Digital Social Hour - Bodybuilding's Dark Side: Why Young Athletes Die | Rich Gaspari DSH #801

Episode Date: October 13, 2024

Uncover Bodybuilding's Dark Side: Why Young Athletes Die in this eye-opening episode of Digital Social Hour! 💪💔 Join Sean Kelly as he sits down with the legendary Rich Gaspari to reveal the hidden truths about the world of bodybuilding. From sneaking into gyms at 13 to becoming a global icon, Rich shares his incredible journey, the discipline behind his success, and the dangerous pitfalls faced by today's young athletes. 🚨 Packed with valuable insights on nutrition, training, and the impact of steroids, this conversation is a must-watch for anyone interested in the sport! 🏆 Don't miss out on this engaging chat as Rich discusses his rise, the evolution of bodybuilding, and his transition from athlete to entrepreneur. Tune in now and join the conversation! Watch now and subscribe for more insider secrets. 📺 Hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for more eye-opening stories on the Digital Social Hour with Sean Kelly! 🚀 #injuryprevention #testosterone #youngathleteshealth #youngathletesdeaths #suddencardiacdeath CHAPTERS: 00:00 - Intro 01:00 - Starting to Lift Weights 03:20 - Importance of Nutrition 08:00 - Steroid Use in Bodybuilding 10:06 - Major Injury Ending Bodybuilding Career 11:14 - Founding Gaspari Nutrition 13:26 - Rich's Drive for Financial Success 15:04 - Mentoring Young Athletes 16:34 - Winning Bodybuilding Competitions Early 17:59 - Bodybuilding Judging Criteria 19:51 - Lingering Losses in Competitions 22:47 - Transitioning to Business Post-Injury 24:36 - Experiences with Fights 25:27 - Favorite UFC Fighters 26:49 - Parenting: Having a Kid Later in Life 27:57 - Will You Encourage Your Son to Lift? 30:11 - Encounter with Jersey Shore Cast 30:40 - Outro APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://www.digitalsocialhour.com/application BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] GUEST: Rich Gaspari https://www.instagram.com/richgaspari https://www.instagram.com/gaspari https://gasparinutrition.com/ LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Like, it is a lot of discipline and hard work, right? It takes years of building up, you know, a body. And then it's also the knowledge of nutrition. You know, you have to sleep right, you have to eat right, you have to train right. And all that has to be continuous year after year after year as you make gains. Ladies and gentlemen, Rish Gaspar here today. Got a legend in the building from Jersey. Yeah, right from the night.

I didn't realize you told me you were born in the same town as I was born. You're a central Jersey guy. Like from, you know, I was born and raised. I was born in New Brunswick, but I was raised in Edison. Nice. That's where Gary Vee was raised too, right? Gary Vaynerchuk. Was he he i didn't even know that i'm glad you said central jersey too because people give me shit for saying that but it exists guys come on now central jersey people say north or south i'm like nah no we're central central bridgewater new jersey middle

six county and uh what age did you start getting into lifting i was pretty young like you know i was sneaking into the levy scene college, which was part of Rutgers. I was like 13 years old. Damn. They didn't question you? Yeah. Well, what happened was they would leave the door open into this. It was like a big warehouse.

The gym was in there. So I would see the doors open. I'd kind of open the door and just start training. And I guess they thought I was a student. But, I mean, I looked young. So they just thought maybe i just looked young for a college student but then eventually one of the guys go like you going to school and i'm like oh yeah yeah where's your id i'm like oh i didn't bring it with me that's funny man but yeah i started training in that gym because they had you know back then there was not many gyms um like it is today they're

everywhere everywhere so it was basically you know a gym with a universal and free weights and stuff so i got into going in there and training i was i was on a mission to be a pro bodybuilder at 13 you were already i knew my destiny the first time i saw a muscle magazine i saw arnold schwarzenegger the hulk lufa rigno and i saw a magazine i was i saw Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Hulk, Lou Ferrigno. And I saw a magazine. I was playing ball with my friend. And then I happened to go into his basement. He had a stack of magazines, all these muscle builder magazines.

