If you know anything about me you know I’m not one for quick-fixes or band-aid solutions.

In every first consultation with a potential new client, I’m very honest - I tell them that there is no finish line. You may have a goal, and milestones along the way, but ‘health’ and ‘fitness’ is never-ending.

You’ll never wake up one day and say “Oh, I’m done now. Time to stop.”

There’s an ebb and flow to fitness. Sometimes you’ll be motivated, fitter, healthier and energetic. Other times you’ll feel busier, slower and fitness will slide down on the priority list.

But it never completely ends.

The integration of physical training, healthy eating and habit is the fundamental aspect of living a long and capable life.

There aren’t many old people who say they wish they didn’t exercise and eat well when they were younger.

There are tonnes that say they’re damn glad they did... because now they can continue to enjoy the heck out of life, while others around them deteriorate.

So if training is a key aspect, we want to make sure you can continue to do it productively.

I’d nail the 5 keys to training longevity as:

1) Don’t get injured

2) Chase process-based goals instead of just outcome-based

3) Weave training into your lifestyle and schedule, and embrace natural ebb and flow. Life changes.

4) Keep it fun, enjoyable and interesting. Always.

5) Don’t get injured

For a legit number five, I’m tempted to say “don’t take anything too seriously” but that's a lie.

The real answer is to take the handful of important things VERY seriously but don't give all the minutiae any bandwidth.

And what are those things? Consistency, focus, progression, planning, and keeping an eye on the big picture.

Tough call… I know.

But hear me out.

I’ve been reading ‘Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker and it’s opened my eyes to how powerful sleep really is.

I knew it was important already but some of the stuff he talks about is blowing my mind.

Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you’ll develop Alzheimer’s disease.

Routinely sleeping less than seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of developing cancer.

Inadequate sleep - even moderate reductions for just one week - disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic.

Those are insane stats!

And he’s got a ridiculous amount of research to back it up.

He then widens the lens of focus a bit…

There are more than twenty large-scale epidemiological studies that have tracked millions of people over many decades, all of which report the same clear relationship:

The shorter your sleep, the shorter your life.

The leading causes of disease in developed nations - diseases that are crippling health-care systems such as heart disease, obesity, dementia, diabetes and cancer - all have recognised causal links to lack of sleep.

You can bet I’ll be taking my sleep even more seriously from now on.

Another thing I found troubling is that car accidents, caused by drowsy driving, exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined.

Taking that a step further… a week of sleeping under 5 hours a night induces impairment equivalent to a blood alcohol level of 0.1%. It’s the same as being drunk.

You can’t hope to bring your best to work, family, relationships and life if you’re walking around drunk 24/7.

I mean sex is great, and don’t leave it out, but it doesn’t have nearly the same effect that sleep does on your health!

If you get the chance to read this book, I highly recommend it.

It can be a bit research-heavy but understanding something we do for 30% of our lives is a worthy investment.

“Alright, I’m going to lose 4kg so I can look and feel good in my speedos down at the beach this Summer.”

You set your goal, it has some meaning, and you’ve started taking action. The worst thing you can do now is to stop.

What’s going to keep you from stopping?

Determination?Perseverance?Tenacity?

These are all lofty things to set out for...

How about we settle for plain ol’ stubbornness.

We don’t have to be heroes to be stubborn, we can just be a pain in the butt.

When we’re stubborn there’s no quit in us, we’re mean, we’re mulish, we’re in it til the finish. We will sink our junkyard dog teeth into our goal’s ass and don’t let go no matter how hard it kicks.

You’re already stubborn about something in your life.

All you have to do is channel your own stubbornness into your health.

I’m stubborn about my own gym training. With Tough Mudder coming up and another 12-hour charity sled push early next year I know I need to be in top shape.

I can honestly say most of the time I can’t be bothered training, especially when there’s other work to do. Sometimes I sit in the car and consider just going home.

Lucky I’m a stubborn son of a gun.

I set my target and then I’m set in my way. Nothing can move me.

And I know you can be the same about certain things. You decide on something and dig your feet into the ground. No amount of pushing will change your mind.

You’ve got the stubbornness.

Time to use this unruly trait for something productive.

The majority of personal trainers are in their 20’s, myself included. Sometimes this can blur the lines of how to most effectively strength train.

What works for people in their 20’s isn’t optimal for those in their 40’s.

I’ve seen it too many times, a young trainer has an older client do the same program they’re doing - it got them gunz and abz, so it will work for the client too right? Not necessarily. Nine times out of ten the client ends up injured, demotivated and back to square one.

To avoid this situation, I’d like to share some considerations for people 40+ who want to get into strength training.

1. Bring Yourself up to a Boiling Point

The more milage your body has, the longer it takes to ‘get going’. There are two critical factors to consider here.

Never skip your warm up.

It only has to be 5-10 minutes of light cardio, a few stretches and mobilisations, with a light warm up set of your first exercise.

My favourite thing to do with clients is to have them perform the same individualised warm up routine every session. Along with warming them up, it also acts as a transition from work-mode to training-mode.

Don’t follow traditional exercise programs.

Traditional exercise programs place the heavier and more demanding lifts at the beginning of a session when you’re feeling fresh and energetic. This is a mistake for people over 40.

It takes a longer time for the muscles and brain to warm up than young people in their twenties. Jumping straight into a heavy set of barbell bench press as your first exercise after 3-hours of office meetings is asking for a shoulder blow out.

Instead, flip the script and reverse the exercise order. Do your lighter, higher rep supplementary work first.

This, combined with a warm up will completely minimise any risk of injury.

2. Tempo Work is Your Secret Weapon

Tempo is the speed in which you perform each rep. For new and older lifters, a slow tempo should be used for almost every exercise, such as 4 seconds down with a 1 second pause than 1 second up.

Using slower tempos cleans up bad form and improves mind-muscle connection, so the right muscles are doing the job. It also lengthens time under tension (the length of a set) which is an important variable for strength and muscle gain.

Who will get more out of an exercise?

The person who jerks and bounces the weight of their chest and has done 10 reps in 3.5 seconds, almost wrenching the joints out of their sockets.The person who lowers a weight slow and controlled, aware of breathing and joint position, pauses, then lifts back up with a strong contraction. They take 40 seconds to do their 10 reps.

Person one won’t last long.

3. Always Leave Reps in the Tank

Lifting to failure is a young man’s game. Hell, I’m only 27 and pushing the limits in the gym is becoming a thing of the past.

I’m not saying never train hard. You should almost always train hard, just intelligently.

There’s a point called ‘technical failure’, the point where your form breaks down. Sure you could probably bust out two more reps but they’d be ugly as sin. The pros of chasing those last two ugly reps don’t even come close to outweighing the risk of injury you’d place yourself under.

With clients, I commonly use what’s called ‘Repetitions In Reserve’. Instead of setting a rep goal (like do 10 reps) I’ll ask a client to keep going until they feel like they could only do 1 more rep, then stop.

4. Address the Fact You Have a Life Outside of the Gym

The program designed by a 23-year-old Instagram star who eats 4000 calories of his parents food a day, sleeps 11 hours a night and can train 6 days a week for 2-hours at a time.

Sure, he may look the part, but that program will ruin you.

You have responsibilities and obligations to contend with. Kids, your work, a mortgage, pets, friends, travel, meetings, getting the car booked in for a service… it’s a constant juggling game. Training is just part of the equation - not you’re entire life.

Being able to match your expectations with your exercise and look beyond only the aesthetic benefits is crucial for long-term health.

Training can be done safely and effectively over 40 years old. It just requires a little more thought than when you were stomping around the gym in your 20's.

Hope this helped!

If you're looking to master the domain of your body and execute a training program effectively and efficiently, I'd love to assist you.

Head to this page to find out more.

One day I’ll write a book.

It’s half the reason for the pile of blog posts I've written over the last few years.

Writing a book isn’t complicated, just lots of words put in a certain order. Writing a book worth reading is. One worth remembering, worth sharing, worth building a philosophy around.

And to do that I know I have to build a base of learning, face-to-face work, reading, writing and practice.

Reps, reps, reps.

The same goes for training - it’s not complicated.

In order to do the cool and fun things you see on the Internet, you have to do the basic things very well.

Spell out the alphabet before using sentences.Crawl before you walk before you run before you jump.Learn how your body moves before you try to mimic how someone else moves.

You have to build your base first. The big foundation to build on. Without a big base the structure will topple eventually when someone or something comes to push it over.

With most new clients we spend at least the first six weeks building the base. Exercises are simple and progressive, there’s nothing fancy, we do what works.

Reps, reps, reps.

Too many skip the base building and jump straight into an F45 class. Three weeks later they quit with a shoulder niggle, lower back pain and find they can’t bend their left knee properly anymore.

Any results they achieved are temporary.

And last but not least, building your diet foundation.

There’s no diet more powerful than the one that you already are eating. The solution is in the routine.

Two fewer drinks, one less snack, drink more water.

The habit of choosing the right thing over what your short-term gratification brain wants.

Reps, reps, reps.

You don’t have to change a lot... to change a lot.

Just start building your base.

Soon you’ll be standing at the peak, beaming with pride.

Ready to build your base?

Which of these are more likely to give you cancer?

Eating salami or smoking cigarettes?

This may shock you...

They are EQUAL.

They’re both type 1 carcinogens. According to the research they are classified in the same category of cancer risk.

Other processed meats which fit the category include things like pepperoni, prosciutto, bacon, ham, chorizo, hot dogs, devon, sausages and cabanossi.

The most recent estimates by the Global Burden of Disease Project show that about 34,000 cancer deaths per yearworldwide are attributable to diets high in processed meat.

How bloody scary is that!

As a simple recommendation from myself, limit how much you eat of this stuff.

We can also reverse the effects slightly by consuming more antioxidants. Think of antioxidants as a mop which cleans up the cancer-causing carcinogens in your body.

Where can you find antioxidants?

Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and seeds (yeah the stuff you know you should be eating more of anyway).

Antioxidants are responsible for rich colour.

All the different types of antioxidants have different colours, have different roles and do different things so we need a wide range of colours in our diets to get them all.

1 in 2 Australians will be diagnosed with cancer by the age of 85.

35% of this is linked to lifestyle factors, meaning diet and exercise.

This is where preventative nutrition has its importance. Some of this risk is totally avoidable. Totally under your control.

Making healthy decisions now can save you a lot of devastation in the future.

The decision to invest in yourself with a qualified, experienced personal trainer is one of the healthiest you can make.

You’ll gloss over some of these exercise tips, thinking “Ehhh”

Some of these will catch your interest...

And some of these will make your jaw drop and brain explode.

I hope it’s not too painful.

1. When doing any single-arm or single-leg exercise, do your weaker side first.

2. Always do a warmup set on your first exercise. For example: If I want to shoulder press the 20kg dumbbells for 15 reps. My first warmup set will be 10kg for 15 reps.

3. People who don’t regularly exercise may lose up to 80% of their muscle strength by age 65.80 freaking percent...

4. When doing pushups you should look like an arrow (emoji) from the top, rather than a T. Tuck the elbows to about 60 degrees. Same goes for bench pressing.

5. You get different effects out of different rep ranges

1-5 is more strength dominant

6-12 gives you strength and muscle gain

12+ leans towards muscle gain and endurance

6. Studies show that children’s physical activity levels correlate closely with those of their parents. Most of us want to set a good example for our kids and set them up for a healthy life. It starts with you.

7. By slowing down the tempo of an exercise you inherently clean up your form. It’s harder to do slow pushups than fast pushups, but much more valuable.

8. You get more out of the lowering portion of the exercise (eccentric) than the actual lifting portion. For example, the lowering of the pushup is more important than the pushing back up. Another good reason to slow down your reps.

9. Studies have shown that after 1 hour of sitting, enzymes that burn fat are reduced by 90%. Prolonged sitting is being correlated with many health risks and shortened life span. Walks interspersed throughout the day to break up your sitting are super important.

10. Dynamic stretch before your workout, static stretch after.

11. Only 10% of people are successful at losing weight by diet alone, according to the National Weight Control Registry in the US.

12. Sweat doesn’t equal a good workout. Neither does muscle soreness. You can have an amazing workout with both and with neither.

13. Your core includes all muscles which attach to your ribs, pelvis or spine - not just your 6-pack at the front. This is why crunches don’t work very well.

14. Mind-muscle connection is a real thing. You can actively focus on the muscle the exercise is targeting and increase the activation in that muscle.

15. Don’t get injured. It’s not worth it.

16. Men who exercise hard more than 3-hours a week are only one third as likely to experience erectile dysfunction as men who exercise very little or not at all.

I’ll finish on that note.

Exercise has benefits well beyond physically looking better(although the increases in confidence, self-satisfaction and happiness make looking better a strong benefit on it's own).

If you haven't been exercising, now is the time to start.

If you have, time to make it a habit.

Here it is, tested, effective and worthwhile:

Stop chasing shortcuts.

Personal finance, weight loss, marketing, careers, beating traffic, relationships, education – everything that matters to someone often comes with heavily promoted shortcuts as an alternative.

Fast, risk-free, effortless secrets that magically work, often at someone else’s expense.

But if the shortcuts worked as promised, they wouldn’t be shortcuts, would they? They’d be the standard.

A shortcut is not an innovation. It’s not a direct path, either. Those work, but they require effort, risk and insight.

A shortcut is a short-sighted ride on the merry-go-round.

If you can’t afford the time and effort to do it right, you probably can’t afford to do it over after you realise that the shortcut was merely a trap.

You’re busy, you’ve got others relying on you and you have high expectations of yourself. Which is exactly why this matters so much.

You don’t have the time or energy to endlessly ride the merry-go-round.

If you’re going to do it, do it right.

I’ll be honest...

Sometimes I feel like giving up.

The jump from employed to self-employed was a big one and came with many unexpected challenges. I’m now the marketing team, an accountant and a business owner. I’m in sales, partnership development, human resources and admin. All while still being the best personal trainer I can be.

And sometimes it’s overwhelming.

When I made the transition last October I had grand ideas of blowing up. I’d open a gym, start making more money than I could handle, hire staff, and make a massive impact on thousands of people’s lives.

(Not unlike some people’s ideas around their lofty physique goals)

Then the process began and I got a rude shock.

IT’S A LOT EASIER TO THINK THAN TO DO.

The ‘idea’ of things is much more comfortable and sexy than the practical reality of the process.

‘Idea’ requires no sacrifice, sweat, energy or discipline.

To take a theoretical construct into a living breathing organism is just WORK.

You have to do the work.

It’s the one thing which stops people

The work is hard. It DOES require sacrifice, sweat, energy and discipline.

And the work is required for anything to happen.

For me, it means getting up at 4.30am every single morning and pushing on through the uncertainty. Day in, day out, just doing the best job I can for my clients and ‘working the process’.

People come to me with their own grand ideas of transforming their physique. That’s great. But that’s only the ‘idea’.

The idea is sexy. It’s comfortable.

Now it’s time to work.

Put in the sacrifice, sweat, energy and discipline towards creating a new reality for yourself.

Do this for a long time.

And when things don’t happen exactly the same as your ‘idea’ imagined... keep working.

This is where some people falter.

For myself, it’s where my business coach steps in.

For my clients, it’s where I step in.

For you, it’s where you remember this article and KEEP WORKING.

So today, a short pledge...

Stop reading about it. Stop thinking about it. Stop putting it off another week.

It’s time to do it.

Are you using any of these oils?

Corn, soybean, canola, sunflower, peanut, cottonseed, safflower?

If you answered yes, stop!

These oils are terrible for your health. They are proven to cause heart disease, cancer and liver damage.

They are called vegetable oils (which is a bit of a lie, how can a ‘vegge’ be unhealthy?)

Vegetable oils have only been in use for the last 100 or so years. Before that, we didn’t have the technology to extract them.

They are actually made from seeds, not vegetables, and require an industrial process to make them. This process involves pressing at high pressure and extracting more oil using solvents such as hexane, a volatile hydrocarbon similar to gasoline. The oils are then refined by heating to a high temperature and adding sodium hydroxide, and finally, degummed, bleached, and deodorised.

Without knowing anything else about it, I already don’t want this substance in my body.

Vegetable oils cause heart disease and raise death rates.

Data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study found that the intervention group that had replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils had a death rate from all causes that was 62% higher than the control group, and 70% higher for cardiovascular disease.

Vegetable oils cause cancer

Israel has one of the highest dietary polyunsaturated/saturated fat ratios in the world. In fact, Israeli Jews may be regarded as a population-based dietary experiment of the effect of a high omega-6 PUFA diet, a diet that until recently was widely recommended. Despite such national habits, there is paradoxically a high prevalence of cardiovascular diseases, hypertension, non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus, obesity, and insulin resistance syndrome. There is also an increased cancer incidence and mortality rate, especially in women, compared with western countries.

Vegetable oils cause liver damage

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is strongly associated with obesity and insulin resistance and has been increasing by leaps and bounds. Humans with NAFLD have a higher ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 polyunsaturated fats in their livers, which is the result of high consumption of omega-6 fats and low consumption of omega-3 fats.

Coinciding with the increased consumption of vegetable oils over the past few decades, not only has there been an increase in NAFLD, but other inflammatory conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, obesity, inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Processed foods are loaded with vegetable oils

It all has to do with the high levels of omega-6 polyunsaturated fat in them.

Look at the label of the salad dressing in your fridge. Most likely it will name vegetable oil as it’s 1st or 2nd ingredient. You just made your healthy salad unhealthy.

