Check it oot.
Leg day, sinful burgers & a bench I don't own.
Issue seven.
Nobody has ever asked me if we can skip the bicep curls. In fifteen years, not once. Legs are different. Legs get negotiated. Can we do them next week? Is this the last set? Do we really need the second exercise?
I understand it. Leg day is harder, and it's harder in a way that feels unfair.
Audio Issue
Me reading this one out loud, so you don't have to. Good for the commute, the walk, or the ten minutes after leg day when standing up isn't happening.
The Question
This one came from a client thinking out loud mid session, somewhere in the middle of a leg day he'd have skipped given the choice. He doesn't like legs. He never has. I make him do them anyway.
“Why are leg exercises so hard compared to upper? Surely bigger muscles means easier?”
It's a fair assumption, but it's wrong in a genuinely interesting way.
Start with the assumption, because that's the bit causing the trouble. Bigger muscle, more strength, easier session. Reasonable enough. But getting stronger doesn't make the set easier. It hands you a heavier bar.
Think about what you actually lift. Whatever weight you can press overhead, you'll squat considerably more than that. Your legs are stronger, so we ask more of them, and we're right to. The set feels brutal because it's been built to feel brutal. Strength doesn't buy you comfort. It buys you capacity, and then we go and spend it.
Size is the next bit, and this is where the question is onto something real. When you squat, you're not working a muscle. You're working most of them at once. Quads, hamstrings, glutes and calves, plus your back, your abs, and everything else holding your ribcage roughly where it should be. All of that tissue wants oxygen, and it wants it at the same time. Your heart rate climbs, your breathing goes, and by rep eight you're not thinking about your quads at all. You're trying not to pass out.
My heart rate often hits 165 after a hard set of back squats or Bulgarian split squats. That's from lifting, not from running anywhere. It doesn't mean squats are secretly a 5K. They aren't. But it does explain why your lungs have become involved in a decision your legs made. A properly demanding leg session asks far more of you than just your legs.
Lateral raises have never left anyone gasping for breath.
Range of motion is the other half of it. A bicep curl moves a forearm about forty centimetres. A squat moves your whole body, plus whatever's on your back, through a much bigger range, and it does it while your ankles, knees and hips all bend at the same time. More weight, more range, more joints.
And then there's the part that turns up two days later. You use your legs for everything. Stairs, standing up, sitting down, the toilet. There is no dignified way to lower yourself onto a toilet seat forty-eight hours after a heavy squat session. You go down in stages, you grab something on the way, and you make a noise that belongs to someone thirty years older. Your biceps have never had to get you out of a chair. Sore arms are a rumour. Sore legs are a lifestyle.
So nothing down there is weaker. Quite the opposite. Legs feel harder because you're moving more weight, through more range, using more muscle, and then walking around on the evidence for three days.
For what it's worth, the client who asked still doesn't like legs. He's just got a better reason now.
01
There are no bad foods. There's only what's in them, and what's around them.
We've started talking about food as though it were behaviour
Look at the words. Clean. Dirty. Naughty. Guilty. Sinful. A cheat meal, as though there were a contract and you'd broken it.
None of that is nutrition language. It's the language of wrongdoing, words for things a person has done and ought to feel bad about. A biscuit hasn't misbehaved. It's a biscuit.
Calling a food bad tells you nothing about the food. It only tells you how you've decided to feel about eating it, and that feeling is the actual problem. I would never shame anyone about food or eating a certain way, and not because I'm being nice about it. Shame doesn't stop people eating. It makes eating feel like something to hide. So it happens standing up, in front of an open fridge, fast enough that you never really taste it. All of the calories, none of the enjoyment.
The goal isn't to make food innocent. Food was never guilty.
Two burgers
My own position first, so you know where I'm standing. I think a burger is one of the best meals going. Good meat, a wholegrain bun, stacked with veg. Protein, carbohydrate, fibre, fat and a proper spread of vitamins and minerals. It's about as close to a complete meal as I know, and I'll not hear otherwise.
Now take a burger from McDonald's. Same word, completely different meal. A thin patty, a white bun, some sauce, and a slice of something the menu is calling a pickle. It still gives you protein, carbohydrate and fat. But the veg is mostly missing, and the fibre goes missing along with it. Then it often turns up alongside fries and a sugary drink, and the whole meal becomes very easy to eat without keeping you full for very long.
Is it bad? No. It's thinner nutritionally. The fries and the drink add a lot more calories without adding much that will keep you full. If you know that walking in, you can have one and get on with your day.
