Chris Tuttle: How To Blow Up In Size Fast Like Jordan Hutchinson (Evidence-Based)

Chris Tuttle, evidence-based IFPB coach of champions like Jordan Hutchinson, joining him the Tampa and the Texas Pro, posts of IFPB AMA, registered dietitian, embassy nutrition, retired IFPB pro, and smart guy.

Why not be as transparent as you can and talk about what you're doing and even chems and gear?

Like, I don't understand it, it doesn't make any sense to me.

But less likely, people are gonna follow suit with the wrong advice.

Once you get to a certain injury level, you're never gonna grow on less.

Not true.

My heaviest body weight of 267 was reached on less gear than I was wearing the two previous years.

My sleep was immaculate.

My appetite was immaculate.

My training was unbelievable.

I was recovering, tightening the obliques to bring it in.

Jordan's waist comes older and more.

We're going to have a crazier V-taper.

Dude, the last ab and thigh shot he sent me today, I was like, Jesus.

I mean, he's still eating a good amount of food.

Is there anything you guys did for the back?

His back's looking amazing.

We're not doing barbell rows and deadlifts and all the stud things that disrupt so much fatigue.

For somebody who has trouble connecting with your back, those are definitely movements you don't want to do.

I don't use too much deck or NPP anymore, Ethan.

I used to.

If I do, it's a short stent of NPP.

I don't have any of my clients take probiotic supplements.

I think they're a complete waste of money.

It's far more effective to have food that's probiotic-rich than it is supplements.

And the reason is a lot of probiotic supplement mega-dose one or two different strengths.

You create more of an imbalance within the gut.

Now, I go, dude, we can't do our normal cycle eight weeks close though.

We're going to have to wait.

I'm going to bring you down to like a very low TRT dose, like 150 milligrams per week, like low.

We will titrate the test up if your body starts to lose fullness, size, or if it starts to soften up or lose training performance.

I know hunger is going to be high but if training's progressively getting better you're able to recover i'm going to give you just enough food for that let's be honest the other thing is which is dangerous is when you're gaining 30 pounds in six weeks you're is there any drugs that you 100 avoid

my podcast same thing cell phones or even where they're driving and they're on the cell phone oh dude that's fantastic that's like right now it's like fucking hell

how you been man how's everything going with the uh olympia very good very good Everything's going great.

No complaints, just trucking along, you know, taking one day at a time.

Yeah, yeah, I bet.

I was just talking to my coach, too, you know, Patrick,

because I was like, hope you're doing well, coach.

I'm assuming that you are stressed out of your fucking mind right now because, you know, you were about to fly to Olympia and you got two weeks and

everybody's fucking prepping and got shows back to back here now.

And yeah, he's just like, yeah, I'm probably going to have a hard time responding on the plane and all these things.

I'm like, well, I don't really doubt that.

I feel like you're going to have a hard time being able to be on your phone at any point in time, considering that you've got

how many athletes?

Yeah, I don't get stressed.

I kind of just operate as I go along, but like nothing's worse when you get on the airplane, you have a six-hour flight and the Wi-Fi doesn't work.

It's like, now I'm wasting six hours.

And then once you get there, then it's like, coach, get my email, coach, get my email, coach, you get my email.

I'm like, dude, fucking hell.

That's the worst fucking feeling, man.

It's so sad.

I can't have any patience.

I just can't.

It's horrible.

It's horrible.

Yeah.

Crazy that we live in a world where I can't live one minute without Wi-Fi.

It's fucking sad.

Well, especially where we live, you know?

Appreciate you for coming on the pod, by the way.

It's been a, to be honest, for me, it's been a long time coming because I've seen your content for so long and I've been watching, you know, your pods on the IFBMA with Milos and everything.

So it's cool to finally get to talk to you in person.

Yeah, man.

This is going to be cool.

like, I like that's on.

Wait, what was that?

I said, I like this stuff.

I like talking, nutrition, coaching, psychology, training.

I like all of it.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I really appreciate the fact that you're just, I mean, you're just straight up about everything, bro.

And super transparent about everything, too, which is, I think, one of the coolest things because you just cover every single area, you know, any place where people end up having probably like questions whether it's even like almost subconsciously in their mind, you end up bringing it up anyways, which is awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean,

I always get get confused when people do not, like, they don't explain things fully or they kind of beat around the bush.

It's like, why not be as transparent as you can and talk about what you're doing and even chems and gear?

Like, I, I don't understand it.

It doesn't make any sense to me because it's like more like the more you're out there and you're able to explain things so people can understand them, the less likely people are going to follow suit with the wrong advice.

or they might

new idea and see things differently and then take a different approach.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Yeah.

I always wonder wonder that too.

And I mean, there's something that's fucking hard for me to talk about because like, obviously I don't even want to put, I don't want to put anyone on the spot.

I don't want to put my selfie even on the spot, to be honest.

And I don't even know how true it is, but I have heard,

like, we had an athlete say before, like, a judge, like a limited judge, had told them that they don't really like to hear athletes talk too in depth about gear, for example, which I was, I mean, I guess would make sense, but I was kind of surprised.

Yeah, especially considering now that like there's such an open dialogue of gear talk.

I mean, listen, I started bodybuilding in 2004, my first show, 2005.

I mean, gear was hush, hush then.

Like, nobody talked about it and discussed anything.

Like,

and everything was quiet and it was not socially acceptable by any means.

You know what I mean?

Like, when I say by any means, I mean, you go to the gym, you train every day at your gym for a year.

You wear a sweatshirt, you're covered up, you talk to people, normal people, you know, general gym goers, weekend weekend warriors, serious athletes, and all of a sudden, one day you take your shirt off and you're shredded, and then half the people won't talk to you anymore.

They don't even want to be associated with you because you're used here.

Holy shit.

It's in your appearance.

That's, I remember doing that all the time.

All of a sudden, I take my shirt off two weeks out, and people I normally talk to, half of them wouldn't talk to me anymore.

They're like, oh, I didn't know like that.

But now it's just like people walk up in the gym.

What do you, what's your cycle?

What are you running?

What are you doing?

This?

It's just

common knowledge.

It's almost like anybody, what sucks now is like anybody that's remotely muscular now is using here.

i know it's crazy bro even worse it's you're using trend you're using trend trend sucks i hate trend and everybody's like you gotta use trend you gotta use trend you gotta use trends

right right oh my god there's without a doubt there's definitely i mean there's still without a doubt there's people that just are lying about it but still though the one thing that i hate the most about what's happened in the industry and like this uh the natier knots and everything is like it's it's really destroying the hope of a lot of natural people like you're like telling them oh you'll never get there so you know it's just like don't don't even get your hopes up what's the point of doing that man the point of having hope in the future for something greater is that you work towards it regardless of the outcome it's process oriented and it's like you're just destroying their fucking

their drive man yeah and you know and not and only that you're going to start to walk people into the chem route

you know what i'm saying you keep telling everybody you're not going to brush do this they're going to be like oh i guess they're right maybe i will just start using sarms or using whatever they're going to use to build muscle.

And, like, what I always say to people, and I'm very honest with them, I go, listen, in bodybuilding, and I used this analogy before, bodybuilding and genetics is like cars.

Some people are born a Ferrari.

Some people are born a Volkswagen Beetle.

And unfortunately, there's no matter what you do to Volkswagen Beetle, it's never going to be a Ferrari.

But you could take a Ferrari and do very little to it, and it's, and it's awesome.

And you can do everything you want to a fucking Volkswagen Beetle and it's never going to be great.

And you do too much to that Volkswagen Beetle, the life of that transmission is probably going to be not very long and they're going to die.

Right.

So like, I keep trying to tell people to understand that, even natural or not, like Chris, I got potential.

It's like looking at physique.

I'm like, honestly, like, I mean, you can work to be a better version of yourself.

But when someone comes to me and they do have poor genetics, they don't buy billion genetics, like you're never going to be the best.

So, you know, it doesn't mean you strive to be a better version of yourself, but you have to keep your expectations realistic.

You know what I'm saying?

Right.

Like, and some people just don't understand that.

And like, even my, some of my clients, like, some of my clients I've had for a long time will see some of my other clients, they're big, bro, like, wow, like, what do you got that guy running?

I'm like, dude, he's running less than you are.

And he's like, really?

And I try to explain to them, man, it's just like, dude, nobody will say anything about any top athlete performing like LeBron James.

It's genetics.

It's hard work, right?

It's like, there's going to be people that might work harder than LeBron James, but will never be LeBron James.

And that's okay.

As long as you're striving to be a better version of yourself, and you always should be that way.

But like, expectation to be realistic.

And I don't want people like sitting there trying to drug themselves into being Chris Bumstead.

You know what I mean?

Yep.

Right.

Plus, I think in the long run, it tends to hurt them anyways.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, not just the obvious, but like, like you're, you almost retract from the progress by just blasting like year-round.

100%.

And they ruin their physique.

I've seen so many people ruin their physique through drugs.

And it's like, dude, if you just took your time, you learned more about training, how to train properly, and we're more patient, you would build a bigger physique.

Now you just build the big stomach and now you're, now your proportions are whacked because now your stomach's like middle, you know?

That's the thing that I felt like at first I was a little bit unsure when Patrick and I were going into this last show this last weekend because

I was on less gear than I was total with Kyle the previous year.

But now that the show is over and I talked to Patrick about some feedback and stuff that happened, it made me feel a lot better because basically I got a couple, I got a little bit of feedback from a couple of people in the audience saying that I was running

the least compared to the people on stage, especially the top five, which is...

understandable you know there's like this level of hardness and like veins and vascularity that you can see on them um and it's true Like there's things that, for example, we just didn't put in menstrual at all, which I've never done for a prep.

I've always had menstrual.

So I was kind of shocked.

But, you know, I'm just like, you know, I let him know the info and he's like, yeah, that's 100% true because you're running about like half of an Olympian athlete stack right now.

But this is our first show.

Slow and steady wins the race.

We progress slowly over time.

And that's what we're going to, you know, blah, blah, blah, which is cool because, you know, having like 18 pounds below the weight cap, it's nice to know that there's places to escalate, you you know, ways to progress.

So it's, it's a positive feeling.

Yeah, nothing's worse when someone is at the position where they're at the end of the weight cap.

They're maxed out in chems and they're not doing well.

And it's like, hey, what do we need to do?

We're getting close to the cap of not being able to do anything versus just changing a class and trying to do something different.

Because there's only, you know, some of these guys at the top professional level, like

you're at the cream of the crop.

Like it's, it's the best of the best.

So you're going to have people who have very small joints, very round muscle bellies that just have proportions that are wild.

And like, how are you going to compete with that with someone who's like five, six and they're at their weight cap and they look like they're 30 pounds heavier?

You know what I mean?

Like, and then you get somebody else who's, you know, a little heavier, a little thicker person, and they're already at the weight cap and they don't look nearly as big.

That's, that's, that's the part where you're like,

that's a tough place to be in.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

It might be a little bit hard to conjure up

without like some, I I don't know, thinking about specific instances, but if

regarding guys that have like really excellent genetics, for example, that you've seen have to like, you know, take minimum dosages or require like a minimum amount of time or work to progress their physique versus people that are that like Volkswagen versus the Ferrari.

Do you happen to have any like specific examples that you remember between whether it's clients or other athletes that you know where you've seen like the Ferrari that needs hardly anything, and then the Volkswagen guy who, like, you know, they're working their ass off, but they're just not making the progress that you wish that they wish they could because of their genetics.

You don't have to say any names or anything.

Oh, yeah, there's no question about it.

I mean, like, even Jordan, like the amount of gear Jordan was using all through this entire time was way lower than probably 95% of open bodybuilders.

And I remember, I remember getting confronted one day at

Texas Pro last year when he got second.

and i know this dude and he knows me and he comes over he's like bro he looks sick he's made some crazy ground last year how much you got that guy running and i'm like i actually don't and he's like i don't believe you and i'm like okay you're asking me you're asking me i didn't plan on this so i'm gonna pull my phone i'm gonna pull my phone all right i'm gonna i'm gonna open my phone you're watching i'm gonna click my email i put in jordan's name I clicked it.

I opened it.

And I showed him the last cycle and he looks at it.

And he's like, so disappointed.

And he's like, that's really not that much.

I know, because

Jordan comes off the stage at Texas Pro the first year he did Texas Pro, so two years ago.

And it's when he got fifth in his pro debut, he comes over to me and he goes, Chris, I've been talking to all these guys backstage, and they're taking like 750 megs of trend a week, 600 gigs of trend a week, like 300 gigs of master on.

He goes, We're way under that.

Do you think we're shortchanging ourselves?

And I simply said, How much weight did you gain from your pro day from when you turned pro till now?

And he's like, 26 pounds.

I'm like, exactly.

It's crazy.

It's crazy, bro.

Like, exactly my point.

And he goes, and he goes, yeah, I understand.

I'm like, dude, we're just going to milk this as much as we can and then have to bump it up when we need to.

That's it.

Right.

But I mean, I still have some guys that, I mean, one of my buddies who just won North Americans, the light heavyweight won overall, first light heavyweight to win overall at pro qualifier since like, I think Jason Arnson in the 1990s.

And

he's been running the same androgyny level for years and it just keeps getting, he just keeps getting better and better.

It's like, I don't, I don't believe in just needing to linearly increase androgen load.

I just don't believe it.

If I see a change and it's working, I'm not going to increase it where people will be like, well, if I increase it more, it's just going to work faster.

That's not always the case.

It's just not.

Because you're going to get to a point with androgen load where you're going to affect your digestion.

You're going to affect your sleep.

And when you affect your sleep and digestion, now you start to regress and go backwards, just like with trend balloon, right?

It's like, that's why I hate trend is how many times does it affect someone's sleep and digestion?

Well, great.

Now we're going backwards, right?

I want them to feel awesome.

I want them to sleep perfectly all through preparation.

I don't want them to have poor sleep.

I don't want people to say these dumb things.

They'll say, well, poor sleep is normal in prep.

You just got to tough it out.

It's the dumbest statement I've ever heard.

So it's like you protect your sleep, their body just progresses faster and faster and faster.

And you're able to use less fat burning chems.

You're able to manage fatigue better.

You're able to keep food in there higher.

So you protect those normal things in the body, you can, that's where like the dosages kind of get, can be adjusted per person, right?

They're based on their ability to tolerate it.

And of course, the effect that you're going to see.

Right.

That was one of the, I think that's probably one of the most special things that I discussed with Jordan.

And I've also talked about this with Terrence as well.

And

it's the idea that like both of these guys had to come off of everything, including training, for a surgery, right?

Like Jordan's was Gyno, Terrence's was his hair transplant.

And afterwards, they both fucking exploded.

Yeah.

Like,

Terrence had trouble exceeding 212 pounds, I believe, prior to his surgery.

But then he took how many weeks off, I don't remember how much of everything, you know, PEDs, training, just bodybuilding in general, came back, hit it hard.

The training stimulus was there.

I'm sure that the PEDs, I don't know, I don't even know what kind of vocab app to use here.

You know, some people like to use like refreshing receptors or something, but

just the tolerance, obviously, is

lower than it was before.

His response was great.

Everything was just on point.

And I feel like

you made a comment, and I don't remember which pod it was, but it was really cool because you were really specific.

You said, if a guy ran 1500 megs of test, 800 deccauzon 500, he won't be hardly responding well to anything.

So you'd have to go back.

You'd have to have him back down to 150 for 12 weeks, then titrate him back up to something like 600 tests, 400,

150 MPP starting dose, for example.

And

I think a lot of people have kind of just

discounted or at least thrown away this idea of just coming off and running a cruise for a while.

And they just think, you know, health phase based off my blood work, which I think is still super important, right?

But it just, I find something, I just find it interesting that these guys had responded so well after they took so much time off.

Yeah, let's unpack that.

That's actually, that's actually really good.

That's really good to talk about.

So, you know, you have this theory where, oh, once you get to a certain injury level, you can never grow on less.

Not true.

My heaviest body weight of 267 was reached on less gear than I was running the two previous years.

Significantly, I was running 750 tests, 400 premium, 300 MPP, and four hours of growth because I could never take more than that because my hands would just, I have carpal tunnel already genetically.

I couldn't even open, I couldn't fucking hold an egg in my hand for four I use.

And my sleep was immaculate.

My appetite was immaculate.

My training was

unbelievable.

I was recovering, low stress life, ran myself very consistently Monday through Sunday.

It was just everything was the stars aligned.

So that whole androgen myth of like you needing more and more and more, or I mean, sorry, once you go a certain high, you're never going to go on less.

That's not true.

So in in Jordan's situation, I told him because he had travel, a lot of travel, which is obviously not ideal for growth at all.

And he had surgery and surgery was like months away after Texas Pro last year.

I go, listen, man, the approach we're going to take, and I always let my clients know the approach.

I'm always like, dude, this is the approach we're going to take.

So you understand what to expect.

I go, dude, we can't do, you know, our normal cycle eight weeks post low, which I'm going to talk to you about post-rebound in a second.

I go, we're going to have to wait.

And how we're going to handle this is this.

I'm going to bring you down to like a very low TRT dose, like 150 milligrams per week, like low.

Okay.

I want you to be low

within normal range.

And obviously we will titrate the test up if your body starts to lose fullness, size, or if it starts to soften up or lose training performance.

So I said, I also, the unfortunate thing is I have to keep you lean.

You have to stay lean.

I don't let my guys get fat in that post-ho rebound.

I just don't.

You can't.

You ruin the whole year.

So I'm just going to feed you enough to keep training performance at a good spot.

Okay.

So you let me, I know hunger is going to be high, but if training's progressively getting better, you're able to recover.

I'm going to give you just enough food for that.

So we did that.

How much food do you normally think that is?

I'm sure it varies, but I can pull it up.

