Absolute Fitness

😴 "I get 7 or 8 hours sleep."

Do you? Or were you in bed for 8 hours?
They're not the same thing.

📱 How long were you scrolling before you actually fell asleep?
☕ How close to bed was your last coffee?
🍕 How close to bed was your last big meal?
🌙 Did you wake up during the night?
😵 Did you wake up feeling rested?

People often tell me they're getting 7-8 hours sleep.
Then after a few questions it turns out they're in bed for 8 hours, but only sleeping for 6.

Being in bed doesn't automatically mean you slept well.
You can get to sleep after caffeine, but the quality is lesser. Same with screens. Same with food.

Poor sleep doesn't just make you tired.
🍫 You'll usually crave more rubbish food.
🍽️ You'll often feel hungrier.
🏋️ Your training performance will usually be worse. Which means results are.. worse.
🚶 You'll often move less throughout the day without even realising it.

People spend a lot of time looking for the perfect diet and training plan.

Meanwhile they're running on 5 or 6 hours of poor quality sleep and making everything harder than it needs to be.

Sleep isn't everything.

But it's one of the few things that makes almost everything else easier

🥵 Due to the heatwave, we've temporarily expanded our membership options.

🐶 Barney has joined the gym.
His exercises include:
🤗 Greeting customers
❄️ Lying down under the aircon

Other members have taken to, sitting, lying and rolling over.

No interest in the Body scanner, but he's definitely enjoying the aircon😂

🧠 Moderation is a funny word. The most unhelpful word.

🍷 "I drink in moderation."
🍫 "I eat chocolate in moderation."
🍕 "I have takeaways in moderation."

📉 "I'm not achieving my goals in moderation."

Moderation doesn't mean anything.

Often people are lying to themselves and in this context it just means less than the maximum amount they could have had.

Congratulations. Here's your medal 🏅

If you're gaining weight every year, is it moderation?

If your blood pressure is climbing, is it moderation?

If you're carrying 3 stone more than you'd like, thank God you moderated.

Too often moderation is defined by what feels reasonable, not by the outcome.

Most people don't think:

"Am I moderating this?"

People think:

"Am I doing less than I could?"

If the outcome is taking you further away from where you want to be, it's probably not moderation 👊

🧠 BEST shape possible with the LEAST effort. Here's what you do.

We're not going for optimum here. We're going for return on investment.

🥩 Eat protein 3-4 times a day.

🥦 Eat as many greens as you can.

🍫 If a food isn't mostly protein or mostly plants, eat a lot less of it.

🏋️ Lift weights 3 times a week. Not 5x, Not 6 and Definitely not 7.

🚶 Walk a bit more, but keep it easy.

😴 Have a set bed time, a set wakeup time and starting sleeping properly.

Things I would avoid:

🏃 Lots of cardio

🛒 Going to the shop hungry

🍺 Alcohol

🍞 Carbs

🧀 Cheese

📋 Complicated meal plans

⏰ Spending 15 hours a week in the gym.

Most people are looking for the final 5%.

When they'd get far better results by focusing on the first 80%.

The boring stuff works.

That's why it's boring 👊

💪 If your goal is to be exceptional, stop reading here and disregard this post.

You don't get extra points for being exhausted.

When I was younger, if I finished a session with energy left in the tank, I made sure I spent that energy. I'd finish 2 hour kickboxing sessions, then go swimming. Or finish at the gym and go straight to kickboxing. 20yro me was a BMF. Unsurprisingly, he was also an idiot.

If I wasn't sore, tired or limping slightly, I thought I'd wasted my time.

A lot of that came from sport. When you do something you love and see results, more always feels better. Unfortunately, training is only half of the equation. You actually get stronger when you recover from it.

Eventually my knee cartilage tore.

It wasn't bad luck. It was years of believing more was always better.

Eventually I realised that constantly feeling beaten up wasn't a sign I was doing things right.

It was often a sign I was doing too much.

Most adults don't need more punishment.

They need a plan they can recover from consistently for the next 10 years.

Recoverable beats heroic for MOST people 👊

🧠 Do not accept worse health markers just because you’re older.

Some decline with age is normal. You are probably not going to feel 20 at 50. But people accept decline way too early.

Especially things like:
❤️ Blood pressure
💪 Strength

Age absolutely matters. It is harder to keep within healthy ranges as you age.

But you should definitely try to, and not just accept the sliding scale.

But if someone is 40 with blood pressure of 140/90, and someone is 50 with blood pressure of 150/95, the 50 year old probably shouldn’t just accept theirs is worse because they’re older.

THEY ARE NOT equally healthy.

The same applies to strength.

At 50, 60 or even 70, should you expect to be a bit weaker? Probably.
Should you just accept becoming weak? If you like sitting in a chair having others get you dressed, maybe.

We’ve had plenty of people in their 50s, 60s and even 70s get stronger, move better and feel far more capable.

People think: Common = healthy

If the average 50 year old has worse blood pressure than the average 30 year old, that doesn’t automatically mean it’s “good for 50.”

