Biography
“As a child I was always into sport. I played at county and club level in numerous different sports: gymnastics, athletics, football, rugby, table tennis and attended the School of Excellence for basketball. So mentally and physically the training ethos was embedded in me from a young age and it became some what autonomous. I was hoping to become a professional athlete: having a low self esteem made this difficult even though I had the physical abilities. This awakened me to the importance of the mind and psychological thought process on physical performance - as well as the effect the mind can have over desires and impulses, plus the need to control them through a lack of trust in ‘self’.
I carried on training in the gym and enjoyed developing my physique: until one day - to my surprise - I was asked if I did bodybuilding competitions. This sent me on a new route of bodybuilding and fitness. I studied sport and social science whilst at Roehampton University in London and I researched into the bodybuilding side of sport, alongside sports science and psychology. I tried to interlink the scientific approach with knowledge from the bodybuilding community – a lot of this knowledge was and still is based on self experimentation, passed down knowledge and assumption.
When I finished university I started to put some of the bodybuilding community’s philosophies to practice. This is when I did my first regional show and placed second. After experiencing how my body and mind reacted, I then adjusted my personal philosophy with some science and I came third in my first national show. By this point I had really begun to learn and understand how my body reacted to physical exercise and nutrition, and my own philosophy was beginning to emerge. I then started training for Mr Titan Body Fitness and Best Physique categories in London where I put my new philosophies together and placed first for both competitions.
After following strict regimes and writing down and counting every calorie eaten and exercise performed, I began to realise that the very thing that helped me in the beginning was now holding me back. and by going back to following feeling and instinct and doing what felt right to me through desire, I came to a more impulsive, intuitive style of training and dieting. With this approach, I rejected any regime or programme and did not measure or categorise: rather I just let free and let be. A new philosophy emerged and I found having an umbrella of understanding guided and allowed me to understand my desires and instincts and rather than seeing them as something I have to control or suppress I’d regard them as things I should follow. This is like a signal to what my body wanted at that time and my conscious understanding to interpret how to follow it.
I then decided to do a bodybuilding show in Los Angeles in the US. It really took a leap of faith into my own ability to read my body and applying my knowledge in science. This is where I learned that the health and fitness industry is very controversial, with many different opinions on training and nutrition. I found the best thing to do is to keep a flexible and open mind and understand that we are all individuals with different physical and psychological make ups, which are unique to us as individuals where there is no particular training routine or diet that one should have whether for losing weight, a particular sport or general fitness: rather an applied guidance and intuitive understanding to follow our instincts and desires to guide us toward a desired outcome”.