So I went and started looking at them. And for me, I started looking at these bodybuilders. I'm like, how did someone get like that? They look like superheroes, like these big, muscular guys. So I started reading the magazines and then i started going to my friend's house just to get to read these magazines yeah not really play with them but i wanted to read the magazines you know it's like oh come on let's play ball i want to read these magazines yeah they were popping back in the day i just

saw sports illustrated go under recently but i feel like magazines these days aren't really it's a shame you know i've been on close to 100 covers. Damn. You know, as a pro bodybuilder. And now it doesn't mean anything, you know. Yeah, back in the day, though, they were hot. It was everything. And that's how I was globally known as a pro bodybuilder.

Once I turned pro winning Mr. Universe, and then I started competing in the professional shows, you know, which was the Mr. Olympia Grand Prix shows, that was basically growing my awareness where Joe Weider was the guy who ran bodybuilding, but he had magazines all over. He had the American magazine, but then other countries would put it into their language. So then I would have covers all over the world. Yeah. The thing that fascinates me with bodybuilding in particular is you're spending years before you even get recognized. Like it is a lot of discipline and hard work, right? A lot of work, discipline, diet. Just like, you know, I was talking about earlier.

I was this 13-year-old kid working out in the gym trying to do something to build some muscle. I didn't really see, you know, results until I was about 15 or 16. And then I started competing as a teenager okay back in the day but yeah it takes it takes years of building up you know a body and then it's also the knowledge of nutrition it's not something where you know athletes just go and train it's 24 7 that you know you have to sleep right you have to eat right you have to train right and all that has to be continuous year after year after year as you make gains. Right. And it sounds like for you, money wasn't the number one reason

you were doing this. At the beginning, it wasn't about money. It was more about I wanted to be the best bodybuilder in the world. And I was always told that I couldn't do it. It was another thing I was known to, I was very, very skinny when I started. And they told me I didn't have the genetics to be a bodybuilder. But I said, no, I can do it. I read about other bodybuilders in the magazine that they didn't have great genetics, but they were able to build their bodies. So I studied a lot. When I was going to Rutgers University, I was a pre-med student.

Wow. So I was very much into, I was on the dean's list. And I was studying everything from nutrition to you know biochemistry but i took everything even in bodybuilding i took it as a science so everything i did when it came to nutrition or training with biomechanics i took it as a science to be the best that i can be yeah i think that's probably what set kick off an exciting football season with BetMGM, an official sportsbook partner of the National Football League. Yard after yard, down after down, the sportsbook, born in Vegas,

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BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. ...deprived you from other bodybuilders was the studying aspect. That was the thing because you know everyone sees someone with muscles and they think they're just a dumb muscle and you know you look at someone like arnold schwarzenegger is very intelligent you know but although for me i took advantage of being this known as a dumb muscle head but then behind i was a lot smarter but you know i changed a lot of things in bodybuilding because when I started competing, the bodybuilders had very little knowledge on nutrition.

So I studied more nutrition. One of the nutritionists I studied was Barry Sears, who believed in a 40-40-20 diet. Yeah. 40% protein, 40% complex carbs, 20% fat. And from that, I used that in my bodybuilding career. Instead of some of these guys just eat a lot of protein, don't eat carbs. That's get ripped when you want to eat just eat whatever you can eat to build you know bulk up and i found like there's a science to how do you build muscle more effectively and efficiently and it's all comes down to nutrition i believe 75 of getting in shape and building a body is all with nutrition i love that that's actually a big percent yes because a lot of

people focus just on the fitness part. You could do all the training in the world, and if you're not eating properly, you're not going to make gains, whether you want to lose body fat or whether you want to gain muscle. And believe it or not, because I was a really skinny guy, the hardest part for me was gaining muscle. And that was slowly increasing my caloric intake to try to eat. And it's not eating McDonald's and pizza.

