Mark Bell's Power Project - Gold Medalist Aiming For World Record While On PEDs - James Magnussen Enhanced Games || MBPP Ep. 1086

Episode Date: July 22, 2024

In episode 1086, James Magnussen, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about why James decided to come out of retirement, join The Enhanced Games, take PED's and attempt to break the world record in the 50m Freestyle. Follow James on IG: https://www.instagram.com/james.magnussen   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

People saying like, oh, well, of course, he's going to go in the hands games. He probably was cheating the whole time. But you're putting a lot on the line. What intrigued you to maybe go this route? I'm 33 years of age, but with the help of testosterone replacement, hormone replacement, I can turn my physical body back into that of a 20 year old athlete. Are you concerned about any side effects or anything like that? There's nothing really super healthy about being the

fastest person in the world. Mark, what do you think he'll notice once he does start his protocol? It's not like you're gonna walk around and be like, I'm not sore. It's just that like what you get sore from might have to be a little bit higher intensity. For this games, I'm focusing on the 50 meters freestyle.

The current world record for that event is 20.91 seconds. My personal best is 21.91 seconds. My personal best is 21.5. And that's where I'm talking about the cherry on top is what I need from the performance enhancements to take me to that world record. James Magnuson, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for taking time to be on our show today. Thanks for having me. Really excited about it. So if you can give people a little bit of background, because I think this story is unique.

I believe you were a silver medalist at the Olympics. You've been competing at a very high level for a long time. And then it seems like maybe there was a little bit of a break and then we all know how hard it can be to come back to sport. So maybe give us a little bit of the background and then kind of what's leading into you making a comeback. Yeah, so I started swimming for Australia

at 18 years of age, which is reasonably young in professional sport. I had a 10-year career between the age of 18 and 28 before I retired. During that time, I had a five-year span where I was the fastest man in the world. I won multiple world titles, Olympic medals, all the fun stuff. And then at the ripe old age of 28, I hung up the speedos and moved into Korea here in

Australia. I work in the media. I own a gym here in Australia as well. So I work in the fitness space as well. And then about five months ago, I got an offer to come and compete in the Enhanced Games, which I'm sure we're going to talk more about. We had Aaron de Sosa on the show, the creator of the Enhanced Games, and it looks like they're getting scheduled to maybe have an event in maybe December, is that right? Probably, I'd say late next year.

So the Olympic Games are in August this year. So I reckon a year's gap after those Olympic Games. So that gives the athletes that are competing in Paris at the Olympic Games a chance to potentially end one career and start another career at the enhanced games because you really can't allow for overlap. So I anticipate a lot of athletes post Paris Olympics will come on board with the enhanced games

in about a year's time. It seems incredibly intriguing, but also kind of dangerous waters, quote unquote, to get into as an athlete because like my concern, you know, if I was in your shoes, if I was in your swimsuit, I would have a little concern over people saying like, oh, well, of course, he's going to go in the enhanced games. He probably was cheating the whole time. And you've been an athlete that has been drug tested.

I'm sure many times competing under the Olympic rules and rules that you have governed by Australia and the USA swimming and so forth. And so you're somebody that's done it by the book, who's done it by the rules, at least that's what I'm thinking since you have medals in the Olympics and competed worldwide. So you're putting a lot on the line. What intrigued you to maybe go this route? Yeah, I think there was a couple of things, Mark.

The first thing is, to me, being an athlete is the greatest privilege in the world. I absolutely love it. People say, you know, it's hard, there's pressure, there's expectation, you have to make sacrifices. I actually think it's the exact opposite. For me, making a sacrifice would be getting up every day and going to a work site or going to an office

and working a normal job. I couldn't envisage that and that is sacrifice to me. They're the real hard workers. Being an athlete is simple. You wake up and you make two decisions all day. Will this make me faster? Will it not make me faster? Every time I take option A.

Life is so simple as an athlete. When the carrot was dangled of coming on board for the enhanced games, the first thing that drew me to it was the opportunity to become an athlete again. I'm 33 years of age and in swimming, that's a dinosaur. There's really no big names swimmers over 30 years of age. But with the help of testosterone replacement, hormone replacement, peptides, stem cells, suddenly I can turn my physical body back into that of a 20-year-old athlete. And one thing, whenever I speak to retired athletes, they all say the exact same thing.

I wish I could put this head, my current head on my 20-year-old body with the wisdom, the knowledge, the calmness of a man in his 30s or 40s on the body of a 20-year-old man, suddenly you've got an indestructible athlete. And now maybe for the first time ever, I've got the opportunity to do just that. And that really excites me. Have you had the opportunity to take some performance enhancing drugs so far?

And if so, like, what does that feel like? Yeah, not yet. So this has been so once I signed on for the games, I started training. So I've just completed a 12 week training block with three, four week micro cycles. And then I'm pretty much what I want to do basically is get to the peak of my athletic ability naturally, back to wherever that is. And at the moment, I'm still showing quite steep improvements. So I'm not there yet. And then once I

hit that plateau, which is, you know, my my peak performance naturally, then my plan is to come over to the States and begin an enhancement protocol with the help of medical professionals. So I'm looking forward to it though because I certainly get a lot soarer the day after training at 33 than I did at 20 years of age. My wife has been a competitive swimmer

for many, many years. And then she swam at the University of Kansas. She was a division one swimmer and she stayed passionate about it. She's part of like a master's program out here in Northern California. And recently, it's been a long time since she since she competed, but she competed in like 12 events. Recently, when she went to practice and she's like getting out of the pool, she's like, I don't remember being so dead. And they're like, yeah, you don't remember being 48 years old because last time you were probably like in your thirties or something like that.

