Summary: Today's podcast is very special. It's an interview with the Adonis Index Open Contest winner Ryan Williams. Ryan has been on board for several months now and he didn't have a long way to go, but he definitely took it to the next level. Check out his pictures: Ryan thought that it's near to impossible to get ripped and look like a Hollywood action movie star. He thought that it would require a very strict lifestyle and an incredible amount of work, which would be impossible to fit into his work schedule which requires a lot of traveling. However, with two kids (six and two year old), wife and regular trips across continents he managed to get in a great shape, a cover model shape you would say. The best part? He is willing to share how he did it. You have a chance to learn how he planned his workout, structured his diet and the other stuff he did to get in shape, you can take his best tricks and tweak them to fit to your own lifestyle. New Approach Got Him Results Ryan revealed that before finding the Adonis Index he was eating a lot, definitely more than his body could burn. He, like many other guys, thought that he can muscle his way to leanness, he thought that if he got big enough and built enough muscle, his metabolism would be so fast that it would burn all the fat on his body. On top of that in the past he read in a fitness magazine that he should never eat below 2000 calories. He never really weighed himself, but Ryan's estimate is that at one time he must have been way over 200 pounds, probably even close to 250. It wasn't until he found Eat Stop Eat and Adonis Index that he realized this is probably not the best approach to take to get in shape. Probably the biggest revelation for Ryan was that he could just diet once and stay like that forever, just do some micro diet management for maintenance and that would be it. He set his daily calories intake at 1800 calories and added two fasts on top of that. He wasn't counting calories, he was doing more of calorie guessing and just eye balling the food to know the rough calorie content. In the past he never followed a real muscle building program either. It was always just a mix of bodybuilding splits that he thought he should do from what he read in fitness magazines. In his own words: "I just trained the mirror muscles, that was it." The biggest shock once he started doing the Adonis Index workouts was of course the training volume. He thought that he was over-training and doubted that he could do it. However, after a few weeks the soreness went away and he realized that it wasn't over-training, but rather under-conditioning, he just wasn't used to such a physical stress before, so his muscles needed some time to get accustomed to such a high volume and intensity of training. Another important fact Ryan mentions in the interview is the importance of periodization, which is crucial, because if you don't change your workout often enough, you will get bored and you will not enjoy your workouts. And how do you plan on sticking to something if you don't enjoy it? You Need to Have a Flexible Approach Ryan said that what got him hooked about Adonis Index was the fact that it is oriented on aesthetics and proportions, the goal isn't to just get big, but to actually achieve a specific shape. Ryan is an opera singer and sometimes he needs to perform without his shirt on, in the past he would do some crazy strict fitness stuff like eating six times a day, eating tons of protein, because he was afraid of losing his muscles for the show and training a lot. Basically this made him a slave to his diet and gym routine for the sake of looking good on stage, however after the show he would always go back to looking pretty average. The big mind shift came once he tried the program. Six months is all he needed to get in the best shape of his life (sounds like something several previous contestants have in common).
