The time on the alarm clock showed 5 am, the last hour of the night before the sun brought light into the world, it was the time when most people in this world, whether they be muggle or magic, were still sleeping.
And the Weasley household wasn't an exception to this, as even Molly Weasley the earliest riser of the household, didn't usually wake up until after six, which meant that almost the whole family was deep asleep at the moment... well almost the whole family...
The silence of the burrow was broken by the sound of the door of the topmost room opening slowly with a loud creak that rang throughout the house.
Ron slowly and silently tiptoed out of his room, before gingerly closing the door behind him. He was dressed in comfortable pyjamas and an old short-sleeved T-shirt, the only piece of 'sportswear' Ron had available to his name.
Having washed his face with cold water earlier, he was now wide awake. His ears strained to listen to any hint of noise, Ron cautiously went down the stairs, making sure not to wake anyone up.
Thankfully, all the nights he spent roaming the Hogwarts castle were coming into use at the moment as he reached the front door without making a single loud noise despite the squeaking stairs.
The moment he came out the front door, he was hit with a breeze of cold air, that instantly rejuvenated him and sent a burst of energy into his body.
After taking a couple of deep breaths filled with the fresh morning air, Ron took off running, "Let's go!"
The Burrow was located on the outskirts of the village Ottery St. Catchpole, and it had a barn, chicken coop, vegetable patch and everything else that one needed to be called a proper magical countryside home.
The house was surrounded on three sides by vast rolling fields, with a simple rugged road in the middle leading towards the village. On the fourth side which is the backside of the house, there laid a wooded area about a hundred meters away, that even had a river flowing through it and that... was where Ron was going at the moment.
It took Ron approximately ten minutes of slow jog before he managed to reach the river bed, the place he had decided would be his personal training area during the summer, and the moment he stepped foot into the clearing beside the river, he fell onto his knees and began huffing and puffing like an eighty years old man.
His legs were aching and shaking fiercely, his lungs felt as if they were on fire, and he had a massive stitch at his side that was hurting like hell, and all that was from a 10-minute run, 'God! I never knew I was this unhealthy...'
After a rest, that was way too long, Ron finally managed to stand up and slowly began the workout routine that he had decided on last night.
In his previous life, Sam had been a casual gym goer, the kind that spends more time watching gym videos than actually going to the gym, and while the knowledge from those videos may not have been particularly useful in his previous life, they were now helping him in creating a proper workout for himself.
Ron's body was that of a complete beginner as he had never regularly done any kind of physical activity in his life... well unless you count those few hours a week he spent during the DA meeting a workout, but those meetings were more about using his magical ability than his physical one.
So he had decided on a full-body workout every day, to begin with. It was a newbie workout that is a bit less strenuous on the body but hits almost all the muscles equally.
He began with a quick warm-up, making sure to heat up all his joints and tendons rigorously as the last thing he wanted was an injury due to carelessness.
After about five minutes of that, his body was sufficiently warmed up and so he began with the most basic exercise that everyone in the world knows about... Push-ups.
And he managed to do a complete total of... twelve.
And those too were divided into three sets of six and then four and then for the last set he barely managed to do two before his arms gave out.
'Damn! To be so skinny, and still only be able to do a dozen push-ups. Merlin! It's embarrassing...'
But as they say, 'No pain! No gain!' so there was nothing to do other than work on it,
The next exercise on his list was pull-ups.
For which he went to a nearby tree, with a sturdy branch at a proper height, before he jumped and hung onto it. He went up and down for a complete total of two times, which couldn't even be considered a full set, and his arms refused to budge from there... and after a few seconds of trying, he had to give up and let go only to fall on his butt.
He wasn't too surprised by his weakness this time so he didn't waste any time before going onto the next exercise—Squats.
Thankfully, his legs didn't completely betray him as he managed to do a decent amount this time— specifically, three sets of 10, and while they couldn't be called much, at least the number wasn't as embarrassing as his pushup count, 'It seems climbing all those stairs during school was useful for something after all..."
After a few minutes of break, he began the next one—sit-ups.
And then he tried Burpees...
And then a few mountain climbers...
And a few more for the back and shoulders...
Before he ended it all with three sets of half-minute-long planks...
And the second he finished with all the exercise goals that he had set himself to do for the day, his body immediately gave out as he fell onto his back... completely limp.
His whole body was aching from top to bottom, his chest was heaving up and down as if he was on his last breath, and for ten long minutes he could do nothing but just lay there on the riverbed looking at the sky... but after those ten minutes he was able to finally get his breath under control and move once again.
It still took him three tries before he was able to get back on his feet and even then his legs kept shaking like crazy.
Removing his sticky T-shirt with some effort, he slowly and gingerly went towards the river to clean himself.
The cold water of the clean fast-flowing river felt like a balm to his muscles as it sent a shock into his nerves and removed quite a bit of his fatigue from his body.
He repeatedly splashed all over his upper body until at last he felt alive once again...
Just as he was finally satisfied with the amount of water he had splattered on himself, Ron caught the image of his own body on the water's surface, and for the first time he saw what his body looked like with his new eyes and it... wasn't very pretty.
Weak flabby arms with little to no muscle definition, a chest that was mostly skin, and in the middle his stomach consisted of two tyres filled with nothing but unhealthy fat.
He was what one would call the very definition of a skinny fat physique...
People with this physique have fat but don't have the fat people's strength, and they are skinny but don't have the skinny look, that good-looking people have, so they get all the drawbacks with none of the benefits...
It is a most stubborn kind of physique that is quite hard to get rid of...
"Ugh! Hope it doesn't stay like this for too long..." He prayed before shaking his head and standing up.
After reluctantly wearing his sticky wet T-shirt once again, he set off towards the Burrow, this time walking there instead of running as his shaky legs didn't seem like they could take any more of a beating.
By the time he reached the Burrow, the sun had risen quite a bit and when he came close to the front door, he could already hear the clanging of pans from inside the house, indicating that his mother had already woken up.
'Well, she'll know sooner or later, so may as well...' He shrugged as he opened the door and went inside and just like he expected his mother had quite a few questions for him.
"Ron? Why are you—When did you wake up? And why are you sweating like that?"
"I am fine, Mum. I just went to do a little bit of exercise, that's all..."
"Exercise?!" she repeated as if it was a strange word, "But why? Is everything alright?" she had such a concerned look on her face as if he had told her that he was on drugs.
"Yes, Mum. Everything's fine. I just... I just want to keep my position on the quidditch team and I know that I am not good enough yet... so I wanted to prepare for it during the summer," he replied telling her the excuse that he had prepared beforehand.
Not that it was a complete lie anyway, as he did want to be on the Gryffindor team and he knew that Harry would hold a tryout for all positions whether someone had been on the team before or not... so this could be like two birds with one stone.
"That... is good then," Molly replied with an unsure look on her face, as on the one hand, she didn't want to discourage him from doing training, but on the other hand she wanted him to put more of his focus on his studies rather than dangerous sports like quidditch
But considering how most of her children had turned out, she knew that it was a lost battle having any of them give up the broom, so she didn't even try, "Then why don't you go ahead and brush your teeth? I am sure you must be hungry after your training and I'll have the breakfast ready in a bit."
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