Category: Personal Best

Let’s start with the big one. Your profession isn’t exactly a natural fit with a clean and healthy lifestyle…

Ha! People see girls, large crowds, lots of booze and partying… and it’s exactly like that! But you need to have the mental strength to realise that if you keep doing that then you might not live past 35 years old. You have to take that on board and get your training in and sort your diet out, to have longevity in the music industry – and in life.

Is that why you wanted to do a body transformation challenge?

I wanted to lose some belly fat and get my abs to come out! I wanted a more defined chest. It’s pretty hard for me to do that.

I am a big lad, and I can get away with murder. Because I have a big frame, in clothes I do look as though I am ripped. But when my shirt comes off I just look like a big lad! So while my main focus was to lose body fat I wasn’t worried about how much I weighed at the start or how much weight I wanted to lose. I weigh a lot more than most people my height and I wanted to lose fat and get more defined.

What was your training like?

I did a lot of resistance training and a lot of weights-based circuit training. I also used one of those high-altitude training masks. And the beauty is that not only do I look better, I am performing better too – I’ve brought my 5K time down to 23 minutes.

What was the hardest part?

It was a hard road, mainly because when it comes to the diet side, I am terrible.It was a bit like educating a 12-year-old.I had a lot to learn. I have always put on muscle quite easily, so I’ve not had to be too strict with my food intake. The thing is, I can also put fat on quite easily, so that’s a problem. But I think I have one of those bodies where I can store more fat quickly, but I can also lose it quickly too if that’s what I want to do. That means the need for me to find the balance is really important.

How did you manage to stay on track while touring?

The touring schedule was tough. I’d only have a couple of hours in between landing and arriving at venues. That made eating hard. I had to be patient sometimes and hold out until I could find the right place to eat. Being prepared is huge, so I took protein powder with me so I could have a shake if I couldn’t find a good place to eat. But sometimes it doesn’t matter how prepared you are, you will struggle to find healthy food. And that’s when you have to be smart and make the best of whatever situation you’re in.

Rest and recovery is vital to changing your body shape. How did you get enough?

Sleep was massively important. To be honest, I did miss a couple of soundchecks so I could get a bit of sleep. You learn in my industry that you have to sleep when you can. Take advantage of every opportunity to get your head down and don’t try to put it off. So now I am lucky in that I can practically sleep standing up. If I were to do it again I would make sure I got my sleep and research better restaurants so that I had somewhere healthy to eat when I needed to eat.

Were you worried at all that you’d fail?

I can train for days on end – no problem. But I can also go down the pub and drink for days on end – easy. And there’s no point training for days if I am not eating right at the same time. That’s where balance comes in. It was imperative my nutrition was on point. For me, getting my diet right was even more important that the training. If anything I was nervous about peaking too early in the challenge. That might sound strange, but I know how quickly I can lose weight when I want to. And my personality is like that – if I’m doing well and working hard, then my natural instinct is to reward myself. I have had those dips on two or three occasions in the 30-day challenge. Even after ten days I was really pleased with my progress and my first thought was that I deserved to go out on the piss and eat what I wanted. But I knew that if I did I would undo all my hard work overnight and be back to square one.

What’s the right approach if you do slip up?

You have to get back on the horse straight away. As soon as you possibly can. There’s no point dwelling on it. All that does is quickly lead to a spiral. Don’t feel guilty, remember you’ve worked hard, and work hard again from now on. Ultimately, the mental side is crucial to success. There will be lots of dips along the way, because you are tired or whatever, but your muscles will move if your mind tells them to. You need to stay motivated and keep moving.

DJ Locksmith was speaking at the launch of MaxiNutrition’s 30-day Ibiza Challenge. To find out how MaxiNutrition products can power your body transformation, visit maxinutrition.com

There are four pillars of bulletproof health, according to US sports clothing giant Under Armour: sleep, activity, nutrition and fitness. The HealthBox, UA’s debut in the activity tracker market (in partnership with mobile tech company HTC), allows you to ensure each of your pillars is in good nick.

