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Transcript From Lucky Hatzipantelis’ interview with Mark Ottobre Video
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Welcome to the show that punches you in the face with inflammation, education and motivation. My name is Mark [inaudible] and welcome to the wolf’s den. Today’s guest was a one overall title at the age of 22 and we’re seen as the next big thing in bodybuilding, Australian bodybuilding. Ah, he was nearing the top next big thing and pretty much lost it all. To blame, shame and self defeat. He has since climbed his way out of that hole to be crowns. The current Mr Victoria. Today’s guest is lucky.
How do you say your last name? It’s a long one. It’s Etsy pentel lists, so to be confused with Etsy chanceless. Welcome to the show. Lucky. It’s absolute pleasure to have you on. I’m really looking for. Your pleasure is all mine. Thank you for having me on here. Oh, thank you sir. Thank you. So by far the most professional podcasts I’ve done, it’s a professional setup even with a microphone. Fantastic. Well, uh, yeah, we, we don’t like to do things in house. We’ve got the cameras set up at the studio nice and quiet on a Sunday. So let’s get into it. So one of the things I do want to get into today, but before we do, do I just kinda want to set the scene what the focus of today folks. I’m lucky being the next beginning of Australian bodybuilding, um, having, having some troubles for, for some time and then getting back in. That’s quite the journey. It’s quite hard to do what you’ve actually done because there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of things, there’s a lot of obstacles in the way. So before we really get into that, can you set the scene of, you know, how was your last comp? What, what’d you, what’d you achieve in the last comp? You know, conditioning wise, our body, fat wise, weight wise, this season. Yeah. This season.
The season. The first one was a sixth of October and are awaiting at about a waiting under 100 fully clothed. Um, the second show was two weeks later. The nationals I weighed in a little bit heavier. I actually have to take off my shoes and my jumper to Wayne under $100. And then I did the world, the PCA world championships, and I weighed in well under 100.
So the first show was the victorians. That’s the show that you want
class in the overall. And that was my goal. So you might on my whiteboard in my diaries, I had that as my, uh, my main objective. That was the main, the main goal because I didn’t really only see it when I committed to my contest prep. That’s the only goal I put on my whiteboard. Anything after that I didn’t think I’d be good enough to win the nationals, but I thought I had a chance at winning the overall, the, the state titles and I had no idea at that stage earlier this year that I’d even be going overseas. So when I committed to my contest prep earlier on in the year, it was just states and nationals. And then, um, once I achieve what I done, I’ve got an invitation to go overseas fully paid for. And I thought, Hey, I’m taking this.
And you came forth PCA. Yeah. I was hoping not to come. And it’s
funny, when I got, when I got backstage of the worlds, I thought I was going to come last and my goal was just, I’d love to come home with a trophy and I knew that if I caught like fifth, I’d get a trophy because top five got a trophy. But then I found out the top six get a trophy. Um, and when the, with the worlds, when we did the presentation, um, two of the guys that were competing earlier on in the day weren’t there, so it’s only six guys. Six of us left on stage. So I knew, Hey, I’m getting a trophy regardless. He’s a pretty cool. And um, I ended up getting fourth, so I was wrapped. So when they called someone else for six, I’m like, that’s really cool. I’ve got fifth. I just naturally assumed that. And then when I called someone else, if like, whoa, that’s really cool.
I got fourth. So I was wrapped with that. And you, so you won the, the Vix, you came second at nationals. I got second adjustment wessels like no one was coming first. Now in that lineup, as soon as Justin wessels ad had had announced that he’s the one that show naturally I knew that this guy is going to win the comp he adjustment has been undefeated in Australia for about two and a half decades. So I’ve got to ask you on NASA. So what, like some people would say, why compete if you know you’re not gonna win, you know, Justin’s going to win. Why do the hard yards get up on stage? You know, diet, do the cardio to know that you’re going to come second. Uh, for me, um, second place was a win. That’s why I was rationalizing it because I knew that I couldn’t win and that was good enough and exciting, compete in so long and I hadn’t done and I’d never done a national title with Ipb.
That’s the, that’s the elite. I wanted to say first year back, where do I stand with the top guys? He’s all about like, I was back by that stage. I knew like I’m really happy with the direction things are going. This is the first year I’ve been training, I’ve only been training for 10 months by this stage and I thought I’ve done really well already and there’s no pressure. There’s no expectation so I could do the nationals is quickly. Let me go back two weeks for the, for the vix. By that stage, like from probably about a couple months before the vix, my body developed to a point where everyone that was seeing me, he was like, dude, you are going to win this, and I couldn’t see that. There are moments when I could get a good pump and I could kind of see or if my adversaries were posting their photos, which a lot of them were doing on a weekly basis, I would take my progress pics.
They’re not posted them, but I’d compare them and it got to a point I’m leading up to the camp where my progress pics were getting better and my buddy was developing. You know, it’s funny with everyone knows about muscle memory, but when it’s you and your own insecurities, it’s hard to. It’s. I kind of felt like, is the muscle going to come back and how could these gonna come back? Surprisingly came back really quickly, so I needed to ask you on that as well because one of the things you’ve said in previous podcasts is, you know, you, you try for 10 months and you won.
How did you make up that gap? Because you did have some guys who obviously they hadn’t fallen off the bandwagon consistent and I’m so, so lucky. Version two point. Oh, but sucky version one maybe. Can you just give us the stats of what is your hit stage or at your best version one?
So we’ll come back to where we were just. Yeah, just quickly. So version one point. Oh my last comp always only 90, 95 kilos as a bit soft and that was after eight years of consecutive training. Ninety five. Those are the best. I’d got to 95 kilos on stage. A little bit soft in my last comp admittedly. So this one I was just better and we’ll go into that. And what are the differently. I did everything differently, but to answer your question right, uh, leading up to the Vix, there’s a lot of pressure and expectation and I’ll deal with it very well, you know, for mates, like am I going to meet these expectations? And then I start overthinking things and daddy, my self doubts huge with me and he buckles me and as I started improving and I was comparing myself, my current self, my progress pics, so these upload photos of my adversaries, I was like, Hey, I’ve got a chance. He’ll. Then as it got closer, I’m like, if I be honest with myself right now, um, I could. I went to take this guy and these are the guys that I thought were the guys debate, but still there was that insecurity in my, in my head. And then as the comp got closer, which has happened in the past, as the comp gets closer, my insecurities come to the surface more rights and I’ll do my head in so much.
It was pretty normal. We bounce around a fair bit in this podcast show wherever you’re watching it or itunes or soundcloud. In saying that, before we get into the childhood stuff, so I do want to set the scene of where you were, I suppose, you know, the justin getting up on stage or those kinds of things. Yeah, I mean really it’s quite a significant. I do want to make a point on it. It’s quite a significant thing to, to get where you went in 10 month.
I know that I’m a whip, like, you know, it’s hard for me to say really positive things about myself but I can be honest with myself and I know that what I did in 10 months was pretty incredible. But to answer your question about the nationals, I knew Justin was going to win it and I didn’t have the pressure and expectation of the vix. I was able to have fun.
So next year you it to win it. I mean justin gets used.
Okay. So my goals for next year, I don’t like saying this, but my goals for next year is I’d like to replicate what I’d done at the state titles that even more like if I was to be really honest with him, Martina, we put her on goals down. I wouldn’t share this normally because it sounds quite narcissistic. Maybe I don’t know, you know, but like I want to come back and I want to convincingly when my class at the nationals and the overall, you know, I thought to myself, if I could do what I did in 10 months with an actual offseason and uh, just uh, I’m back now. You know, what it really comes down to is having an off season. I never had one. I went from inactivity to just account training now for a couple of months and you know what? I want to compete the CEO.
And I made the commitment to myself. And it’s funny when I look back at the photos of how I looked at that time, I thought it’s funny. I thought I was better at the time that I’m what I was. Because I got my weight up to 120 kilos and I thought it had to be more muscle than what I did and when I looked back at my skin folds or headlock, my lean mass is like 98 and my lane mass increased throughout my whole prep. So I need to also to powerlifting comps I, you want a 10 weeks at one at six weeks out. And my lean mass increased and my strength increased. This is going into a print something very different that you haven’t done before. One hundred percent. Yeah. Let’s switch gears and talk about lucky and really set the scene. But lucky is acute.
So it tells me where did you grow up? Where’d you go to high school? High School. Had you been to training all that? Good. So, um, you know, I was born, I was a mistake when I was born. Right. So that forced but to parents to get married right at they divorced quite early on. My mother moved back in with their parents and they basically raised me up until the age of 10. So she had nothing to do with me. Um, and then they moved out, they gave my mother the house and at that point she had the responsibility of me and she had never done that before. So she, she was really toxic. It’s really toxic environment. It was abusive and I looking back at it, upon reflection and knowing what I know now, I was just a kid going through it. I never had anyone cook me meals, asked me how I was going, anything like that.
