About Us

The IAPC Bodybuilding Course was written and created by Wayne McDonald and Richard Hargreaves. Between them they have over 70 years of unique experience in the field of contest readiness and preparation. This enables them to authoritatively cover all aspects that a competitive bodybuilder needs to know…from motivation, training, diet and supplements…right through to posing, presentation, judging, and drug testing. Read on for more information about their extensive experience in the world of bodybuilding…

Richard Hargreaves, Mr Australia
Co-Creator
Bodybuilding Course
Founder and Co-Director
International Institute of Physique Conditioning (IAPC)

In brief

Richard Hargreaves is a former Mr Australia (1984) and currently heads www.ironpower.biz sports nutritional supplement company. Over the last four decades Richard has owned two bodybuilding gymnasiums, promoted a number of bodybuilding shows including the World Championships (NABBA), held the position of Vice President for the Victorian Fitness Industry Association, Committee member for the Fitness Institute of Victoria (A government represented body responsible for self regulation of the fitness industry including training accreditation of Fitness Leaders and minimum Industry Standards – Code of Ethics). Richard is a qualified Fitness Leader and International Physique Judge. He has written numerous articles for Australian Ironman Bodybuilding magazine, Fitness Australia, Personal Trainer on the Net, Fitness Network Australia, Blitz Martial Arts magazine and Australian Musclemag, and appeared on Television and radio as a fitness expert. He has also designed more than a dozen functional foods, drinks and nutritional supplements.

It all started for Richard as a young boy sending off every mail order muscle coupon he came across for more information on building his physique. The advert that captured his attention the most was for the Charles Atlas Course…the one that showed the classic comic strip of the skinny guy getting sand kicked in his face…and the macho bully walking away with his girlfriend. Richard recalls, “I started training at around 10 years of age with the Charles Atlas mail order muscle building routine…although the inspiration for this started much earlier. I remember as a kid going to the newsagents every Saturday morning with my father. While he was buying his newspaper I would ogle at the Muscle magazines on the shelf. Magazine covers with photos of men with huge arms folded across their chest and the most unbelievable pecs (for the time anyway…and for me!) and women wrapped around their legs! These images planted a seed in my mind; that one day I would look like that – I would have big muscular arms, broad shoulders and a V-shaped back. I too, wanted to have girls hanging off me. Even at that young age I absolutely loved and adored females! I’m being very open and honest here…but that would have had to have been my major motivation for building a fantastic physique. I wanted to be attractive to girls!”

Richard followed his Charles Atlas routine religiously for many years, never missing a workout. The routine he followed for all those years involved no weight training…the resistance was provided purely with bodyweight (chin-ups, single leg squats, push-ups, head-stand push-ups, etc) and isometrics. Although the training system didn’t build the massive muscles Richard was after it did provide a phenomenal base of core stability strength and balance. “I remember I would get in the occasional tussle with other guys at school…all part of growing up…and how guys bigger than me would quickly back off when they discovered I was much stronger than I looked or they had imagined.”

He started his first job at 19 years of age as an apprentice graphic artist/photo-retoucher and for the first time could afford to join a gym. “I knew that to take my body to the next level I had to start pumping iron. I will never forget how the gym manager almost fell off his chair when I said my goal was to win Mr Australia. After he stopped laughing and gained his composure, I was left with even more determination and resolve to achieve my lofty goal than ever before.” Six years of solid training later Richard achieved his goal of winning a Mr Australia title. The year was 1984 and by this time his whole life was dominated with bodybuilding, physical fitness and the gym.

