In this two-part interview, I am going to be talking to my friend, Rob Newman, a very remarkable man who has been an entrepreneur, a bodybuilder, a soldier, a boxer, a martial artist, a yoga practitioner and an endurance athlete. He’s built up a million pound business, lost it, picked himself up and started again stacking shelves. He has the kind of grit and determination that you only normally see in films.
What’s more, Rob trained as a personal trainer and is currently part way through training as a physiotherapist. Now he practices functional fitness in his garage.
I’ve split the interview into two parts because we really got into it. In the first part, I asked Rob about his wild life, and he made some general comments about fitness, martial arts, boxing, yoga and the armed forces. This second part is just about his experiences as a bodybuilder.
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CB: So, Rob, let’s talk about bodybuilding now. Just before Christmas, you recommended I read “Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder” by Sam Fussell because it was the book you would have wanted to write. After I read it, I went back and read your post about how to be a bodybuilder. I noticed two things: firstly that you both mention being in pain a lot of the time because of the rep ranges you were doing and secondly that you were both eating a very low-fat diet with plenty of protein and carbohydrates. Do you think that both of those things are a necessary part of being a bodybuilder?
RN: I read Sam Fussell’s book after I left bodybuilding in one sitting when I was supposed to be studying. It mirrors my own experience of the scene, my training and what eventually lead me away from it. Like Fussell, my bible was “The Encyclopaedia” and if Arnold had said it, I did it.
“No pain, no gain” is the backbone of “The Encyclopaedia” and of all of the media in the 1990’s and so I set out to achieve it. Rep ranges were 10-12 for 5 sets, hitting every separate muscle group in three or four ways. It’s a pumping routine and it was just what everyone was doing in the gym’s I went to and we all believed we were so much smarter than the old school compound movements power / strength approach that has come back into favour. Diet-wise, it’s the same thing.
Back in the day, it’s what everything I read said you should eat. I religiously bought Muscle & Fitness and I studied both “The Encyclopaedia” and Bob Paris’s “Beyond Built” and did as they said. It worked, in that I grew, but it was fecking boring and set me up to gorge on crap for years after I came off the gear and out of the scene – fine whilst running 10 miles a day carrying 40-80lbs, not so fine when I later took to shining a chair with my rapidly expanding flabby arse!
It’s funny when you sometimes mention your work colleagues at your day job, for as you know I once did the same thing as you do to pay the bills, and if we had met in the middle of the last decade you wouldn’t have ever thought I had run a mile in my life or lifted a weight in anger. I was that chair-shaped, donut munching, doubled-chinned, espresso-fuelled, finance geek!
Rob Newman: fueled by espresso
And yes, I still think that the boring diet and the pain are necessary parts of being a “bodybuilder” (as understood by the media), if that is the road you are trying to take.
CB: Nice image. I don’t think my co-workers shine chairs nowadays – all the chairs are padded. In his book, Sam Fussell talks extensively about the side effects of the “pharmaceutical assistance” he was taking to further his bodybuilding goals. Notably, he comments on the mood-altering effects, which made him very aggressive, but he also discusses feelings of paranoia and a lack of energy. Much of this discussion is made while recounting his cutting phases, however, which muddied the waters for me a little, as I perceived that some of what he was recounting was probably due to a poorly designed diet (no fat, for example) and a calorie intake that was probably too low. In your experience, how close to reality was his account?
RN: As I have stated before, I took steroids for 2 years. I took D-bol, Deca, and Anadrol (not all at the same time). The simple fact is steroids make you gain muscle mass very quickly (indeed, a “close friend” once watched a world champion boxer get ready for a fight in the gym he went to back in the mid 90’s put on a stone of muscle in 4 weeks taking A LOT of gear). But I also believe that steroids triggered other problems for me.
In 2008 when I ended up very ill, I was diagnosed as suffering from Bipolar disorder (or Manic Depression). To an extent there is a genetic element to this condition and my family have a history of it – together with a history of extreme behaviour – but even if you have a disposition for it, something must be in place to ignite it and in my case I know I began to experience serve mood swings when I went on my first cycle that continued until I collapsed years later and began treatment.
Although I never got ripped for a competition and have never been on a calorie restricting diet, I would totally go with the paranoia and aggression. Another “close friend” of mine (ahem) actually bodily threw his then girlfriend out of a moving car whilst on a cycle, for the singular crime of repeatedly changing the radio station!
