Bit of a longer one this week — apologies in advance. Three topics: stress and training, the DIAL method, and some lifestyle advice for the back half. Optional lecture this week will cover post-Shred options for those asking about 1:1 coaching.
Not all stress is the same
Sleep, stress and steps are your core habits. It's the stuff most people overlook. And to your body, stress is stress — but the aftermath differs:
- Training stress releases endorphins, triggers positive adaptations, builds you up.
- Mental / emotional stress just depletes you.
Both activate the sympathetic nervous system, but the two don't leave you in the same place.
Sympathetic vs parasympathetic
- Sympathetic — fight or flight. Pupils dilate, breathing speeds up, heart pumps harder, blood diverts to muscles, lungs, brain. This is what you want going into training.
- Parasympathetic — rest and digest. Blood diverts back to your gut. This is where you want to be when you're eating.
Eating rushed, distracted or tense keeps you in fight mode — blood isn't going to your gut where it should be. Not optimal for digestion or fuelling.
Name the stress before you manage it
"I need to manage stress" is too broad. You have to name it before you can target it. What kind — physical, mental, emotional? Where's it coming from? Once you can name it, you can actually do something about it.
Cortisol isn't the enemy
Cortisol is the main glucocorticoid hormone in humans. It stimulates gluconeogenesis — breaks down stored protein and fat to make glucose in the liver. That's why it's called catabolic. Training is catabolic too. That's why we eat afterwards — to switch back to anabolic and build.
You want cortisol to rise in the morning. It's what gives you energy to wake up, move, and train. The problem is when it stays too high for too long — chronic elevation keeps you in breakdown mode. Harder to recover, harder to build.
The goal is to modulate cortisol, not eliminate it.
The Pregnenolone Steal
Chronic stress hits more than energy — it hits your hormones. The pathway:
Cholesterol → Pregnenolone → from there it branches into cortisol, DHEA, testosterone, oestrogen.
If you're constantly pushing cortisol, the body diverts pregnenolone away from making anabolic hormones and towards stress management instead. That's the "pregnenolone steal." Over time you get:
- Less muscle
- Less recovery
- Lower libido
- Less vitality
When people say stress affects your hormones — this is what's actually happening underneath.
The four cortisol patterns
Read these and see which one you actually are. Naming it is step one.
Pattern 1 — High morning cortisol
- Wake up restless, anxious
- Can't sleep through the night, mind's racing the second you open your eyes
- Edgy, confrontational
- Crash by lunchtime
(We want cortisol in the morning — just not this much.)
Pattern 2 — High daytime cortisol
- That "always on" feeling
- Constantly behind schedule
- Exhausted but wired
- Talking fast, easily irritated
- High output all day, then flatline when the adrenaline drops
I've been here more times than I can count.
Pattern 3 — High evening cortisol
The most common one, especially post-COVID.
- Can't fall asleep, brain won't switch off
- Overthinking, having arguments in your head at night
- Distracting yourself from bed — scrolling, little tasks, keeping busy
- Low morning energy, high evening energy, constant fatigue
Working late and bringing work-stress into your evenings is the classic driver.
Pattern 4 — Low cortisol
The opposite — no get up and go.
- Dragging through the day
- Relying on caffeine to function
- Usually happens after long periods of high stress — the body eventually down-regulates
- You can fall asleep anywhere — trains, couches, on a chicken's lip
Training cortisol — volume, not intensity
Common mistake: assuming heavy lifts and hard rounds are what's spiking your stress. They're not. It's total volume that catches you up, not intensity.
If you're wiped out and relying on caffeine or pre-workout just to get through sessions, it's a volume problem. The extra sets, the bonus finishers, the extra sessions — that's what drains the tank.
Fix: drop a session or two, or scale back slightly. Keep the key lifts. Keep the intensity where it matters.
What's changing in your programme this week
Week 6 is when we shift into an intensification block. You'll notice:
- Reps drop
- Load goes up
- Tempo shortens
Exercises simplify. The shortened tempo doesn't sound like much on paper, but it lets you lift heavier and push harder — the focus shifts from control to output.
Why now? Calories are lower, stress is higher, energy is potentially down. So we deliberately shift to high intensity + low volume to keep the training stimulus without digging you into the ground. No junk volume.
Ask yourself: are you giving each session high-quality focused effort? Or are you coasting? Attack the programme.
The practical stress playbook
Now for the actually-useful bit — what to do about all of this.
