Purpose:

1. The purpose of this post is to prevent you from being one of those guys who have been working out forever and not seen any substantial progress.

2. Cut through the noise and answer the questions:

• What should you be learning and focused on developing in each phase of fitness?

• What should you expect to invest in to get the most from what you are putting in?

Each level is laid out in sequence because they build on each other. Skipping or rushing one, increases the odds the foundation for the next level is weak and crumbles and that you waste a lot of time and money by investing in things you just don’t need for where you are on your journey.

The goal is for you to be able to read a section, stop, execute, then come back when you need to know what to do next a month later.

Let’s begin with the foundation to your fitness:

Level 1 | Consistency

You’re likely here if:

• You start and stop often

• Motivation comes and goes

• You “know what to do” but don’t do it consistently

• Progress never sticks

The base of your fitness journey starts here. Skipping or undervaluing this will ensure the changes you make are temporary.

Goal: Get consistent with taking action aligned with the goal.

Primary Actions:

• Consistency

  • Show up

  • Not quit

  • Execute imperfectly

  • Begin tracking even if imperfect

Results & Lessons Learned:

• I don’t need to understand everything to get results.

• Imperfect action in the gym and around food done consistently is most of the game.

• Habits around the basics beat optimization.

Investments:

• Gym membership

• Coaching

  • Coaching here isn’t for “what to do”. It increases the odds the follow through on doing the activity actually happens. Most people are not accountable enough to themselves, so they should get a coach to prevent following advice from well-intended, incorrect friends.

Many people skip this level mentally. You didn’t. This is why later levels even worked for you.

Level 2 | Calories & Protein

Body Composition Control

You’re likely here if:

• Your weight fluctuates unpredictably

• You diet hard but don’t look how you expect

• Hunger feels emotional or overwhelming

• You train hard but don’t see clear changes

This is the level that if mastered will take you to a physique better than 90% of the general population.

Goal: Learn how calories and protein impact your body composition

Primary Actions:

• Tracking around calories and protein must become stable and consistent

• Calories

  • Find maintenance personal maintenance calories

  • Find meals you enjoy that fit within the calorie goal

  • Get a handle on vices that add ghost calories (calories you don’t notice that disrupt the goal)

    • Sugar/Creamer in coffee

    • Drinking

    • Sauces/Dressings on foods

• Protein

  • Get a gram of protein per pound of body weight

    • Start at 100 grams a day and add 25 grams a week until where you need to be if not used to prioritizing protein

Results:

• Weight becomes predictable

• Building muscle and losing fat are no longer mysteries or confusing

• Hunger becomes manageable and less emotional

Lessons Learned:

• Calories control direction

• Protein determines muscle

• Collectively they control composition

Investments:

• Bathroom scale

• Macro tracking app

• Protein Powder / Protein snacks

• Optional Investments

  • Food scale

  • InBody Scans

Level 3 | Carbs

Performance Stability

You’re likely here if:

• You’re doing “everything right” but feel tired

• Energy crashes during the day

• Sleep quality is inconsistent

• Digestion, stress, or carbs feel confusing

This level is where athletes separate from dieters. It’s also the first level that has a significant jump in cost of investment. The ROI from the investment usually is obvious because it’s not just impacting appearance. It shows in their day to day life.

Goal: Learn how carbohydrates, sleep, stress and digestion impact your daily life and performance.

Primary Actions:

• Tracking around all macros must become stable and consistent

• Carbohydrates

  • Identify patterns about how when you eat carbs impacts performance

  • Identify patterns about how the quantity of eat carbs impacts performance

• Sleep

  • Identify patterns that impact the quality and quantity of the sleep you have

    • Time you stop eating before bed

    • When to cut off water

    • Stop use of vices like alcohol/smoking

• Stress load

  • Identify patterns about how total stress impacts performance and recovery

    • Training intensity as it relates to life stress and recovery

    • Work stress (travel, deadlines, social load)

    • Caffeine and stimulant use and how it impacts performance and recovery

• Digestive tolerance

  • Identify patterns about how food choice and timing impact performance

    • Foods that cause bloating, urgency, reflux, or fatigue for you

    • Meal size and speed of eating

    • Fiber amount and timing relative to training and recovery (type of fiber)

    • Carb source tolerance (liquid vs solid, low vs high fiber)

• Emotional stress signals

  • Identify patterns between emotions/feelings (irritability, low motivation, poor pumps) and the 4 inputs above

Results:

• Training quality improves

• Energy becomes stable

• Mood, libido, recovery improve

• Less “white-knuckling” and running on willpower

Lessons Learned:

• Carbs are fuel, not fat

• Sleep is a multiplier for building muscle and fat loss

• How well you digest a food doesn’t mean it’s good/bad, healthy/unhealthy, clean/dirty

Investments

• Sleep tracker (Oura, Whoop, Apple Watch)

• Better mattress / cooling tech (Temperpedic/Eight Sleep)

• Basic supplements (electrolytes, magnesium, glycine)

• Food swaps for digestion (not restriction)

  • This is usually where you will see people on the gram talking about what they eat and you start thinking well “how much does that cost?” It’s because at this point their priorities usually have shifted where they are willing to invest more than most on their fitness.

