Well hello ladies and gents, Robert Sykes Keto, savage.com and today I've got special guest Mark Ennis on the line. He is based out of Dublin, Ireland. He's a carnivore coach. Just kind of wanted to bring on the podcast, pick his brain as to what he's learned and working with his client pool. He has had quite the journey himself. He started out young and struggled with a bunch of disorder eating tendencies. He got overweight, then he went anorexic, lost a ton of weight
and then he bulked up again. And then he did his first competition in bodybuilding last year. Fell in love with it. Has been doing Keto Carnivore now for quite some time and is now teaching his client pool how to incorporate that lifestyle eating habits into their own life. And he's making a massive difference in Dublin, Ireland. So I'm super stoked to have him on the podcast excited for the conversation. I've got no doubt that you will take something from it.
So that further delay, sit back, relax, enjoy the conversation with Mark and we are live. Mark. How are you brother? I'm good man. How are you? Thanks for taking my call. Oh my pleasure, man. I'm excited to be chatting with you. Where where are you located from? Where's the accent coming from? I'm from Ireland, Dublin. Dublin, Ireland. You probably think I got an accent, don't you? You have a great accent. I'd love to have an American
accent. I got that Southern draw going for me so I like the Dublin Ireland accent too though, man. Have you ever been? I have never been, my brother's been, and I have every intention of going, but I have yet to be there. Now you'll you'll you'll like it over here. It's right. It's very, very busy country. What's the what's the general population like there as far as just health, fitness, Wellness
is concerned? Is that pretty big on the priority list or is that kind of an afterthought there? It's quite big, but I think we're, I think we're going backwards. Going backwards. Well, America's definitely going backwards, so. Yeah, I think we're, I think we're not too far behind. When you look at the obesity problem now, I don't think we're too far away from the Americans. I think Ireland is, I think Ireland are literally quite behind you guys.
What about the like keto carnivore low carb space, Is that a pretty big scene there or no? No, it's not even. Nobody even mentions over here. Like if you mentioned keto or carnivore over here, you're you're you're probably, you've been told that you're going to probably kill someone. That's that's how bad it is. So you're trying to you're trying to explain to people over here about the epic carnivore or keto, something like that. They just look at you and they say that can't be done.
It's impossible, absolutely impossible. And then when I mentioned that there's a few people that are actually doing on the other side of the world and they're they're, they're nourishing their, they've got unbelievable transformations. They look at it and say, well, that's not real. It's unfortunate man. Is the the quality of the food there like as a baseline pretty
decent though? I mean, is it like New Zealand where you're getting grass finished meat kind of by default or is it just a lot of processed food? Oh no, we have, we have our aisles, we have all Irish based meats, but nobody pretty much goes near them. I think for I think for a lot of people over here, because the cost of living is so high, they usually go for the cheap sources. So anything that's processed or they anything that's really, really cheap, that's what they
usually go after. I mean it's it's so bad at the moment that we're looking at obesity kids at the moment that are walking around six years of age and they're probably weighing just as much as their age. Oh, I hate that man. I hate that. Well, what got you into the kido carnivore space anyways? I mean, you're not seeing it there in your hometown. So what gets you down that trajectory? So I kind of fell into it by accident to be honest. So it started off when I was younger.
I got, I was always a pretty much a fat kid when I was younger and I was really, really overweight. I was I was always the child that was always left out. So even when sports I would always be picked last because my way I would always be bullied in in in school about my way and and it just got to a stage where I got really, really, really upset about it and I wanted to do something about it and this was around a sable 8 or 10 years of age.
So it's no it's no age for a child to go through that kind of that kind of trauma in your life. But anyway, I went through it and it got so bad that I had to do something about it. And at that stage I couldn't go. I couldn't join a gym. So I took it to the extreme. I start exercise and I Start learning about different kind of exercise. I start in my room. I did press UPS at the crunches. I did. I ran every single day to the point where I took it to the
extreme. My food kept on going down and down and down because I had to stay. At that time I thought it was just about all about calories. Just focus on dropping your calories no matter how what food you're eating. Just drop your your food down and then you'll end up losing weight. So I dropped it down and I remember it that we went on for at least two years. My parents hadn't got a clue what was going on so I dropped my weight down to around.
I don't know what it is in pounds, but it's around 4 stone and and I think that was around maybe 48, maybe 50 lbs at a time. And I was quite thin, really, really thin. At a point where I had no more energy. I literally was walking around on fumes, but I'd still, I'd still go outside and I'd still run around but I just had no energy. I bought. Every time I looked at myself in the mirror I was like, OK, I need I still have more to go. I can still grab a bit of fat here.
It's not good. I need to just keep on pushing myself and pushing myself and push myself. So again, that went on for about two or three years and what age? Were you at that point? At the time, I would have been around 10 and my parents wouldn't have found out until I was around 13. So 4 stone? I just converted it. 4 stone is 56 lbs. So that's crazy light man. And. And you said you were heavy before then. Yeah, I would have been a heavy kid. Now I was. I don't know how, how heavy I
was. You know yourself when you when kids are younger, everybody says it's just it's just a puppy fat, like they'll grow out of it. But for me, I grew up in a family where we didn't have a lot of money and everything even was just basically processed food, like pretty basic food. And my mother and father didn't know any better. They just were just basically feeding me every day. But it just got, it got to the point where I was really, really emotional. I gained a ton of weight.
I couldn't even walk up the stairs. I was out of breath most of the time. I'd be walking behind my mother and she'd be walking ahead of me and I'd be struggling to catch up for her. So I knew something was wrong. And it was amazing because when I look back at it, I was only, I was only a child. And as I said, like no, no child should go through this. And This is why I feel like I I was just lucky because I fell
into this by accident. But yeah, Fast forward about three years later and when I was doing this I took my my way to the extreme. I think the lowest way I got down to was about 3 1/2 stone and this is where I fainted. I fainted quite a few times and and I was brought into a hospital. We were actually on a holiday in Spain at the time and I had, I was, we were walking along the beach and I had fainted and I was told my heart stopped and. And they didn't know what was going on.
