Wesley Vissers: A Transparent Look & The Comeback For Olympia

Wesley Vizors, the Dutch IFBB Pro, Olympian, famous YouTuber and content creator, creator of vintage aesthetics, and the winner of the Arnold Classic 2024 IFBB Romanian, IFBB Poland and IFBB France Pro in 2019, 2021 and 2022.

What was the day today?

Leg day, so very important day for me.

Also did a blood draw this morning.

Always a busy schedule.

Of course, with kids, it's an entirely different story but uh you know we're making it work yeah um well

i guess both of those things are really big topics that i was curious about too with um your own plan right now

first off i don't understand how you manage having kids and competing at the same time yeah i'm astounded by that um one of my buddies eric janeke is kind of in the same spot um he has two really really young kids and um

he he was telling me about prior to when he got his pro card, he had a lot of trouble being present with his family.

I think in the last few weeks of prep,

how excruciatingly low the calories were in his diet would start to cause him to phase out while he was with him.

And

which could be, I think, depending on how you look at it, a pretty

monumental and I think drastic thing to

I think to handle when you're dealing with really young kids.

So I don't know.

It was a pretty stressful for his family at least that he

opened up about.

So

I'm impressed that you're able to do it.

Appreciate it.

I know if I'll ever be there.

It's an art.

It's an art to they always say in high professional sports there isn't really a balance, but you can still strive for it.

And it really has a lot to do also with the way you approach things in terms of managing stress as well you can either stress about certain things for example just a small example of many like your kids they're a kid for a reason and they make a mess for example or they wake up earlier you can take it as a negative and say oh i got to clean this up i got to clean up after them it's not fitting in my schedule or you can think hey this is extra neat this is extra calories burned during the prep, and this is extra cardio, extra steps.

And it really depends on how you approach each situation on how it affects your day and then how it affects your week and your affects your whole prep basically.

So really, to me, it's stress management and the way your mindset.

around certain situations is the key factor into managing and balancing the family life out with professional bodybuilding.

Gotcha.

I've listened to a little bit of your story and a little bit of your own protocols and stuff on your YouTube channel and various podcasts.

But I guess what would you say is the

primary ways that you manage your own stress?

I know that you also discussed doing steps at one point.

Yeah.

Yeah, basically, like as a father, your number one stress is indeed what you mentioned at the beginning,

kind of feeling guilty of not spending enough time with your family because you have a family for a reason you're a father you have a responsibility so to me it's really the mental stress it would give me to not be able to spend time with them so i've created kind of a situation in my life where every single day i'm able to spend like breakfast with them do the morning walk with them do the after-dinner walk with them i usually also cook for the family for example every single night so there are plenty of moments yeah there are plenty of moments in the day where i do spend time with them and and do stuff with them.

But honestly, it also has a lot to do with how your partner deals with you being a bodybuilder.

And luckily, I met her literally, like I'm sitting right now in the office of the gym.

I met her here in the gym.

So this is originally her own gym and now it's our gym.

Oh, no way.

Yeah.

I don't know why.

I just assumed that you guys started it together.

Yeah, well, we met in the month that the gym was opened.

So we we pretty much started together, but I did really see it as her gym in the first few years as it was more of a CrossFit related gym.

But now, obviously, it's more of a bodybuilding gym since I got involved a lot.

But,

you know,

she has done bodybuilding competitions in the past.

So she knows exactly when I'm a little bit more, because you can't really prevent that a bit more distanced emotionally.

during prep, for example.

She understands where that comes from.

She has experienced the hunger levels and the lower energy levels, for example.

So she knows exactly where, you know, how that feels.

But also,

I'm in a unique, very fortunate situation that I'm able to make this as a career.

So it actually gives back something as well.

So especially last year when I won the Arnold, our whole gym pretty much transformed in terms of being able to get new equipment, allowing my income, allowing her to take more hours off from the gym, to spend more time with the kids, for example.

All of these things enrich her life as well.

So she, in turn, when I have to go to the gym, she then doesn't mind to spend more time with the children than I'm able to.

So it's really how

you handle every single day as a family and how you support each other in your day-to-day.

life because she does have responsibilities at the gym so I can see the schedule I know okay I'm gonna I gotta out before she goes to the gym.

So, we kind of switch around babysitting our own kids that way.

So, they're never really alone, or we never have to rely on other people.

They're always pretty much at home, which is a big benefit for me as well.

Did she start off in CrossFit first?

Yeah, she first, the very first thing she was as a professional judo athlete, actually almost going to the Olympics, even at that level.

But then she had too many injuries.

And, you you know when you get injuries in judo or any fighting sports you kind of are forced to quit and then she had to find another challenge which was actually a bikini fitness like a body fitness

physique class which was

something you could do in the Netherlands as before

the IVB elite and the NPC split off then there were different classes still as an amateur so she did a few bodybuilding bikini competitions before, and then she was like, Okay, this is not really for me.

She wanted to challenge herself physically instead of like you're at your worst when you look your best.

She just wanted to be at her physical best at all times.

So then she started cross-fitting, doing competitions there, and starting a gym that way.

But she is somebody who really wants to challenge herself every single time.

It doesn't really matter which sport it is, as long as it's challenging.

She's happy about it.

Oh, that's sick.

That's cool.

that's something that i find really um admirable in a woman um my own partner i don't know i uh i think when i

i don't know if this is exposing myself

the first time i met her was uh at a at the young only gym and when i saw her she had those like capped shoulders and i'm like oh she looks like a competitor yeah immediately yeah you can tell energy you know yeah you can tell yeah because uh to enrich the story of before i met her at this gym but i met her when she was eating out of a Tupperware container.

So without even saying a word, you kind of already know what kind of a person it is.

You immediately understand each other way more when you even see something small like that.

And that's pretty much how it got started.

And to this day, it has really helped that we both had that experience and that discipline to put into the sport.

That is so cool.

So you didn't actually secretly convert her into bodybuilding.

No, it wasn't actually your fault.

The funny thing is, we did the exact same competition back in 2013 when I won my first bodybuilding show as an amateur.

But she did the same show with an in bikini.

And the funny thing was her father was sitting in the audience and he already said.

to her about me, I think that guy is going to win.

And that's how they and that's how they kind of still had me in their mind all those years later.

Then Then I got, came to this gym.

And I didn't even come to this gym to work out.

I came to this gym because

a physical therapist was here who had a big name in the Netherlands as who could help bodybuilders and stuff.

So I came here, but they were running this space together.

So he was paying half the rent.

She was paying half the rent.

So I got here for him, but I met her at the same time.

So that's really, and it was 45 minutes away.

So we would have never met otherwise.

It was too far away.

So some things are just meant to happen.

Oh, that's awesome, bro.

Kind of gives me a little bit of chills.

Total tangent, by the way, but I actually lived in the Netherlands for about three, four months when I was like seven years old.

Oh,

yeah.

My family,

obviously, I was in the I don't even remember anything, obviously, because I was seven years old, but yeah, they put they put me in like the kindergarten there.

And I, I just remember,

I think this is when Hagenslag first came out.

Yeah,

bro, I would douse my bread in that shit it was crazy uh i'm pretty sure i also uh pretty sure i also saw my first uh like titties on a poster when i was there i'm feeling yeah i don't know how far you were away from amsterdam or uh yeah

could be a cause there but yeah but you mentioned haggl slug it was a very popular thing to put on your bread as a child for me as well not the healthiest thing but very popular yeah for real i mean i could still kind of wish it was still around i feel like i would have used it for pre-workout nowadays oh definitely yeah

um

so i guess uh one thing i'm curious about because i

in my opinion legs have been my weakest my my weakest muscle group personally as well and um

it's been something i've had to do a lot of experimentation with in terms of growing um i remember originally back when i was in college i had a little bit more of a i don't know if i would call it just kind of that college age mindset where I would go to the gym and I'd be like, I'm going to give it my absolute all.

And then I would end up just maxing out on eight reps on squats with as many plates as possible.

And

you know, when you're going to the gym and you're trying to put as many plates as possible and you want to look good with as many plates as possible, you also tend to go extremely close to failure on the first few sets.

So I would normally end up burning out to the point where I think my maximum effort and optimal load was for like maybe three sets of squats.

And after that, I would try to do my hamstrings and my calves and my other, you know, my other quad exercises.

And I would honestly just be burnt out by that point.

So none of that was optimal in my personal opinion.

At least 75% of the actual workout wasn't optimal.

So

I guess my curiosity right now is,

considering that I think we all can agree that you have some of the craziest upper body proportions on the stage,

what is your plan now, now that you're planning to take this long period of time off to grow?

So the whole reason I'm taking this time off is

a short backstory about the Arnold Classic.

So I did the Arnold Classic last year.

I won it, of course.

And then I won the Arnold Classic UK.

So I was on a big hype train also for myself.

And then you always want to take things a little further, even though I could have just been the exact same as at the Arnold, at the Olympia, for example, but you want to be a bit more crisp.

But what you then notice is the weak points you have,

those things start to fade first.

So my legs were pretty good in proportion at first,

but that's when your body fat is still in a healthy level.

But when you drop down just a percentage too low, it seems like your body draws the energy draws the fat and the fullness from your weak body part and for me that's the legs and at the Olympia I wasn't as full also the the Steve Weinberger also literally said he wasn't full enough as at the Arnold

So that's when I tried to take the next Arnold of this year differently.

And the prep went a lot more smooth.

I actually told my coach a few weeks before going on stage, I'm afraid that I'm not going to make weight because obviously classic physique, you need to make weight for your height.

And I was still like four kilos, almost 10 pounds above my weight limit.

And it was like three weeks before, not even.

And that, and I was already super conditioned, but that's because

me and my coach, we took the prep differently.

We kept the fullness in the legs.

I almost didn't do any cardio, like 20 minutes max.

I took it all from the lowering of the carbs and steps, basically, just to keep the legs intact but then i got uh pretty sick um as i also mentioned on my youtube channel like the day of the flight the day before i got so sick let's just say to make a very long story short i lost like 15 plus pounds in like two three days which was you can't really recover from this no matter how much you're trying to load but the funny thing is well at least to me it's funny when you look at the pictures that i sent my coach the legs were so skinny all of a sudden.

The upper body was still reasonable, but the legs, they went away immediately.

And that still told me, even though during the prep, everything seemed pretty balanced, the moment you get sick and then still your legs go away first, that means it's still a weak point.

It's not really solidified yet.

And that's what my coach told me as well.

You were like at the end stage of building that muscle and really making it your own, but only one thing has to go wrong and you lose the legs immediately.

So that's when I realized, okay, instead of trying to bring them up in between shows and during preps, we have to solidify this muscle in between shows, taking a way longer break.

So that's why I'm taking this break right now.

And to really answer your question, of course, my upper body is a strong...

Yeah, the strongest part of my whole physique is the upper body basically.

And the lower body needs to be better in terms of fullness and proportion with the upper body so what we're doing at least that's the most difficult part for me is lowering the effort and the volume for the upper body as that's simply even if no gram of muscle will be added to the upper body it would still be enough to compete with the top guys but i need to put all my recovery capability into the lower body and um the workout how it looks then is i'm still doing what i've always done kind of um legs push pull rest, split, but the volume within the leg day is pretty much 50% higher than usual.

And the upper body days are then 50% less.

So the upper body days, I don't even really go to extreme failure anymore.

Like the moment I feel that my rhetoric is slow down, I'm like,

I'm like, okay, this is enough, because I don't want the upper body to take any recovery from the legs.

And but with the legs, I really go all out.

and I've been of course training with my own coach training with Hani Rambaud taking tips from a lot of people like from Phil Heath Jay Cutler like everybody who had amazing legs on stage and everybody with knowledge about training legs I've pretty much taken their knowledge and applied it to my own training

like my own coach he realizes the quads themselves are not too bad but it's more about the glutes and the hamstrings Like when I turn around, the back has a good V taper, but then it goes into a Y instead of like an X.

