S6:E9 - Nail Your First Photo Shoot - Even If You Don’t Know Where to Start

You've been training 2, 3, maybe even 4 years, and you're wondering what the next goal is for you. You've seen those photo shoots and you've thought to yourself, that's something I want to do, but you don't exactly know where to start. So in this episode, we are going to be teaching you and unpacking how to nail and how to go about your very first photo shoot. I am joined today by the dynamic duo. I'm joined by Matthew, Or Matt Crooksy, as we call him, and Mr. Ari. But you've got a nickname for him, don't you?

Yeah, Mr. 305. I'm going by his photo shoot.

Photo— Mr. 305, that's Pitbull, huh? Yep. Yeah, so why is he being dubbed 305 Crooksy?

So Ari recently had a photo shoot, what, last week?

Last Friday.

Last Friday. Um, so recently—

I thought it was because he was Portuguese.

No, he had it last Friday. And he had it in a hotel room, so I've called it Mr. 305. So that's his new nickname.

Yeah, holiday.

Yeah, you should put that on there, a little voiceover or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, with Ari can sing it as well. Amazing. Yeah, so Ari, you very timely and obviously fitting podcast. It's like we pick and handpick our guests who we have on for the topics. So you've just done your very first photo shoot. When you first came to Enterprise, was that even a goal?

It wasn't something that popped into my mind off the top of my head. It's probably— it probably was sitting probably very deep in the back of my head and then sort of came to light as I started to make a little bit more progress with my body composition and develop a little bit more experience with my training. But it really came to fruition when I came out of my surgery the I had in the middle of last year. I was meant to run the Melbourne Marathon in October last year, and then after I had a procedure done, those plans went in the bin. And then set the goal to myself of getting into the best shape of my life before I turn 25 and before I go to Europe. What is it, next week now?

We couldn't have any chafing on that Melbourne Marathon run.

Never, never.

That's what it was, huh? Absolutely. Take down the nipples.

Got the nipple tape, got the lot.

Yeah. So let's go back, just backtrack a little bit, right? So you, you saw these— what was it? You came in, you saw the wall, you saw the website, because like your journey, and then you did the photo shoot. You said it was in the recesses. Was the photo shoot, was competing in the recesses in your mind? Was it something that you saw and thought as a kid, this is something I want to do, or was it as a teen, or was it when you started in the industry?

It's a good question. I probably wouldn't say competing off the top of my head. But the main reason I would say I chose a photo shoot, especially over competing, is that when you're competing, you're adhering to a set of criteria and appearing before judges, whereas a photo shoot allows you to be a little bit more subjective in terms of exactly how you want to look, exactly how you want to exhibit, show off your body, and get into your best shape possible, however that looks. So that part appealed to me, and I realized— probably didn't occur to me probably until after my photo shoot as to why I actually did it. A lot of people have been asking me, oh, how was the shoot? Did you enjoy it? And I was pretty, pretty nonchalant about it. I was like, yeah, it was okay, got it done. And I realized it wasn't the shoot itself that was of the most value to me, it was getting into the shape that I did. And as a personal trainer, learning that process, going through that process myself, and being coached through that process by James— shout out James— and understanding the process and being able to better administer it to my clients of my own in the future. The photo shoot for me was just a means of keeping myself accountable, giving myself a deadline, and making that investment with both my time and money to essentially be able to stick to that and not just say, oh, I'm gonna get in good shape. It's, I know this is my deadline, we've mapped that out, we have X number of weeks to achieve this, this is how we're going to do it. Take all the guesswork out of it and know that I have a set goal and milestone to work towards.

So you touch on something that's really quite pertinent, I think, which is you— and correct me if I'm wrong— but you used the photo shoot as a catalyst Because you could just say, I'm gonna get in good shape, right? And you train and you're like wandering and waving. You don't really have a set date of when you're gonna achieve like that peak physique, but you set that date and said, I'm gonna do a photo shoot on X date and I'm gonna do absolutely everything that I can and get that and use that as a catalyst to really put the heat on and see how far you could push your diet, your training, nutrition. Would that be fair to say?

