Over the past few weeks on this blog, I've written about relearning my straight-arm invert, about the surgeries that shaped how I coach, and about why recovery is part of training rather than a reward for it. One idea ran underneath all three: simple, structured, consistent work beats complicated work, especially when your body or your life is changing.
I want to open November with something a little different. Not another principle, but transparency about what "simple for you" costs on my end. That honesty matters more than most of the polished content any of us put out.
The account nobody usually gives
Here's what my weeks look like right now. I work six days a week and I train six days a week. The work is spread across several locations, which means most of my teaching is bookended by travel rather than happening back to back in one building. On top of classes, I coach 1:1 clients, and this autumn I've welcomed new ones.
Then there's the part nobody sees: admin, programme design, content, emails, planning. Depending on the week, that's anywhere from 8 to 20 hours, and I don't always know which end of that range I'll land on until I'm in it. Over the summer I was also cycling 82 to 85 kilometres a week to get between work, and most days I'm comfortably past 15,000 steps, with my heaviest days closer to 25,000 or 30,000.
My own training fits around all of that. Some days it's a full session. Some days it's the ten minutes of movement I wrote about last month. Both count, and learning to believe that has been one of the more useful shifts I've made.
I'm not sharing this for sympathy. I'm sharing it because there's a version of this industry where coaches make the work look effortless, and that quietly sets an unrealistic standard for what running a training business, or keeping a consistent personal practice, is supposed to look like.
Why simple for you often means more work for me
This is the part that gets misunderstood most. When something looks simple from where you're standing, a clear programme, a straightforward cue, a training week that doesn't feel chaotic, that simplicity was built, not found. Someone had to strip away the unnecessary parts, test what matters, and package it so you don't have to do that work yourself.
That's true of how I coach in general, and it's true of what sits behind the Aerial Performance Lab. The simplicity you experience as a member is the output of a lot of complexity absorbed on my end: programme design, individual adjustments, keeping up with research on things like tendon health and hormonal change through perimenopause, and making judgement calls about what to leave out as much as what to include.
Simple doesn't mean easy or low-effort. It means the complexity is absorbed so you don't have to carry it.
What keeping it simple costs me personally
There's another side to this. Keeping my own training simple is a decision I have to keep making, because my instinct has always been to add. More drills, more conditioning, more of everything, as if effort and complexity were the same thing.
What stops me now is the same thing I'd tell any of my clients. My capacity is finite. Every hour of work, every commute, every flare of my back, every low-energy day in perimenopause draws on the same account my training does. If I stack my week with everything I could do, I end up doing none of it well. So I choose a few things that matter, protect them, and let the rest go. That choice is the hard part. The training itself is the easy bit.
What I've stopped doing
Keeping things simple has meant saying no to things I used to say yes to. I've stopped adding a new drill every time a skill stalls; I look first at whether the foundations are there. I've stopped expecting every week to look the same; the busy weeks get a smaller plan, and that's the plan working, not failing. I've stopped measuring a good day by how tired I feel at the end of it.
I've also stopped trying to build programmes and content that cover everything. The people I work with don't need everything. They need the right few things, explained properly, and a structure they can keep coming back to.
None of these were easy to let go of. Each one felt, at first, like doing less. In practice, each one gave me back time and energy that now goes into the parts of my work and training that make a difference.
Growth without the comparison
October's theme for me was growing rather than competing, and this is where it lands. When you see a coach or an athlete making it look effortless, it's tempting to measure yourself against that picture and decide you're falling short. But you're comparing your full, unedited week against someone else's highlight.
The more honest comparison is with yourself. Are you training more consistently than you were three months ago? Do you recover better? Do you understand your body a little more? That's growth, and it doesn't need to look impressive from the outside to be real.
A look back across October
October's three posts were all building towards this point. Relearning my straight-arm invert showed that progress starts long before you land the full move. My surgery story showed that rebuilding through a changing body is a skill, not a failure. Recovery Is Training showed that a sustainable week is the one you can repeat, not the one where you do the most.
What looks simple, sustainable and consistent from the outside is usually the result of real, ongoing effort, not the absence of it.
If this resonates
If keeping your training simple and structured appeals to you more than another complicated plan you'll abandon in three weeks, the Aerial Performance Lab is where that shows up every week: a small number of things that matter, done consistently, without the extra complication. You can try it free first.
Try the Aerial Performance Lab
And if you'd rather have that complexity absorbed for you completely, with a plan built around your body, your schedule and your energy, I have a small number of 1:1 coaching spaces open, online and a few in person in London.
