Inside the Arnold Classic Expo 2026

What is going on, YouTube? Day 1 in Birmingham with GOAT Lifestyle. We're here for the Arnold Classic Expo. My first time being here in 2 years. I'm excited. Everyone just landed. GOAT crew are over there taking selfies, making content, just getting into things. We got off the plane about an hour ago, checked into our hotel, and it was only like 4 PM, and I was like, let's just all go get a lift in. And here we are. So the plan for today is we're in this gym called Foundry Gym in Chelmsley. Chelmsley Wood. I think I'm saying that wrong, but it is absolutely sick. It's a proper bodybuilding gym, and one thing about Birmingham, it has the most old-school gyms. Very like Dorian Yates style gyms. I was feeling a bit tired, but then I was like, you know what, I'm gonna feel better after a session. So day 1 of the Arnold Classic. Today is Thursday, it all kicks off tomorrow, and it goes Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Speaking on stage on Saturday, it's gonna be a good time. So let's get into it. All right, okay, let's Let me see. Let's do the 30s Lou Hi-Rez. Oh God, they're feeling extra heavy today. What is going on there? Okay, okay. I'm overstimulated. All the lighting here is fake. Come on, we got it, we're alive!

2 more.

Alright, we are doing the Mike Thurston special. That is a tricep kickback, a pushdown with 2 cables on either side of you. I'm whipping off the top. I'm feeling shreddy. The lighting is good. Let's get it. So, left to right. Feel best when you, instead of pushing it right down, kind of out like that. You took your head off. Easy with these. Easy, the gym is a dangerous place. Workout done, very quick workout. Just kind of get out of the hotel, get moving a little bit. 5 exercises, flat pressing movement, shoulder pressing movement, dip movement, and then finish with some arms. That's all we're doing today. And now it is essential when we're in the UK to get a little chicky, little chicky Nando's. So that is what everyone is craving now, and that is one thing Birmingham has lots of. All right, so that workout, that was, that was ticking the boxes. I'm not gonna lie, I'm gonna be honest with you, my main motivation to go do that workout was so I could earn the Nando's afterwards. Eat to train or train to eat, sometimes I don't know. So I see it coming, we see Five Guys, Dave's Hot Chicken. Is that a, is that a Birmingham, UK thing? I've never heard Dave's Hot Chicken in my entire life. But either way, Nando's is here now and you all know it's going to be a lot of butterfly chickens. Sometimes wonder how much chickens I have sacrificed for my mediocre look at her physique. We have a wild Glenn Gillam. I saw you like 2 weeks ago. How are the boys doing, bro? You are looking tanned and shredded. This man's on every peptide under the sun. Me too. Nice little crew here this weekend. I think it's like 3 times as many people this weekend compared to last time. Good buzz. So we are finishing off the day in Nando's, finally. Highlight of my day. Now today was just, it was a soft landing. The big day is tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday. So today we're just easing into things, meeting the team. Got a fellow Nori here actually. Hiya! There we go, unreal. I feel more at home now. So a little team dinner now, we're having a— yeah, neighbors, exactly. You know, we'll quash the beef right now. No animosity here. No, definitely not. All family. All family. So we're having a little dinner now. I'll see you guys in the morning, expo day. Let's kill it. Ah, I love the smell of Birmingham in the morning. That fresh industrial air. Good morning everyone, just woke up, got fresh, got shaved. Now the team is meeting down in the lobby in about 15 minutes. We're all gonna walk over, see the booth for the first time. The expo's not open, I'm actually not on till 12, it's like 8 AM now. But we're just gonna go have a little team bonding, little team meeting, crack open an energy