Britain’s #1 Fitness Model Shares His Bodybuilding Secrets - Ryan Terry

Ryan Terry is a professional bodybuilder, fitness model and IFBB Pro. The realm of competitive bodybuilding demands extreme discipline that most people admire but few understand. Just what does it truly take to rise to the top of this sport? And how much do you have to sacrifice in the pursuit of excellence? Expect to learn the origins of Ryan's bodybuilding career, his top 10 best exercises for muscle growth, why he chooses to not monitor his blood levels, who fuels his motivation and serves as his role model, why he transitioned away from the relentless tracking of every fitness metric, the morning routine that has propelled him to become the UK's number 1 physique competitor and much more... Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark’s products at https://bit.ly/sharkwisdom (use code: MW10) Get 10% discount on Marek Health’s comprehensive blood panels at https://marekhealth.com/modernwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Get over 37% discount on all products site-wide from MyProtein at https://bit.ly/proteinwisdom (use code: MODERNWISDOM) Extra Stuff: Follow Ryan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ryanjterry/ Get my free Reading List of 100 books to read before you die → https://chriswillx.com/books/ To support me on Patreon (thank you): https://www.patreon.com/modernwisdom #fitness #bodybuilding #muscle - 00:00 Intro 00:30 What Drives Ryan to Compete? 08:38 Challenges of Turning a Hobby into a Profession 17:02 How to Stay Driven When You’ve Reached the Top 24:17 Ryan's Top 10 Exercises 34:58 Ryan’s Morning Routine 41:42 Running a Blood Testing Business 46:08 Experiences of Fatherhood 52:56 Insights on Nature Vs Nurture 59:30 What’s Next for Ryan? - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Chris Williamson?

  How do you describe what you do?

• 0:06Speaker 01

  So I'm a professional athlete and yeah, sponsored athlete as well.

• 0:12Chris Williamson?

  In what category?

• 0:13Speaker 01

  So I compete in men's physique, which is a bodybuilding class. And that transitions from athletic look, but as the years have gone on, it's got more and more muscular.

• 0:28Chris Williamson?

  What drives you to do what you do? Why do you choose to do this sport that involves starving yourself down to an incredibly low body fat? That involves off seasons, you took an entire off season where you didn't even compete for basically a year and a half in order to be able to come back. Why, why choose that sport?

• 0:46Speaker 01

  So for me, just a bit of background about myself. I was all, I was always brought up around sports. I was very competitive growing up. I was football, gymnastics and swimming and golf. And it was my life, that competitive edge. I had an older brother and older sister who I always used to compete with at home. It never, never stopped. And basically when I came into my teenage years, around the age of 14, I started to develop a complex about the way I looked. A bit of body dysmorphia, shall we say? And I started to join a gym because for me, I thought training my body, making sure that I'm got six pack, looking good, feeling good, that all gonna help with confidence.

• 1:29Chris Williamson?

  Just rolling it back a little bit there, where do you think that body dysmorphia came from? Because we're basically the same age and you know, we didn't have the same levels of comparison. Certainly at the age of 14, Facebook didn't even exist. There was no Instagram, there was no YouTube really. What, what caused the onset of that?

• 1:45Speaker 01

  I think for me, it's funny because me and my siblings have spoke about this before because we all had the same type of complex, but we don't know why we had a great upbringing. I didn't have a father figure in my life and didn't know my dad for about 10 years growing up in that same period. So whether that was a deciding factor, we didn't have a lot of money, all that kind of stuff. We never went without, we just never had the best of the best. But we had a brilliant upbringing, shall we say, it was not an unhappy upbringing.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  But yeah, I don't know, we always just felt there was something missing or always. And when I, I think when I was 14, obviously girls came on the scene and it became more. I became more aware of myself. I think up until that point, I was just so fixated on sports, playing, just being a kid. And I think at the age of fourteen, I had to start work. I was pot washing at the age of fourteen, waitressing at the age of forty.

• 2:40Chris Williamson?

  Was that to contribute for paying for the house and stuff for the family?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yep. So I paid rent, paid board.

• 2:46Chris Williamson?

  From the age of fourteen?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  From the age of fourteen, I was thirty five pounds and I earned probably fifty. And that was every night I worked. On a Saturday, I did removals, furniture removals. On a Sunday, I did pot washing all day. And then, yeah, my mom used to take thirty five pounds. The moment I got to sixteen, I was paying fifty pounds. So.

• 3:06Chris Williamson?

  Okay, right. The wage increases are really hitting me hard.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Oh, it did hit me hard. So we had to, so I didn't have an option of going on to sixth form or anything like that. We, I went straight into an apprenticeship. And yeah, I learned the value of money and hard work early on. But yeah, whether that gave me a complex or not when I was younger, I don't know. But from when I was fourteen, I decided I needed to change things. I was, I wouldn't say I was overweight, but I just, I felt like I was in my head and I was always looking around. At school, I never understood why I was the guy who used to wear a white t-shirt under his shirt, wear a jumper and a coat to try and hide himself in the middle of summer. And I was like, you're crazy. But that was just something I always did and never knew why or understood it.

• 3:51Speaker 01

  So yeah, so I started training and I saw my body changing quite quickly. And yeah, I became obsessed with the gym and trying to learn how to, the nutrition, learn my way around nutrition.

• 4:02Chris Williamson?

  What did you do as a young guy who was trying to find his way in the world?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:07Chris Williamson?

  You know, I think it was less confusing when we were growing up than it is now, but still not totally, like, the guardrails weren't exactly there. Given the fact that you have this decade without a father figure, did you find yourself trying to supplement that with other male role models? Did you look up to other people for inspiration? Where did they come from?

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. So my brother is two years older than me and he was kind of like the head of the house, kind of. He was, my sister's older as well. So I kind of grew up a couple of years older than, like with people older than me. So. Kind of bit of ahead of my time. The time I was eighteen, I was thinking about having my own house, my own business. When really shouldn't be thinking like that eighteen, you should be still being a kid, good on your lads holidays, all that kind of stuff. But for me, he was always a role model for me, but he went in the army at sixteen, so he left. When I was fourteen, he left and that for me felt like it's my time, I need to to fill his shoes and and grow up and so. So so maybe that was, yeah, forced me to be more.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Down another path and when I joined the local gym, it was a backstreet bodybuilding gym, very hardcore. And the guys in there made me work for it, but so I was the little guy just walking around, the little teenager who was just thought that I was going to be gone in six months. But I earned their trust, I earned their respect from training every day there. And and yeah, they took me under their wing and that's how I fell into bodybuilding and I used to watch them training. And I trained with super heavyweight bodybuilders, three hundred and fifty pound guys, massive, massive weights. But I always loved their dedication and I always resonated with that because of that's the sports side of of me, the competing side, sorry. So when competing came up and they said, why don't you try it?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  I was looking at it thinking, I don't have the confidence to take my top off and step on stage. I was an apprentice plumber working on site, never used to do my hair, would never take my top off in a million years. But there was something telling me to face my fears, there was something saying, step out of your comfort zone and see if you can do what these guys all around you every day are doing. And and that was doing a bodybuilding show, dieting down and I just, I loved, I wasn't inspired by the the size of them. I was just inspired by the way they they lived their life, how how regimented they were, how dedicated they were, how competitive they were, how they had a goal. And for me, I wanted to try it just once and that was my goal, just to try it once. So I didn't tell anybody, just in case I I backed out at the last minute.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  But I started diet dieting alongside these guys for this show. And I saw this show came up and it was the closest to me because. It was only like an hour and a half down the road, Leamington Spa, and I didn't realise, but this show was a national qualifier. It was a big show, but I just assumed it was a small regional show. And then, yeah, dieted down, didn't tell anybody, registered the night before. And I got down there on the day and I was like this backstage shaking like mad. I was like, what am I doing? What the hell am I doing? Like, I'm a plumber. I should not be doing this. And then, yeah, stepped on stage and I don't know what it was. I became somebody else. My alter ego came out. I was walking on stage like this and the moment the lights hit me and I came out onto stage, I was like, no, you've done

• 7:21Speaker 01

  all the hard work. You deserve to be here. Now it's time to battle. And that's how I took it. It was like it was a sport and the feeling of winning and obviously that-

• 7:30Chris Williamson?

