Blood, sweat & Tears
An oral history Of Body transformation
The Men’s Health transformation challenge is a time-honoured institution, a rite of passage for new staff members and a chance for us to practise what we promise. You may have seen the photos and tried the workouts. But what’s it really like to overhaul your body so dramatically? Five men who’ve lived, breathed and lifted it give you the unfiltered truth
As representatives of the world’s biggest health and fitness magazine, it’s only right that we test-run our workouts before prescribing them to our readers. We can’t very well claim to be the Kings of Transformation if we haven’t served our time. But the reality – for both you and us – is that life, and ironically work, can get in the way.
Tight deadlines mean bad food choices and tighter waistbands. Late nights in the office mean prioritising sofa time over interval training. Even for those who live and breathe this magazine’s ethos, acquiring a physique akin to the men who grace its cover can feel unattainable for ‘regular blokes’ like them.
So being asked to do just that is understandably daunting. I know. I’ve been there. I’ve sat on the sofa in the corner office and been ‘asked’ by our estimable editor to carry the not inconsiderable weight of the Men’s Health name on my shoulders. To get ripped and quickly. Before you know it, you’re standing in nothing but your gym shorts, having your ‘ before’ shot taken, aware that in eight, 10 or at best 12 weeks’ time, you’ll be back, top off, posing for photographs that will be published in a national magazine. No matter the results.
The challenge itself, like the men who have taken it on, assumes many shapes. From tyre-flipping warrior workouts to skill-based gymnastics, hypertrophic weightlifting to bodypummelling boxing regimes. Some are designed to pack on muscle, others to shed kilos of fat. But all demand the same thing of the chosen staff member: 100% commitment. And that comes with significant reward and expense.
These are the honest recollections of five men who have tested the strength of their muscles, their minds, their relationships even, to prove that it is possible to achieve astonishing results in an incredibly short space of time.
If you’re about to start your own journey to a better body, this is the true path.
PART 1 The Gauntlet Is Thrown Down
In 2005, a young writer by the name of Dan Rookwood walked into the office of the then editor-in- chief of Men’s Health. Rookwood had to get something off his – admittedly weedy – chest. “I said to the editor, ‘The lines we have on the cover of this magazine, they don’t seem very realistic to me. I just don’t believe that a six-pack in six weeks is feasible,’” he recalls. Not only did his boss disagree, he tasked Rookwood with proving himself wrong. And so the bar was set for every staff transformation that followed.
Jamie Millar (former style editor) - I vividly remember being at home in the Midlands as a teenager, reading the issue with Dan on the front cover, and just being amazed that a normal person could achieve that. That’s why I was keen to start my own transformation as soon as I walked through the Men’s Health doors.
Dan Rookwood (former style editor) - I’m just an average guy. I’m not genetically blessed. It was like I was the reader, just giving it a go and proving it is possible, with the right training plan and the right diet.
Mark Sansom (former commissioning editor) - Before my transformation, I was a bit of a fatty. I used to play rugby to a good standard, but I’d never been much of a gym-goer. Certainly if you’re comparing me to Jamie, I’d never had a particularly arduous fitness regime.
Ted Lane (commissioning editor) - I was terrifyingly unfit. Though at the time, I thought I was in alright shape. It’s only now, looking back at pictures of myself, that I go, “Shit, you were heavy.”
Millar - I was different to some of the other guys because I wasn’t overweight. I was already training three or four times a week. But I wanted to see how far I could go. If I did everything right and really went for it, what would happen?
Lane - I went and had a blood test at the beginning, which told me that while I wasn’t yet pre- diabetic, I was heading in that direction. I also found out that I had the metabolism of a 40-year-old, which was humiliating, considering I was 25.
Matt Hambly (digital style editor) - I thought I was relatively fit and strong; all those things you just assume you are as a bloke. And then when I started training, it I was like, “Oh, I’m not that fit and I’m not that strong, I’m just slim.”
