Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 523 - Old School Bodybuilding with Dave Palumbo

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Dave Palumbo is a retired American bodybuilder as well as bodybuilding and physique coach. He is the CEO and founder of RxMuscle.com, owner of Species Nutrition, and former Editor-In-Chief of Muscular Development Magazine. Following a college career of long distance running, Dave began lifting weights and showing interest in bodybuilding when he was 22 years old. Within 6 months he entered his first bodybuilding competition where he placed 6th at a bodyweight of 168lbs. Over the next 5 years, he would gain over 70lbs and win the 1995 NPC Junior National Championships. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢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 ➢Sling Shot: 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

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look, I have two right here. No joke. He did give me two. Um, if you guys want to take advantage of this, you guys can head over to drink L M N T.com slash power project. Pick up a value bundle.

That's mine. Three boxes. And then you get a fourth one free. If you can be like or you can be like in SEMA, grab all four watermelon flavors or you can get a variety of all the other ones. I've been having chocolate every single night. It's like my little like before bedtime snack and it keeps me hydrated throughout the entire night. Again, that's at drink LMNT.com slash power project. Head over there right now. What up Power Project crew? This is Josh Settledge, aka SettleGate,

here to introduce you to our next guest, Dave Palumbo. Dave Palumbo is a retired American bodybuilder, as well as a bodybuilding and physique coach. He is currently the CEO and founder of rxmuscle.com, the owner of Species Nutrition, and the former editor-in-chief of Muscular Development Magazine. Following a college career of long-distance running, Dave began lifting weights and showing interest in bodybuilding when he was 22 years old. Within his first six months of training, he entered his first bodybuilding competition where he placed sixth at a body weight of 168 pounds. Over the next five years, he would gain over 70 pounds of muscle and win the 1995 MPC Junior National Championships. More recently, Dave was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in February of 2021. And in 2004, Dave Palumbo was sentenced to five months in federal prison for the distribution of human growth hormone. But that is a different story for a different time. Please enjoy this

conversation with our guest, Dave Palumbo. Andrew and I did like three or four sets of it and we got smoked. Makes you wonder, like, so now, like, I guess we'll be able to pick between the hamstring, the isolateral, and then that that one but that one just feels better than the typical hammer strength I can breathe on it oh you can't breathe on the hammer strength I don't know what it is yeah the hammer strength kind of always bothers me too even when I was fat

I just never had that much enough protection on the rib cage always felt like it hurt doing any sort of like rows like that yeah needed more fluff in there i guess so we're rolling now i don't know do you want to add this as a part of the podcast or yeah rolling rolling rolling what well i guess we gotta just inform people what we were talking about what were we talking about about the new machines mckean's machines we were

yeah the machinas yeah we got some new machines in the gym i was so pumped yesterday when i saw sully like unwrapping the machines i was like oh it's like christmas so wet it's pretty smoky sent me a picture of the peck deck and i was like you're sending me pornography it's like not good to use on our regular we need to use that for our burner phones only oh god that's got to be be a Snapchat still a thing where like you send Snapchat. Snapchat's still a thing. I never got into it that much, but Snapchat is still a thing. Yeah.

What do you mean a thing? A thing for what? For nudes. Yeah. Really? That's what people, people, people out here acted like, oh, what's your Snapchat? Like, don't, donchat like don't don't don't play this is no like you're not just messaging me on snapchat yeah it's meant for

nudes yeah i remember i heard like a comedian saying that they would carry around two phones this early snapchat days carry one phone for snapchat whatever and then another phone to literally take a picture of the pictures that would come in my buddy in the uk does that shit like he has a second phone because snapchat knows when you screenshot it'll like tell the person so he'll have a second phone and he'll take pictures it'll tell you when you screen capture it yeah or when you video or when you're video recording that's awesome yeah but like like it's impossible to not capture an image of those nudes you just sent. But, you know. That's amazing.

People out here risking it all, man, for some nudes. Risking it all. God dang. But yeah, those machines are amazing. Can't wait for the hack squat. That's going to be coming in. Yeah, we got a back. Terrible.

We got two, I guess two back pieces, right? Mm-hmm. Got two back pieces. Got a chest piece. I guess two back pieces, right? Two back pieces. Got a chest piece. I haven't tried the chest one out yet. And then we have, well, I guess we have the pec deck and the rear delt thingy, which is great because it's always weird. I can never figure out rear delts.

I guess you don't really need to figure it out that much when you do like rows and stuff, but it's like hard to target them. And it feels good to target them. Like when you get a lot of blood in that area, it feels like it helps your whole shoulder somehow. Yeah. What I love about the, the, uh,

so again, so I saw the peck deck, I'm like, Oh, sick rear delts. But on that thing, you can like adjust where the weight catches kind of. So,

and like, you know, for me, like out here is really hard to just even get going. But once you get going, it's like, okay, here we like,

we're good. So that one, you can actually like have it a little bit less in the beginning and then pick catch right away and i really like that it felt good what do you feel more personally andrew do you feel face pulls more or do you feel the rear dial i can't figure out face pulls at all interesting no very interesting a lot of people have a hard time with face pulls, I think, because they don't have good external rotation. And when you can't really rotate back, when you can only pull and your elbow is not able to get real high, then it's just not...

It'll still work the rear delt a lot, but it's just not the same. The way that I was taught how to do them at Westside was to kind of, and I learned it on the sled. You use a rope on a sled with handles. And then when you pull the handles, you pull towards your face and then you pull up and back. And the way that Louie Simmons explained it to me, it was as if you were throwing,

trying to throw a barbell backwards over your head. And so when we do the movement with the cables, we're just trying to practice the same thing. Yeah. Well, that makes sense because when I, so I would see everybody here at ST, you know, kind of more here-ish or like elbows or whatever. And I was like, dude, all I feel is pain. It doesn't feel good. But when I was messing with it a couple of weeks back, I was going up and then way high. I thought I was doing them wrong.

Were you using that cloth attachment thing? Yeah, the little bit more room to breathe. So when I was doing that, that felt pretty good. But I'm like, oh, this isn't how everybody else does it. So maybe I don't know what I'm doing. You end up making it look like a Cuban press is what it looks like. Yeah. Cuban presses with a barbell and you have the barbell you pull the barbell up in like an upright row fashion to like your belly button and then you you uh i guess uh rotator

cuff it back up over your head and then kind of press it out okay yeah weird exercise but an amazing one i have massive bias towards it. I feel it the best. The face pulls? Yeah. I have massive bias towards that movement for the rear delts. There are better movements probably for the rear delts, but I love that one. I think what also matters in people feeling stuff is when they have stuff. It's hard to activate stuff when it's not there. You're like, oh, flex your calves. And someone's like,

what? Yeah, totally. I mean, usually people know how to flex like their calves, usually their forearms, but then you start getting into like lats or traps and then people start getting kind of confused on,

on how to flex it. Even sometimes the chest, those people don't really know how to flex their chest biceps. I think people practice that one. So they kind of know how to do that but you start getting into some other body parts people are like yeah i remember when chris duffin was here he had a lot of great control he was like he's like you need to try to push out on your left oblique more and i'm like uh i'm like this and he's like well you just kind of pushed out your whole stomach he's like right in here you know this spot he's like and that's where you're going to push against the belt

and then I was like can you do that he's like oh yeah and he pushed it out and like his stomach went lopsided I was like that is weird excuse me it went lopsided yeah it went like poop like shifted like shifted to one side I was like oh my god sir you should probably get that checked

yeah he kind of has like a distended you know he kind of has a distended Like shifted to one side. I was like, oh my God. Sir, you should probably get that checked. He kind of has like a distended, you know, he kind of has a distended belly, which is real like muscular. Yeah. And those big ass squats and deadlifts and stuff. He's a ball of muscle. Yeah. Chris Duffin. That makes sense about not having anything there to flex.

That would make sense. Because every time I've tried to work shoulders, I just work front delts. I can never really activate the rear. But with the pec deck, we're doing that. Over time. Over time, you'll be able to do it. Yeah. Maybe Dave Palumbo can tell us a thing or two about flexing.

A thing or two about a thing or two, huh? I'm so excited about that. Somebody did ask if you ever competed in bodybuilding, and I'm like, where you been? Yes. So did you get your pro card yeah i got my pro card in the inba the nga and the wnbf and the only pro card i care about is the wnbf and that's the one i got recently drug tested for yes okay yeah they're all natural organizations but the wnbf i think is like the they have the best shows and they are the best when it comes to drug testing.

If you test negatively, is that positive? If I test negative? Yes. If I test negative, that is positive. That is positive. Positive. Yeah. But yeah, I competed a bunch in 2015 in a few pro shows and I competed quite a bit in late 2013.

Yeah. Really? Seriously? Seriously. Wow. You had the courage to stand on stage like that? Yes. Wow.

Hey, have you ever seen pictures for like, nah, my first show, if you go to like to my, like if you go to the first photo on my Instagram, which is just scrolling way too deep. I think that's the cool thing about Instagram too. You can see how weak I was at a certain point but um yeah those for those pictures from my first show i was like that that shit was interesting let's just see but uh so most of what i've seen you look pretty amazing yeah but did you start out a lot yeah it's really hard did you start out like pretty small or something because you're in the bubble can i get a hey now Did you start out like pretty small or something? Why is that so funny to me?

Because you're in the bubble. Can I get a hey now? Yeah, I think. Oh, yeah. I think of that show. When you pulled up stuff on here, you look pretty jacked to me. Yeah, but that was 2015. Okay. 2013.

I think I was probably, I think when I was stage lean i wasn't as lean but i was around the same weight so i think i was still around 225 or 230 on stage but i wasn't as lean as i was in 2015 did you compete as a teenager no i started doing bodybuilding competing see 2000 i was like 20 19 or 20 i think that was my first show And then second show and all the other shows was when I was, well, first and second show was when I was that age. And then 2015 was just two years later is when I did like five or six shows in that year. Were you muscular in high school?

I mean, I remember seeing older pictures of you, but. There, there'll be some older pictures and throwback pictures to high school there, but yeah, I was pretty big in high school. Okay. I thought you were going to be like, no, I i was a skinny guy i remember no pictures when you were pretty young and you kind of had like biceps and stuff yeah so 16 18 21 23 and now i'm 28 when did the hair start to go 23 you see the receding hairline at 23. That's obviously when the trend began everybody.

No, it's not when the trend began. I wasn't going to say that. For some reason you look like Tiger Woods in the 18 picture. Really? Interesting. That's interesting. We are both black. Well, no. He's... When I was younger. When I was in third grade blaze what did he say it

blazing um when i was in third grade because my eyes are by the way yeah because my eyes are the way they are and my last name is in yang um that's the only non-jacked photo i can find of you kids would be like it seems baggy yeah kids would be like in sema is there anything mixed and i tell kids i'm part japanese because of in yang and they believe that shit but um i would have yeah anyone kids what kids did but uh yeah so the first show pictures there but like that's why i think ig is interesting because like that's why i first started posting videos and you you can like go through other people's too and you can see like how their progression was how they began like there is there's a video of me squatting like 275 and it is ugly i look like a deer with like just it's not going so well yeah

so that's like you know it's cool it's cool i'm scrolling i just see nothing but jacked photos nothing but jackness when you're power lifting i guess there's some plump ones but you're still fucking jacked what like 270 something i passed it a long time ago now but yeah that's funny money was a big boy i wish uh it's one thing that that's one thing if any of you guys are trying to or you're going on a fitness journey or whatever and you you you want to do something with it later even if you're young if you're like 15 or 16, take videos and pictures of that shit. So that by the time you're 25 and you've made a lot of progress, people can see like you,

when you sucked and when you were figuring it out so that everybody knows that there is that stage. Yeah. Definitely take the pictures and videos that you don't want to take. That is super important. Those will be the most important. When you feel great to take a picture, your journey is kind of already over.

You already went, you already kind of like went through it pretty, pretty well. It's like Christian Guzman. So that's why his whole thing is so sick. Cause he was like out here 15 or 16. Oh yeah. Right.

Oh yeah. He was a baby. Baby. Dave Palumbo has been in the game for a long time. Mm-hmm. Doing stuff with muscular development back in the day. And I think you were mentioning that he did a ton of bodybuilding shows and never quite got the pro card. Yeah.

So that's really interesting. How do you stay motivated for long enough to continue to go after it? Mm-hmm. And then I wonder, you know, I wonder what he thinks the reasons are, like what held him back. Like it was,

it was at the era that he was in and he just couldn't get big enough. Cause I believe that's the timeframe that he was around is when people started getting really, really big. But he also was really, really big. I know he was massive. It was massive too.

Yeah. But the guys back then they were starting to get out of control big so i don't know i don't know they're still big today i don't know i don't know what the difference is with bodybuilding they always say that it changes a lot but it kind of seems pretty similar except for when arnold competed till now that obviously some major differences there yeah for some reason though like okay so in the 90s those physiques that were getting on stage as far as the npc is concerned like ifbb pros when people say that they did look better they did kind of look better and you can't necessarily tell why because it's not like i feel like the

physiques now are just bubblier right but they don't necessarily look as i don't know like dexter jackson would be a physique that would, would go really well back in the nineties. Right. But, um, yeah, it's just,

they just looked better and you can't tell why. Yeah. I wonder what it is. I wonder, um, I sometimes wonder if the body fat percentage was just a bit higher and they just looked a little bit better. Like I know some of the guys like, uh, when they would just like kind of bulk,

like they wouldn't bulk bulk, they would still stay pretty lean. Yeah. They would gain a little bit of weight and stuff, but like those old pictures like Mike Menser and some of those guys, they just look powerful. Like he's obviously incredibly lean, but you don't even really think about that. It's like a, it's kind of an afterthought. You're just like, man, his arms look awesome. His chest is massive and his waist is small, but you don't even really think about that. It's like a, it's kind of an afterthought. You're just like, man, his arms look awesome. His chest is massive and his waist is small, but you're not really thinking about how fit

and how shredded he is. And I'm sure if he flexed his quads or something, he'd probably have some striations in him and things like that. But they just, they, uh, they, I mean, he's probably in some of those pictures, probably like eight or 10% body fat, which is not, not a high by any means, but maybe higher than what we see from some of the guys today, they get on stage and they're pretty peeled up. And it's like,

I think another physique that it reminds me of, at least nowadays is like Cedric McMillan. Cedric McMillan is a physique that would have been really well back then. And as he looks great now, but for some, like he just doesn't get to win as much because i don't think he's as big as some of the mass monsters that are competing currently even though he has like the craziest shape to his physique so i think people get uh too like uh it's a weird way to say

it but almost too like blocky or bulky yes uh puffy and then uh man and maybe a lot of that has to do with the drugs you know people use you know quite a bit of drugs i think i think the drugs back in the day i mean everyone always kind of says this but i think they were literally like a like a little bit of an add-on you know and people like hey just take a little bit of this and i think that a lot of those guys looked pretty damn good before they ever really touched any of that stuff they had their diet intact i think nowadays all the convenient uh you know junk food that's out there and things like that people are they're probably also coming from a different place coming from a different spot like arnold was pretty much always jacked yeah you know from the time i mean you go back to when he's like 15 16 he looked pretty damn

good and i think he won some pretty big competitions at a young age and stuff like that, too. Do you guys think that this is partially why, like, the physique guys got so popular? Just because. And classic physique. I think so. When I look at the guys on stage, I want to look like those guys. And I'm not saying any of them are obtainable for me. Like, I'm not saying, like, oh,able for me like i'm not saying like oh i

don't want to look like mr olympia it's like well i can't and i know that but as far as like yeah no i'd rather look like some of the physique guys than you know just being so fucking huge yeah i mean okay let's just be real it is like it is really dope like bodybuilding and those physiques but it's quite uncomfortable too yeah i mean we're just taking about the reality of just walking around right i mean but it's still something to be marveled at it's still something that's that's cool i get what you're saying though that's why more people compete in men's physique because more people can actually attain those physiques realistically. Um, and it's like,

it doesn't take as much bodybuilding takes more work, like more, more work putting on all that muscle than it does for men's physique and probably, yeah, more substances. I think maybe the mistake that people might make is they think that they need to be in this like massive caloric surplus in order to gain size.

