Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 716 - Jeff Alberts: 50 Year Old Pro Natural Bodybuilder's Secret To LONG TERM Physical SUCCESS

Episode Date: April 14, 2022

Jeff Alberts is a Pro Natural Bodybuilder who fell in love with lifting back in 1986. Jeff entered his first competition in 1993 and over the span of 3 decades he's competed in numerous shows. His track record speaks for itself winning 2 pro cards, 16 class titles, 26 top 3 finishes, and winning the 2014 IFPA Pro International. As a coach with 3DMJ, Jeff has worked with over 400+ athletes since 3DMJ’s inception, assisting them to reach a higher level. Follow Jeff on IG: https://www.instagram.com/3dmj_godfather/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ 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 ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢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 on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, I hope you guys are doing well today. I want to give you guys a quick piece of fitness equipment lifting history. The hip circle that you see before you is actually the first hip circle ever. All right? There were no booty bands before the hip circle, which is pretty interesting. That's why you see it in gyms like The Rock. We've seen Kim K using it on Instagram. It is the OG.

But that's also why we have the slingshots, gangster wraps, knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, everything that you're going to need in the gym so that you can protect yourself before you wreck yourself. So, Andrew, you tell the people how to get it. Yeah. You guys got to head over to markbellslingshot.com. Load up a hip circle, some elbow sleeves, some knee sleeves, all up in your cart. And you guys can use promo code power project to save 15% off all of it. Again, markbellslingshot.com links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Did you eat anything today? I had a shake and some granola bars. Throw down a protein shake. How do you normally eat? Like what's your breakfast normally consist of? 90% of the time,

it's like egg whites with some string cheese, cereal or toast or something like that. Today, I was on the run because I had to come here and shave and look presentable you shave everything so protein shakes a lot faster head to toe oh yeah one big just just for you guys i look sexy you know dog for my first ever for my first ever bodybuilding show i thought you had to shave everything i didn't realize that you didn't have to shave your armpits like so i shaved everything and because i didn't want to take something to my armpits i had my ex she waxed my armpits. So I shaved everything. And because I didn't want to take something to my armpits, I had my ex. She waxed my armpits. I still have a video of it where her mother put hot wax on my hair and ripped it off.

And it didn't even all come off. I think you just wanted that, though. Maybe. You have to shave everything. Do you shave your armpits before a show? Friend double bicep, you want your hair to be shown? No, I guess you're right. It depends on what

your armpit situation looks like, I guess. Yeah. Like if it's crazy in there, then you gotta do something. I've seen, you know, where you should definitely shave.

People didn't shave and you're like, you need to go backstage and shave. Before you do your pose in your routine. You're like, this isn't the big old bush. like, this isn't big old Bush.

Yeah. This is the 1970s. This isn't the Mike Menser era. Go clean. Go clean some of that up. So the reason why we have you on the show today is in SEMA over here has been claiming that he's Natty for a really long time. And I think you've known him for a long time. So out of all the analysis,

all the tests, the urine test, the blood test, you put him in that giant machine. Appreciate that. Thank you so much. He didn't look like he was going to fit. What is the verdict? Oh, he's definitely clean. Really?

I paid him to say that. I saw Tom before in the podcast even started. I said, you came out the womb big. That's right. He did. I think he did. He's always been big. And he has a hell of an appetite.

I do. I do. But no, it's fun. I'd imagine, Jeff, because the cool thing about you, man, how old are you now? I'm 50. You're 50. The reason why it's so cool to have you here, dog, is because you have pictures of this on your Instagram of like, you've been lifting all your life and we'll get into that.

But you have this transformation picture from 35 to 48 years old. And you can see, you were still competing then. And you can see the thickness in the legs, the thickness all around your body. You got bigger. And a lot of people are out here on the internet saying, after 30 men who are lifting, you're not going to be able to gain that much new muscle, blah, blah, blah. But you are literally the definition of consistency when it comes to lifting and what that can give an athlete. Because you've been making progress and it doesn't, I don't know, do you think it's slowing down? I mean, it's slowing down, but do you think you're stopping? I mean, look at at i don't look

stopped yet right yeah i think it's definitely slowing but i think you hit the nail on the head when you said consistency like a lot of times when we get older we kind of lose habits it's the habits that deteriorate it's not so much like all of a sudden magically our hormones are going down the toilet. So I think the consistency is huge. Um, you know, I'm not perfect. I've had moments where, you know, I wasn't as consistent and that could be with more so like dieting, but the training itself, like I've literally have been in the gym 35, 36 years with minimal time away. Like probably the most time away I've seen is maybe four months that wasn't by choice well kind of by choice that was more so i look at that bald head that looks

sexy people are gonna say drugs to this man how much do you weigh here in both pictures by the way take a wild guess uh picture number two at 48 i'ma guess one 180 and then the first picture i'ma guess 172 bless your heart once 170 on the right 156 on the left oh wow but that's the thing that's what being lean can do because i mean a normal person person, because I know you and I see you standing here, some would think that on the right you're like 210 pounds or 200 pounds. Pictures by myself, yeah, if you saw that, you'd be like, that dude looks like he's 200 pounds. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. How did you get into bodybuilding in the first place? What spawned your interest? I started lifting weights in eighth grade, more so because family life, like my mom, my stepdad. It was a little bit of a rough go for me, a big transition to go into that household. So that was kind of my escape was the plastic weights, you know, the old sand filled plastic weights. Pulled that down from the garage

rafters. My stepdad up there, he never used it. So I'm like, I'll just throw that in my room, get home from school. And I would just basically go in my room. I locked myself in there and lift just to kind of get away from the environment. And then I kind of enjoyed like seeing the results of it. Like, oh, these little muscles are kind of popping up. Um, and then of course, you know, in school, you know, I was kind of like the only guy lifting. So I was like And then, of course, you know, in school, you know, I was kind of like the only guy lifting. So I was like, oh, that kid, he's pretty jacked. So, you know, I kind of got into that.

And then I kind of built an ego because I was the big fish in Little Bond. So all through high school, I was like the jack guy. And then actually competing, I had no desire to do that. I'm like, there's no way I'm getting in these little underwear and getting up there because I'm an introvert. And just like being here, this is like, this is crazy to me. But, you know, I've learned to get out of my comfort zones. So my ex-wife is like, you can do it.

Just get up there. And so I did. And then, I mean, the rest is history. I haven't looked back. So we're talking like early 90s when i first started competing those uh old school weights for people that uh you know have the liberty to have all the nice stuff of today uh the shit was dangerous man like those old school benches those were fucked and like when you went to put the weight back you had to be really careful

because you could easily go way over top yeah and like separate your shoulder or worse or just kill yourself and the bench itself like over a period of time it would like get real shady it was wobbly like i mean yeah it's got a leg extension on one side and you can bench off the other was that the shit like an unbreakable yeah absolutely okay that's what i was thinking it's just like but like even the weights were wobbly because like they were like filled right so like they could get super lopsided. Like, oh my gosh, this is dangerous. Yeah, they would make noise when you lift it.

You're like... It almost sounded like the bar itself was like plastic. It sort of felt like we have all these tins stacked up. I never even thought about that, but you're right. The bar was like a PVC pipe. It was a piece of shit, basically. And I never thought to myself, this thing's going to snap one day.

But it was awesome because there was no social media, no internet. Just go in my room, have Lee Haney's picture up on the wall, and train. And I had no clue what I was doing. Yeah, I was going to say, how long did it take you to start to figure out? I know in retrospect from now, you probably still don't think you know much because there's always so much more to learn, right? But when you were, you know, when you were just starting out, sounds like you just kind of started.

And when you just started, like, what were you doing? What were you kind of messing around with? Did you read something in a magazine? Like, I'm going to do these three sets of 10 or... Yeah, that was just it. It was muscle and fitness. You know, they had Lee Haney, Barry DeMay, those types of guys.

I remember doing bench press, overhead press, an overhead tricep extension, and a barbell curl. That was it. Put it all on repeat. Yeah, repeat every day. And then once I got into high school, then it became like an ego thing, like how much can I bench? So I remember bench pressing Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. And we max every Friday. This is getting exciting.

Like none of the football coaches had any idea. What about Saturday, Sunday? Any benching on Saturday, Sunday? No. Because I didn't have any gym. I didn't have any equipment. Because at that time when I got into high school, I had moved out of my house.

I was living with my uncle, so we didn't really have any. I didn't have the plastic weight set there. Yeah. So it was just mainly just for PE. I would train. What about the nutrition side of it? Have you always kind of been a leaner person, or was that something that you had to really focus in on right off the bat?

I was athletic as a kid. I wouldn't say I was super lean like when I started training, but I was lean enough to where once I started training, you can actually see results because of the muscle development. But I didn't really dabble into nutrition, like actually educating myself until like I was in my early 20s when I started competing. And it actually made things worse because prior to that, I was just eating mom's cooking or my aunt's cooking or whatever. So I wasn't really paying attention to what my calories were. I was just making sure I was eating a lot.

And then once I got into nutrition, like trying to figure it out, I actually was starting to under eat. So I actually regressed. So it actually was counterproductive actually trying to learn. But I didn't get better at it until my late 20s. actually regressed. So it actually was counterproductive, actually trying to learn. But I didn't get better at it until my late 20s. So it was like a good 10-year stretch where it was almost like my physique wasn't where it should be. But at the same time, because of the talent level I was competing against, I thought I was doing something right because I was winning shows.

I was like winning divisions and things like that. So I'm like, okay, I must be doing something right. And I think because I was growing, the way I grew up and learning on my own and being an introvert, it was hard for me to actually ask people for help. So you were coaching yourself through these shows or you had a coach?