A packet of chips has it’s 2nd ingredient listed as vegetable oil.

All fast food is cooked in vegetable oil.

Pretty much any can or bag of processed food you find lists vegetable oil as an ingredient.

What’s the answer? How can you avoid this garbage ‘food’?

Simple.

Eat whole, unprocessed food. That means meat, fish, dairy products, fruits and vegetables, nuts.

Don’t eat anything that comes in a manufactured bag or box, or anything that has been through an industrial process.

If you need oil for salads or other foods, use high-quality olive oil, a healthy fat that has been used for thousands of years.

However, for cooking at a higher heat, use grass-fed butter, ghee, or coconut oil.

Your healthy body will thank you.

It can almost seem an impossible task to get in shape while living the life of a busy executive.

I work with executives every day and still get taken aback by the constant travel, meetings, deadlines and busyness of it all. Many of my clients are just like you, stressed-out with a lot on their plate and very little time left in the day to look after themselves.

Although it may seem like an impossible task, the results my clients get tell a different story. With the right program, guidance and a few tricks of the trade, even the busiest of men can achieve remarkable results.

Here are the top 10 tips for the busy executive.

Focus on hydration

You’re made up of about 60% water. Dehydration by just 2% can decrease your mental and physical performance by up to 30%. Yeah, that’s massive.

Keep a bottle full of water near you at all times. Whenever you finish it, fill it back up straight away. You should never feel thirsty because you're always sipping.

Drink at least 2L of water a day.

If you’re after something more precise, the rule of thumb is 35mL for every kilo of bodyweight. So, for a 91kg man, he would drink: 91x35 = 3185mL or 3.2 litres.

Master portion control and awareness

Executives don't have time to weigh every bit of food and count calories. A much more suitable method of controlling diet is through portions. This involves knowing how much you should eat, being aware of hunger cues and when you're full as well as sticking to a routine.

Know what's on the menu

When eating out, plan ahead. Get a glance at the menu (or get your PA to) and choose the best option ahead of time so you don't get caught up in the moment.

Once you get good at this you can develop the skill to look at any menu and automatically choose the best. Most of the time it looks like:

- Nothing fried

- Low in oil and sauce

- High volume of vegetables

- Protein option (chicken, turkey, fish, lean beef)

Own the meeting

With the responsibilities and leadership an executive has, you're going to be in many meetings - it's important to acknowledge that and make the most of it.

If you have a big meeting, know exactly what you'll be eating before you go in (to have high energy) and what you'll eat after you're done (as you'll be hungry and tempted by junk food).

Food served in meetings is often crap. Avoid the finger food on the table and either request better options or bring your own.

Dominate travel

Like with meetings, you also travel a lot. 12+ hour flights, not moving the whole time and eating whatever they serve you is a recipe for disaster.

Then, wherever you're travelling to, aim to get into the same routine as you would back home - same eating, same training, same bed time. Travel is not an excuse.

Determine your go-to meals

I always advise having three go-to meals you can whip up in 5-10 minutes with ease. With these staples on your menu you won't have to resort to fast food.

A breakfast, lunch and dinner is recommended.

Maximise sleep quality

One night of poor sleep reduces mental focus the next day by 32%. A few nights in a row destroys your body’s physical performance by half. If you’re sleep deprived and this is your ‘normal’ state, sleep just became your top priority.

Notice the keyword up there, ‘quality’, it's not so much the total amount of sleep which matters. Your deep sleep cycles are where the magic of brain organisation and physical regeneration occur.

Things like avoiding caffeine after 2pm, no screens pre-sleep, minimising bedroom light and moderating temperature.

Sleeping more can be impossible for an executive, but you have the power to improve the quality.

Exercise efficiency

Not all exercises are equal, there are a few which give 10x more benefit by working the whole body and allow you to train with intensity.

When time is short, time efficiency is the name of the game. Choose exercises which give you the biggest bang-for-your-buck. Think:

- Supersets (alternating between two exercises) over straight sets (one exercise at a time)

- Free weights over machines

- Lunges over calf raises

- Chinups over bicep curls

Accidental exercise

When you have little time to spare, think about how you can trade time to exercise instead of trying to add it in.

Consider:

Taking phone calls while walking (biggest one)Riding to workEating lunch at your desk and using your lunch hour to exerciseAlways taking the stairsA standing desk in your office

This can all add up to a serious amount without you having to put any extra time in.

Cut the alcohol

Unless you can convince me you need alcohol to survive, you don't need to drink it.

Most of my executive clients have reduced their alcohol intake dramatically, some even cutting it out completely, and none of them say they miss it. It was a crutch for social situations, it was the norm and it was a habit they were looking to kick at the first opportunity.

The moment you realise this, it gets a lot easier to get in shape.

Getting in shape is more difficult for executives than many people, with the demands placed on them and stressors of life. Difficult is one thing, it is not impossible. With the right mindset, coaching and willpower, remarkable results can be achieved.

And that's where I can help.

To apply for premium, executive-specific health coaching, click here.

60+ hour work weeks are the norm for this guy.

He travels a lot and is in charge of thousands of people.

He doesn’t let that stop him.

(I’ll keep his name private, but if you’re a current client you probably know who I’m talking about as you’ve seen his transformation with your own eyes)

This guy has been with me for 6-months and has missed one workout because he was ill. ONE workout. In 6-months. It speaks a lot to his motivation and character.

Last week I asked him,

“What advice would you give yourself if you had to start all over again?”

Here are the golden words of wisdom from the man himself.

Number 1: Keep count

Track your food intake, weight, measurements and workouts. If you aren’t measuring anything, you can’t manage anything.

Number 2: Get off the grog

His words, not mine! As difficult as it might seem, this is a running trend through many of my clients. They cut the alcohol, lose a tonne of weight and feel a helluva lot better.

Number 3: Enjoy the process

Don’t get caught up over the day to day weight fluctuations or end goal. Find an enjoyable (at least somewhat enjoyable…) way to exercise and stick with it consistently.

Number 4: Treat yourself occasionally

Celebrate the small wins and still live life with the occasional treat. It’s a lifestyle, not a short term thing. He’s losing the weight for the last time.

BONUS Number 5: Don’t get caught up in the first week.

I told the above 4 points to one of my newer clients and she felt she had one more to add. Starting is the hardest part, the first week being the hardest. You won’t see results in a week but you’ll have to make those initial changes. The workouts will be tough but they get easier.

Stick with it. Just get through that first week.

And she’s down over 7kg in 6-weeks (including a 2-week trip to NYC) so knows exactly what it’s like.

*Update - she just cracked the 20kg mark in 16-weeks*

It’s always good hearing advice from ‘in the trenches’.

I hope this was helpful.

Head over to this page if you're ready to begin your own journey, put these tips into action, and become a success story of your own.

Two young fish are swimming along when they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning boys, how’s the water?’

The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”

This is a tale which reminds us that, just like those fish, our lives are largely determined by factors we never fully notice: our habits. The unthinking, automatic choices that surround us each day.

A lean physique requires certain actions to happen each day. As each action has a particular decision and trade-off in the moment, those who have habitualised the decision are more likely to succeed.

Habits are so deep-rooted they form our beliefs and summarise who we are. With effort, we're able to change them to become more in line with who we want to be.

Here are 11 habits for a lean physique

1. Sleep 7-8 hours a night

First on the list and easily the most important. If sleep is compromised everything else is too. Sacrificing sleep more something else is a terrible trade-off which will hurt you in the long term.

A lack of sleep impairs fat burning, increases appetite, plummets testosterone, reduces insulin sensitivity and many more horrible things. It is a non-negotiable for leanness.

Habit: Develop your night routine and set a non-negotiable time for bed.

2. Get direct sunlight

Your hormonal cycle is regulated by exposure to natural sunlight. Testosterone, energy, carb digestion, wakefulness - all regulated by sunlight. Our ancestors evolved their body's circadian rhythm in sync with the sun and never getting sunlight completely screws you over.

Habit: Get natural light in the morning as the sun comes up, at least 10-minutes worth on your skin. Try and get at least 30-minutes more through the day (combine it with habit 6).

3. Stick to a whole food diet

People with lean physiques all eat whole foods and if you'd like to improve your physique this is the place to start. They are more nutritious, have a higher thermogenic value (burn more calories to process) and are hard to overeat. Try it. See how much you can really overeat consuming steak and broccoli, chicken and brown rice, oatmeal and raspberries.

Habit: Buy 90% whole foods at the supermarket and prepare your meals in advance.

4. Show self-control

People with lean physiques don't eat to manage their emotions, they have separated the two. They don't say 'screw it' when they're out and binge just because their friends are.

Much of being lean is controlling your relationship with food. Be in tune with your hunger levels and mindful of what you're putting in your mouth during stressful or distracting situations.

Habit: Don't snack. Don't have trigger foods (foods which cause you to binge) anywhere near you. Don't put yourself in tough situations without a plan.

5. Lift weights

Muscle is the holy grail of health. Lift weights if you want to be lean, live longer, look better, feel better, have better sex, better everything.

Habit: Lift weights 3-4x per week.

6. Walk where possible

Your body hasn't gone through millions of years of evolution for you to sit in a car, then at a desk, then on the couch, day after day. You're made to move.

Walking is a simple movement which regulates blood sugar, improves digestion and increases metabolism. With today's high levels of convenience it's becoming easier to get away with not walking anywhere - a habit which will lead to you being overweight.

Habit: Walk 5-10mins 5-10 times per day. Park further from work. Take the stairs. Make phone calls walking around the block.

7. Write out gratitudes

Being lean requires sacrifices and self-control, it helps to remember why you're doing it in the first place. This places the future rewards in the present tense and allows a mindset of optimism, focus and decisiveness.

Habit: Write 3 gratitudes on paper in the morning and at night.

8. Stress management

When you manage your stress you're less likely to emotionally eat or fall out of your routine. The leanest people guard their lives against unnecessary drama, toxic people and bad situations.

Managing your stress isn't about eliminating all stress. That's impossible. It's coming up with strategies to minimise the effects stress has on you and choosing the things you'd like to prioritise. Much of our stress in life is self-imposed and can be radically reduced with some simple strategies.

This article has some modern ideas you can implement.

9. Develop discipline

Discipline is doing the things you know you have to do. Getting a lean physique isn't rocket science, the information is there, but the difference is in the people who take consistent action.

Read this article to learn how to create discipline and access this all-encompassing habit which will benefit every part of your life.

10. Get into a long-game mindset

A lean physique requires an eye to the long game. Lifting every week, healthy eating every day, proper sleep every night - these habits compound over time and create a momentum wave.

An obese short game mindset is to declare yourself a failure after 2 days of bad eating. A long game mindset is knowing that 10 years of positive habits add up and a weekend off isn't going to make a difference, and there is nothing to fail at.

Habit: Engage in the process of obtaining a lean physique instead of chasing the finish line.

11. Change your identity

Lean and healthy people don't experience 'hardship' over the lifestyle because that way of being is easy... it's who they are.

The struggle with changing your identity is the doubt over trying to accommodate a new identity whilst struggling through the shedding of your old one. There is cognitive dissonance that is unavoidable. That aside, the identity of being 'lean', for those that live this way, it's simply who they are.

You can tap into this way of thinking.

If you make your change in identity a massive struggle and deify it, you will make it harder on yourself to change. Paradoxically, its more to your benefit to imagine that you are turning more into yourself and that life will be easier as you're living your truth.

Over time, consistent healthy habits tally up a monumental score on the board proving to yourself you really are this person.

Habit: Act as if you are the healthiest version of yourself who has already achieved your goals - would you make the same decisions?

Read this article for more identity-changing tips.

You are the summary of your daily habits.

Pay attention to the things you do each day and make sure they are in line with the person you want to be.

Habits are a major part of how we coach personal training at Executive Performance. It's more than a workout; it's about helping executive men to regain control of their health. With a focus on building structure, discipline and consistency, the results gained will last a lifetime.

Check out the Personal Training here.

After years in the industry, I’ve noticed many of us learned how to train by reading magazines or watching videos online. Maybe you just joined your friend in the gym and started following their program.

And it worked for a while…

Until it didn’t.

That’s how I got started as a teenager. I’d receive the latest edition of Men’s Fitness delivered to my doorstep and devour the workouts inside.

Unfortunately the promise of “Get 'The Rock’s' Body in 6 Weeks!” never came true.

Those magazines, videos and your friend's gym sessions were all simple exercises, put together to look pretty, but had no real long-term strategy. They didn’t follow the principles of strength training.

There is a subtle yet enormous difference between exercise and training.

Exercise: you go to the gym, do some leg stuff, a bit of arms, maybe some bench press and then call it a day.

Training: you step into the gym and execute a plan which obeys the principles of strength training to provide the results you're after.

I’d like to share with you how you can make sure you’re TRAINING, instead of just EXERCISING, and make the most of your time, energy and effort.

Principle 1: Progressive Overload

“The Story of Milo”

Milo is a famous wrestler from the 6th century. He’s known for lifting a baby calf every day until eventually, it became a fully-grown bull. Doing this every day, in turn, increased Milo’s muscle mass and strength.

As the calf grew is size, the weight (load) he had to pick up increased. This is the most foundational aspect of strength training; each session progressively overloading the stimulus on the body so it adapts to become bigger, faster, fitter and stronger.

If he’d just always picked up a baby calf every day he would have never gotten any stronger. There would be no reason for the body to change.

You don’t always have to progress by increasing the weight. You can:

Do more repsDo more setsUse better formUse shorter rest periodsTrain more often

But if you don’t challenge yourself, record your results and always try to do a little more NOTHING is going to change. Please don’t waste your efforts.

Principle 2: Specificity

“An Elite Marathon Runner Probably Wouldn’t

Be Elite At Rugby”

The things you do during training cause specific adaptations to occur in the body.

By running a lot, you’d improve your heart and lung capacity, increase mitochondria in the muscle and increase the endurance of your Type I muscle fibres. But none of that is going to help you in a rugby scrum or when a 120kg prop is charging at you.

You adapt to the things you do most, so it’s vital to pick exercises which are transferring to the end results you’re after.

Principle 3: Individualisation

“You're A Snowflake”

No two people are the same and everyone will respond differently to a training stimulus. Things like age, training history, injuries, lifestyle and genetics all impact what a person should be doing. Although there will be similarities between programs as the basics are proven to work...

No two people’s programs should be exactly the same.

A personal addition to this principle I use with clients is ‘The Two C’s’.

Comfort: The movement is pain-free, feels natural, works for your body type.

Control: You’re able to execute the technique with control and get into the right body positions. You can actually feel the targeted muscle working.

Principle 4: Variation

“Even Ice Cream Starts To Taste Bad Eventually”

Ice cream is one of life’s greatest joys. I can smash through one tub fairly easily. Two? Yeah sure. Three? Maybe…

Five tubs of ice cream? I’d begin to hate it.

The same goes for training. Following Principle 1: Progressive Overload, you should be doing similar sessions and working to increase your proficiency in those exercises. But eventually, the body will plateau and needs variation to continue progressing.

It’s the old law of diminishing returns.

It’s common to change up exercises, set and rep schemes, tempo and focus every 4-6 weeks to ensure you don’t plateau (or get bored!)

Principle 5: Reversibility

“If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It”

As simple as the statement, if you stop training your body will fall back to it’s detrained state.

So many people used to be fit when they were younger, then as life gets busier fitness falls off the list of priorities and begins to decline. Five years later they are in all sorts and have lost it all.

It’s a lot easier to maintain than to gain. You can always improve your fitness but gaining it is tough. It requires hard work. It’s a lot easier to maintain your fitness once you get to a point you’re happy with.

There’s more to it than that. I can dive into principles of fat-loss, muscle-building, nutrition and behaviour change, but I think this is enough for one little article.

This is one of the many benefits of working with a personal trainer, such as myself:

I will track every single rep of every single session.I will always be planning one month ahead and ensure your session is optimised for the long-term goal.I will carefully balance progressive overload and variation so you don't plateau, always see improvement and never get bored.I will design a program specifically for you, your goals, your body mechanics, your history and your preferences.I will keep you accountable so you don't regress (yep, even when you go on holidays).

Of course, the principles of resistance training is one slice of what's included in the personal training pie.

If you'd like to improve your body shape, optimise your results and stop wasting time, effort and energy, please get in touch.

There’s something I need to get off my chest.

I hate exercising.

Only some of the time. Like yesterday, I had a lower body workout planned and there were a million other things I’d rather be doing. Watching paint dry was one of them.

I really didn’t want to train.

But I did anyway - sort of.

I scrapped one set of squats and one set of deadlifts off the plan. That was my negotiation with myself, “You can do a little less, but you still have to train.”

The happens more often then I’d like to admit.

Sometimes I get into the groove and still complete the whole planned session. Others I stop a short as I told myself I would.

But I always train.

There are a few big reasons why I do:

1. Exercise makes you feel bloody amazing after your done. I know this as do all of my clients. Doing the session can be tough, mentally and physically, but the sense of satisfaction, the endorphin release afterwards and the accomplishment can’t be compared to anything else.

2. Filling up the tank with $5 is better than running on empty. Doing something is better than nothing. If you’re sleepy, sore or plain old tired there’s always something to be gained - even if it’s some stretching and 15-minutes on the bike.

3. I know I’ve never regretted a workout. I’ve regretted NOT working out plenty of times.

4. Most of the time, I’m already at the gym. This can be the hardest part for many, the first step of leaving the house/office and heading to the gym. I’m lucky I can’t use this excuse because once you’re through those doors you’re halfway done already.

