Barbell Shrugged - A Peak Behind the Curtain in Pro Bodybuilding and the Supplement Industries w/ Alex Michael Turner — Barbell Shrugged #427

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

Alex started lifting weights as soon as he left high school after suffering from bullying. He wanted to build a strong and healthy physique as he weighed a total of 112 lbs. He didn’t want to be the guy being picked on anymore. Alex recalls, “I did not want to be the skinny kid anymore, so I progressed quickly in the gym and increased my knowledge of fitness daily.”   After one year of hard training, his weight jumped up by 26lbs and managed to maintain a low body fat percentage no higher than 5%. In total, after a sold years training, he built a lean physique of 196lbs. From that point onwards, Alex has become a highly recognized fitness model and bodybuilder. He continues to motivate and inspire people all over the world while working as a personal trainer.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, the guys take a loom inside the world of SHREDZ, the bodybuilding world, and supplement industry exposing what is real, fake, and really fake in the supplement industry. In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, Anders Varner and Doug Larson discuss:   What led Turner to the gym.   How bullying fueled his passion for the weights.   Being broke and selling supplements   Overcoming poverty and the rise of social media for his career.   The rise and fall of SHREDZ   And more…   Alex Michael turner on Instagram   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   One Ton Strong - 8 Weeks to PR your snatch, clean, jerk, squat, deadlift, and bench press   One Ton Challenge   20 REP BACK SQUAT PROGRAM _____________________________________________ Please Support Our Sponsors   "Momentous is currently running their Black Friday sale and offering their biggest discount of the year. They are running three different offers -- you can get their Essential grass-fed whey protein isolate, their 100% plant-based protein, and their Sleep aid all for $20 off. As a Barbell Shrugged listener who takes advantage of this huge sale, you can also get a free blender bottle when you use code SHRUGGEDBLACKFRIDAY. So head over to livemomentous.com/shrugged to learn more and to grab this huge offer while it lasts."   US Air Force Special Operations - http://airforce.com/specialops   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   WHOOP - Save $30 on 12 or 18 month membership plan using code “SHRUGGED” at checkout

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all of our sponsors in the mid rolls. Black Friday deals. Alex Michael Turner. Love this dude. We hung out with him at Olympia. He's a huge fan of the One Ton Challenge, which means he's my boy! Because I like people who like like people like once on challenge friends we'll see you at the break all right back to recording here yeah so to finish my story this guy that has the full neck throat tattoo with the giant clown face coming out of his throat in like a very intimidating way

that's like standing at the front of my door turns out to be one of the nicest guys ever. But it's impossible for me to coach this guy at 6 a.m. every single Monday of my life without just being like, dude, tell me about the fucking tattoos that you have all over your throat that are so intimidating. And you've got the teardrop

and the face and the whole... These are very much jail-looking tattoos. It's not pretty and the face and the whole, like, these are, like, very much, like, jail-looking tattoos, right? It's not pretty and well done and nice. It's like someone was there with a ballpoint pen, like, fucking stabbing you just below. I don't picture a lot of people thinking, like, I'm going to go, like, express my artistic side by getting a, you know, spider web on my face. Yeah. So. So he's, he starts telling me the story of his jail time.

And he was like, yeah, I grew up in basically South Central LA. I was part of the Mexican gangs and blah, blah, blah. And then he gets into like, oh, and then I got arrested. And then I started a gang war in jail. And I was like, people are dying in jail because of you. He's like, yeah, well, I was kind of like the guy that, you know, when the gang leaders needed something to get done, I was the guy that they called.

They knew that I could be the meanest MF-er in all of jail. And I was like, oh, my God, you're a member of my gym. This can't be good for branding. And then he goes on to say, say like he got thrown in solitary confinement for a year oh and then in solitary confinement he actually like got a parole and got out of jail and within a week got re-arrested to do the exact and thrown in the exact same hole solitary confinement. Okay. And that was when he got his life together.

Okay. And started working out in solitary confinement. And he would sit there and visualize himself running on a beach. Okay. And then he went through the 12 steps

like he had the AA book. They have like an AA book sitting for you and that's the only thing you get in solitary confinement is the AA book. Yeah. And changed his life around.

Got out of jail. Got really lucky with whatever, however it happened. And now he's on the show Intervention. So if you ever turn on Intervention and you see Michael Gonzalez doing his intervention work, and he's got this giant fucking scary ass fucking tattoo coming out of his throat i had to confront that guy it's 5 45 in the morning one day in the middle of the dark and he's this like giant dude he's like his job before he got on intervention was like these very wealthy people that had very fucked up kids would call him and he'd be

like, their parents can't handle them. Right. I'm the only one. Like, I'm not scared of anybody. Right. So I just take over their lives.

I become basically like their bootcamp instructor. And it was, he was like, I'm the baddest dude that there is. He's like, I'm just a nice guy now. But that's the show. Intervention? No. That's what happened on the just a nice guy now. But that's the show? Intervention?

No. That's what happens on the show or that's a separate thing he used to do? Before the show, that was his job. He's literally, he's got like nine felonies. He's got, I want to have him on the show one day because of fitness. So basically what you're getting at is, you know another guy that looks like me Who was in prison But was a really nice guy He's a really nice guy

I actually really want to interview him one day Because I have We don't have anything man We're just back here doing the talking I really want to interview him because I interviewed him And wanted to understand What fitness was to him.

And he presented fitness to me in a way that I had never heard because he was telling it through the eyes of somebody that's in jail. And when you're on stage posturing at a bodybuilding show like I'm the biggest swolest like most cut up lean dedicated person look at me he is doing the exact same thing in the jail yard but saying come at me right now i will fucking kill all of you do you see how big i am do you see the size of my crew if you want to fuck with me i'm coming for you and he was, and you want to know who the biggest badass gangsters are in all of jail? He's like, the guards. They give them guns and they can shoot us and I have to protect myself against the guards.

And I was just like, dude, they don't talk about this in like NSCA courses. No one's presenting jail fitness. That's a really interesting way to look at things too. I had never heard fitness presented from a felon's point of view before. Michael Gonzalez, love you, bro. Hope you're listening. We're five minutes into the show. Pour a bottle out.

Welcome to Barbell Shrug. Welcome. I'm Anders Varner. Doug Larson. Yeah, good to be here. Alex Michael Turner. Dude, we met you at the CrossFit Games. Yes. And I'm so stoked to talk to you because I've heard some really, really cool things about your life.

You were one of the original Shreds people, which I hear is a phenomenal story that I can't wait to hear about. Yep. Professional bodybuilder. Yeah. Well, yeah. Semi-professional. Semi-professional fitnesser. Fitnesser.

700,000 human beings are interested in your story on Instagram, which is a lot of people. Seriously, mind-blowing. Yeah. Ridiculous amount. We're going to be coming out with a badass clothing line for the One Ton Challenge with you. That's super radical with Savage Barbell. And even I would say the most important thing is coming from this bodybuilding world, you have like the deep dive look at what goes on in that world

and how you're kind of changing the conversation to make it a little bit more holistic, healthy approach instead of just juicing yourself up to the gills and looking like a freak. Yeah, looking like the cow that's all muscular. Oh, the myostatin inhibitor cow or whatever it is. Yeah, that one. That one. That's what those people look like when they're on stage.

And the pit bull. Yeah, or a pit bull. Or the greyhound or whatever it is. Where did this fit? You graduated high school, you said, at 103 pounds? Yep, 103. And for me, that that was you know obviously i realized it was small i was like five foot eight too yeah i wasn't like some short little kid i was

lanky um and the story with that was you know i got into wrestling that was why 103 is kind of the number that stands out so i was 100 pounds i was 103 when i tell people and for a lot of people listening you know 103 was generally the lightest weight group when it came to high school wrestling that you had some some schools had a 98 pound class but most were stopping at 103 is the lightest and a lot of schools have trouble filling that spot because they're you know there's a lot of kids that don't either want to wrestle or they may fit that weight spot and it's just you know not their thing so for me i was actually getting picked on in the hallways of my high school and i was a freshman and this kid came up and stopped these kids from picking on me and asked me what i was doing after

school and then he asked me how much i weighed and it was the weirdest thing for me because i was like uh i don't know like 90 pounds yeah nothing you know my mom's coming to get me and he goes no you're coming to wrestling practice. And it was like, okay, yeah, don't beat my ass. I'll be there. So I went to wrestling practice. I came from a judo background my whole life. I had done that since I was eight.

