What would you say if someone told you that you could lose three stone in 20 weeks?
Snap their hand off, I’d imagine.
But would you be prepared to weigh your food to the exact gramme, eat the same meal for that entire 20 weeks five times a day and take your body to the edge of destruction?
There’s always a catch to anything that sounds too good to believe, but if you’re Beverley bodybuilder Paul Lock it’s what you have to do in pursuit of the ultimate prize.
Paul, 37, of Grovehill Road, Beverley, recently won the National Amateur Body-building Association (NABBA) North East show, gaining him qualification for the British Championships at Southport on Saturday 29 May.
He’s currently in the middle of a training regime of such severity – which has to be unparalleled in the sporting world – ahead of his tilt at the British crown that when HU17.net met him, girlfriend Natalie and Japanese Akita dogs Keiko and Suki at his Grovehill Road shop – NAR Products – he was at times finding it difficult to concentrate.
“It’s very hard, both mentally and physically, when you have to drop two pounds of body fat every week – you just can’t maintain it for very long,” said Paul.
“But it’s like having a tuned car – if you put the wrong fuel in, it won’t run.”
Paul started bodybuilding 20 years ago. He originally practised karate and ju-jitsu, but a love of Bruce Lee films turned him towards bodybuilding (“I wanted a body just like him”) and he quickly found he gained muscle and loved what he was doing.
Now, if Paul’s body is like a car, then it’s definitely a Formula One model, such is the ultra-fine attention to detail needed to get him into tip-top condition.
Even when he’s in the 30 weeks of the year he’s not training for an event, he has to be extremely precise in his training schedule, working specific body parts in a specific order to maintain his muscle tone, while ensuring his body has plenty of rest in between.
But such is the harshness of the other 20 weeks of preparation for an event, five foot six inch Paul makes up for it by piling on up to three stone and sometimes hitting the scales at 16 stone, even while maintaining his training.
It’s then that the hard, hard work REALLY begins to get down from 16 stone to 13 stone for the competition.
“I really, really have to speed up my training when I’m looking at getting ready for an event. I train my whole body on a five-day schedule, with the weekend off. On Monday I work on my back, Tuesday my chest, Wednesday my legs, Thursday my shoulders and Friday my triceps and abs.
“The hardest part of the training is burning off my body fat. As soon as I get out of bed, I have to do an hour on the treadmill in the shop. I must maintain a heart rate of 70 per cent of my maximum, as this is optimum for burning body fat – if you do it higher you can use too much energy and start using muscle reserves.
“This reduces to 20 minutes a day as my weight loss starts to slow down, and then I cut carbohydrates right down, although my proteins do remain higher.”
If this sounds monotonous, then Paul’s diet during peak training would be enough to make anyone go pale at the prospect.
At EXACTLY the same time every day, he eats protein powder after his cardio work out, five meals of Turkey and brown rice, and a protein drink as his last meal.
He does allow himself the luxury of one teaspoon of natural peanut butter with every meal, but even that’s to help with the reduction of body fat and muscle definition. But it has to be done if he is to arrive in peak condition for an event.
“All the foods have to be weighed, all the fats that go into my diet have to be weighed. It really has to be that precise. If you don’t know what you are putting into your body you can’t build muscle.
“By the time of a competition, my body fat can have dropped to less than five per cent, which you just can’t maintain. Some competitors get down to 100 grammes of carbohydrates a day, which is barely enough to maintain the function of your brain.
“In the week up to the competition, I build up the amount of water I drink from 4-5 litres a day to 9-10 litres a day, and in the last days I really load up on carbohydrates, eating 1,000 to 1,500 grammes of complex carbs, such as brown rice, bananas, rice cakes and oats, while reducing my protein.
“Then I don’t drink any fluids for 12 hours before a competition. This helps with drying the body out, gives volume to the muscle and gives an illusion of a defined look.
“Even after all this most people still get it wrong and can mess it up. But you just have to learn from it – you can just be unlucky.”
So after all that, 20 weeks of training in meticulous detail, it can still go wrong. It’s enough to make you cry at the thought.
It makes you wonder why Paul puts himself through it.
“You do it because, yes, you enjoy it. It’s the hardest thing you can possibly do, what you have to do to, in some competitors’ cases, get to less than 2 per cent body fat. No other sport comes close to it and at the end you can barely think.
“I love the challenge. The end result is the satisfaction of knowing you have done it, knowing you have lost three stone and keeping your stength.”
And what will Paul do when it’s all done and dusted?
“I’ll have a big McDonalds!”
Who can blame him?