I was a coach back in the 90s. Really? No, that wasn't a thing. So let me ask you this. When you were, because you said like your early 20s until your late 20s, you think you regressed. Were you kind of hitting the stage around like the same weight, same physique? And you weren't noticing much? I mean, I wouldn't't prove but it wasn't like

that what you just seen it was just like okay you look a little bit bigger but you don't look any leaner and it's partially because was a big reason because you were under eating for a lot of that i was under eating compete while competing yeah like just eat like losing weight too fast like the rate of loss was too fast you know how it is when you're younger ego you're like you want to get after it right yeah like everything has to be hardcore and i'd pay more attention to the scale let's say than what i was looking like yeah so it's like i was chasing these numbers i gotta lose my my two pounds a week or whatever uh-huh and not have any like idea as far as like hey i should be looking a certain way yeah did you we were actually talking also too like the education level back then or the the knowledge that was available isn't like it is

now yeah so it was mainly like i'm trying to learn from these these guys these ifbb pros in the magazines but yet i'm a natural bodybuilder without the internet. So I'm just looking at them like, okay, how do I do this? And I remember reading a Sean Ray article. He didn't track anything. He just eyeballed it. I'm like, okay, let me do that. How long did it take you to realize that they were doing things differently? Did you know when you were in your early 20s that you just made a choice not to hop on?

Or were you following because you're early 20s and you just made a choice not to hop on or were you following because you're like like did you know that they were taking steroids to be able to get those physiques no i knew that yeah yeah i'm not that dumb okay yeah so my ex-wife she would be like why are you she gets frustrated with me she's like why are you doing these shows you know you're not going to win like i would do well and win classes but never overalls like why are you doing these shows? You know, you're not going to win. Like I would do well and win classes, but never overalls. Like, why are you doing this when you know, you're not going to win? You know, you don't, you're never going to go that route. Cause just, that's how I was raised. Like don't drink, don't smoke, don't do anything. So I've always kind of just been, you know, away from that. And not to say, you know, I don't judge people to do it. Just for me personally, this is the path that I wanted to take.

So, yeah, it was just like it took me a long time to actually find someone who actually was doing the natural bodybuilding side of things. Because it's a totally different approach. It's really interesting to think back, too, because steroids weren't always a Schedule III drug. the steroids weren't always a scheduled three drug, you know? And I think that you probably, your beginning of your bodybuilding career probably started like right around the same time it started to become a scheduled three drug. So there was like steroids. I think people think that steroids weren't really prominent and they were,

they were like, they were really rampant. And for many, many years, people would really talk about them really openly. And they would just, they would hand them out to each other in gyms and stuff because it wasn't illegal. Was it more prevalent in the 80s or 90s that it was like that? It was probably more like late 80s, kind of the early 90s. And as I'm saying, like as you were getting into it. But the point of that is that there would still be a lot of guys that were already using, that were already competing when they weren't necessarily a Schedule III drug. So it's just like an interesting time period and to kind of think back of some of those guys.

And then even Arnold and Lee Haney and some of these people, I mean who knows how much they use. Like no one knows any of that information really. But it's not as drastic as what you see going on today. And so I think in today's world where you have people taking these like giant stacks where they're taking five to seven things at a time, that is way different than what you're asking your body to do as a natural competitor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

It was just, again, my personality was kind of like, at the time I just figured that was like, that's bad. Like, that's more so like how I was brought up. You know, drugs are bad, whatever bad. So it's more of a being immoral maybe. So that was just not my thing. And then, of course, I've gotten educated over the years about it. So like I said, it's not that I'm judgmental towards people that do it.

I mean, everybody's going to do their own thing. But this was just the path I chose. And it wasn't until I met Bob Bell. I think you guys probably know Bob Bell. And at the time, he was the promoter of the capital city here in Sacramento. And he was a judge. And I was going to be doing a show in Oregon that he was going to be judging. And he called me up about six weeks away from me. He's like, hey, Jeff, what are you doing? Tell me what you're kind of doing to get ready for the show.

And I kind of was just telling him like the same things I've been doing for like the last 10 years, you know, just really bro and really basic and simple. And he's like, Hey, let's maybe implement some cardio because cardio for me, the way I was brought up and I got brought up in Bob's gym in Fremont at Corny used to go there. Like a lot of old timers, like cardio is bad. You're going to eat your muscle up if you do cardio. So I was always anti cardio and he's like let's Bob's like hey let's introduce some cardio in there. How are you tracking macros? I'm like what's macros?

It's so great that someone decided that cardio is bad. I love that. I love that a bunch of guys got together one day and they're like you know what? Fuck this. This seems like a waste of time. It's boring. It's good for your heart. It's bad for you.

Okay. Right. But at the time, you're young. You don't know any better. So you're kind of just listening to the people that have done it before you. And you look at Ed Korn and you're like, okay, fuck. This guy was jacked. He's trained with Arnold and all them. And he's the head judge of the show I compete at.

So I'm going to listen to him because he was kind of my authority at the time. So Bob Bell kind of just opened my eyes, and it was like maybe a 30-minute phone call, and I was just like walls were up because it almost feels like someone's attacking you, right? Like questioning how you're doing things, and you're like, no, man, I've been doing this for like this long i've won these these class titles these divisions but he's like hey if you want to turn pro in the natural federations he's like you know you got to change some of these approaches so you know cardio hey let's track some macros you know that's some just you know don't cut your water don't cut sodium you know just some simple principles there and i and i i don't know what it was but i've after listening to him for a little bit i'm like can't hurt to try so i was like let

me try this out and six weeks later i got to the show and it was best ever physique i put that point like the size the conditioning was like oh wow that's a different level that i've never seen before and i was one guy away from winning the guy that won he was 30 pounds heavier than me same height um yeah and I was like I remember in the elevator my ex-wife's like is that guy competing I'm like nah I go he's probably just helping out because you know in my mind I've never seen anybody like that so I'm like this guy must be using there's no ways in this natural show yeah shit i get backstage there he is no clothes on like oh shit game over yeah but the end of the he ended up going to worlds he took second worlds and yeah i mean yeah he was legit what is something that

would chew up somebody's muscle because there is the concern over doing cardio but it's not the cardio right it would be being in like a large caloric deficit or something like that, right? Yeah, yeah. Like the picture earlier, the one at 156 at 35, that was like losing, the rate of loss was like way too fast, like more than 1% of my body weight per week for successive weeks. And it was no like, no refeeds, you know, no moments where you're eating more food. Training was hardcore. Like back then it was, you it was mincers, high intensity.

That was balls to the wall. So being in a severe deficit, training with that much intensity. And let's not forget to mention lifestyle. Like at that time I was working in an auto plant. I was working like 40 to 50 hours a week, commuting three hours a day because I would go from out in the valley out here to the Bay Area every single day, getting about five or six hours sleep per night. And I used to think I was lazy. And I'm like, fuck.

And I look back and I go, no, I wasn't lazy. I was just tired. So I was just running myself into the ground. So I don't think it was the fact that, Hey, I gained 14, 15 pounds of muscle from 35 to 48. A lot of that, I learned how to retain it a lot better. So the approaches were a little bit wiser, more conservative. Yeah. Let me ask you this, the, the rate of cuts, cause we were actually recently talking about this in a prior podcast. What, how many weeks, well, I mean, it doesn't even, well, how many weeks would you give yourself to cut back then versus now?

And also now you're probably actually starting at a better body composition when you start your cut too, right? That's the goal. That's always the goal. I mean, back then I had no clue as far as pre-prep positioning. It was like, hey, eat big, get big in the off season season try to put as much size on as you can hey we got 12 to 16 weeks before a show because that's that's kind of how it was as far as like the approaches back then and just diet from there so if it's like if you're 190 you need to be 160 or 156 with 12 16 weeks or whatever you know you do the math but actually take that back that that first picture i

dieted for about eight or nine months oh wow okay cool so that that where i was starting to come into my own that was 2006 i'm like what would happen if i actually dieted longer like longer you know slower not slower but just let me live this lifestyle longer because up until before then it was almost like i attained a certain level of conditioning. And then the season would be over and that would be it. That, I was like, let me see what I can do if I just diet longer. Just live the lifestyle and keep dieting. This idea of the metabolism slowing down, especially if you're doing a long diet.

We hear people more recently have been talking about, i guess that's been around for a while but like cheap meals or like a refeed or a diet break like is your metabolism really slowing down you know if you're dieting uh for this long a period of time and how do you and if so how do you counteract that i don't know if it's slowing down i, if you're under eating and you're trying to do too much, I mean, your body's probably going to have some pushback. Like, hey, I don't want to fucking die. So we're going to slow your, you probably felt this in the scene where you feel lethargic and you just stop moving. So is that metabolism or just the fact that you're just underfed? You're underfed. So once you introduce more food, you're like, oh, I can actually move and go hunt and kill something now.

There is this idea, though, of like your calorie flux, right? Like it can go kind of up and down in accordance to how much you eat to help you kind of regulate your body weight somewhat, right? I'm not the science guy, so I can't break down the science of it. What do you mean by calorie flux? Like just when you start to consume a lot of calories, there's a balance in the body of like, hey, we got more energy. Move more. So you might move more.

Your body is aware that you're getting these extra calories, and then like as you said, you felt lethargic, and then you don't want to move. So I guess, yeah, my point in just kind of bringing that up is that, you know, as you continue to bring those calories down, you know, for this long diet period, I think you said how long, eight months or something like that? Eight or nine, yeah.

Like, is that, like, I guess, I mean, it seems like a good strategy. It seems like it's worked for you many times uh but is there anything that you feel like during that process you have to counteract or you just have to make sure the entire time that you don't excessively under eat so the difference between those two shots again it's like the first shot is eight or nine months of like hardcore dieting, like no breaks, like underfed more, way more. Whereas on the right, I dieted that, let's see, that was 2019. So that was over a year took me to get like that. But I wasn't in a deficit the entire time.

So we factor in one or two refeeds a week, diet breaks every so often often date nights with the wife because i'm fuck the guy on the left would have been like sorry babe we're not doing anything the guy on the right it's like no we're gonna have a glass of wine or two and we're gonna have a date night i understand so it's a lifestyle on the right you know different lifestyle compared to the left i accidentally inferred diet or prep with being in a long-term caloric deficit but that cleared it up thank you that was great no you're welcome and that's the same thing that alberto did with me back in 2015 like it wasn't that we were

in a deficit for 42 weeks you know like we were in a deficit for a lot of that because but we had like a week where we took a diet break. Like during different phases of the prep, we had multiple refeed days. But a majority of it was like that. And I mean when I was like getting that lean, my sex drive left for the last maybe three to four months of the prep. My sex drive was gone. three to four months of the prep, my sex drive was gone. I wish I got like testosterone levels done because I mean, when this is something that happens to a lot of natural bodybuilders, when they prep for a long time and get really lean, have you ever had anybody like get tested

before and like get their hormone levels checked? Because I had one guy that I was working with like four years ago. He wasn't even prepping for a show. He just wants to get the lean as he could. And he looked insane. But when he got his levels checked, his free was like in to like 70 something, 80 tanked. Yeah. And we're like, dog, we need to put body fat back on. Yeah. I mean, that's part of the game, right? Yeah.

