**This is a guest blog written by my good friend Tom Bainbridge of the BTN.Academy** It's often said that those who are struggling to initiate a fat loss attempt, or those who find themselves unable to last more than a couple days before re-downloading the Just Eat app are somehow defective. The typical rhetoric online can probably be simmered down to the phrase “If you want to lose fat then create a calorie deficit, it's not hard” and of course from a technical perspective that's correct. In fact, that's the only thing that would ever work - but that's not really the point and illustratin...

If you are serious about your sport you have to get serious about your diet, not just counting Calories to keep the fat off but understanding the role of each macronutrient and how they benefit your performance, recovery and health.  When it comes to sports nutrition the evidence is clear that carbohydrates are god (1). The ISSN recommend 3-5g/kg of body weight for moderately active exercises and 5-8 g/kg for elite level athletes (2) and, in some cases even higher (1,2). Although there is some sparse evidence to imply that a high fat low carb (HFLC) diet may benefit ultra-endurance athletes...

Whether you are sedentary for most of the day or a highly active person it is possible to develop back pain. If your pain isn't the result of a specific injury but is the kind of pain your doctor may term "non-specific" then you need corrective exercise. A corrective exercise is one that helps to re-balance the body and reduce compensatory movements. By re-balance I mean strength imbalances, certain muscle groups may be weaker or less sensitised and therefore need to be trained more specifically to reduce compensation and improve recruitment patterning. That is where corrective exercise co...

Kettlebell training is quite unique compared with other forms of resistance training, Olympic Lifting probably being the closest in terms of complexity of movement. It’s the technical nature of the lifts that really motivates me, because I'm a bit of a movement geek. Unlike with more conventional weight training you have to develop a different mindset with kettlebell training, that's not to say that conventional weight training isn't good because it is, it's just different. Rather than thinking of each lift as a means to an end to building strength or size in a certain muscle group, you h...

OK, you’re not an idiot not as much as me anyway. But, I want to explain a really simple template for programming your workouts. It’s super easy to over complicate these things, so this blog is going to be a basic step by step guide on how to put together your own training plans, why you should program it that way and also how a trainer can involve their clients in the process. SMART Goals First off, you need to understand your goals. I mean, if you want to enter a bodybuilding competition and you’re running 20k per day you’re going to look shit on stage aren’t you? So, when it comes to d...