Huberman Lab - Build Muscle & Strength & Forge Your Life Path | Dorian Yates

Episode Date: January 19, 2026

Dorian Yates is a former professional bodybuilder, six-time Mr. Olympia winner and a pioneer of high-intensity, low-volume training for building muscle size and strength. He explains how anyone can vastly improve their fitness, mindset and appearance by training with weights just two or three days per week for less than an hour. We also discuss how to determine your natural strengths and passions and select which life path is right for you. Dorian also shares his journey and transformation from wayward youth to world champion athlete, his exploration of psychedelics, views on cannabis and on longevity and health optimization more generally. The knowledge and wisdom Dorian shares is valuable to men and women of all ages. Read the episode show notes at hubermanlab.com. Thank you to our sponsors AG1: https://drinkag1.com/huberman David Protein: https://davidprotein.com/huberman Joovv: https://joovv.com/huberman Our Place: https://fromourplace.com/huberman LMNT: https://drinklmnt.com/huberman Function Health: https://functionhealth.com/huberman Timestamps (00:00:00) Dorian Yates (00:03:17) High-Intensity Training, Bodybuilding, Blood & Guts (00:09:15) Muscular Failure, Stimulate & Recover; Anabolics (00:12:04) Sponsors: David & Joovv (00:14:33) Muscle Pump, Stimulus; Recovery Weeks (00:17:32) Beginners & Learning Correct Mechanics; Diabetes (00:22:13) Research vs Real World, Tool: High-Intensity, Low-Volume Training, HIIT Sprints (00:28:53) Bodybuilding Journey, Reading, Training Logs, Aspiration, Parents (00:39:21) Sponsors: AG1 & Our Place (00:42:46) TRT, Steroids, Genetics, Early Bodybuilding Career; Tool: Steroid Risks (00:53:57) Father & Son Relationship; Training Evolution (00:58:31) Workout Intensity & Motivation, Self-Mastery, Transforming Anger (01:05:34) Death; Opportunity Analysis; Bodybuilders, Steroids & Diuretics (01:12:18) Human Possibility, Fitness & Health Progression, Nutrition (01:16:05) Sponsor: LMNT (01:17:26) Mike Mentzer (01:20:42) 1992-1993 Mr. Olympia, Underdog vs Favorite Mindset (01:30:22) Inspiration & Achieving Goal; Retirement, Transition & Identity (01:38:52) Flexibility, Winning vs Loving the Process (01:43:08) Aging, Exercise & Posture (01:46:34) Sponsor: Function (01:48:22) Losing Muscle & Diet Change; Breathing; Health & Mind (01:52:02) Psychedelics, DMT, Ayahuasca, Perspective & Connection (02:01:20) Risks, Research & Psychedelics; Brain Plasticity, Perspective Change (02:06:23) Sunlight & Mood, Schizophrenia, Dopamine, Mitochondria (02:12:15) Cannabis, Smoking & Health; Cancer; Breathwork (02:19:34) Cannabis & Motivation, Individual Variation, THC Levels (02:25:22) Plant Medicine, Kratom, Natural Plants vs Extracts (02:28:53) Training for Women, Losing Fat & Resistance Training; Resilience (02:33:52) DY Nutrition, Supplements; Life Purpose & Consciousness (02:44:40) Zero-Cost Support, YouTube, Spotify & Apple Follow, Reviews & Feedback, Sponsors, Protocols Book, Social Media, Neural Network Newsletter Disclaimer & Disclosures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When people come to train with me, I said our objective is to get an exercise and go to real muscular failure. You've got to give it more than it's used to. The body does not want to change. They want to keep status quo. So you've got to give it a bloody good reason, as we would say in England, to change, right? So you've got to put more stress on the body than it's used to. And then you need to recover from that. That's the idea, to do enough to stimulate, but not more than that, because this is an overload that you're going to recover from.

And the number one thing that I hear from people is, I don't really. have time for that. I have a business. I have a family. I said, if you could give me 45 minutes, twice a week, that's all you need to do. And it's not theory because I've done it. You change your life, literally with that and a good diet. So the whole time thing excuses, it's not relevant. I'm not listening. You don't need a lot of time. Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dorian Yates.

Dorian Yates is a legendary six-time Mr. Olympia winner, who is also considered one of the greatest pioneers of training methods for bodybuilding health and fitness. He is known for using and recommending low-volume high-intensity workouts, meaning very few sets done with maximal focus, perfect form, and directed muscle engagement, taken to muscular failure and beyond.

Today, Dorian teaches us how the typical person who is not interested, in competitive bodybuilding should train for health and fitness and overall best results. We cover muscle building, fat loss, mobility, what forms of cardio are best, when to do them, and much more. The advice Dorian provides today is immensely valuable and applicable to everyone, men, women, young and old. He explains how for most people, the best muscle building and strength results will be achieved

by training no more than three and in some cases only two days per week. Dorian also shares valuable insights on how to mentally frame and navigate. your life and goals. How to use your hardships as fuel. There's a lot to say about that based on his own experience, but also how to recognize and lean into your natural strengths, how to be practical in choosing what dreams you chase and how to know when to pivot from one endeavor to another. We also discuss cannabis. In fact, even though I, of course, knew he was, Dorian and I first connected because of an episode that I did about cannabis, both the potential benefits of cannabis as well as the very serious risks that may exist for certain people. Dorian's

experience and read of the data on cannabis contrasted with mine, and that led us to an ongoing discussion that we continue today on the podcast, and that has me now reading into some newer studies, and I promise that I'll update everyone on my take of those studies once I get through them. Oh yes, and Dorian also took me through a Yate-style high-intensity workout at Gold's gym Venice. We trained back, we filmed it, and it's posted to our clips channel, so you can check that out. It's linked in the show-note caption. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related

tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dorian Yates. The Dorian Yates. Welcome. Apparently, yeah. Yeah, certainly. Big fan for many years. Thanks to you and thanks to Mike Menser and a few at the time, real iconoclass. I trained differently than everyone around me told me to. And while I never became a competitive athlete at anywhere near the level that you did, certainly, it got me the results I wanted so much faster. I feel super healthy and great at 50. And I really want to talk about this high-intensity, low-ish volume training that really can be credited to you. Because for those that don't know, the community that you come from,

there have been people who have been big proponents of long sessions, many hours in the gym. At the opposite extreme, there's been people such as Mike Menser, who have been proponents of very brief, very high intensity, even one set to failure and that's it. And you brought things into some sense of moderation. This is almost like a hybrid, I guess. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Between the purest H-I-T, which, I mean, I didn't come up with the idea. The guy that really initiated the whole thing was Arthur Jones, who was the guy that made the Nautilus machines, and then he passed it on, right? And Mike Menser made it more popular because Mike Menser was American champion, Mr. Universe, and he was in the magazines.

And I read Arthur Jones's books, and I think I'm a logical thinker. So it made sense to me. but if it made sense to me and it didn't work out practically, who cares, you know? So like yourself, I was kind of training like that and everyone was telling me this is not the way to do it. You need to train more often, do more sets and so on. So I tried it. And the whole thing with my career, it's a bit like a science experiment in a way that I documented everything.

So I've got every workout. The first time I stepped in the gym and said seriously, say, okay, I'm going to train and I want to be a competitive bodybuilder and this is how I'm going to change my life and maybe I'm going to get a gym or something like that. That was about it at the time. But I said, okay, so I'm tracking everything. My progress is going really well. I'm training like three times a week for maybe 45 minutes an hour. But I'm working as well. I'm doing construction. I'm doing some heavy jobs. So this is taking energy. Going well, going well, okay, then let me try it. Let me check it up. I'm train four times a week. I could do a little

bit more. What happened? Nothing. That's what happened. Everything stopped. For three or four weeks, I cut it back, started growing again. So I didn't really need to learn that lesson too many times. And I got to be British champion. I got to be pro, turned pro. And I read everything that Mike Mensa wrote in the magazines and everything like that and got to meet him. when I came out here. And we discussed training and so, okay, what are you doing? You know, I'm warming up, whatever, it takes a couple of sets. I'm doing a set to failure.

And then I'm resting two or three minutes, dropping it down 10%. Maybe I'm going to failure again. So I'm hitting that nail in twice just to make sure it's in there. So Mike said, why don't you try cutting back to one set to failure? So I started that around 91, 92. And I feel like I get another, you know, another level of growth from that. So people say, oh, Dorian doesn't do HIT. I don't know what category we want to put it in.

But it's probably somewhere between conventional bodybuilding and the extreme of HIT that Mike Mensa was doing and Arthur Jones, which would be perfect for the average person. I mean, Arthur Jones was doing like a whole body workout a couple of times a week. That was his initial recommendation. and I agree for the average person that's great because you want to build a certain level of muscle mass for your health. But I was a competitive bodybuilder. So you've got to be concerned with a little bit like, you know, side delts, rear delts.

Average person could do one shoulder exercise. It would be enough. So you need to do a little bit more as a competitive bodybuilder. So somebody came up with a moniker of blood and guts. They saw my trainer that looks like blood and guts. So that's what we called it. So it's high and sensitive training, a lot less than the other guys were doing probably. But maybe the HIT purists will say, oh, it's not.

But it is what it is. And it's all, I've got every workout written down so people can see what I did. And call it what you will. But, you know, it was briefer than everyone else I was competing against. And it had an effect. Although not everyone followed what I was doing, but prior to myself being successful, it was like six times a week. Some people were doing twice a day.

not very often, to be honest. There's a lot in the magazines. Arnold promoted that a lot, right? But if you look at Arnold, he was probably a full size when he was 21, 22. It was huge. How did he get there? He was bench pressing 500. He was doing deadlift, he was doing squats, whatever.

He built the foundation. And I believe competitive body bowls back then, they kind of used the weights as a calorie burner as well. So they've got the muscle mass. Then they're doing more volume and more sets and more reps. And obviously this is helping to maintain the muscle while at the same time burn a lot of calories. So I said, wouldn't it be better to do the weight training just to build muscle and maintain muscle and do some cardio exercise to burn extra calories? So then you'll be able to recover properly.

So that was my approach. So it probably falls somewhere in between the two camps, to be honest. Yeah, I remember trying the one set to failure, a couple warmups, one set to failure. Or you'd pre-exhaust, you know, leg extensions into leg press. And it occurred to me after about a year or two that I needed to do a little bit more. I mentioned that because I think I'm like most people in the sense that, and let me frame this right, I could get certain movements to really thrash the muscle that I needed to with one or two sets. But if there isn't really good mind muscle connection and fiber recruitment, you might need,

little bit more. It's possible, yeah. I mean, none of this is written in stone. When people come to train with me, I said our objective is to get an exercise and go to real muscular failure. We'll need to get there safely, so we'll do a couple of sets to warm up. But if somehow you don't feel, or I don't feel, you nailed it in that set, let's do another one.

You know, there's no law. We can't do a little bit more. So you are correct in saying that somebody that's very experienced, they get that mind muscle connection where you can just link in and you can fully destroy it. So it depends on the person. But the idea is to not do more than it's necessary because then you're going to find it harder to recover. And the process is stimulate, right? So you've got to train, you've got to overload. And during this process, you're not growing. You're creating damage, stress to the muscle, that then has to recover and then overcompensate. So two things need to be in place.

need to be sufficient intensity or overload, there will be no reaction, and then you need to recover from that. And let's just put it straight out there, man. You know, there's a big difference between somebody using anabolic steroids than somebody that's not. So somebody that's using can recover from that process more quickly than some of that isn't. So I feel I should always say this, because when you're looking at a champion bodybuilder and how he trains and your young guy trying to build up, that's probably not appropriate for

you right now. That guy has already got the size and is refining for a competition or something. So that's the idea. To do enough to stimulate, but not more than that because this is an overload you're going to recover from. So you've got to recover before you grow as well. So you don't want to go back to the gym before that whole process has taken place. So I use some simple analogies sometimes when people are training with me. Like we're going in now. We're knocking a wall down, right? We're rehabbing your house. We're knocking a wall down. And the guys need to come now with the bricks. So they need materials.

And they need to do it. But they're halfway through building that wall and you come and knock it down again. We're not getting anywhere, you know. So that's the process that you kind of have to understand. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, David. David makes a protein bar unlike any other. It has 28 grams of protein, only 150 calories and zero grams of sugar. That's right, 28 grams of protein and 70.

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Again, that's J-O-O-V-V-V-C-ROM to get up to $400 off. One of the really kind of unfortunate things about resistance training is that it fills the muscle with blood temporarily. Yeah. In part because of some quotes that came from Arnold and pumping iron The so-called pump is it's an illusion, right? It's transient. And while it can be helpful in letting you know that you targeted a given muscle correctly,

I think people get addicted to that feeling, but they're not realizing that the damage to the muscle tissue that then is allowed to recover is what makes the muscle actually larger when you're outside of the gym. A pump is just a temporary extra blood flow to the area that feels good. You're pumped up, you feel tight. But you could get a lightweight. and get a great pump. It's not going to stimulate any growth. So don't be fooled by the pump. It's nice and it's part of the process, but you've got to overload the muscle. You've got to give it

more than it's used to. The body does not want to change. They want to keep status quo. So you've got to give it a bloody good reason, as we would say in England, to change, right? So you've got to put more stress on the body than it's used to. Otherwise, you won't adapt. So even if it's like, you know, half a pound more or one rep more, it's got to be something more that the body says, hey, this stress, I can't handle it. I need to reinforce myself and adapt to this stress. So next time, it won't be so stressful. That's basically the process. So, and it can't be linear forever, right? Maybe in your first year or train and first 18 months, you just go in like, I put 20, 25 pounds on in the first 18 months that I was training and natural as well.

So, you know, it becomes a case of diminishing returns, though. And at some point, you can't just keep going up like this. So I tell people train real hard for like five or six weeks and then come down for two weeks, maybe a submaxima. So you'll sort of sawtooth it like that, hard for five or six weeks, then back off. And during that two weeks, are you telling people to stay out of the gym entirely? No. I'm telling me you can go in and do some lightweight but nowhere near failure

blood flow, keep the maintenance if you want to take a week off I think is good couple of times a year a lot of guys, when I had a gym the guys, I'm stuck on this and then I said, okay, take a week off I don't know, what do you mean? I said man just take a week off, yeah, come back in a week

and tell me how you feel and I came back and I was stronger I was like, no shit man because you've rested you let your body rest and rebuild so let me listen to you So if I could travel back in time, I wouldn't have called the movie Pumping Iron. I would have called it stress and adapt.

Yeah, exactly. Stress recover adapt. Not quite so sexy. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But that whole notion of the pump plus this idea that, you know, many, many hours in the gym is what's required.

I think it kept a lot of the general public out of resistance training. Yeah. I think now that's changed. And fortunately, because I think it is very beneficial. If we could get a little granular about training and recovery, I think it would be helpful for people. I realize that you laid out the top contour really nicely. So for a person who's natural, not taking hormone replacement therapy or anabolic, you think two, maybe three whole body sessions to start out to learn the movements.

