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

how do you describe what you do so I'm a professional athlete and yeah sponsored athlete as well in what category so I compete in men's physique which is a bodybuilding class and that transitions from athletic look um but as the years have gone on it's it's got more and more muscular should we say what drives you to do what you do why do you choose to do this sport that involves starving yourself down to an incredibly low body fat that involves off Seasons you took an entire off season where you didn't even compete for basically a year and a half in order to be able to come back why why choose that spot so for me just a bit of background about myself um I was all I was always brought up around Sports I was very competitive growing up I was football gymnastics and swimming and golf and it was my life that Competitive Edge I had an older brother an older sister who I always used to compete with at home it never never stopped and basically when I came into my teenage years around the age of 14 I started to develop a complex about the way I looked a bit of um body this morphew should we say and I started to join a gym because for me I thought training my body making sure that I'm got a six-pack looking good feeling good they're all gonna help with confidence just rolling it back a little bit there why do you think that body dysmorphia came from because we're basically the same age yeah and you know we didn't have the same levels of comparison certainly at the age of 14 Facebook didn't even exist no there was no Instagram there was no YouTube really true what what caused the onset of that I think for me it's it's funny because me and my siblings have spoke about this before because we all had the same type of complex but we don't know why we had a great upbringing I didn't have a Far Over figure in my life and didn't know my my dad for about 10 years growing up in that same period And so whether that was a deciding factor um we didn't have a lot of money all that kind of we never went without we just never had the best of the best and but we had a brilliant upbringing should we say it was not on the half you're bringing um but yeah I don't know we always just felt there was something missing I always and when I think when I was 14 obviously girls came on the scene and it became more I became more aware of myself I think up until that point I was just so excited on sports playing just being a kid and I think at the age of 14 I had to start work and I was pot watching at the age of 14 waiting at the age of 40. was that a contribute for paying for the house and stuff for the family yep so I paid rent um from the age of 14 I was 35 pounds and I earned probably 50 and that was every night I worked on a Saturday I did removals uh Furniture removals on a Sunday I did pot washing all day and then yeah I mean we always take 35 pounds the moment I I got to 16 I was paying 50 pounds so um okay yeah the wage increases oh it did Hit me hard so we had to um so I I didn't have an option of going on to sixth form or anything like that we I went straight into an apprenticeship um and yeah I learned the value of money and hard work uh early on but yeah whether that gave me a complex or not when I was younger I don't know but from when I was 14 I decided I needed to change things I was I wouldn't say I was overweight but I just I felt like I was in my head and I was always looking around and at school I never understood why I was the guy who used to wear a white T-shirt under his shirt wear a jumper and a coat to try and hide himself in the middle of summer and I was like you're crazy but that was just something I always did and never knew why or or understood it so yeah so I started training and I saw my body changing quite quickly and yeah I became obsessed with the gym and and trying to learn how to the nutrition learn my way around nutrition what did you do as a young guy who was trying to find his way in the world yeah you know I think it was less confusing when we were growing up than it is now but still not totally like the guardrails weren't exactly there given the fact that you have this decade without a father figure did you find yourself trying to supplement that with other male role models did you look up to other people for inspiration where did they come from yeah so my brother is two years older than me and he was kind of like the head of the house kind of he was my sister's older as well and so I kind of grew up a couple years older than like with people older than me so kind of bit of ahead of my time the time I was 18 I was thinking about having my own house my own business when really shouldn't be thinking like that 18 you should be still being a kid good on your Lads holidays all that kind of stuff but for me he was always a role model for me but he went in the Army at 16 so he left when I was 14 he left and that to me felt like it's my time I need to to fill his shoes and and grow up and stuff so maybe that was yeah forced me to be more down another path and when I joined the local gym it was a Backstreet bodybuilding gym very hardcore and the guys in there made me work for it but so I was the little guy just walking around the little teenager who was just thought they were gonna I was gonna be gone in six months but are you in the truster I earned their respect from training every day there um and yeah they took me under their wing and that's how I fell into bodybuilding and I used to watch them train him I'm not trying to be super heavyweight bodybuilders 350 pound guys massive massive weights and I always loved their dedication and I always resonated with that because of that the sports side of me with the competing side sorry so when competing came up and they said why don't you try it I was looking at thinking I don't have the confidence to take my top off and step on stage there was an apprentice plumber working on site I never used to do my hair I would never take my top off in a million years but there was something telling me to face my fears there was something saying step out your comfort zone and see if you can do what these guys all around you every day are doing um and that was doing a bodybuilding show dieting down and I just I loved I I wasn't inspired by the the size of him I was just um inspired by the way they they lived their life how how regimented they were how dedicated they were how competitive they were how they had a goal and for me I wanted to try it just once and that was my goal just to try it once so I didn't tell anybody just in case I uh I backed out the last minute but I started dieting alongside these guys for this show and I saw uh this show came up and it was the closest to me because it was only like an hour and a half down the road lemington spa and I didn't realize but this show was a national qualifier it was a big show but I just assumed it was a small Regional show and then yeah dieted down didn't tell anybody registered the night before and I got down there on the day and I was like this backstage shaking like mad I was like what am I doing what the hell am I doing like I'm a plumber I should not be doing this and then yeah yeah stepped on stage and I don't know what it was I became somebody else my Alter Ego came out I was walking on stage like this and the moment the lights hit me and I came out onto stage I was like no you've done all the hard work you deserve to be here now it's time to battle and that's how I took it it was like it was a sport and the feeling of winning and obviously you won that first show yeah yeah and that Elation of of getting first place and then I just yeah unbelievable do you think that your sport could have been replaced by basically anything else like it was it it seems to me like it's competition it's hard work it's being disciplined it's having a goal and working toward it it doesn't really seem like it's that much about the bodybuilding itself it's about pushing yourself yeah I think so but because I I was instilled to work constantly work the the sports I was doing at the time was like Golf and I got down to the end of scratch handicap and those type of sports were were taking four or five hours out of the day which for me was my working day whereas training was a necessity