Not Your Average Joe

Hardworking personal trainer and classic physique competitor Joe McNelis shares his top tips to crush it inside and outside the gym, plus a full-body routine to carve out your own ripped physique.

- Kevin Gray

Joe McNelis’ day starts at 3:30 a.m.—he wakes up to begin a rigorous schedule that balances his own training and nutrition with training clients and tackling life’s usual obligations. But the 30-year-old bodybuilder wouldn’t have it any other way.

A four-sport athlete in high school, McNelis excelled at football, baseball, basketball, and track before going on to play wide receiver at Sam Houston State University. He was invited to the NFL Regional Combine but didn’t make a team. He decided to hang up his cleats, put his exercise physiology degree, which he got from Rutgers University, to good use, and pursue his other passions: personal training and bodybuilding.

Now McNelis is a Tier X coach at Equinox in Summit, New Jersey, and is a regular in NPC classic physique competitions, which required him to undertake an entirely new training regimen. “Sports like football are all about improving your speed, agility, and explosiveness,” McNelis says. “Training for physique is totally different. It’s more about size, symmetry, and focusing on individual body parts.”