2932: Phil Heath Used Less PEDs Than Everyone Thought ; Here Is the Real Story

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Enjoy the rest of the show. Phil, welcome back to the show, man. Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we have the full crew now. Some fun conversation all the way. I had FOMO last time, dude. So I know, man. Adam wasn't here. Where was I? I don't remember. It's not often that I wouldn't be here for something. You had to do something. No, you were sick, dude. Sick. Yeah, you were really sick. Yeah, you were sick, bro. Oh, wow. Yeah, you were really sick, which for Adam to miss. I was going to say, that's kind of weird. I must have been really bad. Fragile, but we had a great conversation, so I was excited to have you back on. Off-air, you mentioned that you did some USO shows. I want to hear about this. Yeah. How did that start? And tell me a little bit. And then what would you do there? Would you just Q&A, or what was that all about? So initially, when I became an IFBB pro, one of my first two pro shows, I ended up signing with Metrix. They would have me go to military bases in Hawaii. And Hickam and Schofield, I would do appearances at. And then I would go so often that I'm like, man, I just want to do more of these appearances. This is really cool. So I was like, how can I do more? And they're like, oh, you can apply to be like one of the athletes, talent, guys that would go around the country, if not part of the world, through the USO. So I just signed up. And then next thing you know, I'm getting flown around everywhere. And I've always recognized that our service members deserve the world, because they defend our freedom. They die for it. Freedom comes at an ultimate price, right? So it was always my honor and privilege to go do that. I've been to, you know, even bodybuilding shows through USO, like in Okinawa. Oh, really? Yeah. Went to Okinawa, watched them compete. I'm like, dang, man, these Okinawans, man, get shredded, dude. You know, they're living off of seafood all the time, right? So that was cool. Even went to Gitmo. Wow. Yeah. I went to Gitmo. Wow. Yeah. It was myself and the most interesting man in the world, you know, Jonathan Goldsmith, the Dos Equis guy. Oh, wow. Oh, no way. So he and I did an appearance together. That's cool. Yeah. Yeah. Is he really that interesting? He was. Oh, really? But he was so adamant about ripping in to the lieutenant about, like, the old jail and the new jail and how we, like, supposedly waterboard everybody and all this other stuff. Oh, no. And I'm, like, at lunch, like, dude, like, I'm just trying to, like, get through the day. I got this meet and greet. I'm just trying to keep it cool. And I just want to see some stuff. But, yeah, I was able to go to Gitmo, actually saw the old jail, saw, like, where the minefield is. Like, there's, like, a minefield that still went off at the time. Yeah. You know, it was, like, what's that? And they're, like, oh, yeah, might be an iguana. I don't know. Wow. I'm, like, okay. Got to see there's, like, a line where our skipper and Castro would, like, greet each other with gifts, a gate, essentially. And then we, well, the crazy part about that trip was that we went into their boats and drove over by where people would defect and they'd have to do, we would have to do catch and release. So the problem that I had was when they would tell me, because I didn't see this firsthand, thank goodness, is that we would catch them, we would release them back on their beaches, and they would execute them just like that. Whoa. That's heavy. As a point. Yeah. You know, so. For getting caught? Is that, like, for defecting? Yeah, for defecting. For defecting. It's, like, oh, yeah, you want to be over there? Okay. This is what we do to you. Wow. So I was able to see that, you know, like, hear those stories. But, you know, did a lot of different appearances, got a chance to even go to some of the award ceremonies, like the USO Gala in D.C., where I was basically handing out the awards for each branch of military for excellence. So, like, the best Coast Guard, best Air Force, best person for each branch. So that was neat. And then even ended up doing, what's it called? It was a Medal of Honor ceremony. Oh, that's cool. American Airlines Air Power Foundation. It's called Skyball. That's what it was, Skyball. So I went to Skyball. And I was on stage with my good friend, Chef Robert Irvine. And he would do all the meals for everyone there. And then Gary Sinise has his Lieutenant Dan Band, you know, play. And they had us, all three of us, on stage with all the chefs, every, you know, all these different dignitaries of military. And we ended up doing this thing called the grog. And the grog, I believe, is supposed to simulate the muddy waters of, like, you know, was it Vietnam or whatever? And they take, like, a bucket, and you're supposed to throw, like, whatever you want in it. So it can be alcohol. It could be ice cream. It could be hot sauce. It could be everything. And they stir it up, and everybody has to drink it. Oh, gosh. I drink it three times. Yummy. So this is in front of a bunch of, you know, one-star, two-star, three-star generals and stuff. And I'm just trying to, you know, bro it up. Yeah, yeah. And my wife is down there, like, oh, my God, like, you're going to get hammered, you know? And— Did you? I was feeling myself, you know? And so Robert is actually closing the show and says, hey, you know, I brought my, you know, really good friend, Mr. Olympia Phil Heath. This event is being publicized all throughout the world on all the different bases. And Phil is going to close the show and hands me the microphone. After you had a whole bunch of grog or whatever? Oh, God. Probably had one of the best speeches of my life. No way. Of course. Oh, you're so loose. It was way too loose. But, like, happy, excited, no ums or uhs. Oh, that's great. Like, every synapse in my brain was just on point. That's awesome. My wife is like, you're freaking lucky. Yeah. Because I was going to kill you. But, yeah, so I've done a lot of those things, and I will do them again. I'm assuming there's a lot of questions about training and stuff. Yes. And stuff like that. So my biggest thing is to always, like, when I get on base, you know, I put my bags down and I go straight to the gym. Oh, wow. I train with the Marines, the Army guys. I usually train with them first, and then go hit up guys from Air Force later. But I remember a few times where I would go into the gym, and there'd be a Marine, like, doing bench, and I'd just stand right over him. He's like, "Oh, my God, it's Phil Heath." I'm like, "Keep going, keep going." He starts spotting them. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, and I just spot them and, like, hang out and do all that stuff. That's cool. Because, you know, PT is a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. And their nutrition, of course, has to be on point. I imagine there's a lot of bodybuilding fans. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there is primarily because back when I was competing, even at the beginning of my career, you know, working with Flex Magazine Muscle and Fitness, we would send care packages of, like, magazines and stuff like that. So I would sign some, and they would ship them out. And I always thought that was really cool that Flex Magazine did that. Yeah. Because it just gives them, you know, like, "Hey, we see you. We see you, and we appreciate you." And I imagine, too, just especially when you're on a base over there, you know, working overseas, it's like, "This is the time that I get to go do my thing, and I want to lift." And I love the pictures I'll see sometimes of, like, some of these gyms. Yeah. And some of the equipment that they actually make. Yeah, little makeshift gyms. Yeah, dude. And, you know, part of me is kind of like, "That would be a sick workout," just kind of like basics and just, you know, you're out there and— Well, you actually know it's 45 pounds, or maybe you don't know it's 45 pounds. Yeah. There's no fake weights out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a good time. So you've been maintaining your size and shape, like, really, really well. Thanks. It's been a lot. Or last time I talked to you, you're like, "Well, I kind of train," which is always, to a guy like me, like, "Damn." It's been kind of the same, to be honest. Really? Yeah. I went through spurts, right? So my whole thing was, every time I would go into the gym and be very regimented, right, in my mind, I would think of doing a show. And it's just how I've been wired. I see. And I got so upset at that that I thought, "I just won't go to the gym anymore." I'll just go a couple of days a week just to kind of get away. It was almost like it's tugging me back in. Mm-hmm. You're going to disconnect. Mm-hmm. And, you know, it— It wasn't good. It wasn't healthy, I don't think. So then I would literally have to pray about it. Like, okay, like I need the gym to mean something different now. So it dawned on me. I was like, all right, feel like you're 46. Why don't you just be the most in shape 46 year old you can be, be the evidence that you could actually compete at an extremely high level when all these shows still be able to be mobile, functional, but look and feel healthy. And share that story. So that's really where I'm at now is to prove that, you know, a 25 year old is going to hear me speak and they may listen. They probably won't, but the 35 year old will, because they know that they're closer to 40 than ever before. And they want to have that confidence. Like, Hey, am I going to be okay? You know, am I going to be all right? Well, Phil did, you know, yeah, he had a couple of injuries, but like he was also Mr. Olympia seven times. So really the way I define it now is just, I'm in that gym three to four days a week. Okay. The eating, I'm still like having too much fun with, I love my pasta. I love my carbs and I love sweets, man. So it's like, uh, but I'm toning that down as well, because this summer I'm actually going to do a little prep for myself, you know? No, I just, I'm curious about that, that balance for you. Cause I love all those things too. I'm a big sweet eater, love pastas, love all that stuff. What does that balance, uh, look like for you? Cause I know that's changed for me over years. Like, what I've learned to do, cause I still enjoy that. I still enjoy my ice cream. I still do things like that, but I've also had to in moderation, right? So how have you, how have you changed that? And do you allow that into the diet? And then you go, okay, if I buy it, okay. So that's how you have to do it. Cause if I go to the grocery store and buy it, or if my wife thinks like, Oh, I'm going to just surprise him. Cause I know he loves ice cream and I know he loves this. I just don't like, just don't buy it. That's how I am. You know, just because if it's in the house, I can't let it spoil. I can't let it get freaky. I'm going to be having that. And then now that we live in North Austin, barbecue is like, I have to have it. I feel like that'd be a sin. So that's like the one thing that I will make sure I have, like maybe once every other week. What's your favorite spot there? I don't have one. Not yet. Like, cause I haven't been to all of them yet. I think it was law barbecue, right? The one with the barbecue was, yeah, I liked that one. Yeah. I liked that one. Black's law barbecue. Black's is good. Like, I think it might be, I don't want to say, I don't think it's overrated. I just think that you have to go at a certain time. I agree. I have family that live there and they say black's all the time. Law barbecue is our favorite. And I don't think that lands on everybody's top five list. I think that's one of the best places. I haven't been to Salt Lake. Have you been to Salt Lake? I don't think we've been to Salt Lake. We've been to a lot. We've got to go back. We haven't been in a while. Talk about how easy or hard, it was probably easy, how easy it is to keep, to maintain muscle versus how, how maybe how hard it was to build. Cause. I'm looking at you three, four days a week. I'm kind of whatever. Yep. But you've kept a lot of your side. I mean, how different is, what's your body weight difference now versus when you were like pushing it? How, what is it? What is the difference? 40 pound difference. Okay. So there's a big difference, but you still got so much muscle on your body. Yep. How is it? Is it easy to kind of keep? I'd say it's easy to keep as long as I'm, I mean, look, I can literally, as of right now, I can literally eat twice a day and be fine. And. That's so wild. I'm more on, on. You know, fertility protocol. Cause I'm trying to have a kid, so I can't be running a bunch of tests and that stuff. So. So you're like TRT, go to the gym three days a week. Yep. Just a, you know, a little sipionate and, you know, all the other stuff that he's got me taking just to. Probably HCG to keep you producing. HCG, FSH. That's really it for now. Yeah. And then get bloods done here, I think in the next two weeks. And figure out that baseline. Yeah. To say like, okay, feel like you're, cause my wife is fertile. Like she's already ready to rock and roll. I got to make sure I am. Yeah. So I'm curious to see what those numbers will look like. And then based off of that, we'll know what to increase or dial back or change up. But yeah, I'm at that point now where if I was to, if I was to actually eat four or five times a day. That's the big one. That would make a huge difference. I would gain probably easy 10 pounds in like a month. Yeah. Easily. Yeah. So it's weird. Like how my body wants to, it's like my cells are like, no, no, no, no. We, we, you're basically, I'm a hyper responder essentially through food, exercise, you know, PDs, you name it. To answer your question, like, yes, it was hard to build. You know, when I first started competing, I was natural competing a couple of shows. And it was just always hard to go from like 175 pounds just to 200 pounds in an off season. But then, you know, you get enhanced. I was, I didn't have like those big jumps. Like you see like on social media, like, oh, I'm going to gain 20 pounds in one year. I'm like, I never really had that. Mine was always like five to seven pounds. And then it was just more refined, refinement. I won my first Olympia, like, I want to say like 232, 235. And then the heaviest I weighed at the Olympia was like 248. So I stayed. Pretty close. And I stayed. But you looked, I mean, you look like you had a way more muscle than that. Yeah. Especially in your back. Yeah. More muscle per square inch just due to the fact. I was willing to die for it. Right. Like, I think the way I prepared for it with my trainer, Holly Rambod, is to make sure that your off season isn't too crazy where you're just, you know, eating everything, but you're actually training very, very well. Like I would train very, very well. Like when I say, well, that doesn't mean that I'm lifting the roof because I wasn't that type of lifter, but I was always very consistent and very structured. You seem, you were, you were, I would say I would classify as a. Smart lifter where you were going in and being real smart with your