Departments · Strength, endurance, sleep
Form
Form is not about the beach. It is about carrying your own luggage at seventy, keeping up with your children and having the energy at six in the evening that you had at nine in the morning. Three sessions a week, done properly, is enough.
We write for men with a job, a family and perhaps four hours a week. That is enough for strength, for endurance and for the sleep that makes both work, if the four hours are spent on the right things.
The Training Week builds a plan for your goal, your days and your equipment. The stories cover strength after thirty, Zone 2, sleep and mobility.
In this department
The latest in Form
Form · Strength
Strength Training After Thirty
Two sessions a week, five movements, progressive overload and a notebook. The programme that builds a body for the next forty years, not the next holiday.
Form · Endurance
Zone 2: The Slow Run That Changes Everything
Slower than feels productive, for longer than feels necessary. Three hours a week at a conversational pace builds the engine that everything else runs on.
Form · Sleep
Sleep Like an Athlete
Seven and a half hours, the same wake time seven days a week, a cold dark room and a last coffee at noon. Sleep is the training session most men skip.
Form · Mobility
Ten Minutes of Mobility a Day
Hips, thoracic spine, ankles, shoulders. Five movements with the morning coffee that keep a desk-bound body able to squat, reach and turn around in the car.
The tool for this
Training Week
Goal, days, equipment, minutes per session. A seven-day plan with strength, slow endurance and recovery in the right places, and the rules for making it progress.
Reader poll
Your training, honestly?
Questions we get asked
How many days a week should I train?
Three is the sweet spot for most men over thirty: two strength sessions and one longer endurance session, plus daily walking. More than five is for people paid to do it.
Is running bad for my knees?
Not if you build up slowly and run most of your miles at an easy pace. Knees are damaged by sudden increases in volume, not by running as such.
Do I need a personal trainer?
For the first ten sessions with a barbell, yes: technique is learned faster with eyes on you. After that, a good programme and a video of your own lifts do the job.
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