“Train smart. Train often. It’s not rocket science”
Bobby Rich is the former Judo champ turned personal trainer to the stars, trusted with keeping the likes of David Beckham and Jason Statham in serious shape. Here’s his blueprint for building your best body
It’s not revolutionary: train smart, train hard, train often, but recover well and eat clean. It’s not rocket science. e biggest things for me are accountability and consistency. I spent a lot of time coaching competitive athletes – David Haye, for example – and there’s no reason you can’t take that methodology of performance training into the world of personal training. Typically I break my programmes up into 12-week blocks, and within those blocks we ful l various elements of tness, depending on what the client wants to achieve.
With David Haye we started o with six-week camps and as he got a bit older the camps got a bit longer. We would break them up and try to peak a couple of times within the camp, because you can’t maintain complete intensity for long. at’s the same for someone who’s trying to perform for everyday health and wellness.
You get a lot of people who want to go to the gym and smash themselves to bits every session, but that’s not sustainable: you’re going to end up injured, or just burning out mentally. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and a place for a bit of character building and leaving your soul on the gym oor, but not every day.
Us men like to go in the gym and lift heavy weights without paying any attention to the basics. By that I mean working on foundational strength in the tendons and ligaments, and working on mobility, exibility and joint health. Guys tend to worry about kilograms over form. By lowering the kilos and getting technique sorted I probably lengthened my own sporting career, and the same can be said for everyday gym-goers: by getting the basics right you will be strong, healthy and injury-free for much longer.
When it comes to fat loss, it depends on what people are doing already and what their body types are, but really it comes down to consistency with training and consistency with nutrition. I’m a big believer in fasted cardio in the morning: nothing crazy, just 15-20 minutes of interval training before eating. For me, mobility is the biggest thing, and one real positive to come out of the recent lockdowns has been the shift towards bodyweight training and paying more attention to how we move. You can’t lift weights constantly – as much as I’m a fan of strength training, you need to give your joints a rest. By having more mobile joints, you will not only feel better, but regular lifters can take heart from the fact they will also be able to lift more. As an athlete, David Haye is unmatched when it comes to people I’ve coached, but in terms of cardiovascular tness David Beckham is really strong. He still holds that engine, and when I get him on the treadmill I have to stick a weighted vest on him just to slow him down. Strength-wise, Jason Statham was one of the most impressive chaps I trained: his bodyweight strength is phenomenal.