lifting, whereas some other guys go nuts, but they pay for it with, you know, stuff like that. Yeah. I mean, we've all seen it. Right. Yeah. And although you want to, you know, go crazy, you have to think, well, I have an opportunity to, to have a long, healthy and prosperous career. So honey and I would talk about it like, oh man, like it would be really cool to like, you know, squat five, 600 pounds and do that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And do all this cool stuff. And back then it wasn't social media driven. So I'm glad I didn't have it back then. Cause maybe I would have pushed the envelope or the temptation, just the temptation of wanting to get something filmed. For me, it was just like, make them think that you can lift that just by how you look and how separated I could get the cartoonish muscles that I could carry. And just the illusion, right? I'm going against guys that were well over 260 to 300 pounds. You know, Rami was over 300 pounds when I competed against him before. So it's like, how do I nullify that? Well, be, be more separated and conditioned than the next guy and you'll stand out. Yeah. Yeah. Talk a little bit about being a hyper responder because you hear a lot of guys, they don't realize just how big of a difference there is between individuals and how they can respond. Everybody will build muscle. Everybody will respond. But it's funny. Like the first time this really dawned on me, cause I knew this, the difference. But the first time it's really dawned on me, we interviewed Ben Pekulski years ago and I remember him saying to me, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm trying to lose a hundred pounds of muscle. I was like, what do you mean trying? He's like, well, I can't, I eat once a day, uh, barely work out and it's just not coming off my body. I could lose, I could lose muscle just by not missing a few weeks. And if I ate once a day, it would come off my body very quickly. Talk a little bit about that hyper respond. You mentioned the PEDs even. I think everybody thinks at that level, you take the most PEDs. Right. That is not the case. No, no, it wasn't. And I think it was based on how I started my career. I think what people don't realize is I was already an athlete, you know, prior to bodybuilding, you know, playing division one basketball. You look jacked as a basketball player. So I kind of had a base, you know, just with that. And that was just doing like the old school Herschel Walker workouts, like no waste, just body weight stuff. Growing up in the eighties was great for me, by the way. It was just awesome. Like it was always about like how many pushups, sit-ups and pull-ups you could do. Um, but being able to do like my first couple, you know, MPC shows and actually beat guys that were on gear, um, that gave me a lot of confidence to know that if I'm able to go against a guy that's been doing this for five to 10 years and he's been using, and I'm already better than him, that doesn't mean that I should start. And if I do start, how about we just start with just like one compound? Yeah. Just one. And so I would do that and then I would journal it. This is how I looked off. Oh, you were pretty meticulous. Yeah. Cause you know, I have like an it background as well. So I'm like, everything has to kind of make sense. So then I can look back and say, okay, you were 200 pounds. You're taking this many grams of protein, this many grams of carbs, you know, and you decided to hop on something. You did that for eight weeks. Were you, and then also, were you still consistent on your eating habits? Because I think what happens is guys just start taking gear and then they just eat like crap. Yeah. Because. They think that's going to do all the work. Yeah. It'll do all the work and they're young too. So like they don't realize they already have a lot of testosterone. So now they just threw some nitrous on that thing and they can go lift. But when they come off, it's just like snarf, you know? So I also learned through, you know, people like even Ronnie Coleman, I would ask him questions when I first turned pro. Good example. Cause he was natural for a long time. Yeah. So I asked him, I was like, Hey, after you win the Olympia, what do you do? Like, do you still go to the gym? Like, do you still like walk me through it? And he was like, yeah, I basically do the Grand Prixs, got some guest posing, but then after that i shut it down so what does that mean you know he's like well i'm off everything and he would not go to the gym for like a month and you were like man mr limpy you're supposed to go to the gym every day he's like no i give my body a chance to heal and then i was asking more about the pd stuff his era there were guys like him at the time and people won't even want to believe this but he was telling me he was like yeah i come off for like three months he's like i don't need to be on gear all year round because my body needs to you know those receptors yeah can get fried essentially and you know so therefore i did that and i think that's why my body was able to go from being a super saiyan to actually just a normal you know saiyan and know how to figure out that base form and that really helped me with my confidence because you start to see guys that you're competing against on tour like let's say kai green for instance i would see kai around this time of the year 305 pounds shredded going to the pittsburgh pro to go guest pose i'm like geez man i'm really just now hopping on like a little bit of something and i'm kind of like flabby a little bit you know i'm not hard and i'm only like 250 and i'm you know i'm gonna have the internet think that i'm gonna lose this year's olympia but then it was like are you running his race or are you running your own yeah you're already beating him so just run yours and that insecurity although it got heightened at some point the injections didn't because i knew that the plan i had was just to be able to walk away from it with my health and have some real muscle maturity along with it so yeah now like i can you know kind of eat what i want and i feel like i did build a lot of mature muscle and that was because of the fact that it was a lot of my effort obviously combined with the diet and the recovery um but i also have learned most recently you know just you can't throw a bunch of gear when you're like you know gut microbiome is jacked when you have inflammation problems elsewhere um mitochondria function is you know not good all those things and i feel like i i did have that by proxy of doing the modalities such as the i was doing red light i was i owned a fataris 320 back in 2010 oh wow so i was doing that i just didn't broadcast it i was doing acupuncture i was doing all these things the red light saunas you know the the infrared saunas you know plunges i was doing that way before it became popular so that was always my go-to of like you can't just focus on the gear and you can't just slam a bunch of food you have to train and you have to know how to recover faster and i would invest more money and time for that and which gave me more quality i think i think people i think this is always a speculation but um because of social media and my algorithm now shows this because i'll click on these videos because they're so crazy mm-hmm and it's these fitness influencers but they're like ped influencers yeah and the recommendations they're making are crazy yes like i'm hearing some crazy stuff like i saw one the other day where a guy's like 500 milligrams of testosterone you're not gonna grow off that you need at least a gram you know that's crazy yeah and i'm like whoa whoa whoa like from what i knew from the gym industry i never you know was in the bodybuilding world but i'm like that's a cycle and you're telling these that's a real cycle and you're telling kids that they're not going to grow on that they take a gram of testosterone and they look like nothing yeah and what they're talking about like with with tremolo no you need at least 500 milligrams like oh my god like i'd be coughing like crazy i'm just being honest like i'm just gonna keep it real like go ahead i'm sorry yo no i'm just i'm just blown away i think it's getting crazy it's not producing better physiques by the way because uh you're getting just better regular joes are taking this crazy stuff that's exactly what's happening it's it's it irritates me i'm just gonna say it like i've been very irritated over the past few years especially most recently because these are things that should not be talked about as freely as they should be talked about as freely as they should be as they should as they are it's dangerous these are these are dangerous compounds and people say well phil you did it it's like dude but i also had a foundation i also was doing i didn't take growth hormone until my second arnold classic oh wow wow so i think it comes down to the fact that majority of people that choose to do these peds have heavy insecurity issues oh no doubt and it pours into well i'll just do gear and we're talking about like 16 year olds now yeah because and they'll openly talk to me about it at events so you got kids coming up to telling you oh for sure like with their you know it's crazy with their parents i'm to the point now oh yeah i was in i was in freaking idaho this year no no last year i'm sorry at a nutrition shop and this kid comes up and his mom is there and she's like yeah you know he's really into this bodybuilding stuff and i was like yeah uh i was like oh okay and uh so i look at i was like so what year are you in college you know and he was like oh i'm 16 i was like oh man i would have gave you 20 easily you know whatever especially with that type of physique he was like oh yeah thanks man i'm running this this and i was like whoa in front of his mom and i'm looking at the mom and she goes yeah his dad's not around and this and that what can i do he's gonna do what he wants and i'm like whoa so it comes to that as well so as much as we can kind of bitch and moan about these kids you know talking about these compounds on social which i think is wild because back in the day if you mentioned anything you were afraid that the d.a. was arrested yeah yeah you don't even know like we had to like be like oh they're posting videos of themselves using it dude there's a guy on the airplane like it's a different world literally taking this syringe and be like yeah this is what i'm doing today i'm like whoa so yeah i think it's just i think it's the devil man i think that social media oh man it gives us such a skewed view of reality man like they're not talking about the side effects they're not talking about the guy that no you know i just think it's real drug addiction and i think where they're getting it from great great point i think i think it's a different type of drug addiction as you know you guys know this you this is mind pump man you guys know all this data how many kids are out there you know smoking weed like they used to or drinking yeah you don't hear about alcoholism with kids anymore they don't do it they'll do steroids though they'll do peds they'll do SARMs they'll do all that stuff yeah because they're so vanity based off of a freaking algorithm that i believe right here right now if it was blank for a week we'd have severe mental illness and if it was gone for a month for everyone including myself i would be fine they wouldn't even go to the gym yeah if social media was not around i don't think these kids would care less about going to the gym anymore they're not real gym goers they're just and this is not all of them it's just fueling insecurity but it's fueling the exactly like i just and i see it you know i'm old enough to know some personality disorders and i'm like if this guy wasn't doing peds he'd probably be drinking he'd probably be smoking probably doing other things so of course it's a call to action all the parents out there might be mindful of what your kids are doing where your kids where are your kids where are your kids and search their room and if you see your kid gaining you know mass you know and crushing food it's not bad to ask hey what are you doing and you should be and these parents know man but i think sometimes they don't know how to talk to their own kids because they're soft and they want their kids to be on youtube yeah they really do you know like because what a little bit of living vicariously we wanted to be i wanted to be a basketball player you know a lot of people want to be athletes and stuff these kids they don't care about none of that they want to be on youtube that's it and if they can go ahead and take a drug or if they can get some implants on some boobs or some butt cheeks they'll go do it like they'll like that's the world i believe no the algorithm is feeding into it and they're not going to be able to do it into it and the more crazy stacks so to your point they do the more likes and views and like so it's just it's pushing and they think it's funny yeah yeah oh man bro like i'm on trend ha ha and i'm like you do realize like i don't even let me ask you guys a question do you even think they have like the you know like like back when i first started competing you know you had the supplement review guide right yeah and then you had like anabox 2000 yeah you think these guys even have that no they're just going on they're just yeah social media i mean tiktok people don't realize trend balloon was being used first it was i think with parabolin was the name of it was like a french it was the pros were using 75 milligrams a week yep it was 76 milligrams and a 1.5 ampule cc ampule and they use that once a week these kids are like 400 500 milligrams i don't know how there's more like destruction in the world because i was able to get my hands on that once and i literally wanted to like i i didn't want to leave the gym and that's not me advocating for it it was just like it made that was the one compound that made me like rage well it's the one that's most uh closely connected to uh mental health issues anxiety uh sexual dysfunction yep these kids are getting on there saying weird stuff about their sexual function and desires and weird stuff yeah i actually came off of it i remember doing it for like two weeks and i was like i can't take this it's just this is something that is too strong that i don't trust myself on as just a it's like hey if you know tequila don't make you a happy person man you probably shouldn't drink it you know and i think and i think having a level of discernment is important too like but that comes with age i think as well you know what are the big mistakes you're seeing with uh people these days with just their their strength training uh are there is there trends that you're seeing now that need to be reversed or mistakes i mean i see the same mistakes as far as like not slowing things down no one really works on the eccentric movements as they should um i think it's just like you know lift as heavy as you can as fast as you can make as much noise as you can can. And that probably goes back to what we've been talking about this whole theme of social media. Uh, nothing looks sensational. If you're slowly contracting something, it just doesn't look as cool. It's definitely a