I started going to the gym for Evan
I didn’t start going to the gym for myself. It was part of a promise I made to myself because of Evan.
He was 11 and worried that he was already too late to take competitive swimming seriously. Some boys had been racing since they were seven. Four years feels enormous when you are 11, especially when you stand beside someone who seems to have a head start in everything.
When AquaTech Swimming Club accepted him into its Developmental Squad, I decided I needed to do more than tell him it was not too late. I wanted to prove to him that he could set his mind and heart on something and do the work, even if other people had started years before him. Hard work can catch talent, but only if you keep showing up.
First, I got back in the pool
After our Korea trip in December 2025, I weighed almost 92 kg. That number stayed with me, but the bigger push came from everything happening around Evan’s swimming. I was researching competitive clubs in Singapore, looking for the right fit for the kids, checking out strong swimmers, watching technique videos on YouTube and thinking ahead to the next meet. Somewhere in all that research, the sport I had left alone for 30 years started to pull me back in. I was becoming a swim parent without quite realising it.
In January 2026, I started swimming again. From January through March, I went three times a week, splitting the days between technique, endurance and sprint work. I lost a fair bit of weight before I ever recorded a gym weigh-in. The first weight in my Hevy export is from May, so the chart on my gym page begins after that swimming stretch, not at the beginning of the journey.
The Saturday invitation
Coach Yucong and Coach David invited me to try a session with them at Anytime Fitness. I went along, and that trial got me started in the gym in May. David was kind enough to train us three times a week, but work meant I could only join them on Saturdays.
One coached session a week was a start, but I knew I needed another three or four sessions on my own if I wanted to make real progress. Finding those hours was the problem. Once the family was asleep, I could finally get away to train. That is how the late-night sessions began.
I started logging workouts in Hevy and using ChatGPT to help plan what to do between Saturdays. I kept training with David whenever I could, asking him to check my form, talking through my splits and updating him on how I was getting on. Having Yucong and David in my corner has been a real blessing. I might train alone in the wee hours, but I did not figure all of this out alone.
The hour nobody wants
I am a father of four and I manage two companies. The time I can call my own usually starts when everyone else is asleep. Most nights that means the gym somewhere between 1am and 3am. I don’t expect anyone to think that is a sensible training schedule. It is the slot that lets me be present for my family, make the Saturday sessions when I can and still put in the work on my own.
Some nights I am tired before I leave the house. Sometimes a session feels ordinary. I go anyway. If there is a lesson I hope Evan notices, it is that the work does not wait for the perfect mood, the perfect timetable or a sudden burst of inspiration.
Motivation is useless as a plan. It comes and goes. Discipline is what gets my shoes on when the house is quiet and I could very easily go to bed. Showing up once is easy enough to celebrate; showing up again when nobody is watching is the part that changes things. Call it god-level discipline if you want. To me, it is keeping a promise I made by starting.
The numbers are part of it
I log the sessions and the weigh-ins because memory has a habit of improving the story after the fact. I was almost 92 kg after Korea; by the first recorded gym weigh-in on 14 May, I was 87 kg. The latest entry is 80.45 kg on 25 October. Weight jumps around, and one reading does not say much about a person. Those May-to-October entries are a record of the gym stretch, while the earlier swimming work is part of the story too.
I am not asking Evan to copy my hours or my workouts. I want him to know that an early start is an advantage, not a verdict. He has his own work to do in the water; I have mine in the gym. If he sees that progress is built by turning up over and over, the whole thing will have been worth more than a number on a scale.
Maybe this leads me back to masters swimming too. I am still on the fence. A 5:30am session sounds especially brutal when I have been lifting after midnight. If Evan makes Youth Squad and we can train at the same time, a father and son stint with ATS Masters might finally tip me over. For now, I am keeping the gym appointment I already know how to make.