Is that doing one or two sets to failure? What does that look like for the raw beginner? A raw beginner. First of all, you need to learn how to do the movements correctly before let's, thinking about going to failure. So it would be a certain period of time learning to do the exercise correctly, uh, uh,

put in some kind of idea in their head of what's going on. Uh, you know, what do the pecs do? Bring your arms down and across the body. What do your lats do? They bring your upper arm down and back. So you'd be amazed like if you're enough to have to pro body build or some of them don't know, like, why they're doing what they're doing.

the mechanics involved. And I get them to do light sets, very perfect. Do you feel that? Do you feel how it contracts when you're latts and you squeeze and you contract? Yeah, I feel it, feel it. Okay. Now you've got it, but you've got to try to maintain that when it gets really hard because we're going against the natural mechanics of the body here, right?

Because we're, as I say, we're doing chest, yeah? We're trying to isolate the pecks. There's some doubts involved and triceps and work that. or we're working legs, we're working back. The body normally doesn't work like that. It works as a unit, right? If you throw something, you don't do that from your tricep, right? It'll be from your foot through the hips, through the shoulder,

whole body thing. So when the exercise gets really hard, your brain is going to try to recruit or change the exercise to make it easier. So I've got to get people to override that instinct. Just stick with the form until we get to the point where you can't do anymore and understand, you know, that's why I get them to do light stuff at first, to really feel it, understand, I explain what's going on. A couple of weeks after that, we can start pushing to failure.

Actually, I had a guy recently that we had a business meeting, and he told me he was diabetic and he had liver problems, and it was overweight and this and that. I gave him a challenge. I said, he'd train with me for a month. I'll fix all that shit, yeah? Oh, but my doctor, this and that. I said, listen.

He trained with me three times a week for about 45 minutes. After one month, obviously I changed his diet as well, basically for a short period of time, very low carbs. After one month, he was not in the diabetic zone. He was out of the pre-diabetic zone. He was in the normal range. Great. And his liver function that was three times the normal amount, liver enzymes, was back to normal. I told him, check it out.

You've got a fatty liver. So, yeah, I had a fatty liver. I said, I know. He said, my doctor told me not to eat fat. I'm like, man, do you know how long, at least I don't know here, but in England, how long an MD, a doctor spends studying nutrition? It's trivial. One afternoon, two or three hours.

I mean, you can learn nothing. So the doctor was telling me he's got a fatty liver, so stop eating fat. I said, that's absolutely the worst advice you could get. Because the reason you've got fatty liver is. It's uncontrolled blood sugar. So we get your blood sugar down. One month, his liver was normal, his blood sugar was normal. He lost like five, six kilos of body fat, just in a month.

And we're doing three times a week. Whole body. We split it up, actually, into three workouts. So he's hitting everything once a week. When our mutual friend, you knew him better than I did, the now deceased, unfortunately, a Mike Mentor told me to train each body part once per week. At first I thought he was crazy. So legs once a week, calves once a week, maybe twice for some people, the calves.

But shoulders and arms and chest and back on three separate days. Legs, chest back, shoulders and arms. I thought he was crazy. But then, you know, I thought about it. And the chest and back workout, you're indirectly targeting the arms. Legs is a, if you do them right, is a whole body experience. And a lot of stress on your nervous system, which has to recover independently of the whatever muscle group you're training. if you do legs, I mean, really to failure,

there's a lot of stress on your nervous system as well. So that also has to recover. That's why I say after six weeks, I've just noticed with myself and many people, it seems to like you hit a plateau there. So trying to push through it, come down and I take a rest and go again later. So I know that your opinion on real world results

versus laboratory studies, but these days, let me just put something out there, I'd like to see your response. These days, You know, people will talk a lot about, okay, the studies or muscle biopsies show you train a muscle and stimulate hypertrophy, growth. And then muscle protein synthesis peaks, you know, 48 hours later, which means that you can hit the muscle again, ideally three days later or two days later. I tried that because I thought, hey, listen, I'm a scientist. I'll try it.

And I immediately started going backwards with my progress. This was a few years ago. and went back to training each thing directly once per week and where there's indirect stuff, you know, arms getting hit once indirectly because of a chest and back workout on a separate day, found, I went right back to progress again. And so, you know, I'm a scientist, trained to do science. So how do you think about something where in a laboratory

you can see something like protein synthesis peaks 48 hours later, therefore train every 72 hours versus the real world phenomenon? It's all very interesting. but if it doesn't work in practicality, what's it worth? You know, I hear this a lot now about this science-based training, but I actually don't know what science they're talking about. I mean, some meta studies, I think, but how were those studies carried out?

With whom and so on and so on? I don't know. I know the KCVATO study where it put on 65 pounds of muscle verified in a month by training like less than about an hour a week, I think. Because your whole body, super slow sets to failure. And yes, he was very underweight because he wasn't on anything. And then he got sick. So he's underweight.

So he's building back muscle. But he wouldn't build it back without much stimulus. So 65 pound of muscle, although it was muscle memory, let's say, he had been that big before. But he put it on in a month. And you compare that with Arnold that dieted down to 210, I think, to do this film, stay hungry. then he went back up to 2.30 for the Mystery Olympia, but that took him like three months.

So you can compare that too. So when people talk about these science-based studies and he shouldn't train to failure, it's better to keep reps in reserve. I don't know which studies they're talking about. I'm not saying they're not out there, but I'm not familiar with them. I'm not familiar with how they carried out the studies. But if it doesn't work in practicality, does it really matter? It doesn't matter.

Well, often, I've spent some time with these, and you might not be surprised to learn that a lot of times it's, you know, We got some college students. They're doing leg extensions. You know, we're looking at, you know, biopsies of the quadriceps, this kind of thing. Rarely is it the kind of compound movements, multi-joint movements, sometimes, but not always. Well, look, my experience with the hit, high-intensity, low-ish volume training has been, I'll say it's not just about gaining muscle. I mean, I'm now 50. I know you're almost 64.

Yep. Coming up. Looking amazing. We'll tell us more about longevity stuff in a bit. But I have to say part of it is also that if one trains the way that you're describing each muscle once per week, focusing on intensity, not volume, and so forth, six weeks or so, then backing off for two weeks. You also find that in your peer group, you're not the one always complaining about pain, and you have energy for other things, which we'll get back to.

I mean, unless you're a competitive bodybuilder, most people, including myself, need energy to tend to life and want to be able to not be, it's not the soreness. It's the constant aches and pains that come from over training, I think, that most people don't have to live with but think they do. It depends on your goals, yeah. But I really believe the average person, yeah, that wants to get health benefits from bodybuilding, weight, training, resistance, whatever you want to call it, right? They, they have a guy that's 40 or 50 or 60, guy or a lady, whatever. The idea is if you could, because you've lost muscle mass slowly since maybe one. percent a year since you're 40, right? And this is affecting your health, your metabolism,

the ability to process sugar, many, many things, yeah, bone strength. And the number one thing that I hear from people is, I don't really have time for that. I have a business, I have a family. I said, if you could give me 45 minutes, twice a week, that's all you need to do. Okay, you need to eat properly and everything like that. But that's all you need to do for the average person. If you took eight to ten exercises that covered your whole body and you did it twice a week, that would be enough for the average person. One for chest, one or two for back, one or two for legs. Hey, if you want to do some bicep curls and some triceps, you can do it, but you're doing pressing anyway. So for the average person, that would actually be enough. And it's not theory because

I've done it with people. Like I'm saying, this gentleman that came along, we put 45 minutes in nearly an hour three times a week because I had him doing cardio as well. Well, guess how long the cardio was? Six minutes. Six minutes. You have been pedal hard. We're doing sprints. Like on an air bike.

It's my favorite because it engages every muscle, push, pull, legs. If you do a 20 second all out and you can see how you got on the side of the thing, can see how much watch your generator. So now you have a target to hit or exceed every time. So do a minute, minute and a half warm up, whatever. Feel warm? All out, balls out like the devil's chasing you for 20 seconds. First one's tough, but it's okay.

Go down slowly for a minute. Do the second one all out. The second one's really tough, yeah. The third one is, I've never met anybody that wants to do one after the third one, because literally you can't breathe. and the benefits from that again I think there's a book called the one-minute cardio it's a bit tricky because it's not really one minute it's one minute of sprints but it's six minutes in total and they compared that to 45 minutes of steady cardio on a treadmill or whatever it is

and the results are more or less the same so what do you want to do you want to spend six minutes or want to spend 45 minutes or rather do the six minutes I do a bit of long cardio as well myself because I like biking in the mountains and stuff. But if you did that twice a week, along with some weight training, that would be amazing. You change your life, literally with that and a good diet. So the whole time thing excuses, it's not relevant. I'm not listening. You don't need a lot of time. What I love about you is that you've done things at the ultra elite level within bodybuilding. But the advice that you're giving right now is very practical for the everyday person. And I'm not a psychologist, but I'm going to venture a hypothesis here, which is that some of that has to do with the fact that you grew up,

blue-collar background from Birmingham, working full-time while building out your bodybuilding career. You didn't come to it with a briefcase full of cash and have the opportunity to just say, well, how much training can you do? Well, let's figure it out. You had to be very practical. And my guess is that you had to be very practical about recovery and nutrition as well. You probably, I'm guessing there was a point in your life where you couldn't afford, you know, grass-fed meat. shipped in from south of France and this guy. I'm not saying you do that now.

Let me tell you a story, man. When I was British champion, that was a big thing back then, British champion, right? 3,000 people in the audience packed out. We had buses coming from our gym, all this stuff, you know, air horns. British bodybuilding crowds are not like, they're pretty rowdy. I think the Brits around any sport get pretty rowdy. Pretty rowdy. If you see boxing in Vegas and there's a British fighter, they take over the whole place, you know?

So anyway, this great accolade. I'm British champion now. And I went home. I got no car. I'm living in a council estate. It's like projects, you know. Counsel estate. I got no carpet in my bedroom.

I don't have a proper bed. I just got a mattress. I got a TV that barely works. And I got a trophy. I'm like, wow, look, I'm British champion. But nobody gives us a fuck, really. Like, you know, I do. And the people that's in the bodybuilding.

community, but this hasn't translated into anything yet. It took me about five years of really, like, you know, 100% dedication for me to be a turn pro. And the ironic thing is, I guess, like when you're starting and you've got nothing, nobody's very interested and nobody wants to help you. And you start, when you become successes, then successful, people want to help you because they want to help themselves, which is fair enough. It's a transaction. But, Until then, no. So I got my first car when I was 25. All my friends were driving 18, 19.

But the funny thing is, I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything. I knew I was on this mission. And this in itself was so powerful. Like nobody else had this mission that I was doing was to change my life, basically. And bodybuilding was the vehicle. And I think something that really. help me is I'm an avid reader. I have been since I was about 10 years old and I can take in a lot of information on a subject if I'm very interested. I'll almost be get obsessed with it for a while and

then I might just, I forget about that. I go interested in something else. So all the guys that I was training with, they were like just watching videos and listen to other guys in the gym. I was reading Mike Mens. I was reading Arthur Jones. I was trying to figure it out for myself. which means you need a very independent kind of personality. So, yeah, let me try to do a bit more. It doesn't work, finished, you know. And the fact that I've got all this, every single workout from 1983 to 1997 written down,

all the diets, later on when I'm using anabolic, what I'm using and how long, and all this stuff so I could analyze it, you know, see what's working and what's not working. were like shooting in the dark, hoping they're going to hit something, but they don't. And I, you know, I didn't have time to waste. This was a mission. I didn't have skills. They didn't have a family, all this stuff. So bodybuilding was my road to change my life. Where it was going at first, I didn't know, but I knew it was going somewhere. I knew I could be very good at it.

Did you have the sense, even before all this, that perhaps you were different or that you were destined to pursue something? 100%. What's your earliest recollection of knowing that you were going to aspire to some very high peak? Well, the first thing I was into was Bruce Lee, right? So, you know, Bruce Lee and even I was impressed with this physique then, but now I look compared to a body, but it's very lean. but the abs and everything had that poster on the wall, you know, with the cuts down there and everything. So I was doing push-ups. Just at my last year at school, I started getting bodybuilding magazines and doing a bit of weight training.

So there was that then. I left home at 16 and I just didn't have the lifestyle to pursue it. And for some reason, I'm not doing this. I said, I'm not doing this until I can do it properly. and I always knew I was different I guess you know but you didn't I didn't know why and I didn't know where it was going but I knew it was going somewhere and it's a strange feeling through my whole process I feel like I've done it before almost you know like it was destined I wasn't a surprise and the earlier years it's like I just knew I got to just put everything into this I got to put everything into this I got to put everything into that. And I can't let anything distract me 100% into this. So yeah, I knew I was destined for something. And when I started doing bodybuilding, I was like, ah, so this is it. Yeah. I don't know if you heard the story, but I got a little bit of trouble. Just rowdy guys, really.

We got picked up on the street at the wrong time because there were some street riots in Birmingham, which we weren't involved with, but wrong place, wrong time, got sent to a detention center. and in there they had weights and there was 300 guys and like I was nearly the strongest guy in there there was the only guy that was stronger me was like 50, 60 pounds heavier

and I was really lean I had abs and everything everyone was like wow the physique even the prison officers in there were like you should do something with this said don't worry I'm gonna so that was another one like hey you've got something here you know it's a crossroads here

and I was like I never want to to be in a place like this again and lose my freedom. But you literally become a number and you told when to get up and when to do this. Those places suck. And I saw people in there that I knew they were destined to like, this is their life. Even they didn't care. Yeah, I know. But I don't give a fuck.

I might be in jail, but this is just the life I've chosen. Good look with that, man. It's not for me, you know? So that again was like, hey, you need to do something with this. And when I left there, I didn't start training. I was like, I got to get a job. I got to get in a pot. I got to get stability.

And when I did, I was like, right, I start my bodybuilding journey, write it down today, the date. I still got it, man. What's in those notebooks? Everything from what you did for a warm up, how you felt going into there. All the sets and reps warm up, how I was feeling that day. Some days I was feeling overtrained and tight. Even though I was training three days a week, sometimes I had to back off the intensity because of work and stuff like that.

But how I was feeling. And, you know, it's interesting if I look at my books over the years, the first ones are quite childish. Got these little go for it, you know, mass and power. Kind of cool, too. I'm glad to actually you mentioned that. I've kept training logs inspired by you and by Mike for many years. And getting to read that kind of stuff, the kind of silly stuff. Yeah.

I mean, it captures the spirit of it at the time. Not only that. I wouldn't forget half of the stuff that I did if I hadn't documented it. Even now, I'm like, my guys on social media was like, When we're doing this exercise and when did you just change to this one? I'm like, I don't know, man, I have to go back and look. And sometimes it's not as I thought it was when I go back. It was a little bit different.