Yeah, So they brought me into the hospital and the hospital told me, listen, we need to put you on a drip. We need to start putting some sugars into you and we'll take it from there. And every, I'd say every two hours they were trying to feed me. And at that at that time I had a really, really bad relationship with food. And I mean if you gave me food, I would get scared, like really, really scared. So every time they fed me, I'd throw it at the window.
I didn't want to. It was getting really, really bad. And then I had people coming into me saying to me, listen, you need to eat, you need to eat, otherwise you're going to die. And that struck A chord. Me, That struck A chord with me massively. I was like, Oh my God, like, I'm only, I'm only a young kid here. Like I've still had my life. I still have my life ahead of me, like, what am I going to do?
So that's when I start implementing, start, OK, I need to eat small food, but I'll eat it when I'm ready. And it took a long, long time, a long, long time to get myself back into that routine of eating again. And that took a toll on me for about at least three or four years, to the point where I probably still am going through at the moment, but not not as bad.
And yeah, that went, my recovery went on for about three or four years and when I got to around 18 years of age my family wanted me to have a little bit of discipline in my life and and they said, right, you're never going to get bullied again. So we're going to put you into a we're going to put you into a rugby club. Now I don't know if you know anything about rugby, but rugby, like these guys are huge, like
big, big guys. And when I went in, I was completely I was scared, I was traumatized. I was like, look, I'm just a small kid here, like I'm only, I can't remember what I was at the time. But I was only a skinny lads. And I remember when going in and the coach told me, listen, we're going to teach you how to build muscle and we're going to bring you down to the gym and we're going to feed you and we're going to look after you. So I said this is fantastic. I'm going to feel confident.
I'm going to feel amazing that I want to do this. So took me in, I learned how I picked up my first barbell at around maybe 18 years of age. I think I was and start. I stuck with the basics. Deadlifts, poles, rows and bench presses, stuff like that. Just the basic compound lifts. And my food was increasing on pretty much every month on a monthly basis. But the food that were giving me was basically energy, Gels, cereals, bagels, fruits, dextrose, a lot of carbohydrate food.
And I stuck with that sport for the four years and I I blew up. I absolutely. I mean you're talking about a guy that was coming from anorexia up to about 18 years of age as I was roughly around 9 stones. So I would have been probably maybe around 120, around £130 to after a year, 5I blew up to 18 stone and I think that was over £250 like I was. I was a big, big unit. Like I I put on so much mass you wouldn't believe, and I had. You said that was 18 to To what age?
That that went from 18. I finished rugby at 23. Well, that's quite a bit of, yeah, 9 stone. I'm doing these conversions here. 9 stones, 126 lbs and then 18 stone is 252. So that is a lot of weight in a short period of time. Yeah, and I'm not. I'm only a small guy, like I'm only five or three, so to carry £250 on your frame is a lot of weight and. Probably a lot of muscle, but probably a little. A little extra body fat, too. Oh yeah, Like I was.
I was huge. Like, I felt strong in the gym. Like I was really really strong and powerful and I felt great but I didn't feel great at the opposite effect on me and I was and I was walking around and I was like OK, this this I don't feel good. Like why why do when I feel good if I'm that if I'm this size why am I walking around with like a bloated stomach gassy and my energy is low and why am I, why is my mental health getting affected.
And and this is where I this is where I start going down the rabbit hole. When I looked around and I said right OK, I tried tried a few different things like car I tried carb, back loading. I tried the proteins at fast where I just focused on proteins. I focused and I it led me down to keto. And the more I kept on doing it, I was like OK, I actually feel better when I actually remove carbohydrates on my diet.
I just feel great. I have more energy, but I'm going to lose all this muscle mass if I reduce the carbohydrates on my diet. So I just, I just started experimenting with my body. I was like, OK, let's just take all the processed food outlet's take all the sugary food out and let's just focus on complex carbohydrates, your sweet potato, rice, brown rice, stuff like that, vegetables. And it made it made a difference.
I looked a lot better, felt a little better, but I still had that bloated feeling, that gassy feeling, and it still wasn't sitting right me at all. And I wasn't feeling feeling good at all. So that's when I went down to keto and I looked at keto and I was like, OK, is this real? If I just eat FIFA food, will this have an impact on the way I look? And how am I actually going to structure this? How does it actually work? Do I need, do I need to eat low protein, high protein?
Do I need to eat high fat? Like, where am I going to get my energy from? Is it going to come from carbohydrates? And then I started looking up YouTube videos and I saw people saying, like, listen, you'll get more energy from eating your fats. So I was like, OK, OK, where do I get my frats from? So I get them from avocados, I get them from olive oils, I get from olives, I get coconut oils. So I did.
I dealt. I delve deep into an awful lot of fats and to the point where I lowered my protein down to and at this stage now again I was around £250 and I think I lowered my protein down to maybe around 1:20 when maybe around 1:30. And then my fats were quite high, like really, really high as well and I was maintaining muscle, I was maintaining size and yeah, everything ran really, really well. And I did that for a couple of years and I maintained that for a couple of years.
And as I said, everything went really, really well. But again, I still had that. I still had that energy dips. I was like, I was still walking around and people wouldn't believe me. I was just like, you know what, I might look good, but I still feel like crap. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just don't. I don't feel good. And that's when I came across. I was, I am like last year, this
year, I was last year. And I've I had a friend of mine that does a podcast and I'm funny enough you were on it and I said, I'll dive into this because I've never actually heard a carnival. And I was like, this guy is actually on bodybuilding. So I said I'll listen to this and see what and see what I think of it and then heard all about it. I was like, you're just eating me. And I was like, ah, here. I don't think I'm going to be able to listen to this for 45
minutes. This just, this doesn't, this sounds rubbish, right? I kept it on and the more I kept on listening to you, I was like, this guy's actually making a lot of sense. What was the podcast? Was, well, I'll say, I'll send. You know Auntie, I can't remember what was it was an Irish guy. I spoke to you last year and he's, he's a big influencer over here. I can't remember his name. But you were on it and you spoke about your life. And I was like, this is quite similar to mine.
