I Quit Bodybuilding for 18 Years. Then Stepped on Stage at 40.

I'm going to show you how to have a peak physique even if you have a demanding career, kids, and a time poor. Today I'm going to take you along for a ride as I train and prepare for a fitness comp. What's the twist? I'm 40 years old, single dad of 2 boys, and run a personal training studio with a team of 20. Nutrition is a key component to any health and fitness plan, so let me show you exactly how I do my grocery shopping so you can see what I buy as part of my diet. So we're almost there, almost there, mate. We're in the month of March. If you're doing a comp, nutrition is absolutely paramount. And let me be clear, you can't train for fat loss. There are only 3 adaptations that you get from training, and that is you get to build muscle, you get stronger, and you build cardiovascular endurance. Fat loss is a byproduct. And how do we create that byproduct? We get in a calorie deficit. And doing a comp, you need to be extremely strict with your diet. There is no MasterChef kind of eat whatever I want. The more routine and regimented you are, the more consistent the results are going to be. Sugar jam's the way to go. Let's go sugar jam. I did one organic. So let's do an unbox, so to speak. Rice cakes, new part of the carb up. Potatoes. What foods did I eat and how did I prepare them? So I ate the same foods at the same time every day. The easiest hack I've got for you is just make it regimented. Do the same thing at the same time every day. It's easier. So Let's get into the details. Meal 1, I ate 220 grams of beef mince, 2 slices of gluten-free toast, and 5 to 10 grams of butter. Meal 2 was a protein shake, 150 grams of berries, 20 grams of chocolate, and 1 YoPro yogurt. Meal 3, which is usually post-training, was 220 grams of chicken thigh, 250 grams of green veggies. Meal 4 was 220 grams of chicken thigh and 250 grams of green veggies. And meal 5, which was my dessert, was a protein shake with ice. So you might be wondering why I ate so much chicken thigh and not chicken breast. I honestly just prefer chicken thigh and I love fattier meats, so I picked that over including, say, more carbs. And my total calorie consumption was about 1,600 calories a day compared to my normal, which is usually around 3,500. So what I've got to say is this is not for beginners. I've been doing this for 25 years and I had to go aggressive. I had 10 weeks to get the job done and I was coming to win. Now that I've got my grocery shopping done, the next thing to do is prepare my meals for the week. But before I do, I'm going to fit in some posing practice in preparation for my competition in a few weeks. So I don't love the posing side of things. It's like another thing that I gotta do in my day, which on an already stacked day, you know, pretty busy as it is. I think what I hate about this is, you know, the difference between this and this, and you have so many people's opinions. Oh no, you should Tuck this, and this is— can you lose body fat and build muscle at the same time? For the general gym goer, it really depends on training age, experience, the plan, nutrition, and your current body fat whether you're able to build muscle and burn body fat at the same time. Is it possible? Absolutely. It's recomposition. That's what we do at Enterprise Fitness quite a lot, and usually we're doing with people who have a lower training age, who are carrying a little bit more body fat, and the macronutrients of what they're actually eating is not correct. So to say it's not possible, I think it's incorrect at the this point. And there is literature now that points out that you can do it with certain specific population and demographic. So it's not either or, but it is context dependent upon where you start your journey. All righty, meal prep time. This is a vital part of transforming your physique, so take note. During the prep, I have been having a little bit of decaf. Caffeine is a drug you want to respect because it can affect sleep. So welcome to my kitchen. I'm not a cook. I am the anti-cook. I will make simple meals. And every guy who wants to get shredded, I don't care whether you know how to cook or don't know how to cook, if you want to get shredded, you want to get in shape, you need to have base cooking skills. And that's what I'm going to show you today. So there are 3 main types of carbohydrates that I eat: sweet potato, potato, and rice. So my mentality behind cooking is to keep things as minimal as possible. And the reason why it works is because I can follow it. I want to develop a food routine. And I wanna divide the way I think about food into really simple, easy ways to follow. So I've got my proteins, I've got my carbs, my vegetables, and my fats. And I batch cook these 4 things. So I'll go to my Weber and I'll cook a kilo of chicken thigh, and that will last me about 2 to 3 days. And that's my proteins. I put that in the fridge, then my protein's done. I'll cook a kilo of vegetables and I'll put that in a glass container, put that in my fridge. And then I'm gonna go to my carbs, which is usually either my sweet potato or my rice. Again, I'm cooking about a kilo, putting it in the fridge, And then when I get hungry, I don't fall off the horse. I open up my fridge and like, wow, my food's already made. Here are my carbs, here are my fats, here's my protein, and I'm following my macros. So