Advice is only useful if it survives your questions. We write programmes slowly, keep the notes in the open, and change the plan when the week in front of you is not the week we imagined.
Principles
Four things we hold to.
Every session ends with a short written note, not a verbal summary that evaporates on the walk to the MRT. If a lift feels wrong, or a slot in the week is fiction, we expect you to say so. The plan is a draft. Pushing back is part of the work, not a lack of commitment.
We would rather rewrite a Tuesday session than watch you skip it for a month and then apologise. Disagreement is information. It tells us what the week can actually hold.
We do not hand over a split routine at the first meeting. The ninety minutes come first, and the first week of training is built from what we saw, not from a template named after a body part. People who already train hard still sit through the same screen. Familiarity with a gym is not the same as a current picture of how you move.
If the assessment says the useful work is walking, sleep, and two short strength sessions, that is what we write. Intensity is earned by tolerance, not by the calendar.
We add weight in increments that look dull on paper. A two-and-a-half kilo change that you can repeat is more useful than a jump that leaves you sore and cautious for ten days. The first eight weeks are for finding the dose, not for a photograph.
This is also how we treat people who are already strong. Stalled numbers are more often a recovery or scheduling problem than a need for a new exercise library.
Loads, repetitions, what was skipped, and a simple readiness score from one to ten sit in the same note. At the eight-week review we read those notes next to the first assessment. Memory is a poor archive. The paper is the record we both use.
You keep a copy. If you later work with a physiotherapist, you can hand them the same pages. We do not keep a private version with different numbers.
Notes
A short list, kept on purpose.
We track completed sessions, working loads and repetitions, a subjective readiness score from one to ten, and brief notes on sleep and travel. Those four items are enough to see whether the plan is being done and whether the week around it is holding.
We do not ask for daily weigh-ins. We do not take before-and-after photographs. We do not use skinfolds as a target in themselves. We do not rank clients against each other or publish a leaderboard. Comparison with last month’s own notes is the only comparison we use.
If you want girth measurements, we can take them, and we write them as numbers rather than as a story about progress. They are optional, and they are never a condition of continuing.
Limits
Where coaching stops.
Sharp or worsening pain, numbness, dizziness, a recent operation, pregnancy, and any condition already being managed by a doctor sit outside a coaching decision. We will not load a movement a clinician has asked you to avoid, and we will not guess our way around a symptom we do not understand.
In those cases we continue only inside the limits your doctor or physiotherapist has agreed. If you want us to, we will write to them with a short summary of what we had planned and wait for their reply before we change it.
The studio does not diagnose. We do not cancel a prescription, a scan, or a course of physiotherapy. If the honest next step is a clinic rather than a session, we will say that in the note and stop there.
Clinic
Shared notes, not mixed roles.
When you already have a clinician, the practical shape is simple. We send a one-page summary of the proposed sessions: lifts, ranges, and anything we intend to leave out. You decide whether that letter goes. We do not contact a clinic behind you.
We keep a written list of movements that are off limits and we check it at the start of each block. If a lift is later cleared, we add it back in writing rather than by habit.
Every four to six weeks we repeat a shorter screen of the same patterns we used in the first assessment. The point is to see whether daily tasks have become easier and whether anything we loaded has become irritable. Those notes can go back to the physiotherapist with you.
Formats
Four ways a week can look.
Best when the lifts still need eyes on them, or when the week is irregular enough that a remote plan goes stale. Most people come weekly at the start and move to fortnightly once the pattern is familiar. The hour includes the work, the next session written down, and a short note on what to do if a day is lost.
The required first meeting for anyone new to the studio. It is a conversation, a movement screen, loaded testing at a sensible level, and a written plan for the first week. Details live on the first assessment page. You do not need to be fit to book it.
A written four-week strength plan, adjustments during the month, and a look at up to three lifts on video. This suits people who already train in a condo gym or while travelling, and who can film a set from the side. We still start with the in-person assessment so the writing is not guesswork.
Two people, one hour, comparable training history. We write one session with individual loads rather than two unrelated programmes in the same room. Weekly or fortnightly works. It is a poor fit if one person is returning from injury and the other wants a hard strength block.
Review
Week eight is a meeting, not a test.
At eight weeks we sit with the original assessment and the session notes. We ask three questions. What has become easier in ordinary life, such as stairs, a suitcase, or a long day at a desk. What still feels awkward. What in the plan you simply did not do.
The third question is the useful one. A lift that never happened is not a character note. It is a scheduling error, and we either move it or drop it. We then choose to continue in the same format, change to remote or pairs, or stop. Stopping after a clean block is a normal end, not a failed programme.
Next
Write a few sentences about what you want to change. We reply within one working day with available times for the ninety-minute first meeting.