I need an X frame from the back as well instead of a Y frame.

And I need more glutes and hamstrings and more width in the legs, basically.

So he taught me a different way of performing like a leg press or a hack squat.

Instead of thinking about pushing with the quads, he's like more about catching the weight with the glutes and the hamstrings.

So, kind of turning the whole rep around instead of thinking about, okay, I gotta use the quads to push the weight.

It's more about using the hamstrings and the glutes to control the weight.

And it doesn't matter how much weight you do, because we're bodybuilders, it's all about how much effort you put into the muscle and what the muscle itself experiences.

And then, of course, combining that with every now and then doing Hanny Rambot's FST7 sets, which are

killing.

I've done it with him.

I can't imagine that for your legs.

Yeah, that's unbelievable.

Honestly, it's hard to put into words, but the muscle soreness I got after he put me through that workout, I've never felt anything like that before.

I'm like,

this isn't just something, a scale you learn, but it's a realization.

You can go a lot further and deeper than you thought you could.

Because,

yeah, I never got that soreness before.

So that must mean there's more to unlock here instead of the work as I used to do before.

So I actually like doing intensity techniques like this to truly, what he calls it, kind of open up the fascia.

And it doesn't really matter scientifically what happens.

All that matters is it puts you into a position of more growth.

It puts you beyond where you would normally go.

And I need to do something different for the legs as what I've been doing so far compared to the upper body hasn't been enough.

So that's why I'm taking

much longer off using different but proven workout techniques and staying in a higher body fat and a higher body weight for much longer to really solidify that muscle mass instead of like

just getting there and then going back to prep and kind of not really solidifying that muscle mass.

So in a nutshell, that's what I'm doing right now.

I feel like Nick Walker more than anybody really kind of showed that example too, that like from the back, having those full ass legs can, I mean, you know, given the, given the fact that he had also just like a very grainy, dry back, though, I mean, being able to beat, what, basically one of the best backs in bodybuilding because he had the entire full package from top to bottom, from his back double by kind of just shows just how much that makes a difference in your entire package.

Yeah, I was there in Pittsburgh and I was at one of the pretty much the front row.

row so beforehand I predicted okay I think Derek is gonna win Nick is only gonna stand a chance if he brings his the package he brought before when he was at his best but when I saw him in real life that was just a different Nick Walker you know it doesn't even translate as everybody always says on the pictures and the videos in real life and when they turn around like you say that backdouble bicep is so complete it's really hard to ignore and then he stands next to derek lunsford and you're like well there's no way he's gonna beat him but then the the graininess and the density and the quality in nick's muscle in combination with the proportions in my opinion yeah i thought he he beat uh derek lunsford at that show especially from the back which i really did not expect but that was a very special show for sure yeah i did not expect that either it was it was honestly fucking insane yeah um

but uh regarding the intensifiers too, this is one of my favorite things to discuss because we really don't have hardly any studies on this.

And any studies that we do have regarding optimal ways of training and hypertrophy are obviously on individuals that aren't

individuals that aren't including all the,

I guess, the copious amount of variables that we have, including enhancements, you know, but there's so many things that us as competitors and bodybuilders do that are just different from, I think, the average, that just makes it really hard to,

I think, look at any other, I don't know, I feel like it's just harder for us to look at studies aside from

a big

amount of empirical data, you know, which is obviously,

which obviously the coaches have the most of.

And

it's, it's it's weird because, you know, I feel like it still qualifies as bro science in a way, but like I work with Patrick Tor and I've experimented with the FST7 sets and Patrick Tor's SST sets and all of these amazing intensifiers.

And just as you say, bro, like there's nothing that gets me, there's nothing that gets me more sore.

There's nothing that just gets me a bigger pump.

It's just, I mean, obviously, you don't know, maybe like, obviously, there's studies that show that pump is not

the hypertrophy that you have post-pump is not caused directly by the pump.

There There are simply correlations, and normally they're not direct correlations either.

But there's definitely something to be said, I feel, of

the amount of volume that we're pushing into, and this is volume towards failure, right?

Like putting sets towards failure is shown, even three reps from failure, but within this margin is shown to stimulate the most growth.

Cramming that in in a certain amount of time

while inducing all these nutrients through the blood to your muscle, I just feel like there's just, I don't know.

I just feel like if there's any way for you to just train fucking hard and build tons of mass, this is like the ultimate way to do it, in my personal opinion.

But, you know, I don't know.

What do I know?

Yeah.

But

I agree with that because, like, like you mentioned, there has been no studies at all, and there were, never will be, of guys like us pushing it to the max.

We've already been pushing it to the max for years with optimal nutrition, supplementation, PED use, recovery, sleep, all that dialed in.

Because the studies, like almost everybody who is in those studies, they will grow almost no matter what is going to be done to them because they're still too

fresh into the whole building muscle game.

And I think in evolution, like of the human body,

It's been designed to build a certain amount of muscle until a certain point.

And then you have to do extreme measures to go beyond that barrier.

And we are doing it, of course, with

PEDs and with nutritional values you can't find in nature, like whey protein or so much

carbohydrates or all kinds of minerals and vitamins you normally would never be able to gather in nature.

So we already have that advantage.

But then also with training, you have to tell your body, okay,

like this is the bro science explanation, but pretty much your body has to think okay if i don't improve from this i'm gonna die next time and that's how extreme after like 10 15 years of training you have to give that impulse to your muscles to your brain to be able to actually build the muscle on top of what you already have because there's been so your body is so used to it there's still that evolutionary factor into if i build more muscle on top it's going to be useless weight it's going to be spending too much energy because your body and your brain, they don't know that we are living in this comfortable world.

They just respond to the stimuli they're getting from externally.

So we have to make it more and more and more extreme.

And the studies, they simply can't capture this because nobody who's been training for so long is going to apply to such a study anyway.

And they don't want to ruin their progress.

Maybe one or two, maybe five, but no way there's going to be 50 guys of that level doing it all at the same time, using PEDs,

taking months maybe off of that progress, because one group always has to do something else than the other group to compare.

So there's no way that's ever going to happen, I think, in my opinion.

But that's why the intensifiers, that's exactly that.

That thing that tells your body, okay, this was so extreme, we have to build that extra muscle.

So

the reps in reserve is all coming from research, from people who don't even have half the muscle mass buildup like we do, and not even half of the resistance our body gives to building, to wanting to build muscle.

So you have to do something more extreme to make that same effect still happen.

So many years of doing resistance training.

And that's where, like you mentioned, the empirical evidence, the anecdotal evidence, all the stories, all the...

practical evidence we're seeing in the biggest bodybuilders ever.

They're always, pretty much always doing something more extreme than the studies are saying what is optimal to build muscle so the proof is in the pudding that way so all the biggest bodybuilders almost all of them are doing something beyond what the studies would say is optimal at least they will have built most of their mass that way and only when you start getting injuries or like joints trying to hurt, you kind of start to move towards this more science-based full range of motion, optimal volume way to kind of preserve your bodybuilding longevity.

But if you don't have anything that bothers you in the training, you're still going to train super hard pretty much until your body tells you you can't anymore.

So I think that's how most bodybuilders who are at the

genetical elite at the top are training.

But at the other hand, I do agree that science can prevent a lot of these injuries and things that prevent hard training.

But

it's not really going to be the way to get to that size, in my opinion.

I've never, and that's also the thing, what we say about we're seeing all the biggest guys train differently from what the science says.

You're also seeing all the

all the people who do only train optimally, you almost never see super big guys coming out of of that type of training.

So there's kind of a

problem there about

what science says and what you practically in real life see happen.

So that's kind of that's the struggle basically between the bro science and the actual scientific world that I'm seeing right now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's such a

it's a

the fun debate of bro bro lifters versus science-based lifters.

Um,

so

to give, I guess, to give science a little bit of credit, um, and one thing that Patrick discusses that I um

I also hold true, uh, and um

I really believe at its foundation is uh and sorry my brain's just working slowly, it's just one of those one of those mornings, man.

Yeah, I can imagine, but um, yeah, one of the things that Patrick really discusses that I love a lot is, um, I think the fact that in the end, progressive overload does drive hypertrophy, right?

Like that is the foundation for how we can make sure that we're improving every week.

We're going to grow muscle as we grow in strength, as we increase in volume.

But at a certain point, though, for a lot of us big guys, right?

Or I mean, a lot of you big guys.

It gets harder and harder and harder to progressive overload as you get bigger and bigger and more advanced and more advanced.

And as you just, you know, 10 years down the line, 15 years down the line, 20 years down the line of you doing the exact same thing, growing, growing, even with enhancements, at one point, your strength comes to a plateau.

Like, how long ago did we see Larry Wheel squatting a thousand pounds?

And what is he squatting now?

Like, I mean, I know that he's tailoring it more towards bodybuilding, but it's like, bro, even changing towards bodybuilding, it's hard for him to even maintain that strength, you know?

So much less progressive overload.

So, um,

something that he's, something that he's put forward and promoted is the idea that like once you get to such an advanced level where you just really cannot progressive overload anymore, there still has to be some kind of stimulus somehow.

And what we've all seen in this world is there's been a lot of examples of like amazing adaptations that humans have had through extremely stressful periods.

Right.

And I think this is just like a cool example of showing that like,

hey, man, maybe we can excel and exceed our body's capacities, things that we feel like we have limits on.

Maybe we can exceed them by doing,

I don't know, some crazy things that just cause our body to get stimulated.

So, I just really like this idea that, like, once you start plateauing or getting to a certain point, you can push a little harder.

And there may be different unique ways, but you know, you can just push.

So,

um, there's something that I really wanted to show you, by the way.

I don't know if have you heard of Michaela Acock?

The name rings a bell.

Okay, so

Terrence Ruffin showed me her, uh and

he showed me her insane transformation so she is um i can't remember if she was

she's got six ifbb pro wins she's in she's a a woman bodybuilder i can't remember what her placements were at olympia but this is her transformation i don't know if you can oh yeah i see uh

Yeah, can you see her leg transformation?

Yeah, yeah.

Is that not insane?

Yeah, isn't that not freaking insane?

Yeah, So

I can't remember the exact protocol that she did.

There was a point in time where she just increased her leg frequency immensely.

But according to Terrence, and I think I saw this as well, but I think maybe there was either six months or to a year where she ended up just eliminating.

all upper body training, all upper body training, and just did legs three times, three or four times a week.

And I guess her upper body just maintained the entire time like she didn't lose any upper body mass but her legs blew up from it and it's just something that I always find interesting because I've heard some people before

I guess overcompensate for their weaker body parts in these crazy immense ways but I mean I think

as you've heard before it it's honestly pretty damn hard for us to lose muscle, especially if we're still eating the diet that we should be.

So I just thought this, I don't know.

I know you and Stefan already have your plans and everything and i love how stefan always uh always focuses on form of an exercise and activating the muscle that you need to hit but i just thought this was especially cool that she just like bro her legs just like doubled in size and her upper body looks the same before you even mentioned what you did i was like it's like the only thing that really grew were her legs and the upper body it's it went forward but it was pretty much maintaining looking at those pictures but the legs were just like five times the size.

That's incredible.

I mean, yeah,

it's always like when you're in my shoes and you're at a pretty high level within the industry, you're getting a lot of different advices from a lot of different people.

And the problem is all of them are coming from people who are legitimate.

Like, Honey is saying something different from my coach, who's saying something different from Phil Phil Heath.

And it pretty much just goes on and on.

So you're like, okay,

which side do I choose?

Do I try them all or do I stick to one?

And it kind of, it puts a little bit of a pressure on you to, because yeah, you have now about a year to improve.

And at the same time, you're in the middle, pretty much the peak of your career.

You don't want to make any mistakes, but you don't want to let any potential go either.

