Today we have an interview with Ross Goldsack who won the Open category level 1 in the latest Adonis Index Contest.
Check out his pictures:
This is the Adonis body. Lean and masculine.
Ross looks great and he was really happy with his look and how the pictures turned out.
Here’s one more:
Ross is ripped. If you met him on the street would you think he always looked like this or would you believe that he was over 210 pounds just a few years back?
Ross has a very common story and experience with fitness. A few years ago he decided to work on his physique and started going to the gym with his buddies and also started consuming fitness information, mainly the fitness magazines.
The workouts became a habit and he was really enjoying them.
And like everyone else in this position he naturally wanted to improve, so he progressed into reading bodybuilding magazines and started reading more about various ways to build more muscle and lose fat.
However, he felt victim to the traditional fitness advice and made a lot of mistakes.
Let’s discuss a few of them.
Mistake No.1 Consuming Lots of Fitness Information
Fitness industry is full of companies making billions in revenue.
The goal isn’t to get you in shape though. The goal is to continuously have you buying their products.
And as a result, you start to feel that you absolutely have to get the new magazine, full of the latest tips that nobody knew about four weeks ago, or the new “functional workout” protocol, or the new protein supplement that just came out promising those amazing gains in the first three weeks… and we could go on and on.
If you have been in this industry for a while, you are probably overwhelmed by all the fitness information and various approaches. At this moment you should take a completely different approach. You should detach yourself from the fitness industry and focus on doing the simple things that will get you the most results.
Mistake No.2 Comparing Yourself to Bodybuilders
One of the biggest mistakes Ross made at this early stage of fitness, before finding Adonis Index, was going through the bodybuilding magazines and comparing himself to the photos in them. The issue with this magazines is that they are full of pictures of professional bodybuilders.
With the transformation contests here at Adonis Index, you’ll get pictures that can be compared with fitness covers, because we give advice on how to make yourself look bigger or leaner by posing, show more muscle definition with a tan or water deplete. However, comparing yourself to bodybuilders is a bit ridiculous if you are not willing to take the “extra” mile.
Yes, that would mean taking steroids.
If you are not taking anything beyond supplements, why are you comparing yourself to guys, who inject themselves with stuff you have never heard about and in a dose that would scare off a horse?
Mistake No.3 Doing the Bulking & Cutting Stuff
A few years back Ross got caught in the conventional bulking and cutting approach.
Ross got to a point where he would weigh about 210 pounds. He could fill out a large shirt, but still not have the look he desired.
Like he said, he looked like crap. He was feeling bigger, but fatter.
And no surprise, because what he gained was all fat, he was basically trying to eat his way up to bigger muscles, which is a bit ridiculous and biologically impossible.
There is nothing wrong with being big in a shirt, but most guys will probably prefer looking good shirtless than in a shirt.
So, what will it be shirt on big and shirt off fat or shirt on fit and shirt off ripped?
Make a choice.
FYI when Ross did the cut down and lost the fat, he lost the exact amount of weight he gained during the bulking phase.
So, he went through the misery of gaining fat and losing it again all for nothing, muscle mass as we would expect did not change at all.
What’s the point of that?
Slowly Re-Focus on Building a Natural Body
After finding Adonis Index through Eat Stop Eat, Ross started listening to all of the podcasts and reading every article at Adonis Index he could get his hands on.
He realized that he is not interested in stepping on stage or becoming a bodybuilder, so he re-focused on building a body that is lean and masculine, not big and bodybuilder-bulky.
Ross cut off all of the other streams off fitness information and decided to just follow one simple fitness approach – eat less, workout more.
This worked pretty well. In one year he lost about 20 pounds and got ripped (take a look at the pictures above).
At the age of 30 he got to the best shape of his life.
Take Home Message from Ross:
- If you are spending hours every day consuming fitness advice, but look the same month after month, then realize that you don’t need any more information, you just need to take action
- If you take the photos correctly, they will represent the effort you’ve put into diet and workouts in the past 12 weeks
- If you do a fitness photoshoot expect to shoot hundreds of pictures, but choose only a few
- Take pictures today, even if you don’t like the way you look, you will regret not having the before pictures later when you will want to compare your progress
- As you progress, lose fat and get closer to your ideal body towards the end of the photoshoot or contest, the fat loss will happen at a much slower rate
- You will not get anything from discussing your approach with other people, so don’t
- There are talkers and doers, which one are you or which one would you like to be?
- Find what works for your and stick to it
- Don’t make your life about fitness, balance the other aspects of your life, don’t be the “fitness guy”, the point is to be fit, not obsessed with fitness
- Switch from relax and maintenance mode to contest mode once or twice a year for a few months, enjoy the rest of the year looking good
- Gain muscle and stay lean
- Find the source that you want the information and advice to come from and then block everything else
- Do your own testing, don’t rely on other people
- If its works, keep doing it and don’t stop!
- Get into the Adonis Index Community and post your measurements every week or month to keep yourself accountable
Links from the Interview with Ross:
Theory Of Ideal Male Body – Build your natural ideal body shape
Adonis Index Workout – The Main Adonis Index workout responsible for the most amazing transformations online
Adonis Index Community – Hang out and talk to the Adonis Index winners, workout authors and ask your most pressing fitness questions
Eat Stop Eat – Lifestyle approach to get lean and stay lean all year round, by Brad Pilon
Read Ross’ experience with Adonis Index in his own words
The contest has turned out to be great and I feel I have followed through on my plan and I am hoping that I can find a nice equilibrium post contest. I did AI 3.0 and loved it! It was so cool to just turn up, open the page and just follow it as written. I liked the variety and the timing of the program; it meant that I never got board.
Listen to the interview here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
About Allen Elliott