for me because I needed to transform my physique and that's what helped with my self-confidence so that wasn't an option not to train so if I was to do a sport it would have been bodybuilding and another sport whereas bodybuilding fell into both categories I could keep my confidence and and yeah my self-confidence all but at the same time still have that competitive drive at something we spoke before we got started about the um challenges that you face if you become too obsessive with tracking now whether you're looking at wearables whether you're looking at the Quantified Self movement whether you're looking at getting blood panels done yeah uh biohacking I imagine that the level that you're performing at which is the biggest in the world there's only one title that you haven't won yet am I right saying yeah which is the the Olympia the Mr Olympia yeah so there is one title left basically on everything on the planet that you haven't yet got yes so you have probably worked with the best coaches in terms of training in terms of posing in terms of nutrition in terms of sleep recovery rest mindset all that stuff yes which also probably will have opened up access to all manner of Quantified Self ideas and stuff what has your journey been going from um eating to feel training to feel obsessive tracking uh using the wearables not using the wearables uh and what are the lessons that you've taken away from that yeah so so for me when I started obviously competing in the early days um it was just about the enjoyment of it and for self-confidence it wasn't about um building a career out of it I didn't realize I could I could build a career from it and I just did it for the enjoyment and it kept me on a level where I was happy so while I well whilst ever I was in prep and enjoying the whole process of training and just having that accountability every day I was happy and my best results and the the growth of of my career happened so fast when I was in that state of mind and again if you look back at them I was very relaxed in how I trained so it was all about how I feel how I pump up my strength tiredness all these basic things on how I feel just being at one with myself like looking in the mirror thinking right things need to change I need to work on this I'm not feeling great today do I need more sleep um right I'm not feeling strong we're going to back off the heavy weight sets we're going to look for more time on detention or more volume sets just to go off how I feel but as I grew and got more and more um more competitive in in the bodybuilding career and winning more titles the teams came on teams wanted to help they wanted to know your body fat they wanted to know all these other things and I let them come on and it became I don't know it it was unenjoyable for me because it was taken away why I started it and why I did it which was again for self-confidence and the enjoyment of it and every day we're waking up and we were tracking this we were weighing this and it just it took it away for me and it just became monotonous and a job for me and I'm obsessed with bodybuilding I love it but it's a lifestyle 365 days a year I've done this for the last 20 years and I enjoy it but when I went through that stage I lost the enjoyment and that for me was a big thing and if you look over my career and my play-ins I had a two-year lull um and it was because of that because I just I was answering to other people I lost confidence in myself because I was thinking I don't know the answer to this or do I need to change this what do I take this food out or oh no there's a variable here what do I do whereas normal normally and now I just adapt accordingly because I know my body and as I'm getting older my metabolism is changing but that's the beauty of bodybuilding like everything changes from time to time the interesting thing that I've been playing with as well since starting doing this show you start off doing something that you love right and you end up being competence at it or semi-competent at it and then you start to work a little bit harder and you think wow I'm accruing more gains than I feel like I should be you know your first show you shouldn't have won your first show like most people don't by definition and then you go okay well I'm going to lean into this more and then as you said you get the opportunity maybe I could turn this into a profession maybe I could start to labor around this but one of the quickest ways that you can destroy your love for something is to turn it into a labor 100 and most of the people from the outside this is there's a concept called ikigai right which is your calling in life it's at the intersection of uh what you're good at what Society needs what you can be paid for and what you love to do right so you can imagine you've got this Venn diagram in right in the middle that's where your highest point of contribution is between all of those things presumably because you need to be supported by it most people that start doing something that they absolutely love they're a painter they play the guitar to themselves they do whatever don't realize what on the other side of turning that into a job would perhaps cause a lot of the things that they love about their love to fall away yeah and all of these unseen costs to come through all of the travel all of the additional time away from friends and family the obligations that you need to do for people like gymshark for your supplement company etc etc yeah um those start to stack up because you go I'm not I'm no longer being supported by being a plumber by being on site by doing these things yeah and then on top of that you have like you have the existential pain of well if I fail when it's just my thing on the side it doesn't matter I'm still a plumber I'm still a father I'm still a friend I'm still a whatever yeah but if I am my Pursuit yeah and I fail at my Pursuit yeah that means that I am a failure right there is no more existential distance between what you how you show up in the world in your chosen Pursuit yeah and who you are yeah and that that pressure for a lot of people is really crippling yeah and it's it's something that getting through it it seems like it is was a challenge for you yeah it was and the thing is when we talk about training as well you know even down to the train aspect of it a lot of people now have log books and they track everything which if that works for that individual I'm all for it I think fantastic and if you enjoy that process but I'm on the other side of it I'm very sporadic I like to to go in and how it feels on the day and I know how to push my body through its limits and to its limits so for me I've learned that over the years and whenever I try to implement something like that too much structure I lose that enjoyment which I'm actually being counterproductive because for me that's just how I've always worked in business and I'm a lot more more productive now when I free flow and some people I've spoken to people who are so anal and about that they just can't comprehend it but it works yeah but for me the opposite way around I can't comprehend that so I come from a productivity background when we first started this podcast a lot of it was about productivity because I was I was adamant that the right note-taking app and external brain system would fix all of my problems okay spoiler alert it didn't but I tried really really hard to have this perfect note-taking system and it would all be nested and the notion database would be updating all this stuff and I would use my getting things done to-do list reminders yeah and I found it stressful I found it very arduous to try and construct my life using this um and now I'm looking at my notes in Front of Me 2 563 notes which we've got on on Apple notes which is what we use the most basic thing that my mum probably uses to remind herself of her shopping my point being that whatever the system is that you get into using yeah has to work for you and trying to follow on from someone else's prescription the model of this is how it's supposed to work it's very easy especially in 2023 to say well going more Quantified going more aggressive with your tracking especially stuff like uh heavy app um and all of these weight tracking apps they'll do your like poundage