Articles
Short articles on starting again.
Most fitness advice is about how to begin. These pieces are about the bit after that: what to do once life has interrupted, how to fit training around a normal week, and what counts on a bad day. No transformations, no hype.
One new article a week. If you would rather have the short version in your inbox on a Friday, join the Keep Starting letter.
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The Restart
- The second-day problemOne missed session is not the problem. The story you tell yourself on Tuesday is. What a UCL habit study says about a single miss, and how to keep the next session ordinary.
- The gap between goesAfter a break, your capacity has gone backwards but your standard has not. Why restarting feels harder than starting, and what counts as a return.
Small Still Counts
- Start below your ambitionAmbition is loudest before anything has happened. Choose the smallest amount you can repeat, let the first week teach you something, and raise it once the floor is stable.
- What counts on a bad dayTen minutes is not an hour and nobody needs to pretend otherwise. What the WHO says about some against none, and how to give a bad day a smaller version of the plan.
Fitness for a Full Life
- Does your fitness plan pass the full-life test?Most plans are written on a Sunday, with optimism and a half-empty diary. Test yours against a real month: work, dinners, a weekend away.
- Design your bad week before you need itDeadline week. Travel week. The week three things go wrong by Tuesday. Write four lines now, so a difficult week does not decide the outcome for you.
- Fitness without the overheadSteps, sleep score, macros, streaks. Most of it is decorative. Which numbers actually change what you do tomorrow, and which ones you can delete.
Better Systems, Less Willpower
- Would Wednesday You actually do this?Plans get made by Sunday You and handed to Wednesday You without consultation. One question to ask before you commit to anything, and one thing to remove.
Progress Without Perfection
- You don't have to look fit to be getting fitterThe mirror shows nothing and the scales haven't moved. Meanwhile you carried the box upstairs without stopping. The evidence is arriving where you haven't been looking.