LA Social’s Lindsay Woods recently surprised himself by winning two golds and a silver at the NZIFBB South Island natural & regional champs in Christchurch.
"I wasn’t even trying to win, I was just trying to not look like an idiot.
"My goal was, ‘could I do a comp, take it off my list of things to do and not humiliate myself?"’
Woods, who’s lived in Queenstown for 20 years, says he wanted to see if his body still worked as it’s supposed to, "or was I just literally waiting for the inevitable decline?"
He’d lifted weights since his high school years in Invercargill, done a Challenge Wanaka half ironman about 10 years ago and gone on long treks — like the Camino de Santiago — with his wife and fellow muso, Ailsa.
But training for a bodybuilding comp, he found, was far more extreme, particularly as he condensed what should have been 20 weeks of prep into only three and a-half months.
"There had to be no cheat meals, and just focus, focus, focus."
With the aid of Auckland-based online coach Jordan Earl, he put in 10 hours’ training a week — seven and a-half lifting weights and daily half-hour runs.
Plus he stuck to a strict diet of just chicken, steak, rice and egg whites.
By the end he’d lost 15kg of fat and gained 8kg of muscle.
Woods also prepared for his men’s physique category with weekly Zoom sessions with an Australian posing coach.
He says by the end his training regime was taking a toll — "we were playing at a fundraiser at Hawea about a week before [the comp] and I was struggling to get up on the stage, I just felt drained".
Though stoked with his medal haul, the chances of seeing him so ripped on stage again are maybe not high — "I think it was a one-off".