across an entire workout across a week about rpes you can do drops you can add everything in Right Time dress periods for some people that's great for other people that's not but don't you thinking especially with bodyguin there's so many variables there's too many variables that that can change from from day to day so when people track I think how can you track like so specific because if you've had eight hours sleep one day if you had 10 hours another day that two hours difference in sleep will make a huge difference for me it does I know is so I I can what do you try and get in terms of sleep tonight I've got a two-year-old right right out of the window okay I would love eight hours but now I'm up at four or four most mornings uh doing our work and then I I do my cardio my fastest cardio after half past five and then the house is awake from six so okay yeah it's a crazy morning right we'll go into that yeah yeah yeah so one of the things I'm interested in you know you are getting toward like the peak of your career now with regards to marrying business still doing the thing that got you famous yeah all of your obligations you're living in the UK which is a great country but does have a little bit of a cap in terms of the ceiling of success right you are far and away probably the best known physique competitor coming out of the UK yeah how have you managed to keep your goals growing with you yeah given the fact that you're outstripping pretty much all of your competition the reason I say this is that there will be a lot of people listening by definition they're listening to this kind of a podcast that means that they're already selected out into the top 0.1 percent of people thinking about personal development thinking about improving themselves yeah how can someone how did you and how can someone who doesn't necessarily have that um community of competitors and encouragement around them wherever they live yeah continue to push themselves as their goals get bigger as they progress that's a hard question how did you do it so why were you so driven given the fact that you kept on beating everybody why were you so driven so for me I was always driven to be number one in the world and until I would get that title until I've won the Olympia in my eyes I've not I'm not the best in the world I'm not I've not achieved what I've set out to achieve so everything I've ever set out to achieve in this industry I've achieved so far other than the Olympia so my goal was always every show I've ever done to never do a lesser show in Prestige so that was how I grew quite quickly because I was very strategic on in in the the shows I did I did my research before and I wanted to be known straight to I wanted to go against the best straightaway I wasn't someone who wanted to just make the numbers up or have an easy qualification easy route to Olympia I wanted to go against the best as quick as possible to know my worth and to know if I'm good enough to be up there because again I want to win shows I don't want to be there just to make the numbers up and that always drove me so I was very fortunate earlier on I was like say I was the first pro from the UK for a hell first pro from Europe held that for five six years before anyone else who was me against the Americans for so long and that was just driving forcing itself I felt like I had the UK behind me like pushing me and pushing pressures and expectations of an entire nation very good but it was phenomenal I loved it and even now I still have that drive um but I'm realistic because I have other obligations with family now and I know I need to provide for them and I know I need to um always be there for them I don't want to be a selfish dad I want to be the best um husband I can to my wife so things change along the way and it has become so much harder now but if I want it which I do I will I'll keep going and just keep finding a route and that's how I liked it I don't overthink it I need to be ready in six weeks or seven weeks time for my next show it's not been announced yet the things I'm doing now I've got five businesses and obviously a young family I've got my wife who's pregnant who's doing three months and I'm doing something huge project to do which I can't talk about there is so much at stake here I know what it is I know I know what the project is it's pretty cool but I thrive off it I absolutely love it and if if I didn't have that I would go in saying that I've always worked at such a high capacity because it's the only way I know how I think because of that work ethic being in still from the age of 14. if I get too complacent I get I get stuck I lose my head and I need to be constant what happens if it's three years from now and you still haven't won Mr Olympia oh that's a good question it's hard to say because people assume I'm older than I am because one because I talk I'm very monotonous and old boy but two because I've been in in the industry so long we were talking before I had a guy yesterday called to me and say oh I was looking at your front cover magazines for muscle and fitness in 2009 wow 14 years ago like and I remember that like it was yesterday and it's just crazy to think but I was very successful in my early days so from 1890 and I came onto the scene so now I'm competing against guys who are still two three years older than me winning the Olympia so I don't want to be a guy who stuck around thank God he's still here after like 15 years but at the same time whilst never I've still got that drive and that hunger and that passion for that that first place I'll keep go I'll keep going um so if it gets if it gets to that stage if you're like I'm now 38 39 40 41. then you how how difficult is it going to be for you to let that go if you haven't won that title so me Ross actually have actually spoke in detail about this because that is my fear I'll admit this now is I don't know because competing satisfies that that competitive side of me I don't know what I'll do when it's over because I never did it for the fame or for the popularity or anything like that it was always about yeah satisfying that hunger for competitiveness so when that stops and my wife said the same you need to start to think about it now and start to address it because yeah I tried to have a year out like say last year and the reason I had that year out was that I was thinking it's time for me to stop or to to kind of because we had a child on the way and all that kind of stuff and I got five businesses to run I was trying to feel that competitive void with businesses and trying to keep me busy that's a but I couldn't like I I just love competing I love being in that regimented state and that that fire to compete against other athletes it just yeah I'm not sure what I'm going to do to be honest I think that one of the best examples of this which I always use is Eddie Hall right so you know Eddie gets very close to winning world's strongest man he doesn't he's sort of pipped at the Post Yeah and then he does and he's there stood with this trophy in his hand and he's crying for his grandma I think that's recently passed away uh and he retires he retires there and then and I don't know man I I would like to think that when you do end up winning that trophy you should be able to go out with a lot of Grace and go okay like what's the next challenge the problem again for me though so it's in trouble that's for me I would be happy to win people say here but would you would you you'd want to start a legacy and would you want to win it again and again I wouldn't now for me once I've achieved like I said I've won every show I've worn I have no desire to go back and win that again even though they are really prestigious shows it's another year on you'd get the popularity you get the prize money you'd get all of that with with win that show again but for me I've done that it's in the past I don't have that same drive for that show like the Arnold Classics so why did you do three Arnold Classics because you say you don't you want to do a show that you've done because I want I wanted to be the first one in the UK I want to be the first in Europe and the first in the USA so that was three different Arnold Classics in three different continents what a country sorry which no one else has