My 10 Year Natural Physique Transformation | Rob Lipsett

The first time I picked up a weight was a moment I will never forget. Like most lads starting out, I just wanted to get bigger biceps, look cool, and impress girls. I didn't know it would end up defining what I do for a living and lead me on what I can only describe as an epic adventure. I've done a lot of different stuff over the years, but starting to go to the gym was probably the best decision I ever made in my entire life. But before we go over my 10-year progression as a lifter, I need to provide some background, a prologue if you will. Part 1, 2005-2011, Genesis. I posted the picture you just saw on my Instagram of me when I was 18 beside me currently, which is the 10-year timeline that we will be covering in this video. There's a clear difference in my physique, muscle gained and fat lost. But I got quite a few comments about how when I first joined the gym, I did have a decent frame on me, which I decided to add in a bit of background beginning before the initial picture on the left. Phones were shit back then and I had no reason to be taking videos of myself, so this will be photo footage up until about 2014, which is when I started YouTube. You will probably learn a few things about me in this video from my life before YouTube too, so I hope you find it interesting. From 13 years old, I played rugby. The school I went to is a school in Ireland that takes it very seriously. It was also a boarding school, so there wasn't much else to do. I wasn't one of the best in the year by any means, but I was always on the squad or the panel and had some good days. The position I played was flanker, if it's of any interest. Like I said, I was not the best on the field at all. I was a dumb fuck in school, and I guess that had some carryover onto the field as I could never remember the moves and the drills. But what I was good at was fitness, the conditioning work, and the strength training. If you told me to run in a straight line as fast as I can from point A to point B, I could do that and I could do it well. So when it came to the fitness tests, I was one of the best. In hindsight, that's probably all I had going for me. Here's a look at the first gym I ever lifted in. Our access to the school's weights room was limited to certain times, so I didn't get to go as much as I'd like to. I would just go in and mess around a little bit. Didn't really know what I was doing or why, but this was my first taste of lifting regardless. Along with this, we did do tons of fitness work out on the pitches, and along with playing the actual sport of rugby, this was the first proper training I ever did in my life and provided me with a base of athleticism, I guess you could say. I also bulked nonstop during this whole time. I ate so much, as at the time the trend wasn't to be shredded at all. It was to be big and stocky like a rugby player. It was almost kind of a competition to see who could put on the most weight. Our coaches would weigh us every week or every month, so it actually literally was like a competition to see who could gain the most weight. I would take mass gainers and always go for a second serving at meal times in the school cafeteria, and I'd literally just eat whatever I could. Like, here's a picture of me putting bacon, banana, and peanut butter, making it into a sandwich, and eating it. When I wasn't in school, I worked in a shop called Spar making sandwiches, so on my lunch I could grab something from the deli and I'd make myself two massive rolls and eat that. I see all these kids now under the age of 18 and they all look at Instagram and want to be shredded too soon without gaining any muscle or a base first. We literally didn't have Instagram back then, we didn't have smartphones, which is actually mad to think back on, and I'm glad I grew up in a time where phones and social media weren't a thing. Cutting from a young age, unless you're overweight or obese, is not healthy and can mess up your actual growth and your hormones. So yeah, I just ate loads, played loads of sports, did loads of conditioning work, and lifted the odd weight here and there, and went on a permanent bulk. That was from 2005 to 2011, with only getting access to the gym in 2010 onwards. So that tees up the decade nicely. But that is where my interest in fitness began, in school, and it came from playing rugby and wanting to get big to impress my friends, impress girls, and get better at sports. So I left school with an ambition. Not an ambition to further my studies and improve myself academically, but rather to get more gains. 