Iain Valliere and I Settle On The Average Dosages

Ian Valer, Olympian six-time IFBB Pro Champ, and most importantly, Chris Bumstead's brother.

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

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

Both of these are antithetical to society's understanding of the sport.

And while there will always be some that claim that PEDs are all you need, I would like to deliver an honest message of what is required for achieving top performance as well as the dangers associated with this route.

I received this comment from a user named Night Scarens.

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

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

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

I'm also super poor, and so I'm having all this, uh, I have all this secondhand crappy um

podcast devices and shit.

So that's funny, yeah.

I need to buy a new headphone because my uh, my headphones,

you know, in the wire, like they're like one tiny little piece of the wire attaches, and then now you have to like bend it in the perfect way for you to hear anything for it to work, yeah.

Yeah, that's what's happening.

Um,

so something that I was like, I really enjoyed from some of the discussions.

I mean, you've had like a million discussions on podcast places and everything, but

I was listening to your podcast with Hanni and I thought it was hilarious when you were talking about how you wanted to switch to Patrick.

And you were like saying that like

I was trying to figure out what it was if they have like some kind of like European secret or something

in there.

I mean, it's one of those like grass is always greener.

Like, you know, it's like the thing of like, you know, when you've never used one drug, you think it's like the secrets.

Like, guys that have never used growth hormone think that once I get GH, it's like going to be the secret to being like fucking Ramy, or that when you get to that level, then you're like, well, when I get good IG, when I get incrulex, that'll be the next thing.

The European coaches were like that thing for me at the time, you know?

It was like the, the one thing that like, I thought everything would be different.

And in some ways it was, but I mean, in most ways, like, let's be serious.

What all these coaches are doing is 95% the same.

What it's coming down to is like their intuition and how, and how and when they're making the decisions, you know, like in terms of the drugs they're using, you know, there's small variances, but they're all kind of comparable.

You know, some guys like do certain things differently.

Um, but it was more so, you know, it's, it's at the end of the day, it's just the decision-making time at the appropriate times.

And that's what separates guys like, you know, Hani or Patrick or these guys that end up being top coaches is this, they make the right calls at the right time, you know?

Yeah.

This is something something I was discussing with Kyle, too,

when I had a podcast with him and Jared and we were discussing their new coaching with Nick.

Sure.

He was basically saying like same thing as like, obviously they had a little bit of backlash when it first started, right?

They're like, who is Kyle?

He's some fucking influencer coach shit.

And then they're like, Jared, this fucking science-based ass lifter, you know, the typical shit.

And

fucking dude with hair.

Yeah.

And then Kyle was like, well, I mean, well, that's the secret, right?

The secret is literally literally

the athlete is going to look good with whoever the fuck they're with.

Yeah.

Right.

The difference is like how well they work together.

Yeah.

And

obviously figuring out what works best for that athlete, right?

Timing.

Yeah, no, exactly.

And look, like the first show Patrick and I did together, we shit the bed like completely.

Like the first, well, sorry.

No, that's good news.

The first show I did with him, I did with him after I'd been working with him for like a week.

So I did Vancouver Pro with Matt in 2016 or 2019.

2019?

Yeah, 2019.

And then like two weeks, I left Matt and two weeks later, I did Tampa Pro with Patrick.

And I did look a lot better, but I was already in shape.

Like it would all have been done.

We did some small changes.

But then we did the Tampa Pro the following year where I lost the Hunter and I looked fucking brutal.

Like probably one of the worst showings I've ever had.

But he learned from that like super quick.

Like we did a bunch of things and then he immediately learned like this didn't work.

This didn't work.

This didn't work.

And he pivoted very quickly.

And from then i never lost a show again with him like literally i won the new york pro um and every other other than olympias and arnolds every other show i did with him for the next four years i never lost you know so you know once we found that system which he pivoted very quickly and that's the difference is you know it didn't take him 15 shows to figure it out or scrambling around he remembered what he did He remembered where he looked back and saw, okay, the look was good here.

The look was good here.

The look was good here.

Oh, fuck.

It wasn't good here.

Okay, we got a bit back here when we did this.

And then it was kind of like finding that spot of like, okay, these are the things that are definite do nots.

These are some things that definitely improved your look.

And then kind of found that look and fine-tuned it.

And then we never really, after that show with that Tampa, I never really had a look that was like bad, you know?

I was pretty much on the money every show, you know, maybe bar my last Olympia, but even then, like I was still pretty good.

A lot of that was more my own doing with like nerves and stuff like that.

It wasn't necessarily like that bad of a look.

It was just, you know, a combination of a few things.

But I mean, yeah, once we figured that out, which he did very quickly, I mean, we pretty much hit the nail on the head every time.

What was it that you

shit the bed with in that first show?

Do you guys feel like yeah, for me, I'm very, very sensitive to water manipulations.

And Patrick has said this before.

He's like, look, if I could put you on stage with one gram of carb and five liters of water, or with, you know, a million grams of carbs and zero water, he's like, I'm picking the water all day.

And it's so true with my physique.

Like, if I start to really heavily limit water, I just lose this

size and this fullness and this pop to my look.

And you can see it even in like my day-to-day, like in my progress pictures, you know, like from morning to night, even if my food was very low, just from hydrating a few, like few liters over the day, I would look dramatically bigger and fuller, but with very little like hold like water, like subcutaneous water.

Like I wouldn't get watery throughout the day, but I really like hold a lot of like intracellular, like intramuscular water without holding it in the skin.

So for that Tampa Pro, we had really limited water, like really tapered down going into the show

and use some directs, like nothing crazy.

I mean, I think we'd use like a fucking half a diezide or a quarter diazide, nothing like out of, you know, nothing crazy at all, but it was more just actual water limitations and sodium limitations that we kind of done.

And then we actually, the next show we did New York Pro, like, I don't know, a couple of weeks later, a month later.

um we did the complete opposite we're like all right let's just try this on the complete other end of the spectrum where we limited water water and we, you know, did some stuff with sodium.

Let's do none of that.

Let's just get you onto the stage exactly doing what you've been doing all week.

Like if you drank seven liters of water the day before, let's just drink seven liters of water, drink like you're normally drinking the day of the show.

And that's exactly what we did.

We use zero diuretics, zero water manipulation.

We manipulated sodium to a very small degree, but only like in the last like couple hours just to get a little more pop.

And we didn't do anything like crazy dramatic in terms of a carb.

We just kind of built it up slowly throughout the week.

There was never any like thousand gram days or anything like that.

And we just kept drinking and kept eating like normal.

And I went on stage and won the New York Pro looking like that.

So

that wasn't, I don't think, rendered the best look, but at least now we've done things on both ends of the spectrum.

We've done like heavy limitation of water and sodium manipulation, and then we'd done none.

And then we say, okay, we definitely are way better on this side of the spectrum.

And then from there, we just did like a small bit of fine tuning over the next few shows.

until we found a system that honestly we never changed for three four years after that and you know what I did in terms of my peak process from, you know, then all 2020, 21, you know, the years I was winning Texas, Tampa, seventh at the Olympia bow time, second at the Arnold, all those, my, my peak process was literally like carbon copy almost.

There's some small changes because maybe you're coming from one show to the next or, you know, how your body is responding, but the process was virtually identical every single show after that.

What would you feel like are the small changes whenever you're going to another show?

Like back-to-back?

Yeah, it really depends.

You know, if they're really close in proximity, you know, for me, I definitely,

and if you're flying, like flying obviously will have an impact.

You know, if you're going to fly from like, say, you're doing a show in,

yeah, if you're doing a show in like Florida and then the next week, you're doing a show in like Spain.

I mean, that's, that's a tough turnover.

And you're really, really going to have to limit carb intake, especially for me for the first couple of days, you know, especially until any of those diuretics and your body's kind of rehydrated from that first show.

you know, to 100%.

So you're not like rebounding in it from a water perspective.

And then we just try and keep it as low as we can, get all that water out from the flying, and then kind of build up from there into the show.

So yeah, it really depends on the circumstance, you know, but it's, it's definitely getting, you know, any of that kind of that peak that you did and getting your body kind of to reset after that back to your baseline as fast as possible and then kind of building up into the next one again after that.

Gotcha.

I always felt,

I mean,

I guess it's something that obviously most competitors have to deal with anyways, but

how do you feel like you guys had to deal with like what what was the longest amount of time that you felt like you had back-to-back competitions like you would basically stay on this almost peak conditioning 2021 was the year i did tampa pro i won tampa in like i don't know beginning of july or something end of june july i did texas pro like a week later um and then that was the year during like the covet years when they moved the arnold to the end of the year so that year because they'd canceled it the beginning of the year they moved it to like october It was like, I don't know, a month or two weeks or something before the Olympia.

So I did Tampa to Texas, flew directly there.

And then I did, kept into that, like had a small kind of period where I came up a bit, you know, maybe 10, 15 pounds over stage weight, and then right back down into the Arnold and then the Arnold into the Olympia.

So those that four string, I've done more shows in a year before, but they were a little more spread out than that.

That was kind of going from like, you know, end of July to, or maybe even August when Texas was,

until like October.

So, like, I had four shows within that, you know, three-month period, whatever it was.

Um, that was probably the most I've done in close proximity.

You know, I've done ones where I did like, you know, shows in June and then, you know, had a month off or two months off and then did a show in November, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But that was the most I've done in close proximity for sure.

Gotcha.

So, one of the reasons I'm curious about this, which obviously I feel like I'm going to figure this out for myself, because I actually started working with Patrick

maybe eight, nine months ago

or so.

and this was after I was like I mean obviously I'd been following him for a while but you know bro like including you Patrick fucking just always has the monsters for some fucking reason you know

Stephan NFC pops up freaking knee hat looks like a fucking animal bro what he's like 22 years old or 2010

and

obviously Kion and then I'm just like dude I gotta figure out what this European secret is too yeah yeah so

And also, I just like, I really fucking, just like you do, like, I really love that the way that he like communicates And like, he has this kind of sort of like,

like, I feel like I'm talking to like a sensei master or something sometimes.

Patrick always had like, it's a very direct, but like, a, a, not like an aggressive direct.

It's like a calming direct.

And he also is like, he has this like dad energy about him.

Like you said, like a sensei dad mentor energy, you know, which is, look, like when I was working with Matt, we did great things, but like.

Matt was so much the same age as me.

And look, I don't think your coach has to be 30 years older than you.

I think there's kind of like Kyle and Nick are the same age but um for me you know like finding someone that i looked to more as like a like a hierarchy like you said like a sensei instead of like a peer um i think did a lot for me for sure you know yeah i think it's the same with me i don't know maybe it's because i'm agent or some shit but um honestly uh i really love working with kyle and i think and he was the best coach i've ever had to this date so far.

I haven't done a prep with Patrick yet, but I also felt like our age was so similar.

And like, you know, I kind of like the way that we would interact with each other was more bro-y and stuff.

So, I mean, I really liked it, but I just, um, I always was interested in working with Patrick, and I feel like having that kind of like,

I don't know, I was always taught this kind of perception of having discipline and well, yeah, and you become like eager to please them in a way.

Like, that sounds kind of fucking sus, but like, you know,

I get it, but like, you want to like impress them.

It's like, you know, Patrick's seen so many good bodybuilders.

He's been around for so long and like, he's older than me.

And like, it was just like I had this respect, um, you know for like the age hierarchy there um and experience hierarchy right yeah

so i guess what i was trying to what i what i've always been curious about though is like obviously i'm sure i'll figure this out with him in my upcoming shows but

i was always

stressed out about the thought of doing a lot of back-to-back shows like over a prolonged period of time um like if i do like two or three shows or something in a row or so i mean like i don't feel like that's too big of a deal but i think the thought of one, being in that conditioned state, and then two,

I guess, prolonging the compound uses, especially for orals.

Like

if a show's like maybe two weeks after, I would suppose that I'm not really coming off the orals.

If it's like six weeks after, then I don't know, maybe we'll decide to come off for a small period of time.

I'm not sure.

Yeah, it depends, right?

Yeah.

So I just always would get worried because I'd feel like that look would just fade naturally.

Yeah, I mean, I always look, I know it's not with everyone.

I always get better the more shows in succession i did um you know like i've never in my life in you know 35 pro shows or of shows i've done um i never ever ever in my life looked best my first show of the season ever never never once um generally if i did a full year of competition four five six shows whatever my first show was almost always my worst show um

you know and i i found for me getting the body fat to low levels and then kind of like perfecting the look from there with like carb manipulation and stuff like that.

And, you know, and I think there's obviously something to be said with just having drugs in you longer, you know what I mean, to an extent.

But also, you know, managing that, like you said, you know, if the shows are, say I have a show one week apart, okay, yeah, you're going to keep all the same drugs in.

But then if I have like now eight weeks, six weeks to the Arnold, like after Texas, okay, which ones are we taking out?

Which ones are we putting in?

You know, and kind of management of those through there to obviously keep your body like.

Look, an unhealthy body to an extent will not be effective at burning fat and looking really good.

You know, if a guy's liver is like fucked to the nines i mean burning fat becomes very very difficult um so you know obviously you have to manage those things as well from like a health marker standpoint to make sure your body's actually responsive right

right yeah

um

going back to the the the peaking thing you mentioned that um

when you guys started uh

maintaining the amount of like water i guess that you were consuming rather than like uh prioritizing carb load and then you know decreasing water intake that like that turned out for or that turned out a better look for you um but that wasn't necessarily the best like was there a time that you remember it being like oh this is the best peak like this yeah the best peaks and and like i said you know i think my probably my best peaks were i mean probably 2020 olympia um was probably my best overall peak i don't know if it was my best physique ever um probably pretty close um but that was the same year like i'd done the uh tampa where i lost to hunter looked really bad and then the new york where i won you know it was like my first real season with Patrick.

Um, and that Olympia, I think we, is the first show we kind of tried in the middle ground.

It actually like, you know, we hit pretty good on that.

So it was, it was kind of like a happy medium, but leaning more towards the side of like water sparing

and not too crazy.

Like, look, I have a lot of muscle when I was competing.

I needed a lot of food, obviously.

But we were never like going too crazy with it, you know, in like two day durations where I was like packing in food like too crazy

because I was keeping an amount of water in that was allowing that glycogen to really develop.

Right.

So

I've done it both ways.

I mean, I've done it where you really limit water, but you need to really be packing the food in because it's not going to stick quite the same when you don't have that water with it to create the glycogen, right?

So

so yeah, I think that Olympia, we kind of found a happy middle ground of like, we reduced water a little bit,

but, you know, not anything too crazy.

Like, you know, the day before the show, like, I definitely didn't drink less than like four liters of water.

Like it wasn't like I was down to like a liter of water, 250 mils every three hours.

Like it was nothing like crazy limited.

And the day of the show, I still, you know, drank some water for sure.

And the Olympia is a two-day show as well.

So, you know, managing that over a two-day period and keeping hydration, not losing the look and getting the look back, you know, after pre-judging for the finals is something you have to manage as well.

But yeah, no, it was, you know,

as minimal,

it's such an obvious thing to say, but.

you can really eliminate a lot of like variables just by being in really fucking good shape.

You know, like if you're peeled out of your mind, it's really hard to fuck things up.

So that's kind of the way that we just looked at things is like get ready early, you know, be able to, if we get ready or get ready early, then we can have a little more play in terms of carb manipulation to keep performance high.

Cause like for me, especially, like a lot of my look and a lot of my fat burning even was driven through my training, not through like cardio or diet or anything like that.

Like I trained very intense and, you know, though, that was one of the driving factors for me in terms of managing my look.

And if I noticed my performance went down by noticeable degrees in the gym, my look usually changed with it pretty significantly.

So for me, it was managing performance in the gym, you know, so starting prep a little earlier, you know, doing a longer prep, getting ready a little earlier, being able to keep a bit more food in, kind of manage that, you know, through the food going into the show.

And then just being in really good condition so that we didn't need to try and jump through hoops with.

you know, excess diuretics or, you know, carbon water manipulations or sodium manipulation to get a level of dryness that we didn't already have.

If it's already there, it's not usually worth the risk to try and gain an extra 1%.

We would do the very minimals, a quarter diazide, an eighth of a diazide, just to take the edge off so you could eat and that any little excess there, you could kind of get off if that's how it works.

But we were never like doing anything too crazy from that because it just it wasn't worth the risk other than

controlling the variable beforehand of like just getting in good shape and you don't have to worry about it, you know?

That's pretty similar to how my peeking was with Kyle at my first pro show with him um the water like the water manipulation was like very um what's the word it was just minimal i guess yeah um and i mean to be to be honest it was to the point where like i was kind of shocked that this was happening to me and i was a little bit embarrassed about it but um when we were on stage like

uh

I did men's physique for my first pro show, not sure why, but

they had us on stage for a full hour, which was kind of insane.

Oh, God.

Like, they were like switching us on and off.

And obviously, this one was one of the shows where it was, it's during the summer, it was warm and like the lights were really hot.

So we were all sweating, all of us, at least a little bit.

So they would literally have to call us off stage, dap us up, and then put us back on stage to continue, right?

Yep.

And I swear to God, I was sweating the most, bro.

Like, I was just having like these fucking drip pulls along my entire body.

And

in my head, I'm like, is this, did we do this right?

Or am I like too watery or something?

But in my opinion, I feel like that was still the best look I've had so far.

At least,

I mean,

people say all these things, you know, about like, okay, if you know, you didn't live in water enough when you're sweating or blah, blah, blah, all these things.

But there's something to be said of like,

if it's really hot, you're going to sweat.

Like, there's, there's, if you're not sweating, you're dead.

You know what I mean?

Like, you have to be able to sweat.

It's how your body releases heat, gets rid of, expels heat, and like cools you down, you know, is through sweating.

So like.

if it's hot on stage they're working you a long time

it's just because it's hot and a lot of people like to say it's peak issues.

And look, sometimes it is.

A lot of times it's cortisol, it's stress issues.

You know, like, you know, we could say, like, Martin this past weekend in Pittsburgh, you know, he was really the only guy that was sweating there.

But I think Martin was probably the most stressed of any guy on stage.

I think he really didn't want to fucking lose to Nick.

And I think when you kind of the reality set in that he

potentially was, I think there was a big cortisol dump.

His look changed, his demeanor changed, and sweat started to come.

So, you know, I think there's a few factors that kind of control the sweating on stage.

And, but, like, look, if it's friggin' hot as shit on stage and there's a million rounds opposing,

I would hope you would sweat because if you don't sweat, your body can't expel that heat that's probably not going to do anything good to you internally, you know?

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Um,

thinking about Martin too, it's like, you know, I don't doubt in any way whatsoever that Nick.

Nick performs really well under pressure.

Oh, yeah.

But like, it's so crazy, though, like the place that they were both coming into the show and where, you know, there's all this expectation on Martin.

And then Nick, like, he's been having like these two years of almost backlash.

And out of nowhere, fucking looks like that, dude.

I know.

Well, I mean, I mean, for Nick, like,

you know, obviously Derek had a lot of pressure on him for the show because he just, you know, beat the number one bodybuilding in the world at the Arnold.

So coming in here, he's kind of like deemed the favorite.

So you want to uphold that.

But like you said, I mean, Nick had had, let's be serious, a fucking god-awful last two years.

I mean, he really didn't have a spectacular New York pro.

He missed the Olympia before that because of the hamstring.

He pulled out last year because they just weren't ready, which is a really bad look.

And his fan base was starting to turn against him a little bit, you know?

The bodybuilding world had kind of counted him out.

And it kind of puts you in a good position in one way and that, like, you almost feel like you have nothing to lose.

But it also puts you in another way of like, hey, if I don't perform here, like I've put a stamp on like the fucking death of my career here in a sense, you know?

So like Nick had a ton of pressure going to the show, man.

And like Nick showed up, like, you know, and he showed up like crazy.

And I mean, I personally had him winning the show.

But, you know, it's tough for Martin because Martin's had such like a

like such a peak in his career so quickly.

Like he came from a guy that like, he never even won a show until like last year, you know, like last year's Detroit Pro was the first pro show we ever won.

You know, he wasn't a guy that was like in the mix with these guys.

He kind of been, you know, showing up at Texas, these shows.

He was second, fourth, third, whatever, you know, and kind of building up slowly.

And then all of a sudden, now he's tossed into the mix with almost beating Nick at New York, but it was a less than seller Nick.

So who knows how good Martin really is.

And then he comes fourth at the Olympia.

So then everyone's like, holy fuck.

So now Martin perceives himself as the

fourth best bodybuilding in the world, as he should.

But now you've set your standard to beat basically everybody except for three guys in the world, you know, except for Hottie, Samson, and Derek.

He's like, okay, I should beat everybody else.

And he particularly doesn't like Nick, you know, so

I think going into that show, he probably put a lot of pressure on himself.

Maybe not to win the show, but to at least at the bare minimum beat Nick.

So it's like, if Derek's going to win, I think, look, if Martin had been second and beat Nick, I don't think we would have seen a demeanor change like we did.

