How to Get Back Into Training After a Break

Taking time away from training happens.

You go on holiday. Work gets busy. You get ill. You have children. You pick up an injury. Or sometimes you simply fall out of the habit.

Then comes the surprisingly difficult bit:

Getting started again.

When you've trained consistently for months or years, exercise becomes part of your routine. Once that routine is broken, returning can feel much harder than it probably should.

And the longer you've been away, the easier it is to make the mistake of trying to immediately become the person you were before the break.

You don't need to.

Your first objective is much simpler:

Start training again.

1. Re-establish Your Goal

Before worrying about programmes, exercises or how much weight is on the bar, ask yourself:

What am I actually trying to achieve?

Your answer might have changed since you last trained consistently.

Perhaps you still want to get stronger.

Maybe you want to lose some body fat.

Run a particular distance.

Get your first pull-up.

Or perhaps life is particularly hectic and your current goal is simply:

Train twice every week.

That's a perfectly legitimate goal.

Try to establish what you want, why it matters to you and how you'll know you're making progress.

That gives your training some direction again.

2. Accept Where You Are Now

Depending on how long you've been away, you might not immediately be as strong or fit as you were before.

That's fine.

You haven't failed. You've just had some time away from training.

If you kept a training log, have a look at what you were doing previously—but treat those numbers as information rather than targets you have to hit on your first session back.

If you previously squatted 100kg and 80kg now feels heavy, train with 80kg.

If you used to run 5km comfortably and currently need to alternate between running and walking, do that.

The same applies to bodyweight or other measurements.

You can measure them if the information is useful to you.

But you don't need to punish yourself for what the number says.

Establish where you are, then work from there.

3. Don't Try to Make Up for Lost Time

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see.

You've missed three weeks of training, so your first week back suddenly contains:

Five workouts.

A new diet.

10,000 steps every day.

No alcohol.

No chocolate.

And an enthusiastic promise that this time you're going to stretch every morning.

By Thursday you're exhausted.

You don't need to compensate for the training you didn't do.

You need to make the next session happen.

Your first few workouts back should probably leave you feeling as though you could have done more.

You can increase the weights, volume and intensity as your body readjusts.

There's no prize for making yourself unable to walk after your first squat session in a month.

4. Compare Yourself to Yesterday, Not Six Months Ago

Your previous best performances can be useful reference points.

They shouldn't become something you beat yourself up with.

If you're constantly comparing every session with the strongest or fittest you've ever been, returning to training can become unnecessarily demoralising.

Instead, shorten the timeframe.

What can you improve from where you are now?

One more repetition.

A slightly heavier weight.

Another five minutes of walking.

Turning up for your second workout of the week.

Sometimes progress isn't even physical.

If you haven't exercised for three months and you go to the gym for 30 minutes:

That's progress.

Then do it again.

5. Find Your Rhythm Before Chasing Performance

This is probably the most important part.

Adherence comes first.

The perfect programme is useless if you don't do it.

Look at your actual week and decide where training realistically fits.

Not your imaginary week where you wake up at 5am every morning feeling enormously motivated.

Your real one.

If you can reliably train twice per week, start with twice.

If you know Tuesday and Thursday evenings work, protect those times.

Try to identify what normally stops you training and solve those problems before they happen.

Your initial target isn't necessarily:

“Get fit.”

It's:

“Become somebody who trains regularly again.”

Once the routine is established, we can do much more with it.

6. Don't Go Straight Back to Your Old Training Volume

Your previous programme might eventually become appropriate again.

That doesn't mean you need to complete all of it during your first week back.

Start with manageable weights and fewer total sets if necessary.

Give yourself a few sessions to see how your body responds.

You'll often find that things return more quickly than you expect.

And that's another reason not to rush.

You don't need to prove how fit you used to be.

Build from what you can do now.

7. Keep Your Nutrition Simple

This probably isn't the moment to completely overhaul your diet either.

If you're simultaneously rebuilding your training routine, tracking every gram of carbohydrate and weighing every ingredient may simply create another barrier.

Start with some useful fundamentals:

Drink enough fluid.

Include a useful source of protein with your main meals.

Eat plenty of fruit and vegetables.

Include fibre-rich foods regularly.

Build most of your diet around nutritious foods while leaving room for foods you simply enjoy.

Once those habits are reasonably consistent, you can get more specific if your goals require it.

8. Don't Wait for Motivation

Motivation is fantastic when it turns up.

Unfortunately, it's unreliable.

You don't need to feel incredibly enthusiastic about training every time you do it.

Sometimes you'll have a fantastic session.

Sometimes you'll walk into the gym feeling tired, do 30 minutes of perfectly adequate training and go home.

Both count.

The decent workout you actually do will always beat the perfect workout you don't.

How Quickly Will My Strength and Fitness Come Back?

There's no universal timeframe.

It depends on how long you've been away, what you were doing previously, why you stopped and what you've been doing during the break.

The reassuring part is that you're not starting from scratch.

Someone returning to training has previous experience and adaptations to build upon. Strength and muscle that have been lost during a period away can often be regained more quickly than they were originally developed.

But don't turn that into another deadline.

Let it happen.

Your First Week Back

If you've been struggling to restart, make this deliberately easy.

Choose two opportunities to exercise this week.

Put them in your diary.

Turn up.

Do a sensible amount of work.

Go home.

That's it.

Don't worry about creating the perfect twelve-week transformation.

Get one week right.

Then do another.

The Bottom Line

Getting back into training isn't about immediately returning to your previous best.

It's about rebuilding the behaviours that allowed you to get there in the first place.

Establish where you are.

Set a useful goal.

Start conservatively.

Make training fit your actual life.

Keep your nutrition simple.

And above everything else:

Keep showing up.

Performance can come later.

First, rebuild the habit.

Mental Fatigue: Why Your Brain Feels Tired & What Helps

Do you ever find yourself taking far longer to complete something than it normally should?

You read the same paragraph three times. You struggle to find the right words. Simple decisions suddenly feel unnecessarily difficult. Eventually you're just staring blankly at your computer wondering where your brain has gone.

Welcome to mental fatigue.

