Blog
It’s holiday season. The time where we all frantically diet and exercise like our lives depend on it. But is all that panic really necessary? After almost 10 years working with clients, I see the same patterns year after year.
It’s holiday season. The time where we all frantically diet and exercise like our lives depend on it. But is all that panic really necessary? After almost 10 years working with clients, I see the same patterns year after year.
Fat loss is a funny thing. If you asked most people if they’d like to lose a little fat, they’d probably tell you they would. Some of us feel so strongly about this it influences our behaviour on a daily basis.
If you search for “motivation” on social media, you’ll be inundated with endless cringeworthy memes, quotes and desperate attempts by well meaning people to seem more badass than they actually are.
As a personal trainer and physique coach of 5 years, better yet – as a gym goer of 10 years, I find it no exaggeration whatsoever to say with confidence that weight training has changed my life. I might even go so far as to say that weight training saved my life.
In western culture, we’re very good at splitting the body up into ‘sections’. This is how hospitals are divided up, and how we think about our bodies in general. You have the head, the lungs, the heart, the arms, legs, torso, individual muscles within each area of the body. […]
When you’re new to the gym as an arena to develop yourself – it can be a pretty intimidating place. Lots of people suffer with crippling self confidence issues in general, but when it comes to stepping foot in the gym it’s just magnified. I remember the first time I […]
For a beginner, the gym can be an intimidating environment. Tons of machines, heavy ass dumbbells and metal plates lying around. Everyone seems like they’re an expert other than you, and you feel ridiculously out of your comfort zone and self conscious about every move you make, worried that […]
Ever get to the gym and just don’t feel ready to train? Maybe you’ve come straight from a long day at work and your head’s mashed, maybe you’ve got a lot on in your personal life or maybe you just haven’t got a clue what you’re going to do […]
Social media is fantastic for some things. Keeping us in contact with each other, allowing us to be inspired by each other’s achievements, and it provides some absolutely cracking cat memes. But for all the benefits, the drawbacks are huge. In this article I want to focus on one […]
How To Build Muscle Naturally I’ve lost count of the amount of times I’ve been asked how to build muscle naturally. People even question if there is such a thing as building muscle naturally – as so many people have been disillusioned to believe that you must take performance enhancing […]
“How much does a personal trainer cost at the gym?” That’s the question on everyone’s mind when they’ve finally made the conscious decision that they want to improve their health, fitness, body image or strength and they want some help to get there. The gym can be a […]
Love The Process The fitness industry, not helped by the rise of social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook – has become a massively ‘results’ driven business. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, before and after pictures are really powerful and have their place in what we do. However, […]
When you’re just starting out trying to add muscle to your frame, it can be tempting to look up to the biggest guys in the industry. The bodybuilders, physique athletes and fitness models. And for good reason. These are the top guys in the business and it makes total […]
After being in this industry for as long as I have, it’s always fascinated me how it can be that two different people, with relatively similar circumstances, goals and aspirations can come out with two completely different results. On the surface of it, there shouldn’t be any reason why […]
Nowadays on social media and in the fitness industry in general it’s cool to talk about getting bigger and working yourself into a coma chasing the gains. Everyone wants to post about how they’re ‘killing it’ in the gym – and that’s fantastic, we need intensity and work ethic […]
Before you get to the programming, the methodologies or the rep ranges involved in training for a better physique, we need to take a closer look at the way we actually perform exercises. Even closer than this, we need to pay close attention to the hardest parts of the […]
Training to build muscle can be a confusing thing to try and approach – and with so many conflicting pieces of information and opinions floating around in gyms and on social media it’s no wonder. There are tons of areas that you could dive into and debate for hours […]
Bulking Or Just Getting Fat? Are you bulking, or just getting fat? So a couple of months ago I made a short post on my social media entitled: “Bulking Isn’t An Excuse To Be A Fat Shit” Of all the written posts I’ve ever made (meaning, it wasn’t […]
Meet Liam – One of the kindest, most hard working lads I’ve ever had the pleasure of coaching. I first started doing a few bits of work with Liam a couple of years ago, but our best work together came this year (2018) in the run up to his […]
Meet Dan – or as he’s known to pretty much everyone bar his mother, Boghead (don’t ask why). Aside from being a great friend of mine over the years, for the last 2 years Boghead has been a really hard working and massively impressive success story of mine. […]
Pullups are a massively popular exercise and I’ve lost count of the amount of clients that have a ‘sub goal’ of being able to do bodyweight pullups on their own. If you can master pullups, you will undoubtedly fast track the growth of your lats and rear delts, as […]
So welcome to a new feature I’m launching called ‘client spotlight’. I’m sick of talking about myself so I figured that everyone else must be by now too – so it’s time to make my clients the real stars of the show. First up is Paul King, a […]
Setting Up A Fat Loss Diet Setting up a fat loss diet can be confusing, annoying and unproductive if you don’t put the time, thought and effort into setting it up properly. The set up of the fat loss diet is everything in terms of whether or not you […]