So yeah, it makes a big difference as we get up in age and for myself, you know, speaking for myself, being somebody who has utilized performance enhancing drugs for many years. I love what you said about what a privilege it is to be an athlete. And I guess like if I was to sum up why I take performance enhancing drugs, for many years, I love what you said about what a privilege it is to be an athlete. And I guess like if I was to sum up why I take performance enhancing drugs, it's to continue to be an athlete because I absolutely love it. I love waking up every day thinking of that decision that you mentioned, like is you said faster. In this case, I'm just thinking like, is this going to make me better? Are these decisions throughout the day going to make me leaner? Are they going to make me stronger? Are they going to make me run better?

Are they going to help me to be a better father? Are they going to help me to be a better podcaster? So I think many people are thinking along the lines that you're thinking. What do you think? I'm sure you've spoken to some other athletes who have utilized some steroids, performance enhancing drugs and things like that. Do you have any expectations for it? Do you have any idea what you think it may do for you?

The first thing I think is improve recovery. So the way it was explained to me is, it's not like I'm gonna take, you know, a hundred milligrams of test and jump in the pool the next day and feel like the Hulk. But what it will do is I'll jump in the pool the next day and feel like the Hulk. But what it will do is I'll jump in the pool on day one, feel good, go to the gym that afternoon, still feel good, wake up the next morning, ready to go again and really stack those workouts on top of each other and start to accumulate volume and quality quite quickly,

which at the moment I'm struggling. It's Friday here in Australia and I've had a big week of training and I'm sore and I'm ready to have a rest over the weekend. But what I anticipate is the ability to maybe train again on Saturday and then be bouncing off the walls by Monday. So, and the other thing is, as swimmers, as I'm sure your wife has experienced as well, we accumulate injuries and niggles over time just from pure volume of laps swam in the pool.

So I've had shoulder reconstructions, I've had back injuries, hip injuries, that not that they affect me every day, but when I really start to push those boundaries of what my body's capable of, they start to come to the forefront again a bit. So things like stem cells and peptides, I expect, will be really valuable in aiding me on the journey to recovery from those injuries. Andrew, you got a question over there?

Yeah, I do. So when we hear that the enhanced games is coming and we talked to Aaron D'Souza, and so my thoughts, and I'm sure a lot of people's thoughts go straight to, okay, these guys are gonna be taking so much stuff, they're gonna be taking the most potent stuff available out there. Do you know, for a fact like what, like I guess I'll say protocol that you'll be on

just so that way we get a real life depiction of what some of these athletes might actually be taking? Yeah, so I think the first point of contact will be to get a full testing done of all my biomarkers and see where everything's at, see if there's any deficiencies in any of my hormone levels or the like. I imagine being 33 years of age, my testosterone would be suboptimal. So that would be the first point would be testosterone. Beyond that, like I said, the stem cell treatment for historical injuries, peptides, potentially something like a BPC 157

to heal up some injuries, prevent further injuries. I'd say those three points would be the starting line. And what's available above and beyond that, I'm not too aware of it this case, because I've never taken anything until this point in my career. But my goal is to keep testing, to be really open and honest with it,

to be transparent, like through my own socials, I'm happy to say today, I took X, Y and Z, I feel like this, I trained like this. My performance is tracking in this direction. I want to be super transparent with it. So for any future athletes that are thinking about joining the Enhance Games or are curious about it, it's all documented really clearly, really honestly, and really transparently. Are you concerned about any side effects or anything like that? Or have you kind of looked into and researched enough

to know that this is something you're gonna do short term, you don't have plans of like blasting some crazy physiological levels. So you're thinking like, it probably won't. I mean, being a high level athlete, I guess there's so much at risk anyway. But what are your thoughts? I think that's the much at risk anyway. But what do you think? I think that's the thing that a lot of people don't understand.

You're really pushing boundaries here. But as athletes, we live life on a knife's edge. That knife's edge being high performance and chronic fatigue or illness. We're constantly balancing. I would race at a World Champs or an Olympics at somewhere down around 8% body fat, whilst trying to perform at the highest level. It's teetering on a knife's edge at all times. There's nothing really super healthy about being the fastest person in the world. The way you push your body, the limits you push your body to are not necessarily healthy.

So I think as an athlete, I have a much higher risk appetite than the average person when they consider something like this project or this games, but I've done a heap of research. And I think for a lot of people out there, particularly in Australia, we're very conservative in Australia, maybe a bit more down the English way of thinking than the American way of thinking.

And we're very conservative here. And people think that these are speculative, dangerous substances, when in fact, they're well researched, widely used, and were created for a purpose. They're not dangerous substances, and I'm not looking to do dangerous levels of anything. I really think that the performance enhancing drugs are like the cherry on top to take me, to give me that last one or two percent to break that current world record. Yeah, it's really about optimizing hormones in most cases that your body already produces and makes.

