Rhys Hume. I figured it out the long way round.

Not in the sense of not showing up. I showed up four or five times a week, filmed my lifts, tracked everything I could think of, and read everything I could find. And I got nowhere. Enough beginner progress for people to stop calling me skinny, just about. But the version of me I had in my head when I started at 52kg on Jamaica Street never quite arrived.

During uni I broke my leg playing football. Needed surgery. My parents flew to Greece the same afternoon and my gran had to help me shower because I couldn't get up the stairs. I trained upper body only through recovery because sitting still felt worse than the pain. Then Covid hit, so I built a home gym with no mirrors and started filming every lift to coach myself.

I graduated in Chemistry, got a funded PhD, then Covid pulled the funding. I ended up at Thermofisher as an analytical scientist. Decent money, pension, lab coat. The kind of job you're supposed to be grateful for. I couldn't picture myself doing it forever.

In 2022 a mate caught me cueing someone's deadlift and said I was better at this than half the trainers in the building, so why wasn't I doing it properly. That sentence sat in my head for over a year. Summer 2023 I started my Level 3 while working full time. Early 2024 I coached a few friends for free. They each dropped over a stone while eating more food than they'd ever eaten on a diet, and stuck to it for the first time in their lives.

That was the moment the doubt died. Late 2024 I left Thermofisher and went all in on RDH Coaching.

What I never had, and didn't know I needed, was a coach. Someone who actually watched what I was doing, took it apart, and rebuilt it with me. Someone who genuinely cared whether I got the result I'd been chasing for years.

I figured it out eventually, but the long way round. You don't need to do it the long way. That's what coaching is for.