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This podcast is for people who want to feel fit, strong, and energised again – but haven’t found a way to make fitness hold when life is busy.
You’ve tried plans that work on paper but fall apart under pressure.
You’ve had periods of momentum, followed by long stretches of drift.
Not because you don’t care.
But because most approaches weren’t built for real life.
On this podcast, we talk about how to build strength, energy, and confidence in your body inside a full life – not an ideal one.
Training that adapts when work ramps up.
Nutrition that stays simple when attention is limited.
Habits that survive travel, stress, family, and changing weeks.
These are honest conversations about systems, mindset, and identity – and how fitness stops slipping to the bottom of the list and starts reinforcing the rest of your life.
If you've ever struggled to stay consistent with your workouts, keep them going through a demanding schedule, actually stick to a plan long term, then I'm hopefully gonna solve all of those problems for you in this podcast episode. Now this is a little bit different. This is more of a workshop format. It's just gonna be me today, so I figured this was a good opportunity to work through some of these systems and get you super confident, solve a lot of problems for you, and hopefully, you can walk away really feeling confident that your plan is gonna be flexible and consistent going forward. So you may have already watched a version of this training that I did a few months ago called the tiers of opportunity.
Speaker 1:Now, this is basically just an extended version of that Tears of Opportunity to incorporate a few other elements that's going to allow you flexibility in all the different problem areas that pop up. So the reason that we created this training originally was that one of the biggest struggles that people have with a busy career, with family, and balancing everything else is actually just staying consistent with workouts combined with this thing we call the all or nothing mindset. Basically, it's either all in, do it perfectly, or do nothing at all. And what we found from working with hundreds of clients is that if you can start to exist in that middle ground in what we call the gray area, then suddenly you can be consistent, you can keep moving forward, and it doesn't feel like you have to stop and start all the time, and you don't get that feeling of failure, of guilt, or feeling like you're starting at day one. So the tiers of opportunity training is basically about teaching you to be flexible, be adaptable, stay consistent, keep things sustainable, and actually get out of this thinking, this all or nothing thinking that is often holding you back.
Speaker 1:And an example scenario of that could be the guy that his plan is he does an hour every day. He eats four meals. They're planned out. They look like this, and then something busy pops up. Maybe the kids are sick from school, maybe it's a twelve hour workday, maybe it's a vacation.
Speaker 1:Suddenly, that one hour workout in the gym using this equipment is impossible, so the backup plan isn't there. It basically falls apart, and then they end up doing nothing at all. That goes on for a couple of days, for a week, for a month, and then it's about starting from scratch again. This can even be applied to the nutrition as well, but today, we're gonna specifically be talking about the training. And I'm sure if you're watching this, you've had situations where you had great intentions with how you were gonna train, when you were gonna train, where you were gonna train, and then something comes up, throws you off track, and then it all falls apart.
Speaker 1:And you either quit altogether, you throw off the week, you give up on yourself, you beat yourself up, and you just feel like you're constantly failing. So we're really gonna figure that out today, solve all of those problems, and I'm gonna give you a system that you can walk away with so that your plan is fail proof when it comes to your training. So let's get into it. So let me just grab my pencil. So we're gonna be talking about a few different areas today.
Speaker 1:So the first one is location. The second one is time, as in time of day, like when, basically. You can put that in brackets. And then the last one is duration. How long?
Speaker 1:We can probably add a couple more categories into this, but for the time being, let's stick with these. And then afterwards, we can maybe go through some of the extra ones that could cause you problems. So let's just quickly go through some of these in a scenario. So the first one's location. Obviously, where are you training?
Speaker 1:So this could be a gym. It could be a CrossFit club. It could be at home. It could be in the garden. It could be in the park.
Speaker 1:Wherever it's normal for you in terms of training. Now why does that hold you back? Well, the main reason is that if you are absolutely set on a certain location as where you need to be to get the work done, then you are then a slave to that location. If for whatever reason you can't get there, it's not convenient, you don't have time, it's short, it's not the right hours for you, whatever it is, then it's gonna stop you from actually getting the work done. Right?
Speaker 1:Which is almost beyond your control because if, let's say, you work with a personal trainer and they have a certain set hours that they have available to you, you are limited by their hours. Or if you train in a gym, maybe it's a thirty minute drive away. Maybe it's not open on certain days. Maybe it's open short hours on a Sunday. Again, you are limited by that.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's training outside. Maybe the weather's not good all the time. So you can see there's different scenarios that the location can hold you back. The next one is time, I e when. When you have a family, when you have a busy job, you can't always rely on the same slot time slot that is to get the workout done.