So it's great that I got all that written down undocumented. And I used to have every month a review where I'm at and the goals for the next month. Try to make them realistic, but, you know, the goals in mind for the next month. Super methodical. Very methodical, analytical logic. Do you get that from one of your parents or to go in the online? opposite direction of your parents? Well, my mother was actually quite very educated.

She was private school and everything, but my dad was very working class, car mechanic and everything. But he managed to... Perfect combo. Yeah, he managed to, you know, I was young. I lost my father at 13, right, from a heart attack. But he was a working class guy that managed to buy a small farm. He managed to learn to fly an airplane.

I went up with my dad when it was like four or five years old. He was flying four-seat Cessna's and everything like that. So, I mean, he must have been a smart guy and very driven to be able to do that as a working-class guy. I imagine back in the 1970s flying airplanes. And you work as a maintenance engineer at the rover plant or something. I think for Americans, they don't realize how stratified the class system in England was in that time. Yeah. It's very different.

Very, very different. Absolutely. A working-class guy flying an airplane. There was nobody else doing that. So he must have been a guy above average intelligence And my mom was as well So I probably got the logical stuff from my dad, I would say And you know, my mom's more female, more emotional

My dad was probably very, you know, logical in his ways And an engineer, you know, engineering is about numbers and everything So a lot of people ask me What happened if you didn't lose your father when you're 13? During Yates, the bodybuilder probably wouldn't exist because if life's comfortable, you won't put yourself through this shit, man. I mean, it's a lot of work,

a lot of dedication, a lot of sacrifice, and over many, many years, it's not a short-term thing to get from being starting bodybuilding to be a pro bodybuilder that took me seven years. And that was quick. That was relatively quick.

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wear. I have two questions, one practical, one more related to your personal story. The practical one is one, you know, nowadays there's an almost obsession online of young guys, teens, 20s, 30s, who immediately think they should be on testosterone enhancement, TRT, that, you know, going beyond TRT getting on gear. How long, gear for the folks that don't know is, is a verbiage for steroids. TRT, testosterone replacement therapy, you know, lower dosages designed to bring things into upper normal range, in some cases a little higher. What, from the time you picked up a weight, maybe in this youth detention center, until the first time you went on gear, how long was that? And how much did you achieve doing the sorts of training you were talking about before?

I want to separate this out from the competitive, from the competitive. phase. In part because, frankly, I think, and I've been very open, I went on, I'm on low-dose TRT. I started when I was 45, about 125 milligrams a week. Okay. Same as you. Yeah, same as you. So, but I always tell people they really, really, really should wait, if do it at all.

How long did you have without anything? Whereas, you know, food, training, sleep, maybe some supplements, like some creatine, some protein Right. So I started in 83 earlier in the year. I was 180, 185, but very lean. You can see some pictures of me. After six months training. You have those thick joints. I mean, you're, you're, athletic. I got very low body fat as well, naturally. My son and my daughter, they both, like, had abs and like when I were 11 years old, very, very lean, pale skin, low body fat, thin skin, type of thing. So you wouldn't say,

wow, look at that guy, he's big. But you'd say, wow, he's really cut this guy. That's how I started, 180. So after six months, I think it was 195. And the gym owner put on a contest in Birmingham local gym thing. And he was like, come on, go in a contest. And I don't know. Okay.

So I went in, no diet, no steroids, nothing. It was the first time as contest. I still got the pitchers, but the two guys that I was competing against, they came second and third, I won. But both these guys were already unstuffed. So I was able to beat them not using anything, right? Because genetically, I'm better, I guess.

I'm not saying in six months, I overtook them, I probably started ahead of them. So that was with nothing. I got up to 210. So I just looking back, because we did some social, media posts with my early training, yeah. So I'm benching three plates aside for like three or four reps. And I want to go now into the IFBB and compete, which I know everybody's using, right? So I was

210 when I decided I'm going to do this competition. And I did some D-ball 20 milligrams a day for about six weeks and I switched to Anavar for the contest so I went from 180 to 210 so that's 30 pounds I put on in a year and a half training or something then I decided to do the competition so in six weeks I think on 20 milligrams of DBA I went to like 230 you know it's a big boost in six weeks but I already put on 30 pounds like without anything

and for me it was always always always like, I'm going to do competitive bodybuilding and I intend to make a career out of it. So I just want to be on the same playing field as everybody else. So I won the novice competition in the IFBB. And everyone was like freaking out. The guy who was the head of the Federation who's also a judge at the Mystery Olympia and some other guys came backstage and said, where the hell have you come from? And why are you in the novice competition?

I said, well, I'm from Birmingham. and it's my first competition in the Federation. So I start at the bottom and wait. You're probably better than our best heavyweight. I'm like, no, come on. And they were laughing like, this kid. It's like, we want you to join the British team in two weeks' time at the World Games,

which is World Championship. So I went from a novice two weeks later to compete in the World Games against Barry de May, who became a top Olympian, Matt Mendenell, who was the best amateur in USA at the time. I got seventh place there. And I remember, like, I basically spent out all my funds to get ready for this concert. I had nothing left.

I had to buy a track suit, tanning lotion. Like, I was earning very little money. So this took all my money and I'm broke. And I had to ask my brother-in-law, can you lend me like 20 pounds? Because I need to do this and get a taxi to the team selection. Right? So I went to the team selection. I got picked.

But I was like amongst all these guys. And I'm thinking, like, I just borrowed some money to get here. But they picked me for the World Games team. So I went quite uniquely, I think, from a novice competition to a World Championship in two weeks. So that's, you know, kind of the level I was at when I first started competing. I don't want to put words into your mouth, but do you think it's fair to say that for people who are not going to pursue competitive bodybuilding, that it's, probably best to explore how far they can go with their training and good nutrition, and perhaps even without hormone replacement until they're really need it or later. I mean,

to me, it seems like given the health risks, unless there's, it's sort of like boxing. Like boxing is fun. I've done some boxing, done some sparring, but at some point you realize, wait, if I'm not going to make money doing this, if this isn't my career, getting hit in the head is just not worth it, especially for my job. I'm not asking you to be a public health advisor, but you've been in this sport. A lot of young guys and gals are interested in looking better, feeling better, and going immediately to what peptides can I take? What, you know, should I be on HRT? Should I take Anavar? And I've got my opinions, but you're the expert here. Well, it's my opinion. And the way I looked at it was like, I'm going to do this as a sport, right? So I justified it

because everyone else is doing it. And I did it as a professional. And 19, So I was two times British champion, overall British champion in 1980. I got my pro card. And my first pro contest was Knight of Champions, which was probably second or third, you know, below the Mr. Olympia. Because those of you don't know, you can't just go into Mr. Olympia, right? You have to win a pro show or place in the top three as it used to be then. I'm not sure. Now they seem to give out so many pro cards.

It's kind of lost its value. But then it was tough to get a pro. card. So I said, look, I've been doing all this, yeah. I'm taking steroids, which may have some negative effects on my health later on, may do. So I'm going to go to Knight of Champions. If I don't get in the top five, I'm not good enough. So at that point, if that's the case, no longer justified to take the steroids, right, or compete, because I've gone as far as my genetics will allow me. As I observed, the history of bodybuilding, the guys that were great champions, they were great out the gate. They didn't get, I don't know, 12th place in Mr. Olympia

and the next year I win it, right? You got it? You don't have it, right? That's what I thought. I'm going to be brutally honest with myself. I have a gym. I'm making okay money now. If I don't compete, I could open more gyms, put more time into that. I have a young son. You know, they're kind of making a sacrifice of time and energy and everything, because I'm putting everything into this. So if I don't get in the top five in the night of champions, competitive careers over, steroids are over, do something else within the sport, open more gyms or something like that. Anyway, the story is I got second, so I continued to do what I got to do as a professional and I feel it was justified because I was earning a lot of money, more money than anyone else

I knew ever earned. But what's my advice? If you were a 20-year-old guy and you were speaking to me and I'm giving your advice, get as far as you can naturally, huh? And then look at it. But whatever gains you make by taking anabolics is a temporary situation.

You will lose it when you get off, right? So it's a merry-go round. Once you get on the merry-go-round, you don't really want to get off because when you do get off you start to lose all those gains you start to feel mentally depressed because now your hormones are on the floor

so what are you going to do? Jump right back on again and it becomes this merry-go-round as far as I'm concerned everybody should make their own choices in life and be able to do what they want to do but keep that in mind is it worth it because

negative possible negative effects physically and also has not talked about a lot mentally. I believe there's a lot of people in a sport with mental health problems, especially women now, because they're in the high doses now, where before they really weren't. And we're in this age of instant gratification. Everybody wants everything now, right? And I see it a bit like this, maybe from the guy's point of view,

Well, listen, women are having breast implants, right? They're having lip fillers and Botox and all this shit. So why can't we take some anabolic just to look good and have abs on the beach? Why not? Because of that. And ask yourself if it's worth it, because this is a reality. You can't keep those gains. So you're probably going to be forced to continually redo this over a long period of time.

And that might be bad for your health. I seem to be in very good health. But I've changed my lifestyle and done a lot of different things to kind of recover from the stress that I put on my body in a professional career. And I'm here today and I'm healthy and I'm successful and my business is good and I'm happy. But it could have been different. You know, it was different for a lot of guys that I used to compete against. Yeah, a lot of them are dead. Yeah, so is it worth the risk?

I mean, that's their question to answer. but I would say it's not, but hey, that's just my opinion. Well, I'm struck again by how rational you were. If I place in the top five, et cetera, I'll move forward. If not, very calculated, really. Yeah, so that was the first question, and we will return to some training things. But the second question relates to this thing that you mentioned about your dad, had he not passed away young. A friend of mine, we were talking recently about having daughters versus sons.

I won't provide the context for this. And he said to me, he's got three daughters. And he's very happy with his three daughters. And he said, you know, the one thing about sons is they feel, I think he was talking about himself, they feel like they have to fill their father's shoes. There's going to be a phase where they're competing with their dad no matter what. And my reflexive response was, and then I realized, listen, I went through all that stuff, all that stuff. And in many ways, my dad and I are in good terms now, but we had some choppy years in there. but for sure, but now we're good.

But the friction, I mean, that grew me a lot too. Yeah. I mean, it forced me to work harder. I mean, there were probably some long nights that, you know, I just, I wasn't consciously tying it to like, oh, I'm trying to, you know, outdo him. But I pushed myself to become somebody that was at least as, you know, successful in certain ways and ideally more. And so do you think this is a real thing?

I think every situation can go too. ways, right? I mean, you have a son now. So how do you think about this with him? I think he found it tough. He confined with my wife a little bit that he found it tough. Like, I'm like, don't try to compete with me in what I do because, but take the principles of discipline and hard work, and he can apply that really to anything. But yeah, I think, you know, my son did some bodybuilding. He was playing with the idea of a competing, which he probably could have done quite well. But I said, look, you're a sensitive guy, yeah?

Much more sensitive than me. I got thick skin. But let me tell you what will happen if you compete. You win? Of course he won Historian son. You lose? How can he lose his Dorian son? I said, either way, be prepared for,

that's going to be the reaction. So, you know, if you want to do it, I'll support you. But he decided not to get into the competitive side of things. Well, you trains people and stuff. So, you know, there's still, both of my kids are in the fitness world, let's say. But competitive world is a different thing. And there's very few people that can get to the top and make it work for them, you know. More people now, because before you had to compete and you had to win and you had to be in the magazines,

Now a lot of people can make money online coaching or whatever it is. So there's more avenues now that you can go into to make money. In what's called now the fitness industry is so much bigger than when I was competing. But I would say purest bodybuilding is less people doing it. More people going to the gym and doing fitness in general. But I think bodybuilding per se was more popular in the 80s and 90s because it was all new. And there was less, there was no CrossFit, there was no MMA, you know, things have changed since then. There was no fitness, Mr. Olympia, there's no, I don't know, they've got so many classes now.

So there's many more things for people to do than, you know, maybe the figure it's not worth it to be a competitive bodybuilder. If you can earn an income online and not, you know, put yourself online in competition. So things have changed a lot since then. Yeah. And the bodies that are in movies have changed tremendously. I mean, the average size of a male or female, the shape is so much more bodybuilder-esque now. Yeah, because everyone's using juice, right? You know, it's mainstream now.

When I started bodybuilding in 1980s, I don't think the general public really knew about steroids. Or, you know, they got a little inkling when Ben Johnson got a positive. Now everybody's, it's mainstream, right? Everybody knows about steroids. And I think it's seen as by males as a. cosmetic enhancement, just like females put in blestplants or Botoxin or whatever they put in their lips and everything to make that change. So it's mainstream. You've got rappers, you've got movie stars, like they want to get in shape for a movie. Come on, man. And it's not happening

in two months that transformation without some chemical help, which, you know, they're earning million and millions in the movie. So maybe it's worth it for them, of course. You mentioned you have a thick skin. One of the things that got me to learn about you early on, because frankly, I was involved in other things, a little bit of martial arts, some soccer, some things. And bodybuilding to me wasn't something I really wanted to pursue as a sport, but I wanted to put on muscle. I was a tall, skinny kid.

That's what led me to Menser and how I learned about your training, discovered what you were doing, and then really learned to extract what I think is the best of bodybuilding for somebody who doesn't want to do it. Like, how are they training? how are they eating? What are they doing that's separate from the drugs that I can benefit from this kind of thing? Yeah, absolutely. And to be fair, TRT can be very useful to treat depression and other things for men and in some cases even women. We'll get back to that, but I want to just kind of frame this in a certain way. However, you know, one of the things that I think drew me to what you were doing

at the time is that you had this kind of like mellow, sort of, I would say kind of like quiet, thick-skinned stance. We also have kind of commonalities through our music taste. So I saw that and I'd recognize certain things. Still get that punk inside. The punk rock thing. Yeah, oi music and that kind of thing. And so you go, oh, here's somebody who's kind of different than the rest of this community. But when people see the videos of you training, we'll put some links to those.

It's so striking because you're like this. But then in the moment of a set, it's like, I mean, intensity doesn't. quite explain it. It's like, and I'm curious because people can see those videos, what was going on in your head? Were you thinking going into the set, through the set, were you thinking about, I'm just guessing your dad, how you were an underdog, were you just thinking about the muscle, what were you using besides listening to loud music and intensity doesn't come from nowhere? It comes from someplace. What's your internal narrative at those times? Well, I always prepared myself before I went to the gym, just walk through doors casually.

I'd review my training before I went there. This is what I did last week. This is what I wanted to do today. And I would sit and do a visualization. So I'd have specific clothes for the day and like OCD maybe. And I used to have this thing, which seems strange to me now, yeah. I used to iron my clothes before I went to the gym, right? They had to be ironed.

