We are three athletes/training enthusiasts sharing our experience and insight to help you achieve your physical goals – from fat loss and making your clothes fit better to muscle gain, performance and strength.
Ben
Introduce yourself
I’m Ben, I’m 27 years old and I live in Newcastle. For the last 3 years I’ve been doing a PhD in mathematics. I’ve been training seriously for 3 years too.
What is your athletic background?
I played a lot of sport at school: athletics, rugby, and football. I also enjoyed skiing and BMX recreationally. But I’ve not taken part in any competitive sports for a long time, and I prefer lifting now.
What motivated you to start training?
As a kid I was always very athletic, and I was naturally lean. After a difficult time at school, I lost a lot of weight and became sedentary. Eventually I became so unhappy with the way I looked that I knew I had to change something. I started reading about bodybuilding, trying to learn everything I could from guys like Dorian Yates (Blood and Guts was the first training video I ever watched!). I bought a basic set of vinyl weights and a bench, and I tried to follow a basic split routine for a while, eating a bit more protein than I normally would. I felt that I was weak, and that I needed to be as strong as an average guy. I didn’t really have any particular aesthetic goals in mind apart from feeling better about the way I looked. Then after a few months of using a bit of whey powder and creatine, I realised I needed to join a proper gym to make real progress. I started bulking as hard as I could, for lunch I’d often have 4 double cheeseburgers. I made sure I always had food at hand, and I wouldn’t even go to bed without having a casein shake with olive oil. I went from about 63kg to over 105kg in about a year and a half, and got massively stronger. Then I realised I needed to lean out, and that was when I began to focus more on aesthetics in my training.
What is your training approach?
I’ve followed a simple 3-way split for most of my training: push, pull, legs. Of course, I’ve experimented with lots of different splits, with varying frequency and volume. Recently I’ve had periods where I trained every day, even twice a day. I’ve tried doing steady-state cardio once before on a diet, but I didn’t enjoy it. And now I would rather do high intensity cardio like barbell complexes or prowler pushes, which I feel are more effective for fat loss and improving body composition anyway.
What’s your diet approach?
I listen to my body. I’ve found that a high-carb, moderate protein, low to moderate fat approach works for me. Over the years I’ve discovered which foods I respond well to, and which ones leave me bloated and tired. I would recommend experimenting, and finding what suits you, rather than using a cookie cutter approach or trying to copy someone else.
I’m far more relaxed when it comes to my diet now, I’ll often indulge in junk food and enjoy nights out. I remember a time when I’d carry blender shakes with me to the cinema or to the pub, I’m glad I’ve left that behind!
What’s the worst thing you see people doing?
Not progressing. It annoys me when I see someone lifting the same weight, for the same number of reps, every time they train. I don’t understand why people think they can improve their physique if they aren’t lifting more weight or working harder every time they go to the gym.
Key stats?
I weigh about 88-90kg.
Bench – 125kg
Deadlift – 230kg
Squat – 195kg
Top tip for our readers?
Find your motivation and decide what your goals are (they have to be realistic), and do everything you can to achieve them. Don’t cheat yourself by being lazy and pushing as hard as you can. If you make sacrifices, remember that they’re worth it.
What mistakes have you learned from?
Thinking that eating a massive surplus would allow me to gain muscle at a superhuman rate, and assuming that dieting down to lose the fat I gained would be incredibly easy. Of course, it wasn’t, and I’ve learnt to be more careful with my diet now. I still enjoy bulking, but I understand now that you only need a moderate surplus to get good results, and that beyond a certain point all you’re doing is accelerating fat gain and making more work for yourself.
What have you learned from training that you apply into your own lifestyle?
Look at people who inspire you, find out how they eat and train, try and learn from them. Do enough research to understand what works and why, it’ll save you time and effort in the long run. Be patient, but learn to do what works for you, instead of forcing yourself to follow a particular diet or training plan even if it isn’t giving you results.
Jonny:
Introduce yourself:
I’m Jonny, I’m 21 years old and currently a student at York University studying economics. I have been training seriously seriously since I came to uni, 4 years ago but only really started to put effort into diet and nutrition two years ago. Oh, and most importantly: I’m a former fat kid.
What is your athletic background?