It was eating healthy foods and bringing up my calories slowly so that my body acclimated to the calories so that those calories are used to build muscle and not build fat, you know, build fatter. So I started on diets where eventually for me to get myself to be at about off season around 245, um i had to eat about 8 7500 to 8 000 calories a day and that's healthy calories that's healthy calories so let's see you eat like a pound of beef you know a whole chicken uh i would i would eat like a you know two dozen eggs holy egg whites because i was you know limiting my fats but eating high proteins and then eating only complex carbs, not simple carbs, not white sugar, not refined carbohydrates. I was eating brown rice, sweet

potatoes, oatmeal, some fruits. But when you try to eat healthy like that, eating 7,500 calories, it's really, really hard. I bet, dude. I don't think I can do that every day. And you did that for years, right? I did that for years. And then you would have to cut that weight in a certain amount of time. And then you would cut the weight and go, say, from 7,500. And then because I sped up my metabolism to be able to get acclimated to eating that much, I can diet on 3,000 calories, which still is a drop over half of what you're normally eating, where a lot of people today, if you look at what they're eating,

the average person doesn't eat enough. They eat probably around 17, 18, maybe 2,000 calories. Guys that are fat are usually eating a lot of the junk food, drinking a lot of soda and juices, and that's why they get fat. Yeah, that makes sense. It seems like every year, there's a bodybuilder that passes away at a super young age, 20s, 30s. Why do you think that is? Well, from when I competed in bodybuilding and today, I mean, there is an abuse in steroids that are used. And, you know, listen, I'm not going to deny that I didn't take steroids when I competed as a professional bodybuilder. But the doses that we used were much, much less. I'm still healthy, You know, turning 60, I'm still healthy and in great shape, training every day, where guys are dying in their 20s and 30s

because they're taking very, very high doses. It's funny now because you go on social media and you see all these young kids talking about Tremolone. Yeah, I've seen that. And Tremolone is like a really harsh steroid. And I've never taken even Tmblone when I competed. And when you read all the side effects that there is, and these kids are taking it that haven't even,

they're not even competing and they're just using Tremblone for fun, you know, to use it. It changes your attitude mentally. It's very toxic to the body. So yeah, there's bodybuilders that are dying right now because they're abusing, you know, the whole steroids. It's crazybuilders that are dying right now because they're abusing the whole steroids. It's crazy. And people are injecting testosterone rather than focusing on what's causing low testosterone.

And that's the thing. I mean, see, this is the thing. Testosterone should not be demonized when used properly. A guy my age, my testosterone levels are a lot lower than your testosterone. But what's found that when your testosterone goes lower and lower, you decrease muscle mass. There's a lot of other side effects, depression. So I go to a doctor who looks at what my free testosterone, what my total testosterone is, and all I want to do is get it back to normal. So smaller doses that are prescribed by a doctor for health purposes,

then it's not dangerous. But when a bodybuilder or a kid takes testosterone, it takes three, four, five, six times the doses what they should take. Then you're going to have adverse effects. You know, you're going to increase hemoglobin, a red blood cell count. It's going to cause you to have a stroke. You're going to have liver damage and a lot of these other things that happen from taking high doses. That's scary. Did you have any major injuries or health problems? Well, nothing from steroids, but I've had some major injuries.

What retired me is I basically, I was lifting very heavy weights. My best lifts like on squats were 785 525 i'm still you know pretty strong but what happened is i ruptured a disc um in my 30s when i was competing and with that it it ruptured a disc i caused total paralysis in my right arm and it basically put me into um retirement wow but while i was in bed you know saying okay i was making money off my body. I said, bodybuilder, what am I going to do? So then I'm like, okay, I love, you know, the science of bodybuilding. I love the nutrition part of bodybuilding. And back then, supplementation was coming out more and more.

So what did I do? I started a supplement company. Smart. And that's what I did. And sometimes I tell people, you know, getting injured and having this ruptured disc so that I was in bed for like three months was a blessing in disguise because I said, I can't use my body to make money. Now I got to use my brain, and that's how I started my supplement company. And you ended up making more off that than your whole bodybuilding career.

Way more. I made, you know, my company at one point was valued at over 100 million. Holy crap. I was in over 70 countries. We still are a global company in a lot of countries. Nice. I was talking earlier that what happened to the supplement industry is because guys like me were in the forefront of making money. Now everybody wants to get into the supplement. So saturated.