I mean, you get I mean, that's not even extreme level conditioning because i got leaner than that like a couple months later but i mean yeah you get that lean yeah hormones are going to tank out um and a lot of times when i have had athletes that i've coached that they'll get their test done after like right after and i already know it's going to come back yeah it's probably going to be low they freak out out, like, oh my gosh, you know? And I'm like, give it time. You know, month, two months, six months, just get rechecked. Let's bring the food back up. Let's put some body, like you said, put some body fat back on,

get back to normal, and then see if it comes back up. And it does. Because, you know, doctor sees that. It's almost like, hey, you know, something's going on there. You're not normal. So, you know, we have to kind of get retested just to make sure, you know. So you're not doing something maybe you don't need to do. Like, and no one wants to take medication if they don't have to.

No. Give us some of the basics. Like, approximately what amount of protein do you typically recommend to somebody? I know it could really matter, like, depending on where they are. But just for, like, you know, holding on a muscle, gaining some muscle, like, where do you usually put the protein at? It's context-dependent, like you just kind of mentioned. You know, you kind of look at the one gram per pound, kind of the general rule there. But, I mean, if you have someone who's a little bit heavy, you know, they're carrying a lot of body fat, they're not going to need that.

Myself, I take in like 160 to 170 grams. And I weigh right now 185. So people kind of freak out on that. Like, that's not even a gram per pound. But my lean body mass is maybe 155, 160. So lean body mass, I'm still like a little over a gram per pound. But we also have to look at if we're dieting, like the rate of loss, I think is probably the highest priority to look at. Cause you can have two times the amount of protein or

you can have a gram per pound or what have you. But if you're losing, like I was on the left, you're going to get your, your body's going be like, I'm going to take energy wherever I can get it. Fat, muscle, whatever. So I think when we're dieting, we have to really pay attention to the rate of loss. And the more conservative you are, the better you are going to hold on to size. What are some things that you do pre and post workouts? Is there any sort of anything intentional that you do or is it just you eat six meals a day type of thing?

I don't even eat six meals a day. Most days it's four. You have to, bro. Are we going to lose muscle mass? That was me in the 90s. Where's your six-pack bag?

Six-pack. Ask my ex-wife. She'll tell you how neurotic I was with that shit. You like you know i have to eat broccoli flying everywhere chicken six o'clock 8 30 11 2 30 like on the clock oh shit if i don't eat in the next five minutes i'm gonna atrophy you know so yeah a lot of those myths i kind of uh eliminated on my own um i think the 2014 prep I had, I was like 43 years old at the time.

I was the first time prepping with a family. So it was almost like I had to be forced. I couldn't do those same obsessive things as a bodybuilder. I had to let go of a lot of that. And a lot of it, too, the training. Everybody has kind of their set days they train on. If they don't train on set days, like, oh, gosh, I'm going to shrink. So there was a lot of flexibility with that.

Like, oh, shit, I got to take my kid to the doctor. Okay, we're not training today. We'll just train tomorrow. That type of thing. Same thing with the meals. Like, okay, today's three meals. Maybe tomorrow's four. And yeah, long story short, I got on stage looking better than I did in that shot you're seeing there because that was my best year. So it basically just like took away a lot of those myths.

Have you personally noticed anything with like a post-workout drink or anything like that or any sort of discipline that you have to like eat immediately when you're done? You know, there's this window, right? This like window of time that we need to get to otherwise nothing good is going to happen. Anabolic window. Yeah, we got an anabolic window that's real bro do you do you

tell the guys in prison they get slopped for a meal and then they're fucking jacked right or I go back to when I was in high school as a kid the first two years

I got hell you've seen the picture I look like a man child yeah dude I ate one meal a day I come home from school In high school, as a kid, the first two years, I got healthy. You've seen the picture. I look like a man child. Yeah, dude. I ate one meal a day. I come home from school and eat my mom's cooking, and that was it. I might have maybe a bowl of cereal in the morning, but that was it.

Yeah. My protein requirements back then, I mean, I was probably eating maybe 100 grams. But still, the training is what's driving everything. Of course, you need the nutrition there to back it up but yeah I think a lot of these myths they're just they make people neurotic and I think that's where you see a lot of people not enjoy

the bodybuilding as much so I've learned to let go there's a reason I'm still doing this right 35 36 years later yeah 3-4 meals a day normally yeah that's about the average yeah 3-4 meals a day normally? Yeah, that's about the average. Yeah, three, four meals a day. Protein, 160, 170.

I try to be a little bro at that. Let me make sure that I'm getting good muscle protein synthesis. I'll break that up across four meals because it's hard to eat that much in one shot. But yeah, I try to keep it simple. Carbs are maybe double your body weight, something like that? When I'm dieting, they're a little bit – they're under that. But, yeah, like when I'm not dieting, yeah, they're – more of my calories are coming from carbs than anything else. Or maybe half your body weight? Yeah, about that.

Yeah, anywhere between 40 to 60 grams on most days. So you're still pretty rigorous with tracking, though, or are you just kind of eyeballing it? I'm rigorous now because I'm getting ready for shows. Off season, I'm human. I'm like more of the dad and the husband. Like I'm not going to like put my food on a food scale in the off season. That's just how I've done it like since day one. Like off season, I just like let me just eat and drink.

I have other things to do than to obsess on a food scale and things like that. But also, when you're in your off-season, you're paying attention to your food enough where you're not just gaining weight erratically, right? You're not just seeing weight on the scale go up. You're still paying attention to the food you eat, even though you're not tracking it, correct? The big rocks, right? So, okay, let me make sure I'm getting enough protein in there. That's the big rock.

Let me make sure I'm—because, of course, we're bodybuilders. We me make sure i mean because i'm of course we're bodybuilders trying to put on size so okay let's not be in a deficit so let's pay attention to scale make sure it's not going down if it's staying the same or it's going up we're okay we don't want to go up too high obviously yeah um i'm human off season that's probably like my whole bodybuilding career that's probably the one area where i probably haven't tracked enough let's say i've been too loose because then you know i'm like 205 210 pounds i'm like oh fuck now i gotta lose 40 45 pounds so that's why you see me dieting for a year and i know i'm not gonna diet a year straight because then I'm that obsessive, like, underfed guy for weeks and weeks and weeks where, okay, I've learned to, okay, this is the choice I'm going to make in the off season. It just means I got to start contest prep a lot sooner. So setting timelines, whether you're decently in shape or not, is like highest prior, like the most important thing when you're starting a contest prep is establishing your timeline. I have a question about that because we were talking about bulking

the other day. When a lot of young guys think about bulking, they think about eating as much as possible, seeing the scale go up, their performance in the gym goes up, but they end up putting on a lot of body fat. What would your general guidelines be for bulking? Maybe the upper limit of body fat a person should hold, what they should be looking at in the gym as far as their performance um and potential rate of weight gain you know because especially if somebody's just focusing on the scale going up all the time rather than focusing on progressing in the gym and that metric they could just be putting on more body fat week by week rather than actually gaining muscle and we're talking about

because I'm only experienced with naturals so I mean yeah we're not going to gain a pound of muscle a month like you're going to gain maybe like if you've been lifting for a while you're lucky to gain one or two pounds a year but if you bulk real hard and eat pizza no I've done that

it doesn't work you think you're getting big because like he said like you you eat the pizza you're like hour later you're like fuck i'm swollen right and then you go in the gym you're like holy shit i just threw up some good numbers so you're like hey that must be the reason why i'm doing so good so i'm gonna keep going and before you know it you're like 50 pounds over it takes you a year to get in shape i think a lot of people don't recognize how much time uh food cost us you know we had a um uh someone who's an avid carnivore uh eater yesterday on our show and i think like what she did is she escaped all the food traps. She got away from a lot of them, which sounds like it would be very difficult and to kind of live a life where you're celebrating stuff with family holidays, anniversaries, birthdays, stuff like that.

So it seems like a path that is going to be very rare for someone to be able to travel down. But our food costs us a lot of time. Like when you, when you're eating and you decide that you're going to overeat or you decide that you're going to make a choice to not eat the way you normally do, and you're going to end up with an abundance of calories, your ass is going to be on the treadmill. You know, your ass is going to be out for a walk. You're going to be running. And that's not to say not to do those things, but it just will cost you time.

And I think that if we can – people don't like to typically waste a lot of time. I mean we do on social media and stuff like that. There's some spots in our life where – but that's like a form of entertainment. And so I think if people looked at it as like a little bit more time management they might apply a little bit more to it yeah because taking a whole year to like come back down and in body weight is probably really hard and then also are you any bigger for it in the long run anyway yeah that's just there's like a fine line you know you get to a certain level you're like okay if I take it you know it's like going off a cliff like okay shit I just I just overate now I'm going off a cliff now I gotta climb back

up and that that's me like that's my story is like all season I always get and every time I say I'm not gonna let myself get too heavy but the reason that happens is not like yeah I don't think of it like you're thinking of it at that particular point in time. It's more like my son wants to go have some ice cream. So I'm like, am I really going to worry so much about my bodybuilding side of things in those moments? And for me, I think that's the reason why I've had longevity personally. My approach is just the fact that I learned to let go of the competitive side of the sport.