The HealthBox bundle is made up of a comfortable, lightweight wrist-worn activity band that can measure your resting heart rate, a chest strap heart rate monitor for workouts and a sleek disc-shaped digital scale that reads your weight and body fat percentage – though not 100% accurately. This trio sync via Bluetooth to the free UA Record app, a hub that allows you to chart your weight changes, sleep quality, mood, steps taken and calories burned and consumed.

It’s a fitness fanatic’s dream, but the best thing about UA’s software is it’s compatible with a multitude of fitness apps you’ve probably already tried, including Google Fit and Apple’s HealthKit as well as UA-owned MapMyRun and the excellent MyFitnessPal. It means all your fitness gadgets can work together to deliver on their overall premise: to get you fitter. Makes sense to us.

Under Armour HealthBox, £349

ABOVE AVERAGE

The UA Record app relays your data to tech platform IBM Watson, which provides regular insights on how your stats compare with the average in your age group. Like an on-board GP cajoling you to up your game.

FUTURE PROOF

Later this year the kit will sync with UA’s new GPS-connected trainers, the Speedform Gemini 2, as well as UA’s in-ear HRM earphones, to give you an even clearer picture of your health. AI-fused compression pants can’t be far away.

When, in 2015, US-based fitness and fashion enthusiast Stan Cheung was looking for gym wear that would both perform well and look stylish, he wasn’t happy with the options. “I was on the search for comfortable essentials that could be worn for a workout, going out for coffee, attending meetings or even going out to lunch. I ended up taking my existing gym clothes to the tailor to have them re-engineered. I couldn’t find what I was looking for so I decided to make it myself.”

The result was EYSOM (which stands for Exercise Your State Of Mind), a new athleisure label that specialises in, as Cheung says, “taking true performance gym wear and making it versatile enough to wear anywhere while looking elegant and stylish.” The new collection – an extension of last season’s core gym wear – moves the brand further into the lifestyle arena, with a broader range of clothes including jackets, cardigans, hoodies and sweatshirts. Our pick is the on-trend bomber (above).

The shoe that’s ready for anything

Designing shoes for CrossFit athletes isn’t the easiest footwear gig in the world. The whole point of the all-round fitness movement is that one minute you could be doing an Olympic lift and the next you could be sprinting. Reebok’s new Nano 6.0 accounts for that

Reebok Nano 6.0 £89.95

1 Increase stability

Unless you are actually a hindrance to your team, your first job is to make sure you spend less time sidelined through injury. “Everyone always tries to get athletes to be faster and stronger but they’re always breaking down because there’s a fundamental disconnect in how their body is moving,” says Winsper. “We get every athlete to work on mobility at the start of a session. Get down on one knee and then use your hands to push your front knee over your big toe to stretch the back of the ankle. Stay in that position, then tilt your pelvis forwards to stretch your hip. From that position, place your hands behind your head and tilt from one side to the other and then rotate from one side to the other to work the thoracic spine.” Repeat the drill with the other foot forward.

2 Build speed

If you want to do something impressive with the ball, first you need to get hold of it. To do that, work on your short sprint speed – the ability to spot and make an interception is preferable to tackling, which risks both conceding a foul and injury. It’s rare that you’ll have to go full pelt for 60m so keep sprints short. “It’s important to do speed work at the start of a training session when a player is fresh,” says Winsper. “It could be something as simple as half a dozen short, sharp sprints. You don’t have to do a full speed session but you do need to do it at the start when your nervous system is fresh. You also need to know that all great speed is underpinned by strength and stability. You don’t want athletes sprinting flat-out if they don’t have the strength to back it up.”

3 Master deceleration

Your first touch is likely to improve if you can control how you arrive at the ball – and that means mastering deceleration. “We do a lot of work, from the academy systems right through to the highest level, teaching athletes to decelerate,” says Winsper. “The more force a player produces, the more they have to reduce to stop. You want to drive your heel into the ground to decelerate if you’re running really fast. We take them through a programme to ‘own the movement’ first, making sure the underpinning strength is there to decelerate properly -which means that the glutes fire, the hamstrings are working with the glutes and they’re using the correct part of the foot to decelerate. It’s also about being in control of your hip position. The hips dictate how you control your movement.”

