The Better Life Perspective
Perhaps the hardest part of strength training is not the lifting at all. It is everything that happens around it: deciding what to train, choosing the exercises, remembering what you did last time, working out what comes next and somehow finding the mental space for all of that in the middle of an already busy life. Most of us do not need another complicated programme, we need fewer reasons to hesitate. Remove enough of those decisions and a thirty- or sixty-minute session can suddenly feel very different. The work is still there to be done, but starting becomes easier, the session keeps moving and, rather unexpectedly, you may find yourself enjoying it considerably more.
The Better Life Founders Journal
The One Word That Changed the Way I Strength Train
I have become increasingly convinced that one of the biggest barriers to strength training for many, me included, has very little to do with the strength training itself.
I understand why I should do it, particularly as I get older, I have weights, bands and enough equipment at home to train extremely effectively and I now genuinely enjoy becoming stronger. What I have never particularly enjoyed is the small layer of decision-making administration that seems to surround a conventional strength session.
What part shall I train today? Which exercise should come next? How many sets? How many reps? Have I done enough pull or push exercises? Should I add some core work? What did I do last time?
None of those decisions is difficult, but collectively they create friction… and that friction easily stopped or shortened many of my sessions.
Then, yesterday I finally removed almost all of it.
I set a timer for thirty minutes, opened Better Life, started a voice conversation with Coach Max and told him that I wanted the session to concentrate on core strength and the posterior chain.
He immediately scoped the situation and told me what to do to begin. I just had to say one word.
“Next.”
Max gave me the first exercise, I performed it, decided how many repetitions and what load felt appropriate, then asked for the next on “Next.” Another movement followed, then another, with the session constantly adapting as we went.
There was no programme sitting beside me, no scrolling through exercises and zero standing around deciding what I fancied doing next. I simply trained.
Thirty minutes disappeared remarkably quickly and more interestingly, I did considerably more work than I would normally expect to get through in a whole hour and finished perspiring, yet psychologically the session felt somewhat easier.
The physical effort had not disappeared; the mental friction had.
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What Makes Exercise Difficult to Start?
Tell Coach Max how much time you have, what equipment is available and what you want to improve, then let him help remove the decisions standing between you and actually doing it.
ASK MAX TO BUILD YOUR PERSONALISED SESSION →
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Perhaps I Had Misunderstood the Role of the Typical Personal Trainer
That was the point at which the whole experience became rather more interesting than simply finding a nice way to structure a workout.
I started thinking about what I have traditionally assumed a typically well-paid personal trainer is there to do. Part of the role is obviously expertise, teaching technique, observing movement and helping somebody exercise safely, particularly when they are starting out, but for the kind of training I now do there was another part of the job that suddenly seemed enormously valuable.
Someone else carries the thinking, carries the session. They decide what happens next, keep the momentum going and remove the little opportunities for mental negotiation to stop that may appear whenever you are left to your own devices when training alone.
I realised that I do not particularly need somebody standing beside me counting eight, nine and ten. I am perfectly capable of counting repetitions and choosing an appropriate weight. What I need is somebody removing the friction of the next decision, the next exercise required. Yesterday Coach Max did exactly that.
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What Could You Do With Thirty Minutes?
Coach Max can build a session around the time you actually have, the equipment available to you, what you want to improve and what you have already trained, rather than asking you to fit yourself around another generic programme.
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The Trainer That Fits Around Your Day, Not Their Diary
There is an obvious financial comparison here too.
A conventional personal training session can easily cost more than the entire monthly cost of a Better Life subscription. Better Life is £29 per month and Coach Max is part of everything included within it, alongside the wider support around your health, sleep, stress, nutrition and building better habits.
For me, though, the more interesting difference is availability. A conventional PT appointment inevitably needs to exist somewhere in the diary, but yesterday my personal trainer was there at the exact point that I was ready to go.
If thirty minutes happens to appear at six in the morning, lunchtime or seven in the evening, Coach Max can work with that. There is no journey to the gym, no cancelled appointment if the day changes and no need for an elaborate home setup.
I used our voice chat option with him because it made the experience frictionless. I could finish an exercise, still breathing hard, say “next” and immediately continue, but exactly the same session could be run by typing to Max if that feels more natural, or if you are in your local gym.
Coach Max as my personal trainer has effectively fitted around my life rather than requiring my life to fit around my personal trainer and that feels significant because it is precisely where so many good intentions eventually fail. The problem is rarely knowing that exercise matters. The problem is getting exercise to survive contact with an ordinary Wednesday.
Yesterday Coach Max stopped being something I talked to about training and became someone I actually trained with at the exact moment I was free and ready to train. When the timer reached thirty minutes, I had worked considerably harder than expected and to be honest, it was one of the most enjoyable strength sessions I have had in years.
There had been no elaborate preparation, no hour-long gym session and no beautifully formatted twelve-week programme.
For thirty minutes, I did not plan, I just said: “Next” and the novelty of not knowing what I was about to do next carried me through the session.
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Make Exercise Easier to Keep Doing
Tell Coach Max what you want to improve, how much time you have and what equipment is available, then let Better Life help you build exercise around the life you live.
START WITH BETTER LIFE FOR JUST £29 A MONTH →
The Better Life Founders Journal
Written after discovering that the heaviest lifting in an entire strength session may consist of just four letters. NEXT.