Chad Nicholls has long since been considered a modern legend in the world of bodybuilding for his coaching abilities. Nowadays, almost every major competitor in bodybuilding works with a coach, and there are new coaches coming up every year trying to make their mark. One of the pioneers of this field is Chad Nicholls, also known as “The Diet Doc.”
Nicholls may be best associated with his work with eight-time Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman. More recently, he was also the coach for two-time Mr. Olympia champion Mamdouh “Big Ramy” Elssbiay. Beyond his accolades as a coach, it is also well documented that Nicholls and Shawn Ray have an extreme beef that has lasted nearly 20 years.
Here's a look at his career, including his work with iconic bodybuilders and the controversies he's faced.
Early Career and Kim Chizevsky
In 1988, Kim Chizevsky began dating Chad Nicholls, a bodybuilder who directed her away from being an aerobics instructor and towards bodybuilding, along with becoming her coach and later husband. After three months under his instructions, Chizevsky-Nicholls, weighing 121 pounds (55 kg) at 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m), placed second in the lightheavyweight class in the 1989 NPC Jr. Tri State. With the exception of the 1989 NPC Jr. Tri State and 1989 AAU Central USA, Chizevsky-Nicholls would place 1st in every amateur bodybuilding competition she attended.
In her 1993 pro debut, Chizevsky-Nicholls attended her first pro competition, the Ms. International, which she won. In November 1993, she attended her first Ms. Olympia, where she placed fifth. At the 1994 Ms. International, she placed fifth. In 1995, she placed second at the Ms. International and Ms. In 1996, Chizevsky-Nicholls won the Ms. International and dethroned the Ms. International champion, Laura Creavalle. Also in 1996, she unseated six-time Ms. Olympia defending champion, Lenda Murray. Chizevsky-Nicholls was the first female bodybuilder to win both the Ms. International and Olympia in the same year in 1996. She retained her Ms. Olympia title in 1997 against Lenda Murry, who retired afterwards. At the 1997 Ms. Olympia, she competed at 157 pounds (71 kg). In 1998 and 1999, she won both Ms. Chizevsky-Nicholls decided to retire from bodybuilding after winning the 1999 Ms.
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Kim Chizevsky's victories under Nicholls' guidance include:
- 1993 IFBB Ms. International
- 1993 IFBB Ms. Olympia
- 1994 IFBB Ms. International
- 1995 IFBB Ms. International
- 1995 IFBB Ms. Olympia
- 1996 IFBB Ms. International
- 1996 IFBB Ms. Olympia
- 1997 IFBB Ms. International
- 1998 IFBB Ms. Olympia
- 1999 IFBB Ms. Olympia
The 2000 documentary Bodybuilders dealing with female bodybuilding and specifically concentrates on Ms.
In 2000, Chizevsky-Nicholls appeared in The Cell, which starred Jennifer Lopez. According to director Tarsem Singh's DVD audio commentary, the character she played was originally listed in the script simply as "helper", so Tarsem asked the production designer what disturbs him. So, he replied that “Those women that work out,” so he added her.
The Transformation of Ronnie Coleman
In the eyes of many, Ronnie Coleman is the greatest bodybuilder of all time. Coleman is an 8x time winner of the Mr. Olympia, tied for the most victories in this contest ever. The difference, as he explained in a recent episode of his podcast, was working with Chad Nicholls.
In fact, Chad recalled the exact moment that he knew Ronnie Coleman was going to win the Olympia. Chad went on to say that they did not really buy into it at first, until he decided to share the recent photos that Ronnie sent him.
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“This was about four weeks out from the Olympia. I had literally just picked up pictures from my PO Box and I was headed to the airport to pick these guys up. “I got these pictures, and we’re talking and stuff, and I go ‘Hey man, I’m going to let you look at these, but you’ve gotta keep it on the down low. “I show these, and they just kept passing them back and forth and Tom goes ‘Dude, does anybody know what he looks like?’ and I go ‘No, nobody knows what he looks like.’” Nicholls continued. “And he goes ‘You realize nobody’s going to beat him?
From there, Chad Nicholls and Ronnie Coleman discussed how different things were back then, where trainers had to wait to get pictures, and only get them once a week from bodybuilders. “You had to literally be on the ball a hundred percent. There was literally no room for error. If we messed up something, it took another 24 hours to get the pictures, to see if we needed to make more changes.
That being said, there was still a matter of what caused the massive change in Ronnie’s physique, to go from ninth place at the Olympia one year, to winning the show the next. “We definitely ate more food. Everything was obviously very consistent, very structured in the off season. Ronnie was doing everything pretty good, but we became like a machine in the off season. It was very repetitive but the food amounts went up drastically.
“Yeah he pretty much changed everything that I was doing, basically,” Coleman added. “Everything except for my workouts. He increased my cardio, I was only doing like an hour a day. I went from an hour to two hours. I went from eating like 10oz of chicken and steak, turkey, to like 16oz. And it was the hardest thing I ever did in my whole entire life.
Coleman said that he had to slowly increase the amount of food he ate, in order to avoid intestinal issues and to adapt to this diet. “The thing is too, even when we got to that point, we just had to keep adjusting stuff because Ronnie just kept getting bigger. “So we just had to keep staying up with that. The body kept coming forward, kept coming forward. Obviously this decision worked out for Ronnie Coleman, as he went on to become the king of bodybuilding under the tutelage of Chad Nicholls.
