Stronger Without Quick Fixes: The Lifetime Fitness System
How I built sustainable fitness habits after years of struggle and how you can too
We don't need more 30-day fitness hacks. We need habits that last a lifetime. Systems that support our lives, not control them.
This post explores a central question: What can we eliminate to become stronger? In fitness, I've found we're stronger without temporary fixes, obsession, and complexity. Sometimes becoming stronger means stripping away, not adding more.
What This Post Is About
In this post, I'll share my approach to sustainable fitness that enhances life rather than dominates it. You'll learn:
How to build a fitness system that lasts beyond short-term motivation
The four key training principles that actually work long-term
Why specificity should guide your training decisions
How to incorporate both strength and endurance training sensibly
The "Toothbrush Rule" that transformed my relationship with exercise
Please note: The routines and approaches I describe are what work for me based on my specific goals, history, and body. They are not meant to be copied wholesale.
There's no universal "right" way to train. What matters is finding an approach that:
Aligns with your personal goals
Fits your lifestyle and schedule
Respects your body's current capabilities
Minimises injury risk (which should be a priority for everyone)
As you read, I encourage you to consider what your specific goals are and how you might adapt these principles to your circumstances. Building a sustainable fitness system is about finding what works for you, not following someone else's blueprint exactly.
How my body moves plays a huge role in how my mind feels. The activities I do with friends and how I live my life. If you have let your fitness drop over the years, it's not too late to change. But it will get harder with every day that you neglect yourself.
The best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago. The second best time is now.
Let's get started.
From Army Officer to World Cyclist: My Fitness Evolution
Fitness has always been part of my life.
As a kid, I represented my county in rugby and athletics. I studied sports science at university not because I wanted to become a coach or work in professional sports, but because I was curious about the human body. How we can improve it and compete with other humans. I loved the lab work, the blood lactate threshold tests, the time working in the biomechanics lab, the scientific rigour of peer-reviewed journals.
After uni, I joined the military.
Back then, fitness was pretty simple. Most sessions consistited of long runs. These would be mixed in with loaded marches. We carried a lot of weight on our back to train us for the needs of being a soldier. This gets you fit fast. Stretcher races where as a team you carry an 80kg weight on a rigid stretcher and race other groups around a course. Plus lots of navigation with a map and compass - usually at speed, usually uphill.
My military career taught me discipline, but not true fitness wisdom. I was fit enough to lead, but not living what I knew to be true. I drank too often. I ate poorly. Food was pleasure, not fuel. A way to escape, not recover. There was a macho sense of accomplishement to be able to out on a night of drinking and partying until the early hours and then stumble into an early morning run and still stay at the front of the pack. I did this far too often. I somehow managed to keep it together throughout my 20s but looking back, I left a lot on the table. I could have been fitter and stronger, more professional. Instead I did what was needed and got by due to a lot of stubbornness and mental resilience.
Twelve years later, I left the Army and cycled around the world. That changed my whole perspective of what “being fit” means to me.
I pedalled up to 240km a day on a steel bike carrying cameras, drones, food, and gear. I cycled through jungles, Arctic tundra, desert and vast plains. Up mountain passes and in the busiest cities in the world. I lost 15kg. My diet was mostly noodles, rice, and veg. I didn't track calories, I just moved. Every day.
This gave me a new perspective of what our bodies can achieve. I turned my legs into my transport. Cycling not only got me from A-B, it became my daily activity, a conversation started, a way to see the world slowly. Without my health, non of this would have been possible.
The Principles of Effective Training
Something I was taught very early in my time as a sports scientist was the key principles of training: specificity, progressive overload, reversibility, and individuality. While all matter, one transformed my approach completely:
Specificity: The Principle That Changed Everything
Your body adapts to what you do repeatedly. Ride every day, and you become a cyclist. Run in boots with a pack? You get good at that.
A rower may have outstanding cardiovascular fitness but may strungle to complete long distance runs as their bodies are not specificially trained and developed for that activity. As a soldier, we had broad fitness goals that included both cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and strength. We had to be able to move heavy loads on our backs across rough terrain for hours, be able to then shoot accurately, make well thought decisions and then have the physical strength to carry a fallen commarade if the worst was ever to happen.