They had to be a thing. And I just read a study how ironing clothes really lowers your cortisol by about 40%. I didn't know that. I was just doing it. I trained with my friend in New York. He's like, what the fuck you're doing, man? I just put your t-shirt. No, no, no, no, no, I got to iron it.

There was a whole game preparation going on to get me in maybe OCD, maybe too much. but it worked for me, yeah? So I review, go to the gym, and have my targets, and I use a special type of motivation. It's called fuck you motivation. Fuck you. To all the teachers at school, they said you couldn't get anywhere. Fuck you.

Anyone. So I'm going to show you. Fuck you. So, fuck you motivation. It's a great one, yeah? Whatever you got inside you, anger, negative emotions. use it all, use it all like fire. And then when I go home, I'm like, I'm shield.

I've slayed dragons in the gym. I've hacked people up with my sword. And it's like a form of mastery over oneself. Mastery over the whole thing with the dieting as well for competitions. Maybe I went a little bit overboard with it and came down a little bit too much. because then it was like mastery over my instincts of want to eat and do that. No, I'm deciding here. I'm in control.

And maybe this worked against me a bit as well because I would be like going to the war. I don't care if I feel a little, I'm going through it, you know? So, yeah, I used all these anger, negative emotions, whatever it is. I'll show you, I'm going to make it, I'm going to do this. So whatever works for you. But for me, that worked. You know, anything negative, turn it into something positive. You know, it's transforming the negative energy,

which could be destructive to myself or maybe other people around me, taking it, alchemy, you know, changing it into something else. So I used all that negative feeling, negative emotions. And I stayed in Birmingham as well while I was Mr. Olympia for six years. more opportunities here and everything, but more distractions as well. So I wanted to stay in the same gym, try to keep that same attitude,

even though I got more money in the bank and I'm driving a Mercedes instead of jump around the boss, right? But I wanted to keep that. That's why I didn't move over here. A lot of people asked me, why I didn't go to the States? Because the industry's there. But by the time I got to be Mr. Olympia,

I could kind of dictate things. So I did what I wanted to do, which was keep my head down and keep that hunger going. I love the transmutation of anger and the everyone's got their stories of the, and I can remember in the third grade, someone said something about the jacket that my mom gave me that day to wear. These little things, I mean, they don't bother me anymore. There were times when, you know, we can, we can layer in.

It's fuel, man. Use it for fuel. Yeah. Yeah. Take that anger, the negative thing, whatever, change it into something positive. And we were discussing earlier, like, do we know any, like, elite level, athletes that came from a very comfortable, wealthy family. I don't know any.

I'm not saying there isn't, but I don't know any. You need that motivation. You know, you want to make something. You want to make something of your life. You want to prove to yourself and everybody else, you know, that you've got something. And I just, when I was young, I looked at life around me. I thought, I don't, what is this? I'm going to get amazing.

have some children, go to work, come back. For a lot of people, this is great. Maybe the love of the family and everything like that, but I didn't have that. Even when I had a family, it wasn't a family. You know, my mom and dad were kind of together because it was the 60s, but I got the idea that, you know, that was because of me, maybe.

So we never sat down and had a meal as a family. Never. So we were, mom and dad were married, but they were leading kind of separate lives and I was in the middle somewhere, I guess. Yeah, so if I didn't have that motivation, you know, maybe my dad would have taught me to be a maintenance, you know, car engineer or something, I don't know. There would be a whole different story, I'm sure.

I have this theory that barring accident or injury that we kind of have a unconscious sense of how long we're going to live. I started thinking about this when I read the biography of Steve Jobs, who, He was really on a mission early on and kind of an odd guy. He was in the area I grew up in. And, you know, his whole thing with LSD, but also scream therapy, but also he thought that objects had personality and things like that. He was quite different.

He was doing something different. He was doing something different. He saw the world very differently. And he changed the world. Like him or hate him, he absolutely changed the world. If you learn about him, you realize that he had some sense that he might not live a very long time. Yeah.

And he died quite young, pancreatic. cancer. Is it a sense or is a premonition? Is it? Yeah. You know? And you can edit these thoughts, I think, because I always had this bit of a fate list thing, maybe because my dad died so young. So my dad died at 42. My mom quickly met another guy that she wanted to marry. And he also died at 44. So I saw two guys. Okay, they're both smoked 40 cigarettes a day, which was usual at that time, and don't exercise and drink Not much sunlight up there. Not to get enough sleep and no sunlight, all these things. But, you know, I've changed this over the years because now I'm 63, going on 64 and appear to be very healthy.

I feel great and are looking forward to the future. And I don't know. None of us know, right? I'm just trying to live the best life that I can live day by day and, you know, be the best version of myself and have a lot. good quality of life and appreciate every day at a time. I mean, this is what we learn from dogs, yeah. They don't live in the future. They don't live in the past.

They're just there all the time. They're there as a reminder. We're both dog lovers, so we're talking about that earlier on. So we don't know how long we're going to live. Just make the most of it every day. And, you know, I said I read a lot. So I was this book by a lady that was, this book by a lady that works in end care, you know.

So she interviewed all these people that, you know, they're dying, right? They're on the way out and what they regret and all this stuff. Mostly it was not doing the things they love, not telling the people that they love them enough. Not one fucking person said, I wish I worked harder or anything like that, you know? So I think we have to just make the most of the moment, make most of each day and appreciate it. Because it's, you know, it's going to end, right? We're going to

move on. I don't believe we stop. We just move on. Yeah, I think we continue on in some form. We're already there. We're already everywhere at the same time. And that's what I think. We're just aware of this. We're on this channel right now. We're on this radio, radio wave. I certainly subscribe to that. And I want to get into kind of your exploration of of psychedelics and consciousness and then moving on from it, which not everyone is aware of. But before we do that,

despite the living for the day by the day, you had this sense that like you're going to put everything you have into something and you went for in this. I'm realizing now very logical, like if this, then that. If that, then not this. It wasn't due or die. It was maybe do or die during the training. But it was when the,

the feedback signal was there's a real opportunity here. You put everything in. Exactly. But you weren't foolish with your life resource. No, I did it step by step, you know. And anabolic that I took when I was amateur was, you know, it's fairly low. So I don't think there was that much risk there. When I was becoming Mr. Olympia, it went up another level.

And growth hormone was not available early 80s. So that came in later 80s into the 90s and so on. but I don't think there's much danger in that. There's danger in the body weight, high blood pressure, inflammation. Diarratics. Diarratics, I mean, that's an instant death sentence if you overdo that, and it has happened.

The guy, I mean, hit me the guy that I got second to at my first 90 champions, Mohamed Benaziza. I don't know if you remember him. I do, yeah. It was a short guy, but amazing, a lot of muscle. And he passed away on a tour. because he was doing extreme things with water and diuretics. And they actually did introduce testing for diuretics,

1996 in the Mr. Olympia because people were concerned about this. There was a few guys that died just trying to get dehydrated and getting condition. But I think somebody failed the test and challenged it legally, and it didn't stand up. So then they just dropped it. they did steroid testing interestingly in 1990. How did I go? Sorry.

Take a look online. I mean, it's funny. It used to be a big deal to try and figure out is somebody taking stuff or not. I mean, there's just these telltale signs, right? A certain leanness, a certain, you know, protrusion of some vascular in the neck. I mean, you can tell when people are on and when they're not, right?

And although there are a couple genetic freaks out there, like yourself when you were younger, or my friend Naseema, who works with Mark Bell, who, you know, she's got really long muscle bellies. He's naturally lean and he's a real athlete. And according to him, I think as of last time we spoke, you know, he hasn't touched anything and people would, you know, die to have his kind of musculature.

And he trains hard. He does everything. But it's kind of scary to think what happens when guys like that would go on. I think those are the genet. You could look online in 1990, Mr. Olympia. I don't know because they didn't publish the weights. But Lee Haney still won it. He was maybe a bit lucky to beat Lee LaBron.

Rada. I'd say Hainer was probably 20 pounds down. I mean, the fans were like, fuck this. We want to pay like a couple hundred dollars to see, you know, guys that are a lot less than before. We want to see the same or more. You know, nobody wants to see a guy run 100 meters in 11 seconds when they've seen under 10 seconds.

So I think the people that control the sport, they realize this is not going to fly. So they dropped it. It's so interesting because, you know, bodybuilding is an unusual sport. But for that matter, so is free solo rock climbing. We had Alex Honnold on here. He, you know, climbed L-CAP, probably the most dangerous athletic feet of all time. One slip and fall and you're dead.

He said you can make mistakes, but not slip and fall mistakes. Things like that, things like bodybuilding, things like what we see from the Red Bull athletes. I do think that serves an important role in getting us as the rest of us to think about what's possible with the human body. technology and pharmacology. And I do think that from each extreme sport, even skateboarding, a sport I was involved in early on, by the way, street skateboarders putting themselves at extreme risk, only one, one guy wears a helmet. Yeah.

One. Okay. On vert, they wear helmets, right? But on the street, they don't do it. Why? Because it's not part of the culture. It would like asking professional bodybuilders to stop taking gear. It's not going to happen.

It's embedded in the culture to see how far you can take something in a certain dimension. I think these things provide a useful role in getting the rest of humans to understand what's possible. And there's usually, excuse me, valuable takeaways like resistance training. Absolutely. Nutrition. The new nutrition guidelines for the U.S. just came out today. They basically inverted the food pyramid, limited amount of grains, fruits, vegetables, meat, eggs. You know, it's funny.

It's basically what has been talked about in the fitness bodybuilding community for a very long time. insulin management, low sugar. I mean, it's so funny because now everyone's like, oh, you know, this is so outrageous. But that was pulled from the sport that you're describing. So for people who might not be familiar with the names, because our listenership is broad, I think it's important for people to understand

how something like fitness or health progresses. It pulls these things from the pioneers that we're willing to, frankly, go pioneer how it's done. It doesn't come from university studies. And I say that as a university professor. It comes from the real world and then back through. We're probably 20 years ahead. I mean, I don't know about the U.S., but I went to a conference in London and it was a

national health service, how they're now going to study more nutrition. Because in their five or six years, they do, they do two hours, study on nutrition, which is like, I mean, you can't even get high school level understanding in two hours, right? So I was pleased to hear that now they're, you know, they're going to look at nutrition as part of the health thing. But it was funny because they were promoting a plant-based diet. But, you know, unfortunately, it's going to lack this and this and this. So we need to reinforce it with supplements. It's all in the animal-based diet.

But that raises cholesterol. So that's bad. but we'll have a very deficient diet and have to supplement it. I felt like wouldn't it be better just to take the diet that has the nutrients in in the first place? So I see competitive bodybuilding is like the peak of an iceberg. You know, it's an extreme. It's right at the top, yeah?

But the basic things that we learn can apply to somebody that wants to improve their health. So in an extreme level, we could say maybe it's unhealthy. But if you take the basic principles, it can be very healthy. healthy, having your hormones in the correct place, building muscle mass. There's incredible things that you can do for your health. And you won't be needing to rely on medications to control your blood sugar and your blood pressure and whatever else. Your body can do it itself, you know?

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about our mutual friend, Mike Menser. I'll keep it really brief. Yeah. I paid for an online consult with Mike. It was like a hundred bucks. I had to wire it to him, which was a fortune for me. It was like all my money. I was in high school, right?

You know, I was working at this little skateboard shop when, you know, selling shoes. Maybe it wasn't all my money. But it was significant, I had to wire it to him. He calls and my mother was like, why is his grown man calling? Yeah. Who's his grown man calling the house? He laid down the program.

He barked when he spoke. I don't think people realized. He literally barked when he spoke each word. But there was a real kindness way back somewhere in that bark. And the methods worked. But he gave me some, we stayed in touch and for a couple reasons. First of all, he emphasized on that call, but in subsequent calls, stay away from anabolics.

I didn't ask. He just said it. And he said, learn to enjoy training really fucking hard. Those are his words. Mine is a beautiful thing. And I was like, all right. Like I was coming from skateboarding. He's like, I'm used to getting hurt, right?

And I was like, you know, but he's like, learn to enjoy training really fucking hard, his words. And then he also encouraged me to read. He was like obsessed with philosophy. He was obsessed with Pan Rand, objectiveist epistemology. A lot of that stuff I found to be somewhat interesting. But, I mean, he was super dedicated to that. But he also embedded in me.

He said, he said, you seem like you like learning. Maybe you should focus on school. I was like, all right. And at the time, I was kind of rebellious against my dad. And I took his advice because it was coming from him. And then when I got to school, we stayed in touch. I was in Santa Barbara. And he said, just remember, I'll never forget this.

He said, just remember, 90% of what you're learning is completely wrong. And the worst part is they don't realize they're wrong. And I said 90%. And he said, but the 10% that's right, those are the gems that you build off of. And I thought, man, and now, you know, 30 year, more than 30 years later, as a professional scientist and now podcaster, I can tell you, having spent a lot of time running studies, writing grants, reviewing, like I've been deeply in that community. He's exactly right. Yeah. And so he was wrong about a great many things, but he had some real gems embedded in that, like, barking of a voice.

You remember? Yeah, I mean, he's yelling at you. He yell at you, basically. Yeah. So, anyway, I'm grateful to him. And then he also said, ah, you'll love this. He also said, and also, you're not Dorian Yates, so don't try to be. He said a lot of guys right now.

This is when the grainy photos of you, we'll put a link to this. When that transformation happened, when those photos came out, I think people saw that and it sparked this aspirational thing and millions of people like, holy shit, that's possible. But he said, listen, you're not that, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't enjoy training hard. You're not that, but you could do this other thing. the benefits from it. That's a really good coach.

The last thing I needed was somebody to tell me, hey, listen, do this because it, you know, he needed someone around to talk to or something like that. Anyway, that's Mike. Let's talk about those photos. Because I think, and we'll put them up, we'll put a link to them. What happened in that one year?

And why do you think that that sort of kind of transformation is so much different than like somebody getting big, just big, or somebody getting real strong or somebody, like something happened in that one year, the before and afters that changed the way people think about fitness in general, not just the sport of bodybuilding, but fitness, like what the human body can do.

Yeah, it was a breakthrough level for the sport, you know, as people say, before Dorian and after Dorian, the sport changed. And my approach was unique as well. And Joe Weider, you know, he has his way of doing things, right? This is the guy, by the way, folks that ran muscle and fitness and a bunch of other magazines. He basically took the sport of bodybuilding and popularized it into what is now the health and fitness industry. He was a brilliant marketer, you know?

Joe Weider, training of champions. He don't know nothing about training, but he knew about marketing. Here's the thing, right? 1992 Mr. Olympia and then 93. So people think that between 92 and 93 on stage, 17 pounds of muscle I put on in one year. It's not really true. In 92, six weeks out from the Mr. Olympia,

I was probably five pounds, six pounds, less than the next year. right but I knew lean haynie wasn't going to be there I knew that the guys I was competed against were smaller than me so I said I don't mind sacrificing some size to get

like super shredded like as shredded as the smaller guy right so I was coming down coming down coming down thinking I get you know more shredded maybe I did a little bit but I realized analyzing

because we don't have no iPhone or nothing, right? But I used to take pictures every week, take the camera roll to the, you know, wait for them to develop it and all that, and then look, how do they look? And I looked at 92, six weeks out, I said, I pretty much contest ready then, but I just kept dieting, dieting.

