Fouad Abiad and I Debate Dosages & Health

The host of the Real Bodybuilding Podcast, Open IFBB Pro, and 2015 Vancouver Pro Champion.

The better your health is, the better you're gonna grow.

So, if you're taking three grams of shit and your health is in the toilet, you're probably not gonna make the progress you wanna make.

Fuad Abiyad.

If you don't wanna end up with serious problems like me, you need to catch the trend ahead of time.

The point of Blood Work is not to catch that one snapshot in time and then decide what you're gonna do with your life.

It's to create a record over the course of years so that you can catch things on a trend before they go too far.

They used to make a thing called Test 400.

One year I said, you know what?

I'm going to just test this shit out and see what it feels like.

And I went way overboard.

I settled at 1250.

So you can only imagine how high I went before I was like, okay, this isn't doing anything.

I would have probably stayed away from the more toxic drugs, like lots of lots of.

This stuff just kills you inside.

How to make money as a bodybuilder.

I'm going to tell you something for the first time I've ever told anybody.

Is it like super late over there?

Seven o'clock.

Seven?

Okay, that's what I thought.

Don't you normally do your podcast at like 7 a.m.

or something crazy?

No, no, I do.

There's the two that I do.

I do one at

one at 8 p.m.

And I do one at like, I did one this morning, actually, at 11 a.m.

Oh, okay, okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Is it the bro chat ones that you normally do at 11 a.m.

or the brook?

The bro chat one is the late one.

The bodybuilding and bullets one is the live one that I've been doing during the day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm a fucking rookie.

Wow.

I'll expose myself.

No, it's been listen.

Hey, listen, when I podcast, I don't like to know anything about the person.

That way it's all organic.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think that's,

I think there's something with me then because I've probably watched like at least 100 episodes of your podcast.

It's awesome, man.

Thank you.

No, yeah, I love it, man.

It's it's awesome.

And I mean, there's so much great information that you provide and on your on your actual episodes with your like guests that come on.

But then like when you do like bro chat and bodybuilding and bullocks, it's just it's just awesome.

It turns into chaos sometimes.

I'm sure everyone feels the same.

Yeah.

Some of the QA questions you got too were pretty savage, which I'm not surprised.

Yeah.

I mean, look, it's a place where people can go and just, it's kind of an outlet for guys to be guys.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

How'd you get started with your podcast, anyways?

Well,

are we rolling?

Like, is this going to be part of it?

Are we?

Yeah, we're rolling.

Okay.

Sorry.

Okay.

I always wanted to do something in bodybuilding.

Before I retired, I wanted to do something in bodybuilding.

And

I felt like there was a lot of people talking about bodybuilding, but not the right people were talking about bodybuilding.

And a lot of bad information was getting out there.

And people were kind of talking for the pros.

They were like, you know, the pros do this and the pros do that, but no actual pros were talking.

Oh, yeah.

And it still happens.

Yeah.

So I figured, you know what?

It'd be cool to do like a Joe Rogan style thing for bodybuilding.

So a friend of mine, I was talking to a friend of mine, Jordan Shallow, actually.

He's

goes by the muscle dock.

He's a very well-renowned,

he's well renowned in the science community.

But anyways, I said, this is what I want to do.

And he goes, why don't you just do it then?

And I'm like, well, I don't know.

I don't know how to podcast.

I don't know how to fucking, I don't have a camera.

I don't have a sound system.

I don't have lighting.

He's like, who cares?

He's like, just turn on a webcam and start talking.

So I did.

I just got like a regular shitty webcam and I got a microphone and a USB microphone.

And I, uh,

I did the first four episodes by myself.

And then I started getting guests on.

And the whole purpose of the show was to expose bodybuilders for like who they are and being normal people and not just meatheads that eat chicken and rice all day long.

So it was kind of why I wanted to do it.

And I think I've kind of succeeded in that way.

People see their personalities now.

They see like they have a sense of humor.

They're kind of just normal guys that love to work out.

So that's kind of how it got started.

I think it's been five years now.

So, you know, we're rolling along.

Yeah.

I think that's something that I really like about our podcast too is,

well, about having a podcast space, especially in this industry, is like you and I have spoken to so many experienced, incredible figures in the industry.

And I think that's one of the greatest gifts is in having this platform.

You know, even my personal viewpoints in a lot of places have changed.

Yeah.

Like

some places have been validated, which is nice, but other places I get to see so many different perspectives.

And it's something where you see in the comments section for like any reels or any TikToks or anything.

There's a lot of, like, I'm not trying to hate or put anyone on blast, but there's a lot of people that at face value just believe

everyone experiences what they are.

And if they're not, if they're, if they're not saying that, then they're, they're liars, yeah, which is crazy because the amount of variance in

how we feel,

in our genetics, and our potential, in what we react to, literally everything is so vastly different.

So

that's kind of why I'm honestly really excited to like have you on the podcast.

Yeah.

Is like, I feel like a

maybe,

maybe I'm not that special, but I think it's kind of cool that I feel like we're, we got to be these like moderators where we get to listen to these.

countless different um

like when you're doing the science project for example and you have like controlled subjects we got to see like the variance and all the different experiments that everyone has calculated and then from our own

deduce just what we think seems to make the most sense right i mean for me it's i feel a sense of responsibility and a sense of

duty almost in the bodybuilding world and that's why i try and have on various people like When I have a coach on, I try and get the most out of them so that the people watching actually they're learning something.

So it's not really for me as much as it is.

I mean, it is for me.

Don't get me wrong.

I've learned a ton since I started the podcast.

But

for me, I feel like there's a lot of people watching that don't know about bodybuilding.

So number one, they get interested because they're like, hey, that's cool.

I never knew that about these people.

Number two, there's people that are bodybuilding and just don't have the knowledge.

So those people are learning as we go.

So I feel a sense of responsibility.

And that's where I feel privileged to have the...

the viewership that I have because I can be like, I can bring somebody on and I'm teaching X amount of people.

It's like, if you go and you personal train at a gym, you're helping that one person while you train.

Where I feel like if thousands of people are watching and I can get a coach on to give some real information, I'm helping a whole swath of people.

And kind of,

I almost feel a sense of like, and this may be

grandiose, but I feel like it's changing the direction of things.

Like when I talk about blood work, we talk about getting blood work done so much on the podcast that in the last five years, I've seen a change in people that want to get blood work done.

So I'm like, to me, that feels like a privilege to be able to kind of guide new people coming into the sport to like listen to the right people, you know?

And before, to touch on the point you were talking about before,

there's a real sense of humility that comes with talking to a whole bunch of people with different perspectives.

Because you may come into something, which I will admit that I was one of these people.

You may come into something.

if you're not a well-traveled person, if you don't talk to a lot of people, you may come into this whole thing in life thinking you know everything.

And when you sit and you get to talk to hundreds of people, especially some that are brilliant scientists or coaches or have had great success in their life,

you learn that you don't really know that much.

You learn really quickly that there are people that

know far more than you do about a given subject.

And that creates a lot of humility where you're like, oh, okay, I can just sit back and listen and appreciate and learn instead of thinking that you have to go into every conversation that you like, you know, everything.

So I think I've gained my own sense of humility just sitting down with two, 300 people and actually letting them teach me.

And being able to be humble enough to say, like, yes, tell me everything you know.

I'm going to absorb it.

So it's a,

it's kind of been a privilege in a number of ways, to be honest with you.

Like what, like what we do is really cool that way, because

you don't only get to meet interesting figures, but you get to really,

there's a fulfillment that comes from it

that I never thought of when I started.

I agree.

Yeah, I feel incredibly blessed.

What was the thought process you had starting your podcast with the anxiety that you have?

And how also did you deal with that anxiety whenever you were walking on stage?

The anxiety is a strange one on camera because I get to hide behind the camera, even though I have done podcasts in person that still feel okay.

I think because I'm in a situation like, okay, let me back up.

I feel like anxiety stems from uncertainty.

So whether you're unsure of yourself, whether you're unsure of the thing you're doing, whether you're unsure of the way you speak to people or the way you look or whatever uncertainty you have in your life, I feel like

a lot of people's anxiety, especially mine, stems from that uncertainty.

So when it came to stepping on stage, the only way I knew how to quell that noise was to be over prepared.

And sometimes I went the wrong way.

Like sometimes I would do too much cardio or cut too many calories and it would actually it would actually hurt my look, but it's because I was I was trying to quiet the anxiety.

So I'm like, if I overprepare, if I'm overly ready, if I'm extra shredded, then that anxiety will quiet itself down.

That only happened a couple of times.

There was only,

you know, I just said it today on the podcast I was doing with the guys.

I can only think of two shows I did where I peaked like 100%.

And those two shows, I specifically remember my anxiety being very quiet.

So

if you fast forward to the podcast,

I feel prepared to do the podcast because I've done everything in bodybuilding you can do from media to competition to promotion to magazine to it doesn't matter what like other than judging I've done everything you can do in bodybuilding so when it comes to the podcast I feel like I can talk to anybody about bodybuilding in any given subject so there's a comfort and a

confidence that comes with it that quiets the anxiety a little bit.

Now, don't get me wrong, there's still,

get, I'm going to tell you something for the first time I've never told anybody.

When I have a major guest on, I still get that anxiety.

Like, if I have a guest on that I'm like,

you know, somebody you might look up to, like a Jay Cutler, for example, right?

I'm like, oh, fuck, I gotta, I gotta have Jay on tomorrow.

I'm like, I better make sure it's a good conversation because Jay's done hundreds of interviews.

So, what am I going to ask Jay that nobody else has already asked him, right?

Yep.

So, you get like this, this type of anxiety starts to build.

The first time I had Jay on, we did did

45 or 50 minutes,

and it was a great conversation.

And I think I had got things out of Jay that I'd never heard before myself, anyways.

And around the 50-minute mark, I looked up and I realized we weren't recording.

No shit.

I was like,

I was like, how, I was so nervous.

And this is like,

I think I got Jay to do my podcast like 60 or 70 episodes in.

So it's not like I was fucking new.

It's just I was so fucking nervous because it was Jay Cutler that I just wasn't thinking.

So we get 50 minutes in and I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe I look up and I realize it's not recording.

So I kind of like, I didn't want to tell Jay.

I hadn't the heart to tell him.

So we finished.

I kind of rapped.

I was like, okay, I'm going to do five more minutes and I'm going to rap because now he's just wasting his time.

So I rap.

I message him later and I, I don't remember if I lied to him first and told him it was the audio was fucked up

or if I if I told, I don't remember if I told him the truth or I lied.

I can't remember.

It was a while back now.

And Jay was so fucking cool about it.

He said to me, you know what, bro, it's okay.

We'll do it again.

And I, and, and I hate doing that because one of the things I love about doing my podcast is I don't do any preparation and I don't talk to the people before we start.

I just hit record and I start because I want it to be as organic as possible.

Yeah, I feel that.

Well, I'm like, well, we've already had an hour-long conversation.

If I do it again, it's not going to be organic.

But to Jay's credit, we were able to do it again.

It was a little bit different conversation, but it was still flowed nicely and it was kind of like, it was still interesting.

So, but just to,

you know, just to

kind of touch on the anxiety thing and to touch on how great a person Jay is, because, you know, Jay's busy.

He's a fucking, you know, he's an icon.

He could have been like, you're an idiot.

Fuck you.

You know what?

I'm not doing this again.

But no, he was like, it's cool.

We'll do it again.

And we did it.

But to touch on the anxiety aspect of it,

it doesn't really go away.

You just learn to manage it.

And sometimes in big moments, it can creep back in.

So it's not.

I will tell you that people with anxiety,

whatever, in whatever way it shows itself,

the anxiety is amplified by steroid use.

So since I've retired, I mean, it's kind of twofold.

Like getting older helps you become more sure of yourself.

You can, you kind of grow into your skin.

Yeah, 100%.

So that obviously also reduces the anxiety, but also being off of steroids also dramatically reduces,

takes away that amplification of all your normal emotions.

So yeah, there's a, there's a,

it's not easy when you're dealing with it, especially if you're a competitive bodybuilder because the drugs are part of the game and you're younger and you're unsure of yourself.

So, that anxiety sometimes can really

have an impact on what you're trying to do in life.

Nice.

So, I have something to look forward to.

Why?

Do you have anxiety?

Yeah, for sure.

How does it, how does it manifest itself?

Like, how does it show itself?

Like, for example, like for me, I would sweat and I would get nervous and I would be like, I almost would get like paralyzed

if it was strong enough.

Yeah, I start shaking.

Tremors, yeah.

Um,

it's like uh i've had this big stage fright thing ever since i was a kid like i would still go to i'd still have like talent shows you know and i would perform in them but like i think there was one that i even sang and you could just hear it in my voice the entire time

i wonder why people with anxiety do that to themselves

no i'm serious because my mom would my mom would always say to me you know if you're so anxious why are you going on stage in your underwear

And I'm like,

she's like, she would say, she would say to me, she'd be like, if you don't like people looking at you,

why do you weigh 300 pounds and you got a mohawk?

Like, why are you, you're drawing attention to yourself?

So I don't understand why, you know, a lot of people with anxiety sometimes do the opposite of what would make sense.

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Yeah, I mean, I really don't know much, but I feel like it's just because we feel like we should.

We feel like we shouldn't be anxious

and we feel like we maybe should practice.

I know my girl deals with a lot of anxiety herself too.

And whenever she does,

she has this very, very high level of mindfulness and consciousness that I'm really proud of, especially at her age.

But

she will always say things like, I don't know why I'm feeling anxious.

I shouldn't be.

Like, everything's great.

Life is awesome, but I'm feeling anxiety.

And she'll feel these more often than not, mostly because of her hormones and some things she has to deal with.

Specifically, her, you know, as, and I know some women tend to have these things a little bit more frequently than men do, or more commonly, do the genes.

But

I think for me personally, anytime I've done something, especially start the podcast, one of the biggest reasons that I wanted to start the podcast, too, aside from the fact that I listen to like 20 podcasts and that's all I listen to, listen to the podcast more than I listen to music.

But

I just want to get better at speaking.

Like I would speak to the camera by myself sometimes and I just would, I would just suck.

Like I just, I'd have the hardest time.

Yeah.

And I noticed that when I went to San Diego, I don't know how related this is, but when I went to San Diego, I had a lot of mindset changes because I think I was introduced to a completely new set of people with a completely different perspective than I'm used to.

Like I grew up in an Asian conservative culture where I go to San Diego and, you know, everyone's the opposite.

They're very open-minded.

They're chill.

Where are you from originally?

I grew up in Texas and then Arkansas.

Okay, so you go, why did you go to San Diego?

I went to San Diego because I was admitted to UCSD for my master's in mechanical engineering, but I really the main reason and the reason I was excited to go to UCSD in the first place is because it's California.

I'm like, man, there's going to be Asians there.

Yeah, I guess growing up in Texas, you're like, I get to see more people like me, I guess.

That shit was fucking racist.

That's cool.

Well, you know what?

I just wanted to touch on a couple of things you said.

When your girlfriend says,

why am I feeling anxious?

I shouldn't feel like this, that's a trigger for anxiety, and it doesn't help you resolve it.

When you,

and I know this is probably an anxiety lesson that maybe people don't want to hear, but when you feel anxiety, one of the worst things you can do is either succumb to it or beat yourself up about it.

Those things

make the anxiety worse in the future.

It helps it, like if you think of it like an organism,

the more you beat yourself up, the more that organism grows so every every time you're like i'm anxious why am i anxious and you're like beating yourself up about it that gets stronger right or or every time you have an anxious moment and you bail on that moment like you said like you would talk to the camera by yourself and then you start a podcast doing the thing that causes the anxiety actually will shrink the anxiety.

Avoiding the thing that causes the anxiety will make that anxiety worse to the point where some people,

some people like fear going out in public places right

and they get anxious when they go to certain places so they'll just stop going places altogether well those people start develop to develop agoraphobia and that's the fear of like going outside so basically they get to a point where their anxiety has grown so much now they can't even leave the fucking house because they're just scared of people they're scared of being out so

Just two things I noticed that what you're saying like is challenging the anxiety is a big step towards resolving it and not beating yourself up about it is another step towards overcoming so i just wanted to touch on those two things no i'm glad you did i'm glad you did um

it's uh i think when i was stating that uh those are thoughts that she experiences those are kind of just you know like the we have those default thoughts that will sometimes just come out regardless of yeah whether we know better or not or how many experiences we've had and that'll come out in both of us But

the mindfulness that she has and we both have the understanding that these things come and they go and

it's just not something that we can fight.

