Training Priority Hierarchy
Rank training inputs so consistency and protein beat drop-sets every time
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 72%
Thurston orders training inputs by leverage rather than by how technical or exciting they sound. At the top sits the single hardest thing for most people: consistently showing up and having a genuinely intense session. Next is protein (around 2g per kilogram of bodyweight) and hitting roughly the right total daily calories for the goal, with fat and carb ratios treated as near-irrelevant. Sleep of seven to eight hours follows. Progressive overload with strict, controlled form comes next, pushing the final working set to true concentric failure. Only when you genuinely cannot add load or reps do you reach for intensity manipulators like drop-sets, supersets and partial reps. The model lets you keep looking good even in a suboptimal, restaurant-and-travel lifestyle by protecting the few things that matter.
Origin
Thurston built this hierarchy across a decade of training himself and thousands of hours coaching personal-training clients, then maintaining his physique while travelling and living out of Dubai.
Core principles
- 01Consistency of showing up beats any advanced technique
- 02Protein and total calories matter far more than macro fine-tuning
- 03Sleep is an underrated performance input
- 04Intensity techniques are the last lever, not the first
- 05Form and true failure outrank absolute load
How to run it
- 1
Guarantee the session happens
Treat simply getting to the gym and having one genuinely intense session as the non-negotiable priority. Consistency over weeks and months is what most people actually fail at.
Pro tip If you can hold a full conversation after a set, the set wasn't intense enough.
- 2
Hit your protein
Aim for roughly 2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day, sourced sensibly even when eating out or on the move.
- 3
Land your calories, ignore macro fiddling
Get total daily calories roughly right for your goal. Don't stress the exact fat-to-carb ratio; it barely matters relative to protein and totals.
Watch out Too many people burn energy stressing over macro ratios that make almost no difference.
- 4
Protect sleep
Prioritise seven to eight hours. Poor sleep quietly undermines recovery, mood and how you look and perform.
- 5
Progressively overload with strict form
Grow muscle by overloading the target muscles over time, keeping form slow and controlled and pushing the last working set to true failure.
Pro tip Use a spotter to take the final set slightly beyond concentric failure.
Watch out Ego-lifting with sloppy form shifts tension off the target muscle and invites injury.
- 6
Add intensity techniques last
Only when you genuinely cannot add more load or reps do you introduce partial reps, drop-sets and supersets to keep progressing.
In the wild
Living out of Dubai with a chaotic social scene, late nights and restaurant food, Thurston can't control his environment. Instead he defends the top of the hierarchy: he still gets an intense session in, still hits around 2g/kg protein, gets his rough calories, and guards seven to eight hours of sleep. He accepts that fat and carb ratios drift and that meals aren't optimal. Because the high-leverage inputs stay protected, he continues to look good without a monk-like regime.
→ Maintains a lean, muscular physique despite a travel-heavy, socially distracting lifestyle.
Common mistakes
Chasing techniques before consistency
People fixate on drop-sets and supersets while skipping weeks of training or having low-effort sessions, which is where nearly all failure actually happens.
Lifting heavy with broken form
Loading a bench so the tension lands on shoulders and triceps trains the wrong muscle and risks injury; strict form beats absolute weight.
Over-optimising macros
Stressing the exact fat-to-carb split wastes mental energy on a variable that barely moves results compared to protein, calories and sleep.
Is it for you?
Best for
Busy or travelling people who want to maintain or build a physique without a perfect environment.
Not ideal for
Elite competitors chasing the final few percent of conditioning who need coached precision.
From the transcript
“it's the consistency of going to the gym that's what most people suck at because they go weeks or months with not going or they…”
“the most important thing which i try and do is obviously to grow muscle is to overload that muscle and when it gets to a…”
From the episode
Traveling, Steroids & How To Build An Audience - Mike Thurston - #249
Mike Thurston