2011 to 2012, college years. And no, I wasn't so good at college that I graduated in 2 years. Quite the opposite, really. So now we had some freedom. Keep in mind, I was in a boarding school, an all-boys boarding school. When we left, we were around 18, had access to alcohol and free time after being locked up for 6 years. This was a recipe for disaster. I started going out and drinking roughly 3 times per week, but I did still join a gym, of course, Raw Gym, which you all know very well. The college I went to was near town in Dublin on Angel Street, and and Raw Gym at the time was in Portobello, so they were near each other, and I would often just go to the gym, lift, and hang around there instead of going to lectures. Priorities. This was the first year I ever joined a gym and could actually go whenever I wanted to, so technically my transformation starts here. With that said, I had no idea about programming or training for hypertrophy. I would just copy Jay Cutler's routine or whatever massive bodybuilder I would come across, And I shit you not, I had a day for every single body part. Bicep day, tricep day, chest day, quad day, calf day. If I trained a body part, it would be about 7 to 9 days until I hit it again. Regardless, I still made gains, seeing as when you're just beginning, anything will work. It's like going from not lifting to lifting. You'll still get results even if your routine is terrible because you're going from nothing to something. You're still increasing the stimulus. My nutrition was very bro. I hadn't yet discovered MyFitnessPal or If It Fits Your Macros at this stage. I would try calculate my macros from reading an article from Simply Shredded or Cut and Jacked and then do the maths on a notepad. As you can imagine, I spent most of 2011 and 2012 drinking alcohol and figuring out how to get more gains, which resulted in me failing first year of college, repeating it, and failing again, and ultimately dropping out in the end before I ended up like Billy Madison. I was coming up to 20 at this stage and had no idea where I was going to go in life. I was led to believe college was the be-all end-all, but I always wanted to do something that involved fitness. Part 3: 2012 to 2013. My first time getting shredded but didn't know how. Also discovered Z's. Strange title, but let's get into it. With college slowly on the way out and my interest in the gym growing larger, I decided to kick the drink for a while and go on my first ever cut. Remember earlier Earlier I said how the goal was always to just get big and look swole and stocky. Well, around this time, social media was starting to kick off and people would start Facebook pages documenting their aesthetic journey. A lot of them seemed to be from Australia, the main character being Zeez. Seeing his and his friends' physiques was one of the first inspirations for me to go on a cut. Funnily enough, me and a few of my friends got into this whole scene and also started following the Del Bros. So I was a fan of Joey Dee before we became mates and started traveling around the world together, which is actually crazy to think back on and also hilarious. So my goal to cut down for it was summer 2012 in general, and also a trip to Ayia Napa. I didn't know much at all about nutrition or training and still remember I just cut out carbs to get lean. Like, that was my diet approach. Just get rid of carbs. I didn't yet know that calories was the main thing and you can essentially eat whatever you want as long as you hit your calories and macros. But of course the diet worked anyways, as cutting out carbs put me in a deficit, and I was eating a load of protein. I remember I would just make stir-fries with chicken and veggies and put hot sauce on them. I also took ridiculous amounts of supplements. I would go into the supplement store and the guy behind the counter could have sold me anything. Safe to say, most of them did absolutely nothing. If I was to go back in time and give myself some advice, I'd say to take all the money I spent on supplements and spend it on groceries and also learn about tracking your macros and calories. Buy an ebook or a book from someone legit and learn about progressive overload and calorie deficits. That would have sped up my progress a lot faster. Here is the end result of my cut. Picture was taken in Ayia Napa on a night out on the strip. Yes, I have my top off, please give me a break. This is my first time really getting fully visible abs, and I have to say I was delighted with myself. I saw this photo and was like, "Whoa, I've did it." I didn't know the method into how I got into shape, but I did it anyways. This was the first ever photo I looked at and was like, "I'm sick." My gains deteriorated slowly over that summer. I also went on a trip to Ios Island in Greece, which is a great place, I'd recommend it. Had a great time, but sure enough, this caused more progress to be lost. I remember at the time looking back on the Ian Appa picture from the end of my cut and being pissed off for letting myself get out of shape and losing my beloved abs. So after that summer, I reeled it in a bit, got back into the gym, and then did a leanish bulk during the winter for a few months to gain back some of the muscle I lost, and then cut down for summer again. I was slowly getting more educated on training. I still followed a bro split, but it was an improvement on the year before. There still wasn't as much information available as there is now, so count your blessings. I was still just estimating what I was eating, cutting out carbs unnecessarily, and hoping for the best. This time for summer 2013, I got even leaner than last year and I went to Marbella, where the plan was to get involved in the nightlife industry and start working for a