Guides to training, and answers about the watch.

Women's health

Strength training through menopause

Menopause changes your hormones, your sleep and your bones. It does not change the fact that you can get stronger, and lifting is one of the things the NHS points to for both your bones and your symptoms.

Menopause Women's health

Lifting and bone health: why it matters for women

Bone is living tissue, and it responds to load much like muscle does. Women build less of it and lose it faster around menopause, which makes lifting one of the most useful things you can do for your skeleton, at any age.

Bone health Programming

How many sets per muscle each week

Count your hard sets per muscle across the week, not per session. Around ten a week is where muscle growth reliably picks up, more keeps helping at a slowing rate, and strength needs fewer sets than size does.

Volume Cardio

Cardio before or after lifting?

After, for anything hard. Lifting first keeps your strength work at its best, and cardio around a session costs your strength and muscle very little while it stays easy and short. A few easy minutes before the first set make a good warm-up.

Session order Getting started

Bracing and breathing for heavy lifts

Before a heavy rep, take a big breath low into your belly, tighten your trunk around it, and hold it through the hard part of the rep. On lighter sets, breathe steadily instead. Knowing which set wants which is most of the skill.

Bracing Getting started

What your first block was for

Six weeks in, most of what changed is the part you cannot see. Your first block taught you the lifts, replaced a guess with your real numbers, and ends with a lighter week so the next one starts fresh.

Training blocks Fuel

The pros and cons of pre-workout

One ingredient in a pre-workout has strong evidence behind it for lifting. The scoop is usually too small to hold an effective dose of most of the others.

Supplements Sessions

Training around pain

Pain is not one thing. Some of it means stop and get help today, some of it means see somebody soon, and some of it means change the lift and keep training the rest of you. This page helps you tell which, and it cannot tell you what is wrong.

Pain Fuel

The pros and cons of protein powder

Protein powder is not a supplement in any interesting sense. It is food, sold dry, and what it does for you depends entirely on what you were eating already.

Supplements Getting started

Your first week of lifting

Your first week is not a test. The weights are a deliberately light guess, the sessions are practice, and the one thing you have to get right is an honest record of what you did.

First week Getting started

Good lifting form, and why it matters

Good form is not a pose you hold or a list of rules you pass once. It is the same rep, done the same way, set after set, and it is what makes every other number in your training mean something.

Form Programs and splits

A beginner strength program, and how to start one

Almost any beginner strength program works if you run it honestly for six months. The choice of program is the easy decision, and it is not the one that decides anything.

Starting a program Programs and splits

Home gym and dumbbell only programs

Whether you have a rack in the garage or two dumbbells and a bench, the kit decides two things. How small a step you can take, and how far up you can go.

Equipment On your watch

Running a gym workout from a Garmin

The watch will record your gym workout more honestly than your memory will. The first few sessions go badly anyway, and it is always the same three things.

The gym activity Getting started

Strength training for beginners: where to start

You do not need to be fit to start lifting, and you do not need a perfect program. You need a handful of movements done well, two or three times a week, and a little more each week than the last. Here is how, and a program you can start today.

Beginners Programming

Strength standards, and what they can tell you

There is one large set of published strength standards and everybody in it entered a competition. That is worth knowing before you measure yourself against it.

Strength standards Programs and splits

Powerbuilding: training for strength and size

Heavy main lifts with bodybuilding volume behind them. It sounds like two goals sharing one week. It is closer to two goals that want different things.

Powerbuilding Programming

Training blocks, and what they are for

A block is a run of weeks with one job, ending in a week that pays for the ones before it. The structure matters more than which named model you pick.

Periodization Effort

What training to failure is worth

The last rep is supposed to be the one that counts. The studies that tested that found something more useful and considerably less dramatic.

Training to failure Programs and splits

The bro split, judged on the evidence

One muscle group a day, trained once a week. It deserves better than the punchline and less than its defenders claim, and which one depends on what you train for.

Splits Running

Lifting and running in the same week

Cardio does not kill your gains and lifting does not ruin your legs. What is left when the measurements come in is mostly a question of what you do on which day.

Interference effect Effort

Reps in reserve, and how close to failure to train

Reps in reserve is a count of what you left behind, and it is the same scale as RPE read from the other end. The interesting part is what the number should be.

Proximity to failure Sessions

What exercise order actually decides

Big before small is the rule everybody is handed. The research behind it says something narrower, and the narrow version is the one that tells you what to do.

Exercise order Programs and splits

The full body workout, and who it is really for

Everything trained every session, two or three times a week. The objection is always about the session. The evidence is about the week.

Splits Fuel

The pros and cons of creatine monohydrate

The best evidenced supplement in lifting is also the most oversold. Both are true at once, and the gap between them is the part worth reading.

Supplements Programming

Double progression, and why it works

Two things progress instead of one: the reps inside a range, then the weight. It is the method that keeps working after adding weight every week has stopped.

Rep ranges Sessions

How long to rest between sets

Short rests still make you stronger. Longer ones make you stronger still, and only once you already train. The clock matters less than the advice suggests.

Rest Programs and splits

The upper/lower split, and why four days fits

Two sessions repeated, four days a week, and every muscle trained twice by Friday. The least fashionable split, and the one that fits most weeks.

Splits Programming

What progressive overload actually means

The demand has to keep rising or the body has no reason to change. That is the whole principle, and the weight on the bar is only one of the things that can rise.

Overload Running

Strength training for runners

Runners are told to lift and the advice usually stops there. The research is more specific than that, and the part it is specific about is the load.

Endurance Programs and splits

Push pull legs: the PPL split, three days to six

The split people mean when they say they are on a program. It decides where your sets go, which matters, and not much else, which is the part worth knowing.

Splits On your watch

Garmin Strength Training: What Your Watch Can Do

Your Garmin is already a good strength training and weightlifting tracker. Recording sets, reps and weight was never the hard part. Deciding what you should lift next is.

The watch How the engine thinks

How to take body measurements that tell you something

Body measurements answer the question a scale cannot. The scale gives you one number for two things that move independently. A tape says which one moved, and it only says it if you take it the same way every time.

Tracking How the engine thinks

Two lifts, back to back

Pairing two lifts buys you time and costs you nothing you were using. Here is how to set one up, the five arrangements Reckoner refuses, and the one thing pairing changes about your next week.

Sessions How the engine thinks

What RPE actually measures

It is not how hard the set felt. It is how many good reps you had left when you racked the bar, and it decides whether next week owes you more rest or a lighter week.

Effort How the engine thinks

Why you are not progressing

A lift that has not moved in a month is not a willpower problem. Here is what a real stall looks like week by week, and the four things worth checking before you change anything.

Progression How the engine thinks

The week you back off

A deload is not a week off, and here it is not a lighter bar either. Both versions run through the real engine, and the reason the load stays exactly where you put it.

Recovery How the engine thinks

How Reckoner decides to add weight

You do not decide when the bar goes up, and neither does the calendar. Your last session decides. Here is six weeks of one bench press, run through the real engine, with the reason beside every decision.

Progression