4 Develop agility

To intercept the ball or create space so you’re in a good position to receive it, you’ll need to work on your ability to change direction. All you need are a few cones and a couple of teammates to race against. “A simple but effective sequence is to do a short sprint, a little back-pedal and then a sprint off at a different angle,” says Winsper. “Once you can control that, you can start to work on agility, which is change of direction in response to a stimulus. That’s when we add in a competition: you have two players in the centre and you’ve got different coloured markers at 12m, 10m, 8m, 6m and 4m. The coach might shout ‘blue’ and they race to the blue cone, and then maybe the coach shouts ‘red’ when the athletes are halfway, so they’ve got to execute the skill under pressure.”

5 Improve strength

“Once we’ve made sure the player’s joint is stable, we start to add the muscle architecture – the ability of the muscle tissue to produce force,” says Winsper. “We develop pushing and pulling movements, both horizontally and vertically, rotating, hingeing from the hips and squatting. I wouldn’t start with a soccer-specific programme – I’d start with an athlete-building programme. Once you’ve done that you can be more sport-specific, such as doing single-leg Romanian deadlifts or lateral hops into explosive sprints.” Do single-leg Romanian deadlifts by holding a pair of dumbbells at the top of your thighs while standing on one leg. Hinge at the hips to move the weights down the front of your standing leg until you feel a strong stretch in your hamstrings, then straighten up again.

6 Boost recovery

This is one area where you can mimic the pros’ habits – as long as that means having a leisurely Fifa session on the sofa rather than rolling out of a nightclub at 4am. “Go for the basics first,” says Winsper. “Make sure you’re refuelling, rehydrating and resting. Those are the nonnegotiable elements.” Sadly, that means swerving a post-match pint. Your post-match meal, meanwhile, should contain a healthy portion of protein to assist muscle recovery and some complex carbohydrates to top up your glycogen (energy) stores. “If you’re an amateur athlete, you might not have access to an ice bath but you can have a cold shower on the legs and try to get to a swimming pool the day after the game.” Paul Winsper is an Under Armour ambassador. Visitunderarmour.co.uk.

Unless you’re some sort of untamable grooming maverick, the chances are that if you shave, you shave in the morning. And unless you are one of those rare and irritating people who leap out of bed, full of joy and vigour, there’s an equally good chance that you are still half-asleep during the whole facial de-fuzz process. If that is the case, reach for Gillette’s updated Fusion razor. It has strategically placed cooling technology on its lubricating strips to give you a fresh feeling while you shave. The strips are positioned on both sides of the blade to ensure that the skin is prepared before the blade arrives and after to protect on re-strokes. The total surface area is twice as large as on other cartridges and shaped to maximise the surface area contact with the skin. It almost makes you want to leap out of bed and head for the bathroom. Almost.

70% of shaving strokes are re-strokes over an already shaved area of skin, according to Gillette research, which also found that the average man exerts 1.5kg of pressure per stroke

What a season you’ve just had: 26 starts, 26 wins. A Six Nations Grand Slam. A Premiership. A European Champions Cup. A historic 3-0 series whitewash over Australia. And European Player of the Year, aged 21. How do you follow that up?

Ha! That record [number of starts and wins] changes each time. I don’t know the actual number. Last year was good – it was enjoyable to be involved with Saracens and England. I feel very fortunate to be involved with those teams but the exciting thing is we’re not anywhere near our potential yet. There’s room to grow. We’re hungry and we’re looking to improve. I think the future is going to be brighter than our past.

What do your team-mates make of your record?

I’ve got a little bit of stick for it but all the guys I play with have been a huge part of all of those games – especially all the guys at Saracens. It’s as much their record as it is mine.

You’re doing a politics degree at SOAS in London too – is that going just as well?

I’m in my final year. Things are looking all right… I have a feeling I might have to be at uni a bit more this year which might be quite challenging. With all these things it’s about time management and discipline to know when it’s time to study, when it’s time to train and when it’s time to relax.

We heard you escaped to California to recover over the summer. Did you sneak in a session at the iconic training Mecca of Gold’s Gym near Venice Beach?