I was neglected. And then abused. When I say abuse, I’m talking emotionally, psychologically, and, and a couple of times physically, but more so verbally and emotionally it’s really bad. I have zero relationship with that woman, but she was always abusive and as I got older it actually got worse at school. I’ll give you an example. Uh, you know, kids in that are in those environments. They act up in school. That’s their way of expressing themselves because I don’t know when, any other ways of expressing themselves and I was a Laracon that’s how I developed, I guess a coping mechanism to deal with what I was going through. So I was always American school. I was always playing up, I was never getting into fights or anything, but I was always getting in trouble and he got to a point where, I think it was year nine, um, you know, the, the coordinator caught up my mother and she goes, I don’t give a fuck.
Sorry. I try not to swear. She goes, I don’t care. He can do it with his own shit. Right. That’ll give you an example of how much you just didn’t care. Um, you know what I’m saying? I didn’t even get cooked meals. I never had one cooked meal or hug or even. How are you? If I was ever crying, she came home and I was crying. I remember she’d say things like, well, why the fuck you crying for? So there’s nothing there. There was no emotional attachment at all. Um, so I just got through it and maybe it would have got into this question later, why don’t I start body building? And I really honestly think that it was a coping mechanism because bodybuilding gave me something to focus on. I had nothing else. So how old were you when you got into play? So you know, like how you’re attaining Igi and you know, you and the boys kind of lift wights liquid for girls.
Initially it started like that, you know, like 16 years old. And the Israeli funny. I’m 16 years old. I found some whites in the garage from my uncles because that house I was living in, my uncle’s grew up in as well. So there was a Barbell, like maybe 20 kilos with the whites and those dumbbells. One dumbbell that had like the screws. Remember those ones? Yeah. So like I do the same work at every night and I remember one time I tried doing legs. This is a really funny story. I tried doing legs so I’m squatting, I’m repping out and I thought I had no energy to take the bar off so I thought I’m going to get on my knees and put the bar on the bed and what’s gonna Happen? Like the whites and seeing, you know, I’m stuck on the bed. It was hilarious.
That’s how it started. Then, um, one of my friends turned 18 before I did. He was driving and then we got memberships at Mike’s gym in Dandenong, which has now Dodi standing on and that was like, you know, we went from training in some little, it was like a 20 minute walk from our school and it was these tennis courts and upstairs I had this tiny gym which was like, it was tiny is really, really small, but every day after school were like 10 of us would go there and train for three hours, literally three hours and I remember like during school, so I loved it so much that I wouldn’t study or do classwork. I’d like write down programs and stuff like that. And a workout could be like I exercise for chest, had no idea what I was doing, but I got serious when I say people started noticing my progress at the gym, older blokes.
And it’s for the first time in my life I had people who were supporting me. So when was the first time you picked up a white? We don’t. 16. 16? Yeah. And then you started getting serious about what? 18. When I went to Mike’s gym, so all the blood started seeing my progress and I started supporting me and I never had that before. So put yourself in the shoes of like a 17 or 18 year old. Never had any support from anyone ever. And then all of a sudden, you know, you got these older blokes and everyone’s getting behind you and you know, I fed off it. It felt good for the first time in my life. I had people supporting me with something that I seem to have been good at is almost like these are the first thing that I’m ever good at and they’re glass supported me.
So, um, that pushed me on to think about competing because everyone’s like, dude, you’re one of the best guys. It’s 1718 that I’ve ever seen because I developed pretty quickly. And again, I was natural. Just a lot of blokes at the gym, you know, at one stage, you know, when I kind of started getting more serious, I started gravitating towards more a more older blogs that you have for friends and started kind of moving away from, from my friends from school because at that stage were all 18 and now going clubbing every weekend and then we’ll get into drugs at that stage and I wasn’t and I’m going to fight a lot and I thought this isn’t really for me. So at one point in my life when I was like 19 to 21, the guys that I was hanging out socially, we’re older blokes from the gym and I really developed quickly at that stage and I did my first comment 19, which was coincidentally the, I think the first comp you did. So you’re a junior and I was at
St Joe’s the second column so I can go into that story a little bit actually. And I will. Um, so the first company, it was in 2004. I came last night. I was that guy on stage that shouldn’t have been on stage. I a really, really bad experience and that was the thing in 2005, I was like, I need to compete again. So when my friend said I should hit up Tony Dodi and uh, so I did and he helped me with my prep that year and I competed at the Mba and then I competed at the Ibb and I remember at the ICB showed the whole bunch of people saying, don’t compete, you’re going to look out of place. And I remember it was like three days out of the shower called Tony and said, Hey Tony, look, I can’t compete and you is, what do you mean you can’t compete? You look great. And he goes, oh no, everyone’s telling me I can’t. And he said, no, you can compete them. Look, I’m really sorry I can’t compete. Went to the gym, super bummed out. And one of my friends will say, it was like, what are you doing? Why aren’t you competing? All everyone said I shouldn’t because fuck that man.
Last question. Did you allow other people’s opinions to influence how you felt to say that to him or did you feel that self doubt yourself within your.
Well, I think I really wanted to compete into tiny show and even just to have a crack. Right, and then when everyone stopped, you know, that last week of comp, your carb depleted, you don’t thinking straight, you don’t have your. It is a very vulnerable period. If you don’t have the support network there, you can go off the beaten track. Anyway. I had that support network talk to me up in any way it pretty much two hours or whatever it was. Later I called up, Tony said, I’m really, really sorry. I shouldn’t let these people affected me. I’ll be at your show. All competed, and it was really great experience for me because I competed at that. Shar, remember you, you were a teen. I was a junior and everyone’s like, oh, have you seen this lucky kid? He’s only 17 or 18. How old were you?
I was. You know what’s funny? When he told me that on the phone the other day, I can’t believe that because I was a teenager, I was 70 kilos and I had, from my perspective, I really had nothing. You know, I was in lane, but I was. I had no muscle and you can see my spine from the real. You could literally
see you had a great physique. Teenage music. Yeah, the shape was great and I remember everyone going, Oh, these lucky kid, you know, he’s an expert in that day as well. Thank you. I was on the dumbest died I’ve ever been on to get onto that show. The diet that I was doing that then was 50 egg whites a day. That was my, that was my food. I was getting some pretty shady advice, but it was 50 egg whites a day made up as an Omelet with some vegetables. I felt like absolute crap that day. And Anyway, I came second to a beat, beat someone pick Ryan underwood it when he was a short shout out to Ron Underwood. Absolute basis space. So for me that was a, you know, it wasn’t a first place, but the second place was, you know, you don’t suck at this so much, you know, you can actually hang in there and you can do. So I was, I was, I was happy as a pig in shit with seconds. Yeah. I was really happy to second and I was happy with how I looked because, you know, the year prior I really didn’t
also, let’s just say you were natural doing it.
Okay. It’s a federation. Pretty cool that, that was, that was great for me. So yeah, that was how I first met you and then seeing, you know, my path kind of led me to more pt focused business and training. Then you really got into bodybuilding and hardcore so yeah, absolutely. Great. So I don’t know where we were with that, but what keeps you. I mean for me, I competed once, twice, more in 2007 and then pretty much haven’t put on the trunks. Again, to be honest with you, bodybuilding has never been done six shows and it’s never really spoken to me. I haven’t really, well, I’ve never really enjoyed the process and I haven’t enjoyed the stage either, so I know for a lot of people that I can’t wait to get up on stage. I can’t wait to show what I’ve got. Family. I’d rather lift something. So for me, power lifting, strong man that calls my name more so than the stage, but what
you just quickly. It’s funny you say that like I’ve done both now. I haven’t done strong men, but I’m powerlifting and if I enjoy the process, enjoy the process of the journey for me with bodybuilding, but the day is often for me, so I’ve got this insecurity and self doubt it’s spilling over to for me the days horrible, horrible until it’s done. Right. It’s fun. It’s horrible. I want to know when my coach saw me at the Vix, I wanted to and I took a photo of me. Does he came. I had to go there early on to get a tent and register and not register but do the competitors meeting and then he came a little bit later and then he goes, I need to see you. I said, of course, uh, I was nervous. I thought, you know, I’ve lost a lot of smaller and softer, and then he’s lucky.
He fine. He took a photo and I actually saw a glimpse of the photo and it wasn’t a very flattering photo and I wanted to go straight home. The only thing I knew I had to stay to get through it. There’s so many people that come to the me, but if it was up to me, if I was someone who didn’t have anyone going to the same, I think I would have gone home. I’ll be honest with you, that support network is so integral yet more so. It was the fact that so many people would come to the same me and I knew that I posted it online. If I had gone home, I would look like an idiot if I stayed and didn’t look good. I knew that I’d still be received well because where I’ve come from, hey, he’s come from being depressed, suicidal thought it’d, you know, drug addict not leaving his room for two months and then 10 months time he’s competed again. That’s great. And I knew that it’d be great for business, but obviously when you can paint it, you want to do, you want to do really well and you want to look good and I just thought I don’t look good
sometimes you to do that and you can stack the deck
in such a way that you, you, it’s so much more painful not to go through with it then to back out. Yeah. And you know what the files, to be honest, I kinda got a little bit of that feeling with today’s podcast because this is the most professional thing I’ve ever done. Right. I’ve done three podcasts. This one here is a professional setup and I was so, so much also nervous coming here that I kind of had that feeling where I thought, Oh man, this is going to be. This is a struggle to commit to this, but I know that once I do it, I’m going to get over it. I want to get through it. I’ll be proud of myself for doing it. And then I’ll be able to do it again any other time.
