It’s difficult to think of many competitors
from the Emerald Isle who have forged
reputations beyond the Irish Sea. In fact,
until last year none had ever even become
a UKBFF British champion.
It is partly due to geography and
politics: the UKBFF British Championships
cater only for Irish competitors from
Northern Ireland, which is part of the
United Kingdom (the event should actually
be called the UK Championships). Also,
Ireland has traditionally been a stronghold
of other bodybuilding federations so the
UKBFF talent pool has been small,
although this has changed recently, as the
annual Northern Ireland Championships in
Belfast goes from strength-to-strength.
Stephen Graham, the man who
promotes the Belfast event, for several
years carried the torch as Northern
Ireland’s leading bodybuilder. Graham had
the distinction of winning the first ever
Amateur Olympia in 2011 but he never won
the UKBFF British Championships. That
barrier remained until last year when
Davey Henderson won the under-80 kg
middleweight title in Nottingham. At just
30 years old, he could go on to become
one of Ireland’s most celebrated
competitors.BOXER TO
BODYBUILDER
Standing 5-ft-6 tall, at a stage weight of
78 kg, Henderson is no mass monster. In
his pre-bodybuilding days he was a
whippet-thin 68 kg amateur boxer.
Inspired by Arnold Schwarzenegger, he
started working out a decade ago and
got serious five years later. “I went to a
bodybuilding show and said ‘I want to do
that’,” he recalls. “Until then I was just
going through the motions.”
Henderson relished the challenge: he
won the beginners’ category at his first
show in 2012 and the following year won
the Northern Irish and British under-80
kg intermediate titles. He took 2014 off
to add size but the plan backfired. “I got
too fat,” he says bluntly. Consequently
he managed only fourth in the
middleweights at his first British finals in- “I got too far behind with my diet
and ended up losing too much muscle,”
he says.
To avoid making the same mistake last
year, he gave himself six months to dial in
his condition from an offseason high of 97
kg. “I did everything slowly and had a
cheat day once a week up until the show,”
he says. “I was on 3,000 calories a day
right to the end so I still had lot of energy.”
Henderson was up against 20 other
middleweights in Nottingham, including
defending champion Stephen
Chandiwana, but was the standout pick.
His sharp conditioning brought out his
strong back and hamstrings in the key
rear poses. What was it like when his
name was announced as the winner?
“Unreal,” he says. “I had me a big,
massive yell.”
After conquering the United Kingdom,
he is now preparing to take on the
continent’s best at the Arnold Classic
Europe in Spain in September. Long
term, he has a five-year plan to move up
to the 90 kg light-heavyweights.
“Everything I have is fairly symmetrical.
The only thing I need to do is build more
muscle everywhere,” he says. Whatever
he achieves from here, he can always
look back with pride on creating a slice
of Irish history.
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