But if because I think he thought he was losing to Nick, I mean, that was really what his expectation and pressure for himself on was that show was to just beat Nick, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

I had actually, I just watched half of the bro chat that just came out with you guys.

Yep.

When did you guys film that?

Last night.

Last night.

Was that

after Tyler Mannion's post?

No.

Came out before.

Yeah.

Oh, it was right before.

Yeah.

What did you think about Tyler Mannon's breakdown on the open?

Yeah, I mean, he kind of had the same opinion we did.

I mean, I was kind of happy when I saw his breakdown because his opinion was kind of the same as ours.

I mean, you know, you almost feel outlandish when you're giving a breakdown from a show and you have Derek not winning a back pose.

You feel like, man, if we say this shit online, people are going to tell us we're fucking retarded.

And then Tyler said the exact same thing.

So I'm like, thank God it's not just us, you know?

But yeah, I mean, he had almost the exact same opinion as us.

Like he had him, you know, winning winning the same poses, losing the same poses.

It was close on some,

you know, and I think that's exactly how it was.

I mean, the thing with Nick is

because he is so muscular, your eyes are just drawn to him on stage.

And because there was the comeback story, you want him to win.

But it was a really close show.

I did have Nick winning.

And I do agree with Tyler's opinion.

Tyler himself said he did have Nick winning the show.

He himself did.

But he also said, you know, he had Martin beating Nick last year.

So it's not like there's some kind of Nick favoritism going on here.

I mean, he's being as unbiased as possible.

Um, but yeah, no, I thought he did a great, transparent breakdown of the show.

Um, and I agreed on basically everything he said, right?

Yeah, I do too.

Plus, I mean, in regards to the politics thing, like, I can understand some people's like,

I guess, perspective on that, especially,

I guess, especially considering what people have said

is has happened in the history of the IFBB like years, years back, whether or not some some of it is true or not.

But I just, I always find some of the some of the positions people take on politics a little bit silly because I feel like it's a cop-out for every single kind of every single turnout.

Right.

And I also agree that I just feel like it would be more beneficial, low-key, for this to be this giant fucking thing where Nick Walker takes the win and goes to the Olympia.

And now people are talking about like, the four different guys that it could be or is Nick actually going to take it versus, you know, Samson or Derek or or whatever?

I just feel like that would like cause a lot more hype in general.

Yeah, versus

like the small amount, I guess, of like extra tickets and views that are going to go to the New York Pro.

Exactly.

Yeah, I mean, because that's the, that's the thing people are saying, is right, like, you know, by having Nick lose here, that he has to go do New York, and, you know, Steve's the head judge, he wants him to do his show to sell more, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

But like you said, I mean, you know, it's obviously a lot more beneficial for them to have Nick win that show and go to the Olympia.

And now you have four guys, like, you know, Nick just beat derek derek had just beat samson who won the previous olympia you know hottie's still in the mix like you create a lot more of an interesting storyline by having nick win that show than you ever do by derek right

i feel like with i feel like with the way that it is now i would almost think like

i don't know how nick's going to do at olympia as much anymore like i don't know if he's really if you can really consider him um i guess

I mean, obviously, in my opinion, it's going to just all depend on how they look that day on Olympia.

But I mean, if you were thinking in a political sense, like this.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough because like it would be frustrating for me for sure.

And I'm sure it is for Nick when you're like, this wasn't even the best Derek and I couldn't beat him.

What the fuck does that, like, will I ever beat him?

If I didn't beat him here, will I ever beat him?

And I'm sure that's like a tough mindset to get over because like Nick was at his best here and Derek wasn't and he still lost, even though a lot of people.

I mean, the majority of people, other than the judges, thought that Nick should have won.

You know, so it's like, for him, it's like, well, what the fuck, what can I even do to win here?

Am I always going to lose to Derek?

I mean, this would be a very frustrating place to be in.

It's like, does Derek have to fucking slip up even more for me to beat him?

So, you know, it definitely puts you in a tough spot mentally going into the Olympia, but I'm sure Nick will take that as like a challenge and he'll fire him up to, you know, go fucking obliterate everyone in New York and then go to the Olympia and have his best shot at Derek as he can, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Plus, I mean, I was totally in the position, too, that thinking Nick should win this show.

Like when I was watching, too, when I saw them hit that back pose, I feel like the first thing that came to my mind, and I'm sure it came to a lot of people's mind, is like, holy shit, that's Derek's light out, you know, lights out pose.

But Nick looks like a fucking animal.

Like, Nick looks like he's taken out this pose by far.

Yeah, no, I had Nick winning the back double.

The back lad, I think, was a bit closer, like Tyler said, because the arms and shoulders are taken out of the equation a little bit.

But, I mean, Nick from the waist down is so good and his back is close enough to Derek's.

Derek still has a better back, but you know, like I think if they're you're rating just the back, it's like a 10-9 for Derek.

But then if you're rating like the hamstrings, the ductors and the arms and shoulders, it's like a 10-7 for Nick, you know?

So I definitely gave him the back double.

The back lad, I thought, was close, but I could see it making a case for either guy in that one.

Yeah.

I was a little bit,

I was a little bit sus about the comparison with their side tricep because I think I know that sometimes Nick turns a little too much, right?

Whenever he does a side tricep, he was turned too much, yeah.

But I think in the comparison that Tyler had, Nick was almost

Nick was turned actually less than Derek.

Okay.

So, I mean, that's what I was

on stage.

On stage, he was over-turning most of the time.

He was exposing like way too much from the front.

You know, I think you do need to turn a little bit to show a bit of shoulder width and give a little more dimension to the pose.

But he, for the most part, was over-rotating that shot on stage for sure.

Yeah.

Where he was losing a bit of the like side leg freakiness that he has in the side chest when it's a little more perpendicular.

And then just it wasn't making his upper body and his midsection look as good good as it could if he was just under-rotating anymore.

Yeah, I think Derek definitely took that pose, but mostly just, I don't know, I definitely feel like if Nick improved his posing and flexibility, maybe then there was a big potential for him to take that instead of.

Yeah, Nick can win that pose for sure.

Like, you know, he has bigger arms, better shoulders, you know, a better side leg.

I mean, Derek has one of the best side legs in the world, but Nick's side leg was better at this show.

And when he's actually posing, his midsection control is very, very good, and he has way more developed abs than Derek does.

And their chests are pretty comparable in a side tricep.

I I mean, it's not like a pose that shows off your chest a lot.

So yeah, I mean, I think if Nick can get a little more air out and sit onto that shot a little more like Derek is, not be quite up, so tall up, sit into it just a little more.

I don't think you should ever be crunched down, but just sitting a little more and then just rotating a little bit less, enough to show the shoulder width, but not so much that you're like facing the front of the stage.

I think that's definitely a shot he can win.

Right.

So I just wanted to say this personally, just because this is the truth and this is really how I, how I, what I think and how I feel.

But like,

for like first off before i say it is like i really do think that the i think the ibe is going in an amazing direction and i fucking love what tyler's doing plus i feel like just like the fact that tyler has this voice and he also does all these breakdowns it almost makes me feel like like i can relate to the federation a little bit more rather than like some other federations that are just led by um no offense but like really old people

so i don't know it just feels a lot more relatable to me and i feel like i can i don't know it's really cool to be able to like hear the feedback from him and all that seems to click for in my personal opinion.

But

I think the one thing that like they could really improve on is like really defining things like tiebreakers, because I think that's where a lot of people are getting very confused here.

And one of the points that you guys made that I felt like was a really good point is like, I totally agree that Nick really does let his gut out whenever I think there's like excitement, people are resting, or like there's breaks in composer.

He's like on the side.

Right.

And

I don't know if that's what's.

Yeah, sorry.

And those small things like matter a lot when you're you have a show that's that close right yeah

that's what i would think too i mean plus i mean the the one thing though is like i'm wondering like are all of these 11 judges in the same page of like

what is contributing to breaking the tie for them right like i know there was actually like a third round where they purposely broke the tie right yeah but

I'm not like, you know, you normally they rate

each athlete pose the pose.

So like, where's the opportunity for them to rate someone when they're on the sidelines or they're not looking so good, right?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if like, you know, when you're actually judging, it's not necessarily just like, this guy wins this pose, this guy wins this pose.

It's good when Tyler does it in terms of a breakdown pose by pose, but it's always not so much the tangibles of pose by pose.

You know, sometimes it is the intangibles, especially when it's close, you know, like tan, guys sweating, posing, you know, even just stuff that you're kind of when you're chilling chilling between moments, like mid-section control and things like that.

Like, I do think those things all add up, especially when a show is close.

You know, and yeah, I mean, they did have Nick winning at pre-judging.

And I'm sure a lot of the judges, like Tyler included, you know,

they had Nick winning, right?

I mean, especially at the pre-judge, he had, well, there's nine judges, so it would have been five judges to four, whatever it is.

You know, so I think it was a very close show, but yeah, I think some of those intangibles, we're not intangibles, they are tangibles, but you know, some of those small like nuances of like the, you know, maybe not hitting a pose correctly when they're like, all right, we're 4-4 for poses, you know, which one could we maybe go a different direction on here?

We need to break this tie.

Or, you know, when they came back for that third round, like Nick didn't have quite as much glaze on, didn't control his midsection quite as good as he did in the earlier rounds.

So like there's some very small things that if you are already broken on it, like those things wouldn't have changed my mind as a judge.

I still would have had Nick winning.

But if you're looking at this and you're like, fuck, I'm really torn on this, you know, some of those small things could lead you into one direction or the other, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I'm really fucking excited for the New York Pro.

So, I mean, I guess

that.

Yeah, I mean, at least like,

yeah, I'm excited to see Nick up there again.

But, I mean, let's be serious.

Nick is going to fucking mutilate that lineup.

I mean, it's not even going to be close.

I mean, there's no one even in his ballpark in that show.

I mean, you know, Bonak is the next closest guy, but I mean, Bonak is an amazing bodybuilder, but Nick is at a different level right now.

So, so yeah, I mean, I expect Nick to be extremely dominant in that show for sure.

But there's some guys I'm excited to see in the lineup for sure.

Yeah, I feel really bad too for him.

I'm brain fighting right now, so I'm this is really terrible.

I just brainfart all the time.

Like, I forget everyone's name now.

I know it.

So, um, fucking uh, there was like a couple posts of comparing Nick to

the other person, the other person competing.

That's like Crizzo.

Um, no,

oh my God, what's who else is in the show?

Crizzo, Bonak, that Ken Colossus guy.

He's tall.

He's tall.

Oh, Regan.

Regan.

Yeah.

I'm talking about Regan.

I just felt so bad because Regan.

Look, I like Regan.

He's a Canadian guy, but like,

it's a different level of bodybuilder, man.

I mean, you know, Nick is way bigger, way freakier, way, you know, gets in better condition.

He's definitely more balanced.

You know, Regan has some good spots.

He's got a great back, but Nick obviously showed he has one of the best backs in the world by beating Derek fucking Lunsford in a back double.

So like having a great back is not enough to beat someone with a back as good as Nick.

And then he's still slight in some areas, like his quads still historically need more and his conditioning is generally his like pitfall.

So no, I mean, I don't, I don't even have Regan a second.

You know, I'd love to say Regan would be second.

I mean, I like Regan.

I think he's a good bodybuilder and has a really pretty physique, but he's definitely not at the level of being compared to Nick yet.

Yeah.

I think it's fucking crazy how much Nick brought his legs up too, though.

Like even his legs, like this lower body and the back double by is like one of the.

Ridiculous.

Yeah.

Dude, it's fucking insane, man.

No, I mean, he has the best hamstrings and adductors on the planet.

I mean, the only guy you could maybe in terms of size wise that's comparable is like samson you know he's got crazy wide adductors and hamstrings and sweeping legs from the back um but he doesn't get in the condition that nick gets in so nicks definitely are more impressive to me you know yeah this is what really has me curious on just like how much the ifbb is still going to continue to prioritize keeping that gut small because i know like in the last few years like people have been you know fucking banging that like keep the waist small keep the waist small like you know count them off if the waist isn't but

yeah i mean look look we've we've seen it definitely over the last like decade.

I mean, you know, how heavy guys, I mean, Phil Heath lost the Olympia to Sean Roden over it.

I mean, you know, Samsons wasn't in the same condition as the Olympia, but he was having some mid-section control issues in certain poses, and he lost the Arnold to Derek.

Do I think even if his midsection had been in check, he would have beat that version of Derek?

No.

But they are small things that contribute to that for sure, you know?

Yeah.

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Um, another thing you guys talked about on um bro chat too, I don't know, I just watch, I just want to watch this person.

Um, But

since we were just talking about the shows, right after the show,

I think it was,

I think it was you and Akeem saying that like you guys wish that you took more time after the show, off after the show.

And I guess I was curious what your perspective is on rebounds then.

you know, like taking advantage of that like very extremely insulin sensitive period when you're just absorbing all those nutrients.

Yeah, I mean, look, to some regard, I think it's overrated.

You know, I think a lot of it, it's like the insulin effect.

It's like, yeah, you look really awesome when you use it, but then when you die it down, is it actually anything that's sticking?

And I don't think it's the exact same, but I mean, how many guys have we seen that are like insulin blasting fucking Milos clients that look incredible in the offseason and then they come to die down?

They're the exact same size the year prior.

I think it does give you a bit of like a false perception of gain size versus like a reality.

You know, your body is coming from this depleted state of water and glycogen and you're like, you know, going to pile things in there.

It's going to soak it up like crazy.

But do I think that necessarily renders that much more growth?

Not necessarily.

But there's a difference in, I'm not saying after every single show, when I'm saying this, I'm maybe saying it more in the context of the end of the season.

So like, you know, I think if you're doing a long season, you're doing say two, three, four shows, I think within those, there can be opportunities to use that period, you know, to get a bit of the rebound and, you know, when your body is sensitive and fill out and, you know, really get your training back to a high level and things like that.

But I think doing it after every show, all year, all the time,

you know, especially if you want to have a long career, you know, I think when you're stretching like, you know, I competed from 18 to 33, like, you know, every single year basically for 15 years, you know, it's, that's a lot to be putting on yourself to feel like you have to be at that place all the time.

You know, so I think giving yourself mentally and physically that break

can be very valuable for sure.

You know, and I'm saying it like, you know, like in the year of 2021, when I said like, I did Tampa, I did Texas, and I, you know, hit the rebound after Texas a little bit, going into the Arnold.

And then I go Arnold to the Olympia.

Now I'm done the Olympia.

All right, let's take a month and fucking chill, you know?

So, you know, and I think the real growth is coming in like those durations of an offseason.

And also, like you were speaking before, I think there's also something to be said of like continuation of anabolics over, you know, after that time.

Like you've just, you know, peaked for multiple shows, you know, your body is definitely probably in the worst position it's been all year from a blood work standpoint is like right after a season, you know, like you've done three, four or five shows and you're at the end of the year.

Like, I mean, you've been hammering orals for durations over the year.

I mean, it's probably the time to like give your body a little bit of break from the gas, you know, from the food, from the training, from the anabolics, just for a little bit of time.

Because that real growth is coming in those, in that offseason time of like, you know, stringing actual, just good months of like hard training and like.

progressive eating and all that kind of things, you know, with your cycle and whatever.

But I don't think in an in a rebound,

I think guys have this perception that they're gaining a lot more than they are until they go and diet it down than they're just in the same place that they were before.

Well, then fuck me then.

Fuck.

Look, I think it's a good, I think it's a good time to use if it makes sense in your schedule.

You know, like when you're competing as a pro, like

kind of analyzing your year and your schedule is so important, you know, picking timing of shows that makes sense so you can get, you know, enough time between, you know, your offseason, like the end of your season and the start of the next season to make sure that if there is some weak points you need to work on, that you actually have adequate time.

And that's the time you're taking it.

And then, yeah, if you do have a couple shows throughout the year okay whereas there's some opportunities for me to utilize that rebound you know picking shows that are maybe eight weeks apart instead of two weeks apart so that you can utilize you know four weeks of rebound before you come down for another four weeks you know if you want to get a little you know be a little bigger fuller for the next show whatever i think that there is opportunities for that within the season um and look maybe you do one show in the season you know maybe you're just a guy that fucking hammers one or two shows and then yeah at the end of that season you're like okay yeah i've only been on drugs for 16 weeks you know i'm gonna hit the rebound for eight weeks after the show Cool.

But, you know, speaking for me in the context of competing all year for years on end, you know, I think there was probably more stock in, you know, I'm done the year, go enjoy time with my friends and family, come off the drugs, relax on the food for a couple of, you know, give myself a mental break instead of like finishing the Olympia and then on like the fucking Sunday going to the gym.

You know what I mean?

Like, I don't think you need to be doing that bullshit, you know?

But, bro, mentally, it just sucks.

Right after, right after peaking for a show.

Yeah, no, look.

like you fucking deflate.

Yeah, I mean, I guess.

I mean, you know, I think there's a happy medium.

Like,

I've had some good looks where I just, you know, chilled a bit.

Like, after the 2020 Olympia, me, Chris, Courtney, and Melissa went to Mexico for a week, and I was just like eating whatever I want.

I wasn't training.

I still look good, you know?

But yeah, I mean, you obviously want to like.

You need to take your ego out of it a little bit of like, do I want to look good all year or do I want to be the best bodybuilder I can all year?

And it's sometimes those are tough to weigh, you know?

It's fucking tough.

yeah for sure yeah

and seriousness though I mean I think the perspective that you have is really I think it's a really good perspective to have towards

even

doing

the the little health phase the little health phase in reverse afterwards because

I just

I guess

from my personal experience I've always done like a health phase in a reverse after or at least some sort of thing similar to that.

So this last show, I decided like, fuck it, I want to fucking try the rebound.

I want to fucking build as much size as possible because I was 20 pounds under the weight cap for classic.

Yeah, 20 pounds under the weight cap for classic, which is, yeah, I'm fucking tiny.

You still got a lot of space here, yeah.

So, um, I wanted to like take advantage of it, so I tried to hit the rebound as hard as possible.

And

now, like, I'm not 100% sure whether or not this is totally relative to what you're saying, though I feel like it really is.

Um, that I just, it turned out that I kind of hit it almost too hard.

And so, I had some of my PTs and my active release therapists and guys tell me that I had ramped up my volume way too high, way too quick, immediately after the show, which is obviously the opposite of what you guys say that you wish you did.

You guys wish you took it a little bit easy off of training after the show.

So I ramped it up to the point where I was

doing P-TORS SST sets and I was doing like

six pause reps after every last set of every exercise.

And it basically what happened was the left side of my my upper torso had

I'm not sure if this is exactly an impingement or not but there's this overcompensation where all the muscles my my chest my front delt my rhomboid my lat and this like this these external maybe the internal rotators are too tight or something but basically where all of them pull so hard that for the last eight months, I've been having this persistent pain in my left side of my back and just like this tightness.

Like, if I lift my arm up above my head, it'll actually pop because my arm is being like fucking folded to the socket too hard.

And so, I've been just trying to get body work consistently to try to relieve it.

But, like, every time I go back to training and I train hard again, it comes back just like that.

Yeah, I mean, look, I give you at least a somewhat of the benefit of the doubt of that could have happened anyways.

You know, if you're doing that kind of training and putting that much stress and that much volume and that load on yourself, I mean, the odds of things happening are high.

I mean, you know, for sure.

So whether that was done to rebound state, you know, right after a show or not, yeah, I mean, it could be negligible that that was actually the case.

It could have just been from that ramp up in training that could have happened in the middle of an offseason, you know, six months after your rebound phase.

So it's tough to say.

But I mean, yeah, I mean, obviously your body's in a, you know, a little more delicate, susceptible point when it's right after a show, you know, if you're not.

you know, perfectly hydrated right after and like when you're kind of building back up into things or like you're coming from a long year where your body is a little beat up and then you kind of add more stress onto that.

Um, look, like, I do think these can be valuable times, but I think they need to be valuable times that are picked well, you know.

But, like, for you, you were saying you'd never done one, you'd done health phases, you know, every year after, and blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, I probably would have tried and hit the rebound too.

I mean, I wouldn't have done anything differently, you know.

Yeah, okay, cool.

Makes me feel a little bit better.

Yeah, no, I mean, look, I've hit the rebound after many shows before in my life.

I'm just saying, out of doing 35 shows, you know, I hit the rebound for almost all of them, you know, in some regard where I'm wishing that I had just taken a bit of time, especially at the end of a season, you know, more to just mentally and physically decompress.

Like, no, look, I walked away from my career basically injury-free.

I've never torn a muscle.

I've never had any injuries that have put me out for a season or any duration in my bodybuilding career.

So it wasn't like, oh, I wish I'd done it because my body fell apart on me.

But like I said, one of the things that I did retire from was like mental exhaustion of like all the time that being my life 24 7 365 where I think I could have mitigated that a little more by it not being 24 7 365 you know because I don't think what I was gaining in having one more month of like fucking hard push after a show or two months after that versus what I lost from like a mental enjoyment standpoint that probably gave me ramifications for the entire rest of the 10 months of the year.

I don't think that weighed out in terms of pros and cons.