nightclub. So by this stage, it was around my third year of training and I had made most of my newbie gains. Like, if I was to see myself at the beach, I'd say, "That guy definitely lifts and watches what he eats." The first few years will be when you make the most substantial progress. I'll put some information on the screen about what progress you can expect as a natural lifter. So as you can see, after around the third or fourth year, progress becomes extremely slow. Here, Lyle McDonald describes monthly gains as irrelevant. That's how slow they are. But as you'll see in the rest of the video, I didn't let that discourage me and I pushed on, probably because I wasn't even aware of this information back then, and I'm glad I wasn't. As they say, ignorance is bliss. Summer 2013, Marbella, Thailand, slash gains reset. Here's me thinking I had it all figured out. I had the shreds, I was in the sun, I had a bottle of expensive champagne that I found half empty on the ground and held it firmly in my hand all day to look the part even though I couldn't afford one. In my head, this was peak Made It vibes. I went over there with no job lined up and just sorted one when I was there from going out and meeting other workers. My hours ended up being 9 PM until 3 AM, then I would either go out after that or go home. Either way, my routine was all over the place. I hardly went to the gym as I was just sleeping all day or hungover. And my body clock was a mess too. This is the beginning of what my good friend Joey D calls in his transformation video a "gains suicide." In this video, let's call it a gains reset, as I don't want Joe to sue me for copyright. After working in Marbella, I ended up saving some money and straight after flew to Thailand with some mates from school to travel around the islands and also continue the gains reset. A friend of mine actually took a GoPro with him and made a video of the whole trip. So I'm going to overlay that during this part of the story. So it was another amazing trip that I'll never forget, and one where I prioritized drinking and having a good time over training and nutrition. I've been to Thailand in recent years with Joe, actually, and noticed how since then fitness in Thailand has just blown up, and it's now one of the best places you can go to for a healthy lifestyle, with loads of gyms and high protein menus everywhere. But at the time when I went in 2013, Fitness wasn't as mainstream, and I'm pretty sure protein bars hardly even existed the way they do now. Either way, I went to Thailand for about 4 to 5 weeks. We landed in Bangkok and stayed on the Khao San Road, then went on to Koh Phi Phi, or Koh Phi Phi, I don't know how you pronounce it, where you can see me getting the kickboxing ring here after a few too many, and my friend knocks me the fuck out. Then we went on to Koh Tao where we got our scuba diving licenses. I think that's my favorite island when I think about it. And after that, we went to Koh Phangan for the full moon party where I actually nearly died, but in a fun way. So that's a story for another day. So after a wild few weeks, we flew back to Bangkok for a few days before going home. And I say I couldn't find a gym or a place to eat well, but to be honest, that's probably bullshit. I probably was just too busy having a good time. Add all that with the prior months of working in Marbella in the nightlife scene, and it was a summer of regression in terms of physique. I have the mass of the Thai lad filling up my moped with petrol here. But regardless, I wouldn't change a thing, and I'll always remember that summer. It was my first actual traveling experience. We were young, stupid, thought we were cool, and I thought we were grown up. And it's just funny to look back on and laugh at myself and how little I knew about the world at the time. I probably thought I was Leonardo DiCaprio on the beach, but I was more like Alan from The Hangover, really. Part 4: 2014, Regain Some Gains and Then Gains Reset, The Sequel, J1 Visa Edition. As usual, I did the post-summer bulk to gain back all the muscle I left in Thailand. I bulked for around 3 months and then went on a cut for summer 2014. This time the plan was California. I did this really well. I hardly went out and was really just focused on the gym and training 100%. I hardly touched alcohol for at least 6 months here. I'd kind of gotten it all out of my system over the summer. And I made a final stab at college for a while. My attendance was still very low, and deep down I knew I wasn't gonna do this for 3 more years. I was studying business at the time, and as someone who now makes a great living from being self-employed and running my own business ventures, mainly e-commerce, in hindsight, the course taught me absolutely nothing, and I probably would have learned more from watching a few Gary Vee videos for free rather than paying thousands to sit in a lecture hall. I also could have put those thousands I paid towards college fees to actually starting my website and building my personal brand, but we live and we learn. Obviously, I'm aware college can be amazing, just for me personally, it was a waste of time. And if you were to ask me, have