A Lada and a Bentley are both cars. Nobody expects the same quality or performance from them. Burgers are no different.
And sugar gets the same treatment
“Sugar is bad” is the other one I hear constantly. Same mistake, different food. Fruit contains sugar. Milk contains sugar. Vegetables contain sugar. The word sugar doesn't make a punnet of blueberries and a bag of sweets nutritionally interchangeable.
What people usually mean is that a lot of added sugar, often arriving in food that doesn't offer much else, adds up. Which is true. But that's a portion, a pattern and the rest of the food around it. There's even a window in the week where straight sugar earns its place, and if you've been here since Issue 02 you already know the moment I mean. Same substance, completely different job.
Two checks, one before and one after
I don't ask whether something is good or bad. I ask one thing, every time I look at a plate, mine included. Is this ingredient adding nutritional value, or is it just adding calories?
It isn't a rule and it doesn't ban anything. It's a lens. Fuel first, pleasure second doesn't mean choosing one over the other. My food is fuel and absolutely fucking delicious. That's the point. Build the meal around what makes you feel good, then make it something you genuinely want to eat.
The second check costs you nothing and it happens on its own. How you feel after a meal doesn't tell you everything about it, but it tells you something useful. Heavy, sluggish and wanting a lie down? You either ate something that didn't agree with you, or ate far more than you needed. Steady, full, still able to think straight? That one worked. Your body files the report either way, and it's a lot more honest than the packaging.
02
Coach's Pick: the bench I keep looking at
A confession before I start. I don't own this one.
Every pick I've put in here so far has been something I use, so I'm not about to pretend otherwise now. This one is a tab I refuse to close.
I love fitness equipment. Properly love it. It's my toys. My neighbour takes in my parcels, and he said to me once, “It's so funny. I receive a package on your behalf. You collect it from me. Ten minutes later I see you playing with it on Instagram.” He wasn't wrong. If I could spend my entire salary on kit, I likely would.
Which is exactly why I've got rules about buying it. You don't need a lot of equipment. You need to buy it well. Four questions I ask before anything comes through the door.
Does it do more than one job? In a small space, anything that replaces three separate purchases is worth more than its price tag suggests. A bench that's able to become a dip station and a preacher curl station takes up the floor of one and does the work of three.
Will it still be useful when you're stronger? Adjustable beats fixed, every time. Headroom is much of what you're paying for, and kit you outgrow inside a year was expensive, whatever it cost.
Where does it live when you're not using it? This is the one people skip. Something brilliant that has to be dragged out from behind a sofa gets used twice. If it folds, or it already lives where you train, you'll use it.
Would you use it every week? Everything looks essential at the point of purchase. Very little of it is.
So, the one currently passing all four. The Freak Athlete ABX. It starts as a seriously adjustable bench, eleven angles from flat up to eighty-five degrees, a 450kg limit, and it folds upright when you're finished. Then it can grow into a dip station, preacher curl station, sit-up bench and leg developer as you add attachments. At the time of writing it's €499, down from €599, with 578 reviews behind it. The attachments cost extra though, and they add up fast. The leg developer on its own is €399. So a fully loaded version isn't a casual purchase, but you can add the bits you would genuinely use rather than giving half the terrace to separate machines. That's the appeal.
That last part is why I want it. I train people on a terrace, so abundant space isn't a luxury I have, and every piece of kit has to earn the floor it stands on.
At the other end of the price range, the slant board from Issue 02 earns its space in a different way. It doesn't transform into ten machines. It makes a long list of exercises work better. Squats sit deeper, knees track where they should, and people who couldn't get into a position suddenly can. There's barely a leg session where one doesn't come out.
That's the standard for great home equipment. It doesn't matter how many functions are printed on the box. It matters how many problems it solves in your actual training. Sometimes the answer is ten. Sometimes it's one very annoying problem, solved every week.
Nobody's paying me to mention either of them. Nobody ever has. I'm mentioning this one because if I buy it you're going to hear about it anyway, so you may as well see it now and judge me in advance.
One honest note before you go clicking. At the time of writing, their site says all items ship by 30 October. It's worth checking again before you get excited.
One more thing. I wore an Oura Ring for three months and wrote up the good, the gimmicky, and where I've landed on wearables generally. It's up on the blog now: My Oura Ring told me what I already knew. Mostly. →
Chau for now.
Martin · Barcelona