Kurt Havens: This PED Bodybuilding Knowledge Is Wrong

Kurt Havens, PhDC endo coach, scientist, expert on bodybuilding pharmacology, and enhanced bodybuilding science, and can often be seen with my father, Vigorous Steve, and Dr.

Dean on their podcast roundtable.

50 milligrams pie at the bottom, 150 at the top.

I don't know if using more than 150 is going to do a shitload.

If it's your first time using an Android, 50 is fine.

If you use it a bunch of times and you're 270 pounds, you might need more.

I'm going to say training is probably the most important variable.

Most guys just go around.

They're not doing the right shit.

They're not managing all those variables like you're talking about.

They're not actually looking at their progress.

They're focused on the process of going to the gym.

It never makes sense to front load a psycho with an oral.

Why would you start with more milligrams and then drop the milligrams out?

Because now you've reduced the stimulus.

So if your EQ is too high versus your test, it will occupy the endoreceptor testosterone, can't bind to that.

So not only have you lowered your estrogen load, but you've now lowered the androgen load even lower.

And that's that paranoia can come in.

If hemoglobin and hematocrit are just slightly above the range, but platelets are normal and ferritin is normal, you don't need to give blood, typically.

If the hemoglobin and hematocrit are elevated and platelets are high, yes, you should get blood because that is what's going to cause a clotting issue, but you also probably need to see an infectious disease person to find out why your platelets are high.

And that protein from your food doesn't go immediately into your muscles.

The muscles are pulling protein from the amino acid pool and structural proteins are added to the muscle during the cycle tension.

So the protein you eat is basically replacing amino acids in that pool.

It's not that your post-workout meal is immediately going to your biceps.

Test and trend, I think, is an individual thing.

There's some guys that like high test and low trend.

There are guys like me that prefer low test and high trend.

The waste occurs because of its function.

So the growth hormone receptor is a cell surface receptor.

It does not go in the cell.

When growth hormone binds to the receptor, there's a Jack stat pathway that's downstream.

That's what goes in the cell.

The growth hormone itself doesn't enter the cell.

And if growth hormone were to enter the cell because it's related to cytokine, the body senses that and has an immune response.

And that's what kills the 30%.

So you're wasting, especially if you're using an underground growth hormone with debatable function anyway, now you're losing another 30% of it.

It doesn't make a shitload of sense.

Just to get a peak faster doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work better.

After like a gram, it starts to kind of slow down on what it's doing a little bit.

I feel like it's cruising until about a gram and then it kind of, if your 180 pounds is running instantly make a shitload of sense, no, because it's not necessarily more anabolic than what your pancreas is doing at that point.

If you took two units or three units and your sleep is worse, it's probably because your pituitary puts out more than that when you go to sleep.

So you'd have to just

Before starting this podcast, I just wanted to say that ideating steroids for a full show is not widely accepted because it discounts the real work, which is the backbone of this sport.

and unfortunately spreads that an unsafe chemical solution is all you need for results.

Both of these are an antithetical society's understanding of the sport and while there will always be some that claim that PEDs are all you need, I would like to deliver an honest message of what is required for achieving top performance as well as the dangers associated with this route.

I received this comment from a user named Night Scarens.

But just as a rock climber, the athletes undergoing this path in the sport are willing to put their life on the line for their passion.

Just the danger between the two sports is different.

Luckily, we do have safety nets in the sport, such as organ imaging and regular blood work.

But that doesn't change the high risk one must accept in taking on this competitive lifestyle,

dude.

You got a ton of questions.

Literally, every time you come on, you have a ton of questions.

Do you want every time you come on?

You get a lot of questions.

So,

yeah,

if you get views from it, dude, I don't care.

Thanks, bro.

Well, it's good to see you, man.

Yeah, you've been extremely fucking busy recently, huh?

Thank you, man.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Would I have ever finally

hold on?

Give me one second.

The signal's like really weird right now.

Like, you're a little blurry, and I can't tell if we're delayed or not.

That's the one thing I'd hate about video calls, honestly, but not much you can do about it.

Anyways, I thought it'd be awesome to bring the man who...

angered a lot of the industry with his book on GH.

I didn't rise that anger people.

But I mean, in a way, a lot of it also makes sense.

I just haven't done the research that you have.

Not even nearly close to how intensive.

So it's,

has there been anything that's changed in your research on GH since the last time we spoke?

I mean, I should probably go back and edit some of the book stuff.

Yeah, I mean, there's constantly.

There's constantly research on it as it applies to bodybuilding.

Probably not really.

I mean,

we know the dose for hyperplasia, at least on its own, right?

Six milligrams or 18 I use is where hyperplasia occurs, permanent hyperplasia.

No one knows what the dose is, what occurs with steroids.

I wanted to do a study.

I had set up some of the details to do a study with 20 guys for 12 weeks with different doses of pharmaceutical GH and a fixed dose of testosterone, superphysiological.

I was going to do like 600 milligrams of test and different levels of GH

and do biopsies and determine when hyperplasia was occurring when you mix the two.

But the cost of the study was $2.3 million.

So we'll have to wait on that.

Holy shit.

So

that's crazy.

We're going to fund

my, I call him my lab partner.

There's a doctor in Florida that I do my research with, and we are planning to start a medical journal.

that's geared more toward bodybuilding.

So it'll, it'll just,

it'll have all the substances.

You said more towards what?

These fucking body signals on these calls, man.

Okay, gotcha.

Is it my is it my Wi-Fi?

That looks good.

Yeah, sometimes I have no fucking clue, man.

It's just so random.

Video screens are so great.

It's all right.

We'll meet you.

It's

like a medical journal.

So the current medical journals like Springer or Nature and those sorts of things are geared toward the science community, right?

So most of the stuff that's in them doesn't apply to you and I at all.

Most of the stuff's super boring.

We wanted to start one that really is just studies that are geared toward us, like how drugs perfect performance and fat loss and muscle growth and the things that we care about.

We talk about steroids, growth homeland.

And what we were going to do is have a low entry cost so people subscribe to this.

So then we take, it's a non-for-profit.

We'll take all that money and we'll just apply it into research.

So then we can keep this thing going.

Because at the moment, I'm self-funding stuff, so it's going to be limited as to what I can do.

Like, I self-funded the first testosterone portion.

We're working on a second.

Now that the first part showed what we were looking for, we expanded it.

So there's 10 other guys in this next batch, but we have to pay out of pocket because no pharmaceutical company is going to, you know, sponsor this stuff.

They don't care.

Jesus Christ.

Sorry.

One se.

I want to see if like,

maybe I can close out windows if that's going to help or anything.

Because

it's doing that thing where it's like segmented and you sound like a fucking AI robot.

When you talk, like there's a slight delay in your voice versus your video.

And then sometimes it'll just get like fucking very simulation-y and broken.

Close out all about the windows.

Yeah, maybe I'll just restart the call too.

And then.

Okay, we could go again.

Sure.

So you want me to go the same one?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Gotta love these technical difficulties.

Gotta love them.

How many viewers you got now?

I think we're approaching 50K now.

Yeah.

No shit.

I think last time we were talking was about 30.

So wow.

Grew by 20,000 in like a year.

Damn, I guess so, huh?

That's a lot, man.

Not bad.

Yeah.

What else are you doing?

Do you coach at all?

Are you doing anything else?

No, I don't coach.

I just mostly do

Well, to be honest, everything I do is focused on the content, YouTube videos, Instagram posts and then the podcast like i used to coach but i didn't have time to um focus on creating content and definitely didn't have time to even start a podcast what i was coaching so and i'm sure you understand being in that place like that's why i just do some clients

yeah i can't you know you can't crazy man it's not possible if I always question the coaches I'm blended with that do both.

Like there's no way that both are successful.

You're probably just half-assed and Vofeelton.

I know it's fucking crazy, dude.

Like, I feel like they, um, each client is such its own relationship.

So it's so

imagine that you have like 100 clients, like 100 different relationships.

I have 200.

Yeah, I have 200.

It's wild.

That's 300 calls a month with console.

That's insane.

I'm on the same time.

I'm barely hanging on with one podcast call per week, much less 300.

Yeah, it's, I mean, um, it's, it's a, it's a lot, you know.

Yeah.

Last time we were talking, though, we were talking about GH timing and

as well as how systematic, systemic GH doesn't have any correlation with localized GH in the muscle.

And

which I was wondering, was there any research that you found that indicated that

there would be a

inverse correlation or was there just no research regarding any correlation whatsoever?

it's

it's not necessarily inverse there is some correlation between the the the serum and what's going on inside the muscle right because if you you take gh your serum is going to go up but that doesn't that's not representative of necessarily the outcome that we're looking for so when it's in serum most of the time it's binded there's seven binding proteins in humans that are binding it that's what's keeping it in serum and those binding proteins

basically direct the growth hormone to other places that we don't necessarily want, right?

They direct it to serve organs to serve bone it's the body's way of regulating that hormone because it's not all like in nature it's not trying to just go muscle

right or fat cells it's it's trying to

grow hormone has a ton of

roles yeah so we're not i mean for our point of view it's not that it's totally irrelevant but it's not like You do a bunch of gear, you go get your IGF tested, and wow, look, I'm a monster because my IGF is

whatever.

That doesn't really, you know, relate.

And you can see when Chase Irons was doing his 18 units a day, I don't remember his serum, IGF was pretty low.

It was 150 or 200, you know, clearly not indicative of what was going on in his body.

You know, so it just, but that's what point.

And we see clinically, we see an acromegaly, which is like the adult version of giantism.

We'll get guys with an IGF and serum of 1100, 1,200, 2,000.

They're not muscular, right?

They just have, if you leave it long enough, they'll develop really freakish features, but it's not, it's not, it's not showing that they're growing muscle or losing fat or anything.

Most of the tones, they don't look any different than the average person.

Yeah, I was about to say, what the fuck is like the result of someone having an IGF-1 of 2000?

Like a system.

Well, so all of your flat bones, so it's typical skeletal bones, like you know, your femurs,

the normal bones that make up your skeleton don't grow once the bone plates are fused after puberty, but the flat bones, what's in your hands,

your clavicle is a flat bone, your facial bones,

your feet, those will continue to grow.

So you'll see they develop massive hands and massive feet and their facial features get destroyed.

I see.

But we don't, we usually pick it up.

Nowadays, it's picked up before that.

You don't generally get people that go so far that they're deformed and then they see a doctor.

You know, usually it manifests, you'll see something like a prolactin issue.

There's other issues where they'll go to the doctor and we'll find,

you know, what else is going on there way before it becomes that issue gotcha okay

interesting so if i potentially want to look very masculine and giant then maybe just overdose on gh

um do you find

that's gonna be the regular

where what uh yeah

where do you find the benefit of um taking gh and insulin together honestly the only i might be different from a lot of coaches i've never used insulin myself the only benefit for me of using insulin is when a guy's food,

and it doesn't necessarily have to do directly with their size, but we all get to a certain point.

You would get here as well.

If you want to continue to push your mass past a certain point, right?

Your food is going to go up and up and up and up.

You'll get to a point where

your body can no longer tolerate that food, right?

And what I use is A1C to dictate that.

So we'll watch A1C.

And if A1C starts to creep up and up and up, then it's probably time to introduce insulin, assuming that we we need to keep increasing the food.