So I was used to being on the mats, but wrestling had never been anything I had done. How did you get into judo? That's not even like the normal martial art. I was a kid. I was a brat kid, and my dad and mom wanted something of substance in my life to create a little bit of structure and discipline. And in my little tiny hometown outside of Boise, Idaho,

judo was kind of a big thing because there wasn't a lot around there. We had baseball and soccer, but judo was also a fairly big sport in my little hometown. So that got tossed into the picture, and I started doing that with my brother at eight years old and ran with it. But when I got to my freshman year of high school and started wrestling, I went to wrestling practice, hated it, hated every second of it, but I had friends.

So it kept me going with it. Wait, why did you hate it? I didn't like the conditioning at that time. Really? I wasn't a lazy kid. I was very athletic, but I didn't like the conditioning at that time. Really? I wasn't a lazy kid. I was very athletic. But I didn't like the rigorous cardio at that age. It was a lot of pyramids and a lot of, you know, wind sprints and just things like that to essentially cut weight, you know,

and improve your cardiovascular health. And at that age, I just didn't want to do that. I was more interested in, you know, hitting a baseball or playing video games or hanging out with friends, not doing cardio for hours after wearing layers of clothing. Right. You're like, I'm 90 pounds. I don't need to lose weight. Totally, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I was always waiting for the day I was going to get jumped on the bus going up to a match when I was the one eating food and they were all spitting and trying to lose weight. Were they encouraging you to lift weights and put on weights? No. You could fill out a 103 weight class as best you could? No, they really weren't, you know.

And that was, I think, probably coming from a small country town. It wasn't really the thing that came to mind was being a built 103. It was just you fit the weight class and you're going to wrestle the next guy who does too. Yeah. You know, and it was interesting. I mean, my high school had like, you know, 400 kids at it. Like, I think graduating classes there averaged, you know, between 20 and 60 kids. So it was never a large area.

It was a small little country town, you know. So did you start lifting weights because you were competing in high school sports? Like, how did weightlifting come into the picture? So weightlifting came into the picture at an early age for me. My dad was a competitive powerlifter. So I grew up watching my father compete and lift weights. And so we had a home gym growing up that my dad used. We would mess around in that as kids with my dad, who was a big influence in our life.

You know, very hands-on with us and very active. Put us into sports that we didn't want to play, you know, and later loved. Just a great, you know, and later loved. Just a great, you know, advocate. And I think that that was the thing is as I approached that age of high school where I saw how small I was compared to all the other kids, it opened myself up to being picked on. And I also was kind of a little asshole. I was kind of a jerk to kids. And I used to play the victim in my mind a lot.

So now as an adult, I realize I egged on a lot of the bullying I got. But nonetheless, I opened myself up to being a victim because I was small. a lot so now as an adult i realized i i egged on a lot of the bullying i got but nonetheless i opened myself up to being a victim because i was small so i started lifting weights my junior of high school with my dad and it was like seriously like the stuff you hear about where i wore a hoodie in because i was so small and i hated how i looked and after a while of lifting at the hours where it wasn't busy i was lifting with my dad every time, lifting in a hoodie. I finally started to put on some size. My dad really helped line me out with my diet. He bought me protein powder in high school and creatine.

I took all the stuff that essentially I thought was going to help me get to that next level. So I put on, I think I put on like 30 pounds the next year once I started lifting weights. And I was up to about 130, 135. And I just had fallen in love with it, you know. As that's happening, are you feeling more confident in yourself overall and as an athlete? And the shift had started to happen where my friends that used to make fun of me were starting to ask me for like advice or like little things in the gym I liked. And that made me feel good, you know.

That's like a sign of respect. Totally, yeah. Yep. little things in the gym I liked and that made me feel good you know and that's like a sign of respect totally yeah yep and and so on the opposite side of that I got just as many people too that you know would make fun of me and they would laugh at the fact I was trying to go in and better myself which now as an adult I also realized was just insecurities and things that they had issues with but yeah it messed with me you know and and there was a lot of times where um I wanted to take this this lifting weights to another level. Maybe in my mind at the time it was more of like a personal training avenue. Yeah.

Because social media wasn't anything when I started lifting weights. Totally. I mean, I wasn't like, you know, wanting to be a YouTube star. It was hard to find information, much less broadcast yourself. But I knew I wanted a career in fitness. Yeah. You know, and so I started personal training. I got certified as a trainer.

I started taking on clients at a local little gym there. And I think at the time I had a handful of clients at my peak, but I was, you know, training. I was making a living doing it. And I just fell in love with it. And that's when I started to see social media start to emerge. Facebook had started to come out and people were starting to do photo shoots that they were posting to social media not just in magazines you know and so i was always a genetically pretty lean kid i always had abs i mean there's like pictures of me at five years old with abs you know and i think that was the thing is i started to see that i in my mind had a marketable look

before all the tattoos and everything and i hadn't seen all these kids out there with the same physiques because nowadays it's so saturated you know everybody has abs and everybody has followings but yeah then it was like just to see yourself in the mirror with abs and a decent physique you kind of thought maybe i actually have a chance at like going further with this yeah you know you hadn't been really exposed to the reality of just how many people in the world are actually in shape that is an interesting thing you always have your buddy like for me it was brian brian had like jacked abs from like the day i met him there wasn't like an amount of food he could eat or an amount of beer he could drink to get rid of the abs they were always just there and i'd be

like i'm not ab guy yeah like i could diet as much as i want i'm just not gonna be super ab guy yeah but once you get to standing on a stage or in the profession you realize oh everyone has abs yeah like everyone is relatively in shape i was a little naive yeah yeah you know and I think small town did that to me too. In some ways that can be a good thing. Like not knowing how good all the other people are and like how, how tall the mountain really is to climb. Like it keeps you,

it lets you be motivated in a way where if you really knew what you're getting into, you'd be like, Oh fuck, it's way too hard. Yeah, you're right. It's almost like having blinders on, you know, that you didn't realize you had on. It just keeps you focused because you don't see the outside of everything else that's out there yeah um but yeah as i got out of high school and kept lifting i i started training full-time um just out of little private gyms um that i bounced back and forth from and then i was living in boise idaho and i i went to my first olympia i saved up

and i drove down to las vegas and i went to olympia and that I saved up and I drove down to Las Vegas and I went to Olympia. That was 11 years ago now, today. I walked around this expo. I saw so many people that motivated me. I met a bunch of people. I actually left with this name in my mind that was an emerging company at the time.

It was from an athlete that was working with another company that knew the guy who's starting this other company but he told me he's like alex like this company coming out though this is going to be a big company like i'm going to try to hit this guy up and work with him like i've heard great things about what he's trying to do and i latched on to that of course so as soon as i left the expo the first people i reached out to was this company and this company was beyond genetic supplements later renamed shreds shreds was a genius name oh it was insanity genius yeah i remember the first time i saw it and i was like oh they're gonna make all the money their product is named the

thing that everyone wants yeah everyone. Everyone wants to be shredded. Genius. And it's a word that had been used for so long, too. Yeah. Like, oh, you got the shreds going on. Yeah. And it was just totally. It was smart.

Yeah. So I reached out to these guys living in Boise, Idaho, my little apartment, Boise, Idaho, training clients, you know, just wanting some free supplements. Yeah. Just wanting an opportunity to get exposure, you know. And they reached back out to me via my email that i had sent to them and they were like yeah like let's talk and i was just like oh my god okay like yeah it's gonna be a sponsor well at the time i had i had worked with some little nutrition stores in my hometown and things like that and

i had gotten little give me's here and there from them but to have like a sponsor that was going to be at these expos that i had now seen was just super exciting for me. Because they're pushing you now. Yeah. But, again, at the time. You've got somebody that believes in you. I wanted supplements. Yeah.

These people now, like, they jump into these things and they, like, you know, I want this salary and I want to get paid this. And it's like, hold on. Like, it's so funny how it's just shifted, you know. And I truly was just so excited to get a tub of protein and some pre-workout. You know. In a way that saves you $100 a month. It does.

In a way paying you. Yep. Totally. I want a dope food supplement. Yeah. Or supplement. A food sponsor. Because then I don't have to buy food.

Yes. You handed me money. But not really. And that's kind of the thing about it is I looked at it like that. Like I was really excited just for the simple things. And so Shreds started out. I worked with them for almost two years before it was even close to exploding. And I was actually a sales rep.

And so this was before they had even had the need for an athlete team. It wasn't even known yet. So what I did is I spent my savings account driving up and down the West Coast and trying to get nutrition stores to buy this product, Shreds. Like a little hustler. What actually was the product? It was a fat burner. And that's all it was.

