- Hometown: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
- Current Location: Orlando, Florida
- Height: 6ft, 72in
- Weight: Currently 277lbs, Off-Season 319lbs
- Age: 27
- Favorite Style of Cardio: HIIT
- Favorite football team: Minnesota Vikings
- Websites: www.emekaokammor.com, www.thesimplefitness.com, Youtube, Wix
Tell us about your website and Team Simple Fitness’s belief system.
I developed a website to help establish a web presence in the sport of bodybuilding. In today’s era, you have to be deeply vested in the web. The website serves as a great place to offer videos and pictures of not only me, but also my team, which is called Team Simple Fitness aka, TSF.
We adopted a belief system: Believe, Achieve, Succeed. This is something that my mother drilled into my head as a child. We took that belief system and applied it to being and becoming a bodybuilder.
Believe – The first step in any decision. You have to believe in it to pursue it and make it work. The moment you believe is the moment you set your sights on the next step.
Achieve – Prepare yourself to do what you’ve never done to achieve something you’ve never achieved. Belief will give you the aim focus and determination to make it to step 3.
Succeed – By believing and achieving you will begin succeeding!
How do you go about coaching someone online with their diet and nutrition for a competition? And how important is it to have help to get stage ready?
As soon as a client signs up with me, we have a consultation. It’s not timed; we spend however much time is needed to capture all the information that I will need to help them. I then build a foundational diet and training approach to monitor how they respond to it.
Then every two weeks we check in and make tweaks based on the consultation and progress photographs. During the last 4 weeks we check in weekly and during the final 2 weeks, daily.
While it is helpful to have someone guiding you to the stage, it can be done solo, if you are willing to do the research and mold what you are learning to your own body and develop an approach that suits you. If you choose to tackle it solo, just know and understand that you will make some mistakes, but those mistakes will help evolve your approach. Improve your approach from show to show, and you will improve your physique, from show to show as well.
For your first show did you have any help with your own competition preparation? Do you have someone that helps you now with your competition preparation and tell us a little bit about how you prepare for a show?
For my first show, I had a friend help me. He showed me the intensity that it takes to train for a bodybuilding competition. I did my own diet and approach, but he would kick my butt in the gym to the point of nausea. And that helped framed my training.
I usually do my own contest prep that would consist of a carb cycle diet, moderate cardio, and lots of volume training. I would cycle 150g on low days, 300g on high days, and
Currently, I am working with a local coach who has been a friend since I began bodybuilding in 2010. He has opened my eyes up to a totally different approach, and I am super excited to see how it works for me.
My coach has me on a consistent daily diet of 200g carbs and 320g protein. We check in weekly and he evaluates me, checks my body fat percentage, and we make diet and training tweaks if needed. I started my current prep at 319lbs and 13% body fat. As of 8/27/13, I’m down to 267lbs and 8%.
The biggest step you need to take, no matter what level you are on, when preparing for a show is to set your mind to victory. Focus on giving up what it will take to be the last man standing and everything else falls into place.
How did you make the transition from being a football player weighing in at 310 lbs to a bodybuilder at 240 lbs? And in what way do you feel your weight loss impacted your strength levels?
Well the transition from the gridiron to the stage was rather easy because you are not eating nearly as much once you walk away from the football field. At UCF, Coach O’Leary would feed us constantly and always made sure we had food available to us at no cost to us.
Once you leave that and begin to have to pay out of pocket for your meals, you eat a lot less. Also, for football your workouts are always centered around explosiveness, whereas bodybuilding takes a completely different approach.
As a 310 D-Lineman I always wanted to be lean like the skill players, abs, veins, and striations. So once I was done with football, I was eager to lose that football weight and begin my quest for abs.
My strength is my gift. My strength doesn’t seem to be affected by my weight. For instance, as of 8/23/13 I am currently 275lbs, and I am stronger now than I was at the peak of my off season at 319lbs. I am praying that the leaner I get, the stronger I get. Just the thought of that makes me excited.
What do you feel are the benefits of working chest and back together and how has it benefited you?
I am a student of this sport and that has allowed me to keep an open mind while finding ways to improve on my physique. I had been researching the great Arnold, and I read how he was a firm believer in working chest and back together. I gave it a try, superset style working back as the antagonist muscle.
I found this style for chest and back greatly increased the mass and density of my entire upper body. I witnessed my upper body achieve a higher level of thickness, and I feel that working chest and back together helped a lot.
Here is a sample of my off season chest and back routine.
- Incline barbell
- T-bar row
- Bench press
- Bent over barbell row
- Decline press *Machine or Hammer Strength
- High row
- Pec Dec
- Lat Pulldowns
What is your approach to nutrition with working a quote, unquote ‘normal’ job and how do you manage to get all of your meals in during the work day? You also are very active and have a lot on your plate from the full time job, family obligations, meal prep and you are actively involved in church. How do you find time for all of this?
Eating during the workday for me is not complicated. I am an IT Security Analyst. Most of my days are spent either in my office, or in meetings.
Meal times during work are at 9am, 12pm, and 3pm. As you can see I’m not an every 2 hour eater. If my times get pushed around a bit, meals are still relatively easy to get in.
I learned a lot about time management during my college days. If you are able to allocate a certain amount of time to each task per day, you will be surprised at how much you can accomplish in 24 hours. Most days are as follows:
9am – 12pm: Work
12pm – 1:30pm: Train
1:30pm – 5:30pm: Work
6pm – 6:30pm: Chat with the wife
6:30pm – 7:30pm: Nap
7:45pm – 9pm: Train
9:30pm – 11pm: Church
11:30pm – 12:30am: Cardio
12:30am – 1:30am: Prepare for next day (Pack clothes, cook and pack food, etc.)