Outside of that, is running insulin

if you're 180 pounds, is running insulin makes a shitload of sense?

No.

Right.

Because it's not necessarily more anabolic than what your pancreas is doing at that point.

Right.

So the pump and all those things that you get from it short term in the gym are not necessarily indicative of muscle growth.

It's just,

you know, same as drinking a bunch of salt water.

You got a pump.

It doesn't mean you're growing.

So I don't, it's not necessarily something I would recommend most people screw around with because there's also lots there.

One of the most interesting things I've heard recently is a couple people proposed the idea of low-dose red atrutide in the offseason, rather, to manage blood sugar instead of insulin.

I don't know if you've heard of that or had any discussions.

I have.

I would say

I would prefer to save GLPs for when people are dieting and the food noise is really high.

if it becomes a thing versus try to just leverage them all the time.

We don't know.

Right.

So,

again, this might be my stance on a lot of things versus what you see on the internet.

So,

medically speaking, we don't know the long-term effects of GLPs.

No one does.

They've not been around that long.

So, we can't really say that they're necessarily safe used long-term.

And in that population, they're not designed for you and I.

So, I tend to err on the safer side with that stuff.

I wouldn't tell a guy that's trying to grow to use a GLP.

If blood sugar is the issue, then like I said, if they don't really need that much food, the blood sugar is getting skewed.

Sorry, go on.

Yeah.

Damn, this fucking lag is crazy, bro.

Really bad?

No, I was just saying that

it does seem so counterintuitive that, I don't know, there's going to be so many guys that are trying to push food, like crazy amounts of food in the offseason, of course.

And that's where we run into these.

common issues of guts that we've been discussing for such a long time now.

And

it's like, it makes me curious is this going to

is this going to back up their gi tract more and cause more gi issues or is this going to

force them to lower the actual food volume and potentially hopefully less stretching of the stomach

acting as an organ yeah well look at your look at your look at your waistline right you have an awesome shape

You know, you're not pushing food so high that you're stressing out your gut.

I don't do that either.

i don't think i think i mean we could

it's gonna aggravate a lot of people food itself is not driving growth right so there's no pathway in the human body that food drives muscle growth

there is an energy requirement for muscle growth there's a protein requirement for muscle growth like for instance when you ingest protein that protein from your food doesn't go immediately into your muscles the muscles are pulling protein from the amino acid pool and structural proteins are added to the muscle during mechanical tension.

So the protein you eat is basically replacing amino acids in that pool.

It's not that your post-workout meal is immediately going to your biceps.

It doesn't really work like that.

And from a pure energy point of view,

again, we know this from disease states.

If you have someone that's wasting away from a disease, you can't feed them more to get the muscle back on.

That doesn't work, right?

They just get fat.

Excess calories can get stored, glycogen, body fat, but it's not driving muscle growth per se, right?

There is an energy sensor called PI3K that senses energy and will allow for muscle growth, but things like insulin growth factor one and insulin stimulate that, it doesn't necessarily take energy to stimulate that, that receptor, if that makes sense.

Now, I'm not saying, I'm not trying to confuse people.

I'm not saying that you ever want to be in a deficit and trying to get big because that's probably not going to work.

But you, like watching your journey, right?

You've grown.

You've grown a bunch of the past couple of years and you've never had to really, how high do you ever push your food?

Well, I tend to have a lower metabolic rate than most people, even at my height.

But uh, I think the highest I ever want would be about 3,700 to 3,800 calories, and that's the high carb days.

That's what I'm saying.

But my point is, you're you have quite a physique and you're not eating 8,000 calories of shit just to grow, right?

Because you know, that doesn't work, it's just gonna make you fat, right?

That's that was my point, is that it's not well, I think the other thing is like

pushing the food.

I think the other thing, though, that I think we discussed in the last podcast a little bit was, you know, know, as you, you know, you eat more, you normally that's

simultaneous with you taking more gear when it comes to the bodybuilding industry.

As you take more gear, then you need to feed that more, et cetera.

And that's what, you know, that's normally

more in the realm of, I guess, open bodybuilding where guys are really trying to

push mass, and that's like their greatest priority.

And I mean, that's why I really like Classic is because even though, you know, Lee Priest made that comment about, you know, if everyone just went to open,

I think it's such a cool idea that with the weight cap, you're actually having guys that are

prioritizing even more than the guys that are in the open about like, oh shit, I only have 10 pounds of weight to gain.

Let's make this the most quality 10 pounds I could possibly gain and take three years to gain this or two years to gain this instead of one year.

You know, because you do have open guys that are gaining 10 to 15 pounds in a year.

When someone Nick, who gained like what?

Fucking like, I was just going to say Nick Walker.

Like what?

It was like

three months or something and he gained like 50 pounds.

But that's, but I'm friends with Nick.

His food isn't as high as people would think.

He's not pushing.

He's, he's a big dude, you know, and he doesn't leverage stuff as heavy as people would think.

You know, I probably made mistakes,

you know, a year or two ago thinking that he probably pushed gear much harder than he does.

Knowing him now, you know, he's just kind of a freak, you know, and I

like knowing you personally?

I know personally.

Yeah.

And we, um,

yeah, I was going to say, it's funny because, you know,

I know him a little more personally now as well.

And I'm pretty close with Kyle, his coach.

And it's like,

how much are these guys lying?

But when I talk to them and knowing who they are, like I, it's, you can generally sense that like, even if Nick did push harder in the past, at this point in time, he is not needing to.

No, I mean, not like he was before if he did.

Yeah.

He did push harder in the past.

An interesting thing anymore.

And his look is better now without pushing so hard.

He just looks healthier.

It's fresher.

Yeah.

And I mean, I know his macros.

I've helped him with his blood work and stuff before.

So I have to know what he's eating and what he's using in order to make an assessment there.

But yeah, but my point was, even some of those guys aren't necessarily pushing as hard as people think.

It's a genetic thing for a lot of those guys.

And I think that's me priest's comment, while valid seems almost more valid 20 years ago.

The problem is when he did open,

it was a different game, right?

They weren't as big as the guys today.

So guys like you and I had a potential possibly to do open.

Like you and I can't do open now.

What are you going to compete in open?

Well, how tall are you?

Oh, me.

I don't know if I'm ever going to compete in an open, man.

I'm 5'7 and a half.

My point is, I couldn't do, even in my heaviest, I'm 5'7, my heaviest, I was 240.

I'm still 50 or 60 pounds lighter than these guys in the open category and i can't handle any more weight than that so it's yeah it's and that's maybe on the class will cut off but i just you know so i don't i i agree there should be other classes i think it makes sense you know guys like you should be able to get on stage and do well doesn't mean you need to go against a guy with 300 pounds yeah it's just a different aspect of bodybuilding in a completely different direction you know so But it is fun to watch the open.

That's what I doubt.

Seeing Urs up there was fucking crazy.

So to answer your question, I was just going to mention

it doesn't make any sense to me to use a GLP in the offseason.

Why would you take something that screws up your appetite when the goal is to get bigger?

I don't know.

Seems silly.

Yeah,

I totally agree with that as well.

I think I'm assuming that they're talking about those minimal dosages where you hardly feel any distinction in food noise, especially since retitrutide tends to have a lower effect on food noise anyways than something like Terzepatide.

But

I still think it's just such an interesting, I don't know.

I only see it as like something that makes sense if you actually have like pre-diabetes and it's an issue, but yeah, still that's how I would.

I'd rather play with other things first.

Yeah.

Um, I guess one thing that was interesting that I wanted to bring up with you since the last time we discussed this was my growth in the offseason this year.

People are asking me about how I grew my legs, and the only thing I have that I can tell them is that I train more intensely.

I focus way more on my programming and perfecting my volume.

And then my high carb days on my leg days, I paired it with

50 micrograms of IGF-1 LR3, which

is supposed to be like the least beneficial IGF-1 out there.

And then,

yeah, that's about it.

And then sometimes we'd have two units of insulin and pre and then two insulin, two units of insulin post.

So

it's very interesting because to me, I'm like, Is the IGF-1 that effective?

And is that what helped me like for some reason my legs seem to grow almost,

it seemed to take almost a majority of the growth.

Like, I almost feel like the rest of my body didn't grow very much.

Or is it just the training?

You know, I mean,

it's hard to say with the IGF, with the LR3.

We don't know.

I know it doesn't seem very effective, but I've never used it.

I don't have any first-hand experience.

I just, it doesn't seem like it'd be very effective.

I would say it's your training, man.

I think it's, if you, you know, last time we talked,

If you asked me what I thought the most important variables would be in bodybuilding, I probably would have told you food food was one, you know, the gear, then training.

In the last year, I'd say I'd probably flipped it around and say training is probably the most important variable.

Because while we all go to the gym and do stuff, I think most guys just around, they're not doing the right shit.

They're not managing all those variables like you're talking about.

They're not actually looking at their progress.

They're focused on the process of going to the gym, right?

And like, I do this, but what's occurring is what matters, not going.

Right.

So it's like, and everyone needs a different amount of stimulus.

I don't need a ton of exercise stimulus.

I go to the gym three times a week.

Someone might need four, five, maybe six, you know,

it just depends on how you program, how you control that volume, how you control that intensity, right?

How you're controlling the other things, your sleep, your rest, your food, gear.

And I think if I had to guess, it's probably because you really put a lot of focus into training your legs and not so much other stuff you were using.

There might have been some sort of placebo effect because you thought the IGF was working.

You might have put on a push harder.

You know, but I don't, who knows?

I mean, it's not that it didn't work.

I mean, you look crazy.

So whatever you're doing is working.

Thanks, man.

Thank you, bro.

Yeah, for sure.

Without a doubt, there was at least some kind of placebo effect, though.

Every time I would take the IGF one, I just,

I would be more excited to hit the late day.

So for sure.

Yeah.

And

yeah, every late day was always fucking rough.

But I remember last time we were also talking, we were discussing how you, I think you said that your lower body, you believe, would be a little bit more predominantly fast Twitch fiber compared to the average person.

And then for me, I got my genetics tested and it said I was predominantly slow Twitch fiber.

So I started tailoring my training to high volume.

And I think that made all the difference in my body, which is kind of annoying because I fucking have to be in the gym for so long.

Like my sessions are like two and a half hours, especially for leg days.

But, and then it's twice a week.

But I mean, that's, that's what made the difference so i don't know i guess some of us just really do have the tendency to work to whatever our genetics are predisposed to you know where you respond from you know i've i've been lifted for 37 years 38 years or something and i've just over time i've played with different things to see what worked for me you know and i come back to the same thing but that doesn't mean it's worked for someone else you know and that's what we have to do like what we coach that's what we have to do is figure out what what food what gear what training what is what's actually moving the needle, not just based on some preconceived

notion that someone has or someone said once or because Ronnie Coleman does this or like, who cares?

Like, it, it's more about figuring out what's working for you.

Yeah.

This is a total theoretical question, but if you had to pick one, what's the one variable that you'd say is different between the top pros aside from genetics?

Since they're all probably taking, I would assume they're probably taking about the same

compounds and stuff, say,

aside from like a couple.

Yeah, and I mean, I've seen, I know pros in physique that use 500 milligrams of gear because they can't get any bigger.

And I know open guys that use eight grams of gear.

That's rare.

But I know two that I work with that use incredible amounts of gear.