  You won that first show?

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And that elation of getting first place and then-

• 7:34Chris Williamson?

  Hooked for life.

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, unbelievable.

• 7:36Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that your sport could have been replaced by basically anything else? Like, it was, it seems to me like it's competition, it's hard work, it's being disciplined, it's having a goal and working toward it. It didn't really seem like it's that much about the bodybuilding itself. It's about pushing yourself.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. But because I was instilled to work, constantly work, the sports I was doing at the time was like golf and I got down to the enough scratch handicap. And those type of sports were taking four or five hours out of the day, which for me was my working day. Whereas training was a necessity for me because I needed to transform my physique and that's what helped with my self-confidence. So that wasn't an option not to train. So if I was to do a sport, it would have been bodybuilding and another sport. Whereas bodybuilding fell into both categories. I could keep my confidence and, yeah, my self-confidence all, but at the same time still have that competitive drive at something.

• 8:38Chris Williamson?

  We spoke before we got started about the challenges that you face if you become too obsessive with tracking. Now, whether you're looking at wearables, whether you're looking at the quantified self-movement, whether you're looking at getting blood panels done, biohacking.

• 8:55Chris Williamson?

  I imagine that the level that you're performing at, which is the biggest in the world, there's only one title that you haven't won yet, am I right in saying, which is the?

• 9:02Speaker 01

  The Olympia, the Mr. Olympia, yeah.

• 9:04Chris Williamson?

  So there is one title left, basically on everything on the planet that you haven't yet got.

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:09Chris Williamson?

  So you have probably worked with the best coaches in terms of training, in terms of posing, in terms of nutrition, in terms of sleep, recovery, rest, mindset, all that stuff.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:18Chris Williamson?

  Which also probably will have opened up access to all manner of quantified self ideas and stuff. What has your journey been going from eating to feel, training to feel, obsessive tracking, using the wearables, not using the wearables, and what are the lessons that you've taken away from that?

• 9:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for me, when I started obviously competing in the early days, it was just about the enjoyment of it and for self-confidence. It wasn't about

• 9:47Speaker 01

  building a career out of it. I didn't realise I could build a career from it. I just did it for the enjoyment and it kept me on a level where I was happy. So whilst ever I was in prep and enjoying the whole process of training and just having that accountability every day, I was happy and my best results and the growth of my career happened so fast when I was in that state of mind. And again, if you look back at them, I was very relaxed in how I trained. So it was all about how I feel, how I pump up my strength, tiredness, all these basic things on how I feel. Just being at one with myself, like looking in the mirror, thinking, right, things need to change. I need to work on this. I'm not feeling great today. Do I need more sleep? Right, I'm not feeling strong.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  We're going to back off the heavy weight sets. We're going to look for more time under tension or more volume sets just to go off how I feel. But as I grew and got more and more

• 10:44Speaker 01

  more competitive in the bodybuilding career and winning more titles.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Teams came on, teams wanted to help, they wanted to know your body fat, they wanted to know all these other things and I let them come on and it became, I don't know, it was unenjoyable for me because it was taking away why I started it and why I did it, which was again for self-confidence and enjoyment of it and every day we're waking up and we were tracking this, we were weighing this and it just, it took it away from me and it just became monotonous and a job for me and I'm obsessed with bodybuilding, I love it, but it's a lifestyle, 365 days a year, I've done this for the last 20 years and I enjoy it, but when I went through that stage, I lost enjoyment and that for me was a big thing and if you look over my career and my placings, I had a two-year lull and it was because of

• 11:33Speaker 01

  that, because I just, I was answering to other people, I lost confidence in myself because I was thinking, I don't know the answer to this, or do I need to change this, well, do I take this food out, or, oh no, there's a variable here, what do I do, whereas normal, normally and now, I just adapt accordingly because I know my body and as I'm getting older, my metabolism is changing, but that's the beauty of bodybuilding, like everything changes from time to time.

• 11:58Chris Williamson?

  The interesting thing that I've been playing with as well since starting doing this show,

• 12:05Chris Williamson?

  you start off doing something that you love, right, and you end up being competent at it, or semi-competent at it, and then you start to work a little bit harder and you think, wow, I'm accruing more gains than I feel like I should be, you know, your first show, you shouldn't have won your first show, like most people don't, by definition. And then you go, okay, well, I'm going to lean into this more and then, as you said, you get the opportunity, maybe I could turn this into a profession, maybe I could start to labour around this, but one of the quickest ways that you can destroy your love for something is to turn it into a labour.

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 12:36Chris Williamson?

  And most of the people from the outside, this is There's a concept called ikigai, right? Which is your calling in life. It's at the intersection of what you're good at, what society needs, what you can be paid for and what you love to do. Right? So you can imagine you've got this Venn diagram and right in the middle, that's where your highest point of contribution is between all of those things, presumably because you need to be supported by it. Most people that start doing something that they absolutely love, they're a painter, they play the guitar to themselves, they do whatever, don't realise what on the other side of turning that into a job would perhaps cause a lot of the things that they love about their love to fall away.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:15Chris Williamson?

  And all of these unseen costs to come through, all of the travel, all of the additional time away from friends and family, the obligations that you need to do for people like Jim Shark, for your supplement company, et cetera, et cetera.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:27Chris Williamson?

  Those start to stack up because you go, well, I'm not, I'm no longer being supported by being a plumber, by being on site, by doing these things.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:33Chris Williamson?

  And then on top of that, you have like, you have the existential pain of, well, if I fail, when it's just my thing on the side, it doesn't matter. I'm still a plumber, I'm still a father, I'm still a friend, I'm still a whatever.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:46Chris Williamson?

  But if I am my pursuit.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Chris Williamson?

  And I fail at my pursuit.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:50Chris Williamson?

  That means that I am a failure, right? There is no more existential distance between what you, how you show up in the world in your chosen pursuit.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:59Chris Williamson?

  And who you are.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:00Chris Williamson?

  And that, that pressure for a lot of people is really crippling.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:07Chris Williamson?

  And it's, it's something that getting through it, it seems like it is, was a challenge.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was. And the thing is, when we talk about training as well, you know, even down to the training aspect of it, a lot of people now have logbooks and they track everything, which if that works for that individual, I'm all for it. I think fantastic. And if you enjoy that process, but I'm on the other side of it. I'm very sporadic. I like to go in and how it feels on the day. And I know how to push my body through its limits and to its limits. So for me, I've learned that over the years. And whenever I try to implement something like that, too much structure, I lose that enjoyment, which I'm actually being counterproductive because for me, that's just how I've always worked in business. I'm a lot more.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  More productive now when I free flow and some people I've spoke to people who are so anal and about that they just can't comprehend it.

• 15:01Chris Williamson?

  But it works for them.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, but for me the opposite way around, I can't comprehend that.

• 15:05Chris Williamson?

  So I come from a productivity background. When we first started this podcast, a lot of it was about productivity because I was adamant that the right note taking app and external brain system would fix all of my problems.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:15Chris Williamson?