Absolutely. I know that I've got a lot more progress that I want to make with regards to my own body composition going forward, but the goal for me was just to get into the best shape of my life by my 25th birthday, and that I can say that I've done. Am I satisfied with this? Absolutely not. Do I want to keep going? Absolutely. But it's the best that I've been able to achieve so far, and that's the most that you can ask of yourself at the end of the day.

You're an interesting case study because I don't know if you remember, but when he started that he couldn't squat.

Yeah.

And he couldn't deadlift and couldn't Romanian deadlift. And there was a lot of, I can't do that, my hips don't move that way. And I think during your process, I saw you squat 120 kilos for a couple of reps.

Yeah, I managed to get up to 130 in our strength block.

How many reps?

That was just for a single.

So not only are you— and I say this to highlight the fact for the folks who are doing their— they may be thinking, I can't do a photo shoot and also work on my mobility and work on my strength. But absolutely, you're an example of someone who had some hip issues and back issues and structural things going on. And the program designed with James basically addressed both the body composition, mobility, strength, and you had a very good outcome at the end, which was— now I do need to ask, was it— what was the unexpected? People who are watching this, they might be thinking, they might be on the fence going, they see the photos in our wall, like, that's a cool photo shoot, I like that one where they did that thing, whatever it may be. What for you was the unexpected?

I'm glad you asked this because probably I'd say the biggest preconceived opinion that most people have when I tell them about my shoot and when I was in the process of it and then now after having completed it, they expect that there was some— something different, something outside of the box, something miraculous that was performed in the way of training or nutrition that they want to think that they can't do themselves. They think, okay, you've achieved— you've got into photoshoot shape, you've gotten super lean, you've done all this hard training and dieting, but that's just something that, you know, is for PTs, or that's just something that you can achieve. It's not something that the, that the average Joe could do. But it couldn't be further from the truth. At the end of the day, the principles that I stuck by and was coached through regarding my training and nutrition is exactly the same as what we would administer to pretty much any of our clients, those that are looking to achieve fat loss, strength gain, lean mass. It was just a little bit harder for a little bit longer.

Yeah, I was saying, you probably heard me say this before, um, comp prep is glorified fat loss. Yeah, that's all it is. You do the fat loss principles a bit harder. And a bit longer until you get the result you want. Yeah, and that's basically— it's the same process except you just push yourself harder and longer.

It was nailing the basics for harder and for longer.

I want to ask, because I know during your time doing the, doing the preparation with James, you came across a couple of obstacles in terms of with your calories. I remember you coming up to me, or me and you were discussing, you were a bit stressed about it. What change that? So like, I know you and James built up, I think your calories up to about 4,000 during your strength block.

4,000, correct.

So yeah, you're on 4,000 calories and you got up to what, 83 kilos?

Yep.

Yeah. And where did you start at?

Starting weight at the start of my prep would have been about 74, I believe.

Yeah, so 74 kilos. So you've put on 9 kilos, you've got stronger, you've reduced your injuries as well from your back injuries and hip injuries. Now in terms of your calories, I know when he dropped you down you weren't budging. So what did you have to get down to and what did you have to do, you and Jimmy, to get you leaner and drop you down more?

It's a great question because having not gone through this process before, it was admittedly a little bit stressful for me in the first couple— first probably 4 to 6 weeks of the 16-week cut that we had devoted to to cutting. And for those first 4 to 6 weeks, we didn't see the needle move too much in the way of scale weight or even on the calipers.

Can I just stop you for a sec? Question: where did you start your calories at?

Where did I start them at? Yeah, before my gaining phase or before my cutting phase.

Just map us through the whole thing because there's a reason why I want to make a point.

Cool. So prep started around September last year. Maintenance was established, I think, at around 3,200. And long story short, over the next—

but is that where you started though, or did you work up to 3,200?