Most of them probably about average rates of between,

you know, 1,500 to 3,000 milligrams, give or take, depending on what stage they're in.

I think

it's probably just out of genetics.

I mean, genetics can be the biggest drivers.

I think

probably just the focus and

the commitment to it day in and day out, right?

The average guy is just not able to do that.

They have other commitments and they just can't harness that focus, you know, what these guys do and how they push.

Yeah.

Because it's long-term consistency.

Yeah, I agree.

you said exactly what i was thinking in my head as well in terms of the dosages in terms of what

differs i guess what really puts in

what makes the difference in their success

i mean i know the genetics is probably one of the biggest factors which is the crazy part like you're looking at samson and nick walker and these guys are absolute animals and i know that they put in

i know their day-to-day every hour of the day is tailored towards bodybuilding and becoming the best they can too.

So it's just

every fucking facet of their life.

Yeah.

So it's, I think it's just all of those things over a long period of time just is going to produce that result, right?

Like you can

now, can you have shit genetics and make it that far?

No.

But like if you have better, slightly better than average and you put the discipline in, you can make it pretty far.

you know are you going to be mr olypia probably not i mean the top top guys are you know clearly have some genetic advantage over, and that's been the case since, you know, even before Arnold.

Those guys weren't winning if they didn't have great genetics, especially back then because they didn't have the drugs or the knowledge to really, you know, do anything like we do.

We have everything at our fingertips now.

We understand this stuff.

You know, you could get anything you want to get your hands on.

You know, they got what their doctor could write them for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I

totally just brainfarted.

I literally had something on the top of my head.

That's good.

I normally keep it raw so people can just listen to my awkward silence.

I don't give a fuck.

I guess, right?

Yeah.

So, one of the things that we were discussing last time, and it's been brought up a little bit more frequently in a couple of my last podcasts with some top athletes,

specifically Terrence in Classic and then Jordan Hutchinson in Open.

How

important do you think it is for someone to take time off of gear?

Or is it just as

or is it just as equally effective to continue to run it and just titrate the doses higher?

Given that your blood work is

pretty good, reasonable

in both ways.

So, I mean, yeah.

Let's say

I can get both ways.

So, I would say from a pure science point of view, if growth was the only thing you're concerned with, I mean, in theory, you could just titrate up slowly over time, right?

Because as you become, so if you do 300 milligrams at a certain point, it becomes homeostatic, right?

And you need more stimulus to keep the drugs pushing growth, so you'd have to just increase it.

Obviously, there's a limit, right?

We all could take only so much before you have really awful side effects of any drug.

I mean, you could go that route.

I mean, in theory, that would produce a result.

I would recommend most guys would do some sort of blast and cruise.

Seems like a better way to do it.

The biggest benefit

that I would say, and it's not even a growth-related thing, is from a health point of view, what happens when you run super physiological amounts of steroids, even testosterone long-term.

So you have an amount of stem cells in your body, right?

And they're considered peripotent, meaning they can get committed to any.

And what happens when you take a certain amount of drugs is they get committed to the line that becomes muscle cells and they get pulled out of that pool.

So then your organs don't get your stem cells at the same rate that they would normally.

So eventually things can start to fall apart and your health will go down the toilet, even if your labs look okay, because you're not regenerating your liver and your kidneys, your lungs, and your heart, your brain.

So, you know, from a, from a,

from, if you want to play the long game, it makes more sense to Boston Cruise, I would say, versus just slow betrating gear up.

And I don't know if you've ever tried it, but most guys, if you try the longer thing, where you just keep going and keep going and keep going,

progress gets really slow at a certain point.

Like the most productive cycles seem to be when you go a little bit harder for a shorter period of time, as soon as the growth kind of stops,

usually evaluate where you are.

Is it about pushing up?

Sometimes, sometimes it's just about going a cruise, right?

Like if you went on a bigger cycle and you're dating, you know, a couple pounds a week and

at week eight or week nine or week 10 or whatever, it starts to go down, like you have two choices, right?

You can go down or you can go up.

But if you're using a single amount of stuff, does it make sense to keep going up?

Most guys, I would have them come down, right?

Because I just feel like the growth would be limited down the road doing that.

Gotcha.

I don't know.

Do you agree with that?

No, I feel the same way as well.

And when I look at the anecdotal evidence, it seems to be the case as well.

I mean, or else, I mean, you're probably one of the guys that if you're in the open, you end up titrating those doses, dosages up to eight grams.

You know, setting aside that maybe you're also a fast metabolizer but

i think it's super interesting too that

i don't know i have a theory that if you uh i have a theory that if you get your uh if you get a hair transplant or a gynosurgery then you're gonna like boost your gains by like times two afterwards because that seems to be what's happening with jordan and freaking terrence so

we can take time off and then they gain like fucking 20 pounds out of nowhere yeah i mean i think for terrence i don't i don't know him personally but I believe he changed his training a lot too.

And I think that's kind of where he saw a big,

you know, bump in size.

He like, yeah, so he like rearranged the way he was doing stuff.

I really like, I like the way he was doing things too, because I feel like that's what's helped me as well is at least increase the frequency somewhat of the muscles that I'm trying to grow the most.

At least two times a week has been definitely more effective for me than one time for sure.

I have old school.

I probably have one run this desk somewhere.

I have old school logs because uh i'm old and i write shit by hand sorry what's up fucking video call froze again so i didn't hear what you said for the last 10 seconds

um i hate this call i have training logs going back to the 1990s

um and when i looked back oh shit

when i looked back a year or two ago i was trying to isolate what caused the most growth right because you all these periods where we make a lot of progress the periods we don't make a lot of progress and i looked and the only the biggest common denominator between those times of progress was when I hit things more frequently, right?

My legs grew the most when I trained them at least twice a week.

My arms grew the most when I trained them twice a week or three times a week.

And then times that really I didn't make a ton of progress is when I did more of a bro thing where I hit things once a week.

Hopefully gain a lot of size.

Right.

And the science now backs that up.

The frequency is probably more important than volume.

I mean, they're inversely correlated, right?

Because volume itself is not a driver of growth.

The problem with the need for frequency is that there's atrophy after a couple of days of training in your body part.

so if you're not constantly giving it stimulus you're going to basically take a step forward take a step back right the steroids will prevent a lot of that breakdown that occurs to a lot of bodybuilders or ants don't see that atrophy as much with still occurring to some level right you're just much better like you said you want a part to grow train it first with intensity and train it more frequently it will grow right you might have to take the gas off you know, on something else temporarily, just so you're not doing crazy amounts of shit for every body part.

But like, you know, if you want to focus on your legs, then train your legs two or three times a week and maybe just do slightly less for the other stuff for a couple months and then switch it around.

You know, that's

the most sense when it comes to training.

Plus, I, yeah.

And this is just something that I

believed.

I don't know if this is just purely theoretical or not, but I felt like another part of it is like, say, that you have 16 sets per week for a muscle group.

I mean, I feel it would be much better for you to hit eight of those sets fresh and then another eight sets of those fresh rather than run 16 sets in the same session.

And the last half of those

sets are like, what,

like kind of half-assed or, you know, a reduction in performance.

When if you look at like charts, I don't know the numbers, I'll tell my look at like the gains based on each set, like as the sets progress, like you get the most stimulation from the first set, right?

And then it goes down dramatically set.

So if you're doing eight or nine sets of something in a workout, you're not really getting anything from that last set anyway.

There's a great trick.

I believe I learned it from Chris Beardsley,

who's an exercise physiologist, to tell if you're doing too much volume in a workout.

Because, like I said before, volume is kind of individual, right?

Like, so you might need more volume than me, but so I can't just say to you, oh, you only need X amount of sets.

How would I know what you need, right?

So, a great way to test that is to take your first exercise of the session and put it at the end.

So, I'll just, I'll give you an example.

So, let's say it's a you're doing a push day, and the first thing you do is you're doing a bench press and your last set you do 315 for 12 reps.

If you take that exact exercise and you put at the end of the workout next time, if you get five or less reps than you got when it was at the beginning, it's basically a pointless exercise, right?

So if you get, if you now put that bench at the end of that large workout and you put the same weight on, you put 315 on the bar and you go and you get seven reps or six reps or five reps.

You're doing your overall your workouts too much volume that there's no stimulus at the end then so what you do is then you slowly take the volume down a notch until the end is the same as the beginning another good example is you see those guys calves right all these dudes have horrible calves they go to any gym he says have awful calves and you ask them right like i can't grow my calves because it's genetic i've bad calves genetically like when do you train your calves like the end of my leg day

Train them first.

That's what, you know, if you want to grow, why are you waiting until you're toast and then training them?

Train them in the beginning.

That's what Wessey did for the Arnold and Regis Cat.

Like, just move it to the beginning when you're fresh.

Well, I think another thing is like, you know, I think

number one most important thing, of course, is train intense and train hard, but everyone has to train intense and hard throughout the entire workout in accordance to what the genetics are, right?

Like what they're predisposed to.

So if you're, if you're someone that like needs intense training, but like low volume, then I see it a lot easier for you to be able to focus on like, oh, I don't need to do just three RIR.

Like I can go harder throughout the workout because it's quicker, it's faster, it's less volume versus someone who needs to hit what, 20 sets of calves or something

in order to grow.

You're going to have to manage that fatigue from the very beginning, which is unfortunate because, you know, fucking science pays lifting.

But I mean, you got to make sure that you hit a good, you're, you're hitting good performance throughout the entire workout, not just in the beginning.

I think that's where people lose this height.

So, and I think people misunderstand the term fatigue.

Like when I try to explain fatigue to my clients, they're like, oh, I don't need to take a nap.

I feel good.

Fatigue is not that.

Fatigue is not that.

That's a different type of fatigue.

Fatigue that you and I are talking about is at the nervous system, right?

So the, and that what fatigue comes from is calcium ions enter the muscle cell and they aggravate the nerve that allows them to fire.

That causes fatigue at the nervous system.

And the reason why you don't want that to occur is then your body can't recruit high threshold motor units.

So it's especially the case in someone like you.

If you're saying you have less fast switch fibers, you're, you, you, the last thing you want to do is not be able to recruit the fast switch fibers you have, right?

Because they'll never grow.

So fibers don't really grow at that rate with drugs or without drugs.

They grow at best 50% of what a fast switch fiber is going to grow.

So that's why you don't want to necessarily do so much that you're not getting progress.

And the

drivers of that sort of fatigue are basically volume, negative, like stretching stuff, right?

Anything that's opening up the channel that was calcium in, too much volume.

Um, higher reps produce more fatigue than lower reps do.

Um, so it's just controlling those things.

Like, if you're not making, the easiest way to tell is if you're not making progress, right?

If you're not adding a rep or a pound, you're probably not growing.

You know, and it's common sense.

And again, I think your bodybuilders will say things like, well, you don't need to get stronger to get bigger.

Well, it's kind of a crock of shit because a bigger muscle by nature is a stronger muscle, produces more force, has to.

That doesn't mean if you're on steroids, you have to use that strength because steroids can cause growth on their own.

That's not related to exercise, right?

You just take a turkey based drink and you stick it in your ass.

Your muscles will grow regardless if you get stronger or not, but the muscle is still stronger.

It doesn't mean you have to use it.

I think that's where guys get confused with that stuff.

