Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 922: John Romano

Starting point is 00:00:00 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. This was a treat for me because, you know, I actually really did not... I know of the name, right? I know I've read T-Nation articles. I know I've read articles that he's written in the magazine, but... Yeah. Other than that, I wasn't a voracious reader like you or as a kid, so I wasn't reading as much back then.

Starting point is 00:00:32 And so I really didn't know a lot about John until this episode. And man, it reminds me of the first interview that we did with Jota Sina. And he came in so unassuming. I didn't know anything. I didn't know anything. I didn't know a lot about him. You, Sal, you had co-signed for him.

Starting point is 00:00:50 Everything that he was connected to, I didn't know this guy will be really enjoyable to have. And boy, I mean, he exceeded all my expectations. What a great guy. What a fucking real dude. And how cool was it to ask him and listen to his stories. So transparent and entertaining and oh yeah man it was it was a blast actually and this is not typically subject matter I'm like super stoked on but his delivery and like all

Starting point is 00:01:18 like his knowledge was just awesome. He's the original no holds barred tell it like it is person in the fitness space. I mean, he's been writing articles for Bodybuilding magazines and fitness publications since the 80s and He's out of the gates. I mean, this is why I remember this is why I look for the guy So I was it actually was really hard to find him you it's really hard to find the guy on social media even though It's almost impossible to not read an article that's written by him if you're into reading about fitness and especially muscle building because that's the space. This guy's written, I don't know, thousands and thousands of articles easily. So I had to do a lot of searching. I actually

Starting point is 00:01:58 took me a long time to find him. I found him on Facebook. I thought at least I thought I found him on Facebook and I sent a message like who does that right nowadays, right? Usually it's a Instagram or an email or something like that. And he replied and I found him on Facebook, I thought, at least I thought I found him on Facebook, and I sent a message like, who does that right nowadays, right? Usually it's a Instagram or an email or something like that. And he replied and I'm like, is this the John Romano that writes this thing? He goes, yeah, that's me. And like, fuck, come on our show, man. I want to talk to you because I love your approach. I love how you write.

Starting point is 00:02:18 The guy is super, super knowledgeable. He's been connected to anybody who's anybody in the muscle building world, and especially in the edgy side of that muscle building world. I mean, he was good friends with the late Dan Duchaine, who wrote the underground steroid manual or Bible, I think it was called. They, he's been a part of how the supplement,

Starting point is 00:02:43 the supplement industry kind of morphed into what it is today into the bodybuilding magazines and then into social media. The guy's written for... Oh, everybody's... Every steroid cycle that's taken by most all athletes right now and for sure any bodybuilder was created

Starting point is 00:02:58 with his circle and network of people. Oh, everything you think you know about how to do these things was created by the people that he he worked with And you're gonna hear him talk about all that and he's super candid like we asked him He told you I mean he told us it was so refreshing. Yeah, it was the most one of the most honest interviews We've ever done and of course you super charismatic and a lot of fun to talk to so you guys will have a great time listening to this podcast With John Romano and I I do wanna remind everybody this month,

Starting point is 00:03:27 you can get access to our private forum for free, if you enroll in any of our maps, fitness programs. Now maps, programs are designed for different goals. So we have goals, we have programs for building muscle. We have programs for functional strength and athletic performance for bodybuilders, for correctional exercise, to find out which math program works best for you.

Starting point is 00:03:47 Just go to mapsfitinistproducts.com. And again, this month, if you enroll in any of those programs, you'll get free access to a private forum, which normally costs $100 a year to do. You get it for free for an entire year. And that's it, man, without any further ado, here we are talking to John Romano. So John, I initially reached out to you because you know I was a huge fan of fitness and bodybuilding. I read all the magazines in the 90s, flex and muscle and fitness, but then a muscle media 2000

Starting point is 00:04:19 and Iron Man and all the other ones. And you, your articles were always some of my favorites because you were so know holds barred. You're always very, very honest and whatever. Always, always a prolific author in this space. And but before we get into some of that, I wanna know how you started, because you've been doing this for a long time. How many articles have you written total? Do you have any idea?

Starting point is 00:04:42 It's gotta be in the thousands. Well, into the thousands. Well, I mean at muscular development Towards the probably the last six or seven years of my tour there. I was putting out about 15,000 words a month Between features and columns So I don't I don't know how many actual articles that equals because there was a period of time before that where I was writing freelance under no byline. I was just providing content to people.

Starting point is 00:05:14 So it's gotta be thousands, you know, it must be. Unfortunately, I don't have them all because media changed so much as my very first article, I wrote in pen. I hand wrote. Okay. So much as you know my first article my very first article I wrote in pen Hand wrote okay, and then the second one I typed the third or fourth one I actually wrote on a computer and it was on a floppy disk if you remember Oh, before you were born basically a smoke signal. Oh, don't worry. Sounds all to So between floppy disks and you know various other media storage, I've just lost so much.

Starting point is 00:05:47 Every now and then people will send me a magazine from 1980s something and it's got a article I wrote in it. It's like, wow, I wish I had that. That's fun. Now what guy you started in all this? It's a funny story. I was an obese fat Italian kid in New York. And when you get to be like 12, 13, you start looking for your identity, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:09 you don't really know who you are, what you want to be, what cool is, and all that. And I was very sheltered. My father's a psychiatrist. You know, I lived in a very warm, connected, loving family, which is completely alien, you know, and a lot of realms these days. And I just was kind of lost,

Starting point is 00:06:30 looking for myself. And one day, I remember in 1972, I was 12 years old, my father calls me into the family room and our black and white TV, and he says, you gotta see this. And it was the 1972 Mr. Olympia. Oh, wow.

Starting point is 00:06:43 First thing I saw was Sergio O'Leave, I had a crab shot and his ears disappeared. And I go, what, that is so freaking cool. That's what I want. So I began from there, Charles Atlas ads in the back of magazines and where I'm just to learn about, like, how do you do this? How do you build muscles?

Starting point is 00:07:03 And it was a really sad realization that you got to work out and lift weights for a long time, you know, for that's gonna happen. And I just became passionate about it. And, you know, I was always like trying to, you know, I was always artistically, you know, inclined at it, you know, other things in art medium.

Starting point is 00:07:20 And writing was just kind of one of those things that I was just, you know, very, it was easy, it came to me easily, much easier than speaking as you guys will learn during the course. You killed it, don't worry. And I just started writing, you know, and it took the two merge when I went to prison and I met Dan Dushan on the wait pile. You met Dan in prison? Well, I knew Dan in Venice. I mean, I just wasn't friends with him. I mean, he was, he was, you know, Dan was,

Starting point is 00:07:52 in Dan's prime, you didn't get near him. Dan was driving a Cobra replica with a giant motor and it was racing between Tijuana and L.A. byin steroids and selling them. And, you know, he was just, and, you know, just a brilliant avant-garde kind of strange guy that, you know, no one really, you know, understood. Did you guys even know who Dan did?

Starting point is 00:08:11 No, I know the name, but I don't know. I don't know much about telling the facts. He was, he was, okay, from my perspective, I don't know I'm like, you did, but from my perspective, the dude wrote articles and created products and was like the, he was like the, he broke all the barriers, I would say, he would talk about which steroids to take

Starting point is 00:08:28 and how to take them. He talked about the newest drugs that are coming out. He talked about the dark side of body building and he was the brains behind a lot of what we see and I think the supplement industry today, if I'm not mistaken, right? Wasn't he one of the first creators of like, was it called Ultimate Orange? Yeah, that was like an ephedra based pre-workout supplement, the first one ever.

Starting point is 00:08:48 First it was the first pre-workout ever. Basically in a nutshell, Dan Dushane brought steroids from the hospital medical setting to your bathroom. And that's, he was the original guru. And you know, from the drug side, from the supplement side, from the training side, he is the one who brought bodybuilding, you know, as we know it today together. So he is the one who combined drugs, not just steroids, ancillary drugs, like metformin and, you know, clinbutyrol and things like that, that, you know, we used, that we think of today is just commonplace. He's the guy who invented, who read the medical literature. I mean, okay, let's take Climbuterol.

