Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 328 pt. 2 - Train Like a Bodybuilder ft. John Meadows

Episode Date: February 13, 2020

Part two of our two part series with legendary bodybuilder John Meadows. In part one, John talked a lot about dieting, part two covers recovery, training techniques and PED's! John “The Mountain Dog” Meadows is an IFBB Pro Bodybuilder, training and nutrition expert and entrepreneur. John works with many different athletes across the country to help them reach their physique goals. If you like this episode, please go back and check out part one here: https://lnk.to/johnmeadows1 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT10" at checkout for $10 off $40 or more! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

What up Power Project? Welcome to part two of our two-part series with legendary bodybuilder John Meadows. In part one we talked a lot about diet and what it takes to eat like a bodybuilder. In part two we're going to talk about what it takes to train like a bodybuilder with a little bit of discussion about steroids. If you are a fan of John Meadows and a fan of bodybuilding then you know the struggles when it comes to eating meats, steaks, and high fatty cuts of beef. However, we have the answer to all of that. Our friends over at Certified Piedmontese have the absolute best beef on the planet.

Somehow they've managed to add more protein, less fat, all the flavor, all the tenderness, and somehow cooks faster than regular store-bought beef. Head over to piedmontese.com, that's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Head over there right now. Check out the Jacked and Tan Pack and the PowerProject Deluxe Bundle. Unlike other bundles, our promo code actually works on these ones. Thank you so much for checking out part two of our two-part series. If you enjoy this episode, please go back and check out part one. But for now, enjoy the show. You know, in terms of recovery, because I guess we can go down this rabbit hole a little bit too, you alluded to natural versus enhanced quite a bit already. And we know that a lot of drugs help you recover much better, which is partially why a lot of these guys can get bigger is because they're just recovering so much faster than the guy that doesn't take anything. So I guess what are the, what different factors to guys that don't take any drugs? What can they do

in terms of, I guess, their programming, their nutrition, obviously you mentioned peri-workout shakes and stuff. What can they do to recover better so that they can also make a lot of progress over time? Yeah, well, let me start with what is not a good idea. Because I hear a lot of chatter on YouTube and everywhere that, well, if you're natural, you can't train hard. The only guys that should be training really hard are the guys on gear. Okay, I think we're all in agreement that it's harder to build muscle naturally. So explain to me why training easier is going to help you grow faster. So first of all, don't buy into that line because that's crap.

That's straight crap. Now, I mean, if you look at it, so if you look at, like, for example, muscle protein synthesis, and when you train, like I said, 24, 48 hours, you know, for a muscle, it's turned on. Here's what you don't want. So let me go with kind of basic number two. When a muscle is recovered, train it. So if you train legs on Monday, and you're into this, I'm going to start with the natural side first. So if you train legs on Monday and, you know, it's been 48 hours, 72 hours, what have you. And you're ready to train them again, then do it. Don't wait like three or four days.

You know, you're leaving gains on the table, as we like to say. Right. So train them when it's recovered. First of all, I don't think it's a good idea to train a muscle when it's not recovered. OK, now let's say the muscles really sore. You've got a couple of different approaches. You can you can wait longer to train it, which I think is a fine option, or you can pull back on your intensity. So you're not as sore. That You could argue that's a good idea or a bad idea. It could go either way. But here's the other thing about anabolics. So they have a massive effect on your cortisol. Just like how anabolics will attach to this androgen receptor, and then it goes to your DNA and it fires up the protein synthesis. So these guys on gear,

and A and it fires up the protein synthesis. So these guys on gear, their protein synthesis is firing all the time, 24 seven, seven days a week. That's why you can get away with training something once a week. For naturals, that's not the case. I'm not saying you can't make progress that way. I'm just saying for most natural guys, it's probably not the best idea. You know, you want to take advantage of the muscle protein synthesis, but then when it stops, you can't let the muscle just sit for four or five days. You got to train it. But anyways, so cortisol kind of does the same thing, attaches to a receptor, talks to your, it kind of occupies it. So cortisol doesn't run wild. You know, there's, there were many, many thoughts back in the nineties that the biggest effect from steroids came from the anti catabolic effect.

And so much so that we used to use this drug called cytodrine. You remember that one, Mark? I've heard it before. Yeah. Yeah. We used to use that. It didn't, it didn't work the way we thought it would. But what, but that was a big thought. So then, so anyways, so. Let me get back to my point. So the guys who are training natural, they don't have this advance or this disadvantage of kind of suppressing cortisol. So what happens when you're training just crazy hard and you're doing high volume?

What goes up? You know, your cortisol levels will start to go up. So then you have a really hard time recovering. up. You know, your cortisol levels will start to go up. So then you have a really hard time recovering. So you've just got to set your programming up so that you can recover from it. And what I'm not saying is to not train hard. I'm just saying you may need to manage your volume because higher and higher and higher volumes for a natural, it's a double-edged sword because if you start cranking all that cortisol then these guys get real tired they're worn out they start getting weaker so you just got to be very precise in how you program and even saying but having said that though remember everybody's different people tolerate different amounts of stress so at the end of the day it's still the principle of

individuality you still have to experiment. There's not a single scientific study I've read that I just took black and white, and that's what I'm doing. Experiment. You've got to experiment. This is the beauty of experience is you learn these things as you go. And 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, and then you start to figure out, hopefully, what's working for you and what's not working for you. But anyway, so I hope that helps. Yeah.

Experimentation, I think, is huge. And part of the definition of an experiment is that you don't know the results. And so you're not just constantly testing theories that you know for a fact are going to work. You're testing theories that you think are going to work based off of other information that you maybe gathered from a friend or somebody else, a coach, and maybe just your own history. And you're like, oh, I think I'm going to start to try to train my arms this way.

And that's when we kind of start to get into the definition of us being meatheads is we're constantly thinking of like, oh, I wonder if I went down slower on that movement, if I would gain a little size on it, a little bit more emphasis on the negative. Or I wonder if I started to implement a little isometric training, you know, what that would do for me.

But it makes it a lot of fun to be able to mix it up and to be able to get stimulation from so many different areas. And you're mentioning muscle protein synthesis. That happens from, you know, eating protein, correct? as well as getting the training effect in there, right? Yep, absolutely. So. Yeah, I mean, the diet part of this is interesting too, because, um, you know, I think that, I think

a lot of the people in the natural audience maybe don't think they can handle much nutrition. Um, but again, as Mark was saying, you don't know experiment, you know, see what you can handle. Um, so anyways, um, gotcha. And, you know, on the, on the line of also recovering better, we had big J here recently So anyways. elbow a lot, but he'll get a lot of chest activation still. Now you've been training for decades now and not just training, you've been training really, really hard for decades. And it seems as though you're still training hard now with minimal issues as far as your body's concerned. So what I want to know here is over the decades of your training, what kind of, I guess, what, what, what kind of techniques do you employ in terms of when you do overall movements to make sure that your body isn't, you know, beat up over the years? Like, how did you

manage that? Do you like limit how much, how much you lock out certain joints or that's what I'm trying to get at here. Oh yeah, no, that I, um, I love talking about this because this comes with experience. And when I was in my early twenties, um, I trained at a gym that had a lot of powerlifters in it. And they told me, John, you got to bench press first, deadlift first, squat first. And so I'd go in and bench press, and I kept getting pulls. I had probably 30 near pec tears. Okay. So at some point, I said, you know what? I don't think this

sequence is working out for me. Like every time I go into bench press heavy, I pull something. So I started playing around with the sequences and exercises that I felt were very hard on my connective tissue. I moved them down the list. Like, let me do the other exercises first. They're a little more joint friendly. Then when I get to that exercise, you know, I may not be as moving as much weight, but that doesn't matter. The muscle just knows the load on and how hard it has to work. So when I did that, that is the single biggest thing I did that I think helped me. Just exercise sequencing. And you don't really hear people talk about it because there's no studies on it nobody can read a book about it but you learn it with like I'm guessing for example

if you guys have an exercise that you think really bothers you you're probably not going to come flying out of the gates with it full go so that was that that helped me I've also had a lot of work done over the years, like deep tissue work and ART and MAT. I get deep tissue work done every week. I've had it for probably almost 20 years now. Wow. So those things help. And the other thing is, is there are certain exercises that I like to take through a full range of motion. And I think that's good for your joints to work through a full range of motion, but not all of them. There are certain ones where it feels right, and there are certain ones where it don't. For example, like a preacher curl. I'm not going to let my arm go completely out straight. I feel like you're really risking

