Modern Wisdom - #627 - Ryan Terry - Britain’s #1 Fitness Model Shares His Bodybuilding Secrets

Episode Date: May 13, 2023

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 - Get in touch. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's happening people, welcome back to the show. My guest today is Ryan Terry. He's 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 one physique competitor. And much more. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Gymshark. If you are a guy or a girl that needs new Gymkit, look no further than Gymshark, they ship worldwide, they have an unbelievable range, accessories, tops, t-shirts, shorts, leggings, whatever it is that you need. Their studio shorts for men are outstanding by far the best

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wisdom. That's b-i-t dot l-y slash shark wisdom and the code mw10 at checkout will get you 10% off everything. Plus there is the worldwide shipping and the 30 day free returns. Bit.ly slash shark wisdom and MW10. A checkout. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Marick Health. Stop guessing when it comes to what is happening inside of your body. Marick Health is a telemedicine company that uses blood work to provide valuable insights into how your body is functioning and what might need to be changed to improve your performance

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in your life. You do. You're not eating enough protein, almost nobody is. And the best protein that I've found on the planet is my protein's clear way. It's light and fruity, it looks and tastes like juice, but it's got more protein in than a normal protein shake. It's so easy to drink that you can have it during a workout and it doesn't give you digestive discomfort. So if you've been cycling through a ton of different proteins, trying to find one that is going to not make you feel all uncomfortable and gassy after you've finished it, this is an awesome place to look. Also, no matter what else you need, my protein has got it from pre-workouts to creatine, bars, foods, literally

everything that they have and their ship worldwide. And you can get 37% at least of everything site wide. If you go to bit.ly slash protein wisdom, that unlocks my super secret product page and activates the code modern wisdom, which you can use at checkout to get you the maximum discount available site wide. You don't need to search for super secret codes and combinations and stuff. Whatever the biggest discount is will always be activated if you go to bit.ly slash protein wisdom and modern wisdom. A checkout. But now ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ryan Terry. Ryan Terry, welcome at the show. Thank you for having me. How do you describe what you do?

It's on a professional athlete and yeah, sponsored athlete as well. In what category? So I compete in Men's Fuseek 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, should we say? 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-season, 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? So for me, just a bit of background about myself, I was always brought up around sports. I was very competitive growing up. I was football, gymnastics, 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 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 this small figure, should 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 we're going to help with confidence. Just rolling it back a little bit there. Where do you think that body just more for you came from?

Because we're basically the same age. And 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 caused the onset of that? 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, 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 or that kind of Mae'n gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweithio'r gweith 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 14, I had to start work. I was potwashing at the age of 14, wagering at the age of 40. Was that to contribute for paying

for the house and stuff for the family? Yep, so I paid rent, paid board. From the age of 14. From the age of 14, I was 35 pounds, and I ain't probably 50. And that was every night I worked. On a Saturday, I did removals, for the initial removals, on a Sunday, I did pot washing all day.

And then, yeah, when we used to take 35 pounds, the moment I got to 16, I was paying 50 pounds. So, um, okay. Right. The wage increases are really hitting me hard. It did hit me hard. So we had to, um, so I, I didn't have an option of going on to, to six, four minutes, I like that. We, I went straight into an apprenticeship, um, 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 14, I don't know, but from when I was 14 I decided I needed to change things. I was

I want to say I was overweight, but I just I felt like I was in my head and I was always looking around and 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. 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. What did you do as a young guy who was trying to find his way in the world? I think it was less confusing when we were growing up than it is now, but still not totally, 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? Yeah, so my brother is two years older than me and he was kind like the head of the house, kind of, he was my sister's older as well. So I kind of grew a couple years older than like with people older than me. So kind of bit the head of my time. The time I was 18 I was thinking about having my own house, business, when really shouldn't be thinking thinking about that 18 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 16 so he left, when I was 14 he left and that for me felt like it's my time. I need

to fill his shoes and grow up and stuff. So maybe that was, yeah, forced me to be more than 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 a little teenager who was just thought that I was going to be gone in six months. But I earned the trust, I earned their trust and their respect from training every day there. 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, 350 pound guys, massive, massive weights. And I always

loved their dedication, and I always resonated with that because of that's the sports side of me, the competing side, sorry. So when competing came up and they said, why don't you try it? I was looking at I think 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 your comfort zone and see if you can do what these guys all around you every day are doing.