And you were telling me about your food addictions and stuff like that. And I was like, he's just eating me. And I was like, wow, I'm actually try this. So I went home and I said, right, I'm just going to eat basically eggs, red meat, ground beef for a week and let's see what happens. Just let's just try it and let's see what happens.
And I couldn't believe it. When in a week, my digestive issues were so much better, my energy was so much better, my mental health was so much better, my mental clarity was so much better. And I didn't lose any strength in the gym whatsoever. And I just said, you know what? I think I'm actually going to keep doing this. I mean, people might think I'm actually crazy.
So I think I'm gonna actually do this as a lifestyle and see where it takes me. And ever since then I have to thank you and I have to think thank a few other people that are in the carnivore community. Since then I've basically taken all the principles you guys teach on to the people that I actually coach. And it's actually made a huge, huge difference to people's lives. And it's just it's it's just amazing. And that's pretty much my story. I.
Love it, man. I feel like when you when you've seen kind of all ends of the spectrum, like you had like you were overweight at a young age, then you went crazy, other end of the spectrum got incredibly light. I mean 50 lbs is is nothing, man. And then to blow up to £250 at 5 three, I mean heaviest I've ever been was 230 lbs and I'm 5757 and a half and that was way too
much weight for my frame. So I can kind of relate with where you're at on that end of the spectrum, but then to do all that and then play with all the different types of diets, you know, back loading. I did back loading for quite some time. That was kind of what led me to Keto, was the back loading and how are you doing back loading? Were you following John Kiefer's program pretty closely?
No, I was just, I just, I think that as I said I just, I just, I just think I fell into it by accident because I was just playing around with different things with my body just to see what actually suits my body. And I used to do like I used to do a carb load back load pretty much after training and that didn't work. And then I said right, OK, what if I do, if I just eat proteins throughout the day, a little bit of fat and then just have my carbohydrates at night time.
I was just basically playing around to see what actually do with my body and that's I fell into it. It wasn't about like looking out at YouTube's and trying to find out what what was the best, the best way to do it. I could find I could look at a million YouTube videos, but at the end of the day it's about like, what suits you and I I done that for weeks and weeks and weeks.
I just wanted to find out what actually suits my body, What How can I actually still make progress and still feel pretty much feeling good every day pretty much. Totally. Has your weight been pretty stable here lately? Oh yeah, Like I'm I'm, I'm back to pretty much where I where I should be. I'm a lot healthier than where I should be. I feel great. When I mentioned at the beginning about my eating disorders, I still have to. I don't think I'll ever get rid of that or funny enough.
And I don't have bodybuilding competition this year or sorry, last year. And for many people, a lot of people like to do it because they like to go in, they like to challenge themselves, go in for the win, all that kind of stuff. For me, I was always, since my addiction, I've been anorexic. I've always had to wear a lot of clothing because underneath the underneath that clothes and I still feel like I'm fat. And I I reached out to a coach and I said, listen, I'm not
doing this to win. I'm doing this because pretty much I'll be going out on my underwear and it's going to be a big, big moment for me because I've always hid behind my clothes for years. I mean I'm I'm I'm pushing nearly 50 this year and I'm saying to my my girlfriend at the time I was like listen I can't live like this. I can't be going around on holidays where I'm wearing AT shirt even though I look great, I feel great.
I I need to pretty much bury the bury these demons as quick as I can and what better place to do it than going on stage probably in a different country and just showing off and just you know what, just say you like that. This is my moments and I'm not letting anybody take it away from me and and that's the reason. Sorry, go ahead. What? What is your typical walking around weight now? My weight now is I I'm around 10 1/2 stone, so I'm around 1:40, maybe 1:45.
Yeah, well I think, I mean shoot man, people that have never body built, they they don't compete. It's funny because they just assume that the people that are on stage are incredibly confident in their skin, how they look and they just want to showcase it all the time. But the reality of the situation is, and you can attest to this yourself, is that the people that are doing those things oftentimes are the least
confident in how they look like. They're always being subjective, objective and just nitpicking every little detail. So I can totally relate with you on many fronts there, man. When I was in high school, I would never wear shirt shirts with short sleeves. Like I never wore short sleeve shirts because I was so self-conscious about how I looked and it took me years to get past that.
Man, like bodybuilding that allowed me to breakthrough then, so I can totally see that being the catalyst for you as well. But when you, I don't know, like when you have this idea in your mind of what you want to look like, but then that doesn't align with what you see in the mirror. You just constantly have this fixation about how you look, how people perceive the way you look.
Especially if you're in the coaching space because you're supposed to look a certain way, you know, quote, UN quote, supposed to look a certain way. And you feel like you have to give off this image for your clientele. There's just a lot of pressure there that society puts on you, that social media puts on you. So just breaking through that by stepping on stage and kind of putting yourself out there is pretty admirable man. Yeah, yeah, I totally agree.
I think it's all, it all comes down just peer pressure. And that's the reason why I had I had to grow over. I had to. I had to. I just put so much pressure on myself. I was putting everybody 1st and I wasn't putting myself 1st. And I I knew I said to myself, right, if I'm going to do this, I have to do it right. I'm not going over for the win. And I remember being backstage and I remember seeing everybody stressed and everybody eating carbohydrates every two hours.
And you could see those. You could see the emotion in everybody's face. And I was, I was just, I was so relaxed because I knew my reason why. I knew the reason why I was doing this and I don't know, I was so relaxed. The only time, the only time I got really, really terrified is when they called my name to go
on stage. That's when I said myself, OK, listen, it's either now you either go for it or you turn back and and if you if you if you go forward, that's it, You need to keep looking forward and just bury all those demons and never ever look back. Because I had to. I had to. It's when I say to you I was on the verge, literally on the verge of dying at 10 years of age. I'm not even joking. And doctors are saying to me listen.
And my mother broke down in tears in front of me saying listen son don't leave us And when you when you hear that as a 10 year old and and I shouldn't have to even think about these things. I should be in these should be the best times of my life And but I blame myself for that. I blame myself for pump. I put my parents through that in the 1st place and I wanted to show my parents that listen I got into this. I'm actually going to get out of myself but it took a long long time.