His life revolved around the gym scene. If he weren’t training, he’d be reading a bodybuilding magazine or helping someone else train. Increasingly he found himself working part time at the gym, writing programs and diets for others. He constantly had in the back of his mind his next goal… to have his own gym. Part of the plan was to win a Mr Australia title and then use this credential to successfully market a bodybuilding gym. The first part of the plan had been achieved and two years after winning the title he had saved enough money from working two jobs (graphic artist and gym instructor) to buy his first gym. It was a run-down affair, not making any money because of neglect but full of potential…and he got it for a song. Others had looked at it and could only see a dirty pit whereas Richard could see a goldmine. Within a couple of months he had totally turned the business around and into a very profitable venture. Recalls Richard, “At that stage, I had no experience at marketing. I just knew if I gave the people what they wanted, at the right price, they’d join. The gym membership quickly swelled from a couple of hundred to over one thousand. All I did was re-equip the gym with decent equipment, laid it out properly, cleaned it up and offered great service in the way of training programs and diets that gave fast results. Word of mouth advertising did the rest.”

This new found lifestyle as a gym owner felt right for Richard and so he quit his well paid graphics job and focussed on building the gym up even further. Two years later he opened a second gym, much larger than the first. This second gym was from scratch, ”I built it from the ground up by converting a 7,650 square foot factory into a fitness centre. It was aptly named The Fitness Factory. The weights area alone was over 5,000 square feet, the whole floor completely covered in 1.5” thick conveyor belt rubber. This was a ‘Heavy Duty’ gym in the truest sense of the word and one of the largest in Australia for the time.” Many World champions trained there…Bronwyn O’Brien, Leisa Campbell, Irene Nicole, Charles Clairmont, Sonny Schmidt, Gary Lewer, Pat Cash, Simon O’Donnell, Merv Hughes, Nicole Provis, Todd Woodbridge to name some. Of course, there were also many local bodybuilding champions training along side the Stars.

By this time, Richard was driving around in a red 911 Porsche, having a great time in general. He became Vice President of the Victorian Fitness Industry Association, Committee member for the Fitness Institute of Victoria (A government represented body responsible for self regulation of the fitness industry including training accreditation of Fitness Leaders and minimum Industry Standards – Code of Ethics) and went back to school for a year to do a Fitness Leaders certificate. Richard had loads of hands-on, practical knowledge and experience but wanted some formal qualifications to further his career. He then did a certificate in advanced nutrition and numerous other courses. Throughout this time he was regularly promoting NABBA bodybuilding shows, including the 1991 Professional NABBA World Championship won by the 1983 Mr Olympia, Samir Bannout. Hargreaves advanced to become a qualified International physique judge, judging many local and national bodybuilding shows including a World Championship.

Richard has personally trained over 9,800 clients one-on-one during his career as a personal trainer/gym owner. He has trained world class bodybuilders, Olympic athlete’s, world renowned martial artists, international celebrities, movie stars, TV stars, radio stars, sport stars, dancers, millionaires, successful business people, boys, girls, mums, dads, elderly, injured/rehab/disabled, workers, unemployed and many housewives and house husbands!

Richard held a regular sport for a year on Melbourne (Australia) radio at GOLD FM with Gavin Wood on Monday nights discussing fitness training, diet and supplements. He has also made numerous TV appearances discussing bodybuilding and fitness related topics and has performed as an extra in several dozen TV shows and movies including “A Nice Guy” with Jackie Chan.

Richard has written for Australian Ironman Bodybuilding magazine, Women’s Fitness Australia, Personal Trainer on the Net, Fitness Leaders Network Australia, Network Personal trainer, Taekwondo, Kick-Boxer, Blitz Martial Arts magazine and Australian Musclemag, as well as authoring several fitness related books and posing as a fitness model for an untold number of other books and magazines. Richard is currently CEO of Ironpower Australia, a bodybuilding sports nutritional company that he founded in 1996 and now runs with his Filipina wife, Christine.

