S2:E17 - Wolf’s Den: Lucky Hatzipantelis

Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information, education, and motivation. My name is Mark Ottobre and welcome to the Wolfskin Den. Today's guest won an overall title at the age of 22 and was seen as the next big thing in bodybuilding, in Australian bodybuilding. He was at, you know, nearing the top, next big thing, and pretty much lost it all to blame, shame, and self-defeat. He has since climbed his way out of that hole to be crowned the current Mr. Victoria. Today's guest is Lucky. How do you say your last name?

It's a long one. It's Hatsipantelis. So not to be confused with Hatsy Pantsless.

Welcome to the show, Lucky. It's an absolute pleasure to have you on. I'm really looking forward to getting to know you.

You know what, Mark, the pleasure is all mine, and thank you for having me on here.

Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir.

This is by far the most professional podcast I've done. It's a professional setup, even with a microphone.

Fantastic. Well, yeah, we don't like to do things in halves. We've got the cameras set up at the studio nice and quiet on a Sunday. So let's get into it. So one of the things I do want to get into today, but before we do, I just kind of want to set the scene. The focus of today, folks, you know, Lucky being the next big thing in Australian bodybuilding, you know, having some troubles for some time and then getting back in, that's quite the journey. It's quite hard to do what you've actually done because there's a lot of things, there's a lot of obstacles in the way. So before we really get into that, can you set the scene of, you know, how was your last comp? What would you— what'd you achieve in the last comp, you know, conditioning-wise, body fat-wise, weight-wise?

This season?

Yeah, this season.

So I did 3 comps this season. The first one was 6th of October, and I weighed in at about— I weighed in under 100, fully clothed. The second show was 2 weeks later, the Nationals. I weighed in a little bit heavier. I actually had to take off my shoes and my jumper to weigh in under 100. And then I did the PCA World Championships and I weighed in well under 100.

So the first show was the Victorians, that's the show that you won? Yeah, so that's the show I won my class and the overall.

That was my goal. So on my whiteboard and in my diaries I had that as my main objective. That was the main goal. Because I didn't, earlier on this year when I committed to my contest prep, that's the only goal I put on my whiteboard. Anything after that, I didn't think I'd be good enough to win the nationals, but I thought I had a chance at winning the overall, the state titles. And I had no idea at that stage earlier this year that I'd even be going overseas. So when I committed to my contest prep earlier on in the year, it was just states and nationals and then once I achieved what I'd done, I got an invitation to go overseas, fully paid for, and I thought, hey, I'm taking this.

And you came 4th, that was at the PCA.

Yeah, I was hoping not to come last. And it's funny, when I got backstage at the Worlds, I thought I was gonna come last. And my goal was just, I'd love to come home with a trophy. And I knew that if I got like 5th, I'd get a trophy, 'cause the top 5 got a trophy. But then I found out the top 6 get a trophy. And when the— with the Worlds, when we did the presentation, two of the guys that were competing earlier on in the day weren't there. So there's only 6 guys, 6 of us left on stage. So I knew, hey, I'm getting a trophy regardless. This is pretty cool. And I ended up getting 4th, so I was wrapped. So when they called someone else for 6th, I'm like, that's really cool, I've got 5th. I just naturally assumed that. And then when they called someone else for 5th, I'm like, whoa, that's really cool, I got 4th. So I was wrapped with that.

And so you won the Vicks, you came 2nd at Nationals?

I got 2nd to Justin Wessels. Like, no one was coming 1st in that lineup. As soon as Justin Wessels had announced that he's doing the show, naturally I knew that this guy's gonna win the comp. Justin has been undefeated in Australia for about 2 and a half decades.

So, I've got to ask you on that. Yes, sir. So, like, some people would say, why compete if you know you're not gonna win? You know, Justin's gonna win.

Yeah.

Why do the hard yards, get up on stage, you know, diet, do the cardio to know that you're gonna come second?

Oh, for me, second place was a win. That's the way I was rationalizing it because I knew that I couldn't win. And that was good enough. And because I hadn't competed in so long and I hadn't done— I'd never done a national title with IFBB. That's the elite. I wanted to see first year back, where do I stand with the top guys? Because I'm all about, like, I was back. By that stage, I knew, like, I'm really happy with the direction things are going. This is the first year I've been training. I've only been training for 10 months by this stage. And I thought, I've done really well already. And there's no pressure, there's no expectation. So I could do the Nationals. Just quickly, let me go back 2 weeks. For the Vics, By that stage, like, from probably about a couple months before the Vicks, my body developed to a point where everyone that was seeing me was like, dude, you are gonna win this. And I couldn't see that. There were moments when I could get a good pump and I could kind of see, or if my adversaries were posting their photos, which a lot of them were doing on a weekly basis, I would take my progress pics but not post them, but I'd compare them. And it got to a point leading up to the comp where my progress pics were getting better and my body was developing. You know, it's funny with— everyone knows about muscle memory, but when it's you and you've got insecurities, it's hard to— it's— I kind of felt like, is the muscle going to come back and how quickly is it going to come back? Surprisingly, it came back really quickly.

So I needed to ask you on that as well, because one of the things you've said in previous podcasts is, you know, you trained for 10 months for this. And you won. How did you make up that gap? 'Cause you did have some guys who obviously they hadn't fallen off the bandwagon, they were consistent. So, I mean, Lucky version—

2.0, yeah.

But Lucky version 1, maybe can you just give us the stats of what did you hit stage on at your best in Lucky version 1?

So, we'll come back to where we were just, yeah, just quickly. So, version 1.0, my last comp I was only 95 kilos, and it was a little bit soft. And that was after 8 years of consecutive training. 95, that was the best I'd got to. 95 kilos on stage, a little bit soft at my last comp, admittedly. For this one, I was just better. And we'll go into that and what I did differently. I did everything differently. But to answer your question, right, leading up to the Vic's, there's a lot of pressure and expectation. And I don't deal with that very well. You know, for me it's like, am I gonna meet these expectations? And then I start overthinking things and doubting myself. That's huge with me and it buckles me. And as I started improving and I was comparing myself, my current self, my progress pics to these upload photos of my adversaries, I was like, hey, I've got a chance here. Then as the comp got closer, I'm like, if I be honest with myself right now, I'm gonna take this guy. And these are the guys that I thought were the guys to beat. But still there was that insecurity in my head. And then as the comp got closer, comp gets closer, which has happened in the past, as the comp gets closer, my insecurities come to the surface more, right? So then I do my head in so much.

Which is pretty normal. We are going to bounce around a fair bit in this interview and in this podcast, show, wherever you're watching it, or iTunes or SoundCloud. In saying that, before we get into, you know, the childhood stuff, so I do want to set the scene of where you were. I suppose, You know, the Justin getting up on stage, all those kind of things. Yeah, I mean, really, it's quite a significant— I do want to make a point on it— it's quite a significant thing to get where you went in 10 months.

I know that. I'm aware. Like, you know, it's hard for me to say really positive things about myself, but I can be honest with myself, and I know that what I did in 10 months was pretty incredible. But to answer your question about the Nationals, Because I knew Justin was gonna win it and I didn't have the pressure and expectation of the Vicks, I was able to have fun.

So next year you're gearing up to win it? I mean, Justin gets his Pro card.

Okay, so my goals for next year— I don't like saying this, but my goals for next year is I'd like to replicate what I've done at the state titles, but even more. Like, if I was to be really honest, within my— you know how we put our own goals down? I wouldn't share this normally because it sounds quite narcissistic, maybe. I don't know. You know, but like, I want to come back and I want to convincingly win my class at the Nationals and the overall. You know, I thought to myself, if I could do what I did in 10 months with an actual offseason, and just— I'm back now, you know. And what it really comes down to is having an offseason. I never had one. I went from inactivity to just, okay, I'm training now for a couple of months, and you know what, I want to compete. This year. And I made the commitment to myself. And it's funny, when I look back at the photos of how I looked at that time, I thought— it's funny, I thought I was better at the time than what I was because I got my weight up to 120 kilos and I thought I had a bit more muscle than what I did. And when I look back at my skinfolds, I had like— my lean mass was like 98, and my lean mass increased throughout my whole prep. So I did also 2 powerlifting comps. I did one at 10 weeks out and one at 6 weeks out. And my lean mass increased and my strength increased. This is going into a prep.

That's something very different that you haven't done before, hey?

100%, yeah.

Alright, let's switch gears and talk about Lucky and really set the scene, but Lucky as a kid. So, tell us a bit about, where did you grow up? Where'd you go to high school? Did you finish high school? Like, what were the motivations? How'd you get into training? All that good stuff.

