Lifestyle
A member asked me last week why her Saturday sessions have been so flat all summer. We went through sleep, food, the heat, her programme. Then she mentioned the two or three glasses of wine most evenings since the holidays started. The biggest effect is on sleep, and it'
Lifestyle
You've planned this autumn before. Not this one specifically, but you've had the exact thought — in September last year, and the year before, and probably in January. Once things settle down, I'm going to get back into it properly. Then term started, and things
Sleep
In about two and a half weeks, an alarm goes off at 6:30am in a house that's forgotten what 6:30am is, and the first fortnight of term is brutal for everyone in it. It doesn't have to be. But the fix starts now, because
Lifestyle
Chris asked me about training on holiday. The more useful question is what happens when you get back. The holiday isn't the problem. Two weeks off does very little to you. The problem is the Monday after, and the enthusiasm that walks through the door with a tan
Lifestyle
In a month, something predictable happens. The first week of September arrives, the holidays end, and a wave of people decide this is it — the restart, the new routine, the year they finally sort it out. September doesn't lack motivation. Motivation will be everywhere that first week — it&
Lifestyle
There's a quiet plan a lot of people are carrying around right now: September. New term, new routine, back to the gym, sort the eating out, properly this time. It's easy to think this on a lazy August-bound Sunday. It's also, for most
Lifestyle
The school gates close this week, and six weeks open up. If you're a parent, you already know the shape of it: no school run to anchor the morning, childcare to juggle, days that start early and sprawl, and the fear that the training you'd finally
Lifestyle
You're four days into the holiday. You've eaten well, drunk more than usual, walked a bit, trained not at all — and somewhere on day three you start thinking: you're undoing it, all those months of work, melting away by the poolside. For a lot
Lifestyle
There is a difference between training and training with awareness. Most people who exercise regularly have a sense of what they have done — the number of sessions in a week, the general effort level, whether things felt good or flat. What most people do not have is a record — something
Lifestyle
Today is the longest day of the year. Seventeen hours of light over Amersham, the sun not fully setting until after nine in the evening, the mornings arriving before most people's alarms. It is a day that deserves more attention than it typically gets in the context of
Lifestyle
Spend enough time around a well-run CrossFit box and you start to notice something. The forty-five year old who moves better than most people half their age. The fifty-two year old who completed a workout this morning that would have floored a sedentary thirty-year-old. The
Lifestyle
Motivation is unreliable. This is not pessimism — it is neuroscience. Motivation is a neurochemical state, primarily driven by dopamine, that fluctuates based on sleep quality, stress load, blood sugar stability, and dozens of other variables outside your direct control. Building a fitness habit on the foundation of motivation is building