Natural Competitor Adam Burns Talks With Extremebodyfit.com

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When and Why Did You Start Bodybuilding ?

I’ve been interested in bodybuilding since I was a kid.  I don’t remember the first time I thought bodybuilding was cool, but as long as I can remember I have always been an Arnold fan.  I do however remember when I decided I wanted to get into the scene.  I was in seventh grade at a Portland Blackhawks hockey game.  My mom got mine and my brother’s attention and told us to look behind us.  There were the two most massive men I had ever seen.  It turns out it was pro bodybuiler Dave Hughes and one of his buddies.  I talked to him for a little while and he told me to look for him in the next Ironman Mag.  Of course I did and there he was.  Ever since then I was hooked.  As a child growing up my parents were never actually all that supportive of what I wanted to do.  In fact when I started lifting weights when I was 14, they tried to discourage me from lifting too much and told me I was too young.  I worked out off and on through the years then joined the USAF in 2003.  The careerfield I went into, TACP, was highly demanding, both physically and mentally.  I was calling in airstrikes from battle and coordinating all sorts of aerial assets, from jets and helicopters, to drones and artillery.  We trained extremely hard.  We would do timed ruck marches where we would carry packs of 60-100 pounds for 12 miles with a time standard of 3-4 hours depending on the variables.  Of course this plus all the running we did didn’t allow me to put enough food down to actually put on much muscle.  Although, during my first deployment I no longer had the massive amounts of PT keeping my calorie expenditure so high, and now that I was able to fully dedicate myself to my lifting I hit a growth spurt.  I left for Iraq weighing a mere 135 pounds and returned seven months later weighing 170.  The change was absolutely amazing, to my friends, my family, and myself.  If I wasn’t hooked before, I definitely was now.  Throughout the rest of my military career I was not known anymore as “the little guy”.  I had become the person I’d always wanted to be, the big dude people wanted to talk to about fitness, the one that inspired others, and that people came to for advice.  Unfortunately due to my military operations tempo and the occasional injury I see-sawed back and forth.  On my third deployment, this time to Afghanistan I was blown through a door while calling in an airstrike while being engaged in a fire fight.  After regaining consciousness and finishing out what had to be done I realized that my back was in a pretty bad way.  Unfortunately I was only a month into my six month deployment.  I told my buddies around me, but made sure not to let my leadership get wind of my injury, so as not to be pulled from the line and shipped back to the states to heal.  There was no way I was leaving my friends.  Unfortunately I didn’t understand the extent of my injury, and my back declined greatly over the next five months.  This was probably due, at least in part, to the miles of patrolling the mountains of the Afghan/Pakistan border with a full combat load plus all my equipment.  By the time I got back to the states my back was in a pretty bad way.  To make a long story a little less long, about six months after I returned I was told I needed a two level spinal fusion at the base of my spine (L4-S1).  I was forced to retire completely from the air force and told I couldn’t lift more than 35 pounds and that I was not to do any sort of running or high impact exercise ever again since the doctors were unsure of how long the lifespan of the fusion would be.  I couldn’t believe that I was being forced back into being the little guy again.  Six months after my surgery, against all orders I started lifting again.  Running was out of the question, but honestly I never liked it anyway.  It was my mission to prove the USAF and my doctor wrong, and show everyone just how much I really could accomplish.  Within 18 months of my surgery I had competed in my first physique competition and afterward successfully reached a new personal record of 186 pounds.  My first contest was mainly to gain the knowledge and experience of how things operated.  Now exactly two years after my surgery, I will compete again to try to win the men’s physique category at the NPC Oklahoma Championships.

What Motivates You Everyday To Stay On Track With Your Diet And Training ?

There are lots of things that motivate me to stay on track.  A lot of the times it’s my friends.  They provide me a lot of positive feedback, and help keep my spirits up when I start to have second thoughts about my upcoming performance.  Sometimes it’s something as simple as the mirror.  I’m now leaner than I’ve ever been before.  With as far along in my prep as I am there are times where the visible changes occur on a daily basis.  I am fortunate enough to be able to have free access to a bodpod, so I have my body composition checked every 2-4 weeks.  When I was six and a half weeks out from this next show I was down to a PR of 7.8%.  I’ll find out in a couple of days where I have progressed to, and knowing that I’m only hitting new record after new record helps to keep me motivated.  Other times it’s sheer determination.  On my last deployment I was on a mission where we had gotten down to having only one 16oz bottle of water a day and one MRE to eat for three days.  If I could make it through that then I can definitely make it through this.  When it comes to motivating myself to keep my butt in the gym the methods I use can vary.  Sometimes I can be pretty low on energy due to my diet.  At these times I just force myself to gut through it, telling myself that I’m low on energy because I’m running on stored fat, and that now more than ever I need to continue to persevere.

Why Do You Love BodyBuilding/Fitness ?

True bodybuilders and fitness buffs have a drive, work ethic, and a level of discipline that people that don’t participate in the sport just can’t understand.  I like to be part of that club.  I like to be able to make physical and visible changes in my own body that someone else can see and know, or at least have an idea of how much blood sweat and tears I’ve had to put into it.  On the opposite end of that spectrum, I enjoy being able to look at others and know the kind of effort they’d have to put into achieving what they have.  I feel like it gives us a kind of bond that’s similar in a way to all of us military veterans.  Being able to look at someone and see the work they put into their own body and health (or lack there of) to me, speaks volumes.

Training Principles

My workout is an ever changing, living, breathing organism that evolves as my own body and goals do.  No two workouts are ever identical, and I go by feel as well as what’s available to me since I travel for work quite a bit.  As I prep for my contest I’m currently doing around 5 exercises with a total of about 60-80 reps for my main muscle groups.  Four of the exercises are typically grouped into two supersets.  After that small muscle groups are hit with 2-3 different exercises, typically with 30-50 rep sets.  Most of this is performed in an HIIT fashion to assist in burning fat even more fat outside of my weekly cardio routine.  I every few days I throw in some light ab work, but primarily I’ll hit abs on their own day for 40-60 minutes.

Cardio: At least 4 forty minute sessions a week, about half of which tend to be fasted.

Outline Of Diet

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