There’s a particular flavour of fitness influencer who wants you to believe that you’re simply not taking your health seriously enough.
According to them, you should be waking up at 5am, tracking your sleep, lowering the temperature of your bedroom, timing your meals to the minute and preserving the polyphenols in your blueberries.
Coach Glen Weinstein understands that this isn’t how life works for most men.
‘I’m a 40-year-old with two kids and two businesses,’ he says. ‘I’m working my arse off, and so is my wife. I’m not an influencer who has a three-hour morning routine and swans around for the rest of the day saying, “We all have the same 24 hours.” I live in the real world. I get it.’
His approach is built for men occupying that same real world: men with jobs, families and responsibilities who want to become stronger and fitter, but don’t have unlimited time or a purpose-built all singing, all dancing gym at the bottom of the garden.
The good news? Adhering to Glen’s simple principles doesn’t require either. Here are the rules he recommends.
Glen’s 7 Training Principles for Busy Dads
1. Stop Trying to Optimise Everything
According to Glen, one of the biggest obstacles busy men face is the search for the ‘perfect’ approach.
‘I think the optimisation bros are ruining it for everyone,’ he says. ‘They’re making it feel like success is so far away – that I have to have an AI mattress and a tracker on my wrist and everything at the right temperature.’
His alternative is far less complicated: ‘Just get it done. Done is better than perfect.’
That means just doing your best to sleep for seven hours as consistently as you can without agonising over temperature data; training regularly without waiting for the perfect time of day and choosing an approach you can sustain day-to-day rather than one that looks optimal on paper.
Sustainable beats optimal when optimal isn’t sustainable.
2. Begin with What You Enjoy
When a new client comes to Glen, his first question isn’t about their one-rep max, resting heart rate or preferred training split. It’s simply: what do you enjoy?
‘If we can build it off something you enjoy, you’re never going to need motivation to do it,’ he says. ‘You’re just going to look forward to doing it.’
If you hate running, don’t run. Walk instead. If you love cycling, place more emphasis on cycling. If kettlebells leave you cold but you enjoy using a barbell, build your training around the barbell.
‘Find the thing you enjoy,’ says Glen. ‘Then the motivation comes from watching progress happen, which will be an inevitability of consistency.’
This doesn’t mean every second of every workout needs to be joyous. Training should still challenge you. But if the entire process feels like a punishment, your chances of doing it consistently are slim.
Glen’s message is simple: don’t rob yourself of the opportunity to find the version of fitness that (at least most of the time) is fun.
3. Make Every Piece of Kit Earn Its Space
Home training doesn’t have to mean owning a ‘home gym’. Glen trained in his living room for years. I’m Men’s Health‘s Fitness Director and my own gym used to consist of a collection of sandbags and kettlebells stored in the back of a van.
You don’t need a lot, but everything has to have a purpose.
‘The rule for me is that everything has to earn its space twice,’ says Glen. ‘You can’t have single-use equipment. It must be able to do multiple things or train multiple muscle groups.’
When floor space is at a premium, a huge machine designed for a single exercise makes very little sense. Glen instead recommends versatile tools such as kettlebells, sandbags and maces, alongside a pull-up bar.
‘With a chin-up bar and a kettlebell, you can do every single thing in your body,’ he says. ‘With one kettlebell, you can train your entire body for years without really running into any big problems.’
Even when a fixed weight begins to feel light, you can manipulate your rest periods, increase time under tension or use exercises that place you at a mechanical disadvantage before buying anything heavier.
If your budget stretches to it, Glen recommends adjustable equipment. One well-made adjustable kettlebell can take you from light warm-up drills to genuinely challenging strength work without swallowing up the entire spare room.
4. Keep Your Workouts Short and Full-Body
For busy dads, Glen recommends four full-body sessions each week. Three of those sessions can last just 20 minutes, with the fourth being a longer workout performed when family life allows.
‘Four days a week is the majority,’ he explains. ‘You still have three days off, but it switches your mindset when it comes to your sleep patterns, your eating patterns and your training patterns.’
Why four? Because it’s over half the week. It means you’re engaged in some form of exercise ‘more often than not’.
There’s no need to cram six exercises into each of those shorter sessions, either. Glen prefers to choose just one or two big, high-return movements and perform them well.
‘The workout might be one sandbag, and my job is to pick it up off the floor and squat it once every 30 seconds for 20 minutes,’ he says. ‘Or it might be a kettlebell squat on minute one and a press on minute two, alternated for 20 minutes.’
The exact movements can change, but the framework remains the same: big exercises, minimal kit and a hard stop at 20 minutes.
