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Chris Bumstead stands as the most popular bodybuilder of this generation with 14 million followers on Instagram. His popularity across different platforms is owed to the influential educational videos that he regularly uploads on them.
His popularity aside, the Canadian has become a legendary figure in the game as a four-time Classic Physique winner with the last one arriving in 2022. Bumstead, a couple of months before the competition, announced that he was and will be working with Hany Rambod.
Rambod, a coach with 22 Olympia titles associated with his name, opened up on training Bumstead for the 2022 edition of Mr. Olympia in an episode of The Truth, a podcast hosted by the legendary coach himself. Among the insights he provided into Bumstead's training were the athlete's nutritional practices.
"Chris has been very open about his health issues. He has to be super conservative with everything that goes into his body. We’re talking about foods, just everything. He doesn’t do junk food, he eats organic, he eats minimal gluten. I mean everything that has to do with inflammation he stomps out completely. For me to build on that and try to understand it in the short amount of time that we had was very difficult."
Bumstead suffers from IgA Nephropathy, an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in the kidneys.
Many believed Bumstead to be training with Rambod over a long period before his public announcement. However, Rambod denied this and mentioned that he did not have a lot of time to train him.
"We had about I would guess around 14 weeks together. I had that amount of time to learn a new athlete who has a medical condition, who has a lot of different things I have to work around. He has a different training style than me. Getting him introduced to the FST-7 training style with high volume and being able to do those kinds of things."
In the podcast, Rambod revealed that he was closer to Bumstead's fiancée, Courtney, and how developing and establishing a bond with the Canadian bodybuilder was the most-challenging aspect of working with him:
"I felt like with Chris, getting to know him personally was the hardest thing. I know Courtney much better than I know Chris. Chris, we’ve only spoken a couple of times since the Arnold.
"Getting to know somebody at that level is a huge part of my coaching dynamic, because what I do is, I have to understand what makes that person tick and what that person’s go buttons are."
One of the most studied dynamics in sports psychology is that between a coach and an athlete. Research has shown that a good relationship between the two is directly linked to the athlete's performance.
Bumstead's coach helped by Iain Valliere
Rambod talked about how Valliere, Bumstead's former coach, helped him work the athlete out:
"They had such a great success together with Chris and Iain. So, talking to Iain several times on the phone. We had some really long conversations of things that they did in the past, things that worked and didn’t work. Being able to just pick his brain, and understand so I’m not going to reinvent the wheel. I’m just trying to make it stronger."
Despite the complications, Bumstead won the Classic Physique for a record fourth time, continuing his reign as the most-successful athlete in the division!