Mental fatigue is a normal response to prolonged periods of concentration and cognitive effort. Just as your physical performance can decline after doing lots of physical work, your ability to concentrate and perform mentally can suffer after spending hours thinking, problem-solving, making decisions and dealing with stress.

You can't expect to run as fast after running all day.

Likewise, you probably shouldn't expect your concentration, decision-making and patience to be exactly the same at 5pm as they were at 9am.

There isn't a magic supplement that fixes this, but there are a few things worth getting right.

HYDRATION

Water is essential for pretty much everything your body does, including normal brain function.

Your exact body-water percentage varies considerably depending on things like body composition, age and sex, so you don't need to worry about calculating exactly how many kilograms of you are water.

What matters is avoiding significant dehydration.

Dehydration can affect how you feel and perform, particularly when combined with things like exercise, heat or prolonged periods without drinking. Headaches, tiredness and difficulty concentrating can all accompany dehydration.

You also don't need to spend your entire day aggressively drinking water because you're frightened that thirst means you're already dehydrated.

For most healthy people, thirst is actually a useful part of the body's system for regulating fluid intake.

Keep drinks available throughout the day, drink regularly, and drink more when you're exercising, sweating heavily or somewhere hot.

Your urine can provide a rough additional guide. If it's consistently very dark and you're rarely going to the toilet, you may want to drink a bit more.

There's no prize for producing completely transparent urine all day either.

SLEEP

If you're constantly mentally exhausted, sleep is an obvious place to look.

Both the amount and quality of your sleep matter. One poor night's sleep doesn't mean your day is ruined, but regularly getting insufficient sleep can affect attention, reaction time, memory, mood and decision-making.

Unfortunately, you can't always control exactly how well you sleep.

You can, however, improve the conditions around it.

Some useful things to experiment with include:

1. Give yourself enough opportunity to sleep. Most adults generally need somewhere around 7–9 hours, although individual needs vary.

2. Keep a reasonably consistent schedule. In particular, a relatively consistent waking time can help regulate your sleep-wake cycle.

3. Give yourself time to wind down. That doesn't mean screens are inherently evil. If emails, work or doom-scrolling keep your brain switched on, however, putting them away before bed is probably sensible.

4. Pay attention to caffeine. Caffeine can remain in your system for hours. If your sleep isn't great, experiment with moving your last coffee earlier rather than assuming caffeine doesn't affect you because you can still fall asleep.

You don't need the perfect nighttime routine.

You need one that helps you sleep.

MOVE

If you've spent three hours staring at the same spreadsheet and your brain has turned to porridge, getting away from it for a few minutes can be surprisingly useful.

That doesn't mean sitting at a desk is slowly starving your brain of blood.

It's much simpler than that.

Breaking up prolonged periods of sitting with some movement is good for your health, and short bouts of physical activity can also help with alertness, mood and aspects of cognitive performance.

So get up.

Walk around the building. Go outside. Make a coffee. Take the stairs. Have a walk at lunchtime.

Five or ten minutes away from your desk isn't necessarily five or ten minutes of lost productivity if you come back considerably more capable of doing your job.

And if you can regularly exercise outside work, even better. Physical activity has benefits that extend well beyond your muscles.

TAKE A BREAK

This one probably deserves its own section.

Sometimes the answer to mental fatigue is not trying to find another way to force yourself through it.

It's stopping for a bit.

Sustained concentration is difficult. Short breaks can give you an opportunity to move, eat, drink, change your environment and return to a task with a little more attention.

That doesn't mean you need a complicated productivity system involving seventeen timers and an app.

If your productivity has fallen off a cliff, occasionally walking away from the task for ten minutes is more useful than spending another hour pretending to work.

FOOD AND CAFFEINE

Your brain requires energy, but you don't need special "brain foods" to get through the working day.

Regular meals containing a sensible mixture of protein, carbohydrate, fats, fruit and vegetables will do a perfectly good job for most people.

Caffeine can temporarily improve alertness and reduce feelings of fatigue, which is precisely why half the country starts its working day clutching a coffee.

Just remember that more isn't always better.

Using increasingly large amounts of caffeine to compensate for consistently poor sleep can eventually become a fairly rubbish cycle: tired → caffeine → worse sleep → more tired → more caffeine.

Use it as a tool, not life support.

WHAT ABOUT SUPPLEMENTS?

I wouldn't recommend fish oil as a treatment for mental fatigue or as a way of "increasing blood flow to the brain."

Omega-3 fatty acids are important nutrients and oily fish can absolutely form part of a healthy diet. But that's a different claim.

For most people struggling with everyday mental fatigue, supplements are going to sit a long way behind:

Sleep → breaks → movement → food → hydration → managing workload and stress.

The boring stuff wins again.

IN CLOSING

Mental fatigue is normal.

If you've spent the entire day concentrating, solving problems, dealing with people and making decisions, it isn't surprising that your brain doesn't feel as sharp by the end of it.

You can't remove every source of stress or cognitive demand from your life, but you can make sure you're not making things unnecessarily difficult for yourself.

Sleep enough. Eat properly. Stay hydrated. Move. Take breaks. Use caffeine sensibly.

And accept that occasionally the most productive thing you can do is stop staring at the bloody screen.

If fatigue or problems with concentration are persistent, severe, unexplained or significantly affecting everyday life, that's different from the normal end-of-day mental slump and is worth discussing with a healthcare professional.

Mindset: How to Approach Training for Long-Term Progress

Your mindset matters.

But probably not in the "YOU HAVE TO WANT IT MORE THAN EVERYONE ELSE" way that gets plastered over pictures of people doing burpees.

Training is easier for some people than others.

Some genuinely love going to the gym. Some enjoy training once they're there but have to drag themselves through the door. Others don't particularly enjoy exercise at all but value what it allows them to do.

That means everyone starts from a slightly different place.

You don't need a particular personality to make progress, but there are a few ways of thinking that I've found consistently useful when coaching people.

OWNERSHIP

Taking ownership doesn't mean blaming yourself for everything that goes wrong.

Life happens.

Work gets busy. Children get ill. Money gets tight. You get injured. Your sleep goes to shit. Sometimes circumstances genuinely make training more difficult.

Ownership means recognising the situation you're in and asking:

What can I actually do about it?

Imagine you're regularly missing training because work has become ridiculous.

