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how are we everybody we're all good awesome thank you so much for coming i
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really do mean me and ryan really do appreciate our fans and uh people like yourselves
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paying good money and taking time out your day to come and see us as a very humbling privilege yeah definitely um so
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i guess today we're here to sort of dive into ryan's life a little bit and
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uh see what it's like prepping for mr olympia to what you've got coming up in in how many weeks how
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many months so not that i'm counting 26 weeks in one day
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so 26 weeks on one day to the to the dot tell us your accolades so far
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so like okay so i've been in the industry now
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i've been competing for over 12 years or 13 years and i've won mr great britain
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uk nationals british finals i've won the arnold classic arnold schwarzenegger his show
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three times in europe um britain and in america
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i've won the asia grand prix four times i've won the ifbb pro league shows
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over 20 shows um and i play second in the mr olympia
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which is the biggest show in the world so yeah i've still got that number one spot yet but that's kind of the goal now
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so mr olympia is your number one goal in your career was that the top thing to do
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yeah so basically when i started my career all i ever wanted to do was start at the bottom and then every show
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i ever did was to it was a better tier so to speak to keep rising through the ranks so every time a
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show came up what was more prestigious or better than the one that had competed in i wanted to win that title be the
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first guy to win it and set legacies shall we say and then i've achieved everything i wanted to achieve i won everything i
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wanted to there's only one show left which is the olympian fortunate unfortunately i've i've qualified six
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times and i've placed sixth fifth fourth third and second so
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i [Music] and then i need bow out gracefully so it's like so it's a once-a-year show once a year show and
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it's it's basically the best of the best in the world so so for the last six years yeah five
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years you've done six fit four per second
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talk us through like what kind of prep goes into mr olympia obviously it's like an all
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year round thing you don't just train for you know it's not like some sports where you could just pick up for 12 weeks
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you've got to do like you know a fixed amount of weeks of full knx amount which put in talk is through your bulking
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phase your cutting phase how many weeks out are you doing those sort of things yes so i've trained now as a bodybuilder
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so to speak for over 20 years i started when i was 14 i'm 33 now and
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um yeah i've lived the life 365 days of each year you can see i'm not meant to
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be a big guy genetically i'm not that like yourself i never will be but
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i eat six to seven solid meals a day all high carb meals so
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for instance my daily like nutritional value will be oats in the morning 120 grams with
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blueberries bananas and 50 grams of peanut butter two scoops of whey protein and then
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every two hours i'll have in a day i have two phillips steaks two salmon fillets three chicken breasts
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four eggs all with rice white potato sweetener and this has been like this for 20 years i've been like
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this for 20 years so it's very it's quite monotonous it's very similar every day but
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you have to live and breathe bodybuilding that's kind of what i've done so when you start prayer i'm
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technically in prep all year because you like to say you have an off season where you can relax on your diet a
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little bit but it's all about getting that mass amount of calories in and really trying to push the weight up so
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you're in a more anabolic state and then obviously when you start dieting i normally start out in around 16 weeks
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and that's where you count every calorie that goes in and you every expenditure as well so all to your cardio and your
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weight training so you bulk all year i mean obviously the olympia's only one show yeah so how
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many shows you do in a year so in my early career when i was trying to build my name up and win these titles to to
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get myself a good um like credit for the olympia i was i was competing all year i was completely
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the arnold's in march and june july i'd be in asia doing asia grand prix and then i'd be in america in september
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but as the divisions evolved they're getting bigger and bigger these guys are monsters now they're in the
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early 20s so for me to to stand next to those guys i have to
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have off seasons i have to knock off because when you're competing when you're in a deficit constantly no matter
