What your first month of PT with me actually looks like

The first four weeks aren’t the warm up. They’re where you show yourself that you actually can do this.

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Here's a thing I hear a lot, usually said slightly apologetically, as though it's an unreasonable request: "I just want to start slowly and see how it goes."

Completely reasonable request. In fact, it's exactly what I'd recommend.

That's why I call the first four weeks with every client a Foundation Month; not because I've slapped a fancy name on a gentle induction, but because there's genuine method to how it's structured. We're not easing you in to be kind. We're easing you in because it works.

What we're actually doing in those first four weeks

The Foundation Month isn't a warm-up to the real thing. It is the real thing - just with a clear purpose.

We're gathering information. How you move, what feels strong, what's been sitting a bit neglected, how your energy holds up across a session, how your body responds in the days after. It’s difficult to build a programme that's genuinely right for you without this. Nobody can — anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a generic plan with your name typed at the top.

We're also laying groundwork. The movements we drill in the first few weeks become the language of everything that follows. Get them right early and progression feels intuitive. Skip that stage and you spend the next six months quietly compensating for gaps neither of us knew were there.

Perhaps just as important is that this period allows us to get to know each other. By which i don’t mean swapping Netflix recommendations and paint shade tips (although I’m always up for a bit of that…) but rather establishing our preferred lines of communication; Me knowing how you train is only part of it because I also want to understand how you think about training — what's motivated you before, what's derailed you, what sort of cues you respond to, how you learn best and so on.

Photo by Henrik Pauly on Unsplash

What it feels like from your end

Manageable, purposeful, and about a 5-6 out of 10 on your effort level scale.

Sessions in the Foundation Month are structured around the fundamentals of how you hinge, squat, push, pull, carry, twist. these are the common patterns of human movement and as we pass through modern life often we drop the ball on one or more of these. So we take a look at what’s going on under the hood and then after the first month everything we do will be a more sophisticated and challenging version of those six planes of motion. The more comfortable you are with the basics, the more interesting the later work gets.

You won't finish a Foundation Month session face-down on the floor wondering what just happened. You will finish it having worked hard, having learned something about how your body moves, and probably feeling a cautious optimism that this might actually be sustainable. That's the goal.

What you'll have at the end of it

After four weeks, we both have something to work from. You'll have a clearer sense of what you're capable of — usually more than you thought (although for experienced but lapsed athletes it can sometimes be a useful recalibration of where they’re currently at).

Most people notice they're moving better. Some notice they're stronger. Almost everyone notices they feel less anxious about training — which sounds like a small thing but is actually quite significant, because that anxiety is often what's kept people from starting, or sticking, in the first place.

The Foundation Month won't transform your body in four weeks. What it will do is make the next four months - and the four after that - genuinely effective. That's the trade-off, and in my experience it's a very good one.

If you’re thinking about getting started, this is exactly where we begin. You don’t need to be fit first, you just need to start.