It took a long, long time for me to to get it to get out of. What do you think was the reason for that pressure in the 1st place? Like, what do you think the catalyst was for you at such a young age to be so consumed by your your weights? How you looked like? What do you think the catalyst was? Bullying. Bullying the product?
Yeah, just bullying. I mean, I used to get bullied over my way every single day in school when I was younger and girls wouldn't come near me. And as I said, I used to be the fat kid that would be last to get picked on a sports team and that took its toll on me. So let's say we're playing soccer or rugby or whatever it is. I was always last. Nobody wanted me on their team. Nobody. And I used to go home and I used to cry into my pillow, literally cry into my pillow.
I was like, I can't live like this. This is, this is not my life. I just can't. I just cannot live like this. What's going on? How am I getting so big? I didn't understand. I didn't understand my life. I didn't understand how I felt this way. And the and the only way I knew I could get rid of it was exercise. To the point where it just. I got so addicted. I got so addicted to exercise that I just couldn't get over.
I really couldn't get out of it. Were you doing like the like, binging and purging when you were really struggling with the anorexia? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was, I was, I was. I would have been purging at the beginning, but at the at the at the later stages, then I would have just took it to a level where I would have been pretty much eaten nothing. I mean, I I could have went days
fast and pretty much for days. I mean, when we got to the later stage of the anorexia, I mean, I probably would have had a Mars bar and that would have been my meal for the day and it would have took me nearly an hour to eat. Were you getting bullied quite a bit when you were so small too? Yeah, that's tough. Man, so it went, it went on for, it went on for a long, long time and it just as I said, it just, it got it got me, it got me really, really bad.
And it could have had, it could, have, could have been worse. When you found Keto and Carnivore and you started living that way, did you? I mean, are you eating pretty intuitively? Are you tracking everything or how you structuring that? So at the moment I'm not I'm actually quite relaxed. I'm I'm actually going through a
reverse phase at the moment. So I competed in November and my I can't remember what my calories were around or I think they're around maybe 1450 I think before I got on stage and stand up and increase my food intake slowly. I'm still increase my food slowly and the reason why I did that, and that's the reason why I spoke to my coach about this, because I didn't want to get into that situation again where I dropped all the way and then I'm allowed to.
I'm allowing myself to bench because that that could literally take over my life because I've done that in the past and I wanted to do it right. So I I said at the very, very beginning, we're going to drop the weight down, we're going to get ripped the shreds on on stage. But when I come out with this, we're going to do a reverse diet and I'm probably going to do it for about four or five months. That's tough, man. Like I'm in my reverse diet now as well.
My last show of the season was in November 2 and you know, I'm I guess 9 weeks post show right now. Reverse dieting. And it's tough, man. Like reverse dieting is no joke because like you have. No show date looming on the calendar, so staying on track of your nutrition so as to not allow yourself to binge is honestly, in my opinion, psychologically harder than actually cutting calories in preparation for the show. Because. One. Yeah. One hundred, 100%.
It's it's really, really hard. Especially when you're going through the holidays and Christmases and this time this time of the year when it's very, very cold, you just want to sit back and enjoy a meal with the family and just just chill out basically for them. No, yeah, totally agree, Totally agree. It's a lot harder. And there's there's been a few times throughout this reverse
diet where I've eaten in excess. Like there there was two days where I ate like 8000 calories, which my body didn't need that many calories in in a sitting by any means. But one thing I've done that I'm proud of with this reverse is that I've tracked everything. So I know that I had the 8000 calories. I know my why my body responded the way it did post consumption of that intake. And I've I've kept things much more dialed in with this reverse diet than I ever have previously.
And there's been times like I've done several show seasons now and each reverse diet, each prep and each reverse diet has gotten better and built on the one prior. But really putting time and attention towards the reverse is just as important as the cut itself. And I see so many people like you say they just start binging afterwards post show and then they put on way too much body fat way too quickly and it just really has a takes a
psychological toll on them. Yeah. And and that's a good point because I I put up a post there about about, I think it was about 8 weeks ago and about five years ago I was, I was eating the standard 6 meals a day and I was eating, I think at the top end I was eating around 2200 calories and I looked absolutely rubbish, completely rubbish, and I brought it down to around 1600. Now my current calorie intake at the moment, I'm, I'm pretty sure I'm honored, probably a bit hard in 22.
I'm probably around 23, maybe 2350 and I still look, I still look really, really lean. I mean my body fat is still quite low. I still have my abs, I'm still quite ripped, I still feel great and I'm like, how far can I actually push this. So that's the reason why I chose to do it, because I know eat in this kind of way and live in this kind of way. Also it's it's very, very hard to put on weight. A lot of weight, a lot of body fat. When you're eating this this
kind of way, you don't think so? No, I totally agree. And The thing is like if you do have days where you eat in excess, like those two 8000 calorie days were certainly in excess for me, but it was predominantly coming from all quality foods like animal based foods. Like some of that 8000 calories was coming from, you know, grass, finished beef liver and you know, mahi Mai fish fillets. Like it was all stuff that I don't feel guilty about eating.
And I think that is a huge component as well. Like when you eat something that you know isn't serving you and you have this guilt associated with it, it makes it so much easier to fall into these binging, purging tendencies. Whereas if you do eat in surplus and you're honest with yourself about it, but you know it's all coming from quality foods, that certainly lessens the adverse effects both physically and
mentally. Exactly. Yeah. And the guilt goes away, Correct. Yeah, I agree A. 100% So you did the show in November, and what did that do for the inner demons like that? Totally squelched them. Like are there any any concern with how you look underneath the clothes now? Do you feel the need to layer up or do you feel pretty good about yourself? Now I feel great. Now I feel fantastic to the to the point where we we we went over and we only we only said
we'll do one show. We only literally did said we do one show and I remember stepping on stage and I I remember as I said I was shaking before I stepped on stage but when I got out there I just I felt amazing. I was like OK this is it this is my moment I just feel great. And then I remember sitting back down speaking to the coach and I was like you know what I want to do this again and he's like what do you what what do you mean you want to do it again. I said I want to do this again.
