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Spartan Health Regimen Review
Interview With Anthony Bova
Spartan Health Regimen
Q. Can you give us some background about yourself?
A. Sure, my name is Anthony Bova but pretty much everyone just calls me either BOVA or The Spartan Warlord. The Warlord title’s a private joke some of my students started a few years ago, but it kind of stuck.
I’m the creator of the SPARTAN HEALTH REGIMEN program which is a diet, training and lifestyle program aimed at health and fitness fanatics. I’m an Australian but spend my time living between Sydney and Las Vegas.
Q. What got you started in health and fitness?
A. I’ve always been interested in health and fitness. I was always the guy doing extra training on my own in school and trying to eat right. I followed all the advice I could find in bodybuilding and fitness books and magazines. I read about and tried nearly every system and method I could.
But it wasn’t until I got heavily into Jiu Jitsu training in my mid-twenties that I started to think there must be a better way to eat and train for maximum results. Because for martial arts you want real functional strength and fitness not just size.
I started a quest to find the best methods for both diet and training while keeping in mind the Bruce Lee philosophy to “Take what works and reject what doesn’t”.
Q. What are your Favorite and least Favorite exercises?
A. You mean for strength training? I’m a big fan of compound movements for strength training and against fancy isolation exercises. Isolation work might be good for injury rehabilitation but it’s a waste of time for a guy who wants to build real strength and power.
One of my all round favorite strength exercises for the upper body is the Overhead Press. I move a lot of students off focusing on the Bench Press and onto hard training with the overhead press. This builds a lot of functional strength through the whole shoulder girdle area which is totally useable in contact sports and in real life situations like a fight. Plus it’s a more natural movement than the bench press, causes less injuries and creates a look of POWER by developing the shoulder, upper chest and upper back muscles rather than just big droopy pecs.
But you know what . . . it’s more about the system of sets and reps than the exercise. You could take a variety of solid compound exercises but if you don’t train them the right way they still won’t work. That’s what I focus on in the Spartan Strength Training part of my program. Using a system of sets and reps that builds real world functional strength. And the side effect of functional strength is dense muscle tissue.
Q. What are some tips you can give for the beginner, intermediate and advanced?
A. For beginners I’ll get them to master chin-ups and push-ups but done in a Spartan Style. By Spartan Style I mean from a position of greatest strength and in a way that works the most muscles possible. These two when done right are useful compound exercises which work the whole upper body. Plus they’ll be working lower body strength with things like hill sprints.
For intermediates we start to hit the gym properly. You want a program which will work all the upper and lower body muscles plus you supplement this with conditioning work for fitness and endurance. You should also add in some specialized work on grip, neck and abs. For a modern Spartan it’s important to have strength through these 3 areas, not just to look good but for performance sake.
For advanced you can really start to do interesting things. I like to get advanced students into lower rep routines for serious strength gains. I modelled a lot of advanced strength work off the old time strongman Doug Hepburn. He was a natural lifter born with a deformed lower leg yet he achieved amazing strength. One of the bonus reports I give away with my program covers a similar routine for super strength gains.
Q. Where do you stand on the use of steroids and supplements?
A. I am not anti-supplement . . . I’m anti-bullsh#t supplements.
I found from studying diet that we as modern people in the Western world are not getting enough nutrients in our diets. In fact our diets are shockingly lacking in a lot of fat soluble vitamins and mineral density. So the supplements I recommend to all Spartan students are based around boosting the nutrient level of your diet. Some could be called “Super-foods” rather than supplements.
I actually teach how to use two of these simple supplements in a FREE Video on my website. I do this because once you boost your nutrient level you’ll find your health, your strength, your recovery, hell . . . pretty much everything improves.
As for steroids, I do not advocate using them. Why use them? Once you stop the gains disappear so why not concentrate on building natural dense muscle which can be maintained for decades. But on the other hand I’m not into lecturing people like an overprotective mother. If they want to make a choice to use steroids, then so be it. The Spartan diet and training works whether you use them or not.
Q. What are your future goals?
A. My future goals are to reach more people with the Spartan program. It’s always been an underground thing and that’s never going to fully change. It’s never going to be for the mass market but I know it can help a lot of dedicated athletes if they give it a go. Which is why I’ve decided to start promoting it a little more online.
Q. What is the toughest part about fitness for you?
A. Ha . . . the toughest part if sorting through all the B.S. Every week massive volumes of fitness and health related information is spread through TV, magazines, new books and the internet. And I would say 90% of it is rubbish or just marketing propaganda. The biggest problem is your average person doesn’t want to do any real fitness training or to change their diet. They want a magic pill or a fancy scientific machine that will make them thin, or strong, or fit, or healthy overnight without any effort. It doesn’t work that way and I have no interest in training people who believe that stuff.
Q. Tell us about the Spartan Health Regimen?
A. It’s a hard-core program for health and fitness fanatics, people who don’t want to go through life being average. The ancient Spartans were the elite, the toughest of the tough and proud of it. It covers diet, strength and endurance training, metal toughness and Spartan lifestyle and motivation. It will mould an out-of-shape slob into a healthy athlete, and an athlete into a Modern Spartan Warrior.
Q. What are the Spartan workouts like?
A. Spartan workouts alternate between strength training and conditioning work. With extra training thrown in for grip, neck and most importantly abs. You can’t be a Spartan without strong abs.
All the training is supplemental in nature. What that means is you can take what you need and add it to your current training. I get a lot of athletes from many different sports and everyone has different training needs. But my philosophy is in the end a stronger, fitter body is going to help you in ANY sport.
Q. What is the Spartan diet like?
A. The Spartan Diet is probably the MOST important part of the whole program. I say that because nothing will have a greater impact on your overall health and performance than diet.
I can say without reservation the Spartan Diet will get you into the healthiest state you have ever been in your life. It’s the first thing all Spartan students notice. Increased health and energy and recovery.
A lot of diets focus on short term results. Or on low carbs verses low fat. Or high protein or any of a dozen other issues. But all that kind of talk misses the main secret to diet. The ultimate diet for a human has to provide all the nutrients a human needs, and a hard training human needs even more nutrients than your average slob.
When I talk about nutrients that doesn’t just mean carbs, protein and fats. It means mineral density and the right vitamins and micro-nutrients. When you compare native tribal people, people who eat a lot more naturally than we do now, it’s the ones with the most nutrient rich diets who are always stronger and healthier than their neighbours. They didn’t have the diseases we suffer from now either. This is why the Spartan Diet I teach is all about eating a high nutrient diet.
Another interesting point is once you start to eat this way you naturally get leaner and stronger. That sounds crazy but it works. I have always been a hard gainer when it comes to muscle building and I never gained strength or muscle easily until I switched to the Spartan Diet. A high nutrient diet allows your body to utilize protein better and build muscle.
But I generally don’t like people to get the SPARTAN HEALTH REGIMEN until they have at least watched my “#1 Spartan Secret Video” and downloaded my First Chapter of the Spartan program. That way they can make sure it’s for them and I can make sure they are right for the program.
If any of your readers are interested in learning more they can come to my website and request the Spartan Video and First Chapter . . . both are 100% FREE!
Q. Anything else you'd like to add?
Thankyou for the interview it’s been fun, and thank you for helping to spread the word about the Spartan program.