No, started about 3,200 and worked our way up to 4,000 for probably the, the final 8 weeks of my gaining phase. Once we entered the cutting phase, it was a gradual decrease, pretty much just decreasing it as we needed. We went straight back down to 3,200, and then from there, when we didn't see the needle move that much, it was pretty consistent but marginal decreases, probably down to 3, then down to 2.8. I think that spanned over about the first 4 to 6 weeks. From there, we didn't see the needle moving too much, and then by that point, we're all 10 weeks out from the shoot. And I think I was still sitting at around— I think it was 13, 14%, and we had initially set out the goal of getting to 8%. So me not having been through this process before, I was like, shit, we're cutting it fine now. James wasn't stressed. I put my faith in him. And once we started to push things a little bit more, I think after 2 weeks we got down to about 2350. After another fortnight, there's been another small drop to 2200. And the lowest we got down to during the prep on a consistent basis was 2,000. But I would probably say that first drop of about 400 to 500 calories from 2.8 to about 2.3 was when we really started to see the needle start to move. And we ended up coming in leaner than the anticipated goal. And yeah, I had a schedule.

Fantastic. So one of the points that I wanted to make on that as well is, I know people might be listening to this going, wow, Ari, I'm only eating 1,200 calories right now. And it's that thing where I always say to folks, like, if you are planning a photo shoot or planning a high-end result, you know, the calorie mountain concept, which I talk about in my book The Enterprise Diet, is you need to start at a high base. And you started at 4,000 calories, which is a really great place to start dieting someone from because there's a lot of food. And what I was saying this to someone the other day is if you've been— and there are a lot of people who think the idea of doing a photo shoot is starving themselves, right? And they just stop eating, I'm not eating any food for a week, and they get to 800 calories. How do you diet someone with 800 calories? What, do you go to 600? Everything just starts shutting down. So what, for those listening at home, what you really want to be keeping in mind is it's not a lose. People think like weight loss, for example, is if I have to lose weight. But if you're at 800 calories, it's actually a win. If you're at, let's say, 80 kilos and eating 800 calories a day and you want to get to say 70 kilos, it's a win if you can stay at 80 kilos and and get to say 1,400 calories, because then you actually have more food to diet someone down from, and metabolism, everything's switching back online. You want to get to that high point to then be able to diet someone down to be able to get top-end result. So the more food someone has— and textbook example, of course, I'd expect nothing less from the master James Kelly— is to build someone up to that super high and then diet them down. In saying that, how did you find the training? Was the training changed to How did James structure it? What did you guys do to get this photoshoot-ready physique?

I think an important, an important thing to know in all of this is within this training we had a devoted strength block, and within the goal of getting into photoshoot shape, I set the goal of entering a strength block and actually seeing how much I could build on my squat, bench, and deadlift. Not just within that, I actually hadn't deadlifted going into this prep in probably about 4 years, so It was a matter of building up my squat. It was a matter of building up my bench. But with the deadlift, it was actually just learning how to deadlift again and getting the confidence to deadlift. And I know James will— or likes to rave about me whining about, oh, I'm never going to deadlift again. I don't know how to deadlift. I can't deadlift off the floor. And long story short, within that, we progressed to me being able to deadlift off the floor. And hit a personal PB of 150, which I was ecstatic with. It's something that I still want to build on, but if you told me within that, within this prep, I'd go from not having deadlifted in 4 years to deadlifting nearly double my body weight, I'd be over the moon. So going back to the initial question, we, it was, we mapped out 40 weeks of prep from the start to the finish. We set aside 30— what is that now? It was a 16-week cut, and then within that, the rest of it was essentially just spent in a surplus gaining lean mass. And the training started by nothing out of the ordinary. Volume was pretty even across all muscle groups, and it was a pretty wide variety of rep ranges. Then leading into the strength block, rep ranges started to decrease, volume started to decrease, and essentially built up to a week of one rep max testing. After that, I think it was one week of deload, and then within the 16-week cut, we slowly began to increase and vary rep ranges a little bit more, increase volume leading into the shoot. That's probably the main things that were altered.

