Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1507: Everything You Need to Know About Steroids With John Romano

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

In this episode Sal speaks with bodybuilding journalist and steroid expert, John Romano about steroids. The interview is followed up by a discussion with Sal, Adam and Justin. How did he get into the supplement space? (2:35) When did athletes start experimenting with steroids? (4:50) The popularity in the United States. (7:27) What is the difference between testosterone and other anabolic steroids? (9:29) The pros/cons of androgenic and anabolic steroids. (11:25) What is the difference in feel? (13:31) Why he believes most steroid stacks should start with testosterone. (15:23) Why you must determine your goals and realistic expectations first. (18:25) The starter stack for a young male in his late 20s to increase performance. (20:00) How to determine your dose duration? (25:00) Once off a cycle, how does one get back to baseline? (26:44) Should women stay clear of anabolic steroids? (28:33) What is clenbuterol and what is it used for? (32:40) What is albuterol? (33:48) How growth hormone stimulates other things to happen. (34:44) What are Selective Androgen Receptor Modulators (SARMs), why am I able to buy them on the internet, and what do they do? (38:57) How did athletes beat drug tests back in the day? (46:13) Is there a genetic component to how you respond to these drugs? (52:25) Why recovery and nutrition are the keys to preserving muscle, NOT drugs. (53:51) Why he believes there are only two genders and addressing the controversy surrounding transgender athletes. (55:21) Are testosterone cycles becoming more acceptable and mainstream? (1:04:00) How has the response been to his podcast? (1:07:25) A Mind Pump follow-up conversation on the comments made by John. (1:11:39) Related Links/Products Mentioned March Promotion: Get in Shape for Summer – Promo code: “SPRINGBREAK” at checkout ‎Fitness Fame & Fortune on Apple Podcasts Dragon Slayer Media - YouTube Mind Pump #922: John Romano Death of Tom Simpson - Wikipedia Effects of androgenic-anabolic steroids in athletes Anadrol - steroid.com Clenbuterol: Side Effects, Uses, for Weight Loss, and More Albuterol | Side Effects, Dosage, Uses and More Human growth hormone (HGH): Does it slow aging? - Mayo Clinic Growth hormone, athletic performance, and aging SARMs: Everything You Need to Know - Men's Health Mind Pump#895: Do Transgender Athletes Have An Unfair Advantage? Phys Ed: Will Olympic Athletes Dope if They Know It Might Kill Them? Icarus | Netflix Official Site Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources People Mentioned Jay Cutler (@jaycutler)  Instagram Lance Armstrong (@lancearmstrong)  Instagram Barry L Bonds (@blbonds25)  Instagram

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salta Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You are listening to the world's number one fitness health and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Okay, today we have a controversial episode for you. I interviewed my good friend, John Romano. He is an icon in the bodybuilding world of sky.

He's been around for a long time. He's written articles and bodybuilding magazines and he's talked about hormones and steroids and fat burners and the crazy side of bodybuilding and fat loss and muscle building for decades. I actually grew up reading this guy's articles. And one thing I love about John is he's blunt. He'll just say what he feels.

There is no filter and you'll hear that in this episode. This episode is not for the faint of heart. He goes into depth about a lot of stuff that can trigger a lot of people. So there's your trigger warning. So if you get upset, don't say I didn't warn you. But in this episode, we talk mostly about everything you need to know about anabolic steroids

and that black market stuff that can cause people to build muscle and burn body fat. Now, John currently hosts a podcast, really good podcast called Fitness, Fame, and Fortune. So if you like John, if you love that no holds barred style, go check out his podcast. I know you won't be disappointed again. This guy brings it every single time. Now this podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, Viori. They make the best at the leisureware stuff you'll find anywhere. We love their clothing, very comfortable, great to work out and great to lounge around in,

great to hang out in, very, very awesome, great looking stuff. Go check them out and use the Mind Pump discount for 20% off. Go to vioriclothing.com that's v-u-o-r-i, clothing.com forward slash Mind Pump. And you'll get an automatic 20% off. By the way, their spring collection is in right now. So they got a lot of cool stuff there.

Also, one more thing, we are running a promotion on two workout programs and a bundle. The first workout program is Maps Hit, that's high intensity interval training type program. And then we have Maps Split, which is a body builder type workout program. And then the bundle is called the Bikini Bundle, which combines multiple workout programs.

All three of those are 50% off. So if you want to check them out, learn more information or just sign up because you trust me. Go to maps, fitnessproducts.com and then use the code Spring Break. We had you on Mind Pump a while ago. I think this is before it's like an episode 900 something. So since then we've done I don't't know, 600 episodes or so. And this is always weird because I grew up reading all your stuff. You were, when I was reading everything I could about building muscle, burning body fat, body building, and especially when I was reading about all the stuff that you're not supposed to talk about or whatever.

You were the guy, you were the guy. So it's really cool to be able to talk to you like this and have you on my show. So it's kind of surreal. But we do have a larger audience since the last time I had you on. Probably a lot of new listeners. I'd love for you to give a little bit of background to start. You are a, what

I consider a guru in bodybuilding, but in particular, you're known for knowing all the information about performance enhancing drugs, steroids, how athletes use them, the good, the bad and the ugly. So how did you learn all this? How did you get into this space? I wouldn't say have all the information, but I have enough. Let's put it that way. How did I get into it?

I was, I happened to be at the right place at the right time. I happened to be in prison with a guy named Dan Duchain and it all kind of started from there. So, you know, that was 1980, 7, 8, 9, something around there. And, you know, I just got interested in the problem solving aspect of performance enhancement. And he was the original guru, and pretty much discovered, I would say, 90% or more of what bodybuilders

and strength athletes, even track athletes, and to some degree, Olympic athletes, use to this day to enhance their performance. So let's talk about that a little bit. It's pretty well known that athletes at high levels use performance enhancing drugs, which can include everything from testosterone, steroids, growth hormones, and then there's a lot more than that as well. When did athletes really start experimenting with these substances?

Probably in the 1930s, I think the Olympic athletes were availed to what the Western European, I mean the Eastern European block nations were doing. And they were, you know, typically, I don't think he can fit fair to call it cheating at the time, because really, you know, I guess, you know, there's been sort of a set of rules that limit your ability to enhance performance. And since the beginning of time, the memorial that those rules have been promulgated, there has been a faction of athletes and coaches hellbent on beating them. So it just poses interesting propositions.

And as you go along with you know trying to to beat drug tests, cheat to whatever you know the technology just increases and it gets better and better. Yeah I recall the was it the East German female swim team was I think that was probably when people started to really pay attention. They all come out of the locker room looking like me. They blew everybody out of the water, essentially. Was that when people started to really pay attention, like what's going on?

It was the East German swimmers. You know, they had a pretty noticeable masculineizing effect to them, to be kind. You know, the Russians, the Bulgarians, they were all, they were all, you know, doing it. And with women, with men, it just didn't matter. It was there, their mindset was win. However you do that, you just win. So it didn't matter.

You see, whether women were given up their femininity, it didn't matter if men were having a heart attack, none of that mattered to Eastern countries. What matter is gold medals, winning prestige, you know, the bragging rights of winning. When would you say it started to get more popular in America with our professional athletes? I would assume the probably started in the Olympics and then you'd start seeing it maybe in football, I would assume.

Is that where you'd say the first kind of widespread use of anabolic started happening? Well, there was, there were several disciplines sort of vying at the same time. There was cycling, there was Olympic lifting, there was bodybuilding, and there was track and field. And all of those disciplines were utilizing their own brands of performance enhancement that sort of all culminated into them discovering that, wow, hormones are the way to go.