And that was doing a bodybuilding show, dieting down, and I just, I loved, I wasn't inspired by the size of them. I was just inspired by the way they lived their life, 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 backed out the last minute. But I started dieting alongside these guys for the 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, Lamenting 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, I had to down, didn't tell anybody who 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. I was like, what am I doing? What am I doing? Like I'm a plumber. I should not be doing this. And then, yeah, yes, 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 it lights hit me and I came out on

to stage, I was like, no, you've done all the hard work. You deserve to be in 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 you won that first show. Yeah, yeah, and that elation of getting first place and then Huck is for life. Yeah, unbelievable. 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. Doesn't really seem like it's that much

about the body building itself, it's about pushing yourself. 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, five hours out of the day, which for me was my working day. Whereas training was an 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. 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-movingment, whether you're looking at getting blood panels done, biohacking. I imagine 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? Which is the... The Olympia. Of course, the Olympia. Yeah. So there is one title left, basically on everything on the planet that you haven't yet got. 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.

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? 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 building a career out of it. Mae'n gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaithio'r gwaith ability 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 lower on this. I'm not feeling great today, do I need more sleep? Right, I'm not feeling strong. We're gonna back off the heavyweight sets, we're gonna 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, more competitive in the bodybuilding career and winning more titles. 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 were waking up and we were tracking this, we were weighing this. And it just, it took it away for 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 that, because 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? Do I take this food out or, I know 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 tablet's been changing, but that's the beauty of body building,

like everything changes from time to time. The interesting thing that I've been playing with as well since starting doing this show, 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 labor around this.

But one of the quickest ways that you can destroy your look for something is to turn it into a labor. 100%. And most of the people from the outside, this is... There's a concept called icky guy, right, which is your calling in life. It's at the intersection of what your good at, what society needs, what you can be paid for, and what you love to do. 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, the painter, they play

the guitar to themselves, they do whatever, don't realize 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. 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, etc., etc. Those start to stack up because like Jim Shark, for your supplement company, et cetera, et cetera. Those start to stack up because you go, I'm not, I'm no longer being supported by being a plumber, by being on site by doing these things.

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. But if I am my pursuit, and I fail at my pursuit, 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. Yeah, and who you are. Yeah, and That that pressure for a lot of people is really crippling.

And it's something that getting through it, it seems like it was a challenge for you. 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 counter productive. Because for me, that's just how I've always worked in business. I'm a lot more productive now when I free-flow. Some people, I've spoke to people who are so anal and about that, they just can't comprehend it. But it works for me. Yeah, but for me, the opposite way around, I can't comprehend that. 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. Like, okay. 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. 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 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 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 pounded across an entire workout, across a week about RPEs, you can do drops, you can add everything in, right? Time, dress period, for some people, that's great, for other people, that's not.

But don't you think, especially with bodybuilding, there's so many variables, there's too many variables 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 ten hours another day, that two hours difference in sleep will make a huge difference. For me, it does. I know it is. So I can... What do you try and get in terms of sleep tonight? I've got two-year-olds. Right, okay. I would love eight hours, but I've now, I olds. Right, okay. Right out of the window. Okay.

I would love eight hours, but I've 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 half past five and then the house is awake from six. Okay. Yeah, it's a crazy morning. Right. We'll go into that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So one of the things that 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, 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. Yeah. How have you managed to keep your goals growing with you? Yeah. 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. 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, continue to push themselves as their goals get bigger as they progress? That's a hard question, how did you do it? Why were you so driven? Given the fact that you kept on beating everybody, why were you so driven? For me, I was always driven to be number one in the world. Until I get that title, until I have won the Olympia, in my eyes I've not the best in the world, 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 the shows I did, I did my research before, and I wanted to be known straight away. 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 limpia. I wanted to go against the best as quick as possible to know my worth and to know if I'm good enough to build there because again, I want to win shows, I don't want to be there

just 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 a health, 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 driving force in itself. I felt like I had the UK behind me, pushing me and pushing me. Prussia is an expectation of an entire nation. Yeah, Very good. 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 it for them, and I know I need to always be there for them. I don't want to be selfish, I don't want to be the best 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 it. I don't over think it. I need to be ready in six weeks or seven weeks time 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 doing three and I'm doing something huge project, I don't know which I can't talk about, there is so much at stake here. I know what it is. I know what the project is, it's pretty cool. Well, I thrive off it, I absolutely love it. And if I didn't have that, I would go insane, that 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 14, if I get too complacent, I get stuck, I lose my head and I need to be constant. What happens if it's three years from now and you still haven't won the Miss Rylimpia? 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 but two because I've been in the industry so long. We were talking before I had a guy yesterday called me and say how I was looking at your front cover magazines for Muslim fitness in 2009. Wow, that's 14 years ago. And I remember that like it was yesterday. And it's just crazy to think, but I was very successful in my