So it's such a saturated market. What's happening is we used to make really high margins in selling supplements but what happened now is because there's so much competition the margins have eroded yeah so you have to be a lot smarter what's great about gaspari nutrition is it it is a legacy brand so because there's awareness to the brand i still have sales to grow that brand right but i tell anyone who wants to get into the supplement business today, I say don't get into it because it's a very difficult market to make money. Like I made millions from it, and a lot of people just think they're going to set up a brand and make millions, and it doesn't happen like that.

There's some big people that have tried launching their own supplement brands and it hasn't worked out. They failed. I've seen so many people fail. And you have to – listen, you have to have – I'm a very relationship driven person and i've traveled the whole world to meet customers to build up my sales and that was part of how i grew the brand and people like how the hell did you get in you know russia how

did you get in china how did you get it i went there i would go there meet with distributors face to face and i felt that was the best way when you have a relationship with someone to get them to buy from you and they started selling your brand for you. And that's what I did. And for years I just traveled around the world to build up my brand or travel in the United States to different places to build up the brand. Yeah, there's certain old-school techniques that I try to do, like going to conferences, flying in person, meet face to face.

I feel like it's a lost art these days with social media. It is so lost. And believe me, now I can learn from you. There's a lot more ways of making money now through social media and all the social networking. And I've learned that as well because I said, you know what? I'm an old dog, but I have to learn new tricks to build up and make more money. Do you still have the same hunger to make money? I really much enjoy what I do. I, you know, I've been, listen, I've been around a long time. So I've been through my ups and downs and had some, you know, issues like personally

with divorce and losing millions of dollars and then trying to, you know, gain back millions of dollars. So a lot of things have happened, but i still have a hunger because i enjoy what i do yeah you know i believe that being fit helps a lot because there's guys at my age that are totally it's just a mess most guys your age yeah they're just a mess they're not you know they're not training um you know they're like lazy you know i'm up at 5 30 in the morning every day going to the gym in the morning starting my day at eight o'clock to you know work and i'm very i'm a very scheduled person and dedicated person to you know being structured and i believe that structure is a big part of my success and that's probably because of bodybuilding you have to be very structured to be a great bodybuilder so if you can take those attributes and put it into business you you can be successful. But constantly learning and evolving is very important because, as you know, the market constantly changes and how you

can make money today. Yeah. So it doesn't sound like retirement's in the books anytime soon for you. No, no. Listen, I went to Italy and there's a guy, he's a famous producer of equipment called Rudy Panata, the equipment's Panata. He's making hundreds of millions making a brand. I went to go see him. He's 72 years old, still training every day and still building a business and how he's going to get that business bigger. And I look at that and I said, well, this guy's 72 and he's still doing it. But I do it because I enjoy doing it. Just like I see him doing it. So I said, as long as I can enjoy working,'ll continue to work right and i saw you're mentoring some people flex lewis is one of your clients right he was one of my he was one of

my athletes that i mentored uh hini yamagishi another athlete that i mentored i mentored many many athletes wow and i enjoy doing that and you know it's great to see these people that were under my wing that are now successful yeah financially that's cool because you could have just not helped out anyone you could have just kept that information for yourself, but you chose to spread it. I'd rather spread the knowledge, and I still believe in doing that, to helping people because it comes back to you tenfold. I do believe in that. I mean, for me, even though I'm older, I don't feel I'm old, but people get to meet me and

say, wow, you're the legend. You're Rich Gasparri. But for me, I'm just Rich Gaspari i love that man yeah because you probably had some battles with ego as you were winning competitions you got to understand i turned pro when i was 20 years old so i was a very young pro and then i got to travel the world but you know when you're that young a lot of times you make mistakes right you know because your ego goes too high. And that's kind of what happened in my life, where I went in the wrong direction some of the time. And that's why today I'm much wiser

in learning from those mistakes than I was younger. And I try to mentor even the guys that are very successful saying, listen, here's the things that I did that you shouldn't do. It doesn't happen to me. Yeah, well, now it's amplified because of social media. So your ego is just 10 times bigger. It becomes so big. Cause if you get followers or you get views, you think you're the shit. Yes, exactly. You got to stay grounded though, man. What age were you

when you won your first competition? Um, I was 17 years old and I won a teenage competition. It was funny cause I won the teenage competition at 17 years old. Then a year later I went into another teenage competition and what happened was I went, cause I was 17 years old. Then a year later, I went into another teenage competition. And what happened was I went, because I was still a teenager, I said, let me compete in this show. I ended up winning the show. And the heavyweight happened to be a teenager that I beat. He went into the men's division and won the men's overall.

