Michael Linehan Fitness

18/09/2025

You can get lean in just 5% of your weekly waking hours.

One of the simplest frameworks I use with my busiest clients is the 2-3-3 Method:

👉 2 total hours of training per week
👉 3 workouts per week
👉 as one of 3 simple habits.

That’s it. Simple, direct, and effective.

It’s based on a simple equation of energy in vs energy out, meaning that your fat-loss results are highly predictable.

But sometimes structure needs to give way to chaos.

Client requests, family emergencies and business travel will throw you a curveball from time to time.

It’s during this weeks, the 2:3:3 method, gives way to the 1:2:3 method:

👉 1 total hour of training 
👉 2 body workouts per week
👉 as one of 3 simple habits.

The goal during these weeks is to simply stay in momenutm.

Success in all aspects of life is not only about reaching higher highs.

It’s also about raising your baseline, so you have an acceptable floor to fall back on when s**t hits the fan.

These methods are one of the many I use with my clients as part of the High Performance Fitness Transformation.

Once you see how little time and mental energy you need to give to your body to see consistent results, there’s no going back.

There’s room for only one obsession in your life, and if yours is your craft, then your fitness efforts need to support that mission, not detract from it 🤝

16/08/2025

I’ve been spending more time hanging off bars lately, and here’s why:

Grip Strength.

Not only is grip strength a key marker of neurological health, it’s the first impression we give when we shake someone’s hand.

A limp handshake is off-putting, and it’s probably because many of our social norms are intuitive methods of assessing the health (and utility) of potential friends, colleagues and romantic partners.

So grip strength’s importance is not just about the gym, or even your health.

It creates that first impression that you are an action taker.

Rather than spend money on grip trainers and wasting time with complicated, unnecessary forearm exercises, let’s opt for some low hanging fruit (pun very much intended).

Dead hangs with both arms or one arm, will not only train your grip strength but will also help with shoulder mobility and to decompress your spine.

All of which are important considerations for those who make their living in the digital world 👨‍💻👩‍💻

You also want to make sure you know how to grip the bar.

Lead with the gap between your thumb and index finger, running the bar along the lifeline of your palm, then wrapping your hand around the bar from there.

Let’s get rid of that limp grip, that results in taking the weight into your fingers.

Now to the question of grip health. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that those with healthy nervous systems will have better grips, rather than it being the other way around?

Remember that the body is a feedback system.

If you force yourself to smile you can make yourself happy.

I’d adopt the same belief around grip strength and neurological health until seeing evidence that suggests otherwise 🤝

03/08/2025

Those clouds in the back delivered quite the punch on the way down ⚡️😅

Great way to spend the day though 👌

The phone was switched off for approx 12 hours and am definitely going to be doing that more often 👍

13/06/2025

Flexible Fat Loss is a bottom-up style of coaching combining flexible dieting, AI-powered tracking tools and time-efficient training systems.

My mission is to make fat-loss accessible and sustainable for busy founders, executives and C-levels who need to perform at a top-level, while improving their health and fitness.

The Flexible Fat Loss Framework is inspired by my previous work in the technology industry, organising business conferences, and under the tutelage of one of the co-authors of the Agile Manifesto.

What sets this framework apart from other training and nutrition styles is a “people over process” bottom-up approach. I work with:
👉 Your current time constraints
👉 Your aspirational lifestyle
👉 Your guilty pleasures

We then layer on the Flexible Fat Loss Framework, built on 5 key tenets, inspired by financial planning principles:
1. Budget - calories, mental bandwidth
2. Track - in less than 5 mins daily using AI
3. Quick money - step-count and/or cardio
4. Slow money - build muscle to burn more calories at rest
5. Spend - keep time and calories aside for meals out, drinks, or whatever your vices are

This approach leads to:
🏆 Losing 10 kilos in 12 weeks
🏆 Building lifelong, sustainable habits
🏆 Stable energy
🏆 Improved performance in your field
🏆 Addressing concerns surrounding lifestyle-related illnesses

1:1 coaching slots and group slots are currently closed, but keep your eyes peeled this month for the next intake to be announced soon 🤝

03/06/2025

Summer is here

and with it more social get-togethers 🍷

more trips away ✈️

and spontaneous food adventures 🥘

So how are you going to balance all of the above, while losing body fat, and maintaining a high level of performance in your field of work?

You have your work cut out for you!

Or do you?

The reality is that if you dropped the black and white, all or nothing thinking, you could easily lose 10 kilos this Summer without missing any of the fun, and maintaining a high standard of work.