  Spoiler alert, it didn't, but I tried really, really hard to have this perfect note taking system and it would all be nested and the notion database would be updating all this stuff and I would use my getting things done to do list reminders.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:29Chris Williamson?

  And I found it stressful. I found it very arduous to try and construct my life using this. And now I'm looking at my notes in front of me, 2,563 notes, which we've got on on Apple Notes, which is what we use. The most basic bitch thing that my mum probably uses to remind herself of her shopping. My point being that whatever the system is that you get into using.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:49Chris Williamson?

  Has to work for you and trying to follow on from someone else's prescription, the model of this is how it's supposed to work. It's very easy, especially in 2023, to say, well, going more quantified, going more aggressive with your tracking, especially stuff like heavy app and all of these weight tracking apps, they'll do your like pounded across an entire workout across a week about RPEs, you can do drops, you can add everything in, right? Time, rest periods. For some people, that's great. For other people, that's not.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  But don't you think in especially with bodybuilding, there's so many variables, there's too many variables that that can change from day to day. So when people track, I think, how can you track like so specific? Because if you've had eight hours sleep one day, if you had 10 hours another day, that two hours difference in sleep will make a huge difference. For me, it does. I know it's so I can.

• 16:39Chris Williamson?

  What do you try and get in terms of sleep a night?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  I've got a two year old.

• 16:43Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Right out the window. But I would love eight hours, but now I'm up at four, half four most mornings. I do an hour work and then I do my cardio, my fasted cardio after that at half past five and then the house is awake from six. So.

• 16:57Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a crazy morning.

• 16:59Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  We'll go into that.

• 17:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So one of the things I'm interested in, you know, you are. Getting toward like the peak of your career now with regards to marrying business, still doing the thing that got you famous.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:13Chris Williamson?

  All of your obligations. You're living in the UK, which is a great country, but does have a little bit of a cap in terms of the ceiling of success. Right. You are far and away probably the best known physique competitor coming out of the UK.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:27Chris Williamson?

  How have you managed to keep your goals growing with you?

• 17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:33Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that you're outstripping pretty much all of your competition. The reason I say this is that there will be a lot of people listening. By definition, they're listening to this kind of a podcast that means that they're already selected out into the top 0.1% of people thinking about personal development, thinking about improving themselves.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:50Chris Williamson?

  How can someone, how did you and how can someone who doesn't necessarily have that community of competitors and encouragement around them, wherever they live.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:00Chris Williamson?

  Continue to push themselves as their goals get bigger as they progress.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  That's a hard question, that is.

• 18:06Chris Williamson?

  How did you do it? So why, why were you so driven? Given the fact that you kept on beating everybody, why were you so driven?

• 18:12Speaker 01

  So for me, I was always driven to be number one in the world. And until I get that title, until I've won the Olympia, in my eyes, I've not, I'm not the best in the world. I'm not, I've not achieved what I've set out to achieve. So everything I've ever set out to achieve in this industry, I've achieved so far other than the Olympia. So my goal was always every show I've ever done to never do a lesser show in prestige. So that was how I grew quite quickly because I was very strategic on, in, in the, the shows I did. I did my research before and I wanted to be known straight to, I wanted to go against the best straight away. I wasn't someone who wanted to just make the numbers up or have an easy qualification, easy route to Olympia.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  I wanted to go against the best as quick as possible to know my worth and to know if I'm good enough to be up there. Because again, I, I want to win shows. I don't want to be there just to, to make the numbers up. And that always drove me. So I was very fortunate early on. I was like, say, I was the first pro from the UK for, I held first pro from Europe, held that for five, six years before anyone else. It was me against the Americans for so long. And that was just a driving force in itself. I felt like I had the UK behind me, pushing me and pushing.

• 19:24Chris Williamson?

  Pressures and expectations of an entire nation. Very good.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  But it was phenomenal. I loved it. And even now I still have that drive. But I'm realistic because. I have other obligations with family now and I know I need to provide for them and I know I need to um always be there for them. I don't want to be a selfish dad. I want to be the best um husband I can to my wife. So things change along the way and it has become so much harder now. But if I want it, which I do, I will, I'll keep going and just keep finding a route. And that's how I like to do. I don't overthink it. I need to be ready in six week or seven weeks time uh for my next show. It's not been announced yet. The things I'm doing now, I've got five businesses and obviously a young family. I've got my wife who's pregnant, who's due in three months.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  And I'm doing something huge project to do, which I can't talk about. There is so much at stake here.

• 20:13Chris Williamson?

  I know what it is. I know, I know what the project is. It's pretty cool.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  But I thrive off it. I absolutely love it. And if if I didn't have that, I would go insane. That's I've always worked at such a high capacity because it's the only way I know how. I think because of that work ethic being instilled from the age of fourteen. If I get too complacent, I get, I get stuck, I lose my head and I need to be constant.

• 20:36Chris Williamson?

  What happens if it's three years from now and you still haven't won Mr. Olympia?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good question. It's hard to say because people assume I'm older than I am because one, because I talk, I'm very monotonous and old boy.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  But two, because I've been in in the industry so long. We were talking before, I had a guy yesterday come up to me and say, I was looking at your front cover magazines for muscle and fitness in two thousand nine. Wow, that's fourteen years ago, like, and I remember that like it was yesterday and it's just crazy to think, but I was very successful in my my early days, so from eighteen, nineteen, I came onto the scene. So now I'm competing against guys who are still two, three years older than me, winning the Olympia. So I don't want to be a guy who's stuck around thinking, God, he's still here after like fifteen years. But at the same time, whatsoever, I've still got that drive and that hunger and that passion for that that first place. I'll keep go, I'll keep going. Um.

• 21:35Chris Williamson?

  If it gets, if it gets to that stage, if you're like, I'm now thirty eight, thirty nine, forty, forty one.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Then you.

• 21:44Chris Williamson?

  How, how difficult is it going to be for you to let that go if you haven't won that title?

• 21:48Speaker 01

  So me, Ross Edgley, I've actually spoken in detail about this because that is my fear. I'll, I'll admit this now is, I don't know, because competing satisfies that, that competitive side of me. I don't know what I'll do when it's over because I never did it for the fame or for the popularity or anything like that. It was always about, yeah, satisfying that hunger for competitiveness. So when that stops, and my wife said the same, you need to start to think about it now and start to address it because, yeah, I tried to have a year out, like I say, last year. And the reason I had that year out was I was thinking, it's time for me to stop or to, to kind of, because we had a child on the way and all that kind of stuff. And

• 22:32Speaker 01

  I've got five businesses to run. I was trying to fill that competitive void with businesses and trying to keep me busy. That's it. But I couldn't, like, I, I just love competing. I love being in that regimented state and that, that fire to compete against other athletes. It just, yeah, I'm not sure what I'm going to do, to be honest.

• 22:54Chris Williamson?

  I think that one of the best examples of this, which I always use is Eddie Hall, right? So, you know, Eddie gets very close to winning World's Strongest Man. He doesn't. He's sort of pipped at the post. And then he does, and he's there stood with this trophy in his hand and he's crying for his grandma, I think, that's recently passed away. And he retires, he retires there and then. And I don't know, man, I, I would like to think that when you do end up winning that trophy, you should be able to go out with a lot of grace and go, okay, like, what's the next challenge?