But, you know, instead, I think for us personally, quieting my mind,

meditating, taking deep breaths,

making myself feel

like in a place where I'm understanding that everything is okay.

Right.

Always helps.

And then, of course, the last thing is putting myself in the place that does cause the anxiety in the first place.

Yeah,

there's two other things I think that would help dramatically for anybody listening.

There's a book called The Power of Now

by Eckhart Tolle or Eckhart Tolle I don't know how to pronounce the last name.

Basically, the book is about living in the present

because living in the past causes depression.

Living in the future, which is what most anxiety, anxious people do, living in the future is what causes the anxiety because you're worried about what's going to happen so you're always thinking ahead instead of just living in the moment so it teaches you to keep always reel yourself back in just what how am i feeling right now what's going on around me right at this moment blah blah blah so that's a big one and then the other thing i was going to say is this is going to sound really stupid but a therapist told me this a long time ago pat yourself on the back for really small wins so like

There's a thing I used to, I used to hate standing in line at the bank.

I don't know why.

Don't ask me.

It sounds fucking stupid.

But if there was a lineup at the bank, it used to drive me crazy because I would have to stand in line and it just, I'd just get anxious just standing there.

And

he's like, look, if you go to the bank and you walk in and there's one person there and you don't have to stand in line very long,

when you leave, mentally pat yourself on the back.

Just be like, I did it.

I wasn't anxious.

Awesome.

Because we never do that shit.

All we do is

tell ourselves when we do something wrong.

So part of it is

kind of rewarding yourself, I guess, in a way when you, when you don't feel those feelings, which I think a lot of people don't do.

So

anyway, getting carried away on the anxiety thing, I apologize.

It's an important topic for me because one, I dealt with it for a very long time, but two, almost every single time on my podcast, when I talk about it, inevitably I'll get a slew of messages from people

thanking me because they feel the same way.

So I think it's important to talk about so people don't feel like they're alone.

alone.

No, I agree.

I talk about like everything on my podcast, right?

And obviously I talk about bodybuilding the most by far.

But I mean, I think my favorite episodes that I've ever had are the ones where me and the guests literally just talk about our lives and the shit that we've been through.

Yeah.

Cause I guess I just never realized until I had social media and I started just saying like, you know what, I don't give a fuck.

I'm just going to post about my life and let people know.

like what I've been through that like there's so many other people that have experienced the same thing.

And by talking to them, meeting them in person

and us having these conversations, it's made me feel a lot better.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

a lot of the reason I do this is also for myself.

So are you, how old are you?

How old do I look?

Well, you're Asian, so that doesn't count.

You could be like 45, but you really look 25.

So I don't feel like I'm not.

I thought I was crazy.

I'm going to guess you're 28.

Okay, you're pretty damn close.

And you're a physique pro, right?

I turned pro in men's physique in 2019.

Okay.

But then I took three years of just eating in a deficit to maintenance calories in order to, because I wasn't making any money from bodybuilding.

And I know you, I know you know this very well, but

I was not making crap.

Like I was an engineer at first, made money, and then I hated it.

You know, nine-to-five job, I just fucking hated it.

And I actually dropped out of my master's program like a week before it even started.

So I was just trying to live by without, you know, any way of making money whatsoever.

So I was like, you know what?

I think I got to make some money somehow.

And I got to, I think I just need to build my following on social media.

So I just stayed as shredded as possible for three years.

And

ended up working.

So how did you make money?

Like, where, how did you make money in that time when you quit your, when you quit school?

Yeah.

So I quit school and I started doing a little bit of coaching because I had like maybe I had like less than 100K followers when I quit.

I think I had like maybe 50K or something like that.

Yeah.

So I started coaching a few clients,

which helped a little bit, but I was really living paycheck to paycheck.

In fact, I was actually like losing money.

I was losing my savings that I had saved up from engineering.

So at one point,

my bank was going to go to zero and I was going to be like, I'm fucking shit out of luck.

So then TikTok came out and I just started posting my workout videos on there with music.

And I always loved like...

montages that like Callan von Mager made on YouTube and all these other creators made on YouTube.

But

I didn't post on YouTube at the time.

Well, I did, but it was just so much work.

And with Instagram and TikTok out, I was like, you know, maybe I can like make these on montages for myself, but instead on Instagram and TikTok.

So the moment TikTok came out, I started posting that in like 2019 or something, 2020, maybe.

And this is kind of before TikTok got big.

So I kind of got lucky and I think I just caught a wave because I was one of the first fitness people or bodybuilders or whatever to post on TikTok.

Right.

And that blew up and then gave me followers on Instagram too.

And then that just started gaining me sponsors.

And that's how it all started.

Did you make money on TikTok?

Because that's the one thing I hate is I can't, as a Canadian, I can't make money on TikTok.

Well,

there was, obviously, there was no like money that you can make straight from the TikTok app.

It was just sponsors.

Okay, okay.

I mean, you can now, though, right?

I stopped using TikTok like a year ago.

Oh, okay.

A year or a half ago.

Because I think guys are making money off of TikTok now, I think.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't really know the details about it either.

So you got a following and you picked up some sponsors and that was like helping you kind of supplement your income.

Yeah, that helped immensely.

It kind of changed everything, to be honest.

And you were coaching a bunch of people at the same time?

I was coaching people.

Yeah.

So you were in a deficit.

You were staying shredded to get the following.

And then how did you get to turn pro?

So that was 2019 when I turned pro.

Oh, okay.

So you turned pro before this?

I turned pro and then I decided I'm going to reverse diet from this show.

Okay, okay, okay.

You know, I was like, I'm like you, where I like, I love food and i'll i i started off obese i was like the most obese asian 12 year old kid i look like the poster boy for like a freaking chiao button or something yeah yeah but um

uh i i just told myself i was going to reverse diet from my pro show and then stay shredded and it kind of worked out i just basically stayed on like

200 milligrams of tests.

Sometimes I'd go to like 150 because 200 I felt like I looked watery and then I'd run like a low dose of primo and low dose of mastron along with it.

So I just kept looking dry.

yeah and i would like go on and off of that for literally like three years and just eat a deficit to maintenance it was so bad okay you're not like you're you're definitely not like me because i couldn't have been in a deficit for three fucking years how did you do that shit uh it was kind of miserable to be honest i was gonna say that sounds horrible yeah well like i think the um

I think seeing the money come in and seeing the gains come in, seeing the progress in life come in kept me driven.

And it did really help my life a lot.

Like as

weird as it was, But the whole deficit thing, now that I look back on my life, I realize my mental health was pretty shit.

And

I didn't even know what I was doing with gear to at the time.

Like I realized my estrogen was actually below range for

a lot of that time, which is extremely fucking bad.

Like

I don't know how my bones are now, but hopefully it's okay.

I'm sure you're okay, but it can fuck with you mentally, that's for sure.

Yeah.

So, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I also wanted to start the podcast is because I went through my own like slew of issues from not knowing what to do in bodybuilding, not knowing what to do with gear, you know, having a coach that just pushed things on me for me to get my pro card.

Just a bunch of different things.

Did you compete as a pro or no?

I competed as a pro for my first time this most recent year.

Okay.

But I've been training to do classic and I haven't done classic yet

because this last year when I decided to do my pro debut,

I wanted to do do classic, but I just knew I wasn't going to do well because I'm just not big enough.

I was like 20 pounds under the weight cap, under my weight cap.

So I decided to still do men's physique, which was fun and awesome.

But I think my physique now doesn't fare well in men's physique as it would have before.

Like I'm mostly Filipino, kind of like Jeremy Bundy and he have a very similar structure and physique.

Okay.

Like small waist, good proportions,

not really a defined core.

So I went on stage and like my first time on stage was pretty cool.

I did it here in California and they called me out in first call outs.

So I got really excited because it was like six of us on stage out of like 20 or something, 20 or whatever

pros.

But I didn't really practice posing in men's physique, so that's my fault.

So I kind of fucked up and I was like flexing my chest the entire time.

And then when I did back, I kind of did like a lat spread with my fists out instead of doing an actual men's physique pose.

So they told me they took me out of the first call outs and moved me back several positions because of that.

But said that my conditioning was on point, everything was good.

But me personally, I believe that my midsection was just doesn't ever get good enough for men's physique in my life.

But that's kind of an easy fix.

Like when someone says you didn't place and it was mainly your posing, that's kind of an easy correction.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And even if you said to me, my abs don't get defined enough, that's also not,

I mean, that's probably an easier muscle to etch in, I guess, for lack of a more scientific term.

But yeah, I don't know.

So is it like you don't, is it you don't want to do men's physique because you don't feel like you fit the class or you don't want to do men's physique because you think you'd be better in classic?

I don't want to do men's physique because I have a bigger passion for classic.

And I also, I also want to build my physique in the same, like the proportions I want for my physique to end up with align with similar to the proportions that people in classic stage have except i want bigger arms yeah so

we all want bigger arms yeah yeah yeah um

yeah so that's that's why i want to do classic but um

no um

i i do agree with that about abs but i i do want to point out like i think you understand too how genetics like vary so differently before between each person.

And for me, for example, when I get shredded, my glutes will come and peeled before my core

comes in

in comparison to the other people in the men's physique stage.

And now like looking at like Ryan Terry and the new second place, even like Brandon Hendrickson, man, it's like Sadiq Hatzovic and I agreed on my podcast that it's become kind of like an ab show now in men's physique.

I kind of felt, and maybe this is just because I'm not in that world, but I kind of felt like it always was.

To me, when I see men's physique, I see, yes, there's back development, yes, you know, chest, shoulders, but to me, the main component is wide shoulders, small defined waist.

Yeah.

And to me, that's the main criteria.

And then everything else fits into that.

So I don't know how much it's, I mean, maybe it's changed size-wise, which is why they're trying to bring them back down in size.

But I feel like the abs were always, I mean, maybe I don't know, but I feel like they were always a main component of the class.

I think they cared, but I really don't, I think it did change a lot.

It's gotten worse.

I think in the beginning, in the beginning, it was like, like you said, it's about the V-taper.

Right.

You know, wide shoulders, wide lats, small waist.

That was the most important part.

And I think Sadiq had like a very aesthetic type of posing routine he had there.

And I don't know if

I don't know if Steve seeing him at his gym in person and stuff ever affected that or what he thought about his physique.

And then Jeremy also just had this insane V-taper and I think musculature that was that stood out compared to the other guys.

Like at this round of fullness, right?

Yeah.

But

they never had the most chiseled core.

If you compare their pictures when they won Olympia versus any of the news.

Yeah, like Ryan Terry's abs are fucking.

Like, he's known for his fucking abs.

You know?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's crazy.

And so is second place now.

Second place currently is also now known for his abs.

So it's just

pretty insane.

But whatever.

It's Men's Physique.

On to bigger and better things, I guess, right?

But going off of anxiety, I listened to your episode on Mark Bell's podcast, which was honestly pretty dope.

Um, and uh, you stated that you started PEDs the same time that you started bodybuilding, yeah.

So, I'm curious because I think a lot of people that listen to my podcast and people that have been in my position too, I think that's one of the bigger things-the bigger things that cause us anxiety when it comes to bodybuilding, especially a lot of kids who have just decided to dive into it.

Right.

Um,

so uh, what was your mindset when you first got started?

I

thought bodybuilding was fucking stupid, I thought the guys looked gross.

No, I'm going to, I'll give you a brief rundown.

So

I played high school football.

I was a middle linebacker and off and defensive line.

And I was about 235 pounds and I was chunky.

And

my last

year of high school, I think I was 18 or something like that, 19 maybe.

I started doing a lot of cardio, a lot of boot camps, not boot camps, but like my own kind of circuit training.

I wasn't really training like a bodybuilder.

I wasn't training to be strong.

I was just doing a lot of circuit training, skipping rope, a lot of cardio.

And I got down to like 190 pounds.

And I had like a nice physique.

It wasn't chiseled or anything, but it was just like your average beach body kind of thing, right?

And then

I started bouncing at this club.

And one of the guys there was like 260 pounds at like 5'7.

And he would just walk through a crowd and people would just get the fuck out of the way.

And I'm like, and he had these like 24-inch arms.

They were probably 22, but I remember them being 24.

But I was like, man, I want to fucking look like that.

That guy's a fucking monster.

But I didn't, still didn't want to do it.

Like, because before that, I was reading like men's health and like magazines like that.

And when I saw Flex magazine, I'm like, I don't know, man, that's fucking too much.

And I was against steroids.

I'm like, I don't want to take steroids.

Some of the guys I was bouncing with were taking steroids.

And I'm like, no, that's bad.

I don't want to do it.

Fast forward, like a year year from then, I saw my first bodybuilding show.

I went to the Toronto Pro.

It was May 2000.

And

I had, there was a pro am.

So I got to see Dexter Jackson and Marcus Ruhl compete against each other.

And in the amateur, my buddy that I said was bouncing, he competed in the amateur.

I was like, man, this is really fucking cool.

Like, he's peeled.

Like, I always used to see him at the bar.

And he would finish at the bar and he would just eat.

He would just take his food and go home.

He wouldn't party with us.

He wouldn't drink.

He would just go home and eat, go to sleep.

And I see him on stage and I'm like, fuck, man, that's the same guy.

I'm like, he's peeled and veiny and like fucking shredded.

And I'm like, that's really cool.

I'm like, I could probably do that.

And a friend of mine goes, you can't fucking do that.

I'm like, all right, bet.

So

we bet on it.

And I gave myself a year.

So that was May.

I did fast forward a year and a few months.

I did my first show.

I won the overall.

But the thing was, when we made that bet,

I knew I had to take steroids because they told me, they're like, look,

you're not going to do this without,

you know, unless you do the natural stream, like you're not going to be able to win an open show naturally.

So I said, okay.

So I never really got that period.

You know, a lot of guys you talk to in professional bodybuilding, they were like,

you know, if you talk to like Frank McGrath or you talk to like Lee Priest or if you talk to Ian, these guys started lifting when they were like 14 years old and they lifted naturally for a number of years and they started gear.

They started gear at like 18 19 20 whatever

i was like

i want to do bodybuilding what tools do i need and they just gave me the gear i got my supplements i got everything like all in the same day

i remember like getting my first tub of protein i'm like okay here we go i'm gonna get huge as if like the way was gonna do it right yeah so i've been there i uh I kind of started it all at the same time and that was my thought process.

And the thought process was literally, I don't want to be huge for the bar.

I don't want to be this or that.

It was literally, I want to win this show.

They told me I need these tools to win the show.

These are the tools I'm going to use.

And I started.

And as soon as I retired from bodybuilding, I kind of stopped.

Like there was long stretches of time where I wouldn't do any juice at all.

And people would ask me, like, I talked about on the podcast, and my friends would ask me, they'd be like, you're not taking anything?

I'm like, no, I don't want to do any shots.

I just, I don't, I was so sick of fucking needles by the end of my career.

I'm like, I don't want to do a shot ever again.

They're like, but your test level's got to be like rock bottom.

I said, I did blood work.

My test levels are low, but I feel incredible.

I'm sleeping okay.

My training is still pretty good.

So I just, I would go long stretches, like months without taking anything.

Now, I think for health reasons, I'm back on like

125.

I do half a CC once a week.

So 125 milligrams of ananthate once a week.

And that's kind of it.

But yeah, I was totally against it.

And they just, my friends were like, look, this is how it works.

This is what people do.

If you want to win, this is what you got to do.

So I was like, okay, sign me up.

And it was more of like,

it was more out of necessity than it was out of like

vanity.

Like a lot of guys I see nowadays will be like,

I want to be jacked for social media or I want to be jacked for the bar or I want to be jacked.

I never wanted to, for me, it was strictly because of competition.

So, there wasn't really, it wasn't really like a moral dilemma for me.

