Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 297 - Chris Aceto

Episode Date: December 18, 2019

Chris Aceto is a bodybuilding training and nutrition expert who has worked with some of the biggest names in bodybuilding including 4x Mr. O, Jay Cutler. He was an early proponent of a low carb diet before it caught on to mainstream, and is the author of several books helping bodybuilders from the early beginner stages all the way to the highest levels of competition. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/shop.aspx?utm_source=instagram&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Power%20Project for 25% off your order plus FREE Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢Quest Nutrition: https://www.questnutrition.com/ Use code "MARKSQUEST" at checkout for 20% of your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

um yeah anyway uh thanks to our sponsors really appreciate uh our peeps at quest nutrition um we got some of the donut bars just sitting right here on the table but i think that there's one more left oh there's only one more in there it's we have to keep it there so everybody can see it though so quest also has uh not only do they have a million different kinds of bars, a million different types that you can kind of get all over the place. They're at 7-Eleven and everything. You can see them at the airport. Somebody was asking me the other day about how do you eat when you travel. I was like, the same.

It's not any harder, especially nowadays. Things have improved a lot. And there's great companies like Quest Nutrition. There's great products kind of all over the place. But the standard traditional Quest bars are fantastic. And then nowadays they got the Hero Bar, which we talk about that a lot. Those are damn good. Those are damn addicting.

They have cookies. They have chips. They have pizza. So you're going to want to check out Quest Nutrition and what they have to offer. They also have protein powders that you can cook with and make up all kinds of different recipes with. Head over to questnutrition.com at checkout, enter promo code Mark's Quest for 20% off your entire order. Yeah, that was cool having Piedmontese here for the seminar and then having them on the show. They explained a lot. I don't know much about meat

other than I just love eating it. It was great to hear them talk about their business and just how much they care about the company and how much they care about what they're putting out there. We appreciate the hell out of them. they're always um they're they're always they're always good to us and um it's just a great company if you want to try to get more protein in and you don't want the fat to go along with it check out some of the piedmontese steaks and sitting on the table right here on our podcast we got some of the uh beef jerky even

yeah i've been getting a lot of dms from guys that are that have been getting their beef and it's just like it's all good everything like everyone's talking about how freaking good it is yeah across the board all the cuts they're just the the fat is lower in comparison to anything that's out there it's amazing yeah and the conversation that we just had with Chris Aceto, I mean he was saying how he utilizes some carbohydrates in people's diets and it's higher or lower with people. And we always talk about how much protein you need. If you're going to overeat on anything, it would be the protein.

And then the hardest thing to manage for most people is just the fat calories. And how do you have food that tastes good that doesn't contain large amounts of fat you know because like fast food restaurants and a lot of these other things it's when we get the fat calories up along with the carbohydrates at the same time

we end up with delicious foods a lot of times but Piedmontese steak tastes really good even without the extra calories. Yeah that's how you do it you head over to piedmontese steak tastes really good even without the extra calories. Yeah, that's how you do it. You head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. Right now through the rest of the year, they're giving everybody 25% off the entire order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free shipping.

So, yeah, you don't need a special promo code this month. But if you want to support us, use the link in the YouTube description and the podcast show notes. And I've been on this no carbs till Christmas kick since the 1st of November. That's got to be tough, right? Yeah, it's not easy, but when you got snacks, you can kind of bypass that. When you got snacks, you can kind of bypass that. I'm not big on snacks. I try not to eat them too often.

But sometimes at the end of the day, I'll reach for a Perfect Keto bar. I'm still in ketosis. I actually have the strips that you can pee on that they sell through Perfect Keto as well. You can go on their website and purchase them off of there. And I'm still in ketosis and have been for a little while now. So still feeling good, still feeling strong. Everything's coming together training-wise. Strength feels like it's actually coming back up now that my body weight has kind of leveled off,

and I think it's because of the nutrition and it's because of being motivated enough to kind of stay on the diet and keep with the diet, which is usually the hardest part for people. But a lot of the products over at Perfect Keto, I think they're not only going to help me, I think they'll help you. So check out some of the stuff from Perfect Keto. They have actual ketone products that you can put into some of your drinks, some of your coffee.

The Nootropic has ketones in it. They have protein powders that have MCT oil powder in there. And then we often will utilize the MCT oil powders in our coffees and things like that too just to help enhance the flavor. Yeah, I was just thinking the pea strips, I don't even need to make it all the way to the bathroom to use them. Yep. Anyway. Just stick them down the front of your pants. I'm actually going to buy some of those because I think I make ketosis more than I think I – like more than I expect. I'm actually going to buy some of those because I think I'm in ketosis more than I think I am, like more than I expect.

So I'm going to buy some of those after this. Yeah, yeah. You guys got to check them out. Head over to perfectketo.com slash powerproject at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject for 15% off your order. All right. What you guys got? We got Chris Aceto on the show today.

Really excited to talk to him um this guy has built a lot of uh world champion bodybuilders and um excited to to talk to him and ask him you know i i know he's kind of a calorie derived guy um he believes what he believes he's um he's also like a lot of these people that help with bodybuilding, a lot of them have like knowledge from bodybuilding, but not many of, Chris has worked with, you know, some, some of the cream of the crop of, of bodybuilding for the last, uh, several decades. So, and then also, uh, he went out to Gold's Gym Venice and kind of lived that life for a while. And, um, yeah, so we're, we're, uh, we're really fortunate to have him on the show today. You know, this is going to be really fun. Like I think when, uh, when people think of IFBB pro

bodybuilders, like some of the greatest ones, one thing that i kept coming across in terms like the comments on videos were like okay so what was this person's protocol and what was this person's protocol and what was this protocol it wasn't like nutrition protocol or training is more so what was their drug protocol and the the interesting thing that i think chris was like coming back to was like that's not that like that's the smallest thing, which is really interesting. Cause even I wasn't like, I didn't think that was like the smallest thing. Cause you hear about guys going to Dubai and a bunch of crazy stuff to figure

out what works best. So I'm really interested to see his take on that. Cause these guys are massive. Yeah. You must have to have a kind of a certain genetic profile. You know, in talking to Jay Cutler, Jay Cutler said he was like, Chris Aceto was the guy. So he, Jay went to him and said like,

hey, like, what do you think? And Chris was like, oh, great. Like another, another kid, like bugging me, you know, kind of things like, all right, I'll take a look at you. And he was like, he was like, yeah, your people are right. You do have a lot at you. And he was like, he was like, yeah, yeah, your people are right. You do have a lot of potential.

He's like, if you can follow this diet for the next couple months, you know, that might turn into something. So, you know, Jay Cutler being Jay Cutler, he followed the diet for like six months and they saw each other again.

And Chris Aceto went, holy shit. He's like, you're going to win a Mr. Olympia contest someday. And Jay Cutler was like 18 at the time or something like that. So that definitely doesn't have a lot to do with drugs. I mean, I'm sure drugs does.

I'm sure they play a role. But percentage-wise, it's probably kind of more on the outside. It's probably more of like a 5% difference because if you don't have that in you to – I mean you look at just all the different people that you know. 40, 250 pounds conditioned on stage and be a heavyweight professional bodybuilder, even with drugs being involved. It's like there's not a lot of people. A real small amount of people that you can think of that you might know and it might not even be anybody. Because that's just – I mean look at like a Dexter Jackson. Or look at a Jay Cutler, like how bubbly and round these muscle bellies are. Jay Cutler being, you know, removed from bodybuilding for several years now.

And he still looks jacked. He still looks big. I think he's like 250, but he looks like he's like 280 because the muscles are just so big, you know? Wow. He's still 250. That's crazy. A lot of those guys end up dropping a lot of weight. Yeah.

There we go. All right. Can you see me, hear me? We can see you and we can hear you. And we're live. We're ready to dive in. Thank you so much for coming on the show and thanks so much for kind of taking a short notice.

First thing I wanted to ask you is I wanted to ask you a little bit about like your thoughts on a ketogenic style diet and also your thoughts on a lot of people are doing like a carnivore style diet. What are some of your thoughts on those styles of diets? Have you used those with anybody you work with or are you not a fan of them? And if so, why? I've never used them. And I think that diets are like investment advice. I think that if you ask 10 investors, you know, give me your 10 best bets or give me an investment strategy, you're going to get 10 different answers. And the same thing is with diets because, you know, every single person is different. Some people have an easy time getting lean, some people don't. You know,

and there's a lot of factors in getting lean. It's outside of diet. Of course, as diet, you know, calories count, carbs count, meal frequency counts, outside of diet, cardio counts, how hard you train, you know, and hard is, right? You can define hard so many different ways. A lot of people say I train hard and, you know, do they really train hard? A lot of people say they do cardio hard. Do they really do it hard? So to answer a specific diet question, I mean, I haven't used a keto diet ever.

I mean, I haven't used a keto diet ever. I've used some variation of low carbs, and I think low carbs works good for people. And I mean, by definition, a low carb diet or a keto diet is going to be low calorie diet. So calories do count to a large extent. But to look for like the magic in some type of macro profile is you just, you know, barking up the wrong tree. I think you're looking for magic. It's really just a reduction in overall food. Yeah, absolutely.

What have you seen in terms of cardiovascular training? Because there's kind of a lot, you know, people go back and forth on, you know, how much cardio somebody should do. And even if it's a worthy cause to implement quite a bit of cardio, do you use cardio with a lot of your clients? Ideally, you know, in my mind, I wouldn't even say on paper, in my mind, I hate cardio. Because I think it's the antithesis of what you're trying to accomplish. If you look at a cardio physique, you know, a long distance runner there, you know, the body fat could technically still be, you know, they obviously don't have a hard look and they're expending a lot of calories. You know, the distance runner, for example, a mid distance runner. spending a lot of calories you know the distance runner for example a mid-distance runner um so um and i believe that your metabolism with cardio can slow down just like it can well it doesn't slow down but you become efficient at doing it um the numbers lie you know you could

people like snap snapshot uh you know just burn 800 calories on a uh you know treadmill they do that four days in a row. Technically, they should be a pound lighter, right? And their physique didn't change one bit. So cardio, it's a great tool to help keep the furnace going, to help burn calories. But I think people like everything. They take everything to excess, and they think that more is better.

More is better for some people, few and far between, but I think too much cardio can interfere with how hard you can train, which is not a good thing. And it can also – in some people, it's not as effective as you think, and that's why you have people, you know, they say, you know, I didn't look good for this show or I didn't look good for this. And I was doing, you know, hour in the morning and 30 minutes at night. You know, could just be overkill.

Ultimately, you're trying to find out, you know, how much your own personal body can withstand. And I think that's, you know, variable from person to person, too, because we all know people did two hours of cardio and just got crazy ripped. And for them, it seems like they could do the cardio and their body didn't become efficient at doing it. In other words, you know, you get on the cardio machine, you do an hour, and it says you burnt 700, they did burn 700. Whereas some people, you know, over time, says you burnt 700 and they did burn 700. Whereas some people, you know, over time your body adapts to cardio exercise by being able to do it, but burning less, less energy doing it. Would you maybe recommend some amount of cardio to somebody who really struggles with the diet side of side of things? Maybe you have a client.

Go ahead. I was going to say maybe you have a client that just struggles to like really adhere to the diet strictly. Well, I have everyone do cardio. I was going to say maybe you have a client that just struggles to really adhere to the diet strictly. Well, I have everyone do cardio. I'm just trying to find a sweet spot where I'm not having them do too much. And so I think cardio definitely helps you get leaner. But in terms of there's a fine line between how much is effective and how much is just too much. But everyone, I generally have everyone I help do cardio for sure.

As far as like the nutrition, I guess, goes for the bodybuilders you work with, is there a general thing you end up going for? Because you mentioned like you've been an advocate of low carbohydrate for the longest time, but I guess like, do you also help them in the off season when they're bulking? And is there like, do you have a different type of approach when you go with them in terms of the bulk versus, you know, when they're cutting? Yeah. I mean, if they're trying, I don't follow too, too, too many people in the off season. Okay. Because ultimately it's, you know, it's you know the fine tuning is the fine tuning right you know getting ready for a show but off season sort of mostly boils down to eating more than calories than you need you didn't have protein to grow training hard and

ultimately everyone gets fat anyway right so what are you monitoring other than their their body weight going up you know or them looking bigger but in terms of monitoring them you know ultimately you'd be monitoring monitoring them and saying oh yeah you're getting bigger you know 110 110 kilo kilograms 112 114 115 each increment up each kilogram up every two palms up. They're probably, you know, bigger, but they're probably softer along the way too. So, um, I mean, I don't follow too many people in the off season. Like it's, it's mostly like bringing it down, trying to reverse everything and trying to get lean without, you know, pulling apart, get lean without shrinking.