Wow. So I stayed in the teenage division, which I could have also won the men's division at 18 so i go i'm 18 and this guy that i beat you know beat the men so that means i must be pretty good and you know when i was in new jersey competing a lot of guys would say you know you're just a big fish in a little pond yeah so i was like what do you mean i'm a big fish in a little pond you can't beat all these guys you know lufringno all these different names but i'm platts yeah so i'm like where these guys live they live in california so the mecca of bodybuilding now it's not not

bodybuilding spread everywhere actually um las vegas is now the mecca bodybuilding or not yet more more gyms here for bodybuilding the olympia's been here many many years but anyways it was venice california so i moved to venice california because i said you know what i'm gonna beat all the top guys i don't want to be a big fish in a little pond i want to be a big fish in a big pond so i moved to california to then start you know training and competing into the bigger shows interesting the scoring i'm interested in how they judge it because for me i don't know much about the sport but it seems hard to judge that kind of stuff is it subjective it's very subjective but you know they basically judge on symmetry uh balance shape aesthetics definition so all these things come into factor you know what's pleasing to the eye there's two

different types of physiques you know you have a napalm physique which is more like a classic you know small waist and then you have you know a herculean physique which is like a bigger type of body and it it on a day whether those judges like more the aesthetic physique or more that really big physique depends you know you can have a set of judges that'll vote for this guy one time and then the next day vote for the other guy right because it's all that matter as you said it's it's not it's not something like when you um you get a touchdown in football yeah it's all subjective that's what i mean yeah as a judge what if you're friends with the guy competing you know what i mean well that doesn't happen as much you You know, judges try to stay clear. I actually became a judge after I retired.

What happened was I had my athletes, like Hideyama Gishi and Flex Lewis were my athletes. So I started judging. And I did it more because I had a passion for the sport. So I got to judge Flex. And because they were my athletes. You would give them tens? No, no. That was the difference.

I ended up scoring them lower because I was so critical on them that my scores were actually lower than what the other scores because I thought people were going to say like, oh, you're going to favor those guys because you're athletes. But I ended up getting a lot of, you know, flack from people saying you should be judging. So I stopped judging. But I did it more because I enjoyed the passion of the sport to help. And, you know, I have a good eye for it, but I just said, you know, I'm not going to do this. I know you got runner up a few times, any losses three times for Mr. Olympia, right? So any of those losses still, still eat at you? I mean, listen, I'm the person that beat me was an eight-time Mr. Olympia. There's only two bodybuilders to get eight-time Mr. Olympia,

and that's Lee Haney, that's the guy I competed with, and Ronnie Coleman. When I competed against Lee Haney, I told you I moved to California. Lee Haney was already five or six years older than me. He saw me in the gym. He was already pro. I wasn't a pro yet. I was an amateur. He saw how hard I trained and basically came up to me said hey kid i'd love you to train with me and be my training partner for me it was like i'm gonna learn from this top

pro to be better now little did he know that a year later i'd be competing against him but he was my man i have to say he was my mentor and so the guy i lost against ended up becoming or beating arnold schwarzenegger's record and being one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time still to this day so i don't feel as bad getting second place to one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time so it just meant that i was the second best bodybuilder of all time yeah you know but you know i've won a lot of shows that i'm really proud of. I'm the first Arnold Classic winner. That's one of the biggest shows. I've won Mr. World, Mr. Universe.

