Strength, engine and durability in one athlete. Programs built on twenty years across powerlifting, CrossFit, Ironman and ultra, and on the one skill that carried all of it: turning up when the result wasn't there yet.
Ironman Florida · 2024 · 13:12
Every number here was earned in a different sport, in the same body, without a single injury. That's the whole argument for hybrid training done properly.
Most people don't fail hybrid training because they're weak or slow. They fail because they treat it as stacking suffering. High Persistence is the opposite: a way of sequencing strength, engine and recovery so you can keep doing all three for years.
Each strength day pairs a powerlift with its Olympic lift: squat with snatch, deadlift with clean and jerk. Engine work sits beside it, never on top of it. Nothing gets dropped to make room for something else.
Heavy central-nervous-system lifts never land on consecutive days. It's the single rule that has kept the squat above 200 kg through marathon blocks, and the joints quiet.
Sixty to seventy percent of max heart rate, for hours, deliberately boring. It's what turns a CrossFit engine that lasts twenty minutes into one that lasts thirteen hours.
A fixed daily baseline plus carbohydrate per training hour. Eat more when the session ran long, not when you feel like it. Protein and fat go up when the bar goes up.
Pride skips recovery because it feels soft. Self-respect sleeps, eats, and changes the plan when life gets in the way. One or two well-prepared events a year still puts you ahead of everyone who stayed in their lane.
Most sessions are dense, not long. The programs are written for people with a job, a family and a gym that isn't always open, because that's who built them.
"Pain tolerance isn't the same as preparation, and it only works in the short term."Scott Britton, Men's Health UK, January 2026
Twelve-week blocks with percentage-based lifting, structured engine work, and nutrition targets built in. Delivered as a mobile training grid you open at the rack, plus a full PDF. No app to learn.
Three strength days, three engine days, one long session, one full rest. Sheiko-style squat waves, a sub-20 5K progression and a nutrition baseline that scales with your training hours. The block everything else is built on.
For lifters who want to keep their numbers and finally be able to run. Heavy powerlifting and Olympic work with a zone 2 base layered underneath, the way it was done going from a 240 kg squat to an Ironman start line.
Marathon, 70.3 or HYROX prep for people who refuse to become skinny. Three runs a week, a long weekend session, and enough lifting to arrive at the start line strong. Includes the race-week fuelling and hydration plan learned the hard way.
I grew up on a council estate in Manchester, a chunky kid with no idea what food was for, and left home at sixteen with nothing. Muay Thai from seven to eighteen. Rugby. County sprinting. Then a gym I cleaned to pay for the membership.
Powerlifting came during a two-year hiring freeze while I waited to join the police. I ended up with British titles and a European championship, then walked into CrossFit and spent two years getting to a level where I could qualify. Seven years of competing later, I'd never missed a heat. Along the way I became a Detective Inspector, founded Battle Cancer with a Guinness World Record deadlift of the Titanic, and grew it to nine countries and more than $13 million raised.
In 2024, at 36, I learned to swim from zero and finished an Ironman five months later. In 2025 I did an Ironman in Japan, a powerlifting meet a week after, and a 100 km mountain ultra six days after that. I was timed out of the ultra by two minutes and eight seconds. That failure taught me more about hybrid training than anything that went right, and it's why these programs exist.
None of it came from talent. In every one of those rooms I was the least gifted person there. I was just still there.
Read the full story
More than eighty pieces for Men's Health UK and others since 2019, most of them written mid-block. The four below are the ones to start with.
The Whistler post-mortem. Why recovery, not fitness, was the problem.
Read → Men's Health UK · Aug 2025The full weekly split, session by session, including the Sheiko-inspired squat day.
Read → Men's Health UK · Sep 2025The baseline-plus-carbs-per-hour model, and why the eating was harder than the training.
Read → Men's Health UK · Oct 2024Going from twenty-minute efforts to thirteen hours without losing the barbell.
Read →
Every event on this site, filmed as it happened. Ironman Japan, a powerlifting meet five days later, the Whistler ultra that timed me out, and the 2026 season that followed. Ten episodes, including the ones that went wrong.
Heavyweight tees in Iron and Chalk, single-colour print, one Oxblood detail. First drop opens with the programs.
Want a plan written for your goals, not a template? Pick your blocks and I'll build it. Or just get on the list: one email a fortnight, written between sessions, no fluff.