I think taking a little more time here and there and then being excited to get back at it versus like, fuck, I'm tired and I'm starting my offseason, but I'm already fucking exhausted.

You know, like, I feel like I've been fucking slugging it all year, you know, mentally, especially.

I think it would have paid off for sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Cool.

I think most of the audience already knows your story, to be honest.

Sure.

Without a doubt.

But

I kind of just wanted to ask, anyways, partly for the few that don't know.

And also, I think,

I mean, I've heard so much of like your story already.

And like, I just, there's some, I think there's some parts that I just

never did hear.

So I'm like aware of your story meeting Melissa and her, I guess, almost essentially falling in love with bodybuilding through you.

Yeah, I mean, I would not say, look,

I'm not going to say Melissa ever fell in love with bodybuilding.

You know, look, Melissa did it as a byproduct of like sharing, like having a shared experience with me and her brother.

You know, like I, when I met her, I had competed before.

You know, we met in 2012

and I had already won Canadian Junior Nationals the year prior in 2011.

And then I got a bad staph infection.

Like I got a really bad like staff infection that I left.

And then I got like kind of went septic.

And it was a whole fucking slew of shitty things after that.

And it's funny because you were saying it earlier.

And I know people in the homestead will be like, nah, it's not, blah, blah, blah.

But I got it from fucking dirty towels on stage.

So, because this was back in 2010, 2011, they used to use cotton towels and they'd wipe like 30 guys with the same cotton towel.

Oh, versus now they use a paper towel and they use your paper towel, you throw it out, you know?

Back then, they were literally using like white cotton towels and wiping like me and 15 other guys with this.

So now you're on stage, you're sweating, your pores are open, you know, and now you're getting bacteria from 30 different fucking disgusting bodybuilders on stage and putting it on each other, you know?

So what I ended up getting is I got a staph infection in my chest.

And I swear on my fucking mother's life, I had never shot a needle in my chest at this point.

I've done it, but at that point, yet I hadn't, you know.

Maybe Paul wouldn't have minded, though.

Yeah.

So, so I got a fucking abscess in my chest and I thought it had just like tweaked a muscle.

So I kind of left it.

And then it kind of like started to leech and fucking, I had infections everywhere.

And I ended up being in the hospital for a while.

And I had like an IV pick line in for months after that.

It was a big fucking ordeal for sure.

And then just as I started to get back into training a bit, then I broke my arm arm wrestling.

So then at that point, I was kind of like, fuck this.

I'm done with bodybuilding.

I'm getting this fucking one thing after the other.

I'm like, this obviously isn't meant to be.

And then I met Melissa shortly after breaking my arm in 2012.

And when we met, I was kind of like really done with bodybuilding.

I was still training.

How old were you then?

21.

Yeah.

Okay.

So I was still training and that kind of stuff, but like I wasn't being too serious with things.

Like I was eating, but I was going to the fucking bar and, you know, trying to fucking fuck girls and shit like that.

You know, like I wasn't being like too serious as a bodybuilder like I would become later.

You know, I'd kind of like been like, fuck this for a while.

So I met Melissa.

I'm most of us At 21, to be honest,

as most of us are at 21.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Unless you're freaking like, but I hadn't been like that for the years prior.

Like when I was competing and winning junior nationals and things like that before, I was like, as hardcore as I was when I was a top-level pro, you know, like never miss meals.

I was fucking, you know, getting to bed at the right time.

I wasn't fucking drinking or anything like that.

So I'd kind of like laxed up and I'm like, you know what?

I'm fucking done with bodybuilding.

You know, I'm not, this isn't going to be a life for me kind of thing.

And then I met Melissa.

You know, we were together for about a year and she could tell that I was like kind of missing it a bit, you know?

So then she was like, why don't you just fucking compete?

And I was like, no, no, no.

And so she's the one that kind of pushed me to do it again.

And then I did another show in the end of 2013

and I looked really fucking good.

And that kind of like spiraled me.

Like I did that.

And then I did like a pro qualifier and whatever.

And I turned pro like within six months after that.

And then at this same time,

you know, while I was with Melissa, obviously Chris, you know, was her younger brother.

He was, I mean, he was in fucking high school at this point.

You know, he was in like grade 11, you know, he was like a, like a junior, you know, so he was starting to like get more serious with his training.

He was already training relatively seriously when I met her, even though he was young.

Um, but then obviously, like, you know, meeting an actual bodybuilder that had competed and then kind of picking my brain, us starting to train together a bit.

And, you know, me introducing him to that bodybuilding world, then, you know, I coached him and got him on stage for that first show.

And then Melissa, I think, kind of just like joined in to like be part of the experience, you know?

Okay.

Like, you know, it was,

she wanted to kind of like see the trials and tribulations that like I faced and that her brother was in, kind of have something to connect with us on.

And she was enjoying training at the time.

I mean, Melissa is a fucking freak of nature for sure.

So, you know, she was seeing the progress and it was all new to her.

I'm sure she enjoyed a lot.

But I would never say that Melissa like loved it, excuse me, in the same regard that like Chris or I did.

I think it was just like a, I don't think she would have been someone that would have been drawn to it if Chris and I weren't doing it, you know?

Yeah.

I was trying to figure out the perfect word, to be honest, and I really did not feel like love was a good word, but

I went for it no I gave it I give you the explanation though yeah no yeah that makes sense um yeah I feel like Chris would be really good at bodybuilding yeah um

so just like reeling it back a little bit uh

because this is something I was personally curious about but what do you what is I guess the earliest memory that comes to your mind when you think bodybuilding the earliest memory that you had

because from from all the podcasts that I've heard it sounds like you've been fucking bodybuilding since the womb

no I did my first show when I was like, I started prepping for it when I was 18.

I think I was 19 when I actually did the show.

It was like just past my birthday.

I was, it would have been 19.

But yeah, I mean, how I kind of got started into bodybuilding is I'd just been training and like, you know, I fucking like knew Ronnie Coleman, like the fucking, you know, early 2000s guys and shit like that, but I didn't like follow bodybuilding in any like serious degree.

And I started working at a local supplement store in Canada and the guys were like, yo, you're fucking jacked.

Why don't you do a show?

And they were spawned.

The store was the sponsor for like our local show.

So yeah, I remember, I remember that first show pretty well for sure.

You know, like, I remember for that prep, like I, I hired some local guy that was just like a trainer at a gym and he kind of did my thing, but this was a guy from the 90s.

So he had me like drinking like distilled water only at like 20 weeks out, like, you know, like fucking wild shit, you know?

And then I kind of was like, I don't know if I trust what this guy is doing.

So then I tried doing my own thing.

And I just did a completely carbless keto diet for like 14 weeks.

So when I say, when I say carbless, like I wouldn't eat vegetables, I wouldn't eat like, if I looked at the label, even if I had like one gram of fucking fiber, I wouldn't eat it.

So like I literally just ate like white fish and like fats.

And that's all I ate literally for three, like three and a half months.

Like I went fucking crazy like in my head.

I was, I was so restricted.

I was probably eating 1,200 calories a day for three months.

I was doing like three hours of cardio, but I got fucking peeled out of my skull.

And for a first show, which which most guys don't, I at least got accustomed to like the discomfort of like getting in shape.

And I thought that that's what it was always going to be.

And obviously I did too much that first prep.

So every prep after that, when I actually had proper guidance, felt like a fucking easy to me, you know, like I had gone so balls deep that first prep, like doing way more than I needed to do, like eating way less food, doing way more cardio.

My training volume at that time was like Jay Cutler, like 50 fucking sets of workout.

You know, I'm in the gym for four hours, like, you know, doing five sets of 20 exercises.

Like, it was ridiculous, you know?

And just getting on the stairs, like on the fucking highest level I couldn't, just powering for like an hour, two hours a day.

Like, it was crazy.

Like, I'd finish the workout, go sleep in my car and like shit like that.

So I thought that's what bodybuilding was to be a good bodybuilder,

which some semblances are true, but very much not in some ways.

So, but it definitely set me up for like

the level of, you know, how I was kind of known throughout my career for my conditioning and putting like that level of discomfort to getting that and like being hungry and like pushing things like that became like so easy for me because I started it so hard, so early, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

I, um, I feel the same way too.

Kind of happened where like my journey started where I was actually a bit obese when I was a kid.

So

it was a pretty messy childhood because I was like an only child in an Asian family in like Texas.

So fucking

just fucking so racist.

So yeah, at one point I was like 12, 13 years old and I just started fucking like starving myself like i literally just decided i'm not gonna eat anything yeah and like fast and then

it was terrible bro like honestly being transparent i'd like be throwing up and yeah um lost 40 pounds in like two months then i started competing like later on and i'm like this isn't too bad yeah except that like

i still had some shows though where i'd like i had to push to 1200 1100 calories during the last few weeks just to get lean enough yeah yeah and um I'm trying to require that.

I have a question for you.

Yeah.

Did you find once your body fat overall got lower and you maintained it at a lower spot constantly that getting in shape became easier and easier for you?

You know, because I found for me for sure, like,

I,

and look, I'm, I'm, Fuad would hate me for this because he's like pro bulk fucking, you know, but

I always, always, always had my best competitive seasons coming off a leaner off season.

And the more I was able to maintain, like, you know, I try and grow, but I would push food to the point where my training was as optimized as it could be, like where I was progressing in strength and I was getting really, really fucking strong.

But like I wasn't putting in more food that like I was just getting fatter and not getting stronger.

So like I would just find that point, especially with Patrick, we found that really well, where I would just be like eating enough that like my training was optimized and I felt comfortable in the gym.

You know, you get to heavy enough, you're eating so much food, you're in like discomfort all the time.

You're fucking, you're trained legs, you feel like you're going to fucking puke.

Your lower back's pumped all the time like it's just a fucking miserable state to be in so we kind of found a point that was like where my training was optimized but my body fat composition was pretty good and if i was pretty lean every year from like when i would stay like that i always looked better you know the years where i pushed it i just really want to be fucking 305 310 315 whatever it was always especially the first two shows of the year at least until i like had body fat down for like a good duration was really fucking hard preps but then when if i started from a lean point my preps were fucking easy, you know?

Yeah.

I

feel the exact same way, which I hate saying because I'm honestly like Fuin and I could fucking clean out a box of pizza if I wanted.

But yeah, like my physique, it was always easier for me to get leaner and yeah, to basically get to my best fucking physique when I had a leaner offseason.

Yeah.

Like the longer.

So basically like.

The thing with me is like I always loved bodybuilding and competing, but I took this like three, four year hiatus off of competing and bodybuilding and honestly just actually growing and bulking period for the sake of just being shredded on social media

off of like Loki secretly test in primo and

fucking just posting shredded videos and stuff.

And obviously like that's the reason I can do this now is because I did that in the first place.

Yeah.

So I can't regret it.

I do hate that I feel like I'm fucking super small now, even though, because I haven't like gained any size in four years.

But because of that, though, when i first show back it was so easy for me to get shredded i was like this is the easiest it's ever been and i prepped with my partner yeah which i would think would be normally harder but like it it ended up being the easiest the most fun the most enjoyable prep i've ever had in my life and i feel like i loved my look at the end the most to the point where like I think it was just the picture, but people were saying that I started looking like I was on heroin because I was so fucking deprived.

It's funny you say that, though.

Like, I actually found when Melissa was competing as well, it was a lot easier for sure, because it's such a shared experience of like, you know, it just became like our life became so like kind of symbiotic and like we would get up together.

We'd, you know, like right now, like I go to bed at like fucking four o'clock in the morning.

Melissa goes to bed at like nine.

You know what I mean?

Like we're on like such, we're on like such different wavelengths, which look, it's, it's great.

And we kind of have like, we, we, we don't work.

So like we're obviously together 19 of those hours during the day anyways.

So it's not like we're like, oh, she's going to bed and I'm staying up.

It's like we're not having time together.

But like our lives are, you know, how we operate in the day and how we kind of spend our time is definitely very different.

Like she likes to go to bed early.

Like I like to go to bed to bed later.

Like, you know, and we kind of operate in different ways.

I'd like to train later in the day.

She likes to train earlier and stuff like that.

But,

but when we were competing, it was like we were kind of like always on the same wavelength.

Like we would go to bed early, earlier,

you know, get up at kind of the same time, do our cardio in the morning.

We were like always have food prepped together and like training at the same time.

So like it kind of puts you in this like, you know, symbiotic relationship where you're kind of like on the same vibe, same wavelength all the time with that stuff.

So I found it worked really well when we did it together.

Um, you know, I know a lot of couples have a really hard time because they're like fighting for that energy and space and the tension.

Um, but with Melissa and I, it actually worked really, really well for us.

Yeah, yeah, I feel the exact same way.

Um, I mean, obviously, there were like a few times where, like, I think uh, like, this was my first time trying trends, so I think I think like the trend would like get to me just a little bit.

Yeah, yeah,

this is actually your first time you got trends for your podcast.

This is your first time,

yeah,

Yeah.

Well, to be honest, I was,

I think it was a little fucking childish ego of me that I was like, yeah, I'm going to be that guy that never fucking took trend.

I don't know.

It was a good pro or something.

I don't know.

Yeah, until you use it once, you're like, fuck, this is why everybody likes this shit, you know?

Because it works really fucking good, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, I would probably still be one of the guys that isn't going to titrate up super high.

I might.

I don't know how much.

I don't know.

We'll see what we do with the logic.

You honestly don't need much of it.

I mean, I've,

i i definitely when i was younger i went higher with it um you know like when i was fucking 19 20 you know whatever and i was doing all my own shit i'd do you know 700 milligrams a week or something here and there like in my preps just trying to trying to push it um but when i was an actual competitive pro and like actually doing good and making good progress like those years when i was doing that i was getting tons of side effects and didn't actually make a ton of progress, you know, but when I kind of figured out my food and my training and, you know, and kind of the sweet spot for that, I found using 350 a week was kind of like the most most I ever went.

You know, with Patrick, 50 milligrams a day was kind of like the sweet spot that we hit, and that I never really changed from that.

And that's kind of the spot that I always stayed with that.

So, you know, I definitely found with that more than other drugs, there is a point of like diminishing returns.

Like the more I used, my physique kind of looked a bit weird.

And kind of like, even though I know it's not an aromatizing compound, I kind of looked like a little puffier, like not quite as like crisp.

Dude, this is, yeah, this is something that I, okay, so I had this, like, a little bit of a debate with Fuad

because we were discussing

basically from our conversations with guests and his own experiences, what he thought were the differences between open and classic regarding a bodybuilder's nutrition training and PDs.

Yeah.

And so I think we came like at first he was saying that there is about no difference.

But, you know, I'm trying to remember exactly what the specifics are of the debate, but I think we came to the conclusion that like there is

a small difference.

And the difference, the the point that i was trying to make is that like first off when you have a bigger amount of muscle mass it tends to be that you can tend to take more drugs and like there's like a higher sweet spot for you yeah um but when it comes to being on the stage what i've noticed is like yeah like if i take more trend i almost feel a little less detailed and more full yeah But for classic specifically, especially with my physique where it's actually hard for me to get detailed, where I have to actually like deplete, you know, hard, it's almost, I think, works against my personal genetics to push the dose that high because then I start losing some of the detail that I kind of need.

Yeah.

You know,

I always found like

more than more than that, like the more I went, it definitely didn't make my look progressively better.

Where I did notice with some compounds, like, look, if I take more Mastron, I found I generally look better, you know, like to a point.

I mean, like, I didn't ever go like two grams of it where I'm like, oh my God, like, yeah, I look awesome, you know, but like finding the spot we're taking like 500, 700 milligrams a week of that versus like the 350 with the trend, you know, I definitely found I looked better with that versus with the trend.

The more I took, it definitely, I mean, obviously there's more psychological effects.

Your sleep gets impacted more.

You know, you're sweating your fucking dick off so hard at night, like your sleep quality goes down and sleep like for building muscle is fucking crucial.

You know, my training became, I was sweating my fucking balls off in my training.

I just didn't feel as good.

So there's a lot of like secondary effects that I thought weren't as advantageous.

And my look didn't look as good, you know, and I found this spot was like, okay, you've got enough in there that you're getting the hardening effect, you're getting the strength and a bit of aggression towards your training, but then using some of the other compounds to really like perfect and kind of crisp up the look along with obviously your nutrition and training and all that shit, right?

Yeah.

I also just had a podcast with Daniel Fabod, who

I think you guys may have met maybe at the show, but he got third in classic at Detroit.

And he was discussing about how like trend, like it's a progestin, and if you're like not lean enough, you know, and you keep taking higher and higher doses, it almost like makes your skin like thicker, yeah, in a way.

And, um, you know, I thought that was a really cool explanation.

You know, aside from the whole, like, you know, the higher you run it, maybe the more mental side effects and less sleep that you get, which obviously is going to increase your cortisol.

Yeah.

And, you know, you want to block your cortisol with trend.

But like,

obviously, you'll get some like dudes in like the real, the comments of the actual reels that like are like bodybuilding bros and think like trend is the god's juice, you know, and they're like, oh, look, I think trend, I think trend is is a is a good valuable uh compound um but i also think that it's one of those ones i definitely found that more wasn't better you know um that like you know find that like you know anywhere between 150 300 400 milligrams at the very outset um is really all you need to like really optimize that drug and that look you know and it depends i mean like i've i found some like real good parable in amps when i was young that like i was taking like fucking 140 like two amps a week like they're what 76 milligrams to 152 milligrams a week of that I was taking.

And I looked fucking incredible.

So, like, for that, like, I was like, okay, this is great.

I only took two of these a week and I looked awesome.

Um, but with some of this fucking lab trend shit, who knows how much is actually in there?

So, you know, the 350 is kind of the sweet spot that I found.

Um, and more I definitely didn't find enhanced my look anymore for sure.

Yeah, yeah,

unless it's halo testing, then it's always better.

Yeah, halo just fucking 100, 200, who died.

I don't know why, dude.

I love, I just, I'm one of those guys.

I don't really feel anything on halo, I just like it.

Yeah.

I definitely felt it.

It, you know, putting it in like the last four weeks, especially if food is getting lower, you know, for one, keeping your training at a high level, I think is super important.

I think that's, that's the biggest thing for me is like,

because my physique was so contingent on like training being at a high level, that's really what I kind of built as the foundation of everything.

Like, you know, finding with food, with drugs, with the amount of cardio I was doing, whatever I could do to like make my training retain at the highest level possible was always going to render the best look for me.

You know, like, look, I know a lot of guys don't build their physiques from really hard training.

It's just like, you know, they're genetically gifted and that's not an important thing where other factors could be more heavily weighted in that equation.

But for me, I found really, you know, whatever things.

So like, yeah, when the energy starts to get a bit lower, something like the halo like that putting in, you know, definitely gave me like a little bit of an extra boost.

And, you know, it has that kind of volumizing effect and things like that as well.

You know, hardening whatever, I don't fucking, you know, whatever people feel they experience from it.

Um, but just even just keeping my training at a high level so I could keep training as hard as I was, which is then expelling more calories, which then helps me get leaner, you know, right?

Like once my training starts to suffer and I'm not feel like I can't push it as hard or as long or whatever, then obviously the amount of calories I'm burning in a day was mitigated, right?

So that is where I found on the second end from the trend or the halo, that's where I was getting the most benefits, just keeping my training high, you know?

Yeah.

In terms of the like not feeling so much, um, what I mean is like I relate more to that about what you said.

it's like by not feeling so much it's like uh

where i do feel like the effects of trend after like say six week period or something um i start feeling like a little bit irritated and like my thoughts are starting to be like yeah like i'll fucking get out of this car and fucking punch someone's windshield it's what it's funny this car because that's the one place i experience it i'm a very like not aggressive person like i'm not like someone that like fucking gets mad very easily i'm very like even keel like low aggression but in a fucking car when you're like trend or haloed out if someone does something something that normally you'd be like, ah, fuck this guy and like move on for 30 seconds, I'm like road rage, like chasing this guy down, fucking tailgating him.

I'm like, I'm gonna fucking kill you, you know?

That's the only place I would experience it is in the fucking car, you know?

Yeah, so I'm glad I didn't have a motorcycle when I was fucking bodybuilding for God's sake.

I'd be fucking dead 10 times over, you know?

Yeah.

But yeah, I guess halo is the one thing where like I haven't felt those the negative mental effects yet.

Yeah.

At least, yeah.

So I don't know.

Maybe it's just our chemistry is weird.

Everything's always different.

For sure.

Fucking brainfighting.

Whatever.

Anyways,

if you don't mind me asking, when did you give up your natty card?

I never competed naturally.

The first show I did, I ran

400 milligrams of sustenon and 50 milligrams of Winstroll, I think,

is what I did for my first show when I was 19.

I'd done once

what?

Light work.

Yeah, light work.

And that was like my third cycle or second cycle.

So I think I'd done one this summer at the beginning of the summer.

And then that kind of led into the prep, you know, when I started working at the store in that year, and then they kind of said to do the show.

And then I kind of went one, one bulk into that prep.