Okay. and trying to get lean without, you know, pulling apart, get lean without shrinking. What are some of the extremes that you've seen with how people respond to food differently? You know, you had somebody like a Jay Cutler who was, you know, shoveling down about a thousand carbs a day, and you might have somebody else on a 25 grams of carbs per day protocol. What are some of the extremes that you've seen over the years? per day protocol. What are some of the extremes that you've seen over the years? You know, I've just seen like, you know, someone I'm working with now, I just realized like last night, he's a huge bodybuilder. And I, you know, literally driving from one place to another, I realized you're going to have to starve him, you know, because you're trying to do things like methodical and you're trying to do

things like to not slow the metabolism down. And the like week is ticking by and the next week is ticking by and you know, he's following things, but he's not getting leaner. And yet I'm thinking I'm driving, gosh, this classic guy I just had when a show was eating more than him. You know? Wow. And so I'm struggling with it to some degree in my mind

and then I just realized, you know, you just got to drop the nuclear bomb at some point and say, you know, maybe he's got to go into full ketosis. Maybe, you know? I mean's got to go into full ketosis. Maybe, you know, I mean, that brings you full circle. Maybe you've got to force it off. You know, maybe you've got to, you know, in this case, you've got to just drag it down with low calories, low carbs, the opposite of what you should be doing, right, to kill the metabolism, but you've got to get the fat off.

And to answer your question, different extremes, um, that would be an extreme, you know, because you would think, and I hear that from other people who prep people, they say, Christian, I'm working with this guy. He's really big. It seems like people who get a lot of muscle, the metabolism is not as fast as you think, you know, it's like, wow, they, their weight get all the way up there on that calorie level. You know, in other words, they didn't eat tons and tons to get up there, but they grew.

And even though they didn't get that fat to get lean, sometimes they have to just hammer it down on the other end. Which you would think, oh, they got all that muscle, right? They got all that muscle. They can eat a lot on their diet. So that's an extreme, you know, as opposed to, let's say, the flip end, Jay eating a thousand carbs. What do you think about intermittent fasting? Is that something that you ever use with people? I've not used it.

It just comes up all the time. People ask me everywhere all the time about it. And I think it's probably an effective way to lose weight because it's a variable low-cal diet. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it ensures people are strict for some period of time, you know, very strict, obviously. But that strictness is broken up by, you know,

the period where you're reading. So, I mean, there's got to be something to it because a lot of people, most people ask me, you know, I'll say, why? And they say, oh, because I'm doing it and it's really worked for me. Whereas other things people ask me about and I'll say, why? And they say, no, I'm just curious. I tried it and it didn't work so of all the little like weird strategies or just odd strategies in the last 10 years or so that's one that's come up people ask me and they tell me that you know it worked for them you think uh in terms of standard bodybuilding though it, it may make more sense to consistently and constantly feed the body and feed the muscles.

Yeah, I think it still boils down to, you know, the six meals a day, five or six meals a day. You know, the consistency of having some type of low blood sugar, but still stay, you know, stable, low blood sugar. So carbs are moderate, moderate, low. So you can still be in like a fat burning zone because your calories are low and your, because your carbs are not too high, your insulin levels are not too high. So ideally you could be burning constant protein intake so that, you know, you're, you have a continual intake or influx of amino acids so that because you're on low calorie you don't go into a you know burning off muscle stage so you know i think it's it's tried and true you know what i mean you know it's it's it's it's been around for so long and

you know so many people have good results with it. It's, it's hard to fight with. How about like the, the actual food that you, you know, you have your bodybuilders focus on eating. Cause I heard Jay mentioned that like he, when he was working with you back in the day, like he would just have numbers that you would tell him to have. Um, and he could like eat a donut or something, but he wouldn't, he would make sure he stuck to eating certain foods. Do you still, I mean, I, I prescribe for people like exact, exact, exact. But like when you're eating, and that's, you know, one in a million, Jay was eating and growing and getting lean at the same time on 1,000 carbs. And, I mean, when he was doing that, people didn't believe it.

And he didn't even tell them he was doing it because he didn't want to have to try to explain it or he didn't want to have to try to um say like but you can't i can but you can't yeah um but uh you know what if you're eating a thousand carbs i mean i would give them the numbers because does it really matter i mean it's it's so bizarre anyway, right? A thousand. So it's like six meals, you know, 150 a meal. So it's like three cups of rice. Does it really matter if you go three cups of rice, three cups of rice,

three cups of rice, three cups of rice, one cup of rice, a donut and a bagel? You know, this is like five grams of fat in the donut, you know, because the opposite of that with those bigel, you know, this is like five grams of fat in the donut, you know, because the opposite of that with those big numbers, you know, such huge numbers is, um, is that it's irrelevant, you know, as opposed to somebody who's eaten a hundred carbs and they have one donut and 50 carbs from rice, you know, that's, then you're taking half your carbs from sugary carbs.

And if you're eating a hundred carbs, you have a hard time getting lean anyway. Yeah. With Jay, I would just throw out the numbers and say, you know, 150, 150, 150, 150. And you know, it works. When it comes to having that amount of carbohydrates, what would you do with the fats? You know, if you have somebody who is doing well with carbs, you know, where do the fats end up going?

I still follow a pretty low-fat diet, you know, and, you know, for contest prep, for example. And I feel like really, really low fat leans you down even faster, but a lot of people who go really, really low fat, they get thinner looking, stringier looking. You know what I mean? Like they don't have the density. So I think in the last

maybe 10 years or so i probably moved away from like super low fat to like lower fat if somebody has a hard time getting lean i may you know drag their fat down um one of the reasons i just like eliminate the fat on them if they have a hard time getting lean is because when you eat like no fat you just starve all the time you know i mean you're just like god i'm not eating anything and i'm still a big believer like if you feel like you're starving you're probably burning fat you know what i mean yeah because like i mean i don't do anything active hardly i sit at desk all day long and i don't eat anything and I'm never hungry. You know what I mean? So it doesn't add up. So the opposite is if you're starving,

you probably, you know, there's probably indication that, right, that there's a demand there. So sometimes when you go like, you know, fish and egg whites, it's like eating lettuce. You know what I mean? Even if you're eating like rice or potato with it, you're just starving all the time. And sometimes when people say I'm starving, I say, okay, that's a good sign to some degree. If you're trying to get lean. It's just a terrible feeling to starve. I'm curious about this then because you've been doing this for a long time. There are probably bodybuilders that are like, okay, is there a way to mitigate this feeling of starvation? You're saying feeling like you're starving is a good thing, but there are probably some guys

who are just like, ah, how can I make this easier? As much as like, maybe that shouldn't be the question. It's supposed to be hard. Yeah. Are there any tactics that help guys get through this successfully, but I guess not feel as shitty? Yeah, well, you could eat tons of vegetables. I've had people throw up almost. I eat too much lettuce or sugar-free jello and get sick from that. There's some supplements, I think, that can make you feel less starving. You know what I mean? There's not too many ways around it. That's

starving feeling. Yeah. It's funny that we're talking about starving because it goes back to the guy who I was like, God, this guy can't get lean. I'm going to have to starve him. And today it was like the first day. So I'm really hungry. It's like, gosh, thank goodness. And I forgot about going low fat. You know, he's, you know, he's not like super low fat, you know, dietary fats. So maybe that's the next step, starve him down by, you know, creating no fullness in the stomach. This poor guy's going to end up with no food just from this podcast. Yeah, it is a tough thing to deal with. Something that's helped me mitigate, you know, how hungry I get, because I used to be 330 pounds in my pursuit for powerlifting and just exercising.

I mean, as shitty as that sounds to try to tell someone who's trying to lose weight, it's like, hey, go exercise. Do you ever do that with your people that you contest prep? Do they work out multiple times a day sometimes? I think if people train, you know, sometimes training twice a day can lean you down faster than training once. If you can train hard twice and not overtrain, that's the trick, you know, it's, it's, um, and an exercise and will of course change your brain chemistry.

So you're stimulating like endorphins that shut you shut digestion down. So, you know what I mean? When sometimes when you're starving you feel like god my stomach's digestion itself so i'm so hungry and if you of course if you exercise and that's why when people say like if i drink coffee you know coffee kind of changes and you know releases a little bit endorphins or like ephedra products, release endorphins, or training, of course. You know, so that would work. You know, but getting lean is not easy.

And that's why, you know, I respect the people I work with because, you know, I may be telling them what to do, but I'm not doing the work. They're the ones. They're starving. You know, as you know, if you came from 330 down down, right, there's a lot of, if you lean, there's going to be a lot of times where you just, you know, it's, it's not easy, you know, it's always a mental battle. I've noticed what you're talking about. I noticed that when I felt hungry,

I felt like I was burning fat. I really did. I, that way. And, you know, as I was coming down, I was also every once in a while would make the mistake because I got so used to it. I was like, oh, well, hungry, you know, being hungry and being like, quote unquote, starving is working great for me. So I'll just starve a little bit more. And then I got kind of like you were talking about kind of got stringy. And then I was like, well, that's not really that's not really the look I'm going for. it got to be hard to manage but you know protein can be very satiating and and you know diving into like two chicken breasts or something as on appetizing as it is that can help help you get past being super hungry sometimes yeah protein is generally as opposed to

carbohydrates is an appetite stimulator. You know, protein is to some degree, you know, a large neutralizer. So, I mean, it goes back to like, again, like lower carbs or even keto diet. You know, people would probably, people may like a keto diet because sometimes they're going to be less hungry than a diet that's not keto. You know, high protein will always make you less hungry than what they call it, like when you study nutrition, a chow diet. Chow diet is like a high-fat, high-sugar diet. And it's what they feed the rats to make them eat more and more and more and more just to study what to eat. They don't give them protein, protein, protein, protein because they'd eat nothing. That's like me.

I think I'm like a rat. And that's why I try to shy away from carbohydrates a little bit more because if I do eat them, it just stimulates something in me. Like I just want to eat more and more. And next thing I know, my sweet potato has turned into Ben and Jerry's somehow. It's funny how people don't have appetites too. I hear that all the time. I don't have an appetite. You know, in the training to, you know, to get big. Like I don't have appetites too. I hear that all the time. I don't have an appetite. And they're training to get big. It's like, I don't have an appetite.

Yeah, I've never had an issue with that. To get big, you have to have an appetite. And to get ripped, you have to let your mind override your appetite. Does anything help stimulate appetite? You did mention carbohydrate. Have you seen anything else be effective to help some people bulk up, whether it be a drug or supplement or food?

Back in the day, I don't even know if it's around, but people used to use periactin to... I know there's some, which I've never used, never told anyone to use, but I know for sure there's an appetite like... What's the... Not a to use, but I know for sure there's an appetite like a...

What's the... Not a SARM, but a... Andrew? Appetite stimulant. What is it? It's like, you know one of those things, GHP-6 something? Oh, yeah. Growth hormone, yeah.

It's MK-677-ibutamorin. There you go. A little thick. The chemist said that. That's right a little thick the chemist that's right yeah experimentalist right and does it work um absolutely it um um i am one of those persons that didn't really have a huge appetite and yeah i experimented experimented with mk677 and that's it mk677 yeah and it it definitely helps it doesn't help in my opinion as much as like the uh the message boards and forums will say you know i think a lot of that is mental because they're taking something that's supposed to make you hungry and you know raise your

ghrelin level so they take it and they're like oh my god i'm ravenously hungry and when i when i took it the the biggest sign for me that it wasn't as powerful as i accidentally like double dosed myself and it was awesome smart bad move but i i did that and then i realized like wait i'm not any hungrier than i was the day before like okay so like maybe it's more mental but it it absolutely does help because i would go from you know kind of dreading the next meal to like kind of being pumped up and excited like dude like i'm actually gonna enjoy this now yeah yeah i'm curious about this too um as far as because you always hear bodybuilders the last generation say guys don't work out as hard and i want want to know your take on that. But do you think the way that

a lot of bodybuilders look at nutrition now is not as disciplined or is not as good as the prior generations look at nutrition? Is there anything different in that sense? Well, I think when it comes to the training part, I think that defaulting to machines has played a big role. And just there is a difference between doing bent over rows and hammer strength rows. I don't know why people do hammer strength anything. Barbells and dumbbells. I don't know why bodybuilders would use machines other than just the epitome of laziness. I mean that. If I wasn't so lazy

and hate training so much, I've always had this idea of wanting to do a before and after picture of myself with only using a bar. So I figured I could do squats. I could do front squats. I could do bent rows.