I was like, okay, if I want to compete, this is what I got to do.

Let's just sign me up.

Right, right, right.

And that's kind of how it worked.

Yeah, it's a weird thing for me to say this, considering that I'm so into competing and trying to get on the Olympic stage.

But if I was to do,

if I was to build my body into like the kind of body that I wanted, just on a day-to-day basis, like walking around,

it'd probably be shredded and like five, ten pounds, maybe five pounds lighter when I'm lean.

Yeah.

Which is like a physique that I carried around back when I tried to stay as lean as possible.

And you really hardly need any gear, if any at all, to do that.

No, I mean, I think the one thing people I don't know if they know is once you've built the muscle, it's much easier to maintain.

So you can always, you know, for people who are thinking about using steroids, I would never advocate for it.

But if if they are,

it can be a tool that you use briefly and then back right off.

And your body will maintain the muscle you have as long as you're eating pretty good and training hard.

Right.

So, I mean, look, I've been retired for 10 years.

I still weigh 265 pounds.

It's not a beautiful 265 pounds.

I'm a little bit chubbier, I think, but I'm still carrying a ton of muscle for being retired for 10 years and not really taking any gear.

So it's not easy to lose it once you put it on.

Yeah, that's nice to hear.

Yeah.

Especially seeing all the

old classic names that have some freaking savage physique still.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at

Jay, dude.

I know, right?

And I don't think, and I would, if I had to guess,

and I could be wrong, and I'm sure Jay would probably say it.

I don't know, but if I had to guess, Jay was probably on the minimum amount of TRT.

And

Jay is the one guy I've always been jealous of because he eats the same fucking way

all year round, whether he's retired, not retired, doesn't matter.

The guy is always eating perfectly.

And I think that's why he looks that way.

You know what I mean?

He's just doesn't ever mess with his diet and trains hard.

Has he ever talked to you about his stress levels in his past or currently?

No,

you know what?

I've never talked to him about that.

But if I think, look, I don't know Jay on an extremely personal level.

We talk sometimes.

He's always been very respectful to me and very polite and very helpful.

But

he almost feels like the kind of guy that manages stress very well.

Like for the amount of things that he has going on that I hear people talking about, it kind of feels like either he's put a really good team in place where he doesn't have to stress or he's just been doing it for so long that he's learned to kind of manage it and move through it.

Yeah, I feel the same way.

I don't think I've ever talked about this publicly, but the first time I met Jay was at a TG, the gym in San Diego.

And I see him about to walk up the stairs.

I'm already a young only athlete at that time, I think.

And I go up to him and I'm just like,

hey, Mr.

Jay, I am.

Hey, Mr.

Jay.

That's such a such an Asian thing to say.

Hey, Mr.

Jerry.

Pretty sure I bowed too.

And I was just like, man, you're, I don't know.

I don't even know what I said.

I think I just fucking, I think I just word vomited because I didn't even know what I was about to say, to be honest.

Like, I was just like, you're an inspiration.

I look up to you.

You're awesome.

Some shit like that.

Bro just looks at me calm, right?

Like, I don't, I don't even hear his breathing.

Yeah.

He just looks at me and his eyebrows are like this.

And I'm just like, he just looks me down and up and goes,

thank you.

And then just walks upstairs.

And I'm like, wow, this guy fucking hates me.

No, he fucking hates my guts.

No, he said,

I think Jay, honestly, you know, John Meadows used to say it, John, John's my fucking idol or my mentor, but

John used to always say that Jay has created the blueprint for all of bodybuilding.

If you want to be a successful bodybuilder, if you want to be a successful bodybuilder on and off the stage, Jay has created the blueprint.

And what I mean by that, by the story you just told is,

I don't know, he didn't, maybe he didn't give you the response you wanted, but he still took the time to stand there, let you talk and say thank you.

Yeah.

Well, here's, here's what I have to say to that: is

exactly what you said is like, he is like the blueprint.

After that, after that time, I think it was like a year later, maybe two years later, but we like met up again at like the young alley.

I don't know, it was like a young alley.

It was like the first young allay like

expo that they threw for themselves or something because young LA is so sick.

sick.

Just kidding, love you, Gary.

And

I just

like, I think I'm talking in a group.

I don't remember who's in the group.

I don't know if it, if Shizzy's in the group or not, but I'm talking in a group and Jay comes up and starts talking to them.

And, you know, I'm here.

I'm just like fucking intimidated because it's Jay Cutler next to me.

Right.

And they're just chatting up.

And then out of nowhere, Jay goes, oh, yeah, that's awesome.

Nihil, you should have him come on your podcast.

And I was like, the fuck?

Not only does this guy know who I am, but he knows I have a podcast.

And it just blew my freaking mind.

And I guess like fast forward a couple of years, like Jay has literally been one of the most nicest father figures to like all of us younger athletes.

Every time we're...

Every time we're having like a shoot together or anything like that, Jay will literally ask us like, how are we doing?

How are we feeling?

Are we competing anytime soon?

Like he literally acts like a dad.

And I think that's something that's so cool about him is like, you know, he's done all of these things in the industry, but he also cares about all these people.

And I think that karma comes back to him is, you know, just as much as he cares about these people.

I think it's genuine, too.

I don't think it's an, I don't think it's an act.

I don't think it's contrived.

I don't think it's like, oh, I got to do this because I'm Jay.

I think he actually fucking cares.

Like he sent me a,

he sent me a voice note just a couple of weeks ago about the podcast and about

how lucky we are that we get to do this.

And I'm like,

we're not, I'm like, we're not peers.

I'm like, you're Jay.

And I'm, and I, and I'm here.

You're fucking Jay, right?

But he's talking to me like we're peers.

And I'm like, this is fucking nuts.

So he has that effect on people.

Cause I remember the first time I met him, he was fucking wide as a house.

Like I met, I met JJ, right?

Cannonball fucking delts, four feet wide, five foot six or seven, whatever he is.

And I got a picture.

And I said, hey, you know, Jay, I was,

I forget what it was.

I think I was with Muscle Tech at the time or I was talking to him.

I hadn't signed yet.

So I was able to cut the line.

So I got, sorry to everybody I cut in front of, but I was able to cut the line.

And I met Jay and we took a picture and then he asked me my name and stuff and whatever.

And I fucked off.

The next year at the Arnold, I go back and I still don't think I was signed yet, but I still know.

Anyway, I get to the front of the line.

I meet Jay again.

And he's like, hey, Fouad, how'd your year go?

How was your off-season?

And I'm like, how the fuck does this guy remember me?

I'm like, I'm not even, I don't think I was a pro yet.

And I'm like, how does this guy even know who I am?

And it was really fucking strange to me that he,

like, I'm really bad with names.

I'll remember people from one show to the next, but I'm really bad with names.

And I'm like, how does this guy remember everybody's name?

He must meet, you know, Jay has always been notorious for being the first guy at the expo and the last guy out the door.

And how do you must meet 10,000, 20,000 people while you're here?

How do you remember everybody's name?

So,

and this is what I mean.

When I say blueprint, I don't mean just the eating and the training.

It's everything.

He just, he has it all down, you know, and I don't know if that's something somebody taught him or it's just in him.

I don't know, but

it's the way to go for sure.

He's got to figure it out.

I think that's something special, too, that he has that I know you've talked about in your podcast as well.

And I've talked about with a lot of like top coaches.

And it's just the whole like, you know, if you're enjoying it, then you're probably going to have a better physique.

If you're stressed out, then it's probably going to show in your physique.

Yeah.

I mean,

sorry, go ahead.

No, I just, I've found myself in this last year realizing that I have to actually put an effort to relax.

Like, I actually have to mentally tell myself, like,

fucking relax, you know, but not like with that kind of talk.

Well, I mean, look, I can tell you this.

And Hani could probably back me up on this because, you know, Hani coached me for two or three years.

And John, you know, God love him.

If he was still here, he'd probably tell you the same thing.

I was never, I think I've only said this one other time publicly because it feels like an arrogant thing to say, but I'll say it now, anyways.

When I look back at my physique, I think I could have been much, much better than I was

if my mental state, if I could have controlled my mental state.

And part of it is what you're talking about.

That, that thing where you're like overly hard on yourself and overly unsure, it can ruin a fucking physique, man.

And one of the main people,

one of the most notable people I'll talk about is Cedric McMillan.

He was a good friend of mine.

God rest his soul.

He was anxiety-ridden.

And

people would always be like, well, why can't he get in shape?

Why can't he get in shape?

It's my belief that he was just so...

hard on himself that his body just wouldn't relax.

Because if you look at him from when he turned pro, he was in really good shape when he turned pro.

But at that time, there was zero expectation of him.

The problem is when he turned pro and everybody saw his physique and how classic it looked, people were like, oh, this is the guy.

This is going to be the guy.

This is going to guy.

This is the guy.

Because at the time, bodybuilding had bigger guts, wider waists.

And Cedric all of a sudden shows up with this beautifully aesthetic flowing physique at six feet, six foot one or whatever.

And people were like, that guy's going to change bodybuilding.

And I think that pressure probably, he carried it because he used to call himself when he would sign his autographs, he would say, Cedric, the one, Macmillan.

So I think he really

believed that about himself, but also had trouble fulfilling that vision that other people had for him.

So yeah, it can be, it can be very detrimental to a physique to overthink.

I agree with that.

I think when I got my pro card, that's when I finally like released that I was ever going to get my pro card in the weirdest way.

Yeah.

I was just like, I just released all expectations and I'm just like, it's never going to happen.

And then when they called out my name, I was kind of in denial for like two weeks before I sank in.

Yeah.

Did you have shows before that where you almost came close but didn't win?

Only one show.

I got fifth.

Okay.

And that kind of thing.

So why did you have this thought then if you had never

like the reason I'm going to I'm going to go somewhere with it because I have a similar story, but why did you have such low self-belief if you had never come close before?

Like, you basically did one show and then won.

Well, because it took me nine shows to get my pro card.

Oh, but it was only one, it was only one national show is what you're saying.

It was only no, no, no.

It was five national shows.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, okay.

And the fifth national show,

I finally got my pro card.

But

it's, I was also like, I was natural for like the first two or three natural shows.

Okay.

And so like seeing the people I was up against and not really wanting to take PEDs, also having like a fear of needles and all this ridiculous shit, just like, I was just like,

you know, I would get 16th plus place and it would just really put me down.

Yeah.

But there had to be something in the back of your mind that said to you,

I'm not doing what these guys are doing.

You know what I mean?

Like that's like when I like when I started, the reason I started taking gear is because I'm like, My training partner, well, somebody I looked up to at the time was literally like,

you're not going to win if you don't do this.

So if you want to do it do it right or don't do it right

So you had to have some kind of saving grace in your mind that you were like well I'm not doing what these guys are doing So

you know, I can't expect to beat them like did that ever cross your mind

Hold on, can you give me one second?

I'm gonna run to a restaurant.

That is the best feeling in the universe

I Don't think I've ever had one podcast without a break So you just hit record and then you just edit it all afterwards?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I have a I have an editing team that will like switch the views.

Really?

If that makes sense, yeah.

Cause normally when I I started my podcast and doing live podcasts, because I liked it, I liked it in person, way better in person.

Yeah.

But, you know, I'd have three camera views, so they would just edit the camera views.

Where are you?

Where do you live?

Like, what city?

I'm in LA.

Oh, so you have a lot of access to various people there?

I do, but it's way too expensive for me.

So

my people are actually in Sri Lanka.

No, no, I mean, like, I don't mean access to people helping you with the podcast.

I mean, you have access to guests to come see you in person.

Yeah, to an extent.

It's an easier hub for people because, like, a lot of people will visit LA for various reasons.

And then I can, like, hopefully connect with them then.

Right.

But

still, bro, like, getting in-guest guests is like the hardest thing.

Is it really?

It's the hardest thing, yeah.

I mean, like,

I'm sure like as I continue growing and then also be able to like, you know, pay for their trips and everything, it's a little bit different right right um but i

don't think i make enough money to be able to pay for everyone's trip right yeah i couldn't i couldn't do that i mean like i'm in windsor ontario which is right across the border from detroit not a lot of people are coming here so that's why i've i everything i do is virtual because i'm like first of all i don't have the money to fly people in or i don't want to spend the money to fly people in because i feel like these people can still get value virtually but also even if i did want to spend the money people are like what am i going to to do in windsor or detroit you know what i mean so i'm like yeah so it's kind of like you know i i i thought about moving to toronto just to have that more of like a hub like you said

or i've batted around the idea of texas so i don't know but we'll see i think texas could be pretty awesome though for sure well you left there so how do you are you back you're not back in texas you're still in la no i'm not going back you didn't like texas no no i mean texas is fun but uh my parents live there now so i'm gonna stay away

okay

It is pretty cool, though.

I mean, it is extremely progressive, but I mean, is it all the podcasters?

I've thought of Austin.

I like the idea of Austin, but

is it progressive to the point where

there's like

gay pride flags everywhere?

Or is it just not that I care?

I'm just saying, like, I'm trying to figure out how progressive it is.

Like, is it like,

is everybody using pronouns there, or is it like still kind of normal?

I mean, to be honest, I'm not the best person to ask because I don't really visit there, nor do I live there.

But from what I've been told, it's

almost more progressive than LA,

which is kind of shocking.

So I don't know.

Maybe I'll pick a different city.

Yeah.

Anyway.

It seems cool, though.

I wanted to ask, so

what do you feel like was the biggest mistake you made back then when you first started PEDs and bodybuilding?

Well,

if I have to be dead honest,

which is something I don't want to tell myself, but I wish I would have done a better job of being a little bit more strict with my diet.

I think,

look, I don't think steroids are healthy.

I think there's probably safer doses you can take, and there's a lot of things you can do to mitigate some of the effects of steroids, like choosing the right ones that maybe aren't as toxic and taking them in lower doses and things like that but for me

if you if you

for me i feel like the food i chose to eat and the way i chose to eat it did more damage than the drugs almost or i don't want to say that maybe more so the combination of the two together uh did a lot of damage so do you mean like damage to your blood work or damage to your mental health no damage to my blood work

no damage to my blood work damage to my blood work Like when I think about my kidneys,

my kidney issues came from having high blood pressure.

And

high blood pressure came from shitty diet,

maybe too much drugs, being too heavy in the offseason.

Like I would get up to 310 pounds, 300 pounds.

And it wasn't horrible looking.

Like you can still kind of see my abs, but it was probably still around

anywhere between 13 and 15%, which some people think is okay, but to me, it's probably a little bit too much.

So I think I could have stayed a little bit leaner.

I caught it by probably knowing, no, knowing what I know now then,

I probably could have taken less drugs.

I probably could have taken less toxic drugs.

I think through most of my 20s, my off-season cycles always had included an oral of some sort, like a D-ball or an Anadrol, which will wreak havoc on your fucking system.

There's a lot of things I could have done differently that people know now that just weren't part of normal culture,

normal bodybuilding culture back in the day.

Like, look,

we have advanced so far since I was in my prime that someone like Samson, for example,

is

basing his protocols and hormone optimization on Merrick Health.

So, Merrick Health is a company I work with that Samson's also sponsored by, that Ian's also sponsored by.

I think Derek Moore Plates, Derek from Moore Plates, Moore Digits is either the whole owner or part owner.

But these guys, we've reached such a level in bodybuilding now where some of these pros are having their hormones guided directly by their blood work.

So if you,

you literally can't think of a

healthier or cleaner way or safer way to do this other than what they're doing.

Like, that's the safest way to do it.

Because whatever trend you see in your blood work, you're going to see it, you're going to catch it early.

So like, so like my blood pressure, for example, had I had somebody watching over me in my 20s or late 20s, my blood pressure, they would have caught that shit early.

And I could have started taking an ARB or

something of that kind to lower the blood pressure, which would have saved.

What happened to me was I think the first time anybody told me about my blood pressure, I was 31 years old and that was right around the prime of my career.

I really started to get some traction on stage.

And the doctor was like, you got to retire.

Your blood pressure is too high.

You're going to die.

And I'm like, I'm not fucking retiring.

What are you talking about?

I left that guy's office crying.

I thought my career was over.

