#994 - Sam Sulek - The Endless Pursuit of Progress

If you weren't doing bodybuilding, what do you think you'd be obsessing over instead?

I think it, I mean, it would have to be something.

But honestly, I was kind of lucky starting off body.

I don't even say bodybuilding.

The only, and this is something people say anyway, if you don't compete, you're not a bodybuilder.

Like, it's a little, because when someone does their first show, you know, they kind of want to express this like,

you know, glamour about it.

It's like, I'm a bodybuilder because I competed.

You're just, but I kind of leaned into that.

So before I actually competed, I was, I'd always described myself as like just, I'd say a lifter because the point wasn't more so to compete in bodybuilding.

Like when I'm working at arms, I'm not thinking like, okay, I need my arms to be a little bit bigger so that I can beat this guy on stage.

Like it's more so I want them to be bigger for me.

And then that kind of played into once I was at a certain level, like, okay, now now it's about time to compete.

Like it was always on the list, but it wasn't like the point, especially not in the beginning.

For me, I'm like, I just want to get big.

I did gymnastics when I was like 11 to 16.

I think I was good, but I wasn't like going to be college-level scholarship,

like no Olympic, but like it was fun.

And there's one guy named Connor who is, he's the older dude.

And now I might not look at him the same way, but at the time, he was nuts.

He was huge.

So we all, whenever we do like strength or conditioning, that's how

I think that was probably some of the seed that got planted.

Cause I was doing like four hours a day, like middle school, early high school.

So you already had one obsession.

So that was like it.

I never had to be dragged to do it because I was excited.

It was fun.

So once I quit doing that, to switch it with the bodybuilding just happened to be something I was already kind of interested in.

And it just fit perfectly.

Like we would talk every every summer where some of the guys would be like, okay, this summer we're actually going to work out and we never did it.

But once I actually quit doing it, that's what I replaced it with.

But if it wasn't bodybuilding, let's say there was an alternate universe Sam, or I've got the itch where it's like, oh, it'd be awesome if I could play guitar like Rob Scallon.

He's this YouTuber who's into guitars and everything, or just anything.

Like that could have been it.

But it happened to be like, okay, I'm going to get into working out really serious.

And that also just happened to be the perfect match for me.

Have you held on to the bendiness from gymnastics at all?

A little.

I can, like, when I stretch, I can loosen up.

But when I'm off-season, full of carbs, like it actually kind of sucks to squat because I get like how tight everything is.

Everything is tighter.

When I'm dieted down, I can get my hands under a squat bar fine.

But when I'm eating a lot of food, like when I'm more like a 270, like I'm sitting there for five minutes just trying to stretch out.

Mike Isratel had

some back surgery thing on him, and

it's cut open.

They've removed fat.

They've got rid of fat cells.

They've stitched him back up.

It's like a big traumatic surgery.

And I asked him what the most painful thing that he went through was.

And it was that he said they'd laid him on his back with his arms like this.

And so he woke up and the most painful thing was the fact that he'd been in an overhead position with his arms over his head for a few hours.

And that always makes me laugh.

I never heard that part.

I did see that, though.

Some of those.

If I had something done like that, for whatever reason, I probably wouldn't post that surgery picture with like the bloody shirt.

That man has no shame.

He just.

But that's kind of cool, too, because he actually gets to show it off.

Well, I think, you know, why is it that people have resonated with you?

A very sort of transparent look into.

Even if people don't see themselves directly in Mike getting his back cut open or you spending a lot of time obsessing about the gym, what they do see is a person

being

transparent, right?

And that's where relatability comes from, I think.

Like authenticity breeds relatability.

And,

you know, if Mike had just disappeared and come back with a smaller waist and some scars, people would have been like, hey, what's going on?

And I think that that wouldn't feel very legitimate.

Yeah, no, that's a good way of thinking about it.

That's one thing where I didn't plan for it to be like that, but I got a lot of questions this whole weekend where it's like, and every, any, all of us do, like everyone who's semi-six, any, even like you've got 10,000 followers, like it's, okay, what's the secret?

And it's the same thing with bodybuilding.

What's the one set that I can do where it actually completely makes it super easy and it all just happens like nothing?

And it's

like usually if somebody wants to start posting things or trying to do anything, it's always like, okay, what are people doing?

Let me try to emulate that and like recreate it or just like jump on a trend, which like is fine.

Maybe try to change it up a little bit, but it's like the best thing that you could do is pick something that you already do and you already like and just try to like document that.

Like if you're a

and it's to the point now, like where if you weren't doing that, you're almost missing out.

Or like if you have a small business or if you're into like restoring cars or you have some kind of random interest, like the what I really like about social media is there's so many niches that no matter what you're into, you can make it a thing.

And so, I guess if I could say one tip, being able to talk on camera helps a lot.

Because then you actually, like when I look at people, I've seen guys post things in the gym forever before I posted anything.

And they're still posting the exact same thing.

And I've seen this guy for like seven years and he's super big,

but he's never like spoke on video.

And I'm like, that's the whole point.

I want to know who this guy is so I can kind of like get back to those experiences.

Yeah.

So it's like

it's almost

a situation where you already have something really valuable and it's your own individuality.

And to try to like, you know, conform to what everyone else already does is basically to lose that.

So you're already your own individual guy.

Like no one has lived your life.

Try to show that part off.

But I'm also not the best source of that kind of tip because my first YouTube video is the same as this one.

It's the same as the most recent one.

So there is no like, okay, I went through years of study and data and analytics.

And this is the, like, it wasn't a Mr.

Beast story of I analyzed the whatever.

If somebody told me they were going to post like what I posted, I don't think it would work.

If you tried to plan it in advance, it would have probably sounded like a failure.

Yeah, so it just happened to line up.

Who was

inspiration for you coming up both content creation side but also mindsets physique wise yeah in uh so i i really watched a lot of callum von moger

like back when i was you know or a 16 year old because the guy who got me into the gym like i mean i was getting into it anyway but he was the guy from my high school who actually bodybuild he competed like at at the end of when he was a senior and i was a junior like we were both like the bodybuilders of the school you know like a high school level but he got me into callum and then eventually I started watching all the Rich Piana Bigger by the Day videos, which then you can kind of see the similarity where it's, okay, he's posting a video every day.

He's in the car.

He's doing a real workout.

And

like, I, I only thought about it.

Like, I like that format.

I go to the gym and I work out and I drive back.

To record that is like nothing.

Like it's, it's very seamless for my routine.

But

it was also just something like nobody was doing.

Like I was, when I was coming up before posting anything, I'm looking at regular influencers.

I'm like, oh, you guys wouldn't even work out if you didn't have a camera.

And I'm squatting in like a dead gym.

It's like two in the morning.

No one's watching.

Like, I recorded the set for me.

Nobody else watched it happen.

And that was like a chip on my shoulder thing of like, it doesn't even matter.

There's no one in here.

I'm still getting after it because I want it.

And there's nothing that's going to change that.

So when I started like actually posting things, once I saw a group of brothers who went to my school really blow up one summer, and I was getting kind of like jealous.

I'm like, okay, now I got to start doing it.

I was going to do it eventually, but that was like the starter.

I was like, I've always kind of hemmed about this where it's like,

am I a different guy now that I'm recording all these things and trying to like talking about it and putting it out there?

And like, I would just always think about that in the back of my mind.

Because now these workouts are not just me alone.

Now there's an observer.

So it's like, is the experiment altered?

Because now people are watching it.

And I don't think it is.

Like after all this time, I think I'm still, if anything, it's a little bit of an accountability factor.

Because if I didn't think,

you know, maybe I wasn't totally into it, I know somebody's watching.

So I might go a little extra hard.

So I think it hasn't taken away too much.

But maybe added a little bit.

Yeah.

But if you get distracted by it,

it's like the workout should come before the recording of the workout.

I've always thought.

Have you found it hard to hold on to authenticity now that millions of people are watching?

Well, now it'd be, if I made a video that was inauthentic, it'd be strange.

Like,

because I'll record, because now I'm kind of getting around doing all these events.

I get to talk to everybody.

And

sometimes it's hard to actually separate someone's social media persona versus their real, like, human personality.

because sometimes we look at a video as like you're kind of hosting a show and a tv host does not talk offset the same

on set like it was like all right we're gonna hit a chest day today and i'm doing like a youtube intro and there's like sounds like like that's just not what i do and i i for me i think that'd be silly anyway so it's um

i think it's for me kind of a cool mentality where i'm not exactly even thinking like okay i want to improve my content engagement.

I'm trying to improve my reach or like anything like that because I almost boil it all because it's so one-dimensional.

Like it branches out.

I talk about everything, but it's like, I want it to be about the gym specifically.

So for me, it's like this kind of

branching off point of motivation where in my mind, I feel the better that all my workouts are.

Not only is that better for me because I want them to be good, but it will just bleed and like bleed out and raise everything else up

because it's all stemming from the working out anyway.

There's four-hour compilations of your car talks to go to sleep to.

Did you anticipate that you'd become an ASMR channel eventually?

But I actually heard that before.

Never in high school, but when I was in college,

it was like my second year.

I gave a couple presentations.

Like one time I,

one of my curricular or extracurricular credits was Mafia Cinema History.

So it was following.

That's niche.

Yeah.

It was following like from the first,

what do you call a soundless movie?

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where in between frames of like actual video, they just had a black screen with the words that got said.

Like it started from there.

What a funny way to put a movie together.

Yeah.

But it's like, that's all you had.

They couldn't time sync audio with a clap like we can now.

But then it went up like all the way through Godfather and everything else.

And I had to make a group video where it was clips from all these movies and someone had to overlay their voice and edit it all together.

And I was posting like little TikToks at the time, like fitness TikToks.

So I almost volunteered for the editing voiceover so I could get a little, like that was the first video that I ever edited it, technically.

And people told me after, when they heard it, they said, Dude, you should do like an audiobook or something.

And I didn't hear it.

I did not like, I couldn't hear it because it's my own voice.

But then I gave a different presentation in a different class, and the two guys sitting next to me said the same thing.

So I don't know what changed over the course of those years or if, like, maybe I got a little older and I could be more outspoken and like not shrink down and be so nervous because I'm like talking to someone.

But that's part of it where when I think of how you could like do a, like do the books on what all the just success came from, it's like I think posting a lot of videos, actually like meaning what I'm talking about and really working out and like being behind it, like that, that's something I could tell anybody to do.

And then I always say that the X factor was involved because a lot of it was things that just could not be predicted, but happened to work out really well.

I would subscribe to a Samsung sleep stories.

app if that goes out on Audible.

I get curious about doing just audiobooks.

i i think it'd be great like you're just describing a an afternoon walk through a gentle meadow or something yeah and then i'd probably i'd get to read the books because i'd be i'd be reading it and i'd be a little more

you wouldn't say literate but you'd be a little more just

i could look dude if the if this bodybuilding thing and all this gym shark stuff you know if that doesn't go well i i genuinely think that there's a an opportunity you know a nice collaboration with karma headspace or something like that sleep stories would be good so i you know

just lingering on what we said there this authenticity with millions watching and

it is there's a there's a degree of uh performativeness you want to you're always compelled to do because yeah like in a way i think there's kind of like a sam on video and then there's like a sam when i'm talking with my buddies or a group

but i almost don't think it's too much of a like thing because you will naturally act differently based on who you're with.

And for me, when I'm working out alone and I've got just the camera, like I thought I'd get a camera guy because that's what everyone does.

But it's so natural for me to have that like actual back and forth.

It's all just things that I get to think of.

Like even though I'm probably a little less energetic because obviously if you're in a group hanging out and whoever, like you're going to be a little more jumpy.

But when it's just me, like, I don't think that's

like as even though it's a little different than my typical back and forth, like even now, this probably wouldn't be exactly how I talk like in the world, but it's not intentional in a way.

The goal is to try and reduce the distance between those two people.

Right.

Get them as close as possible.

Fuck me.

It's like you'll dress up for a fancy restaurant.

That doesn't mean you always dress up.

It doesn't mean that you in a suit is somehow inauthentic.

Yeah.

But, you know, I think

even the lowest followed person with a couple of hundred followers on their Instagram, if you turn the camera around on yourself and you press the button, like, oh, fuck, I need to do it.

There was a statistical increase in cosmetic surgery.

I think it was called Zoom face after COVID because people were seeing themselves on camera so much that they were observing their own flaws.

And, you know, that's you just on a live call with your boss or either your assistant or your team or whatever.

So, holy shit.

Like, if that's how people are feeling just with video calls on COVID, imagine what it's like when you start posting or you put an Instagram story up.