And I could see an argument that you might need a little extra energy and you certainly don't, you certainly don't want to have too little energy. But I think that the mistake is made when you think that you need an extra thousand or 2000 calories. I mean, uh, maybe it's kind of worked for some guys,

but then they also need to take growth hormone and insulin. And like, it causes like this other cascade of things. I think even if the natural guys are to try that, I think they're going to get too puffy and too bulky. So yeah, it's, it's not an easy thing to,

not an easy thing to figure out. But to your point, Andrew, with some of those physique competitors, I believe that those guys probably come from a similar place that the old school bodybuilders came from. And that's a place of most likely being kind of on the thinner side and not ever really getting to be fat without ever really. And even within their career, like a body, some bodybuilders would get fat in their career. And I think that I think that that's just kind of permanent. I think that kind of sits around. I think it ends up being part of get fat in their career. And I think that, I think that that shit's kind of permanent.

I think that kind of sits around. I think it, it ends up being part of your physique in some way. I don't think you can like burn it all off and just, I don't think you can look the same. Most of the bodybuilders that I've ever known, they're usually fairly thin or started fairly thin and they, they're able to add on to that.

I mean, there are exceptions to every rule, but that's a lot of what I, I think it's really rare for a bodybuilder to be like, yeah, man, I used to be a total fat kid. I haven't, I haven't really, I haven't really come across it much. I know John Anderson mentioned that he was a fat kid, but John Anderson is also a fairly blocky power lifter or a bodybuilder rather. He did have some good success in bodybuilding, but it's just rare. It's really rare from what I've seen.

Yeah. And that's, that's also why like classic physique is so much more popular too, just because it's like, you don't have to get as big as bodybuilding and it looks more like, like it's just honestly looks more pleasing to most people too. I think, I think women would be more into it, right? Women would be like, Hey, that, yeah, the guy looks awesome.

And then bodybuilding, I think sometimes women are like, that's not attractive. That doesn't look cool. Yeah. I mean, let's be real. Like, it's funny. Um, a lot of people that start like lifting, it's kind of like a meme at this point, but you know, you, you think that you're going to be getting all this attention from women and it's just, it's all dudes.

It's, it's all dudes. It's all dudes. But, um, yeah, yeah. Bodybuilding is very, very interesting these days. And that's, that's something that's really interesting about the sport because it's, know dave palumbo doesn't compete anymore but he talks a lot about it he does train but it makes me think it's like like basketball you could play that for a long time even when you're old you could like play picket basketball but bodybuilding you know that's something that you do but and there are like you know there are masters and stuff but at that point it's like

i don't know it it's not like an it's not like a normal sport even power lifting power lifting you you can you could do that for a hot minute and still you know but bodybuilding it's like at a certain point it seems like you might just i mean there's like you know um you know run out of gas we'll just say you know like with just aging you know shit happens but i think it's other factors like like when you're young in your 20s you have one person to take you know uh responsibility for you know you have yourself then all of a sudden you get older and masters and it's like oh shit you got a wife you got kids you got other people that depend on you and i think that to me i think that's what you know might get people to be like you know what yeah i'll probably step away from

you know this shit right now and do you mean like the one where like you're actually on gas no i just i just meant like testosterone hormone levels and stuff like that. Just, just getting older. But I don't know. That's just my thoughts on it. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah.

It looks like we got Dave ready to go too. Oh, he has the legendary pop tarts. Oh yeah. My man. He's got all of them. My man. Stack them all up on top of each other and just eat them straight.

So the more you eat them, the better they are actually. And they're fucking really good, man. I got, at first I was like, these aren't that good. Cause I thought it was more like a pop tart.

And then I also forgot that pop tarts aren't that good. Anyway, like pop tarts, like, I don't know. We have a weird memory, right? We think they're legit,

but they sucked. Yeah. Anyway, the legendary, uh, tasty pastries are awesome. I just had to kind of reframe my mind and understand that it's not really like a Pop-Tart. Do you warm them up or no?

No, I just eat them usually. But I did a really fat thing yesterday. It was great, though. New discovery. Had to run home. Didn't have time to eat here. Just too much going on yesterday. So on my way home, I drank one of those like Fairlife protein shakes with the cookies and cream tasty pastry.

And I was like, I'm going to have one, then have the other. And then like I took a bite and then I took a drink. Oh, dude, I've been dipping in there. Yeah, I've been dipping. The whole way home, I would take a bite and I take a drink and I just sit there in traffic with both in my, you know, it almost sounded bad. But it was like i was dipping it in the uh the chocolate milk that sounds good it was their life protein shake they make protein shakes oh dude oh that's uh 30 grams of protein and only like four grams of uh carbs like two fat

do you get this like a gas station i think you can get them kind of just about anywhere but not not not anywhere but you get them they the Core Power, which is really good, but they also just make a regular protein shake that you can get at Costco. They taste really good. Tastes like chocolate milk. Really fucking good. What's up, buddy? We were talking about some of those. I don't know if you've seen these at the gas station,

but there's Core Power, Fair Life protein drinks. Yeah, I haven't tried them. I'll tell you which ones my wife loves. Have you tried the Jack O'Ox, the Bang ones? life protein drinks. Yeah. I haven't tried them. Yeah. I'll tell you which ones my wife loves. Have you tried the Jack O'Ox, the bang ones?

I have not. No. Bang makes a, like these like coffee flavored, they have caffeine in them, but they're like protein. Just, I've seen that.

Yeah. The key. It's a, and there's a way I slid in there. There's like, no, there's no like lactose in them. They're really oh that's awesome yeah he's definitely a job with those remember how bad uh the protein shakes and stuff used to be oh horrendous remember the old uh old

metrics would like break your blender i remember like my blender was literally smoking trying to like blend that shit up but you know what even though there was no way i slept back then they didn't they didn't use pure way they used egg way and casein it didn't those things didn't bother my stomach i didn't get like you know the poops from those things even though if you left if you if you left that stuff in a shaker bottle overnight remember the rancid smell you'd almost had to throw the shaker bottle out there it was so terrible i'd leave them in my trunk because i would personally train people and they would be so disgusting the smell would be it was like how can how can a shake that tastes so good turn into this in like five hours right dave how'd you get started in bodybuilding and uh how long ago did

you get started in bodybuilding um i started ago did you get started in bodybuilding? I started, I was doing a little working out in high school, believe it or not, just to get stronger. I remember some, a couple of the kids said, you know, if you worked out, you, I can tell you, you'd look good. You know, you got, you know, like a big chest. And so I started doing, you know, I was doing pushups and stuff like that. Cause my dad always did that kind of stuff. And I started weight training and I, you know, I, I was always so lean that, you know, if you put on five pounds of muscle and you have no body fat, it looks like 20 pounds of muscle. So I got a lot of attention because I was very dainty and stuff

like that. So kids think that's cool in high school and stuff like that. So I got into that. And then when I went to college, I was a long distance runner and the coaches were like, you're too big. And I wasn't really big. I was like 165 pounds, you know, they're like, you're too big. And so they made me like, they gave me like anorexic complex. Cause you know, when you're running long distance, if you're carrying around 15 pounds of muscle, that's extra weight on your back. It's going to slow you down. So I basically starved off. Yeah. I almost starved myself down to about 140 pounds and it did make me faster, but I was really, you know, I looked really skinny. So when I decided that my running career

was over at the end of college, you know, I said, you know, I'm never going to get a date. So I started working out again. And, you know, that's when I really got into like, you know, I went from starving myself to now everything I ate, you know, because I ate clean, turned to muscle. It was like, there was no limiting factor. It was like, as much food as I can get down my body, that's how much muscle I built. It was like I was on, I didn't know anything about steroids. But I, you know, looking back, it was like I was on steroids because my body just wanted to grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. So I had to build up from eating like twice a day to like eating six times a day. And, you know, I was doing those Joe Weider shakes, you know, that would destroy your stomach. But, you know, back then, you know, when you're a kid, you can actually drink milk and it doesn't really affect you that badly.

Where'd you learn some of this stuff from? Like, where'd you learn a little bit of bodybuilding from and the eating and stuff? Magazines, maybe? The magazines. Yeah. I mean, I was like, you know, I bought it. I bought the Kool-Aid, you know, that Joe Ito was feeding me. And that was just because I didn't do nothing.

But I had – but you know what? Remember, I was in college. It was my last year. I was pre-med. I had a biology major. I was taking genetics class. able to take what i was reading and i kind of inter interpreted uh how you know in in a way that was filtering out a lot of the garbage because i i knew what made sense physiologically speaking and you know so i started doing you know pretty much i realized that protein was the key

you know that was the missing ingredient whereas with running it's all carbohydrates you know you don't even worry about protein it's funny i thought i wasn't eating a lot of protein when i was running but i was drinking like a half a gallon of milk a day and you know how much and uh you remember i don't know if you remember back in the 80s they actually had um they come out with something called skim milk plus and it was like concentrated skim milk they just put more protein they basically put powdered skim milk in the skim milk and it started in pennsylvania which is where i was in school and so i used to drink a half a gallon every day of that stuff it was probably like you know 200 grams of protein in there at least damn bring it back you know that's a lot

but you know what i would at the night i would get my stomach would look like an ethiopian kid before i went to bed remember those little ethiopians they show in national geographic with the balloon bellies that's how i look before i went to bed and then i would i would pee all night long i would get up every two hours and pee pee pee pee pee by the morning my stomach was flat again it was crazy you got in sema for you get over here oh fuck um yo so were you that kid in national geographic no stop it man stop it i thought god damn it he's like that's me i was that kid in yeah uh i don't know um so how big how how um how much weight did you gain so you went from 140 to what before you decided that you wanted to start like competing in bodybuilding and before like you started taking your first substances and stuff like that that's it so when I was, I was 140 in 1988, I started work, maybe 88. And I started working

out and I went to about 180, which was, I gained 40 pounds in the first year, but I probably 20 of that probably was just restoring what I normally, you know what I mean? It's like muscle memory. Like I went back to my high school weight really quickly, you know, because I started eating and I wasn't starving myself all the time. You got to remember when I was a long distance runner, I was running 10 miles a day. So I was really, you know, pushing my body very hard. So I, but you know, and then what happens is I started working out like, like I used to run.

I was working out for two and a half, three hours a day. You know how that goes when you first start. So I, you know i was making a lot of mistakes but i was growing anyway despite that because i was eating a lot of food and i just had to stop and it was i was addicted to running so i had to like wean myself off it i didn't just stop running immediately i had to go down to five miles a day two and a half miles a day and i was on two and a half miles a day for a long time and then i finally realized the more i the less i ran the, the bigger I got. So by night, so when I graduated college in 1990, I had decided I was going to do a bodybuilding show because there was a kid in the gym doing one. So I graduated in May of 90. And then in like June, I did my first show,

the natural New York city. So I had gotten up to to i think like 185 pounds and then i dieted down to like 176 but actually for the for the middleweight class it's actually i think i got down to 168 wow so i was i went from like a lean 140 to so i gained 20 what 28 pounds of muscle you know in that year and a half that i had and that was all natural you know it's just just for me training and eating and stuff like that of course course, at almost 5'11", being 168 pounds on stage is probably not going to cut it in terms of winning. So I didn't even place top five. I think it was sixth place. That was back when the shows were really competitive.

But it was a natural show. Drug test and everything, supposedly, a polygraph test or whatever. And all the guys in the middleweight class were like man you're pretty ripped but you need more muscle you know so i had strided glutes but i was really like thin on the thin side so i said to myself i'm not competing again until i have enough muscle that i think that i could at least you know look respectable in my own mind so i i started training and i and I did one more natural show in 1992. And I was 200 pounds. So just about I think I even made 198 at one of the Jersey shows. I was about 198 200. So that was what another, you know, 35 pounds of muscle I gained in those two years. And then I decided I

was going to, you know, take a, you you know i was going to switch over to the dark side and start using some stuff and then i competed in 94 at 228 so i gained another 30 pounds of muscle almost in those two years would you say that you're someone who gains muscle this time on gear this time on gear do you gain muscle easily because like those are like that that's a lot of no i had a ridiculously enormous amount of food um to be honest with you but i guess maybe i did because i grew you know i my body responded but you know what i'm an i was a neurotic i did everything there was no mistakes made like i didn't miss workouts i never missed a meal i never missed sleeping and resting you know

i i was like i knew more about anabolic steroids before I ever took a shot than probably the rest of the world knew because I researched it. I read that Bill Phillips anabolic reference guide 600 times. I was like, I knew it. I had the whole thing in my mind plotted out what I was doing, even though I hadn't done it yet. And I don't think anyone else knew that I knew what I was doing. But once I got to 94, people started asking me questions because people realized this guy gained a ridiculous amount of muscle in the last couple of years. And then people wanted to know what I was doing. And it was just really applied consistency. That's what I would say, obviously.

Then I gained another 30 pounds over the next year. Then I gained another 30 pounds over the next year. So from 94 to 95, when I won the Junior Nationals at the heavyweight class, I gained another 30 pounds. So then I was up to 258. And then I gained another 10 pounds the following year to 268. And that was pretty much where I kind of... That wasn't my heaviest contest weight, but that was probably a comfortable weight for me. I did get as heavy as 280. I competed once.