So it's sometimes pretty difficult to really choose the right path and the only thing i can then think of at least it has to be something that is quite different from what i used to do before because that obviously it worked up into a point but not enough to be proportionate with the upper body so that's that's kind of the challenge that i'm facing right now it's like i would honestly if there was like a hyperbolic time chamber i would i would love to only train the legs for a year and see okay what happens what's gonna happen?

But it's also

a thing only works as well, just like a diet, as well as you are able to follow it and as well as you don't have stress about doing it.

Because I think, for example, if I would do a full year of, let's just, let's not make it so extreme, let's just say 90% leg training and 10% upper body training to...

to be a little bit more comfortable to keep the upper body mass i would still i think be a bit stressed about thinking i'm losing on losing something i had before like my dominant upper body i want that to remain a strength i don't want it to be lessened in any way so that's it's always going to be a challenge where you really 100

go for one trading method and don't have any doubts about it because that's going to be the number one killer i think of progress in the long run because you got to be able to stick to a trading method for long long enough to see the actual outcome of it.

And that's what bodybuilding is.

It takes long to see something.

And

yeah,

it just has to agree with you, which is why I also think

you should choose training methods and exercises that are kind of like a balance between you think it's kind of fun to do, but it also feels great on the body.

It doesn't go against your anatomy, for example.

Like I cannot do back squats, to give an example.

But if Tom Platts would have given me advice, he would say, stick to only back squats, do them as heavy as you can, as much volume as you can.

You can always do five reps more.

I mean, if I would do stuff like that, it would not be good for my physique, even though for him it worked wonderfully because his anatomy allowed him to go up and down like a piston, basically, and it grew his legs to immense size.

So, everybody has to look for what fits their own body the most.

And

that's what I'm doing right now.

It's really

that's the fortunate thing about having an own gym to literally purchase machines that you think feel great

and then use those instead of like

being

left at the mercy of what a gym has to offer.

So that really is a big benefit that I'm having right now.

And I'm taking full advantage of it for sure.

Yeah.

It's funny you mentioned that.

That's an that's an extremely stressful place to be to be honest,

which I understand.

My girl, for example, she

has her coach and then

also, you know, she is my partner and we live together.

So, you know, she'll pick me for advice, but then like,

you know, a good 25% of the time, it doesn't align with her coach.

And that puts her in this just crazy, chaotic spiral, you know, because she's just like, well, I have to freaking listen to my coach, but now I don't know if what I'm doing is right.

And it just kind of makes it worse for her, to be honest, which is, which I hate, honestly.

I mean, in the end, we both, her coach and I both have the same ideologies.

We, we both understand foundations of what will help her grow and improve.

But it's like the smallest, tiniest little things, you know, like whether, I don't know, like whether to use

L-carnitine or not or something or whatever, or if it's gonna, if like Johimbine is gonna spike spike your anxiety or not.

So, should you use your Himbine right now or not?

Yeah, it's just the smallest little thing.

So, um, I can understand that frustration, but uh, I think, regardless, whatever you do, man, it's pretty clear that you're gonna put your energy into your legs and you're gonna put all your energy this year into improving what you need to improve on.

So, I think, regardless of whatever you choose to do, it's you're gonna improve a lot and it's gonna be cool to see.

Yeah, I appreciate that.

It's really uh very exciting to be part of this, um, of this journey and to have made it a career and to be able to just wake up every day and do your very best to make it happen and with so many people who actually care and listen or watch or try to learn something.

So that's why I really love that along the way that I'm improving myself to show also to other people how I've done this.

As you've probably also experienced, like people who might be in a similar situation as yourself, who have similar struggles, they reach out to you or send a DM and they tell you how much much you've helped them, for example, but just by making content in general.

And that's like my biggest example: is always either people who are tall, like me, or people who have families.

They always send me DMs of

how inspirational it can be to see somebody actually doing the work and seeing that you can achieve something great if you just put in the work and never give up and put in the discipline.

So it's just very motivating to be able to do this and at the same time help other people as well.

Yeah.

I also remember hearing in a podcast, I believe that you were discussing how you like first started training and people used to call you Arnold before you even like knew about like bodybuilding really.

So it kind of just

I mean for me personally it would have just stayed there subconsciously in my mind as well.

So I guess

When you first started training,

did you like,

what were your like methods when you first started training to build the physique you have now?

Because I know you mentioned something regarding like emulating some of Arnold's training, but do you feel like a lot of this was focused on like the same kind of exercises and training regimen he would do, like focusing on upper body and arms?

Or is there like, I don't know,

I guess there's just so many different variables.

Yeah, so

the first...

Like the first six years of my training before doing any competitions, those were really based on what my father told me, as he was quite strong and muscular himself, and he took us to the gym, me and my brother.

We always trained together and it was just the easiest form of progressive overload you can imagine.

He just said, if you can do six reps with the weight, you should do heavier.

The next set, you can do heavier.

And that's how I progressed for like six, seven years until I did my first show.

But when you have done your first bodybuilding show, you automatically get into contact and in touch with a lot more experienced people and you start watching other bodybuilders especially around that time when i won my first show that's when the arnold comparisons came and um that's when i looked him up as well more seriously and watching pumping iron and hearing him talk about the range of motion and the pump for example uh it really and mind muscle connection it really changed my training and then i i it clicked somehow intuitively when I saw him train like how he does the Tebow row or the bent over row or the chest and back supersets the concentration curl I simply mimicked what he did and it automatically felt so great and so logical for me at the moment and I was still very young like 20 21 so I could do anything in the gym and recover pretty much

no injuries ever like everything felt amazing so i like every single week i would do like chest and back supersets arms supersets but pretty much all old school movements that he used to do in his own workouts um and it really worked for a long time it really built substantial volume in my upper body but yeah for the legs he didn't really have anything um special so i then looked to tom platts actually but instead of the instead of the the squats, I did his

hack squat techniques.

Like I called it the duck stance.

So when you do the hack squat, I don't know if you've ever seen that video, but when he does the heck squat and he puts his knees like a few feet over his toes, like so far out.

That's what I used to do back in the day as well.

when I was still flexible enough to do so.

And that technique actually really helped quite a lot also for calves going so extreme.

because back in the day, like the calf development was like so disproportionately huge compared to my upper legs.

It was like my calves were wider than my upper legs were.

So it was some techniques, some techniques really worked for me, but some also didn't really, because I, yeah, as I mentioned, being quite tall, you simply need

different exercises to get into the range of motion to build enough muscle.

But back back then i didn't know about the stretch mediated hypertrophy for example so i just mimicked the exercises but didn't really think about going to full depth like on the squat going a little bit below parallel was already enough for me because if i went deeper it would be my lower back involved it would have uh lower back palms for example so i changed like without even thinking about it a lot of movements to fit my anatomy but it didn't really grow the muscle i needed to but yeah like you mentioned the arnold was a very big inspiration for me i even mimicked his posing routines and when i realized that um

he was pretty much the only one who could pose like that back in the day and a lot of those poses fit my body pretty good as well i started using those some of those signature poses even to this day it's like my favorite classic pose is still going to be the three-quarter uh front double bicep pose that he yeah bro.

And it's, it's very, it took a lot of practice to get that one right.

And it's still, if you, if you don't pose for a while and you try it, then it's, you kind of feel stiff again because it's really, you got to be really flexible with it.

So those classic poses, they look very like flowy and fluent and easy to do.

But the moment you do them, it's like you're stretching out a lot of different muscles at the same time to be able to hit that stance.

So it's way more challenging than the traditional poses, but that's the beauty of classic bodybuilding, in my opinion.

It's like

what Arnold also used to say, no matter how difficult a pose feels, you should always make it look like it's very easy to do.

And that's where the grace comes from.

And you can be proud of yourself if you...

get through a posing routine without showing any effort at all.

And that's one of the most difficult things to do in my opinion.

Because yeah, you can do a posing routine and you can practice and you can do the poses you practice but to do it with classic poses and to do it gracefully and to really hit the poses correctly that really

um it takes a lot of time at least it did for me especially the transitions um to do those correctly so i have a lot of respect for uh the 70s bodybuilders as they perfected that kind of posing.

It's a little bit lost today.

Some people can still pose quite quite well.

Like obviously Terrence and Logan Franklin and even Mike who won the Arnold cannot pose very well.

But a lot of people,

they kind of stick to the more easy poses and they don't think it's that important anymore, which,

you know, kind of is a shame for bodybuilding as an art, in my opinion.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think, well, I hope, but I also maybe think maybe in a very small capacity that people, the judges are still paying attention pretty closely now to to posing and um presence i think i i feel like terrence in the last couple shows against jose kind of showed that that presentation i mean obviously he has the limbs and he has the proportions but i feel like that presentation was a um

a big

uh

a big thing that like you know gave him a point up from Jose.

Yeah.

So I think

I've literally done a show before where they said it's very close between you and another guy.

If you nail your posing routine, you're going to win.

That's literally what was told me backstage.

And so sometimes when it's very close, and I wasn't a professional yet, it was an amateur show, so kind of different

criteria, maybe.

I do think if it is very close, and I think it was between Terence and Hosema, like they, like, again, I saw that battle in real life as well.

Just insane

how close that was in my opinion.

How different physiques, but still how close the battle was.

I do think the presentation then plays a bigger role than usual.

Like if the winner simply is overpowering the rest with their physique, you know, as long as you do the mandatories right, you're going to win.

But if it's very close,

I think it could indeed come down to presentation.

So it proves that presentation is something not to be underestimated, especially as a professional bodybuilder who, you know, who really wants to always win the show.

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.

Also, this channel is not sponsored, which means only the companies that I work with, which are Young Lay and Huge Supplements, are the companies that can help fund this channel by you guys using the code Nile.

So Code Nile gives you a discount of 15% off of YoungLay, and CodeNile also gives you a discount of 10% off of Huge Supplements.

And if you decide to purchase anything from any of these companies, it will help immensely for me by using my code.

And this way, I can travel to other guests and also upgrade an equipment to make this podcast bigger and better for you guys.

You gotta, well, I mean, I know you are going to, but I just have to say, you got to keep those three classic poses that you transition to at the end of every like favorite classic pose.

Those are so epic, by the way, bro.

They look so good on your physique.

It's crazy.

I don't talk about this much, but when I blew up first and how I got big on social media was primarily through

like workout videos and such on TikTok and Instagram.

And honestly,

I hate to say it, but

I'd have to give most of the credit to TikTok, to be honest.

That originally blew me up.

And

the thing that I would do is

I believe I got famous for

one, how my physique looked, and also that I just had this extremely small waist.

And everyone would always tell me, like, dude, you have the smallest waist.

But every time I took a video,

I would

twist my hip as hard as freaking possible, man, as hard as possible.

So literally my right hip bone was facing like straight towards the camera.

And I guess just people like you can't really like if you stand there and try to look like you're not cringing really hard, you know,

it's hard to tell, you know, the illusion makes a huge difference.

So my waist really isn't that small.

I'm just really twisting really fucking hard, man.

But there's this exercise, there's this machine that i saw recently pop up and um

it's called the uh schnell leg extension leg curl have you heard of that oh no i haven't no um

i mean i i don't know how optimal this would be for a lot of people but i personally have found um i i end my leg workouts with uh sissy squats um so you know i'll do like leg presses and then i'll

maybe do another compound that'll go to leg extensions and then i'll end with sissy squats and do some intensifiers with the sissy squats.

And I just love them because, you know, you have full hip extension while you're doing them.

And I always get like the biggest pump from doing them.

And I know it only stretches that one middle part of your quad, I guess.

But still, I always get the biggest pump from doing it.

But I saw this guy doing this

exercise that popped up on my page.

Oh, yeah.

And, bro, like,

can you see this guy's literally like laying flat and it's a leg extension?

Yeah.

Is that not crazy?

Did you know that Eric

I don't know how to say his last name, Janinsky?

Janeky, yeah.

Janeky Janeky.