5. My goals require me to train. And if I want to achieve them I'm going to have to suck it up and put off some short-term gratification for long-term success.

This all might sound odd coming from a personal trainer. I’m human too. Even though I do these weird sled pushes, powerlifting comps and marathons, my motivation still comes in ebbs and flows.

I’d confidently say about half the time I don’t feel like training at all.

So I ignore what I ‘feel’ like because I know that’s my emotional brain on hyperdrive telling me to go home, get in my onesie, flick on the Bachelor and eat a tub of ice cream.

I train anyway.

Imagine you had a heart attack.

Right here, right now. The chest pain gripping you; squeezing like a vice. Left shoulder starting to ache. A shortness of breath has you clutching at your throat.

Don't worry, it’s all good because you survive - no harm done.

But it was a bit of a shock wasn’t it?!

You’d think you’d do your best to not have it happen again. A glimpse of death tends to push us to make changes.

You’d think so...

I came across this frightening snippet over the weekend.

“Only 41% of people who were given free preventative medications following their heart attack were still taking them 1.5 years later.”

Wait what!

59% of people WEREN’T taking their FREE medication (literally a few pills a day) even AFTER they had a heart attack (meaning they were on the path to another).

*Face palm*

It’s enough to give doctors nightmares.

These results show us how hard behaviour change is. Human beings, even when faced with knowledge, and in this case coupled with a very real glimpse at mortality, struggle to maintain even the easiest of behaviour changes.

No wonder it’s so hard to stick to your diet and exercise program.

As a personal trainer, the ins and outs of exercise and nutrition are important but pale in comparison to behaviour change.

Over the next 5 years (or however long it takes), I’ll be working towards my Masters degree in Coaching Psychology at Sydney Uni.

And I feel this is where I’ll be able to stay ahead of the industry.

In the information age you can get workouts, diet plans and pretty learn anything you’d need to know about getting fit and healthy online.

But actually doing it?

Changing your beliefs and habitsStrengthening your willpower and disciplineGrowing your self-awareness and confidence

That’s the magic.

Combine THAT stuff with proper exercise and nutrition and you’ll be unstoppable.

Not long ago I had a weekend in the Hunter Valley with a bunch of my closest friends.

One slightly drunk conversation with one mate had me talking about all the things I want to do and accomplish and my impatience for them not all happening right here and now.

He had 3 words for me.

“Life is long.”

He’s right.

Life is long. It all feels like a rush. Like we SHOULD be in a rush. Busy all the time and hitting goals left, right and centre.

But we’ve got time.

Time to change things.

Time to work towards our best life.

We’ve also had a long time up until now. All those decisions from the many days of the past have led you to where you are right now. Things like your friends, where you live, your job and your health.

Talking about your health, you never wake up in the same body twice.

You’ll never be this exact same age again, you’ll never be in the same exact state of health again.

Your health right now is an outcome of everything in the past.

What happens from now is an outcome of all the decisions you make in the moment.

You are not "fixated" in your health. It’s responsive to stimulus and can always change. It adapts to whatever you throw at it - whether it be Netflix or gym sessions.

Every action has a consequence, and that consequence has a consequence. All things amplify and build on each other.

You choose Netflix and with that probably comes a block of chocolate.

You choose a gym session and you will crave a healthy meal to refuel afterwards.

It took many years to arrive at your current state of health. And an improved state of health will take time to create.

Put in the work, you’ve got the time.

Life is long.

I met up with my business coach recently.

Yep! Coaches have coaches too.

Along with realigning my focus and giving me a 5-year framework to work towards, we got onto the topic of investment.

Not money.

TIME and ENERGY investment.

Being able to work smarter, not harder.

All of this fits into something I’ve been talking to clients about recently. Especially the newer ones.

Note down ALL the things you know you shouldn’t be doing. Before you try and do anything tricky, get rid of the dumb stuff.

This is the obvious stuff.

It’s the best investment of your time, energy and effort.

Not worrying about all the extra stuff you should be doing.

Instead, focusing on the things you’re currently doing which are against the grain of your goal.

I call it the ‘dumb stuff’ because we know we shouldn’t be doing it, yet we do it anyway.

Going to the pub after work 4 nights a week.Having a cupboard full of potato chips.Falling asleep in front of the TV each night.

Write this stuff down and work on getting rid of the dumb stuff before you try and do anything tricky.

This does require some self-awareness, perspective and humility. You have to be able to own your actions and choices. Which is hard.

But I never ever want people screwing around for 5 years and ending up in the same exact place. So sometimes doing some hard stuff is a good thing.

A necessary thing.

A wise man once said,

“Summer bodies are made in winter.”

It might have been Gandalf. Or Donald Trump. Or maybe it was Jay-Z.

I don’t know 🤷♂️

But I do know whoever said it is right on the money. Progress is made over months, not weeks. The best time to start working towards your Summer body is today. The second best time is tomorrow.

That’s why I’ve decided to share my 3 favourite workouts for a head-turning physique. I use these methods all the time with clients.

#1 German Body Composition Training

Developed by the Germans to develop the finest of physiques, GBC training involves tough supersets of upper and lower body exercises - high reps with little rest.

Example workout:

Hex bar deadlift x12

Rest 45 seconds

Pushups x12

Rest 45 seconds

Repeat x4

Seated cable row x12

Rest 45 seconds

Walking lunge x12/leg

Rest 45 seconds

Repeat x4

Dumbbell overhead press x15

Rest 45 seconds

Dumbbell Romanian deadlift x15

Rest 45 seconds

Repeat x4

#2 Heavy-Light Contrast Training

I don’t know who discovered this one, but let’s assume it was somewhere in Eastern Europe (they come up with all the good stuff).

Contrast training is where you superset two exercises for the same body part. The first exercise is done slowly with a heavier weight and lower reps. The second is done faster with a lighter weight for high reps.

Example workout:

Barbell back squat x6 reps

Rest 20s

Walking lunge x12 reps/leg

Rest 90s

X4 sets

Chinups x6 reps

Rest 20s

Wide grip lat pulldown x15 reps

Rest 90s

X4 sets

Dumbbell bench press x6 reps

Rest 20s

Pushups x15+ reps

Rest 90s

X4 sets

#3 Density Training

The big kahuna of getting a heap of training done, shred away fat and maximise your training time.

Density training is time-based. You pick a few key exercises, set a time limit (usually 10-15mins) and work through the exercises repeatedly until the time is up.

Example workout:

As many rounds as possible in 15-minutes

Reverse dumbbell lunge x8/legStanding dumbbell overhead press x10TRX row x10Lying leg raise x10

Rest a few minutes, then:

As many rounds as possible in 10-minutes

Dumbbell squats x12Bent over dumbbell row x12Battle rope slams x20

There are many ways to train and not one single best way. As long as you go in with a plan and train with purpose, you’ll see results.

I hope you found this useful and let me know if you decide to give one of the workouts a crack!

Don’t judge me... I’m super into 'The Bachelor'.

I hardly even turn on the TV these days but 'The Bachelor' gets me every time. The drama, the Osher and the complete trash they call

Australia’s most popular show.

I love it!

Last night’s episode was a cracker. The Bachie (Matt) had a nuclear meltdown with all the girls competing for his attention.

It had me realise something:

Too much choice is paralysing.

And these days you pretty much have an infinite amount of choice when it comes to your health. Even I get confused sometimes by the tidal wave of information.

Chris Hemsworth claiming his new app has the best workouts.An Instagram model releases her new fat-sizzling 7-day detox.The ripped guy at the gym says you should be doing this, not that.

There’s way too much to do in one lifetime.

Many of them will actually work if you stick to them (ok, maybe not the detox). The problem is with this much choice you end up either paralysed or program hopping.

Not starting at all or starting again too often.

In both cases, zero progress is made.

And in our bachelor Matt’s case, a meltdown follows.

The question then becomes:

How do you narrow down the choice? How do you know your choice is right? And how do you stick to it?

Narrowing down the choice follows a simple process.

Start by defining your goal. For Matt, he wants to find a partner he can spend the rest of his life with. A clear goal. For you, your choice should be determined by what outcomes you want from it.

Do you want to put on muscle or lose fat? Get stronger or run a half-marathon?Lower your blood cholesterol or increase your booty size?

Why? Why? Why?

The further you get into the details here the better choice you’ll make.

To decide whether your choice is right, place it through some filters.

For Matt, he has a couple of filters each of his choices will go through:

Can I imagine a future with this person?This is a TV show… will our lives be able to come together afterwards in the real world?Does this person have a good laugh?

For you, it would look a little different:

Does the program have proof it works? Testimonials from people like you? Is it backed by studies and research?Is it realistic? Will I be able to complete it?What does this person have to gain from selling me something? Some people have ill intentions and you can spot them a mile away.

Finally… now you’ve made your choice, how do you stick to it?

‘How To Stick To Your Choice’

Following through, discipline, motivation - whatever you want to call it. It’s really the key to anything.

I’m not going to be able to dissect human behaviour in one article (or even scratch the surface). Instead, I’ll provide some useful tips and notes you can use this week to give you extra ‘sticking power’ straight away.

1. Don’t rely on motivation.

Because it doesn’t last - it comes and goes in peaks and troughs.

Motivation -> Inspiration -> Action = wrong.

If you’re waiting until your motivated to do something you’ll never get far. Here’s how it really works:

Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation.

Action comes first. Action creates inspiration. Action creates motivation. Relying on motivation is unsustainable, immature, and limiting. Yet, this is the framework for how most people live their lives.

Motivation is fleeting and unreliable; you can go months without it. To rely on it is not a winning strategy. Ignore motivation - if it’s there, great. Use it. If it’s not, act anyway. This is how you create sustainable motivation in the first place.

It doesn’t matter how you feel. Act anyway.

2. Get deeper on the why.

To not have to rely on motivation, you need something deeper. There needs to be a real, meaningful reason why you want to change or do something. Behaviour change is no easy task - we are essentially rewiring a part of us. Something that’s hardwired into your brain.

This is where the rule of 3 comes in. For any significant decision, change or undertaking, you must have a real reason behind it.

Ask yourself why 3 times. Why do you making this change?

It’s the new you. It’s not a fad. It’s not going to go yo up and down.

“This is my new normal. Not something I do when I’m pumped or excited.”

You will not stick to any choice unless you make that decision.

3. Get super self-aware (without being weird about it)

Self-awareness is being aware of your consciousness. This means doing things with intent and considering the consequences of those actions.

It’s super easy to grab takeout on your way home, drink 5 beers instead of 2 and rationalise skipping a workout for a dog walk on the weekend.

In the moment those things make sense.

But how will they impact everything else?

Good questions are my weapon of choice to develop self-awareness.

A good question has the ability to flip your perspective. It’s a way to test your own, or somebody else’s assumptions. When I’m coaching, I don’t need to know everything about everything, but by asking the right questions at the right times, most of my clients can figure out the answers on their own.

To start being more aware try asking yourself these 3 questions a few times a day:

What have I done recently that I’m most proud of?Is there anything I could be doing better?How will the things I’m doing today impact me tomorrow, next week and next year?

4. Micro speed. Macro patience.

Building off the last point, this is a term I like to use to explain the day-to-day stuff vs the long-term goals. Being impatient with your actions and being patient with the outcomes.

Unfortunately, most people are living life backwards.

They are quick to set lofty goals, thinking 3-months to 5-years in the future. They are living in the macro. Then on the micro, they don’t focus on maximising everything they can in the here and now.

For example, someone expects to have a flourishing family in 5 years but doesn’t take the time to invest in any relationships in the present.

Setting your goals is good, and that’s all they are. General goals giving you a direction to work towards and being very patient as you spend the next few years working towards them. Then, executing with speed in the short-term. Hitting all allocated workouts, getting nutritious food into you every few hours, getting to bed on time and planning your days in advance.

We don’t have much control over our journey in the next few years. But, we can choose to be all over the next 7 days.

In the long-term, it’s how you approach the weeks which matter.

5. Build the perseverance muscle.

Just like going to the gym to build your biceps, you can build your ‘mental’ muscles too. The hardest part about building muscles is it’s painful. Physically, mentally or both, it hurts, it’s uncomfortable. And that’s where most people give in.

Lucky for us, human beings are built to adapt.

Although we don’t like discomfort, we eventually get used to it. Start waking up at 5.30am instead of 6am - it’s tough the first week but after that it becomes the new normal.

Similarly, undertaking tough and frustrating challenges allow you to grow. Periods of hardships, self-doubt and failures are the perfect conditions to build your perseverance muscle.

As the saying goes, “What matters is who you become in the process, not reaching the goal.”

Say no to alcohol this week and next week it’s much easier.Work out 3x this week and next week it’s much easier.Plan out your week on a Sunday and soon it will feel weird not to plan ahead.

All because you’re building your mind muscles.

I really hope you found this useful. If you need anything else feel free to reach out. I'd love to help.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a popular way for busy people to exercise; the efficiency of gaining benefits in a shorter amount of time.

But is it the best way to train for executives?

HIIT training involves alternating between maximal efforts and rests, done repeatedly. Think on and off bike sprints, F45 or your common bootcamp style class. There's plenty of research to show how good it can be for your health and body composition - superior to any other method of training.

Or is it...?

Imagine if you only drove your car with the RPM’s in the red zone. Your car would still take you from point A to point B. However, if you kept driving like that, your car would start to break down. Your body functions in the same way.

Executives lead a stressful lifestyle.

They sleep 23% less and work 24% more than the average worker, combined with the day to day conversations, decisions and complex thinking. I'm yet to meet an executive who has it completely under control - stress is part of the job.

HIIT is extremely stressful on the body.

Your brain can't tell the difference between all the stressors in life - it still releases the same hormones. Frequent HIIT sessions combined with a high-stress lifestyle leads to chronically elevated stress levels and all the detriments which go with it.

It goes against the whole 'exercise decreases stress', which is one of the main benefits for executives in particular

A HIIT session can also leave you feeling worse off than before. They take a long time to recover from (that's kind of the point) which can make you fatigued and tired, mentally and physically performing well below your capacity.

HIIT has a much higher injury risk.

I must also mention this as the strain is higher, form often compromised and most people don't have the physical capacity to jump right into a HIIT session.

Well, what do you do?

Train smarter, not harder.

Use HIIT as a tool in your toolbox to bust out when you're in a position to up the ante. It can help reduce boredom and definitely has plenty of research to support it. Just don't rely on it as your primary method.

Hiring the wrong personal trainer can be a huge waste of time and money.

I'm not the best for everyone. I can comfortably admit that.

We might be a good fit. We might not.

The truth is, there are thousands of personal trainers in Sydney. Each one is unique with a different skillset and experiences. Hiring the right trainer for you is a crucial step and unfortunately, it's often one taken away from you.

You join a gym, get paired with a trainer without any say and away you gooooo...

It's not the best way to do it and can end up in a lot of wasted time and money.

So I thought I'd give you the power to decide for yourself.

What to look for in a personal trainer.

1. Assessment & Intake Interview

A qualified trainer should always have an interview process where they sit and talk to you before you ever get moving. Rather than 'fill out this form', there should be a conversation where you get to know each other. They get to know more about you, your goals, exercise history, motivations and barriers while you get to know them better.

First and foremost, personal training is a relationship. If you don't like the trainer then and there, you're allowed to find someone else you click with.

There should also be a movement assessment. A basic physical screen where they'll take you through the simple movement patterns, see how you move and then be able to give you feedback and direction on what a preliminary plan would look like relative to your goal.

2. Experience

I'd suggest finding a trainer who has been personal training for at least 5 years. The average career life span of a trainer is 6-months, so to make it past 5 years they must be passionate about the job and be good enough to make a living from it.

3. Personal Fitness

I've heard many arguments against this, but if someone is truly educated, qualified and experienced, they should be a physical representation of their knowledge. Although an incredible physique doesn't correlate to how good they are as a trainer (it can sometimes negatively correlate), they should be relatively strong, fit and capable for their age.

I wouldn't hire a personal finance expert if they were broke...

4. A Training Philosophy

This doesn't mean they need to have written a book, have articles or run seminars, simply that they should be able to clearly explain their personal methodology to how they assess, train and progress people.

There should be a method to the madness based on science and anecdotal experience.

5. They Continuously Learn

It's also a great idea to ask them what their major influences are in their personal training education and about the people they've learned from. I'm aware that their answers probably won't mean anything to you, but its the reaction you want to pay attention to. If they are entirely caught off guard and can't recommend any reading or can't name anyone that could be considered an influence on their training, they may not be the best trainer for you.

A couple of things to avoid.

If you didn't like this article, don't hire me.

I'm thorough, objective and results-driven. Some people enjoy that and some don't.

The power is in your hands to find the best person to get you from A to B. Hopefully this article can help you along the way.

Of course, if you did like it, I'm open to seeing if we're a good fit.

People share their health and fitness goals with me all the time. They have pretty spreadsheets, sexy workout plans and fanciful visions of turning heads at the beach and posing for underwear ads.

“Sounds good. It looks like it’s time to do the work.”

*Awkward silence*

“Well.. yeah… I’ve been reading to make sure I haven’t missed anything. I’m also meeting with some other trainers to see if I want to get professional help. And I’m tweaking my 1-year plan, it’s looking really good…”

“No, I think you misunderstood. It’s time to do the real work. The hard work you don’t want to do.”

*Another awkward silence*

They don’t get it. Or they don’t want to.

They aren’t doing the work, and they won’t succeed regardless of how busy they keep themselves with not doing it.