Starting point is 00:09:27 Climbuterol was a bronchial dilator. He's the first guy, right? He was the first guy because he read that the side effects were jitters, you'd burn more calories in. Oh, this is great for bodybuilding. And here's five or six lab, we'll lab rats will take it for me and see what happens. And it was this all kind of empirical knowledge

Starting point is 00:09:47 that we accrued over the time. It really started back in Gold's gym. There was, I'm trying to remember his name. It's, I'll think of it in a minute. Zimpano, Michael Zimpano. He was a body builder in Venice back in the day. And he used, on Sundays, he used to have a little corner in the back of Gold's gym and he called it Sunday school and it's where he taught drugs.

Starting point is 00:10:07 You're going to hell, sir. You're going to hell for that. It was like drugs 101, you know, how to give you a shot. That's hilarious. I mean, it was like basic stuff, you know, what testosterone does, what goes with it and all these guys would just like congregate there and you know Dan knew that was going on and you know one day he walked in there and he's listening to him and he goes dude it waited till it was over and he goes dude let me buy you a beer and you know they started talking about you know how to you know

Starting point is 00:10:38 integrate this and then Dan came out with the underground steroid handbook. He's the guy that wrote that that's right you know it's funny I got I got messages right now literally in my DM on Instagram from kids were like and then Dan came out with the underground steroid handbook. He's the guy that wrote that. That's right. You know what's funny? I got messages right now, literally in my DM on Instagram, from kids were like, hey, have you heard of this fat burner called DNP? It's supposed to be dangerous, whatever. Dan DuCane wrote a fucking article about that like 1991. That's the only reason why I know what it was

Starting point is 00:10:58 is this guy was writing about the shit way back then. I have a great story about DNP, Dynitrofinal. It was the first batch he got. He bought from some chemical company, so he's got a bag of yellow powder on the kitchen table. And I was shit ton of, I'm sorry if we can see. No, hold on. No, hold on. No, hold on. Good. And we got a shit ton of empty, double-o, or I don't know if they were double-o, they weren't that big. Empty capsules. And he wants to make sample packs, you know, to get like five or six people trying this shit to see what was gonna happen. So, um, we're there scooping it up into the into the capsules and making these capsules a roughly 20 milligrams or whatever it was supposed to be, you know, we didn't have a milligrams scale.

Starting point is 00:11:37 We're eyeballing it. It just looks about right. About a half an hour later, I'm like sweating my ass off, and I'm like, damn, turn the freaking heat off. You go, the heat's not on. The air conditioner's on. Are you hot or am I going through a middle-life crisis? And he goes, no, it's fucking hot. And about five minutes went by before we realized

Starting point is 00:11:59 we're absorbing this shit through our fingers. Cause we didn't have gloves on. Yeah. That shit will kill you too. Yes. So isn't it like the shit that's in dynam Cause we didn't have gloves on. That shit'll kill you. Yes. So isn't it like the shit that's in dynamite? Isn't that what DMP is? TNT, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:12 It's a wall of pre-cursor, yeah. What the fuck? Holy cow, so you meet him by going to prison. If you don't mind me asking what got you there in the first time. I was a, in another life, I was a commodities broker. And it was in the 80s, you know, the greed era. And I got a little too creative from my own good.

Starting point is 00:12:30 Can we talk about that? That sounds like an Italian job. Like, I think we're just going to fucking ask you about that. Yeah, it was actually kind of brilliant if I just say something. Well, okay, yeah, what were you doing in commodities? What explain that? Well, it was, it started out as stocks and then it went to commodities, but I got in trouble with,

Starting point is 00:12:51 the commodities was okay, I got in trouble with the stocks. I had, I was like you guys, I was a pretty good salesman in my time. And I was selling gold and silver contracts over the phone. Back when silver was five bucks that had gone to 50 and then it came down all the hype was a hunt brothers or buying it and it's gonna go back up to 50 and can you imagine how much money

Starting point is 00:13:12 you're gonna make if you're adding it down to that. And so I was doing pretty well in that and I met this guy in Malibu who was a stock broker and he said, dude, come work for me, you'll give you legit. You want to have to hide in a boiler room and you can make real money. Get your Series 7 and get your license and be legit. So I started working for him and it was just

Starting point is 00:13:34 ball-busting work in Century City and LA and Tonya's Towers. And I walked into his big corner office, he was a big producer and he's in the, off on one of his tables He's got these this paper Okay, now you got to remember this is like 1980 Four or five so you know before a lot of you know computer stuff you guys are used to

Starting point is 00:13:58 So there was actually stuff called paper And it was it was these in the days, when you went to McDonald's, they had a long, they had a long thing that they used to check off, you know, your order on it was like a long sheet. And it was this old joke, you know, when the cop came up and flipped open his, his ticket book to give you a ticket. And the guy says, all of an order of fries and a big man. So, you know, it was that, it was those kind of long sheets or pink. I go, what are these? And I was like reading them. They're all company listings and they had market cap and you know blah blah blah. And and so he goes, those are the pinks. Those are penny stocks. They're not on the they're they're not volatile enough

Starting point is 00:14:33 There's no enough volume for them to be listed on an exchange lot of Michelle corporations, but they're basically penny stocks So I get this bright idea that you know well the market cap You know the cap on these things is like just a couple million that, you know, well, the market cap, you know, the cap on these things is like just a couple million bucks, you know, at the most, you know, we could just buy the whole damn company, put it in our trading account, sell the shit out to our clients, it'll go up because we just dried up the supply. Friday commas will just sell it all. It's like, we'll fund Wall Street. It's a same plot there.

Starting point is 00:15:03 But this was before that was before. Yeah, well, so basically that's what we did. So X, Y, Z company, you know, could buy the whole down all the float. We could buy for, you know, a million two, put that in our account, roll up our sleeves, put it on a pot of coffee and call all our clients. You know, it's just, you know,

Starting point is 00:15:19 it's make up some shit story and you know, how great it's gonna do. It was gonna do good because we owned all the stock. So every time you put put in a buy order, the specialist in Wall Street had to like raise the price to entice someone to sell. So we get, you know, two thirds of a penny, hey, that's great, we'll take that, you know, that's 30%.

Starting point is 00:15:35 And we just kept doing that. We're making a lot of money. And the feds, somebody complain, I'm not exactly how it happened, but somehow the feds, somebody completely, I don't know exactly how it happened, but somehow the feds read flagged it. Oh, I remember what happened, 87, the market collapsed. You know, we had that big market collapse and when the market came back online,

Starting point is 00:15:55 they instituted something called stockwatch. And stockwatch was a computer program that flagged irregular trades. So when they see one RR number take down an entire company's float, and they go, oh, that looks suspicious. So yeah, they put a FBI agent on it or a securities agent on it or whatever.

Starting point is 00:16:15 And one day I came to my office and my door was locked. And just like in the movie, they've walked me out of there and I was fired and I didn't completely understand why and then One day I'm training with La Lausato at at Golds For two years when he was making his comeback remember he had retired for a while and he was gonna come back It's I was helping him with his comeback and I've leave there which is trained shoulders. I leave there and his two FBI shoulders, I leave there and there's two FBI agents, you know, in the parking lot, Cofft me and threw me in the back of the car and that was the last I saw that life.

Starting point is 00:16:51 How much time did you get to train you? Well, I was, the sentence was two years and I did probably about a year and nine months. Which is not bad considering that's something you would get nailed for bad now, right? Yeah, well I had a $300 and something thousand dollar restitution that I had to pay too, which was part of it. And by the way, they took all my shit. I mean, I had lots of money in the bank. I had artwork, cars, motorcycles, everything. They took everything.