The problem at that time was I was too stubborn and didn't, I just kind of wanted to bury my head in the sand and I wanted to compete and I didn't care and I didn't go get a second opinion.

I was like, fuck that guy.

He doesn't know what he's talking about.

I feel fine.

Not knowing that you could feel fine and have super high blood pressure and not know it.

But at the time, like I said, these things like people talk about now, like it seems so wild what I'm saying, because nowadays, getting your blood pressure done, like checking your blood pressure and getting your blood work done is a totally fucking normal thing to do.

Every serious competitive lifter I know is getting blood work done at least once or twice a year.

And a lot of them now have like a life source blood pressure monitor at home that they check their own blood pressure.

So,

fast forward like three, four years when I met John Meadows and he was like, hey, hey, you know, you don't have to retire.

You can take a blood pressure medication and still compete.

It'll just keep you in check.

So that's finally when I went to see a doctor and I was like, hey,

can you check my blood pressure?

Can you prescribe me something?

But by that time, it had already done quite a bit of damage to my kidneys because high blood pressure is kind of the number one

issue with kidneys because nobody feels their

high blood pressure.

They let it go for for a while and that blood pressure damages that filter that's part of your kidney, right?

So

yeah, so I did a little bit of damage and then John kind of put me on to blood pressure meds, which I asked my doctor about and then he had a new doctor and he said, yeah, we can do that.

And then kind of I started running blood pressure meds ever since then.

But yeah, going back to your question,

I would have ate better because there was a lot of binge nights where I was like, you know, back in the day, bulking was bulking.

Like now, now when people talk about bulking, it's social media bulking.

So it's like, you're kind of bulking, but you're still kind of lean.

Back then, bulking was like,

it didn't matter what you ate.

It didn't matter how fat you got.

There was no social media.

You're like, I just want to get as heavy as I can.

So I would have done that differently, and I probably would have taken less drugs.

Yeah, I've heard Lee Priest's bulking phases.

It's inspiring.

I mean, that's where I got

it.

I mean, that's where I got myself mine from.

I'm like, fuck it.

Look at Lee Priest.

Look how good he looks.

Well, plus, I mean, look, there were coaches at the time.

Like,

look,

Chad Nichols is a great coach.

And

obviously, he coached Ronnie Coleman and Nashville somebody and Flex Wheeler.

And he's got the list is endless.

And I turned pro with Chad, so I know.

how knowledgeable he is.

But at the same time,

everything he did was very big.

So like, if you're eating, we're going to eat big.

So offseasons were like

six, seven, thousand calories, not clean food always.

And we're going to just put on some fucking weight and we're going to lift heavy and we're going to grow.

It's a very like old school,

like you would never catch coaches nowadays, like a Patrick Tour, a Stefan, or.

Definitely not Patrick for sure.

Definitely not Patrick.

You would not catch them making these type of

diets and protocols.

So things have changed really, really dramatically.

So

sitting here and saying I would do things differently is easy, but only because we've learned so much.

So

had I known then what I know now, I would have done things differently.

When you said, for example, like lower your doses previously, you've talked to a lot of guests.

as I have, and like we both know that it, you know, it varies so much.

But

what are some examples of that?

Or what are some, I guess, ranges that you'd say?

Because I think a lot of people that listen to these podcasts, like, that's why I started this podcast in the first place, too.

I know it's named a crazy name, Transparent, but I named that because

I started PEDs the fucking wrong way.

You know, like the wrong way.

How did you start them?

What's the wrong way?

My current coach was pushing me to take PEDs and I didn't ever want to take them.

I didn't want to take care of it whatsoever.

But I kept losing, so I got desperate.

And I was doing the thing where like you, I cared about it so much, like in the middle of the night, I'd like dreamt that I got my pro card and I would like wake up.

I would wake up in tears because I'd realize like it was a fucking dream.

I didn't actually get my pro card.

So

my coach at the time pushed me to take certain things.

And so I ended up just taking this pill that he had me take, which was literally an estrogen blocker and an AI.

Okay.

So like my third national show, I think, I was literally natural, except I was on freaking like Novadex and Arebadex.

It's even worse.

It gets drier.

Right.

It was fucking stupid.

Smaller, smaller, and dry.

Yeah.

So, I mean, and then that just kept going.

And then finally, I got my pro card on Windstroll and Halo Testing.

Okay.

But obviously, no tests, no injections.

Something silly.

Yeah.

So, um, I just want to touch on something, though.

You said that, like, it's a negative, and it's not a negative.

Like, you said to me,

I wanted it so bad, I got desperate.

That's not really desperate.

That's just doing what you got to do to win.

Like, there's a, there's a, like, there's a formula.

Like, you can,

you can ride a high horse as long as you want.

And I'm not talking about you personally.

I'm talking about, like, in general.

In general, a guy can ride a high horse as long as he wants.

But there are things that are physiologically not possible.

So, unless you're one of the one in a billion people that's a fucking outlier, like a Michael Hearn, if Mike O'Hearn's natural, you're just not going to be able to compete.

So, when you say to me, I was desperate, I say you you were smart.

You know what I mean?

Like, I look at it a little differently.

I think you should too, because it's not desperation.

You're like,

I got to do what the sport calls for, or else I got to pick a different sport.

Yeah.

I appreciate that.

But I think my perspective is

while like I knew I had to do what I needed to do in order to win,

the desperation part is just accepting.

what this coach is advising me to do without

caring enough enough to take the time to do the research, without caring enough to educate myself,

figure out what even these

AIs.

So you're not saying I was desperate, so I took steroids.

You're saying I was desperate, so I blindly just did whatever the fuck I had to do.

Yeah.

Or I was told to do.

Yeah, I get it.

I get it.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sorry.

That's the basis for why I wanted to start my podcast in the first place.

Right.

I think

this whole getting your blood work done, monitoring your lipids, monitoring your kidneys, monitoring every single marker that you possibly can, doing multiple scans throughout your lifetime.

All of these things are probably the most important thing by far when you're doing this whatsoever.

Yeah, I mean, look, I've had a number of people say to me, Well, blood work doesn't show everything.

And I'm like, You're a thousand percent right.

You could do your blood work today, it could be a hundred percent perfect, and you could die tomorrow.

You could have a heart attack tomorrow, and you wouldn't know.

But

are you way fucking better off getting your blood work done?

Yes, so yeah, there are always flukes that are going to happen, but

and I'm probably preaching to the wrong people or maybe people that don't care.

But

if you don't want to end up with serious problems like me,

you need to catch the trend ahead of time.

So, for example, if you say, and I'm going to go back to your gear question in a second, I just want to touch on this real quickly.

For example, when you talk about

an EGFR on a kidney, on a blood work, for people who don't know, that measures the function of your kidneys.

It's one of the measures, right?

Well,

let's say a good number would be 80 and above, 90 and above, depending on your age, right?

If you do your blood work and you see 90, you're like, oh, my kidneys are good.

If you do your blood work the next, you know, once a, twice a year, the next six months, and you're like, it's 89, you're like, hmm, all right, well, I don't need to worry.

It's only 89.

Maybe I didn't drink enough water that day or something, right?

Then the next six months, you do it and it's 88, and then it's 86, and then it's 84.

You're like, okay, wait a minute.

This no longer is

I was dehydrated, or this is now a trending in the wrong.

So just so people understand, the point of blood work is not to catch that one snapshot in time and then decide what you're going to do with your life.

It's to create

a record over the course of years so that you can catch things on a trend before they go too far.

So anyway, so going back to your question, you're asking me about low doses or high doses in what regard?

Like when you stated

one of the things that people can do, for example, is

say for example, lower dose.

I'm just wondering like what was running through your head and like when you've talked to these hundreds of people over the last few years, I know you've taken your own doses that are for you.

Other people have had taken their own doses for them.

There's a lot of discussion about dosages in the industry.

And the ones in Reels and TikTok comments are, I think, especially ridiculous.

But what do you think,

what runs through your head?

What kind of ranges do you think run through your head when you think that?

So I'm going to give you ranges in a second.

I just want to say this one thing really quickly that I learned not so long ago that I don't think people will understand.

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What 250 milligrams of test does to me might be completely different from what it does to you.

Yep.

100 milligrams.

So when people talk about dosages, they need to know that.

Because

I can, I know some very, very high-level pros that if I told you what they were taking, you'd be like, you're fucking full of shit.

But the problem that people don't understand is it doesn't matter what they're taking.

It matters what their test levels look like from what they took.

So you could take 250 milligrams and your free testosterone could be through the fucking roof.

I could take 250 milligrams and it might not make my

testosterone budge.

So it's really a moot point for me to tell you

I was so crazy at one point, I took 2,500 milligrams a week.

of test.

It doesn't fucking matter because somebody else may take 500 and get the same result in their blood work.

This is why, and I hate to go back to it, but this is why like guided optimization makes sense because now you're like, I'm not guessing.

My coach told me to take 500 milligrams.

So, okay, I'm going to take 500 milligrams.

But then let's say you stop making progress and your coach says to you, you know what?

Let's bump it to 750.

If you had done your blood work and seen your test levels at 500, you would know if you need to go to 750.

Without your coach, if your coach said that to you, you'd be like, well, wait a minute.

My test is like 2,000.

I don't think I need more tests.

I don't think that's why I'm not growing, right?

Because the upper level of normal is like 680 or something like that.

So if your test level on your blood work is 2,000 or 3,000, you're like, I know I'm good for tests.

I don't think we need to increase that.

I think that helps already because I think a lot of people don't even know what to look for in the super physiological range.

Right.

Right.

But that's why, and that's why

either talking to somebody that can teach you what those ranges look like or working with a company that can do it for you, one way or another,

like when you say to me, what would you have done differently?

If this, if I had had this knowledge then,

this is one thing I would have done differently.

Because

I

flippantly increased dosages.

It was more of an ambitious thing.

Like, oh, well,

it took me four tries to turn pro.

So on the fourth try, I'm like, well, fuck this.

I'm going to bump this shit up.

I didn't win because I got bigger.

I won because I got harder.

So

the amount of tests didn't make the difference, right?

But you just get in this zone where you're like, I got a place better.

I'm a pro now.

I got a place better in the pros.

I'm so close to winning.

I'm second place.

Maybe I need more test.

Maybe I need more anadrol.

Maybe I need more trend.

Maybe I need more.

And you start playing this fucking game with yourself

that really is

extremely false and is not the way to go about it and is not the fucking recipe.

And I can tell you from my own personal experience, I've gone way up with doses and I've come down to a sweet spot.

And going way up did not yield any more results than that sweet spot.

Where,

and the only way I found that sweet spot was not by blood work because I didn't know about that kind of thing yet.

The way I found that sweet spot was I just kept going up.

Every year I would go up by like 250 milligrams.

You know what?

I'm going to do a little bit more.

I'm going to do a little bit more.

I'm going to do a little bit more.

And every year I would get a little bit bigger and I'm like, okay, it's working.

It's working.

I probably would have got bigger anyway.

Just the time in the gym with the amount of food probably would have yielded those five pounds of muscle I was putting on every year.

But in my head, I was like, no, no, it's because I did more gear.

It's because I did more gear.

It's because I did more gear.

Until I got to a point where I'm like, I'm just really fucking watery.

Yeah.

I'm really like, I'm taking so much fucking tests now.

I'm just a water bag.

And I don't feel any bigger and I don't feel any stronger.

And so, you know what?

Maybe this is too far.

So I started to come back down.

I went all the way up and I came back down and I landed at 1250.

I'm like, 1250 is where I feel like I'm my strongest.

I feel like I'm developing, but not getting like watery and gross.

I'm not getting any side effects.

I'm not getting any acne.

I'm not getting any gyno.

I'm not getting, okay, 1250.

But that was a trial and error thing.

You don't have to do that anymore.

You can actually find out.

Yep.

You know what I mean?

So

that's one thing I would have done differently.

Second thing is I would have probably stayed away from the more toxic drugs.

Like nowadays, you were just telling me your stack earlier.

Nowadays, the safer use model is a very kind of popular thing.

A lot of guys are using Mastron.

A lot of guys are using Primo.

These are known as like safer drugs with less side effects.

Even though I don't know how true that is, because if you're taking Primo as a safe drug, but you're taking a thousand milligrams a week of it, it still might be affecting you in some way.

I don't know.

I'm not a pharmacologist.

But

back in the day, it was Anadrol, D-ball, lots of EQ, lots of trend.

This stuff, lots of Winstrawl.

This stuff fucking just kills you inside.

Yeah.

So,

and

for a couple coaches I worked with, a lot of AIs.

And you know, when you're taking like a ton of AIs and really blocking estrogen, that kills your cholesterol, your good cholesterol.

So

there's a number of things I would have done differently.

You could go down the list and I would have been like, I probably wouldn't have used orals.

I probably would have used less test.

I probably would have used less EQ if I used EQ at all.

I probably would have saved trend for the last six weeks for a show.

There's a whole list I could go down and tell you

where things were done wrong.

Is that orals

not orals in the offseason?

Or would you still have taken orals when you competed at the show?

So

orals in the offseason were D-ball and Anadraw.

One or the other, not both.

Orals pre-contest, usually Winstraw, Anivar.

If I got close to the contest, maybe some Halo.

And And then that's not including my AIs, like my fucking Nelvedex, my Aromacin, my Arimadex, Letrazole, whatever I was combining.

That whole cocktail was probably very detrimental to my health.

Because nowadays, when you talk to coaches, the ones that are doing well in the sport, their guys are using a minimal amount of fucking AI.

They're not using combinations of AI because you don't want to.

We like that so much better.

Listen, now we...

Yeah, now we've all learned you don't need to block estrogen completely.

you actually need a little bit of estrogen for your body to function properly for your muscles to look right for you not to look for you to have that volume look that people are looking for so and just for just strictly for health purposes so

um

yeah i don't know there's dude there's a lot of stuff and i think the oral the orals pre-contest i probably would have

saved for the very very end i probably would have saved them for like the four to six week mark you know some of the stuff i started 10 weeks out and i'm like it's just not necessary It's just not, it's not necessary.

So there's a lot of little changes I would have made.

I felt some of the same experiences myself already, and I haven't really done that much.

I haven't really competed that much in the industry, but I've already noticed myself in my last few shows that I have felt like I ran things higher than I even needed to.

Like to the point where, like, because I'm sure you can agree, like, classic and open have such a drastically different look.

Yes.

And I don't know.

I've heard some people say otherwise, and I don't think it's true.

I believe there is a difference of what bodybuilders are doing in classic versus what people are doing in open.

Careful.

You don't think so?

Depends on the person.

Depends on the person.

I can tell you for certain that there are some open pros doing less than all the guys in the top spots of classic.

This is what I'm trying to express to you.

The level of mass is not directly correlated with the level of drugs.

And this is a common misconception.

Look, even amongst people that are told this on a regular basis, I'm told this on a regular basis.

You've probably heard people say this a number of times.

Somehow, your brain still goes back to, well, that guy's way fucking bigger.

He must be doing a way, a ton more drugs.

Well,

that's not quite my thought process.

Um, so I'm trying to think of a way to explain this properly.

It's not a big change in the drug use, and it's not drug use specifically that I'm talking about.

Okay.

And I disagree that just because they're bigger, they should be doing more drugs.

That's not true, right?

If you're bigger, it's because you have been doing all the shit that you should be doing for longer, in my opinion.

Yeah, you're eating more.

Yeah.

Right.

Muscle mass is over time.

That's my, that's my perception.

I agree.

Um, but I had some conversations from my conversations with like Patrick Tor and Stefan Kienzel, a lot of these other top coaches.

And my own experiences, what I feel like I've seen is Stefan and Patrick both said in their own words

that

too many drugs can ruin a physique, can

change your proportions, can blur lines.

And

I

know that open cares more about fullness and size, while classic cares more about conditioning on stage.

Specifically on stage.

But be careful because correlation is not causation.

So

you're right about what you just said, but that doesn't mean it's because there's more drugs or more variety of drugs.

The look you have to have on stage.

in classic is very different than the look you have to have on stage in open and what i mean by that is not the look as far as criteria goes.

I mean the peak.

Like I was with Chris.

I went with Ian

the day, I think it was the day before the Classic Olympia to see Chris.