So, football players were taken to the end of ball, cyclists were experimenting with EPO and other stimulants. And in fact, there's a spot on the tour de France route that commemorates the spot where the famous cyclist, I forgot his name, French guy, died during the course of the race of emphetamine overdose. So track and field that we're using emphetamines, testosterone, drugs like wind straw that were supposed to keep you lean and tighten fast and whatever. I think Ben Johnson failed his drug test first,

not as a law. So, there was kind of all going at the same time, then you had some notables pop out. You had, you had, you know, in the late 80s, you had, you know, you had Lyle Alzato, and you had Ben Johnson, and you had football players, you know, parent groups, worrying about their football player sons taking Diana ball. So it was kind of like a cauldron all brewing at the same time. I don't think he can actually pinpoint it to one specific element.

Yeah, so you mentioned a few different steroids. You said, you know, windstroll, and then you mentioned testosterone. What's the difference between testosterone and the other anabolic steroid? Now testosterone is considered a steroid, hormone steroid refers to just the chemical structure. I mean, technically cholesterol is a steroid, hormone steroid refers to just the chemical structure.

I mean, technically cholesterol is a steroid. But what's the difference between testosterone and other steroids? Why make other steroids? I think the first thing you gotta do is understand the difference between androgens, what we call androgens, and what we call anabolic.

So what's termed an androgen is typically, obviously, something of a high androgenic value with testosterone being the baseline. So drugs that were more androgenic than testosterone but less anabolic were termed androgens, and drugs that were more anabolic and less androgenic were termed steroids. The difference being, for most, not all, most steroids, steroids are a mountain, a mountain, a structural change on the molecular level to testosterone. So you start with testosterone, you augment the structural formation of the molecule and you have a new drug.

And a drug that could be either more anabolic and less angiogenic than testosterone or less angiogenic or more angiogenic and less Annabolic, depending on what you're looking for, you know, strength athlete, you know, power lifters, they want more Androgen, straight speed and strength athlete, straight speed and endurance athletes want less bulk, more

density, you know, higher endurance threshold. So it just matters what, you know, sport you're pursuing is going to dictate what cycle of drugs you're gonna use. Okay, so what are the main differences then between anabolic and angrigenic? And for my knowledge, anabolic is building muscle, right?

Pro, I guess, protein synthesis. Androgenic is everything that turns you into a man. My voice lowering, growing facial hair, that kind of stuff. Am I, am I hitting them on the head? And if that's the case, why would you want one over the other? What are the benefits of an Androgenic steroid versus one that's more anabolic? The more Androgenic the drug is, the more Androgenic effect you're going to have, and which includes the secondary sexual characteristics of a male, the deep voice,

the hair, the lower body fat, all the increased muscle mass, all of those things that differentiate men from women. The problem with Androgens is that they come with significant side effects, most of which are undesirable for bodybuilding and, you know, other drugs too, and women. So you want to mitigate the bad side effects, which would be acne, wild hair growth, aggression, water weight gain, you know, all kinds of, you know, things of that nature. Whereas anabolic tend to have less of the androgenic effect and are just typically more anabolic. They're not as anabolic as the androgen, but they are nevertheless anabolic with less side

effects. So what typically you would do is you would pick an Androgen, typically testosterone, and you'd stack a steroid or two on top of it. So you have the base Androgenic effect, which you want, but you also mitigate the undesirable effects by adding the steroid. So you're getting a greater antibiotic effect at some total of the mixture.

It's gonna give you a greater antibiotic effect and a net lower androgenic side effect, which is less to undesirable side effects. Now, being somebody who's experimented with them yourself and then having worked with so many athletes, what does it feel like to be on a highly anabolic low androgenic steroid versus one that's very androgenic in low anabolic. What is the difference in feel? It's psychological is the feel because a high androgen dose, you heard the term

royd rage, you know, that's, there's a, and it also depends on how susceptible you are to it. I know guys that can take a gram and a half of tests a week and there's docile as puppies. I know guys who can take a walk by a drug store that sells testosterone and they're dragging people out of their cars and beating them up. So it just depends on what your propensity towards unbridled aggression is. If you are susceptible to aggression testosterone is definitely going to bring it out of you. So that is probably the biggest feel. And if you can channel that aggression in the gym, you will find yourself putting up some

pretty impressive personal records. As far as anabolic score, what that feels like, the feel of that is more, you look in the mirror and you just see yourself getting denser and harder and vainier and leaner and it's just kind of like a self-progressing kind of thing that you see yourself improving so you work harder and that's the kind of psychological aspect of that. They're very different.

Okay. So that makes sense. I could see how some people would like the feel of an Androgen, a strong Androgen, because that aggressive feeling. I mean, I like that when I work out. Um, and then the anabolic, of course, the aesthetics, uh, you know, that go along with it. What are some of your favorite steroids that are highly androgenic? Would it just be testosterone?

Is that your favorite on that list? Well, yeah, testosterone is by far the best, most useful baseline drug to consider when you're talking about using performance enhancing drugs. Mainly because it's the testosterone in the bottle is no different structurally from the testosterone your body produces. So, you know, the source of it's different,

but the chemical is the same. So, your body is used to dealing with that, you add more of it, it's just your body is used to dealing with it versus, you know, other things on top of that that are completely foreign to your body is used to dealing with it versus other things on top of that that are completely foreign to your body. So I always would suggest that the baseline component to a stack is testosterone. And you go up on top of that depending on what you want.

So what's your goal? Your goal is going to determine what else you're going to do. That's not to say that all steroid stacks start with testosterone. They don't. There's completely legitimate what we call aesthetic stacks that have the things like equipoic and Deca. That's for a very mild non-problematic. You can do low dose, get a lot of gain out of it,

but you're not gonna be J Cutler. So that leads us into a whole other aspect of misconceptions is that the giant bodybuilder, if you do his drugs, you're going to look like him. And that's completely not the case. Although a lot of people consider that formula when they're deciding what they want to do, and it's just nuts. So, you know, obviously being in the space as long as I have, I've heard and done my own reading on certain compounds.

I remember people referring to a sterile-like anodrol as guerrilla steroids. Like, you take this and you just gain a pound a day or whatever. I mean, is that true? And if it is, how's it working? Yeah. And it draws a great drug, you know, it has its purpose. It can also be a terrible drug. It just depends on how you use it for how long you use it, how old you are when you use it.

They all play a role in what you're going to get out of it. It's just, I'm sorry, I lost your... Yeah, the question is, I remember hearing about it as being this one you take and you just get away. Oh yeah, like crazy. Yeah, well, I mean, if you do, you got to differentiate what the way it is. I mean, it's mostly water. It's not going to be muscle.

You're not going to get a pound of muscle a day taking taking a drug, you're not, I don't care what anybody tells you or what you read on the internet, it's not going to happen. So water is probably the predominant factor in anod raw weight gainer. Okay. Now, when people, I heard you mentioning, you know, taking a gram and a half or you're mentioning numbers or whatever, what would be like a typical starter stack for somebody? Let's say it's a guy, he wants to gain muscle, isn't trying to go crazy, but wants to see, you know, certain amount of results from doing this.

What do people starting with? They're starting with the wrong impression is what they're starting with. And I think you have to address that first because if you made a pie chart out of everything that you're going to do to enhance performance and you're going to slice that pie up into percentage portions of what plays the biggest role in anabolism and performance enhancement, you'll find that this pie cut for drugs is probably 15 or 20% of the pie. It's not that big. The far majority of that pie is going to be divided up into training and diet. And if your diet and your training are dialed in, then you have to determine,

you have to really be realistic and honest about that. Then you have to determine, what am I doing? What sport am I doing? Do I want to get huge and ripped? Do I want to get huge and strong? Do I want to be small and fast? What's the goal? And then you can start determining what you want to do, once you determine number one, what your realistic expectation is for the drugs themselves and two, what your ultimate goal is. Okay, what would you say would be for the average guy?

I want to gain some muscle I've never done, anabolic before, I've been working out for a while, my diet's pretty good. Where do they usually start? What do the doses look like? How old are you? Okay, somebody in their 20s or 30s I would say. Late 20s?

Yeah, let's do that. That'd probably be more responsible. By the way, I do want to say, I'm not recommending, you do this kind of stuff, but I think that this information is important because you go online and read what some people say in forums and I guarantee people are getting information that's harming their health.