Lane - All of us are provided with a plan by a professional trainer, which will go on to form the basis of the programme we’ll write up for our readers. For me, the first weeks were brutal. It’s a huge shock, whatever shape you start out in. For the training to work at all, it has to push you harder than you’ve ever been pushed before.
Millar - I thought I knew my way around a gym but a bit of knowledge is a dangerous amount. You think you know everything, but you don’t. Working with someone who did was an amazing opportunity.
Lane - I remembering doing my first arms session on a Friday. I sat at home over the weekend and my forearms were so wrecked that they’d just folded up underneath my chin, like T-rex arms.
Sansom - My programme was very focused on strength and, in some ways, I loved my strength gains even more than the way I looked at the end of the challenge. I was pressing 50kg dumbbells. I felt great. Once we got the first couple of weeks out the way, I started to really look forward to my gym sessions.
Rookwood - Addicted is too strong a word, but I learned to really savour that post-workout ache. I remember going away at Christmas, and on Boxing Day I really wanted to go to the gym. That’s not normal, is it?
PART 2 Weight Of Expectation
As anyone who has ever attempted a transformation can attest, though the weights you’re lifting may get heavier, you can’t always see the initial difference in your body. Four weeks into your challenge, the pressure starts to mount. Whatever you achieve – or fail to – the results will be there for all the world to view. Finding a source of motivation becomes vitally important.
Sansom - To know that you’ll be taking your gear off at the end of the 10 weeks, and you’ll be seen in a magazine which goes out to millions of people… that helps with motivation. You don’t want to look like an idiot.
Lane - Without the pressure of being on the front of a national magazine, I wouldn’t have been so disciplined. That was why I was so out of shape in the first place: because I’d go to the gym, get two weeks in and think, “This sucks,” and quit. This transformation dragged me through the bit where you hate exercise. I reached a point where I actually enjoyed it.
Sansom - If I had been doing it on my own, there’s no way I would’ve stayed motivated. But I was doing it at the same time as Jamie and [deputy editor] David Morton, so there was a competitive element. Even though we didn’t admit it
“I was told that I had the metabolism of a 40-year-old. I was only 25”
to each other, we all wanted to look the best. Or at least not look embarrassing next to the other two guys.
Millar - I wanted to beat the others. We were in competition. I wanted to get the best results. We’d keep each other on our toes, but we also had people we could talk to about the experience. That social side massively helped.
Hambly - I’m not a particularly competitive person. It never felt like I was competing against the other guys on the challenge, and it wasn’t like we formed this band of brothers, either. But it was nice to have somebody to talk to.
Lane - I did my transformation solo…
Rookwood - There were times when you’d think to yourself, “I can’t go to another training session, I can’t get up this early, I just can’t do this.” In those situations, the thing that used to get me fired up was calling to mind an idiot who used to bully me at school. I was a tiny kid; he was a big fat brute. I remember thinking, “Fuck you, [ name removed], I’m going to be on the cover of Men’s Health.” And it kept me going.
PART 3 The Stubborn Middle
By the halfway point, your mindset shifts. Your new regimen is no longer just a bit of fun – it’s a way of life. The only problem is, the rest of the world doesn’t get the memo. You don’t have any less work on your plate or any fewer social occasions in your diary. The distractions, the temptations, they’re all still there. You just need to develop strategies to deal with them.
Millar - You’re training like an athlete, but an athlete would have a nap in the afternoon, and a massage, then they’d go to bed and probably have 10 hours of sleep. And most of us aren’t in a position to do any of those.
Sansom - It was the nutrition that was the biggest adjustment. I grew up in a very foodie family, so changing my mindset from eating purely for pleasure to eating for purpose felt alien to me. Lane - Some days, I was so tired after coming home that I didn’t have the energy to find interesting ways to hit my macros. On those days, I’d just eat like a robot: food became fuel.