• 23:31Speaker 01

  That's for me though, sorry to interrupt, but that's for me. I would be happy to win. People say, yeah, but would you? Would you? You'd want to start a legacy and would you want to win it again and again? I wouldn't. Now, for me, once I've achieved, like I say, I've, I've won every show I've won. I have no desire to go back and win that again, even though they are really prestigious shows. It's another year on. You'd get the popularity, you'd get the prize money. You'd get all of that with, with, with winning that show again. But for me, I've done that. It's in the past. I don't have that same drive for that show like the Arnold Classics. So why did you do three Arnold Classics? Because you say you don't, you want to do a show that you've done. Because I want, I wanted to be the first one in the UK. I wanted to be the first in Europe and the first in the USA. So that was three different Arnold Classics in three different continents, what, uh, countries, sorry, which no one else has done.

• 24:16Chris Williamson?

  Okay, let's say you are someone who has spent the last 20 years focusing on training, especially for hypertrophy. You are someone that has won pretty much every single title on the planet. You have 10 exercises that you can do for the rest of your life in order to maintain as good of a physique as you can. What are they and why?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  10, that's very specific.

• 24:39Chris Williamson?

  10. I just figured, I just figured that that would be enough for you to get each different muscle group.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Right, okay.

• 24:44Chris Williamson?

  So what are the, what are the longest levers that you can pull when it comes to maintaining size or increasing size?

• 24:51Speaker 01

  So a lot of obviously compound lifts. So you're looking at your deadlifts, uh, your bench press. Um, and your squats, they're always good. Again, these are things what I've, I've had to adapt over the years because of, um, injuries and things. Training's silly when I was younger.

• 25:05Chris Williamson?

  Okay, there's three.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  There's three there. Um, hanging leg raise for core. It's one of the hardest midsection. If you do it properly, I think it's one of the hardest, uh, midsection exercises, but it's phenomenal for your transverse abdominis, your upper and lower abdominals, everything. Just, it's a great. I, I feel like that was something that helped me build my, my midsection.

• 25:26Chris Williamson?

  You've got one of the like acclaimed best midsections in all of fitness. What are the cues that people get wrong when they're doing hanging leg raises?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  So the create momentum, the swing, which, um, I think that has a bit to do with CrossFit with this kipping and malarkey and momentum stuff that, that came into play a fair few years ago. But, um, yeah, I think swinging, um, I think using the hip flexors instead of the, the midsection.

• 25:49Chris Williamson?

  How do you know if you're doing that?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  You'll feel it. You'll feel it down your quads. Um.

• 25:54Chris Williamson?

  What's the cue? Someone's doing a, someone's listening to this, hanging from a bar right now. What is the cue for them to go from, I'm hanging straight to I'm doing a leg raise? That makes it work appropriately.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  So is it tucking the hips in and making sure you're contracting your upper and lower abdominals before anything else? So it's always keeping them fully contracted. My muscle connection is a huge thing. I believe in that so much.

• 26:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Mike Thurston does the same.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the thing is, the last few years, I've done that so much more now. As I've got older and more mature, I'm not just trying to lift heavy weight and trying to ego lift. And since I've done that, the muscle maturity and how my body's developed is just exponential. I just wish I'd done it five, six years ago. So yeah, so I think that's very important, mind to muscle connection.

• 26:38Chris Williamson?

  With hanging leg raises, are you going to an L? Are you going up to touch the bar?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  So either. So I used to do all the way to the top, but I alternate now. So I just do a bit of both. I think there's a place for both of them, but I think that when you go past a certain point, you are recruiting other muscle groups. So if you want to just isolate your midsection, just go to 90 degrees.

• 26:58Chris Williamson?

  How do you do progressive overload on that? Or do you?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Well, you could add weights to you.

• 27:03Chris Williamson?

  Do you?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  I don't personally, because I was obsessed with my midsection growing up. As you say, Rob Richards was the guy who got me obsessed with it. So I wanted to be on the front covers like Rob was. I used to see all the magazines. And I try to treat my midsection like any other muscle part. Some, a lot of people think with the midsection, you should train 30 minutes after every session. Or why? Every other muscle part we train, we train to break the muscle fibers down heavy, a lot of load. We break the muscle fibers, we let them recover two, three, four days before we hit them again. And that's how I looked and viewed my midsection. So I'd give them two full hour sessions with a three to four day rest between. And I'd six to eight range, really heavy.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  The thing with that, I start to develop really chunky abs, blocky abs. But it, and then it started to look a bit distended because I'd gone too far with it. And I was causing so many back problems. I had slipped discs from it. And basically it's because I was too front heavy, too front strong. So it took a lot of years to start having to hyperextend. For every crunch I did, they said I had to do two hyperextensions.

• 28:12Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  So yeah, it was.

• 28:13Chris Williamson?

  You needed to compensate for all of that anterior strength that you developed.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  And so now I don't tend to go too heavy and we do a lot of own body weight stuff.

• 28:21Chris Williamson?

  Okay, cool. So you've got four. You've got squat, bench, deadlift.

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:25Chris Williamson?

  Hanging leg raises, six more slots to keep your body.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  So I'd go with some isolation work. So we'll probably go with like an incline dumbbell chest. Just because you can do a lot of different variations on that, but I think it's great for development.

• 28:44Chris Williamson?

  Shoulders aren't getting much work at the moment.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  All right, shoulder press. We'll go with a dumbbell shoulder press because it's great for isolation, unilateral. And that's quite important. Obviously leg work. So we need to do some hamstring work. So we'd do. I would, I would say stiff leg deadlift, but no, I think if we're going to try and create some growth, I think we're going to go for like a lying hamstring curl heavy.

• 29:12Chris Williamson?

  You prefer a lying to a seated?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  I do, yes. Yeah, I do. But I don't know if that's down to the fact I just get better contraction off that. I think it's personal preference in my eyes. I've always said that with any type of exercises, if you feel an exercise more than another, stick with it, go with it. Do the extra sets and reps on that particular exercise because that's where you're going to get the most out of it. If you're doing an exercise because someone else has told you to do it and you're not getting that much connection or you're not feeling it. There's no point. And that's, that's what I love about bodybuilding as well. Nutrition and training, you adapt it to you. It's, it's an individual sport. You can have people around you supporting you. But your metabolism and the way you train, the way you eat, it all falls on you. So learn the body yourself and adapt as you go.

• 29:58Chris Williamson?

  Okay, three left. What have you got?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  I've lost where we are now.

• 30:02Chris Williamson?

  Squat, bench, deadlift, hanging leg raise, incline chest press with dumbbells, shoulder press.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Seated calf raise.

• 30:10Chris Williamson?

  Seated calf raise. Oh, so you want to get the soleus moving?

• 30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll get them in.

• 30:14Chris Williamson?

  Okay, okay.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  We'll cover them. And then.

• 30:17Chris Williamson?

  Two left.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  We need overhead tricep extension rope.

• 30:23Chris Williamson?

  Uh pivoted from the bottom of a pulley.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:25Chris Williamson?

  Right. Okay. Yeah. What are the cues that people get wrong there? Because this is something that I absolutely love to do. But where, where do people go wrong? Quite mechanically, quite a complex movement.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you can go too heavy too soon and start recruiting and start, yeah, pulling. I don't know with the shoulder. I think it's, it's important to lock your elbows in a fixed position as well as the shoulder, make sure there's no movement there. I like to elongate and stretch it out. Not a lot of people go too far with it, but I like to overextend slightly to get a full stretch. Um, and a full contraction at the top. Um.

• 30:56Chris Williamson?

  One more.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  We need biceps, don't we? Then we've got everything then.

• 31:00Chris Williamson?

  What's your number one bicep exercise?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  What is my number one vice? You know, I'm going to say, I'm going to say, um, this is a bit of an outward one this. Cause I've done loads of them today is, um, pull ups, close grip pull ups. I know it's a back workout, but your secondary muscles, bicep, and the contraction I get off that for my bicep. Every week I hit them. I always want to bring my back up anyway. So it's an excuse to just hit the back as well. But I think that's a great overall exercise.

