👋 Hi! Tell us about yourself and your training
My name is Tyrone Bell, I’m a WBFF Fitness Model Pro, currently living in Auckland, New Zealand where I run an online training and health & fitness education business that specializing in the area of weight loss.
I picked up my first weight at the age of 10, when my dad decided I was old enough to start lifting. I still remember that very first ‘workout’ using his rusty old home gym weight bench and rusty weight plates – actually looking back, I’m surprised I didn’t get tetanus. But what I did definitely did catch was the ‘bug’ for lifting. From that day on I feel in love with training.
My love of training has taken me around the world and has opened countless doors and opportunities for me. I was able to obtain the position as the head trainer for the lead cast of the hit TV show Spartacus a few years back, where I was responsible for getting cast members in shape and camera-ready.
That opened doors for me to train other celebrities on other big budget film and TV shows. It also opened the doors to work with Bodybuilding.com, appear and contribute in Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Muscle & Fitness and other major main stream health and fitness publications.
I’m so grateful to the health and fitness lifestyle, not just from the everyday physical benefits, but also for the countless doors and opportunities that it has opened up for me.
⏱ Describe a typical day of training
Each and everyday for me contains some form of training or physical movement. My cardio, even in the off-season, I’ll perform in the morning in a fasted state. I personally like this mainly from the ‘high’ I get off that early morning activity and fresh air (my cardio is always a beach walk).
After breakfast, I’ll spend 15 – 20 minutes centering myself for the day and actually participate in a form of meditation or gentle yoga. I can’t tell you how much practicing mediation, mindfulness, and yoga has helped me in every aspect of my life – business, relations as well as my actual weight training itself from the point of view of improved focus and being truly present in every repetition I ever do.
I always try and teach people, including all my online clients, to remember your mind is the most powerful weapon you have. But it can also be your biggest foe if left to sit in negative thoughts. Learn to harness it and the positive effects will ripple through every area of your life.
For resistance training, I hit four to five days a week. Typically, four days a week in a typical off-season, with the occasional 5th day thrown in if I’m concentrating on bringing up or working on a specific body part. When I’m prepping for a WBFF competition my training steps up to a regular five days a week.
👊 How do you keep going and push harder?
- I love seeing progression. In every area of my life, I get off on making improvements and seeing progress being made. That’s every area as well, not just my weight training.
- Business. I love to see the growth we’ve made, I love to see how many people have we helped this week to lose weight and better their lives.
- Personal development. I love to see myself grow in areas that were weakness or what I considered flaws.
- Relationships. I love to see them deepen and develop. So when it comes to my training, it’s exactly the same.
Seeing progression, seeing development, seeing improvements are all the motivations I need to never miss a gym session and to always give 100% each and every time I walk through those gym doors.
🏆 How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
I recently just stepped off stage, two weeks ago, where I was able to earn my Pro Card in the WBFF. Making me a WBFF Fitness Model Pro. That was a huge goal of mine that I was able to finally achieve. So right now I’m both reverse dieting, as well as slowly building my training intensity up.
After every show I do, I always have a full week of shooting a lot of content. While other competitors hit the burgers and chocolates immediately post show, I stay as tight as possible to get in as much quality video and image content as possible, for myself and my sponsors in the seven days that follow – trust me I hit the burgers and chocolate after that. LOL
So training wise in the seven days that follow a competition isn’t too much – all the pump ups and training footage that we get shooting the content is enough during that week.
The weeks that follow though I concentrate on slowly bringing my training intensity and lifts back up to where they were before prep began.
🤕 How do you recover, rest and handle injuries?
Arrrrr injuries… This one I know all too well. I worked as a stuntman for years prior to getting into the fitness industry full time, so truthfully, I’m a walking mess. While my days as a stuntman, getting hit by cars, thrown down stairs, kicked through walls, etc., etc. is over, I’m now left with the aftermath.
Regularly visiting my physio at least once a week to work on any acute problems that I have going on is a big help. Practicing yoga has helped physically from a mobility point of view, and just being smart and letting go of any form of ego when lifting – that’s how I manage and deal with new and old injuries on a daily basis.
🍎 How is your diet and what supplements do you use?
Nutrition should always be about supporting and nourishment of your body.