early days, sort of from 1890 and 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 and got his God, he's still here after like 15 years, but at the same time, whilst ever I've still got that drive and that hunger and that passion for that first place, I'll keep going. I keep going. So if it gets to that stage, if you're like, I'm now 38, 39, 40, 41, how difficult is it going to be for you to let that go if you haven't won that title? So me, Ross Ejli, have actually spoken detail about this because that is my fear. I'll admit this now is I don't know because competing satisfies 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 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 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 kind of, because we had a child on the way and all that kind of stuff, and I got five businesses to run. I was trying to fill that competitive void with businesses and trying to keep me busy. That's what I couldn't, like I just love competing, I love being in that regimented state and that fire to compete against other athletes.

It's just, yeah, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do, to be honest. 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 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 grandmire, I think, that's recently passed away. And he retires. He retires there and then. And I don't know, man, 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? The problem again.

For me though, but it's so it's in trouble. That's for me, I would be happy to win. People say here, 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 know. For me, once I've achieved like, I say, 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 get the prize money you'd get all of that with we've win 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 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 anal classics in three different contents, what, or a country, sorry, which no one else has done. 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? 10, that's very specific.

10, I just figured that would be enough for you to get each different muscle group. Right, okay. So what are would be enough for you to get each different muscle group. Right, okay. So what are the longest levers that you can pull when it comes to maintaining size or increasing size for muscle? Obviously compound lifts, so you're looking at your dead lifts, your bench press and your squats, they're always good. Again, these are things that I've had to adapt over the years because of injuries and things

training silly when I was younger. Okay, there's three. There's three there. 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 midsection exercises, but it's phenomenal for your transverse subdomines, your upper and lower abdominals, everything. It's a great, I feel like that was something

that helped me build my midsection. 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? So the create momentum, the swing, which I think that has a bit to do with CrossFit with this Kippin and Malarke and momentum stuff that came into play for a few years ago. But I think swinging, I think using the hip flexors instead of the midsection. How do you know if you're doing that? You'll feel it, you'll feel it down your quads. What's the cue? 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.

So is it taking the hips in and making sure you're contracting, you're open lower abdominals, go from I'm hanging straight to I'm doing a leg raise that makes it work appropriately. So is it took in the hips in and making sure you're contracting your open lower abdominals before anything else. So it's always keeping them fully contracted. Minds and most of connection is a huge thing. I believe in that so much. Yeah, my first and the same. 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 try to ego lift. And since I've done that, the muscle maturity and how my body's developed is just exponential. I wish I'd done it five, six years ago.

So, yes, so I think that's very important, my total connection. With hanging like raises, are you going to an L, are you going up to touch the bar? 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. How do you do progressive overload on that, or do you? You or you could add weights to you. Do you? I don't, personally, because I was obsessed with my midsection growing up. As you see, Rob Riches 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 tried to treat my midsection like any of the muscle parts. A lot of people think with the midsection, you should train 30 minutes after every session or why every of a muscle part we train, we train to break the muscle fibers down heavy, a lot of load, we break the muscle fiber, 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 add the six to eight rep range really heavy. The thing with that, I start to develop really chunky abs, blocky abs, but in 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 basics because I was too front heavy, too front strong. So it took a lot of years to start having to a high-prex then for every crunch I did, this that I had to do two high-prex tensions. Wow. So yeah, it was very important. You needed to compensate for all of that anterior strength that you developed. And so now I don't tend to go too heavy and we do a lot of own body weight stuff. Okay, cool. So you've got four, you've got squat, bench, deadlift, hanging leg raises, six more slots to keep your body. 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. Shoulders aren't getting much work at the moment. Alright, shoulder press will go with a dumbbell shoulder press because it's great for isolation, unilateral and that's quite important, obviously, length. So we need to do some hamstring work. So we would do... I would say stiff like 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 line hamstring curl heavy. You prefer a line to aced it? I do, yes. Yeah, I do. But I don't think 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 gonna get the most out of it. If you're doing an exercise because you're someone else