So it's fat loss pills, more or less. Yeah. Ephedrine. Yeah. Before it was outlawed. No, there wasn't even Ephedrine in it. It was like caffeine and it was like, I mean, a little bit of capsaicin. Like it was like.

That's really. It was like a caffeine It was like... It was a caffeine pill. It was a caffeine pill. It was. They came out with a whole suite of products. But the first one was a caffeine pill. You throw a little bit of biotin into the caffeine pill and then it becomes a women's fat burner. The thing about this is I started getting this

into some stores on the West Coast. I hustled my way into, as the company grew, I earned my position as an athlete. I was still living in Boise. The CEO at the time, he had started really talking this company up like it was just going to go places. It was going to be huge. We were all getting excited. There was only three of us at the time. Joey Swole was one of them and a couple others that honestly aren't even in the industry at all anymore.

But we were all getting pumped. So why was that company, even at the beginning, why was everybody so excited about it? Because you're spending your own money to sell their supplement what it is arvin was a great salesman yeah ceo of the company he literally created such a an image to us of something he believed in so hard we believed in it too yeah i mean we truly became part of the you were like 22 23 years old at this time i was like 21 yeah yeah yeah just just you were ready to attach ready to yeah and you start hearing numbers like you know hundreds of thousands of dollars a year a million dollars and you i mean you become very yeah open-minded to like well tell me how you know i didn't even need the money part

i just wanted to like like crossfit yeah like greg glassman wants me to go die while i move a barbell okay okay tell me what greg i'll do there's a competition okay if you can be a part of something dope and make a bunch of money at the same time yeah it's just it sounds great right yeah so you know we all fed into this and it wasn't not great so i'll get to that point but the the thing was is the next step was moving out to where they were located which was the east coast and that was the thing for me i again i had like nothing in my savings left i had a little bit left and so i worked for a little while i saved up a little bit more and i again used my money to move out there well i got out there i was promised the world i was promised this nice place to live and sent pictures of it even furnished wasn't there when i got there so i got

out there and i had a little tiny apartment no bed nothing that i was promised and then it turned into like well we'll get you a mattress this week we'll get you oh it was like it's very depressing and as a kid i was homesick i at this point had my whole life out there on the east coast yeah complete opposite ends of the country you know know, I had barely any money. I was just scared. And I was trusting these people that now I was questioning. And it's like, what the fuck am I doing? Yeah.

Especially because you were just hustling your ass off of these people. Yeah. And for, yeah, the year plus prior, driving and spending my money to sell this product. They basically used you as a salesman to sell their product and then made you homeless. Very much so. Genius. Genius. Genius. And I hear that, and I just sit here and just, like, face palm myself

because you just, like – But for a long time it was very good. It's just insanity, though, you know, that I fell for it. And we all did. Yeah, but it was also very good. It was. It got good. Yeah.

So literally there was a turning point. I remember me and Devin Fizik. Devin had moved out there. He had signed with us. And Devin was out there. And he and I were both having a really rough time. Like we had no money. Yeah.

We were broke. We were hungry. Like we were like seriously like what is happening? Yeah. And yet we're sitting here selling these products, sitting here on Kick Messenger answering questions. So finally, you know, we called Arvin and he came over to meet us and we had a talk with him. And both of us are like almost in tears. Like we just want to go home.

Like we can't do this anymore. You know, and at that point it was like, okay, you know, I'll transfer you some money. We'll get you guys some groceries. Like, I'm sorry. I didn't know this was this bad. And things started to change from that point. We started to get paid more. You know, a few months later we got new contracts negotiated where all of a sudden we had salaries.

The salaries we had almost been promised. And it was like, wow, this is happening now. We started having tours booked. We started traveling. And that's when I was excited and I felt like I had put the work in and I had done myself the justice and earned something. Otherwise, I was almost starting to believe I wasn't going to be there. You were training really hard, I imagine, to be on stages. You were a full-time bodybuilder. Yep, I was almost starting to believe I wasn't going to be there. You were training really hard, I imagine, to be on stages.

You were a full-time bodybuilder. Yep. I was competing in the NPC. I was hitting shows, different parts of the country. And I was taking that very seriously. And so my life was fitness. And so anyway, we got out there. We started finally making some money, got excited, started traveling.

And then the real money started. I mean, mean literally it makes me sound so bad to say it but like coming from where i came from and even where i'm at today the money i made was insane yeah i probably won't ever make that kind of money again doing something like that yeah it's impossible well those influencers were crushing it yeah we were yeah you know smashing it because you could run your own business, and Shreds was promoting you super hard. So a lot of those guys and girls were running the Shreds piece, which was very profitable. And they were running their own challenges and training programs.

One, Shreds was backing us up on that with graphics, with support on that, with email support, things like that. So, I mean, there was people that Shreds was answering the emails for on their challenges. Yeah. You know what I mean? You've got to think to think like that's pretty handy to have like multiple employees at your disposal yeah we would go to these expos you know and we would each have our own bodyguard the whole expo you know i mean like and not just a bodyguard we would hire 50 cents bodyguards yeah you know they were spending 40 000 a weekend on bodyguards you know back it up why do you need bodyguards because it was the image you know and do you need bodyguards? Because it was the image. You know, and that was the thing.

There was never the question in my mind we needed bodyguards. We were all bodybuilders. Like, if anybody was going to mess with us, we too were in shape.

And it's like, the difference was it makes us look high status. And that was the mission from day one. It was to be arrogant as fuck were the exact words

of Arvin. And that is what he wanted. That was what we did. You know, I mean, dude, I got shreds tattooed on the words of Arvin. And that is what he wanted. That was what we did. I mean, dude, I got Shreds tattooed on the inside of my mouth. It's like Shreds was life. For everyone just listening, he just pulled his bottom lip down so he could see

the tattoo on the inside of his bottom lip that says Shreds. Also, if you don't know Alex, he has two sleeves and a neck tattoo he has a lot of tattoos so it's not just on the inside of his mouth where he gets tattoos no

and that's not just the only shreds tattoo alright alright keep it on it was just one of those things the real money started we all were really starting to believe it was going to be a lifelong thing like that none of us were invested. Imagine you're in your early 20s.

You're walking through the Olympia with a bodyguard. Yeah, getting out of an armored truck. And you're making great money getting out of an armored truck. You think your shit is so dope. Yeah, truly, dude. You are the man. There is nobody in this building that can touch you. And that was the most dangerous thing.

They should never let 23-year-olds think like that. No. That's dangerous. It's so bad. You're going to fall on your face for sure. I went to get my hair cut one time by Devin Fizik's mom. Yeah. She's a hairstylist.

And she's cutting my hair, and she's's cutting my hair and she's like so she's getting emotional and she's like so have you have you talked to my son and i'm like well no like what's going on liz and she's like well devon and i had a big falling out and he blocked me and his sisters on instagram and i'm just like hearing this drama in this family and i'm just like seeing this mom crying cutting my hair because her son who's on shreds blocked her on instagram and i'm just like now i hear this stuff and you you hear it back and it's like dear god yeah well you're trapped in it it's insanity all that matters yep it's truly it's insane though yeah no but um so what started happening is we all started falling apart as a team we all started hating each other yeah nobody

was getting along anymore the arrogance someone has to win the arrogant battle. So we would go to tours. We'd be in Australia. We'd be walking down downtown Melbourne and people would see us as a team. At the time, TMZ was doing stuff of us. Like paparazzi and stuff. And you'd have three of the teammates walking up ahead of us

by like 100 yards. And then like two here and like 50 yards back, two more. Because all of us did not like each other and we were like clicky so it was like the funniest thing because there'd be like this group that liked them and these people that didn't like them and there was like eight of us yeah so the actual tightness of the group that was really just like dysfunctional it was actually really hilarious now that i look at it and they never stepped in and said anything to anybody nobody ever as a company was like look get your shit together like get along people are watching you yeah they let us all banter back and

forth over social media and people caught on to that too and so there was a few people that really manipulated situations you guys were so good at social media though it there wasn't a single day that I wouldn't go on Instagram or go on Facebook or wherever it was and you would just see the ads and you would see the models. You'd see you. You'd see Nikki. What's the girl that was in the WWE with red hair? Oh, Eva. Eva. Eva Marie.

Yeah. was in the WWE with red hair. Oh, Eva. Eva. Yeah, like you would just see the crew, and you would never have guessed. I didn't follow it super closely, but you would have never guessed. I would just like look at you guys and be like, this company is just smashing it. Yeah.

Like every time I went on social media, it looked like Shreds was just the biggest, baddest thing that ever existed. Well, I mean, you had guys buying Lamborghinis. Yeah. And, you know, just crazy stuff. But – Wait, so what year is this where you guys are starting to fall apart? We started to fall apart in 2000 – 2019?

