The fitness industry has a problem with food. Specifically, it has convinced an entire generation that eating less is always better, that maintaining a lean physique year-round is optimal, and that you can build meaningful muscle while consuming at maintenance calories. This is wrong. Not opinion-wrong. Research-wrong. If you want to get strong, you have to eat enough to support the process. A moderate caloric surplus builds muscle and supports recovery from the training need

The fitness industry treats intensity and volume as equal variables you can trade off against each other. Do less weight with more sets. Do more weight with fewer sets. Six of one, half dozen of the other. This is wrong. Intensity and volume don't sit on the same level. Intensity is the gatekeeper. Volume only matters after you've paid the entry fee. The Threshold That Changes Everything There's a minimum level of mechanical tension required to trigger muscle growth. Below th

Short-term programmes exploit your desire for something fresh and exciting.

Week in and week out, members file into studios, dutifully find their spot, follow the instructor’s cues, and sweat, grunt, and groan for 60 minutes. They are consistent. They are dedicated. They are, by any visible metric, working hard. And yet, months or even years later, they confess the same disheartening truth over the hum of the treadmills "I go to five classes a week, but I don't look any different" or the familiar, confused refrain, "That class never, ever gets easier

Meaningful progressive overload becomes an impossibility when your baseline is constantly reset with a barrage of new exercises. Furthermore, mastery of fundamental movement patterns remains elusive if you're perpetually stuck in the initial, neurologically demanding learning phase of each new whim