The fans loved it, but the judges didn't because it wasn't as an aesthetic look as maybe I needed to be. My sweet spot was around that 265, 268 range. But it took me five years. I gained 100 pounds of muscle. That's pretty much what I tell people. years they gain 100 pounds of muscle that's pretty much what i tell people yeah with uh with anabolic steroids i think that maybe people think that um that once you start to take them that it gives you results like in perpetuity like it gives you results kind of forever and um i'm not even talking yet necessarily about coming off of them but just while you're on them

you get to play that card one time. It's kind of like when you first start training, you can play the card of like, oh, I'm going to eat a lot. I'm going to eat six times a day and that's going to help get me big. That's one card that you can play and that doesn't work forever. Just eating more doesn't always work because at a certain point, you might start to get fatter. But a similar thing happens with steroids. Like you play that card, you gain your 20 pounds and sometimes it gets to be really difficult. Seems like you were able to expand that a little bit and you were able to gain, you know, 50 pounds, 60 pounds, but maybe that was just because you weren't done growing naturally

as well. Like, what are some of your thoughts about, you know, a lot of people are on the fence about taking steroids. Like what is your experience with them? Like, did they really get you some of your thoughts about, you know, a lot of people are on the fence about taking steroids. Like, what is your experience with them? Like, did they really get you some of the results that you were looking for? Well, you know, I think it's important to mention that I did train naturally for like four or five years, you know, and I really tapped. I couldn't gain any more weight. You know, there was no more food I could eat. Like, my body just wasn't growing anymore.

So that's the reason I got a little frustrated. People were accusing me of taking steroids anyway. Now, I might have been on steroids because I was taking that. Remember the old hot stuff? Right, right. Hot stuff. Had like a banana ball in it or whatever. Yeah.

That's what they said. Who knows? I definitely grew from taking that. So I don't know if there was steroids in there or not. But people thought I was on steroids. I'm like, you know what? This is ridiculous. Who cares? I want to compete with the best. i don't know if there was steroids in there or not but people was thought i was on steroids i'm like you know what this is ridiculous who cares i don't care i want to compete with the best i don't care if anyone wants to let them stereotype me as much as they want because i knew a lot of guys taking steroids that look terrible so um i decided to start taking and i started you know with very mild cycles but i my body responded really really well to him

and you know i i have this theory. I just do. I mean, I ran, I was running long distance for five years straight, never taken a day off, you know, sometimes at certain points, 10 miles a day or more. I really think I changed like my metabolism permanently from that. Cause I think what happens is with, you know, with distance and endurance type athletes, the muscle doesn't get bigger we know it doesn't hypertrophy but it gets more oxygen efficient and i think it does the way it does that is that it creates more mitochondria and when you create more mitochondria which you know and when you create more nuclei which would be i guess the process of hyperplasia

you don't necessarily see a size increase but but you see an efficiency increase. Now, when you actually try to make the muscles get bigger via hypertrophy training, which would be heavy weights, obviously lower repetitions, it's like you have more genetic potential than you did before. So I created more cells and more mitochondria. So I actually souped up my body's genetics before I started bodybuilding. And then I started bodybuilding on top of that. I think that's why I grew so fast because I had all this new tissue there and I had all these mitochondria, which would make obviously oxidizing fat more efficient in

my body, which was perfect for running, right? Because you want to be able to produce a lot of ATP quickly. And so I think I actually altered my metabolism. I think if I hadn't done the running first, even though it sounds nuts, I don't think I would have been as successful as a bodybuilder and looked as freaky as I did. So whatever, you know, I always believe things happen the way they're supposed to. And so whatever the chain of events were, I noticed that. But I will say this about anabolics. I responded to lower dose stuff really, really well, but I noticed that I didn't necessarily get the density and thickness. Now, you were always a very strong guy, Mark, but I was not strong in the sense that

I had good strength in terms of maneuverability and stuff like that. But I wasn't like a guy who could go into the gym when he was in high school and bench press 225 or 315 or 405, like some of these guys I have heard. So my strength came from the bigger I got. So as I got bigger, I just got stronger. So eventually, I was inclining 405. And I was squatting, you know, 700 pounds, and I was deadlifting, you know, 650. But I didn't start out like that. It was because I got the 300 pounds of muscle that enabled me to get that strong. And so the progressive overload that I was constantly subject my body to, along with the food and the drugs and the consistency of applying it, you know, and never messing up, I think just just resulted in

me building the physique that I did, I think it was all together. And I always tell people, the secret to being a great bodybuilder is the boring you know consistent applying of the same principles over and over and over again and never getting bored never getting distracted never giving up and that sometimes some people can call that insanity but you know that that's really the secret to success of bodybuilding so i'm curious like for a lot of bodybuilders that are going at it that they're trying because when you look at pictures of your physique, anybody would assume that that's an IFBB pro physique. That was my assumption.

But then when you see like how much you competed, but you didn't manage to get the pro card, even though you obviously had a pro level physique, like what is it that first I told you not to bring this up. I'm sorry. No, it's good. I'll talk about anything i don't care but like you know first off like what do you think it was that i mean that had you continuously getting the runner up even though that doesn't really make that much sense you know i i now that i'm not competing i always look at my physique and and i i want to throw up sometimes when i see pictures of myself, certain ones and some of the pictures

I'm like, wow, I look really good there. So I definitely had what it took to be an IFBB pro. There was no doubt about that. I mean, we've seen some pretty horrible physiques turn pro. So I definitely had what it took to turn pro. There's no doubt. I don't think anyone would deny that. There was, first of all, in the nineties, it was harder to get a pro card because they

didn't give that many out and so it was a very politically uh driven um type of situation in other words depending on who who you were with what supplement company you were with what the you know because they only gave out so many pro cards and on top of that there was a there was a hierarchy of like whose hand you had a shake and who you knew and who you didn't maybe piss off. And I was very naive to this. I wish I had someone like myself now advising me that. I was of the belief. Maybe because I was raised by my father who was an educator and I was in this ivory tower my whole career in college.

I didn't really have a lot of street smarts. I thought that you were rewarded on merit. And I didn't think of the fact that, you know what, bodybuilding is not a sport where you can actually whoever crosses the finish line wins first, whether the guy's a dick or not. It's like, who's handy, you shake and type of thing. And I didn't get involved in the politics. And I should have a little bit more looking back because I'm sure I was around all the right people. I just didn't bother to even get involved with that. And it worked against me, I think. I think maybe it was construed as I was arrogant. I don't know. And maybe I wasn't

rewarded for that. That's the only way I can look at it. And I think later, when I did become friends with everyone in the whole industry, because I started covering the shows and representing companies and doing guest posing with all the promoters, it was like too late already. I had stopped already. And I was at the end of my career. So I didn't play the political game. I didn't have anyone advising me. And when I finally realized that, I think that it was, like I said, it was too late. Now, the reason I mentioned this is because it is important if you're a bodybuilder and you're coming up to hobnob in the right circle, so to speak, and respect the right people because it is a beauty pageant it is a subjective sport you can it's really whatever people want there's no there's no way to say you know what even though you don't like me it's too bad i'm the best football player on the field you know that kind of thing you think it's as political right now as it was in the 90s um maybe but at the top echelon but it doesn't matter because

there's so many opportunities to get a pro card. Now, pretty much anyone can get a program, right? I mean, I mean, you go to masters nationals and they give out 600 pro cards for the

weekend. So, I mean, if you have a good physique, you're probably going to win eventually, you know, there's enough, there's enough opportunities that,

and you know what the reason is. And a lot of people think, well, the, the, the talent pool isn't as good as it was back in the nineties. It really is. It might be better.

It's just a guy guys turn pro too quickly nowadays so you don't see it. Back then, the guys who were in the top five of the super heavy, the heavyweight class, all of them were going to become pros. It was just a matter of which year because they only gave out one card per class

and then one overall. It just took a long time. A lot of the guys were just pros in the waiting. So the amateur top shows, when we would watch nationals in USA, we loved it because you were watching a pro show, basically. Nowadays, the talents, they drain the amateur ranks so quickly that you don't really have time for some of these amateurs to get super good. And that's why a lot of these amateurs have a tough time competing in the pros,

and they got to actually take a year or two off before they actually are ready. You know? Yeah. How did you kind of have the courage to body build? Like, because a lot of times if I feel like with some of these sports, like I've always been a huge pro wrestling fan.

And when I was a pro wrestler, I felt like I always had to defend it. When I got into powerlifting, it was kind of the same thing. It's like this niche thing, especially back when I was a pro wrestler I felt like I always had to defend it when I got into power lifting it was kind of the same thing it's like this niche thing especially back when I was doing it like no one cared about it it wasn't soccer it wasn't football it wasn't baseball it wasn't any of the big sports and it wasn't just it wasn't a popular big thing bodybuildings always looked at as being weird you're carrying around your Tupperware one moment you're super shredded and people can see veins in your face and the next moment you're fat and bloated and people like i thought you were a bodybuilder why so how did you uh how did you deal with like a lot

of the criticism because back when you started uh there was even less people involved in fitness right right you know i never really looked very sloppy in the offseason i was always like a like a freaky looking like off-season bodybuilder. And I think I must have loved the attention, walking through the shopping malls and stuff like that, in the supermarket with my tank top and shorts on at 300 pounds. And people were like, holy shit. My ex at the time, she would always walk three steps behind me

and listen to what people were saying. I walked with blinders. I didn't care what anyone said. You always get those guys who go, stir it, stir it with blinders. I didn't care what anyone said, you know, you know, you always get those guys to go stir it, stir it, stir it, you know, and then she'd be like, fuck you. And she'd start arguing with them. I'm like, would you just leave these idiots alone? I said, you know, you're going to get me into fights with people now, you know,

it's just, I don't care what people think, you know, but I, I just never worried. I don't, I, my whole life, really, I've never really worried about what other people think about me. I just kind of do what I love, you I love and what I like and what I'm passionate about. I guess it's like the artist in me. As long as it gives me pleasure, I really don't care what anyone else thinks. There are a couple of people that irritate me here and there along the way. But now with social media, you can go online

and you call them out. i don't think we owe anyone an explanation i think if you want to for you know back in the 90s you know bodybuilding like you said wasn't maybe that widely acceptable but people kind of were interested about it because everyone would look every person out there wants to change the way they look okay um especially if they're not in shape and bodybuilders are the greatest magicians of all time when it comes to changing their physiques, right? So a lot of the regular people, even though they may not want to look like us bodybuilders, they want to look different and they want to get lean.

And so I found that a lot of average people were coming to me for advice. And like you said, they would say, well, I don't want to look like you, but I definitely want to lose body fat and my blood work is off and this and that. And so I really kind of embraced that right from the early part of my bodybuilding career, giving people advice. And I did it for free. There was no charging. I used to go on these forums and answer questions. And I had tons of people always in and out of my house asking me what the latest and greatest protein powders are and how I should use them and what they should use for fat burners and how they should diet. And so I was dieting people before there was even diet guru coaches. I was just doing it for my friends and the guys in the gym just because they gave me pleasure.

We'd go to the shows together. I'd help them. I'd be backstage oiling them up and, and, and tanning them and all that stuff. And so it just, for me, it was always like an information thing. So I think people respected me in the sense that, Hey, you know, that guy is a big, big freak, but he's also very, you know, he's also really smart. And so I kind of got that, like created that little niche for myself. your own experience. What's, um, true and false about anabolic steroids, uh, both positives and negatives. Like what are some positive results that you really like thought were great and now you're not on them anymore.

So maybe you don't get to, uh, maybe you wish you were, but, um, you know, what are some of the positive and negatives and what's true and what's false about them in your opinion? Yeah. I mean, you definitely feel invincible on them. There's, I mean, there's no doubt about that.

You recover faster, you feel stronger. I mean, injuries heal quickly. There's, I mean, there's, there's not,

there's no comparison. I mean, yeah, obviously sex drive is through the roof. You know, uh, you just, you just,

you feel like Superman on them. And, and that's the, the, the danger part of it, because you can, you just you just you feel like superman on them and and that's the the danger part of it because you can you can think that like it's like a drug addict chasing a high you can if you're not smart you can try to keep getting that you you know you can think more is better i think and a lot of people fall into that trap i never felt that i never really fell into that trap because i always found that when i went a little too high in dosage, I didn't feel good. I knew I was very attuned to my body. So I found the sweet spot for me,

which was about 1000 milligrams of testosterone a week, combined with some anabolics, one or two compounds. And then I was a big... I really loved growth hormone. I had a really good connection for growth hormone even early on in my career. So I had a doctor friend who was getting it from the hospital. And so I wasn't using a lot. I was using 2IUs, but I was using it back in 1995. So a lot of guys didn't start using it until the late 90s because they didn't have access to it or they didn't have the money for it. So I found that small incremental dosages consistently used, you couldn't beat the recovery rate and it definitely i felt like it definitely enhanced the way the anabolics worked

i got better results i stayed leaner just you know the pumps were insane on it so for me that was i always liked the long acting injectables with with growth hormone and then i found at some point not through the right channels, but I found that I was very insulin resistant on GH. And I probably didn't produce a lot of insulin anyway, because I was very lean all the time. And so I started experimenting with insulin around the time Milos... So Milos and I actually had a conversation in 1996 when we were in Dubai together about insulin. We had both just started experimenting with it. And like short-acting, fast-acting insulin like Humulin R, which was available readily without a prescription at most

US pharmacies. And I found that I was growing better. I wasn't using a lot. I was using like 10 IUs in the morning and 8 IUs like 5-6 hours later. And I found that I was responding better with that. Without that, I found I was very flat all the time. Growth hormone would not allow me to really fill my muscles up. And probably I wasn't producing... With the amount of food I was eating, I probably wasn't producing enough insulin. And so no one used blood sugar monitors then because there were really none that were readily available. You can go now and buy one for 10 bucks at Walmart. They didn't have them. They were like hundreds of dollars. And no one thought to use them. But I was using trial and error. So I developed a bunch of

insulin protocols that I was using that seemed to work really well for me. And that was really pushing my, I was started gaining a lot. I noticed a lot of gains when I started adding that in, in small amounts. But I mean, to answer your question, you know, anabolics make you better. They make you stronger. They make you faster. No pun intended. And if you use them responsibly, you know, I find that they don't have a lot of side effects. Now, I had my gynecomastia taken out. Obviously, you know, that was one of the initial side effects I got from my first shot of testosterone.

I had some bad acne. I always was prone to acne. I'm a bad acne. I always was prone to acne. I'm a greasy Italian. And so when I took them, I started getting a lot of those big red boils. It wasn't like scarring acne, but it was really uncomfortable acne. So I did do Accutane to get rid of that. Those were probably my two biggest side effects, I would say, that I had. Other than that, the typical fluid retention, probably.

But I never was a big oral guy because whenever I would take anadrol or dianabol, I never lasted more than two, three weeks on it because I couldn't eat on it. So I never really took the toxic anabolics because my body just didn't jive well with them. So that probably saved me. But once again, I think what people do is they get carried away and they think that the anabolics are what's building the muscle, not the food and the training, which we know is not true. It is the food and the training. The anabolics kind of just give you that little extra push. And they start downing, you know, three anadrols a day and six, 10 Dianabol pills a day. And then they're taking 3,000 milligrams of testosterone a week.

