PerformWell Podcast

You get the physique you wanted. Then you find someone bigger, leaner or further ahead. When does it actually feel like enough?
Bradley Talbot is 22. He grew up in care, found support through the gym and now works as an online fitness coach. In this conversation, we get into body image, the comparison trap and why looking good means very little if you feel awful.
We talk about chasing size, steroid use, whole foods, calorie counting and the problem with a diet you cannot wait to finish. Bradley calls it “renting your body”. We also get into growing up with social media, building a routine you can stick to and what it means to perform well beyond the gym.
What changed when you stopped chasing someone else’s body? Let us know in the comments 👇
Episode 163 of the PerformWell Podcast.
Follow us on Instagram:
Nick: https://www.instagram.com/getfitbynick/
Grant: https://www.instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/
Bradley: https://www.instagram.com/bradleytalbot11/
PerformWell Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
CHAPTERS
00:00 A body you can keep. A life that feels good.
00:24 Meet Bradley Talbot
01:53 Growing up in care and finding the gym
04:39 From football to chasing size
07:16 Feeling good vs looking good
09:23 Steroids, comparison and being honest
15:11 Nick on the cost of using steroids
19:12 When gym culture stops being healthy
20:11 Whole foods and calorie counting
23:48 Are you renting your body?
26:41 Building habits that last
28:21 Social media changes who you compare yourself to
30:36 Gen Z, drinking and life after lockdown
37:32 Helping young men beyond the gym
41:53 What does it mean to perform well?
43:24 This too shall pass
46:37 Being present and enjoying the process
48:48 Where to find Bradley
#PerformWellPodcast #BodyImage #FitnessMindset #BradleyTalbot #HealthyHabits

You keep saying you’ll start Monday. What if the missing piece is a date in the diary?
Nick and Grant unpack motivation vs discipline, why forcing yourself through training you hate rarely lasts, and how a goal you actually care about can change your behaviour. Nick shares what kept him moving during his Ironman, and we get into self-help without action, overthinking the perfect plan, and choosing your first event.
What would you book if you stopped putting it off? Tell us in the comments.
🎙️ Episode 162 of the PerformWell Podcast. Hosted by Nick & Grant.
Nick: https://www.instagram.com/getfitbynick/
Grant: https://www.instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/
📲 Follow us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
Nick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getfitbynick
Subscribe for more honest conversations about training, mindset and performing well.

00:00 You need a date
00:29 Why can’t you stay consistent?
01:10 Is discipline enough?
02:04 Internal vs external motivation
03:23 The Ironman moment that tested Nick’s why
05:40 Stop waiting to feel motivated
07:08 You don’t have to love every training session
08:46 Be motivated by the goal
09:15 Write down what you want and why
11:03 Self-help books without action
12:28 Take action first, then course correct
15:11 Book a date and start with one goal
17:03 How one event changes your habits
18:54 Practical tips to perform well
20:37 Like, subscribe and join the conversation

#FitnessMotivation #MotivationVsDiscipline #PerformWellPodcast

Craig Swinton is heavily enhanced, competes as a bodybuilder, and used to be a paramedic. So we asked him the question everyone in the gym is quietly asking: how far can you actually get without gear?

His answer wasn't what we expected. A natural lifter should train exactly the same way he does. Half his male clients are walking around with low testosterone and no idea. And the four things he'd fix before anyone even mentions a needle are the least exciting things on the list.

We also get into what gear actually costs. Craig's cystic acne and Accutane, my torn brachialis and three months on tren I still think about. Plus peptides, GLP-1s, sleep apnea, fake nattys, and whether people buy from your physique or your personality.

If you're in your thirties and quietly wondering whether your body's best days are behind you, this one's for you.

⚠️ Nothing here is medical advice. Speak to a doctor.

