- 2024 Mr. Olympia Samson Dauda’s winner said he once fought to gain weight and build muscle.
- Eating more home -cooked foods and whole foods helped him gain size and strength to compete.
- His exercises aim to maximize muscles with a mixture of high repetitions and heavy weight in time saving superstes.
Seeing Samson Dauda, ​​you would never think he was once a weak child.
But the winner of 2024 Mr. Olympia – the most prestigious bodybuilding price – said he once had a difficult time to gain muscle.
“When I was young, I tried to wear weight. I was one of those guys who could leave eating everything and didn’t put in the pounds,” he told Business Insider in an interview in his partnership with the Celsius Energy Brave.
Now Dauda weighs up to 330 pounds in the outside season, while packing in muscle for competition.
Born in Nigeria, Dauda moved to the United Kingdom as a teenager and began his athletic career in Rugby, where a teammate introduced him to Bodybuilding. He started competing in 2014.
In 2020, at the age of 34, he left his job as a construction worker to focus on full -time body building.
He said two changes in his diet and the training routine have helped him penetrate the muscle building plate: eating many nutrients and hitting high -time drills, saving time.
High -speed superssets can increase muscle growth
Dauda said that, as someone trying to win, his workouts involve as much time under tension as possible to promote muscle growth.
To do this, its typical routine includes back-back training groups that begin with a large number of lightweight repetitions, and then lower reps as it increases weight over time.
The strategy allows him to get the benefits of lifting heavier weights, while also maximizing the time when his muscles are working.
“You’re putting a lot of strains on the muscles for a long period,” Dauda said.
Superssets – performing two exercises one after another over and over – can also be useful for building muscle because it saves time. Changing the exercise allows you to allow one muscle group to rest while the other is working, so you should not expect between groups.
Need extra calories and nutrients to build muscle
All that fitness work needs fuel, and Dauda said eating dense nutrients instead of processed food improved its profits.
“You need to give your body building blocks that you are able to use to build muscle,” he said.
For a bodybuilder pro, eating becomes a full -time job.
Dauda said his off -season diet, when he is trying to build muscle, includes 7,500 calories a day, most of which are whole foods.
“We cook all my meals at home, so we control everything. We know that the quality of the food is there and we are able to decide the quality size with it,” he said.
Typical nutrition include sources of protein such as eggs, chicken breast, steak, beef in the soil – research suggests the ideal amount of protein for muscle profits is about 0.7 grams of protein for your body weight daily. Dauda also eats many carbs for energy from foods like oatmeal, sweet potatoes and pasta.
It complements the grace of whey protein to make sure it is getting enough protein to build muscle. It also relies on caffeine, including Celsius, to keep its energy in the weeks before a competition, when intense preparation can be exhausting and makes it difficult to sleep.
Dauda still gives herself a break, especially immediately after competition. His favorite meal after the show is pizza, ideally washed with a large bottle of coke. But after a few days of satisfaction, Dauda is usually happy to return to his healthy home -cooked meal routine.
“You are so deprived of for weeks and months in the end that you have all these things you want to eat,” he said. “And after a week you are a kind of like, I have had enough. I want to go back to diet food.”