So it's just like they might ramp up your growth hormone a little bit, your testosterone, and you might get into like trickier stuff, who knows. I don't know what the rules are on like EPO or any of that kind of thing, but that's where you start to kind of roll the dice because there's just less and less people that know a lot of information about those things. You got to like really dig deep to try to find these coaches that who the heck knows how they knew the information, how they figure it out. I mean, I think Lance Armstrong famously had Moto Man, and I don't know if you know the story,

but Moto Man was a guy that rode a moped alongside, and he was Lance Armstrong's gardener. And Lance Armstrong's gardener is the guy that would provide them with the drugs. He wasn't the guy that had the protocol. That's a different guy. But he was the guy that had the kit and had everything all set up and they would stop it like a drinking station or whatever and they would give him whatever he needed and then they would kind of be off and going again. It kind of shows you like, you know, athletes are really going to push it and athletes have that mindset, whether it's doing something to the lengths that Lance Armstrong did or whether it's an American baseball player here in the United States putting a little bit of extra pine

tar on their baseball bat. They're allowed to have a certain amount of stuff on their bat and guys have been accused of having too much of that on their bat. There's all kinds of different ways to finagle stuff and to kind of get into cheating. But for some of the fans out there, some of the swimming fans, what events do you mainly do? What events have you done and what are some of the times that you've done? Yeah, so I was a sprint freestyler.

So I did 50 and 100 freestyle. I was fastest in the 100 freestyle, which is kind of the blue ribbon event of swimming. It's like the 100 track. So I competed in the 100 freestyle throughout my career. That's where I won all my world titles and was the fastest in the world. But for this games, I'm focusing on the 50 meters freestyle. The reason being, I believe it's a 22nd event. I believe that's the event where performance enhancing drugs can have the biggest effect. It's a very pure expression of power and explosiveness. And that's why I focused on

that event. The current world record for that event is 20.91 seconds. My personal best is 21.5. So I need 0.59 of a second to break that world record. And that's where I'm talking about the cherry on top. That's where, you know, that last half a second is what I need from the performance enhancements to take me to that world record. I find all this stuff so interesting, you know. I'm sure there's all kinds of different pools. There's like

pools that are probably faster and there's other pools that are slower. Right? I mean, there's all this different stuff out there. There's probably particular buoyancy with the pH of the pool. I mean, probably a list of things that go on that no one has any idea about. I think it's interesting that years ago, I believe Speedo made like a particular Speedo and then people were breaking left records left and right. And, you know, as fans, we want to see people break records, but for some reason that was like too much for everybody. And I think the US or the, the swimming committee got like up in arms about that and they eliminated those suits. What did some of those suits do? Any idea what those were doing? Yeah. So basically those suits were made of polyurethane, which just floated athletes in

the water. So as, particularly for sprint freestyle, like where we are bigger athletes. So I'm six, five, about 230 pounds. And so in the water, that means when I fatigue, I start to sink because of my size. But with these suits, as I fatigue, I no longer sink, this suit floats me up and I just maintain that speed. So the world record that I'm going for was actually set in one of these suits back in 2009. So it's a 15 year old world record. And the crazy thing I did with these world records, pretty much the suits come in,

every single world records gets broken. Then later that year, they say, oh, that was a little bit too extreme. They banned the suits and we just go back to wearing these tiny little shorts basically made out of nylon. However, they keep all the world record. So that's like saying in NASCAR,

oh, next year we're going from V8s back to a four cylinder engine, but all the records or the lap records stand. It's sort of like, what are you doing? If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid and they're taking these supplements to help them function at

peak performance. But that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now because you can get yourself different lab panels like the Power Project Panel which is a comprehensive set of labs to help you figure out what your different levels are and when you do figure out what your levels are, you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation, or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary, hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction so you're not playing guesswork with your body. Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done,

but you just want to get a checkup, we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction if you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done. This is something super important that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick.

We've all worked with Merrick just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing guesswork with our body. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at merrickhealth.com slash power project and at checkout enter promo code power project to save 10% off any one of these panels

or any lab on the entire website. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. That's insane. What, like any idea of what your like VO2 maxes or anything like that? You get stuff like that measured before? It's super hard. Like there is a swimming test to do it, but mostly you have to do it on a stationary bike or a treadmill. And because we're not cyclists or track athletes, we usually get quite skewed results. But I imagine it will be something that I'll track this time around because it'll be a really good indication

of how these performance enhancing drugs are working. So I'd say I'll probably do the stationary bike option and just get a baseline. But I'll do all of that testing when I come over to America because the thing I'm running into at the moment here in Australia, because we're so conservative, I can't work with any current swim coaches. I don't have access to, in Australia, we have basically these institutes of sport. So in each state in Australia, we have an institute of sport. And then we have

an overarching Australian Institute of Sport, which is all the scientists, the biomechanists, the physiologists, all the high performance staff are based out of those centres. And because of this project that I'm working on, I don't have access to those people. And I think that's where the United States being a little bit more progressive, you guys are far more exposed like the anti-aging space, those anti-aging clinics, there's no such thing as that here in Australia. So there's still a lot of stigma attached to it, which is why I think that I need to kickstart this process over in the United States. Dr. Justin Marchegiani Are those guys knocking on your door, like the TRT clinics and stuff like that?

