Phil Viz: Biggest Problems with Bodybuilding, Steroids, Peptides (& how to fix it and blow up)

Phil Vos, longtime IFBB in Olympian Coach and educator who's been in the industry for decades. And one of the people I consider to be one of the most educated and important that people have been bothered. One of our kind is to actually double into the research and realize that all the sites were under those names. It was nowhere near high enough to have an effect. It also slightly calls permanent damage there to an extent if you reason it for a long enough period of time. And then there's people that are coming off the rutta that their motility never returned. John Meadows is the one that corrected everything. He said, "It's not you, why are you at your eat? It's you, why are you at your digest, process, absorb and utilize." Whenever someone calls his own dust film rises along with insulin. So if you're constantly pushing old dust, you're not going to be water routines. And that's what you've got to be very careful with insulin insulin levels when you're peaking for a show. Low doses, we're still getting decent results. But you're not getting that power packed results from the pharma genes. You're not going to see the difference until you hit f***ing by use. And this is why we can hypertrophy all we want, but that's not cell division. To elevate a GH along with a stress stimulus is going to induce hydroplysis and give us more cells. I actually experienced that because I was stuck at 220 for three years. So you get to tell me Jay Cutlerx forgot how to get in shape and to go how to dry out. It's the thickness of the skin. So I don't let my classic guys use it depending on the age you are, how willing you are to be reckless. I would go 50 a day, 75 a day, really want to get crazy. You have the genetic potential on her to go. Yeah, but this is a free job. And I would bang that until your strength shoots you to the roof. And then I would shift to something sustainable, like a test EQ. And it's going to result in a better growth. So can you do it without the strength push? Yes, absolutely. You've seen it in a million times. But I feel like this is the fastest, most effective way to do it. Do you believe that there is a critical? We bound when you come off red. What's up, bro homies? So the new transparent shirt is finally out. And I just wanted to thank you guys so much. To be honest, I don't know if I've expressed my thanks enough to you guys. But this podcast has probably been the most meaningful thing that I think I've ever created. I've ever really dealt my time into. And I just wanted to thank you guys for giving me this opportunity. Because I really would not be here if it wasn't for all of y'all. And as cliche as it may all sound, the power to be able to have a voice and discuss these issues that we have all dealt with has been something that I think I felt a lot of fulfillment through. Because of just how much we've been able to connect with each other. So we finally have the shirt, the hoodie and the pants all on this site. Basically, and the site is acons, a y k o n s dot com slash collections slash transparent. And three pieces there for you to get. So we try to make it as cheap as reasonably possible because the company that we work with does up charge extra, quite a bit extra for the base price for shipping and handling and packaging. And this is all everything that we kind of needed to have implemented. Because to be honest with y'all, I have never dealt with clothes before. Never dealt with any of this crap before. So I have no absolutely what I'm doing. But basically because of the prices, I felt bad that the shipping was expensive. So I have a code code now for you guys to use to get 10% off of everything that you're buying. So hopefully that kind of helps compensate just a little bit. But because of this, not having enough product is going to be an issue. And they'll be able to send out your product to you within two days. And then the shipping should be about seven to 12 days, at least as according to the site. So maximum, you'll get your thing in two weeks. If you guys need anything, please feel free to reach out. I'll be here, I'll answer your questions. DM, this is the community. So I'll be here the entire time. And yeah, I really appreciate you guys because I wouldn't be here without you. So thank you guys so much. And let's get this ball rolling. Keep fairly hard. How you been brother? Yeah, I can do it. Doing all right. I gotta turn this fucking speaker down though. There we go. That should be a little better. Nice. Look at that quality. Look at that quality, bro. What is that? You got some quality there. Oh wait, can you hear me? The alligator. Okay, cool. The last two times. It's an AI 360 link system scam. Okay, nice. So if I move. I feel like I'm on a TikTok right now. Can you see my background in this? Ish. Yeah, I can see the ocean. Yeah. So same old shit. Just the work. And this is late in the day for me. So I'm like a little guy. Where you live now? I'm in Florida. Right. We're in Florida. Oh, Pompato Beach. Pompato Beach. Have you been there for a while? Have you used recently? Recently, right? I, uh. Correct. I'm moving now. This fucking video cam moving. I'm just crazy. Yeah, it follows everywhere. I moved here in, uh, was it March, you know, of, uh, 2024? Uh-huh. Because we were planning on doing this. And then I split with my ex and then I was like, you know what? This is not in the right mindset for it. Right. A bunch of crazy stuff. I haven't. For sure. And then we kept missing each other. Like we were going to do it in person. We'll do one in person. Like, uh, I'll be at the Arnold. I'll be at the Olympia. Cool. It's crazy that I took us like a year and a half. Flash two years to get to this man. It's a wild. I can't believe you. You're like, I can't believe I mean, messages I got. Oh, dude. People are always asking to have you on. In fact, there's a lot of questions. Obviously. Did you pick up some good ones? Yeah, well, I mean, we'll just go through all well as much of them as we can. It's normally how it goes. Just go through them. That's not all on this one now. My hair line is. Yeah, it's looking clean, dude. This is what I want. That's what I want. You're going to get it coming in. I already got the transplant in December. Oh, no shit. Yeah. So it's like just the three month mark is finished. So you know, all the shedding is done. So now it's going to start growing in. Hopefully by six one market actually looks a little better. Get it in December, right? Yeah. I got it at the end of October and the October. Oh no shit. Wait. What the fuck? Why the fuck does yours look so fucking good already? I'll tell you what. We'll talk and we'll talk about the protocol and how I did this on podcast. We're on the podcast already, bro. How are we? Yeah, we're rolling. Oh, I didn't even know we were rolling. Well, basically what I did is I used a lot of BPC, TB, GHK, Farmer Grade GH, obviously. Okay. Minoxidil, Due to Steraid or Do Testarid, however. To Testarid. Yeah. I used Redenzel, which is a little known product that works very well, almost as well as Minoxidil. Also, there's numerous other things. Now you get the, you know, I get the injections to numb it and then your skull is really numb for the next two to three months. Like when you touch it. Yeah, it feels well. It feels weird because they must have pulled out. It feels weird. It feels weird. It's really itchy though. It's constantly itchy for me. That's the main thing. If you think of the premise of a tense unit, when somebody's trying to repair their nerves, it makes it fire off with an electrical signal. And that firing wolf gets the area active and breathes blood to the area and speeds up healing. So it just made sense to me. Just tap my hands on my skull, on my scalp repeatedly and it really worked. No way, really. What? It's literally the same idea. Your body has to send a sensation. That's a signal to register the sensation. So you just keep doing it. That and also a red light cap. Multi-finquency. Okay. Cool. But yeah, it grew in like super fast. Yeah. No, bro, that's kind of crazy, man. Three months. Three or more months. We know at least I went to also did a really good job. Now, hair time. That's it really is. Okay. That's the same place I want to do. I must not be doing the shit with recovery. Well, the thing is, I'm very diligent on the recovery protocols. Yeah. Right. But like, they're, they're phenomenal. They're the best there is. I was actually calling around a bunch of different doctors and whatnot and trying to interview them. There's not, their doctor was the only one that could not only answer my questions. But I threw one out of my thought he wasn't going to be able to get about PDGF and he knew all about it. That was like very surprised. Nice. Okay. Wait, what about PDGF? What is PDGF? PDGF is a play-ods-wide growth factor. So it's basically a like PRP on steroids. Okay. Like they, I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but it's higher content-traded in growth factors. So it's not, it was, I don't know if it was available or the place I was going wasn't supposed to give it to. I don't want to really say. But I think that it's not FDA-approved yet, but it's supposed to be superior. But I asked their doctor a question about it. He knew all about it. I'm very surprised because it's reasonably new. Gotcha. Is, did you do PRP as well? Did I? Well, did you do PRP? I did PRP with a non-abolative laser as well. So the laser, what it does is when you get PRP done, it drains like within the first three to five days, right? And then, so you're basically exposed to the playlets for like three to five days. They use a non-abolative laser, which means it, it goes beneath the surface and damages a deep layer. So it kind of like seals it in. So until that heals, the PRP can't leave the area. So instead of like three to five days, it keeps there for about three weeks. Damn, okay. Well, I did not do any PRP. Even though now, her time has been a row, I can recommend it. So it's probably a little bit more than six. You were supposed to, right? They're really telling us to do PRP once a month, but yeah, that didn't happen. I mean, I just been non-stop traveling. I haven't been home. So it's been a little bit of a crazy situation the last few months. So I'm moving to Vegas in a week. So are you really? I had a lot of friends out there. They said that's like bodybuilding central. Right. I know, man. I'm excited. I'm so hyped. But it'll be a new chapter that I'm excited for. And then I'll potentially be moving to Austin. And then I can also be around the Dallas Fort Worth area for a bit. Maybe in the year or so, but because bodybuilding is pretty great in Dallas and Fort Worth too. Oh, yeah. Thanks, John. He was Tuesday as well. Yeah. So I don't know. I'll figure it out. But yeah, that's basically why I haven't been doing PRP. man, which is, I'm just hoping that I'm hoping it'll get it done. Yeah. All right. When I go to when I finally move into Vegas, it's crazy, bro. I moved to Vegas. Well, I need to find a fucking place. Still, so find a place to lease, move to Vegas. And then right afterwards, like in the day, I'd fly to the Arnold and then come back and then try to finish the move and then I'm traveling again somewhere else within like three days. So life is crazy. But it's good. I get the opportunity to travel at least, which most people are right. I remember the days I wished I was busy. So never complain about being too busy. Yeah. Yeah. Also, you always had the craziest beard gains, dude. Who may I just I have a really sick hair in my face. So it fills in really well. It looks as good as the people that I've seen in Turkey get the beard transplants. It's crazy. It's a wild. People ask people ask me if I Beijing my year, but you could see I don't. If you do what you're doing, it like the whole thing black, like the skin, everything. Oh, yeah. It looks like it's colored on. Yeah, it's just fucking dense. Wait, what's your ethnicity? I think background. Talent. Huh. Okay. Okay. We do tend to have that. Yeah. I was wondering if you had a little urban you too. You know what? The old funny is all my doppelgangers are Middle Eastern. That's a prize. I could see it. There's one guy that that actually body builds who's about my age, who looks like so similar to me. You can't tell the part. Tell us apart in some pictures. Huh. Okay. Is he do you do people know him? I I always forget the page. I don't know who he is, but like somebody found him and sent it to me. I come across to here and there because I'll see a picture. Like is that me? No. Got you. Okay. But we were talking about peptides. Are there any peptides that you're promoting over right now? I love peptides. It depends on what you're trying to do them because what's going on right now is the industry is just completely overdoing it. Like everybody wants to take like every peptide they can possibly think of, right? And you know, that's never a good thing. My friend Jason Thea will actually ran into some trouble. If you get what exactly his issue was, but it was from taking too many peptides for two won't. You know, just like stacking them on up on stacking them. And you know, numerous people have had issues. So you really should pick what you're trying to do and just stick with that rather than trying to just take everything you could possibly take. You know, because right now they have the fullest that and you know, I'm not jumping on that band right now. I want to see how everybody else does. I have one client on it was ravenously hungry. Another person I can't help but right now, what is that? How is your client's blood work been on since starting fullest end? You know, blood's yet. It's only been four or six weeks. Dom says that people that he's had on fullest and have terrible blood work afterwards. Like it's right in a few weeks. Well, when I get off here, you're going to make me go, holl's and blood's from them. Okay. But yeah, regarding the other peptides, I just pretty much I stick to, I take a daily BPC and TB and GHK just our end K PV just simply because I have colitis. So it really helps. I also take a what is colitis? Also, all sort of colitis is autoimmune, where your body basically attacks your colon and you get like inflammation, you get ulcers, you know, they can bleed. I've had times and there's like mucus in the stool. Jesus. You get this when it's what it's flared. You get the perpetual feeling of having the shit, but don't actually have to go. And it's just like miserable because you never want to leave a house. So it's very hard to deal with. But with taking both an oral and injectable version of that because I cover all bases, I've been right as rain. I've been perfect. You know, nothing bothers me really at all. I do a little bit of cratum on top of that just because cratum seems to help. But I use, I just use the little capsules of powder and I'll take like two or three of them a day, which is like one gram, one and a half, which is almost nothing. You know, but yeah, it's to help me with that. So when leaving the house, I'll pop two of those just to make sure. And I know that I won't have issues because it's not fun when you have issues from flare up. Right. Do you ever take days off of cratum or you just constantly with that dose? No, I take them every day. Okay. I, uh, when I went to the Olympia, I forgot it. Mm hmm. And my stomach was killing me. And then I got home and then I had to go right to Turkey and I remembered it and I was perfect. So like even five day, a bit like I was miserable. Yeah. That's so cool. Like, um, I've read so many anecdotes about how cratum has helped a lot of people with her, with issues regarding with issues similar to yours that are exacerbated with how much pain that they, they feel on a daily basis and just seems to help them without very many issues, which is nice because I don't know. I, you get, I get a little bit worried with the use of certain opioids or cratum use. But then again, when I was using it myself, my experimentation was like using upwards to almost 14 grams a day, like three times separate. Right. It was pretty crazy to the point where obviously I started getting some extreme. I was just extremely addicted and coming off would have some intense withdrawals that replicated fever. So that's got to be difficult. Um, I find that when people take cratum, they start to chase a feeling, right? You know how this goes. Yeah, exactly. Slowly creeps up and then you just catch yourself habitually doing it, right? So I have roles of when I, the way I take things like if I take, say an adder or all or not an adder like a quarter of an adder or some cratum or anything that could have mind altering effects, I want to take the smallest dose possible to make me functional, but not actually feel something distinct. Like I don't want to feel high, I feel happy. I don't want to feel like because I've had people tell me like, if they're saving me, like you can't even feel like I don't want to feel bad, but they feel much trying it. I don't want to feel anything because that's what you'll chase. So you want to take such a small amount that you're not really feeling anything. You're just functioning, right? So like I have 30 milligrams of adeol for example, I'll take a quarter, seven and a half. And then if I need more, I'll take them to the quarter, they'll never catch me pop a whole because I don't want that, I don't want that feeling, you know, because I also don't like the feeling of when I'm not normal. Like I don't like feeling high, I don't like doing drum. I just, I'd like to always, you know, be stable as I can. I like feeling high a little bit, but I said three years ago on my podcast that I pop, a public quarter of an ad or a max two for the exact same reason you do. Like you and I have a very similar mentality when it comes to that. Cause it's helpful. I think everybody should take this, not take this approach because then you can prevent yourself from having issues, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Plus I feel very susceptible. Like I can, I think over the years, I've become a lot more conscious of how I feel on a day to day basis. So anytime any of these tools are utilized over a point that's necessary, I can feel the effect almost the next day or just a tolerance. The next day if I decide to repeat that tool, you know, I'm saying. You don't want to give the habit of doing anything every day. Yeah. So you want to just do it when you need to. Now you don't want to get, like you get up in the morning, but if you had a good night's rest and you're function fine, why would you take an aderol or caffeine or drink coffee? Like if you feel good, why would you do it? You know, it becomes habitual. So I believe that you should get up, start, you know, functioning, get what you need to do. And then if something is needed, you add it. But more to more often than not, if you slept good, it's not needed. Yeah. What's your opinion on the mitochondrial peptides right now? Which ones? There's a, there's a number of them on, but I think for the most heart, they're very, very helpful. The ones that I like are one I like cardering. I know it has some potential downside inside effects and whatnot. I'll use it for your work out of pre cardio here