I could do shoulder press, bench press, incline bench press, just a bar. You know what I mean? Yeah. I could do squats. I could do, you could come up with a million ways to use a bar. And so I, million yeah ways to use a bar and um so i i i think the the way your body responds to machines versus free weights is different um so i it's weird to me when i see you know i don't go to gyms a lot but if i'm helping someone say you know yeah i'm in town i'll go to the gym and see it's all machines it's like gosh that's strange and then um you know with with so there might be some truth to that you know um and then with the diet uh um jay said something to me one day said these guys don't even cook their food

and i'm like what do you mean they don't cook their food? He says, it's all delivered. So this weird, like Jay cooked, like I kid Eduardo Correa that I've been helping for maybe 11 years. And he's eaten six to seven meals a day, every day. He's never eaten five ever since the day i met him so when he was at the new york pro this year i said this i calculated this is like the 23rd thousandth meal

i've seen and he always know he's never eaten a packaged meal ever he's eating a restaurant meal or he's eaten out before but not often but it's all cooked cook, cook, you know? So, um, I mean, that's just an interesting J is a Mon where people, you know, nutritionists, you know, I, he was making the point. I think that, you know, Chris, I control what I eat. And I mean, it's that important to me. I, I want to see it to go. I want to weigh it. I want to put it in the pan. I want to cook it. I want to weigh the rice or measure the rice or the potato. I'm going to eat it. And the next meal, whereas now it's like, you know, pick up your phone and have some, you know, company deliver the six meals for you a day.

Yeah. I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's just a different, it's different. I struggle more with the training. I struggle more with the machines than I do with nutrition. I think inconvenience can make you a champion. You know, like Jay Cutler used to drive several hours to go see you just to pose in front of you and then head back in his Jeep, right, and freeze his ass off. Yeah. Everything's hard work, you know. And, yeah, you're right. everything's hard work, you know? And yeah, you're right.

You know, he would do that and, and, you know, he would, you know, he was committed. He was all in, you know, that's the thing about Jay is, I mean, any, anyone who's, you know, rises to that level. But you've interviewed Jay, so, you know, he's a different breed. Yeah. What are your thoughts on SARMs since we, we talked about them for a second there? Um, I, I, I don't, I don't know much about him. Honestly. Um, I know people laugh when they hear that because they think that I'm, you know, it's okay. Chris preps people. He's like chemist. Um, and, uh, and, you know, I don't know much about him.

And even if I did, I wouldn't say, well, you know, Arnold was using Test and Primo, and other Mr. Olympians were using the same thing. Right. You know, in terms of, you know, what's tried and true, thing right you know in terms of you know what's tried and true i think those things will crowd out the idea that psalms is something special peptides this way put it this way would you rather prepare for a bodybuilding contest on test and primo or psalms right and every every single person without even you know we would say okay i'll go with go with what people have been using for 30 years. So that's how you know which one's better.

I want to know about this too then. When you look online and you look at YouTube a lot now, you see a lot of YouTubers talking about, oh, this is my steroid stack. And they have literally just, I don't know, just a crazy, this is my steroid stack. And they have like literally just, I don't know, just a crazy amount of stuff that they're taking. And they look variably average, not even really that great. Right. So people look at that and then they're like, wow, if this guy is taking all this stuff and you got like, look, look at these Mr. Olympia dudes, they must be on so many more things. But then I've heard conversations where they're talking and they're like, I really don't take that much stuff. And even their coach is like, hey, it doesn't take that much.

So what is the difference there? Genetics. Genetics. Okay. Yeah. Well, it's genetics. the YouTuber who's 105 pounds and taking that list of products, you know, he can quadruple it and he's still not going to be even, you know,

top 10 if he has crappy genetics in the national bodybuilding championships. You know, I might be exaggerating, but to make a point, whereas, I mean, you know, there's, there's, there is this idea that there's – versus somebody with great genetics, you know, they're taking one-fifth of what this guy is doing and they're getting 500 times better results. Is it because of his diet and his training? Could be, but it's probably mostly genetics. You know, I mean, people ask me all the time, you know, I want to be Mr. Olympia.

I tell them you're not going to be Mr. Olympia. You know what I mean? And they're pros. I said, you're not going to be Mr. Olympia. You know, there's only a few people genetically who have the structure, the fullness, the shape, you know, who can win. You're more like a second tier pro. You know, why? Because of genetics. And then, you know, who can win. You're more like a second-tier pro. Why?

Because of genetics. Inevitably, the conversation may circle around to, well, what if I wanted to push the envelope? You push the envelope and still be second-tier. You know what I mean? You can't tell me Dexter Jackson competing for 30 years

is not genetically blessed to the yin-yang. You know what I mean? You can't tell me Dexter Jackson competing for 30 years is not genetically blessed. You know what I mean? I mean, I still... And for someone to think, well, I would like to use what Dexter uses. You can. It's not rocket science. I'm sure he's using the basics and less than you think. Otherwise, you wouldn't have the longevity that he has.

How do you get somebody from good to great? I mean, all things being equal, you know, I assume that everyone steps on the Olympia stage is using similar tactics. But you took Sean Roden, I think, from like last place in the Mr. Olympia to first. Like, how does how does transition like that happen? It starts with a vision. It starts with a vision. If you have the genetics, you have to have a vision first. I will you know, I felt like when I was working with Jay, he can tell you.

I told him from like a kid, you're going to be Mr. Olympia. I felt like when I was working with Jay, he can tell you, I told him from like a kid, you're going to be Mr. Olympia. Yeah, he said he was 18 or something, yeah. Yeah, I pounded that into his head. Why? Because I believed it. And I told, I don't think, I'm certainly sure he didn't believe it. But as he was going and started seeing some like crazy changes, got tremendous genetics goes back to genetics again. And then having people like, you know, when you're an amateur, you know,

flex wheel or come up to say, you know, you're going to be something in the sport. You know what I mean? You start to internalize what people have been telling you. And if you never internalize that vision, you'll never be Mr. Olympia. You know, you have to internalize the idea that you're going to win that show. And you have to obsess about it. And you have to every day be uncomfortable knowing that you're not Mr. Olympia yet. So that you can be, so that can get under your skin and drive you there. And the irony of that is that I mean, when

Sean met Jay, Jay sat him down. Sean will tell you that story, or Jay will tell you the story, is Jay told Sean, spent maybe a couple hours with him one night, like three in the morning in Germany at an airport or a cafe or something.

And Sean said, you know, I want to be Mr. Olympia. He hadn't placed top ten. He was eleventh at his first Olymp something. And John said, you know, I want to be Mr. Olympia. He hadn't placed top 10. He was 11th at his first Olympia. And, and Jay set the vision for him that then you have to internalize the idea that I'm good enough to be Mr. Olympia, but just internalizing it, you know, you've got to act on it at the same time. So obviously you need the genetics. Obviously you need to know how to do it. You know, you have to know how to do the training for your body. You have to know how to do the diet for your body.

But ultimately bodybuilding is, or not ultimately, but a lot of success in anything comes down to mindset. And if you have to have the Mr. Olympia mindset. And that mindset is all encompassed in, you know, do you think really Elon Musk has any life whatsoever outside of stressing about Tesla if a stock is going to go from 290 to 210 today or if he's going to deliver for Wall Street, you know, 293,000 trucks? Because if he delivers 200,000, his stock's going to tank.

I mean, does he really have any relationships other than that company? The answer is no, he doesn't. And that's the mindset to making this dream of building electric cars and laying it all on the line, almost going bankrupt and trying to make gas-using cars obsolete. It's that mindset that you need in everything to be the best, and that's what you need to be Mr. Olympia. So that's why I respect every person who's won the Mr. Olympia title because they're all genetics.

I mean, come on, Coleman's genetics. Dorian Yee trained hard. It's genetics. You know, Sean genetics, Phil, perhaps the genetics genetics, meaning they all have what it takes, but still to get to that level and stay at that level is, you know, it's a vision and it's mental toughness. You know, when you were talking about, you mentioned Coleman, right? When you were working with Jay and Coleman was just winning one after the other, after the other, after the other.

You were talking about having a belief that you're Mr. Olympia. Was there ever a time where you, where they were just like, how, like, how can we beat this monster of a human? Or was it just consistent belief? No, it was consistent belief. And, you know, because people forget that Jay beat him in 01. I mean, he didn't beat him to 06. They didn't hand him the title to 06. But, I mean, Coleman, right, 98 wins, 99 wins, 2,000 wins.

So at this point, he's got three wins. That's not a lot. I mean, it's a lot, but he's got three and he's indestructible. And all through those wins, I kept on telling Jay, it doesn't matter. You're still going to get this guy. You're still going to beat Ronnie. And I think it was in 2000 on the tour after the Olympia,

Jay competed with Coleman and got second, second, second to him. And I personally felt at at least one of those shows Jay could have won. But it was the idea of Ron Coleman, Jay Cutler. Judge's perspective is still like,

Ronnie missed Olympia three times. Jay Cutler um but i was backstage at one show and i said i had a disposable kodak camera and i asked i said jay take this picture with coleman and um i took it i have it still and i he said why why'd you take that picture and i said because i just wanted to document it for you that this was the last time Ronnie would beat you. And Jay just ran with that. He said, that's it. He had already won, let's see, one, two, no.

He took the whole year off and got ready for the 01 Olympia. And that was the first time the Olympia was two days, unfortunately. But the prejudging went down and um looked to be like jay won and if you look at judges scores jay only got one second place vote in prejudging he had all first place votes at that show so i mean he had already taken him down quick people forget but he already beaten him early in the career it's just that what happened coleman went the next year you know up, up another level. And then, you know, it took Jay to 2006 to beat him.

How, how, how much do you have to like cultivate this championship mindset with some of the guys? Is some, some of them have it kind of already, or, you know, do you have to, I mean, that must be a big part of your coaching because yeah it's going to come down to like the calories and it's going to come down to training and drugs and genetics and a lot of things but this mindset must be something that you must communicate a lot to these athletes right well i push people a lot um and you and as much as i don't push like the championship mindset,

I always remind people like, you know, this guy's really beatable. He's not as good as people think. He's not as good as I think. I always try to put that into people's heads who I might be helping, who, you know, if they're trying win um 212 olympia i always told eduardo crea you can win the show i always told jose raymond you could win the show they've been second they haven't beaten flex but um you've come close you know certainly jose came very close in 15 and 2014 Eduardo Correa came close. So I think those two people have it anyway. You know what I mean?

They have that mental mindset, but you know, a lot of people you work with too, they, they're inexperienced, they're young. So it takes, you know, you can't just read it and believe it or you can't just hear it and believe it. It takes time. You know what I mean? You've got to. And a lot of that mindset, of course, is created by how you respond, not react, but respond to losses. You know, some people respond to losses like, OK, they they take it. It's a loss. It's disappointing. They regroup. They see if they can learn something from it, and they move forward.