I have a couple of outlooks and implement a couple of different approaches when it comes to my own nutrition.
However, whatever approach I’m taking, which generally most of the time is a very ‘balanced’ approach favoring a higher level of protein, balanced amount of complex carbs, and moderate fat – and of course a wide range of vegetables to provide the essential minerals and vitamins required for overall optimal health – health is always the number one priority first and foremost.
I teach all my online clients that no matter what your goal is (FYI 95% of my online clients and course participates are about weight loss), the primary focus is ALWAYS on improving and supporting all the critical health factors that are ultimately responsible for your body accepting the signal to burn fat.
Nutrition should always be about supporting and nourishment of your body. Your nutrition should always be structured around improving and supporting your gut health, liver function, thyroid function, concentrating on obtaining a state of insulin sensitivity, and helping balance stress and cortisol hormones – no matter what your goal is, I firmly believe your nutrition approach needs to have foods that support these physiological functions first and foremost.
Now if you’re trying to lose weight, it needs to be done and structured under a calorie deficient, and if your wanting to push the scales up – structured under a calorie surplus.
When it comes to supplements, I’ll daily take a good mutli-vitamin and multimineral as an insurance policy seeing our foods are becoming less reliable at providing everything we require.
I use an Isolate Protein Powder where I’ll make use of a couple times a day to help easily increase my daily protein totals as well as take it immediately post training to allow a fast acting protein source into my system.
During training itself, I take Creatine Monohydrate as well as BCAA/EAA mix – sipping it through my sessions.
👍 What has inspired and motivated you?
I’m motivated everyday to do what I do (helping people lose weight) because, to be honest, the world is a mess when it comes to this area. The western world is not setup to support or even care about those battling with obesity.
In fact, its geared to trap people in cycle of convenience with the end result being a decline of their health and quality of life. I’m motivated because I want to play a major role in breaking this and helping as many people as possible truly master their weight, their health and their minds.
When it comes to competing, honestly it comes from a ‘selfish’ personal point of view. I’m motivated to compete because it pushes me places that under everyday, normal circumstance you just wouldn’t go. Powerful things happen to your mind and who you are when you push pass the restraints of normality. Getting down to 3% BF is one of the ‘push pass’ places.
It’s important to understand, too, though that this isn’t just exclusive to bodybuilding and competing as other athletes from marathon runners to extreme rock climbers all talk about the same feeling of what happens to the mind when you go places that others won’t.
✏️ Advice for other people who want to improve themselves?
Tips for starting out is realize you don’t want to use all your guns at once.
Find an approach and be consistent with it. We live in an age where there is so much information out there that it proves to be a hindrance to someone’s progression or hindrance to even starting because so many people are left paralyzed and confused as to which approach to take.
Sure do your diligence at the start but once you decide to run with a method, with an approach – see it out to the end. Give it your all in the way of consistency and adherence so after a number of months you can accurately assess “did that work for me”.
Tips for starting out is realize you don’t want to use all your guns at once. If your new to training or coming off the back of a long lay off, you’ll be fresh to the training stimulus, you will respond.
So don’t go in a use every intensifier method known to man and train six times a week, twice a day! Go in with the mentality (and this goes for experienced and season trainers as well) that you want to ‘get the most- out of the least’. You want your body responding from as little stimulus as possible.
Keep adding volume and intensity slowly to over the weeks to generate and keep the stimulus going. But understand if you use everything at once – you’ll have nothing up your sleeve when you hit a training plateau, when you stop responding.
Likewise, the easier option, so you don’t have to try and work this all out through trial and error, is find a good trainer to do this for you. That’s the easiest option if you have the resources.
🤝 Are you taking on clients right now?
I’m always taking on coaching clients via my online training services. I have people from all over the world, with varying goals and coming from varying circumstance and ability’s. It’s the vast variety in clients that keeps my day interesting.
As I mentioned, the majority of my clients are people wanting to lose weight because of the unique online weight loss courses that I regularly run.
However, I still have clients wanting to build muscle, compete, and even clients who are athletes from sports that have nothing to do with bodybuilding.
📝 Where can we learn more about you?
The best place to learn more about me and what I do is on my website tailoredfit.co.nz. Likewise you can follow me on Instagram where I share a lot of my training and nutrition advice regularly @tyrone_bell.