and there. Push my threshold. The higher dose slew does the same thing about 100 millilocks. So I also like to use that. But these aren't things that I will use every day anyway. You know, Motsie, I tried at one point, but my metabolism is really fast and maybe like really sweaty and like hot. And I kind of didn't like the feeling so I'm going to try it again, but I have a low reduce. Okay. So the slew at 100 milligrams, because that's a lot. You only, you, you'll only use that like one day of the week, for example, or like on a specific day that you need. Is does that make it so you don't feel exhausted from that? One of our, one of our chemists actually dug into the research and realized that all the sites were underdosing it. So it was nowhere near what the actual dose is. So everybody was saying like, I feel it and this feels great. We'll see about it. It wasn't, it was nowhere near high enough to have an effect. So he took 400 milligrams and we had numerous people take 400 and had phenomenal results, strengthings, body fat and endurance, everything. You know, so I think the strengthings are attributed to just better function, right? But I just do 100. I just, I just like that little push, but again, I don't have body fat issues, you know? So I use it more like an endurance push. I'm trying to push my endurance stuff. I'm doing some cardio because I don't like to do cardio a lot, but obviously I have to do my cardio, my hard cardio for my heart health, right? So when I do it, I do myself a push, you know, so I can get more out of it. Do you happen to, what dose do you recall sleeping use when you saw kidney markers improved? I think it was like 500 micrograms or something like that. Okay. So yeah, it's just like a typical double dose. Yeah. That's, it's, it's, I mean, honestly, I can't say for sure because I don't know when it's too new and there's so many people that have used it. I can only tell you what I've seen, but I don't believe that's effective, honestly. You know, especially because I trust our canister. He's a very, very smart guy. He's a bodybuilding himself. This is a pretty damn good shape. He's figured out a lot of things the industry still uses today. So You know, if I'm going to take somebody's word for it, it's going to be his. Okay. Gotcha. Hmm. Interesting. Um, what about a G L P's right now? Redditor's up tied. So the G L P are interesting. Um, I don't know if you saw the, uh, unwracked podcast episode where I talked about how I did that with James Hollings head manually. So the way the G L P's work, I actually figured that out years ago, just using insulin, right? Just micro dose and just having an effect in that manner. So when they came out, I know, obviously I was all for it. Um, but what we did back in the day was I was just micro dosing, um, insulin with him. It was just was a gym tolling side right before, uh, it was going into 2000 and 19. So I think I had the pictures, uh, I don't know where they are right now. You put on like 30 pounds from show to show and got Lena's Halle. And it was so of the next six weeks out, we just decided to do an early show and jump in and place top three, I think, or top four. Might have been, but, um, now, uh, we were just taking the insulin and, uh, dropping blood glucose back down into range right before the meals. So with the G L P's, your body is releasing more insulin relative to the carbohydrates that you eat, right? So a little bit more than your body normally would do. So all I was doing was adding a little bit on top of the meal, but for the next meal to push you down into range. So when you start, when you start a meal with your blood glucose lower, you're going to have me on more enzymatic release and action. You're going to digest better. Uh, it's going to digest faster. It's going to have a better sensitivity and partitioning effect. And this is overall going to have a better, um, result. Okay. Gotcha. I don't like to, I don't like the people abusing the G L P's like for a rebound because some people just have appetite control issues. I can understand. Um, if somebody's really overweight in the offseason of his struggling, I can understand. But for the typical competitor, I wouldn't use it. You know, I think that we're losing that toughness aspect today in bodybuilding where people just like grit it out and they build that, you know, tough shell and that grit. So then when things get hard, they're able to push through. But now everybody wants to, you know, try to minimize everything, you know, they want to appetite, suppress the anti wants something for energy. They want something for everything, right? So if everything, it's like a crutch and when you don't develop that, you know, that mental toughness to push through things when the time comes when you need it. And there's no drug for it. You're screwed, right? So I do. It's important that you learn those things early and don't rely on the G L P's. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of my, um, my perspective as well is trying your best not to rely on the G L P. Especially since we've seen accounts of some competitors and even Olympians use the G L P's and by the time Olympia comes around, they do experience even just a little bit of some issues, which is obviously something that you want to avoid when you're coming to carb up and you're, you know, you're attacking peak week. I also was, um, dude, I was actually talking to Grant at the Las Campiones, Jim in Austin. And, um, uh, uh, fucking Austin, S B and we were discussing reddit and peaking and they brought up some interesting things where it seems like. I'm trying to remember which aspects of the Rada use, but it affected peaking because of like the rate of digestion and nutrient absorption. So I'm not sure what your experiences. I think you guys, you and Grant may have experienced experimented with that and it seemed that. Peaking on the same amount of carbs was different as you came off the Rada for peak week versus when you guys did a mock before, I think, right? There's a few issues with that. Now, obviously, um, the first thing we want to address is the motility issues, right? So the speed of which the food moves to our system. If we have trouble with that, then, you know, your food's kind of running into a traffic jam, your spuffed up, your bloated, it's going to clog everything up to go and pair absorption. And sort of calls a cascade of issues, things that we don't want, right? We want great motility as a competitor, you know, because we're constantly eating food and we're constantly pushing that through. So it also can, you know, slightly calls permanent damage there to an extent if you use it for a long enough period of time. And then there's people that are coming off Rada that their motility never returned. It, you know, it can I interject? How does it affect? How does it cause permanent damage? I'm not sure honestly, I don't know the mechanisms. I'm just this is so new. I'm just right now what I'm giving you is my experience with this. So I've people and talk to people that discontinued the use of the Rada, but their motility never went back to normal. Geez. That seems to me like that's either a lingering effect or permanent damage. You know, I'm going to check back up on that, you know, a month, sound the road and see how they're doing. I don't want to name any names, but probably some people that would recognize those names on this podcast. I would hope that is going to be a lingering issue more of just like a like a gut health issue that you can hopefully repair through something like going to a who's Austin. You know, I'm about to talk about. Yeah, no, yeah, got, got guys who I'm trying to remember his last name. Guys who focus on primarily focus on gut health. I want to talk to us toys. Yeah, it's a different Austin, but I'm just pretty part of his lesson. Anyways, yeah, I even had a homie too. Um, Derek crew who went to a coach regarding his gut health and ended up coming off gear, I think for at least like a year or so, they just focused primarily on his gut health and everything came back, but it took a while. Right. See, your guts going to take damage, no matter what you're doing this, because just wear and tear, right. So what you do, you're going to take some type of damage with the sport, just because of how often we eat and then the graduation and all the other things that we do. It's just how much can we mitigate it and how long can we last, right. So a lot of people retire because of the food, dexterity, action retired because of the food. You just couldn't eat the food anymore. But I wrote retired because of the food, you know, just, you know, damage GI track doesn't mean they did anything wrong. It just mean they means they pounded it for too long. You know, you can, you can take perfect care of your car. It's going to break them one day, you know. So it just is what it is from the wear and tear. Do you think you still might have that wear and tear, even if you're like say that you're being very conscious of your digestions and you're not overloading your gut with like even large amounts of food, like say you're like an aminense, you know, well, every human man is going to take wear and turn no matter what we do, it's just to what extent, right. So even people that don't compete, people that are now valuable, we walk it around every day when they're in meals, you know, just some extent they're getting wear and tear. So like I said, you would take perfect care of your car. It's going to break down one day. It might break down later than somebody else's car because you took better care of it. But it's going to we accelerate it with what we do because of how often we eat, right. The more you use thing, the more wear and tear it's going to take and there's no way around that. You know, you've lived long enough. You're going to get bad joints. You're going to get bad shoulders. There's no possible way around that. You're not going to find somebody in their 60s, still listening to that, doesn't have bad joints. Just doesn't exist. So we're trying to mitigate the damage as much as we can and it's good that the industry started to pay attention to gut health because if you can't absorb what you're eating, then nothing happens. John Meadows actually was the one that corrected everything. He said, it's not you are what you eat. It's you are what you digest, process, absorb and utilize. So that all helped with that. All happens in the gut. And if your gut's not healthy, that's not going to happen to any, you know, significant extent to get you where you want to be. Yeah, yeah, that's why I love to press maintenance on this podcast. Whatever type of maintenance you've got oxidative stress maintenance, gut health maintenance, even I mean, even maintenance of your allostatic load, which I think a lot of people kind of dismiss, you know, what you forget about. The most important thing for your gut health is first of all, it's going to be fiber, right? I mean, aside from not irritating with, you know, processed sugars and things like that. But fiber really pushes everything through kind of like scrapes the sides, clears everything out. And, you know, if you're exposed to any like toxins or anything that's stressing your GI track, it's not sitting there very long. It's going to push through by fiber. So a lot of people don't eat enough fiber. And when that happens, you know, they start to like get bloated. They start to have issues and whatnot. And a lot of times when people will sign up with me, my off days are zero carbs from my clients. But I put a lot of vegetables in those days. And that usually works to clear everything out. You don't need high fiber every day. Me at a few days a week to help clear everything out and push everything through. That's going to be one cool. I like the idea. I like the Jesus Christ. I like the idea of you utilizing more fiber and vegetables on the off days. It makes a lot of sense to me. I got a diverse podcast on that. And, you know, I just, I see no point in eating carbohydrates on an off day, so because we're not utilizing them, right? We're operating below our ana rubbid threshold, which is the point at which we cross and we need a faster fuel source. So glucose, right? So below the anaerobic threshold, we can utilize oxygen fats very easily. So we don't really need carbohydrates. It's pointless to put them in those days as long as the training days are sufficient, right? Now people say, well, I want to load up on carbs on my off days. I'll write it for the next days. But if you have enough carbs in your general training day diets, then that's not going to be an issue. What is going to happen is you're going to have overall lower calories for the day. I go high protein, high EFA, but, you know, zero carbohydrates. So overall, your calorie intake is going to be lower. So what's going to happen is you're actually going to increase your sensitivity, you know, because you're going to be in somewhat of a deficit. Even though you have all the building blocks that you need to build, you're going to be in somewhat of a deficit. And what that's going to do is going to prime you for the following days. The next day after an off day, now your GI track is nice, rested. It wasn't beat up. Everything is cleared out and it's ready for the food, right? So that's a lot better than coming into your next day with a club that GI track, you know, which is what most competitors do. But I think today people are getting better at it. We saw a period probably, I'd say like 2005 through maybe 2000. 2015 where everybody getting real big stomachs and everybody was really paying attention to digestion and just counting. And then I feel like we've done a very good job as an industry walking that back now. You would you agree? Like 1000%. Yeah, 1000%. At least they can good care of their digestion. And it's very important because your GI track is one of the things that's going to dictate your longevity, how long you live. Right. Because if you're malnourished, your body is not going to be able to repair and fuel itself and function properly and eventually it's going to break down sooner. Yeah, for sure. Question that I forgot I was about to ask. Oh, so I'm assuming, considering what we just discussed, I'm assuming you're not a proponent of using a low dose of true titan, which is uptight in the off season. No, not anymore. I played with it, I experimented with it and I decided against it. Didn't like it. I used it myself. I already have motility issues. And when I saw what it did to me, I stopped right away. I might have, I think I made it three weeks in and I was like, all right, yeah, I'm going to this and I threw it out. I was like, I'm not doing that anymore. But luckily I didn't do any permanent damage to myself, but I'm very aware of my own biofeedback. So I noticed that right away. Really didn't like it and backed off of it. And then what I saw going out with my clients, we generally just decided against it. So I don't really see what my clients anymore. Okay. Gotcha. So I did alternate off of true zip tie. I did alternate between true zip tie and red and true tie throughout my off cycle phase, just to maintain as lean of a body, body fat percentage as I could and keep it as long as it's such a high, even though obviously it's still high because I'm staying lean, but it was super helpful. So that was nice. But back to what I did, I didn't complete a thought before at true time repeating, right? So was it really since a higher insulin spike relative to the food that you're eating, you're getting your pulsing higher insulin, right? So whenever one pulses, the industrial rises along with insulin. So if you're constantly pushing oldosterone up, you're going to be water retention. And that's why it's very, very, you've got to be very, very careful with insulin and insulin levels when peaking for a show, you know, proper water control and understand the entire environment and everything that's going on. But that's not something you want to just be, you know, on your control, then just flying off the handle with that extra insulin because it's going to make you end up retaining water as well. Mm hmm. Something I was discussing with Grant and Austin SB, do you believe that there is a quote unquote rebound when you come off redder of insulin sensitivity? Not that I've noticed, nothing, I didn't see anything significant with my clients, but again, I control everything really tightly. So it could have just been a matter of, you know, me controlling things so tightly that I didn't manifest and maybe other people would see that. So I can't speak others. I can just tell you what I've seen. No. Okay. Cool. Awesome. Sick. All right. What do you get all your peptides, by the way, because I know your friends with my two. So, well, I, uh, I'm actually here with bio longevity labs. Okay. Nice. Gotcha. So we get all our, well, I was actually from Europe, not from China. So we get a little bit higher agreement with everybody else is using. And to be honest, you could notice the difference. Like people have told me, um, I have noticed myself. You know, it's just, I, I don't know the process. So I can't really speak on the details of it, but I can tell you I notice a difference using their BPC versus other BPC and things like that. Hmm. Okay. Cool. Cool. Uh, I have less experience with different labs or different companies or suppliers, but I can't say I've been appreciative of Mike so far. And the fact that he, um, uh, manufacturers everything himself and the US, like, is it awesome dude in that hair formula you're using. Uh, that's, uh, if you noticed, he named it after me. Oh, yeah. I remember you guys talked about that. Yeah. You made that right? Yeah. I'm that. We actually had a crazy formula that we had put together. Uh, I just, I think that it was just too much in one bottle and it didn't really seem to be absorbing. This was already when I was already struggling with my hair before I got the transplant and it might just, nothing might have worked at that point anyway. You know, so I can't say how it worked or how well it didn't, but we put way too many ingredients in it. So he reworked it. And I think it works better now that it did previously. Yeah. I'm so glad that you guys created that too because like, I've been using the Knoxville for like years and it's just, it just dried the shit out of my hair. Honestly. And this one works well, right? This one, uh, so far it's felt like it works better, but I haven't had enough time under it. But definitely I can, uh, feels a little bit softer or maybe it's placebo, but that's what it feels like to me. It's like a day. Uh, about twice a day. Sometimes I forget I only use it once, but yeah, most of the time choice. I gotta be consistent if you want this to happen. Mm hmm. You know, a lot of people will complain. Uh, you know, they're the success of their hair transplant and this and that, but they didn't do the georgeance on post procedure recovery, right? You know, so like, you know, look at you and me. We went to the same place. I went a month prior and, you know, I, you know, OCD on my hair and, you know, you kind of took a layback approach to it. You're, you're, it looks like it's already been a year and a half. It's crazy. Like, it's supposed to be perfect after like a year to a year and a half and it's like, I'll