What’s going on here?

They’re getting whipped in the war against Resistance.

Resistance is insidious and impersonal. It can’t be seen, but it’s swirling in you right now, and it can be felt. It will tell you anything to keep you from doing the work. It will lie, argue, seduce and bully you to get its way. It will do anything to strike a deal, and then stab you in the back.

Resistance hates anything which requires you to reduce immediate gratification in search of long-term fulfilment.

It’s the voice you hear when you wake up early and it’s cold outside.

It invades your mind with social media, television and fast food.

Make no mistake, the fight against resistance is brutal. It will tell you that you’re too weak. Too stupid. Too lazy.

But you’re not.

It can only overpower you and win if you let it.

If you defiantly do the work, resistance whithers away. Every bit chisels away at it. Do enough work and eventually the armour crumbles, its power fades and all that’s left is a whispering ghost.

Creating a healthy, strong body, a business, a relationship, or anything positive in your life, you’re a warrior and you’re enemy is resistance.

Remember this when you’re reaching for the snooze button, when you’re procrastinating, and when you’re struggling through a tough workout. If you’re looking for an excuse to skip that it’s a sign not skipping is exactly what you must do.

Future You is depending on Present You.

Each day you’re presented with one of two decisions: sell yourself short and sail a little further away down the river, or do the work now and realise your potential.

Put it off today, and you’ll be more likely to procrastinate tomorrow. Get into action now and tomorrow will be easier.

Put in the work, even when it’s hard, and you’ll be rewarded with something far better than fleeting comfort: satisfaction.

The satisfaction of knowing that you’re closing the day a little closer to your aims, that you’re living up to your standards, that you have what it takes to do what it takes.

So while you may not enjoy every workout, remember you’re always going to enjoy having worked out.

He was out on the town celebrating his best mate’s birthday. He hadn’t seen his mate in ages!

He also had a fitness photo shoot next week, where he’d put down a reasonable chunk of cash to get some professional photos taken (so he wanted to be as lean as possible).

To drink or to not drink. To relax or stress. To celebrate or deprive. To stick to the diet or throw it out.

That guy was me.

And I was trying to make the better bad choice.

There are times in life where things don’t go to plan. You are forced to make a better bad choice, one where you choose the best of the bad choices on offer.

Another example would be you at a restaurant. You really want that piece of cheesecake for dessert but you ‘know’ that cheesecake isn’t in your diet.

You have 3 choices:

1. Don’t have any cheesecake. This leads to feelings of deprivation which are not healthy and generally leads to binges down the road.

2. Eat a whole piece of cheesecake. This satisfies the cravings but overloads your body with lots of fat and calories.

3. Split a piece of cheesecake with a friend. This is the best of the bad choices. It allows you to satisfy your cravings and not feel deprived but reduce the total fat and calories by at least half.

There are no absolutes for healthy eating and exercising. We are not always able to do everything as perfectly as we’d like. In fact, the quest for perfection tends to derail more exercise and dietary programs than anything else.

Life is here to be enjoyed.

We often find ourselves in the position of making better bad choices. A quick weigh up of the options sometimes shows us it’s not back and white - there’s a grey area in between where you can get a win from both world’s

As for me?

I drank at my best mate’s birthday that night. A couple low carb beers and Johnny Walker with Diet Coke :)

And I didn’t regret a thing.

Your friend has been on this weird diet lately - something about celery juice and white kidney bean extract...

They look tired as hell. Although they don’t say they are, they move less, fidget less, aren’t as eager to do anything physical, even their face shows a little less expression than normal.

This is just what happens when we diet - it’s something we can’t control.

When we diet we reduce our energy intake. The subconscious notices this and decides to stop any sort of unnecessary movement to save as much energy as possible. If you usually tap your foot while sitting your body will subconsciously stop doing that. Blasted efficient human evolution!

We literally stop moving as much.

Part of your energy expenditure comes from a thing researchers call NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis). It’s the energy burned from all the other movement during the day which isn’t specifically exercise.

NEAT can be between 15% to 50% of your daily calorie burn.

These are like secret calories burning.

This actually happens - when you start dieting and losing weight your body responds by subconsciously moving less. Let’s say you reduce your calorie intake by 20% but your NEAT drops from 40% to 20%.

That’s the whole diet wiped out right there!

It’s the big reason ‘step goals’ and smart watches which tell you to get up and move are popular at the moment. They give us a direct way to counter the uncontrollable reduction in NEAT.

Next time you decide to diet for a while, remember this. If you can account for the inevitable movement decrease you’ll have a much easier time - with a lot less stress wondering why the scale isn’t budging.

A 12-week diet would look like this:

Week 1-4: 8,000 steps/dayWeek 5-8: 10,000 steps/dayWeek 9-12: 12,000 steps/day

This progressive increase in steps will counter the progressive decrease in NEAT you’ll experience as you diet and begin to lose weight.

Your body is a pain in the ass - it’s had thousands of years of adaptation to save as much energy as possible.

Use this knowledge to gain the body you desire.

Scrolling through Instagram last night was much more stressful than it should be...

‘Experts’ are now just the people with the most followers (doing absolutely anything to get even more followers).

Every second ‘influencer’ has something to sell to their followers, taking advantage of people’s hopes and insecurities.

“Wouldn’t be here without my skinny tea! Use my discount code at the checkout for 20% off! #bootygains #livelaughlove”

No, they didn’t get that body from skinny tea.

Skinny tea isn’t even a thing. It’s just normal tea and someone wrote skinny on the packaging.

#marketing

There are so many better ways to speed up your fat loss progress - without burning a hole in your wallet.

The best fat burners are priceless.

Not meaning they’re expensive, but they’re totally free.

Consistent sleep/wake times.

Planning meal on Sunday for the upcoming week.

Batch cooking twice a week.

Staying busy at night. Hobbies are great (especially social ones and the type which get you moving). Social media scrolling isn’t a hobby.

Tracking your food (even better, you calories) as best you can. You don’t have to be perfect.

Go for a walk outside. No need to count your steps but all good if you do. Just get out there.

Reach out to an old friend. The more isolated we are, the more we focus on our own challenges. And dieting/fat loss/hunger is definitely a challenge.

Help someone. Yep, sounds cheesy, but it works. Solving someone else’s problem (or at least supporting them in whatever it is) naturally increases your own sense of resolve. You’ll feel more resourceful and steadfast in your challenges. Which is the key to sticking to a diet.

Yes, fat loss is food. But it’s not all about the food.

And it has nothing to do with skinny tea.

“I followed the recipe, and it doesn’t work!!!”

That’s how many review of online recipes begin.

Then the poster explains how he replaced the sour cream with yoghurt (the only thing in the fridge), he placed wheat flour with rice flour (because it’s gluten free, duh) and he used a toaster oven instead of a real oven…

Once you’ve started something, it’s underway - you have heart and pride invested in it.

In the face of helpful advice, it’s easy to say “sure, that’s what I’m already doing,” and then torture your description of what you’re currently doing to make it sort of, almost, sound like you’re following the suggested approach.

But you’re not.

You’re merely wasting time and effort pretending you’re doing it.

And you won’t enjoy the zero results.

Being a personal trainer, I hear things like this all the time.

“Sure, I walk 10,000 steps a day easy.” Then having to scroll back 11 days to find the last time they hit 10k steps.

“My eating is good. I eat pretty healthy.” Then hearing they booze out three times a week after work with multiple fried foods somehow finding their way into mouths.

You’re either following the recipe, or you’re not.

What if, just for a week, or even a day, you acted as if?

What if you re-did your plan or your approach in a totally new way, one that embraces the advice you’ve been given?

What if you followed the recipe by following the recipe, simply to learn the technique?

After that, after you’ve seen what it can do (and what you can achieve), you won’t need to search for any new recipes.

In the age of unlimited access to workouts, diets and professionals, the hard part about getting good advice isn’t getting it.

… It’s following it.

Only then will the wheels start turning.

More is better.

Harder, longer, faster.

No pain, no gain.

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

All of those maxims above are stuffed down our throats on a daily basis and it really sucks because it can set us up for massive failure.

More is better.

Here's what I hate about this one. Doing more is not always better. In fact, doing too much tends to cause other issues.

For instance, let's say you're exercising 4 days per week at the gym but you have a high-stress job, a family to provide for, and other obligations.

Trying to do more than 4 workouts per week can set you up for all kinds of problems that will compound into the negatives.

More training could increase your stress levels causing you to:

get less sleepsee your family lessbe unable to recover from workoutsstart to hate working out

So the 'more is better' mantra is an example where doing more will absolutely wreck your life.

That is unless you're doing nothing as-is. There’s a perfect balance in between ‘too much’ and ‘not enough’. You inherently know what that feels like.

Harder, longer, faster.

Did you know that the longer your workouts last, the more stress hormones are released?

Stress hormones like cortisol, and adrenaline can break down your muscle tissue if chronically elevated. I see it all the time - people tell me they're not getting much out of their workouts, so they go from training for 30 minutes to 90 minutes or longer.

Then they add more days of excessive exercising.

They struggle to lose fat. They can't sleep. They can't get through a day without drinking 8 cups of coffee.

The stress compounds usually until they get injured, or just throw their hands up and down a box of donuts.

No pain, no gain.

"NO PAIN NO GAIN! Gimme another 10 reps! Make those muscles bleeeeeed"

- Actual quote I overheard when I used to train at a bodybuilding gym

Sure, exercise should be challenging. Getting your muscles to grow comes from intense training sessions.

But pain?

As in feeling sharp pains in your joints as you run on the road?Pain in your shoulder as you push yourself through a heavy bench press that is 10kg too much for you?Hearing your knees click and feeling the pain in your hips as you force yourself into a too-deep squat?

All that is just stupid.

Nothing to gain from that kind of pain, other than injuries and chronic mobility issues.

I'll sleep when I'm dead.

This one is my favourite to hate.

Without adequate sleep, everything goes to hell.

Losing out on sleep can negatively impact your ability to lose fat.

It can wreck your insulin sensitivity (making it easier to gain fat).It will often make it easier to overeat (which just makes us fatter).It will impact your training, making you weaker and unable to train intensely.

If you're not prioritising a solid 7-8 hours of sleep per night, you're missing out on one of the easiest ways to improve your quality of life.

Look -- sometimes you have to cut back on what you're doing to make progress. Think smarter, long-term, overall progressive progress.

You’re gonna be here for a long time yet.

Don’t make it harder than it is.

What separates the tired, soft, unproductive executive from the healthy and highly effective executive?

Good question.

Stephen Covey's classic, '7 Habits of Highly Effective People,'

rocked the world of personal development and business. Within 7 key principles, he summed up how to skyrocket your effectiveness in yourself and with others.

As my service focuses on health, which I believe is a massive factor in one's effectiveness, I thought it would be useful to view each of the habits through that perspective.

You want to be effective, of course, but you also want to be healthy enough to enjoy the fruits of that effectiveness. As many of the world's most successful people say, your health is your wealth. Healthiness and effectiveness go hand in hand.

1. Be proactive

The first habit of healthy and highly effective executives is proactivity. Proactive people are driven by values independent of the environment or what other people think of them. Essentially, they choose solutions over blame and complaint. Being healthy doesn't come naturally to any busy executive, so initiative to control this aspect is important.

Taking responsibility for your current situation and acknowledging all which happens from now is up to you. As cliche would have it,

"Change starts from within."

Once we decide to become proactive, exactly where we focus our efforts becomes important. There are many concerns in life, but we don't always have control over them. Proactive people focus on the things within their circle of influence.

Healthy and highly effective executives make the decision to improve their health, and their lives, through the things they can influence rather than simply reacting to external forces.

2. Begin with the end in mind

Goals, we all have them and we all put them at the back of our mind until one day we realise things aren't going as we had once planned. Healthy and effective executives have purposeful goals and work backwards from them, ensuring the end is always the objective.

An effective goal-setting process starts with a broad scope of life and all its possibilities. Then, strategically working through timelines and objectives, goals which are in line with personal values and principles can be established.

(Being coached through the right goal-setting process can be an absolute game-changer. If you want to go through something unique, let me know and I'll connect you with the right person.)

What separates healthy and effective executives from those who aren't is a continuous reflection of whether your actions are in line with your long-term goals and personal principles. Alignment ensures effectiveness in purpose, whereas misalignment can send one down a spiral feeling lost, 'missing something' or unfulfilled.

3. Put first things first

realise they have no room. Sand is all the little things which don't matter; big rocks are the actions which move the needle forward.

If you were to simply react to life as it happens to you, you'd spend your days at the whim of other people, helping them with their big rocks and never making progress of your own. Healthy and effective executives have the capability to identify what really matters and channel time and energy into these things before any others.

In health, this means identifying the key movers in exercise, nutrition and recovery, then making time and putting prioritisation into doing them.

This is why many exercise in the morning. Health is one of the biggest of big rocks, affecting things such as productivity, mood, energy, lifespan, relationships and confidence. Getting it done first it ensures the important task which feeds into every other aspect of life actually gets done.

4. Think win/win

A great way to enter engagements is to think win/win, how can you come from a place of abundance where everyone is able to succeed?

Importantly, healthy and effective executives are able to use this principle in regards to efficiency, opting to take the perspective of how to make the most of situations.

- What if I...?

- How could I make it work...?

- What would it look like if...?

Most of the time, there is a simple solution (for example, struggling to move during the day? Turn an appointment into a walking meeting). There is always a way to win. If there isn't, maybe the wrong objective has been targeted and it's best to step back and reassess.

5. Seek to understand

Covey's original 5th habit related to communication and effective listening in relationships with others. To the healthy executive, seeking to understand is more about understanding yourself, being able to listen to cues and feedback and effectively make decisions based on that.

Self-awareness is a key meta-skill, encompassing emotional, cognitive and spiritual aspects. The more one understands themselves, the more they understand the world around them and have the ability to create an impact. One must put effort into emotional intelligence, improving decision making, especially in stressful situations (where binge-eating can sit).

A healthy and highly effective executive can delay short-term gratification to succeed in the long-term.

I'd also note in this principle, a healthy and effective executive has a basic understanding of nutrition (calories, protein, carbs and fat). Food is the fuel we live off and has profound effects on the body. It deserves some attention.

6. Synergise

To synergise is to seek ways to leverage individual parts to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. A healthy and highly effective executive can trust, understand and communicate with others to gain a greater outcome than they could on their own.

In the realms of health, this means getting help. Whether it be physically, through a personal trainer or nutritionist, or mentally, such as a performance psychologist, a healthy and highly effective executive builds a network around them to reach a higher level than they could on their own.

Any relationship in these areas is multiplied by one's willingness to trust and communicate. It's a two-way street.

7. Sharpen the axe

The last habit of healthy and highly effective executives is continuous self-improvement. They take time off 'producing' to work on their 'production capacity'.

Improving one's production capacity comes in the form of personal renewal of the physical, social, mental, emotional and spiritual dimensions. To remain healthy and effective you must have balance between these. Each dimension is as important as the next, but my focus is on the physical. If you don't have your health you really have nothing.

'Sharpening the axe' comes from the story of the young man who came across of woodcutter struggling to chop down a tree.

Curious, the young man asked, "what are you doing?"

"Can't you see I'm cutting down this tree?"

"Why don't you take a break and sharpen your axe?"

"I have no time to stop." The woodcutter explained he'd been at this for hours and had lots more to do.

The young man pushed back, "If you sharpen your axe you'll be able to cut down the tree faster."

"I'm way too busy to stop!"

This is where I place a lot of my coaching. New clients come to me out of balance, with a heavy focus on work (producing) for the last 15+ years. The way we reframe their perspective on health, especially the physical strength, endurance and nutritional components while touching on the mental dimension always leads to improved output and a sharper axe.

So, how can we help you sharpen your axe?

Executive Performance is the leader in physical transformations for executive men in Sydney. With a thorough approach to health which includes nutrition, exercise and mentality, results are far beyond what you'd expect from your local gym.

Ready to increase your health and effectiveness in one quick click?

Get in touch to schedule an appointment.

There’s a distinct gap between current performance and potential performance.

Performance doesn’t just refer to hitting work targets. It involves the whole spectrum of relationships, achievement, how one acts, looks and feels. It's measuring oneself against standard norms over the long term in all parts of life, with most of us wanting to exceed these norms.

Talking to a fellow coach, he explained the gap can be caused by a number of things; communication skills, emotional intelligence, productivity, influence, goals and direction, values and clarity or even courage. To name just a few...

But for many (and the way I see it) that gap is health.

From this, an awkward paradox emerges.

“Neglecting your health to focus on business is the primary thing holding back your business.”

Health is the greatest ROI aspect to spend time and effort in. As it's most often the gap for executives and senior leaders, people who've had to put it on the back-burner for a while, it's the easiest to get back under control.

The two sides of the coin, physical activity and nutrition, both play roles of equal importance and lead to a third, even more important, factor of beliefs, behaviours and identity. I guess we can call this the edge of the coin, you can't have the edge without the two sides.

Nutrition is a choice. What and how you eat is dependant on you.

Closing the gap, you have more energy, better control of emotions, your skin glows, there's less the grab around the midsection and you develop the willpower muscle.

Physical activity is also a choice. One of prioritisation and time management.

Closing the gap, you stand taller, breath easier, sleep better, move more comfortable and hold yourself more confidently.

The benefits of improved health FAR outweigh the time and effort put in. Changes now will still have an impact, exponentially so, 5, 10 and 30 years down the line.

If you’ve read this far, consider how your health is impacting you and what it could mean to improve it.

