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20th July 2016
05:39pm BST
The 32-year-old went through a hellish three-month programme at Manchester's Ultimate Performance gym to build his brand new body.
Ryan, who played Jason Grimshaw in the iconic Manchester soap, took on the 12-week challenge with his younger twin brothers Scott and Adam, who star in Emmerdale and Waterloo Road.
He went from 82kg and 22 per cent body fat to 78kg and a super-ripped 9.5 per cent body fat at the end of the programme.
"We all had an individual goal, for me leaving Coronation Street meant I needed to be in the best shape of my life to go into the next step of my career," he said explained.
It was 12 weeks where Ryan had to put everything he had into training, dieting and achieving the transformation he wanted.
With a busy career seeing him work from 7:30am to 7:30pm at night, he had to be in the gym training at 5:30am every day.
"I know it sounds crazy," he said. "But you have to be committed and get up at those times in the morning.
"It just means going to bed earlier, so for 12 weeks, get yourself in that routine, be disciplined, put yourself in the driving seat for once.
"I know if you get in early enough, you can train and forget about it for the rest of the day, eat well and go to bed. Just give yourself 12 weeks of complete discipline. That work schedule has to work around your fitness, it has to become part of your work."
He wasn't just going in and throwing a few weights around either. It was a structured hypertrophy plan to help him build muscle tissue fast and break through his training plateaus.
UP website explains that the 12-week plan incorporates a periodised exercise routine designed to increase both strength and muscle mass and uses challenging weight training routines with intensification, accumulation and super-compensation phases.
The plan includes cycles of low set 'heavy' work, high set 'volume' work as well as low rep functional hypertrophy work to build muscle.
"One thing I have taken from UP is learning how to control my workout, using the right muscles and really making the most out of every single training session," he explained.
But one major thing that had to change to start bringing his body fat down and helping him build muscle was his diet.
Going from eating out all the time and grabbing food when he was hungry, to structured meal preparation day in, day out, was tough for Ryan.
But preparing healthy, nutrient-rich meals that met his macro nutrient targets and helped him shed fat were vital to the transformation.
"Honestly, I’ll tell you that the first couple of weeks were difficult; my energy levels were low, I was ratty, tired and finding having to prepare meals was difficult.
"I like to eat out all the time and it became a real chore at first. But as time goes on your body starts to programme itself to a new way of life and to the food you are eating and putting inside of your body.
"Then you start to connect with it and you start to sleep better, you wake up easier and the afternoon meals would fuel the rest of my day whilst I was filming at Corrie.
"The diet at first was difficult but as soon as you get the hang of it, it very quickly becomes a positive."
Even once Ryan got the hang of the meal prep and got used to the 5:30am starts to go and kill it at the gym, he still found himself 'falling off the wagon' occasionally.
But he didn't let the odd lapse dent his progress and he quickly got himself back on track with his physique goals.
"I wouldn’t like to tell Matt this, but there would be times where we would fall off the wagon but feeling so guilty about it, you would train ever harder to make up for it.
"The diet is so important and if you are going to slip off for a day, just make sure you pick up where you left off and hit it even harder.
"Just remember, you only have 12 weeks, so be disciplined and you can achieve what you’ve set your goals to be."
Another thing that did go completely was alcohol. As we wrote here, it won't do you any good to be out drinking 10 pints of beer every Friday if your goal is a six pack in 12 weeks.
"If you drink and it means you don’t drink, just do it for 3 months and you may never need to do it again but if you do, it may have a knock on effect on the rest of your life.
"The best advice I could give would be to put everything you can into that 12 weeks, it’s only 12 weeks. It may sound like a long time but it’s just 12 weeks of your life to put the biggest and hardest effort you’ve ever put in before."
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