skill. Uh, and I give all the credit to bodybuilders because you have a lot of strength sports, right? You're powerlifting, Olympic lifting, you've got strong man, but bodybuilders, uh, really are the experts at making a weight feel heavy. Yep. Uh, good ones, right? Like, like rather than lifting heavier, which I think is important when you're a beginner, just get stronger. But at some point, uh, the risk versus reward isn't very good. You're not going to get more gains from adding 50 pounds to your squat anymore, but you're probably better, better off slowing down and making it feel heavier. Uh, yeah. Or just repping the hell out of it. You know, like, you know, I could, uh, I could back squat pretty heavy, but I get front squat even better. So in order to get bigger quads, my, my coach was like, honey was like, Phil, we'll do pre-exhaust. And then you're going to do five sets of three 15 squats for 20 reps. Oh God. Oh boy. And you know, I'm living in Denver. Oh, wow. And we're doing that twice a week. Wow. Lunges plus hack squats, plus leg press. And if he really wants to piss me off, he's throwing some vertical leg presses in there as well. So, you know, so that's a long day where I wasn't, a person I ever like puked during a workout, but I sure as hell passed out many times. Like I just got laid out, but that volume really helped. I really feel like you start getting to that risk versus reward, you know, aspect. And I trained by myself. So we always designed a workout where I could handle that way. And if I did fail, I'm not going to die. You know what I mean? What was the value of working with a coach? Cause you're so experienced. What point in your career did you, uh, did honey get you? What, what point? After I turned pro. After you turned pro. Yeah. So before Olympia. No, no, no. Before, like, so after I, after I won my pro card, that was when I was searching for a coach. I was kind of looking for a coach, uh, when I was doing the NPC junior nationals. But that was only because I was told that I needed one. Cause I was already getting, um, calls from Steve Blackman over at muscular development and the late Peter McGuff over at flex. So they had like this bidding war to try to get me to be exclusive athlete. So Peter McGuff was like, I want you to work with Chris Asito. I like Chris Asito. He's, and he was obviously a contributor to the magazine as well. And he was working with Jay. So, you know, Jay was their guy. And then, uh, Steve Blackman was like, well, I have Chad Nichols and he works with freaking Ronnie Coleman and he, and he's worked with flex Wheeler. He's worked with these guys. So I ended up hitting up Chad, um, the week of the junior nationals in oh five. And he probably just didn't recognize the number and didn't call, you know, call me back. So then after I got my pro card a month later, I ran into him and he was like, man in the honey. Uh, then in August at the, uh, the IPB North Americans. Okay. And then I met him and I was like, I recognize you from the magazine and MD, I have a column in this and that. So then I watched him. I basically job shadowed him when he was training, uh, Charles Ray Artie and Bill Wilmore for the NPC nationals that same year. And based off of his interaction with his clients and also the client's girlfriends and family, I was like, okay, I think I can, um, give him autonomy over this physique because I like the way he coaches his clients. But I also like how he handles the people around him, them as well. Like asking them questions. How has his training been? What has he gone to the bathroom? Like, is he stressed? Is he this, is he that he's very meticulous on all these different things. And, um, it, but for us, it had to start off at kind of like a friendship. Um, I had to know that if we're going to be on the phone for like 30 minutes to an hour, I gotta, I gotta know that I like actually being around you, you know, cause I don't want to just be with someone that is very rigid and, you know, very rude and that I didn't vibe with, but we vibed on various other things. So I would fly out here to go meet up with them. And one day he was like, all right, man, we're both talking on the phone way too much, man. We're going to work together or not. So we're like, all right, let's do it. So we did the 2006, uh, Sean Ray pro-am and that's where we really got down and dirty and did our first approach. Well, so when you would fly in, where would you guys train at? Over at, uh, the Golds and Campbell. Oh, really? Yeah. So we're trying to work down the street in Campbell. What was the value of, uh, working with a coach? What did, what did that help you just get like, okay, I'm going to give this to someone else and just. Yeah. Ronnie was the one that told me I needed a coach. Really, really told me that. I mean, everybody else did. Like I told you about Steve Blackman and Peter McGuff, but like, I felt like that was more agenda based based on working for him. Of course they want you to get a coach. Ronnie, I was like, well, who do you think? And he said, well, Arnie's really good. And it was funny because I was like, all right, that makes sense. So the value of it was Ronnie said, you need a second set of eyes. You really, he was like, you don't need to be stressed about all this stuff. Getting ready for a show the last week. Um, it gets really gnarly and you just need someone with a good eye and really good communication skills. And I was like, that makes sense. Cause that's what a coach really has to do. And, um, but as far as the value, Oh man, I mean, he, he was able to push me, um, without being in the room. That makes sense. Cause we did everything pretty much remote. Uh, we probably trained together like handful of times throughout each year. Anything's you changed because of his coaching, like with your training or just knowing like when, when to push a little bit further past my limit and when to kind of like back off, especially cardio, because I can get on cardio. Like nobody's business. Well, you were a basketball player. Yeah. So it was nothing, but did you have a tendency to overdo cardio before? I would want to, but then I realized like he would pull the reins back on that and be like, you don't need all that or you need to do more. Um, his whole thing was like, let's see how further we can push my physique without a ton of carbohydrates. So I hated that. I ain't going to lie. Like that was something that was extremely difficult. You know, for eight weeks, no more than 125, 130 grams of carbs, like no cheat meals, no nothing. And like all white fish, like all white fish. It was brutal, but I came out shredded. So I didn't, you know, in your mind, you're like, I don't care. Yeah. Um, but the coaching aspect I'd say, as we got closer to like when I was training for the Olympia, um, handling the noise and knowing like, um, I needed him, you know, there to kind of give me an understanding. Cause he was sick. Like third row or fourth row. And he would, um, text me backstage cause they wouldn't let him backstage. Um, I don't even know why personally, I believe that they probably thought it was an unfair advantage cause they knew I was coming. Cause they let it Neil Hill. They let all these other guys back there with their clients, but they always made honey, like, you know, Oh, interesting. Do you have a, uh, what's the most memorable Olympia for you? Hmm. You know, you would think it would be the first one. And I think as I've done more interviews, yeah, the first one, but man, like the third one and the seventh one were like, well, that's cause you got pushed in those ones. The third one was because of the fact that everything was clicking. That was the heaviest I ever weighed on Olympia stage. And I did one call out and that Friday night, are you battling Jay or Kai at that time? Okay. Yeah. So I did the, I did literally one call out after I had my individuals. Which was insane because they called me back out to do the last call out. And then Steve Weinberger was like, Phil, he's back in line. And I was like, that's respect right there. Like I just, you know, gave someone the, the Tyson uppercut, man, you know what I'm saying? Knocked him out. Not even close, dog. It's not even close. I mean, it hasn't been done since, right? I think it was only done one other time. Oh, I didn't realize that. Oh, wow. Yeah. I think the last time that happened was I was told, I think it was Jay Emanuel that told me Lee Haney had done that one year. I think it was like an 88 or something like that. So it's not something that judges are going to do. Especially in a two day show. Yeah. A two day show. Like, okay, you go there for two days. You see, you see me up there with everybody else. And I only do one full call out. That means, you know, I whooped. It's not even close. Yeah. It's not even close. That's for, they're fighting for a second. Yeah. It's like, he can go eat a cheeseburger tonight. I also think it was because of the fact that why are we, we've seen enough. If anything, we're just going to pose him to death to see something worse. This is the best that we've seen in a very long time. We're going to give him the respect, give him his flowers. It's game over. Next. 2017, I'd say close second. The intention behind it was the fact that I needed to really, oh man, 2017, man. It's like you said with Mr. Olympia, you have the opportunity to tie Schwarzenegger, man. Yeah. And I saw Arnold at that, at his Arnold Classic. And I asked him to, I was like, hey, can you come over here for a second? And after we were taking pictures and cause he came by my booth and I was like, it would be an honor to be tied with you. That's just the short version. And he just looked at me and kind of gave me like the, the dad nod and he hugged me. And I was like, okay, I was like, you got to make this happen now because you know, no one's getting the nod. And when you get the nod from the person that you highly respect, you have to do the work. So I went through absolute madness in the gym to get ready for that one. So that's, I mean that's what I ended with, right, seven. and that number was just so special so yeah that one was probably the most memorable and it didn't hurt the fact that the rock was there announcing it oh that's right you know so that was pretty cool too that's right what what did you do because there was uh i mean your body progressed uh throughout the years but your back made this huge like transformation yeah it was not a bad body part then became one of the best what was the difference in your training uh or what did you do that really that made the difference with your back training i think um because you just brought like a hundred level of like thickness yeah is what it was i think it was more of like the barbell rows um not dumbbell rows but more barbell like overhand and underhand barbell rows that was really a strong point for me especially the underhand ones because i felt like i could pull my elbows back so much deeper like the yates row basically yeah and um anything was good for him it was definitely good for me right so um and then just the volume i was doing so much volume for back i was training back and legs twice a week for those shows because i knew that those were areas that if i could get them up i would be a force to be reckoned with um but a lot of rowing movements uh initially when i got into bodybuilding i was always like oh feels narrow i'm too narrow oh so you're going for width so i was thinking well all right i'll do width just from pull-ups and pull-downs and all that stuff and i got some width off of that but then i was like if i can get round like how i do in the chest and the arms and shoulders i'll get round if i get round here yeah oh man it's gonna be really nutty so um did anybody coach you to really throw those rows in was it another competitor or was it just you saying okay i know these are good for i would probably say i mean watching those you know blood and guts during these videos and then watching ronnie the unbelievable video like that i can't watch those and work out because i'll hurt myself there you go yeah right yeah man i'm not gonna do that you start going crazy but yeah i'd say those videos and then the old school mister okabe videos a battle for the olympia oh yeah you know watching jay at you know gold flamingo and you know doing back and stuff saying he's gonna chase ronnie to go beat him you know it was always back yep and that was the era right if you didn't have a back you weren't gonna win the olympia so i just thought well then back it is the other one would be you were known for your delts as well um it was that always a focus because of the narrow criticism yes whatever 100 okay because you got to create an illusion so if you can cap your shoulders yeah you're just gonna and you're gonna look great in the quarter turns because a lot of people don't realize like when you train arms non-stop and you have these big biceps and then your triceps stick out your rear delts are tiny yeah and it hurts your most muscular it really hurts like when you do a crab and you don't have that it's it's not gonna look right so like you look at kevin lebroni like i was just gonna i was just gonna say your your delta reminded me of his yeah like and his are just some of the best it's just phenomenal yeah so i always looked at his videos and his magazines so delt training was you know i say like 2010 was the year that like i started really noticing a change and that was also because of the fact that i stopped training arms once a week i was training every other week because they were just too it would just throw off the symmetry it's just throw off the balance and we honey and i talked about it he hit the course me big time to he doesn't want to train arms i was just gonna say how did you convince yourself do you want to win or not yeah do you trust your coach or not and if i say yes then that means be coachable and if the results aren't what you want then i can always fire them i mean that's just the honest to god truth right but it worked and the quality that i had like 2010 arnold i think is one of my best physiques as well like that was nasty but it was like i was so full and it was in the delts in the upper chest that really made that difference um what about the training what were the did you do any specific extras you said rear delts i think a lot of people don't realize how big of a role the rear delt plays in the roundness you got to do that reverse pec deck you got to do the face pulls you got to do the dumbbells you know you got to do everything i would do them like even on back day too just add a little extra yeah why not you can keep them fuller you know just keep them activated you know um behind the neck presses was something that i'd like to do as well so that that's rad because those that was controversial that was the way bodybuilders shoulder pressed in the 90s yes everybody did behind the neck yep then it was like these are dangerous they're not good for you type of deal yeah if you're doing like three plates i mean or technique is bad you know the mobility talk about the talk about why you like them because when i do them they feel totally different than a traditional yeah i like them because they were difficult because i knew i