Journey to the Bodybuilding stage – introducing Rich

Hi I’m Rich, a firefighter currently training to get back on stage this year. I am currently in a cutting phase just bringing back some condition. It has been a long road… I prepped two years for a show in 2017. I won and it gave me an invite to the British Finals. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend due to a new job and injury. I then had 18 months off with ongoing injuries as I needed to get fully better. This meant I didn’t step foot in a gym for most that time, I have been back training for around 9-10 months now.

Bodybuilding started for me when I had a couple of injuries playing rugby. As my injuries put my apprenticeship at risk… so I had to make a choice, the fact I was never going to get paid a decent wage playing rugby meant one thing, so I reluctantly stepped back from it.

At this point, I was kind of lost and found myself just training to keep fit and trying to replace that love I had for rugby, which it did. I slowly got stronger and bigger and actually started to train to compete in strongman at u105kg. This soon came to an end as I kept getting injuries.

In 2014 I started training at a gym called Samsons, a lot of bodybuilders trained at this gym which is where I first saw anything like this. I knew straight away that I wanted to look like one of them. I started to prep in 2015 for a show which was when I got hooked on seeing my body change. I actually didn’t do the show as I wasn’t happy with how I looked so took another long offseason and prepped for 2017. One of the men from Samson’s gym became one of my best friends and coached me for my first show in 2017!

These images are from UKBFF 2017 South Coast u90kg, this is the competition I won!