1. Outsource what stresses you
Meal prep stressing you out? Prep company or HelloFresh. Housework, admin, laundry — can any of it be delegated or simplified?
Personally, two of the best investments I've ever made are a cleaner and a washing lady. Sounds pathetic. It isn't. Washing genuinely stresses me out and someone else doing it means my head is clearer for the stuff that matters.
2. Sleep is the superpower
Protect your sleep. Recovery lives or dies here. What often feels like stress is just sleep debt.
A friend of mine just moved to Thailand to focus on grappling full-time. The problem in the UK: we finish training at 9:30 pm and are up coaching at 5-6 am. In Thailand he trains 6-8 pm and his next session is 10 am. His words: "I feel a different man. I can train so much." That's just sleep doing its job.
3. Eat enough
Losing weight is itself a stressor. Use the Range Method. Don't skip meals. If you're doing time-restricted eating, shorten the window — move your first meal earlier. Fasting too long spikes cortisol.
4. Rest-day fuel
Keep calories close to training-day levels. Your body needs the nutrients to repair. Under-eating rest days is a classic mistake that stalls progress.
5. Track your patterns
Certain times of day, days of the week, points in your cycle — where do you always feel wrecked? Mine's Thursday. If you can name a pattern, you can plan around it. If you're always fried Thursday afternoon, don't schedule your hardest session there.
Discipline > motivation — the winning chain
Priorities for the next two blocks: sleep, prep, hydration, discipline over motivation. Motivation got you started. Discipline gets you over the finish line. Motivation bounces around like a ball — unpredictable. Discipline holds you steady.
The chain:
Discipline → Habits → Consistency → Growth
Discipline is doing what needs to be done, even when you don't feel like it. Ask yourself why — why did you join this? You joined for a reason. Hold that reason.
Push, recover, adapt — not push, push, push
High achievers get into a "zone of delusion" where they convince themselves they can just keep pushing. A star that shines twice as bright burns half as long. Don't be that star.
The actual model: push → recover → adapt → push → recover → adapt. That's where the growth lives. Not in the grinding.
World-class basics beat optimisation
Habits carry you past the Shred — sleep, food, prep, training. Protect them.
The 1% do world-class basics. Too many people are trying to optimise the last 5% before they've nailed the foundation. Nail sleep, food, hydration, training — then chase optimisation. Not before.
Consistency turns average into world-class. Not intensity. Not tricks. Not the perfect programme. Just showing up.
How to actually be consistent — abandon all-or-nothing
Miss one meal → write off the day → write off the week. Kill that mindset today.
If you're driving your car and one tyre bursts, you don't get out and stab the other three. Same principle when you miss a meal — the answer is never "may as well ruin the rest too."
- Stop chasing perfection. There is no perfect.
- Sustainability wins. Boring works.
- Two great weeks + two rubbish weeks = net zero. Most people's years.
The DIAL Method
One of my favourite tools — a fail-safe way to stay consistent no matter what life throws at you.
Think of a dial from 1 to 10:
- 10 = your best day. Full plan, calories hit, macros hit, training on point.
- 1 = bare minimum. Three solid meals with protein. That's it. 1 is the floor you don't drop below — even on your worst day.
- 2-9 = life. Some days a 7. Some days a 3. That's fine.
The point: you're never at zero. Zero is the all-or-nothing mindset. On the DIAL, you're always at least a 1.
How to build your DIAL
- Rate where you are right now. Nutrition and training — out of 10. Say you're a 7.
- What's one thing you could do this week to move from a 7 to an 8? Write it down. Then 8 to 9. Then 9 to 10.
- Write down your absolute 10. What does the perfect day look like?
- Write down your absolute 1. The floor. e.g. "Didn't track, but had three meals with protein."
- Fill in 2-9 from there.
Refer to your DIAL when life throws a curveball. Big work day → drop to a 4. Sick kid at home → drop to a 2. You never hit zero. That's the whole point.
Week 6 action points
- Identify your cortisol pattern (1, 2, 3 or 4) — and pick one habit that targets it this week.
- Attack the intensification block. Reps down, load up, tempo tight. No junk volume.
- Outsource one thing that stresses you out this week — even a small thing.
- Rest-day fuel: keep calories close to training days.
- Build your DIAL. Write down your 1, your 10, and fill in 2-9.
- Push → recover → adapt. Not push → push → push.
Check-ins Thursday and Friday. Optional lecture this week covers post-Shred options for those asking about 1:1 coaching. Any questions — you know where I am.