So that's why I wanted to talk to you. Bro, science is best. Yeah, there's a lot of misinformation out there. And I don't know where it comes from. I don't know how it gets construed. I think part of the problem is that gurus and coaches like to really needlessly complicate the matter so that they can look more astute and smart and have all the answers, but it's a bunch of bullshit. way, it is irresponsible to suggest or condone the use of steroids in adolescent people.

I mean, men and women. So if you're in your early 20, I don't think there's a, there's a exact age pinpoint where you can say 22. And then after 22 is good and below 22 is bad. But it's in that neighborhood. So you have to worry about number one, I would worry about bonapyfysis being solid so that you're not limiting growth by messing with your growth plates. I would also want to make sure that you're in good health and all that. And if you have all no family history of heart stuff, no weird blood work, all the lights are green, you're of age. Okay.

So you've been training, you're diet's good, and you want to start, you want to gain some muscle mass. I would first get a blood, get your blood work done, find out where your hormone levels are at, specifically testosterone, free testosterone, and total testosterone, and your TE ratio. And see what you got to work with. If you're really low testosterone, then you're definitely a candidate for adding testosterone. Your natural test level is pretty high, and you don't want to go overboard and go crazy.

You might want to just consider, like I, like I called before the aesthetic steroids stack, or it would just be one or two different steroids to get you out, to get you're a little bit, you know, advanced, working out and recovery response. If you want to take it to next level up, I would definitely consider, you know, testosterone as a baseline. If you're a 200, let's say you're a 200 pound guy and you want to gain a few pounds of muscle. I would start at probably a thousand milligrams a week of testosterone with three to 500 milligrams of a steroid on top of that and see how it goes. See what happens. Okay.

Wow. That sounds like a pretty big. Is that a pretty high number or is that what you would consider like? Look, if you're going to get into it, this is where you're going to see some of the big benefits. Well, that's a loaded question. We're dealing with a younger person. So as you're older, and I don't have the actual medical studies to support this, I've just

been speaking from personal experience that the older you are, the less you need. Oh, I see. So a younger guy, probably because his system is used to dealing with a high hormone load that you would need a higher hormone addition to surpass what your body is going to lose by shutting down your own testosterone production. So you have to judge, if you're already, whatever you take, whatever test you take, you're going to lower your, or eliminate your own testosterone production. So you have to subtract what your body would be producing from the total equation to determine

how much you're going to add, because you have to make up for that, that, that test, your body's not going to produce anymore. So while it sounds like a lot, it really isn't, because you're compensating for what your body's going to stop producing, and then the added steroid on top, like, yeah, I mean, you got to look at it this way. If you're going to do it, you might as well do it. Don't just do it and do it a little bit. It's like being a little pregnant. You got to either, you either are or you aren't. So, if you're going to go for it, go for it. Don't just stick your toe in the water and leave it there.

I mean, you got I mean, it's a big boy decision and you got to be prepared to to deal with it. And if you're going to deal with it, then don't do it half fast. Go for it. Hmm. How long does that normally last cycle like that? Are they 8, 12, 16 weeks? What does it look like? Back in the day, guys would do 8 weeks was the magic number. If you went 10 or 12 weeks, you were a renegade. This was only pre-contest. We've definitely come a long way with respect to that. Guys take in 5,000 milligrams a week and knock on one for their entire career. And you know, that's a huge extreme.

So I have found that your dostoration is tied to two things. One is your blood work and two is your overall physical health. So if you're taking whatever dose you're taking and you're monitoring your blood work every 10 weeks or so and your estrogen's not getting out of whack, your prolactin's not getting out of whack, your estridial is not out of whack and you're pretty much do, you know, your LDL is good, all the other markers of health are fine, your liver enzymes are not too far out of whack. Everything that's

looked, everything that looks good, then you just, you can keep going and worry about bringing your own test, your own test production back, you know, when you're ready to get off if you want to have kids or whatever. But the latest, the latest vogue is to just stay on and deal with the consequences later. So with that in mind, you can stay on a cycle like that for pretty much as long as you want, as long as you're monitoring your health markers and are willing to deal with the aftermath. So it's up to you.

Now when you come off, I would assume your natural testosterone would be in the floor. What are some of the ways that you could kick that, kickstart that back into gear? Or is it just a waiting game? It could be both. I mean, I know you're right.

Your natural test levels are gonna be in the basement when you stop. I've seen them in double digits. I mean, it's really, really low. So, you've got two choices. You can weight it out and your body will definitely respond and kick your own production back into full gear in time. Or, if your blood work warrants it, I would look at using, you know, some form of post-cycle therapy. And typically, that would be a mixture of HCG,

human chronic, good-out of tropin, and cloning. And that's probably a 30-day cycle. You're going to do HCG for 15 days. And I'll just give it to you. 2000, I use a day for 15 days plus about 50 migs of clomin a day for 30 days. And that gets things moving faster. That should raise the dead, yes. Now, when you're done with all that, you do the HCG, you do the Clomid, do you then,

okay, so that's gonna boost you. Clomid by, I mean, HCG by itself will do that. And then you go off, do you then stay that way or does it go down again and then come back up? Well, that cycle, that course of PCT should bring you back to your natural, you know, upper range. And it should just stay there

and let's tell you, tell you mess with it again by doing more drugs. Okay, now we're talking about a guy right now. What about women? Women nowadays are using antibiotics way more than they ever did before. What are women using? And you know, maybe even before we say that,

do you think it's a bad idea for women to even touch anabolic? I mean, I know if a woman decides she wants to transition to a male, they put her on essentially the same stuff she would take if she were trying to improve her performance. So let's start there. Should women stay clear? And then the ones that do use it, what are they using?

Because I would assume they're not even getting anywhere near what you would say a guy would take. You'd be surprised. Wow. Well, it's a huge question. It depends. It depends on a lot of things. Number one, it depends on the girl. What does she want to do? And what is she willing to accept in order to do that? Because side-effect wise, the side-effects of women is going to experience taking male hormones is radically different than the side-effects a male is going to take, taking male hormones. So right there is your big question, is what is she willing to accept? So if she's willing to accept all of it,

then there's one course. If she's willing to accept only some of it, then there's another course. If she's willing to accept none of it, there's still something you can do, but not as much. So what does that look like then? For someone, let's say somebody's like, I don't want too many crazy.

I don't want to get a beard and I don't want an Adam's apple. I want something from it. What are they typically doing? But they don't want all the side effects. Well, what does she want to do? Does she want to do CrossFit? Does she want to do bikini? Does she want to do bodybuilding?

Does she want to be a swimmer? What does she want to do? Let's say, let's say, that's a good question. I'm glad you're saying this. This is good because I think a lot of people don't realize that there's a difference based on what the athlete or the person is looking for. It's not a one size fits all.

But because we're speaking to a large audience, I would say bikini. That's probably what more women, more mainstream fitness fanatic women would identify with You know less so, you know bodybuilding or those other sports Rich boyfriend plastic surgery and cocaine there you go I mean that there's 10 through 26 in the in your typical bikini show There's you know, it's just look bikini. It's a interesting topic bikini because

I'm a dinosaur. I'm one of the old school guys that cringed when bikini came along You know, I felt that the that the when Bikini came along, you know, I felt that the athlete aspect of the sport was sort of attacked because you could go to your basic pool bar and the beer tub girl could be a card carry in pro-athlete, a member of the IFBB. You know, and that's kind of a smack in the face to the guy who's got a, you know, almost died to get the same thing. So, you know, Bikini is one of those things where the girl, if she's going to really be a hardcore boss to the wall athlete, really doesn't need anything in terms of performance enhancing drugs.