• 31:31Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that you've added deadlifts in, what is it that you're finding as a physique competitor that first off, isn't massively judged on your legs? And secondly, wants a narrow torso?

• 31:42Chris Williamson?

  Why would you put deadlifts into that kind of a workout?

• 31:44Speaker 01

  So I've never believed this with, I don't know if scientifically this is right, but with deadlifting, I've never, I used to deadlift every week. Uh, I don't so much now. I do a lot more isolation on hyperextension again, because I get a better contraction. I do hypers. I prefer to deadlift, but I do hypers mainly, but with a deadlift, um, obviously recruits near enough every muscle in the, in the body. So it's great for, for an overall workout, but, um, I've lost my train of thought. What were we saying?

• 32:11Chris Williamson?

  Why are you using deadlifts given that you want to have a small waist?

• 32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, like I say, because I train my midsection the way I do, I do a lot of isotension in the morning.

• 32:18Chris Williamson?

  What's that?

• 32:20Speaker 01

  So it's basically all about ISO holds. So you breathe in, fully breathe in, you exhale every bit of air out of the body. And you crunch your abs as hard as you can for three seconds.

• 32:31Chris Williamson?

  Standing up?

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Standing up. Yeah.

• 32:33Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  You can do that with any muscle part. So I, it's the most monotonous thing a bodybuilder can do. But it's one of the best things for, for muscle control, for getting everything tight, for condition. I challenge anybody to do this. So do, we'll, we'll keep it simple. Three. Three from the front, three from the sides, you've got three on the bleaks on either side. So you've got, so you inhale, hands over your head, as you come down, you crunch, you exhale every bit of air out, you crunch and hold it for three seconds as hard as you can. It's good to have your top off because you need to seriously tense. Do it again and crunch, try and do that 10 times and then go to the side and then crunch down, hold, and then do that 10 times and then do that 10 times, have 30 seconds rest, go again and then go again.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  I do it five rounds and you're literally dripping wet through and the blood volume you get in your midsection is insane. So you can do that with like with your biceps or between exercises. So if you're doing a, yeah, like a bicep curl, you go straight in, you hold your pose, a double bicep and you hold, you squeeze your midsection, you squeeze your biceps as hard as you can for 20 seconds, say. You come out and then you go straight back into your working set. It is brutal, but if you ever see on a bodybuilding stage when people are like they're shaking because they've got no connection, they've got no control of their biceps.

• 33:53Chris Williamson?

  Is that why that happens?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there's other, there's other factors what can happen.

• 33:56Chris Williamson?

  Dehydrated, they're tired, et cetera, et cetera.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  But nine times out of 10, that will be down to the fact they've not done any iso holds or they've not took the time with their posing to practise their posing. And that's something I always pride in myself and I remember the first few shows I did on the Olympia stage, we're all, we're all back hitting from the back and the guys are going, Ryan, how are you holding that? How are you holding that? Because everyone's shaking and it's because eight weeks out from any show, 30 minutes after my fasted cardio, I'll do iso holds with every, every pose I have to do and every muscle group. So it's horrendous, but these are the things that people don't see. These are like, so when you look at bodybuilding, oh yeah, you eat some meals and you train twice a day.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  But it's the, it's the little things, it's the, what I've, I obsess over because it's okay having a great work ethic like in the gym or having the discipline to eat your six meals and not cheat. But it's also the other bits of presentation which is so important.

• 34:57Chris Williamson?

  What's your morning routine? Take me through it from waking up, what time, what do you do? What are you eating? What are you drinking? What movements are you going through?

• 35:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, so typically around five o'clock we get up. I do a black coffee. I'll go down, I'll have EAAs and L carnitine and that's like 15 minutes before I go and do my

• 35:15Chris Williamson?

  The oral L carnitine or injected?

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Oral, yeah, oral, through liquid, liquid form. And then 15 minutes after that, I'll go and do an hour fasted cardio. So 30 minute cross trainer, 30 minute incline walk.

• 35:28Chris Williamson?

  What sort of heart rate is on to?

• 35:31Speaker 01

  Again, I don't look at that now. That's, I'm very basic in that. It's a low intensity. It's nothing too strenuous in that way. I'll do 30 minute core work or it's either 30 minute core work or 30 minute stretch mobility work after that hour. And then it's 30 minutes posing. So you do your

• 35:50Chris Williamson?

  What time is it now?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  So that is seven o'clock ish, half seven.

• 35:54Chris Williamson?

  Wow. Okay. So it's a very regimented morning.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:57Chris Williamson?

  Okay, seven o'clock.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then half seven, I'll go in, I'll have

• 36:02Speaker 01

  yeah, massive breakfast, but to most, most people it's massive, but for me it's nothing but

• 36:07Chris Williamson?

  What does that typically consist of?

• 36:08Speaker 01

  So I'll always make sure my first meal has every source of protein. So we've got a good source of protein, bioavailable protein. We've got so like a whey protein or whey isolate. We've got complex carbs, so oatmeal. We've got essential fats through almond butter or almond flakes. We've got blueberries, antioxidants.

• 36:30Chris Williamson?

  Are you blending all this together or eating it separately?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  No, I eat it all together in, I don't blend it. We cook it.

• 36:35Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  I put the protein in, I let the, I cook it all first, let it cool down, then put the protein in not to degenerate it too much.

• 36:42Chris Williamson?

  Yep. Okay.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  And then, yeah, I'll take my multivitae. So we've got multivitae, CLA, amigas, all that kind of stuff. Around, yeah, my meal.

• 36:53Chris Williamson?

  We're now at what, eight thirty?

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Eight o'clock, yeah, around eight o'clock.

• 36:57Chris Williamson?

  Okay, day's about to begin.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then obviously my son's ready to, he has his breakfast with me. So I make his breakfast at the same time. I've changed his nappy twice by then.

• 37:07Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Does that get added into the workout as well?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's horrendous.

• 37:10Chris Williamson?

  Fantastic, fantastic.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  And then, yeah, we get him ready and then, yeah, I start my working day. So.

• 37:17Chris Williamson?

  Dude, I mean. Just that morning, you mentioned before we got started, I train three times a day. You know, I'm good friends with a bunch of CrossFit athletes and they're known for training slash overtraining.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:30Chris Williamson?

  I think from the outside, especially the world of physique, but also bodybuilding, the volume of training is something that people don't really get to see. And part of that is it doesn't translate very well on video.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:42Chris Williamson?

  You know, like, understand it because no one's going to show five or six sets of 12 on one exercise, then five or six sets of 12 on another exercise. Whereas everybody knows what a 20 minute EMOM or 30 minutes of monostuctural work is. I think CrossFit particularly is a sport or a training methodology that is designed to look good on video, you know, it's quite compelling, it's varied, it's high intensity. Bodybuilding is a bit more monotonous, which makes it less exciting. I think the same thing's true of footballers as well, that

• 38:16Chris Williamson?

  the difficulty of training that footballers go through specifically is something that nobody thinks about. Like you think about boxers, you know, even tennis players, golfers, you think about the amount of time they spend. To me, when you think about footballers, given that it's the most popular sport on the planet, I just don't hold them in the same reverence, you know? I don't think that they're hard workers. I'm sure that there are tons and tons and tons of hard workers. Look at Ronaldo with his top off, insane.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:44Chris Williamson?

  But I still don't hold them in that same way. Do you know what I mean?

• 38:47Speaker 01

  No, 100%. But then obviously when we talk about, just to give you insight, like my working day as well. So I eat every two hours, so I have to cook at least six meals a day. So in that time, I have three chicken breasts, or no, four chicken breasts. In fact, four chicken breasts, two salmon fillets, two fillet steaks a day, four eggs a day, all with rice, white potato, eggs, oats, so much veg. So I have to prep all that, that's straight after my morning.

