Tips & Tricks

Nutrition Tip: Stop saving all your protein for dinner  

Make every meal count 
A lot of people eat a small breakfast, grab a light lunch and then try to hit their protein target with a massive dinner. But if you're trying to build or maintain muscle, spreading your protein intake throughout the day is a practical strategy worth considering. 
Your muscles are constantly repairing and rebuilding. Eating protein provides the amino acids needed for this process, while resistance training stimulates muscle protein synthesis—the process of creating new muscle proteins.
Research suggests that consuming a sufficient amount of protein at several meals may help support this process. A review by Schoenfeld and Aragon proposed a target of approximately 0.4 g of protein per kilogram of body weight per meal, across four meals, although the evidence for an optimal distribution is not definitive. 


Try this
Instead of having 100 g of protein at dinner, aim to include a quality protein source in each main meal. 
- Breakfast: Greek yoghurt, eggs or a protein smoothie. 
- Lunch: Chicken wrap, tuna sandwich or a lentil bowl. 
- Dinner: Beef, fish, chicken, tofu or another protein-rich option.
- Snack: Cottage cheese, milk or a protein-rich snack if needed. 


 The takeaway: 
Your daily protein intake matters most. Spreading it across the day is a useful way to make that target easier to hit and support your training. 

Training Tip: Make Your Last Rep Look Like Your First 

What it is: 
Instead of rushing through your sets to hit a target number of reps, focus on making every rep look as similar as possible. This means maintaining control, using a consistent range of motion and avoiding momentum to squeeze out extra reps.  The goal isn't just to complete the set—it's to make every rep count. 


Why it matters: 
• Reinforces consistent technique and movement patterns.
• Helps you get more out of each working set. 
• Makes it easier to track genuine improvements in strength. 
• Reduces the temptation to sacrifice technique when fatigue sets in. 
• Encourages you to focus on quality rather than simply chasing numbers. 


How to apply it: 
• Pick a weight you can lift with good technique throughout your target rep range. 
• Control the lowering phase of each rep. 
• Use the same range of motion from the first rep to the last. 
• If your technique starts to break down, consider ending the set or reducing the weight. 
• Focus on feeling the target muscles working rather than simply moving the weight from A to B.

Practical example: 
If you're performing 10 reps of a dumbbell bench press, don't treat the first 5 reps as a warm-up and then rush the final 5. 
Set your shoulders, control the dumbbells down, maintain your position and press with intent on every rep. Even as fatigue builds, aim to keep the same quality of movement. 

Why now? 
As we continue progressing through our training blocks and increasing our weights, it's important that our technique progresses alongside our strength.  Research on resistance training shows that training close to failure can stimulate muscle growth, but taking every set to complete failure isn't essential. Maintaining quality reps while managing fatigue can help you train consistently and progress over time. 


Simple cue: "Make every rep a rep worth keeping."