My Men’s Health Journey – From China to Wigan
- Dec 9, 2014
- 8 min read
This article is for anyone who is struggling to meet a goal and anyone who is struggling to stick at something, or scared to come out of their comfort zones to try something new and adventurous. Use this story as motivation to do something out of the ordinary in 2015! You will learn how I managed to meet my long term goal of being featured in Men’s Health, learn a load of new life skills and travel the world all at the same time!
Here is my story and everything is 100% true, it took me 5 years - from 2006-2011 and I wasn't stopping until I had managed it in some way shape or form...
I had been training for a few years and one day looked at the front cover of Men's Health and thought "How the hell do they get abs like that?”. I was training nearly every day, did judo once a week but still no sign off that elusive six pack. That could only mean three things: more sit ups, more leg raises and more side bends. This did not work. I was working my abdominals every day and after observing me for some time the owner of my gym asked me “Ryan, are you trying to get a six pack, if so you need to lose some body fat” to which I replied “But I am not fat!”. He then went on to say that even though my body fat was not high, it also was not low enough for my abs to show. This had me thinking.
In 2006 I saw an ad for the Men’s Health Cover Model competition and thought I should be able to make the final one day. All I needed to do was to get in shape, take and send in a few pictures and write about my life and routine in 250 words. Sounded simple, turned out to be very complex! Or maybe I made it complex!
After thinking about how to get my abs showing, my next course of action was to add extra cardio after my weight workouts. Again, after doing this for a month or two the owner of my gym again gave me some advice on the lines of “Ryan you are making a mountain out of a molehill” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Why are you adding a 30-40 minute run after your weights workout?”
“Because I want to burn extra calories and lose that extra body fat”
“You will just end up burning out doing that. Haven’t you thought of eating less?”
This ended up creating another period of reflection. I entered the 2006 Cover Model Competition but with no success.
It was now 2007, my graduation year and I moved to China to teach English in a rather grim city that reach temperatures of -25 degrees in winter, but at least I could go ice-skating as you can see below.
On arriving home in March 2008 I wanted to enter the competition again, but I struggled to get my body fat low enough for Cover Model Standard and again did not hear a word from Men’s Health.
In 2009 whilst completing my teacher training, I was in amazing shape and my body fat was very low. If I was ever going to make it, it would be this time! I thought if I failed this year, it would be my last year of entering because I was obviously either: not tall enough; not big enough; not shredded enough and I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to put in more effort than I already had. I received no call and no letter. I was frustrated and wanted to give in to the challenge. Part of me wanted to stay in England to apply for teaching positions, the other part of me wanted to do something more adventurous but less stable.
At this point I had shift my focus. I loved martial arts and I was now 25 and opportunities to live abroad would get fewer and fewer. I let go of the cover model dream and moved back to China to live in a stunning city near Shanghai called Hangzhou.
It was 2010 and in the back of my mind I thought, maybe I will enter again when I get back in 2011 but I needed something extra, something to make a 5ft 7 fitness model stand out over the 6ft bigger more stacked models. Instead of focussing only on training and picture taking, I decided to give Men’s Health a decent story to read that would make me stand out. As it turned out….thinking outside of the box actually worked.
Above, light sparring in China
My plan seemed to slowly and naturally unfold. I discovered a Muay Thai gym close to my work and a box gym very close by too. This made everything perfectly convenient. After training in Thai boxing for a few months I had to start thinking of what to do after my teaching contract. I looked for things I could do in Asia and I came across a Yoga teaching course in the Himalayas. Amazingly, it started just after my contract ended in 2011. I booked it! I wasn’t finished there either, I also booked two months intense Muay Thai training in Thailand as well. I had the full intention of having a fight at the end of it, in which I would win and tell Men’s Health how great it was; but not all of my story worked out as planned!
