Simone Puddu Personal Training

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Welcome to Simone Puddu Personal Training. I help real people — especially those overcoming pain, rehab, or burnout — build real strength.

Wim Hof Method Certified Instructor
I help YOU to control your health and fall in love with your body

Full coaching is for:
- stress management
- fat loss
- muscle build
Contact me if you are motivated to change � From in-person sessions in Malta to fully guided online programs, I offer transformation, not just training.
👇 Scroll down for success stories, real-life wins, and simple insights.
🎯 Ready to start? Message me or book a free consult.

01/11/2026

Imagine completing considerably fewer squat repetitions and improving your jumping performance MORE.

That's exactly what happened in an eight-week experiment involving 22 young men.

One group stopped their squat sets when repetition speed dropped by 20%. The other continued until a 40% loss of speed.

The first group completed approximately 40% fewer repetitions.

Their countermovement jump improved by 9.5%, compared with 3.5% in the other group.

And here's another interesting detail: both groups improved their squat strength.

This brings us to an important coaching question.

If I'm programming squats for you because you want to jump higher, sprint faster or develop explosive power, how much fatigue should I allow you to accumulate during each set?

The faster repetitions and the slower repetitions impose different demands. We have to consider those differences when designing the training.

A later review found a small average advantage for lower velocity loss in jump and sprint outcomes, although the evidence doesn't give us one universally optimal stopping percentage.

The lesson I take into coaching is straightforward: decide what adaptation you're training for, then programme the load, repetitions, speed and fatigue accordingly.

The complete video is available on my YouTube channel.

Do your squat sets usually end because you've reached the prescribed repetitions, or because the quality of your repetitions is dropping?

31/10/2026

You do not need to understand training before you start training.
That would be like waiting to understand swimming before getting into the water.

Your first months in the gym ARE where you learn.

You do not need to understand periodisation.
You do not need to calculate your optimal weekly volume.
You do not need to know whether 6 reps or 10 reps are “better”.
You certainly don’t need a PhD in biomechanics before touching a dumbbell.
You need a sensible program, someone competent to guide you when necessary, and repetitions.

Lots of them.

Because there are things I can explain to you for three hours that your body will understand after three good sets.

What does a stable squat feel like?
How hard is RPE 8?
What does “two reps in reserve” actually mean?
How does a hip hinge feel compared with a squat?
How much weight can YOU control through a full ROM?

You learn those things by doing them 😉

Then something interesting happens.
You start understanding the program you are following.
You recognise when your technique changes.
You learn what real effort feels like.
You discover how quickly YOU recover.
You stop being someone who simply “does workouts” and start becoming someone who knows how to train.

Knowledge grows WITH experience.

That’s why my beginners start with foundations: technique, consistency, repetitions and small progressions. Complexity earns its place later.

And yes, get help.

There is absolutely no prize for spending six months independently rediscovering things a competent coach can teach you in twenty minutes.

Read. Ask questions. Learn the theory. I LOVE when clients want to understand why we do something.

But do it while you are training.

Because researching training and training are two completely different activities.

At some point you have to put the phone down, pick the weight up and collect your own data.

Start → Practice → Understand → Improve.

You don’t study your way into being ready.

You train your way into becoming capable.

30/10/2026

Before the powerlifters come for me: I LOVE YOU! ❤️😂

You are genuinely some of the nicest people in any gym. Which makes it even more tragic that your rest periods last three business days and your idea of “we can share” requires a forklift to change the weights.

I’m sorry. The lifetime ban must stand. 😆

Now YOUR turn: if you could ban ONE thing (or one type of person 😈) from every gym, what would it be?

Powerlifters: you may appeal. In writing. During your next rest period. ❤️

Ps: apologies for the language, I got taken by the heat 😄

30/10/2026

There is no perfect diet.
Whenever someone start talking about the “definitive”, “perfect” “absolute”, “right for all” or “now scientifically proven to be the correct” diet, call bull**it with your whole voice. Stream it please.
After decades of diet wars, we should probably have understood this by now.

Keto works.
Intermittent fasting works.
Low fat works.
Mediterranean works.
Counting calories works.

For fat loss, they all eventually have to achieve the same thing:

You need to consume less energy than you expend for long enough to lose fat.
For dear peace of fat activists, body positivists and weird alien genetic ancestry advocates.

The interesting question is how YOU get there.

Because the mathematically perfect diet that makes you miserable, hungry, socially isolated and ready to quit after 12 days is a terrible diet for you.