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how good you are you'll always eat into muscle tissue when you're down to those like last percentages of fat because
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your body needs fat to survive it doesn't need muscle to survive so when you're in those last last parts of
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prayer it's so hard to keep that muscle because it just turns it turns to muscle for energy so it'll
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start burning that so um i've found out the last two years i've had to have
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longer breaks off to hold size hold more size but i've had six weeks off training
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at the minute i'm not we just briefly spoke about it but i've had a little bit of an injury and i've had to have six weeks off and i've dropped 15 pounds in
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weight like that just from coming off my diet having three or four meals and
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going on holiday with a family so it is very regimented and you have to be all here yeah
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i mean that sounds pretty tough prepping said to say you've got competition in march yeah some in the summer yeah at
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the end of the year so doing that bulking and cutting phase is pretty tough you're doing little like three or four
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weeks of volume and then a short 16 week cut yeah and it's not healthy for you as well because when you're yo-yo in weight
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it's just not it's not good for the metabolism it's not good for anybody so i mean i say the latter part of my career with
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competing and the only title i really really want to get is that olympia title so i want to give every shot i can and
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that is giving my body a rest give my metabolism arrested and going again
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you just talked through your diet that you pretty much do 365 days a year
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yeah when you're bulking i mean when i'm bulking yeah we're talking cheesecakes we're talking
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20-inch pizzas what sort of things do you eat when you're bulking because just eat healthy or do you put salt
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yeah so it's my general senses or the way i look at it i still eat my clean meals so i sell out my six meals but
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obviously i don't want to be counting calories all year round and i don't want to be
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eating that cleaner you're not enjoying your food having a social life and stuff so on the off season
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i'll incorporate all my meals so i love steak instead i love ribeye steak and stuff like that but then i'll add sauces
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all extra calories cheese that kind of stuff whatever i want to do to be able to switch off and not feel like i'm on
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prep so i'm still getting my calorific like yeah help from food yeah my macros
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but at the same time i'm switching i've got a young family now as well so i don't want to be that guy who's like in
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a restaurant with his tupperware and weighing his food out as i've got further on into my career i
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know you don't have to do that at all so yeah i've just been away for two weeks and stuff and on a holiday all-inclusive
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i was making sure i still got my meals in but i was in turkey so i was having a lot of uh
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[Music] just the one for now but yeah i'd like some more in the future nice and i've
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found doing all this business and being a dad as well
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overnight it changes everything doesn't it and they became they become the sole purpose of what you're there
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for to decide for them and as a bodybuilder it's the most selfish sport on this planet even if
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you don't want it to be you've got to think about your meals they come first you rest your sleep they come second
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your training comes through whereas when you have this little boy who's dependent on you everything he comes first so i
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remember i was doing my last olympia and he was 12 weeks old and it was horrendous i was getting like
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a couple of night a couple of hours sleep i was missing all my meals and then at like 10 o'clock at night i was
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trying to do my cardio get three meals in and my weight training it just yeah
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it was difficult but now he's a little bit older we're going to a routine he um
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he works on my side of the minute touchwood and i'm managing to cope quite well now really well and he gives you another
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purpose as well like before it was all about i won't say glory hunting but i just wanted to be the best the wife the
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best in my field whereas now it's about providing for him giving him a good life
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i didn't have a bad life grow at all i never got to find the things that i'd love to be able to
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to give them to him and also for him to say his dad was mr olympia
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one day like that for me yeah it might not mean anything to him but to me happens a lot
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so mr olympia is the dream yeah i suppose the ultimate goal was to learn people
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how many like when do you when did you draw the line because i i drew a line in my career you know what
