The Best 10 Exercises For Getting Extremely Muscular | 5X World Champion Bodybuilder Wole Adesemoye | Dr. Azri Zakariya
I'm a 5 time bodybuilding world champion. I've walked the walk and talked the talk.
Azri:Ten exercises for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Wole:A bodyweight exercise, which I love doing, could save your life one day. You're gonna build immense amount of strength.
Azri:Staples, in terms of foods, they lose that next £20, £30.
Wole:I eat the same thing every single day, so I will have
Azri:Alright. Welcome to the next episode of the Elite Health podcast. We are joined by Wally. Wally's a 5 time world champion, very good friend, met at the Mastermind, and super happy to have you on here. So, White, give yourself an introduction.
Azri:I can't do you justice here.
Wole:Azeri, it's a it's a pleasure. Should I say, sorry, doctor Azeri, it's a pleasure to be on the podcast. My name is Wally Addison Way. I live in London, United Kingdom. I'm a 5 time bodybuilding world champion.
Wole:I'm a London firefighter for the past 24 years. I've traveled the world and lived with some of the toughest tribes on the planet in my TV show Last Man Standing back in 2,008, 2009, win all that. A business owner, son, a brother. You know, I got a a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful girlfriend. What else can I say?
Wole:I can't say anymore. I feel like I'm just, you know, I'm beating my own drums. I don't know what to say.
Azri:And her slips. Overly qualified. Yeah. I know that.
Wole:Don't know what to say. I'm I'm shy now.
Azri:I love that. I love that. So in case you couldn't tell, always in absolutely incredible shape. So that's, of course, one of the biggest achievements in terms of personal development I feel for most people. So, Wally, let's cut straight to it.
Azri:If you could do 10 exercises for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Wole:Oh, that that is such a hard question, but I have to start off with deadlifts. Deadlift to me, daddy of all exercises that will help you build total body strength. So the top of my list will be dead lifts. You're not gonna build immense amount of muscle, but you're gonna build immense amount of strength with dead lifts. So dead lifts will be at the top of my list.
Wole:2nd will be barbell squats. Why? Squats to me is a fundamental exercise and a very functional exercise that we do on a day to day basis without realizing. So functionality to me is very important. You know, when we stand up from a sit seating position, it's a squatting.
Wole:When we sit down, we're squatting. I'll definitely, definitely, definitely have squats in there. Moving on. Barbell bench press. Again, a great exercise to build upper body strength.
Wole:That will be my 3rd exercise that I will select. Then I'll move on to a bodyweight exercise, which I love doing, which will be pull ups. Pull ups for me is it's a great exercise. The the ability to be able to pull your own body weight, it's fantastic. My 5th exercise that I'll move on to will be dips.
Wole:Dips wide. Again, your own body weight. You're able to move your own body weight. I love when I see bodybuilders that can actually move their own body weight in such a way that you don't see many people being able to do that. And they're those sort of two exercises that I mentioned with the pull ups and dips could save your life one day.
Wole:You know? Not that you could be angry at the end of a cliff thinking, oh my god. I gotta pull myself up. But, you know, that sort of analogy that I give that when you're hanging on a on a hedge of a cliff, can you actually pull your own body weight up to save your life? So that will be my my my five exercises so far.
Wole:Then I'll move on. For me, I love barbell military press. You want to have that ability to push something above your head. Really good, again, for upper body strength. That would be my 6th exercise.
Wole:And I always have a phrase, life is too short to have small arms. So I've gotta have a couple of arm exercises in there. So it's gotta be barbell curl. I love doing barbell curl. Again, I love doing anything that's gonna hit my the front of my arms because guess what?
Wole:When you're wearing a t shirt, what do the ladies see first? Your arms. So I gotta throw a little bit of arm workout in there, so it would definitely be barbell curl. Then moving on, of course, gotta hit the triceps. Triceps, why do I love hitting the triceps?
Wole:I love hitting the tricep again because life's too short to have small arms. One of my favorite exercises to do for triceps, this is my 7th exercise, will be a overhead cable extension. Again, that constant tension that you have to work the long head of the triceps to hit that muscle fiber, It just makes your arms look so much bigger. The tricep muscle as a whole is the biggest, biggest muscle in the arm. It's bigger than the biceps because, again, the biceps has 2 heads.