And I was fortunate enough to be there with Ian, so I got to see him backstage.

He's fucking flat.

This is the day before.

He's flat.

He's like,

I don't know, not flat flat, but like he still had a long way to go before he was like blasting full.

And you saw some of that when he did Prague, right?

You saw the difference in the fullness and the

crispness of his skin and

the depth of the striations.

That's the difference between

classic and open.

And that's not because of drugs.

That's because the judges want a different look.

If an open bodybuilder decided to come in like Chris

and he came in flat and sharp and like really etched in, he would lose the show.

He would lose the show because all the other open guys are going to be full and fucking round.

Right.

Right.

So it's not necessarily because there's more drugs.

It's because the peak is different for both classes.

So like when I, when I think of classic, I think of the bodybuilders from the 90s.

If you think of

open bodybuilding in the early 90s, 90 to 93,

think about the way Kevin Lavroni looked on stage.

If you want to pull up a picture and your editors can add it here or something, think about the way Flex Wheeler looked or Kevin Lavroni looked on stage in 92, 93.

If you compare that to a classic guy now, it's almost identical peak.

They have a flatter look, the striations are deeper, and the crispness of the skin is drier.

But that's because the judges wanted that back then.

They wanted the open bodybuilders to be flat, crisp, and just extremely detailed.

Judges aren't looking for that now.

Judges want the guy to be conditioned, low body fat, but full and round, right?

So if you get a bodybuilder that's carrying 250 plus pounds of muscle and you fill him out, he's never going to have the striations

that a classic guy will have.

And like I said, that was evident with Chris himself because Chris's peak at the Olympia looks drastically different than Chris's peak at Prague.

Yeah, it does.

Right.

So this is kind of the point I'm trying to make.

I think it's good that you made that distinction because I think that's true too.

But I think I haven't been able to really describe

my perspective too well.

Cause the thing is

there, I don't believe when I said there's like a difference,

I didn't state that the difference was purely just doses or purely just amount.

because that's not true.

But

from

my own, well, I haven't gotten to there with my own experience, but from talking to a lot of coaches and talking to a lot of athletes,

I feel like there is a difference in the amount of

it.

Seems like most of the conclusions come to the reason why there has been growing guts has been more so because of food volume and GI, mixed with potentially, according to Stefan and

Patrick, potentially drugs.

I think truth comes first.

I agree with

all.

Yeah.

Sorry, go ahead.

So, and I noticed in classic, you know, people care less about getting as big as possible because you got a weight cap, you know?

And so, what's the most optimal way for you to have the best physique on stage in the very end if you think about the long term?

It's calculating yourself to build mass at a rate where your gut never gets bigger or your waistline never gets bigger.

You know, it's like I only have 20 pounds left to go.

Whereas for open,

that cap isn't there.

So I think the way that they

do this is slightly different.

Like their mindset is slightly different.

And look,

I'm not going to

talk to you like you're naive or like you try and pull the wool over anybody's eyes.

There are bodybuilders, open bodybuilders, that are going to do GH and insulin and fucking

thousands of milligrams a week and do everything under the sun.

But I will ask you this.

Have you noticed a difference in guts in the open class from the early 2000s or mid-2000s to now?

Like if you took Ronnie Jay's era,

which is my era,

and you compared it to the bodybuilders of today, what is the one thing you see that's different?

Yeah, I think that's also something that

I haven't mentioned is there's a huge difference now.

And I think there's also a difference, and that's because of people actively, these competitors actively trying to make sure those waists are smaller but can i express to you what i think that is yeah in my era like we just talked about earlier everything was extremes and the judges didn't give a fuck what your waist looked like it wasn't until 2012 i was at the athletes meeting

when or at the Arnold.

Sorry, it wasn't an athletes meeting.

I was at the Arnold when Arnold Schwarzenegger came out.

It was after the 2012 Arnold, which I did.

And he was like, these guts are fucking gross.

And you guys need to do something because nobody wants to look like this.

So from the year, I would say 97 was probably Dorian's biggest waist look.

From that time until about 2012, nobody gave a shit at what your waist looked like, how wide it was, how much it stuck out, because the name of the game was get as big as Ronnie and nothing else matters.

Right?

Like even if you look at Jay, if you look at Jay 2001, that's my favorite Jay.

His waist is like small and he's got a beautiful aesthetic shape, still massive, but like, right, 2009, 2009, he's much bigger, but so is his waist.

His waist is a little bit wider.

So I would give you that in that era, there was probably way more drugs being used than needs to be and way more than the classic guys are probably using.

What I would say to you now is, I bet you their protocols are much closer.

And the reason an open bodybuilder's waist is probably bigger is because they have to eat way more food.

Yeah.

I don't think the drug protocols are that different.

I still would give you the nod that maybe the open guy takes more or has a larger array of things he's using.

But I honestly, I wouldn't say it's that crazy for people to be like.

Like the difference in size is not the difference in drugs, I guess is what I'm trying to say, right?

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm glad you said that because I actually totally agree with that.

Yeah.

I agree that it's food volume is a big, big

nowadays.

Nowadays, it's like the, I think it's food.

I think if we had had this conversation 20 years ago, I would have to admit to you that you're right.

The drug protocols are

insane.

And I think that's one of the problems when people just discuss things in like comment sections.

And I think that's a thing.

That's like an issue is like when we're on social media, a lot of people take comments at face value and they just listen to comments, even if it's some freaking anonymous person.

and that's something that I think I like discussing a lot of my podcast is like you can't always just listen to these comments there's so many variables and sometimes these people are just grouping in like they're thinking about one time one person and then they're grouping in all open bodybuilders into that which is wrong like

this era for sure people are so much more conscious about their shape and it's a it's a nuanced conversation because it's not only that the judges have told people hey your fucking waists are in check or fucked or fucked up and you need to get them in check.

It's not just that.

It's a combination of all of it.

It's everything we've discussed in the last hour and a half.

It's guys are getting their blood work done.

Guys are worried about their health.

Guys are eating cleaner because they don't get as fat in the offseason.

Guys are taking less drugs because other guys have died and people are like, I don't want to fucking die when I'm 45 years old.

There are so many facets to why

things are different.

It's not, you know what I mean?

So

this isn't 2005 anymore where people are like, fuck it all.

I just want to be huge.

Right.

It's not, it's just not like that anymore.

And I think coming down to like my conclusion of all of this, I think my biggest, the point that I'm trying to make is that

we're all not taking as many drugs as

laymen people will accuse bodybuilders of taking.

Like the drug use isn't as crazy as some people will accuse them of.

Like people will say three grams plus 10 grams, some crazy shit.

And I'm just like, that's not true.

And by people saying that, I think that's a really dangerous thing because, you know, some kid could take you at face value, start putting his doses to multiple grams.

So I have a few things to say about that.

One, it comes down to people like me and you having podcasts and having professionals on,

like not just ourselves speaking, but other professionals and coaches on talking about these things.

There's a couple of things though.

It doesn't, what I've realized over the course of five years and having my podcast is it doesn't, it doesn't make as big a dent as you would think it would, having someone like Ian on come, come, come on and say, my, my normal dose was 700 milligrams a week of test.

It doesn't, you would think that that would make a massive dent, that 90% of the people would go, oh, okay, well, maybe I should lower my dose.

It's not.

It's like 20% of people believe him.

The rest think he's full of shit.

And there's a 20% on the other side who are like, I don't care if he's telling the truth or not.

I'm doing fucking 5,000 milligrams a week because

that's kind of the next facet I was going to talk about.

And I did this myself so I can say it.

Sometimes you get to a place where all you care about is winning

or being better.

And you're like, I'll fucking, that doctor told me to stop.

And I was like, I'm not fucking stopping.

I don't give a fuck what you say.

So I never blame people for not believing.

I never blame people for having ambition because I've been there.

I think my, and I never get upset about it because it's hard to believe.

Listen, it's hard for a person to sit there and go,

well, that guy took way less than I did and I look like shit.

Yeah.

Like that's hard for people to say.

So they have to, they have to have a reason, right?

Well, his genetics are better or he's taking way more than he's saying or they have to come up with these reasons, right?

Right.

So I don't ever get upset about it anymore.

My philosophy is I'm just going to keep saying it, keep talking about it, keep bringing on other people that will talk about it.

And eventually maybe that 20 or 30% will turn into 40 or 50 or 60, right?

Yeah.

It's kind of the same thing I've done with blood work.

Like we talk about blood work so much that it's just become part of normal discussion and bodybuilding, right?

It's like you see a trend in your blood work too, and you like figure out what might be wrong with you.

Hopefully people, hopefully we can all see a trend and all the experts that we're listening to, the people that we can find credibility and that we believe are telling the truth and be be like, wow, actually,

you know, you can be successful without ruining your blood work and blasting your socks off.

Right, right.

And something that I say in almost all my podcasts, too, which you already mentioned like 30 minutes ago or more, but in my own words, that I think what I would like someone who's viewing the podcast to think of, if they are like that person who

listens to Lee Priest saying that he like grew on 400 milligrams of tests and he's like, wow, well, I'm taking 800 and I feel like I look like shit.

yeah is like there's people that are prescribed 100 milligrams of tests for trt there's also people that are prescribed 200 to 250 milligrams of tests for trt right and sometimes their ranges are in the exact same place right same thing with any drug you know adderall some people aren't even prescribed adderall because they don't need it some people are prescribed 10 milligrams some people are prescribed 50.

right so to compare yourself and say

that

especially even just considering how short leap priest is right you know like there's going to be a drastic difference in the dose.

So just don't compare it because it literally makes no sense to you.

Well, the other thing is to like to touch on that, I know we talked, this is a really hard thing for people to grasp because

if I drink a cup of coffee and you drink a cup of coffee, we both got 200 milligrams of caffeine.

We should feel exactly the same.

That's kind of what we're taught.

So it's hard to say to me, you took 200 milligrams and I took 200, 200 milligrams, but it didn't yield the same results for me

in my blood work.

That's really hard for people to grasp that that 200 milligram shot is going to affect you differently than it might affect me and might affect differently than a third person.

Now, the other aspect of it, too, that becomes very confusing for people is something Stefan talks about all the time.

And I'm sure you've heard the term hyper-responder.

I didn't know that was a real thing.

It is a real thing.

And Stefan, boss of Outlaw, the coach of Martin and dozens of other fucking people now,

talks about being a hyper-tolerator.

And we just talked about it on my podcast today.

And what he means by that is how fast your body clears the drug so that you don't get the negative effects of it.

So, you know, some, you see some guys out there taking a thousand milligrams of test a week and they're fucking riddled with acne.

They have gyno.

Their liver enzymes are fucked and their body's just destroyed by a thousand milligrams.

And then I got fucking friends who've been doing steroids.

I got friends who've been doing steroids for 40 fucking years and their blood work is pristine.

So So there's a thing that Stefan calls a hyper tolerator, which I agree with wholeheartedly.

And that's what you can take in, what your body can tolerate, and what your body expels and gets rid of, and how fast it does it.

Because a healthier body is a better body, right?

So if I can tolerate, if I can tolerate trend, I'm going to look better than you if you can't tolerate it.

You see what I'm saying?

So all these things kind of go into play.

So when people say to me, well, I want to be as big as you.

What was your test dose?

It's fucking irrelevant.

It doesn't matter because whatever I took might affect you 100% differently.

So, I really like that about the tolerable.

I think a lot of

genetics enough.

And something I've talked about a lot in my podcast that I really enjoy because I haven't heard a lot of people do this, but I got my raw data from 23andMe and place it.

My friend placed it into Prometheus, and it gave me a huge rundown on my

genetics and my genetic predispositions.

Okay.

And, bro, you'll be like shocked to find, like, I think everybody should, because I don't think these things are very expensive or hard to do and take much time.

I think everybody, especially if you're a bodybuilder and you're going to be dealing with these things, should definitely get their genetics done just to see.

Because sometimes your parents won't even tell you.

What's running in your family.

Sometimes they don't even know.

Right, right, right.

Like, I hate to bring it up like this because, you know, he was such a great guy, but like geosthetics, for example, like his aunt died from the same thing that he did.

Makes me wonder, like, if we knew some of these things that run in our genes, I feel like we would be able to take some precautions ahead of time to make sure that those things don't happen.

And so,

dude, there's just like so many things you'll find in like your genetic data that will like surprise you because you'll be like, wow, I actually felt this from over 10 years.

For example, I felt like I responded higher to higher reps slightly more than others.

I have more type 1 fibers, fibers at least according to my genetics i'm better as an endurance athlete right just one small simple example but then there's so much with like my heart my kidneys and all these things that are also in there yeah so i mean there's a couple things i would say about that one it's interesting to talk about genetics in these terms because people usually in the bodybuilding world only talk about genetics in terms of getting big or getting shredded.

Like you always see a guy that's like jacked with beautiful symmetry.

You're like, oh, look at his genetics because you're only looking at the genetics of his muscle insertions or muscle volume.

volume.

Or you'll see a guy that's like peeled out of his fucking mind.

You'll be like, oh man, that guy's skin's so thin.

Like that's a genetic gift.

But nobody ever talks about that guy's been running gear for 20 years and his fucking kidneys are perfect.

Like that's also a genetic trait, right?

But I also go back to like, you know, the Joaesthetics example and I think to myself, I literally know people that know that they have heart disease in their family and they don't care.

So

I think it may stop some people where other people might be like, this is what I want to do.

And I'm going to take the risk.

I don't think, I mean, maybe I'm naive, but I don't think anybody starts bodybuilding and starts taking steroids and doesn't understand that there's a risk.

But they do it anyway.

But they do it anyway.

Yeah.

Right.

So

I am happy, though, that like with this education, this knowledge, even though you say like people will do it anyways,

like

if I had this knowledge a long time ago, I would have

like, I'm going to be straight up honest.

Like, I hate to say, like, you know, you should be on all these medications or supplements, but the fact is if it helps you without hurting you,

then you should probably do whatever you know will at least help you in the long run, I think.

And, you know, I would have been on a straggler's fruit.

I would have been on azetamibe.

I would have monitored my blood pressure every day when I didn't.

I would have gotten my blood.

blood work done more regularly, but I have an echocardiogram tomorrow and a CAC scan tomorrow.

This will be my first echocardiogram.

And I just would have gotten all of these things sooner, honestly.

Yeah, you should get a calcium score too.

You can track that trend as well.

But

yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of things that we can all look back at.

The good thing is that

we're learning now and we can pay it forward to the next generation.

So I think that's kind of how I look at it.

And hopefully people will listen.

I think the people that are serious

will listen.

And then there's the people that won't, but we we can't concern ourselves too much with those people.

Yeah.

Do you mind?

Are you done to do this Q ⁇ A real quick?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tons of questions.

I'm not surprised.

Really?

Yeah.

Of course.

That's good to know.

CM Dunn asks, in your peak bodybuilding career, did you ever think about your next steps after retirement?

Not at my peak.

No.

I would consider my peak somewhere between 30 and 32.

And then it's weird.

I kind of peaked again at 35.

I didn't start thinking about retirement and what I would do after until 36 or 37.

So I think when I was really humming along, I didn't really think about it too much.

And as soon as I saw, I saw like a crack in the armor, I was like, okay, I need to worry about what's next.

And then it's funny, worrying about it is there, but it doesn't mean you're going to find anything.

Like the podcast was a fucking accident.

You know what I mean?

Like, I started hostile right there in my basement on a fucking poker table.

I started selling t-shirts.

And the podcast wasn't even supposed to be connected to hostile in any way.

It was just supposed to be for fun.

I didn't know either of these things would blow up the way they have.

So

you know, the truth is when I was done bodybuilding, I remember sitting at the dinner table with my family.

And I'll make this quick because I know you probably got a bunch of questions.

And I was going to retire.

I'm like, I'm going to retire and I'm going to walk away from bodybuilding completely.

I don't want to be part of it anymore.

It's going to be too depressing for me.

I need to just erase that part of my life.

I'm going to go, I'm going to go sell homes.

I'm going going to be a real estate agent.

And that was my plan.

And I did go through a couple years of depression after retirement.

