Sam Bacon Personal Training

First time competing in anything in over a decade and it was a steep learning curve.

Not just about Hyrox, but about myself!

Doing mixed doubles, it was unfamiliar for me to train with someone else and have to strategise etc.

Jo has been absolutely class and very proud of our time, despite me fu***ng it up at the end!

Turns out if I make a mistake, I properly dig into myself 🤣 (I made us do an extra lap on the last run, adding 2-3 minutes to our time 🤬).

It confirmed for me that performance is certainly more my bag rather than aesthetics.

Over the next few years, I’m planning to put my expertise into practice a lot more with my own training.

As many coaches can probably empathise with, I often put myself to the bottom of the pile and prioritise work/clients.

Having trained for so long and in so many different ways, sometimes you can lose your way. But I’ve certainly found the fire for training again and plan on making the most of it!

I will be back to do another Hyrox at some point, but for now than plan is to get strong af.

It’s time to abandon the all or nothing mindset.

It’s not about one ‘or’ the other.

It’s about one ‘AND’ the other!

Not black and white, but grey.

The magic happens not in the dichotomous or the mutually exclusive, but in the harmonious and coexistent.

Without our health we cannot be happy.

Without our happiness, we cannot be truly healthy.

“The capacity to learn is a gift; the ability to learn is a skill; the willingness to learn is a choice.”

Not having Sarah around at work this week has been strange!

But it was to be expected having been such a big part of Pioneer for the last 6 years.

Despite missing her presence on the gym floor, I’m so happy she’s moved on to pursue something that she’s passionate about and excited for.

It takes courage to step outside of your comfort zone and try something new.

Change is a necessary part of growth! Go after what makes you feel inspired and provides you with that sense of fulfilment.

“Try and fail, but never fail to try”

Now to spend just 12 hours a day together rather than 24!

Knowing your terminology in this profession can take you a long way in improving your understanding and communication of anatomy and movement.
 
Be it with a colleague or client. The language you use will obviously differ, but the message remains the same.
 
If you truly understand something, likelihood is you can explain it in simple terms.
 
This is the start of a “Gym Jargon” series of posts I’ll be doing to help you develop your coach vocabulary.
 
Gym Jargon: Proximal.
 
Proximal, in essence means closer to the centre. It’s counterpart, distal, means further away from the centre.
 
Why might this bear some importance?
 
You might use it when considering different approaches when attempting to solve a problem.
 
For example, a client has knee pain and you want to try and figure out as much as you can as to why before you consider referring out.
 
This demonstrates you know your stuff to the client and allows you to communicate your findings effectively to a physio.
 
Through various subjective and objective assessments and filtering the information through your expertise and clinical reasoning, you identify the knee could be taking on extra loading due to what’s happening at the hip or foot and ankle.
 
Hip = Above / Closer to the centre of the body = Proximal to the knee.
 
Foot & Ankle = Below / further away from the centre of the body = Distal to the knee.
 
What’s it going to be?
 
Top – Down, Bottom – Up or a bit of both!?

Success, by definition, is “the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.”
 
You don’t have to subscribe to what society deems as being successful.
 
Likelihood is we’d all be a lot happier if we cared less about social status and the materialistic / superficial things in life and focused on what truly matters to us as individuals.
 
Identify your values.
 
Become curious and explore the different ways in which you can grow as a person.
 
Reflect on what’s truly meaningful to you.
 
Pursue what makes you happy.
 
Find whatever provides you will fulfilment.
 
Discover what success means for you.

“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery” - Mark Van Doren.

If nutrition ever gets a bit confusing, I find it helps to bring it right back down to a basic distinction between food quality and quantity.

Food Quality – The nutrient density of a given good (What you eat).

Food Quantity – The amount you consume (How much).

Let me try to provide some clarity via context.

Some people live at extreme ends of a continuum between the two.

Those who believe the IIFYM (If it fits your macros) idea that, as long as you quantify the amount of calories, protein, fats and carbs you eat, then WHAT you eat doesn’t matter at all. It’s just about numbers.

Although it is possible to get very lean by eating donuts and protein shakes, you’re likely to feel and function like absolute dog s**t and you may hinder your health.

On the other hand, we have those who subscribe to the notion of “clean” eating. That is, as long as you eat “healthy” food, it doesn’t matter how much of it you eat.

Although your body will thank you for the nourishment, it’s very possible to over or under consume healthy food.

This can also be a slippery slope towards orthorexic tendencies (an unhealthy obsession with only eating “clean”, “pure”, “natural” foods).

So, the reality of it is, both ideologies are flawed.

For optimal results, it makes sense to focus on both quality and quantity.

However, this can be challenging from an adherence stand point. That’s a lot to try and change at once!

