Eacock Twins Interview

Thanks for joining us today guys. Tell our readers who you are and what you do.

Hi Guys, we are Jason and Kristian Eacock (A.K.A The Eacock Twins). We have both been training for nearly 8 years and currently own and run our own gym. The gym has been successfully running now for over 18 months.

You guys own a gym, tell us about the step from training into a gym, to starting your own.

Funnily enough we both graduated university with first class degrees in Engineering. As you can imagine people tend to look at us like we have two heads when we tell them that.

So it seems weird to think we went from that to owning a gym, but training is our life and one day we just decided that it was time to turn our passion into something we could do for the rest of our lives. So we put our engineering careers on hold and decided to open a gym, we have never looked back since.

Obviously starting any business is a daunting task, however when you are as passionate about fitness as we are most of it becomes second nature. As you can imagine between us we have spent our fair share of time in and around many gyms, so we already had a fairly clear idea of exactly what we wanted to achieve and what was needed to be done to make it successful.

What were the biggest pitfalls or problems you faced when starting up your gym?

The hardest thing in our opinion is, getting your name and brand out there to let people know what you have to offer. No matter how good your facilities are or how extensive your knowledge is if no one knows you exist then it’s difficult to get knew members and help them achieve their goals.

Obviously opening a gym involves a large amount of investment and there is always pressure to make sure you gym succeeds, but we have found that having an extensive knowledge base and experience has allowed us to offer services that other gyms can’t and therefore the gym sells itself. Never underestimate good customer service and word of mouth.

Was there any equipment you felt were must haves for your own gym?

We are constantly upgrading and love re-investing our money into new top of the range equipment. Subsequently we have built up a large variety of equipment to suit many different types of training. Despite this we believe that there are certain pieces of equipment that are essential for a gym. These include mainly basic pieces of equipment which offer a wide range of use, such as:

• Power Racks
• Lifting platforms
• Dual Adjustable Pulleys (DAP) / Cable Cross Over
• And plenty of Barbells, Dumbell, Kettle Bells and Benches

All this equipment allows any athlete no matter how experienced to completely train their entire body through compound lifts such as squats, deadlifts overhead press and more. Cardio is an important part of most gyms but some of the most effective cardio workouts are high intensity circuits using just a bar, kettle bells and a bit of free space.

Ironically when you look at the price of setting up a new gym, some of this essential equipment is the cheapest, so there is no excuse not to have it.

What is the best and worst parts about running your own gym?

The best part about running our own gym is the lifestyle, our hobby has literally become a full time career, and sometimes it almost seems like a dream. Getting out of bed in the morning is easy when you know that you get to do what you love every day. It’s good because we can focus much more of our time to our own fitness goals even when we are at work.

The worst part is trying to keep our workouts short and intense, when you train in your own gym you find people are constantly asking for advice, but it’s ok because we love it!

How did you guys get started training?

We both started training when we were 17 years of age, we began training at home and within 6 months we had built an entire gym from sectional garage pieces and kitted it out with some pretty awesome equipment.

We had things such as; Squat stands, Olympic bars, 45 degree leg press, over 500kg of weights plates and more. We hit it hard from the get go and have never looked back since!

What was your inspiration for stepping into the weight room?

Our Dad has been into training since before we were born and therefore it was always around us from a young age. We were always very active as kids, but were always small for our age and didn’t really start from a “strong” base. This is what drove us even harder to push to where we wanted to be. We hope we are proof that anyone can achieve a goal no matter where they start from.

At what point did it turn from hobby to lifestyle?

This happened pretty quickly, we knew almost from day one that we would never want to stop.

You’re part of the SCI-MX athlete team. We have also interviewed Daniel Ventura. Tell us about how you became involved with them.

We have always loved their products and could have only dreamed that one day we would be working with them. This year we decided to hit up Body Power as we had always had other commitments that had prevented us from going.

We heard they were doing a competition to take on new athletes and just thought we would give it a go. We never imagined we would be where we are today, but it’s been amazing and we feel it’s such a big achievement to be a part of their Team.

Talk us through your training split.

Over the years we have tried every training split and program going. We tend to change things up regularly, but one or our favourite splits at the moment is:

Day One: Chest & Back (Power)

Day Two: Shoulder & Arms (Giant Sets)

Day Three: Legs, Calves & Abs (Power)

Day Four: Day Off

Day Five: Chest & Back (Giant Sets)

Day Six: Shoulder & Arms (Power)

Day Severn: Legs, Calves & Abs (Giant Sets)

If we are in the last stages of our cut, then we tend to keep the power days down to one session every two weeks per muscle group.

How do you implement cardio into your regime?