So like a 20-inch arm is a shitload stronger than a 14-inch arm.

But it doesn't mean that the guy on a ton of steroids has to use that strength to get there.

He'll get there faster and probably bigger if he's actually getting, if he's leveraging those things like reps in reserve and you know training intensity uh versus just getting a pop but the drugs clearly work you know steroids work yeah yeah for sure real quick guys so while i was looking at the youtube analytics i actually saw that 85 of you guys that watch this channel are not subscribed and i want to ask very little of you guys but if you enjoy this podcast if you find value in it then please do me this one favor and subscribe to the channel because doing so helps me get bigger and greater guests like the guests you are listening to today.

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In regards to,

I mean, in regards to the compounds that we're discussing, something I don't really often talk about is like the prep cycles, which I find also, I mean, I've been finding a little bit more interest in recently just because, you know, coaches have their own different,

I guess, cocktail that they'll choose, obviously tailored to the client.

But I mean, each one has their own preferences.

Like I've talked to Hayesine Nassir, who has discussed his preference for avoiding orals during prep.

And then, obviously, you have others that like to leverage their orals since, I don't know, it's just, I guess, certain orals are easier to help get that kind of like cosmetic, dry, detailed look, depending on what you're using.

Um,

in a prep cycle, I guess, how important do you feel like windstrol is to utilize?

I'd say it's pretty important.

To me, it's that's the look.

It's not trend, it's not mastron, it's the wind straw for most guys.

Um,

yeah, and I mean, I don't usually use other orals, I typically would stay from halotest in antibars, generally not needed unless someone's testosterone is real low or they're really struggling.

I'd rather save the liver burden for the wind straw at the end, and I would, I personally would generally leverage it harder and for a much shorter duration at the end of a prep versus in the beginning.

Uh, I learned that from AJ Sings, who probably learned that from Jay Cutler.

That's just kind of how I've leveraged it lately, and it seems to work better.

That's really on the world, though.

I think I've only used Halo in one guy in the last three years,

and he asked to use it.

It's just something, you know, I don't push a lot of blasts.

The Halo testing, like, I don't typically use it for guys anymore.

Oh, Halo testing.

Yeah.

Is there a reason for that?

Is that just due to

blood effects on blood break?

I just think mood-wise, not necessarily the best idea.

Yeah, yeah, for a majority, for sure.

Not something that most people enjoy using.

And I just, and why use it if it's not needed?

Right.

That makes sense.

I,

so, all right.

I'm just going to bring something up.

I,

you know, most, most athletes.

prefer to keep things like this private, but I feel like one of my purposes is to relate to my audience and connect with them over the things that we're doing and kind of just like relay our experiences because, you know, a lot of us will be looking on these forums to see some anecdotes and it really kind of honestly helps contribute to like what we feel like maybe our genetics are prone to, I guess.

So it's kind of the fun part about the podcast is sometimes I feel like it's a live in-person like Reddit where you can see the person that's actually talking.

But

I'm just going to say this straight out.

And I'm hoping Patrick is chill with this.

But for my prep cycle for this show, which I'm two weeks out, the thing I found the most interesting, and maybe he's just doing this just for me, for the sake of my genetics, and that I've discussed with him before that I don't have any aggression issues or anything on healer tests and I actually react very well for it.

Trend, on the other hand, that's something that I like to limit to 100 milligrams max.

So, you know, like everything I react fine with, but for trend, it's just like trend gets me fucking

gets me edgy, trend, trend exacerbates my irritation whenever I'm low on energy.

Just all of these things that are not not very beneficial for me, including insomnia.

So

he has not added Windstroll at all.

I have not been taking any windstroll.

And it's been a shock to me because I've always felt the same about you, about how Windstroll has always, I felt like Windstroll always gave me the look that I was looking for in order for me to get that like almost Hosema type

fucking stringy detailed lines everywhere.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So I just find it really, really interesting.

The stack is essentially test, mast, provirin,

trend, and then now we're adding in the halo.

Okay.

So it's very, it's just so interesting to me because I'm looking at my physique and I look, I look full.

I don't see the lines that I'd normally see with windshall, but I also just don't look as geared out.

And people have been telling me that I look healthier.

Yeah.

So I'm not sure what Patrick is going for for this show.

Obviously, it's a free show, so it's experimentation.

It's working.

I mean, there's no one way to do things, right?

Like I might have similar to Pat, I don't, I don't know, Patrick, but I might, um, I might have a standard, right, in my mind, what I would have guys run the prep.

It's very similar to what you just said.

Um, and the doses will change, right, depending on the person.

Like, there's guys that use 100 milligrams of trend.

This guy's use 700 milligrams of trend.

Um,

but it doesn't mean that's what everyone's using.

You know, um,

you, there's, there's guys that I've helped with their pro card that didn't need trend.

It just depends on the person, right?

And their diet and the look and the training and genetics.

And there's so many factors.

And that's kind of the thing.

You know,

an athlete that's been with me for a long time that's been competing, you know, we've tried Trend in the past and he didn't really love it.

So we're going to do another show this year without.

We're just going to use tests and DHTs.

And we've won.

So it just really depends.

You know, you, the part of it too, is you're seasoned at this.

You've been dieting a long time.

You know how to get lean.

You know how to tolerate hunger and you know how to manage your fatigue and all these things.

So you might not need a strong drug load because you know how to do it with your body versus just liberated chemicals.

And the problem with Monstrol, though, like you said, is while it brings out that detail, it does tend to flatten people out a little bit, right?

So then it becomes a little more difficult to have that bubbly look, you know, especially if you're not using GH.

I see.

Kind of the shape can suffer a little bit, you know.

Right.

That's what I was, that's actually the thing that I was thinking about might be his little attack at our prep as opposed to you know, my attack with Kyle last year.

As my calories were higher with Kyle.

I feel like I came into the show a little bit more,

I don't know,

fueled, I guess.

Like, like, I just, my calories were higher running in the last couple weeks for Patrick.

I mean, this is kind of Patrick's attack with most of his athletes, including Keon, is like a hardcore diet.

Like,

the deficit is fucking tough.

Um,

and it's been 70 grams of carbs on rest days, 130 on training days for me specifically,

which has been very low energy for sure.

But I mean, the glutes came in striated at about five weeks out.

And then we've just been pushing in and continuously.

And as he sees, he, you know, every other day check-ins, he's on top of it.

And as I flatten out, he'll decide if I need a refeed.

So, I mean, I do feel like there is a sense of fullness that is being maintained that I probably wouldn't have had last year on the wind stroll.

So I don't know.

It's interesting.

Maybe, maybe we're just going to end up eating less food going to the show, but maybe I'll maintain a similar level of fullness as last time.

Interesting shift.

It just depends.

Yeah.

But again, that's, I think that's the key in like between the client and the coach, like you and Patrick are doing, it's like that communication.

So you can keep changing stuff as it's needed back and forth, right?

As your look changes, as your energy needs changes, like constantly looking at that stuff, because it's going to change and it can change day to day, week to week.

It's the closer you get, right?

Like the end, got to talk to guys every day because every day the look is going to change.

Every day the mood is going to change.

The digestion is going to change.

Those are all things you got to keep track of.

But like you said, if you're coming in at five weeks out, that's a great place to be because at least then you have more room to play with that look versus like pushing a guy right to right before peak week when you're trying to get him lean and then

clean the look up.

Right.

yeah and I do feel like what show you is aligned

it's the tournament of champions

tournament champions pro in San Diego yeah it's um it's it's an NBC show mixed with a classic pro show uh so obviously it's a much smaller classic show but San Diego is like where I lived for five years and it's the place that I find my home and it's the place where I found my tribe where I feel like you know people the people I resonated with the most so I just feel the most comfortable going there plus it's like a two-hour drive from here so much better than having having to fucking fly somewhere and get a hotel and get fucking stressed out about that shit.

I fucking, I hate flying to shows.

Where are you now?

You're in L.A.

I'm in LA still, yeah.

But probably not.

I'll probably be moving to Kentucky in March.

Okay.

Why

nowhere?

Because my girl and her whole family and all the people that are close to her friends are there.

And

I don't know, man.

I never, ever thought that I would ever move back to the Midwest for anything anything or anyone, but I guess a girl got me to drag me back there.

So

fucking crazy.

Yeah.

Good pro.

That's a good one.

But

yeah, so I guess one of something I want to ask is: have you happened to ever have a client react?

Obviously, don't have to say any names or anything, but have you ever had a client react abnormally to a particular compound?

I just had a discussion with Hyacinth, who is Terrence's coach, Terrence's reference coach, and he used this word.

He said the word isn't correct, but he has a guy that almost seems like he was allergic to NPP, where he would try like

a host of so many different

brands or different, whatever sources, and he would get the same reaction.

And then he had a woman that was like almost that same type of allergic to Primo.

Wow.

No, I mean, outside of guys just getting side effects from

certain people don't tolerate different compounds.

Certain people don't tolerate different amounts of things.

Even see with testosterone, I have a lot of lifestyle guys.

Probably the majority of my clients are what I would call lifestyle guys at this point.

And everyone has a different tolerance for things.

There are some guys that

do really great on testosterone.

There are other guys you give them 150 milligrams and they have side effects, right?

The blood pressure goes up.

They can't sleep.

They get acne.

So.

Yeah.

But like a specific harsh reaction.

No, I mean, it's also possible that there's something in the gear that they're reacting to, right?

Especially nowadays, who knows what people are doing.

Yeah, it's interesting.

That's why I love bodybuilding so much.

Like we all have to train differently.

We all have to, a lot of us react differently to different compounds,

even down to like food choices in our GI tract.

I don't know.

Is there anything that you do for GI health?

What are like top things that you recommend?

I mean, not specifically.

I just

with a lot of guys, I'll just make sure that their food,

I try to get them away from just the chicken and rice shit all the time.

It's fine if they want to do that for certain meals, but I think it's very important they need a balance diet.

I want them to be included vegetables and have fiber in their diet and those sorts of things because you see it.

You see it in your athletes when they're eating nothing but rice is the only carb source.

Like they get backed up, constipated.

Like you see it in their gut.

They don't feel good.

So am I adjusting the GI stuff directly?

No, but I do try to make people.

have better food choices.

I try to encourage them to eat better,

more well-rounded stuff instead of like typical,

you know, chicken rice, chicken rice, chicken rice, all day, all day long.

You know, or even the fats that they take in.

One of the

pro that I know, we were looking at his fat sources and it was mostly from peanut butter.

You know, it's like, well, there's nothing necessarily wrong with peanut butter, peanuts themselves have a high mold content, so they can be inflammatory.

So I don't know if you want to eat a ton of peanut butter, right?

There's other better fats out there to supplement,

you know, just for

a health point.

The call froze again for a second.

What was the last thing you said about peanuts?

They have a high mold content.

Okay.

So they can be inflammatory.

It's not that peanut butter is inflammatory.

It's not like this.

I'm not making some like crazy Instagram statement about inflammatory foods.

It's that peanuts tend to be high in mold.

So the mold itself is inflammatory.

You don't want to eat a ton of stuff that's moldy.

And it just gets a lot of inflammation and stuff.

So we just change another fat source, right?

So some flaxseeds, some olive oil.

There's just other things you can incorporate for that same amount of fat to just mix it up.

So your body gets a better source, you know, versus eating just the same

on fat all the time.

