Getting It Off His Chest

Steve Cook is the world’s number one fitness model and has inspired millions to get into the shape of their life. But he won’t be satisfied until everyone gets the message that real success comes by loving what you do and having the desire to do better today than you did yesterday. Get that right, he tells MF, and the six-pack will take care of itself.

After his Men’s Fitness covershoot, Steve Cook tweeted to say he would be at St Paul’s Cathedral the following morning at 11am if anyone wanted to do some sightseeing with him. His followers turned up in droves. The 31-year-old from Boise, Idaho, didn’t see many sights in the end because he spent the rest of the morning talking fitness and posing for selfies with his fans.

To say that Cook is the most popular man in fitness is no understatement. He has more than 1.2 million Instagram followers, 600,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, and every event he attends – whether it’s the world’s biggest fitness show or an informal weekend meet-up – brings people from miles around for the chance to speak to their idol.

But what he tells them isn’t necessarily what you’d expect. With so many self-proclaimed fitness experts on social media banging the drum about how you should smash yourself in the gym every day – hash tagging every post with #BeastMode or something equally hardcore – Cook’s message is loud and clear: health comes first. After all, he says, what’s the point of having a rock-hard six-pack if you go to bed every night starving and miserable and dreading the 6am alarm to go to the gym? For Cook, as it should be for us all, his fitness isn’t defined by his body-fat percentage, nor is his happiness measured by the circumference of his biceps.

Cook’s ethos is simple: to be healthy you have to be happy, and he’s a man on a mission to spread that message far and wide.

Steve, you started out as a pure bodybuilder, but over recent years you’ve branched out into many other areas of training. Why?