Train Smarter!

What if the fastest way to change your body is to stop chasing fast results? We break down a training approach that trades randomness for repeatable progress: pick weights by rep range, log everything, and push to a steady 8/10 effort so you actually get stronger week to week.

We start with the big lie of “new workout, new me.” Novelty feels productive, but it hides a lack of measurable progression. You’ll hear how to choose your working weight using simple rep ranges, when to add the tiniest plates for slow, sustainable increases, and how to use RPE to check your effort without burning out. We also get practical about warm-ups and mobility that matter—five minutes to oil the joints, then a rehearsal set to groove the movement before the work begins.

Failure training? Yes, but only where it’s safe and smart. Machines and bodyweight staples like push-ups are prime spots to push hard, while heavy free-weight lifts demand caution. If you train at home or lack plates, we share tempo, pauses, and partials to raise mechanical tension without risking form. Then we zoom out to metabolism: why strength training during a deficit protects lean mass, keeps your metabolism responsive, and makes weight maintenance easier than cardio-only approaches. Cardio still has a role—steps, incline walking, StairMaster—but it should follow lifting so it never robs your performance.

Recovery turns effort into results. We talk rest days, sleep, junk volume, and how a short evening stretch can improve posture and reduce stiffness without living in the gym. The goal is a plan you can stick to: three focused strength sessions, sensible cardio, honest logging, and tiny progressions that stack up over months. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s stuck on random workouts, and leave a quick review—what small progression are you committing to this week?

Transcript

Why Random Workouts Fail

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Today's just a real quick um run through training. And the reason I wanted to do this because I did a video on this a long time ago, but it just didn't um just expired probably the stuff I speak about, things get updated. Um, so just like as people are joining the program, new to the program, been on the program for a long time, quick recap of like how you how you need to approach your workouts um step by step, really. Because going into your sessions, you want to be pretty clued up with you know seeing your workouts and knowing how hard you're gonna push and what you're gonna do in them workouts. So as you go in your training app, you've got your program there, whether it's four strength sessions, three strengths, one cardio, um, or let's do in more performance. Essentially, there'll be performance programming there. But majority of the time, you're gonna have strength workouts and a little bit of cardio. What I'll normally do is tell you how much cardio if you do in those strength sessions. If not, I'll say ask Louis. Ask Louis means ask me on what cardio um you basically need to do. But as you're going on workouts, you need to make sure you're pressing start. A lot of people are starting these workouts just kind of flowing through the workouts without actually pressing start and log in your weights. The reason we log our weights is because each time we come back to the workout, you want to be able to progress. Now, a lot of people have got into a bad habit of thinking that workouts should be random on a weekly basis. Where, oh, these are my workouts. What happens next week? Now, if your workouts were completely random each week and we just change your workouts every single week, what would happen is every single week they'd be brand new to you. And if the workouts are brand new to you, what happens is there's no progression. This is like going and doing Barry's boot camp four times a week or doing a one rebel. Well, the workouts are there with weights. Essentially, what happens is if you're doing random workouts, you basically every week it's new, you pick in similar weights, and there's no progression. Over time, you there'll be a little bit of progression in regards to you will be getting fit, but we're not seeing true progression. Think of it like reading a book. Yeah. If you started a new book every week, you wouldn't get a book finished. Yeah, we have to go through the chapters, and it takes us a while to read the book. And then once you finish that book, once we've seen the whole