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strongest man but where do you draw the line is there a target is like x amount of olympia titles or just the one you
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know everyone's got a goal and you want to achieve something you know the target and then sort of step back and enjoy themselves because
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i know more than anybody that you know the 365 days a year the diet the training the sacrifice of family time
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definitely it definitely takes a toll on you mentally more so than physically so what's the
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target for you yeah i think for me i would be happy with what you did you always said you wanted to be the world's
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strongest man and then you'll bow out gracefully and you've achieved what you want to achieve i feel like that would be the same for me um
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it's hard because i love competing it's not something like i want to win it once and walk away like because it's been my
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life for 20 years as it has been it must be hard and this is my last view actually it must be hard to walk away
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because that's something i'm a bit fearful of because i don't it's the unknown i don't know when i
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step back where i'll have a purpose because i've always been regimented in my food
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it's never been an obsession it's just it's always what i've known i've always had a good social life i've always done
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everything i wanted to do but bodybuilding has always been at the forefront of it so to step back from
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that competitive side that's what i'm a bit scared of to be honest but yeah i'd love to just win the olympian and we'll
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see but i'm 33 now and obviously in bodybuilding it's not a lot it's not it's not old jay cutler won it
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when he was 33 his first olympia i'm realistic i'm looking around at some of these guys here in their early 20s
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still in the teens they feel like thousands so i'm
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not like okay so yeah i'm really so i don't want to
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hang on and hang on and i want to get in do the job and get out
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fair enough the human body peaks usually in size and strength yeah they're about 30 years of age
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that's so true because i know my two thirty i've had every injury under the sun
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until thirty i felt like invincible that's it i turned thirty i've had everything but what about yourself that
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is a question i'm gonna fight back at you then when you won obviously the strongest man how hard was it
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to walk away to say i'm done because that has been your life for 10 15 20 years to
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then say i'm done i mean it was tough yeah i'm completely honest it was tough i mean you also
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dedicate your whole life to one one soul being target yeah achieve the dream so to say and i i made
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the promise to myself and then promised him to my wife with kids really that i was going to win it once and walk away from
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them because it is so you know it drains you mentally and physically it takes you have to sacrifice
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not only you know all the eating and whatever abuse you're doing to your body it's sacrificing family time and that's
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the hardest thing to take is you know oh you're out for a meal tonight i can't
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go you know i've got to get the prepping or i'm going to go training yeah you know even christmas you know you can ruin christmas because you've got to get
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your training on that day you know yeah good days off so i think you know having that target of a win it wants to walk away from them
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was a very big thing yeah the actual process of it
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excuse me that's the process of it of winning the title and retiring was very hard yeah it's been well documented that
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you know olympic champions world champions reach the pinnacle you know achieve the dream
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and then excuse the language but the next day you've got to go home and sit down and take a like everybody else
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and it's a harsh reality yeah it's you know you know better than everybody else and as soon as you spent all this spent all these years
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you spent 20 years chasing this dream you achieve it you get this huge euphoria
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you think you're on top of the world you know everything's going to be amazing now and then the next day boom but you
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know you're back at home doing the dishes and taking your kids to school back to reality and nothing's really changed you know but i think with you
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though you you transition quite well because obviously with your youtube and with you commentating will strongest man
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you've kept yourself very busy so was that like a ploy is that was that the intention was
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just the plan was the plan was there's no there's no actual money in strongman
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you know to win the world's strongest man you're talking i think i think they've upped it a little bit now i think you're talking
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probably about 45 maybe 50 thousand dollars from first place and if you think about
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it you know people train all year for that one competition and yes it's it's a good wager when you put it in