🎙️ Hosted by Nick & Grant.
Nick: instagram.com/getfitbynick
Grant: instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/

💪 This week's guest, Craig Swinton (APEX Fitness Coaching):
instagram.com/apex_fitness_coaching_/

📲 Follow us:
Instagram instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
YouTube youtube.com/@getfitbynick

00:00 Craig's back, and this time we answer the question
01:23 An ex-paramedic on why he uses gear anyway
04:27 Is TRT still natty? Where's the line?
06:29 If you took steroids 10 years ago, are you natural now?
09:07 How long a natural needs to catch up, and the real ceiling
12:37 Would Grant ever go on? The side effects that stop him
16:49 What three months on tren actually cost me
18:42 Peptides, GLP-1s and the new middle ground
25:50 Should a natural train differently? Craig says no
30:15 Why he won't push gear on a dad
34:23 Half his male clients have low testosterone
37:22 The four levers to fix before you touch anything
42:28 Sleep apnea takes ten years off your life
49:24 Fake nattys, and whether physique or personality sells
57:50 What it really means to perform well

#NaturalBodybuilding #NattyOrNot #LowTestosterone

Everyone in their mid thirties suddenly decides they're past it. The aches show up, recovery feels slower, and the conclusion is always the same. Must be my age.

It usually isn't. Nick and Grant go through the research on muscle mass and metabolic decline, including the MRI study where a 70 year old triathlete's quad matched a 40 year old's while a 74 year old who didn't train had wasted away. Nick tells the story of what six months behind a bank desk during lockdown did to a body that had been fit for fifteen years, and what happened when he started moving again.

Two coaches in their mid thirties arguing that this is the prime, not the decline, with the client examples to back it up. A 67 year old working towards a muscle up. A 45 year old through menopause in the best shape of her life. None of it is genetics and none of it is luck.

Older is not old. There's a difference.

00:00 The complaint we hear every single week
01:19 When your physical prime actually is
02:47 My 67 year old client is working towards a muscle up
04:31 The study that kills the age excuse
07:28 Stop chasing fat loss and start chasing strength
09:35 Pick a challenge, any challenge
10:55 What six months behind a desk did to me
14:01 The steps number that changes things
15:49 What is genuinely not normal at 35
16:45 When age does start to matter
21:46 Turning up on the bad days
24:51 Older is not old

📚 References
Wroblewski et al. "Chronic exercise preserves lean muscle mass in masters athletes." Phys Sportsmed. 2011;39(3):172-8. Forty athletes aged 40 to 81. Muscle area held across the whole range. PMID: 22030953
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22030953/

Pontzer et al. "Daily energy expenditure through the human life course." Science. 2021;373(6556):808-12. 6,400 people, 29 countries. Metabolism is stable from 20 to 60. PMID: 34385400
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34385400/

We're coaches, not doctors. If something feels medically wrong, go and get tested.

🎙️ Hosted by Nick & Grant.
Nick: instagram.com/getfitbynick
Grant: instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/

📲 Follow us:
Instagram instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
YouTube youtube.com/@getfitbynick

#FitnessOver35 #OlderNotOld #PerformWellPodcast

Three weeks in. You're training. You're eating properly. The mirror hasn't
caught up and the scale has stopped moving. Nothing has gone wrong. You're early, and you're measuring the wrong thing.

This week Nick and Grant are joined by Southampton personal trainer and nutrition coach Gemma Paddington to unpack the three week wall: why the scale drops fast and then stalls, why quick weight change is almost never fat, and what's actually changing underneath while you can't see a thing.

We get into glycogen and water weight, weight loss vs fat loss, why Gemma times progress photos around a client's cycle, the client whose scale weight went UP 2kg and why that was good news, weekend calories, refeeds vs cheat days, the comparison trap, and how precise you actually need to be with food depending on where you're starting from.

Plus what all three of us have had to unlearn this year, and what to actually do when you hit week three and want to quit.

If you've ever said "I'm doing everything right and nothing's happening",
this one's for you.

GUEST
Gemma Paddington: https://www.instagram.com/gemmapaddy82/

🎙️ Hosted by Nick & Grant.
Nick: https://www.instagram.com/getfitbynick
Grant: https://www.instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/