How will it change things?

I’m talking about more than the aesthetics of 6-pack abs.

How will you feel? Will your mood be different? Will you think more clearly or go through the day with more energy? How will that affect your work and the people around you?

I could go on and on about the multi-faceted impacts of improved health, but we all inherently know them.

The most common New Year’s resolution is about health… for a good reason. Deep down we know of the gaping hole in our performance and want to make a change. But don’t. There lies the difference between desire and action.

A large gap to fill.

A simple choice to fill it.

Still reading? It might be a good time to reflect and consider the next steps.

How's this for mind-boggling...

122 women were split into two groups.

One group could eat anything they wanted within a low-calorie diet.

The other group could also eat anything they wanted within the same amount of calories... except bread. They could eat ANYTHING they wanted but they weren't allowed any bread whatsoever.

(best thing since sliced bread...)

Over the 16-weeks, both groups had pretty similar results.

BUT here’s the interesting bit. Of the no-bread group, 21% of people dropped out of the study. They just couldn’t handle not being allowed to eat bread (vs just 6% of the bread group).

They could eat anything they wanted, but because of the one restriction of bread, they were more than 3x more likely to give up.

That’s just how humans work.

We are weird creatures!

I attended Martin MacDonald’s Nutrition World Tour a couple weekends ago and o

There were plenty of other studies like the bread study, each showing how restriction causes us to go through psychological hell.

If I tell you not to think of a pink elephant.

I mean it, DO NOT think of a pink elephant!

Now, what are you thinking about?

If we are told we can’t have something, we want it.

So, now for something completely different.

You have unconditional permission to eat anything.

It’s your choice, but you are in charge of your results.

The things you do while you are dieting are all within your control. Nothing is ‘not allowed’. There are no ‘bad foods’. You choose what to eat and are responsible for your choices.

“I’m making a choice not to have that for a period of time.”

A simple restriction by your own choice for a short period of time. Most of us can handle that, as long as it doesn’t send you crazy like the bread people.

“I’m choosing to diet aggressively but I know I can have a maintenance day anytime and no foods are off limits.”

It’s your choice to lower your calories and lose some fat. On any day, you are allowed to eat more and eat the foods you enjoy. You’re in charge of the diet and the results.

“I’m choosing to restrict the variety of foods I eat.”

Higher food variety stimulates appetite and delays the feeling of ‘fullness’ so it’s a good idea to keep it simple in a dieting period.

For most of us, losing weight is easy. Keeping it off is the hard part.

Losing weight is as simple as reducing your calorie intake for a while. Keeping it off requires a lifestyle change because if you're still the same person on the inside who weighed 20kgs heavier, you'll likely be back there within a few months.

I didn't realise how important this concept was when I was younger.

At a fresh 20 years old, I tried out the keto diet.

It’s a diet where you eat lots of fat, some protein and ZERO carbs (you’re seriously not even allowed to look at carbs).

I was encouraged to cover meals in oil and fatty sauces, I had to pick the fattiest meats I could find (such as bacon and sausages - chicken was too lean) and I wasn’t allowed to eat many vegetables or any fruit at all.

It totally messed with my head.

Yeah, I lost weight. But it had nothing to do with the magic of the keto diet. It was the fact I wasn’t allowed to eat 90% of foods so ended up not eating much at all.

I was in a calorie deficit and lost weight.

And as soon as I finished my 3-month stint I put the weight all back on.

As the restriction lifted the floodgates opened and I drowned myself in carbs in a way I’m not proud of.

(I once ate a loaf of bread in one sitting...)

Which brings me to another nugget from the seminar I’d like to share with you:

There are no unhealthy foods, there aren’t even unhealthy meals, there are only unhealthy diets.

Dieting is supposed to be a temporary thing in an attempt to lose some body fat. There are healthy ways to go about it and not so healthy ones (my 20-year-old self found this out).

The diet is a means to an end… but what is the end?

The ‘end’ is the big picture of living your life. It’s what happens after the temporary diet. It’s how you transition from diet-mode to everyday-life-mode.

Some diets simply don’t allow you to do this.

They leave you so psychologically bruised and battered you have little chance to maintain your results.

Diet’s don't need to be sustainable, and they shouldn’t be. They only need to ‘work’ while you want to lose weight. No one should be dieting forever.

There just needs to be enough flexibility that you don’t send yourself to the loony bin and have no hope in transitioning to back to real life once it’s done.

This brings us back to the first lesson: you have unconditional permission to eat anything - it’s your choice, but you’re in charge of the results.

No one meal can ‘make’ you unhealthy.

No single food will ‘ruin’ your results.

As long as most of the stuff you eat is pretty healthy and you’re aware of being in a calorie deficit, you really can eat whatever you want.

Food doesn’t control you.

Let this moment be the one where you claim this thought as your own.

Here's the bombshell I sent out in the Executive Performance email newsletter yesterday.

(message me if you'd like to join and receive these weekly)

On Saturday I went to the Sydney Fitness Expo and it reminded me why I don’t go to those things often.

The fitness industry is beyond frustrating.

Sure, there was some cool new technology and pieces of equipment which may improve your results.

But 90% of the stuff going on there sums up what ‘health and fitness’ has become:

Supplements… so many supplements… All promising crazy results with little or no research behind them. It’s all a big marketing game with most people looking to make big unfounded promises (straight-up lies) to get your money.


Drug use (steroids) is higher than ever and cosmetic surgery is off the charts. There’s so much focus on how you look rather than how physically and mentally healthy you actually are.


The whole environment made me uncomfortable… and this is my industry. I can’t imagine how the average person would feel walking around there. With obesity rates climbing, the people who really need help are repelled by the industry meant to help them. 


It goes against everything I believe in.

Here’s a nice truth to kick off your Monday which many at that expo wouldn’t have told you.

“Some people say nutrition is 50% of fat-loss and the other 50% is training. It’s not. Nutrition is 100%.”

Without a sound nutrition plan with a calorie deficit, there is simply no fat-loss - no matter how many times you go to the gym a week.

It doesn’t matter if you’re taking white kidney bean extract (it’s a hot thing at the moment) and doing ten F45 classes, if the nutrition isn’t solid you’ll get nowhere.

Sure, there are some things you can do to make training more targeted toward fat-loss, but when that’s the goal your focus should be on nutrition, not training.

The best way to think about it?

Eat for fat-loss, train for muscle gain.

Do this and you’ll never have a body composition worry again. You’ll lose fat AND gain muscle at the same time.

This is how I train, every fitness model you see trains and how I train my clients.

As I like to give you guys some takeaways every email, here are 2 example workouts I’ve used with my clients this month which is just a snapshot of their whole program. Feel free to give them a try yourself.

Workout 1: German Body Composition

A1) Barbell back squat 3x10-12 reps @ 3010 tempo, rest 60s A2) Banded chinups 3x10-12 reps @ 2110 tempo, rest 60s

B1) Dumbbell bench press 3x10-12 reps @ 2110 tempo, rest 60s B2) Lying hamstring curl 3x10-12 reps @ 3010 tempo, rest 60s

C1) Banded deadbugs 3x6-8/leg rest 10s C2) Side plank 3x25s/side rest 60s

Workout 2: Heavy-Light Method

A1) Back foot elevated split squat 4x8 reps @ 3110 tempo, rest 10s A2) Leg press 4x12 reps @ 2010 tempo, rest 120s

B1) Dumbbell seated overhead press 4x8 reps @ 3110 tempo, rest 10sB2) Dumbbell side lateral raises 4x12 reps @2010 tempo, rest 120s

C1) Dumbbell prone row 4x8 reps @ 2111 tempo, rest 10s C2) Cable rope pull to neck 4x12 reps @2010 tempo, rest 120s

These will do a whole lot more for you than jumping around like the energiser bunny.

I’ve got more nutrition-based content from last weekends seminar I’d like to share with you coming up, I just had to interrupt to get this out to you.

There are some dodgy people in this industry.

Be careful who you listen to.

I’ll be here trying to give you the honest truth as best I can.

Have a great week,

- Mike Gostelow

P.S. Any questions about the workouts/exercises feel free to ask and I’ll help you get started.

Two similar guys work in an office together. They have the same body shape, eat the same things and both live pretty sedentary lives.

Until one guy decides to try something new.

His family got a new doggo and he walks it about 1.5km every morning. Finding he enjoys the walks, he gets another 1.5km in every day during lunch.

Using this to spur his health-kick on, he stops eating his mid-morning doughnut.

The other guy doesn’t.

He doesn’t have a dog, doesn’t walk and doesn’t stop his snacking.

In a months time, they are about 21 doughnuts and 21 days of walking apart.

In a years time, they are 261 doughnuts and 783km apart.

Doughnut guy has eaten 65,250 calories while dog-man has burnt 71,755 calories.

A difference of 137,025 calories.

They started the same, but how different must they look now?

(Science has shown it takes burning 3500 calories to burn a pound of fat. So for anyone wondering how different they would look; about 15kg of fat different.)

In the short-term, little things look to not matter much.

In the long-term, these things add up to significant amounts.

Imagine if you made some small changes:

You swapped your doughnut for an apple.You decided to do no alcohol on weekdays and put an end to the 10+ drinks.You started a 15-min bodyweight workout two mornings a week

How would that bank up over a few months, over a year or over the next 10 years?

You don’t have to go crazy and flip your lifestyle, just find a few small, healthy changes you can make, which hardly impact your life at all, and do them consistently.

Hope this article got you thinking.

I know when I was writing it I thought about all the little decisions I make daily and how they add up over time.

I’m already going to make a few changes.

Tired, baggy eyes. Slightly pale skin. An unhealthy roundness to their physique. I see it with every client or executive group I come across.

Putting it short, the demands of the executive lifestyle are strenuous.

On average, the life of an executive means:

As a result of all this, executives are at greater risk for:

Sleep deprivationHeart diseaseDepression. 40% or more of CEOs may suffer depression, double the rate of the general public.StrokeDiabetesAnd much more

Scary stuff.

Life-ending stuff, if not managed.

If any of this sounds like you or someone you know, it may be time for a change.

The majority of executives I’ve met are data driven and many of these stats are a wake up call. Once they are shown how some simple changes could alter their situation, they take action.

Two steps moving forwards:

Make sure you get a regular, thorough health check. Heart, lungs, bloods, brain, the works. With the stress you put on your system it’s imperative to catch something early (ideally before it can manifest).Take your nutrition and exercise seriously. It’s not optional when your life depends on it.

Look after yourself.

Last Friday night I ran my first charity event. For 13 long hours, a mate and I pushed a 100kg sled from 7pm to 8am the next morning.

We sweat, we swore and we raised over $10,500 for Gotcha4Life.

Photo credit: Matt Bates

There are a few reasons Aidan and I decided to run this event. Both of us have family and friends who have mental illnesses and we have experienced first hand the devastating effects it can have. We've gone down the rabbit hole of men's health, attending Tomorrow Man events and completing a Mental First Aid Certification. As we kept digging into the suicide and depression rates we were shocked to find out how prevalent it is and even more shocked at how no one talks about it.

We needed to do something.

We expected it to be hard and we hoped it would cause a little ripple.

What we didn't expect is how large the event grew. Each passing week it expanded into new networks, making the front page of the Manly Daily newspaper and generating more awareness than we ever could have dreamed.

The event taught me a lot about myself, physically and mentally pushing close to breaking point and coming out the other side a stronger man.

Now it's done, I can reflect back at what made it possible.

1. You are capable of much more than you believe

Originally, we set the bar of a 12-hour sled push. That's a bloody tough effort and we trained hard for it, believing 12 hours would be our absolute limit.

Until the week before...

During our last training session, I posed the question to Aidan, "Why is 12 our limit?"

He looked back at me, "It's not."

So we pushed for 13 hours instead.

What our limits are today don’t have to be what our limits are tomorrow if we decide to change them.

A year ago I never thought I could accomplish this. I would have laughed if someone asked me to do it. Not a chance. Then I did it.

You are capable of so much more than you believe.

2. Pain and discomfort are actually positive things

I learned more about myself during the process of this event than all of my years combined.

By putting myself through immense physical, mental and emotional discomfort I adopted a new perspective on life. Things that were hard before aren't so hard now by comparison. The short-term pain has led to a positive return 100x more than what I put in.

With pain comes calluses. You learn from experiences and adapt to become a stronger you. From now on I'll be searching for these discomforts, leaning into them and continuing down this path.

3. Don't try and go

it alone

If you’d asked me to push a sled for even 2 hours this time last year I would have laughed. As for 13 hours? Forget about it!

Even though I proved I’m capable to push it this long, I know that if I was trying to do it alone something would have given out - likely mentally over physically.

My brain was more like a roast potato than an actual human brain in the last few hours. The only thing that kept me going were the people supporting me. There were even three magnificent people who stayed the whole night in the gym and watched us push the sled.

Us humans are social creatures and thrive off social support. I won't be trying to complete anything challenging without a backup squad in my corner motivating me, keeping me accountable and providing a shoulder to lean on.

4. It starts and ends with

your self-talk

"This is easy."

Three words which got me through the gruelling hours.

Every time I heard myself saying something negative like 'this is hard', 'I'm tired' or 'my feet hurt' I quickly reversed it. It's not that hard. People have gone through wars. People run ultra-marathons. People go through mental anguish every single day. This isn't hard. I can keep going.

I kept saying these things, reminding myself of why I'm pushing. It's bigger than me. It doesn't matter if it's hard. I'm trying to impact lives here. I can keep going.

If you say it's hard, then of course, it's going to be hard. Words have power, so use them wisely.

The things you tell yourself tend to be what you believe and what plays out in your actions. If you're going through a challenge, positive self-talk should be in your repertoire.

5. Chunk it down into

bite-sized pieces

One. Lap. At. A. Time.

That's all I needed to do. Push the sled from this end to that end. It doesn't matter how long I've already been pushing or how far I still have to go. The only important thing is what's happening right here, right now.

The same goes for anything difficult in life. Progress comes from consistency, one hour at a time, one day at a time, one week at a time. You move forward taking small steps which over time lead to major leaps.

The speed of movement doesn't matter, as long as tonight you go to sleep further along the path than where you were when you woke up.

Bonus learning: Coming from a

place of service

This event had special meaning to me. As a man of relative wellness, I find it's my responsibility to help those who aren't well. And if I ever find myself unwell I know they'll return the favour.

Pushing this sled for others, instead of just for myself, made the 13 hours fly by.

I know for a fact I'll continue doing charity work. It's rewarding and immediately satisfying to see the impact you're able to make.

Keep your eyes peeled for what's next...

Today, rather than me spouting advice, I thought I’d hand the reigns over to one of my clients. Here are 5 tips, word for word, on how to transform your physique (with me expanding on each).

Over the last few months, this guy has made significant progress.

He's lost 9kgs, hit his first ever chin-up, lowered his cholesterol from dangerous to healthy and has now set his sights on Tough Mudder.

Mentally he has shifted completely, from disbeliever to achiever.

This has all happened with him working at the executive level and being the busiest man I know!

So, take these tips from his mouth, who you may share a lot in common with.

1. “Don’t let your self-confidence be your barrier”

Before working with me, he hadn’t stepped into the gym in over 20 years. As my business is in a gym, I can’t directly relate to his experience but I can definitely understand it. Loud noises, big brutes eying you off and an amount of uncertainty about what to do is intimidating and a massive barrier for a lot of people.

Your start point is different than anybody else's, your journey is your own and the hardest part is starting. Once the wheels get rolling you'll be hard to stop.

If you invest in a coach, great, it will take much of this barrier away. If not, start with what you’re comfortable and grow from there.

2. “Make sure the focus is about yourself and not others”

When no one is watching, who is holding you accountable? The intention of transforming and changing for yourself, to improve yourself, is powerful. No one else can tell you to change and certainly not force you.

Do it for you.

3. “Be honest in what you want to achieve”

Evolving from the last tip, know why you’re doing it. On a personal level consider all the ways improved health and a remarkable physique will impact your life. Chasing a 6-pack for the sake of having one is an uphill battle. What do you want and why do you want it?

When you set a goal make sure it’s realistic. Then, ensure the plan to reach that goal is just as realistic. You should be able to think about it and honestly say, ‘this is achievable and I know I can do it’.

4. “Don’t be distracted by shiny objects”

There are plenty of things out there, let’s call them shiny objects, competing for your attention. They promise ridiculous results, crazy new diets all the celebrities are using and throw unrealistic standards at you. Don't let them fool you.

Set the goal, make the plan and stick to the plan with your full focus.

5. “Accept that every week isn’t going to be successful”

Life likes to peg curveballs at you, that’s fact. As much as you’d like, there are certain things you can’t control and sometimes things don’t go your way. Any person who has achieved success knows it wasn’t linear, the ups and downs are part of the journey.

We learn more from our failures than our successes. This makes us stronger, more adaptable and, if we keep going, more likely to win the long game.

When I asked him for the advice he’d tell others I thought he'd provide training and nutrition tips. As you can see above, that wasn’t the case.

I’d like to highlight that point. The tips he gave were all mental, all about self-belief, consistency, focus and perspective.

Nutrition and exercise is the easy part, the mental is what separates the achievers from the rest.

It's a 'when' question.

In this single instance, a half-hearted decision won't do. You're either in or you're out.

The decision must be made at some point, some choose to do it early in their life and others later. Many have an experience which makes the decision for them and a poor, unfortunate few never realise the question, deteriorating over the years.

The question?

When will you make your health the priority?