look at recovery process. That's why I do that. You know, a lot of people don't do that and then they wonder why their hair transplant didn't work the way they wanted it to or how fast it came in because they didn't diligence, you know, but at least we have a piece of mind to know the place we went to does a phenomenal job. Right. Um, I, my barber actually, I'm down in Florida. So, uh, my barber knows a lot of people that have gotten hair transplant plants down here in Miami. He's looking at my head. Oh, he's like, I can't even tell you that this done. There's no scarring. There's no marks. There's nothing on your head. Like, he's like, if I didn't know you went, there's no possible way I could even tell that you got a transplant. Yeah. It does. Awesome. The more they do it, it doesn't, the better they're going to get at it, right? I have been using, uh, I have been using BPC GHKCU, um, using the minoxidone finasteride topicals since they allowed me to and I've been doing the entire process that, you know, they have like a whole box that give you would like stuff to use each month, um, to, um, improve the, uh, the recovery process and then keep your hair quality high. I've been doing all of that. I just haven't done the PRP. That's something that I really need to jump onto. And then what else did you say in your stack that you had in the last few months? What was it? It's a multi-frequency LED red light cap. Okay. I'll sit to fuck that. I'll text you which one to get after this. Alright, sick. Sick, bro. Yeah, just ask a friend. Alright, well, um, I wanted to ask you, oh, and by the way, um, when we talk about Mike, we're talking about Mike from APR Health Solutions, guys. So, um, he's a good dude about for a while. He's such a good dude, man. Um, he's a plus like, he's, he got a whole Airbnb for us for the Arnold. So now I have like a place to stay with. I have in the pay for it and hotel and everything. It's nice, dude. He's always. Oh, he was going to be there. We haven't talked in a little bit. So yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We'll both be there. Thanks for our rants, you guys. For sure. Um, when it comes to, well, actually, I wanted to ask you this prior, but we went on a little bit of a tangent, but how did you get started with bodybuilding and coaching in the first place? Oh, man. How did I get started with bodybuilding and how did I get started with coaching? That's a long story. So, bodybuilding, high school, high school, high school, for and broke up with me. I was fucking upset. I was being a bitch. So, if you listen to the classic story, I realized that if I ran myself into the ground, I didn't have the, I didn't have the energy to be sad anymore. So I would just beat myself into the floor and then I was okay the rest of the day, because I didn't have the energy to be sad. It's an honor, I swear. Getting good results. And then one of my buddies decided he was going to do a bodybuilding show asking me to deal with him. Uh, he pulled out. I didn't. And the rest is history. Um, as far as coaching, I used to be the most, the last words he pulled out. I didn't. I, I was probably the most annoying person on the entire internet on the forums back in the day, because I would ask so many questions. Like you wouldn't even believe it was. There's probably thousands and thousands of questions on these, on these forums throughout the internet from me. And you know, I was just, I'm obsessive about wanting to learn. I realized early that I didn't have the genetic response that some of the other guys did. So if I, in my mind, if I'm going to be better than them, I got to be smarter than them. I have to outthink them. I figure out what they don't know. And you know, uh, just like Ron Harris said on a recent podcast they did with him. He's like, not far than anybody would have imagined you possibly could have. And that's because I was very, very diligent on trying to figure things out. And I figured a lot of things out for many other people did. And I learned from Scott Stevenson, John Meadows, Ken Skip Hill, Dante Trudeau, you know, those guys put out so much phenomenal information back in the day. Things that still apply today. Um, I don't think those guys get the recognition that they actually deserve aside from John Meadows, obviously a legend. Um, but they really played a big part in my, in short, in my, my, my learning curve, you know, so those, those guys were mentors to me. And then, um, years later, uh, I said the Ken Skip Hill, he was my first and only coach coach. Coast Meadows 20 for one show, the rest of my career did myself. And I said, don't how could I ever repay you? And he said, don't repay me, pay it forward, you know, so I did mentorship programs later down the road. Actually, you were coached by one of my, uh, apprentices, right? Kyle Locke's. Yeah, Kyle. Yeah. So I identified him. He was, he was very smart. Um, he was very, I realized that, um, I was like, I'm not sure if I was going to be recognized, but he, I could write, I could send him a book in a text and then he could repeat it back to me, like verbatim. Like, I realized he was really picking up on it. So I grabbed him and Nelson Jones. I was like, what do you guys think about becoming coaches? No, these guys hadn't even won their weight class at this point. So they never would have been. coaches, having not gone that road. But I think that they both proven themselves thoroughly now on the pro level, all across the different divisions. Both of them had Olympians. So I think they've done very well. And then I've had more apprentices since then who I'm also very proud of. But yeah, I built up a lot of coaches that I'm very, very proud of and proud of these guys. They're their own people now. They have their own style. So like Kyle, for example, he's not just my style anymore because he learned a lot through the years and he branched off and he went underneath some other coaches and learned different things. So he's got his own style now. So, you know, I wouldn't say that those guys are like a complete reflection of me. I'm very proud of the extent to which those guys have succeeded. And I'm always trying to put out more information and educate the industry and just try to make difference, raise the bar, you know how it is. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to glaze you, bro, but honestly, I think you're one of the most knowledgeable people in the industry that I've honestly ever seen. So I appreciate it. It's been a long time coming down this mod. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a tough industry. There's a lot of really smart people in this industry, you know, but I've always been competitive in that aspect, more so than physical. I've always had the belief that my mind could be much more competitive than my body could when competing with other people. So I always like, if you were to ask me like what I pride myself on the most, it would be my, it would be my brains. Everybody would think like my muscles, my physique, my placings, no, none of that. Like that, that didn't make me feel that good at all. Making a difference intellectually is what makes me feel good because I'm able to help other people, you know, yeah, they're able to differentiate other people's lives. And that's what matters to me. That's, you know, John Meadows, obviously left a huge mark on the industry. And my goal is to, I don't think I could ever leave a mark to that capacity, but I would love to leave something behind where I could say I affected the industry in a positive way. And, you know, that's what we're going to be doing this year with the educational platform. My next classes to me a blog work class because I think all coaches need to understand that. And all the coaches do is they're just comparing the ranges on the blog work. And they think that's what reading blood work means. And that's not how it works at all. Blood work tells a story. They don't even get complete handles sometimes. And there's fields missing. And then they're trying to say, okay, well, this is what's going on. How do you know? You know, you're, you're, you're missing numerous fields that tell this story. So I really want to try to make a difference there and really push health to the forefront so that it becomes standard where coaches have to know how to read blood work well. It's where if a coach doesn't read blood work, they're not going to get clients. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. With peptides growing substantially in the last couple of months alone, honestly, we could list out a long list of all the peptides that have helped us. You guys have heard these peptides and these research chems in the podcast, maybe a million times. Peptides of use for APR such as BPC157, CP500 for soft tissue healing, red or true tide and other GLPs might have congel support such as SS31, want C, 5-mean, I want a Q, methylene blue, slew. There's a bunch of others. Obviously, the list goes on and on. One of my favorite things though that I've been utilizing such as during my last prep that has allowed my blood work to come basically pristine aside from slightly elevated liver enzymes at about 16131 week after the show. And this is after a light day because my dumb ass is on a skip training day. These are probably the things that I think are the most important. So this includes like your injectable glutathione, injectable or even just normal NAC, liposublulglutathione, GI aids such as oral BPC, oral TB, KPV. A lot of these things have probably been very substantial in reducing oxidative stress and keeping all my blood markers down and thus keeping me as basically health fee as fucking possible that you can be while your body building. So I couldn't be more thankful to Mike for literally showing me the ropes and also providing me with all of these things. Even the compounded supplements that he creates for blood pressure and reducing oxidative stress and all your organs, including your cardiovascular system, your liver and your kidneys, all of these that he creates have been very substantial. Honestly. So you can find any of these at his site, aprhealthsolutions.com. And he has offered me a code code Nile for you guys to use, which will offer you a 15% discount off of all of that as well. Since he knows that the codes are a little bit just for the homies, you know, if you guys end up using those and you like him, please let me know. Shoot in the comments, just give me a DM or something. And if you ever have any problems or any questions, I'll be here too. This is a community for me. Even though I don't have a fucking disco, because I'm lazy shit, but I fucking should make it wouldn't. So I love you guys and keep paying in heart. Just thinking about John and how I wish he was still around me. I used to watch his videos all the time, but I never ever got to meet him personally or honestly taught him personally because I was too young. So yes, hours, let's change topics. Yeah. What do you feel like is the hardest man that you had to climb or maybe the biggest unexpected detour that you had to move through? Because after, I mean, this is something that I've always really liked to discuss. I think just because I don't know, a lot of us on this podcast have we've been through our own shit, but when it comes to bodybuilding, I realize more and more each year, how much what you go through in life, regardless of whether or not it's related to bodybuilding, obviously affects everything related to bodybuilding. Like how productive you are, how that's so funny. This question, because I know we have to talk about it, unless you have like something stalking my texts or something, because I've actually had this conversation with like four clients this week about how you can't let stress and life derail you, right? So like, I have clients and I have friends, they'll say, y'all, well, once I get past this, like one guy's building a gym, he's like, oh, two weeks when the gym is done, then I'm going to start. And I try to remind them, I'm like, you think that the froze, the top bodybuilders and competitors on the earth don't have stress in their life and difficulties. They learn how to execute anyway and that's what makes them that good because listen, you know, you're a high level competitor. It's about consistency, it's not about having three good days a week and four days a week. If you don't have six, seven good days that week was a waste, you know, you don't get anywhere. You've got to have consecutive compounding days in order to get real results and they don't realize that. And you know, some of these guys are, you know, they haven't had a bad workout or misdemeal in years, you know, because they prioritize it, but they also know how to work, you know, work it around their life and, you know, do it even if they're stressed, right? We saw Victor Martinez kick second at the Olympia when his sister was murdered a month out, you know. You know, it's like, you've got to be able to manage your stress and manage your life and still do this, right? You can't fall low. So it's got to become part of like who you are. And it's hard. It's not easy. People don't realize like the Olympians that we see, everybody always says, oh, those guys have great genetics. There's a thousand more guys like that with great genetics, who never got there because they can't execute like the guys were watching on stage. They're guys on stage are the guys with, on the Olympia stage are the guys with the genetics and the work ethic, you know, there's a, how many, how many next Mr Olympias have we gone through in the last 15 years and we just, they fell off the map and we forgot about them, right? Because they get it done. So the difference is these guys we see on the Olympia stage now are the ones that can execute and execute consistently and do it regardless of the stress and regardless of what's going on with their life. You know, so I think that's very important. I have a guy on Australia right now whose wife's due date is like weeks after the show and we're plotting and planning everything so that he could still help out. I'm getting them ready early. I'm giving a cushion. Yeah, we're gonna have higher periods of higher food closer to the show just to make sure he's able to help his wife. You know, some of kind of like hacking that and he's going for a national title. He's going for a pro card and still prioritizing his life too and making it work together. You know, and that's what this is really about. And if you can't do that, you're not going to make it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was your personal biggest detour that you had experience? Comfort. Once I, my career ended when I got comfortable when I made too much money and life got too easy and life got too comfortable, I got weak and that's the truth. I'm not going to lie about it. Yes, I hurt my shoulder. Yes, my shoulder slowed me down but the old me would have went right through it. Comfort, comfort chills. So tie fighters actually in Thailand, even both the ones live in poverty because they believe that it makes you tough and makes you hungry. You know, and there's even a line in this in Batman when Bane says the bad man, he says, victory is defeated you. You know, so would you get too comfortable? You lose that firing, you lose that drive. You know, and like I'm even dealing with a client right now that has, you know, pro potential possibly even a limpia potential and you know what I'm not going to drop a name but hasn't gotten back the bodybuilding because just the fire is not there. He feels he got popular, he feels validated, he feels comfortable and that insecurity now that was driving him is gone. You know, and when you lose that, you know, you're not going to be willing to endure and do the things that other people are going to do. You know, some people could just operate that way, right? They can just push through it, but how often do you see for people turn, throw it any sport football, basketball, that are rich kids? Very rarely because their life's too comfortable. So comfort is really what would knock me off honestly. Yeah, that's something that I look back on every day that, you know, no matter how hard someone's childhood has been, I'm sure most people that have experienced some sort of trauma. Yeah, I mean, I understand that word very well. I've been going to EDM EDMR, EMDR therapy for the last year or so, but so, Sometimes it's so hard for me to use a term trauma for some reason. But I don't know. I couldn't be more thankful for the things that me and some of my best friends have gone through through our childhood because I feel like that just it puts things into perspective. It makes things just feel so much easier nowadays. You know what I mean? Like I just, no matter how hard things get nowadays, I still feel blessed. And I can still reflect on that through a lens of gratitude. I'm sorry. I have a tendency to interrupt. I'm sorry to the viewers. I have a very bad habit of that. So I apologize to the grants. I didn't mean to interrupt. No, no, no, that was it. I was done. Yeah. So government agencies, specifically like CIA and FBI, when they're conducting interviews, they look for a specific amount of trauma, the right amount of. So too little trauma and you have no drive, too much and you're kind of screwed up. So they look for that sweet spot of trauma that's just enough to drive you without fucking you up. And you know, that's what really, you know, drive a lot of people. Because trauma sometimes can be a very motivating factor. You know, if you are insecure, if you feel like we're treated unfairly, if something's wrong, like whatever it is, if it's something that you feel like you have to overcome, prove yourself or just want to prove yourself to yourself or you know, you just want to succeed or you want to do something different, that trauma can be powerful. It can provide you. If you could harness that energy and redirect it. Because like Kai Green said about Ronnie, he didn't squat a hundred pounds from a place of happiness. You know, that comes from a place of pain. You know, anytime I got under like a serious weight, you know, or doing a serious set, I'm not thinking happy thoughts, you know, that's not what's going to push you through that set. You know, people would, they would see me training and like they think I'm like insane or like, well, how do you do that? I'm like, well, I put myself in a really bad place before it's set. Yeah. For sure, bro. I'm sure you've done it too. Oh, no, yeah, for sure, every time. For sure. That's the weird, contradicting part about life to me. I love studying psychology so like I'm a class inspector on everything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you sharing that, bro, really. A little bit different, but what are some of the craziest experiences that you've been through when it comes to body, bodybuilding? Myself or other people? Ah, man. If it includes, if you can, if there's one, if it's crazy, that it includes other people, that'd be really dope to hear, but you don't have to share any names, of course. Well, I've saved lives that shows more than once. One's a very close friend, I'm not going to name names. Listen, could you have lived possibly, but he was in very, I mean, couldn't stand up. I'll be carrying him to my car, that type of thing. You