Yeah, I never, I never heard about that.

But that, that's one thing where,

because the bodybuilding, like even getting into bodybuilding and everything that comes along with it, and like bringing like a prepped meal to school or just whatever, it's still a little like off the beaten path.

It's getting super normal now because everybody's in the, in the gym, which I think is perfect.

Because now gyms are going to, you know, not substantially, but gradually increase in value because there's just more of a demand.

So it's like the more, the merrier.

But

just from knowing that it's kind of a thing where,

like, if you post on social media, you're asking to get hated on.

It's just the nature of it.

But bodybuilding is like also a guarantee because it's, it's, you could play into it like maybe someone's insecure about how they look and they're going to go after someone who they like what whatever.

It's just part of it.

But already knowing that, like to, you know, get into into it and see anyone say anything, it's like, it's if you're unapologetically into something, like if I saw you eating a bowl of ice cream and I said, I can't believe you're eating vanilla.

That's the worst flavor.

You're a total loser.

But you really liked it.

You wouldn't be offended by that.

You'd think I'm weird for even trying to criticize you for it because you really are into it.

So

that's something where it's, it's its own skill to.

be able to put yourself out there

and only take criticism for what it is.

Like if someone posted or made a comment on my video, and this is more like when I put my director, producer hat on, and they say,

This video's audio sucked.

Delete your channel.

I'm going to take that as, all right, I might need to fix my audio.

I don't need to take the hate with a critique because I can take, I want the critique.

That's the good.

Thank you for your feedback.

Yeah.

Like you can, you should be able to separate that from

the context of how it's said.

What have you learned about dealing with criticism and self-worth and stuff like that?

Because if the plan was, hey, it'd be cool if some people watched this, and then there's an awful lot of scrutiny, and you're young, and are approaching this from a little bit of a different angle, it's going to invite in criticism.

How have you learned to deal with that?

It's not like I totally did not even think about it in the beginning.

Because when you first start getting, like, let's say you're posting something, you get like a few thousand followers.

It's, you know, it takes a second.

But if you look back on it, it's really a milestone that your videos are being shown to more people.

Because if the same 10 people love every video in the comments, that means your stuff's only getting shown to them.

It's not getting shown to anyone else.

So once people start giving you, like, you know, just saying regular just hate, that means that they're someone who got shown your stuff for the first time.

So it actually means your things are moving out of like a small little scale bubble and scaling.

But it's, I don't know, for someone who's struggling with it, I'd say, like,

remember, this guy just scrolled away.

He did not, he doesn't even remember saying it.

It's, it's just a weird thing where, you know, your phone is a totally different communicative device than real life.

So maybe judge what people actually say to you in person.

And just,

I don't know, for some people, it's much harder to get over, I'm sure.

It's a good point that that comment someone just made is

flippant, passive.

Whereas for you, that might linger.

I mean, I know for me, you know, over the thousand episodes I've done this show, there's certainly some comments where I've gone to bed at night and I'm like, fuck's sake, think about it.

Like, that's the thing that you're going to think about as your head hits the pillow.

But you just remember the insults and forget the compliments.

That's kind of the way that the world works.

And it's a, and even just try to, like, this is one thing I really like is trying to imagine anything where it's not a debate, but just like two sides of an approach.

Like, okay, do I want to read every hate comment and take it personally and like really only look at those,

or do I want to like look at the system as it really is?

There's like always way more real comments.

So, why does that, why does the negative one get so much impact?

And 10 other, like, how many good comments even outweigh one bad one?

And if that one actually like hit you in a weak spot, there could be no number, and that could just be it.

So, I think that's where it's um,

it's almost like it, it shouldn't be, but it is.

Like it sh it shouldn't happen.

People shouldn't be mean, but they are going to be.

That's just how it is.

So that's where it's actually your responsibility to try to be impervious to it

because you're kind of suffering in your own mind.

Because it was your choice to let it in and get upset.

Because if you were a little kind of like, I don't want to say mentally tougher, but kind of

if you could take a little more stoic approach like that, then you wouldn't even get upset about it in the first place.

What does that stoic approach look like to you?

It's just not, you know, not making a fuss about something if it doesn't actually require that.

Because I think about that a lot.

Like, my whole thing is, or one thing I like to think is like, okay, was today a good day?

Like, net.

And it doesn't have to be crazy good, but like, on average, was I feeling like pretty good, not too stressed out about things.

If I have a to-do list, it's not like, like, I'm taking the proper steps to actually complete it.

Like, I'm not letting anything linger too much.

And if I'm making myself upset, or like if I'm tired and I'm going into situations with a negative starting point, well, then you're already, you can be upset about anything.

Oh, this weekend was so busy.

Oh, it sucked.

Oh, I'm so tired.

Like you can instantly do that.

And it's like nothing because it's this weird self-depreciation, like.

boomy, things are so hard.

And it's, it's a, I mean, I get the logic because it's, it's a comfortable like retreat everything is so hard everything sucks i can do nothing about it it's just how it is so there's nothing like it's uh it's a taking your hands off the wheel of things when

you're not six years old like this is you reach a point where you're you're responsible like i you know i've still got some some stuff in my parents' house I'm gonna go pick up and things, but at at this point now, like 23-year-old Sam, I'm completely responsible for all my own stuff.

So I gotta actually take a hold of it.

And if I make myself upset about like the stupidest things, well, then I'm stressing myself out for no reason.

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I'm like Neo in the Matrix, dude.

You're not going to win.

That's drinklmnt.com/slash

modern wisdom.

It is a

strange thing to try and

deal with the criticisms of people that you don't know.

At least in my experience, the amount of times that you can try and reverse engineer.

Well, would you don't take criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from?

Don't accept.

That's a good one.

Yeah, it's nice.

All of this stuff makes sense.

We're saying it in a hypothetical.

Yeah.

When you're in it, it's all of this.

I got this conversation later on today with a couple of young philosopher bros.

And they do logic, right?

So it's a very sterile,

rational way to sort of look at situations.

Honestly.

The more that I've done a little bit of research into logic, the more it feels like it just completely fucking falls apart the second an emotion comes in.

You're like, oh, this sounded so great.

But you're not an equation.

You're not a sterile laboratory.

It's like it's something that's fun on paper because you could read that and think, oh my God, if I start thinking that this way, I'll never be upset again.

And it's like, you're not a freaking robot.

I bring this up a ton where I'm like, just because you can use Excel doesn't mean you don't have to run around like we used to do when we were hunter-gatherer.

We're not that much different.

Like we can do way different stuff, but you're still like genetically right there.

You got to run around and freaking move.

But yeah, same thing.

You can't like the idea to kind of like almost be afraid of your own emotions where you don't want to even get into it and just like thug your way out of it where it's like, I don't care.

It's just like any kind of extra masculine.

Have you heard of ACT acceptance and commitment therapy?

It's not too dissimilar to CBT.

It's kind of...

CBT adjacent, I suppose.

But in many ways,

CBT is teaching you the thinking patterns, the way that your brain works, so that you can

better see and move through challenges.

Acceptance and commitment therapy, a lot of that is about this thing is happening and you sort of allow it to move through you.

So it's CBT I for insomnia is very popular and act I for insomnia is also pretty popular.

But the approaches are very different.

So

acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia, a lot of the time is just, okay, I'm awake.

What would it be like if I was okay with being awake not cbt which a lot of the time feels like you're um you're in battle with it uh oh that's catastrophic thinking that's anchoring bias that's you know uh and at least in my experience using act for challenges that you've got in your life you said before um

do i feel sort of generally pretty good about the day am i not too stressed

what would it be like if i was just just okay with this?

What would it be like if I was just, my knee, I've got a little bit of a knee injury or something.

And you go, I can fight against it or I can reverse engineer it.

You know, this is a challenge that I need to get through.

This is where the real work begins.

You go, my knee hurts.

What if I was okay with my knee hurting?

Yeah.

I'm still need to go and do the thing.

But at least for me, and maybe it's different for different physiologies.

For me, I just like that.

sort of ease regulation thing.

For me, that's

that works quite well.

But then that's where, like, when I talk about the logic of taking things to two extremes, well, what do you do?

Like, just take everything negative that ever happens to you and say, this is just how it is.

That's okay.

Like, that's completely forgetting.

I don't need to fix it.

I can just let it fester and get worse.

Like, it's, it's, are you going to lower your standards to the problems that you're dealing with?

Or are you going to raise your standards and fix those problems?

and be in a better position.

So you can't fix everything, but some of the things that's where the middle ground comes in.

The things that you could fix, you should fix.

And the things that you can't, you shouldn't worry about.

Well, that's the stoic fork, right?

That dichotomy of control thing.

So you mentioned there about training at the gym, two in the morning, kind of getting it done.

This is me on my own.

How difficult has it been to maintain a simple lifestyle now?

Because I can't imagine that training in the gyms near you is quite as peaceful as it used to be.

Well, maybe a little, but it's actually the best

out of anywhere.

Apart from that, people have seen you a million times.

I've been at this gym since I started working out, so I see all the same people working.

No one's amazed.

Oh, it's all yeah.

If anything, they're probably like, oh, he's on my machine.

Like, oh my god, Sam's on the Smith.

I want to

be there for 30 minutes, motherfucker.

And it's just like an exposure thing, you know, like just from being there so much.

But when I uh, when I get to visit places, that's where it's a little crazier.

Or

like, even it's kind of the classic trope of, holy, my Instagram just blew up.

Go to LA.

I'm out of here.

And it's,

you're kind of boxing yourself in because now you're doing what everyone else does.

For me, I've been like, the gym is going to have the same weights anywhere.

The whole point of social media is you can do it from anywhere.

I don't need to uproot my whole life and everyone that I know just because that's what other people do.

So it's...

At home, it's like very normal.

But it's definitely different.

But as different as it is um like i i got this a lot it's like how crazy is this and like objectively it's totally crazy like i can still see that from before to now but you do get a little bit exposed to it just from it never just happened like first it was like one guy at a kroger

said

whoa

dude i saw you on my phone earlier And it was a video that had like 2,000 views.

Like, it just happened because he was, that was the start.

And then, like, the next week, there was another guy.

And then it's like all very 0.1% increases over time.

So there was no moment where the frog jumped out of the boiling water because it just raised temperature super slowly.

But it's definitely crazy how big it's all kind of scaled.

But at home, it's pretty normal.

How do you not get distracted as more options come onto the table?

I think I've still got a little bit of that kind of,

I don't want to say hater preconception, but almost like hard-headedness of like, I know what I'm doing.

I know what I want to do.

I know who I wouldn't want to like get involved with.

Because it's not like everyone on social media is always the nicest person ever.

Like it's like anything.

So I can see guys where I would say, I like this guy.

This guy's cool.

We have talked before.

Let's do something.

But even, and I always think about this at the expos, like to see an expo, everyone just left this Lyft Lyft London, and they are getting after it.

This year is their year.

I saw Sawyer Clatt, I saw David Lade, Phil Heath was there.

This is going to be sweet.

In a week,

that motivation is going to, it's going to dwindle because this is like the just for show part.

And in the moment, it's super flashy.

But, you know, even the workouts I got to do with some of the gym truck guys, like Jack Eagles and Marcus, and like, it was really fun because I get to lift with guys who are kind of higher level advanced.

Like Jack Eagles is a total beast.

But that's

countered by the three months of workouts I just did on my own, which were only for the purpose of like progress.

So it's like there's a ratio of like fun to work

where like, you know, how many there would be a million hours of, I always reference the basketball players because they're such a good example of a lot of practice before performance.

And it's like, how long would you sit and watch like a Akobe Bryant shoot free throws?

Like, how long would you watch LeBron do dribbling drills?

You wouldn't.

But that's the kind of,

I see a lot of quotes where it's like, those are the glorious, gloryless battles which, when won, add up to a seamless victory.

But it's, it's like, you can't forget that all happened before.

But it's easy to when all you see is that end result.

Like when we're all in matching track suits, we're a freaking Gymshark team.

Don't forget, everybody is now going back to where they belong.

Not belong, but back to where they're from.

To do the boring stuff.

And they're all going to get back to work.

They're all going back to normal.

Dude, it's the same with the show.

It's

this is fun and it's cool, but

that's not over this weekend.

I landed on Thursday.

I had the athlete venue thing on Friday with all of us going.

I didn't get to do the athlete workout on the Friday afternoon because I had to go back and prep and read.

And then I had to do it before we left on Saturday and then left early on Saturday.

And then on Sunday, I did it all morning and then didn't get to go to the product showcase last night for the same thing.

