If there’s one man who could do with a rest, it’s Gary Neville. But in between managing his media and business interests, the former footballer still starts most weekdays the same way: waking up early for a 6am workout.

‘My whole life has been about routine and repetition,’ Neville told The Times. ‘Even now, I need structure in every part of my life.

‘I’m up every morning at quarter past five. I’ll have a coffee, review all the news – sports news mainly, but news as well. All your papers, so I’m across everything. Five mornings a week I’ll then walk to the gym for six, and finish at 6:50 before walking back home for seven.’

The 51-year-old favours high-intensity, circuit-style training rather than traditional bodybuilding workouts, having regularly attended Barry’s classes over the years. That said, strength work still forms part of his routine.

It’s an approach Neville adopted after learning a difficult lesson in retirement. Having stepped away from professional football in 2011, he admits he spent the first couple of years enjoying himself a little too much.

The Wake-Up Call That Changed Gary Neville’s Fitness

‘The impact of not training every day surprised me,’ Neville said in a social media video.

‘I think I took for granted how training made me feel good about myself – in my body, in my head. And then when I finished playing football, I started to have a glass of wine at night regularly, I started to have a bit of cheese, I started to have more chocolate.

‘I started to think I could just relax and enjoy my life from a nutrition and fitness point of view. I didn’t work very hard at all – in fact I didn’t train much in the first year or two [after retirement].’

The weight gain that followed eventually prompted an intervention from his wife.

‘If you look at those first couple of years outside of football, you’ll see that I put weight on,’ he said.

‘I remember my wife coming up to me one day and saying, “Look, come on, you need to sort yourself out. You’ve been fit all your life.”

‘And it completely transformed the way I thought. From that moment on, I started at it again.’

Why Neville Calls Exercise a Form of Medicine

These days, Neville says training has become non-negotiable.

He’s not preparing for a sporting event or chasing specific performance goals, but he notices a significant difference in both his physical and mental wellbeing whenever he stops exercising for too long.

‘I feel like I can’t go without training,’ he explained. ‘If I go three, four or five days without training then it’s not the end of the world, but if I go two weeks without it, I start to feel heavy.

‘I start to feel like I’m losing strength. You start to feel like you’re going under a little bit. I didn’t prepare for the fact that not training, eating more and not being able to cope without that fitness structure in my life every single day.’

The former Manchester United captain believes the mental benefits are just as important as the physical ones.

‘People who don’t train are missing out on a great medicine,’ he said. ‘I stopped for two to three years and the impact it had on my mental health was terrible.’

More than a decade after retirement, Neville’s routine looks very different to the one he followed as a professional footballer. But the principle remains the same: move regularly, stay consistent and make exercise part of your day rather than something you squeeze in when you get the chance.

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Ryan is a Senior Writer at Men’s Health UK with a passion for storytelling, health and fitness. Having graduated from Cardiff University in 2020, and later obtaining his NCTJ qualification, Ryan started his career as a Trainee News Writer for sports titles Golf Monthly, Cycling Weekly and Rugby World before progressing to Staff Writer and subsequently Senior Writer with football magazine FourFourTwo.

During his two-and-a-half years there he wrote news stories for the website and features for the magazine, while he also interviewed names such as Les Ferdinand, Ally McCoist, Jamie Redknapp and Antonio Rudiger, among many others. His standout memory, though, came when getting the opportunity to speak to then-Plymouth Argyle manager Steven Schumacher as the club won League One in 2023.

Having grown up a keen footballer and playing for his boyhood side until the age of 16, Ryan got the opportunity to represent Northern Ireland national futsal team eight times, scoring three goals against England, Scotland and Gibraltar. Now past his peak, Ryan prefers to mix weightlifting with running – he achieved a marathon PB of 3:31:49 at Manchester in April 2025, but credits the heat for failing to get below the coveted 3:30 mark…

You can follow Ryan on Instagram @ryan.dabbs or on X @ryandabbs_