And it also sets a new record of where you’re at. So anything below that is now a lot easier. Yeah. It’s like you’ve evolved. So let’s get back into your story. All right, so 2007. No, 2005 was when you did the first comp. Then you kind of skyrocketed. And, and I can only speak for me, I’m not hardcore into the bodybuilding world. I’m an observer. I’m a coach. I help people get into that. And even right now I’m not coaching anyone. It’s mainly my team here at enterprise. You do wally’s all my team and enterprise deal the coaching, so I’m not hardcore into that world. But for me as it I’ll say, is it almost as an outsider, almost insider outsider to me, it seemed that you were on the fast track to being a top amateur and possibly even someone who you’d think, oh yeah, he’ll probably maybe even give his pro card one day.
People were thinking and that’s what my goal was. Did I think I could achieve it? I thought I could. I knew that I could do nothing as a pro. I knew that I knew my genetic limitations, so what my goal was was to win my pro card in Australia and I knew at that point for me that was it because I knew that are competing as a pro, I would not get anywhere and I knew that it would be just a bad investment because like, yeah, it would be bad investment if I, if I tried to pursue a Pro Korea, I wouldn’t get anywhere. And when I say investment, it’s an investment. It’s a financial investment and it’s also, I personally believe a, somebody might not like to hear me saying this. I personally think your, your, it’s a risk as well.
So insane in terms of your health as well. Yeah, absolutely. I mean it’s not a natural thing or the body wants to be, you know, 110, 120, 140 kilos, you know, walking around five percent body fat. That’s a, that’s, that’s an absolute unbelievable ask of the body and you see the pros, you know, once they get off state, you know, once they stopped competing, they shrink. They got a lot smaller, you know, don’t lose everything. Obviously they still look fine, perfectly fine, and
that’s the ones that actually make it to that point. Let’s not forget about the ones that lose their life before that point. That’s true. Know so many. Like I love bodybuilding, I’m really passionate about bodybuilding and it saddens me to know how many body builders that I really admired from, from my favorite eras, like the nineties, right? How many of these guys have passed away?
That’s what her going in with that. Was that a self defeating prophecy? So I mean because because it is in, I think it was 2012 or 13 that you won the states where you felt like you were in 2010. Right? So is in you, you old lucky for example, he set this goal of being a pro, but then now you know, lucky two point, oh, now knows that that’s probably not a goal. That is a rational golden. The sense of being holistic for his whole life. So, so was that at the time a self defeating prophecy of, well, if I actually achieved these, my wife is actually going to go backwards. Would you have that awareness then or.
No, at that time I had the goal of just I want it to be the best bodybuilder in the country. That was my was going through my head at that time, but I also knew that because I was retained and coaching the better I did on stage just translated to a better business, a more successful business and the better I was doing, my business was growing and I knew that if I can, if I can get that pro card, this is, this is the, this is the phrase I used, I’d be printing money because you can charge whatever you want is the people. You know, a lot of these pros, we’ll charge one Australian pros. They’ll charge 1:50, a personal training session and they’re getting it. They’re getting booked out as well because people see you as the guy that they want to be and they think they think that, hey, this guy must know something that I don’t know.
I want to go see that guy and as I was getting better at, as an amateur, I was again, I was attracting a lot more clients who were competitive bodybuilders. I, I had people coming from the state to see me seriously. It happened probably half a dozen times and I saw that is like, wow, this is huge. This person has come into state to train with me for a week. What are also. Yeah, that’s awesome. And I’m the kind of guy as well where, um, you know, when people, when a couple of dudes did that allowed them to stay with me because I just thought these guys come into state, paid for a flight and a taxi and I couldn’t even charge them a couple of the guys. So they stayed with me and I changed them for free simply because they’d come eat, say train with me. I thought Madison, that’s cool. That makes me feel really cool. So I kind of, I wanted to reward that in a way. You know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely. I’m actually next week we’ve got to go. Coming from Canada for a year, we’ve had now actually had people come from state. You’ve got them coming from across oceans. Well, I suppose the point guys watching this, I’ll just make a point of as well, and when I was at my peak with coaching, I did have a lot of people from interstate come in, so I think that I would say is that it’s not necessarily synonymous that you’ve got to be pro to, to do that. I think really it comes back to build that level of
you’d be for that, for those viewers that don’t know, marcus trained literally hundreds and hundreds of people. Mostly females
very successfully. Well competitors. Yes. Competitors, females. Definitely. Yeah. There’s, this is now. I mean if you look at Olivia enterprise, there has been so um, yeah, definitely. So yeah, it’s big and it easy. Absolutely right. It is, it is. Very cool. Um, but what I wanted to get into now was the downward spiral of things. So what was the peak? Let’s talk highs and lows. And before we do that, if I can just get Jaden just to close the door because there’s a little bit of interference in the background, but yeah, let’s talk highs and lows. Your your highest height. I think we’ve spoken a little bit about it. I think he won the belt that Craig.
No, no, no, no, no. Craig Lucas around the country classic. So in 2005 and we competed for that comp. I was given a chicken and Broccoli Diet with no salt in cutting up protein patterns, all that kind of stuff. I think I’m weighed 70 kilos because I overdid it. So the next year I weighed 80 kilos. Still natural only I think. So I dieted more effectively and I one Craig Lucas country classic as a junior. Then four weeks later I won then Napa, Australia championships as a junior and I got. I got a trip to go overseas to compete at the, at the nab a universe and you’ve got to think a young guy who has never good at anything, isn’t it not. Not Good at school, you’re going back to school. I had to repeat it. And then I only did year 12 simply because my grandma called me up crying when she found out that I wanted him to leave. The only reason why I did it was to make them happy now because I’d found the Atlantic meant I was 18 in year 12 and I was driving so year 12 was one of the best years of my life, you know, year 12 for me was, you know, horsing around with my friends and girls. That’s all it was. I was clubbing in year 12, you know, not every night, not every night, but we would go during the week, some weeks. Um, what was I going with that?
Did the. Dan would spoil the highs highs?
Yeah. Okay. Just going back to the comps. Yeah. So I did the, I went overseas. So put let’s put things in perspective. Right? I’ve never achieved anything, never done anything, never had any support from home. And all of a sudden at one stage and Graeme Landstuhl, the promoter on Emc has announced that, you know, the judges have thoughts. So good of lucky that we want to send him overseas represented Australia. I’m like, wow, this is awesome. You know, if I did that and that cop I think was the comp that may be think, hey man, I’m onto something here that that’s what really made me like think this is what I want to do now. And I think I’ve got a chance to go far because again, I went to the Napa universe. This is the same content, Arnold Schwarzenegger, nicotine and one. This is huge. And then after that, because I knew Graham Land told Tommy, hey, we want you for, you know, Napa for the next three years you can go to the universe.
I gave it a year off and because I was going to nab a universe and not going up against natural guys, I thought this is my rationale. Now I’m 21 and I’m thinking I don’t want to go to the nab. A Universe will then Aba worlds as a natural anymore. That’s the first year. Use performance enhancing drugs. And then I, I, I actually want in 2008 the junior class and the overall. And that for me was like, okay, you know, I’ve kind of made a statement here through my achievement and that’s, that’s the progression of my, of, of my career, I guess, and how things just gotten better and that made me think I think I’ve got more of a chance to. And then the support came and as you know, when you’re successful, more people are coming around you. And that’s when the pressure and expectation actually started.
Then I competed again in 2010. I did really well. One of the overall, again, these two in a row now I won the Australasia and then the following year was the pro qualifier. That’s, this is it now, don’t forget the goal was to go pro. Now this is the first show that I’m doing for that. This is the pro card now. And it was a myself, luke, Tim’s and a large Vegan Indian court. Horrendous thing to invite about 125 kilos. Right? I’m the smallest guy on stage on yours off. Uh, from my perspective, I’ve got a lot slaughtered on stage. But when I saw the footage, I could kind of see, okay, I can see how he had me, but I can also see that I’ve got a lot of potential here to do well. Um, and I try, like, I actually contacted Luke so luke teams beat me.
I contacted Luke teams as coach who you may know, John Davey to coach me because I thought, you know what? He helped luke to win and he, John David was a prong self. That’s the direction I want to go down. I’ve taken myself as far as I can go where to now. Some people think that my downward spiral started after I lost the lieutenants. I didn’t. I was even more mode like coming second or third. We’re placing. It was, he is, he is a pro card. The other two people, there’s no place in. It’s this first. That’s it for me though. Not winning was no problem. It motivated me like always. Then the very next day I was putting a plan together. So I trained for like another year after that and I actually. Now you asked me earlier, how do you compete knowing Econ, when will that following year?