a tear with your bicep. That just doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Now, I can do a hack squat, though. Go down nice and slow i can get really deep stretch out my quads that feels good to me so i think you as you experiment i think you find certain exercises that you can go full range of motion with and then other ones you know when i do an incline barbell press i stop about an inch or two short above my sternum and everybody's like oh you're cheating you're cheating. You're cheating. I'm like, well, you know, if I go down and touch, I pull my pec and my rotator cuff hurts. So I'm going to take the cheating. I'll just cheat. And I think as you go, you find out stuff like that

with your exercises. If you're paying attention to your body, it tells you like, does this feel okay? Does it not feel okay? Yeah. I think finding exercises that, you know, it's great to find exercises that allow you to use maximal weights. But at the same time, those maximal weights could end up putting you into a predicament, especially when you've been training for a long time. Because you know how to fire your muscles and you know how to push into it. And you're probably going to be moving a pretty good amount of weight. So even just to kind of go along with what you're saying, if someone was to simply just do a couple sets of pushups before they hit some bench pressing, you know, if they did four sets of 25 reps on a pushup with, you know, 45 seconds rest, a minute rest, and it's not going to torch you, but you activated the muscles, you got a lot of the muscles

warm and it's going to be more difficult. And I love the bodybuilding principles of like, hey, let's, you know, everyone has their own kind of touch on things. But the general idea is you're getting in a good amount of work in a condensed period of time. And so, you know, from a powerlifting perspective, we need to kind of like ride over these speed bumps a million times in order to get stronger. But we can't do it a million times in order to get stronger, but we can't do it a

million times in terms of the reps because we'll be in bad positions for too long during the workout. So we have to do it with many sets or we have to do it just over a long period of time with 80%, 90% and so on. In terms of bodybuilding though, you get to kind of run through those speed bumps where you can come out the other side, though, you get to kind of run through those speed bumps where you can come out the other side, getting what you needed to get out of it, simply by doing the amount of work in a condensed period of time, because you got a certain amount of volume that needs to be done. And you just get fatigued. You know, if you're like, all right, Mark, here's what you're gonna do. You're squatting with me, and we're gonna do, you know, three sets of 15.

And maybe the first couple are kind of like warmups, but they fatigue me. Cause I'm not used to training the way you're training now. You know, we, I get, uh, you know, eight reps deep on set number two, legs are already really burning, you know, and you start to really get that stimulus. And now if I get rounded over in these squats, uh, it's not going to be detrimental to my lower back. Cause the odds are I'm probably using like three plates or something like that. Yeah. I mean, like if there was one thing I would tell people for longevity, that would be exercise sequencing and paying attention to what's

bothering your body. I just think that's very underrated. And, you know, what I found too, like for instance, with my chest was when I took that approach, my chest actually got bigger. I mean, I felt like the bench press was actually then a better move for my pecs. I mean, I don't know that you'd call it classic pre-exhaustion because I wasn't doing a fly. I might just do a dumbbell press instead or a machine press. But what I can say is the actual development of muscle did not suffer at all. In fact, it got better. So it's not a compromise. I think it's actually good planning.

It's good programming. You know, the fact that you made that one change in the sequencing and you grew, that's kind of crazy. But I want to see if we can go back to that point where you said like you were stalling out for four or so years in terms of your muscle gain. And then you started adding peri-workout nutrition, which led to better recovery, which led to more growth. As far as I guess, the amount of muscle that an individual can gain, whether natural, whether enhanced or whatever. When does someone know that they've become like an advanced level trainee? Because a lot of people, you know, they've been training for whatever, six years, like I'm not getting much bigger.

They may think they've tapped out, but you know, the court, like there's so many training things that they can add in to allow for more growth. So how does one kind of like blast past that plateau if they think they're there? Well, that's tough, right? It's hard to say. Like when you do hit your P, in order for you to really say that, you would have to know for a fact you can't get any bigger. And that means you've manipulated every variable possible with no success. And I think most people, you can't say that. You can't say they've really manipulated every variable and done everything they can do because that's truly what you would have to do to say with certainty, I'm at my genetic limit.

You know, when you get to, so when I think about beginners and intermediates and advanced, I don't necessarily think about the time in a gym because I've seen a lot of guys that have been lifting 10 or 15 years that I would still consider beginners based on their exercise performance, the way they train, and so forth. So I think it's really good to have, for example, a good mentor, somebody who knows what they're doing, somebody with a lot of experience. I mentioned my friend Dave Tate earlier, tons of knowledge, somebody that I could bounce ideas off of. I think it's good to have people like that, that you can, that can mentor you and help you and teach you what to do.

When I was younger, I always made it a goal to search out people that knew more than me and that were smarter than me so I could learn from them. I was very hungry to learn. In fact, today's Monday, Saturday, I was just training with Brandon Curry, very hungry to learn in fact um today's monday saturday i was just training with brandon curry who's our champ mr limpia and it was cool for me because i'm wanting to learn from brandon you know we're we're doing a workout just got put up on my youtube today actually a couple hours ago but i love learning i love it um i mean he showed a couple of things I hadn't really thought about. And like for me, I feel like I'm hitting the jackpot. So I just love learning.

So I think when you get to that advanced stage, you've got to continually learn, get better, work with people smarter than you, work with people know more than you. And as you go, you'll get you'll figure things out yourself. And as you go, you'll figure things out for yourself. You'll come up with things, exercises and things that will work for you. But it's a combination of who you're surrounding yourself with and experiment. You know, Mark mentioned experimenting earlier. Experimenting is also at the top of my list. Like there's nothing that drives me more crazy than when people say, just do the same stuff over and over. I mean, like, damn, I can't experiment at all. Like that sucks, you know? So those would be the two things to me that really will help you get to advanced. and and you know you you kind of know as you go you know when you're intermediate you'll say okay yeah i i know that um a leg extension works my quadriceps i know the proper form but then as you get advanced you might say

well i know that dorsiflexing my foot can activate my rectus femoris a little better not that everybody needs to think about that but i'm just illustrating that as you go and if you're trying to learn, you'll get more and more on that advanced level. What are some things you learned from Dave Tate maybe outside the gym? Because Dave Tate is an old salty dog. He's an old veteran. He knows a lot of tricks of the trade, but he's been around business for a long time. Uh, did that, some of that rub off on you? Like, what are some other things you may have learned from him? Well, not only did it rub off, Dave is one of my business mentors. So, um, when I, you know, I don't know if you guys know, but I was a

JP Morgan chase for many, many years for 10 years running projects there. And when I left a corporate world to kind of do this stuff full time, you know, Dave kind of took me under his wing and, you know, always, always gave me good business advice. And the times I didn't listen to him, I paid for it. So he knows because he's fucked up so many times, right? That and that's, you know, when I do seminars, that's what I tell people. I'm like, I've just made a ton of mistakes. I'm just trying to help you guys not make all the mistakes I made. I don't consider myself an expert at anything except making mistakes.

I've made a ton of them. So Dave, from a business perspective, really, really has made a big impact on me. And, you know, Dave and I, if you've ever seen any of our older videos back when we were training hard, man, we killed each other. But I tell you, man, that guy's got the biggest heart. I've seen that guy do more for more people. People don't know it because he's not out bragging about it. He does it behind the scenes. So he's just a great guy that's had a great influence on me.

I got a question here from a fan. We got some of the guys that train in here regularly are huge fans of yours as, as are we. And we appreciate, you know, you putting out all the YouTube stuff recently. That's, that's been awesome that you've gotten inspired to, to tackle some YouTube stuff. This guy wants to know, he said he heard that you used to train at Westside and then you would travel across town and go finish off your legs somewhere else. Like, I think that's unique to bodybuilders, you know, and, and, um, you know, maybe there's some CrossFitters and power up. There's that flirt with those kinds of things too.

Maybe somebody drives an hour and a half to West side on the weekend to get that experience. And they usually have another gym they train at. Maybe some CrossFitters do it to kind of up their game. And, but we'll hear bodybuilders sometimes they're like, Hey, I'm going over here. Cause this has this leg press over here. And then I'm going to finish my workout over here. Cause this other gym has a kick-ass leg curl and leg extension machine. Yeah.

I actually have a membership a lifetime just because of their hack squat. People are like, that's all I've ever seen that guy do. And he's in tremendous shape. All he ever does is a fucking hack squat machine. Yeah. So when I was at Louie's, it was the old location on Demarest and on the west side. And, you know, we'd go do our speed work on the squats.

