Hector McFadyen Coaching

Get strong!!

There’s loads of reasons to get strong but a big one for me is it helps almost every goal.

Fat loss - get strong
Muscle building - get strong
Getting stronger - who knew 🤷‍♂️

Emily’s only specific goal was to get strong at a few lifts she enjoys doing.

We put them into a structured plan.

The only other thing we changed was protein intake.

By doing this Emily’s achieved her goals and is now a lot stronger. But she’s also built some muscle and reduced body fat as a byproduct.

All three of the big goals achieved, solely focussing on getting stronger.

Most importantly though, massive shout out to Emily for her consistent hard work!!

Looking forward to hitting more PBs 💪

Tuesday Tip: Ask for help!!

Not the most exciting post I know, but definitely important!!

Asking for help in the gym can:

- reduce injury risk

- improve form

- add more exercises to your repertoire

- help get more out of an exercise

- speed up your workouts (someone may know an alternative exercise if you’re waiting for a bit of kit)

- allow you to work around issues you might have ie injuries

Takeaway point there’s no downside to asking for help!!

Happy New Year 🥳

Hope you all had a great one!

If you’ve taken time off the gym or are starting fresh it’s important to ease into it.

- Set your goals

- Learn and practice your movements

- Warm up properly

- But vitally important, enjoy it!!!

This is .

Over 12 weeks jody:
- lifted progressively heavier weights

- cut down processed foods

- increased protein and veggies

- consistently improved little and often

- encouraged everyone around her (including me)

It’s paid off!

Be like Jody!

Friendly reminder that meal times and what you “can and can’t” eat at certain times of the day are completely arbitrary.

What and when you eat should be dictated by:
- your goal
- your preference
- your schedule
Not sure what’s expected or “normal”!
In that spirit I’m going to enjoy this bowl of porridge for lunch at 4 in the afternoon 😋

Small pauses in sets are ok, long breaks aren’t.

Pausing in a set to get air for a couple of seconds when needed is absolutely fine and with squats its probably mandatory.

But having a break mid-set for a chat or because it got a bit challenging defeats the point.

By doing this you allow the muscle to recover so it doesn’t come close to failure (which is needed for improved size and strength gains).

Instead the weight feels lighter again and you end up doing a couple of ineffective mini sets

Focus on the exercise you’re doing, anything else is after.

(Disclaimer; this doesn’t include advanced intensity techniques such as cluster sets)

If you’ve ever had to take time off training due to, persistent injuries, psychological and/or physical fatigue then it’s possible you’ve reached the point of

Basically if you’re recovery can’t keep up with your training you’ll burn out.

Ironically I’m writing this having had to take a deload week to recover due to trying to find out how much I can recover from.

The silver lining is it’s a lesson,.

If you’ve ever felt overtrained then check out my next post on a few things you can do to avoid it (because it fu***ng sucks!!!) or get in touch and we can start you on a structured programme that takes recovery into account!!

When’s the right time to change exercises? 🧐

Now that gyms have been open for nearly 5 weeks most standard workout programmes will have finished or be close to finishing. So the question for the next programme is, what exercises should you be changing?

For most of us who started a whole new programme when the gyms opened, the answer is as few exercise changes as possible.

Why? To get the most out of an exercise you need to keep practising form; progressing intensity and establishing a better mental connection to the muscles working.

So when do you change the exercise?
- You’ve hit a plateau. If the weight used hasn’t increased or even decreased that’s a good indicator to swap it out.
- It causes pain. No exercise should cause pain (apart from the burning pain), if it does, get rid of it.
- You genuinely hate it. If there is a certain exercise you cannot stand and you can never get to the point of pushing it then, unless it serves a purpose no other exercise can, then change it.

“But you need to !!” NOPE!! If you’re constantly changing exercises how can you tell if you’ve progressed?

If you want more information on how and when to change exercises then send me a DM and we can get you a progressive programme that gets the most out of every exercise!! 💪