Starting point is 00:17:17 They took everything. So yeah, so when I got out, it was naked, man. I had to start completely over. But that's where Dan came in. When I got to prison, it was naked, man, I had to start completely over. But that's where Dan came in. When I got to prison, I was in MDC, Metropolitan Tension Center in downtown LA, which is just a building with these little narrow windows in it, like these things on the wall. And you don't go outside. There's no outside, there's no, there's a cage really, it's not really outside.

Starting point is 00:17:43 But nine months in there, man, my hair fell out. I was like the whitest I ever was in my entire life. And I get on this bus ride and go out to Boron, California, to the prison camp. And just, you know, go through the gate and there's a pool and there's guys laying out there eating watermelon. And I was like, where are you going? You're on that. Yeah, so, and then that's where I met Dan at the weight pile and and born on prison camp,

Starting point is 00:18:08 or federal prison camp in boron, California. And because he knew of me, I knew of him. And if you ever go to prison, the one thing you will notice beyond the posity of available women to connect with. It's intellectual stimulation. There's very few smart people in prison. Generally, the smart people don't get caught. So you're left with the rest. And yeah, it was being able to talk to somebody.

Starting point is 00:18:38 So it's easy to find the other smart guy that's in there. Yeah, it's just gravitate to you, Jen. Yeah, real quick. We just gravitated towards each other. And, you know, he is the guy who encouraged me to write. Oh, interesting. And I actually wrote my first article in prison. Oh, that's great. Wow, now who did you write for initially?

Starting point is 00:18:59 There was a body building, it was like a newspaper, it was called Body Building Lifestyles. Mm-hmm. I think Jason Mathis, Mathis or something like that, But a bodybuilding was like a newspaper, it was called Bodybuilding Lifestyles. I think Jason Mathis, Mathis, something like that, was the guy who did that, really cool dude. And real pioneer, man, because that was like one of the first, you know, go against Weeter kind of, you know,

Starting point is 00:19:17 periodicals. And I was my, yeah, my first article was in there and that was when I was, you know. So explain that, what do you mean go against Weeter? Like, what were you put, what kind of common knowledge was he saying that you were, you were countering? Well, you know, we, like Weeter had, you know, the Weeter principles, you know, and a lot of it was just, you know, the progressive resistance principle.

Starting point is 00:19:38 Yeah. My low of Croton invented that in 660 BC, not Joe Weeter, you know. So, you know, that story, you know, lived in the Catholic. Right, put the cow over shoulder and walked up the hill every day until he made him a bull. So, yeah, so, I mean, you know, it was stuff like that. It would just kind of like buck, buck the, you know, the traditional common knowledge of we were promoting. So, and I don't even remember the article, what I said, what I wrote or anything.

Starting point is 00:20:09 And then when I got out of prison, a month or two later, the phone rings, and it's Steve Blackman from Muscular Development Magazine, who had just bought Muscular Development Magazine from like think York Barbell. And he wanted a food column column because I remember I was the muscle chef back in the day. That's right. And he wanted a food column and I said, yeah, be great. I'll be happy to write that. That's like three cents to my name at the

Starting point is 00:20:36 time. And when you go from making, you know, hundreds of thousands a year to three cents, it's a giant wake up call. So this guy wanted to pay me, you know, and I go, he goes, wait, I talk about compensation, and I go, you're gonna pay me? This is bodybuilding. Yeah. And because back then, nobody got paid. We had a picture in a magazine.

Starting point is 00:20:55 That was all you, that was the pay me running. Exactly. And no, he paid me 300 bucks for my first article, which was handwritten in ink. And it just went up from there, but Dan Dushane is the guy who told me that I should write, and that's what I did. Now back in those days, the articles and stuff

Starting point is 00:21:18 written for bodybuilding and muscle building and fitness and all that, they were very kind of clean and PG and nobody talked about the other sides of training, the other sides of, but you guys didn't. You guys covered it all. Did you get pushback? Oh. Oh boy.

Starting point is 00:21:36 Did we ever? Like the getting our seat at the Olympia, like in the back in the corner, you know? I mean, it was all kind, but it was, well, it was, people say, you know, I mean, it was all kind, but it was, people say, you know, I'm pro drug or pro whatever. I'm just anti hypocrisy. And, you know, weeder had all these guys, you know,

Starting point is 00:21:53 when these ads, these big giant dudes, you know, I'm not gonna name anybody's name. And, you know, and it's, you know, weeder's protein and weeder's amino acids and desiccated liver and shit. And we go, that's a crock of shit. He's like, I know, I'm doing his drug side. And what else? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:22:09 You know, and it was this whole thing. And it got so bad that we actually, at one point, went all natural. The magazine was like, all natural must go. I remember that. Yeah, that's where we really kicked ourselves and he asked that was the stupidest thing we ever did. And that was almost instantly out of business

Starting point is 00:22:25 in like one month. Oh my God. But yeah, by the time we got all the advertisers to change their ads, we were like ready to fold. Wow. So what was the response when you started? Because it felt like with bodybuilding, it was like a big secret.

Starting point is 00:22:39 It almost reminds me of like professional wrestling. Nobody talks about the fact that it's scripted, right? Right. Nobody talked about the other side. There's eaten a lot of vitamins. Yeah. Nobody wanted to talk about it. And then you guys were doing that. I mean, what was the response like from from the athletes and everybody else? Well, as you can imagine, it was kind of too cited. You know, we had the industry who was like, what the fuck are you guys doing? You're a rock in the

Starting point is 00:23:02 out. You're rocking a boat. You're upset're upsetting the apple card Don't do that and and Drugs you got to remember now Ben at this at this there's a lot of things going on at the same time during this time frame At the peak of that Ben Weeter was running all over the world trying to get bodybuilding into the Olympics That's right, and I mean that's like trying to get a hooker into a convent. I mean, what are you doing? Yeah, you know, you can't, the most regular work in the world. You're gonna try and get the most drug the guys in there. I mean, what the hell's wrong with you?

Starting point is 00:23:32 It's also objective, yeah. Right, so, you know, Ben's flying around trying to do that and I'm like talking about everybody's drug cycles and we're like, how much, you know, gear they're doing and Andri's monster died and you know, all the drugs he did and, you know, and just, so the pushback came from the federation, you know, the IFBB, the NPC. And I was always, I was always not necessarily for them, but I was always pro athlete. I was always promoting

Starting point is 00:23:58 the athletes. I was, you know, number one in my book was give these guys as much as you can give them because they're not getting anything anywhere else. So I was always trying to promote the athletes and to promote the sport, but I couldn't hide from the obvious. And my thinking was, isn't it better to talk about this and get it out in the open and get science behind it and get people understanding what they're doing and not making blunders that's going to that are going to hurt them and possibly kill them in the case of DNP or insulin or something like that. You have potential dangers here that nobody's talking about. So let's get it.

Starting point is 00:24:34 Let's start talking about it. And the first thing you got to do is admit that this is what's going on. You can't walk around thinking that it's the wheat or overload principle that's making Mr. Olympias. It just doesn't work that way. I'm thinking that it's the weeder overload principle that's making Mr. Olympias, you know, it just doesn't work that way. I would have to say, you probably arguably saved more people than hurt

Starting point is 00:24:50 because people learned how to do things the right way. But before that, where would they get their information from? The big guy in the gym? Well, you know, it was kind of like one of those things where you know, you talk to the guy, I mean, I'm about my first bottle of Anivar, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, few fakes. Right. I say everything was pretty pretty real back. If you are stealing it from pharmacies or whatever back drive the Tijuana or yeah, or going to Mexico. I remember an article. I don't remember what magazine it was. It might have been muscular development or muscle media, but I don't remember who it was. I think it

Starting point is 00:25:33 was Bill Phillips who actually drove to Mexico, bought some steroids and brought it back and did a whole article on how he did it. I remember I remember that article and I I don't know. Yeah, it was it was a cool article. I don't think it was it. I remember that article and I don't know that. Yeah, it was a cool article. I don't think it was Bill. I think it was, who was his senior editor at the time? I'll think of it in a minute. But they were connected.

