My Story

My training background goes back to 1990, when, as a 12 year old, I first started training in my bedroom with a set of York cast iron plates and a bench, following the training plans that I found in Flex or Muscle & Fitness magazines.

This gave me a great foundation as a young teenager, and I carried on training through into my 20’s, when I had a disc herniation in my lower back, which was severe enough that I was unable to walk or stand up straight because of the pain for almost a full year as I waited for surgery to repair the damage. In this time, my training was non-existent and my diet revolved around what I could put in the oven and wait to finish cooking.

My training started again a few weeks after the surgery, and I had to rebuild everything. This was about 2004/2005, and it wasn’t long after that when I started armwrestling with a club in Milton Keynes.

Within a few months of training, I started competing and shortly after that, I finished runner up at the British novice national championships. From there, I started competing at the British open against the guys who would become my team mates at Worlds. I had great success with multiple national championship silver medals on both my left and right arms and went on to compete for GB in the 2009 and 2010 WAF World armwrestling championships.

From there, I moved onto the ArmWars professional circuit, competing around Europe, and appearing regularly on Eurosport. During this time, I was running my own armwrestling team in Cambridge, where I coached a number of my members to national and international level competitions, with some of them joining me on the ArmWars circuit. 

Sadly, in 2014, I suffered a career ending injury to my wrist in a match at the FIBO expo in Germany, against a national champion from Norway. This injury led to my transition into Strongman, it was here that I found my true calling, with a win in my first ever competition and podium finishes in my next 8. In 2019, I had my best year, winning the masters (over 40) category at the prestigious London’s Strongest Man, then a 5th place at the Official Strongman Games (OSG) European championship in the masters, followed in December with a 16th place finish at the OSG World Championships, also in the masters. 

As you will no doubt remember, 2020 was not a great year, and so it followed for sport, with pretty much everything being cancelled, including the OSG Worlds, which I had qualified for. Luckily, the organisers allowed our invites to carry over to the 2021 games, where I had a difficult weekend, coming off the back of a couple of injuries, and finishing 22nd out of a stacked field of nearly 40 guys.

Moving into  2022, and I suffered another injury to my back, which led me to discover a whole list of conditions in my back and hips that knocked me mentally for six. I was ready to retire from the sport, but it dawned onme that most of the things that were wrong, were things I had been living training and competing with for a while, and not conditions that came on as a result of my back injury. So I set my mind to training again, which meant a period of rehab and rebuilding. 

In 2023, I entered Britain’s Strongest master, (a direct qualifier for Europes) where we had a 300kg deadlift for reps as the 1st event, now this is a number that filled me with uncertainty, because not only had I not touched a weight that heavy since my injury and recovery, but I was also going through a particularly hard time mentally, and I wasn’t sure if I could even get it off the floor, so to manage 2 reps was a huge metaphorical monkey off my back, and it gave me the confidence for the rest of the competition. I finished just outside the top 10, which was a very poor performance by the stadards I set for myself, but at the same time, a great result considering at some point a year previously, I was ready to quit tghe sport.

My training continued and in 2024, I switched my mentality and decided to change my training completely, focusing on reducing bodyfat and gaining muscle. To this end, I dropped 20kg over 5 months to the leanest 108kg I have ever been and in all honesty, my body felt the best it had felt for a long time, at 47 I gave myself a new lease of life because I wasn no longer training to be the strongest in the room. My back felt amazing, my joints didn’t hurt and my fitness was the best it had been for over a decade. Now I maintain some strongman training in my program but I made the decision to retire from the sport last year and I haven’t looked back.

Now my training is about keeping fit, in good shape and still somewhat strong whilst at the same time, enjoying myself.

Click here to find out about my services and pricing and if you think I could be the right coach for you, send me a message using the form at the bottom of the page.