Dr. Michael O'Neill Yeah, we've spoken with quite a few. They're keen to get involved. But like I said, I've just got to get over that. I want to do it in person. I want to do very extensive testing, you know, get some really good results on all those biomarkers that they're an important starting point before, before I jump into anything. Yeah. With the, with the enhanced games, like, can you get your own doctor to prescribe you, you know, your own prescriptions or does it have to come through them?

Yeah, so it's still very early at the moment. Like I said, a lot of athletes will come on board after Paris a couple of months, but at this stage, I'll be getting advice from both the enhanced games, they have quite an extensive medical staff, which you can find on their website, but also personal advice as well, because I wanna be twice as sure that what I'm doing is the correct thing for me and my body and my body's reacting the way

that it should to those substances. What are you doing or what have you done, typically outside the pool to get so fast? Because I think sometimes, I think for some sports, especially something like swimming, I'd imagine you gotta be kinda cautious on where you add bulk or you gotta be, I guess the limitations would be like mobility

and things like that. So what are some things to do outside the pool to get faster? Yeah, so during my swimming career, because I did a hundred meters, so that was a 47 second event. So you can compare it to 400 meters on the track. And so a lot of that is about lactate production

and lactic acid buffering and being able to handle that pain. But the problem that I always ran into as an athlete and my strength and conditioning coaches was because I'm a fast switch explosive athlete, I can put on size quite quickly. And so they were always very cautious of me having too much muscle bulk, being too heavy and putting on size in the wrong places, which would cause flotation issues.

So this time around, I only have to swim for 20 seconds. And I imagine that my power to weight ratio will improve quite significantly with the enhanced protocol. So this time I'm focusing on really explosive lifts, heavy weights, low reps, and then a lot of plyometric work as well, jumping, throwing, anti-rotational stuff for my core, and then a huge focus on mobility. I'm spending at least six hours a week on mobility. I wanna be the most mobile swimmer in that race so that all of that size that I put on, that strength that I have,

I can exhibit in the best way through the best ranges of motion. I guess when you're, I had never really thought about it, but I guess when you're doing 50 meters and a hundred meters, I mean that start is just, I mean that's got to be almost everything, right? How you start the rail. Yeah.

So we did some really interesting testing not long ago with force plates, looking at vert jump, broad jump, some of the different ways that I exert power. And the really cool thing now that's available, they have all the results from athletes around the world. So he compared my results firstly to Australia. So my vert jump, my broad jump, all of those things. And in Australia, I was at the 98th percentile of Australian athletes, which here we have rugby's huge, we have our

own football codes, we have swimming, athletics, cricket, all those things. So I was at the 98th percentile. Then we compared it to NFL and NBA athletes. And I was at about the 60th percentile. So sometimes we get caught up, you know, down here in Australia, I'm like, well, I'm a super athletic guy. And then I compare it to NBA and NFL, and I'm like a run of the mill average NFL player. So, which is really cool for me

because things like vert jump and my vertical jump and things like that, things that I can work, like they're very measurable. I can work towards those numbers of those NBA or NFL players. And if I've got the one of the biggest vert jumps in world swimming, I'm going to be flying off those starting blocks. Sorry for asking such an elementary question, but I just I love digging into these sort of things,

but do you know how many calories per day that you are consuming? Yeah. So I'm sitting at about 4,500 calories a day at the moment. And that's for essentially maintenance of my current body weight. Believe it or not. You get to enjoy quite a bit of food. Do you keep that food pretty clean or is it like a little bit of a mix? Pretty clean, pretty clean.

I mean, Saturday, Sunday, I'll be a bit looser around lunch and dinner, but during the week pretty clean. My main goals are trying to hit protein intake. So I'm aiming for between 250 grams to 300 grams of protein a day, and then creatine, glutamine, beta-alanine, plus three serps of whey protein a day. So I've always been quite into supplementation and my body weight and the amount of training that I do, it's very hard to meet

those protein intakes with a normal diet. Do you think most athletes should swim? Like it kind of seems like something that's kind of swept off to the side when we talk about great exercises you can do. Like I asked you what you do outside the pool. And so you could ask a football player or something like that, what do you do outside of playing football? And it's rare to hear somebody say that they swim, but swimming just seems like such great conditioning

for a lot of people. Do you think more athletes should look into some swimming? Yeah, absolutely. I think for two reasons. The first one being the hypoxic nature of swimming. So because you can't just breathe freely and you have to control your breath, a lot of people when they swim panic and tire really quickly because they don't have that cyclical breathing, which is actually once you have it, really relaxing and really calming

and really beneficial. So for the first reason, I think, building your lung capacity and learning how to control your breath, swimming is really important. The second reason, most aerobic conditioning that you do will be weight bearing to some degree, which can be tough on the knees, ankles, hips, even spine when you're constantly loading it up with something like long distance running, even cycling to a degree, you're sitting in quite an uncomfortable position.