done okay let's say you are someone who has spent the last 20 years focusing on training especially for hypertrophy you are someone that has won pretty much every single title on the planet you have 10 exercises that you can do for the rest of your life in order to maintain as good of a physique as you can what are they and why ten that's very specific ten I just figured I just figured that that would be enough for you to get each different muscle group right okay so what are the what are the longest levers that you can pull when it comes to maintaining size or increasing size of obviously compound list so you're looking at your deadlifts uh your bench press um and your squats they're always good again these are things that I have had to adapt over the years because of um injuries and things training silly when I was younger okay there's three there's three there um hanging leg raise for core it's one of the hardest mid-sections if you do it properly I think it's one of the hardest uh mid-section exercises but it's phenomenal for your transverse abdomenes your upper and lower abdominals everything just it's a great I feel like that was something that helped me build my my midsection you've got one of the like acclaimed best midsections in all of Fitness what are the cues that people get wrong when they're doing hanging leg roses so the create momentum the swing which um I think that's a bit to do CrossFit with this Kip in Malarkey and momentum stuff that that came into play a fair few years ago but um yeah I think swinging um I think using the hip flexors instead of the the midsection how do you know if you're doing that you'll feel it you'll feel it down your quads um what's the cue someone's doing a someone's listening to this hanging from a bar right now what is the cue for them to go from I'm hanging straight to I'm doing a leg raise that makes it work appropriately so is it tucking the hips in and making sure you're Contracting you're up and lower abdominals before anything else so it's always keeping them fully contracted Minds multiple connection is is a huge thing I believe in that so much yeah Mike Thurston does the same yeah and the thing is the last few years I've done that so much more now as I've got older and more mature I'm not just trying to lift heavy weight and trying to Ego lift and since I've done that the muscle maturity and how my body's developed it's just exponential I just wish I'd done it five six years ago um so yeah so I think that's very important mind to muscle connection with hanging leg raises you're going to an L are you going up to touch the bar so either so I used to do all the way to the top um but I alternate now so I just do a bit of both um I think there's there's a place for both of them but I think that when you go past a certain point you are recruiting all the muscle groups and so if you want to just isolate your midsection just go to 90 degrees how do you do Progressive overload on that or do you you or you could add weights to you do you I don't personally because I was obsessed with my midsection girl or as you say Rob Richards was the guy who got me obsessed with it so I wanted to be on the front covers like Rob was I you see all the magazines and I try to treat my midsection like any other muscle but some a lot of people think with the midsection you should um training 30 minutes after every session or why every other muscle part we train we train to break the muscle fibers down heavy a lot of load we break the most followers we'll let them recover two three four days before we hit him again and that's how I looked and viewed my midsection so I'd give them two full hour sessions with a three to four day rest between and had the six to eight rep range really heavy the thing with that I start to develop really chunky ABS blocky ABS but in the end it started to look a bit distended because I'd gone too far with it and I was causing so many back problems had slipped discs from it and basically it's because I was too front heavy too front strong so it took a lot of years to start having to uh hyper extend for every crunch I did they said I had to do two hyper extensions wow so yeah it was you needed to compensate for all of that anterior strength that you developed and so now I don't tend to go too heavy and we do a lot of own body weight stuff okay cool so you've got four you've got squat bench deadlift yeah okay hanging leg raises six more slots to keep your body uh so so I'll go with uh some isolation work so we'll we'll probably go with like an incline dumbbell chest just because um you can do very a lot of different variations on that but I think it's great for development um shoulders aren't getting much work at the moment all right shoulder press we'll go with a dumbbell shoulder press because it's great for isolation unilateral um and that's quite important um obviously so we need to do some hamstring work so we would do I would I would say stiff like deadlift but now we I think if we're going to try and create some growth I think we're gonna go for like a lion hamstring curl heavy you prefer a lying to a seated I do yes um yeah I do but I don't know if that's down to the fact I just get better contraction off that I think it's personal preference um in my eyes like I've always said that with any type of exercises if you feel an exercise more than another stick with it Go With It do the extra sets and Reps on that particular exercise because that's where you're going to get the most out of it if you're doing an exercise because someone else has told you to do it and you're not getting that my internal connection or you're not revealing it there's no point and that's that's what I love about bodybuilding as well nutrition and training you adapt it to you it's it's an individual sport you can have people around you supporting it but your metabolism and the way you train the way you eat it all falls on you so learn the body yourself and adapt as you go okay three left what have you got I've lost where we are now um squat bench deadlift hanging leg raise uh incline chest press with dumbbells shoulder press seated car phrase seated calf raise oh so you want to get the Soleus moving yeah we'll get them in okay David okay we'll cover them and then um two left we need overhead tricep extension rope pivoted from the bottom of a pulley yeah right okay yeah what are the cues that people get wrong there because this is a something that I absolutely love to do but where do people go wrong quite mechanically quite a complex movement yeah I think you can go too heavy too soon and start recruiting and start yeah pulling I don't know with the shoulder I think it's it's important to lock your elbows in a fixed position as well as the shoulder make sure there's no movement there I like to elongate and stretch it out and not a lot of people go too far with it but I like to overextend slightly to get a full stretch um and a full contraction at the top um online we need biceps down then we've got everything then what's your number one bicep exercise what is my number one box you know what I'm going to say I'm going to say it um this is a bit of an outward one this because I've done loads of them today is um pull-ups close grip pull-ups I know it's a back workout but your secondary muscle is bicep and the contraction I get off that for my bicep every week I hit them I always want to bring my back up anyway so it's an excuse to just hit the back as well but I think that's a great overall exercise given the fact that you've added deadlifts in what is it that you're finding as a physique competitor that first off isn't massively judged on your legs and secondly wants a narrow torso okay why would you put deadlift into that kind of a workout so I've never believed this with I don't know if scientifically this is right but we've deadlifted I've never I used to deadlift every week I don't so much now do a lot more isolation on hyper extensions again because I get a better contraction I do hypers I prefer to deadlift but I do hypers mainly but with a deadlift um obviously recruits near off every muscle in the in the body so it's great for for an overall workout but um I've lost my train of thought well what were we saying why are you using deadlifts given that you want to have a