And they look like shit. And they can't figure out why. They can't eat. They're drinking every single meal because they have no appetite. And so there is a diminishing return. Once again, you have to be smart about how you lay out what you do. And I think that I had a really good balanced approach to it and a smart approach to it. And back then, no one thought to use ridiculously high dosages, at least in the initial part

of my career. I don't think if you told anyone you were taking more than four IUs a GH, they'd be like, why? No one would even do that. It was too expensive and no one even thought to do that. I remember when I helped Kevin Lavrone back in 96 for the Arnold when he won. He was using four IUs a GH a day and he only did it for like eight or 10 weeks. I mean, and no one thought to do any more than that, you know, that's just the way it was. And I think guys today might

get a little more carried away with the anabolics. And once again, it's all about balance. So when you throw the balance off, you have problems. It sounds to me like one of the major negatives is just that you're going to need to know a lot, you know, and, uh, there's a lot of young people out there that are just kind of starting their lifting journey. And maybe they go to the gym for a couple months and they feel like they're stuck. And then they kind of find out that other people, you know, use the performance enhancing drugs and they, they, they hop on them. And what I always just caution people is, is that it can be, it's not necessarily a gateway into other drugs,

but a lot of times it's into other performance enhancing drugs. So it's just a, it can be a slippery slope and you can be like just really in it and you can end up kind of, you know, going down the career path that you chose, which is all stuff that interested you, that, that, that you liked, that you really went after. But it sounds like, you know, for people that are young or people that aren't knowledgeable about this topic, it's like, man, you, it would be great for you to have a really good understanding,

do the best you can to find out as much information as you can before you ever inject any of these things. I'm in very much agreement with you, like where I think that, you know, some testosterone, I don't think really causes much harm, like where I think that, you know, some testosterone, I don't think really causes much harm, but with the harm that it does cause is it does make you feel invincible. It does make you feel great. And so now you're kind of trapped inside of that. If you already like fitness, if you already like lifting, if you already like power lifting

and you already like physique transformation, you're going to like it that much more when you get a taste of what steroids can do for you. And then you're kind of trapped in there because then like, then what do you do? Like when you come off stuff and in your opinion, now that you've been off stuff for a while, are you able to keep any of the gains that you got from? Cause I think some people are like,

I'm going to do a cycle or two. I'm going to gain a little size. I'm going to hold onto that for 10, 10 20 years what are some of your thoughts on something like that you know chris if i started eating six times a day and i started training at a gym i train my house because you know i get three kids and because of covid and i wanted to put more muscle on i know i could probably go up 20 30 pounds easily i don't want to my blood pressure is good at this this way i feel good i'm 53 years old 30 pounds easily. I don't want to. My blood pressure is good at this weight. I feel good.

I'm 53 years old. I don't need to weigh 230 pounds. 190 is fine for me. I feel comfortable this way. So I kind of keep myself this way. I'm shredded, though. I have striated glutes. I have no body fat.

Show us. You told me without a shirt. What? Show us. No, I'm just kidding. No. I'm straight. I'm not big but i'm lean you know i have strident glutes you know i i'm very lean you know and and so i'm comfortable so like you know if i

want to go to the beach and take my shirt off i i feel good i'm not big you know like i used to be but i don't have to prove anything you know so i think that you have to find something that you're comfortable with now look i'm not against HRT at all. Because you know what? If I had low testosterone, believe me, I'd be the first guy back on HRT. For some reason, after doing five years of having kids with my wife and HCG every day almost, my body turned itself back on to a certain enough of a degree that I feel good and I have good energy. And you remember, I had my thyroid removed, you know, a couple, you know,

two months ago and I'm on replacement and I feel good too, even on that. So I'm, I'm, my body's in a good, in a good zone in terms of energy level and I'm not depressed. And so why mess with it? You know, but if my levels dropped at some point and I stopped feeling good and I went for testing and I was low, I would be right back on HRT. I'm not against it. I'm completely for it.

I think it's great for people who are older. But what I found is a lot of guys who had low testosterone as a kid, low testosterone as adults. So it's not changing anything like that. I probably had very high testosterone as a kid because I was a maniac, you know, lunatic, very aggressive athlete. You know, you would think I was on a cycle, you know, when I was 16, you know, I was such a maniac. So I probably had very high testosterone. I never had it checked. Who knows? I know kids though, you know, those kids in school that were like a little on the soft side, they were terrible athletes. Those guys probably had low testosterone.

They didn't have any drive. And so when they go on a cycle now and they become bodybuilders, when they come off and they decide, all right, I'm done competing, they're going back to what they were naturally if they don't take something. So a lot of those guys have to stay on hormone replacement because they just don't, they probably never were high enough, you know? But they don't test you. They never tested kids when we were young, you know? Nowadays, they test kids to see if they have low testosterone. They just kind of lumped you with the loser group if you didn't have testosterone when we were kids. So there's a lot more knowledge today about this stuff.

And I think that that's good. But the one point I wanted to make was that when people are getting into bodybuilding, I never had a viewpoint of myself when I started that I have to look like Lee Haney. I set my sights lower. I said, I want to look like Stallone in Rambo, that kind of thing, Rocky. That was a more realistic goal for me. And then when I got to that point, then I said, I want to look like, I don't know. I don't know who the next guy was. I always had someone like a physique in my mind that was attainable. And I knew that it was going to take steps to get where I wanted to. I knew that even with 240 pounds, I looked good, better than the average person. I had muscle. I was lean. But I wasn't ready to win a bodybuilding show, not a national

level show for sure. So I wasn't delusional. I loved the process of watching myself transform. As long as I saw that I was making progress in the positive direction, gaining muscle, gaining strength in the gym, that was enough of a reinforcement for me. I didn't have to say to myself, I got to be Dorian Yates tomorrow. So Dorian must be taking eight IUs a day of GH. I'll take 16. I never had that mentality. I knew it was going to take time.

And I was willing to put the time in. I didn't feel like. I knew it was going to take time. And I was willing to put the time in. I didn't feel like I had to go and try to do... I knew there was no secrets, in other words, that I didn't know about. And I just was confident in the process that if I continued to make the... I kept saying to myself, I'm gaining this many pounds every so many weeks. I'm getting stronger. It's just a matter of time. If it keeps going, I'm going to grow. I always tell people, don't look at saying you want to gain 20 pounds of muscle. If you gain a quarter of a pound of muscle every single week for a whole year, that's what? 20 pounds of muscle in the year. That should be your goal. Go for that quarter

of a pound. If you screw up one week out of the year, you lost a quarter of a pound. And I didn't want to lose anything. And that's how I looked at it every day had account for me because I knew that I needed to make that quarter of a pound weight gain, a muscle gain every single week. So for individuals who have already decided, okay, I'm going to take the leap. I'm going to start doing this. Um, the reason why I like, I was so surprised as you were talking about this stuff initially is because every time we have a guest that comes on and talks about this shit, it's just complicated. There's a lot of moving parts. When you talk about experimenting with shit, you are experimenting with substances in your body.

That shit is scary, right? But you are smart. So you kind of were very in tune with what to look for in terms of how you feel. All these variables you were taking account for most people aren't right. So if an individual does decide to make this leap and a lot of people, you know, it may, it makes you feel on top of the world.

What are some, what are some things that they need to avoid? So they just don't go too far into the danger zone. Like how can they avoid getting there right well you know another thing that also had a really big advantage was that i had a there was a there was a doctor who's a dermatologist at my gym and up in westchester i was going to medical school at the time and he had graduated from the same medical school 20 years earlier uh and he was he was obsessed with bodybuilding this guy he was he was he has

to work backstage all the ifb pro shows night of champions you know it's the doctor back there and we hit it off we immediately hit it off and i remember asking because i was i hadn't taken any steroids i said i said dr mike i said i said hey what do you feel about steroids i had this is when i first like i only had known him for like a couple weeks and i knew he was doing steroids people told me but i so i wanted to get his opinion he's like i'd rather see my kids take steroids and drink alcohol the alcohol is worse for them than toxic to their liver and so that's all i had to do is hear that and then so i had i had kind of had a mentor um i had someone i could bounce ideas off because he was a he was a genius this. This guy, uh, you know, he, he, he,

he, when I would go over like what I did in medical school that day, he remembered, like he had a photographic memory. He wouldn't remember. Oh, I remember that. Uh, you know, and he would go, or we were review it. And we used to hang out at the gym. He had the key to his gym in Westchester. I used to go there at like midnight and stay there with till two in the morning with him. And all we would do is talk about anabolics and bodybuilding and science of bodybuilding and, you know, theories of, you know, all this stuff. So I had someone who was kind of like, who can answer my questions. And at the same time, you know,

help me synthesize my own ideas and theories. And at least if he says it made sense, logically, that the ideas I came up with, then I knew they were sound, you know? And I think that's something that a lot of people don't have now. A lot of people use me for that type. A lot of people will ask me theoretical questions and I kind of act like the old Dr. Mike acted to me. But when I started thinking about insulin and I started talking to him about it, and

we kind of synthesized the ideas together, it made it a little bit more acceptable. Now, when I was trying to learn about stuff that was previously known, that was stuff I was educating myself from like Bill Phillips and stuff like that. I always use sources that I respected. I think what the problem is, a lot of guys nowadays, they go online and the first thing to do is they Google steroid or they put it in Instagram and they find these self-proclaimed bro guru steroid experts, in quotes. And they listen to these guys. And these guys are morons, most of them.

And most of them didn't even graduate high school. And really what a lot of them are is just glamorous. They're selling their own underground gear. And so they're trying to provide a platform that they're so smart and knowledgeable about, and you should use this and this and this. And by the way, here's the link to my website. And that's dangerous. You know, you got to use sources. There are a lot of people, I'm not the only one out there. I mean, Bill Llewellyn wrote an insane book, that anabolic book is probably the best book out there right now. I mean, use sources, you know, that you trust and educate yourself and ask the right questions. And I mean, I get,

I teach a course called the secrets to becoming a diet guru. I do it like four times a year. It used to be in person because I felt it was a better in-person course because of COVID, I put it online and I always have 25 people. Every time I hold that course online, we're going to probably be doing it. I think, the first week in June again. And I go over everything from diet, nutrition, drugs. I teach people how to be real diet gurus. I actually have broken it down and made a curriculum out of it. My dad was a teacher.

I remember his curriculums. I used to read when I was... I used to see them as a kid. I created a curriculum in a workbook, which has kind of become almost a textbook. And people could use this as a template to actually be their own coach and understand the science of how these things work. And when you educate yourself and create and have knowledge that you can trust, you feel empowered. When you're making up things or repeating things that you're hearing online and acting like your own guru because, oh, this guy said this and this guy said that, nothing is clarified in your brain.

And you have too many conflicting things going on. And you're never going to be a good coach. And you know what? You're not going to do yourself any good service because you're not really understanding what's going on in your body from a scientific and chemical standpoint. And I can't stress enough the education part of this curve. And you should be doing, like you said, the education prior to taking the steroids, not while you're on the steroids and having problems. What were your thoughts when you saw Bigger, Stronger, Faster years ago? I loved it. I'll tell you why. Mostly because it was finally

someone did something that actually showed our side, the bodybuilder side of things. It's funny because bodybuilders don't get any credit. Think about it. The nutritional practices, the supplement practices, and even the hormone practices that we see today, bodybuilders were doing this 25 years ago. Bodybuilders are 25 years ahead of conventional medicine. And if it wasn't for what bodybuilders learned about taking anabolics and testosterone replacement and nutritional supplements and the need for extra protein, we would never have the knowledge we do today. So you guys exposed that. And you also exposed it in the film, the idea that even though people are using them and not telling anyone, they're not that bad for you if you do them the right way.

And it's like, I breed snakes, boa constrictors and all kinds of pythons and stuff like that. And everyone thinks that if you have a snake, it's going to kill you, right? This deadly creature. They're like dogs, you know. Once they're bred in captivity, 99% of them are not venomous. No one keeps venomous snakes. Only the lunatics keep venomous snakes. You know, the people that are really, really expert keepers.

lunatics keep venomous snakes you know people that are really really expert keepers those people keeping snakes that if you get if you get bit by them you get two puncture you know marks on your arm you're not dying from it so because there's an ignorance level there people think assume snakes are bad and and that's what it is it's like steroids think people think all steroids are bad matter of fact on all the packaging if you read any anabolics well nowadays everything's underground but back in the day when you would buy something from the pharmacy or you get something from overseas pharmacy, all the package inserts said the same thing. They all have the exact same side effects, liver, tumors, and cancer, and all these sides. But yet every anabolic doesn't cause all that. They just lumped it all together.

Like every steroid is just as dangerous. Like Anabar, which is like taking M&&ms is just as toxic as anadrol you know and that's just not the case obviously you know uh so we've been hanging out with uh andre milanichev for the last like week and a half one of the greatest power lifters of all time. Um, he blew our minds. He had said something for powerlifters along the lines of, um, don't worry about, uh, hitting three reps or less unless you've put in about three years of hard work and training and, you know, in the gym powerlifting. Um, you know, so basically like, unless you put in the time, don't even worry about competing right now. Do you have any similar advice for bodybuilders? You that might be, I don't know, the weekend warrior will say,

and then eventually like, wow, actually, I'm making some progress. I might be interested in hopping on stage, but I don't know when that time is. Do you have something similar for someone like that? I think competition is great. And I'll tell you why. Because when I first started competing, I wasn't under any delusions that I was going to nationals. I was just trying to compete to see what I looked like, to validate what I was doing in the gym was actually good. And I loved the whole idea of the whole diet down, put the tan and the oil on, get on stage with the other guys and compete, you know, because I was an athlete, you know, so I think it's good because I think people get burnt. You can't have people do the same thing over and over. You get

burnt and you hit plateaus. You can't be forever gaining muscle, you know, at some point you got stagnant, you hit a plateau. That's why it's good, I think, at least every year, maybe every 18 months to try to die it down and get on stage. Number one, it gives you stage. If you want to do this for a career or for a long time, you got to have stage experience. You can't just wait until you're ready to turn pro and then get on stage because you're going to look like a bumbling idiot up there. pro and then get on stage because you're going to look like a bumbling idiot up there. These early shows where you make your mistakes and you learn and you get through the learning curve is invaluable because you learn how your body responds to carbohydrates and carving up and water depletion and all the things that go along with contest prep. Also, when you diet down

and you get lean and then you start eating again, you get this like anabolic rebound effect. We all know. Number one, your appetite goes to the roof. Number two, your body just wants to build muscle after you've been basically starving itself, starving the body for four months getting ready for a show. So I think this is probably in powerlifting too. Cycle. Cycling your training and your diet and everything like that is super important to keep the body guessing and to keep gains coming. So I found that by competing every year or even every, like I said, 18 months, I found that I made better progress than when I would not compete, so to speak.