But I mean, for him, for me, I usually will immediately go to extremely high calories the first week post-show because I don't want them to binge eat in peanut butter and shit food.

Okay.

Okay.

That's usually what's going to get someone fat.

Gotcha.

Gotcha, right?

If I can prevent that, so I might go right to like 420 grams of white rice per meal and like all this food.

So

they have a better ability to withstand pizza and junk food, right?

And then at the end of the week, they're like, dude, I'm only up four pounds, but I'm so full.

I'm like, cool, pull back a little bit, right?

To get over that psychological hump.

That way they feel full.

But most of the time, people are obsessed with, they want to feel full, you know what I mean?

Post-show.

You just want to feel satisfied.

So I think around eight weeks, he actually held strided glutes for like, I think eight weeks post-show.

And his training was getting better and better and better.

He's getting fuller, getting better, just recovery.

Then he got to a weight cap where he just held the weight for a while.

And then he started to get a little softer.

So then I bumped his test to 300 mgs a week.

And then he ended up being on 300 mgs or less for about four months.

And we just, same thing, food was just enough to keep his training performance where it was.

And then when he started and we're able to increase food, his body put on, he put on 12 pounds of stage weight in five months.

So, it's like, usually, people do that over like nine months, you know?

And he just kept growing and growing and growing and growing.

And I'm like, I'm like, dude, this is weird, but like, am I adding anything?

Am I going to change the food?

And then, what's even weirder is when we started, when we decided last minute to go into prep,

he's like, dude, I really want to do this show.

Let's compete.

And I'm like, usually we do 20 weeks, bro, and we only have 16.

So, like, I'm I'm going to be a little aggressive right after rip.

Okay.

He's like, okay.

So I dropped his calories way back and, you know, would feed him.

He checked in every single day, checked in every day.

And I would feed him when he needed to be fed, pulled back when you need to be pulled back, back and forth.

And then around like 11 weeks out, he was just kind of staying the same weight and just getting harder and leaner and harder and leaner.

Didn't change the drugs at all.

Testing EQ.

That was it.

And then I'm like, bro, this is getting weird.

It's getting real weird.

Like normally, like bringing in contest prep stuff.

And I go, I think we should just leave it alone.

Like, let's just leave it alone.

It's working, right?

We'll put in the contest prep stuff soon, but we usually will start that.

We usually start that earlier, but let's just give it a week or two.

So around like, I think around eight weeks, we started bringing contest prep stuff.

And then it just got even better and better.

Like Jordan has gotten really good at training his body.

And that's one that I think people don't get.

They just fucking destroy their body in the gym, think it's hardcore, think it's cool, all these drops.

And they have no idea what they're doing.

And they're not managing the recovery.

Jordan's excellent at giving the right stimulus with matching the right recovery.

And then you can, then sleep is better, digestion is better, your body's keeping up with it, android's doing its thing versus just pounding the shit out of your body, increasing androgens, and hoping what's to see what sticks to the wall, you know?

So that was his response.

But I do that with all my guys.

And real quick about post-show rebound, I don't have anybody do a post-show rebound where they push anabolics the immediate eight weeks post-show.

I think it's the wrong move.

I like to take those eight weeks and bring it down to real low TRT.

Don't let them get fat.

So at the end of the eight weeks, their blood work is good.

They're still lean.

They've been on TRT for eight weeks and their relationship with food is fixed.

Their body feels rested.

Their sleep has normalized.

And now they have a whole 18-week rebound.

So now you're starting fresh.

We're like, oh, I can push for 18 weeks because health parameters are good.

My body's been on TRT.

I have no aches and pains.

Everything's fresh.

I haven't been pushing super hard in the gym.

Now you have an 18-week productive season.

And I had six guys last year.

I had six guys last year that I've been working with for years put on 10 plus pounds of stage weight doing the exact same thing.

That's fucking awesome.

Yeah, exact same thing.

And I've seen that

seems to be, but nobody wants to do that.

Nobody's like, no, I'm going to get back in the gym, start training really hard.

And

I'm going to run D-ball post-show.

And then they just,

they're so into the immediate gratification that they ruin the overall,

they don't see the overall picture, you know?

Yeah, man, we're all the most hyped to fucking get back after the show.

When after you start eating all that food and stuff and you start filling out, you're like, God damn, we gotta fucking train hard.

Yeah, yeah, so hard not to, bro.

It's not the time to, it's really not.

Yeah,

it's fucking tough, psychologically tough for sure.

Um,

back to saying the same thing about like cruise, but people like cruising 500.

Like, I've had clients refuse to want to go below like like 400.

They call it sports TRT, sports TRT.

And then they go, they don't want to go below.

So I don't want to shrink, dude.

I don't want to shrink.

Okay, if you want to grow, like you got to let your body like come down.

It's kind of like if you want caffeine to work, I know they're different substances, but if you want caffeine to work, for example, you can't be like, I'm going to go from six cups to four cups, back to six cups.

It's more like go to six cups and go all the way down to a half a cup.

And then maybe for two weeks, do no cups.

Yep.

Once you get back to one cup again, you're like, whoa, you know what I mean?

Then you're, then you can titrate up it.

Let it again.

Yeah.

Whether it's longer or shorter cycles, as long as it's a cycle and you're going up and down rather than just continuously going up.

For sure.

That's where the effectiveness is.

Yeah.

When you said he gained about 12 pounds in five months, was that on the 350 test or was that on a new cycle?

Oh, no, no, no.

That was like, I'm talking like when we actually put on lean tissue, it was like in that period of time because we were hovering around a very low body weight for him.

I don't remember at the time.

The low body weight may have been,

I think it may have been 260,

225, 260 on TRT for four months with lean.

He still had a little strided glutes even at the end of the four months.

Funny, 260 is low.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then once we started, it was just, he just kept gaining weight, gaining weight, looking the same, gaining weight, looking the same, gaining weight, looking the same.

I think we got up to 293.

And then I was like, dude, like, this is the leafest 293 I've ever seen you be.

But this is wild.

And then that's when we started to come back down.

But, um, no, no, no, you know, some people can make some gains to some degree, but somebody that size is not going to make substantial gains on TRT, you know what I mean?

Like, yeah, get a middleweight, they could probably make some gains on even on TRT because you're refining their training, you're managing cover with their training, but like a big, big guy like that still needs more androgens to put on new tissue, right?

Yep, yep.

Um,

I'd assume because it's just like the more tissue, the more receptors, the more, the more acquired.

Yeah, you need more of the rest of the horrible.

There's definitely, there's 100% fact to that.

Like there's going to be a level of androids required to hold that tissue.

And the only reason why Jordan was able to hold that tissue coming out of a show is because your body does have a rebound effect.

It does.

You go low, low food, and then all of a sudden you're like on TRT, like a real TRT, and you eat food, you're going to feel like you're on a good amount of gear for quite a while.

And then your body starts to go back to its normal homeostasis.

Then you feel like you're not on any gear.

But then that's a good place for you to put in the gear.

Correct.

Start that.

Correct.

A hundred percent.

Gotcha.

So you feel like it's a little, I mean,

so you don't feel like there's like some kind of like multiplication effect with the like insulin sensitivity of like that food going in plus a higher amount of gear post-show.

Listen, the reason I think it's a bad idea is for these reasons.

One, you just shit on your body with chems.

And obviously, we all know that chems during contest prep are a hell of a lot more toxic than off-season.

We know that.

We also know that the duration of our rebound post-show can't be very long because of that fact, even if we do decide to do that.

So, it's like, realistically, how much tissue are you really going to put on in six to eight weeks?

Like, let's be honest, right?

Most people are just going to gain no water.

And the other thing is, which is dangerous, as people don't understand, is they probably don't even check it, is when you're gaining 30 pounds in six weeks, your blood pressure is going high.

It is.

You know, I know everybody talks about bodybuilders are dying.

I can't believe it.

I can't believe it.

I fucking can because I know what people do, right?

Like, it's not a shock to me.

It's like all these people doing these things of instant gratification and wanting to jump the guns.

They want to be 50 pounds heavier yesterday.

Well, that's going to have a consequence.

Now, that being said, though, there are situations where I've had clients where they got into shape really easily and we didn't even use very much.

And I was totally okay with them going another eight weeks post-show.

I was totally okay with that.

But I still don't like it because the amount of water retention you do get from adding more androgens or keeping androgens in with eating a bunch of food and rebounding, you just tick.

You just explode.

Your muscles are full.

And people always think, look how big I am.

It's just your body's super physiologically responding and soaking up all that water and sodium and you're abnormally puffed out.

But that's not muscle.

It's short-lived.

It's a major change in fluid balance till your body gets back to homeostasis again.

So, like, I still don't think it's the most optimal route to take in the long term.

I just don't, you know, and listen,

most people are really burning the candle at both ends to get into shape.

Most of them are.

So, you know, it is going out of a show.

Like, you don't feel 100% seven days after a show.

You're not like, dude, I feel off season ready.

So, I'd rather them be off-season ready physically and mentally in their sleep and everything.

So, when they can push, they have more accurate everything.

Everything just, I'd rather push them for 18 weeks than a short six and have all these ramifications of water retention, can't sleep, put on 30 pounds.

I mean, how many times a year people like put on so much weight post show, and they're like, bro, my ankles are swollen.

I'm falling asleep all day at work.

Like, that's just an optimal time for most people.

It makes sense.

I understand why people do it.

It makes sense.

But, like, I don't think it's the best route.

So, I'm just going to say this transparently because, I mean, that's what I'm fucking meeting this podcast for.

So, regardless of whether people want to judge it or not, this is my experience and I feel like it'd be helpful to at least share.

But

I

have done

the health phase post-show.

I've taken breaks post-show and I decided last year, I'm like, I was so motivated to fucking make gains.

I've heard of the rebound versus the reverse diet versus like the health phase.

I want to try the rebound this time.

So I gave him the patch code.

I'm like, I want to try to rebound off this show.

I want to go hard.

I want to see how many gains I can make.

Now that I know there's like a ton of variables here because like one of of the variables, for example, we're going into this last show with less gear, so I'm coming in at a lower weight than I was projected to be, right?

My stage weight this year is about the same as my stage weight last year, which psychologically to me is not a good thing.

But people are telling me you made crazy gains, you know, in

majority of it is in your legs.

Like we see these gains.

So there are some gains there.

If I trust them, then I guess there's some gains there.

But

looking at the amount of gains I made from the year that I did the health phase and then slowly progressing back up versus last year

at pretty similar dosages.

Last year I was at about 600 tests, 500 Primo.

The year before it was 500 tests, 400 Primo.

I don't really feel like I made nearly as much doing the rebound as I thought I would.

Like, I don't think there was any advantage to taking advantage of that rebound.

And instead, I really just had no health phase, honestly.

And I think taking that time off, one, just to like improve the blood rate even more, even though it was in pretty good parameters because I do a lot of antioxidants, glutathione, and stay on top of everything else, including nutrition and cardio.

But

I think just taking that time off,

I feel like people think they're retracting.

I feel like people think they're backtracking because they're not making, you know, they're not running things during that time.

They're not maybe training as hard or eating as much during that time.

But I don't think that happens at all, man.

Like, I think all the same progress, at least, is made in the time that you are back on if you do take that break.

Yeah, no, no, I agree.

And listen, like, you know how it is with this, with our sport.

It's, it's very anecdotal, right?

Like, sure, there's people that made plenty of ground with crazy ground.

And like, I will tell you one rebound story myself that I, for me personally, um, but like, it just, I think overall, it's not the best move.

I'm not saying it's not possible to gain muscle post-show.

I just don't think it's the best move, especially for your health.

And obviously, there's very

many

dependent on a lot of variables, as we discussed, how hard you had to make to get in shape, what engines were used, how long were you engines for,

how old you are, how big you are.

So I think those are very important to consider if you're making, make that decision.

But, you know, it's funny you say that, where like you can make gains, but be the same weight.

Your body can change the way it looks and be similar weight.

It can because muscles, think about this.

I would make this a great example.

You ever see a crazy experienced cyclist?

They're like 140 pounds, but their legs look like they're made of steel.

Like

they're ripped.

And like small human beings, but what that muscle looks like, it's grainy, hard, and dense.

But not this, not like they're gaining weight.

So it's like, you know, muscles can change in appearance.

You can look and appear different.

your symmetry can change and be very close to the same way people get very people get very hell-bent on um objective forms of measurement right i'm getting stronger i'm getting bigger i'm gaining weight i'm getting bigger and all of a sudden they die down they're like i look the same right right yeah no strength is not always an indicator of hypertrophy because there's such thing as mechanical strength where you're just becoming more efficient within the movement and that's how you're getting stronger um but those those are all things i think you'll need to consider and and then the annoying thing about what you said about where people are like, if I'm not being productive, I'm not going to make gains.

You can't be productive all the time.

You can't.

Just like in professional sports, they follow macro and meso cycles.

They do, you know, they do their deloads.

Their period of time is the end of the season where they're instructed not to do any baseball at all of a pressure baseball player.

They go, go do two weeks of cross training, go do other sports.

They get their body acclimated to other movement patterns.

Those are all important things.

You can't be full throttle all the time.

Doesn't work, doesn't work.

You know, it's kind of like

it's the same philosophy of like, dude, there's a slippery hill and you're driving up a car.

It's like, there's times to hit the accelerator and there's times to let off the accelerator to get the most traction you can.

You can't just redline it and expect to get the most traction you can.

It's like Dr.

Scott share said on our podcast that people really undervalue the importance of the parasympathetic state.

Just how important it is that you have to actually focus on getting in that state so that you can recover properly.

Yeah.

Fire shirt, by the way, bro.

That's big on my contest prep, guys.

I always tell my guys, dude, get your shit done in the first three quarters of the day.

In the last quarter of the day, settle down.

Put on step brothers.

Like play a video game.

Stepbrothers.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Like play a video game, like spend time with the formerly, like, you know, do something around the house that's not bodybuilding related.

Just get all your shit done and get into that parasympathetic nervous system side so you can sleep.

You can't be full throttle sympathetic stuff all the time.

Eventually your body's just not going to respond as well.

It's not going to burn fat as well.

Your recovery is going to hinder.

But if you're able to do that, you can just progress.

And that's one thing I'm on Jordan about all the time is sleep.

And he sleeps like a baby, but we have a lot of things set up to make sure that happens.

You know what I mean?

Right.

Real quick, guys.

So while I was looking at the YouTube analytics, I actually saw that

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I've been able to get on top of my sleep after the last few years because I'm sure people have already heard me obsess about trying to figure out how to like perfect sleep and everything.

But that's my fucking biggest problem, man.

Psychologically, it's just so hard for me to get myself to like

just

relax at the end of the day.

Like, cause, you know, my just like from growing up in this fucking goddamn typical Asian household, all I think about is my mom telling me that I'm fucking lazy.

I'm not doing something.

So it's a, it's tough to get out of.

It's tough when you're an ambitious person because you always, I'm the same way, bro.

Like, I need to be productive all the time, but I've convinced myself that like, I got to get to bed and sleep so I can get up at five and start cranking.

You know what I mean?

We'll get up really early every day.

So like, that's my motivation

I need rest so I can fucking rip it tomorrow morning.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's the exact same thing that keeps me in check, too.

Um,

you mentioned earlier in a conversation about drop sets and about how uh Jordan has been really on top of his training.

Like, he doesn't do any extra drop sets, he like manages his fatigue and his rest very well.

I was wondering what you uh, where do you find a place for these?

Because, uh, one of Patrick, one of Patrick Tor's

aspects of his training, which he calls SST

psychoplasmic stimulation training, is that at the end of the second exercise of each, no, at the end of the second set of each exercise, you're implementing one form of this SST, which is some kind of intensifier.

So normally the one that I pick is tends to be a little bit more of the hardest one, but it's the rest pause set where you rest for 20 seconds, go to failure, rest for 20 seconds, go to failure, rest for 20 seconds, go to about failure, you know, until you have one rep left or there's one like ones where it's like you just do a single drop set of 33

you drop 33 of the weight and then you slow the eccentric down by to about like four seconds for example

but like places for like these drop sets especially in the offseason where do you find these how do you feel about these drop sets do you find them effective I know Jordan does some drop sets, but I like Jordan does his own training, but I've steered his training over the years.

Like at one point in time, he started to get more injured and i go guy what do you whatever you're doing is not working you gotta you gotta cut the shit like

like i like in other words like he had a ductor issue and he and then he had a knee issue i'm like dude how do you train i look at this video i'm like bro you gotta you want to take those eight plates and make those eight plates for like 15 plates okay yeah move slower make it more harder stop at the bottom pause make lighter weight harder on the muscle because your soft tissue and your muscle imbalances are just gonna that's gonna ruin you you're gonna fall apart yeah yeah

And then if I see, if I feel like he's not recovering, I'm like, hey, man, you're going to need to back off.

So he's learned that and he's kind of toned it himself.

And drop sets are in part of his program to some degree, but they're not blindly being like, we're doing a drop set after every exercise of the last set.

That's just foolish.

And my opinion is just they don't understand training.

Because as you know, if you kind of exert yourself or stimulate the muscle too much in the first exercise, that greatly affects the performance of that muscle for the next exercise.

For the next.

So I'm okay with people doing drop sets on something like a chest fly, a lateral raise, leg curl, calf raise, leg extension.

I'm not okay with somebody doing like a triple drop set on a hack squat.

That's just crazy.

You're going to drop, you're going to drive too much fatigue and it's just not required.

So, like, in my opinion, I rather people do a back off set with full rest than sit there and make a muscle go to failure repetitively over and over again.

Because now that I understand recovery, I understand

systemic fatigue, like your CNS system,

and I see people who train to failure a lot.

And I don't see them making extraordinary gains.

It will come to a point where I might implement it for a few weeks to see how the person responds and how they're recovering.

Sure.

But like, I usually tell people, I'm usually focusing on people how to move weight in a way to target the muscle you're trying to target.