instead of being so like OCD on following macros, I simply set myself up for success. All this is done in 10 weeks. I started January 6th. We've come a long way in a relatively short time. It's really probably 2, 2 hard weeks of dieting and 1 week of refeeding. Now we prep. So it'll be here before I know it, then I won't compete again for another 10 years, maybe longer, maybe never again. See how this one goes. I'm sorry, bro. I'm not sorry. It's now time for my favorite part of the day, working out. But I must say, this weight cut is definitely taking its toll on me. This, this week has been probably one of my lowest weeks. Um, really felt— I call it the diet depression where it just felt super duper depressed. So it's only been 2 days. I had sweet potato last night, 200 grams of sweet potato, didn't even touch the sides. I'll tell you what, like the diet depression just like lifted immediately. Wow, not everything sucks. I don't suck. I feel like not normal, but I feel better. Look, I think anyone who's watching this and they're on their track and they want to lose weight and change their body, the thing that to remember is that losing weight, building muscle can feel a lot like watching paint dry, is if every day you're expecting something to change, it's probably not going to change all that much. But when you zoom out to 3 months, you can lose 12 kilos in 3 months, maybe more. And even if you lost 6 kilos in 3 months, that's 6 kilos that you've lost. You look back on that 3 months ago, wow, I lost 6 kilos, I'm directionally correct. Don't worry about being perfect, don't worry about the all or none, don't worry about, you know, the all or none mentality suddenly gives you all, usually gives you none. What is far better is being directionally correct. We're 2 weeks, 2 weeks out from today, so the strategy that we're probably going to be employing is I'm going to eat into the show rather than do a super hard carb up. Um, I'm just going to slowly progress. When we say that, but it's always like a moving target. So we're still a little bit more food right now, just a little bit, like basically one meal. Um, I think we need more. To be honest. Tyrone wants to keep, keep it steady. End of the week, um, trained legs yesterday. The goal here is arm day hypertrophy, you know, not really looking at building right now because calories are too low, but maintaining, getting a good pump. But the pump today is, I would say, kind of not great. I mean, I've got a bit of a pump, but we had some carbs the other week. It was a hell of a lot better. I put up a video on socials and I looked significantly better with carbs because you want to be progressing, right? But you also got to accept that some days you're going to look better than others, you know, trusting in the process. So my training during my prep really was fundamental training, or to me what I would call fundamental training, executed really well. Let me cover the first thing, because it's the most common question I get about my training, is that I didn't do any cardio during my prep whatsoever. But the caveat to that is I did commit to 10,000 steps minimum per day. And, you know, being a dad of two kids, sometimes my steps were like 20,000 a day, and that was just me running after the kids and doing what I call life, right? So I did have a step goal, and it was no more than 10,000. But in additional cardio, there was none. Why fat bars? The reason why we do fat bars is you have more of a motor neuron output when using a fat implement, number one. Number two, there's much more carryover. If you get strong on a fat implement, you'll be stronger on skinny implements. Now, talking about my weight training plan, Mondays was chest, back, shoulders. Tuesdays I did legs with a quad focus. Wednesdays I'd go for like an extra walk, sometimes I wouldn't. Thursdays I would do again another upper body workout, so chest, back, shoulders. Fridays was a leg day with a posterior focus, hamstrings and glutes. And then Saturday was a cheeky arm day. Love a cheeky pump on a Saturday. My bicep brachialis, which is this muscle here, the bicep brachialis runs all the way through deep. It is one of the secrets, so to speak, to getting bigger arms, and is for most people very neglected and undertrained. Having a well-developed bicep brachialis is certainly going to give you more of thickness in your arm, uh, and you're going to kill two birds with one stone. Why not have impressive forearms? That was kind of the split. In terms of the rep schemes, rep scheme really altered anywhere from 6 to 12 reps. Yes, there were some supersets, there was some drop sets, but mainly a lot of straight sets actually, and straight sets brought to failure. And I think my training— intense fundamentals done unbelievably well. So I'm training using the same movements and grinding those, those movement patterns really well. So training, very, very simple, but executed fundamentally perfectly to get the result. Workout's done, food time, or shake time I should say. We're 14 days out, and I kind of feel like after 14 days, kind of get my life back, get my brain back, get my body back, get my vitality back. Probably, if I was to put it all in that one word, it's get my vitality back. So how did I handle the pressure of kids, business, and doing this prep? Well, the thing with life is that people wait. They want a perfect window to do anything, and