Speaker 1:Now I do believe that it's very, very powerful to have a really strong idea of when you usually do your workouts. We often say to clients, schedule your workouts in the diary so it literally feels like an important meeting. Whilst I stand by that, there needs to be a backup plan as well. Right? How often have you said, oh, I'm gonna get up at 05:30 to train before I go to work, and then it doesn't happen for whatever reason.
Speaker 1:Maybe you don't wake up. Maybe you were too tired. Maybe you oversleep. Maybe you do get up, but then you just don't feel like it, or maybe the kids need you, or there's lots of reasons what can throw you off. And what often happens is that when that time slot passes, then it doesn't get made up anywhere else because that time slot has been given so much prominence that nothing else works, and it's just a failure.
Speaker 1:The day is just a write off. And then, obviously, you can get that that momentous effect of, okay, I'm not gonna work out tomorrow or the next day or the next day. You lose that momentum and you beat yourself up. And it's all simply because you only had a plan a, you didn't have a plan b. And that's the theme that we'll be seeing within this whole workshop.
Speaker 1:And then the last one is duration. So how long are you actually training for? This one's really, really straightforward. We just see it all the time with people that join Vibrant People. They're training for two hours a day, for ninety minutes, even sixty minutes.
Speaker 1:And it's a long time. Right? Like, to carve out that much time if you do have a demanding career, if you're working eight, nine, ten hour days, and you've got a family to take care of, and you just wanna live your life and not feel like you're a slave to this, then trying to carve out two hours, ninety minutes, even an hour from your day can be difficult. Now it's not to say it's impossible, and it's not to say you shouldn't do it, but it's just to say that, again, it's that plan a, plan b, or all or nothing mindset. If you have in your plan that you're gonna train for two hours a day and then it doesn't happen, there doesn't seem to be that wiggle room we often see.
Speaker 1:So it's either I'll do the two hours. If I can't, then I'll do nothing at all. So there's no flexibility or adaptability when it comes to duration as well. And obviously with duration, the longer you require in order to get the work done, then the harder it's gonna be to actually keep that consistent and keep it sustainable because there's gonna be more things that throw you off. Because location, when, okay, cool, we can kind of work with that.
Speaker 1:But if the duration is really long and it requires a long amount of time, there's gonna be a lot of things that can come up that are gonna throw you off, if you don't have any ability to adjust that time and work with different times in order to get the work done. And I think for me personally, duration has been the one that's made the big the biggest change for me since becoming a father and since business took off. When I was younger, used to do yoga for three hours in the morning. Three hours. Two hours in the morning, ninety minutes, ashtanga.
Speaker 1:And then I would go and do calisthenics in the park for like two or three hours because I didn't have those outside responsibilities. All I had to care about was me, and I had a different business back then that was very much of a lifestyle business. So when we had kids, when I got married, when this business took off, when things changed and time became more compressed, I would basically sacrifice every single other element of my life if I wanted to maintain that routine, which was a large amount of duration. So you can see how playing with the duration allows things to be much easier to actually stay consistent with and stay keep actioning, basically. Imagine if I told you you're gonna work out for one minute a day, it's pretty much impossible to fail.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's run back through to location. So what we're gonna talk about here is the idea of this tiers of opportunity. Now, usually, the tiers of opportunity for us, we put it as a pyramid. Let's write tiers of opportunity.
Speaker 1:Cool. And then we basically create levels in this pyramid, and we can do this for location. We can do it for time. We can do it for duration. We could even do it for approach.
Speaker 1:Let me add approach onto this as well. So approach might be the method that you use. Is it a run? Is it mobility? Is it body weight training?
Speaker 1:Is it weight training? Is it machines? Is it rowing? CrossFit? The list goes on.
Speaker 1:So we're gonna basically during this process, we're gonna work through a tier of opportunity for each of these four areas. Okay? Now what I want you to do, one of two options. You can either grab a pen and paper now and actually work through this with me and create this system as we go, or you can watch this through first and then do the process afterwards. I recommend actually just going and doing this now.
Speaker 1:Seize the moment. Let's get it done. Let's walk away with a great system that you can go and then implement. So location first. How does the tiers of opportunity work?
Speaker 1:So basically, at the top, this is our, like, number one option. This is plan a. This is the one that's most enjoyable for us, the most convenient, the easiest for us to action, the most aligned with the way we wanna train, the approach, the goals, our lifestyle, all of those things. So let's call this plan a. Tier two is plan b.