Nice. And all these titles, it was something that I also proved that even though they told me I didn't have the genetics or they said I couldn't be the best, I ended up beating so many of the best genetically gifted bodybuilders in the world. Do you know why? It's all mentality. And in the sport, if you have a good mentality in competing,

and that's what I had, I was able to beat much, much better guys. I was able to prepare more. I put all science into what I did when I competed with when it came to the diet and my complex carbohydrates writing down everything i did how i trained doing you know how i slept uh leaving no stones unturned when it came to like presentation and posing and my hair color everything wow so when you put all those together you end up making a better package yeah you know to win yeah work ethic and your drive man because there's certain genetics like they

had more muscle or something their bone density density was lighter stuff like that you can't control right no and and that's the thing like you know lee haney had the combination of everything he had the genetics and the drive right so then it was very hard to beat a guy like that. But there was a lot of guys that had great genetics, could just lift the weight and build muscle. Those are the guys that didn't have the right drive and mentality. Those are the guys that I could beat. You see that in every sport too. Oh, definitely.

You see guys that have that mental drive and tenacity to be great, and because they work so hard, end up being much better athletes than the guys who have more genetics absolutely how tough was the transition for you after that injury getting into business world it was really really hard the transition for a lot of athletes to go from athlete to going into another world where you're not an athlete anymore yeah and it's very hard like when i was competing in bodybuilding i had had the red carpet out, you know, going to any place that I went to, like gyms. They just opened the door for me.

So when I started my supplement line, I started saying, well, everybody was putting out the red carpet for me. So if I go to all these gyms, they're going to definitely buy it. When I found out, that wasn't true. So I went to these places and I went door to door to door to door. And let me tell you something. It was a setback because when I got the injury, I had, I had weeder contracts. I was making money. I was living very well in my, in my twenties where I was driving around a Porsche, beautiful

house on the water. And then I lost it all because of the injury. So I had to move back to my parents' house in my mid-20s, start over again. And it was really hard. And I took the car, the Porsche I had. I bought a minivan so that I could use it to make deliveries with this brand that I took all my money

and then started this business out of my parents' basement and grew it from there. Damn, that sounds like a really humbling experience and that's the hard part about people you know taking those steps to go three steps back to go four steps forward right all the people make it very very difficult because they're so used to being treated a certain way as an athlete so then where i was wind and dine as an entrepreneur i have to wind and dine now my customers to get them to buy from me. And that's a much different experience than doing that, than trying to have somebody just doing anything for you.

And that's what I was. And that's what was happening when I was an athlete. And then as an entrepreneur, it all changed. Absolutely. I know you're a fan of the UFC. You've done some stuff with them. Did you ever have to put your body to work and fight someone? No.

I never had anything to do with fighting anybody i've never got into uh you know ufc i enjoy watching it but i'm you know that's one thing i'm not i'm not i'm a wimp when it comes to fighting yeah some people have so much muscle but they can't fight yeah and i i don't claim to be a fighter yeah people get heated in the gym i've seen gym fights on like instagram yeah? All the steroid guys or whatever. But no one ever challenged you. That's interesting. No. I'm not a provocative guy that starts fights.

And if a guy's getting antsy with me, I usually can tone down the fighting. I let people not win, but win mentally. So I don't get into fights. Because what the hell do fights do for you? Yeah, make them think they won, but really, who cares? It's a step away from it. Who are your favorite fighters to watch in the UFC? That's a good question.

I mean, you know, I had an athlete that I actually sponsored was Frankie Edgar. And what I liked about Frankie Edgar, he was like the Rocky Balboa of the ufc because he was get he would get beaten and then come back and then beat his opponents that's kind of why i liked him and plus he was a gaspari athlete nice um that i had you know for gaspari so that was a good one i had uh ronda rousey oh she's an athlete as well killed it i signed up i signed her up with gaspari nutrition before she turned pro wow so you found her early. I found her early. And then she got, not pro, but win the championships.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when she got championships, she was doing an endorsement of my brand, which I was paying her nowhere near the amount of money that she was getting thrown at her. So she ended up leaving me. But those are athletes that I had that I respected because they were for the brand. Yeah, her story is nuts, man. Yeah i mean lived out of her car what she she basically before she uh became a champion she was living out of her car you know to become this you know fighter and and then when she became a fighter and then she started winning all the fights and she remember she had that arm bar. That was her technique to put everybody down.