Other people, it's just like the end of the world. And the people who take a loss as it's the end of the world, they're never going to make it to the top. And the irony is, right, Coleman started in 15th place at the Olympia, and Jay started in 15th place in the Olympia. Jay started in 15th place in the Olympia and, and wrote and started out of the top 10. You know what I mean? It's funny that those guys rose to the top, because if you had asked when they got 15,

do you think Warren Coleman's going to win the Olympia? People would be like, no, he's 15. Do you think Jay Cullin? No, 15. Do you think wrote? No, he can't even break top 10. 15. Do you think Roden? No, he can't even break top 10. So it's interesting that those people obviously learn something from those losses. And so you can tell someone or they can read it in a book, but I think, you know, you kind of sort of have to have it. You know what I mean? You got to have that mentality and you probably learned it outside of

something before you got to bodybuilding. You know, I know Jay learned it from working for his family in construction. You know, they just ground them into the grind. You know, they ground them. They made them grind every day working when he was a little kid. So maybe he had the work ethic. It was just, you know, taking the work ethic and parlaying it into something else. Do you have to be careful and maybe, maybe sometimes reserved with maybe the first thing that

comes to your mind when you are seeing pictures from some of the athletes like if they're let's say someone's a few weeks behind you know or they're a little off track you think um you know are you able to like jump down their throat and say something to them or do you have to be a little have a more soft approach to it or just does it just depend on the athlete no i i think most people know like when they're not in shape um i just sometimes remind them you you do know you don't look terrible just so there's no disconnect you have to be pretty pretty you have to be pretty blunt though. Just so we're on the same page. You do know that you look terrible.

People like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm, you know, I'm ready to get going. Right.

I think bodybuilding is such a interesting sport in the way that like you mentioned Ronnie and both Ronnie and Jay were 15th in their first Olympia. It's, I guess the climb to getting to first seems so crazy, especially when you've placed 15th in their first Olympia. Um, it's, I guess the climb to getting to first seems so crazy, especially when you've placed 15th, when you mentioned all that belief you need to have. Um, it's like you, you have to get better as you get older and it's such a long process. Has there been anyone like, I don't remember or no, but has there been anyone who just came in and splashed rather immediately?

Or is it, is it? Yeah. I mean, you know, look at Lee Haney from, I think, fifth or fourth or first, no, third to first. So he made a third, third to first, Dorian second to first, you know, their first Olympias. Of course, Phil was like fifth to like second to first. So it says as much about the people like Coleman J and Roden, you know, about their drive than it does anything else. Or it says something about Haney, Dorian's and Phil's phenomenal, either genetic slash luck slash hard work to be able to like, oh, I'm here.

I'm winning right away. I don't think we'll see that. For some reason, I don't think that I don't think we're going to see that much anymore. It's weird that those odd occasions people were able to just to like jump in

or even LeBne. I mean, he won the USA or the nationals and he was second in his first Olympia. I mean, it's crazy. I was an amateur last year. I won the nationals and now I'm second in the Mr. Olympia. Why don't you think we're going to like see that much? Because there's other avenues to compete in like people like, okay, I'm doing classic and I like that, or I'm doing men's physique and I like that. There's options for people as opposed to that was it.

It was just bodybuilding. Has anything changed about getting in shape since you were competing? about getting in shape since you were competing? I don't think anything's really changed. Just expectations have changed on what people's levels of... It's weird, right? I mean, you always hear people like, oh, the condition is terrible now compared to like 10 years ago.

Yes and no. It's funny. You didn't need glutes and hams 14 years ago. And now they're prerequisite. You won't even get looked at if you don't have glutes and hams. And yet you can have glutes and hams. You can have just average condition everywhere else. So you place high because you've have glutes and hams and yet you can have glutes and hams have no other you can have just average condition everywhere else so you place high because you got glutes and hams wow you know you know what i mean just a weird observation that um that people don't consider you to have to be in shape if you don't have glutes and hams and you know people go nuts

over the guy with the greatest glutes and hams i mean sean roden essentially had the best glutes and hams when he won right i mean you you could argue that the show came down to glutes and hams you know he out gluten hammed everyone it's funny though because i'm like in natural bodybuilding that's the same type of thing but it's more so glutes like if you don't have glutes, you're not in shape. That's what they say. Distriated glutes. Distriated glutes is what you need. You can't have a nice house without granite countertop kitchens

and stainless steel appliances. You're like, oh, yeah, do you see the rest of the house? Yeah, but it doesn't have granite. There's no glutes. It doesn't have granite. You have white refrigerator and a white microwave oven. It's not stainless steel. You have white refrigerator and a white microwave oven. It's not stainless steel. Aside from the expectations, the way that you got in shape, because we got some pictures of you here,

and I've seen some stuff from back in the day when you were at Gold's Gym Venice and stuff like that. It's still like chicken and rice pretty much, right? I mean, that's, you're talking about a moderate to low-fat diet, right? It'd be like saying, is there a new way to embezzle money at a company? They've been embezzling it. You know, it's like when you find out the bookkeeper's been, the bookkeeper's been cooking the books the same way they've been cooking them for, you know, 200 years. It's a formula, right?

Yeah, it's a formula. You know, it's a formula based on energy control. I'd like to say calorie control, energy, yeah, energy, calorie control, energy expenditure. But not much has changed, know not really i don't think a lot has changed i mean i got i got a book i wrote in 1996 1995 a bodybuilding and i just went to china and i said oh god i gotta do a seminar i hate seminars take the book on the plane and skim through it and i'm like okay same stuff i'm doing now nothing's changed yeah you know it's it's interesting when you mentioned um at least for the exercise aspect of bodybuilding how you don't you don't like machines that much because like i get it's it's so funny seeing like so many bodybuilders are like preach that

machines are the way to go if you want to isolate certain muscle groups hamstrings i think it's the worst it's so yeah no that's not that's pretty awesome and i'll stake everything i know on it i will um i think they don't i i don't want to isolate a muscle i don't know if i want to isolate a muscle i don't i i just i don't i don't think i want to train just and only feel my packs. I think it's okay to feel your shoulders and triceps. Maybe it's just a damn heavy weight that they have to come into play. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you're going to hurt yourself otherwise. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I, you know, I, I don't care if I squat and I feel it in my glutes and hands too,

as well as my quads. I don't know if I want to just throw that away and just use some machine that I go up and down, up and down, up and down. I can only feel my quads. I don't know if it's enough stress on the quads or just, you know, I don't see anyone's legs better than Tom Platt's anymore. I don't see anyone's back or I'll put Tom Platt's legs against

anyone's legs. He didn't do hammer strength. And I will put Samir Banoot's back double bicep from 83 against his blast Roden and Curry's back away. Right? You put the pictures up side by side. You think he did those machines? Phil, of course, is a different... He's got a great back double. Samir would say I'd beat him too, but... You know what I mean? They used free weights. Something I've always said from a powerlifting perspective is I,

I always thought the assistance exercises, uh, the only real importance of the supplemental exercises were the fact that they weren't barbell exercises. So it was more of a distraction away from continuing onward with the barbell movement to almost hurt yourself. You know, it's just,

so that's distraction, distraction, that total distraction. movement to almost hurt yourself. You know, it's just, so that's. Distraction, distraction, that total distraction. Yeah, that's all, that's, that's, that's all I ever felt that they were. I don't felt, I didn't feel like they were exponentially helping you any further. I actually just felt like it just felt like you were doing, it just gave you the illusion that you were doing more work. And, you know, it was also maybe preventing you from overuse of using the barbell. You know, it's, it's funny that you say feel, because I mean, I asked someone today, they, you know,

sometimes feeling will tell you what's going on. You know, and I asked someone today, he said, do I look leaner? I said, no. He said, do I, I asked him, do you feel leaner? I said, yeah, I feel leaner. I said, okay, you're probably leaner then. I mean, I can't see it from two days ago or three days ago, but maybe my eyes aren't as good as, you know, maybe the distinction is that small right now. But if you feel leaner, maybe you are. I mean, it's, it's a difference in, do you feel leaner? No,

I feel softer than, holy smokes, then you don't look any better. And I think you're telling me you feel softer then holy smokes then you don't look any better and i think you're telling me you feel softer so you know if you feel like those exercises just a waste of time maybe they are a waste of time have you ever had to talk someone off the ledge off of uh you know them saying that they feel fat or they feel flat and they want to abandon doing the show all the time i've had people quit on me 10 days out and win shows um i've had people want to pull out of a show three days out and not win the show but place extremely high in a very important show um yeah have you ever took us all apart at the end? You ever took us at the end? And that's why I always tell people,

you know, when, when, one thing I think, you know, go back to mentality is even people in the Olympia, you know, whether I help them or don't help them,

they're on the edge, you know, they're, they're, they're out of their minds. They don't know where they are the last 10 days. Like, am I, am I good enough? You know, that's out of their minds. They don't know where they are the last 10 days. Like, am I good enough?

You know, that's what they're thinking 24 hours a day. Am I good enough? Am I tight enough? Am I better than last year? Am I going to be better than this guy? Most people. You know, it's funny.

I will tell you this. Sean Roden, 10 days out, have complete, utter, no stress whatsoever or any thoughts about any other competitor. Same thing for Jay Cutler. I mean, they won Olympias.

And I'm sure Coleman would be the same way and Heath would be the same way. You know what I mean? You can't get caught up in things that you can't control. You ever recognize how ridiculous it is, the profession that you're in, where somebody's holding on to this little microscopic amount of fat and they're like, dude, I'm too fat. I can't do the show. Or my glutes aren't striated enough. I don't think I'm going to win. You're like, oh my God, this is kind of weird. It's a show of extremes, right? It's a pageantry of extremes. And yeah, I mean, people, right? They keep themselves up all night long worrying about their condition for the last four weeks.

Yeah. Have you ever had to just tell a client like, hey, you need to just go home and sleep? Because of them being tired or because of them being stressed out? I'm currently trying to shred down and obtain abs for the first time in my entire life. I'm being coached by Mark and Nsema and one day I just came in and I'm like, man, I don't know guys, I'm feeling extremely flat.

Mark said something kind of similar to what you just said he's like dude if we took a picture of you two days ago and then we took a picture of you today you would look the exact same and I'm like I don't know man like I don't I don't feel like I'm looking too good and then Encima was like well what's your sleep been like I'm like well it's always a struggle, but yeah, I probably should maybe get a couple more hours. And he's like, yes, you need to sleep right now. And so I went and got a couple nights of good rest and I woke up on the third day and I'm just like, oh shit, that guy knows what he's talking about. You need to go again.

Yeah. Not only mentally was I more in a positive mind state, but I felt like when I looked in the mirror, I'm like, uh-huh, there we go, we're back on track, guys, let's keep going. So I was just curious if at that level, I know everybody is, I mean, they have so much experience, but does that still slip up to where you're like, hey, guys, sleep is the other thing that you guys up to where you're like hey guys like sleep is like the other you know

other thing that you guys need to be tracking or you know it's just as important as x y and z well i you know i don't participate to answer that i don't participate a lot in people's training stuff right i micromanage the diet got it and when i don't need to micromanage i just let the diet run on its own. But I'll tell people, I'll insert myself at key times, I think, and tell people, you are overtraining. And I won't tell them to go to sleep, but I say, you know what? You can't train tomorrow or the next day. Just going to be a thousand percent waste of your time. You're going to go backwards rather than forwards.

So I think that falls under the category of rest, you know, sleep or slash overtraining. You've got to push your body to the limit, whether you're trying to do the, you know, the Long Island amateur show or the Mr. Olympia. You've got to push your body to the limit to, you know, break personal barriers. But at the same time, you do have limits. And that's why I hate when people say no limits. Every time I hear someone say no limits, I said, there's tons of limits. Yeah. You know, and you should observe limits. But, you know you have to know when you're pushing your body too much because when you push your body too much nothing happens or nothing good happens so you know rest and knowing when to

take days off from training and people laugh at me you know with me because who I help don't because I'm notorious for like I can't take a day off. I'm 10 days out. And I say, I want you to take today off and tomorrow off. Because, you know, 10 days is a long time when you're, you know, straggling and you're, you know, you're, you're, you know, you're at the tip of the mountain just because you're at the top of the mountain, you can, you can stay at the top.

You can slide back quickly you know if you're not well rested or you're too far over trained yeah and if so if we're able to separate uh bodybuilding from you know peds and then so maybe i guess that can fit in its own uh like level as far as how deep someone can be into bodybuilding. In your opinion, is bodybuilding healthy? I would say bodybuilding is very healthy. I think weight training is incredibly healthy. I think it's healthier than, by far more healthy than cardiovascular exercise. Weight one versus the other. Weight training smokes cardiovascular exercise. We weight one versus the other. Weight training smokes

cardiovascular exercise. How about this? Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I was curious about when you hear a lot about peak weeks of a lot of bodybuilders, a lot of bodybuilders do some wild stuff on peak week. That's just... Yeah, I call them disaster weeks. Yeah.