This principle - specificity - is the backbone of my training today. I don't train for aesthetics. Bigger biceps serve little purpose functionally other than to impress myself. I train to live a fuller life. To go on long hikes with friends. To be able to ride to Stonehenge for summer solstice. To feel strong enough to carry out home repairs and carry my child.
What specific activities do you want your body to be capable of?
With this in mind, you can start to build a training programme that helps you achieve the things you want out of life, not what somebody in some magazine or social media video told you to want. That's where your training should begin.
In the spirit of "Stronger Without," I've become stronger by removing distractions from my training. Stronger without obsessing over appearance. Stronger without chasing numbers on a scale. Stronger without comparing myself to fitness influencers.
Goals That Actually Guide Me
Your goals should reflect what you truly value, not what fitness influencers tell you to want. Mine are deliberately focused on capability and sustainability:
Stay injury-free
Complete a full marathon by Sept 2025
"Feel" strong - lift my bodyweight, carry weight, deadlift safely
Maintain a weight of about 80kg
Let fitness support my life - not dominate it
Some goals are clear. Others are more intuitive. That's fine. The point isn't to perfect the goal. It's to let the goal shape the process. As I start to approach 40, I’m also ware that recovery and training will become harder. I will no longer be able to party until the early hours and then go out on a 10 mile run. A key focus is to improve my long term health outcomes. I want to live a long and healthy life and being fit into my older years is a key strategy to achieve this.
The Toothbrush Rule
People often ask “how do I stay motivated to work out”.
Here's my answer: Don't rely on motivation. Build systems. It needs to become automatic.
Think of training like brushing your teeth. You don't wait to be inspired. You do it because it matters. You treat it as a non-negotiable habit.
You don't get fit by running twice a month any more than you get clean teeth by brushing every other week. Move your body every day forever.
Even a walk counts.
You remove the friction by moving at fixed times of theday and treat them like appointments. Have your clothes ready and do it first thing in the morning if possible. I find tracking my progress really helps to get me into the flow. I use an app to track my workouts but this could be as simple as a tick list.
The Toothbrush Rule changed everything for me. It might do the same for you. This is perhaps the clearest expression of being "stronger without". Stronger without relying on motivation. Stronger without waiting for perfect conditions. Stronger without excuses.
My Weekly Routine (Marathon + Strength)
It might be useful to share what my current week of training looks like. Now, this isn’t to say I’ve always been this organised. My goals often change and so therefore does my training. Over the last 6 months, I’ve really started to focus on improving my running. It’s something I’ve come to enjoy more and more since leaving the military. I enjoy the peacefulness of it and the space it gives me to think.
I'm training for two things at the moment: endurance and strength. That means fitting both into my week without overcomplicating it.
Running Plan (Current Phase)
Total: ~49km per week
This structure guides me, but I adjust based on how my body feels. I increase the distance by ~3–5km per week and add a deload every 4th week (~60% volume). I'm not chasing volume for the sake of it. I'm building up slowly, on purpose, following the principle of progressive overload. That means slowly increasing the frequency, intensity, type and time (FITT).
I have a marathon scheduled for the begining of September. This will be the first marathon I’ve run since 2015, and that time I did it with zero training and felt rough afterwards. This time I want it to be different. I want to enjoy the process of building up my endurance. To get the long runs in alongside intervals and tempo sessions.
On a long run in the New Forest. Sun Shining. Being chased by a cyclist…
Strength Plan: Push / Pull / Legs (3-Day Split)
The same goes for my strength training. I'm much more steady with this as a routine as I'm not focusing on improving strength. My focus is much more on maintaining my current levels and the training supporting my overall goals of maintaining weight and staying injury free.
I aim to go to the gym 4 times a week and cycle through these sessions:
Session One: Push
Bench Press – 5×6–8
Incline Press – 4×8
Overhead Press – 4×8
Lateral Raise – 5×10
Weighted Dips – 3×8
Triceps Pushdown – 3×12
Triceps Extension – 3×12
Session Two: Pull
Pull-Ups – 4×8–12
Bent-Over Row – 4×8
Seated Row – 4×10
Lat Pulldown – 3×10
Barbell Curl – 3×10
Hammer Curl – 3×10
Session Three: Legs + Core
Squat – 5×6–8
Romanian Deadlift – 4×10
Walking Lunge – 3×20m
Leg Curl – 3×10
Calf Raise – 4×10
Leg Extension – 3×10
Weighted Crunch – 3×20
Hanging Leg Raise – 3×10
For each set I aim to lift a weight that is close to 8 in the Borg Rate of Percieved Exhertion (RPE). As this is a totally subjective measure based on what your percieve. It’sa useful measure but far from exact.