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Ronnie Coleman's transformation under Chad Nicholls' guidance led to multiple Mr. Olympia titles.
Coaching Big Ramy
Nowadays, he’s been working with the two-time and defending Olympia champion, Mamdouh “Big Ramy” Elssbiay. James had Chad Nicholls join him on a recent episode of “The Menace Podcast” to look back at his multi-decade career and share his opinions on numerous topics. Among those is the field of contenders that look to dethrone the champion at the 2022 Olympia.
“I don’t necessarily think that there’s a guy that’s a threat to Ramy that’s competing right now,” Nicholls told James. So, what does Ramy have to do in order to successfully defend his title in 2022? “Our game plan is still conditioning, but at the same time, you take an entire year of training, which he probably hadn’t had for numerous years, getting a whole year dedicated to bodybuilding, pushing as hard as he can with everything timed perfect…there’s no telling what he’s capable of,” Nicholls said.
As of 2023, Chad Nicholls has been doing a sort of “damage control” trying to adjust Ramy’s bodybuilding prep in order to fix his physique issues and rise back up to champion status. This is after Ramy’s drop from first to fifth place at the 2022 Mr.
Controversies and Conflicts
Beyond his accolades as a coach, it is also well documented that Nicholls and Shawn Ray have an extreme beef that has lasted nearly 20 years. It’s a long and complicated history of comments throughout the years. But the main source of the tension is Ray’s repeated comments that Nicholls is a dangerous coach.
The public rivalry has led to an avalanche of opinions in the bodybuilding industry - which only became more pronounced with the advent of social media. Many, if not most, fans believe that Shawn Ray is out of line - and that his comments constitute defamation.
The discourse around this beef was reignited in March 2023, when Chad Nicholl’s son confronted Shawn Ray at the Arnold Classic expo. It was widely assumed that Dom Nicholl’s confrontation with Shawn Ray was simply due to the years and years of negative comments Ray made about his father.
While that, in part, is true - there seems to be far more to the story. It turns out that many small, but aggressive, events happened behind the scenes that eventually led to a tipping point for Dom.
According to Chad Nicholls, he had tried to meet up and speak privately with Shawn Ray first. Nicholls claims this was to smooth things over and end the beef once and for all.
Chad Nicholls explains that Shawn Ray started making false accusations about Dom Nicholls - stating that he was physically threatened or lightly assaulted by Dom. Chad Nicholls also highlights that his son is only 19 years old - and for an adult to make false accusations like that and start putting pressure on a teenager is a bit inexcusable.
Some have pointed out that it appeared like Dom Nicholls premeditated recording his confrontation with Shawn Ray. This created a bit of a public argument among fans about the intention of the video and the altercation all-together. But Chad Nicholls puts the recording into more perspective. Dom was simply recording the situation to protect himself from legal action. He wanted proof that he did not physically touch Shawn Ray.
Clearly, what started as an attempt to end a beef between Chad Nicholls and Shawn Ray only ended up agitating it more. Chard Nicholls comments and explanation behind the altercation seems reasonable. It will be interesting to see of Shawn Ray makes a comment of his own - and if they divert away from the series of events described here.
Nicholls also spoke about his time working with Kim as well as Ronnie Coleman, the strength of his two sons, thoughts about other Olympia competitors as well as up and coming stars he sees potential in, and a lot more.
Chad Nicholls has broken his silence regarding the altercation between his son, Dom, and Shawn Ray at the 2023 Arnold Classic.
“When I saw Shawn [at the Arnold Classic Expo], I had nothing but positive thoughts. I was going to be like, ‘Hey man we need to talk. Let’s go and talk.’ My thinking was let’s just squash this shit. It’s all petty nonsense. He kinda made a smart-ass thing, got my number and we’re both there, let’s go talk. I said let’s go talk and my thinking was we will exit the ballroom because I didn’t want to do in front of everybody. We’re already at the back and so I was going to walk out the back doors. Basically what happened was when Shawn realized we were getting ready to exit, he stopped and kind of backtracked. Dom was behind him but Dom kinda was like, ‘Get moving boy,’ and then Shawn does Shawn and starts screaming, ‘You’re going to go to jail, you want to be arrested, I’m going to end your career, blah blah.’ That was really the end of it.
“But I guess after that, Ron Harris had sent Dom a message and it’s like, ‘Hey why is Shawn saying you hit him?’ And Dom’s like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Because Ron was right there. ‘I didn’t hit him.’ And he’s like, ‘No that’s what I’m saying. Why is Shawn saying that?’ He’s completely lying about it so that kind of pissed off Dom. Then, somebody else came and was like, ‘Hey I heard Shawn was ready to go outside with you.
“So, now Dom loses his cool a little bit the next day, goes up and decides to confront him. The reason he recorded it was basically so they couldn’t say something happened that didn’t happen so that was really all that was basically being recorded. He went up basically, said what he said, they recorded it again, only reason they record it so Shawn couldn’t come back and say oh well he was aggressive, put his hands on me, done this, done that and that was basically it. It was done and over with at that point basically… It was basically he had already started saying stuff that was not true. So, Dom didn’t want to do something and all of a sudden, Sean calls up somebody and said he assaulted me at the booth.
It will be interesting to see of Shawn Ray makes a comment of his own - and if they divert away from the series of events described here.
BIG RAMY'S COACH | Chad Nicholls | Fouad Abiad's Real Bodybuilding Podcast Ep.87
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