James Fun Fact

It’s my job to understand gay men with an interest in fitness, since T2T Fitness serves men attracted to men. Something I found out about a year ago that was interesting is that you can tell where a person is regarding their commitment to fitness and how much it's a priority to them by finding out what percentage of their annual income and how much time in their calendar is allocated to fitness. For this example I will use numbers but know they are for directional purposes and not concrete. Take the principle not the exact numbers

• Beginners typically allocate 5% or less of their income and less than 3 hours a week on their fitness

• Intermediate fitness enthusiasts typically allocate 6-10% of their income and about 5-7 hours a week on fitness

• Advanced lifters and bodybuilders typically allocate 11-15% of their income and 10 hours a week [at least] on fitness.

It’s simpler for gaymers or cyclists. What you find is if a person values and prioritizes the thing, they naturally invest in it.

Where this gets interesting: oftentimes beginners want and need to change their lifestyle the most, but they also are in a spot where they don’t make enough for an investment into a coach that falls within that 5% of their income. This is when they choose to prioritize their health and make it happen which starts an upward spiral usually shifting their life and sometimes, income. Or they stay within the comfort zone putting the money into the current priorities which keeps them stuck- from what i have seen often for years.

Level 4 | Fats

Hormone Balancing

You’re likely here if:

• Progress stalls despite doing the basics well

• Recovery feels slower

• Mood, libido, or joints feel “off”

• You’ve dieted hard for long periods

This is where resilience in the body makes a big jump. It’s not optimization, it’s damage prevention as you increase the workload and stress on your body.

Goal: Understand how micronutrients and fats impact recovery and performance

Primary Actions:

• Track average daily fat intake for 7–14 days

• Adjust fat intake upward or downward in small increments (±10–15g) and observe changes in:

  • Libido, mood, joint comfort, and training performance

• Distribute fats more evenly across meals and note differences between:

  • Higher-fat earlier in the day vs later

• Ensure daily inclusion of at least 2–3 whole-food fat sources

  • Add Eggs, fatty fish, olive oil, nuts, red meat if not already in the diet

Results:

• Hormones stabilize under stress

• Skin, joints, libido, mood improve

• Plateaus become less frequent

Lessons Learned:

• Low fat works… until it doesn’t and you accidentally break yourself and need long recovery periods which can demoralize and stop progress.

• Hormones don’t crash suddenly, they erode slowly over time

• Food quality matters when calories are already controlled

Investments

• Higher-quality food sourcing

• Targeted labs if needed

• Vitamin D testing

• Omega-3 intake tracking

From Level 5 onward, I am no longer speaking to the majority of people.

Level 5 | Salt

Appearance Control

You’re likely here if:

• You’re lean but don’t always look your best

• Pumps, fullness, and bloating feel inconsistent

• Your physique changes dramatically day to day

This is where you learn to control the visuals of your physique. Small inputs begin creating predictable, visible outcomes. This is where natural lifters can look enhanced

Goal: Understand how sodium, potassium, water, and glycogen impact training performance, pumps, and day-to-day physique appearance

Primary Actions:

• Track average daily sodium intake for 7–14 days

• Adjust sodium intake upward or downward in small increments (± 500–1000 mg ) and observe changes in:

  • Pumps, endurance when training, bloating, and flatness / fullness

• Have meals that are higher in carbohydrates and are intentional with the amount of sodium used

• Maintain consistent daily water intake rather than drinking only when thirsty

• Note physique differences between:

  • High-carb / high-sodium days

  • High-carb / low-sodium days

• Begin taking more frequent progress photos to be able to compare the visual differences

Results:

• More consistent pumps and better training output

• Reduced, seemingly random bloating

• Control of looking fuller or harder without fat loss

• Stability in day-to-day visuals

Lessons Learned:

• Salt does not cause fat gain

• Understand how salt and water impact the scale in a big way due to intracellular volume and glycogen storage

• Dehydration does not equal leanness and often worsens appearance

Investments:

• Electrolyte tracking or supplementation

  • LMNT

• Consistent carb sources

• Sweat-rate awareness
  

Level 6 | Personalization

Signal-Driven Training & Nutrition

You’re likely here if:

• You want fewer plateaus

• You want to catch problems early

• You want confidence in adjustments instead of second-guessing
  

This is where you learn that no one knows you like you and that coaching is a collaborative effort of pairing your personal knowledge with the coach’s experience and pattern recognition across hundreds of clients. Decisions shift from guessing to signal-driven. Clean data makes the next decision obvious. This level is about reading signals, not yet changing training design.