drink. Then some people are on, some aren't, so anyways, let's go down. It's a classic Birmingham day, like it's pretty much the same as Ireland. But look, we're back to Marbella on a Sunday. Happy days. Let's go back inside. Let's go back in. Fit of the day, same thing I've been wearing the last few weeks. Alphalete hoodie and joggers and Ghost tee. All I wear anyways. So we are getting a little sneak preview of the expo. Look at that, there's the stage. And then we are literally as close as can possibly be be. Look at this! Oh my God, this is HQ for the weekend. So this is where I'm gonna be. Oh my God, right across from Panada as well if we need to get a little workout. We got a blood clinic right near the entrance. Oh man, I'm back. 2016 Rob is back in the game. Let's go, baby! First bit of caffeine today needed. So Expo's just about to kick off now. I'm actually not on for like 3, 4 hours. So I'm gonna try and like figure out my day. I might just hang around now anyways because we're here. The expo is well underway, and I'm not just saying this, the Ghost booth is literally the busiest booth. I'm gonna go have a little look around now, but it is absolutely packed. The queue, look at this, like it just, it just keeps going. So that's good to see. We still still got it. A lot of people coming up saying hello, saying they love the channel. But one thing I'm getting is that I need to upload more. That's what everyone says to me. And I get in my own head, I'm like, every day I like, you know, do the same thing, or I'm just with the baby and going to the gym. But people, they just want consistency, you know. Guys like Sam Sulek is the best example of— he does the same thing every day, but he shows up, and it shows consistency and accountability. So I think I need to go back to my old ways of just bashing up content, even if repetitive, to do my best to make it different. What do you guys think? Is this year to bring back regular vlogs? Do you want more sporadic challenges? Let me know what you guys want. But people in person are saying they want just regular vlogs in Dublin, Marbella, wherever it is. Expo day 1 complete. So that is a wrap. Such a good day. Haven't done a good expo in so long, and thank you so much to everyone who came up and said hello, had a chat today, and restoring my confidence, restoring my faith in the fitness industry. I'm on the right path. Really good day. Uh, Ghost had the longest queue out of all the booths. Super busy, and Friday is always the quietest day by far as people have work. Saturday's the busiest day, Sunday and second. Arnold came over to the booth at the end, and there are like very few celebrities that I would actually care about seeing, but Arnold is one of them. Like, he is an old school A-list celebrity who lifts. Like, he appeals to me. And so he came over to the booth, stood right next to me, we all got a big snap. Epic day. So just got freshened up there. I am about to get dolled up, and we're all meeting downstairs in the lobby, and we're just going for food in the hotel tonight. Tomorrow night is the big dressy-up night, uh, so I'm dying for steak. I've had so little calories, and I've been on my feet all day. This is my first, like, proper sit-down meal, so I'm pumped. But just gonna put on something kind of casual now and then head down, meet the team. But feel good. No lift today though, no lift today. We will survive. This is what we are going for today. Needs a bit of an iron. Down to reception now, meet the team, steak in mouth, evening sorted. Oh, all right, end of the day now. Finishing off with a steak. Exactly what I'm craving, as promised. Eat this now. Kieran, just take a little chips. My God, thank you a couple of times. I'm trying to get me to shred up. I'm gonna have like 3 chips. Eating this now. Team dinner here. We got Dan up there as well. He just showed up from America. Chill night tonight, big day tomorrow. Holy shit, it is actually a beautiful day in Birmingham. And we had