So, yeah, you're right.

It's

95%,

98% of it is all of this stuff, which is me looking at a laptop or me with a Kindle or me with a book or me with notes or me walking and going, what the fuck do I think about that thing?

Like, what's the idea?

What's the name for that concept?

What's it, whatever?

And then, oh, okay, I get to come back and finally have some fun.

But

there was a cool story from Atomic Habits by James Clear.

And

I think it was the lead coach of maybe the Chinese weightlifting team.

Or maybe this is Ben Bergeron's Chasing Excellence.

It's one of the two.

And they spoke to

the lead coach of the Chinese weightlifting team.

They said, what's the difference between the guys who are elite and the guys that are world champions?

And he said, it's the world champions that are prepared to do the most boring work with the least amount of complaining.

And I just really like that idea because

especially as things become more successful, and this is like a really unpopular talking point on the internet because everybody wants to hear the zero to one, not the 50 to 55 or 80 to 85 or 95 to 96.

They don't want to hear about the top end stuff because it doesn't sound, it sounds more exclusionary, right?

Because by definition, most people are on the come up as opposed to closer to the top.

But I think it's important to give people an idea of what are the pitfalls that are coming up for you.

If you do what you say that you want to achieve, which is become better in whatever it is that you are, even becoming better as a parent, becoming better as a dog owner, becoming better as a friend, or whatever, as you become more advanced, there will be fewer and fewer people that can give you advice about what you're going to come up against.

Anyway, point is:

people that are prepared to show up and do boring things as their situation becomes becomes more luxurious,

feels sort of opulent.

You know, if you're a world champion Chinese weightlifter,

I imagine you've probably got your meals cooked for you.

You'll have body work, you'll have a coach, you'll have a mindset person, you'll have friends, you'll be living in a house that's probably quite nicely put together,

a bed that's constructed for your particular physiology, firmness, all that sort of stuff.

And you think,

how do you remain hungry to go in and do an hour of mobility work

four times a week when

you have your meals cooked for you and you've got a custom-built pillow and stuff.

And that

preparedness to accept no matter how good I get at this thing,

I will always have to do boring shit.

And that's not a bug.

It's a feature.

And not only is it a feature, it's a source of competitive advantage because as things get more

salubrious, as you as you raise up through the ranks, other people will have the same thought that you do, which is, I shouldn't need to do this shit anymore.

You go, okay.

So if you can continue to lean into the stuff that you did at the start, at the end,

that's where the competitive advantage lies.

Yeah, I was just doing the math to make sure I knew what it all added up to, but not even including, because before the bodybuilding shows I just did, like I was dining for like five months, but just counting the year from January until that first show, a three-month period, there was five days straight

of cardio.

It was 120 hours because

it was 30 minutes in the morning and then 30 minutes after the workout for two of those months.

And then for one of those months was an hour in the morning and an hour after.

So five, like, who would even be able to watch five hours of something like that?

Let alone, or five days of something like that, let alone do it?

And that's the stuff I don't show off.

Because, I mean, for one, nobody would even care to watch it.

But

it's like a hidden quest in a video game where it's actually the most valuable thing, or like it's straight out of Indiana Jones when he's got to pick the premise is he's in this kind of magical cave, if you haven't seen it.

And there's a million gold, or like there's a hundred gold chalices, and they're all super flashy.

And if you pick the correct one, you get in eternal life or something, whatever.

So there's two guys that show up.

It was Indiana Jones and then another like villain guy.

And he picks the flashiest, most diamond-encrusted one he could get his hands on, like what he thinks would be the trick, drinks from it, instantly dead or something like that.

It's been a while.

And then Indiana Jones picks the scrappy wooden one.

And that was the secret, the one that was understated.

And it's, um, so that gets me motivated to do that kind of stuff and track all my cardio and calories and everything because I know its value because I've done it and gotten the value from it.

So I know that it actually like is the trick.

But if you, if you've never done it, you don't have that proof and it's, it's always a what if.

And that's everything.

Like that's honestly, that's the,

at least stateside, that's your kind of programmed to do that.

Middle school.

High school, okay, you have to go to college to get this job to do this.

Like the idea of doing, getting into into like a trade or getting into like, I think I have this awesome business idea.

That is the minority by far to branch off from this conditioned path.

And it's not like it's bad, but

so many people might have been able to do so many awesome things if they could really do what they wanted to do instead of just, you know, following the beaten path.

Bro.

If you're succeeding at a life that you hate, imagine how great you'd be at one that you actually enjoyed.

There's so many people that are crushing it and they're not fired up for what they do.

Imagine how good you could be if you actually woke up on the morning and were excited for what you were about to do.

Like it was a, and that might just be a time thing.

Like there's a video of Seinfeld in an interview.

And, you know, I don't, I don't know if I'd call him the greatest source of whatever, but he's like, you know, back, back in the, in the 90s, back in the 80s, the flex was like, what do you do for work?

And that's a little different because, I mean, inflation and whatever.

But at the time, at least, it was, oh, this guy has a cooler job than me.

Oh, this guy worked at a guitar shop.

That's cool.

I'm a freaking accountant.

That's just paper everything.

And it's

like it's very monetarily driven.

Like,

it's, it's, what are the three classics?

It's like sex, drugs, and money.

That's, you know, monetized social media-wise in its own way, the sex side.

But in regular Instagram and when it comes to, or at least the money side, that you don't have to do anything.

You don't have to be an interesting guy at all.

If you get your hands on a super fancy car and make some videos about it, you didn't even have to, you could know someone who had it and he let you.

And that's your whole gimmick, just the fact that you like have something this valuable.

And for me, I'm like, that sucks.

Like you didn't, you didn't do anything to get that.

And the ones that did, well, they don't even care to show it off because they are kind of, you know, comfortable enough with wherever they're at.

Where it's like guys who say, oh, dude, I'm going to do a bodybuilding show.

I'm going to make it.

I'm going to be the next whoever.

My thought on that is always you're trying to essentially argue your case to the universe.

And internally in your mind, that kind of idea to want to propel, like convince everyone you can do it may come from an internal doubt of,

I don't know if I can do it, but I want to do it.

I don't know if I can do it.

I'm going to tell everyone I can do it, and then maybe I'll be able to convince myself.

So it's not bad to want to say that and then still really go after it.

But however I'm wired, I don't exactly want to talk about what I'm going to do.

And it might be a little bit of a defense mechanism for me.

Because if I have a plan to do something and then it totally flops,

well, no one knew I was going to do it.

You've done set a goal, you can't fail.

Nobody knew I was going to do it.

So I don't know.

But I don't think it's as much of that as it is.

Like, you know, on the social media side, if I said I was going to do a bodybuilding show in six months, the whole time people would, people would say, like, he's not going to do it.

So I'm like, all right, I don't want to even talk about it.

So usually it's like, okay, 12 weeks out.

videos, you know, transformation programs,

like just really hyping it up months in advance.

So for me with mine, it was like, all all right, we're doing a show in like three days.

We're already ready.

Yeah.

Not even to give anybody the opportunity to think it wouldn't happen because then you just do it.

And that's already way more impactful because anybody could say they're going to do it.

But to actually

like have that belief very firmly or it's not even a belief.

It's like an under

It's I want to have an understanding that I know I can get where I want to go, where it's to the point where you don't believe that if I knock this water, I was going to spill everywhere.

You know it.

You know, that's what is going to happen from the circumstance.

So if you're really,

and maybe in the beginning, I'm sure some of it was just from optimal delusion, but I think you might even need some of that just to get started.

But now it's to the point where I know what I'll be capable of, or I know what I am capable of.

And I want to at least reach that level of effort and consistency with the things that I'm really into.

I'm I'm not like that with everything,

but with the working out, at least very specifically, like that's my thing.

Not all your eggs in one basket, but if most of them are in there, you should give it a lot of attention.

And I know I'll feel better if I do.

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When it comes to prep, first bodybuilding show this year, male body dysmorphia is on track to overtake female body dysmorphia within a couple of decades.

What's your relationship with the mirror like?

I was definitely feeling it a little because you are,

it's one day where you just really depleted all your water.

Like, you will never look like that on a regular day-to-day basis.

And also, I mean, it's also kind of an interesting look.

Like, do you really want to look?

like a stage bodybuilder all the time like i get so i get the allure there for the day but afterward, like actually eating more food and kind of getting a little bit softer just from, because that's the nature of it, that was actually when I did feel it a little, because I was just looking at the absolute craziest version of myself ever.

And now I'm not that.

But it's kind of a, it's, it's more of a mental thing where what do you imagine yourself as?

When you think of Chris Williamson, are you thinking awesome lighting, huge, jacked, ripped, pumped up?

Yes, keep going.

I'm thinking, or at least I try to like imagine myself more so as like just like how I look in the day.

Like the, the more the or the larger I've gotten just in like the pursuit of size,

the more comfortable I've gotten with like just the fact that I'm as big as I am, right?

I don't feel the need to like

only post my biggest picture and like even go so far as to like Photoshop it.

That sucks.

Not only is that like you're just lying by doing that, which for the people you're showing is that's that's stupid.

That's rough.

But you're lying to yourself because you're definitely looking at that picture and thinking, you know, that's how I look.

And that's not how you look.

When I'm when I'm pumped up in the gym, that is its own circumstance, which is cool in its own way.

And then I can go back to what I normally look like.

And for me, I've been so like real progress-driven with the gym where I'm not so concerned with how do I look today for everyone who's going to see me.

And those guys are the guys who stay lean all year round, always posting Instagram.

They're scared of getting too fluffy to make the longer-term progress.

Well, maybe you're not scared in every case, because if that's the look that you really want, then you're good.

That's sweet.

Like you actually kind of did it.

But if you're someone where you actually are scared of that, then that's the motivation.

It's just fear of looking a little softer or anything.

And

I mean, we're not helping.

You know, guys who post a really crazy picture aren't exactly helping the situation because they're showing a totally crazy version.

But it's, that's where, I mean, it's just how it is.

so it's kind of your responsibility to try to grasp it more objectively like these guys look like this because of everything that they're doing you can't forget that

do you see this with the fans that you interact with uh you know you've got young followers what's your demographic what's the it's wide it's it's um it's probably evenly dispersed between 18 and below 18 to like 30 and then 30 and above okay because i'll get i mean i'm i'm getting off flights and like this older pilot is like, how's my landing, Sam?

I was like,

like, it took me a second, but it's way wider than I ever would have guessed.

Well, even within that, right?

Guys, I guess of all ages.

Yeah, we're, everybody's in the gym.

The middle body dysmorphia thing, just, I think it really fascinates me.

I think we've got a good cultural narrative and archetype around

you know, body positivity for all that.

There were lots of things that was

maybe a little contrived with that for women.

Yeah.

I don't think we've had the same sort of a movement for men.

And I think that that's where this male body dysmorphia thing really, really ramping up.

I mean, you saw bigger, stronger, faster, right?

Where

Luke Skywalker action figure in the 60s was sort of like a nerdy dude.

And then in the 90s, you know, he's been doing five by five for a few years.

And then by sort of the 2000s, he's been on a very, very heavy course of trend.

And you go, why does Luke Skywalker need striated delts?

So you've got this big flation thing that's going on.

But that's not new.

I mean, when did Rocky come out?

That's true.

That's true.

But I think if you were to look at how prevalent that's been, the saturation level.

Yeah, if Rocky as a boxer is ripped,

yeah.

Is it unrealistic?

Are many boxers that built?

Probably not.

But at the very least, the nerdy dude that swings the lightsaber around, probably not him.

But there's no area now that's beyond somebody being jacked for it uh i'm just interested in what

what you're seeing from your audience and what you think for sort of younger generations even younger than you that are coming up now to try and have this balance i want to look better but i don't want to

i don't want to feel in deficit and i i don't want to go through life hating the mirror yeah that's um That's definitely an angle I have to bring up.

That is something like to be looked at.

But terms of the situation I think guys are always going to have it easier because as much of a standard as there is it's still not the same as for women and guys are more likely to look at things as like

shit man I'm just fat or like if you're if you're a guy like that could just be like like guys will joke around with each other like that because like that's just kind of how we are it's a little more

I don't want to say playful but you could you could say kind of blunt like that but it's not as likely to eat at us i would you know i'm not exactly the guy to go to to be like, what was it like to lose 300 pounds?

I could try to guess.

I don't know for sure.

But

I think it's definitely increasing the more prevalent fitness is becoming.

But it's something where another middle ground, like, okay, I either have to look like a Ronnie Coleman or like a Greg Plitt, or I'm completely worthless, which is this side of the scale, which that sucks.