I would suggest that if your goal is predominantly body composition based, then I’d perhaps lean towards quantifying your intake initially, then focus on improving the quality over time.

If your goal is more health focused, you might benefit from improving the quality of the foods you eat first, then worry about how much of it you eat relative to energy requirements.

Short answer? No.

How I try to communicate this to clients is as follows…

If you always feel sore, you’re probably doing too much.

If you never feel sore, you might not be doing enough.

You should probably feel sore sometimes.

It can serve as an occasional reminder that you’re likely training hard enough to elicit an adaptation.

Soreness suggests you have exceeded the habitual level of stress your body is accustomed to, but it certainly isn’t something you should strive for and its absence is not indicative of not making progress.

Your body will accommodate to the training load placed upon it over time and condition itself to not have such a dramatic response.

Short term, this comes in the form of what’s known as the repeat bout effect. That is, if you perform the same session two weeks in a row, you’ll experience much less soreness the second time as the stress placed on the body is no longer novel.

The degree of soreness does not equate to the amount of benefit. Aiming to get as sore as possible is actually very counterproductive as you won’t be able to recover and therefore the frequency at which you can train will decrease.

We want stimulation, not annihilation.

“Don’t worry, lifting weights won’t make you too bulky”

This is something you hear a lot in the fitness industry which is perpetuating this societal ideal that for women, slimmer is ALWAYS better.

The assumption that women don’t or shouldn’t want to be bigger needs to die.

Sure, if someone has expressed that they specifically don’t want to get bigger, educating them and communicating how it won’t happen accidentally is absolutely fine.

You can certainly do plenty of resistance training and get stronger and leaner without gaining much muscle mass. The difference is predominantly a nutrition consideration.

I get it, as a PT you might be talking to a particular target market that this applies to and your business caters for, but you might also be alienating other potential clients with different goals who you’d also like to work with.

WTF is “too bulky” anyway? Who’s deciding that? Surely, it’s just a subjective preference.

For me, it’s none of my business. You tell me what you want to achieve and I’ll help you do so whilst providing the necessary context and education.

We need to remove the judgement, challenge our biases and stop projecting our own beliefs onto our prospective clients.

When it comes to protein, it can get a little confusing as to what’s most important.

Before you worry about the details, try to tick off the big bang for your buck things first.

📊Total Daily Intake

Your total daily intake takes precedent over anything else.

Now, let’s get one thing straight. There is a big difference between the minimum amount of protein that is suggested for your RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) in order to survive and function vs what’s optimal for increasing muscle mass.

The RDA is a modest 0.8g/kg/day. If you’re doing a lot of resistance training with the goal of hypertrophy and you want to maximally support this process via nutrition, you want to aim for more like 2g/kg/day.

So, for example, if you weigh 80kg, your target would be 160g protein. If this is challenging, just slowly increase your intake from where you are now.

🥩Amino Acid Profile

The quality of the protein you consume is also vital, but perhaps of secondary importance relative to the quantity.

Most foods contain some degree of essential and non-essential amino acids. Good quality sources contain almost all 20 and rank high in term of bioavailability (how easy it is for your body to digest, absorb and utilise nutrients).

Specifically, it’s thought that leucine is particularly important to help promote protein synthesis.

Examples of such sources are predominantly animal based, so poultry, eggs, red meat, fish, whey etc. It is possible to combined different plant-based options, however, you will need to eat a lot more of these sources to meet the same values.

⏰Nutrient Timing

When you’re consistently hitting your total daily intake of protein, it makes sense to spread out the doses you consume throughout the day.

This is to ensure your body has the resources it needs, readily available.

For me, this is more of a logistical consideration than a technical one.

How many times can you realistically eat?

What are your preferences around meal frequency?

We can take that 160g target and divide it by the following:

8 x 20g
4 x 40g
2 x 80g

Which one of these looks more appealing to you? I’d personally go for 4 x 40g.

Client Testimonial: Alex.

"Around a year ago I decided that I would bite the bullet and return to PT as I’d completely fallen out of a gym routine and trying to balance work and being consistent was something I had been struggling with.

I’ve had PT’s in the past but my experience at Pioneer and especially with Sam has been second to none. Over the course of the last year, I managed to get into the best shape of my life and learnt so much. I also gained so much more self confidence in and out of the gym.

Sam is by far the best PT I have ever had. It isn’t just about the workouts in the gym, he puts a real emphasis on helping you with your lifestyle outside of the gym.

Overall, his approach is more about making sustainable change rather than just being pushed to the absolute limit for an hour as I’ve experienced with other trainers. I would look nowhere else for a PT.

Having taken a step back from PT for a while due to changes I have going on at the minute, Sam provided me with a plan to follow in my own gym and everything I learnt I have taken away with me and still apply it now.

Anyone considering joining should really just go for it! I cannot thank Pioneer and Sam enough."