Like the typical young lad, I grew up playing football. As I got older year on year the more serious I took it. Like most kids I wanted to become a professional footballer, I knew to achieve this I had to work hard and work on every aspect of my game. If I didn’t know something like a particular skill, I’d do everything to research it and teach myself this skill, I’d spend endless hours on YouTube watching videos like “How to run faster”.
As I got older, I realised this dream wasn’t going to materialise, and decided I at least wanted to become the best player in my league. As our team was moving into open age men's league, I decided I wanted to become stronger in preparation to compete with the ‘big boys’.
This is where my love for bodybuilding started. Like everything I do I researched everything about the sport from “most optimal way to gain muscle” to “best diet plan to get shredded” as I noticed changes and growth in my physique quite rapidly it became an addiction, I quickly gained a passion for the sport.
During this period, I entered 3 bodybuilding competitions placing 2nd in one and 3rd in the other two. The experience taught me many life lessons I still use to this day. But after competing I realised it wasn’t the life I wanted to live.
I then discovered CrossFit, it was the hardest form of exercise I had ever experienced. On my first session I remember doing 20 burpees and died mid-set. I felt severely embarrassed. Especially as I looked fit externally but obviously wasn’t internally. I said to myself this isn’t happening again, so I kept going back and showing up. My fitness improved, my technique got cleaner, so much so that I love the sport and have entered by first competition in November.
I now currently take a hybrid approach, and train a mix of hypertrophy to look good, then CrossFit to perform good. I feel these two training styles complement each other as its important to look like a beast, but also compete like one.
I also do a lot of mental health self-work, to prevent stress and anxiety as best as I can, I am a firm believer of prehab instead of rehab. Just like a physical injury, it’s much better to prepare yourself than repair yourself.
I believe fitness, especially something as intense as CrossFit, is a challenge on the mindset. And to be successful you must be obsessed with it. If you look at the best athletes in the world, they all look completely different, but they all have the same insane mentality.
This is where my mindset of fitness has changed and developed, instead of fearing that pain, I embrace it and use it to push myself further. Seeing how much pain I can put myself through before I'm forced to stop, is what pushes me to become the best. This is what I think makes a great athlete and that any client can implement into their own journey.