Or, man, I don't care how I look.

I'm going to be 400 pounds and I'm going to love it.

There's no problem with this at all.

And that's, that sucks too.

So there is a middle ground of where I think it's important to, you can be your own like worst critic,

but it's different if your own worst, if you're your own worst hater.

You can tell yourself you have things that you want to work on, but to really like self-depreciate and like, I'm just such a, I, I hate to hear it.

I'll see guys where they, I'm into the gym and it's, it's always the same guy I reference here because it was so egregious.

Every time I'd come in to work out, he's like, oh, how you doing, man?

He's like, shit,

squatting today.

I hate it.

I want to get out of here.

But he's not joking.

And I mean, for him, that's where it goes back to like sometimes it's a self-soothing behavior to say, oh, this all sucks so bad.

And you're like releasing your responsibility for the situation.

Like, oh, everything sucks.

Oh,

just how it is.

But it's,

yeah, that's what I really like to hear the the most because for a high school guy to go from like 160 normal looking dude to pretty big, I mean, after a year of only working out, no diet at all, you can look pretty good.

Like you drastically different.

But it didn't take that much because you do get that early starting point of, well, you were already pretty lean.

Noob gains a real dude.

Yeah, newbie gains.

Right in the beginning, you're the most susceptible to your training.

So for someone to show me their, you know, fat loss transformation, like, dude, look at this picture.

And it's not the guy I'm looking at right now.

Like, it's 150 pounds.

So these guys could be in like my gyms that I go to, and he's with his dad.

And like, we get a little picture.

And then, you know, he walks off and does a set.

And then his dad's telling me, he's like, dude, he started watching you talk about dieting.

Like, he really got into it.

I never could have guessed this would happen.

Like, completely.

changed the dude's life.

But not because I said something, but because he like took the action to do it.

And when someone does that, like out of, honestly, out of everything, even someone who like had a regular, like maybe they started off a little leaner, they got pretty big, they had a big bench or something, like I'm always more impressed.

And I can actually like get a look, just something about like, I know that you know about the things that I really value.

Doing cardio a ton, tracking your calories, going into your kitchen and like, I want to eat something.

I'm not going to do it, though.

I'm going to handle this internal battle.

I'm giving myself

and actually making it happen.

And, like, losing, because losing that much weight is like, I don't know, about 10 times, but it's up there in a multiplicity of difficulty from just working out and liking it and getting a little more muscle.

So, those are the guys where when I hear that, I'm like,

we're going to talk for a little longer.

Like, we're not, I'm going to, we're going to have a little chat here.

Like, that's what I want to hear.

You mentioned sort of some of the differences between guys and girls there.

You've gained, what, 100 pounds-ish, probably?

Something

from bottom to top.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of muscle, great condition.

You look fantastic on the stage.

Given that most guys go to the gym in order to get attention from girls, what is the ratio of attention that you get from guys and girls now that you are in the big 200s?

Yeah, right.

I don't know.

I don't know about if the social media stats are any indicator or like what your gender demographics are, but at least from my like long form videos where people are actually coming to watch me talk about working out and like the things that go along with it, it's

I call them the four percenters because it's the four percent female viewers.

And I mean, it's not like unreasonable because I'm talking about working out as a guy.

from a guy's perspective.

But I mean, I'll chime in because sometimes I'll be like, I'm sorry,

I'm not the guy to watch for glute training.

So it's sometimes where if someone's, you know, dude, I want to get into a serious,

like, I'm going to really lock in.

I want to know what it's like to lose 300 pounds.

I want to know what it's like to whatever.

Like, that's where I'm going to say, you know, I can tell you what I know.

But if you want to watch someone who did it, then you've got to watch somebody else and kind of get inspired from their track.

What about IRL?

Because, you know, guys that might not even know who you are as you're getting bigger.

Dude, like, what are you doing for arms?

Yeah.

The many girls that come up and go, Sam, like, use your forearms, we're getting so big.

So, that's that's one thing which was not the motivation.

Because the guys who think

even the idea is strange.

Oh, if I was a big, if I was just bigger,

girls would be all over me.

If I was, if my doubts were a little,

that's not, that's not the value system for sure.

That's not what it works in Europe.

But, but if you get big enough, they will come up and talk to you and they'll say, My brother loves you.

My boyfriend loves you.

Could you take a picture so I could send it to him?

Because I see you on his phone so much that they don't watch the videos, but they see him like secondarily.

So it actually, if you get big enough, girls will talk to you because they will come up and ask you for a picture for their dad.

There's a

meme online that you have a fear of women.

So that plays back into the earlier TikToks.

Okay.

Where I, my formula, which I just thought was funny, but like how all my things were, was if you want to post a video about working out in like a 10-second little short, like you might think you want to talk about how serious the gym is or have like a, like, don't even do a caption.

Just say, like, grind.

Or like, you don't know what it takes.

But how I've always looked at it is like, if you're big,

You have already said that you are serious.

Like unspokenly, just from how you are as a guy or what the video was.

Like, clearly, you're serious because you have these results that you're showing off in the video.

To say anything like a motivational just thing on top of that, which, like, if it's a motivational video, that's different.

But in terms of like regular kind of content, like you're putting a hat on a hat.

For me, it's like post a workout video that's just really cool and hype of the workout.

And I'm like, lifting bench at 315.

But then the caption is like just something silly, something you wouldn't expect.

Cause it's like, you know,

the only reason I want to get strong is so I can protect my cats at home.

Or like, it's like, I had to cut this workout short today.

My mom had to pick me up to go get groceries.

So like, like, something silly, because that's not something you'd expect.

And everybody always posts it, like, you'd want to post like, oh, I'm so serious.

So it's almost like, you know, just, you can be.

If you're serious enough about something, it's even funnier when you're silly with something else.

What's that got to do with the fear of women thing?

Because that's his own joke.

You would think big brawlic guy,

like just from what we were saying before, it's like, oh, you're working out to get girls.

That is kind of, and I didn't come up with that joke.

Like I saw it before and kind of just like it happened to scale a little more with me.

But it's like, that's its own joke of like, oh, you, this is this big, like, masculine dude, whatever.

Like, can I work in with you?

And then in the video, I just like disappear, like teleport.

Because that's, that's just something that you wouldn't expect.

Like, it's funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then it, but, you know, then it bled into like real life where, like, we did meet and greets.

And, like, the first time I ever took a picture and there was a girl there, all the comments were like,

what the f?

I thought he was.

What?

They feel like they'd been betrayed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's like, what do you,

in a world where that was actually the case, what you want there to be like, guys, this meet and greets guys only.

Yeah.

Well, like, that, that wouldn't.

You're at least going to get 4% based on your demo.

It's 4%.

Yeah, exactly.

Instagram's 20%, but that's because it's Instagram.

Because that's not really watching your stuff.

I think the most real viewers and the most real feedback and comments, that's on the YouTube.

Because there's a lot of intent to watch a whole workout or even some of a workout.

Whereas on Instagram, you can just, something can be shown to you, scroll it away.

It's like nothing.

You were posting on...

You may still do Spotify video, I think.

There's stuff that gets reposted there.

That's not you?

That's not your channel?

I'll get into it.

I've got a couple of things where it's like on the list of things to kind of right like track down or get control of they do video now so you can basically do that so you can just plug it over there the whole thing yeah I think that'll be good because people it would certainly work to listen to yeah because you can just listen the whole thing it's gonna be confronting in there but that's that's something where if it was an audio form I'd probably cut some of that out instead of the workout's sounds and ASMR I'd probably just say what the workout was in its own little note segment in the middle and then talk about it after yeah yeah yeah because I yeah that's its own joke like it'll be dude, don't watch this video without headphones.

Or my wife came in and she thought I was watching like whatever.

Yep.

And it's, so I actually think,

I don't know.

I just, for me, that makes me feel like I'm keeping it real.

But is it too much?

So I don't know.

I'm not too worried about it.

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modern wisdom.

Bodybuilding's already a rough sport, physically, psychologically, hormonally.

How much are you thinking about longevity at the moment?

And the trade-offs.

That's one thing I'll bring up because it's like guys will ask me, it's like, are you going to move to open?

Are you going to, or it's, can't wait to see you as Mr.

Olympia.

Like, as though it's, it's, that's the track that I'm on.

And for me, it's more so, it's like, okay, what am I willing to do that adds to this whole thing with bodybuilding that will take me, you know, a certain degree of distance, right?

Because if you're a top-level Olympia competitor, that comes with its own things, you know, like it's not as though bodybuilding on a competitive level is, and I might not be the one to say recommend because I'm not like a complete

G

of bodybuilding, like a Jay Cutler or like a real commentator or a judge would be who's been in the sport for years.

But it's like, it's not something to be pursued forever.

Like actually the bigger I've gotten, the more I've started to be content with the size that I already am, where I used to imagine 300-pound Sam Sulik.

I'm like, yeah, once I get to 300, that'll start to be.

But it's something where when you actually get to a different position just over time and like through progress, you're going to have a different perception of like what you actually want.

Because even though you may have reached that level from having a certain goal, Now you're a completely different person with different circumstances.

And as good as that goal may have been to motivate you in the beginning,

sometimes that can change.

Yeah, dude, that's true.

And it's not a giving up.

It's just you've gotten a better perspective and now you know more to make a better decision.

That's a really fantastic point that

adjusting your goals as you get closer to them, to some people feels like seeding ground.

You've already done the hard part.

Why are you not applying more pressure

and really, really pushing?

But

the same as

what you considered to be a good dish when you were starting out as a chef will not be what you consider to be a good dish as you become more sophisticated.

And that dish may be more simple.

So you may start out making these really complex things with 500 ingredients and you think, well, actually, you know, just a good pasta.

Like, I can just nail a good pasta.

And I think that that's pretty sweet.

So yeah, the ability to discern good from bad, like taste, like what's something that's a tasteful goal for me to go towards?

What's something that resonates?

How do I realize as I get closer to something that maybe the ladder I was climbing was kind of leaning up against the wrong wall a little bit?

So, I'm just going to adjust it and I'm going to keep climbing over here.

And it's with bodybuilding, at least, there's a few examples.

I mean, actually, I'm sure there's thousands where it's just not highlighted on social media.

So, I wouldn't have any input on when this might happen.

But with bodybuilding,

it's not something I'd recommend for everyone.

Like, when I see the, like,

I'd say it's prevalence now, like the idea of I need to be a bodybuilder or like a younger guy saying I have to be able to get on stage at a certain point.

I think

it's a bit over-inflated in its value because it's very showy.

You only see that like little flashy kind of point at the end.

And it's also in a scope of social media where like

as much as I'm not trying to overdo it and make myself like look cooler or better, like portray the crazy lifestyle that I might actually actually live.

It's still kind of flashy in its presentation.

So if you get obsessed with like the idea of something to actually approach what that real thing is,

now your idea of it is actually going to become a real understanding of it.

And you'll realize like,

shit, man, I wouldn't, like there's guys where they have gone pro, like they really got into it.

They were 100% serious.

And then they realize this isn't for me.

I'm going to, I'm going to not, like, backpedal isn't the right word.

I'm going to just redirect towards something which I actually value now.

And if at any point that would happen, then that's what I would do.

How do you

now personally weigh health versus aesthetics?

You've got this.

Well, I mean, everybody, uh there's actual like numerical metrics.

You know, everyone's getting their like honestly, I think everybody should be getting their blood tested, even just out of curiosity.

That's something you're doing regularly.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's that's definitely like anybody who's serious about bodybuilding, they're all getting relatively extensive blood tests pretty regularly.

And if they're not, then like you are missing out.

But what sucks is actually it's, um, I'm kind of spoiled because my general practitioner will order all my stuff, like a full panel of everything.

Whereas a lot of doctors, like, I'll hear stories where it's like, you know, can I just get, like, can I just get my test leveled?

A normal dude.

Nah, you're young.

You don't have to worry about something like that.

And it's

like,

I mean, I'm sure you've got your own take on it, but it's just kind of this behind the

curve sort of thing.

Cause that's something like, could

what if you're a guy where you're straight up hypogonadal and you're, you might be literally whatever value is barely any?

That could totally 50s or the 200s or something.

Well, I'm saying, like, if there were somebody where they were under 100, and it's like, you didn't have any control over that.

And if your hormones are totally out of whack, then that would be warrant for intervention.

And that was something that would be totally like doctor viewed.

But what I see a lot is you could take that statement

and stretch it as far as it could go to justify the craziest things.

Like it's with, and I see it a lot in training.