• 39:16Chris Williamson?

  You're doing that? You haven't got somebody that comes in? You're not just paying a chef to come and do this for you?

• 39:20Speaker 01

  So I did that for about three months and I just couldn't get my head around someone else doing my work for me. And I just, because I need to know, when I step on stage, every part of my prep and every part of my 365 days. Of the year going into that show, I know exactly what I've put into my body.

• 39:38Chris Williamson?

  Been under your control.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  Yes. And even my wife, bless her, we had this conversation last week. She tried to shorten my day, so whilst I was, she was working out, right, he's must be nearly fifteen minutes from fish. She starts to make my breakfast and she put it in the microwave ready. So all I had to do was press it on. But I couldn't get my head around it because I was like, are you sure?

• 39:56Chris Williamson?

  She's measured it out.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's only one hundred and twenty grams in that. Are you sure there's only twenty grams of almond? And it's ridiculous, but I just feel comfortable.

• 40:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  I don't make a scene or anything. It's just what I've always done.

• 40:06Chris Williamson?

  Quietly chug on, get it done.

• 40:08Speaker 01

  And when people talk about, if you see a bodybuilder and you get this misconception, it's horrible where people are like, oh, you're living out your top wear and you make a big scene of it. And yeah, you've got your fish and rice. I've managed to do that for twenty years now and I've never made it. Like, I can still socialize with my friends, still go out at night. We go to restaurants. If I can't eat what? Nine times out of ten, I can eat in every restaurant. You just ask for a plain steak or a plain chicken breast, jacket potato, some mixed veg or a mixed salad. It's easy. So when they say, I can't have that, I can't eat any of this because it's not on prep. You can, of course you can. You just have to adapt and it's how much you want to live in normal society and be a bodybuilder, which don't typically go hand in hand.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  But I go on nights out, I'll nip out to my car, quickly eat my meal, come back in the time it takes to go to the toilet. So people don't even know, like my son's birthday, really sad, two weeks out from the Olympia, everyone's celebrating in his pub.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, garden pub. And yeah, I just kept nipping off every two hours into my car to eat my meals, back in. No one even knew. Look like I'm going to get a drink.

• 41:11Chris Williamson?

  It's like being a closet drug addict, but yours is protein instead of heroin or something.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  Went to watch Creed three last week with my brother in law and I snipped into the toilet, straight out the fire exit, eat my meal in the car park, straight back in. No one even knew. And I just, you don't have to make a scene of it. It's just part and parcel of what I do. And it's just became the norm now. But, but yeah, just to follow on from the working day. Then I get into my emails. Like I said, I've got five businesses to run. So we've got property developing, a clothing company, I've got a coaching company. Blood lab, which is a healthcare clinic company and then RJT Limited, which is all my sponsors and obligations there. So we address all of that.

• 41:50Chris Williamson?

  Why can people go if they want to get blood work done in the UK?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  So it's called the Blood Lab. If you look on Instagram, you'll see, but we have pop up clinics all over the UK, Scotland, Ireland. So we have about forty to fifty clinics running through the year. And then we've got a full time HQ, which I've just built in Hale, Manchester. So that's open twenty four seven. We've, we've got over twenty for lobotomists now. We've got four.

• 42:14Chris Williamson?

  So you have to go to.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  To the website, book on.

• 42:17Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but you have to go in terms of getting a blood draw. It's not like in the US where you can go to LabCorp or the local places that can take the blood and send it to you.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can have, you can have it done at your house. We can send people out to you. So we, we've partnered with Randocs now. So huge, huge company who actually can come to your door, take your blood work, or you can do it yourself and send it off.

• 42:37Chris Williamson?

  That's brave.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, obviously not do it yourself, but get a phlebotist, do it.

• 42:42Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay, okay, okay.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, send it from home.

• 42:45Chris Williamson?

  What's the website for that if people want to get blood work in the UK?

• 42:48Speaker 01

  So yeah, thebloodlab.co.uk. Go onto there and like you'll see, we do everything now. So we do ECGs, echocardiograms, we do minor surgeries, TRT, HRT.

• 43:00Chris Williamson?

  You're like a British Derek from More Plates More Dates.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  So yeah, we're doing a bit. I'm still learning all this side of it. This is something, as I've got older, I've took more pride in my blood work and that sort of thing.

• 43:12Chris Williamson?

  Talk to me, talk to me about, I mean, if you, you have access to these bloods, what sort of numbers do your test levels and everything else get down to as you're right at the bottom end of prep? Just how quickly does that look?

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Well, I tend, so this is the thing as well, I never look at them whilst I'm in prep. So I've got, I've put my, my faith and trust into my doctor, which I've, I've worked with, I met him on a Jim Shark event in Australia, would you believe? And we, we came, came back and we started working together. And I just said to him, look, I don't need to know that as long as I'm healthy and I need to know where I need to be. Don't, again, you know, I said to you about, I don't want to concern myself with numbers and analytics. So I want to just.

• 43:49Chris Williamson?

  Unless I'm outside of range and there's something really concerning, just crack on. But does he tell you afterward? Have you seen what it looks like afterward?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very low.

• 43:56Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  I must admit, with the body fat being so low as well, that is, yeah, it's, it's pretty low, but it's, it's just.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Within, I'd say, five or six weeks of coming off a show, getting my body fat back up, just easing off training and all that kind of stuff.

• 44:11Chris Williamson?

  A little bit less stress as well.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're normally back into where we need to be. And that's why I kind of, towards the end, the last few years, I've only ever done one show a year because of how taxing it is on the body. I used to live and breathe it and it was just the norm. I used to love it, but obviously with having a family now, I can't be selfish 365 days a year. So for me, I just, I have to think of them more as well.

• 44:35Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that you've got this massive Instagram, people have been following you for decades, based on the way that you look.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:42Chris Williamson?

  Do you have any desire to start serving the world beyond just the skin deep way that you show up? Have you got a plan for that moving forward to actually add value beyond simply being a visual inspiration?

• 44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, so again, so for me, that was never my intention to be front of house. And I was always someone who liked to work in the background and be an underdog, you know.

• 45:05Chris Williamson?

  Whether it was your intention or not, that's what's ended up happening.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you wouldn't believe it, but I would love to do something to help others. And with the blood, for me with the blood lab, I know it's a bit cliche saying it, but that for me seemed like I'm starting to transition more because the amount of people we've helped now and the amount of people we're educating. Because our, it started off as a bodybuilding, like, field with the blood work. But we've now gone further afield, it's now mainstream, we're going corporate with it and everything. And it's grown at such a level, but it's just educating people more around health. And that's something, yeah, that I've prided myself in. So I think without even consciously knowing it, that's the way I'm going now with a lot of things.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  And the exciting project that I'm building at the minute, that's a huge step in that direction. And it might be my retirement, shall we say, it might be my way of that transition, that might fill that void, shall we say, with competing.

• 46:04Chris Williamson?

  Given the fact that you've spent so much time upfront being a competitor, how is that informing the way that you show up as a father? You've mentioned that you've got a young son who is just now going to be starting to ask questions, you know, wanting to do things, maybe even looking at hobbies and, you know, going and do-

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Daddy Jim, Daddy Jim every morning, Daddy Jim.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  I'll be back in an hour.

