Rise of the Juggernaut!

The U.K.’s Luke Sandoe Has Big Plans for 2020

By Ron Harris

Luke Sandoe really came on our collective radar in 2019, with a powerhouse showing at the Arnold Classic and again that summer in Tampa. The Olympia didn’t go quite as well. Most bodybuilders would only share so much as to why they didn’t meet their goals, but Luke is an open book. Here, he opens up about how his home life impacted his bodybuilding, and goes into detail about his brutally heavy training style and why it works best for him.

2019 was a hell of a year for you. I consider it your breakout year where you joined the A list.

It was a very up-and-down year. It was the best year I’ve had professionally, and by far the worst year I’ve had personally. That might explain some of the ups and downs. It was my breakout year purely because of my third place at the Arnold, then going head to head with Dexter in Tampa. Those two things were the highlights for me.

Lest we forget, you were third at the Arnold to the same two men who were one and two at the Mr. Olympia, Brandon Curry and William Bonac. That show had a lineup almost as good as the Olympia. Then in Tampa you gave Dexter a real fight, and he’s one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time.

Yeah, he’s pretty good, isn’t he? From my perspective, 2019 ended on a downer at the Olympia, but the year as a whole was incredible. It was a learning experience. I know what I need to fix now, and I have fixed much of it, especially in my personal life. I know what it took to get me to those highs, and I’m mentally ready to get there again.

I never like to pry, but you have to tell me something about what was going on in your personal life.

It was female stuff. I came out of a long-term relationship that had been very good and which I thought would continue for a lot longer. I was happy and thought everything was great. It became rocky for numerous reasons, and it ended badly. As a result, I decided to pack up my life from one county and move to another. Getting to my gym, Muscleworks in Orpington, used to take me 40 to 60 minutes. It could take me as long as four hours to get home, depending on London traffic and how jammed up the bridge over the Thames River was. It took me an average of two to three hours to drive home, and I think only a couple of times I lucked up and got home in an hour. Now that I’ve relocated, I’m eight minutes away. I’m so much happier here. Both for bodybuilding and my personal life, it’s a fresh start for me.

Just out of curiosity, at what point in 2019 did the breakup happen?

It was four days before I left for the Arnold Classic. I was fine for that, but I deteriorated over the next two shows with all the traveling on top. I got better leading up to Tampa, then declined again after that. There was a pattern. I’m in a good place now. Literally, I’m in a new house, which is fucking sweet.

I thought you looked really good in Tampa, for the record.

I didn’t like that look as much. I was drier and harder, but flat and just not round. The Arnold look was better. It was also easier to attain because I started my prep fresh and my body responded well. The body fat just came off. Staying full wasn’t a problem. For Tampa, we wanted to push the condition and I wound up coming in flat.

Was the issue there the fact that you’d done a couple of other shows in between?

I did the Arnold Australia and then the Indy Pro, which took me to mid-April. I took a couple of weeks off and put some weight back on, and then we had to crash diet for Tampa. It was less than four weeks out from Tampa when I realized I wasn’t getting to the Olympia on points. The only show left I could reasonably do was Tampa. It was not an ideal situation.

You said you learned a lot. What do you feel is the winning formula for you?

For my Arnold contest prep, my girlfriend was living with me, and it was great. Life was peaceful and calm. I have that peace again now. I have everything I need, and I can focus, with no distractions. A calm home life is so important. You appreciate that after having been in a rocky situation for a while.

I know when I’ve had fights with my wife and she’s pissed off at me, I get nauseated and have no appetite. Are you like that, or do you pig out on junk food?

I do not want to eat. And then I know my training isn’t as good as a result, and that pisses me off. You can’t ignore a bad home environment. You might still be eating, training and doing your cardio, but if your mind isn’t 100 percent in the game, it just doesn’t all click the way it should.

You’re clearly eating well now, because you’re 300 pounds and leaner than I would expect you to be. I know you’ve been at this weight before, but is this the best condition you’ve ever held at 300?