I was training for the 2012 pro qualifier. I was about eight weeks out and I found out that a guy called Abraham was competing. Do you know Abraham? I remember that guy. Okay. He was the $100 for year for the viewers that don’t know who Abraham is. This guy compete at 125 kilos. This you know now you are not going to win that guy. If he looks like a pro, there’s no one else is going to to even come close. Now, you know when I mentioned earlier about being a pro in the investment is also a financial investment that goes into trying to become a pro and I just waited all up and I thought to myself, I can’t win. What’s the point of going through the I kind of. I didn’t even get a place and they get no trophy. What’s the point of doing this?
So I did. That’s the first are pulled out of it because I just thought there’s no point and I was investing a lot of money each week into this. I thought there’s no point. So I pulled out and I thought to myself, you know what, I’m going to take a couple of weeks off training. A couple weeks turned into eight years. Right now if we look at the downward spiral that first year, that first couple of weeks extended, right. And things are still good. I’ll still working in everything. But then I started using recreational drugs because I had. I was living this really. It’s really disciplined lifestyle for like eight years. Literally I hadn’t done any drugs or anything like that. Then all of a sudden like I’m doing one now. It almost feels good. So it started with recreational drugs. It was cocaine and I got pretty some stages where it got pretty bad on that and that was 2000 and end of 2012, 2013 and then I really didn’t know at the time, but without that discipline lifestyle, my life went downhill.
I, I needed the discipline to keep me on a positive track without it, without the training, without having specifically goals. That’s what it comes down to because I realized my life was on track when I had a goal and then bothered when I stopped competing. I didn’t actually have any goals. You know, when you don’t, when you caught this prepping or maybe when you’re prepping someone, you may know this, you’d so discipline that discipline and all those, um, all those qualities and characteristics that come with doing a prep, they spill over into other areas of life. Then you become disciplined with everything else Jocko. Will Wilkins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he’s one of the guys that I came across online and he, you know, what’s great about him, he tells it like it is
discipline leads to freedom and with discipline you have no freedom and it’s almost seems counterintuitive, but it’s absolutely true. You need that routine to keep you on track to actually, you know, whether it’s financial freedom or having success over your body or a, I suppose sovereignty over your domain is that, you know, I like using finances as an example. Unless you learn how to save you money, unless you learn the difference between the haves and have nots, you will always and forever be a slave to money. It’s only until you go, right, well, this is what I’m going to do with the money. This is where I’m going to spend my money on not going to spend my money here and actually be actively engaged in that. That that’s when you actually have the freedom. But that comes through discipline and it’s the same thing with training and health and fitness and when helping someone with a healthy lifestyle, it’s, you know, you can’t eat cheeseburgers every day. You can’t just eat whatever you want and shovel whatever you want into your golf because you’re going to end up fat, tired, overweight, and you’d have probably diseased as well. So there has to be a discipline and structure and routine around that. So just to recap on that, what year was it when a job came onstage? Okay. So
is that pro qualifier was the 2012
in 2012 and then you didn’t train.
So I, I stopped training about six weeks or eight weeks before March of two. They’re still in 2008 was end of 2011. That’s when I stopped training and things. I think I would say 2012 wasn’t a necessarily a bad year for me, but I was doing a lot of recreational drugs on weekends and things like that. Still working in everything. I’m a pseudo drugs, recreational drugs on weekends and stuff like that. Um, if when things started really spiraling I think was more 2013. That’s when, again, not having a goal, not having discipline and things just started spiral, um, bad relationship, negative toxic relationships as well. Uh, not knowing how to deal with things. And then, um, it just, it really progressively go really bad. But then between 2013 and 2000, end of 2017, that’s a period of my life that I will I call if I was to write a memoir that was the dark he is.
Um, but you know, what’s really fascinating about the dark is, and this is true, this is legitimately, genuinely true. That’s when I learned the most about myself. It’s a prior to that. Everything I had, I wasn’t introspective before that point. So what, so in terms, what you’re saying with that understanding yourself. So if your actions and behaviors and why you are the way you are prior to that, would you say, and this is just a pure Monterey on things, probably, that you’re winning these contests. You’re on top, you know, it’s like, yeah, life’s good. Narcissistic behaviors. Then the dream gets shredded by this 125 kilo monster who just says, mate, doesn’t matter how hard you work this title. This is coming. You Go, Holy Shit. What am I doing with my life when I actually plan on taking two weeks off? And then continuing training that didn’t.
That didn’t actually end up happening, so like it wasn’t like I was shattered, it was dislike. There’s no point in me continuing to make this investment. I can’t win this and what I’d done is that’s the first point where I was honest with myself and I said to myself, okay, let’s have a look. Have ads going to win this. How many other people are in my way to win this? So like there were guys like Luke Schembri. There were so many other guys in the country that I knew would that will be doing the pro qualifier. I try, I try to work out or accompanied him. If he did it, I copied him if he did it and this, this is my rationale. I worked at the guys that would date me that we’re currently competing and it got to like four years later if I.
Oh one. Then I thought to myself is only stocked doble left and it’d be made him and in four years time I think I’d be, I’d be good enough to beat him. That was depending on if no one knew came out. That’s how I thought about it and I thought, because again, it’s what onsite, it’s a big investment. I’m talking tens of thousands of dollars. This is what I’m, I would like to see. I don’t want to go too much into that side of things, but the investment that I’m talking about is for a contest prep. If you want to become pro, you’re not looking at a few hundred dollars or a few thousand. We’re looking at tens of thousands now, right? That’s, this is the reality of things. This is the reality of if you want to go for your program, this is what you’re spending. So for me, let’s put things in perspective now, right?
And again, I should probably mention this, right? Right now I’m, I’m a few, um, a few weeks out, I’m eight weeks out. You know what? Now that we’re talking about, if things are coming to me right, also the coffee or gunshot, I’m eight weeks out. I am investing tens of thousands into this contest prep, right? And if I was to be completely vulnerable and honest here, this is the moment that it stopped, right? I developed scar tissue in certain areas from intramuscular injections and I just couldn’t put anything in. Right. Not only that, right. I thought to myself, here I am doing what I’m doing. I’m living at moms. Let’s say a wind is pro card. I’m getting back in my shitbox of a car and I’m driving back to mum’s, which is an environment that I hate. It’s killing me and my rationale back then was to achieve what I need to achieve or what I wanted to achieve.
I have to be, I have to live here because all I was like would still pay. Also contribute because I was earning more money than her so I was paying all the bills and everything, but that was cheaper than renting on my own or buying and at that time I was in a financial position to do that. My pet business was. I was doing 10 to 15 sessions a day, seven days a week I was bringing money in. Right. But knowing that like I’ll give an example of what I would go through when I’m prepping for this pro card. Right. It’s all coming back to me now. I would come home from work at night, 9:00, I would open the door to come in, we’ll have to do is cook and go to sleep right out, open the door and I’d hear, shut the fuck up.
I’m trying to fucking sleep. Are Try and cook at any noise I make. I’m getting screamed at this, the environment I’m in, so I’m thinking I’ve got to believe here to win that title. It’s going to cost me this much each year and if I did, when I’m coming back to this toxic environment, I’ve got to get outta here. So I had reason to move out and I thought that’s what I want to do now. So the moment that I couldn’t, there’s one moment I try to put some oil in. I couldn’t put it in. I threw the needle on the ground. Three months later I was living in my own place, renting of course, but I paid up front for five months renting and with another couple of months I’d 30 grand saved. So that was a difference and I felt happy doing that these lot. Let me tell you, when you live in a toxic environment with a parent, then you move out.
You don’t understand how much better you feel. It’s, Oh, I felt great. Well, it’s like being a king in a castle, but having the folks that are there so you don’t really have chemo was being destroyed in that house. It was really toxic. Who’s really the. The the has my. I had my own place and you felt really good and that’s. That was actually the moment that I stopped. Right, but I didn’t feel bad knowing that I couldn’t win. You just accepted it and I planned on still training. It’s just the way things happened with not training at because my body still look really good. I thought, Hey, I’m. I’m really fine. Not Training two weeks extended. Then that extended. Then there was the recreational drugs, then it was a toxic relationship and then it just spiraled without having that discipline. You know? The only time in my life that I ever had stability seriously was when I was pregnant because I was focused on something. If I didn’t have that, those years that I didn’t compete in between that period of time that I was competing were years that I didn’t make progress in life.
So it’s almost like a, and again, I don’t, I don’t mean to be jumping the gun on this, but it’s almost like you’re lucky. He’s really good at competing is really good at training is really good at looking a certain way and that’s what he does and it’s almost like, well, if you take the soul or the purpose of living from lucky, he doesn’t have an anchor, doesn’t ever. Right. It doesn’t. The time at the time, that lighthouse ton, that’s all on you because I didn’t have any,
any mentor mentors in any way had no parent. So you gotta think this is a kid who’s been neglected at home. He’s got no one to show them direction. He’s lost. Was there anyone who stepped up in your life as surrogate parents? No. No, no, no. I trained as mentors and had some luck until I. until I started competing, you know, family members. I’ll give you an example, man. I’ve got an uncle, right? I’ve got aunties and uncles that are really great, right? But they were never really there when I was younger to help me in any way. I didn’t tell me one Christmas when I actually became an adult before I lost my shit. He goes, know what lucky you know, the family is really happy that you turned out how you have considering how fuck both your parents are these a family member telling me that now.