• 46:27Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so what are the values that you hope that you instill into your son? And what are the things as well that you hope that you don't, given, you know, the 10-year absence that you had of a father figure?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  So that is the reason I want to be the best dad in the world because of me not having that when I was younger. So that is my number one priority now. People say, oh, is that why you probably won't win the Olympia? Have you lost that drive? But I think the opposite. I want to prove to people, and I want to prove to my son, like, he's massive motivation for me. He's my driving force to be able to provide for him, for him to be proud of me. He was, he was at the seat 1A, I'm getting actually emotional talking about, 1A at the Arnold Classic, which meant he was behind the head judge, which every person who loves bodybuilding would want to sit there. I had my son, who was one years old, sitting there. I pulled every string I could to have him sat there because I wanted him to see his dad and to be proud of, proud of it, me to win it in front of him and stuff.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So he's been a big driving force for me to carry on and to keep getting better for him personally. And with the businesses and all that kind of stuff, one of the businesses is in his name. So he doesn't know it. He's the director and he, it will be his company when he's-

• 47:36Chris Williamson?

  Youngest director in the UK.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. So it's called Alta, which is Alfie Lewis Terry Aesthetics. So for me, these are all things which I never had. And I told you about growing up with, we didn't have a lot of money. I was, from the age of 14, I was told I had to work and I was instilled that hard work. And yeah, there was times where I say we never had the best things. We never went without, but we appreciated money and we, yeah, we never had the big holidays, all that kind of stuff. So this is something I want to be able to, to give my son, to have the life I didn't have. But at the same time, I've said to my wife, please don't let me get carried away just because we've done well and we're financially okay now, that he doesn't appreciate the value of-

• 48:15Chris Williamson?

  So this is the next question that I've got for you, mate. How is it, given the fact that you have managed to be an incredible success, in spite, because of the limitations and the challenges that you had to face?

• 48:31Chris Williamson?

  You want to pay forward your success to give your kid the chances that you never kids that you the and the future.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, the future one.

• 48:40Chris Williamson?

  The chances that you never had, the opportunities you never had, the quality of life that you never had. And yet, both of us, the things that we went through when we were kids have driven us to do things that in retrospect were incredibly proud of.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:53Chris Williamson?

  And very well may not have achieved had we not have had those setbacks.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  That is very true.

• 48:58Chris Williamson?

  How, I mean, you know, this is a perennial question, but how are you balancing the difference between wanting to give your child love and give your child challenges?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is, this is a great, this is a great topic. This is something me and my wife need to sit down and talk more about because I am fearful of that. Like I said, I want to spoil my son. Yes, I want to spoil my son because I want, yeah, I want him to be happy. I wanted, but at the same time, I still want him to be, even to the point where this is going to sound a bit wrong now, but he's in private school now or he's, he only goes twice, twice a week. He's, he's only two years old, but I'm contemplating taking him out of private school. Although I want him to have the best starting life and then the best education life. I don't want him, like you said, the silver spoon. I don't want him to think that's the norm because he's going to school with people who turn up in helicopters and like

• 49:49Speaker 01

  Bentleys and, and I'm thinking, I didn't have any of this and I, I've done okay. And I, and now I wise up to the world a lot quicker and it's in its harsh world. And I don't want him to be mollycoddled. And he is being to some degree with, with my wife. And I love her so much for it because she, she cares for him so much. And yeah, you couldn't ask for a better mom, but at the same time, I am fearful that he, yeah, he, he won't be ready for the big wide world.

• 50:19Chris Williamson?

  He's got to be exposed to those difficulties, man.

• 50:21Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 50:22Chris Williamson?

  I mean, this is something that I think about so much, especially, you know, I flew back from the US this morning, landed this morning. The class system in the UK is very rigid, you know, America still has this very fluid sort of working to middle and then middle to upper class system. I have bags of friends in the US. All of my richest friends are American, right? All of them.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:44Chris Williamson?

  And they're homeschooling their kids, paying tutors to come around to school their kids, but they come from backgrounds as poor as mine and yours.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:53Chris Williamson?

  But they don't have that sort of glass ceiling, rigid class structure thing that plays on top of them. I feel it as well with me and I can't wait to be a dad, you know, like when the time's right for me. But I think about that too. How am I going to be able to give the challenges that I need to, to my kids? To make them sufficiently resilient, because I know how much I value that in myself.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:19Chris Williamson?

  Whilst not making their life unnecessarily hard.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:24Chris Williamson?

  It's very, very difficult.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  There's so many variables with that as well. Like, for instance, we've got like a, we've had to sit down as parents. I think parenting is so hard and you don't understand it until you're like in amongst it and you're actually going through it. We were getting to a point where I was conscious of this and my wife wasn't. So she was giving everything he wanted, all that kind of. I was the opposite because I could see that he was getting, he was expecting everything, whatever he wanted, he was getting. So I was going the opposite way, doing the, so I was purposely not doing.

• 51:53Chris Williamson?

  Bad cop, good cop.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, being strict with it. But again, that has its own problems because you then create a divide between parenting and who's he going to be drawn to, who's he going to?

• 52:02Chris Williamson?

  Soft touch with mum.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we had to sit down not long ago and we are now working in a line in unison. But again, we still need to find that, that balance because I take him to, he goes to gym, he's so competitive, which is, which is brilliant. So I'm glad we've got that side nailed down already. The reason I put him in that school was it's very sports academic. It's very, very, and you, you, you win gracefully, you lose gracefully. There's no such thing as taking part. There's.

• 52:27Chris Williamson?

  Good, good.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that aspect and we've got him in gymnastics on a Wednesday. He swims on a Tuesday. He plays football on a Saturday, swims on a Sunday. So he's doing what I did growing up. He doesn't sit in front of a TV. He's very active. He's outside. He forages every week. He's foraging every week. So I'm proud of that side, but you're very right in the fact that.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, how do we not mollycoddle him too much?

• 52:52Chris Williamson?

  Absolutely. So let me give you some insights that I've learned over the last couple of years to do with this stuff. So the number one behavioral geneticist on the planet, guy called Robert Plomont. So he was the fourth most cited psychologist of the 20th century. That's a century that had people like Sigmund Freud in it, right? So the fourth most cited, he basically has teased apart the differences between nature and nurture more than anybody else in history. Okay, every single pair of twins born in the UK between 1991 and 1994 were enrolled into this study. They've ended up tracking, I think it's somewhere in the region of about 50,000 pairs of twins. Some of these were separated at birth, taken into adoptive or foster families.

• 53:31Chris Williamson?

  And when you do that, especially if you've got monozygotic twins, you have one person in terms of their genes, but two environments, right? So it allows you to tease apart what are the differences, et cetera, et cetera. When you control for everything, including socioeconomic status, household income, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The school that you'd send your kid to accounts for between one and 3% of their academic outcomes. So if you were to send them to the worst school in the region or the best school in the region. Now, the problem that you have here, one in three percent doesn't sound like much. Another thing to fold in is that the nurture part of nurturing, when you raise your kids, doesn't come from you and it doesn't come from your wife.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 54:15Chris Williamson?

  It comes from the friends that they hang around with. It comes from the father of the cool kid that he likes to go and play with. It's like, my dad's lame because my dad doesn't play guitar, but John's dad lets him play guitar and he gets to stay up late and have ice cream. And if John's dad also happens to be a businessman that is very focused on money. If John's dad happens to be someone that gambles a lot, if John's dad happens to have a terrible relationship with his partner. Those are the values that will be inculcated. The single best predictor of a child's future wealth level when controlling for all of the other variables is the average income of the postcode that they grow up in. So it's the people around them, the nurture element of nature and nurture for children's upbringing seems to be the friend groups that you put them in.

• 55:00Chris Williamson?

  So one of the first things that I would do is very, like, and this is something that I think about, you know, when I imagine my imaginary child that I don't have yet.