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that way you don't win every year exactly you know if you come second you're talking
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less than half of that yeah where's your other income come from it's a tough sport i was working full time up until
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two years before when i managed to get a few sponsors yeah the plan was always was
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to win the world's strongest man and capitalize you know use that title to do have youtuber endorsements the
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appearances like you know somebody with both sides
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[Music] but i admire how you've done it because i'll be honest like
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for me with that like a bodybuilding mindset like i i've never really thought about social media influencing like the
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youtube game and obviously this crept up so quick and it's like a huge thing now whereas in my head i think i'm still
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stuck in i've got a training drink twice a day i compete for a living i'm a bodybuilder
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in my head so i'm trying to do that transition now and it's when you start looking at algorithms and start looking
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chasing numbers and because i think because of code is what i've gone off traffic over here but because of the
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pandemic i was always someone who built my career off meeting people face to face and exposing all over the world and
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that's i loved that part of it being personal with somebody but with social media doesn't you don't get that
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intimacy you just kind of like you're posting something they're just numbered like figures and stuff so i've really
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struggled to get ahold of the new world like the influencing world i i've got a good presence and i've got a great following
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but i just um yeah for me i need to try my game on that i think so
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five years ago like in school when i was struggling i wasn't even on instagram yeah so you know
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i was just catching up with it it's all kicked off at once youtube and everything yeah um i just want to move
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on to i suppose what these guys want to hear about injuries and
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failure yes because you know like i said earlier you don't win everything in life you go to these
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competitions and become or fifth and i can imagine you're a bit like me
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in it unless you're winning it you've lost it yeah second place is the first loser exactly you know um so how
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would you deal with coming second third fourth or not making the finals and how did you deal with
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injuries how do you deal with the setbacks because they are the toughest things in life yeah you know i would say that losses
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make the wins but how do you deal with it i think it's important to have a strong network
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like obviously your wife's been very supportive of you over the years and stuff and so high i've had a great team
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around me and who can pick the positives out of any negative and like my wife has was phenomenal in a
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lot of that so i in 2017 was my lowest part of my careers i was second in the
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world i was the honorable classic champion they pulled me up to win the olympia it was a massive heart about it
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but basically i was told i had to move to america so i upheld my life i saw my house sold everything i owned i took um
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my girlfriend and my wife now over and we started a fresh 12 weeks out from the olympia bit naive living in
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america i spent an absolute fortune trying to know get a house get a car just didn't have that support network
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around other than my wife which i put a lot of stress onto it and um yeah i came sixth i dropped to sick one
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of my worst places and i went into the deepest hole i must admit it was it was really difficult three months couldn't
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drink just couldn't get that motivation back i thought career's over all done and it was just um it was it was when
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the face of my wife just be a big slap bass and said you need to sort it out and
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do what you love do it for you not for everybody else and all this kind of stuff and yeah that's how i've kind of pulled myself back out of it but
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injuries are a big thing like i've been riddled with my career
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but i just because uh it's just about training smarter it's about not letting it get to your head um
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i remember dexter jackson i don't know if anyone knows dexter jackson was an open-class bodybuilder and then he said to me about
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you don't have to put mass weight on for your opposite
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but for us it's just getting that mind to muscle connection again that pump and that breaking the muscle fiber now so he
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said he could do a workout with two kg dumbbells and then for me i was like right i'm making excuses if i want it
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bad enough i'll do it and that's exactly what i'm doing now i tore my lat six weeks ago and it was yeah quite a
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bad injury but i had the month off and now i put everything in place so i've got the best
