Sydney Strength Coach & Exercise Physiologist

Sydney Strength Coach & Exercise Physiologist A Sydney based Strength Cosch and Exercise Physiologist specialising in Lifting & Athletic Performance, Metabolic Health and Rehabilitation.

I am an Aus Representative Powerlifter and International Coach passionate in providing evidence based results.

Same exercises. Different intent. Different results.Two blokes squat the same weight for the same reps. One walks away w...
15/09/2026

Same exercises. Different intent. Different results.
Two blokes squat the same weight for the same reps. One walks away with bigger legs. One walks away with a bigger squat.

Powerlifting trains the lift. Technique is optimised to shorten the bar path and share load across as much muscle as possible — to make the lift easier.

Bodybuilding trains the muscle. Technique is optimised to keep tension on one target — often by making the lift harder.

Same bar. Opposite goals.

And here’s the part most blokes need to hear: if you want to look strong, carry more muscle and keep your joints, you want the second one with a strength base underneath it.

Pick the outcome first. The program follows.

14/09/2026

Not a bad result after a massive weekend at APL Nationals.

Could have been a better result if I didn’t rush the second rep but good to have 3 reds on the bar again. Keen to keep building.

Squats don’t wreck your knees. Untrained knees do. Cartilage, tendon and bone all remodel in response to progressive loa...
10/09/2026

Squats don’t wreck your knees. Untrained knees do.

Cartilage, tendon and bone all remodel in response to progressive loading. Avoidance doesn’t protect a joint — it just lowers what the joint can handle.

Full-depth squatting places high force on the knee, but the research consistently fails to link it to increased injury or degeneration in trained populations. Across the literature, resistance-trained people report lower rates of knee osteoarthritis than sedentary controls, not higher.

The real risk is a fast jump in load — a sudden increase in volume, intensity, or a new exercise added at full effort.

The knee isn’t fragile. Your progression might be.

Send this to whoever told you otherwise.

09/09/2026

Same 10 kilos. Two different bodies at the end.

In a deficit, your body pulls energy from fat and from lean tissue. That ratio isn’t fixed. A steeper deficit shifts more of the loss toward lean mass — and low protein and short sleep shift it further.

Around 0.5% of body weight per week keeps most people on the right side of it. One kilo a week starts costing you muscle you spent years building.

Three things to hold it:
— 0.5% of body weight per week
— 2–2.2g protein per kg of body weight
— One heavy top set on each main lift, every week

Slower isn’t softer. It’s the version where you still look like you lift when you’re finished.

Save this for your next cut.

Don’t fall into the “more volume = greater outcome” trap. We all have a certain capacity, some more than others. The goa...
07/09/2026

Don’t fall into the “more volume = greater outcome” trap. We all have a certain capacity, some more than others.

The goal is to work within the maximal recoverable volume threshold, where you can adapt to the stimulus of training without accumulating more fatigue than you can recover from.

Adding work also adds fatigue. Sometimes it can be profitable but most of the time it can be more detrimental.

So next time you’re thinking of adding a day, more sets or more exercises, instead think of “more quality work” within what you’re already doing.

If you’re stuck in a plateau and thinking about increasing your volume, DM me instead.

10 things I’ve learned in the first year of being a dad.Some of it’s training. Most of it isn’t. 1. Your standards for y...
06/09/2026

10 things I’ve learned in the first year of being a dad.
Some of it’s training. Most of it isn’t.

1. Your standards for yourself quietly become your kid’s standards later.
2. Time doesn’t get created. It gets reallocated.
3. Asking for help isn’t a failure of capability. It’s a resource allocation decision.
4. Protein and sleep get sacrificed first under time pressure. Plan for that.
5. Presence beats duration. 15 focused minutes outperforms 2 distracted hours.
6. There’s no such thing as “mum jobs” and “dad jobs.” No record keeping either.
7. “No time to train” is usually “no plan for training.”
8. You don’t know your own tolerance for chaos until it’s tested daily.
9. Date nights aren’t a luxury. They’re maintenance.
10. Recovery capacity changes with a newborn. Programming needs to flex, not just willpower.

Comment your number below.

You don’t need more motivation, you need fewer decisions. A plan set to follow, not a new opportunity each day to fall o...
03/09/2026

You don’t need more motivation, you need fewer decisions. A plan set to follow, not a new opportunity each day to fall off track.

Motivation doesn’t last long, and no one was successful from relying on this, day after day. Following a plan, and having the discipline to sticking to it is the recipe for success.

In one two-week study, 248 people were split into three groups. One read motivational material about exercise. One got nothing. One wrote down a single sentence: when, where and how they’d train that week.

The motivation group did no better than the control group. 35% and 38%.

The group that wrote the sentence: 91%.

Same information. Same intention. The only difference was that one group had already made the decision.

The mechanism is simple. Motivation is a state — it moves with your sleep, your stress and whatever happened at work on Thursday. A plan is a cue. Once “Tuesday, 6am, gym” exists, showing up doesn’t require you to feel anything. It requires you to follow an instruction you already wrote.

Every session you haven’t scheduled is a decision you have to win at 5:45am. Tired, dark, warm bed, and a completely reasonable excuse sitting right there.

You won’t win that one every week. Nobody does.

So stop trying to. Move the decision out of the morning and into your calendar on Sunday.

Three sessions. Specific day, specific time, specific gym. Written down.

The bloke still training in ten years isn’t more motivated than you. He made the decision once instead of a hundred and fifty times a year.

02/09/2026

We’ve taken a slight lean back too far and turned it into another rowing movement, especially if momentum is involved.

When we lean too far back, we change the movement from a vertical pull into a horizontal pull. It’s a fine line, but we often cross it.

Leaning up to 30degrees is fine, as long as we aren’t turning the exercise into a back extension with momentum.

A 2025 EMG study (Buonsenso et al., J. Funct. Morphol. Kinesiol.) directly tested this — 40 trained men, wide pronated grip upright vs. the same grip with a 30° back lean. There was no significant difference in lat activation between any of the grip or lean variations tested.

This is your breathing room, beyond that and you may as well do a seated row.

So keep a slight lean but don’t take it too far, if you can’t trust yourself, just keep upright and force better lat activity.

01/09/2026

The reaction is always the same.

“More aggressive deficit = faster results”

This is wrong from two angles.

Firstly, adherence.

Aggressive deficits crash NEAT, tank training
quality, and you can’t sustain them long enough
to matter.

Secondly, metabolic adaptation

Cut too hard and your body fights back, the metabolism slows, hunger spikes, energy tanks. You end up burning less than
someone eating more.

Weight loss isn’t rocket science but there are principals to adhere to if you want to maximise results, maintain muscle mass and training performance.

DM me if you’re struggling with your cut and need support.

Address

Summer Hill, NSW
2130

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