And the gym, the other gym I was training at was World's Gym on the east side. So it was probably about 30, 35 minutes to get across town so we would finish our our squats and i would get in the car and i would haul ass back across to the world and when i'd literally run in there and start loading the leg press up because i still felt i was pretty warm and to go ahead and do all my other stuff and lou Louie didn't care because, um, I was a really good squatter and I was a very quad dominant squatter. Like I was more one of the guys with a high bar there, you know, um, straight up and down spine. So he didn't care that I was working my quads more because I used them more when I squatted. Um, when I was over there, it was Mike Francois

and myself were the two bodybuilders. Um, I loved it. I mean, it was great. Like I would go in and Louie would tell me what to do and I would do it. I would work my butt off. You know, Chuck Vogelpool was standing around somewhere. So Chuck was very inspiring to me. Chuck to this day is still probably the biggest animal I've ever got to train alongside. So tons of respect for him. But I really,

I've really had a great relationship with Louie and I just went over there, shut my mouth and did whatever he told me to do. Is a box squat a good movement for people to build up their lower body? Absolutely. It's a squatting movement. Right. I don't see any reason. I don't see any way somebody could say it doesn't work.

You could just change your mechanics to emphasize different things. You know, there's ways you could make it harder on your adductors. There's ways you can make it harder on your quads, depending on your depth and your stance and things like that. But I see no issues with box squats at all. You know, when you were mentioning driving across town to go to that gym to get more leg volume in because you can handle it made me curious about this because you said that like powerlifters can take a lot from bodybuilders and vice versa. So specifically to that, what can powerlifters take from bodybuilding to improve themselves at powerlifting? And then what can bodybuilders take from powerlifting to improve themselves as bodybuilders? Well, from a bodybuilder's perspective, we focus on maximally developing every single muscle.

You want a complete physique. And having every muscle developed is potentially very good for a powerlifter. We know that the larger a muscle fiber is, the more force it can potentially produce. So there's no downside to having bigger muscles, having bigger muscle fibers. And bodybuilders generally do a pretty good job with training everything. There's a point where it gets to just be too much for a power lifter. But I think, like when I, like, for instance, Chuck, Chuck would do a lot of assistance work, you know, when I was over there and Chuck looked more like a bodybuilder, you know, he developed different than the other guys because he was doing so much

kind of bodybuilding work really. Um, you know, and then from a powerlifting perspective, there were, there was a couple of things I always really liked and it wasn't just lifting heavy weight I mean that's cool and that's needed but that wasn't the only thing there's a real emphasis on form with power lifters and what I always appreciated about power lifters is you can be power lifting for five years 10 years 20 years and they're always finding flaws and mechanics and always working to make things better and I I just always thought like, if you apply that mindset to bodybuilding, just making everything work at its absolute best, I think it would be an awesome thing. So, um, you know, it wasn't just a lot of people assume I just mean doing lots of bench presses

and shoulder presses, not just that. I mean, that's cool, but that's bodybuilders have done. That's been doing that stuff forever too. To me, I just love how powerlifters analyze and they're meticulous about how they train and how they execute movements. Cause a lot of bodybuilders aren't like that. They don't really get that deep into understanding a movement. And I think for you to become your best as a bodybuilder, you find movements that you can get to that level where you feel them that good. And the more advanced you get, as Mark mentioned earlier, the more you can kind of connect with that muscle and your mind muscle connection and so forth.

muscle connection and so forth. So when you can actually find a routine and exercises that you can connect with like that, now you've just enhanced your abilities as a potential as a bodybuilder big time. And I did that with my back, for example, I really struggled with back development. And I was following the Lee Haney routine for muscle and fitness. I did my bent over barbell rows. I did my chins. I love Lee Haney. So I was trying to do everything he did, hands. I love Lee Haney. So I was trying to do everything he did, but guess what? That didn't really work for me. I'm not saying those are bad exercises. I'm just saying there were other exercises that came along that I connected with better, that I can feel better. And then boom, all of a sudden my back started growing and eventually it became a real strong body part. But that kind of mindset is what, so that's how I think they kind of complement each other.

What was the intensity like when you were at Westside Barbell? Was that, I'm sure as a longtime bodybuilder, you were probably already bringing it and you're probably already working very hard. And also the environment back then in the commercial gyms were different. Everyone was pretty intense, at least from what I remember. But still, was it a little bit of a culture shock when you walked in and the music was cranking and people were bleeding all over the place and stuff like that? Not really. Not really, because the world gym I trained out was the same way. Right.

You don't see that in commercial gyms anymore. No, no, no. But even at the world gym, we had the deadlift platforms. We had the chalk bowl back we had a chalk the chalk bowl back there the metallica was blasting every saturday morning i mean um it wasn't that different i just i just appreciated louis i think just because i got to like it was it was motivational for me because of who i was surrounded by like Like I seen, I would see crazy stuff. Like you remember Kenny Patterson, right?

Absolutely. I remember Kenny doing like, like a lying dumbbell tricep extension with like a hundred pound dumbbell. Jesus. And I'm just sitting there watching it. And like George Halpert, I remember, remember George. I mean, um, 628 raw bench, 628 pound raw bench press at 198 he was phenomenal

so those guys I'm like that's motivational to be around people that strong and you know how we used to go out to the garage at Louie's or not at Louie's but he had a garage that we all went out and benched at on Sundays and so there was three benches and on the first bench you had the four strongest guys

you know we had lots of kenny patterson's and in the second bench you had the kind of medium guys and on the third bench you had the guys like me i was bottom of the barrel so you know i was on that third bench usually i was was there with Joe McCoy. Joe was doing well over 500 and 181. Um, Arnold Coleman was on that bench. So I was like the weakling of the group. And so it was motivating for me to see these animals training. Um, I had the intensity. I had that from day one, but to see these guys going that hard with that kind of weight, I mean, honestly, it just motivated the heck out of them. What did that necessarily, well, actually you mentioned that you would always try to put yourself in situations where people were better than you. So were you doing that? Like when you

started training as a kid, like first off, when did you start training? And then also how did training environments change the way you looked at your progression? Or did they like, I guess the question I'm trying to get at here is when you change at your progression or did they like, I guess the question I'm trying to get out here is when you change your training environment, did you automatically start to get better because of the people around you? So I started training when I was 12 and I picked up a muscle and fitness magazine and, um, I immediately saw the pictures and said, this is what I want to do. Uh, I competed when I was 13, it was 1985, uh, after one year, 81, 1985, um, was when I did my first show when I was 13 years old. Um, I was like, I, when I opened up the magazine, that was my goal.

Like, I want to look like these guys. And I wasn't bullied or I wasn't trying to impress girls. I just loved bodybuilding from the start. It had nothing to do with anything but that. So I was very passionate about it. And I trained at a gym that had a couple of good bodybuilders. It was a small town, but for me, they were massive at the time. And then as I got older into my teenage years, there was a guy named John Perillo, who was a very well-known coach back in the day.

And John invited me to start training down at his center in Cincinnati. And I give John a lot of credit, too, because, you know, I was 19 years old and John brought me down there to train. I was going to college about a half hour away. So any chance I old and john brought me down there to train i was going to college about a half hour away so any chance i got i would go down there and train john had a coach that worked for him his name was mike matson and mike absolutely destroyed me he killed me he was i don't think i've ever been as hard on any of my clients as mike was on me. And to this day, I love him to death because of that, because of the expectations he put on me. So, you know, I started training at Perillo's. So I had somebody just from day one, just pounding me and taught me the value of nutrition. And he just,

in 1992, and I won all three of them with a perfect score as a 20-year-old. So I was beating all the veterans. And it was because of John and Mike, specifically Mike working with me. So, you know, and then through the years, I trained at different gyms. And then things kind of started to change. You know, the gyms weren't quite the same now. But I still always had this you know i always kind of had this saying like you create your own environment so it shouldn't matter what

the person next to you is doing you still got to bring it so even when i was training at like california fitness or whatever i still worked hard i still worked really hard i never let my environment really bring me down um now having having said that, I'll always take the awesome environment 10 times out of 10, but I didn't let it bring me down in that, in the other environments. And, and they're not, not too many gyms are like that now where you can just unleash. So anyways, that's kind of what it was like for me. Do you remember a product that John Perillo had called CapTri? Oh, yeah, the MCT oil.

Yeah. Yep, MCT oil in like the mid-80s, right? Yeah, he had a training manual and a nutrition manual. Those were like my Bibles. I took those everywhere I went. He was a little bit of a low-carb proponent, but mixing in a little bit of carbohydrates, I think even just around the workout from what I remember. Well, I can tell you the one thing he did, man, was he had an inordinate amount of vegetables in a diet. Right.