She just needs to work hard. And that's probably true for 90% of the bikini girls out there. The other 10% are probably hormonally challenged, have issues, physically challenged, and whatnot, and really need a lot of help getting in shape. And for them, yeah, there's drugs they can use. But I'm of the belief that anything beyond

clean buterole and maybe some GH, that's about the extent that I'm gonna look at a bikini girl doing. Let's talk about that. So clean buterole for my knowledge was an asthma drug, was a drug originally given to people to open up their bronchial passageways, and then we were giving it apparently to cattle

to bulk them up a little bit, and that's when athletes got their hands on it. What is, am I right? Is that what it is, and what does it do? Is it a steroid? No, it's not a steroid. Climbutra also bronchial dilator, basically the effect that you're getting from it is tremor.

So, if you take clay and you just find it, your hands are shaken. And that tremor is systemic, and that tremor basically burns more calories than if you weren't tremoring. So by virtue of the extra calorie burning, you're getting added, you know, a lipolithic effect. So the benefit to clean butyrol is fat burning. The proposed anabolic effect is absolutely minimal, not worth taking for the anabolic effect. It's really typically used, you know, for getting lean. What about albuterol?

Albuterol is a drug that I was prescribed as a kid. Now I took it through inhaler, but I know you could probably take it through tablet as well. It sounds like Kim Clembuterol. Is it similar? Similar, yeah. Okay. In terms of bronchial dilation,

I don't think the tremor is as pronounced in Albuterol, but it's the same idea. You're more, it's a drug designed to open your airways so you can breathe. That's weird. I never heard anybody explain it that way. So basically you're taking a drug that's making you shake a little bit

and then that extra shaking is making you burn extra calories. You're taking it for its side effect. Wow. That's what Dushan discovered. He read You're taking it for its side effect. Wow. That's what Dushan discovered. He read about this drug side effect was weight loss due to tremor and this is a great for bodybuilding. So that's one of the hundreds of things you're doing today

that this guy discovered that you know, no idea he did. Okay. You mentioned growth hormone, another hormone that athletes have been using for a little while. How does growth hormone work in comparison to anabolic steroids for performance? Are they in the same category or totally different? Well, growth hormone is not a sex hormone,

so it completely falls out of the anabolic hormone list that people are used to. It's not a steroid. Growth hormone is basically a, to put in the simplest language possible, is basically a hormone that stimulates other things to happen. Tissue repair, growth and growth, burning body fat, there's a host of effects, collagen enhancement, there's a lot of benefits to growth hormone, just in the sense that it's a hormone your body uses for growth and repair throughout the course of your life, especially when you're little.

And gradually, abs is you get older to replace that or add more to it, brings back sort of the youth generating effects, which it's predominantly used for. There is a secondary antibiotic, I wouldn't call it anabolic effect. I call it more like a muscle preserving effect that you can experience muscle preservation under restricted calories. You won't lose as much muscle on growth hormone as you would without it on a significantly calorie restricted diet. And then there's the fat burning component of it, which makes it very attractive.

On top of all of that, there's almost no side effects to it. There's definitely no masculinizing side effects to it. So it's preferred by women for that fat burning and no male side effects, women are lining up for it. So there's definitely that aspect of it. There are side effects, and they'll get me wrong. They're just not negative, socially repugnant side effects like you get with, you know, male drugs. So it's definitely a drug utilized by women more for that respect.

And there's also other steroids that are extremely mild that women will use, like, you know, antivar, premabBallon to some degree winstrel. I don't like winstrel and women, but Prima-Ballons my favorite to use on women because it's just almost no side effects and you get a lot of good effect from it. Interesting. So growth hormone, what does it feel like then?

Because, you know, I kind of get an idea now what it would, what it feels like to be on steroids. What does it feel like to be on growth hormone? Is it more subtle? That's what I've read. Much more subtle, much, much more subtle. And that, of course, is dose dependent. Many of the published data are of a dosage between two and three I used as a day for you know an average adult which is very low Compared to athletes who are taken four five six I use a day So the feel you're gonna get on a higher level is different than the feel you're gonna get at a lower level the lower level

Feel is almost not perceptible. It is over time Perceptible I had a great case of a woman I worked with. She was a neighbor of mine in Mexico. She lived in Arizona and our paths wouldn't cross as often because of our travel schedules. And I had, she had asked me about growth hormone. I suggested that she use it how much she used. She was in her 50s. I hadn't seen her in about six months until our paths crossed again.

And when I did it was like, did you have a facelift? Did you plastic surgery? What did you do? Because I've only been doing what you told me to do. And the difference was absolutely staggering what it did for this woman in terms of her, the youth elements of her face, the collagen replacement, the health of her hair, the diminution of wrinkles, the clarity of her eyes. It was a whole different person, by virtue of,

a two-eye use a day of Monday through Friday of HGH. Wow, that's interesting. Okay, so these days, drugs have gotten, or I should say, performance enhancing drugs have gotten more interesting. I was talking about this on my podcast, on Mind Pump, the other day where I was doing some research for interview on SARMS, selective androgen receptor modulators,

and go back on Facebook, and I'm getting all these ads on Facebook for SARMS, like mainstream ads, you can buy them on the for SARMS, like mainstream ads. You can buy them on the internet, get a mail to you. So first off, what are SARMS? And second, why am I able to buy them if I want on the internet? And then third, what do they do? Selective Androgen modulator, receptor modulator.

It's basically, excuse me, it's a drug, I guess in the simplest terms, it's a drug that specifically targets something that you want to do. And I guess the most common one that people are familiar with is Nolvadex. Nolvadex is a song. Nolvadex specifically looks for estrogen and blonset. So that's what you're, that's the objective. So selective receptor modulators are, kind of like this new breed of drug that are, that are, that are site-specific. Androgen receptor specific. So you have a receptor site for this drug, you get this drug attaching itself to and no

other. So you have no other infiltration, no other side effects, no other nothing other than the specific receptor you're trying to modulate. Okay. And so that's what the problem with them is they are experimental drugs. And because they're experimental drugs and this falls under the exact same category as pro pro hormones and peptides is that there's no human use for them. They know approved human use for them. They're no approved human use for them,

they're research chemicals. So when you go buy them online, unless your address is a laboratory somewhere, you're breaking the law. So they're not as legal as people think they are. And as the steroid law is written, it's anything with the steroid like effect. So if you're promoting this drug as steroid like or listening steroid-like effects, you're breaking the law. So they sound like a good thing on the surface because

they can people think they're, you're not going to go to prison using them, but that's not entirely true. Okay, so Novodex is a Serm, right, estrogen modulator. Sarm's go to the Androgen. So Sarm's essentially the way the advertising is like, you know, you get, you know, you build muscle, right, because the Androgen Receptors, what testosterone or steroids attach to, you build muscle, get? Cause the endogen receptor is what testosterone or steroids attach to. You build muscle, get stronger, burn body fat, but you don't get the same side effects you would get from steroids.

What's your experience with storms? Is that true or is it all just, you know, hype? I look at all of the alternative preparations with the jaundiced eye because I ask predominantly first why. On this side you have drugs that we know steroids work. They work great. Why do you want an alternative? Do you want the alternative because it's better? Well, that's not true because they're not better. Or do you want the alternative because so you can say you're a natural athlete or you don't use steroids, you use this other thing that's not a steroid.

So you have a moral clarity in what you're doing so that you don't think you're doing anything bad. So I always defer to the steroid, because typically we know more about them, the effect is we expectable, we know what we're gonna get from using them within a range. And we know what the downside is, we don't really know enough about psalms, we don't know enough about peptides andides and pro-hormones to make

any of those assertions. Right off the bat, the lack of study we have regarding them turns me off to them. Secondarily, I haven't heard of any of them being as good or better than the real hormone. They're not something I'm holding too much. And not to mention the number of people who are failing drug tests long after they stop using these things, they're getting popped on drug tests. So on every way I look at it, I stay away from them.