Just silly things like that.

See, guys, the peanut allergy is based.

It's created for people with higher genetics to avoid mold.

I have been utilizing oral BBC lately.

I was wondering if you happen to ever utilize oral oral BBC or KPV or any of these things, or even something as simple as glutamine.

Glutamine, I have, if I some extent screwed up, I will use glutamine.

I've never, I personally never used any of the peptides ever.

I have lots of clients use them.

I've just never touched them.

I've recommended them to people for certain issues, but it's never been something I've ever used.

But yeah, I mean, oral BPC definitely can help with your gut.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

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Transcend HRT has worked with many professional bodybuilders and pro athletes, such as Thor Bjornsson, Phil Heath, and Jeremy Bundia.

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Nick Walker was trying to, was telling me and Jordan to try KPV.

It seems like it's really helped him a lot.

So something I want to try implementing.

But

the thing that I really liked about Chris Tuttle's approach with Jordan is how much fruits they've been implementing in his diet, which I would fucking love.

I I know Patrick does implement a few fruits here and there, like a serving or two of fruits, depending on, I think, you know, where we are in prep and how high the carbs are.

But

it's, it's kind of cool.

I feel like a majority or a lot of his carbs, Jordan's carbs was fruits.

And

there's certain things that like he does that in the bodybuilding bro science.

or whatever the bodybuilding industry they believe to get you thinner skin like you know like freaking the the Stair Master will help get you thinner skin.

And then, see, like, that's what I'm just like,

yeah, I don't know.

It's like, I wonder if it's, if they're, if, if it's really just like the calorie deficit that

they're you, that, that's really getting them to get lean enough.

Because for Jordan, you know, he, he really just implemented steps and that guy ended up being like the most conditioned on stage at the Tampa and Texas Pro.

Just cardio.

When cardio will modulate lymphatic fluid too, so you'll just have less

fluid under your skin, right?

You didn't notice I can see to my own physique times when I've not done a ton of cardio versus times when I've done a bunch of cardio, even if I'm the same level of leanest, I just, my skin does look a lot better when I'm healthy and I'm in shape.

Yeah.

You know, but it's not like

your actual skin getting thinner.

Right, right.

Yeah.

It's a lymphatic fluid for sure.

But do you ever find like any particular type of cardio seems to, I guess,

increase the reduction of lymphatic fluid?

Like, I don't know, higher heart rates or something?

With, well, so with cardio, I feel like probably similar to sort of literature, right?

We all have different anatomy.

We all fit into different things.

Just, you know, you might get a great result from doing some movement, but when I do it, it like excuse my shoulders up.

With cardio, I have guys do what they prefer that they'll do consistently, like versus tell them what kind of audio they have to do.

i don't do the stationary like i don't do the stair climber my legs get pumped up and that happens way before my heart rate gets up and then i camp on my knees so i i do a mix personally of either lower intensity like walking on an incline or running like i was a track athlete when i was younger so running is a natural thing to me that doesn't have to run um i enjoy it uh i but i like Yeah, I like to be in shape.

I like to keep my heart healthy and I like to keep my heart rate up a lot of times.

The low low-intensity stuff,

I utilize more.

I feel like that's low and fatigue is high.

It's hard to push yourself.

That's kind of my approach.

I'm not eating it.

I'm not sure if I'm always having a mix of different types of cardio.

But if I'm just maintaining my size, I prefer to just

push myself more with the cardio.

But I don't think there's any one form of cardio that's going to receive

more than any other.

I'm like, oh, I'm fine.

I'm doing okay.

Recovery is on point.

It's a good opportunity where I feel like I can implement something like Stair Master or Incline Mocking or even like, I've just fucking loved the elliptical recently.

recently

as lame as it is.

What do you think?

How do you feel?

How effective do you feel are the new research chems like SLU, MOTSI, 5-Amino, Methylene Blue, even something like Cardarine that's not new, but like being implemented at the end of prep?

I wouldn't use carterine.

No?

No.

There's like some cancer.

connections there with that stuff.

Right.

I mean, there's some evidence that this stuff works.

Is it super conclusive?

No.

And is it going to replace exercise?

No.

I mean,

with that stuff, I, you know, again, not something I use, not something I promote.

That's, I think, something that Vigor, Steve, and I don't see an eye on.

I think we agree on most things, but

he's very into that stuff.

I kind of stick with the more classic stuff.

I see.

But I don't think there's any, you know,

I don't necessarily see any harm in trying it, but I'd rather recommend stuff that I know is at least going to have an outcome that I'm looking forward when that's remotely safe.

I don't, I don't, no one really knows that stuff.

There's most of that stuff's done on rats.

Yeah.

I feel like the place that it can be beneficial is if you really are trying to push the barrier.

And when it comes to like energy, you can really feel a really big decrease in your performance.

And so you have to utilize some kind of mitochondrial support to, I guess, improve your performance, like say like the last week or so, or not the last week, but you know, um away from the show but hopefully maybe like within the last three weeks or something but in my opinion um i've had some smaller experimentations with it and i just don't think that anyone that is tight on money it's just it just makes any sense like value-wise i would not recommend it to anyone that's tight on money you know the simple fact is lifting weights decreases mitochondrial density and cardio increases it so

you could just do cardio to get the same effect right

more out of it i know that's not fun and sexy because people just want to buy a bunch of drugs, but

that's where I would go there first before I would leverage a bunch of stuff.

Yeah.

You know?

No, I agree as well.

I think the only place that I find, well, the part that I'm, I find interesting is like, you know, when people are doing cardio, they feel like

they're like,

what is it called?

They're

their neat is lower throughout the day.

Like they just don't want to move.

You know know what I mean the energy reserves oh like say that you do fasted cardio in the morning yeah so um you know that's supposed to increase I guess I don't know your mitochondrial production I don't know if fasting makes much of a difference with the mitochondria well I mean just the cardio cardio absolutely yeah

but I still feel like there's such a decrease in energy say that you're you know running 70 grams of carbs or something

that's where that's where I'm wondering like how effective could it actually be for running for like a couple of weeks?

It could.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm sure at the end of prep, when you're, yeah, I mean, there's been times that I couldn't even get off the couch.

I would sit there debating if it was working in a week or

I could probably hold it for another hour.

I think I'll just sit here.

I think at that point, sure.

But I think like

you're a lifestyle guy and you got 20% body fat.

Is SLU going to make a difference?

Oh, fuck no.

I doubt it.

You know, I'd rather, again,

leverage things like testosterone or something that we know is going to work.

Yeah.

No, for sure.

you know that that's the way i look at that stuff i mean if someone's got endless budget and and no risk you know adversity then why not take all that crap but right and also who wants to be injecting seven different things every day

it gets so annoying dude yeah you know from prep right it's like you're pincushion by the end you see oh yeah for sure

And it fucking pisses me off too, because I'm like trying to figure out how

just trying to figure out how to make it look like I'm not a pincushion, especially by the time the show comes around.

Yeah, with the new character.

Like, nowhere to hide.

Yeah, it's fucking rough, dude.

And then, like, you know, Ian and all these other guys are talking about like, if you inject in your lats, you're going to get nerve damage, and it just gets me even more paranoid about where I'm injecting and shit.

So, I don't know.

Yeah.

I want to go.

Um, if you're down, I want to jump to the questions because we only have like a few minutes to get to the other side.

I think we got them.

But, um, before we do that, real quick, I was hoping to ask

if you happen to like,

so I and some of my audience, I know, have some issues with sleep.

We've all experimented with different things.

I'm wondering if you happen to implement anything for people or any of your clients that have problems with sleep or insomnia.

Do you have any recommendations?

I start with magnesium.

Yeah.

Basic.

And the way to figure out the dose is you titrate.

So any form but oxide.

Again, I guess guys will obsess about what particular form.

I don't know if that's a good time.

I think it's not even debatable.

Like it's dumb.

As long as it's not oxide, any of those other forms,

what I found is you titrate up until your stool gets soft.

I know it sounds gross, you know,

and then that way you reach your maximum dose.

You got to back up a pill, but like, or

until sleep improves.

So, and some guys need 500 milligrams of potassium, some guys need a gram,

magnesium, some guys need a, you know, whatever.

The dose is going to depend on the person.

It depends on a lot of things, your enzymes, how much caffeine, how much carbonate drinks you take in bay,

stress levels, things like that.

It depends on what's waking them up.

Is it a nervous system thing?

Is it because he got a picnic?

Do you mind if I interject real quick before you continue on the sleep?

So during peak week, when you're drying out, dehydrating, you're getting, you know, maybe you're doing a little bit of water manipulation.

Do you ever find it okay to just continue to like, say, titrate up your magnesium if you need to if you're starting to get constipation?

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

yeah

um

because also especially if we're running something like so androidans will increase the comt comt is the enzyme that's going to clear adrenaline magnesium rebuilds that enzyme androdens cause that to go away tren especially causes loss of comt so if you're using tren and you're really close to the end it makes sense to bring the magnesium up okay

Potassium.

So a lot of guys wake up to piss, right?

A A lot of times you want to take potassium.

I did, there's a video on my YouTube channel that I did with Dr.

Dean about how to stop that from occurring.

A lot of it's, you know, assuming you're not drinking a gallon of water before you go to bed, a lot of it's just your sodium potassium ratio could be off, right?

A lot of bodybuilders are eating

way too much salt versus how much potassium they're getting.

And it's just all that water that's pooling down in your limbs when you're awake, when you lay down to go to sleep, it's run back to your kidneys and cause you wake up and pee.

Get your potassium levels back up.

It helps reabsorb.

so you're not actually cutting that pool in um i think that's something i need to work on then because one of my issues is peeing regularly but what i wanted to do is that i haven't checked yet is just check my prostate just to make sure things are okay um but i mean according to my blood work everything is fine so i mean um i guess usually you would see if your prostate was starting to get swollen you'd see like issues with with urination yeah

um

Yeah, my urination has just always been frequent, though.

Like I've, even since I was a kid, I would still wake up to pee at least once at least twice.

Frequent, more it would be strained, like the stream would be strained if your prostate was starting to swell.

Oh.

So like it would trickle.

Like you wouldn't pee like, you know,

you wouldn't pee like a racehorse.

The stream would be compromised.

That's hilarious because

yesterday I was like peeing on the fucking tree and my friend was like, dude, you pee like a racehorse.

Yeah.

So maybe I'm okay.

Okay.

It'd be the opposite.

You'd like stand at the toilet for 20 minutes trying to piss and nothing's coming out.

That's fucking hilarious.

I was like, what the fuck does that mean?

He's like, you never heard about peeing like a racer?

Yeah.

So

the

so I'd start there.

Melatonin, if you react well to it.

There's an extended, I know Pure makes an extended release one or sustained release or whatever they call it.

That seems to be a little better than the standard rate because the standard one helps you go to sleep, but then you, it wears off and you wake up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That just so people are aware, if you take too much melatonin on your blood work, it can show as raised prolactin because it can raise your prolactin to a degree.

Not that they're harmful, but just to be aware, if you get weird prolactin readings and you're taking melatonin, it could be that.

Interesting.

What else would you use?

You know, some vitamin C might help, right?

If you're very stressed, your cortisol should be the lowest at night, but sometimes with issues, especially if it gear used and prec, you know, you never know.