The Power of Slow Progression

SPEAKER_00 2:30

story, the story's finished, then we go on to the next story. It's the same with training. We don't want to switch too regular because if we're doing that, if we're doing classes, do anything, we're not seeing true progression. And true progression is I did this this week. How can I measure? I'm doing more the week after, whether it's reps, whether it is more weight, or whether it is even more like I'm lifting the same weight, but I'm lifting it better. And that progression is what leads us to get more results. But progression wants to be slow. And I'll go through this a little bit more later on, but progression wants to be slow. We don't want fast progression. And the reason we don't want fast progression is we ain't no spring chickens. Yeah. Most of us are over the age of 31. Um, but some of us are pushing 40s, 50s. Now, that means our body does not adapt to trading as quick as it used to back in the day. So, therefore, if we go from squatting 10 kilos to next week going, right, I want to squat 20 kilos, all of a sudden, that big progression, the body's just not prime for it. So we want small progressions. How a small progression looks, let's say I bench 100 kilos. Yeah. If I can do that quite comfortably for a period of time, I now need to progress. I don't then put 110 on there. I put on 100 kilos and I add 1.25, 1.25 either side. So I'm adding two and a half kilos overall. 2% basically on that weight. That's a small progression. I get used to that, I add a bit more. Then 1.25s over long periods of time start to add up. You do that consistently over a good six month period, then 1.25s turn into sometimes 15 kilos. What we don't want to do is bang 15 kilos on it'd be way too heavy for us, and our joints and stuff aren't quite ready for it. So slow progression is always better

Warm-Up and Mobility That Matter

SPEAKER_00 4:25

than fast progression. Anyway, reversing for a second. As you walk in the gym, you're going to be freezing cold. Yeah, especially if you live in the UK, it's flipping cold all the time. Or if you're at home, you're going to be cold, getting out of bed, wanting to train. So we need to do some kind of warm-up. How that warm-up should look, which I don't know a lot of people don't follow, it should look whether a little bit of warming up on a piece of cardio equipment or some mobility. What mobility looks like is stretching, but through movement. Um, what is a good mobility movement if you just go on YouTube and mobile, whatever you're training that day, legs, five-minute mobility on YouTube. Upper body, mobility on upper body. Now, I can give you that in the app, but it'll be very boring just watching it on the app kind of style. Sometimes I will put a little bit of activation in there, but mobility is really simple. Just get on a YouTube. There's thousands of better videos than I can ever prescribe. What that does is basically oils the joints, oils the knees, oils the hips, oils the back, and gets you in a position where you're now primed to go and lift your weight. That first set that you do, first exercise that you do, is gonna be a bit of a tester. Like, okay, let me just go through the movement of this and feel the weight before we even think about the working weight. If you're at home, again, you might want to lift a little bit lighter before you get to your working weight. Now, what is our working weight? This is the question that I get asked the whole time. What weights do I lift? Now I am a

Choosing Working Weights by Rep Range

SPEAKER_00 6:00

genius when it comes to fitness. But if you're listening to this, I am smiling, but I am a genius. Um I am a genius when it comes to weight. But I could not tell you all exactly what you should be lifting, all 100 of you. Yeah? If I could tell you all what you should be lifting, I'd be I'd be a very rich man. Yeah? It's it's impossible. So therefore, I I have to trust you can go in the gym and navigate through this equation of what to lift. I give you reps and sets. The rep range that I give you is basically the indication of how heavy I want you to be. So that is my way of saying I want you to be around these reps. So normally the rep range will be eight to ten, ten to twelve, twelve to fifteen, fifteen above, very rare occasion. Sometimes it might be below eight, like six to eight, for example, depending on if we're doing a bit of strength work. So you normally have a rep range of about one to three reps. What I want from you is to perform that exercise where it gets difficult enough that you land in between that rep range. If you come one or two reps short, that's absolutely fine. You went a bit too heavy, but that's okay, we can progress. If you become more, if you come more than one or two reps short, you probably went a bit too heavy. Now, if you can perform that rep range and you can get to the top end, so if I say eight to ten, if you can get to 10 reps comfortably, it means the weight was too light. So therefore, the next set, what needs to happen is we need to increase the weight by just one or 1.25 to see if we can then perform that same exercise. Now you've got to also be smart. If it felt so easy, you're miles away from getting that rep range being difficult, then obviously you you miss a few notches. If you're at home and you don't have more weights, we need to think about can we get more weights or can we make that set a little bit harder? And I'll talk about that how to um you know perform failure a bit easier later on. But that rep range is what we're trying to make the exercise difficult enough that we fall in between that rep range. Now, once we complete that rep range a few times over, we then add a bit more weight and go. If you come back to that same exercise next week, you'll be able to see, oh, last week I did this rep for this amount of weight. Now, if you did all the sets and you realize, okay, that last week was too light, then you use this week to progress. Over time, what will happen is you'll get closer and closer and closer to failure because of your progression. But what I don't want to see is if you've got three sets eight to ten, for example, you're hitting three sets of 10 reps on a certain weight. Because that means you're underperforming. That means you're able to hit that rep range very comfortably over and over and over again. Now, if you were to do that over and over and over again, you would

