Adam Collard from ‘Love Island’ lost fat and got swole 11 years ago. 3 things helped him build muscle.

Adam Collard wasn’t always the shredded lothario viewers watched break hearts on “Love Island” in 2018.

As a teenager, he was overweight and had a pretty hard time at school because of it, he told Business Insider.

“I was always one of the biggest kids, both in height and in weight. So I stood out like a sore thumb,” Collard, who is six feet five, said. “I always carried a lot of weight and I just didn’t like it. I wasn’t happy. It made me very, very introverted.”

As a coping mechanism, he would binge on high-calorie treats, leading to more weight gain and more difficult feelings around his body image. “It was a vicious cycle,” the 29-year-old said.

When Collard turned 16, his relationship with his body started to change. A friend who also wanted to lose some weight convinced him to go to a local gym with him. He ended up sticking with it and falling in love with fitness.

“I just fell in love with the process,” he said. “The gym doesn’t require too much talent. You can outwork talent, and I like that you can see results, whether it be strength or fitness or body improvements, almost every single week.”

Over the next three years, Collard’s weight stayed around 200 pounds, but the difference in his body composition was “astronomical,” he said. His body fat percentage went from around 44% to 8%.

“It was completely different body types,” he said. “What I had to do was lose a lot of fat first and then kind of build back up from there.”

He has since gone on to become a personal trainer and gym owner in in Newcastle, UK, and compete in fitness endurance competitions, including Ironman and Hyrox.

“I think people undervalue how nice it is to just be fit for life,” Collard said.

Collard shared the three things that helped him build so much muscle.

Practice progressive overload

Increasing the weight or number of sets and reps you do over time is crucial for building muscle, Collard said. This is known as “progressive overload” and evidence suggests it is “one of the biggest drivers” of gains, he said.

In a small 2024 study published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine, 39 novice gym-goers between the ages of 18 and 35 did leg extension exercises for 10 weeks. During that period, the weight was gradually increased for one leg, while the number of reps done by the other leg was increased. The authors found that both legs built a similar amount of muscle mass and strength, suggesting that both forms of progressive overload were effective. They noted that their findings were limited to the early stages of building muscle mass.

Tracking your progress, whether using a spreadsheet or your phone’s notes app, can also be helpful for tracking how heavy you are lifting and holding yourself accountable.

“Tracking and monitoring progress is big. You would track progress at work, so why would you not do it with your body?” Collard said.

Focus on the quality of your workouts

Collard said that the quality of your workout, meaning how hard you work and following proper technique, is more important for building strength than the quantity.

“We have people who do four sessions a week, five sessions a week who train 45 to 60 minutes, very, very hard. But then we see people in the gym who come every day, but do not push,” he said. It’s the people who train with true intensity that Collard sees progress at his gym.

“And I don’t mean hard as in ‘hardcore, hardcore, break your body,’ all of that. It can be a smart way, but that will always trump the lack of effort,” he said.

Understand macronutrients

When Collard first got into fitness, he tried out a lot of fad diets, including cutting out carbs, but they were too restrictive to help him build muscle. For muscle mass to grow, you need to eat enough protein and be in a calorie surplus, meaning you eat more calories than you burn. To lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit.

“It made me lose weight, but it also made me lose muscle because I think I took it too extreme. I was massively under-eating for my size, height, weight, and age,” he said.

Through training as a PT and trial-and-error, he learned that it’s not just calories that count when it comes to body recomposition, what you eat is important too.

“I always say to people, the calories are what’s going to make you gain or lose, but macronutrients are what’s going to decide how you do that. As in, yes, you’re gaining weight, but are you gaining majority muscle, are you gaining majority fat?” he said.

The three macronutrients—carbohydrates, protein, and fat—are the nutrients the body needs in large quantities.

A 2022 meta-analysis found that eating 0.7 grams of protein per pound of body weight a day, in combination with regular resistance training, was optimal for strength gains.

“Macronutrients and actually looking at what you are fueling is very important,” Collard said.

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