Starting point is 00:25:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was his idea. Go buy it. Because I was making probably five grand a month driving down to Teohwana, buying a few know, a few thousand bucks worth of steroids and driving them. It was the 80s, it was before the 1990, you know, law came in, so it was, there weren't schedule three drugs yet. There were just prescription items. There was no different bringing steroids back in penicillin. So there were just prescription items. So we'd go down and

Starting point is 00:26:21 buy a shit ton of them, bring them back to LA, sell them all and drive back down and buy more. And it was like, I was not the only guy doing that. So the stuff was real, but just nobody knew how to use it. Then he had Zampano given Sunday school and you know, in the back of Gold's gym and of course Dan's book, you know, his book Underground Story, Handbook One, and then subsequently the re-write and Underground Story at Handbook Two was more prolific. These were the, this was the go-to manual on how to use drugs, how to give yourself a shot, how to load, how to use one needle to load and the other needle to shoot, where to do it, how to do it, talked about side effects, talked about combinations, what went together, what didn't, how you manage the antiballic load versus the Androgen load.

Starting point is 00:27:10 And these were all things that nobody, nobody had a con, even a clue of. So, it was either read his shit and do what he said, or take this, wait and see. And a lot of people, there's a lot of guys now, me included, who are, you know, have remnants of that recklessness, you know, that we have to deal with today. But, you know, I've been taking testosterone replacement

Starting point is 00:27:36 now for like 11 years, because I've fucked myself up. So bad back then, but price to pay, but I think, you know, now that other people don't have to go through that, I think is a far better thing. Yeah, most of the knowledge I have on these substances comes from those books. It's actually those books reading them because those are so fascinated. And now before those books came out was the use of selective estrogen receptor modulators, like Nolvidex and Clomid, were those widespread or did it happen after those books came out where people started to understand to take

Starting point is 00:28:09 things to work with estrogen and the post-cycle therapy and all that stuff. All of that stuff came through them down. All of what you guys do today as part of Contest Prep, all of the drugs that you use, all of the methodology, the protocols, he was the guy who invented all of it. So if you're taking metformin, the Vanitol sulfate, clean buterole, nolvidex,

Starting point is 00:28:35 clomid, you know, HCG. The HCG clomid, you know, that whole post-cycle therapy protocol came from him. All of that shit came from him. Because nobody, because back in the Arnold era, it was just, you take a little deca and six weeks before the show, those guys didn't do a lot of drugs,

Starting point is 00:28:56 compared to Lee speaking, because nobody knew, no one knew how to do it. And then the ancillary drugs that you used to go with it, nobody had a clue about those, they didn't even know what they were. They weren't even, um, conjoined to our industry back then. It was him who went into the medical literature. He made his fake UCLA ID and went into the library at UCLA and read and copied and, you know, he made a fake use fake ID to go read books. Well, we actually, it was a couple of us to do, because we had to get on campus,

Starting point is 00:29:27 because you see a lot of medical library, we didn't have med line or any, there was no computers. So we had to like, What a great hustle. Yeah. Hustle in the learn, shit. Yeah, that's cool. I'm curious too, like, okay, so I heard somewhere along the line,

Starting point is 00:29:41 like after World War II is really where they developed like, anabolic steroids, like, do you know, like the whole War II is really where they developed, like, Annabelle steroids. Like, do you know, like, the whole history of like, how it came to be in like, in medical practice, how they were using it? Well, yes, somewhat, I don't know the whole story, but I know the Germans invented, Diane Abel, and they, it was a,

Starting point is 00:30:00 I don't remember the exact reason why they invented it. I may have, I think it had a military implication, but what happened was the East Germans started using it for athletic purposes. And it was the East Germans and then the Russians and the Bulgarians that all behind they are in curtain and started getting into this. And then it really came to a head when the women were using it.

Starting point is 00:30:27 The women's East German women swim team is the one that these women showed up and they look like basically me and a bathing suit. They're looking at it with a pair of socks rolled up in their trunks. I mean, it was obvious. There was just these chicks are different. Yeah, so a little different.

Starting point is 00:30:46 I use chicken quotes. So, yeah, and it came out of that that it was a, the Germans invent, I think, I'll think, but before this is over, I'll probably think of the dude's name. But it was Diana Ball was the first real drug that infiltrated, that actually crossed from medical to sports. And if you look back at the steroid control act of 1990 and the hearings that preceded before that,

Starting point is 00:31:15 you'll see that it was football players in Diana Ball that were the problem, that the government was trying to fix. And that was the one, that was the first one that I think the first bodybuilder started messing with if I'm not mistaken, right? Larry Scott and the first Olympia, I think he would take like a tab of D-Ball or whatever it is.

Starting point is 00:31:32 It was, and then Dekka, Derablein was the second one. And that was the original stack, right? D-Ball, Dekka, and D-Ball. The original masking stuff. Now since you've been around since like the conception of this stuff, what have you seen as far as the evolution? Like we mentioned Arnold, right? And a lot of people argued, was he natural? Was he not natural? Another guy took stuff. It was just nowhere near what they take today. Like, what does that evolution look like? Like about what was he taking

Starting point is 00:31:56 back then and those guys taking and then where we are? Let me add a little bit to that to that because that's a great question because you saw clear differences in bodybuilders from the 50s and 60s to the 70s, then you saw another evolution in the 80s, and then there was a huge evolution after Dorian hit the scene, and then you saw another revolution right around the time that Ronnie started winning or whatnot, and now you have these guys. So what's going on this whole time? Because it can't be the training. I don't think.

Starting point is 00:32:25 Well, partly, I think it was three, I think it was three succinct things. It was definitely the drugs, it was the nutrition, and it was the training. Okay, so let's go back to, at least where I'm familiar. The Arnold era is where I first started paying attention. I don't really, before that it was kind of nebulous, but I really, I really didn't think it mattered

Starting point is 00:32:44 because bodybuilding was nothing until Arnold showed up. So back then, guy would go on a cycle six or eight weeks before a contest. They wouldn't take any drugs in the off season. None, zero. And they would just eat whatever they thought was the right thing to eat. Now was the theory back then because it was mainly just

Starting point is 00:33:04 to hold onto the muscle that they. Now, was that was the theory back then because it was mainly just to hold on to the muscle that they had built, is that why? Well, because you were dieting, and the theory was that if you took, you know, antibiotics, you would, we would preserve muscle mass in the, you know, with calorie restriction. Right, right. So that was really where that mindset came from.

Starting point is 00:33:19 But back then it was six, you know, eight, maybe eight or 10 weeks, but it was about eight weeks before a contest they'd start maybe Deca and Diana Ball or Deca and whatever. And it mild shit. And certainly not two, three grams a week. And then the second era was probably after the Arnold era was, you know, Lee, I guess that there was a sort of kind of a dead zone in there when you had Samir and Chris Dickerson and, you know, you had

Starting point is 00:33:50 Zane winning and Franco winning and it was kind of like not really you know, mind blowing and then all of a sudden Lehanie showed up and things got a little different but Lehanie was natural for this first two or three Olympias. You're kidding me. Yeah, so I did not know that. Well, he was, Leigh Hanney's a very religious, spiritual guy and he felt that putting those drugs in his body was against God. Wow. And he had a real hard time, a very hard time coming

Starting point is 00:34:18 to grips with having to use them. And his last Olympia was, his last Olympia because he just couldn't do it anymore. And Dorian was just, you know, right there, you know, too good. And Dorian can give a shit. So, you know, he was bad-ass. So, you know, that's kind of morphed into there. And then when Dorian came, everybody thinks Dorian's thing was drugs.

Starting point is 00:34:43 And, you know, it really wasn't. Dorian was insane with the intensity he could generate when he trained. He was the only Mr. Olympia that took Mike Mencer's high intensity training program to the Nth degree. His book, Blood and Guts is based off of Arthur Jones. Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:02 And Blood and Guts is the name of his blood and guts. Do you ever watch his training videos? Yeah, oh, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think guts is the name of his blood. Yeah, guts. Do you ever watch his training videos? What are your training videos? Him and Leroy Davis training? Oh, man. You'll get a fuck, you'll get sore watching it. You'll go out of the gym and do PRs all day after you watch those two together.