RPE, Failure, and Safe Exercises

SPEAKER_00 9:20

get some progression, but you wouldn't get that much progression at all. There's a reason why my arm doesn't get bigger lifting this can. It's because it doesn't cause enough tension in my bicep to make my bicep bigger lifting this can. If I was to get a really heavy one, and if I was to get like eight, 10 reps here, so I'm texting it. If I was to get a really heavy one and it took me like on the ninth time I lift it up, that's going to show me more progression. The next time I lift this can, my muscle has to get stronger to get more than 10 reps out. That's how progression works. But if I can lift this all day long, and that might burn, might ache a little bit, but it will not improve. It will not improve my muscle tone. So this is where people have a misconception about if I'm doing something long enough and I'm getting a burning sensation, what essentially is happening is my muscle is changing. No, we just create some lactic acid in the in the muscle, and you're getting a burning sensation. That's not what um that doesn't increase um your muscle tone or muscle building. Yeah. It needs to be heavy enough over a smaller period of time. You can also go around your range about looking at effort scale. Now we use an F like old school PTs use an effort scale. It's called an RPE, where you do a set and you ask yourself on an RPE, rate of perceived exertion, how hard was it? And it should be around an eight or nine out of ten. If it's any less, it means we have to go heavier. So you can use a rate of exertion, rate perceived exertion, but I would normally just go towards your rep ranges. If you can hit them rep ranges, you go a little bit heavier. But ask yourself, as you leave certain exercises, as you leave certain sets, how hard was that? If it was a five, okay, next time I've got to go up. I've got to make that a little bit harder. Your whole session should be coming in around about an eight. We don't want to be going tens. Only lunatics go tens, then people that shout in the gym. We don't need to be going tens. But around an eight, you should be leaving the gym thinking that was an eight out of ten. If it feels like a five out of ten, there's room for you to push more. That means there's more results to be had. That means if you're coming in at five, 50%, that means you've got another 30% of more results that can be happening in them sessions. So mark yourself. That's why there's a scale at the end of your workout. Mark it. How hard was that workout? If it weren't that hard, we need to go up. Now, there's certain exercises where getting

Strength vs Cardio: Order and Purpose

SPEAKER_00 12:00

the weights in position is hard enough that if I can go, let's say I've never 10 squats with weights on my shoulders at home, it's easy for me. But I now want to go heavier. But to get 12s up or to get 15s up becomes a lot more difficult for me. And I actually find that quite hard to do. So what I do is I go, right, I might have to stay on these 10s, but I need to make these harder over this period of time. So you slow it down. You really slow it down. So until we can slow it down enough and make it as difficult as possible, that we start to feel that failure, we start to get to that eight out of 10 within that exercise. You can make an exercise really difficult by slowing it down, controlling it, really working into the right areas. So if we don't always want to go heavier, we make it harder. You get the same progression there. Exact same progression. Now, when it comes to reaching failure, failure is where I can't do any more reps. Now, it's a very hard place to get because it means pushing yourself to the very limit. Now, there's going to be certain exercises that we do not want to try and go for failure. Squats, bench press, um maybe sometimes dips if we fell through. But there's some exercises where if we go for failure, we're going to end up hurting ourselves. But there's some exercises where, especially in the gym, if you're using machines, a good one is leg extension. That one you can really push to failure. Because if you start to fail, if you get to a point where you can't do any more, the option is you just relax on the machine. Yeah? And the machine just stops. There's no risk of injury. Same with like a chest pressed machine, because the worst case scenario, you drop it. Bicep curl, very easy. Anything overhead, not so easy. Because if we do reach failure, what we're going to do is we're kind of in a bit of a compromise position. Anything close to the head or above the head, shoulder press, again, we can be in a compromised position. So there's when people talk about this failure, failure, failure, yes, we want to try and get failure as much as possible, but we also need to be smart where some exercises we can't really go. So the exercises you can, the exercises you feel like, oh, I've got the opportunity to push the failure here, really push yourself and try and see if you can. Push-ups. Easy one to push the failure. Yeah? So that failure is something that we want, but not always as achievable. Um, and really there'll be some big argument of eight out of 10 is is is probably better than 10 out of 10, because 10 out of 10 can essentially cause more fatigue and therefore more tiredness, more injury. So we if we can push 80% consistently, we've got more chance of uh succeeding. Now, strength work is key for how your body is shaped. But also, what it is key for is your metabolism and how we keep results. Someone that was to do just cardio and low calorie diet, and someone that is to do uh a low-calorie diet with strength training and a little bit of

