ALEX BEATTIE
On the cover this issue is personal trainer and fitness model Alex Beattie. After a stint on ITV’s Love Island in 2017, the 26-yearold from Newcastle set up Achievable Academy, a coaching platform based around two styles of programme: Burn and Build. Having gone from skinny kid to bulked-up bodybuilder, these days Beattie’s approach to fitness is about looking the part, but ensuring general health and wellbeing don’t get overlooked.
ALEX, HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR TRAINING PHILOSOPHY?
My whole vision of tness has changed quite a bit. I used to do a lot of bodybuilding and physique stu , and my goal was simply to get bigger. I got to the point where I had done a few competitions – and won a couple – and I thought, What now?
I’ve always been really into sports, so I didn’t really want to get any bigger than I was, and I basically decided to take a step back from that world and work on my overall tness and lung strength. I like to describe myself as a ‘hybrid trainer’, because I want to look good, but also be able to run ten miles if I want to.
WHAT DOES YOUR WORKOUT ROUTINE LOOK LIKE?
Last year, I started to focus much more on my cardiovascular tness. I train twice a day, with cardio in the morning and a weights session in the afternoon. I get up in the morning at about seven, then I’m straight out for either a fasted run or walk. When I’m in the gym, I tend to spend about an hour and a half per session in total, and descend in reps from 12 to six over four sets. I usually do a good stretch and warm up for 20 minutes to get some blood in the muscles, then I’ll go into two or three compound moves at the start of the workout, followed by two or three accessory movements, and then a quick nisher. If I’m training legs, for example, I might do squats, deadlifts, leg press as my main movements, followed by leg extensions, leg curls, calf raises. And then I’ll do a bodyweight nisher, like jumping squats and jumping lunges supersetted together to make sure I’m walking out like John Wayne.
DO YOU PAY EQUAL ATTENTION TO YOUR NUTRITION?
I eat pretty exibly. I don’t avoid anything in particular, but I do track my calories and I track my protein. My training usually takes care of maintaining the maintenance amount, because of the two sessions a day. I stick to 1g protein per lb of bodyweight,
but I only have one shake a day, because I really like to get most of my intake from ‘real’ food sources – I like to eat, so that’s not a problem!
I usually have four fairly big meals a day. I get up and have either porridge or Weetabix with some nut butter, then at ten or 11 I’ll have a bagel with salmon and eggs or something like that. At two or three I’ll have rice, tuna and veg – something super easy and high in protein – and then later on I’ll have dinner.
I don’t have cheat meals or anything like that. If I’m out in a café and there’s something I want, I’ll have it.
WHAT’S THE BIGGEST FITNESS MISTAKE YOU’VE LEARNED FROM?
De nitely sacri cing form to look like I could lift heavier weights. One of the big reasons I started going to the gym in the rst place was because I wasn’t comfortable with the way I looked. So I tried to keep up with friends and probably skipped two years of solid training, because I was lifting weights with poor form.
With the programmes I create for beginner clients, the rst six weeks will always be just learning the movement fundamentals. ere’s a lot of bodyweight stu in there, and a lot of trying to connect to the movements and positioning. It’s about telling people where they should be feeling the move, and getting used to the perfect technique.
“I want to look good, but also be able to run ten miles if I want to”