So you guys didn't do— did you guys do a heap of supersetting, drop setting? Time under tension techniques.

Yeah, there was plenty within that. So first couple of phases, most things were superseded, and then I would probably say the first couple of phases coming out of the strength block was when intensifiers were retained. And then those last probably 2 to 3 phases going into the shoot was when those intensifiers were stripped away as my calories were at their lowest and I was feeling my most depleted. And the focus essentially just became on focusing on one exercise at a time and getting the most out of every exercise in every set and every rep.

And cardio, we going for runs with this guy?

No, I wouldn't be able to keep up.

I was injured anyway, so that's how any of us would have any hope keeping up with you. But was there any cardio at all?

Cardio was introduced, I think, 6 weeks into my cut, so it was for the last 10 weeks of prep that that I began running twice a week on top of the 5 days of training that I was doing. I love running.

So, so that's why you did running?

That's why I chose running.

Twice a week for an hour or like 30 minutes steady state? Yeah, outdoors.

Outdoors, rain, hail, or shine.

Any rules? Were you— is it like fartlek training or like intense sprints or 400 meters? Was it just— you just ran steady state?

Just steady state.

Yeah, nice.

And yeah, no, I was gonna say that's pretty good. I've actually got a question to ask to Mark actually. Okay, it's a bit on the opposing side, so I've got a little photo here of Mark's photo shoot that he did how long ago?

Oh, that was 2017.

2017. Yeah, looking quite handsome in that photo.

Thank you.

In the snow.

Yeah, the black makeup really suits my eyes.

Had to fight off a couple of polar bears in this photo here.

Samurai.

Now I want to ask you a question. So we spoke about Ari's prep for his photo shoot. What was the— was there any difference that you did with your coach compared to what James did with Ari? Now that's what, 6 years difference? Obviously fitness changes, etc., nutrition, new things come out. Now did you do any cardio? Did you do any of this?

Shout out to my boy Reece. So Reece helped me with that. I did my own programming and he helped me like stick to a diet, which I don't always do. So for me And also I'm probably the worst person as well in some regards because I just don't eat lean meat. So even on that prep, all my meat was fat, fatty. He's like, you gotta eat lean meat. I'm not doing it. I'm not eating lean meat. I didn't have any chicken breasts. It was all chicken thigh and red meat and a lot of red meat too. What was different? Really for me, I stay relatively lean anyway. I think I got injured and that's why I switched goals. Yeah, I got injured in powerlifting. And then I'm like, all right, I'm going to do a photo shoot. And then actually, what was the trigger was my friend— shout out to Guy Cleve. Guy Cleve called me up and he's got this concept for a photo shoot. We should do this like Neo Ninja Warrior in the snow. And I didn't have any interest in competing, but when he said that idea to me, I got like super motivated. I'm like, man, that is wicked. Yeah, let's do that. And so I was like, all right, I'll get ready for this. And I started dieting down Process-wise, honestly, like as Ari said, it's glorified fat loss, right? So I think I was at a pretty big base calorie-wise. I couldn't tell you, I didn't count calories. It was really quite just— I ate the same thing every day. Like, I'd swap out my proteins. I can't remember what breakfast was, but breakfast I think was like 5 eggs, 5 full eggs, probably about 150-odd grams of rice. And then the next meal would have been probably about 100 and 200 grams, depending on weight, raw, weight cooked, but probably about 200 grams of raw meat. With probably 200 grams of sweet potato or 150 grams of rice and pretty much rinse and repeat. I don't think I've had any protein shakes in that prep either. It was all food. I think I ate about 5 meals a day and slowly built up my carbs. I think for— because it was such 6 years ago— for my high carb days, I think I ate about 300 grams of food weight. That is of some cereal, like Koala Crunch, or I think it was Koala Crunch. Um, but yeah, I, I can't actually— can't remember everything that I did. And in my training, I just took care of my own training. A lot of it was actually instinctual training, so I didn't think I was following a plan. One of my go-to for me personally for body comp is I use a pyramid method, which I start at— and this is how we do it for every exercise, basically. Not every exercise, but every body part. And these are my A's, and then I just do supplementary of what kind of I feel like I need. So like my A's would be 20 reps, so I'd go 20, 15, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, then back up to 20. In terms of myself, I'm doing like presses, I'd start at 20 and I'll just go down, go to super, one super heavy set, and then go back up to 20 reps. So I found that way I'd maintain muscle, hit those top end ranges, but that, and then I'll do a whole bunch of drop setting on my supplementaries like my Bs and Cs series as well. So that's an overview in terms of getting, doing, because I think I was actually very lean and I was sitting at about, I think on my photo shoot I was, I started at about 88 kilos and I ended up about 81, 82. So I got quite lean and I maintained muscle all throughout. But I would never recommend to do a photo shoot in the snow ever again.