Sansom - But it’s not exactly complicated, is it? I mean, look, I was eating a lot of sweet potato and greens and frozen fish fillets. So all you really need is a microwave and a kettle, and you’re laughing.
Rookwood - I always had these bottles of mega greens on the go. They tasted like pond sludge and everyone in the office hated them because they stank.
Lane - I remember struggling with eating such a humongous breakfast. Four eggs, salmon, rye bread, avocado, all that kind of stuff, before my 9am session. You can’t eat that and then run straight to the gym. I had to set my alarm earlier just to find more time to eat.
Millar - Beef for breakfast was an interesting one. There’s something weird about frying steak at 7am, but I actually quite liked it.
Hambly - I was getting up at 5am and eating a huge meal. A couple of times I wolfed it down too fast, went upstairs to brush my teeth, and threw it up. I was devastated. I’d forced all this food down at such an early time of day, then triggered my gag reflex and literally had to flush my macros down the toilet.
Millar - Prepping the food can be time- consuming. It’s a bit like having a newborn baby, in the sense that you’re on this relentless three-hour cycle. With babies it’s feeding and changing. With the challenge, you’re eating every three hours. By the time you’ve finished one meal, you’ve only got an hour or so before you’ve then got to think about where the next is coming from. It takes up a lot of mental bandwidth, a lot of planning.
Rookwood - I used to have one cheat day at the weekend, which kept me sane. I could have Sunday lunch and a beer with my girlfriend and not be this tunnelvisioned meathead, just scoffing chicken straight from the packet. Though I did that a lot, too.
PART 4 Antisocial Network
With a fortnight left until D- day, be prepared for the people around you to lose their patience. What began as an intriguing conversation piece starts to feel like an obstruction to your old way of life. Sure, in the right light you can almost see your six-pack. But to your friends and partner, you have become, well, boring.
Sansom - Admittedly, I started taking myself too seriously, in terms of the way I looked. I was awful to the girl I was going out with at the time. I became really judgemental about her food choices.
Millar - Eating is a big part of your relationship, and my diet was very precise. My wife didn’t want to eat exactly the same things I did every night. I had to be really anal about quantities, and she didn’t want to be weighing out rice.
Sansom - I suffered from impotence while I was doing it as well. For the best part of eight weeks, I had no interest in sex, which obviously displeased my girlfriend. She thought there was something wrong with me. But apparently it’s pretty common with people who are training at that sort of level.
Millar - My wife appreciated the physical changes in my body, but fundamentally I think it’s difficult to be around somebody who’s so self-obsessed.
“There’s something weird about frying steak at 7am, but I quite liked it”
Rookwood - I was in my twenties during my first challenge – that’s when you’re having as much fun as possible and out every night. So not doing that was quite a change for me. If I did drink, I’d choose something with the lowest possible impact, like a vodka and soda. You can still go out without feeling like you’ve absolutely ruined yourself.
Lane - I didn’t have a drop of alcohol for 12 weeks. I had a moving-in party at my new flat, and I got through that sober. That was new territory for me. It got to about 11pm and everyone just started repeating themselves and I said to myself, “I’m done here.”
Millar - It’s amazing how difficult it is to not drink and not get flack for it. People have a real issue with it. Due to the nature of my job, I go to a lot of events after work, so I developed this habit of taking a drink and just holding it all night. Because if you’re not holding a drink, people are constantly trying to give you one.
Rookwood - It’s like this Catholic guilt, almost – if I’d had a big night then, my God, I would sweat it out in the gym the next day. I’m not sure if mine was a particularly healthy mindset, but it was what it was.
Lane - The funny thing is my flatmates kind of got into it in the end. They all started meal prepping and they’d come and do the park run with me on Saturdays, which irritated me actually, because they’re naturally fit. They’d turn up hungover and still run sub-20 5Ks.
Hambly - I never really thought of going out. I remember sitting at my desk on a Friday night and feeling like I was going to shut down. I’d rather just go home, eat, watch TV and sleep.