My Chinese coach on the left and my Thai coach on the right
Before I knew it, my teaching contract was over and I was on a plane to India. The previous few months were spent trying to add a bit of muscle mass which I had managed but I was about to lose it all. For the next six weeks I would be on a vegetarian diet and I could feel my muscle mass fading away. It was a brilliant experience, one which I will write about on another day, but as for my muscle mass, I had a lot of work to do! We did some pretty strange things in India, here are probably the strangest:
Below, teaching yoga in India
Thailand was another story all together and it turned out to be a disaster. I had gone from relaxing and meditating in the Himalayas to waking up every morning with Eminem and DMX blasting from the speakers of the MMA and boot camp training area at 6am.
I trained twice a day for 1.5-2 hours each session as well as fitting in a yoga session. If I thought a vegetarian diet was destructive for my muscle mass, doing so much cardio devoured it. I went from 68 kilos to 62 kilos within a few weeks of being there.
I also took up private MMA classes with an instructor who was intent on getting me to have a cage fight. “I only want a Thai fight” I would say. Eventually he convinced me due to there being a shortage of MMA fighters at the time. My name went on the list and they only found a match one week beforehand. A match? The guy was nine kilos heavier and a very good ground fighter in which I only had basic knowledge.
Stupidly I thought I would try to add some mass so tried doing a weights workout, and then a day or two later thought it was a good idea to run up the Big Buddha mountain in Phuket – 6 kilometres on a 45 degree incline.
On the way down the mountain I witnessed a horrific accident, narrowly missing it by about 50 meters http://phuketwan.com/tourism/phuket-big-buddha-tragedy-die-crash-tourist-jeep-13963/ and if I hadn’t decided to listen to another song on my mp3 player, I could have been in the middle of it.
Back to my training...
I over trained and made myself really ill. I got a staph infection twice and couldn’t train and then following the Big Buddha run, I got a virus along with severe pink eye which took me out of action for an entire week. Four hundred pounds of training money down the drain and only five days until my fight. Not to mention having to do a 12 hour Visa run to Burma to get a stamp on my passport! It was squeaky bum time for me.
I did what I could to get my fitness back up after the Visa run but I only had 2 days, the virus and pink eye had knocked me for six. One day I tried some interval sprints on top of my MMA/Thai classes and the other I did some technique work. I was wiped out but there was no way I was backing out after having agreed to fight. In the end I managed two and a half 3 minute rounds. I discovered on the day that what was to be my secret weapon (knees to the head) were actually disallowed in this event so I tried to keep the fight standing up which was a mistake. By the third round after getting crucifixed, I thought to myself, why the hell did I sign up to this? It wasn’t getting hit that was bothering me because I was quite well covered, it was my exhaustion, I had used every last drop of energy and couldn’t move. I lay there, literally feeling crucified. There was no way out and I had nothing left as you can see here at the end of the second round.
The endorphin release after the fight was fantastic though! I was on a high for about 3 hours. I also met MMA heavyweight champion Mark Hunt who had gone there to train.
Losing the fight had a big impact on my Men’s Health story. I had only prepared my mind to win so I wasn’t sure how to explain that I had lost. I thought that I wouldn’t stand a chance now, but I wrote it anyway. Instead of making it sound magical I made it more comical, helped by the fact that I cracked a rib in the second to last week just messing around; making my return flight a bit uncomfortable and wasting another lump sum of money.
I also didn’t think my pictures were up to scratch either but they would just have to make do. I sent my story and waited.
After ten days and no reply I thought I had blown it. Why would they choose someone at 62 kilos
and 5 foot 7 in height over all the other entries who were taller bigger and stronger? Maybe the competition just wasn’t going to happen for me. But then 14 days after entering, I had a missed call from an unknown number, and a voicemail. After 5 years of trying, I had finally made it to the final and subsequently feature in the magazine in 2011 and again in 2013. Anything is possible when you put your mind to it.
Whenever you feel like giving up on your goals, if you really believe you can do it are willing to work your ass off, think outside of the box and build the right skills, you will probably do it. I went about my goal in a very strange way, but that was my path on my journey. You must discover your own path and journey that suits you, your life and your goals. Don’t think that you can perform miracles with one month of training, you will go back to old habits and old ways. Getting your ideal body takes constant learning, discipline and can take years. It has to become a part of you and your lifestyle and you will be rewarded in the long term future.
As you can see, I was probably the smallest one in there....but I made it at least!
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