The Rising
Body first. Then the mind work. Before the day begins.
The hundred isn't the point. Showing up is. Sets of five still count. Log them as you go.
The Stone
Sixty seconds. Still. Hands at your sides. Tall without trying.
Breathe out long. Nothing to perform. Nowhere to leak.
The Seal
Don't fight the urge. Don't obey it. Let it pass through.
Today's training
…
Tonight's numbers
Ten seconds before bed. This is how we watch the 4pm crash disappear once breakfast lands. The data will tell us which fuel experiment wins.
Every day you touch any of this counts. We count what you build, not what you break.
Nine thousand by day ninety. Watch the mountain build.
The Build
Three weights days. Two sprint days. Hiking on top. Upper-body bias, because your legs are already ahead. We never chase a maximum. Smooth is the standard, and we always leave two reps in the tank. That's not softness, that's how the strong stay training.
The Foundation
Groove the movements, wake the back up with your osteo's blessing, and take the Campaign on the road. Pull-ups twice a week from day one.
The Build
London. Same timezone. Volume climbs, the mirror starts talking back, and we get our session in together in the flesh. Detail loads here at the Phase One call.
The Standard
Pull-up specialisation, the photos, the standing man in the flesh. Twelve unassisted, day ninety. Detail loads at the Phase Two call.
The Week
Default rhythm. The Campaign overrides it while you travel. See below.
Session A: Upper Pull
›
The pull-up day. Fresh, first, always.
Ladder: sets of clean reps, never grinding. Use band assistance or slow 5-second negatives to fill sets once clean reps run out. Every rep smooth. That's how twelve gets built.
Session B: Lower + Core
›
Legs maintained, six-pack built, back looked after.
RDL stays light and perfect: neutral spine, hips back. If the upper back or neck talks at all, swap to hip thrusts and tell me on WhatsApp. We work with the osteo, not around him. Calves and ankles get their minutes. Your words, your programme.
Session C: Upper Push
›
The bench day.
Bench: two in the tank, every set. The number climbs by showing up, not by heroics. No hotel bench? DB press flat on a bench or floor press covers it, and the Campaign notes have the swaps.
Sprint days × 2
›
The decathlete gets his legs back. Contained power: fast but smooth, never strained.
The rule: the session ends the moment form dips, whatever the rep count says. We never empty the tank here. That's a hard line in this programme, and it's what keeps you training all ninety days.
Weekend hike
›
Your choice of ground, 60–120 minutes. This is recovery, thinking time and legs all at once. In August that means English woodland, and one of them is with me in Ashdown Forest.
The Campaign
Auckland → Sydney → Bangkok → London. Most men lose momentum to travel. You build yours in three countries.
- Mon 27 Jul: Session A at Les Mills. The Auckland farewell.
- Tue 28 Jul: Fly AKL → SYD. Walking floors: 8–10k steps through terminals, calves, shoulders loose.
- Wed 29 Jul: Session B, Sydney. Any commercial gym or hotel gym: leg press → DB RDL, lunges, calves, hanging raises.
- Thu 30 Jul: Travel / arrive Bangkok. Long walk, early daylight, eat on local time.
- Fri 31 Jul: Session C, Bangkok. Hotel-gym version: DB bench or floor press, DB shoulder press, laterals, triceps.
- Sat 1 Aug: Fly to London. Walking floors again.
- Sun 2 Aug: Arrive. One long daylight walk to reset the clock. No gym required; the walk is the session.
- Week of 3 Aug: London gym locked in: David Lloyd or nearest full setup to where you're staying. Send me the shortlist and I'll pick with you.
- August, date TBC: The Sussex Session. Ashdown Forest: we train together in the flesh, then coffee. We set the date once you've landed and settled.
Jet lag protocol: morning light within an hour of waking, meals on local time from day one, push-ups as normal. The Rising travels free.
The Ladder
Log your best clean set of pull-ups whenever you test one. Twelve by day ninety.
Once a week, one WhatsApp line to me on how the back's feeling, and keep your osteopath in the loop as you load. Training helped it last time, and we keep it that way by talking, not guessing.
Recovery & Optimisation
The whole-system work you asked about. More lands here at each phase call. You'll keep finding things in here.
Sauna & cold
›
Your weekly habit stays and earns its place: 15–20 minutes, evening or post-training, cold finish exactly as you already run it. On the road, any hotel sauna counts, and if there isn't one, a hot bath and a cold shower finish does the honest version. Never straight after sprints; give the system an hour to settle first.