know, so like when you're in that state, you know, it's not a good situation. You know, his coach did something really, really reckless and stupid, especially with his current circumstance that should not have been done and he was really, really bad shape. So I've saved lives that shows numerous times just because, you know, something went wrong or somebody got some bad advice once was because the EMT didn't even know what they were doing. That was pretty upsetting. But as far as crazy things, I haven't really like run into a lot of like really crazy things that I've seen. What I see is pretty much normal, you know, weight cutting, things like that. Obviously, we have our experiences. We go people passing or having issues and things like that. I've had a client come at suicide, which really messed me up because everybody always tell me like, like, your natural inclination is to like, could I have fixed it, right? And I remember his girlfriend saying to me, you know, like, he really looked up to you and this and that. And I said to her, I said, I wish he would have talked to me. She's like, he'd never would have let you see him, see him be weak. So that's really when I changed my coaching because I was like a hard at. So I was like a drill subject for a very long time. And I guess it was too much to wear like, listen, I understand it's not my fault, this and that, but I feel like if he would have talked to me, maybe I could have said something that made a difference, you know, but he was too scared to let me see that because I was Mr. Hardass. And you know, that doesn't really mesh well with a lot of clients as well. You know, like, back when I was younger, I was a lot of complaints that I was just mean, I was a mean coach, you know, it wasn't understanding and like all these kinds of things. And listen, they weren't entirely wrong, you know. So just like anything else that we do, we've got to get better with it as we go. So you know, I'm always trying to improve. And that was one aspect in which I'm still trying to improve, you know, I psychologically personality wise, don't always come across like the way that I mean to people can take it the wrong way. So I'm always trying to be conscious of, you know, what I do, what I say, how I act and how I affect other people, because I think that's very, very literally right? Like if I were to say, I'm smarter than some, I'm not trying to put them down. I'm not trying to put myself up. I say that like I'm saying grass is green. I just see it as what I see it, you know, I'm not saying with any type of malicious intent, I'm not saying with any ego, I'm just saying like that's how I see the situation. So like I, I will be very literal with the words that I use and sometimes don't realize that it can be taken the wrong way. So I'm trying to be conscious of that with like just my social life, my friends, everybody pretty much. But it makes it hard to talk to chicks. Go enough of this honestly. I kind of wanted to ask if like what your experience is doing this, because like what we were discussing previously regarding, I guess total Alice that glow, the things that you've been through and using that for us to move on or move forward. I think one of the things that I've been trying to practice recently more so than before, as like a constant reminder is no matter what place I'm in, no matter how paralyzed I feel, just move forward. Right. Like it's not the motivation that I need even though that may be helpful at times to feel the urge to move forward, but it's just no matter what, just move. And I think that can be a little bit difficult, especially if say that you're in a lesser, a lesser deep situation like your body building and your coaching yourself. I think it's easy to get this sort of maybe decision paralysis. And that's where the problems arise. Right. Do you have a tracker on my phone? This is another conversation that I was having this week in recent. Yeah. Literally, literally. You just you just pulled two conversations out of my phone somehow. But yeah, like when things get when things become stressful, right, or when you become upset, or even if you're in depression, right? I had a I was talking, I was talking to this girl recently and the topic came up about like depression and things like that, you know, because I had my break up years ago and all these other things. And I started to get the idea that she was thinking like when you're depressed, you don't do anything. You sit at home, like curled up in a ball. And I'm like, no, like if I'm depressed, I do everything the same. I just do it in a bad mood. Like, like, you can't let that like today, these kids are all talking about safe spaces in this and that. And then he'd personal days from work. I didn't exist when I was growing up, you know? Like you deal with it, especially as a man, listen, women I could understand. It is a man, it's your job to be able to handle your emotions, right? Did that mean you don't feel them? No, of course you're going to feel them. Of course you're going to be upset and things are going to go wrong. But things need to still be done, right? Like in a marriage, for example, you know, the wife is typically going to be more emotional. So if something's wrong and you know, she's struggling with yours, you have you struggled to what happens? The whole family falls apart? No, you've got to be the one that keeps that together. So just because you're frustrated, just because you're upset, just because things are really wrong, doesn't mean you stop doing what you're doing. You know, you keep going, regard this. You know, you can feel your emotions, you can think about it, but you would have to do anyway. And that's the thing that I think has been lost with today's generation is that lesson of, you know, like, it's okay to feel a certain way, but you still got a function. Mm-hmm. Yeah. When, whenever you were competing, was there any time that you were coaching yourself? I coached my whole career myself. Okay. So with, when you were under skipped, then it was just like that 16-week period of time when you were learning from him, really? I was four years old and I was asking a million questions on forums and everybody was saying that people finally jumped in. They're like, why aren't you just higher skipping? I was like, I'm broke. I don't have money. I'm 20 years old. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. I jumped in and I still remember this day. He said, this one's pro bono. I didn't know what pro bono meant. So I started like looking it up. And when I saw what it meant, I like jumped in the air. And yeah, 16 weeks, I wrote him a book every night. He replied back with a book. You won't find a coach that'll do that today. And it really, really accelerated my learning curve. So then from 21 to the end of my career, I coached myself. And yes, I made mistakes. And I didn't feel anybody had the knowledge at that point. You know, to do a really good job is we hadn't figured out a whole lot. Yeah, there's only a few of us at that point that were really figuring things out. You know, and I'm also the type where if I catch you make a mistake here, I'm going to lose all trust for you. You know, so I did want to put myself in that situation. So I figured I'd be okay with making my own mistakes. And you know, like these guys today and today's world trying to self coach, you're not going to ever have the possibility of having the knowledge of a top coach as a competitor right now. Unless you're really, really studying and into it. And the thing is, it's very hard to make decisions when you're emotional when you're invested in it, right? So your own personal emotions are invested in this. And that's going to decrease your body's ability to process logic in that sector of the brain. So I can't think clearly. This is the very least me to. a trained eye that you trust. I can tell you what they're seeing, tell you what they think, and then you make a decision off of that. But it's very, very hard to prep yourself. When I was doing it, you could argue there wasn't enough information. So, you know, different scenario. In today's world, all of the information that exists, they've done all the footwork. They've got all that knowledge and put it all together and all that experience for you. You know, you'd be crazy not to use a coach. This is the only sport for people that don't need a coach. Yeah. Okay. I have this argument with Jared Feather, which I I see his point. But Jared believes that insulin sensitivity, like insulin sensitivity as a problem in the bodybuilding industry is blown out of proportion. What do you feel about that? It depends. It depends on what we're talking about. What do you mean blowing out of proportion? Like you think it's like how much people talk about insulin sensitivity potential being an issue as a bodybuilder is just not an issue. Like you will as a bodybuilder, all the things you're doing, you're going to stay insulin sensitive, sensitive, unless you're in a situation that's a little bit more more specific, such as, um, Stan Mals where he was utilizing big, big doses of GH multiple times a day regularly at a frequent basis with giant, just a huge amount of carbohydrates over the course of like two, three years. And he has that propensity in his genetics for type 1 diabetes that his brother got when he was 18. I think it was type 1 because it was a genetic, but it just, uh, it just started up when his brother was 18 and then for him, I guess it started up later in that later in his age. Yeah. Well, you would both have a point, depends on what you're going to take. So, um, I think one of the first requests you got to have me on here was because, uh, chase science quoted me about GH, right? About the 18. I use a GH. Oh, yeah. He, he, he, he, he has to keep an A also. Yeah. What was the question about GH? Yeah. I'm, I'm gonna jump to it honestly, but. So, uh, yeah, throw me the question, we'll look at it. Okay, let me, let me find it real quick. Uh, chase asks to talk about Sarah Stim versus generics and what he's heard freaks do regarding HGH. All right. Well, that's where that's the direction I was going anyway. Um, this whole generic versus farm argument is getting crazy. Um, I posed this argument on my page, uh, last year and somebody who's actually, actually is, is in R and D, uh, messaged me anonymously and she showed me proof, but she's, I asked her, yeah, even I asked her, I said, would you come on a podcast? She's like, I wouldn't use my job. Absolutely not. She's like, keep my name out of this. Please, like you can get, you could really run my life. I'm just trying to do this to be helpful. So I started asking her questions. I said, could peptides be altered to produce a false positive and test positive for GH? She said, that's absolutely. And I said, one of the odds that these generic GH facilities are real GH. And she said the training and experience alone necessary along with the equipment makes almost impossible. She's like, it's extremely unlikely that they're actually producing real GH. Said more than likely it's, uh, it's an older GHRP test positive for GH. GHRP is going to elevate IGF one. John Meadows actually believed they added ADHD to make you hold a little bit of water. So that, I remember that. Simulay water retention. And I get that a lot of people say, all the way it works. Let's say I'm not saying that. GH's creative jobs work. They grow muscle. I'm saying it's not the same drug. It doesn't work the same. That's what I'm saying. Anytime people talk about generics, right? They'll say, oh, we usually need to take a higher dose. Have you ever heard of a generic medication before that needs a higher dose to be the same potency as the brand name? You know, now just as described 30 milligrams of Adderall, right? Like, oh, yeah, it's this. It's generic. She just takes 60 like you'd be out of your mind, right? So there's no such thing as, you know, a drug you'd need to take a higher dose to get the same results from. It's not the same. And the thing is that low doses, you're still getting decent results, but you're not getting like that power pack results from the pharma GH. You're not going to see the difference till you hit 10 to all I use. And this is why the vast majority of the pros all use pharma. It's crazy. These people that's industry really think that they're smart. All the pros are stupid. Because they're just wasting all their money and they just don't know any better. The pros have access to all the information you have in more. They did try the generics. They realized it didn't work the same. Some of them will throw a little bit in extra just to cover all bases like I know Dallas, but Marvel was doing that. But they're going to have their base of pharma GH. And it's going to be high from what I know all of the competitors. I think it was a 2019. It won't be only one guy was under 1890s on stage. So higher doses of GH are going to induce hyperplasia, which is cell division. And Scott Stevenson actually produced the research that was showing that one of the limiting factors for us as far as how much muscle mass we can gain is going to be total cell count, right? So we can hypertrophy all we want, but that's not cell division. So the elevated, elevated GH along with a stress stimulus is going to induce hyperplasia to give us more cells. I actually experienced that because I was stuck at 223 years until I used pharma GH. And that was the reason why at the time, yeah, the reason why everyone simplifies it to like, oh, yeah, GH is for the long term gains. You're not going to see anything short term, but high dose. You'll see it right away. I remember, I still remember a specific day when I first went up to like 12 I use go into LA fitness and I started warm up with a lap pole now. And my lats were so pumped, my tricep was hit in my lap. I was like, what the hell is going on? When you hit 12 I use and start going there and higher, you will inflate thinking about warming up. You'll start getting a pump driving to the gym. Like, you don't understand what this does to you. It will inflate the like out of you. Okay. So for devil's advocate, and I kind of the, I kind of see what he's saying, but I had a discussion with Justin Harris and he believes that GH can be good for short term quote, short term as in like maybe like a few years or so. But he believes like say 10 years down the line. It's the result. It's one of the main causes for the, the unwanted changes and proportions of a lot of bodybuilders. What do you mean? I'm sure changes in proportions. You need muscle supplies. Just like he thinks where the proportions start looking a little weird. And it's like like you're not making gains right in the most optimal places. One of the things he feels long term GHs. One of the things that I've been pointing out lately and you know, I would like more people to like parrot this and repeat this, you know, because back in the past, I used to take offense when somebody would like steal my information and pull it off his theirs. But like, I think that certain things now need to be spread. And I think that people are not realizing that higher doses of GH have an upper daily college. It's just what just came out of college. So this is why all the details disappearing because of high doses of GH and the insulin correlated to it. Even if you're not using insulin through the resistance that the GH causes, you're pulsing higher insulin, right? So you're going to have amplified IGF1 levels due to the elevation IGF1 BP3. So it's going to amplify the GH's effect. It's going to have a synergist effect. And your skin just gets thicker. And this is why we see details start to disappear. If you look at like the end of J-coller's career, right? He had no Christmas tree left. If you look at when he turned crow, he had a beautiful Christmas tree. He had to tell me J-coller just forgot how to get and shape and forgot how to dry out. It's the thickness of his skin. That's what happened. So I don't let my classic guys use it because it's the detailed division. So my classic guys, I won't use it because I need their skin paper thin. I will only go high doses. If it's an open pro bodybuilder or like somebody's trying to build it to 212 because you're good at need that mass and just really know other way to do it if genetics didn't already do it. You know what I'm saying? You could pound gear all you want. Still going to be a slow roll unless you start hitting that GH. Pretty heavy. You don't like like GH at all for your classic competitors? If I like three ideas. I'll mess. In the short term, I would use it. But for the most part, no. So like my guy going into the Arnold Classic, right? Paul Cameron. He's black guy. He's already got that thick skin. It would worsen the problem if I gave him GH because there was make his skin thicker and thicker. We don't want that. We're trying to push for you. So you have to decide what this individual could do. If you have somebody with like paper thin skin, then yeah, and you can probably get away with it. But like we could even see an open as a get bad at it for this. I'm just like this is speculation. I don't remember sure. He didn't tell me this. But we could see that Earth's skin got thicker as he got thicker. And I may or may not know what he uses and his skin's just getting thicker. So we could see it. He packed on a lot of mess, but he lost a lot of detail. Didn't he used to have that paper thin skin? You don't think that's just all the variables associated with him jumping to open? Not just GH. What else could cause it? Definitely. I just feel like an increase in anything that'll hold water, including carbohydrates, is going to increase. It's not even bone dry. The details were reduced. It's not water. I don't know. I believe in like a, I just believe in homeostasis of the distribution of water. Obviously we try to like, we try to skew that distribution to our favor during peak week. But I still believe that you can't, it's not ever perfect, which is why it's such a risky process doing peak week, especially with crazier changes in your variables, right? It won't always be perfect, but I think we're getting like sidetracked on peaking is the fact that GH, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm very, very sure of this. I could said you pictures you could post, you could, when you post this, you could go throw them up on the screen. I'll show you new people that later in their career lost their detail as they got bigger and their skin got thicker. It's because of high. It's a GH. So color used to tell people before you, you know, start to get in PC and main stream, take as much as you can afford. That's what it used to tell people. So Ronnie was the first one to really gun it with Chad Nichols and then Jay. They went up even higher than that. I heard he was taking two bottles of serfs in the day. That's what I was told on anyway. You could see the massive growth that he had, but you could see the loss in detail, especially from the back. His skin got thicker. Why would somebody think it's thicker as they age? As we age, our college instead of just down regulates and you get old man skin, right? So you just think it's thinner. Why would you think you're instead of thinner as you got older? - Gotcha. - There's gotta be a catalyst in place, right? - I see. - We're looking