Whether you’re hitting the gym to improve your sporting performance or look your best, establishing a solid muscle base and lowering body fat are the goal of most training regimes. Finding the best regime for you, your body shape and lifestyle is the hard part, along with the patience and determination required to succeed.

Seeing results in muscle gain and weight loss won’t just depend on how intense your workout is. First, you need to realise that some of the things you thought you knew about exercise are completely wrong. ‘Want big biceps? Do biceps curls.’ ‘Want a six-pack? Do crunches.’ This sort of advice has formed the basis of many training programmes – but it’s inadequate at best and plain wrong at worst.