But my brother said to me at that dinner, my brother that I'm in business with right now, my brother said to me at that dinner, he's like, it would be a shame to throw away 20 years of experience in this thing that you've done.

You need to find something to do in the world that you're in.

And so podcasting and hostile was born, and that's it.

But yeah, I didn't think about it until I saw a crack in the armor, and it was time to time to, I knew time was coming.

That's freaking awesome, though, to hear.

Honestly, there's a lot of figures, but you're definitely one of the people that I look up to the most when I'm in this industry.

Because

I've had tons of anxiety and paranoia just being in the bodybuilding industry and thinking, like, because my parents have raised me as a, you should be a mechanical engineer or a doctor.

Yeah.

And that's the only way you'll be stable.

So I've had this paranoia of being unstable my entire life.

And like, you know, someday, what if all this falls through?

What if my accounts get banned?

What if I just lose everything?

Can I tell you something really shitty?

Yeah.

The more successful you get, the stronger that feeling will become.

Oh, that's awesome.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, man.

But imposter syndrome is fucking real.

It's not a fake thing.

And the more popular you get,

or not just popular, but the more successful you get, the more successful your business gets, the more money you make.

And I I don't know if this happens to everybody, but I can tell you from my own personal experience,

that feeling doesn't go away, but it drives you.

You know, that feeling keeps you on your toes.

But I don't know if I'll ever see a day where I'm like,

okay, I made it.

I can just sit.

I just don't know.

I don't know if that day is ever going to come, you know?

I would have said earlier if it was like, maybe if you just quit test completely,

you just hit the male version of menopause no that's not no that feeling is not drug related

that feeling is not drug related

related at all no i know a lot of guys who are successful business people

that are like they have the same feeling they've never been bodybuilders i think when you achieve something

that you didn't expect to achieve

it it's a little bit shocking and it takes you time to like i don't i feel better now than i did five years ago but there's still days i wake up and go what if it's all just disappears

so i don't know maybe it's just always there maybe it gets better as you get older maybe it gets better as the the bigger your business gets i don't know i don't know but it's it's hard to get rid of that feeling i feel like someone wise is just going to tell us it's a mental thing

it is a mental thing it's not a it's not a physical thing because The reality is my company is doing well.

My podcast is doing well.

No one's going to come and take my home from me.

It's 100% a mental thing, but I think it has something to do with being an ambitious person

and always wanting more and always wanting security.

And so because what we're doing, like if you're raised in a home, maybe this is part of it.

I think if you're raised in a home where the provider is a shift worker or a nine-to-five person,

that seems more stable.

Whereas what we're doing is really built off of viewership and sponsorship and these kind of things, which seems a little less stable than like going to a nine-to-five job where you have more security.

So I've thought that too.

Maybe it's because when you're, when you're an entrepreneur,

you're kind of building everything on your own and it can disappear at the same, just as quick as you got it.

Whereas when you're working for another company, maybe you have more security because that company is so big that it's not going nowhere.

So I've thought maybe the entrepreneurial part of it is maybe why that fear comes into play as well.

I think that's a possibility, at least

until you're in the company and you hear about layoffs.

Yeah, that's true too.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I think, I think you're totally right with that because

I'm not trying to put her on blast or anything, but she's just a great example.

I think about my mom, for example, and a lot of other,

man, I feel like I'm fucking.

putting a demographic on blast, but I just saw this as an example because I went to see family and relatives for the first time in like 10 years and visited the Philippines.

Just got back from Christmas.

And

it's always a culture shock.

But like

elderly Asian women, for example,

my mom, my dad is

the head of one of the departments

at a university.

He's done very well for himself academically.

And even to this day,

my mom will spend hours cutting coupons to save 70% off.

Is that fucked up?

Dude, she

lives in scarcity every single day because of just how she grew up and how her parents were.

It's insane.

Yeah.

Listen, my mom.

So

maybe you've heard me talk about it on the podcast.

We grew up poor.

Like,

well, my brother and sister are very successful.

My oldest brother and my sister's the oldest of the family.

They're both very successful.

And I would say 20, maybe even 30 years ago, they started taking care of my parents.

They bought them a home.

They bought them a a car, they're paying all their bills.

My parents didn't have to work anymore, they were basically getting like a retirement check that they would just do whatever they wanted with.

My mom would still cut coupons,

and I'm like, You don't even have to fucking pay for your own shit anymore.

Why are you cutting coupons?

So, and my brother literally gave her a credit card with like some

astronomical fucking limit.

He's like, You go buy yourself whatever you want.

She never fucking used it, never.

And I'm like,

I think that like that mentality is just there.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it's hard to get out of.

I don't know if it's neuroplasticity or what, but it's just so crazy to see the

changes and just the cultural differences, the general, the generational differences are so much more drastic than I remember them being now that I'm at this age.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So like my dad, my dad never bought anything with credit.

Nothing.

You know, you go to like Leon's or something, or well, you probably don't have Leon's in LA, but like you go to like a furniture store, and they'll be like, Don't pay for one year.

And you go and you just pick out a fucking sofa that you like and you take it home.

My dad would never do that shit.

He's like, Whatever we have in the fucking house, I'm paying for.

He had zero debt.

And I'm like, I look around my house and I'm like, The bank owns everything.

It owns shit.

They own my motorcycle.

I finance it.

They finance my car.

I'm like, I don't give a fuck.

So I'm like, How did that happen?

How did I, I was raised by this person and I'm totally fucking, yeah.

So generationally, it's crazy.

Yeah.

Same.

Oh, this is nice.

Elish Kinope

said, he was just saying to you, how are you so kind and positive?

Very common gathered.

Me?

Yeah.

That's the first time I've ever been called positive.

I'm usually, I'm usually not.

Listen, I'm very serious in my real life.

And not that I'm not real online.

Like, this is really who I am, but I'm serious when the time calls for it.

When I'm on with the guys, I'm very happy happy because I like hanging out with my friends.

So people get to see me just laughing all the time because I like to laugh.

I like to be with my friends.

I do some stuff alone, like ride my motorcycle and shit.

But for the most part, if I have the choice of doing something with someone or doing it by myself, I'd rather hang out with my friends.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think it makes life that much more fun.

Yeah.

I do feel a little bit sorry for Ian sometimes, though, when I'm listening to your podcast.

Why?

Because I argue with him all the time.

Why do you feel sorry for him?

Because he gets argued with all the time?

He wins all the arguments.

Don't feel sorry for him.

That motherfucker lives to argue, and he's good at it.

Yeah.

That's funny.

Nevia for the Soul asks, best workout split and macro split.

The one that you love.

I know that's a really shitty answer, but okay, if I'm going to give you my favorite answer, I think a bro split is best.

Only because you can really devote the time you need to each body part and give them enough recovery that

you can really get into a groove.

that being said

the most important thing is for

you to enjoy what you're doing and i've said this i've said this for a really long time because i had i had a friend back in the day that used to train with us that quit after like two years he didn't love it he he did it solely because he wanted to look good and i'm like it doesn't work that way man you can you can train for fun and look good but you can't be a bodybuilder for fun unless you have set up the lifestyle that you want in a way that you love it.

So like some people, for example, like eating a 40, 40, 20 split with their diet, right?

40% protein, 40% carbs, 20% fat.

Some people like higher fats.

Some people like no carbs.

You know, like there's,

you have to do what you're going to stick to.

Right.

Right.

Like if you, if somebody said, if somebody said to me, hey, I want you to do push-pull legs for the rest of your life, I'm going to be like, I quit.

I don't want to do it anymore.

It doesn't, that's not fun for me.

Or if somebody said to me, hey, you got to do a four-second negative and a four-second positive on every rep.

I'm like, I'm out.

Not for me.

Sorry.

So

you got to do what you like.

And that's all there is to it.

Like, but like when I see

science guys train and they're training slow and methodical, I know it works.

I know they're right.

But my training is emotional.

When I go to the gym, I'm releasing some type of anger, frustration.

Maybe I'm happy,

but it's a very emotional experience for me.

I'm not timing, oh, I got to take a one-minute break between sets and I got to do a four-second negative and I got to, I'm not, I'm not, I don't have a logbook.

I go in there to train to have fun.

And that's, and that's why I still do it 25 years later.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I think if,

go ahead.

I agree.

I think that's the best route of action.

And I think the thing that's fun that people don't think about is

like you, for example, that's what you enjoy the most.

Right.

I'm a little bit like, I'm kind of in the middle, I'd say.

And there's also people that enjoy the most

the logbook and writing.

Yeah, yeah.

They enjoy that.

Yeah.

They, they

get

it.

They derive dopamine from it.

They get a lot of saturation.

I remember having Jordan Peters on my podcast.

And he literally said to me, I don't care if my logbook goes up one pound.

He had one pound plates or a half pound plates or something like that.

He goes, I don't care if my logbook goes up one pound.

If it does, that means I won that week.

So he's totally driven by this

solely scientific approach.

Whereas I'm the exact opposite.

But I don't think, and there was a period of time in my life where I would have been like, that guy's stupid, or that thing is stupid, or that technique is stupid.

It's funny when you do think something for long enough, you start to realize that they all have their place.

Yep.

And everybody should do what they enjoy because all roads lead to the same fucking ending.

I've seen bodybuilders with shit form

become Mr.

Olympias.

I've seen bodybuilders with high volume become Mr.

Olympias.

I've seen bodybuilders with low volume become Mr.

Olympias.

You know what I mean?

It's like, just do what you love.

Right.

Just do it.

Just do it hard, right?

Do what you love, but do it with some real fucking intent, and you'll see results.

Mm-hmm.

Let's finish with the rest of these questions, but let me run to the restroom real quick again.

Sometimes I'm like paranoid if there's something going on with my kidneys because I pee so freaking often.

And I can't tell if it's just like I just drink so much water or not.

When was the last blood work you got done?

Get your blood work done.

No, I think it was just a month ago and my kidneys were fine.

I'm always just a little bit dehydrated when I get it done.

And that's what it shows.

And create, you know, creatinine levels are always high for bodybuilders.

Yeah, but what's high?

What are you, what are you seeing?

Like 120, 130?

Like, what do you see?

It's not, it's not high.

It's just like,

yeah, I always get the same response, like, you're fine.

You're doing okay don't sweat it dude okay he's probably just drinking a lot of water i mean there's there's so many there's so many reasons why you might be peeing a lot i wouldn't stress it okay okay just just trust your blood work that's all i would say all right trust my all right cool cool

see now you can see how paranoid i am no it's okay it's good to combo being a bodybuilder it's better to be paranoid than not care at all true right yeah Going off the whole macro split and how these, how every, you know, you should do what works best for you.

I remember you saying on one of of your podcasts about how I think you maybe you did this with John, where you actually tried a higher fat diet and that seemed to work better for you.

Loved it.

I loved it.

And I don't know.

And look, this is a, this is a personal thing.

Sometimes

if I do a higher carb diet, I get really bloated.

And now, I got to tell you, when I started working with John, I was 34 years old.

So this is already 14 or 15 years into my bodybuilding career.

So I had already kind of developed like digestive issues.

So anytime I ate carbs, I would get bloated.

And

I didn't always feel great with low fat.

So working with John, we actually did like more of a,

I would say 40, 30, 30 type of diet.

My carbs were never that high.

I think it was like two, 300, maybe 400 max a day, which is not a lot for a guy who weighs 290 pounds.

And my fats were always higher.

I would do at least 15 to 30 grams of fat in every meal.

So,

and that's not including the fats from like the steak or whatever I'm eating.

I'm talking about added fats, like either an avocado or peanut butter or olive oil.

And I felt incredible.

And I think people make this mistake all the time.

I just talked to, I had Matt Grego on my podcast.

And Matt was telling me that his first prep with Chris

was very difficult because they did no fat.

And he said, this prep, they've added in fats and he feels incredible.

And I think people forget sometimes that a lot of your natural

physiological responses depend on your fat levels.

So if you, if you're on, like when I hear somebody like Roman, for example, Roman does like, it's just fucking fat and just carbs and protein.

He'll do like eight, 900,000 grams of carbs a day and protein.

And that's, I think Martin does something similar to that too.

Oh, no, he adds in some avocado.

But I know Roman is a very, very low-fat guy.

And to me, that would just wreck me.

I couldn't.

My mental state would be horrible.

i would i would i would have a lot of this all day long right i would eat and feel good the carbs would wear off and i would crash the fats i feel like keep me pretty level throughout the day

i can agree with that a lot too and i've seen um i'll see people that just react a lot better with higher carbs people that just feel a lot better with higher fats and i think i'm just like you i feel a lot better with a slightly higher fat intake yeah whereas uh i mean i mean i don't know you know the orange box of cream of rice you know the uncle I don't know if it's up

anyway the orange box of cream of rice the traditional the original one I still use that and one serving is 45 grams not 45 grams of carbs 45 grams of weight It's literally like nothing

I eat that I'm fine if I do two servings which is 90 grams I'm bloated

So it's like I'm very sensitive to carbs, I think.

So I prefer a higher fat diet.

This is also a a little bit of a generalization, but I saw

there is some similarities amongst

ethnicities.

Yeah.

But it seems like the, like, I feel like

it's considered more commonly.

Yeah, like Arab Middle Eastern, like darker, like browner skinned or darker skinned tend to have and share that commonality, whereas like you'll see a lot of white people who can eat tons of carbs and it doesn't affect them in the same way.

If it's upbringing, then that would make sense because a lot of our food has a lot of olive oil in it and a lot of like a lot of meat, like there's a lot of red meat, a lot of lamb, which is high in fat.

So, I don't know if upbringing has anything to do with it or just genetics in general.

I don't know, but it makes sense.

Zero Wondering asks, How to make money as a bodybuilder?

You always have good info on this.

I have a video on my YouTube channel that

I broke down in detail that has a ton of views for anybody who wants to go watch it.

But other than that, I'll try and break down quickly here for those who don't want to go watch it.

You have to have your hands in a lot of jars.

You're not going to make body.

Bodybuilding is not the job for somebody who wants safety and security.

Bodybuilding is unless you're a Phenom, right?

If you're Samson Douda,

great.

You just won the fucking Arnold.

You won the Olympia.

You got a million dollars.

You're cool, right?

For the average bodybuilder.

You got to have your hands in a lot of cookie jars or have a lot of pots on the stove, whatever analogy you want to use, because

you can make a lot of money coaching, right?

You can be a coach and make a lot of money, but coaching might take time away from your competitive nature.

So you might not be able to coach as many clients as you want.

You might only be able to coach 30, which will make you some money, but it's not going to make you a living.

So then you're like, okay, well, if I start a YouTube channel, I can make $1,000, a couple thousand dollars a month.

That'll help supplement your income.

If I have a contract, if I'm good enough on stage, that might pay me $1,000, $2,000, $3,000.

So if you want to make 10 or 20 grand a month,

unless you focus in 100% on one facet, and even then, even if you do, you might not, you need to have multiple income streams.

And there, there are in bodybuilding.

There are a ton, right?

Coaching, you can sell t-shirts, you can sell merchandise, you can

you can do YouTube and social media, like getting sponsorships.

And now, especially sponsorships are different.

Back in the day, if you got a sponsorship as a bodybuilder, you were allowed one sponsorship.

Like when I was with Muscle Tech, that's it.

You're with Muscle Tech.

You're not with

Gasp and fucking Celsius and fucking

Sheik lifting gear.

And it's like you would have one or two sponsorships.

You'd have a supplement contract, maybe a magazine contract.

That was it.

Now,

if you look at like my athletes like Samson and Martin, they got a Shaker Cup sponsorship.

They got an energy drink sponsorship.

They got a supplement contract, they got a clothing contract, they got like

so you start to really like spread yourself out.

And no one thing might make you a fortune, but when you add them all together, you're like, I'm fucking living pretty good.

You know, 20 grand a month is a quarter million dollars a year.

So,

I mean, you can do that, right?

Like, if you're a good coach, if you can build up your clientele, you know, some of these coaches are charging $300 a month

you have you have 10 clients that's three thousand dollars that's a that's a you know a quarter of a good income so i think for anybody looking to become a bodybuilder unless you're a phenom unless you're a phil heath unless you're a jay cutler unless you're killing it from the start you need to i mean look at i'll give you the best example look at sam I had Sam Sulak signed.

