00:00:00- Well, what I love about you is that you've done things
00:00:02at the ultra elite level within bodybuilding,
00:00:06but the advice that you're giving right now
00:00:07is very practical for the everyday person.
00:00:09And I'm not a psychologist,
00:00:10but I'm gonna venture a hypothesis here,
00:00:12which is that some of that has to do with the fact
00:00:14that you grew up blue collar background from Birmingham,
00:00:17working full time while building out
00:00:19your bodybuilding career.
00:00:20You didn't come to it with a briefcase full of cash
00:00:23and have the opportunity to just say,
00:00:25well, how much training can you do?
00:00:27Well, let's figure it out.
00:00:28Like you had to be very practical.
00:00:29And my guess is that you had to be very practical
00:00:31about recovery and nutrition as well.
00:00:34You probably, I'm guessing there was a point in your life
00:00:36where you couldn't afford grass-fed meat shipped in
00:00:39from south of France and this guy.
00:00:42I'm not saying you do that now.
00:00:42- Let me tell you a story, man.
00:00:43When I was a British champion,
00:00:47that was a big thing back then, British champion, right?
00:00:503,000 people in the audience packed out.
00:00:53We had buses coming from our gym,
00:00:55all this stuff, you know, air horns.
00:00:58This great accolade, I'm British champion now.
00:01:00And I went home.
00:01:02I got no car.
00:01:04I'm living in a council estate.
00:01:08It's like projects, you know?
00:01:10Council estate.
00:01:11I got no carpet in my bedroom.
00:01:13I don't even have a proper bed, I just got a mattress.
00:01:15I got a TV that barely works and I got a trophy.
00:01:19I'm like, wow, look, I'm British champion,
00:01:23but nobody gives a really.
00:01:24Like, you know, I do and the people
00:01:25that's in the bodybuilding community,
00:01:27but this hasn't translated into anything yet.
00:01:30It took me about five years of really like, you know,
00:01:35100% dedication for me to turn pro.
00:01:39And the ironic thing is, I guess,
00:01:43like when you're starting and you've got nothing,
00:01:45nobody's very interested and nobody wants to help you.
00:01:48When you start, when you become successes,
00:01:50then successful, people want to help you
00:01:52'cause they want to help themselves,
00:01:53which is fair enough.
00:01:54It's a transaction, but until then, no.
00:01:59So I got my first car when I was 25.
00:02:04All my friends were driving 18, 19.
00:02:07But the funny thing is,
00:02:08I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything.
00:02:10I knew I was on this mission
00:02:12and this in itself was so powerful.
00:02:15Like nobody else had this mission that I was doing,
00:02:19which was to change my life, basically.
00:02:21And bodybuilding was the vehicle.
00:02:24So all the guys that I was training with,
00:02:26they were like just watching videos
00:02:28and listen to other guys in the gym.
00:02:30I was reading Mike Mensah, I was reading Arthur Jones.
00:02:33I was trying to figure it out for myself,
00:02:35which means you need a very independent kind of personality.
00:02:43And the fact that I've got all this,
00:02:45every single workout from 1983 to 1997,
00:02:49written down all the diets later on
00:02:51when I'm using anabolics, what I'm using and how long
00:02:53and all this stuff so I could analyze it,
00:02:57see what's working and what's not working.
00:03:00A lot of guys were like shooting in the dark,
00:03:03hoping they're gonna hit something, but they don't.
00:03:06And I didn't have time to waste.
00:03:08This was a mission.
00:03:11I didn't have skills, I didn't have a family, all this stuff.
00:03:14So bodybuilding was my road to change my life.
00:03:19Where it was going at first, I didn't know,
00:03:21but I knew it was going somewhere.
00:03:22I knew I could be very good at it.
00:03:24(gentle music)
00:03:44[MUSIC PLAYING]