A 50-year-old ex 900-pound squatter, complete like real experience and respect in the space will make a video and he's training now still.

And he's been training for 40 years or 35 years.

And he'll say, you know, right now it's back squats, they're just not

the reward to wrist to reward ratio, it's not there.

It's too much on my lower back.

My knees are, they've been kind of worn.

Like it's, so for me, I've got to stick to more, like lighter leg press and, you know, just more kind of stable movements.

And that's backed by his situation.

And someone who is kind of starting a little earlier in the gym, they might have an awesome grasp of everything will hear that.

And then that's an easy argument to say, well, this guy said you don't even need to squat.

I'm not squatting.

Dude, squats, like not even an acceptance of, like, I don't want to squat.

That's why I don't do it.

But just this,

you know, trying to bring the bar down to their level of like, well, I'm not willing to squat.

I don't want to do it.

If I can justify why I don't need to do it, then actually I'm not skipping anything.

I'm doing it right by doing less.

What's the

line?

What's the linkage or analogy between that and the bloods?

Yeah, well, it's just because

then some, you know, somebody could say, oh, you know, my test was probably super low anyway.

They didn't even get a test.

Somebody could say, it's like, you know,

I was looking at WemMD and it's like, the,

so I don't bring that up as much, but the normalcy and like the

conditioned of just like, that's not a big deal.

Like, that's not something I'm.

Bro, let me give you this.

Let me give you this.

According to the American Urological Association, 25% of patients on TRT never had their testosterone checked.

One-third weren't even deficient.

I saw that last week.

But what's the age demographic?

Because

if that's still like what somebody would conventionally say a normal age to be, like a 35 above, I think that's a much different situation than anything earlier because you're literally still a developing dude.

You know, like you, that's, that is a thing that you are messing with, which is not just like, eh, it's just, you know, whatever.

We were talking before we got started about some of the challenges you have health-wise with bulking up and what that does to you, the way that you feel.

You've already mentioned mobility.

What are some of the unseen

side effects of gaining so much weight in such a short space of time as a young dude?

Yeah, and it's so that's one thing that's kind of interesting because there's this sort of

I almost want to say just what you would call your how you're carrying the weight that you're carrying because right now I'm I'm like I'm 250 and I'm actually a little bit lighter from this whole week of everything we've been doing and not eating as much food and traveling, but still like I feel very light.

Like I do not feel as though I'm super heavy because in the range of like my big and and bulked weight to like my lighter, carb depleted, maybe a little less hydrated weight, like I'm on the bottom end of that scale.

Whereas like two years ago, for me to really bulk up to 250 and be a very water retentive, like it felt completely different.

Like bend over to put your shoes on and like you can feel you're like, you're almost holding your breath because there's so much pressure.

Like you had a, you got a full stomach, like just things like that.

But the scale really could, I mean, it's, it's so gradual or no, it's so extensive.

Because anything that I could say, like, like, I fit in an airplane seat fine.

Like, I still, that's not, that's an Eddie Hall, Ronnie Coleman, Ryan Shaw problem.

Problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, I'm big, but I'm still like relatively human-shaped, you know?

Like, like, muscle does not exceed my frame.

Like, if you looked at like a very good example would be a Derek Lunsford.

Yes.

And I, uh, I'll bring him up sometimes because he's got a really interesting look because you could basically describe him as you took a regular, I mean, you took a regular lean guy and you just dragged the muscle scale all the way to the max.

Because, I mean, sometimes to even get to that size, like it, it just has an effect.

What's the C-weigh?

He's got to be heavy.

I don't know any exact terms.

And it's different when you're shorter, too.

So someone who's 6'3 at 200.

is very different than someone at 5'4 at 200.

So he's a, well, he's heavy, but he's a crazy big.

So for him, he's got his own.

That's where, like, when we were talking on our panel talk yesterday, when the guy said, like, what if you had to change about your sleep from being so big?

Like,

those guys must have their own stories.

Or, like, maybe they

industrial strength, CPAP machine.

I couldn't even say that'd be for them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

How do you think about discipline?

I'm interested in

where you go for

drive when motivation is low.

Yeah, I think

because I don't usually think to my, I never have self-talk in my mind where I say, like, I need to be more disciplined right now.

And it's, maybe just because of what motivated me to get into it in the beginning.

Like, I just never, like, that was never my mantra of a word.

And with anything working out related, I, um,

I guess I almost feel like I'm on a like sometimes I feel a little hypocritical hypocritical when I'll say like typically good motivational like okay even if you feel like you're not going to get after it like you just gotta like know that you're gonna regret it if you don't things along those lines but for the most part like I kind of treat it as this like this is gonna happen like there is no like the idea of okay I need to take a break today or I need to take a rest day today.

I'm getting better at it because it is objectively necessary at times.

I'm getting better at taking a rest day.

I think they're unnecessarily taken a lot, which makes me like a little more tentative because it's like I know people are skipping just because they didn't want to do it.

And it's the same thing as the logic of the guy who actually did an objectively correct thing.

I'm a little fatigued.

I can feel it.

The muscle that I was going to hit today is even a little sore, and I didn't really get a lot of food or water today.

A rest, if I stay home and really refuel and get a good night's rest, and do this workout tomorrow, it will objectively be better for my long-term progress.

And someone could pretend they're using that logic and justify, I don't want to go today.

Rest days are actually good.

Rest days are good and then they take two weeks off.

That's the other extreme.

I think of on the scale of no rest days ever to two weeks at a time on the regular, this isn't a middle ground that's like right here.

It's much more on this side of things

and it's uh i think you're a different guy if you go even when you don't want to or when you subjectively have extra difficulties because now you're the guy who did it even when it was hard and it's like you know nobody knows that you did it even uh when i was dieting for a few of the workouts towards the end like i was super low energy like i'm like I'm doing three sets of pull downs and I don't feel warm at all until like the fourth one.

And I'm recording it.

And for me, it's like there's different levels of actualized thought where like, if you think something, you know, and you constantly think the same thing, you can start to ingrain it in your mind.

But if you say something and you consistently say like, oh man, I'm so tired,

you're convincing yourself that it's true.

You're making it true.

And also, I'm not going to, like, I don't like guys when they complain in a prep.

Because if I'm trying to watch someone else's video of like them working towards something, I don't want half the things they're saying to be like, Yeah, I feel like shit, man, this sucks.

I really don't even want to be here.

Like, that's so.

I don't even like the idea of anything like that.

But so, for that workout, where I'm dying, like it was really hard.

Like, 400 milligrams of caffeine was not getting

its direct translation.

But,

oh, all right, that was a good one.

Let's move on to the next one.

Walk, walk, walk, turn the camera off.

Oh,

But it's like, cause I, and it's not even like a portrayal of that, because I bring that up as soon as that show is done, like I brought that up.

I'm like, guys, I was dying on a few of those lifts like hard.

I don't want to show it though, because like, I want to, you know, you're kind of, you've got this mental version of what the world is when you think about it.

And if you can think about it in a better way, it'll kind of bleed into like actual reality.

Yeah, you're sort of faking it until you believe it.

Well, look,

the devil's in the details with this.

When should I take a rest day

versus like, am I taking a day off because I might get injured today?

I'm not slept well.

I really need it.

Exactly.

Or am I selling myself short?

Am I not allowing myself to say these things out loud or attach much worth to these thoughts because I'm denying what is actually true?

Because this is better for me in the long run because it's a positive mindset.

Am I being honest with the audience if i don't put forward the weaker version of me that i don't want to be or am i being more honest if i do put it forward it's infinite spiral of i think that at least that last portion gets a little well i i think it'd be it's its own thing where it's a completely different perception that i'm like portraying i think it's different when you like you might say something then like in a situation like that and then later like guys remember when i was super high energy for that back day that was not it i think it kind of balanced out when you say that later but that's something to think about for all of them, for sure.

Well, how many times have people in an argument with a partner said something that they then later regret?

Right, right.

In the moment, a heated moment of a diet or an argument, we often say stuff that's random.

Yeah, that's a, that's one thing, getting back to

we were saying something a second ago about like different kind of thought processes and things.

And one of probably one of my first, like what you kind of call Eureka moment of like self-realization, I was like in high school.

And imagine Sam Sulik

pissed like beyond belief.

And it's like, you know, for whatever, not even anything serious, but like in the moment, this was the worst thing ever.

I'm in the shower.

I'm like sitting there just stewing.

And I was, I take this and I go, dude, being this like upset is just so tiring.

Like, what am I doing?

Like that, and I hadn't been into any kind of

or like motivational speaker, like thought control kind of, not thought control, but like thought, like,

you know, kind of controlling your own thoughts, like what you think of things or anything like that.

But that was the first time I had a certain kind of reflection of like, what am I even doing right now?

This is not, this is not even necessary.

And this also sucks.

And it was like a good little,

just, all right, let's chill out here.

Do you get angry?

You seem pretty chill all the time.

I'm much more chill now, I believe.

Like, I wasn't, I was never not chill.

Like, I was never like fighting anybody or anything.

But I think over time, I've become much more chill for sure is that a cultivated practice or do you think that's just you a little a little cult like i was um

there's this one youtube channel it's called grave mind

right and it's uh kind of small but they it's a lot of um it's a lot of just excerpts from like uh

all sorts of like marcus aurelius kind of or like the stoic mind like all sorts of little books like that like i've never gotten into like where i sit and i read a whole thing or anything like some of those ideas are very kind of translatable to the training.

So it was half training because it's like the better of a, you know, kind of head and direction, a thing that's controlling your training, the better the training will be.

So it wasn't exactly a like, you know, self-help thought process of trying to learn more about how you are as a person.

It was like, this is actually going to make my training better.

That was kind of the motivation.

But it definitely extends into just all of life.

But it's like, you know, there's things you can't control.

There's things you can control.

To be upset about anything unnecessarily, you just, you're stressing yourself out for no reason.

And you're creating your own negative energy by like looking at something in that light.

So just a lot of, like, I got into that for like a couple of,

I don't see, maybe like a month.

I like watch a lot of those videos and I took whatever I took from them.

And I think it was, it put me on a better.

mental path.

And it's, um, but like, it's a little silly to say, just for the regular person to hear because it's like all the cliches of like, you know, the grass isn't always greener on the other side or like, you know, just whichever ones.

And they're so just like random.

Like you just spit them out.

You don't even really take it in.

But if in like if you ever have a situation in life where you screw up or something bad happened or whatever, and then you think of one of those because you're like, oh shit, that was actually true.

That, that was literally me just now, where it's, you know, you're going to come across a problem you didn't expect

and to, you know, kind of cower from it or just like pretend it didn't actually happen.

It's, it's something where you kind of, and I think with the training for me, when I'm doing all these videos and like really talk, it's a lot of self-reflection practice because now instead of just a thought about how my training is going, I'm putting it out into like real words and really like, you know, because I don't, the, the whole point of all the things I post is the objective take on, you know, working out out from Sam of the perspective of whatever that day was.

So even if I said something that may have been in the moment objective, like I was saying, like, this is what I believe,

a year later, I could say something else.

I reserve the right to change my mind.

I'm a different guy.

Yeah.

I'm a different guy.

I've done different things.

I've seen different things.

I've met different people.

To be the same guy over time is, I mean, that would just suck.

But that would be even less authentic.

Yeah, there's a

I think one of the problems with anybody putting anything out on the internet, whether you're a content creator or a person that your mum that posts on Facebook,

because we have this concrete record of everything that everybody has ever said throughout all of time, what you end up with is the opportunity for people to call out what on the outside looks like hypocrisy, but from the inside is just updating your worldview and learning and developing and growing.

And

confusing those two

and the quickness of people to say, well, you didn't say that before.

You didn't agree with 45 minutes of cardio.

I thought it was 30, Sam.

Was it not 30 in the last prep?

And

the

incentive there is for people to not say that they have changed their mind when they've changed their mind.

And it also

encourages people to never actually state their opinions.

That's what I was about to say.

If you know that

you have had a few things where you look back and say, yeah, I actually don't do, I don't drink a protein shake with with 100 grams of sugar in it anymore.

I did at the time, and I'm like, Was that something you used to do?

He's like, Well, post-workout, you're very sensitive to an insulin response.

You fucking will be if you put 100 grams of sugar in it.

100 grams is literally just straight sugar and like two scoops of protein.

Are you kidding me?

Well, it was dextrose.

The highest glycemic index sugar there is.

And that was, and it's, it's not like it didn't work.

I bet you felt great after that.

I, one of them came back up when I got back to the uh, when I got back to the apartment.