The word priority comes from the word prior, which means to come before something else. You can only have one priority, the thing which is your irrefutable, point of first contact standard, and there is a point where health must become it.

There's no fighting the evidence that your health declines as you age.

Below shows a graph taken from research done by the World Health Organisation and shows the deterioration (orange line) vs the prioritisation of health (blue line).

There's a massive difference which only grows as you get older.

At what point do you throw down the gauntlet and make the decision?

Wait to find out you have Type 2 diabetes?Realise you are out of breath giving a simple presentation?Wait until your first stroke?Realise you can't tie your shoes on your own any more?

There are two paths on the above graph. Both are options of the future.

(I'd even say with proper training and guided nutrition the blue line can continue to increase up into your 50s)

It all comes down to one decision.

You'll have to make it eventually and it's going to be a lot easier if you do it now.

The Perfectionist.

- He cooks the whole weeks meals in advance.

- He measures out every single ingredient to the exact gram of protein.

- He goes home early from a party to eat his planned dinner.

And when he (inevitably) screws up, he binges on ice cream, chocolate and Crust pizza.

He used to be me.

To my own detriment, I used to chase perfection. I had lofty physique, career and performance goals and wanted to do everything in my power to ensure I reach them.

This mindset of perfection didn’t end well and I found myself going through a continuous cycle of huge highs followed by depressing lows.

Then something changed.

I came across a new method.

I've forgotten the original genius who came up with it, but I was never the same.

The Blast & Cruise Method

There’s no doubt about it, being perfect in your exercise and nutrition regime will get you the fastest results. The problem is you can’t be perfect for long. Eventually, something’s gotta give. I know for myself I can be on a strict diet for about 4-6 weeks until I get over it, and I use this knowledge to my advantage.

I will be extremely good for those 4-6 weeks, see results, then take 1-2 weeks off.

Blast: 4-6 weeks

Cruise: 1-2 weeks

My clients use this same method.

We nail the diet and exercise for up to 6 weeks then take a 1-2 week breather. This breather allows your metabolism to stabilise (your new physique settles as the ‘norm’) and you physically and mentally recover, ready to hit it hard again.

Progress ends up looking like this (sit back and admire my artistic skills).

The key is when you're cruising, you aren’t binging, losing progress or being a slob. You’re just loosening the reigns a little to allow you to recover.

Everyone is different and responds better to different approaches.

You might like a 1-month blast alternated with a 1-month cruise.

Or even 2-week blasts with 4-week cruises.

The important part is continuous progress. In a year’s time, if you follow this method, you’ll find yourself looking much leaner. You’ll also be feeling a lot better as you get those mental breaks throughout the year.

You shouldn't chase perfection.

Let’s say you aim to be perfect this year. You are 100% on point for a while, it’s unsustainable and you know it, yet you keep pushing yourself. Eventually, you break down and go through a phase of 20% perfect. What's the point? Soon, you regain some motivation and decide to go after it again, chasing perfection.

This is the classic yo-yo approach.

But what would happen if you planned for this?

You knew your limits of perfection and could focus your efforts for a while then slow down before your burnt out. The blast and cruise method works with the ebb and flow of motivation and drive rather than forcefully pushing yourself to exhaustion.

Perfect leads to stress, frazzlement (new word?) and a cycle of failure and self-depreciation as you simply cannot be perfect all the time.

Blast and cruise leads to calm, focus and consistent progress.

Nobody is perfect all the time.

Blast and cruise.

A structured way to sort your nutrition for a long time without ever feeling burnt out, stressed, or rebounding back to where you started.

Feeling like it's time for a blast? Check out the coaching page and let's get started.

The secret of your success is hidden in your daily routine.

The actions you complete day to day form your life. To ensure you're doing the right actions every single day requires the right structures to be in place, guiding your path.

To do this we must build a house.

First, let's get things straight. I'm no carpenter and I wouldn't trust myself to build a birdhouse.

Building an actual human house...? Forgetaboutit!

I'm a personal trainer with an unusually keen interest in helping people build discipline and structure in their lives. I may see a client for just three hours a week, so what happens in those other 165 hours of the week is crucial.

Yet, even with the carpentry skills of an overgrown hamster, I HAVE build my own house - I've built out the way I live. The design, foundations, walls and furniture have all been meticulously placed in a way I can live my life to it's fullest.

I've created this system through endless trial and error, learning from the best in the world.

Now it's time for me to share how you can do this too.

In my experience, there are 3 steps to building a house (and structuring your days).

1. Choose the location and design the house.

2. Lay the foundation and build the framework.

3. Put up walls, add in furniture and make the whole thing pretty.

So grab your trusty hammer, bring a few nails and let's get building.

Choosing the location for your house

The right location for your house is priority number one. If you want to live by the beach but build a house in the country... well, you kinda screwed up.

Similarly, you must have a goal.

As a man with gigantic hands once said,

"You can't have a plan for your day, 'til you have a plan for your life."

- Tony Robbins

He's completely right. How can you successfully plan your day if you have no idea what the desired outcome is? You did everything on your to-do list, but did it get your closer to your goal?

To focus your direction there are two parts you'll need to run through; a 5-year vision and the 1-year goals which will pave the way to that 5-year vision becoming reality.

(check out this article for an audacious goal-setting breakdown)

The 5-Year Vision

For your vision I want you to imagine how you'd like your life to look in 5-years time. Imagine it in such detail it feels completely real. Write down all the different things going on (I find jotting down bullets on a pen and paper the easiest way to let your mind wander).

Cover the areas of family, career, health, finances, personal growth, romance, fun, physical environment and any contributions you've made to the world.

That should get your visionary juices flowing.

Your 5-year vision gives you a North Star to aim for. It's guaranteed to change along the way, and that's fine. We really have no idea where we'll be in 5 years time, but if you have an idea in your head of where you'd like to be there's a much higher chance you'll get there.

The 1-Year Goals

Once your 5-year vision is set you can break it down into yearly chunks. What are the things which will need to happen in the next one year to be on track for your vision? It's best to organise this into four aspects:

Health

Wealth

Personal Development

Social

As an example, let me share with you some of my 2019 goals in each of these areas.

Health - Finish my 12-hour sled push charity event, complete the Spartan Beast, walk the Oxfam 50km and compete in two biathlons.

Wealth - Invest $10k, save $25k and grow Executive Performance past six figures.

Personal Development - Attend 2 conferences, read 25+ books, complete 1-2 NLP courses.

Social - Travel to 2 new countries, become an ambassador for a mental health charity and forge deeper relationships with core people in my life.

Each of these is distinct, achievable and is directly in line with my vision. I know if I'm able to achieve these I'll be one step closer to where I want to be.

Give it some thought yourself and see what you come up with.

I'll wait...

Okay, now you know where to build your house we can start to look at the overall design, slowly working in the details to the perfect structure.

You know where your house is going.

Time to design it.

You have your direction, your vision and your goals - perfect. Now you're able to break it down into what's going to need to happen on a smaller scale to make it happen.

In other words, what is your house going to look like?

There are a few special designer tricks we'll use to determine this.

Mastering the Necessary Skills & Systems

For your 1-year goals, there are certain skills you'll need to master and acts you'll need to repeatedly perform to achieve them.

Skills are the things you'll need to learn, and eventually master. Systems are the repeated actions, habits and processes which must happen consistently.

To determine the skills you'll need, ask yourself this question:

"What skills and expertise will I need to master to improve the odds of achieving my 1-year goals?"

For example, a few things on my own 2019 list include:

Public speakingCopywritingNetworkingMoney managementNeuro-linguistic programming

I know I'll need to put direct effort into improving these skills to increase the likelihood of reaching my goal.

Systems are the actions needed to make the goal happen. Any sort of goal can be broken down into a few key actions which will need to happen (or happen consistently) to reach it.

For example, if the skill is public speaking I'll need to practice solo, practice in front of friends, practice in front of strangers and learn how to use gestures and tone to make it engaging.

Another example is breaking my goal of travelling to 2 new countries. There are certain things I'll need to do such as:

Decide where I want to go and when I'll go.Work out how much it will cost.Budget accordingly.Start putting money into the travel account.Book flights and accommodation.

As you can see, it's a system.

Breaking goals down into skills and systems allows you to take those first few steps.

A Year of Quarters

The best thing to do next is to turn the whole year into quarters. Twelve months is a long time away and some of your goals may seem unreachable, by breaking it into four 3-month blocks you're able to direct focus, set smaller goals within reach and reassess your progress often.

"You can do anything, but not everything."

- David Allen

Think Q1, Q2, Q3 and Q4, with each quarter building on the last.

Now you have complete clarity on what you truly want.

You've set goals and have broken them down into their parts and processes. It seems achievable. Next up is to direct your focus on your week.

Laying the foundation

Any home starts with a foundation, the base upon which everything is built. Only when you've determined your long-term goals and determined what needs to be done can we begin to look at your week.

There are three parts to mastering your week:

PrioritisingPlanningPreparing

Laying the foundation is all about prioritisation.

A quick question - How much time do you spend doing things which will move you forwards?

I'm talking dedicated, proactive work towards your goals. It's so often we get caught in a reactive mode, doing the work to help others reach their goals and never having energy or time to move the needle forward for ourselves.

Think back to your 1-year goals which you broke down into skills and systems. Look back at your last week and ask yourself if you intentionally did anything to develop these skills, actualise your systems and make progress.

Or did you tread water?

There's a difference between doing work, and doing work which will move you forwards. Building the foundation relies on knowing the difference.

At the start of your week, you must set five specific tasks to be done which will, without a question, move you closer to your goal.

For example, if the goal is to get shredded (although it should be more specific than that) you may have the tasks of:

Hit the gym four times following the program set by your coachLog every meal in MyFitnessPal, hitting your macrosSleep 7.5 hours on average every nightDrink 3L of water a dayResearch gyms in the area for next weeks business trip to Melbourne.

Everything else is secondary to your priority tasks. They form the foundation of your week and ensure you make progress towards getting shredded, becoming a millionaire or whatever else your heart desires.

Building the framework

Great, you now have priorities you know for a fact will lead to your progress. Now to make sure you do them.

Like putting up the wooden frame of a house, planning and preparation build the backbone of structure.

Step 1: Planning

Get out a blank weekly calendar and place it on the table. The first thing you do is place your five specific tasks on there, before work or social commitments. These are the things which will move you forwards and MUST come first.

Only after you've done that can you put anything else on such as work, family time, date nights and down time.

If you don't do this your tasks won't get done.

Imagine the goal of reading a book a week (like I managed in 2018). You can't hope to read in any spare time that pops up and expect to do it. You must put specified reading time in your diary, else you'll fail.

Step 2: Preparation

If planning is the chef cooking up a 5-star plate of food, preparation is putting it on a plate and making it look as good as it smells.

Preparation involves taking the precursor steps needed to take action on your plan, setting yourself up for success. Execution of the plan is where you make progress.

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week."

- George Patton

What are the things you can do to be more likely to stick to the plan?

Here are a bunch of examples from a heap of different goals:

Planning to run before work three times this week?

- Know what you're wearing for each run.

- Put out a glass of water, your headphones and shoes the night before.

- Map out your runs and determine the pace you'd like to hold.

Planning on cold-calling leads this week?

- Have a list ready to go.

- Know your sales script off by heart.

- Have a pre-game ritual (it works).

Planning to eat 90% perfect this week?

- Go for a big shop on Sunday and plan the week's meals.

- Before each meal, drink a glass of water.

- Pre-cook protein and vegetables.

Planning to write an article on 'structure' this week?

- Use the pomodoro technique.

- Download the 'Self-Control' app and use it during writing blocks.

- Write first, before any admin, emails, messages or 'busy' work.

There are a billion variations of this for all the possible goals, systems, priorities and plans. Determine what you need to do and prepare like your life depends on it (because it does).

The house is coming together now, take a step back to admire it in all its glory.

It's beautiful.

Yet not nearly finished.

The basic structure is set up and it's time to fill in the details.

The first thing you do is put up walls

We've worked hard today to determine the activities which make up an awesome day. Putting up walls is symbolic of putting boundaries in places to ensure you do these things.

Wall 1 - Your physical environment

In his book, Atomic Habits, James Clear refers to anti-habits: how to make it hard to do habits, actions or behaviours which sabotage your day.

For the things you DON'T want to do, you must:

Make it invisibleMake it unattractiveMake it difficultMake it unsatisfying

The rule is to reduce your exposure to any cues which tempt you to go off track. Remove any of these from the environment.

For example, back to the goal of getting shredded. Here are some things you can do:

Don't have trigger foods in the housePut fresh fruit and healthy snacks in eye-view when you walk in the kitchenPlace your alarm on the other side of the room so you have to get up and don't miss your morning gym sessionTell the people you live with what your goal is. Remove alcohol from the fridge.Be careful who you follow on social media

We can set up the perfect plan and be motivated to do it but in the moment come up with hundreds of excuses.

Removing the triggers of these excuses is the basis of structure and discipline.

Life is already hard, why make it any harder by testing your willpower?

Wall 2 - Pure, relentless focus

The next boundary to keep you structured comes from the mirror. More precisely, the person looking back at you in the mirror.

Yeah, you.

Be relentless in protecting your structure.

In today's age, you're constantly bombarded by distractions, time-suckers and energy-vampires. People who want to take your time and attention and waste it on non-issues.

You have the structure of an awesome day, week and life here. You MUST say no to anyone and anything who tries to tear it down.

Respect yourself and your time, only then will other people follow suit. It will be hard in the beginning but once people realise you're no pushover they will change their expectations of you, giving you the freedom to focus on what's important.

Wall 3 - Place accountability in people you don't want to disappoint

Accountability forms the third wall to keep your house propped up. Not just any accountability though... accountability to someone you deeply don't want to disappoint.

This can be friends, family, employer, co-workers - anyone you have a strong relationship with, who will support you when things get tough and also push you when you're not 'feeling it'.

Ideally, you'll find and invest in a coach. A great coach can walk the fine line between friend and authority figure. They want you to succeed.

Accountability builds your social environment and mental awareness, further strengthening your structure.

Wall 4 - Control the beginning and the end

You need four walls to make a room, and what an important wall this is.

Your morning and night routine are the bookends of your day, how you start and how you finish. If these two things are optimised it can lead to consistently great days, no matter what happens in the middle.

A few examples of great additions to your morning routine:

ExerciseMorning gratitudesWriting down your 3 most important tasks of the dayA big glass of waterReciting affirmationsNot hitting snoozeMeditating for 2 minutesMaking your bedMorning stretches

Each of these creates positive momentum to carry you through the day. Gratitude sets up a positive mindset, writing down your MITs develops focus and not hitting snooze tells the world you’re the boss.

Here is my exact morning routine if you're interested.

Same goes for your night-time routine. As sleep is so critical, the things you can do at night to optimise it become large factors your energy, health and mood the next day. Anything you can also do the night before to prepare for the next day can lead to a more calm and positive day.

Here are some example night routine additions

Evening gratitudesWrite down your 3 biggest wins of the dayPhone gets turned off 30-minutes before bedDaily review - what did you learn?Plan your day for tomorrowNo screens an hour before bedReadMeditate for 2 minutesSet out clothes for tomorrowPrepare food for tomorrow

(as a note, I try and hit all of these every night. I don't often get them done, but 1,3,7,9,10 are non-negotiable).

Making it look pretty is the final touch

You've just spent all this time building a house and it's looking pretty fresh, yet it's not quite ready for your friends to come over for a housewarming party.

Paint the walls with a meaningful incentive.

An incentive is a reward to keep you on track, a prize at the end to look forward to. This isn't a necessity, only something which may provide an extra boost of motivation when the going gets tough.

And feng-shui the hell out of the place.

You are in control of your life. You choose how you to live it, what you want out of it and how you define your own success.

Take life by the balls and make it yours.

You've just invested quite a bit of time reading this article... for what?

I'll tell you what.

If you made it this far you're one of the few people who want to make an impact in the world. As a member of the same gang, I salute you.

From here on you follow this mantra,

'Every Day is Game Day'

Living up to your own potential is what you're after. With modern life's distractions, instant gratifications and general laziness it can be tempting to cruise by.

Not you.

Not in this lifetime.

I want you to commit to excellence, bringing your best to each day. You now have to structure to do it, so no more excuses. Read this article on discipline and strap in for a successful future.

Go get it.

This article is based upon what I coach my executive clients. If you want to learn more, check out this link.

In 2018 I challenged myself to read 52 books in 52 weeks. I may have gone a bit overboard...

Below you'll find all the books with a rating and one-sentence summary. (The books with pictures were my favourites)

Fiction (mostly fantasy)

1. Wise Man's Fear - Patrick Rothfuss

10/10

The anti-hero Kvothe continues his journey to hunt down the elusive Chandrians - if you read one fantasy series in your life, make it this one.

2. The Way of Kings: Part 2 - Brandon Sanderson

9/10

The stories of Kaladin and Shallan evolve in this massive world-building epic.

3. Words of Radiance: Part 1 - Brandon Sanderson

9/10

The journeys of Kaladin and Shallan begin to intertwine, introducing deep historical storylines and opening the series to a larger scale.

4. The Final Empire - Brandon Sanderson

10/10

I went to the library to borrow the next in the previous series but they didn't have it, by luck I stumbled across Sanderson's other amazing fantasy series.

5. The Well of Ascension - Brandon Sanderson

7/10

Felt as though this book was a filler between the first book and the third, not a lot happening compared to The Final Empire.

