How Gareth Lost 8% Body Fat In 8 Weeks & Built A 180Kg Deadlift

Gareth, 39, Volbroker

Hey it’s Vlad! Another great success story to share with you. I’ve been training with Gareth for quite some time now and he's gone through a lot of strong phases with great results so I wanted to detail two of them for you because it’s crazy how much progress he has made and there's many lessons to learn from his training.

Part 1: From 21.7% body fat down to 13.7% in 8 weeks at the beginning of 2019.

When Gary showed up to his first session of 2019 we sat down again to figure out where to take his training during the year. The goal was very clear. Spend the first 3 months of the year getting ready for his 40th birthday so he can celebrate it as lean as possible. So we got to work and magic started happening. Gary's beaten the initial goal of 15% we set out and did it in an incredibly short period of time! His mates were impressed because they didn't see him this lean since school! And when his 40th birthday came, Gary could celebrate knowing his body is in the exact shape, fitness, strength and health he wanted it to be.

Let's Look At How We Did It

Defining goals and motivation
Once again the most important thing was to figure out what exactly he's after, what's driving him and how to approach it. Once we got that drafted out it was much easier for him to stay focused and keep his eyes on the ball.

Adjusting the food intake
Gareth's been always consistent with his training but his current goal meant he also had to work on his nutrition and it was much easier than we thought! Dry January started him off with some good numbers and once he saw some first results from that it was easy to stick to the plan seeing more and more results every single week.

Regular body scan measurements
Coming into our new studio and re-starting regular bio impedence scans to show Gareth's body fat percentage has been the best feedback mechanism at work. Seeing a drop every week was reaffirming he was doing the right things and encouraging him to continue with the programme.

Gareth's Perspective On Things

Gareth - Ok, obviously over time we've had different goals, in terms of each time we've trained for something. The overriding goal over all has always been to put on muscle size but the leaning down thing at the beginning of the year was getting ready for my 40th birthday and wanting to actually lose quite a lot of weight and there were a couple of holidays booked in California as well so I wanted to try to look a little bit better for those. Obviously coming to my 40th birthday the focus as I'm getting older is on the health side. I'm definitely a firm believer that the more I come down to gym the better I feel health wise physically and mentally as well as opposed to coming home after work, pieing out and then falling asleep in front of the TV stupidly early because I have no energy. So the main focus as I was getting to the 40th was to put myself into as good of a state as possible.

At the time when we started this push I was at 83kg and when we finished just before my birthday I was at 73kg which now also leaves me lots of space to enjoy myself over the summer as most people would. And the main thing is that I now know that even if I put some weight back on I can repeat what we've just done anytime and get back to the shape we've achieved and it's fully in my control. Knowing that you can achieve something similar to what we've achieved in those 3 months makes me confident that I can achieve it again. The main conflict if you want to call it that is sort of thinking that if you do this you're sacrificing your social life and I definitely don't think that's the case. It's just doing things slightly different. I believe dropping 5% body fat or 5 kg bodyweight should be achievable absolutely for anybody. But it's having that mindset to set some time aside to focus on yourself.

OK, What About Those 180KG Deadlifts?

Part 2: Gareth's strength stats after his first 6 months of strength and fitness training.

So this part goes a bit back to when we first started training in August 2014 and Gareth had just finished his recovery from injuries as you'll see in the videos. He wanted to focus on strength and fitness so he can ultimately go back to a proper game of rugby which was his main driver. So we set up to work on those and his progress was brilliant. He went from 60kg deadlifts with bad form to 180kg deadlifts of good form. Massively increased his rep range and muscle engagement on squats, built his way up to 50kg dumbbell bench presses and managed to manipulate his bodyweight in the process. Hitting new goals almost regularly is the reason why we're still training up to this day.

Let's Look At His Story A Bit Closer

And Here's A Bit About His Training

Defining goals and motivation
From the point that we sat down with Gareth it was very clear what were going to focus on and what structure we were going to use for our sessions. The goals we set up were mainly strength goals in the big lifts and we also set up goals within our high-intensity training.

Face To Face PT sessions
Once a week, Gareth comes for his 1-2-1 PT sessions, where we go through some exercises outside of his workout programme, and where we usually push for new personal bests, and focus on high-intensity training, which most people find more challenging to do on their own.

Regularly updated programme
To keep it fresh and effective, all of Gareth’s PT sessions as well as workout programmes are updated regularly. Each 12 weeks we reassess his goals and tweak the workouts to make sure Gareth continues to make great progress.

"The reason started personal training was a change of programme, different ideas and help really... I'm not too bad doing weights, but doing any high intensity or running or anything like that I lack so much motivation."

Leveraging our sessions
It's easy to follow the workout programme but it's much easier to get through certain exercises when someone pushes you. To leverage our sessions, we normally train chest and legs when doing weights and high intensity and abs outside of weights. Everything else can be trained with the same intensity outside of our sessions.

Flexible lifestyle and tolerance with alcohol consumption
Like many others in the City, business often involves alcohol at one point or another, so it would be impractical (and pretty impossible) to ask someone like Gareth to stop drinking alcohol completely. Instead, we maximise other things so he can get great results.


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Consistently showing up leads to consistent results
Gareth has always turned up to his sessions and completed his own training diligently. In the long term it has made a big difference for him and he's been able to keep raising the bar for himself.

Nutrition and supplementation advice
What Gareth needs at times is a change of focus from strength to body composition. He gets his nutritional guidelines and supplement recommendations if he feels up for some supplements.

"If I didn't like the training I wouldn't be here." - 60kg to 160kg deadlift in 10 months; 50kg dumbbell bench press; 40 min of 50:10 high intensity, 160kg seated row machine.

Asking Gareth About His Experience

So Gareth, a few months ago you decided to change something about your body, why now?
I come from a rugby, American football background. Haven’t trained properly in ages due to injuries – shoulder, knee surgery, a hernia. I was trying to overcome those, get back into training, lose a bit of weight, but at the same time not get stuck in a rut, trying to do the same thing over and over again. Quite often, I find myself doing the same training, same exercises every session, so you don’t really improve in a way. You just get into a dull ache, and your body gets used to it, so it doesn’t end up fat burning or anything. You end up putting on more and more weight coz you’re still eating the same.

What’s your reason behind this?
I want to at least have one more game of rugby. I’m getting old. I’m in my mid-30s, so it feels like the playing days are behind me. So as long as I get at least one more game I’ll be definitely happy. But it’s taking that step of ‘Oh I’m fit enough to play one game’, and thinking, am I fit enough to play another? Just wanted to move along that direction and see if I can do a whole season without injury.

Why did you decide to start personal training?
Change of programme, different ideas, and just help really. I’m not too bad at getting in to do weights, but doing things like high-intensity or running or anything like that, I lack so much motivation. I wanted PT to provide some guidance through sessions, it makes it so much easier.

How has it been for you so far?
It’s good, I wouldn’t still be here if I didn’t like it!

What are the results you're seeing from your efforts?
I’ve definitely lost weight. But at the same time, not too much because I’m keeping quite a bit on muscle-wise. I remember the first session we did, on back and legs. We were doing deadlifts and I could barely manage 60kg. And now I’m onto 160 and that’s almost 2.5 times my weight. I’m quite happy with that! And it’s also great to have guidance in terms of technique. That first session absolutely killed my back, and now I don’t have that anymore. That’s all through having someone teach you or watch you while you’re doing the exercise to make sure your technique is correct.

Do you consider PT to be a good investment of your energy, time and money?
Definitely. I would make the same decision again every time.

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