I any regrets over these 10 years, I would have to be fully honest and say it was spending 2 years of trying to pass a course I didn't care about. If you're entering college and want some advice from me, it would be to do something that you are truly passionate about and that gets you excited, and that you say, "Yeah, that's what I wanna work as when I'm older." So before officially leaving college, I managed to secure a J-1 visa. This is basically a student visa that allows us Irish to work in America for a few months. You have to be enrolled in college to get your form stamped by the head of the college, so I just about got this sorted before dropping out. Me and some friends decided we would move to Isla Vista in Santa Barbara for the summer and work there. So much like the lead-up from Marbella the year before, I said, I'm gonna get in the best shape possible for my summer in California. I end up getting really lean, and at this stage I'd also become qualified as a personal trainer and educated myself on how to diet and train properly. So I knew about tracking food, if it fits your macros, creating a deficit with the foods you enjoy, training with a goal in mind and for progressive overload. 2014 was the year I began to look like I was properly into the gym and would get comments about it. I'd also started a Facebook page, Rob Lipsett Fitness, where I would share advice and document my progress. The page never went over 30,000 likes, but this was the first platform I put myself out there on. I'll link it in the bio if you wanna go check it out and maybe drop it a like. I definitely saw some substantial progress during this period and was really happy with my progress going over to America. I'm not sure if you are aware what Isla Vista is, but it's basically like American Pie in real life, and I felt like I was stiffer. There was frat parties every night. We would go on road trips to Huntington Beach for the US Surf Open. Went to festivals, and just had a sick time. So I was living basically on campus in UCSB, and I was able to join the college gym, which was actually a very good gym. So I didn't lose much progress and do a gains reset until the very end of the summer when I quit my job over there and started traveling around the West Coast and getting out of routine. Again, I was aware that I was sacrificing some progress to have fun like a normal person, but it was another amazing summer in the books, and my final year ever of doing a gains reset. But it was time to go back to Ireland, grow up a bit, and get serious about things, and stop resetting my gains. 2014, September 1st, start of YouTube. After summer, I started to put more effort into my Facebook page, which actually had some good traction at the time. And at this stage, I was obsessed with the fitness scene and everything surrounding it. I would watch so many American fitness YouTubers, and I said, well, no one in Ireland is doing this, so I might as well give it a go. Put my own twist on things, and that was the beginning of YouTube. What's going on everyone? Morning. Gonna take you through my day today. Full day of eating, bit of lifting in there as well, and so on, so forth. Let's get it going. My first year on YouTube was great. I remember when I hit 1,000 subscribers, I just couldn't believe it. I felt like, this is it, I'm part of the gang, I'm doing it. My videos are so low quality, filmed with an iPhone 5, sellotaped to the wall, but I was doing it. I was making progress and documenting it. And from here onwards, there were no more gains resets, no extended time off training, and I learned when you half-ass things and give 50%, you get 50% back. When you give 70%, you get that back. So if you want 100% of the results, you put in that effort and you'll get it back. You can't cheat this or take shortcuts. The gym doesn't care if you're not in the mood. Your diet isn't going to just sort itself out. You get out what you put in. I hope this video gave you a better idea of what I'm like as a person, because I get some great inboxes on the page. Some of you leave really funny comments, and I just want to say thank you as well for being so supportive of everything. So you guys are great, and I hope you liked the video, and maybe in the future, if you want, I can do more videos. So, um, Let me know anyways, and until next time, keep it real. At this stage, alongside YouTube, I was working full-time in an office job. My hours were 9 AM to 6 PM, and I was sat at a desk. My day looked something like this: work 9 to 6, pack up, then sit in traffic and get home around 7 PM, get ready for the gym and have trained and be home by 9 PM, eat dinner at 9 PM and chat to my family. 9:30 PM to 2 AM, I would work on my side hustle, which was fitness. So it would be writing ebooks and guides, editing videos, responding to online clients, manage my Facebook and YouTube channel, which even though They were small, took a lot of time. Plan videos, package up orders for the merchandise I was selling so I could go to post office at lunchtime the following day and send them off. I had very little sleep, training wasn't ideal, and physique progress was slow due to the above, but it just had to be done. Keep in mind, all up to this point I was just living paycheck to paycheck and I had no money saved up, so I couldn't just quit my job. The goal was to make more from fitness than my office job per month so it would be safe to quit my office job. I managed to do that within about 6 months. So I went and quit my job and focused on putting 100% into making a living from fitness. 