Yeah, you're, I mean, to what you were saying, testosterone, we've been studying forever. It's a relatively non-toxic hormone. I mean, I could inject a massive amount and I'm not going to die of toxicity. We don't know much about these storms and I'm sure they're probably toxic at much lower doses than testosterone. You mentioned drug tests. Okay, this is where I have a lot of questions because athletes at high levels

are using anabolic steroids and hormones and you know, band substances, they're not supposed to use these organizations test them and look at Lance Armstrong. He won so many races, did so well, passed every drug test, never failed a drug test. The only reason why we know he used performance enhancing drugs is because his friends ratted him out afterwards.

How the hell are athletes passing drug tests? That's the $10,000 a month question. You're not going to give up any secrets, John. You know, back in the day, I probably would have, but right now, I would say the majority of my business is athletes who are at the pro football level, Olympic track and field level, Olympic cycling level, and CrossFit level, all of which are drug tested. Significantly drug tested, and the drug testing has gotten more and more and more challenging as time has gone on and they've been availed to what the loopholes are.

So now that beating drug tests is relatively or exponentially much more difficult than it used to be, and the tools we have to work with are fewer and harder to come by and expensive to arrange, that no, I'm not letting those secrets out. Ah, significant contributions to my bank account. Okay, John. Well, okay, how about this? Let's go back to when drug tests were predictable. We knew we were going to get tested at this time.

They're testing me for anabolic and whatever, how did athletes beat them back then? Were they just using anabolic that were like testosterone, which is identical to your own testosterone, then dropping the dose before the test? What were they doing those days? All right, I'll let some of the cats out of the bag. Just, that's such a, ooh, that's a pot of stew right there.

You gotta, first of all, you gotta know a lot about yourself before you can determine where and where you, where and what you have to do, where you have to go and what you have to do to be the drug test. Okay, so right off the bat, the drug test is cleaved into two pieces. One is gonna be testosterone,

and the rest of it's gonna be everything else, because testosterone cannot exist in a typical metabolite drug test because it will all fail it because we're men and we have testosterone. So drug tests only determine yes or no. It's either the drug is there or the drug is not there. So we're all going to fail the testosterone drug test. So what they do is they test for a ratio of epitestosterone to testosterone. And that range is one to one to four. The testosterone, epitestosterone, respectively.

So if you take test, your test level is going to go up. Your epitestosterone is going to go up commensurate to that level to maintain the ratio. And if you fail the drug test, you're failing the drug test because your TE ratio is above four to one. Now what the lab does is if you have a drug test that's over four to one, you have to get that drug test confirmed by a complicated test that's going to determine whether or not the excess testosterone source is animal or plant. If it's an animal source, the source is animal, that's just your T.E. ratio, that's from

you and you're going to pass the test. If it's from a plant source, you're going to fail the test. However, it is up to the federation. The drug testing lab does not notify the athlete, it notifies the federation. If test the federation, athlete 4786213 has a TE ratio above 401 that we recommend the atomic level test. It is then up to the federation, whether they want to shell out the money to confirm that. So right there, that's pass or fail phase number one.

Are you the superstar athlete that would give the blackest eye possible to your sponsors, the sport, the federation, if you fail your drug test? If so, we're sweeping that shit under the rug. So, we're not gonna bother with the secondary test, okay? If you're some poor schmuck in the middle of the field, yeah, we're gonna make an example out of you and we're gonna spring for the $1,500 bucks, get you to fail the test and kick

you out. Did you ever notice that it wasn't Lance Armstrong that was failing the drug test? It was Floyd Landis, it was the guys below it was guys below him that were failing drug tests. It wasn't him. Okay. So they there's the sacrificial lambs and there's the and there's the preservation property. You're gonna preserve the sport is gonna seek to preserve its superstars and not hurt them. Unless some machination of issues occurs in the case of Barry Bonds, in the case of Lance Armstrong, it was usually because the guy was a monumental dick. People hated him and were trying to do everything they could

to undermine him. I guarantee you, Barry B Bond was a nice guy if... Lance. Lance was a nice guy. They'd still have their accolades. So what you're saying is, it's in these professional organizations that generate money, have viewers, do the whole thing. It's in their best interest to not kick out their biggest draws, if you will.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. That I always thought that. I mean, it's, it's, you, you, I mean, some, I mean, it's, it's, it's been called to the Matt so many times that now they're starting to do it. But prior to, I think last year, you never saw the top string guys getting down on their drug tests. Or, are we assumed that they're all clean? Hell no.

You know, the fact, and that's what Lance Armstrong personified the most, the clearest message that you could ever derive from this whole thing is just because you failed the drug test, I mean, past the drug test, does it mean you're clean? Wow. So that's pretty crazy. So back to Barry Bonds, I noticed, this is something I noticed about him. Obviously, he got a lot bigger as his career went on, but so did his head. I don't mean figuratively.

I mean, literally, his head grew. What was that from? Was that from growth hormone, testosterone? Like, why would just skull grow? Well, I don't know if it is skull per se. You know, one of the side effects of testosterone or some steroids is water retention. And sometimes you get water retention in the face. And it makes your head look bigger. So yeah, that could be a possibility. Growth hormone can make your jaw grow, your your brow bow grow, they're gonna know those typical agromeglia

side effects that you know, that giantism, you know, that people talk about or the side of it, but your whole head does not grow. No. Okay, you know, John, I'm thinking back to, you know, I used to run a gym down in Southern California and I, in the gym I was running. It was close to the border between Mexico and the US and so I would have trainers and stuff. They'd go down all the time, pick up, you know, anabolic, come back or whatever. And I remember there was such a huge difference between, there was one guy and he was on way more anabolic than almost anybody else that worked for me.

And he looked like a regular dude in the gym. He worked out hard, he had a good diet. And then there was another guy, remember this was another guy who took the lowest dose and looked like he exploded. Are there a genetic component to how you respond to these drugs as well? Absolutely, absolutely. And again, another part of stew,

there's all kinds of things that are involved with that. There's everything from myostatin negativity to receptor propensity. So it depends on the person. Yeah, but yeah, it is definitely, there are certain amalgam of physical characteristics that line up in such a way that it doesn't matter what drug you're going to do. You're just, you're just not going to get the benefit out of it. And then there's other guys like you just said that you can just breathe if

you're taking test and breathe on them, they grow. So it does depend on your makeup. Now, are there permanent effects or results from it? So let's say you do steroids and your growth hormone whatever, and you do these for on and off for a year, two years, three years, four years, and then you decide, hey, look, I don't wanna do this anymore, I'm gonna go off, you do the four on and off for a year or two years, three years, four years, and then you decide, hey, look, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm going to go off.

You do the proper post-cycle therapy, hormones come back to normal. Do you lose all those gains or do you keep a certain percentage of them? It comes down to what you do to preserve it. I think one thing people have to understand is that your arms grow not because you want them to. And they look cool. Your arms grow as any other muscle in your body is going to grow. It is a direct response to the body's survival mechanism.

It's a stress response. The reason muscle grows is because you've subjected to a stress that it can't handle it. So if you can convince your body by virtue of your workout intensity that I need this muscle and you feed it, you got the right nutrients on board, it's going to keep you convinced your body that I don't need this much.

I only need 20% of this. And if you don't feed your body, you will lose it. So it just depends on what you put your body through. Recovery and nutrition are the key elements to keeping muscle, not drugs. Okay. So along those lines, it leads me to the next question, because these days we're starting to see a lot of controversy or should I say discussion around transgender athletes entering into sports and the argument for

Because the argument against us saying hey look, it's not fair. You're a biological man. You transition to a woman It's not fair. It's not fair competition for you to compete against biological women. The argument pro is if they transition and they've been, and if they've brought their testosterone levels down, and they're on hormone blockers and they've been that way now for a year, they've erased whatever advantage that they have.