2016? Okay. No. Five years, six years ago. So, 14. 13, 14? 13, 14 13 14 14 i would say okay yeah i had to think about yeah okay so yeah and when it started to happen what was going on were you had the trolly people the jealous people they had started some hate pages against shreds well these pages were dedicated to bringing that company down okay yeah well Yeah. Well, they were looking for anything and everything.

So you had these pages growing popularity because they were the first of its kind to just be all hate driven. All trolls. But they were like open to like send us anything

you have on these people. And so like... They just hate the brand or they think the products are a joke or they... They didn't like the attitudes of the athletes and the persona of the company.

So it all was just kind of a combination. If you're the most arrogant, you have the biggest... You're going to be the most hated. The biggest target on you so that everybody's coming after you. And you always sound like a dick. Always.

There's never like, oh, yeah, but Alex is kind of cool. They're like, no, shreds, total assholes, everywhere. Yeah, they are all shitty. Yeah. Yeah, and it's just horrible total assholes everywhere. Yeah. They are all shitty. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just horrible because that wasn't that way.

So we would wake up, like, I would wake up and there would be stuff on my page that was like, I hope your wife gets shot on the job. And you're like, fuck. Or, like, people would be like, I bought shreds last month because of you and I wish I wouldn't have and I hope you fucking die. And you're just like, dude, it's a fat burner, and I didn't do anything to you. Yeah. I just took the picture. So what this was stemming from was we had one athlete that really got called out for photoshopping his images. This is where the drama started.

At all. Yeah. And it turned into a snowball. Wasn't there multiple? Yeah, there was another girl. She photoshopped, but she had more of a rumor of getting her ass done. So everyone photoshops their images, but they're photoshopping them in a way that is extremely misleading or what? So when I say photoshop, we're not talking about like –

Dude, you got to go on and watch, look at the page halfway. We're not talking about smoothing skin. We're not talking about like that. skin. We're not talking about that. We're talking about making shoulder caps six inches wider on each side or taking in a waist to where the Paige Hathaway's waist would be the tiniest little thing and then her ass would stick. And she would have a dimple. Yeah, it was very interesting.

And so the thing was, as the Photoshop came out, I'm actually going to show you while we're talking a photo of the type of photoshop but as as this was all coming out you know all of us athletes we literally were like look you've got to do something to arvin and they they wouldn't do anything they wouldn't say anything and it turned out devon had a bunch of dirt on the ceo and his personal life so he was very scared to do anything to Devin. So we all were just frustrated because it was kind of one of these things. So here's some of the images I'll show you too. This was like the before and afters of some of the images he was Photoshopping.

Gotcha. So you can see like there's a very immense. Right. I feel like I've seen that specific. His glutes and his legs are way more muscular. His waist is way tinier. Like shoulders are way bigger. His shouldersutes and his legs are way more muscular. His waist is way tinier. His shoulders are way bigger. His shoulders are massively better.

Substantially better. And, I mean, they just get worse. So much leaner. You know, so, again, there's Photoshop. You know what's really funny is I used to go to Fisher's Gym, and a lot of those guys would train in there because Nikki was one of the Shreds girls, one of the original Shreds girls. Right. And I would see them and I would look at them and be like,

you don't look like I think you look. Right. Something is weird. It's like when you see a very impressive person online and then you show up and you're like, we kind of look alike more than that picture you have over there. Like everybody's lean, but they're not like these like giant strong monster.

Like they look in that picture. I remember a whole bunch of them being in the, in Fisher's gym and he, Fisher was just like, it's all bullshit, dude. And I was like, really,

really, you know, lighting. There's like, there's so many factors that can make somebody look insane. And I'll admit that, dude, like right now, if I lifted my shirt up, I would look like I don't really work out. But if I stood up and did a few push-ups and turned a certain way,

I could look more shredded than anybody in here probably. There's so many factors that come into play with it. Photoshopping. There's definite Photoshopping, like what I just showed you. And then there's, eh, they might have touched that up. Yeah. You know, but that's the thing. That's what posing is, is making yourself look significantly larger and highlighting your best angles.

Exactly, yeah. Right. Totally. So that happened. Shreds went down. It went down ugly. It went down very ugly. It went down, like, overnight.

I left the company publicly. I left my salary even. I left a lot of money on the table with nothing lined up because I was so sick of waking up to the continuous hate on my page that I'd worked to build the brand I'd worked to build for myself. Yeah. And all because of a few selfish people that didn't care about the rest of us or our livelihoods. Were you running your own business on the side? I had a few investments. That was one of the biggest things with Shreds is the assistant was running all of, was that Devin Fizik's page?

Yeah. That he was running all the nutrition challenges? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's what you're talking about. Okay, so yeah, Devin had some chick that he hired, and she was posing as Devin. So she did all of his training, carried a cell phone around, and acted as Devin and texted all these clients. So there was dudes talking about very personal stuff to Devin, quote unquote.

And it was this chick. So you can imagine the amount of trust that that killed when that all came out. And what ended up happening was he owed her a couple thousand dollars is all and wouldn't pay her. And she told him, I'm going to expose i'm gonna show people everything and he would have been smart to just pay her the couple grand yeah pay her double because he was making i mean he was like he was lamborghini guy yeah he was the image and now he's lamborghini repoed guy i don't want to laugh because that's mean. But it's also a personal choice. Yeah.

You know, you do this to yourself. And if that kid had to see everything that all of us have had to go through because of his shit, I feel so not bad. Well, what is the backlash on you? I feel like, well, one, I just met you six, eight weeks ago, a couple months ago. Yeah. But, like, what is the backlash on you coming out of that and rebuilding? It's like just a goat by association thing. They just assume that everyone's doing it yeah and to this day there still is there's a few brands that shreds really put a bad taste in their mouth of and they just they don't care if it's just me or anybody associated with it they just won't have anything

to do with you i don't know if it's because you've been through it that you have just risen above it but i don't get any of that vibe from you at all from like the second i met you there was never like an arrogant oh man vibe to any i try my hardest not to be that way yeah so i appreciate that because i used to see flashbacks of things that i would do or say when i was a part of that all yeah and i was never as bad as some people got but like there's just things in this day that embarrass me and my moral roots start bad as some people got but like there's just things to this day that embarrass me and my moral roots start to like kick me in the ass a little bit and just like oh dude really yeah and i've said it a lot i think i've actually devalued myself at times even

because i i'll say to people's things like i'm not tom cruise and they're like yeah well no shit we know you're not tom cruise dude but we still appreciate the work you've put in to be who you are you motivate us and so i think there's times i even take myself down notches further than i probably should yeah just because i feel like it returns better energy to your life you know like i don't want to be the guy that has to walk into a room living through his past as like i was this guy and i did this like if people know who i am and that's cool and if they don't what does it matter like it's something that's very weird with people having access and you being in the public eye, right?

Like even on this podcast, it's very easy to reach out to me or Doug, you, and say like, I mean, man, you really like, thank you for the content you guys are putting out. It's really like changing my life. And, you know, I'm just super appreciative. And you're like, dude, I'm just a guy that likes lifting weights yeah i've just been doing it long enough that i have a couple good opinions on how you might be able to do it and i'm super grateful for everybody that reaches out but sometimes that message comes across like you're like a like a special person

and you're like yeah no if you lifted weights six days a week for the rest of your life you'd have a good opinion about it. Exactly. You'd really understand what's going on. That's a really good point. And I feel like there is like a when you're in your 20s, that can very easily go to your head. I'm really happy that I'm 36 when I get to see it. I'm like, dude, you just keep going.

Like, keep lifting weights. Keep listening to the show. And they think you're full of crap, too. It sucks, but it's the truth. Just keep lifting weights. Just keep doing it. You're going to look back this time about that being all it takes. Because it really is that.

It's consistency. And my generation, they don't want to be consistent with anything. They want immediate results. They want that instant gratification. That's why these 30-day challenges and these 90-day challenges and these, like, bandwagon-y things are so popular right now because that's a perfect setting for my generation. Think about it. I mean, nobody has to do anything in their mind. 30 days and I'll be to my goal weight.

Shredded. Let's do it. Yeah. Take calorie deficit, high intensity. Yeah. Yeah. And then i'm sitting here i'm sitting here taking these clients on that are coming to me going alex like i did

this challenge and i didn't get anywhere okay i'll pay the amount you're charging to do the right way and i look at their their diet and they were eating 630 calories in a day yeah and it's a 230 pound woman and i'm like it blows my mind yeah and yet she's like, I didn't even hardly lose weight. And I'm like, yeah. Well, that's an interesting thing because I feel like you're probably known as being the onstage guy, the body guy, the supplement seller, pusher, whatever it is, influencer. Taking a quick break to talk about our sponsors. I'm so stoked on these people. Sarah Hendershot was on the show last week.