📲 Follow us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getfitbynick

🏋️ Coaching: https://performwellcoaching.co.uk

New episodes every week. If this one helped, drop a comment and tell us where you got stuck, we read all of them.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Your diet is working, you just can't see it yet
00:40 What the first three weeks actually look like
02:08 Why the scale isn't the metric at week three
03:27 Inches, centimetres and other British nonsense
03:55 Why the scale drops fast and then stops
05:23 Glycogen, water and the first two weeks
06:05 Weight loss vs fat loss: not the same goal
09:42 The client whose weight went up 2kg
11:08 How fighters cut water weight, and why you shouldn't
13:56 When weight cutting goes wrong
14:48 What's changing that you can't see
16:10 Recomp: strength up, weight flat, fat dropping
16:59 If not the scale, then what?
17:27 Bloating, cycles and timing progress photos
18:58 Where the honeymoon ends
19:30 "Two sessions a week and 2,000 steps a day"
20:12 The pit of despair
21:21 The weekend maths
22:21 Cheat days vs refeeds
24:18 How to actually run a refeed
28:23 The comparison problem
30:06 Body dysmorphia
31:06 Precision vs simplicity
33:49 Just track something
34:51 Why protein is so hard for people
35:44 What we've each had to unlearn this year
40:00 Gemma's back injury and training past 40
41:38 Three things to do at week three
43:52 Gemma calls out a coach in the gym
46:27 What does it mean to perform well?

#fatloss #nutrition #fitnesspodcast

Every goal I set as a kid, I quit. The Marines, two weeks from
Greenberry. SAS selection. A business that folded in COVID. Cycling the
length of Britain. At 35, the Ironman is the first one I've actually
ticked off that list.

Grant and I break down what the last 12 months really cost: the 11 to 15
hour training weeks, the social life, the strength work I loved, the beer
gardens I cycled past. Why "I don't have time" almost always means "I
don't have the energy." Why discipline shows up AFTER commitment, not before it. And the question that nearly broke me the day before the race:

Does it still count as an Ironman if they cancel the swim?

If you're strength-first and you think endurance is out of your reach,
this one's for you.

🎙️ Hosted by Nick & Grant.
Nick: https://www.instagram.com/getfitbynick
Grant: https://www.instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/

📲 Follow us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getfitbynick

🏋️ Coaching: https://performwellcoaching.co.uk

#ironman #ironmantraining #hybridathlete

Archie Hunt was born ten weeks early with a heart that isn't supposed to let him run. In April he ran 2:27:41 at the London Marathon in a cape and a pair of red pants, and set the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon dressed as a book character. The previous record was 2:42, held by a man dressed as Dracula.

The part nobody expects is how he did it. Ninety-two percent of his training is zone one and zone two. No intervals, no threshold sessions, no marathon blocks, for two full years. He built from 40k a week to 200k a week by run-commuting to and from work with a backpack, around 60-hour weeks as a corporate lawyer in London. In that time his heart got measurably stronger and he came off three of his four medications.

He's also beaten runners who've trained hard their entire lives, which is why the hate mail is always from people slightly slower than him and never from anyone faster.

We get into all of it. Why patience beats intensity. Why he'd take 300th place with a PB over 10th without one. What he thinks about at 30k when it's falling apart. And what it actually means to perform well when the ceiling you're chasing keeps moving.

In this episode:

Why he was told not to run, and why he found a different doctor
How 200k a week is possible around a full-time job
The zone two case, from someone who has no other option
Fuelling, 3,500 calories a day, and two breakfasts at his desk
Throwing up at 60k of a 110k ultra and winning it anyway
Splitting yourself into the person who trains and the person who races
Sub 2:20, Comrades, backyard ultras, and the elite start at London

Follow Archie: https://www.instagram.com/archibald_on_the_run/

Archie trains under medical supervision with regular scans and checkups. As he says himself in the episode, don't copy a 24 year old on the internet. If you have a heart condition, speak to your own specialist.

🎙️ Hosted by Nick & Grant.

Nick: https://www.instagram.com/getfitbynick

Grant: https://www.instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/

📲 Follow us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getfitbynick

#Marathon #ZoneTwo #RunningPodcast #WorldRecord #Endurance

Bryony "Killer Bee" Tyrell spent seven years as an intensive care nurse. She spent her nights becoming one of Britain's leading female cage fighters. She raised two kids through all of it.

Nobody on the ward had any idea. Now Gemma Arterton is playing her in a feature film.

In this episode: why weight cutting kills more fighters than punches do, what her coach shouted at her from the corner in Belgium when she was too tired to stand, why she'd rather fight 15,000 people than speak to them, and why at 46 she's still competing and moving into stunt work.

She also put both of us on the floor before we started recording. She fights at 52kg.