couldn't you know throw up more than a plate at first you know doing for the front you could throw two plates on there and you know yeah it's heavy yeah but you can get through it try doing that from the rear like like you said mobility yeah you realize there's a hole there's a real gap here yeah of strength so if i could if i can get stronger back there then how my physique is going to look better so doing those and also standing military presses i was doing those a lot too that's so great okay so this is also great to hear because uh uh especially with bodybuilding or when people talk about just hypertrophy training oh it's the same thing it's not the same thing it doesn't feel the same no there's way more stability involved i've always gotten better results from standing i do with my clients because my clients weren't bodybuilders they were just everyday people and it was more functional yes uh but why would you a pro bodybuilder choose to do them standing what did you notice from um well we did we did those when i played basketball in college you know just push presses yeah just because you got ready for like clean and jerk you know but then um i saw jay cutler do it and i trained him with him one time we were in hawaii actually we're guest posing at mr okabe's uh hawaii islands uh competition i think sean ray runs that now um and he was like let's go to the gym and he's just loading up the plates man he's got two plates on here just i was like dude let me try that and then you realize like you're just not as strong as you think but i thought oh core stability is going to be a big deal here my thoracic spine is aching from doing this low back is aching legs are twitching like that means i don't there's a hole in this physique so how about i just start with a plate let's start with hell like let's just start with 225s on each side and just really get the motion going this is what i'm supposed to feel okay throw a plate on and then just master that that was something i feel like i did better than most people even people that don't compete is that i knew that i have to start somewhere and i need to master the smallest weight go up to the bigger weight do you think your experience as an athlete played a role in that because you're you're talking like yes sounds like it yeah because um strength training is a skill exercises are all skills they're all techniques um and athletes get that you know when you play basketball it's not about uh just going as hard as you can you get practice it's about like you got to perfect the skill right do you think that played a role in how you approach your workouts where you're like okay this is a skill it's not just hit my delts it's also right do you think that played a role in that i think so because inherently like what do you do when you're shooting hoops like you start like two feet away from the basket take a step back do the same thing i mean that's how i learned how to shoot you know and you also have to visualize it you know i used to visualize the basket the ball going through the basket so you sit under stand underneath it and you have your friend just shoot it or you just shoot it you know you just go like that and watch it go through through through through through and then that now you know what it sounds like you know what it's supposed to look like and then you start making it happen for me it was like okay i should have the fundamentals with shooting a basketball with one hand and then take a step back take a step back now you're shooting threes with one hand with no problem now this is just guide hand so yeah you're starting to get those reps and then you realize like okay if i'm doing alternating dumbbell curls why don't you stay on one side and make sure that i get all these done correctly because when i start doing this i start leaning and i start doing this why am i doing this why can i just stand like this and then as it gets heavier maybe i throw a little body english toward the end but um and then just checking your insecurity man like i've done videos where i'm like curling 35s and stuff and people like oh man i could do that and i'm like yeah but you don't look like me yeah and they're like oh well i'm not on gear and i'm like okay i was in high school looking better than you what are you talking about you know oh we just got genetics like no dude i'm the wrist squeezing at the peak contraction and being able to hold it that's real strength and then also um doing photo shoots early in my career back when photo shoots were a thing you would have to chris lund i don't know if you remember chris lund he would make us i mean hold those dumbbells those barbells for like seconds it felt like minutes but they're like you know you had to hold that peak contraction this is the money shot this is the best shot and you're like no he's like yes you know and then i remember him telling me right before i turned pro he says um if you train like that every so often you're gonna get really strong i was like what he's holding the dumbbell at peak contractions just like what you did so then i started throwing that into my routines and like when i'm doing presses and just knowing talking about my muscle connection how you're gonna have my muscle connection when you're going super fast like you're just it's not gonna happen so i just again training by myself uh knowing not being afraid to go up a little bit and not being concerned turn with what everybody else is doing i still go through that like i'll go to the gym tomorrow and i'll see somebody training and i'm like man no i want to lift i want to lift that 400 pound bench i'm like that but you you can't do you like that's not you that's just not you but you're at 315 or you're right at 275 how can you make that work for you how does that feel for you oh that feels really good do you feel any of your shoulders do you feel it any other places no then how's your pump pump's way better than him well then why are you tripping then why are you focusing on their race run yours yeah i think that's so important uh it's it's important for people to understand because it also reduces risk of injury and again you're treating the exercises like they're skills not just uh a way to you know make my quad sore or whatever yeah i i mean yeah you don't want to be on gym fails that's for sure you don't want to be on that and and look i've i've luckily i've only had like a couple times where i've had like a twinge you know about benching or something like that where i'm like oh man like that could be like a partial tear or um but for me it was always like trying to train too hard or too heavy or so much volume toward the end of a prep because i'm probably a little too lean to be going that hard yeah that's when the risk is high because yeah that's where i noticed like okay you're taking a vasoconstrictor with a vasodilator and you're lean and you're pushing all this blood into this area you don't think you're ever going to cramp up you don't think that you're tearing anything dude like yeah something's going to happen one day yeah speaking of prep uh now that glps are so widely available how uh prevalent are they in pre-contests prep are bodybuilders using them like crazy i've heard everyone's doing i mean when i say everyone i mean probably over 90 percent of people i've heard a lot of guys talk about it um i mean i have my opinions about it i just think that well does it feel to you because to me when i look at my bodybuilders i'm like oh my god i'm bodybuilding before glps the discipline's crazy right but the diet disciplines are craziest like like like you know 12 weeks of diet yeah and what you hear that these guys are eating and the just the discipline around it's insane yep to me it's almost like i mean cheating is the wrong word but it's like kind of yeah i mean i i kind of feel what you're saying though it's like they don't suffer i guess you're not really suffering yes i don't think they're willing to suffer and i think the physiques are i don't think they're willing to suffer and i think the physiques are i don't think you're seeing more athletes now that can't peak for more than one event because of it say it's work ethic i also think it's because of what they're taking interesting um why are we not seeing people peak i was just gonna ask you you're a pro bodybuilder and you for real like we're talking about open guys because the classic guys i think are doing really good job yeah you know mr zeke i think they're doing a really good job pro bodybuilders carry open class guys carry more muscle right but why are they off like there's no freaking reason guys green earth like why you should be like i'm talking about like way off we're talking about like over 10 percent wow like that's a lack of dedication and discipline and oh it's not like if someone says well it's not my like a discipline it's like well then what's your where's your discipline with how you end up saying i'm going to take this drug then that you really don't need so when it comes to gops i don't think anyone should do them because so they're supposed to what slow things down right like yeah gastric emptying or whatever but aren't you trying to eat over 3 500 calories a day you go on gops man you ain't gonna i've been on gop yeah i don't want to eat no 3 500 calories the food noise is like uh-uh like i don't want to eat anything if anything i want to throw up like you know so i don't see so that's the thing it's like so i'm going to do a gop one but i'm going to take jh jh rp6 that's you're gonna that's a weird stupid yeah but i've heard these things i'm like you're you're trying to over complicate a simple solution which is simply do your cardio go do your diet don't throw and don't think that you're ronnie coleman you could throw a kc masterpiece on your freaking chicken and and you know you can't throw barbecue sauce on your chicken and you just because you're on insulin and also this stuff you know i'm saying you hear these stories right like everybody thinks they're coleman or you know i had a friend that did that once i go to his house i see a meal prep and i was like dude like how much barbecue sauce you put on this you're an off season right he's like no man i'm pre-contest i was like oh it's tasty i was like how are you how are you really dieting if that's what you're doing well in my my opinion because i know people will point to ped use but with peds you still have to work out okay you gotta you still gotta lift and you gotta make it work yeah but there's like synthol which is cheating that's totally that's just putting oil in your muscle and we got a lot of that and i or at least a derivative derivative of that right and i almost feel like glp is going to be like i'm going to be like i'm going to be like i'm going to be like glp is in the same category it's like i'm going to pre-contest yeah but i'm going to crush my appetite with as a bodybuilder right i get the use for people who are obese but i'm a bodybuilder i got 12 weeks i'm just going to use this and i'm just going to kill my appetite you're skipping one of the two main things that make it make it a sport yeah exactly right like the sport of bodybuilding is the lifting portion of it and the diet those are the two parts that make struggles to get adam how do you do it when all your friends are doing it yeah yeah you know but hey this guy's over but like you said i think it's showing up on stage i think it's showing up on stage i think it's that the person who's willing to take those shortcuts not do those things it's probably showing up in other other factors i think so too i think that's why we're seeing no one with diet face anymore no one sucked in like no one sucked in in the face like you got guys winning shows they still got fat faces it's because they're freaking inflamed why are they inflamed probably it ain't from the inflammatory foods because they because we see them all on youtube right it's probably from the compounds whether it's too much of the pd side you know the anabolics or it could be other things you throw a bunch of peptides at it this is still stuff that i get it it works but i think majority of that stuff should be used more off season or left out during contest prep because unless if you have a real injury i don't really think you know or we have enough data to say like oh this can cause water retention this like i know that taking growth hormone during prep like at some point in time you got to cut that out because you are going to hold water it's also i remember we had dr seeds on a couple times and he's like one of the leading uh doctors and researchers and i think i know bodybuilder mentality and i respect it uh they're the kamikazes they figure this stuff out and they risk their lives yes and i get it but the mentality with bodybuilding is if some is good more is better and i remember dr seed saying that that's not how you want to do with peptides he's like you're not trying to throw 15 peptides at yourself because uh the way they interact with the body uh they're not going to work so well together right we're going to focus on this yep do that for a while maybe it's my mitochondrial health then we'll pull that out then we're going to work on this or maybe we'll work on this part of mitochondrial health then we pull that out then we work on this other part of mitochondrial health rather than throwing everything kitchen sink at yourself i think that's the problem like you said i mean they're just willing to because they have access to it as well you i mean look like we used to talk about the guys that used to travel over to kuwait to go to oxygen gym and stuff like that because they had their best equipment is that still happening is that still a big thing i don't know it was like a big thing for a while they come back yeah crazy looking who was it that told us they said well the difference is they just go there and that's just eat sleep and train just yeah well there's that part i mean yeah i'm not throwing shade at that part but they had a lot of things more readily available yeah that's what it was they had like a straight pharmacy for all yeah like oh if there was a drought in the states they ain't got no drought of that you know they had that on you know really available but i agree i think it just should just come down to how dedicated can you be with your diet and training um reduce inflammation at all costs and a lot of those compounds you like you said you take more side effects come and no one really has the data to say like oh yeah you should take like 10 different uh pds and you know like you know anabolics and you should do 10 freaking different peptides i would probably now that i'm thinking about because i try to gamify this for myself i'm like if you were to you know do that i'm like well i probably want to make sure that i'm zero issues with my gut microbiome so i'm thinking of like you know maybe like some kpvs yeah pc stuff like that especially in the off season when you're eating a lot of food yeah and like mitochondria health yeah because without that your system's wrecked already and then you're just throwing a bunch of stuff at it it doesn't make sense um i think that maybe you know igf you know igf1 i think that's pretty good but i just think still it comes