He also does like an hybrid leg extension, but he puts like yoga blocks and pads in such a way that he's also almost laying all the way back.

And he also said it really stretches out his legs in a way different manner than a usual leg extension.

So it might be something to try and also to once again go back to Tom Platts.

If you see some of his leg extensions, he ends the leg extension also with that technique to kind of like his hips go up, which means the leg goes more straight and he's laying down and then he finishes off the exercise with a few of those reps.

I think I've never felt it before, but it just watching that guy you just showed me, it already, I think it would get a great stretch and a feel in those quads for sure.

Could be something to try out.

Yeah, it's pretty amazing.

Eric is a personal friend of mine back over here in LA.

And to be honest,

there's always going to be the haters in social media.

And I know he gets a lot of shit for his science-based training.

Some people just think that he trains like a puss, to be honest.

And it's crazy because he has the deepest.

most perfect form and he has more flexibility than I do.

Like I don't even have nearly as much hip hinge as he does.

When I do, my hip fucking pops out on the right side.

Um, and uh,

I think Eric trains harder than anyone else I know here, in LA, to be honest.

Um,

and it's hard to explain, but like,

like he'll go to the vertical leg press machine, yeah, and we'll go to failure.

And we were working out with another one of our buddies, and our other buddy was just throwing up mid through the workout.

So, I mean, and Eric works out like that every single leg day he does.

So

it's pretty intense, honestly.

You can tell by the physique he brought to stage lately.

I mean,

he's making some incredible progress.

So

it must be working.

I mean,

the way he trains, that is backed in science.

But you can also see...

When you watch his videos and you watch how he trains, like when you have experience in bodybuilding, you can just tell it's really stimulating those exact exact muscles and leaving other muscles out because that's what bodybuilding is you don't want

you want to try to isolate what you're target what you're trying to target like a leg press you just want those legs especially the quads to be targeted and the way he does it he has so much knee flexion that it's yeah the stimulus in the quads is just top to bottom maximized because you can see he can't physically go deeper than than how how deep he goes.

So you can't get more stretch in those quads.

And you can tell by the stage pictures, I mean, the legs are huge, obviously, but they're getting bigger, even though, and what we mentioned at the beginning, it's very difficult to still stimulate muscle when you've already got a lot of size.

So his training, it's like people who say that kind of training is for pussies or something.

I mean,

it's just try those full-range motion reps and sets, and those feel so much more challenging than double the weight and half the range of motion.

So it really is a different way, but a very effective way to train.

And he's living proof that it works.

So

yeah.

In my opinion, it's like, you know, you can do whatever form that you want to, whether or not you care about like your joints or not in the long run.

But like, as long as you freaking go to failure, then you're going as hard as you can, like real failure.

And I don't know.

Have you seen this three-year transformation?

Yeah, I have actually.

Okay.

So you saw that, like, his legs were the group that literally gained, that grew the most in those three years.

Exactly.

It was like an immense amount, too.

So, I, I,

you know, I think everyone trains and reacts differently, but just the amount of time under tension that he has under the weight per set is what blew my mind when I was training with him.

It's like you could just feel the lactic acid build up to the point where it's like, yeah,

it's all willpower from here.

Yeah.

um exactly do you still

you mentioned that your dad used to be like you know if you can hit it for six reps then you can go have your which is fucking insane um

do you feel like you still train around that rep range now or do you have like a much a greater variance now or have you figured out like a do you know if you feel like you respond more to say higher reps than lower reps For example, it's definitely a bigger rep range now.

So I honestly, I never really go below 8 anymore.

And 8 is even an exception if I hit that.

If I hit 8, it would have been a miscalculation that I would have thought I could have hit 10 and I couldn't hit 10.

But in my opinion,

I've been training now.

I'm now 32.

So I've been training for

17 years, 18 years.

So it's been a long time.

And the first few years, you can go heavy, low rep range go for prs even because when you're young you always want to see how strong you are and you walk away unscathed but right now even if i wanted to go lower rep ranges it's not really possible anymore because it's too risky for me right now i've had too many i've never had an injury but too many little things here and there where it just

kind of messes up my long-term progress because maybe for that one workout it would be great stimulus.

But then the next morning

when I had a heavy chest session, for example, I feel the rotator cuffs, I feel the joints.

It's not going to be conducive to long-term growth for me.

So you have to be then

intelligent about your training.

And then the science does kind of comfort you into them mentioning, oh, from five to 30 reps is all pretty much equal in hypertrophy.

As long as you mention you go to failure, then it's all going to work.

Like, obviously, 30 reps to failure is going to be extremely difficult, in my opinion, compared to like 12 reps because it's mentally a lot more taxing.

You're in the set for way longer.

And if you push yourself mentally, all of a sudden you can do five more reps in that 30 rep range because the weight is very light.

So it's quite difficult to find your...

30 rep mag for example but around the 10 to 15 rep range it's pretty easy to gauge your true failure point.

So that's where I stay.

So it's a combination of pretty heavy weights, but still a high enough rep range that the weight doesn't have to be super heavy to reach failure within that rep range.

And then I usually do like the first one or two sets is that rep range.

And I might go 15 plus on the last working set.

kind of like the typical back off set how people used to call it so i reduce the weight not by a certain percentage but kind of instinctively okay

I've done like 12 reps with this amount of weight I'm just gonna think okay if I do two plates or two

on a stacked weight machine two less then I might be able to do 15 plus reps.

It's kind of like a feeling.

So I used to be very particular about the numbers and logging everything to perfection.

But

that brings me a little more stress than it does good in the long run.

It's kind of a combination of knowing what you did in the first one or two sets.

And then depending on how those go, the third set and maybe even the rest of the workout is more instinctual on what just feels great for the muscle.

And it kind of always works out in between a 10 and 15 rep range to hit failure there.

And I think if that feels great as a workout strategy and it doesn't stress you out that you're not literally logging everything then it will work great but as I mentioned before it's all about what

what gives you the most stress-free training and what is the most effective like the balance between those two because I think the best bodybuilders ever and you might have heard this before as well Ronnie Coleman is the ultimate example of somebody who just trains hard and isn't stressed about anything and he grew to incredible size yeah and it's because he doesn't stress about anything.

He just believes that training hard works regardless of what he does.

That will usually, in the long run, have the best

results.

But that's why I also mentioned you got to be intelligent about your training because yes, Ronnie Coleman is the best debuterer of all time, but he also reaped the consequences of training a little too heavy, maybe towards the end.

And that's not where I want to go with a family.

I still want to be able to function after bodybuilding.

So it's always going to be a combination of as effective as possible, but also with longevity in mind.

So yeah, 10 to 15 rep range to me is worked works really well.

Well, that's good news for me.

I'm fucked.

I stress about everything.

Yeah, it's

it's difficult to change.

But

what when I realize that whether I stress about it or not, some things you just can't change and you might as well just experience it.

And if you truly to the root understand that sentence, then you can let go of most of the stress.

And that really is the key to

fun in your workouts again.

The reason why we pretty much all started training is because we thought it was fun.

So you gotta find that enjoyment in your workouts with a combination of your experience in training and your knowledge about what works well.

So that's why

I don't do the best possible movements for me when they

just are like

hip thrusts, to give an example.

My glutes need to improve, so hip thrusts would be a smart movement to do.

But whenever I do them, it's just such a struggle for me to get into the machine,

to really go to fear on an exercise like that my lower back also gets involved it's like i don't really get a good experience from the exercise so i then choose different movements like also a sake movement like the bulgarian split squat but at least with that movement i feel the glutes so much more yeah it it replaces the hip thrust for me completely and then i just make the decision okay yes i know the hip thrust would be a good addition to grow my glutes, but I'm not going to stress about not doing it because I just know the movement itself isn't conducive for me long term.

So I'm just going to stick to different movements that I know are more fun to me and work as well.

And then when you stick to those and you do the progressive overload thing and you do them for a long time, you will grow from those as well.

So usually

it's funny that optimal in theory usually never is optimal in practice.

And yeah, that's, in my opinion, what I've come to find out in all of these years.

I've done it all before, but in long term, it really is as simple as you got to enjoy what you're doing as well.

I think that's a fantastic example.

Even though Brett Contreras, the creator of the hip thrust, has two variants to it.

And one is like the scoop method that he explains should hopefully have, I believe, less stress on the lumbar.

He did a study because there was like an argument with him versus someone else.

I can't remember who, but basically the argument was comparing squats to the hip thrust.

And one was saying that squats would be more optimal.

And he was saying the hip thrust would be more optimal for glute growth.

But when they did the study, in the end, there was the same engagement for glutes for both exercises.

It's just that the hip thrust helped isolate the glutes more than, say, the squats, whereas the squats, you know, you hit a little bit more quads.

I don't know what else was in there, to be honest.

But

I think that's like a great example that like, if you're feeling it more in the split squat, then it's probably likely that the split squat is still hitting your glutes just as well, but you're also hitting a lot of the other muscle groups that you want to improve anyways.

So

if you're down for it,

you got a lot of questions in the Q ⁇ A.

And normally I

fuck up and I always get to the Q ⁇ A way too late and then we end up not being able to ask any of the questions.

So if you're down to jump to it, but I have one question for myself personally before we go to it.

But I guess

what would you say was your favorite prep that you feel like you brought your last, your best package?

Yeah, as cliche as it sounds, the Arnold Classic prep of last year was my favorite.

Why?

Because I had no expectation at all about myself, how I would would place in the show.

My coach, when I traveled to Ohio for the competition, my coach, he came to our apartment and he was like talking to Marley, my partner.

He was like, is Wesley always so relaxed?

He doesn't stress.

He's always like this.

He was like, yeah, this is just how he is.

And that's exactly how it was.

I was like, okay.

I know I've done everything I could.

I know I look as great as I I can.

I've practiced the posing.

Like, I'm prepared for the competition.

All I want to do is beat one guy who beat me at the Olympia.

Like, one of those guys who beat me at that last year's Olympia, I want to beat at the Arnold.

That's the only goal I had.

If I had that, I already won, because then that would place me one rank higher than before.

So that just goes to show.

that when you approach a competition like with no expectations at all, it kind of also shows in your physique.

It's like a fresher look.

This is obviously bro science and you can't prove this really in science, but maybe you can with lower cortisol, less water attention, stuff like this.

But still,

it's not having the stress that you just roll into the competition so smoothly and you're not trying to seek out.

the most optimal peak or the most optimal carb up.

You're just following your coach's orders.

You're not taking anything to the extreme.

And all of a sudden, you just show up at your best ever.

And I went on stage and I didn't even realize how well I placed because in the pre-judging, you kind of know already which place you could have.

And I got off stage and then my coach came to me, kind of congratulating me, like, you're going to be second or first.

I'm like, Really?

I didn't even realize what was happening.

I just did my my thing as a bodybuilder on stage.

But yeah, I didn't even realize I was next to Ramon the whole time.

And

that was really the best feeling ever because I felt great.

I still had energy, no stress.

Everything went smooth.

And it just all came together perfectly for me at that show.

So yeah, that show was my favorite one.

Dude,

I love that you say that because it's just so crazy that, you know, back in the past, bodybuilders used to have the mentality of like, oh, you got to work as hard as possible, like, I'm going to be number one type crap now.

But I think there's just like a small percentage of people, like everyone's a little bit different.

And I think there is a small percentage of people like Nick Walker that can maybe do that and work better under pressure.

But

I think the vast majority, and this is seeing like I've experienced this myself when I got my pro card, like I kept getting like 16 plus place at nationals.

I was doing terribly.

I did nine shows.

I wasn't like gifted from the start, but

by the time that

I was at my last two shows before I got my pro card, I had just, I almost felt like, you know,

you know, whatever happens, happens.

I'm not going to get it anymore.

Like, I was like so depressed from not getting it that I ended up releasing all expectations.

And I'm sure you've heard the saying, like, expectations are suffering.

Like, I ended up just like saying, like, you know what?