Swimming is not weight bearing, so it's a lot nicer on the joints and is constantly working your core. So you have to have really good core control to keep those hips nice and high and staying flat in the water. So it's very different stimulus to what most people are used to, but therefore is very beneficial, I believe. What was it like recovering from some of those,

you mentioned you had like a shoulder surgery or maybe even a replacement, did you say? Yeah, shoulder reconstruction, yes. I've got a couple of screws in there to hold everything in place. And what did you do? Like, was that hard to come back from that or have you not swam your fastest times off of that yet?

Yeah, it was really difficult to come back from. I think the most difficult thing I found that as an athlete, my identity is really closely linked to my athletic ability. Like I wake up and I like to feel fast and strong and mobile, that's part of my identity. So to wake up in a sling, feeling sick and sorry, I think it was really tough mentally to cope with those times.

And you feel really, really weak and incapable. And that's what I found the toughest. And it was about a six month recovery from that shoulder reconstruction for me. And it came up, so I came second at the London Olympics by one one hundredth of a second to an American swimmer. So thanks for that. But I was tracking really well,

from multiple years there, I didn't lose a race heading into the Rio Olympics. And then right before the Rio Olympics, my shoulder falls apart and I have to get a shoulder reconstruction. And basically, I was racing the clock just to try and qualify for the Rio Olympics because I'd had so much time out of the water. So I got there, but I wasn't in my best condition. And that's the really hard thing about the Olympic Games is you had a shoulder reconstruction right before the Olympics.

Well, there's nothing we can do about that. You can wait another four years till the next one. And the way it actually panned out was between the Rio Olympics and the next time was five years because of COVID. They cancelled the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. So by the time Tokyo had come around, I was retired and I didn't get my shot at that third Olympic Games. So that's again why these enhanced games are really exciting. Maybe we can break tradition, break what's been done throughout history. And if this games is really successful,

for example, the sports we're talking about are swimming, track, weightlifting and combat sports. Probably the foremost dynamic exciting sports at the Olympic Games. If we can watch those sports over a day and have the fastest, you know, men and women in the world in each event, that's a really exciting TV product. It's only one day. We only have to capture people's attention for one day. Why then couldn't we do that every year. If it's only one day, one broadcast every year, suddenly this becomes like the Super Bowl of Olympic sports and it's on every year and those athletes get the chance every year

to showcase their skills on a world stage and they don't have to wait for that four-year Olympic cycle. Yeah, it seems brutal to wait four years. Yeah. Do you think that, you know, there's going to be, I'm going to say like a lot of pressure on these athletes because you know, they are going to be open, right? Because it seems like no matter what somebody is taking or not taking, they're going to be guilty by association with the enhanced games. Do you think that there's going to be maybe just too much pressure on the athletes to quote unquote break records or get faster times than the unenhanced games to the point where you know, maybe it just might make them, I don't know, hurt themselves or do something

to like take them out of their game because I don't want to say like, Oh, if they don't break records, it's a failure, but it does seem like, okay, now that the floodgates are open, let's see what you guys can do. And Oh, they didn't break the records. Therefore this wasn't quite the success that we thought it was going to be. Yeah. I think there's those top level athletes at the games who are already close to those world records naturally will break those records.

That will just be a byproduct of those performance enhancements. But for the average athlete, sorry, not the average athlete, for a world-class athlete coming from, let's say, the Australian swim team across to the enhanced games, I'll give you some financial examples of why the enhanced games will actually take pressure off these athletes. So as an Australian swimmer, if you're top five in the world in your event, you get 30,000 Australian dollars per year, which is about 14,000 USD a year. That's your salary. Now for some athletes who are marketable or who are well renowned, maybe they're the fastest in the world, they'll get sponsorships and make most of their

money off sponsorships. But if you're top five in the world and people don't really know who you are, $14,000 US per year. To sign on to the Enhanced Games, you get $100,000 US as your salary. So it actually almost takes the pressure off because now you can live within your means, you can focus more on performance, you don't have to have a part-time job or be worrying about going out trying to get sponsors. So I think there's actually coming across the enhanced games. For example, if I'm an Australian swimmer. And I missed the Olympic team this year for Paris, suddenly I get zero dollars. I don't get paid anymore.

And so I'm teetering on, you know, being able to live or, you know, being below the poverty line. The enhanced games, there's no qualifying trials as such. I sign on with the enhanced games. I get my $100,000 US to come on board. They facilitate my training, my enhancement protocols, help me throughout that process. I think it actually takes a lot of financial pressure off current athletes. What kind of comments are you seeing on like Instagram and stuff like that?

Are they, is there a lot of negativity surrounding you talking about going to the enhanced games or has it been positive? There was some initial pushback, I think, which happens in any industry when there's a disrupt up. But now it's been overwhelmingly positive. People are really excited about what this product can be, about how fast an athlete can go, about what the physiques will look like, what are eight men standing behind the blocks before a 50-meter freestyle with performance enhancements look like. Six-five to 50.