Recovery, Rest Days, and Junk Volume

SPEAKER_00 15:10

cardio, that person would find it a lot easier to keep the weight off than this person that just did cardio and drove their weight down. Why? Because as you drive your weight down and you bring the calories down, your metabolism gets smaller. So the smaller your metabolism gets, it means that the less food you can deal with, essentially. Yeah. Now, when we come out of that diet phase, you want to start putting food back in. If we don't have a fast metabolism, what tends to happen is we can then start to put more weight on because our body can't deal with the amount of food we want it to. With strength training, what happens is because we're building some good quality muscle, our metabolism stays quite strong. So you're able to use food better. So therefore, calories don't need to get as low. And then when we do get low, if we do ever put any more food back in, we can use that food a little bit more. So strength training is key for fat loss. You see, it's a big buzzword at the minute, strength training. Because a lot of people are using jabs, trying to lose weight. They're not doing the strength training, they're losing a lot of muscle. Therefore, metabolism gets slower, therefore, you just put the weight back on. It's just the same as crash dieting. But we can use cardio as well, because cardio is a way for us to burn calories, get more calories out. And if we do low-intensity cardio, it's to get more calories out without feeling really drained. When it comes to running, high hit training, stuff like that, that stuff can drain us a little bit and put a bit too much fatigue on the body. So we can use things like steps, stair master, high incline to really just burn calories to get a little bit more out of the body. But that cardio is an added bonus to our training. So what we don't want to do is put cardio in that can compromise the strength training. So, really, we do not want to put cardio pre-training. Let's say you've got 20 minutes cardio in your session. If you do that 20-minute stairmaster before a leg day, then try and train legs, it's gonna be a nightmare. You're not gonna get the same out of them legs. You're better off doing the legs and then doing the cardio after. Because we're not trying to perform well in the cardio, we just need it to tick over. We can essentially be okay to be tired in um in that cardio. Yeah? So cardio is key. It's not essential, but it's a good tool to help us. But it has to come second priority to the strength training. You're gonna burn more calories in cardio within that session, but you're not gonna burn more calories overall. Strength training will burn calories throughout the day, throughout the day, throughout the day. You'll see some people that are in really good shape, like quite muscular, that will find it very, very difficult to put a lot of weight on because their metabolism is so good and their muscle works for them. Now, and that is a difference between losing weight and being in shape. In shape lasts a lot longer, losing weight can be very quick, but can bounce back very quickly as well. My last point is recovery. That this is something that not a lot of people are doing. Um, and it's I'm guilty, it's the first thing to go for me. Stretching, pre-workout mobility. I'm not great at that. I do a few bits of bobs, but you know, I just take the risk of injury. But recovery is a key thing for us.