Like if you're doing, if you're doing inclined dumbbell press and you're not feeling your chest fibers with every repetition, you're not actually feeling them contract.

That's a problem, right?

So let's get there first and then let's learn to push that muscle to near failure while maintaining the tension here.

Once you're there, then we can make a back off set where we're able to really drive those upper chest fibers because I don't want people compensating.

You know, like all of a sudden people start arching their back in an incline press and they're like, I got one 20s for 10.

I'm like, no, you didn't, you got five.

And then it turned into a flat press.

So I'm more in that route.

I just don't, I just, I know people have different ways of doing it.

I just, I don't think it's, for me, I don't agree with it.

I just don't.

Like at the end of the workout, sure, to finish something off, but like, if somebody is legs are super sore every week and they're big and they're making ground, I'm never going to have them do a drop stat on legs, right?

If there is a shoulder rear dealt and a medial dealt that just seems seems not to respond and their shoulders are never sore and the recoveries are fine i might implement some drop sets and some other intensifiers but it's very individualized it's not like blindly being like we're going to do a drop set on every exercise of the last set or we're going to do it on every second or third exercise of every body part it's very individualized to that sense No, it totally makes sense.

I'm glad you said that because I feel like a lot of us have been in that place too where we will,

we will fucking train our asses off and hit those drop sets and then we fucking end up having imbalances.

We have tightness in places that just won't let go.

End up having to get way too much extra body work just to like manage that.

You said it 100%.

That's the consequence of it.

I wanted to experiment with that myself.

So, you know, during that rebound phase, I just went so fucking hard afterwards with volume and everything that my entire left side of my body and the entire upper body just locked the fuck up where I had pain just going to bed.

Like I couldn't sleep properly because the left side of my back was just too tight and in pain.

And yeah, then I started talking to like my active release therapists, chiropractors, and some other guys.

And they were all just like, yeah, you just ramped up volume way too hard, way too quick right after your show.

And that's the thing that I think people undervalue.

And I love, I love Food's podcast, and I love how

they discuss the importance of intensity and everything.

But if there is one thing that I want to give to

quote-unquote science-based lifters in the science-based community, it's that I think people undervalue the importance of the productivity of the entire workout.

And that's the issue when it comes to intensity: is like not everybody has

the full sense of where that balances for them of how intense they need to go in the beginning to make sure that they're going just as intense at the end, which is why you know they have that RIR measure because it kind of just helps some people measure where they need to aim for, I guess.

But you know, I'll work out with my friends, for example, like my

boy Roman, who also films for me sometimes.

Like, this guy, you know, lifting isn't isn't his number one thing, but he loves bodybuilding and everything.

Every time I go to the gym with him for light day, bro is hitting failure on the first fucking set.

Bro goes so fucking hard, you know, and there's a lot of us that are like that, that are like emotional lifters.

We put our emotion in our lift because we want to go hard.

We want to progress.

We really want to, which is cool.

It's awesome.

But it really just backtracks.

And they don't, you don't realize that because this is a game of not just.

lifting hard and training hard and working hard, but it's also working smart.

Let's say, dude, if it was as easy as just training your balls off, eating a bunch of food, taking a bunch of gear, we would all be huge.

And when I had Jay Collins the podcast, he told us he never ever trained to failure.

Didn't train to failure.

He thought failure was bad.

He goes, you're more likely to get injured.

We're willing to compensate.

You're a lot of missing balances.

He goes, I built my physique with volume.

And obviously, we go see the videos of him.

He wasn't lifting crazy weight either.

It's doing 455 on squats.

You know, it's Mr.

Lippia.

It's like then you see other people lifting insane weight.

And then I was used to to be confused as a kid watching Dennis Wolf squat 315 Owing.

And I'm like, wow.

But now I get it.

You know what I mean?

Like, I get it.

They're stimulating the muscle and they're training the muscle to near failure, but they're keeping the tension where they need it.

They're not all of a sudden rocking into their hips and using their hips to power the weight out of the hole because they don't want to just have a big ass.

They want big quads.

But, you know, it's funny.

It's at the end of the day, guys, and it's like, and I know you believe this too, it's very individualized.

Like you have a set of principles that you'll gravitate with the client, and then you adjust those to how the person is responding.

Someone might do a couple of drop sets, sure.

But like, I think I can't stand it because I understand science.

I have a master's of nutrition.

I reviewed tons of studies.

I get there's genetic variability, but I also understand that one size doesn't fit all with anybody.

It doesn't.

There's people that end being hospitalized taking regular doses of Advel, right?

Everybody's different.

So when it comes to training, like

you have to adjust individualize.

And when people go, oh, you have to train to failure, you have to do this.

It's a dumb statement.

It's an ignorant statement to make because there's a lot of people that don't need to do that and they grow fine.

There's people that do that and they don't grow at all.

So just like there's many Mr.

Olympias, they all train different.

They're all of a sudden like, I figured it out because I just copied previous Mr.

Olympias training and now I am where I am.

That's not how it works.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I found like the perfect middle ground for myself.

So I got my Gen X then.

Said this a million times.

I wonder how annoying my audience is going to be saying this now.

I got my

Gen X then from 23andMe, got the raw data, put in Prometheus, figured out like some of my genetic predispositions and everything.

Found out that I have this thing called impaired muscle performance.

So it's basically like I have a more, a higher percentage of like solo twitch fibers or endurance break is something I excel at, but like powerlifting, for example, is something I don't excel at.

So, and I found that that resonated with me in what I saw with results.

Like I saw that like I needed to do higher volume than most people in general.

Um, like, higher volume, higher, sometimes higher ups for things, like, especially legs and shoulders.

You know, it's already higher for most people, but for me, I just like

it was just very evident that I needed to do enough volume per week, and I wasn't doing enough to grow them.

And that's the changes I've made in the last couple of years for legs is increasing that volume.

A couple people are asking to, which is another reason why I'm saying this.

But

one of the things I found out, though, for me personally is that like the middle ground between like Patrick Torres' training and then also also just

doing,

and for example, like what you said, seemed to be the best for me, where I would like,

I would prioritize progressive overload and volume, but at the end of the last exercise of each muscle group, I would do like that hardcore rest pause set.

And then afterwards, I'm done.

You know, that's where I found out, like, okay, I'm not getting any crazy injuries anymore.

I'm getting pretty fucking sore,

but I'm recovering by the time that I hit that muscle group next.

Everything seems to be perfect.

You know, sometimes I'd be a little bit too hard and then my legs would still be a little bit sore by the time I hit legs again.

But normally it was pretty close to being on point.

So that's where I found the perfect place for you.

You probably have this, Newtell listeners, you're probably very good at keeping your body in the same position as you're reaching that failure because we all have seen people start to compensate.

arching excessively their elbow left elbow flares out a shoulder comes forward you're probably able to keep yourself very stable and keep the tension on the muscle, which is a very overlooked concept when people are training to failure or doing intensifiers is stop compensating and shifting your body's mechanics to have other muscles assist.

Just bring what you're doing to failure.

Yeah, no, I know exactly what you mean.

Every time I did do that in the past, that's where the injuries came in.

Yeah.

Which was awesome.

Something you mentioned in one of the past podcasts too about training, which I found super fucking interesting.

I was curious if you're still like, if you still align with this, but you mentioned that you prefer most people to, you prefer people to hit most muscle groups at least maybe two times per week, which I'm totally on par with too.

But you said for chest training, you don't normally see as much of a benefit to hitting it twice per week.

That was me personally.

Okay.

Okay.

So you personally, like, I've always been a slow recoverer, like really slow.

I trained with this, one of my friends, Dave Anderson, Dave, you look at me in high school.

And this dude would do so much volume and he's getting stronger every week.

And I'm over there being like, I'm getting weaker.

I just couldn't recover from what we were doing.

I was like a nine sets of chess guy per week and I worked up to four or five or five reps.

Like, but like it just, once I stopped training so much and stopped doing so much volume, I started getting stronger.

But no, like

for volume, I don't necessarily believe that.

It's just more specific response.

I do think it's very hard for people to train quads twice per week.

Like, that's really hard, especially if you're pushing it pretty difficult.

Like, you know, I mean, that leg workout probably has to be pretty low volume or decent intensity to have somebody recover from a full leg workout twice per week.

Plus, that's so taxing on a recovery bank for all the other body parts, right?

It's like if you're trying to do every body part twice and legs.

Yeah, that's why I think only my legs grew this last year.

But that's what I needed to bring up anyway, so it was worth it.

Meaning you did it twice or once per week?

I did it twice per week, but I don't feel like the rest of my, I don't feel like the rest of my body really grew that much, to be honest.

A lot of the shit stayed the same, man.

Your legs took all the recovery bank, right?

Yeah, my legs literally took like everything.

And I had some people commenting, like, I think you're like bottom-heavy now.

And I'm like, what?

Do you know what's really funny is like the whole concept of push-pull legs.

I started, like I said, I started competing in 05.

Push-pull legs wasn't a thing.

Training body parts twice per week wasn't a thing.

It was your typical growth split.

I ran a grow split from

2004 all the way until 2018.

And I went from a stage weight of 170 with decent conditioning to ripped on stage at 222 with a bro split.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, and remember, I remember, I still remember in the first few four years of bodybuilding, I ran the same damn off-season cycle over and over again.

750 test, three or 400 DECA, and 40 mix of deball, not even any growth hormone.

And I was putting on 10 pounds of stage weight every year.

Like it just worked.

So, like, it's hard for me to always say this is best.

This is not.

I do think there's a lot of merit now that you think about it.

If you have to accumulate 16 working sets in one session, how effective are those last four sets when you can just divide that up into two and hit back twice?

You're going to be more fresh.

The muscle is going to be able to provide a higher output to move the weight.

And you might be able to manage fatigue and have more effective volume than doing 16 sets all at once.

But again, there's a lot of people that build a lot of crazy physiques training one body part per week.

You know what I mean?

They did.

Yeah.

You know, David Henry was training, what, four days on and three days off, four days on, three days off.

That dude was massive, you know?

Right.

So it's,

it's all.

There's got to be a huge genetic factor for that, too.

Oh, for sure.

But like, it's genetics, anecdotal.

It's hard to just flat out say this is the best, but I do feel that twice per week body parts is superior.

I could never prove to you in a study, but I do feel that it is.

The only reason I feel that it is, is that it's easier to make sure that you're fresh the second half of that volume rather than when you're doing it in the same day, you know?

I mean, if you're really good at managing, you know, the fatigue on that day off that workout, then maybe it's not that much of a difference for you.

But yeah, dude, 100%.

I totally understand.

16 sets.

Like, imagine like 16 working sets of legs.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

I want to ask

because a fucking Jordan Hutchins, Jordan's just looking fucking amazing.

And we were actually just DMing the other day.

And he's like, dude, I'm very excited for Olympia because I think we're going to be bringing something new.

We're going to be bringing a new package.

So

do you want to tell us what that package is?

Well, less than that, like you always got to be realistic with your athletes on what you can achieve in six, seven, eight weeks.

It's like the bottom line is like, bro, we have to like, we got to clean out a little bit.

So it's like, I just bought back down to like just test and mast and took everything else out, gave him more food, told him to back off training for a little bit on the weekends, go do something fun, relax, get your brain, you know, off of bodybuilding, deload before we have to hit it hard again.

And

a couple meals off plan.

I go, but listen, we can't put on size in that amount of time.

Like, can't we can't sit there and be like, snap our fingers, five more pounds and the lats.

So, you know, let's do what we can.

And what we can do is we can come in with a little harder condition and we could tweak that a little bit, even though I thought Texas pre-judging he was perfect, but we could probably do even a a little bit more than that without losing our fullness.

But most importantly, we can bring in our waist and we can work on our posing and our presentation.

So posing and presentation, bringing your waist can change your physique dramatically, like a lot within four weeks.

So I know he had a lot of difficulty controlling his midsection because he had hernia surgery.

So he really avoided, we really avoided a lot of core training because it would aggravate it.

Now that he's able to, we implemented a core training routine every day.

And I say core, I mean like bracing, vacuum, McGill curl-ups, side side planks, things that he can do that allows him to activate the muscles.

It's not in the purpose of tearing down or accumulating volume of those movements.

It's creating resistance within

multiple aspects of your core.

So you're able to connect with it when you flex.

So like I can sit here right now and be like, I'm blowing my left oblique.

Now I'm blowing my right oblique.

Where some people, they don't ever exercise the area.

They can't do that very well, right?

Connect with it.

So my goal for him was to be able to connect with his midsection very well, to blow harder on the side tricep, the the quarter turns, the ab and thigh, the front relaxed, everything.

And then, of course, tighten the obliques to bring it in.

Jewett did a great job of that over the years.

Now, his waist comes all the way in.

And if Jordan's waist comes all the way in more, we're going to have a crazier V-taper and our call.

That's what it looked like.

That's what I looked at in his last post.

Yeah.

The last ab and thigh shot he sent me today.

I was like, Jesus.

I'm like, dude, we're on the money now.

And he's still eating a good amount of food.

So I'm like, when we have to be able to pull

the high fiber food out um and some protein that waste didn't come in even more is there anything you guys did for the back because back's looking amazing uh just the typical he he his back has come up a lot and now he's got new equipment over at uh absolute in looseville the best car i've ever seen my life he's gonna know the comfort more but he knows what to do now for his back like we're not doing barbell rows and deadlifts and all this things that disrupt so much fatigue and you cannot connect with it now for the listeners i'm not trashing those exercises but for somebody who has trouble connecting with your back those are definitely movements you don't want to do.

You want to do movements where you're going to be able to get that strong connection, and then you can gravitate towards back movements that are a little harder to get a connection.

But he's got a good routine going down now, and he's able to connect with his back more, and of course, better machinery to be able to blow out the lats, et cetera.

You know, so that's pretty much the deal.

He's already had that.

It just takes more time doing just that.

Gotcha.

What's the plan of attack for y'all's peaking for Olympia as opposed to, say, Texas and Tampa Pro?

I know you guys had a pretty amazing experience peaking for Texas.

Yeah, dude, told you.

I know.

I listened to y'all's pod, but melted.

Like,

you never know what the body's going to do.

And I love Chris Acino's favorite quote: he says, Chris goes to me, he goes, dude,

sometimes right when you think you know a lot about the body and prep, the body will do something completely different, making you realize you know absolutely fucking nothing.

Right.

So, like, when I, when I peaked him for Tampa,

I peak how I peak everybody.

It's just, I'm falling day by day.

Whatever the body's doing that day ends up being the change in the plane that day.

I don't have like, I'm not going to be like, oh, Wednesday, we're going to go zero carb.

I don't do that with anybody.

It's just starting seven days out.

We make a change, see the response, make a change, see the response, good response, keep it the same.

And I just keep going like this.

That way, it's for me, it's fail-safe.

I don't make an error.

And we did something for Tampa, and obviously it worked.

And then the only thing in Tampa which I would have changed was I wish I probably could have restricted water more in the morning.

I just didn't see the water that the stage light was showing.

And then we came off stage in Tampa pre-judging.

He was still winning at a pre-judging, but it was close to Quentin.

And I said, as soon as he came off stage, I'm like, zero water the rest of the day, zero water to run stage.

And then he peed like three or four times.

We didn't take a diuretic, by the way.

So, and then, and then once he got back on stage at night show, he was perfect.

Perfect.

That's awesome.

So, now keeping that in mind, I'm like looking at Tampa, Texas, I'm like, all right, I have a projected plan of how your body is going to respond since I've prepped you for six years.

I have a pretty good understanding.

And his body was predictable every single day until Friday.

And then Friday comes and carbs go up.

Water's the same as it was Thursday.

I'm not a big water cutter guy.

I usually keep water always in

and keep the water in.

I just put it in the, I just put it, I put a lot of amount with meals in between meals.

That way it's easily controlled.

And then as the day goes on, every two meals, I'm looking at it and I'm like,

you're not gaining any weight.

You usually gain six pounds.

I'm accounting for a six pound weight gain

today and then a six pound weight loss on average overnight.

And seeing how that happening, it's not happening.

I'm like, hmm.

I'm like, all right, we're going to add a little bit more food for the next meal.

Like, because like during the day, he was like at the same weight, basically.

Yeah, the entire day, right?

Almost the entirely.

Yeah, and then getting drier and harder.

And I'm like, but this is a problem because you get to the end of the day, you're the same weight, and you're dry, and you're hard.

You get tomorrow morning, you're going to be flat and flat, yeah, flat.

So, like, we have to go to bed a little smooth.

So, I'm like, all right, let's increase the sodium a little bit, let's increase the food, and then I might add another 500 mls of water before bed, which would be like six and a half liters, I think, that night.

And I'm like, I look at the end of the day, I'm like, bro, you're fucking nasty.

And then he goes, I'm like, Jordan, this is my take.

We have to be on stage around noon.

So we do have room for error if we take a diuretic and it goes too far.

But if we wake up tomorrow morning, we can also take a diuretic in the morning and dry out as well if we're not dry enough.

And we both came to the decision that we'll just take a quarter of a diazide.

And then if it's too flat in the morning, we can just fix it with more water and more salt.

And we're like, all right, deal.

Let's take a quarter diazide.

And we did it.

Woke up this morning.

It was lights out, like lights.

And then I'm like, dude, you're a little flat.

I think one meal with 300 mls of water, 400 mls of water, and then we'll take a look.

And he did it, and he only gained like one pound, and his body became alive.

And I'm like, we're just going to maintain that as the day goes on.

But, like, that's a perfect example of like, you have a plan, your body's responding how it was responding on Thursday, predicting what Friday's going to be.

And Friday, your body goes, I have other plans.

I'm just going to say this late.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I guess for Olympia, though, do you guys have to?

I'm assuming you're just going to to try to do the same kind of strategy and then just monitor it every single day, see how it goes.

