A Week in My Life: How I Train, Work in Tech, and Recover as a Fitness Coach for Software Engineers

Most fitness content shows you what to do in the gym.

This is about everything else - the structure, the habits, the daily decisions that make the gym sessions actually work.

I'm an online fitness coach for software engineers and tech professionals.

I also work full-time in remote marketing for a Swiss tech company.

I have a young daughter, a house we're renovating ourselves, and a village in the Rhodope mountains where we spend our weekends.

This is what a real week looks like.

Not a perfect week. A typical one.

The morning architecture

I wake up between 6 and 6:30.

Coffee - black with a small amount of milk, no sugar - while I make breakfast for my daughter and wife.

By 8:30 we're in the car.

My wife and I both work from home, and my mother looks after our daughter during the week. The drop-off is part of the morning rhythm, not a disruption to it.

From there, straight to the gym. I'm there by 9:00.

The session is either zone two cardio - 30 minutes on the stairs or inclined treadmill, heart rate between 145 and 155, which is zone two for me - or a strength session. Not both at the same time. Alternating, planned, intentional.

I'm home by 9:45 and at my desk by 10:00.

This is the part most people miss. The training isn't squeezed into the gaps. It's the first real commitment of the working day, before the cognitive load accumulates, before the meetings start, before the day has had a chance to fill with reasons not to go.

Breakfast that takes 90 seconds

Four raw eggs, frozen berries, protein powder, creatine, fine oats, fresh milk. Blended. Done.

This isn't a compromise. It's a deliberate optimization.

The nutritional profile is exactly what I need - protein, slow carbohydrates, micronutrients from the berries, creatine for training adaptation.

The preparation time is under two minutes.

For someone who coaches software engineers on removing friction from healthy habits, this is the practice, not just the theory.

The working day structure

I work from home Monday through Friday with a rhythm that's been refined over time rather than imposed by anyone. On Friday afternoons, after work ends, we pack the car and drive 50 minutes to our summer house in the Rhodope mountains.

Between meetings, I do Wim Hof breathing or a short mobility sequence - five to ten minutes.

This isn't wellness theater. Software engineers breathing shallowly at a desk for hours accumulate CO2 and tension that compounds through the afternoon. Interrupting it deliberately is the difference between arriving at the end of the day depleted and arriving at the end of the day functional.

At 13:00, lunch break. My wife and I walk to one of three or four restaurants within walking distance that we've specifically selected - places that serve real cooked food, not processed lunch options. We eat together, we walk, we're away from screens for an hour. Both of us work in front of computers all day. The lunch break is non-negotiable.

The afternoon training window

At 16:30, my wife goes to collect our daughter. This is when I either do the strength session if I did cardio in the morning, or I join them at the park if the week has already had enough training load.

This is the data-informed decision that Whoop makes possible. Recovery score, HRV, accumulated strain - I look at the numbers and I decide. Not based on whether I feel motivated. Based on what the body actually needs.

Sometimes the right answer is the park.

Evenings without screens

We eat dinner between 18:30 and 19:00. The rule is simple - the last meal is at least two to three hours before sleep. We go to bed at 21:30.

We don't own a television. After dinner we play with our daughter, spend time together, and do a light stretching routine before bed. The rooms are aired out and cooled to under 18 degrees. Blackout curtains throughout the house.

Complete darkness.

This isn't asceticism. It's the practical application of everything I know about sleep architecture and recovery - applied to my own life, not just recommended to clients.

The absence of screens in the evening is probably the single most impactful change in the household. Two people who spend their entire working day in front of monitors and deliberately stop at the end of the day.

The quality of sleep that follows is measurably different from the years we spent watching something until 23:00.

Friday through Sunday: the village

From Friday evening we're at our summer house. The work there is physical - garden maintenance, construction, renovation. We're building something real with our hands, and the caloric expenditure is significant without being structured exercise.

This is deliberate active recovery. Not the gym, not zone two cardio - but real physical engagement with the environment. Movement that has purpose beyond fitness. The kind that humans did before fitness became a scheduled activity.

We rest during the middle of the day when it's hot and our daughter naps. In the evenings we walk through the village. We eat well. We sleep with the windows open and the mountains outside.

By Monday morning the recovery data looks different from weeks where we stayed in town. The body responds to genuine rest and outdoor physical engagement in ways that structured recovery protocols approximate but don't quite match.

The ideal week - and the real one

The perfect week includes everything.

Morning cardio. Work. Strength sessions.

Time with my daughter and wife.

An evening ride on the CBR 600 through the mountain roads.

Recovery that matches the load.

It happens.

Not every week, but often enough to be the standard rather than the exception.

When it doesn't happen completely, something still happens.

The minimum is always there - movement in the morning, lunch away from the desk, sleep before 22:00. The rest adjusts around life without collapsing entirely.

Why any of this is possible: the design behind it

None of what I've described above is the result of exceptional willpower or an unusually flexible job. It's the result of deliberate decisions made years ago about where and how to live.

We don't commute. Everything is five minutes away by car - my mother's house where our daughter spends the day, the gym, the restaurants we eat at, the shops. This isn't an accident. It's one of the primary reasons we left Berlin after eight years and came back to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city.

