Most people trying to sort their health out are taking instructions from three or four people who have never spoken to each other. The acupuncturist says magnesium. The trainer says more protein. Someone says train hard after work; someone else says nothing intense after dark. Every one of them may be right in isolation. Together they produce a plan nobody is actually holding.
I have watched this undermine more programmes than any physiological factor I can name.
Someone comes to me for nutrition. We build something around what their testing actually shows — their recovery capacity, their stress physiology, their sleep. Then their trainer, who has never seen any of it and is doing a perfectly good job by their own lights, puts them through a session at eight in the evening that leaves them wired until one in the morning.
Nobody has done anything wrong. The plan still fails.
One practitioner holding both halves. Exercise and nutrition, prescribed by the same person, from the same information, with the same understanding of what your body is currently capable of recovering from.
Not because I am better at either half than a specialist. Because the two halves have to agree with each other, and when they are held by different people they routinely do not.
Training is a stressor. That is the entire point of it — you apply a load, the body adapts, you get stronger. But adaptation is not free. It draws on the same recovery capacity that everything else in your life is drawing on.
Which means the right training prescription for you depends on things that live firmly on the nutrition side of the fence: how you are sleeping, whether you are eating enough for the work you do, what your stress physiology is doing, whether you are digesting and absorbing what you eat. A programme that would build a well-recovered thirty-year-old will flatten someone running on empty, and it will look like a motivation problem when it does.
I have been coaching since I was eighteen — boxing and athletics first, then general population, now thirty-seven years of it — and I moved into functional nutrition precisely because I kept hitting the ceiling from the other side. You can only programme so well for someone whose underlying terrain you cannot see.
I would rather say this on the sales page than let you find out later.
A lot of the industry sells assessment as injury prevention — screen the movement, find the dysfunction, fix it, avoid the injury. I held that position for most of my career and the evidence does not support it. A meta-analysis of thirty prospective studies covering over three thousand runners tested more than a hundred biomechanical and strength variables and found essentially nothing predictive. Movement screening tools do not predict injury either. What does predict injury, consistently, is having been injured before.
I have written about that at length, including the part where I withdraw a claim I had been making for years.
So here is what I do claim. Preparatory work makes you more capable — stronger, better coordinated, able to control a descent and produce force in positions you currently cannot. That is worth having on its own terms. It is the right framework for returning to training after injury, which is the situation where the evidence genuinely supports individual attention. And it is how you learn to move well, which is a skill like any other.
What I will not tell you is that it guarantees you will not get hurt. Nobody can tell you that honestly.
On the over-fifties specifically, because this is the group I care most about reaching. The capacity to control a descent, catch a stumble and get off the floor unaided is what determines whether you stay independent, and it declines faster than raw strength does. It is also the most trainable thing in the room. The eccentric training article covers the mechanism — it matters more for how you will be at eighty than almost anything else you could do.
Online is the primary way I coach, and I want to be straightforward about why: it is better for this kind of work, not a compromise.
An initial assessment session — movement, history, what you can currently do, what you are trying to get back to or towards. Done by video call, with you moving so I can see it.
A programme built for your equipment and your week, not a template. Whether that is a full gym, a set of bands and a kitchen worktop, or a garage with a barbell in it.
Video demonstrations and coaching cues for every movement, so you are not guessing.
Regular review calls to progress the programme, troubleshoot, and adjust when life changes — which it will.
Messaging between sessions for the questions that come up mid-week, including form checks from a phone video.
The advantage of coaching remotely is that you train in the place you will actually keep training — your own gym, your own kit, your own schedule — rather than in a session that only works when I am standing there. The habit has to survive without me. Building it in your environment from day one is how that happens.
On its own. Movement coaching without any of the testing. If your question is how to train and you are eating reasonably well, this is enough.
Alongside the TDG Programme. This is where it does the most, and it is the reason the service exists. When I can see your blood chemistry, your stress hormones and your gut function, the training prescription stops being a guess about your recovery capacity and starts being informed by it. Existing TDG clients can add movement coaching at any point.
As the way into the Move Well First material. The self-paced programme covers the whole methodology across thirteen modules. Some people want to work through it with someone. Coaching can be the front door, the accompaniment, or the follow-on.
I do still train people face to face, and I am glad to. But I should be honest about the availability rather than let you find out after enquiring.
Most of my in-person slots are held by clients who have been with me for years, in fixed times, and they do not come free often. Something occasionally opens up — more often for fortnightly or monthly work than weekly — but I cannot promise it, and I would rather say so now than string you along.
If in-person matters to you, ask on the discovery call and I will tell you honestly what is available. If it turns out there is nothing, online is not a lesser version of this. For most people it is the better one.
The prices are on this page rather than behind an enquiry form, because people who have to ask what something costs usually assume the worst and never ask.
Initial assessment and programme build — £145. A full session by video call: movement, history, what you can currently do, what you are working towards. You come away with a programme built for your equipment and your week, with video demonstrations for every movement.
This is the same fee as a nutrition consultation, deliberately. Same practitioner, same hour, same depth of preparation behind it. I do not think the movement side is the cheap half.
Ongoing coaching — £150 a month. Programme progression, a review call each month, form checks and messaging between sessions. Cancel any time; no minimum term.
£110 a month for TDG Programme clients. If I already have your test results, a good deal of the assessment work is done and the prescription is better for it. That saving is passed on.
£75 an hour, subject to availability — see the note above, which is honest about how limited that is.
Long-standing clients on historic rates stay on them. That does not change, and it is not something you need to raise with me.
The discovery call is free, takes twenty minutes, and is genuinely an orientation rather than a sales call. Bring what you are trying to achieve, what has gone wrong before, and what your week actually looks like. If I am not the right person, I will say so and point you somewhere better.
And if you are currently getting advice from several directions at once and quietly suspect it does not add up — that is worth twenty minutes on its own.
Free, twenty minutes, no obligation. The right starting point for anyone not yet a client.
Book a discovery call See the TDG Programme