It doesn't hurt to take, you know, 500 milligrams, 1,000 milligrams of vitamin C before bed.

Or maybe cycle ashwagandha, potentially.

What are your thoughts on that?

I guess you could.

Yeah, I don't see a problem with that.

The

what else would I do?

And then

if the sleep is impaired and it's acute and not like for a long duration, you could leverage something like Benadryl, assuming that you don't have allergic reaction to Benadryl.

Yep, yep.

The dose depends on your body weight.

I don't want to give people dosing of those things here.

But

Benadryl will work.

Again, not something I would use long term yeah but it can help you fall asleep um

can make you grog you the next day

what else would i leverage um

i had to say it but that's the thing that's probably the biggest impact geisha nice i mean

that's i mean the way you kind of know when your growth like that's how i usually tell people their growth hormone

they're taking an adequate amount of growth hormone is when your sleep improves a lot um what about have have you had some people that have the opposite effect where their sleep

like, what do you think that is?

Is it just their genetics or?

No, it's probably the dose is not,

well, if it's underground stuff, we don't know, right?

Because who knows how it's actually dosed and how it's absorbent and stuff.

So that's kind of a wild card.

If it's pharmaceutical and it's keeping you awake, most likely the dose is less than what your pituitary would be putting out.

So it's actually disrupting your sleep versus what your normal circadian rhythm would be.

from a growth hormone.

So like if you're, you know, you know, if you took two units or three units or whatever, you know, and your sleep is worse, it's probably because your pituitary puts out more than that when you go to sleep, right?

So you'd have to just go up with the dose.

You know, and the sleep is definitely dose dependent with growth hormone and not that people need to necessarily leverage shitload of it, but like it definitely improves the higher up you go.

I see.

Okay.

Then I mean that there's there's other, then there's prescription drugs.

I think doxapin is probably the best.

that I'm aware of.

I don't sleep is not my specialty, but of the ones that I'm aware of, doxapin, it's used as an antidepressant in big doses, but in small doses, it's used for sleep medicine, three milligrams or six milligrams, and it can be written as a generic.

There's a brand name called Silenorbit that's wildly expensive.

But that seems to be one of the better prescription sleep drugs if someone really needs it.

They're really an insomniac.

There's Trazodone, there's things like that, but again, I don't know how far down the drug stuff you want to go with getting to sleep.

I'd rather try to address it without all that stuff.

No, I agree.

The reason I was asking is because the people that I discussed, the insomnia issues, is that unfortunately we do implement everything like magnesium,

L-tryptophan, fucking

literally everything that you were listing, essentially.

Like I have a whole list of things that I take,

you know, GABA, whatever.

But

the thing that's helped me the most, the craziest thing is like, obviously I avoided trazodone, but

I get a similar sedation from the antihistamines or like Benadryl, for example.

And obviously, I'm a little bit concerned about it because, you know, the increased risk of dementia or Alzheimer's in the long term.

But what I just try to do, honestly, and I just hope that this is, this helps, is I just supplement with cholinergic supplements every day, such as like CDP choline and alpha GPC regularly, which obviously helps my like, you know, cognitive ability during the day also.

And, and then, you know, hopefully whenever prep is done and I'm off the trend or whatever, maybe I can just come off of it again.

Yeah, you should be able to.

It's usually just regarding prep.

The guys need that stuff.

Yeah.

You could also get geneticists done to just see if you've had the genes for any of those

neurological things.

Dementia, Alzheimer's, you know, that we know the genes.

They test GTCV pro.

If you don't have those genes, most likely you wouldn't be getting that.

Unfortunately, I have a little bit of those genes in there.

Okay.

Yes.

Grandma has it too.

So,

yeah, I got to be a little extra careful.

Cool.

All right.

Let's ask these questions.

Yeah.

Bo Alexander asks his love for anadrol trend and test lol and how to make that sustainable.

Sustainable.

It's not sustainable.

It's a cycle for guys that have kind of reached their kind of limit and they need to push harder to get to the next size.

I don't think it's sustainable at all.

And I would only use the anadrol.

Typically, I'd only use it for the last four weeks.

Right.

Because about then that's when your appetite goes to shit and it doesn't work anymore.

But you gain most of your size from anadrol in the beginning and then it kind of just goes to shit and your appetite goes down um

sustainable i don't think that's the case i think you know

once maybe twice a year if you're if you're a career person that needs that level of size but i don't you know how many guys even need to push that big i did it to get to 240 and then realized 240 was too heavy that's crazy bro 240 at seven and a half at five seven five seven and a half yeah no i'm 210 now 240 was too big damn bro i couldn't i was exhausted all how lean do you think you you were at 240?

I was pretty lean.

It was definitely single digits.

Wow.

I can

get pictures.

Yeah, my wife wasn't super happy with it.

And everywhere we went, people want to talk about bodybuilding.

So, you know, I'm 50 years old.

It wasn't really the conversation I want to get in

a grocery store.

That's funny as shit.

Actually, that reminds me that I wanted to say earlier, and I totally forgot.

When we were talking about training and that being one of the biggest biggest variables, that's difference between different between the top pros.

I think one of the things that I find really interesting about Terrence Ruffin and Jordan Hutchinson's little blow-up phase after their long health phase that they had due to their surgeries was not only was it like jumping back on compounds and also jumping back on like a

decent nutrition and diet plan that wasn't too crazy, you know, in terms of a surplus, but it was also the fact that like, you know, they had like this this massive required deloading phase, essentially, where they couldn't really train properly, or they actually had to take a couple weeks off of training simply because of their surgery recovery.

And I feel like, I think, I just, if you, what Jordan and I were discussing is it seems to be like a compounding factor of, you know, the compounds, the food, and then reinducing the training, where, like, oh my God, dude, any fucking training you're going to do, you're going to get a stimulus out of it.

And that seemed to blow them up in that short period of time.

So

I don't know.

It seems like something interesting.

Jacob Parker92 asks, differences of female HGH use.

If lower IGF-1 conversion, then why a lower dose?

They just

respond to it differently than men.

You don't want to leverage,

you just don't want to leverage that much GH in a female, unless they have a terminal disease.

For

physique stuff, they're not going to get the full benefit of

the IGS.

IGF aspect of it.

They're going to get mostly the HGH thing, which can make blood sugar and things like that worse if you push it.

Yeah, most females don't need.

I put my wife on one milligram of three.

I use a serastem for a year to fix her knees.

And that was about the most she could.

I never went above that, but three at first was even a lot for her.

It was like a lot of water treating her knees and stuff.

So you would say a lot is around somewhere above three on average.

For a female, yeah, most of them probably only need like two.

Okay.

Depending on what they're trying to get out of it.

I mean, are we talking with female bodybuilders?

Who knows what those girls use?

Right.

Right.

It's a little different.

You know, I just feel like for a regular, you know, a girl that wants to be fit, I don't think they need nearly as much as a guy.

Or like a bikini competitor, maybe issues.

It's all drugs, like a lot of things are sexually dimorphic, meaning they're different in men and women.

Right.

Yeah.

You and I are not the same.

Yeah.

As females, that is.

Right.

I've been having a lot of fun just like learning more about the female biochemistry and how it relates to bodybuilding recently.

I just, it's just so much more, it just feels so much more complicated and fragile.

Brad Emerson asks, oh, never mind.

It was another question of best way to dose to run test trend anadrol.

Like he was people love that.

You know, someone asked

ChatGPT the other day a question about a cycle for mass, and it literally recited back something I had said.

No way.

That's crazy.

He goes like the like that how AI maybe isn't that accurate if it's just quoting people.

Yeah.

Because it was something it was like similar to that.

It was like test trendanadrol.

And I was like, where do you think that came from that's crazy that's hilarious yeah um best way to dose

best way slash dose to run test trend anadrol like you were

this is question

i know it's kind of i think the anadrol thing i think the anadrol thing is easy right 50 milligrams probably at the bottom 150 at the top i know that there's a lot of pros that use more i don't know if using more than 150 is going to do a shitload um

outside make you sick i would say just on the new tolerance and how many times you use it.

If it's your first time using Android, 50 is probably fine.

If you use it a bunch of times and you're 270 pounds, you might need more.

And like I said, I would use it just the last four weeks of the cycle.

To me, it didn't, it never makes sense to front load a cycle with an oral.

Why would you start with more milligrams and then drop the milligrams out?

Because now you've reduced the stimulus.

It's like you wouldn't do that with exercise or food.

Like as you're growing, you're not going to start bringing the food down.

Right.

As you're getting stronger in the gym, you're not going to lower the weight.

So, why would you lower the gear load?

So, like, I'd use it at the end as the as the gains start to slow to bring it back up again.

Um, test and trend, I think, is an individual thing.

There's some guys that like high test and low trend.

There are guys like me that prefer low test and high trend.

Like, if I bring the test up high with trend, I have awful side effects.

If I can run it, I could run 700 acetate or 800 an anthate if I use 600 tests or less.

Yeah.

If I ran 1200 tests with that, I'd feel awful.

Yeah.

So that's an individual.

Some guys need the opposite.

Right.

My boy Steve Cochrane can run tread in like

what, 300 to 600 like year-round, and it does hardly affects his blood work.

Yeah.

I run 150 and I can't sleep.

Yeah.

It's it's but again, it doesn't always affect, you know, I see that a lot in the

in the successful pros, a lot of times their blood work doesn't get that fucked up after a show.

Yeah.

And it's a genetic thing.

If you can tolerate drugs until you get that big my blood work was pristine after my last show it was shocking because you got you're able to tolerate that stuff that's why you could do this yeah um i also did take a fuck ton of antioxidants throughout the entire prep and a lot of glutathione so i'm wondering if that made some difference as well but probably didn't hurt yeah philip 9705 asks ace inhibitors versus arb for bodybuilders controlling blood pressure i had to pick on i guess an arb I'd rather go

I'd rather figure out natural well like what's causing blood pressure first and fix it naturally versus just throwing drugs at it.

You know, because usually there's a reason for it.

Is it your disrupted sleep?

Is it a hydration thing?

Is it estrogen?

Is it right?

It's funny how you see that.

Like everyone got terrified of the AIs and let their estrin go all the way up here.

And then everyone's blood pressure went up here.

And everyone was like, oh, throw blood pressure medicine at it instead of maybe just addressing the leftover issue.

So I usually look at labs and figure out.

what else is occurring with the person before it's going to drugs, right?

And then if it's, if it requires drugs to manage, then it's usually like Telm Sarkin or something similar at the lowest effective dose and then testing blood pressure to see if it's controlled versus just arbitrarily throwing blood pressure medicine at the problem.

Yeah.

So

I'm on board with that too.

Pilot T.

Suede asks, do they really use Diana Ball during PCT?

No.

How would that work for PCT?

Who said that?

I never think I ever said that.

I don't know where you got it from.

Maybe you guys said it.

Maybe you said it as a joke at one point.

Yeah, Yeah, probably.

I was going to say that.

Probably.

I don't know if you can have anyone use Dianabol for anything.

Sefer Shiraki asks how to deal with Boldenon hematocrit and what's the starter dose on top of 350 test.

These are oddly special.

Okay.

So

usually most guys are going to run EQ

somewhere between 50% and 80%.

of tests, depending on your estrogen.

The biggest issue there is it's concrete estrogen.