Does your, does your son really want to go have ice cream? Are you dropping hints? Like, Ooh, it's hot today. I don't think he's saying, Hey dad,

let's go get an apple. Yeah. Let's have some rice cakes, dad. Yeah. With, uh, so you said you mentioned longevity we've been having a lot of like movement people on the show we've been all

well and seem has always been real bendy and paid attention to that mark and i have just started recently paying attention to that sort of thing and trying to progress that way because i mean i haven't had like a long career lifting or anything nowhere near Mark. Mark has done a lot of shit. And he will say that he's been pretty stiff for a long time. And now he's trying to like unstuck himself. And then again, like the more people that we're kind of looking into, it's like, oh, these are different like, you know, movements that maybe we should try doing that. Maybe we should try being more, what's like with kettlebells, like functional fitness type stuff. But for yourself, you know, you've been, I know functional.

I didn't mean to drop that in there. But for yourself, you know, you've been bodybuilding for a long time, but you look like you're in amazing shape. Like health wise is what I mean. Are you like stuck anywhere? Do you have any like aches or pains or can you like. I'm 50. Yeah hurt right but like um like your back doesn't hurt you know like when you get out of bed like that sort of thing like how is your body uh holding up all these years no i i experience everything you just said okay yeah yeah i think joints hurt here and there stuff like that yeah

my shoulders um my lower back actually strained it the other day picking up my son's shoe off the floor oh shit so i know that kind of mad he didn't clean up up after from so man he's just his fault so i mean he has it out for you i can already yell like 365 375 on the normal pick up a pair of shoes and i hurt my back go figure yeah i know the pain. No, but yeah, I mean, you know, it's where I think for me, it's more wear and tear. I mean, you're 50 training 35 years pretty consistently. You can't expect like everything's going to feel great all the time. Um, so for me, the reason I think I've lasted so long and continuing to keep moving forward with it is just, it's more mental

and learning how to pace my training. Um, you know, cause let's face it, if I'm fucking doing 500 pound deadlifts week in and week out and, Oh, I'm going to foam roll. Like that's going to cure my aches and pains. Like, no, let's go to the root cause. Why do you have the pains in the first place? Like, look, maybe you shouldn't be dead lifting 500 maybe you find some alternative exercises to do that's a little more practical so there's i mean there's a lot of context you can look at but that's the biggest thing i look at is like how do i pace out my training and that's something that i've learned through our team 3 3D Muscle Journeys PT, because basically he's just kind of taught me how to balance that stuff out.

Have you found some of that line of how much weight you need to actually use? I want to say I saw a study recently where some people were using like 30% less weight and they still had these outstanding outcomes. And then people used 60% less weight and they had the same outstanding outcomes. What have you kind of discovered for yourself? Do you like need that weight or is it more of like more the mental component? Like I've gotten into running more recently. And I know it's not a probably great idea for me to run all the time might not be a great idea it might not be in my

best interest of the health of my knees and joints to get like way into running and to but for my mind i fucking love it so i find myself doing it almost every single day so with you with weights do you get attached to like i you know it's got to be at least three plates on this exercise otherwise it's a garbage workout yeah i mean i got the ego every now and then um i've learned to let go of like squats and deadlifts and i learned the hard way because like 2013 i think it was my off season like that was the most squats i've ever done in my life like i hit a 460 that was the most i've ever done done in my life. Like I hit a 460. That was the most I've ever done. And I was like 42 years old at the time.

And because of that and having success on the deadlift and all these big lifts, even add two plate overhead, I did that like for one or two reps. So I got into the season in 2014 and that was my best year as a pro. Winning a pro show, taking fourth at Worlds. So in my mind, it was like, okay, this is, and my physique kind of resembled some of those loads. Like, okay, I'm seeing some change there I've never seen before. Got success.

That season was over. Hey, let's head back into the off season. Let's just keep larynx and repeating that. Well, your body can only handle so much. You know, repetitive've repetitive use. I started getting lower back strains. I probably had three in one year. So I had a lower back strain, rehab it, get back under the bar,

get the squat back up over four plates. Cool, got that. And then it happened again. So like going through that like three times, I was like, why am I beating my head against a brick wall here? So let me find different exercises, different alternatives to try to keep my longevity going. So I was like, oh, leg press, pack squats, leg extensions, obviously not as heavy as loads, but hey, my muscle mass is still there. So I know these things.

You can look at the research and go, okay, you can lift 30% of your 1RM and take it to failure. Your muscle isn't going to go anywhere. But mentally, you're going to go from lifting 400 pounds and I'm going way down here. It's hard to let go of that. So I think a lot of people struggle with that. What about something like, I guess, just trying to recreate something similar. So hypothetically, you do a set of leg press or leg extension and you go right into the squat and now you end up using quite a bit less weight instead of 405. Maybe you have 275 on there.

You know, do you, have you done stuff like that? Yeah. Like if I'm dropping loads down like quite a bit, then I'm going to make sure that the intensity level, meaning how close to failure I'm getting, is definitely elevated. Because obviously if you're lifting 400 pounds, you can be further away from failure versus 200 pounds if you're doing the same number of reps. So, yeah, it's a different style of training too.

Like for me to go from like doing six reps on something, now I got to do 20, and then you have to question like, well, how close are you really getting to failure at 20 because is it you're tapping out because there's just a lot of lactic acid there and you're kind of just being a puss now and you're short-chain yourself?

So yeah, it takes time to kind of adapt to the to that style when it comes to training jeff uh you know everyone talks about progressive overload progressive overload and increasing volume over years and years and years but i know you're going with this you can't always lift heavier you can't always keep doing more volume year by year for like that and it's like if that's what people expect, so they can keep gaining muscle, how are you going to continue doing that? So you have actually continued to make progress over the years. When looking at what people talk about when it comes to progressive overload, what do you think people are getting wrong? Like, how do you handle your

training to keep making progress and keep progressing and still gaining muscle, but you're not always increasing your training volume. At least that's my assumption. Maybe I'm wrong. No, I don't think you're wrong. Like most people want to quantify, right? They quantify through numbers. You guys have been training a long time too. Like you guys know you can't just add a set year after year after year. Otherwise I'd be doing like 50 sets for one exercise, and then I got six more to do after that. It's like, no, it doesn't work that way. And I think you guys know too, you guys are experienced.

Like think back to when you guys first started training. Like where your intensity and effort level was at. Like you're going to expect someone who walks into the gym in their first year to go close to failure or learn like really good form in their first year. So I think as we get advanced, we're more skilled. We're more skilled with form. We're more skilled with intent and effort. And we know how to push ourselves like physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And I don't think many people look at the skill set of bodybuilding. They just think, oh, okay. They just look at the research and the evidence and go, okay, I got to do X amount of set. I got to do 10 to 20 sets according to X, Y, and Z. But if you actually look at people train, you watch them train. That's the thing that I do as a coach. I'm like, let me see your form, not just how you're actually executing,

but I want to see from start to finish where your effort level's at and everything's on point with that. How you're actually executing, but I want to see from start to finish where your effort level's at. And everything's on point with that. Because you could have the most perfect program in the world on paper, but if the execution isn't there, it's not going to get you very far. Yeah. I love what you said right there about skill set. I think Nsema has a really good skill set when he's training. Like he's very in tune with his body, obviously from being an athlete and stuff like that too. But in the weight room specifically, it's like it's kind of – I consider it to be like a form of genius in a way.

When you watch people move a certain way or tap into a muscle a certain way, I think he could use a lot less weight than another individual but be firing muscles way differently and getting like maybe even more out of it than somebody else, even though he could probably use 100 pounds more on the exercise. And then probably the most intelligent person I've ever lifted with from a skill set lifting standpoint has been Mike O'Hearn. I've never seen anything like it before in my life. It's crazy. And, you know, Mike is a guy who grew up a little bit similar to myself where, uh, he was in some of these, uh, classes cause he learned kind of slowly and he kind of thought he was dumb, but like the guy is a fucking genius when you work out with him. It's, it's, it's completely,

uh, amazing to train with someone like that. And then also I've been fortunate enough to be around people like Charles glass. And when I was younger, I was training at Gold's Gym and I was doing an exercise. Charles walked by and he was like, hey, he's like, you want me to show you how to do that the right way? I was like, oh, my God, I'd love that. And it was like a sissy squat. And it totally annihilated me and it killed me. And I was like messed up for like a week. The next time he came into the gym and he walked past me and I was doing another exercise. He's like, hey, you want me to show you how to do that? I was like, up for like a week. The next time he came into the gym and he walked past

me and I was doing another exercise. He's like, Hey, you want me to show you how to do that? I was like, no, I'm good. But you know, there, it is, there's just something special about, I mean, you can go in there and do a lateral raise and you can do it just like the guy next to you. But the guy next to you might be like really thinking about it. He might be thinking about how all those muscle fibers are firing and he's squeezing them up like it's just it could be so vastly different from one person to the next yeah big time like online too it's it's because you can't you're not physically there with someone right you know so i think a lot of times like i get this all the time is i'll post something up and that's all the volume you do.

Like I get that all the time. So my response is always, and I know in the back of my mind, like, okay, I'm 50. The person asking me is probably half my age. So they're not even, my training age is like older than they've been on planet Earth. So in my mind, I'm like, okay, that might be only three sets. Okay, but I've done this for 35 years. So if you think volume over time from that perspective, I've done a shit ton more volume than that person or the average person.

But everybody kind of just looks in this little bubble. It's a little vacuum. So you have to look at the career. Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we like to look good in the gym and out of the career. Back to the family, how's it going now? We like to look good in the gym and out of the gym. That's why you always see Mark and I

and Andrew is stepping up on the short, short game wearing shorts from Viore and clothes from Viore and honestly, the number one compliment

that I've seen that I've gotten and even Mark's gotten is damn, your butt looks good and that's because well, the clothes we wear

make our booties look delicious. Andrew, how can they get it? Yeah, you guys both have pretty big wagons. You guys can head over to viore.com slash powerproject. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash powerproject to receive 20% off the most amazing apparel that looks so good inside and outside of the gym. It's going to make your ass look fat. And your ass will look fat.

Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. God damn it. That was a good one. That was a good one. It's going to make your ass look fat. This is another thing too. When people think of bodybuilding,

they think that after a training session, you should be feeling a certain way. There are people that are like, I'm bodybuilding, so after a training session, I should be feeling super sore. I should be kind of trashed. But when you think about the consistency of that, you cannot replicate that for weeks and months on end. So when young guys are looking at training, I'm curious to you, how do you think that they should be feeling post-training session if they want to be able to actually gain a good amount of muscle over time and not fuck themselves up? Well, if they take a step back, they need to take a step back and think,

okay, I'm going to be doing this five years, 10 years, 20 years, 35 years. How long have you guys been training? You've been training a while. I mean, you're young. Since I was 13, so like 16, 16 years. Yeah, 30 years or so. I mean, you guys, you're young. Sometimes 13, but so like 16, 16 years. Yeah, 30 years or so. I mean, you guys have probably

had those sessions where it's like, I remember those sessions coming out, doing legs and I can't even drive off because my,

my leg's shaking and I can't get the clutch to pop out, you know? So, I mean, I've learned to, like,

you have to pace it out and if you're not, the thing is, it's recovering too. You have to recover. And I think a lot of times a lot of people miss the boat on that because they want to do more and more and more, but they don't like actually think of recovery as like, should be an equal part of the process. And we look at other sports. This is what frustrates me about bodybuilding is that

we don't look at other sports to improve our bodybuilding. Like look at baseball, like starting baseball pitchers. You don't see a starting baseball pitcher pitch every game. I mean, they throw 90 to 100 miles per hour. They're throwing multiple pitches. Their arm ends up jelly after that. So to expect them to do that with the same velocity and same accuracy the next day, it ain't going to happen.

But as bodybuilders, we want to crush ourself like that starting pitcher and go back to the gym the next day and then want to keep that performance elevating. It's just not going to happen. So that's one thing I've learned back in the old times with training like Minter and Yates was like, yeah, we train freaking hard as shit. And it's probably not ideal to do that all the time, but the thing we always put value on was recovery. So I was training like every other day to maintain performance. So I think sometimes as bodybuilders, we need to think like we're actually an athlete. We need to think about the performance aspect of it.

How can I get more out of myself and become more efficient? Yeah, Menser and Yates, I think, you know, the heavy duty training, they did a lot for the recovery because even though it was intense, the overall volume was brought down, or at least it was supposed to be. Right. But you would just go and hammer, like, one exercise, and you would just completely smash yourself on that one exercise. Yeah. Yeah, I trained like that for about 16, 17 years. Wow. 16, 17 years. And then after that, I met up with my crew, 3D Muscle Journey, and I got more into

the science side of things and learned about, you know, other principles of training. So now it's like I kind of use a plethora of tools, you know, depending, like, for example, if I'm pressed for time, like, okay, today's going to be a high intensity training day, low volume, high intensity, because I only have 40 minutes to train. So I'm going to get as much as I can out of this session with less. Other days I might feel fatigued and tired. Like, okay, I just don't want to go that hard. Let me just add a couple more sets in there

and keep it a little further from failure. And I don't think there's a way where you can actually say, hey, which one's better? Like, acutely, what's better? Two sets of complete failure or four sets, two or three reps in reserve? What's better? Like, there's no way to know. Use both.

Yeah, there's no way to say which one's more optimal. And this is questions I've posed to, like, Eric Helms and all that. And, yeah, no one's going to give a hard answer to it. With the heavy-duty style training, can you explain what that looked like when you were doing some of it? Because I think for people to know about it, I think would be really useful. So the guy that introduced me to it, it was – we're training three days per week, some simple basic exercises, bench, overhead press, bent row, leg press, squat, that type of thing. But it was – we did two sets to

failure. And usually the second set, it would be like failure, then force reps, depending on the exercise, of course, safe exercises. And then after the force reps on the last one, it would be a static hold. Damn. So it'd be like, okay, two force reps on overhead press, you know, get okay up here. And now you're holding it as, and the goal wouldn't be like, two force reps on overhead press you know get okay up here now you're holding it as and the goal wouldn't be like let it down slow your your thought process is keep pushing push up the entire time as the weight's kind of coming down so it would be like that and and that was kind of the gist of it um and then when i started doing it kind of by myself i kind of let go some of that a little bit.

But for the most part, it was just two sets. Because I know mentor was like a lot of it was like one set to just complete failure. I think sometimes you might use two different exercises. Like from what I remember, you might have pre-exhaust on like a leg extension or something like that and then go right into like a squat. Or maybe it was vice versa. Maybe it was squat first and leg extension. But I just remember doing some of those workouts and just a crazy feeling, like feeling like your bones are bleeding or something. It's just hard to describe. But you're like, there's so much pain going on inside this body,

and you can't help but make weird faces and make crazy noises. And you're just like, holy shit. But it did get you through a workout fast. You know, you would just warm up and then, bam, you go right to it. You're at it. I mean, what it taught me, it taught me how to grind. Even though I'll say it's probably not ideal to train in that fashion all the time, but in my early days it taught me how to grind.

It taught me how to become efficient and how to put effort in. So nowadays, like when I'm coaching athletes, you know, their tendency is like, oh, I got to do X amount of sets based off of, you know, X, Y, and Z research. But I'm like, why spend your wheel doing four or five sets when your form's not where it should be, your effort level isn't where it should be. So I'm going to give you two sets, maybe three, and let's improve efficiency. And if you're progressing with that, then great.

We know we don't need to do four or five sets. If you're not progressing with that, okay, then, and if you're not fatigued, okay, now we add volume. Because if you're fatigued, what's the point of adding more volume? You're just going to make yourself even more fatigued. Now you're going to be that baseball pitcher throwing wild pitches all over the place because you're not recovered. What other training concepts are, yeah, like training concepts like that do you think would have been useful when you were in your 20s or early 30s before you started becoming more mature with the way that you train? Because like again, you see a lot of young people training. You're like, you're not going to do that for two decades or three decades or even five years from now. You're going to break yourself. So what other things do

you think young guys and women should be thinking about to have longevity when it comes to training? I think it's the pace. Again, it's just the understanding that it's not, you know, the old saying, it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. And on the natural side of things, brand it's a marathon yeah and on the natural side of things like most of the the high level athletes are in their 30s 40s and even into their 50s so there's definitely a an aspect where you can stay on a high level for a very long time but if you're basically you know shooting your wad for lack of better terms early on you're not going to get to where I'm at, you know, because you're just going to end up being banged up. So it's, I guess what frustrates me a little bit about the longevity thing is like, the question is like, I get a lot of like, what do you do? You foam roll, you stretch, you do all these things. Like those are useful, but it's

more about just understanding the pace, like knowing how to pace your training, knowing how to pace your diet. Like, like I was saying earlier about the off-season, letting my body weight go up, you know. If I didn't do that, I would have been burnt out because the first three, four years of competing, it was back to back to back, hardcore, hardcore, hardcore. And I finally burned out. I'm like, okay, I need to take a step back here. Because my life was in shambles after three competitive seasons, I was everything else go in my life marriage work all that stuff finances so it's like fuck i need to actually put bodybuilding aside and actually focus on real life so that's part of longevity too is the mental aspect the burnout not just physically but also mentally and emotionally you can get burned out

on this stuff that's an interesting side of it that people don't talk about is the yeah what's happening personally you know as well as what's going on in the gym because yes we would love to get the results in the gym but if other shit's kind of falling apart that's not that's not really i guess what we're we're after when we're talking about longevity. We want to be able to spin all the different plates of life simultaneously without having any of them drop, without having any of them break, and also do it kind of fluidly without it being too hectic and not having too many plates to spin.

Yeah. I mean, another thing is enjoyment too. I think with social media, we look at the guys who are left and right. Oh, we got to do it that way. Has to be done that way. I've learned, like, okay, I need to do it my way. I have to basically, you know, go after self-mastery. Because if I do that, I'm going to be able to keep going.

So when it's all said and done, I want to kind of sing that song, you know. I did it my way, you know. So, I mean, that's the thing with social media. You look at like those two pictures, like if you just brought those two pictures up and I try to put context to it when I post up, because you can look at those two pictures and go, oh yeah, I mean, look at the guy in the right, look at the guy on the left. But guy on the right i mean behind the scenes far more mature i'm not just the physique but like just me as a human and like my my life as far as being a husband and and a dad and all that like i kind of did that like the way i was approaching bodybuilding to the left you know that's why that's why i ended up getting divorced was part of it was

bodybuilding, but just the fact that we were high school sweethearts. I mean, it's a long story, but I think a lot of times we don't see behind the curtains. And I try to express that and show people that I'm human, whether things are going really well or not going really well. I think we're all human and we all have our own story and we need to, you know, we want to be relatable to people and not make it seem like, okay, yeah, this guy on the right looking at me, he's freaking Jack. He does things perfectly. That wasn't perfect. The reason that's like that is because of all the years before that, all the success and failures I went through.

So I think that's not talked about enough. When it comes to like, when's the last, was 48 the last time you competed or did you compete? Yeah, that was 48. That's 2019. 2019? Yeah. Now at 50 with like what you're seeing and you said you're getting ready for prep again, do you think that you're going to look better than the physique you had when you were 48?

I don't know. You don't know? We'll see. I mean, I would love to think that. The reason I keep going, like I want to improve. That's the fuel to keep me going. Whether it happens or not, I mean, I'll be okay with it one way or another because I've learned to try to fulfill current potential, current potential. And I think, yeah, you have to be realistic with expectations. So, and I can look at elsewhere.

Like you look at the Marshall Johnson of the world, you know, he was one of the best natural bodybuilders on the planet in his 50s, in his mid 50s. And, you know, I can look at guys like that. Okay, they've done it. So, hey, if they can do it, then I can do it. You know what? Since you just mentioned marshall johnson i think this is a good time to throw out some names of like really good natural bodybuilders um because i think that when people pay attention

to bodybuilding they look at a lot of the npc guys and a lot of these natural guys that look fucking amazing people never see it and because people never see it they think that you have to be on copious amounts of drugs to get to that type of physique um so this is marshall johnson i'll he's how old is he i would say there he's probably 54 55 maybe somewhere in there when i competed against him in 2014, I was 43. He was, I believe 52, 53, 54, somewhere in there.

Yep. And I'm like, I want to, I want to be on stage with him because he's inspiring. And I kind of looked up to him, but at the same time, like I want to beat him. Yeah. I want to beat this guy.

