CHASE THE PUMP
Follow Spencer Matthews’s gym plan and use peripheral heart action training to build lean muscle with no cardio needed
Following a decade of excess, Spencer Matthews had a reality check: to achieve his goals, both physical and mental, he needed to give his life a comprehensive overhaul. So, he dedicated 10 weeks to seeing just how good things could get. This is his atonement plan. Make it yours
Two days from completing a gruelling body transformation, Spencer Matthews is feeling exhausted but excited. “I’ve never been in more trouble in my life,” he muses. “And
I’ve done some stuff.”
He’s gamely answering the inevitable questions about the performance-enhancing drug that got him kicked out of the celebrity jungle in 2015. “It was Anavar, by the way – pills not needles. And it was shit. It did nothing.”
Of course, this is old news. But dredging it up brings into sharper contrast the man you see pictured on these pages. In just 10 weeks, Matthews has purged the dad bod that came with balancing the stresses of work life and a family to feel stronger and look leaner than ever before. And this time, he’s done it the right way.
The results are nothing short of extraordinary. His body fat dropped from 12% to 5%; plus, he shed 6kg of blubber and shrank his waist from 97cm to 82cm. His five-rep max for the bench press jumped from 75kg to 97.5kg, and his deadlift rose from 70kg to 130kg. Some may snipe that starting a transformation at 12% body fat isn’t much of a challenge, but that’s missing the point. This was about placing a cherry on top of a holistic life transformation that began two years ago.
“Alcohol played a big part in my teens and twenties,” says Matthews. “I had jobs in the City, where drinking was very much encouraged.”
He’d habitually down a beer with lunch and a gin and tonic after work, then take things too far at the weekend. “It was taking a toll on my body and my work life. I was blaming others for my shortcomings,” he says. “I realised I’d never live up to my potential if I continued to allow alcohol to be a hurdle.”
Matthews gave up booze six months before becoming a father. “It’s interesting because you’re making a positive life choice, but everyone else disagrees,” he says. “If you go to the gym, people consider it a good thing. But if you go sober, they brand you as boring.”
Doubters expected him to eventually give up on giving up, but Matthews not only continued, he capitalised. His business CleanCo has grown quickly: with five low-alcohol gins and a rum, it turned over £3m in its first year and raised £7m to continue growing.
Matthews is a man incapable of doing things by halves. When given the opportunity to test the benefits of clean living to his fitness and work life, he grabbed it and ran.
A Clean Slate
“I don’t see the point in doing a transformation unless you smash the life out of it,” says Matthews. “I wanted to look like Brad Pitt – somewhere between Fight Club and Troy.” His new six-pack abs attest to a job well done. “When you start anything new that’s hard, it’s always tempting to give up,” he says. “But carry on, and that feeling of achievement will soon kick in.” It took him a month to reach that point, under the guidance of trainer Shaun Stafford. “No one likes being rubbish at something. I was tensing in front of a mirror and nothing happened. It was demoralising,” he says. “Then I pushed on and started enjoying it. Now, it’s part of my life.”
What won’t last beyond this photo shoot, however, is his diet. Maintaining a 600kcal deficit each day was hard work. “I was offered a cheat meal once a week but didn’t take it,” he says. “If I smash a bucket of chicken wings, well, that’s 2,000kcal I’ll have to burn later.” To make life easier, he turned to fitness food deliveries from Men’s Health Fuel (“It was convenient and took all the guesswork out of watching my calorie intake”), while also re-evaluating his shopping list.
Stafford classified his foods as “friends” or “foes”. When calories are king, even the healthy fats in avocado, nuts and salmon are the enemy. They were replaced by low-fat, high-fibre ingredients, such as green veg, to help him feel full. “We’re aiming for a 3,500kcal deficit across a week,” says Stafford. “Peanut butter? That’s gone.”
“I’ve enjoyed lifting heavier, too,” Matthews says. Now, he’ll focus on adding kilos to his lifting PBs while continuing to progress in his new passion, Brazilian jiu-jitsu. “It’s pointless to work this hard, then just to put it all back on again,” he concludes. And that’s exactly the point. The transformation lifestyle isn’t sustainable; it’s a kick- start. Grind through and you’ll emerge fitter, leaner and with a taste for fitness that, if nurtured, can last a lifetime. Matthews is just getting started. Now, it’s your turn.