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Yeah. So this this morning, actually, the host of today's show, Mark Bell admitted to me that he had been taking performance enhancing drugs and I was just completely floored. I couldn't believe it. So I guess like, I would love for you to take this opportunity because he does have some experience with it to maybe think about some questions you might have for him. And as you think, Mark, what do you think he'll notice once he does start his protocol? Like he said, he's like, I know I'm not going to notice like day one that I'm going to explode through the water and this sort of thing. But as he

goes on, what do you think are going to be some of the things that he notices? I think you're going to be like Dr. Evil. I think you're going to be like Dr. Evil. I think you're going to just take your hands and slap them together and rub them together a little bit and laugh because of how good you're going to feel. It's going to be an incredible feeling. You already know what it's like to have great training sessions. You're already very in tune with your body and you already know what it means to have the correct inputs and you leave that training session kind of exhausted but you're so excited, you have a ton of enthusiasm, and you just kind of

think to yourself like, holy shit, I did it. I got faster today. What will happen with performance enhancing drugs in my opinion is you'll just have more of those days. You'll have more days that register as being a really positive input. Sometimes you're trying to do these things naturally. Like you said, it's a kind of a double-edged sword of like training well and getting the volume that you need, getting the reps that you need.

And sometimes we get so excited about that, that it's almost to our detriment. But when you're enhanced, when you have performance enhancement, you can get more out of less. And the other thing that's great is that you're already a seasoned, you're a veteran of your sport and a master of your sport. So you will know kind of the exact, the most optimal reps, the most optimal sets that you need. You'll be able to literally, I know you can already feel it. I know you already understand it,

but it'll be probably taken up even a notch beyond that. You might do a set or two and you might just jump out of the pool where maybe other times you had scheduled maybe more laps or more sets and you would have maybe stuck to that. I think when you're in, when you're performance enhanced, you're like, no, no, no, I got what I need. I can, I could take off. So it's really interesting.

I think that most people think that it's always like a do more thing, like, oh, I get to do a lot more thing like oh, I get to do a lot more But I think that you'll just find a way to be more efficient. I heard someone talking about this recently. They said The average person doesn't need eight hours of sleep. They need six point five hours of quality sleep So I guess that's what I'm referring to is the quality of your training is gonna be nailed down Even better than it already has been which I'm sure it it's been pretty spot on with the results that you've been getting. My big question around the performance enhancements are, let's assume that the games are in, let's

say 12 months time. What is the optimal amount of time or do you need to cycle on and off performance enhancement drugs to peak in 12 months from now? You know, they make some changes fairly rapidly, like, you know, six weeks or so, but obviously six weeks out from it, you wouldn't want to take it because six weeks is where you start to get the accumulation effect. So like a steroid might or performance enhancing drugs in general might add like 2% to your athletic prowess, let's just say, or 2% to what you can handle or 3% to what you can

handle some sort of percentage that's not super high. But because the percentage isn't like crazy or anything, it makes more sense to take them earlier on. And then you have, as you were mentioning, you're thinking that your recovery and stuff like that is gonna be better and you're correct. Your recovery won't be, it's not like you're gonna walk around

and be like, I'm not sore. It's just that like what you get sore from might have to be a little bit higher intensity. And so your body's gonna be able to literally handle more because of what you're doing to your hormones and stuff like that. But yeah, you wanna take them way ahead of time, months and months ahead of time,

probably six, eight months ahead of time, you know months and months ahead of time probably You know six eight months ahead of time at least but You know, there's people I can connect you with I think you and I spoke privately about a few people that I could probably maybe Connect you to that That could help advise you because it is tricky You're gonna want to know way ahead of time What does what you know because if we have if I was dude, like let's have you take 200 milligrams of testosterone for the next six weeks. And if you're training and you're eating and your sleep is like on point, it's like you

could gain 12 pounds sick. You can gain eight pounds. And it's like, okay, well now we have to figure out, you know, how can you pull yourself through the water with the extra weight? Does it really matter that much because of the buoyancy and like, there would be a lot of things to like, to try to figure out, but I'm excited for you because I know like,

you're just gonna be super pumped and you start taking these performance enhancing drugs. I have a question for both of you. We haven't heard too many American perspectives on this over here in Australia. So Aaron may have spoken about when he came on Ridley Scott has signed on to produce a documentary for the games. Yeah, so it'll be, you know, like a drive to survive type production for the enhanced games. If, or in my case, I believe when this documentary

as the games are broadcast and we can show these athletes improve their performance safely and effectively without detrimental side effects, these drugs, their efficacy can be proven on a worldwide scale. And again, really honestly and transparently through this documentary, do you think this will change the landscape of sport forever and other sports and organizations will start looking at the possibility of using some of these substances. Man, I wish that was the case.

I think here in the United States when it comes to like the NFL or something like that, some of these organizations are really tricky. I mean, it kind of depends on how closely you look into these things, but I almost think that the NFL is like kind of evil in a way. They're really tied to big pharma. They're tied to the alcohol companies. I mean, they're drug dealers. I mean, they're peddling drugs left and right.