And. And he says, well, what what? What category do you want to do? And I remember watching the guys coming out when they were wearing those, those shorts. I don't, I can't remember. I don't know the name of the field physique, but they were wearing shorts. Yeah. And I was like, I can do that. I want to do that. And I just got really, really excited. I was just in the zone. I was like, you know what, let's just go backstage.
Let's see if I can get my name up and let's see if I can actually do it. So your man turned around and says was, yeah, you can go in but you'll have to get yourself a pair of shorts. So myself and the coach ran inside the door. We had to run to the nearest shop because we had no shorts. And we went through a few shops and we were looking around and the one, the one thing that they didn't have was shorts because it was, it was like November the
middle. It was freezing cold and we went everywhere, went to every single sports shop and we were looking at we were literally against time and we're like, listen, we need to get a pressure because I'm up on saves in the next 45 minutes or what we're running around the I should be, I should be looking after my energy. But this stage I was just full of adrenaline. I was feeling great. I was like, you know what, I'm doing this, I don't care. I'm doing this. So we eventually got into a
mall. We got a pair of shorts. They were like, I'd say they were they were too big on me, but I didn't care and went up to the guy said, listen I'm ready to go. He says, right, you're going to be on now in the next half an hour. So went back with the coach. We had to do the, we had to do the posing techniques. We did that. We did that for about 20 minutes, locked into it and yeah, we went back up on stage and we did it all over again.
And I was just it's just a moment that you're never, ever going to take away from me. That's awesome. And so you the first time you were on stage was for like a bodybuilding category? Just a bodybuilding category, yeah, that's what we're going, that's what we're aiming for. And we did that. And so we were in the trunks for them and we're posing literally every day And and then yeah we got on stage greatly and I was up there with another six guys.
They were fantastic and they all, we all spoke to each other before we went on stage and and yeah, it was amazing as I said when I look, when I look back at it and saying I said why don't you not just do this a long, long time ago like you should have just done this like 10 years ago and you wouldn't you would have never been in this situation. You would have felt a lot better. But what can you do? That's awesome, man. Do you think you'll you'll compete again like in in the
future? Another another season? No, I think, no, I think I'm done. I think for me, as I said, it wasn't about the win. It was never about the the, the winning. For me, I always had my. I always had my own personal reason why I did it. I'm glad I did it. Now I'm just going to focus 100%. Now I'm like, I'm what I do at home, my coaching business, well. Talk to me about the coaching businessman. How long have you been doing
that? So I've been doing coaching now since I was 21. So I've been, I've been doing fitness now, like personal training and coaching since I was 21. But I've been doing online coaching now for the last five years and it's gone quite well at the moment. And I'm glad now that I, as I said, I'm glad I went down that carnivore route because I used to give people like the carbohydrates, diets, the six
meals a day. And I'm pretty sure every trainer has done the same thing, probably in the carnivore community. And when I look back and I'm like, wow, what was I? What was I thinking? What was I actually thinking? And yeah, that's the reason why I got on it. So my development in coaching has definitely improved since I've definitely been in the
carnivore community. But when it comes to training, I've always been, I wouldn't say an expert in training, but I know my stuff and I think I know myself because I was brought up in rugby and and when the guys train a rugby they get, they get big very, very quickly. Like really, really big, quite big, quite quickly. And I think from when we look at the fitness community at the moment, I think a lot of people
just like to get confused. I think there's an awful lot of information out there on social media about basic stuff when it just comes down to the principles of training. Like if you're just doing the basics in the gym, you're training the heart, you're feeding your body and you're recovering every other day, you're going to get amazing results. I mean, there's no there's no set stone when it comes to training.
Does everybody has a training routine that they enjoy And as a if you're making, if you're making progressions, you're adding progressive overload into your training and you're you're doing well and you're getting amazing results, that's pretty much all that matters. Yeah, I think a lot of people overthink the training component. Like yes, there's you can go to the NTH degree with technique and form and intensity variations and all the the
nuance to training. But so many people just fail to take the first step towards training because it is kind of overwhelming when you start looking at all that nuance. But you can see tremendous, tremendous progress with just like the basic bare bone fundamentals. Absolutely. Yeah. Just, I mean, I mean, I think the hardest one to do is lift your own body weight. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of guys that can't even do like 10 pull ups, I mean, and then and they're going over a lot, a lot
pull down. I'm like no try and do the pull ups first. Totally what? What is it you think about the the rugby training style that leads to such massive growth so quickly? Like, what do you think they're doing differently? It's it's definitely the training intensity and it's that's pretty much it. I mean, we don't do any junk
junk volume. It's just you going to the gym, you warm the muscle up and basically you go and lit that When you're ready for that main lift, that's when you do it, Yeah. And then it's all about progressive overload. You write this stuff down and then you come back in the following week to try and beat your numbers. And me, I mean, that's pretty much it. We never did any any junk volume in the gym whatsoever. We just wanted the muscle.
We maybe did 4/4 rounds. But I'll give you an example. Let's say we're doing a bench press and let's say you'll start off with say, I don't know, me 40 lbs in the bar. You'll just do 5 reps Every time the weight goes up, the reps go down. So you're just getting a just getting a feel of the muscle and then when you get to that target weight, we were always aiming for between 6:00 and 8:00 reps.
So that would be your wherever was your maximum Rep, we would always decrease the weight by about 20% and then we'd wrap up probably about 630 reps and that's how we grew up. We were, we were literally in the gym for I'd say 30 minutes Max. But the intensity in those sessions was really, really high. Like really, really high. So you're typically doing like four sets for a given exercise. Yeah, 4X4 and exercise, yeah.
And then the reps would have been extremely low because the reason why the rest were low is when we're trying to save our energy. So we were doing like say sets of 15, sets of 12, sets of ten sets of eight like Viper Trophy training, we were saving our energy.
So on that last Rep and before we actually went into our our into our main set, we were just doing one clean Rep, like just one clean Rep And if struggles, if you struggle to get that weight up, well then that that weight was extremely heavy. So you probably would have been back down to around maybe 3040% because at that time that would had that would have had a major effect on your CNS system to try and get that one way up.
