Steve Walker's Journey with My Muscle Chef

Two years ago I weighed 79kg at 24% body fat, and had a 150kg max deadlift. After dedicating my training to weightlifting and also fuelling myself with My Muscle Chef as the base of my diet, I have since transformed myself to now weigh 90kg at 14% body fat, I’ve increased my deadlift to 250kg, and have also won the title as Brisbane's Strongest Man. 

STARTING MY JOURNEY

I have a background in boxing training, however this was put on hold after a car crash incident resulting in a severe shoulder injury. The recovery from this took a few years and surgeries to finally reach back up to about 95% normality. I was advised to start thinking about sport again and develop some muscle tone in my shoulder. My weightlifting journey has since taken 2 years, starting out with powerlifting, which I loved as I saw changes in my strength and endurance very quickly. After a short while I progressed into a strongman, and from then on I was absolutely hooked!

To fuel my strongman journey, I turned to My Muscle Chef meals as the core of my nutrition. I would highly recommend the Muscle Gain Meal Plan for those aiming to increase muscle mass, including larger portioned meals and high protein content suitable for bulking.

MY CHALLENGE & MOTIVATION

The challenges I faced at the beginning were a lot of very sore and very slow recoveries from workouts, as well as having to swallow my pride and be one of the very weakest guys in the gym. Motivation was never ever an issue as thankfully I am a very strong willed person. If I want to achieve something, I will - especially when I'm doubted.

A good friend and now long term training partner of mine told me: “It doesn't matter what you do in life. It takes time, patience and perseverance to be truly good at something”. I think this is very very true. As a national level strongman athlete of close to ten years, he is a real testament to that and has been a HUGE part of my motivation for success.

TRAINING SCHEDULE

Initially, I started training twice a week for around 1.5 hours each day. Progressively as time went on and my body got more and more used to what I was doing, I ramped my training frequency to 6 days a week, training for at least 2 hours each day.

FUELLING MY GOAL

For nutrition, I started out by building a basic diet plan through my local dietitian, which aimed to lower my body fat and increase my skeletal muscle mass. Within a short amount of time this diet began to give me the results I wanted to see, however I had also become hugely interested in strongman and had set a goal to compete in an under 90kg strongman competition.

Things then became difficult, as I was basically force feeding myself to healthily get to the weight I needed to be for the comp. Doing my own meal prep was fine, but I quickly got bored of eating the same thing everyday and it was a very tedious process that I didn’t look forward to. 

“Reluctant to continue with the same old routine, I turned to My Muscle Chef as a primary nutrition choice and introduced two high carb, high protein MYMC meals per day into my diet plan.” 

It was a real game changer for me because all of a sudden I had no problem getting the food in, however I also genuinely enjoyed every bit of it (the food and the consumption). The most satisfying part was that on top of this, the results I achieved from having a clean, structured diet was absolutely fantastic - I was bigger, leaner, stronger and healthier, and I felt better than ever! 

WHAT’S NEXT

My future plans are to qualify for Arnold's Australia in Strongman in u90kg and see how I go against the country's best. My dream is to one day win it as a u105kg competitor.

"For me, My Muscle Chef is a super easy, affordable, tasty and effective way to eat healthily. With the ability to tailor your nutrition to any sporting goals you might have, you can stick to your routine and genuinely enjoy the food you eat. I have found My Muscle Chef to be super helpful to my fitness journey."

To kickstart a fitness journey of your own, take the first step by choosing the meal plan that's right for you. Explore our range of goal based meal plans, including Performance, Muscle Gain and Calorie Control.