The chief reason Richard has joined forces with Wayne to write this bodybuilding certificate course is explained in Richard’s words, “There are lots of information, website, courses, systems, diets, etc. relating to fitness, bodybuilding and the like in general but nothing specializes in a step-by-step blueprint that covers all the nitty gritty aspects of what a bodybuilder needs to do and know to compete and have a chance at winning a contest. In short, a complete Certificate in Bodybuilding Contest Preparation. Between Wayne and I (who I met and became friends with over 30 years ago), we have collectively 70 years of unique experience in the field of contest readiness and preparation. This enables the two of us to authoritatively cover all aspects that a competitive bodybuilder needs to know…from motivation, training, diet and supplements…right through to posing, presentation, judging, and drug testing…and even how to part your hair on the day! Nothing has been left to chance in detailing how to prepare a competitor for their first…or last bodybuilding show.”

Wayne McDonald B.A.Sc.
Co-Creator
Bodybuilding Course
Founder and Co-Director
International Institute of Physique Conditioning (IAPC)

In 1980 Wayne McDonald commenced an Applied Science Degree (Physical Education) at Victoria University in Melbourne (Australia) and vividly remembers an early university party. At that time he was a marathon runner, training up to 3 hours per day. Wayne was in peak training and super fit. The party was during a long, cold Melbourne winter but the opportunity to wear several layers of clothes still didn’t mask his marathon leanness. When Wayne arrived at the party, those-more-caring girls took one look at his gaunt condition and quickly offered him a warm position near the heater. “Here I was, the fittest person in the room, yet I looked almost unwell”, he recounts. “My sunken-eyed fragility gave everyone the impression if I attempted to eat a salad sandwich, the sandwich may win.” Some bodybuilders arrived. Call them casual trainers because in comparison to the number of hours Wayne trained, they were casual. But, they radiated a picture of health and vigour that he didn’t. They looked fantastic. And the same girls rushed over to them – but not out of concern. The bodybuilders looked like Wayne was meant to – they looked “fit” and more so, they looked strong and healthy. The irony made an impact and the reality struck him. To Wayne McDonald, this (weight training/bodybuilding) illustrated the perfect fitness lifestyle and representation of what the fitness industry was meant to achieve. Bodybuilding was the future of this industry, its fountain of youth and Wayne went about finding out how it was done.

The following week Wayne walked into the university gym to ask ten trainers, “How do you get big?” The answer, or more exactly the answers, changed Wayne’s life because he got eleven different answers – due to one guy having more than one theory. Wayne thought, “Why don’t they know?”

Wayne’s course and Degree was modern for the time. The course allowed students to fairly much tailor what they studied and after his experience at the gym Wayne decided over the next five years, he would focus on exercise physiology to find out how muscle grows.

In the 1980’s studying muscle hypertrophy and acknowledging an interest in bodybuilding was not that popular in the academic world. One lecturer even scoffed the sport was a disease – the opposite of anorexia – and was psychologically dangerous. However, Wayne’s love of weight training, bodybuilding and unusual study topics made him well known at University. In biomechanics he even presented the gravity changes in Sergio Olivia’s posing routine as the final paper. And it was profitable. Many companies and government departments approach universities to perform research, product assessment, endorsements and the like. And the university (lecturers) passed everything onto Wayne. Wayne designed health clubs and gymnasiums for different town councils, evaluated new training equipment and the like. He worked as the University Gym Manager at $5 an hour but made $80 an hour consulting. From his tertiary studies, Wayne’s theories about muscle growth enthralled him to find guinea-pigs willing to hand their bodies over and follow his new weight training programs, diet manipulation and supplementation. Unknowingly Wayne created his own personal training business and a successful stable of competitive bodybuilders.

Wayne’s Graduating Research Paper to the university was, in fact, the world’s largest research on muscle growth and body composition in female bodybuilders. The study conducted over the last two of his five-year degree gained publication in several journals world wide. Wayne McDonald had become somewhat of an expert. “My goal at this time, and the purpose behind doing such a massive piece of original research, was to continue study in America towards a PhD in muscle hypertrophy,” Wayne stated. Getting published work would help him secure the best placing in the “Publish or Perish” world of academia. But then, the Australian dollar nose-dived against the US greenback and the dream became financially unreasonable.