Fascia release
›
Ten minutes, two or three times a week, foam roller or a firm ball: lats, pecs, upper back, and the soles of the feet. Slow passes, more ironing than scrubbing, with a long exhale on the tender spots, and the line is discomfort, never pain. This directly supports the osteo work on the upper back and neck; show him what you're doing and let him steer the target areas. A lacrosse ball packs flat and travels through every airport on the Campaign.
Lymph flow
›
The lymph system has no pump. You are the pump. Your 90 minutes of daily walking is already the best lymph practice there is. Add dry brushing before your morning shower: two or three minutes, light strokes, always toward the heart. On flight days: calf raises every hour in the aisle, water and salt at every refill. Deep nasal breathing into the belly moves more lymph than any massage. Your meditation practice is doing double duty and always was.
Red light
›
Keep the 20-minute morning session with the journal; it's already sequenced into the Rising. When convenient, add a session over trained muscles in the evening on weights days. For the Campaign, the face mask is the one that packs. The full rig waits for London if you can ship it, or resumes in October.
Down-regulation
›
The fastest lever on the nervous system: exhale longer than you inhale. Four counts in, eight slow counts out, five rounds. Use it before meals so digestion gets a calm system, and any time the day sharpens. It's also the engine inside the letting-go tool: the urge arrives, the long exhale answers. One tool, every door.
Fuel
Pro-metabolic eating. You'll eat more, not less, because we're feeding a build. No counting, no restriction. Ninety days of building your intuition instead.
- Carbs are fuel. Fruit, honey, white rice, potatoes, quality dairy. Sugar was never the enemy. Context is.
- Protein at every meal. Grass-fed, organic, wild where you can. Source is everything, and that's already your instinct.
- No seed oils. Butter, ghee, coconut oil, a little olive. Nothing from a factory press.
- Dairy is a cornerstone. Your milk habit stays. It's a feature, not a bug.
- Salt to taste, and then some. Keep the ¼ tsp per litre going.
- Eat when warm, calm, unhurried. Digestion follows the nervous system. The standing man eats like he stands.
Breakfast
The new meal. This is where the 4pm crash gets fixed and the build gets fed. Rotate the three, or run the fruit-till-noon experiment for a week and tell me how you feel.
The experiment: fruit until noon: fruit, juice, honey and dairy only through the morning, first solid meal at lunch. Some men fly on it, some don't. One week's trial, honest report, we keep what works.
Lunch
Dinner
Snacks & rituals
Hydration
~3 litres a day, ¼ teaspoon of salt or electrolytes per litre. You already run this, keep it. Long black every other day stays. Green tea with manuka and salt in the morning stays. On flight days, a litre extra and salt every refill, because planes drain you faster than training does.
Sourcing: London
- Hook & Son: raw milk from Hastings, delivered nationwide and at London farmers' markets. Your milk problem, solved. Order the first delivery before you land.
- Farmers' markets: Borough Market and your nearest weekend market for grass-fed meat, eggs and raw dairy. Send me your London postcode and I'll map your nearest.
- Organic butchers: look for Pasture for Life certification; I'll send my Sussex list when we train together.
- Transit weeks: Sydney and Bangkok won't do raw. Best-available organic and pasteurised full-fat is the standard there, zero guilt attached. Standards travel; specific products don't have to.
The full set, as a creed
›
One rotates through each day. Read the whole set aloud whenever you want the full charge.
The Four Agreements
The Achilles version. Not rules. A covenant with yourself, signed once and lived daily.
- One. Keep your power. Nothing leaks. Not to screens, not to sugar, not to the opinions of others. Every hour you keep is an hour that builds.
- Two. Never two in a row. A slip is a day. The spiral is a choice, and you no longer make it. Stop it at one, every time.
- Three. Leave everything better than you found it. Your words. Every person, place and thing. Including your own body, every single day.
- Four. Smooth is the standard. Contained power, never strain. In the gym, in the queue, in conversation. The stone does not force. The stone holds.
The Letter
Write to the man standing at Day 90. Seal it once, and it stays locked until he's real. He opens it on the last day.
The Standing Man
Completely relaxed. Calm, peaceful, unreactive. Hands at his sides, tall without trying: an elegant creature come to rest in a moment of stillness.