So yeah, my first cycle, I think, was just the 400 milligrams of sustenance, the test.

And then, yeah, I guess the second one, then I would have went into the prep and I added the Windstrawl in for that.

I might have used Clen,

but yeah, those are the only two anabolics I used at first.

And then I kind of like, you know, grew from there in my anabolic adventures, you know.

Okay.

Your anabolic adventures.

Do you ever feel like there was a point where

you were like,

I don't even know what I'm asking, to be honest.

Like, the thing that comes to my head is like,

when I did this last pro show, like, I kept having this thing in my head where I was like, bro, I've never done big doses.

I've never done big doses.

Like, this is my chance.

Like, I got this in the bag.

You know, I got a little like edge, a little advantage.

Yeah.

And and then i did the big doses and i don't and i gotta be real like i don't feel like my physique got that much better it got better for sure it's it's yeah it will but i mean it there's there's always like a weight of that you know like how much are you gaining versus how much like ramifications are you getting yourself right yeah i felt i felt like i started hitting that kind of like um

the opposite of a minimum effective dose like maximum Yeah, maximum

effective dose.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I went, I was a lot more like, like most guys, you know, especially from my generation, were, I was a lot more aggressive with the drugs when I was young.

You know, like when I didn't know what I was doing, when, you know, the information I was getting was like from, you know, fucking these internet forums of like saying, this is what Ronnie Coleman used.

And they're like written by some guy that has never actually seen a cycle, you know, you know, like those Chad Nichols cycles that get cycled, you know, those where it's like 7,000 drugs.

Yeah, look, maybe these are real.

I don't know.

But like, you know, that was like what my basis was back in those days, like finding stuff on the fucking deep web of like fucking nonsense.

Like, you know, there wasn't social media yet then.

There was no Instagram.

There wasn't really any coaches on Facebook.

It was kind of like finding what you could on the internet and then putting your best, you know, opinion, like best practices of what you thought would render the best results.

So I was definitely a lot more aggressive when I was young.

You know, I was never like too crazy.

I mean, you know, I know guys that have done a lot crazier things than me.

But as I got older, you know, I really started to, I found kind of like a sweet spot for things that honestly, for a lot of my career remained unchanged.

Like I kind of found, you know, for an offseason and for a prep, I had like a 10 year duration where it kind of just stayed the same.

Like in a prep, I would do 100 milligrams of test prop every day, 700 a week.

I would do 500 milligrams of masturan.

I'd do 75 a day, so 525, and I'd do 350 mass trend.

And that was kind of like the, you know, the base that I did every show for as long as I can remember the last like eight, seven, six, whatever years of my career was kind of the exact same, you know, of like my injectable base there.

you know, but when I was younger, I mean, I was like, you know, doing, trying to do test suspension and fucking like, you know what I mean?

It's like, I was just doing like all the fucking random things that I read on the internet were like the good things to do, but, um, but it didn't lead to me necessarily having a better physique.

And I, I know people listening to this might be like, well, yeah, you built your physique when you were young like that, and then you were able to relax on the drugs as you get older.

And that's actually not the case.

My physique, if you look at my career, was very progressive and actually until a point of when I learned how to train, you know, like it was kind of like, I was kind of getting a little better every year, not really that much.

Like, you know, some years I was actually worse than the year before, maybe get a little better.

My placings are kind of here and there, you know,

until one, I got good coaching.

And two, like I actually learned how to train well, you know, like train hard and eat properly and like things like that.

Where when you're younger, you know, you think that the drugs are the answer and the other things are like the secondary factors.

When you get actually to a level, then you realize like, yeah, no, those, the drugs are the secondary factor.

You kind of just find like a baseline.

It It works.

It puts you in this anabolic state, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

And they're, they're good to render a look, but they're like the kind of the secondary, like, icing on the cake behind, especially in my opinion, the training.

Like, for me, I think that training is like the and all, be all in terms of what drives progress.

Um, you know, and then obviously nutrition, but I don't think nutrition is as complicated as people think.

I think it's just like get yourself in some kind of surplus where your training is optimized, like I said, and then just, you know, trying to get fucking stronger, you know, just progressing in your lifts.

And if your training is progressing, generally you're going to get bigger.

Like obviously, you know, you could do a power lift.

You're training super, super low volume.

Maybe you'll get stronger to some degree without a ton of hypertrophy.

But if you're training within like the guise of a bodybuilder and you're eating enough food, it doesn't need to be crazy amounts of surplus, putting a 5,000 calorie surplus isn't going to serve you any more purpose.

And then just having enough anabolics in there that it can support the training.

and support, you know, using all that food that you're, you know, taking your protein synthesis is upticked a little bit.

And then just training as hard as you can, just getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

And that was really what I like used as my like milestone: okay, every year when I was getting stronger, I was getting better, you know, and that's really what when I kind of really hit my stride in like 2019, 20, 21, 22 was not the times I was using the most drugs or built off a foundation where I was already big that I kind of could relax off the drugs.

It was when I just learned how to train, you know,

gotcha.

Um, I guess, how would you explain the differentiation between when you weren't training right versus when you were?

Yeah, I mean, it was a lot more like

way more volume than I was doing.

And look, I do think that there's guys that have been amazing bodybuilders with high volume training.

So I'm not going to say it doesn't work.

But for me, it was a lot more volume and a lot lower intensity.

Like when you're young, you just don't know what you don't know.

And I didn't know what like training hard felt like yet.

You know, I hadn't kind of branched out of my very small pool of like who was in my city that was bodybuilders or people that trained.

So I was always the strongest and hardest training guy.

So I thought I was training hard until then I kind of got to be the pro level and I started to, you know, meet more guys and I trained with guys that actually trained hard or, you know, went with a train, like, you know, the first couple of times like I met Matt Jansen, I go out and train with him in Dallas and I'm like, holy fuck, there's a completely different level to this that I'm not at yet, you know, that I wasn't training at that level of intensity or that level of effort or pushing the sets to the point that I think are really important.

And that is when I really started to see the progress.

So it's, yeah, I mean, it's, but it's a feeling that like you think you're training to failure until you have someone or you kind of find the feeling of what it actually feels like.

You push yourself there to put yourself really deep into sets, you know, like I would be stopping sets back then what I thought was to failure that I learned later in my career were like three, four, five sets from like actual failure, you know?

And I think that those ones are like, you know, years of combining those hard training sessions is what really rendered the progress for me, you know okay um i guess how much uh

i mean obviously this is gonna differ for a person but for you i guess what was that optimal amount of volume that you've

yeah it depends on the body part but i was kind of like more in the

you know 12 to at most 15 working sets in a workout you know like that's kind of where i would be is like you know i found the sweet spot of like you know my big compound exercises i'd be doing two two working sets on and then my like more isolation like less you know demanding like exercises, like from a nervous system standpoint or whatever, energy demand standpoint, I would probably do three sets on those.

So, you know, say if I'm doing five exercises, you know, three of them or two of them, I'm doing two sets on, the other ones I'm doing three sets on.

So yeah, and that 12 to 15 sets is kind of where I really landed and maintained for most of like my best years of bodybuilding.

Okay.

When you say like five sets, I guess, like

how many muscle groups per like in the workout would you be hitting?

Like would this be like a, oh, one.

Sorry, when I was younger.

Yeah, when I was older and I was doing like the 15, that would probably be between two body parts, you know, like I was doing like some kind of bro split variation, like a chest and tries back, but like, but then it got more specific as I, you know, had to improve things in my physique.

Like there was a lot of periods, you know, when I was working with Patrick where I'd be training chest twice in a week and back twice in a week, you know, and certain things were getting kind of put more on the back burner because they didn't need as much attention.

So, you know, like I'd be doing like a chest and tries, and on the back of the week, I'd be doing like chest and shoulders, or I'd be doing quads by itself with maybe a bit of arms, um, and then I'd be doing back again with my hamstrings, you know.

So, like, those things were getting hit twice.

It was some kind of modified bro split, push-pull legs, whatever, kind of in the middle there.

Um, but yeah, so like, you know, it would be 12 to 15 working sets and in a total workout.

Yeah, okay, that's cool.

But then when I was younger, I would go do like a chest day by itself and do 30 working sets, you know, like

I would do, I would do six exercises and do five sets of every single exercise, you know?

But like all this, and I was also doing it the other way, which guys could disagree with me on this, but this is just my opinion.

I used to do it the way where I would progress up to a working set, but every set within it would still be like kind of a hard set.

So it's like I would do like, you know, 15 reps, 15 reps, 12 reps, whatever, and kind of work up.

And then my last set would be like my heaviest one.

But like at that point, in my opinion, you've expelled so much energy on sub-maximal sets.

So like how I ended up doing it later in my career, like, you know, a lot of guys do now with the lower-ish volume.

I'm not as low as some guys are.

I would say I'm like more of like a moderate, um,

but was kind of like doing my very, very minimal warm-up sets, two reps, three reps, whatever, just kind of working up.

And then my top set, my first working set would be with the maximal amount of weight I could do for the maximal amount of reps within a range.

Obviously, I wasn't trying to do 20 rep sets of fucking, you know, chest presses or anything.

I don't think that's advantageous as much, but working up to, you know, like the heaviest eight or 10 that I could work up to and doing that as my first set when I'm the most fresh then doing one back off set and then moving on you know gotcha yeah yeah I feel like we had a

kind of surprised amount of like somewhat similar experiences but I feel like we had a pretty similar experience here in regards to training yeah like I right now I would say I do about 12 to 16 like I would do maybe like six to eight maybe more like eight sets per

like specific muscle group and then um you know i'd do maybe like two muscle groups per workout, so that ended up being like 16 or something total.

Yeah, so I'd be about to say I think it's hilarious when some people I feel like layman people get a little bit confused when certain bodybuilders will say how many sets.

I saw this freaking reel like yesterday of Lee talking about how many sets you do for arms.

Like, this is why you like grew.

And he'd be like, Yeah, I do 20 sets for arms.

Yeah, but then you'd have the comments like people are like, dude, he's a fucking liar, like 20 sets for an exercise.

I'm like, these kids are imagining that just doing 20 sets of a bicep curl and then probably 20 sets of like a tricep.

I'm sure he means per

arm workout.

Yeah.

And it's also different because like, you know, the sets aren't quite the same.

You know, and they're like I said, I think a lot of what we would now count as kind of like warm-up progressive sets are being counted as warm-up sets or counting as working sets, like Fuad would.

You know, like when he was training, like he would say he was doing

four sets in an exercise, but like two of those or three of those even would be kind of like sub-maximal warm-up sets where he could have feeder sets.

Yeah, Yeah, where he could have done as many reps with 30 more pounds than he was doing in the preset.

So it's like it is a set and it still is volume accumulated.

But in my mind, they're just not as advantageous as like getting as much done with as maximal load as possible early.

And then, so, like, I would always put my like most demanding exercises at the beginning of the workout when I'm the freshest and try and get the most amount of load with good form for as many reps as possible within the range.

Um, and then kind of like going to you know, less demanding exercises throughout my workout, right?

yeah i think that makes the most sense um when i first started off too i think i was like a freaking kind of a cunt of a kid when i was in college like back in uh purdue and i uh i have some of my audience that's from purdue that

uh have heard of me and stuff so they're probably gonna fucking laugh at this shit but like in purdue is when i started social media so um there's one point where like I was like in a fraternity, right?

So you got like a hierarchy when you're in college.

So you kind of care about your status and shit, which I think is fucking gay.

But, you know, that's, that was me and probably Silas.

But I was like,

at one point, I was just like, man, I want to like grow and I want to build myself and I want to become better and I want to show that, you know?

So I started documenting my bodybuilding journey in college.

And at one point, it kind of hit off a little bit.

There was like this one really homo picture that I took that just got like thousands and thousands of views and it got me to like 10k.

Can we edit to cut in this photo right now or what?

Panzer photo.

But like,

I guess I started making a name for myself.

And then there was this point where like people knew my name or knew of me whenever I'd go to the gym.

Sure.

So then my workouts ended up consisting of the amount of volume I would do would actually just match how much time like the three hours I wanted to spend in the gym.

Yeah.

Because after engineering, I just want to go to the gym and then I'd be like, I would see my homies and then there'd be like my place where I'd like smash like two scoops of pre-workout.

So it's a show

for sure.

And then

all the baddies went to the gym too.

So I had to spend like three hours in the mirror.

Especially at college, yeah.

Yeah, especially at college.

So yeah, one thing doing one thing too, I'll say when it pertains to training is why my training was a lot more volume when I was younger too, is

I was a lot more adamant on short breaks to like feel the pump.

You know, I like when you're young, you're like pump obsessed.

You know, it's like you want to look good, you want to feel the pump.

And I use that as like an ultimate gauge for progress when I know now it's not necessarily.

You know, I think it could be to some degree an important factor, but I don't think it's that important.

I think that's more of like a factor that's probably relating more to your train, to your nutrition or your hydration or things like that, as opposed to like quality of a workout.

But I would take like super short breaks between all my exercises.

So then obviously the amount of load that I was able to work at like effectively and the intensity that you can bring to every set was obviously a lot less.

Where now I'm a huge believer in go when you're ready.

Like, you know, take, take the time you need when you're caught your breath and you feel like you're at the maximum amount of like strength that you have to give to the next set.

You know, I don't think that going super short break where it's like, oh, I'm still out of breath from the last set or, you know, I feel like I, you know, could get another rep or two if I rated a minute longer.

I think it is more advantageous to take the more time.

I don't think that moving quickly is necessarily any benefit in terms of hypertrophy training.

When it comes to athletic based training, I think.

you know, workload and time like that is very important.

But in terms of hypertrophy, I don't think it's valuable at all.

I think if you're going to just be lazy and take 15 minutes to talk to your friends between sets, I think that's obviously different.

But I think taking as much time as you need to be able to be at 100% for the next, as 100% as you can be given what you've already done in the workout, is always going to be more advantageous.

When I was younger, it was just like pump, move quick, like fucking, you know, like super setting things and fucking a million drop sets and like, you know what I mean?

Like all that kind of stuff.

Like, you know, that, that I don't think is necessarily driving hypertrophy as much as how I believe I train later in my career, you know?

Right.

Right, right, right.

I would feel the same way about the pump until I would be caught up talking to somebody and then I talked to them for fucking 15 minutes and then

which is my fault.

And then I would lose the pump and then get mad at myself.

Yeah, I mean, the thing with the pump is like, I could go do push-ups on my floor right now and get a pump.

Do I think that necessarily is building my chest?

No, you know?

So I think there is like, I think mechanical tension is the prime driver for building muscle.

And I think if you're sacrificing creating mechanical tension, in the sake of a pump, you're probably leaving progress at the door, you know?

Like, yeah, like doing the rest a little bit too short.

Yeah, if you're, if you're going too fast or working at like lighter loads, you know, to move a little quicker and just like squeezing and feeling and trying to pump things versus like, you know, obviously you want to feel an exercise size to a degree, but I do think feeling is overrated to a large degree.

But I think, you know, taking the time to be adequately prepared for the next set.

And even if your pump doesn't feel as good, I think it's still more advantageous, you know.

How many minutes does it tend to be for you personally?

I know it probably differs per muscle group, but.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, if I'm like doing a hard set of squats, I might take five, six, seven minutes between a set for sure.

You know, I mean, fuck, that's exhausting.

You know, if you're doing a hard set of barbell squats or, you know, hack squats or something like that or deadlifts or like something like that, that's like a really heavy load that's like put on your back or whatever.

That's like really exhausting.

I could take a long time for sure.

I mean, it depends.

Yeah, five minutes plus.

Obviously, if it's a set of fucking, you know, rope extensions, like, I don't think you need that long.

You know, I think you'll probably be recovered in a minute to 90 seconds between those.

So, yeah, it depends on the muscle group.

But, the rule of thumb is: one, have you caught your breath?

And two, like, do you feel that you're mentally ready to give everything to the next set?

And if you're like, fuck, I need another minute, take it, you know?

Okay.

That's actually honestly just something that I've learned recently, even though I've like heard of this for a long time.

Cause I used to follow people like Dr.

Mike fucking back in college before he actually got

famous.

I mean, to be honest, for some reason, only recently did I start implementing the,

I guess, the concept of waiting until your heart rate goes back down to like a reasonable level,

which is a problem because sometimes I'm in the gym for a long time and I like to superset and then my heart rate just stays up.

Yeah.

But

I guess when then?

Because right now I've been setting like two to three minute timers, depending on what the exercise is.

When it's leg press, I can't fucking do three minutes.

It has to be like three to four minutes normally.

But

I guess when do you feel like there is a place for the pump?

Like I said, I don't think you should ever be chasing the pump.

Like, I think you should be getting a pump.

And if you're not, then I would explore more things from like a nutrition and a hydration standpoint or like volume standpoint or things like that.

You know, like, you know, if you're doing too much volume, yeah, by the end of the workout, you're probably going to be losing your pump.

So I think trying to chase it forever, I think, could be.

you know, not advantageous.

So maybe you're doing too much.

But I also think most of the time, if your nutrition is in a good point and you're like adequately fueled, you know, and if your hydration is good and your sodium intake is adequate, you know, because sodium is like crazy important for getting pumps in the gym.

If someone wants to just enhance their pump in a pre-workout, just add like two grams of salt to your pre-workout and you'll definitely get a better pump.

So, you know, I think if I'm not getting good pumps, I think it needs to be explored more from like a...

a nutrition and hydration standpoint than it would be like, I need to move faster in my workout or like anything like that.

You know, I think if you're moving heavy weight and you're contracting the muscle, you're going to get blood in there no matter what.

So I don't usually ever look at it now as like a primary or important factor in my training by any large degree.

Okay.

How did you feel about Petor's SSD sets?

It's honestly been so long I don't really remember what the SSD sets even are.

So maybe give me a refresher on it so I can remind myself.

Yeah.

So he had like,

I think it's five options, but I don't remember distinctively all five because i just pick like my two favorites um

my two favorites are the there's like um you do right after you do your last set to failure you do 20 sec your last set of the exercise of each exercise to failure you do 20 second rest and then so it's a rest pause set Yeah, that one's a rest pause set.

So you do 20 seconds rest and then you hit it again to failure and you keep doing it until you only have one rep left in the tank.

And then one of the other ones is like, it's actually a 45 second, then you hit it, 30 second, then you hit it, 15 second, then you hit it.

And then another option is like, you actually just do a drop set where you drop it to like 66% of the weight it was before.

Yeah, see, I'm definitely more in favor of something like a rest pause than I am a drop set because you're working at the same maximal load the whole time.

So like with a drop set, you're lowering the load and reducing the mechanical tension, where I would think.

In my mind, getting maybe less reps with a higher load, you know, taking that, you know, 15, 20 second break, then, you know, stay with that same load, getting a couple extra reps, then you're just bringing that a little deeper till failure, but still using that heavy load that you're using on that set.

So I like those.

I did rest pauses a lot.

How much do they serve in the total benefit of hypertrophy?

I have no idea.

But I definitely do like them as like an intensifier and like, you know, really feeling like you're getting like a good.

hard training session in.

They're definitely like a good one for that.

But I did lots of rest pauses.

And then Janssen worked with those a lot too when I worked with him.

So yeah, I definitely did a lot of those in my life for sure.

i like to feel like that's one of the european secrets yeah i know i just see like the fullness of stefine's physique and i'm like it's those res pause sets yeah no i mean i i think i think the biggest thing is just how close and how deep into failure you're bringing them you know i think if you if you have learned to bring your basic working sets that deep i think it can be almost just as as effective um i think for a lot of guys it's just like a it's a good way to train themselves to push sets really deep with that maximal load right yeah yeah

Man, there's like fucking three things that are crossing my brain.

So I guess with

the training, so you were mentioning back when you were prepping for a show, you're like three weeks out of a show and stuff.

You wanted to make sure that your training was, your training performance was still high because that would yield you the best physique.

Was there ever a time where you guys kind of had like trouble in trying to find like this perfect amount of like

managing fatigue?

Because your training, you know, would still be high and i know some coaches actually like titrate down training intensity or volume so we would we would titrate down volume yeah so intensity i would always try and maintain until maybe like the last week or 10 days or something like that i do think at that point you're obviously you want to reduce inflammation reduce things like that in the muscle so i don't think pushing your workouts quite as hard within the last week are generally advantageous i think they're probably detrimental and it also depends on how high your food is if you're really having to push down to get into shape but yeah i i think we would manage it from an overall workload and volume standpoint.

So I would reduce the amount of total working sets in the workout, but the ones that I would still have, I would try and fucking be as heavy and as hard as I could.

And then if I found I was still not able to achieve it, I would reduce it even more.

So yeah, it was usually general overall workload that was reduced, but I would try and maintain the same level of effort and intensity.

And obviously, you're going to get drops in strength when you're, when you're prepping for a show.

You know, and a lot of that is just correlated with body weight.

I mean, as weight moves weight, I mean, the lighter you you get, the weaker you'll be.

I mean, it's, it's almost inevitable.