And like my stomach couldn't handle all that firewood. Right. But John also had these Perillo bars. Yeah. And I loved those Perillo bars. So I used to carb load on them before I did my show. They were delicious. I remember them.

Yeah, they had like maltodextrins in them and it had MCT oil powder and had protein, which is like there was no protein bars back then. Wow. Yeah. They were fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love all that old shit.

It's pretty cool. Now, along with like, I guess what they taught you in your a lot of your videos you do a lot of i guess giant sets i guess i feel like i've seen you talk a lot about drop sets and techniques like that um when should a person maybe think about employing some of this because i know there's so much i don't know exactly how we can answer this question but there's a lot of different techniques that a lot of people don't use. Most people, you know, they'll do three sets of movement, move on to the next movement, three sets, and they'll just overload progressively. Right. But when should I guess,

yeah. When should one think about implementing sets to failure, drop sets, things like that? Absolutely not necessary for a beginner. Um, As you progress more as an intermediate, you're going to want to start taking some sets to failure, in my opinion. The way I advise people to do it is to work up to a hard set and then Dorian 8 style go to failure. Failure to me means you can't perform any more repetitions with perfect form. When your form goes, like if it's going to go you stop you know um and then as you get advanced then you can throw in a set or two of those advanced techniques so go to failure and

then do a drop set so generally what that looks like is for intermediates is like let's say you do four exercises probably going to go to failure on the last set so four sets the failure see a lot of people think that they see they used to see these videos of dave tate and i training they used to think all of our sets were like that i'm like no man we would die if we did 35 sets of failure um and then as you get advanced it's like okay now let's challenge the muscle even more so let's add one or two of those for for it for the day as well so you know it's not multiple sets within an exercise it's picking a couple exercises to usually the most and implementing that advanced technique about something like force sets or yeah forced reps forced reps yeah that would be just another

example of a high intensity technique to me you got cluster sets drop sets uh, uh, um, four straps. You may maybe, maybe throw in some negatives or something, maybe throw in an ISO or something like all that to me means that when you hit normal failure, then you're doing something to continue to apply stress to the muscle after that. Got it. How do you eat nowadays? Uh, I don't need hardly anything. Um, I went for 20 something years and ate six meals a day. And after my last contest in 2017, I said, that's over. So I eat whatever I want, what I want. It probably averages out to 80 to 100 grams of protein a day. You know, maybe three meals a day. But here's the interesting thing. When I was competing,

about the last five years, my off season, I would be 227 to 230. Then I would compete about 225. Well, I'm 227 to 230 now. I didn't really lose much of anything. The muscle's not quite as round, but it's all still there. And it's mind-blowing to me how much easier it is to maintain muscle than to build it. I feel like building muscle is very challenging. But once you have it and you own it for many, many years, I feel like maintaining it, as long as I'm training hard, my muscle doesn't go anywhere. So it's been pretty amazing for me and just kind of eye-opening the last three years to see how easy it is to hold on the muscle as long as I'm training hard. Well, and training hard might even be a little different for you now. I'm sure you still get after it. But because of all the tricks that you figured out and all the just different ways you figured out to fire your muscles, The weights probably don't have to be too crazy.

I'd imagine, right. To keep your size. Oh, I can't. If I tried to do the stuff that I did 10, 15 years ago, I'd kill myself.

Yeah. I, I can't put a bar on my back and squat anymore. My lower back gets a little worn out from that, but I can still use like, you know, like a safety squat bar, for example.

So I just, I have found ways to work around exercises that don't make me feel comfortable. But you, but you're right. You know, I'm doing 120 pound dumbbells now for chest work, whereas like, you know, before I, maybe I could have used 140s, but, but I really feel like as you advance, you should be able to get more and more out of your sets every, every year. you should be able to get more and more out of your sets every, every year. As you get better at this,

you should be able to get more out of each set that you do. I really do believe that. And I think that's a lot of times why guys in their younger do this high volume stuff, because they haven't got to the point yet where they have enough experience to really maximize the potential of one individual set. Cool perspective. And the same thing might be happening with your nutrition where you're getting more out of less. Great point. Absolutely. Yeah.

No, it's, it's actually really funny. You said that. Cause I have a few, I have a few buddies that they did like, they did a lot of bodybuilding training and they got pretty big and they're eating less protein. And I guess they're more so surprised at how much they are maintaining on almost half of the protein they used to eat. And I was always curious about that because, you know, you're like you're scared not to eat a gram per pound. Right. Because you're like, fuck, I might lose all this. But I'm going to shrink. Exactly.

And how long have you been doing that? It's been, what, two years or actually three now? It's been going. It'll be three years in May. Yeah. Yeah. And you're still the same weight. You're not dropping at all. No, just been going, it'll be three years in May. Yeah. Yeah. And you're still the same way. You're not dropping at all.

No, I haven't lost a pound in two, three years. Yeah. That's crazy. It's actually really crazy. What you got over there? You mentioned,

you mentioned that too earlier. Oh yeah. Um, so Ed was, I was always telling Ed how little I was eating and Ed and I have done some business together in the past. And Ed like watched how I ate a couple of days in a row. He said, I've been counting your protein. You know, you've only had 60 grams of protein today.

Yeah. So like he was like, you weren't kidding. I was like, no, dude, why would I lie about something like that? You know, he was he was watching you like a hawk, huh? Yeah, he was. And like I alwaysk, huh? Yeah, he was. And like, I always had to have my donut for the day. But then after that, you know, maybe a little sushi, maybe a couple of my breakfast in the morning is two is two eggs and two pieces of toast. And I feel fantastic.

Like, that feels great to me. And people are like, aren't you starving? I'm like, no, actually, I feel great. You know, now, when I was younger, it was six eggs, a bowl of oatmeal, and two pieces of toast. But do you think you absolutely had to eat that way in order to grow? Because I'm asking this as somebody who is smaller that wants to get bigger. And everybody's just always talking about if you want to get big, you got to eat big. Now, obviously, you did do that and you've accomplished that but here you are today and you're still able to maintain it fairly easily like so is it just one of the things where you

just you have to go through the journey in order to actually get to where you are now well i i can't say with 100 certainty because because when I was younger, I was eating so much because that's what I believed and what I was taught. So I never went the other route and tried to eat like I am now. But if I were just to take an educated guess, I would say that that heavy eating was something that I needed to do to gain muscle. But I will say this. There's a point where your body can only absorb so much food. It can only handle so much. You know, when you eat a meal and you're full and it's two and a half hours later and it's time for another meal, but you're still full. I don't think it's a good idea to then shove down another meal when you haven't even digested the

last one. You know, and if you look at bodybuilding, there are so many people with digestive issues with Crohn's and IBS and all these stomach issues. And I personally think it's from eating nonstop and never giving your body a digestive break. This is one thing I think you mentioned fasting earlier. This is one reason why I like 24 hour fast in particular, just to give your digestive system a break just to chill out, you know? So, I mean, I think all the eating I did was necessary, but I do think I probably went a little overboard. Now, I would never, in my coaching now, I never tell people to eat a meal if they're still full from the last meal. Like, if you're still sitting there and you're real full, wait. Cramming down another meal is not going to help you. And I am a firm believer in that.

wait, cramming down another meal is not going to help you. And I am a firm believer in that. You were mentioning, you know, you get, you can only like take in so many nutrients kind of at a time, but I think maybe for the smaller guy, it's important to feel that, you know, I know like just, I've been training for a long time and I can start to feel like food and I'm like, oh, that, you know, that's starting to hit me now. I should probably cut back on the amount of food I'm eating again and shift into something different or, or even just, you know, eat less for the rest of the day or make, you know, make adjustments, you know, according to that. But, you know, in bodybuilding, sometimes refer to that as like spilling over. You know, you filled up all the muscle cells and you look a little bit jacked. And then the next thing you know, you look a little bit soft and

look a little bit puffy and you went a little bit too far. But it's probably important for people to people that are trying to get a better physique, you know, as in like bodybuilding. It's probably important that they get themselves close to that point or at least feel that at some point. Yeah. Yeah. That that intuition comes. Well, I don't not necessarily for some people. Some people still think I call that the power shove method. You just keep shoving stuff down.

But hopefully you get a little bit better and you start to get a little better with your nutrition. Like everything else we've been talking about, just experiment with it. Just try different things. Just experiment and see what happens. There's no downside. When we had Big Jay on, we were kind of going back and forth about how long should you bulk? When is too big, big enough to start cutting down? And he said something around 14% body fat.