Because I think what happens is people lose focus. Oh, I'm going to wait five years before I get on stage again. Before they know it, four years has gone. They gained five pounds of muscle and they really didn't make the progress they wanted because they were unfocused because they said, oh, I got so much time. So what if I miss two weeks here and a week there, I got to go on vacation and my friends are going out to the club. I treated it like, man, I got the Olympia coming up every single year and I got to be ready for it. So I only have so much time to put muscle on. I got so much time to diet. And then after the diet, it's right back in the gym again, because I got to get ready for the following year. And if you want to do this competitively and be great at it and make awesome progress, that's how you have to think. So I never tell anyone you shouldn't compete because you're not

ready yet, because you know what? Who knows? Let's see what you look like on stage oh great you know what we need to work your legs now you know you need to put size on your back uh it's impossible to get an assessment when in off-season shape of what you really need to work on until you strip everything off all that body fat and get on that stage and compete i think that that's important uh from a a competitive standpoint if you want to be go to an level, you got to make those steps. Also, I work with a lot of people who just are like, I'm so out of shape, Dave. I don't know what to do. I'm undirected.

You know what? Let's get you ready for a competition or let's get you ready for a photo shoot. But you got to treat this like it's the Olympia. And you know what? Guys and girls too, I get such great results when they have that mindset. But you got to treat this like it's the Olympia. And you know what? Guys get... And girls too. I get such great results when they have that mindset. This is the most important thing in my life, this competition that I'm going in, even though

it's the Mr. Kentucky, whatever, or Mr. Backstreet Gym show. It's important to that person because they're making it important. And they learn the discipline it's going to take to get to the best that they are to make themselves look like, hey, I'm Mr. Olympia on this stage, even though I may not have the size yet to be Mr. Olympia. How do you help individuals? Because a lot of people that compete a lot, they'll get that lean and they'll have a hard time getting rid of that physique as in letting go of being that lean after they hit the stage women men both um how do you mentor people out of that mindset to hey okay we gotta put some body fat on because you need to get healthier again and this is where you're going to be because you're not going to hold on to that stage ready physique for long yeah i just i just had a discussion with someone yesterday. One of my clients was talking to me. He's from another

country. And he's like, we spent way too much time, 45 minutes on the phone, talking about his cheat meal he has every week. It's such a stressful situation for him that I want to have a whole pizza, but should I not eat the cheese?

I'm like, why don't you have two slices of pizza and a chicken parm or something like that? Eat some protein. It's not just a binge meal. But if I eat the whole pizza, if I take the cheese off, will that be all right? I said, why would you just eat bread? I said, and I don't know why I was engaged. I should have just dismissed him right away. But for 45 minutes, I was getting stressed out. was feeling his stress i'm a very um i'm a very uh i guess you're the empathic person i should have it would have been great but i started feeling people's emotional state i started getting sucked into his his his uh mental you know issue about this cheat meal and the

stress that it you know and the guy has no body fat on his body, you know? And he's like, well, next time, because we just started dieting him. He's like, next time we do off season, is it possible that I can do an off season where I don't feel so full all the time? I said, I have you eating six, seven times a day. Of course you're going to be feel full. You're not fat. He goes, yeah, but my stomach feels very full. I don't, if I have to go on vacation, you know, he's worried about all the wrong things. You want to be a great bodybuilder, but you're worried about going on vacation once a year and you're not going to, you're not going to put on muscle adequately and you're going to starve yourself the whole year. So you can go, I said,

how about scheduling your vacation when you're dieting? I never thought about that. You know? So, I mean, Pete, there's a lot, look, I work with a lot of eating disordered women too out there. And I understand that mentality because when I was a runner, I used to starve myself. And I had almost like I was bordering on the anorexic mindset too. I understand how that works. But you have to explain to people the reason you're hiring me is because you're not thinking. It's very hard to advise yourself.

And you're not thinking clearly. And you're thinking in a way that's going to make you not get the progress you want. I am here to make sure that you think properly or not even allow you to think I'll do the thinking and tell you what to do. You'll just give me feedback on what you're doing. And that's how I walk people through it. And sometimes I got to give them the speech. Do you want to be a great bodybuilder or do you want to be a dysfunctional human being? I don't care one way or another. I just want want to be a great bodybuilder or do you want to be a dysfunctional human being? I don't care one way or another. I just want you to be happy as my client. If you want to diet 365 days a year and you're going to pay me for it, I'll diet you 365 days a year,

but you're not going to make the progress you're telling me that you want to make. So I'm not going to let you get fat in the off season. You might get a little bloated because when you eat eight times a day or seven times a day, you're going to feel like there's food in your stomach all the time. And I walk them through this mental process of what they're going to feel like and why they're going to feel like it. And then it's not unique to them. Everyone goes through this. And a lot of times I get people through it. Sometimes I... Every once in a while, I can't succeed. Someone just can't handle it. It's too mental for them.

They don't have the mindset to be a bodybuilder because they don't understand. They can't make the mental sacrifice. And that's fine. Everyone has got different goals. But when someone comes to me and says, I want to be a great bodybuilder, I want to put muscle on and I want to compete, then I have to be tough with them. And they expect that and they respect that in the long run. And when they do make progress and they do look good, they're very happy about it. But I think people have problems.

They send me these pictures on Instagram. I want to look like this guy. I'm like, do you know how much muscle that guy has on his body? I said, that guy is jacked. He's like, yeah, but he's 176. I said, he's in contest shape at 176 i said i said you you don't even have a fraction of that muscle in your body i said you're you don't compare yourself to other people let's make you the best that you can be and then they they get it a lot of times when

i tell them that you know so what do you think um are some of the biggest mistakes some of the newcomers make when it comes to that bulk part of the whole bodybuilding process? I think a lot of people think it's just a calorie thing and they start downing lots of high-carb junkie type stuff. You remember the old... Mark, you remember the old weight gainers? Oh, yeah. I think it was... I think It might have been nature's way. I was dating this girl. She was anorexic. She didn't have any food in her house.

So when I'd come stay at her house, I had nothing to eat. So I used to buy these. They were called Perfect 1100s. It was 1,100 calories. They were in these little plastic things. You just added water and you shook them up. It was probably... It was like 50 grams of protein, but it was like 200 grams of sugar in there.

And I had a very fast metabolism. I wasn't eating because she had no food in her house. So I would literally drink three of these a day. I would kill my stomach, you know, until it finally got assimilated. But I would basically shake it up and gulp it down, the whole thing down. And, you know, if a normal person did that with a normal metabolism, they would have gotten, they would have been a fat slob and probably just terrible. I was maintaining my physique on this because my body's metabolism was so fast.

But I think a lot of people drink stuff like that. They think it's equivalent to eating two chicken breasts and two baked potatoes and half an avocado. And there's just no comparison to that, that food meal to the shake that was mostly sugar. And I think that's a huge mistake. People might say, they eat the wrong type of foods. Um, they think that they could just, you know, Oh, Dave Palumbo eats McDonald's every day. I can eat McDonald's every day.

And so they go to McDonald's every day and they become like fat slobs. And that's a big mistake. And then there's the people that are afraid to eat enough and they're too clean they eat so clean and i just i went through this when i first started you know getting into bodybuilding i didn't have a lot of money so i was i was in medical school so i was eating like tuna i would buy these tuna cans the albacore tuna would go on sale for 99 cents a can i would buy 100 cans and i would eat like four or five of those a day with white rice with soy sauce on it. That was my mixture. I would mix white rice, a can of tuna, soy sauce, mix it around, and I eat it.

And I would eat it all day long, the same meal. And I just couldn't grow after a while. It was too clean. There was no fat in it. I didn't realize this at the time. And I was maintaining what I had. I was pretty damn lean, but I wasn't making progress. And so it was because I was eating too clean.

So there's two extremes. The people that eat the junk food thinking I got to just get massively big. And the people that eat so clean that they never make the progress they want because they're afraid that they're going to get fat and or they just don't know any better. How do you personally stay lean nowadays? I have three kids up there right after. They seem very lean. What's your nutrition like?

I'm not eating enough probably every day to support my metabolism. I think that I have such a very fast metabolism. I could eat pretty much anything. I eat very clean, but for health purposes, because I want to stay healthy and live as long as possible. But I just don't eat a lot of junk food. And the funny thing is I can eat junk food and I don't really get fat from it, but I

just don't feel good on it. So I don't really eat a lot of cookies and sweets. And I try to stay away from refined sugars as much as possible. I eat a little bit here and there, but by and far, I try to eat pretty clean foods. But it's very hard for me to get fat. So to ask me that, it's kind of a loaded question. But if you saw the way I ate, you would think that I was on a contest diet in a sense because I do eat clean. But I crave clean foods. I think that when you're eating clean, you crave clean foods. As soon as you start eating junkier foods,

like sometimes I'll go to the, when I would go to the Olympia, like remember it was in the Orleans hotel. They have like a Fuddruckers there and Fuddruckers, they have like a Sparrows pizza. And for some reason in the food court there, that was the quickest way to eat. And we were so busy at the Olympia. So I would eat it basically Sparrows every single meal, pizza, slice of pizza, you know, basically a chicken breast you know like a chicken not chicken parma

like a chicken cutlet with like you know a plate of pasta and i would eat that like three times a day because it was just quick it was right there i could actually work on my computer while i'm in the food court when i got home i i almost couldn't eat my clean food anymore. It tasted like shit because I was eating Italian food every single three times a day. So what happens is your body starts craving. So people eat a lot of junk food, they crave junk food. And that's really it. Where our brain gets addicted to the junk food and it wants more and more and more of it. And so I think that you got to gotta develop good habits i tell people that and good habits mean getting in a routine of eating right and healthy giving yourself the

ability once a week to have a cheat meal is fine but it's planned you know and same thing with nutritional supplements it's a pain in the ass i have i got a lot of bottles of supplements i gotta constantly keep pouring out you know this bottle and this bottle and this bottle and i gotta put them in plastic bags but you know what I do it every day and I take them religiously. I brush my teeth at night because I know that the positive benefits, health benefits are there. And so I make it part of my routine. And when I do that, I find that... And I'm organized. There's no guessing. And I know what the results are going to be. And I look good and I feel good. And why would I change that routine? I don't know. I think people get depressed sometimes

and they start eating junk food because they just don't want to be bothered. But if you want to look good and you want to be healthy, whether you're trying to get huge or not, you got to be organized. And you have to have a game plan, whether it be, like I said, whether you're competing for the Olympia or you're a 53-year-old guy chasing three kids around and trying to run four businesses. You got to have a game plan. You can't just wing it. If I just waited till I was hungry every day to start looking for food, I'd be eating crap all the time. I'd be eating all the junk food people send me, the samples of shit all day long.

What would you say is some like as far as bodybuilders specifically are concerned what are some nutritional concepts because like you know you see you see some bodybuilders that are getting into it and they're you know eating crazy amounts of carbs they're trying to put down as much carbs as possible 500 600 700 when you hear that jay cutler ate like a thousand carbs a day or some shit right um but in your opinion like what are some concepts that these these these are stuck you know like some people like you know you should always be eating something two hours before you work out etc what are just some general guidelines that you see across the board you find that this is something that bodybuilders should be doing nutritionally? First thing, the number one mistake people make

is looking at what Jay Cutler eats and trying to emulate, okay? Because Jay was a genetic freak. I mean, from day one, if you looked at him as a teenager before he even took any drugs, he was huge, okay? This guy is not the guy you emulate, okay?

He's an easy gainer. He's a genetic freak. He had a ton of muscle at the peak of his career. Of course, he had to eat 1,000 grams of carbs a day. Likewise, I see guys eating 1,000 grams of carbs a day and I have them test their blood sugar and their blood sugars are running super high because you know what? Your body's pancreas cannot produce enough insulin to eat 1,000 grams of carbs a day. I hate to break it to you. Just can't do it. Doesn't have enough production. And then you add GH on top of that, which makes you insulin resistant, and you start having problems. So I always try to tell people that there are better

ways around that. No one needs 1,000 grams of carbs a day. I believe that if you substituted some of that carbs for fat, good essential fats in your diet, okay, that you can lower your carb intake and you still calorically be where you need to be. But you'd be getting a different composition because eating too many grams of carbs will definitely give you some kind of a diabetic state later in life. And that's not worth it. So number one, learning how to eat is important. We all know we need a lot of protein, but we also need a decent amount of fat. If you have a super fast metabolism, adding more fats to your diet will benefit you way more than just gorging on carbs all the day.

Because like I said, how many grams of carbs? Carbs are only used as a fuel source. They don't build muscle. And that's a very big myth people don't understand. Carbs do not build muscle. And that's a very big myth people don't understand. Carbs do not build muscle. There's no component of the muscle cell that requires carbohydrates to build it. It's made of essentially mostly protein. And then the rest of the outside of the cell is made of for is fuel. So how much fuel does your body actually need? In order to grow, you need a lot of protein and fat, and you need enough carbs to fuel the processes of training, thinking, whatever you do during the day. And that's it.

That's what the carbs do. They fuel your movement. Now, if you don't eat enough carbs, your body will use some of that protein and fat that you're eating as a fuel source we don't want that especially in an off season where you're trying to make yourself bigger okay and you're trying to grow so you want to eat enough so i think people that's a big mistake people eat too many carbs um the timing in meals is very important this is a this is probably the most important aspect of someone getting into bodybuilding is learning to space your meals that You can't save protein. Your body needs protein all day long. And there's no storage facility for protein in your body. There's fat cells, you store fat. There's glycogen stores, you store carbs. You can't store protein. So if you eat protein in the morning and then

you wait five hours and you've been eating other stuff, but you haven't eaten any protein, now your body is deficient in protein. It can't adequately repair muscle because its first priority is the immune system, nails, hair, skin, protein hormone production, and protein enzymes that it has to make. There's a lot of need for protein in the body. So if you go five hours and there's no storage facility and you have no protein, your body's going to break down skeletal muscle tissue, your muscle, and use those amino acids in there for what it needs. It's the equivalent of going to a desert island, being starving to death and eating your arm because you need food. I mean, yeah, you satisfied your food requirement, but now you have no arm left. Okay. So that's a big mistake. People don't space their meals equally throughout every two, you know, two, three hours a day. They're not

eating enough protein per meal. Um, and that's, that's the, the absolute number one, you know, mistake. And maybe you guys have, you know, experiences, people come and ask you advice. Hey, I really want to put on muscle. I don't know why I can't grow. I'm like, well, what are you eating? Oh, I eat a ton of food a day. Let's lay it out. What do you eat for breakfast? Well, I go to the deli and I get two eggs on a bagel. All right, that's 12 grams of protein. Okay, you're already protein deficient. What's your next meal? Well, when I get to work, they have bagels and cream cheese. I say, all right, well, he goes, but I eat like five or six of those things. So you just got another six grams of protein from the cream cheese. I said, all right, well, he goes, but I eat like five or six of those things.

