Eddie Hearn Explains What It Feels like to Be on a Men's Health Cover Shoot
I've always been body conscious, so doing my Men’s Health magazine shoot two weeks ago was quite a daunting prospect.
You can be a confident person, but putting yourself outside of your comfort zone is where growth really occurs. When I do a press conference now or when I speak to the press, people say, ‘Wow, how do you do that?’ It’s because I've done it a million times, but the first time I did it, I was shaking.
I wasn’t quite shaking two weeks ago, but doing the MH shoot took me back to those first press conferences. You're getting made up by a makeup artist, you’ve got a stylist telling you to put on this vest and stand there, and then the photographer says, ‘Right, now slowly take off the vest.’ I was thinking, Jesus Christ, I’m not sure about all this. It's just not what I do.
The shoot was all about being in shape, in front of what felt like the world, after not being in shape for 30 years. You're taking your top off on these shoots and you’ve got all these people standing around who are used to seeing absolute Adonises. With me, it's when you compare my old pictures to the magazine shoot photos, it's pretty impressive. But still, I'm a long way from what the Men’s Health staff are used to or where I'd want to be.
Since then, I’ve shown a couple of people some of the photos I took at the shoot, former fighters like Darren Barker and Tony Bellew. To see their reaction, which is a genuine one of bloody hell, it makes you feel great.
The challenge now is to continue doing what I’m doing. I have to admit it, for the few weeks before the shoot, I was thinking the shoot is on that day, so I need to get three or four weight sessions in this week. Then you’ve got two weeks to go, and I’m thinking nearly there, nearly there. Then bang, you do the shoot, and I've definitely struggled a bit with my training since – not in terms of the frequency, but just in terms of my energy in the sessions, because obviously everything was building towards the shoot.
The good thing is, I feel like I've built enough of a foundation that even when I have a few ‘bad’ meals, you're just not going to see it – as long as I always stabilise and get back on it.
For me now, it's become a mindset and a lifestyle because I don't want to go back to feeling like shit. I think leading up to the shoot, I was definitely staying away from certain foods, but now if I want to have a big bowl of pasta, or I want to have a pizza or a curry, I'm more likely to do it, but I'm much more conscious now as well. So if I want to have a 1000-calorie pizza, it's fine, but I make sure I don't go out for a massive lunch and end up eating 3500 or 4000 calories in a day.
On the other side of that, every morning I wake up and have water with electrolytes and creatine. That's the routine. As well as that, now in the morning, I'm thinking, are you training today? If you are, look at your macros, let's get some carbohydrates in you.
That’s the change that I’ve gone through. So when you look at the cover don’t expect some absolute Adonis. Expect a guy who's always tried but failed, but now has finally found some light at the end of a very long tunnel. I’ve still got a a long way to go, but I’m excited to see where I’ll be in six-months’ time.
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