down to the the grittiness of just training and just really getting after it and making sure that you know how to use food as your as your ally to go get how you want to look and it and you have to be building hard grainy muscle at some point like if you've been in this game for 10 plus years and you don't have any type of striations even in your off season there's a problem there's an issue like i know genetically there's probably some data that says that yeah you can train as hard as you want but you might not have striated glutes or or let's just say striated quads or something like that better than the next guy but i still think you should have like there should be a body part especially like the delts and the chest and the arms like you should have and i don't see that as much in the open division i do see it in like lower divisions as far as like weight is concerned because they're not above like you know 240 250 and that's usually because maybe they are injecting some oil or whatever i don't know yeah i think it's just taking too much stuff yeah i just like you said i think that their body's inflamed they're just taking so much stuff should just be probably leading into the show too because i've asked like, "Hey, so when do you start peeling this back?" And they kind of look at you like, "What?" at some point you know you have to think like that's oil like it's still oil right with benzo alcohol whatever yeah it's anabolic compound it needs to get through that it needs to get through your system and that at least that's what i did yeah because i want because i was a big stickler on skin texture and being light skinned and all that stuff like you want to like i have an advantage so to speak but i want to make sure that i'm dying away all the fat and really all i have left is just water and i'll just peel it back just enough but it's because of the fact that i might have over dieted just a little bit during prep so that we can do with the carb up more flawlessly without having to rely on blood pressure meds because i think through the diuretic usage on top of all that that's where really people you know crap the bed because they're they're thinking like all right well i'll just take i'll just you know cut the water and i'll just take more pills and i'm like you and then you're wondering why you're flat you know like you're taking blood pressure meds dude like your blood pressure's down here and you're trying to have it up here so you can get a pump it's not going to work like that so you again you can't be throwing all this stuff into this machine and expect it to be perfect yeah i've heard some horror stories some pre-contest horror stories or you know david you did you ever have any leading up to a show where you're like man i ain't feeling good this never the only time i had an issue was in 09 when i had food poisoning that was it i had food poisoning after the meet the olympians i wasn't feeling right and i noticed like i was tracking my weight leading up to the show i was like man you're like losing like five pounds every other day and like what's going on and i think i caught like a stomach bug and then that thursday night after meeting the olympians i was puking for like hours dude you know i had the emts coming to my room like early early friday morning they didn't leave until like five almost six in the morning and i was not going to compete and that's when i was like okay can i please god please you know like i i mean and the emts were like you throw it one more time we're taking you in there's no show for you we got it on fluids and your show's done and i was like i will hold that in for real i was like i'm just not gonna say anything i'm just gonna meditate and i'm just gonna be like no i'm fine i'm fine you know what i'm saying because i was like yeah i think that was a year after my first mr olympia where i placed third so i'm thinking well i have a chance to place top three again um it didn't work out that way but yeah that was the only real i would say as far as like an illness um yeah that was the only year i ever had anything do you do you think uh the judges ever got to see your best physique i know almost every one of my pro buddies when we talk about peaking on stage most all of us have said i never brought the best like best was either hours later the next day two days before or do you feel like you've you've presented the best i think well i could say no but for probably a different reason okay it's because um i end up getting a hernias so if i'd have never got that winning 10 mr olympias would have not been a problem they would have seen something i mean they've already seen some stuff from me that was never i think will be duplicated in some way you know i'm the only mr olympia to ever win seven consecutive in a two-day show format no one's ever done that and do you feel on all those like when you hit stage this was best you no i think like every year had his own story right right because i feel like that's a common theme like you are the most winning guy though i've talked to you so i was really curious to ask you so 11 yeah that was like the best balance on friday saturday uh 12 i believe like it was a different physique i think it was a different physique because i was going after more uh density knowing knowing that i was only thinking about kai and he was a very dense bodybuilder so i was like well my shape and conditioning is always going to carry me through but if i can train with more eccentric movements like he did and i can just get a little bit more thickness like in the back i'm going to be just fine so that's what happened there 2013 i basically took 2011 and 2012 had them merged together and it was in perfect harmony and that was fantastic 2014 um what happened 2014 oh i end up eating uh there was a recall on freaking almond butter and i was eating it for three months and didn't know it because i already had it stocked up in the house so i had um i ended up taking what's it called a magnesium whatever citrate yeah and it created like a rock in my stomach and i didn't realize like oh i need to now hydrate oh man this is not going to be good so i couldn't go to the bathroom so i just had like you know water like on me in 2014 thank goodness kai didn't look like me i didn't look like me i didn't look like me i didn't look like that great in friday because i probably would have lost because by saturday i fixed it but friday i was like not well but that was also the year that he and i got into it 2015 i came in more streamlined because i was so afraid that you know i was like i was getting too big and i was like and i'm honestly i'm listening to too many people that's when the internet was like oh yeah you know he's got this you know problem with his stomach and this and that and judge was like hey let's keep it together so i was like all right bet 2015 i just came out there if you look at pre-judging came out there it was like oh yeah he's got this you know problem with his stomach and this and that i just go like now what that means i should win because i lost probably like a good eight pounds of muscle just to go make sure that i was shredded shredded and the only person i was going against really at the time was dexter and the late sean rodin so i kind of picked the way i wanted to look based on the field yeah because in 2016 i told honey i was like let's just go for broke and that means friday like let's not wait till saturday let's just go and that was like the version of myself on friday and then um 2017 you know i thought we did really good i think the problem is again that's when the hernias really came into play in 2017 and in 2018 of course you know i tore my incisions didn't really get to showcase how i won it but 2020 when i came back i will say this if i was to ever release the contest pictures for 2020 which everybody says oh yeah if i show you the pictures man let's send that year even though because i didn't do 2019 if i would have came in right we totally missed our mark like we did something stupid you know going like two weeks out i would never advise it i basically did a different diuretic than i ever did in my career and um you know it was my body my choice type of thing you know you can get advice but i'm not going to blame anybody i raised my hand to that it just didn't work and um i came in more flat and not myself my electrolyte balance was completely off and um i felt like i had like two chins you know because i was running a different diuretic that time and i wasn't getting the same type of food and it was just recipe for disaster but two weeks out i was probably like i think i was still like 260 like 262 yeah and hard like and you know how i get hard like grill marks in the glutes like i was like to the point where i was like having to eat like no bs like every day steak and eggs every day i had to have it with hash browns and a biscuit like i'm not even playing like it wasn't because of we handled gop ones it wasn't because of anything but just a basic ass fat burner l carnitine coffee for you know that was the cardio mix and literally just like i was running hard like my metabolism was on fire and i think from the muscle maturity like i learned as i got older because of real muscle you needed to feed the muscle more like you could get away and that's probably why ronnie was able to eat the way he did because he had so much muscle like he had to feed it some extra calories whereas other people they don't have that quality of muscle to even substantiate that but yeah i don't think the judges really got to see the best version because i got hurt and then i missed my peak in 2020 but man those are those nightmares i'll probably have for you're the first person i've actually heard come to stage like with that mentality that was really to hear you talk about because most guys are just competing against themselves they're trying to bring the better version of them where you actually took into consideration like i'm going to be going up against this guy yeah i know what i know who i'm going against like if i say i'm going against kai i gotta i gotta assess what his strengths and weaknesses are okay he's more dense i don't need to be as big i just need to be a better version of me in these particular areas yeah i've never heard anyone else go at it like that because it because it's like fighting counter punches are massive in a fight right what makes sense but a guy like i like i feel like uh only you could kind of get to do that because you know you're going to be in the top two everybody else is just like i gotta get better i get better i'll be hope i'll be glad if i make top 10 or whatever where you know like i know i'm going to be battling for probably the top three spots this is who i'm going after this is how they're going to look i already know i got a beat with fullness yeah yeah i think i knew like early on that i would be a bigger version of a dexter jackson because he and i had like similar um so i always told myself like if he's going to be the most conditioned i got to be right there because i ain't going to be no jay cutler i'm not i'm not structurally wide like that yeah be who i am so i always looked at myself like more like a combination of like flex kevin and chris you know cormier like somewhere around there so let me let me like let me look at those three physiques and pick and choose like where i feel like my physique lies and really it was just conditioning i was like i'm going to be the best i can be i can have no weakness really like them i just got to make sure that when i'm dieted down i don't lose my legs because that's a big thing Um, for me that was like, make sure, because I did so much cardio, like I was so cardio heavy that, you know, your legs got to survive, you know? Um, and then just knowing that don't do anything that you consider 5% better getting 5% better because you'd be 20% worse. So none of that crazy stuff you read online, like, Oh yeah, eat pie filling before the show and like have like three burgers. And it's like, yeah, that might work for one show. And then the next one, you're going to look like ass, you know? So I kept a journal actually for every contest. I kept a journal and I'm talking about a journal, like not just food, but like, even when I went to the bathroom and like how often was it number one or number two, was it, you know, like all that I kept journals on all that. And I would bring it to Vegas. So I'd be there for like 10 days and I would give it to honey. We'd look at it and we like, okay, we're kind of ahead of schedule. Oh yeah. What did we do last year? Okay. We did this. I was like, okay, that didn't work last year. Let's do this. You know? Yeah. Yeah. But at least we had kind of like a guide. Yeah. But yeah. Who gave you the nickname? An old roommate. What? So yeah. When is that? College or when? Not like post-college. He was like, yeah, your nickname is the gift man. Cause, um, not because it's just the people are going to get messed up. They're going to think like, Oh, you're calling yourself the gift. Like, you know, I'm like, no, no, no, no. It's more like everybody has one, but mine is like different because I'm going to be able to come from a different place. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to come from a different sport in basketball, going to be articulate, going to have a different type of swagger. And I'm going to connect with people differently through that. And I just was like, bro, like that ain't going to sound right initially. So we're just going to run with the most arrogant one and we're just going to let people define it however they want. Because that just sounds too scientific. Yeah. Yeah. But really that's what it is. It was really like, I have a gift. It's really like back in what, oh five, what were bodybuilders considered, you know, freaks, you know, meatheads. It's everything negative. Like everything was negative and mine was more like, no man, like I'm just taking the gift that I have. I'm cultivating it just like any superhero would the first matrix. He don't even know who he is. Yeah. And the second one he does. Then the third one he's ready to go dominate. Same with Luke Skywalker, same thing. So it's like taking her gift now that I'm winning. Now I get to tell people you have a gift. You go find that niche, figure it out, learn it, face yourself over and over again, do the work. And when it's your turn, you share it. How hard is it to transition it? Cause you're so meticulous as a pro competing for years, uh, counting your journaling, your bowel movements. Yeah. Diet. You're taking pictures. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Like how meticulous. I have people collect it. You know, like Putin, right? Like how they collect Putin stuff. You know? Yeah. Can't give out all the secrets. No. That's right. You go from tracking everything. Yep. To regular life. What's that like? You know, it's so bad. Cause now you're calling me out. I feel attacked. I mean, it's gotta be a hard transition. It's gonna be weird. Cause you just be like, all right, I don't need that notebook anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hobbies. Did you pick up new hobbies or go back to hobbies? I was in depression for four and a half years. Four and a half, bro. Four and a half. That's tough. No shit. Yeah. Wow. No, no BS, man. Like, well, you're so driven towards something and then it's gone. I mean, it's, it's normal to go through a little bit. Four and a half. Yeah. Four and a half, man. Yeah. Yeah. It hit everything. You know, COVID didn't help me any well in any, you know, it was bad timing. And then, you know, I was, I did the 2020 Olympia. I had already been finishing up our documentary, breaking Olympia. And then after that, you know, I was being managed by Danny Garcia at the time with the Garcia companies, seven bucks. Cause they were a part of the doc. And then my whole transition was to try to go into Hollywood. Well, I had to stay in shape past the Olympia. So that late spring, I got a call. I got a call to be in the, through Warner brothers to be in black Adam that never came into fruition, still got paid, but didn't happen. But yet I'm still having to get lean. And, you know, I got down to like 226, which was like, obviously I ain't on nothing. You know, I'm on Peloton twice a day and I'm like emaciated where people are like, dude, you're doing a show again. And I thought you retired. And I was like, nah, man. So I think after that. And I realized like the way I view it, the Hollywood thing wasn't going to pan out because I just was not going to take that shot. I was not going to take that jab, dude. And I think that that, and that's just my opinion. I just feel like that alone was probably making people feel nervous. So none of that really came into fruition in the other films that I was offered. I was like, it was overly sexualized. And I was like, I'm not going to be just some sex dude and, you know, just some weirdo and, you know, shadows anybody. Why do they do, why do they do that to the bodybuilder guy? Yeah. Cause they, cause they want to see, I mean, to their point, you got to think like some directors, probably like I'm getting to see like the, one of the best physiques of all time. And I can't get them to take a shirt off. I can't take your clothes off. Take your clothes off. You know, it'd be like seeing like Pamela Anderson. You don't want to see her to take her clothes off. Like as a director, they're probably like, no, I want to see your thing, right? You're a bodybuilder. Like, why are you so weird about it? Wink, wink. Why are you so weird about it? It's like, so I'm like, no, I want to be there for my artistic ability. And did you see Mike's? Yeah. Hey, bro. Hey, listen, listen. We didn't warn us about that. He comes on the show. We have a great company. He's a boy and he's promoting it. And like, Hey, not one time. You're going to give me a heads up on what I'm going to watch. He didn't tell us shit, bro. He didn't tell us nothing. He didn't say like, Hey, prepare yourself. No, nothing. He could have been like, Hey, just a homie nod. Just off air. You go, Hey, just so you know, but didn't say nothing. You seen the theater at home. I saw it at home. Thank God. Yeah. I'm watching it. I watch it. I watch it first. These guys haven't watched it yet. And I'm like, you just as bad as him, bro. Cause you didn't tell them. Oh, I know. I told him. Okay. I texted him. I was like, dude, you guys have to watch this. I said, you have to watch this. And I was like, because he, I can't believe he came on the show, talked all this whole time about it. And then even off air, never once gave us like a, like a plot. Yeah, dude. I mean, good for him, man. I love him, man. Him and Mona. You know, they're great. They are great. We got nothing but love for him. But to not, to not give us a heads up on like, Oh my God, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this, man. I'm going to do that. majority of people their last high school football game and that's it yeah basketball game that's it for me i got to go to college now i wasn't no star or anything but i still was on a team you gotta take me through you take first before we move on because i'm still stuck on the mic and the fact that you because i just i never thought that like this is probably a thing that they poach bug breaking look it up suck breaking like they are like no we want to know what we can get away with and that is not something that is told to you first historical contemporary concept of the sexual brutalization immediately black man oh wow shit yeah i did not even know this is a thing think about most black dudes and i mean you see on tv like have they either worn a dress or they're out there being like a sex symbol like like overly sexualized not not like i didn't even know something chill yeah i think that part of that too is their their little uh the satanic initiation that's what i think oh a hundred percent the humiliation rituals so i think that part of that too is their their little uh the satanic initiation that's what i think yeah yeah let's say we get away with right are they are they offering good money even because i'm sure so i wouldn't have known okay so you didn't even get to that point you didn't even entertain it no because when you're reading the scripting and it was for all i know the script that i was reading to be cool it could be completely honest it might have been for that same film because it sounded very not like the first scene was like me in like a freaking truck driving to a gym and i'm kind of like just like staring off into the world just like again and a girl's head pops up and it's like really that's the first that's the first scene like you know what i'm saying and you know it's funny i'll never forget it like hey props to you my wife and i are reading this we're reading this like like i'm and i should have been doing this but you know you're texting and driving and i'm reading the text while i'm driving and she's reading it i was like waiting for her response and i was like nah text them back and say that's just not what i'm looking for i wanted to be like you know a coach car or something like that and i was like no i'm not looking for that i wanted to be like you know a like you know denzel and like remember the titans you know the rock and like gridiron gang something like that you know i'm saying where i'm helping out youth or something like that to pull from like my old dna of like being in sport not that part good for you though because i bet a lot of guys are want to be in hollywood so bad that they're tempted by that that they're like hey i gotta pay my dues i mean like if you're an actor and that's all you and if that's your thing and and granted like i would say this you're an artist that is not your identity you're playing a different identity sure so if you're if i'm an actor and they say hey phil you got to be an axe murderer and i'm like hell no you know but if i'm that i gotta act yeah so they're probably thinking the same thing this is just a role that i'm acting with is that i'm not really that person but my whole thing is but what if i like it how is that going to sit and really do i need to have this conversation with my wife and be like hey like i'm about to do this film i'm gonna have this love scene this and that are we cool we don't fly like that yeah and we had this conversation like long before so you know we just have some standards and it's not the you know poke at anybody else i mean they live their life it was just not for me yeah and uh i'm fortunate enough to have things to quote unquote fall back on or fall into and look i would still entertain doing a film it would just have to be something that i would like to do yeah that would i think ethically and morally would make sense because i also have to be good at what i'm you know portraying so then if you guys are watching it you could say well that's not phil that's jake you know whatever you know that's whoever i'm playing because otherwise you guys would read right through that you know at this point when you were going through this like identity thing and you're looking at hollywood which by the way kudos to you for for you know sticking your guns at that point was your faith strong like it is now or was that later did that start that was like the start okay because that was when we're living in florida and i think being out there man i just felt like there was no like although the state was free you know especially post covid and all that stuff there was no faith yeah you never saw that like there was no one i met at the gym or anything it was like oh yeah man me and the guys were about to go to bible study or about to go to the gym you know about to go do this that and the other but i would hear that even when i was in denver i was just like i'm fixated on this olympia stuff so i just felt everything when i was when we're living in south florida was like how much money you have what kind of car you drive like where are you going out to dinner it was like flashy culture and i'll be honest like there was a point in time in my life where i was very flashy but at this point you know some things got stripped away due to covid you know um so i started having a bigger faith walk just out of the necessity of wanting something bigger than myself and then trying to figure out okay i'm clearly troubled because i've focused on the validation of the world there i said it yeah damn damn damn damn and then you're having the conflict of saying but but look what i got from it traveling the world meeting people becoming somebody and it's like well who you think got you through it and who you think is gonna get you through this one now so that's when you're on your knees screaming hollering like you know not knowing who you are but just crying out saying lord please like it ain't just the dmx on lord give me a sign it's like for real like tears in your eyes of like i just need to know what it is i'm supposed to be doing and i'll and i'll just wait i'll just wait and next thing you know um you know better deals came and you know things that i really wanted to do came and yeah you know you make a deal here to go bad you know that's just the way of being an entrepreneur you know it happens but i started feeling like more discernment and i'd say through that walk i started realizing that the reason even as i'm talking about it like the gym the gym served a different purpose back then and then having to start from zero and going through that depression i had to recreate it for something for the next for the next nine holes of this golf course so now i'm at a point where yeah the depression was real um to the point where you know i got three different types of sand out trophies in my house that alone should make me happy right but no because i had a hollow victory every one of them because i was able to leverage all my small and big trauma all my pain went through that people i was probably the best at training angry but it yielded something that the world wanted yeah that i believe god gave me an opportunity so he gave me a platform but now i get to use it for something else and i just didn't know what that was now i feel like i'm learning like no you're the evidence phil like you were able to get through this and if you're on the other side healthy and strong and you can motivate people to live a better life and give a damn about their success and but then also enjoy it because i can't remember like more than 10 instances of that and i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god i'm like oh my god this is where i was really enjoying i this i got a question for you because i don't know if this if this is similar experience for you but um i always used to train angry that's just how i worked out always as a kid angry angry music death metal let's go yeah yeah and uh the more angry the better and don't approach me you know while i'm working out and um then i become a christian and uh this wasn't on my doing this is just a gift right it was just a blessing uh my music changed and i work out joyful now which is very it's better i'm laughing because i'm like yeah okay so it's better yeah it's weird because you i would have never said that before right it was like i'm at war yeah and now i'm like smiling i'm worship music and i'm joyful yep very different experience it's a better experience are you finding any of that is it work i've been i'm laughing because i have found that okay i think when people have seen me like the best compliment i've received is phil you look so happy oh okay and i think that's why that's cool because they probably saw me i mean people live through youtube right so they've seen like all these videos and stuff i'm like phil's a freaking dream killer and this and that and it's like yeah i was dude and i can't lie man that that ego got me through life yeah that ego kept me alive in certain instances that ego got me those titles you know through the pain and this and that but what's i don't need him anymore it's not a life or death situation i don't have to live in fight or flight and i do the same thing and as a matter of fact i um i post a lot of christian hip-hop you know a lot of christian rap and it's funny because you have like your your playlist and i started looking through my playlist and i'm like i can't really vibe with that no more and i started deleting some of those playlists isn't that wild yeah it has been wild like so wait a minute i used to in that you know i use like spotify so i can see like the lyrics i started reading them and i was like it's preaching to you this don't know but the the other stuff that's what i mean the old stuff will preach to you you gotta make sure this is bad bro like what are we talking about like the things that we're saying and i'm thinking yeah i don't like that anymore so when i hear like a bunch of you know like really nasty derogatory language like foul language at gyms i literally have to make sure that my earbuds are like charged up ready to roll because um i just don't vibe with it and yeah i listen to praise and worship while i train i'm happier when i train people are probably you know they see me at the gym and i'm i i think when i'm training i i'm very stoic so you don't know i'm a very hard person to read so they don't know if i'm approachable or not and i'm like no no come on over take a picture of this and that you know they're like are you sure i'm like i am not competing i'm not getting ready you know what i'm saying like you want to get a selfie that's cool i'm not getting ready for the olympia anymore um but yeah i do believe the things that we read the thing the people who we hang out with but most importantly the things that we listen to yeah i had that is huge so i had a weird experience the other day i'm in here filming and i film the faith series the one that you were on and i had worship music on but we have trainers with clients in here and i'm very aware of the clients and i want to make sure this is their gym not mine even though i'm doing my thing this is your gym lady comes in she's working out i got my music on and i'm like hey what do you like to listen to this is your gym oh i like hip-hop so i put on 90s hip-hop okay old gangster rap and i'm working i was working out before and then i was working out again with the music and i found i felt prideful it totally changed how i felt and i'm like man music preaches to you you got to change my vibe i was like before i