So, you know, I was born, I was a mistake when I was born, alright? So, that forced my two parents to get married, right? And they divorced quite early on. My mother moved back in with her parents and they basically raised me up until the age of 10. So she had nothing to do with me. And then they moved out, they gave my mother the house, and at that point she had the responsibility of me and she had never done that before. So she, she was really toxic. It was a really toxic environment. It was abusive. And I, looking back at it upon reflection and knowing what I know now, I was just a kid going through it. I never had anyone cooking me meals, asking me how I was going, anything like that. I was neglected and then abused. When I say abused, I'm talking emotionally, psychologically, and a couple times physically, but more so verbally and emotionally. It was really bad. I have zero relationship with that woman, but she was always abusive. And as I got older, it actually got worse. Uh, at school, I'll give you an example. Uh, you know, kids in those environments they act up in school. That's their way of expressing themselves because they don't know any other way of expressing themselves. And I was a larrikin. That's how I developed, I guess, a coping mechanism to deal with what I was going through. So I was a larrikin at school. I was always playing up. I was never getting into fights or anything, but I was always getting in trouble. And it got to a point where I think it was Year 9, you know, the coordinator called up my mother and she goes, "I don't give a fuck." Sorry, I try not to swear. She goes, "I don't care. He can deal with his own shit," right? That'll give you an example of how much she just didn't care. You know, when I say that, I didn't even get cooked meals. I never had one cooked meal or a hug or even "How are you?" If I was ever crying, if she came home and I was crying, I remember she'd say things like, "What the fuck are you crying for?" So there's nothing there. There's no emotional attachment at all. So I just got through it. And maybe would have got into this question later, why did I start bodybuilding? And I really honestly think that it was a coping mechanism. Because bodybuilding gave me something to focus on. I had nothing else.

So, how old were you when you got into bodybuilding?

Okay, so, you know like how you're a teenager and, you know, you and the boys kind of lift weights to look good for girls? Initially it started like that. You know, like 16 years old and the— this is really funny. I'm 16 years old. I found some weights in the garage from my uncles, 'cause that house I was living in, my uncles grew up in as well. So there was a barbell, like maybe 20 kilos worth of weights, and those dumbbells, one dumbbell that had like the screws. Remember those ones?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so like I do the same workout every night. And I remember one time I tried doing legs. This is a really funny story. I tried doing legs, so I'm squatting, I'm repping out, and I thought I had no energy to take the bar off. So I thought, "I'm gonna get on my knees and put the bar on the bed." And what's gonna happen? Like, the weights would sink and I'm stuck on the bed. It was hilarious. That's how I started. But then, one of my friends turned 18 before I did. He was driving. And then we got memberships at Mike's Gym in Dandenong, which is now Dougherty's Dandenong. And that was like, you know, we went from training in some little— It was like a 20-minute walk from our school. And it was these tennis courts, and upstairs they had this tiny gym, which was like— it was tiny. It was really, really small. But every day after school, like, 10 of us would go there and train for 3 hours. Literally 3 hours. And I remember, like, during school, I was so— I loved it so much that I wouldn't study or do classwork. I'd, like, write down programs and stuff like that. And a workout could be like 8 exercises for chest. Had no idea what I was doing. But I got serious when I— people started noticing my progress at the gym, older blokes. And for the first time in my life, I had people who were supporting me.

So when was the first time you picked up a weight?

When I was 16.

16? Yeah. And then you started getting serious about what, 18?

When I went to Mike's gym. So older blokes started seeing my progress and they started supporting me, and I'd never had that before. So put yourself in the shoes of like a 17 or 18-year-old. Never had any support from anyone, ever. And then all of a sudden, you know, you got these older blokes and everyone's getting behind you. And, you know, I fed off it. It felt good. For the first time in my life, I had people, you know, supporting me with something that I seem to have been good at. It's almost like this is the first thing I'm ever good at, and there are guys supporting me. So that pushed me on to think about competing. Everyone's like, dude, you're one of the best you know, guys at 17, 18 that I've ever seen. Because I developed pretty quickly. And again, I was natural.

Who was that? Specific?

Just a lot of blokes at the gym. You know, at one stage, you know, when I kind of, you know, started getting more serious, I started gravitating towards more older blokes at the gym for friends. And I started kind of like moving away from my friends from school. Because at that stage, we're all 18. And they were going clubbing every weekend. And they were getting into drugs at that stage and I wasn't, and they were getting into fights a lot, and I thought, this isn't really for me. So at one point in my life, when I was like 19 to like 21, the guys that I was hanging out socially were older blokes from the gym, and I really developed quickly at that stage, and I did my first comp at 19, which was coincidentally the, I think the first comp you did.

Yeah.

So you were a junior and I was a teenager.

Oh no, that was the second comp, so I can go into that story a little bit actually, and I will. So, the first comp I did was in 2004. I came last out of a lineup of 8. I was that guy on stage that shouldn't have been on stage. I had a really, really bad experience at my first show. But you came back and redeemed yourself. And that was the thing, in 2005 I was like, "I need to compete again." So, one of my friends said I should hit up Tony Doherty. And so, I did and he helped me with my prep that year and I competed at the IMBA and then I competed at the IFBB. And I remember at the IFBB show there were a bunch of people saying, "Don't compete, you're gonna look out of place." I remember it was like 3 days out of the show, I called Tony and said, "Hey Tony, look, I can't compete." And he goes, "What do you mean?" What do you mean you can't compete? You look great. And he goes, oh no, everyone's telling me I can't. And he said, no, you can compete. I'm like, I'm really sorry, I can't compete. Went to the gym, super bummed out. And one of my friends was there, was like, what are you doing? Why aren't you competing? Oh, everyone said I shouldn't. He goes, fuck that, man.

Can I ask you a question? Did you allow other people's opinions to influence how you felt to say that to him? Or did you feel that self-doubt yourself within yourself?

Well, I think I really wanted to compete and do Tony's show. And even just to have a crack, right? And then when everyone started, you know, that last week of comp, you're carb depleted, thinking straight. It's a very vulnerable period. It is a very vulnerable period. If you don't have the support network there, you can go off the beaten track. Anyway, I had that support network, talked me up, and then anyway, pretty much 2 hours or whatever it was later, I called up Tony and said, I'm really, really sorry. I shouldn't have let these people affect me. I'll be at your show. I'll compete. And it was really a great experience for me because I competed at that show. I remember you, you were a teen, I was a junior, and everyone's like, oh, have you seen this lucky kid? He's only, I think, 17 or 18. How old were you?

I was, you know what, it's funny. When you told me that on the phone the other day, I can't believe that, 'cause I was a teenager, I was 70 kilos, and I had, from my perspective, I really had nothing. You know, I was lean, but I was, I had no muscle. You could see my spine from the rear. You could literally see my spine.

You had a great physique. Maybe, maybe I was in great shape. Great teenage physique, yeah, the shape was great, and I remember everyone going, "Oh, this lucky kid." You know, "He's the next big thing." I'd say you looked great.

That day as well.

Thank you. I was on the dumbest diet I've ever been on to get onto that show. The diet that I was doing that then was 50 egg whites a day. That was my food. I was getting some pretty shady advice, but it was 50 egg whites a day made up as an omelette with some vegetables. I felt like absolute crap that day. And anyway, I came second to— I beat someone, beat Ryan Underwood when he was a junior. Shout out to Ryan Underwood.

I tell you what, that guy's a beast.

He's an absolute beast. So for me, that was, you know, it wasn't a first place, but the second place was, you know, you don't suck at this there's so much, you know, you can actually hang in there and you can do something. You were happy with second. I was happy as a pig in shit with second. He's like, I was happy with second at the Nationals. Yeah, I was really happy with second, and I was happy with how I looked because, you know, the year prior I really didn't—

Also, let's just say you were natural doing an untested federation. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, and that was great for me. So, yeah, that was how I first met you, and then seeing, you know, my path kind of led me to more PT-focused business and training, then you really got into the the bodybuilding and hardcore. So yeah, absolutely great. So I don't know where we were with that, but what kept you, I mean, for me, I competed once, twice more in 2007, and then pretty much haven't put on the trunks again. To be honest with you, bodybuilding has never, I've done 6 shows, and it's never really spoken to me. I haven't really, well, I've never really enjoyed the process, and I haven't enjoyed the stage either. So I know for a lot of people, they're like, I can't wait to get up on stage, I can't wait to show what I've got. For me, I'm like, nah. I'd rather lift something. So for me, powerlifting, strongman, that calls my name more so than the stage. But what kept you going?

Just quickly, it's funny you say that, like I've done both now. I haven't done strongman, but I've done powerlifting. And if I enjoy the process of the journey for me with bodybuilding, but the day is often for me, 'cause I've got the insecurity and the self-doubt. It's spilling over. So for me, the day is horrible. Horrible. Until it's done. Right? It's horrible. I wanna, you know, when my coach saw me at the Vic's, I wanted to put, and like, he took a photo of me. 'Cause he came, I had to go there early on to get tanned and register, and not register, but do the competitor's meeting. And then he came a little bit later. And then he goes, "I need to see you." I said, "Of course." I was nervous. I thought, you know, I've lost it, I'm smaller, I'm softer. And then he's like, you're fine. He took a photo and I actually saw a glimpse of the photo and it wasn't a very flattering photo and I wanted to go straight home. The only— I knew I had to stay there to get through it because so many people had come to see me. But if it was up to me, if I was someone who didn't have anyone going to see him, I think I would have gone home. I'm being honest with you.

That support network, that's so integral.

Yeah, but more so was the fact that so many people would come to see me and I knew that I'd posted online. If I had gone home, I would look like an idiot. If I stayed and didn't look good, I knew that I'd still be received well because where I've come from, hey, he's come from being a depressed suicidal thoughted, you know, drug addict, not leaving his room for 2 months, and then in 10 months' time he's competed again. That's great. And I knew that'd be great for business. But obviously when you're competing, you want to do, you want to do really well and you want to look good. And I just thought, I don't look good.

Well, sometimes you need to do that. You need to stack the deck in such a way that you, you, it's so much more painful not to go through with it than to back out. Yeah.