Yeah.

Make those adjustments as needed, right?

Yeah.

I just know that Jordan full is not the best look.

When he's full full, it's not the best look.

When he's slightly under full, he's the best look.

But no, I'm just going to do what I've always done, especially now, obviously, every single, I mean, last year when we did Chicago to Tampa to Texas, like.

Every single one of those peaks was a little different.

And it's all based on what the body's doing at that time.

Like, there's nothing, like the amount of water, salt was the same, matter of water

might vary a little bit.

The food varied a little bit.

But Texas Pro, we were very low carb for him.

It was like 75 grams of carbs per meal for a carb up, and it was fine.

And then Tampa, he was a lot more carbs.

So it's just, you know what it is, man.

It's just what the body's doing, I'm going to do.

And that's it.

There's no like preconceived status.

We get there Monday on purpose.

That way we allow a good 40 hours for his body just to get acclimated.

I'll set him him in so he's very stress-free because that's my goal is to keep him calm and relaxed and stress-free.

As soon as your mind gets stressed, your body just does weird shit.

And then all the things you try to do to fill out and dry out just doesn't work as well.

Just doesn't.

Yep.

No.

Happened to me.

I fucking got bursitis in my knee like right before I flew to a show.

Crazy inflammation in the knee.

The whole week was just the worst week of my life, man.

I just.

was stressing the fuck out of not being able to walk.

I was limping everywhere.

I was like, dude, what am I going to fucking do for this show?

And obviously the inflammation and stress and the water retention just never went off.

So, yeah, it was terrible.

The body follows the mind 100%.

Yeah.

I,

something I really like that you do, that Kyle also did with me is the whole like weighing yourself as the day goes on, seeing where your weight is, seeing where you land at the end, waking up in the morning.

I just feel like it's super calculated.

Yeah.

Um, when did you start doing that?

And I've done it for a while now.

So, like, typically

it depends on the person but like for obviously somebody very high level a very big show they're weighing themselves fasted after meal two after meal four

and after meal six on thursday okay

and then friday depending on the person they're doing the same thing or i need weight before each meal So then it'd be weight before each meal.

That way I can adjust the fluid for that meal if I need to.

Usually, food

is already in one way or now, predetermined based on Thursday's response.

And then I'll probably adjust it if I need to.

But I like to know what the weight is beforehand.

But I always have an idea of

where they are.

Because I get some, I got a guy win UK championships, an older masters guy this past weekend.

And

I know that the first half of the day, a quarter of the day, he gains weight quickly.

Like quick.

He's like, oh my God, three pounds up already.

Like, do I freak out?

No, no, no no no no you're fine you're fine and then like four hours later he's back down like two and a half pounds like i knew that was going to happen because that's just him he eats his body retains for a second and then he starts peeing so it's like i knew that was going to happen so i think taking the weight um is important and knowing that trend and knowing their weight before they go to bed starting seven days out so you can predict idea of how much water they're diuresing overnight because you can always know this most people don't sleep well the night before the show so you're never going to diaries the same weight from Friday night to Saturday morning.

You can predict it, be like, they lost five and a half pounds on average every single night, Monday all the way through Thursday night to Friday morning, but they're not going to lose five and a half pounds for Friday into Saturday.

And that's where diuretic becomes very useful because it can kick the same amount of water off.

Yep.

Why would you say most people don't sleep so well

before the show?

They're just excited.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Every time.

Quite a little calm down, like I calm down.

After it's a UFC fight, they're fucking pumped dude.

I'm fucking fucking tweaking out.

I'm looking at my, you know, they're just all wound up.

Yeah.

I mean, like,

daydreaming about my posing routine, trying to make sure that it's perfect.

Yeah.

That's going to change anything.

Exactly.

And like, you know, you know, telling somebody to relax doesn't always doesn't work ever.

Yeah.

So I find that this, you know, one thing I do do with my guys, though, because I've been with some mistake before,

I try to go over their routine of what they're doing.

So where are you staying?

Oh, I'm staying in a hotel with like two of my buddies.

I'm like, No, you're not.

No, you're not.

You're staying by yourself.

Oh, really?

Yeah, you're not staying with anybody.

I'm not doing that game.

You know me, fucking times that's ended in disaster because they get their buddy gets an argument with her wife, and that's in the room.

And now they're stressed because they're fucking fighting.

Dude, no, you stay by yourself.

They can stay in another room.

Don't stay with another competitor either.

Stay by yourself or with your best one person only.

And like, that's it.

I like, I remember one time where guys, like, oh, my whole family can.

I'm like, it's like fucking 14 people in a room, bro.

Like, like, that's the dumbest idea ever.

I know they want to support you.

They can support you tomorrow.

But, like, let's make it through the night.

And he's like, oh man, they're like watching TV.

They're being loud.

The kids jumping in the bed.

It's dumb.

Yeah.

You ever feel like there's also other variables, though, that are contributing to that sleep, just like, you know, lower estrogen and like the dehydration?

Um,

I don't know.

I, I, I, for me, like, I, most of the time for people, it's excitement.

And like I said, I don't ever cut water really the day before.

So like dehydration is not really a thing for them.

And I usually will position, listen, I do whatever I can to make somebody sleep well.

And a lot of my guys, their biggest meal of the day is the night before, the, is the meal before they go to bed.

If they start to have trouble sleeping because of hunger, I will allocate a large amount of calories to that meal.

That way they eat it and they fall into that rest and digest mode.

And they're like, oh, I feel relaxed.

Good.

Go to sleep.

So like when people say, oh, I keep my post-workout meal the biggest or pre-workout the biggest, yeah, some guys, but as soon as they have poor sleep, I'm moving that food to the last night of the meal, that's last, last meal of the day.

100%.

Are you just saying in general, like on any day, or are you saying specifically pre-sleeping?

Every day, every day.

If I had a client who's like, dude, I'm, I can't sleep, I'm hungry at night, or I, I'm freaking out, I'm moving food all the way to that time.

Okay.

I'll take out a food, take food out of meal one, two, and three, and I'll move it into the last three.

And I'll even sometimes go really overboard and make meal one very small and then make meal six last meal of the day huge.

I love that, bro.

They're like, dude, I'm sleeping again.

I am only peeing once in the middle of the night.

So I'll also have them add a little more salt to the last meal of the day to help hold water in so they can sleep, not peeing six times a night.

Because as soon as sleep falls apart, everything falls apart.

It's funny because you see on like layman's just everywhere, just

oh, don't eat like a big meal before bed so you can sleep.

Like don't eat like two, three hours before bed so you can sleep and stuff.

For me, I'm just like, bro, I don't fucking, I'll hardly eat in the beginning, and like, I just love having the big meals at the end, it just feels right, yeah, so much better.

And I just like you said, though, there is some merit to saying that because you get someone who's reflux, who's already a general population client, and they're and they're general, they're fat, and they're eating largely before they go to bed and they get reflux and they can't sleep.

Yeah, obviously, there's some truth to that.

Or I'm sure you and I both been there before where we eat way too much at night in the offseason and then we sleep because now we're uncomfortable and we're like girgitating.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Your body's like more alert, it's stressed.

So like there is some merit to that, but like there's, there's, you know, those are extreme cases.

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I am the king of allergies.

I once had a podcast with, I don't know if you've heard heard of Togi, that one, the one influencer kid that

got famous for doing like

steroid edits of him injecting himself with a needle, and then he started gambling and doing these crazy YouTube videos that were like hilarious.

Dude, no, well, I don't follow anybody.

I don't know.

That's probably a good thing, then.

Well,

I was just doing a podcast with him a while back, and like, I just keep

sneafing because of my allergies and stuff, and everyone just thought I was doing Coke with him.

fantastic

it's a secret guys

um i want to ask you actually before the q a but how's prep going with jamesh james is good i mean dude i mean dude with when it comes to uh i mean we didn't place how we wanted to place but like looking at his pictures and being there in person and seeing him i i had no complaints other than posing um i thought he looked conditioned he's his most conditioned he's been in a long time.

Yeah.

I didn't think he was flat.

We just need to be less conditioned and bigger.

So, like, I'm looking at the guys ahead of him.

Like, he just needs to be full as a house for James.

So, like, we plan on, he was 266 on stage.

So, we need to be probably 272, 273 on stage.

And we can sacrifice some glute lines.

We can sacrifice some lines just to get that huge full pop upstairs.

Because when he gets conditioned, the upper body loses that crazy pop that James is known for, which will end up making up for the lack of clavicle width.

He has narrow clavicles.

So if he can't afford to get any, he can't afford any fullness to be lost in the upper body.

So, like, if we can manage to move away from some of the condition and fill him out, which we're doing that now, we're feeding the shit out of him.

He's eating a lot today.

Saw his pictures today.

He's looking already fuller, but we're going to keep driving driving that weight till we get to about 272, assess the whole thing, see if we can push a little higher if we can without getting too soft, and then see how the cookie crumbles from there.

And we're working on core control and posing, but prepping him was honestly easy.

It really was easy.

And I'm friends with him.

So we talked every single day.

And it was smooth.

Like I had no issues with the prep.

I was honestly happy with the look on stage.

It just wasn't what we needed to place how we normally place this.

I see.

I see.

Yeah.

I fucking love James too.

He's just,

he's like dad, so introspective, always has like the right, the right, uh, the right advice and everything.

Yeah.

But uh, um,

are you, are you saying this about what you guys need to achieve now because

of

what you guys need to

what you guys need for the judging criteria on that stage or

because this is kind of like a genetic response and he just seems to look better if he's more filled filled out.

Both.

Both.

Now I'm looking at the guys ahead of him.

I'm like, from the back, like James was peeled, ripped, glutes, hands, everything peeled.

And I see a lot of, I mean, obviously Hassan was fat.

He's just huge.

And like, obviously, at the end of the day, it's a muscle show, right?

It's a muscle show.

So if we can get rid of some of that and look bigger and pop and more full.

Because James doesn't have a strong V taper.

He doesn't.

So like we need to get that fullness back to the the upper body to create the illusion of that V taper.

He can't really change too much of his structure, obviously, but you can change the illusion of.

And that's what we need to do.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Cool.

You mentioned that James, or no, not James, that Jordan was eight weeks out from the Olympia since Texas, right?

So was it roughly eight?

It was, right?

Yeah, I think he was eight, seven or eight.

Something like that.

Yeah.

So like with James being pretty like closer,

having a lot less weeks between shows.

What would you do for someone that has, say, like three weeks in between shows?

In his situation or anybody?

Anybody.

I mean, three weeks usually like in a nutshell, the first week is like, dude, chill out.

Don't go

start training legs really heavy and hard on Monday, right?

Maybe start training Tuesday, you know, get a few meals off plan Saturday night, Sunday, kind of deload, rest,

get your sleep schedule back, you know, get your meals and everything order for Monday, go back to like a light training session on Monday, light cardio, or keep your step count pretty high, and just start working back into your normal routine.

Um, and then see how your body is going to rebound.

Because ultimately, it's always the question of, is your body going to rebound?

Is it going to retain water coming out of a four-day hard carb up

and/or diuretic use and then restricting water and adding water?

Or if you did any of that, how is it going to respond?

So, uh, generally, I give people moderate calories.

I don't put them on the same low-fat diet.

I put them on like moderate amount and just have them follow it exactly and e-nominally weight every day just to see the weight trend.

If he starts to like spike really hard, I end up like having to pull back a little bit already because I want to be ahead of that rebound.

I don't want them to like get all the way to the week later and they're already eight pounds up and it's still going up and up.

I don't want that.

I want them to like.

get that rebound over with if it's going to happen and come right back down to baseline body weight seven days out.

I mean seven days pro-show.

And then that way you have a week to renormal, even a week to normalize from that rebound, a week to train, and then a week to pee week again.

Okay, gotcha.

What about PDs?

Do you keep that consistent or you change anything?

I always pull orals right away.

It's the first thing I do.

I always give them their liver a break for a little bit, whether it's depending how far they have, if it's for three weeks, I'll give them an oral break for seven to 10 days.

And at that point, it's not going to make a shit of difference.

You have all the oils in already, but I will pull the orals out and then bring them back in the same amount or sometimes even less if they're looking disgustingly nasty okay disgustingly nasty like that i mean sometimes people surprise me you you know just like you look at them you're like

dude you look retarded like this is this is insane it's like yeah we can sprinkle in like tab of the wind straw or whatever that's fine but i'm not gonna be like you know Because at that point in time, they've already had four days of not training and carbs, then a day of rest and eating with family.

So it's like, that's a big break for the body.

Yeah.

Now fatigues kind of come off and they feel good and they're happy.

And then their body just

fills back out.

And so at that point in time, like there's not any need, really.

Right.

Okay.

Huh?

Cool.

What about with James?

Then

how's it different with James right now?

He did pull the orals out, but he didn't rebound at all.

So, like, we ate a shit ton of food on

Friday.

Like, I'm talking 200 grams of rice measured dry, 30 grams of carbs from fruit.

I always peek car people up on fruit with every meal.

I fucking love that, by the way.

I totally forgot to say that I love that you use fruit.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

Right.

You have potatoes, I have a potassium source.

Uh, you have fiber, um, fiber that's not going to bloat you, but it will help you shit because I don't want my guys constipated to eating, you know, a good godly amount of rice products.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Um, and it gives them something different to eat.

So it's always either dates, banana, um, dates, banana, or apples.

That's usually what I use mostly.

And then he was at like 30 grams of added fat per meal.

And he was just barely filling out.

And then it finally stuck after a few meals of that.

Then it started to stick and body started to fill out a little bit more.

But for him, like he didn't really eat much off plan.

You know, everything was kind of closed and we were done.

We went home.

I had a flight the next morning and I told him he could have, he should have a nice meal with family when he gets back home on Sunday night, but just keep it reasonable.

He sent me a picture of it.

I'm like, dude, you can eat all that, not a big deal.

Just don't binge eat.

Just don't binge.

Have a nice snow, but don't binge.

And then he didn't, he didn't rebound at all.

And then today he's already trending down from his highest weight.

So he's about 265 today.

And I gave him a lot more food today, a lot more food today.

It was like,

yeah, but

what was his stage weight?

Stage weight was 266.4.

Okay.

And he was 265 today?

He was 265 and changed today, correct?

Okay, gotcha.

Cool, cool.

Wow, that's awesome.

I'm interested in seeing the next package, man.

That'll be exciting because I do remember.

Um, I don't even know what post it was, and I think you mentioned like a, I don't know if it was on Pod or if you mentioned it actually in a comment on that post, if it was bodybuilding with borders or whatever.

But obviously, there are some comments that like there always are going to be those people that are flaming saying, like, oh, yeah, James looks like small, his upper body looks small, but they're not really realizing that you guys are literally just like depleting and firing him out and making sure he's conditioned.

He's 258 in that picture.

No, let's just be honest.

Anybody who's 258 with strided glutes is not small.

Right?

You know what I mean?

It's not small.

But, like, you know, when Philip had 266 and he was fine, he just needs to be even fuller with less condition.

I think that'll be a better package for him.

What weight do you do you think that's going to land out again?

I'm

and we agreed today, we chatted today about it, and I said, I want to drive that weight up slowly, gradually to 272, and then assess.

I think between 272 and 275

is where he's going to be able to be without losing condition where someone can say, bro, you lost because of condition.

Do you know what I'm saying?

I think we can get there and be full as a house without losing too much.

And obviously, it's way easier to do that when you're already shredded, right?

It's kind of like it's hard to do it on the way down, but once you're there, you just start adding back because you don't, you can't get fat in a week.

Do you know what I mean?

Can't get fat in two weeks, provided you're not eating like a total ass And we're not, we're just systematically adding more calories.

So I think that's where he'll be.

If I was a betting man, I'm thinking close to 272.

Okay.

Cool.

That's right.

Awesome.

So something I want to ask too, aside from the fact that I really love that you have fruits and shit and nutrition, I think that's something that's very like different than old school bodybuilding, right?

Fucking rice, cream or rice, rice, cream or rice, oats.

And I see all the merit in doing so.

I just, I think, and I think a lot of even like old school coaches have kind of evolved to like involve more fruits and variety in their diets, realizing how important it is.

Because

I just, I wasn't a fan of the old argument that since fruit is more fructose, it's going to be glycogen that's primarily stored in the liver first.

You know, the entire, you know, the argument.

Yeah.

But one of the things that I also really like about what you do, especially in the offseason, is keeping guys lean for the sake of insulin sensitivity.

Yeah.

So I'm curious.

I don't get it.

I don't understand.

What do you, what do you have to say about, um, I guess, old school bodybuilding coaches?

I know there's been a bunch, um, and I'm sure they still believe this to an extent and press this, but saying that like you must eat a lot of food, like you must eat high calories, high amounts.

And part of the problem that a lot of people aren't making gains is because they're just not eating enough.

I used to believe that too.

I fell fell into that dogmatic viewpoint.

But, like, I guess now that I've been coaching for as long as I have, I just don't see it.

Like, how many times have I gotten people a year of a while where you just pushing food and pushing food and they can't eat anymore?

Then you're adding peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and you're adding Pop-Tarts and you're adding insulin.

And then they just be like, bro, I feel like shit.

I'm tired all the time.

Training socks.

I have reflux.

I can't sleep at night.

I'm like, you're not getting anywhere.

And then, and then, and then the hindsight, I look at the six people that put more than 10 pounds of stage weight in last year that I had, and every single one of them stayed lean for the entire year, maintained an excellent appetite, slept great, and they felt awesome training.

So it's like, you know, it is, we've all been there.

When you're force-feeding food, training's not very fun.

Yep.

Because you don't feel good.

And if you don't feel good and you're just force-feeding something that your body will stop taking, it's not going to work.

There are people that like have poor appetites that you have to force themselves to eat.

That is true.