If you're at that level, you shouldn't be bulking anymore. What's your opinion on how big should somebody get before they start either maintaining or try to bring it back down? Well, I like that 14% number. I usually say more like 12 to 14. Now, having said that, that's just a guesstimate. But when a guy is at 18%, 20%, I haven't seen too many people where that was really beneficial. I like for a guy to be able to at least just see the outline of their abs, not like veins and a six pack.

I mean, like just see the outline, just see that they're there. And then, you know, all of the things that we were talking about with insulin sensitivity, are you getting a good pump? You know, how's your strength? You know, if you're to the point where you can't feel a pump anymore or it's hard to get, your strength's not going anywhere, then you're going to have a hard time convincing me that getting fatter is going to help you in that respect. So I don't have a problem with that 14. I think probably 12 to 14 is a good area to be in.

Some people maybe a little less. Some people maybe a little bit more. But I think for a general statement, that's not bad. I'm curious about this because we had Ron Partlow or Paltrow? Yeah, Partlow. people maybe a little bit more but i think for a general statement that's not bad you know i'm curious about this because we had uh we had ron partlow or paltrow yeah partlow partlow on recently right and um he's talking about you know uh like rich piano and like how anabolic's like and you know he ended up dying for that but what i'm curious about is this because a lot of young guys on youtube are on youtube telling people you you know, what they take. And there's these massive amounts of just shit and guys follow that. And it's probably not safe.

So what I want is like, what is your advice to young guys that are interested in, you know, taking anabolics and stuff to get bigger where they want to go into bodybuilding or powerlifting or whatever, but how can they do that stuff while still taking, I guess, into consideration their long-term health? Well, you know, one thing that it's so different now, now in good ways and bad ways. So first of all, the coaching is maybe not so good now in bodybuilding. You've got a lot of young guys that came to the sport that prescribed some very heavy doses and like triple what I ever took. And these guys are coaches and people look up to them and they don't realize how really poor of a coach they are.

And, you know, we used to have access to things much easier, much cleaner than you do now. I haven't been involved in any underground stuff for years and years and years. I'm fortunate to have a doctor that I work with. But I would, but the one thing that's popped up a lot is all these HRT clinics and things like that. So if you go that route, at least you're doing it legally, at least you're getting it legally, at least you're getting blood work done. Blood work is not the end all be all, but at least it's at least you're measuring something at least you're watching if you know if you're taking antiviral from a clinic, at least you can watch your HDL, at least you can watch your ALT and your AST and your liver,

blah, blah, blah, and so forth. So I always approach, I always have people approach it from a perspective of trying to find a doctor that's responsible, that can help you. Sometimes that's not always easy. But I would start there first. You don't know what you're getting off the underground. People ask me all the time, have you heard of this? I'm like, no, dude, I haven't heard of any of this stuff. Um, in the old days we used to just send somebody to Mexico and they'd fill up a fake gas cart, fake tank of gas in her car with stuff and drive it over the border. Um, but, um, so I would start there. And then the other thing I would say is people vastly overestimate what you really need. Okay. I take a 200 milligram shot of sipunate every Saturday. I'll

probably do it the rest of my life. That's what I've done for three years now. When I won my first contest, I had one of my training partners, his dad was a veterinarian. So I was very anti-drug, very anti-drug. I might've even been one of the guys crying about cheaters. I don't know if I was or not, but it wouldn't surprise me. But I educated myself and I thought, you know what? Maybe this stuff isn't as bad as people are making out to be as long as you're responsible with it. So anyways, my friend says, hey, John, I saw a bottle of Winstraw on my dad's vet truck. You want it?

And I was like, hell yeah. If it's good enough for a horse if it's good enough for a horse that's good enough for me you know so he gave me a 30 cc bottle windstroll and that's what i use 50 milligrams every other day for 60 days for my first show first men's show i won the overall um so i went i didn't take testosterone until i won the state championship i didn't take testosterone until I won a state championship. I didn't take growth hormone until my second year at the USA. And nowadays, like if you tell people, even like a state show, these guys have this thing in their mind, well, I need 1,000 mg of tests. The most I ever took in my life for a week was 750 milligrams. But these guys have this perspective now that they think you need 1,500 mg of test and 1,000 mg of TRIN. So we used to have these parabolin ampules from Nygma in France, and they came in these 1.5

milliliter ampules. It was a 76 milligram dose. I always thought that was odd, that it was 76 instead of 75, you know, 15. Anyways, so two of those would be a good dose. So whatever 76 times two is. The really hardcore guys would take three ampules in a week. So whatever 76 times three is. But now you've got all these idiot coaches telling these guys they need 100 milligrams to 200 milligrams a day of Tremolone. Goddamn. Not a good idea, right? I mean, you can actually find studies where it has a negative effect on people's brains, like promoting Alzheimer's almost. So I'm not against any

of this stuff. I just think you should be responsible and try to have somebody watch you that's smart, that's got experience, particularly a doctor, if you can get a doctor that works with you. I try to go beyond blood work. You know, my HDL has kind of been up and down. Sometimes it's up as high as 60, sometimes it's down as low as 25. So I went and got a calcium score test done. You know, it looks at actual calcium in your arteries so that I know, like there's no doubt in my mind if something's you

know i actually got done when dallas mccarver died like when he died i was like i wasn't taking as much as these other guys but i've taken a lot of stuff if you look at it cumulatively over the years so i went got a calcium score test done and i was very happy with the result but so i try to take a real proactive approach to looking at this stuff and staying healthy and things like that. And, um, you know, I think that, you know, when you're young and I remember having a mentality when I was in my twenties, it was a little different. It was like, I'm scared to see what that's going to be. So like, forget it. I'm not even going to get blood work done. Cause I'm scared. I don't even,

I don't want to even look at it. I'm scared of it. But luckily, I had a good doctor, Dr. Serrano, who basically forced me to get the labs done so we could start tracking stuff. But, you know, I was fortunate. So anyways, those are just kind of some of my thoughts on that. Born and raised in Ohio? Yes, sir. From a little small town, Washington Courthouse, about an hour south here in Columbus. I live here in Columbus. I went to school originally at Wilmington College, which was down by Perillos. And I was there for three years. And I wanted to be, at that time, I wanted to be school, Capital University in Columbus, because it was right down the street from World Gym. So I actually transferred schools just to be close to World Gym because I felt like going to World Gym would give me the best opportunity to be a pro. Now, I was in my early 20s. It didn't quite work as quickly as I wanted it to, though. It took a few decades later to get that pro card. It took a few decades later to get that pro card. But so you can see how kind of hell bent I was even back then at that young age on trying to make it happen. Did you always have a positive demeanor growing up?

Sounds like you had some unfortunate situations happen. You didn't know your dad and your mother passed when you were young. Were you like when you were younger? Were you like when you were younger were you like angry were you trying to like kick everyone's ass with lifting or or something to that effect to uh maybe fill in some of the tragedies that happened you know um i think i've always been pretty happy honestly um i i've always had this i you know i never never knew my dad, but I never knew him. So there was nothing to be sad about.

Like there wasn't anything there to begin with. So, you know, my mom was a really bad drug addict and alcoholic. So I felt like my grandmother raising me was a blessing. Like I would rather had that. So I had a very loving grandmother grandmother she was a cook in a restaurant she made three dollars and eighty cents an hour and she was the best grandma that I could have ever asked for and so I you know a lot of people would probably consider my upbringing up they'd probably think I was pretty poor and I think probably by some people's standards I was pretty poor. And I think probably by some people's standards, I was having been a third

world countries. I don't think I was, but, um, so for me, you know, if you look at Maslow's hierarchy, you know, you got that bottom level where it's like food and shelter and clothing, you get above that, you know, your family and your social connections. And so I always felt like I did have the family that loved me just because my grandma. So, you know, I was never a real angry guy. I always liked to stand up for the people who couldn't stand up for themselves. So if somebody was picking on somebody at school, if somebody was bullying, I'd be the one to stand up for them. I still to this day think that I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent here, but I just think that we should protect the people that can't protect themselves and really look out for each other.

here, but I just think that we should protect the people that can't protect themselves and really look out for each other. So no, man, I mean, I've had some challenging circumstances, but they make you who you are. I've had surgeons volunteer to take the scars off my stomach, and I said, leave them there. I did have some taken off, but I wanted some to be left there because it reminds me, man, I could go at any time. I could die at any time. And in 2005, I was that close. So it reminds you die at any time. And in 2005, I was that close. So it reminds you of what's important. And certainly when you have things that you have to earn, you're appreciated. And I do feel like I've had great people around me.

