Hello and happy Saturday!

I hope the week has gone well for you and you have a restful and fulfilling weekend ahead.

September is here, and after a bit of a break over the summer, I’m getting ready to get back into the swing of things from Monday. I’m sure many of you are too!

I’ve had a bit of a shift in my thinking over the last couple of months, especially whilst doing my 6-week health reset, and I wanted to share it with you.

After finishing my Masters, I leant quite heavily into coaching around purpose and direction in midlife. I worked with some brilliant people and did some work that I’m really proud of. Eventually, I stopped personal training altogether so I could focus purely on building that side of things online.

But if I’m truthful, something felt slightly off almost from the beginning.

I missed working with people locally. I missed face-to-face conversations. And, perhaps surprisingly, I really missed personal training and helping people with their health and fitness.

It got me looking back over the people I’ve worked with over the years and thinking about how those relationships actually began.

And I realised something.

With the occasional exception, most people didn’t come to me wanting to explore their purpose, change their life or work out who they wanted to become.

They came because they wanted to feel better.

They wanted to lose some weight. Get fitter. Feel stronger. Have more energy. Get back into exercise. Improve their health. Feel better in themselves.

And very often, it was through working on those things that the bigger conversations naturally began.

Confidence. Relationships. Work. Purpose. Meaning. What they wanted from life.

It made me wonder whether, somewhere along the way, I had stopped meeting people where they were.

I’d become so interested in the deeper aspects of wellbeing that perhaps I’d forgotten something important:

Your health is the foundation.

And for many of us, that’s where we need to start.

Exercise. Nutrition. Sleep. Energy. Strength. Fitness. Stress. Having some structure again. Feeling comfortable in our body. Doing the simple things consistently enough to start feeling like ourselves again.

It also reminded me that this is where a huge amount of my experience actually lies. I’ve spent around 15 years working in health and fitness, alongside my later training in coaching, behaviour change and positive psychology.

So rather than trying to separate all of those things, I’ve decided to bring them back together.

In some ways, I feel like I’ve come full circle — but with a much broader understanding of what it means to help someone live well.

So from September, I’m going to start working privately with a small number of people again through personal training and health & wellbeing coaching.

For some people, that might simply mean getting back into exercise and having someone alongside them to provide a bit of structure, accountability and encouragement.

For others, it might involve looking more broadly at their health and wellbeing and making changes across several areas of life.

And for some, it might be a combination of the two.

Some of the areas I can help with include:

• Getting back into exercise after time away
• Building strength, fitness and confidence
• Improving nutrition without needing to follow a perfect diet
• Losing weight and improving body composition
• Creating healthier habits that actually fit around real life
• Improving sleep, energy and recovery
• Managing stress and taking better care of yourself
• Getting your health back on track when you know things have slipped
• Building motivation, consistency and accountability
• Looking beyond physical health at the wider areas affecting your wellbeing
• And, if and when it feels relevant, exploring some of those bigger questions around direction, purpose and creating a life that feels good to live

I don't believe everybody needs to completely reinvent themselves.

Sometimes you just need somewhere to start.

And sometimes getting your body moving again, eating a little better, sleeping properly and beginning to feel stronger can create a ripple effect into areas of life you weren't expecting.

That's the kind of work I want to do.

So, if September feels like the right time to get your health — and perhaps your wider wellbeing — back on track, I’m opening up a small amount of space to work with people again.

Sessions are £50 per hour and can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly, depending on what you need. We can focus on personal training, health & wellbeing coaching, or a combination of the two.

For personal training, I’m based at X8 in Exmouth — a smaller, quieter independent gym with a friendly, welcoming feel and excellent equipment for building total-body strength, fitness and function, without the intimidating atmosphere of a big, busy commercial gym.

If you're interested, just reply to this message and tell me a little bit about where you're at. I'm happy to have a chat over the next couple of weeks and see whether I might be able to help.

I hate false scarcity and the whole “only a few spaces left” sales tactic (which admittedly I have done in the past), but after reconnecting with a few previous clients, I genuinely only have capacity for around three more people at the moment. So, if you’d like to have a chat, and get September kickstarted, let’s have one. No pressure, no hard sell — just a conversation to see where you’re at, what you need and whether I might be the right person to help.

Have a great weekend.

Dan