Olly Foster male model

Olly Foster Fitness Model Top Tips

A few tips for someone looking to become a fitness model and how you maintain a year long shoot ready physique.

1. Keep Your Diet Consistent All Year Round

Anyone looking to become a fitness model needs to get in the right frame of mindset. Being a fitness model has similarities to being a bodybuilder in terms of commitment, diet, training requirements / intensity, discipline and self motivation. However it stops there! You need to realise that you are a model and not a bodybuilder. Daily I get asked what do you eat when you’re not shooting/off season, etc. My answer?! I eat the same. Day in, day out, not much changes in reality. My diet is consistently clean with the odd indulgent here and there, which when needed will be eliminated come shoot time.

You need to become accustomed to the fact that there is no off season, no time outs and no long binging sessions. To be successful you need to be reliable, consistent and committed to the cause. We can be given anything from a day to 3 weeks notice for shoots meaning you have to keep yourself in tip top shape all the time. Yes you can have refeed meal (not cheat I hate this word) and yes you can go out every now and then, but if you let things slip by the wayside it will show and another more regulated, dedicated model will get your gig.

2. Train With Purpose, Be Committed & Stay Focussed

On the training front you need to stay focused and every time you train and train with a purpose. I generally will vary between a strength based program and a hypertrophy based program over 3-4 week periods. However, when I get a booking, and only if possible, I will switch to metabolic or my favourite, lactic acid style base of training. This with a few diet tweaks such as carb intake and a calorie consumption helps shift any little fat that may be sitting midriff. From a body fat % point of view I will very rarely come above 7/8% and normally come into a shoot at about 5/6, which for me is now an easy process based on experience and knowledge. Normally there is no need to drop below this and if requested to do so then usually a longer time period is given to achieve the desired look. However, personally anything below this to me is not what I would class as a fitness model look. It’s certainly not desirable to the mass population and in my eyes is not sustainable. This is one of the reasons I have never got on stage, that is a step too far. Most of these guys rebound within a week, binge for several days and can actually damage their metabolism all for little recognition and some free protein. The only thing I find appealing about stepping on stage is the challenge. The goal, setting and planning your training and diet to achieve a desired result. To stay focused as a fitness model you need targets, without them it can become easy to drift and slowly slip out of shape. To overcome this you need to become accountable to yourself, be shooting regularly, or for me, work in the industry. I am a walking billboard to my business, I walk the walk and I talk the talk.

3. Be Realistic About Your Earning Potential

Don’t be lead to believe or fall into the illusion that fitness models make lots of money. This is BS, I know only a handful of models that survive solely from fitness modelling alone and they worked damn hard to get where they are and continue to work even harder to stay at the top of their game. Most of us however have a main job and model on the side. Obviously. I work for Ultimate Performance as a senior trainer at the Manchester branch and I love my job. Just be realistic guys about how big financially the industry can be and of course how the politics of it all work.

4. Be The Best You Can Be

One last thing I always preach is to “be yourself”, yes it’s ok and good to have aspiring models / people to look up too, (I know i did) but in reality “you can only be the best YOU can be”. Don’t be thinking I want to look like him/her because in the real world and genetically speaking the majority of the time this won’t be possible. Concentrate on you as an individual and make your own mark in the industry with a unique personality, because at the end of the day you are selling yourself, not a replica of somebody else!

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