Every commercial is something that's going to cause permanent damage to your body. McDonald's and Nike and these big sponsors that really produce crappy broken down products for our society. And people can't go to a football game. They wouldn't even enjoy the football game without alcohol. So it's like, how good of a product are you trying

to sell us? And they're so linked and so in bed with all those companies. I don't think they'll ever Want to put these drugs these performance enhancing drugs Alcohol, I guess you could probably figure out ways that it's performance enhancing maybe for hitting on chicks or something like that Or it's a little lubricant as they say, right? And there's other drugs but like when it comes to performance enhancement, I don't think anybody wants the cat of the bag on that I don't think anybody wants to wants for people to Really just feel fucking awesome all the time

I think that it's like I don't think there's like conspiracy to like try to keep it You know down or whatever like that, but I just think that I think they're pretty happy I think the NFL is pretty happy with the money that they get from big pharma and the money they get from alcohol companies. Yeah, I'll disagree. I think there is quite a bit of a conspiracy against that because you know, like, yeah, if, if you had something that somebody could take and it would wipe out a huge amount of money that comes in from SSRIs, just put them on testosterone. All of a sudden now they're getting, they're happier. They're getting in shape.

It's like, Oh, maybe I don't need that other shot. That's going to help me lose weight now. So in my opinion, yeah, there's a little bit of a, like some darkness in there. And so I think the enhanced games is facing an uphill battle because when the games does have success, when these athletes are performing at an insane, awesome rate and they have a protocol and they're healthy, I think, especially here in the States, there's going to be a lot of articles, a lot of news reports, and a lot of stuff that's going to be kind of like propaganda showing that like, oh no, this isn't healthy. Like this isn't the way athletes should be training and all this and that because it's

going to hurt the bottom line. If you can look and be like, well, but that guy's doing really, really good and his blood work is super healthy and it seems like he's, he's totally fine. Like where's the issue? No, no, no, no, ignore that. is super healthy and it seems like he's totally fine. Like, where's the issue? No, no, no, ignore that. Here are these other medications that will correct everything. They do cost money.

They don't work as good, but just trust us and trust the science. So that's what I think. Yeah. I think it's amazing. I think it will cause a lot of good conversation though. So I think that, you know, here in the United States, we have Donald Trump, who I always say is a blessing to our political status because people have more conversation. People end up talking about politics that otherwise wouldn't talk about politics.

So I think in this case, I think that's the huge positive, the huge benefit of like, rather than this thing being like swept under the rug for so long. And we know that people are taking performance enhancing drugs in all of, in all of sports. They still are. That's why those records are going to be so hard to break. You know, the hundred meter record, um, some of the Olympic lifts and stuff like that are just like off the charts. It's hard not to believe that at least some of those records were broken by somebody who was probably cheating in some way. But now it's like, let's just put all cards on the table and we're just going to say, yeah, man, I'm, I took a, b and c and that's how I did that.

And someone's going to go, shit, man, I didn't know about c. Nobody told me. Damn it. You get more conversation going. And I think if people can figure out ways to do it with some relative safety behind it, I think it could cause some good conversation. I agree. And my last question. Who you watch it?

Oh, a hundred percent. I can't wait. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't have you ever seen the skit? Like there's a, there's a program here in the United States called Saturday Night Live. And they did a the all steroid Olympics. Have you ever seen that clip before? No. Oh my God. It's hilarious. So it's like this Russian lifter goes to like lift the weight and he's lifting like 4,000 pounds or something. And he goes and lift the weight and he's lifting like 4,000 pounds or something and he goes and lift the weight and his arms actually just rip out of the socket and blood starts bleeding everywhere and the announcer's like, oh, that's a tough blow for the Russian, but he'll be back. He's got four years to

recover from that. So yeah, this is, this is a dream come true for me. Uh, the all steroid Olympics. Yeah, I love it. I cannot wait. And, um, yeah, so best of luck for sure. I can't wait to watch you break all these records. One thing I did want to ask you, I totally forgot about, because when it comes to like cleaning up sports, right? You heard that a lot in baseball because, oh, we don't want youth athletes to think you need to take PEDs in order to perform at the highest level. Have you like given any thought to that? And I know you had mentioned your age and you've already been at the top for a very long time,

but does that concern you at all to think that, maybe there's a high school swimmer that's like already has it in their mind, like, oh, if I wanna be as good as James, and this means I'm gonna have to start taking some PEDs. Yeah, I think for me mentally I had to separate those two things really early on and decide what my stance was on that. So for younger athletes, for just children in general, I think there is things that you

take from sport that you should aspire towards, that you should use athletes as role models for. And so the best examples I can give is if I had a kid, I don't have a kid yet, but when I have a kid, if we sit down on the weekend and watch the UFC, for example, and my son is watching Conor McGregor, there are aspects of Conor McGregor's lifestyle, maybe less now than when he was at his peak, but there are aspects of his lifestyle that young athletes should aspire towards. His dedication, his commitment, the sacrifices he's made, his dedication to his sport, his category.

