November 2018 23Advantage
STAY AHEAD OF THE GAME
IT’S A ROUND 1PM in Sydney’s
well-to-do suburb of Paddington
when Adam MacDougall sees a
chance to walk the talk. This Men’s
Health photo shoot is moving
someplace else so we all start
ambling up a steep rise towards
the new location.
“Hang on,” says MacDougall,
pivoting sharply. “I’ll put these
clothes back in the car and run
up after you.”
And run he does. Because that’s
how MacDougall trains nowadays.
The grinding, interminable workout
is a relic of his footballing past. Now
he grabs opportunities to fold bursts
of activity into daily living. To that
end an alarm sounds on his phone
every hour. “It’s my reminder to get
up and move,” he says. “I might drop
for a set of push-ups. Or I might walk
to the shops to get milk.” Add those
auxiliaries to a daily 10-minute
workout and MacDougall reckons
he’s getting all the huff and puff he
needs to stay lean and hard.
But there’s a catch, right? He
could no longer be the tackle-
busting beast he was for Newcastle,
NSW and Australia? “I’m lighter,”
he concedes – by about 12 kilograms.
“But I’m also fitter and healthier
than I ever was as a player.”
Now vacuuming a bang-for-
your-buck piccolo in a busy café,
McDougall revisits his playing days
with a sometimes regretful air.
“After a training session it wouldn’t
have been uncommon for me to eat
half a kilogram of lollies and chase
those with three litres of Gatorade,”
he says. “It did the trick for recovery,
but it couldn’t have been great for
your health.”
This much is undeniable: he’s
richer than he ever was playing
foot y. As the force behind the
meal-replacement drink The MAN
Shake, MacDougall is raking in
the bucks. Last financial year he
moved millions of units at $45 a pop
in Australia, New Zealand, China
and Iran, while a
spinoff protein bar is
rolling off a Brisbane
conveyor belt in
similar numbers.
His success
has turned him
into a 43-year-old
philanthropist:
he recently gave a
quarter of a million
dollars to brain-
cancer charity
the Mark Hughes
Foundation. Meanwhile, his books
The Man Plan and The 10-Minute
Man have made him a bestselling
author, and his Health Hacker
podcasts a seemingly omniscient
voice on all matters wellbeing.
Not bad for a guy dubbed “MadDog” by his Newcastle Knights
captain. As a guide to character, the
moniker was always misleading,
says MacDougall. Andrew Johns
didn’t call him that because
MacDougall was unhinged. “He
called me that because of my
intensity,” says MacDougall. “On
and off the field I gave 100 per cent.”
The MacDougall story is a
lesson in productivity. Why pour all
your energies into one endeavour
when you can have something else
worthwhile bubbling on the side?
Why waste an hour meandering
through a workout when upping the
urgency could have
it wrapped in 10
minutes for the same
result? Why cook an
elaborate breakfast
when you can chug a
shake? The lazy man’s
hero? The everyman’s
inspiration might be
closer to the mark.
If you had half
MacDougall’s verve
you’d be prone to
bouncing off walls,
which is what he was doing in
Hawaii recently when a hurricane
confined him to a hotel room with
his kids for 48 hours. “There was
a hurricane outside and a cyclone
inside,” he says.
Jovial yet intense, MacDougallDiscover how former rugby league player Adam “Mad Dog” MacDougall
made a fortune and got in his best-ever shape by avoiding the hard yardsTOP DOG
BY DANIEL WILLIAMS // PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVE WHEELERMUSCLE HACK
You can build strapping legs
with bodyweight squats by
taking the quads to failure.
But the reps required could
be monstrous.
“So pre-fatigue the muscle
before each set by sprinting
on the spot for 30-60
seconds,” says MacDougall.