So it would have made no sense to try and back the weight down by 20% because you probably would have only got one or two reps That makes sense. Totally, yeah. The whole concept of junk volume is one that I've seen tossed
around a lot more here lately. Like here in the States, especially with all the talk of hypertrophy and building size, everyone's talking about you know, volume, volume, volume, volume being the end all be all but often times at the exclusion of intensity and I guess just for the listeners sake would you define junk volume. So junk volume is when you go into the gym and let's say you're warming up a muscle and you're doing like say six sets on the same exercise.
So you could have you could have done maybe 607080 reps done before you actually go in and do your main set. Now to me that makes absolutely no sense because you're waiting too much energy when you could be putting all that energy into that main set. And even if you're lifting much fewer reps but at a significantly higher weight, then the total volume is going to be lower if you're just, you know, going through the equation to calculate total volume.
But the intensity would be higher, the effect on your CNS is going to be higher, and the reason that you're giving your body a stimulus to grow is going to be higher. Exactly, yeah, exactly. So how many different exercises are you typically doing then? So I'm in the gym and so I follow now a push pull leg and I do 1 upper body at the sorry full full body at the weekend. So when I'm doing let's say a push routine, I only have six exercises in total.
What I'm doing, so I'll give you an example. So at the mall at the start, I'll do an activation kind of movement. So I'm just activating the shoulders, I'm activating this chest, making sure everything feels really, really good. So I might start off with a PEC deck just to get some blood into the muscle. I'm not doing any failure sets here whatsoever. It's just basically just get the muscle primed and ready.
Then I'll go into my first push movements will be a chest movement that could be. Now for me, I I like to do stationary exercises simply because they're a lot safer. I have nothing against barbells, I've nothing against dumbbells. But the the reason why I don't use barbells is because an awful lot of people get rotator cuff injuries and then when it comes to dumbbells, when you're trying to pick them off the ground, that takes an awful lot of energy.
Oh, you also so this is the reason why I try and stick with machines or cables. So I'll do a standard chess machine, and at this stage now my my muscles are quite warm, so I'll do just four. I'll do 4 rounds, but I'll start off with just four reps so I don't need to go heavy. I don't need to go super high Rep, just do four good reps Time and attention. Let the muscle do the work. I'll increase the weight by about 2030%. I'll drop the weight down or sorry, I'll drop the reps down.
I'll do about 3 reps I'll draw. I'll increase the weight again by maybe about 1015%. I'll do 2 reps, then I'll increase the weight. Again, that's going to be a heavyweight. I'm just going to do one clean Rep now on that. On that one clean Rep, I'm really going to focus on the negative. So I'm going to push the weight out and I'm really going to
focus on the negative. I'm going to give myself a 30 seconds psych myself up. I'm going to put the, I'm going to put it on a weight where I feel like I think it's going to be challenging, but I know I can get the six to 10 reps now. I'm not thinking about how many reps I'm doing. I'm still putting the muscle through. It's maximum failure. So I'm really focusing on that
negative. I'm really focusing on that eccentric, that concentric part of the lift, and then when I get to the end part, but I'll focus on the static part of the Rep, see the three parts. When we look at trying to fail on a muscle, and that's the eccentric, decent, concentric, and the static, static part of the Rep, I try and make sure I do every single one of them before I actually come off the machine. Too many people go into an
exercise, into an exercise. They'll lift away from A to B, and then they'll come off there and they haven't even broken a sweat. Yeah, broken. And that's when I look at that. I'm saying, let's listen, like you've just wasted a set there. And then they'll go back in and do it again, and then they'll go back in and do it again. Whereas when I go in, I'm taking that muscle to a place where
it's never been before. Now if I know if I take that muscle to a place it's never been, what's the point in going back in and doing it again? Yeah, no, I totally agree, man. So you're typically doing like a 443 one and then eight Rep scheme on your four sets roughly? Exactly, yeah. And I'm not wasting energy, any
energy. And and the good thing about that Robert is throughout the whole route, throughout the whole when I do my exercise like let's say I'm done, I'm doing push date for me if you're getting weaker throughout the throughout the program, something to me tell something tells me the program is wrong. You're probably doing too much junk volume. It used to be able to maintain strength all the way through that exercise routine. Does that make sense? Totally how?
Often and I think. Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. How often are you changing routines? I would change routines if I get stuck in a movement. So let's say I have. Let's say I'm doing the stack on the chest press and I've
maintained 8 to 10 reps. I might move then onto a hammer strength machine or I might move on to something that's a little bit heavier, a little bit stronger, and that's when I'll know, OK, my body's telling me it's it's it's time to move on or I might actually get bored of doing that movements. I might say maybe I'll I'll just do a different angle. So maybe I'll do an incline machine press and maybe I'll do a hammer strength and incline press.
It's something in. That's it, in that in that way I'll do it. But when just going back to the training program, when I finish my chest movements, I know I've actually fatigued my chest. So now I need to go on a different angle of a push movements. So this is where I'll go towards a shoulder movement because I did days. Now I don't need to do any more movements on my chest. I've fatigued the chest, so going back in and doing any more junk volume makes absolutely no
sense to me whatsoever. So that's when I'll go into any a slightly inclined hammer strength and I'll really focus on those delts. And again, I'll do the same principle. I'll go in, I'll do four sets, 4 reps at the beginning, 321, and then I'll go back in and I'll attack that main set. Once I've done those four, those two, then I'm going to focus down on a tricep movement. So this is where I'll do more of a dip.
So I'm I'm still bringing in my chest, so I'll do, I'll focus more on the triceps and the same thing. The same thing applies here. But because I'm at the end of my routine, this is where I'll add in an extra intensity technique on this movement. So this is where I'll introduce maybe a rest pause there or a muckle round set. So basically what a rest pause set is, is when you take the set
to complete failure. So when you can't do another Rep, you'll rest for about 25 seconds, you'll take 25 deep breaths and you'll go back in and you'll do it again. So probably on the first one I'll probably give a 10, the next one I'll probably get get give A5 and then on the last one I'll probably just get one or two. And then on that last one or two, I'm really, really, really going to focus on that negative as long as I can.