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team around me i'm in the gym of the minute doing anything i can any movement i can just to work around it because in
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26 weeks time my son is going to be in the front row of the olympia in las vegas and i need to make him proud and
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that's i guess is actually said because that's what motivates me now that's really nice to hear that yeah
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that support system's super important people people always forget the
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stuff happens behind the scenes the wives the girlfriends without them supporting and looking
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after the house the kids washing your clothes prepping your food yeah you're nothing exactly you are nothing right i
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don't know if jay cutler said that jay cutler four times mr olympia he actually said i said why did you quit so early
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like he had so much more in here and he said because i lost my winning formula which was his wife uh his wife did
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everything for me he said i didn't have that winning formula anymore and i was like that's just right left him yeah
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yeah right and then he couldn't he just
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exactly yeah i think we'll take a few questions from
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yeah on the crowd if that's okay yes sir so basically you're just asking
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about nick walker who's an open class bodybuilder he's very young and he's an absolute monster muted mass monster and
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he's huge and people are pipping him to be like the next mr olympian he's going to take
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over the sport and stuff but to me nick is a great guy i love his work and i love his confidence he's very
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very confident himself and i've always admired that because i've never had that side of my game i wish i was a bit more
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i would say cocky but more confident like i wish i could hold my own a bit more with whereas yeah nick's got that
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but personally i'm not a massive fan anymore where where it's going with the look of the
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open class i think classic physique is where it should be so you look into the 70s the 80s like
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beautiful physiques it was bodybuilders in ours when you used to look at them you thought wow absolute phenomenal
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physique and i just feel like they kind of lost that a bit and gone for that mutual ass and i think dorian yates was
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the guy who kind of changed that he wanted if he went to the big big guys i respect it i just i really hope and
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obviously we've had quite a lot of bad rap at the minute as well with people that dying basically so i think i feel
21:38
like it's getting too far uh dangerous now and i think the likes of chris bumstead um
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brian ainsley these physiques are just stunning and you can aspire to look like them and i think that's where we should
21:50
really cap it if i'm honest yeah but like i said i still i'm inspired by
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the bodybuilders i love their work ethic their mindsets and stuff i trained with dave tits and motivated to mister you
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yes i do yeah four times mr universe he was a super heavyweight he was six foot two still i could bring out
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so inspiring to train with but at the same time i never wanted to to look like that so yeah it was um
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yeah that's where i'm at how much water you take a day how much
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water do we do to both of us yeah okay um
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i mean at the minute you know if i'm training on a training day you're probably talking about 10 liters
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of water a day they're about here but i mean that's a two liter job i'll get through five of them quite
22:38
easily but it's just you'll be amazed you know you don't you don't piss 10 liters out you just
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just perspire it you'll be amazed how much how much you lose through sweat
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you can't see us sweating now but we'll be losing a lot of fluids just just through sweat really um
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flying as well if i do a flight probably you can get upwards of like 15 16 liters on that on the over travel
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because flights are very dry on the other planes and it draws the moisture out of you so like
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flights really do pull up pull the water out of you you have to drink more so that's why when you're on a flight you should really guzzle the water back so
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yeah about 10 liters a day and 16 litres a day if you're traveling so i'm not as extreme as that i'm five
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to six liters a day and i consume a lot around my training though so i trade to
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at least two two liters whilst i'm training so just to keep it hydrated by electrolyzing that into my drinks as
23:36
well um but yeah i've done 10 liters once and
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i literally just the time i come out the toilet i was back in so i was literally back and forth and i actually started to
23:47
get a bit dizzy or something we found
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yeah the more i dropped the leaner i'd get which yeah it was stupid but yeah so five to six
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liters on average yeah what should supplements do so what sort of supplements do you take
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i mean for me personally like strongman is
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all about the the protein and the fats and the cardio it's it's calories basically so