And on the androgen side, EQ binds to the androgen receptor with with 61% affinity, and testosterone's 67% affinity, testosterone's 31%.

So if your EQ is too high versus your test, it will occupy the android receptor.

Testosterone can't bind to that.

So not only have you lowered your estrogen low, but you now lower the androgen load even lower, and that's where that paranoia can come in.

So basically, you're just running you.

The

hematocrit issue in and of itself is not necessarily an issue.

What we're looking at

when we're deciding if you need to have phlembotomy done are four markers typically.

Hemoglobin, hematocrit, platelets, and ferritin.

You want to check all four of those.

If hemoglobin and hematocrit are just slightly above the range, but platelets are normal and ferritin is normal, you don't need to give blood, typically.

Again, these statements, someone should talk to their own doctor before just taking this advice because I've not seen the person, so I can't really give personal advice.

If hemoglobin and hematocrit are elevated and platelets are high, yes, you should give blood because that is what's going to cause a clotting issue, but you also probably need to see an infectious disease person to find out why your platelets are high.

Estrogen can cause platelets to increase.

It could be directly related to estrogen as well.

But again,

we would need to see their labs.

If hemoglobin and hematocrit are high, platelets are normal, and ferritin is high, blood should be given as well because ferritin being iron will oxidize.

It can start to destroy your heart or kidneys, pancreas.

So you don't want that high.

Those are all rare situations, normally, which all you see in steroid uses are hemoglobin, hematocrit, like slightly above the range, platelets in the middle, ferritin somewhere in the middle or low.

And if someone's constantly giving blood,

then they'll drive the ferritin low, which will make you anemic.

So anemia is actually deadly versus having a hematocrit and hemoglobin one or two points above the range is not deadly.

So

it's much more of a risk just to arbitrarily give blood brace than those two markers.

So, and EQ doesn't seem to raise it in the long run any higher than any other stir.

It just does it faster, right?

Same with Annajol.

It'll get it really high, really quickly, and then it kind of levels out.

Same with all drugs, testosterone do the same thing.

And it's not a dose.

It's not like the more of the drugs you take, the higher and higher and higher it climbs, right?

It reaches a peak above the range, and that kind of just stabilizes.

If you notice during your cycles, it doesn't ever continue up, it just kind of hovers there.

Yep.

So I don't know if that answers his question.

No, that helps a lot.

That's very on board with what I've discussed with my doctor as well.

I mean, note the sad thing is every doctor nurse is taught this stuff, but they casually forget it

when they join these TRT clinics and then they see your blood work and like, oh my God,

your hemoglobin rheumatic or to like have to get blood.

They know better than that.

Yeah.

Yeah, there are definitely some doctors that are just,

I don't even know, man.

I

actually, I'm just going to fucking say this because I think it might help people, but my doctor is Maxwell Thomas, and he's

in his 30s, I think.

But this guy, I mean, I was having this discussion with someone else, but it just seems like sometimes the younger doctors are a little bit more open-minded and just kind of a little bit more on top of the shit.

But I mean, that's just a general assumption.

But yeah, if you guys are in the LA slash reset slash the Valley area, Dr.

Maxwell Thomas is a pretty great doctor, honestly.

And he's very open to talk about regarding any of this stuff.

So

I'm very lucky to have him, at least until fucking March when I move.

And then I got to find some fucking random person in Kentucky, which is probably not going to happen.

We could get to Telemod.

I get you someone to Telemad for you.

Thank you, bro.

Appreciate that, man.

That's saving my ass.

No offense against doctors in Kentucky, but I don't know if I would just go the

local doctor.

iski asks where have you been Kurt you disappeared where have I been I've been coaching people that's where I've been and we talked about this I don't know if it was on if you recorded that part yeah you know you and I both um now I both like have the opposite ends of of the Instagram thing going on so like my whole thing is coaching his whole thing is social media you can't really do both

you know the guys that do

The coaches that have a large video presence they coach,

there's got to be a give or take somewhere.

I don't know how they do it, but I'm imagining that it's not done in 100% for either of them because I can't.

I mean, I'm on 300 calls a month, like I told you before.

I just don't have time.

I was obviously, I'll come on your show anytime you want.

I just, I'm just very selective with what free time I have.

Yeah,

I appreciate that, man, a lot, especially like, even like through our discussions over DM, I could tell that you're just so fucking packed busy and everything.

So, I really do appreciate that.

Yeah, man.

No, and I want if the sad thing is, I miss it.

I just, we don't have time.

You know, I'd be like, he was like, here, take on 200 clients.

The heck are you going to fit that?

Right.

And you have a family.

Yeah.

So I have to manage my time carefully.

Carlos Louv

Louves something says, does fasted cardio really have a benefit?

From a, from an actual like fat loss outcome, not really.

I mean, the substrate used during exercise is relatively irrelevant.

I do mind fasting because it's the only time I'll do it, right?

I got to wake up before my kids.

I've got to get them to school and and got my day started.

So I do fasted.

Can you, if you did it post-prandio, meaning like in the period of time after your digestion, sure.

Is the outcome going to be any different?

I don't think so.

I don't have any study to show that the difference is it, could it yield maybe 1% more fat loss?

Sure.

If you're at that level of competition, like someone like you, perhaps.

But I mean, realistically, what does it really matter?

Right.

You're talking about calories burned and what really matters more than the substrate.

I mean, I would say the only place where you can really find some effectiveness is if you're utilizing a lot of, you know, you're leveraging a lot of drugs and that facet cardio.

Yeah, but that's again, that's a cardio question.

That's a drug question.

So from a pure cardio point of view, does it really make a difference?

Now, I've always just found it easier just to get the shit done in the morning before the rest of my day is no longer mine.

You know, like I was up at 5 a.m.

and I ran three miles this morning, but because I know like I don't have any more time.

The next time I'll get to sit down and not do something work-related, it's going to be 10 o'clock tonight.

So, I'm not doing cardio at 10 o'clock.

Do you find

your

mainly just effective in a facid state?

So, yohimbai is kind of interesting.

Yohimbine is not necessarily like

I don't view it as a fat burner per se, it's more of a fat uptake inhibitor.

So, it blocks the alpha receptors that allow fat to go into the cell more so than like a beta receptor modulator, like ephedrin beta-2 or clinbuterol beta-3.

Right.

Um, Meyerbegren.

So, it's almost like Johimbine.

I'd almost say Johimbaine and the mighty omiss be more useful in a state where you're over, like in a growth stage, right, to kind of prevent fat gaining.

I never felt good on Johimba.

I made my blood pressure do weird things.

My stomach felt weird.

I've always just either leveraged a fetrin and caffeine or climbuterol or a combination of both.

I see.

I feel okay on

Johimbine, which is obviously why it's okay for me to like utilize it.

But the main purpose for me utilizing is to attack the fat cells that are more related to estrogen

this

fucking ass cheeks glued

glutes and shit.

Yeah.

Yeah, you can use that kind of stuff.

But that's again more of like you tend to, you tend to have less beta receptors there, so they're stopped readily burning that off those areas.

Maybe even more alpha receptors there.

So it's kind of stopping.

It's still netting out the same thing.

It's just a different mechanism of action.

Gotcha.

Okay.

So you don't think it really matters about like like when to take it, like whether or not you're taking it for fast cardio or you're taking it for cardio later in the day after treating it?

You know, if someone tolerates it and they feel okay on it, they can use them for fast to cardio.

But does it make a difference?

Probably not.

No, because again, if it's stopping the alpha receptors, you're might eating.

So what is it to actually stop it?

Gotcha.

Interesting.

Okay.

Paulo, Paolo Lopez, asks, what's your opinion?

What's your opinion of Bordo?

Oh, he probably meant to say about.

What's your opinion about dihydroboldanone DHB?

Honestly, I think it's toxic.

Not something I screw around with.

So the only two cases I've ever seen of liver failure in bodybuilders have both been from DHB.

Now, one of them, the guy was on it for a year.

I don't know why the fuck you stay on that thing for a year.

It's

chemically itself can be toxic based on its structure.

And the problem is in order to get it to be a liquid so it's injectable, they have to use potentially toxic solvents too.

So it's it's probably a combination of the two.

But is it some magic anabolic?

I mean, I'm sure people for the last 50 years people have been searching for some magic anabolic.

I don't think it exists, right?

Yeah.

I mean, it's not from a chemical point of view, it's not unique in any capability.

The unique steroids that have unique properties that other drugs do not possess are TREN, TEST, Anadrol, Dianabol, and Winstrol.

Those all have some unique property that no other steroid has.

All the other ones have overlapping properties that you could detain from one of those five.

GHP would be considered a not unique steroid in my mind.

It's an intermediate in the production of primobol, and that's what was discovered.

Samatapari asks, is insulin used in all divisions or is it really just open?

I'm sure it gets used in all divisions.

Most of my guys don't use insulin.

The guys that I work with that do,

I guess they're all in open.

Most of them don't use a ton of it.

Yeah, I mean, I think just going back to what we said in the beginning of this, I think it's more related to how much food they have to eat, not that it's so wildly anabolic on its own.

I think it just comes down to everybody needs it or not.

I never needed it.

You probably never needed it.

You said you use a little bit of it, but I'm with two units.

It's really, you know, gives you a little boost, I guess, but it's not, you know.

Yeah, right.

You know, once you get to the big anything, it's any cherry on top.

Yeah, it's, but you're hardly, you know, that's nothing compared to what some people just use.

Milos is 100 units.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah, I guess my clarification on that would just be, especially after discuss or talking about this privately with people in the industry nowadays, I feel like it's used less now.

And if it is used, it's used for something like bringing up a weaker body part, like mine was.

So specifically on like one day or two days a week that you're hitting that body part.

I agree.

And it's not true.

And that it's really, yeah.

No, because I think guys more are nowadays, I think guys more concerned about how long they can live and do this for.

Yep.

I think like the early 2000s or late 90s was like the peak of the dangerous stuff.

I agree.

Morpsey asks, endogenous insulin versus exogenous fast-acting insulin to manipulate DH response in IGF-1 binding proteins.

Endogenous insulin versus exogenous fast-acting insulin.

So I wouldn't.

No, I mean, that's not.

Estrogen is going to be the main modulator of the binding proteins.

I wouldn't leverage insulin.

Like, I'm not sure what his question is.

I wouldn't leverage that would not be the

that would not necessarily be the reason to

use it.

That would be more to magnify an IGF response, but not

the response, not messy the binding proteins.

He asked another question that I feel like is actually a pretty good one.

He asks, Morps, he asks, what has been some realizations from coaching that you've had, et cetera, like different diet, PD, training responses, doses, et cetera.

I think one of them is what I said before.

If you asked me a year ago, I would have have said food was the most important thing because most people screw their food up.

And now it's changed more to training.

I find more mistakes in training than I do in anything else.

And that just being overall, people are just doing way too much and too much junk.

Like the stuff they're doing in the gym, most of it is total waste of time.

And they're just right.

Like you see these guys in the gym for three hours just doing these goofy fucking things with these garbage weights for no reason, just going through the motions for no reason.

Like with no plan, no progression.

That's one of the biggest things I've realized just now,

having dealt with thousands of people.

Yeah, food.

I think people struggle with hunger.

I think a lot of people really struggle.

I think guys like you are rare that can tolerate hunger well and do this successfully.