Do you know what I mean? And when he told me that that’s when I was competing. So again, the success coming my way, I was, I had, I was being successful business. All of this came through the discipline lifestyle of competing. That’s all I knew. It wasn’t until I became older, after I, after I kind of sunk and became more self aware that I realized that I realized is the reality of life, you know? And I knew that, you know, I didn’t necessarily the bodybuilding to stay anchored. It was just I need goals and I need to be disciplined. Ultimately, what I found he came down to is having goals to work towards. Would you say you hit rock bottom and that I use. I couldn’t have gotten any. Like I, I think I can show vulnerability, right, but I think I don’t. I’m not strong enough yet to express the level of rock bottom that I was.
It was nasty and without getting into too much personal detail. Okay. The recording for me was before I made the commitment to myself to move forward and start treating myself well. It was locked. It was this time last year when I got out of it and two months prior. I hadn’t left my room for two months. Legitimately two months. What would a room for two months. Drugs, right? Yeah. That’s escaping reality and that was supposed to be honest. I was meth and marijuana. They using them both in a toxic way. Right. I want to see. I didn’t want to be here anymore. The only thing literally keeping me, he was my dog because again, I didn’t have anyone and they get two doors down was the woman that gave birth me that she knew what I was doing, didn’t give a shit, and for anyone who’s a who has parents that neglected them and legitimately didn’t give a shit about them and abused them, it lays an emptiness inside you.
It’s, it’s, it’s so many. Unless you’ve experienced it, you don’t know. So we were. The drugs away of it is simply a stable boy. That’s it. That’s all it was and that possibly avoid filler. And it’s funny you mentioned that because in that period of time I spent a lot of time on youtube and the Internet, so when I did my drugs, it wasn’t recreationally. Apart from when I was doing cocaine, when I was doing the really bad stuff, it was all my own. I would acquire what I need and I’ll go to my bedroom or lock myself away, darker, but that’s it. I didn’t want to. It was literally escaping reality. That’s all it was. But when he say filling a void, I remember once coming across an interview with Mike Tyson and he spoke about his drug addiction and what he said was exactly what I said.
Wherever he goes, he goes, he felt like I was trying to fill a hole inside me, like a. It was like a bottomless pit. And he goes, no matter how much drugs are put in there, I couldn’t fill that void. And he goes, what that void was, was a love that I never had from my parents. And you know what? Prior to that, that’s why I love being on Youtube. I come across all this information that helped me when he said that it hit me how shit, man, I can relate to this. So it makes sense. It does, yeah. We don’t want to just kind of springboard off from because as people are going to be watching this on youtube and such a relatable story. So my hope is that this hits the people who it needs to hit if they’re in troubled times and your story has some reliability and can put someone.
I picked someone out of a dark hall. As you picked yourself, add up, what advice to the youtube watchers of this, you know, where you’ve been, how, how did you pick yourself up and what advice would you give? It was hard. It was really hard. I kind of felt like I knew that I didn’t necessarily have, I was confused if I had an addiction or not because I chose when to do it or not. I literally chose when to do it or not. It wasn’t an every day. It was never an everyday thing. But then there were times when our would, what I described as destroying myself and it would take a cattle, there’ll be a catalyst. Something would happen on an emotional level. Say something in a relationship with would fail or, or I’d be feeling vulnerable. Then my mum would, would go off at something over nothing and then bang, you know, I would then decide not I’m going to get on it, you know what I mean?
And sometimes it might be to other times it was, it was worse. It would be a couple of weeks. Um, the, what I would say to people, it’s, you only have one life and it’s really up to you and I think we all deserve better. And I think what keeps, I can’t talk for everyone, but for me personally, I was really afraid. This is what I thought when I was, when I got really introspective, I thought what is keeping me, what is holding me back? It was not having value for myself because I, no one helped me develop that. It was destroyed when you have two parents who were abusive and emotionally, there’s nothing there and it literally, I’m telling you, you’re a piece of shit. I have my mom telling me no one loves you. This is when I was growing up. See if your mom doesn’t love you, then who does, you can’t even love yourself, you know, so, um, wasn’t gone with that, taking people up out of the hole, you know, that.
But I had to kind of firstly accept that to get over where I was at except this woman doesn’t give a shit about you. Right? But, you know, always afraid. You have to think kid, when you’re a kid growing up, you’d got your parents discipline, you falive they’re setting you up for life. Had No one to set me up for life. I didn’t have the skills or abilities to face life and I feel that that was something that was really holding me back. It was facing life and that’s something that like guys like Jordan Peterson talk about actually facing life and you know, what was good about Jordan Peterson and you mentioned them earlier. When I came across him, he was like, one of the biggest influences. I haven’t bought his book right? Because I love him. You know, he, he, he would explain what’s wrong with you. I could relate to this. He would explain why. I’m like, hey man, I can relate to this. And then he will explain. Not even explain. He will tell you and you know how he talks. It’s like blunt, this is it. This is what’s wrong with you. This is why. And this is what you got to do. It’s up to you.
Now was on. Now go clean your room, clean your room with your shoulders back. That’s discipline. Keeping your room clean,
selection of your room, you know will. Then you have a tiny room tidy room. You know what they’re gonna have. They’re gonna have a pretty. Their life will look a lot better in someone’s got messy room. Not all the time, but we could probably agree that most of the time.
Well it’s that saying neural linguistic programming, NLP and personal development. It’s how you do one thing is how you do everything and you know it’s the attention to the details. The devil’s in the detail and self respect, the way you dress, the way all those things, and maybe they’re not always interrelated so much, but tell you there is a huge, huge amount where it is. You know, if you can’t control your, your own personal domain, then you know, what do you have
with rock bottom? What comes with that is a lot of shame and you have no confidence in yourself, but the shame aspect of things, value fee self and you have no confidence seems huge. I actually lost the confidence in myself either work, I was calling myself a chic trying to all these things even though I had so much success with a lot of my clients. Right. So like you have to develop by sending little tiny goals even just by cleaning the room, Don, for work, these little little achievements, build yourself up again because when you’re rock bottom and you and you allowed yourself to really hit rock bottom with drugs, you see yourself or I did anyway as a piece of shit. How did you make a transition? American, uh, made a commitment to myself. You know what? With me, I knew that I was at a moment where you said something happened where like, yeah, you know this.
Yeah, you want to talk about it? Okay. I’m having to talk about it. So the moment, the catalyst catalyst, those catalysts for me to destroy myself because one catalyst for me to know this is it, this is the moment. And what that time was, it was, um, I remember it was like a Sunday. It was a sunny day and the guy that I would acquire my drugs from came around on his push bike somewhere and again, in this scene you got people to pretend to be your friends, you know, these kind of thing. It wasn’t a friend, but I went to school with him and he came over and he’s in my room and police knocked on the door. I didn’t always policing flight, went to the door and the front door wouldn’t open, so I said, guys, you got to come around the side.
I went and greeted them and they said, he’s at your, your pushback at the front and say not, but I can go get the guy who it is. He’s a drug dealer now when I don’t like calling my mom, so we’re just gonna. Call Them Maria. That’s more comfortable for me when Maria so that, that were there. She came out and she said to him, you gotta leave now. Understandably, and that’s cool except that now she hasn’t talked to me or never did unless he’s yelling or screaming or if she needed something and she knocked on my door the next day and she goes, you can tell your friend he can come back now, and that killed me because they down always, always felt like I felt like there’s a woman, there’s two doors down. I wish you would save me. That’s how I felt deep down.
I know it sounds silly to some people. That was what was going on through my head when I was in that state of mind and when she said that and she closed the door, I literally like fell to the floor and I’m crying now. You know, like, like, you know when you cry. Then he got like sobbing. I’m solving now. Then I just stood up and I said to myself, this woman doesn’t give a shit about me and I’ve got to. I’ll go to promo. I’ll go to. I want to know. It wasn’t, it was, I am not. This is what I said. I remember now. I said, I’m not going to let her win. That’s what it was because I felt in my head at the time, again, you’ve got to think someone’s on drugs slightly stole. It could be slightly or extreme altered state of mind with the way you’re rationalizing things.
Right. I saw it as she knew what I was doing this whole time. She could see it. I’m not showering, doing anything right, not going to work. She doesn’t care. She’s now enabling this behavior and then when that happened, I’m not smart enough to know what the right word was, but I kind of felt like she was pushing for it now, not enabling. She’s now she wants me to, you know, she’s, she wants me to do it. Hey, tell you drug dealer can come back so you can see. You can spend more time in your room. And I’d gone to a point where like, my money was dwindling, right? Money was dwindling and I knew that like, okay, if I’m going to be continuing to eat food, I can’t do that Nell’s. Cool. But that was the last time that he. So it all Kinda came together well in a way when she said that and I said, no, I’m not going to let you win from that moment is when I stopped.