Recap: Priorities for Lasting Results

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Now, how do we recover? Our sleep is a great recovery, but we don't know what the privilege of sleep, stretching. Now, I think you know, don't quote me to anyone that would argue it, but I don't believe that you need to do a big stretch session after your workout. Um, what you can do it is like later on in the evening, if you are watching TV, just on front of the TV, just do some stretching, lengthen the muscle, get that mobility, loosen off the tightness that you built up throughout that day. Some people would argue that you could do it after a big session, it would help, but you don't want to be in the gym forever, so we can break that down later on um in the evening. But we also need rest days, days where we're resting from strength, because actually the the real benefits of strength training come when you're resting. I train a really hard chest session, I go, I rested them for five, six days. In that time, my muscles send their signals everywhere saying, hey, we've had a lot of work done in this gym. If we want to get stronger and be able to deal with that again, I'm gonna need some more protein, I'm gonna need some more muscle, I'm gonna need to be in a better quality position. So then when I go back next week, I can deal with that. And that's how the muscles basically grow. But we need that um recovery. So these people that think that you need to train every single day and you're panicking that you can't train, you're actually sometimes giving yourself a bit more like um diminishing results, yeah, where you're pushing too far. There's a certain thing called junk volume in this game. That means where we've reached the cap of what matters, and then it's like I'm doing more because I think I should do more, and it just becomes junk, junk volume, therefore gives us um less results because you're overworking the body. Three sets of 10, for example, is a good range. If you do five sets of 10, it becomes a point where you're not going to get more out of that set, so now we're just doing junk volume for the sake of it. 45 minutes in the gym is enough, good time, hour, maybe if it's a long session. Plus cardio can be a bit longer, but don't feel like you need to be training every single day. I do weights three times a week. I'm a big lad. Three times a week is what I need. Yeah? And that's just to still build muscle. But I do not train five weight sessions a week. I do three, I do some cardio, I do some recovery. So them rest days. You can do cardio on your rest days, like cardio because it's not as taxing. But then rest days are needed. So when you're panicking, that you're not training, not being to the gym, you want to train your legs again, you want to train, it's not needed. Yeah? You need rest days in there to let your body relax and recover and bring down the stress levels overall. So just a little recap: warming up, mobility. Are we warming up? Get on YouTube, quick mobility, get your joints moving. Think about an oiled machine. It needs to be moved around, you know. We need to get these shoulders moving. Like, can you raise your arms? Can you do all that stuff without your body cricking? Cracking and cricking, whatever the word is. Um, what weight should you use in the gym? I can't tell you that, but what I can tell you is a rep range that you're aiming for. Now, that rep range is for you to be able to pick a weight that it gets difficult enough that you finish in between that rep range. So we're looking at about an eight out of ten difficulty. That is each exercise, each set, and each workout as a whole. As you get later on down that workout, you can get more tired. We're still trying to push to that eight out of ten. We're not just trying to brush it. If we leave the gym, anything less than eight out of ten, it means there's more room, more results to go. Reaching failure is key, but not always essential and not always needed with every single exercise. So you've got to pick the exercises that you can reach failure on. That you go, the risk for failure right now is is so slim for me. Like sit-ups, for example. You can do them to failure, yeah? Because what's the worst that can happen? You fall back and get cramped. Whatever. It is what it is. Things like that, leg raises, like any abs, bank. You can reach failure because the risk is too low, is very low. Big, heavy weight exercises that aren't on machines, not worth it. Cardio, needed for weight loss. Again, not needed, not essential for weight loss, but gives it added bonus, but needs to be post-stream sessions. It can't bring our strength sessions down. Losing weight and being in shape are two different things. If you want to lose weight, you can lose weight very quickly, but you will not keep it. Being in shape takes a little bit longer, a bit more sustainable, but and you keep the results and you look better for it. So when you see these people jabbing, lost loads of weight. I lost 10 pounds in five weeks. Great. See you later. Let me see you next week in that same shape. They won't be there, I promise you. Some of them will be blind. Recovery needed. Rest days needed. Stretching, needed. I know I don't do it, but stretching is needed. It does help your body feel better. It does make this. Some people are walking around looking ripped like this, yeah, because they don't never stretch their body. But actually, what's the worst? What you know, what it's no good looking in shape like this. Being like this, upright, really good flexibility around the body takes off about two kilos. You know, that's two kilos dirty. You don't need to lose towards your goal. Just by bringing your posture back, having more mobility around the body. And that is my chat on training them. So that's gonna be quick, but it was a bit longer than quick.