Wole:The triceps has 3 heads. So that will be my 7th. Now I'm moving on. I love any form of dynamic exercise. So a walking lunge of some form, I gotta throw that in there.
Wole:So that would be again, that would be my 8th exercise, a a dumbbell or barbell walking lunge. Then when it comes to another exercise that you could do for me, I love doing bent over rows. Any form of bent over rows, you could do you could do any form of pendulum pendulum rows. You could do traditional bent over rows. For me, again, great exercise to build upper body strength.
Wole:And the final exercise that I love to incorporate is a little bit of an ab exercise. Again, every once 6 packs. The abs are made in the kitchen realistically, but, you know, hanging leg raises for me is a great exercise. A lot of people do this exercise incorrectly, and that would be my top ten exercise that I would like to incorporate if I can only do 10 exercise for the rest of my life.
Azri:Love that. Very, very complete list. Yeah. That's really gonna cover all bases from what I'm hearing. Yeah.
Azri:Let's say, while I had a few years off put on 20, £30 extra. Right. And you're going back into a fat loss phase. What would the staples in terms of foods look like in your diet to lose that next £20, £30?
Wole:A lot of people make nutrition very complex and complicated. Simplify things by looking at what do you like to have for breakfast. Are you the sort of person that you are in a rush in the morning and you wanna get out the door? Can you have a protein smoothie in the morning for breakfast? So I will have, like, a very staple breakfast.
Wole:I eat the same thing every single day for breakfast. That's oatmeal, which is porridge, and eggs every single day. That's all I have. Every single day. That's what I have for breakfast.
Wole:Then when it comes to lunch or I say meal 2, I have 4 to 5 options for protein. That could be some form of a lean meat, like maybe chicken, turkey. Then I have something with fish, which could be, like, either cod or salmon. Then I may add some steak into this. So I have 5 options for protein for that meal too.
Wole:And then for carbohydrates, I'll have again 5 options. It could be like sweet potato, white rice, white potatoes. Sometimes I like having pasta. I'll chop pasta in there, and I love wraps. So I've gotta have some wraps in there for carbohydrates.
Wole:Again, when it comes to vegetables, again, I like salads. I like asparagus. I like green beans. I like, broccoli. So I'll give myself those options, and I'll just cycle those meals throughout the day.
Wole:So, again, example of my day, meal 1 may look like eggs and oaks for breakfast, then meal 2 may look like chicken, sweet potato, and broccoli. Meal 3 may look like cod, a salad, and white rice, And then meal 4, again, may look like I might have some salmon, white potato, and some long stem broccoli. Then meal 5, I may have a steak. I love a good steak. So I may have steak for dinner with a with a salad or something.
Wole:You know, I kind of consume my carbs at early stage of the day. And my final meal of the day, it's normally just protein and vegetables or proteins and salads. So the simpler you keep your nutrition, the better it'll be. And then when it comes to exercise, again, if I had to go look at my exercise programming, I'll look at, okay, what's the most efficient way for me to train? But if I had limitations and days I can train, I'll probably do like a push pull split.
Wole:You know, push pull leg split, which I love. You cover all of the angles you may do. On a push day, you'll do your chest, your shoulders, triceps. And then on a pull day, you might do your, back and biceps. And then on a leg day, you'll hit the the legs.
Wole:It is that simple. You know, if you're limited to only 3 sessions a week, that's what I would do. Number for cardiovascular, low intensity steady state cardio. For me, this is what I found has worked well for me in the in the past. So I'll go back to doing that maybe 20 minutes in the stair master or 20 minutes in the cross trainer, 20 minutes incline walk, and I'll make sure I'm in the caloric deficit.
Wole:Again, caloric deficit, meaning that burning more calories than I'm consuming. I repeat, caloric deficit just means that you're burning more calories than you're consuming. So if your daily expenditure is at 3,000, you wanna comp consume in around 2 and a half 1000, and I'll slowly reduce those calories as I go along. Because a lot of people, they go straight away into low calorie diet, and they can't stick to it. Why?
Wole:Because it's too hard. Start high and reduce your calories by 200 calories every single couple of weeks till you get to a manageable percentage, and that body fat will come up slowly.