Last week, she talked to us about everything. Protein powders. I've been taking protein powders my whole freaking life. That's how I got so jacked. I don't even know if I'm that jacked. But I've been taking protein powders my whole life and never had a clue what was going on in there. And guess what? There's gangsters out there in the protein land. Imagine that. And they cut the protein. They put

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He told us all the good stories. We mic'd him up. We recorded the entire eight-mile run. We cut it down into the coolest little parts. So you get to hang out with Lieutenant Colonel Kearns, who's awesome, such a nice guy. He's in the special operations, and he talks about all the training, the torture methods they use on each other to train, prepare. It's just an epic, epic video.

So get over to YouTube, check it out. And most importantly, get over to airforce.com forward slash special ops or see a recruiter near you. We're going to get back to the show. Remember, livemomentous.com forward slash shrugged and use the coupon code shruggedblackfriday for all the proteins and the sleep aids. People probably don't know that you're also, like, really intelligent about training.

I don't know if people, when they, like, go to your account, they're going to get good information. But seeing you as, like, going from shreds model spokesperson to, like, the next stage of, like, no, I actually know my shit. Like, I'm really good at this understanding the body and training yeah that is the foundation uh was that a was that a big transition kind of after shreds like rebuilding yourself you know what it wasn't and the only reason why was because i had trained in person for so long prior to the shred stuff yeah that i had the foundation for training people down i knew how to work with people mentally yeah i understood what would fuck with people's minds and what they could get over and how to work with them and so to be able to do it remotely and online it wasn't that big of a

transition for me to to learn how to do that stuff now converting my following over to understanding i knew that stuff as you're asking it it was maybe a little more difficult because I wasn't marketing myself the right way I wasn't sitting there putting out informational videos yeah I wasn't doing like these workouts these things everybody's doing now yeah and my only reason I don't do that still and I know it's it's this is why I feel like YouTube or podcasts things like this are such a great thing they're a great asset for people because you're giving them information but you're not selling yourself out and the sense of giving them copyable information that like they're necessarily going to be able to do everything with. You're giving them pieces of information

that make them intrigued to learn more and maybe inquire more. And that's the thing is with a lot of these things people are posting nowadays, it's informative, but it's also giving away everything to them. So if you're a trainer, you're somebody posting swipe workouts every day, you're going to have a large majority of people that are going to follow every one of those workouts and never going to buy a product from you. And for me, who makes a living off this, I respect my business enough that I have to find that like fine. It's like a gray area. It's like, I have to find the fine line of what's valuable enough to keep off my social media, to sell to my clients that I know is going to work for them. And what's going to give people enough that they're going to be intrigued to want more from me for free.

Yeah. You know, and so that's probably the big thing was I had trouble finding that median. And still to this day, there's days I wake up and I'm like, do i want to give somebody diet tips today or do i want to post a video of me being shredded as absolute shit and having people go obviously he's doing something i want to ask what he's doing and it only goes so far with some people yeah so i've had to learn to like kind of open myself up to things i don't normally post about well you could in those posts it's very easy you put up the super shredded video of you posing in the right angles and everyone's like i want to be like that here's my money but if you put up a post where you're like hey this is what it means to be like in a caloric deficit for the next six months you

can hit your actual goal to um you know get the body and the body fat percentage that you'd really like to be able to see your abs you're like fuck that that. Boring. Yeah. Yeah, right. No way I'm cutting down my fat grams to 75 a day. Yeah. No way. Something ridiculous. Yeah, like nobody wants – well, that's really – I actually noticed some of that as well. Like you can put up some snazzy little quote or your opinion on something and people just love it. And then you try and put like a really quality,

here's how to do this for the rest of your life and like set long-term goals. And they're like, no way. Have you done any like vlog style videos of your training, just documenting how you train? I have tried that in the past and I have a few up on YouTube. I think the thing again was I have a really, really big issue with things not being perfect. So it was always kind of a critical thing on my. I think the thing again was I have a really, really big issue with things not being perfect. So it was always kind of a critical thing on my own end that when I was

trying to film my own workout videos without having a videographer and I have a videographer now, which that's made the biggest difference in my stuff. Um, but I didn't ever have that. I would always try to do my own production. I try to film my own stuff and it's awkward trying to do your own workout videos. And I never how i looked i was never happy with my image so i think that was a big factor too is my social media followers don't realize this that just like them i deal with body image issues and to have so many people criticizing what you do daily and wanting to know why you do this how you do this why you're doing that instead of that you start to you start to look at yourself and like not want to put yourself out there in that sense either unless you look perfect to yourself so there was a lot of times i would film a workout video and be like fuck like my calves are tiny here like i'm

not going to post this chest workout and i wouldn't post an entire informative chest workout because i wasn't happy enough with my calves and i knew there might be a small percentage of people out there who would be like you know his calves and it's like the 99 of the people that would appreciate the chest workout were missing out because of my insecurities and my inability to just be like fuck it what's really weird because yeah that it's it's almost like your online persona though is not you yeah in a way it's just this it's a snapshot of your brain that's going on. Yeah, this is like all I really want you to know. I never put pictures of my kid online. Yeah.

Which is like the most important thing that's going on. It's purely a business. It's the resume. Like if you were going to go learn about what you're up to, I wouldn't go to your website. No. I'd go to your Instagram. Check it out. See what you know about.

See what you're up to. You've been in the bodybuilding world for, what, 20 years now? Like, shit. Yeah, 15. 15 years? Yeah. We got to meet you at the CrossFit Games. Yes.

How cool is that? That's really... Totally different world. It was incredible. This is the first time I've been here. I want to know what you thought about when you got to the CrossFit Games. Do you remember the first time you came to the Olympia? Right now. That is exactly probably how I felt.

Yeah, that's because I really want to compare my experience here to what you were going through at the CrossFit. Not even going through, but how you saw the CrossFit Games. First thing, I was intimidated. Because I know the CrossFit community is extremely, extremely critical. Yeah. Or I thought they were critical. I felt they were very clicky. Yeah.

And I need to say that lightly because I don't want to offend people because I was actually misinformed. Yeah. I walked into this event thinking I'm going to get really judged. I'm probably not wearing the right kind of clothes. These guys all wear certain brands and they're all super super into like certain things yeah you know just like anything and and i walked in and actually people were really chill yeah like the first guy i bumped into was like oh sorry bro like oh and he was like complimenting me and it was like this is

really odd like i'm very used to a few types of people that i know who do crossfit just being kind of jerks yeah but now i'm realizing that just like everything, I was very misinformed. Yeah. They're actually cooler than the bodybuilding community. Yeah. They motivate each other. And that was, I think, the biggest thing that stood out to me at the CrossFit Games was to see how people cheered other people on.

And if nobody listening to this, well, actually pretty much everybody who listens to your podcast does CrossFit versus conventional. Strength and conditioning. So let me put it like this to the people who are familiar with CrossFit, I guess, that are all listening. I wasn't familiar with working out in a way that other people around you pushing

to max out or get certain reps done would motivate you like it did. And in a normal conventional gym lifting around people i feel like people don't compete with each other they more just kind of intimidate and just kind of like headphones on and they posture on yeah totally and i don't i don't like yard yeah but to be in a crossfit box like to be in a gym like that and see the types of people around me squatting the same amounts of weight and going up and going up and going you're going up you're not gonna squat you're pushing too and i found myself failing

with weight i was never lifting i found myself like pushing past you know certain things that i was unable to ever do and it was the motivation factor it was a fire lit under my ass because the guy next to me wasn't gonna quit either totally and so that was something i picked up not just from being able to physically lift the weight next to people like that but to be around them as people. They're the same way. So they're the kinds of people that are a community. They're people that like oh your hands are full let me grab your lunch plate for you

and carry it to the table for you dude. And like that's really fucking cool. It's the only competition in the world. Maybe like the Boston Marathon where most of the people there, everyone knows what it's like to run Marathon where most of the people there, everyone knows what it's like to run, but it's one of the only competitions where when Matt Frazier's doing 50 thrusters,

everyone in the stands knows what it's like to do 50 thrusters. And they know what a savage he is for doing it. Yeah. Like they all can do that and be like, oh, that would take me 20 minutes, and he just did it in seven. Like everybody in there has at least some sort of reference point to what a 95 or a 135 pound thruster is like, if they're doing a muscle up, everyone in the stands knows what a muscle up is and knows the coordination

and athleticism to, to get there. I walk in here and I know what it's like to lift weights, but I have no idea what it's like to lift weights but i have no idea what it's like to be super shredded like that and i don't even know if i could ever get to that with 100 dedication and perfect nutrition like i don't know if i could be on stage shredded guy i clearly don't really want to be but the mental side yeah well just yeah and i think that one, just I've had a blast here. I haven't gone back to Olympia or the LA Fit Expo when we went up.

