July 31, 2011 11.41 am This story is over 157 months old

Local hopeful narrowly misses out Mr Lincolnshire title

Flexing muscles: Hundreds turned up at The Lawn to see Lincolnshire hunks flex their muscles for Mr Lincolnshire 2011.

Local electrician Chris Thornton, living on Kingsway, Lincoln, claimed second place in the Mr Lincolnshire bodybuilding competition held on Saturday at The Lawn.

Despite winning best First Timer, Thornton (24) narrowly missed out to Glyn Wilkes from Skegness, who has claimed this years’ Mr Lincolnshire title at the age of 45.

With over 20 competitors, over half a dozen categories, ‘guest posers’ and a ‘shirts off competition’, hundreds turned out to see the trunk clad Adonis-a-likes.

Getting ready for the show

Contestants gather back stage to apply fake tan, practice flexing and get pump up with weights and exercises.

The Lincolnite delved into the months of hard work in the build up and what drove Chris Thornton to subject his body to such intense physical endeavours.

He said: “I was starting to get more into the gym and spending a bit of money on it when someone suggested I should enter a competition and with something to aim for I decided to give it my all.”

Thornton shed some light on how training is split into two phases, ‘bulking up’ and ‘ripping up’, which consists of putting size on at first and then adjusting training and diets to make muscles as toned as possible.

To get to in a good enough shape to compete, Thornton spent two hours at the gym working on a two days on, one day off rota, regardless of what day that fell on.

Maintaining such a physique requires a lot of dedication and not just at the gym, with diets being a big aspect of the strict body conditioning regime.

During his ‘bulking up’ faze Thornton was consuming around 4,700 calories a day and he explained how his breakfast consisted of an 8oz steak, six eggs, 30g porridge, a banana, omega seeds and 20ml flaxseed oil.

The diet is just as intense when ‘cutting up’ in the run up to the show with Thornton eating things like white fish and broccoli and eating every two hours.

Another aspect of ‘ripping up’ is cardiovascular exercise which is often overlooked when thinking of bodybuilding but Thornton was getting up at 5:30am to go for a 45 minute power walk, 6 days a week, for seven weeks in the build up to the event.