But to make the blanket statement of like, you got to force feed food and put on a bunch of weight, I just don't think that's not accurate.

It's not accurate.

That's just not.

You can push as much food as you can, provided training is still good, you're not getting excessively fat, and sleep is still good.

If that, if you can do that, and you keep, then by all means, fucking eat as much as you want.

Gotcha.

You know, it just, when it comes to the point of force-feeding food, I've never, I've never seen any one of my clients ever and the standpoint of force-feeding food.

And it ended up being like, wow, we put on 15 pounds of muscle this whole.

Yeah.

I've never seen.

I think the one thing that these guys needed to, I think the one thing that they were missing that they weren't like saying that's probably really important as like a disclaimer is that, and this is like, this in terms of like gear load or like amount is relative to like your response, right?

It's like, how well are you responding to it?

Are you responding a lot

is just

the

and Mike Summerfeld said this on my podcast with him is with more gear requires more food.

And if someone's pushing more, that's where the need for more food is required.

But obviously there's a certain level and there's a balance needed, right?

Because, you know, in the 2000s, we had guys that were pushing max amounts of fucking gear, max amounts of food.

And what did that do to their digestive system too in the long run?

You know, you kind of come up with a physique that's not exactly optimal and not going to win shows these days.

So

I feel like that's probably.

I totally agree.

Is there any drugs that you 100% avoid?

I don't really use D-ball.

And obviously, I just,

I feel like anadroil is more, I feel like 25 milligrams of anadroil is more useful.

I rarely have anybody ever take 50.

I think 25 just gives you a little bit, but it doesn't crush your appetite and it's a longer half-life.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I have had people use D-ball this last year, but like, that's all they could get.

So

it's not my first choice by any means, just because the blood values just spike up and down.

And I've never seen anybody like use D-ball,

or I could say, I see it, I implement it, and I'm like, wow, this is a game changer.

I usually be like, oh,

they have great training.

And then they stop after a period of time and it's like, training's back to where it was.

I'm like, okay, we didn't get anywhere.

Um, where like anadro, on the other hand, I've seen people like legit make ground,

like legit make make gains.

Um, but that's not everybody.

Um, I don't use

trestolone,

I don't use these new exotic drugs, DHB.

Um, obviously, now we have a worldwide shortage of primo and mastron, so we're kind of limited now of like quest and EQ.

I don't use too much deck or NPP anymore either.

Um, I used to.

If I do, it's a short stent of NPP because I feel like there's just too many psychological side effects with people and too many things to gamble where at first they feel great, then they feel like depressed, then they're bad, then you got to take Caber or Proactin Blocker.

I just don't want to be a chem guy.

I just don't want to, I don't want to be that.

And I just don't think.

I haven't seen it.

If somebody says to me, the other comes to me like, dude, NPP is my favorite drug.

It works amazing.

It's the best thing that's ever happened to me.

I'm like, okay, then we're going to to leave it, right?

Okay.

Like, I'm not one who's,

dude, I'm not a coach where I'm just like stuck in my ways.

If you come to me and you're like, bro, I love keto diets and I want to die in low carb.

I'll be like okay, bro, we'll die in low carb.

You know what I mean?

Let's go.

You know,

that's what you're telling me.

Let's, let's go.

But like, I want to see progress.

And if I would be like, all right, we'll take your approach.

And we'll, I'll work with that.

And if it's, if it looks like we're not progressing, I'm going to have to bring in some carbs here and there.

And usually the client's like, okay, okay, yeah, cool.

I understand.

But I try to listen to my clients and I talk to my clients.

We make decisions together.

I don't dictate.

I don't tell people to show up and just follow the plan.

I explain why.

I mean, every time, like with Jordan, like anytime I make a change in the first line of my check-in, I'll always write what I'm seeing and what we're changing and what I expect to see.

So he kind of understands, like, oh, okay, I got it.

I got it.

I follow.

I follow what we're doing.

Like, I don't make a change or terms like, I don't understand these changes.

Like, I always explain to them.

Gotcha.

That's cool.

Fan of that.

My favorite thing about this podcast, man, is like being able to discuss things with people over and over again.

It's really cool to just see how,

especially with open-minded individuals like you, how like the information and education and just like your attacks at things kind of evolve over time.

Which is obviously so fucking necessary because we're always going to keep evolving.

Have you implemented Reddit True Tide with any clients?

I had clients come to me already on it.

That's how it started.

Okay.

That's this whole thing started.

I've been using this.

Can I use it?

Okay.

Okay.

I'll have to learn about it now.

Learn about it.

You know, okay, we can keep it in.

It's not a big deal.

I've used it personally myself.

I've tried to try it to figure out more of like understanding of it.

Right.

My father's a physician, so I also talk to my dad a lot about all these things.

And am aware that obviously you're aware too, the major lawsuits that are going on with GLPs and

GOP drugs and patients.

And there's a lot of patients with gastroparesis, permanent messed up issues, eyesight, things like that.

So

I tell all my clients, dude, when these new drugs come out and wants to jump on the bandwagon, you got to be fucking careful.

Like, you know, you don't just take it willy-nilly and start running 18 milligrams of retrutide.

You know what I mean?

Like, why don't we start with a bare minimum if you're going to use it and then see what the outcome is but the bottom line is we know what t3 does we know what clean does we know what anivar winstrel test tremblon we know what they do and we know the long-term effects pretty much as well because they've been out for years

so these new drugs for me it makes me nervous because i mean look how many women's physique have passed away in the last like year or two years and females like since when are females in our industry passing away now they're passing away like every month so it's like what are they doing?

I know a lot of these top coaches are putting them on DNP and all these other crazy concoctions of fat-burning drugs, which is probably ruining their life.

I would have thought people would be fucking not using DNP anymore.

But do people still use DNP all the time, bro?

All the fucking time.

It's ridiculous.

But that's my take on it.

I think it's going to, when it actually gets FDA approved, it's going to change.

fat loss forever.

It really is going to.

But this is the problem.

And as my father explained to me, he's like, Chris, I get people who come in all the time and ask me for GLP1s, but they don't want to change their lifestyle or exercise.

They just want to take the drug and want the drug to take the fat loss off.

And he goes, well, the problem with that is they come in two or two months later and they're like, Doc, I've only lost five pounds.

Well, why aren't I losing more?

And my dad's like, well, you, you got to, you got to, you should probably do the part two, right?

Eat a little better, exercise more.

Well, can I just take more of the drug?

And he goes, you can do that.

And you're approved to use the upper threshold of what's recommended by the drug, but you're going to have more side effects.

And you can potentially run into some serious side effects.

And which is crazy is people are okay with that.

So like, you know, when people take a little bit of retruitide, a little bit, maybe one milligram a week or even less, you can get a positive benefit, especially when you're combining it with a very strict exercise plan.

And of course, nutrition, you can go pretty far.

But I'm not.

by any means on board and it honestly disgusts me when people like i just want to use it to lower my appetite And I'm sorry, dude.

Then this is not your sport for you.

Yeah.

Like, if you can't deal with being hungry for 12 weeks, dude, cut me a break.

Cut me a break.

You know, I don't want people using it for that purpose or people like, I'm just going to use this because it's suppressing my appetite.

Or you can just toughen up.

That's fine, too.

No, I'm with that as well.

The one place that I found it very beneficial when I, well, to be honest, I was on your side because I'm someone who had to starve my entire life.

Like I started off as an officer or I started as a fat kid when I was younger, got bullied for all this shit.

The reason I started bodybuilding is because, like, damn, this is the one way that I can actually eat food and it contributes to my fucking progress.

So, I started fucking lifting and shit at 12 years old and did everything I could to lose weight.

Obviously, I didn't know anything when I was 12, so I was just starving myself.

It was just a really bad cycle, but basically, long, long story short, like the, when I got my pro card, I was eating like 1,100 calories to 1,200 calories in the last few weeks, just snacking them boxes of spinach.

So, it's like when Red and True Die came out, I was like, damn,

you eliminated like the hardest part of all of life and bodybuilding for people and all these new competitors.

And like, obviously, it made me feel a little salty, you know?

But I see the benefit of micro-dosing, especially when Eric Janeke kind of opened up to me and he was like, yeah, I'm actually on this.

I haven't told anyone yet.

The problem was he was having a lot of issues with his family and his wife because he was like, his wife would be like, why the fuck aren't you like taking care of the kids?

He's fucking crying.

And he'd just be standing there zoned out because he's been like,

just all these like issues that came with one, just his hunger levels and his blood sugar, and

it like affected his, I think, his presence and his mentality with his family or whatever, just affected relationships.

So he, when he got on it, it's like his family and his wife couldn't tell that he was prepping,

which I think there I could see the psychological benefit.

If it's, if you're taking it out a low dose and it's like benefiting your life and relationships and lowering your psychological stresses, I can see a big benefit there for sure.

But I've also seen the other side where people are taking too much of the dose, causing themselves GI distress.

And this may not, I'm sure there'll be some people that don't like my take on this, and it's fine.

It's just an opinion.

But I feel like whenever the dose is taken up too high, it is definitely easier for you to back up your GI tract and cause your waist to kind of

like, you know, how you and Jordan are trying to slim down your waist yeah it just makes it so much harder it really does like yeah you're eating less food but you're still eating the same plan you're still on the same amount of food that's in the plan if you're a bodybuilder but now it's just moving through your gi tract slower and if you're eating that much protein it's going to be a little backed up so here came if you push yourself hard sympathetic nervous systemize you might have some serious constipation issues i just wish people would understand and fully grasp the effect of what some of these things that we're doing are going to pro later in life.

And like, unfortunately, like people don't remember that.

They think about, I just want to win this local show.

They don't understand.

I mean, dude, because I'm a dietitian, for some reason, people think I can fix them.

And I can't even tell you how many people have come to me with kidney failure, people that you know

in this industry.

They're like, Chris, you're a dietitian.

The doctor's scaring me.

I don't know if he knows what I'm talking about.

He's talking about.

Can you look at my numbers?

I look at his numbers.

I'm like, bro, you're done.

Like, you're done.

What do you mean I'm done?

Like, you're not fixing your kidneys to bodybuilding again.

You're not fixing your kidneys to step on safe one physique again.

You're not.

You're done.

Like you're going to have to prolong your kidneys for as long as you can.

I've had people come to me who had mild heart attacks from other coaches.

I don't want to tell anybody I had mild heart attack.

It's embarrassing.

I just, I want to know what you think.

And I'm like, dude, you're done.

Well, you're going to have to start making the changes to your lifestyle to prolong your life.

Yeah.

People just take things, take these things like they're MMs.

They're not fucking M ⁇ Ms.

Like you got to know what you're doing and don't be blind to just the recommendations.

Like, understand what you're doing, understand the potential side effect later in life and get the most out of the least.

Like, that's it.

Don't use it as a crutch, as you said.

It's just like six, eight milligrams of retriotide.

Come on, bro.

Come on.

You know?

Yeah.

What's the biggest catastrophe that you've had with a client?

Biggest catastrophe.

Like, it was my doing I fucked up or one client fucked up.

It could be either.

I got, I got one.

I got one.

It wasn't on me.

So we get to peak week and I told him, he goes, we can take directions.

We take direct X.

I'm like, I don't know.

I don't know yet.

We'll decide Friday night.

We get there.

Are you sure?

I want to get dry.

This dude's already ripped.

Dry as a fucking bone already.

Okay, cool.

So I give him, you know, a slight decline in calories on Monday and Tuesday.

And then I don't hear from him.

Disappears.

Message him, bro.

What's going on?

I have a pack of pictures.

Thursday morning, nothing.

Bro, what's going on?

I'm blowing up his phone.

Call him, bro.

You're all right?

You're freaking me out.

Freaking me out.

Thursday night, oh, dude, really sorry.

I'm embarrassed.

I've been in the ER.

I'm like, what?

ER for what?

He's like, dude, I gave myself ragamyelysis.

I'm like, how, like, what?

I don't understand.

He's like, why, Willie, you wasn't listening to what you're saying.

I started taking 100 milligrams of old actone on Sunday per day.

Oh, my God.

And when you told me to drop my calories, I knew what you're trying to do.

You're trying to deplete my glycogen.

So I was training two hours a day with weight training.

And I started to pull my water back because I wanted to be really, really dry, man.

I wanted to be really dry.

And then he ended up like

getting to the ER with rhabdo.

And then he had a mild heart attack because the potassium was so high.

Holy shit.

Dumb.

Dumb.

That's insane.

Yeah, that's dumb.

A week out.

He would have won.

He would have easily won.

Easily won.

Man.

He would have been around three poses in this one.

They would have been like gold stage.

And then his wife made him retire.

He's like, you're fucking done.

I remember his wife was like, dude, you're an idiot.

You're done.

Well, good for her.

Good for her.

And then I would think the only thing, the only thing that comes to mind, which I messed up on, was my good friend Christian Coronado.

And it's nothing like,

it wasn't like negligence.

We had to make wait for nationals one year.

And

he's a good friend of mine.

He's awesome.

And he has his pro card now.

He died himself years, a couple of years later.

But I had to make him make weight.

And he made weight.

And then when I was filling it back up, I should have brought more sodium back in and I should have brought more fluid back in faster.

And I just didn't.

And his fluid balance just got all messed up.

And on the process of filling out,

like he didn't even really fill out.

He just got smooth, which confused me at the time.

Looking back, you know, it's been five years or whatever years ago, like I understood what happened.

But then

I was really upset.

I was like, fuck,

because like he's my friend, and like, obviously, like, I want the best for him.

And like, I made a call and it wasn't the right call.

Anytime you make a call as a coach, and it's not the right cult and you care, it sucks.

You know?

Yeah.

So, like, look at that one.

I'm like, now I now understand

what it was.

And obviously, that's why you're always trying to better yourself, improve, and look at what happened and make the right calls, you know?

Do you monitor or keep magnesium and potassium at any certain levels throughout peak wheat?

So because I start removing vegetables and potatoes from people's plans, and not everybody eats potatoes, but I usually have potato as an option for their last meal.

But I'll usually will start to make sure that they have at least anywhere from 250 to 350 milligrams of potassium from fruit with every meal starting Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Okay.

And that's dates, banana, or apple.

Apple's a little weak on potassium, so I'm going to add a date to that.

And then vegetables are out.

So that's kind of how I control for potassium.

I want potassium to be in every meal.

Gotcha.

I know there's some potassium in meat.

I get it, but that's not what I'm focusing on at that point in time since so many vegetables have come out.

Right.

Yeah.

Sodium I always keep consistent.

I always have them get an idea about 12 days out.

Wait, what are you doing for sodium?

I don't know.

We'll find out.

And they tell me what they're adding per meal.

And then I'm like, okay, so you're roughly at 1,000 milligrams per meal.

You're roughly at 750 or 50, whatever it is.

And I'll go, yeah, just hold it there, be consistent for me.

And then I might adjust that later.

But I usually will just crank up the sodium Saturday morning.

I might double the sodium or one and a half times the sodium on Saturday.

Or if they're not filling out fast enough and I'm feeding them and feeding them, they're not like popping, then I'll probably increase sodium per meal.

um along with carbs um on friday if i need to but i only do that probably 20 of the time.

If you get a, if you get a head scratcher where you're like, this is weird, you're not filling out, it's strange.

And then I'll do that and that usually works.

Okay.

But that's the only things, the two things I control for.

I don't potassium load anybody.

I don't water load people.

I don't generally carb deplete people.

I might bring calories down a little bit, which would be more like their fat burning diet, just to get them back down into their lowest weight.

But I don't do anything drastic than the week of, I don't do anything like that.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Not much.

Why, why destroy a good physique already?

Yeah.

I want my guys ready three weeks out.

And like, I get comments all the time now.

They're like, bro, how is a guy six weeks out?

How is he four weeks?

That's insane.

No, because I'm looking at him six weeks out like he's three weeks out.

You know what I'm saying?

Like if he's four weeks out, I'm looking at him.

He's one week out.

That's how I operate because I want to get to three weeks out and then I want to remove the cardio.

I want to start adding a little bit of food back in.

I want to start improving sleep.

I want them to start feeling better.

I want their training performance to improve.

And of course, I want to run a few mock-up carbs.

Okay.

Saturday and Sunday, we're going to bring the carbs up, you know, 250 grams in each day.

Let's remove the cardio and train those days, relax and chill.

Let's see how your body responds.

Let's check it out.

And then that way I get a good idea of how they're going to respond.

So I at least have a projection of what the carb up will be.

And then based on the carbup and the projection and their pictures and their weight, I'll make the fine-tuned adjustments to that.

Okay, gotcha.

Is the rest, or no, is this for all divisions where you start feeding them back up and removing cardio about three weeks out?

Yeah, yeah, I don't help women anymore, I'm not interested, okay.

But I help, and the main reason is because the amount of drugs they have to use to be competitive, I don't have nothing to do with that.

I'll have nothing to do with that.

Um,

I don't have anything to do with turning a woman into a man, that's for sure.

And that's when I just must have scary.

Um, I know there's some physically, genetically fit women who don't really do much, and I used to diet women, I've had figure pros and

fitness.

But I mean,

you look at Jenny Lynn and Monica Brandt back in the day, then you look at the girls today.

Totally different story.

I just don't have any interest in that.

I respect them.

I just don't have any interest in them as a coach.

So I help men's physique classic and bodybuilding, but it's all the same story.

Gotcha.

Okay, cool.

What about training as peak week approaches?

What does that normally look like?

I generally don't change it at all, except two things.

No legs seven days or earlier and remove failure training and stay in an RIR of like two.

They can keep everything else exactly the same.

I want them to keep it.

I want to keep the volume the same.

I want to keep everything exactly the same because I operate on consistency.

So everything's going to be as consistent as possible.

That allows me to do the best thing.

If I, you get to peak week and you start changing your water, your salt, you have them do depletion workouts.