RPE 7-8: A challenging set, but you could still do a few more reps if you tried.
RPE 9: Close to max effort, you might be able to grind out one more rep, but no more.
RPE 10: Maximum effort, you can't do another rep.
I use the Hevy app on my Apple Watch to log sets and time rest. I leave my phone in the locker in the changing room. I have some podcasts downloaded to my watch. Current favourites are the NY Times podcast, All Songs Considered (great for new music), Strangers on a Bench by Tom Rosenthal. I sometimes also listen to audiobooks. I find this is a great way of stacking habits I want to maintain. When I'm really into a good book, I often can't wait to have my gym time so I can listen to the book.
Movement as a Way of Life
My gym is about 4km from my house. I have started travelling there by running long the beach in Bournemouth. By pairing my runs with a trip to the gym, I get my exercise all done first thing in the morning. In the book Atomic Habbits, James Clear says:
“The key to building lasting habits is to join them to something you already do each day.”
By linking the act of running with going to the gym, I don’t need to find extra time or motivation. It’s all one activity or block from my day. I lace up, run, train.
The idea that cardio "kills muscle" is outdated. Multiple studies show that when strength and endurance training are combined intelligently - especially with proper nutrition and recovery - you can improve both. A 2012 meta-analysis in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that while high-frequency, high-volume cardio can interfere with maximal strength and hypertrophy, low-to-moderate cardio combined with resistance training can enhance overall fitness without significantly compromising muscle growth.
If you're aiming for balanced fitness: strength, endurance, health, by combining both is not just effective, it's essential.
“Your heart is a muscle. Treat it like one.”
Yet many people still see cardio as just a tool for weight loss. That’s misinformed. Cardio trains your cardiovascular system, boosts recovery, improves mental clarity, and helps you live longer. It’s about performance and longevity, not just aesthetics.
Our bodies are made to move. But modern life makes it easy not to.
As a society, we’re moving less than ever. A 2022 report from the World Health Organisation found that more than 1 in 4 adults globally are not active enough, contributing to rising rates of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and depression. Even those who exercise regularly often spend the rest of their day sitting at desks, in cars, on sofas. Research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine shows that sedentary behaviour is an independent risk factor for poor health, regardless of whether you go to the gym.
Growing up without a car, movement wasn't "exercise" for my family. It was life. We walked. We cycled. We carried groceries home in plastic bags that cut into our fingers. While cars are efficient, they distance us from our bodies, environment, and each other. During my world cycle, I connected with locals daily. Connections impossible from inside a metal box.
That’s why I still walk. Still cycle. Still run to the sea. I don’t just want to be fit. I want to stay connected. And I want to be doing this for the rest of my life.
Try this:
Pick one journey you usually make by car: work, school run, shop. Switch it to a walk or a bike ride for one month. Notice how it changes not just your fitness, but your mindset and your sense of place.
Small changes compound. They always have.
Final Thoughts
You don't have to be obsessed. You don't need to track every metric.
But you do need to move every day, forever.
It's easy to let things slip. I did for years. The photos above tell that story better than words can. They show where I was at my heaviest and where I am today (I probably lost a lot of weight from just having a haircut). Only recently have I made changes that have resulted in my body feeling strong and healthy. The transformation wasn't overnight; it was the result of consistent application of the principles I've shared.
Train in a way that serves your life. Build strength to lift your child. Run so you can join your friends on that mountain hike. Cycle because it makes you feel free.
I've given you a brief insight into my training plan at the moment. This time next year, this will likely look a bit different. I may have slightly altered goals or be training for some other event. What I'm certain will remain is my desire to see exercise as a way to support my life and to remain injury free. To maintain a healthy weight and not over-indulge.
The body adapts. You just have to give it a reason.
What would you be stronger without? What one habit could you eliminate to move toward lasting fitness? Share your six-month challenge in the comments - I'll be cheering you on. Remember: consistency trumps intensity every time.