Azri:Very, very well said. And I think you touched on a few points that are super key that most people skip on. So first thing is actually optimizing around your schedule and convenience. One thing that people struggle to from what I've seen with clients is actually sticking to something around their busy work life and their schedule. So you know, what more they eat may not be what's right for you.
Azri:What one person eats isn't necessarily what you should be eating. You know, but not everyone does, though, that what you're eating is very much optimized around digestion as well, what actually sits in your stomach well. Right? So do you wanna elaborate a bit more on that?
Wole:Yes. So, like, for example, you know, one of the things that I can elaborate on, I found that when I was eating sweet potato, my oxygen level was really high and then dropping really low. You know, eat sweet potato with my say, for example, with protein and vegetables, I will eat rice, for example. Rice keeps me fuller for longer and the volume of food that you eat as well. I love having salads and vegetables because at the end of the day, they'll add volume to your actual meal and keep you fuller for longer.
Wole:A lot of people, they wanna eat eat high quantities of food without really putting effort in to burn that food off. It's like you're putting fuel in your body, but you're not burning off. So that's why it becomes difficult. So by adding salad into your meal, by adding more vegetables, I always say to my clients, you have unlimited supply of vegetables that you can eat. Mhmm.
Wole:How much vegetable can one can actually eat? Not much. Exactly. Exactly. You know?
Wole:Okay. Give me 500 grams of broccoli on my plate. I'm gonna struggle to finish that. You think you should split your meals up so you're eating maybe every 3 to 4 hours. I'll say 4 hours is the maximum I'll go about consuming something, but 3 to 4 hours is the is what I always say is the sweet spot for our for clients and for myself.
Wole:And a lot of the things that I implement with our clients are things that I've done myself. So I've walked the walk and took the talk, and that's why I'm able to be able to do it.
Azri:I think the biggest thing here that you mentioned is how we can actually make a calorie deficit easy to stick to.
Wole:Exactly.
Azri:One big thing being satiety. How full do these foods actually make you feel so you're not getting cravings and binging at night and telling yourself, you know, I've fallen off again and again and again. Because if you're putting yourself in a position where you are set up to failure, that means there's something going wrong in the back end in the first place. Right? And then they put it down to consistency, motivation, not being able to stick to it when what they actually did was try keto, cut every single food out that they could Exactly.
Azri:Thought they eat.
Wole:Don't get me started on keto.
Azri:Gosh. Yeah.
Wole:And intermittent fasting. You know? Don't get me started.
Azri:Let's go for paleo, carnivore, every fad diet with a fancy name behind it and say that's the reason why I lost fat when it was actually put yourself at a caloric deficit, even if it was a small period of time. Main thing here, I guess, is how we can actually sustainably lose fat without restrictive diets and without, you know, endless cardio having to force yourself into burning 5,000 calories. Right. How have you made that work for you around you know, you have a business. You have your day to day work life as well.
Azri:Have you made that easy for yourself?
Wole:That's a great question. I think, you know, that's quite simple for me to answer because the failure to prepare is preparing to fail. Me, myself, and I, I make bad decision when I'm hungry. Just wanna fill the hole like most people. I'm human.
Wole:So preparation is what I've really, really helped me to sustain it. When I have a busy schedule and I'm not able to cook for myself, I use a food prep company. You know, that really helps me to stay on track and make sure I'm getting my calorie intake in on a day to day basis. So I use a food prep company to help me get myself put together, make sure my my foods are all prepared. So all I've got to do is put it in the microwave, heat it up, and eat it.
Wole:Then I can't make the mistakes. It's impossible to fail when I'm prepared. So preparation is key.
Azri:A big, big factor that does play into all areas of life. And, clearly, you have made some serious progress in your life. And of course, with all the information that you've imparted on us, I really do respect your journey so far in terms of your winning mindset podcast that you should watch. You've just wrapped you've just wrapped one up together. And of course, your personal journey is very, very inspiring.
Azri:So where can they find you, Wole?
Wole:So, you know, my Instagram is just me, wole adesemoye. It's w o l e, adessemoye, a d e s e m o y e, on Instagram, on Facebook, on Twitter, formerly known as X, and, of course, on YouTube. It's just my name, Ollie Addison Way across the social media platform.
Azri:Awesome. The links will be available for you. So thank you so much for joining us. Very much appreciate your time, Ollie.
Wole:Amazing. Thank you very much.