6. Arcanum Unbound - Brandon Sanderson

6/10

A bunch of short stories which didn't make the cut for his other series (they still add value for a fan).

7. Mythos - Stephen Fry

6/10

Witty and sarcastic but not as epic in the storytelling as I'd hoped.

8. Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

9/10

Even if you've seen the movie the book is different enough to keep you entertained and engaged (literally read it in two days).

9. Passage - Justin Cronin

6/10

For a book about surviving vampires in a post-apocalyptic America, spanning 1200 pages, it was painfully slow-paced.

10. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

5/10

Tried to read something older and not fantasy - didn't work

11. Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

8/10

A simple tale of human resilience and the meaning of life.

12. The Light Fantastic - Terry Pratchett

8/10

Pratchett is a master of fun writing, his Discworld series will always be my go-to for short, chuckle-filled reads.

Non-Fiction (for that self development)

Business/Finance

13. I Will Teach You to be Rich - Ramit Sethi

9/10

Exactly the advice you need as an introduction to the world of finance (would be a 10 if it was made with Australian references rather than US)

14. Making Money Made Simple - Noel Whittaker

8/10

Will have to read again as it contained more complex investment, real-estate, super and financial advice.

15. Barefoot Investor - Scott Pape

9/10

Essential reading for the entire Australian population.

16. 24 Assets - Daniel Priestley

6/10

I'm not quite at the stage of business this book was written for #oneday.

17. Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki

10/10

Gamechanger in my mindset towards money, career, investment and lifestyle.

18. The E-Myth Revisited - Michael Gerber

8/10

A god-send for any small business owner highlighting the difference between working on your business and working in your business.

19. Key Person of Influence - Daniel Priestley

9/10

Third time reading this simple method of become an industry leader.

20. The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason

7/10

Similar to Rich Dad Poor Dad, based on the principles of money rather than tips and tricks.

21. Built to Last - Jim Collins

6/10

Interesting read to find what all extraordinary companies have in common but a bit beyond where I currently am.

Marketing/Writing

22. Crushing It - Gary Vaynerchuk

5/10

Wasn't what I was hoping for unfortunately.

23. Why Do You Hate Money - Joey Percia

10/10

Any person interested in the business of fitness must read this.

24. Viralnomics - Jon Goodman

6/10

A few gold nuggets but left a lot to be desired for.

25. This is Marketing - Seth Godin

10/10

A masterpiece in the new age of marketing where it's all about genuinely caring about your customer.

26. On Writing - Stephen King

9/10

I found it fascinating to read King's background and philosophy on writing.

27. Elements of Style - William Strunk Jr

8/10

A bible on how to write gooder.

28. Influence - Robert Cialdini

9/10

The innate, unconscious ways we respond to certain situations and stimuli can be manipulated for good or evil.

29. Perennial Seller - Ryan Holiday

6/10

I'll be reading this again before I start writing my book.

Personal Development

30. Man Up - Bedros Keuilian

6/10

Nothing new, simply the power of persistence.

31. Tools of Titans - Tim Ferriss

10/10

A book to highlight the hell out of with an incredible amount of random, useful info bites.

32. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k - Mark Manson

10/10

A must read for every human on Earth.

33. Conscious Coaching - Brett Bartholomew

4/10

A great book for team sport coaches, which I am not.

34. Focus - Daniel Goleman

4/10

Tended to dribble on a lot without giving many useful takeaways

35. N1 Nutrition - Phil Learney

5/10

From someone with an active interest in nutrition he lost me in the first 20 pages.

36. Algorithms to Live By - Brian Christian

3/10

Putting computer science to work on simplifying our daily decisions sounds interesting right?... Wrong.

37. Every Day is Game Day - Mark Verstegan

7/10

I love the idea behind every day being a day you strive to be your best like it's the Superbowl.

38. 12 Rules for Life - Jordan Peterson

9/10

The deepest dive into human nature I've ever read will need to be reread multiple times to absorb it's lessons.

39. King - Elliot Hulse

8/10

Becoming the king of your own body and mind will always be a winner in my eyes.

40. Mindset With Muscle - Jamie Alderton

7/10

Developing a healthy body and mind put in very simple terms.

41. To Sell is Human - Daniel H. Pink

7/10

A good take on selling for people who don't like selling.

42. The Obstacle is the Way - Ryan Holiday

10/10

The 3rd time I've read this book always inspires me to keep going.

43. CEO Strength Coach - Ron McKeefrey

5/10

Written for strength coaches in the competitive US job market.

44. Principles - Ray Dalio

9/10

How one of the most successful men in the world systemises his business and life.

45. School of Greatness - Lewis Howes

7/10

Good concepts and format but nothing new.

46. High Performance Habits - Brendan Burchard

9/10

Detailed stories and directly applicable ideas for high-performers.

47. How To Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie

8/10

Oldie but a goodie (should be required reading in high school)

48. Own The Day, Own Your Life - Aubrey Marcus

7/10

Methodical layout on how to improve every aspect of your life from the moment you wake up to the moment you close your eyes at night.

49. The Perfect Day Formula - Craig Ballantyne

10/10

A straightforward book in creating the discipline and structure of a perfect day.

50. Back, After the Break - Osher Günsberg

8/10

The first autobiography I've read about the downward spiral of depression with no punches held back.

51. The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

10/10

A written for anyone wanting to create something in the world - letting them know what they're in for and how to overcome resistance.

52. A Short History of Almost Everything - Bill Bryson

8/10

Making the facts of universal history mildly exciting, even for someone not interested in history.

53. The Way of the Superior Man - David Deida

7/10

The interactions between masculine and feminine energy.

54. Grit - Angela Duckworth

3/10

Very little useful information, more focused on highlighting what a superstar the author is.

55. The 12 Week Year - Brain P. Morgan

7/10

Strategies to think bigger and be more productive.

56. Atomic Habits - James Clear

10/10

Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement.

57. Unstoppable - Craig Ballantyne

7/10

A guide to overcoming anxiety with advice on business, health and life.

58. The Laws of Human Nature - Robert Greene

9/10

An immensely deep and eye-opening dive into why we do things.

59. Habits of Highly Wealthy Online Trainers - Jon Goodman

6/10

Good little guide, nothing new.

60. Your Best Year Ever - Michael Hyatt

8/10

A new way to set goals by first looking at the previous year and going from there.

As the sun dawned on the horizon of the new year you could have found me furiously scribbling on a large piece of paper.

I was writing down all my hopes and dreams.

At the beginning of 2018 I sat down and planned the goals I wanted to achieve this year. I thought to myself, "what do I actually want?"

This process, which has become a New Years tradition, is the ultimate source of my discipline, structure and purpose in life.

But what happens AFTER I do all this goal-setting stuff is what counts.

I sit there, look at the main goals, and determine one thing.

What can you do in the next 24-hours to get the ball rolling?

There are 5-10 things on the list each year, ranging from all physical to financial to personal development.

I, like most, have dreams to achieve big things.

But unlike most, I have the 24-hour rule as an ace up my sleeve.

For each of the goals on my list I determine one thing I can do in the next 24-hours to take the first step towards achieving it.

As an example, here are goals from my 2018 list and what I did on the 1st of January to get the ball rolling.

Goal: Complete in a powerlifting competition.

Within 24-hours: Pay for and lock in my position in a comp this year.

Goal: Put $15,000 into an investment account.

Within 24-hours: Choose the account, open the account and set up a weekly direct debit from my bank account.

Goal: Start my own business.

Within 24-hours: Register the business name Executive Performance.

You can see how you can use this rule for any goal you have. If you want something, take immediate action.

Fire away, don't wait for the perfect aim

This is the time of year everyone is thinking ahead and setting goals. Most people stay right there, thinking about the things they'd like to achieve but never taking any action towards them.

You're different.

Now you know the 24-hour rule you can use it in the real world.

Think you want something?

Yeah

You sure you want it?

Pretty sure

What can you do in the next 24-hours to get the ball rolling?

Good question.

Take action now.

more, more, MOAR!

It’s always been my mindset (and you’ve probably thought the same before).

What's next, next, NEXT!

You get told to set goals, envision the future, aim for targets - always looking forwards.

When was the last time you reflected on the past?

That’s where all the solutions lie.

As 2018 winds down to a close I thought I’d share with you the questions I’m pondering.

How did you see the past year going?

What were your plans, your dreams, your concrete goals if you had any?

What disappointments or regrets did you experience this past year?

What did you feel you should have been acknowledged for but weren’t?

What did you accomplish this past year that you were most proud of?

What were two or three specific themes that kept recurring?

What were the major life lessons you learned this past year?

These come from a book called ‘Your Best Year Yet’. I intended to read it to be able to focus on 2019 and get really clear on what I wanted to achieve.

Instead the first half of the book was all about 2018.

(a blessing in disguise)

It's been a big year for myself and I completely ignored it, already thinking to next year and all the new goals.

This book highlighted the importance of review.

Reflection, acknowledgement, gratitudes, lessons, limiting beliefs - stuff we should be doing more of.

There’s a lot to be learned from your experiences. As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.”

With a year review you can ensure you don’t make the same mistakes.

It also allows you to see what a fantastic year you’ve had. Acknowledge the awesome things you did! Even it’s it’s been tough you can celebrate your resilience to be able to keep going.

My challenge for you is this.

Scroll back up and answer the questions honestly (if you're a high-achiever you can write them down).

I'm definitely making this a yearly thing.

You walk into the gym and meet your new personal trainer for the first time.

He looks you straight in the eyes says...

“So, what’s your goal you sexy thing?”

(maybe not his exact words)

Wisdom says the best way to achieve what we want in life - ripped abs, building a successful business, spending more time with family - is to set a specific goal.

This is how I used to do it too.

I set goals for the weights I wanted to lift, the amount of money I made, the grades I wanted in school. I succeeded in some, but failed at a lot of them.

Eventually, I began to realise my results had very little to do with the goals I set and nearly everything to do with the systems I followed.

Set a goal, then forget it

What would happen if you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system?

If you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal of winning a championship, only focusing on what your team did at practice, managing your assistant coaches and recruiting talent, would you still get results?

I think you would.

The score takes care of itself.

Goals are good, not great

Goals give direction, but systems are best for making progress.

Goals only give change in the moment. We think we need to change our results, but the results aren’t the problem. What we need is to change the systems that cause those results.

Goals restrict your happiness. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy” are famous last words of someone chasing air. Don’t box yourself into this narrow version of happiness.

Still set your goal, you need to know where you’re going, but then determine the systems which will get you there.

Eg. Goal = Lose 10kg

Systems

Eat 4x healthy meals a day, maintaining a calorie deficit. Train with weights 3x /week Walk 10,000 steps a day Sleep 8 hours a night

Forget the 10kg and focus on the day to day systems. The fat loss will take care of itself.

I guarantee if you follow this you WILL achieve your goal in time.

We always want results.

They will come.

For now… focus on what you can control.

Need help honing your focus?

The Power Shift System is designed to help you do exactly that. We sit down to determine your goal, break it down into the systems you'll need to laser in on and then we get to work.

Interested? Check it out here.

You wake up one morning and notice you have to go up a belt buckle, you aren’t as happy with what’s looking back at you in the mirror and you’re out of breath walking up the stairs – no biggie, you’ll do something soon.

Your health is a dragon you must acknowledge and be prepared to fight every single day.

By denying the problem you allow it to grow.

The dragon, which was once kitten-size, is beginning to look intimidating. With each passing day, your health deteriorates and the dragon grows. Soon you’ll be in a fight for your life.

When I was 17 I almost lost my Dad.

It was during the financial crisis of 2008. My parents had a lot of money in the stock market when it bombed. The stress this placed on my father as a provider for the family was almost too much.

As a family, we almost lost everything and my father took it as his burden to bear.

He didn’t look after his health and it rapidly began to deteriorate.

The dragon began to grow in size as his physical and mental health declined. He denied the problem, opting to work harder instead, and eventually, it all became too much.

I experienced the consequences of denying the dragon first hand. My dad became depressed and suicidal.

It all became too real when I woke up to find he was admitted into the hospital.

Since almost losing him I’ve developed a purpose to help men to live happier, healthier and longer lives. The men who feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. The breadwinners who hold the responsibility.

And the men who feel like they can never work hard enough.

Hospital forced my Dad to acknowledge the dragon which had grown to a monstrous size. He found strength and began to fight back. These days he is the strongest he’s ever been.

As I saw him regain his strength, confidence and love of life I realised I could help other men feel in control of their health by giving them structure and support – standing by them as they fought their own dragons.

Your health is the most important thing you own. Without it, all the money, assets and promotions can’t fill the void.

Improving your health can change your life.

The sooner you take the first step the easier it will be. The dragon is still small. What you do now will improve your future exponentially.

Click here to learn the 5-step framework my clients use to slay their dragons, improve their health and find success in their lives.

As similar as all us humans are, we are also extremely diverse.

We have different music tastes, follow different religions, like different hobbies and enjoy different food.

And we're all shaped differently; big, small, round, long, thick, thin. Some find fat-loss a breeze while others have to fight for every kilo.

That's why these are 'almost-rules', they aren't truly set-in-stone rules but instead strongly recommended suggestions based on fundamental nutritional science and practical applications.

You can bet if you're following these you'll have no trouble with fat-loss... ever.

1. Sleep 7-8 hours a night. This is almost-rule number 1 for a reason.

2. Drink water when you wake up. Water kickstarts your body to get going, a big glass (300+ mL) will do.

3. Eat protein at every meal.When in doubt, eat meat and vegetables.

4. Eliminate foods which make you feel like crap. This includes bloated, gassy, depressed, moody or lethargic. These are foods you clearly shouldn't be eating.

5. Low carb diets tend to work well these days. We don't move much, with general high insulin-resistance and extra fat on the body - so you don't actually need much carbs to get by.

6. Meal plans and elimination diets work well in the short term, not the long. They provide structure to get results but fall short as they are too restrictive and don't teach you anything about how to maintain fat loss when you're not following the plan.

Be aware of the difference between 'I want to eat' and 'I need to eat'.

8. Keep caffeine intake down. You can have some but overdoing caffeine will lead to increased stress (not good).

9. Eat until you're 90% full, not until you get bloated, constipated or always full. Be mindful of the things you're putting in your mouth and how they make you feel.

10. Move daily. Walk where possible and avoid sitting for long periods of time.

11. Train hard at least 3x a week. Strength training and intervals - this is all you need.

12. Plan your days. Make your health a priority and schedule it in the diary as non-negotiable blocks (eg. meal prep, gym time, what's for lunch, down time). Make decisions ahead of time.

13. Get some accountability. You are an emotional creature and having support on your side makes it ten-fold more likely you'll succeed.

14. All diets create a calorie deficit somehow. Ignore fads and the latest diet hacks, it all comes back to a calorie deficit.

15. Don't question the rules. We like to think we are the exception to the rule, it would work for everyone but me. False. Commit to the rules for a while and don't be surprised when the scale starts to move.

Apply the 'almost rules' to your fat-loss efforts. You're going to be eating healthy, exercising enough, structuring your days and your weight shouldn't be much of an issue.

You’ve already cultivated a mindset of responsibility and set up the structures to succeed in Part 1. Let’s take it a step further and turn you into an unstoppable man on a mission.

Step 4. Developing a Masculine Mindset

Your reality is made up of perceptions and actions.

Both of these are the total summary of who you are at this very moment in time. Every perception and action has led to now. They also directly determine where you will be in the future.

Luckily you control them both utterly and completely. No one can control how you perceive the world. No one can control your actions.

You are in charge.

You don’t always get what you wish for, but you get what you think you deserve.

It’s a ‘glass half empty, glass half full’ approach. How do you perceive the world? Because, how you perceive it is exactly how it is. We create our own reality. Being able to focus on the good rather than the bad begins to train your brain to naturally do so. It gets easier to notice all the good. This soon becomes an upward spiral of gratitude and mindfulness.

How you react to situations determines your physiological and mental response. Do you react immediately based on emotion, or are you able to take a breath, consider the options and react accordingly.

Being busy is often a perception stemming from lack of prioritisation and planning. Perceiving all things as equal will lead to you spread extremely thin, sometimes beyond the breaking point After you perceive a situation, you take what you believe is the most correct form of action.

Therefore, you are the summary of every past action you’ve ever made.

Where you’re at right this very second is a result of the decisions you made in the past. We are products of what we repeatedly do, and if you want to change your outcome, you have to change your daily actions.

Right now, at this very moment, you are everything you have ever done.

If this is the case, every action you take matters. Every single one of them. Actions (and inactions) have consequences, and consequences have consequences. There is no way around it, you must be aware of your actions. You are in control.

Imagine your future self in five years time. If every single action of your past has led you to where you are now, every action from now until then will determine where you end up. With that in mind, what little things can you do now which will improve your future? Each will take you down a different path. And, at the end of the day, you’re responsible for yourself. Only you can control your reactions and actions.

Everything you do matters and you are responsible for everything that happens.

Step 5. Take Relentless Action

If you do nothing after reading this you’ve wasted your time. You don’t need more information. You need to take action. You need to do the work.

Part 1. The Myth of Motivation

Here’s how most try to improve their health.

They wait for motivation to strike. Maybe they watch 300 and compare their bodies to the shredded physiques of the Spartans. Or maybe they see an old mate who is in much better shape than them.

Either way, motivation pulsates through them and spurs them into action. This surge of motivation inspires them to change everything at once – hitting the gym every single day for 10 days while only eating chicken and broccoli. This lasts for the 10 days and then the gym pass isn’t used for months. In passing, they see the same guy again… and the cycle starts again.