• 55:09Chris Williamson?

  I would go and vet very, very closely, what are the coaches like at every single different boxing gym, swimming gym, gymnastics gym, which is the one that I think, right, he's got the values. He's the dad that's closest to me, that's closest.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  That's what we did with that school. We went to about four private schools. They were all driven by like the education side, which is great. For me, I was driven by the sports and the winning side and the competitive.

• 55:31Chris Williamson?

  Doesn't sound like a professional athlete.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  All aspects of it though, but yeah, so carry on, sorry.

• 55:35Chris Williamson?

  No, just that I would focus very much on who are the other kids that are going?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:42Chris Williamson?

  What are the parents like that go there? I would, this sounds bad, but I would very carefully vet the friends that you're sending the kids around to. And this doesn't mean, you know, they can be from any background that you want, but you want the family to have the right values. You want them to be hardworking, you don't want them to be materialistic. You want them to understand that you don't want them to be spending all of their time on the phone, et cetera, et cetera. And this is where wealth doesn't create advantages for kids.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:11Chris Williamson?

  Because a lot of the time, if you're rich, you will outsource raising your kids to nannies, to kindergarten, et cetera, et cetera. But they're not going to take this level of resolution, they're not going to look at it this finely.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:27Chris Williamson?

  And if you do decide to do that, I really think that the differences that you can see, I would, I would go as far as to say that you could ignore the time that it looks at in terms of school, outcomes, educational, all the rest of it, and simply focus on, do they have the right values? Who are the kids that they're hanging around with? What are the activities they're doing outside of school? And what are the parents of the kids that they hang around with? And I think that you will have as much, if not more of an impact. Now, obviously you want to cover all of the bases, et cetera, et cetera. But that seems to be, based on what I've read, one of the longest levers that you have for your kids. And I think that you're doing it the right way, focusing on what are the values, et cetera, et cetera.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:03Chris Williamson?

  Um. But yeah, man, it's a ruthless situation to think that the nurture part of nature and nurture isn't you and it's not your partner.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  That's so true. That is so true. So I need to make sure everyone's around me.

• 57:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, you know, but think about it this way, man. You have the opportunity to create, and I see this again in in Austin, there's a lot of these um called homesteading. So my friends that have sold companies for tens of millions when they're in their twenties and are now just getting to chill out and raise their kids on a get on a ranch or whatever. They'll go on by a hundred acres of of land somewhere in Texas with ten other families. One will be a doctor, one will be a teacher, one will be a physical trainer, one will be a something else. And they'll basically make a miniature village. They'll homeschool the kids altogether. But what they're doing is they're pre-selecting for people that are like the sort of people that they're like, that are like the sort of people that they want their kids to be like. And you're going to end up with those communities, I think, unless there's some like

• 57:56Chris Williamson?

  weird uh byproduct uh maladaptive social effect that happens because uh they're not sufficiently exposed to different cultures or whatever. That might be a thing. But I think that you're going to see those people having really, really great outcomes for their kids. Now, you might get uh like a concentration or a distillation of bad thought patterns because it's focusing everything, not just the good, but also the bad.

• 58:21Chris Williamson?

  You know, like, this is how cults start, right? It's, you know, if you have like a little bit of racism and everybody around you is a racist, everybody's pretty racist.

• 58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:29Chris Williamson?

  But I think that that's a good way to look at it. And what you have the opportunity to as somebody that has a platform that has success, that has, you know, a an aspirational lifestyle, is to not only raise up your kid, but to find other people that have a growth mindset that have kids and you go, why don't we work together?

• 58:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:48Chris Williamson?

  To make our kid, given what we know, given how we understand that child development works.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:52Chris Williamson?

  Why don't we work together and dedicate the next five to 10 years to both? I'm going to give all of the values and maybe even write it out. This is something that I considered doing. Sit down with, you know, four other pairs of parents that have all got kids that are all going to maybe have more that are around about your age and say, okay, let's agree on an agenda. You know, like you do with a business. You've got brand values for a business, you've got guidelines, you've got a branding guide, you've got all of these different things for a business, and you never sit down and do this for your kids.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:19Chris Williamson?

  So I think that would be a really good, a really good strategy for people to think about doing.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Let's try telling that to my wife.

• 59:26Chris Williamson?

  Ah, she'll be on board. She'll be on board. Okay, so what's next? What can people expect from you next?

• 59:32Speaker 01

  So we've got an exciting year this year. So like I say, we were talking about this on the, on the cab drive over. Um, I, the last two years, I don't know what it was where I felt like I'd achieved everything I wanted to achieve other than the Olympia. And I kind of just sat back on my laurels a little bit. I, I financially got into a place I wanted to be. The companies were doing, doing okay and stuff. And I kind of, yeah, just lulled a bit for two years. And that's just not me. And the longer I did that for, the more I was getting agitated, the more I was just not happy myself. So this year, I said to my wife at Christmas, I said, look, I need, I need to go back to who I am. And, and that's keeping busy, keeping progressing in life. And that, it's not necessarily financially or competing.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  It's just, I need to still fulfill and keep doing things. I need to keep progressing moving forward. So I took on some big challenges this year. So again, I've got a huge project, which is going to take me all year to do. But this is, yeah, setting me up for, for the next 10, 20 years. And it's, it's always been a dream of mine, which I've wanted to do. And it's just, I've never had the right time to do it with travelling. Been in a different country every week and having different obligations and stuff. But I feel like now with, with the young family and wanting to be at home more, it's a perfect time to do this. So that's as much as I'm going to say on it, but it's, it's going to be like nothing the UK's seen. So it's going to be phenomenal. And at the same time, we've got the Ryan Terry British Championship. So again, this is a legacy.

• 1:00:59Chris Williamson?

  You own your own federation now?

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  Own my own show. So it's the, it's the finale. I won this in 2013 and it's the British Championship. So it's basically the best of the best amateurs in the UK all go head to head to win the British title. And you win a pro card and you go into the pro leagues, which can then take you.

• 1:01:16Chris Williamson?

  Which federation is this?

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  This is the IFBB. It's affiliated to the IFBB, but it's two bros. But Jim Shark have kindly backed me this year. So I've done it for four years, um, on my own. It's been very difficult, very hard. And it's always just been a, a passion of mine. I never made money out of it. It was just because.

• 1:01:32Chris Williamson?

  Here comes Ben Francis, swinging in, last minute, slipstreaming all of the work you've done.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Exactly. But it's going to just put bodybuilding, like UK bodybuilding back on the map. And for me, that's what it's about. I'm not, not bothered about taking money from this at all. I just want there to be. A show where everyone goes to and just comes out of it thinking, oh my days, that's what it used to be. Because I grew up around bodybuilding from 14 and I used to go to Southport, to the Mr. Universe, used to go to Batley, Briar Hill, all these dives, but they were just brilliant bodybuilding shows. And the standard of athletes, you had thousands of people filling village halls and stuff, and it was just brilliant. And we've lost that. It became a money thing. It became, I hate to say, a bit political,

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  a bit clicky. And we just lost that authenticity. So my goal, taking money out of it is to bring that back. And I'm going to do everything it takes. Some of the things and some of the people who are coming to this show already, it's just going to be off the rick tan. We've got the Manchester Arena, which we're looking at doing this weekend with the Lift event. We've actually hired that out again for the bodybuilding show in October. And yeah, I'm so excited for that.

• 1:02:43Chris Williamson?

  Unreal. Ryan Terry, ladies and gentlemen. If people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do, where should they go?

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can follow me on social media, Ryan J Terry on Instagram. That's kind of my main platform, on YouTube, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

• 1:02:58Chris Williamson?

  Ryan, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Take care.