If it takes me about 30 seconds to destroy that negative part of the Rep, so be it. That way I know then I have literally destroyed the muscle I don't need to do anymore. So once all those pressing movements are done, all I need to do now is just focus on isolation movements and basically speed up the and speed up the exercise. So this is where I might add in some tricep push downs.
I'll do maybe a couple of rounds, maybe 2 rounds of 15, and then I'll go straight in and do my my, my one main set. Then I might do a cable extension and that's pretty much it. Throw in a few ABS and that's it. The road to work, it will take me roughly about 3540 minutes and for me, I enjoy that. I enjoy the intensity. I I enjoy just going into the gym and just basically killing it. Put my earphones on, block out who's in the gym. I just got just pretty much go to work.
I love it, ma'am. How long are you resting between sets? Are you tracking that at all or just intuitive? So on on the isolations, maybe 2530 seconds when it comes to my main lifts on the comp. On the the push movements 60 seconds 90 seconds Max. Gotcha. Nice. Do you feel like your hypertrophy potential has been hindered at all by not having as much fun? I mean, obviously your strength is going to be the primary focus
ever. Do you feel like you've suffered at all from a hypertrophy standpoint? No, I don't think so at all. If anything I've actually, I think it's actually improved it. I think I've actually, I've actually gotten stronger. And The funny thing is I did this all the way during my prep and I didn't lose any strength until around probably about two weeks before I stepped on stage. Yeah, no, that's key, man. What about the recovery?
I feel like a lot of people train hard in the gym and they they fail to focus on the recovery. How long between a target muscle group and a given set of compound exercise before you do that same thing again, just a week? Yeah, so pretty much a week now. I do a full body on a on the weekend where I don't take it to the extreme so I do still lift where it's kind of like a light day. So. So when I'm in a light day I'm not thinking about how many reps
I'm doing. I'm just doing everything pretty much time under tension. So I could be doing a movement and it could take me nearly 60 seconds up to two minutes to do, but I'm still I'm still getting a good activation on the muscle A. Lot more blood flow too. Yeah, yeah. So 4. Four days a week. Then push, pull legs, full body, yeah. And that's and that suits me.
If now if I find that I'm not I'm not recovering or let's say my lifts are get are going down or I'm I'm not sleeping well or my hunger's going up, that mean that tells me then that my training volume is too high in the gym. Yeah. And that's how I know covering very, very well. That makes sense, man. How's your recovery been since you switched over to carnivore keto? Like Higher fat, higher protein? Minimal carbs? Like, has your recovery made a
pretty noticeable change? If if honestly, it feels like I could train every day if I wanted to. I mean, I feels like I could go into the gym every single day, still do the the type of intensity I'm doing right now and I still think I'd actually be able to recover so much faster. Yeah, notice the same thing, man. Like when I used to train with a traditional diet, I would just be. So I was doing like a body part split. So I would do legs. For instance.
One day I would not be able to train legs until the following week. Whereas now I've I've been playing around with the full body routine for the past year and I literally trained with a quite a bit of intensity every single day, five days a week at least. And I don't feel any issues with the recovery whatsoever. Like I could do heavy squats on Monday, and if I wanted to do heavy squats again on Tuesday, I don't feel like I would have any issues doing so. Yeah, definitely.
And can I just ask as well that when it comes to your training volume and it like I know you're doing a full body, are you just doing one exercise per body part or what? What? How does it work? Yeah. So with the full body, I've been doing just one exercise per body parts. And then the sets and reps kind of just depend on the movement. It's like the compound movements. I'll do fewer reps, heavier weights. But yeah, one exercise for a given body part every time I
train. Yeah, it it makes total sense, doesn't it? It doesn't make any sense. If you're going into say, like a hack squat and you take that to failure and then you're walking over to like, say, a Smith machine and you're dealing squats, yeah, yeah, it just doesn't make any sense because your your legs are taxed.
They're really, really taxed. Unless you're going to be going over to that Smith Smith squat and lowering the weight and really focusing on the muscle, it just makes no sense to go over and start adding more volume. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And with the full body, I'm getting quite a bit of volume over the course of the week. And I'm I've got much more training frequency for a given body part because I'm hitting it every single day.
But it's not like I'm doing 6 exercises for a given body part and then doing that same thing the next day. Like, everything's getting ample time to recover, but everything's getting worked daily, which is I kind of have enjoyed it, really. Yeah, and that's the most important thing, isn't it? It's just being. It's just fine that what's enjoyable and what you can actually sustain and keep doing for a long time.
Totally, totally. So with your client pool, like are those mostly people that are like what? What is the the target demographic or avatar of your typical client? Are they mostly people that are just wanting to lose weight? Are they familiar with low carb keto? Like how are they finding you What What kind of type of client are you working with? Yeah, so I have a mixture of clients, but if you look at my bio, I know an awful lot. I know, yourself included.
There's an awful lot of people in the Carnivore community put up Carnivore and they put up keto. And the reason why I chose not to do that is because Susan, as you know it from when I spoke to you at the beginning over here, key on Carnivore is is such a small thing.
It really is. So when I take a client on, if I said to somebody, listen, I'm going to have you on me for the rest of for the pretty much for the rest of your life, that client is going to run them while it's going to run them while for me it's not going to happen. So I try and ease them in, so I'll take them on and regardless whether they're trying to build muscle, they're trying to lose weight, I'll take them on and I'll educate them through the
process. So I'll say, listen, OK, this could take three to six months, but this is what we're going to do. And what I'm doing is I'm deliberately, well, I'm not deliberately, I'm doing it behind their back. I'm reducing the carbohydrates slowly and they don't actually have any idea. I'm actually doing it to the point when we get to around let's say week eight, week 9, the carbohydrates are pretty
much down to just veggies. And then by week 10, maybe week 12, I've completely removed them all together and they get back to me and like Mark, I feel great. I feel fantastic like I'm just eating meat. Like how is this possible that I'm just walking around and I'm just eating eggs and I'm just eating red meat? Like how is it possible? And that's that's been a huge, a huge cue for me this year. Huge. I mean if I can break the market over here for like at least 2%,
I know I'll do quite well. But we're we live in a saturated environment here because there's so many people on the Internet, on social media that bring that about so much really, really bad information, really, really bad information. And unfortunately for me, I'm in a I'm a small fish, I'm a small fish in a big pond. So I'll be here. Yeah, well there's I mean same. Same is true here with regards to bad information misinformation. There's a lot of good information out there right now.
