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How many hours do you have to spend in the gym to have your body?
I go five or six times a week because the body must be left at least one day off. They are usually two or three-hour workouts in which I combine aerobic and anaerobic exercise.
What do these exercises consist of?
What I do is divide the muscles: one day I work chest, another back, another leg … training varies according to the time of year. When there is competition I work with less weight and more intensity because, by eating very little, I have less energy and more risk of injury. Outside of competition, when I eat a lot more and have more strength, what I do is gain pounds and do fewer repetitions.
When is a competition coming up, do you go on a diet?
You have to lose weight because the rest of the year you gain it in order to get more muscle mass. What happens is that when you gain weight you also get fat and water. In the competition season, you have to remove that fat and accumulated water to go out on stage defined. You are left with only pure muscle.
How is your diet?
It is super strict, I have to weigh every meal with a scale that I have at home to know the amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates that I want to health. I have to have everything under control and eat when it touches me, every two or three hours. I make 6 or 7 meals a day.
It doesn’t seem like I’m hungry …
As enough to be able to train with more strength and gain muscle, but when I enter competition time I lower the amounts to define the body. It really is the hardest because you are hungry, you are dizzy, you have anxiety … but hey, they are short periods of two months or so, in which I don’t eat any carbohydrates. Everything is based on chicken, fish and vegetables. The bread, nor try it. I only eat it out of competition and I do it at home, made of whole spelled.
When did your hobby of bodybuilding start?
I started to like myself at 13 years old because my brother brought some weights home and I started using them, but really, when I joined the gym for the first time it was at 15 years old, with a friend. It was then that I met my coach and we started a routine and a diet seriously.
It didn’t take long for him to be champion, is his genetic?
Genetics is very important, but if you don’t exploit it, it’s useless. But yes, it is true that genetics accompanies me a lot in this sport. When I started to do weights when I was 13 years old, I already had a physical shape above the people of my age.
Isn’t it bad to do weights at just 13 years old?
It is a myth that I would like to deny. All well-done sports are not harmful at any age. If you put a 10-year-old boy to do weights with a mockery of kilos when his bones are still developing, you can cause damage, but if you do it naturally and well-controlled it is not harmful. They told me that I was not going to grow anymore when I started with the weights at 13 years old, but I have grown 10 cm since then. Now I am 1.83 m, I am not very tall, but I have not stayed short either.
Is there a lot of doping in bodybuilding?
It has always been accompanied by the shadow of doping, but I practice the natural modality and there are many controls. Here everything is achieved through diet and training because this is a sport, the other is just a show.
Is artificial muscle visible to the naked eye?
In very small amounts it can be concealed, but doping in large amounts causes clearly visible side effects. For example, a lot of disproportion of shoulders and trapezius, which is where these substances affect the most, or gynecomastia (growth of mammary glands in men). Women get beautiful facials and their voices get worse. When you know a little about bodybuilding, you know that there are certain sizes of muscles that cannot be achieved naturally.
How do competitions work?
There is a round of mandatory poses that all rivals have to do together and the judges compare us. Then each one has a minute of free poses to do a choreography that you have practiced at home. The most important thing is the mandatory poses, which are always the same and you have to train them well. They are the ones that judges value the most.
How do you prepare before going on stage?
First we paint the body with a dye and before leaving we add oil or lacquer to shine more with the spotlights they put on you. Bodybuilders always go very brown on stage, but it is not because they have sunbathed, but because they paint themselves. It is a body dye that allows muscles to look much better.
You have been classified as a High Performance Athlete, what does it mean?
It means that I am already competing internationally and that you live your life accordingly. It is no longer a hobby, but a profession and I consider it that way. I receive sports scholarships and compete in a professional, not amateur, way.
Can you live from bodybuilding?
You can live, but not directly from competitions. To live you also need the brands that sponsor you, the classes you can give as a personal trainer … many things. The prizes are undervalued, you have to be practically the best in the world to live on cash prizes alone.
He talks about sponsors, but when they go out almost naked on stage they have little room to put on the brand’s stickers …
(laughs) Yes, we don’t fit anyone’s stickers in the swimsuit, but there are other forms of sponsorship. For example, supplementation brands that sponsor you in exchange for offering their products to the public through the internet. I am now starting with a youtube channel and an Instagram account.
Your next goal is the World Cup, what is your goal there?
Yes, it will take place in the Caribbean, in the Antilles, in November. My goal is always to win, it is clear that it is difficult, but if I have won the European Championship, my goal in the World Cup is to go and win. I have never been to a World Cup, but my goal will be that.
