The Uneducated PT Podcast - 🎙️ Episode 136: Get Stronger – Panel Discussion with Ailis, Cillian, Emmaline & Roy

Episode Date: December 6, 2025

What does it really take to get stronger — and stay strong for life? In this special live panel episode, we’re joined by Ailis, Cillian, Emmaline, and Roy, four experienced voices from the fitness industry, for an honest, practical, and myth-busting conversation about strength training, building muscle, and long-term consistency in the gym. From how they each got started lifting weights to the mistakes they wish they’d avoided, this conversation is packed with real-world advice for beginners and seasoned lifters alike. In this episode, we cover: How each speaker first got into strength training and how their motivation has evolved The most common beginner mistakes — and how to avoid them The smartest way to build strength safely without burning out or getting injured What’s really happening during newbie gains, and how to break through plateaus Why so many people fall into program hopping, and how to stay consistent The truth about rep ranges — are they overrated or misunderstood? The big debate: Does cardio kill gains? Free weights vs machines — what actually works best? Where functional training fits into a strength program Plus, we finish with a live Audience Q&A packed with practical takeaways you can apply immediately in your own training. Whether you’re just starting your strength journey or looking to train smarter and break past roadblocks, this episode is full of insights you won’t want to miss.

First of all, I'm just going to round the applause for the panel speaker. And also, thank you for everyone. I appreciate it. I'm just going to get just to start by all of you is to give about 60 seconds to introduce yourself and talk about what you do in the fitness industry and how you came into the fitness industry. Cool. Well, my name is Roy Ritchie. Came into the fitness industry off a background of just being really unhealthy, having heart issues, very, very overweight. and I needed to do something about that and

pretty much the same as I'm sure most of you you know you rely on magazines word and mouth gossip and just information online I tried all those things that didn't work and using myself as an experiment I just noticed the change overall in performance mindset behavior change and whatnot and then I realized that I actually loved it I actually loved helping people recognize that those things actually work and it's not just like the traditional influencer type stuff.

So I left my old corporate IT job and started coaching. Gooday. I'm Emmeline. I'm not from here if you can't tell. But I got into health and fitness. I joined a gym about eight years ago after I was sick of jumping around my living room doing workouts and fell in love with it. I spent many years. strength training, loving it, but also had a terrible relationship with food. Turns out you can't out-train a bad diet. So I spent a lot of time working on that and then decided to become a coach because I wanted to help other people do the same.

I now have like a mix of people that I help. So I help people with sort of yo-yo dieting and binge eating and things like that. But also on the other side of it, I now train for strong woman and compete in strong women. So now I'm starting to play in people that are interested in just getting strong. Normal people that just want to get strong. And I love it. Hi, I'm Killian. The way that I came into the fitness industry, I was very nerdy, unathletic, socially awkward. Part of that is maybe partially changed, arguably. But when I was 15, I was very lucky that my school had a kind of after school cross fist type thing. Myself and my

friends got into that. I just loved this, gave me a lot of confidence and decided that I wanted to do that for my career. I went to college for studying to be a strength conditioning coach and then decided that I just wanted to help regular people who were maybe a little bit more like me when I started off. So most of my clients are kind of guys that are just getting into strength training, don't really know what to do, maybe struggling with some pain and injury and stuff like that. So that's mostly what I do. Hey, I'm Elish. I kind of just fell into the gym one day. I just went with other friends and I was like, oh yeah, this is kind of fun. And then realized from there that being strong is quite cool and then decided, you know, I'll start doing a bit of power lifting and then was like, yeah, this is fun. Join the gym for it. Realized how much confidence you can get from just like being confident in yourself and knowing that like, you know, you can go into a gym and know what you're doing is quite fun. So then that's kind of the people I work with now is just trying to get. people like complete just beginners into the gym and just get them used to strength training and stuff

like that um i would say in the room probably a lot of people in here might be you know between zero to two years strength training or i've got into the gym wanted to get in shape wanted to feel better and might want to continue the progress from from there what are some of the common mistakes you've made starting off that you help coach other people or just even from your experience that that people can learn from. Let's say in respect to getting stronger and continuing to make progress and maybe building a little bit of muscle, what are some common mistakes people you find that people make with their strength training? I feel like immediately going into a calorie deficit, something a lot of people do. Like you join the gym and you think straight away you have to cut out

everything that's bad for you, you know, cut out everything that you enjoy pretty much. And I don't think it's necessary. Like you just get into the gym and build a bit of confidence and you'll learn about nutrition along the way, you know? I think everybody undervalues the power of consistency and the importance of it starting off. So I would say for definitely like the people that I work with, the biggest change that I make to the strategy they would like to take starting off is saying four to five days a week when you're starting from zero is probably not a very smart way to go about things, especially if strength training isn't the number one priority in your life.