We have people like

the Trend Twins.

These guys are doing everything.

You know, Sam just started his own clothing line.

He's got money from YouTube.

The Trend Twins got their own supplement brand.

Like, these guys all understand

that there is a lot of places where they can make their money.

They just got to spread out and go find it.

Ian Harris asks,

What is Fuad's favorite memory of Luke?

Their podcast got me through lockdown UK.

Well, unfortunately, I only got to hang out with Luke in person once,

and it was my fondest memory.

We, I mean, look,

you can create some really awesome memories online.

Like, you can become very close with somebody when you talk to them every day or once a week for three hours or whatever it is your schedule is with that person.

But there's nothing really that compares to hanging out in person.

I think training with Luke, I know I got to train with him once.

We posed down together.

We went to eat together.

He's just a good person, man.

He's just a really good person um

very

humble for somebody that is like was as incredible as he was very witty and smart and fucking funny uh which is amazing because i just could sit there and laugh all fucking day long with him um

but yeah i think the one time we went to the we were at the la fit expo together we were both sponsored by iron rebel We got to train together.

I got to watch him throw around 200-pound dumbbells like they were fucking a warm-up.

And then we posed down together.

I think I have a video somewhere on my Instagram of us posing down together.

And I just,

I don't know, we just clicked.

He was,

he was a fan of mine and I was a fan of his.

He obviously followed me before I knew him and he was a fan.

And when I got to know him, I was a huge fan of him and I wanted to see him reach the highest levels and he was on his way.

And I really believe,

you know, Ben said something on a most recent podcast with Samson that I agree with is I think, and I said to, I kind of started the conversation by saying, I think Samson and Luke would have been one and two at the Olympia right now.

And Ben said he thinks Luke would have got there before Samson, but then Samson would have overtaken him.

And I kind of agree with that statement.

Luke was a very, very good bodybuilder.

Like when you look back at, when you, if you follow Ben, Ben usually puts up a throwback of Luke every week.

When you look at those photos, you're like, fuck, man, that is a phenomenal physique.

So,

yeah, my greatest memory was probably hanging out,

training, eating, doing things bodybuilders do.

And then obviously every week, you know, my wife would say to me, she's like, you know, I never hear you laugh like that.

And I'm like, he's the only fucking guy that makes me laugh like that.

And we would sit down for two hours or an hour or whatever the podcast was.

And he would just make me piss myself laughing every fucking week.

And

I don't know.

I guess all my greatest memories are online on YouTube with me and him just laughing and shooting the shit.

KST Meyer asks, What are your goals with Hostile and your Detroit pro show?

I have very big goals.

Obviously, just like everybody else, I have a lot of doubts about my goals.

You know, like when you're bodybuilding, for example, try and relate it to people competing, or maybe people watch this podcast or maybe want to be social media influencers.

Like when you say, if you want to be a social media influencer and you say, I want to be as big as Logan Paul or Jake Paul or Sam Sulik,

It's a lofty goal to say you want to be Mr.

Beast,

right?

If you just started a YouTube channel.

I feel that way about my company.

I want my company to be the cellulores of the world.

You know, the thing that's in every fridge that every kid is using, the thing that like,

you know, it's at that's at the fucking Walmart,

it's at the corner store.

It's just everywhere you look.

We are everywhere.

And I want to be in every country across the world.

I want to be in India.

I want to be in Brazil.

I want to be in Europe.

I want to be everywhere.

It's just such a slow, it's a very slow, arduous process.

And building a business is just like building a physique.

If you're a phenom,

you snap and you're there.

If you're not, you got to plug away fucking year after year, but you can get there if you keep your head down.

So

that's what I'm doing.

I know my company is not the phenom company that's just like two years in, we're fucking the biggest company in the fucking world.

We have a lot of popularity.

A lot of people know who Hostile is, which is great.

And we have

great sales, but

the vision I have for the size of the company is much, much larger.

And I think part of that comes from being a Muscle Tech athlete.

I remember

walking into Muscle Tech headquarters and being like, holy fuck, it's like this eight-story fucking building with like offices everywhere.

And they had their own gym and their own kitchen and their own staff waiting on the athletes and just like this mega, like,

you know, it was, it was really special to be there.

And that's kind of what I want.

That's what I want.

And for the podcast,

I was just talking about branching out to a fourth podcast that is not bodybuilding related.

My goal ultimately is to move to a city that is more of a hub.

where I can fly people in and sit down and do in-person podcasts and really make it something special

and not do virtual podcasts the way I do now in 720p.

I'd like to eventually get the 4K real life.

That would be huge.

Yeah.

It's got to be LA or Austin, I think.

I think those are two really cool.

I really like Texas.

I've been to Texas a number of times now.

I've been to Houston.

I've been to San Antonio.

I've been to Austin.

I've been to Dallas, Fort Worth.

everywhere I go, I'm like, I could live here.

Nice.

You know, yeah, I like it there.

Yeah.

As much as I give it shit, I mean, you know, I lived there for 12 years.

So

I mean, aside from it being racist, I liked it.

So it's just really fucking hot.

Listen, I like California, but I only like Northern California.

I can't live in L.A.

Like, I visited a friend in

Sacramento.

Yeah.

And the riding up there is beautiful because I like motorcycle riding is my number one thing.

Yeah.

I just don't think I can live in la this the it's so busy and like it's insane bro la is really rough to adapt to it's really really really hard most people just do it most people come here and they're like yeah i don't want to be here and they leave so yeah well i mean like toronto is

a small

dot compared to to la

and i hate toronto so i know i can't live in la it's just too much it's too much yeah dwar doisco man I'm so shit at this.

Dwar asks, he's always around annoying drama.

How does he personally deal with the controversies?

Oh,

oh, it's so crazy.

People think it's like me causing the drama.

And I'm like, I'm not fucking doing anything.

I'm just trying to run my company and do my podcast.

And this shit fucking finds me.

And I'm like,

you know what it is?

I'm going to tell you the truth.

So

I think because the company blew up and the podcast blew up in popularity,

maybe it rubbed a couple people the wrong way.

And people watching who follow me will know who those people are.

But there's a few people in my life and my bodybuilding, my post-bodybuilding career, I can probably think of three people

who have gone out of their way

to spin any story that's hostile related in a negative fashion.

And like you said, people read comments and people believe them they don't know the truth they don't know what's real like you know stories like oh he only paid sam two thousand dollars

false or they're like oh he wouldn't let sam go on other podcasts is also false like everything all of these stories and bullshit things that you see

they're false but it's like you get a few guys that have a youtube channel or a prominent youtube or a prominent social media page and if they go out of their their way to attack you, if they have enough people following them, eventually those people are going to start to believe the bullshit.

And I think what I've learned over time is

I'm not focused on the people who don't care about me or like me or support me.

I'm focused on the people who do.

I know I have a very large fan base that watches the podcast.

I know they like watching it.

I focus on those people.

I know we have a very great, loyal customer base for hostile.

I focus on those people.

I think when you start focusing on the negative people, you've already lost.

If all of your day is spent

focusing on the drama, which I've been guilty of, because you always want to defend yourself,

if your days are spent that way, then you're losing.

If you're defending, you're losing.

I remember...

I don't know if you know who Chale Sunnin is, but I remember watching a Chale Sunnin

YouTube video.

He's talking about it, and he was talking about politics.

And he said, if you're defending, you're losing.

And it stuck in my head.

And I'm like, he's fucking right.

Because if you're defending, that means you think you did something wrong.

So I try just to ignore it at this point.

People are going to make videos.

People are going to talk.

I think

it's gotten to the point now where people see through it.

So I just let it go.

I don't partake in any of the bullshit.

Yeah.

I think it's a hard line between

Joe Rogan's ghost and post and like trying to be interactive with your audience.

I think it's just a hard line to

ignore that stuff.

I think I don't think Joe Rogan's wrong, but I also don't have Joe Rogan's fan base, so it would be impossible for Joe Rogan to stay in contact with his fan base because he's got millions and millions of people watching every podcast and hundreds of thousands commenting, right?

I got a thousand comments, I can breeze through a hundred of those every day, And I like

my thing is this.

I don't want to punish the people that like me

because I want to ignore the people that don't like me.

Right.

So what I decided to do is I read through and if I see an asshole comment, I just delete the guy and I block him and I'm like, I don't give a fuck.

And I focus on the people that do.

I'm not talking about people just ignoring you or sorry, disagreeing with you.

I'm saying when someone's really being just a fucking ass, like just a troll, I'll just get rid of those people.

I'm like, you don't, I don't need you in this community.

And then I try and focus on the people that are there because they like what I'm doing or they want to be part of the community.

They want to have a real conversation.

I don't feel like the ghost and post thing is respectful,

but I do understand it if you're

if your

viewership is so big that you just can't right.

Yeah, you just can't interact.

It's just too big to interact with.

Right.

So I think that's my kind of philosophy on it.

As long as I can manage to get back to some people, then I want to try to.

Chris Williamson from Modern Wisdom does the same thing.

It's like if you're literally just outright saying something that's completely out of pocket,

it doesn't contribute to

the discussion or the debate in any sense.

It just deletes them.

Just get rid of it.

Delete it.

Yep.

Jaden Lifts asks,

favorite off-season cycle.

Test EQ.

I shouldn't even say this.

Okay.

Can we preface it by saying I'm not proud of it?

So I have two

test EQ anadrol was earlier on in my career,

and I reached a point where anadrol, and I don't know if it's because the anadrol itself changed or my body changed, but I reached a point where I couldn't eat when I took anadroll.

So I switched from test EQ Anadrol to test EQ Trenny.

And

I'm not proud of that fact, but fuck it worked.

I mean, look,

if I could do it all again, I probably wouldn't do it, but it fucking worked.

So, yeah, I got

because what happened was I couldn't, I was using the anadrol for strength.

And when I couldn't eat anymore, I'm like, well, it doesn't matter if I take this shit now because I can't eat.

I was literally, I literally fucked up my digestion so bad I could only eat one meal a day.

So I'm like, I'm just not going to take it.

So I would take

test E test or trend E, sorry,

because I wanted the strength gains from it, because I couldn't get the strength gains from the anadrol anymore.

Is that a great philosophy?

Probably not.

I don't think anybody should do that.

But

I did like the way it felt.

Joseba, Joseba Ipara.

Okay, this is because

Joseba is a big fan.

Okay, yeah, you know him.

Yeah, he gave me shit for actually saying your name wrong on my other podcasts.

My fans are loyal.

I gotta,

they are.

He asked, What's the biggest cycle you've ever run?

But I mean, we could maybe even change that to the worst cycle.

If

I want to answer this only for a teaching moment,

it's a lot, it's a fucking lot.

There was,

do you remember the test 400?

I don't know if they still make test 400, but they used to make a thing called Test 400.

It was 400 milligrams of test and one cc of oil.

And

I,

one year, I said, you know what?

I'm going to just test this shit out and see what it feels like.

And I went way overboard.

Like, I'm not going to give you a number, but I'll tell you that I settled at 1250.

So you can only imagine how high I went before I was like,

okay, this isn't doing anything.

It was a big fucking cycle.

I want to say it was probably at least three to four grams of shit altogether.

Didn't do anything.

I promise you.

I did not make,

I made the, I did probably made the least amount of gains that year, like actual contest weight gains.

I gained a lot of fucking weight in the offseason, but actual contest weight muscle tissue,

I did not do that well that year.

It was probably one of my least successful years.

So I know for sure that it's not the way to go, But yeah, it was,

that's one I regret for sure.

I'm glad you said that because I've heard, you know, from a lot of my own podcasts, I've had multiple people say,

I don't know if you know Ziegler Monster, he's one great example I can think of.

Yeah.

But

that have literally stated the same thing and given similar ranges where he, for example, said like, he ran 1.2 grams for how many years?

I think maybe this was like tests, but then he tried doubling it, 2.4, and he said literally no change in the rate of progress.

No change in the process.

Yeah, that's why I told you

I would go up by 250s

and see where my progress was.

And I came back to 1250 because I'm like, I'm not noticing anything at 1500.

And I'm definitely not noticing anything at 1750.

I'm only noticing that I feel worse.

Like I would sleep shittier.

I would be retaining more water.

I'd sweat more.

I was more agitated.

But I wasn't getting any of the benefits, like the strength and the muscle size.

So I went back.

And I think that's something that I like about what we talked about earlier:

a thing that I think a lot of bodybuilders, especially the most experienced ones, are more conscious of now is like, if you feel good, you'll do well.

So what's the point of driving up the dosages to the point where you start feeling less good?

I mean, look, it's Stefan.

Stefan's

driven this point home every time he's been on the podcast with me.

The better your health is, the better you're going to to grow.

So if you're taking three grams of shit and your health is in the toilet, you're probably not going to make the progress you want to make.

Kilburn asks, when will you ever do the McDonald's cheat meal video?

I want to see you smash 500 chicken nuggets.

I never said 500.

For sure, I never said 500.

I think I might have said 100.

I don't know, man.

You know,

it's embarrassing what my binges look like.

Like a McDonald's trip for me, when I'm really on it, like if I'm like, I'm hungry, I'm going to fucking eat.

Like Ben knows, right?

Because me and Ben binge together.

Ben can fucking eat more than I can.

But maybe I'll do it on video one day.

It's really gross.

It's not, it's not something to be proud of, but I just have a big appetite sometimes, man.

I just want to crush food.

Oh, I get it, bro.

I used to destroy Chinese buffets.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

How many plates?

Like, how many times back and forth?

I don't remember how many plates, but I remember when I was like 13, 14 years old, I was in Boy Scouts.

Oh, you were like a fat, you were a fat kid.

Oh, I was a fat kid, yeah.

That's why I started bodybuilding because I had to put this food somewhere.

That's awesome.

Yeah, I was fucking obese, but yeah, I was like 13 years old, and like there was this kid that was like 17 in Boy Scouts, he was like senior in high school or something.

We decided to have a comp, uh, we went to CC's Pizza for Boy Scouts, and uh, we decided to have a competition.

I think we tied at like 22 slices of pizza or something.

That's fucking awesome.

I'm proud of you, man.

I didn't know that.

I have a newfound respect for you.

Thanks, homie.

B Witsy.

There's actually a lot of people that ask this question, so this is cool.

But

I am Zamada or whatever asks, what are the requirements to be a brand ambassador for hostile?

And then

someone asks, like, how do you approach deals with hostile athletes?

I think they're all asking for a friend.

Yeah.

Honestly, man, I kind of.

It's something I enjoy doing.

Sometimes Ben, sometimes Ben will send me a message and be like, hey, have you seen this kid?

But most of the time, it's something I kind of enjoy doing in my spare time.

I like looking around.

I like my explore page is full of bodybuilding stuff.

And, well, and motorcycles, but I'll search, I'll just flip through and I'll see like different bodybuilders and what they're doing and young and up-and-comers.

And

look, the first thing that matters,

I'm going to say this to people and it's going to fall on deaf ears.

You don't have to look for a sponsorship.

The sponsorship will find you.

And I know that sounds really fluffy, but the sponsorship that you want, that's going to pay you, is the one that finds you.

And the reason I'm saying that is

when I got a sponsorship, I never started bodybuilding thinking I'm going to get a sponsorship.

I started bodybuilding because I loved it.

And then when I got good enough and I gained some popularity, Muscle Tech approached me.

I didn't call them.

I didn't send them a letter.

I didn't message anybody.

They contacted me and they were like, are you interested in designing?

Because, and that's how all of these companies do it.

If you have something to offer, a company will reach out to you and they will find you.

Now,

let's say that doesn't happen.

It doesn't hurt to send an email or a DM.

It doesn't hurt to go, like, I'm very accessible on Instagram.

And I'm not saying people should message me because right now we're literally not signing anybody.

I'm happy with the guys I have.

I'm happy with the ambassadors I have.

Unless you're like a really famous TikTok person, I'm probably, that's kind of what I'm looking for right now.

That's really all I'm looking for.

And I mean famous.

I'm talking like a million follower famous.

But I don't know.

I think number one,

you have to have something to offer, whether it be a physique, whether

maybe you have a podcast that's popular, maybe you have

a social media page that's popular.