Millar - One week before our final photoshoot, I had to go to the Baselworld watch fair for work, which meant being away for two nights. It was so close to the end of my challenge, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, so I cooked 12 chicken breasts, put them in a cool bag and took them with me on the plane. For
three days, I was living off plain chicken, which over the course of the day would get progressively warmer. It was grim.
Hambly - In the last two weeks, I started to get scared. I’d been working hard, eating right, I’d put on muscle – but I just wasn’t ready to be on the cover.
Millar - In Basel, there was a moment when we were standing on the street outside, between appointments. The guy next to me was sneaking in a cigarette; I was sneaking in a chicken breast. It was a bit embarrassing, but my overriding feeling was, “I just hope this trip doesn’t affect my results.” I’d been through so much, I didn’t want to get to the end and be dissatisfied.
Hambly - I was in the best shape I’d ever been in, but I started having nightmares about not being ready on shoot day.
PART 5 The End Game
Every staff member who has completed a Men’s Health challenge has seen incredible results, transforming their physiques in ways they never believed possible. The truth is, living like a competitive athlete for two months is hard work. The aching limbs, the calloused hands, the tedious diet, the strain on your love life – is the shredded midriff really worth it?
Sansom - I was absolutely chuffed with the results. I didn’t realise I could look the way I did. It was only with about seven days to go that I started to notice definition in my abs. I must’ve been down to about 7% body fat. That was when it hit home that I’d been doing it exactly right.
Hambly - Despite all the work, at the end of the process I still didn’t have a six-pack. I loved doing the challenge, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Throughout the whole transformation, I’d never felt better – I was in a great mood most of the time, I felt stronger. But I didn’t do as well as a lot of the other guys. I was trying to put on as much muscle as possible – which I achieved – but I assumed that a six-pack would come with that.
Millar - The biggest thing for me was realising how hard I could push myself, versus how hard I’d been pushing myself before. What I thought was hard training and what was actually hard training. I was almost more pleased with the strength gains than with the aesthetic results.
Sansom - I absolutely loved the training and being able to see the improvements, but I wouldn’t go at it quite that hard again. It took over my life.
Lane - For me, it was life-changing. I went from being someone who was genuinely unhealthy, drank too much and ate too much crap, to someone who enjoyed taking care of himself. I enjoyed feeling healthy, waking up with energy and going to work not feeling below par. Being in shape made me feel 100 times better about myself.
Rookwood - Once you’ve been through it all, it’s like there’s this good angel on your shoulder, which constantly reminds you that you can’t let it go. Maybe it’s a guilt thing that I have, but having been on the Men’s Health cover, I can’t become a fat blimp. I can’t allow myself to do that.
Millar - I think people find the whole transformation thing quite mystifying. Like it’s somehow imprecise. It’s not. It’s really black and white: do these things and you will get the results. It’s just that doing those things is not easy.
Rookwood - I did a transformation in my twenties and one in my thirties. I turn 40 next year. While I don’t imagine I’ll ever appear on the cover again, I’ve got this thing now where the day I turn 40, I want to be in that same shape, in cover model shape. I’ve already started training for it.
Sansom - Knowing that you’re only ever 10 weeks away from looking like that again is a nice thing. I mean, as long as you don’t let yourself go too much.
Millar - You need a lot of discipline. You have to suffer. And most people, given the choice between doing something that’s slightly unpleasant and not doing it, will choose to not do it. That’s all it is. I found that an empowering thing to learn.
Lane - The good thing about the transformation is that it’s a kickstart. And some people who are in a rut, as I was, need to make a genuine concerted effort to push through the tough bit at the beginning, put their head down, break through a couple of walls, and then come up for breath afterwards. And then that’s when they can find their balance, and start to live a new, sustainable life.
Start your own transformation with this month’s Primal 9 training manual. And let us know how you get on @Menshealthuk. After all, we’ve been there.