Speaker 1:So the next best thing. Then we have c. Then we have d. For this example, we're gonna do four tiers. You can have three.
Speaker 1:You can have five. You can have six if you want. I recommend a minimum of three in order to make this, like, really, really bulletproof, but I'll leave that one up to you. Today, we're gonna be doing four. So location.
Speaker 1:Best location for me, personally, I would say is probably the well, let's just go for the gym. Right? Like, different environment, away from home, away from, you know, not weather dependent, all the different equipment, safe, clean. You can have a shower. You can have a sauna afterwards.
Speaker 1:Okay? So that's number one for me. Next one for me is probably the outdoor gym. Contrain in the sun, fresh air, again, away from home. My outdoor gym is actually next to the sea as well.
Speaker 1:So if you wanna jump in the sea, that's pretty cool. And, also, it's super convenient because it's next to the play park. So if I do need to go with the kids and get a workout in that way, then I can do that as well. Next one for me is garden because, again, outdoors, I am at home, which is obviously convenient for showering and all that sort of thing. But I get to be outdoors, and it just feels a bit more holistic doing it that way.
Speaker 1:And then the final one is at home, which would basically be be over Yeah. Be in my living room or in my kitchen. Gets the job done. Not the most inspiring. It's where I eat.
Speaker 1:It's where I play. It's where I work sometimes. So I would probably rather be anywhere other than at home, but that's what we do to keep the flame alive. And then also, we have this new studio beautifully being built. This is gonna become my a, and the gym is gonna be thrown well off, and hopefully, this will be the place I can train every single day because it's convenient, it's next to my home, it's gonna have the equipment we need.
Speaker 1:So I'm gonna make my plan a very, very easy for myself. So as you can see here, we've got our tiers of opportunity. Now how do you use this? Basically, the way we use it is simple. We have our optimum situation, which is gonna be a combination of all of these different elements, location, time, duration, approach.
Speaker 1:That's our perfect plan a. Now we wanna be flexible with the ones that we need to be flexible with in order to get the work done and actually keep taking consistent action. So for location, plan a is the gym. In a perfect world, I get to the gym. Great.
Speaker 1:And then if I can't do that, I fall back to plan b. If I can't do that, fall back to plan c. If I can't do that, I fall back to plan d. So that is the flexibility and the tier of opportunity when it comes to location. Let me just see if I can get the rubber to work.
Speaker 1:Okay. That's not gonna work. K. The best thing, I think, will be to do that. Okay.
Speaker 1:Sweet. So next time, let's go for time. So my optimum spot is either basically when I leave the house. So sometimes I drop the kids off at school, sometimes I don't. It only adds about thirty minutes onto my day, but my perfect slot is 8AM.
Speaker 1:Before work starts, get it done, and then whatever happens in the day can get can happen, and it doesn't stop me from training. And just on that note, I do recommend that earlier in your day you can train, and that doesn't mean getting up at 5AM. It just means before the main bulk of the day starts. The earlier you can do that, the more likely you're gonna succeed because the later you leave it in the day, the more excuses pile up, the more reasons, the more obstacles, the more unexpected things happen. So the earlier you can do it, the better chance you've got of actually getting it done.
Speaker 1:Next block for me would be probably the 12PM slot. B and C for me are quite similar on this one. 12PM, get the morning jobs done. If I've got a block in the middle that's free, then I'll go and get the workout done and then get back to work in the afternoon. And then the next one is 3PM.
Speaker 1:This is after the workday's finished. I usually have my last calls around three or four. So I'll go straight after that, and then I'll go home and do family time. And then d is around 7PM. So that's when the kids have gone to bed.
Speaker 1:We've just put them down, and then I'll do my workout then. That's my least favorite spot because don't really like working out after a long day and especially close to bedtime. But if it has to get done, that's when it has to get done. So same as location. These are our plans.
Speaker 1:A at the top, d at the bottom. Map that out now. So you're most perfect, easiest, most enjoyable, most importantly, the one that you can do most consistently. That's a. And then work that down building up your a, b, c, and d.
Speaker 1:And you can always pause this video if I'm going too fast at any point. So now let's move on to duration. Now this one is very, very straightforward. There'll be a bit of difference between certain people and how much you wanna train in your capacity, but largely, things are gonna be the same. So you might be surprised.
Speaker 1:My number at the top for a is not gonna be that big now at all. In fact, there will be I can't even remember a time in the last few years where I've trained for over an hour. So optimum for me will be sixty minutes, b, forty five minutes, c, thirty minutes. And d, we'll go for fifteen minutes. I certainly suggest that you don't keep the gaps between these two close.
