Coach Glen Oliver

I wrote something longer and more honest than an Instagram post allows.
No funnel. No pressure.
Just clarity.
If it’s for you, you’ll know.
Click the link in my bio to read it.
Onwards

This time of year often brings with it the inevitable all or nothing approach to achieving your goals.

The rigid diet where you demonise certain foods.
The training plan where you go all in.
The morning routine that takes 3 hours to complete.

In my 13 years of coaching I have never seen this approach work, LONG TERM.

Sure you can leverage willpower, discipline and grit to apply your efforts to the commitment in the short term. And maybe because of this you achieve the goal.

But I would offer is the intention with the goal to complete it then just revert back to where you were before? Or do you want to achieve the goal and never have to achieve that same goal again?

I get it. The urgency and / or pain you feel when you start is a powerful driver to do things that get you to where you want as fast as possible. That makes sense.

However, if what you are doing to achieve the goal is not sustainable within your life for the rest of your life let’s call it what it is: a band aid or a quick fix.

You may not want to hear the truth but this is it: Long term change requires a commitment to small consistent compounding actions that over time change how you show up for yourself both externally and internally in how you view yourself and the world around you.

That is what long term lifestyle change is.

Anything else that is advertised or marketed is not that. It is there to leverage your pain and urgency that provides a solution that has no interest in what happens when the thing ends. Those selling this are not coaches, they are the modern version of the snake oil salesman.

Real change requires awareness, patience, and the commitment to show up for yourself every day a little bit better than the day before.

Latest thoughts. Link in the bio!

So much of life for me at this point is an ongoing battle with the belief that my value in the world is tied to what I produce, how hard I work, and how much financial security I can build.

I’m not sh****ng on those things. They matter.
They just aren’t everything.

The lens I try to look through now is this:
When I get to the end of my days, which decisions will I regret, and which ones will I be able to sit with in peace?

From that place, it’s become clear that the relentless pursuit of more recognition and more money can quietly pull me away from what actually matters most (at least to me).

My health, as I continue to age, something we all take for granted until it’s gone.

My remaining years. We’re all on a countdown timer, and none of us knows how much time is left.

My presence with my daughter. The moments I get to share with her as she grows and changes at a pace that still catches me off guard.

I can’t imagine a future version of me wishing I’d worked more, but I can easily imagine regretting not being there enough.

This time of year has a funny way of pulling us toward the all-in approach.

New training plan. New diet. New rules. New you.

And to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with wanting change. In fact, this can be a powerful moment to begin.

The thing worth questioning isn’t whether you start…

It’s how you start.

Too often we make changes that are so big they rely almost entirely on willpower and discipline to sustain them. The problem? Both are finite resources. They work… until life does what life always does.

We all live inside a comfort zone. Even when we don’t love it, it’s familiar.

Step too far outside of it and it’s like a bungee cord pulling you back the moment stress, fatigue, or chaos shows up.

That’s why the compounding effect of small, repeatable actions matters so much.

If you’re currently doing nothing, jumping straight to five 60-minute workouts a week isn’t motivation, it’s a setup.

A better place to start might be 2–3 twenty-minute sessions per week.

It won’t feel as exciting.
It won’t feel “all in.”

But if you can stick to it when life gets messy, it wins.

A simple litmus test:
“With everything life throws at me, am I confident I can follow through on this 90% of the time?”

If the answer is no, scale it back.

This may not be the sexy approach.

But lasting change isn’t built on willpower.

It’s built by doing something long enough that it becomes who you are — not something you have to force.

First time doing one of these in a long while. I hope it lands for a few of you. Click the link in my bio to have a read.

I haven’t posted much here for a while.

Not because I stopped caring about health and training — but because I’ve been rethinking how I want to help people.

Over the last few years, I’ve worked with a lot of men in their 40s and 50s who don’t recognise their bodies anymore. I’ve been fortunate enough to get a ton of reps in helping guys a similar age to myself.

They’re not lazy. They’re not unmotivated.
They’re busy, capable, and used to being good at things.

What’s changed is that the strategies they used in their 20s and 30s don’t work the same way anymore.

Pushing harder leads to pain.
Eating less leads to burnout.
And most advice online feels extreme or unrealistic.

Lately, my focus has been on something simpler and more sustainable:
helping men train smarter, feel stronger, and build health that actually fits real life.

I’ll be sharing more about strength, nutrition, recovery, and what it really takes to stay capable as you get older — without the noise.

If that sounds useful, you’re in the right place.

So many positive behaviours and habits are pre-framed with the word ‘should.’

I should work out to achieve XYZ goal.
I should eat better to achieve XYZ goal.
I should meditate to reduce my stress.
I should read to expand my knowledge.

How about with all of these things we consider that these are not obligatory things we need to pile into our life because without them we feel somewhat less than.

Instead we consider that we ‘can’ and from that place make the choice from an entirely different place.

‘Should’ is from the outside, ‘can’ I believe is from within.

“Workout not because you should because you can, and it is for you” one of my old mentors James Fitzgerald said. And this is that in its essence.

Workout because you can, because it is for you and to do so will connect you more deeply with your body and what it is capable of.
Eat better because you can, and it will nourish your body helping you to feel better in every possible way.
Meditate because you can, and to learn to sit with and recognise the incessant chatter of your mind will improve the quality of your life in every possible way.
Read because you can, and to do so will again enrich the quality of your life in every possible way as you expand your understanding of yourself and the world you find yourself in.

With Goals season upon us maybe consider this as an antidote to not starting yet another workout plan you fail, another diet you cannot sustain, or any other practice or habit you want to start simply because you feel like you ‘should.’

Latest substack. Check the link to read some thoughts on this.

Yeah I didn’t think this would happen either. Link in bio on some thoughts returning to this.

Thoughts, words. Read it by clicking the link in my bio. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