While I was at school I played most sports to some degree, only ever playing tennis, golf and squash seriously – I’d hurt my knee when I was quite young during a game of rugby which forced me to put that on hold. In sixth form I started playing rugby again and started messing around in the school gym – I didn’t train properly at all but managed to pull 160kg off the floor and benched bodyweight. I had no real plan and really just trained for fun with friends. At university I took up rowing, I rowed for the university on several occasions and even dabbled in college rugby. I learn’t a lot about different training modalities during this time but I never really made any progress in the gym and tended to weigh below 85kg most of the time which, for my height, is pretty slight. Around 2 years ago, I’d gained quite a bit of weight (mostly fat) from favouring work over sport and subscribing to the uni lifestyle. I weighed 16 stone and decided I needed a change, I started training more intelligently and monitored my diet . It was around this time that Propane was born, I made rapid progress and learnt a lot in relatively little time. I now train for enjoyment but I’m hoping to compete this year.
What motivated you to start training?
Well, put bluntly, I used to be pretty chubby as a kid and exercise, running specifically, was my way of doing something about it. I knew absolutely nothing about training at the time and ran a lot of miles and lost a lot of fat, I gained next to no muscle and was actually quite slight. I was frustrated that running hadn’t allowed me to look like guys in the magazines so started researching weight training and have never looked back.
What is your training approach?
I believe that you should do as much training as possible as long as you can tolerate it. I think weight training is an extremely powerful tool and should be used by anyone, regardless of goal. I’d preference it over cardio any day but still think cardio has occasional application. I’ve always gained strength by performing the main movements frequently with explosive focus and lower weight, for muscle gain I switch and use a more intese approach, up the weight and up the reps. If I’m looking to lose fat I lower training frequency to 3 times per week and focus more on diet.
What’s your diet approach?
I think that for any goal you should have periods where you underfeed and include periodic overfeeding. Any diet approach I follow involves these components, I just change the length of each phase. I think Intermittent Fasting is an extremely powerful tool and continue to recommend it to clients, by extension I also enjoy periods of ADF and I’m currently using Carb Backloading.
What’s the worst thing you see people doing?
Skinny mochas and low fat muffins. I rant about this a lot but its just simply wrong. Dropping the fat of one meal per day may lower overall calories but its missing the bigger picture in my opinion. Most people ordering this insulinogenic duo tend to look the same week in week out, month after month. Weight loss comes with intelligent planning and long term dedication, not just changing the milk in your syrup soaked coffee.
Key stats?
To date my best lifts are (at a bodyweight of 91kg)
Bench Press: 160kg
Squat: 215kg
Deadlift: 260kg
Push press: 105kg
Top tip for our readers?
Follow the diet that you can stick to. It doesnt matter what it is. Pick something you like the look of, commit and stick to it for a few months.
What mistakes have you learned from?
Being too strict and getting bogged down in minor details. Diet and training don’t have to be mapped out by spreadsheets and graphs interlaced with equations and percentages, it’s really more simple than most people think. The best gains I ever made in my training and diet was when I let the details go, I just trained what felt right and focused on eating less calories than I was burning and getting enough protein. While I wouldn’t recommend this approach for a beginner I think the main caveat is that getting a better physique doesn’t have to be a life consuming venture, it can merge effortlessly with your lifestyle and be very rewarding.
What have you learned from training that you apply into your own lifestyle?
While it may seem cliché the value which training has taught me is to persist with anything I do. With weight training you have to learn that results only come with effort and consistency and getting where you want to be takes time. This is something that you can apply into everything in life, whether it’s your studies, relationships or even just learning to push yourself and be your own motivation.
Yusef:
Introduce yourself:
I’m Yusef, I study in Scotland. My interest in training stems from seeking to improve my capacities and performance, and apply it to sport. Looking better is a (welcome) side-effect. I used to be very skinny (59kg).
What is your athletic background?
My main sport is gymnastics, along with any related acrobatic sports. They all overlap quite well. I’m biased, but I feel that there is a decent carryover from acrobatic abilities to other physical skills – explosiveness, coordination, balance, flexibility, strength.
What motivated you to start training and what is your ultimate goal?
You know when you go to use the toothpaste, and some a***hole has squeezed out the last bit? I wanted to be that guy.