Fuck it.

Like, I'm just going to come here and try to do the best I can.

But, like, you know, I keep losing.

So, like, why expect anything?

And then out of nowhere, I'm like, they're like giving me my pro card and it doesn't register for the next week.

I didn't feel any emotions.

I didn't even, like, it wasn't until a week after that I started celebrating a lot.

That's so nice.

That's so nice.

And so, like, I hear, you know, you hear John Jewett talk about this.

You hear Fua discuss this.

There's a lot of just top experienced bodybuilders that nowadays all talk about this total allostatic load where like you reduce psychological stress, you reduce mental stress, you do, reduce physical stress, just reducing these stresses and making sure that you're managing them to a good level and you always bring the best package.

Yeah, it's,

it's, it's, we all know that's a truth, especially now you have experienced it, I've experienced it, but at the same time, it's so difficult to master, especially like when you, like when you won your pro card and when I won the Arnold, you automatically

create a better position for yourself within the industry.

And that

within itself brings you a little bit more pressure to do well.

To give a practical example, when you win a bigger show, you get more sponsorships or

you improve the current sponsorships you have.

So you're doing better financially for your family.

So it's almost impossible to ignore the fact that you kind of have to be at this level now and you can't really let go so easily anymore because you're afraid that if you do, it's like you don't care whether you lose all those sponsorships or not, for example.

That's like if I don't, like if I lose a competition,

the competition itself, I don't care about, but it's

the things around it that makes it important to do well.

And that is the, I think, the practical difficult part about bodybuilding on a higher level is that sometimes the placings and

how well you do correlate a lot with your success

in your career in general.

Like not as a bodybuilder, but just as like making money for yourself, like providing for your family.

So that's going to be always a difficult part.

The moment that you do exceed expectation, from that moment, it's going to be more difficult to find that balance of trying not to care too much, but also you have to care a little bit because if you don't do well, it's, you know, at some point it's going to affect your livelihood potentially.

So that's always a good balance to

find out what the best way is to approach.

But yeah, I thought

usually when you win a show,

it can fuel you positively because a lot of people then believe in you.

You have proven to yourself, hey, wait a second, I can do this.

So it can give you a lot of positive energy as well.

But then almost simultaneously, you know it's only going to get more difficult from now on because you've got to face even larger challenges.

Like for me, it was after the Arnold.

I still had to beat the best ever, like Chris Bomstead.

And that

inevitably brings more pressure because you know, okay, this is going to be a different kind of challenge.

And then I went a little too far and it kind of went backwards for me from that point.

But yeah,

that's that's what bodybuilding is about sometimes, you know, dealing with the situations.

And

that's why I always love to be the underdog back in the day.

Like, no one really talking about me.

I'm just going to go to the show.

No one really has expectations.

So it makes it easier for yourself as well.

But at the highest level, it's got to be a little bit more difficult, but we're still doing our best to stay level-headed into those bigger shows.

Yeah.

That actually actually brought me to thinking about something that you were discussing with Vigorous Steve at one of y'all's podcast together, which I really like.

Which every single, like, I feel like almost every

advanced and experienced bodybuilder that I've spoken to says the exact same thing, but it's always like, it's always those couple of people in the reels or TikToks, you know, like on the Explorer feed that are just like, no, you got to take the biggest doses just to win,

which is crazy.

But I like how you guys were discussing like trend use, right?

And how,

you know, there's only a

there's a very low

maximum tolerable dose for a lot of people, but also an extremely low minimum effective dose.

Like you really don't need that much to experience and gain the most benefits from it, right?

Including like decreasing cortisol.

So one of my friends, when he was competing, he had like the best genetics.

His name was Nathan.

My boy Nathan Brooks, he was the one person I did the first podcast with, if anyone's been here since then.

But

he has, he looked like, to my, in my personal opinion, he looked like a Ramon Dino

that just,

he just fucking looked amazing, bro.

Giant gorilla arms, massive legs, was younger than me, but would be squatting like five plates for reps just, you know, casually.

And

when he did his first competition,

you know, of course, bro looked absolutely amazing.

And, you know, I was always curious, like, how is he going to do?

I feel like he's going to get first.

Well, lo and behold, dude gets first place in overall.

But shortly, right after he gets first place,

he decides to quit competing forever.

And like, this blew my mind.

But during the experience, you know, he

the last few weeks, like it was just meant, it was messing with his mental health so much

that

he felt like it wasn't conducive to his overall health at all.

And he he just wasn't getting any sleep.

And this has me thinking like of a lot of people who, when they do compete, I think, you know, we have to like really focus in and learn our own bodies and how we react to things, how we react to our training, how we react to our diet, and especially how we react to whatever drugs that we're using.

Because I think in the end, like if you're doing too much, it just takes the chill away from you, right?

And if it takes the chill away from you, man, you're caring about every little thing that goes wrong.

You're getting aggravated or bothered by every small thing that isn't going the right way, you're not getting the correct sleep, which is only exacerbating all of those things even more, you know.

And it's just like, in the end, I personally feel like this whole idea of like going as high as you possibly can, hiring the doses, and increasing the doses more is just hurting a lot of people in the butt or biting you, biting a lot of people in the butt.

So

what I always say is like every person has like an optimal dose for them, but you just have to figure out what it is.

And it doesn't mean 500 milligrams plus of trend a week.

Some people maybe, but I really think most people probably don't need that much.

No, for sure.

I mean, it kind of makes me think about the original trendy parabolan amps of, I think, 76 milligrams.

And those were then prescribed to use once a week, I think, or at least that dose is once a week.

And that goes to show that it was designed

for that being the effective dose.

But obviously, bodybuilders go way, way higher with everything.

But the side effects, they exponentially go up with the usage of something like TREN.

And

what I've experienced myself,

I think a bodybuilder, no matter who it is, would be lying if they would not have

experimented with higher dosage at one point just to see what it does and to then realize a higher dosage actually

at some point comes with only negatives rather than anything positive on top.

So with trend as the best example, as you mentioned, the moment that you stress about everything and your sleep starts to suffer, no matter what you do or eat or use or train or supplement with, it's not going to fix those issues.

Like the basics, having those in check and being able to have that in check for the duration of the prep is the most important.

And anything that messes that up is not worth it.

So for some people, they, like John Jewett is an example, sometimes he even throws out trend completely at the end.

And that's because he manipulates his diet, his activity level, and his training.

and his nutrition to such a way that he's going to be lean enough,

far enough beforehand, that Trent isn't necessary it might make it easier sometimes to get into great shape but it should never be a must

and um

too many people experience the negatives from this and um that like we talked about a lot before already like the stress will just kill your progress like uh the not only the mental stress but also it then turns into physical stress and then then turns into less muscle retention

and the that's gonna be a negative spiral because the moment you start to become weaker in the gym or you feel less strong then you're gonna think oh i gotta use more to compensate for this so it's gonna be climbing up more and you get more side effects from it so that's when i throughout the years realized i can use less and less and less and it actually makes me feel better which allows me to sleep better and allows me to get my need up without realizing it like more steps being more active

not being so down so i i'm more active with my kids automatically and it brings you in a better shape than initially thinking that it was trend that needs to be responsible for this but in fact it's just

your your capability of staying active throughout the whole prep and staying uh you know good spirited and uh strong it all has to do with the basics like the sleep the nutrition and the higher activity level without draining you too much and that combination will always be better than any drug you take the only reason you should take anything is muscle retention and there's not so much needed as people think to make that happen in the Caldes prep

in my opinion

the less you you can use the better your physique will look on stage the less skin flare-ups you'll have

the less

yeah the better your sleep will be, the better you will look, the fresher you will look, the fuller you will look, the less hungry you will have, the less stress you will have from that.

It's just

it can be either only positives or only negative depending on the milligrams of trend that you use.

So yeah, I think it's it's very important to keep mentioning something like this because

I think

most of the younger generation will always think the more muscular you are or the better you do in a show correlates exactly with how much you use.

But it's almost the exact opposite.

I mean, the winner is the winner because of the fact he doesn't need to use so much, because the rest has to use so much and they meet that stress barrier that prevents you from showing such a peaked physique.

I think almost, and this is like a theory, but I think almost all physiques that you can just see are peaked perfectly.

Like to give an example at at this past Arnold, like Derek Lunsford's physique, it was peaked so nicely.

It might be that he

used way less drugs than before, for example, to allow his physique to actually showcase its true potential.

And that's what I've experienced with the Arnold as well.

And whenever you try to do more, it always ends up not looking as good as before.

So, really,

yeah, in my personal experience,

using as less as possible that you can get away with, and at the same time, not stressing about this again, don't stress about using less because that will counteract it.

You've got to believe in the fact that less usage, but sticking to the basics, will be better in your prep.

And when you believe it, you get like the double effect of it actually being true, but also the extra placebo effect on top that will get you a better result.

So the mind is really strong in this.

That's what people underestimate quite a lot.

Yeah, dude, that's why I feel like it's so cool, or it's just so important and helpful to have like a really good coach that you trust.

That's also really good with communicating you with you, like freaking Stefan, Hani, and Patrick.

Like all of these guys just have that level of communication where you're like,

it's like

an uncle or an older brother or like, even like a dad figure.

Like you're like, I trust this guy.

And they know how to talk to you whenever you're in times of like stress.

And it's something something that I think all of these coaches know too.

I have one pushback on what you mentioned: is that I do know that there are some, obviously, some competitors that have pushed the limits of their gear usage that still got first place.

But I think a majority of people that I've seen that have gotten first place recently have found their balance and pulled back.

And not trying to like spill too much.

I know Nick Walker is a good example of recently who has under Kyle taken.

He's

we could probably assume whatever dosages he's taken before and for this show has probably been on not GH but half of like the androgen load and I think for a lot of us for you for me Daniel Fabod mentioned this on the podcast too who I believe um

I think you beat one placement at at uh

uh the detroit pro

um oh yeah but um we all have experienced like i guess gear usage and trend usage to the point where it's almost like when you're peaking for a show and you're trying to carb up, like, we all know that you can take too many carbs, you can consume too many carbs, and you can also consume too less of carbs.

And like, there's like just this perfect balance point in the middle where that's like your peak look, right?

And, you know, if you take no gear whatsoever, obviously, you're gonna look more flat.

There's gonna be this like, you know, there's this natural look that everybody already knows.

But if you take too much gear, like I've noticed when I take, say, like too much trend or too many, just too many compounds altogether, it's like when I consume too many carbs, I just get bigger and I get more full and more full and more full.

But it starts taking away from my detail, like the striations of my muscles, the lines that I want to show.

My glute striations are not as

like thin and dark, you know?

And it's just, and I know that in classic, for example, man, they are just,

they're really,

i think um

they're really rewarding the conditioning um

i feel like they've been rewarding conditioning for a long time honestly but like you know you see the most triated guys even if they don't have the proportions they still do really really well true i think it it also correlates with the quality of one's physique like the more striations you can see the higher quality slash density the muscle is able to showcase.

And when you have like a, when you like, some people are very conditioned, but they're not detailed it's like yeah you can see that okay their glutes they have lines in them but some body parts they don't have any detail at all it's like very strange sometimes but that happens and i think when you're able to show like sprayations pretty much everywhere it also goes to show the quality of your physique and if you can show that quality it means a lot and almost no water retention, which means low inflammation, which almost automatically means means lower usage of PEDs because

higher uses of PEDs usually correlate with higher inflammation or at least higher retention of water.

And it gives you fullness, but at the same time, as you mentioned, it blurs a little bit the lines that your muscles do have.

And I will always

be more of a fan of showing the maximum amount of striation and details and literally that carved out muscle and getting the fullness through sheer muscle mass then getting the fullness a little bit artificially through water retention from using more PEDs and that's the ultimate balance to strive for because obviously if you use zero testosterone you're not going to be able to show a full physique at all you might show striations but we all know those natural guys they are the driest bodybuilders on earth but they're always very flat as well yeah never full they never have full cap delves for example so you got to strike a balance here.