Meanwhile, a less sophisticated approach that you can repeat for six months can completely change your body.

This is where people waste an incredible amount of time.

They keep searching for the BEST diet when they should be searching for their most sustainable way to create the required result.

Meal timing can be optimised.
Macros can be optimised.
Food selection can be improved.
Supplements can fill specific gaps.
We can play with all of that.

But first I need you to be able to DO THE DAMN THING.

And no, “sustainable” doesn’t mean effortless.

A caloric deficit sometimes means hunger.
Planning meals requires effort.
Changing habits can be uncomfortable.
Saying no sometimes is part of the process.
Sustainable means the cost is low enough that you can keep paying it until the job is done. Still: you need to pay that cost.

Then we make the diet better.
More nutritious.
Better protein intake.
More fibre.
Better food choices.
Better adapted to your training.

But we build those improvements onto something you can actually execute.

Stop searching for dietary perfection.

Find an approach that creates the result you need and that you can repeat long enough to get there.
Then refine the hell out of it.

29/10/2026

Squats build glutes. They build QUADS too. Do you actually want both?

Many women want more prominent glutes while keeping the front of their thighs relatively slim. Others want substantial muscle development throughout the entire lower body. Both are perfectly valid goals, but they call for different programming decisions.

Here's something worth considering.

Every demanding squat set contributes to the training stimulus for BOTH the glutes and quadriceps. If your programme already contains squats, lunges, leg presses and other knee-dominant exercises, your quads may be receiving considerably more training volume than you intended.

And that volume accumulates over weeks and months.

Now, imagine I'm programming for a woman whose priority is glute development while keeping additional quad growth under control.

I can maintain squats for their considerable benefits, but distribute more of her glute-focused training volume towards exercises such as hip thrusts, which allow substantial loading of the glutes with relatively little quadriceps involvement.

Romanian deadlifts can provide another useful hip-extension stimulus, particularly with the glutes working at longer muscle lengths, while also heavily involving the hamstrings.

The result is a programme where we can develop the glutes through different movement patterns while deliberately managing how much work the quadriceps receive.

Of course, exercise selection is only part of the equation. Loading, ex*****on, productive volume, progressive overload and recovery still determine how effectively we stimulate growth.

And if your goal is BIGGER quads alongside bigger glutes? Wonderful! 😁 We can programme for THAT too.

The important question is: WHAT physique are we trying to develop, and where should we invest our training volume to achieve it?

Want the complete comparison? Watch my Squat vs Deadlift vs Hip Thrust video on YouTube, where I explain the muscular demands of each exercise and how I use them when programming for different physique goals.

28/10/2026

Low volume or high volume? Uuuuh how I see this question being answered with a political-view approach!
“This is the dogma and that’s it!!” 😄

Truth is both can and do work.

The question to ask is: how much volume can you productively use RIGHT NOW?

Your volume tolerance is not a personality trait.

It changes.

During a caloric surplus, sleeping well and recovering beautifully, I may progressively push your weekly volume higher.

During a cut, with less energy available and performance becoming harder to maintain, I will probably ask less volume from you - in heavy multi-joints exercises especially- and focus on keeping the quality of the stimulus high.

Add a stressful month at work, poor sleep or three hard weeks of accumulated fatigue?
The equation changes again.

And 6 months later, after becoming stronger and more experienced?
We reassess it.

Volume is a variable. We manipulate it.

Sometimes we build it, others we hold it, or we deliberately reduce it to dissipate fatigue.
Then we build again.

That is also why two women with the same goal may receive very different programs from me.

One may progress great on 12 quality weekly sets for a large muscle group.

Another one may productively handle 20+.

Giving both 20 because “science says 20 sets” would completely miss the point.

And copying the volume of an athlete, influencer or even your training partner tells you very little about the volume you need.

I look at what happens after we prescribe it:
Are you progressing?
Are reps and loads moving?
Is ex*****on staying good?
Are you recovering before the next exposure?
Can we add work and get more progress from it?

Those answers tell me where to go next.

This is exactly why my programming changes between phases.

The right volume is the volume that produces adaptation AND leaves you enough recovery to produce it again.

Then, when your capacity changes, we change the program with it.

28/10/2026

MORE squat repetitions, LESS improvement in jumping performance?

Here's an interesting experiment.

Twenty-two young men trained squats for eight weeks. One group stopped when repetition speed dropped by 20%. The other kept going until a 40% reduction.

The group that stopped earlier completed approximately 40% fewer repetitions.