Yes. I haven’t really tried to push things, either. I eat until I’m full, but I don’t force-feed beyond that point. I’m hammering the training, and I’m not taking the piss with anything else at all. (Note: “taking the piss” is U.K. slang for either making fun of someone or something or taking liberties with no regard for consequences. Luke is using the second meaning here regarding PEDs.) I want to get that muscle from training because it has a different look. You can also bring up body parts that way. The guys who blow up by relying more on the gear don’t really ever seem to improve the areas they need to. My focus this off-season has been to double up on certain areas that need to be better. My hams aren’t shit, but they are just not that good. They look OK from the side, but I want them to be deeper and thicker from the back. I want to bring my chest out more. It’s not as round and thick as my arms and shoulders are. And I’m working on midsection control. If I can bring my waist in an inch, that will make everything else look bigger.

The weights I see you using lately on your IG and your Redcon1 videos are ridiculous. I saw you doing hack squats with 11 plates a side, and you’ve posted video of 455-pound barbell incline presses a few times. Are you stronger now than ever before in your life?

On some lifts, yeah. I’ve modified my training. I look at body parts I need to bring up and see how I can train them a little more often without interfering with other body parts. For example, my lower back would be fucked if I were deadlifting on Wednesday and squatting on both Monday and Friday.

Tell me how you arrange everything that way, please.

As I said, I want to bring up my chest and hams, but I don’t want a whole other chest day or a second hamstring day. So, I do chest and shoulders on Monday, then quads on Tuesday with one hamstring movement. Wednesday is off. On Thursday I do back with Romanian deadlifts. That’s my heavy compound movement for hams for the week. On Friday, I do one bullshit pumping movement for chest to start, then for my triceps workout I do close-grip bench press and dips, as my triceps are already a strong body part, Then I do biceps. Saturday is hamstrings only.

I saw you were out in Florida for the opening of the Redcon1 Gym. What’s that place like?

It’s really fucking cool. It was a posh private gym before, the kind of place with chandeliers in the changing rooms. When Aaron bought it, he decided to turn it into a hardcore bodybuilding gym. He took out all the bullshit stuff and brought in all new equipment. But he kept all the fancy lighting and the amazing bathrooms. It’s like a top-class spa in the bathrooms, and this awesome bodybuilding gym outside. It’s lit up like a nightclub, just so cool.

I assume you took some time off training after the Olympia?

I took about three to four weeks off and did nothing. Then for two weeks, I went to the gym and didn’t do much. From there I started ramping it back up.

You’ve talked about how you want to put on more overall size. Honestly, I think you’re as big as you need to be.

It’s not so much about getting bigger, it’s the illusion of being bigger, if that makes sense. I do want to get bigger overall, which will happen anyway, but I want to add size in those key areas while making my midsection tighter. Size has to be the goal when you train, otherwise, what are you doing?

You did five shows in 2019. Regardless of your issues at home, I feel prep simply takes a bigger toll on guys like you who are a lot bigger and heavier.

It does. When I got home from Tampa, I had jet lag the minute I got into London. I thought I’d be fine in a couple of days. Three weeks later, I still felt the same. Getting out of bed in the morning felt like a chore. Up until Tampa, my whole routine was locked in and I felt great. Then I lost it. There is no real explanation.

There was only six weeks between Tampa and the Mr. Olympia, too.

Nothing felt good. Because Chris was keeping my weight higher as long as possible, I felt groggy. The whole idea sounded great on paper, but it didn’t work the way we’d hoped.

How would you rate your physique at the Olympia?

I wasn’t lean enough. I wasn’t off by a lot, but it was enough. I was watery and had a horrible midsection. 10 days out from the show, I got a stomach bug where I couldn’t eat, and everything was coming out both ends for about a day and a half. After that I felt fine, but my food wasn’t digesting properly. I would eat a meal and it would just sit there in my stomach. That didn’t sort itself out until two weeks after the Olympia.

Which foods does your body seem to handle best?

My carbs for breakfast, and this is all year long, are two bagels. Pasta makes me feel like shit, and I don’t like potatoes. Rice is a staple, and red meat works very well for me.

I saw you doing rows with a 220-pound dumbbell. Did your gym get those just for you?