Motivation Vs Purpose One of the biggest throw away comments I get is something along the lines of “I wish I had your motivation”. No, you don’t. People tend to look at my life and my career, and assume that I’m the most motivated person in the world. That it […]
The amount of thought most people put into their training programme usually consists of walking in the gym and seeing what they feel like training. This is the most backward and limiting philosophy towards training and in this article I’m going to spell out why – and what you should […]
In the last article I put out we spoke about the top 3 things you can do with you training to help build muscle. Today we’re looking at the other side of the coin: nutrition. Nutrition is an area of huge debate and unnecessary anger when someone tries to […]
Today we’re talking about the good stuff. Back to basics with this article and I’m going through my top 3 tips for muscle building in beginners. Basically, this is all the stuff I wish I’d gotten right from day 1 (if I did, I’d be a lot bigger than I […]
Today’s article is going to cover the power and effectiveness of the routine. Routines create sustainable predictability, they allow you to plan things in your day properly and massively decrease the probability that you’ll fuck up on your diet or training or anything else you really need to be doing […]
In today’s article I want to go through autoregulation – or in simpler terms, how to adjust your training plan as you go. A Training plan can be very rigid, set in stone and black and white. The trouble is, human beings are far from rigid creatures. We’re constantly […]
When it comes to trying to get in better shape, whether you’re trying to lose weight or stack it on, the ‘default setting’ most people revert back to when they start the process is the ‘all or nothing’ approach. This works – if you actually stick to the ‘all’ part […]
Mental Health In Fitness Mental health, while it has been demonised and ridiculed for generations, now seems to be the topic on everyone’s lips. It’s no surprise to log on to a social media site nowadays and see people posting updates regarding mental health. However, one thing I have noticed […]
The inspiration for this blog post comes from Dr Jordan Peterson’s book “12 Rules For Life” – which is a fantastic read and I’d recommend it to anyone. So any useful mindset related things that happen to be in this article should be attributed to Dr Peterson before any credit […]
Welcome back to my blog series on the 3 phases to a better physique, all about bringing the package together and getting lean. This article is going to cover phase 3 – the phase I go through myself periodically to get in great shape. Now it’s important to note […]
Welcome back to my second piece on how to set yourself up for a better physique. If you missed my first article go back to the blog section of my website and have a read through it on there. Today I’m going to be talking about the next phase […]
If you’re new to weight training, it can be hard to visualise just how you’re supposed to go from where you are right now to where you want to be in terms of your physique. With that in mind, this 3-part article is going to take you through the […]
For all the reading, watching, studying and practicing I’ve ever done on muscle growth – the times where I’ve learned the most have been when I’ve made mistakes. Nothing teaches you the right way of doing things like experiencing the wrong way of doing them. Running head first into brick […]
If you’re natural, or ‘drug free’, you’ve likely contemplated whether you need to train differently to the guys out there using assistance. It’s a perfectly reasonable question – after all, a lot of the bodybuilders, fitness models and people in the spotlight we see on social media are using drugs. […]
Strength, heavy lifting, power building, whatever you want to call it – everyone’s got an opinion on it when it comes to utilising it for muscular growth and no one seems to agree. The information out there is all very conflicting in what kind of training you should be […]
Getting in better shape, improving your body composition and stacking on muscle is something that requires effort. We know this, it’s not new information. The issue most people have isn’t that they don’t put effort into the process. It’s more that they direct their efforts into the wrong places. […]
When we set out to achieve a goal, be that fitness related or otherwise – we’re presented with choices every single day. Regardless of what these choices are about – the choice itself usually boils down to one thing: Instant Gratification or Relentless Patience. The reason most people don’t […]
Weight training can be one of the most daunting and confusing things to try and learn on your own. Over the last 9 years or so I’ve made more mistakes in the weights room than I care to admit. From starting at 16 years old and doing nothing but chest […]
When you’re first starting out in the gym and want to build some muscle, everything seems mega confusing. The issue of what training programme to follow or how to structure you’re training is one of the most baffling for most people – and something most people get completely wrong in […]
Lagging body parts suck.
They’re the parts of your body you seem to target every time you go in to the gym but never seem to respond no matter what you try.
Contrary to popular belief, the process of building muscle mass and training for a better physique stretches way beyond the stereotypical ‘meathead’ lifting heavy things up and putting them back down again in a dungeon like basement gym.
Having worked in gyms and been around guys that are trying to build muscle for a number of years now, I’ve started to notice some trends that crop up week after week when I speak to people about their struggles with training.
I’m going to start this article by saying that powerlifting as a sport, is awesome. I have a massive amount of respect for those that compete or train as a powerlifter – the amount of weight some of these guys can lift is insane.
No matter who you are, we’ve all got areas of our body that we’re not as happy with as others.
Areas that are maybe slightly under developed, not as aesthetically pleasing as others or whatever it might be that’s bothering us.