When you're dealing with, guess like rodin cutler etc do you like do you keep it simple or are there any weird is there anything that you bring out of left field to i guess bring anything more out of their physiques no i just don't want people coming into the show peak week for me is don't let people go into the show holding water. So, I mean, you can, you can, and you know what? The perfect peak on paper works until it doesn't work in real life. And people write these extravagant peaking processes down and they can manipulate one thing, two things, three things, or five things. And it looks great on paper, but it might not work at all, you know,

in real life. So if you end up on stage holding water, you're just torpedoed 16 weeks or 12 weeks or 18 or 40 weeks of dieting down the drain. The flip side is, I mean, look at Roley last year and Remy the year before. There were two biggest guys on stage and two most waterlogged guys there are. So, you know, so other than thinking, you know, don't, you know, don't be stupid and let this guy go on stage holding water. The flip side to that is don't let him go on stage being too flat too. But if I had the choice, I'd rather see someone on stage a little flat and tight

than holding a little bit too much water and not tight enough. Are there any concepts in terms of ways that you go about getting like drying athletes out yeah i'll try to deplete them you know i'll try to deplete them but i'm trying to think all the way through the process you know how really does this guy respond to like low carbs and depleting because when you deplete someone you can you run the risk of you know destroying all that prep by bringing them in too flat you know in other words i mean how many people have you heard about a scene i mean you see it just go to contests tv people like maniacs thursday friday everyone is eating like maniacs thursday friday probably depleted a little

bit too long or too hard yeah you know i mean so they're in the panic mode trying to refill back up could be um so i'm always aware of like how running into like a couple weeks out how sensitive they are to falling apart when their carbs go go low some people keep them keep their carbs low and they you know they're fine they don't they don't drink that bad they don't go too flat you know so if that's the case, I think, you know, I would have the confidence to deplete them fairly hard. Um, but if they fall apart, then I wouldn't deplete them too hard. I wouldn't, you know, drop their carbs too, too low. Um, and then, you know, the last three days, um, ideally I would like to carve them up, but I would,

I would go back to, you know, the I would go back to you know the diet you know were they able you know if I ever tried to introduce carbs would they look better or would they look better in a lot waterier I mean would they look fuller and just end up holding a lot of water so it depends on the person really but know, ultimately everyone's going to do probably should use some form of like depleting where the carbs are really low for three days and then loading where they go back up for like three days. I mean, it's, it's, like I said, it's tried and true, but you know, it's social media days and people go wacky, you know, and they,

they see so-and-so carbon up on this and they say, maybe I need to cover up on that. Or, you know, they see someone eating like crazy and they say, maybe I'm going to, you know, and they, they see so-and-so carbon up on this and they said, maybe I need to cover up on that. Or, you know, they see someone eating like crazy and they say, maybe I'm going to, you know, if I don't eat that, I'm going to be flat. So, um, it goes back to mindset again, you know, people, I mean, people get caught up in what other people are doing. Yeah. What are your thoughts on, on, uh, cheat meals? Um, do you think they're, they're important?

How do you factor them in? Or do you think it's just an excuse for people to go hog wild? I think it's mostly an excuse for people to eat. I think it's people get hungry and they say, I need to cheat because I'm hungry. Uh, um, I, I think there, there people are far less, uh, people, people seem to be doing them a lot. And I know people who, you know, I, I, I just, you know, I, I kind of help a lot of people this year and I didn't have people doing a lot of cheat meals you know I mean some I did with

really good metabolisms but most I didn't you know and some people would like email me what about cheat meal I don't even respond you know what I mean like on the first show then they get it after a while instead of emailing me let me text them what do you think about a cheat meal?

Not responding. Someone was getting ready for a show, which he won. He said, my anniversary is coming up. I didn't respond because I knew what that was being set up for. Cheat meal. Then he texted me and said, hey, Chris, my wedding anniversary is coming up. I said, I don't care. And he said, you don't care about my anniversary? Or a cheat mail.

I said, really? Actually, either. I'm not really concerned. I mean, you know what? I just had someone do a cheat meal because they're just like in shape and lean. And that's when there's not much harm to them. But this idea of like, you know, I get 20 pounds of fat to lose and having cheat meals is going to help me get there quicker or faster. You know, I don't really buy into that.

Do you ever sometimes use simple sugars, you know, a soda or something like that to help kind of refill somebody that's in shape? Or do you sometimes, I know sometimes some coaches will say like, oh, you need to eat like cake or you need to eat like a burger. Like do you employ some things like that or that's not really your style oh yeah sometimes what i'll do is instead of letting them uh a lot of times instead of having people like have their like carbs go way up and have like a cheat meal i'll say you know what you can work into your diet instead of, you know, the 225 carbs you're eating now,

you can get them for the next couple of days from anything. Calories are still pretty low. You know, the, the quote, you know, the, the insulin response is higher because you're eating crappier carbs, you know? And so I don't really care, but they, but, but the calories still don't go crazy high. How about sodium? Because back in the – I used to hear a lot that a lot of coaches would just be like when their athletes would make meals, they wouldn't let them use salt. They would only be allowed to use seasoning.

Nowadays, I hear of more individuals like, yeah, you can just have as much sodium as you want as long as you keep it consistent throughout your whole prep. How do you feel about that? Yeah, I think that people just like they, I think people eat way too much sodium and they, it's weird. I think people drink too much water and eat too much sodium. But just because it's like, I asked somebody, it's funny. Cause I'm, I micromanage, but I don't. And a lot of times I'll tell people like, oh yeah, we got three weeks out. By the way, how much water are you drinking? Sometimes you can meet these numbers that are I'll tell people like, oh, yeah, we got three weeks out. By the way, how much water are you drinking? Sometimes you meet these numbers that are insane. I'm like, why?

Five gallons. Yeah, yeah. You know, they give you crazy numbers. So I'll say, how much salt you got in your diet? And the guy's like, well, I put like, you know, 14 cranks of salt on each meal. I'm like, each meal? You know? But it's relative.

meal. I'm like, each meal? But it's relative. So if the guy's eating like 14 cranks, which is insane and stupid, now if he listens to this show, he'll know exactly what it is, because that's his word, cranks, and 14 is his number. Obviously, if he cuts down to

three cranks per meal, that's a big sodium deficit the last week. So he doesn't, he'd never be able to cut it out because it probably cramp up and go, you know, to the hospital, you know, just by reducing his own sodium down to nothing.

Well, I wouldn't say cramp up and go to the hospital, but if he added like a diuretic to it, he definitely would. So versus someone who's just, you know, putting a little bit of salt, you know,

on three or four meals, you know putting a little bit of salt you know on three or four meals you know a little bit um they may have to go really low sodium the last week you know to squeeze out the last amount of water but it's relative right you know it's it's like some guy who's making a hundred thousand dollars a year and then he's you know making forty thousand dollars his lifestyle is just torched yeah you know, making $40,000, his lifestyle is just torched, you know, versus somebody making, you know, $15,000 a year, going down to $8,000 is still half cut. But I mean, the guy making, you know, with the bigger income, even though his has gotten half, his lifestyle is completely upside down. So it's the person who's like 14 cranks down to three cranks.

It's still a lot of four cranks a meal. It's still a lot of salt, but his body's, the way it reacts, because there's such a differential between the peak and the amount of sodium to the reduction. That is as extreme as the guy who's just you know using salt a little bit here and there to like not how do you handle a quote like a refeed day or refeed meal um how do i how do i what like like uh is there like a certain protocol because i know you mentioned that you'll still keep people within like the uh the um the calorie range yeah and um i'm just curious because you know uh again this is something i'd never experienced but mark was like yeah you're gonna need to eat a little bit more tomorrow

but i was just curious like how do you handle those i mean i'll have people do refeeds you know and i'll have people eat a lot too because i'm doing i'm trying but um i was just trying to make the point that most people start refeeds before way before they even need a refeed it's like the guy you just hired for you you know for your company and he's worked you know 40 hour week and he wants a vacation it's like dude you put in you don't need a vacation yet you work one week versus the guy who think of that as the refeed you know the time off from work the time off from your diet you know the guy who works 22 straight weeks or 14 straight weeks you know hammering for you for your you know as your employee he takes quote the refeed the one week off, he goes on vacation, he comes back better than

ever because he's, you know, to work for you because he's refreshed. You know, in metabolism is kind of the same, but people want to like take that week of vacation after working for one, you know, one 40 hour work week. And same thing with the diet. They want to take the, you know, been on a diet six days and say, okay, I need a refeed. They want to take the, you know, been on a diet six days and say, okay, I need a refeed. You know, back, I want to ask you this, cause I'm really curious about this in terms of the peaking. When you look at, I don't know if you've, cause you've worked with a lot of bodybuilders, but when you see a lot of like, I guess in the natural bodybuilding realm, you, you find

that like a lot of higher, a lot of coaches that deal with those guys they don't deplete much water or sodium because they feel that if they if they are depleted they actually look much smaller just because their muscle bellies are generally smaller does anything that enhanced guys take affect water like is there like a more reason to do some sodium and water depletion on them versus on natural guys because when you see that on natural guys they just look bad usually what do you mean they look like when when a lot of natural guys are sodium and water depleted they just like look flat and soft you know yeah, you, you have to pound out the sodium and pound out, you know, out of the, the,

the non-natural athlete because the anabolics retain insane amounts of water. Ah, okay. Cloud the appearance. So, um, you know, you, you can try to pound the, you know, get rid of the water. And the reason the muscle looks better is because it's artificially inflated with anabolics. Okay. Whereas the natural guy, you know, you know, pull the sodium out of him and, you know, try to pull water out of him. It just leads to like a flat stringy look.

Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense because you hear them trying to do the same things and it just doesn't work. Like you just explained why. Okay. Are you a fan of a carb cycling? And if so, like how do you implement that? I am. I am. I like to, um, I mean, I don't use it a lot, a lot, because the way I do things is like so instinctual that it probably includes a lot of carb cycling, just I'm not aware of it. But if I was going to, if someone said he put together a diet for me, you know, for, I'd probably keep them on like, you know, three days, three days, like low carbs,

a couple of days, like medium carbs in one day, it wouldn't be a refeed, but it'd be like higher carb and then rerun it through. I think it allows people to stay motivated for the diet better. I think it allows people the one day that's higher in carbs. It does allow them metabolism, not to, not to speed up, but prevent it from crashing. I think that ultimately that type of diet versus a standard diet that's typically around the same calories, but lower in cal, but you know, same calorie level generally. Uh, I think you see better results from cycling your carbs. You just get something to look forward to, right? I mean, you have that, you're, you're just

like, Oh man, on Wednesday I get to eat more. That's going to be fun. Yeah. I mean, you may, usually the day, you know, the day after you can train better after that day too. So you can expend more, you know, it's always about expenditure and reduction, you know, how much can you expend and how much can you reduce? And you'll find people with, uh, you know, train really hard, don't have to do much cardio because they're, you know, they're, they're expending a lot, you know what I mean? Or their carbs don't have to do much cardio because they're, you know, they're, they're expending a lot. You know what I mean? Or the carbs don't have to go not always, but you know, as low because they're, they're, they're expending a lot to me.

So if carbs think of calories, because when you reduce carbs, you reduce calories, when your carbs are low, your calories are low. But if you're, you know, if you have in days where you are eating more carbs, maybe you can, most people probably train harder the day or two days after and they'll be able to expend more and ultimately get leaner. You know, on that talk of like cardio, when you were talking about it earlier, you mentioned like some guys do way too much cardio and you typically, you like them to get their deficit from their diet. I think that's what you were mentioning. from their diet. I think that's what you were mentioning, but so that people can understand in your opinion, what does too much cardio look like? And what does like a normal amount of

cardio look like? I know it varies from person to person. It's not a blanket statement, but what's, if you can, what's that look like? Too much cardio on your body looks like you're leaner, but only in certain body parts. That's what too much cardio looks like. You get leaner, but only in certain body parts yeah it's like your fat still wants to hang around so you don't not that everyone gets uniformly lean right we all have the areas that slow to burn off but and then also uh too much cardio looks like in the gym that you can't get a pump you know or your strength suffers or you you're moving the weights

with like far less aggression than you could previously yeah so the litmus test for each individual is am i not you know is my workout suffering you know my my only question all the way through crime test prep with people is how's your workouts i don't need to know the detail that can be you know said no no that's not what I mean. I said, you got a good pump. Yeah, I got a good pump. Okay. I don't need to know anymore. Or, you know, I don't have a good pump. Well, is your strength still there?