You just need the right system that blends seamlessly into your ideal summer lifestyle.

I and my clients will be using the Time Efficient Summer Training System (TESTS) to continue our fat loss efforts, while time for the activities we want in our respective lifestyles.

This system will have us training two hours per week or less, spending just five minutes daily on nutrition.

You can steal this system for less than the cost of dinner to lose 10 kilos this summer.

Simply message the word ‘SYSTEM’ and I’ll send you the details.

🚨 This offer is available for 36 hours closing Wednesday, June 3rd at 8pm GMT

24/05/2025

📸 Throwback to Budapest 2021

Here’s what real discipline looks like 👇

One of my clients just completed his 100th workout, having been working together for eight months now.

He’s averaged a workout every 2.4 days.

To some, this might not seem like a lot, particularly to people who think they need to “go all in”, “lock in” or “get back on the wagon”.

The BEST client results usually come from my clients who start with the end in mind and seek to build sustainable habits.

In this particular client’s case, he is in his mid-40s, is the managing director of a 100-person strong consulting company, and has a young family to take care of.

Yet, he has still managed to lose 7 kilos, completely end his struggle with excess body fat, and has established low-maintenance habits, that make it highly unlikely that he’ll ever return to his old ways.

When he originally came to me, he was practicing intermittent fasting, thought he needed to do hours of cardio to lose body fat, and was resistant to let go of these beliefs.

But he turned over control, trusted in the process, and most importantly:
He did not beat himself up for having a bad week!

If you have to psych yourself up to get started, that’s a sign that you’re trying to force fit a life that is not yet sustainable for your current mental bandwidth.

Discipline is a muscle, and you can’t max out on day one.

The theme of this week has accidentally turned into “less is more”.

It’s a point that needs to be driven home repeatedly until it clicks.

Because most of us high-performers start off working our asses off in a bid to prove something to the world, and to ourselves.

So we shut ourselves off to higher-leverage strategies.

Until we repeatedly break.

Instead, let’s break the cycle.

🚨 The doors close on the Flexible Fat Loss Protocol in just 4 hours’ time

You can reply directly to this email if you want the full details of this 1:1 Coaching Program, to lose between 6-8 kilos in your first 90 days.

💬Message me and I’ll send you a document with all the details

17/05/2025

In my previous career, big business deals were always done over dinner and drinks.

In some cultures you are not even trusted unless your prospective business partners have seen how you handle your booze.

What would drive me crazy about this culture, was how far it took me away from my fitness goals.

In hindsight, I wish I wasn’t so hard on myself.

Breaking bread is an ingrained ritual in how we humans spend quality time getting to know each other before committing further time, energy, and resources to continuing a personal or business relationship.

There is no need to remove social food and drinks from your routine when embarking on a fat loss goal. It just means that you budget accordingly, so that your weekend cheat meal in front of Netflix, is replaced with social occasions that add to your life.

In this way, you can turn dead time into productive time, while still getting a much-needed break from prepped meals.

This bottom-up, lifestyle-first approach is key to my approach with the Flexible Fat Loss Framework. I am on a mission to make fat loss accessible to high-performers while allowing them to live in the now, and enjoy their lives.

Stay tuned, as Monday I will be launching a very special 1:1 coaching service for entrepreneurs, creatives, and other workaholics.

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📸 .arts
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🗓️ May 2021

06/04/2025

The 400th post since this became a coaching page 15 months ago 🥳

Two thoughts👇

1. Celebrate action, not wins.
“You are always entitled to the action, but never its fruit” - The Baghavad Gita

2. Probably put in upwards of 60 hrs per week up until this point on the business. That was fine to get past a certain threshold of experience, but now it’s time to dial things back a little and take back my Sundays 👌

Whether it’s building a business or your fat loss efforts. The time you invest up front will bear fruit and come back to you in spades.

But you have very limited control of when that happens.

None of our goals exist in a vacuum.

There are always external factors.

Just celebrate consistently showing up.

05/03/2025

As the weather starts to shift a bit now, I’ve really been looking forward to some outdoor workouts 💪

Remember when it comes to building muscle, it’s not 100% necessary to lift heavy.

You simply need to provide enough stimulus on the target muscle.

This is perfectly achieved through callisthenics and outdoor training, you’ll just probably need to increase the amount of sets and reps you perform.

What I like to do sometimes is split my training between the gym and calisthenics to get the best of both worlds 👌

20/01/2025