Until recently, journalist Tim Shaw was a superslob whose idea of a workout was walking home from the pub. We catch up with Tim's trainer to get the inside story on how he managed such a remarkable change.
For Extreme Male Beauty Tim agreed to take on a gruelling eight-week diet and fitness regime in an attempt to turn his hated man-boobs into pecs that would make David Beckham proud.
"It was eight weeks of training divided into two blocks," explains Tim's personal trainer Fraser Murray, from Virgin Active Manchester. "I created a programme based on what he was after, which was a more toned appearance. When he started he was really weak – he couldn't even do one chin-up. So we did strength-based training: four days a week he would bench press, do box squats, press-ups, reverse lunges and so on."
"The first week was painful. Tim wasn’t used to exercising and he found it very hard, but as we went on his motivation just went up and up. Every week we would step up the exercises so he was doing more and more."
After four weeks Fraser moved Tim onto a new programme: "It's important to keep challenging the body, so we started doing lifting and conditioning sessions – aerobic and anaerobic fitness to work off extra calories."
But did Tim's hard work pay off? "I saw a crazy improvement over the eight weeks," says Fraser. "His attitude got better. His arms, shoulders and chest got bigger and his waist got smaller. We measured his body fat regularly: at the start it was 21%, then halfway through it was 16.5%. After eight weeks of training he was down to 13% body fat. He made awesome progress."
Fraser warns that Tim's fitness regime wouldn't suit everyone. "It was an extreme training programme with extreme results. But if you want to get fit you really need to think about injury prevention, and get a programme that's individually suited to you – no two bodies are the same."
