Paul Wallace's 90 day transformation

Fast car fanatic Paul Wallace, also known as Super Cars of London, has taken on the challenge of a lifetime and, nope, it doesn't involve any kind of vehicle! Venturing completely out of his comfort zone, Paul is taking on a 90 day challenge, aiming to be the fittest version of himself, physically and mentally.

And, where do we come in, you ask? Well, Grenade® will be supporting Paul every step of the way, offering nutritional support via our sports range and hooking Paul up with some of the best personal trainers and fitness experts in the game - all part of Team Grenade®, of course!

Want to know more about Paul's transformation? Well, you're in the right place! Be sure to keep your eye on this post, where we'll be sharing 'diary entry' updates on Paul's progress, what he's loved and what he's found tough. We'll also be sharing Paul's transformation photos, workouts and nutritional tips and tricks, so if you're also taking on your very own transformation, you might learn a thing or two! Click below to read Paul's updates!

Pre-transformation: An Intro to Paul

"For 11 years, my life has revolved heavily around cars. From £1,000 sheds to £3,000,000 gold plated Swedish hyper-cars. I’ve driven through 30+ countries and have covered countless miles. It’s consumed my life. I love almost everything about it. But there’s just one problem - I’m ALWAYS sitting down.

Quick back story: for more than half my life, I’ve played football, tennis, competed in athletics and have dabbled in gym based exercise so I’m naturally athletic, but my work life has fully taken over, and I’ve realised in recent years that I’m not getting any younger, and this lifestyle isn’t sustainable. Then I discovered Grenade®, in almost every petrol station I visited. I soon became a huge fan, and a large consumer of Grenade® Carb Killa® bars and their shakes. They kept me going whilst I was on the road. Sitting in a car driving, sitting in a hotel room editing my videos or lying down in my bed catching up on sleep.

Fast forward to today, I was recently (proudly) announced as the newest member of Team Grenade® and ready to kick-start my 2020 in the only way Grenade® know how - a 90 day transformation. But there’s a twist. Instead of just lifting heavy weights, I’m going to be exploring the art of being a Life Athlete. How to work smarter, make my days more efficient, smile more, laugh better and become an all round, more versatile warrior ready for whatever life throws at me.

I’m going to update the team at Grenade® as I go so feel free to check in on this blog post and ask a question and/ or join me! I’ll be sharing easy and accessible workouts, handpicking my favourite gym moves and hopefully be providing some real life ups and downs to pursuing this dream of mine. For now, I hope this brief intro has painted a picture of where I’m starting, and where I want to be in 90 days. So I’ll stop typing, and get myself ready for my next gym session! See you there!"

Day 30 update

"I’m currently writing this, legs resting up on the sofa after a pretty full-on day. My watch is saying I’ve burnt 1,400 calories and exercised for 118 minutes. 7 kilometres walked through London, a 14 minute, 3 kilometre run and a 25 minute high intensity circuit. Safe to say I am not only taking my 90 day Grenade® transformation challenge seriously, but I am loving every minute of it too!!

Looking back to my first few days and my workout with Elliot, I was definitely at a very exciting point of the learning curve. I was a sponge, soaking up every nugget of knowledge and grabbing every bit of advice I could. I still feel incredibly low down on this learning curve but I’m making progress. There is so much information out there, it’s hard to focus your perspective onto something that is exactly tailored to your body, mentality and style of training.

However, I’m progressing in the gym, I’m running further and faster, can feel my leg days paying off and I’m definitely lifting heavier weights, maintaining my form and focusing on disciplining my rests in-between sets. Combine this with my supplements, I find myself reaching for the ‘Cookie Chaos’ Hydra 6 Protein so often to feed my muscles. Having the support from Team Grenade® has played a massive part in this journey so far too. I love touching base with everyone, discussing my progress, sharing my excitement on my latest PB or even just asking on something random in the hope I can finesse my transformation.

I also really enjoyed reading through hundreds of questions to do with my 90 day transformation via Instagram Q&A’s from you guys. I’m loving seeing so many people get inspired from my transformation progress and it motivates me to learn more in the hope I can pass on my knowledge and help people overcome their gym fears and start making those lifestyle changes towards a more healthy one. Feel free to direct message me on Instagram (@WallacePJW) if you have any questions. We’re a third of the way through my 90 day challenge and I’m already excited to see how far I can go, and how far I can push myself!"