But there's I mean you have to wade through so much minutiae to find it, man. I mean, there's and there's so many people in the in the bodybuilding fitness space that are just braggadociously talking about how you can lose weight and eat a bunch of junk. Feel like that's like this place of pride. For them to be able to show off 6 pack ass but be doing so while holding ice cream and and boxed pizza. It's like that's not even the
right message. Like you don't want to fuel your body with that stuff, even if you still look great while you do it. Like, there's so much more to health than just the physical appearance. Exactly. And then when we look at the diet and let's say you're on 8020 split and you're eating like just 80% good food and you're allowed to have 20% of whatever you want. This is why most people struggle with the diets because they're eating every couple of hours.
And then the food that they are eating, because they're on so low calories, they're like, Oh my God, I can't wait for that next two hours. I have to eat now. And this is how people binge. And this is how people get a really, really bad relationship with food and then they end up getting these massive eating disorders.
Yeah, totally man. So when you're when you're working with clients and you kind of slowly transition to this keto approach like are they coming to you with any issues of like you know quote UN quote keto flu or digestive issues or is it pretty much smooth sailing? No, it's usually all, it's usually all digestive issues. And I can usually see when I speak to these people and these people in person, I can see basically what I went through that it's not just a weight loss issue.
It's deeper than that. I mean, everybody has a reason why they want to lose weight. It's always because I want to look this way and I want to look that way. But I try and get deep into the minds of people and say, OK, listen, why do you want to do this? Why do you want to do this? Why do you want? And then we when we when we finally break it down and we find out the real reason why people want to do it, then that's when you know, OK, listen this Pete.
This person is in this for the for the right reasons. The one thing I can't stand is taking somebody on and they're like, OK I'm looking to lose like say 20 lbs in a month's time. I'm like, listen you're not you're not the right person for me. I need to I need basically what you want from this. Like you need to tell me the reason why you actually want to do this. I mean what was the reason.
I mean, I the idea what an awful lot of women in the health space that deal with and they have issues with their their mental health or Pecos or thyroid or idea. When an awful lot of women that have these issues and when they come to me, they're they're getting their labs checked out, their doctor, their doctor Saints. I'm like, listen, there's nothing wrong with you. Everything's fine, everything's good. You just keep eating the way you are and everything's grand.
But they're going home when they're emotional, the scales number, the weight and scales going up on their and they're looking at them scales and like like I'm eating very, very healthy here. Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening? And it's it's very, very degrading when these people go to a coach and pretty much nothing has changed. It's just like you know what, just eat your carbohydrate food, eat every couple of hours and it's like, no, that's not what you do.
And then you try and get these people on and he explains and say listen, you've pretty much been been brainwashed. I'm not saying I'm perfect, but I know that I can basically try and get you out of the hole as quick as possible and try and
get you off the medication. And when you mention to someone and about medication and and say like, listen, I can probably help you come off the medication maybe in the next six months because you're not a doctor and you haven't got a PhD. It's very, very hard to get your point across. But I mean, shoot, the results speak for themselves, man. I mean, you've got a pretty impressive, impressive, you know, client testimonial list on your Instagram. So like that speaks volumes right there?
Absolutely. And that's why I just want to keep on working on it. Just, I think at the end of the day, results matter. No matter what you say, it's just about testimonials. Get people on board, let people talk about their their journeys. I've had people now come on the podcast and they've literally spoken about their journey and
it's it's amazing. Listen to these stories because it's like you've literally taken someone from a dark space and they're coming out the other side and they look great. They feel great and it's just, it's just an amazing feeling. It's just an amazing feeling, taking someone from that, from that space up to another place. That's why we do what we do, man. That is why we do what we do. I love it. Well, what's in the pipeline for you, man? What are you excited about going
forward? So at the moment I'm just going to be focusing on my, on my, on my coaching business. I'm working on my app at the moment, so that's going to be fixed now, probably around June or July. It's taking a bit of time. We're at the moment now. Everything's just going really, really well with the coaching business. I want to keep doing that and let's see where we go from there. I love it, man. What? What is the app you're building out?
I'm building up an app. It's gonna be all based around carnivore, funny enough. And it's gonna be just basically all the kind of our training, setups, training intensities, and I'll be talking about different types of training and different kind of lifestyle. People have these issues when it comes to like work lifestyle and family lifestyle. So that's where I'll be diving pretty much into and try and help people as much as possible on these apps.
I love it, man. I'm working on an app right now too and it's it's quite the undertaking. But shoot, man, let me know when yours goes live. I'd be happy to get you back on a podcast, promote it and talk about it and just kind of see how that's impacted your clientele base. It takes an awful lot long time to put put the work in. Doesn't. It it does, it does. But again, we we got our wives figured out. So like when you figure that out, you've got intention and purpose throughout your day.
And that's what I'm worried about. Like I'm I don't want to. I don't want to pull it up yet until I'm 100% sure and and 100% guarantee it. I know it's going to work. Absolutely, man. I love it. Well, Mark, it's been a pleasure chatting with your brother. I'm super stoked for what you've got coming. I'm impressed with what you've done thus far and and I'm just excited for what the future holds, man. So what? Where do people go to find out more about you and dive deeper?
So people can find me on Instagram mainly or on Facebook at Fitness Beyond Time 01. Awesome. Well, I will certainly link out to that and make it easy for people to find you, Mark. Keep killing it, brother. If there's everything I can do for you, man, just let me know. Thanks very much, Robert. Thanks for the call. You bet, man. Take care. See. You later, Paul.