Goal: Use internal data to identify issues early and guide nutrition, training, and recovery decisions

Primary Actions:

• Begin tracking and using trends in the following areas to make informed decisions around the following areas:

  • Bloodwork when healthy and performing well

  • Digestive feedback to decide if deeper gut testing is warranted

  • Training recovery trends to adjust training volume and calorie intake

Results:

• A stronger sense of intuition or correct “gut” decisions

• Earlier detection of issues

• Fewer plateaus or regressions

• Reduced emotional decision-making

• Higher confidence in adjustments

Lessons Learned:

• Data and information is only useful if it changes actions

• Numbers don’t replace awareness, they are used to refine it

• Most people investing in information are wasting resources

Investment:

• DEXA scans (quarterly or semi-annual)

• Lab test (quarterly)

• Gut mapping if digestive symptoms persist

• Time investment in interpretation, not just testing
  

Level 7 | Optimization

Tweaks for Longevity

You’re likely here if:

• You’ve trained for a long time

• Injuries or burnout are a concern

• You want sustainable, long-term improvement

Ironically, this is where most people start when they get on their fitness journey. This is where long-term progress and longevity are protected. This level assumes you already know how to read signals. Now, you learn how to design training that respects them long-term.

Goal: Understand how much training your body can recover from consistently over years, not weeks. Figure out which workouts work best for you, how long you can train before needing to change the programming, and what micro-adjustments give the best results on a personal level.

Primary Actions:

• Track weekly sets and reps by muscle group to see which combination of volume and weight work best for you

• Connect that to how they impact fatigue markers:

  • Sleep quality

  • Motivation

  • Joint discomfort

  • Performance decay

• Schedule deloads proactively instead of reactively

• Adjust volume before increasing intensity or load

  • Deepen knowledge of RESTW (number of reps, eccentric control, number of sets, rest time, weight). Shifts from understanding they are the levers to progressively overload and build muscle to which order works best for you

  • My personal framework: SRTEW has worked best for me as far as results and kept me safe

• Develop a high life-stress protocol and understand where to adjust training and attention to in periods of extreme stress to prevent regressing

Results:

• Fewer injuries

• Sustained progress past early genetic gains (newbie gains)

• Ability to train hard without burnout

• Consistent improvement in long-term body composition outcome

Lessons Learned:

• More is not better once recovery is capped

• Fatigue accumulates quietly and should be respected

• Longevity is a skill

• Success is not an accident

Investment:

• Program design education or coaching programs with access to deeper levels of information and personalization

  • Our L3 program was built for this at T2T

• Training logs

  • I use google sheets because im a simple man

• Willingness to pull back before breaking
  

PEDs | Amplification

Multiplier of Effort & Direction, Not Foundation

This layer does not replace any previous level. It magnifies them.

THIS IS NOT ME RECOMMENDING ANYONE GO ENHANCED.

THIS SECTION EXISTS BECAUSE I HAVE SEEN MEN GO ENHANCED WITH NO KNOWLEDGE AND A COACH THAT DIDN’T CARE AND INCREASE RISK WITH MARGINAL REWARD. Said differently, they got gynecomastia, increased other health risks, and ultimately looked worse than many natural lifters I know personally. Treat this as educational information, not prescriptive.

Goal: Understand that PEDs increase both returns and risks. This is why mastery of other steps should be achieved first.

Primary Actions:

• Establish stable nutrition, sleep, hydration, and training systems before any consideration

• Maintain baseline bloodwork and health markers around free testosterone, estrogen, hematocrit, hemoglobin, blood pressure, your lipids,

• Monitor recovery, appetite, and fatigue more closely than pre-PED use

• Prioritize health markers over short-term aesthetic outcomes

Results:

• Increased results from the mastery developed on the foundational habits

• Reduced reliance on just the feelings your body produce

• Higher ceiling with higher responsibility

Lessons Learned:

• PEDs amplify the results from the inputs, they don’t create them

• Weak fundamentals become expensive mistakes

• Some individuals tolerate skipping steps due to genetics, coaching, or luck. This is not repeatable or transferable.

Investment:

• The compounds themselves add up financially

• More frequent bloodwork

• Time loss of health monitoring and education burden

• Higher-quality food and recovery inputs

Summary:

My hope is that in producing this you know what to do and whats important for you to do now.

If you have any questions or want help moving through these steps, DM me on Instagram. My handle is @t2tresults.

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