Day 40 update

"This week was my first REAL test when it comes to "How dedicated am I to make a change?". I was travelling to Malaga, Spain for a 5 day video shoot with a huge automotive manufacturer. I had a 19 page script to learn and 5:30am call times, with 7pm wrap times - and that was if I was lucky. On top of this, I had team meetings in the evening, plus dinner and somehow still needed to find time to learn the next day’s script AND get a workout in.

What made the entire week even more challenging was the hotel I was staying in didn’t have gym facilities. Here I am, in full panic mode that this is the week I fall off. The week my momentum crumbles. I was determined not to let this happen and found out I had to get creative QUICK! Let me take you through my week of workouts in the South of Spain, all with the help of my rucksack.

Day 1

I managed to get a quick 3 km run in, followed by pull ups, press ups and tricep dips along the beach front. The weather was perfect. Late-teens, sun beaming down. It really was perfect to work out! I looked around and got a sense of just how lucky these guys were that lived here and how normal it was for them to pop to the beach after work for a game of volleyball.

Day 2

This is where things rapidly went downhill. The weather shifted to a much colder temperature; combine that with a later finish, I found myself in my hotel room, pitch black outside and not many options. I filled my rucksack up with shoes, clothes and my camera equipment including my laptop to weight it and begin a full body circuit, treating my rucksack as a lovely 10kg dumbbell. It worked a treat!

Day 3

Now in a rhythm, excited by my rucksack discovery, I couldn’t wait to push myself, find more weight to put in my bag and make myself work even harder. My body and brain were shattered but I somehow found motivation in this new creation. I emptied the contents of my mini bar fridge into my bag and all of a sudden had a 15-17kg weight ready to go. It’s safe to say I destroyed a leg session!

Day 4 & 5

I was now well in the pattern, had discovered this new way to train but still managed to get 3 km runs in both days here as well. Time was on my side but I could feel my body screaming for a rest. I wanted to get Thursday and Friday in so that I could successfully complete the week and rest on the weekend. I hit a 25 minute full body circuit each day playing with the amount of water bottles I had in my bag. I was telling my friends about this genius move and was more ready than ever to hit my 45 day transformation goal. Half way there!

What I learnt this week was that there really is no excuses when it comes to training. As long as you’re in the right frame of mind, you can get a workout in anywhere. It kept my brain going, it pushed my body through the tiredness and I really felt a sense of achievement as I reached the end of the week. Which, of course, released a great feeling of completion, one which I took home and enjoyed all weekend! I’m now back in the UK for a short period before I head off to Dubai on my next adventure. Luckily, the hotel has a decent gym which isn’t nearly as exciting as lifting my rucksack for a week, but anyway! We move on and keep pushing!"

Day 45 update

SOL in Dubai: Training Program

What used to be a reason not to train in my head, is now a habit, and a challenge that wherever I travel to, I will always find a way to exercise and stay on the move. Last year I racked up many air miles, spent hundreds of hours at airports and always found myself choosing my bed or the bar over a gym session. Here I am, straight off the back of my hardest week training in Malaga, in Dubai ready for another week of mental games. When the weather is this good, it’s hard not to lounge by the pool. But an even better feeling is lounging by the pool after an intense gym circuit created in your head on the flight over.

Here we are, 3,500 miles away from home. I took an overnight flight, taking off at 9pm and landing 7am local time. Upon landing, we hit 4 locations around Dubai for a pretty intense photo-shoot session, wrapping at about 7pm. I explored the gym facilities and was overall pretty happy with the equipment. Usually in the Middle East, hotels are equipped with awesome gyms so I was always confident I would have everything I needed. What I really needed was energy! Whilst I could pick up Grenade® Carb Killa® bars from my local pharmacy across the street, Grenade Energy® was hard to find. I realised at the end of day 1 in Dubai that my worries and challenges came not from the desire of training, but making sure my body was properly fuelled and ready to train.