Yeah, my strength's still there. Okay. That's all I need to know. And that would allow me in my mind to be able to say, okay, then we can push cardio. You know, I mean, you can do more cardio. And then it gets to the point of like, you know, terrible workout. Well, what's terrible? You know, no mean, you can do more cardio and then it gets to the point of like, you know, terrible workout. Well, what's terrible? You know, no pump, no strength. Okay. Either cardio is too much or the diet is too hard. Do you think this is partially because like people are,

cause I see a lot of people taking like short, short, short preps. Is that a consequence of that? Like they try to stack a lot of cardio and a lot of dieting and it's a short period of time yeah people like to prep short because it's hard to it's hard to think long term you know if you that's the reason people like to prep short is because it's hard to think long term and it's hard to do things long consistently long term it's hard to get an employee to work hard for you for a long period of time anyone can work hard for you for five weeks then say what happened to john smith he was working for you. What happened to him? He was great for the first five weeks and he got lazy. So it's the same thing with contest prep. It's hard to do it for a long period of time. And I know people who work with me, they want to do short preps. Why?

They want magic or they want me to grind them down to the ground. But I would much rather, well, I would suggest longer prep for everybody because it just, it allows you to adjust to mistakes that you might make and everyone's going to make mistakes in their prep or uncertainties that, you know, pop up in the prep where, you know, gosh, last year I got, you know, I was getting leaner a lot faster than this year. Well, good, good thing you decided to prep a longer period of time because, you know, things aren't coming together as you expected.

Yeah. I like what you're saying about the workouts. I think that's something that we undersell ourselves. People will sometimes talk about how you can't, like, you know, out-train a bad diet. And, you know, we should be smart enough to know that that's true. Like, you're going to, you know, you can out eat any training effects that you have, right? But it is important that you feel awesome every single time that you work out and your workouts are productive. And if they're not, then you do have to start to analyze like why, like what's making them bad?

Am I not eating enough? Am I not well rested enough? Am I doing too much cardio? And then I think we also don't understand how quickly that can turn bad. You can overtrain and then end up having cravings and feeling tired. And there's just so many things that can happen based off those workouts. So I think that's a really critical point is you got to keep the workouts. You have to have good workouts.

And then a question I have about bodybuilding in particular, how important is it to get a pump and how important is it to try to maintain a pump throughout a workout in your opinion? Well, I think strength is important, right? If you're maintaining your strength, but also and maintaining a pump. I mean, pump is feedback that your body's responding to what you're doing. You know, I'm not, you know, it's blood flow, blah, blah, blah. I mean, if you try to like articulate what is a pump, it's blood flow, it's blah, blah, blah, it's bubbling the muscle. But why? You know, why is it there?

What I can tell you, the only thing I know about a pump with certain is it's feedback that something's's good to have and you can't get one when you're over dieting and over training um and if the pump is intuitively if you know it's that it's it's like the crack for bodybuilder there's nothing but what is better than the ultimate wacky crazy pump i I mean, just think of the best pumps in the gym. I mean, right? Yeah. If you could get the craziest pump on – if you know if you did 10 o'clock in the morning, you did chest and you had the craziest pump

and you know it was only from one hammer strength machine that you got at that. You do that. You'd go back to that. You drive three hours every day to do a chest at that, right? Yep. Would you not drive three hours every single day if you could guarantee the craziest ultimate pump? So, you know, there's something that it's like the ultimate feedback for something good's happening. So usually, you know, over dieting, over training, blah, blah, blah, over cardio, you know, kills that. So that's why I always ask people because I'm not there. I'm not training with them. Right. I don't even go see the people I work with.

It's even in the biggest level shows. I just ask them, you know, how's the pump? And if people tell me like four weeks out, insane, I'm like, okay, then we're onto something because you're getting, you're looking better anyway. You're looking leaner. But if they tell me like, it's terrible. Well, how about yesterday? They say like, oh, it's terrible too. Then I know something, you know, I'm pushing them too hard with the diet or they're overtraining or they just got the rut and cumulatively they haven't taken you know enough days off and something's got to happen with either the diet the training the rest to get to the point

where at least you got a good pump yeah you know because then you know you're you know that's feedback to your body that something good good's happening you know when we're mentioning overtraining and like dieting too hard i've always wondered when you see bodybuilders doing show to show to show every single year and they have a short off season back to prepping show to show to show isn't that is do you ever think that there's a point that they could be competing too much that if they took like a prolonged i I don't know, year and a half off season to just gain that they'd be able to make more progress than competing every year? Or is it just the nature of the sport that you need to compete every single year? Yeah.

I mean, it'd be like an army going from battle to battle to battle. It'd be just won by the fourth one, even if they're the best army on earth. Right? So it's, I mean, you need an off season to allow your body to get to the point where it's just ready to drag it back down. Because the whole point in getting ready for a show is you're dragging your body down a cliff.

You know, you can make it, you know, somewhat comfortable. You can make it and try to do things where, so you, you know, your metabolism doesn't slow. You can do a high days. You can do intimate. You can do the refeeds. You can take, ultimately you're dragging yourself down the cliff, you know, refeeds. Ultimately, you're dragging yourself down the cliff, you know, and to get down there, you have to be like ready to do it. You've got to be mentally ready, but you also have to be physically ready. You know, so doing multiple shows, it's always difficult for people.

You know, it's an on paper thing. Whenever people say, I'm doing five shows this year, I'm so motivated. I'm like, yeah, right. By the fifth show, you'll be like burnt. Yeah. Okay. Dragging yourself down a cliff. That's a, that is a, puts a great picture in your head. Yeah. It's like, how many branches do you want to hit on the way down? And how many, how many rocks do you want to split you open, you know, on your way down the cliff yeah it's not fun i i have people tell me all the time you know i don't respond like when they say i'm dead tired you know i don't respond to like i'm hungry i'm dead tired i need to i need a cheat meal i don't know that's good just ignore it i guess but i guess it's just the mentality because like you know when when talking to you about all of this is like you make it it is tough you know and i guess like whenever you're

always trying to find a way to make it easier i think like mark yourself said it's just not going to be fucking easy and that's just what you have to deal with yeah yeah it's it's it's not easy um i mean you you Yeah, it's not easy. I mean, it is not easy. And it's funny when I meet people and they say, can you work with me? And they say, you know, I'm ready to work. I'm thinking, does that really need to be said? I mean, I mean, if you want to be your best, not only Mr. Olympia,

but just your absolute best, yeah, you better be ready to work. You know, and it's, that's, that's what it takes to get into great shape. It's, you know, what would be a great bodybuilder on any level. It's a, it's a lot of work, a lot of consistency. We get any help from supplements or vitamins. You do utilize protein shakes or anything like that with some people you work with.

I use protein shakes. I don't use too many. I don't use too many, you know, I don't use too much protein powders. I do a lot with food. I am a big believer in multivitamins, multimin, you know, generally sports supplements, all the stuff. They're not going to make or break you. You know what I mean? They're not going to put it this way. way oh do you know how do you feel i

haven't got a pump for two days well that's because you take your multivitamins multimineral zinc you know glutathione branching amino acids it's it's a you know it's a combination of many things that lead to that that said traditional nutritional supplements that are available to play a role in your recovery and keeping your immune system more, probably more than anything else strong. It's not going to, and it's most likely not going to hurt anything. No, no, it's when I was in college, I had one side of the wall was completely filled.

It looked like a store with all the supplements I used to take. What about creatine? Tremendous, tremendous product. I think that's a must-have. Of course. It's a product you can take today and feel tomorrow. Even when shredding down, you still recommend people yeah people always say i'll hold water it's like dude come on i had to ask i'm just i just had to ask

most people tell me to hold water i say dude you're still fat yeah you're like that's the problem you're just still chubby and then in terms of the protein shakes like just i don't know what somebody has one once a day or a couple times a week something like that people use them like after they train right you know i'm still trying to figure out the whole gut problem right the gh the type of whey protein right so i i mean i'm trying to try to like and i'm still trying to i'm still trying to figure out in my own head like really is eight ounces of ground beef which one's better eight ounces of ground beef or two scoots of whey protein right my into it my instincts say the ground beef right you know on the note i don't know

when you mentioned gut problem if you meant actual stomach problems or the bodybuilding gut problem that you see a lot these days uh all of it all of it people people always tell me i mean people who aren't using gh how my stomach's all screwed up you know i'm always i hear that so often you know and i i come back to like protein powders. I don't know, you know, people using too many protein powders, you know, the whole idea of that much protein in a concentrate that you can put, mix up and put in this like little cup and drink it down. That's 60 grams of protein. That's a lot like just flying through your small intestines quickly, you know?

Okay. Yeah. And it would take quickly, you know? Okay. Yeah. And it would take you, you know, how long to chew on 60 grams of protein? It would take you a while, right? I don't know if it was meant to be. Yeah. You just get to sip it down. Yeah. And you can look at that like through any liquid, right?

Orange juice or anything else. I mean, it's kind of all, kind of all ends up being similar. I love the way you're simplifying everything. To people listening, some people might be like, man, this guy's just kind of like making everything seem so simple, but it is fairly simple. I mean, nutrition has always been simple. I try to share this with people all the time. Nothing has changed. You still have to work really hard. If you want to have a good body, then maybe you put some time into it. But if you want to have a great body, that's a full-time job.

It's a large requirement, and you're going to need a lot of help and a lot of assistance from either somebody like yourself or you've got the outside resources really to try to manage having a great body. Who is your favorite bodybuilder of all time? to try to manage uh you know having having a great body who who is um your uh favorite bodybuilder of all time like is there's do you have an inspiration that uh drove you to even start bodybuilding well um it's funny i uh i liked um i liked tom plat Platz when I was growing up because he had big legs. I had big legs. But I just realized this the other day because someone else had read the same book. I read, when I was a kid, I read Arnold's Education of a Bodybuilder.

And I bought the book somewhere, somewhere like at a garage sale. And I was like, wow, I'm doing weightlifting and bodybuilding. So I bought the book. And I bought the book and ran home to read it. And I thought it was going to be like, okay, like Mondays you do chest, right? Tuesdays you do back. And I'm reading the book and it's like I mean it's it's Anthony Robbins before Anthony Robbins was Anthony Robbins in other words it it talked about mental

your mental game and I was like in the seventh grade and I'd never I'd never nobody ever told me before about being mentally positive I mean I didn I didn't know what that meant, you know, when you're 13 years old and I didn't know what like setting goals meant. I mean, maybe this day and age people, you know, set goals for their kids and, and to work, you know, try to, try to instill in them that there are options. That was the first time I ever read something and realized, Oh, there's options in things. And Arnold kind of spelled that out.

And yet he didn't really, I mean, he was, he was talking way above and beyond, you know, weight training. And so that, you know, that was a huge influence on me because I was expecting to find out something to read in that book about physically improving yourself and it was mentally improving yourself, which as you're a 13-year-old kid, you didn't even know what's that all about.

Even though I thought he had a killer physique, of course, like everyone else, I think Arnold became a, someone to copy, you know what I mean? To, to, to steal his ideas, emulate whatever you want to call it in terms of you know, what how you your perspective on life. Cool. So I mean, because everyone's physiques you can fall in love with. You know, when you're a kid and you're looking at magazines, every single

magazine you open up, you're like, wow, wow, you know, they're all mind-blowing to you, right? So, I mean, pick any of them. You could you could you know, they're all mind-blowing to you, right? So, I mean, pick any of them. You could admire all of them. And greatest bodybuilder of all time, in your opinion? I think the greatest bodybuilder is Arnold because people have this stupid idea. They say, well, he wouldn't get 10th in the Olympia.

It's called groundbreaker. You know what I mean? He broke ground for everyone else. He broke ground for, I mean, his level of development in 73, probably would have, his 73 look would have won in, well, it did win in 74, 73, 74, 75, that look would have won, or would have killed that one in 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82. It wasn't until Samir strung it together in 83, and then Lee Haney in 84.

