fitness
Breakthroughs
He’s one-quarter English, one-quarter German
and half-Filipino. He started practicing martial arts
when he was six, Cocaine holds a black belt in traditional Karate, fought for the British National Karate
Team, and went on to train in everything from English
catch wrestling (with the legendary Billy Robinson,
rest his soul) to going to Thailand for a crash course in
Muay Thai. He grew up in Gloucester, England (famous for cheese rolling, Dick Whittington and serial
killer Fred West) but moved to Los Angeles, California
when he was 18 to study acting. James fell in love with
an old friend, moved back home, and they’re now a
happily married couple who have been together for 14
years! Center Stage reveals Cocaine James’ fundamentals and the lifestyle of a true artist and a fitness enthusiast.
How long have you been in the modelling business? “I first got into modelling when I was 17, which
terrifyingly was 16 years ago! I actually attended modelling classes, where I learned how to do everything
on the catwalk (when my friends make fun of me for
that, I ask them to walk across the room while taking a
suit jacket on and off and trying to look graceful – they
soon understand!) as well as things like how to conduct yourself, how to communicate with clients, what
needs to be in your kit bag… all the fundamentals that
sadly seem to be eroding today”, he said
Who was your fitness inspiration? “My inspiration in terms of physical fitness, and indeed most
avenues of life, is Bruce Lee. I grew up on a steady diet
of pro wrestling and action cinema but, while I loved
their physiques, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Hulk Hogan didn’t look anything like me. Bruce, on the other
hand, was a badass little Asian guy – and I even had
a Lee-like haircut for a time! It was his flexibility that
I admired the most (when I went to Florida for some
Karate training I was given the nickname “Rubber
Band” because I was so flexible, so this resonated with
me) but I loved the way that Bruce was so ripped and
shredded without having all the mass.
I have a pretty broad back and shoulders so, when I
was determining what body shape I wanted, I seriously considered going in the direction of bulking and
adding mass. But ultimately I got into rock music and
decided that a cross between Bruce’s definition and
Iggy Pop’s heroin chic was what I wanted to work
towards!”, James revealed.
When you were growing up, what were your
goals or perhaps dream? “I’ve always loved acting and
wanted to be an actor ever since I started watching
Bruce Lee movies (interesting, as most people think
of him as “a martial artist” rather than “an actor”).
However, I’ve been playing videogames since the age
of three and when I was seven years old I fell in love
with British games magazines. So since then I always
wanted to write about videogames. I spent a lot of time
on the stage and acting in productions growing up,
and I moved to LA to study acting in Hollywood when I
was 18. When I came back to England I started writing for games publications and spent ten years editing
various magazines. So I guess one dream came true
and one came halfway true!”
How do you maintain your physique? “I noted
earlier how I got into modelling at 17, but the dream
was initially shortlived as I ballooned to 17 stone/238
pounds. Yes, I was one pound lighter than Homer
Simpson when he was “239 and feelin’ fine”! It got to
the point where I looked like crap and my knees, which
I’d already damaged as a teenager, were really suffering from carrying all the weight, so I had to do something. In the first instance, I used a hyper-aggressive
interpretation of the Atkins Diet to drop a huge amount
of weight. Where Dr Atkins recommended a two-week
“Induction Phase” of only having ten grams of carbohydrates per day, I stayed on the diet (on and off) for
two or three years only having TWO grams of carbs
per day. Bear in mind that this was back in the early
2000s, so very few people actually knew what “low
carb” meant, eve