8 hours of sleep. Every night. No if buts or maybes.

Your muscles only grow when they are resting and recovering. During your training you put stress and tension on the muscles, and for them to get bigger and stronger, they need time to recover and rest.

Sleeping is the single greatest version of rest you can provide your body, it’s where your body has nothing else to do but recover. Quality sleep is essential for recovery, hormones, appetite and much much more. Most people will seem to do anything to get better results but sleep more.

It’s quite funny really that I’ve had someone ask me how to have more energy to train, they said they’re taking cold showers before hand, having caffeine, having carbs but don’t seem to be able to have a good lift, I asked them how much sleep they’re getting and they said, ‘uhh, about 6 hours’ I told them to get 8 hours of sleep every single night without fail and they’d feel amazing, so do you know what they did? Nothing, and then when I spoke to them next they had stopped training because they were ‘too tired’ to do it after work. Just provide yourself with 8 hours a sleep per night, I can promise you will get better results.

If you are bulking you must hit your surplus every single day, if you are not consistent and miss days you will not maximise your potential and can often lead to people giving up because they don’t see the progress they want, well of course you’re not seeing the progress you want, you’re not doing what you should. Do not be lazy with your meals.

It’s very easy to skip a few calories and fall short, but if this happens more than once in a blue moon, you’re leaving a lot on the table.

If you are trying to lose weight, don’t expect it to happen overnight and do not expect to lose weight if you do not track EVERYTHING, or at least know EXACTLY what you’re eating.

Snacks or little things like oils and butter get left out far too often and then usually lead to stopping your weight loss, if you’re doing this, do not complain when you fall short of your goals.

And don’t just have a cheat day every week where you don’t count calories because I’ll bet you you’re probably eating the deficit of the week in that one day. Do not expect to lose weight if you train hard and eat well in the week just to drink the weeks deficit in alcohol every single weekend.

Stay consistent with your goals, be realistic, you will get there.

Progressive overload is the only way, I’ll repeat that, THE ONLY WAY your muscles will ever get stronger or bigger.

As your training progresses your body will adapt. These adaptations mean at some point, whatever you are currently doing will only maintain your state and will not progress you further. If you lift a 60kg bench press for 10 reps for a whole year solid, with the same form, your chest will not grow because it has not been introduced to a stimulus which DEMANDS it to grow.

It’s simple supply and demand, the higher the demand of the circumstance the more supply your body must give. Try to increase your reps every session, if you got 60 x 10 last session go for 60 x 11, go into every session thinking, I have to train harder than last time. I have to progress. Progressive overload doesn’t have to just be weight or reps however, it can be your form. If you use the same weight or even less, but you are controlling it properly, you’re adding more tension on the muscle and you’re probably still progressing.

When you are losing body fat, your calorie deficit (the difference in calories in comparison to calories out, a purposeful tip of the scale to expend more calories than consumed), will also most likely need to increase over time as your body adapts.

Watch the scale, take photos and measurements, if you begin to plateau, increase the deficit slightly and slowly. As you get lighter, you require less calories to function.

The 4 horsemen of non negotiables are just train hard, sleep well, progressively overload and hit your macros.

Intensity can be misinterpreted sometimes as to what it truly means.

Train till failure & go through the whole range of motion with integrity. There’s not much more to it. Sets should be hard. You should almost dread your next set, otherwise you’re not training hard enough.

If you do a set and wait 30 seconds and you can do over 50% of the reps of the first set, you’re not training hard enough. Discipline your intensity.