Asked before, answered straight.

4 training sessions a week, 60–75 minutes each, plus a weekly call (capped at 45 minutes and usually shorter) and a 20-minute Sunday check-in. Call it 5–7 hours a week, most of it scheduled around your week. If you can't find that, neither of us should pretend this is going to work.

No — and this is not a polite marketing no. The plan is built on normal food, ordering rules for any restaurant or drive-thru in America, and weekly math that absorbs a birthday dinner or a 10 p.m. drive-thru run without derailing. The extreme version wouldn’t survive 26 weeks of a real life, and 26 weeks is the whole point.

You should — and this isn’t about discipline; you’ve got more than most. But the week is engineered against you: the hours, the sleep debt, the seat, the food you eat when you can. That’s not a willpower problem, it’s a systems problem — and a system built around the week you actually have is what fixes it. This isn’t a crutch; it’s you upgrading your own system. The entire program graduates you into running yourself, and there’s a live test to prove it happened.

You’ve probably already tried — that’s usually why people end up here. An app or a cheap online coach sells you access; nobody’s accountable for your outcome, which is why it bills you forever and is built for you to stay. This is a 26-week transformation program, not a subscription: a scan-verified result, a guarantee behind it, and a graduation date on the calendar. Price it against the thing it buys back: the energy to actually be there for your family at the end of the day, and the shape to be the example your kids copy. Not a monthly app. One of those bills forever. This one ends: with the body, and the skill to keep it for the rest of your life.

Make every scheduled coaching call (at the cadence set for your phase; rescheduling with reasonable notice counts), hold at least 80% workout compliance in the coaching app, and submit your weekly check-in — including the Sunday photo or digital-edition screenshot of your Operator’s Log entry — missing no more than two across the program. Do that, and if after 26 weeks you haven’t gained 10 lbs of muscle and lost 10 lbs of fat (scan-verified), or you don’t pass the self-coaching test, I coach you free, week-for-week, until you do. Plain-language summary; your signed Monarch agreement governs.

Fully remote, anywhere in the U.S. You need gym access (commercial, garage, or well-equipped home), a smartphone for the coaching app, and a scale. Everything else — programming, check-ins, form review, calls — runs through the app and a weekly video call.

The first five clients. They pay full price — the price never moves — and receive founding value that expires when the five seats fill: Monarch Maintenance included — the $97/mo fee waived — and a founding rate locked at today’s prices on anything Monarch ever offers. After the five, clients buy the standard offer. The roster itself is capped at 6 active clients — one coach, deliberately. Full terms on the Strategy Session.

Two different things. You get real exit windows — a cooling-off period after signing, then an agreement-specific 45- or 30-day window where you can walk away owing only for the days you used. What I don't do is a money-back guarantee on results, because refunds train people to bail when it gets hard; instead the guarantee keeps me working free until the result lands. Full detail: Cancellation & Refunds.

No. The supplement plan is five evidence-supported basics (creatine, whey, D3, fish oil, magnesium) and you can buy them anywhere. Disclosure, up front: I'm an affiliate for Prestige Labs and ICON Meals. For Prestige, my links apply Monarch pricing automatically at checkout; for ICON Meals, the code SEANCONNICK takes 10% off. The recommendations don't change either way — the links and the code just make them cheaper.

For a returning lifter — yes, and it’s the entire reason this program only takes people who’ve trained before. Muscle memory is real physiology: rebuilding tissue you’ve built before is dramatically faster than building it new. A true beginner can’t; someone who trained seriously once and has since let it slide can. The guarantee floor is scan-verified for exactly that reason — the number has to survive a DEXA, not a mirror.

Beginners who’ve never trained. Anyone under 30 or over 45 (the programming assumptions genuinely differ). "I need to lose 80 lbs" cases — you deserve a program built for that, and this isn’t it. And price-shoppers: if the decision comes down to price, we’d both be settling — this is priced like the transformation it is, not a monthly app.

You graduate with your own maintenance playbook, a hardcover log of 26 weeks of your own coaching decisions, and a passed competency test — the skill to run yourself for the rest of your life. No forced subscription. An optional light-touch maintenance tier exists if you want a safety net later — but the stated goal is that you don’t need one.