So starting with something you can get on a roll with and do not just for six weeks, but for months and maybe the first entire year, even if that's just two or three days a week, you can make a huge amount of progress if you're doing that consistently. I'm going to take the opposite direction from the specific strength training itself is sleep. I trained and trained and trained for years and I wasn't able to recover well enough. I was training really hard and not getting the results I wanted because I was working. working 60 hours a week and sleeping about five hours a night. So you can train as hard as you want,

but if you're not recovering equally as well, you're not going to get the results that you want. Yeah, my answer is probably going to have an umbrella effect on all of these guys, but mine's is realistic expectations. You know, so many people, similar to what was touched on here, so many people think more is better, harder is better, sleeping less is better, eating less is better, less is better, but if you're not getting clear on these things, if you're if you're not being

realistic about what you want from training and exercise, then you're realistically digging yourself a whole. And then once you're in there, you've then got to unlearn those patterns. And for so many people, that's a difficult thing to do, especially if they've done it for years. And I've seen this myself with clients. They've spent time with other coaches, PTs, watching content. And you've got to spend a large amount of time changing that mindset, that thought process and that behavior. And for some people, that's really, really difficult. For others, if they're ready for it, they're good. Talk a little bit more about less is more.

Because I suppose if people are getting into the gym for the first time and let's say they're socially anxious, there might be benefits to say going into the gym five days a week because that repetition of being in that environment probably puts people at ease. but then at the same time they might be struggling to see progress so where is the line there you know you mentioned before about three times a week I couldn't agree more I mean that's that's all I train you know some people look at my Instagram and stuff like that and they might think oh this guy must be you know five or six times a week and then whenever I tell people and even my clients I say look

I just train three times a week I'm actually not a gym bro like I actually want to get out at the gym. I'm there to get done what I want to get done and go and live my life. But then again, I come back to that belief system where people see all these folk in like Dubai or whatever and they're every single day on their Instagram. Oh, I'm doing a 10K run. I'm doing like a five rep max deadlift day. And it's all they're doing.

And it's like, but that's, you know, they're lying to you. They're only showing you to get likes and virality and all these different things, but it's genuinely less as more. I mean, I've got some clients who train twice a week just because it's all they've got time for. But it then comes down to what the programming looks like, what the effort looks like. You know, you mentioned before about recovery. It's the thread. It goes through the whole thing. So, I mean, I would always say, look, if you can do three times a week, do three times a week.

if not, do too, but coming back to the consistency side of things, like, go for it. But personally, I used to compete in powerlifting, and even in powerlifting, I would see folk training five, six times a week, and I was only doing four, you know, and I consistently got better, and I'm a little humble brag, but I was winning, I was winning competitions, you know, and I'm like, but then folk were like, you know, you could do an extra session. I was like, I don't need to. Like, the results speak for themselves and I'm happy with that so keep going it's only in rare occasions I feel like somebody could do a fifth session but even then I've got clients who do a fifth session

and it's something very small like come in for like a recovery session if it's a guy come in and do like 20 minutes of arms if it's a woman you know she might want to do like glutes and back or something but it's something it's not going to interfere with anything else and it's only there if you've got time and stuff, but realistically, three or four is more than enough, you know. Yeah, I would definitely, definitely agree with that. I spent probably the first six years of my fitness journey training five or six days a week and burning out and not getting the results I wanted and not recovering. Two years ago, I hired a coach.

