Momentum Is Easier to Keep Than to Build

September gave you your routine back. Term restarted, the fixed schedule returned, and if you stuck with two sessions a week from the start of the month you …

Twelve Weeks From Today

Today is the 30th of September. Twelve weeks from today is the 23rd of December. Twelve weeks is long enough for the following to happen.

Why the Class Beats Training on Your Own

Plenty of people have trained alone for twenty years and done perfectly well out of it. If you've got a programme, you follow it, and you know how to load a squat, solo training works.

Where the Strength Work Sits in a Session

We put the lifting before the workout. Warm-up, then strength, then the metcon, and that's been the order all summer. From November it changes, and the strength work moves to the back end of the hour.

What Two Sessions a Week Buys You

The question comes up near the end of most first phone calls, usually apologetically. What's the minimum? People expect to be told five.

Why We Score

Every workout here has a score. A time, a number of reps, a load — something goes on the board at the front and something goes in the app. For a nervous beginner that looks like a leaderboard, and that can be somewhat off-putting.

What a 60-Minute Class Fits In

People arrive expecting an hour of shouting and burpees. It's a fair thing to expect from the internet.

Touch-and-Go or Singles

Twenty-one deadlifts at a moderate weight, somewhere in a workout. The clock starts and within three reps you've made a decision that determines the next four minutes, and you probably made it without thinking.

Your Watch's Recovery Score

You wake up, reach for the phone, and it tells you you're 34% recovered. You haven't sat up yet.

Teens in an Exam Year

September of an exam year, and something has to go to make room for revision. Sport is usually near the top of that list — two hours a week plus travel, for something that isn't on any syllabus.

Coming Back After a False Start Somewhere Else

You joined a gym in January. You went four times in the first fortnight, twice more in February, and then not at all. The direct debit is still going out.

You've Entered a 10k. Now What?

You signed up in a moment of optimism, probably out for dinner one night, and it's in six or eight weeks. You train two or three times a week already and you're reasonably fit, so the assumption is that you'll be fine.