Q: What’s the next best thing to actually going to the gym? A: Reading about going to the gym. Q: How can you fit personal training into your busy lifestyle? A: By sitting down with an article by a personal trainer. Q: How can you feel toned, lean and muscular without any physical effort? A: Peruse a fitness blog!

Yes folks, as a dedicated armchair athlete, and aspiring sports writer, I’ve come up with the perfect mind body balance. I’m pleased to report that my latest hobby is reading the internet’s dazzling array of fitness blogs. These wonderful sites- written by personal trainers, nutritionists, assorted nutters, fitness models et al- dish up all the latest info about exercise and diet. And the best thing is that they can be read while sitting on one’s butt with a cup of tea and low carb/high protein biscuit. Obviously, I’m joking about the biscuit: spekulatius, those nice gingerbread-almond combos, are my preferred weapon of choice.

After extensive research (about a month of sitting around with cups of teas, after my kid has gone to bed) I’ve come up with what I think are the cream of the current crop. However, like any good researcher, I’ve got to admit some bias in my selection and analysis:

(a) No pretty, no read: ok, so it’s superficial, but if the typography and graphics aren’t that hot, I’m not inclined to stay and read. I also give bonus marks for nice illustrations or relevant documentation. It shows that you care about detail and that you are in it for the long haul.

(b) Gender: while I occasionally read the manly blogs, often designated by black and grey colour schemes, adrenaline graphics and photos of rippling torsos, I’m more interested in content that targets women. The good side of this is that I get to find out about female friendly exercises and stuff that mainstream blogs won’t touch (e.g. exercising during menstruation). The bad side is that you have to wade through a certain amount of material about body image and eating disorders, which is useful information, but just not what I’m particularly interested in.

(c)  Punctuation: ok, so I’m leaving myself open here, but if you don’t know how to use a possessive apostrophe, I’m going to doubt your authority on all other subjects.

I have a host of other biases, but they’re really too nitpicky to list in detail.

Here’s my current faves:

Jen Sinkler, a former rugby player and personal trainer, writes an engaging blog about strength training, nutrition and exercise. Her blog went viral a few months ago when she weighed into the ‘cardio versus weights debate’. When someone asked her what she did for cardio, she famously replied ‘lift weights faster’. And yes, you can buy a cute-shirt with this slogan on it.

I only worked out what CrossFit is fairly recently, and since them have been mentally translating it as ‘gymnastics for guys’. Yes, this is an awkward admission, but until quite late in the piece, I thought 50 Shades of Grey was a book about old people, so not understanding CrossFit is quite on par. Here’s a funny article by a CrossFit devotee and another piece, that got a heap of traffic, by a critical voice.

A blog that makes me smile, probably for the wrong reasons, is Fitness on Toast. A ridiculously good looking Swedish trainer sashays around the world, being photographed in expensive workout outfits, and sometimes stopping to eat delicious food. So why do I grin? Just small things, like the post that says you need to throw your trainers out after six months, and a breezy ‘easy’ recipe that considers fresh wild salmon a fridge staple. I rest my case.

If you’re interested in food, this nutritionist’s blog is a good read: it’s regularly updated, has nice pictures and recipes, and she’s generous with her linking. However as a fitness devotee, when she starts talking CrossFit, I’ve got no idea what’s going on. It’s like another language, with hieroglyphic scribbles on a whiteboard, its own syntax and vocabulary, the whole bit. Good to read on Mondays, as she does a nice round up of good posts from the world of fitness and exercise, but sometimes the content she links to does feel a bit ‘prayer and clean living’.

One of my particular faves is Fit and Feminist: the name says it all.