small waist yeah like I say because I train my midsection the way I do I do a lot of ice attention in the morning um so it's basically all about ISO holds so you breathe in fully breathe in with you exhale every bit of air out of the body and you crunch your abs as hard as you can for three seconds and then standing up standing up yeah you can do that with any muscle part so I it's the most monotonous thing a bodybuilder can do but it's one of the best things for for muscle control for getting everything tight for condition I challenge anybody to do this so do we'll keep it simple three three from the front three from the size you've got three on the bleaks on either side so you've got so you inhale hands of yet as you come down you crunch you exhale every bit of air out you crunch and hold it for three seconds as hard as you can it's good to have your top off because you need to seriously tense do it again and crunch try and do that 10 times and then go to the side and then crunch down hold and they do that 10 times and they do that 10 times have 30 seconds rest go again and then go again I do it five rounds and you're literally dripping wet through and the blood volume you get in your midsection is insane so you can do that with like um with your biceps or between exercises so if you're doing um yeah like a bicep curl you can straighten you hold your pose a double bicep and you hold you squeeze your midsection you squeeze it your biceps as hard as you can for 20 seconds say you come out and you go straight back into your working set it is brutal but if you ever see on a bodybuilding stage when when people are out there shaking because they've got no connection they've got no control over their biceps that's why that happens yeah yeah there's also there's other factors what can happen dehydrated they're tired et cetera et cetera nine times out of ten that will be down to the fact they've not done any ISO holes or they've not took the time with their posing to practice the posing um and that's something I always pride in myself and I remember the first few shows I did on the Olympia stage we're all we're all back um hitting from the back and the guys are going like Ryan what you know how are you holding that how are you holding that because they're all everyone's shaking and it's because eight weeks out from any show 30 minutes after my fasted cardio I'll do ISO holds with every every pose I have to do and every muscle group so it's it's horrendous but these are the things that people don't see these are like so when you look at bodybuilding oh yeah you eat some meals and you train uh twice a day but it's the the little things it's the what I've I'm I obsess over because it's okay having a great work ethic like in the gym or having the discipline to eat your six meals and and not cheat but it's also the other bits of presentation which is so important what's your morning routine take me through it from waking up what time what do you do what are you eating what are you drinking what movements are you going through yeah so typically around five o'clock we get up um I do a black coffee I'll go down I'll have uh eaas and L-Carnitine and that's like 15 minutes before I go and do my oral L-Carnitine are injected oral yep yeah oral through liquid liquid form and then 15 minutes after that I'll go and do an hour faster cardio so 30 minute cross trainer 30 minute incline walk what sort of heart rate is on to again I don't look at that now that that's I'm very basic in that it's a low intensity it's nothing to do something that way I'll do 30 minute call work or um let's have a 30 minute call work or 30 minute uh stretch Mobility work after that hour um and then it's 30 minutes uh posing so you're doing what time is it now so that is seven o'clock ish half seven wow okay so it's a very regimented morning yeah yeah okay seven o'clock yeah so then half seven I'll go in I'll have yeah massive breakfast but uh to most most people it's massive but for me it's it's nothing but what does that typically consist of so I'll always make sure uh my first meal has every source of approach so we've got a good um source of protein bioavailable protein we've got so like a whey protein or away isolate we've got complex carbs so oatmeal um we've got essential fats through almond butter or almond flakes we've got blueberries antioxidants uh are you blending all this together you're eating it separately no I eat it all together in I don't blend it we cook it I put the protein in I let the I cook it all first let it cool down then put the protein in not to degenerate it too much yep okay and then yeah I'll take my multivits um so we've got Multiverse CLA uh Amigas all that kind of stuff um around yeah my meal we're now at what 8 30. eight o'clock yeah around eight o'clock okay day's about to begin yeah and then obviously my son's ready to he has breakfast with me so I'll make these breakfast at the same time um I've changed his nappy twice by then okay does that get added into the workout as well yeah it's horrendous fantastic um and then yeah we get him ready um and then yeah I start my working day so dude I mean just that morning you mentioned before we got started I trained three times a day you know I I'm good friends with a bunch of CrossFit athletes and they're known for training slash over training yeah I think from the outside especially the world of physique yeah but also bodybuilding the volume of training is something that people don't really get to see and part of that is it doesn't translate very well on video yeah you know like understand it because no one's going to show five or six sets of 12 on one exercise then five or six sets of twelve on another exercise whereas everybody knows what a 20 minute Imam of 30 minutes of money structural work is think CrossFit particularly is a sport or a training methodology that is designed to look good yeah on video you know it's quite compelling it's varied it's high intensity uh bodybuilding is a bit more monotonous which makes it less exciting um I think the same thing's true of footballers as well then the difficulty of training that footballers go through specifically is something that nobody thinks about like you think about boxes uh you know even it's a tennis players golfers you think about the amount of time they spend so to me when you think about football it's given that it's the most popular sport on the planet I just don't hold them in the same reverence you know I don't think that the hard workers I'm sure that the tons and tons and tons of hard workers look at Ronaldo with his top off insane yeah but I still don't hold them in that same way do you know what I mean no 100 but then obviously what we talk about just to give you insight about my working day as well so I eat every two hours so I have to cook at least six meals a day so in that time I have three chicken breasts or and a four chicken breast in about four chicken breasts two salmon fillets two fillet steaks a day four eggs a day all with rice white potato eggs oats uh so much veg so I have to prep all that that straight after my morning you're doing that you haven't got somebody that comes in you're not just paying a chef to come and do this for you so I did that for about three months and I just couldn't get my head around someone else doing my work for me and I just because I need to know when I step on stage every part of my prep and every part of my 365 days of the Year going into that show I know exactly what I've put into being under your control yes and that even my wife bless her we had this conversation last week she tried to shorten my dayblet so whilst I was she was working out right he must be nearly 15 minutes from fish you start to make my breakfast and she put it in the microwave ready so all I had to do was press it on but I couldn't get my head around it because I was like are you sure it's only 120 grams in that you sure there's only 20 grams of almonds and it's ridiculous but I just feel comfortable yeah I don't make a scene or anything it's just what I've always done quietly chug on yeah get it done and when people talk about um like if you see a body and they get you get this misconception and it's it's horrible where people are like oh you're living out your Tupperware and you make