You're changing so many things.

I don't do any of that.

Gotcha.

Yeah, that's my fucking problem during peak week is I can't help but go to failure.

I need to learn how to back off on peak week.

Because, you know, like Patrick will just say, like

pump, chest and back pump on Thursday, for example.

And I'll like vivid.

Yeah, it's a pump.

There's no failure there.

But like on the previous workouts, there was not like a word pump in there.

So I don't know.

I think just like subconsciously, I'm like, oh man, I have to go to failure at least a few times.

Or somehow, I think it kind of backtracked a little bit for me.

If fatigue's high, it probably did.

If fatigue wasn't that high, it was probably fine.

But, like, you know, it is, there's always a big difference going to failure in a pec deck versus a dumbbell, dumbbell row.

You know what I mean?

Like, it's different movements that drive different multiple fatigue.

So, like, I don't care if people are doing failure to bicep curls and triceps.

It's like, you're not going to create systemic fatigue doing that.

You know, you're going to create a lot of systemic fatigue doing bent over barbell rows until you're green in the face.

You know what I mean?

I see a lot of coaches doing no legs at least seven days or whatever.

do you know like what's the reason for seven days to allow your legs to recover fully one and remove fatigue two because have you ever noticed that like if you don't train legs for a while don't do cardio how deep the cuts in your legs get it gets insanely deep yeah um so i want that the the natural diuresis of the water of the legs from fully covered just to leave that makes sense okay i think the one thing for me I've seen anecdotally for myself.

I don't know why I said all those things.

It's that like whenever I don't train them for seven days or more, the cuts get deeper, but it's like it also just

tough, man.

It gets flatter.

Yeah, it does get flatter.

And that's the hard thing, I think, to

balance because like, if there's someone like me where like, you know, I have a low quad sweep and it's at the bottom.

So like naturally, it's already kind of a straight quad and it needs like it it only rounds out the more full it is.

It's like, that's where I find like a hard balance of like, just how, how, how much can we fill this out so that it's at least rounded, the shape is there?

Because I know that's important for classic.

Well, then that's okay then.

I mean, like, that's, that's, that's where, that's where things get individualistic.

Like, and I, dude, I do the same thing.

If I get a guy whose legs are small, like, I don't necessarily gonna pull legs.

I might tell them not to go crazy, maybe stay with like leg press and some like, you know, split squats and lunges.

I'm not gonna have to do squats,

but I might do that to keep them for that very reason.

But for sure, but if somebody's like, they don't have deep cuts in their legs, I'm definitely pulling legs out, maybe 10 days out

to expand that.

So it's definitely an individual basis.

And I totally understand what you're saying.

Gotcha.

Cool.

What's the most anxious moment you've ever had as a coach?

Oh, guy.

Like, I'm so invested with my clients, and my clients know that.

And they always say that to me.

I feel like I've never been with a coach that's so invested before.

Like,

I want my clients to be able to do that.

You can tell it too, by the way, bro, which is awesome.

I'm like emotionally invested in them.

Like, I like I'm on it.

Like, when I'm with Jordan, I'm with James, like, dude, like, all right, James, we got to be the noon.

You got to start getting your meal done now.

Like, we got to do this.

Like, I'm making sure everything is stress-free as possible for them.

And, but, like, I would say all the times Jordan competed, a lot of my guys competing, I want them to do so well.

It's always devastating when they don't.

But, um,

I would say, probably, I would say the most anxiety-driven for me, even though I'm pretty level-headed, as in like, I'm able to control my anxiety.

I've been competing in individual sports my whole life.

So like, I understand how to control that anxiety, but it's probably like Jordan's like, I mean, we're rolling into Tampa and like, it's just like, now he has all this hype.

I'm like, great.

Like, all we need is like,

all we need is expectations and hype.

It's way easier when you're just like the underdog coming up.

Nobody knows who you are.

Yeah.

Stink and he's going to win.

I got, I got people messaging me.

Hey, is Jordan doing Tampa?

Like other coaches, because they want to know if their guy's going to do well or not.

And I'm like,

yeah, I don't know.

And like, bro, I think he's going to win.

I think he's going to win.

I'm like, great.

And then people are telling Jordan he's going to win.

And then Cutler's like, I foresee him winning.

And then I foresee him being top five Olympia in the next three years.

And I'm like, great, all this pressure, you know, I'm over here just trying to stay focused.

And Jordan's showing me all these exciting things that are happening.

And I'm just trying to pay attention just to what I need to pay attention to to make the right decisions.

Because as you know, you get excited and you get overly anxious.

You can make a very irrational decision, Right.

So like, I'm very careful in my decision making.

So when I see Jordan and I'm looking at him, I will visually look at him, but I also record at the same time.

And then I set it up and I compare the video side by side and push play.

So I look at it again after I saw it and make my final decisions.

I don't want to make an error through emotion, but that's it.

And

I would say that's kind of like probably the most anxiety driven because dude, Jordan and I are tight, super tight.

And we've become so tight over the years and i just i want what's best for him like i don't want to be responsible for like making a bad decision and like that's where the anxiety comes from you know what i mean yeah

that makes sense yeah

i appreciate you for sharing that by the way yeah i think it's um

i think it's undervalued and under talked about about how each of these especially like a coach and a client if you really care about them how much they're all their own relationships and just coaches really have they really take on a lot and i don't think they uh get the flowers that they they deserve so yeah dude it's like I love all my clients I have a lot of guys and I have a very high high client retention extremely high and like a lot of guys I've had for five six plus years like all the guys I have my pictures all around me have been like eight Christian's been here for eight years six years and um you just want them to progress and I'm like I just I want to be there for them and even my new guys like they show me the effort like bro you're like I got a new client and he's dude this dude's dude's gonna be nasty and i'm like bro we're doing nationals this year he's like we are oh we're definitely doing that and i go and and you're staying with me like you're coming down with me i'm looking at you to make sure everything's fine i'll pick you up at the airport let's let's let's let's go do this you know um but that that's the that's the part because you're invested and you want to make sure it is it's frustrating though sometimes when somebody doesn't do what you said because you can't yell at them You're kind of like, oh, bro, I didn't read that right.

And your head, you're like,

why, why, why didn't you read it right?

You know what I mean?

Bro, I'm doing my part.

You got to do your part.

All you got to do is just read it twice.

Yeah.

Assume.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Fuck.

I get it.

I totally get it.

Let's do this Q ⁇ A real quick.

Logan Gear, Lower, Logan Greer.

Sorry, bro.

I'm so, sorry.

What's the best way to plan a reverse diet after a show?

Because it's very innovative.

It's hard to give you like, you know, exactly what to do, but I can give you some tips.

One is don't start too conservative on calories.

Don't be like, I'm just going to add 30 grams of carbs to my fat loss plan and then titrate up.

You got to start hard and then back off from there because you're trying to prevent yourself from binge eating, losing control.

Two, have a good variety of food in your diets.

You're excited to eat what you have.

Don't just be the same bodybuilding chicken, rice, chicken, rice.

Have an exchange list.

Bring in some sourdough bread.

Bring in maybe real butter.

You know, have a nice steak at the end of the night, make hamburgers with, you know, carbs that you can control from your buns.

Like just make a meal that has variety because you've been eating the same shit for 12 weeks.

So have a variety, have it fit your macros, don't be too aggressive.

Training-wise, don't go too crazy, light cardio, keep step count, protect your sleep.

A plan for a meal-off plan only at the end of the day, at the end of the week, after you have a meal-off plan on Friday, Saturday night, and then Sunday with family.

Don't binge eat.

Eat to your full.

Be excited.

Have a nice portion, but don't binge eat till you're in the fetal position to feel like you're going to die.

Not a good move.

Try to avoid sugar completely Saturday night and save it for Sunday night to allow your body just to get a little more acclimated to more food or else you just blow up like a tick and your legs will be huge.

You'll feel a complete garbage.

That's pretty much, oh, get right back on the water intake, high water intake right away.

Most of my guys, the second they get off stage for night show, I have them pound two liters like right away.

Like get the water in before the food.

That way, you're not like the other way around where you're like, I'm so full, I'm so thirsty, but I can't drink.

You know what I mean?

Right.

So start that hydration process right away and get that in.

But that, that's, that's the, that's the reverse phase.

And then make your call on adjustments at the end of the week because you're going to rebound.

You don't know how much.

And then adjust.

You can always assume that you're going to gain anywhere from five to 12 pounds, depending on the body mass the first seven days, which is acceptable.

On anything more than that, it's not acceptable.

And then after that, it should be like maybe two or three pounds after each couple of weeks thereafter.

And then it should stabilize

ideally.

And if you get out for the first seven days and you're up five pounds and you feel fine, great.

That's awesome.

Okay.

You know, cool.

But it shouldn't be 20 pounds.

Yeah.

I think that's nice, though, that you at least said like two to three pounds every couple of weeks or so.

After

it should be for sure.

Yeah.

Cool.

You can't fall back into the restricted diet.

You're just going to create this yo-yo diet effect and just completely annihilate your relationship with food where like you start getting anxious around food and then you're strict and then we eat off plan, you go crazy and then you feel guilty and then you're doing more cardio, then you feel like shit, and then you're doing it again, and then your dopamine's up and then you're crashing.

You don't want to get involved in that.

And say that you're dropping all compounds right after the show.

This is probably still the same case or maybe just

less in weight.

Yeah, two ways.

Either.

I tell my guys, like, if, you know, the best time to come off completely is right away because you're going to kind of like skip that mental rebound because you're going to have food to look forward to and more pumps right away.

So, if you want to come off test completely and run like Milvedex and the Remidex, like the first post-four weeks, and then start TRT for the last four weeks and then start your cycle, or just do TRT, a real TRT, not support TRT, post-show and wean off T3 if you're taking it, wean off Remidex if you're taking it, but you can drop everything else.

Gotcha.

Okay, cool.

As term in terms of like their weight being gained, though, you normally find that to be about the same when they jump off everything?

Or, I mean, like, I assume some guys will lose a little bit of weight from the compounds being dropped out.

You know, it's a good question.

It's hard to say because think about it.

When you're seven days out, you probably are already cut your injectables anyway, and you're just running orals.

That's true.

So, like, you're probably not going to have too much of that.

Okay, yeah.

I think that some of the water rebound that you might see sometimes when people are going, I know some people do, but they take absurd amount of AIs and then they remove the AIs, right?

Then you're going to bore it really bad.

That's why I always recommend

weaning off of them slowly instead of just going from like, I mean, I don't have my guys do this, but like three milligrams a day of Remedex to like, you know, none.

Yeah.

You know, probably not a good move.

But no, I don't, I don't really foresee that happening.

I tell people, though, like, a lot of people want to run growth post-show.

They're like, I should jack the growth way up.

I'm like, no,

you have all this circulating blood glucose from you eating so much food.

Now you want to take a high amount of growth hormone and you're probably going to cause a little bit into resistance.

Not the time to do that.

Not the time to do that.

Gotcha.

The GMO bro asks, what's the furthest out that you've added VAR during a contest prep?

10 weeks out.

10 weeks.

10 weeks.

It's usually, honestly, I'm very conservative.

I usually draw like 25 milligrams at 10 weeks and I would just like assess their performance.

And I only added it to help maintain training performance during a time.

I had to bring somebody down faster.

So, it's like if I, if I have enough time and we're doing prep how I normally need to do prep, I don't do that.

But if it's like, I got to push like two pounds of body fat off, three pounds of body fat every seven days, like they're going to have to have a little bit of higher androgen load to help hold training performance, which ultimately is going to hold lean tissue.

Gotcha.

It actually brings me to something I forgot that I wanted to ask you earlier, but you said low-fat diet.

Do you mean that you implement a low-fat diet or just as in like when you're doing a bodybuilding uh like when you're prepping for a show like the fat is just not necessarily like high it's i don't know it's kind of weird i know like low high it's a respective those are respective terms i can't define that right what is a low fat diet well in the dietitian world low fat diets like 40 grams of fat or less okay yeah that's pretty low that is pretty low well yeah i mean for you know a female who's 4'8

40 you know that might not be that low right but like most of us it is so it's relative to the person.

But I don't like, I'm not a low-fat guy with any of my guys.

Like, I don't like sit there and be like, chicken, rice, egg whites, you know, no cream of rice, fruit.

Like, I don't do that.

I have added fats with everybody to some degree, whether it's five mls of olive oil to 15 mls of olive oil.

When I say that, I just mean five to 15 grams of fat of fat, not really counting the meat.

And I might have a fatty red meat once a meal, once a day, it might not, depends on the preference.

I might have whole eggs.

It might not, as the preference.

But I don't do high fat and I don't do low fat.

I'm more like a moderate, low fat, a moderate guy.

Gotcha.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Apple fats, dude.

Real important.

Right.

I've seen that a little bit more often too.

Patrick's also moderate, you know, like a place where it's like the fats are just

whatever, whatever, whatever fats are required just for like your foundational purposes and to keep all everything running smoothly.

Yep.

Totally agree.

Caffeine, Caffeine D asks, what are some strategies you use to keep gut health in check in a high calorie offseason?

Yeah.

So that's a great freaking question.

So one,

kombucha.

Kombucha, fire.

Ouerkraut or both.

I don't have any of my clients take probiotic supplements.

I think they're a complete waste of money.

When you look at what you can achieve with probiotic rich foods with a large group of people and what you can achieve with probiotic supplements with a large group of people, it's far more effective to have food that's probiotic rich than it is supplements.

And the reason is, one,

one is, and this is actually research courses,

that something, something like 30% of probiotics actually are beneficial, the rest are not.

And then like something like 10% of people take probiotics actually get worse.

Because what ends up happening is a lot of the probiotic supplements micro, macro dose, mega dose, sorry, one or two different strains, right?

Then when you macro dose, when you mega dose one or two strains, you create more of an imbalance within the gut.

Now, if you just randomly shot in the dark and you ended up getting the strain that you need to feel better, then you feel better.

But you're spending money on a product that you don't know is fully authentic and it's mega dosing one or one of the you need or you don't need.

So you need a variety.

So like I don't have any of my guys do it and I usually will pull them off of it and I usually have them implement sauerkraut to some degree, 15 grams three times per day but if they're like really problematic with their gut and they have a history of poor gut I usually have them do a full kombucha at the end of the night and that legitimately works 90% of the time like and pretty damn quickly

okay I will always do that usually health aid is a good brand it's pretty hardcore though with flavor not gonna lie um synergy is a decent brand they have a lot of variety and they're across the country but buddha's buddha's brews in texas that's my it's my favorite by far And that works great.

And now, as far as variety in the diet, you gotta have food in the diet,

fruits and vegetables.

I tell them, like, you gotta pick three fruits, three vegetables that you kind of cycle through.

I don't need you to have three different, six different gourmet meals every day and do a vast variety of variety.

You don't need to do that, but don't be sticking to the same damn vegetable, same damn fruit every day for the whole offseason.

Don't do that.

Rice is rice, cream of rice is rice.

Obviously, it's just energy.

That's all the whole point of rice and cream of rice is just energy and calories.

That's all the point is.

But I always have them have some type of potato, oat, or oat,

and then of course, three portions of fruit a day, and then three portions of vegetables a day.

And they can be in limited portions, like 50 grams of vegetables cooked three times per day.

That's fine.

But I do do a good amount of fruits and I do encourage.

to some degree a variety of protein even though there's not a lot of research supporting that like if you change up your protein you're going to help your gut the only thing you're going to do is exposing your gut to a variety of food so it gets used to assimilating and breaking down those foods.

If you kind of pigeon yourself, you pigeonhole yourself into like three foods, you're going to get those three foods, and then your gut microflora is going to start become less diverse because that's you have only probiotic foods.

And then your body's going to use digesting those and all of a sudden eat off plane, you eat something foreign, your gut's like, oh my God, my gut hurts so bad, I can't tolerate that.

And that's what ends up happening.

So, my guys, like, luckily, like right now, I don't really have many guys that have have gut problems.

They're usually just digesting like cement.

They can digest anything because of the format of my diets, you know?

Nice.

Obviously, you're going to have people that have, I call it gut sensitivities where like, it's not a true allergy.

It's just like, I have trouble digesting almond butter, right?

Okay, we'll do peanut butter.

Oh, I can't do nut butters.

That's fine.

We'll do olive oil.

Or I limit avocados.

There's certain things that I limit.

They have their, in the offseason, they're limits, limits on potatoes, limits on oats, limits on avocado and certain foods.

Because as you know, like you reach a certain threshold of certain foods and it becomes a problem, right?

Like 100, 100 grams of avocado per day, not a problem.

300 grams of avocado a day, now we're in the FODNAP place, and now you're going to probably have some gut issues or overripe bananas.

So that's pretty much my answer for all that, but you got to have a variety of food diet.

You got to put effort into your food.

You have to.

Okay.

I'm trying to remember.

There's something I was going to ask you in the middle.

I'm fucking.

Oh, and sleep.

Sleep and not a lot of stimulants.

Because a lot of stimulants and poor sleep will also destroy your gut.

Okay.

Managing strap, obviously.

Right.

Fuck, what was I going to ask?

What was it about?

Category.

Somewhere in the middle there, you mentioned something that I don't remember if it was fruits or

oh, oats.

What are your thoughts on like the controversial takes on oats and how it like destroys your gut, rips up your gut and all the shit or whatever?

I don't see it.

I do see this though, which is weird.

I couldn't explain to you.

Why does Bob's red mill oats digest better than Quaker oats?

I have no idea.

No idea.

I've seen it anecdotally at least 50 times with clients.

Damn.

Okay.

I have no idea.

I've no oats.

I've seen some weird shit with ground turkey.

Purdue ground turkey.

People have a lot of problems.

They go to,

what is it, Shady Brook Farms, Turkey, ground turkey, and they can tolerate that.

So I don't know.

Don't know.