He's like, no, you're doing full. And I'm like, oh, but I've always done five or six. He's like, you don't need it. He's like, do you feel good when you do four? And I was like, yeah. And I was like, okay. and in the last two years since I've had a coach and I've only trained four days a week, I'm less stressed because I'm not trying to fit in that extra one or two training sessions

four is a lot more manageable for my life. And I've got more time to recover. I'm getting more out of the sessions when they're in there. You think, oh, I go more, I'll get more out of it. But by the fifth or sixth day, you're tired. You're not lifting as much. You're not training as hard. So you're better off going for less days and training more effectively than going for more days.

and by the end of it, you're just snacked. So I definitely think, I have clients that train one time a week because their life is chaos. And I'm like, you know what? You came to me and you weren't training at all. So one time a week is better than what you were doing before. I have clients that have said, I want to train five times a week and I won't let them. I'm like, you're doing four.

And if you can consistently tick off four for the first like two or three months, then we'll talk about a fifth. And I'm yet to have someone consistently tick off four so that they get their fifth session. So people often think I need to do more. definitely don't need to. There's no need for it. Do an amount that works for you. And if it was more than what you were doing before, which was probably nothing, or maybe once, or once every couple of weeks, it's always going to be better than what you were doing. Just to add about, like, influencing stuff like that, because I thought it was quite an

interesting thing to point out. But, like, it's just really important to remember that that's their job. So, like, they're not going and doing, like, a nine to five and stuff like that. And even for myself, when I first moved to Manchester, all I was doing was online coaching. And, like, I could go to the gym more and I was. You would have seen it on my stories way more. I was training every day. And then I picked up a second job. Now I work in 9 to 5 as well. And I train four times a week. And that's it. And, like, it is different. And it is hard. And I feel like we just need to appreciate more that, like, most people that are coming to us are people that work. Like, like, a 9 to 5. And, like, you can't just go to the gym whenever you feel like.

And, you know, your job isn't to make content. You just want to get in, get your session. done and leave and that's fine and that's like all it has to be. In order to, Matt, so let's say they're doing less now. They've decided they're only going to do three or four sessions of consistency rather than training seven days a week. How do they ensure that they get the best out of them sessions, both inside and outside of the gym? Well, definitely like to reiterate even on maybe more like a micro level what the guys were

saying there. Within a session itself, people will still. It'll, like, it always comes back to the same mindset that just seems to be kind of endemic of society of large that more is better. So even if you get somebody down to doing, like, just three sessions instead of more, they'll oftentimes sort of cram in loads of exercises. Let me put in this extra method. What about putting some conditioning at the end or whatever? You know, that's a big one. So basically finding, like, what is the maximum bang for book we can get with the least amount?

because there's only so much energy and time that you have to put into executing. Usually, in my experience, like four to six exercises really well for most people, if you really want to progress them for the long term. And then I guess the obvious one outside of that, which is without a day, the hardest part to do with most people because of like what you were saying with everything else that's going on in their life is the recovery aspect. So when I'm coaching people, I always go back to what I call like flipping the big

rocks. People want to look at pebbles. They want to look at like, how can I optimize the small thing in my technique? What if I put in an extra set or whatever? Typically, I'm like, okay, you're already probably at like an ace to nine out of 10 in terms of the quality of your training. If we look at your sleep and your nutrition, you might be more in like that four to six down. What does that look like? Well, it just typically looks like the, the classic thing is like Monday to Friday is pretty good. And then Saturday on those all of us, you know? And, And just trying to get people to get out of that mindset of, like, fack it, I've made a small mistake now.

I'm just going to start again next week, you know? The sleep one, like, people just not, I think people try to distract themselves a lot who have, like, busy and stressful lives. So they kind of get to that period of the last two or three hours before bed. And they want to just, like, stimulus, stimulus, binge Netflix, whatever, instead of, like, to develop a nice kind of stress relieving routine before bed and it is hard and I think that's where probably one of the most challenging things with coaching people whether it's for strength or anything is having the the open honest communication abase not just where you want to get to but

what you're willing to do to get there and most people I find especially if they're in the first couple of years of just training they really don't fully understand kind of like what you were saying about like the Dubai influencer or whoever it is they're following, they have no concept of what that person is giving up to be able to look the way they do or perform the way they do. Usually when I lay it out to them and I'm like, so you don't want to go out with your friends on the weekend and have drinks regularly, you don't want to get the odd takeaway, you don't be able to stay up past one o'clock in the morning because that's what it's going to take to get to this really lofty goal that you've set for yourself. Why don't we just start with something