So I sacrificed a lot in 92, and I determined that I wouldn't do that in 93. I still did it a little bit because I tend to overdo things, right? So in 93, I would say I put on six or seven pounds of muscle. As a Mr. Olympia, this is outstanding, right? Because you're already at a high level. But I didn't sacrifice 10 pounds of muscle that I wasted the year before. So it appeared that I put on 17 pounds of pure muscle in a year.

I didn't. I just simply didn't sacrifice as much as I did the year before. So it was a great year of progress. And the pictures that were taken in 92 were taken a week after the contest. So I had lost that muscle. So if you compare that one to that one, it looks like, wow, it's night and day. It wasn't really. I got pictures from 92 where I'm almost as big as 93, but nobody saw those pictures.

And the pictures that I talked in 93 was my friend with a camera. I said, hey, would it be good if you come up and did those pictures that we did last year? in the same spot in a gym, yeah, let's do that. And when he showed them afterwards, even I was freaked out. I was like, what? And he's like, I'm sending these to the magazines. They were not meant to be, they were meant to be just for my record. He had a better camera than me, so that's what I wanted them for.

That's why I got my underwear on and my socks, yeah? Because I never think these photos are going to be published, right? But he sent them to Weider. And the editor at the Weider Magazine was people. Peter McGough, he was English, so we were friends. So he sent him to Peter McGoff, and Peter said, all the guys are coming to the office, and they know that I'm friends with you. So they're, you know, looking for something.

So, you know, how's it doing? He said, oh, I've got these, very casually, I've got these pictures, we'd like to see them. He said, I put them on the desk. He said, they went white. They just went, and just stood there shaking the head, like, okay. It's on for a second then. I mean, six weeks out, everyone gave up when they saw those pictures, more or less.

How did it feel to be at one point an underdog? And then you're the winner. Well, hold on. Before I was a winner, very difficult. Because I had this underdog thing. I'm from the streets. And nobody thinks I can do this. And I'm from England.

They're all American and this and this and this. That's against me, theoretically. So I thrived on that. You know, fuck you, motivation. As I said, I'm going to show you. So I got second to Lee Haney, but then he retired. So now the title's open and logically I'm the favourite. And actually I struggled with that for a while.

Like, first of all, it was like, I'm the favorite now. I don't have that underdog thing. I don't know what to do now. And then I was like, so I'm probably going to be mistaken. Olympia. This, it's a real, you know, when I went against Haney, I wanted to try to win, but I was a new guy and, wow, so I can be Mr. Olympia? And then I just kind of turned it around in my head. Yeah, but why not, man? Somebody's got to be a Mr. Olympia. And do you know anybody that's dedicated themselves to the craft the way you have? Absolutely not. So yeah,

God damn it, I deserve it. And this took about a week to like change this whole, uh, point of view where I was comfortable going in as the favorite. Because, yeah, I'm going to win, so I should be the favorite. But I struggled with it, man. Because the whole time I was the underdog, even when I was in England, I'm not social. So I didn't talk to the judges or socialize or do anything. It was like, you know, who is this guy? Why is it like that?

Just comes here and disappears. Just I wasn't interested in socializing or talking or trying to get favors and just do my thing here, you know. Well, dopamine is a lot of. all about the pleasure of pursuit, not the pursuit of pleasure. And the problem with reaching a goal line is for many people, they don't know what to do at that point. In fact, one of the coaches for the Boston Celtics, who used to be a former chess prodigy, Josh Waitskin, was on here. And he said, you know, it's very different when you're defending a championship. You're now the defending champion. As opposed to it's a, it's, you've been

climbing up. Exactly. I'm going to get that bastard up there. I'm going to knock him off. Oh, now you're there. Now everyone trying to knock you off. Once you hit the peak, because I think this, the reason I'm asking is I think this is important for many people who are on the climb, want to be on the climb, want the peak. Once you're at the peak, sounds like you did a very good job of rotating your mindset to no one's going to take this away from it. Like a bulldog. And don't get comfortable. Don't get comfortable. So how do you hear that? Like the Rocky movie. Remember the Rocky movie? When he gets comfortable. He's got the big house and everything. It starts getting and you get Mr. T T coming along, the badass from the ghetto, kicking his ass because he got too comfortable.

So I always remember that. Like I'm just going to stay here, train in the gym with the same guys I train with. You know, they don't fucking treat me like a superstar or nothing. You know, they know I'm the man, but we're friends. We've been friends for years. They know me. Keep my feet on the ground. If I came here, I potentially could have made more income, but it probably would have lasted shorter. So in the long run, I probably would have made less because just too many distractions. I wanted to keep my way away from everything. And it's different days then. Everything is the magazines. So with the magazines, I would come here, do the Mr. Olympia, do one week of intensive photograph sessions, video, everything for the magazines.

so they have enough material for a year. Then I simply disappear and go home and nobody who see me. There's no social media. There's no, you don't need to keep up the constant flow of attention in order to earn income. I earn my prize money. I got my contracts. I go home and start work again.

And I loved it. I loved having that mission. But I can tell you something. It's very difficult to find a picture of me smiling because I was so intense in this tunnel. And at the end, there was no joy in it. Like the last year, 97, I remember getting ready for the contest. I'm like, wow, this feels like Groundhog Day.

I've done this in process so many times. And I started to think, this is starting to feel like a job. I mean, it was, but it was a passion more. It was a bit of both, right? But now it's starting to feel like a job. And I start to think about what am I going to do after this? because it's starting to, I don't want to feel like that, you know. Sounds like I'm just jocking you, but I'm telling you like that's, that's a very wise

perspective because a lot of people don't want to let go. Yeah. They don't see themselves in anything else and therefore they don't know what to do. Also, when you reach a certain level in anything, it becomes easier to just make a little bit more money over here. Yeah. I mean, you know, people would just pay you to be in the room. You're the king there.

You're the king, right? So maybe you don't want to give. that up. So yeah, it was tough. And I kind of observed a lot of athletes from different sports, how they really struggle. Because yes, you can still go to the gym and lift weights. But why are you doing it now? That absolute tunnel that you put yourself in, like you're going to battle every day for this goal. That in itself is a high. The dopamine, as you say, as a chase, I mean, a competition is once a year, right? For me, at least, it was once a year.

So it's the whole year that you, you know, aiming on that target. I can see that day the whole year. I'm thinking about that day like I'm in a tunnel. Probably my best friend is like, it's great to hang out with you now because you're in the room. He said, I'd be with you before,

but I'm well aware that your mind was not there. Like, you know, now you're like, yeah, now I'm enjoying life. Then I couldn't afford to really enjoy it. Like, I'm on a mission here. I'm in a war or well. whatever I had in my head. But it's a huge part of my life.

Without that, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. Now I wouldn't be, you know, would have met my wife. She's a competitor as well. There's so many things. So I knew I had to do it. And now it's obvious why. And I think, I mean, I had people coming up to me with tears in their eyes. Many people saying, bro, I know you don't know.

me but you saved my life. You know, just something you said or you did or inspire me and this is like fucking this is worth more than the Mr. Olympia trophy. So I did it for myself. It was a selfish pursuit. It's bodybuilding. It's all about you, yeah. But now it's changing to something else where I can use my position, my influence and at my

age, my life experience to help and inspire many people. And maybe that's the whole point of the thing ultimately. you know. There was a plan you weren't aware of. Yeah, absolutely. I just know I had to do it. Not I want to. Like I have to.

Like my life depends on this. That was my mentality. Well, I certainly get that feeling. And I can say for myself and many others that you have really inspired me. I had no, as I said, no aspirations of becoming a bodybuilder. But the idea that I could strengthen my body and most importantly, do. things differently than everyone else said and know that it works. I think that as much as the titles that you've achieved and your backstory is super impressive and all of that stands forever, right? You're

on the rush more of bodybuilding, that's for sure. This notion that you went about it differently, right? Like you said, you weren't out in California. They called you the shadow because you disappear and then come back. The way you trained, the low-volume. high-intensity training. I don't think people realize just how opposite that was to everything that was being thrown at people. And so what it told me was that one should trust experience and try things at the margins safely because oftentimes there's real pearls there.

And when there is, you have to discard of everything else you hear. And I hear I'm talking about fitness, but I've seen this in my science career. In media and podcasting, I mean, you know, the number of people that told me like, don't do a podcast. Like, you know, they're going, what, what, close family members and scientists don't be like, what are you doing? And it's like, now they're coming to me asking, hey, do you have a job because I want to get out of the science thing?

It's a grind. Oh, no, it's, and like you said, you get, you catch so much friction early on. There must be something that pulls iconoclasts forward. It's like this, you said, I have to do it. Yeah, it's despite everything else that's happening. Doesn't matter what's happening, man. I had to do it. And day by day, I was very conscious.

I need to do my best today, every day, every day, every day, every day. And in that tunnel. And also, you know, post-carea, I talk about my experiences then and depression and so on. This can affect anybody and actually affects a lot of athletes from that extreme. You're in the extreme tunnel, stress, goals. And then it's suddenly gone. So you don't have this goal that was like. Like, in a way, giving you a lot of dopamine, you can go to the gym, but there's no, there's no purpose now, really.

I know someone whose child just went off to university. And they were so committed as a single parent that they're in a little bit of an existential crisis. Yeah, they're not having that thing now. Who am I without that role? And they'll figure it out, but I think it's athletes. I think it's this identity thing. So where is that boundary between you need to identify with something as it being you and you are. are it in order to really go to great heights and anything. But then you also have to be able to

dissociate from that identity piece. Well, that's the question. Who am I? That was the question. Who am I now? What am I going to do with life? What am I supposed to do? And it's only 35. You know, and I've retired. It's like, you know, when a guy retires at 60, even if he's just been working in a bank or whatever, it's very often that they get depressed because they don't have, they're going to work every day and they don't have this, you know, it's not a mission, but they don't have this routine anymore. They don't know what they're supposed to do with their time. Imagine the intensity of an athlete and then that's not there anymore.

So it took me time to change the mindset from, oh, look what I've lost. And I don't know who I am anymore because I was the king and now I'm not or whatever. To like, yeah, but there was a lot of things I couldn't do then. Like my life was so restricted then. I wouldn't even go out if I'm going to get back after 10.30 because I've got to be at bed at 11. I mean, this was all year. It wasn't just for competition. Now I'm, you know, doing fairly well financially.

I don't have to do anything that I don't want to do. And I can go. And I've always been in love with animals and wildlife. And I used to sponsor mountain grillers in Rwanda and Uganda. because there was like only 600 of them in the world. So I used to sponsor them. So one of the first things I did was went on a safari out to Uganda, guerrilla trekking in the mountains.

And I couldn't do that before. Maybe I could, but in my mind, I couldn't. I don't want to take the time off. So it started to open up more possibilities slowly, but it probably took me a couple of years to start to come to terms with it. I mean, I had a business. You had kids too, right? I had a son.

at that point who was coming to the end of school age I had a business but it's like where's it's not exciting there's not that passion so I decided I can do lots of other things and slowly I started to get comfortable

with it and I'm whatever I want to be you know I'm not Mr Olympia you're not a scientist. It's what you do. It's not who you are, right?

It's what you're doing at the point of time. So it was a whole journey of exploration, and I've always been very good at why. You know, I was 21 years old. I started bodybuilding. Why? Why is that the best way to train? Just because everyone's doing it?

Am I sure? Tried it out? No, it's better to train more briefly. I get better results. So fortunately, I always had that, independence of thought, even though other guys at the gym saying I'm wrong, we're like, okay, you're right, thank you. It's really interesting because, you know, we've created this little backdrop,

this kind of ghost of Mike Menser. And for those who don't know him, he barked when he spoke, he was a real iconoclass. He carried this bitterness for never having, you know, become Mr. Olympia. I think Mike was too rigid in his thoughts. You've got to be a little bit flexible. Yes, mostly it was right, but maybe for this guy, you know, he got to be a little bit flexible. And I think it was a bit too extreme in the end, like training once every 10 or 12 days and so on.

And he became unhealthy, right? He smoked. Yeah, this I didn't understand. Amphetamine use. I still don't understand it. I still don't understand. I understand ex-bodybuilders or athletes that don't want to, like, you know, maintain their peak. it's ridiculous. You can't as you get older. But I didn't understand somebody that was in

health, fitness, bodybuilding that suddenly didn't want to exercise and got overweight and smoke cigarettes and so on. I didn't really understand that. That was one thing I didn't get with Mike. He was very, like, pissed off about the Mr. Olympia, the arm was one in 1980 and got disillusioned with a sport. And he carried around with him. I mean, he was one. of the first conversations we had, like when I first met, he told me Arnold is not going to like me. And I said, well, not that I really care, but why do you think that? And it's like, because you're better than him. Well, it's, you know, it's debatable.

But let's say, if I was, why would Arnold give a fuck? He was making movies, 20 mil, I wouldn't give a shit if I was him. He's like, you don't understand Arnold. So, you know, he was carrying this still around with him. You know, it wasn't healthy, I guess. I don't know and I'm not a psychologist, but I'm going to venture that he wanted to be a winner, the winner, more than he probably loved the fitness piece and the training piece. And I say that because, you know, it sounds like I'm name dropping here, but I'm fortunate to be very good friends with the great Rick Rubin, right? And Rick has worked with so many amazing artists.

And he'll tell me stories sometimes about people who really didn't make music or do comedy because, they loved music and comedy. They wanted to be loved. Okay. When they got maybe attacked about a song, not being as good as their last song, it crushed them. And he would say,

just go back and make music. Yeah. Do what you want. And this is one of the things that makes Rick so brilliant. But then he eventually, he would share these stories in private, of course, that some people aren't doing the thing for the thing.

It's about they weren't loved as a kid or they would need the adoration. And so it's not, maybe Mike could, We're speculating here, but could smoke cigarettes and let himself be out of shape because it wasn't really about bodybuilding. He just maybe needed to be a champion so he could validate something. We don't know, right? I always got the impression with Mike that it wasn't really anything to do with health.

I mean, it's not at competitive level. Let's say maybe it could be unhealthy. But you can be healthy with it. But I love to train, man. It doesn't matter what it is. I could hike, I could ride a bike, could do Pilates. I could do yoga. You know, done boxing, done loads of things.

But I just like to exercise. And I like to feel good. And it's nothing competitive anymore. It's like this is my vehicle that I've got to experience life in a physical reality. This is it. If this isn't working well, I'm not going to have much fun. I'm not going to have a good quality of life. And what do I want for the next, you know, have along?