2015, first time competing and breaking into the fitness industry. So now that I had more time to train and make content, I progressed a lot this year in terms of the fitness industry and my physique. This was the first year I started going to expos frequently, doing photo shoots and collabs. And I ended up doing the usual bulk and cut cycle and decided to prep for a show, which is documented on my channel. This was my first time competing and I had no idea what I was doing. I hadn't been training consistently long enough. I had no idea how to do a peak week. I didn't diet hard enough at that. My physique just wasn't good enough. Simple as. I ended up getting pretty lean and looked alright for a lad in the gym. I wasn't a beginner or a newbie anymore, But as you probably know, that doesn't really cut it in competitions. I ended up not even placing at that show. And I didn't think I'd give a shite, but I've always been a competitive person, and I was actually gutted afterwards, and basically drove home crying, which is fucking hilarious to picture. Me covered in fake tan, wearing a pair of board shorts, driving home in my car that would cut out every half hour. On top of that, this was my first time experiencing a full rebound after a show. It was basically like I was under a spell. I just couldn't control my eating for over 4 or 5 weeks after the show, and it was just crazy. I gained so much fat and kind of just got everything out of my system. And I've done a full video on this, but I cannot stress the importance of being mindful of your relationship with food. After I got my body fat back down to normal ranges, I went on a cut in a more flexible way and actually never had a bad rebound again after that. So I learned from my mistakes, went back to the drawing board, and and decided I would do the exact same show the following year. Part 5: 2016-2017. Hard work pays off. So this was a huge time for me. After putting out fitness content consistently for over 3 years, I really started to finally see a return on things. My physique progression was also out of the intermediate phase too. I ended up bringing home a first place trophy from the same comp that I didn't place in the year before. I just took things so much more seriously from the get-go, and I didn't have a stupid peak week where I tried to manipulate all these things that don't even do anything. I ended up being the leanest I've ever been in my life. I still don't think I've gotten as lean since then. Before all the shows were canceled this year, I was planning on getting even leaner, but we'll just have to wait. Besides for my physique goals, my life was moving rapidly at this stage. I signed with Alpha Elite and Myprotein. So I started flying around the world with them to different expos and events. I was getting featured in newspapers. Me and Christian won awards at BodyPower that year. I started doing way more public speaking and actually getting paid well to do it. I had made a series of ebooks and guides that were also selling really well. I started to travel a bit more, and I felt like all the years prior were finally paying off. And with my physique, because I had put in the years, I could relax for a bit and enjoy life, and I wouldn't feel like I was going to lose all my progress. At this stage, I also started furthering my knowledge into not just learning about fat loss and muscle gain, but into how to make this into a lifestyle and how to be consistent. I started working on my mindset a lot, and you may think getting and keeping a good physique is just about diet and training, but you could argue mindset is the most important part. That's what gets the diet and training done. For 2014 to mid-2017, honestly, I rarely went out and hardly ever drank alcohol as I was just trying to save money the whole time and build the foundation of my channel. These were essential years for me, and I think everyone has to have a stage in their life where they put the head down and do the work, whether it's now or later. So in 2017, I started to go out again a little bit more and have more of a social life, but I still prioritized the gym, kept alcohol to every second week for the most part, and stayed in shape. So for the rest of 2017, I continued to travel all over the world, make content online, I had some TV appearances too, which helped me break into more mainstream market, and that's always been a dream of mine to make evidence-based fitness more mainstream. So that was a good feeling. This set me up nicely for the coming years that we're going to get into now. 2018 to 2020, minor improvements here and there, but life gains. Now, as I said earlier, all my newbie gains were gone at this stage. I stayed lean for most of 2018, then decided on one last bulk near the end of the year from September to the