at a very high carbohydrate intake, which is gonna be pulsing insulin very high, elevating IGF-1 levels too, or high dose of GH. So both of those things make perfect sense in line with why his skin got thicker than we should. Or not just him. - Yeah, okay. That makes a lot of sense. I'm training for over 15 years now and I was too lazy to track anything. Training wise for about the first 10 years, because science based trainings for PCs. But I kept hitting plateaus from burnout, fatigue, joint issues, and injuries. And other factors that at the time I didn't really fully understand, realizing not everyone is built to handle the intense and same workload in injury resilience as Tom Platt's and Ronnie Coleman's head face. I wanted to speed around that shit, but the reality is dudes that have always known the body best are the ones that have been lifting for at least a decade should take a long time to figure out. I started tracking all my trading on the notes app on iPhone because I don't know what paper is until recently I started using the RP hypertrophy app. The RP hypertrophy app spoon feeds you step by step workouts tailored towards whatever your focus is or you can customize the workout yourself. Well educated coaches have always cost 250 to 500 or more a month. I'm paying 500 bucks. That's like 10 bottles that's a strong. But if you're not competing or you don't have the money to spend, the app will adjust your program for you every week to maximize your long-term growth. It'll basis on your pump, how fatigued you feel, how your joints feel and more. It takes in everything to account. None of which I took into accounting college because the only accounting I did was counting how many dumps were in my class. Look, there's a titty. If you don't believe in science based training, you don't got to do no three RIR shit. You can just hoist heavy steel and track it because we all know that the people who say that they remember their weight sets and reps every week are full of shit. I'm a, there's a sort of middle ground where you track your progress and make sure all the variables are right in your food, sleep, gear, progressive overload. And then you go to the gym and slam those heavy PRs until your blood pressure is higher than my list. If you're still unsure, they've got a 30 day money back here into you. So if you still don't like it and it gives you a bad 10, you can get your money back. That way when you compete at your next show, your tan doesn't cost you the first place that you so well deserve. So go to the link in the description below or you go to rpstrength.com/nile and use code knowledge, check out that's rpstrength.com/nile. Code knowledge, check out. Okay, so this has been one of my favorite questions recently, but, uh, cheese, but, um, if you were to go back in time, well, I like to ask this from the perspective of if you're coaching a client, but I know there's so much genetic variance. So it tends to be a little bit easier when I ask if you're to go back in time and say you had just to like start off and start off your bodybuilding career, the right way and just explode in size with maintaining all your proportions, maintaining all your health markers the right way. And then maybe achieving the best possible, uh, best possible rank that you could possibly achieve at the bodybuilding industry and competing. What would you do training wise and PED wise? Is this still, uh, the error that I grew up in or is it later because I didn't grow up with classic. If I grew up in classic existed, I wouldn't have wanted to body. Hmm, let's say this error. So if it was classic, I would have taken a much different approach. Um, you know, I would have absolutely protected my waistline of all costs. Um, I think I did a pretty good job with that, but, um, I wouldn't have done things like ractage and things like that. I would have definitely trained for a little bit more detail and things like that were given my arms more emphasis. Um, you don't think, um, you don't think racked ads are a good idea to build up back thickness. I mean, it affects your waist. So I don't want to do anything that looks the waist because you have to remember every inch you put on your waist is like losing 10 pounds and you have to add another 10 pounds just to keep the same proportions. So we want to make sure we keep the waist as small as possible and my waist was really, really tiny when I was young and by the end of my heart, you had sick proportions, bro. And I was like, well, I'm not going to be a little bit more of a classic proportions. Well, here's the thing at the end of my bodybuilding career, like I looked very tapered, but that was because of my clavicles and because of my shoulders wasn't because of my waist. I was looking small in it, but like my, my profile picture, my front relax, everybody always talks about that whenever they refer to like my best pictures and whatnot. My waist there's probably like 3334. Damn, really? Yes, my shoulders are so wide. How tall are you? 5, 8. That does not, yeah, that doesn't look 3334. That's crazy. My shoulders are just so wide that it made it look small. But I had those shoulders and probably 30 inch waist when I began. So my taper was crazy. People actually used to accuse me of photoshopping. So I would like post videos and be like, Matt Photoshop. So like if I could have maintained that, then I definitely would have stuck with that because I would have just taken an overall different approach. You know, I wouldn't have hit GH hard. I wouldn't have had to beat myself up so much, you know, because like I don't train legs anymore because I tell people I train legs enough for a lifetime. I didn't have the genetics of everybody else. So I had to really run myself into the ground to get a response out of it. You know, I didn't train because it was ego because I had to. So I would have liked to not have to do some of the things that I had to do in the gym, you know, in order to get to where I got. It wasn't, it really wasn't too fun. Like it's not fun training legs, then you're just useless the rest of the day, you know, or even you train so hard you get sick the following day, you know, or you train so hard you can't eat, but you know you gotta get the food down so you're stuffing it down and you're nauseous. And not only that, my metabolism is so fast that I had to eat ungodly amounts of food, raw muscle, and I would have liked to not have to do that. But if I had this to all do over, I would have not competed for my first four or five years. I would have built a base. I would have done everything like that. I would have done it slow and steady. I would have been patient. I would have had little like I had thrown in a fasting day here and there. I definitely would have had zero carb off days, which I didn't do in the beginning of my career because I didn't know enough, I didn't know enough to know to do it. You know, PED wise, I would have blasted earlier and then slowed it down and that's what I do all my people now. A younger you are, the more resilient your health is. So that's what you want to build your base. And then we have our muscle memory from that point. Once you've built up to a certain size, people are afraid to like, move muscle, improve, and come off cycle. You will get that 20 pounds of muscle back in a month, month and a half if you've already built it once. It's not the same as trying to build it for the first time. Because of all that, there's no need to rush. You know, so I would have hit it hard in my first years, built my general base and then just refined the rest of my career. Like even like we were talking about my guy going into the arm with Paul, I told him, once we got you topped out in classic, I was like, you won't be rebounding anymore after the show. I'm sending you on vacation. Like, go home, like go chill, like no gym, no PEDs come off. Let's be healthy because we're not trying to add 10, 15 pounds anymore because yes, the rebound is the best time to grow, but it's also stressful on your body. You just died it for 16, 20 weeks on PEDs. And you're going to do another 10, 12. You know, that's not the best thing for your body. The reason we do it is because you can get a whole off season worth of gains in 10, 12 weeks. It's like having two off seasons in the same year. But it's still not the healthiest thing in the world to do that I prefer to not have to do it. So if I could have maxed out my mass by the time I was 25, which if I was classic, I definitely would have. And then the rest of my career, I would have dropped the doses down. I would have taken more rest, had it taken more time off. And just preserved everything that much longer. You know, I ended up with bad shoulder because of how hard I had to train. Luckily, my knees and my back are great because I was always like very big mobility. I was very careful. But you know, there's a lot of things that I wouldn't have had to do. For me personally, I feel like the, I feel like taking say 12 weeks off is a lot better than me rebounding for my personal experience. What's your cap? If I don't take one stroll, I'm 17 pounds below my cap with it. I gained about two pounds. So I'd be 15 pounds. I mean, a rebound would benefit you. But again, it's up to you, you know, depend on what you're running to get for this. You know, I feel like once you have kids, once you have a family, the, you know, the story changes, you know, you've got to be much more careful with your health and mindful of what you do yourself. You may want to do something, but you've got to think of your family. And I'm also very big on that. I will, one of the reasons why I'll screen people when they put in applications is because I try to get a feel for who the person is. And if they have a, you know, I'm all about me and my family's on the back where in a attitude, I just don't like that type of person. And if I don't want to help, I can't coach you the best of my abilities. Like, I have to like you, I want you to succeed. So if I, if I think less of you, then I'm not going to do a good job. So I'd rather pass on that, you know? So I think that, you know, priority straight, you know, things like that is going to play a factor. I did do, I did experiment with a rebound with Patrick last year and the amount I gained in my stage weight was very, very minimal versus taking a health phase with at that point I was on PEDs for maybe two years straight because of that. I took it very seriously, like obsessively seriously. I only put on a little bit, but I think I really think that I just needed a break from the PEDs. Like I took this 12 week off season. I'm not with Patrick yet because I'm moving to Vegas right now. So this month has been obviously travel, travel, travel crazy, crazy, but I, I, I, I, I, So far this is just me accounting the results of the experiment of the experiment for people 12 weeks off lowest weight when I was lowest weight during the off cycle was 179 my stage weight Lowest stage weight got was 180 before the car bump Or maybe 182 with windstroll for the last show and then now I jumped on 350 tests the 300 primo just to have a little stepping stone for me as I tight-trade calories up for this month before I joined patch And I'm up to 192 which is pretty cool because you know like you said I'm already seeing all of these All this fullness come back really fucking fast You make a good point in the fact that if you were on PDs too long your body just can be worn down and burnt out If people don't consider those things. Yeah, I think that's what happened even if my blood work was decent Your blood work could be decent But you could still have a stressed out liver kidneys heart You could have your whole system stressed out inflammation could be high cortisol could be high joints could be hurting Yeah, your body could just be at the point where your body is saying enough and we see that you know a lot of people don't Take their health, you know serious. It's it's it's it's just wild that you know people will take the health supplements Seriously like the reason I signed with H.D. Muscle was because of the kidney and liver H.D. because of the health supplement line that they had Designed because it was so good It wasn't because I wanted the free workout or the protein or any of that It was the health line and I wanted to implement that with all my clients as well You know, it's crazy like I could tell people well, you know You're not gonna live long you don't take care of your kidneys and liver and they don't care But I tell a competitor you're not gonna get dry for dry on stage if your kidneys are stressed now they hit You're not gonna get peeled if your liver is not functioning properly. Oh now they care all of a sudden You know care about her for their vanity, but not for their health, you know But either way if your health is not in line your body's not gonna respond and I've had times when I just felt a client's body was too stressed out And I just pulled them off. I've had people in I mean six weeks in you know, not a lot's happening. They're not getting stronger There's aches and pains and I'll ask them about their moods because usually that will correlate like yeah My head's just off. I will like listen Move the crew is pull off we're done with this, you know Because you've just got to reset at some point, you know You can't just keep beating the body down and think that it has unlimited resilience something's gonna crack at some point So like you said if you were on for two years you run for a long period of time you definitely needed a break Yeah, yeah What would be your PD stack here for your most optimal offseason now knowing everything you know for somebody else? I mean, it's kind of hard for somebody else like I mean we could say just like a I knew But I don't respond to I don't respond to higher doses of certain drugs I which was not one of those guys that's like super resilient to PD's so like I've told this story before like Oh somebody talked me to take it 100 makes a trend a day of ACE for a show and I remember like not even a week in I couldn't breathe I just couldn't breathe, you know, and I had to stop you know a lot of guys now we're running a grandma trend no problem My body won't do it, you know, so like there's things that I can't do that other people other people can do and that's another thing people We'll talk about is the pros Health resilience to the PD's because listen here's the truth and Chase is gonna love this one Is the fact of the matter is Typically within reason the more you take Without the side effects the better your gains are gonna be but the thing is Most people are gonna have side effects once you get into that, you know two gram two and a half gram range You know, but there's a lot of pros that can hit that three four or five gram range and not really have even side effects Like I had on that trend that time, you know because their body is just resilient. They have super health so the more you could tolerate The better you're gonna be now this doesn't mean everybody watching this to start doing it and then start You know placeboing yourself and mind fucking yourself and oh, I'm fine when you really not fine Most people are not good to be fine on three four grams. You're not, you know But there's people that are so obsessed with this that they'll just deal with it Let's tell themselves that they're okay. They won't be honest with themselves, you know but the more you can take Without the downside that or it's gonna work and I've seen it you know I've seen it with people I won't run certain doses of clients that I'm friends with all the coaches seem with all of them have done We've talked about some of the crazy doses some people had done with some people pros have done or even what the pros hold them They were doing before they came on with them and There's a pretty goddamn high doses in this industry, you know if we're talking Open of limpia. I would have to say the average cycle for the Olympus through grams, you know So there's gonna be some guy that like a average cycle Like for the season. Oh for the prep. Okay. Okay, so some people will be a little some people But then some people will be way above that, you know, there's classic guys that have taken six seven eight grams No, oh gee. That's crazy. There's guys one guy that passed was on trend for year straight, you know There's people in the UK scene will take an orals for year straight, you know So like there's a lot of people that really abuse this because they connect their identity to this right so like This is all their life is about and then when they retire, you know, they shovel, you know But they're willing to just get anything for this. No, I want to tell you and tell me that if he could win the Olympia and die tomorrow He would take the deal I shit you not to 12 compared and he's the watchess and no one thought no and no I'm talking about him It but the thing is pretty savage though. This is how these guys think, you know And they do these dangerous things and they're not really thinking about the consequences. I was uh, I was at lunch with Luke Sanda one day and he told me the only reason he didn't die at that show is because he fell asleep and didn't take the thick dies arc Mm-hmm, you know, he's that he tells me he's like when my coach called me in the coachries I'm a coach called me in the hospital first words that of his mouth were not hey, I'm glad you're alive It's I'd like to keep this between us don't rip my reputation pretty much, you know Well, like who tell some who who gives the refob guys I'm the day, you know There's no circumstance you're gonna you're gonna convince me that that's that's safe or responsible If somebody's doing that you should fire that coach But these but a lot of these pros though willing to do it because they want to win You know, it's not uncommon to see somebody take three four or five diazide or taking bullmex or demodex and stacking them and it'll Dectorn on top of it and then they're using insulin just so they're not completely flat You know because the insulin will counteract the flatness effects do extend right? Um overpower the sodium loss effects But for the most part, you know people are just willing to give way too much for this because they connect their identity to it And you know, I don't think that that's healthy Mm-hmm gosh, okay cool So anyway back to the question if you were to ask me what would be an optimal cycle? Let's just talk about a generalized person. So I'll talk about concepts rather than Uh, you know specific doses, but I would probably jump start to cycle with um Antivar for college and synthesis support real quick because I would throw trend in there trend in Antivar is one of my favorite combinations because trend is going to push your strength through the roof But connect it to you doesn't strengthen as tight as fast as muscle tissue does right? So Antivar is going to upgrade your college and synthesis and add that element of support so that your body can support the drastic strength gains Now depending on the level you are depending on the age you are and how willing this you are willing you are to be reckless You know, I would go 50 a day 75 a day if you really want to get crazy and you got you have the genetic potential on or today Yeah, but this is if you're young, you know, and I would bang that until