And you know what, if I was to be honest, I kind of got a little bit of that feeling with today's podcast because this is the most professional thing I've ever done, right? I've done 3 podcasts. This one here is a professional setup. And I was so, I was so much, I was so nervous coming here that I kind of had that feeling where I thought, oh man, this is going to be, this is a struggle like to commit to this. But I know that once I do it, I'm going to get over it. I'm going to get through it. I'll be proud of myself for doing it and then I'll be able to do it again any other time.

And also sets a new record of where you're at. So anything below that is now a lot easier.

Exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah. It's like you've you've evolved.

So let's get back into your story, all right? So 2007, your— no, 2005 was when you did the first comp. Then you kind of skyrocketed, and I can only speak for me, I'm not hardcore into the bodybuilding world, you know, I'm an observer, I'm a coach, I help people get into that, and even right now I'm not coaching anyone, it's mainly my team here at Enterprise who do— well, it is all my team at Enterprise do all the coaching, so I'm not hardcore into that world, but for me, as I'll say, is almost as an outsider, almost insider-outsider, To me it seemed that you were on the fast track to being, you know, a top amateur and possibly even someone who you would think, oh yeah, he'll probably maybe even get his pro card one day.

That's what people were thinking and that's what my goal was. Did I think I could achieve it? I thought I could, but I knew that I could do nothing as a pro. I knew that, I knew my genetic limitations. So what my goal was, was to win my pro card in Australia And I knew at that point, for me, that was it. Because I knew that competing as a pro, I would not get anywhere. And I knew that it would be just a bad investment. Like, yeah, it would be a bad investment if I tried to pursue a pro career. I wouldn't get anywhere. And when I say investment, it's an investment.

Oh yeah.

It's a financial investment. And it's also, I personally believe, some bodybuilders may not like to hear me saying this, I personally think you're, it's a risk as well.

So, in saying that—

In terms of your health as well.

Yeah, oh, absolutely. I mean, it's not a natural thing or the body wants to be, you know, 110, 120, 140 kilos, you know, walking around at 5% body fat. That's an absolute unbelievable ask of the body. And you see the pros, you know, once they get off stage, you know, once they stop competing, they shrink, they get a lot smaller. You know, they don't lose everything, obviously they still look look fine, perfectly fine, but—

And that's the ones that actually make it to that point. Let's not forget about the ones that lose their life before that point.

That's true.

You know, so many— like, I love bodybuilding, I'm really passionate about bodybuilding, and it saddens me to know how many bodybuilders that I really admired from my favorite era, like the '90s, right? How many of these guys have passed away? That hurts.

Going in with that, was that a self-defeating prophecy? So, I mean, 'cause I think it was 2000 and 12 or 13 that you won the All States where you felt like you were—

No, 2010.

2010, right? So, is in you— Old Lucky, for example, he set this goal of being a pro, but then now, you know, Lucky 2.0 now knows that that's probably not a goal that is a rational goal in the sense of being holistic for his whole life. So, was that at the time a self-defeating prophecy of, well, if I actually achieve this, my life is actually going to go backwards? Backwards. Did you have that awareness then?

No, at that time I had that goal of just, I wanted to be the best bodybuilder in the country. That was my, what was going through my head at that time. But I also knew that because I was PTing and coaching, the better I did on stage just translated to a better business, a more successful business. And the better I was doing, my business was growing, and I knew that if I could get that pro card This is the phrase I used. I'd be printing money because you can charge whatever you want. Because people, you know, a lot of these pros will charge one— I'm talking Australian pros— they'll charge $150 a personal training session and they're getting it. They're getting booked out as well because people see you as the guy that they want to be and they think that, hey, this guy must know something that I don't know. I want to go see that guy. And as I was getting better as an amateur, I was, again, I was attracting a lot more clients who were competitive bodybuilders. You know, I had people coming from interstate to see me. Seriously. It happened probably half a dozen times. And I saw that as like, wow, this is huge. This person has come interstate to train with me for a week. What an awesome, you know, that felt awesome. And I'm the kind of guy as well where, you know, when people, when a couple of the dudes did that, I allowed them to stay with me. 'Cause I just thought, this guy's come interstate, paid for a flight, and a taxi, you know, and I couldn't even charge them, a couple of the guys. So they stayed with me and I trained them for free simply because they'd come interstate to train with me. I thought, man, that's, that's cool. That makes me feel really cool. So I kind of, I wanted to reward that in a way, you know what I mean?

Yeah, absolutely. Actually, next week we've got a guy coming from Canada.

Wow.

For, yeah, we've had now actually, and so I've had people come from interstate.

You got them coming from across oceans.

Yeah, well, I suppose the point, guys watching this, I'll just make a point of it as well. I know when I was at my peak with coaching, I did have a lot of people from interstate come in. So, the thing that I would say is that it's not necessarily synonymous that you've got to be a pro to do that. I think really it comes back to that level of results.

You've built that. For those viewers that don't know, Marcus trained literally hundreds of people, mostly females, very successfully.

Well, competitors, yes. Competitors, females, definitely. Um, yeah, there's, there's now, I mean, if you look at all of enterprise, there has been. That's massive. Yeah, so, um, yeah, definitely. So yeah, it's big and it is absolutely right, it is, it is very cool. Um, but what I wanted to get into now was the, the downward spiral of things. So what was the peak? Let's talk highs and lows. And before we do that, if I can just get Jayden just to close the door because there's a little bit of interference in the background. Um, but yeah, let's talk highs and lows. Your highest height, I think we've spoken a little bit about it. I think you won the belt that Craig Lucas—

No, no, no. So Craig Lucas ran the Country Classic. So in 2005 when we competed, I overdieted for that comp. I was given a chicken and broccoli diet with no salt and cutting out protein powders, all that kind of stuff. I think I weighed 70 kilos 'cause I overdieted. So the next year I weighed 80 kilos, still natural. Um, only I think I dieted more effectively, and I won Craig Lucas's Country Classic as a junior. Then 4 weeks later, I won the NABBA Australia Championships as a junior, and I got, um, I got a trip to go overseas to compete at the NABBA Universe. And you got to think, a young guy who was never good at anything, was not good at school, you know, going back to school, I failed Year 10, had to repeat it. And then I only did Year 12 simply because my grandma called me up crying when she found out that I wanted to leave. The only reason why I did it was to make her happy. Now, because I had failed Year 10, it meant I was 18 in Year 12 and I was driving. So Year 12 was one of the best years of my life. You know, Year 12 for me was, you know, horsing around with my friends and girls. That's all it was. I was clubbing. In Year 12, you know. Not every night, but we would go during the week some, a lot of weeks. Where was I going with that?

Do the downward spiral, the highs, highs, lows.

Yeah, okay, well, just going back to the comps. Yes, so I did the, I went overseas. So put, let's put things in perspective, right? I've never achieved anything, never done anything, never had any support from home, and all of a sudden I'm on stage and Graham Lansfield, the promoter and MC, announced that, you know, the judges have thought so good of Lucky that we want to send him overseas to represent Australia. I'm like, wow, this is awesome, you know. So I did that, and that comp I think was the comp that made me think, hey man, I'm onto something here. And that just— that's what really made me like think, this is what I want to do now, and I think I've got a chance to go far. Because again, I went to the NABBA Universe. This is the same comp that Arnold Schwarzenegger did and won. This is huge. And then after that, 'cause I knew Graeme Lansfield told me, "Hey, we want you for, you know, NABBA for the next 3 years. You can go to the Universe." I gave it a year off. And because I was going to the NABBA Universe and not going up against natural guys, I thought, this is my rationale. Now I'm 21 and I'm thinking, I don't wanna go to the NABBA Universe or the NABBA Worlds as a natural anymore. That's the first year I used performance-enhancing drugs. And then I actually won in 2008 the junior class and the overall, and that for me was like, okay, you know, I've kind of made a statement here through my achievement. And that's, that's the progression of my career, I guess, and how things just got better. And that made me think, I think I've got more of a chance here. And then the support came. And as you know, when you're successful, more people are coming around you. And that's when the pressure and expectation actually started. Then I competed again in 2010. I did really well, won an overall again. This is 2 in a row now. I won the Australasia, and then the following year was the pro qualifier. That's— this is it now. Don't forget, the goal was to go pro. Now this is the first show that I'm doing for that. This is the pro card now, and it was myself, Luke Timms, and a large vegan Indian called Virender Singh, who weighed about 125 kilos, right? I'm the smallest guy on stage. I knew I was off. From my perspective, I got slaughtered on stage, but when I saw the footage, I could kind of see, okay, I can see how he had me, but I can also see that I've got a lot of potential here to do well. And I tried— like, I actually contacted Luke. So Luke Timms beat me. I contacted Luke Timms' coach, who you may know, John Davey, to coach me because I thought, you know what, he helped Luke to win, and John Davey was a pro himself. That's the direction I want to go down. I've taken myself as far as I can go. Where to now? So some people think that my downward spiral started after I lost to Luke Timms. It didn't. I was even more motivated. Like, coming second or third, there's no placing. It was, here's the pro card, the other two people, there's no placing. It's just first, that's it. For me though, not winning was no problem. It motivated me. Like, I was, then the very next day I was putting a plan together. So I trained for like another year after that. And I actually, now you asked me earlier, how do you compete knowing you can't win? Well, that following year I was training for the 2012 Pro Qualifier. I was about 8 weeks out and I found out that a guy called Abraham was competing. Do you know Abraham?