You know, in high school, the football coach liked me. He would drive me up to World Gym on the weekends during the offseason. So I have had people that kind of looked out for me. And I still actually still do. I still feel like I have people that kind of look out for me and it makes me feel good. And part of that's just having a positive mindset and being a young, hardworking person. A lot of people don't mind holding the door open for you here and there, right? Yeah. Yeah. And, um, you know, I think, I think that it's getting more and more challenging today to maintain that positivity because we're flooded with negativity from everywhere, from all around us. So now it's becoming, I think, and I think that's why we see a lot of kids get depressed. I call it compare and despair.

You know, they compare in themselves to other people on social media and things like that. And, you know, I have a couple, I have twin boys that are 11 years old and I'm trying to, I'm doing my best to build their confidence and, you know, try to become good young men as opposed to just, you know, they have YouTube, they already have a YouTube channel. They have, they're already in all kinds of stuff. But I'm just trying to you know do a

good job raise them and on my youtube videos every once in a while you'll see my son alexander do a yo-yo trick he's a pretty sick yo-yo i saw i saw it the other day it was pretty cool so now next month he's getting in a rubik's cube championship he just started playing with a rubik's cube i'm like they have contests for that? So I look at this contest sheet. They've got like blindfolded categories. I don't know how you do that. How do you do that with a Rubik's Cube?

They've got one-handed. So dudes only use one hand. So he's been playing with it for about a month now, and he's got it down to where he can do it in like 50 seconds right now. And I couldn't solve more than one side ever in my life. He can already, he just sits there and his hands go nonstop, takes him about 50 seconds generally. Um, so where can people, uh, find out more about you? You have a lot of great information on the internet. I've been seeing a lot of the YouTube videos pop up lately. Um, Where can people find you? Yeah. So YouTube and Instagram is MountainDog1. And then my website is MountainDogDiet.com. And by the way, my supplement company is Granite

Supplements. We just released, I'm super, super excited about this. We just released a protein powder that's a combination of whey casein egg and beef protein and i played around with this formula for six months played around with digestive enzymes in it because i'm pretty sensitive to protein powders this stuff is amazing it digests perfect your stomach doesn't feel like it's blowing out which is what happens to me when i usually eat straight protein straight weight whey isolate you know so um anyways what uh what kicked off the youtube channel well what I used to do was I had I was writing training programs and I wanted people to understand what I was doing on an exercise so I would I started a

youtube to show people the exercise now what I did back then it was purely YouTube to show people the exercise. Now, what I did back then, it was purely just to show exercises. And I would keep the videos as short as I could, like 10 seconds, because I didn't want people to click on. I want them to actually watch the videos. And then about three years ago, I'm talking to some people and they're like, you're missing out on a massive opportunity. And I was kind of like, well, but isn't YouTube mostly young guys? Is there any old guys doing it? And they're like, yeah, but they don't really have your business or they don't really have your knowledge. Like, I don't know about that. But so they said, you know what, let's just go full bore and let's see what happens. And I said, well, okay, let's do it. So we did five videos a week

for the first year and, um, it grew pretty good. And then it started to gain momentum. I think people then actually started to actually watch the videos and now it's done really, really well. Now it's building up really fast, but we do five videos a week and, um, year round every once in a while we might do four, but generally we do five every single week but it's been it's kind of like my pro career like I didn't have a video go viral or anything it's just it's just been week after video after video chipping away chipping away and I get on there an hour or two every single day and I go through the comments I respond to comments and I think that people probably appreciate that too. But I do that as

best I can as well. And, you know, now it's actually turned into something really fun. Even doing that many, many videos, it's still a pretty fun thing. And, you know, and I like, I came from the corporate world. So, you know, from a financial perspective, it's pretty cool to know that my YouTube channel now, I can do better at that than when I was a VP at Chase running the biggest projects in the entire bank. Like, that's pretty cool that I can exchange those two, right? Yeah. Will you be at the Arnold this year? Yeah, absolutely.

What I do is I don't stand behind a booth usually, maybe for an hour or two, but I walk around and I interact with people. I don't stand behind a booth usually, maybe for an hour or two, but I walk around and I interact with people. Cool. I have my camera guy with me, but I'll just be walking around and saying hi to people and meeting people. Yeah, we'll be podcasting out there and it'd be great to finally shake your hand in person and get an opportunity to meet you. Yeah, I'd love that. That'd be great. Cool.

Thanks so much for your time. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you. No, it's my pleasure. And thank you very much for having me on. All right. We really, really appreciate it. Thank you. No, it's my pleasure. And thank you very much for having me on. All right. Take care. See you later. Thank you.

Damn. Good info right there. A lot, man. I think one of the coolest things was the sequencing thing, because when a lot of power lifters want to do bodybuilding work, right? I would get why you'd start with your big compounds, but they do it so that they can lift the heaviest loads possible. But he does those movements later so he feels better, even though he's a little bit weak on them later. Yeah, and what would be the problem with, you get done with a powerlifting meet, what would be a problem with implementing that

when you're off-season or whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah, it would be a great idea. He mentioned some people, and he mentioned some things that are you know just it was super cool to hear him talk about some of these kind of uh iconic you know people in the industry that are from a long ass time ago but one person he mentioned and i just need to tell this story because this is funny but he mentioned kenny patterson kenny patterson was uh one of the best power lifters that Westside Barbell ever had, but he mainly turned into a really, really great bench presser, super crazy strong.

And, you know, I think he would do like 585 for reps on like a floor press and stuff like that. I mean, this guy was just extraordinarily strong. And George Halbert and Kenny Patterson, they'd go back and forth. They were like similar age. I think there were similar body weights, 220, 198. You know, it's Westside Barbell, so it's equipped lifting, but their bench in 700, you know, 750, things in that neighborhood.

But these are, you know, again, these are guys that weigh like 200 pounds, basically. Anyway, something happened. Kenny Patterson was very, like, young basically. Anyway, something happened. Kenny Patterson was very like young and I guess something happened that everyone disagreed with and they wanted to like boot him out of the gym, which you didn't really get. You didn't typically get like booted out of the gym

from Westside Barbell. You would just kind of like more like get voted off the island, you know, kind of a survivor style. So it wouldn't be like anyone physically grab you and be like, dude, you got to get out of here. You know,

it was nothing. I think people probably envision that when they're saying, so-and-so got kicked out. It's like, you kind of recognize you're not welcome anymore. So you just kind of stop showing up, you know, and that's,

that's a, or you do show up and no one helps you, you know, when no one's helping you for a meet, you know, and that's the normal nature of the gym. Then you're like, well, I guess, I guess I did something to piss everybody off. So that, those are the kinds of things that would happen. But with Kenny Patterson, there was something in particular, I don't know the details of it at all, but Louie talked to everybody and he's like, man, like this really

hurts. You know, this really sucks. Like I've been friends with him since he was like 15. You know, I've been like a mentor and coach to him. I don't want to see him leave, but, you know, you guys, what do you guys think? You know, and they're like, yeah, man, he's sorry. You know, he has to go. And so Louie's like, all right, well, let's all meet up tomorrow at like 8 o'clock and I'll tell Kenny to come in. And everyone's like, okay, cool. You know, and they're, they're going to talk to him before training and they were going

to kind of, you know, just kind of say why basically, and just have this awkward, hard conversation with him. And, uh, Louie's waiting at the gym and no one's showing up. And then finally here comes Kenny Patterson. So he had to talk to him on his own and he's no up. Oh, no. And then finally, here comes Kenny Patterson. So he had to talk to him on his own. And he's no longer welcome at the gym. And then maybe 10 minutes later, after he tells him he's got to go, everyone starts showing up.

It's time to bench or whatever. Everyone just waited in their car. And Louie's like, I had to talk to him all by myself. He's like, I thought he was going to kick my ass. Oh, man. I wonder, like, did they do that shit on purpose just so they yeah probably yeah no one else definitely deal with attention either yeah oh that's funny as hell that's i mean they may have all like done it kind of like just out of like not wanting to deal with the awkwardness

but they also may have all talked about him and like let let willie deal with that shit it's his gym let him deal with that oh man do you know this kenny panderson guy is he still uh is he still active and yeah yeah he's still around i don't know you know this is like 30 years ago something so i and again i i don't you know this is uh this is west side barbell like folklore so take it for what it's worth i don't know how i don't know how true it is but but. Oh man, that's funny. That's actually really funny. But yeah, talking about like training out, uh, you know, the powerhouse gym and all those different kinds of, or, or a world gym and having the chalk bowl there and, you know,

people like bleeding and stuff. Dude, training environment is, is so huge. Like it's, it's crazy. Like that's why when I, when I see people and they're only training in the garage gym, I just wonder like Bryce Lewis does that sometimes, but I feel like he does train a lot around a lot of strong people a lot of times. Yeah. So if you're, if you're, and I see garage gyms are getting really popular for people just starting out and I'm pretty sure it's because they don't want to deal with the uncomfortable nature

of going into a commercial gym or a gym where there's a lot of people and potentially being embarrassed by their strength. Right. I think that's one of the worst things you could do. Getting a bunch of like, unless like you can't, you don't have access to a gym that's closed. So you can't drive all the way. Like it's like an hour away to your nearest gym. I'd say don't get a garage gym yet.

