GJP Elite

Here’s a very common scenario I see people going through

Regular efforts to ‘finally make it stick’ with exercise, which for some strange reason always begins in January

We some superhuman efforts usually until March at the very latest

Before reality hits come Easter time:

- school holidays arrive
- the clocks change
- it’s lighter outside
- summer is fast approaching
- socialising rapidly peaks

This is the big barrier most people struggle with. With no ‘bare minimum’ at this time year, you will almost always fizzle into an inactive patch where family, friends, sunshine and socialising becomes more of a priority than health and fitness.

This trend continues until September - I’ve seen it year upon year like clockwork:

- schools return
- holidays are over
- parents switch back on
- non-parents feel the end of the year looming
- ‘one last push’ until the end of the year

This triggers a pretty solid run for most people between September and November.

And then that big old C word comes around

It upends everything good you had going, you never hit a solid year of progress, and so you pack it all in for the year, get sauced up for 4 weeks straight, promising you’ll go back harder than ever next January.

What a frustrating cycle to be in!

How about a re-frame?

As little as 1 fitness event or deadline to work towards can transform how you behave during the months where you are typically less active.

Have a strategy to ‘elevate your floor’ so you have a new bare minimum Apr-Aug - eg. ‘On my worst possible week - I will do 1 strength session & 1 conditioning session, and walk as much as possible’ -definitely beats zero!

Or if you have an event, the training will take care of itself.

Having a ‘bare minimum’ number of sessions to target for December, can help provide a focus - eg. 8 sessions. That could be 2 per week every week, or 4 per week for 2 weeks, with the final 2 weeks off - up to you!

How will you break the consistency cycle?

Starting from scratch isn’t actually a bad place to be!

In the early days of training, pretty much everything works and nothing you do is wasted. Whichever exercise you pick is almost guaranteed to provide some kind of stimulus for change (bear in mind this sharp upward trajectory doesn’t last forever)

That said, people almost always choose badly when deciding what to go after. You go hunting for the 12 exercise ‘abs blast’ programme when really, just 3 simple standards would tell far more about where you actually are.

Here’s 3 I goals I’d tell anyone to focus on:

1) Jump further than your height.

A standing broad jump is a power test, and power drops off earlier and faster with age than strength does - In the Toledo ageing study, older adults sitting in the lowest bracket for lower body power carried roughly a 1.6 times higher mortality risk.

Being able to produce force quickly matters well beyond sport.

2) Deadlift your own bodyweight. In an ideal world this would be 1.5-2x (if your goal is to thrive, rather than survive)

It’s sad to see when somebody can’t even trust their body to pick something heavy off the floor. But I’ve had clients walk in terrified of a barbell, and with the right attitude, lift their bodyweight inside six months - there is hope!

3) A single, clean press up with your chest going all the way to the floor. Full range, no half reps.

Rather than attempting floor press ups with diabolical tekkers, why not start with an elevated press up at belly-button height, target 10 reps, then work your way down a notch, week-by-week?

If you can do 10 reps at knee-height with perfect form - attempt 1 from the floor with equally perfect form.

None of this needs a fancy gym, a supplement stack or a six day training week.

Go and test all 3 this week and write the numbers down. Whatever you can’t do yet becomes the thing you train. Retest in twelve weeks.

Ticking those 3 boxes could be the start of something special, and it gives you something specific and important to measure instead of guessing whether you’re getting anywhere.

DM or comment PERFORM and I’ll send you the free trial of the my app which lays all of this out.

We took my client from 85kg to 130kg for 5 reps on the trap bar deadlift, in 18 months. Yet another win to the boring, boring basics.

Most people struggle for these kind of strength improvements because they rush the process, get injured, and take 1 step back for every 2 steps forwards.

Simple is beautiful, and my tracking is about as simple as it gets. I don’t write down every set he does - just the ones that matter that day. Some coaches spend hours logging warm-up sets, and sets bridging to max, but I just want to know how the hardest 2 sets went.

I tend to use the 2-for-2 rule 👉🏽 if you can do 2 reps beyond the minimum target, 2 weeks in a row - we’re good to slightly increase the load next time.

Consistency will always be king - Practice the skill often enough, with decent technique and no ego, and the load progression takes care of itself.

Consistently doing 2-3 hard sets of 4-6 reps after a couple of warm-up sets, putting technical ex*****on above everything, and walking out feeling good rather than wrecked so you want to do it again next week? That’s very hard to beat.

Do it for 18 months and in this case, you end up 45kg stronger without performing any miracles.

(If you are already lifting close to your ceiling, this rate of progression would obviously be reduced, but still considerable)

My client isn’t special - He’s just good at showing up, and I’m good at paying attention to what matters (according to my limited knowledge) and ignoring what doesn’t, so he gets the most bang for his buck.

If you’re keen to start getting stronger in the simplest way possible - DM or comment PERFORM for a free trial of the Perform For Life app.

Family time ✅️🇫🇷☀️🌊

Great to just do absolutely nothing for a week (other than be 'Shark' in the pool once a day chucking kids about).

Trips like these don't come around too often, so glad we made the most of it!

Some training tips sound obvious, don’t they?

