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Alex Marks | Online & F2F PT

@on.your.marks

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Lifting weights & spirits | 📍London OYM SW11
@on.your.marks.studio 🏋🏻‍♂️ In Studio PT
Fitness Travel host - Health & Fitness Game

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4 days ago

Personal training is becoming increasingly digital. We believe the industry needs more of the real thing. 🖤

Real coaching. Real relationships. A quality space built around helping people become stronger, fitter and more confident.

We’ve put a lot of hard work into transforming the studio, creating an environment that reflects what we believe personal training should be: **high-end, in-person coaching with exceptional attention to detail.**

A huge thank you to my two brothers for the graft, time and support in bringing this vision to life. Couldn’t have done it without you both.

To our existing clients — this next chapter is for you. We can’t wait for you to experience the new space.

And to the next chapter itself… we’re welcoming brilliant new coaches to the studio, who are **taking on clients from TODAY.** 👊🏼

If you’re ready to invest in yourself and want more than just a workout plan, we’d love to hear from you.

**New space. New coaches. Same standards.**

Welcome to the next chapter of On Your Marks.

📍 London - SW11
📩 DM us to enquire about personal training.
👩‍💻 www.oymcoaching.com
@on.your.marks
@on.your.marks.studio taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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6 days ago

WANT TO LOSE WEIGHT?👇🏼

Eat less.

There you go. 16+ years as a Personal Trainer condensed into two words. You’re welcome.

Except… eat less what?

This is where overly simple fat-loss advice starts to fall apart.

Yes, to lose fat you need to consume fewer calories than your body uses. But that doesn’t necessarily mean eating dramatically less food.

Protein and carbohydrates contain around 4 calories per gram.
Fat contains around 9 calories per gram.

That doesn’t make fat “bad”. Far from it. Foods like olive oil, nuts and avocado can be fantastic additions to your diet — they’re just much more calorie-dense.

So sometimes “eating less” actually means being smarter about where your calories are coming from.

More protein.
Plenty of fruit and vegetables.
Carbohydrates to fuel your training and your life.
Healthy fats in appropriate portions.

And yes, there’s still room for the foods you actually enjoy.

Because the goal shouldn’t be:

EAT LESS.

It should be:

EAT SMARTER. taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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11 days ago

This is what eating “healthier” can look like.
But this alone isn’t going to fix your diet.

“Eat less crap. Eat more food.” Sounds sensible. And generally, it is.

But there’s one fairly important word missing:

CALORIES.

You can eat burgers, chocolate, crisps and still lose body fat if you’re consistently consuming fewer calories than your body uses.

And you can eat avocado, nuts, olive oil, salmon and beautifully prepared “whole foods” and still gain weight if you consistently consume more calories than you need.

That doesn’t mean food quality doesn’t matter. It absolutely does — for protein, fibre, vitamins, minerals, fullness, energy, digestion and general health.

But healthy food and fat-loss food aren’t automatically the same thing.

There’s another reality that Instagram nutrition advice often ignores:

Not everyone has the time, money, facilities or inclination to prepare fresh meals three times a day.

Sometimes dinner is something from a packet.
Sometimes lunch comes from Pret.
Sometimes you eat the bloody burger.

That’s called having a life.

And this is where understanding calories becomes far more useful than labelling foods GOOD or CRAP.

Protein = 4 calories per gram
Carbohydrate = 4 calories per gram
Fat = 9 calories per gram

So foods that contain a lot of fat — including plenty of highly processed foods — can become calorie-dense very quickly. That doesn’t make dietary fat bad; we need it. It simply means a relatively small amount can contain a lot of calories.

Meanwhile, meals built around lean protein, fruit, vegetables and sensible portions of carbohydrates will often give you a much larger volume of food for the same calories — while generally keeping you fuller and giving your body more of what it needs.

So yes…

Eat less CRAP.
Eat more FOOD.

But don’t pretend that’s the whole lesson.

Understand how much you’re eating.
Prioritise protein and plants.
Make the better choice when you can.
Make the convenient choice when you need to.
And stop expecting your diet to be perfect before it can work.

Calories determine whether fat loss can happen.
Food quality determines a hell of a lot about how good you feel while doing it. by @on.your.marks

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13 days ago

Most fat-loss advice eventually ends up looking like this. 👆

Eat less.
Move more.
Lose weight.

Simple? Yes.
Useful? Not really.

Because once you start asking better questions, the Post-it notes start multiplying…

Eat less what?
Move more how?
What if I want to lose fat, not just weight?
Should I lift weights?
Do I need more protein?
What about carbs?
And what the hell does “toned” actually mean?

Over the next few posts, I’m going to work my way through the board — one Post-it at a time — and turn the usual fitness soundbites into advice you can actually use.

No extremes. No magic foods. No pretending it’s more complicated than it needs to be.

POST-IT NOTE #1 incoming: “EAT LESS.”

Probably the most technically correct — and spectacularly unhelpful — piece of fat-loss advice ever given.

#OYMCoaching #FatLoss #StrengthTraining #Nutrition PersonalTraining ClaphamJunction taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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13 days ago

STOP trying to “sit up straight” all day. Build an upper body strong enough to support better posture. 👇

🏋️ Barbell Bench Press — builds strength through your chest, shoulders and triceps, developing a strong horizontal push.

💪 DB Overhead Press — strengthens your shoulders while teaching you to control load overhead and maintain a strong trunk position.

🏋️ Barbell Bent-Over Row — strengthens the muscles supporting your shoulder blades and helps you maintain a strong upper-back position.

⬇️ Cable Lat Pulldown — builds strength through the lats and upper back, supporting healthy shoulder movement and control.

↔️ Cable Low Row — strengthens the mid-back muscles that help counteract the rounded, forward-shoulder position many of us spend hours in.

And these exercises are every bit as important for women as they are for men.

If you spend your day at a desk, driving, carrying or feeding a baby, or staring down at your phone, training your upper body matters.

Strong backs, shoulders, chests and arms aren’t gender specific — and neither is good posture.

Push. Pull. Get stronger. Stand taller.

Coach taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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17 days ago

COMPARISONITIS — and apparently I can now catch it from myself.

I asked AI to give me a cleaner haircut. Then slightly bigger legs. Harmless enough… except the original photo was actually me. A real body, on a real day, doing something I enjoy.

Within two edits, I’d created a version of myself to compare myself against — one that doesn’t even exist.

We already spend enough time comparing ourselves to other people: fitter, leaner, younger, stronger. Now AI gives us the opportunity to manufacture an “improved” version of ourselves and develop comparisonitis with our own imagination.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to improve your physique. I’ve built a career around helping people do exactly that. But there’s a big difference between working towards progress and constantly moving the goalposts on what you think you should look like.

Train. Get stronger. Look after yourself. Chase goals.

But every now and then, remember to give the person in the before photo some credit too.

Turns out he was doing alright.

Coach taken in Sahara Dessert, Egypt by @on.your.marks

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18 days ago

IF YOU GREW UP IN THE 90s, THERE’S A GOOD CHANCE YOU STILL THINK CARBS ARE MAKING YOU FAT.

Low-carb. No-carb. Atkins. Rice cakes. Tiny portions.

And an entire generation of women was exposed to messaging like Kate Moss’s infamous:

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

What an absolutely terrible thing to teach women.

Food isn’t something you need to earn.
Carbohydrates aren’t something you need to fear.
And skinny was never a synonym for healthy, strong, energetic or happy.

If your goal is to lose body fat while actually feeling GOOD, carbohydrates can be incredibly useful.

1. CARBS HELP YOU TRAIN HARDER 🏋️‍♀️

Carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in your muscles and provide readily available fuel for harder training.

And if we’re trying to lose fat, I don’t want you dragging yourself through your strength sessions feeling depleted.

I want you lifting, progressing and giving your body a very good reason to hold onto its muscle.

2. CARBS HELP FUEL THE LIFE OUTSIDE THE GYM ⚡️

You’re not a fitness model preparing for a photoshoot.

You’ve got a job. Kids. Meetings. School runs. Social plans. A dog that still needs walking. And ideally, a life you actually enjoy.

Carbohydrates provide energy for all of it.

Fat loss shouldn’t require you to become a tired, miserable version of yourself just to make the number on the scales smaller.

3. YOU DON’T NEED TO REMOVE CARBS TO LOSE BODY FAT 🍝

This is the big one.

Fat loss requires a sustained calorie deficit — not the elimination of bread, potatoes, pasta or fruit.

Yes, reducing carbs can make the scales drop quickly at first because stored carbohydrate carries water with it.

That doesn’t mean you suddenly lost loads of body fat.

And it definitely doesn’t mean carbs were the problem.

The goal isn’t to eat as little as possible.

The goal is to eat enough to train well, retain muscle, function like a human being and still create the calorie deficit required to lose fat.

So perhaps it’s time we finally retired:

“Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.”

Because being strong, well-fed, energetic, confident and able to enjoy a bowl of pasta without taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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20 days ago

The fittest version of me isn’t the one who sacrifices the most. It’s the one who still has a life on Friday night.

I spend most of my week asking quite a lot of my body.

I coach on my feet all day. I lift heavy. I run. I’m trying to build muscle without losing an engine, and on Sundays I still want to be able to play 90 minutes of 11-a-side football without spending Monday walking like I’ve been hit by a car.

For years, fitness was very easy to measure by what I could add.

More weight. More muscle. More sessions. More discipline.

Now I think the challenge is bridging it all together.

Strength without becoming slow.
Cardio without sacrificing muscle.
Football without destroying the rest of the week.
Recovery without feeling guilty for doing nothing.

And doing all of that while having a physically taxing job and enough energy left for an actual life.

Which brings me to Friday.

Friday is, and probably always will be, my favourite day of the week.

No lifting. No running. No chasing numbers.

Sauna. Mobility. Switch off.

Then get dressed up, go somewhere good, eat what I fancy, have a drink and spend the evening with the girl I love.

That isn’t the part of my week where I stop being disciplined.

It’s one of the reasons I bother being disciplined in the first place.

There’s also something slightly ironic about using AI to document all of this, only for it to repeatedly hand me back a taller, leaner and more muscular version of myself.

I don’t need an imaginary “better” body.

I want my body to be strong, fit, athletic and healthy enough to keep doing the things that make my life good for as long as possible.

Maybe the goal is simply to be the best athlete at the bar on Friday… and potentially the best drinker in the gym. 🍻 taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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21 days ago

Who remembers art attack? Anywho… loads of other great exercises to max out your glutes with commercial gym equipment - but if you want to be old school/ the actual king or queen at glutmaxxing smash the hell outta these before you hide on gym equipment. 4x6-8 reps for 6 weeks, 3x10-15reps for 3 weeks. Rinse and repeat - grow them puppies 🍑

DM me for more details on how you can work with me…

Coach by @on.your.marks

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a month ago

What’s your guess? taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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a month ago

Some of my favourites - remember whenever we’re training unilateral movements (lower or upper) we’re challenging core strength as well as the selected muscle group.

Give these a whirl and like always … my DM’s are open for any specific questions.

Coach #unilateral #upperbody #pt taken in On Your Marks by @on.your.marks

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a month ago