I remember that guy. Okay, he was there like 100 and—

for you, for the viewers that don't know who Abraham is, this guy competed 125 kilos. This— you know now you are not going to win. That guy, he looks like a pro. There's no one else who's going to even come close. Now You know, when I mentioned earlier about being a pro in the investment, there's also a financial investment that goes into trying to become a pro. And I just weighed it all up and I thought to myself, I can't win. What's the point of going through? I can't even— I don't even get a place and I get no trophy. What's the point of doing this? So I did— that's the first show I pulled out of, because I just thought there's no point and I was investing a lot of money each week into this. I thought, there's no point. So I pulled out and I thought to myself, you know what, I'm gonna take a couple weeks off training. A couple weeks turned into 8 years, right? Now if we look at the downward spiral, that first year, that, that first couple of weeks extended, right? Things are still good, I was still working and everything, but then I started using recreational drugs. So I was living this really, this really disciplined lifestyle for like 8 years. Literally, I hadn't done any drugs or anything like that. Then all of a sudden, like, I can do what I want now. This almost feels good. So it started with recreational drugs. It was cocaine. And I got pretty— there were some stages where I got pretty bad on that. And that was 2000 and end of 2012, 2013. And then I realized— I didn't know at the time But without that disciplined lifestyle, my life went downhill. I, I needed the discipline to keep me on a positive track. Without it, without the training, without having got specifically goals, that's what it comes down to. So I realized my life was on track when I had a goal, and then by the— when I stopped competing, I didn't actually have any goals. You know, when you, you know, when you're contest prepping, or maybe when you're prepping someone, you may know this, you're so disciplined and that that discipline and all those, all those qualities and characteristics that come with doing a prep, they spill over into other areas of life. Then you become disciplined with everything else.

Well, it's like Jocko Wilkins.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he's one of the guys that I came across online and he, you know what's great about him? He tells it like it is.

Yeah, discipline leads to freedom. And without discipline you have no freedom. And it almost seems counterintuitive, but it's absolutely true. You need that routine to keep you on track. To actually, you know, whether it's financial freedom or having success over your body or I suppose sovereignty over your domain is that, you know, I like using finances as an example. Unless you learn how to save your money, unless you learn the difference between the haves and have-nots, you will always and forever be a slave to money. It's only until you go, right, well, this is what I'm gonna do with the money, this is where I'm gonna spend my money, I'm not gonna spend my money here, and actually be actively engaged in that, that's when you actually have the freedom. But that comes through discipline. And it's the same thing with training and health and fitness and when helping someone with a healthy lifestyle. It's, you know, you can't eat cheeseburgers every day. You can't just eat whatever you want and shovel whatever you want into your gob because you're going to end up fat, tired, overweight, and, you know, probably diseased as well. So there has to be a discipline and structure and routine around that. So just to recap on that, what year was it when Abe came on stage?

Okay, so that, that pro qualifier was the 2012.

So in 2012, and then you didn't train.

So I, I stopped training about 6 weeks or 8 weeks before March of 2011. It was still in 2011. It was end of 2011. That's when I stopped training. And things— I think I would say 2012 wasn't necessarily a bad year for me, but I was doing a lot of recreational drugs on weekends and things like that. I was still working and everything. I was still doing drugs on— recreational drugs on weekends and stuff like that. If when things started really spiraling, I think was more 2013. That's when, again, not having a goal, not having discipline, and things just started to spiral. Bad relation— negative, toxic relationships as well, not knowing how to deal with things. And then it just, it really progressively got really bad. But then between 2013 and end of 2017, that's a period of my life that I call, you know, if I was to write a memoir, that was the dark years. But you know what's really fascinating about the dark years? And this is true, this is legitimately, genuinely true. That's when I learned the most about myself. So prior to that—

What did you learn about yourself?

Everything. I wasn't introspective before that point.

So in terms of what you're saying with that is—

Okay, understanding yourself. So, your actions and behaviours and why you are the way you are.

Prior to that, would you say, and this is just a pure mind read on things, prior to that, you're winning these contests, you're on top, you know, it's like, yeah, life's good, narcissistic behaviours, then it kind of, the dream gets shattered by this 125 kilo monster who just says, mate, doesn't matter how hard you work, this title, this is coming home with me. You go, holy shit, what am I doing with my life?

Well, I just actually planned on taking 2 weeks off and then continuing training. That didn't, that didn't actually end up happening. So like, it wasn't like I was shattered. It was just like, there's no point in me continuing to make this investment. I can't win this. And what I'd done is, that's the first point where I was honest with myself and I said to myself, okay, let's have a look. How many— Abe's gonna win this. How many other people are in my way to win this? So like, there were guys like Luke Chambry, there were so many other guys in the country that I knew would, that would be doing the pro qualifier. I tried to work out, I can't beat him if he did it, I can't beat him if he did it. And this is my rationale. I worked out the guys that would beat me that were currently competing. And it got to like 4 years later, if they all won, then I thought to myself, there's only Scott Goble left and it'd be me and him. And in 4 years time, I think I'd be good enough to beat him.

Hope Scott's watching this.

Yeah, that was depending on if no one new came out. That's how I thought about it. And I thought, because again, it's— when I say it's a big investment, I'm talking tens of thousands of dollars. This is what I'm— so, like, I don't want to go too much into that side of things, but the investment that I'm talking about is for a contest prep, if you want to become pro, you're not looking at a few hundred dollars or a few thousand. We're looking at tens of thousands now, right? This is the reality of things. This is the reality of if you want to go for your pro card, this is what you're spending. So for me, let's put things in perspective now, right? And again, I should probably mention this, right? Right now, I'm a few weeks out. I'm 8 weeks out. You know what? Now that we're talking about it, things are coming to me, right?

It's also the coffee, it got you.

I'm 8 weeks out. I am investing tens of thousands into this contest prep, right? And if I was to be completely vulnerable and honest here, this is the moment that it stopped, right? I developed scar tissue in certain areas from intramuscular injections and I just couldn't put anything in, right? Not only that, right, I thought to myself, here I am doing what I'm doing, I'm living at mum's. Let's say I win this pro card, I'm getting back in my shitbox of a car and I'm driving back to mum's, which is an environment that I hate, that's killing me. And my rationale back then was, to achieve what I need to achieve or what I want to achieve, I have to be, I have to live here because all I was, like, I would still pay, I would still contribute 'cause I was earning more money than her. So I was paying all the bills and everything, but that was cheaper than renting on my own or buying. And at that time, I was in a financial position to do that. My PT business was, I was doing 10 to 15 sessions a day, 7 days a week. I was bringing money in, right? But knowing that, like, I would, I'll give you an example of what I would go through when I'm prepping for this pro card, right? It's all coming back to me now. I would come home from work at night, 9 o'clock. I would open the door to come in. All I have to do is cook and go to sleep, right? I would open the door and I'd hear, "Shut the fuck up. I'm trying to fucking sleep." I try and cook and any noise I make, I'm getting screamed at. This is the environment I'm in. So I'm thinking, I gotta live here to win that title. It's gonna cost me this much each year. And if I did win, I'm coming back to this toxic environment. I've gotta get out of here. So I had reason to move out. And I thought, "That's what I wanna do now." So the moment that I couldn't— there's one moment I tried to put some oil in, I couldn't put it in, I threw the needle on the ground. 2 months later, I was living in my own place, renting of course, but I paid upfront for 5 months. Renting, and within another couple of months I had $30,000 saved. So that was the difference, and I felt happy doing that. This is like, let me tell you, when you live in a toxic environment with a parent, then you move out, you don't understand how much better you feel. It's all— I felt great.

Well, it's like being a king in a castle but having the folks still there, so you don't really have something.

There's no king. I was being destroyed in that house. It was really toxic.

Who's really the—

you know, and then I had my own place and it felt really good. And that was actually the moment that I stopped, right? But I didn't feel bad knowing that I couldn't win. It's just I accepted it, and I planned on still training. It's just the way things happen with not training. And because my body still looked really good, I thought, "Hey, I'm really fine not training." 2 weeks extended, then that extended, then there was the recreational drugs, then there was a toxic relationship, and then it just spiraled. Without having that discipline, you know, the only time in my life that I ever had stability, seriously, was when I was contest prepping. Because I was focused on something. If I didn't have that, those years that I didn't compete in between that period of time that I was competing were years that I didn't make progress in life.

So it's almost like, uh, and again, I don't mean to be, um, jumping the gun on this, but it's almost like, you know, Lucky is really good at competing, he's really good at training, he's really good at looking a certain way, and that's what he does. Yeah. And it's almost like, well, if you take the soul or the purpose, uh, of living from Lucky, he doesn't have an anchor, he doesn't have a rudder.

At the time, at the time. At the time, that's all I knew. Because I didn't have any, any mental— Mentors in any way. Had no parent. So you gotta think, this is a kid who's been neglected at home. He's got no one to show him direction. He's lost.

Was there anyone who stepped up in your life as a surrogate parent? Not at all. No trainers, mentors?

No, I had some, like, until I started competing. Um, you know, family members, uh, I'll give you an example, man. I've got an uncle, right? I've got aunties and uncles that are really great, right? But they were never really there when I was younger to help me in any way. I had an uncle tell me one Christmas when I actually became an adult, before I lost my shit, he goes, "You know what, Lucky? You know, the family is really happy that you turned out how you have considering how fucked both your parents are." This is a family member telling me that now. Do you know what I mean? And when he told me that, that's when I was competing. So again, there's success coming my way. I was PTing, successful business. All this came through the disciplined lifestyle of competing. And that's all I knew. It wasn't until I became older, after I kind of sunk and became more self-aware, that I realized that— I realized it's the reality of life, you know, and I knew that, you know, I didn't necessarily need the bodybuilding to stay anchored. It was just I need goals and I need to be disciplined. Ultimately, what I found it came down to was having goals to work towards.