Get around other people so you can have people around you that are stronger than you whether it's a commercial gym or a gym like super training you know i think it makes a big difference yeah what if every rep could be a little bit better every set could be just a little bit better or your your worst days can could then just not be so bad you know because you got somebody there with you maybe maybe you still struggle maybe you just don't love uh training but somebody else is kind of helping you, you know, pick it up a little bit. I remember, like, just playing football and watching, you know, watching tape.

And, you know, we'd all, like, we'd all, like, make fun of each other, you know? We'd be like, dude, what are you doing on this play? You know, like, what is this? And we would, like, go back and rewind it and just, like, okay, we just want to make sure. Am I seeing this correctly? You know, you and rewind it and just, okay, we just want to make sure. Am I seeing this correctly? You're number 73, right? That's your number?

Okay, you did absolutely nothing on that play. You're just running around in circles. What are you doing? It looks like everybody else on the team is all kind of paying attention on the same page. And, you know, you did nothing on that play. But those kind of things are the things that, you know, next time you're on the field or when you're in practice you're thinking like we better you know we better fucking go is number 73 is that the guy that you said you hated like was that his number no no no okay i'm just wondering if like that's his number

he would have been like 22 or something yeah right yeah because he was a defensive back yeah the same yeah keep picking on the same guy okay dude when we have these bodybuilders on do you guys get super motivated it it makes me uh like you know having big j on made me consider 20s and i have been using some 20s here and there which is nice i like it so i guess it just uh expands what i'm used to doing and makes me like rethink some of the things i do to see something if something might be better like the sequencing he was talking about typically i really do like giving people their big compounds first um but that is something to think about for some specific individuals that's really you know there's there's a lot in there to unpack and the cool thing about um john is yo his youtube channel is a wealth of information like it's really crazy how deep

he goes on a lot of these videos so if you're not subscribed to him already you need to go subscribe yeah yeah and then picking up small things like you know the sets of 20 from big j like if you're a smaller guy you want to get big do sets of 20 so i guess what my ass was doing on friday morning i was doing sets of 20 with legs and i'm still sore but yeah you know like i don't know do something about these bodybuilders i'm just like let's i'm gonna heat up my chicken and rice right now and i'll get as much as i can today and all that good stuff bodybuilding motivation videos on youtube oh yeah light your hair on fire you're all excited it gets you all fired up i mean they're they're i i would think even if you're not a meathead and you'd be inspired by it just because you can see how much dedication goes into

the whole thing and i know there's some people that are just going to be like. Oh man they just do a lot of drugs. And there is a lot of drugs in it. We already know that. But there's also a lot of discipline. Six meals a day. Eight hours of sleep every day. Two three hours of training every day.

Cardio every day. I mean it's fucking wild. Yeah. If it's not drugs. People are complaining about it. Well I have a family. I don't have the time. If I did that all day long.

I maybe could look better. It's like it's always going to be something why not just fucking appreciate it and then strive for it yeah and that's what's also cool about john because he in a lot of his videos he goes into the natural like what what kind of things you need to be considering or doing maybe a little bit differently and actually he does he did mention that both natural athletes and enhanced athletes they need to both train hard because he's right a lot of natural guys think oh i can't recover like this so i can't train that hard no you got to train fucking hard yeah you know they're just different things you need to think about in terms of how you recover i don't really know how to i don't really know how to describe this but it seems like you know um when you're doing bodybuilding stuff you know there

seems to be this common common thread of you know, going to failure, getting close to failure. And there's some, you know, there's some other versions of that where you don't have to necessarily go the Dorian Yates route where you're going, you know, to total failure and you're doing force reps and stuff. Because you could potentially do three or four sets with a similar weight. But in the end, you ended up with a similar result. It's just that you're not like probably screaming and going crazy. The screaming and going crazy stuff

is kind of a weird part of it, but it just like happens. Like you might not even want it to happen, but you just get to a point where you're like, can't help but get a little oomph in there and start making weird noise and start breathing all strange because it just gets to be painful. Remember when you trained with Mike? Yeah. Last week?

Yeah. Dude, like, yeah, like on that set of those weird squat things, I couldn't help but just be like, that shit just happened. I didn't mean for it to happen it just did so yeah it just when you're training that hard fuck yeah it's painful i mean you might i would imagine you would let out some weird noise if someone was like fighting you in the street like and you had to really truly defend yourself you know you would you'd like to think that you could remain calm and be like stoic and stuff but you'd you know you're kind of fighting for your life. What if you saw a knife or something and then, you know, you're going to be like extra violent and extra over the top at that moment. And I don't

think you're going to really care if you, you know, bite the guy's face off or let out a loud yell or whatever. You're just going to kind of do whatever you need to do to, um, get out of the situation or protect yourself. Yeah, man. Bodybuilding training, like when you're getting after it, it's like when you're preparing for a competition, it gets, the training does become painful. I haven't had to train like that in a while, which is great. I still train, but like that, that's something different. It's tough, man. And it's a good analogy to try to pull into your day-to-day because

if you you know your workouts are only as good as your recovery and i think that's a big issue for a lot of people they're not recovering uh from you know never mind their workouts they're recovering from their day-to-day like you're only strong as you're like battery power and if you were to you know if you were to uh you know be a video game like you know you're not in the green enough you know you don't have enough green power. You're not recharging enough every day because you're not taking care of yourself enough. You're not sleeping enough and stuff.

In a video game, the character sometimes even has to pick up food or pick up a heart or whatever, and then he starts gaining his energy back. But I think a lot of people are just smothering themselves. And John hit it right on the head saying like, you know, we would do really hard stuff, but it might've been for like a set or two for three or four different exercises.

And when you think that way, that's a, that's a difficult thing to do easier said than done, but an easy thing to have in your head on the way to the gym. You're like, okay, I'm doing, I'm doing leg presses. I'm doing, okay, I'm doing leg presses,

I'm doing leg extensions, I'm doing leg curls, and I'm going to finish with stiff leg deadlifts or something. And you know ahead of time, okay, four exercises, when it comes to getting some good blood into the legs and it comes to doing that third or fourth set, that's when I'm just going to let loose, and that's when I'm just going to go all in. I got a training partner there with me.

We can do some forced reps. He can yell at me or encourage me whatever way to get through it. And we'll, we're both going to kill each other, but we're both going to figure out a way to get through it. Yeah. Conceptually. That's like what kind of big J was doing. And that's what Mike was doing.

We were working out with him. Like your first few sets are cool. Your last two sets are nightmare. Yeah. Right. Yeah. It's pretty sets are a nightmare. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's pretty much what it was. And the other way to do some bodybuilding is maybe a little calmer approach, but have shorter rest periods from set to set.

I'm not really aware of that many other bodybuilders that use that, although there has been a handful where they just have a mild. I guess Jay Cutler might be an example of it but jay cutler still always killed himself so wait repeat that one more time well just you know so like maybe say like doing like i don't know three to five sets right having a uh a pretty strict uh rest interval of like a minute yeah you know so jay would do like a plate two plates three plates i don't think on a squat i don't think he really cared about the rest interval until he got to his working sets. Once he's in his working sets, and normally he would do leg extensions beforehand too. He might do three or four sets of

10 just to get some blood into the legs. So his legs are pretty pumped. He's already fairly warmed up and ready for the squats. Now when he would go to do his squats, he's going to pick the weight that feels right and ready for the squats. Now, when he would go to do his squats, he might, he's going to pick the weight that feels right for him for the day. He might do sets of 10 to 12. He's always a controlled lifter and he might use like 405. Yeah. But he was also very, very strong.