Yes they did, and there’s a set of 240s coming soon. I have done presses with the 220s also, but never got it on video. James Hollingshead and I press the 200s every week, but we never bother to film it because it’s nothing special for us. This is a problem I have. People love to leave comments like, “you don’t need to be training that heavy, bro.” They don’t understand that a weight that might be very heavy for them may not be heavy for me. And just because they are weaker doesn’t mean I don’t think they train hard. I’m not deliberately trying to use the heaviest weights compared to anyone else. That’s just how James and I train. We use the weights we need to. If we are getting 10 to 12 reps, that weight isn’t super heavy for us. For example, most big guys get anywhere from 315 to 405 on the incline barbell press for four to six reps. We get 10 to 12 with 455. We just happen to be stronger. Even Ronnie Coleman didn’t train very heavy. Mind you, the weights were very heavy, but he usually got 12 reps with them.

Most of those comments are from haters I am sure, but I bet a lot of people are genuinely concerned you’re going to get injured.

Touch wood, I’ve never had a serious training injury. We are sensible. We warm up properly, and we pre-exhaust the shit out of every body part. We do heavy pullovers before back, and on chest we work up to an all-out set of eight to 10 on the pec flye. Even on leg day, before those heavy hack squats, we do leg extensions, leg curls and several sets of leg presses for 15 to 25 reps plus drop sets. We have to do this because we’ve gotten so strong. After all these, we are still getting eight to 10 perfect reps on the heaviest compound movements. People ask, why don’t you just do high reps on hack squats too? Well our bodies may be bigger, but our lungs are not. The oxygen debt on the leg press alone is horrendous. If we did high reps on hacks too, we’d die. People love to tell me that I’m training all wrong. Look, I wouldn’t walk into a car repair shop and tell the mechanic he isn’t fixing the cars the right way. We all train in a way that works best for us. If I trained the way Phil Heath does, I wouldn’t be nearly as big as I am. So, I could say his training is bullshit. But is it? Look at him! Branch Warren’s training sucks, right? But that’s what got him looking the way he did. If something works for me or you, that’s all that matters. Fuck what anyone else says or thinks.

Tell me about 2020. You must be pretty excited. 2019 was good, but you seem to be in a much better position now to take things to the next level. You’re close to the best gym in the U.K., you have Chris Aceto coaching you, you train every day with James Hollingshead, and you have Aaron Singerman and Redcon1 in your corner.

Yes, I feel like I found sixth gear in 2019, and I’m ready to go into seventh gear now. I have zero excuses to fail, and I will not.

I just hope that if you win the British Grand Prix on May 3 and place top five at the Olympia, which I believe you are fully capable of, we will all stop referencing the 2019 Arnold as your best.

I think even if I do surpass that look— and I plan to— it’s still the show everyone will remember. That’s OK with me. But to do as well as you said in 2020 would put me on the A list in my mind at last. I would feel like I really belonged up there. That’s my goal.

IG: @lukesandoe

Luke Sandoe’s Redcon1 Stack
Grunt Essential Amino Acids (EAAs)
Big Noise Pump Formula
Tango Creatine Recovery Solution
Cluster Bomb Intra/Post-workout Carbs
Mental Trigger Focus Formula
 
For more information, visit redcon1.com

Current Training Split

Monday – Chest and shoulders

Tuesday – Quads and one hamstring movement

Wednesday – OFF

Thursday – Back, rear delts, Romanian deadlifts

Friday – Arms and one chest movement

Saturday – Hams

Sunday – OFF

Contest History

2012 UKBFF British South Coast

Junior Winner

2012 British Championships

Second, Intermediate Over 90kg

2015 British Championships

Sixth Place, Super Heavyweight

2016 UKBFF Welsh Championships

Super Heavyweight and Overall

2016 British Championships

Super Heavyweight and Overall

2017 Arnold Classic

Eighth Place

2017 Vancouver Pro

13^th Place

2018 Arnold Classic Australia

Sixth Place

2018 California Pro

15^th Place

2018 Indy Pro

Third Place

2019 Arnold Classic

Third Place

2019 Arnold Classic Australia

Fifth Place

2019 Indy Pro

Fourth Place

2019 Tampa Pro

Second Place

2019 Mr. Olympia

11^th Place

Ron Harris got his start in the bodybuilding industry during the eight years he worked in Los Angeles as Associate Producer for ESPN’s “American Muscle Magazine” show in the 1990s. Since 1992 he has published nearly 5,000 articles in bodybuilding and fitness magazines, making him the most prolific bodybuilding writer ever. Ron has been training since the age of 14 and competing as a bodybuilder since 1989. He lives with his wife and two children in the Boston area. Facebook Instagram

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