Strength + Cardio Hybrid

The training does not create the deficit; what you eat does. There is no calorie target, no macro split and no supplement advice here, because a training plan is the wrong place for them.

For that side of it, see a registered dietitian or your GP — particularly if you take regular medication, have been told to watch your blood sugar, or have a history of disordered eating.

One case is worth naming rather than leaving to that conversation: if you take insulin or a sulfonylurea for diabetes, training while eating less can drop your blood sugar further and faster than either does on its own.

Speak to your GP or diabetes team before you start, keep something fast-acting to hand while you train, and treat shakiness, sweating, confusion or sudden hunger as a reason to stop the session and check rather than to push through it.

Strength is what this programme protects, so strength is the gauge. Log the top set of the squat, the overhead press, the Romanian deadlift and the rows.

The signal to act is a load you handled a fortnight ago that you cannot handle today, twice in a row on the same lift or on two different lifts in the same week.

Take the next week at two thirds of the sets with the same loads, drop the running to three intervals, keep the easy work easy, and eat more; if it is still going backwards the week after, stop cutting food further and talk to a registered dietitian or your GP.

If your sleep or your sessions fall off, or your appetite drops away, that is the programme telling you it is under-fed — any one of those on its own is enough to act on, and they do not have to arrive together.

Periods becoming lighter, irregular or stopping counts too. If you are on medication that suppresses appetite, use sleep and your sessions as the signal instead, because appetite will not tell you.

Eat more, do not train more. The three days a week you are not training are part of the plan rather than a gap in it.

Count the hard days rather than the sessions: the two lifting days and the running intervals are three hard days, and four a week is the ceiling for most people. The forty minutes of rowing is easy on purpose and does not count against it.

The spare hard day is deliberately left unspent, because a fifth hard session costs you the squat before it costs you anything else.

Before you start, please read this part. Training is among the safest and most useful things most people can do, and there is a short list of exceptions worth checking yourself against first.

If you have a heart or lung condition, chest pain or pressure at rest or on effort, dizziness or blackouts, blood pressure or diabetes that is not currently controlled, a hernia, low bone density or osteoporosis, a joint or back problem that is flaring, or you are pregnant or within a year of giving birth, speak to your GP or a physiotherapist before starting and follow their instruction over anything written here.

Stop the session and get medical advice for chest pain or tightness, breathlessness out of proportion to the effort, dizziness, or a sudden sharp pain in a joint or the back.

Stop it as well for pain, numbness, pins and needles or weakness that travels down an arm or a leg, and get that seen before you load the pattern again.

Day 4 is the hardest session in this programme: if you have not run in some time, do the first month of it on the rowing machine and build the running back separately. Squat and press in a rack with the safety pins set.

Nothing here is medical advice.