was happy now i'm like look in the mirror like i'm the shit yeah i'm like oh that is very interesting what are we doing yeah very very interesting and especially when you when you you know just say it when you give your life to christ right like you start saying like all right well i'm not gonna do the same things i was doing before even though they served a purpose uh like and look i'm not gonna say that you know i'm friends like i'm friendly with some of these major artists like hip-hop artists i know some of their djs i know some of their producers they've sent me beats they've sent me early releases and i'm like can you just send me the instrumentals bro like no no you're being nice like you're not trying to like you know crap on them or anything because this is their artistic you know stuff so i'm like hey i just want to hear the beats you know man i see someone so singing on this i can see this and i text them back they're like oh yeah man we do it come out next week and i hear it and i'm like man it just don't it don't hit me the same do you ever feel like this is a question for you because of uh you had such a um successful from a worldly sense uh successful past do you ever feel like lot's wife or you're like don't turn around don't look back you're gonna turn into a pillar do you ever find yourself in those moments where you're looking back kind of fondly but they're like wait a minute i've been here before yeah or i can see my friends or i can see like the younger guys and i'm like literally don't touch that don't touch that hot stove yeah you know or feel like i mean you know you're in the world of health and fitness right so you're gonna see you know a lot of women so you have to be very mindful can't have a lustful heart and all this other stuff you know checking out chicks all day and then you have your friends being like like back in the day like hey man look at that now you got like competitions like wellness and stuff and every girl's got glutes you know so you're like okay can i just appreciate someone's hard work you know and then you're like okay i'm gonna go to the gym and i'm gonna go to the gym without gawking yeah you know what i'm saying and not be a creep this and that the answer is yes it is just or if you notice a pattern of how people approach you with certain conversations where you know that it could become very toxic highly gossip driven or even, you know, that one guy, he is the playboy of playboys. He's going to talk about women nonstop. And I'm just like, I'm out. Yeah. I just shut it down. I'm like, all right, man, I'm not really here for that. You know, you got anything else you want to talk about? And it's literally just being more bold about it. And they're like, what's your deal? I'm like, cause I'm married and I'm trying to have kids and I really don't care about that. And I've been there, done that, bro. And I'm this way that was behind me. I don't need to do that. Talk about your path to fatherhood right now. I mean, what's that, what's going through? Like, what are you thinking? Are you like excited, nervous? I mean, I'm going to be nervous when she comes home and says, Hey, I'm, you know, we're doing this, you know, we're pregnant. Um, but I think at my age now, like, you know, my first marriage, I was, uh, fathering her son at 12, uh, yeah, like 11, 12 years old. Um, so I know what that's like, but to hold your own an infant, I don't know what that's like. And especially in this day, that's something that I've realized now I really need to know who I am. And I have to be building up. Um, um, I'm having to evolve more as a better human, a better man. Yeah. Because if I say, Oh yeah, I want to have kids. It's like, but you have to be a better man to be a better father and a better husband. So shouldn't that be your goal, Phil? Shouldn't that be your eighth, ninth, 10th Sandow? You know what I'm saying? Like you gave majority of your adult years to a sport that still loves you and all this other stuff, but man, having your own, like that would be sick. And you know, my wife and I've talked about it. If that's not God's will, like we would probably try to, you know, foster a child, you know, like we would be willing to do that because we just have that in us. My wife is so awesome. Like she definitely is. She deserves to be a mom. Like she is so cool. Like, like she just knows how to take care of our house. Like, like I could be traveling, you know, I travel the world, right. And she's at home. Like I could just imagine like what it would be like her, you know, taking care of a child. If I'm traveling, you know, I could be doing my own form of ministry, you know, like doing a meet and greets and actually having quality conversations and, you know, promoting sport and all that stuff while she's at home with our kids, you know, helping them be straight. And then when I come home, just, I would love to have a son or a I know it'd be very difficult at times, but to run up and grab your leg, it would probably get me teared up a lot, but I would be so like, I I've always heard this from all my guy friends. You guys tell me different. It's like you have an extra gear now. Oh yeah. So I would love to know what that's like because I know how protective I am over my family and also my friends. When you say you die for them and you do anything for them, it's like, I know there would be another level. And I feel like completeness as far as legacy would be fulfilled if I can with the assistance of my wife and having some, you know, a tribe, you know, cause it does take a village. I do know that, but it would just be so freaking dope just to look at them. And even if they're acting like gremlins at the freaking movie theater, you know, acting a fool, right. I would probably be like, yep, that's me. I can't even get mad. I'm going to disappoint them, but I'm like, hey, come here. Don't do that. You know? That's right. You said kids too. It sounds like you want more than one. Well, if, if I could have two, I mean, why not? You know, I was raised as an only child. So, you know, making friends, I wouldn't say it was difficult, but it was something that I wanted. You know, I always wanted to be around and I was fortunate. Like I had, you know, three friends that had a household of four boys. Wow. All three. All three of them. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. The Washingtons, the Burlesons and the Wheelers. So it's like, and one of the Burlesons, they're like, I'd like to see the food Burlesons. They played sports. Uh, uh, Nathaniel Burleson, Nate Burleson. Yeah. Nate, that was my childhood friend. I'm not kidding. Yeah. So I grew up with his, you know, around them, went to elementary school with, with Nate. I'm a year older than Nate, his brother, Kevin and I, we were like, you know, good friends, his brother, Kevin, actually, I believe he's still there. He's assistant coach for Detroit, for the Pistons. And, uh, yeah, man. So, I mean, imagine our Sandlot, you know, basketball games, football games, all that stuff. So I would love to have, you know, more than one. I would love to have a boy and a girl. Lord, help me if I have two girls. I just think of that sometimes I'm like, Oh boy, I got both. It was meant to be if so, I'm like, it's meant to be, but man, Lord, help me, man. I got, I'll pray for it. I got boys I'll be outnumbered. Hey, nothing melts. Nothing will melt you like a little daughter. I know nothing. I got both. I got boys and girls love them and they're different, but my daughters melt me. Like, that's what I'm saying. I'm like screwed. I'm, I'm looking at Sheree right now. I'm like a little her all day. And I, I, you know, she's like, Oh my gosh, you're going to have a girl. Cause you were crazy. And this, that, I was like, Hey, that's true. By the way, I was like, she's going to be so statistical in that place. I'm like, oops. If she's got both of us, Oh my gosh, watch out. Cause she has a man, she, I mean, she's amazing, but just, you know, even aesthetically, I'm like, are they going to have muscles? Like, you know, cause when I look at baby pictures of myself, I'm like, I had little calves and stuff. And I'm like, man, if I got calves and legs, Sheree's got calves and she got glutes. And I'm like, Oh no, no, no, no, dad. I know. Here's a piano. Just be skinny. No, I don't want some kid coming over and being like, Hey man, your daughter looking hot or whatever. I'll be like, Oh my gosh. Like I'm going to be having to stay swole till I'm like 65, 70. Right. You're going to, you're going to crush your, being an older, I was an older dad. So being an older dad, like you're just at a different place, way more mature that you, even the way you talk about ego and everything you've been through, like imagine raising a kid at 20. Oh, impossible. And it hadn't to go through all that. So the fact that you've gone through all of that and then having a kid, like you'll be patient, you'll be, you'll be calm. You'll, you'll have so much more wisdom. Like, yeah, I think I was like that when, like when I was married the first time and I was dealing with, you know, my stepson and he was big into, um, man, this is dating us all. He was big into like UFC. So he liked GSP cause you know, he was a champion at the time. So I bought him like that DVD set of rush fit. And he would like work out in his room. Now he's like a freaking black belt and yeah. So it was like neat to see how that turned out for him. But psychologically, like what these kids go through, you know, like in middle school and stuff like that. And I, and I got to experience that and kind of be that voice of reason. Like the reason why you got in trouble, son is because this isn't this, the reason why we tell you not to do this is to protect you, not to make you hate us. You know, it's just, so those conversations, I think it would be quite easier because yeah, again, I mean, I was like in my mid thirties at that time. And of course I have more life to me. I think it would be, how do I navigate this world to where the kid knows that no matter what happens, they are always to come to me and the wife, they're always supposed to come to us because we love them and we cherish them and they don't have to look to these teachers or whatever first, because, you know, you start seeing like how schools are, they get ahold of your kids, they can be poisoning your kids. And that's another reason why I was like, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's another reason why I want to still, still be jacked because I'm going to be walking through that school and be like, Hey, this is my kid. You're going to be all right, bro. I don't care what you do with them. I know, I know where you go get your laundry. I know everything, man. Like, well, if this helps you at all, there's a really big study on, uh, adolescents and teenagers. And they were trying to look at what, cause they've been depressed and anxious. And this is the first time in history when that generation is the most depressed and anxious typically as people in middle age and what they found the best, best predictor of, of, of good health, like no anxiety, like almost completely nullified the effects of social media and stuff was where the kids active in church. So that, that gives you a little bit of, you know, so when the kids active in church and was dad active in the church and it made, and it's like the kids were protected completely from some of those issues. So, well, you gotta be able to do that. I mean, you know, I was raised Southern Baptist originally and my, you know, my mom's from the deep South. So it was my dad. And, uh, that makes a lot of sense. I mean, there's certain things that have to be in order. Yeah. You're good community. Keep them off tech as long as you can. And keep them off to prolong that as long as you can. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the beautiful Pandora's box, the beautiful thing is that I got friends like y'all be like, Hey, what'd y'all do? Cause you know, it is, it is interesting when you go out to dinner and you see everybody with the handhelds. Yeah. That's crazy. It's, you know, from, you know, you can go to a Michelin star and still see someone on a date with a handheld. It's like, can we not just put that down and all just enjoy this little tiny piece of food and just enjoy each other's company. That's why I really like traveling overseas. Um, I'll be going to Italy. I usually go to Italy once a year and to go to restaurants, you know, they eat late. They're just laughing. Yeah. Culture's different. Three hours long conversations. They're hanging out. And I'm like, no tech, no kid with the headphones on. And I get it. Like some kids, you know, they have auditory issues, maybe a little bit of autism. has some aspergers and stuff like that totally understand um but yeah like you shouldn't have to just throw them an ipad yeah they should learn like how to sit there and yeah be quiet you know yeah i mean i didn't have you know my mom didn't well i mean we didn't have a game boy and you know on the phone back then but my mom wasn't just saying like here's some legos like go, go do this while I'm at wherever at dinner. Like, no, like it was be quiet or just in engaging conversation or, or just sit there and eat your food and listen. I think we all should have a, a, a chance to just be connect a hundred percent. You're going to do great, dude. You're going to be great. Yeah. Yeah. Be fun, man. I know that. Well, good luck with that, dude. I'll be praying for your brother. Thank you. That happens and you have healthy. Oh man. I would love to be able to, I just like, you know, you see, I really appreciate that you guys, um, you see like how Michael Hearn is with Titan, you know? Yeah. I look at that. I was like, that would be so dope. You know, I have like certain plans and stuff and just, again, I just want to take what my father did and what my stepdad did and what my mom's did and just be like, okay, this is how we can make this really fun and cool. And just the first sporting event and I'll, I'll never forget like going to the first baseball game, you know, like stuff like that. Like I got to see, I got to see Ken Griffey Jr. Hit his first home run in the kingdom. That's a cool memory. You know, my stepdad, he used to work for the NBC affiliate and he used to get tickets and we got to see it and he would bring the radio to listen to the play by play. And that was back in the day, man, Dave knee house, man. He used to, uh, be the, uh, announcer and man, Belcher right there in the field, you know, what a cool memory. Oh my God. Like I'm a huge Griffey fan. Like he's awesome. Best swing ever in my opinion. There's the bonds probably him and bonds probably had the best. I think Griffey's prettier, prettier bonds. I was there for Ricky Henderson's base dealing record. Oh dude. That's insane. It was insane. Yeah. He's one of my favorites all the time. Yeah. What a, what a great era of athletes. We had the best dude. They would all be like, people would obviously say that these guys are using like, they'd be like, he can't be that fast. Like a Bo Jackson. Uh-huh. They'd be like, no way. Like people wouldn't understand. What's crazy about him was how effortless it was. Like he didn't even care. I know. How