more realistic. And most people find that they're actually a lot more satisfied than they think they're going to be by just going for the realistic thing. Do you think that they fall into the trap of looking at strength training and build a muscle to maybe get the physique they want or to feel the way they want by looking at it in the lens of a fat loss face? I mean, I don't typically get people like that. I'm sure there are a loss and maybe you guys get people like that. I think that's because of your content? Yeah. So, absolutely. You know, and I think this actually is a big thing, like what you've touched on there is really like the messaging and the narrative that fitness is wrapped up in. If you're always wrapping it up in look at my abs and come and train with me for that reason, it's not going to be a surprise if you get people wanting to work with you from the lens of fat loss.

I, because my experience with it has been mostly health and performance, that's the way that I wrap it up. And so I don't tend to get people who want to come out of from that perspective. But there definitely is a lot of work that would go into trying to kind of detach that idea from strength training. Similar to like people that do, I don't know, running coaching or cardio or whatever, like as soon as you start looking that as a way to like get into a bigger calorie deficit, you're getting into a very dark side of fitness, whereas it should always be looking at it from the point of view of health, I think. I'm trying to think of what I could add on to that. It's I just found myself nodding all the way through. I totally agree. I find this, you know, you mentioned with predominantly working with guys.

And that's very, very true because like a lot of guys do tend to gravitate towards like, oh, like I want a big deadlift or I want to be able to bench this and whatnot. And it's like, that's great. But it, there can be a struggle. on attaching that to the health and you know we mentioned before about trying to bridge the gap on where somebody's at and where they need to be but this is where I like to include well what do they want so I like to look at things in two pots like what do they want and what do they need and try and merge the two because I definitely fell into the trap early in my coaching massive people

pleasing tendencies oh I just want my clients to be happy so I would only do what they wanted and but then when they were lacking results or they were burning out and stuff I was like oh fuck like I was oh well let's change things again but now over time and I'm going to thank therapy for this you know it comes into what do they need

and you slip stream this and this is how I do things anyway whether you are looking at things from a habitual standpoint the training standpoint from the training standpoint I had a client recently I programmed a day for her

and she only had three exercises like it was deadlift, like a hamstring and maybe code or something. And she looked at it and was like, okay, is that all I've got? And then once she did it, she was like, what the fuck was that? And I was like, there you go. So again, it's kind of like, again, for my thought process there was she wanted to improve our deadlift, so that became her focus. And the other two was managing the fatigue and making sure she was recovering,

but also getting things that she needed. So coming all the way back, when you look at things from the fat loss perspective, again, my experience we're working with women is I want to get stronger, but I don't have the confidence to go there. And I'm going to use a client of mine, Joe, at the moment, she's more than capable. And she sends me 20 videos a week over like her squat, her deadlift and whatnot. And our technique is great. Like, a numbers are great. She's getting results.

but then the thing I keep trying to get across the messaging is you've got more like you've got more like I don't want you to I ended up at one point saying look I don't want you to send any more videos until I see at least five kilos more on this bar and then you know I was having to basically like funnel her into making that choice but she did say it was a confidence thing and I was like you've got the capabilities so it's trying to look at these things and helping someone and understand which areas to focus on,

but also which areas that you can push. So if you're looking at all the levers, and now I'm gonna speak from a male perspective, guys just wanna go, fuck all the levers are gonna go up, and I'm David Goggins or whatever bullshit. And it's like, no, no, you're only putting two levers up. But then on the other side of the coin,

again, in my experience, working with women, they'll be nervous to put two, levers up. And it's like, no, you can, but we need to make sure that they're right levers. So again, you know, we'll come back to performance and strength and whatnot. It's like most people would go, okay, we'll put you in a moderate like maintenance calories or whatever. But it would, for me, it would be the programming and the communication and making sure that you've got multiple touch points through the week. And, you know, again, seeing how their sessions are, really reviewing things, as I mentioned before with Joe,

like learning about their personality and seeing where you can help that person move forward. So again, I kind of feel like I'm going into a bit of a rabbit hole here, but it really, really is person dependent and learning about that person, whether they're a feeler or a non-feeler, what their goals are, what their needs are, what their wants are. And as, you know, all these guys here would agree on, it's helping them understand why you've put certain levers in place. Because it's not just good enough to have the programming. I mean, if it was just programming, if it was just, oh, here's a training plan and a calorie, your calories and eat more protein, we wouldn't have a job. It's that simple.