Um, and I did, you know, thankfully. Yeah. Um, but I mean, he's,

he's part of the reason why I'm still doing this at 50. I'm like, he did it, so why can't I do it? Yeah. But, I mean, he's an incredible physique. You know, I think he's, what, 6 foot maybe, 5'11"? Yep. About 170, 175 pounds on stage. Doesn't seem very big.

You look at those numbers, you're like, that's not very big. But bodybuilding is illusions. Mm-hmm. And the guy gets just extremely peeled. Gets disgustingly lean. Who else you got? Yeah, who else? Because we want to pull up quite a few impressive natural bodybuilders, young or old.

So we can talk about them? Yeah, yeah. Just reference them. Maybe people can check them out. People can check them out because, again, I just don't think people know what people can look like with years of fucking training and natural bodybuilding. And the reason why I say that is because I see so many videos from creators on YouTube, like Greg Doucette and a lot of these cats, and they're pulling people's out. They're pulling people's names out. They're like, oh yeah, this person's

way too lean. You can't get this lean without drugs, or you can't gain this amount of science without drugs. And it's fucking young people's minds up. It really is. Cause they're like, well, if I want to do that, I have to have to i have to get on something and no judgment towards people who do use steroids i'm not judging anybody but i think that there is a lack of belief within a lot of young guys because of the shit that a lot of people say can i share a story yes okay so i was my first time going to a natural show and and that was at Cap City in 99. That was the first time competing. And there was a guy backstage.

Me and my brother were competing. We saw him. We're like, and in my mind, I'm like, there's no way this guy is natural. And the reason I was assuming that without even talking to this person or knowing, like, what the drug status, like, that the test was, was insecurity. And my own ego was like protecting it. Like he looks better than me. There's no way I can look like that. So therefore he must be doing something that he shouldn't be based on these rules that

were competing here. Yeah. So it wasn't what that person was doing. It was more about my insecurities and my ego. what that person was doing. It was more about my insecurities and my ego. And then, you know,

fast forward like 10 years later after gaining knowledge and education and going through more experiences, I surpassed that guy by leaps and bounds. So I feel like an ass for even, you know, it's basically calling this guy. I didn't, I didn't tell him in person, Hey,

you're doing something. This is in my mind. I'm calling him out. And it's like, I think that's, you know, it's basically calling this guy. I didn't tell him in person, hey, you're doing something. It's just in my mind I'm calling him out. Yeah. And it's like, I think that's, you know, people just have to have an open mind. And what I should have did was like, hey, my name's Jeff. And hey, how did you get that lean? Or what was your training like?

What was your nutrition like? What did you do to get that way? So instead of like trying to learn, it was almost like walls are up. Yeah. I think that happens a lot online. Oh yeah. Easily.

But you think about too, like different parts of the world, cultures are different and things like that. And where your surroundings, right? Like, cause I've coached athletes where they tell me like, Hey, you know, no one knows about natural bodybuilding at all. It's, it's all the other side. So that's the only information they're getting. So when they see someone like myself or someone like you, they're just like, hey, he must be doing something.

Yeah. Yeah. Brian Whitaker. Throw him up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember seeing him at Worlds in 2015. Is our boy, Alvaro Nunez, still competing? He's getting ready.

Getting ready this year. Yeah, he looks big. He's made some improvements. So they talked about having gaining weight in the offseason. So for me, personally, I think he always kept himself a little too lean in the offseason. And I remember telling him back in the day, you need to let your body weight creep up. And he's like, no, man, we we're gonna got to keep it lean or whatever and and yeah he's had like an extended offseason a little bit heavier not to the point where it's like too fluffy yeah yeah I mean

we're seeing the results of that now this is Brian Whitaker damn so yeah what do you think he competes at? Body weight? I don't know, 175, 180? It's like 160. Really? Yeah, I think he's like 5'8", 5'9", 160. So, I mean, you think of those numbers too, right? The arms look big. It looks like the arms of a 200-pound person. So, I've seen him in person, and when you see him, you're like, does he lift?

You know, because in T-shirts, you know, you just, and I get that too, like when I'm totally in shape, if I'm wearing like a normal, like a little bit baggier T-shirt, you know, I'd look just like athletic. Hey, he's athletic. But you take the shirt off, and you're like, whoa. So a lot of it's illusion. But, yeah, not the biggest guys in the world, but I mean, look at the symmetry, the proportions,

the conditioning, even the posing. Like, okay, it's the most muscular easy pose to hit, but I mean, it's flawless. Like, look at the thumbs. They're perfectly together. Shoulders are perfectly lined up. A lot of times presentation can make a world of difference

and trust me he's emailed me and said hey Jeff what do you think of my posing what do I need to work on so that guy to perfect his craft he has a certain circle he goes to he'll go like Lane Norton me for posing

a couple other people he only asks certain people he doesn't say tell me about how good I am. He wants to know where his flaws are so he can improve. Yeah. So crazy work ethic. If you guys didn't know, like Jeff's like a master at posing when it comes to bodybuilding.

Like it's insane. So there's another thing. What do you recommend when people are just not mobile? Oh, yeah. So it depends on the pose, yeah. So you might have to tweak things individually. Usually lat spreads, like front lat spread or lat spread, some people have a hard time opening up the scap.

So instead of having your hands on your waist, I'm like, hey, let's just do a front relax and just move your hands in front of you so they can't see, and it looks like a lat spread. That's what I kept doing. That's what I had to do. I couldn't get my arms to go through on that. So like on that, for example, if he couldn't get his scap to open up, I would say, okay, let's just hide your hands to make it look like it. Yeah, that's Alberto.

We mentioned a little bit, you know, uh, going to failure. Um, you know, how important do you feel that is? And like, how, like how often would someone do that in a given workout or given week or given month even? I don't think going to failure is like necessary to be honest with you. I think, uh, I think it's good to know where your boundaries are with that. Like, I think you need to learn to actually go there in order to really truly know like, okay, where your intensity level should be. Like if you're never pushing yourself to failure, then how do you know?

Like if you're, cause yeah, I mean, you've seen guys in the gym, you're like, they're spinning their wheels there. They look the same year after year after year, but you're like, dude, you got like six more in the tank. You could keep pushing. So I think it's important to go to failure to learn where your thresholds are at. So you can better gauge like if you're one rep in reserve, you're two or three or four.

But I don't think like, that's a question I've asked like Eric Helms, like, hey, what's the difference between if I were to go to failure or I leave one in the tank? Like there's no definitive answer. But if you leave one in the tank. But what's failure though? Like define failure.

Like your definition could be different than mine, might be different than his. So I think failure can be very subjective. For most of my training, especially like now now i just like when something starts to burn pretty bad i just do a couple more reps and a couple more reps could be like three or it could be like eight you know kind of just depends but i think it's very very rare that i do anything to where it's like just all out like can't move can't do i don't particularly like stuff like that i think maybe just because of maybe how long I've been training and then in my head I'm just

I'm thinking about the after effects like what's the recovery like from this because I do train pretty much every day I do some sort of exercise of some type every day so I don't want to quote unquote leave it all in the gym because the gym isn't the only thing that I do exactly yeah I mean it's contact dependent too on the individual like for myself I don't need to go to failure as much nowadays I mean I'm 50

so the reality is I'm not going to add 5 pounds of muscle anymore at this point you know so I can do less and maintain what I have and I'm getting to that point now. Like I just had an off season. Like, okay, let me see if I actually put some size on.

I don't know if I have or not. It's hard to tell unless I'm extremely lean. But if I had to put all my money on it, I would say I probably haven't. So at this point, I'm starting to come to reality and come to terms like, okay, I don't need to slam myself, you know, every session or maybe every once in a while just to, you know, for ego, hey, let me have a little fun here. But outside of that, I mean, like, what's the point now? And especially with like, like he asked earlier, like, do you hurt?

Yeah, I hurt. So obviously, if it's harder to train, you're going to hurt more. So yeah, I think it's different. Like if you have someone who's new, I think it's important like if you have someone who's new I think it's important to press them a little bit if you're coaching somebody and it's not for bodybuilding and they're just trying to lose some weight um do you try to put time frames or time domains on it because you know in bodybuilding it's like okay this show is this time and we got a 16 week prep or are you just like hey this is a new lifestyle so we can take however long is necessary to kind of get to the destination double-edged sword there you know

because if you if you're too complacent you know oh it's okay you know we got six weeks we still have you know we could do this 10 months from now or whatever it's like then you know it gives people excuses to kind of ease off even more. So I think there's a fine line. I think it's important to set up, you know, some structure timelines. Um,

but there should be some flexibility, you know, built within that. And I think setting expectations up front is important. Like if someone has a certain weight loss goal, yeah, we're trying to get to about here. And if you get there, great. If you don't, okay, we do have, we're trying to get to about here. And if you get

there, great. If you don't, okay, we do have, we could extend it out because there's, like you said, we're not getting on stage, but you got to make sure that, you know, they are following through because that's happened for me, even with contest prep. It's like, well, you know, there's, there's always another show next month, you know, and it's like, let me have three glasses of wine instead of two, you know? So yeah, you have three glasses of wine instead of two you know so yeah you have to you have to definitely make sure that the you're setting up those boundaries there and when people are let's say that like again they're not getting ready for a bodybuilding show but what do you think what mindset should people have when it comes to dieting and trying to lose

body fat because uh you know a lot of people like to say, oh, diets don't work and 95% of diets fail, but it could potentially be because they're not playing the marathon. You know, they're, they're trying to play the sprint. So what's the mindset that you think people should have if they have a lot of weight to lose? Um, how should they, how should they think about it? That's a good question because to be honest, I don't work with too much clientele in that area because I work with a lot of athletes. So mentally they're kind of already, they're there. So it's a lot easier. And personally, like I just, that's where I thrive is with working with athletes. But I think like when you're setting up someone's goal or diet,

Like when you're setting up someone's goal or diet, like the expectations, but also the protocols have to be something where that person can actually adhere to it and sustain it. I think a lot of times the coaches, we set up protocol where they just can't be there right then and there, right? Like you have to be able to set something up where you're going to set them up for a little bit more success. Because anybody that has like some game plan in place and if they're failing a little bit, like the confidence level is going to go down and you're not going to want to keep doing it. So it can be as simple as like, hey, we're not tracking any macros, but hey, let's just not have any soda this week. Something small as that to build confidence. Because it's layers, right? You got to teach people how to do these things.

