30/09/2026
52. Old Enough to Know Better.
It’s my Birthday 🎂 I’m 52 today!🥳
I’ve spent most of my life around sport, training and physical performance. First as a professional sportsman and, for the last decade or so, on the other side of the fence coaching people.
I’ve also spent a ridiculous number of hours training myself, reading, learning, experimenting and, importantly, getting things wrong.
I’ve trained twice a day. Done enormous amounts of volume. Trained harder when I probably needed to train less. I’ve tried fasting, fasted training, different nutritional strategies and pretty much every supplement known to man looking for some tiny additional edge. 🏏
I’ve chased marginal gains while occasionally overlooking the fairly obvious things sitting right in front of me.
Perhaps that’s one advantage of turning 52. You’ve been around long enough to separate some of the noise from the things that actually matter.
So rather than 52 life lessons, because nobody needs that, here are five things I see very differently now.
1. MORE TRAINING DOESN’T NECESSARILY MEAN MORE RESULTS
I’ve made this mistake myself.
There were periods when I thought lack of progress meant I simply wasn’t doing enough. More sessions, more exercises, more sets. I’ve trained twice a day and accumulated huge amounts of volume only to sometimes get absolutely nowhere.
These days I’m much more interested in the minimum effective dose. Not the least you can get away with, but enough quality work to produce the adaptation you’re actually looking for.
Beyond a point, more volume can mean diminishing returns and more fatigue. That’s where junk volume starts creeping in.
I’ve also stopped judging a session by how destroyed somebody is afterwards. Making someone exhausted is easy. Creating the right stimulus, recovering from it and progressing it over time takes considerably more thought and skill.
More isn’t automatically better. Better is better.
2. NUTRITION. I’VE TRIED THE CLEVER STUFF
Fasting. Fasted training. Different meal timings and macronutrient approaches. Sports nutrition strategies and pretty much every legal supplement promising another percentage somewhere.
Some of it has value. None of it replaces the foundations.
For fat loss, energy balance matters. For building or retaining muscle, sufficient protein and resistance training matter. For sporting performance, you need to adequately fuel the work.
But coaching has taught me something else. The perfect nutritional strategy is useless if it doesn’t survive somebody’s actual life.
Work, children, weekends, hunger, alcohol, eating out, preparation, sleep and habits all matter.
After years of looking for clever answers, I increasingly find myself returning to simple ones.
The basics aren’t basic because they’re unimportant. They’re basic because everything else sits on top of them.
3. I VALUE MUSCLE MORE AT 52 THAN I DID AT 22
I’ve spent years trying to build muscle and I’m still trying now.
When I was younger, muscle was largely about sport, performance and appearance. I still care about all three. I like looking like I train and I’m not going to pretend otherwise.
But I now value muscle and strength for something else. Physical reserve.
I want strong legs, a strong back and enough capacity that climbing stairs, carrying luggage, playing sport or getting off the floor sit nowhere near the ceiling of what my body can manage.
Resistance training also provides an important stimulus for muscle and bone as we age.
It’s one reason I smile when women tell me they’re worried that strength training will suddenly make them bulky.
I’ve been deliberately trying to build muscle for years. Trust me, it doesn’t arrive that easily.
4. INJURY ISN’T ALWAYS A REASON TO STOP
My thinking around injury has changed enormously.
You cannot make somebody injury proof, and I don’t think the answer is trying to avoid every movement or load that might potentially cause a problem.
I think much more about building capacity.
What can you currently tolerate? Can we change the load, range, speed or exercise and find an appropriate starting point? Then can we gradually build from there?
Sometimes we push. Sometimes we regress. Sometimes we work around something. And sometimes we need input from the appropriate specialist.
But there’s another part of this conversation that isn’t said enough.
You have to give the process time to work.
You can’t spend years becoming weaker or less conditioned, train for two weeks and expect everything to be fixed. Strength takes time. Muscle takes time. Tendons adapt over time. Habits and confidence take time.
The first setback doesn’t automatically mean the process has failed.
I’ve increasingly realised that consistency isn’t just motivational fluff. It’s part of the prescription.
There is no programme clever enough to compensate for continually stopping and starting. At some point, you have to be true to the goal you said you wanted.
My job is to make the process appropriate, progressive and individual.
But I can’t do the adaptation for you.
5. LONGEVITY MEANS SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT TO ME NOW
At 22, I wasn’t training for my seventies.
At 52, I’d be foolish not to think about them.
Although, according to my body composition tracking, my “metabolic age” is currently 36. A metric I’m more than happy to accept without asking too many difficult scientific questions.
I’ll take the win. 🤣😎
Back in the real world, though, I’m not trying to train like a 25 year old or pretend ageing isn’t happening.
I’m trying to influence how I age.
I want muscle. Strength. Cardiovascular fitness. Power. Balance, coordination and some athleticism. I want joints accustomed to movement and tissues accustomed to being loaded.
I’d quite like to still run, jump, rotate, carry things and play sport for as long as my body allows me to.
And I’d like as much of that physical capacity as possible still available to me at 62, 72 and beyond.
That’s longevity to me.
Not simply being alive for longer. Being capable for longer.
Age should absolutely influence how we train. Recovery changes. Injuries accumulate. Priorities change.
But adjusting training is very different from surrendering physical capability.
Age should inform the prescription. It shouldn’t become the diagnosis.
Perhaps the biggest lesson at 52, though, is being comfortable changing my mind.
I’ve changed my thoughts on training volume, nutrition, mobility, injury, exercise selection, recovery and performance. I’ll undoubtedly change some of them again.
The longer I coach, the less interested I am in proving I was right and the more interested I am in finding out whether there’s a better way.
After decades of chasing marginal gains, I’ve found myself returning to remarkably uncomplicated things.
Train well. Do enough, but don’t assume more is better. Eat appropriately for your goal. Get enough protein. Recover. Build muscle. Maintain your cardiovascular fitness. Keep some athleticism. ✅
Then do those things for long enough to actually give them a chance to work.
So, 52 today.
Still trying to build muscle. Still trying to get stronger. Still coaching. Still learning. Still changing my mind.
Getting older is unavoidable.
I’m just not convinced we need to practise getting weaker. ✌🏼