And then I made another another one to replace it.

But that was like, I had just eaten a huge meal too.

So

I would not recommend them as much now.

But also, I can't say that it was like completely foolish because it worked towards what my goals were.

So it's just something that's...

It's like it's partly built by 100 gram sugar protein shakes.

Exactly.

Yeah.

So it's like, you know, it's just part of the journey of things.

And that's something bodybuilders.

Like that's another, like, if you could say something that's a little different about how I've talked about everything is for them, it's always been this portrayal of I'm only eating rice and chicken and broccoli, and that's all.

And I never cheat and I never eat anything else when you record like a CD for bodybuilding.

But really, these guys are eating all sorts of junk.

Like Elite Priest is a, he's, he's unapologetic in the sense that he's going to say everything how it is.

He's a fat boy.

And he's, he's like, I'm eating McDonald's.

I mean, I'm just eating to get big, man.

If you get fat in the offseason, that's how it is.

Then you can diet.

So I, um, for me, now my statement or what my current take is on like trying to leverage growth from increased calorie input is like, you know, bulk, but

don't get too fat.

Like, cause if you, they'll call it a perma bulk, where it's like, dude, you have, you have gained 40 pounds and 30 pounds of that was not muscle.

And that's where, well, now you're kind of screwed because you got to lose it.

But there is a, there is a sweet spot where you will gain a little bit of body fat, you know, 10 pounds, whatever.

And I think what throws people off is for one,

like maybe they want to, they want to do it.

They want to eat for like a couple of months, get a little bigger and then die back down.

I think it could be like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to diet.

I know people don't like diets.

They've never done it, but they hear what people say about it.

I don't know if I could do it.

Maybe.

I don't want to do it.

But it's also, oh man, I've got my bicep vein right now, though.

I can see my abs right now.

I don't want to lose that.

And for me,

I've got a picture and it's a three-month difference.

And it's insane because it's me like eating a bunch of trash.

Well, not even not actually, it's, it's improved gradually.

Like now more food is like you're putting more, it's, I think of it about it like putting more things through like a fine filter.

And it's like the more additives and just like whatever, like not as though I'm picking out specific ones where I'm never going to eat red 40 because of the, but it's like just on a basic convention biased.

Like I know this is a good, a big bowl of oatmeal and ground beef and like a

semi-natural barbecue sauce is going to make me feel good.

But more so, it won't make me feel bad.

Yes.

And I can eat more of those.

So it's just an objective take that that is better.

But in the time when I was eating like a full pint of like vanilla ice cream and a protein shake, the logic was, well, there's a ton of calories in this.

I can eat it very quickly.

I am gaining weight.

The goal that I am trying to achieve is being achieved.

Is it exactly the most optimal way?

Well, sometimes you kind of have to, you got to screw up.

I don't know what i oh i said i said a good way of saying this but it's like you have to learn from your mistakes so that you can be better later so it's not make mistakes on purpose but when you do like and you realize they were wrong

yeah exactly so the problem isn't making them the problem would be not learning from them a quick aside if you've been feeling a bit sluggish your testosterone levels might be the problem they play a huge role in your energy focus and performance but most people have no idea where those are and what to do if something's off which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter, more comprehensive, and more convenient way to work out what's happening inside of my body.

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What do you think are the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to diet when trying to build muscle?

I, oh, it's because it's very black and white, I feel.

Because you're either a real hardcore, like, I'm going to track everything, I got to scale, or I'm like pretty good at reading all the nutrition labels and I'll make sure I eat enough food.

Because it's really, you're either eating enough or you're not.

And for someone, like, no one is going to track their calories 25% of the time.

Like,

nobody's going to be on their diet 50% of the time.

And even if they were, well, then it's not going to work.

You're not going to notice any substantial changes from it because

like dieting, the scrutiny, I consider close to the scrutiny of like

getting a medical degree.

It's not like getting a business degree or an accounting degree or something where, you know, You get a 2.0 GPA.

Here you go.

You did it.

You know, 70 average, you pass.

Like Like, if I only dieted 70% of the time, or 70% as, you know,

somehow 70% of what was actually necessary, then if I went on stage,

I'd look a fool.

I'd be literally way too soft.

And in relation to the guys who actually did it, like, or even someone just trying to lose weight, you can be on it 70% of the day.

You could be on it 95% of the day.

And then there's a lot of damage in that 5%.

Five minutes unfiltered in a pantry.

You can completely

undo it.

That sounds like a Sam Sulik sex tape.

Five minutes unfiltered in a pantry.

But you can completely undo all your work.

And that happens a lot.

I was good today.

I'm going to have a milkshake.

Just ruined it.

Just with the one thing.

But the margins are very tight, right?

Yeah, because you're either in a deficit.

And it's not necessarily on a day-by-day, because sometimes you throw refeeds in or whatever, but you're either in a deficit consistently on average, week by week, or you're not, or you're in a surplus consistently average, week by week, or you're not.

And even if you, and it's like, honestly, a week is probably a good chunk to describe because if I was in a good six days,

I can, I can undo that in a day.

Yeah.

I can undo, so 300 calorie deficit for six days.

1800 calories is a

meal.

That's one meal.

Or it's like half of a crazy meal if you're like really nuts and you're already, because you're already in a dieted state.

Like you're already subject to like suck up carbs.

Like I've had,

you know, because rather than just reverse dieting very slowly,

like I've had like a 10,000 calorie day one day, and it wasn't like a 10,000 calorie challenge.

Like that was, I tracked everything just because I want to know, but that's just what happened because I let the floodgates loose.

10,000, like a 4,000 calorie day on a Sunday could throw off all your stuff Saturday to Friday.

So it's,

you know, it's something where these, they either, someone could either step it up enough where they actually make it happen, or they're kind of just caught toiling, or they just don't even want to deal with it.

And I know it's, I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying if you do track everything on a scale and you count it all and you like disperse your meals evenly throughout the day so that you are not like dying hungry because you just starved yourself all day, well, then the likelihood that you'll actually get lean if you did everything right, it's like 100%.

Where are the biggest vectors of weakness in dieting for you?

It sounds like you and me have the same thing, which is nighttime snacking tends to be a big temptation, which means if you can just discriminate a little bit more calorie expenditure toward the end of the day, you can go to bed feeling not like you're going to go do the pantry sex today.

I have never blown my calorie deficit from breakfast it is always later in the day so what i do is i just wait till

sometimes i'll just wait until kind of as late as i feel like usually noon is a good like when i because right now i'm going from eating a ton of food to now eating like basically a normal amount of food which just that change even though i'm not in a serious deficit is still enough to start to get me a little bit lighter and actually get some fat reserves burning but nothing like really what you call locked in yet Like fast forward a few months, we're like, okay, I've got 2,500 for today and I need to make them count because I'm getting hungry.

I'm going to wait until maybe one, usually not beyond one.

And it's not because of the magic of intermittent fasting, but you can skip breakfast and you're not dying.

You can wait a little bit and then I just want to time it where it's, I'm hungry, but I'm not starving.

Because if you wait until you're really starving, well, then now you're starving.

You want to eat.

eat that.

You're at the mercy of that desire to eat.

Yeah.

So there's like a threshold of hunger where if you wait until you're too hungry, it might make you more likely to overdo it.

I had an Achilles repair after playing cricket, which is the most British way to snap an Achilles.

And the advice from the surgeon was don't chase the pain when he was talking about using the painkillers.

that you always want to be out ahead of the pain a little bit.

And it's kind of the same, like don't chase the hunger with this.

Allow yourself to get, I'm starting to feel it a little bit.

and I'll just, I'll nip that in the bud as opposed to being ravenous.

And that's how you go from needing a 500-calorie meal to a thousand-calorie meal.

And you go,

that was two-fifths of my entire day on 2,500 gone in a single meal.

God, the rest of the day is going to suck.

Right.

So that's

something I always have to.

It's like a dichotomy of trying to get good at anything or trying to really progress at something because there is a perception that I have to be either rocky balboa and run do 10 miles every morning and drink egg whites and

or

if I can't do that I'll do nothing like that's yeah there's a good reference a guy was like people will have a slashed tire approach to dieting where if one tire gets slashed like you had a bad day he I've I've had days where I cheated I didn't say it till later but I had a couple really big days on my diet um but the idea that okay today was a little off,

screw it, done.

Like it's either perfect or nothing, which is, it's so crazy.

Cause it's a, it's like just what you'd call someone's hypothetical like perfection, where they imagine like the perfect version of themselves and they set the bar there.

And like real life is nothing like that.

But now to like, if they think that this is the bar, To be anything short makes them feel comfortable.

Like, it's just not for me.

If I can't be perfect, I don't want to be anything at all.

But with working out, like what I was about to really get into is

it's a combination of, for one, you do have to be serious.

Like with dieting, the whole point is literally, on average, you are hungrier than you are not hungry.

And you don't get to eat a lot of stuff.

Like, it's just, it's difficult.

It's something hard.

So

you have to like kind of raise to the occasion of like, I can handle this.

I will be tougher to be able to do it and like really bring it and put a lot of effort into it.

But at the same time, you want to give yourself a routine that makes it the easiest for you.

So, for me to say, like, you know, if you, if I really time out my diet well, it actually doesn't feel like I'm dieting that hard because I had very low calorie, high-volume meals and like an egg-white omelet with a full pack of like a salad mixed into it.

Rice, just potatoes.

So, it's um,

but that only comes after that hard-headedness of saying, I'm going to do it in the beginning.

Because if your first instinct is to coddle yourself, well, then that's not a position where you're ever going to, you know, deal with it when it gets hard.

Yeah, but you have to be able to, like, that's where I like, I used to do basically

three to four times the amount of volume in a workout that I do now.

I used my mind was five sets on five movements.

So for one chest day as 165-pound Sam, I was doing five sets of bench, five sets of incline bench, five sets of flies, five sets of dips, five sets of something else.

And like, it is a little fluffier volume.

Like, I wasn't capable of the intensity that I can reach now from doing it for so long.

But in my mind, more is better.

I don't care that it's going to take a while and be long.

Like, that's just, this is what I want to do.

And this is how I'm going to do it.

Dose, response, increased dose, increase response.

Nothing is going to change that.

So it's this like hard-headedness where it was hard for me to even go from 25 sets down to 11 because that's, I just cut it in half.

Is that

half the work, more results?

I think that's nuts.

But, you know, it's something where, you know, even though you're reluctant, still trying things like that and changing it up.

Like that's, that's sort of the whole point.

Like you want to optimize this routine so that you can do it the most efficiently.

But you can look at that as though, oh, for me, an optimized routine is I go to the gym once a week.

Sometimes I don't even go.

Like, that's just the routine that's optimized for me.

And that's where it's more of a coddling than it is like a bringing it.

You either raise the bar or you lower yourself to the bar.

What are some of the more...

Did you ever have a non-just macro tracking approach?

Did you ever do any more wacky diets?

Well, I wouldn't say like wacky.

But when I started working out, I just made sure I hit my protein.

That was all.

Like main gaining.

You're a beginner.

I I was also still doing diving at the time.

And as a beginner, just from eating your protein, like that's no one is eating 250 grams of protein a day just because I don't think just because they're hungry.

I don't think anybody flukes

more than probably 120 to 150 grams.

No one accidentally falls backward into 150 grams of protein.

It never happens.

Like you're, I mean, when I was a kid, I was like, oh, back from school, eat a whole bag of croutons.

I'm like, that was was good.

Let's go do something.

Like, that was a meal.

That was like a snack of whatever.

And so I, protein was the thing I would track, and that was all.

And like anything else I ate, whatever.

And that worked pretty well because I coupled that with like really hard training.

But yeah, nothing too wacky.

For a while, I really got into drinking egg whites, like cracked into a cup.

Okay.

And

my only gripe is the fact, or the only thing stopping me from still doing it is the fact that the like the egg protein raw is so bound up with itself that its bioavailability is like 50%.

So if you're eating 150 grams of protein worth of egg whites

in a raw form, you're only breaking it down to 25.

And I'm not going to eat double

than what I like.

I'm not going to counter that.

Do you think people need to think more about that, about bioavailability when it comes to protein consumption?

Because you can hit your 250.

If it was all through egg whites, it's 125.

Yeah, right.

So, but usually with the proteins, like my rule is the proteins that I would really count towards my number of, like, this is the ones I want to get in the day is kind of like what I call direct animal proteins, like a dairy, maybe not a cheese because, you know, they're filtering things out, but like any kind of milk or yogurt or cottage cheese, that's in there.

That's solid.