And, well, you can see the rest is history now that she's doing really well. She blew up. And you just had a kid a few years ago? I have a four-year-old son. So an old guy like me having a four-year-old son is not common. But, you know, I love my son. He's an unbelievable. Everyone said he's a clone of me because he looks like me

and he acts like me. And I see that this kid's going to be something really special when he grows up. And, you know, having kids older, you respect them even more. Sometimes when you're younger, you're so busy with your own life young. When you're older, you kind of look back and you look at

these these this person that you're developing yep into who they're going to be yeah see that personality change which is amazing because you can have you know siblings and they're all totally different on how their personalities they are and it's not something that's put by their parents you know their nature nurture you know everything with nature, nurture, you know, I think with kids. So I love having my son and enjoying him. And this is why another reason why I keep working is, you know, I want to retire. Not that I want to retire.

I'll always work, but enjoy doing it where it's not about the money. It's more about building. Yeah. What age are you going to start him lifting up? It's all if he wants to lift. I will not force my son to get into training. You know, it's funny. My dad was totally against me getting into bodybuilding.

Really? Well, I was, okay, I'll tell you why. I was a Rutgers student, a pre-med student. I went from being a pre-med student to saying, hey, dad, I'm going to move to California to be a bodybuilder. That makes sense. They were so upset with me. I said, if I don't turn pro in one year, then I'll go back to college and give up bodybuilding.

Well, in that one year, I turned pro. And then the rest is history. You know, became this pro bodybuilder. And they supported you when you turned pro? They supported me. They didn't understand it at first. Yeah, yeah. But when they see me traveling around the world making money doing seminars and exhibitions and you know seeing that you know in one month i was making

uh more money than my dad made in a year so then they kind of like so that's that's what happened to me too that's literally what happened to me but it's it is crazy like yo i'm dropping out and you paid the tuition but i'm gonna try this on my own yeah i'll do something this is what i want to do and so when you mentioned about my son i want him to do what he wants to do and i hope he finds a direction of what he wants to do and he finds what he wants to do nice you know of course you want to always guide kids to do the right decisions and not just sit there and you know smoke pot and yeah do nothing that's what i did everyone did that in jersey really not you probably but everyone else did yeah pot was big in jersey in high school man there's nothing to do out there yeah jersey's a good state for families but like

there's not much to do well down the shore is not bad when you oh yeah you were down the shore right the well i live now down the jersey shore it seems like there's more activity going on but you're right in the winter it's freaking dead yeah it's not like not like here in vegas that there's so much to do yeah it's almost too much do. Too much out here, man. And you made a point is when I lived in Jersey, all I was doing was lifting weights because I isolated myself. I moved to California, and I saw, wow, beautiful sunshine, the beach, beautiful women.

I was in Los Angeles. It was a bit of a distraction. I said, I came out here for a reason. I'm not going to get distracted by all this stuff that's going on over here. But that's what's hard. Most people get distracted. Oh, yeah. Especially in L.A. and Vegas.

Too many distractions out there. Did you run into the Jersey Shore guys when you were down the shore? They wanted to get sponsored by me. Some of the guys, you know, because I grew my brand. And then I looked at some of these guys uh you know because i grew my brand and then i looked at some of these guys to say that wasn't the kind of message i was trying to put out you know with my products yeah so yeah i i've i've known all i know all those guys but i didn't really you know sponsor them i feel that that was probably a good move rich it's been fun man anything you want to promote or close off with

just um you know my brand has been around for 26 man. Anything you want to promote or close off with? Just, you know, my brand has been around for 26 years, Aspari Nutrition. We want to get, you know, products, sports nutrition products, health products. We've grown the brand to do much, much more. Aspari Nutrition. I also have Aspari Ageless, which as I got older, I wanted a brand more for anti-aging. That's why I came up with Aspari Ageless. Awesome. We'll link it all in the video. Thanks for coming on, man.

Thank you. Thanks for watching, guys, as always. See you tomorrow.