a big scene of it yeah you've got your fishing license I've managed to do that for for 20 years now and I've never made it like I can still socialize my friends still go out at night we go to restaurants if I can't eat what nine times out of ten I can eat in every restaurant you just ask for a plane steak or a plain chicken breast jacket potato some mixed casual mixed salad it's easy so when they say I can't have that I can't eat any of any of this because it's not on prep you can of course you can you just have to adapt and it's it's how much you want to live in normal society and be a bodybuilder which don't typically go hand in hand but I go on nights out I'll nip out to my car quickly eat my meal come back in the time it takes to go to the toilet so people don't even know about my son's birthday really sad two two weeks out from the Olympia everyone's celebrating in this Pub um yeah the garden pool and yeah just kept nipping off every two hours into my car to eat my meals back in no one even knew look I'm going to get a drink it's like being uh it's like being a closet drug addict yeah but yours is protein instead of heroin or something went to watch Cree three last week with my brother-in-law and that's how sniffing the toilet straight out the fire exit leave a meal of the car parked straight back in didn't even no one even knew you don't have to make a scene of it it's just part and parcel of what I do and it's just became the norm now but but yeah just to follow on from the Working Day and then I get into my emails like I say I've got five businesses to run so I've got property developing got clothing company uh got a coaching company um blood lab which is um a healthcare clinic company and then rjt limited which is all my sponsors and obligations there so we address where can people go if they want to get blood work done in the UK so it's called the blood lab if you look on Instagram you'll see but we have pop-up clinics all over the UK Scotland Ireland so we have about 40 to 50 clinics running through the year and then we've got a full-time HQ which I've just built in hail Manchester so that's open 24 7. um with we've got over 20 phlebotomists now we've got four so you have to go to to the website book on yeah but you have to go in terms of getting a blood draw it's not like in the US where you can go to the lab Co-op or the local places that can take the blood and send it to you yeah so you can have uh you can have it done at your house we can send people out to you so we we've partnered with randox now so huge huge company who actually can come to your door take your blood work or you can do it yourself and send it off we live yeah they'll obviously not do it yourself but careful about this dude right okay okay okay yeah so when it comes home what's the website if people want to get blood work in the UK so yeah the bloodlab.co.uk um go on to there and like you'll see we do everything now so we do ECGs echocardiograms um we do minor surgeries trt HRT um you're like a British Derek from more plates more dates so yeah we're doing a bit I'm still learning all this side of it this is something as I've got older I've talked more pride in um like my blood work and that sort of thing um talk to me about I mean if you you have access to these Bloods what sort of numbers do your test levels and everything else get down to as you're right at the bottom end of prep just how ugly does that look well attend so this is the thing as well I never look at them whilst I'm in prep so I've got I've put my my faith and trust into my doctor which I I've worked with I met him on a gym shark event in Australia would you believe and we came came back and we started working together and I just said to him look I don't need to know that as long as I'm healthy and I need know where I need to be don't again you know I said to you about I don't want to concern myself with numbers and analytics is what I want to just unless I'm outside of range and there's something really concerning just yeah crack on but does he tell you afterwards have you seen what it looks like afterwards uh yeah it's very low right almost admit with the body fat being solo as well that is uh yeah it's pretty low but it's just within I'd say five or six weeks of coming off the show getting my body fat back up just easing off training and all that kind of stuff a little bit less stress yeah we're normally back into where we need to be in um that's why I kind of towards the end the last few years I've only ever done one show a year because of how taxing it is on the body um I used to live and breathe and it was just the norm I used to love it but obviously with having a family now and I can't be selfish 365 days a year so for me I just I have to think of them more as well given the fact that you've got this massive Instagram people have been following you for decades based on the way that you look yeah do you have any desire to start serving the world Beyond just the Skin Deep way that you show up have you got a plan for that moving forward to actually add value Beyond simply being a visual inspiration yeah well so again so for me that was never my intention to be front of house and to I was always someone who liked to work in the background and be an underdog you know whether it was your intention or not that's what's ended up happening yeah you wouldn't believe it but um I would love to do something to help others and with the blood for me with the blood lab I know it's a bit cliche but that for me seems like I'm starting to to transition more because the amount of people with help now and the amount of people educating because our it started off as a bodybuilding like filled with the blood work but we've now gone further afield it's now mainstream we're going corporate with it and everything and it's growing at such a level but it's just educating people more around health and that's something yeah that I've prided myself in so I think without even consciously knowing it that's the way where I'm going now uh with a lot of things and the exciting project that I'm building at the minute that's that's a huge step in that direction um and it might be my retirement should we say it might be my way of that transition that might fill that Voyage should we say with with competing given the fact that you've spent so much time up front being a competitor how is that informing the way that you show up as a father you've mentioned that you've got a young son who is just now going to be starting to ask questions you know wanting to do things maybe even looking at hobbies and you know going into gym every morning Daddy gym I'll be back in an hour okay so what are the values that you hope that you instill into your son and what are the things as well that you hope that you don't given you know the 10-year absence that you had of a father figure so that is the reason I want to be the best at in the world because of me not having that when I was younger um so that is my number one priority now people say oh is that why you you probably won't win the Olympia have you lost that drive but I think the opposite I want to prove to people and I want to prove to my son like he's massive motivation for me he's my driving force to be able to provide for him for him to be proud of me he was he was at the the seat one I'm gonna actually emotional talking about 1A um at the Arnold Classic which meant he was behind the head George which every person who loves bodybuilding would want to sit there I had my son who was one years old sitting out I pulled every string I could to have him sat there because I wanted him to see his his dad and to be proud of proud of him it's a winner in front of him and stuff so he's been a big driving force for me to carry on and to keep getting better for him personally and with the businesses and all that kind of stuff one of the business is in his name so he doesn't know it he's the director and he it will be his company youngest director in the UK exactly so it's called Alta which is Alfie Lewis Terry Aesthetics so for me these are all things which I never had and I've told you about growing up with with we wouldn't have a lot of money I was from the age of 14 I was told I had to work and I was instilled that hard work and yeah there was times