You could conclude:

"I can't train because work is too busy."

That might be completely true.

But it doesn't give you anywhere to go.

A more useful question is:

"Work is extremely busy at the moment. Given that, what can I realistically manage?"

Maybe three 60-minute sessions become two 30-minute sessions.

Maybe you train closer to work.

Maybe you temporarily lower your expectations.

Maybe maintaining what you've already built becomes the goal until life calms down.

Sometimes the answer might even be:

Training isn't the priority this week.

That's still ownership.

You're making a decision rather than pretending your circumstances don't exist.

Focus on the things you can influence.

That's where your effort is useful.

DISCIPLINE

Motivation is lovely when it turns up.

Unfortunately, it isn't particularly reliable.

There will be days when you want to train and days when you'd much rather sit on the sofa eating biscuits.

Discipline is being able to follow through with useful behaviours even when you don't particularly feel like doing them.

But don't confuse discipline with making everything unnecessarily difficult.

If you want to train consistently, make training easier to do.

Put it in your diary.

Train somewhere convenient.

Have your kit ready.

Follow a programme so you don't have to invent a workout every time you enter the gym.

If an hour feels impossible, do thirty minutes.

If five sessions a week repeatedly falls apart, plan three.

A realistic plan performed consistently beats an ambitious plan you continually fail to follow.

You still have to do the work.

But good planning means you don't have to win a heroic battle with yourself every Tuesday evening just to get through the gym door.

FOCUS

When you're training, train.

Know what you're doing and why you're doing it.

That doesn't mean you need to spend an hour staring intensely at a barbell like you're preparing for mortal combat.

You can talk to people. You can enjoy yourself. You can use your phone.

But there's a difference between using your phone to record your weights or time your rest periods and accidentally spending fifteen minutes watching someone you've never met make an omelette.

Your exercises have a purpose.

Your sets have a purpose.

Even your rest periods have a purpose.

Pay attention to what you're doing and you'll generally get more from the time you're already spending in the gym.

CONSISTENCY

This is where mindset actually becomes useful.

One brilliant week doesn't matter very much.

Neither does one terrible week.

Progress comes from accumulating enough useful work over months and years.

That means missing a workout isn't failure.

Eating more than you planned at the weekend isn't failure.

Having a rubbish training session isn't failure.

The problem usually starts when one deviation becomes:

"Well, I've fucked it now."

You haven't.

Get back to what you were doing.

You don't need to punish yourself, make up missed workouts or start again next Monday.

Just continue.

ADAPTABILITY

Your plan should serve your life.

Your life shouldn't have to remain perfectly organised so that your training plan can survive.

Goals change.

Work changes.

Relationships change.

Bodies change.

What worked brilliantly two years ago might not be appropriate now.

Being able to adjust your training without abandoning it altogether is an enormously useful skill.

Sometimes progress means pushing harder.

Sometimes it means doing less.

Sometimes it means maintaining what you've already achieved while your attention is needed somewhere else.

That's not failure.

That's good programming.

IN CLOSING

A useful training mindset isn't about being relentlessly positive or endlessly motivated.

It's much less exciting than that.

Take ownership of what you can influence.

Build some discipline.

Pay attention to what you're doing.

Be consistent rather than perfect.

Adapt when life changes.

Then keep going.

You don't need to become the sort of person who wakes up at 4am screaming motivational quotes into the mirror.

You just need to make enough good decisions, often enough, for long enough.

Good Form: What Does Good Exercise Technique Actually Mean?

What does good form actually mean?

You'll often hear that there's a right and wrong way to perform an exercise.

Keep your back straight. Knees behind your toes. Shoulders back and down. Feet pointing forwards.

Unfortunately, human beings aren't built identically and exercises don't all require the same positions.

Good technique is important, but it's a little more complicated than following a universal checklist.

WHAT IS GOOD FORM?

I'd define good form as:

Performing an exercise with a technique that is appropriate for the movement, the individual, the load and what you're trying to achieve.

Someone squatting a maximal weight won't necessarily move exactly like someone performing a light goblet squat.

A powerlifter won't necessarily deadlift like a weightlifter.

Someone with long femurs might squat differently to someone with short femurs.

And someone lifting a natural stone definitely isn't going to look like they're demonstrating a kettlebell deadlift in a textbook.

Context matters.

There are still some useful principles we can apply.

CONTROL THE MOVEMENT

Generally, you should be in control of the weight rather than desperately trying to survive it.

That doesn't mean every repetition needs to be painfully slow.

It means you should understand the movement you're trying to perform and be capable of maintaining an appropriate technique as fatigue and load increase.

Technique will naturally change slightly when something gets heavy.

That's normal.

But if every repetition increasingly resembles a completely different exercise, the load may have exceeded what you can currently control.

USE A RANGE OF MOTION YOU CAN MANAGE

There isn't one correct range of motion for every person and every exercise.

Your available range will depend on the exercise, your anatomy, mobility, experience and what you're trying to achieve.

Generally, use as much range as is useful for the goal and that you can control comfortably.

Over time, that range can often be developed.

You don't need to force yourself into somebody else's positions simply because that's what their squat looks like.

YOUR SPINE CAN MOVE

You'll often hear that the spine must remain perfectly neutral during exercise.

A relatively stable spinal position can be extremely useful when handling heavy loads, particularly in exercises such as squats and deadlifts.

But your spine is also designed to bend, extend and rotate.

Movement itself isn't inherently dangerous.

Some exercises deliberately train spinal movement. Others require you to resist it.

The important question isn't:

"Did my spine move?"

It's:

"Was that movement appropriate for what I was trying to do, and was I prepared for the load?"

YOUR KNEES CAN GO OVER YOUR TOES

This one deserves killing off properly.

Your knees are allowed to travel forwards past your toes.

They do it when you walk, run, climb stairs and perform plenty of perfectly sensible exercises.

Depending on your anatomy and the exercise you're performing, allowing the knees to travel forwards can be completely normal and useful.

Rather than obsessing about keeping the knee directly above the ankle, concentrate on maintaining a stable foot and controlling the movement.

Likewise, your knees don't always have to track in one perfectly predetermined line.

YOUR FEET DON'T HAVE TO POINT STRAIGHT AHEAD

Your stance should suit you and the exercise.