There was the last, like three years ago was the last time, and then before that I had probably only been in a CrossFit scenario for 10, 12 years. Okay. So I've only been to two of these events um in the last two decades almost um the interesting thing about these ones versus the crossfit ones is the way you look at these is the thing that people are drawn to it's like i want to look like that person i want to have abs like that person you see people flexing in their pictures like hardcore so they have the right angles and the right things.

In CrossFit, everyone's drawn to your performance, but you can't perform when you're just walking around, hanging out with people. So that's the conversation of like, oh, do you do Fran? What do you do Fran in? And then that's the conversation piece. But it's not like you have better abs than me. Let's have a flex off.

Let's take a picture and see who can out angle somebody. In CrossFit, that does not matter. Yeah, the performance piece of it is, and being in great shape is, you know, that's where the conversation's at. It's a much more performance-driven thing. And here it's an aesthetic-driven thing. And everybody can see what you look like. So they don't see the work.

They don't see how hard it is. They just say, oh, I want that. You know what's even funnier on the flip side of that? You concentrate on the performance side of things in CrossFit, and so you understand the work that goes into that. Yeah. In this industry, you focus on the opposite, and you disregard the work that goes into that. In this industry, you focus on the opposite and you disregard the work that goes into it.

It's all excuses in this industry of how they got to look like that versus just fucking giving them the credit. We saw a total monster walk by with gigantic traps and I asked what you thought of that guy. He's juiced to the gills, clearly. The body's not supposed to grow like that. But what does inside the body's not supposed to grow like that um but what i guess the what

does inside the bodybuilding scene look like as a whole are that those people right there are not healthy they're peaked out to like the the highest degree of everything but if you go to your local bodybuilding show is are those people healthy is that like a a healthy conversation that's going on about it's not a conversation that goes on at all really you don't discuss like the healthy aspect of this industry yeah i really don't think you do when you look like that and and the pictures we're pointing at are you know heavyweight bodybuilders on the wall in front of us 260 pounds plus when you look like that probably walk around at like 320 and then diet down to 260 i mean i might i'm not included in those

conversations but even in my competing backstage you never hear people sit around and go so dude like how's your cholesterol yeah you know like that's not they you know it's just interesting yeah whereas in crossfit and other industries like that it's in it's more interesting how much they focus on the health side of it yeah you know, where is your heart rate at during your exercises? Where is this at? Whereas with this stuff, I mean, yeah, you have people that get more methodical with it all. But most people, it's just not the same aspect health-wise or health concern-wise. Do you follow Ben Pekulski at all?

Yeah. He was actually who I was just thinking of when it came to science. Yeah. Just because he's one of the bodybuilders that gets very scientific with things. He does tons of testing. He uses university study type stuff on everything he does. His preps have been interesting to watch. I used to follow him years ago.

I can honestly say, though, I haven't followed him for probably two years. But I used to. And just to watch his Olympia prep, just everything he did to try to bring in the most scientifically perfect package he could, was something as a geek I nerded out on and thought was just so cool. I'm a big fan of Pekulski. I think he's really badass. Yeah.

He brings a really cool angle to understanding the mindset of the perfect body. Like, that should be an individual conversation to you. It shouldn't be chasing the guy of the perfect body like what that should be an individual conversation to you it shouldn't be chasing the guy on the wall um you know the thing and he's really really smart he brings that level of detail and dedication to every aspect of his life though like he's a guy that i really feel like has his entire life together like he got the bodybuilding fitness isn't he a doctor not that i know of i don't think a doctor? Not that I know of. I don't think he's a PhD. Not a PhD? I don't think so.

I feel like he does something, though. Well, he has programs that he's worked with that are – he writes with PhDs. Okay, okay. So he's around them all the time. Okay. Well, the thing with him, too, that's so interesting is he never was like – you've got to think. He was never willing to push himself past the point that was something that would make him feel uncomfortable where I feel like,

you know, or that scientifically probably was going to cause issues. Yeah. And that's something I also really found to be interesting was he wasn't willing to sacrifice his longterm health as far as he knew to go win the Olympia. He tried, but also knew where he had to stop and draw the line with all the stuff he was doing and monitoring where a lot of these guys weren't monitoring those things and they were able to take it that extra notch or that step past where

ben was yeah yeah because you know they were willing to kind of trying to be healthy they are trying to win yeah they're trying to win i actually No judgment there because that's how lots of sports are. If you're trying to be the best weightlifter, best football player, best MMA fighter, you're just trying to win. You're not trying to just be healthy. And just because CrossFit – That's why it's so interesting. He's willing to sacrifice so much to compete with those guys,

knowing that everything he's doing, it may never give him the actual win, but he's doing it the right way, and he's creating a path for people to follow that's scientifically backed, and that shows all these different methods that you can implement or not. Yeah, just because CrossFit has a massive health piece to it, the people that you see on the CrossFit Games

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That was also interesting. The food court is generally pretty healthy at these types of things. At the CrossFit Games, it was really cool, really cool stuff, like ice cream, beer. I had to open it up a little bit. You're in Madison, Wisconsin. Yeah. Is it always like that? Sacred cow.

Is it always pretty good food? Spotted cow, excuse me. Sorry, Wisconsin people. Yeah, I think that, like, the thing about the – it's probably all the events. I mean, we just happen to be around a lot of CrossFitters all the time. But you come to these things, and, like, I mean, this is the second time I was stoked you were going to be here. Because we met at the games, but we didn't really get to hang out.

And now I was like, oh, dope, Alex is going to be at Olympia. Like, when I see you, I want to hang out, which then means i'm probably going to loosen up on my training ideals and my nutrition ideals and i want to go have a beer yep i want to go like throw some dice we're in vegas i want to party a little bit like so like when i come to these at home i'm like dialed in everything's disciplined yeah like same i I even just recently went in for four months and was, like, back to counting macros and, like. Okay. Dialing things back in. And after my first baby and, like, okay, like, I have to get back to, like, get back on track.

And. But you come to these and it's like, all my friends are here. Yeah. I haven't seen them in, some a month some six months some a year like first last time i saw cassie lance was a year and change ago and you just they're all your friends they're the they're not like your friend friends but your road people i all always want to be around and hang out with and learn from and of course you just get loosened up we're gonna go have some ice cream or we're gonna go have a cheeseburger and yeah we're gonna have a beer it's not always the most healthy on the road

but it's because it's kind of where the party's at but you also know you know you're going back to that structure yeah and you know what it's like and you know that you look forward to times like this i think that though it's easy to be okay i think a lot of people don't have like they're they struggle to disconnect the emotion and feeling of, like, eating or drinking or whatever it is. Like, when I go home, it's not like, you're in Vegas, it's like, I'd like to go to a really nice restaurant. At home, I'm like, I just want to eat the vegetable because I think the vegetable is delicious. Yeah. And I don't want to go to the restaurant down the street.

You don't have to, like, re-trick yourself into liking healthy food. Totally. And that's, I think, so funny too. That's my thing with clients is like I've had people and in the beginning of training people, I tried the crap of like, okay, you have to eat 12 cheeseburgers a day for lunch. Well, let's just cut it down to six. I'm not doing that shit anymore. And if that's the way clients want to work, I know how I train.

And if people are unable to wrap their minds around micronutrient-rich foods, I'm not the right coach for them. And I tell people that from the start. Yeah, that's an interesting thing. They want a macro diet. They want to fit macronutrient-lacking foods into a diet that they feel is going to work for them. And I'm like, you feeling like it's going to work for you is why it's not. I'm telling you what will work for you.

And if you want to take it past the point once you get to your goal by doing this fine see how it works from there that was like the very first thing that aaron heine said about you when i was talking to him was that you're kind of leading the charge in this space like in this industry of bodybuilding and bringing a much healthier approach to your clients and where many people are pumping supplements and pumping just eat big, be big, take this supplement. A calorie is a calorie in your body. And it's like, no, like, there's this IIFYM confusion is like it's detrimental. Yeah. Because people take what they learn on the internet now as gold.

