Quick stats about Shomo Das Age: 19 Height: 5’6’’ Weight: 165 pounds What inspired you to get into fitness? I weighed about 90 pounds at the...
Quick stats about Shomo Das
Age: 19
Height: 5’6’’
Weight: 165 pounds
What inspired you to get into fitness?
I weighed about 90 pounds at the beginning of high school. Everybody picked on me on the football team and I was always getting pushed around and laughed at for how weak and small I was. It became too much for me and I decided that I would build an incredible physique. I will never forget picking up my first issue of Muscle and Fitness and seeing Dexter “The Blade” Jackson on the cover. I remember flipping through the pages, seeing the top physique stars, and just saying to myself “I want to look like that guy”. I signed up at my gym and have been training 5-6 days a week ever since. No exceptions.
What was your exercise routine like?
--> I was actually a distance runner in high school, which made it nearly impossible to gain a lot of muscle until I came to college. Running for 2 hours and then weight training for another 2 hours is not the best way to go about getting big! I did make incredible strength gains in high school though. In college, I have been able to focus purely on my bodybuilding. For the past year and a half, I have found that volume training works best for me. I train a lot; some may even say I “overtrain”. But the way I see it, my volume training is fueled by my diet and proper sleep. I use bodypart splits throughout the week and make sure I train every muscle group twice. As far as exercises go, I pick two or three compound moves per muscle group and about 3 isolation moves to finish the workout and get very good squeezes and contractions. There are no specific exercises I always do. The body is a very adaptive entity; so if you want to make gains in the gym, confuse your body! That is where drop sets, forced reps, etc. come into play.
What is your diet like?
I count all of my calories and know exactly how many grams of carbs, fats, and proteins I am consuming every single day. As long as I am hitting my macronutrient number, I do not worry too much about the sources, other than that they are of good quality. I have a lot of meats, oatmeal, and peanut butter, but in the offseason, when sodium consumption is not a very big concern for me, I will eat anything I want that fits into my macronutrient distribution. This flexibility allows me to stay sane while dieting year round. Unfortunately, I cannot prescribe the macronutrient distribution which will yield a trainee optimal results. Every body is different. What works for me, may not work for you at all. So, it is important to experiment and see what works for you.
Any mistakes you made during the whole process?
I went through a phase in high school where I was a huge “supplement junkie”. I spent more time looking at supplements than I did tweaking my diet and nutrition. This has become a trend amongst many younger trainees and it is definitely not a good habit to continue. Most gains come from diet and nutrition. Focusing on the supplementation aspect of bodybuilding is simply the wrong approach!
Recommendation for people who want to get into shape just like you.
Train hard. Eat right. Most importantly… Believe in yourself! You can achieve any goal you set out to achieve if you have a true belief in yourself and your abilities. Give it everything you’ve got!
Shomo has recently won his Men’s Open Class and took 2nd in the Teenage overall at the 2013 NPC Northern Kentucky Bodybuilding Championships, one of the biggest regional bodybuilding shows in the United States. He is currently bodybuilding with Team Complete Human Performance under his coach, Alex Viada. Be on the lookout for him as one of the youngest contenders on the national stage as he goes pro!
