http://www.universal-performance.com/

Coach Nicholas Weir, 105 Hoepner Rd, Bundamba (2026)

03/09/2026

One thing you quickly realise when training somewhere new is that you’re probably not going to have access to exactly the same equipment you use back home.

Yesterday’s leg and biceps session here in Koh Samui was a good example.

Pretty much everything I used was from Bench Fitness Equipment a Thai equipment manufacturer and some of their pieces genuinely surprised me (in a good way).

The seated and lying hamstring curls felt incredible. I’d comfortably put both above the Hammer Strength and Life Fitness versions I’m used to.

The plate loaded unilateral leg extension was definitely a different experience, though. I’ll leave it at that 😂

For my squat movement, I’d normally use the Cybex hack squat. They didn’t have one here and I wasn’t a fan of the hack they did have, so I substituted it for the Bench Fitness pendulum.

That thing was no joke.

Three plates had me fighting for six reps. Very humbling 😂

I’d rate it significantly heavier than the Watson pendulum squat.

A few other substitutions were needed throughout the session, but that’s part of training while travelling.

The important thing isn’t finding an exact replica of every exercise you normally perform. It’s matching the movement pattern as closely as possible, finding something that loads the intended musculature well and maintaining the same relative intensity and ex*****on standard.

Different equipment means the absolute load might change considerably.

The standard of training doesn’t have to.

Coaching ➡️ NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪

Or

www.universalperformancecoaching.com/coaching-enquiries

The Original GymPin STATUE
DRIVEN NUTRITION STATUE
Medibolic - Health Supplements STATUE
International Protein Official STATUE

31/08/2026

“You can’t grow on TRT…”

September 2025 ~97kg vs August 2026 ~107kg.

My longest standing client (me).

The past 11 months was spent grafting on 150mg testosterone per week. No additional adjuncts or escalation of mg’s when progress slowed; just dr. prescribed TRT and another 10kg of body mass added during the process.

Obviously I am not claiming I have added 10kg of pure contractile tissue here; that would be fu***ng asinine, nor am I claiming some wasn’t regaining muscle I had lost on the past due to downsizing back when I was ‘assisted’ but the comparison does ‘make a point’ I think many NEED to hear.

Based on my observation as a coach over the past decade, most athletes become ABSOLUTELY pathetic when they come ‘off cycle.’

Training standards drop, nutrition goes to s**t, sleep gets worse, stress management goes out the window and suddenly every mediocre excuse under the sun comes out…

These are the same people who convince themselves the reason they are not progressing is because they need another 500mg of drugs as opposed to accepting that they are usually leaving an enormous amount of progress on the table via s**tty ex*****on of the big rocks.

If your training is not high in effort or standardised in ex*****on, if your nutrition changes depending on how you feel that day, or your sleep hygiene and digestion are compromised or if life outside of the gym is a complete stress fest, then your androgen dose is probably not EVEN CLOSE to being the rate limiting factor.

Training, nutrition, sleep, stress management and digestive health are boring because you cannot buy them in a vial and inject them…they require you to ACTUALLY do something.

That is also why people would rather talk about drugs.

Drugs work, obviously. Nobody with more than two brain cells to rub together is arguing otherwise, BUT there is a massive difference between using pharmacology to augment an already calibrated environment and using it to compensate for the fact you are fu***ng terrible with everything outside of taking drugs.

If you come off cycle and immediately stop progressing don’t look at the gear first. Instead, look at everything else you stopped taking seriously.

24/08/2026

Legs from last Friday

Probably the best hacks have moved for me.

Eccentrics felt controlled, I was able to maintain position well and concentric velocity was noticeably better across both sets.

Pretty much the exact opposite to how yesterday‘s leg session went… the same loads felt considerably heavier.

I also regressed by a rep on both sets and rep velocity was worse. The eccentrics didn’t feel as controlled, concentric speed was down and the entire movement just felt “off.”

Initially, that was frustrating because on paper there weren’t many obvious variables that had changed. But looking back, there were two worth considering.

First, I had more knee pain during yesterday’s session.

Pain isn’t simply a sensation that exists independently of performance. Nociceptive input from the knee can alter quadriceps activation, force production, rate of force development and motor control. Even relatively minor discomfort can change the way you load and coordinate a movement.

Second, last week I did my cardio until after both leg sessions (not before). Yesterday, I performed cardio roughly an hour beforehand.

Aerobic work performed prior to resistance training can acutely reduce subsequent lower-body strength-endurance, power and movement velocity, particularly when the same musculature is being used.

Neither of those variables allows me to say, “this definitively cost me one rep.”

But combine some residual peripheral fatigue from cardio, an irritated knee, poorer bracing/mechanics and suddenly the difference between an exceptional session and an average one becomes pretty easy to rationalise.

Something I think is worth remembering when analysing training:

Performance ≠ strength

Your underlying strength and hypertrophic progression don’t suddenly disappear because one session produces a worse number.