your strength shoots through the roof probably six weeks eight weeks And then I would ship to something sustainable like a test EQ, you know Something like that and that's what you really push your volume up You take that new strength translate it more into volume higher rep ranges eat all your food and then really work on growing You know because what you'll see is a lot of times people will push to shrink that but the muscle mass does it correlate right away And we listen we see that well as yours stay in the same weight class to get swarmer or swarmer or swarmer Right so just because you're getting started doesn't mean you built the same level of muscle mass Thought you could take that strength and then translate it into higher Rep ranges with more volume, you know, let's wear and tear on your joints eat all the food and then that really translates to the growth This is how I do it autism of my people so I like to Bang strength at the beginning of a cycle and then I'll transition them to something smooth and then work on you A quarter quote solidifying that and you know eating the food and really building the muscle in a higher volume range That that seems to work the best of everything that I've come across to date Okay, what exactly do you mean by being strength in the beginning of a cycle though Meaning try to any I'm not I'm not focused on the pump I'm not focused on isolation I'm not focused on any end focused on pushing strength up Okay, like Progressive overload with those numbers Yes, but as hard as you possibly can going like like really Focusing on that and nothing else and then once you built that strength up Then you can translate it now if I have a client come to me that's been it there's at this for a number of years They're already strong not gonna do that right um Cuz it's it's unnecessary, you know listen four or five squatting It's a human body. I don't care how easy it is for you. That's good to beat your legs up, you know But like 225 is not gonna do the same thing you could say that yeah, I'm getting the same type of You know stress and failure and this and that relatively with the weight, but it's not the same You know, it's just more and more stress on the human body overall no matter how strong you are And it's gonna result in and you know better growth So can you do it without the strength push? Yes, absolutely. We've seen it a million times But I feel like this is the fastest most effective way to do it is to push your strength that was hard as you can and then translate that Okay, yeah, I feel like you and Patrick have a bit of a similar methodology Patrick or yeah friend of mine. He's one of the best coaches in the in the industry He's a incredibly smart guy. He's very very good at what he does and he's incredibly passionate and he will drive your ass if you fall off playing too much or giving to any excuses. For sure. Okay, cool. If you're down, I mean, obviously I have so much more I could talk about with you, but like I said, this is a no-holds-far box, well, no-holds-far podcast. You can get as crazy as you want. I'm working on getting more of the Q&As in, though, and giving that a little bit more time for discussion, though. So I, something I'm working on. So let's just jump to the Q&A this time. And then we can always do a second if you ever, you know, or for it. Well, we'll probably do another win a person at some point. We plan on that forever, but we just never ran into it. We're like, screw it. Let's just do the recording. Yeah, that would be awesome. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie, Jack Alishman, that says nothing. Just tell Viz the Wiz that he's fucking awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it. Yeah. Yiga, Yiga Wiz and that calls us as fuck. Yeah, no question. I can't believe I made DMs I got about this podcast. People were so excited. You have a lot of loyal, excited followers. A lot of fucking awesome people, only sick people at this pod. Kitch, Akoby asks, oh, well, this is also not a question. No questions. Just shout out to coach. Happy to finally see him on the pod. John Benjamin asks, at what point did you decide that going for your pro card wasn't worth it? Honestly, like I did stop going for my pro card. I wasn't worth it. I stopped because my body shut down. My body gave out. I had shoulder injuries. Like I said, comfort killed me. I wasn't doing the same thing. That was kind of like it was it was a slow transition, but like I caught myself trying to find shortcuts and easier ways and dealing with being hungry, rather than just deal with it, you know, or caffeine or adder all when I was tired, when I really shouldn't have done it. And I was really just trying to make the process easier. I didn't stop because I decided to stop. I stopped because I kind of aged out. You know, a circle peed and you kicked in early from year on 38. So I started losing my quad sweep. And we really bothered me with the started losing my shoulder, which were always a store leader easy for me. You know, so I was just in like those round caps. Like I still have the size to them, but like they lost like the bubble, bubbly look to them. You know, that started affecting me. And I really just didn't like how I was looking. And I'm not a single person that's going to compete, you know, just to be the best version of myself. I want to be the all-time best version of myself or not do it at all. And that's why people like I've asked me, why don't you just do a, I can still today, to this day, I could probably prep for a master's show in turn pro. But that's not some, like the pro card doesn't mean anything to me. It's how you do it, right? And it's what you got out of it. I would feel that I was up third of the USA twice. I was fourth in nationalism, fourth in North American. I was this close. So I feel like I just couldn't get the job done. I didn't get the job done as what it is. So I don't deserve a pro card. I don't deserve to go take a master's card from somebody who might have started lifting it like 30 years old. Didn't that my track record? It's not the same. You know, it's like it's like a pro jumping into a little league game and hitting the home none. You know, like I wouldn't feel good about it. You know, I think I believe that other people that get their master's pro cards, very respectable. You know, but I don't think that because I couldn't hack it and open, I'm going to just sneak in the back door with a master's pro card. That's not something that I believe in from an integrity standpoint for myself. So that's why I just decided not to do it. And I just didn't like the way my body looked when I didn't have like that big, full popping look anywhere. So not I didn't decide to stop. I was forced to stop. Okay. Going off of what you said about trading, I personally, like for example, when I did my rebound last year, I ramped up volume a little bit too high, starting curing a lot of injuries in my upper body, which probably also makes sense why my legs got to blow up in the last couple of years because upper body just definitely took a hit in terms of like trading productivity. But this may be a little bit hard to answer because it's big, but how big of how big of a range in volume, have you seen amongst all your clients or maybe just other people in general? Are there, do you see their, man, how do I phrase it? Do you just see their optimal level of volume? Like, doing this required volume very across the spectrum? Yeah, how much does it vary? So I don't, I don't very volume very much what I'll do is I'll vary frequency. So I'll add more rest days in if I feel like they're not recovering because I feel like I'd program a program in a very fair and adequate amount of volume. But I also have self management things in place. So I'll have these talks with my clients as they get older as I've had them longer. Usually it's like our second, year, our third year, but I'm sure like we're really working together like for a long term and like long-term goal. I'll explain to them like how to read their biofeedback and I'll tell them, listen, I've had days when I plan to go into the gym for legs 12 to 14 sets. After six, I was done. I went home. You know, you've got to know when you can't do anything more conducive to growth, right? How effective we had our quads are like smoked, but we're still training legs. And like the pump is gone, we're still pushing the sets and now our knees are hurting, you know, everything hurts. That's how we cause those issues. So you've got to learn to read your own biofeedback. You've got to know when enough is enough. You've got to know it's time to go home. Gunfech Roodle actually proved with all of his DC training that you don't need high volume to grow. He was having equal to two sets of body part, you know, two to three times a week. And it was working, you know, it's just a matter of how much intense again, much effort you put into it, you know, so it depends on what I'm training that day. If I'm going into squat that day, I'm probably not going to have a hell of a lot of volume. Now if you have somebody going into deadlift that day, you're probably not going to have a hell of a lot of volume. Now if you're going in for a vertical back day and everything is pull up some pull downs, you're probably going to have more volume, you know, it's depending on how much stress to the body, what you're doing is placing, you know, you've got to measure everything. So being in touch with in tune with, you know, your biofeedback and what you need is very important. So self-management in the workouts is something that I will teach, but I also, almost my clients also always tell you this, my answer to everything is back off, take a day off, you know, like I'll put all the people fast, I'll have them skip meals, I'll have them take two, three days off in a row, I'll tell them to take a week off in a row, like I just bodybuilders don't rest enough, they don't recover enough. We need far more rest and far more recovery than everybody thinks that we do. And again, this is most of the major pros are very good at, very in tune with what they're about to be and responding to it. And that's what amateurs really lack. I feel like that's what Jordan Hutchinson and Chris Tuddle did so well this last year. Was a Jordan really good as biofeedball. Yeah, yeah, I agree. Okay. C. Jeffrey asks, what is your off-season strategy to bring up a lagging muscle group? In print at the CCS titties. He said what? In print at the CC's got titties. It's just. Yeah. Well, it's going to be an individual basis, right? It depends on what's causing the body parts of the leg. So not everybody has struggling body parts for the same reason, right? So you've got to look at that individual situation, determine what's causing that body parts of the leg in the first place. And then what you're going to do is you're going to affect that variable or those numerous variables in order to get that in line, right? So what's causing it to stall is and really fixing that. Usually we'll get the body part wrong. A lot of people wanting. I know what he wants to hear. He wants to hear more volume, less volume, special exercises, special angles. And it's not really about that. Probably the biggest thing that I found was intensity levels. Everybody thinks that because they trained a failure, that they're trading is intense. I sweat. I go to failure. All my sets that does. I mean, you're training hard. I can do pushups to failure. So I think you'd be a huge chest. You know, so I think that learning how to train hard gradually over time is going to make a big difference. I think that a lot of times when people have lagging body parts, it's a body part. They don't generally like train very much. So they don't give it the same type of effort that other body parts get. You know, a lot of times it's supposed to be a change because they don't see their back. That's where everybody has all the good beach muscles and they have no back, right? That's typically what we'll see. We'll see weak legs, right? Because people don't like the train legs hard. Why? Because training legs hurts. Training legs sucks. I've always said, like if you tell if you say I love training legs, you don't train legs. I usually get crazy anxiety. I'm like, no one went out. I was going to do it myself. You know, and if I was training, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, no, I agree. I will say that like devil's advocate. Well, I mean, it's more of just like pushback, but I use to get tons of anxiety training legs. And I think because of how much growth I've seen in the last two years, now I'm a little bit more excited. Like like day is my favorite because in the moment, yeah, it's a little tough at the moment. Definitely put yourself into dark space. You enjoy the idea of train legs. You enjoy the result of training legs. You don't actually enjoy the workout or you're not training hard. You know, so I think that people taking body parts as serious as they do their grid body parts is one of the factors. And I find that very, very often. You know, I'll ask them to send me videos, for example, and I'll compare those videos to the body parts that they like. And it's not the same type of effort. It's not same type of intense intensity. Like they don't give it the same. It's almost like they like they submitted to it and they kind of like accepted that this body parts like I grow as well. So I'm not going to give it the effort, you know, or it's just becomes habitual. But I think that really learning to push the intensity the same way as other body parts really makes a difference. Now you could reorganize where it is and you're split, you know, to try to prioritize it. Now this is another thing that people don't frequently do is you should always train a body part you're trying to improve a day after a rest day, right? Because everything is rested and everything is healed up and your nervous system is likely going to be more functional, right? So that's what everything holds us back, especially with over training is, you know, nervous system fatigue. If you can't fire the muscle off to a high enough capacity to affect change and gain an adaptation, then it's not going to work. So a lot of times, it's not the muscles that are being overtrained, it's the nervous system that's overtrained. Because if you could fire off your nervous system properly, you'd be able to fire it at max capacity or close to it and then gain that stimulus. So a lot of times, I see that in off season, people just trend too much, too often, too much volume. And I'll ask them specific questions like digging for this. I'll say like, you know, you get those like real good hard contractions that feel like a pump and like, nah, not really, like, now, like, do you feel like a ton of tension in the muscle or all kind of, you know, like, a person that really feels those things will distinctly know it and they'll be a little emphasize it to me. Oh my god. Yeah, like the pump, like, all the tension. If they don't get that like, oh, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about reaction, that means they're not getting, you know, and that's how they're probably overtraining and they need to rest their mirror system more. But there's so many ways to affect weak body parts, which you've got to know why it's weak. Sometimes it's just too much volume. So a lot of times when you look at our weak body part, the body part doesn't recover the same, doesn't have the same innervation. It doesn't have the same capillary density. So it's not going to get the nutrients. It's not going to get the activation that it typically would for, you know, a more advanced body part. That's also why weaker body parts are typically not as lean, right? Because the capillary density in the area. So if you get an area more active, it's going to become more functional and that's just with more frequency of use. But a lot of people just train too much. They do too much to it and it never recovers and it never adapts. It doesn't have the capacity to adapt from high up to high volume. Because you've never built that up in the first place. You know, you've got to build a capacity to stay high on. You know, you just don't, you don't just jump from eight sets of work out to 20 and think that that's going to work. It's never going to work. So long-winded answer, that's probably not the answer he wanted. But the answer is it's situational. Okay. Hmm. Just curious by the way, this is totally random. But are you able to turn off that effect on your camera? What the zoomie getting out? Yeah. No. I ain't tech illiterate. This thing is set off. I don't know how to do it. I apologize. It's funny. I'll try to figure that out in the future. Okay. Jake. Jake's, Jake's 51 asks, who does he have winning the open this year? Winning the open? Yeah. Yeah. I don't have enough information to make an educated guess that's the problem. You know, I usually get insider information, but closer to the show. So at this point in the year, if Andrew Jack is as serious as they say he is, and he's finally adhering to everything because I heard he was a star at the Lazy, like he would eat two meals a day, you know, just like, what is there so many? Why am I hearing that so much? Even on an amateur program, like he just didn't, the thing is he's never had to do it. So why would he, you know? So like, he told me that someone told me that he was, I'm sorry, Andrew. I don't, this is probably not even true. People are probably just saying shit because someone told me that he was eating either candy bar or a protein bar while he was on like incline treadmill or stair mastery. Why are you saying cardio? You heard that, dude? That's epic. Well, here but that's that's going to be something to worry about. He truly got serious. He's going to have meals. You know, and change the way he's posing some poses. He would be showing the hard to beat, but here's the thing. Look at Sanson 350 right now. Sansons aesthetic, you know, he doesn't have a wide waist. So it's not like he's going to have a blowing out waist. He's worried about like the Ronnie Coleman 2003 effect, but I think that Sanson is doing pretty good job at controlling his waistline and people are underestimating how much that size is going to impact everything on stage. You know, when he steps on stage, 70 pounds bigger than the next guy. It's a lot of muscle, a lot of muscle and he's aesthetic. But here's the thing. We don't know what he did to get to that weight, right? So like I talked about the high GH thing. If he was, if he's banging GH right now, he's going to show up with thicker skin. And that's going to hurt his detail. And it's going to make him look like he's not as conditioned as he was the previous years, right? And that'll hurt him. But if he's not, and he's just, you know, really building up there with just like food, effort, change, genetics and whatnot, then Sanson's going to be really freaking hard to beat. But you can't ever count out Derek because Derek's a gamer. Every time somebody counts Derek out, what happens? He comes back to wins, right? They counted him out to 12 and comes back with wins. They count him out of open. He wins. Then he loses. They count him out again. They count him out of back and wins. They count him out. Pittsburgh, he wins. He, you know, Derek's a gamer, you know? So