Andrew Jacked is the hottest hand in Men's Open bodybuilding. In March 2026 he won the Arnold Classic and its record $750,000 prize — beating Nick Walker and Hadi Choopan — then flew to England weeks later and won the Arnold Classic UK for another $250,000. Over a million dollars in prize money before the season's main event even arrives.
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The Nigerian-born athlete, real name Chinedu Obiekea, took third at the 2025 Mr. Olympia — his best finish yet after climbing from 8th in 2022 — and heads into the 2026 show (September 24-27, Las Vegas) as the consensus biggest threat to champion Derek Lunsford. Jay Cutler has called him "the next guy."
"I'm letting them know I'm coming. Get me."
At 6'2" he is exceptionally tall for the division, carrying around 266 pounds on stage with the small waist and flowing lines of a Classic competitor. This guide covers how he trains, his documented sessions, his allergy-driven diet, and the late-start story that makes his rise the strangest in the sport.
Training Philosophy
Jacked came to bodybuilding around 2019, in his mid-thirties — an electrical engineer, former military officer, and kickboxer who first got famous as Larry Wheels' training partner in Dubai. Within roughly four years of his first show he was an Arnold Classic champion.
His training reflects the engineer more than the fighter: a one-muscle-group-per-day split built on machines, cables, and strict isolation, with moderate-to-high reps and quality prized over load. Filmed training with Flex Wheeler shows the pattern — sets of 20 on pressing movements, rests held to 45-90 seconds, and two-to-three-second negatives on every rep.
The patience shows up in how he fixes weaknesses too: he famously trained calves every single day for three months to bring the body part up.
His prep team is led by nutritionist Chris Aceto — the same mind running Derek Lunsford's diet — with pre-contest training alongside veteran pro Kamal El-Gargni in Tampa. The mental side, he says, is already won:
"Mentally, now, I think I'm more ahead of them now, in terms of advantage."
Documented Training Week
Jacked hasn't published an official program; the split below is the documented body-part structure from his filmed sessions and interviews, with recovery days built around therapy work — massage, dry needling, shockwave, and cupping.
| Day | Focus | Documented Movements |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Back | Pull-ups, supported rows, pulldowns |
| Day 2 | Chest + Triceps | Incline presses, cable flys, pushdowns |
| Day 3 | Shoulders + Biceps | Y-raises, machine press, cable curls |
| Day 4 | Legs | Extensions, machine squats, lunges |
| Day 5 | Recovery / Therapy | Massage, needling, mobility |
Chest
The clearest window into his training is the chest session he filmed with the legendary Flex Wheeler — high-rep pressing at strict tempo with short rests.
| Exercise | Sets | Reps | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Incline Press | 3 | 20 | 2-3 second negatives |
| Dumbbell Press | 2 | 20 | 45-90 second rests |
| Incline Machine Press | 3 | 20 | Constant tension |
| High-to-Low Cable Fly | 2 | 20 | Hard squeeze at the bottom |
His other documented chest movements rotate incline dumbbell work, Hammer Strength presses, the pec deck, and dumbbell hex presses, with reps documented anywhere from 10 to 21.
Back, Shoulders, and Legs
Back sessions are built from pull-ups, chest-supported low rows, an incline row machine, straight-arm cable pulldowns, kneeling close-grip pulldowns, and seated rows — width work and strict rowing for a torso that has to fill a 6'2" frame.
Shoulder-and-biceps day runs cable Y-raises, incline dumbbell lateral and front raises, plate-loaded overhead presses, and cable upright rows, then finishes arms with cable curls and rope hammer curls. Triceps ride with chest: pushdowns, overhead cable extensions, and EZ-bar skull crushers.
Legs rotate extensions, machine squats, full and partial leg presses, heel-elevated goblet squats, and walking lunges. Exact set-and-rep prescriptions for these days aren't published — the documented constants are the machine-first selection, the strict tempo, and the volume.
Diet
Jacked's diet is shaped by an unusual constraint for a mass sport: food allergies and a small, sensitive stomach.
"My stomach is so small and sensitive and I have a high level of allergies, especially to food. I barely can eat six square meals."
The documented day is six deliberately plain meals: oats with ten eggs (six whites, four whole) to open, then four meals of roughly 200 grams of chicken with rice and broccoli, and a protein shake to close. Off-season carbs are documented in the 400-500 gram range; beef, potatoes, and berries rotate in when the stomach allows. He has never published a calorie total.
On supplements, he's a BSN ambassador — documented using AMINOx aminos intra-workout and Syntha-6 protein after training.
The System
Every other man in the Olympia's top five spent his twenties accumulating muscle. Jacked spent his as an engineer and a fighter, and didn't touch a bodybuilding stage until his mid-thirties. That he is now the betting favorite to dethrone a two-time Mr. Olympia — at somewhere past 40 — breaks every rule about how long elite muscle takes to build.
The method underneath is almost boring: machines, sets of twenty, short rests, slow negatives, plain chicken and rice, and therapy days treated as seriously as training days. The physique is the argument that boring, executed at his standard, is enough.
Whether it's enough in September — against Lunsford's condition, Walker's density, and Dauda's rebuilt mass — is the biggest question of the season. The full field is in our Mr. Olympia 2026 preview.
Explore Similar Routines
- Derek Lunsford's Workout Routine
- Nick Walker's Workout Routine
- Samson Dauda's Workout Routine
- Mr. Olympia 2026: The Full Preview
- Kevin Levrone's Workout Routine
Not everyone has two hours a day for an Olympia split. If time is your constraint, EMS training condenses a full-body strength stimulus into a 20 minute session.
A small, sensitive stomach and food allergies keep his intake deliberately plain — six simple meals, and a supplement layer of exactly two documented products: BSN's AMINOx through training and a protein shake to close the day.