Starting point is 00:35:15 Yeah, I mean, crazy. So Dory and trained like a maniac. I mean, only in the sense that there are, I have learned over the over all these years, almost 40 years doing this, the number one thing that you need to do to be a great bodybuilder is concentrate. You have to be able to generate intensity

Starting point is 00:35:37 because muscle growth, your body doesn't give a shit about winning the Olympia. It doesn't even know what the Olympia is. Your body is a reactive organism. You pinch yourself with a pin. Immediately, the body begins to do something about that. It signals pain to the brain, to know that you have, you know, need to address this.

Starting point is 00:35:59 It's got, you know, to release adrenaline, to, you know, dead in the pain, keep you awake, and it immediately starts healing, immediately starts healing. So as a mechanism of survival, so building muscle is a survival mechanism. You stress your body to the point where you cannot complete what your brain is asking it to do. If you can drive that to a point of actually momentarily interrupting the signal

Starting point is 00:36:26 from your brain near muscle to contract, you have ostensibly reached failure. That's real failure. No, it hurts too much. I'm going to quit. That's not a failure. Failure is your body fails. Literally fails. That's the stimulus to survive.

Starting point is 00:36:40 The body then perceives this musculature is inadequate for the stress that it's being subjected to. And if that stress is day in, day out, day in, day out, the body gets the message, it's gotta improve. Adaptor die. Adaptor, exactly, exactly. So there's no, you know, all the other bullshit that's been created over the years means zero. The body only knows about saving itself. and that's why it builds muscles.

Starting point is 00:37:07 So it's either going to recruit fibers. If there's not enough fibers, it's going to induce hyperplasia and make more, or hypertrophy make the ones that's got bigger. But it is only doing that as a response to the stimulus needs to survive. So, the best bodybuilder is gonna be the guy who can drive himself to that point. Now, you know, all these volume guys are gonna come back and say, well, we preached only, you know, 40 sets of, you know, 20 pound curls.

Starting point is 00:37:39 And that doesn't matter. You'll definitely get an effect from volume. And if you wanna pull genetics into the play, you know, you can have the most genetically gifted guy. You can feed him Snickers bars and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and he's going to, he's going to win. I crack up when these guys who I prepped Ronnie Coleman for the Olympia. My dog could prep Ron Coleman for the Olympia. Did you see that guy before he took drugs? Yeah. He was a freak before that. Give me a 60 year old post men appausal woman

Starting point is 00:38:05 and do winter pro card and the master's now I'm impressed. Sure. And so I really don't find any big wow factor in somebody telling me they prep Phil Heath or any Mr. or this just means nothing to me because that's not a lot of work. So when Dan's your question, I know I'm getting way off on. So, you know, when, to answer your question,

Starting point is 00:38:26 I know I'm getting way off of it. Yeah, no problem. I had to do that. I live in the South now. So, you know, Dorian's image was what was so awe-inspiring. And people automatically had to attach why to that. So, and there were these great pictures of Dorian towards the end of his career, automatically how to how to attach why to that. So and there were these great pictures of Dorian

Starting point is 00:38:47 towards the end of his career reason, his underwear and socks, you see him? Oh, that's the famous one. The black one. The black one. Oh, that's the famous one. The black one. The black one.

Starting point is 00:38:55 The black one. Who could not look at that and be like, what the fuck? You know, and immediately, of course. Nobody ever looked like that before. Ever. Yeah. Ever. And immediately, he'll drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs.

Starting point is 00:39:05 So he must be doing a lot of drugs. He wasn't, I mean, yes, he did them. I know he met with Dan a couple of times. I know they weren't talking brownie recipes. So, you know, so that was definitely in the works, but I saw him train and his nutrition too, was, you know, right on,

Starting point is 00:39:24 and he was really the first guy that attacked his nutrition too, you know, right on, and he was really the first guy that attacked all three. You said programming nutrition and steroids. With the same intensity. Yeah, because I remember the year he took second to Lee, and then the year he came back and won, he had gained, I don't know, how many pounds of muscle. He looked like a different person,

Starting point is 00:39:41 and he had talked about how he had changed his training, because before that, he trained the traditional bodybuilding type of style of workout and then I think he met it was either Mike Menser or I don't know and he had changed his training to it was yeah He had changed his training completely and he had credited his training to the added muscle But there's always that speculation that the drugs took a new a new level well, and they You know, they did, but it's unfair to pigeonhole them. Sure. You know, I look at contest prep, you know,

Starting point is 00:40:10 with my clients as a pie chart. And you plot, you know, slices of the pie. And for me, at least half of it is nutrition. Sure. You know, a giant chunk is training. And if you really look at drugs, as far as I'm concerned with all the other stuff, you stuff, you can do, it's just a sliver. Maybe 15%, 20 maybe at the most.

Starting point is 00:40:31 It's not the end all. Trying to convince people of that sometimes is a very difficult thing because they don't want to work, especially this generation. So, to try to explain in words, how Dory and trained, it's almost impossible. I've seen him train and it's just like, what's like nothing nobody else is doing. I saw him, he and Mike Moderazo were in Gold's Gym one day doing Ben Over Rose.

Starting point is 00:41:04 And it was like one exercise. I mean, they had done a couple warm upsets. him and he and Mike Moderazo were in Gold's Gym one day doing Ben Over Rose and It was like one exercise. I mean, they had done a couple warm-up sets Dorian put through had three 15 on the on the bar He starts doing Ben Over Rose. He did like a million of them and they were till he couldn't possibly do another one Put the bar down Mike stripped the 45 off each side and he started doing them again until he couldn't like do another one and then he stripped another 45 off each side and he took 135, he rode that till it was done and then took his belt off and went home. That was it, done.

Starting point is 00:41:35 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And to his detriment, he trained it at super high intensity because then it's... He tore himself apart. He ripped all his, you know, he ripped his, tried, he ripped muscles apart because you ripped, you know, muscles apart because he was able to generate so much intensity. So that era, you know,

Starting point is 00:41:52 and then Dory was the first guy over 250 on stage. Yeah, and I feel like everybody chasing him was what caused the whole kamikaze style of the 90s where you guys consuming 600 grams of protein and messing with all kinds of other drugs. And you have a lot of these guys aren't with us today. What's the guy, that's when guys started dying was, I'm not saying that he caused that,

Starting point is 00:42:11 but mark that in history that was before him zero, after him a bunch. And that may just be coincidence, but I don't think so. When Dory walked out on stage, back then it was, this guy's like, where did he come from? Then the 90s came and the 90s for some reason blessed us with some amazing genetic pool

Starting point is 00:42:36 that just has never ever since then or now has come around again. You had Chris Cormier, Nassers, Lee Priest, Paul Delette, Flex Wheeler, Kevin LaRoni, J. Culler came in towards the end. These guys were just like, whoever saw anybody like that. When Flex Wheeler and Ronnie Coleman in 98 were standing there, you know, to see who was going to win the Olympia, even though Flex already knew they were going to give it to Ronnie. You just looking at the, I was in the front row, man, and just like, what, where, what is this, this has gone so far, because they were so good, you know, and

Starting point is 00:43:16 um, it, that, that, would you say that the 90s is, is when the death of female bodybuilding really started, not the death, I hate to say that, but really the decline of female bodybuilding, because it was taken off for a while before that, and you had written some articles about this in the 90s, and I'm sure you probably got some heat form, but the women started to look totally different right around this time. Yeah, well, I was Dan's fault too,

Starting point is 00:43:40 to some degree, and mine, and maybe we'll one or two other guys. But, well, and mine, and maybe one or two other guys. But, well, you know, if you go back to Rachel McGlish and Lisa Lyons, that era, they couldn't win a bikini contest today, okay? So, there's definitely been an evolution, but it's kind of like a norm, anytime you invent something,

Starting point is 00:44:02 and enough time, you invented the car in 1903, okay, now look at a car. You wanna say it was drugs. I mean, it was just evolution, evolution of design, evolution of knowledge, evolution of concept, evolution of applications, all kinds of things that come together to evolve something from its inception

Starting point is 00:44:20 to its current state and then into the future. So, you have to factor that in, but women's bodybuilding had gotten to the point where the women were doing the drugs, the guys were doing. And that's a female body. You put male hormones in it. You're going to have a problem. And unless you really know what you're doing and can manage that. And Dan, and, you know, predominantly at that point, started working with women.

