How to Train for Decades Without Breaking (Lethal February)
The training system that actually lasts.
Every man grinding in a gym right now believes the same thing.
Push harder.
Red line every session.
Fail every rep.
Suffer more than the guy next to you.
The high intensity obsession has taken over.
Mike Mentzer’s handful of brutal sets pushed to absolute failure. VO2 max sessions that leave you face down on the floor. The idea that if you’re not destroyed after training, you wasted your time.
And the logic tracks.
If 2 hard sets deliver the same strength gains as 6, why do 6? If 10 minutes of hell matches 90 minutes of steady cardio, why wouldn’t you take it?
Less time. More suffering. Faster results.
I get the appeal. I trained this way for many years…
The idea that you can walk into a gym 3 times per week, crush yourself for 30-45 minutes, and walk out having done everything you need to do. No wasted time. No fluff. Pure, concentrated suffering.
There’s something deeply satisfying about that. Especially for men who are already stretched thin across business, family, relationships. The gym becomes the one place where the equation is simple. Work hard. Get out. Move on.
And the fitness industry has made it incredibly easy to believe this is the optimal path.
Two brutal sets instead of six. Ten minutes of redlining instead of an hour of “boring” cardio. The promise that intensity is the shortcut every busy man has been looking for.
The problem isn’t that this approach doesn’t work.
It does. For a while.
The problem is that it builds nothing lasting.
You can make a massive difference to your fitness in 12 weeks of punishing, soul-crushing training. Absolutely. But then what? You keep redlining. The injuries start stacking. The burnout creeps in. And six months later you’re back to where you started, wondering why the shortcut didn’t stick.
We see this all of the time with ‘health coaches’ in the bodybuilding industry who will do an aggressive 12 week cut with their clients, as soon as the cut is over, they relapse, rebound, binge, stuff their faces, and end up exactly where they started…
Here’s the truth I refused to accept, and I’m sure many of you too…
Wanting to achieve anything exceptional in life requires time. Reps. Lots of them.
You wouldn’t expect to run a multimillion dollar business just doing 3x 45 minute work blocks per week, so why do we have this same warped perception when it comes to our health?
YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR BILLION DOLLAR ASSET
Every business, every deal, every moment with your family, every adventure… It all runs on one thing. Energy.
Not money, connections or ‘network’.
Energy is the ultimate currency. It’s the fuel behind everything you will ever build, create, or experience in your life.
The training processes #1 aim should be to build as much energy capital in your life… So you can spend it.
The same way you would spend money… Energy you can use to train more, energy you can use in your business or career. Energy you can use to support your family. Energy you can use to explore, travel & see the world.
Now more than ever, this is a necessity for modern men. And that’s been taken away from us as modern life is architected to remove every possible reason to move. The car replaces walking. The desk replaces physical labour. The couch replaces everything else. You haven’t failed. The system was built to make you sit.
BUT HOW MUCH DO YOU NEED TO MOVE DAILY?
This number is going to shock you. 2 HOURS. Not 10 minutes of HIIT. Not 20 minutes of sprints…
2 HOURS.
Why 2 hours? Credit to Iñaki de la Parra, Alan Couzens & Gordo Byrn, for providing me with the awareness of these particular studies and concepts. As I have learnt more about endurance sports, the methodologies & systems they use have been very inspirational toward the development of the Lethal Training System.
Herman Pontzer’s research on the Hadza tribe, one of the last true hunter-gatherer populations on earth , found that these men moved roughly 90 to 120 minutes per day at moderate intensity [1]. No gym. No protocol. No optimization. Just the natural rhythm of surviving and building a life. And they achieved a mean VO2 max of 56.7… A number 99% of you reading this do not have.
Meanwhile, the average Western man’s primary movement is walking between machines in the gym, or walking from the couch to the fridge… And we wonder why the state of health is in shambles….
The gap between how much we move and how much we were built to move? About 90 to 120 minutes per day.
That’s where the two hours comes from. It’s not arbitrary. It’s the distance between what we are and what we’re supposed to be.
And here’s why it matters beyond just “being fit.”
A VO2 max of 50 results in a four-fold decrease in the risk of death. Four times less likely to die. From anything. That number has been replicated across massive mortality studies. It’s one of the strongest predictors of how long you actually live [2].
But here’s the part that should genuinely terrify you…
To maintain a VO2 max of 50 at age 75, you need approximately two hours of aerobic movement per day [3]. Not to improve. Just to maintain. And the research is clear, a man who trains consistently throughout his life at 75 has roughly the same fitness as a typical 25-year-old who does nothing.
The men who don’t maintain? They’re already heading toward the sedentary line by their mid-50s.
Two hours a day isn’t a training goal. It’s a standard worth pursuing.
You don’t have to get there tomorrow… But it has to be where you’re heading.
PILLAR 1: VISUALISE & PLAN YOUR IDEAL LIFE
I get it, this sounds like some woo woo manifestation hippy advice.
But it’s not.
After my professional sporting career ended, I spent an entire decade training like a headless chicken. Bodybuilding for one month. Powerlifting the next. Some random program I found online after that.
Then I’d fall off, lose momentum, and start the cycle again.
The reason? I was training for vanity, cosmetics & no real purpose.
I was not thinking long term… And I was a burnt out athlete who had been redlining since I was 16 trying to make it as an elite.
That is the exact reason I created The Lethal Gentleman’s Standards, principles, philosophies & ways of life. It gave me a purpose to train and move after my professional sporting career was over.
Now I have ambitions within the realms of martial arts, golf, tennis, open water swimming & so many other forms of movement.
Without a plan or vision for what this training will actually do for you… You won’t stick to it, and that’s why when clients come to me saying they want to get leaner and that’s it…. I teach them to think exponentially bigger than that.
A good place to start with this concept is reading The Lethal Mindset piece…
PILLAR 2: START EMBARASSINGLY SMALL
If I ran you through my current training schedule, you would probably never think you’d have the time or bandwidth to train a minimum of 12 hours per week…
But I didn’t start here… I started by walking.
Firstly, 10 minutes upon waking up… That then turned into 30 minute blocks between client meetings & work.
Not only did this help build the foundations of my gas tank, but it also allowed me to start stacking wins.
Every single client I’ve ever worked with comes to me with the same plan.
“I’m going to completely overhaul my life. Train twice a day. Cut all processed food. Sleep 9 hours. Cold plunge every morning.”
And every single time, it collapses within two weeks.
Early in my consulting career, I’d let them do it. I’d build the overhaul plan. Watch it fall apart. Then we’d start again.
I refuse to do this now because I have never seen it work in practise.
Gradual change = longer lasting that overnight overhauls.
PILLAR 3: GET SERIOUS ABOUT LIFESTYLE DESIGN
If you’re serious about getting this much movement into your day, you are going to have to aggressively audit your lifestyle.
Can you replace the netflix with a walk?
Can you cycle, walk or commute in any way to your work?
Can you help your child’s athletic development where you’re both getting fitter in the process?
Can you use a walking pad when you’re working at your desk?
Do you have any interest in hobbies or sports that would help you add more movement to your routine?
This is a question I often ask my clients:
“If I said you needed to move for 2 hours each day & if you did this every single day for a year I’d give you 5 million dollars, would you be able to find time”?
The answer is almost always a yes… Your health is worth far more than 5MM… So it’s time to start treating it accordingly.
HOW I SETUP THIS LIFESTYLE DESIGN SYSTEM…
Now that you have the 3 pillars, let’s apply it with clear cut examples & standards to build toward.
This is not something you will do overnight, it’s a gradual process, BUT…