where we never had the best things we never went without but we appreciated money and we yeah we never had the big holidays all that kind of stuff so this is something I want to be able to to give my son to have the life I didn't have but at the same time I've said to my wife please don't let me get carried away just because we've done well and we're financially okay now that he doesn't appreciate the value of so this is the next question I've got for you mate how is it given the fact that you have managed to be an incredible success in spite because of the limitations and the challenges that you had to face yeah you want to pay forward your success to give your kid the chances you never kids that you that and the future yeah the future one um the chances that you never had the opportunities you never had the quality of life that you never had and yet both of us the things that we went through when we were kids have driven us to do things that in retrospect are incredibly proud of yeah and very well may not have achieved had we not have had those setbacks that's very true how I mean you know this is a perennial question but how are you balancing the difference between wanting to give your child love and give your child challenges yeah this is this is a great this is a great topic if this is something me and my wife need to sit down and talk more about because I am fearful of that like I said I want to spoil my son yes I want to spoil my son because I want yeah I want him to be happy I wanted to but at the same time I still want him to be even to the point where this is going to sound a bit wrong now but he's in private school now or he only goes twice twice a week he's only two years old but I'm contemplating taking him out of private school although I want him to have the best start in life and the best education life I don't want him like you said the Silver Spoon like I don't want him to think that's the norm because he's going to school with people who turn up in helicopters and like Bentleys and and I'm thinking I didn't have any of this and I I've done okay and I and now I wise look to the world a lot quicker and it's in its harsh world and I don't want him to be Molly coddled and he is being to some degree with with my wife and I love her so much for it because she she cares for him so much and it yeah he couldn't ask for a better Mum but at the same time I am fearful that he yeah he won't be ready for the big wild world he's gonna be exposed to those difficulties man 100 I mean this is something that I think about so much especially you know I flew back from the US this morning landed this morning um the class system in the UK is very rigid you know um America still has this very fluid sort of working to middle and then middle to upper class system I have bags of friends in the US all of my richest friends are American right all of them yeah and the homeschooling their kids paying tutors to come around to school like it but they come from backgrounds as poor as mine and yours yeah but they don't have that sort of glass ceiling rigid class structure thing that plays on top of them I feel it as well with me and I can't wait to be a dad you know like when the time's right for me um but I think about that too how am I going to be able to give the challenges that I need to to my kids to make them sufficiently resilient because I know how much I value that in myself yeah whilst not making their life unnecessarily hard yeah uh it's very they're very difficult there's so many variables with that as well like for instance we we've got like a we've had to sit down as parents I think parenting is so hard and you don't understand it until you're like you're in a month stand you're actually going through it we were getting to a point where I was conscious of this and my wife wasn't so she was given everything he wanted all that kind of I was the opposite because I could see that he was getting he was expecting everything whatever he wanted he was getting so I was going the opposite way doing the two so I was purposely not doing a laptop yeah being strict but again that has its own problems because you then create a divide between parenting and who's he going to be drawn to who's he going to and soft touch with mum yeah so we had to sit down not long ago and we are now working in a line in unison but again we still need to find that that bonus because I take him to because the gym like he's so competitive which is which is brilliant so I'm glad we've got that side nailed down already because the reason I put him in that school was it's very small sports academic it's very very and you you you win gracefully you lose gracefully there's no such thing as taking part there's good yeah I love that aspect and we're going in gymnastics on a Wednesday he swims on a Tuesday he plays football on a Saturday swims on a Sunday so he's doing what I did Growing Up he doesn't sit in front of a TV he's very active he's outside he forests every week he's forestering every week um so I'm proud of that side but you're very right in the fact that yeah how do we uh not Molly coddle him too much absolutely so let me give you some insights that I've learned over the last couple of years to do with this stuff so uh the number one behavioral behavioral geneticist on the planet guy called Robert Plowman so he was the fourth most cited psychologist of the 20th century that's a century that had people like Sigmund Freud in it right so the fourth most cited he basically has teased apart the differences between nature and nurture more than anybody else in history okay every single pair of twins born in the UK between 1991 and 1994 were enrolled into this study they've ended up tracking I think it's somewhere in the region of about 50 000 pairs of twins some of these were separated at Birth taken into adoptive or Foster families and when you do that especially if you've got monozygotic twins you have one person in terms of their genes but two environments right so it allows you to tease apart what are the differences etc etc when you control for everything including socioeconomic status household income blah blah blah blah blah the school that you'd send your kid to accounts for between one and three percent of their academic outcomes so if you were to send them to the worst school in the region or the best school in the region now the problem that you have here one in three percent doesn't sound like much another thing to fold in is that the um nurture part of nurturing when you raise your kids yeah doesn't come from you and it doesn't come from your wife okay it comes from the friends that they hang around with it comes from the uh father of the cool kid that he likes to go and play with it's like my dad's lame because my dad doesn't play guitar but John's dad lets him play guitar and he gets to stay up late and have ice cream and if John's dad also happens to be a businessman that is very focused on money if John's dad happens to be someone that gambles a lot if John's dad happens to have a terrible relationship with his partner those are the values that will be inculcated the single best predictor of a child's future wealth level when controlling for all of the other variables is the average income of the postcode that they grow up in so it's the people around them the nurture element of Nature and nurture for children's upbringing seems to be the friend groups that you put them in so one of the first things that I would do is very like and this is something that I think about you know when I imagine my imaginary child that I don't have yet um I would go and vet very very closely what are the coaches like at every single different boxing gym swimming gym gym gymnastics gym which is the one that I think right he's got the values he's the dad that's closest to me that's closest that's what we did with that school yeah we went to about four private schools they were all driven by like the education which is great for me I was driven by the sports and the winning side and the competitive doesn't sound like a professional athlete all aspects of it though but yeah so carry on sorry no just that I I would focus very much on who are the other kids that are going yeah what do the parents like that go there I would this sounds bad but I would