But I think, in my opinion, it's more beautiful to show those triated muscles to kind of literally showcase how hard you work for it than to kind of inflate them with PEDs.

And there's always going to be a balance there.

But yeah, that's my bodybuilding opinion.

I've been training for over 15 years now, and I was too lazy to track anything training-wise for about the first 10 years because science-based training is for pussies.

But I kept hitting plateaus from burnout, fatigue, joint issues, and injuries, and other factors that at the time I didn't really fully understand.

Realizing not everyone is built to handle the intense, insane workload and injury resilience as Tom Platts and Ronnie Coleman, sadface.

I wanted to speedrun that shit, but the reality is dudes that have always known their body best are the ones that have been lifting for at least a decade.

Shit takes a long ass time to figure out.

I started tracking all my training on the notes app on iPhone because I don't know what paper is.

Until recently, I started using the RP Hypertrophy app.

The The RP Hypertrophy app spoon feeds you step-by-step workouts tailored towards whatever your focus is, or you can customize the workout yourself.

Well-educated coaches have always cost $250 to $500 or more a month.

I'm paying $500.

That's like 10 bottles of testosterone.

But if you're not competing or you don't have the money to spend, the app will adjust your program for you every week to maximize your long-term growth.

It'll base this on your pump, how fatigued you feel, how your joints feel, and more.

It takes in everything to account.

None of which I took into account in college because the only accounting I did was counting how many dumpies were in my class.

Look, there's a titty.

If you don't believe in science-based training, you don't got to do no three RIR shit.

You can just hoist heavy steel and track it because we all know that the people who say that they remember their weight sets and reps every week are full of shit.

IMO, there's a sort of middle ground where you track your progress and make sure all the variables are right in your food, sleep, gear, progressive overload, and then you go to the gym and slam those heavy PRs until your blood pressure is higher than Miley Cyrus.

If you're still unsure, they've got a 30-day money-back guarantee.

So if you still don't like it and it gives you a bad tan, you can get your money back.

That way, when you compete at your next show, your tan doesn't cost you the first place that you so well deserve.

So go to the link in the description below or you go to rpstrength.com slash nile and use code nala checkout.

That's rpstrength.com slash nile, code nile checkout.

All right, let's jump to this Q ⁇ A super quick.

Punk Rockfit asks, when are you going to screw the weight cap, blow up them legs and and go open?

Well, honestly, people, because there's a weight cap in classic physique, people think I'm going to take that into account, but trust me, I'm not holding back anything in the offseason to grow.

So it's not like, oh, I have a weight cap, so I got to put a brake on growing.

I still have a mindset of maximizing my growth, but I automatically want to stay a little lean because it's useless to pack on 10 extra pounds of fat.

That's going to be, you got to have a diet off anyway it's just going to make the prep longer and your body more unhealthy so that's the only reason why i stay a little leaner than usual but this offseason i'm just i'm that's not going to be my priority but health is the priority in turn in combination with muscle mass but uh internal screwing the weight cap eventually in my career i do want to do an open show So I still want to first maximize my potential in classical Zeek because I think it would be a shame if you've won a big show before to then all of a sudden give up the whole class.

So I still want to really maximize what I can do here.

And once I realize, okay, I've done everything I could, when now it's time for an open show, it's going to happen.

But at what point, I don't know, but it's going to happen for sure.

Yeah.

Plus, I mean, obviously you have one of the most 70s proportioned physiques, period.

So I think it would be a shame to leave classic so early.

Yeah, exactly.

Owen Warlow asks, asks, where does he get his golden rice from?

I need that in my life.

Well, the golden rice, I don't get it from anywhere.

It's just your favorite rice and you combine it with either turmeric powder or fresh turmeric in the rice cooker, usually, because in a rice cooker, you don't lose anything through straining it afterwards.

And you can add like black pepper or a little bit of salt, for example, to enhance the flavor.

But just a little bit of turmeric powder already enhances the look of the golden rice.

And if you're tired of like, if you find it difficult to eat your meals, making it look more appealing also makes it easier to eat.

Like it's, you don't always want to eat like a big heap of white, boring rice.

If you give it a special color and a little bit of spice, it's going to be a little more tasty and look better and more exciting to eat.

So that's one of my favorite things to do to rice.

That's hilarious.

Yellow rice has always been more aesthetically pleasing and tasteful for me for some reason, too.

Viti asks, does he train abs?

Yeah, I train abs.

Abs to me is a combination of training the transverse abdominis, so the vacuum muscles to pull in the stomach, but also purely the rectus abdominis, which is the six-pack abs,

pretty much the same way as any other muscle group, like

10 to 15 reps, as heavy as needed to go to further in that rep range.

I don't really, if you want to develop more muscle mass in the abs, like if you're lean and your abs don't really show that much yet, you simply need more muscle mass there.

And that's what I neglected abs for a few years back in the day because I thought, oh, they're going to remain the same anyway.

When I get lean, they're going to show up.

But at some point,

they

started actually

getting smaller or less pronounced, even when I was fully lean and it looked really strange.

Like you do like a hands-claps, hand clasped, most muscular.

Everything is striated, and the abs are like not showing.

It's like flat.

It was like, oh, this is not complete.

As Arnold said, the center of your body is where everybody looks at, which is your abs.

That's the first thing you kind of look at.

And if those disappear, it takes away from the rest of your body as well.

So I train the abs just the same as the rest of the muscle groups.

So like cable crunches with a heavy weight and also

decline leg raises after that.

So I can actually hit failure pretty soon.

So they're already fatigued.

But just simple stuff and a vacuum to keep the waist as small and controllable as possible.

Yeah, I can agree with all of that too.

I had my own experience where I didn't have any of those like upper external obliques like the fish gills.

And I always thought it was just my genetics.

I would like, in my own head, I blame my genetics and then I trained them specifically with these side upper oblique crunches with cables for like four or five years and pop, they came out of nowhere.

Started doing some Jeff Seed poses.

Nice.

JC Physique asks, how long did you train naturally before hopping on PEDs?

And how old were you when you hopped on?

I was seven years I trained without them.

Then I did my first bodybuilding show naturally, which I won the overall.

And that's when I realized: okay, if I wanted to turn this into a career and win next year, like at a higher level, I either have to say, okay, I'm going to do this for fun, or I want to turn this into a career.

And that's pretty much when I started using PEDs to kind of

go through an evolution in my physique.

I gained,

let's see,

14 kilograms, which is over 30 pounds during the prep for the next show.

And that was like a minimal, I don't even remember the cycle, but it was I, the gym owner back, back then

gave me advice, and he gave me good advice because he said start as low as possible.

So it was maybe

a little higher, a little higher than TRT and

during the contest, you I think something was added near the end I don't even remember exactly what it was because I didn't really have a lot of care for the PED side I just wanted to make progress in bodybuilding I was too young to really do my investigation back then yeah yeah yeah I know

but I still

you know and when I realized how much I transformed in that time I was like, whoa, this is a different story.

But then you kind of also know you have the genetics to do well because then I first only won the junior classes and the overall there but then I won like the entire show as a 21 year old I won like every from everybody all the yeah all the adults basically all the older guys I won everything and that's when I turned I was 21 and I was already a top amateur in the Netherlands back then without even realizing that it was diff like how normally difficult that would be.

To me, it was quite quite easy to do, but that was like, it happened so quick for me back then.

I didn't even realize how quick everything went until looking back, I was like, whoa,

that was quite a lot of shows that I won back to back without even realizing how

that's not normal, but I didn't even know because I had no other experience.

I never experienced a loss.

all the way until my first Olympia, basically.

So that was,

yeah, very special time.

Damn, Wesley, it must be nice.

Yeah, it's nice, but also very humbling once you reach the true professional level, how much of a difference there is between amateurs and professionals.

Like

at first you win everything and you're used to this, and then all of a sudden you have shared 14th place at the Mr.

Olympia.

It's a very humbling feeling.

which you then have to think about, okay, do I still want to do this or not?

Because it's such an investment to go from the Netherlands to Las Vegas, especially back then.

I took a whole family with me because they were like, okay, you keep waiting.

Now we want to see it for ourselves as well.

And then everybody was in Las Vegas.

I end up like 14th.

It was a very humbling experience, but I learned a lot from it.

And now every time I lose, I always look at the reason why and I learn from it.

So it's always, I try to make it as valuable as possible.

That's awesome.

That's cool.

Troy Wellen asks, what made you switch from free weights to machines?

Maybe?

Yeah, so I used to do a lot of free weights that we talked about before, like all the classic exercises, the Tebow row, bent of row, the bench press, incline, like everything you can imagine.

But at some point, if you keep doing that year after year, you start to notice a little bit of irritations in the joints here and there, rotator cuffs.

Then you move to machines where you don't feel it as much, like moving from an incline heavy double fly to a peg deck or a cable fly already puts less pressure on the shoulders, as an example.

And

slowly, you find out which machines suit you better than

which free exercises that are the same.

And now I know exactly, and now I trade, I think, 80% machine, 20% free weight, because that simply is better for

my longevity and bodybuilding, basically.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

How old were you when you first started lifting, by the way?

14.

14.

Okay, cool.

I beat you by a year.

Nice.

Troy Willen asks opinion on Nandrolone.

Haven't used it for many years.

The only

most recent experience, like years ago, I've had with it, is NPP, like the fast-acting, well, fast-acting acting or less slow acting version of it.

And

from like I've used DECA only once ever, and that was,

I think, 10, maybe literally 10 years ago.

And I.

What I know about it is more from what I hear from other people than what I noticed myself.

But back in the day, I used to have

gynecomastia from puberty, but then I took the DECA in combination with testosterone, and then it exacerbated that a lot.

So, if you are estrogen-sensitive and you take it with testosterone, it's gonna make it a lot worse, the symptoms.

And

pretty much ever since then, I've never used it anymore.

But they say

it can mess up your anxiety levels.

It can mess up because prolactin prolactin goes up which then messes with your um erection quality for example or your your blood flow in general and um yeah for it it only really works for you if you're fit for it if you know that you don't really have any uh side effects from it it's pretty much how almost all drugs work

some people they swear by like bolinone and others they feel a lot of anxiety with it for example So that's the difference how your

makeup in your brain is depends,

dictates the kind of drug you should take for maximum result.

Because ultimately we only want muscle growth.

We don't want all those other effects.

But sometimes you just have to deal with them and find out, okay, this drug has this side effect, which is just in comparison to how much muscle it builds, not worth it.

It's not conducive to long-term progress.

And then you've got to move to another one that feels better for you overall.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Totally agree.

I like what Stefan says about it, where he's like, if you have anxiety issues with Nangelin, don't take nangelone.

If you have like hematocritic issues, don't take EQ, et cetera.

If you have hair loss issues, probably avoid like Primo or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you happen to, are there any like favorite supplements that you take or supplements that you really like to take for your like organ protection, long-term health, um, reducing oxidative stress types of stuff.

Well, the basics, which because of the basics, people don't really talk about it as much, but it's very important in my opinion.

Like things like omega-3, high-quality ones,

because I do so many blood tests, I know exactly the effect they can have.

And it's my LDL cholesterol is extremely low, always.

HDL is also too low, but if LDL is low, like very low, it really doesn't matter what the HDL is because the LDL is more telling of unhealthy cardiovascular system than a high HDL and a high LDL.

But omega-3 has a profound effect on this.

It also is very good for your cell membranes to keep them more elastic and more

permissible for vitamins and minerals to go through it and to kind of for your metabolism in general also for insulin sensitivity and

a lot of people get a lot get way too much omega-6 which is inflammation promoting and too little omega-3 which is inflammation

prevents it or lowers it and also vitamin

D3 in combination with K2

to make sure that the calcium that you have in your system and that you ingest goes is actually absorbed and goes to the right place.