Your words, brother. That's who these ninety days reveal. Trustworthy. Consistent. Fatherly. Protective. Warm, open, kind, and no leaky energy. He speaks kindly, calmly, deliberately. He leaves everything better than he found it. People feel safe around him.
From Slight to Stone
The old story said weak. It was never yours. It was handed to you by one man's word about one presentation, and you've carried it long enough. The evidence says otherwise: decathlon at nineteen, a year of devotion most men couldn't do, drugs and alcohol dismissed without a wobble.
You're not weak. You're a powerful man who's had the taps left open. So the whole programme is one move: seal the leaks, keep your power. A stone is still. A stone is trusted. A stone holds the whole building up, and a stone doesn't leak.
The Seal: the full protocol
Rule one: don't fight it, don't obey it. When the urge arrives, sugar, the screen, whatever shape it takes, you do neither. You notice it, name it quietly ("there it is"), take one long slow breath out, and let it sit there without acting. Urges are waves: they build, they peak, they pass, usually inside a couple of minutes. You don't have to win the moment. You only have to not hand it the keys. Then move your body: stand up, walk to another room, put your hands on something real.
Rule two: never two in a row. A slip is allowed. The collapse after it is not. The real damage was never the slip, it's the spiral, the perfectionist's trap where one broken streak drains the whole tank. One is a day. Two is the old pattern. We stop it at one, every time.
After a slip: no story, no shame, no sermon. Log it, drink water, do ten push-ups, and go do the next right thing on the list. The man you're becoming pays vigilant attention, stays calm and detached, and holds the frame. That's it. That's the whole ceremony.
The Standing Practice
Once a day, sixty seconds, anywhere stillness finds you: a queue, a lift, the kettle. Feet under you. Hands at your sides. Shoulders down. One long breath out. Nothing to perform, nowhere to leak. You told me stillness is where the doubt gets in, so stillness is exactly where we build. The timer on the Today page is there when you want it; the queue at the shop counts just the same.
The Servo-Mechanism
The idea you loved from your reading: a guided system doesn't panic when it drifts off course. It registers the miss, corrects calmly, and keeps moving toward the target. No drama about the misses. The target is set: the standing man, twelve pull-ups, day ninety. Your only job is the next small correction. Hold the image clear, and let the system steer.
The Evening
Meditation and breath work to bring the system down, melatonin as your routine has it, and the poetry stays. That's not a hobby, that's the artist's therapy, and the artist is half of who we're building. Your father's art, your grandfather's steadiness: the synthesis is yours. Write the day into verse whenever it wants to be written.
One for the GP list, no drama: when you're in for the bloods, ask about long-term high-dose melatonin, just a sense-check while we make your sleep even better naturally.
If the heavy stuff surfaces at any point, Les, the year, any of it, the door's open on WhatsApp or a call, on your terms, any time. No question needs to come with it.
The Standards
Three outward proofs, day ninety the deadline. This board updates itself as you log.
Weekly check-in
Every week, without fail. That's my end of the deal as much as yours. Fill it in, send it, and I come back to you same day.
The Body
Front, side and back. Morning, before food, same light, phone propped not held. These are for the day-ninety comparison and the symmetry work: shoulders building out over a tight waist, the classical ratio. Nobody sees them but us. Send via WhatsApp when done.
Waist at navel · chest · flexed arm · morning weight if you want it. Numbers serve the picture, never the other way round.
The energy line
Your nightly numbers, last fourteen days. Highly sensitive to your energy, your words, so we give it a line and watch what breakfast, the Seal and the miles do to it.
Bloodwork
Private lab, whenever you book it. This is the panel. Screenshot this card and hand it over. Bring me the results as your doctor's data and they feed the plan.
- Full blood count + ferritin, B12, folate
- Vitamin D (25-OH)
- Thyroid: TSH, free T3, free T4
- Metabolic: fasting glucose, HbA1c, lipid panel
- Hormonal: total & free testosterone, SHBG, prolactin, morning cortisol
- Inflammation: hs-CRP
- Liver & kidney panels, plus magnesium and zinc
While you're at it: the melatonin question for the GP. One conversation, no drama.
Make it feel like an app
iPhone: open this page in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen. Android: open in Chrome, tap the menu, then Add to Home screen. It gets its own icon, opens full screen, and works offline. One tap from your home screen every morning.
Your data
Everything in this app lives on your phone, works offline, and belongs to you. Back it up any time, and if you ever change phones, import brings it all home. No logins, no servers, no glitches. I learned that lesson properly.