Right. What was some of the actionable, tangible things that you did? Okay, so like I, I had, because that had been to the gym in a few months where I was working and I knew everyone had left my room. I actually developed lot, you could say social anxiety, so I couldn’t go out. So I firstly started going for walks around the block. To be honest with you, it wasn’t around the block. The walks that I was doing first was that drug dealer guy owed me money and he wasn’t at, I need that money for food. Right. He wasn’t answering my phone calls and I knew where he lived. Right. And I went to his house a couple times and his grandma and said he got his grandma to answer and I knew he was there and I thought I’m the kind of guy. She acted all upset that I was there.
I’m not gonna. I’m not gonna knock on this door anymore. Even though I know he’s a coward in the back room, right. So what I’ll do is every morning, or I would walk past his house, he had a pocket, the fruit, I’ll do stretches hoping that I’d saved. They’re really one of my money. Right. And I want to tell him how disappointed I was him because he ripped me off that he ripped me off when he was pretending to be my friend. So when for these walks every day and those walks, you know, got me active again, uh, would go to the supermarket when he wasn’t busy. Now have to get back in the gym. I was going at times when that wasn’t busy in the morning when you’re talking actually Beta, there’s no one else there. And I was quite fortunate that I had one former client that I knew would train with me again.
As soon as I messaged him, I messaged him and I said, hey, vj competing this year. And he goes, early fuel if you’re training me. And I was like, I’m not going to. I was like, that’s money coming in. I knew is if I have one client in time, I’ll get more. So like it was a, I only charged him 100 bucks for the wake at that time because he was really young, it was like a teenager and he’s actually as an asylum seeker from Afghanistan. So I really wanted to help him. Right. Um, and I tried for two years. You want always comes, so he comes back with me and that kind of gave me a reason to go back at night and I won’t lie to you guys. It was really hard to go back to the gym at night because I felt like I felt shame, you know what I mean?
And I felt I’m going back, I’m looking at a lot skinnier. Everyone’s going to ask where you bain, what do I say? So I had to lie. I told some people that went away. I went on a holiday, I’ll tell other people sick, you know what I mean? Because the shame that’s attached to that. And at the time I couldn’t be open like I am now. You know what I mean? Like I knew I could have nice myself. So I suppose in summary, the tangible steps is you just took one day at a time. Really? Yes.
Yeah. And then each day at a time, just a little bit more, little bit more from, from a short walk now to a long walk to the supermarket
market when Cim developed social and social anxieties. That’s what I did. But what I found that really helped was just setting little goals, tiny goals, really tiny golf. I’ll tell you one, one goal that I set that Sami people may sound really silly. He says nothing hours going to the beach every day and what it is, right? I found I got some, I love being in the water and I got a really good energy from being in the water. I don’t know what it was and I love going snorkeling. So I did this every single day and the beach I went through, one was really close to me. Um, it was Chelsea beach and there was like, you don’t like how they have those light posts. So that boats. No, it was like probably like 100 meters away from the shore. I was really scared to like swim to back and door.
Halfway. I’d come back and I said, you know what? No, I’m going to set this no shocks or I’m not going to. I’m going to be able to come back. I’m going to set myself a goal of going. They’re facing that fear. Is that a fear of going there and coming back and I’m going to come back and I did it right. I’m a sweaty right when I did it is the first time I felt a little bit good about myself in a really long time simply from achieving something. I’ve got to feel right. I’m going to go to that light post doc around it and come back. That was all it was and it was the first little thing that I. Micro
goals that you set along the way to achieve and build that self confidence. So it was really just a person
too hard to go from where you are thinking that you’re a pacers. Literally thinking that you’re a piece of shit. Not even good enough for life because I was, once they had, I had one foot out the door. If it was with my dog, I don’t know what I would’ve done. Always look to give you an idea of rock bottom. I could take out my phone right now and go to my web browser and I’ve still got around there. I think all the way up. If I scroll to one of the tabs I had, it was literally like researching how to commit suicide. That’s labeled. I was at it slow my phone, one of my old phones that I could actually show you. That’s where I was and I told myself I felt that because I love my dog. Beautiful. Husky. I said I don’t trust anyone else with her. Right? And so that like that. I Love Lover Man. He’s the only consistent thing in my life all these years. A chrome lever. So
stain. So in the process of actually getting clean from substance. So it sounds to me from from you getting cleaned, it really just started with an event that happened that you wanted to happen in a different way and from that event you went right, no more, I need to take control of this. You got in the driver’s bus of your own life and then it wasn’t even a case of I’m addicted to this stuff anymore. There was just, this isn’t even an issue, this is a nonissue for me. I’m not doing this anymore, and then let’s let’s start setting micro goals and the first marker goal was just walking and then going to the beach and then the light post and then getting to the gym and then training and then sitting in the
gold. Ultimately it was a small progression.
I knew as well because I know, again, I’m a little bit confused if I was addicted to the substance of meth or not because I chose what to do and I chose what to stop. There was no rehab, there was nothing like that. There’s been no relapses or anything like that. I just, in a way, I kind of feel if it was an addiction, I just changed it, so I went from, you went from the initial event of not I was smoking that that’s what I was doing to escape reality and then I started training and then I just trained more and more and more and then when I decided to commit to my contest prep now like you know, I’m going back to what you said earlier. I’ve done so much in 10 months. I honestly don’t think that I could’ve done all that if I had like a normal nine to five job. We had a family or if I had a girlfriend. I committed my life for 26 weeks to one objective and I’ve never worked so hard toward something. I put hours into this. I trained every day. I did towards the end twice a day.
So. So why? Why get back? What was the getting back on stage a part of the organic process of setting micro goals for you?
I knew that it was really. I knew that for me it was my business is going to help me. This is going to set up my life. It’s worth. Well, my business is, is lucky say financial freedom. So I knew that the only thing I could do where I could go from having, I got to a point of having $2 to my name right, thoughts of going to the supermarket and stealing, stealing a potato to eight. That was, if you want to say rock bottom, that is rock bottom along with the other things that I’ve shared. Right? But for me, I knew once I get my one side started training again, I’ll get more clients. I knew that if I compete it again and did well on back to earning a couple k a week and I knew I could do all this in one year and I have.
And like I said, at discipline equals freedom and this is something that Jocko Jocko says, and I’ll give you an example. Black and white example right this time last year, I hadn’t left my room in two months. It wasn’t working. There was no discipline. Now in a position to be living independently and I can go overseas wherever I want. So if you want to talk about freedom, we got 10 months ago and now and the only difference is the discipline lifestyle. That’s what that’s enabled me to have. I can go anywhere I want in the world now. Whereas last year I couldn’t even leave my suburb. I treat all my name with no discipline at all. You know what I mean? Completely different mindset at the time. So when you talk about neuroplasticity, we can change that. That’s what’s really cool and I’m glad that I didn’t take myself out because I didn’t know at the time that your mindset and what’s going on in your head, it can really change dramatically.
You know what I mean? And I’m, I’m glad that I took those, those steps and you know, if I look at what I want to do in the future, and I spoke to you about this, about becoming a youth worker and I know people that have lost their lights, the right May. Knowing that I’ve been at the, at the step of suicide. And I know that that was my mindset at the time. But then now it’s like, you know, this time last year, I didn’t want to say tomorrow and right now man, I can’t baby, I can’t wait for tomorrow because I know tomorrow is I can work towards goals. Do you know what I mean? I’m so excited going to work because I know not only am I going to come home with like a little wallet full of money every single day. Right. But I love what I do and I’m loving the direction I’m going in.
Same person one year apart. So one, why don’t you run like now looking back on that, if you could go back to future you give yourself some advice, what advice would you got to get out of the whole sooner? No, I don’t know if it was. I honestly don’t being honest here yet. I honestly don’t know if I could have done it if that catalyst hadn’t happened. So you have to have the. I don’t know if I have to. I don’t know if I had to, you know, because I had a lot of people try and help me over those years and you really have to help yourself. You can have, you can have a lot of people who are trying to help you, but if you don’t accept things, and I think it’s, for me, again, there’s different reasons why people can be doing the same thing.
A lot of different reasons. For me personally, I had deep rooted, unresolved issues, you know, like I told you, like I had to literally accept that both parents don’t give a shit. It’s up to you to pull that ship in and to fucking take it out. You know what I mean? There’s no one else is going to help you. And that’s what he was. Maybe give yourself a Jordan Peterson book. I don’t, I don’t. I honestly don’t know if it would. Even if I could tell myself, you know, like if anyone is watching this that is in that state, right. And say rock bottom, you’re doing drugs and you know shouldn’t because you know, you shouldn’t. I’m really self aware. So at the time I’m doing something that I know is destroying my life, you know, some sometimes. So I had mirrored wardrobes, will get me a reward, drugs.