2am – 8am: SLEEP
How important do you feel it is to have your family be supportive of your bodybuilding lifestyle? Also do you feel it is a benefit that your wife is involved in the sport too, do you spend time together doing meal prep in the kitchen?
I believe having your family and friends support in bodybuilding is the key to success. The people around you can help or hurt you in bodybuilding. They can be the extra push you need in the gym, or with your diet or they can be your downfall. Many competitors keep a small circle of supporters because true support is hard to find in this highly criticized sport.
Having my wife involved in the competitive life of bodybuilding is a blessing. I remember before she was competing she would always ask, “Why do you need to eat so much chicken?” “You just bought protein.” “Why are you running low already?” Lol
I haven’t heard those questions in some years now. Getting her on ship has helped me not have to stress about the financial aspect of bodybuilding because she gets it now. She understands how 10lbs of chicken can disappear in 2 days, especially with two people in the same household in prep.
Most importantly, she understands the level of dedication it takes to be competitive. The funny thing is; my wife and I have never worked out together. We sometimes squat together, which is a beautiful site. But, other than that you wouldn’t even think we know each other. She’s intense in the gym. And I’m intense during my sets, but usually I’m smiling and having fun.
When it comes to meal prep, it’s not an assigned task for either of us. If you need to eat, and no food is prepared, guess what? It’s your turn to meal prep. This usually falls on me.
Who do you admire most in this sport and why?
I admire big Ron the most. I used to look up to him for what he accomplished on the stage, but since being sponsored by him; I get to see him for more than the 8 Time Mr.Olymipa. Big Ron is completely down to earth.
He is very humble and will talk and joke with just about anyone. Hard to believe that he has accomplished all that he has on stage and is as approachable as he is. He answers emails and will even answer the calls into the warehouse. He is a tangible champion and shows no sign of arrogance.
I remember the first time I met him; I was nervous to introduce myself. He knew me from being his athlete, but we had never met face to face. After about 3 hours, I finally introduced myself and he recognized me. We began to talk about competing and so forth.
There was a line of people waiting to get his autograph, and my wife was in that line. So when she made it to the front I said, “Hey Ron, that’s my wife can we take a picture?” He looked at me and said, “We family, why you had her waiting in line?”
As we were taking the picture, the back of my phone is a stage photo of myself. Ron saw the picture and said, “is that you?” “Let me see that phone.”
He told me I looked great and asked why I didn’t win that show. He left me with these words “You’ll get there.” And I’ve been trying my hardest ever since.
I know you are a rep for Ronnie Coleman’s RCSS supplement line, how did that come about?
I’m one of his sponsored athletes and this is an instance where persistence prevailed. I am a HUGE fan of Ronnie. When I first got word that he would be starting up a supplement line, I began emailing and reaching out to him. For about a year I would check back every 3 or 4 months to find out if he would be sponsoring athletes. The answer was always, “not yet.”
When he began to sponsor athletes, I reached out again and was told that they are no longer looking for athletes. I didn’t take no for an answer. Shortly after that, I reached out again and this time the response was, “we’ll take a look and let you know.”
I was thinking that they were just tired of me and blowing me off. I had no choice, but to wait it out. About a month later I received an email saying that they would like to have me join Team Coleman as a RCSS sponsored athlete.
Are you yourself a sponsored athlete or looking for a sponsorship?
So yes, I am happily sponsored by the 8 Time Mr.Olympia, Big Ron. And I am searching high and low for a sponsorship from a solid workout apparel company. I can’t keep my workout clothes consistent with all these off seasons of 4XL and contest preps of XL/2X.
What do you enjoy most about this sport and why?
I enjoy the fact this sport brings out in you, what you never thought you had in you. It forces you to dig deeper and push yourself further than you imagined. This sport helps build characteristics that can be applied in all arenas of life.
It teaches you to be dedicated, you’re forced to learn how to sacrifice, you feel what it’s like to operate outside of your comfort zone, you develop aim and focus, you are shown the importance of preparation, and you develop an unyielding will to succeed. That is why I love this sport!
How has your faith enabled you to reach your goals and what do you think the future holds for you?
My faith tells me to put God first in all that I do, so I body build with my Faith; I myself could not do this without strong faith in God. By nature, to the outside eye, bodybuilding is a self-indulging sport, but it takes a team to help that person get on stage.
That team for me consists of God, my wife, my pastor, my coach, and my training partners. Every time I get under a bar with 495lbs on it and attempt to lift it above my chest, I am saying to myself, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Before I put 600+lbs on my back and attempt to squat to the floor and up as many times as I can I am saying to myself, “for with God nothing shall be impossible.”
During my prep, I’m usually very emerged into my faith. Prayer and meditation upon waking, worship before and during cardio, and prayer on my way to work. I am this way because physically, mentally, and emotionally I have to give myself to Him to keep me.
Contest Prep takes its toll and the only way that I know to keep me smiling and having a good time all the way through my prep is to lean on my faith. Bodybuilding is a tool that I was given.
I’m honestly not sure what the future holds for me because I didn’t see this coming. But my goal for the future is to fulfill my potential in bodybuilding. Now where that takes me, I’ll have to keep my hand to the plow and see…