So you just got another six grams of protein from the cream cheese you're eating. The person already, it's already one o'clock in the afternoon and they've had 20 grams of protein. Meanwhile, their protein requirement is 200 grams for the day. So that's the number one mistake, people. Everyone thinks they eat great. Everyone thinks they eat enough and no one has any clue because they have no organization. They don't write down what they eat and they don't even know how much protein is in the food that they're consuming. And so that's a big mistake I think that people make. Dave, do you think in any way your thyroid cancer was connected to the use of anabolics and how long you did them for and things like that? use of anabolics and how long you did them for and things like that? You know, this is going to sound like a real psycho answer. I wish it was. I really wish it was because if I self-induced it, I'd be much more comfortable with that because,

all right, I got my thyroid out. I screwed up. All right. I don't believe that's the case. I think I have a genetic predisposition to that i have cancer my on my mother's side of the family everyone died of cancer all different types no one died of thyroid well no one really dies of thyroid cancer but luckily very very few people but my mom had pancreatic cancer my her father my grandfather had liver cancer my grandmother had lung cancer the list goes on and on and on my my mother's uh sister had breast cancer this cancer and i found out you know something i didn't know also when you get a fight when you get some kind of a cancer nodule um it has the um i guess you could say the whether it spreads or not metastasizes or not is based exclusively exclusively on family genetics

meaning that if you have a if your if your family has a history of metastatic cancers you more than likely yours is going to metastasize to it has nothing to do with size everyone thinks oh the bigger the cancer the more it spreads no that's not how it goes so i I think mine had some kind of something to do with my family history. Thank God, thank the Lord, whatever angels were watching over me, allowed me to catch it at a very small size on a routine scan. And it's gone. And I hope this Friday, I'll find out. I had my radioactive ionite. I hope it's gone forever. But I think it had nothing to do with bodybuilding. Like I said, I really wish it did. I wish I induced it because then forever, but I think it had nothing to do with body. Like I said, I really wish it did. I wish I induced it because then I at least have an explanation.

How did you catch it? Do you get tested for things regularly? Do you go to the doctor often and things like that? I'm going to tell you that story. It's a good story, but I got to just, I want to make, I think the camera needs to be plugged in. Hold on a second. I'll tell you the story, even though you can't see me,

because it was interesting. I have an enlarged aorta. uh, it's called an aortic aneurysm. Don't know how it got there. Never had it when I was bodybuilding or anything like that. It's somehow started about two years ago. I went for a cardiac CT scan because I wanted to see how my coronary arteries were. And the doctor called me up. He's a cardiologist friend of mine. He's like, Dave, you have nothing in your coronary arteries. They're completely open. However, we did notice that you have an enlarged aorta. I said, what does that mean? Well, if your aorta gets too big, it can break.

They call it a dissecting aorta, like what happened to Chris Dim, and you could die from that. So we keep an eye on it. So I went to a cardiothoracic surgeon. They said, all right, once a year, we're going to send you for a cardiac CT scan of your aorta to see if it's gotten larger in size. If it gets too large, they have to operate and repair it, which is not a great procedure. Luckily, mine has not gotten bigger. I went this year for my second year in a row. They scanned it. They said, it's fine. As a matter of fact, it got smaller somehow. Great. He's like, but you know what? I want to send you to check your aortic valve out. Because sometimes the aortic valve can be damaged by an enlarged aorta. I go there,

I get the scan, comes back. No. He calls me up. He's like, it's fine. Your aortic valve is fine. I said, where's the results? So they said, you have my chart. I go on there because I want to read my labs and everything. And I'm reading the thing, and I'm looking at it. And I'm like, OK, everything is normal.

And then I noticed at the very end, they say thyroid nodule. So I call up the guy. I said, what's with this thyroid nodule? He said, ah, everyone has nodules. I wouldn up the guy. I said, what's with this thyroid? He said, everyone has nodules. I wouldn't worry about it. Very small. I said, send me for an ultrasound because I know my family history of cancer. I'm paranoid.

Go for an ultrasound. Within 20 minutes, I didn't even get back to my house yet. They already had sent the results to me. Highly suspicious one centimeter nodule on my thyroid. Small nodule, but highly suspicious. I try to get an appointment with my endocrinologist around here. With any endocrinologist, they want me to wait four months. All right. I got a highly suspicious nodule on my thyroid. I'm not waiting four months, right? So I have a kid I grew up with. Best friend in high school. We went through college together, everything like this. And he's an endocrinologist, ironically enough. There's no coincidences, right?

He's in Miami. He's like, Dave, just drive down here. I'll biopsy. I do my own biopsies. I said, you do your own biopsies? I said, they do it in Atlanta. He goes, I do my own biopsies. Go to his office. Five minutes it takes him. He sticks a needle in my neck, sends it out. A week later, calls me up. He goes, you have papillary thyroid cancer. He goes, I know it looked suspicious to me. That's why I told you to come to my office. So he's like, I got a very good friend. That's all he does is take out thyroid cancers.

We'll take it out. It's small. It should be fine. So of course, I'm always the exception. So I go there. They got me on the table. It should be like a 45-minute surgery. I'm on the five and a half hours because they take out half my thyroid.

They send the, they send one of my lymph nodes that is right underneath the thyroid gland for biopsy while I'm actually under anesthesia, which was smart. It comes back that the, that the lymph node had, had some cells in it. So now he's got to take the whole land out. So he goes back and he takes the whole thyroid gland out and closes me up. The surgery was a breeze. I was actually pumping gas right after I got out of surgery in my car. It was not a bad surgery at all. But now what they wanted to do is when they see that it has spread a little bit, or at least

chip some cells off, they want to give you what's called radioactive iodine. And with the radioactive iodine... I got my radioactive bracelet on here. My son thinks I'm Spider-Man. The radioactive iodine will target any thyroid cells in your body, good or bad. Most of my thyroid has been removed, obviously. So if any of the cancer cells spread anywhere, it'll target those cells and basically kill them. And then on Friday, this Friday, I go tomorrow, they'll scan my whole body and they'll see where that radioactive iodine actually went. If it went anywhere,

you know, other than my neck area. And hopefully that's it. Hopefully I'm done. You know, hopefully it killed everything that was left and I'm done with it. But it was, think about it. If I didn't follow up and now I'm doing research and I'm finding that like one out of every 10 people has like thyroid cancer potentially. So I don't know why they don't do routine screenings. It's literally a five minute ultrasound on your neck. And so I send my – I don't know if you're interested. I send my – I sell my system.

Why don't you go – she's got Hashimoto's, which means that her – she has an autoimmune disease against her thyroid. She's on replacement. I said, why don't you get your thyroid ultrasound too? She's like, I don't know. She goes and gets it done. She calls me up. I got four nodules on my thyroid. And one of them, which was very, very, very much smaller than mine, so small they can't even biopsy, looked highly suspicious to or looked suspicious to.

So that's how I know it's probably genetic. So it is, it's, that's how I know it's probably genetic. Um, so it is what it is. You know, we all look as you get older, shit's going to happen to you and you can either let it drive you insane and become, you know, suicidal about it, or you can just deal with it and understand that when you get old, the shit goes wrong and you got to deal with it. It's very important that you stay on top of your health. You get your diagnostic tests done. You get your colonoscopy when you're 50, you get your cardiac CT scan to see if top of your health. You get your diagnostic tests done. You get your colonoscopy when you're 50. You get your cardiac CT scan to see if your heart's good. You get your echocardiograms regularly on your heart.

And I would add thyroid scan every five years just to make sure your thyroid's doing well because the thyroid gland collects all the junk. So if you're exposed to heavy metals, radiation, everything goes right here for some reason in that gland. And that's when things go wrong. So it's a good idea to check it out. Does this change your diet at all or anything in terms of your daily habits? You know what? For two weeks, a week prior and a week after the radioactive iodine, I couldn't eat anything with iodine. I had to eat an iodine-free diet because they want to

make sure that the radioactive iodine goes into the cells and not the regular iodine that you're consuming so i said well how hard could that be so i look at the sheet they give me and and everything i eat has iodine in it fish you know uh whole eggs you know egg yolks have a lot of iodine in them certain that's it's like they basically gave me the list of do not eat is my diet, basically. I had to stop all my nutritional supplements because my demineralized formula that I produced has sea kelp in there, which is iodine. Because a lot of people, most people don't get enough iodine in their diet. And so I fortified my vitamins. So I had to basically stop everything that I normally do. My whole routine has completely changed.

I'm eating red meat and I'm eating chicken every meal. everything that I normally do. My whole routine is completely changed. I'm eating red meat and I'm eating chicken every meal and I have to switch to sea salt because I got to make sure that there's no iodine in what I'm consuming. But that's it. Once this week is over, then I can go back to eating anything I want. Gotcha. Does this alter your metabolism? You mentioned having a fast metabolism. I always thought the thyroid regulates a lot of that. Now, that's a very good question, Mark. And I've answered this on my Ask Dave show, but it warrants repeating. You know, people think that how fast your metabolism and how well you burn fat is completely related to your thyroid gland.

And I'm telling you it's not. I'm going to give you an analogy. Your thyroid should be optimal. In other words, you should have good T3, free T3 output, okay? Because the free T3 is your active thyroid hormone in order for your body to work. But how much fat you burn and how fast your metabolism is really related to the machinery that you got doing the burning. So if you have a lot of muscle on your body, you have muscle that's very metabolically active with a lot of mitochondria. I'm a fat burning machine. We've talked about this earlier.

All my thyroid gland does is regulate the thermostat. Once the thermostat is set right, my body goes to work and burns fat. If you don't have a lot of muscle, you have a slow, poor... Your muscle works poorly. It doesn't really burn a lot of fat. You you don't have a lot of muscle, you have a slow, poor, your muscle works poorly. It doesn't really burn a lot of fat. You tend to get fat really easily. Even if you set the thermostat on high, you're still not going to burn as much fat as someone like me. So my metabolic rate has not changed at all. I feel exactly the same on the replacement dose than I did on my normal thyroid. My thyroid wasn't high in my gland. I had normal output my whole life. But the machinery that I have that's actually doing the fat burning in my body is what's

supercharged. And I think that's an important distinction. That's why you can give... Look, I've worked with women where I work them up to 75 microns of Cytomel a day, which is T3, pure T3, and they're still not burning any fat. Why? Well, they don't have that much muscle. They don't have a good metabolism to begin with.

And when I say metabolism, I mean the machinery that burns the fat, the actual mitochondria that oxidize the fatty acids. It's just not that efficient. So it doesn't matter. That's why if one person takes 50 microns of side of milk and you give another and you give the same person, another person 50 micrograms of Cytomel, they don't burn fat at the same level because their bodies are different.

Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. It is. What's like now that you're 53, what's your process or what's your thought process in terms of longevity? Like what do you do as far as like after you, you know,

after all this process and you go back to your normal nutrition, what, what does your process for like your nutrition your exercise your supplementation to uh have a really good quality of life for as long as you can yeah i think blood sugar control is is very important for why was it neurotic because i might for some reason my wife got pregnant she got gestational diabetes and her blood sugars were running high. And she was showing me on the blood sugar monitor. And this is before I ever even used the blood sugar monitor. Like, let me check my blood sugar.

Check my blood sugar was high. Not like crazy high, but high. What the fuck's going on? I don't know if I had sympathetic blood sugar issues because she had them or what. So I started lowering my carbon intake. I was like, what the hell's going on here? blood sugar issues because she had them or what so i was started i stopped eating you know i started lowering my carbon intake i was like what the hell's going on here and i actually even talked documented this and i i did three months of a long-acting insulin um like a lantus insulin to kind of give my pancreas a rest and let the beta cells because they've shown that if you rest

the beta cells they'll regenerate themselves and And after I did that, I did notice my blood sugars have been almost perfect since then. Now, during this time, I also was going through my shoulder replacements and I wasn't working out. So I don't know if the fact that I wasn't working, you know, working out sensitizes your insulin receptors. So going back to working out also definitely improved my blood sugars. But that's important because the worst thing that can happen is if you have poor blood sugar control, it can lead to dementia. It could lead to you losing limbs, fingers, toes. Because what happens is if there's too much sugar in the blood, it accumulates in the

microcirculation of the extremities, your eyes, and your brain is also considered something where sugar can accumulate. And that's why they think that there's like, uh, there's like a diabetes that can cause dementia. Yeah. So blood sugar control, very important.

Um, blood pressure control, very important. I take a, an ACE inhibitor. I've been taking it for 15 or maybe almost 20 years now, um, to keep my blood sugar in normal range.

And I've, you know, I've tried to go off of it and it, and it goes up a little bit. And I think what happens is as we get a little older, our blood vessels lose that elasticity and that ability to open and close, dilate as easily. So they get a little stiffer. So sometimes your blood pressures can go up because of that, because they can't accommodate that as well. Because it's funny, when I was 300 pounds, I never had high blood pressure. And then when I switch,

when I got older and I got off all the antibiotics now i have high blood pressure so i i control that with an ace inhibitor um so blood sugar blood pressure and of course keeping body fat good and then getting your diagnostic making sure your heart blood vessels those coronary arteries are open you don't have blockages there nowadays you don't need to get an angiogram you can get a cardiac ct. They can even do a cardiac CT, what's called calcium score to see if you have any calcium deposit in your vessels. Luckily, I have zero, but that's something that I've seen a lot of people have. Mel Chancey is a good friend of mine. I made him go get a cardiac CT scan. A lot of people have told him that, but I had told him there was a place right over here because he lives about 20 minutes from me. And he found out he had

a blockage in his coronary artery. He got a head to get against the other stent put in. Had he not gone though, who knows? He would have died of a heart attack maybe. I mean, that's how his dad died. So you got to be on top of this stuff. This is stuff that's easy. And you know what? You're crazy. I know it's a pain in the ass because you got to do the whole prep for it. Get a colonoscopy just to make sure you don't have any polyps in there or any kind of colon cancer. And, you know, I went and did that when I was just this past year. And I was happy to report that the doctor told me I had the cleanest colon he'd seen in 20 years. So I attribute that to my five. I don't have a bottle that I attribute that to my fiber life but uh using regular fiber supplement is important so these are things that i do look you can go crazy

like i take a lot of different supplements that i cycle on and off stuff that's supposed to help with you know brain function and and keeping you know your your your memory good because i don't know if as i've gotten older i forget things a lot more i don't know if it has anything to do with that they call it senior moments i don't know i could just lot more. I don't know if it has anything to do with that. They call it senior moments. I don't know. I could just be very busy. I don't know what it is, but I don't, my memory is not as good as it used to be. That's for sure. That's, that's one thing I do notice as I've gotten a little older, but I am very distracted and pulled in a million directions. So you can only do so much, but I think those are the main things, blood pressure, blood sugar, heart health, um, colon. And now, you know, you might want to

check your thyroid out too. I would add that to the list. How have you been able to, uh, turn this new chapter of your life, you know, turn away from bodybuilding and turn away from being the big guy and all those different things. You know, I'm always a believer in recreating yourself. So once I proved that i could be the biggest guy already and the freakiest guy out there i didn't really have anything to prove anymore so it wasn't like i had unfinished business you know like some people like you know i think they're always chasing that that one thing they think they didn't accomplish and they want to accomplish and so i kind of i'm of the of the idea that I give 100% to whatever I put my mind to,

and I try to become the best at it, at least in my mind. And then once I'm satisfied that I've gotten there, if it doesn't interest me anymore, it doesn't serve me to interest me anymore. In other words, I'm at a point where, you know what, if I continue to try to be 300 pounds, I'm probably going to die young. I didn't want to do that. I wanted to have a family. So I recreated myself. I said, all right, this is how I want to look now. I want to downsize to this size. I want to look like this. And it wasn't initially 190. It was originally 230. I wanted to go down to just a good muscle, but not where I'm huffing and puffing all day long. And then I went and I kept progressively getting smaller. So I kept recreating my mind how I wanted to look.