So I think a lot of times it comes down as a coach. You got to make sure you're setting up protocols where it fits that person. And usually when I work with someone, the first time I get a Zoom call, they're going to last anywhere between an hour. I've had calls that lasted two hours and 45 minutes. Because I'm dissecting their entire lifestyle, like their entire context. Like you're asking me about protein intake and all that. I'm asking questions like, I know science says this, but can you do this? Like, do you digest protein well?

Do you get bloated? You know, all these things I'm taking into consideration. So I'm not going to just look at science and go, okay, I need to hit a gram per pound or whatever. I'm like, well, maybe this person needs half of that because of X, Y, and Z, where I can get the best adherence and best sustainability out of them. And they're actually enjoying what they're doing. Because if they're not enjoying what they're doing, I don't care how perfect protocol is, you're not going to follow it.

You might follow it like for a week or two. Then after that, like, screw Jeff, I'm going to do something else. What are your thoughts on, because I like to make a lot of fun foods in the kitchen, but they'll be extremely high carb, high protein and and extremely low fat, uh, not whole foods. A lot of artificial sweeteners, uh, protein powders, Greek yogurts and stuff like that. So I'm definitely falling into the, like, if it fits your macros trap, um, done that in the past and I'm definitely going to do it again in the future. Cause sometimes I'm going to just be stupid in the kitchen, but you know, what are your thoughts on stuff like that?

Like some of the anabolic diet type stuff where it's just extremely high protein, high carbs, little to no fat, but they're getting in their protein. So it's going to be OK. Like, is there any issue with like macros and micros and that sort of thing? I think you have to be balanced. Right. So I kind of use the general rule of like, okay, 80%, you know, you want to make sure you're eating your micronutrients, get your fiber in there, get your protein.

The other 20%, you want to go have ice cream with your son? Not an apple, ice cream. Go do it, you know, because that's another part of longevity, right? Like could you imagine like eating nothing but high protein diet for like 30 years like maybe you can do it maybe there's someone out there that can do it but i know there's no freaking way i'm gonna be able to do that so i need my moments where i can be a little human and to be honest i don't spend a ton of time like going on social media and looking at like this type diet that type diet like i don't

even get involved in any of those debates i'm like i'm kind of a hey i post up my training this is how i kind of do my thing and maybe someone can learn from it and then i go away because i got other things to do besides you know get into social media debates about like artificial sweeteners yeah you got to be careful with the apples they're trying to kill you get into social media debates about artificial sweeteners. Yeah, you got to be careful with the apples. They're trying to kill you. That's what we learned yesterday. You personally don't care too much about artificial sweeteners,

you know, Crystal Light and Diet Coke and stuff like that. I don't dive into, like, I'm not educated enough to kind of give an opinion science based opinion I can tell you personal experience and I can tell you my dad who's 83 years old he's been drinking diet coke since I've been alive and he's he's 83 and he's still

going and for yourself like you just there's probably artificial sweeteners in some of the protein powders BC BCAAs. Yeah, and I have to have my coffee in the morning. So I'll use Equal there. Diet sodas every once in a while. I'm 50.

I'm still doing it. And I've been drinking Diet Pepsi for years. Yeah. Personally, I just think, we've talked about it many times in this podcast, whatever can help you control your calories, you know, just if it makes it that much more miserable to not have a diet Coke or something like that in your, in your life or Coke zero, whatever it is, then just have it. It's like we, we, we end up kind of putting everything in a good, bad category and we

don't allow any room for anything to be like kind of hovering in the middle. And then also, what about the mental side of things? Like just something just tastes good, you know? Something just, you just enjoy something, you know? And so if you're always sticking to foods that you feel like you kind of have to eat or it gets monotonous after a while, there's got to be ways to kind of switch things up. For you personally, have you messed around with like really low carb or, I mean, you must have like manipulated stuff a lot going into shows and what have you found through

that process for yourself? Like back in the 90s and that era, I remember playing around with like keto for shows. Let me just go super high protein, you know, decent amount of fat and literally like very close to zero carbs. Um, yeah, let's just say my training didn't go too well. Right. And my physique didn't really look all that great. And not to mention, you know, I was grumpy, moody. I was already grumpy and moody as it is dieting, but that was like another layer. So I just didn't find too much positives out of it. Right.

And it was something definitely I wasn't going to sustain after I'm done with competing for a bodybuilding show. Did you have similar effects when you just didn't know what you were doing and you were eating too little? Did it feel similar to being on the keto diet? It felt worse. Felt worse. Because, yeah, I mean the training too. There's in a deficit and no carbs. Because training, like, back then, you know, moderate rep ranges.

You know, we're talking like eight plus. And the higher those reps got, the worse it felt. Like, fuck, I have no gas here. That's exactly what it kind of felt like. How about this? Because, like, I still hear or I still see a lot of individuals who are choosing to do shows naturally. They're still thinking about like you've mentioned it a bit, cutting water,

cutting sodium. Those things are still within the minds of those athletes. And there's a disconnect when it comes to athletes in the NPC that can do these things with success than athletes that aren't taking anything and the reason why they can't. So why is it not the best idea to be trying to cut those things when you're actually trying to get lean and get ready for a show if you're not on anything? Cutting water? Cutting water and cutting sodium and all those things. Muscles made up of what, 70, 75% water? I mean, you start cutting your water back. I mean, you're going to flatten out. You actually could hold more water because the body's like, hey, we're not getting any more. I'm going to hold on to what I got. I've done all that.

And to be honest with you, I've cut water where I thought it made my physique look better. But I'm not sure if it was that or was it more carbs I was taking it. I had no way to kind of discern what effect I was getting from what. Yeah. I can tell you that when Bob Bell introduced me, like, hey, don't cut your water. Don't cut your sodium. Keep that stuff just normal. If anything, elevate your water just a little bit.

I looked a lot fuller and a lot harder. Yep. So that was kind of my personal experience with that. So a lot of times when I'm peaking athletes now, I don't adjust the variables too much. If anything, like ahead of like a week or two, let's figure out where your baselines are at. So let's start tracking those things so we know where it's at.

And that way we know we head into a peak week. Let's keep all those variables the same. And the only thing we're really manipulating is maybe some carb intake. So you have like one thing that's kind of moving, one moving part, which is easier to interpret like what things are actually doing. There's no wild peak week magic going on because a lot of athletes last week. I'll tell you a crazy ass story.

So it was before, in 99, I was getting ready for the Monterey Bay MPC. And the day before the show, I was laying in the sun not drinking water because in my mind I'm like I'm going to lay in the sun dehydrate myself

I'm going to get hard as shit and my ex-wife's like you need to drink water and she was begging me because she's like your nose is sinking in like I was just like starting to look

like Skeletor and I felt terrible I did I like I felt terrible so I drank literally on Friday before the show maybe six ounces the entire day.

And then I didn't drink anything the next morning. I didn't drink anything until after prejudging was over. And she was begging me to drink water and I wouldn't do it. And yeah, like visually I thought I looked good because I ended up winning the class. But in hindsight, like looking at photos back then to now, I'm like, oh, my gosh. I was just flat as a pancake. Yeah. Yeah.

And I mean, I've seen, I had an athlete at the MPC Contra Costa collapse right next to me on stage. Because he was, you know, doing diureturetics you know before he was dehydrated and just we're we're just standing there and all of a sudden here just big crash and he's face planted on the floor that was the scariest thing i was like fuck yeah i was like okay yeah let's not cut water no more what about the ladies we sometimes hear that women uh after a show and i mean it happens to men too, but it seems to be a little bit more of an issue with some of the female competitors. They get done with a show, they did pretty well, and they just have this crazy rebound.

How can people avoid the rebound and what's going on with some of that, you think? Oh, the rebound as far as weight gain? Yeah. Oh, the rebound as far as like weight gain? Yeah. It's hard to say because you have to look at the individual and the approach leading up to the show. Like if it's very invasive, like you're losing weight rapidly, like quickly, like we talked about earlier,

or they've been limited on certain foods, like, hey, you can only eat X food sources and that's it so it's like putting handcuffs on you know and then once the show's over with and that hyper focus goal is gone handcuffs come off like oh shit there's ihop there's burger king there's the pizza and you know when you're that lean your body just wants to get fat again so So it's like a, that's like a storm brewing, you know? And it's like, here's the storm, it hits. So leading up to it, yeah, you have to like, again, having that, that timeline, pacing it out, like making sure you're conservative, half to 1% of your body weight per week. That's what you want to lose. Make sure you're inclusive with your food sources.

Don't be cutting like sodium and all that stuff. Because again, you want to, in a sense, your off season should almost look like what contest prep looks like as far as the approach and how you do things. So that way you're not doing these big up and down swings. So you want to keep that baseline as steady as possible. Of course, you know, once the show's over, you're going to be hungry. You're going to want to eat those things. But my experience and what other bodybuilders have experienced by having that type of approach

is it's like, yeah, you know what? I don't need that double cheeseburger because I just had a low fat cheeseburger last week and I made it fit. So, you know, that type of thing. Do you kind of warn some people like when they are kind of getting into bodybuilding or when they finish their first show, like, hey man, I know you're going to be super hungry. Enjoy yourself the next couple of days. But let's do you kind of give them a base like, hey, let's try to keep the body weight around here over the next couple of weeks. So before the show's over, it can be depending on the athlete. It might be two weeks ahead of time.

