64 JUNE 2017

T

Covered in glory:

Robards’ path to MH

world domination.

From top: MH Croatia,

USA, Spain, South

Africa, Russia, Turkey

and Germany.

im Robards is sitting on a rolling

mound of grass behind the surf club

at Sydney’s idyllic Freshwater beach.

Despite the languid setting, his

face carries a grimace. The reason

for the anguish? He’s recalling an

injury that occurred earlier last

year that could easily have derailed

everything he’s been working

towards and threatened one of his

most precious assets: his body.

It was April, and Robards was

at the outdoor gym down at Bondi

Beach doing one of the eye-popping

calisthenics moves for which he’s

become famous – a back lever

with his arms supinated. Maybe

he wasn’t warmed up enough, he

says, or perhaps he’d done too many

“push” movements before going

into a pulling one. Whatever it was,

the result wasn’t pretty. He tore his

biceps muscle clean off the bone.

“It was excruciating,” says

‘‘I’m cover-model

ready because my

body is a reflection

of my lifestyle’’

TIM ROBARDS WEARS SPEEDO SHORTS

http://www.mens-health.com.my 65

Robards, who in the past 15 months

has appeared on the cover of more

than 10 international editions of

MH. “I started seeing grey, then

I started seeing black, and that’s

when I knew I was going into shock.

I decided to lie down because I was

thinking, ‘This is getting serious –

you better get yourself on the ground

or you’re going to hit it pretty soon.’”

By any measure, it was a horrific

injury. Told he wouldn’t be doing

chin-ups for 18 months, right as his

bodyweight training programme,

The Robards Method, was getting off

the ground, he set to work, furiously

researching the injury and drawing

on his own expert knowledge of

rehabilitation. Crucially, he never

stopped exercising, hitting spin

classes and doing more leg work, as

he assiduously worked through his

rehab exercises. “I was exercising

more with my arm in a sling than ever

before,” he chuckles. He was back on

the bars within three months.

“It was a great challenge for

my mindset,” the 35-year-old

chiropractor says now. “I could

have gone: ‘Right, that’s it, I’m going

to give up now, I’m going to stop

working out, eat crap.’” Instead he

went the other way. “I thought I’ll

use this as a challenge, and see how

my body reacts and adapts.”

In Robards’ carefully calibrated

response to the setback you’ll find

the keys to constructing a physique

that snaps back into shape like

an elastic band, regardless of the

directions in which you stretch

it or the adversity that confronts

it. The response also offers an

insight into just how he’s become

an MH favourite all over the world,

bombarding newsstands everywhere

from Sao Paulo to St Petersburg,

despite some seismic shifts in his

personal life and fundamental

changes in the way he trains.

Whether you aspire to cover

model-grade abs or just want to add

some lean muscle to your frame in

time for beach season, in Robards’

rarefied fitness journey, you’ll find

the tools you need to build a body

you can bank on.

STRIVE FOR

CONSISTENCY

A little known fact: when Men’s

Health approaches various athletes

and actors about appearing on our

cover, it’s not always on our terms.

Sometimes we have to wait for the

star to get in shape – “just give me a

month to get ripped” is a common

refrain. With Robards though, we

could call him Monday morning and

he’d be ready to go that afternoon.

The reason is his consistency.

The 7-2-1 Diet

Whether it’s in fitness, health or anything else, a new

habit is unlikely to stick unless it’s underpinned by

structure. This is where a system, like Robards 7-2-1

approach to eating can help. It breaks down as follows:

70 % 20 % 10 %

Clean

“It’s not full

paleo, it’s more

ancestral eating,

lots of whole

foods,” Robards

explains.

Sensible

“If I want to have

my comfort

foods, pizza,

pasta, I’ll just try

and balance

them out with

extra vegies .”

Anything

goes

“If that means

a glass of wine

each night or

dessert at the

in-laws’ house,

I’ll do that.”

“I’m never not ready to shoot,”

he says. “My philosophy around

training and fitness means that I

don’t fluctuate, I don’t put on or take

off mass just to look a certain way.

I’m basically cover-model ready

and that’s because my body is a

reflection of my lifestyle.”

Consistency is also why he looks

as good, if not better now, than

when his modelling career began

nine years ago. And why he can

absorb an injury like the one he

suffered last year without blowing

out. “A healthy-looking body is not

something you need to peak for one

month a year, and then the rest of the

year you let go to rubbish,” he says.

It’s week in, week out, independent

of season or circumstance.

Chipping away every day to reach

a goal may take longer than a monk-

like month of extreme shredding,

Robards concedes, but it means

that when you do reach your target

weight or desired shape, it’s a lot

easier to stay there.

“A lot of guys go super-hard and

restrictive to cut down, and they

can’t maintain that so they feel like

they’re failing, and then they go the

opposite way and just pile it all back

on,” he says. You may be familiar

with the boom-bust cycle. Achieve

consistency in your training,

Robards says, and your body will

always come in right on budget.