Um, you know, so I, I think a lot of it is just that, but, you know, a lot of it is, is pertaining to food and, you know, energy balance and demand, especially if you're doing a lot of cardio.

I mean, there's energy expenditure there.

So, I mean, like, there's a lot of things that are cofactors in that.

But, um, you know, for us, especially with Patrick, we always tried to keep for me, my cardio as low as as possible

because that would keep my training at a higher level.

And I was generally able to expel a lot more calories and burn a lot more fat during my actual weight training than I ever was during my cardio, you know?

Gotcha.

Yeah.

So,

I mean, you and I both had to like, I guess, uh, early on, we learned just like how, how difficult it was to diet.

But then I guess that kind of like set a precedent for us in,

you know, future competitions.

So I guess this is a discussion I've been having a little bit more often recently.

And I don't know if some of the audience hates this discussion or not, but

I,

at at first I had kind of like a conflicted perspective on it, but I'm almost being warmed into the idea.

It's still a little difficult, but I guess what's your thought on

the fact that GLP1s are now being used pretty commonly in bodybuilding preps?

Yeah, look, I don't have a massive opinion on it because I've never used them myself and I've never implemented them in the days when I was coaching.

So I don't have enough experience utilizing them.

You know, it's tough because I do see the benefits.

You know, I do see from an appetite suppression and blood glucose management standpoint, I do see where they do have a benefit.

But I'm also, like I said, I'm a huge proponent on like maximizing, you know, your training.

And I think a lot of people, when they introduce these kind of things, do get a bit of like suffrage in their training and their output and their intensity.

You know, but I think if you're able to get in your adequate protein, your training is staying relatively stable and it's helping just like curb your appetite a little bit and keep blood glucose in a good spot.

I don't see a huge issue to it.

I mean, out of all the compounds we're using as bodybuilders, this is probably one of the safer ones you're going to be utilizing.

So

I'm not opposed to it in any way.

I mean, if it was that versus DNP, I'm fucking taking Ozempic all day, you know?

Like, if this is, if this is the coin I'm flipping, I'm fucking hoping I'm flipping onto the GLP1 side, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think, um, I think there's some kind of a, I think there's a very good argument to be said for micro-dosing it, or at least below initial dosing protocols, especially, you know, as a a bodybuilder and when you're eating that much protein and shit and you're trying to manage your gut.

Yeah.

So

yeah, from what I've seen, that's the benefits seem to like weigh into the whole micro dosing thing.

I do know though, it is a lot of hard, it's, I've seen it be pretty hard for people to kind of figure out a good dosing place because it's like, it's so weird the way that the dosing is.

It's like, if you go,

I don't know, I mean, this might just,

maybe I'm wrong.

Maybe people have all different experiences, but when you just go like a little bit below the dosing, sometimes how much you feel feel is drastically different.

If you go like

too high, you know,

which is very easy with like how small those

units are, you can just suddenly feel nauseous and you can't even eat the protein that you need to.

Yeah, yeah, and that can be tough.

So, like I said before, you know, as long as you're able to get all the food that you do need in, like, if you're not crashing your appetite to the point where even getting what you need to fuel your training and like actually be in the right spot from like a nutrition standpoint is still able to be done.

I do think it can be a valuable tool for guys, you know, especially guys that have a really hard time with like cheating on their diet and appetite control and things like that during a prep.

Like, you know, if you're just fucking really, really struggling with that, do I think it can be a tool to implement?

Sure.

Do I think it was something I would have used?

No, but I didn't have problems.

Like I'm not a big eater to begin with.

So like being hungry to me was almost like a fucking sense of relief, you know, like I was eating so much throughout the rest of the year, there would only be like maybe, you know, six weeks out of the year, you know, four weeks, three weeks before a show, two, you know, whatever it was,

that I would really be like actually pretty hungry.

And at that point, I like welcomed it, you know, like I was like, fuck, it feels nice to like be excited to eat my next meal and like be hungry and like, you know, wake up in the morning, like, you know, for me now, like, I'm never like a big morning eating guy.

So I wake up in the morning, like excited to eat and like, you know, want to do your cardio, go get your food in as fast as possible.

Like, I actually like love that.

So like, but I know a lot of guys like fucking hate being hungry and they have a really hard time with it.

And I know this is like a, I don't know if genetic was the right word, but you know, how people's like release leptin and ghrelin and how it affects them like mentally, I know, is very different person to person.

Yeah, it is definitely genetic variant, yeah.

So, for me, it was like not a very hard thing at all.

Um, but I think if you are someone that struggles with that, then I do think it could be a tool that, you know, at the at the right dosing on the lower end, I think could be something you could implement and use effectively for sure.

Cool.

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Chris Williamson talks about having a podcaster bladder and I just don't have that.

I can't imagine doing like a two-hour live show or something.

I have like a camel bladder, man.

I can do like eight-hour drives and not stop to piss once.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

How much,

I mean, how much water do you you are you?

I mean, I don't measure my water, but I mean, I probably drink like five liters a day.

I mean, like, I'm not like crazy, but I drink enough for sure.

Yeah.

Damn.

That's crazy.

I almost wonder if I should like, well, I take astralogous root and I've noticed that, you know, the

some credible people

I've discussed this with, I've talked about like, you know, the benefits of continuously titrating up above two grams.

Like you can continuously increase the dose fine and it'll just continue to benefit you.

But like, bro, I do two grams in a full day and I'm peeing five times throughout the day.

Yeah, like I do it in the morning.

It's crazy.

I definitely pee a lot less now that I'm not using any anabolics.

Like when I was, I definitely found I pissed a lot more.

I don't know if there's any correlation there or if it's just maybe I'm not eating as much so I don't drink as much water.

So I'm not sure.

But yeah, I definitely noticed I piss a lot less.

Like same at night.

Like I can sleep basically a full night now and not wake up to piss, which was like obviously impossible when I was competing.

I was getting up like two, three times a night to fucking piss, you know?

Okay.

Interesting.

Yeah.

This juice to piss ratio ought to be slow.

All right, a million questions.

Cool.

Oof.

Wow.

I'm going to pick one of my favorites actually real quick.

Okay.

Because I'm going to get this done at the exact same place in December.

But 21 asks, how painful was the hair transplant?

Would you do it again?

It's not that bad.

I I mean, look,

it's a long procedure and only about like one, two minutes of it is painful.

You know, when they give you the local anesthetic, you know, they fucking shove some pretty nasty needles in your head, which in your scalp, like you think of how tight that skin is, like it's definitely not nice.

And they go in like horizontally.

So say this is your scalp.

They go in like this way, you know?

They're not like going like this.

Maybe I shouldn't have done that.

So they go in like long, like with a long needle, going sideways.

And they'll like put a bit of, they'll go like this.

They put a bit of of numbing draw back put a bit of numbing draw back put a bit of numbing pull it out and they go another spot numb numb numb pull it out and then until they get your head and then they do the front well they do the back first to numb it to get like all the donor hairs out of the back of your head and then they take out hairs for a few hours whatever and then when they flip you over and start transplanting then they numb your head again at the top so you do that twice where they do the numbing which is certainly not pleasant, but

it's a short period.

So, I mean, like, it's two minutes of like eight out of 10 pain.

And then you just lay there with a fucking completely numb head for, you know, hours on end.

But it's not that bad, I mean, I mean, like, you know,

my mom's husband just went recently.

You know, we went back last year and he did his and like he was like, it was fine, you know, and like he's not like, you know, he's not like fucking super macho man that's like, nothing hurts me.

Like if it had hurt him, he would have told me, you know, and he was like, no, it wasn't that bad, you know?

So, yeah, I mean, it's, it's not pleasant, but it's short.

And then you literally just lay there with a fucking numb head for five to eight hours yeah okay it's long yeah but no i mean would i do it again yeah i mean if i need it i'll probably will do another one at some point um

but no i mean it's it's it's not like the worst thing ever i mean it's it's worth it for sure yeah okay

Can I demand like a like a ketamine infusion or something?

No, but just like pop a fucking, pop like a fucking, you know, quarterbar of Xanax or something.

You'll be all right, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm actually, I'm really excited for it because I think I used to be somewhat known for my hair and

now I just look like I have pews on my forehead because of the gear.

Yeah, no, mine came in really well, but I still want more on the back.

Like the back, like in the crown area is definitely a harder area for them to transplant because the scalp is a little thinner and blood flow there is not as good as it is like in the temple like forehead area.

So you get like usually like a 70, 80% success rate on grafts done at the front versus you get like a 30-40 at the back.

So I definitely want to put more in the back at some point, but I'll wait till I've like thinned out on top a bit and they can kind of just go do the whole top.

So yeah, I mean, I'll probably go back at some point.

I mean, but I, but I built a pretty good relationship with the guys there.

Like I, I went down last year, just went fucking dirt biking with Malik, like the owner.

Like I just like hung out.

Yeah, like I went on vacation there.

Me and Melissa went down with my mom and her husband.

And, you know, he got his hair done.

And I just like, you know, Malik and his like people like put us on vacation.

They like arranged a full vacation for us there.

And we went and explored Turkey.

We went, I went dirt biking with him and his like couple of his buddies and shit.

it was a good time so that's nice turkey turkey's awesome i i like turkey a lot it gets kind of like i think people think of it as like this fucking middle eastern country where like women gotta cover up and it's like kind of scary it's like it's not like that at all maybe if you go super far eastern turkey we're getting closer to iran um but like istanbul is fucking like europe man it's like europe with some muslims like it's it's not like it's a very nice safe country that like is really beautiful and honestly i really like going there yeah okay cool yeah you'll like it um

Yoseba.

I'm back again.

Fucking Yoseba.

I fucking know this guy.

Yoseba says, never have sex again or never train again.

Never trade again.

Yeah.

Never train again.

Well, I mean,

okay, maybe, maybe I would say, oh, fuck.

So I can do anything else but have sex?

Like, can I still get blow jobs and like fucking go down on my wife and like other things?

Or it's like, if we're talking just no penetration, then I might take that over training.

But like me and my wife still want to have kids.

So I guess if I just went IVF route, then I wouldn't technically have to have sex to have a kid.

So

I don't know, that's tough.

I probably would be a very miserable human that would end up divorced if I stopped training.

So I may probably have to keep the training in, or I won't have a wife to fuck anyways, you know?

Yeah.

I have a feeling like if it was

if it was just penetration, then I think I would have, I would say, never

have penetrative sex again.

I would say it's all sex.

Yeah.

So

then, yeah, I probably got to say no training, but that sucks.

Damn, that's crazy.

I mean, fuck, man.

I'm only 35, 34.

Like, if I got another, you know, 40, 50 years in me of no sex, that's going to be a rough time, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would probably have to say that.

And my wife would also divorce me for that if I never fucked her again.

So, you know, she's leaving me if I become a miserable fuck for not training or for not fucking her.

So, I mean, either way, I'm getting the shit under the stick here, you know?

I'd probably have to say never have sex again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not like

I'm having sex anyways.

I'm just kidding.

Just kidding, Lexi.

She's probably going to listen to this.

She's probably going to leave me.

Megerton asks.

This is a big question.

This is a long.

He says, favorite moment from each mean gym you've trained at, but I mean, that's a lot of moments in a lot of gyms, I'm assuming.

Yeah, that's hard over my career to even think of.

Favorite moment at a gym.

Man,

that's even tough to pin down.

I mean, I've fucking trained for so long with so many different people and things like that.

i don't even know if i could even think of anything that stands out like you know obviously i've had a lot of i do remember um 2020 olympia it was one of the years that melissa chris and i all competed at the olympia together um and i remember like you know being at this was the years they were in orlando and being like in the kissing me muscle gym like the three of us like all being in you know show shape and like training and like we were all there for like the common goal of like doing the best we could at the olympian and you were still coaching chris at this time too right i was still coaching both of them for this olympia yeah that's funny.

So, you know,

yeah, I remember, I remember that, like, really enjoying those times of like us all kind of being together and like, or sorry, 20, this is 2018 Olympia, was we were all together.

So 2018 Olympia,

and we were all together and all competing.

And just remember, like, really feeling that like bond among us that we were like all going to be on the Olympia stage together and like everything was pretty cool.

Like that was a pretty, pretty surreal moment for sure.

Yeah.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Gio asks, any misconceptions of bodybuilding that bothers bothers you?

No, I mean,

obviously there's like the meathead stereotype.

In a lot of cases, that's true.

So I can't say that's necessarily a stereotype.

A lot of bodybuilders become bodybuilders because they're fucking meatheads and they're fucking half-retarded.

So

I don't know.

Nothing that like stands out.

Is there anything that stands out to you, like bodybuilding misconceptions?

I don't know, man.

Maybe that they're like assholes or something.

You know, like I know even at my local gym, you know, there's a lot of people that I'll like meet in other arenas that will like talk to me.

And they're like, man, I was always too scared.

You're so scary looking at the gym, like, blah, blah, blah.

Where like a lot of these guys, especially in a gym setting, I mean, I am anytime.

I'm a very like social person.

Like I like interacting with people and like, it's never a bother to me, like no matter what phase of my life I'm in to like stop and talk to people.

But because of how you look, I think a lot of people are like, think that you're something from a personality standpoint that you're probably not.

um and especially in a gym like if someone came up to me and asked me a question about like how to make their training better i'd i'd fucking even if i was two weeks out from a show i would spend 15 minutes with them and try and help them like i don't care at all you know yeah like i would love i love to like share the knowledge of those kind of things so yeah that would probably be a big one for me is like thinking that they're meaner than they are because of how they look you know yeah

so okay i got one and i don't i think it's a little bit rare all right but um i think so my girl and i were in florida right for my show and um we had this guy uh uh

we got an uber and um this guy was just like asking us what we're doing there and i'm just like you know i'm competing at the show i'm bodybuilding whatever um and he's like oh cool cool and he's like do you do steroids and i'm like yeah yeah i do steroids and he's like oh damn um

it was almost like kind of demeaning and i was just like the fuck is this from and then he was just like uh

he's like normally guys who do steroids are like pretty big right like like um

he's like, oh my god, what a shot to your fucking nuts, eh?

He's like, and then he's like, I just want to be like, you know, I want to stay natty like Chris Bumstead.

Oh, my God.

And out of nowhere,

just like looking at each other, and we're just like, wait, wait.

Yes.

What is this?

I Mr.

Olympia is the nattiest guy in the world.

So I guess he's just like, I don't know.

Like, this is definitely still, this is so rare now, but I guess there's still people out there that believe that there's like Olympians that are natural.

And

I think it's because they'll compare them to like

they'll compare them to like ronnie coleman and they'll be like this is steroids this is not you know this is a natural beautiful you know healthy body and this is steroids the ones with the big guts are the ones yeah it's like the big fucking disgusting freaks are the only ones that use steroids little do they know that like 90 of the

people that go to your gym are taking steroids and you just can't even tell like I don't think people even realize like until they've been in this world like or know people that fucking do steroids, sell steroids, been around steroids, steroids.

That, like, everybody does steroids, you know, like, whether it's just like little kids taking some fucking anivar, doing a bit of test, or whatever it is, like, fucking, you know, doing some shit to shred down for summer or whatever.

So many people use steroids.

And I don't say that's like a good thing.

I don't think it's a good thing.

Um, I think it's a bad thing for sure, but I think it's way, way more rampant than people think, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

Bro, like, um,

I don't want to put anyone on, I don't want to put this kid on blast.

So it's always hard to like say these stories sometimes, but I'm like, dude, these are such good stories.

But but freaking um this

this kid this this kid i know who has reached out to me for help before

um and he was natural back then like this was years years ago he reached back out to me again bro and he was like

so this guy is telling me to take this stuff but i've been taking this like what do you think about it so basically essentially there's this guy who ended up being

I'm sorry, bro, if you're listening to this, I swear to God, I'm not going to say your name.

I hope this is discreet enough, but there's a guy who basically became like, basically, an uncle figure to him, you know, after a few years who was a friend of his in the gym.

And,

you know, this kid wanted to like make some gains.

And like, mind you, this kid is below the age of 18, right?

And I've noticed this has happened pretty common.

So this is kind of one of the big reasons why I wanted to create this podcast in the first place is because I had some misconceptions too when I started.

Basically, this kid started jumping on stuff because this guy was like

telling him, like, this is the way.

Take Anna Varin Winstrawl.

Yeah.

yeah.

And his dad, when he found out, he was like, well, just don't inject.

Like, if you're going to take it or whatever, just don't inject, right?

Yeah.

Like, that's what I'm saying.

And obviously, we understand.

There's misconception and miscommunication here.

Yeah.

Well, the craziest thing to me, though, is that apparently

he asked me he was like, so he took a, he sent me this picture and he's like,

how many I use do you think this is?

How many IUs of GH do you think this is?

And he sent me a picture of a giant bag of white pills.

Oh my God.

This guy had sold him these giant bags of white pills that was supposedly a year's worth.

of growth hormone of oral growth hormone for ten thousand dollars oh no i know i felt so fucking bad dude yeah that's not a thing guys Sorry.

Yeah.

And I'm like,

I'm like, dude, like, like, I have a lot, like, the, my audience is pretty damn well versed, I think.

The age range is a lot.

Obviously, the biggest age range is 20s to the, is, is in your 20s, like 20 to 30.

Yeah.

But, like,

I think people don't really understand, you know, like America is fucking huge.

Like, there's,

and there's so many people that just, there's still this, like, this gray area where people just don't really completely understand PEDs or bodybuilding.

I mean, it's even a good thing you said there, too.

Like, you know, someone said, don't inject as if orals are somehow inherently safer than injectable drugs, when I would actually probably say it's the opposite.

You know, like in terms of a health ramification standpoint, when you're taking an oral that has to be processed at a higher level through the liver is in most cases going to be worse for you.

Like if someone's like, hey, I'm going to take testosterone, I'm going to take D-ball or anadrol.

I'm telling them to take tests all day long.

I mean, this is like a bioidentical bio-identical hormone.

I'm going to tell them to take that versus fucking, you know, like then fucking take the orals.

I mean, it's definitely going to be way safer in terms of like a health management standpoint, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

I'm just hoping that like all these podcasts that we're all having and stuff kind of help kind of help like dispel some of this, you know,

old crazy.com forum shit.

What I grew up with, you know.

FOHO8 asks, what is the reason you respond to so many people and help them on Insta?

Smiley face.

Yeah,

I don't really know.

I enjoy it.

I mean, I like helping people.

I think it's, it feels very fulfilling for me, you know, knowing that like, you know, I'll talk to a guy and like help him with his training or nutrition or whatever it is.

And like, he'll come back in a couple of months and be like, man, that really fucking helped.

I've made a lot of progress.

He sent me his pictures and he's like super proud of it.

You know, I really hate holding information hostage.

You know, I think like it took me a long time to learn this stuff.

And I don't think that everybody needs to go through that same, I think there's a lot of things you need to just learn on your own, but I think a lot of it is just things that like we can share the, the wealth of information that, you know, I've spent 15 years accruing or that other guys have.

And look, I'm a professional bodybuilder, or I was, my life is not extremely busy.

Like it's more busy now, but when I was competing, I literally just like ate and sat on the couch all day.

You know, for me to answer your DMs is not like a time consuming thing.

And it honestly gave me a high fulfillment, like I said, to help people in their journey.

And then, you know, they'd make more progress sometimes because of it.

And that, like, that felt good, you know?

So I like talking to people.

I like helping people.

And yeah, it's always been something that I've enjoyed doing.

Yeah.

Hell yeah.

I love all the stuff you post too.

Thank you.

All the stories and all the comments are fucking hilarious.

Oscar Laduke

asks, do you feel pressure competing knowing C-bombs your brother-in-law?

No, I never felt pressure competing.

I mean, obviously, I probably felt some pressure from like an overall career success standpoint,

you know, because

it's definitely weird having the most famous guy in the history of this industry as your brother-in-law.

And like seeing that evolution was definitely like a little surreal for sure.

So, no,

we compete in different divisions.

So it was never, look, if he had been an open bodybuilder, then for sure, I would have felt a lot more, you know,

with wanting to be a better bodybuilder than him because I'm a very competitive person.

I wanted to be better than everybody, let alone just him.

So, I would have felt that, you know, that I wanted to keep my hierarchy as the big brother of the better of the two bodybuilders.

But no, we compete in different divisions.

So, like, I didn't feel that pressure from a competition standpoint.

Like, I didn't feel like, oh, I have to win this show or place high at the Olympia because C-bum's my brother-in-law.

Like, I never felt that.

But obviously, his career is so, like, such a crazy magnitude that, you know, from that standpoint, I always felt some pressure, I'd say.

But I don't even know if it was pressure.

Maybe more envy than pressure,

but not pressure per se, no.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Polly fucking D asks, so what does it feel like mugging Chris?

Well, I'm definitely mogging him now for fucking he's he's retired and he's he has his fucking shoulder all fucked up.

He just got like his a bunch of stem cells and crazy shit done in his shoulder.

So he hadn't really been training at all for like months, like three plus months.

He hadn't really trained.

So, you know, it's, it was good because for the last year, he was still competing and I was retired.