So it's helping to build that trust, but not just the trust between the coach and the person, is to help the person build trust in themselves in their decision-making and making sure that this isn't just an 8, 10 or 12-week process. It's at least, you know, 12 months and seeing how you can break this down. And it's no surprise when you look at people's like photos or lifts and stuff from 12, you know, when you look at like 12 months before, I've got a client, Ryan, we've just kind of going through the 12-month process. And the change in him is amazing.

Like, his lifts are incredible. But the thing that I brought back to him was how you think is completely different from when you first started working with me. And that was my focus because I recognized it. And his wife recognized it as well. And once we brought this up to him, he was like, oh, yeah, you know what? Like, I'm pretty proud, you know. And that's a, I feel like that's an important part that just gets often overlooked, you know. Hands up for the gal was in here who, when they started training, they were like,

I don't want to lift heavy because I'm really scared I'm going to get bulky. Yeah, me too, me too. And I avoided lifting heavy for so long for that reason. And then I was like, oh no, but lifting heavy is fun. And I started learning how strong I could be and I started to have more fun with it. And I think once you get away from that mindset, because I can tell you, you physically cannot get bulky by accident. It does not happen overnight and it's not happen by accident and I've been trying really hard for a long time now to get bulky.

Um, the way what's to train that even, you know, because people will come in and say, I want to tone it up, but I don't think they understand the concept of what toning up is. Toning up is a marketing ploy for building muscle to make women go and build some muscle. It's just another way of saying building muscle and probably leaning out a bit at the same time. Um, but when you switch your focus to, I want to get strong. I want to, I want to get strong. I want to feel good, I want to train hard, your aesthetic goals will probably come a lot faster than if you're like, oh, I need to eat in a calorie deficit and I can't lift that heavy because I'm scared that I'll get bulky. It won't, it won't happen. So I think there is a lot to be said for

eating at maintenance calories and I don't think people talk about it enough when it comes to your training. People like, and it's again, social media's fault. They're like, you either have to be cutting or bulking. I'm sure we've all heard the terms cutting and boling. I'm sure we've all heard the terms cutting and bulking before, you're either in a calorie deficit or you're in a calorie surplus. And I think if you just sit around maintenance or if you want to lose some fat just a little bit below and train balls to the wall, you'll probably get the best results of your life because you'll feel good, you'll feel strong, you'll feel healthy, you'll be fueling yourself well, you'll have enough calories that you won't be miserable, and you'll have more energy

for training and you'll be lifting heavier than you ever have. Kill, can you explain newbie games and how people can stay motivated after that? Once the act. I'm sure we'll have people in here and I'm like, oh, I've been here for a while now and haven't made the progress that is when I first time. The existential crisis that kicks in after. Newbie gains are, if you think of training or getting stronger, building muscle, whatever, it's basically your body adapting from the point of view of surviving because you put a stress on your body, which is training, and it thinks, okay, I might die if this keeps happening and I don't, you know, make some changes. So that means I get

stronger, I build muscle. When you're starting off, the energy cost of that for your body is very, very low, because you're going from not being very strong, not having very much muscle, to getting a little bit more. And that basically is why you can come into the gym on week one, lift x amount you come in week two and maybe you add five kilos or however much a few reps or whatever at whatever point for most people it's usually somewhere in the space of that first year something happens and you just hit a brick wall and that doesn't that doesn't work anymore and that is basically just because you've kind of passed a threshold where your body is going to require an awful lot more either stimulus so like more or better.

better training, maybe like a higher effort potentially. But critically, I think the biggest thing that I have to do with people to get them to keep making progress past, you know, newbie games into what might be called like the intermediate stage is really working on that recovery thing. So you can get away for quite a while, probably at least the first few months, with having a really crappy diet, doing nothing with your sleep probably, and you'll make just fine progress. And then you start, you don't have to become like a professional athlete, but you kind of do have to start thinking of your body as more of an athlete in terms of a certain amount of fuel has to be coming in. It has to be good quality fuels. So a good amount of protein, eating your fruits and vegetables, and making sure that you get a certain amount of sleep.