you tell him he can't do something. He's going to try to just shove that up your ass. So we don't know what Derek's doing right now in line with preparing to beat Sanson. But I think that Hottie is going to be out of it. You know? I don't think Nick has the legs to get the top five because it's just too much. He's too much of the oddball with the legs now. You know? Like I saw that last year when the whole lineup was out because I'm actually rooting for Nick. Kyle was prepping Nick. But when he came out, like the legs were immediately apparent next to the rest of the lineup, that that was going to be a big problem. So I think if we're looking at who's going to win, we've got to consider if Andrew's 100% if Sanson conditions and depends on what Derek does to listen to Derek's, he's still getting better. You know, you know, hold these young, you know, he's still getting better. So I think it's going to be interesting between the three of those guys. I don't think Hottie's going to be in contention. And I think that honestly, like, Humpter's going to possibly crack into that top five. And Martin is also, you can't, there's Kyle Martin. Martin always makes improvements and he comes with that nasty condition. He has those hands and glutes. So, you know, you've got Martin that's going to be a problem. If Martin and Hunter both be at Hottie and Nick, I would not be surprised. Yeah. Yeah. You got to give it to Martin. No matter how much shit he gets, he uses it for fuel. And he always comes back. So I'm proud of him for that. He loves to be good. I have seen Andrew train hard. So I don't know. Hopefully these are just stories. Well, it's not the train. It's everything else, right? It's the eating, the rest, like all of that was the stuff that he didn't want to do. But if he is doing that, and he's going to be a real problem. Yeah. For sure. He would, he definitely will. I kind of wanted to actually bring this up. Because since I saw, I didn't get to read all your messages, your DMs this morning, but just heads up for the audience. I was like, I was in the comments of some, I don't know if it was Bobby Biller with borders or one of the other fucking accounts discussing Mike's height. And I found that really interesting that you guys measured that. Because like that was genuinely my personal experience with him. But then again, you know, I was wearing converse. I don't know what shoes he was wearing. I don't remember. But it's in the, it's in the videos somewhere. Honestly, I, in my heart, like I hope he's trolling. I hope he was joking about getting five nine. You know, that's crazy. Because I stood next to him. I've literally seen somebody who's, I don't know, I don't want to say too much, but a certain height standing next to him. I have a very good idea of how tall he is. And I don't want to say too much, but he's not five nine. And I hope I really, that he's just trolling about getting to five nine to get everybody talking, you know, because like then he had Wesley jump in. He's like, I'm gonna be six foot, but then I figured, no, why don't I be six one? And then why six one when I could be six two? You know, I was like, each obviously Wesley was trolling them. And I think that's going to be a pretty good comparison if Wesley's legs have come up. But if Mike is five eight to five nine, I could accept that. If he's over five nine, that's, that's not something morally that I can, you know, applaud. Or you mean if he's, if he's under, if he's like five seven, you're saying, he's somehow, he somehow, it's heighted over five nine. I would consider that bullshit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. I feel like I think he has the capacity to be able to reach five nine that cap. Um, obviously like I told you guys, or I said in the comments, uh, I'm five seven and a half. Or what's up? But when you wake up in the morning because you're spying decompresses. Well, honestly, I wasn't even counting that. I was just thinking about the fact that when I was training with him, my eyes were like looking a little bit up at him. That's what I, that's all I remember. And I remember thinking I, I FBB and my doctors height me at five seven and a half. I would say I'm probably more like five seven and like fucking three eights or something. I don't know. It depends at the time of the day. And like, I guess how, how fucking into prep and depleted I am, but normally the I FBB heights me at five seven and a half. So I guess I'm five seven and a half. But I look at him beyond positive. He's not close to five. I I feel like he's got to be at least five eight. He's not told. I feel like he's got to be at least five eight then. Maybe he was just wearing like slightly thicker shoes than me. But yeah, again, I don't know. Maybe you can gain like half an inch to an inch on like by hydrating his discs. I know he does like an entire like what month long process when it comes to hydrating his discs. So that doesn't work. That's that's that's that's that's that's that's a bunch of smoke and mirrors. You don't think that works? That does not work. What about Michael DeBoul saying that he gained like he gained half an inch in his high class. So he was able to put that as a back. Don't believe me. Somebody explained to me physiologically how that's possible. How you can you know specifically hydrate your discs and get them decompress and and affect that physiologically. I would love to hear somebody explain that to me. Sounds like a bunch of smoke and mirrors. Sounds like a bunch of BS so that when they beat someone and they beat that they beat the measurement and they get over that's their excuse for how they did it so they could justify it. It's completely what do you not do not believe that you're shorter at the end of the day? Of course you are because you're spline compression. You're always tall as first thing in the morning because of spline of the compression. right? Yeah. To what extent? Three quarters of an inch, inch max, you know, it's, it's, it's not going to be at the point where you gain some, you know, significant height. So saying I gain, yeah, but I think I think getting half an inch is possible. Heffan inch, yeah, that's, no, not an inch and a half. I was saying half an inch is what I was saying. Like, oh, listen, I could, I could take any guy at the scale and get a half inch out of him. Yeah, that's what I, okay, so we don't know exactly the height, Mike is, so I'm not going to like claim anything. But if I were to save my observations, I would believe he's 5A and then when he does all of that, then he can reach 5.9 and it puts like what? I don't know how many six, seven pounds or something on his, on his, I bet, I bet, I bet money against it. If it, if, if, if I was there to, to do the hiding, okay, okay, all right, very funny against all right, all right, all right, but, um, and Mike, no, this is no offense to you. I think you're a phenomenal competitor. We're just talking literally here and it is what it is. Yeah, yeah. I just, these are always such funny combos to be man, because like, even when I was blowing up on TikTok, like in 2020, I would have so many people just saying that I'm fucking 5 to M5 4 and that I'm such a liar. And I'm like, everybody's gonna say that shit, dude. I hate the way this whole situation went because last year, Mike had this like stigma because of all the hiding controversy, right? So we know that if he had one, everybody would have made a big deal, the whole audience. So you, you know, you can never rule out the fact that maybe that played a part in the judging, right? Because, yeah, so like, it's not fair to Mike because look at how insane competitor. And I always like to see the best guys up there looking their best and everything judged fairly. And I feel like, how's it that controversy? He didn't 100% get the, now that I listen to that shit, yeah, I'm just saying you should have won, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that even if he was lights out, it would have been tough to give it to him. And I don't like that. I don't think that's fair for him as hard as he works that that should happen. I would love him to just sell him a little over 5 or 8. This is the way I'm going to go with I'm coming here to smoke everybody. If I was here, I would literally have somebody walk up to the scale of me or the camera. I would be like, look, say 5 8.1. Let's go. And then nobody can say shit. And then just walk up there smoke everybody. Oh, yeah, I would applaud that. I would love to see that too. Yes, sir, yes, sir, ex, why do I even say usernames? I don't fucking, yes, sir, asks, how do you structure a refeed day? When to push, how do you structure a refeed day and when to push or pull back on the refeed? Okay, so we're talking about crap, right? I'm assuming. It has to be because the way you do it, you word it, it didn't say like diet air and contest prep. So the way I start refeeds is I like to try to start refeeds at six weeks out if I haven't far enough ahead, but you can't do a refeed without them being in reasonable condition, right? Because obviously your sensitivity and your practitioner is going to be altered as you get leaner and different variables are going to change what he's going to respond differently to things. So when we do refeeds, we want to collect data. And this is why people mess up with their peaks a lot because they don't collect data, you know, by the time I get somebody to stage, I have a pretty good idea of how I did a peak because I've collected all the data on refeeds. So one day of refeeding is not going to be sufficient for, you know, a metabolic boost. We know that based on research. So it's got to be at least two days. So I always start low, say you have 100 grams of carbs, meal times five, six meals, and then we'll do that for two days. And then I'll assess. First thing you want to do is you want to see how many days it takes that water retention to come off, right? See how much weight they gained, see how they're responded to it. And then you got to decide if you're going to tweak that up or down. There's no one set way. There's not one set method. You know, the good idea of the carbon mount space in the size of your competitor, right? And their metabolic rate and what you know about how their body responds to things. So it's, it's a lot of like trial and error. It's a lot of guess and check. You know, I start with a very basic counter-grims cards, meet a lower protein. We make sure we pull this after every meal, things like that. And then we just continually tweak that process as we go closer to the show. There's no magic to it. There's no, you know, secrets to it. If you saw how IP people, I'm probably pretty disappointed. And that goes for a lot of people. If you saw Chris, Chris, for subtle peak people, you'd be disappointed. You saw how Andrew Berry peaks table. You'd be disappointed. You know why? We don't do crazy shit. We get them in shape. We see how their body responds. And then we do that. And then we just watch closely in monitor. And that's it. You know, and you're going to be very consistent that way. A lot of people want protocols, but there are no protocols. There is no such thing. There's no such thing as a peaking protocol that's going to work for everybody or even have the people. You know, it's always going to be different. If you see 10 of my clients, if you look at 10 of their peaks, you take a different coach coach. He's person because they're not the same. You know, you've got to do what their body tells you to do, not what you want to do. And I think this is where maturing as a coach comes in because at the beginning of a career, you have a tendency to think, okay, this is what I did. And this is worked for me. So this must be the best way. And then you want to implement that with everybody else. So you'll stick to a style of dieting. You'll stick to a style of bulking, you know, and things like that. And then as you get older, you realize that people's bodies are so different that you're going to alter these things based on what that person's body wants. People will say, I mean, are you a high-carb coach or a low-carb coach? I'm like, I'm high-carb, low-carb, high-voo-t, low-pro-t, high-fat, low-fat, carvesick lane keto. I will do what your body tells me to do. So I can apply every method based on what I see your body needs. So rather than protocols, me to get better at reading that person's body and responding accordingly. Well, if you do a refeed for somebody, I understand that there's a lot of variance per client, but I would assume that you're keeping most of the macronutrients, most of the food choices about the same. And then you'd just be having a spike in carbohydrates based on what their baseline carbs are. Well, your body is going to process, your body is going to process different foods based on familiar. So like, can you ever have something that you haven't had in a while and then you eat it? And all of a sudden, it's sitting on your stomach, I'll go brick, and you're like, I'm usually fine with this because you haven't had it. So your body will acclimate towards familiar with it. And this is why adding shit into the final week is stupid. Like recently last year, I'm not going to say who I was very disappointed in somebody who was putting bacon into the morning of shows. And I was just like, you just gave somebody greasy fucking bacon the morning of a show and they've never had it. You know, it's going to do their stomach. And yeah, fuck the science stomachs up real bad. So like I was very, very disappointed in hearing that from somebody that I had helped for a time. So like, you never want to add something into the final week that you haven't done. You know, you don't want to introduce new foods. And when we do refains, we stick to the same foods. For me, it's usually cranberry, rice, white rice, rice cakes. You know, we have, we can have some fruit in there, we can throw some honey in there, you know, things like that, but we stick to the same foods. And you should have tweaked that refeed so many times that when it comes to peak week, you already know what to do. You know, a lot of times people are looking for like different looks and this and that. And they're not really sure. Like, oh, we, let's see how many times have you heard a coach say to you, let's, we, we, won't let's try to get you a little folded, right? They don't know how fully you can get. Like, they don't already know what that look looks like. Oh, I think you can be a little drier. Wait, they don't know what your driest look looks like. They sure they know these things. They're throwing darks in the dark, you know, and if you manage your refeeds properly and not only the refeed, but post refeed and see what the body does, how long it takes that water to come off is going to tell you how close to the show. You want to back down those colors, right? Things like that. And once you understand that, it's not guessing. Now, this is why a lot of coaches are consistent now because they have a lot of this data and they know they just implement it. You know, it's not because they had this great protocol because they pay attention. Okay. Yeah. Well, Noble Fitness asks, what's your approach to a rebound if blood break is perfect post show? So we're actually debating this. I have an apprentice chat with all of my past apprentices because I still educate them to this day. So I'll keep them. I'll keep them. Yeah. So my deal was like, listen, my program is pricey, right? It's three grand a month. That's the commitment. Right. So it's a lot of money. You know, what they're all very successful, but I told them, once that year is over, I will still review clients for you. You could still shadow me at shows. I will still always help you from the rest of your career because that's, you know, I feel we're almost responsible for them to an extent, right? And I want to see them do well. I want to see the six, you know, so I, I will help with those things. So in that shot, I also have Andrew Barry. I also have my friend Luke Carro's extremely smart competitive bodybuilder, pro. And we talk about these things. And I posed the question recently. I said, what do you think about not titrating up slowly and reverse dieting out and just hitting it a little harder from day one and allowing your muscles to really hold all that water and use that leverage to push strength and see if that has a faster effect. And we all have talked about it. We all done it in the past ourselves. So the conclusions that we came to are like as long as blood pressure is in range, right? I'm not water retention. You're gonna make sure blood pressure is not up. And as long as it's safe, that I'm going to attempt to actually do it this time this year with a few people and see if that has a better effect because we don't know until we try it. You know, everybody reversed diets out right now, you know, adding a little bit of carbs, adding a little bit of carbs slowly moving up. But, you know, that sensitivity is elevated the most from beginning. And anybody who's gone off the rails post show knows you blow it up with water and then your mega strong in the gym, right? So that is an extremely stimulus could lead to more muscle mass. So, you know, I'm not talking about getting bloated out of the mind to where it's like disgusting, but just, you know, a good amount of water attention, not trying to stay dry. and up to gain that water, inter-muscular water retention and that resulting leverage to make you stronger and allow for more stimulus. So that's something I'm gonna be playing with this year. - Gotcha, that's cool. Yeah, Patrick is the same way with that as well. The nice thing for me though is I can hardly anything in all of a sudden I blow up with water. So, I'm pretty sure we've got a dark-skidation. - That wasn't. - What's up? - You, that wasn't? - Yeah, compared to average, which is nice, you know, when the oxygen, what's up? - Get's up 'cause you're always pretty lean. - Thanks bro. I fucking, I was a fat kid so it's like a little tech where I like, it's easier for me to work really hard to be lean 'cause I, yeah, bullying gets you there for sure. - That's where some of the motivation comes from too. - Yeah, for sure. There's a lot of questions man, fuck. - Let's just leave you for a while. - As you want and then edit this later, I don't know. - Whatever you want. - Yeah, let's start doing a little like hyper speed firing off. - Well, no, no, it doesn't have to be fast. Like I'm done for the day with work so. - Yeah, okay. - Go rush. - I do it. - I personally have to get a little bit ready 'cause I had to head to Vegas for the house hunting and shit. But we'll do a little bit more. Andrew Griggs asks, "Ask your tits." - To ask what? - "Ask your tits." - "Ask your tits." - I'll ask for sure. - Ask for sure bro. Are you even a bodybuilder? Gone declared asks, "Best gut health advice. "The void leaky gut, dysbiosis, and SIBO." - Hire somebody to fix it. That's my best in place. - Yeah man, I would say this. - These people think that they could just fix these things on their own without any semblance of understanding of what it is or any experience and knowledge and how to fix it. Hire somebody to fix it. You know, you wouldn't try to get yourself better when you're sick instead of going to the doctor. Like, in a situation like that, with