My brother got me started lifting weights. I began with the most idiotic and novel programs, I was a sucker for fancy exercises and had no concept of progressive overload. My diet was also terrible. I used to equate ‘being tired’ with having an ‘effective workout’. Needless to say I didn’t make any gains until I started to take a more calculated approach to training. My ultimate goal from training is to improve my relative strength and explosiveness.
What is your training approach?
The more I learned about training, the more I realised that going back to the basic movements is always the most effective. Get stronger in major lifts, and everything else will fall into place. If you want bigger arms, get stronger.
What is your diet approach?
I don’t drink any fizzy drinks or eat processed foods. I cook my own meals and therefore know exactly what is in them. I drink a LOT of water and eat calorie-dense foods because I have low appetite.
What is the worst thing you see people doing? Keep it fitness related!
Trying to sculpt and finesse their muscles when they have nothing to sculpt. They should just be focusing on improving their performance, form and strength. Even if they just want to look better. You look as good as you perform.
Key stats?
I weigh around 80kg
Dip: BW + 72kg
90kg Snatch
220kg deadlift
120kg bench
120kg clean
160kg squat.
Top tip for our readers?
Don’t neglect your diet. If you have trouble gaining weight and you think you’re eating a lot, log your food one day. You might be surprised how little you’re eating.
What mistakes have you learned from?
Like Jonny, I used to focus on the minutia while ignoring the major issues, e.g. worrying about the carb content of an apple or the width of my grip, all while I’m missing meals every day. Priorities!
What have you learned from training that you apply into your own lifestyle?
Read and learn. Find the most efficient way to get results. The hardest or most complex way to do something is not necessarily the most effective. Then pick a sound strategy, and be patient with it.
Past Editor Dan:
Dan:
Introduce yourself:
I’m Dan, I work in London and I’ve been training for roughly 5 years.
What is your athletic background?
At school I played cricket pretty seriously and for some reason I always had a knack at high jump. By the time I got to sixth form, the only sport I played was rugby and my training reflected that, then in my first year of university I took up rowing, which is definitely something I’d recommend. Alongside these team sports I’ve always been pretty keen on golf, squash and skiing.
What motivated you to start training?
When I first started training I was really dissatisfied with the way my body looked, I was at school and I’d always been fat when I was younger. I’d already lost some weight just through dieting and wanted bigger arms. Not long after, I decided to train to be better at rugby, then I wanted to gain size all over, then I was rowing at university so my training was around that. After finishing rowing I just focused on strength and nowadays I just try to maintain a good physique and strong lifts. What started out as just wanting bigger arms to look better in a t-shirt became a real interest in going to the gym and all types of training.
What is your training approach?
To be honest it varies massively month to month but there are a few constants: heavy weights, a range of cardio and I always try not to change what I’m doing more frequently than once every 2 months.
What is the worst thing you see people doing? Keep it fitness related!
There are a few but my favourite is people who spend hours planning everything perfectly and working out their diet to the gram but never even try when they’re in the gym.
What is your diet approach?
Frankly, I don’t have a specific diet approach, but I try to eat roughly the same amount of calories from protein as from carbs. I am trying something specific at the moment but it’s too early to talk about really.
Key stats?
Height: 5’10
Weight: 82kg
Squat: 180kg
Bench: 130kg
Deadlift: 210kg
Chinup: bodyweight plus 60kg
500m row on an erg: 1:23
10km run: 55 mins
Top tip for our readers?
Squat, Bench press, deadlift and chin-up regularly, use a weight that’s heavy for you but safe and progressively increase the weights you’re using. If you’re overweight, do this but add cardio at least a couple of times a week and eat a little less and a little healthier (and train with weights)
What mistakes have you learned from?
With regards to diet, I’ve made two pretty big mistakes: to begin with I was far too anal and precise, and then as a result I ended up being too lax and not really paying enough attention to what I was eating. A training one is not putting enough time and effort into the big lifts and getting distracted with other exercises.
What have you learned from training that you apply into your own lifestyle?
Being able to take a step back and really look at things for what they are. Too much of the time people won’t be achieving their goals and their response will be to moan about it and curse the hand they’ve been dealt. When in fact if they just look at what they’ve been doing objectively it’s pretty clear that they’re not doing something right. For example if I’m not losing weight, my initial reaction might be to think ‘but I’ve been doing everything right! I must just have bad genetics’ when in fact if I take a little time and really think about it, I’ve been drinking too regularly and missing too many training sessions.
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