who's told you to do it and you're not getting that in that way and it's a connection or you're not really in it, there's no point. And that's what I love about bodybuilding as well. Nutrition and training, you adapt it to you. 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. Okay, three left, what have you got? I've lost where we are now. Squat and bench, deadlift, hanging leg raise, incline chest press with dumbbells. Shoulder press. Seated calf raise. Seated calf raise. Oh, so you want to get the soleus moving? Yeah, we'll get that, man. Okay. Okay. We'll cover them. And then two left. We need overhead tricep extension, rope. Pivoted from the bottom

of a pulley. Yeah right okay yeah. What are the cues that people get wrong there because this is something that I absolutely love to do but where do people go wrong? Quite mechanically quite a complex movement. Yeah I think you can go too heavy too soon and start recruiting and start pulling. I don't know with the shoulder. I think 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 and a full contraction at the top. One more.

And when you buy steps, don't we? Then we've got everything then. What's your number one buy step exercise? Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, what is my number one bicep exercise? Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh 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. 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? Why would you put deadlifts into that kind of a workout? So I've never believed this. I don't know if scientifically this is right, but with deadlift

and I've never, I use the deadlift every week. I don't so much now. I do a lot more isolation on hyper extensions again, because I get a better contraction. I do hypers. I prefer to deadlift, but I do hyper as mainly. But with with a deadlift obviously recruits near off every muscle in the body so it's great for an overall workout but I've lost my train of thought we're always saying that. Why are you using deadlifts given that you want to have a small waist? Yeah like I say because I train my midsection the way I do I do a lot of ice attention in the morning What's that? So it's basically all about iso holds so you breathe in fully breathing with your exhale every bit of air out of the body and you crunch your abs as hard as you can for three seconds and then standing up Standing up. Yeah, you can do that with any muscle parts

So it's the most monotonous thing a body will be able to do But it's one of the best things for for muscle control for getting everything tied for condition I challenge anybody to do this so do for muscle control, for getting everything tied, for condition. I challenge anybody to do this. We'll keep it simple. Three from the front, three from the sides. You've got three on the bleak on either side. So you've got, so you inhale.

Hands up, you add, 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 do it again. Try and do that ten times and then go to the side and then crunch down, hold, and do that ten times and do that ten times. Have 30 seconds rest, go again and then go again. 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 between exercises. So if you're doing a like a bicep curl, you're straight in, you hold your pose, a double bicep, and you hold, you squeeze your midsection, you squeeze your biceps hard as you can for 20 seconds. Say you come out and you go straight back into your working set. It is brutal, but if you ever see on a bodybuilding stage when people are at this shaking, because they've got no connection, they've got no control of their bicep and they're still at the place.

But what happens? Yeah, yeah. These other factors, what can happen? Dehydrated, they're tired, they're et cetera, et cetera. But nine times out of ten, that will be down to the fact they've not done any iso holes or they've not took the time with their posing to practice the posing. And that's something I always pride myself and I remember the first few shows I did on the Olympia stage, we're all back hitting from the back and they go, I was like, Ryan,

how are you holding that? How are you holding that? Because they're all everyone shaking and it's because eight weeks out from any show 30 minutes after my faster cardio. I'll do ISO holes with every Every pose I have to deal 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 body moving Oh, yeah, you eat some meals and you train twice a day But 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. 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? Yeah, so typically around 5 o'clock we get up. I do a black coffee, I'll go down, I'll have EAAs and Elkhana team and that's like 15 minutes before I go and do my first. The oral Elkhana team are injected? Yeah, oral, through liquid, liquid form. And then 15 minutes after that I'll go and do an hour faster cardio.

So 30 minute cross trainer, 30 minute in client walk. What sort of heart rate is on to? Again, I don't look at that now. That's I'm very basic in that. It's a low intensity. It's nothing to do. I'm just focusing that way. I'll do 30 minute core work or it's have a 30 minute core work or 30 minute stretch mobility work after that hour and then it's 30 minutes posing. So you do a you do a you do a you do a you do a you do a you do a hour time is it now? So that is 7 o'clock ish, half seven. Wow okay so it's a very regimented morning. Yeah yeah okay seven o'clock. Yeah so then half seven I'll go in I'll have yeah massive breakfast but uh to most most people's massive, but for me it's nothing,

but... What does that typically consist of? I'll always make sure my first meal has every source of approach. So we've got a good source of protein, bioavailable protein. We've got a way protein or a way isolate. We've got complex carbs, oatmeal. We've got essential fats through almond butter or away isolate. We've got complex carbs, so oatmeal. We've got essential fats through almond butter or almond flakes. We've got blueberries, antioxidants.