We aren’t huge believers in using cardio as a primary basis for fat loss, this is always based around diet. However, we do both utilise cardio as a way of keeping fit and also a way of manipulating the caloric intake and macros in our diet.

Sometimes we will utilise high intensity weight training as a way of initiating fat burn while still stimulating an anabolic response, to promote both fat loss and a hypertrophic stimulus.

Do you do it year round, or just when cutting?

For fitness purposes we try to utilise cardio year round, whether this is from your usual cardio machines or other more inventive ways. This is primarily for the health benefits associated with increased cardiovascular health, but we both make sure to regulate our calories and macronutrient ratios based on the amount of cardio we are doing.

We tend to stay in good shape all year round so we don’t necessarily have cutting periods, we both try to regulate our body fat on a week by week basis and therefore are constantly moderating our macro’s to suit.

What is the one exercise you would attribute to providing you the biggest gains?

Deadlift definitely! We are both naturally good deadlifters and there is nothing better than moving ridiculously heavy weights off the floor.

It’s the ultimate compound movement (along with squats) and hits everything from the entire posterior chain to the core and even traps.

Talk us through your diet. What type of macros do you aim for?

We both currently follow flexible dieting/IIFYM, and therefore food choices change meal to meal. We tend to follow a High Carb, Moderate Protein, Low/Moderate Fat diets.

Kristian is currently reverse dieting and his, macros are as follows 500c/225p/55f, his weight is stable and is maintaining his body fat. While cutting he will keep his carbohydrates at around 250-300 at a minimum. We are both believers of high carbohydrate diets for the following reasons:

Low carbohydrate diets can decrease T3 levels, disrupt cortisol to testosterone ratios, interfere with hormone balance, contribute to muscle loss, and prevent muscle gains.

I diet on high carbs to. I have a lot of ‘experts’ in youtube comments tell me im eating too many carbs, but it works for me. What is a typical day of eating for you both?

It changes every single day depending on how we are training and what we fancy. We both track our macronutrients pretty strictly so as long as it falls within our requirements then we can eat it.

This usually includes foods such as:

Chicken, Egg whites, Whey, Tuna, Rice, Potatoes, Sweet Potatoes, Oats etc. We are both cereal lovers so eat a lot of the stuff too.

What supplements do you use?

The basis of our supplement use has always been fundamentally just Whey and occasionally Creatine. We have recently started using pre-workout, we had never really been big pre-workout guys, until we tried SCI-MX’s X-PLODE HARDCORE™. That stuff really helps you push yourself and gives you that extra drive in the gym.

Which of the SCI-MX products is your favourite?

We both love SCI-MX’s ULTRA WHEY PROTEIN™, and we seem to get through tubs of the stuff! As far as taste goes the AMINO INTRA RIPPEDCORE™ is phenomenal! We honestly don’t know how it tastes so good, we’ve tried so many aminos over the years and not one has ever tasted good, aminos are renowned for tasting bad, but this stuff is so good, it’s addictive!

Check out our range of SCI-MX DISCOUNT CODES

How effective are fat burning supplements in your opinion?

We believe that fat burn is primarily due to training intensity and diet as a whole! However, no one can deny that a good fat burner can definitely up the ante when it comes to trying that little bit harder! When used as an additive we believe it has its place, even if for some people it may just give them a physiological edge to push that little bit harder or eat that little bit cleaner!

How do you factor cheat meals into your diet?

We definitely wouldn’t call them “cheat meals”. More like strategic carb re-feed meal/days. However due to the high carb diets we tend to follow we generally don’t have a huge amount of these days/meals.

What are some of the biggest mistakes you made when first starting out?

We’d say the biggest mistake was underestimating how important a diet really is! Another big mistake was trying to put on too much weight! Due to being very small we believed we needed to put on as much weight as possible on the scales. It didn’t take us long to realise this isn’t the case. As a general rule we follow the mirror. LEAN IS MEAN!

What advice would you give to people just starting to workout?

Definitely enjoy yourself. The biggest reason for people stopping the gym is they get bored. If you stick to it with consistency and put in the effort you will see the results, so why not make it fun at the same time!

What projects have you got coming up?

At the moment we are in the process of moving/upgrading our gym for a second time to a larger facility with much more equipment! So most other things have been put on the back burner for the time being.

We are still training as hard as physically possible but have had to prioritise to make sure the new gym can be everything we have always wanted to provide to our members.

Where can our readers follow you?

You can follow us on:

Facebook – Eacock Twins – https://www.facebook.com/EacockTwins

Twitter: @eacocktwins1, @KristianEacock, @JasonEacock

Instagram: kristianeacock, jasoneacock