So rather than emotionally reacting to a single regression, identify what changed, control what you can and see what happens at the next exposure.

So, cardio is staying after training on leg days from now on, the knee will be monitored and we go again Friday.

SA preacher x2
Inc. DB curl x2
Seated ham x2
Laying ham x1
Leg ext x2
Hack x2
Glute drive x1

24/08/2026

Weekly update.

Not a particularly exciting one this week. Just continuing to tick boxes and live out the glamorous hobbybuilder lifestyle.

Appetite is fairly non-existent at the moment, although given my body fat is quite high relative to where my body would physiologically prefer to sit, I can’t exactly act surprised by that.

I’ve included a slightly less “classic” front double biceps in this week’s update as well.

You’ll notice I’m not really bending the knees and trying to manufacture more quad sweep or exaggerate the lower half. That’s intentional.

I was talking to my friend TBK about this the other day and we were discussing the idea that, ideally, the X-frame should do most of the talking for you.

Obviously posing exists to accentuate what is already there. That is quite literally the point of posing, but there’s a difference between presenting the physique well and trying to pose your way into proportions that the physique itself doesn’t actually possess.

At some point the tissue has to do the heavy lifting.

If you need to contort yourself into oblivion to create the illusion of an X-frame, the solution probably isn’t another posing cue; It’s probably another few years of growing the areas responsible for creating one.

Which, conveniently, is also where I’m at.

There’s still quite a bit of tissue missing from my physique, particularly if I want the structure to look the way I’d eventually like it to look without having to manufacture it through posing.

Fortunately that problem has a fairly simple solution.

Time.

BW: 106.7kg

Nutrition:

HD: ~200P / ~750C / ~35F (1)
TD: ~200P / ~600C / ~45F (3)
NTD: ~200P / ~450C / ~60F (3)

Fluids: ~5L
Na: ~3,700mg
K: ~10,000mg
Mg: ~1,200mg
Ca: ~1,800mg

Training: Upper/lower 4x/week

Test: 150mg Dr. prescribed (same as the past 25 months).

RHR: 42
BP: 105/54
FBG: 3.9 mmol/L
Steps: ~20k/day
Sleep: ~8 hrs

Cardio:

TD: 30 min elliptical (~120 bpm)
NTD: 30–45 min elliptical (~120 bpm)

💻 Coaching ➡️ NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪

Or

www.universalperformancecoaching.com/coaching-enquiries

The Original GymPin STATUE
DRIVEN NUTRITION STATUE
Medibolic - Health Supplements STATUE
International Protein Official STATUE

20/08/2026

Step maxxing
Digestion maxxing
Health maxxing
Melanin maxxing
Pump maxxing
Glucose maxxing
Work maxxing
Life maxxing

19/08/2026

Monday: legs + biceps.

Another productive outing with 4.5 plates on the Cybex hack. Five relatively comfortable reps, and arguably the best this load has moved to date.

Touch wood I don’t somehow manage to jinx what has been a suspiciously good run of training lately.

Also committed the heinous crime of adding one set of reverse EZ-bar curls at the end, purely to give the brachioradialis a little more direct attention.

One set, one slightly different function/line of pull, very little additional fatigue. Given muscle growth is fibre specific, sometimes adding a strategically different exercise is a more sensible way to cover a muscle than simply doing more sets of the same s**t.

Anyway, long may the current winning streak continue.

Session

SA preacher x1
Incline db curl x2
Rev EZ-bar curl x1
Seated ham curl x2
Laying ham curl x1
Leg Extension x2
Hacks x2
Glute Drive x1 (best hip thrust machine ever invented).

17/08/2026

It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these. A few weeks, actually.

Things have been travelling well, although I do have a confession.

For reasons that seemed completely reasonable at the time, I’ve been tracking my “fasted” bodyweight in possibly the most unnecessarily autistic manner imaginable:

Wake up ➡️ drink 2L fluid ➡️ fasted cardio ➡️ weigh myself ➡️ subtract 2kg ➡️ record as morning weight.

‘ScIeNcE’ haha!

This morning I went back to how I used to weigh myself, the way I ask every athlete I coach to: toilet, then weigh in before fluids/cardio.

Turns out I’m actually ~106.5kg, not ~104.5kg.

So I’ve been understating my bodyweight by ~2kg for 3-4 months, while convincing myself I’d developed a sophisticated method of measuring it.

…Excellent.

Regardless, training is progressing, body composition is somewhere I’m happy with despite carrying a decent chunk of fat through my lower back. Health markers remain excellent and I’m SLOWLY accumulating more tissue.

I’ve included two front double variations to show how significantly posing alone can alter perceived muscularity, shape and overall look )worth remembering before diagnosing yourself with 14 ‘weak points’ after one s**t photo).

The health-maxxing hobbybuilder era rolls on.