It's too cold.

Dumbest thing you could do. You can't get a pump, right? So I was inside, it was warm, I was, I had a super pump, everything was ripped, veins everywhere. I'm like, yeah, this is sick. Went outside, I was like, holy shit, where did you do it? Like Mount Bulbul. So like, literally, the only way I can describe it is when you walk out, it's like having a cold shower straight away. It was like, it was negative degrees and I had my shirt off. Negative degrees in the snow. Like, the next day I got dreadfully sick, dreadfully sick. I was out for 2 weeks. That's how sick I got after the photo shoot. So there's that photo that you brought in. I've got like fake tan on, but you can see my hands, which doesn't have the fake tan, they're purple. My hands are purple because it was, it was like I was in a cold shower the whole time because you had the wind on you as well. Because look, the idea was what we're going to have— he rigged— you got this explosive guy who rigged— basically I had a sword and the guy had a pack of fake blood and the photo was going to be like, I would go like this and then he was going to explode the fake blood and we're going to get the shot. And we did get the shot. It didn't work out exactly the way we wanted But it was pretty cool and it's a novel idea. But yeah, to maintain a pump in— it's impossible. Like, it was impossible. All my veins and everything just shriveled up and I was purple. But interesting experience. Wouldn't recommend doing a photo shoot in the snow to anyone, especially with your shirt off. Particularly with your shirt off. But it was great. I think, look, I am proud of the photos. I think the photos are great. Obviously I would have looked better if there was heat and it was on the beach and stuff and I was able to maintain a pump. But yeah, for what the concept was, again, shout out to Guy Cleve. It was an amazing photo shoot with an amazing creative kind of direction that he had. But the actual shoot— and this is the other thing I'd probably say, because you had your own photographer who you went to— if you look at the photographers who you like— I love Guy's work— you went to Charles, I think. You got to pick the photographer. And like, Dan does great work too, from Sniper Shots. There's so many photographers out there, but you've got to resonate with it and go, yeah, that's inspiring to me to get— do photos with them.

Yeah, no, 100%. I think that's— look, I've never done a photo shoot myself. Would it be something that I'd do in the future?

Mate, I could see you on the beach.

I'm thinking Calvin's, a football just there. That's what I'm thinking.

I was thinking budgie smugglers with a bucket hat. Yeah, on the beach.

And maybe, yeah, some like sunnies, like some Oakley glasses. Yeah, I think that'll do me well.

Straight off of Love Island.

Yeah. You get super lean because you already walk around super—

I'm already lean. Yeah, but yeah, that's it. That being said, when I get measured, I'm usually around about 14%, 13%.

Yeah, it wouldn't take you much though.

No, I wouldn't. I think mine's more just inflammation.

Yeah, clean up your diet a bit.

Oh, mine's not bad.

Yeah, just a lot of these after games.