Now you've worked, you know, men, women, you've done, you've done their animal hormone cycles, you've been in that whole world, you know how hormones affect the body, both temporarily and permanently. So I think you're one of the best people to ask this question, is this a fair playing field? Is it a level playing field or is this okay once they bring the hormone levels down and are their new gender for, however long the organization says they're supposed to be? It's a bunch of horse shit. I'm probably going to take a lot of flack from this for being insensitive and xenophobic

or homophobic or whatever you want to call me. But there's only two genders. There is male and there is female. What separates those two is not psychological. It is biological. It's physical and it happens in the womb. And it happens in the womb to the degree that it is undeniable. So the fact of the matter is, as little as baby's eye goats, we all start off as female. There is, at some point during the gestation, a hormone cascade that effectively will turn that zygote male or keep it female.

If there's any contradiction in that, it's going to revert back to female. So that's what the body does. Now, if you think that you're a male, trapped in that female body, that's not biological. That is psychological. And you can have all kinds of issues with that and seek help, professional help, and deal with it, however you want.

But you are not going to use it as a crutch to get into a sport that belongs to the opposite sex. And what happened, the reason I emphasize opposite is because men and women are opposite. So just because you stop taking testosterone doesn't undo the testosterone, what the testosterone did since you were the little baby Zygote and transition from female to male in the womb. So fast forward now all that to today you're still bigger, stronger and more physically superior than a Zygote who stayed female and is now a female. So the drugs have already been done.

You're not gonna undo mother nature. You're not gonna undo what made you female in the womb. I mean, what made you male in the womb? That's not gonna ever happen. So if you're a male and you take all the female hormones you want, it doesn't undo the male structures that you were born with and you will be forever superior physically to your female counterpart.

So it's ridiculous. Now to be fair to play the opposite side, if I got my testosterone levels down to what a woman's testosterone levels are, if I took hormone blockers, if I transitioned, I would definitely notice a drop in strength and performance. But what you're saying is there's still a permanent amount that is going to be there, no matter what.

Correct. Okay. So unfair. You think it's not fair and this shouldn't be even an argument is what you're saying. I'm fair. It's going to destroy women's sports completely. Women's sports are going to be dominated by also ran males who happen to identify with being female at the moment. It's absolutely ludicrous. I don't even understand how an actual Serious athlete can stomach the fact that they suck so bad as a male that they had to beat that a compete as a girl

In order to win. I don't even know how you sleep with yourself at night Know and that you're that bad that you had to actually compete against girls to get the accolades. You think you deserve. Well, here, let me ask you this then, okay? Because again, playing the opposite side, you know, I would say, I don't think people are doing things to their body that could cause permanent serious harm just to win competitions. Now you've worked with lots of high-level athletes. Is that a true statement or do athletes do crazy things to themselves all the time to try to win?

No, no, no, no, no, first of all, first of all, there are no, there are no men who are taking female hormones so that they can, that I'm sorry, the opposite. There are no women taking male hormones so that they can compete in men's sports. If there are, it's extremely rare. The predominant action that's happening here is shitty male athletes masquerading as women, even if they take female hormones

to try to compete against women You're never ever gonna undo the the the physical advantage that a male has over a female And you're never gonna create an advantage in a female over a male by taking by doing the opposite So it's completely one sided There's no stampede of women to try to compete in men's sports. The stampede is men trying to compete in women's sports. Yeah, well, okay, so a lot of what you're saying, I would say I agree with just being in the fitness space,

I've known very high level competitive women who take high doses of anabolic steroids are definitely very strong can perform at incredible levels stronger than the average male but they don't come close to you know even what natural top level male athletes can come to so i've never seen for example of uh... a woman uh... come anywhere close to what the top man even in the same weight class

uh... come to no matter what drugs she takes. So, in that case, I could definitely see what you're talking about. So do you think this is gonna keep going in that direction or do you think at some point people are gonna say, okay, that's enough? This is, what do you think is gonna take before people say or agree with you and mass

where they say, okay, this is just not fair. The snowflakes have to stop whining. You know, this idea that everybody can win, that everybody participates, you get a trophy, that if you can't compete and win as a man, then do it as a woman, all of this idiocy has to change. You, there is the object of sport is to determine who's the best at what they do, not to determine

how many people can play and have fun. That's the problem. Sports are serious business as if insted by the multi-million dollar contracts at stake at the upper levels. If you want to look at sports seriously, you have to look at it seriously. And to come away with the idea that, to some degree, that it's at all serious, that a woman, that a man wants to compete as a woman, then the ideology is flawed. Once you've got to fix the ideology first, once you fix that, then the ideology is flawed. Once you've got to, you got to fix the ideology first.

Once you fix that, then the rest falls into place. But there's a tremendous movement right now in America to really screw things up. And it's attacking masculinity, it's attacking cultural norms, it's attacking the base it's attacking cultural norms, it's attacking the base ideologies that are very basic, like which bathroom do you use? I mean, and these things are all being confounded by lunatics. So you have to fix that first.

All right, well, I'm going to change gears with you a little bit. It seems like laws are loosening up on lots of controlled substances. I know marijuana legalized in many states, medically or even recreationally. I see in some states now, psychedelics are starting to become decriminalized. It looks like we're moving in that direction. Do you think hormones like testosterone

will start to become less regulated or not scheduled like they currently are, maybe along the lines of like female hormones and how easy it is to get, for example, estrogen or progesterone versus testosterone. Do you see it moving in that direction? The laws are kind of like already a little bit loose in as far as concern, or maybe not actually the laws themselves, but the chasing of them, the pursuing of justice with respect to those laws. The big steroid busts, the news of them are few and far between.

The underground in America is extremely saturated. The raw materials from China, Pakistan, India are coming in and people are manufacturing their own. So there's a tremendous availability of steroids on the black market. As far as the legitimate market goes, I would say that it's easier today to find a doctor willing to prescribe testosterone replacement than it was a few years ago. It's easier for patients to seek medical advice and get not only their hormone levels checked, but also talk to doctors and have conversations about the use of growth hormone and testosterone for anti-aging, for recuperative effects, adjunct treatments, off-label treatments to other certain diseases and whatnot. So they're being looked at, there's less media hysteria now. Back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you had these crazy people talking about, you know, kids committing suicide and the dangers of steroids and every single solitary, a celebrity that had some kind of wild fit that was, you know, diagnosed with

Roid rage in the media and all of that stuff is gone. They're focused on other things now and even the DEA isn't looking at steroids like they used to so I think from the law enforcement end of it. It's not as it's not perceived as seriously as it once was on the medical Community level. I think it's being looked at less nefariously and there are more and more and more doctors who are willing to, you know, prescribe and monitor and manage hormone cycles. Yeah, I, part of it, I'm assuming, has to do with the fact that men's testosterone levels have been declining for the last, you know, I don't know, five decades. And so, TRT is going to be, I mean, it's just growing because men are not having testosterone like they used to and a lot of theories is to why some theories have to do with the chemicals

were exposed to Xenoestrogens, others are saying it's because we're not active like we used to, but nonetheless, it's becoming, in my experience, more medically acceptable, more mainstream, if you will. You know, one thing I love about you, John, is that, and this is why, at least, the love reading your stuff, is you don't hold anything back. You're very, very straightforward. You know where you stand on everything.

You don't, you just answer very honestly. I know you're in the new media space. You've been now for a little while, right? You started a podcast. How's that going? How is it compared to when you were doing magazines and stuff? Is it a totally different world or the same, is it the same, just different technology? Oh, I think it's a completely different world. And I'm not, and admittedly, I am not completely adapted to it, you know.

Yeah, I do as podcast that I thought would be really popular, you know, with Rich Kaspari, who is a really popular guy in the bodybuilding world. And, you know, we've done 35 shows, I think, so far, nothing on your level. But I don't know if I'm doing as good as I should be. We're getting probably between 1,500 downloads of show between the platforms. I don't know if that's any good or not. I was anticipating we'd be doing way better than that by now. I think it's a matter of,

I think what I find confounding today that I'm not used to is the, not only the social media end of it, as you well know, I am not big on social media, I probably should be, I remember you telling it, saying it took quite an effort to find me. I was really in it, and I thought that was nuts because I'm everywhere, but yeah, I mean,

that's part of my problem is I really don't know how to get the eyeballs generated to come look at my stuff, but I think the people who do listen to our podcast are really happy with it. They think it's great. We've had great guests. We've had I think four or five Mr. Olympia's on already, plus a bunch of who's who in the industry.