Interesting.

The only thing I can say is something to do with the processing.

Yeah.

Maybe there's some contamination in there.

I don't know.

But I don't get involved with, like, I know you're talking about the oats and like it being bad for your gut or whatever.

I don't.

I don't know.

I don't know the answer.

Right.

It's always interesting, Cliff.

We love American processed food.

I like to listen to it.

I hear it.

I take it in.

If I see it, okay, yeah, that makes sense.

But like, I definitely don't blindly blindly add things in if i don't see it myself gotcha

um this question asked by coach gaggy is kind of uh kind of related what do you think about more carbs what do you think about more carbs more calories but low volume foods such as honey jam dried fruits etc to push more food more carbs but low volume to and for better digestion in the offseason oh i do it all the time i do it all the time you get to a point with somebody where they're going to eat 600 grams of rice cooked right so it's like that point i'm pulling some of that rice out adding dates i mean dude 40 grams of dates is two dates that's 30 carbs yeah it's crazy it's so easy to sucks because i love them i'll smash that button it's like

yeah you know like so like they do that and they do a side of sourdough bread and they have a glass of orange juice on the side or a grape juice That's an easy way to create more calorically dense foods that are easy to consume to keep the volume down.

I do that all the time.

I really do, especially my bigger guys who are just trying to gain weight and they're 300 pounds.

You have to do that to some degree if they have a poor appetite and you don't have to blow up their stomach either.

So I'm all for that, but I want to preface that by saying, like, just because you don't want to eat food doesn't mean we're going to eat a bunch of jam, honey, dates.

See what I'm saying?

Some people take that and they'll run with it the other way where they're like, oh, for breakfast, I'm just going to have a piece of toast with a ton of jam and honey on it in three dates and not eat oatmeal and other things ever again.

Because there's going to come to a point where you're going to consume too many simple sugars where you're just not going to feel very good.

Right.

Yeah, I agree.

I was actually going to ask when, or if there's a time of the day that you implement those, I don't know.

I can't talk now at the end of the podcast.

I think I drink too much coffee.

That's like kind of like

if there's like a time of day where you implement those specifically, like the simple sugars, or if it's just kind of distributed.

For me, because I'm a very big stickler on glycemic control, I like to have them spread out evenly.

Gotcha.

I don't want one meal to be like, I'm not a big advocate of somebody consuming 200 grams of carbohydrates of straight powder post-workout.

I think it's, I think it's, I don't think it's a good idea because you're just going to spike insulin and you're going to crashing sleepy after.

I want my guns to have good, even energy through the entire day.

We're only training once a day, and we're not Olympic athletes here.

So it's not like we need to store glycogen as fast as possible to perform two hours later, right?

That's not what we're doing here.

So, like, yeah, I will have easy-digest carbs post-workout and I will add fat post-workout too.

But like, I try to have a better, more stable glycemic control through the day.

Okay, cool.

Awesome.

Um, he also asks HRT therapy after competitions, such as HMG, HCG, low dose test, Clomid.

So he's asking, like, if you should be doing all that?

What's the question exactly?

HRT therapy after competitions.

Like, I guess, do you implement any HRT therapy after

competitions?

Like, if you're coming off things?

So HRT homoplasmin therapy.

So like, this is my viewpoint of Clomid, HEG, and testosterone.

Like,

I'm still in the believer.

I know there's people who believe against this, and that's fine.

Is if you're taking testosterone, now I'm adding HEG and Clomid, like I'm bringing Sam to the beach, right?

I'm like, I don't, either you're going to come off a test and run your Clomid and HEG.

and really get some more testicular function back or you're not and you're just going to be home replacement therapy and then avoid HEG and Clomed, or you can run a little bit of HEG if you want to get some sort of signal to your testes.

So if you decide to have children later, it's still going to work or, you know, recover faster.

But like, I generally don't do that.

I generally don't recommend guys.

I don't want my guys taking tons of shit, tons of drugs.

So it's like, if we can avoid having to take three more compounds after the show, I'm all for it.

You know what I mean?

Like, I'd rather be, it's like, it's their choice.

I have guys who who are like, hey, man, I want to have kids.

I want to come off every single time.

Okay, then that's a different story, right?

Yeah.

Right.

The only other thing I would say for

some kids.

Go ahead, man.

I was going to say that unless some guys are already prescribed testosterone, these are right back to the normal prescription.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

The only thing I was going to say is if you're pretty concerned about having kids or like you're actually concerned, I mean, if you're like in the off-season or whatever, or even like, even just any time, honestly, with cruising, just doing a little bit, a micro dose of ACG alongside whatever you're injecting honestly has been pretty helpful to a lot of people.

Yeah, he asks, when do you stop the bulk phase with clients?

And how long is a bulk break or a short diet phase?

I feel like I heard you say nine months is around where you're even for before, but okay, so

typically an off-season push might be anywhere from 14 to 18 weeks.

And that's dependent.

The length of time is dependent on the person's response.

If they're growing, we're going all those 18 weeks.

If they've been stuck from 11 weeks to 14 weeks and I can't get them to budge, we're stopping.

Like the body's done.

We're going to go back to maintenance.

I never, ever take somebody from a full bulk to a cut.

I don't ever do that.

You're just going to piss away a lot of the muscle you just gain.

You want that weight to stick.

So I usually just back down the androgens and back down the food a bit.

Sometimes we're not right away.

I'll usually keep the food the same until they look softer and then I might remove the food, but I have to protect the training.

I'm trying to protect the training during that

maintenance phase, or you call it transitional phase, however you want to call it.

But I never go from a full bulk to a deficit ever.

Gotcha.

And even with guys in prep, I call it pre-prep.

We never go like off-season and go right into prep.

It's more like off-season maintenance calories for like six weeks into prep.

Okay.

Trained by J-Mo asks, anything that you could change about bodybuilding today?

What would it be?

More stage time and comparisons.

I would like to see more stage time instead of putting so much emphasis on like the top two guys, three guys.

Yeah, I would like to see more comparisons, especially at the higher level.

It's like, okay, dude, let's put fifth place next.

Let's put this projected fifth place guy next to first place.

Let's do round of poses.

Let's see how they pair up.

Because you know how many times we've been to a show before we're like, this guy looks pretty fucking good.

Why isn't he over here?

Right.

And it's just like, I would have loved to see them next to each other.

Right.

I would love to see more of that.

i agree with that i totally agree with that have you ever been to muscle contest shows yes um have you what have you felt of their

because um at least for the pro level uh in california and southern california like the show i did with them last year in san diego they put us guys when i competed in men's physique it was like 20 guys They had us all on stage being exchanged on stage for a total of an hour.

Like we were having to be brought out of stage just to be dabbed because we were all sweating profusely.

It was crazy, man.

And that's a lot.

Yeah, that was a lot.

It was pretty sick, but it was fucking tough.

And then for this last classic show, this last Saturday, it was, again, about an hour, but it felt like we had more breaks for some reason.

Maybe it was because individual routines was included in that hour.

Like the, you know, the 45-second small pre-judging routines.

But yeah, they seemed to, they seem to work the guys, which is something I enjoy.

I do feel like I think everyone should do a little bit more comparisons exchanging, you know, like, I think that would be a little bit cooler.

But

yeah, it's something that I do appreciate from them at least is that they work you.

Yeah.

I like something, something else they did too that was really cool.

Like, I really appreciated them doing this for me, honestly.

But

at finals,

I wasn't in the top five, but they called me out.

And then number 14, which is Sam Puckman, maybe, who has won, like, he's been in like the top three in all his last few shows.

Um,

they called us to to join the top five

at the very end of finals just to pose down with him, which was fucking awesome.

And, you know, I was curious.

I was like, whoa, I did not expect this.

And even in him, so I asked them, and they were like, yeah, you actually just brought a completely different package at finals and you had confidence that you didn't have in pre-judging.

Also, your opposing routine showed that confidence.

Also, you were glazed.

You weren't glazed at pre-judging.

And then they said it was fuller, but the truth was, I was unprepared at finals and I didn't get a chance to pump up, and I was pretty upset about it.

So, finals came around, and I went down there 30 minutes early to like start real slow and then made sure I was pumped up by the time I got up there.

So, I guess it all made a difference enough for them to actually bring me in and compare me with the top five again, which was honestly dude.

What's that meant so much to me?

Yeah,

I love that.

I like that, yeah.

So, um,

I would love to see a lot more of that.

I agree.

Explain.

Coach Thomas asks,

where did you get your knowledge about PEDs?

So we're so many different places.

Walses and places.

I mean, we can start going back to just reading online.

Didn't you like buy Chris Isito's books too?

Like way, way, way back?

Yeah, I bought all Chris Asito's books.

I brought all William Wellen's books.

I had read all those anabolic guides.

I read all of those.

Obviously, I got a lot of knowledge from Fokery.

He was my first coach.

I got a lot of knowledge from Asito.

But like, I'm a very good learner with just experiencing things.

I don't need to ask questions.

So, I never, I remember Sito saying to me, he's like, bro, you're like, so easy to work with.

I could work with 10 of you.

And I'm like, oh, I'm just observing.

And, but what he's doing, I'm learning and I understand why he's doing it.

Like, I'm very observant.

So, like, learn from him.

And, but, like, I would say just knowledge basis over the years, it's come from so many sources, man.

It really has

a lot of personal experience, which you can always hold too much.

You can't hold too much merit to it because anecdotal evidence, and obviously, in science doesn't mean anything.

But a lot of the books, William Owens' books, a lot of dysterer.com.

That was what I think my first time I ever looked at

what drug profiles were and what they did.

And obviously, as you know, in hindsight, when you look at real life application and you look at the profile, you're like, that's not the same.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

This will put sheer mass on you and do this and that.

I'm like,

you're a good, you know?

But I think that's, that's where it was and just helping people over the years and learning and seeing.

That's kind of how it's been shaped.

I wouldn't say that's any been any

groundbreaking source where one of them was like, this guy taught me the most.

It was just more like understood.

Evan, Evan is another good resource because I would always ask Evan questions because he was a lot.

He was really good friends of mine.

He's a really good friend of mine.

And I would always ask him questions about, hey, man, does this sound right?

And he'd look at me like, that doesn't sound right, dude.

Don't do that.

And then you tell me, like, this is what you probably should be doing.

I learned a lot from him as well.

Gotcha.

That's dope.

Connor Lug asks, the best way to structure high-day carbs and carb source choices.

You already went over

carb source choices.

Jeez, dude, what's going on?

But

I saw another question that was basically similar, like asking about how you structure carb cycling.

Yeah, so June, this is such a tough question because there's carb cycling for so many things.

So usually in preparation for a show,

I will first implement high days as needed.

Might start taking the baseline calories down, getting an effect.

Great.

We had a good effect over five days.

I'm going to bring calories up for two days and then see the effect.

And then based on that response, we'll determine the amount and when possibly we feed next.

And then I kind of end up doing it that way.

Very individualized based on the response.

It's not set in stone.

However,

there's multiple situations where I might have somebody feed on back day and leg day, where it's like Monday and Thursday, where those are their higher calorie days, and the rest are lower days.

I might have a situation where Monday through Friday is lower and Saturday and Sunday are higher.

I do like two days back to back.

I find two days back to back of higher calories in prep works really well because I don't like taking somebody and being like, here's a super high day, a thousand calories, two thousand calories above where you're supposed to.

I'd rather be like, oh, let's be 700 calories more on these two days together.

You know what I'm saying?

That way it really allows fatigue to come down and you really get a positive response mentally.

And physiologically, your body starts to lycheg and fatigue comes down.

I like that the most.

Jordan, most of the time, was feeding two days in a row for his refeeds.

Sometimes if he goes, my fatigue's fine, everything's great.

I'm training like a maniac and his weight's going down a little too fast.

I'll just give him one.

But if he's like, bro my fatigue's been really bad the last two days and training suffering i'll be like we're feeding three days in a row and to bring all that back to life um

that's generally how i do it but i always tell people this too it will come to a point where i like to have the high days be on a non-training day because training we know interferes with muscle glycogen and if a high day's purpose is to store glycogen and bring down fatigue.

I want them to do that on an off day, not on a day where like, let's do an extra hour of cardio and we'll do this.

And now you're just negating everything you're trying to do with the refeed.

But that's how I implement it.

It's very individualistic.

I mean, I cycle carbs in the offseason too for my guys.

They have low days and high days to help with appetite insensitivity.

And it varies.

Some guys go four low, one high.

Some people have the high days and specific days.

It's really what fits that person.

And as far as carbs go, I usually will lower protein a little bit on those days, a little bit.

Sometimes I don't.

Sometimes I do.

Usually I might, if it, if the day is really high, I might bring vegetables out completely that day.

That way it helps digestion.

Just like you're eating like a thousand carbs and you're eating much vegetables.

So I'll just remove the vegetables out that day.

Yeah.

I feel like you're like the, to be honest, the only person I've heard that does, that'll do two high carb days in a row.

That's not for the sake of like a mock.

I think judging are useful.

It's it's like it's so useful it seems awesome i don't like that super high day because i've ran into the problem before you get a super high day and half the people will say oh chris man i'm so sleepy today like all these carbs like like i'm something to eat but like i'm kind of groggy and i'm kind of like not focused yep and i just didn't feel good or they'll be like oh my stomach hurts like i went from eating fucking half cup of rice to like two and a half cups of rice and my stomach hurts yeah i don't like this sudden extreme shift So, like, I like to have two moderate days instead of one super high day.

I just feel like that works better for the most number of people.

I don't run that problem of like digestion or feeling foggy.

Gotcha.

It's so fun to talk to you, man.

Cause, like, I got to be real.

Like, I love both sides of the equation.

Like, I, it's just exciting to talk about hardcore bodybuilding.

And, and, you know, like, you talk to someone like, you know, Patrick, and he's like,

he's like, yeah, these, like, you have to, you have to, you have to manage things to make sure that your body's in the most optimal state.

But bodybuilding is hard.

Like, you have to suffer.

Like, these high-carb days are going to be full.

Like, you're going to eat a, you're going to have to eat a lot or like, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

He'll like be straight up.

Like, you know, you'll see on his story, I'll always talk about like guys that just, like, they want to like get shortcuts when they need to understand that bodybuilding is difficult and it requires discipline.

It requires whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But

sometimes he's so hardcore with like, man, I'm like eating 70 grams of of carbs in a rest day and suddenly I'm at like

500 grams of carbs plus and I feel that like GI distress, you know, um, on that high carb day.

Or

I don't know, I'm trying to think of other examples because that's not really the best example.

But basically,

it's, it's cool to hear from you, like you have, you have a, a, a, a lot of consciousness and mindfulness over

how someone's reacting both physically and mentally to like

each of these changes.

And I think that's kind of undervalued a lot in

not just bodybuilding, but prep especially.

There's two things I always say to people.

If I tell you to do something and it is the right move, but you mentally feel that it's not and it's stressing you out, then it becomes the wrong move.

Right.

So that's one thing about aspects of mental, the communication between the client and the coach.

Like I tell my guys all the time, hey, if I tell you to do something and it's uncomfortable, you got to tell me.

Because then it becomes the wrong thing because you're not confident what you're doing.

If you're not confident what you're doing, you start stressing.

You start stressing, you're going to change how your body is going to start to operate and retain water or sleep or whatever.

Um, now, in regards to like what you're saying about like things being hard, I agree, like bodybuilding is hard, but there's a difference between hard and having a negative physiological response.

I don't want people having fucked up digestion.

I've been, I don't want somebody getting to this point in prep, and this sucks.

What's going to prep, and they're like, one day, they get bad sleep, they fight with their wife, they binge, and all of a sudden, the next seven days, their digestion is falling apart.

They're like, Oh, bro, my stomach hurts.

I'm constipated now.

Now I'm having like loose stools.

I'm like,

like, this is not what we want.

So, like, I don't want that.

If somebody wants a high day and they're digesting fine, they feel good and calories climb high, awesome.

I'm going to keep it.

But if I get a negative physiological response, I'm super groggy.

I don't feel good.

Stresses me out.

My digestion's off.

Now I'm constipated for $40.

I will have nothing to do with that.

I want digestion to be flawless.

I want sleep to be flawless.

I want them to be in a good, happy mood.

And all the people who are like that go through prep with torn mitzocardio, no T3 or low T3, and they get shredded and they look big and they're on low gear and they're eating high food.

Like, I know that direct correlation with that.

Everybody who's getting good sleep is burning fat so much faster.

So much faster.

Yeah.

Martin Kuipers

asks, do you plan on hopping on stage one last time?

Me once?

No, I tore my hamstring, dude, last year.

This year,

I used to be a freshman motocross racer, okay?

And I had the greatest idea once I turned 40 to be like, you know what?

I'm old.

I haven't ridden a river bike since 2004, 2003.

I want to get back on a bike.

Now I got money.

I'm going to go buy the sickest bike.

Got back into riding.

Talk about like, man, I've been a long time.

Started to get the hang of it.

I took a real bad fall tumbled fell the bike collapsed me hit my leg brought my knee all the way to my head

yeah and ruptured my hamstring

as i'm tumbling through the air a hit in my head but

i feel my hamstring like tore my hamstring and the

stop rolling

i tore my hamstring i tore my hamstring and the guy comes over picks the bike up off of me and i'm like i tore my hamstring i tore my hamstring he's like how do you know i'm like oh i know oh i know i 100 no

that was the worst injury i've ever sustained in my life bro i've broken nine bones in my life.

I had concussions, stitches, everything.

I've never had an injury like that, dude.

That was just treacherous.

So now my hamstring just flaps because it ruptured in half.

Oh, man.

The muscle belly itself.

And you can't put together a spaghetti.

You know what I mean?

So two of the heads are together and the bicep for Morris is ripped.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

I mean, so that's what you get when you're 42 years old.

You're not rip like a kid.