do you break a bat like that? Bro, you, you hear me? I don't know. I mean, you know what I mean? Oh, I strike out. Like I'm frustrated. Yeah. I've listened to a lot of his interviews and stuff like that. And he just talks about like, he, he talks about too, like, uh, he wouldn't even go in the weight room. He'd go in and then he would sneak out the back and not lift. Like, I mean, he just was a freak of nature. Just freaks, dude. Yeah. You guys ever wonder where the next one of those is? Oh, right here, dude. Right here. Yeah. This is, this is, this is, I think the next, uh, freak athlete that we're watching right now to see him at 21 years old, the handling, the way he's handling the ball. Oh, the way he's handling, I mean, the last two games, he broke, broke back-to-back records. His, he had, he had 12 blocks in one game in a playoff. He just had 35 points, 12 rebounds, like five blocks. They have no answer for him. No answer. He's just, he can do it all. He can shoot. He can defend. He can, I mean, dribble. He can, yeah, he's, and he's humble. He's like a good teammate. Yeah. Who would you want to see? Like, as far as like the current guys that are playing hoop, like really break out, like as far as like, he's probably on the, I'm the most pro him. Um, I like, I like Shea's game. I mean, what we're seeing right now with, uh, Otani too is, is crazy. That's crazy. First time we ever seen a pitcher that hits home runs like that. So that's, you know, I like to see his freaking Zion. It's he's a, he's a, a bad story, dude. Like he had so much. Yeah. I just want to see, like, I would love to see this guy really hunker down. I, I, me too, but I think it's, I think his time has passed. I think he, I mean, if he were to come back and turn it around now, it would be unbelievable. Cause what is he now in his like fourth year? Oh no, he's further than that. He's like, Oh, cause he didn't really play. Yeah. This is like year five or six now with him and he's just never completes a full season. And yeah, no, I, I would have, he was so crazy and, in college, everyone thought he was going to be the next freakish thing to watch. For sure. Yeah. I look at him, I'm like, Oh man, why can't these guys just really hire like one of us? That's the part that's trips, trips me out. We, I mean, we've had some great, you know, athletic coaches on here, but for the most part, a lot of people think that because you're a pro athlete, you have like these great coaches. Like a lot of them are worse. They're worse. It's like some homie they went to school with. And that's just like one, one certification. He's just, and like the stuff that they're doing. I think we knew all the best coaches. Yeah. Five of them. Yeah. Yeah. Put them on payroll. And then they don't get to work out with like the actual strength and conditioning coach of the team. They'll bring in their own guy. And because they all want to be their own man, you know, but then again, you can't pay someone 20 plus million and think that he's not going to tell you to go off. Right. He's going to be like, well, then make me, he's coming or I'm not coming. Yeah. I, I look at that. I'm like, how are these guys not like, we can get a whole nother conversation at a time about load management and all this other crap, but like, I just don't understand. I'll never get it as to why you're being paid that much money and you are having soft tissue injuries nonstop or you're just being a wuss. Well, we see the ones that do get it. And actually, I mean, you talk about people like LeBron, the reason why he's been able to go for as long as he has, he's spending a million dollars a year on recovery alone. And like those guys have those ones have figured. Tom Brady. I mean, there's, there's a few that have figured it out and you have got the right people in their corner, but the bulk of them don't, the bulk of them, like you said, I'd love to see someone play an 82 game season though, with the technology that they have today. I don't see why you couldn't. And I think it's selective. And I think part of it is the fact that they're like, well, I can gamify the system. And what are they going to do? You got to adjust the training once you get there, man. And I think part of it is the fact that they're like, well, I can preserve my career and still get, and they're still willing to pay me 10 plus million if I don't go as hard. Well, that's one of the biggest controversies right now in basketball is the guys taking so many games off. And you have some kid who bought tickets a month in advance to come see his superstar player. I've seen it. Oh, I've seen it too. I've seen it, bro. It's unfortunate. It's effed up, dude. It's like, I just think, I think that's the only reason why I always stick to like the Jordan era as being like the best is because those guys did play in as many games as possible. Yeah. As possible. And yeah, their careers might got cut short, but with today's technology and everything, why wouldn't you want to play? I don't know. Maybe because I never played in college really, you know, like I didn't, you know, like I had hoped, but I can only imagine like, it would be like bodybuilding. Like, okay. You know, I got, I got, I got a little bit of flack for not doing multiple shows throughout the year, but I was like, well, I'm already doing like the Arnold and Olympia. I tell you what, if that money at the Arnold, it was, you know, where it was, you know, and the Olympia was, I would do both those shows. How much is that scale, by the way? I don't, I don't follow where, where, where it was 20 years ago, where it is now. So the Arnold back in the day was like a hundred grand plus. It was really cool though. They had the, the check, you got a H2 Hummer and a custom AP watch. Oh, I didn't know that. So like when Jay Cutler won, he would get all three, which I thought was dope. You know, you get a car, you know, and then eventually people were like, I don't want the car. I just want the cash. You know, it's like, yeah, but dude, like you go from that to like, they're going to give you cash for like 35 grand. Why do that? Just get the car and drive it, wrap it, you know, do something else with it. The Olympia at the same time, I remember seeing like Ronnie would win the Olympia. They would have like a Cadillac Escalade, you know, you know, SUV, you know, on the Olympia stage, you know, to go win. So it was usually just like a hundred thousand. Then it went, then the Arnold stayed at like 130 for years. Yeah. Got it to 130 K then with no car. No watch, just a check. The Olympia went up from a hundred to one 10 to one 20. I think it went to like 200. And then by the time I won, I think it was like two 50. So I wanted to believe, I think the first time I won, it was either 200, two 50. Then it went to 300 to 400 and then it stayed there. And then most recently Arnold was like, I don't want to play this game anymore. I honored this whole agreement because of Joe. And Ben to keep the Arnold prize money below the Olympia. And then you say, screw it. I'm just going to do what I want. I'll break the rules. I'm going to do, I think he said he was going to do 500,000. And that's when the Olympia was like, well, we'll do 600,000. Then Arnold's like, do you know who I am? Seven 50. Wow. It's seven 50. I didn't realize it shot up that high. Well, Arnold this year was 750,000. Andrew Jack won that. And then he went over to the. Arnold UK and picked up another two 50. So he made a million in a month. Wow. So imagine Ronnie Coleman, basically all the sandals that he won was probably still less than what someone won in one month. Wow. So it's changed dramatically. I'm happy that the athletes have the opportunity, but I think now it's like, you know, you got that. I think, I think the Pittsburgh pro is like a hundred grand. I don't know that Pittsburgh pros now. Yeah. A hundred thousand. So you got multiple shows. Six figures. And I think if they would have had to, I don't know if they're having to do by pro this year, but I believe that's a hundred grand as well. So, I mean, man, like. I see some guys not even want to leave the house to go compete, and then they're like, well, I'm not going to win, so I'm not going to. I'm like, dude, second place is still. You know, like Brandon Curry went to the Arnold UK. I think he was like fifth or sixth at the Arnold Ohio, picked up second place, still walked out with over $100,000. Yeah, wow. I'm like, at his age in this sport, like he's still able to, you know, place high, walk away from some good cash prize. So I think I'm assuming the Olympians are going to probably go up in prize money too because they're not, you know, it's going to be a game now. Eventually it will hit a million, I think. Wow. Which. What a turn on that. Big time. Yeah. I mean, and that's just for the open division. The other categories, I mean, the prize money does go up, but not as significant. Did you keep post all this? Did you keep a lot of sponsors? Do you still get good revenue from that? Are you done with a lot of sponsorships? A lot of the sponsorships are done. They're much different. Yeah. You know, because before, you know, I was doing like the supplement stuff. Yeah. Now I'm doing my own brand that will be launching this summer. Like we had like a rebrand. So I'll be doing that. And, you know, I didn't have a clothing sponsor when I was getting ready for Olympias back then, but now I do. I'm with Young LA. Oh, cool. I was previously with Gymshark. Now I'm with Young LA. I've been with them since the beginning of this year. And then just the partnership deals are obviously different nowadays. Yeah. It's just some of it's data driven. Some of it's legacy driven. Some of it's a little bit of both. Yeah. You know, we definitely didn't have, you know, like telehealth back then. Yeah. You know, so there's the different component, you know, energy drink campaigns weren't going around back then. Those are things that I'm, the thing for me is like, I always am very particular as to who I want to partner with because of what I build as a rep, you know, reputation, you know, and my legacy within the sport of bodybuilding. You don't just, just because someone is willing to pay, doesn't mean that it's good money long term. And some of the stuff that you would want to do, maybe that only should be short term because maybe it's just like a cool ad campaign, you know, like it could just be something fun. Whereas other ones you think, well, this should be for at least two years. But then some companies are like, well, we only want like six months to 12 months because they're like, again, they're looking at data driven things. So sometimes I just take myself out the equation and say, how about I just not do it at all and just focus on other things. Like I do public speaking, you know, I work with different sports teams. Uh, both, you know, amateur and, uh, non-professional right now, but some, I always wanted to say college is professional, but it pretty much is. So I guess I work with professionals, you know, so I've done that. So I really, I really do like working with, um, you know, high school and some, uh, collegiate sports programs because of the NIL deals. Yeah. Because that's a different layer, you know, of, uh, pressure. You've got a 17 year old, 18 year old kid being told that they're all world and they're going to get all world money and their kids, but their kids and their parents are really driving those decisions. And if the kid isn't getting a certain amount of playing time, or if the kid is playing well enough to go to a different school, they're going to hit that portal. And it's not because of what the kid wants to do is because the parents want them to now imagine the mom, the dad, if they're together, if they're not together, the mom may say, or the dad may say, you know, uh, you know, you got to take after your younger brothers and sisters, you know, you know, this is, this is generational wealth. Like this will be, this is why we, you know, took each of those AAU tournaments and stuff like that. You don't think these parents are talking to the kids. They are ruthless. Have you, have you heard of some of these crazy portal stories of like a whole team getting like wiped out and like in summer and stuff like that? Insane. Yep. You got your hands in so many things. What, uh, what's most consistent revenue for you and what's your favorite to do? Ooh, my favorite is probably coaching, you know, and I do a lot of it privately. I get DM, you know, people say, Hey, would you like to be a keynote speaker here, there? And then after I do that, people will want to hire me, um, to do other things. That's, that's always been something that, um, I enjoy because it's, it doesn't have to be heavily broadcasted, but it could be a lot more intimate. I plan on doing more of that. Actually. I'm doing a launching a fitness app here pretty soon. So that'll enable more people to get, um, reps with me. Yeah. You know, cause a lot of people have hit me up and say like, Hey, how do you deal with performance anxiety? How do you go from being an amateur to pro and how do you go from pro to being a good one? And how do you even deal with like contracts and stuff within this crazy sport? Yeah. You know, a lot of them don't even know the pure structure of filing LLCs and in gaining trademarks, you know, having your own IP is a huge thing that a lot of people in our industry do not have. They'll say, Oh, well I got a website or I've got a blue check mark. It's like, dude, you don't even own your freaking name and you don't even have a war fund just in case someone's someone wants to misrepresent it. So, you know, I really like to focus on those things cause those things are universal. But yeah, that, and, um, some other things I'll be able to launch here pretty soon. So that's it for right now. But yeah. Uh, to be continued. Yeah. All right. Exciting. Yeah. Good stuff, man. Awesome conversation again, bro. Oh, thank you guys. Oh, of course. Anytime, man. When I saw you text, I was like, I was about to screw with you and be like, nah, man, I didn't have fun. Last time didn't show up. You know, like you really ruined it. Yeah. It was like such a jerk, man. Like he canceled last minute. No, no, no. It was great. I hope I can do it again, man. We will. I tell you what, that's why I'm curious about the business stuff. So when you have a big, love to have you on and, uh, I'll kick it off, dude. So appreciate it. Of course. Appreciate it. You got my number, dude. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'll for sure be sending you guys some stuff. All right. Thank you for listening. To mind pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance. Check out our discounted RGB super bundle at mind pump media.com. The RGB super bundle includes maps, anabolic mass performance, and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs with detailed, workout blueprints and over 200 videos. The RGB super bundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price, the RGB super bundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now. Plus other valuable free resources at mind pump, media.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mind pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is mind pump.