Starting point is 00:44:44 And that's why I predominantly work with women is because I really learned that through him. Women are completely different animal when it comes to taking drugs because a tiny, tiny little bit of testosterone in a woman's body makes a huge difference. You really change it there. 10 milligrams a week,

Starting point is 00:45:03 a guy wouldn't even feel that. And a woman changes them completely. Completely. So, you got to be really careful. And those drugs women definitely should not do. And then there's drugs women should do or could do. And unfortunately, we didn't know that back then. So, you know, there was, like I used the term willing lab rat

Starting point is 00:45:22 because back when Dan was figuring this stuff out, the women he worked with were all willing lab rats. They did whatever he said, and we learned a tremendous amount from them. But yeah, they started going a little overboard. Then what happened was you had the evolution of the schmo. So, as opposed to men who were always viewed as an athlete, women were looked at as sex objects when they started getting more muscle

Starting point is 00:45:50 and it became fetishized. And there became, as a whole underground cult that started supporting women, women from a sexual standpoint, like almost prostitution, sessions, wrestling, things, or things. That's when it started. That's when it started. That's when it started.

Starting point is 00:46:05 It was back then when the women are all giant beefed up and you know, had these giant legs and the guys wanted to get their head squeezed. And you know, so, you know, When did you finally learn that? Like, cause I remember the first time that I actually had somebody reach out to me and do what they call it muscle worship.

Starting point is 00:46:20 Muscle worship. Right, and I was just blown away that people wanted to offer me money to like flex on a video stuff. So again, you're you're a part of the you know conception of this. Well, how did that for how did that knowledge come to you the first time? Well, it was kind of a funny story. Yeah, it makes me laugh when I think about it. Dan lived in an apartment in Venice in the middle. I lived in it was a house converter into apartments. I lived in the front. He lived in the middle and then the third apartment in Venice in the middle. I lived in it was a house, converted into apartments. I lived in the front, he lived in the middle, and then there's a third apartment in the back,

Starting point is 00:46:49 it was rented by this chick named Laura Vukov, who was a big ass female bodybuilder, who did sessions. Back then it was wrestling, so you know, the guys would wrestle with them, and then they posed and feel them, and then there was the the hand release and it was really seedy. So, and I just thought Laura was kind of a kooky chick because in Venice you would go to Gold's gym just to see the crowd. There were nut cases in there. Girls were training and shredded fish nets and stuff hanging out. It I mean, it was a scene. So I just, the Laura was one of them, you know?

Starting point is 00:47:28 So then one, I'm sitting, I'm reading a book in my couch one night and I hear this smashing, slamming, bang, stuff breaking and go, what the fuck? And I go bang on dance door. What are you doing? You're remodeling the kitchen. You know, what are you?

Starting point is 00:47:43 What are you, what are you, it's not me, it's her. So I go, what the fuck is she doing? And're remodeling the kitchen. You know, what are you? What are you doing? It's her. So I go, what the fuck is she doing? And he goes, she's wrestling. I'm wrestling. So I wait a while. Door opens, door closes. I guess somebody left at Walk or a Bang and Laura's door.

Starting point is 00:47:57 All her furniture is pushed against the wall. And she's got this wrestling mat on the floor with the circle in it, you know, the whole thing. And I go, what are you doing? And this is a chick who has these mannequin heads on her back porch with wigs on them, drying out, you know. She's weird as fuck. Weird as fuck. Wow. So she was wrestling dudes and it was like,

Starting point is 00:48:18 oh, I get it. Okay, so you're a prostitute. Of sorts. So yeah, guys would pay her to wrestle, to wrestle, and sometimes they would film it, so he could go jerk off to it later. And there was just that, then I started learning about her friends

Starting point is 00:48:36 and what other ones were doing. Then I remember the Olympia, and the women's Olympia used to be a standalone event. It was held in New York at the Beacon Theater by itself. And I remember we went to the Olympia and we were coming back from dinner and this we were going upstairs and one of the competitors at Dan knew was leaving.

Starting point is 00:48:58 And, or we were leaving and she was going upstairs. We were going to dinner and she was coming back and we go, you know, we wanted to come with us, where are you going? She was, I'm going to work. Because they'd come to town and start lining up clients to wrestle them in the hotel room. That is so interesting. That's a whole other side to that world

Starting point is 00:49:18 that a lot of people aren't even familiar with. Well, internet. Oh yeah, yeah. But then if you look at it now, if you look at Phoenix Rising or any of the places now where we The and I if this pains me to say it because I still look at them as great athletes and dedicated athletes honest dedicated athletes It pains me to say it, but yeah

Starting point is 00:49:39 There are the ones that are making money at it now or the ones that are still doing tricks And the guys that are supporting like shows that are given female bodybuilders a lot of money are the guys that are making money at it now are the ones that are still doing tricks. And the guys that are supporting like shows that are giving female bodybuilders a lot of money are the guys that are supporting female bodybuilders because of the fetish aspect of it, not because they are, and they're probably gonna disagree with me, but I don't care.

Starting point is 00:50:01 They're doing it because they wanna maintain, they don't wanna lose that, they don't wanna, they don't want them to go away. Wow, it's that big then, it's great. It's got to be bigger now. It's more. Yeah, oh, absolutely. And international too.

Starting point is 00:50:11 Right, right, right. I can imagine if it's hit my DM and I've been offered something that I had, I didn't even know what it was. I had to like Google search it. I really know, like no idea. Like I thought it was a joke because that was like someone trolling me at first. And then I realized after multiple ones had come in,

Starting point is 00:50:24 I thought, wow, these people really want me just to flex and send me to do a weird shit like that. And then I found out there's this whole culture around it. I'm not by your posing trunks. They'll do dirty posing trunks. And there's just some sick people out there. Wow. And unfortunately, bodybuilding has elements

Starting point is 00:50:43 that fulfill all of that. Well, and you also gotta think, I have empathy for the women because it's not like you know, bodybuilding has elements that fulfill. Well, and you also gotta think, you know, I have empathy for the women because it's not like there's money in it. Like that's, I think that's the mistake. A lot of people think that like you can make all this money being a pro woman's bodybuilder or a pro even bodybuilder

Starting point is 00:50:57 that there's just not a lot of money and so you end up going, oh fuck, I put all my time and effort into this thing. No money, oh shit, here's these people that wanna pay me some money if I wrestle around with them and then let them jerk off. What morality is just inversely proportional to their income. The lower your moral, the more money you're gonna make in bodybuilding if you're a woman. Interesting.

Starting point is 00:51:17 So I will caveat this to the end to my dying breath. I don't like saying it, but it is the truth. Now, what was your connection to, because I know you talked a lot about Dan, but with Bill Phillips back in those days, because when I remember specifically, a shift in the direction of some of the information that Bill was putting out,

Starting point is 00:51:41 at first he was a part of that no holds bar, give all the information type of stuff. And then he, I don't know if he bought EAS or he created EAS supplements. He did. But those supplements started to come out and he was the first guy or that was the first supplement

Starting point is 00:51:55 that really pushed and promoted Craya Teen, which fucking worked. And I remember some of those ads of those days. I remember him saying something like Vanito Soulfate was like Deca and Craya Teen was like Dianna Ball and their effects, which I'm sure he got a ads of those days. I remember him saying something like Vanityl Soulfate was like Deca and Crayteen was like Diana Ball and their effects, which I'm sure he got a lot of heat for. That wasn't Dan's articles, but it was Bill, right? Or T.C. Loma.