Some people naturally squat comfortably with their feet almost straight.

Others need more turnout.

Neither is automatically correct.

Experiment with stance width and foot angle until you find a position that allows you to perform the movement comfortably and effectively.

YOUR SHOULDERS DON'T ALWAYS NEED TO BE "BACK AND DOWN"

"Shoulders back and down" can be a useful cue for certain exercises.

It isn't a rule for human movement.

Your shoulder blades are supposed to move.

When you raise your arms overhead, for example, your shoulder blades naturally rotate and move around your ribcage.

Trying to permanently pin them down can actually interfere with the movement you're trying to perform.

Again:

Use the position appropriate for the exercise.

CREATE TENSION WHERE YOU NEED IT

One thing from the old BearWolf checklist that absolutely survives is learning how to create tension.

For heavy compound exercises, being able to brace and create a stable position can make you considerably stronger and give you more control over the load.

Useful cues might include:

Grip the floor.

Grip the bar hard.

Brace your trunk.

Create tension before you move the weight.

You might hear a coach tell you to "bend the bar", "spread the floor" or "screw your feet into the ground."

These aren't literal instructions.

They're cues designed to help you create the muscular tension required for that particular lift.

And different cues work for different people.

TECHNIQUE SHOULD BE REPEATABLE

This is one of the things I look for most when coaching.

Can you perform the movement consistently?

If five repetitions look like five completely different exercises, there's probably something worth working on.

As you become more experienced, your technique should generally become more repeatable and efficient.

That gives us something we can progressively load.

GOOD FORM ISN'T ONE PERFECT SHAPE

This is probably the most important point.

There isn't a single perfect technique that guarantees you'll never get injured.

And moving outside some imaginary perfect alignment doesn't mean you've damaged yourself.

Training itself involves exposing the body to stress.

The aim is to develop your ability to tolerate and produce that stress progressively.

Technique is one tool that helps us perform movements effectively, manage load and target what we're trying to train.

It isn't a magical protective forcefield.

IN CLOSING

Good form matters.

But good form doesn't mean forcing everybody into identical positions.

It means finding a technique that works for your body, the exercise you're performing, the load you're using and the outcome you're trying to achieve.

Learn the movement.

Control it.

Create tension where you need it.

Use an appropriate range of motion.

Build the load progressively.

And don't panic because your knee travelled two centimetres past your toe.

If you're unsure, that's where a good coach becomes useful. Sometimes a small adjustment can make an exercise feel completely different.

Gym Etiquette: How Not to Be a Nightmare to Train Around

Gyms work considerably better when everyone remembers that other people are using them too.

You don't need an extensive rulebook to train around other humans successfully.

Put things back. Don't be a dick. Pay attention to what's happening around you.

That covers most of it.

But here's the slightly longer version.

PUT YOUR WEIGHTS AWAY

When you've finished using something, put it back.

Even if the weights were already out when you arrived.

Someone else's laziness doesn't need to become yours.

And if you're strong enough to load the plates onto the bar, you're strong enough to put them back afterwards.

PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR TRAINING

Your phone isn't banned from the gym.

I use mine to record lifts, track workouts, time rest periods and occasionally change whatever terrible music somebody has put on.

The problem isn't the phone.

The problem is becoming so distracted by it that your two-minute rest period somehow becomes twelve minutes while you watch videos of a raccoon stealing someone's Amazon delivery.

Use your phone.

Just remember why you're in the gym.

BE AWARE OF PEOPLE AROUND YOU

Before starting an exercise, have a quick look around.

Is someone about to lift behind you?

Are you standing directly in front of somebody who's using the mirror?

Have you positioned yourself somewhere that blocks half the gym?

Could somebody reasonably walk through the space you're about to swing a kettlebell into?

A little spatial awareness goes a long way.

This becomes particularly important when people are lifting heavy weights, carrying awkward objects or performing movements that require a lot of space.

CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF

If you've left a bench looking like somebody has emptied a pint of water over it, wipe it down.

Nobody wants your sweat.

That's really all the explanation this one requires.

LET PEOPLE WORK IN

If somebody asks to share a piece of equipment and it's practical, let them.

You can alternate sets while the other person rests.

Obviously this doesn't work brilliantly for everything. If you're halfway through a complicated setup involving five bands, three boxes and seventeen carefully positioned plates, constantly changing it might be ridiculous.

But if you're both doing roughly the same thing, share.

The gym isn't your private facility.

DON'T INTERRUPT SOMEONE DURING A SET

If somebody is underneath a heavy barbell, now probably isn't the ideal moment to ask how many sets they've got left.

Wait until they've finished.

Likewise, don't walk unnecessarily close to someone performing a heavy or technically demanding lift.

Give people room to work.

IF YOU'RE SPOTTING SOMEONE, ASK WHAT THEY WANT

Don't assume.

Before the set, establish what the lifter actually wants from you.

They might want help taking the bar out.

They might want you to intervene only if the bar starts moving downwards.

They might want a hand-off but absolutely no assistance afterwards.

Ask.

And unless they've requested otherwise, don't grab the weight halfway through a difficult repetition simply because it slowed down.

A slow rep isn't necessarily a failed rep.

USE THE MIRRORS

Mirrors are useful.

They can provide visual feedback about your position and movement, and occasionally it's nice to look at yourself and think:

"Bloody hell, my shoulders look good today."

Both are allowed.

Just don't spend so long admiring yourself that someone else has to climb over you to reach the dumbbells.

DON'T GIVE UNSOLICITED COACHING

Unless somebody is in immediate danger, they probably don't need you wandering over to explain everything they're doing wrong.

You don't know their training history.

You don't know their goals.

You don't necessarily know why they're performing the exercise that way.

And—quite importantly—they didn't ask you.

If someone asks for help, brilliant.

Otherwise, concentrate on your own training.

PEOPLE WILL TRAIN DIFFERENTLY TO YOU

There's more than one way to get stronger, fitter or build muscle.

Somebody else's exercise might look strange to you.

That doesn't automatically make it wrong.

They may have different goals, different limitations, different preferences or simply know something you don't.

You don't need to understand everybody else's programme.

You only need to understand yours.

IN CLOSING

Good gym etiquette isn't complicated.

