Health & Performance 3

14/10/2026

Nearly half the people who start the Winter Spine Race do not finish it.

A recce on the Spine route, and this is the kind version. No snow, no night, and no fourth morning in a row.

Across the three winter Spine races from 2018 to 2026 there have been 2334 starters and 1291 finishers. The full spine has swung between 43% and 60% finishing in a year. Challenger South has been as low as 31% and as high as 77%. Same course. Same cut offs.

That spread is the whole argument. This race is not decided by the fittest in October. It is decided by cold, by feet, by sleep, by fuelling, and by the decisions you make at four in the morning on day four.

So we’ve built this series exactly on that, drawn on 94 peer reviewed references. Two posts a week, all the way to race day. Follow for the rest of it. The carousels are on the profile.

13/10/2026

13/10/2026

This is the easy day. A recce on the Pennine way. No snow, no dark, no fourth morning in a row.

Across the Challenger South, Challenger North and Full Spine from 2018-2026 there have been 2334 starters and 1291 finishers. The full Spine has swung from 43% and 60% finishing in a year. Challenger South has been as low as 31% and as high as 77%. Same course, same cut offs.

That spread is the whole argument. This race is not decided by those who are fittest in October. It is decided by cold, by feet, by sleep, by fuelling, and by the decisions you make at four in the morning on day four.

We have a series of posts, drawn from a 52 page evidence review with 94 scientific evidence papers. Two posts a week, all the way to race week. Follow along for the rest of it. The carousels are on the profile.

11/09/2026

How has your week been?

Your watch and app knows your HRV, your sleep, and your training load. It has never once asked how your week has been. Swipe for 5 moments where the data goes quiet, and what a coach says in that situation.

The recovery score with no context. Placebos can influence performance, positively and negatively. A number delivered as a warning can cause you to perform worse if there is no context to it.

A missed session and red box on TrainingPeaks can cause you to overreact, but with a coach who can adapt the plan will keep you honest.

Reading an MRI scan alone, not appreciating the nuances can increase your risk of catastrophisation.

A generic plan that doesn’t understand your day job load, or that you have a newborn baby.

This isn’t to say ‘apps are bad’. We use them with all the athletes we coach. This is to highlight the gaps they cannot close, and when a human (or team of humans) can help you interpret the noise.

Send this to your training partner who trusts the app more than their legs.

22/07/2026

The moment your training ‘system’ becomes a cage, it stops working.

Clare is deliberate about the me word: she calls her approach a framework, not a formula. A formula is fixed and brittle. A framework is agile, it grows with your thinking, your experience, and what you learn from the people around you.

For endurance, this is the difference between rigidly obeying a plan and actually practicing one. The athletes who stay the course, are the ones who treat their training as a living framework the adapt, not a formula they either complete or fail.

Check out the full webinar on our circle platform (link 👆) Save this as a reminder if your plan feels more like a rule book than a tool. Framework or formula - which is yours right now?

21/07/2026

The advice that works for your training partner, or comes from an app, might be quietly wrong for you.

Here’s something a good psychologist will admit that a lot of coaching won’t: most of what we say is a generalisation. Research deals in averages. You are not an average, you are wired exactly one way, and it’s yours.

Amy makes this the ground rule in her teaching and practice; everyone is different. A mental strategy that transforms one athlete leaves another cold. You can view the whole webinar on our circle platform (link 👆). But when you are reading a new idea, treat it as an experiment, not an instruction. The skill is noticing what actually shifts in YOUR state, and keeping that.

Save this and share it with the training partner who keeps telling you what “works”. If you are looking for personalised coaching, unique to you, contact us for a no obligation chat and see how our team can help you.

16/07/2026

Resilience isn’t always about pushing through.

A great webinar we had recently on the HP3 circle community with where we applied the lessons of endurance sport to all aspects of life.

This is an important lesson, particularly for those approaching races and thinking they need to push on through. ‘Resilience’ is getting a lot of attention in the world of sport (and business), but it’s not about the ability to suffer in a pain cave, it’s really about creating the environment to thrive.

Full video is available on our YouTube channel or within the community app.

14/07/2026

The summit is optional. Getting home isn’t.

Most UK mountain rescue call outs don’t involve beginners on extreme objectives. They involve experienced hill goers on ordinary days out. In Scotland alone, the biggest reasons for a call out were undramatic slips, trips, and navigational errors (Scottish Mountain Rescue 2022, Knott 2011).

Our latest HP3 webinar with coach Chris Mountain Mastery is all about running in the mountains with better judgement. Swipe through for the essentials.

Want structured, evidence informed coaching for your next big trail or ultra event? That’s what we do at HP3. And if you want to keep learning, ask us questions and train alongside other mountain runners, come and join in the conversation in our HP3 circle community - link in bio.

19/05/2026

What a weekend for at in challenging conditions we had some amazing performances 🙌

On the 25k course we had , Paul Dew and Melisa Lenero

On the 56k we had , Josh Twigg, Brando Posocco, (15th), Michele Wang, and

On the 100k we had (10th), Flo King (8th) and . Sadly Alecsa Stewart retired injured at the final checkpoint.

Finally in the 100mile we had Howard Dracup knock 2hrs off last year’s time and finished 17th.

Huge thanks to all the coaching team .mahon1 and for their support in the build up and throughout the weekend - especially for crewing Lewis and all round super cheer leader / organiser.

Whatever your endurance goals, our team of experts can help you reach your peak.

29/04/2026

Stop focussing on posture.
The near universal cue “keep a neutral spine or you’ll hurt your back” has been challenged by this 2026 narrative review.

What the evidence actually says:
Trained lifters routinely show measurable lumbar flexion under load, with no clear prospective signal of higher injury risk.
Abrupt jumps in training load predict low back injury more consistently than a few degrees of flexion on a single rep.
Movement variability and dynamic trunk control look more protective than rigid kinematic targets and long static planks.

Does posture matter then? Yes, but only as one variable in a multifactorial system. But coach load progression first. Reserve hard postural cues for novices, return-to-lift rehab, and maximal attempts.

If you coach lifters or rehab low back pain, save this for the next time you see a rounded rep, and share with a strength coach who still cues “neutral spine” on every set.

Cherni et al. (2026)

- Tim