I want to be functional. I want to be able to do these things that I love to do. and I want to be around and be healthy for my kids. And I just love to exercise, man. I do something every day, different things, not lifting weights. I do that maybe a couple of times a week, moderate weights, because I don't want to, I've got injuries. I've got a torn bicep on this side, a torn tricep tendon,

and some shoulder issues. I don't have any pain or anything, but it's just mechanically, my right side is stronger than my left. You look out of overload it. You look lean and strong. Yeah, I'm lean, I'm strong. I don't push too much with the weights. And you kept your height.

You know, a lot of people who don't train starts to shrink. I didn't keep my height. Really? I got taller. Did you really? I posted about a month ago, six weeks on my page. Just teasing people. Because I went to get some arthritis in my shoes, you know, to balance out.

And the guy's got the measuring thing. So I just stood on and said, you're 183. Like 180? I've never been more than 180 before. Metric system, folks. Yeah, yeah. Right? It's like six foot, right? I was five, ten and a half, five eleven, maybe.

So did I physically grow bone? That's what I thought, because I'm six one. I heard you're five, ten. Yeah. I walked in thinking maybe people usually lose a little bit of height unless they train real hard and they make sure to take care of themselves. And then I walk in and yeah, you're about six feet. Yeah.

But the thing is, why? Because I've been doing Pilates and functional training and resetting the shoulders back. My posture is much better. So I'm standing straighter, which gives me an extra inch of height. So I've actually got taller. No, I haven't taken huge amounts of growth hormone and suddenly grew when I was 60 years old. It's just my posture. And the way I stand, there's less curvature shoulder there.

So you lose a bit of height because when you lift and your pecks get big and your lats, your shoulders rotate forward. You're trying to hunch forward. So you're sitting a little bit lower. I didn't even know. I was like, measure myself like, wow, that's just because I'm standing straighter and my shoulders are back. I lost that cervical arch.

It's more straighter now. We call the text neck for the kids. Yeah. Heads forward, shoulders forward. You know, boxes have it because they're always like forward with the shoulders. So I've just got my posture really good. I've done yoga for like seven years. I've done Pilates, do some functional training.

So it's all about getting this thing in the best. shape. I don't have any joint pains. I'd hip replacement like 14 months ago, which is great. And you're just on the logos. So I train for what I need. What do I need right now? I need some good cardio, but not excessive. So I do some sprints and some bikes outside. I do a little weight training in order to maintain, not trying to build nothing, just trying to maintain. What's the split? People are going to want to know. I don't even have a split, man. I go in. I generally do some upper body once a week and some lower body once a week. Some pushing pulling, some hip. Yeah, I do, you know, things that I can do.

With chest and shoulders, it's very light because of the pushing. So I do some dumbbell press. Any compound movements for your lower body? At this point, no, because my legs are really big. Like, because I didn't have any injuries on the lower body, I think I've maintained a lot more muscle mass here. So I do bike. I do some, what's it called Bulgarian squats with lightweights?

so I can do one side at a time. But heavy leg presses and things like that, why? Why would I do it? It's because potentially risking an injury. And, yeah, you can leg press a ton of weight, but you can't touch your toes. What's the point, you know? Well, and you're also maintaining some muscle

that you've laid down for many decades prior. Absolutely. It's not going to go anywhere as long as it gets a little bit of stimulation. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, FUNCHON. Last year, I became a function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. Function provides over 100 advanced lab tests that give you a key snapshot of your entire bodily health. This snapshot offers you with insights on your heart health,

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For people that are interested in longevity who are maybe a little bit, quote unquote, light or boned, do you think they should emphasize cardio more and strength, less or the opposite? Whereas you are able to get away with doing quite a lot of cardio, Pilates, and yoga, but you don't need much resistance training. And we don't talk about this anymore. It used to be endomorph, ectomorff, mesomorph.

Nobody talks like that anymore. I had excessive amounts of muscle mass, actually. I was a few years ago, still at like 250, you know, just on TRT and some training. And I went for a checkup. My blood pressure was a bit high. And it just triggered something. I mean, like, I've been eating still like a bodybuilder. You know, frequent meals, chicken, breast and rice.

I don't know. It's just habit. So I kept doing it. I said, I'm going to go on a lower protein diet, more plant-based, and lose some weight, right? But which weight I'm going to lose? I'm not fat. So I guess I'm going to lose muscle mass. But it was interesting exercise in that I dedicated my whole life to earlier life to building muscle

Now I'm actively trying to lose it for health reasons, but also I wanted to check my ego. You know? I think everyone else was more concerned than me about, oh, it's looking skinny now and everything. Yeah, I don't care. You know, I don't care. I'm just doing what I think is best for my health. I'm losing some weight because I think if you're carrying a lot of weight when you get older, even if it's muscle, I don't think it's ideal, right?

So I brought my weight down from 250 to 230. And at that point, I put more protein and fat. So right now I eat probably twice a day in between 12 and 10 and might have a shake or something like that. So it's more higher protein and fats, a bit less carbs, intermittent fasting. And I feel great on it. I go in the morning, get up, do my things.

And speaking about breathing, I mean, I came a lot more conscious about that through doing yoga practices. At one point, I really got into yoga and the breathing, different breathing techniques or different things. I mean, you can do breathing to, like, produce DMT. And, like, you can really shift yourself just with breathing. It's amazing what you can do. So I went through all that and became much more conscious about breathing and trying to breathe through the nose, wearing the gym, you know, naturally got your mouth open and trying to gulp in as much oxygen as it can.

So breathing is definitely important. I'm doing yoga, try to breathe through the nose and become more conscious about breathing. And I feel like I can speak to my whole body. Like anywhere I want to go, speak to myself, contact my organs and check in with them and make sure everything's all right. I had exterior muscle consciousness, but nothing else. Now I'm whole body conscious and health has a lot to do with the mind,

maybe more than we even realize. I think unresolved traumas leads to a lot of disease. So it's good to explore yourself and your mind and how you look at things and maybe change the way you look at things and don't carry this weight around. I have a friend that practices different kinds of things. medicines and he had three cancers and he's convinced that it's trauma-based. Well, certainly there are data and there are a lot of real-life examples where when people hold in their pain and in particular shame, it causes disease.

We've had a couple of guests that have talked about this. But it's kind of interesting. The original naming of the type A personality was all around people who were prone to heart attack because they didn't actually let out what was going on for them. And it's been a ride for the psychology, science world to try and figure this out. I think we'd be remiss if we don't talk a little bit about psychedelics and your experience with those. But I want to preface that with saying that my understanding is that right now, you're not a psychonaut. But you did explore, which I find really interesting because people think if you start something, you got to do it forever.

with the exception of maybe fitness and sleep and all the basic health stuff, what's so striking is it seems like you're able to go into something deep, get the best of it, and then get out. Yeah, that's what I did with psychedelics. I feel, I wouldn't say I'll never do psychedelics again because I may be in a different space and may feel the need to do it. But I went through that whole experience and it was amazing. I mean, it gives you a totally different perspective on life.

You said 97 was last Olympia. Yeah. You realize you're done. 98 through 2000, you're kind of going through a reframe? Yeah, a whole lot of things happened as well in my personal life. My nephew passed away at 15 years old in my house and there was no explanation. Oh, man. It was very close.

So sorry. My marriage was, everything was falling apart. You know, everything was falling apart in my life. But maybe it had to get reorganized. And I think I went for a period like I just want to. have fun here and just, you know, I don't really go too deeply into stuff because it was, I kind of get into it and it was too heavy. So I'm like, I'm just going to have fun. And later on, a friend of mine was like, you should try DMT. He's over in California and he had

some pharma grade stuff. And I read, only in California. Yeah, I read this book when I was living in Amsterdam for a couple of years. It was no internet. So I read this book, DMT, the spirit molecule. You can get that all about DMT. So I'd heard about it. I'm like, yeah, I heard about that stuff. So we got the powder and I smoked it and I saw the behind reality, if you like, the construction, the numbers and the geometry and everything's connected. And everything's one thing. And we're having an experience and we can choose, you know, to experience good, bad, whatever in this reality and it's a temporary experience and everything is forever.

There's no time and all these things, whoof, came in. But DMT is a very short experience, like 10 seconds or something. So then I got invited on this podcast in England called London Real. Yeah. And it was a very early, small podcast at the time. They invite me down. I said, it sounds interesting because I like to talk. I can talk about different subjects if you want, whatever.

So we're back, you know, before we do the podcast, we're talking away and I don't know, it came in a conversation. Yeah, DMT, oh yeah, I've done that. What? You've done it all? Would you be willing to talk about it on the podcast? I said, it's London real or London bullshit? What's the name?

Podcast, man. And I talked about the psychedelics and my experience, and it went absolutely. huge because this was, I think it was like 2012. That's early. But people were stopping me on the street and they weren't stopping me because you're that guy on, oh, it's fascinating what you talked about. And because I was on that show, then this camp from Costa Rica, they got in touch with me and we're in Ayahuasca camp.

I did it once in Spain, Iowaska. It was a great experience. And then these guys got in touch with me, and they said, how do you feel about coming into Costa Rica and being like a headliner? I said, I don't know about that, man, because it's very private. I just want to do my own thing. Like in Spain, nobody knows who I am. So I did it once there.

And like, I'm just doing my thing, man. I don't want to be, you know, hey, or Dari. And I'm just here for my personal experience. And they're like, well, when it's the ceremonies, that's the shaman and the facilitators. And you're just another guy once you go in there. But during the day, can you look after the guys? I said, I don't know. Okay, let me give it a try.

And people from the fitness industry or the gym or whatever were coming. And I said, why are you here? Because I was kind of interested in it. I was kind of curious. But I didn't know. I didn't know if it's for me. Maybe it's a hippie thing. Maybe I don't know.

But when I saw that you were doing it, I said, oh, it's cool. It's Dorian's doing it. Let's go. So we did three camps there with like 20 people ahead. In one week, you do four sessions. So I've probably done like 20-something ayahuasca ceremonies and each time was different

each time I learned something but I got to the stage where I'm like what more can I learn I'm not coming here to be a you know psychedelic tourists they call them people that keep going back keep going back well if it was helping you why don't you keep going back

once you've learned I can't remember who it was but they said, you know, once you pick up the receiver and get the message, put it down, right? So it was over a period of time, and I was like, wow, I don't feel like I need to do it anymore or I want to do it anymore. It may change.

But I feel like I learned what I needed to learn and I helped other people on their journey as well. So I got the message. You know, what more do I need to know? If I would have sat down with you prior to your psychedelic work, like right here, right now, would you feel different, be different? I believe so, yeah. I mean, it's like, it's hard to describe the whole experience. How is it?

How is it? It's like, wow, well, it's different for everybody. But in terms of the takeaways, were some related to... The biggest takeaway is everything, everything, everything, everything, everything is all. One thing. We are one thing. We're not a drop from the ocean. We're the ocean and a drop.

As Rumi, as the Rumi saying, right? But I get it. I was saying that before, before I even read that. I was telling people, I said, imagine an ocean, yeah, that's everything. But there's a spray that's come out like a little drop. And he thinks, oh, I'm just a little drop. Oh, poor me, I'm a little. No, you're the ocean as well.

You'll drop back into the ocean when you, So everything is one thing. We're all connected. We're the same thing having separate experiences. That's what I got. And we're all connected. And the whole experience we're having is mental. Like nothing exists without observation.

So this is all created by us. Everything. It's our imagination. That doesn't really exist. If that makes sense, it might not. Because you've got to experience. Listen, I'm very open.

As a neuroscientist, I understand for certain that our brains are very good at extracting certain kinds of information. That's red, that's blue. I can hear your voice. That's Dorian. I'm me. But that's a, through a certain set of filters. Yeah, you're a machine with a computer, and it's limited.

We've got certain filters. It's like someone described it. I forget who it was that, you know, if you were in a house and the windows were open out onto a yard, you would hear certain things. and see certain things, and that's your conception of a yard. But if you were outside in the field on the other side of the yard, you'd get a very different picture, a very different experience of it. Let me give you another analogy like that.

I don't know where this one came from, but I was used it at one time because there's so many different levels to psychedelic experience. But I said it like this. Imagine you're in a room, whatever shape, square room, and you're in this room, and that's all that exists. you can see it you can touch it there's nothing more because you're not aware of it right how about if i bought a little trampoline in here and you're bounced up on a trampoline and you happen to see over the wall and you see there's a whole fucking other world out there that you didn't know about

but now you've seen it you can't forget right so you'll come back to this room with a different perspective knowing that this is not this is not it really so it gives you a totally new perspective on life, I think. I'm totally on board. I will say, I do think there are certain people with predisposition to psychosis that should be cautious about psychedelics. Oh, the camp I went to in Costa Rica is like they do a full review. They've got doctors on board and everything like that.

So they do vet people before and get their medical history and all that stuff. So I'm sure there's some exceptions where maybe it might not be beneficial, but I'm not an expert on that, but if it's a real camp, and that is the thing. A lot of them are not, you know, or they just get as many people in there to get as much money and they don't get the attention and everything like that. So if you're going to do it, I mean, do your bit of research on who's doing it and how are they qualified and what the facility is like and everything like that. I mean, I did it in Spain where it's kind of Wild West.

They don't really tell you too much, you know. But I can handle that. Not everyone else can. So better to go to a place where they do it very professionally. And with a shaman, you know, a proper, like a traditional, not a guy. I mean, I could say I'm a shaman and put camps on it for what I'm not. You know, these guys, it's passed down through the family. And they do maybe a decade of training before they're going in there and actually administering the ceremonies.

So I think that's important. Yeah, I think the data on psilocybin for depression, MDMA, not recognizing. recreationally but therapeutically for PTSD, I've a gain for PTSD and for alcohol and other substance abuse disorders is very intriguing. And I'm not trying to hedge here and play, you know, but I think it's very interesting. I think we're headed. I think people forget. This is one of these things where I almost forgot to say this. Whether or not it's therapy, working out a pill or psychedelics, ultimately what we're after is this thing of brain plasticity, right? I mean, they're all aimed at the same end point.

But the psychedelics are particularly interesting because the experience of them, not just the effects they have long term, but both the experience of being in the psychedelic journey as well as the long-term outcomes, seem to create something that done correctly brings people more peace. Well, there's a guy in England that's now funded

and has been doing the experiments, and he got like brain activity before and afterwards. I don't know what basis is on, but let's say their brain activity that they can see is like maybe 30% lit up, 100%. Yeah, it's certainly... So it's activating parts of your brain that's kind of sleeping, I guess. Yeah, it's revealing a bunch of lateral connections in what we call the default mode network. Basically, more brain areas are talking to one another in the psychoanotism. Which change your perspective.