24:28
you try and orientate it around that so if you like the mass gainers strength
24:34
can be based a lot around creatine as well so creatine is great for strength but also say be
24:41
wary of creatine as well because it leaves you susceptible to injuries
24:46
so even though it's a really great product it's something that can i find from experience that you can
24:52
overdo creatine it can actually dry the muscle out so you've got to be careful of how much creatine you take i've seen
24:57
people like keeping creating into the shakers and i'm like oh like you've got to be very sensible on what you take
25:04
obviously amino acids you know they have glutamines glycosenes all those you know it's going
25:10
to be sensible with it really but i think i think a good balance of pretty
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much a little bit of everything about the l taurines and all that just get a little bit of everything multivitamins
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you know there's a bit of skepticism on multibits but you know i'll take one a day just just to get it in there she's
25:27
got a little bit of everything and that's how it works really you know massive calories and i just throw a little bit of every every single
25:34
supplement so that'll work put it all together it'll work about yourself your main ones yeah so for me i
25:41
again i take supplements in the absorption rate so all my supplements always are based around my training
25:48
so i usually uh oh i used to i take eas pre and intra
25:54
i'll take a good fast acting car so either cyclic dextrin waxy bay star
26:01
car 10 vitago or multi-dextrin multi-detection is a cheap car
26:06
tastes good mix as well spot on because i'm quite lean i have to try and get the
26:12
calories in however i can liquid form is perfect for me so i take like 75 grams
26:19
of carbs in my my pre 75 during and 100 after so i'm getting
26:26
yeah quite a lot like 250 of carbs around trading so
26:31
i'll have two scoops of weight so a good weight protein whey isolate whey protein and a multi-bit i've always taken my
26:37
multiverse just to get everything in um obviously if you're fortunate you're sponsored or if you if you're quite like
26:44
say get everything and try it all but they they're the fundamentals for me and it's always been around my training
26:51
so how's the how's the lap going you do yours yeah how's the bicep
26:56
and am i going out to colorado so um yeah if anyone's in the know i
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tore my bicep off the bone back in i'm gonna say pretty much coming up to
27:07
about a year ago so like the end of july i think the start of august top of my head um and yeah it was a very very tough
27:15
recovery it's it's not just like you get a little tear in the muscle you can just let it be i had to go and get surgery i
27:21
had to go get the tendon i tend and rolled up my arm so it was up here i had to get my an incision there on my
27:28
forearm surgeon put his finger up pulled the tendon down it's all on youtube
27:38
so he puts his finger up he pulls the tendon down he then drills a hole in the bone pulls
27:43
it through staples it on the other side and then it bonds to the bone that was hell on earth you know it
27:49
really was um the surgeon said i recommend you don't do any any impact
27:55
with the bicep room for a year um so you know you could do little little movements and you can start doing
28:01
bits of weights but you can't jolt it and of course with boxing that's what boxing is it's jolting the muscles so
28:08
obviously i had to fight forward one arm which is unfortunate but that's just the way that's the way that
28:14
things happen sometimes um and if we're just getting up to about i mean what about 10 months on and we
28:20
get to the point where it's feeling good you know it's just about usable again so it's been a long process but
28:27
you've got to go through these things and i like the good old saying tough times don't last tough people do yeah i think
28:33
i'm a tough guy you know i can push through everything i've got a lot of feelings in my life a lot of losses a lot of injuries and it's how you pick
28:40
yourself off again after and keep moving forward um will i be in colorado i don't know yet
28:47
i don't know yet okay i have to go i hope to go it's i'm gonna
28:52
have a reason to go there you know what i mean it's like they're doing great or vip or something so i probably will be
28:58
there as of yet now and then on to your laptop in my lap
29:03
yeah so that was a strange one like how how you turn your lats i don't
29:08
know what it was is i got um last year my feedback was
29:13
everything they wanted even changed my posing changed everything on stage and the head judge steve weinberg said that
29:20
everything's where we needed to be now you just need to bring your back up because i'm going against these guys
29:25
who've got these huge turtle backs and i've never been that guy so right
29:30
so i went i flew over to america went to boston and i was training with some of them i was i stupidly let them get in my
29:37
head and i was thinking about how do you do what do you do to it and they were basically i don't know if
29:43
this was a lie because they're my competition but they were saying they're doing 100 pull-ups every day between the training
29:50
so whatever they were doing they were doing 10 sets of 10 so like if you i thought i'm going to try this and see if
29:56
it works see if it brings my back up so i was already training back twice a week so i was doing a width
30:02
a width session and a thickness session so i was thinking between on chest just doing ten
30:09
ten minute pull-ups and just doing ten times or five times whatever and i could feel myself getting weaker
30:15
and weaker as the weeks were getting on with my pull-ups i was thinking i should be getting better it's really getting
30:20
worse doing and then yeah stupidly i did a hanging leg raise and
30:25
i've done them for the last 20 years twice three times a week and then i just relaxed it got lazy and it just i hated
30:33
it tear which wasn't the best feeling um but torch ward i'm trying to stay in
30:39
this positive mindset i've had a good rest and again we was in the gym yesterday the first time back in the gym
30:45
and i can actually funnily enough i can do everything pressing um anything on the chest arms over the
30:51
back i still can't retract the back yeah i can do everything else so that's not going to stop me so that
30:57
no matter what i'll be ready in 26 weeks it's just might have hitting my back a little bit
31:02
i can do a lot of hybrid extensions so i'm just gonna have to do hyperextensions that's about it so yeah
31:09
we'll be okay brian well thanks for the question and uh right i think that wraps up the session for me ryan so uh thank you guys