So would you say you hit rock bottom in that 8 years?

I couldn't have gone any— like, I think I can show vulnerability, right? But I think I don't— I'm not strong enough yet to express the level of rock bottom that I was. It was nasty. And without getting into too much personal detail, okay, the rock bottom for me was before I made the commitment to myself to move forward and start treating myself well. It was like— it was this time last year when I got out of it, and 2 months prior I hadn't left my room for 2 months. Legitimately, 2 months.

What keeps you in the room for 2 months?

Drugs.

Right.

Yeah, that's escaping reality. And that was, if I was to be honest, that was meth and marijuana. Right. But using them both in a toxic way, right? I wanted to escape. I didn't want to be here anymore. The only thing literally keeping me here was my dog. Because again, I didn't have anyone. And again, 2 doors down was the woman that gave birth to me, that she knew what I was doing, didn't give a shit. And for anyone who's, uh, who has parents that neglected them and legitimately didn't give a shit about them and abuse them, it leaves an emptiness inside you. It's, it's, it's something unless you've experienced it, you don't know.

So were the drugs a way of—

It's simply escaping.

Simply escaping.

It wasn't even a void filler. It was an escape. That's all it was. Possibly a void filler. And it's funny you mentioned that because in that period of time, I spent a lot of time on YouTube and the internet. So when I did my drugs, it wasn't recreationally, apart from when I was doing cocaine. When I was doing the really bad stuff, it was on my own. I would acquire what I need and I would go to my bedroom. I would lock myself away, dark room, like that's it. I didn't wanna— it was literally escaping reality. That's all it was. But when you say filling a void, I remember once coming across an interview with Mike Tyson and he spoke about his drug addiction and what he said was exactly what I said. When you're over, he goes, he goes, it felt like I was trying to fill a hole inside me. Like it was like a bottomless pit. He goes, no matter how much drugs I put in there, I couldn't fill that void. And he goes, what that void was, was a love that I never had from my parents. And you know what? Prior to that, that's why I love being on YouTube. I come across all this information that helped me. When he said that, it hit me. Hey, shit, man, I can relate to this.

Does that make sense? It does. And what I want to just kind of springboard off from, because I know people are going to be watching this on YouTube, it is such a relatable story. So my hope is that, you know, this hits the people who it needs to hit if they're in troubled times and your story has some relatability and can put someone, pick someone out of a dark hole as you've picked yourself out of. What advice to the YouTube watchers of this, you know, where you've been, how did you pick yourself up and what advice would you give?

It was hard. You know what was really hard? I kind of felt like I knew that I didn't necessarily have— I was confused if I had an addiction or not because I chose when to do it or not. I literally chose when to do it or not. It wasn't an everyday— it was never an everyday thing. But then there were times when I would, what I describe as destroy myself, and it would take a catalyst. There'd be a catalyst. Something would happen on an emotional level. Say something in a relationship would fail, or I'd be feeling vulnerable, then my mum would would go off at something over nothing and then bang, you know, I would then just decide, no, I'm gonna get on it, you know what I mean? And sometimes it might be just for a day or two, other times it was, it was worse, it would be a couple of weeks. But what I would say to people, it's you only have one life and it's really up to you, and I think we all deserve better. And I think what keeps— I can't talk for everyone, but for me personally, I was really afraid. This is what I thought when I was— when I got really introspective, I thought, what is keeping me? What is holding me back? It was not having value for myself, because I had— no one helped me develop that. It was destroyed. When you have two parents who are abusive and emotionally there's nothing there, and they're literally telling you you're a piece of shit. I remember my mum telling me, no one loves you. This is when I was growing up. So if your own mum doesn't love you, then who does? You can't even love yourself, you know. So, um, where was I going with that?

Picking people up out of the hole.

Yeah, I know that, but, um, I had to kind of firstly accept that. To get over where I was, I had to accept this woman doesn't give a shit about you, right? But, you know, I was afraid. You gotta think, kid, when you're a kid growing up, you've got your parents disciplining you for life. They're setting you up for life. I had no one to set me up for life. I didn't have the skills or abilities to face life, and I feel that that was something that was really holding me back. It was facing life, and that's something that, like, guys like Jordan Peterson talk about, actually facing life. And you know what was good about Jordan Peterson? You mentioned him earlier. When I came across him, he was like one of the biggest influences. I even bought his book, right? Because I love him, you know. He, he would explain what's wrong with you. I could relate to this. He would explain why. I'm like, hey man, I can relate to this. And then he would explain— not even explain, he'll tell you. And you know how he talks, it's blunt. This is it, this is what's wrong with you, this is why, and this is what you got to do.

It's up to you.

Now go clean your room.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Now go clean your room.

With your shoulders back.

That's discipline.

Yeah.

Keeping your room clean. If you're a reflection of your room, you know, well then you have a tidy room. If someone's got a tidy room, you know what, they're gonna have, they're gonna have a pretty, their life will look a lot better than someone's got a messy room. Not all the time, but we could probably agree that most of the time.

Well, it's that saying, you know, I suppose in neuro-linguistic programming, NLP, and personal development, it's How you do one thing is how you do everything.

Yeah.

And, you know, it's the attention to the details, the devil's in the detail, and, you know, self-respect, the way you dress, the way all those things. And maybe they're not always interrelated so much, but there is a huge, huge amount where it is, you know. If you can't control your own personal domain, then, you know, what do you have?

The thing is, with rock bottom, what comes with that is a lot of shame. You have no confidence in yourself. But the shame aspect of things, value for yourself, and you have no— like, the confidence thing's huge. I actually lost the confidence in myself to even work. I was calling myself a shit trainer, all these things, even though I had so much success with a lot of my clients, right? So like, you have to develop by setting little tiny goals, even just by cleaning the room, going for a walk. These little, little achievements build yourself up again, because when you're rock bottom and you allowed yourself to really hit rock bottom with drugs, You see yourself, or I did anyway, as a piece of shit.

So how did you make the transition?

I made a commitment to myself. I like, you know what, with me, I knew that I was at a moment where you said something happened. Yeah, you know this. Yeah, do you want to talk about it? Yeah. Okay, I'm happy to talk about it. So the moment, the catalyst, there's always catalysts. There was catalyst for me to destroy myself, but there was one catalyst for me to No, this is it. This is the moment. And what that time was, it was, um, I remember it was like a Sunday. It was a sunny day. And the guy that I would acquire my drugs from came around on his pushbike. This summer, and again, in this scene, you got people to pretend to be your friends, you know, this kind of thing. And I knew he wasn't a friend, but I went to school with him. And he came over and he's in my room and police knocked on the door. I didn't know I was police went to the door and the front door wouldn't open. So I said, guys, you gotta come around the side. I went and greeted them and they said, is that your pushbike at the front? I said, nah, but I can go get the guy who it is. He was a drug dealer. Now, when— I don't like calling my mum, so we're just gonna call her Maria. That's more comfortable for me. When Maria saw that they were there, she came out and she said to him, you gotta leave now. Understandably, and that's cool, I accept that. Now, she hasn't talked to me. Or never did unless she's yelling or screaming or if she needed something. And she knocked on my door the next day and she goes, "You can tell your friend he can come back now." And that killed me because deep down I always felt like—

Protect you.

I felt like there's a woman, there's two doors down, I wish she would save me. That's how I felt deep down. I know it sounds silly to some people. That was what was going on through my head when I was in that state of mind. And when she said that and she closed the door, I literally like fell to the floor. And I'm crying now, you know, like, like, you know, when you cry, then you got like sobbing. I'm sobbing now. And then I just stood up and I said to myself, this woman doesn't give a shit about me. And I've got to, I've got to pull my, I've got to, I want to, it wasn't, it was, I am not, this is what I said. I remember now. I said, I'm not going to let her win. That's what it was. Cause I felt in my head at the time, again, you got to think someone's on drugs. Is slightly stoked. It could be slightly or extreme altered state of mind with the way you're rationalizing things, right? I saw it as she knew what I was doing this whole time. She could see that I'm not showering, doing anything, right? Not going to work. She doesn't care. She's now enabling this behavior. And then when that happened, I'm not smart enough to know what the right word was, but I kind of felt like she was pushing for it now. Not enabling. She's now, she wants me to, you know, she wants me to do it. "Hey, tell your drug dealer you can come back so you can spend more time in your room." And I'd gotten to a point where like my money was dwindling, right? My money was dwindling and I knew that like, okay, if I'm gonna be continuing to eat food, I can't do that. And that was cool. But that was the last time that he, so it all kind of came together well in a way. When she said that and I said, "No, I'm not gonna let you win." From that moment, is when I stopped running.

What were some of the actionable, tangible things that you did?