Starting point is 00:52:13 Oh, okay. I told you I remember his name before. Oh, there you go. He was the guy who brought the steroids back from, he wrote the article about it. And I think he ended up not bringing them back. I think he threw them out before he went across the border. Oh, that's right. Or maybe there may be another article where he brought it back, but I just think

Starting point is 00:52:27 they remember that one. But here's what happens when you have a magazine and a supplement company. Your magazine is going to be supported by your advertisers, okay? So you can't, you can't alienate your advertisers by saying that your creatine is better than their creatine. So you have to just talk about creatine. And it gets a little dicey because, you want them to buy yours. You don't want them to buy your advertisers, but at the same time, you want your advertisers money. So, you know, how do you do that?

Starting point is 00:52:57 Right, exactly. It's a balancing. Bill Phillips was really good at it. And he was, I mean, a very brilliant move when he wrote that supplement guide. Guide. That's right. It was like a ranking or rating guide.

Starting point is 00:53:10 Every single one. Right. Really it was a way to prevent a sell. But he, I would have to say, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, you know better than I do, I would have to say he kind of invented or started the modern supplement marketing machine with EAS and with all that.

Starting point is 00:53:27 It went one of the first like mega million supplement companies if I'm not mistaken. Well, Metrix was first, Bill Phillips and him and then they split. He worked, I don't know he worked with that. Yeah, they were, they were, they were, they asked him, they knew that. That was the original.

Starting point is 00:53:41 That was what's his name, Dr. Connolly. Scott Connolly and, right, that was, so that was the original hook up was what's his name, Dr. Connolly, Scott Connolly. Yeah, yeah. Right, so that was the original hook up. And then metrics took off and then Bill started Muscle Media 2000 and then whatever his supplement company is. Yeah, and so watching that process, what was that like for you and now seeing where everything is at now?

Starting point is 00:54:02 Well, it was kind of cool because, again, before computers and the internet, the way we had computers just now have internet really. Well, we had internet, but it wasn't like it is today. There's no social media. Dial up. There was a dial up. Half hour just to see a picture.

Starting point is 00:54:16 You have mail. Oh, yeah. I remember that long code. You had to put in to get some porn out of the computer. I was printing it off forever. Yeah. I know. Mom off forever. Yeah, I know. It was mom's home. No, sorry, I'm in load.

Starting point is 00:54:27 Come on, come on. So, yeah, but it was that era. And we created the rivalry in the magazines, because he had Ron Harris work in form, and Ron Harris would rate all the body building magazines and kind of like overview them so you didn't have to buy them. And I started on the attack mode for him. And we actually started creating this rivalry

Starting point is 00:54:55 in the magazines. We're calling each other out, calling each other names, like making this cut. And so month by month, people were waiting for this. We had, because you couldn't get it on social media, we were waiting for this. What's Romano going to say? What's Phillips going to say?

Starting point is 00:55:12 And we're back in Frank Frank, got so heated that he actually flew me out to EAS, Muscle Media 2000, and in Colorado, and met with me to just like, we got to cool this down, you know, and he you know He showed me he had I will have to say I probably have been Really blown away about two or three times in my life and seeing his place was one of them Oh, I mean he even had the computer cables called you know purple, you know the same color is his Lamborghini and you know It was just over the top

Starting point is 00:55:41 same color as his Lamborghini. And, you know, it was just over the top. It was incredible. The way he had TV screens coming out of the ceiling, he had theater room, he had his gym, he had all this cool stuff that you would want. You know? And his- And how old is he at that?

Starting point is 00:55:59 Well, how old are you and how old is he about this time? I'm like 30, mid 30s, I'm probably mid 30s, mid to late 30s and he's probably about the same. You were about the same age. Wow, wow. Yeah, he was like the first mogul in that hole. One of the first supplement moguls I would say. Marketing genius.

Starting point is 00:56:19 If I was gonna put a label on Bill Phillips, I would say marketing genius. Now him and Dan were close for a while. Dan worked for, wrote for Muscle Media 2000. You know, ultimate orange was, well now that was champion nutrition, that was after. I don't remember what supplements Dan Mayer

Starting point is 00:56:37 may not have been involved with at EAS, but he was a monthly columnist for Muscle Media 2000. The second time he went to jail, he was writing all his articles for Muscle Media 2000, freehand and sending them in. So yeah, they had a long procedure. Now is he going to jail for the information that he's sharing or is he going to jail

Starting point is 00:56:58 for getting caught with stuff? Like what's he going to jail for? Um, well, yeah. A couple of things. The first time, the first time was because he, I'm trying to think of was this was the first or the second. I mean, how to do with Clean Viewed Are All. I think this was the second time.

Starting point is 00:57:17 I don't really remember the first time, the first might have been just drug sales. I don't remember. But at one point it was the FDA had, somebody had complained to the FDA about a bottle of clin buterole, and it didn't have a label on it. And he actually, his actual charge stemmed from the fact

Starting point is 00:57:37 that it didn't have a label on it. And the FDA chose to interpret that however they did. The problem was they had to get rid of them because he was blowing all the steroid cases. I went to one of the court cases, a couple clients of mine were involved and they hired him as an expert witness to determine that the amount of drugs that they had

Starting point is 00:57:58 was actually for personal use, not for trafficking. Because there was a giant garbage bag full of them. And the government's witness was testifying and the defense attorney asked the government witness, where do you get all your steroid knowledge from? And he points to Dan and hope and court and so read his books. So they said to make a example out of it. And then that's exactly right. They made an example out of them. And then that's exactly right. They made an example out of them. Wow.

Starting point is 00:58:27 So doing this for as long as you have and watching the evolution of things, what do you think about the more recent disruption of how the internet and social media has kind of changed? Because all the information we got forever was through the magazines, and that's done. Those magazines are almost all dead, and now it's all done through the internet.

Starting point is 00:58:46 What do you think about this whole? Well, social media has, it can be a good thing and it can be a bad thing. I've prepped clients for competition, various sports for like 30 years. I never advertise, I never run an ad, I never talk to anybody like, hey, tell them I know how I helped you and me.

Starting point is 00:59:11 And in fact, the opposite, I say, don't tell anybody I'm working for you, especially if you're a CrossFit athlete because they know you're working with John Romano, you're getting drug tested tomorrow. I know. And so I just, I keep that very low key and people need me and they find me.

Starting point is 00:59:24 And that's always how I've operated. Today, everybody's an expert and their expertise doesn't come from a university or some kind of certification body. No variety comes from how many likes they have. And they're experts at needlessly complicating things. One guy, for example, nutrition coach, and they're experts at needlessly complicating things. One guy, for example, nutrition coach, he's, I walk into his office and he's got a piece of paper on the wall about the size that I white screen over there.

Starting point is 00:59:53 It's giant, and it's got little teeny tiny writing on it, like 10 point, you know, font. And it's the metabolic pathway and he's got the crebs cycle on there and pyruvate pathways. And I'm like, what the fuck do you need that for? Oh, I teach just all my clients. So they understand what's wouldn't eat a carbohydrate, how it breaks down into glucose.

Starting point is 01:00:12 And what's there? And I go, why? You know, it's Tommy. It's three ounces of potato and leave it at that, you know? So what I find is that is that everybody's looking for their point of difference. And some guys try to come across as I'm so much smarter than everybody else, because I know the pyruvate pathway. I can tell you how ADP converts to ATP, and I'm really good at that.