Are you blending all this together, you're eating it separately? No, I eat it all together. I don't blend it. We cook it. 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. Yep. Okay. And then yeah, I'll take my multivits, we've got multivits, CLA, Amigas, all that kind of stuff, around, yeah, my meal. Well, now at what, 8, 30?

We've got eight o'clock, around eight o'clock. Okay, days about to begin. 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. Okay. Does that get added into the workout as well? Yeah, it's horrendous. Fantastic. Fantastic. And then yeah, we get him ready. And then yeah, I start my working day. So dude, I mean,

just that morning, you mentioned before we got started, I trained three times a day. You know, I'm good friends with a bunch of CrossFit athletes and they're known for training, slashing over training. Yeah. 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. Yeah. You know, like, understand, 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 e-mom

or 30 minutes of monostructural work is. Think CrossFit particularly is a sport or a training methodology that is designed to look good on video. It's quite compelling, it's varied, it's high intensity, bodybuilding is a bit more monotonous which makes us exciting. I think the same thing's true of footballers as well than the difficulty of training that footballers go through

specifically, it's something that nobody thinks about like you think about boxes, even tennis players, golfers Like you think about boxes, you know, even tennis players, golfers, you think about the amount of time that's been, to me, when you think about football as 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 the hard workers,

I'm sure that the tons and tons and tons of hard workers, okay, Ronaldo with his top off, insane. Yeah. But I still don't hold them in that same way. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, 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, if I have four chicken breasts, two salmon fillets, two fillets a day, four cheeking breasts, if I've got four cheeking breasts, two salmon fillets, two fillet steaks a day, four eggs a day, all with rice, wipe, tater, eggs, oats, so much veg.

So I have to prep all that, that's straight after my morning. 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? 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 your control. Yes. And even my wife, bless her, we had this conversation last week. She tried to shorten my day, bless. So whilst I was, she was working out, right, isn't it? He must be nearly 15 minutes from fish. She just start to make my breakfast.

And she put it in the microwave, ready to all that to do was press it on, but I couldn't get my head around it because I was like, are you sure? She was imagining that there's 120 grams in there. Are you sure there's only 20 grams of almond? And it's ridiculous, but I just feel comfortable. Yeah, I don't make a scene or anything it's just what I've always got. Gently chug on, get it done. And when people talk about

um, if you see a body book and they get you get this misconception and it's horrible where people are living out of the tupperware and you make a big scene of it and you know you've got efficient rights. I've managed to do that for for 20 years now and I've never made it like I can still socialise my friends, still go out at night, if we made it like, I can still socialize with my friends, still go out at night, if we go to restaurants, if I can't eat, what nine times I'd tend like eating every restaurant, you just ask for a plain steak or a plain chicken rest,

jacket potato, some mixed vegetable or a mixed salad, it's easy. So when this I can't have that, I can't eat any of this because it's not on-prem. You can, of course you can, you just have to adapt. And it's how much you want to live in normal society and the bodybuilder, which don't typically go hand in hand.

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 that my son's birthday, really sad two weeks out from the Olympia, everyone's celebrating in his pub, yeah, garden pub. And yeah, just kept nipping off over two.

I was into my cars, eat my meals back in. No one even knew what I'd want to get a drink. It's like being a closet drug addict, but yours is protein instead of heroin or something. Went to watch Cree three last week with my brother-in-law and that's option if you need a toilet, straight out the fire exit, even me with a car park straight back in.

Didn't even know even knew. And I just thought, you don't have to make a scene of it. a'r sgwch i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ffyr i'n ff company, got a coaching company, Blood Lab, which is a healthcare clinic company, and an RJT limited, which is all my sponsors and obligations there. So, we're doing all of this. Why can people go if they want to get blood work done in the UK? 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 40 to 50 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 24, seven. We've got over 20 for the bottom. It's now we've got four. So you have to go to the website, book on. Yeah, but you have to go in terms of getting a blood draw. It's not like in the US where you can go lab copper. The local places that can take the blood and send it to you. Yeah, so you can have it done at your house.

We can send people out. So we we've partnered with Randox 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. We like it. Yeah, obviously not do it yourself, but get a full bot. It's right. Okay.