That's, you know, every amino acid necessary, whatever.

Or like any meats or eggs, like that's.

pretty much what counts.

And then everything else, like the

proteins that are in, you know, the two pieces of bread you made a sandwich with, like, sure, they are proteins, but it's like, you know, taking amino acids.

Like, you don't make a protein shake out of, you know, BCAAs because it's only specific ones.

Like, you want that whole chain of everything.

So I always just break it down to those.

And things that you would conventionally call protein, like, you're good.

Like beefs and chicken and anything like that.

Like, that's not something to worry about.

It'd only be weird if you,

you know, if you're the type to say, okay, I need all this to be plant-based, you know, legumes or soy or whatever.

And that's something where...

Difficult restrictions going on here.

That's something where I'm not the guy to ask because that's not what I do.

There was a the reason I asked about the wacky diet thing,

me and my friends, I started training 20 years ago.

So 37, I started training when I was 17.

And

bodybuilding.com, the MISC forums on there, that world, before we kind of just understood it was Kaiko meats, if it fits your macros, and then we need to kind of filter it through.

Yeah.

Like for to get to a bodybuilding look, yeah.

And then when you, when you're thinking about lifestyle, you just factor in what you've done, which is, I don't want to feel like shit.

I should probably try and eat mostly whole foods, mostly simple, balanced, blah, blah, blah, like colorful plate and stuff.

So, you ever did you ever mess with like the we didn't know that 20 years ago, we didn't know that, Sam.

This is new fucking unearthed evidence.

And some of the stuff, we were adamant that skip-loading.

I tried to tell you about this yesterday.

So, skip-loading was

a version of carb backloading where you went all week carb-free, and the goal was to hit at least a kilo of carbs on a Sunday.

And

this, the argument behind this was you wanted to avoid metabolism dropping off too much.

So by spiking it really high on the Sunday, it would allow you to sort of

keep the metabolism burning going.

It doesn't lull your body into a false.

Don't try and assess the fucking science, okay?

No, I'm trying.

I'm just thinking about it as like my bro science mind of like good.

That's the dude, that's the hat you need.

You need the bro-science hat, not the real scientist hat.

And then

there was another argument that was, I think skip loading was also done as a part of bodybuilding prep.

You might even do this, where you do your full refeed and then wait to see how long it takes your weight to come back down to the pre-refeed weight.

And that was, okay, that's how much sort of drop off I've got at the moment.

That's how much I'm burning.

Carb night, which was car backloading, but once per week, but only on an evening.

Car backloading was this whole period that we went through.

There was a time when Christian Thibodeau had blueberry extract in this Nalgene bottle, but you needed to get it, it was you were drinking this much of it.

And we were like, It's the blueberry extract.

That's really what's going to cause the fat burning to work.

And it was a wonderful time.

We were, you said, Indiana Jones.

I felt like an explorer, you know, got the hat on, got the little assistant running around trying to find stuff.

And

turns out most of it didn't work, but

it was an adventurous time.

The golden era has gone, dude.

You just know that it's protein and calories.

But it might have been blueberry extract.

It's a different look now, though.

But my whole, even with any kind of training, is I'm not so picky about someone's...

Like, I'm going to look at someone and think, what is that guy doing?

If he's doing something that is egregiously strange.

If you're doing something weird, I'm going to say, dude.

Or I'm going to at least think it.

I wouldn't just tell somebody this like in real life if I saw them.

But with the training, it's like, you know, guys are doing now over here, what,

oh man, hytrox.

High rocks.

High rocks.

Yeah.

I mean, it says it all, but he called it high trucks.

Yeah.

But, but all sorts of different kinds of training.

And there's like some of the Chinese weightlifters where they're doing a freaking back to a bicep.

This guy's back looks like a freaking

pro bodybuilder, like with all the cuts and everything.

So what's, is it is it that your training was better than this guy's training is it that and then it's oh well this guy's training only works because of his genetics and it's like well then it still works for him so i'm looking at it as though it's not exactly what you're doing but i can boil down the basics these guys worked hard they do a lot consistent their diet's reasonable and like they care about it so they put energy into it so

it's like if you're doing a full body workout every day and like that's your thing and it's, I think we've come or we're about to come full circle because there's, I think it's, there's been a progression since what we call the golden era of who is trustworthy.

And it's, you know, it requires some nuance to actually know the real answer because Arnold era, man, Arnold is huge.

All these bodybuilders are huge.

They work out.

I'm going to do their workout.

Fast forward, fast forward.

Okay, now these bodybuilders are getting extra big.

They must be begin extra smart.

And then, you know, Q Rocky IV,

steroids are involved.

Q, the David Laid era.

Q, the natural era.

Q, these guys work out and they're just like me.

These guys know what they're doing.

Fast forward a little bit.

Okay, now that's, oh,

these guys are lying.

This is the fake natural era.

I can't listen to these guys because they're not actually telling the truth about it.

And then now we're in the like scientifically explainable era where it's it's not the gains that i have it's the training and the explanations why i do the training that i do which makes me superior because i can explain it very well and i have different studies to support it but at what point could i give you

uh like let's let's say i was i was working on my own energy drink or like something like that at what point could i tell you hey man i've got 10 studies that say this is the best thing ever and then you drink it and it tastes like shit

can any amount of studies and data and science make you think that that actually tastes good

so i think we're to the point where it will almost revert back to a point of

your results will begin to speak for themselves under the context that you know what went into those results that's interesting

what do you make of the world of evidence-based lifting science-based stuff at the moment?

I think there's people who are gimmicky about it and make it a thing because they know it's like

because an older person or an older guy who works out is going to stick to the basics that he know worked for him, which is sweet.

But

it's going to be harder for him to accept new ideas.

So for a younger guy, it's kind of this like clout mentality of like, well, I'm on the new wave train.

But some of it's a little silly.

I don't think all of it is.

So I'm not, I would never say the point isn't exactly what they're doing, but a lot of the idea behind it and it's kind of its own subculture is it's very like it's a weird elitism because it's not like it's Chris Bumstead saying like this is the or

and like their whole thing is this is right

you are wrong and like that sucks that's not cool and that's not even true because there's so many people that get so many different results doing so many different things like the idea that they're following is, if I'm not perfect, then there's no point.

And it's getting back to like the conditioning of

preschool, middle school, high school, college.

You know, I want to get a degree so I know I can get a job.

I want to know it's going to work.

And that's the demand of being able to explain it with studies because, you know,

going into the gym at all is kind of uncomfortable.

for the non-beginner for any if of any age where you've never worked out before it's always like, Oh, are people gonna watch me working out?

I've never done it, I'm uncomfortable because I've never actually gotten experience doing it.

Like, do I need to get one of my buddies who works out to bring me to kind of coach me?

Well, then they're gonna know that he's coached.

Like, it's it's something where it does have an inflated kind of situation.

You don't get nerve respect going into a freaking uh Starbucks, but the gym is a little different because it has that physicality.

So, for them to, um,

you know, just think, like, okay, this is actually the solution because this is perfect and this will work.

It's a snake oil of an idea instead of a product.

What do you mean that?

Because the convincing point is that if you do it just like how we're saying to do it, we can guarantee that it will work for you.

When really, I think the best guys who work out and lift, just what you call the best lifters, would be

the ones who actually

get their hands on their own wheel and learn it for themselves.

And then they get a deeper understanding.

Because I could read a book about like,

let's say for some reason I was raised in captivity

and I read a book that was like, how to act normal.

As much as I could read it, it would never translate to

actually being a regular guy.

Because you have to do these things to learn them.

Like it's a different kind of experience.

Because the working out isn't something you can just say on paper.

You have to actually become experienced from doing it, and then you'll be different in the future.

So to say, like,

and even just to say something so blatantly, at least what I would consider at least

ill-advised of this is the perfect way to do anything.

That's not true, man.

Like, you're just saying that.

How much of it do you think is

like uncertainty reduction?

Yeah, exactly.

It's a lot.

And it's, I think, in a way, it's a little bit

bringing it down, like I talked about, either raising to the bar or like kind of coddling yourself and making it seem like less of a thing.

If you bring it and you get serious, you say, okay, the gym is full of guys who really get serious.

I'm going to do it and I'm going.

Or

I'm going to do these things, which people said is the perfect way to do it.

And it's not, you don't have to go that hard or you don't have to do that much.

Like things like that, I feel is a lowering of the difficulty but it's argued as an improvement of the efficiency

but for me i'm looking at that as though like do you hate working out like if you hate working out then you want a routine where it's like one set a day like the ideal well i guess the idea would be zero sets like in in their world it's i wish there was a pill like a real where it's you never have to work out again and this is where my bias could come in because it's not an objective like I'm just adding to a conversation like I can't say anything completely objective but from my perspective like I like it in the gym if a workout took if I could do 20 sets and that was actually like pretty efficient and it worked that's what I would do but it's not because that's like

I'm not chasing a

maximum efficiency in a way I'm half chasing like maximum enjoyment because I like I like to be in the gym yeah I think that's a good well you've said yourself you went from 25 sets, reduced that down because you were more efficient.

That you some could say you're updating your worldview, you have accumulated some evidence that has now changed and informed the way that you're going to show up in the gym.

But I think there's definitely an argument to be made that

we are not equations.

And

I guess the

the slight addition to what you've said there is the assumption there is a science-based approach to lifting or an evidence-based approach to lifting causes causes a less enjoyable

sort of routine.

But some people may go in and say, like, just imagine for a second that the evidence-based routine happened to be more fun.

I don't know how or why or whatever.

If for me it clicked as more fun, I'd have to do it.

Yes, then you'd be like, oh, wow, I've got both things.

I've got both efficiency and I've got enjoyment coming through both.

But yeah, if you're looking, dude, I say it again.

The era in which I sort of came up learning about lifting, we didn't, is it 5-3-1?

Is it 5x5?

Is it German volume training?

Is it drop sets?

Is it res pause?

Is it Mayo sets?

Is it Mayor?

Like, you know, there's so many.

And ultimately, when you look across what most people's points of failure are for the normal lifter, for 99% of people that are going to the gym, which is still only, what, like 3% of the population or something?

So it's a...

tiny amount of a tiny amount.

The point of failure is compliance.

And the reason for the failure in compliance is typically motivation and enjoyment.

So, what you should be optimizing for, this is what the science, the evidence-based lifting community should do.

They should make their workouts as fun as possible.

So, that would be a great study.

What is, and this would be a fucking, actually a fucking phenomenal study.

What constitutes an enjoyable workout?

I would have to assume that variation across the year in terms of exercises would be one of those variation in terms of sets, reps, progressions.

You know, you don't want to be doing drop sets all the time, but it's kind of fun to do that.

You don't want to be doing pump stuff all the time, but that's also kind of fun.

You don't want to have to be doing squats all of the time.

Oh, I can switch those up.

Maybe I'll do some walking lunges.

Maybe I'll do suitcase lunges.

I won't just do backrack lunges.

Oh, that'll give my shoulders a little bit of a rest.

And I don't need to warm up so much.

And okay.

So

where can you maximize compliance through enjoyment as well as through efficiency for effectiveness on the other side?

So there's an equation that you can reverse engineer somehow.

But so if I had to put a little more of like my current 2025, you know, September 1st take,

it would be not so much that I'm against any particular style at all.

It's more so I'm not, like, it does not please me to see people be very unopen to discussion and like very just hard-headed with a take like that.

Because I've changed my mind and like learned different things very drastically.

Even the like the videos, my training looks incredibly different now than even a year and a half ago.

And I think it'll look different in a year and a half from then.

But one more thing about the studies though,

I'm personally

not the kind of person in a control group study

by any stretch of the imagination.

So that's my own bias of, is a study from 180-pound guys who are starting to work out who don't eat all the protein that i'm eating who aren't doing all the cardio who just have not been having this whole lifestyle with everything that goes along with it that is not me or any of these more kind of older school or hardcore bodybuilders or power lifters so it's it's as though those those studies aren't invalid but it's just not you know it's it's like you um you know if you if you canvas what's the best tv show and it's things intended for children like like not to say that that's so intended for like a 65 65-year-old guy who's into nature.

Sure, it could be the best show for that intended target audience, but it probably wouldn't be the same for me.

So then that could, that can make me kind of backpedal and say, actually,

for the younger audience, the untrained audience to look at these studies, if they think, or if they would be the people who were in them, well, then I guess I could see a little more.

And I'm just trying to exert my will in the way of like thinking that what I do works and that it should be working working for everyone.

Advanced lifters by design are going to be less represented in these things, right?

Yeah, exactly.

