Why buy a £300 pair of running shoes? They won’t increase your strength, you’re being mugged off big time, so why can’t you see it? But who am I to say all of this, what proof have I got in what I say … Well, read on and you’ll see for yourself and save yourself a lot of money. Once you’ve read my fitness routine you’ll never be ripped off again. For the first time in my life I’m going to share with you the secrets of my Solitary Fitness workouts that are now legendary throughout the penal system.
SEARCHING
What do you want? How do you want to achieve it? How far are you determined to get it, coz nothing comes from nothing. To get a body how you want it takes a lot of hard work and when you get it you have to work at maintaining it! But you will enjoy that part. So search, decide and work at it! Don’t overstep your goal coz, I’ll tell you now, the Arnies of the world really are pumped-up freaks! Sorry, Arnie, but basically that’s all you are. It’s not only unnatural, it’s bloody ridiculous. You guys are never happy: if you’ve 20-inch biceps, you then want 21-inch – it all becomes very silly!
As I keep telling people, it’s your heart that counts, so look after the ticker … Make staying alive your sole aim. Strip off, look in the mirror – what needs to be worked on? Concentrate on what you see and then make it your business to change it. Within a month on my programme you’ll see a real difference, big time! You’ll look and feel 100 times better. You don’t need a gym or weights, or expensive bikes and rowing machines – it’s all a joke! Stop throwing your money away on objects you don’t need.
Did cavemen use weights? Did Hercules or Samson use a gym?
Did they take steroids or swallow pills? Did they bollocks!
Look back in time at some of the great strong men – to mention one, ‘Eugene Sandown’ … well, did he abuse his body?
Being in solitary I am denied access to a gym and not allowed to mix, so I am on my own at all times. I get one hour out of my cell (or cage depending on which prison I’m in) a day to exercise out on the yard, which is a cage 20 x 30ft long! This is my arena; I am the Gladiator! I work out under the sky in the rain, snow, wind and sun in all weathers, six days of every week (religiously) and my routine works: I am a strong and powerful man. On rare occasions when I’m allowed out on the yard with fellow cons, I pick them up. I use them as human weights (of course, with their permission, unless it’s a governor). I also get them up on my back and run with them, two at a time. I squat with them, I bench press them – ‘bench press’ for you novices means lying on your back and pushing a weight from your chest upwards! So I am strong, do not doubt it. My strength is legendary – I once picked up a prison governor and ran with him.
In my hour in the cage under the sky I will do press-ups, squats, stretching, sit-ups, bunny hops, star jumps and I will jog around in between. I do all this to get my heart pumping and I also time every workout, but the most important part of the workout is to enjoy what you do. I laugh a lot. I love it, it’s my life! I’m a max-secure inmate. Cameras and guards constantly monitor me. I am 54 years of age, remember, and I am as fast now as I was at 30 years of age. I am 5ft 10½in tall and weigh in at 230 pounds of solid muscle. If I hit you, I’ll deform your looks. I can hit a man 20 times in four seconds! I can push 132 press-ups in 60 seconds – can Arnie do the same?
DON’T DO AS I DO, DO AS I SAY!
Right, a lot of the so-called professionals of the fitness game are gonna tell you my regime is based on multi-thousands of press-ups and sit-ups per day, and that this book is gonna be based on that … bollocks! Those armchair critics couldn’t push out one, never mind ten push-ups; they just want you to keep them company … If people like this are holding you back, they’re not your friends. Get rid of them coz they’re negative, what I call lemons! Look, even the England manager has his footballers doing basic exercises. I bet you don’t get Beckham telling his gaffer he don’t want to push out ten burpees coz it would spoil his hairdo!
In order to meet the stages in this book, you’ll have to faithfully follow my directions. Some of the seasoned athletes among you are going to push on and start at page 100 or wherever … Ha, ha! That’s no use, as this book is structured in a way that you cannot just go through it page by page. You and they would feel uncomfortable doing so; your body needs acclimatising to my altitude before I can take you to those heights, so be warned!
My workout (not yours at this stage) really starts from the time I get out of bed; I bury my head deep in a bowl full of cold water, then I’ll blow out a quick 100 press-ups just to get the heart pumping. Being in solitary I have to keep my mind active so I will pace up and down my cell and every minute I drop and I do 50 press-ups and then jot it down on a piece of paper. You will be amazed how it adds up. Some days I will push 3,000–6,000 press-ups. It sounds inhuman, amazing, but remember, it’s killing time for me; it’s my buzz! Another day, I will do sit-ups and then squats, and so on. Obviously, you on the outside don’t have the time I’ve got, so you will have to work out a routine of when best to do it, and where to do it, if you wish to follow exactly as I do, but not yet! I’d say do it in the garden. Get a nice mat and you can walk up and down the garden and drop every so often to do your workout as I do in my cell. When I’m bored I will do some shadow boxing for speed and reflexes. I will skip and jog on the spot, I will do some dynamics. I use a towel for this: I just pull at it behind my back and in front; you can feel it pulling at your muscles, stretching – it’s a good way of building up. But not yet …
Sundays, I relax … do nothing. Then on Monday I am raring to go. When I was up in Hull Jail I had access to a gym for the first time in years. I walked in and put 120kg (2.2lb = 1kg) on the bar – an Olympic bar – and bench pressed it ten times! An Olympic bar weighs 10kg, so the total was 130kg. So what does that tell you? My way keeps you strong, fit as well. The cons had been in the gym for years and years, and even they could not do it. I had just blown away all the fitness magazines and manuals, and I do it all on porridge!
DO IT MY WAY
My way makes a mockery of the fitness world as I do it on the basics. I don’t want pills or silly drinks or steroids! Sure, I miss the steaks, but even so I don’t need it, so why do you? Why do I need a £300 pair of shoes or a £10 sweatband to look good? My sweat drips in my eyes and down my body, but it’s pure sweat, good honest sweat. I want to feel the rewards of my workouts drip down my brow. How many films have featured Bruce Willis wearing a vest, dripping gallons of sweat from his brow … what if he wore a pretty pink-coloured sweatband around his head?
My heart is in good shape. Is Arnie’s? He needed an open-heart operation! They say his condition was hereditary. Let me ask you one question and think before you answer: would you sooner look like Daley Thompson or Arnie? Myself, I’d pick Daley all the time, a natural all-rounder, a fit and fast man I admire. Any of the old-timers will recall a guy by the name of Charles Atlas. Did he do weights! In the 1930s he won a court case when he was accused of pumping iron. The only reason he pumped iron twice a week was to test his strength … nothing wrong with doing that. That Rambo geezer, he’s a superb body on him. You can’t knock the man, but can you knock me? I do it all from a hole in the ground on the total basics of life with no sweetness. Thirty years I’ve survived a war and I’m still on top. I’ve been to hell and back, and lived in the belly of the beast.
STOP BEING RIPPED OFF!
Fitness and strength come from within. You don’t get it out of bottles, the ends of syringes or from the insides of nicely put-together packages. Work out what you will save in a year doing it my way: gym fees, pills, protein drinks, steroids, creams, outfits and equipment? Now get real!
YOUR BODY IS A MACHINE
I see the human body as a machine. Feed it, look after it, clean it inside and out … Most of all, believe in it and it will respond every time. But like a machine