Gary Neville might be 15 years retired from professional football, but he hasn’t lost his appetite for training.
Speaking to Men’s Health at the Emirates Stadium on the opening night of the Premier League season, Neville reveals that he still trains at least four – and often five – times a week, adapting his sessions around an increasingly busy schedule. For him, getting the work done is non-negotiable.
‘I don’t miss a session,’ Neville says. ‘If I say I’m going to do it, I do it. But I have to do it in the morning – I would never be able to do it in the afternoon.’
Chatting alongside Jamie Carragher, who doesn’t quite believe Neville when he says he neither has a personal trainer nor uses ChatGPT to write his sessions, the Manchester United legend explains that most of his training knowledge comes from spending 20 years in professional sport.
‘Here’s the Bulgarian weightlifter, Gary Nevilleov’
And while plenty has changed since his playing days, his approach to lifting remains surprisingly old-school: build your training around heavy compound exercises and get them done consistently.
The 6 Strength Exercises Neville Swears By
‘I love squats,’ Neville says. ‘At United, when I used to do squats, Paul Scholes used to walk in and say, “Here’s the Bulgarian weightlifter, Gary Nevilleov,” because I was so stocky.
‘Bench press, squats, shoulder press, lunges, bent-over rows, deadlifts – they are six exercises I’ve always done, but do you know what I love? Calf raises. Underrated.
‘I do some cardio, I always go for a walk once a week and I row mainly – I struggle with running.’
The 51-year-old will often wake at 5am to get to the gym for 6. And when his favoured gym closed down a few months ago, that didn’t derail his routine. Instead, Neville pivoted and now regularly heads to Barry’s Bootcamp classes in Manchester.
He has, however, learned when enough is enough, deliberately skipping the final 15 minutes of the workout.
‘That’s when I get injured,’ he says.
How Neville Trains Around a Busy Schedule
Alongside his punditry and co-commentary duties for Sky Sports, Neville runs multiple businesses and appears on several podcasts each week. Throw in regular travel up and down the country and sticking to the same training schedule every week isn’t particularly realistic.
So he doesn’t try.
‘I’m in the hotel tonight and then I’ll do a morning gym session there,’ Neville says, speaking just a couple of hours before going on air to cover Arsenal’s opening-day win against Coventry.
‘I’m debating whether to do a 10,000-metre row, which is just cardio and will take me 41 to 42 minutes, or a circuit, which would be: four arms [exercises], four legs, two core, two cardio – something like that. 12 stations, 40 seconds on, 20 seconds off.’
He admits rowing for that long is boring, but says he feels the benefits. He’s also eager to show us the timing app he uses for his circuits, which beeps at the end of each interval so he doesn’t have to keep checking his phone.
He does, however, forget to turn it off, leaving the alarms to repeatedly interrupt our conversation.
For Neville, the bigger challenge isn’t finding the motivation to train – it’s finding somewhere to put the sessions.
‘I had a problem this week – on Thursday I was going to my daughter’s GCSE results early,’ he explains. ‘On Friday I travelled down to London at 6am [for the first Premier League game of the season]. Saturday, I’m free. Sunday, I’m travelling at 7am. And then on Monday I’m travelling back to London from Manchester at 7am.
‘So, I trained Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday straight. I have Thursday, Friday off, train Saturday. So that’s my four this week. And then next week I’ll start again on Tuesday.
‘I do plan my training knowing when I can and can’t train, because we do have a schedule.’
It’s not the meticulously structured programme Neville would have followed at Manchester United. But 15 years into retirement, the principle that underpins it hasn’t changed much: work out when you can, adapt when you need to and, above all, don’t skip the session you’ve promised yourself you’ll do.
Sky Sports is the home of domestic football, showing over 1,500 live matches across the Premier League, English Football League, Women’s Super League and Scottish Premiership this season.
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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_