MY METHOD

I coach people, not numbers on a sheet. What we build together holds up even in the rough weeks, because it starts with habits before it starts with loads.

WHY WEIGHTS, AT ANY AGE

Getting stronger makes everything else better: running, playing, holding up through a whole season, carrying the shopping up the stairs, standing up from a chair at seventy without thinking about it. With age, muscle mass and strength tend to decline, especially if you do not train them, and training them is how you keep them. That is why the World Health Organization recommends that adults do muscle-strengthening activities for the major muscle groups at least two days a week.

Twice a week: less than you imagine, and the reason you get to keep the life you have. What matters is that those two sessions are written well and done well — load that grows with you, clean execution, high intensity where it belongs. That is where my work sits: in the quality of that time, not in the number of hours.

WHAT I LEARNED IN AMERICA

I spent four years in the United States as a Division One student-athlete, and there I saw a different way of coaching: it starts from movement — how you push, how you pull, how you land — and the program grows in phases, with recovery and habits inside the plan rather than beside it. Every person is treated as an athlete, whatever their starting point.

Many gyms still work machine by machine and muscle group by muscle group, the same sheet for months. I bring over the model I was trained in: what is standard practice in the United States for anyone preparing athletes, applied to you.

THE HIGH-LOW MODEL

It is the model elite sprinters and elite athletes are prepared with, and I use it in every program. The nervous system cannot be stressed to its maximum every single day: it needs alternation between high intensity days and recovery days.

• High day — sprints and heavy lower body lifts: deadlifts, squats, heavy lunges.
• Low day — upper body and longer, less intense cardio-metabolic work.

It took me years of mistakes and wasted hours training too much to understand it. Strength work has to be short, infrequent, organised and intense: my job is to simplify your training as much as possible.

RESULTS DO NOT STOP AT THE GYM DOOR

Training sits at the centre: it is the part I write, and it is where you build. Around it I look at your whole day — how you sleep, how you recover, what you eat, how much time you actually have — because that is where gym work turns into results. On nutrition I give you education, so you recognise the right choices on your own: a meal plan is written by a nutritionist, and when you need one I will tell you.

FOUNDATIONS FIRST

Every program rests on five pillars, and they hold for someone starting today just as much as for a competing athlete:

• Progressive overload — you grow when the work grows with you, gradually.
• Consistency — the average session done every week beats the perfect one done now and then.
• Recovery — the body gets stronger while it rests: sleep is part of the training.
• Nutrition education — you learn to understand what you eat and why, so you make the right choices on your own even when I am not there.
• Habits — what you repeat every day builds the result: the rest is garnish.

JUST SHOW UP

Showing up is the part that depends on you, and it is the part that decides the result: your habits change while you follow the program, one session at a time. The rest is my job — writing those sessions so that every week moves you a step forward, and keeping them inside the life you already have.