Bryony is the clearest example we've had on this show of something that keeps coming up: the people doing extraordinary things almost never quit their normal life to do it. They just refuse to accept that the ordinary one is all they get.

Follow the film:
https://www.instagram.com/killa_bee_film/

Shot at:
Hoplite BJJ
https://www.hoplitebjj.co.uk/

The PerformWell Podcast. You haven't peaked. You just stopped doing hard things.

Hosted by Nick Finch and Grant McDonald.
Online coaching: performwellcoaching.co.uk
Instagram:
www.instagram.com/getfitbynick
www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast
www.instagram.com/coach_grant_mcdonald

#MMA #Nurse #Podcast

Should you do an Ironman? Probably not. Three days before Ironman Leeds, Nick Finch and Grant McDonald talk about why chasing someone else's challenge is the fastest way to end up training for a life you don't want.

Everyone's doing a Hyrox. Everyone's running a marathon. Everyone's posting the medal. And if you're in your thirties watching all of it happen on your phone, it's easy to feel like you're behind on a race you never entered.

This episode is about the opposite of that. It's about reference experiences, the small things you tick off that quietly build the confidence to attempt bigger ones, and why nobody wakes up one morning and does a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bike and a marathon in a single day.

Nick breaks down the four year ladder that got him to the start line: a charity boxing match in front of a thousand people, a failed attempt to cycle the length of the UK, a marathon, and a swim with the Royal Marines. Grant walks through the same pattern in karate, from white belt to two national titles, and why earning his black belt was harder and more frightening than any competition.

We also get into the 11 hour training weeks, the 24 week build, the swim cutoff that ends your race before you've even got on the bike, and the honest answer to what happens if it goes wrong on Sunday.

The question underneath all of it: what's your marathon?

Tell us in the comments. We read every one.

SUPPORT THE FUNDRAISER
Nick is racing for CALM.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/stronger-than-the-silence

NEXT WEEK'S EPISODE
Post race debrief, recorded within 48 hours of the finish line. Subscribe so you don't miss it.

ABOUT THE SHOW
PerformWell is a podcast about people who have done something most people would call impossible. We find the part you can copy. Every guest gets the same question at the end: what does it mean to perform well?

Hosted by Nick Finch and Grant McDonald.

WORK WITH NICK
Online coaching, The Hybrid Build: performwellcoaching.co.uk
Instagram: @getfitbynick @coach_grantmcdonald

#Ironman #HybridTraining #PerformWell

Rob Stark photographs physiques for a living. He still catches himself in a mirror and thinks he looks small.

Rob went from 64kg at 6'2" to 101kg and back down to 80kg. Before the camera he was a DJ at Ministry of Sound, a filmmaker with a U2 music video to his name, an actor and a performer. He told me before we recorded that he wasn't sure he had anything interesting to say.

In this one we get into why nearly everyone hates being photographed, how Rob talks people down before a shoot, what a physique built as a hiding place actually costs, and why he still gets nervous after twenty years behind the lens.

Grant and I have both been shot by Rob. This one's personal.

Follow Rob:
https://www.instagram.com/starkphysiques/
https://www.shotbystark.com/

Get after your own goals:
💪 Coaching: performwellcoaching.co.uk

🎙️ Hosted by Nick & Grant.
Nick: https://www.instagram.com/getfitbynick
Grant: https://www.instagram.com/coach_grantmcdonald/

📲 Follow us:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/performwellpodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@performwellpodcast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@getfitbynick

00:00 The man who thought he had nothing to say
00:45 A career that started by accident
08:12 Everyone is creative until it gets taken out of them
11:13 Fifty side quests and one pattern
13:48 The holiday photo that started it
14:45 The advice that stopped him wasting years
15:33 Wanting to be lean and big at the same time
17:48 Nick at 75kg and 6'4"
20:18 Testosterone, bloods, and doing it properly
29:31 Body dysmorphia goes both ways
30:24 Hiding inside a character
32:39 How to talk someone down before a shoot
35:53 I'd rather fight 1,000 people than talk to them
40:41 Building a body you can hide in
45:07 What does it mean to perform well?
53:05 Twenty years in and still nervous
55:24 Meditation, and rowing versus sailing

#bodydysmorphia #physiquephotography #performwellpodcast