our little steak dinner last night and we took it easy. There was a few lads that wanted to go full send. Dan Dan particularly wanted to go to casino. We resisted as today's the busiest day of the expo. I'm feeling good. I'm not on till 12, so I'm gonna go down, get like a nice big breakfast because I didn't eat till like dinner yesterday. Probably maybe do a hotel gym session if I have time, and then hit the expo and give it our all. Last full day, back to Marbella tomorrow. I, I do miss Marbella. Like, I've been gone like 10 days now in total between Dublin. Happy to get back and kind camp out for the summer. That is a work of art right now. Look at that. That will have you fueled for the day. Not macro-friendly, but absolutely delicious. Let's dig in. Okay, this is probably a bit unnecessary, but we got waffle, maple syrup, Greek yogurt, and some berries. I don't know if I should be proud for having two breakfasts, but it's just how it is. Banana as well. Eating lots of it. So this This is the type of conversations that we have at breakfast here. We are comparing blood tests. We're talking all things peptides. This is the conversations that men crave. A little bit of looksmaxing in there as well. We're all having a great time. So we're finished breakfast now. Considering a hotel workout. Not too sure if we'll make it. We gotta be at the booth at 12. But either way, savage breakfast. First time having a full Irish, not a full English, reinvented it. First time having a full Irish in a long time. It was delicious. Also out of crack. How long ago? Ready for the day. Day 2 off the Arnold Classic. Today we're wearing black tees, which I like. Heading over to the expo now. Beautiful day, workout in, full Irish breakfast consumed. That is the actual real biohacker's routine. Let's run over now. I'm late. Let's give good enthusiasm to everyone, as that is what I'm all about. What's going on, guys? It is Saturday at the Arnold Expo. Saturday is the big day. The place is buzzing. I think I can confidently say that this is the busiest booth in the whole entire expo. Ghost leveling up always. We got a bigger booth from last year as well, bigger team. The vibes are immaculate. Let's smash an energy drink and go make some friends. Oh, Marty, so good to meet you. So guys, this is Mark, and Mark is a part of both my programs, the Digital Game Plan, which is my business coaching program for personal trainers, people who want to get in the fitness industry, and also the Actual Game Plan, a fitness program as well. So if you want to say how you found each program, I would love that. Can't say enough and they've been absolutely amazing. Join the Digital Game Plan as the one-to-one PT, now expanded onto online. Working with Rob, especially on his one-to-one calls, has been absolutely amazing. Yeah, leveled up completely, and it's an honor to meet him today. It's been great. Awesome, man. And the fitness, what's your recent progress? Uh, currently 8K down in just over a month and a half. That's insane. Uh, muscle mass gone up, body fat gone down, so it's all going the right way. There we go. Unbelievable. Lovely to see you, Rob. All right, so I'm gonna try to show you how how many people are here. Like I said, busiest booth. So it starts over there. Let's try, let's try go around. This is insane. All the way around here, it keeps going all the way down here, all the way down here, loops around there, and then comes back here. It is absolutely packed today. Irish head on you. I'm in my dad era now. It's so your audience like grow with you. Like it started out with like Joey D, I Beat the Vlogs, and now we're on the Baby Vlogs. Legend, mate. You can have a lot of longevity in the industry if you genuinely love what you're doing. You know, this is the only thing I love— fitness, I love social media, I love content creation. I'm going to be doing this for another 10 years. Hey, I've been following you for years, man. Years, years. You're one of my favorite influencers.