So for a decade, you know, he was ahead of his game. And when people caught up with him, I mean, he had to figure out all this stuff on his own. And at that point, people who came after him could model and steal the ideas that he had laid out. You know what I mean? I mean, when you're, you know uh people will take elon musk's car 20 years from now and they'll look at back the old tesla and say what a joke he's a junk or

they'll look at the iphone now and say look at the iphone one it was pathetic or a blackberry yeah but blackberry was the first smartphone they they broke ground so that's why, you know, I think Arnold number one, and the fact that he stuck around and has stuck around and supported the sport when he didn't need to, you know, I mean, he was right. He was number one box office guy for a long, long, long time and still putting on the Arnold classic or putting on the Arnold classic. So nobody's going to do stuff like that. How have you taken some of these principles of hard work and dedication to bodybuilding, you being a former bodybuilder yourself, and then instilling some of these lessons into, you know, a Jay Cutler and some of these other guys? Have you been able to take that outside

of the gym and utilize it in your own life? of the gym and utilize it in your own life? Yeah, I think in terms of, you know, I think you can borrow, I mean, bodybuilding is not easy and it takes a remarkable amount of hard work and you have to live it 24 hours a day if you want to be good at it. So, and I think business is easy compared to bodybuilding. So I've been able to take the principles of discipline, hard work,

goal setting, vision, and apply it to business, mostly because I knew business is not all-encompassing. You get time off. In bodybuildinging. You get time off. In bodybuilding, you get no time off. It's always like off-season into pre-season. You eat three days out, one bad meal, you're doomed. You can sign a contract in business and it has a little clause in it. If anything in this contract is screwed up, you get to go back and start all over again.

You know what I mean? Your lawyers have a thing in there. If we screwed it up totally, we have the right to go back and redo it all over again. It's like, oh, sorry, I screwed up prejudging. I get to go back and redo my peak week. I think by comparison, bodybuilding is still remarkably demanding demanding remarkably hard i always tell people god if you put the time and effort into something outside of bodybuilding that you do into bodybuilding you're going to be successful and then you mentioned uh how arnold had an impact on you

at a young age and you were unaware that stuff like that even existed, have it a positive mindset. Is this something that you share with your own children? Yeah. I share with my kids options. You know, I give them options. You know, do you want to, they were homeschooled or, you know, would you like to be homeschooled? You know, here's what homeschooling is and now they're not homeschooled, you know? And now that they're in public school, I said, there's options. You don't have to go to the same public school, you know, every year.

You can go to, you know, different public schools. You want to go to private school, let's go look at a private school. You know, there's, I'm always, it's funny because a lot of kids grow up in, you know, if you grew up in poverty, there are no options, actually. I mean, there's fewer options. And if you grew up in a disenfranchised community, there's less options. community, there's less options. And it's just a simple, it's a simple idea that options are available to us. In the profession that I do in real estate or something,

I'll often say to someone when they say, you know, this is an emergency. This is what we're doing. What else can we do? And there's nothing else we can do. It's got to be something else. People have their hearts, you know, people going for operations and the doctor gives them five different things that they can do. Yeah.

You know, what are our options right now? We're in an emergency situation. What other things can we do? Or what are the, you know, and what are the results of those possible things so um i i think if you um i think you you know being successful or i hate that word, but broadening your horizons by, by, um,

always believing that there are, there are alternatives or options to what you're doing now. And there might be a better way of doing things, including contest prep is, is a good way to go. I think that's great. A great thing to share with children is because,

you know, as a kid, your mind is always so blown when you hear that somebody else is doing something, you know, you just might not be aware. I remember my nephew, he was so excited when he could count to 10. And he came to me, he was like, Uncle Mark, Uncle Mark. He's like, I can count to 10. And I said, what about 11? And you should have seen his eyes just lit up. Like, I don't know nothing about no 11. Like, what are you talking about, dude? You know, I just got to 10.

Cut me some slack here. But it's great to let kids know, yeah, there are other options. You don't have to eat junk food. I mean, you can. There's some wonderful options in terms of junk food. But there's healthy food that tastes pretty good too. So you could give them options and then see which way they want to go with it. Yeah, no, I can't agree with you more.

And I mean, you hope with kids that anything that decisions that they make, they make good decisions. But, you know, you always want to, it just, you know, I get stuck on the idea of options only because like at that, you know, we could go back to the Arnold book, Education of a Bodybuilder and um i mean i went through you know just my environment i grew up in i didn't know that there's options on the table like even the idea of options you know you just were told what to do and there's nothing wrong with that to be told what you do too because it's the discipline in it but the idea of like you know there are options there are options for you to do in life you know you don't have to live where you live um there are options. There are options for you to do in life. You know, you don't have to live where you live. There are options, you know, on so many different levels. And, you know, with that in mind, it allows you to keep an open mind.

And I think an open mind allows you to create for yourself, ultimately, create for yourself ultimately, um, possibly a more comfortable lifestyle or, or, or more comfortable life or one with less, you know, stress and duress and, you know, one where you're living it rather than just like, it's like crashing down on you. You know, on this note of like, we're talking about all these options here. Um, when you looked at like at like when you see the evolution of bodybuilding and you see where you know classic physique is now a thing it's more classic physique is meant to i guess emulate the arnold era when physiques looked like that um how do you feel about classic physique do you like do you like the way that category looks versus bodybuilding or do you just do you look at it as two different things or do you just look at it as bodybuilding um i look at it as two different looks it's

bodybuilding and i love it um and the it's just it's uh unfortunate that we got to the place where we had to create it or it had to manifest itself from what had been rewarded as winners to professional bodybuilding shows. We all love mass, right? Everyone loves muscle mass, and the more is better until it doesn't look better. And I think that's what, what happened to the sport is it just took a turn where all the physiques look the same,

or there was less distinction from physique to physique, and where there was no room for somebody with a killer physique, just there was no room for that body, because he would ultimately get beat by somebody who might have an ugly big body. You know, I mean, there's big, I mean, real estate, there's big houses, and there's ugly big body. I mean, real estate, there's big houses and there's ugly big houses. And how much house do you need when you have the perfect? I can show you houses that are just mind-blowing that are 100 years old. They might have been remodeled a little bit. They're 100 years old.

They're brick. Yes, they've been remodeled on the inside. They're 2,300 square feet. They're craftsmen put them together with thought into each and every nook and cranny in that house. And that house would blow your mind over some 4,200 square foot house that somebody just put together in six weeks, you know, in a suburb 19 miles away from this house. So the point is, you know, there's, you know, there's bigger is not always better. And I think that that's what happened with the sport. It went, you know, took an odd turn and it, and it so much so that here we are with classic physique and,

you know, there's a lot of classic bodybuilders I look at and say, now that's bodybuilding, you know there's a lot of classic bodybuilders I look at and say now that's bodybuilding you know and you know do they weigh a lot

no are they gigantic no but they're put together perfectly right yeah it kills me when someone's saying

yeah he'd be incredible if he gained 20 pounds you know well he might gain 20 pounds but five of it might go in the wrong spot. And you'll say, you know what? He was actually a little bit better about 14 pounds ago. Yeah. How about guys like, I guess, Cedric and Millen, Sean Roden,

who you worked with or who you're working with. Um, they like, in terms of, I guess, the flow of their physique, even if they were bigger or smaller, they still seem fairly classic ish. If you get what I'm saying, am I wrong in saying that? Yeah, they're classic ish. I mean, they're more classic, you know, in 2012 than they are 2019. Yeah. But there's a.

I mean, you know, someone said, said well how do you define classic i said it's it's you know it's critical of somebody in the classic olympia place in high school just because he's muscular has the height and weight dimensions that meet that i said you know classic when you see it you know it's like you go into an old classic home and you say wow you know someone who's grown up their whole entire entire life in a city that's not too – in Las Vegas. You know what I mean? Like Vegas, they might come back to Boston and see a brownstone of it. You know, it's, wow, how'd they do this?

We don't even know how they do it anymore. They couldn't do it. You know, they couldn't do this anymore. So, I mean, there's a – you know classic when you see it, you know, and there's some people in the open with more classic lines, Sean and Cedric, then, then,

or even Brandon Curry than others. Just pure mass monsters. And there's nothing wrong with, you know, Rolly Wiggler at all, pure mass monster, or of course, Randy,

but I'm not going to name names for people. One big shows in the last six years who look like shit. And that should have never happened. Yeah. You know, so, I mean, you know, and the idea that the whole point that went down the wrong, wrong, you know, turnpike turnoff is that, you know, you had a classic pro show this weekend with 40 guys in it you know you couldn't have a pro show with 40 guys in it you could you could have a high we're having a men's open pro show you're gonna get 40 guys no you're not why because people

have decided that's not the look that i want for myself. And so the growth in the sport is, and I said this when the second Classic started, I told Dave Palumbo on our podcast, I said, and he laughed, I said, I think in, you know, five years, we're going to be talking about the Classic Olympia or seven years, definitely 10, and we might not even give two craps about the Open Olympia.

And that's where I would guarantee you there'll be as equal as excitement in the Classic Olympia this year as there is in the men's Open. It might have been this year. It might have been equally amongst purists, equal excitement about the Classic division as it might have been this year it might have been equally you know amongst purists equal excitement about the classic division as it was about the open especially with the big names missing in the open now that i mean that makes a lot not saying that like you know when people look at that or even i look at that uh classic versus like bodybuilding, um, even myself, like I just like the classic physiques better.

Like if, if I were to ever want to do that and not saying I could, but I would rather much rather like look like a classic physique bodybuilder than a bodybuilder. I'm not saying I can or anything, you know what I mean? But that's, you're exactly right about that. I mean, it's taste, right? Personal preference. But generally, there's a lot to see in a classic physique. You can draw your eye in on every pose.

And that's how you know when you have a complete physique, when every single pose looks off the hook you can look impressive there's a lot of people in the open Olympia are damn impressive on every single pose but for their bodies to look off the hook on every single

not only poses but just the movement into the poses then you know it's classic Chris thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. This was incredible. Thanks for sharing all that information with us. Yeah, you're welcome.

Thank you very much for having me. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you very much. Let's do it again. All right. Take care. Okay. Bye-bye.

Wow. That dude's smart, man. Yeah, he is. My stomach was trying to get on the broadcast. I was laughing, bro. I heard that shit. I was wondering if mine got on. Yeah, I think somebody else may have too.

Or it might have been outside. They might have been shooting their police thing over there or whatever. I heard something making noise in the background. Yeah, I was thinking maybe it was yours that was so loud that it was going into mine. Mine was going crazy for like 30 seconds. Dude, yeah. I couldn't even ignore it. Like making weird noises, you know?

That's just, you're burning fat. Yeah, exactly. Fat burning stages. That was so reassuring because you know over the past like since before this week i would say maybe a week and a half like i wasn't waking up hungry like i just wasn't even hungry period i think all people got out of that podcast was uh no cardio and oh yeah and more machines like whoops wrote that stuff the wrong way.

Like, that's what he said. But yeah. Yeah, being hungry, I think, is a good sign. Yeah, and then so now we cut down my macros a little bit. And yeah, I've been waking up a little hungrier than normal. And I mean, I think I've made a pretty good amount of progress over the past couple days. I also think, though, there's people that they don't, there's a lot of people that like you came from a place of already

eating pretty good, you know? But there's some people that when they come from a spot where they're eating very irresponsibly, they actually might find the food to be like hard to eat. Like sometimes you struggle with

the amount of food because now you're starting to not only have the micronutrient content but you're also getting the macronutrient content your body actually needs and you're just feeling more full all the time you're you're you're feeling better and yes if you're trying to get like lean lean and and really trying to uh have some crazy progress then you're probably going to have to be hungry. But that can also come down kind of slowly. And I love how he just didn't waver on anything. Like it was like, what do you think of intermittent fasting?