Speaker 1:D, fifteen minutes. That you would almost think, right, let's add an e for this and just go like five minutes. Right? Because that's gonna keep the flame alive. The whole point of this tiers of opportunity system is to make sure that things happen.
Speaker 1:So don't do sixty minutes, fifty five, fifty, forty five because forty five is still quite a lot of time to fit in on a crazy, crazy worst day. So what we wanna be thinking is how can we fold down the system and use it as layers of safety nets? So imagine you're a man or a woman, and you're falling. That's plan a. That's your first safety net.
Speaker 1:But the net splits. Oh, no. And you fall through. Plan b. But the net splits.
Speaker 1:Oh, no. And you fall through. Plan c. And the plan c catches you. Great.
Speaker 1:I got it done. And that is basically what we're thinking with this system. It's layers of safety nets that allow us to get the thing done even when it doesn't go to perfect plan. So let's get rid of this guy. To be honest, like, I will just base this usually on what happens on the day in terms of duration.
Speaker 1:I'm not totally crazy about it. I actually train forty five minutes thirty to forty five minutes most days. I do ten to fifteen minutes mobility, and then around thirty to forty minutes strength, and that would be four days a week. And then in between, I would do some cardio. That's usually my last resort, 7PM cardio.
Speaker 1:So we've done duration. And then finally, we'll move on to approach. And this is gonna be very different for everyone. And approach is an interesting one. And what we basically mean by this is the limitations that we put on ourselves based on, like, equipment, weather, what what we wanna work on, all those sort of things.
Speaker 1:So let's just say, for example, your perfect thing was doing CrossFit style weights in the gym, but for some reason, you can't get to the gym, the hours aren't right with your timetable, and you can't be away for ninety minutes. Well, then maybe a is CrossFit, but then b is going to a commercial gym when you can go at any time and do a CrossFit style circuit. So approach, it's kind of like location, but it's also about the thing that you do as well because you could be at home. Right? Location could be home, but approach could be weights, cardio, body weight, mobility, which each obviously can be optimized by different lengths of time.
Speaker 1:So for example, if you're training for an ultra marathon and you need to go out and go on the Peloton and do three hours on the Peloton versus just doing a quick fifteen minute body body weight circuit for strength, then obviously that's your change in approach. So the way it works for me usually, I will have let's get the pan out. What are you working? What's opacity done? So I would have body weight at the top.
Speaker 1:That would be body weight strength. Then second, I would have mobility. Third, I would probably do the Peloton. And then finally, I'd go for a run. I would probably include some weights with the body weight if I'm in a hotel or something or it's available.
Speaker 1:Happy to throw some weights around once in a while, but that's pretty much the table that I would be looking at. So, basically, if if the frequency was down for the week in fact, there's almost a different angle with this tiers of opportunity. I've just thought of this now, which is why I'm kind of babbling along, but I'll explain what I was thinking. So with the approach, there's almost a different tier of opportunity, which is looking at the whole week rather than the individual moment itself. So let's say we have set the seven days of the week.
Speaker 1:Right? So we'll get those written down here, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Right? And you're supposed to do strength. We'll use as an s, Monday, Wednesday, Friday.
Speaker 1:We wanna do cardio, c, on Tuesday, Thursday. And then maybe we do mobility on Sundays. Right? So let's say, for whatever reason and, obviously, we'll try and limit this by using the other tiers of opportunity. But let's say, for whatever reason, Monday and Tuesday is a no go.
Speaker 1:So we've suddenly got less days to try and fit in all of these things. Well, this would be a good point to actually address your tier of opportunity in terms of approach as well. So for me, however compressed the week is, or if there's gonna be a limited number of days I can train compared to optimal, then I will always do what I can to fit the body weight strength training in first before anything else. So the things that go are gonna be the run, not gonna do that. The Peloton, I'm not gonna do that.
Speaker 1:And the mobility, I'm not gonna do that. So I will prioritize the strength within these days that we have available. So that's a really nice way of using the tiers of opportunity when it comes to approach as well and being flexible with that. And another one that we kind of haven't touched on when it comes to the week, you can see you can use this thing for all sorts of different things to make sure you've got backup plans. If you do have a busy week and you usually you wanna train, like, four times, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, also remember about that all or nothing thinking when it comes to days of the week as well.