Might be two months. But first meetup, I'm always like, okay, we're going to have some type of recovery set up for post-show because that's where we tend to get in the hot water the most is after the show. And Steve was looking at me like, yeah, man, I know what you're talking about. So, yeah. And the last thing I want to do as a coach too before the show is like throw too much of that on them because they're so focused on the show and everything else so there's a kind of a fine line but there I definitely have a structure set up and it's going to look different for for different people

because everybody's lifestyles and things are different but usually it's like okay the next the next day yeah just eat like a normal person you know go go eat your IHOP go eat your Burger King or whatever get it out of your system. But Monday, hey, here's some parameters that we want to stick with. And this is kind of okay. This is where we want our body weight four weeks later, eight weeks later, what have you. So there's still some type of structure in place,

but obviously it's not going to be as rigid as a contest prep. Dog, it can get bad. There was a trainer I used to work with back in the day we worked out we worked in the same gym and he'd do shows every year but his track record was the same every year post show he had one bad year where he gained 45 pounds in three days his feet were bloated his hands were bloated his face was bloated like the post show rebound for a lot of people can be real and then the the tough thing is like it seems as though if you gain the weight back really fast this is totally anecdotal but i've just seen it happen quite a few times that it's usually much harder for those people to lose

especially if they try to lose it too soon because a lot of those people what happens is they'll gain that weight back fast and they're like okay i gotta try to drop some of, but they can't because their metabolism hasn't caught up to the amount of weight that they've gained. Well, that just mentally you're tapped out, man. If you just spent like the last six months of your life dieting, you don't want to jump back into that. So that's when you get these little, little cycles. Yeah. So that's why it's important, you know, to educate people ahead of time before the show's over to let them know what they can expect. But you've got to pay attention to that as a coach. And I think a lot of times as coaches, we're like, oh, show's over.

Just forget about that person. But that's where you have to really kind of keep a good eye on them. But we need to gain weight, though. Yes. I mean, if you're talking like a male natural biblia like Brian Whitaker lean, like you can't stay lean like that. That's not the healthiest thing to do. You got to gain weight. So some people are fearful of gaining weight because they work so hard.

They look amazing. They don't want to let that go. But the reality is, is you have to let that go. And at that point, the goal is I got to do another show two years from now, three years from now. Well, you got to get bigger and whatnot. Well, you need food to do that. So you got to learn another show two years from now, three years from now. Well, you got to get bigger and whatnot. Well, you need food to do that. So you got to learn to eat again.

So there's, you don't want to, because the opposite could happen. There's people that try to stay too lean, like reverse dieting. Like, okay, I'm going to add 10, 15 grams of carbs per week. So, all right, all right, bro. Here's one rice cake. That's all you get today. Like, you really think people are going to adhere to that? No.

No. So that's why we coined the recovery diet. We need to get yourself, your body fat levels back to a normal state so you're more human, you're functional again, and you can, in a sense, be a little bit happier at that point. Yeah. About how much weight do you usually gain? I know you mentioned sometimes you go up

as much as 50. No, 50 is a little steep. I'd say most of the time I'm anywhere between 30 and 35. That's pretty comfortable. Yeah, it's not too bad. I mean, I think,

I don't know what my body fat percentage is. I would put a number on it. It's probably like anywhere between 18 and 22 in the off seasons. For people that want to compete, actually, you mentioned

something pretty interesting. You mentioned getting ready for a show two to three years from now, where a lot of times you see people in NPC and in natural federations trying to compete every single year. Do you think it's actually possible to make good, decent progress

if you are competing every single year? As a natural? Yeah yeah i think you can make progress but it's not there's more forms of progress outside of just putting muscle on if your goal is to put a substantial amount of muscle on like trying to do it year after year compete it's not going to happen because it takes anywhere between one to six months to recover and then you factor in okay now I have like maybe four or five months to try to put some size on. And then you got to diet again.

You got to start back to diet. So you're not going to see a whole lot of size gains, like competing every single year. But I mean, you know, someone like myself can probably compete every year. Not that I would want to, because it's not the healthiest thing to do in the world. But there's other forms of progress, meaning like the approach, like, you know, okay, you can get better at dieting. You can, you can be a better person to your family while you're dieting, improve those skills. You can improve your posing. You could get more conditioned. So you can visually make

yourself look like you've made a solid improvements. But I don't recommend that. I don't recommend competing every single year. A lot of people get caught in that cycle in bodybuilding and bikini and all that because they're trying to get back to that physique all the time. So they're perpetually competing and they can never let go of that body

or dieting or whatever. That's another topic of discussion, right? If you're using the sport to try to fulfill like some type of unhappiness like chances are it's probably not going to happen because when you're that lean i don't care what you look like you don't feel good like yeah i look great in those pictures but i'm not going to walk around like that year round yeah i'd rather walk around 20% body fat and have a glass of wine with my wife and enjoy life.

Andrew, got anything else over there, buddy? No. Well, I mean, I guess like for you, like, well, for me, an average person, you know, I, I would like to walk around closer to the 10% than I would the 20%. Um, I guess like what, what advice do you have for someone like me like i'm not training nowhere near as hard as i should be right now i'm trying to like recoup my back and stuff my diet's pretty much always in check i'm never going too far you know i'm i guess i'm in a surplus maybe maybe a maintenance right now um but for me like if i want to see have visual abs year round what should I be focusing on? Should it be the diet? Should it be the training?

My sleep's really good right now. I don't know. I feel like I haven't. Again, I have to check myself because I'm looking for progress even though I'm not working for it right now. I know that. But I just feel like my progress hasn't really changed too much over the past, say two years. What do you think I'm missing on right now? When you say progress, what do you define progress? I guess, yeah, thank you for asking that. My body fat percentage,

it's usually always going to be somewhere around 18 to 22% regardless of what I'm eating, be somewhere around 18 to 22 percent regardless of what i'm eating unless i do go on strict cut but then i get kind of stringy um i don't really i don't i don't know in my opinion i think like i still need to gain a little bit more size and i think and mark please jump in wherever you feel necessary because these two guys have a better grasp on my body than I do most of the time. So what I hear is you got low back issues. Yeah. You want to be leaner. Right. And you want to be bigger. Yeah. So you put those things in priority. It's like, okay, getting healthy is probably the main priority. So you probably don't want to be in a deficit while you're trying to get back to full health. Because obviously it's harder to do that when you're in deficit. Once you get that cured, then my thought is, well, if you diet after that point, like you're healthy, you get leaner, you're probably going to say, well, I need more muscle.

And then you're going to have to go the other way anyways. So it's like once you work on the foundation, getting a little more muscle, then diet down that would be my thought that makes sense on the on the two minute conversation i know right if you were if you're like a client like we'll be on a call for like hour and a half two hours like just dissecting everything but yeah i just had to get it out there because i was it was in the back of my head that would be my thought fired off i have a question too, man. Looking at your training over the years, I mean, you've trained, but how long do you think you've been consistently doing one type of,

not even one type of training, but like a program that was progressive? How long have you stuck with that consistently? I mean, yeah, it hasn't been that long. No, I couldn't even say a year, you know, because I've always, you know, whether it's powerlifting or I'll do like a bodybuilding thing with Mark or like with biomechanics, like it's, yeah, it's been altered. It's, I mean, I would say I've been consistent, but not on the same progressive type of program. So if the goal is to put some more muscle on, like you haven't been consistent with hypertrophy type training? In a fed state, like crossing all your T's, dotting your I's, like making sure you're eating enough to support the training,

make sure protein is there, sleep's on point. Actually, like he was kind of saying like yeah across the board no not not consistent because you can change the way you look through weight training even if your body fat percentage stays the same let's say in the next year or two and you just focus on being progressive you're going to change the way you look like even though you're the same level of leanness you'll look probably leaner because you're holding more muscle yeah and the the question was spurred up because of this post right here where i think you're saying you're around the same body fat percentage throughout each picture pretty much yeah it's pretty close to the same body fat percentages across all three maybe you know two three maybe percent hair but i mean it's pretty similar i don't have

i don't have any pre you know hair pictures anyways i've been bald for a long time those are great haircuts by the way right there oh yeah look at that that's so so the yeah that was like because i had a flat or a mullet in high school, man, because that was a thing back then. Yeah. And I would hair blow it and all that. And then it was like I graduated high school and I was like letting go, like changing styles. So I'm like, let me do this flat top. But I didn't want to let go of the mullet so you still kind of see it in the back there. A little rat tail. Yeah.

And then to the right, it's like I don't have any hair, so let's just wear beanie and cover it up. Yeah. Perpetual hats. Yeah beanie and cover it up. Yeah, perpetual hats. Yeah. That's how we rock. Yeah, and then did you grow up in NorCal area? Yeah,

Bay Area. Yeah, okay, cool. Oh, yeah, awesome. Yeah,

that answers me, which is, I just need somebody to tell me, like, be more consistent. Andrew, want to take us out of here,

buddy? All right, thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you guys like today's video and drop us a comment down below on anything you found interesting.

Let us know your natty status. I want to see your guys' natty cards. Make sure you guys subscribe to the YouTube channel and follow the podcast at MBPowerProject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ and Seema. Where are you at?

The Discord is also popping, and we're going to be killing it on Reddit. And to answer this, guys, do you guys think Jeff is natty or not? I'm at SeemaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube. SeemaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. Jeff, where can we find you and where can we find

3DMJ? 3DMuscleJourney.com and 3DMJGodfather on Instagram. That slingshot thingy that you drove amazing i love it man midlife you guys like it you guys got i just gotta cruise around go ahead and see my dog it was exciting as hell yeah yeah like once he sped up he just put his foot on the gas i couldn't i just had to laugh because since you're so close to the ground it feels wild yeah no i i haven't felt that like pushed back in my seat i don't know over 10 years

have you been in mark's tesla because that kind of does that too when it no absolutely yeah i well so i've driven mark's car so maybe that's part of why i didn't feel that but i also didn't get to i didn't you know in florida on it but i've wanted one of those slingshots since the first day i saw one you know i've been in motorsports for a couple years i haven't although i've been away from it for even longer now but like dude like i i had you know a pretty beefy engine in my little 240 i had the the jdm swap so it had a turbo so that was the last time that i had gotten in anything where i was like yuck and it just throws you way back in your seat feeling that was fucking awesome super inspiring so I really appreciate that little joy ride.

You're welcome, man. It's not natty. I'll tell you that. Yeah, no, that shit was dope. Yeah, I can't wait to get my own or steal yours or something. Hide the keys.

There you go. You got it for your 50th birthday? I did. That was my midlife crisis right there. Perfect. Awesome, man. Good call.

It's a beautiful looking car. It is. Strength is never weak. This week is never strength. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Catch you guys later.