Oh my God, thank you.

Now look, now you're bigger than me. My advice worked too well. Worked too well. You passed me out. Thank you so much. Actually, my friend and I, we watch your videos together, like my first gym buddy ever. He's like, oh, I want to be like Rob when I grow up. Now he's grown up. Yeah. You guys are mates? No, we haven't. Oh no, you like the smell of tonight? Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. Check the date on that as well. May 2018. I was doing talks at the Ghost dinner when I wasn't even signed with Ghost. Now here we are. It was always—

you started a tradition of like going strong for 8 years now.

Yeah. Of the free dinner.

Rob Lipsett speech.

Yeah, how did it— it's happening tonight. We're gonna get the best editing today. Bye, bro. We like it, bro. We like it. It's good to see you. And then a quick little story on how I got with Ghost. It actually started in Birmingham, so it was at BodyPower. So it would have been maybe 2016, and I was actually with another brand at the time, and we Ended up going on a night out, and me, Dan, and Ryan, we— I can't remember too much of the night, to be honest, but we got along so well, and we literally, we became, you know, best pals since that. And I pretty much woke up with a ghost contract in my pocket after the night out. When I started out on social media, I was a fan of bodybuilding and the fitness industry myself. Like, I used to go to, you know, BodyPower when it would not be in a sponsored athlete, and I would go to queue grew up to meet guys that I looked up to, and I would always just value the ones that were more truthful and open and honest. I show my bad days when I'm eating terrible on YouTube, 20,000 calorie challenge, done that a couple of times. When I'm going to Ibiza, being a bit of a degenerate, I'm always real. I say keep it real at the end of every single YouTube video. So, you know, be the change that you want to see, and I think that the whole industry actually reflects that now. I actually think the fitness industry is in the best place that it's been in in a long time. And I think that's more educational and beneficial for everyone, uh, just to be— have more integrity. So yeah, be the change you want to see. It's easy to get views on a 10-second video. If you want to build a diehard community— got my boy over here following me for 8 years— if you want to build longevity in the fitness industry— I've been in the fitness industry for over 12 years— and that— my answer to that is get on YouTube, because if you can get a number of people to watch you for 15, 20 minutes, you know, you've really built a connection with that person and you've built that trust and you've built that authority as well. So when you actually look at the amount of fitness YouTubers in Ireland or the UK, you know, in Ireland I'm the biggest fitness YouTuber because no one else showed up to the race. I win by default. And in the UK there's really not that many. You know, you've got Ryan Terry, Matt Does Fitness, Mike Thurston, a handful more, you know, there's a small amount. So my answer to you would be get on YouTube and speedrun, get to 100 videos as quick as you can. Don't worry about quality, just quantity. Get the reps in. Once you've gotten to 100 videos, go into your analytics, look at your top 10 performing videos and do those 10 again. So that's your niche and that is— that shows you what works. That's what your audience likes to see and in that process You're gonna become an amazing content creator. You're gonna get better at editing. You're gonna learn how to work cameras. You're gonna learn how to hooks. You're gonna do hooks. You're gonna learn how to sell. You're gonna learn how to pace videos. And you'll actually be a better person in real life. It'll make you better at speaking and communicating. YouTube is the biggest self-help, self-development project I've ever done. Brands absolutely love it. The audience loves it. It is— and it gives you longevity in the fitness industry. And it is completely untapped. It's completely unsaturated. Just look at the amount of fitness YouTubers Ireland and the UK. So that's my advice: YouTube, 100 videos, look at your top 10. I want to build some YouTubers here that I can collaborate with. I want some competition in these neck of the woods. There we go. Unreal, man. There we go. Don't wash it. Why would you wash a crock? Hey, what's going on? How are things? On the Don't Be Sour podcast. Oh yeah, it was, it was so much fun. I, I watch it every week. And so he actually like called me on a night out. Yeah, we were all in the Alfie team dinner. He's like, hey, do you want to still bid on the podcast tomorrow? And I was like, put some down tequila, and I was like, I'll be there. She put you on every— yeah, the comments are really nice. I was like reading all the comments, I was like, they like me. I could see them holding back on some stuff you were saying. They were like, yeah, yeah, the Americans laugh. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but it was funny, like, you know, me and Max are like best mates at this stage. Like, I've known Max like as long as I've been doing YouTube, and that's a cool thing that YouTube, like, you actually, you'll make best friends. Like, Christian's at my wedding, you know. So it's a really, really cool kind of way to meet like kind of people. Massive fan of your work. Ah, dude, and said, obviously this feels surreal. Oh man, put it in here, put it in here. You inspired me in ways that you wouldn't even know. Man, thank you so much. I saw your reel the other day, right? You know, they document everything. Yes. And it gave me chills. Downloaded like my first ever videos and I was like, whoa, this is— I'm going to just get into editing mode here. And I post that and the feedback's amazing. That's awesome. Congratulations on the kid, by the way. Life is flying. They were giving me a lot of doom and gloom beforehand saying your life's going to change, it's the hardest thing in the world. And I'm like, it's so worth it that I can't even call it hard. I couldn't call it hard. It's a blessing, you know. So it's just been fantastic. I've genuinely loved every moment. So Dan, CEO of Ghost, if you were to give yourself, when you just started at Ghost, one piece of advice, what would it be?

Ooh, it's a good one though. Uh, look, I, I think we did a good job at this, but it's really to enjoy every single chapter because the only sure thing is like there's another chapter coming. And we talked about this a little bit too, but there's a A lot of— so much to look back on where it's like June 1st, 2016, press go on the website, it crashes, right? We get our first office, a tiny little glass box at WeWork, and it's like me sitting in this sweat box with Ryan, CJ, and Ricky, and like nothing to lose, back against the wall, like, hey boys, gonna try to teach you everything I know because we may not be able to spend this much time together. And then we get our first office, and then second office in Vegas, and energy, all these things happen. Like every chapter, there's something awesome about it, and there's some things that— some challenges and things that sucked about it. Things I miss a lot about some of those chapters. Talking about the big, the big pool parties.