Put your equipment away.

Clean up after yourself.

Share when you reasonably can.

Give people space.

Pay attention to what you're doing.

Don't interfere with other people's training.

And generally try to leave the gym slightly better than you found it.

Do all of that and you'll already be considerably less annoying than a surprising number of people.

Progressive Overload: How to Keep Making Progress

If you want your body to continue adapting to training, you need to give it a reason to.

Over time, your training needs to become more challenging in some way.

This is the basic idea behind progressive overload.

It doesn't mean destroying yourself every time you enter the gym.

And it definitely doesn't mean you need to set a personal best every Tuesday for the rest of your life.

It means gradually increasing the demands you place on your body as you become capable of handling more.

KEEP A LOGBOOK

One of the simplest things you can do to improve your training is record what you actually do.

Exercises.

Weights.

Repetitions.

Sets.

Times or distances where relevant.

Potentially your RIR or RPE.

Your logbook gives you context for the next session.

Instead of walking onto the gym floor and thinking:

"What did I deadlift last week? Was it 160? Maybe 170?"

you know.

That means you can make sensible decisions about what you're trying to achieve today.

WHAT DOES PROGRESS LOOK LIKE?

Adding weight to the bar is the obvious example.

But it isn't the only way to progress.

You might:

Lift more weight.

100kg × 8 becomes 102.5kg × 8.

Perform more repetitions.

100kg × 8 becomes 100kg × 9.

Complete more work within a given time.

Five rounds becomes six.

Complete the same work faster.

A task takes 10:00 and eventually takes 9:45.

Increase your range of motion.

You gradually become capable of controlling a movement through a greater range.

Improve your technique.

The same weight and reps become more controlled, consistent or appropriate for the goal.

Perform the same work at a lower perceived effort.

Something that previously felt like an all-out effort now feels manageable.

Improve your capacity.

You recover faster between efforts or can maintain your performance for longer.

Progress depends on what you're actually training for.

SMALL IMPROVEMENTS ADD UP

You don't need enormous jumps.

If you can add a repetition here, a small amount of weight there and gradually accumulate improvements over months and years, you can end up considerably stronger than where you started.

Even the smallest step forward is still a step forward.

But there's an important addition:

You won't necessarily take that step every session.

YOU DON'T NEED TO BEAT LAST WEEK EVERY TIME

This is where I'd change the original BearWolf approach most.

I used to tell clients:

"You should attempt to progress on every set of every exercise."

I wouldn't say that anymore.

Training doesn't work that neatly.

Maybe you slept badly.

Maybe you've accumulated fatigue.

Maybe you changed the exercise immediately before it.

Maybe you're dieting.

Maybe last week's performance was unusually good.

Or maybe you've simply become experienced enough that adding weight or repetitions every single week is no longer realistic.

A session where you match your previous performance can still be productive training.

Occasionally performing slightly worse doesn't mean you've suddenly become weaker either.

Look at the trend.

PROGRESS IS A TREND, NOT A STRAIGHT LINE

Imagine your squat looks like this:

Week 1 — 150kg × 6
Week 2 — 150kg × 7
Week 3 — 150kg × 6
Week 4 — 150kg × 8
Week 5 — 155kg × 6

Week 3 wasn't a failed training session.

Zoom out and the direction is obvious.

This becomes increasingly important the stronger and more experienced you become.

Beginners can sometimes add weight almost every workout.

An experienced lifter might work for months for a relatively small improvement.

Both are progressing.

PROGRESSION WITH REP RANGES

One of the easiest methods is double progression.

Imagine your programme says:

3 × 8–10

You might begin with:

60kg × 8, 8, 8

Over subsequent sessions you gradually increase the repetitions:

60kg × 9, 9, 8

Then:

60kg × 10, 10, 10

Once you can perform the top of the prescribed range at the intended effort, increase the weight.

Perhaps:

62.5kg × 8, 8, 8

Then start building again.

You don't need to reinvent your entire programme.

You simply give your body gradually increasing demands.

MORE WORK ISN'T ALWAYS MORE PROGRESS

Another thing I'd change from the original article is using cumulative weight lifted as the ultimate measure of progress.

If you squat:

100kg × 10 = 1,000kg total

and next week:

110kg × 9 = 990kg total

your tonnage has technically decreased.

Have you gone backwards?

Not necessarily.

Likewise, you could dramatically increase tonnage simply by performing loads of additional light repetitions.

That doesn't automatically mean you've become stronger or built more muscle.

Volume is useful training information.

It just isn't a universal score for how successful your training was.

Measure the thing that actually relates to your goal.

PROGRESSIVE OVERLOAD DOESN'T MEAN ADDING WEIGHT FOREVER

Eventually, you can't just keep adding 2.5kg every week.

If you could, someone starting with a 60kg squat would be squatting several tonnes after a few years.

At some point progress slows.

Programming becomes more important.

You may need periods where you accumulate training, periods where you push harder and periods where you deliberately reduce fatigue.

Sometimes the programme changes.

Sometimes an exercise changes.

Sometimes you maintain something while concentrating on improving something else.

Progressive overload is a principle—not a command to put more weight on the bar every workout.

ADAPTATION TAKES TIME

Your body adapts to the demands you repeatedly place upon it.

Training provides the stimulus.

Recovery allows you to respond to it.

Then you train again.

Over enough repetitions of that process, you become stronger, fitter, more muscular or more skilled.

You can't rush that indefinitely by simply training harder.

At some point, adding more stress without sufficient recovery becomes counterproductive.

The goal is to provide enough stimulus to encourage adaptation, then continue progressing that stimulus as your capacity improves.

SOMETIMES MAINTENANCE IS SUCCESS

Context matters.

If you're incredibly busy, dieting aggressively, dealing with poor sleep or concentrating on another physical quality, simply maintaining your strength can be a perfectly successful outcome.

Progress isn't always:

MORE. MORE. MORE.

Sometimes maintaining something while circumstances are working against you demonstrates that your training is doing its job.

IN CLOSING

Keep a logbook.

Know what you've done.

Know what you're trying to achieve.

And over time, try to do a little more or a little better.

That might mean another kilogram.

Another repetition.

A faster time.

A greater range of motion.

Better control.

Or the same performance at a lower level of effort.