So it's going to the bones and other areas where it's needed rather than hang out in the vascular system where you don't want it for plaque buildup.

That's also something a lot of people take vitamin D3

and it promotes like the calcium absorption, but it doesn't promote the

transportation to where it needs to go, which is where the K2 comes in.

So always take both at the same time.

And

I've recently and this

is too

big of a subject to really dive into but I've done a DNA test and now with chat GPT like I did a DNA test to see what my ancestry was originally but it comes with a lot of other raw data so I uploaded it to chat GPT and I asked it

find out for me everything that's relevant for bodybuilding and i i i mentioned a few of of the symptoms that I was feeling and having and it came up with a lot of like those

SMPs I think they're called like genetic markers that stand for an effect in your body and for me for example I always have to look out for that I don't have the best genes for instance sensitivity or the best genes for cholesterol like stuff like this comes out of that result and you know exactly which supplements work the best for you.

But also liposomalglutothione, if I say it correctly,

I need to take that because

my methylation

in my body isn't very efficient because of my genes, apparently.

So literally genetics.

plays a way bigger role than people think.

And you always get these broad supplementation recommendations.

Oh, this is good for you.

This is not necessary.

But sometimes, if you want to improve something specifically in your physio in your body, like a DNA test, like literally looking at your genes, can tell you a lot.

But it is kind of in the forefront of science still.

And I think in the future it'll play a way bigger role.

But like supplements like B vitamins and glutathione and stuff, they all work together to improve this,

which will make the chemical makeup of your brain better more efficient allowing for better sleep less stress less anxiety all stuff all of this stuff which is uh ultimately going to be better for uh for health and progress in bodybuilding so uh i really tailor my supplementation also to uh to literally my my dna

and uh but that might be a little going too far for most people but there's always going to be uh

what

never mind i'll i'll tell you in a second Keep going.

Keep going.

And let's see what else I take.

I take quite a lot, but it's not necessary to say everything, I think.

And generally also, like, we used to think creatine also was purely for performance, but I also happen to have the gene for increased chance for Alzheimer's, which

oh, yeah, which also famously the

Thor actor also has, and he has done like a lot of research for it, but you can do stuff early on.

Like pretty much the moment you turn 30, it kind of already starts to develop if you don't do anything about it, and it only starts to show like at 60 plus, but it doesn't mean you can't do something about it sooner.

So that's why the omega-3 is so high, and

the anti-inflammatory supplements, but also creatine actually helps to prevent a lot of these symptoms and to prevent you from getting it maybe at all.

Like it's a combination of all of this stuff that could really prevent a lot of those things, at least from happening for many years in advance.

So

yeah, I think those were the most important ones that I...

And magnesium also, by the way, important mineral.

Take it pretty much with every meal as people really underestimate.

how much of a deficiency you can have and you it's very difficult to get out from your foods so you can might as well supplement with it and the maximum tolerable dose is so much higher that you it's it's difficult to overdose with so you might as well take a little too much

preferably magnesium bisglycinate for example if you take uh citrate or um

the other one citrate Yes, citrate.

You will notice that you take too much by going to the bathroom.

It draws a lot of extra fluids into the intestines and it's not going to be too pleasant.

So with most supplements, like if you take too much creatine, too much magnesium, you will notice it with your digestion as well.

But most of those supplements I mentioned, you can take in a quite high dosage, like the vitamin D3 at least, omega-3, very high.

Creatine, I take

around 15 grams a day.

And olive and magnesium quite high as well.

And as long as you don't have any digestion side effects, it's only going to be good for you, in my opinion.

I love that you said all of this.

I wish we had more time because I feel like we could talk about this for hours, to be honest.

I don't know if you know of Dr.

Dean, but I had him.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Love Dr.

Dean.

I had him on the podcast.

Also just filmed another one with him, too.

And he's probably going to come back on again.

And my audience freaking loves him.

They love hearing about all the supplementation and everything to optimize health.

And we both also got our DNA tested as well.

So you're the second person I've heard also get this done, which is super, super cool.

Yeah, I originally got mine from 23andMe, and then I imported, he and I both actually got our raw data from there and put it into Prometheus.

So this is really cool to hear that you put this on Chat GPT because I think I'm going to do that now.

Yeah.

But

yeah, I found out a lot of the same things.

And one of the things, one of the things, for example, was like that.

I found out that I have a higher percentage than the average of slow twitch fibers um there's this thing called like muscle uh muscle performance impairment um yeah which essentially just means I probably would not be a good power lifter so I continue to train in high volume and that would be more optimal than me and then I also found out all these other things like such as like I have a higher risk of four Alzheimer's

high blood pressure and um

some some various aspects of cardiovascular disease do run in my family, so I have to be very particular about that.

Take citrus bregamot, natokinase, telmasardin, just a bunch of other things, you know, for that.

But yeah, I mean, I just love that you said that because I like to tell people, like, even if they feel like the government is going to take all their data and their info and shit.

It's very, I think it's super.

You should be in charge of that before they even understand it themselves.

So you tested it and you understand it way better now than the government would at this point because you're doing your own research and you can then already do something about it before

somehow they can but uh the dna testing is is very interesting it's just unfortunate that if you want to i don't know how it's called anymore but you can do different tests like i did the answer ancestry test so it only takes a part of your genome that you can find out what your ancestry is but automatically you you take those other genes with it but if you want to test your entire genome, it's going to be a lot more expensive, of course.

I don't know which one you've done.

But I've done it at MyHeritage like

seven years ago, and I still have that raw data.

So I only recently was able to use ChatGPT for it.

Only now it's advanced enough to understand it.

But I've also done it at sequencing.com, which and I don't, I don't recommend it yet because I haven't had the results yet, but I paid quite a premium to test my entire genome.

So not just a small portion, but the entirety of it.

So you can get all your information.

I think Dean did that as well because he mentioned he can see how efficient his body metabolizes testosterone, for example, and other hormones.

And sometimes if you do an ancestry test, those genes aren't found in the raw data.

So there's a lot more interesting stuff.

But yeah, it's interesting to talk about this because I think this will be the future in supplementation and maybe even healthcare in general to tailor your healthcare and what you eat and supplement with based on literally what you need.

You know them for sure.

So blood tests,

doing a blood test is kind of like an indirect way because you're seeing the result of what your genes are responsible for.

But if you go to the root cause, it's your genes.

It's going to be like some people, they have genetics that their LDL will be high regardless of anything they do.

So if you know that, you also know that if you have that gene, it actually shows up as a high LDL in your blood test, but it's not as damaging to your system for somebody who doesn't have the gene but does have a high LDL because they ruined it themselves with bad lifestyle choices.

But if it's genetic, it's not going to be as harmful.

So it's like this

very interesting test you can do on yourself if you care enough to investigate about it, because it's a big topic, obviously.

But it's going to be interesting for sure in the future.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

I'm excited about it.

I don't know.

Things about genes always get me super excited.

I don't know why, but

yeah, thanks for sharing that.

All right, let's just finish up just a few more questions and then we'll run out of here.

a lot of people are excited that you're on the podcast and they're also all thanking you for the wave drip idea

how does it feel being pioneer

a lot of these are good um yo chin emerson asks how do you stay so conditioned year-round

yeah it's um

like

People ask me, do you ever do cheat meals or cheat days or something like that?

I like to go.

I used to be worse at this, but I got better.

Like whenever I go out to eat, I like to go for quality over quantity.

Some people, they somehow think in the regular life they're deprived of something.

So the moment they have the chance, they let go way too much and they eat as much as they can of low quality stuff.

It's like a

a waste of calories in my opinion.

So I go for the higher quality stuff, which is more expensive, which would automatically be a barrier not to eat too much.

So learn that stuff like this is more about the experience and you're going to go away satisfied regardless, but at least your stomach won't be bulging full and you won't be gaining too much fat from it.

Like I'm not saying you should never cheat or something, but if you can transform your thinking and your mindset around it a little bit, it's going to make it a lot easier never to overdo it so much.

Because,

for example with every holiday like easter or father's day or christmas we always with the family go to a an all-you-can-eat buffet but you have different kinds you have like

you have the kind that you can eat a lot of like cheap foods which you then do or you can go to a higher quality one with like higher protein options of of like high quality salmon or like beef and if you eat those things like a steak it's you're you can't eat

a super high quantity of it at least not compared to like fast food kind of buffets and um it's it's and it's more expensive as well so you're more mindful of choosing the foods that are worth it rather than just eating as much as you can and also to bring it back to like uh more practical stuff your day-to-day diet should be structured in such a way that every week you should not gain more than half a percent of body weight max in the offseason.

Like after a bodybuilding show or after a cutting phase, the first few weeks you will gain around one to one and a half percent body weight.

You're gonna get it faster because of glycogen storage, extra water storage, but also you gotta get back to a healthy body fat percentage because before quality progress can begin.

But once you are in that stage where sleep is optimal again and you feel great, you feel energized, the body weight should not go up higher than one and a half a percent per week because just imagine like if you're 200 pounds that means one pound a week if that is even even if that already is purely muscle you're gonna gain like a lot of pounds by the end of your bulk which is already unrealistic so the more body weight you gain a week the more of it will be fat which will have to die off by the end so it's a double-edged sword or or double negative basically whereas in your off-season you will won't be satisfied with how you look as much and you have to start your prep or your cutting phase sooner because you're carrying too much body weight it's gonna

you know i can name all the negatives here i don't want to be too negative but i just want to motivate people you can actually stay really lean or relatively lean by and implementing this

method of not gaining too much body weight each week and just calculating

how much half a percent is of your body weight.

Just weigh yourself every day as a data point.

Take the average and compare it to the average of the last week.

If it's around half a percent, you're golden.

Just stick around that and you will make more than enough gains to get stronger and build muscle mass.

And

yeah.

And just

make sure that if you fall victim to not,

you know, quote unquote,

be able to control yourself yourself from cheating then put your favorite foods already as part of the diet so that it cannot be a cheat because it's not a cheat it's part of your regime it's part of your routine so like i every single day i have some a little bit of chocolate and away drippy talked about before that makes my meal taste so much better that the cravings for other sweets is a lot less.

So it makes it easier not to eat extra on top of my diet.

Of Of course, I do as well.

I'm human.

I have children.

Obviously, I'm not a robot who does everything perfectly.

But if you already implement these techniques,

it's going to save a lot of unnecessary pounds in the offseason.

And it's going to be much better for health as well, which will be better for muscle gains.

Yeah, that's well put.

Well put.

Relationship with food is always the hardest thing for some people.

I know it just varies per person, but just like you said, adapting that to what your relationship with food is to continuously improve your relationship over time, I think is the best.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if you have to answer this one, but Bram Grayling asks, what's the most experimental drug you use and was it worth it?

I think the thing people are talking about now, the SLU PB332,

I don't know how experimental it is, but it is kind of

not as researched in the literature, at least on people compared to like other

drugs, the PDs.

But

I also follow Vigorous Steve quite a lot and

also Dean.

And I listened to their anabolic roundtable and it just came up there.

And I was like, well, they make such compelling points about it.

Why not give it a shot?

And the only downfall about it is that it's so expensive, in my opinion.

So it's like, is it going to be worth it?

Like some people say they notice

effects from it right away, which by the way is mitochondrial efficiency, if I am correct about that, which means you will burn more energy

pretty much doing nothing extra.

It's like an exercise mimetic.

So the moment you take it, it mimics as if your body is doing something extra, like an extra activity which means you're gonna be burning on a net basis more calories than if you didn't take it and it's it supposedly doesn't have any side effects which would obviously be great but I'm not sure yet if it's something you can for example

use it instead of Clan for example which would be that would be a big win if you can use something that has side effects with something that doesn't have side effects then it would justify the

price point, but it's still not as researched enough that you don't really know which dosage is good.

Like, is it 200 microamps?

Is it 600?

I don't know.