Yeah, so from home. What's the website that people want to get blood work in the UK? So yeah, the blood lab dot code at UK. Go on to that and let you see, we do everything now. So we do ECGs, echocardiograms, we do minus surgery, TRT, HRT. You're like a British Derek from more plates, more dates. 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 talked more pride in my blood work and that sort of thing Talk to me about I mean if you you have access to these bloods

What sort of numbers to your test levels and everything else get down to is your right at the bottom end of prep? Just how ugly does that look? Well attend so this is the 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 made him on a gym shark, I made an Australian, would you believe? And we came, came back in, 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, and I need, nowhere I need to be. Don't, again, you know, I said to you about, I don't want to know that. As long as I'm healthy and I need nowhere I need to be. Again, you know I said to you about I don't want to concern myself with numbers and analytics. That's an outside of range and there's something really concerning just crack on.

But does he tell you afterwards? Have you seen what it looks like afterwards? Yeah, it's very low. Right. I almost admit with the body fat being so low as well, that is pretty low. But it's just within, I'd say, five or six weeks of coming off the show, getting my body fat back up, just easing off training and all that kind of stuff. That's a bit less stress. Yeah, we're normally back into where we need to be. 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 is on the body. I used to live and breathe it and it was just a normal. I used to love it, but obviously we've been a family now. I can't be selfish during the six five days a year. So for me, I just, I have to think of them more as well. Given the fact that you've got this massive Instagram, people have been following you for decades based on the way that you look. Yeah. 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? Yeah, well, so again, so for me, that was never my intention to be front of house and to, I was always someone who liked to work in the background and be an underdog, you know whether it was your intention or not that's what sounded about me. 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 to transition more because the amount of people we've helped now and the amount of people we're educating, because it started off as a body building 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 growing, it's such a level, but it's just educating people more around health,

and that's something, yeah, that I've pried myself in. So I think without even consciously knowing it, that's the where I'm going now with a lot of things. And the exciting project that I'm building the minute, that's a huge step in that direction. And it might be my retirement, should we say, it might be my way of that transition, that might fill that void, should we say, with competing. 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,

wanting to do things, maybe even looking at hobbies and going and do. That gym, that gym every morning. That he gym. So he says to me, we're back in an hour. 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 to you? So that is the reason I want to be the best at in the world because of me not having that when I was younger.

So that is my reason I want to be the best at it in the world because of me not having that when I was younger. So that is my number one priority now. People say, 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, I don't 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 one, I'm going to actually emotional talking about, one A 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 year old sitting out, I pulled every string I could to have him sat there because I wanted him to seize his dad.

And to be proud of it, me to win it in front of him and stuff. So he's been a big driving force for me to carry on and to keep getting better for him personally. With the businesses and all that kind of stuff, one of the businesses is in his name. He doesn't know it, he's the director and it will be his company. You're going to direct him in the UK. Exactly. It's called Alta, which is Alfie Lewis Terry aesthetics. For me, these are all things which I never had.

I told you about growing up with we would 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, those times where I was saying we never had the best things. We never went without but we appreciate money and we never had the big holidays or that kind of stuff. So this is something I want to be able 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 just because we've done well and we're financially okay now that he doesn't appreciate the value of.

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. You want to pay forward your success to give your kid the chances that you never kids that you in the future. 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 are incredibly proud of, and very well may not have achieved, had we not have had those setbacks.

That is very true. 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? 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 to the same time. I'm just going to spoil my son because I want, yeah, I want him to be a happier, I want him to be 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 only goes twice a week, 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 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, Bentley's and I'm thinking, I didn't have any of this. And I, I've done okay. And I, and now, I wise look to the world a lot quicker. And it's, in its harsh world. And I don't want him to be mollycold or and he is being to some degree with with my wife

and I love her so much for it because she cares for him so much and yeah you couldn't ask for a better mum but at the same time I am fearful that he yeah he won't be ready for the big wild world. It's got to be exposed to those difficulties man. 100%. I mean this is something that I think about so much, especially, you know, 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 America's friends are American, right? All of them. And they're homeschooling their kids, paying tutors to come around to school, liquid, bags of friends in the US. All of my richest friends are American, all of them. And they're homeschooling their kids, paying tutors to come around to school, liquid, but they come from backgrounds as poor as mine in yours.

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, 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 while not making their life unnecessarily hard. Yeah.

