One of the biggest ways I’ve found that I’m able to handle more stress is by leaning in on my relationships, specifically with my wife. To be able to connect with her to share my stress with her, to have moments with her. I just realized that helps me kind of regulate a lot more efficiently than I would have in the past trying to bottle it all up and handle it by myself. It usually leads to a mild implosion over time.
With strength sports in particular it can feel very isolating at times because it’s all you. You have to go to the gym, you have to go perform by yourself. I think having that kind of support system is really helpful.
I’ve realized over the past few years especially as the Olympia starts coming in, my stress really compounds. Every single day matters. My sleep matters for how much I recover for how hard I train the next day. My digestion has to be perfect, relating to my stress. If anything’s going wrong at work, or with travel or anything at all, it all compounds. It takes me away from my work, and it kind of compounds into a lot more stress.
You need to be able to slow down and put life into perspective and understand that there’s only so much you can really control. All you can do is move forward and focus on what’s next rather than what’s behind you.
Have you found that it’s gotten easier to stay in that zone and really be locked in as your career has gone on?
It did for a while, and then recently it got a lot harder for various reasons. For a while bodybuilding was all just fun—hanging out and working out. Then I started winning Olympias and then I felt the pressure to have to be the best. I had to kind of reframe my mindset to try to compete against myself rather than other people. I was getting into a good routine and my life was purely bodybuilding. It consisted of sleeping, eating, and training. That was it.
And then four years ago now I moved down to Florida, started a business and have been involved in growing the company. And that even though I have a lot of business partners helping me, the mental stress takes me away from focusing on one thing and one goal, which is being Mr. Olympia. It definitely makes it a lot harder to get into the groove of where I need to be.
And now as well, I started this prep and my baby was probably four weeks old. So I’ve got a child, the family, business and trying to win Olympia. Over the years I’ve gotten better, but life has given me more obstacles that I need to be better at handling. It’s gotten harder, but I’ve gotten stronger.
I’ve been thinking a lot about being more efficient in my own training lately and coming to the realization that it’s not about being hype-efficient in the gym, but buttoning up everything else in your life around so that when you do get to the gym, you’re 100% there.
Yeah, I think a lot of people also get the whole efficiency thing wrong. Like you said, they just think of time in the gym and just time to do what they need to do. And I’ll take the example of my relationship with my wife. I can think I need to be efficient, isolate myself, spend more time at the gym or X, Y, and Z, but that’s more likely to lead to disconnection with my life and It’s more likely to lead to stress in my relationship, which will take away from me being able to focus on bodybuilding. So if I actually pour more time into my relationship and be able to stay connected with my wife then we’re able to work through challenges together rather than separate. It’s actually making me more efficient. That’s why I have a really strong foundation.
What does your recovery plan look like these days?
I’m definitely huge on sleep but I also—I’m recently kind of discovering that people who are obsessed with sleep are usually people who suck at sleeping. I have shit sleep and I’ve always not been a sleeper. So I put a lot of focus and emphasis on having 10 hours of downtime from when I go to bed to when I have to wake up. So my mind can calm down and sleep. I use blackout curtains, supplements, and stay off my phone. We have recessed lighting in our bedroom and bathroom and it can change colors to red, so I get no blue light at night. We have separate AC for the bedroom so I can crank the AC down to 60 but the baby’s not freezing out in the other room. Sleep is really everything for bodybuilding. It’s good for muscle growth and hormone regulation. Overall, sleep is huge.