Yeah, like it sounds like it can probably work. He didn't say that keto doesn't work. He didn't say that no carb doesn't work. But he just implements what works. And it's like, oh, the person's getting leaner oh they got too skinny let's give him a little bit more food you know and he just it was so uh so basic and almost so nonchalant you're like i don't even know if i learned anything from that but what you learned is that the basics work yeah i mean you ask them you ask them on two different occasions like has

anything changed and it's like no nothing's changed right whether the diet or the training right so yeah yeah just confirm more of what most people kind of already know but now this just cements it a little bit better yeah and some people might be wondering like why we didn't ask him about you know a lot about steroids is like he would just he would just throw out the same basic stuff. There's nothing new. People take testosterone and other things to get ready for a show. He also is a guy that one thing that we didn't really cover, he did talk a little bit about how he might carb cycle people,

but he'll audible a lot, just the way a lot of contest prep coaches will. He'll make adjustments a lot like he might say, oh, okay, well, you need to do cardio over the next three days for 30 minutes. And he might pull it back out or need new pictures or whatever. And then he might bring your carbs back up or bring your carbs back down. He's going to adjust on the fly. And I'm they probably do similar things with with some of the drug protocols but you're not really going to gain a lot out of that because that's going to be so uniquely different for each person so i hope people really like with what he was saying about like you know some of these higher level bodybuilders drug use i hope people really like

pay attention to that and believe it because like when you hear a lot of these higher level bodybuilders drug you so people really like pay attention to that and believe it because like when you hear a lot of these guys on youtube and see that shit that like the amount that they're taking people really think that's normal like that that's not normal yeah like that is some that is dangerous the amount of like shit that these youtubers are taking and barely making any progress you know yeah that's he's like he's right these dudes aren't taking much shit people don't want they don't want to hear that they don't want to hear that and i i like how he's brutally honest about it too like you won't be mr olympia no matter how much you do you won't be you know do you know how many power lifters there are that are already on

lifters there are that are already on massive amounts of stuff when somebody brings up larry wheels someone's like oh my god dude he's on massive amounts of shit and you're like well you use stuff too you know you you know it's it's crazy though but that's like that's the go-to thing and it's like well i don't think that's the difference, but okay, whatever makes you feel good. Yeah, it's literally, yeah, it's whatever makes you feel happy, feel okay with it. That makes you more comfortable with yourself and you'll go for it. Oh, you're right. That's the difference. Yeah.

But you know what really is funny? When we were talking about peak week, man, if you ever were to go to you ever were to go to like natural shows, I don't know, like you'll probably see this more now too. Um, and ask like, what's the, some of these guys did on peak week when they look horrible. They're like, yeah, it did all this depletion and all this stuff and it just didn't seem to work out. But yeah, like, like he, he explained it. It makes sense.

I didn't realize that anabolics like make you hold so much water, but that is why they have to do that shit. If you're a natural guy that's doing a show, you shouldn't get rid of water. That's the one thing that's helping you be full. Keep that. It makes a large difference. I actually think a lot of times

the natural guys can look a little leaner sometimes. They can look a little drier. And maybe that just has to do with the – maybe that has to do with like what he was saying, anabolics kind of making you hold on to water and maybe just hold on to other nutrients.

And maybe it's hard to get as dense. Obviously, you can look a lot bigger. You can look a lot crazier. But like in Alberto Nunezz i mean that you don't really see like alberto nunez like one time when we were podcasting with him a few years ago i mean he had like striations in his jaw and i'm like i've never seen that i don't know what's going on but it looks crazy like whatever that shit is it looks crazy yeah the the condition of high level natural dudes it's really it's really really crazy but

the thing is they don't do crazy stuff on their peak week it's pretty much like if they're in shape they just keep it all the same until showtime it's it's not fancy at all powerlifting is the same thing you know people flip out the last few weeks uh before before they get into a competition they're like oh man like my i shouldn't have bought a different belt that 13 millimeter belt was so much but oh man maybe i should put that back on oh wait should i use a lever belt oh wait i was squatting better a couple years ago in flats or they go back and watch an old video from like six years ago and they they're like oh man i was close to my max that i do now i oh man i should maybe switch all that other training program was better. Maybe I should go back to three sets of three.

You just doubt. For some reason, you start doubting everything. Normally, you got to try to keep your cool. If you do have a coach, you probably paid them. Just believe in that and work on that and trust in that.

Then when the show is over, the competition is over, you can always reevaluate what he could have done better. But there's this saying that says, the time to learn how to run is not when you're being chased by a lion. So when you're going full blast in a competition, that's not the time to really switch things up, man.

It's just hold steady and try to stay on that program the best you can. I've been still peeing like crazy. I don't have... You tried hanging upside down? No, that'd be a bad idea. Because you guys know

the other side, the taint is like it's got lockjaw, right? I can hold my poop in pretty good. Your taint has lockjaw. Yeah. Yesterday morning, it's early, it's dark, I can't see. So I go by feel around the house. I kind of have an idea where I am.

I'm like hurrying to the bathroom. Like, I got to do, this is going to be a close one. So I normally feel and I swing my right arm around to feel the bathroom like i gotta dude this is gonna be a close one so i normally feel and i swing my right arm around to feel the bathroom door sill like it's just like boom touch it light on yeah i go for the door sill i miss i take an awkward step and and i peed myself i i couldn't believe it i'm like ah am i an adult what's one one small misstep and i that was it i had to pee so bad i have to get you some diapers i think so i'm like concerned do some kegels bro there's an app for that you know no no seriously there's an app for everything there's a kegel app it'll like count down and his pelvic floor needs some help

yeah does it calculate how much like pressure you can hold in yeah actually um it's it's supposedly like it has a different programs building up from the basic program so it gets more advanced you hold for more seconds don't't ask how I know. Just know that it does this. The progression, right? Yeah. It's progressive overload. There it is.

That's what it's all about. Has there been anything weird that's changed in your diet in the last few weeks? Like everything's been kind of like not that much different than what you've done before, right? Everything's the same. Yeah. The exact same. I mean, we did alter how much i am eating but it's still it's it's chicken and rice yeah yeah that's it and i i don't i don't have any um like uh i don't do any kind of like drinks of any kind other than sparkling water i'm trying to think uh i guess

the newest thing that i implemented was like i'm having salsa with um egg whites yeah a super awesome bodybuilding hack or shredding hack is um get a mexican girlfriend because they can make amazing homemade salsa and it's it's insane like i i don't feel like i'm on like any kind of like restrictions because i have just a like a cup full of egg whites with salsa and it's it's it's really good yeah yeah and then of course like when i do make chicken people you know like i can't can't do chicken but i've been using caribbeq and like that chicken seasoning or chicken rub yeah dude it makes a world of a difference it doesn't make any sense and then that of course with um i will mix in once in a while the um redmond's uh seasonal

that stuff's really really good but all in all dude like no i'm not i haven't changed anything yeah yeah just i mean it could just be continuing to lose weight could be peeing some of it out peeing peeing out some of that body fat yeah i mean i would i was crazy so like when the piedmontese people were here like they had extra uh flat iron steaks and I put that in my macros and I'm like, I can't believe this is, this is like more lean than like chicken. It, it, it was insane.

Yeah. So adding in that protein. Yeah. Yeah. So that made that, it was pretty cool. I was like pretty far, not ridiculously far over, but I was over protein last night and it was pretty awesome.

How many days do we have left until the unveiling um i think only like nine days nine days yeah this is what i've been doing like every so often let's say how many days till christmas you asking siri or something yeah nine days till then sorry i thought i had the had the volume up. I was like, wait, what? Yeah, so I'll just ask Siri how many days till Christmas. Yeah. Siri just told me nine days. And you've been counting down with a little chocolate every morning? Mm-hmm.

No. A little chocolate calendar. I have seen those. My nephew got one, but no, I don't have one. I have no idea what you guys are talking about. I don't know what this thing is. Chocolate calendar? Wait, is this like a weird?

No, it's like a little kid thing. Oh, okay. It's like a countdown every day. They get one piece of chocolate. Yeah, they just open it up every day. It should be like a piece of jerky or something, though. A piece of meat. Yeah.

Yeah, it was awesome having him on the show today and um you know it's so obvious on how he gets along so well with jay cutler i mean they seem like the same person they sound identical yeah yeah man they seem very uh they seem very similar like it's a no bullshit approach and you got to work hard at it. Man, his physique was amazing when he was younger. Yeah,

I mean, he was, I mean, that's always, that's always the impressive thing, right? When it's, he's not just coaching it,

not just talking about it. He actually went out there and he did it. He looks, yeah, he looked awesome. Jay said he doesn't work out anymore though. Yeah, anyway, thanks to our sponsors.

Really appreciate our peeps at Quest Nutrition. We got some of the donut bars just sitting right here on the table, but I think that there's one more left. There's only one more in there. We have to keep it there so everybody can see it though. Quest also has, not only do they have a million different kinds of bars, a million different types that you can kind of get all over the place. They're at 7-Eleven and everything. You can see them at the airport.

Somebody was asking me the other day about how do you eat when you travel. I was like, the same. It's not any harder, especially, especially nowadays, like things have improved a lot. And, uh, there's great companies like quest nutrition. There's great products kind of all over the place, but, uh, there's standard traditional quest bars are fantastic. And then nowadays they got the hero bar, which we talk about that a lot. Those are damn good. Those are damn addicting. They have cookies. They have chips. They have pizza.

You're going to want to check out Quest Nutrition and what they have to offer. They also have protein powders that you can cook with and make up all kinds of different recipes with. Head over to questnutrition.com at checkout. Enter promo code MarksQuest for 20 20 off your entire order yeah that was cool having pete montes here for the seminar and then having them on the

show they explained a lot you know i don't i don't know much about uh meat other than i just love eating it so it was great to hear them uh talk about their business and just how much how much they care care about the company and how much they care about what they're putting out there. And we appreciate the hell out of them. They're always good to us and it's just a great company. to try to get more protein in and you don't want the fat to go along with it check out some of the piedmontese steaks and sitting on the table right here on our podcast we got some of the beef jerky even yeah i've been getting a lot of dms from guys that are that have been getting their beef and it's just like it's all good everything like everyone's talking about how freaking good it is yeah across the board all the, they're just, the fat is lower in comparison to anything

that's out there. It's amazing. Yeah. And the conversation that we just had with, you know, Chris Aceto, I mean, he was saying how, you know, he utilizes some carbohydrates in people's diets and it's higher or lower with people. And we always talk about how much protein you need. If you're going to overeat on anything, it would be the protein.

And then the hardest thing to manage for most people is just the fat calories. And how do you have food that tastes good that doesn't contain large amounts of fat? Because like fast food restaurants and a lot of these other things, it's when we get the fat calories up along with the carbohydrates at the same time we end up with delicious foods a lot of times but piedmontese steak tastes really good even without the extra calories yeah that's how you do it you head over to piedmontese.com that's p-i-e-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com uh right now through the rest of the year they're giving everybody 25 off the entire order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free shipping.

So, yeah, you don't need a special promo code this month. But if you want to support us, use the link in the YouTube description and the podcast show notes. And I've been on this no carbs till Christmas kick since the 1st of November. That's got to be tough, right? Yeah, you know, it's not easy, but when you got snacks, you can kind of bypass that. I'm not big on snacks. I try not to eat them too often, but sometimes at the end of the day, I'll reach for a Perfect Keto bar.

I'm still in ketosis. I actually have the strips that you can pee on that they sell through Perfect Keto as well. You can go on their website and purchase them off of there. And I'm still in ketosis and have been for a little while now. So still feeling good, still feeling strong. Everything's coming together training-wise. Strength feels like it's actually coming back up now that my body weight has kind of leveled off. And I think it's because of the nutrition and it's because of being motivated enough to kind of stay on the diet and keep with the diet, which is usually the hardest part for people. But a lot of the products over at Perfect Keto, I think they're not only going to help me.

I think they'll help you. So check out some of the stuff from Perfect Keto. They have actual ketone products that you can put into some of your drinks, some of your coffee. The Nootropic has ketones in it. They have protein powders that have MCT oil powder in there. And then we often will utilize the MCT oil powders in our coffees and things like that too just to help enhance the flavor. Yeah, I was just thinking the pea strips, I don't even need to make it all the way to the bathroom to use them.

Yep. Anyway. Just stick them down the front of your pants. Yeah. I'm actually going to buy some of those because I think I make ketosis more than I think I am, like more than I expect. So I'm going to buy some of those after this. Yeah, yeah.

You guys got to check them out. Head over to perfectketo.com slash powerproject at checkout. Enter promo code powerproject for 15% off your order. And I think that's all the time we got. Where can people find it, Andrew? Hit me up on Instagram at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where you at?

And Seema Eang on Instagram and YouTube. Mr. Mark Bale? At Mark Smelly Bale on Instagram and YouTube and Twitter. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later. Bye!