It's very, very difficult. There is so many variables with that as well. 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 a monk's tent and you're actually going through it where we were getting to a point where I was conscious of this and my wife wasn't. So she was giving everything that he wanted or like I was the opposite because I could see that He was like getting it. He was expecting everything. He was wherever he wanted he was getting So I was going the opposite way doing the talk

So I was purposely not doing that good. Yeah, being strict with but again That has its own problems because you then create a divide between parenting and who's gonna be drawn to who's you going to and soft touch with mum 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 place, because I take him to Augusta Jim, he's so competitive, which is brilliant. 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, and you win gracefully, you lose gracefully, there's no such thing as taking part, there's good. 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, he 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's always been outside every week, he's foraged during every week. So I'm proud of that side, but you're very right in the fact that, yeah, how do we not molecule him too much?

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, behavioral geneticist on the planet, Garkal-Robot-Poloment, 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. 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, the school that you'd send your kid to accounts

for between one and three percent 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. 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 post code 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.

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, 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. 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. Doesn't sound like a professional athlete. All aspects of it,

though. But yeah, so carry on, sorry. No, just that I would focus very much on who are the other kids that are going. 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 round 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 the fact you don't want them to be spending all of their time on their phone,

et cetera, et cetera. understand the fact you don't want them to be spending all of their time on their phone, etc, etc. And this is where wealth doesn't create advantages for kids because a lot of the time, if you're rich, you will outsource raising your kids to nannies, to kindergarten, etc, etc. But they're not going to take this level of resolution. They're not going to look at it this finally. And if you do decide to do that, I really think that the difference is that you can see. 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 are hanging around with? What are the activities they're doing outside of school? 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're hanging around with, and I think that you will have as much, if not more of an impact, not 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.

Yeah. 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. That's true. That's so true. So I need to make sure everyone's around me. 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 Austin, there's a lot of these called home studying so my Friends that have sold companies for tens of millions when they're in their 20s And then I was just getting to chill out and raise their kids on a get on a ranch or whatever

They'll go and buy a hundred acres of land somewhere in Texas with 10 other families one will be a doctor one will be a teacher One will be a physical train and 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 the kids to be like. And you're going to end up with those communities, I think, unless there's some like weird, by-product maladaptive social effect that happens because 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 like a concentration or a distillation of bad thought patterns because it's focusing everything, not just the good, but also the bad. 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 is pretty racist. Yeah, yeah. But I think that that's a good way to look at it.

And what you have the opportunity to is somebody that has a platform that has success, that has, you know, an aspirational lifestyle is to not only raise up your kids, but to find other people that have a growth mindset, that have kids, and you go, why don't we work together to make our kid, given what we know, given how we understand

that child development works, 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 consider doing. Sit down with 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 the 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. So I think that would be a really good strategy for people to think about doing. Yeah, definitely. But try to tell that to my wife. Ah, she'll be on board. She'll be on board. Okay, so what's next?

What can people expect from you next? So we've got an exciting year this year. So like I say, we were talking about this on the cab drive over. The last two years, I don't know what it was where, I felt like I'd achieved everything I wanted to do over the limpia. And I kind of just sat back on my laurels a little bit. I'd financially got into a place I wanted to be, the companies were doing, doing okay and so fun. 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, and I said to my wife at Christmas, I said, look, I need to go back to who I am. And that's keeping busy, keeping progressing in life. And that's not necessarily financially or competing. It's just, I need to still fulfil and keep doing things, I need to keep progressing forward. So I took on some big challenges this year. So again, I've got a huge project which you can take me all year to do. But this is, yeah, setting me up for for the next 10, 20 years. And 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 traveling, being 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 or it's a perfect time to do this. So that's as much as I'm going to say on it, but 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. You're on your own federation now. Own my own show. So 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 win the British title and you win a pro card and you go into the pro leagues, which federation is this?

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

It was just because it was- He becomes Ben Francis swinging in, last minute, slid streaming, all of the work he've done. Exactly, but it's gonna 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 you 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 South

Port to the Mr. Universe, used to go to Batley, Briley Hill, all these dives, but they were just brilliant bodybuilding shows. and the standard of athletes, you had thousands of people filling the 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, 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 have come into this show already,

it's just going to be off the rick ten. 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. Unreal. Ryan Terry, ladies and gentlemen, if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do where should they go. 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. Ryan I appreciate you, thank you mate. We'll take care.