The same “friend” has also spent a number of nights out and about trying to start fights with people by bumping into them, tripping them up and generally being an arse. One particularly bad night in Blackpool readily come to mind… but the trouble is (or is a good thing?) no one is that keen to rumble with a 220 pound shaven headed nut job itching for any excuse to give you the good news!
CB: I’m not sure I even want to know! But there must have been benefits or you wouldn’t have done it. You reached around 220lbs at 11-12% bodyfat at 6′ as a bodybuilder, which I guess is not far away from Sam Fussell’s build at 245lbs and 6’4″. How did you feel walking around at that weight? Do you ever miss being that size?
RN: I can’t lie, I loved being big and I miss it. It’s like being rich. It gives you a confidence that you can walk in anywhere and nobody is going to mess with you and that they are going to pay attention to you. One of my best days out was going to the swimming baths and practically stopping the ladies aqua aerobics class as I did the walk from the changing rooms to the free side of the pool in my Speedos (I stress I don’t wear Speedos anymore!!!)
I also loved getting my shirt off whenever I could and have very fond memories of ladies running their hands over me!That said, I don’t miss what I took to get it – that feeling of being full to your throat all the time, eating for function rather than taste and then, of course, the subsequent 3 rolls of toilet paper a day and the permanent pain that throbs, throbs, throbs across your body all the time from 3 on, 1 off.
CB: Some great memories, clearly. And, personally, as a former competitive swimmer, I can’t see anything wrong with Speedos, but each to their own, I guess. Finally, let’s finish on a positive note. If you were to start from the beginning again, with bodybuilding, how would you go about it? How would your new approach be better than the way you did it before?
RN: I wouldn’t encourage anyone to be a bodybuilder. Being big for the sake of being big is a never ending reflexive circle. When is enough, enough? Bigness alone will cause you more damage than I want to express, but if you grow as the result of trying to get strong to stay well and function day to day, that is all good.
As I set out at the beginning of this interview, I am actually trying to increase my body weight this year and look again like I lift some weights, so technically I am bodybuilding, but this time I am doing it without any supplementation – and that includes whey, creatine or anything that it not whole foods – and based on strength training rather than muscular isolation and pumping up.
In doing so, I am concentrating on the basics of deadlifts, squats, bench press and overhead press, increase weight each workout and limiting myself to 5 x 5 for each, spilt over workout “A” and “B”. It’s an old approach – one taken by my Father-in-law in the 1950’s (who wanted to be Reg Park), and I am in the early days of it so we will have to see how it goes. Based on his shape and condition in his late seventies, it worked for him! He built long term muscle that has stayed with him and is easy to maintain allowing him to function like your average 40 year old.
With any project like this, your diet is key, and this is always my failing. I cannot stand eating the same shit again and again and I just don’t have the discipline any more to force it down my neck, so I know I am not going to get as big as I once was and cannot stay as lean as I did when I was on the gear eating tuna and rice 6 times a day. And whilst I am with you on not eating sugar, I work better of a high complex carb base.
My average day, 6 weeks in, is proving to be something like:
- 0600: 2 eggs any style, 1 cup porridge oats made up with 1 cup of water and 1 cup of milk with a little honey to taste.
- 0930: 1 cup of brown rice or two medium potatoes with a tin of tuna or salmon or 200g cold meat with 1/2 cup green vegetables
- 1300: Lunch from the staff canteen, usually fish / chicken / beef casserole, jacket spud and veg
- 1600: 1 pint whole milk, fruit and 250g mixed nuts
- 2000: Dinner as normal.
I am up 7lbs on this in 6 weeks, but some of this is bodyfat, which I’ll accept for now, but will strip off when I get closer to summer. I am also approaching what I know to be my present maximum lifts so the next few weeks are going to be interesting… come back to me in a year and I’ll let you know if I am right or not.
Oh, and sleep. Get as much of it as you can. My day job is shift-based with lates and earlys so it can be hard for me to get a regular 9 hours, but that’s what I am aiming for, remember you grow when you sleep, the training and the food is just the stimulus and the fuel…
CB: Sounds like you have a great plan, there, Rob. And thanks for sharing that routine and meal plan with us, I’m sure people will find it helpful. And I am so pleased I finally pinned you down and got you to share so many of your remarkable life experiences and lessons, I can’t think of anyone who has lived as fully and as fast as you have!
RN: Chris, thanks for the interview, I am going to have to shoot. It’s been emotional.