It's all the same. I could do the same thing with keto. The crap you hear about keto, the stuff you hear about IIFYM, there's so many different things. And IIFYM is great because anything is technically IIFYM. Everything you eat is IIFYM. You can make that ice cream fit right in there. Now, when you talk about unhealthy foods.

That's just macros for everyone. There's no acronym. Macros with no conversation about the quality of the food. Truly. It could be. Macros with no micros. Yeah. And the thing about it is like what's so crazy is.

I feel like I want to finish that because it's not 100% accurate what I said. No, not quite. Go ahead. It could be a very high-quality diet, but most of the time people use it in an abusive way. In a poor way, yes. Right. Yes. They say I-F-Y-M, and it means that they're going to go eat a donut because they have carbs left in their day. Right.

It's like the reality of it is that the diets that sell the best, they focus on one very specific thing. It's either the quality of the food, the quantity of the food, or the nutrient timing of the food. And so macros is all about the quantity of the food. So that sells well and people latch onto because it's easier than focusing on all three of these domains. But if you're a professional and you're really concerned about your health, you really do need to be focusing on all three.

So macros are great, but you should be doing macros with high-quality, nutrient-dense, real food. 100%. Yes. And for anybody that tries to tell me my body won't know the difference, it's frustrating, you know, and it's like absolutely not true. They're saying they can lose some body fat by just doing the quantity piece, and they could probably look better just doing the quantity piece,

but it's not the healthiest way to go about it. Totally. And aesthetically, I don't think it's the best either. You can eat a low-calorie day, but if it's loaded up with inflammatory foods, you feel it the next day where you're just like, ugh. True.

I look in the mirror, and I'm probably like, ugh, I just feel like shit, and it looks like shit. And if you're a bodybuilder or trying to work on your physique specifically, it'll kill you. 100%. Yeah. It's only going to set you back.

And I think that that's why with the way this industry is shifting, the way diets and nutrition are shifting. Yeah, you can almost stand up. We're getting kicked out of everywhere. Anyway. Anyway. Yeah. But, yeah, that's kind of why I am trying to do this because I was always raised around healthy foods. I mean, as kids, we didn't eat crap. My parents shopped healthy.

They made healthy dinners. And it taught me to eat that way. And it's something Ryan Fisher said in our podcast, and it's stuck with me since he said it. But as a kid, he heard from a bodybuilder at his gym. He asked this guy, you know, who's just in jack shape, like how he could look like him. And the guy just told him, you know, everything you eat, you need to eat with purpose.

Yeah. And if it's not serving a purpose, why are you putting it into your body? Yeah. And that has stuck with me, too, because it is so true. There's things we enjoy. Yeah. And those things have a time and a place. And there's a purpose so you enjoy your life 100% yeah it exists so you should if you're shooting for a specific goal that requires specific foods for that purpose you eat those foods yeah and that's just how it is if you want a specific result yes you have to focus on all three of those things yep if you just want to let it go one night

you can have that too totally just own it yeah the intuitive eater people drive me absolutely crazy like i'm just feeling it out you're like yeah no no just god don't please of all of the diets that one's the worst one because it just means you're not tracking shit yeah well yeah i i see a lot of people who truly haven't like bodybuilders in my industry. I used to play into these things, and I would argue back and forth on these little comment sections, and I've stopped because you aren't going to get anywhere. Wait, you didn't change anyone's mind in a comment section?

It's insane, right? Yeah. But, like, these rants about keto not being sustainable or whatever else, at the end of the day realistically there's things like keto that are sustainable long term well no matter what you think yeah because calories in and calories out can all be adjusted to where yes it can be maintained long term yeah if you're able to ingest the amount of food necessary yeah which that's where people get hung up on it most people can't continue to eat like that

long term yeah while getting the right macro ratios in and with keto you see a lot of these keto pages and you see like a a double bacon cheeseburger without the bun or something gourmet like that and they're like keto you know and sure it's keto yeah as long as all the other macros in your day make that keto yeah and so to the to the overweight female or the obese male who's trying to lose weight using keto without a coach who knows what he's doing, they see this and they're thinking, cool, I was going to have a cheeseburger tonight anyway. I'm just going to take the bun off and fuck, I'm keto. No, you are not.

And that's the thing that sucks is people lose their water weight by cutting carbs out, never doing keto correctly. And then they stop losing weight or they may continue to lose weight slowly over time versus where they really could be doing it and doing correct keto. And it's something as simple as like their protein and fats ratios off, you know, and people don't know how to track their macros. But they're following a guy who's genetically shredded, talking about his keto diet, and realistically he's just on a high-fat diet, you know, and he's not even eating real keto.

But the people that follow him believe everything he says because he's someone like Alex Michael Turner, dude. And when he says this is keto, they follow it. And it turns into a buzzword. Yes, totally. And the buzzword, because they have the following, starts to become its own entity. Whether it has the nutritional backing or real science behind it. And who is going to call you out and who is going to call you on your shit unless they're bigger than you or have a bigger following now? Yeah.

You're going to scream it out in an empty hallway about somebody with a big following? Cool. And that's kind of the scarier part about it is these people can preach us all day, but until somebody bigger than them with a bigger platform or a louder voice, until they jump in and actually say something about it, they can to sell those plans they can continue to preach that crap and that's just what we have to deal with so the only proactive way to go about it i think it's really interesting too in the instagram world is like are you a fitness professional or are you a model that's a big difference right the fitness pro that really has taken their time to learn the

craft and like actually worked with people or you're just someone that likes working out that looks good doing it or even you just read your you just finished your cert class and you've never had a single client and you really don't know what you're doing but you're trying yeah you know there's a lot of application to this totally and I've learned what not to do and what works well. And it's interesting because it's taken a lot of trial and error. Yeah. You have a million different types of people out there. And it really is true that nobody's the same.

But you can figure it out pretty quickly. Yeah. There's some common threads. Yeah, there are. And so I think that that's, you know, that's it. I believe in micronutrient-rich foods. Yeah. 100%.

Well, we first met you, and you were running the Facebook Live for FitAid at the One Ton Challenge. Yep. And, dude, One Ton Challenge, you've got two of these now in your back pocket. I know. And we're going to be making a freaking clothing line out of this. It's very cool having you because I think we we doug and i specifically we love the olympic weightlifting community powerlifters are rad we clearly have a whole ton of ties to the crossfit world yes but bringing like a bodybuilding type person and we're really

like i i like to think we're positioning ourselves like right in the middle of all four of these strength sports and bringing as many people that just really like being students of the strength game and giving them a platform to express strength. Their abilities. Yeah. I guess when you first heard of it and after experiencing it, what are your thoughts on what the hell is going on here? I think the one-ton challenge, when I first heard of it and after experiencing it, what are your thoughts on what the hell is going on here? I think the one-ton challenge, when I first heard about it,

I thought it was awesome from the start. Yeah. I really did. I got called by FitAid, and they pitched it to me and told me all about it. And I knew from the start there was no way I was going to be able to do it. But I thought it was great. I started adding up my high school PRs. I'm like, shit.

Okay, yeah. Okay, yeah. Oh, yeah, we're still off there. But I still was really interested in it because I think just like what we were talking about really early on, I like stimulating things, and I like being able to train different ways and methods. And with this, again, just like CrossFit being something new, it was something new. It was something that i was really excited to see grow if it had a chance to grow yeah you had some big people involved in it in the beginning right totally like some like celebrities oh yeah it's seen as it's john's thing

yeah so like that was like when we i had never heard or done it's not even a real thing we're making it a real thing right it was one of the hardest parts about doing the one-ton challenge before we started doing it as a very public thing was getting invited to john cena's home gym like cool you can't just go and do it like nobody even yeah you can uh but most people i know that's so cool most people like you may hear about it you do it in your gym but no one gives a shit because you didn't do it at cena's place and your name's not on the door so whatever but now we're able to you know when i talk to him and tell him what's going on i send him the pictures of everything that we did at the games and he's just like

dude you took an idea and you made it so dope like i'm so stoked for you like this looks so rad um that's got to be so rewarding dude it's cool well the the reason that this whole thing like this whole one-ton challenge is like so it is like the the product of something that's super just like core to my existence now which is like when I was 13 I started lifting weights at some level I was clueless right and then you kind of get an idea of what's going on and then you kind of get a little bit better and then CrossFit shows up and it gives you like this actual real purpose to why you've been training and then I never made it to the CrossFit Games I never really made it to the Olympic Weightlifting Nationals like I never made it to the CrossFit Games. I never really made it to Olympic Weightlifting Nationals. Like, I never, like, made it to the things that I always thought I was good enough to get to.