And I think it's time to have some of those guests back on and since we've gone to video now, we were just only audio. Now we're I think about a 10 or 12 shows into audio and video. So I'm hoping it'll grow. Maybe people listen into this. I want to slide over to drag and slayer media and check out fitness fame and fortune. You know, I might want to do that. Yeah, I'll make sure I point to it in the intro. And again, I mean, just to my audience, if you want the no holds bar, nitty gritty, about everything I have to do with fitness, you're the guy.

I really don't trust anybody else as much as I do. I know how long you've been around. I've read all your stuff. You were talking about the stuff way before anybody else, and it's funny because what I know about all these things is a lot of it comes from you and Dan, Dan, you can't do chain, which you had earlier mentioned.

It's funny because I'll read stuff now, and people will talk like they, like, oh, this is groundbreaking, we just, this is what I'm like, I read that back in 1995 or whatever, you know, back in the day. Yeah, I find it interesting that people, you know, especially younger guys today who were getting into bodybuilding, you know, so little about the history of bodybuilding

and, you know, who's responsible for what they're actually doing and why. I think the whole concept of why is really not addressed. Like why are you doing what you're doing? And if you ask 10 people in the gym, they have no clue. They may think they do, but they really don't. Well, John, it's been a pleasure, man.

It's always a blast talking to you. I really appreciate you. I appreciate you and I love doing your show. And if you ever need me again, I never hesitate to ask. I'm always happy to do it. Beautiful. And I'll be happy to come on your short, too, so anytime. Can you do it tomorrow? Yeah.

All right. I'll have my assistant reach out. Serious. We'll get it. I definitely want to have you. You're absolutely one of the guests I want to have back on. And because we sort of did our first show with you guys and sort of you interviewed us and and I would like to flip the tables on you. All right, perfect. All right, thanks again, John. I appreciate it.

Anytime. Thank you. Oh, man. That was a fiery interview with John. That was a fun one to listen to. Yeah, and so I have a question, actually I have a question for you Adam because I mean, I have some knowledge, you know, just because I read a lot about anabolic and how much people use and this kind of stuff. One thing that John said that I was surprising, I wouldn't have guessed that he would have said this is when I asked him a starting cycle dose for a guy,

200 pounds, late 20s, early 30s. He said a gram of testosterone plus like 300 to 400 milligrams of other steroids. That sounds like a lot to me. And you were in the pro world. Is that like, what's your opinion on that? That blew me away.

I found that very interesting. And it actually helped me connect the dots on some things that I've experienced personally. So I've talked about that I was one of those young kids in his early 20s that experimented with steroids early on and I took a really big cycle, the upwards of a gram or so when I first did the very first one and I told you that I didn't get the greatest results and I didn't get the greatest results because of what he said about the pie chart You know the other 80% of my my pie chart wasn't wasn't in line

I you know Sure, I I took the protein shakes and and ate the bars and I was lifting weight training hard But my understanding of like programming and progressive overload My my true understanding of nutrition and the importance of consistency with it just wasn't there yet. And so my results were really terrible. Now I felt strong and I felt different. Like I definitely could fill the end, obviously the end of box, taking that much, but didn't

get the results I ever wanted. And later on in my in my lifting career, you know, fast forward to competing. I was on really low doses, but I was in my 30s. So it makes sense to me now why I felt like so good on such a low dose because I probably already, well, I know I did because I did blood work in my late 20s and I already had testosterone in the floor from the experimenting that I was doing in my early 20s. And so just the right amount combined with my knowledge of programming and diet in my 30s really allowed me to scale to becoming an IFBB pro. And so now it makes a lot of sense to me where before it was like, man, this is crazy

that my body is just responding. And I just attributed it all to, oh, it must be because I was that off on diet and exercise. But now it makes sense to me that maybe I had a much better testosterone levels than before. And then even though I was on a much higher dose, comparatively to where I was competing wise, maybe the way my body responded was similar. Well, so a study had just come out that talked about, they explored the differences in how people's bodies

respond to weight training, and then they were testing testosterone levels. And what they found was the testosterone levels in the guys that did well versus the guys that didn't do well, didn't make that big of a difference. What made the big difference was the Androgen receptor density. So like this guy over here, his testosterone is 650.

And then he's, but he's responding way better to the workouts. And this guy who's testosterone is 800. But the difference is this guy's got way more receptors than the other guy. Well, this is why I was so glad that you brought up the genetic component because that was my experience too. I've met plenty of guys that have done a much bigger doses than me that saw no results.

I remember, I helped out some, I coached some guys that they came to me and the first thing that I would ask them is like, you know, what are you taking? And they would list off these cycles that I was just like, holy shit. And then I, you know, no offense to the guy, but he did not look like, I mean, he barely looked like he was a lifter, much less an experienced competitor who was on that big of a cycle. And so it explains a lot to me what a major factor that is. Yeah, I think it's good for especially young Mende

to hear that because it dispels that myth that all of a sudden you're taking this, you know, you're taking anabolic steroids and then it's gonna produce this sort of superhero body as a result of that, you know, maybe some, you know, whatever they're doing workout-wise, just adding that into the mix is gonna like produce this this superhero version of them.

Yeah, and also, here's another thing, studies also consistently show that as men age, okay, if they're healthy, testosterone levels will decline a little bit, but guess what also changes is they get older. Their angiogen receptors get denser, they get more as they get older. So this, and remember that he made the comment

that as the older a guy gets, the less he needs to get the same results. Probably due to the fact that he's got more Androgen receptors or more better density as he gets older versus when he was younger. So I thought that was very interesting. We said that's not about those studies. Does that align with muscle maturity and muscle memory too? Probably. Yeah, probably. As you're going to say, because you got to factor that in. I don't know if that's all part of the same category or not, but you take somebody who's been lifting for, I mean, I know this too. I mean, this is very apparent to me.

After I had done cycles, even when I came off and I had some of the lowest testosterone levels in my life and my 30s, I still was bigger and had more muscle than I was in my, you know, early 20s taking tons of testosterone. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. Now, of course, the elephant in the room is when he went off on the debate on transgender athletes. Now, John is just, if you don't know John, he's very just, he'll just speak what he feels.

He definitely gave us his opinion. He does. I tell you what, the part that I agree with wholeheartedly is that there is a permanent advantage. I mean, look, anybody who's in fitness who's worked with people or worked in gyms for a long time, there's a permanent, there really is a permanent advantage. I can, I tell you what. Yeah, but the part that I disagree with is that I don't, I think we were discussing moment, or you were discussing momentarily there,

a very, very small percentage currently. Now that could change, but a very small percentage of people, I don't think most people that deal with this psychological issue of feeling like they are in the opposite sex's body, go out and decide, I'm gonna go through this crazy with this psychological issue of feeling like they are in the opposite sexist body, go out and decide, I'm going to go through this crazy transformation, hormonal surgeries, all this stuff, just so I can go win a trophy. I don't think that's, I don't, I don't think that's a dismal.

It's not as prevalent as the news and media would, you know, like show that like we think it's happening everywhere just because it's a popular topic. Right. But I do, I mean, it's a bit harsh in the way that he presented it, but also it's things to consider in terms of our biological differences and to just glaze over that to try and make sure everybody feels good about it. I think it needs to be considered. When sports is just about metrics,

and it's about, you know, actual performance, and there was a reason why they differentiated that between the two sexes initially, and we're trying to stray away from that, so it's something to consider when bringing it into the sky. No, I agree. I agree with your point.

And I remember when we had the two transgenders on and we had the debate. And that was the point that I made was that, because remember when they did that study or that survey on all the Olympic athletes, on if they could be guaranteed a gold medal, like die in five years? But die in five years, I think it's a common mentality.