In Berlin we had everything a city offers and spent enormous amounts of time and money navigating it. In Plovdiv we have what we actually need within five minutes. The gym session happens because it costs 45 minutes total, not two hours including commute. The lunch walk happens because the restaurants are walkable. The evening is calm because the logistics of daily life don't consume it.

The financial architecture supports the lifestyle architecture. Costs are optimized, income is maximized, which creates room for deliberate delegation - cleaning, eating out at quality restaurants, investing in the house rather than spending on lifestyle inflation that doesn't improve daily life.

This is what I mean by design. Not hacks. Not biohacking. Not an elaborate morning routine that requires two hours of free time before the day starts.

The right location. The right proximity. The right financial structure. These decisions created the conditions where the healthy defaults became the easy ones.

Software engineers are systems thinkers by profession. The healthiest ones I know apply that thinking to their lives, not just their code.

What this is actually demonstrating

The point of describing this week isn't to present a perfect lifestyle or suggest that every software engineer should replicate it exactly.

The point is to show that healthy physical habits don't require suffering, rigid discipline, or sacrificing the things that matter.

The training happens because the morning structure makes it the path of least resistance, not the path of most willpower. The nutrition works because the decisions are pre-made - the breakfast recipe, the selected restaurants, the dinner patterns - not because I'm exercising restraint at every meal. The sleep is good because the environment is designed for it, not because I go to bed thinking about sleep hygiene.

This is what I mean when I say that fitness for tech professionals isn't about finding more motivation. It's about designing a life where the healthy choices are the default ones.

The gym sessions are 30 to 45 minutes. The walk at lunch is part of the workday.

The breathing exercises happen between meetings. The evenings are genuinely restful because there's nothing competing for attention.

The result isn't visible in any single day. It's visible in the Whoop data over months - recovery trending up, HRV stable, physiological age tracking younger than chronological. It's visible in the energy available for the work, the family, and the projects that matter.

Software engineers spend years optimizing systems at work. This is the same process applied to the most important system you operate.

I work 1:1 with software engineers and tech professionals on building exactly this kind of structure around their actual life - not a generic program, but a system that fits. Book a free 30-minute call and let's talk about what that looks like for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time does this actually take per day?

The morning training session is 45 minutes including travel. The lunch walk is part of the break that exists anyway. The breathing exercises happen between meetings and take five to ten minutes. The evening routine is 15 minutes. None of this requires finding extra hours - it requires placing habits inside the structure that already exists.

Is zone two cardio necessary or is it just for fitness enthusiasts?

Zone two cardio - sustained moderate intensity where you can hold a conversation - is the most evidence-backed form of exercise for metabolic health, cardiovascular efficiency, and longevity. For software engineers specifically, it also provides active recovery from the cognitive load of the workday without adding significant physical stress. 30 minutes three times a week is sufficient for meaningful benefit.

How do you maintain this structure when work gets demanding?

The morning training happens before the working day starts, which removes the main variable. When a week is particularly demanding, the afternoon session gets replaced with the park or a walk rather than cancelled entirely. The minimum is movement twice a day - morning session and lunch walk. Everything else adjusts around that minimum.

Why no television in the evenings?

Both of us work in front of screens all day. Adding screen time in the evening extends the cortisol and blue light exposure that disrupts sleep architecture. The quality of sleep measurably improved when we removed the television. For software engineers already spending ten or more hours on screens, the evening is the one window where genuine cognitive rest is possible.

What is the smoothie breakfast and why raw eggs?

Raw eggs in a blended drink are safe when consumed immediately and provide high-quality complete protein with full bioavailability. Combined with oats for slow carbohydrates, berries for micronutrients, protein powder to hit the daily target, and creatine for training adaptation - the result is a nutritionally complete breakfast that takes 90 seconds to prepare. For people who struggle with breakfast consistency, removing the preparation friction removes the main barrier.

How does the weekend physical work fit into a training program?

It doesn't need to. Physical work in the garden and on construction projects is genuine movement with caloric expenditure and functional strength demands. It counts as active recovery in the context of the week's overall training load. The body doesn't distinguish between a farmer's carry and carrying construction materials. The stimulus is similar. The psychological benefit of building something real is additional.

Are raw eggs actually safe to eat?

The short answer is yes, when consumed immediately after blending and sourced from quality suppliers.

The salmonella concern around raw eggs is real but significantly overstated in practice. Studies estimate that approximately 1 in 20,000 eggs in Europe contains salmonella - and that risk drops further with refrigerated, quality-sourced eggs consumed immediately rather than left sitting.

The bioavailability question is more nuanced. Cooked egg protein is absorbed at roughly 91% efficiency versus around 51-65% for raw eggs according to older research. However, more recent studies suggest that when raw eggs are blended with other ingredients - as in a smoothie - absorption improves significantly because the mechanical breakdown compensates for the lack of heat denaturation.

I've been consuming four raw eggs blended into my morning smoothie for five to six years. No digestive issues, no illness, no problems of any kind. Several of my clients do the same with identical results.

The practical reality: if you're using fresh, refrigerated eggs from a quality source and consuming the smoothie immediately, the risk is negligible and the convenience benefit is real. If you have a compromised immune system or are pregnant, cooked eggs are the safer choice.

For healthy adults who want a fast, complete protein source with zero cooking time - raw eggs in a blended drink have worked consistently for me and the people I work with.