14 January 2026
Why the first hour wins
The 06:00 hour is the most reliable slot we run. People who train before they open a laptop tend to keep the appointment, even in a week that later fills with meetings. The evening story is different. A late call, a dinner that overruns, rain on Bukit Pasoh Road at 18:40 — the session is the first thing that gets moved. We see it in the logs: morning blocks have fewer last-minute changes.
That is not a moral claim about willpower. It is a scheduling fact. The morning has fewer competing events. You have already organised the night before: shoes at the door, the programme on the desk, a set time to leave the house. The work itself is the same squat, hinge and press. The difference is that it happens.
We keep the first session of the weekday at 06:00 because the room is still quiet, the air is relatively cool, and you can be at your desk by nine. If your job starts later, 07:00 and 08:00 hold the same pattern. Evening hours exist for those who cannot take the morning; we do not pretend they are as stable. When we write a programme, we also write a slot. The programme only works if the slot is the one you will actually keep.
If you are deciding between 06:00 and 18:30, choose the hour that survives a bad week, not the hour that looks convenient on a calm Monday.
3 February 2026
Learning the hinge before the weight
Most people arrive able to pick a bag off the floor. That is not the same as a hinge we are happy to load. In the first three weeks of a starting block we spend more time on the hip hinge than on the number written next to the bar. We film a set from the side, we look at where the shin stays, and we ask for a pause just below the knee until the back can hold the position without a shrug.
It feels slow. It is meant to. A rushed deadlift in week one is how we inherit a sore lumbar week four. The hinge has to belong to you before the load belongs to you. We use a dowel, a kettlebell, then a light bar. Only when the lockout is quiet — no extra extension, no breath held as a brace — do we add plates.
What you get later is not a prettier video. You get a lift you can repeat on a humid Tuesday when you slept badly. The same three weeks also teach you how we write the log: the weight, the repetitions, and one short note about how the last set felt. That note is how the next week gets written. If the hinge is sloppy, we do not add kilograms. We add another week of the same drill.
People who have lifted for years still go through this. Experience is not a pass. It is a starting point. The bar will still be there in April. The position has to be there first.
20 February 2026
Training through a humid March
March in this part of Singapore is not a surprise, but it still changes the session. The walk up the stairs already raises the heart rate. The room holds the night’s moisture until mid-morning. We do not pretend a heavy squat wave feels the same as it did in January.
This year we have lengthened the warm-up by about six minutes on the warmer weeks: more easy rowing, more hip opening, a slower build to the first working set. We ask people to arrive with water already started, not to discover thirst in set three. Volume comes down before intensity does. If the programme said five sets, we may keep the top set and drop a back-off. The point is to leave the floor able to train on Thursday, not to match a number written in a cooler fortnight.
Air-conditioning helps; it does not cancel humidity on the walk from Outram Park. We keep the speaker quiet so nobody has to shout over it. If you feel the room more than the lift, say so. That is useful information, not a complaint. We would rather rewrite Friday than watch a grind that came from the weather rather than the plan.
Bring a second shirt if you want one. The towel service is there for a reason. March is a month to train, not a month to prove you can ignore the climate.
9 March 2026
What we changed in the four-week blocks
We used to write four-week blocks as three climbing weeks and a lighter fourth. On paper that is tidy. In the logs it was not. Too many people arrived in week three already managing sleep and a long office stretch, then treated week four as optional. The deload became a skip.
From March we are writing two harder weeks, a true down week, then a rebuild week that looks like week two with a little more quality. The hard weeks still have a top set you can point at. The down week is not a holiday. It is the same lifts at a volume that lets you practise the positions without collecting fatigue. We say this in the first conversation so nobody treats the lighter days as a loss of progress.
We changed it because the journal told us to, not because a textbook rotated. Singapore weeks are long. Heat and travel already supply a deload if we pretend they do not. A planned down week is cleaner than an accidental one in the middle of a peak. If your work trip falls on the hard week, we swap the days. The block is a shape, not a calendar tattoo.
The next rewrite is in April. Until then, if your log says the second hard week felt like a third, we will cut a set. That is the method. The block serves the person in the room.