very carefully vet the friends that you're sending the kids around to and this doesn't mean you know they can be from any background that you want but you want the family to have the right values you want them to be hard working you don't want them to be materialistic you want them to understand the fact you don't want them to be spending all of their time on their phone etc etc and um this is where wealth doesn't create advantages for kids yeah um because a lot of the time if you're rich you will Outsource raising your kids to nannies to kindergarten etc etc but they're not going to take this level of uh resolution they're not going to look at it this finally yeah and if you do decide to do that I really think that the difference is that you can see I I would go as far as to say that you could ignore the time that it looks at in terms of school outcomes educational all the rest of it and simply focus on do they have the right values who are the kids that they're hanging around with what are the activities they're doing outside of school and what are the parents of the kids that they hang around with and I think that you will have as much if not more of an impact now obviously you want to cover all of the bases etc etc but that seems to be based on what I've read one of the longest levers that you have for your kids and I think that you're doing it the right way focusing on what are the values etc etc yeah um but yeah man it's a ruthless situation to think that the nurture part of Nature and nurture isn't you and it's not your partner that's so true that is so true so I need to make sure everyone's around me yeah absolutely excuse me absolutely well you know but think about it this way man you have the opportunity to create and I see this again in in Austin there's a lot of these um it's called homesteading okay so my friends that have sold companies for tens of millions when they're in their 20s and are now just getting to chill out and raise their kids on again on a ranch or whatever they'll go and buy 100 acres of land somewhere in Texas with 10 other families one will be a doctor one will be a teacher one will be a physical trainer one will be something else and they'll basically make a miniature Village they'll homeschool the kids all together but what they're doing is they're pre-selecting for people that are like the sort of people that they like that are like the sort of people that they want the kids to be like and you're going to end up with those communities I think unless there's some like weird uh byproduct maladaptive social effect that happens because they're not sufficiently exposed to different cultures or whatever that might be a thing but I think that you're going to see those people having really really great outcomes for their kids now you might get uh like a concentration or a distillation of bad thought patterns because it's focusing everything not just the good but also the bad um you know like this is how colds start right it's you know if you have like a little bit of racism and everybody around you is a racist everybody's pretty racist yeah yeah um but I think that that's a good way to look at it and what you have the opportunity to as somebody that has a platform that has success that has you know an aspirational lifestyle is to not only raise up your kid but to find other people that have a growth mindset that have kids and you go why don't we work together yeah to make arcade given what we know given how we understand that child development works yeah why don't we work together and dedicate the next five to ten years to both I'm going to give all of the values and maybe even write it out this is something that I consider doing sit down with you know four other pairs of parents that have all got kids that are all gonna maybe have more that are around about your age and say okay let's agree on an agenda you know like you do with the business you've got brand values for a business you've got guidelines you've got a branding guide you've got all of these different things for a business and you never sit down and do this for your kids yeah yeah so I think that would be a really good a really good strategy for people to think about doing yeah definitely let's uh try telling that to my wife ah she'll be on board she'll be on board okay so what's next what can people expect from you next so we've got an exciting year this year so like I say we're talking about this on the on the cab drive over um I the last two years I don't know what it was where I felt like I'd achieved everything I wanted to other than the Olympia and I kind of just sat back on my Laurels a little bit I financially got into a place I wanted to be the companies were doing doing okay and stuff and I kind of yeah just lulled a bit for two years and that's just not me and the longer I did that for the more I was getting agitated the more I was just not happy in myself so this year and I said to my wife at Christmas said look I need I need to go back to who I am and and that's keeping busy keeping progressing in life and that it's not necessarily financially or competing it's just I need to still fulfill and keep doing things I need to keep progressing moving forward so I took on some big challenges this year so again I've got a huge project which is going to take me all year to do but this is yeah setting me up for for the next 10 20 years and it's it's always been a dream of mine which I've wanted to do and it's just I've never had the right time to do it with traveling I've been in a different country every week and having different obligations and stuff but I feel like now with with the young family and wanting to be at home more it's a perfect time to do this so that's as much as I'm going to say on it but it's it's gonna be like like nothing the UK scene so it's going to be phenomenal and at the same time we've got the Ryan Terry British Championship so again this is when you're in Federation now own my own show so it's the it's the finale I won this in 2013 and it's the British Championship so it's basically the best of the best amateurs in the UK all go head-to-head to win the British title and you win a pro card and you go into the pro leagues which Federation is this this is the ifbb right uh it's Affiliated to the ifbb but it's two Bros but Jim shark have kindly backed me this year so I've done it for four years um on my own it's been very difficult very hard and it's always just been a passion of mine I never made money out of it it was just because Ben Francis swinging in last minute slip streaming all of the work you've done exactly but it's gonna just put bodybuilding like UK bodybuilding back on the map and for me that's what it's about I'm not not bored about taking money from this at all I just want there to be a show where everyone goes to and just comes out of and thinking oh my days that's what it used to be because I grew up around bodybuilding from 14 and I used to go to Southport to the Mr universities to Batley brierley Hill all these Dives but they were just brilliant bodybuilding shows and the standard of of athletes the you had thousands of people filling Village halls and stuff and it was just brilliant and we've lost that it became a money thing it became I hate to say a bit political a bit clicky and we just lost that authenticity so my goal taking money out of it is to bring that back and I'm going to do everything it takes some of the things and some of the people who are coming to this show already it's just going to be off the return we've got the Manchester Arena which we're looking at doing this weekend with the lift event we've actually hide that out again um for the bodybuilding show in October and yeah I'm so excited for that unreal Ryan Terry ladies and gentlemen if people want to keep up to date with the stuff that you do where should they go yeah you can follow me on social media Ryan J Terrier on Instagram um that's kind of my main platform on YouTube all that kind of stuff but yeah well thank you for having me I appreciate it Ryan I appreciate you thank you mate take care what's happening people thank you very much for tuning in if that episode then press here for a selection of the best clips from the podcast over the last few weeks and don't forget to subscribe peace