Okay, so like, I did— I had— because I hadn't been to the gym in a few months where I was working, and I knew everyone, hadn't left my room. I actually developed, like, you could say, social anxiety, right? So I couldn't go out. So I firstly started going for walks around the block. To be honest with you, It wasn't around the block. The walks that I was doing first was that drug dealer guy owed me money and he wasn't— I needed that money for food, right? He wasn't answering my phone calls and I knew where he lived, right? And I went to his house a couple of times and his grandma answered. He got his grandma to answer and I knew he was there. And I thought, I'm the kind of guy— she acted all upset that I was there. I'm not gonna knock on this door anymore, even though I know he's a coward in the back room, right? So what I would do is I'd every morning, or I would walk past his house. He had a park across the road. I'll do stretches hoping that I'd see him. I really wanted my money, right? And I wanted to tell him how disappointed I was in him. He ripped me off, that he had ripped me off when he was pretending to be my friend. So I went for these walks every day, and those walks, you know, got me active again. I would go to the supermarket when he wasn't busy. Now to get back in the gym, I was going at times that wasn't busy. In the morning, or just so I could actually be there, there's no one else there. And I was quite fortunate that I had one former client that I knew would train with me again as soon as I messaged him. I messaged him and I said, "Hey, Vijay, you competing this year?" And he goes, "Only if you're training me." And I was like, "Yes, that's money coming in." I knew if I have one client, in time I'll get more. So like, it was, I only charged him $100 for the week at that time because he was really young. He was like a teenager and he's actually an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. So I really wanted to help him, right? And I trained him for 2 years. He won all his comps. So he'd come back with me and that kind of gave me a reason to go back at night. And I won't lie to you guys, it was really hard to go back to the gym at night because I felt like, I felt shame. Do you know what I mean? And I felt I'm going back, I'm looking a lot skinnier, everyone's gonna ask, "Where you been?" What do I say? So I had to lie. You know, like I told some people I went away, I went on a holiday. I told other people I was sick. Do you know what I mean? 'Cause there's shame that's attached to that. And at the time, I couldn't be open like I am now. Do you know what I mean? I knew I could, I had to face myself.

So I suppose in summary, the tangible steps is you just took one day at a time, really.

Yes.

Yeah, and then each day at a time, just a little bit more, a little bit more, from a short walk, Now to a long walk to the supermarket.

Going to the supermarket when it's hot. Well, that's if you develop social anxieties. That's what I did. But what I found that really helped was just setting little goals. Tiny goals. Really tiny goals. I'll tell you one goal that I set that for some people may sound really silly because it's nothing. I was going to the beach every day. I don't know what it is, right? I found I got some— I love being in the water and I got a really good energy from being in the water. I don't know what it was, and I love going snorkeling. So I did this every single day. And at the beach I went to, one that was really close to me, it was Chelsea Beach, and there was like, you know like how they have those light posts so that boats know? It was like probably like 100 meters away from the shore. I was really scared to like swim to it and back. And like I'd go halfway and I'd come back, and I said, you know what, no. I'm gonna, there's no sharks, or I'm not gonna, I'm gonna be able to come back. I'm gonna set myself a goal of going there, facing that fear, because I had a fear of going there and coming back, and I'm gonna come back. And I did it, right? I swear to you, right? When I did it, it was the first time I felt a little bit good about myself in a really long time, simply from achieving something. I've got a fear, right? I'm gonna go to that light post, go around it, and come back. That was all it was, and it was the first little thing that I—

it was micro goals that you set along the way. To achieve and build that self-confidence.

So it was really just a process of my way to go from where you are thinking that you're a piece of shit, literally thinking that you're a piece of shit, not even good enough for life. Because I was once— I had one foot out the door, you know. So if I was with my dog, I don't know what I would have done. I was— look, to give you an idea of rock bottom, I could take out my phone right now and go to my web browser, and I've still got it on there, I think, all the way up. If I scroll to one of the tabs I had, it was literally like researching how to commit suicide. That's the level that I was at. It's still on my phone, one of my old phones. I could actually show you. That's where I was. And I told myself, or I felt that, because I love my dog, beautiful husky, I said, I don't trust anyone else with her, right? And for that, like, for that, I love her, man. She's the only consistent thing in my life all these years. I couldn't leave her. So I'm staying.

So, in the process of actually getting clean from substance, so it sounds to me from you getting clean, it really just started with an event that happened that you wanted to happen in a different way. And from that event you went, right, no more. I need to take control of this. You got in the driver's bus of your own life and then said, you know what, it wasn't even a case of I'm addicted to this stuff anymore. There was just, this isn't even an issue. This is a non-issue for me. I'm not doing this anymore.

Pretty much.

I'm not making that choice anymore. Start setting micro goals, and the first micro goal was just walking, and then going to the beach, and then the light post, and then getting to the gym, and then training, and then setting the goal ultimately to compete.

It was a small progression, but I knew as well, because I knew I'd, again, I'm a little bit confused if I was addicted to the substance of meth or not, because I chose when to do it, I chose when to stop. There was no rehab, there was nothing like that. There's been no relapses or anything like that. I just, In a way, I kind of feel if it was an addiction, I just changed it. So it went from—

plasticity—

it went from, okay, the initial event of, I was smoking that, that's what I was doing to escape reality, and then, you know, I started training, and then I just trained more and more and more. And then when I decided to commit to my contest prep, now, like, you know, I— going back to what you said earlier, I've done so much in 10 months. I honestly don't think that I could have done all that if I had like a normal 9-to-5 job, or if I had a family, or if I had a girlfriend. I committed my life for 26 weeks to one objective, and I've never worked so hard towards something. I put hours into this. I trained every day, and then towards the end, twice a day.

So, so why, why get back? What was the getting back on stage a part of the organic process of setting micro goals for you?

I knew that for me, it was really, I knew that for me, it was my business that's gonna help me, that's gonna set up my life. It's work.

[Speaker] It's a lot of things.

[Speaker] Well, my business is, like you said, financial freedom. So I knew that the only thing I could do where I could go from having, I got to a point of having $2 to my name, right? Thoughts of going to the supermarket and stealing, stealing a potato to eat. That was, if you wanna say rock bottom, That is rock bottom along with the other things that I've shared, right? But for me, I knew once I get my— once I start training again, I'll get more clients. I knew that if I compete again and did well, I'm back to earning a couple K a week. And I knew I could do all this in one year, and I have. And like you said, discipline equals freedom. And this is something that Jocko says, and I'll give you an example, black and white example, right? This time last year, I hadn't left my room in 2 months. Wasn't working, there was no discipline. Now we're in a position to be living independently and I can go overseas whenever I want. So if you want to talk about freedom, we got 10 months ago and now, and the only difference is the discipline lifestyle. That's what that's enabled me to have. You know, I can go anywhere I want in the world now, whereas last year I couldn't even leave my suburb. I had $2 to my name with no discipline at all. You know what I mean? Completely different a mindset at the time. So when you talk about neuroplasticity, you can change that. That's what's really cool. And, you know, I'm glad that I didn't take myself out because I didn't know at the time that your mindset and what's going on in your head, it can really change. Absolutely dramatically, you know what I mean? And I'm glad that I took those, those steps. And, you know, if I look at what I want to do in the future, and I spoke to you about this, about becoming a youth worker, You know, I know people that have lost their lives through suicide, right? Me knowing that I've been, you know, at the step of suicide, and I know that that was my mindset at the time, but then now it's like, you know, this time last year I didn't want to see tomorrow, and right now, man, I can't— baby, I can't wait for tomorrow. 'Cause I know tomorrow is I can work towards goals. Do you know what I mean? I'm so excited going to work 'cause I know not only am I gonna come home with like a a little wallet full of money every single day, right? But I love what I do and I'm loving the direction I'm going in. Same person, one year apart.

So one year on, like now looking back on that, if you could go back, say future you, give yourself some advice.

Yeah.

What advice would you have got to get out of the hole sooner?

You know, I don't know if it was— I honestly, I'm being honest here. I honestly don't know if I could have done it. If that catalyst hadn't happened.

We had to have the—

I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if I had to. I don't know if I had to, you know, because I had a lot of people trying to help me over those years, and you really have to help yourself. You can have, you can have a lot of people trying to help you, but if you don't accept things— and I think it's for me, again, there's different reasons why people can be doing the same thing, a lot of different reasons. For me personally, I had deep-rooted unresolved issues. You know, like I told you, like I had to literally accept that both parents don't give a shit. It's up to you to pull that ship in and to fucking take it out. Do you know what I mean? There's no one else gonna help you. And that's what it was.

Maybe give yourself a Jordan Peterson book.

I honestly don't know.

I don't know if it would have worked at the time.

You know, like even if I could tell myself, you know, like if anyone's watching this, that is in that state, right? Say rock bottom, you're doing drugs and you know you shouldn't. 'Cause you know you shouldn't. I'm really self-aware. So at the time, I'm doing something that I know is destroying my life. You know, there was some times, 'cause I had mirrored wardrobe, I've got mirrored wardrobes. I'd look at myself in the mirror and I'd be like, "What the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing, man? You're destroying yourself." And I'd start crying. You know what I mean? But there was a part of me that like, it was easier And I read this quote somewhere, something along the lines of, it's easier, it's easier to make a beast of yourself than to face life like a man. I don't know, I don't know where I read that or if I quoted it properly, right? But when I read it, I could relate to it. This is what I'm doing. I'm making a beast of myself because I'm not— I don't have the balls to face life like a man. But because I didn't have— I knew I just— I don't have the skills and for life, I don't know, I don't have the skill. I was a kid. I had no guidance whatsoever, man. You know, and then there's this big scary world out there. But literally, like, you know, if I could drum something into myself, you know, when I was, you know, any point of that 5-year period, it's like, dude, you have one life, don't fucking waste it. This is it, and it's up to you.