the truth is there is no perfect window. You need to decide. And decision— the word decision, the etymology of decision comes from to kill off. So you kill off the other options and you commit to one direction that where you want to go. So I think overall time management is a myth. What you do have is focus management, and I think if you can manage your focus that's where you manage your priorities. And if you can manage your priorities, that's how you get things done. Today's Saturday, we have 7 days left. Monday we start eating. I get a steak every night from Monday, which is— I know it's only porterhouse, but it's better than no steak. All right, so I'm going to get my wax done. Uh, we should bring you guys inside, but they've got like their own rules and stuff. So we're waxed now, we're good to go. I need to eat some food and, um, get back to the gym. Now that I'm waxed and ready to go, I need to get in the zone for competition day, which does include a spray tan. I think there's, you know, the balance of order and chaos. The more order in your life, the more you can invite chaos. If you're someone who goes after life and attacks their goals, you need to be ordered, you need to be structured, because you, you're gonna meet with chaos. And if you're not ordered and structured, how are you going to handle that chaos? You're going to become a chaotic person, which it's going to impact your goals, right? It's going to impact your thought process. So my whole thing is that control the controllables. I can control me, I can control my environment, I can't control what happens, you know, that's the truth. But there are things I am in control of, so let's control those things. And then when you're ready, go up to the front to see Tony and Patricia, and you also get a slab of seafood. So headspace with competing— how do you stay in the right headspace? So firstly, I wasn't sure I'd ever compete again, and that's the truth. The last show I did was in 2007, not '17, 2007. It was 18 years ago. So I wasn't actually sure whether I'd actually compete again. I wanted to, but you know, I made every excuse, let's face it, under the sun as to, you know, I own this gym and what if I come last and what if I don't look good and all these kind of things. So I was too busy, I got kids now, whatever. I made all the excuses that most people make. Good luck. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Just doing nasal breathing just to slow down the heart rate and just, uh, your breath controls your heart, controls your mind. So control your breath, you can control state. I just started the process and found out Really wasn't that hard. So a lot of worries, but again, I got a great team here and I started stacking all these things that I wanted to do with it. Like, I want to film it for YouTube, I want to film it for you guys, I want to document the process for our clients and trainers. And one thing that really spoke to me, because I turned 40 before this prep, was I want to do it before I'm 40 to prove to everyone that age is just a number, right? Like, I was absolutely in the best shape I've ever been at 40 competing. I'm speeding up, checking with the breath. I'm speeding up. It's like I need to breathe. So age is just a number, right? So I guess my message is, if, you know, I'm 40 and I'm busy, all these type of things, you know, whatever your goal, you can do it too, right? So as long as you train hard, eat well, supplement smart, age is no excuse. It's a mindset. And if you're consistent, then the world's your oyster. 40+ and 30+. Get ready for number 74, Mark. I'm competing in a total of 6 divisions throughout the day, and although I'm gunning for first place in all of them, of course things don't always turn out the way you hope. In second place, competitor number 74, Mark Wallaha. In second place, competitor number 74, Mark Wallaha. I competed 2004, I came last. Competed 2005, came second twice. Competed 2007, Came second 3 times. Competed in strongman, came second. Competing in strongman again, came second. Having placed second twice now, I'm starting to wonder whether I even have a chance of winning. I'm competing against a fierce lineup of competitors half my age. Even though that first place medal seems just slightly out of reach, I'm going to continue to give it my all. And just as I'm accepting my fate of walking away with only only silver medals, this happens. Yeah! Almost didn't believe it. Like, wow, the monkey's off my back. I finally had won. I remember walking backstage at this one, looking at everyone going, Jesus, there's 4 guys who could win this, and I'd be lucky to place. And then winning this one, I was very happy, very happy winning this one, because the caliber in this lineup I thought was very good. There's probably 4 or 5 guys in this lineup that definitely came to win. Getting the win on this one, very meaningful actually. Floodgates open, and I end up winning the Best Poser Award as well as a 4th medal. I was so happy I won that position too. Like, beating Earl, I mean, he's, he's a veteran, right? He's a pro. So like, it's a big tick, big checkbox. Like, it made the victory worth something, beating competitor and athlete of his standard. I was like, what That's my journey of how I won my first Fitness Con before whilst running a business and taking care of 2 kids. To see how I transformed Jamie's body, click here.