Speaker 1:If Monday doesn't happen, there's still Tuesday. Right? Like, I think it's crazy that we have this thing where we tell ourselves if it doesn't go exactly to plan, then we failed, and we just bail. And then we miss Tuesday, and then we miss Wednesday, and suddenly we've messed up the week. Right?
Speaker 1:So instead of thinking that way, think, okay. Cool. Monday didn't happen. Let's just shift it to Tuesday. No issue.
Speaker 1:Wednesday doesn't happen. Shift it to Thursday, and then Friday, Sunday, Saturday. Perfect. Right? Now you wanna try and stick to some semblance of order because if it's changing all the time, you're making it harder to build that habit and that expectation on that particular day.
Speaker 1:But if it's a one off, just adapt within the week. Results don't happen just day by day. It's week by week. It's what it looks like over a month, over six months, over a year. So remember, you can be flexible with all of this, and you can still move forward, especially if it allows you to actually take action on all of this.
Speaker 1:Right? So be flexible with your week as well. So now we've got all of this. Hopefully, you've got your tier of opportunity for your location, for time, for duration, and approach, maybe even the way that the week looks as well. How you action this?
Speaker 1:Let's run through a few scenarios. So scenario one, usually, your preferred approach is to do sixty minute workout in a gym at 8AM, and you're gonna lift weights. For whatever reason, the day is super, super busy. You don't have time to get to the gym. You don't have time to be there for sixty minutes, and 8AM is not gonna happen because you have to drop the kids off at school.
Speaker 1:So what you do is for each of those things, you just move down the tiers until you hit a thing that's feasible for you. So maybe you move down on location and you move down home, which is your second best thing. Time moves down to thirty minutes. You feel confident you can get thirty minutes in. Duration.
Speaker 1:Sorry. Time moves to 7PM. You know full well. No there's no gonna be no distractions there. You'll have thirty minutes at that point.
Speaker 1:And the approach moves to body weight. You know, you can just do that at home, do some push ups, do some squats and get it done. So you can see how that example shows you how you can move down those tiers. And you don't have to move down all at once. One tier can stay the same.
Speaker 1:So if your perfect location is the gym and you can still get to the gym, but it might just be switching from 8AM to 12PM and changing the duration down from sixty minutes down to fifteen minutes. Approach stays the same. Location stays the same. Right? And the other two change.
Speaker 1:Or maybe you have the time. You have 8AM is cool. You can train for an hour, but it's bank holiday and the gym's closed, but you still wanna train. So instead, you change location. You move to home, and you change the approach to body weight.
Speaker 1:So you do it from home. So you can see how having these different tiers of opportunity and actually cultivating this flexible and adaptable mindset, moving away from all or nothing thinking and into this gray area can be insanely powerful for consistency. Because at the end of the day, if you only have a plan a, there's gonna be lots of opportunities for that plan a to fail, especially if you have a busy life and you you have lots of responsibilities. If you can create three or four layers of backup plans in all these different areas where things can potentially go wrong, then suddenly you have a fail proof plan. Now, obviously, we haven't got into the details of what you're actually doing in that time, and that's a whole new conversation.
Speaker 1:But number one of getting results from any kind of fitness plan is actually doing it to begin with. Because, you know, you see me say all the time on social media, ten minutes of body weight push ups is gonna be sixty minutes gym workout that was skipped. Right? Every single time. Doing it is step one in order to get results.
Speaker 1:And this system is gonna allow you to do it 99.9% of the time. There is really no excuses once you have this system in place and you move into that mindset. If you have any questions about the tiers of opportunity, feel free to drop me a message. If you wanna talk to me about how we can build this system into your life and actually help you build these systems that are flexible, that are adaptable, that not only get you results but are actually sustainable long term, then drop me a message, and I'd love to chat to you about how we can work together. Going back to this just briefly, the reason that we use body weight mainly in this program and most of our clients train at home is because you have to use the system a lot less.
Speaker 1:If you don't really have to worry about location and you don't have to worry about approach, then you've removed two obstacles that hold you back because, you know, you can always train wherever you are, and you can always use your body weight. So you take two of those obstacles out, and then it's just time and duration that you really have to play with and obviously the flexibility in the week. Just to give you an insight as to why we prefer that approach for our particular clientele and also why I decided to use that in my own life when I had my family, when I had my business to keep me consistent and keep me sustainable. So that's a wrap, guys. I really hope you got a lot out of this.
Speaker 1:As I said, if you've got any questions, drop me a message. If you wanna find out more about the systems that we're using with our clients and how they might work for you, please just ask, and I'm happy to send over the details and have a chat about how we could make it work. Lots of love, guys. Peace out.