So we'll switch gears a little bit and just go through a few more topics.

You know I can't drive manual?

No, neither can I. Really? Yeah. You drive auto? I drive auto. Oh, no shit. Yeah.

You know, whenever I tell someone I can't drive manual, they're all like, you can't drive manual? For me, I had a very a very good logic for it.

It's like, well, I could invest the time in driving manual, but it's more of a pain in the ass, so I'd rather just work on my business and focus. So it's very much more of a decision out of efficiency. And a lot of my decisions in life actually come out of efficiency, of like, what's the fastest route to getting my goal.

But have you ever been judged by someone for not being able to drive manual?

Uh, some people try and judge me, but I don't kind of let myself be judged. I'm like, well, why would I drive manual? You can only— like, I'm not, I'm not driving a race car, I'm not an F1 driver.

Hey man, I can have both hands on my wheel.

Yeah, I can have one, one hand out the window, you know, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or in summer I do that to show the guns, you know.

Yeah, exactly. And plus, you know, I've got— I'm driving an FJ Cruiser at the moment and they don't come, man.

Was that yours? That's, that's my best friend actually has that car.

They're so cool. Yeah, they're great cars.

You know, he went to Europe a couple times and left it for me to drive and I'm like, it's such a huge car.

It is a huge car. It takes a while to get used to. It does.

And there's a couple of blind spots as well.

It has— it does have some blind spot issues, but one of the things that is actually quite funny, I drove that car, I didn't realize there was reversing sensors in the car. And for whatever reason, I turned off the— somehow the reversing sensors when I got the car weren't on, and no one told me that they had reversing sensors.

You need them for that car.

So I drove for 2 years without any reversing sensors, and one day I was playing with the buttons, I pressed this button, I'm like, I wonder what this is, I'm just gonna leave it on. Yeah, start reversing, it goes beep beep beep.

I'm like Helps so much.

There's reversing sensors in this car, but anyway, so that's my little story. Let's switch the gear. We're going to go through, you know, a lot of different topics in a pretty rapid format. So this is the one word game, which I like to play with all of my guests. So, you know, for those who haven't watched the one word game, basically I'm going to say a word. Say, for example, if I said superhero, you might say Superman. So you ready?

Yeah.

The answer is born ready, by the way.

All right.

So I thought I was conceived ready, but obviously not. Australian bodybuilding in Australia.

Tony Doherty.

Protein powders.

Oh shit. That one I wasn't expecting. I guess it's, oh shit.

Okay. IFBB bikini division.

Oh, those bikini chicks.

Never.

If there's any bikini chicks watching, I'm single and I'm ready to meet you. I'm just joking. No.

Never.

Graham Lansfield.

Worst supplement?

Years ago, anything flavored fruit punch.

They were horrible, Mark.

They were horrible, weren't they?

Yeah. Amen. Favorite supplement?

Favorite supplement? To be honest with you, Vital Greens.

Ultimate competing goal?

I have two. I have two. And these are, these are my 3-year plan. I have to be Pro League overall Australia and the PCA World Championships.

Oh, mentor.

Mentor?

Mentor.

Oh, I'd have to say, if you're watching this, Iyab Maleeb, that is you, my friend.

Respected peer.

You know, the first name that comes to my mind is Christian Caldwell, who was actually an adversary of mine. He was, but he helped me so much backstage because I had this anxiety attack backstage. I couldn't even take my clothes off. I'm looking at everyone thinking they all look so much better than me, and he helped me back. Even though I'm up against him, he helped me to get on stage, and I'm so thankful to that. Christian, if you're watching, thank you so much.

Best bodybuilder of all time?

Oh, that's a tough one. I think going by, going by the stats, it's Phil Heath. But for what I like, I like the physiques like more Lee Labrada and Frank Zane and the guys from the late '80s, personally.

Yeah. Favorite athlete?

I'd say Roger Federer. Oh, I know, I've got to go back on that. I said that, but I had to think about it. I want to say GSP. How good is GSP?

I heard him talk the other—

yeah, yeah.

Comfort food?

Oh man, I don't know. You can call it comfort food. I like yogurt, right? And I love oats. I'm being serious too.

We're at a bar. What are we drinking?

I don't drink.

Don't drink.

If I had to choose something, right? If I was forced to choose an alcoholic beverage, it would be a shandy. If for those of you don't know what a shandy is, it's a little bit of beer and it's a lot of lemonade.

It's very Dandenong of you.

Yeah.

Favorite exercise.

Squats.

Something you would like to see more of?

I know this is gonna sound really like cheesy and cliché, just a lot more peace in this world that we live in. Seriously.

Nice. I thought you're gonna say something like that.

No, no, seriously. Seriously, there's a lot of suffering that happens.

Agreed. What is something you want to see less of?

Well, I guess that's the same answer. Suffering. Yeah.

The biggest myth in bodybuilding?

That bodybuilders have small penises. Alright, no they don't. Not all of us. Not especially the Greeks. Let me tell you.

A hobby or a pastime?

Sorry. I enjoy, I've got a few interests. I like psychology, history, and I like astronomy. And I love watching documentaries. So if I'm chilling out, that's what I like to do.

And for Christmas, Lucky really hopes he gets a—

Can I be honest with you? I'm a little bit different, right? I don't like getting gifts, believe it or not. It's like, you know, gifts make me feel uncomfortable. I'm being serious too. It's got to do with my upbringing. For me, I'll explain why, right? For me, every Christmas and birthday almost when I was growing up Maria would actually say things like, I want to make this the worst fucking day of your life, and she'd lose it at me. I'm being serious. So like, when it comes to Christmas, what's something you hope you get? Oh, for this? Ah, um, I don't know.

Doesn't know.

Don't know. Well, thank you. We're going on a break, guys.

We're going on a break. Uh, keep watching, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube, and we'll be right back. Hey, hey folks, hope you're enjoying this interview with Lucky. For more great interviews and great content, make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube for all the latest releases. Follow us on Instagram and like us on Facebook. And if you need a hand with your training, do visit www.melbournepersonaltrainers.com. And for the personal trainers watching, I haven't forgot about you. Visit personaltrainermentoring.com for information on how you can do mentoring with yours truly. So let's get back into it with Lucky and see you on the other side. Welcome back to the Wolf's Den. Today's guest is Lucky. We're going to be wrapping it up and talking about what he's done with his training, nutrition, and things that you've learnt recently. So Lucky, Lucky version 1 trained a certain way, now Lucky version 2 is training a different way. You said before that you're on some keto fasting.

Oh no, that's just post-comp.

That's just post-comp.

Yeah, yeah, it's really stupid.

What are you doing post-comp?

Okay, so I've never really been lean over summer. I've always been a bit of a normal, look normal, or just really fat off-season. So I've got this goal of, if any of you guys know of the Bond movies, you know when Daniel Craig was first introduced as Bond and there's a scene of him coming out of the water at the beach looking like this specimen of a man? I have this image in my head of coming out of the beach looking like a specimen of a man. And just to get my ego stroked a little bit, you know, get my hard work validated. So I, my last comp was end of October. And I was in Amsterdam a week after and I continued dieting straight through to get a bit harder and now I'm back in Melbourne and I actually have, if I was to be completely honest, almost like developed a slight eating disorder where I'm afraid to put carbs in. So I've gone keto and then I'm happy to try different things.

Are you measuring with keto? You're getting your blood glucose monitor out?

Not at all.

Pissing on the strips?

No, no, nothing like that. No, I'm just a dumb Greek. I failed year 10, failed year 12. Come on, guys. So, look, I'm gonna stop doing what I'm doing now, and next week I've actually already told myself I wanna commit to like another short, you know, 6-week diet, just get me over summer, just so I can look good, something sustainable, just something healthy and balanced whilst maintaining some cardio.

And if you run us through like a contest day for you, like if you're getting ready for a prep, like what time do you wake up, what are you eating, when are you training?

It really depends on the, where we are in the prep. So, as I said, I did 2 powerlifting comps.

What's your last 6 weeks out?

Yeah, okay, so my last powerlifting comp was 6 weeks out. Then after that point, I thought, okay, I'm just gonna commit to the bodybuilding comp now and do what I've got to do for that. Prior to that point, it was really easy. I was where I needed to be. I was doing no cardio. I was probably consuming about 200 to 300 grams of carbs.

What time does the day start for you? What time do you wake up?

Oh, really early.

What time?

6 o'clock.

So you wake up at 6.

I wake up at 6.

Are you eating, training?

Like, what's your first meal? I would wake up at 6, I would do push-ups and sit-ups, and then I would have my first meal, and then I would kind of go back to bed.

What's the meal?

I was doing 100 grams of oats with berries, almond milk, some honey, some cinnamon, 100 grams of mince with 300 grams of egg whites and some veggies.

And then you go back to bed?

For a little bit, and then I'd get up and go to the gym. I'll do my first session, then I'll train my clients, and then I'd go home. Obviously, I'd be having like— the meals that I'd have, if we're gonna be specific, after training, I would have some beef again with some sweet potato, and I would sometimes, depending on where we were, but last 6 weeks, I think that was the last carb meal. And then I had beef again with some veggies. And then I'd go home, have a nap, wake up, go back to work. And I would eat before my first client. And I was eating beef the whole time. I would eat beef again with some veggies. And then I would train about 3 or 4 clients. I would go home. I then, I had this routine that I was doing when I get home. I would do 30 minutes on my bike outside. I'd go for a walk for 40 minutes, then I'd come home, I would do half an hour of abs every night. I did abs every day twice. And push-ups.

