About This Publication

Reference edition · revised August 2026

Hollybank Herbal is an independent reference publication about physical activity: what the public-health guidance really says, how a gym works as a room, what the vocabulary of training means, and how recovery fits around it.

A herbarium is a catalogue: a specimen pressed, labelled and filed so the next person can identify it without guessing. We work the same way on a subject people find intimidating — hollybankherbal.online catalogues the gym floor family by family, so a first visit is a matter of reading labels rather than of nerve. We sell nothing and recommend no product.

What we publish

One long reference article at a time, revised rather than replaced. Our subject is the everyday middle of this field — the guidance an adult can act on without a coach, a laboratory or a subscription. We are not a training-programme site and we do not publish workouts to follow.

Our editorial position

Three commitments shape everything here. We state uncertainty in the body of the text rather than burying it in a footnote. We do not describe a mechanism more precisely than the evidence allows. And we distinguish throughout between what has been measured in populations and what an individual reader can expect, because those are different claims.

What we are not. We are not clinicians, we do not diagnose, and nothing we publish is a treatment plan. Where a question needs a professional — pain, injury, medication, pregnancy, a diagnosed condition — we say so and stop.

Who writes it

Articles are written and maintained by the editorial desk. We do not attach invented credentials to our work: where a claim needs authority, we cite the guidance or the review literature it comes from, so a reader can check the source rather than trust a byline.

Sources we rely on

Published national and international physical-activity guidance, principally the World Health Organization's 2020 guidelines on physical activity and sedentary behaviour.
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses in exercise science, in preference to single trials.
Standard reference works on gym practice and terminology, for the vocabulary sections.

Where reviews disagree, we report the disagreement instead of choosing a side and presenting it as established.

How this site is funded

We sell nothing. There are no products, no memberships, no programmes, no supplements and no affiliate links on this site. We do not accept payment for coverage or for a mention, and no third party has a say in what appears here.

Corrections

We correct errors in place and note the revision date at the top of the page. If you believe something here is wrong, write to us with the detail and we will check it — see the contact page for how corrections are handled.