So like, it was the first time in 15 years I felt like Chris was mogging me.

So now at least I feel like I have that back, you know?

So it's, it's good.

I mean, being the one that was the open bodybuilders the whole time, I was always like the bigger, stronger guy.

And then when I retired for a while and he was still competing, I'm like, fuck, I don't like this, you know, like I feel like he's a little stronger, a little stronger than me, maybe not heavier than me, but like more muscular than me because he was still obviously competing and I wasn't.

But no, now that he's

retired and fucking his shoulders falling apart, at least I got it back a little bit.

Yeah.

Joseph asks,

how do you create a Chris Bumstead?

You cannot, unfortunately.

Yeah, look,

there's no.

no way to create something like that.

I mean, Chris is just

an anomaly, you know?

I mean, he's structurally almost perfect.

He's like a perfect height.

He's got wide clavicles.

He's got small hips and small joints.

And, you know, everything just is put together well.

Like, look, he's got some muscles like his biceps and things like that aren't the best things ever.

But when you combine the whole thing, I mean, he's just very, very genetically gifted.

And he worked very hard,

you know, trained very hard and was very consistent for a long time.

And yeah, I mean, the thing is, like

the unfortunate reality is just not all men are created equally, you know?

Like,

no matter how hard you train, you're never going to run as fast as Usain Bolt.

No matter how hard you, you know, do a million things, you're not going to be seven feet tall and be able to play in the NBA.

Like, there's just things that you're born with, and Chris was just born to be a good bodybuilder, and that's just like the end of it, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I guess

to tail off of that,

I guess it's a little hard of a question to ask because I'm sure it's there's so many things that were put into it, but um

I guess what was it like

how was it like figuring out the coaching relationship with Chris?

And um, I guess like what were the maybe like unique circumstances that you guys had to work around, whether it was like how he responded to certain foods or how he responded to certain gear or how he responded to like timing because I'm assuming there was a lot of that.

Yeah, I mean, it was tough, man.

I mean, look, a lot of the years I was coaching Chris,

I didn't know a lot, you know, like I started coaching Chris when I was really young and I was kind of figuring this all out at the same time, you know, with him.

Like I wasn't like, you know, someone that was 20 years deep into a coaching career and felt like I had all the answers.

Like a lot of it was just like learning as I went.

You know, I was very inexperienced.

Things changed a lot kind of as we went.

Like things that I...

would have done from a nutrition standpoint or training advice I gave him at the beginning, 10 years later, I would have been like, what the fuck was I thinking telling telling him this?

You know, like it's, it's an evolution.

And I was like, you know, a 21 year old kid to a 31 year old kid, 32, 33 at the end.

You know, so it, there was like a lot of like lessons that I learned that obviously changed how I coached him, you know, whether it was just things I learned on my own or with working with different coaches, you know, with Matt, with Patrick, with Dennis, with whatever,

you know, things I learned along the way.

But, you know, obviously the toughest period was, you know, Chris had in 2017, 18, kind of expressed himself like he has like an autoimmune disease that affects his kidneys.

He has an IgA neuropathy that came out in, I guess, beginning of 2017, 16, 17, yeah, 17.

So, you know, that was obviously very stressful and tough and, you know, to manage, you know, one, from just a personal relationship standpoint of me being like, fuck, I really don't want to put my, my family in harm here.

So like, there was obviously like a mental dilemma of like, what do I do to, you know, help this guy bodybuild, but like not make anything worse.

And for a lot, for there was a period in there where I was, I was honestly like, I don't know if I should coach him because I don't, like, if something bad happens, like, I don't want that happening, like with me as, as his family and like having to live with that, you know, selfishly, you know, obviously this is something I don't want to hurt him because I love him and he's my family, but also like, what's the, if, if I do something that then like, you know, ends up hurting him.

because we're trying to be good bodybuilders now i'm like living the rest of my life with his family and you know what i mean or with him or whatever it is and whatever ramifications come from that, like I don't want that fucking, you know, that on my mind, on my conscience, on my hands, whatever.

So there was a time that I was, you know, earlier before we did end up splitting up, that I was really weighing of like, if I wanted to help him when those, um, those issues came out, but it, I kind of like came to the realization of like, I would rather him be doing it with me than anybody else because like I feel like I have his well-being,

you know, as a higher concern because of the personal relationship, not the other way around.

So, but no, it was definitely hard.

I mean, and there was times like near the end, too, that were really hard on a personal relationship.

I mean, you know, we had some bad years where we were like, definitely not friends, you know,

you know, where it was, it was tough because I was trying to compete at the Olympia.

I was still coaching him.

You know, time management becomes very difficult of like who gets more energy and time here.

Like, you know, to compete at the Olympia and like in the open, our schedule is completely different than classic.

We're competing on the Friday night.

He's competing early Saturday.

And there became a point where I really had to like weigh the,

you know, like, do I want to give my best shot at being the best bodybuilder and being at my best for this Olympia, or do I want to give that to Chris?

And my first Olympia in 2018, it went more to Chris.

Like I was just happy to be there, my first one, and I was coming 14th and whatever.

But then when I started to realize like, hey, I can be shooting for first call outs and I'm like, you know, actually being competitive here.

Well, then I started to want to put that time and energy towards myself.

And he definitely got on the back burner of that.

And that's kind of why we ended up, you know, making the, you know, combined conscious decision to, to be like, hey, maybe we should find someone else that can come in here that can be like a full time for this.

Because when I'm trying to compete here at the Olympia, like, I can't give you all this time and energy that you need to be the best bodybuilder that you can be.

And like the 2021 Olympia, like, you know, I was getting off stage and going to bed late and he's getting up at five o'clock in the morning to get his tan on.

I've been asleep for two hours.

Like, I don't want to get up and look at his progress photos.

Like, I need to sleep for fucking eight hours to like look my best for the Saturday night finals, you know?

So like it became things like that that, you know, were obviously hard because he needs me there and he wants me to look at him and, you know, be there to support him and like help him from a coaching standpoint and even just like a support standpoint, not be like left out to dry.

But then I'm like, well, I also got to fucking try and place it this goddamn Olympia.

Like this is my career as well, you know?

So that's where that push and pull kind of came.

That was, it was definitely hard to manage.

But, you know, I think.

when we kind of handed the reins off to Hani, that like definitely helped.

And we were able to like rebuild our relationship in a lot of ways.

And it was, it was

definitely a lot better for having someone else step in.

Like when I was competing, that was just too much to manage that someone of that level and that superpower and stardom with that much expectation while also trying to like exceed my own expectations, you know?

I mean, dude, honestly, I can't even like, I can't even like absorb the concept of like coaching anybody when you're stepping on the Olympia stage, much less coaching another Olympian competitor or Mr.

Olympia.

So yeah, I don't know.

I mean, honestly, kudos to you because I think it's still fucking amazing that you were able to do it.

It felt so easy the first year because like I didn't care to like sacrifice a bit of my my own to help him because he was already coming second at the Olympia then.

Like 2017, he'd come second.

I didn't compete in 17 at that Olympia.

And then 18, we were there together.

So I didn't care to like sacrifice a bit of my like time or energy to maybe not look a thousand percent, but to have him at his best.

But then like I said, once I got to where I was actually like taking this seriously and now like this is my career and like, you know, I'm like making good money from sponsors and like I've been winning a lot of shows.

And like, I'm like, all right, well, I'm sorry, man, but like if someone's got to suffer here between me and you and I'm picking, I'm picking me.

I'm sorry, you know?

So that's why he just needed someone that could be a full-time guy just for him, you know, or a full-time coach.

I mean, obviously, Honey was coaching other guys too, but, but his job is to be there for his athletes, like where my job needed to be there to compete, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I guess,

well, this is a question that's a curiosity of my own, but I guess how did you guys have to work around when you found out about his autoimmune disease?

Because, I mean, I'm sure that's fucking difficult for him on the kidneys.

Yeah, it was tough, man.

I mean, you know, at first it was,

it was very hard and we really didn't know what the fuck we were doing.

I mean, you know, it started off with obviously like significant limitations in protein and sodium and things like that to try and relieve any, you know, any stress we could on his kidneys and bring his blood pressure down as much as we could and like things like that.

And, you know, a whole slew of different things we were trying from supplementation standpoint.

But, you know, a lot of it, I think, was just induced by like overall like stress load.

You know, like his body just kind of had a freak out on his kidneys.

I think after that, it just became like,

you know, stress management and like just overall like demand you were putting on the body management.

You know, I think if we didn't put his body in any too crazy of places from like pushing things too hard from a diet or drug or nutrition or training standpoint at like any too aggressive a point.

So it usually could be managed.

But obviously that's not always the reality when you're bodybuilding.

It's like, you know, you have to push your training hard.

You have to push the calories low sometimes.

Like it's just the reality of it.

So, no, it was definitely scary.

I mean, but you know, we managed it just through, yeah, I mean, you know, put taking as much stress off his kidneys as humanly possible and then lowering like all inflammatory

markers as much as possible, you know, trying to eat as clean from a, you know, inflammatory standpoint as we possibly could and things like that, which were things we weren't as concerned about before.

But, you know, after a while, we definitely got it under a good management.

And then, you know, he learned a lot on his own as well to things that he could do just in his day-to-day life that he found helped manage as well.

So it was definitely a learning period.

And I don't have like a 100% perfect answer, but

yeah, it was just, you know, from a whole kind of management standpoint, from kidney health, you know, anything like you could think, like even, you know, back then, talking about astragalus, like these weren't even supplements that were really like popularized yet.

So, you know, finding a good supplement regime and like, you know, protein intake being kind of monitored, you know, along with his blood work and kind of where his, his kidney values were.

And then sodium intake and stuff like that had to be very like closely monitored and water intake and stuff like that.

So it was kind of just like a full spectrum management of those things until we like had them under control.

You know, gotcha.

Do you feel like the limitation of protein ever affected like his muscle mass or muscle, I don't know, his density in any sense?

Or

yeah, yeah, I mean, probably to some small degree.

But not anything.

I don't think, I think most guys are as a whole, probably overeating protein.

Um, I think to at least like maintain and like for him, it's not like he had to like grow massive amounts at that point.

You know, he was within the confines of the classic physique cutoff.

So it wasn't like he could put on 20 more pounds of muscle.

Like, so we weren't overly concerned about like growing.

Um, so, you know, with them being, the protein being a little more monitored and sodium definitely, you know, obviously the sodium being down, I mean, you know, he definitely impacted his look in short term and in periods.

But no, I mean, it didn't have any significant effect on it.

I mean, I think we found found a happy medium where he was getting enough in, his numbers were all managed that it was, it was okay, you know.

Yeah, gotcha.

Um, I guess the last question about this before we before, well, I don't even know if there's a question, actually, derp, but um, I had this, uh, I had this argument with someone on my podcast

because we were discussing Trent

and you know, Chris said he doesn't take trend anymore.

Yeah, he doesn't.

And this guy was, this guy was like straight up just like, well, Chris is lying.

No.

And I'm like, well, I mean, bro, like, if you had an autoimmune disease that was affecting your kidneys yeah and trend is what trend is and affects your kidneys in the way that trend does

bro are you really going to give up your life and your family like yeah no you could take some other compounds yeah no it's not that like where he was at his career wasn't that like necessary and and you know like i said we

We were able to manage it through other like ways.

No, he like, did he use it when we were like younger and in earlier preps?

Sure.

I mean, never crazy.

He never did much dosing of anything, to be honest.

Um, but you know, once that expressed itself, that was out and it never came back in.

Um, not to my degree, not with working with me, at least.

I don't believe it did with Hani either.

So, um, so yeah, no, like, that's there is definitely truth to that.

Um, you know, like it would just be like more of the test mastron or primo and stuff like that, windstraw, whatever, but it would all be very moderate to low dosing and everything.

Like, he really, the thing with Chris is like, you have to remember, Chris isn't like a 300-pound bodybuilder, you know, like he's 240 on stage, but he's six foot one.

You know, he, he's a big guy, but like, he's not like, he, and he also didn't really grow a lot in his years of bodybuilding.

Like, when he turned pro, he was competing only like six or eight pounds less than he was at his biggest at the Olympia.

You know, there wasn't like

there wasn't like 30 pounds of growth that happened over those years or anything where he really would have had to push the anabolics or push the food or anything like that.

You know, because of being in classical physique, he was a little safer in that regard and that, you know, it's like, okay, I can only weigh so much, so we don't need need to push things to a higher level, right?

So, so no, yeah, but no, he didn't definitely after 2017.

I don't think we ever used it again.

I think we tried to put it in one time, you know, he was under control and we put it in at one point and his

not so that it like his kidneys freaked out, but he started to like hold some water, which was like a pretty indicative thing of his kidneys having a little bit of problem.

So we just pulled it back out.

I think we kept it in for like two weeks.

He started to have a bit of edema and we pulled it back out.

And then I don't think we ever use it again.

Gotcha.

Makes sense.

bro um

yeah the six to eight pounds like showing on his lats was fucking insane of a change though yeah i mean the a big thing with him is like he did gain some muscle in the right spots but i think a lot of it was he learned to present his physique a lot better like the year from 2019 to 2020 where it looked like his back like quadrupled in size A lot of that wasn't actually his back got that much better.

It's he changed how he posed it.

He was standing very upright and kind of like pushing his spine, like flexing the spine backwards, you know, versus after he kind of like contracted this way and kind of popped his lats back.

So it was a bit of a different way that he posed it.

That definitely worked a lot better for him.

So yeah, I think there was some improvements there, but they were,

it was a lot less than people think between 19 and 20 in his back, you know, versus just a way, way, way bigger difference in how he presented it, you know?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

And it's one of the craziest things about posing is how it can really transform your physique like that.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

I actually noticed that too.

And I had been,

I use it, I use that as like a, one of the templates for me.

And when I, whenever I'm making sure to do my, my, um, back double bicep, because I do notice there's still a lot of athletes that tend to not kind of like pop those lats down almost, like pop the shoulders down and pop the lats back and then hyper extend that lower back so it's not like turned outwards and the erectors are like protruding.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel like it makes a big difference.

Yeah.

Versus before he was staying very upright, if anything, kind of like leaning back like Phil Heath does, you know like and and for him it just wasn't giving him any like depth or like pop to his back at all and if you watch him on stage like when his back started to look good he would kind of like pop it down and you'd see it kind of like set his arms into his lats like that um you know so he just got a lot better at posing spent more time with it um and really learned how to like show the best of his physique more than anything there then look his back did improve a little bit but like not to the degree that it really displayed because of the posing changes you know yeah yeah

kste mario says holy holy shit, let's fucking go.

This pod is going to slap.

Fucking love you.

And then he asks,

also, how does it feel to be 41% gay?

Feels good.

At least I'm not 50, you know?

Just got to keep it under 50, you know?

Just got to keep it under 50.

As long as I'm under 50, I'm safe, you know.

It's a little hard sometimes.

Yeah, it is.

Especially with that trend.

When the trend's in, you know, things start to become a little more desirable than they would do without it

um he asked so what's your best body body part in your opinion

oh

man aside from what's hidden

i don't know when i was competing i mean it changed throughout my career like early in my career i had really really good delts and arms um that like almost overpowered everything else you know my shoulders were probably like my best body part early in my career and then as i kind of changed things and my physique bounced out a bit i mean my legs

you know like my side leg was probably like in my side chest my quarter turns my side tricep like i probably had one of the best side legs in the whole pro league um for a few years yeah the thing is fucking massive bro yeah like my side leg was probably one of the better ones for sure um so yeah i mean like shoulders are like side leg you know hamstring i had really good hamstring drop good side quad i mean my quads are still good from the front like very detailed um but like i wouldn't say they were the best quads out there but they were still very good so yeah i mean probably my legs and my shoulders, you know, my chest and back probably being the weakest.

My back got better as I got older for sure.

But yeah, things kind of changed throughout my career for sure.

Yeah.

Do you feel like that the hamstring thing was a little bit more genetic or was it more of like a training thing for you?

No, I think it's definitely genetic.

I think it's how your hamstring inserts and drops is definitely, well, obviously a byproduct of how much muscle you have there.

More muscle will display better.

I think I learned really early on how to pose them really well, to really like position my legs to kind of like smush that hamstring up against the back leg and really get the most out of it.

Where I think a lot of guys make a lot of posing errors on the side shots where they don't smush it up against the back leg.

They have the legs kind of too perpendicular, not that front leg, the front facing stage leg far enough up amongst the other leg.

And I think a lot of guys can make the mistake of flexing their hamstring on side poses, which is like an absolute no-go.

You just need to let it like relax and let it hang.

So yeah, it was posing.

And then, yeah, I mean, my hamstrings have always been pretty decent.

But I mean, I was also like a really heavy, like RDL deadlifter, like trained my hamstrings.

So as they got more muscle, it definitely looked better.

But a lot of it was just genetics of how they were kind of inserted and stuff like that as well.

Okay.

That's cool.

Yeah, I just, I love looking at all the

genetic differences across races.

Yeah.

I don't think it's racist.

Like fucking, I've noticed there's always like, there's a lot of white guys that tend to have the craziest fucking hamstrings.

Yeah.

Like, you even look at like Anton's physique as he got six at Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

And like, dude, his hamstring is just absolutely massive and the sweep is just like perfectly shaped.

Yeah.

And then, you know, you go look at some East Asians and Koreans and their quads are just fucking

annoying.

That's crazy.

I know.

Yeah.

So then people ask me, they're like, oh, yeah, you're Asian, right?

You got big legs.

And I'm like.

Fucked.

More like a Filipino genetics.

I feel like the only thing that we have is is like lats.

But the legs are definitely not there, especially the calves.

Yeah.

It's rough.

Mine were good.

It's funny because like I am, obviously the running joke with me is my calves, you know, like my fucking calves sucked and stuff.

But the funny thing is, if you actually look early in my career, I had like hunt-labrata calves for like the first five years of my life, like bodybuilding career.

It's some kind of nerve death that I had in the back of my knee that I think happened from wearing knee sleeves.

I'm not 100% sure.

Okay.

But like the inside like head of my gastroctor just like died off kind of slowly after like 2019, 2018, 2019, slowly just got like a little worse every year, every year, every year.

But yeah, my calves, like if I have pictures from like early where I had fucking like gigantor calves, you know, like it was, they were genetically, I have really, really good calves.

But yeah, I think just squatting really heavy in like knee wraps and knee sleeves where it's jamming into the back of your knee with like the wrap of the sleeve under high load and high pressure

just like killed off that fucking nerve bed that supplies to the, to the inner gastro.

Cause like my outer calf is fine.

It still stayed the same.

But like the inner head just like, and even when I feel it, it feels just like fucking ground beef, like it's like dead.

I feel like the inner head is what matters too.

I know, I know.

Especially from the front, you know, like, especially from the front, like, that's what you see like popping out on the side of your leg, you know?

So like, yeah, that's, that definitely sucked.

I mean,

I really didn't notice it much until people started saying it online.

And then I was like, holy fuck.

Yeah.

And then I started looking back at my pictures and you could see like every year they just like got a little worse, a little worse, a little worse.

And then

yeah, I mean, it's, and it's not like a product of training.

I mean, I actually trained my calves less when they were big.

But yeah, it's just, I think over years of like squatting and fucking stuff, super heavy, it just fucked them up somehow, you know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

Yeah, that's your excuse too.

That, yeah, there was a couple of the questions actually about the nerve damage.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people were curious about that.

Was it, was there ever like anything related to like the back area with the nerve damage?

Or was it?

No, I don't have any nerve issues in my back.

I mean, I think you do get guys.

I mean, you saw it with Ramy a little bit too, you know, how their lats ride up and stuff like that.

I don't know if that's necessarily a nerve issue or just like damage to the muscle over time and it kind of just rides up the tendons a little bit.

You know, I'm not sure exactly.

I mean, I've had nerve induction tests done everywhere.

And I don't have any issues in my like upper back or spine or lats or any area like that versus my calves,

So yeah, no, not to any significant degree.

But the thing was

weird with that is like it kind of looked different year to year.

And I think I also posed it differently and didn't display it as well some years as others.

So I'm not really sure if I have a good answer for that.

But yeah, I mean, I found definitely when I stopped deadlifting really heavy, my back didn't look as good.

um especially like my erectors and how my lats tied into everything as well um i definitely lost some depth on that like the last year of my career when I stopped doing like the super heavy deadlifts.

So I think it might have been just a loss of muscle in certain areas

that, you know, was not just not good calls I was making from a training standpoint.

But yeah, no, there's, I don't think there's any significant nerve loss there.

I mean, my, my lats feel fine.

There's no strength loss versus like my calves.

There's obviously like something going on there, you know?

Okay.

Yeah.

The question might have been more related to like the nerve issue because there's, I don't know if it was, you know, these bodybuilding instagram accounts where they compare bodybuilders and yeah and then piss a lot of people off yeah it was one of those recently where i was like um i was looking at kai kaikeya pittsburgh and it was like making these connections that his left calf inside is really small because there's like probably nerve damage in his back or something i compared it to like maybe i mean some you yeah some guys do get it you know

It's something that happens in their lower back, you know, that that's where it supplies the nerves down to both calves.