So you just didn't like chicken, don't like chicken, don't like chicken?

No, I just—

Taste-wise or?

I just felt, I knew that there's a lot more, I'm getting a lot more bang for my buck with red meat.

So are you counting calories, macros, food weight? Do you follow a system or is that just here are the meals, this is what I'm gonna eat?

That's really, that's what it was.

So how do you manipulate the getting closer in? Is it just eliminating meals, eliminating carbs?

That's what I had my coach, he had. So I got myself to about 4 weeks out, then I said, okay, this is what I'm doing. And I'd been really just running the same thing. And like, so what I would normally do, I'd start with my diet and then I'll do my body, my skin folds every week, and then when I would need to make adjustments, I would. I didn't need to make any adjustments. I think because my, even though my calorie intake was so high, so just going back to my diet, after I'd do that 2.5 hours of work each night, I would actually eat a half a kilo steak. Now for a lot of people this might be insane. I ate half a kilo steak and as soon as I ate that, I'd eat half a kilo of mince with heaps of veggies. And then as soon as I ate that, I'm not even kidding here, right? When I spoke to Iyad at 6 weeks out and said, You need to take over. Because again, that will take stress off me. I told him what I ate. The meat, the beef, the rump, the mince, and then I'm like, and then I have about 300 to 400 grams of yogurt with berries and honey as well, and with cinnamon. He goes, you're eating all that? I said, I'm eating all that. He goes, you're getting leaner. I said, what do you want me to do? He goes, okay, he goes, I've never had anyone eat yogurt pre-contest. And I'm like, well, I always have. I've had my clients eating yogurt, you know, 'cause I got that from John Davey, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's a great way to finish off the day. It's like a treat. And he goes, okay, keep it all in. He goes, but I can't believe you're eating a kilo of red meat right before you go to bed. And that's what I did. Now when I just said to Iain, you take over, tell me what to do, as we got closer, we just kind of really eliminated the yogurt at maybe like 10 days out. But then he had me like, so literally that's what I was eating the whole time up until literally 2 weeks out where that's when the carb cycling started and the zero carb days were introduced.

So if I get this right, because this is quite an unusual plan.

Yeah.

I certainly haven't done the yogurt with any of my competitors as well, but the, the, you were eating 500 to a kilo of mince in like one sitting because you had steak.

It was the steak and the mince. And I'm being, I'm not even exaggerating here.

So how many meals a day would you be having?

I was having, I think, 6.

6, and then that last meal was like a super meal.

Yeah.

And that's just because you trained all day pretty much.

But not only, don't forget, at that point I was actually trying, I think I was training twice a day, but I was still doing that, the kilo of red meat before I was training twice a day. I've been doing the kilo of red meat for months. With the yogurt, but then I was always doing that 3 hours of cardio at night.

Wow.

Well, I call it 3 hours of cardio, but I didn't see it as cardio. So I'm on the bike for 30 minutes, going for a walk to supermarket and back, and then sit-ups and push-ups and then some posing. Altogether at night, that was between 2 to 3 hours of work.

So what time would you go to bed?

Generally like maybe 11:30, 12:00. Right. Yeah.

So it's quite a full day of just training and eating.

Well, if we refer back to earlier when I said I committed myself for 25, 26 weeks to this goal, if I had family or a full-time job, I couldn't have done it the way I did. Everything I did, was it necessary? I don't know. It's what I did, and I look better than I ever have. I was bigger than I ever have. Could I have done less and still look the same? I don't know. Could I have done less and looked better? I actually don't know. I would have to do that to know. I don't know. But all I know is that's what I did, and I end in 10 months' time apparently now I'm the best bodybuilder in Victoria. By my— the title that I have says that. I still can't believe it.

I have to ask you this.

Yeah.

Side topic.

Yes, sir.

What is Mr. Diamond Creek?

Okay, so as I was getting ready for this—

I don't know the reference.

As I was getting ready for this comp, I didn't want to— it was hard for me to say what my goal was because I kind of didn't want to come across like a wanker on on social media. So I kind of— I said that I was competing on at the 2022 Dandenong Creek International. Like, I made up something, right? It's just Dandenong Creek is like a suburb near my house. Like, Dandenong Creek. It's not even a— yeah. And so that's what I kind of use as a reference to the comp that I was doing. So there's no Dandenong Creek. It was just my reference and people knew, some people knew what I meant, but then there were other people who actually would inbox me and say, "Hey bro, where's this Dandenong Creek title?" I just thought you were taking the piss.

I'm like, "What was he like?" But then I'm like, "Wait a minute, he's from Dandenong." So maybe there was a comp once.

There's actually no Mr. Dandenong Creek, but I refer to it as the 2022 Dandenong Creek. So I even kind of separated it from the year that we're currently in. I don't know why. At the time, I just, this was a joke kind of, 'cause I stuff, I fool, I horse around a lot on social media. So I called it the 2022 Dandenong Creek, and I said, I'm gunning for the overall. And so the 2018 Victorian State Championships was essentially my 2022 Mr. Dandenong Creek.

Yeah, fantastic. So nutritionally, you kind of just planned out your meals, that's what you did. You did training-wise. I've heard stories, I think it was from Scott Goble saying once that Lucky just, like when he trains, he really just, he brings an intensity to training that—

Let me touch on that, right? When I used to train years ago, I had this reputation of being this animal in the gym. I find a low rep target really easy. You know, give me 5 plates and say get 5 reps out, yeah, any day of the week. Give me 3 plates and say get 15 reps. Alright, this is hard now. So, 'cause I was always working in a low rep bracket, hitting my targets and getting stronger, it appeared like I'm this animal. But all I was doing was hitting my targets and stopping. I never even went like hardly even close to, you know, failure. Like for me, doing 3 plates for 12-15 reps with a spot at the end, then doing a drop set, that's an animal. But when people see 5 plates and see people, other people see, or the same people see 3 plates, they just think 5 plates is an animal. For me, 5 plates is easy. Give me 3 plates with 12 reps and I'm burning out. That's, for me, that's an animal. So I think all that could be misconception. I don't think I trained as hard as what people thought, it just appeared that way.

So your training for this comp was just a lot of volume, would you say?

Volume, absolutely. But the volume increased. So when I was on the powerlifting comps, obviously there's less training frequency frequency. And unless it was a different program altogether, but when I went to the, after my last powerlifting comp, I shifted that, that kind of training. But at the same time, I realized that my performance dropped. So up until the last powerlifting comp, I was getting stronger through my whole prep. And I wasn't going to failure on anything, not even close to it. I was using it like the RPE system. So that's the, what's that called, rate of perceived exertion, and I was working at an RPE of 7 on most of my sets. So what that means, for the guys that don't know, if you do a set of 10 and I say to you, how many more reps could you have got? And you say, I could have got 3, I'd call that an RPE of 7. If you said, I could— if you could only barely get 1, well, that's an RPE of 10. That's complete exertion. So I was hardly ever close to failing. I was always working at a submaximal load with volume. And depending on the body type, you know, I separated my deadlifts from my back accessories. So I would do back, all my contract, scapula retracting, lighter weights, really focusing on squeezing, and then I would have a deadlift day. I actually had 3 lower body days. So Monday I would do all my squats, Wednesday I would do a typical, like a traditional leg workout, front squats, no back squats, so more quad-specific, hamstrings at night on all 3 days. And then on Friday I would do—

What's your go-to hamstring builders for you?

Okay, stiff leg deadlifts, I really like the dumbbell leg curl, we don't have a glute-ham raise at our gym, that's great, but more than anything, the heavy compounds.

And for you, your quads, 'cause I mean you've got very, Impressive set of quads.

Okay, so the leg exercise that I was doing, Monday would be squats, pause squats, Bulgarian split squats. Wednesday was front squats, leg press, extensions, hack squats. Just 'cause I still thought I had to do these exercises. And then Friday was deadlifts, either deficit deadlifts or block pulls. Then I would do some safety bar squats. And then in the evenings, again, I did glutes and hamstrings. Now, as I was approaching my comp, you know, my glutes and hamstrings weren't coming in. And then again, I'm like, what do I do? That's when I decided to kind of increase the volume. So I separated them quad days, those leg days into AM/PM. So I could do more volume on my hamstrings and glutes, again, thinking that they're gonna come in more. But they didn't.

Well, Lucky, it's been an absolute pleasure.

Hey, thank you so much, Mark.

What final thoughts or things do you have future steps, where people are gonna see you next on stage?

Okay, so my next— my goals, my competitive goals for this year, I plan on doing a powerlifting comp in January, end of January. I don't think my body's ready for it, so I'll be doing a powerlifting comp in April. But for bodybuilding, it's the same 3 comps next year, which should be Tony's show, the Victorian State Championships, the Nationals, and then I'll be going overseas again to the PCA World Championships in the hope of bettering my placings at those last two shows.

And if people want to get in contact with you, training—

yes, so I'm a coach and a trainer down at Next Level Fitness, and we've got a really, we've got a really good thing going on down there. And people can contact me either on Instagram message, private message, or Messenger on Facebook.

So folks, that's the interview with Lucky. I'm Mark Ottobre. My guest today is Lucky. Hatzipanopoulos. What's the last name?

Hatzipantelis. Not to be confused with Hancy Pantsless.

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