To accessorise: to add something to something else to improve usefulness, versatility, or attractiveness.

It’s not in the best interest of your progress to skip exercises, but it happens. Sometimes you just have to leave the gym earlier that anticipated, time gets away from you, you’re chatting too much or you’re just absolutely spent on energy, so not all exercises are going to make the cut on that day.

When that happens, here are some tools for your tool belt so you can modify your training in the least detrimental way possible.

Oftentimes we have people come in to the gym that have been training for 2-5 years or more. They have gym experience. When it comes time for them to perform fundamental movement patterns though, they really lack confidence in how to execute them, or what loads to use. This is absolutely no shade on them; it’s just a reflection of how services are commonly rendered in the fitness industry.

One of our fundamental values at TSF is cultivating independent lifters. Our service delivery is entirely reflective of this. We coach in such a way that we not only help people get stronger, but also to teach them the skills to be able to resistance train safely and effectively in any gym, without guidance, for as long as they see value in doing so.

In this article I unpack why we think developing autonomy is so important, and how we go about cultivating autonomy as coaches.

In powerlifting circles, cardio is often viewed as a dirty word. How many times have we heard “cardio is hardio” or “six reps is cardio bro”. Nah man, six reps shouldn’t be cardio. Improving your cardiovascular fitness can be of huge benefit not only to your health, but also to your powerlifting training. Excess specificity or specialising for powerlifting too much can come at a cost for your health and overtime, ironically for your performance too. Cardio training can help that.

At TSF, we typically program in five-week blocks and we are staunch on sub-maximal training. Understanding the “why” behind coaching decisions can help you as a lifter to attack your training with the intention that is built in to your program. If you don’t know why certain exercises are in your program or what the purpose of an intro/deload week is, it’s hard for you to execute them with the desired intention.

In this article I explain how we structure our training at TSF and in line with that, how you can best execute each week of your training block to achieve the best training outcomes.

Across a five week training period, we want to first recover from the fatigue accumulated in the preceding training block, then build training momentum across the block to launch us in to the next one. This is how we do it.

Barbells, dumbbells and machines are not as different as they appear on the surface. They all apply external load to the body with the goal of making the trainee stronger. You can get stronger, you can get more jacked and you can change the shape of your body with any one or combination of those tools.

Based on factors like your skill level, your goals, what equipment you have access to, your access to a coach, etc, you may be better using one training tool over another, or using them in various degrees.

I unpack that in this article so you can make best use of your time in the gym!

Getting started in strength training doesn’t need to be a super intimidating, complicated process. If you can move, you can strength train.

At its foundation, strength training is about adding load to human movement. It’s one of the things that I love about it so much; that it is infinitely scalable, which makes it incredibly accessible. Even an 80 year old with no experience with sport or exercise can start strength training in some form.

Perhaps you’ve read a little about strength training and it’s benefits and you want to get started. In this article I discuss where to start and what to focus your efforts on in your first six months in the gym.