So he might kick it up a notch and occasionally use like five plates or so. And the form would be flawless. And he did it nearly every week. But I guess what I'm saying here is that that you know his his intensity was spread out maybe through a few sets um and he wasn't maybe going as heavy and wasn't maybe going to like it's like after he did his last rep it wasn't like he felt like he was going to fall you know i mean he could have probably done a couple reps probably had a couple reps in the tank but that's because he did more sets yeah rather than just hitting that one that one big one and so there's some different ways of doing it but they're not that different from each other those those two ways they're not i like uh john's

approach when he was talking about like don't like if you're still sore don't hit that muscle group again just because you want to be a savage right yeah and it's hard it's hard i wanted to ask him like well how do you you, where do you find the line? Like you, you can't just make every workout be perfect where like everything feels good. I'm not in pain. So I'm going to hit that. You have to really, so in SEMA, if you have some advice for that, you know, on that, on that subject, cause you, you know, you, you need to push through the, you know, the, the

difficult times, right? Like that's how you get stronger. Yeah. This is where like, you know, if you're, if you're someone who wants to experiment with this, we talked a lot about this, you can write out your own training routines and all you have to do is kind of track how you feel from session to session, whether it's like you have an upper day and a lower day, a push, pull, whatever, right? Track how you feel from session to session. And if like after your second lower day, if you're feeling that by the time you have to get to your next leg day, your legs are still fried, then you can take out a few sets of that lower day, right? And then when you get to that next leg session, you can hit it. Well, boom,

you know where your volume is. Just like when we had Mike Isretel on here and he was talking about that maximum recoverable volume. For everybody, it's going to be a little bit different, but you need to figure out, am I recovered after this session that I set up for myself? If I'm not recovered after four days, maybe I'm just doing too much of a certain muscle group in this session. We need to just take away a little bit and I'll be fine. He was also talking about just being able to call like an audible. You're on your way to the gym and you're questioning yourself. You're like, am I being a pussy? Or would it make sense for me just to simply do legs tomorrow or the day after because I'll have a better squat workout? Again, like trying to be recovered.

Like if your batteries are already low, it's not going to do you a service. Especially if you were trying to train for strength. Well, actually, in the case of strength, sometimes it's important to train fatigued but sore is probably still not good because you're trying to produce force so it still probably wouldn't be that great but like mentally being a little beat down from training is very very normal for strength training those are kind of different things and when you unrack the weight it feels really heavy that's actually very normal it's a yeah it's adaptation your body's trying to go through and your body doesn't want to do it it's not on board it's not okay with it but when it comes to hypertrophy training i think it does

make sense to say you know what i really don't i just don't feel that great and uh all right you know let's make an agreement with myself right here let's let's just do it let's just do this one thing and let's so instead of legs we're doing shoulders you know you give yourself something simple something easy and it's like all right i'm gonna kill my shoulders that's the agreement but my legs are sore i'll wait another day yeah and i also love what he said about eating too like he doesn't have any of his clients force feed themselves that's great and i think there's a ton to that because when i have my you know when a day like today it's gonna be tough like my feeding window got it's got a lot shorter so

that means my dinner time is gonna be huge there's been times where i'm trying to get everything in and what happens the next morning an awesome blowout and i'm just like how much of those nutrients that i ate last night are actually being like kept inside my body you know so i man fuck dude you know these episodes have been so good yeah you know on the note of that real quick this is kind of an aside but you remember when we went to that uh brazilian place when we were in la h and h or whatever that place i i think about it every day actually it was it was so good but the body's so fucking smart you guys remember when i tapped out initially i was like i can't handle one more bite of this and and you guys were still eating right and i was like you know what let me let me have one more bite of this steak or whatever so i put it in my mouth i chewed it it was taking a really long time to chew and

once i swallowed it this you know when you're you feel like you have to throw up your saliva starts to collect in your mouth that happened like immediately once i swallowed it i was like wow one bite later i'm wanting to throw everything so i just sat there all quiet while you guys were all talking quiet yeah i got really quiet after that bite just trying to hold myself out from throwing everything up no i was like i knew it i knew i just had that call right there not to eat anymore you know so that body knows you know, we need to stop eating. It happens fast. Yeah.

Really fast. That place was so good though. It was. That place was, that place was awesome. You know, I think people that are trying to figure out a way to eat more, you know, try to implement foods that digest pretty well for you would be a good idea. And then see where you can sneak in food. You know, maybe you can sneak in some food around your workouts.

Even if you're fasting, you know, Cole Robinson talks a lot about that. He's like, it ain't really going to matter. And he does recognize that it's not fasting. He's, you know, he's a smart dude. You know, you guys heard him when he was on the show. But I think that's a great recommendation. Have an orange. Have a couple of eggs or egg whites or a hard-boiled egg

or just a little something before your exercise because, as John was pointing out, and some of our other bodybuilders have been on the show, what if that little bit of food can make you just a little bit better for your training session? Maybe it, maybe it helps you become a little bit more optimal. And again, you know, it has to coincide with the goals that you have, you know, what's, what's the goal. If the goal is to have a better physique, then we need to, we can't really afford to really slip up in the training sessions. And we can't really afford to, uh, we can't afford

to lose muscle mass, you know, and I'm not someone who's a proponent or thinks that you're going to all of a sudden lose muscle mass when you don't have carbohydrates in there. Uh, but you do get smaller, you know, and so there's potential for it. And so why not block some of the potential for it? Why not? As he was pointing out today, which I think is the most valuable lesson we got for today was why don't you just experiment and see what happens exactly exactly where can people find andrew you guys can hit me up on instagram at i am andrew z but please make sure you guys are following the podcast at mark bell's power project that's also on instagram and on twitter at mb power project on twitter tiktok and bite and Byte at the same handle.

And really, really quick, thank you guys so much for everybody that's been rating and reviewing the podcast. It helps a ton. You guys, we reached out. We said, hey, give us some reviews and you guys have responded very well. Just like our boy Blah Manson.

He says, awesome information. Quote, these guys bring in guests that speak on all different lifestyles relating to both diet and exercise. Their guests usually say the same thing, eat well and work hard in the gym, duh, but usually have fantastic dialogue that puts

a positive shine on your day. Also, thanks to this group, I will be having Piedmontese steak instead of some keto birthday treat for my birthday. Well, shit, dude. Happy birthday. Thank you so much for that review. That really does help us out. If you guys want to hear your name or your review right on air, just

drop us a review right now on iTunes and you could potentially hear your name on air. Nseema, where you at? At NseemaYinYang on Instagram, YouTube and Bite. NseemaYinY yang on instagram youtube invite and see my yin yang on tiktok and twitter and real quick uh so february 8th is coming up i'm gonna be competing against chad wesley smith on saturday gonna break his face bro so y'all know costa mesa california is where the tournament takes place that's socal right um i don't roll deep in socal so if you're

listening to this and you live in soCal, you can grab those tickets. I think it's flow grappling ticks.com. Uh, or you can just DM me and I can send you the link where you can grab tickets and choose me as your fighter. And I hope to see some power project fam out there cause he rolls deep and goes to Mesa. So you're going to need a lot of help. So yeah. Are you flying down there?

Yeah, I'm flying down there. Flying down there. Any special like uh grizzly bear training or anything for you know because to size up your opponent here you've been wrestling some uh gorillas or some bears or something like that since chad's such a big such a big big boy i've managed to find a a tribe of very large white men in dixon california that i've been doing jujitsu with and they are similar to Chad's size so they roll together and I roll with them

sweet I'm at Mark Smelly Bell on YouTube, Twitter, Instagram TikTok all over the place 100 days of carnivore I issued a new challenge for everybody just kind of suckering you into doing the carnivore

diet for longer I just simplified it a little bit made it a little easier I issued a new challenge for everybody, just kind of suckering you into doing the carnivore diet for longer. I just simplified it a little bit, made it a little easier just to throw in some dairy for a little while. Doing that for the first maybe week or so, maybe two weeks. I ditched fasting just to try something new, try something different again. Why not experiment? Why not try things out? I feel good throughout the day. Been doing my walk runs, been keeping up on

all that. And, uh, training has been going good. Everything's been feeling really good. And, uh, I would like you guys to join in on the journey. So if you want to join in and check it out, there's information on, I have a Facebook page for it, which is, uh, Mark Bell's carnivore challenge. You can check that out, or you can check out the YouTube channel where I'm going to post every day. And probably the craziest part of posting every day has been that I'm videoing it and editing it myself every day. And it sucks.

But I'm getting it done. I'm getting it done. I'm making it fucking happen. So I got like 90 more days or something. Or no, 60 something more days of that. You got this. Oh my God. But it's good to get that information out there.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.