The travel lifestyle is a lot of fun, but requires a lot of work. And it’s hands down incredibly tiring. Some of my most active days through my Apple Watch are travel days. If you’re travelling through time zones too, it’s very easy to throw your body off with random meals, snacks and sugary treats. Maintaining a strict diet is impossible. And I’ve always accepted that. But that didn’t stop me from enjoying the challenge of finding local restaurants and food outlets to find my protein. I’ve consumed a lot of Lebanese meals, a lot of veg, the odd burger but still made sure no matter what I ate, I always trained. Combining the above with a lot of water and cutting back on soft drinks, I made sure I put my body in the best position possible (without my Grenade® supplements at home) to work out.

Whilst I’m out here in Dubai, I’ll be celebrating 50% completion of my 90 day transformation, which just so happens to be the 14th February. Valentine’s Day! I’m away from my girlfriend but still managed to spend the day and evening with my second love. My health. I’ve ignored it for far too long, and am so grateful to have acknowledged this when I have. I feel proud to be so invested in this transformation challenge, and am constantly motivating myself to push harder, life heavier and train for longer. I’m picking up new techniques and training methods and have definitely seen a change in my physique, and felt a change mentally. I’m now pushing to cut as much as possible in this second half of my transformation. Focusing on cardio and diet, making sure that I minimalism the amount of muscle I lose whilst cutting. I’m pushing myself further than I’ve ever gone before, and I’m loving every minute of it. I’m fascinated by my own endurance and will continue to push every day whilst I’m here in Dubai, and will push even harder on my return. My schedule looks pretty clear between now and the 1st April so it’s the home straight now! Can’t wait to share more images as we get closer to the 90 day finish line!!

Day 75 update

I just want to start by saying: no injury has stopped me from training and no work commitment has meant I take the day off. And no virus is going to stop me complete my 90 day transformation!!

I’m following a bunch of great fitness pages on Instagram (mostly Team Grenade®) and getting a whole load of ‘home workout’ inspiration for when the day comes and we’re all locked in our homes! Anyway, this week I wanted to fine tune my technique. Form is the most important part of training to avoid injury and I take it super seriously. I met up with Nathan Williams, who has been a personal trainer as long as I’ve been Youtube’ing (11 years), so we instantly had a mutual respect for sticking at something we’re passionate about. Nathan put me through a fairly rigorous workout, but we spent time on finessing my technique and form to really isolate muscles and push new breathing patterns to maximise efficiency in the gym.

The 3 key points I took away from my session with Nathan were:

1) Warm up is important

It’s very easy to get in and out of the gym. I am the laziest person when it comes to warm up and cool down. It’s boring, low tempo, not very exciting and can sometimes hurt. So I usually skip it. MY BIGGEST MISTAKE EVER! Nathan made sure I was ready for this session. He took me through a full body warm up which to be honest, last summer I would have classed as a workout! I felt nimble, flexible and more mobile. Ready to work out and my muscles felt fresh. Biggest learning curve for me: never underestimate a good warm up!!

2) Monitor rest

I do think this depends on your goals and objectives with the gym or training in general. Sometimes it’s about hanging out with friends, but for me, I didn’t realise the importance of monitoring your rest before picking the weights back up. Nathan was keen to point this out to build on your sets! We did a lot of super-sets purely because we were limited on time (and I was filming), so Nathan was really hot on making sure my sets were consistent, just like my rest periods. It’s sessions like this that make me wish I had someone like Nathan at every session. What I’ve found over the 90 days, and meeting so many members of team Grenade®, is just how much information and knowledge you can have on training to manipulate to fit into your body and training style. I have a long way to go!

3) Push Yourself

Training alone is tough, especially to build up motivation to get that last rep in. I always finish each set on a ‘rep to failure’ mindset. Rather than count, I just try and push my body until it can’t go again. However, training with Nathan, I learnt that even when you think you can’t lift anymore, your mentality can squeeze an extra rep ALWAYS!! Obviously the circumstances might mean it’s unwise to push for one more set, but definitely don’t feel intimidated to ask someone to help spot your set. That way you can maximise your workout.

Training with Nathan taught me so much, and was perfect timing. The first 60-70 days have been about building a foundation of knowledge, and physical ability, to then be able to fine tune and finesse my workouts for the final last 2 weeks. Being able to train at theGrenade® Gym meant we were certainly not limited to equipment. We had a great session, finished with a brutal body conditioning circuit which really got my heart pumping. You’ll be able to see the full workout on my Youtube channel in the coming days but, for now, I hope this blog might help you to push further towards your training goals!

The Finish Line