But you’d be amazed how few people tick this very basic box.

Ask yourself - When was the last time you got your HR above 80-90% of its maximum?

Don’t know your max HR? Many people have heard of the inaccurate random way to guess, which is to subtract your age from 220.

(If that were true, my heart would have exploded 10 times this year)

Sometimes, the easiest way to find out is start doing some maximal stuff every now and then (true max, not a bit breathless) and observe what happens to your heart rate when you do it - typically with the use of a Apple Watch / Whoop / Garmin / Polar / Oura / Fitbit etc.

You don’t need to spend long at this very high HR - but you do need to do it if you’d like to be genuinely fit.

Just go there briefly, twice per week is plenty if you just want to move the needle.

If you can do that, you’ll be doing something I guarantee you 90+% of people overlook in their fitness pursuits.

Now tell me - what’s your weapon of choice for getting your HR near max? (My go-to is running & assault bike)

Athletes are built not born.

One final week working with Frankie before he jets off on his US college adventure.

A lot of excellent progress made by consistently showing up for years, and now over the last month:

Rack pulling his first 100kg
Hitting a 3:30 1km
Improving his explosive jump height
Mixing it against grown men with a PL academy

And developing excellent control over his movement stability and co-ordination.

He hits his protein targets
He takes his daily performance medicine (Creatine)
He loves his sleep

18 but not obsessed with partying - he’s obsessed with his game and doing the basics well.

Really looking forward to watching him thrive! .christian10 Sarah Christian

Trust me, I’ve got you covered. I’ve built an app for my high performing clients that anyone can now access.

Perform For Life helps you build small habits for incredible results. Tracking, guidance, insight & community, all in one place.

- Instant access to workouts, exercise demos and train-along videos.
- Sleep, nutrition and mindset tools to remove the repeated banana skins.
- Professional coaching and mentoring in your pocket.

DM or comment PERFORM and I’ll send you a free 7 day trial of my app right now, or click the link to get started.

Today - Hip & Shoulder mobilisation and activation

Low intensity session today - included some upper body hypertrophy (bench press, lat pulldown, cable curl/extension)

But main objective was to loosen up, work on some weak areas, and keep ticking for the next session tomorrow where I will go heavy, with some speed/agility work at the start.

I'm enjoying alternating low/high intensity sessions at the moment.

Great way to stay away from the grey zone (every session 7/10 intensity), and maintain consistency.

Ever catch yourself wondering what happened to that spring in your step?

Or feeling like your athletic capabilities are disappearing right from within you? Sensing it in your stride, your dimming appetite for fast, swift movements in your day to day?

Muscle power declines at a rate of roughly 10% per decade after the age of 30, and today I’m going to show you just how big a game changer adding power and explosive movements to your week can be.

Not only does jump performance have a very high correlation to your top speed running ability (as you can tell by the jump height of one of the fastest people on the planet, Noah Lyles).

But the amount of jump height you are capable of producing also has an extremely high correlation with - you guessed it - life expectancy.

You may have heard myself or other coaches mention the importance of strength training 1000 times, and how many research papers have correlated measures like grip strength with living longer.

But what many people don’t realise is that power is an even better predictive measure than grip strength.

For one study, when using grip strength or muscle power to predict mortality, they used a ‘hazard ratio’ to summarise the risk of death from being ranked in the lowest vs. highest categories for each.

The hazard ratio for strength was 1.62 (men) and 1.71 (women) (Translation - your risk of death increases by 160-170% if you are extremely weak vs. extremely strong), while the hazard ratio for muscle power was 5.88 (men) and 6.9 (women) - a seismic increase which does more than just hint at the importance of this metric.

So how do we go about making this happen and actually becoming faster, and more explosive and powerful?

Check out my newsletter via the link in my story (24hrs) or bio to discover 8 drills for you to mix, match and rotate 1-2 times per week for incredible results.

They say communication is key to a healthy relationship, it’s true - but so is sleep!

We’ve been together 9 years, married nearly 4, and although our love hasn’t changed, our sleep certainly has!

🕕 Past-midnight bedtimes
📱 Phones by the bed
📺 “just one more episode”
🍹 Mid-week cocktail nights
☕️ Post-dinner coffees…

…were the norm for us. It’s fair to say we had minimal respect and awareness of the bad sleep habits that were crushing our moods, performance & productivity.

Over the past 5 years, we’ve gone all in on making good quality sleep a priority - we’ve embedded so many positive changes and we’re here to tell you from both personal experience and professional expertise - it’s time to make sleep a non-negotiable.

As health professionals we are big advocates of quality sleep… whether its about the immediate effects it has on your day-to-day (decision-making, hunger hormones, working memory, mood, etc.) or the longer term effects on longevity and performance - we know the impact it has on your health.

And here’s the kicker - most people have NO idea that chronic sleep restriction is even the cause of these impairments. Research shows that even though these physiological effects exist or get worse, we stop perceiving them - we think we adapt, but we don’t. We just stop noticing.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, there is expert support and guidance waiting for you right here.

Want to be part of the 1 in 5 people in the UK who actually gets proper kip? Then follow and for more support on improving your health and achieving your true potential.