It means people are becoming less healthy as they get older.

Older does not automatically mean unhealthy and “normal for my age” is not always the same thing as “good” 👊

🧠 Being skinny doesn’t automatically mean healthy.

I had a client start recently (Not pictured) who, to look at, you’d probably think looked like a fairly normal bloke. Maybe even a little on the skinny side.

I put him on the body scanner.

Turns out the t shirt was hiding a bit of a belly 😅

Even more surprising was that because he had so little muscle relative to his body fat, someone I thought was probably too skinny, was classified as overweight according to the InBody scanner.

Yes, to a point being leaner is generally healthier. But people massively overestimate how much being skinny automatically protects them.

Health is more than just:

❌ Weight
❌ Waist size
❌ Looking slim in clothes

Things like:

💪 Muscle mass
❤️ Fitness
🩸 Blood pressure
🦵 Strength and movement
😴 Sleep
🥗 Lifestyle habits

matter too.

You can be slim and unhealthy. Just like you can be heavier and healthier than people expect.

On average being lighter is better. But it’s definitely not the whole story 👊

📊 Think twice before copying your partner’s gym plan.

A female client's recent results
📉 Body fat: Down 0.2kg
💪 Muscle mass: Down 0.4kg

Not ideal. She didn't want to lose muscle! Her protein has been good and training has been consistent, so this is understandably frustrating at first glance.

However. On her initial scan when she started with us, she had significantly more muscle through her trunk and arms compared to her legs. Before joining AF she had been following a program her partner had shown her. A program designed for him, which resulted in her being upper body dominant.

Not ideal when you're after a strong feminine physique, but also not ideal long term due to risk of injury. If your upper body is doing too much relative to your lower body, it can mean poorer movement, more compensation and potentially a higher likelihood of niggles/injuries over time.

👏 Thankfully all the muscle lost was in her upper body, and even though she'd lost muscle overall, she'd actually gained muscle in her legs. Meaning the gap has already started closing 👏

Meaning she is now far more proportionate upper to lower, which is generally a really positive thing.

There were also left to right imbalances which improved too. 99% leg symmetry is basically normal human variation territory.

📈 Arm symmetry improved from 93.2% → 94.6%
🦵 Leg symmetry improved from 98.3% → 99.0%

This is obviously less exciting than losing loads of body fat 😅
But becoming more balanced can matter a lot.

🦵 Better movement
💪 Better load sharing through the body
😌 Less compensation
🏋️ Better long term progress
🚶 More resilient as we get older

Also, body scanners are fantastic, but they're not magic. We encourage our clients to scan monthly so we can spot trends rather than taking the data from individual readings. Small changes in muscle mass can happen for lots of reasons.

Hydration 💧
Food/carbs the day before 🍚
Stress 😴
Recovery 💤

Before panicking over one number, it’s worth looking at the bigger picture.

🧠 You don’t need more motivation. You will not leave the gym feeling worse.

Even I have moments where I feel like I can't be bothered to train 😴 Sometimes I think, I’ll just take a rest day (Sometimes you need this and fair enough 👍). But more often I think, you don't need a rest day, just go to the gym and see what happens. Just do 1 exercise, see how you feel 👀

Next thing I know I’ve finished my hour workout, 20ish sets completed 😂

This happens quite a lot. You turn up not really feeling it 😩 Get moving a bit 🚶 You start feeling better 👍 You accidentally find some motivation once you’re already there 💪 The session ends up decent 🔥

Then you leave feeling better than when you walked in 😌
No one ever regrets finishing their gym session! 🙌

You don't always need a brutal workout. Sometimes turning up is the win 👊

📅 One thing we do see work really well is having your training time set in your diary week in week out. Treat it like any other appointment.

Tiny tip. Huge benefits ✨

🪥 Bio hacking and life optimization has lead to people massively overcomplicating fitness.

For most normal adults, it should feel a bit more like brushing your teeth. It doesn't always need to be exciting. Although it would obviously be better if it was! It shouldn't be punishment. You do not need to smash yourself every session.

Exercise should be something you do as the norm, which future you benefits from.

No one gets excited when they brush their teeth. Our 3 year old does sometimes but that's due to mastering a skill you guys hopefully nailed a little while ago. We brush our teeth because future you doesn’t want fillings 🦷

Well what does future you want?

💪 Strength to move freely through life for as long as possible
🦵 The mobility to move well and pain free
❤️ Good health with as few drugs and trips to medical professionals as possible
This is sounding like a post for older people, but hopefully it's more of a kick for younger people too!
🚶 Independence. No one wants to have to rely on someone else any more than necessary.
😌 To look and feel good. Obviously.

The gym should not be treated as optional. Nor should it be treated as optimal. It should be the minimum. If you are waiting for the ideal time to sort yourself out. You are going to be waiting a very, very long time.. and it wont last long.

If you think future you is an A hole, then fair enough, make their life harder 😂

But if you think you might quite like future you, maybe start helping them out a bit.