Definitely being a competitive bodybuilder is not for everyone.

Definitely takes a special person.

I think also just that everyone just has different needs.

I don't think that there's, I don't know of any two clients that do the same thing, not the same gear, not the same food, not the same druda necessarily.

It just depends on the person,

right?

What motivates them to get stuff done?

Otel Rader asks, well, actually, he says, fuck, let's go.

Real science is coming.

I'll try.

Glenn Lennehan asks, top three all-time favorite bodybuilders.

Wow,

that's pretty tough.

He says, favorites, not best.

Danny Padilla.

Danny Padilla, really.

That guy had a sick physique for a short thing.

Danny Padilla would be my favorite.

Cool.

Favorite, not best, right?

No, he wasn't fantastic bodybuilder.

I think he was like the youngest Mr.

America ever.

And then he kind of just disappeared, right?

He's still around.

He's live.

He does interviews randomly.

Just hanging out.

He lives in

upstate New York.

You know, that's a really hard one.

Kevin Lavrone.

Kevin Levron.

Freaky.

So freaky.

You know, Kevin, let's say Kevin and Flex Guiller tied just in the freakiness.

You know, maybe even Lee Priest in there.

I know I'm giving too many answers now.

You know, I have a lot of respect for Frank Singh because I think Frank Singh was one of the first guys that could really move well on stage and show that it wasn't just pure size sometimes.

You know, I know he's kind of irrelevant nowadays, but

for guys like you and I, I think

I'm sure he had some

play in your,

you know, just the way he can move and

there's tons of guys that are hot bigger than him now that he'd still beat.

It was cool that he was seen more of like an, yeah, he was seen more of like an artist.

That's the aspect I like the most about him, honestly.

Yeah.

I mean, and he was just tried to be very intuitive with everything he did, right?

He was basically the one who invented carb cycling

and really started looking at that stuff when the other guys were just eating as much food as they could, right?

And then just removing carbs altogether to diet.

Yeah, I mean, I guess,

yeah, I guess that those would be my favorites.

Cool.

About Paris, I just thought was great.

Just from a pure aesthetics point of view, there's not many guys that still look, even today, there aren't many guys that look better than Bob Paris.

Yeah, very aesthetic.

You know,

I don't know why, but I fucking loved Paul DeLitt.

Well, he was a freak, too.

That's a small question, man.

There's so many good bodybuilders.

And I left out all the guys today.

You know,

there's still guys today that I, you know, I enjoy.

Yeah.

Big Ramon fan.

I really hope he does well this year.

Yeah.

I just love those arms, man.

I just want massive arms.

I'm trying to pick the best questions because there are so many.

And I got like five minutes.

Okay, cool.

Yoseba Ibarra.

He's an avid watch of the podcast.

He's always been around with both Mind and Foods podcast.

He says he asks best time to take four IUs of GH.

For bed.

Before bed.

Yeah.

For most people, you should go for bed.

Do you still, do you still

do you still have anything against splitting up dosages during the day?

Can it be done short?

It doesn't make a ton of sense to me.

It'd be like you're splitting up your testosterone dose because you're getting a much less of a peak.

The peak is not going to be...

The peak with anything is what's going to control the outcome to a large degree.

Also, when you split it up, you're stopping glucose uptake.

So then if you're a typical bodybuilder and you're eating chicken or rice and now you've stopped your body from being able to use glucose, what the fuck is a growth hormone doing?

And then, bodybuilders in the past, then what they would do is then use insulin on top of it to kind of then help with that, but then you're making yourself diabetic.

Yeah, none of it makes any sense to me.

We

have tons of data medically, but it's it's

I've been on growth hormone.

I have a prescription for growth hormone because I have uh I have what would be considered technically a terminal disease.

So I have to be on growth hormone for the rest of my life.

And I have tons of lab work and scans and all this stuff done.

Um, and I've spent years in school studying this stuff.

I I couldn't give you a good reason why splitting it up makes any sense.

Gotcha.

Um, not to say that there might be some random reason to, but I

um, I've never found a good one.

Okay, stable dennis asks

says no matter what you ask, you're gonna get a thorough and intelligent answer from Kurt.

Big shoes, man to Phil.

Um, there's a lot of HGH questions.

Um, you can do another one, man.

I'll come back on it, man.

Oh, yeah, that'd be awesome, man.

That'd be sick.

Beer Arms Second asks, what's a high-end dose of testosterone?

1,000 milligrams or 1,500 milligrams?

I feel like this depends on the person.

Yeah, it depends on the person.

There's guys who use two or three grams of tests.

I mean, I found

after like a gram, it starts to kind of slow down on what it's doing a little bit.

You know, I feel like it's what I've heard.

It's cruising until about a gram, and then it kind of, you know, but again, I'm not a 300-pound guy.

It's possible a guy, you know, that's 300 pounds, maybe two grams, still moves the needle a little bit.

When I've gone, I've, you know, when I've done over a gram, I got a lot of water from it.

Yeah.

Did I get any more growth out of it?

I don't know.

I don't think so.

I feel like for me, the sweet spot is honestly probably like 600 to 750 is probably a much better place than even more than that.

I'd rather leverage something else in there.

That's been my sweet spot.

Yeah.

600 this last offseason.

Yeah, I just don't know why.

You know, when I was younger, yeah, I'd done, you know, grams a bit, but what I don't know what I was getting out of it said bloat.

Yeah, I think 750 will be my new sweet spot as well this new this new season.

I believe that's what Nick Walker's sweet spot is 750.

Wild, crazy.

And so like even,

yeah, that's definitely on the lower end of open, but for sure for Nick, and then also Martin, his sweet spot's about 750 or 700.

And then with the EQ, like it's about the response to it, right?

If you respond to it, but you need more.

Right.

And then there's a lot of classic competitors too, like michael debull samos

yeah a bunch of other guys um

riley rindon asks

thoughts on idf1 receptor downregulation from high hdh usage

unlikely at best so we we have long-term studies that were backed by the fda on decade-long studies on six milligram of seristim use

uh long-term use, and there was no adverse effects.

Nothing like that occurred.

So I think a lot of these things are conjecture at best.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Sam O'Kelle asks, dive into trends PPAR effects.

That's a whole video on itself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jaeger Lifts asks, if using GH for fat loss, should you pin it in the, put it the night before if doing sub-Q for AM cardio?

Yeah.

You should always.

Because if you do it in the morning,

if you do it in the morning, it's

a waste like 20%.

When are you doing?

Wait, and also, like,

when are you getting the effect from the GH at that point?

If you put it in the morning, this you're waiting four hours to do your cardio.

I mean, there's a lot of bodybuilders that choose to do it, I am, but then again, you also waste a little bit of the GH by doing so.

It's also a cytokine.

So there's more to it than just that.

So not only is there waste, the waste occurs because of its function.

So the growth hormone receptor is a cell surface receptor.

It does not go in the cell.

When growth hormone binds to the receptor, there's a JAX stat pathway that's downstream.

That's what goes in the cell.

The growth hormone itself doesn't enter the cell.

The reason being is the growth hormone is a cytokine.

So growth hormone is part of the immune system.

So the immune system is a vast thing.

It's not as simple as people think.

It's part of that family.

And if growth hormone were to enter the cell because it's related to a cytokine, the body senses that and has an immune response.

And that's what kills the 30%.

So you're wasting, especially if you're using an underground growth hormone with debatable function anyway, now you're losing another 30% of it.

It doesn't make a shitload of sense.

Just to get a peak faster doesn't necessarily mean it's going to work better with that.

That's just not, you know, it's again, these drugs,

these companies spend billions of dollars designing these drugs.

They're pretty aware of the best ways to use them.

Like if IM was a better way to use growth hormone, they would, that's what they would do to SARSTIM.

Okay.

Gotcha.

They put it up too.

It's not that the pharmaceutical companies are looking for ease of use on that.

Diabetics are ticked insulin all day.

They're looking for the most bang for the buck.

How to use this drug to stop this disease.

That's how it's used.

Okay, gotcha.

Maybe we'll just ask one more question because now you got to go.

Thoughts on training upper, lower, rep scheme, and set, same for enhanced slash natural?

I've always thought it made sense to train like you're natural regardless if you're enhanced or not.

Yeah.

Because the response, and I did a video with Paul Carter on Big Paul's channel, Anabaic Bodybuilding, about this.

The drug response to muscle growth is a totally separate thing than the exercise response.

I'm not going to go

exercise, mechanical tension, steroids, and growth hormone are the android receptor, the IGF-1 receptor, and PI3K.

They're totally separate mechanisms.

So, to train like you're on drugs doesn't make a ton of sense because the mechanical tension is what matters.

You should be experiencing that when you're natural anyway.

There's no reason to.

And recovery, like we talked about, the nervous system is not improved from steroids.

So, just because it masks the feeling at the muscle doesn't mean that your nervous system is recovered.

It's not like

most guys that are on drugs, they're leveraging just a drug response.

They're not, they're wasting their time in the gym doing unnecessary stuff.

I think the last time we were discussing, the last time we had a podcast, though, we did discuss that there were some places where you could implement one of these top coaches' training styles, like Patrick's, like P-Tor's, like SST style, if you are enhanced.

Like the whole like-not to say it wouldn't work, but is it needed?

Probably not.

And again, if you're talking about top, top-level guys, like yourself included,

it doesn't necessarily apply to like the average guy in the gym you know and i i don't know who's i don't know the people asking these questions but a lot of times the assumption is if if you're asking these questions you probably don't know and you're probably not getting a result that's why you're asking questions so i'm trying to help guide

i think your answer is perfect you know guide people to make better decisions with their stuff instead of making it more confusing right i don't think that you need to train any different on drugs I think I think you making at least the distinction between the two is like is what's perfect because we have both advanced lifters and we have you know both beginners on this podcast so

I think that's the cool thing too is being able to make the distinction between the two because I think that's what is just exciting is like you know why not have more knowledge over this whole thing as a vast base of yeah people with different genetics and different yeah variances

um all right i asked one last question at the end of every podcast but uh

I don't know if you remember this question, but

if you were to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one message you could send to to the entire world today, what would that message be?

To the entire world.

Yeah.

Has to be to the entire world?

Preferably.

Okay.

Well, thanks for listening.

How about that?

All right.

That's good.

Works for me.

Cool.

Thanks for coming on, man.

Where can everybody find you?

Instagram, kurt.havens.

YouTube, kurt.havens.

I have not had time to make content in like a year, so I apologize.

I have no new content up there.

I'm on Vigorous Steve's channel once a month with steve and dr dean

uh anabolic roundtable so that's probably where most of my content is going to be um i hope to come back here again soon anytime you want me to come back finish up these questions um

yeah instagram is probably the easiest place to find me and i my website is atomiclifecoaching.com um consults coaching

uh there's one book up there currently i plan to write more again when i have more time um and i'm working on some more online education with uh AJ Sims, and we have some current uh online started education with Big Paul that's available on Big Paul's Anaboth Bodybuilding channel.

Nice,

yeah.

Thanks for coming on, man.

That was sick, sure.

Hope you have a great rest of your day, your fucking grinding-ass workday, and um,

hopefully, you have some extra time with family.

Thank you, brother.

I'll see you later.

All right, I'll see you later, too, bro.

Thanks again.

Bye.

See ya.