The Weekly Exerciser
I'm an Exercise Scientist, writer, and speaker who shares practical, evidence-based ideas each week to help you exercise consistently, stay strong and healthy, and make fitness fit YOUR life.
Are your exercise goals setting you up to fail?
Think back to an exercise goal you’ve set for yourself in the past. Maybe it was to get to the gym 3 times per week. Or perhaps to take 10,000 steps per day. Or just to get your 150 minutes of physical activity for the week. These are all reasonable goals, particularly since they focus on the process (or behaviour - do something X times per week), not the outcome (like lose 5 kg of body weight) - which is more often the focus, yet is far less within our control. So after setting the goal, you...
A minimalist approach to well-rounded fitness
When I was in high school, I was first introduced to the idea of “fitness components”. Essentially, the different qualities underlying what it means to be “fit” - which help determine our ability to do physical tasks. Back then, they were divided into: “Health-related” components: cardiorespiratory (aerobic) fitness, strength, body composition, flexibility; and “Skill/performance-related”components: power, balance, agility, coordination, reaction time. This distinction implied that some...
Do you need to lift heavy for stronger bones?
It’s pretty easy to notice when your fitness or strength is declining. Unfortunately, the same doesn’t apply for your bone health. You can’t actually feel your bones getting weaker. Bone loss can occur gradually over years without many symptoms, and the first indication many people get that their bones have weakened is when they sustain a fracture. And the unfortunate truth is a broken bone at age 70 or 80 can have vastly different consequences to one at 20 or 30. Beyond fractures themselves,...
4 types of exercises I want to do more as I get older
I recently turned 38, and more and more I’m thinking about the things I want to keep doing 10, 20, and 30+ years from now. And what I can do now to help make that possible. When it comes to resistance training (and exercise more generally), my philosophy centres on doing the simple things often. But I also recognise there are certain qualities a basic training approach doesn’t always challenge that well - some of which become increasingly important for healthy ageing. Some of these qualities...
Why exercise is maintenance, not just medicine
The term “exercise is medicine” is often used to help convey why exercise matters for health. That makes sense given an active lifestyle is linked to a lower risk of virtually all chronic health conditions - not to mention being critical for keeping us functioning well to get the most out of our years. But I think the “medicine” metaphor actually misses something important. Because if we treat exercise like a prescription, then we tend to think it’s something we only turn to when things go...
For metabolic health, does cardio or strength matter more?
When we think of the benefits of exercise, we tend to put resistance and aerobic training into different “buckets”: Resistance improves muscle, strength, and maybe bone Aerobic benefits heart health, fitness, and metabolic health There is some truth to this of course. At the extremes, a bodybuilder looks very different to a marathon runner, after all. But is the distinction really that clear - especially for the health benefits we can’t see? A 2026 systematic review and meta-analysis...
How I designed my strength program around my life
A couple of weeks ago, a reader asked me a simple question: “Your ideas are interesting… but I’d like to know what you actually do in the gym.” It seemed like a pretty straightforward request. But following on from last week’s newsletter, I think the most useful thing isn’t just what I do, but explaining why my program looks the way it does. Because it’s an example of how I’ve adapted my training around my life - my current goals, priorities, and constraints. Right now, I want my strength...
Three years on, here's the question we don’t ask enough
I almost forgot, to be honest. That was until my amazing wife and kids surprised me with something: Yep - this week marked three years since the first edition of The Weekly Exerciser, way back in July 2023. So, whether you’ve been on this journey for one, many, or all of the 156 weekly editions… Thank you. Your support, feedback, and questions have helped mould this into something that is (hopefully) valuable for you. Thinking back to when I started this newsletter, I imagined it would be...
5 lessons my first half marathon taught me about exercise
If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure if I'd even make it. I was 10 km into my first half marathon (21 km), and up until this point I’d gone a bit quicker than I expected - but I felt strong. Then something unexpected started to happen. Without warning, my quadriceps started to twitch with that uncomfortable sensation of cramping - which was strange, as this almost never happened in any of my training runs. The doubt soon crept in, and I began to picture myself limping across the finish line far...
Does sitting too much undo your exercise?
Let me take you back to Monday this week. I went for a 30-minute run, clocking up about 7000 steps in the process. Yet by 4pm, my Garmin said I’d barely done another 1000 steps across the whole day. You see, I’m more active than most people - but I can also be quite inactive when I’m not pounding the pavement. Which always gets me thinking… Does all this sedentary time undo some of the benefits of my exercise? You can see why my eyes widened when I came across a new debate in Medicine &...
I'm an Exercise Scientist, writer, and speaker who shares practical, evidence-based ideas each week to help you exercise consistently, stay strong and healthy, and make fitness fit YOUR life.