Don't panic when every session isn't a personal best.

Progress isn't what happens between Monday and Thursday.

It's what happens when you compare where you are now with where you were months or years ago.

Keep giving your body an appropriate reason to adapt.

Then give it enough time to do so.

Setting Up for a Lift: Bracing, Tension & Position

Before you lift something heavy, your setup matters.

A good setup puts you in a position where you can produce force effectively, control the movement and perform the exercise you're actually trying to perform.

But there isn't one universal setup that applies to every exercise.

Your feet don't always need to point forwards.

Your knees don't always need to be pushed out.

Your shoulder blades don't always need to be pulled back and down.

And your spine doesn't need to be locked into one identical position for every movement.

The setup should match the lift.

CREATE TENSION WHERE YOU NEED IT

When you're lifting something heavy, deliberately creating muscular tension can make you feel considerably more stable and allow you to transfer force effectively.

Think about a heavy deadlift.

Before the bar leaves the floor, you might:

Grip the bar firmly.

Brace your trunk.

Create tension through your upper body.

Push through the floor.

Then lift.

Compare that with casually grabbing the bar and immediately trying to yank it from the ground.

Same person.

Same bar.

Very different setup.

A useful principle is:

Get organised before you apply force.

YOUR FEET

Your feet provide your connection to the floor in many exercises.

You want them positioned in a way that gives you a stable base and allows the rest of your body to move appropriately.

But there's no requirement for everybody's toes to point perfectly forwards.

Some people squat comfortably with relatively straight feet.

Others naturally use some turnout.

Stance width can also vary according to anatomy, exercise and preference.

Instead of forcing one universal position, think:

Can I maintain a stable foot while producing force through the movement?

"SCREW YOUR FEET INTO THE FLOOR"

This can still be a useful coaching cue.

Imagine gently trying to rotate your feet against the floor without actually allowing them to move.

For some people this creates useful tension through the hips and legs.

But remember:

It's a cue, not an anatomical law.

You don't need to aggressively force your knees outwards during every exercise.

Your knees should be allowed to move in ways appropriate to the movement you're performing.

If the cue helps you feel stable, use it.

If it makes your movement worse, don't.

BRACE YOUR TRUNK

This is probably the most useful part of the original article.

Before a demanding lift, you can create pressure and muscular tension around your torso by bracing.

Imagine somebody is about to punch you in the stomach.

You'd instinctively tighten your midsection.

For heavier lifting, think about creating tension all the way around your trunk rather than simply sucking your stomach in.

Front.

Sides.

Back.

A useful cue is:

Take a breath. Expand. Brace.

This can create a strong torso from which your arms and legs can produce force.

DOES YOUR BACK HAVE TO BE PERFECTLY STRAIGHT?

No.

Your spine is capable of flexing, extending and rotating.

Different exercises also involve different spinal positions.

During many heavy barbell lifts, deliberately maintaining a relatively stable torso can be useful because it allows you to transfer force effectively under load.

That's different from saying:

"Your spine must never move or you'll injure yourself."

Movement isn't inherently dangerous.

As with everything else, load, preparation, capacity and context matter.

WHAT ABOUT YOUR RIBS?

"Ribs down" can be a useful cue for somebody who excessively extends their torso during a particular movement.

But it isn't something everybody needs to consciously do during every exercise.

Sometimes you want a stacked position.

Sometimes your torso position changes as part of the movement.

Sometimes shouting increasingly complicated anatomical instructions at somebody makes them considerably worse at lifting.

Use the cue when it solves a problem.

Not because it's written on a checklist.

SETTING YOUR SHOULDERS

This is where I'd make the biggest change from the original article.

Your shoulder blades are supposed to move.

Pulling them "back and down" can be useful in certain exercises.

During a bench press, for example, deliberately positioning the shoulder blades against the bench can create a useful and repeatable setup.

But during overhead pressing, rowing, carrying and many other movements, the shoulder blades need to move appropriately with the arms.

So instead of:

Always pull your shoulders back and down.

Think:

What does this particular exercise require my shoulders to do?

That's a much better rule.

GRIP THE IMPLEMENT PROPERLY

Your grip is another part of your setup.

For many heavy exercises, gripping the bar, handle or implement firmly can help create tension through the rest of the upper body.

You may hear cues such as:

"Bend the bar."

"Break the bar."

"Crush the handle."

You're not literally trying to fold a barbell in half.

They're simply cues designed to encourage muscular tension.

And if you're lifting a natural stone, sandbag or similarly awkward object, there may not be a convenient handle at all.

The principle remains the same:

Establish the best connection you can with the thing you're trying to move.

COMMON BARBELL GRIPS

You'll encounter several basic grip positions.

Pronated / overhand grip
Palms facing generally away from you.

Supinated / underhand grip
Palms facing generally towards you.

Mixed grip
One hand pronated and the other supinated.

A mixed grip is commonly used in heavy deadlifting because it helps prevent the bar rolling from the hands.

If you're regularly deadlifting with a mixed grip, you can alternate which hand is supinated during lighter training if you prefer, although many lifters develop a preferred setup for their heaviest attempts.

There are also other options—including hook grip and lifting straps—depending on the exercise and your goals.

GRIP WIDTH

There isn't one universal "neutral", "close" or "wide" grip that's strongest for every exercise.

Grip width should be chosen according to the movement.

For a conventional deadlift, your hands will normally sit just outside your legs, keeping the arms relatively vertical.

For a bench press, grip width changes the mechanics and range of motion.

For a row, different widths and arm paths can change how the movement feels and which positions you're emphasising.

A snatch grip is an intentionally very wide grip primarily associated with the Olympic snatch and exercises derived from it.

Rather than memorising:

Close = arms
Wide = back

learn why you're using a particular grip for that particular exercise.

YOUR SETUP SHOULD BE REPEATABLE

This matters enormously for strength training.

If you squat with a completely different stance every week, grip the bar differently every deadlift session and change your bench setup every set, it's difficult to know whether you're actually progressing.

Develop a setup that works for you.

Then practise it.

Before a heavy lift, your setup should eventually become almost automatic.

Feet.

Grip.

Position.

Breath.

Brace.

Lift.

You shouldn't need to perform a 17-point biomechanical checklist in your head every time you touch a barbell.