You have to have something.

Now, the problem with Hostile is, or not the problem, but

one of the aspects of it is we don't sign just anybody because we are a bodybuilding company so when we found Sam

like when I found Sam it wasn't just like oh this kid's really popular he was also a bodybuilder

so it fit the company because he's a because he's a hardcore bodybuilder so there's certain people that are really popular that I just can't sign because it doesn't fit our brand so one you have to have something to offer Two, you have to have good social media.

You know how many times I've seen a great bodybuilder with zero social media?

I've probably come come across four different athletes that have the most phenomenal physiques in the world, zero social media.

And when I ask them, they're like, oh, well, nobody wants to see that.

And I'm like, no company is going to sign you anymore, man.

It's the name of the game.

So you have to have potential.

You have to have social media.

You have to be able to work hard.

Like Samson, Samson's Mr.

Olympia.

He still works just as hard for us as when he first started.

That's awesome.

And that work ethic comes from his construction background, right?

Martin, same thing.

I just signed Martin.

I can't believe the way the kid has a work ethic on him.

Like

we shot,

he shot,

he did like

video and photo shoots back to back, straight.

One of them was all day long for four or five days.

So,

potential, social media, work ethic

in that order.

That's how I look at it.

Like

I like people to have potential

in whatever they're doing.

So I can, I want to grow with that athlete.

That's part of my

part of what I like about our companies.

Like we got Samson, Samson.

Nobody even knew who the fuck Samson was.

He was still placing outside the top five in some shows.

And

what got me was his potential because of his physique.

And then I saw his work ethic because he was at a show in Korea.

I don't know if you know the story, but it was during COVID.

And when he arrived in Korea, he had to quarantine for two weeks before he could go to the gym.

This fucking guy's in his room, jogging on the spot, doing

handstand.

military press against the wall to try and get a workout in.

And I'm watching this shit as he's posting it online and I'm going,

this is the work ethic I want.

Yeah, yeah.

So I had to have him.

I'm like, this the potential of his physique plus that work ethic, this is, this is a winning combination.

Yeah.

And then turns out he's Mr.

Olympia.

So it's almost like a neuroticism.

I remember doing that during COVID too.

Like when we were quarantined, I would like backpack,

but put random shit in my backpack.

We all did it.

We all did it.

But a guy, a guy travels to Korea knowing he's going to have to quarantine.

I think he was three weeks or four weeks out from the show.

So he knows he's going to have to quarantine at the most crucial time of a prep, goes anyways because he wants to qualify for the Olympia,

does all the work in his room, has food brought to his room that's diet-friendly,

and then takes second place.

And I'm like, I got to have this guy on my team.

I got to have this guy on my team.

That is awesome.

So anyway,

I can't, it's hard for me to tell people exactly the formula, but that's as close as I can get to telling them.

Yeah, I mean, I've seen a lot of the athletes on your team, man, and they're fucking they look fucking crazy.

They do, yeah.

I'm very happy with the guys we have.

I think a lot of them have a ton of potential.

Um,

and they work really hard, and that means something.

Yeah, so I uh I'm happy with the team we have right now.

Going off what you said, I've never actually said this, but um, I think what I would say for people is

get a purpose and like run with it

because just like you said like the the the

value is what is gonna bring people to your content right like some people just try to like

get as many views as possible through reels or something but I truly think that like it's the people that find a purpose in what they're doing that can run with that for forever.

And you just

I'm going to express something to you that most people don't realize.

The guy who acts like a jackass for views and has 5 million followers

will not sell $1,000 worth of product.

Okay?

I've experienced this.

I've worked for another company that I helped sign someone that had a million followers who couldn't sell $1,000

worth of product

with this code.

Do you understand?

Do you know why?

If your following is built on you being a jackass, that means nobody trusts you.

If your following is built because you offer good information, because you're a bodybuilder or whatever, or you're a coach, you're a scientist, you're a something, and you've had valuable things to offer,

your fan base trusts you.

They're like, oh, you know what?

I trust his opinion.

I'll try that stuff because he's probably an honest person.

That goes a long way.

So the way you build your following matters.

So that's why I said number one is potential.

Number one is not following because you can build a following that

doesn't believe in anything you have to say.

They're just following you because it's entertaining.

Right.

So that's a, there's a little caveat that I think people don't don't think of.

Jacob Whelan asks,

would you rather stop eating apple cores or stop showering with your dogs?

Fucking podcast.

My fucking podcast creates so much fucking havoc for me.

Okay.

Okay.

I don't shower with my dog anymore because my dog goes to a groomer that takes care of him.

No, not anymore.

Listen, I only did it like twice.

I'm not like I'm showering every fucking day with my dog.

No, I

my dog goes to a daycare training school now and they take care of him.

So in Apple Cores,

I like eating apple core.

There's a lot of probiotics in the core.

I don't know.

People make a big deal of it.

It's just a fucking,

it's just another piece of the apple.

Yeah, i'm not i'll give up showering with my dog i already have

that's fine that's fine i'm keeping i'm keeping the apple course uh matt black asked um if you like to get caught yes i love getting caught i do it as much as possible because it usually leads to sex so um

yes i enjoy getting caught i'm fucked up that way i'm kind of perverted chase irons asked uh when are you gonna come to chicago and train at his gym and sign his mural on his wall chase irons first of all thank you i am honored that he has my mural at his gym.

And I think if I'm not mistaken, he also has Luke's mural up next to mine.

And

this summer, I am going to ride from Chicago to L.A.

or to California anyway.

I will stop at your gym when I start my ride and sign that wall, I promise.

Nice.

Personal question.

What are your plans for the Detroit Pro?

Well, I'm going to bring in all my friends again.

So people at the meet and greet are going to be able to meet everybody they want to meet.

Like Samson's coming, Mike Van Wick's coming, Ian's coming.

Paul will be there.

Everybody loves Paul.

Ben will be there.

Seth will be there.

James will be there.

It's going to be a great show.

We got James and Carlos so far assigned in.

Aaron Golly, Ron Gordon.

Those are the four open guys I know so far.

We got some classic guys coming.

A lot of guys are on the maybe fence right now.

That could make it an even better show.

But we're putting a lot into it, man.

I think we're doing classic this year for the open,

for the pros, so it's not just an open bodybuilding show anymore.

We've added classic, and

we added the fit model division for the NPC.

I don't know how that's going to go.

I don't know how many people want to do fit model, but I think as a promoter, it's important to offer the class and see who wants to do it.

But yeah, we have a lot of good stuff planned.

We have the same venue.

We have the same great lighting.

And we're not too far after the Arnold, so

I want to see how many guys from the Arnold I can get to come do the show.

But it's going to be a really good time.

And we're going to try and correct any errors we made last year.

You know, there was one error I think we made last year that I really want to correct.

And that was we had VIP tickets, but we didn't have VIP seating.

And that seems like it's such an easy thing to figure out.

And I just didn't really plan for it properly.

So this year, VIP tickets tickets will have VIP seating and they'll have entry to the auditorium first.

And it's just little things like this.

Oh, and one more thing.

I'm trying to do a free live stream for everybody.

We made a little bit of money on the live stream last year, but I don't think it's worth it.

I think I would rather have

instead of having 5,000 people watch the show because they don't want to spend the money, I'd rather have 40,000 people watch the show.

So I want to do a free live stream.

I just, I'm working with the live stream people to figure out how I do that on my YouTube channel.

So hopefully, if I can figure out the logistics of it, the Detroit Pro will be live streamed free

at Fuad Ibi Admita YouTube channel.

Oh, that'd be awesome.

Yeah.

So I figure because I have 300,000 subscribers or more or whatever, I figure if I can get a certain number of those people to watch the show,

that

a lot more people will be able to experience bodybuilding than just getting the four or 5,000 people that want to pay for a live stream.

Maybe some

not hardcore fans will watch just to see what it's about.

So I kind of want to like open it up to everybody and forego the few thousand dollars that I'm going to make or that we're going to make and just open it so everybody can watch.

Yeah, I think that'd be really cool.

Yeah, and I think, sorry, one more thing.

Just during the live stream, I want to have Seth and Ian doing commentary.

I might jump in on that too.

So

there'll be some familiar voices for the people watching from the podcast crossing over to watch the show.

Nice, nice.

Yeah.

Is Paul going to be a judge for that?

No, Paul, Paul's a promoter, and

I think there's a rule against that.

So Paul won't be judging.

He'll be walking around with me, shaking hands, and making sure everything's running smoothly.

Gotcha.

Cool, cool.

So many.

You can ask it.

Go ahead.

There's just so many shower with your dog questions.

fucking podcast that that podcast took me from you know what's funny

the podcast made me

it took me from like a really serious angry bodybuilder to people to people seeing me more as like this joking goofy

it does that for a lot of people you know when nick walker signed with me

Nick Walker got on the podcast and people, I got so many messages from people that were like, I thought Nick was an asshole.

I thought he was a mutant.

I thought he was just like a meathead.

He's so funny.

I love him.

I think that's one of my most unintentional benefits of the podcast: just it showing people like the lighter side of all of us.

Yeah, like who you guys really, really are.

Yeah, I just don't want to deal with the shower dog jokes anymore.

Incoming more of those.

Oh, great.

Mohammed IPB Pro asks, How's the best coach at the moment, in your opinion, except Samson's coach?

I really like Stefan and Patrick.

Same.

I really,

there is a

quiet confidence that they both have that if I was an athlete, that's what I want out of my coach.

The worst thing you can have in a coach is a coach that's unsure of himself.

So if I had to pick anybody,

and look, Mel's a great coach, but I don't know how, like, Mel is a great coach for Samson.

I don't know how, you know, every coach is good for a certain person.

Not every coach is good with every other person.

I would have to go with Stefan or Patrick just because of the breadth of people that they've coached that

all

have like a very

have all excelled in their own way, I guess.

Right.

So

I think Mel deserves credit for doing what she's done with Samson.

I think Ben has done some good things with Hunter.

I think

someone like Justin Compton, Justin Harris,

obviously Matt Jansen when he was more focused.

There's a lot of, obviously, Hani is at the top of the list.

But I think honestly, lately, the two guys I would put at the very top right now,

not at the very top, because Hani's going to always be at the very top, but I think the two guys that I are most sought after right now are probably Stefan and Patrick.

Cool.

Yeah.

I really enjoyed talking to Justin Harris as well.

Very, very smart individual.

Honestly, you know what?

Another underrated coach?

Chris Tuttle.

Chris Tuttle is one of the smartest,

most

moderate in his approach,

but still very, very successful.

So like you don't get a lot of extremes, but he's also very health conscious.

Like Chris Tuttle is a very good coach as well.

I forgot to mention him.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a, oh, you know who else I like is Cameron Cheek.

Every time Cameron Cheek

posts an athlete and I see them, they're fucking peeled.

Yeah.

So

there's a lot of big names, but Stefan and Patrick Prime.

Might as well just say every coach now.

Well, I mean,

I know I've named a lot of people, but they're all honorable mention coaches.

Yeah.

And it's not every coach.

Listen, there are a million.

Oh, my bad.

One second.

I'm just going to switch views here.

No, dude.

Normally I tried to stop this at an hour and a half and we're at two and a half hours, so I don't know how that happens.

Hold on, three fucking hours here.

All right, let's do a couple more, and then I'm going to go up and down.

We're about done.

I'm starving.

I think this is the first time I've ever seen what's next to your background.

Yeah, that's

my first pro win is this giant dude here.

I think there's an Olympia trophy and a Toronto Pro trophy and then just some other memorabilia.

Paul's daughters made that cookie jar for me.

Oh, that's awesome.

Anyway, there's some shit back there.

Well,

I'm actually glad you said that because I've never said this ever publicly.

So I don't even know if I'm going to edit this out or not, but Patrick's actually my coach right now.

Oh, that's great.

And I felt the same way whenever you're talking about those coaches, like he and Stefan were the ones I was looking at for years.

And I just loved how they did their work.

And I agree with like everything Ian says about Patrick is he is like a dad figure.

And you do kind of like, in a non-sexual way, want to please him.

No, no, for sure.

He has that effect.

Listen, I worked with Patrick for like a month and I'm like, I can't work with you anymore, man.

You're too much.

It was after my career was over.

So I just, when I get, when I retired, I just wasn't ready for that level of scrutiny.

Yeah.

But he very, he's very demanding.

And you, and you, like you said, you want to please him.

And I'm like, I'm not ready for this.

Yeah, for sure.

I posted like a, I think I posted a story of me like with like whey protein and krispies that I said post-workout.

And he just said the question mark because it wasn't like exactly what some of them.

Man, I got an argument with one, with him once.

Because I said I liked having barbecue sauce on my chicken.

And he called me,

and he called me a pussy.

I was like, you know what?

I'm like, fuck you, dude.

I'm like, yeah, no, but no, I get along with Patrick.

I think he's a great guy.

Yeah, he's awesome.

Last question I ask every guest on the end of every podcast.

But if you were to

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

Wow, that's fucking deep.

Holy shit.

Oh, that's really tough, man.

Ask the question again.

If you were to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one message you could send to the entire world today,

what would the message be?

I don't know, man.

This answer would probably change

with every year of my life.

Because every year you grow a little bit and your opinion of what's important changes.

Fuck, that's so hard.

There's so many things I want to say.

Like, I want to say

live life to the fullest because it's short.

Say yes to everything because it's easy to say no, but then you have regret.

I want to say it doesn't matter what you do in life, but do it to the fullest extent.

So, you have, you know, what

I realize there's a theme to my life, and that's not having any regret.

I don't know.

You know, I think the message I'd want to give people that is something I wish I would have lived my life in that way is

just to live life to the fullest, be as present as possible, and learn to enjoy the good moments and not

focus on the bad moments because the bad moments are only for a short time and there's always something positive around the corner.

I guess that's a really tough question.

It's, you know what?

That's not an on-the-spot question.

That's like I have to, I had to like sit down and like really like think about that one.

I think that was a great answer though.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that was a perfect answer.

I mean, if I could live, I guess if I could live my life that way, that's how I would want to live it.

So I think that's what I want people to think about.

I love that.

Thanks, Baron.

Thanks for coming on.

Where can everybody find you, even though everybody already knows?

Thank you for having me.

You can find me at Fouad Abiad Media on YouTube and Fouad Abiyad on Instagram.

And if you want to support the brand, it's hostile.com.

And if you are interested in coming to the show or being part of my show and Paul's show and Ben's show, it's detroitpro.com.

Tickets are there.

Registration is there.

Everything is there.

And all I want to say is thank you for having me on.

Thank you for all the great questions.

I had a lot of fun.

We've been on for quite a while.

And

I really want to thank people who support myself, the brand, my friends that do the podcast with me.

I mean, it really means a lot to me.

So thank you very much, man.

Thanks, man.

Thanks for coming on.

It was an honor.

Cheers.

Thank you, brother.

Okay.

All right.

Love you guys.

Peace.

Okay, bro.

Okay, bro.

I will see you.

I'm going to go eat.

And when do you think this is going to go up?

I'll try to get it up as soon as possible because I know you have

the show coming up soon.

Oh, no.

You don't have to worry about that.

The show's the posing clinic thing is, I didn't even mention it because I don't know if we're going to do it.

And the show is not till March 29th, so you don't have to rush.

Whenever you get it up.

It's got like 13 weeks, right?

12 Saturday.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would like to have it up just in case if anyone wants to compete at the show because

if I was able to compete, I would at your show.

i think that would be so much fun your first your first classic show that would be crazy

anyway listen i appreciate you having me on man and um

yeah thank you it was really fun yeah yeah same same okay bro that's good man i'll see you soon all right talk soon bye-bye love you guys thank you guys so much raise the five stars on apple podcast spotify or anywhere you find your podcast and subscribe to the youtube channel by clicking the bell button and doing so helps us get amazing guests like food today i never thought i would have a podcast with fooad i've been following his podcast for a couple years now.

And to be honest, just because of you guys, I'm able to talk with all these guys that I look up to, and I couldn't be more thankful for it.

So,

I'm still just a kid, but I'm learning so much, and it's all thanks to you guys.

So, love you guys.

Peace.