I have to extend on Mark's comment. I don't—

I—

it'd be hard for me to recommend that much more just generally doing a photo shoot in the cold in winter. Yes, you don't get your pumps as well when you train, but I don't think I've ever been as cold as 2 days before my photo shoot when I had to get my tan, and then I came back in here to work wearing only a baggy t-shirt and shorts when it was about 6 degrees outside, and just trying to coach people with borderline hypothermia. I would definitely say it's easier doing a photo shoot when the weather's a little bit warmer, and you'll be a little bit— you have, you'll have more options available to you because there was no chance I was ever going to be doing something outdoors.

But I'm not worse because you're lean, and because you're so lean, you're even— you feel the cold even more, like your joints feel the cold and you start shattering and shivering.

I thought this was a myth. I remember our colleague Amy— shout out to Amy Darrell— when she was going into her comp, she would say that she felt the cold so much more when she was lean. And when we're saying lean, we're talking anatomy chart lean, because only Amy can get that lean. But I brushed it off. I was like, nah, nonsense. It's just lose a bit of fat, doesn't mean you're colder. No, I was, I was proven wrong. I've never been as consistently cold in my life than when I dropped down to as lean as what I've got myself down to. You can put as many layers on as you want If you step outside and there's even the slightest cold wind, it's like they just get ripped off of you and you're out shirtless like Mark in the snow.

Yeah.

Did you have to get another tan because of your seatbelt?

No, I didn't.

So I know you came in and you looked pretty stressed, and then Tyrone was there. Yeah, he'll tell the story. So this is my—

this was my first time getting a spray tan. I went and got my tan. First time you get your tan, it's always much darker and a little bit streakier until you rinse it off. I didn't know this, and I thought the tan was the tan. So I go get my tan, I hop in the car, jump straight back in, jump straight back to work, do my day, go home. I take my top off, and I've got a nice big fat seat belt print across my newly brown body. So I'm losing my shit. I come in the next day, I'm stressed, I'm angry, and all the guys here telling me, calm down, have you rinsed yet? I'm like, no. Just rinse, you'll be okay. Sure enough, I rinse, it's nowhere near as dark because I don't know if anyone remembers that cursed Lynx ad from the late 2000s where the guy walks around, he sprays the chocolate Lynx, and then it becomes a chocolate guy, and then all the girls start trying to take bites off him. But I pretty much looked like that. But once I rinsed, I looked okay.

Happy days.

Yes, and no more seatbelt print.

Yeah, yeah, I— yeah, that's 100%.

Not as bad as Serena's was this week.

Oh, Serena. Oh my God, orange Oompa Loompa tan.

Abominable.

Another one, you took Sammy as well through a photo shoot. You had some more obstacles there.

That might be episode 2 where we're getting to Sammy, I think.

Oh yeah, okay.

So you— something to stay tuned for, for the viewer. Yes, gentlemen, I think it's probably a good place that we leave this episode for to let our viewers dive into future episodes that we have. Gentlemen, it has been an absolute pleasure. Final thoughts from either of you before we wrap up this episode?

Do a photoshoot. Set an audacious goal. If you're sitting in the back of your head, then you want to do it, so do it.

Maddie, train hard, eat well, supplement smart.

That's my line. Where can the folks find you, Ari?

So you can find me at Enterprise, or you can find me on Instagram at coach.ario.

And you, Mr. Matthew?

Yeah, Enterprise Fitness, or @mattcrookspt on Instagram.

And my name is Mark Ottobre, owner and founder of Enterprise Fitness. And if you want the secrets to a photo shoot ready body or a long-term transformations, I highly suggest you check out my newly released book. It is entitled The Enterprise Diet, and it has the secrets. And as Ari and Matt, we were unpacking today about the philosophies, techniques, and systems that we use to get our clients photo shoot ready lean and keep it all year round. So I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode. Make sure wherever you're listening to it, you hit subscribe. And till next episode, train hard, eat well, and supplement smart.