start of 2019, where I gained a good 15 pounds. Obviously this was not pure muscle. Maybe even none of it was muscle. I gained some decent strength, got some epic eating done, and also gave myself a mental break on dieting and staying lean. Even though it is what I like to do, it's nice to give it a rest for a while. After this book, one thing I found was that fat was quite hard to lose after it. I found it was much easier to get lean and maintain that rather than consciously gain weight and then lose it afterwards. I imagine this is just largely down to habit. If you ever read the book The Power of Habit, there's a lot in it that can actually be applied to diet and training. Anyways, I spent a good few months in 2019 cutting back down very slowly to retain as much muscle as possible and also maintaining for a few months here and there. I continued to develop myself further in other aspects of life, and of course kept traveling and building connections. When I finally got down to a level of lean similar to what I had in 2017, I'm weighing on average about 3 to 5 pounds more, which falls in line with the chart from Lyle McDonald that I linked earlier. In the end, I'm left with a physique that I'm happy with and know how to maintain. My markers of health are all on point, and I also started getting my blood bloods done regularly, as yes, this is a physique video, but feeling good and being healthy is a huge factor. And at this stage of my life, it is probably the main reason I work out. I've came to terms I'm not going to gain 20 more pounds of lean muscle. It's also very important to note at this stage I've also developed a good relationship with food, especially when you compare it to, say, 2015. Cutting was a lot easier for me to do now, and I think a lot of that really just comes with age, experience, and maturity too. Now this is up for debate, but the more advanced you get, the more pointless heavy bulking gets in my opinion. You can't just force-feed growth. You can't just bulk harder and become Ronnie Coleman. So like I said, my focus is more so on staying lean and feeling good. Could I gain more muscle if I commit to a long-term bulk? Yes, for sure, but it's just not what I want to do. I choose to stay lean as, like a lot of people, I just prefer how it feels. Now that I was happy with where I was at in terms of physique, I could put my focus into other areas of life. I'm not going to go into detail on where I went and what I did in 2019, as that's all online already, and this isn't a travel video, it's a video talking about my progress as a lifter. But I'd finally built my ideal physique and lifestyle. Now here's the key point: I could probably progress more, but I would have to sacrifice more lifestyle to do so. Which I'm not willing to do. Maintaining my physique while traveling the world, just being happy and fulfilled, is a dream come true. I realize progress isn't always just how much fat you lose or muscle you gain, it's how your whole life improves. What's the point in training an unnecessary amount and tracking every single gram of food you eat if you've no life outside of that? It's pointless for the most part, not something I'd recommend. Fitness should improve your life, not take away from it. 2020, where are we currently at? Now, as you've seen, from 2017 to 2020, I've just made minor improvements here and there. I'm not going to keep on gaining muscle like I did the first few years until I'm the size of Ronnie Coleman and winning Mr. Olympia back to back. I can't just keep on benching until I can casually bench press the weight of a car. There has to be a point where progress slows down or ends. We all have a genetic limit where Which brings me on to my next point. When I got to my physique in 2017, if you were to tell me I could maintain this physique while experiencing life to the fullest, being social, going out and having a good time with my friends, family, and other half, I'd say sign me up. And some of you might be wondering, why not get on PEDs and take it to the next level? And as I've said in previous videos, I'm not against that at all. Who knows, maybe in the future I will. I have no problem with people who are enhanced. More power to them. I just don't see the point for me. I don't think I'll be happier, more fulfilled, or more enlightened with a few extra inches on my delts. To do well in this industry, sure, having a good physique helps, but you don't have to be juiced to the gills. What you do have to do is genuinely care about improving other people's lives and making a positive impact. That's what it's about, and I think everyone will agree on that. At this stage, going to the gym is just like brushing my teeth. It's simply a part of my life I couldn't do without, and it may be tough to keep on improving my physique at this age, but I know I'm going to try as this is what I love to do. If you told me if I was to go to the gym and train hard for another year and only put on a pound of muscle, I'd still do it. So bring it on, I guess. More to come in all aspects of life, and until then, thanks so much for watching. Hope you enjoyed the video, got something from it. Keep it real, I'm outta here. Peace.