‘At the end of 20 minutes, you’ve had a ferociously good workout,’ he says. ‘It’s taken almost no time, almost no space and almost no equipment. If you do that four times a week, I guarantee you get stronger.’
5. Programme Time to Play
Despite his stripped-back approach, Glen doesn’t believe every minute of training has to be ruthlessly productive. In fact, he encourages clients to programme ‘playtime’ into their sessions.
That might mean learning to swing a mace, practising juggling between strength sets or experimenting with an unfamiliar movement.
‘You have this opportunity to explore a new movement pattern or a new implement,’ he says. ‘There’s joy in that because your brain goes, “New thing, new thing.” You get those good feelings, but you can still train hard as well. It hasn’t just felt like a slog.’
Giving play a defined time limit (Glen recommends around 10 minutes) means it doesn’t feel like a distraction from your ‘real’ workout. Glen often places it at the beginning of a session, allowing it to double as a warm-up.
‘Before a big pressing day, open up your shoulders with a mace, play around with a flow rope or do a bit of juggling,’ he says. ‘It replaces your warm-up and teaches you something.’
Ten minutes may not sound like much, but repeated several times each week, it quickly adds up.
‘Three months after starting that practice, you have a new skill,’ Glen says. ‘If you do it for ten minutes, two to four times a week, you’re going to become proficient with that new training tool.’
6. Build a Body That Can Do More
This playful approach also feeds into Glen’s broader belief that training should prepare you for life outside the gym.
He is a particular advocate of sandbags, clubs and maces because they develop qualities often neglected by conventional strength training, including rotation, throwing, balance and the ability to produce force from awkward positions.
‘I wish I’d started using sandbags earlier,’ he says. ‘Every rep is a wrestle. It requires you to balance through your feet and engage all the way to your fingertips. There’s no part of the body that isn’t involved.’
Sandbags can be carried slowly, lifted heavily or thrown explosively. More importantly, they refuse to follow a perfectly fixed path. You’re forced to adjust, brace and remain strong in positions that traditional gym exercises may allow you to avoid.
‘I think sandbags make a functional human,’ says Glen. ‘It’s not just about show muscles. They allow you to be strong and move well, and that’s a massive unlock for every stage of your life.’
The goal isn’t simply to look like somebody who trains. It’s to become the dad who can run around the playground, carry awkward objects and throw himself into life rather than watching it all from the sidelines.
7. Make Fitness a Family Affair
Finally, Glen believes that getting fit as a busy parent requires some cooperation at home.
‘Fitness is a family affair,’ he says. ‘That doesn’t mean everyone has to be your cheerleader. It means somebody needs to help facilitate it happening.’
During the week, that may mean finding space for a handful of 20-minute workouts. At the weekend, Glen and his wife take turns creating time for one another to train for longer.
He also involves his children whenever possible. Home training gives them a chance to see exercise as a normal part of adult life rather than something their parents merely tell them they should be doing.
‘It’s monkey see, monkey do,’ Glen says. ‘Not “do as I tell you”, but “do as I do”.’
And that, ultimately, is the framework: find something you enjoy, keep the equipment and workouts simple, train more often than you don’t, and make the whole thing work within your life. Not the imaginary life where every day begins at 5am with breathwork and a cold plunge. The one you’re already living.
Try Glen’s Go-To Full-Body Workout
Want to put Glen’s framework into practice? This full body sandbag circuit delivers a full-body workout in just under 20 minutes, using a single sandbag and a pull-up bar – although the latter can be replaced with a side plank.
‘It take almost no time, almost no space and almost no equipment,’ says Glen. ‘If you do that four times a week, I guarantee you get stronger.’
The Workout
Warm-up thoroughly and then complete the following:
Work through the following five exercises, performing each for 40 seconds followed by 20 seconds of rest. Complete three rounds in total, for 15 minutes of work.
A. Sandbag to shoulder x 40 seconds
B. Sandbag burpee x 40 seconds
C. Sandbag squat x 40 seconds
D. Sandbag ground-to-overhead x 40 seconds
E. Sandbag seated knee tuck x 40 seconds
Choose a sandbag weight that allows you to keep moving with good form throughout each 40-second interval. You should be working hard, but this isn’t the time to grind out increasingly ugly reps. Pace the first round, push harder during the second and empty the tank on your final pass.
The Finisher
Finish with one of the following:
- One-minute dead hang from a pull-up bar; or
- A 30-second side plank on each side
Immediately follow this with a one-minute plank.
A few minutes of mobility, 15 minutes of full-body sandbag work and two minutes of trunk and grip training. One bag, less than 20 minutes and no commute required.
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