IN CLOSING

A good setup gives you a stable, repeatable starting position from which you can produce force effectively.

But there isn't one setup for every lift or every person.

Your stance depends on the exercise.

Your shoulder position depends on the exercise.

Your grip depends on the exercise.

Your spinal position depends on the exercise.

Use tension and bracing when they help you produce force.

Use coaching cues when they actually improve something.

And practise your setup until it becomes repeatable.

Get organised. Get tight where you need to. Then lift.

That's considerably more useful than trying to force every human body into exactly the same position.

Tempo: How Fast Should You Lift Weights?

Tempo describes the speed at which different parts of a repetition are performed.

Sometimes we'll deliberately change tempo to emphasise a particular part of an exercise, practise control, introduce pauses or encourage you to move with maximum intent.

Other times, you can just lift the bloody thing.

Not every exercise needs a complicated tempo prescription.

THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF A REP

A repetition can broadly be divided into:

Eccentric — the muscle is lengthening under load.

Bottom / stretched position — the transition between lowering and lifting.

Concentric — the muscle is shortening as you produce force.

Top / contracted position — the transition before beginning the next repetition.

Take a squat.

Lowering into the squat is the eccentric portion.

The bottom of the squat is the stretched position.

Standing back up is the concentric portion.

Then you begin the next rep.

Understanding these terms makes prescribed tempos much easier to follow.

STANDARD TEMPO

Unless your programme says otherwise, you generally don't need to count every second of every repetition.

For most strength training, use a controlled eccentric and perform the concentric with deliberate intent.

In other words:

Control it down.

Lift it up.

Exactly how fast the weight actually moves will depend on the exercise, load and how fatigued you are.

A heavy deadlift isn't going to fly off the floor simply because you're trying to move it quickly.

SLOW TEMPO

Sometimes we'll deliberately slow part of an exercise down.

For example:

4-second squat descent → stand normally

Slower repetitions can be useful for:

Practising control and positioning.

Making relatively light loads challenging.

Spending more time in a particular part of a movement.

Reducing momentum.

Providing variation within training.

But slow isn't automatically better.

If you deliberately make every repetition incredibly slow, you'll generally have to use less weight or perform fewer repetitions.

That's not necessarily a problem—it just means you've changed the exercise.

PAUSED REPS

Tempo can also include a deliberate pause.

For example:

3-second descent → 2-second pause → stand

Pauses can be particularly useful for developing strength and control in specific positions.

A paused squat removes some of the assistance you'd normally get from immediately reversing direction at the bottom.

A paused bench press makes you establish control with the bar on the chest before pressing.

And pauses can be used almost anywhere if there's a reason for them.

The important bit is the last part:

If there's a reason for them.

Don't add pauses everywhere simply because they make exercises horrible.

EXPLOSIVE REPS

Sometimes the goal is to produce force as quickly as possible.

This is better described as explosive intent than simply "fast reps."

Think:

Move the weight as fast as you can while maintaining the movement you're trying to perform.

With a light load, that might actually look fast.

With a very heavy load, the bar might move slowly despite you applying as much force as possible.

Your intent is explosive even if the result isn't.

This can be important when training power and practising forceful lifting.

TEMPO IN CIRCUITS AND CONDITIONING

You don't automatically need to perform repetitions as quickly as possible just because you're doing a circuit.

The appropriate speed depends on the exercise and purpose of the workout.

If you're trying to complete something For Time, speed obviously matters.

But moving faster only helps if you can continue performing the movement effectively.

There's little benefit in absolutely hammering the first 30 seconds of a ten-minute workout before spending the remaining nine and a half minutes reconsidering your life choices.

Move at a pace appropriate to the task.

TEMPO NOTATION

You may sometimes see tempo written as four numbers.

For example:

3-1-1-0

These numbers describe the duration of different portions of the repetition.

A common convention is:

3 — three seconds eccentric
1 — one second in the bottom/stretched position
1 — one second concentric
0 — no pause before the next repetition

So a squat performed at 3-1-1-0 would mean:

Lower for 3 seconds.

Pause at the bottom for 1 second.

Stand in approximately 1 second.

Immediately begin the next repetition.

You may also see X, meaning perform that portion explosively rather than trying to make it last a particular number of seconds.

For example:

3-1-X-0

Control down.

Pause.

Then drive up with maximum intent.

One important caveat: tempo notation isn't completely standardised between every coach, so check how your programme defines it rather than assuming.

WHAT ABOUT TIME UNDER TENSION?

Slower repetitions obviously increase the amount of time a muscle spends producing force during an individual rep.

That's where the phrase time under tension comes from.

But more time under tension isn't automatically better.

You can make a set last longer simply by moving incredibly slowly, but you'll probably have to reduce the load or number of repetitions you can perform.

For building muscle, there's no need to chase the longest possible set.

A range of repetition speeds can work perfectly well.

Tempo is better thought of as another variable we can manipulate, rather than a score where more seconds automatically means more gains.

IN CLOSING

Tempo is simply how quickly you perform different portions of a repetition.

Most of the time:

Control the movement and lift with intent.

Sometimes we'll deliberately slow things down.

Sometimes we'll pause.

Sometimes we'll try to move explosively.

Each changes the exercise slightly and can be useful for different reasons.

But don't make every repetition slow simply because you've heard that time under tension = gains.

Tempo is a tool. Use it when it has a purpose.

Reps: How Many Repetitions Should You Do?

A rep, or repetition, is one complete cycle of an exercise.

Perform a squat from standing, descend, stand back up and you've completed one rep.

Do that ten times and you've completed ten reps.

Those repetitions together make up a set.

Simple enough.

But how you perform those reps—and how many you choose to perform—can significantly change the demands of an exercise.

EVERY REP IS PRACTICE

The original version of this guide said:

"Every individual rep is a battle for good form."

I still like the sentiment, although I'd probably replace battle with practice.

Each repetition is an opportunity to practise the movement you're trying to perform.

That doesn't mean every rep needs to look absolutely identical or conform to some imaginary textbook definition of perfect technique.

Bodies differ.

Exercises differ.

And technique can change slightly as loads and fatigue increase.

Instead, aim for movement that is appropriate for the exercise, your body and the goal of the set.