That's right. And the way you think. Yeah, change your perception. It affects everything. That's right. There was a guy, funn enough, he used to work for the government. in UK, right? So they had him do a report on drugs and recreational drugs and what his conclusions were. And he said, people that take ecstasy, MDMA on the weekend, statistically, they're much

safer than somebody that does horse riding. I mean, this is a scientific, and they fired him. And a lot of scientists that work for the UK, they retire. They're like, we're scientists. We're scientists. You can't dictate to us what the conclusion must be. We're scientists. We just look and give you the conclusion. Anyway, Professor Not now is working independently and funded in London and he's doing a lot of these studies

on different psychedelics and brain activity and depression and so on. So a lot of people that came to the camps are struggling with depression and different issues and some of the experiences might have been unpleasant at the time

but everybody at the end of the week is like, wow, this is the most important thing I've done in my life. This is life-changing. I heard that so many times, like literally from everybody that's done it. So it's worth looking into, definitely. And no, beyond whatever you might feel at the time, there's no side effects afterwards or anything like that.

And another thing after doing these camps, I mean, you're restricted with your diet. And before you go, they give you a specific diet and things to cut out like alcohol and any other kind of drugs and so on. And I feel like if my brain was a computer, like at the end of the week, all the junk files are gone out. And it's just having so many ideas and inspiration and ideas for business. like it's on fire and eventually it settles down to a more normal pace,

but you feel like your computer's just been upgraded. Yeah, defragged, as I say. We mentioned schizophrenia a couple minutes ago, reminds me there are these very interesting findings. You know, there are a few exceptions to what I'm about to say, but I know that your wife is from Brazil. And we were talking about the value of sunlight, you being from the UK. You know, you don't find schizophrenia near the equator. because of the light.

I'm not going to say schizophrenia is one thing, and I'm not going to say it's caused by one thing, but there's some very interesting hypotheses about certain types of winter infections make people more prone to them. Now, why would those winter infections only occur closer to the poles? It may be that this is a theory, that some of the long wavelength light from the sun, the reds and orange and yellows and so forth,

provide a protective function on the mitochondria and at certain stages of pregnancy, because there is a genetic component to schizophrenia, but there's also an environmental component. Identical twins don't always both have it. Sunlight seems protective. The amount of sunlight seems protective in a way that is not trivial, that statistically is very impressive. So it's interesting, right? I think overall health, the sun is essential. I mean, I've talked about it before to friends and everything.

I was like, I mean, I was in the club, right? Isn't it a ridiculous joke? How we've been told to be scared of the sun when it's the giver of all life on the planet. Somehow it can be bad for us. That's just ridiculous, yeah? If you go in the sun and you start to get burnt, get out of the sun. Or throw on a layer of clothing.

Yeah, and put on a hat. Yeah. Listen, man, I'm as white as the sun. they come naturally, yeah? I'm like a bottle of milk, man. But I went to Spain and I guess my nutrition improved, much better fruits and vegetables there. So that might be something. But I slowly introduced myself to the sun and now I can stay out all day. I might get a bit reddish because I'm pale skin, but I don't get burnt or nothing. I can stay in the sun all day. And yeah, I just feel much better in the So, everybody does.

People come from England to live in Spain because of that fact. And if we look between the UK and Spain, there's about six, seven year difference in the life expectancy. Yeah, maybe the food's a bit better, but the sun is the key, I believe. I won't launch into a whole scientific lecture on this, but it's very interesting and not a coincidence at all that dopamine and the synthesis of dopamine in the body, it's altyracine, but there's a enzyme called tyrosanis, and it's the rate-limiting enzyme for dopamine production. Dopamine makes you feel good, motivated, et cetera.

It's correlate with the sex hormones. We know all this stuff. Certainly you do. It's also responsible for pigmentation of the skin, which is why, for instance, an Arctic fox, which is white in the winter, becomes brown in the summer through the dopamine pathway. So the feeling good in the sun is not a trivial thing.

It's through the dopamine pathway and the melanin pathway. The other thing that's really interesting is that there's been a study recently where they gave people a glucose tolerance test, how well they managed blood sugar, insulin, etc. And in sunlight, or even with some sunlight just landing on their back, their metabolism goes up by about, I believe it's 29%, and their blood glucose regulation is far better. And it's because the sunlight actually gets through the body,

charges the mitochondria. And it actually reaches a mitochondria in the cell. It actually will, the long wavelength light will go all the way through your body and charge your mitochondria on the way. And this is not like hearsay. This is documented in beautiful studies. Glenn Jeffrey at University College London, another formerly pasty pale Brit who I've known for many decades, came here, sat there and said,

the more time you get in the sun, the longer your life. The more time you get in the sun, the better your blood glucose regulation. The more time you get in the sun and on and on and on. And the opposite is also true. Too much time under just LED lights and not enough sunlight is damaging to mitochondria. And it's a very big effect. I think this is going to be one of the biggest health issues. This is beyond vitamin D production.

It includes vitamin D production, but actually vitamin D comes from the UV. The stuff they say is bad. The UV light is what triggers vitamin D production. So look, you don't want to get a sunburn. And I'm glad you mentioned that. But we have been sold a bill of goods about the sun. and I think in the next 10 years, it's going to go the same direction as lifting weights turns to fat.

No one believes that because it's not true, but we were told that for decades. Oh, they used to believe it. I mean, when I started back in the 80s, very few women wanted to lift weights because I was scared they would get too big. And, yeah, it was funny. People would come down the gym when I was British champion or something, you know?

Yeah, you know, I don't want to get too big. Like, something like you, that would be great. Don't worry. It's not going to happen by, accident. Don't worry. Yeah. I always tell people, especially if women want to train, the pump you you get in the gym, that's as big as you're ever going to get within a couple of months. Yeah. So if you ever see yourself in the mirror at the gym and go, oh, my God, that's far too big. Go ahead. Quit for two weeks. But, you know, exactly. I mean, people think they're going to go

sleep in. But it's interesting, you know, like when in Spain, yeah. And we live right by the beach, me and gal, a lot on the beach. We're outside a lot, right? I had my vitamin D tested, and it was only 35. I thought just from the sun. Some people just don't convert vitamin D that well and or produce vitamin D that well and need to supplement it. And it does seem to have some genetic component, which makes sense. Speaking of which, I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about cannabis because I think one of our early correspondences.

I was like, I did an episode about cannabis. And I said, listen, I'm worried about psychotic risk. But I said, listen, there could be medical use. uses and I've done a couple different episodes. Also you had Peter Artia on here, right? I had a T on. Yeah, I had it on my podcast, but we didn't, uh, you didn't touch on that subject. Okay.

No, I mean, I think that I want to be clear. My stance is one where I've seen people benefit. I've seen data that for people with a predisposition to psychosis, the high THC can be problematic. This is just what I've seen. Yeah. But you sent me a note saying that, um, first of all, that your experience with it has been good. So I want to give you the opportunity to share that.

And then some of the things that you speculate about because I'm an open book. Well, to give you some background, yeah, I guess cannabis is a bit like cultural. In Birmingham, where I grew up, they have a lot of Jamaicans. So, I mean, Jamaicans, they smoke cannabis, they make tea. It's just a cultural thing. It's normal for them, right? So it was about, I had a couple of friends that their dad's with Jamaican. So I was smoking it anyway.

and wasn't smoking it because I thought there was any particular health benefits. I just smoking it and drinking alcohol, like hanging out. But my friend's dads who were Jamaican was like, oh, this is protects against this and we drink tea for this and the women take it for menstrual pain, and PMA. So I kind of heard that, but I'm, yeah, okay, whatever. And I would smoke occasionally when I was training. And when I went to live in Amsterdam for a little bit,

as I said, I did a lot of reading, I started reading about it. I started searching for studies. And I found those massive, massive health benefits from THC and different cannabinoids. Some of it really counterintuitive, I guess, for people. You had Peter Atier on here, right? So you asked Peter, I think, what about smoking cannabis?

How does that affect your lungs? And I think he was pretty much say, it's probably like the same as nicotine. Tobacco, right? I think that's what he said. But he's probably not aware of a 25-year-long massive study that was done at UCLA, Dr. Donald Taskin, I think his name is.

So they put these people into groups, cigarette smokers, cannabis smokers, and control group that didn't smoke anything. So after 25 years, what did they find? Cigarette group, we already know, right? Loss of lung function, increased cancers, blah, blah, blah, blah. In the cannabis group, and heavy, daily smoking, 25 years. I'll agree because I've been heavily smoking every day for 30 years. right so what was the effect on the lungs some negative yes because of the heat and the tar and

everything like that it could irritate the airways it reduced somewhat the antioxidant layer on your airways so statistically it would be more susceptible to an infection maybe bronchitis or something like that although of all my friends I don't know anyone that got it but statistically it would be more likely to get it lung function, interesting, 25 years of cannabis smoking, compared to the non-smokers, there was a slight increase in lung capacity in the cannabis smokers. I have to check out this study, yeah. No cancers.

Other groups got cancers, but this one don't, after 25 years. So that's the lung cancer. So maybe Peter was not privy to this information. Well, I'll check out the study. I'm not familiar with it, but I appreciate you raising it. I wonder if it's the THC and whether or not edible forms of THC would have the same effect or whether or not it's the smoking of cannabis. So you think it's the THC.

You know Rick Simpson? I know of Rick Simpson. RSO. Rick Simpson, anyway, he made a concentrated oil from cannabis. Now they sell it in all the pharmacies called RSO, although I spoke to Rick. It's nothing to do with him. He just because he's the guy that originally did it. In Canada and he cured hundreds of people with cancers.

He made a doctorate entry called Run from the Cure. So the guy was growing cannabis on his farm in Canada, making the oil from it because he discovered by mistake. He had some skin cancer and he discovered by mistake that the oil got rid of it and he started to, anyway, he was persecuted by the authorities in Canada because he wasn't selling it. He was literally putting his money into it,

growing plants and giving it away for free, right? watch the documentary, it's very, explains it all. And he was persecuted there and he lives in Europe now. And there's a lady at the University of Madrid, Dr. Sanchez. She has proven in a lab setting, THC. You can't even get the video, the speeded up video, literally eating in the cancer cells. Oh, yeah, I've seen this. I think we're finally in 2026 breaking in.

to new ground where people are looking at psychedelics, looking at other compounds, nutrition, et cetera. I do think we're, I'm an optimist. I like to think that in part because of discussions like this and an open-mindedness that has not existed before, that we're starting to break new ground in at least exploring things, right, being willing to explore things. You won't be shocked to hear, but many people might be shocked to hear that the initial group that was exploring different types of breathing to achieve different brain body states, people like

Stan Graf and all those people, a lot of them were run out of universities. They thought it was, somehow it was looked at as too counterculture. Now, my lab, I'm not running a lab right now, but I still teach, but my lab has published clinical studies, right? Federal, well, in that case, privately funded, but peer-reviewed studies on breathwork for anxiety control, breathwork for sleep augmentation. And so to us now, like breathwork sounds like the kind of like, oh, of course, right? but 20 years ago, if you said breathwork, people are like, okay, where's your magic carpet and there's the door and let's lock you out?

You can manipulate your brain and your body with breathwork. Sure. Yeah, you can really shift your state. And the thing with the cannabis, I've also seen it in my life. I've seen it with real people and there's thousands of people out on the internet if you search. Well, certainly for glaucoma, a field that I was involved in for a long time. You know, eye pressure, cannabis is a well-utilized tool to relieve eye pressure. cause of blindness second to cataract only is glaucoma due to elevated eye pressure and

cannabis it reduces that that's well established there so in the ophthalmology community they've really embraced it I do have one question I think is in the back of many people's minds or should be you were clearly and still are a very driven guy although now you have this kind of a balance I try to be balanced now yeah you have an additional you have an on-off switch right now maybe it was all gas pedal before Many people that I know who smoked a lot of weed, some of them became very a motivated. They like... I'll do it tomorrow.

Yeah, exactly. So you are a unique specimen in the sense that, like, super driven, right? And so I had this, you know, a dime store psychologist theory for a long time with my friends, which was, hey, if you're really driven, maybe you should do some things to relax. Maybe cannabis is right for you, a little bit. But if you're lazy, I don't know if that's the right drug. If you're lazy, you're lazy, right? Maybe it just amplifies it.

You know, there's a test you can do now. I don't know if it's here, but I did it in Spain. So we have an endocannabinoid system, right, inside your body. But it varies. So there's a swab you can do, and it gives you a report on your endocanabinoid system, right? and there was one of them is a likelihood of negative effects from one to ten so the lady did my thing and I was kidding around with her I said what does it say there do I need to THC for life

just messing about she said well you're not far off she said look at this the likelihood of you having negative effects from cannabis you're on one out of 10 so for instance my wife. We've been married 12, 13 years now. Sorry, Gala, if I made a mistake. She don't go anywhere near it. She feels totally paranoid if she has a little bit of cannabis. So I'm well aware of the, you know, different endocannabinoid systems maybe or different personalities. So for some people, there will get a lot of negative effects. So you have to find out for yourself. But it's interesting that they've got this test now that actually proves that

your endocannabinoid system might be slightly different for mine. So I might benefit more from THC. Maybe you benefit more from CBD or balance. So it's interesting now that we're able to get this information. And I'm very driven and I'm very disciplined. And yeah, my wife thinks I'm hyperactive. I'm kind of quietly. I look very relaxed, but I'm constantly thinking and moving.

And so probably for me it's beneficial at this stage. And having this discussion with my friend, oh, it's not good and it's only for losers. I said, you like to watch that American football, don't you? On Saturday, it's like, yeah. I said, you know they did a survey with NFL players and NBA players? How many of them use cannabis on a daily basis? In between 70 and 80%.

So we're talking about the most elite athletes in the world highest paid athletes, they wouldn't be doing that if it wasn't benefiting them and they're saying it's benefiting them but more to the point how about the owners of these clubs

if they thought this is having a negative fit on that they would stamp it out right away but they don't and these are, you know, the basketball players are saying they smoke blunts before they go on the court and they play better and they recover better and so on

and that makes sense. So I would say it's good to hear you say that it probably varies by person. Your wife, it's not for her. It's clearly for you. And it probably varies by profession and natural tend to drive. But maybe other things too.

I mean, I know some artist, musicians who need to drink and smoke and others who don't. And, you know, now nicotine's made a big comeback in the oral forms of nicotine. You know, I feel like, just like with dogs, there's tremendous variation and body size temperament.

Even food. Humans are different. Some food for some people, they are allergic to it. It gives them bad effect and somebody else is not. So there's no rule that applies to everybody 100%. But cannabis has a very negative image, let's say, because of over 100 years of propaganda, yeah. It was a medicine.

You could get it on the shelves in America in 1900. It was for many things. Queen Victoria, the famous, longest queen, she used to use cannabis for period pains and this and that. So it was used as a medicine for a long time until the pharmaceutical industry came along. And then all of a sudden, they're making movies. You know, if a white woman smokes cannabis, she's going to sleep with black men and all kind of crazy stuff.