multiple factors, he's got almost zero chance of fixing it himself. - Gotcha, yeah. Yeah, good health is very complicated. Andrew Griggs asks, "What is your most controversial "bodybuilding hot take?" - Controversial bodybuilding hot take? - Yeah. - Controversial with this and a lot of my takes people agree with. I think the victim Martinez won the WZT-07 Olympia. (laughing) Yeah, I think he won that show. I think that if Ramon was a better poser, he could have beat Cebu Ahmed a couple of shows. I think that his posing cost in the title, few times. I don't really have any controversial takes and it's pretty in mind that a lot of people agree with whether the judges decided on by the matter or not. You know, a lot of the fans will agree with me. So I'm like, "What real controversial takes on that?" - Okay. Frankie Dutraz asks, "What dose of GHG typically "be getting to see insulin resistance in people?" - Oh, that's gonna be depending on the person. So there's a wide array. You'll see if some people get insulin resistance with four. I use just see people get very little insulin resistance to eight eye use. Now, if you're going like 10 plus almost everybody's gonna have some insulin resistance to some extent, you know, and then there's water retention with that. But this is good. Again, it's gonna be situationally dependent. Now, when I've ever used GH, I'm talking about pharma GH. I'm talking about generic crap. So specifically talking about pharma. I would say two, three eye use is probably safe. Four is usually safe for most people as long as you're eating responsibly. Now, if you're at a hypercaller thigh and you're eating like excessively all your maintenance, then you probably get to get insulin resistance from that coupled with the GH. So as long as your diet's pretty tight, you know, accurate, you know, in a decent surplus, but not overdoing it. And four eye use, you probably get to get away with it. - Okay. I think that goes along with the next question. He also asks, "At what point would you recommend implementing insulin for a competitor?" And then Doka asks, "How do you use insulin in the off season?" - Okay. So this is a topic that I have a specific opinion on. I think that protocols for insulin don't exist. So again, this is one of those situations where if you saw five of my client programs with insulin, you'd think it was different coaches because they're all using different things. You need to understand how insulin works and then apply it to that particular scenario, right? And then decided, "What did you, what did you do trying to do with that insulin?" - So what scenario would you, in which scenario would you start applying insulin? - Okay, so as far as when I would start with insulin, it's gonna depend. If they're using GH, I'm probably always gonna use insulin just to try to compensate for that resistance and get better control of blood sugar and nutrient, partitioning and transport and everything like that. And try to keep getting, you know, too far out of hand, right? So I would-- - Coach prob is the same way. - What is that? - Coach prob, Dalil, one of my last podcasts said the same thing. So with GH, almost always, without GH, it would be when I've exhausted PDUs. So we gotta remember that people think, don't realize that insulin is implemented and a lot of things that we do, we got without realizing it because of your, because of your endogenous production, right? Your internal production. When you see somebody like Jay Cutler eating a thousand grams of carbs a day, his body was pulsing insulin through the roof. So yes, yes, his insulin helped him tremendously with that. So like one thing that dexterjection to tell people is carbs are the secret to growing. Well, high carbs are gonna make your body pulse a lot of insulin, which is gonna result in growth. So anybody that's on a high carb diet, like a very high carb diet, you are using insulin. You know, you just all realize that you are. Your body's pulsing a whole lot of it. So it is helping. So you've got to determine is what's being pulsed enough? How is their body processing the food? Like if I have like somebody eating a post-workout meal, right? And then two hours later, blood sugar is like 125. You know, they're not processing that very well. And there's a number of reasons why that could happen. But let's just say that that's happening due to resistance, right? So then I would start to use insulin. So I would start to put insulin in when I see meals compounding when I see blood sugar creeping up a little too much when they're a little too lefargic when they're a little too sleepy, signs of high blood pressure, high blood glucose, then I would be implemented. But again, situation, I look for signs, but I'll also use it to crack barriers if I need to. If I'm trying to prove a certain body part, I'll use it just for that day. Just on that body part, pre-workout and post-pre-to-really pack like a do-stores full as well as a lecture light load, jam pack those electrolytes in there and make sure you get really good contractions and you sell you a little water, get all that leverage, get all that stimulus. So results in muscle growth. And then post-workout to really partition the meal and make sure that it's processing as quickly and efficiently as possible. Plus, the obvious elevation in IGF1 levels was all to come in use. - Okay. Sylvester MC asks, "What about your peaking process "has the industry in the frenzy?" And do you agree? - What about what? - What about your peaking process has the industry in the frenzy? - You know, frenzy? - Yeah. - I don't think the industry is in frenzy of like peaking process. I don't think people know what's about it, you know? I keep very simple. I tell everybody, just like I said here, I don't do anything magical for peaking. Like there's nothing, I mean, there's some things I do for peaking that I won't teach on here because it has to be talking person. I even told my apprentice is that they had to learn this from being in person with me, is using insulin to be to dry them out. So you can use insulin to burn body fat, you can use it to enhance recovery, you can use it to low glycogen, you can also use it to dry out if, you know, what you're doing. But this is not something I will eat to do with a client over the phone. I'll only do it if I'm there in person because I can literally see what's happening in real time and then adapt it, adjust to it because if you mess that up, you're gonna make them look terrible. So all of my apprentices do know how to do this but they had to be in person with me to learn how to do it. You know, to like, this is not something I would do over the fall. - Okay, got it. - Surprise, there wasn't crazy questions. - I mean, there's a lot of crazy questions to be honest, but there's a, it's kind of hard to get through all of it. Jay Michael asks, cocaine during a cut, smashed that with some sigs. - Settiger? - Cocaine during a cut. - During a cut. - Oh, cocaine during a cut. I mean, how much different is it than Adderall? - Not really honestly. - I made that mistake years ago. - You're both smack. - Geared up what I talked about using Adderall for appetite suppression and for energy at the end of prep. But I failed to mention that use quarters. So everybody started popping whole ones and I'm getting these DMs that are like, I'm sprinting on my cardio, I'm getting so lean, I'm doing so great, thank you so much for this. And I didn't realize, in one day I just got the, the fall out of my head, I was like, how much are you taking? Like, oh, just one. We mean one, like one pill, I'm like, holy shit. I'm like, oh, you're high. They're like, no, that's a for sure. Like, you're, you're, 30 other times you're high. Like you're high. (laughing) You know, like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I realize I'm like, oh, I'm like, damn, I just got it up because I forgot to mention quarters and they're just popping whole ones. Holy. And Rikis Silva asks a body count, at least an over under, Prime Phil was a Guido back in his day. Was I? No. He says you were. He says I was. Yeah. I had a buzz cut, I didn't even have spiky hair. (laughing) But I wish, I wish one of my friends just the fuck up and told me what I look like. Because that buzz cut looked freaking awful. Are you gonna drop the body count? The body count? Yeah, he was asking for the body count, at least an over under. Stop not doing that. (laughing) I'm not, I'll never get another date. Oh shit. Yeah, from the point of five percent. Listen, but in the last decade, I've been very, very good. (laughing) All right. I'll leave it at that. Uh, shit. G.E.L.I.V.S. asks, how much did you use in gear change the game for you? - How much did gear change the game? Well, again, I didn't have the genetics. So, like, naturally, I wasn't growing whole. I was growing, but like, it was like a slow roll. You know, like, people look at how big I got, and they assume that I had good genetics. No, I drained water out of a stone to get to that sucks. You know, it was not fun, it was not easy. So, PEDs changed a lot for me, because without PEDs, I probably couldn't even have been a good natural bodybuilder. No, I wouldn't have been able to build them. So, I have, I have a 18-year-old right now who's natural who would have beat me, you know? So, like, actually, I have a 18-year-old who's natural who would have beat me after my first cycle. (laughing) So, actually, I have three natural clients that would have beat me after my first couple of cycles. So, like, I just, I wasn't responsive. So, but the biggest game changer for me was GH, far more GH. That's what really changed the reason for me, because I couldn't get thinking-- - No. - I have very wide shoulders, but it's hard to fill all that in, right? So, I always looked, I was really quiet, but I'm also really thin, I didn't have any thickness. So, I was not able to get like a thick look until I got the GH in. - Okay, that's cool to know. I feel like, I feel like Gemini PEDs helped me grow quite a bit, but like, the biggest differences really, just like getting that crisp look. Like, when I'd just run Primo and Master, something like that, or like Winstraw, along with it, it's just like, - I feel like you don't look that just like-- - Do you feel like you morph when you change the drugs? - I feel like I morph when I take prep drugs. - So-- - So fucking awesome. (laughing) - Because you're more endomorphic, right? So, obviously, there's the body type thing really is an applicable, but it gives us an idea of how their body's responding looks. You're more endomorphic, right? So, you're typically-- - Yeah, and body type. - A body type easier in your water, or water-retensive. So, for somebody like you, a partner, a dry compound, is gonna make a bigger difference that it is for somebody like me. See, switching to prep drugs for me doesn't make a big difference, because I'm not like this huge water holder to begin with. So, the water holders, when they shift to a Master on Primo-type drug, it's gonna be a big change. You're gonna see, like, massive changes. So, again, this could be situation. But again, on the flip side, water-retensive drugs, off-season, like an anageral, make a big difference for somebody like me, because I typically have flatter muscles. And they really volumized me and filled me out. I was insanely fast metabolism. So, my body likes to burn up all the calories. I could just keep eating, and my body-- I'll just go as burn hotter and burn through it. You know, like, in all the times. So, the volumizers for me make the big difference, and for you, the cutters make the difference. - Gotcha. Sam, Sam, Nate Berry asks, "What are some causes/fixes for waking to piss at night? "Appreciate all the info Phil puts out." - Well, I would ask him how old he is, first of all, but I'm doing guess he's probably in his 30s to 40s, so it's a swollen prostate that's falling and half the wake to piss at night. That's what usually happens to everybody. So, swollen prostate is due to DHT. So, he's going to need something that can control your DHT. The first thing you need to go to is a supplement before they go to the drugs. So, a lot of times, Soul Paul matter will fix the issue. So, just the Chintose of Soul Paul matter, the exact dose, I've been taking it so long, I forget the dose, it's probably 500 milligrams, I wanna say, I'm not positive of it. But Soul Paul matter is something that will fix it. If not, then you need to move to a penis there, and that doesn't do it, you need to move to the test right. But, waking to piss through the night, you have a swollen prostate. - Okay. Isn't there a marker in your blood weight that you can check to determine? - Yeah, your PSA. - Right, but if it's in a good range, I mean, does that mean you could still have a screen? - Here's the thing, you don't need blood work to know the drug prostate is swollen, right? So, like after Ordoz and Mille feel it, when you go to piss, you'll feel it 'cause you'll struggle to push the screen out, it'll be difficult. Now, if he's talking about, just 'cause he drinks water all day long, pissing a lot at night, that could be something entirely different. And people like that, I will have stopped, I'll have them stop drinking, look at it, not stop, but stop pounding water, like an hour or two. - A little earlier. - Yeah. - Because that could be waking you up as well. So, but typically it's gonna be prostate enlargement, almost always prostate enlargement. - The reason I asked that is 'cause, and I can tell there's some doctors about this too, but I'm one of those people that pee frequently at night, but I also drink a lot of water the other day, and also before night, and I can't really, it's just something I, you know. And my PSA isn't a good range as well, nor do I feel any symptoms of a swollen prostate. I was a little bit worried about it at first because I was like, why am I peeing so much? But yeah. - So you're the other scenario. So what I would do is I would go to higher electrolytes than your final meal. I would definitely include some carbohydrates, right? Because carbohydrates are going to cause to be physiological, interstellar concentrations of electrolytes, pull water into the muscles, make you more attentive, rather than excreting it, right? And slow your rate of your nation down. So final meal, I would bump your electrolytes, I would have some carbohydrates in that meal, and then I would slow water down to bed time. - Okay, cool, awesome. All right, we're about out of time, but I ask everybody one last question at the end of every podcast, and if you were to disappear from the world tomorrow and you had one message you could send to the entire world today, what would the message be? - Oh man. It should give me time to prepare for this. I'm not good at thinking, I'm not, I'm not thinking of, I'm not good with philosophical things off the top of my head. You should have a message for the world. - Yeah. - Be less judgmental. I think everybody judges everybody too much, too harshly, too quickly. They don't consider what people are dealing with. They don't consider that people might be attacking, 'cause they're upset. I make this mistake myself. I'll fire back at somebody, and then after two or three exchanges, I catch myself on being really mean, and then I'm like, it's first of all gonna just have, they'd come here, you know, just in a good mood and decide to argue with somebody. They came here to argue with somebody, 'cause they're not having a good day, and you don't know how bad that they could be. You know? So sometimes you really gotta stop and think it. I still try to catch myself to this day. Like if I catch myself, what would it really be mean? Does somebody who started with me, I have to remind myself, they might be starting with somebody just died or it just woke up with somebody or they could have lost their job. Like really serious, you could be going on, and it's not you. You just happen to be the thing they saw first. You know, in a bad mood, and they started fighting with you. Listen, everybody watching this, you could all be honest with yourself. I will go online and fight with people when I'm in a bad mood. I'm in a great mood if life is good and I'm happy. It never happens. Never. Happy people don't do that. Happy people do not go online, start with people. Never. If you see that, something's either psychologically wrong or currently wrong life wise, and we just need to really think about those things and be less judgmental of people as far as that and what their choices are. I feel like this world is getting really judgmental as far as what people do with their lives and how they act and what they like and this and that. One of my friends recently told me, like they had a dominatrix relationship, right? And I was like, all right, cool. Like, it's not my thing, but that's your thing, cool. If I ever meet somebody who likes not to introduce you, like, you know, people just charge people for shit far too often. It was a national competitor two years ago that I got an argument with. And he had recently told me that he was bisexual. And his first thought was, I'm gonna go online and tell everybody that. I'm like, are you crazy? I'm like, okay, how mad I am. Like, no, like, what the fuck? Like, first of all, that's not something to judge somebody on. So what? They like this, they like that. Who gives you shit? Everybody's different. Everybody watch this has something fucking weird. They watch them corner thought of whatever, fantasized about or was high a drug, whatever. So nobody's fucking innocent. If you wanna be judged on your shit, don't judge people on their shit. Here. - Awesome, bro. I hope you're that. Well, this was an awesome podcast, dude. And I know we could talk about loads more, but is there anything that you'd like to share or like any place you'd like people to find you before we go to-- - Well, you see to find me, I'm always on social media. You're gonna apply for coaching, fill out my application on my link to your end of my bio. I do do console calls pretty frequently for coaches and for competitors as well. Coaches, I do have an anonymous option where you can do a console call with me for a client without your name being visible. 'Cause I know a lot of, that was an issue that I fixed. I realized a lot of these coaches didn't want me to know that it was them asking a question and whatnot. So I can do it anonymously and I'm not gonna ask who you are and I'm not gonna investigate and I'm not gonna care. Just gonna help you out, that's it. Other than that, hopefully we get that educational platform once up this year. That should be good. My contest prep course just dropped recently. We really improved that. We moved just like 70 pages of PowerPoint, but I got it done in under four hours, which was great. We even added additional bonus footage at the end. So next course coming out is gonna be blood work. From there, I'm gonna be doing a whole time, probably four, five hours of education content. So that's what I wanna do. Try to change the industry, try to make a difference and hopefully I do. - Awesome. Thank you for coming on this podcast. - Awesome. - Hey guys. - Hey guys. - Flutter. - Yeah. And everybody the podcast merch is all in a bunch of different colors now. Have you got new shorts? So, if you guys want to help some mentally.