But there's also, then I have to differentiate for my son, just because Conor McGregor is a role model and he's an athlete, doesn't mean that you then go out and kick other kids in the head on the playground. It's up to me as a parent and me as I guess the person that my son looks to for guidance, it's up to me to articulate which parts of elite performance, elite sport should be aspired towards and should be used as role models. And the way I think particularly

these enhanced games will start is I think this is an opportunity for current and former athletes to prolong their career, to extend their careers beyond what was previously physically possible. And so for a younger athlete, I would be recommending to start at point A, which would be trying out for the Olympics, the world championships, pushing your body to its physical limits naturally first. And then this is an opportunity to prolong your career after that prior career. Where that ends in the future,

the way that the conversations that I've had, the amount of global interest in these games and the success that I believe they will be. Maybe in the future, one day this becomes the safer option because it is so transparent, it is so open. Nobody's going to the dark corners of medicine and science to try and find something to beat the testers, to beat WADA, to beat USADA.

They're actually just open and honest with what's available and therefore they can do it safely. So at the moment, I would say, you know, look towards these games for certain aspects of inspiration, but also be realistic for young athletes and young children of these are professional athletes doing it in a professional setting and not everything they do are doing is to be copied or mirrored for younger athletes

James where's your last name come from? Are you like Icelandic or Swedish or something? Norwegian oh Magnuson this is There's pretty much everyone in Australia. We're all immigrants at some point. So my grandparents were from Norway on my dad's side. So that's where I get my 6'5", 230 pounds. I think what you're doing is incredibly admirable, at least as far as I'm aware of. I think you're the most decorated athlete to be the first guy to kind of cross over. And I always say the first man to the wall gets bloody so

You're taking on a huge responsibility, but I think it's an important one So I hope other athletes do it as well. Are there other athletes that are well known that that You're aware that are crossing over to the enhanced games as well There are there are but I think from the most part, there's still competing and there will be competing at the Paris Olympics. So they don't want their names revealed until after those games. Because I imagine that the international Olympic committee will be quite combative with those athletes.

Funnily enough, I'm working in the media here in Australia and I'm going across to the Paris Olympics as part of the broadcast for the Australian media. It's going to infect everybody. It's going to be a really interesting relationship that I have with those officials because they have been quite harsh with some of their comments. But whenever there's a disruptor in sport, the most recent example I can think of is live golf. As soon as Phil Mickelson signed up for live golf, people were just hammering him. But now, we're 18 months down the track.

So many golfers have gone from the PGA across to live. But at the end of the day, the ones that benefit are the athletes because there's more eyeballs on the sport, there's more money, there's more sponsorship, and the sport progresses and the athletes benefit. This is great, man. We wish you all the luck. Where can people find you?

And how do they kind of find out more about the Enhanced Games? So the Enhanced Games, you can look up their website Enhanced.org and that has all the staff that they've got on board, the medical professionals, the finances that are backing the games, plans for the games, how they're tracking, all that kind of stuff. Now that I'm back training, I'm posting some training content on my socials. So just James.magnuson on Instagram, you can see a bit of that training. And my plan over the

next few months is definitely once I start the enhancement protocols, I'm going to bring on board a videographer and release weekly vlogs and video content on what I'm taking, how that's making me feel, and all the training outcomes that I'm getting from those enhancements. So I'm going to start that process of being transparent really early on in the piece so that people can follow along on my journey and Yeah, enjoy the ride. Thank you so much for your time. Go kick some ass and get that fastest 50 ever Thanks guys looking forward to it. I think that was incredible. You know what James was saying, you know I think it's admirable that he's the first guy With the credentials. There's not a lot of other guys I'm really hearing

talking about it, but as he was pointing out, maybe after the Paris Olympics, some people will drop some hints that they're participating. I thought it was really cool that he said Ridley Scott is gonna be part of a documentary series that they're gonna be following everything that goes on with the enhanced game.

So I just think it's great. I think it's a long time coming. I mean, it's just so obvious. It's just so obvious that there's a lot of performance enhancement in sports. I think those performance enhancing drugs are made for performance enhancement of sport. And therefore, they should kind of be in sport.

And hopefully, somebody at some point comes to some resolution of how these can kind of safely be utilized. It's an interesting thing that our mind always goes to like, well, what about the kids? Well, in this case, you know, especially when you're talking about swimming, kids have plenty of opportunity to still compete drug tested and drug free. They have the USA swimming and they only have that one like governing body and they can do that as much as they want. And when you think about, there's other sports

like bodybuilding, powerlifting and stuff where there's tested, untested and stuff like that. But I just think that when it comes to kids, I mean, kids are not gonna do a lot of things that their parents do. I mean, Patrick Mahomes gonna do a lot of things that their parents do. I mean, Patrick Mahomes might have a drink here and there on the weekends or something like that. And obviously you don't want your six-year-old kid

who's looking up to him to drink alcohol. But for some reason, when the steroid thing comes up, I think there's just so many misconceptions about it. And it's a decision that adults should make. And hopefully we figured out a way for them to be in sports because I think the sports that we love, I think they can be better, they can be enhanced. People can recover from them better.

They can be safer. And one of my favorite sports, which is professional football, there's so much CTE in that sport, so many concussions, and just so much damage to a lot of athletes that maybe is unnecessary. Maybe if these athletes are hydrated better, and just so much damage to a lot of athletes that maybe is unnecessary. Maybe if these athletes are hydrated better, maybe if these athletes are fueled better,

whether it's taking things for their hormones or peptides, I'm all for it. I think they should be able to do it and they should be able to recover from how violent their sport and activity is. Strength is never weakness, weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later, bye.