Free Guide
Building your dream physique is not about finding one perfect workout or diet.
It comes down to choosing the right goal, following a structured plan and staying consistent long enough for your body to change.
Before you change your calories or training, decide what you are trying to achieve.
Do you want to:
Your plan should match your goal.
A cut is usually best if your main priority is losing body fat.
A lean bulk is usually best if you are already relatively lean and need more muscle.
A body recomposition can work particularly well if you are new to training, returning after a break, or have higher body fat and relatively low muscle.
Choose one clear direction instead of constantly changing your goal.
Your calorie intake determines whether your bodyweight is likely to increase, decrease or remain relatively stable.
For fat loss, eat below maintenance.
For muscle gain, eat slightly above maintenance.
For maintenance, eat around your maintenance calories.
Your starting calorie target is only an estimate. The most important thing is monitoring your actual bodyweight trend and adjusting when necessary.
Protein supports muscle growth and helps maintain muscle while dieting.
For people who resistance train, a useful general target is around 1.6–2.2 g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day.
Build your meals around quality protein sources such as:
Do not go into the gym and choose random exercises every session.
Your programme should train all major muscle groups and allow you to track your performance over time.
Focus on movements for:
Consistency with a good programme is far more valuable than constantly searching for a new one.
Your body needs a reason to adapt.
Over time, aim to improve your performance by gradually increasing things such as:
This is often referred to as progressive overload.
You do not need to improve every exercise every session, but your overall performance should move forward over time.
Simply turning up to the gym is not enough.
Your working sets should generally be challenging and performed with good technique.
You should finish most hard sets knowing you could not have completed many more good-quality repetitions.
Avoid both extremes: training far too easily and sacrificing technique just to move heavier weight.
Cardiovascular exercise can improve fitness, health and help with calorie expenditure.
You can use activities such as:
If you are cutting, increasing activity can help create your calorie deficit.
If you are bulking, cardio can still support cardiovascular fitness without needing to interfere with your muscle-building goals.
Muscle is not built only while you are training.
Your body also needs time and resources to recover.
Focus on:
More training is not always better.
Better training combined with adequate recovery is what matters.
What gets measured is easier to improve.
Track things such as:
Do not rely only on the mirror or one weigh-in.
Look at your progress over weeks and months.
Progress will not always be perfectly linear.
If your weight stalls, your training stops improving or your routine becomes difficult to maintain, do not immediately throw everything away.
Look at the data and decide what actually needs changing.
Sometimes calories need adjusting.
Sometimes your training needs changing.
Sometimes the plan is fine and you simply need to become more consistent.
A great physique takes time.
Your body does not care how motivated you feel today. It responds to what you repeatedly do over months and years.
The person who follows a good plan consistently will usually make better progress than the person constantly searching for the perfect plan.
Keep it simple:
Think about where you want to be six months from now.
What do you want to weigh?
How do you want to look?
How strong do you want to be?
What would you need to start doing differently today to move towards that?
Those six months are going to pass regardless.
You can arrive there having made real progress, or you can still be telling yourself that you will start soon.
Want a Plan Built Around You?
If you want help deciding whether you should cut, bulk or recomp, how many calories and macros you should be eating, how you should train and what needs to change when your progress stalls, my 1-to-1 coaching can help. I build your training, nutrition and recovery plan around your current position, lifestyle and goals so you have a clear route towards the physique you want.
Not ready yet?