​Are you at the beginning of your fitness journey and want to design your own workouts? Then you’re in the right place. Read this article and learn to apply basic principles of exercise science to create your own full-body training sessions.
 
First of all, I’ll be completely honest with you: A single blog article is no substitute for a personal trainer or coach, who can teach you correct form and draw upon their expertise and experience to craft a training program suited to your current fitness level, skills, and individual body.
 
But not everyone has access to a coach, and some training is better than no training.
 
As a beginner, what you need the most are consistency and practice, so you can get great results for months with a simple, well-structured full-body workout.
 
I trained this way three days a week for six months when I started bodybuilding. I have clients who do the same, even if they’re not beginners anymore, and still get incredible results.
 
Now that I’ve spent long enough singing the praises of full-body training, let’s get into the basics.
 
In order to create a science-based muscle-building workout, you need to understand:
 

• Exercise selection
• Exercise order
• Reps
• Sets
• Rest intervals
• Tempo

 
Ready? Strap in.

​I have recently posted a poll on my Instagram stories, asking my followers if they were staying on top of exercise.
 
“No” was the most popular answer.
 
In another poll, I asked “Why?” and offered two options: “No guidance” and “Low motivation”.
 
“Low motivation” received an overwhelming 100% response.
 
What many of us might not realise is that your initial motivation is fuelled by a sense of novelty and inspiration to achieve success.
 
Unfortunately, neither of the two lasts long.
 
Your shiny new training program becomes old news in a couple of weeks.
 
And your long-term goal of losing 50lbs can seem too far away when you step on the scale and you’ve only lost half a pound this week.
 
Once your starting levels of motivation are running low, don’t wait to wake up one day and find them miraculously restored.
 
Spoiler alert: It won’t happen.
 
Instead, become the architect of your own motivation.
 
One way to do this is to accomplish a workout when it’s the very last thing you want to do.
 
This will boost your confidence and thus perpetuate a positive feedback loop of success, followed by a sense of accomplishment and renewed motivation, followed by repeated success.
 
In this article, I will cover my top tips to do exactly that.

​Full disclosure: I don’t like meal prep.
 
Nevertheless, my nutritional goals are to improve body composition and to support training performance whilst training clients in the gym, working as an online coach, producing online content like this blog, and spending some “me time” with my partner or pursuing my hobbies.
 
For this reason, it would be counterproductive to simply throw meals together as and when, therefore I have found ways to make meal prep fit into my lifestyle rather than the other way around.
 
Do you feel overwhelmed at the prospect of spending all Sunday making meals for the week? Then read on!
 
In this article, I aim to outline a number of strategies that have helped me and my clients tailor goal-appropriate nutritional choices to a hectic lifestyle.

​It’s January 1st and you haven’t thought about exercise or nutrition for two weeks.
 
You have been eating a lot more than usual, drinking a lot more than usual – and I don’t mean water – and sitting around a lot more than usual. Maybe you feel bloated or sluggish and you think it’s time to “get back on track.” How do you do it?
 
In this article, I intend to cover some strategies to incorporate healthy eating and exercise back into your life after a “holiday layoff.”

Your mindset dictates the way you feel about your choices. Are you happy to diet or do you only do it “because you have to”? Are you happy to work out or is it a chore?
 
If you believe a certain truth, then you will behave accordingly. So, if you switch from a truth that doesn’t serve you to one that aligns with your goals, you are setting yourself up for success.
 
The three tips in this article can help you reframe your fitness decisions so that you can achieve your objectives and enjoy yourself in the process.
 
As a side note, when I was first brainstorming ideas for the piece, I thought to use the festive period for context, but in hindsight this advice can apply to your lifestyle as a whole.