And I think that's where a lot of people start shopping around for, no, there must be some secrets. It must be more complicated than that. Is that when they start program hopping? Could you explain that? Yeah, yeah. So, well, program hopping is just this phenomenon of usually when people are in that stage and they think the answer is they don't have the perfect program. There's a special exercise.

There's a special set and rep scheme that's going to do it for them. I have seen people follow some of these stupidest programs known to man and do like a 10 to 10 job on their food and sleep and they make incredible gains past that newbie phase. it is almost definitely not your program unless you've like taken a program off like a 14 year old in fly fist or something like that if you if you pulled off a program from like a decently reputable source online or something like that they're all in and around the same quality obviously you know for the sake of my ego i'm going to say i have the best programs but i know realistically i don't it's about the same as what we would all make or even the people that profess to be the best in the industry or whatever,

we're all doing much of the same stuff. The only difference I've seen in, say, like, friends of mine or people that I know that just keep pushing past where other people would get stuck is they just take it more seriously. They're just willing to make more sacrifices. You're going to notice, I started training over lockdown and made the best gains of my life after being, like, plateaued, so stuck for quite a while.

I trained with two friends who were a lot stronger than me. One of them was, like, bench press. what I was doing on the squat, which was very humbling. And what I observed was they pushed way harder. They did not really ever miss training sessions unless they were like sick or there was something very significant on. And the food and sleep thing was just a non-negotiable for them. They weren't like Olympic athlete level, but they, you know,

there was a certain amount of messing around. They just weren't going to do because they just knew it wasn't going to work. You also touched on their rep ranges there. I think a lot of people get confused when they're like, oh, well, I've done 12 reps. I should stop now because it's 12 reps or three. Could you just explain rep ranges for? I did a set of 50 yesterday on my program. 50.

Talk about that a little bit. Yeah. Actually, I did bitch out at 40. Last week it was 50. So different rep ranges have different purpose, but every rep range has a purpose. So when I saw 50 reps in my program, this month, I've turned around to my coach and I've gone, what the fuck is that in there for? I never do 50 reps. I do strength training. A lot of my sets are sort of anywhere from one to six

reps for building strength. So something that allows me to move a lot of weight. And then, you know, sort of building a bit more muscle. I tend to work more in that sort of six to 15 range. And I saw 50 in there. I was like, what the hell is this doing? And he's like, I'm not going to lie to him. You're really fucking strong. So we need to tap into something else now. And he's like, so this is lactic threshold work. So you know when you're like doing a lot of reps or you're going for a run or something and like your legs start to burn, that's what 50s for apparently.

He says we want to manage your tolerance to that burning feeling you get. Because when I go into comps and you're lifting for a minute, minute and a half nonstop, these sets of 50 are a minute and a half nonstop. So it has its own purpose. Do you want to talk more about rep ranges with specific things? Yeah, well, I mean, it's basically, it's going to lead to different adaptations in your body to some degree. So if you think about going for a run, that is thousands of reps, technically. You could think of each step or stride as a rep.

And so that's going to lead to aerobic or endurance adaptations, primarily pretty much nothing for like your maximum strength. If you're very, very new to training, you might get some amounts of hyperch for your muscle gain from us. But when you go down the other side of the scale, and let's say it's something you can only lift for one rep, that's going to be primarily your maximum amount of strength. So like the most force that you can put out. And then realistically, most people's kind of best results, because I think most people aren't training to be like a power lifter and they're not training to be an ultra. endurance runner. Most people want to get a little bit stronger, gain some muscle and drop a little bit body fast and just feel like generally healthy and athletic. So most of your work is probably going to be somewhere in the region of like two or three up to a base like 15 reps just in general. Obviously

there's times where you go outside of that and that's because it's going to be enough intensity, so enough weight or load that you are going to get stronger and you're going to be doing enough work or volume that your muscles are going to get bigger as well. I think the rep range thing, certainly, like you're saying, most people in this room are kind of like zero to two years of training. I think it's so far down the totem pole of things to worry about in terms of, you know, the difference is like between whether you do like six reps or 10 reps on an exercise matters so little compared to like consistency, the effort you put in, like you've already rattled on a day so many times to sleep in the food, it comes back to that. So there is a time and a