If you're learning a new exercise, pay attention to the demonstrations and coaching cues you've been given.

As you become more experienced, good technique should require progressively less conscious thought.

THE DIFFERENT PARTS OF A REP

We can divide a repetition into several parts.

ECCENTRIC

The eccentric portion occurs when a muscle is producing force while lengthening.

Think about lowering yourself into a squat or lowering a dumbbell during a biceps curl.

This is sometimes called the negative portion of a rep.

CONCENTRIC

The concentric portion occurs when a muscle is producing force while shortening.

Standing up from a squat or curling a dumbbell towards you are examples.

This is sometimes called the positive portion of a rep.

ISOMETRIC

An isometric contraction occurs when you're producing force without meaningful movement occurring at the joint.

Pause at the bottom of a squat.

Hold a plank.

Stop a dumbbell halfway through a curl.

You're producing force while maintaining a position.

An exercise doesn't necessarily fit perfectly into a simple three-part sequence, but these terms give us a useful language for discussing movement.

They also become particularly useful when we prescribe tempo.

HOW MANY REPS SHOULD YOU DO?

It depends on what you're trying to achieve.

As a general rule, lower-repetition sets allow you to use heavier loads, while higher-repetition sets require lighter loads.

But I'd avoid treating rep ranges as completely separate physiological zones.

You may have seen charts suggesting something like:

1–5 reps = strength

6–12 reps = muscle

15+ reps = endurance

That's a useful simplification for understanding why programmes look different.

It isn't a biological rule.

REPS FOR STRENGTH

If your primary goal is maximal strength, relatively heavy loads and lower repetitions are particularly useful.

If you want to become good at lifting very heavy weights, at some point you need to practise lifting relatively heavy weights.

Lower-repetition sets allow you to do this without accumulating an enormous number of fatiguing repetitions within each set.

You'll also generally take longer rest periods so you can produce high levels of force again on subsequent sets.

That doesn't mean sets of 10 can't make you stronger.

They absolutely can.

They're simply less specific to demonstrating maximal strength than heavier, lower-repetition work.

REPS FOR BUILDING MUSCLE

Muscle growth isn't confined to a magical 8–12 rep hypertrophy zone.

Muscle can be built across a fairly broad range of repetitions provided the sets are sufficiently challenging and you accumulate an appropriate amount of training.

Moderate rep ranges are extremely popular because they're practical.

They allow you to use meaningful loads, accumulate useful training volume and get reasonably close to failure without every set taking forever.

But you can build muscle with sets of 5.

You can build muscle with sets of 15.

And you can build muscle with considerably higher repetitions too.

The number on its own doesn't determine whether a set builds muscle.

REPS FOR MUSCULAR ENDURANCE

Higher-repetition sets can be particularly useful for developing local muscular endurance—your ability to repeatedly produce force or maintain muscular work.

They also come with a very distinctive sensation.

The burn.

Learning to tolerate that discomfort is part of performing high-repetition work effectively.

But again, there isn't a precise repetition where your body announces:

"Right. Hypertrophy finished. Endurance starts now."

The adaptations overlap.

REP RANGES

Rather than always prescribing one exact number, your programme may give you a rep range.

For example:

8–10 reps

That gives us flexibility.

Imagine you perform:

60kg × 8

Over subsequent sessions you might progress to:

60kg × 9

then:

60kg × 10

Once you're comfortably reaching the top of the range at the intended level of effort, we might increase the weight.

Perhaps:

62.5kg × 8

Then the process begins again.

This is one simple way of applying progressive overload.

THE NUMBER OF REPS ISN'T THE WHOLE PRESCRIPTION

This is important.

Imagine two people perform:

100kg × 8

Person A finishes knowing they could have performed another five repetitions.

Person B finishes knowing they could perhaps have managed one more.

They've performed the same exercise.

The same weight.

The same number of reps.

But they haven't necessarily experienced the same training stimulus.

That's why we may also prescribe or record RIR — Reps in Reserve.

For example:

8 reps @ 2 RIR

means:

Perform eight repetitions using a weight where you estimate you could have completed approximately another two good reps.

This gives us considerably more information than simply writing:

8 reps.

YOU DON'T ALWAYS USE THE HEAVIEST WEIGHT POSSIBLE

This is another part I'd change from the original guide.

If I prescribe:

10 reps

that doesn't automatically mean:

Find the heaviest weight you can possibly lift ten times.

That would essentially turn every prescribed set into a test of failure.

Instead, the appropriate weight depends on the intended effort.

10 reps @ 3 RIR is very different from:

10 reps to failure.

Both have their place.

The programme should tell you what we're trying to achieve.

WHAT HAPPENS AS YOU FATIGUE?

Repetitions often change as a set becomes difficult.

They may slow down.

Your technique may change slightly.

Your perception of effort increases.

Eventually, you may reach technical failure or muscular failure.

That doesn't mean every difficult rep is automatically a bad rep.

A repetition taking longer because you're producing maximal effort against a heavy load is completely different from deliberately performing a slow repetition.

This is why rep speed and lifting tempo aren't quite the same thing.

You might be trying to move a heavy bar as explosively as possible.

It just isn't going anywhere particularly quickly.

QUALITY AND QUANTITY

Your goal isn't simply to accumulate as many repetitions as humanly possible.

The reps should serve the purpose of the exercise.

Sometimes that's:

Heavy, low-rep strength work.

Sometimes it's:

Moderate-rep muscle-building work.

Sometimes it's:

High-rep muscular endurance.

Sometimes it's:

Explosive repetitions performed with maximal intent.

Sometimes we're simply practising a movement.

Don't become so obsessed with categorising rep ranges that you forget the bigger picture.

IN CLOSING

A rep is simply one repetition of a movement.

But the number of reps you perform affects the load you can use and the demands of the set.

Lower reps generally allow heavier weights.

Higher reps require lighter weights and place greater demands on muscular endurance.

Muscle can be built across a broad range.

Strength can be developed across a broad range too, although heavier training becomes increasingly important when maximal strength is the goal.

And your prescribed reps only make sense when considered alongside load, effort, sets, rest and tempo.

There isn't a magical rep range.

Choose the reps that make sense for what you're trying to achieve.