There was one called Rifa Madness. You know, smoking. Go send you crazy. I mean, this is in people's minds, you know. It's a bad thing. It's a drug. It's not. It's a plant medicine. And it grows from the ground like that. It's stronger now. It's higher in THHC because it's been crossbreed and cross. You're like a dog. You know, you want a dog with a long nose.

It's the same thing with plants. So people want to get more bang for their buck. So the breeders are trying to breed more THC into it. And sometimes this is not good for people because the CBD is kind of calmed down and balanced with the THC. Now the CBD is down and the T-H is up there. So that's why it's more likely to make you feel a little edgy now because the T-Hs is kind of active. I had a guest on here named Chris McCurdy. He's a scientist out in Florida. And he taught me three things.

I think that you'll find interesting in light of what we're talking about. One, that every pharmaceutical company has what are called bioprospectors that send people quietly to the jungle to other places and not just the jungle to find plants. that are used locally and then to find specific molecules and develop highly potent extracts to grab just one effect. The second thing is we were talking about kratum. I think the proper pronunciation is kratom. And he was talking about how the kratom plant

and even the cocoa plant chewing on the leaves is known to give people a kind of balanced, in both cases, kind of stimulant relaxation effect. I did that in Peru when we went to Machu Picchu. Interesting. Yeah, you feel like maybe at a coffee or something. Well, it's interesting because what happens is people take the plant, find the molecule that produces like the real dopamine high in the case of cocaine, or cratum, and they then develop cratum isolates or cratim-like synthetics or THC-like synthetics. And so what, especially in the United States, there's this tendency to take a plant which is very balanced in its chemistry and then to extract the thing that gives you an amplified effect, which is most habit forming and addictive.

And then drive that to market. But then we demonize the whole plant. But in its natural form, you can't patent it. So you can't make a lot of money. So you need to change it a little bit or extract something out of there. Cannabis grows from the ground. Yes, it's stronger than it used to be back in a 60. because the growers have bred it like that.

But it's not synthetic. It's just a plant crossed with a plant. Like, you know, it's a natural process. That's why farmers can't make money from it. They have to change it from its natural form balance, but when they do that, it doesn't work so well. Well, the internet has caused a great many problems, instant gratification, this kind of thing.

But I also think it's solved a great number of problems. And one of the things that it's solved is that the discussions about plants versus isolates, about cannabis for one person, maybe not for another, psychedelics, TRT versus steroids. I like to think that we are in a whole new era now where people hopefully are starting to search for information differently. It's not like it was.

You can find it now at your fingertips, man. It's great. When I first was starting to get interested in psychedelics and cannabis, I mean, as I said, I was in Amsterdam. So there's stores there with books in it that I wouldn't normally find even in England. So that's when I had to, you know, like when I started bodybuilding, I had to go out and buy magazines or get a booker.

It wasn't so easy. Now at your fingertips, you can do everything. Don't listen to me. Go check out that study if you want. I didn't make it. But I can tell you, after 30 years of daily smoking, I went for a fitness evaluation. I was in Brazil a couple of years ago. they said the test biologist, I should be 38.

And my breathing and my heart rates recovery from exercise is excellent. Well, no one's doubting your vigor. I promise you that. Bruce Lee. I'm similar to your wife and that it's not for me. But I'm, you know, like to each their own, right? I have the things that work for me and the things that don't. And I'm open-minded.

I have a couple more questions. One is about your wife vis-a-vis training for women. And early on we were talking about training, and I'll point people to some other references that you've put out there about training. But you made it very clear kind of what the beginner versus more advanced stuff is. I want to make sure that we touch on she's quite the athlete. Do you think women who want to get stronger, maybe just a bit more size here and there, but not overall size? Do you think they should train differently? And if so, how?

Definitely from men? Yes. I don't think so. I mean, the same muscles in the same place. same rules apply. The muscles are not going to grow unless you overload them. It's just going to be limited by the fact that you're female and you don't produce a lot of testosterone,

which makes it much more difficult to build muscle. So we just have this nonsense word. I said it's a nonsense word. No, I don't want to get bigger. I want to get toned. All right, but there is no such thing as toned. What you mean is you want to look firmer, right? Yes, it's called building muscle and losing body fat.

So your arms might be the same size, but it's a different composition now. It looks leaner. It looks more shapely. It's the same thing. It's bodybuilding. You're building muscle and losing body fat. That's the only way you can change your shape. You can do yoga, you can do polite, all these things.

It's great for your mobility or internal musculature. But the only way to really change your physical appearance is resistance training. Weight training. What if you want to call it? Maybe they don't want to call it bodybuilding. Oh, no. resistance training that sounds better but it's the same bloody thing you know you need to build muscle and lose body fat then you'll look leaner and don't worry about building too much muscle unless you're

a genetic outlier that's genetically very muscular and maybe higher testosterone levels the girls that you see in competition they're all using steroids all of them even the bikini competition they had this bikini class for women that introduced years ago because the idea is the women are getting too big now in the other classes, so we'll make this bikini class, which is a fit, you know, young girl that's been trained of a little bit, bikini on the beach, they started doing juice and got bigger. I'm like, what they're going to do next? Bikini light? Unfortunately, that's what, you know, when it gets competitive, people start using products. So all those girls you see doing competitions, they're all using steroids. So you're not going to get like that by mistake. You need to build some muscle mass,

you can change your appearance and be healthier. Resistance training. just the same as a man. Maybe you want to do extra well on your glutes or something because that's a big thing for women. Maybe you do another exercise there that the man doesn't do. But the same thing applies, right? Stress, adaptation, recovery adaptation.

It's the same principle. It's not voodoo. There's no, you know, there's a whole industry now, right? Online. And simple. easy facts don't sound sexy so that everybody tries to make

everything very complicated in order to make the client perceive more value I got to change I was talking to a guy once who's the top trainer I said why have you got to train your client's routine every random

four weeks six weeks whatever it is you do I said it's nonsense people just to do the same exercises that work right don't keep changing it around you can't even track it yeah i know but they want it they like to change it around like maybe it's a good business strategy but i'm like just tell people the truth and it is what it is it's much harder to package and sell drive yeah it's uh hard work sweat push yourself but there's a beauty in that there's a beauty in pushing yourself and you know once you're overcome something, then you feel more confident and stronger to overcome something again, right?

And this bleeds into everything, right, into your life. Like the gym is a microcosm of your life, right? If you're going to push your bat in a gym and not push yourself when it gets tough, you're going to, oh, no, screw that, put it down. I'm probably going to do the same thing in life when things come along that are tough, you know? So it's not just a physical thing. It's that it's, it's, it's, the mental thing that controls everything. If you become a more resilient, more confident, stronger person, that goes into everything in your life. So there's more to bodybuilding than big muscles and competitions.

And iron your shirts. Yeah, iron your shirts, lower your cortisol. I don't even know why I was doing that. I was just doing it. I'm imagining that now. I'm going to start ironing my own shirts. Tell me about D.Y. Nutrition. I'm not getting paid to ask this.

I'm just very curious. You know, where is it? What is it? When I was bodybuilding, I was competing. I was contracted to work with the Weeder company. You know, be there a guy in the magazines and hold the product and everything. But I was interested, you know, in supplements. I was always reading nutrition supplements, anything to do with my craft.

And I spoke to Joe Weeder and I said, listen, can I work with the guys? And, you know, no, no, no, just be the guy. So I was interested in getting involved then because I thought the weirdest supplements definitely could be better, right? Well, he didn't want me involved in that. So through various businesses over the years, I built DIY Nutrition, which is my own brand. I was just doing it myself, me and a partner and doing it ourselves.

and over the years then I found some good partners. And we got to the point now where we have our own pharmaceutical facility in Europe. And we've been hitting the bodybuilding market all over Europe and Middle East. And now we're shifting. We're still going to maintain that, but we're shifting into health, wellness, all the things that we're talking about and making some real kick-ass product for that market as well. So there's almost like two Dorian, the Dorian the bodybuilder and Dorian now who's in his 60s and being concerned about my own health and longevity and quality of life. And what supplements can you take to help in that area?

So we're developing that, a whole kind of new area that I'm really interested and really involved in the development of the products and everything like that. And we are, after many years of demand, coming to the U.S. pretty soon. So that's one of the reasons I'm over here, meeting with some people and everything. So look out for us. We'll be in the U.S. soon as well. Great. So I imagine it's the quote-unquote conventional stuff like weight protein, creatine, glutamine. But some additional things as well.

Yeah, we've got pre-workout, creatine. Pre-workouts called blood and guts. and that's the first product we're going to be bringing in here to the U.S. There'll be a lot more shouting in gyms. Yeah, you know, I'm working on something special. I don't want to say what it is yet, but something special with the Blood and Guts product, so you get a bit more than a product for myself.

We'll wait until that's ready to go. Cool. Yeah, let us know. Final question, and it's arguably a big one, but feel free to have to. handle it however you want. You've had a very unusual life relative to most humans on the planet. Past or present. It's been a wild ride. And again, I'm struck by your internal sense that you were destined for something different and great. You're really leaning into it in such a logical way

and also knowing when to rack that and go to the next thing, keeping the best of what was and grabbing the best of what's next and so forth, as well as maintaining your health. So here's my question. Yeah. Because you did all that. You're doing it now. It's not over.

And you also have this experience of psychedelics and consciousness, and you're a thinker. You're thinking. That's one of the reasons I like to smoke cannabis. Because I just go into thinking it's like breaks all the boxes. You know, you and Rogan can do that. Talk about that way.

Yeah, yeah. And for the rest of us, we end up in a little ball, scared that the lint is going to put. It's going to a lot of people. I want to smoke with me. Oh, man. My wife says when they're like, she's like, don't do it. Well, I can't, I don't enter marital disputes.

But so what do you think this is all about, man? Not just for you, but for everyone. I mean, like a lot of people look up to you. They look to your story, but it's your insight and your experience that I think is what's so intriguing. What do you think is all? about? I mean, why are we here? We're God playing hide and seek with itself. We're consciousness, having an experience, being in a physical reality. And we're all the same thing. We appear to be different and separate, and we are, we're having an individual experience, but ultimately we're the

same thing, having all those experiences at the same time. If you want to call that God, it's just everything. That's what I got from psychedelics and we're all on our own journeys in this reality, maybe to learn things or maybe to explore what it's like to be in this reality because consciousness is not physical, it's just consciousness. And I believe it's in everything. In the plants, in the animals, in us, it's all the same thing, having kind of different experiences. And it doesn't end, you know. It's like we got the TV on, right? TV's on there, we're watching it, we turn it off.

Or the TV blows up or whatever. But the energy that was going into the TV is still there somewhere, right? So we are still somewhere, even after this experience finishes. This much I'm pretty sure about. That's what I got. And live life to its fullest. Like, you're going to come here. and have this opportunity and just stay here and go from here to here and do this.

And I never wanted to do that. I knew I felt there's more to life. And there still is. I want adventure. I want experiences. And it's been up and down. And I feel like now like I'm the most balanced and the most peaceful that I've been. I know my place and try to enjoy every day.

and spread love, you know, because that's where we come from. We've forgotten. Yeah, but it's all, creation is the same as love. It's the same frequency. That's what I get from my experience, and I look forward to every day. And being somewhat of a mentor and a teacher, I guess, at this point, you know, I do these camps, like once or twice a year,

just like six people or something where I take them through my training methods and in the gym and we do the theory and they become certified at the end of the week so we call it D-Y-H-I-T training certification but I said to the guys I said I think I'm going to change the name of this thing

to the D-Y experience because the training is part of it but it almost becomes something else by the end of the week spending so much time together and talking and training together together and I see the people when they're under stress in the gym. I see things about them that I could maybe share and to be helpful. So I feel all the things I've been through is giving me the experience to be able to do that

and help and inspire other people and my own kids. And anyone that's around me can benefit for my experiences. I think at this point, that's probably the reason I did it all in the first place. You know, I wanted to be this guy, I wanted to be Mr. Olympia, I wanted to have this trophies, I wanted to make the money and be famous and all that stuff, I suppose. But what was the point of all that? I think I get it now more than ever, yeah. So I'm feeling a good place.

I feel peaceful. I feel balanced. And that's my role now, I think. You know, just to inspire and help other people from my experiences and my knowledge. I think that's where I'm at now, yeah. Well, you have certainly inspired me and millions of other people. And you're going to continue to, by virtue of your accomplishments, what you've said here today and everything going forward. I can't express enough gratitude to you.

You've really been a leader without realizing it in domains of life that you don't realize. for, you know, like a guy who was plugging away in the lab. I also liked working out who didn't become an athlete or a bodybuilder, but really loved fitness. Like, I'm just one example of millions of people who have been truly inspired by you. You shaped and changed millions of lives. That's really powerful, man. And I really appreciate that when people come up to me, you know. It's real.

And when I, you know, and when I saw that you were into some of the same music and that you, you like blondie and, you know, and bulldogs. I met her. Did you really? Oh, yeah. You know, it was 1990 in New York. I met her in the gym there. And, man, I don't have a fucking camera. Man, she's amazing.

I remember her as a kid. And I was like, man, you know, some guys like the swimsuit models. I'm like, she was punk. I'm like, blonde is it. And so just, you know, there are these points of convergence that one feels. And again, I'm saying this for me, but millions of people feel that. They go, oh, bulldog or blonde. or whatever it is, that you like the hack squat, not the Smith rack at a certain stage of

your career. I guess you liked both. But, you know, these things matter in ways that most people will never get the opportunity to say directly to you and thank you. So on behalf of all of them. Thanks. Thank you. And also just on behalf of myself.

Thanks for having me on the show. This has been awesome. And I'm super grateful that we did it. And I'm excited to train tomorrow. Oh, you're going to get ass kick tomorrow. Nice. Yeah. I'll admit that I'm 1% scared, but 99% fire.

Don't worry, you'll be alive. I still got some fucking. I told the guy once in a, they were filming me, so it came out. I was like, just fucking get on this leg press and do this and bring it down on the control and press it up and just fucking do that until I tell you to stop, yeah? I said, listen, you're not going to die. But if you do, you won't know about it. So don't worry, man.

Let's go. Awesome. All right, man. Let's see you at goals tomorrow. See you at goals tomorrow. Thank you for joining me. me for today's discussion with Dorian Yates. To learn more about Dorian and what he's doing now,

please see the links in the show note captions. Also linked in the show note caption is the video of the high-intensity, low-volume workout that Dorian took me and my producer Rob through at Gold's Gym Venice. We trained back. It was brutal, and it was awesome. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast,

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Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard, I have a new book coming out. It's my very first book. It's entitled Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is a book that I've been working on for more than five years, and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience. And it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation. And of course, I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.

The book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com. There you can find links to various vendors. you can pick the one that you like best. Again, the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the Human Body. And if you're not already following me on social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms. So that's Instagram, X, threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

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certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.