Most of them. Yeah, a great percentage, greater mentality. Most of them. Yeah. A great percentage, greater than 50% of them said that, yes, I would, I would accept dying in five years just to have a goal. And most people in the Olympics are in two, they're 20s. So you're, you're telling me that if, if that mentality is in, in that sport to get a goal medal, that it's not eventually going to attract some people that will go, wait a second.

Like here's my way to get it. And so I do think that even if it's a small minority today, I think it could grow into something. Yeah, I think, you know, I agree. I think now it's probably what's happening now is people who are transgender going through the process and then competing. I don't think it's people saying agreed. I want to win. I can't win in this category. So now I'm going to transition. I think we're seeing the unintended consequences. Yeah, I think that the idea of obviously allowing someone

to change their sex, their an adult, they should be allowed to do that. If they want to do that, no one thought this far along that, oh, what happens when they start competing? It wasn't about that, right? It's getting to a point where there needs to be more further discussion around it. Just in terms of fair play.

And I really do feel there needs to be a lot more female voices that speak up in terms of how they'll see it. Oh, there will be. Oh, that's where it'll come. Yeah, it's because there's a lot of girls losing scholarships and opportunities. Right, it's title nine, right?

Is that what it is? I think so. Yeah, it's just the initial movement. When it's title nine, right? Is that what it is? I think so. Yeah, it's just the absolute movement. When that starts getting affected, right? When you start seeing high school athletes, female high school athletes losing scholarships. And it won't be after one or two.

It's when you'll start to see that happen. That's when you'll, it'll happen. And I was definitely curious when you brought up all the different testing for professional sports and like he started to kind of like be a little bit reserved in terms of the techniques of how to like, kind of check the system and this. And I was like, I was like, well, that's how they get

to dissipate and that's something that's something that main source of his income. Dude, that's what he does. You know, that's not makes sense that he's gonna wanna give away his secrets because otherwise his value goes down. Oh, of course, I just, I was so curious because I did watch that documentary Icarus and they did kind of go through a lot of the Ways that they were able to go around some of the tests and what the methods that we use in Russia and all that is public knowledge.

So to to different to see how you know any of those methods would would be You know in our market would be so a different would be. Well, that would be, it could just only went over blood doping though. Wasn't that all they, that's the only thing that comes. Testosterone. It did all of it. Yeah, I watched that documentary.

I don't remember the topic. You know what though, here's a deal, okay. No one is gonna give away how they're getting away with it now. They might give away how they got away with it before. Right. But the testing is constantly chasing the new methods. It's not the other way around.

It's cat mouse. It's cat mouse. It's cat mouse. And so what they did five or 10 years ago, you could figure out. What they're doing now, you got to pay somebody like John. I do love that you guys went that direction, talk about because this has been a long debate for my buddy. I mean, we've been debating this since we were in high school. Right?

Obviously, before I was in this field, and I think I had more knowledge in like first hand, I used to debate this. I used to tell my friends that, you know, these pro athletes, they're all on steroids, you know. I would say most of them, 80, 90% of, I don't care if you're a pitcher, who you are, like, you know, sport,

because everybody always thinks steroids and think big muscular, right? Like, I just think that you're gonna get this, like, oh, he's not massaging. Oh, no, look at him, he doesn't look like him. Yeah, exactly, so they assume that they're not, but it's like, no, at that level, millions of dollars are being made, if you think every enhancement matters.

Yeah, if you don't think that a majority of these guys, I find it more rare when we have friends like Brendan or my buddy, Frampton, who is both these guys were all natural athletes, and unfortunately, they weren't huge names in the sport because they weren't willing to take the next step, which all their peers would do. If you're making millions of dollars based off of your physical performance

and you have doctors ready and willing to prescribe you and monitor you and you have an organization that is ready and willing to turn or shield you. you and monitor you and you have an organization that is ready and willing to turn up to shield you to shield you. That's that's the name of the game. It's part of the business. It's part of the whole thing.

It's like it's like being in movie like Hollywood same thing. You know, you're an actor and actress and you're getting ready for, you know, they're making, you know, Avengers again and they're going to have Justin, you know, be one of the one of the guys or whatever. Pretty sure they would say, all right, Justin Justin you got six months or a year to get ready for this role here's a doctor they're gonna do your blood work they're gonna I'm taking all the stuff yeah they're gonna optimize all your stuff don't worry we have it all covered here's your nutritionist they're gonna make your meals for you here's your gym you got a trainer you just gotta do the work

just do the work oh and by the way we're gonna pay you you know five million dollars or ten million dollars to do it I mean and you have doctors monitoring you so all the potential scary stuff is taking care of. You're probably gonna do it. I wonder how much of that is actually like the the movie industry pushing it or allowing it or it's just more the other thing where they just turn to blind eye and it's more of the actor who's like hey I'm gonna have to have my shirt off 90% of the time here. We need you Jack. I want to love three months. I look amazing. I bet you it's the, you think so?

Yes, and I bet you. I don't think so. I think the big actors have their own system. So the big actors go in and they don't, they're like, oh yeah, I got it. Six months, don't worry. They already got their doctor. They got their whatever.

I got that taken care of. But I bet you, it's almost like, you know, the person who manages the talent is like, and they're probably positioned it this way. They probably say, hey, look, here's a deal, you're gonna get in shape for this role. Here's a doctor we work with. They're going to test your hormones

and they're gonna optimize your hormones in your health so that you can get in the best shape possible. That's all, and it's all perfectly legal. And the doctors, let me put it this way. If I did your blood work, Adam, and I'm a doctor, I could literally say, well, these are what we're gonna do. We're gonna push your testosterone to this upper limit. Your growth hormone, we can push it up to this limit

within the parameter. They're not on bodybuilding doses, but I guarantee they got... Oh, yeah, that's what you just find it hilarious. So immediately after all that, they get a men's health spread like every single time. Yeah, they can just, what did you do? Like what supplements were you on? And like, what kind of crazy crossfit workout

did you do this whole time? Well, you got your workouts taken care of, your nutrition taken care of, and your drugs, you know, of course. You're gonna see crazy stuff like that. And they're all, I mean, and actors tend to be genetically- This is all facades, somewhat gifted anyway.

You know, I do wanna say this, I wanna backtrack a little bit and say this about the transgender athlete debate. I just wanna be very clear. I believe individuals should be able to do whatever they want to their body. And I think everybody should be treated with respect and care as an individual. The question is, and this is the debate. And what I hate about this debate is it gets silenced because if you're on the opposite

side, then you're silenced as some kind of a bigot, which is silly, it's a stupid way to shut someone down when they're having a legitimate conversation. And the conversation is, is there an advantage, an unfair advantage from a man transitioning to a woman? Is there a permanent physical advantage that they have that can't get bit reversed with hormones? And I will say, there their apps 100% there is.

And I tell you what, I could take my sister and I could put her on all the drugs in the world and I could have her testosterone levels measure 10 times higher than Justin's. She ain't gonna beat him in the bench press. She's not, no matter what, she'll never bench press 400 pounds because no matter how many steroids I give her. There is no, nothing you can do that'll erase some of those permanent changes.

And I do think this debate, especially in combat sports. Boy, when you see MMA, it's like, oh my gosh, someone's going to get hurt, you know, if we don't stop. So each their own, and individuals, I'm all for individuals, like choosing their own destiny and going to direction they want. I just, you know, like the thing that I always, like, both loved and admired about sports is it's devoid of all the different cultural aspects. It's there. It's the metrics.

It's, are you faster? Are, you know, can you lift more? Like, it was the last place where I felt like a lot of politics didn't enter, but now it's definitely intertwined with a lot of what we see in culture now. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that was a good time, huh? Yeah, yeah. Great episode, man. All right, so check this out. My pump is recorded on videos, as well as the audio,

so you can come find us on YouTube, MyNPum podcast. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at MyNPum. Justin, me at MyNPon, Adam at Mind Pump Adam. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at Mind Pump Media.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic.

Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money bag guarantee, and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review

on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump!