DO I ACTUALLY NEED A BLOOD TEST?

If you're over 40, tired all the time and training hard for nothing, you're guessing. Bloods stop the guessing.

Most men I coach have never had a proper blood test. They've had the odd one at the GP after something went wrong, and that's it. So when they tell me they're flat, sleeping badly and not recovering, we're both guessing.

A blood panel doesn't fix anything on its own. What it does is narrow the list. Low ferritin, a thyroid that's drifting, vitamin D on the floor in February, testosterone lower than it should be for your age — those things all feel like "I'm just getting old", and they're all measurable.

The other reason to do it is the baseline. If you test now and again in six months, you can see whether the training and the food are doing what we think they're doing. Without that you're relying on how you felt this morning, which is a terrible way to make decisions.

What I'd look at first: full blood count, ferritin, vitamin D, HbA1c, a lipid panel, liver and kidney markers, thyroid, and a full male hormone panel including total and free testosterone, SHBG and oestradiol.

Get it done through a lab that explains the results properly. Then bring them to your check-in and we'll build round what's actually there.

Stuart is a coach, not a doctor. Nothing here is medical advice — talk to a clinician before changing anything medical.