I even got the T-shirt [he points to his black Gold’s Gym top]. I had four weeks off and stayed in Bel Air for a bit. It was cool, I had a lot of fun out there – it’s a cool place to train. To be fair I was very small in that gym. There were some big units walking about.

Do you enjoy the physical demands of your sport?

I do like training. This off-season I went a couple of weeks without training and I felt like my body was getting withdrawal symptoms. I needed to do something. I struggle to switch off. We train for most of the year so going to the gym is normal, it’s a part of our lives. When you don’t do something that’s normal it tends to feel weird. I missed the routine.

What workouts do you do when the strength and conditioning coaches aren’t watching?

If it was up to me and I’m lifting for fun, it’s beach weights all the way. Biceps curls, abs exercises. For that reason, I fitted in well at Gold’s Gym.

Have you always been big or have you had to work hard to bulk up?

When I was younger I struggled to put weight on. Now I’m finding it much easier. I need to manage my weight to make sure I don’t put it on too quickly. My metabolism has slowed down. I don’t feel the need to deny myself anything because I’m normally quite good. I just don’t buy them. If it’s not in your house you’re not going to eat it.

What about if you’re eating on the go? [MFreminds Maro he grabbed a bacon sandwich and peach iced tea before we sat down for the interview.]

Nah, it was a grilled chicken sandwich. Honest. And iced tea is good for you, right? That’s what I tell myself anyway.

In 2015 you were part of the pre-World Cup training squad under Stuart Lancaster, and this

year you worked with Eddie Jones in the Six Nations. What has been the biggest change?

I’m not the best person to ask… I was there for three weeks before the World Cup and in that three weeks we did very little rugby. It was basically just fitness and strength and conditioning. You can’t compare that with when I joined the team with Eddie Jones because we were going straight into a match. But what I would say is he’s come in and made these players even more motivated than they already were, and he’s got that fight and belief back in the team.

Does he put his arm around you or does he challenge you?

He does whatever he thinks is necessary at the time. He’s a very intelligent guy and he knows how to motivate the team and his players. He does what he believes is necessary.

Does he congratulate you?

Of course he does! Every sensible coach will congratulate you when you do well but we’re not where we want to be and until we get there we’ll continue to work hard.

When Jones came in he said he wanted to make training “uncomfortable”. Was he true to his word?

Yeah, training’s tough. Sessions don’t last too long, normally just over an hour, but within that hour it’s intense. It’s very physical and he and the rest of the training staff expect very high standards from everyone. And it’s all rugby relevant – it’s not just fitness. The most important thing is we all know what we’re training for. You can’t just train in the gym and not train on the pitch, because at the end of the day you’re training to be a rugby player. All the stuff you do in the gym has to be transferable to what you want to do on the pitch.

What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned in your sport?

I’d say it’s that the process creates the result. If your process is to train really well, eat really well, mentally prepare well and have that holistic approach, more often than not you’d expect to have a good performance – if those things are all in place. If you take one of those things for granted, that’s when the performance tends to suffer.

You were England captain for the Under-20 World Cup win in 2014 and are already being talked about as a future senior team captain. So what would you say makes a good leader?

People always ask me this question and I find it’s better to ask people who have captained at the top level. I just try to be myself. I try to add a bit of energy and intensity to the team. I try to lead by example and hopefully say the right thing at the right time and do the right thing at the right time.

Apart from a World Cup, a Lions tour is the only thing missing from your CV. The tour of New Zealand is less than 12 months away… Is it your Everest?

Honestly, I haven’t started thinking about it. I’ve just got back from the off-season and I’ve started pre-season now, so my goal is to get in the best shape possible for the start of the season and hopefully start the season with a bang with Saracens. Hopefully my performances will be at the level I expect them to be and we’ll go from there.

What do you want to work on over the next year to get yourself on that tour?

I want to improve every part of my game. I want to improve my strength, my fitness, my tactical understanding, my collisions. I don’t think I need to be any bigger but if I can work on those things I’ll be the best player I can be.

Maro Itoje was speaking at the launch of Maximuscle’s new raw ingredient powders. Pre-order now at maximuscle.com