I’d look at myself in the mirror and be like, I’d be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing man? You, you’re destroying itself, not start crying. You know what I mean? But there was a part of me that like, it was easier and I read this quote somewhere, something along the lines of it’s easier. It’s easier to make a base of yourself than to face life like a man. I don’t know. I don’t know where I read that or if I quoted it properly. Right. But when I read it, I could relate to it. It’s what I’m doing. I’m making a base of myself because I’m not, I don’t have the balls to face life like a man, but because I didn’t have a new. I just don’t have the skills and philosophy. I don’t know. I don’t have the skill. I was a kid. I had no guidance whatsoever, man, you know what? And then this big, this big scary world out there, but literally like, you know, if I could drum something into myself, you know, when I was, you know, any point in that five year period, it’s like, dude, you have one life, don’t fucking wasted. This is it. And it’s up to you. So we’ll switch
gears a little bit and just go through a few more topics. Drive manual. No, neither can I. it’s really. Yeah, I’ll drive order. Whenever I tell someone I can’t drive manual, they’re all like, you can’t drive. For me, I had a very good logic for it. It’s like wow, I could invest the time in driving manual, but it’s more of a pain in the ass. So I’d rather just work on my business and focused. So it’s very much more of a decision at an efficiency and a lot of my decisions in life actually come out of efficiency of what, what’s the fastest route to getting my goal? If you have be judged by someone for not being able to drive manual. Some people try and judge me, but I don’t kind of let myself be judged and I’m like, well why would I drive manual?
You can only like I’m not driving a race car. I’m not, I’m not an f one driver so I can have both hands on the wheel. Yeah. I can have one one hand out the window and shot the guns. Yeah, exactly. And plus, you know, I’ve got an. I’m driving an Fj cruiser at the moment and that doesn’t come then. That’s a great company. You went to Europe a couple times and left it for me to draw it and I’m like, it’s such a huge car. It isn’t huge. Guy Takes a while to get used to. It does a couple of blind spots. It has, it does have some blind spot issues, but one of the things that is actually quite funny, I drove that car. I didn’t realize it was reversing sensors in the car and for whatever reason I turned off the idea somehow reversing sensors when I got the car went on and no one told me that they had reversing censorship.
So I drove for two years without any reversing sensors. Then one day I was playing with the buttons. I press this button, like I wonder what this is. I’m just gonna. Leave it on. Start reversing those bpba. I’m like reversing sensors in this car. But anyway. So that’s my little story. Let’s switch the gear. We were going to go through a lot of different topics in a pretty rapid format. So this is the one word game which I like to play with all my guests. So for those who haven’t watched the one word game, basically I’m going to say a word. So for example, you might say superman. So let’s. You Ready? Yeah. The answer is born already by the way. I thought I was conceived very, but obviously not Australia. Australian bodybuilding in Australia telling you God protein powders.
Oh Shit.
That one I was expecting. So I guess it’s. Oh Shit. Okay. I fbb Bikini Division.
Oh,
the Katy chicks. Never any bikini kicks watching. I’m single and I’m Ray. I’m just joking. No, never. Grand Lancefield worst supplement years ago. Anything flavored fruit punch that were horrible bar. A favorite supplement? Favorite supplement, to be honest with vital greens, ultimate competing goal.
I have to, I have to.
And these are, these are my year plan. I have to be pro league overall Australia. Um, and uh, the PCA world championships, a mental, mental, mental. Oh, I’d have to say, let me see if you’re watching this year. Believe that is you, my friend at respected peer,
you know, the first name that comes to my mind is Christian Caldwell, who was actually an adversary of mine. He was a, but he helped me so much backstage because I had the sense of anxiety attack backstage. I couldn’t even take my clothes off. I’m looking at everyone thinking that, oh look so much better than me. And he helped me back even though I’m up against him. He helped me to get on stage and I’m so thankful that Christian, if you’re watching. Thank you so much. Besides the bodybuilder of all time. Oh, that’s a tough one. I think going by, going by the stats, it’s it’s Phil Heath, but for what I liked, I liked the physiques like more layla broader and frank [inaudible] and the guys from the late eighties, personally, a favorite athlete.
I’d say Roger Federer. Oh, I know. I’m going to go back on that. I said that, but I had to think about it. I want to say GSP, how good’s GSP? I heard him talk to the other. Have to show a comfort food. A man. I don’t. You can call it comfortable. I like yogurt. Right, and I love oats. I’ve been serious to. We’re out of bar. What are we drinking? I don’t drink. Don’t drink a fighting the truth. Something. Right? If I was forced to choose an alcoholic beverage, it would be a Shandy. For those of you don’t know what a Shandy is, it’s a little bit of beer and it’s a lot of lemonade and none of a favorite exercise. Our squats. Something you would like to see more of.
I know this is gonna sound really like cheesy and cliche. It’s a lot more peace in this world that we live in. Seriously. Nice. I thought we were going to say something like that one. Seriously suffering that happens. Agreed. What you want to see less of. Well, I guess the same answer for it. Yeah. The biggest myth in bodybuilding that body Buddhist have small penises. All right. No they don’t. Not all of us, especially the Greeks. Let me tell you a hobby or a pastime I enjoy. I’ve got a, I’ve got a few interests. Um, a like a psychology, a history, and I like astronomy and I love watching documentaries. So if I, if I’m chilling out, that’s what I like to do. And for Christmas lucky really hoped he gets. Uh, uh. Can I be honest with you? I’m a little bit different, right?
I don’t like it. And gifts, believe it or not, it’s gonna make me feel uncomfortable. I’m being serious too. It’s got to do with my, with my upbringing. For me. Explain why. Right. For me. Every Christmas and birthday, almost when I was growing up and Maria would actually say things like, I want to make this the worst fucking day you alive. And she’d lose it at me. I’m being serious. So like when it comes to Christmas, what’s something you hope you get off of this? Uh, um, I don’t know. We don’t want to break guy and going on a break. Keep watching. Make sure you subscribe to us on Youtube and we’ll be right back.
Hey folks, hope you enjoy this interview with lucky for more great interviews and great content. Make sure you subscribe to us on Youtube old latest releases. Follow us on instagram and like us on facebook and if you need a hand with your training and do visit www.melbourne personal trainers and for the personal trainers watching, I haven’t forgot about you. Visit personal trainer mentoring for information on how you can do mentoring with yours truly. So let’s get back into it with lucky and see you on the other side.
Welcome back to the wolf sten. Today’s guest is lucky. We are going to be wrapping it up and talking about what he’s done with these training nutrition and things that you’ve been learning recently. So lucky, lucky version one, trained a certain way now. Lucky version two is training a different way. You said before that you’re on some key fasting. That’s just postcards. It’s really stupid. What are you doing? Postcomm? Okay. So, um, I’ve never really been lean over the summer. I’ve always been a bit of a normal, like a normal or just really fat off season. So I, uh, I’ve got this goal of if any of you guys know of the, um, of the bond movies, you know, when, when Daniel Craig was first introduced this bond and there’s a scene of him coming out of the water at the beach looking like this specimen of a man.
I have this image in my head of coming out of the beach looking like a specimen of a man and just to get my ego stroked a little bit, you know, get my hard work validated. So I, molasses comp was end of October and I was in Amsterdam a week after and I continue dieting straight through to get a bit harder. And now I’m back in Melbourne and I actually have, if I was to be completely honest, almost like develop a slight eating disorder where I’m afraid of carbs in. So I’ve Gone Keto and then I’m trying, I’m happy to try different things. Are you measuring with Keto? You’re getting your blood glucose monitor out? Not at all. Not on the strips, no, nothing like that. No. I’m just a dumb, greater 10 or 12. Come on guys. So look, I’m going to stop doing what I’m doing now and next week of I’ve actually already taught myself I want to commit to like another short six week diet.
Just get me over the summer. Just doesn’t look good. Something sustainable. Just something something healthy and balanced, uh, whilst maintaining some cardio. And if you run us through like a contest for you, like if you’re getting ready for a prep, like what time do you wake up training when you’re training? It really depends on where we are in the prep. So as I said, I did two pallets in the last six weeks out. Yeah. Okay. So my last and was six weeks out and then after that point I thought okay, I’m assuming commit to the body burning company. I wouldn’t do what I gotta do for that. Prior to that point, it was really easy. I was where I needed to be. I was doing cardio. I was probably consuming about two to 300 grand. We’ll talk to you about a really early 6:00. So you wake up at six, seven, six.
Are you eating training? That’s how I would wake up at six. I’ll do pushups and sit ups a and they don’t have my first meal and then I’ll kind of go back to bed and knew I was doing a hundred grams of oats with Barry’s almond milk. Some honey, some cinnamon. I’m 100 grams of mince with a 300 grams of egg whites and some veggies. And then you go back to bed for a little bit and then I’d get up and go to the gym. I’ll do my first session, uh, then I’ll train my clients and then I’d go home. Obviously we’ll be having the meals that I’d have if when you be specific. Well, after training I would have um, some base again with some sweet potato and sometimes depending on where we were. But last six weeks, I think that was the last carb meal and then I had a beef again with some veggies and then I’d go home, have a nap, wake up, go back to work, and our eight before my first client and I was eating beef the whole time or they pay for game with some veggies and then our trained about three or four clients.
I would go home. I then I had this routine that I was doing. When I get home I’ll do 30 minutes on a bike outside. I’ll go for a walk for 40 minutes, then I’d come home. I would do half an hour of abs every night or the abs every day twice. So push up like chicken. Don’t let you. Don’t like the taste was or I just felt a new that there’s a lot more. I’m getting a lot more bang for my buck with red meat. So you counting calories, macros, food, wait a. do you follow a system or is it just here? The meals. This is what I’m going to eight and that’s really, that’s what it was. How do you manipulate the. Getting closer in isn’t getting meals, eliminating cubs. That’s why I had my coach. He had, so I got myself to about four weeks out.
Then I said, okay, this is what I’m doing and I’ve been really just running the same thing and like so what I would normally do, I’d start with my diet and then I’ll do my body and my skin folds every week and then when I would need to make adjustments I would. I didn’t need to make any adjustments. I think because my even in my calorie intake was so high, so this just going back to my diet. After I do that, two and a half hours of work each night, I would actually eat a half kilo stake that for a lot of people this might be insane. I ate half a kilo stake and as soon as I ate that I’d eat half kilo of mince with heaps of veggies and then as soon as I that I’m not even kidding here. Right. We’re not spoke to he at six weeks out and said you need to take over because again, that will take stress off me.
I told him what I, the, the, the ramp, the myths, and then I’m like, then I have about three to 400 grams of yogurt with berries and honey as well as with cinnamon. He goes, you not all that. I said, I’m eating all that. He goes, you’re getting Leno. What do want me to do? He goes, okay. He goes, I’ve never had anyone eat yogurt pre contest. And I’m like, well, I always have had my clients eating yogurt, you know, because I got that from John Davey and there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a great way to finish off the day. It’s really, it’s like a trait. And he goes, okay, keep it all in. He goes, but I can’t believe any kilo of mate right before you go to bed. And that’s what I did. Now when I just said, can you take over, tell me what to do.
As we got closer, we just kind of really eliminated the yoga at maybe like 10 days out. Uh, but then he had me like, so little, that’s what I was eating the whole time up until literally two weeks out where that’s when the carb cycling started and the zero carb days we introduced. So if I get this right, because this is quite an unusual plan. Yeah, I certainly haven’t done the yoga with any of the competitors as well. But the, the, you, you were eating 500 a kilo of means in like one sitting. It was literally like two minutes and I’m, I’m being, I’m not even exaggerating here. So how many meals a day would you be having? I was having a thing for a six, six. And in that last meal was like a super meal. Yeah. Yeah. And that’s just because you trained all day?
Pretty much. Not only, not only that, I was at that point, I was actually trying. I think I was training twice a day, but I was still doing that. The kilo of red meat before I was training twice a day. I’ve been doing the red, the kilo of red meat for months with the yoga. But then I was always doing that three hours of cardio at night, well while core three hours of cardio, but I didn’t see it as cardio, so I’m on the bike for 30 minutes going for a walk, supermarket and back and then sit ups and pushups and it’s imposing altogether night. That was between two to three hours of work. So as long as you go to bed generally like maybe 11, 30 12. Yeah. So it’s quite a full day of just training and eating. Well, if we refer back to earlier when I said I committed myself for 25, 26 weeks to this goal, if I had family or a full time job, I couldn’t have done it the way I did everything I did.
Was it necessary? I don’t know. This what I did and I looked better than I ever have. I was bigger than I ever have. Could I’ve done less and still look the same? I don’t know. Could I have done less and look better? I actually don’t know. I would have to do that to no, but all I know is that’s what I did and I end in 10 months time. Apparently now the best bodybuilder in Victoria by my, the title that I have says that I still can’t believe it. I’ve asked you this topic, what is Mr is a diamond creek. Okay. So as I was getting ready for this, another, the reference as I was getting ready for this comp, I didn’t want to. It was hard for me to say what my goal was because I’d kind of didn’t want to come across like a wanker on, on social media. So I kind of, I said that I was competing on the 20, 22, Danny, Don Creek International, like a made up something, right? It’s Dandenong creek is like a suburb near my hand, like Dandenong Creek. It’s not even A. Yeah. And um, so that’s what I kind of use as a reference to the conference I was doing. So there’s no Dandenong creek. It was just my wife and people knew. Some people knew what I meant, but then other people
who actually would inbox me. So a broke. Can you, where’s this? Danny, don’t treat title. I just thought what was he like? But then I’m like, wait a minute. He’s from Danenong. So maybe there was a comp. No, Mr Dandenong creek that I refer to it as the 20 slash 20 to Dandenong Creek. So I even, I even kind of
credit from the heat the year that we’re currently in. I don’t know why at the time I just. This is a joke. So I stuffed full of wholesale Randall on social media. So I caught it a 20 slash 20 through Dandenong creek and I said I’m gunning for the overall. And so the 2018 Victorian State Championships was essentially my 20 slash 22 ms dot Daniel Craig.
Yeah. Fantastic. So nutritionally you kind of just plan out your meals. That’s what you did training wise. I’ve heard stories angles from Scott global saying once that lucky, just like when he trains, he really just, he brings an intensity to training.
Can you let me, let me, let me touch on that. Right. When I used to train years ago, I had this reputation of being an animal in the gym, right? I find a low rep target really easy, you know, give me five plates and say get five reps out yet any day of the week, give me three plates. I get 15 reps. this is hot now. So because I was always working in a low rep bracket, hitting my targets and getting stronger, it appeared like on this animal, the all I was doing was hitting my targets and stopping. I never even went like hardly even close to failure. Like for me doing three plates for 12, 15 reps with a, with a sport at the end. Then doing a drop set, that’s an animal. But when people say five plates and say people, other people say, well if the same people say three plates, they just think five plates an animal for me.
Fireplaces, easy Gimme, three plates of 12 reps and I’m burning out. That’s for me, that’s an animal. So I think that could be a misconception. I don’t think I tried as hard as what people thought. It just appeared that way. So you’re training for this accomplished just a lot of volume. Would you say the volume? Absolutely, yeah. The volume increased. So when I was in the Palestinian comes, obviously there’s less training frequency and unless it was different program altogether, but when I went to the, after my last Palestine comp, I shifted that, that kind of training, but at the same time I realized that my performance drops, so up until the last Palestinian comp always getting stronger through my whole prep and I wasn’t going to failure on anything, not even close to it. I was always using the RPA system. So that’s the, uh, what’s that called?
P a rating of perceived exertion. And I was working at an Rpe of seven on most of my sets. So that means the guys that don’t know, if you do a set of 10 and I say to you, how many more reps could you have got any, say acquitted got three. I’d call that an RP of seven. If you said I could, if you could only barely get one, well that’s an API of 10. That’s complete exertion. So I was, I was highly ever close to failing. I was always working in a submaximal load with, with volume and depending on the body type, you know, I separated my beliefs from my back accessories, so I will do back all my contracts, scapular attracting lot of whites, really focusing on squeezing. And then I would have a deadlift day. I actually had three lower body days, so Monday I’ll do all my squats.
I’m Wednesday or do a typical, a traditional leg workout with front squats, back squats, some more quad specific hamstrings at night on all three days. And then on Friday I’ll do. What’s your go to hamstring builders for you? Okay. I’m stiff. They dead lifts. I really liked the Dumbbell Lakeville. We don’t have a glute ham raise at our gym. That’s great. But more than anything, the heavy compounds and view your quads, Gilman, you’ve got a very impressive sort of. The leg exercise that I was doing Monday would be squats, squats, Bulgarian split squats. I’m Wednesday was front squats, leg press extensions, hack squats. Just because I still thought I had to do these exercises and then Friday was dead lifts either deficit deadlifts or blog pools, then I’ll do some safety bar squats, um, and then in the evenings on again on the glutes and hamstrings.
Now as I was approaching my comp, you know, my glutes and hamstrings were coming in. And then again, I’m like, what do I do? That’s when I decided to kind of increase the volume. So I separated them corn days in those leg dyes into amp m, so do more volume on my hamstrings and glutes again, thinking that they’re going to come in more. Um, but they didn’t. Well, lucky. It’s been absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. What final thoughts or things do have a future steps where people are gonna see you next on stage? Okay. So my next, my goals, my competitive goals for this year. Uh, I plan on doing a Paliton company January end of January. I don’t think my body’s ready for it. So we’re doing a Palestinian camp in April for bodybuilding. It’s the same three comps next year, which will be the, uh, at Tony’s show, the Victorian state championships, the nationals, and then I’ll be going overseas again to the PCA world championships in the hope of bettering my placings at those last three shows and people want to get in contact with you training and I’m a coach and a trainer. Next level fitness. And we’ve got our. We’ve got a really good thing going on down there and people can contact me either on instagram message a
private message or message her on facebook. So folks that the interview with lucky on market terryberry my guest today, today’s lucky had subpoenaed populus. So what’s the last name? And tell us not to be confused with Hanson hats. He pantless. So thanks for watching. Make sure you subscribe to us on Youtube. Stay tuned for more great episodes. We have sebasty in Arab coming up. Dwayne, Allie, and past shows include Andrew Locke Antonioni. So for more info that we can get you fixed. Checkout person trying to mentoring the wolfpack log or wibw dot Melbourne personal trainers, old things, enterprise fitness. And if you want to come in and train. So I folks, until next episode, hit subscribe. Train hard supplements. Smart.
Well.