But that's where, like, I don't want to do that.

Like I don't, I'm not trying, and I, I always, I'll usually, if I say anything kind of statement-y,

I'll try to preface it because I mean it to be, this is my take.

Like it is not the videos are not meant to be like this objective thing.

It's like how I think about any given thing at any given time.

So it's like if you're watching a Sam video years in the future and it's a clip of me saying something, like look at the upload date and just take it into account.

Correct at the time.

All right.

Let's say that you only had 10 exercises for the rest of time to build the best body that you could.

What are you going to choose?

I've got a roster set up.

So when it comes to legs, I think that the idea of a crazy heavy squats or leg press all the time as a quad builder, it just wouldn't be it for me.

Because I've had periods of time where I basically did a leg leg extension exclusively.

Usually when I diet, my leg extension volume increases because, I mean, squeezing-wise, activation-wise, you know, if you slap electronic pulse indicators, maybe you could get a real readout of how much they're activating.

But for me, like, if I had to pick a quad movement, I would just kill it on the leg extensions because you can really pump them up, go a little heavier.

Like, there's, if I had to pick one,

that would be it.

Okay.

Then hamstrings would be, I'd be a little torn but i'd probably pick

i'm very torn either seated or laying curl but either way a hamstring curl

i'm afraid sam you can't i guess i'd have to pick the uh

i'd have to pick laying i would

a little bit more stretch i would well i just like not even because of that because you would actually in a seated position if you pull forward would your you know hips not be more rounded over where your hamstrings tie in So now they're actually more stretched.

Like you feel your hamstrings stretch when you bend your torso to touch your toes, not when you're laying down.

So like the idea when people talk about there's more stretch on the lane curl,

I don't even see it.

Well, that depends if you're sat like this, because often there's handles, people press themselves up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that would be...

You've pushed this off as opposed to pulling yourself in.

So I guess it depends how you position yourself.

So I guess.

But right now, I'm on a kick of lane curl.

All right, so quad extension, lying handy curl.

And then for back, I'd probably just have to do regular pull-downs.

But you could also cheat them into a row by leaning back extra far.

All right, okay.

Yeah,

that's acceptable because you've just got the one machine.

It's the same handle, it's the same setup.

Okay, all right.

For me, anyway, I need more lats because I want them to be wider.

Like the thickness of my back is actually fine.

Like I want them to extend out.

Like that's what really gives that sort of look illusion.

What do you think about when it comes to lat pull down, hand position, cues?

What are you thinking?

Because then you can change it up pretty drastically.

Like if I do a lighter set, which is normally toward the end, I can put my hands extra far out and it's a bit a little bit more like rather than pulling my shoulders up and down, which kind of gets like a lot of my lower lats, like kind of erector, like middle thickness, rather, you know, having wider hands and rotating around my shoulders.

That gets me a little more upper lats.

Or you could also make it super heavy and do a closer grip.

and you get a little forearm and bicep just from the nature of a like that's more of a compound movement of a row but then you can really load it too okay so quad extension lying hamstring cull lat pull down with a little bit of fuckery on the handle what's for yeah for for chest i think i'd have to pick

oh i'm a little torn but honestly if i had to only pick one no you can you've got 10 in total so you can

you got a lot of muscle groups so you got to at least cover your bases okay so i would say there was a time when I would say incline barbell if I was on an inclined barbell kick.

But it's a little tricky on your shoulders because it's very like directly mounted.

Like the only time I ever get my shoulders is usually inclined barbell.

When I like it, I like it, but I wouldn't do it all the time.

So that's where I would say dumbbell.

But even then, dumbbell is very limited because you can go really heavy.

And the individual loading and the fact that they can move out the entire way, you still squeeze at the top.

You You can rest a bench with a bar at the top because it's all just going through your bone structure.

Not so much with dumbbells.

It's always adjusting.

Yeah,

you're never going to relax on the top of a dumbbell.

But what I think I'd have to pick now would actually be a seated cable press.

So if you've ever seen seat here,

cable here, cable here, you pull it in, you kind of like this.

Okay.

Because that is.

Pretty neutral throughout that?

Pretty neutral, yeah.

Yeah.

So you're not allowed to.

Not incline, not decline, like kind of hands up a little bit.

Yeah,

because that's a much more versatile set.

Because I can do it really heavy, like a conventional press, but I could also go lighter and be much more squeeze-emphasized because those are like the two bases I basically cover for every move, every body part.

If I do a heavy one, I'm going to counter it with a lighter squeezing one.

And to do only one, I think you'd be limiting your stimulus.

So that puts us at what.

That's four now.

So there's definitely on

incline dumbbell press, which I think for every guy

is always going to be up there for chest.

It feels good on your shoulders.

It's always one of the first movements that you do when you get into the gym.

You feel like it's building the bit of the chest that you want, which is up here.

But if you do a really light set, you just don't feel it the same as you do if you're on cable.

So I understand that tension, especially because you're being pulled that way, not that way, right?

So you always have that kind of widening force, even at the top.

Yeah, that's a good point.

All right, so there's four.

So,

extension, curl, pull down,

cable, press.

Yeah, is that on an on a little incline, 30 degrees?

It's just flattish, okay, basically, flat, flat-loaded.

All right, because then you could also put your hands up a little and get more upper chest, put it down a little, get more getting very cheeky here.

Okay, number five.

So, a five and six for arms would be uh, well, for triceps first,

I'd probably have to pick just a easy bar curl push down so not the V bar like 90 degrees is too much straight is also a little too much on your wrists so a little camber more like a 120 that's about right because I can also do that lighten squeezing or you can really like get into it and have some heft what are you thinking about with cues for that are you more upright if you got a little bit of bend in the hips yeah decently upright but if you're if you stand too upright well then now you're like turning it into an ab exercise because you're loading your arms downward and you have to keep yourself tense to stay there.

So

I'll hunch over it.

Or if I'm doing a hard one, I'll put my head to the side of the cable and kind of like wrench it a little like that.

Not for all of them, but for some of them.

Okay.

And then dumbbells is just dumbbell curls.

It's hard to beat.

Seated, standing, supernated.

With it count as different movements.

Yes.

Got to pick one.

I guess I'd have to just pick standing.

Standing, supernated?

So more of a regular, a classic twist of neutral

your hips into supernated.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because just

with some movements, being able to change the load completely changes the style of the movement.

Because I could do the 30s and really hold it and squeeze it.

Or I could try to do like the 70s and have it be a much heavier kind of brunt sort of thing.

So that's...

All right, we're getting closer.

I can chill on shoulders because I don't, I haven't done a real shoulder workout for like years at this point because they're just, they're already big.

Like they don't, relative, my arms need to grow.

So I would want to add a forearm curl cable.

Okay.

So you're holding the 1D handle, you know, cable up here.

I'm loading it down this way.

Like this is the force.

Okay.

And I'm just doing this.

Okay.

And it's not a huge movement.

Yep.

But it's like enough where you actually kind of thicken this up.

And I used to do a ton of that.

And then my forearms got big enough and then I never did it again.

at least now you're back on it because the arms have caught up now added a little more but it's uh yeah and honestly for

just i think it was a joke that hugh jackman or someone or stallone worked their forearms like crazy because when you're acting you're not always shirtless but you're usually sleeveless and having big forearms makes you look extra cool

so uh i guess after that i'd probably have to add a calf raise just because standing seated uh seated seated is a little bit better okay even though you're gonna be hitting i always get these the wrong way around that's wrong personal solius whatever for me i feel it and my calves will grow from it so i've got my own anecdotal evidence of it worked okay got two left so the next one has to be the cardio bike which not many people would add because they're thinking i don't even need to do cardio because it's not in their mind but that's uh yeah so seated and then the pedals are like where my feet are over here it's kind of a reclined positive

it's a reclined position and it's the easiest one one.

A little backrest.

My torso does not move.

So I can pedal as much as I want.

I'm just sitting playing with my phone for 30 minutes.

Like you can do it and also make it easy.

Have you got a preferred machine for that?

Like to pre-core, make a particularly good just and some of them, they have little handles.

Sometimes the handles are too close to where your knees are and you'll bump your knee on them.

That's my only gripe.

But I'm not picky.

The one I have at my house is like,

I mean, it's the equivalent of one that you would get for free if you picked it up from like the side of the road.

But it still works.

And actually, that one's harder on a

well, it reads harder because sometimes the math that they do to calculate calories burned, it's not completely because if someone like me pedaled for 30 minutes at X difficulty at X speed,

an Olympic cyclist or like a marathon cyclist could do it at the same speed and the same difficulty, and he would actually burn less calories because he's more efficient and I'm less efficient.

So it's not necessarily I always aim for the same number.

It's like I know the feeling of like, this is hard, but it's not too hard.

Like this is the right energy expenditure level.

I did that on a, I've been getting into incline treadmill walking to get to zone two.

Zone two for me is really hard to hit.

It's like way faster than a normal walk on the road and it's way slower than a jog.

And yeah, my incline preferred is like 3.55%.

3.

For me, 3.2 at 15 15 is nice, but I don't know what the metrics are of the

whatever the machine is that was in the UK.

And it was 3.2, 15.

And I was like, this doesn't feel right.

Okay, I'll just keep going up four.

Like, four still doesn't feel right.

Five?

What the fuck is this number?

It got to 5.3.

I'm like,

about that.

The speed is off.

Yeah.

Is that miles per hour or climate?

I don't know.

Because it wouldn't be kilometers over here because it would still be miles per hour.

Whatever it was,

the exact same.

You go, I can go to a new machine, and after you've done, you don't even need that many sessions, what?

20, 30 sessions before you go, I kind of understand how I'm supposed to feel and where my heart rate's supposed to be at, like just by a sense of breathing.

Okay, so you got one left.

What's left?

Yeah, one left.

What haven't we done?

We haven't got, you haven't touched abs.

You haven't touched glutes directly.

You haven't touched shoulders directly.

What else is missing?

I think that's it.

Lower back, I guess.

If that's in a bodybuilding sphere, you'd want your lower back developed enough where it's got like a little texture.

But if it gets too big, it'll take away from your waist.

Because the whole point is this illusion of wider shoulders and a smaller waist.

So now that they're already developed, I probably wouldn't, I don't hit my abs because they get worked, you know, kind of secondarily from even doing dumbbell curls.

I'm keeping myself stable.

Like once they're there and you're actually still working out, they're not going anywhere.

And then every time you look at yourself in the mirror, you're going to flex them.

Like they get worked enough to be maintained.

So

that's why there's not a lot of ab workouts.

Because I did a lot before, and now they're just not going to go anywhere.

Like same with shoulders.

So

I'd have to, I'm a little reluctant, but I can't think of anything else I would want to do.

I'd pick the adductor machine.

That's where you're squeezing your legs together.

Okay.

Why?

It makes your legs a little thicker in the middle.

Because that's it's this whole kind of like system of uh like kind of it tie in it ties in kind of below your knee, more hamstring, but it's this sort of just piece right in the center where if your adductors were completely undeveloped and you just sit up straight with your knee straight, you'd have a really big gap between your legs.

And you think you wouldn't be able to fully get that with the extension?

Uh, well, the extension is just quad because that's a quad, like a knee flexion,

and this is uh like leg, well, you know, I don't even know what you call it.

That, yeah,

yeah, the joke is the

uh well it's

i don't know there's like two versions of a joke because they'll call that one the ball crusher because that's what you that's what you're squeezing legs together but the older like the joke that people would say before was that was either the good girl or the bad girl machine uh one's forcing it apart one's forcing it together yeah

okay because i don't i don't really i don't want to perpetuate that name but that was that's kind of a reference to to those okay very good

sam solek ladies and gentlemen sam you're awesome man i really loved hanging with you this weekend yeah this is freaking fun

what's next what can people expect over the next few months from you

nothing a couple people asked me that it's like all right man what are you working on

and i'm like well i've got some renovations going on i got to clear out my garage it's uh like i've got i've got my uh i've got a few lists I kind of couple them into one because it's all like my thing, but I've got like social media list,

like getting

I say it's you could say it's more for the production value, but I just like camera stuff.

So I'm always trying new camera things just because it's, but it's, you know, it does directly play into how the videos look.

Like that's my little fidgety tinker thing to get into.

Just iterating.

Yeah, exactly.

But in terms of the, I mean,

there's not a lot of flash with real working out.

They're out in the garage.

There's not going to be Sam 2.0.

It'll only be a gradual evolution.

So it's like, you know, check back in two years and we'll have a lot of updates.

Fuck yeah.

I'm looking forward to it, man.

Appreciate it.

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