We've all grown up a little bit. Yeah, we're tired though.

But you know, you just have to really enjoy it. But I think the most important thing though, like as far as like now, the one thing I would say is I wouldn't change a fucking thing, like about any of it. So the whole ride, very humble, appreciative of it, but I wouldn't change it.

It's awesome.

That.

Yeah, 10 more. Okay, that's not bad. 160 milligrams. That's my third one of the day. You can squeeze in 4. That's not— yeah, we could. You could squeeze them. Yeah, we can get in 4. Gotta push it to the limit. So things are winding down here. Happy mood. A savage day. We ended up doing a Q&A on stage with, uh, Dan and Sean, and the questions were actually really good, and I got really into it, taking lots of photos with everyone afterwards. And today is definitely my favorite day so far, meeting clients and everything. Hey, let's do it. Absolutely. Done real, guys. Appreciate it. Thank you so much for come to talk as well. Yeah, we're actually going to start a, like, a fitness channel ourselves. Yeah, it's part of the trend. We're going to be called Creative Bros. Oh, nice, the naughty trend. Good on you. But do it, you know, get those reps, guys. Another little tip as well, I've like a, a business program where I like cover how to go from like consumer to creator. There's a module in it, okay? And it's called, it's gonna be cringe. So you're gonna watch your first video, you're gonna hate yourself. You're gonna say, I said my voice, it sounds terrible. I say, eh, and, um, there's dead silence, there's awkward pauses. Bear with it. Look at it. Don't take it to heart and get to editing it. Chop out all the dead silence, chop out all the eh's decent homes. Yeah, put a little back, very slight background music to it, you'll be like, oh, it's not bad. Okay, so your, your first impression will be like, oh, you'll cringe at yourself, be like, this is terrible. And then you edit it through, dial it up a little bit, put a nice bit of contrast, bit of saturation, and then you'll be like, oh, I'm actually not too bad. Yeah, yeah, it's a program in terms of digital game plan. Unreal. Thank you, guys. Enjoy. And, uh, it'll be the thing. It'll be the best thing you ever do, starting. Like, it'll make— like I said on stage, it'll make you a better person in real life. So I wish I started sooner. I started at 22. What age you guys? Get on it, man. Get on it. And it's like less brain rot, like TikTok. Do you ever watch like a half hour on TikTok and you're like, oh, I feel like an idiot? Then you like, you watch like a 2-hour podcast on YouTube and you're like, oh wow, I really learned something there. So I would say go heavy in on YouTube, not only watching it but creating waiting on it too. Yeah, guys, smash it down here. Send me your channel link for your channel and I'll be your first subscriber. Yeah, do it, guys. Unreal. That's amazing. Doing lots of high fives. That is a wrap on Saturday. Of course, we're finishing with the rig out. Day 2, busiest day complete. Okay, final night. Look at this, literally wearing a Ghost shirt. That's a good athlete right there. All black as always. Jeez, my voice is nearly gone. We're heading to a place called Tattu, which is one of the nicer spots in Birmingham. They've even got one in Dubai, so you know you're doing well if you can expand like that. So really fancy spot. We went to it last time we were here. It's like Asian food. I can't wait. I haven't ate like much since that breakfast. That was quite a big breakfast though, but all right, I gotta run down event. The party bus is here. Let's go! Arnold UK 2026. Oh, that is a wrap. Had an amazing night last night. Went to Tattoo, went to a place called Albert Schloss in Birmingham, went to the casino, won a few quid with the whole team, and not feeling too bad today. Got a little buffet breakfast, went hard, now I'm feeling good again. Arnold Classic 2026, that is a wrap. Met so many people this year, like people who have been watching me for 10 years. It's so crazy. Right now I'm like loving this phase that I'm in. I'm like, I'm officially reached OG status and I'm still going, I'm still here, and I've built just the most amazing community, the most amazing audience that I'm so grateful for. Here's to another 10 years.