I'm somebody, and this comes also from the DNA test.

I don't notice

pretty much anything from

whatever I take, whether it's alcohol or drugs or pre-workouts, I always stay level.

It doesn't matter what I do or take, take.

It's not like I'm really noticing much.

And that's also genetic.

So I can't notice something right away.

Like with Clan, at least you can still see, okay, at the beginning, at least you're getting a little bit shaky.

So you know it's doing something.

And your heart rate increases a little bit.

But with SLU, it's a bit more difficult to distinguish the actual effect.

And because the price point is pretty high, it's like I'm not entirely sure yet if it's worth it.

but there's so many people who claim it does a lot for them that it's hard to ignore.

But

as I mentioned before, everybody is different in this regard.

But that's pretty much the most experimental thing I've taken.

I love that.

I'm glad that you shared that because I've heard mixed reviews on it too.

I hear some people say that they've noticed, like John Jewett and some of his clients or anecdotes here feel that they have not like it's almost negligible, I guess, the amount of fat loss they've experienced and then other people that feel like they've noticed it almost immediately so it's interesting yeah the thing with experimental drugs is usually you don't take it alone you always take it almost as an extra on top of whatever you're doing already so it's very difficult to notice something if it has a small effect like if you're using growth hormone clan your himbine a lot of peds are you really going to notice the difference from adding that on top maybe it does something, but because you're using all those other things already, it cannot really express itself, it potential as much because your body is already being targeted by so many other fat-burning

compounds.

So

maybe

I know Vigorous Steve himself usually does stuff on their own.

Like he, I think he used the SLU on its own and he said he noticed quite the effect.

So, you know, I do trust him.

So if you

if I were to recommend it, I would like say, Okay, watch his video and uh see what he says about it because he always does these deep dives, which means this is the most research you can find about it in that video.

There's nothing really much left.

So, if that video does not convince you, I think it's still too early, but it might convince you anyway because he did notice something.

But yeah, it's a very interesting compound, maybe for the future as well.

Yeah,

Have you heard of Myra Begrin?

Yes.

That's the beta three antagonist, I think.

Yeah,

I don't know.

I found a lot of interest in it since people propose it as a side effect free clean.

But I don't know.

I think the biggest benefit of it is that

it relaxes the bladder muscles, or at least the impulse the the bladder gives you to have the pee so it doesn't wake you up in the night which will promote sleep which will promote fat burning so that would be the ultimate side effect free thing to have because

like it's like saying something that promotes sleep but only if you wake up to pee then it will have the biggest benefit if you if you can get eight hours of sleep no matter what i it might not have such a huge effect but uh it's very hard to believe it's going to be the same effect as as clan butyrol because

if it really did maybe we should have heard about it a little bit more by now

this is exactly why i felt like i found it really like this is exactly why i felt like i wanted to like try it myself because i had this conversation with dr dean um regarding sleep and um

reducing the amount of times that you wake up to pee and he said for some people you know if you're waking up to pee multiple times a night with a completely full bladder it may be a good idea to look into mold being in your surroundings or in your own home.

But if it comes to not being a full bladder or something, whether maybe it's either psychological or you there is something else that is relieving you in between your sleep cycles of being in that deep enough sleep to stay there, and uh, that's me right now.

So, I'm like waking up like three to four times a night to go pee.

So, this sounds kind of promising for me, man.

This sounds really nice, but um, yeah, I don't know.

I'll probably check it out and I'll let you guys all know what I

find.

Um, let's see if you can find one more question because you have like a hundred questions here, and we only ask like four,

but um, there's a lot

and Jeski asks, I'll

ask him, Als hisch in

Troz Nederlander is

I don't know if I did that right.

I know, I actually understood that.

Jah ig ben Trochenedlander.

Yes, I am a proud Dutchman.

I'm so glad you understood that.

That's a big dub.

These are all really good.

This one seems a little bit more introspective.

TJ Miller asks, what's something you would tell your younger self with the knowledge you have now?

Focus more on nutrition because

the first six years

I got all of my gains from training and the nutrition was like

sometimes I happened to hit my protein goal, sometimes not.

It really really was not a focus because the moment you make progress you're like why change anything being a young self and not really having the internet or the forums or anything to guide me I wasn't on there at all so I just followed only the training my dad told me about and the only thing he said is

get some it's called quark in the Netherlands which is kind of like a Greek yogurt comparison but that's the only thing I ate after the training and that that's the only change I made to my childhood diet that I still had to get some protein in.

So I think nutrition plays, in my opinion, pretty much the biggest role overall in changing your physique in the long term.

If you just train regularly, but your nutrition sucks, you will always look the same.

But if you eat perfectly and you train normally, you will be able to make more progress over the long run.

So I think nutrition is going to be definitely something I would have focused on a bit more.

But at the same time, it's like you don't want to ruin your childhood so early on by making, by already having perfect meal plans at like 15 or 16.

So I do think a lot of the generation now is social media, because unlike me, they are now exposed to what should be optimal.

But then it kind of takes away like the freedom, which is the unique feeling of ignorance is bliss before you even know what that means.

That is a feeling you can never get back once you're past that.

Like once you know what is best for you, then it's over.

You never will have the freedom again.

So it's kind of hard to also take away, like for example with my own children,

we teach them what is healthy, but we don't force anything on them either.

It's like I want them to have freedom in their mind for as long as possible because the fondest memories I have of my childhood is just playing a game or something with my brother and not

having a care in the world, like just being in the moment instead of thinking about the next thing to do.

That is the funny thing is,

thinking about the future is the only thing that truly differentiates humans from the other animals in the world.

But at the same time, it also is the only thing that stresses people out the most, like

thinking about consequences, about what you're doing or of the future so it's uh that really is a double-edged sword if you don't treat that properly nice okay

um j michael asks uh was there a number of i use of gh that you ever felt like was too much for you

um

i think

no like lately i follow actually uh or i follow like John Jewish Locke quite a lot and I listen quite carefully to what his opinion is about growth hormone.

And he currently is using around 10 IUs, I think.

He's been doing this for quite a while.

And I followed his course as well about growth hormone and what the effects are.

The biggest benefit of using such a large amount is I think especially prevalent in the off-season.

where you're able to eat more food and stay lean.

But controversially, leanness promotes insulin sensitivity but growth hormone affects it negatively as well so there's a balance there and i think for everybody this is different so we have two things that growth hormone really does it's it affects fat burning and incin sensitivity but also your igf1 levels so the best thing to do would be

first thing is find a legit source of growth hormone this is the number one thing of course but once you know you have that

you start like i think four units would be kind of the minimum to use if you don't want to waste your money because i think between two and three most people who have decent genetics will already produce around that much or at least enough of that with a similar effect so four or higher should be in my opinion if you're gonna use your money for it uh the minimum dose if you want to have effects for muscle growth and fat burning

But your IGF-1 levels for everybody, they have a different response to the amount of growth hormone they take.

Like some people, they do a blood test and the IGF-1 levels are much higher.

And for some people, they stay relatively the same as their natural levels.

And maybe, I don't know, I don't know for sure, but maybe for those people, I would not go super high with it because For some people, it doesn't matter how high you go with growth hormone, the IGF-1 level doesn't really respond much more to it the only thing happening is your insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance increases so for those people it's not worth it but for me around five units would be kind of the ideal dose of a balance between

still being insulin sensitive throughout the entire year and having the fat burning properties and increasing the IGF-1 levels high enough for a muscle building effect, but also not too high where it takes over the side effect parts of the equation so i think around five units um

not more than that isn't really needed for me personally yeah um agree with absolutely everything you said um and my coach also had me at four for the last year and just but me up to five for the prep so i'm in the same place too um and literally the only thing i would have to say i guess to um

all of this, which I also agree with and have experienced and have discussed with a lot of guests, is like if someone only had enough money to say inject like two to three IUs per day of GH, I feel like there is something to say about the theory of doing it at the opposite of when you go to bed.

That way to hopefully sustain your natural GH production.

And then on top of that, maybe you're just adding the two to three IUs like say in the morning or something, fasted cardio or maybe after meal one, after workout or something.

So I think there's potential benefit there.

But other than that, totally agree with just if you're going to take it at all, probably aim for at least four.

Yeah, yeah, and then probably don't need to go much higher.

True.

Cool.

Last question.

Jack Steinrock asks: most important change you can make as an amateur for the most productive offseason.

Or, I guess, maybe also, if Taylor get to you,

what have you found that has

made probably the most in your own offseason?

Yeah, so

if we think about more from amateur to pro and when I turned pro what I did back then I actually did log my lifts to kind of get familiar with

getting honest with where does my failure point really lie and instead of trying to remember my previous weights to actually check your logbook and see how much weight you did last time to make sure you dial in progressive overload to get comfortable in that way of training, especially around the weaker muscle groups, to make sure you are actually improving those rather than switching around exercises too much or workouts too much.

Stick to one plan and progressively overload with that plan and make sure to fuel those workouts with

smart macronutrient distribution.

over the day.

The off-season is the only opportunity you have to re-maximize carbs and to really recover from your workout as opposed to prep where you are trying to sustain instead of like gain anything.

So in the off season, I like to re-maximize carbs around the workout obviously, but also during breakfast when you've been fasting for the longest, higher protein, higher carbohydrate and moderate to low fat to make sure you maximize the glycogen storage at all times to make sure you will always recover as quick as possible and maximize

exercise performance to ensure that you're able to progress your lifts for as long as possible in the offseason.

As that is the only

proxy you have of muscle gain, because week to week you don't notice anything in your physique, but you can notice something in your strength.

And the only way to objectify this is to write it down and to make sure you do it with correct form.

So that's how I made a lot of progress at the early pro days.

And I went quite quickly to my weight cap that way and but yeah after a while you gotta find what works for you the best but at first you gotta make sure that you know what progressive overload really means and I would also because automatically I did this record yourself for YouTube I record myself quite often my exercises to see

you kind of remember oh that was a difficult set like a seated row for example you're doing you know you're beating your logbook with one rep but then you can check your video footage to see was your form actually not breaking down just to achieve that record again.

So I learned a lot from watching my footage and seeing that my form wasn't as pristine as like the first warm-up sets.

And then you can

prevent fooling yourself and actually injuring yourself in the long term because the best offseasons are the ones where you don't have any kind of injury

or niggles or pains at all?

So you can just have productive, energized workouts.

And also, don't forget the recovery from nutrition and also those eight hours of sleep, how boring it may sound, it's going to be the most productive thing you can do in your off-season.

Yeah, yeah.

Preacher.

I ask one last question at the end of every podcast for every guest, but if you were to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one message to send to the entire world today, what would the message be?

A little bit in line with what we talked about before regarding your mindset about things.

You can always approach every situation in two ways, in a negative or a positive way.

How at face value, how negative it may seem, there's always going to be some kind of benefit you can pull out from the situation, which will turn your mindset around which will give you less stress and in turn make you just a nicer person to be around like to give the practical example again

if my

if i get downstairs and my kids are already wait are already up and they've made a mess of the living room will i take this as a negative and punish them and be and start the day negatively or can i think about this as a nice positive active start of the day?

See it as an opportunity to teach my children how to clean up after themselves and they shouldn't be doing it.

Just make every situation as positive as you can.

And that will audibly,

as selfless as that sounds, you can turn into something

positively selfish.

by actually knowing it will reduce your own stress levels as well.

So it's going to be good for everybody, going to be good for yourself, and going to be good for the people around you because you will be a better person and less stressed.

So the nicer you can be, the better life you and the people around you will have.

Love that mindset, man.

Thanks for coming on the podcast.

That was awesome.

Of course.

Very welcome.

It was a joy to be here.

Thanks, bro.

It was an honor to have you on, and I'm sure everyone's going to love this one a lot.

So awesome.

Hope you have a great rest of your day.

And thanks for coming on again, bro.

You too, man.

Thank you.

Peace.

See you.