So it could be coming from different places.

Um, it could not be at all.

I mean, it's, it's hard to say, you know, um, you know, with calves, calves are a tricky one because they're so easy to kill off like that.

It is a common thing I've seen with a lot of guys now that I've had it, and I've like a lot of guys have messed with me over the years.

You know, I mean, I saw with a ton of guys that, you know, Dennis Wolfe and other guys that have their calves die off over time.

I think it's just, you know, either something that happens at like the lower back, like, you know, an impingement in the spine there that's killing the nerve supply or in the back of the knee.

It like happens one place or the other.

Yeah.

Damn.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

but I mean, like, look, if I was gonna lose, if I was gonna lose anything on my physique, I'm happy to like, look, having big calves is cool, but like, from a bodybuilding perspective, it's the thing that affects your physique from a competitive standpoint by far the least, you know?

Yeah, like if you lose your fucking arms or your fucking quads or like something like that, you're you're kind of fucked.

Um, but like losing your calves, I've still placed the same whether I had them or not.

It didn't really change anything in my career, you know.

What about the size of your glutes?

Like, not the peeled or not the striat, the striations, but like the size of your glutes, Like how big they were?

Well, what do you mean?

Like, uh, like, how do you feel like it's a judge compared to something like Cavs, like the size of someone's, of a guy's glutes on stage?

I think glutes don't matter to be big.

I think they only matter if they're underdevelopedly small.

Like someone like Michael Criszo, you know, I think when they're, you can see they're underdeveloped in ratio to the rest of the physique.

I think that's a detriment.

But I also think on the other side that having too big of glutes is, is definitely a detractor for your physique as well.

Like, you know, i had at one point where i actually intentionally brought my glutes down like stopped doing a lot of things that i thought was giving them too much because i started to notice in my back poses they were like detracting it's like all you would see was my glutes and they were like really overdeveloped um and i even work with a guy right now that you know is his quads have been like a point that we want to bring up and his glutes are like super overdeveloped and that's obviously regarding to how he trains and foot positioning and you know hip drive and a bunch of things like that so um you know changes like that that you have to make in your training so yeah i think it can go on both sides i think having too big of glutes compared to the rest of you can definitely be like kind of an eyesore and look kind of weird and take away from your physique.

And I think if they're too small, but I think kind of anything in the middle is fine.

Like I don't think bigger is necessarily better if they're detailed the same.

But I think once they start to get too small where they're like, what the fuck, this guy has no glutes, then it looks weird for sure, especially on side poses too.

Like, you know, if you're doing a side chest and like you don't have like a glute kind of, you know, rounded framing into the hamstring and tying into the leg.

I think that can look weird for sure.

It kind of ruins the flow of those those poses.

Like Chris Owens kind of goes like flat from his back into his hamstring where there's not like kind of anything to flow and make that pose really flow nicely there.

So I think it can definitely hurt shots.

But yeah, I mean, there's, there's guys with not great glutes.

Like, you know, Nick Walker doesn't have like super big or good glutes by any means.

He's still one of the best bodybuilders in the world.

And I don't think it takes away from his physique in any dramatic fashion.

You know, okay.

Yeah.

Do you ever feel like there's a

Do you ever feel like there's an issue when like some bodybuilders like flex their glutes to get the striations out?

Like it, it becomes like significantly smaller.

Yeah, I mean, look, there's, it's tough because there's kind of like two ways to pose these.

It's like, you know, you get guys that kind of pop their hips back a bit more.

You're going to definitely get more adductor

width and like you're going to get more appearance of size, but it also becomes harder to contract the glute when you're pushing your hip back.

So, you know, there is guys that are really good at it, you know.

But it's, it's definitely like you look at like that Jose Jose Josema guy, Josema.

Like, like, he, he, he does it perfectly.

He pops his hip back, but he can still get a good contraction of the glutes, but that's also because he's fucking peeled out of his skull.

So like when you're that lean, you're going to see lines in your glutes.

So yeah, I mean, the trick to make everything look good is just to be peeled.

So no, I generally think popping the hips back so they're like more in line with the body or slightly behind versus contracting and having your hips forward is usually going to be worse.

So I think you should generally have them underneath you or behind and pushing the adductors out a bit more and pushing the glutes out a bit more.

But you need to be able to still get some kind of contraction of the glutes or it's just going to look like you don't have glutes in shape, you know?

Okay, cool.

Aryan Vade asks, how does it feel being Canada?

How does it feel being Canada's greatest bodybuilder?

Well, this is a thing of contention.

So, I mean, from a, from an analytical standpoint, statistically, I am the best Canadian bodybuilder, but I think a lot of people would still say Paul Dillett is the best Canadian bodybuilder.

So it's tough.

I mean, like, it's, it's cool.

I mean, it's something that I, I like to milk and make jokes out of for sure, especially when Fuad's with me.

Like, I'll definitely tell him all day that I'm the best Canadian bodybuilder, you know?

Yeah.

Um, you know, because I do have the most pro wins and, and stuff like that.

But I mean, Paul Dillett was, you know, has a higher Olympia placing than me.

Um, and there was a lot more guys competing at all the shows during the year.

So, you know, getting pro wins was harder to come by then.

So, yeah, it's different, but I mean, I'll, I'll fucking, I'll take the credit.

So, thank you.

Christian Hennessy asks, breakup advice.

I'm going through it and lost all motivation to train, diet, diet, et cetera.

Yeah, I mean, it's tough, man.

I mean, the way I look at this is

don't add insult to injury.

You know what I mean?

Like when you're already feeling down about the breakout, breakup, there's nothing that's going to make you feel worse than like making you like not be proud of what you look like and like doing things that make you feel good.

You know, so I think you really just need to like remember like

you know, that doing these positive steps, you know, like the training and keeping your nutrition in check and like feeling good about how you look are going to make you feel better and more confident after the breakup, versus if you kind of just let everything slide, it's just going to like pile, like dog pile on like shit onto shit, you know.

So, I know it's not easy and like you just want to kind of fucking lay there and not train, you're demotivated and stuff like that.

But, you know, I think like on the other side of that, you're going to feel a lot better if you, you know, put more time into like yourself and into things that you enjoy and things that make you feel good about yourself, right?

Yeah, yeah, I think so too.

Maybe a little extra test, also.

Yeah, crack that up a little bit.

Um,

Mooksus asks, how's your fertility journey and um, any tips/slash protocol for us?

Mine's long, man.

I mean, fuck, you know, when I first retired from bodybuilding, my fucking sperm count was like literally zero.

So it's coming up, but it's coming up slowly but surely.

So I don't know how much longer I'm going to tough out this journey of like trying to naturally conceive or if I'm just going to fucking bite the bullet and we're going to go do a couple rounds of IVF and hopefully get one successful.

Yeah.

Because Cause like, I don't know, to really be like have a good chance at natural conception, I mean, you want your sperm count like at bare minimum, like 20 million.

I mean, really 40, 60, 80, 100 is like more ideal to have like good, good odds.

And I'm not at that level yet, like of even 20 million.

I'm not even really even close.

So, you know,

it's like, I know sometimes it'll just go and then all of a sudden your numbers shoot up, but I'm also been off even TRT for like over a year.

And I don't know how much longer I'm like willing to do that, you know?

So, um, so I would probably, we'll probably go probably this summer to Turkey to like the, the now hairtime guys actually have a good connection for us and probably blast out around the IVF down there.

And then if that's successful, then great.

And if not, then we'll just keep firing them out until we are.

So yeah, I mean, that's probably where we're at now.

I mean, I'm just, I'm getting ants in my pants now to fucking get back to my normal life and things like that.

So,

and it like, it, it's, it's hard when it's,

you know, for me, it's hard when like all the things you do in the day, you're like worrying about, is this going to have like negative ramifications on my fertility, you know?

It's like, I'm putting it, I'm putting a zin in and I'm like, fuck, this nicotine's battery fucking nuts, you know, like everything that I do, it's like, you know, like you're just always thinking about it of like things that you should and shouldn't do that might be good or bad.

And it's like, it's just like a tough mental thing on you, you know, and then it's like, you know, even when you're fucking your wife, it's like you're always like, just thinking about making babies.

And it's like, it just, it becomes like a, a different dynamic of it.

So I'm ready to just get over with it.

So yeah, we'll probably just do IVF and hopefully that's, that's good.

But

yeah, I mean, tips for it.

I mean, I don't know.

I mean, I'm obviously if your protocol is going to be important, you know, if, if you're, if your count's not good, or even if it is and you're trying to make it better, I mean, you know, HCG, I mean, ideally FSH, like RFSH is going to be your best case or HMG.

Yeah,

FSH is actually going to be a little better than straight HMG, but they both work fine.

I mean, HMG is FSH and LH, but the actual just RFSH does work a little better.

And then

with HCG, I'll tell people to be more aggressive than they think because one, if you're coming off test or even if you're using it, it can keep you propped up from a feeling standpoint a lot more.

Like I was able to keep my test levels at like 940 by hammering enough HCG, you know?

So, you know, a lot of the protocols that doctors will give, I think are a little on the conservative side in terms of HCG management.

So, you know, I think you can go two, 3,000 units three times a week, you know, and it's always, I think more than three doesn't really do much more in terms of, you know, spermatogenesis, but up to 3,000 units three times a week can be beneficial.

And then in terms of what it does from a, just like a feeling normal standpoint, I think there's a lot of benefit in that as well.

Right.

Because that's one of the toughest things, especially for bodybuilders when they, you know, if they're, if they're coming off tests, let's say they are, you know, is just like the process becomes very daunting because you fucking feel like shit in the gym, your energy is low, your motivation is low, your sex drive's low, and like all these things.

And it's tough to stay the course on that.

So I think if you can at least get enough HCG in you to like make you feel relatively normal, it makes that whole process a lot easier for sure.

Gotcha.

That's cool.

And then injectable carnitine is very valuable as well, for sure, for like sperm health.

So, you know, 500 milligrams a day is probably pretty good there.

Damn, I didn't even know that.

Yeah.

Dude, that's the fucking, that's like my least favorite thing to ever inject.

Yeah, it hurts especially if you're doing higher doses yeah it burns like a bitch yeah yeah um i guess the one thing i would have to say to that is um um after talking to a couple doctors it does seem like for anyone that is um worried about the fertility in the long run that uh we've seen uh running acg during your cycle yep to honestly be pretty beneficial for a lot of guys yep so um just be like you don't even need much like even just doing like you know one shot a week to keep a pulse in there you know like doing 500 to a thousand units once a week or twice a week or whatever just keeping a bid in there to like, you know, keep that process going, um, I think can be beneficial instead of like trying to fucking jumpstart it years later, you know.

Yeah, yeah.

Just be careful because your loads still get big.

Yeah, that's fun though.

Um, Connor Sams asks, how to know how much GH to take, uh, considering how big you are?

No, I mean,

I think like anything, you just start low and then kind of, I, I found GH, I kind of found found a sweet spot kind of like the six units but I mean you can still get really good like start at one to two units I mean I think two is a good starting point you know start with two units a day and then kind of see how you feel I mean you know the thing is it's like you need to ask yourself like what are you trying to achieve out of it and if you're trying to become a 300 pound goliath gh is not going to do that for you i'm sorry like it's i think people have this like false perception of gh that it's like this drug that just morphs guys into monsters and out of all the compounds i've used gh is probably the least pronounced in terms of its like progress and gains and results.

Do I think it made positive impact on me as a bodybuilder?

Sure.

You know, from a fat burning standpoint, skin quality standpoint, sleep, I mean, a bunch of other things I think it did.

You know, the kind of fullness and roundness look that I had to my muscles, I think it enhanced a little bit.

You know, but I think, did I ever use it and be like, holy fuck, I'm growing like crazy because of GH?

No.

I don't think it really does much to that standpoint from any significant degree compared to training food, anabolics, you know, stuff like that.

But, you know, I mean, start with two units and, you know, work your way up to like a maximum of six and kind of see how you feel in between there.

And I think that's probably a good spot.

I guess I wanted to pick your brain about something curious, but like, I think no one really truly knows about this,

though.

I think more people lean to one place, which is that

GH and insulin work

inversely.

So naturally, if you want to replicate the natural process, you want to make sure that you're taking your GH when your insulin is back down low again.

But I

I know Patrick was discussing this on one of his podcasts about his belief in taking GH.

And

he believes that obviously you shouldn't be doing this a lot because, you know, taking GH during the same, around the same time that your insulin is high is obviously going to increase your insulin resistance in the long run.

But he believes that with GH and insulin both being these very two anabolic hormones,

and like this rise of IGF-1 is greatest when insulin and GH are both higher,

that sometimes you do take GH at the same time when your insulin is high.

Yeah, no, and this is the thing that I, and I guess I want to hear your opinion on it.

When

people say taking GH, you know, like on an empty stomach or when there's not insulin present or things like this.

To my knowledge, these studies are talking about natural GH secretion and natural insulin secretion.

So, and kind of having like a shunting effect of each other.

To my knowledge, I don't think it matters as much when you're taking exogenous growth hormone.

I don't think your like natural GH, like insulin from having carbs present is going to do anything to like hurt the exogenous.

Will it maybe suppress your natural GH secretion?

Yes, but you're giving yourself exogenous GH.

So I don't know how much of an impact it actually even has.

Right.

You know, like I don't think there's that much stock in taking GH on an empty stomach or away from food or presence of insulin anyway to any large degree.

I've done it every single way that you could possibly imagine with GH, fasted, not fasted, microdose one unit fucking eight times a day, doing two units three times a day, whatever.

I've done everything you could do.

And I didn't notice any really dramatic difference at all, you know, even at higher doses of it.

So yeah, I don't think, I think most of that is like, yeah, with natural insulin and GH secretion, like, you know, eating carbs before bed and then it's, you know, shunting GH release over your sleep and things like that.

But like, you're just giving yourself, it's like saying the same thing as like, well, yeah, don't do this because it'll block natural testosterone production.

It's like, yeah, but I'm shooting a gram of test.

It fucking doesn't matter.

It's fake, you know?

Right, exactly.

So,

yeah, I'm not sure, but I remember Patrick saying things about this, you know, with taking them at the same time when we were competing.

I can't, like you said, that was obviously his reasoning.

I don't remember it exactly now.

But

yeah, I mean, I'm always weary on people saying the GH and insulin at the same time having negative, you know, counter indications on each other.

Cause I was like, I don't know if that's right, the quite right reading of the studies to it.

Cause I I think they're all done from not taking exogenous hormones, they're from natural like rhythms, you know, right?

So, honestly, I totally agree with you.

And obviously, this is all theoretical, right?

But from my own experiences and from talking with some of these, a lot of these people who like to study this a lot, you know, I mean, obviously, we don't know,

you know, people can judge their credibility by themselves, but like, you know, fucking Vigor Steve, Kurt, Dr.

Dean,

Patrick,

there's Dr.

Todd.

There's been a a lot of people that have like discussed their own theories on this from my personal experience obviously we know that um i guess uh

the you the the the igf1 readings you get in your blood work obviously don't dictate like your systematic systemic g Igf1 yeah but if we want to say that like obviously it can potentially correlate like if you're increasing your liver IGF-1 then potentially you know your system

Systemic IGF-1 is increasing too.

When I did do the protocols under Patrick where I wouldn't really give a fuck about like waiting long enough after my meal or whatever and make sure it's like my stomach's in a fasted state before I take my GH.

And I would take it like the GH, like say just 30 minutes after I ate my meal, for example, and I got my blood break tested, my IGF-1, which when I'm not taking GH happens to be really low, unfortunately, like 110,

it would end up in the 400s still, regardless of whether or not it was.

GH in a fasted state or not.

So

I don't know what that means, but that's just the result I got.

And then from talking to all these guys and their theories, I mean, to me, it seems like it really doesn't really matter when you take the GH.

That's been my experience.

I don't think it matters.

Yeah.

And I guess if you want to take it fat, if you want to take it for the purpose of fat burning before your cardio, like, yeah, you want to do it fasted.

I don't know whether or not it'll kick out, kick in fast enough if you do it subcutaneously or not, but like, I mean, it doesn't really matter that much.

Yeah, just do your GH intravenously then.

You'll be good.

Yeah.

And then the only other, the only other discussion I had, which was with Brian Moscow, the gorilla chemist, is the concept of like, if you do only have enough money for a certain amount of GH,

we discussed the potential possibility of like maybe just saving the GH for like when you inject it in the morning or post-workout and then not injecting the GH before bed.

So then your natural levels of GH.

still rise anyways before bed.

But that's only if you need to save money.

Yeah, I actually never did GH before bed.

And I would do it first thing in the morning and then post-training is like kind of what I always did.

Okay.

Um, for the most part, I mean, like I said, I've tried everything under the sun, but I was usually training at like 4:30 p.m.

to like 6:30 p.m.

So I would do it, like you were saying with Patrick, after that post-training meal, and then I would do it fast in the morning.

So, that was like the two times I did it.

And that's kind of like how I always operated, and I always had good success with that.

And I didn't find too much of a variance from having one way or the other, you know?

Yeah, yeah, okay, cool.

Um,

Cod

Codward

asks,

uh, what was your best offseason and why and best prep and why?

I mean, they're probably both one into the same.

I mean, I think my 2021,

yeah, 2021 going, no, 2020, end of 2020 going into 2021.

You know, and like we were saying earlier, like I stayed a little bit leaner that offseason, like instead of getting up to like 300 plus, I stayed at like a, you know, pretty manageable 285.

And I was by far the strongest I'd ever been.

I mean, that was like the years when I had like videos of me like, you know, cranking out five plate incline barbell like it was fucking like 185, you know, like it just felt everything felt so light to me that year.

I remember just like any weight I felt like I wanted to move, I could move.

And my food wasn't like in a crazy spot.

Like I was eating and I was, you know, it was like not easy to get my food in, but it was not like I was like fucking choking on food and gagging, fucking taking six liters of water to get it down.

Yeah.

You know, stuff like that, like some of the miserable offseasons I have had.

I kept a little more cardio in that offseason.

And then that kind of led into a much more successful and better competition season.

So like that was when I went into one Tampa, then Texas, then Arnold that year.

So yeah, I mean, that was probably the best,

the best offseason into a best competitive season.

I mean, best overall prep, I mean, it's hard to say.

You know, the first Olympia I did in 2018 with Jansen, I remember that prep just feeling like everything was like so smooth and so responsive.

And like we would change food by like a little bit and I'd get such a dramatic response.

And like, you know, we'd do a little bit of a carb, like a cheat meal or a high day.

And like, I'd look so much bigger and fuller the next day.

And like, I remember that time, that prep just feeling like everything was just like firing at like 110%.

And like, I felt like everything was so responsive.

So that was probably the one I remember as being like,

not necessarily the best because it wasn't my best look, but like just the most fun and easy one.

Um, because like everything just felt like so cool and so like so manipulative, like manipulatable, um, you know, but uh, yeah, the offseason in 2020 going into 2021 was definitely my best.

Yeah, okay.

Um, do you remember what your calories were around in that off-season?

No, I don't remember.

I mean, I could calculate it kind of based off rough.

I was probably eating like, you know, 400 grams of rice meal, you know, 200 grams of meat, you know, in like six meals,

you know, something like that, whatever that kind of works out to be.

But it wasn't anything like, I definitely had gone higher, so it wasn't anything like too insane.

Yeah.

I feel like 400 grams of rice is like almost 120 grams of carbs.

Or am I being dumb?

Yeah, it's probably about that.

Maybe more.

Rice to 28 grams of carbs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Damn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But it, but it was a good amount.

It was probably like, yeah, seven to eight hundred grams of carbs a day.

Um, maybe more, you know.

know?

So, I mean, yeah, if you put it all together, I mean, probably

6,500 to 6,500 calories, somewhere in that range.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah.

That's avage.

Did you ever have to use things like betane HDL?

I definitely use it as protein.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I definitely have used it like periodically throughout my career.

And I did think it helped for sure, you know, especially like, you know, when I had periods where I'd get like fucking, you know, acid reflux or like heartburn from like eating the amount of food or if you have any oral drugs in, I definitely found that it helped with that for for sure as well.

Okay, that's cool.

Um, I've always been okay with my digestion, but for some reason, in the last, like, I think I'm like really ending the end of this book, and Patrick's also like kind of like on the borderline of body fat, which is making me feel awesome.

Uh, but um,

uh, the last like four or five weeks or something, I've been having these massive putrid farts at night, just like multiple farts that wake me up at night and shit.

Have you used the uh oral BBC 157?

Uh, oh no, not oral.

I haven't used oral yet.

I found the oral, I'm using one right now that's the oral BPC 157 with this KPV stuff in it.

And I've actually felt it's made a big difference in my, just like my overall feeling of like appetite and digestive motility and everything like that.

I've definitely found it's made like a big uptick in that.

Okay, cool.

I'll probably try to utilize that.

The betane, though, has helped me definitely with like the

future.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, and I guess this is something something we kind of talked about earlier, but I think we only talked about the prep portion.

