A champion Cumbria bodybuilder spoke yesterday of the gruelling training routine he had to endure in order to beat off the competition at the NAC Open British Championship last weekend in Manchester.
Chris Walsh, of Barrow-in-Furness, told his local paper that he went through “16 weeks of hell” in order to win the title of the NAC’s under-23s Open British Champion – garnering particular praise from judges for his “outstanding symmetry, general conditioning and athletic shape,” according to the North West Evening Mail.
The bodybuilding prize that he had worked so hard to win was finally his, and a worthy pay-off for the intensive training and dietary programme he underwent in the months leading up to the contest.
Chris has been a bodybuilder for three years, but this was his toughest test yet – he would get up in the early morning and spend an hour on an exercise bike at the local Furness Health Centre gym, before eating his first meal of the day at 10am – 200g of chicken and 100g of cooked rice, to be repeated every two-and-a-half hours. He would also drink around 10 litres of water a day and eat 15 egg whites every night.
At 4pm, he would begin an hours weight training for muscle building, interspersed with brisk walking on the treadmill at the gym. The weights routine was six days a week and the cardio training every single day.
“It’s definitely not easy,” he told the paper. “As the weeks go on, you drop your carbs low to pull the fat levels down, and with your cardio it really does take it out of you. You’re just really, really tired – no energy, your legs feel like lead.”