And once I decided that I don't want to be that big guy anymore, I don't care if people think that I'm not big anymore, because it doesn't matter. Because I've already... I got nothing to prove anymore. I already proved. I got the pictures to show it, that I was able to accomplish that. So if I'm going to talk about how to get big, and how to eat big, and how to eat right, and how to get lean, I got the pictures to

prove that I've already done it. I don't need to constantly keep reiterating. Now, if I turned into a fat slob and was out of shape right now, and I was giving diet advice, I might look like a hypocrite. And that's one of the reasons why I stay lean and look good because if I'm going to give advice, I got to at least look like I know what I'm talking about. I don't need to be 300 pounds to do that, but I can at least show people, look, hey, this is a life choice to look good and to be healthy. Okay. And you got to be willing to find things that you like and enjoy and are passionate about in your life and go after those things.

Okay. After you've done with bodybuilding. And that's what I did. I started my own nutrition company. I started RxMuscle, my own media website to cover the sport that I love, be able to educate people, be able to analyze the shows, to do a podcast. I have the Heavy Muscle Radio podcast that's been going, I think, longer than anything else out there.

That's something that I'm passionate about. And so I poured my energy into that and being the best that I can be at that. And, you know, just recently I got into breeding within the last six years, reptiles. And I'm super crazy passionate about that because it's an artistic outlet for me. I'm an artist also, you know, at, I think we're all artists to some degree. Anyone who creates stuff is an artist. And my palette, rather than my markers or my paints, are, you know, creating different colored snakes. And so I'm always involved in something creative. I find that if you have a creative outlet, you don't get bored and you don't sit around and want to do drugs and do destructive things to yourself.

So I keep myself well distracted doing things that i'm you know that i am excited about by the way do you sell set snakes i do maybe if you're looking you're in the market for a pet snake let me know i'm very curious that's some cool stuff um so i had a question i was curious about your shoulders. You said you got both of them replaced? Both replaced, yeah. When I went to the surgeon, he said to me, he goes, you probably should have had these replaced 15 years ago. I said, yeah, I know.

He's like, it's a good thing you waited. He goes, because the replacements 15 years ago sucked. He said they didn't last. They were terrible. The guy who actually replaced my shoulders, Dr. Frankel, invented the reverse shoulder replacement, believe it or not. And when I went to him, he was in Tampa. He was referred to me. I mean, I was a referral. He's a bodybuilder himself. And so I'm talking to him. I'm like, someone was mentioning a guy by the name of Mattson, this Dr. Mattson in Seattle.

in in uh this dr matson in um in in uh seattle he's like yeah he's the best he's like he's uh the arnold schwarzenegger of of shoulder surgeons shoulder replacement surgeons he goes but i'm like lee haney i'll take lee haney lee haney's good enough for me he's really good this guy he he you know it was the easiest surgery he's ever had you know because it really was not painful for me and i know some people find that they were, they're painful, but this guy didn't believe in physical therapy. He says, you know what? You don't need to do anything. Matter of fact, my wife is a physical therapist. Stay away from him. Let him, I don't want him doing any physical therapy. Let it heal. He goes, it's not a, it's not a, it's not a type of thing that needs physical therapy and not walking on

your shoulders. And you know what? He was everything he told me and walked me through every step. He was a hundred percent, right. Um, there was a little achiness, but there was compared to the pain I was in before I got the surgery. It's crazy. And you know what? I have full range of motion. I can do everything. I can throw a baseball overhand, a football. I can't, I can't be, I'm not, I I'm so happy with the results. I can lift better now than I did when I was competing. That's how much pain I was in. And I have full... I could do all the movements. I could hit double bicep poses. It was the best surgery I had. If anyone would ask me, hey, Dave, is it worth getting your shoulder replaced if you need it done? I would say, of all the surgeries that I've

had, that's the easiest. The quad repair, that's a different story. Terrible, terrible, terrible rehab on that. I don't remember when, but I think I seen that you had Doug Brignoli on your podcast or one of your platforms. We recently just had him on and we loved some of the information that he was giving us with the physics and all the Brig 20. that he was giving us with the physics and you know all the uh the brig 20 you know some of the the movements that he advises people do to get the most bang for your um bodybuilding buck we'll say um but you know again like we're fans of compound movements obviously the big three uh can you poke any holes in some of the uh the training methods that you know he advises people um do as far as you know for bodybuilding, of course. But do you see anything where you can take his information like that's good,

but I think you should still do X, Y, and Z? Right. Well, I mean, I've never seen a guy with enormous squats that only does sissy squats, right? I mean, the sissy squat might be the purest quad exercise that activates the quad the best. I mean, the sissy squat might be the purest quad exercise that activates the quads the best. But let's face it, who's doing sissy squats with, you know, 33 inch quads? The guys squatting 600 pounds have 33 inch quads. So, you know, a lot of stuff science wise in the test tube theoretically makes sense. But you can't argue with practical results. I mean, we know what works. And that's why when I have these guys, these steroid guru guys say, I have the secret way

of taking, you're going to microdose this stuff and you're going to take it subcutaneously every single day and it's going to work better. Listen, guys have been taking steroids for 50 years. It's figured out already. We know how this stuff works. You know, you take a thousand milligrams of testosterone a week with an anabolic and you get big. Okay. That's how it works. If you want to get big legs, if you don't squat, you're not getting huge legs. That's all there is. I don't care what the biomechanics of it are. And I love Doug. Doug's a great guy, very smart. I love having the interview with him, but that's the bottom line. Okay. The bottom line is if you don't get on an incline bench press and bench press heavyweight, you're not going to have a big upper, upper pecs. You know, you're not doing, you're not doing,

you know, flies and building big pecs. It's just not happening. So you can't argue with the practical results of what's going on, even if it can't be explained physiologically. Does that make sense? Well, let me ask you this then. Would you say that because the biomechanical aspect of what he's doing, it's cool. It's cool. And I think it's pretty great that he's added that into a lot of people's training. Would you say that then the more beneficial thing is like, okay, you see what all these bodybuilders are doing. Let's add in these movements that apparently have biomechanical efficiency into what they're doing and marry the two or um yeah yeah what do you think about that do you think that's the most practical approach to take here well that's like saying well you know high reps

might work but you know what if we take what dorian yates was doing and then we we throw 15 more sets of high rep training in there as well would that make him bigger no it'd probably over train him right so yeah i mean or or how about these guys that hook i and this is i'm not taking the jab at this but i but i am in the sense yeah you know the the the ems machines that now are big people like train with those ems pads on them yeah i mean i mean everyone's oh i feel it so much i have i've interviewed a lot of guys oh i feel that i want to work i was sore the next day. I'm like, did you get any bigger from it? Probably not. You know, maybe you're just sore from, from the muscle. You know, if I,

if I stand here and I take my cell phone and I contract my muscle whole flexing this cell phone for 20 minutes straight. Okay. I'm going to be sore the next day. Is my bicep going to grow bigger because of that? Probably not. Soreness doesn't mean that you're getting bigger. It just means you did something that you're not used to doing and it's sore, the muscle because of that. If I go run 10 miles, which I can't do,

but if I did it, I'd be super sore the next day. It doesn't mean I'm going to make progress as far as a body goes in the right direction so you know you don't if you know what works okay do you think you can make big rami any bigger because he's going to put uh the ems pads on or he's going to do any more of those little uh you know doug rignoli you know, exercises? Probably not. Probably not because what he's doing is maximizing already what his muscle hypertrophy, you know, curve. And it's like, you know, I always tell people, people say, if I take HCG in addition to my cycle, will I grow better? I said, well,

if I give you a handful of sandy to throw it on the beach, is there more sand on the beach? Yeah. But can you even notice it? No, of course. Yeah. I think we have a tendency to extract stuff and then to apply it like literally. And to think that that's the way,

you know, uh, when it comes to, uh, you know, investigating like what muscles activated on a particular exercise and, and studying it. I mean,

it's really hard to know, to learn much of anything from studies. Who are you studying? You know, how long has this person been training? You know, Doug would say that you're getting kind of 30% quad activation during a squat. But is that someone that knows how to flex their quads? Is that from a professional bodybuilder?

Is that, or is that just some guy that, you know, is just learning how to squat and he kind of leans forward a lot in the school i mean your your form your technique i mean there's so many factors that that really uh that really play into it also is that 30 of that 600 pound squat maybe that's enough to grow the legs the way you need to right because you can't even get close to that 30 of 600 pound squat when you're doing, you know, a SISTI squat.

Right. And then also you're just, you're, you're working the whole body. So there's nothing wrong with, I mean, you know, it's great that your entire body's working during a squat. I think that's, I think that's good information. You know, like we, we know that, you know, we, we know a lot of these things. I think, you know, again, having Andre Milanochev here and uh in having guys like jay cutler and people we've had over the years it's it's uh almost like disheartening in a way because they're so simple with the information that they give you you're like damn

it i fell for it again you know like i fell for this new thing you know simple wisdom you know oh my god every time you know jay, don't be fancy, be consistent. And, uh, right. Andre Malanichev said, think less. He, he said it over and over and over and over again. So if I'm asking you, Hey, what's better hack squat, or, you know, have this new hack squat that's on this different angle, or should I be leg pressing? You'd be like, Hey, just stop being an idiot.

Go in there and fucking train, you know, go, go lift. Squat. Squatting builds legs. That's all there is to it. You're not going to build legs on a leg press or a hack squat. That's my answer usually to that question. Squat and then if you want to do as a second movement, hack squat or leg press, go

for it. But the bottom line, my friend Jerry Scalise said it best years ago. He's like, you know what? Go in the gym and do 10 sets of squats and go home. You want big legs. You do that every week for two years. You're going to get big legs. You don't even need to do anything else.

But that's too hard. That's right. Going to walk around like you just got off a horse for a week. But that's it. Think about it. If you only had to do 10 sets of squats and then go home, people would think I'm not doing enough. I got to do more.

But you know what? That's really, that's's you'll have amazing quad development and amazing hamstring and glute development if you do that you know where can people find out more about you and where can they find your supplements species nutrition.com is the uh supplement line um rxmuscle.com would be our bodybuilding media website and obviously go subscribe to the rxmuscle youtube channel we got you know instagram the official underscore rxmuscle i got my day palumbo instagram at huge 285 and if you like to follow my uh snake uh business that's palumbo's pythons on uh instagram how uh how long you've had have you had Species Nutrition for?

I was trying to figure that out the other day. And I'm like, I started in like 07, 08, around there. So it's been almost 14 years now. It's always been something. It was a labor of love initially. And it's been something I've constantly just built consistently. And it's very soft. Our customer retention and the repeat customers are really, really high. So once we get a new customer, we keep them because the quality of the products are really high. We're a little more expensive than maybe your bargain brands you get out there. But I'm a big believer in the quality of supplements. And that's more important. Full transparency on the bottles. I don't put any proprietary formulas. And that's more important. Full transparency on the bottles. I don't put any proprietary formulas. And that's always been my thing. And I'm always available to defend the products as being the best out there because I make them that way. I'm kind of stupid ingredients out there with effective dosages. I put the product out first, and then I worried about whatever the profit margin was going to be

afterwards, which is not the right way to run a business, but it's the right way to have a good supplement line. So I'm really comfortable with the line. Even if I make a little less profit on the line than some of these companies, it doesn't matter to me because I feel like I'm putting out good products that I actually use myself, which was very important. Because I can't tell you how many guys rep product lines out there and then they buy my products or their wives buy my products for them because they know that my stuff is better than the stuff they're being paid to endorse. And that puts a smile on my face when I see that. I say, you know what? I did something right. That's important to me. Do you guys go a little bit more off of word of mouth, or do you spend some money on Facebook advertising and things like that?

You know, we do very little advertising. My advertising is basically my number one RX muscle, obviously, would be probably the prime way I educate people through there and the science of the products. I also have a lot of word of mouth because I have a lot of nutrition clients myself that are on the products that then spread the word through that. We don't do a lot of coaches are have the product line in their arsenal they recommend to their to their to their clients and even if they don't recommend the entire line i can't tell you how many people use our fiber supplement i mean there's probably most of the industry uses fiber lies even the people that hate me use the fiber lies because they know it works you know you know what i mean it's it? It's funny because may he rest in peace, Luke Sando, he loved to fiberlize.

I mean, he even said it on a podcast. I mean, he could not, you know, if he ran out, he lost his mind. I mean, Guy Sestanino, same way. These are just guys that understand how good this product is. And so that makes me feel good. It makes me feel good when an entire industry can say, hey, you know what? That product that Dave And so that makes me feel good. It makes me feel good when an entire industry can say, Hey, you know what? That product that Dave Palumbo makes is the best. And so that's validating me in a sense too. And maybe my ego a little bit.

A great way to get new customers is to spend more money on advertising. Yeah. Yeah. Give it a shot. It works really well. It's important that you have a good company that you work with or have someone that handles it, you know, because you don't want to get swindled, you know, out of money. But I would advise you look into it a little bit more. It can be really, really helpful to helping you gain customers. And if you have good customer retention, that those two will work really well for you. term of retention, uh, that those two will, uh, work really well for you. We do the, we do the ad role. I don't know if you do ad role. We do ad role, you know, um, that's about the only place we really spend our advertising on, um, which is, we get pretty decent return on that. But, um, yeah, if you have any ideas, shoot me a text afterwards. I definitely feel they're listening.

Hell yeah. Great to have you on the show. I always always learning. I always tell people. Thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thanks guys. Great. I had, I had fun with the interview today so that uh that's how i know it was a good interview awesome yeah take care we'll catch you later see you later damn we got through some good stuff there yeah i'm so grateful to be in this position that i'm in right now to be on this podcast just be getting that wisdom from people so many yes i love that dude dude dave palumbo that's fucking amazing yeah i'm just

laughing at the big noli thing i was just like i just thought that was funny i i did i was trying to like see can i can i bring this can i can i marry these two he's like no he just killed it yeah he did so he did i mean i know i don't think this would be possible but it'd be sick to get like both of them on like to debate like you know training methods and stuff i don't know i think that'd be sick not that i mean they do they are friends and he didn't say anything bad and and i i just i i'm still gonna do doug brignoli movements i'm still gonna you know read the book i'm still i'm all not all in but like i'm all in you know what i mean but i'm still gonna you know i love hearing a different point of view from somebody who very obviously has the track record you know it's hard to the problem is

it's hard to know like he said no one's really gotten big off sissy squats but who's tried it um there's people with huge legs that you ask them like hey what have you done and they're like i played rugby you know so it's like now not every rugby player has huge legs so that would start to lead you to believe that like the way that you do stuff matters a lot uh your genetic potential matters a lot maybe everyone in that whole person's family has fairly large legs or maybe just due to their height or whatever um but we see people squat with i i think it's pretty rare to see people even having similar form in squats. Like there's a way to squat and then there's different, uh, shin lengths and, and quad lengths and, uh, hips and mechanics.