But I was kind of curious, because Fuad was discussing his own sweet spot in his offseason, but why you felt like your sweet spot with your compounds were in your own offseason.

Yeah, I mean, I similar to my prep, I kind of like found a sweet spot with that, like that I kind of kept consistent.

Pretty much would almost always, I kind of kept it the same, like off-season prep in terms of my testos.

It was pretty much always 700 to maybe I'd push it to a thousand a week in the offseason, but generally, like, I just really liked for some reason doing 100 milligrams of prop every day.

Don't ask me why.

I just like,

I was doing injections every day anyways.

You know, I just like liked the idea of doing that.

I never would forget it.

It just made me feel healthier, you know, doing it every day.

So I would

inject every day too.

So I would just do most of the time, I would do just 100 milligrams of prop.

And then in the offseason, I, for a lot of years, I really liked using NPP.

So I would probably put like, you know, 400 milligrams of that in.

And then I had a couple off seasons where I might put in like some EQ or something like that.

But for the most part, like in my off seasons, I generally would operate like two compounds, maybe a third.

So like, let's say a thousand milligrams of test, you know, four to 500 milligrams of NPP.

And then if I was putting in something else, like, say I did put in a Primo or Mastron or something at like, you know, four to 600 milligrams.

So like a 1800, 2,000 milligrams total for that would be like the most I would go in an off season

over over two or three compounds.

Yeah, okay.

There's this, uh, I had this comment, like, I think just on my last podcast.

Um,

I don't even fucking remember what my last podcast was.

Um, yeah, I just had this comment that came up on uh, oh, I think it was a podcast with Eric and Marcus, but uh, it was saying, like, I used to think that all bodybuilders were taking more than four grams, but now after like listening to so many like athletes and whatever, like I realized, like, I'd be surprised if any body blue says that they're taking over two grams total.

Yeah, no, I think probably most guys are, I think most guys are probably in a pretty similar range of like,

you know, probably in that two grams to, you know, 1500 maybe to 2,500, you know, maybe some guys at the high end of like maybe 3,000.

It's tougher to say in a prep setting, you know, because when you combine like all the oral dosings and stuff like that, like, you know, like my, my total combined injectable dose in a prep would only be like maybe 12 1300 milligrams um but then when you get close to a show and like say you have you know 20 milligrams of halo and you got 50 milligrams of winstrol in you you know 50 milligrams a day but there's seven days in a week so then you're adding that as another 350 milligrams yeah so by the time you add that i was probably on average like let's say you know yeah 15 1700 milligrams a week in an offseason probably like 2000 to 2500 in a prep at the peak of a prep closest to a show so that was probably like where I operated 90% of the time.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

I feel like that makes so much sense, honestly.

I mean,

yeah, from all the bodybuilders I heard, I was, at first, I was surprised when I heard

Martin tell me what his normal stack was because I think I was used to hearing some bodybuilders like Fuad saying his sweet spot for Tess alone was like 1,200.

Yeah.

And then, I mean, this is Phil Heath, but Phil Heath said on a podcast that the highest his TESS ever went was 1300, which I believe.

I believe that.

I've never gone higher than, I think 1,200 would be the highest I've ever gone with test.

And I was like really young.

I mean,

most times I would never go over a thousand.

And like I said, for a lot of years, I just kept doing this 100 milligrams a day of prop.

And like, I felt good doing that.

So yeah, I mean, like, I've done, you know, 1,200 milligrams of test with other compounds.

So it combines to be more when I was younger.

Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, 1,300 for Phil I mean honestly I'm surprised he's even gone that high to be honest for knowing Phil you know

yeah

yeah um and then Martin told me like his his is normally like 750 tests and then uh I don't know if he said like 750 EQ or something yeah but yeah I mean that seems like I know people wouldn't believe that but that sounds like to me that would be a pretty normal offseason for like me or a lot of guys you know like I was saying like you know i was doing the 700 or to a thousand tests so kind of in that same range that martin's saying and then i was adding in like a mpp or eq or whatever or splitting the dose between an MPP and a Mastron or Primo or something,

you know, for a combined other six, 700 milligrams a week.

So yeah, I mean, I completely believe Martin on that.

I mean, 14, 1,500 milligrams, you know,

for over two compounds.

I completely believe that.

I mean, that's more than enough to render like good dose.

You combine that, and then you probably got, you know, six units of growth hormone in.

You got a lot of good food, you know, heavy training.

I mean, that's way more than enough anabolics to render growth for sure, you know?

Right.

Yeah.

And then I don't know if you know Dura, but he also said, like, Duro, like, I think my audience is known for like liking Dura because they feel like he's super real, the way he talks, you know, and shit.

But like, he was talking about like, you know, some of his big off seasons, he'd be running like at least a gram of test and then plus a bunch of other compounds.

But he did say in the sustainable off seasons, which, you know, Martin's like running this, for example, every single offseason.

Yeah.

His was like 700.

So I'm hearing like this range for open bodybuilders.

Like, we're all kind of saying the same thing.

Yeah, you're all saying the same thing.

It's like

the same thing.

But then like a 500 milligram difference or range.

Look,

I've obviously met lots of bodybuilders over the years, and they're all kind of within the same range.

You know, I've met some guys that are going a little lower, you know, that like maybe an off-season for them would be like six, 700 tests with like, you know, 300 milligrams of NPP.

So maybe like a, or, or Mastron or fucking whatever, you know, so like a total combined of like a gram or like 1200.

And I've met guys that are like, yeah, doing 1500 tests with, you know, a thousand milligrams of EQ or something.

So 2,500 combined, but you're still always in that, you know, 1,500 to 2,500 range.

Like finding many guys that are doing, especially in an off-season setting, doing four grams a year.

I've never come across that.

And if I have come across it, it was guys that were like not top-level bodybuilders.

They were usually amateur bodybuilders that were trying to be good bodybuilders

that thought that's what they needed to do or were trying to overcome genetic inadequacies to get to that level

by doing like crazy amounts.

Like I'm sure we've all like, I mean, I've seen some guys, you know, that were just fucking regular dudes almost looking that were taking the craziest cycles I've ever seen, you know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I enjoyed the explanations that I've heard from figures like Dr.

Dean about how like, you know, like you, you saturate your androgen receptors, right?

But as you grow more muscle, you grow more androgen receptors so you can take more.

But if you're like a freaking small guy and then you're taking like two grams of three grams of dirty off the bat, all the rest of that, those androgens are going to the receptors in your hair, the receptors in your skin.

You know, you're getting a lot more side side effects for the exact same benefits.

Yeah.

And that's a good gauge for guys to use, you know, like if you're noticing you're getting a lot of side effects like that, like, you know, like your skin and you're getting, you know, experience like expedited hair loss and things like that, then you're like, okay, I'm probably taking more than I need to, you know?

Like you look at someone like Phil Heath, like, you know, throughout his career, he had like perfect skin the entire career.

Like his skin is like, looks like it's made of plastic, you know, like you can look at some of these things of like how side effects of drug use, it doesn't always, but in a lot of ways will express itself in people you know yeah yeah

um

um

there's so many questions here bro

um

i guess maybe we can just close this up with a couple more yeah i get like one or two more that's good um

ZMZ strength 97 asks, do you want a boy or a girl?

And pig, don't say you're lucky to have you.

I won't say that.

I have a preference.

i would definitely honestly prefer to have a girl i don't know why um my sister's got a girl chris and courtney had a girl um

i don't know i just like the idea of being like a having like a little girl to protect i like more and i also know what like kind of a fucking shitbird i was when i grew up and i

it would be fun to have a kid like that but i also like i plan on having more than one kid so but for a first one i would definitely like to have a girl i think yeah Nice, nice.

But it's funny.

I think now my odds are probably back to normal.

Like when you're a bodybuilder, I feel like all bodybuilders have girls.

Girls.

And I think it's a temperature thing to my knowledge.

It's like something with temperature.

Someone explained it to me once.

Yeah.

It's literally something to do with that.

Like if you're, you know, when you're using anabolics and your like base temperature is increased or the temperature of your fucking testicles or something, it does something to the sperm morphology or I don't know what it is, but.

Apparently it's something to do with heat.

But like I've been off everything for a year, so I feel like I'm probably going to fucking shoot at a boy at this point.

But I don't really give a fuck, but if I'm picking, I would, I would like to have a girl first, yeah, yeah, burns your sperm to have an infinity for your gender, so you got to dip your nuts in the cold plunge before you fucking bang your wife, you know.

I feel like I wanted to have a girl at first, but then I thought about whenever they hear hit puberty, so I don't know, yeah,

that's true too.

You got to fucking deal with that whole process, which is rough too, but that's something that the uh, that Melissa will have to deal with.

Um, hit

hi, this is Max asks, who wins out of Ian and Chris in a wrestling match, but first time meet and Ian slept with Milas?

I think he means Melissa.

Oh, yeah, probably.

Spell it with a Y.

I don't know what he's talking about.

Okay, so

first

me and Chris in a wrestling match, but what?

But first time,

but it's a first time meet and Ian slept with Melissa.

Okay, so he found out I banged his sister.

We've just met and we're wrestling.

Yeah.

Obviously, I'm fucking Chris up.

Come on, let's be honest.

We've actually only wrestled once and we were both like really fucking drunk.

I remember this.

We'd been out at the bar, me, him, and Melissa and some friends.

And we got back.

I had a condo at the time.

And

we were, I don't know, I can't remember.

It was like, I was really drunk sitting at the counter, like eating something.

And he was like drunk being a shitbird, like

coming up behind me and like whispering shit in my ear, trying to like irritate irritate me.

And then we ended up fucking wrestling on the floor once.

And I like actually got mad.

I think he was kind of like silly laughing around.

So I fucking got like actually mad.

Like got him on the ground and fucking choked him until he's like, okay, okay, okay.

And that's the only time we've ever wrestled.

I'll take that one win to the grave, you know?

Fire.

Yeah.

I fucking,

Sean, if you're listening to this, I'm sorry.

But

at one of the young LA after parties, we were at like Gary's place and, you know, they were having a pole party and shit.

It was like when the night was over, right?

So everyone's pretty fucking drunk.

drunk and fucking up.

And I don't know how this happened, but Shizzy comes up to me and

we were like hanging out, but now I know that this kid is plastered.

I fucking know.

You know, you just know, bro, when like when they're looking at you, but they're not looking at you.

Yeah.

And like he

James is also in the area.

And

I actually just saw this video of James and Shizzy.

Yeah, bro.

Yeah.

Well, I fucking feel bad because, you know, Shizzy turns to me and he's like, bro,

tell me to fuck him up for you.

And I'm like, what are you talking about, bro?

I don't want you to fuck him up.

He's like, no, bro.

I'll fuck him up.

I'll fuck him up if you tell me to.

Tell me to fuck him up for you.

And I'm just like, what the fuck is going on?

I feel like I shouldn't do this.

But I'm like, I've only known Sean for like, how many days now, right?

Yeah.

So I'm just like.

All right, fuck it, bro.

All right, fuck it, bro.

Fuck it, fuck him up.

Yeah, fuck him up, bro.

Fucking like one minute in

fucking one minute in bro james picks him up and slams him on the fucking ground dude and i'm just like oh man i fucked up and then later on that night like i'm sitting on the pole by sean and um i'm hoping i'm hoping this is okay i think it's i'm talking about it because i think it's a super cool thing but like um gary's there and sean's just crying right and i'm just like oh man this kid's fucked up but sean's just like crying about his mom and he's like i love my mom so much and like she's like finally we can like you know give her a place And like, you know, now we're

finally making money for her.

And like, sure.

It was like some deep shit.

Yeah.

But I'm like,

if Shizzy just got in like this wrestling match and now is like crying about his mom

because it's like feels so deep and emotional and happy for him.

I'm like, this guy is, this guy is not going to remember any of this.

No, no, no.

Any of it.

That's fine.

So I feel bad.

Anyways.

All right, let's just pick one last random question.

Yeah, one more.

There's a couple questions on people of the mass primo discussion, but one of them was just like,

Demetrice Gods asks, which one do you prefer, Primo or Mast?

It's tough to say.

I mean, I didn't find them really dramatically different in my opinion.

The thing is, I always hedge towards the side of using Mastron because I just trusted it more.

I am like a massive skeptic on like trusting the efficacy of most primo that's out there to actually even be primo, you know?

Yeah.

That I'm not just fucking taking masturon, paying more for it anyways, you know?

So I always

tariffs and stuff.

I'm a little bit more sus.

I don't know if you've noticed, but like a lot of body diligent people are having trouble getting primo.

Maybe sometimes yeah, well, I think because of the tariffs to China, I think it's fucked up.

A lot of the like labs and like the places that make the raw materials over in China are fucking like fucked, you know?

Yeah.

So getting raw materials over here, I think has been really hard for a lot of the labs.

So I think, yeah, I mean, it's there's definitely a shortage of stuff for a lot of these guys and getting raw materials over here to make decent stuff.

So, yeah, um, so yeah, no, I definitely see that, but but yeah, no, I usually erred on the side of caution just using Mastron.

Um, I used Primo a few times, I didn't found it did anything more spectacular to me than the Mastron did, yeah.

Um, and it's more expensive generally, so I was usually just opting for a Mastron, yeah, yeah, it makes sense, yeah.

Bro, I had to fucking pay $150 for a bottle of Primo recently.

Oh, geez, that's brutal, affriended offended that's rough yeah um

all right i gotta ask these last couple questions is it gay to share your deodorant with your gym bro midlift because he smells

like a little bit but it's also it also would be like

it would be not cool of you if he's now smelling like shit and then the fucking girls are all like the smell and be like yo this guy fucking stinks so you kind of got to be a bro so like for the girls in the gym he doesn't smell like shit and if you're training with him too then it's like almost like making you look bad by proxy that you train with the stinky guy yeah so yeah i mean it's a little fucking gay sharing deodorant especially if it's not spray on deodorant um but it's probably worth the gayness in that case you know yeah that was a very intuitive

yeah i would probably say that um i mean i think uh you should probably

if you're like i would throw it away Like if you're like reusing it and then like, you know, like you're smelling it behind your back and shit.

I mean, yeah, I mean, and if he was actually like smelling that bad, now he's touching his deodorant to my his armpit.

I don't know if I want to touch that on mine after the fact.

Um, so yeah, I mean, if you're gonna carry deodorant in your gym bag and you're gonna share it with your bros, just bring spray on deodorant, then you never need to worry about it, you know?

Yeah, yeah,

yeah,

yeah.

Um, Louis Almeida asks, What's the fastest speed that Ian allegedly has done on his new bike?

Allegedly, is all caps, allegedly, yeah, allegedly in Mexico.

Um,

well, I guess you guys are miles an hour.

I know it in kilometers an hour.

I'm in Canada.

So

I've done over 250 on it.

So 250.

Yeah.

So I've done 155, 160 on it.

Yeah.

So nothing too crazy.

Nothing too crazy yet.

That's fucking allegedly sick.

Allegedly, yeah.

It was in Mexico.

It's okay.

It was on the Audubon and I did it.

I brought my bike over to Germany and did it there.

It was perfectly legal.

It's fire.

Yeah.

Siri asks, what would it take for you to make a comeback comeback to the stage?

I mean, it would take my wife having a kid for sure.

Look, if she got pregnant tomorrow or and like got past the point of like where pregnancies are scary still,

I would probably make a decent attempt at it.

So I don't know.

It depends.

I mean, I wouldn't make an attempt at it to like try and be super serious.

And like, I don't think I'm ever going to be as good as I once was.

I don't think I'm going to be seventh at the Olympia in today's crop of guys.

I don't think I would be as good as I was when I was, you know, 30, 31.

But I would, and I seriously would want to do like the let my pro card expire and go do an amateur show because I think the content would be fucking hilarious if I like show up my like local Ottawa show and like go crazy, you know.

So, and I could do, I could relinquish my pro card either way.

So, I don't actually need to let it expire or whatever the rules are.

I mean, I could just say, I don't want to be a pro anymore, I think.

I don't know how the rules work, but I think guys can like, you know, like Roman Fritz, when he turned pro way back in the day, he won his pro card once, didn't feel he was ready to turn pro relinquish the pro card and turn pro again like a year or two later and then took that one so i don't think i necessarily have to be a pro so um so i it would be fun to just like you know do a whole fucking video series of like starting from the ground again of like you know just make a fucking joke of it and show up at my local show and like you know go to canadian nationals and do all that kind of shit and you know make my way back to try and qualify to the olympia like as if i was starting from scratch like regional show national show like work my way up and try and get back to the olympia stage i think would be a hilarious like series to do.

And, you know, I would do like, I'm getting a bit older and, you know, I, I, I definitely don't want to like go crazy with drugs at this point in my life.

Like it's just not worth it for what there would be to gain.

Like it would just be, you know, do a short blast of it to like short blast from a career standpoint, not a drug standpoint, like a short blast of career, you know, come back to the stage to do that kind of like one run just for fun.

But like, I don't have any inclinations to like get back up there and try and compete for five more years and dime 40 or anything like that, you know?

Yeah.

I think you shouldn't 100% do that though, for sure.

It would be hilarious for sure.

No, you have to.

Imagine the pictures of me next.

Like imagine being your first show, like your first local show.

Some kid that's like, you know, 19 has been on his like weight loss journey and he's going to do his fucking first local show.

He's like, you know, just done like his first little cycle of Anivar and then he like gets me.

You know, then I'm standing on stage next to him like, hey, you know,

fucking, you know, one fucking bunch of pro shows and shit.

I'm showing up at local shows.

I mean, it would just be hilarious, you know?

Definitely don't announce the show.

No, if I was going to do it, I wouldn't say.

I wouldn't even say what I'm going to, what show I'm going to do.

I would just like, you know, start prepping kind of slowly.

I mean,

but yeah, I mean, it's, it would be funny to do for sure.

Yeah.

And it would also be fun to do it and like see how little drugs I could do it on, you know, especially for a local show where it doesn't matter much.

Like, you know, see if I could just do like barely anything, you know, just like, you know, do like 300 milligrams of test and 200 milligrams of mastron.

And like, what, do I look okay or am I going to really look like shit?

Cause I'll probably look like shit, but I'd like to see it, you know, just to try it, like, how low I could do it, you know, for the beginning ones where it doesn't really matter much, you know?

Yeah, I think it'd be cool.

I think you could definitely do it.

I mean, some people don't believe him, but like, I think I believe Larry when he had to like really sink down like fucking 60 pounds for like that one show with the cap.

Yeah.

So he just took like what?

It was like a TRT and Anivar and maybe Clint or something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean, like, I mean, he was pretty.

I mean, at this point, we're like, like, I could hold 255, 260 being off everything.

And, like, my strength is pretty good still.

Like, I'm, I could train with any pro bodybuilder and keep up, no problem, like, from a strength perspective.

Like, it wouldn't be very hard.

Yeah.

Um, so, you know, I, I don't think I would need a ton to hold on to the muscle.

Um, it would just depend how hard I have to push the diet and, and how much I'm able to hold on to with it.

So, you know, gotcha.

So, I ask one last question at the end of every podcast, everybody.

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

Oh, that's a good, that's a deep one.

Man.

What kind of answers do you usually get here?

I don't know.

I mean, if there's one thing I like learned,

you know, over my career of bodybuilding, I think,

is it's like,

and this is is something Chris has talked about a lot too.

It's like,

you know, I think people really try and like

repress or like shut down like the hard feelings, like, especially in bodybuilding, you know, like when,

you know, you have like bad experiences in bodybuilding or like things aren't going your way, you really try and like shut it down.

And I think what that ended up leaving me with at the body, at the end of my career is like, it went by really, really quickly.

And,

and I didn't enjoy it as much as I think I could have if I kind of just let all the feelings that kind of came with everything just kind of like flow through me and kind of like feel everything a bit more, you know, where I was kind of trying like to push down a lot of negative feelings and stay so locked in and focused that I kind of like lost all of it.

And I think if there's one thing I would give to people, it's to like, just kind of let all those emotions, good and bad, just kind of like, like sit in them and feel them and like soak them in and like be better because of them and don't try and like push them away.

You know, I think there's so many good lessons and and so many like good moments that happen like, you know, in these small like nuances of like feelings that I think we really lose out.

And I definitely noticed it being on the other side of bodybuilding is that like it feels like it happened so fast and I feel like I don't remember a lot of it because I was really trying to like go to the next thing, go to the next thing, go to the next thing.

And like, you know, if there was like things that I didn't want to think about going on, like from an emotional standpoint or from like a bad season of things that I didn't like or, you know, whatever it was, I kind of tried to like, you know, get them out of my mind, stay locked in, keep pushing forward.

So I think just like, you know, feel all the things you feel.

Like, don't be afraid to feel the good things and the bad.

And like, just really embrace all of it.

And, uh, and I think you'll, you'll be a lot better off at the end of it because of it, you know.

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

That was awesome, bro.

All right, dude.

Appreciate you having me.

Yeah.

Thank you, man.

Yeah.

Later, brother.