place for us, but people typically have to get like pretty far into training before those details are going to be make or break for them, you know? Our last question for Ali is just because I spend a lot of money on an app that none of them used to log in their training sets. So is it worth it for them to log in their training sets? It's actually like crucial. you to log in your trading sense. It is a non-negotiable if you want to make progress because I don't know about you guys, my memory's rubbish. If I'm going in a week later and I'm like, oh, what weight did I live last week? Oh, how many reps did I get through last week? And I'm trying to remember, my memory's not reliable. But if I have it there in front of me, I can see

the progress. And it's actually nice to look back and go, oh, this week I did this, this week I did this, never be afraid of like, you know, like the little 1.25 plates. They are not a waste of time. I have clients adding 2.5 kilos for a lift each week. And they don't even know it's creeping up. And then all of a sudden, six, eight weeks later, they're like, oh, I didn't know I could lift this. I'm like, yeah, I've been nudging you along for a few weeks here. So it's so, so important to track your weights so that you can see the progress you're making. You can be motivated by the progress that you're making. And you can make sure you actually are making progress. It's kind of falling on from that. It's also something I like to say to clients as well,

developing evidence that you're you know what you're um what's possible you know so i mean if you're just kind of coming in here two or three times a week and you're like ah i think uh i think i did this and i think i did that and then and then you're not really going to put in much effort so you're going to give it a bit of a go and say oh that was a good hour it was a good workout and you walk out and then if someone says oh what did you do in the gym today it's again it's a bit of a bit of a bit of this a bit of that or how much did you left? I'm not sure. So then if you're not sure,

you go back in and everything just becomes not sure. Like you don't know how, again, your capability, you don't know if you're getting bigger, stronger, like faster, more endurance.

And if you're not, then I kind of come back to the lever analogy of what you don't know which lever to then put focus on. But something I personally do and I love seeing it with clients as well as they put notes down on exercises. So when they performed an exercise, how it felt, you know,

or even at the end of a workout. And, you know, recently, you know, last week I took like a delode week. But when I looked back at the patterns, I saw it coming because I looked at my own notes after lifts and saying, oh, like my elbows felt a bit like tender here and this felt that. So I actually saw it come in. So I pre-planned it, just to recover. So again, it's looking at the bottom.

patterns and if you're all if if you look back say you know I mentioned it before if you look back a year and you look through your training notes you know as you mentioned there about your your clients lifts you start to you're almost surprising yourself in certain aspects again a shoulder pressing stuff but then it isn't a surprise because you see every single week of what you're doing and then again you assess your energy your mood and then the intensity that you're willing to put in just to inch forward a little bit. And it's, you know, it might seem like the 1.25 or something. But one session doesn't make or break anything, but coming back to the consistency,

if you're consistently doing that with the runs, the sessions, the willingness to add weight and push a little harder, again, six to 12 months, so much changes. And then you then add years to that. And when you go into the intermediate stage, believe me, someone who's been training for 16 years, 1.25, you will take it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I suppose one thing I'd add to that as well is, like, I've noticed from training people that there's this, like, phenomenon with human psychology where as soon as we get to somewhere that would have actually been a big goal for us at one point, the bar immediately gets raised in our head. And we forget what it was like to be a beginner at something and when we were kind of like looking up at the top of the mountain. And I have found that having a log of where somebody started and being able to show that to them when maybe they've, like you said, just added 1.25 kilos to something.

And I might think, oh, maybe that wasn't a great week. Being able to refer back to like, buddy, this is triple what you were lifting when we started like six months ago. all of a sudden reframes it of like okay yeah that's i forgot that i was that week when i started off um and so i think if you don't log aside from all the really valid stuff that's already been said you're kind of robbing yourself of like a big amount of happiness and satisfaction because training is such a long game and if you're always expecting to get progress on like a not even like a per session but like a weekly basis after a while you're going to be very dissatisfied if you don't have the ability to look back

and put things in perspective. Folks, big round of the applause for our colleagues. And with these questions for the next one, just to remember that about. So I'll go, folks, right.