I guess, isn't that at least better than rupturing at the tendon?

No, because then they can attach the tendon.

Oh,

yeah.

When it's a tendon, bro, it's easy.

Then they just reattach it, and then your muscle belly is intact, and it's going to gain function again.

It would be a shitty recovery, but I mean, let me be honest, bro.

Like, I've lost my ability to run.

I can't run at all.

Like, when I run, I have to keep my feet really underneath me.

I can't extend my leg out to accelerate at all.

Damn.

Holy shit.

Yeah.

Fuck, I'm sorry about that, bro.

Also, I'm 42.

I'm not going to step on stage.

I don't want to go through the whole drug route again.

I don't want to do that.

Yeah.

You know, I tell people in my, you know, and one thing I love about my dad, and my dad's a very, very respectable, very intelligent man, and he's realistic, a doctor.

You know, he's like, I don't know what you guys do to yourself.

I don't know what the ramification is going to be either, but I can tell you this, every drug has a side effect.

And you do something long enough, the probability of something going wrong is going to go up.

So obviously you have a dose, you have duration, you have genetics.

And these three things together are greatly going to to determine the outcome later in life.

You might be feeling fine now, Chris.

That's why people smoke cigarettes for five years.

They feel fine.

All of a sudden, they have cancer year six.

Or some people don't have cancer.

You never know, but it's the gamble that you're going to play.

So, like, I say to myself, I've done what I've done and I'm ready to move on, moving on from it.

I don't want to keep playing that game of, I'd love to.

I love lifting.

I love the lifestyle, but I'll live all the lifestyle but the drugs.

Makes sense.

Gotcha.

You still look fucking filthy in a t-shirt.

So I feel like that's all that matters.

I'm only like 207 pounds.

It's weird.

I haven't had one

years.

Only.

Martin Kuipers asks, do you still sell the posing course?

And how's the Electrolyte Company doing?

Yeah, I still have the posing course.

Basically, it is

the most, probably most intricate, detailed posing course you'll ever purchase.

Because it goes and breaks down every single pose from the feet up of bodybuilding and classic.

Is this for somebody who's super experienced, who needs fine critiquing at a pro level?

No.

This is for somebody who's getting into bodybuilding in classic and they want to learn posing without spending a thousand dollars on a posing coach.

You can look at it.

I describe everything, how to put your feet with certain torso lengths, what you need to do.

If you have a long torso or short torso, your hand positioning, I break down everything.

It's pretty long.

It's very extensive.

But yes, it is still available on my website.

And Electrolyte Company is doing good.

More hydration.

Nice.

More hydration.

it's doing good and um you know is dude let me tell you something guys you're starting a product it's not easy there's all these loopholes and all these problems of like yeah having to get labels labels didn't come in and the label company's like well i got the labels but the caps don't fit and you're like the caps don't fit what do you mean and they always have the wrong caps and it's it's always a headache but and now imagine everything with the tariffs too on top of that

so many people with companies that are just having the worst nightmares things are coming in like five weeks late when the tariffs are high dude sometimes sometimes they come in like two days.

The other thing is nobody wants to do their job.

Like you're like, all right, I'll call you back.

Let me know.

Wait.

Next day, hey, oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

So what's going to happen?

Fuck, dude.

I know, bro.

Yeah.

Like, when I stopped working for a corporate world or like an engineering firm or whatever, I realized like I work twice as fast doing my, doing shit for myself and my own business than I do ever working for a company.

Yeah.

I'm like waiting half the time.

Yeah.

It's crazy.

When you have your own business, you're invested.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Got a few questions.

I'm trying to pick through

the, like, we've been through a lot of this already, so that's kind of why I'm like stuttering through some of them.

Um, Joris Devil asks, uh,

when did you start working with James?

And how did you guys start working together, basically?

I've been friends with James for a while, and 13 weeks out, he asked me if I could help him.

Um, and he sent me pictures.

He's like, hey, do you think it's possible to still hold together decent patching with

13 weeks?

And I said, well, James, like, I normally like to have 20 weeks with people so I can at least learn a little bit with their body.

He goes, but I'll be happy to help you.

I really would.

It's like, I know his armor look was not, he was not happy with Armor look at all.

He was really upset with it.

So I was like, dude, I know I can, I'm a conditioned guy.

I like condition.

So I can do that.

And his concern is like, oh, I need to be conditioned in full.

And

he was like, I just don't want to be flat.

I'm like, won't let you get flat.

And he wasn't flat.

We weren't supposed to be could be, but that's how that conversation started.

And we started the next day.

I said to him, send me all your information, all your pictures, your everything that I need to see, and let's start tomorrow.

And I, I, because he's a good friend of mine.

So like, I dropped everything that day and I made his plan, sent it over to him, and he started right away.

And he checked in every single day for the entire 13 weeks to make sure everything was going in the direction it needed to.

And how I deal with the time change is I have him send me weight also at P.M.

at night.

So I predict his AM weight on his PM weight and I'll send him an update to start the next day because he's eight hours ahead.

All right.

Gotcha.

That way there's no missing a beat the next day.

That's awesome.

The Real Blue asks, do you have your athletes train abs?

And if so, what would the scheme be?

I do.

They need to train abs.

They need to.

I don't have them do rope crunches generally, but like, I like core strengthening exercises that indirectly obviously condition your abs, which would be side planks, McGill curl-ups.

ab rollouts.

And I will implement hanging leg raises to some degree, but that's that's it.

I want them to do it frequently.

I want them to be doing it more of a conditioning standpoint versus building your ab standpoint.

If somebody has weak abs, I'm going to obviously prescribe something slightly different, but the vast majority of people need to keep their core strong to protect their lower back.

And obviously, being able to keep their waist tight and small, you always see these big bodybuilders just guts sticking out, right?

Yeah.

Like they're just relying on a belt.

They don't like able to hold it in.

And then you see powerlifters,

you know, and their waist is small and they're squatting 800 pounds.

That's like this, they can cringe their stomach together and their core is so strong.

So, like, I need to have them have a strong core.

And so, those are the movements I usually implement for them.

Just two sets, two sets each, not crazy, not to failure or anything wild, but you know, you get a good burn, good connection, maintain spinal integrity, keep your spine straight during those movements, like planks and the ab rollouts.

Um, and I have them do maybe three times per week.

Gotcha, cool.

Uh, you said

I know it's just a plank, but side planks, you don't feel like that may grow the obliques on the side a little bit too much?

No, because we're not doing it for like duration of failure.

We're just doing it for completely just to be able to be able to connect to them.

So it's like two sets, 30 seconds.

You're not going to build anything about your obliques with that at all.

Gotcha.

And I noticed guys that do that end up having a smaller midsection.

Gotcha.

Because they're able to control and pull it in.

This one, you don't have to answer this if you don't feel, but because I know we're already talking about expectations and Jordan, but the question literally is by Logan Thompson, expectations for Jordan at the Olympia.

Um,

I would be happy with top eight,

I would be happy with top eight.

I think it, I could think it could be possible, but you like this, dude.

I think the Olympia lineup this year is insane.

It's disgusting, man.

It's insane.

So, it's like between

put like this: if he got top eight, I'd be thrilled.

If he got top 10, I'm okay with that.

If he got top six for some chance,

I would go out drinking that night.

Fire.

When's the last time you drank?

I actually went like legitimately 24 years of my life not drinking at all.

Fuck no way.

Yeah.

And then

I actually started drinking like two years ago.

So now I'm like, now I'm like really into like high-end whiskeys.

Let's go.

And I love old-fashioned.

So like whenever we go to a restaurant, I get like the fanciest old-fashioned they can get and try different whiskies.

And I don't like to drink drink, but like one or two drinks.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, my um, I didn't drink for like maybe six or seven years or so.

Uh, and now that I'm with my girl and she lives in Kentucky, and her family's all in Kentucky, and everyone fucking drinks like crazy there.

It's like, it's almost like if I don't start, it's gonna be fucking really awkward, right?

What's wrong with your boy?

Um,

whatever,

um, Aurelian aesthetics asks: Does it matter what type of ester we use in contest prep?

No,

I'm sure they're responding to mastron proponent or an ethate or or test anethate, a cipinate or probinate

because of the injection volume.

I don't want people having to do like nine cc's, like everything's like 50 or 100 millimeters per milliliter.

I don't want to even do it, so I always will recommend mast E over mass probe.

I'll always recommend test E

or test SIP over test test probe.

Always.

I do recommend trend ACE over trend E because you can adjust the dose rapidly due to a side effect.

Yeah.

So in that case, if you're using the enanthate esters, though, what when do you drop them before show?

Seven to ten days out.

Okay.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Cool.

Chris, Jack Taylor asked, what is something you think people put too much emphasis on versus what people aren't putting?

Gear.

They put too much emphasis on gear.

They put too much emphasis on just getting stronger and moving weight in the gym.

I just like, I see some people train.

I'm just like, dude, what are you doing?

Like, they're just pushing weight.

You're not feeling the muscle.

You're short-changing range of motion just to push load.

Yeah, it looks cool.

But why was Jay Cutler using 130s and 140s?

And I see a bunch of people at the gym using the same and they're like 185 pounds.

You know what I'm saying?

Like,

there's a big difference here.

And they're like, how do you build a chest?

Well, you're building a chest because you don't know how to train.

So people underemphasize how you you move the weight.

They're overemphasizing constantly just pushing weight and doing more.

What training split should I do?

How about we learn how to train first of doing the movements you already are doing and then worry about other things?

That's what I find the most problem with people that come to me.

I look at how they're training and sometimes I'm surprised that they're able to build the physique they were on how they were training.

Right.

Yeah.

Stephanie Keats will say it's the same.

Yeah.

Cool thing is I found the, I found,

well, I discovered for myself myself too, like, you know, you constantly keep learning, and right.

And I thought that I had a little, pretty, a pretty good handle on how I should be training for everything by now.

But I literally just realized that I've been training my mid-back thickness wrong for like the last fucking 15 years.

Because

I was like training with Dr.

Toddley, and he was a, he's got this crazy, like, he's lacking in lat.

So I taught him lat stuff, but I'm lacking in thickness.

At least I thought.

And his back thickness is just fucking weird.

It's like insane.

It's like monstrous.

So we did rows and he wanted to follow my workout.

So I took him through it and he did my back rows better than I did.

I looked back on the video and I'm like, this guy is doing the full Arnold and Ronnie Coleman stretch and then contra and then coming back and then the full extension and like chest up, everything, scapula retraction, full range of motion with, you know, the scapula extension retraction.

And then when I looked at me, I was basically just doing biceps and rear delts.

Like I was just moving my arms, but I didn't didn't really like this was like isometric.

And that's where I realized, like, fuck, man, I have been,

and whenever I, my show feedback is like, aside from bringing everything up, because you know, I'm still the smallest competitor on stage, the one thing that I need to focus on, they say, is the mid-back density, which in my opinion is really just that upper back density because I have this, this lower lat thickness that other people don't.

But I'm missing literally that area that is contracting when I'm supposed to be scapular attracting and then extending and stuff.

So, I mean,

it just

another thing that proved to me from my own experience that I've been undervaluing the movement and

movement patterns for everything.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then they're very individualized.

Everybody's put together a little differently.

You know what I mean?

And that's what we'll come after, you know?

I love what you said, like you thought you had an idea and then you learned something new and then you're like, oh, shit, right.

And that's the part of learning.

And what people don't understand is like the, you know, the dunyan cougar effect the the little the little you know the more you think you know everything and then the more you know the more you're like i don't know anything because you just keep learning and learning and learning right yeah exactly i do got to ask though um your opinion on this because i find that it's so much easier for me to do this capulary retraction and extension like full range of motion on anything that requires lumbar support um like you know like a bent over barbell row or bent over dumbbell row or like a cable row but if i go on something like a t-bar row like a chest supported machine row or something, I find the pad is like too thick where it's like I can't really stretch as much.

That hurts as I probably can't breathe.

No, like, it's like, it's just like, it's, it's like the pad is too thick where it's like, it's almost inhibiting the stretch.

It's not just, yeah, it's not just supporting me in the middle.

It's supporting me in the entire chest.

So it's like, it's not, I feel like I'm not bending as much.

I feel like I'm not really.

Yeah, you could try to do is put the foot platform higher so your chest is a little bit higher over the platform.

Okay.

Your arms are up here and the platform stops so you can get your arms over it.

That's something I'll probably try.

But at the end of the day,

even a slightly wider grip would allow you to be able to achieve a longer extension of the arms without coming together too much.

That's also an option.

But I mean, at the end of the day, if your scapula is completely protracted, you don't need to go much further than that.

Thoracic flexion is just obviously stretching you more your erectors and you're getting a little further stretched in the lab as you're coming forward, but it's not quite as essential as it is to maximally wrap the scapula around the spine one way and then wrap it back around the other way.

Yep.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

Awesome.

All right.

Last question.

Last QA.

Luke asks: What is the most important tip you have for young aspiring bodybuilders?

Man, the one tip I have with some young guys, and I'm always trying to tell them you could be really good if you stay away from toxic women, you don't get hurt.

wow facts yeah it's facts um young

okay you got to take care of your body so like you get a hundred civic off the show floor and you ride the piss out of it it's probably gonna die for four years right

you can take care of that car and drive it hard but take care of it and it will last a long time a lot of young guys going full crisis and vinegar just pushing way too hard in the gym earlier on and they pay the consequences three or later three years later and they're done they're done bodily and completely torn pat torn hamstring and they're done learn how to train properly don't be influenced by your boys telling you to be a pussy and pick up heavy weight that's the dumbest thing you could possibly do stay in your own lane progress from your previous best learn how to train properly learn mood patterns and then go that direction if you do that you'll be way far ahead because i look at myself i was stupid too going to the gym deadlifting twice per week, trying to like pick up as heavy weight as I possibly could.

And I was strong.

I could deadlift 475 for 20 reps.

Like I was strong, but like destroyed my lower back.

I have chronic lower back pain.

Like there's so many things

that came of it.

So it's like, I would be focusing on that.

Yeah.

I used to, when I was in college, I was like overhead pressing dumbbells with like hundreds.

And I, I would do anything to take that back because I got shoulder impingements on both shoulders that caused me to not be able to bench press or overhead press anymore.

And I haven't ever since.

So, which fucking sucks, man.

Right.

And you think about it back in the day, like, and it's all oh, for what?

For what?

Right.

Just like fucking awesome.

Great.

Now I can't even put my arms above my head.

It felt great back then.

Yeah.

It doesn't feel great now, though.

But when we're young, like, think about it.

When you don't feel it, when you don't feel it, you don't believe it.

Like, I remember my dad telling me, and besides all the motocross broken bones, seeing my body fall through the air, fucking pass out cold.

And remember, my dad, and then I did strongmen for a little bit.

And my dad came to my strongman show, and he looks at me and he goes, and he's like, dude, you're going to be paying the price later for all this shit.

And I'm like, dad, what are you talking about?

I feel fucking great.

He goes, you just lifted an axle wheel, a 450-pound axle wheel for 20 reps.

He goes, there's going to be consequences to that later in life.

I'm like, dad, whatever, whatever.

And now I'm older and my body's like feeling it.

And my dad says to me like last, like last year, he goes, Chris, you know what's funny?

I've had had two sold surgeries, knee surgery, two hip surgeries, back surgery.

I never raced motocross.

I never bodybuild.

I never did strongman, nor did I have any aches and pains when I was 40.

And you've been having aches and pains since you were 30.

He goes, be prepared, my friend.

I'm like, great.

Damn it.

For real.

Thanks, Dad.

I'm waiting for technological advancements.

Maybe they can grow new limbs and tissues.

Maybe foxes.

That reminds me of everyone that's been paying like so much money to get their body frozen in the sake that someone finds the

cure to bring you back to life, your frozen body back to life.

It's wild.

Yeah, dude.

All right.

One last question at the end of every podcast.

I ask everyone, fuck everyone.

If you were to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one message you could send to the entire world today, what would the message be?

Easy.

Really pay attention to the relationships and your family that you have because life is not for granted.

I've lost a lot of people in my life.

And unfortunately, you know, the whole message of we don't realize how much you love something until it's gone.

You don't understand how great a time is until it's a memory.

So being more present with what you're doing and enjoying everything you do have and don't be, don't be ungrateful for your health and what you're able to do because it's going to be taken from all of us eventually.

Our health, our physical ability, our family.

So like, I see a lot of people just chasing things that don't matter and they're still miserable.

But, like, at the end of the day, if you're walking, being able to compete, do a hobby, eat food, have a roof over your head, you shouldn't be upset about half the things that you are.

I love that, man.

Thanks.

Thank you for that.

Thanks for coming on this podcast.

This was awesome.

You're extremely easy to talk to, and that's clear because I was definitely shooting for an hour less than the time that we got, but it was hard to keep going.

Awesome.

Is there anything that you'd like to share with the audience, promote, or anything, talk about before you want to?

No, that's really it, guys.

I mean, listen, I have a pretty long wait list right now, and I apologize that people are going to email me and inquire.

But if you are interested in the wait list, like it's email me sooner so you can be on it because it's a it's a never-ending wait list that just keeps going this way.

Um, and I have a couple assistant coaches that are under me.

Nate's awesome, Nihar's awesome, and Tori helps a lot of my females.

So I do have help, and I do have trained all of them.

So they're not going to be doing willy-nilly weird things.

And I oversee it.

But, you know, if you do contact me, you will be

talking to me.

And then I will direct you.

It's not anywhere where you think it's me and it's somebody else.

I don't do that weird stuff.

And that's it.

If you guys want to check out more hydration, you can.

I've got four flavors.

You can go to drinkmore.com, morehydration.com, and then check it out.

But that's really about it, my friend.

Sick.

Thanks for coming on, bro.

That That was awesome.

Thanks, man.

I'll catch you soon.

Later, brother.