And like, I, it's really rare to see people really move the same way. So I, I would imagine you're getting different activation from each individual person based off of their height, based off their weight, based off of how they move. I mean, there's a, based off their history, what he said about running,

I found that to be really fascinating that this would be good stuff for our boy, Andy Galpin to dive into a little bit more. The slow twitch muscle fibers actually have a, they have way more potential than people originally thought. People always thought that you need like fast Twitch. And that's the only thing that, you know,

that's the most important thing. And you gotta be explosive and it's a way to be strong. And it's also a way to be big because those explosive fibers, uh, have the most tendency to grow the most. But now there's a lot of other information saying, Hey, like maybe what we originally thought wasn't true.

And when we see soccer players like in sima and uh stan efforting and a few other people that have had backgrounds like that get real big it does make you wonder like man maybe having that capacity uh was really beneficial so i was smiling when day was talking about i'm like i just got my ammo yeah but um even right here you still look big yeah i think i was like yeah i was 16 there but you're not like you know monster you know like you are now yeah but i mean 190 yeah around there because by college i was 210 so this was close to before college yeah i want to start playing again that was the only like i went all the way back in your um instagram feed and your first pictures you

insanely shredded yeah yeah that was my first bodybuilding show there but um yeah no i really uh that's why when we were talking about like the training thing when we were talking to doug i was trying to get doug to see if like okay well how can we marry compound movements back into this and he was very into like breaking only 20 and then dave was like so i just think like it is interesting though what you said there because when you do look at like a lot of athletes that let's say that they do they have built really big quads or whatever right you can't necessarily know if they have just the potential to have really big quads. And because everybody squats, they just do a lot of squatting and hack squatting, et cetera. But if they did add in sissy squats, would they have been able to achieve a different

type of level? So that's why I just think it's, it's worth, you know, I mean, Dave was saying when I asked about marrying the two, he was like, well, if you add 15 extra sets, you're going to overtrain. Well, we can take away sets of other stuff and then add some of this stuff in to take some of that volume. So you're still doing a good amount of volume, but you're now not overtraining. And we could get that potential benefit of the biomechanical side while also getting the benefit of what a lot of people generally do to gain muscle in these areas. My philosophy on training is to figure out how to get more out of less, mainly just due to my current goals.

Like that wasn't always my goal, but I think that, I mean, I always, you know, before that, I always wanted to try to get just the most I could get, period, with probably the minimal amount of effort. But the difference now is like I I like to kind of pre fatigue a muscle going into something because like, I love squats, but like, I don't want to have to squat like anything really all that heavy. I just want to move around a weight that feels good where I feel like I'm moving. Well, hips don't hurt. Knees don't hurt. There's no pain. Uh, just, uh, some blood flowing into the quads and just me kind of, you know, praying that I

make it back into the, into the rack or whatever, you know, that, that kind of stuff, I'd rather aim for that rather than like having the weight, you know, crush my spine type of thing. That's, but that's kind of my own, but you know, I also, I think you can use a lot of this information to keep yourself really healthy. You know, if you understand that, you know, when you are trying to build big quads, if that's the main goal and you're trying to really tap into, you know, just focusing in on the quads and you have a bad back, well, it would be great if you had this information because now maybe there's some other options and who's to say, like, who's, you know, who really knows? Like, it's hard for anyone to really know.

Could you, you know, walk with the sled backwards for 15 minutes or 10 minutes, let's say, before a workout? Your legs will be smoked. But then the workout that you have is going to be great. You'll have a great pump the whole time. You know, someone else might say, hey, that's not optimal because then you can't use the right stimulus and things of that nature. But I just think that people haven't maybe a lot of people have tried a lot of different things, but I just don't think there's any real way to truly know when it comes to that kind of stuff. That's why when I hear like when people say, oh, it's tried and true, like just because something is tried and true and it has worked for many people doesn't mean that there is not another way or potentially a way that might be a little bit better to do it. Just because we've been doing something for so long doesn't mean that we can't adjust.

Doesn't mean that there's no other way or else nutrition. People wouldn't be doing a lot of things that they're doing as far as nutrition nowadays because there's just a certain way that it's been being done. Yeah. It's been done. as far as nutrition nowadays, because there's just a certain way that it's been being done. Yeah. It's been done. I mean,

I know he's old school, but it's still like freaks me out when an old school, like bodybuilder type of person talks about the meal timing and how important it is. Cause I'm like, he probably hates fasting. Oh no. He's talking about how there's no protein in my system.

Like he's talking directly to me. I need to eat right now. Like I literally almost got up and got a protein shake. But yeah, it's pretty, he didn't say anything about fasting. I need to eat right now. Like I literally almost got up and got a protein shake. But yeah, he didn't say anything about fasting. I wanted to ask him, but the conversation kind of left that. But yeah, I don't know. The meal timing stuff, it makes a lot of sense. But what you said just now, but it's tried and true, doesn't mean that fasting doesn't make sense also.

I mean, you know, that doesn't work. It doesn't mean that you can't do fasting for bodybuilding, but I think, you know, as we were talking, we were mainly talking about bodybuilding. And so I think that that's something where he's like, you know, it probably, he probably doesn't recommend it to people. It doesn't mean you can't do it. But like you said, he's probably not a huge fan of it, but I bet you, he probably utilized it a bit himself just out of pure convenience. That information about the protein storage is an interesting thing. But I also think there's like adaptation that you can have to your body. So let's just say that we ran a study on all three of us and we decided that we're going to do intermittent fasting for the next three weeks.

And we did 20 hours of fasting every day. Well, you know, maybe week one, week two shows that like, yeah, we did lose muscle mass. But maybe we didn't conduct the study for long enough to kind of see like maybe by week three, maybe that starts to taper off. And then maybe there's a recorrecting that your body does, you know, at some, at some other point. I mean, it seems like it definitely doesn't seem like we need protein necessarily every couple hours. Uh, I mean, I don't have like, you know, I don't know what the studies would show, but like that seems to be, uh, too fast. You know, um, if you, if I ate a steak last night and it was like a hundred grams of protein or something, even though you're, even though I'm trying to get a certain protein requirement

daily, uh, if I went two days without it, I don't think it's a huge deal. Now, again, I don't know if it's the most optimal way to try to like build muscle mass, but, uh, I don't think it, I don't think I'm going to be losing a lot of muscle in a short period of time. So it's just, it's hard to tell with a lot of muscle in a short period of time. So it's just, it's hard to tell with a lot of these things. Yeah. Yeah.

That was really cool though. That was, that was really interesting. And I think the thing that I still, it's crazy to wrap my head around is just how he kind of came off of everything. You know, like he's, he's not on anything at all right now.

You don't see that often and he's he's not on anything at all right now you don't see that often and he's in still in really good shape but you just don't see people just like stop right so yeah he just completely shifted gears completely went and did something uh something totally different i we should have asked him i, how long that process took. It probably took a few years, but good for him. You know, I think some people are like, oh, man, you know, he looks small nowadays or whatever. And it's like, well, he just doesn't have the same goals, which I think is great. He's shifting gears and doing something different. And he might be smaller than he was, but he's not small by any means.

It's just funny to me what people think small is he's not small he's just no longer 300 pounds no longer 300 pounds but he's still single digit body fat at 190 pounds at 511 that's pretty damn impressive yeah it's pretty i also think when talking about nutrition and we do talk a lot about fasting and we we promote it because we like it uh it works well for us but i also think when talking about nutrition, and we do talk a lot about fasting and we promote it because we like it. It works well for us. But I also think that there is something to be said about kind of repeatedly throughout the day feeding yourself. When you're a person that has struggled previously with nutrition, you're a person that's really struggled with hunger. nutrition, your person that's really struggled with hunger, your person that's really struggled with cravings, keeping yourself, you know, I guess, satisfied, uh, throughout the, throughout the day can be really important. And that is stuff that we advise all the time. We say, look,

you know, maybe take the first two weeks and, uh, you know, just get used to the food. You might, you might even overeat for a little bit. And then once we get down the road a little bit longer, uh, a little bit further, we can kind of correct and we can kind of make different decisions. But some people hear about fasting and then they fast and they get themselves so hungry that they end up overeating. And really all that we're working towards is to try to help people and figure out a way for them to have control of their diet where they don't get into those situations where they overeat. Absolutely. And I think, yeah, get themselves to have control of the situation. And then also just like, you know, know when, like, is it, it's an appropriate time to eat. You know what I mean?

Like right now I'm not going to fast today. I could, I could definitely feel it through this podcast. Like I know I need to eat something right now. I can feel it. Right. So I'm just not going to fast today. But you get you become more in tune to when you actually need to eat and when that's not a big deal. You could just let it pass by. It's very, very apparent. But I think if you're eating all the time, like every single day, you don't really you're not in tune with what like real hunger is like.

Yeah. You know, you're just used to just scarfing down food and that in and of itself that i don't know how long that can necessarily last you know it's interesting because people say that i i can't uh like i can't fast like that i don't have the ability to and what i always tell people is even when i was at my heaviest i was still hungry then like you're like, everyone experiences hunger. I think every single day, I mean, I would imagine, right? Like even, even when people eat a lot of times a day, they still are hungry.

You either woke up hungry or you're hungry between breakfast and lunch. Like you were hungry somewhere. So can you just kind of like lean into that a bit? I think, I think he can, you know, I don't think there's people out there that can't do that. No, absolutely not. I like that.

And Seema's hungry and he's going to not fast today, but he's just going to go have a tasty pastry and I'm going to go lift for four hours and then do jujitsu. But yeah, that's all the food I'm going to eat. Okay. Tom is so funny, bro. We're having this conversation in the break room and he's like,

yeah, I never see you eat food and i never see you work out but for some reason you stay the same size it's like yeah i fast and i don't work like it's it's the the the uh the daily conversation whenever any like two or more of us meet inside the uh like the break room like to heat up food or whatever it's always like there's no way in sima's natty like there's and then you know he never eats like all he does is jujitsu and he's shredded and he's jacked and strong and handsome oh god but tom was like yeah you eat like three cliff bars and that's just not true i know because we don't have cliff bars here. Anivar and M&M's. That was so funny. Anivar's like M&M's. He's like, Anivar's like M&M's.

Bro, anabolics are so complicated, man. There's a lot to it, isn't there? Like, how would people be doing this shit so casually? I'm just like, what? Shut up. He's like, you take growth hormone and then you get insulin resistance and then there's a lot to it. There can be a lot to it, but it can be really, really simple too. You can just take some testosterone and call it a day and you don't have to really worry

a ton as long as you don't take too much testosterone. That's the thing. You've got to find out what's a reasonable amount for you to take. What's your goal? What are you trying to do? Know thyself, yo. Like I think one thing that he said that I was just like, hey, people pay attention to this.

It makes you feel really good like you're on top of the world. And if you're someone that seeks that feeling a lot, if you're someone who gets very like addicted to that feeling, you're probably going to be someone who can has the capacity to overdo things. So have people in your circle and have people around you that can call you on your shit and tell you when you need to back off, because that can get very dangerous. I feel that that could get very dangerous for individuals who are just like, you know, so just please pay attention to that. You know, and this is like a debate that can go on forever about like when you should take them versus when you shouldn't take them and stuff. But I do think it's important just to just to see what you can do without them.

Not necessarily as if that's going to be the path that you continue down forever. But I think that's important just because you need to have all that shit inside you anyway. You need to have all those disciplines intact anyway. You know, you're not going to get away with not eating properly. You're not going to get away with skipping training sessions. All those things are always going to be important. training sessions. All those things are always going to be important. So, you know, if you go to the gym for two weeks in a row and then you're out for a week and going back and forth, it's like, that's not, none of this is for you. It's not for you. Like have some dedication, have some

commitment. Once you've done that for a while and now you are going to make an educated decision towards maybe even considering it. Yeah. and then like you were saying on the podcast just now like what do you like what that's it right like you have that card one time that you can play and then after that there's nowhere else to go so if the disciplines aren't there and then you hop on if it's if that's gone then you know i guess there goes your motivation because you're not going to go anywhere else but there yeah and dave tate's described it and he said like if you are using steroids to uh play varsity football he's like you're not going to do very well in college right you know if you're taking them to uh make the team uh you know in college uh you're probably not going to get picked as a pro, you know, so it's it can

it can bump you up a notch. You might beat out the other guy that's ahead of you because you're a little bit stronger or something, but it's not going to propel you like three levels forward. You know, it's going to give you one little one little notch above what you got now. And that's about it. But all you're going to get. Take us on out of here, Andrew. I will drink LMNTMNT.com slash PowerProject.

Yesterday I had an awesome opportunity to train with one of the goats. I trained with Mark Bell and I was fasting the entire day. Oh my god. And I got a compliment on my bicep veins, which felt amazing. And I hadn't eaten anything all day. All I had in my body was just Element Electrolytes. Don't know what the hell that's all about, but hey, it made me look good, felt good. And my training went really, really well. And my lats are getting that sodium in. Yeah, my lats are a little sore today. But anyway, yeah, this stuff's incredible.

And we highly recommend that you get the value bundle and just go ahead and load up on watermelon salt because it's going to be your favorite. That's at drinklmnt.com slash power project. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. Newsletter will be going out very, very soon with some, you know, some really good information from Mark, as well as like an exclusive thing that I just got word of that I'm going to throw in that newsletter that we can announce just yet on air. But if you guys are on the newsletter, you'll, you'll know about it, uh, very, very soon. So make sure you guys subscribe links down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. My Instagram is at I am Andrew Z and Twitter at I'm Andrew Z as well. And SEMA, where are you at? And Seema Yin Yang on Instagram and YouTube. And Seema

Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark? I'm very ashy today. Yeah. I just wanted to come out and admit it. You know, and Seema pointed it out to me. Can you show the camera your hand? So Andrew can kind of look how ashy his hands are.

Like, it really, you need to get some lotion right there. It offended Encima. I think he was offended, maybe disgusted. I don't know. I wanted to get some lotion for my car, but I didn't have any for you. So I was hoping you would just lick me and that would help. Saliva.

Yeah. Saliva actually works in getting ash off. Can you rub like some of the fat from carnivore crisps like all over? Oh, yeah. That work? Maybe. Melt down some of that fat. Yeah, that could work. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye!