Workout routine: I alternate Heavy, Moderate and Light workouts, allowing for adequate muscle recovery to promote growth whilst remaining lean year round.
I typically follow a 5 day split, with two rest days:
Monday: Back and Calves
Tuesday: Shoulders
Wednesday: Legs and Calves
Thursday: Rest
Friday: Chest
Saturday: Biceps and Triceps
Sunday: Rest.
I often do cardio and abs in the morning 3 days a week, and would then weight train later in the afternoon. My workouts are intense and last no longer than an hour. I work on the basis of progressive cycles, and aim to increase the poundage by 5% on the beginning of every cycle. This way I prevent overtraining, and ensure gains in lean mass and strength at a stable and safe rate.

My favorite exercise used to be lateral dumbbell raises, because when I was training pre-contest, the separation in my deltoids were incredible, and I loved watching all the muscle fibers in work as I trained them, but more recently I’ve been focusing on my weaker muscle groups, and while my legs are not small, I wanted to add further thickness to them, so I dropped some of the weight from my squats and started squatting deeper until my things were parallel to the floor. This gives me an incredible stretch in the thighs, and when I’m lean enough I can see the same detail in my quads that I could when I trained shoulders. It’s very motivating to see the muscles working as you train, especially when you know your making positive gains in your weak areas.

I remember training my adductors and abductors on a machine when I first stated training, and the pain I was in over the following days. I could hardly walk. It felt as though I’d been hit on the inside of my legs with a sledge hammer. I haven’t trained them since. At least not with the same machines.

Cardio plays an important role in my training. Firstly, I enjoy doing cardio, especially when the sun is shinning and I can get out in the morning and go for a run. It really wakes me up and energizes me. When I’m not competing, I will typically do cardio in the form of hill runs or go out on my bike 3 times a week. For hill runs I train in interval levels, which are very high intensity. There’s a hill near to where I live that doesn’t appear to be that steep, but when you sprint up it and walk back down 10 times, it becomes almost unbearable. When out on my bike, I’ll keep the intensity moderately high at a level that I am able to hold for 40 minutes or so. I vary my cardio intensity and length, to ensure I work all spectrums of cardio fitness. I want to make sure I have good endurance but at the same time have power and speed. Pre-contest cardio becomes a little more frequent but also more controlled. I don’t want to be burning too many calories when I’m dieting by pushing my cardio too hard. I’ll always have an eye on my heart monitor watch. My favorite cardio is doing 20 minutes of 30-second sprints on the stationary bike, allowing as much recovery time as I need to get my heart rate back down to 65% MHR. It’s a great indicator to see my recovery rate improve, and a real sign of my improvements. I’m very analytical, and will print my cardio sessions out after uploading the graphs from my watch to the computer. I’ll often perform interval training early morning to help elevate my body’s metabolism throughout the day, and if I feel I need to do more, I’ll do some low-intensity cardio in the evening, or after my weights workout, which typically will be a brisk walk on a treadmill with a steep incline for 40 minutes. I find this is always a great way to work the core.