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Ryan | Natural Bodybuilding Coach 🚫💉⚙️

@empathy_lifts

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Drug Free Bodybuilding Coach 🚫💉⚙️
📍California Legacy Team 🌁
🏆Pro Natural Bodybuilder
👇DM me “PREP” for coaching

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Follow @empathy_lifts if you’re thinking about competing as a natural bodybuilder or looking for better conditioning in your next show 😈 by @empathy_lifts

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3 days ago

We did it. I needed this 😮‍💨 taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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a year ago

What a day @smallguyseb !!!

Incredible showing today at the @wnbf_battleofthebay .

This is YEARS of dialed nutrition and HARD training.

Can’t express how proud I am of the man you are behind this physique.
——-

Big moments for me as a coach and competitor myself seeing such high level competition. Lit a FIRE again that I really needed.🔥

From @3dmj_godfather (congrats on the Classic Physique Pro Card!!! - nailed that peak),

to @giraffebrah (ELITE conditioning - HUGE congrats on the Pro card, so well deserved)

and even long time friend and up and coming natural bodybuilder @mindfulstrengthmethod . Best you’ve ever looked brother.

So many other incredible athletes today, I’m very excited for the future of this event and the sport in total.

See you all at @wnbf_musclemayhem !!

#DrugFreeBodybuilding taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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20 days ago

👉 @empathy_lifts by @empathy_lifts

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2 days ago

Follow @empathy_lifts for more reasons you aren’t growing muscle 😅 by @empathy_lifts

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3 days ago

Time will pass anyways, might as well give the world reference to what’s possible 🚫💉⚙️ taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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3 days ago

The classic “arch” within fitness is going from zero thought and focus on nutrition, to very hyper-focused on nutrition, to then hopefully not focused on nutrition once again (but this time coming from habitual/2nd nature tendencies).

As you get into tracking calories/macros you start to understand different foods hold different values. And not just nutritional values.

Aka food can make you happy and it can also satiate you physically. Food is for fuel/performance and also for fun.

Balancing calories and portions of foods that keep you healthy (🫘🥝🥦🍗🥑)

with foods that keep you consistent
(🍫🍪🍩🧁🍭),

is ideally the goal. But often times when striving towards that particular goal, most of us get caught up pushing extremes.

Whether it’s what low calorie, what sugar free options, or even how many high fiber veggies can stuff into our diet to add VOLUME. All of these unfortunately involve inherent TIME thinking about food.

And when you’re in a deficit, maybe even towards the later stages of a content prep, your hunger will likely not ever be fully satisfied regardless of volume.

So the best protocol I’ve found is

1. Acceptance of this hunger. Almost an expectation of it.
2. Try to preoccupy your headspace with other enjoyable things besides food. Less TIME thinking about food in general.

🔑Set your meals to be reasonably satisfying in flavor, volume, and micronutrients, then f*ck off. Go do something else 🤝 by @empathy_lifts

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3 days ago

BEFORE YOU TAKE AWAY CALORIES👇

Review ALL the data.

My training partner and 2nd eye during prep would tell me every time he saw me in the gym that I looked leaner. More conditioned.

i never saw it lol

At one point i hit a 3-5 week “plateau”. The scale wasn’t moving. I felt flat and was convinced I needed to change something.

But he wouldn’t let me touch my calories.

Every time i tried to argue for a cut, he killed it. And im glad he pushed back.

I was getting stronger, my lifts were moving, I wasn’t starving, and I actually felt great. Energy was high.

So I stayed the course. For weeks. Scale still not moving the way I expected but my training sessions were the best they’d been.

To be quite honest, even within the last few weeks leading up to my bodybuilding show, I never felt lean enough.

I just put my entire faith in the process and what I objectively know as a coach. And most importantly I trusted my best friend and training partner to be honest with me which 100% kept me from breaking the whole thing every week.

The result? I got leaner than i’d ever been. Lean enough, with enough muscle, to win my pro card.

I’ve competed in over a dozen shows over the last 10 years and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the one prep that I committed to protecting my performance during, is the prep I finally achieve was I set out to do.

The scale told me nothing was happening but my performance told me everything was working 💪📈

that’s why i don’t coach guys to lose weight.

i coach guys to become the man that can hold their leanness without breaking shit every 4-6 weeks through impatience. taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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4 days ago

No words can touch this feeling 🖤

This is drug free bodybuilding 🚫💉⚙️

#battleofthebay2025 #NaturalBodybuilding #LifetimeNatural taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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a year ago

Comment LEGACY and I’ll send over my FULL Contest Prep Roadmap taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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8 days ago

Don’t make these mistakes when trying to grow muscle!👆 taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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2 years ago

11 days out 🗓️ Documented Thoughts 💭👇

Visually leaner every week with very minor changes on the scale on average.

Starting to push a deficit via more steps and slightly* less calories likely through these first 2 natural bodybuilding shows, with a focus on coming in my leanest by Muscle Mayhem in November. So very minor peak weeks.

Need to make sure this deficit is not pulling too much from my training performance as I see worse visual outcomes when my training suffers. Just more muscle loss and at this stage I don’t think my look can stand to lose any lean tissue.

So with that said, calories will remain consistent especially around training, with an emphasis on steps/movement to increase the deficit 📉. Something I haven’t done years prior.

Appetite is through the roof, probably 9.8/10 so high volume whole foods take absolute priority in my diet to get through the days.

Flexible dieting aka a pint of ice cream every night has been amazing and allowed me a ton of enjoyment/satisfaction thus far…but it’s that time.

Hyper-palatable foods have been completely removed to mitigate hunger/cravings/food focus as much as possible.

This is where I test extremes, set new points of reference to what I’m capable of.

These weeks are comparable to the last hard reps at the end of a working set. Unintentionally slow, grindy, painful, physically/mentally/spiritually challenging.

I am grateful for this opportunity. taken in San Francisco Bay Area by @empathy_lifts

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a year ago