And yet, their countermovement jump improved by 9.5%, compared with 3.5% in the group performing considerably more work. Both groups achieved similar improvements in squat strength.

Now imagine I'm programming your training because you want to jump higher or accelerate faster.

Why would I insist on squeezing out another four slow, exhausting repetitions if my priority is developing explosive performance?

That's the question this experiment helps us investigate.

Of course, one study doesn't establish the perfect number of repetitions for everybody. More recent research supports a small average advantage for preserving repetition speed, while leaving the optimal threshold uncertain.

And if your goal is muscle growth? Well, we have a different discussion to have!

That's why I always want to know what adaptation we're trying to achieve before deciding how much work belongs in a set.

The complete video is on my YouTube channel, where I explain the research, the limitations and the practical applications.

When you squat, are you training for muscle growth, strength or explosive performance?

27/10/2026

PRECISE. EFFORTLESS. FREE. Choose two.

Tracking your food has a cost. You can pay with your time, accept wider error margins, or pay somebody or something to handle part of the work.

1️⃣ PRECISE + FREE
You normally do the work yourself: weigh food, log meals, record training and review the trends. The money stays in your pocket. The workload stays with you.

2️⃣ EFFORTLESS + FREE
You simplify: use portions, estimate more and accept less precision. Expert trick: REPEAT MEALS. Familiar meals and consistent portions give you fewer things to figure out every day.

3️⃣ PRECISE + EFFORTLESS
You usually pay to reduce the workload. Coaching, meal preparation, technology or other services can handle part of it. Greater precision still takes work; some of that work moves away from you.

The useful question is: HOW MUCH PRECISION DO I NEED NOW?

You might make progress with a broad structure, consistent portions and a simple training log. Or your current goal might require tighter tracking.

Tracking is useful when it gives you awareness and feedback you can USE: what is changing, whether your plan is working and what needs adjusting.

Professional support can make sense when saving time and reducing your mental workload are worth more to you than doing everything manually.

The work has to happen somewhere. It won’t fall from the sky for you. 😆

Save this if you keep bouncing between tracking absolutely everything and tracking nothing.

Want help choosing the amount of structure you actually need? Send me PROGRAMME and we’ll work out what suits you.

Much Love

27/10/2026

10 to 25 sets per week for LARGE muscle groups.

That is a hell if a wide range.

Intentionally.

Think glutes, quads, hamstrings, back, chest: large amounts of muscle tissue capable of handling and benefiting from substantial weekly work.

But 10 sets and 25 sets are two completely different training prescriptions.

A beginner may grow perfectly well around the lower end while getting stronger almost every week.

An experienced lifter in a hypertrophy phase, eating enough and recovering well, may need considerably more work to keep creating adaptation.

And between those two people we have everything that changes volume tolerance:

Goal
Training experience.
Effort and RPE.
Exercise selection.
Load.
Frequency.
Caloric intake.
Sleep.
External stress.
Individual recovery capacity.

This is why I don’t give someone 20 sets simply because “20 sets builds muscle.”

First I find the amount that produces progress.

Then we watch.

Are loads or reps increasing?
Is ex*****on staying good?
Are you recovering between exposures?
Can you reproduce high-quality work later in the week?
If yes, we have room to maintain or progressively add volume.

If performance starts declining while fatigue, soreness and joint stress keep climbing, adding another five sets is unlikely to be the clever solution.

And this is particularly important with LARGE muscle groups because their training often involves demanding compound movements.

Five extra sets of squats, RDLs or heavy rows do not cost the same as five tiny accessory sets.

Volume has a dose.
Enough creates the stimulus.
More can create more adaptation — while you can recover from it.
Too much starts spending recovery resources without buying enough additional progress.

So 10–25 gives us the map.

Your training tells us where on that map you belong.

27/10/2026

Nobody wants to hear it. But here it is anyway.

Lift 3 times a week. Eat whole food. Drink water. Skip the alcohol and ci******es. Walk 30 minutes a day. Go to bed on time. Get some sunlight.

That is it. Do those things consistently and you will be healthier than 95% of the people around you.

Not because the bar is low - although, honestly, it kind of is. But because most people know what to do and still do not do it. Consistently. Over time. Without waiting for motivation to show up.

The basics are not boring. They are the foundation that almost nobody actually builds.

Save this. Come back to it when you are tempted to chase something complicated.

Address

Triq Maria Teresa Spinelli
Gzira
GZR1301

Website

https://simonepuddu.com/

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