So what was the exhaustive list of opportunities in 1985 one could pursue after obtaining five years of knowledge of how to build bulging biceps? Wayne lugged furniture on a removal van for the next year while he contemplated what to do with all this specialized knowledge. Wayne had been training bodybuilders for five years now and felt impatient – frustrated at passing on knowledge at the rate of one person an hour. Wayne wanted a vehicle to pass-on his unique knowledge. Through magazines, he knew he could touch tens of thousands.

In March of 1987 Wayne McDonald left Australia for the first time, bound for California (USA) and wrote for top bodybuilding and fitness magazines, like Weider’s Muscle & Fitness. This gave Wayne the vehicle to meet and get to know the world’s top bodybuilders and identities including Joe Weider and even Arnold Schwarzenegger. Wayne interviewed and photographed Mr and Ms Olympia’s. He squeezed in time to include a few up-and-comers, like Lee Labrada. Previously in Australia, Wayne had written for both Australian and English bodybuilding magazines and felt there was room for a better local magazine in Australia. From Melbourne, Wayne received a job offer to manage a Government operated fitness centre that he had previously designed while at university. So at 23 years of age, Wayne McDonald returned to Australia, opened the gym and this job financed the launch his own REPS Bodybuilding Australia magazine (1987-1993).

In the role as the publisher/editor of REPS, Wayne realized the true depth and negative role drugs play in sport. Wayne points out – “I’m not preaching about the multitude of possible health problems. Simply, drug-use takes the challenge and intelligence out of sport. When a bodybuilder can take drugs, drink milkshakes and still get ripped, it takes away the need to fully understand nutrition. When an athlete can take drugs, train and recover faster, it takes away the need to fully understand how their body functions. In fact, for many drug-using athletes the challenge and intelligence becomes the drug-taking. Wayne does understand the motivation for athletes to take drugs – to be the best”. He says, “I understand the frustration to improve, which makes an athlete who wouldn’t take aspirin for a headache, buy steroids from a drug dealer. However, I studied physiology not pharmacology, because I loved sport.”

So in 1991, when Wayne was approached to develop Natural bodybuilding in Australia, he was ready to take the challenge and make a difference in the sport of bodybuilding. Wayne relished the opportunity to create an organization (Australian Natural Bodybuilding Federation) from the ground up. On a blank piece of paper he planned a bodybuilding organization calling upon the ten years of experience from training bodybuilders, judging contests, attending hundreds of other bodybuilding shows and receiving a further four years of feedback from the readers of REPS. He was aware, if the sport was to grow, the next step was to build credibility. Wayne wrote a comprehensive drug policy and argued to a reluctant IOC drug testing arm to step up to the plate and test bodybuilding.

Wayne McDonald was officially recognized as the World Vice-President in 1998 for the International Natural Bodybuilding Association and in 1999 joined with some 20 other Countries and changed the name of the ANBF to the INBA. Over the past 25 years Wayne has aimed to be innovative, make the sport appealing by creating the excitement of change. He has looked to keep the sport evolving and moving with the times. Wayne commented he believes the vast majority of bodybuilding organizations at least try to be similarly responsive today – they have to be to survive in an organization-saturated industry. “I believe now, as I did in 1991, the sport is ready for a new wave of growth.

The next generation of progress will not solely rely on organizational or contest development as it did over the last decade. Bodybuilding evolution will be created from developing education programs to expand the number of trainers who have knowledge of the sport and ability to create competitors,” stated Wayne. More qualified trainers in bodybuilding – more troops on the ground, more voices in the fitness industry. If magazines were the vehicle to pass on knowledge in the 1980’s and 90’s to tens of thousands, the internet and this bodybuilding course, can multiply this effect. Wayne McDonald is more excited than ever before about the future of bodybuilding and the release of this Bodybuilding Contest Preparation Course; the net result of his 35 years of study, knowledge and experience.

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