BW: 106.5kg

Nutrition:

HD: ~200P / ~750C / ~35F (1)
TD: ~200P / ~600C / ~45F (3)
NTD: ~200P / ~450C / ~60F (3)

Fluids: ~5L
Na: ~3,700mg
K: ~10,000mg
Mg: ~1,200mg
Ca: ~1,800mg

Training: Upper/lower 4x/week

Test: 150mg Dr. prescribed (same as the past 25 months, no other androgens).

RHR: 41
BP: 107/55
FBG: 3.9 mmol/L
Steps: ~20k/day (15k at 7° incline)
Sleep: ~7.5 hrs

Cardio

TD: 30 min elliptical (~120 bpm)
NTD: 30 to 45 min elliptical (~120 bpm)

💻 Coaching ➡️ NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪

Or

www.universalperformancecoaching.com/coaching-enquiries

The Original GymPin STATUE
DRIVEN NUTRITION STATUE
Medibolic - Health Supplements STATUE
International Protein Official STATUE

12/08/2026

Solid upper session today.

Today was meant to be a rest day, but I swapped yesterday’s training day with today.

Tuesdays have become one of my busier work days lately, with more client check-ins falling on a Tuesday than a Wednesday, and right now my athletes are the priority. I’d rather move my own training around than rush through check-ins or have my attention divided between the two.

So, Tuesday became the rest day, Wednesday became upper, and it actually worked out pretty fu***ng well.

If anything, the extra day between legs on Monday and upper today probably contributed to how good the session felt.

Something people underestimate is the amount of fatigue that carries over between sessions, even when you’re training completely different body parts.

Legs Monday and upper Tuesday might not have much local muscular overlap, but that doesn’t mean Monday’s session exists in a vacuum. There’s still fatigue as a cost of training hard.

An extra 24 hours can make a difference.

A few nice progressions throughout today’s session as well.

Nothing in the form of more reps or more load, but on a handful of movements I matched last week’s performance while finishing the sets with what I’d estimate to be an additional rep in reserve.

Progress isn’t exclusively adding another plate to the bar or beating the logbook by a rep every week. If the same performance costs you less than it did previously, you’ve improved.

Very solid session all round.

Bench supported pushdown x2
BTN pulldown (frontal) x2
Pulldown (sagittal) x1
T-bar row x2 (1 set transverse, 1 set sagittal)
Lateral raise x2
Pec fly x1
Incline smith x2
Pullover x1
Calves x2 (not shown - nobody cares about calves)

11/08/2026

The reason I don’t make as much PED-related content anymore.

One observation I’ve made over the years is that it’s usually the smallest guys who are the most obsessed with the drugs, while the genuinely big guys tend to be far more obsessed with their training, nutrition and recovery.

Drugs do matter. I’m not pretending they don’t.

But they don’t matter anywhere near as much as a lot of people seem to think they do.

Once you’ve got the basics sorted on the drug front, I’d argue that training, nutrition, recovery and, of course, genetics matter far more than endlessly obsessing over compounds, dosages and protocols.

The irony is that the number of people who think they understand proper training and nutrition is far greater than the number of people who actually understand proper training and nutrition.

And I think that’s part of the problem.

It’s much easier to believe the missing piece is another drug than to accept that there might still be a lot left to learn about the fundamentals.

📈 Offseason / Contest Prep Coaching NICHOLAS “THE STATUE” WEIR 🇦🇺 🇩🇪 (link in bio to website and coaching application)

10/08/2026

Legs + biceps to kick off another week of training.

Wasn’t feeling particularly great going into this one, but ended up being a very productive session regardless.

First set of hacks moved better than I expected 4 plates/side x8 and with ex*****on staying pretty much identical to last week, but one rep up.

So naturally, I got a little greedy on the second set…

The sensible move would’ve been match what I got last week (4¼ plates/side x5) but after how that first set moved I had to give 4½ a crack.

Ended up getting 5 reps, and had I not fu**ed up my bracing on the fifth, Trav and I were confident there was another rep there.

Appreciate Travis John being there for the spot 🤝🏼

That puts me back at my recent all-time best, which is a nice little milestone considering how the knee/hips have been the last couple months.

More importantly, it makes the goal of getting to 5 plates/side (for reps) by the end of the year look like it’s still very much on the cards.

There’s obviously a balance between being patient with progression and knowing when to take the opportunity to push.

You don’t want to add load for the sake of adding load if ex*****on starts falling apart BUT when everything is moving well and you’ve earned the opportunity to take a bigger jump, sometimes you just have to fu***ng send it and see where the chips fall.

DOMS have already set in though, so I’m definitely paying for that decision today 😂

Very productive start to the week.

Full session across the slides.

SA preacher x2
Incline DB curl x2
Seated ham curl x2
Laying ham curl x2
Leg extension x2
Hack squat x2
Glute drive x1

Coach Nicholas Weir

03/09/2026

31/08/2026

24/08/2026

24/08/2026

20/08/2026

19/08/2026

17/08/2026

12/08/2026

11/08/2026

10/08/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request