But I made it to Cena's house. That's pretty. I made it to his garage door. My name's on that door. And that moment takes a little while to kind of, like, fully sink in. And with working with Doug, and we were like, well, what do we really want to teach? It's like, we're not the greatest athletes in the world but we're very interested in like this understanding of like the lifelong pursuit of strength so how do we structure a business

around the lifelong pursuit of strength and like what what's what's the symbol of that yeah it's the one-time challenge it's our ability to be strength athletes and do olympic lifting and do power lifting and express it and we have a goal of it's attainable everyone should be able to do it you might just have to put in a decade of really good work and actually be a student of the game but you can get there everyone can deadlift for 500 pounds if you really put that to be the goal everyone can get there there. I know because I'm so average. I didn't get to the CrossFit Games. I'm not special. We're just regular people, but you can get there.

A 400-pound squat, a 300-pound bench, 300-pound jerk, 300-pound clean. All these numbers are very, very doable. That's actually a really badass way to look at it, too. And a 200-pound snatch is like a very doable thing, and that lands you right at 2,000 pounds. There's nothing hard about it.

The hardest part is you have to show up for a decade, and you have to try. And if you do that, then there's a cool little club. And if you fail, you just keep coming back. You just keep coming back. You just keep going, and you keep getting better at it. Whereas lifting weights is awesome. You're not re-qualifying.

You're just working at getting better. There's a's a goal at the end of hey i made it i can i can at least say that i'm strong yeah um when did you meet dave with savage barbell so i met dave god crossfit games it was first time yeah oh cool it hasn't even been long you know and the thing about it is it's it's just one of those things that when I first got Savage Apparel, so I'm not going to mention any names at all. And I'm not going to talk poorly at all because everything's good. I was with a prior clothing company before this, though, as an apparel representative for them. And I started to just realize that as an athlete, I wanted a higher level of actual performance-driven clothing or inspired clothing versus just you know like kind of the run-of-the-mill just very casual wear yeah like cotton clothes that you

know you'd wear just kind of chilling and that's what i found myself doing is buying more brands out there that i wasn't endorsed with that fit what i wanted yeah and as somebody who who takes a lot of pride in the integrity of the brands I represent and actually using and believing in the products, it started to create a gap in my life with that endorsement of getting paid to represent their products that I was starting to fall out of love with. Yeah. So time went on. I was growing apart from that style and that feel. And I found a company, and that was Savage.

And I got their shorts at the CrossFit Games as, you know, demo shorts to wear, and I thought they were just the most badass quality shorts in the world. Yeah. I got home. I wear them all the time. I had one pair. I ended up getting another pair just because I washed that pair often.

And I just, I love the quality. And so when I left, I actually didn't have any anticipation of working with them yet. I was open-minded to several other people. And I had offers from other people, too, that were in the bodybuilding industry. And they had a bunch of athletes I already knew. It was the same old stuff, same old faces. That was what intrigued me, too, was that Savage was huge in the CrossFit world, which is new to me.

It's something I'm really intrigued by. It's a community I want to embark on getting to know. I want to emerge myself in this community. They're very much what I want to be like as far as community feel goes. The support and the positivity versus the bodybuilding world. It's very how can we bring this person down? How can we be negative and just judgmental and it's just very clicky and just negative yeah you know crossfit's not crossfit's

positive so even though i'm not a crossfit athlete i want to be yeah and that's what's so funny it's like i realized that all this this type of you know this idea that it's it's the opposite of what it is yeah it's truly just because that's pretty much what the fitness people all live in every day. And they just believe that it's all like that. But, no, it was great. I saw Savage there for the first time. I wore it. And then after I left the clothing company that I just recently left, one of my connections at FitAid, actually, Lorelei, I'll just throw her out there.

She's the gangster. She's amazing. And she's done so much for me she's the connector yeah she's been a great friend she's helped me with a lot of the stuff that I'm doing currently

and she proposed Savage and I talked and set that meeting up and everything just went really well Dave and I we vibe well we're very similar people Dave's a great dude

you know and yeah we talked for two hours on the phone I mean it was just like the longest conversation ever I find myself doing that with him all the time too and it was about everything from left to right up to to down, white to black.

It was like we just got down on details of what he wanted to do with Savage, what he had been working on, the story behind it all. It just felt right. Yeah. I love working with him. He's so stoked on the one-time challenge and being a part of it. And he's working his ass off. You can tell.

His back story. i respect that yeah you know and for him having a real career that he's had to manage this and work alongside this all with and made it work and grown it into what it is i just i respect that yeah and that's where i come from those kinds of people and i know yeah were the uh were the initial talks i mean we're we're coming out with, like, a one-ton challenge apparel line, and you're going to be the face of the male side of it. Was this part of, like, the initial talk? Not even really. More of the initial talk was just kind of, like, wanting to kind of, like, have my help, maybe giving some input.

Yeah. Like, the styles and, like, what people would want to wear, you know, and what my following would like. And then it turned more into, like, what you're talking about. Yeah. More of, like, the face of it and doing something more signature. And I was just like, holy shit. I mean, dude, it gives me goosebumps.

He called me and he was like, one-tone challenge apparel line. And I was like, that sounds dope. I don't do apparel. Like, T-shirts are cool. He was like, what do you think of Alex? And I was like, dope. Like, you're really going all in. Let's talk about it. so as soon as he got off

the phone with him again there was like a two hour long conversation that we like got into some some good stuff and uh i was like fuck dude like let's make this thing happen so i know uh you're working with him but i'm really stoked to have you on our team. Thank you. And building this thing out, man. It's been really, really cool. I'm glad. Being at Olympia, having you at the CrossFit Games, and, like, you can genuinely tell when people, like, it would be very easy to look at those crazy guys doing Olympic lifting and powerlifting and this new thing and hate on it

because it's, like, not the biggest, baddest thing. But having someone come in and, like, just be like, oh, wow, this is rad. You guys are doing cool shit. It means a lot to me. And it's super cool to have you on board. I give credit where it's due. And I think that the cream always rises to the top. And that's the thing with this whole experience.

This last year of my life, I've met people like yourself, like you. And it's been an honor because the people that I've aligned myself with up to this point, it's been interesting to see who has turned around and been different and who hasn't been what I've thought or why my circle is so small. Yeah. You know, but it's because I'm intelligent too. I'm smart. Keep my circle small.

Yeah. No, but you guys are all good people. Well, what you put out comes back to you. When you're an arrogant 22-year-old that thinks your shit doesn't stink, that comes back in a bad way. It does. If you just put out good vibes and keep good people around, it comes back.

So that's kind of what I want to do. I just want to keep riding this wave and really put out some badass stuff. And I know that the talks of what we're wanting to do, I mean, you know what we're talking about doing with this clothing. And, like, I don't think people understand the level of quality and complexity that's going to go into this. Like, this isn't just going to be, like, some cotton tees.

This isn't just going to be, like, some raglan shorts. This is going to be, like, next level. It's a real group of people fired up about doing stuff. It's very, very real. You know, and we're not just here to create a single line for this one-ton challenge. This is going to take over apparel. Yeah. We want this to grow into something.

Dave's fired up about it. Yeah. I'm excited. I'm excited. I like lay in bed and think about it. I just lay there and rub materials on my face. This feels so good. I'm like, this nylon is just so awesome.

No, but I am excited. Yeah. We'll have all that over at Savage Barbell. We'll be selling it through our site, too. Cool. Where can people find you at, dude? If they want to find me. If they want.

They definitely do now. Instagram, Alex Michael Turner on Instagram. And then Facebook, Facebook, Alex Michael Turner. You still do the Facebook? I still do. Check it out, everyone. Do you scroll through the feed? Not really.

No. I think the feed is so beat now. It's always messed up, too. It's all janky. But, no, I do. Both that and that. So, yeah. Alex Michael Turner.

Doug Larson. You bet. Find me on Instagram, Douglas C. Larson. Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. We're the Shrug Collective at Shrug Collective. One-ton challenge.com. Snatch clean jerks. Squat, deadlift, and bench.

Add them all up. Find your one-ton total. The lifelong pursuit of strength. 2,000 pounds for men, 1,200 for women. Get over there. One-tonchallenge.com. Put your PRs in. Find out where you're at.

We'll see you guys next Wednesday. That's a wrap. Remember, Black Friday deals. Get over to one-tonchallenge.com forward slash join. That's where you're going to save all the coin on the big 12-month OneTone Challenge program. And then ShruggedCollective.com forward slash store. We can go in and buy all the e-books.

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