Here’s the truth: motivation doesn’t work.

Motivation -> Inspiration -> Action = wrong

If you’re waiting until your motivated to do something you’ll never get far. Here’s how it really works:

Action -> Inspiration -> Motivation

Action comes first. Action creates inspiration. Action creates motivation. Relying on inspiration is unsustainable, immature, and limiting. Yet, this is the framework for how most people live their lives.

“Action is not just the effect of motivation; it is also the cause of it.”

– Mark Manson

Inspiration is fleeting and unreliable; you can go months without it. To rely on it is not a winning strategy. Ignore inspiration — if it’s there, great. Use it. If it’s not, act anyway. This is how you create sustainable motivation in the first place. Instead of waiting to “feel” like you’re ready, act before you’re ready.

You are in charge of your life — your actions, behaviours, and choices. You can act despite not feeling inspired.

Part 2. Consistency Over Perfection

If you ask me what the most important thing in regaining control of your health is I’ll always answer with one, single word.

“Consistency.”

Consistency is the most important factor which will make or break your success.

The fact is this will all take time to accomplish. Everything you will ever need is in this framework but that doesn’t take anything away from the work you’ll have to do. It’s not easy. If it were, you wouldn’t be in the situation you are now. You must be consistent with your efforts over a long period. Show up, every single day, and do the work.

Aim to go to sleep a better man than the one you woke up as.

Taking responsibility, setting the process and creating the structure will go a long way to helping you be consistent in your mission. In the day to day heat of the battle, it will come down to you saying, “Alright. Today I will do the things I know I need to do.”

And get it done.

Part 3. The Necessity For Accountability

You are influenced by the people you surround yourself with.

In your mission, you need to find positive influences as it will make doing the work easier. The best ways to do this is to hire a coach and join a team.

A professional coach is the pinnacle of accountability. Someone you are financially invested in. Someone who can guide you through this framework, troubleshoot obstacles, have real conversations with and actually cares about you. A person who you deeply don’t want to disappoint.

Joining a team takes this accountability further. A tight-knit group on the same mission will provide you with more reasons to get out of bed every morning. More people you don’t want to let down and more people who are sharing the same experience – friendships forged in the heat of change are meaningful.

If you’re able to find the right accountability regaining control of your health is inevitable.

This whole 5-step framework underpins the Power Shift System. A semi-private coaching program for men looking to reclaim an athletic body and regain control of their health.

You must do something before it’s too late. Now is the time to take action.

Click here to learn how the Power Shift System can help you.

This 5-step framework is an essence of my father’s journey with the bulk of my own experiences working with the health of high-calibre men.

It encompasses everything you’ll ever need to regain control (and can be brutally honest at times).

Step 1. Take Responsibility

You didn’t get to where you are right now by accident.

In your business life, you’re doing well – it’s no fluke. It took years of study, then long hours of over-working and over-delivering, striving to deliver the best. Eventually, you reached a point where you could provide for others.

You are responsible for where you are in your life right now. In business AND in health.

With all that driven work on the career aspect of your life, your health took a backseat. Sleep was secondary and gym visits were few and far between. You don’t feel like you did at 25 — energy zapped with a spare tyre around the gut. Small things, like walking up the stairs, are a lot harder than they should be.

Step one to regaining control of your health is knowing that it’s all your fault.

Extreme ownership of a problem is you taking charge of a situation and admitting that it’s within your control. Your health isn’t what it should be and if you’d like to live a high-quality life in a few years time you must regain control now.

Step 2. Set The Process

Now you’ve acknowledged that you’re the one in charge it’s time to set the benchmarks of where you’d like to be.

My father understood the position he found himself in when he was in the hospital. He knew he needed meaning and purpose. Being directionless is a one-stop journey to a substandard life. To get the ball rolling, you need to set goals.

Part 1. Set your sights on the goal

In an ideal situation, in 5-years time, what would you want your life to look like? (let’s keep it health related, but this can be extended into any domain)

Answer these to reveal your ultimate meaning:

What truly matters to you?What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?What are you physically capable of in 5-years time?How do you want to feel when you wake up in the morning?Why do you want to fix your health?

These five questions will outline your goal. It’s more than having abs – it’s a mental and physical shift from being where you currently are to where you’d like to be.

Don’t try to impress anyone else here; these are your intentions. If they are going to become reality they need to be your own.

Part 2. Break it down into a process

There are 3 Laws of Health which are set in stone. The rest becomes filling in the blanks.

Law 1. You must have a regular and consistent physical training routine.

Physical training is essential. The benefits are highly studied and understood. It has to be a priority. We are all busy. Barack Obama, Tony Robbins, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are just as busy as you. They find the time to train daily.

Weight training is highly recommended but what’s most important is that it’s regular and consistent. Regular, as in, most days of the week. Consistent, as in, until the end of time.

Law 2. 85% of your food must be nutritious.

You are what you eat – literally. Food is broken down into molecules

which are the building blocks of your cells. Every cell in your body comes from what you consume. Only put high-quality fuel in your

Ferrari. You know what that is.

Enjoy life; 15% is your buffer.

Law 3. You must get adequate high-quality sleep.

Sleep affects every single biological function in your body. Your metabolism, your brain cells, your mood, your energy, your skin, your hunger, your IQ… the list goes on. It’s just as important as exercise when it comes to improving your health, performance and physical condition.

Step 3. Create the structure

You have the blueprint for taking control of your health and so begins the time to lay down the structures which will form the foundation.

Part 1. Create the habits of your success.

We are creatures of habits. Our lives are dominated by a series of automatic behaviours and actions. When habits become concrete we are powerless – unless we acknowledge and deliberately counteract the habit.

The problem is particularly strong habits can produce addiction-like behaviours that can force your brain into autopilot even in the face of strong disincentives, including loss of reputation, health, job and family.

What can you do?

Keystone habits are your bread and butter

Keystone habits matter more than most habits because they cause a chain reaction, changing many other habits in the process. The best keystone habits for taking control of your health and reaching your goals are the 3 Laws of Health from the previous step.

Law 1. You must have a regular and consistent physical training routine.Law 2. 80% of your food must be nutritious.Law 3. You must get adequate high-quality sleep.

A physical training routine will cause a massive ripple effect on the rest of your life. That, along with healthy food choices and a sleep routine, will provide the keystone to building every other healthy habit off of.

Part 2. What about willpower?

Willpower is as important as good habits. It’s how you keep going when your habits aren’t strong enough to resist temptation.

Willpower is the single most important keystone habit. It’s also a learnable skill.

Think of willpower like a muscle. You only have a finite amount of willpower to use each day. As you use it, your willpower gets tired and making the right decisions gets harder and harder. Luckily, you can train it to become stronger. As with strengthening a muscle, you can strengthen your willpower through intentional use.

Willpower is how you will form all of your habits of success.

As you would train a muscle, start small. Use it on the main habits you’re trying to create (the 3 Laws) – don’t try to change everything at once.

Part 3. Claim your space

Before we go further, know that nothing matters if it’s not implemented. Consistency is king and nothing can trump it.

How do we set up consistency?

We set up both time and environment to ensure you implement.

It’s the one thing missing from all previous attempts at regaining control of this area of your life. Here’s how you do it. It’s simple and not exactly sexy.

Create a daily 45-minute space at a set time every single morning. For you.

And you protect it. Even if Sophie Monk rocks up in a bikini and asks you to take her right there and then, you raise your self-worth and value your space. Never give that time away. If you do, you open the floodgates to end up back where you started.

During this time, perform the thing you need to do to regain control of your health but ‘never have time to do’ – exercise.

For the final (and most important) two steps click here to read on.

Early mornings are a time of peace. It’s dark, silent and oddly calming as the world sleeps in the comfort of its bed – it’s the perfect time to train.

The most common excuses for lack of exercise are:

I don’t have time.It’s not a priority right now.

You do have time (I’ll show you how to find it) and you’re kidding yourself if you don’t believe your health is important (without it you have nothing).

You have the time to train.

I get it, your life is a busy commotion of responsibilities and obligations. People have certain expectations of you and there’s zero space left in the diary for anything as silly as exercising.

We all get the same amount of hours every day. Barack Obama finds time to exercise for 45-minutes, six days a week. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, is in the gym at 5 am every morning. When asked how he stays productive Richard Branson had a one-word reply, “exercise”. He claims it gives him 4 additional hours of productivity every day.

These men are as busy as you are, yet find time to exercise. They are also very smart, so if the benefits weren’t obvious they wouldn’t be doing it. It’s not a matter of time or busyness, it’s a matter of priorities. They know investing in themselves will pay huge dividends.

The importance of your health is not often obvious until it’s falling apart. At that stage, it may be too late.

A simple improvement in your physical shape and capacity can change the world around you in ways you can’t imagine. When you exercise and change your body, you change your future.

You strengthen your breathing, and suddenly your ability to speak and express yourself clearly has strengthened as well.You strengthen your hands, and now you feel you can handle more than you have beforeYou strengthen your spine, and stress does not bear down on you the same.You strengthen your legs, and you stand differently. What once tired you out is now something you walk through without reservation.You stand a little taller and move a bit more self-assured.

Things change. Important things. Things you wouldn’t consider until you come by them and realise all that you’ve been missing out on.

Your physicality sets the limits to what you believe you can accomplish.

It defines what you are capable of, and not capable of. Expanding your physical capability expands your possibilities in all other areas of your life.

When you go to the gym, you are training yourself to be more capable. You are going beyond prior limits. You are facing the unknown, boldly, and realising you can handle what is there.

In the process, you learn about yourself by recreating yourself. You say yes to your own potential.

Training is important for more reasons than you may realise.

The best time to exercise is before the world wakes up

Before you even think about opening up your emails – exercise. Training early reduces any obstacles or distractions which may pop up (aka putting out the daily fires).

Training early also mentally puts yourself first. You matter, your health matters and doing something positive for yourself before you begin to serve the rest of the world confirms that you’re in control of your life.

Exercising in the morning creates positive momentum to carry you through the day.

Momentum creates a sense of ease. Imagine how good you’ll feel when you tick off the biggest, most important box for your own quality of life – before anyone else is even awake. This significant win makes the rest of the day easier as you’re walking taller and more confident, commanding respect and brimming with internal pride knowing you’re taking steps to positively influence your life.

You aren’t stuck. You can make the decision to get out of bed.

Break the inertia and allow momentum to carry you forward. Training in the morning is one of the best things you can do for yourself, your family, your friends, your career and your quality of life.

If you’re ready to learn the exact steps my clients use to get up early and want to check out the world’s greatest morning routine, click here to continue.

It’s NOT about a number on the scale.

It’s NOT about what your friends think.

It’s NOT about chasing an Instagram-worthy physique.

And it’s CERTAINLY NOT about how that girl in yoga pants (who you've never even talked to) looks at you.

It’s.

About.

You.

Everything else is outside your sphere of control.

It took me a long time to figure this out.

Back when I was a young scallywag I begun my fitness journey with the sole hope of impressing others - dudes will respect my muscles and girls will fawn over my abs.

It didn’t work like that.

I got muscles and I carved out the abs but nothing in my world really changed.

Still, I kept lifting thinking that if I get a little big bigger and a teensy bit leaner I’ll be happy.

Years of this didn’t result in one ounce of happiness and left me and empty shell. No one was impressed. My life was all about the gym and my body.

Now, finally, at the ripe age of 26 after coaching clients for many years, I've learned something...

Training in the gym, lifting weights to improve your physique, is about much more than just your physique. Sure, the initial benefits of looking better are great, but you soon reach a stage where further improvements don't bring any extra happiness.

There is a hidden power of the gym not many realise.

Here are 3 ways the gym can change you (if you get out of your own way)

1. You CRUSH limiting beliefs

In my early days of training I remember watching the strong dudes in the gym lift weights twice as heavy as mine.

"I could never do that.".

Your physical ability sets the limits to what you believe you can accomplish. This thought pattern extended to other things in my life - public speaking, girls, business and the like.

Physical ability defines what you are capable of, and not capable of. By expanding your physical capability you expand your possibilities in all other areas of your life.

When you go to the gym, you are training yourself to be more capable. You are going beyond prior limits. You are facing the unknown, boldly, and realising you can handle what is there.

You prove that, with consistent effort, you can achieve things you once thought impossible.

The whole process of physical self-improvement unlocks a very powerful thought...

'There is no limit.'

You say yes to your own potential.

2. You gain confidence in your own skin

You develop a physique to be proud of, and in your mind, you set the standard.

It doesn’t have to be shredded to the bone or have muscles upon muscles. You're not comparing it to anyone else, you're only improving yourself to a point where you are confident in your appearance and ability.

Training in the gym reveals a body which you can throw a tight tee over and feel a sense of pride in how it fits. Only you know how hard you work, the effort which goes in behind the scenes and the discipline you show every night when the missus brings out the biscuits.

It may not be the best physique out there, but that's not the goal.

The goal is to have a physical shape which represents the person you believe you are.

That's where confidence is found.

3. You become addicted to the upward spiral

Have you ever heard someone say they felt terrible for getting in shape?

I've never.

If you begin training at the gym you'll undergo a physical transformation. This simple change affects the world around you in ways you can't imagine.

- You strengthen your breathing, and suddenly your ability to speak and express yourself clearly has strengthened as well.

- You strengthen your hands, and now you feel you can handle more than you have before

- You strengthen your spine, and stress does not bear down on you the same.

- You strengthen your legs, and you stand differently. What once tired you out is now something you walk through without reservation.

- You stand a little taller, and move a bit more self assured.

This feels damn good, and the feeling is addictive. The upward spiral and physical ability and shape affecting your mood, beliefs, confidence and energy leads you to want to maintain this feeling.

How could you go back to what you once were?

The number on the scale and what others think of you are byproducts of you going to the gym. You place as much value in these as you want, but know they are out of your control.

What IS in your control is you and your own journey of self-belief and self-acceptance.

Chasing arbitrary numbers or a photoshopped magazine body can work wonders for short-term motivation. As a lifestyle change, though, there is a definite ceiling. You’ll always be chasing the next thing, wanting more, bigger, leaner, stronger.

The best thing you can do is focus on yourself.

Your personal journey is the only thing that matters.

It’s cold outside…

The sound of the alarm brings you into another day, but you feel the darkness lulling you back to sleep and the snooze button tempting you with loving ‘click me’ eyes. You’d rather stay snug under the sheets than face the day.

You need the world’s best morning routine to get you out of bed.

Before I release the secrets of the best morning routine there’s something more important to acknowledge. You.

When you get up early to exercise it’s very easy to decide “just for today” to stay in bed. You are a creature of impulse and emotion. Marketers use ‘limited time only’, ‘50% OFF’ and ‘flash sale’ to target this. You make your decisions based on emotion and then rationalise your decision afterwards.

Don’t give up what you want MOST for what you want NOW.

If your goal is to regain control of your health you must exercise. For almost everyone, you must do it first thing in the morning. You can’t let short-term emotions halt your mission or you’ll never gain those first steps of momentum.

The ONE trick to ensure you get

out of bed

Sit down and think about, in extreme detail, all the ways in which reaching your physical goal will change your life.

Think about the self-talk when you see a picture of yourself.Imagine how your relationships will change.Think about are the activities you would be capable of.What will people’s first impressions of you be?Think about how you will finally be living up to your own full potential.

Now, put these thoughts into a single, repeatable paragraph (or a few).

Whenever you don’t feel like getting out of bed, and the short-term emotions are threatening to tie you down, recite your paragraph. Move from the short-term to the long-term.

Reaching your potential, validating your identity and leaving a legacy are a lot more powerful than any small excuse your impulsive brain can think up.

Now you’re awake I can fill you in on the world’s best morning routine

1. Don’t hit snooze

You’re an adult. Snooze is for teenagers.

You’re on a mission. Snooze is for lazy people with no direction.

You set an alarm because that is the time you need to get out of bed. It’s a conscious thought from the night before that this is an appropriate time to get up if you want to have time to do everything you need to do in the morning before you leave. Hitting snooze can set off a chain of reactions, the feeling of being rushed and negative thoughts about the day.

Like “today is going to suck”

It will only suck if you hit snooze.

2. Morning gratitude

Gratitude is a powerful and hugely underrated way to shift your mindset. Starting your day with an attitude of gratitude instantly gives you a positive outlook on the day and sets you up for optimism to take with you.

The easiest way to do it? In the morning spend a minute (yes, just a single minute!) thinking of 3 things if your life that you are grateful for. Be happy that these things are part of your life.

For example, my 3 gratuities from this morning:

The sun is shining todayI have a job which allows me to do what I enjoyMy family supports every decision I make

3. Drink a big glass of water

Your body wakes up every morning dehydrated. Get things moving again by gulping down at least 500ml of water.

4. Set your targets

Pick three things that you want to do today. Make sure these things have a strict finish point (eg. make 3 sales calls). They must line up with your long-term goals and by completing them will take you closer to achieving them.

Example– Long term goal: Lose 10kg

Daily goals:

Go to the gym for 45 minutes.Stay under my calorie target of 2250.Buy protein powder.

Three things in which you will accomplish today to leave you feeling as though the day was successful.

5. Make your bed

In his commencement speech, U.S. Navy Admiral. William H. McRaven, said:

“If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed.”

Now is the time to regain control of

your mornings

The Power Shift System is designed for you in mind. It covers all bases (including early morning training) and will have you progressing towards your goals at a rate you think is impossible. We don’t do impossible – we get results.

To learn how the system can help you, click here read more.