Starting point is 01:00:38 And then you got the guys doing squats on a Bosu ball, and you got everybody doing all this crazy shit to try to make them look different than the next guy So those some little higher them. So I Just think why are you needlessly complicating this? I would do it the opposite way I would insanely simplify it and to it to attract people to it Which is you know my my system is so freaking easy I mean well We saw this in the this you before we got on air

Starting point is 01:01:04 We were talking a little bit about this and you were asking questions about Mind Pump and part of the reason why the programs were so successful was that's so basic because we squat, we deadlift, we overhead press, we barbell row. It's like what we had seen, we had, you know, we've been doing this

Starting point is 01:01:21 for almost 20 years, South 20 years and we watched this evolution had, you know, we've been doing this for almost 20 years, South 20 years, and we watched this evolution of, you know, really solid stuff that we all learned back in the 80s and 90s, like that are so staple movements that everybody should be doing. And then it progressed to exactly what you said, these, you know, both suballs and create, turn in sideways on machines and super fancy. Yeah. Let me just move.

Starting point is 01:01:43 What is the most creative thing you can do in the gym and it now became this, you know, as a trainer, who could come up with the most creative workouts, not the most effective workouts. And we've kind of just all we really did, nothing's magical about what we revisited, the shit that really fucking works. And sometimes every once in a while,

Starting point is 01:01:59 we get a refund, you know, someone asks for their money back and what it always is is, well, these, I know what these are. I thought there'd be a lot more. Yeah, there's these exercises. All the rest of it. These exercises are so basic, everybody knows what a squat or a barbell row, yeah, but fucking do them.

Starting point is 01:02:15 You know what I say? Do them right. Yeah, do them right. It's stick with them. It's not doing all the bullshit. Right, right, right. Well, you know, what I say is, you know, when I give somebody a diet and I go, you know,

Starting point is 01:02:24 I can get to something internet for free, you know, what you pay what I say is, you know, why give somebody a diet and I go, you know, you can get to something internet for free, you know, what would you pay me for is coaching, you know, and that's what that's the art that's lost. You just think of they can just pile on the complication and it's going to always going to look great. And if you can follow it, you'll get results. But I own a gym in Mexico and and it's it's a different. You're still on a gym in Mexico? I'm involved. I'm not, I sold most of my interest in it.

Starting point is 01:02:47 Now I just have a small tiny little interest in it. Is there a pharmacy around next to it? In it, I have a pharmacy. I knew it. I knew it. That's the fucking next to it. Fuck it next to it. I'm gonna get that personal training package right there.

Starting point is 01:03:02 Well, I mean, the whole Mexico steroid is a whole other topic we should, if you want a really comical thing to talk about, but all the steroids in Mexico are faking or shit. So, yeah, so when I've discovered all that down there, it's evolved, but now that's what there is, almost all of it's gone from the pharmacy. They hardly saw anything in the pharmacy anymore. None of it's dosed the way we need it,

Starting point is 01:03:24 and it's really expensive. So it created a great underground market, but for unscrupulous people, you take a kilo of testosterone powder, costs 700 bucks, a kilo of premable on powder, costs 13,000. And when you mix them up on the bottle, there's no label on it.

Starting point is 01:03:41 They look identical. You know, so if you're an unscrupulous drug manufacturer down there, which 99.9% of them are, you're gonna get an order for Prima-Ballin and you're gonna make a 25 milligram testosterone syppianate bottle and you're gonna stick the Prima-Ballin label on it. And that's what these guys are getting for drugs.

Starting point is 01:04:00 Now that's okay for you and me, but when you get a chick doing it, that's a big problem. So, you know, so, you know, that's why we got into that down there, manufacturing, you know, real steroids, because there was just such a need for it. There were just no, there were just nothing real anywhere ever.

Starting point is 01:04:18 And you know, people always say, Mexico is just the bodybuilder paradise. How come none of them are big? Because, A, they don't have to eat, B, they don't have to train, and see their don't have to train and see their drugs are shit. So, you know, and since, you know, then we've actually now are getting some, you know, decent Mexican, I mean, some of them will blow your mind.

Starting point is 01:04:35 So, is what happened, I'm assuming what happened is when guys like you were crossing the border and this was becoming a regular thing, and this was even when I was young and first coming in this space, I had friends that did that. In fact, I even thought about going down because they were making a ton of money doing this. I'm assuming that what happened was people in Mexico got smart.

Starting point is 01:04:54 Man, there's people coming and buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of steroids. Let's start watering this shit down and cutting it basically, right? Well, no. That's a good, well, sort of, but mostly no. I'll tell you why. When you first cross the border in Mexico,

Starting point is 01:05:10 you're not in Mexico. You're in what's called the border zone. 20 kilometers later, you cross another border, and that's where you actually get your visa stamped, and that's where you're actually in Mexico. So that border zone is like no man's land. There's no law there. There's no law there. There's no regulation there. They sell veterinary steroids in the human pharmacy. They sell

Starting point is 01:05:30 my stuff in the in the pharmacy. You know, you can't do that. You know, um, and, and, um, and today, if you buy steroids in Tijuana, it's all fake, completely fake. Um, there's, there's the only pharmaceutical drugs available in a pharmacy in Mexico now are Sustinon preloads, Andrea all gel caps, Proviarant tabs, Deca preloads, 50 milligrams each, two in a pack for 40 bucks, and that's it. So there's there's there's there's almost there's almost nothing zero. They even took a premable almost the last one that left shearing dried that one up. So there's there's virtually nothing and everything is in nothing's in multi use everything's in a one CC dose and I think two two hundred fifty milligrams is the highest. So that's not bodybuilder friendly at all. So for the for

Starting point is 01:06:23 the body builder the Mexican bodybuilders, they need a drugs. So for the, for the bodybuilder, the Mexican bodybuilders, they need a drugs. So that's where that comes from. The transient drugs across the border is very little of that now because the penalties are so high. And there's so many UGLs in America now, you don't have to worry about getting stuff across the border now and you just get it in the mail

Starting point is 01:06:43 and it's you know safe as Safe as can be so the importing steroids today from Mexico is almost nonexistent. Wow, so Although there is you know border activity, but like I said that stuff you're getting an abortor shit So if you're actually going into Mexico The stuff in the pharmacy is is you know not feasible and the stuff on on the street is shit. So we had a great opportunity to move in there and do something with that. Is that because the laws are gray over there or you can do whatever you want?

Starting point is 01:07:15 I mean, how's that work? I mean, how are you able to have a pharmacy in your gym? That's crazy. I actually moved it out of the gym, but it wasn't the gym for a while. Many of the laws down there are kind of like suggestions. They're not really laws, they're either, they're either like what you should do

Starting point is 01:07:33 and how much the cop can make on the side by like mentioning that to you, you know. So you like factor that into your business plan. You're like, okay, let's see here, this is gonna cost us this much to make. If a top stop says we're gonna probably have to pay him this much, okay, we can still have good enough margin. And the narcos.

Starting point is 01:07:50 You gotta satisfy, you gotta ask permission. Okay, so we're not doing anything where the cops are gonna care at all because it's just, they don't even know anything about it. But the narcos care because that's drug money, and you gotta get permission. So, you know, we went to them and they said, I won't give a shit about steroids. So, you know, but if we start making a billion pesos a month, they're going to be interested

Starting point is 01:08:13 and then we're going to have to cross that bridge and we come to it. But for right now, we're good. And so legally, it's not like here, legally, they don't care. They just, I mean, I mean, I've done steroid transactions right in front of cops. Oh wow. Two cops down there and there's nobody cares. It's illegal in the sense that you're not really supposed

Starting point is 01:08:34 to make a pharmaceutical drug in your backyard, but they don't care. There's nothing in it. And if a cop wants to make any noise about it, you're gonna give him a couple thousand pesos and he's gonna go away. And then if he comes back a month, you're gonna give him a couple thousand pesos and he's gonna go away. You know, and then if he comes back a month later, whatever you give him a couple thousand more,

Starting point is 01:08:49 it's just not that big a deal. Wow. Do you think steroids and a box there would should be legalized in the US? Absolutely. Now, absolutely, a billion percent, absolutely. Now, why? Like, what do people who think it should be illegal

Starting point is 01:09:02 saying and why are you thinking the wrong? The people who think it should be illegal are misinformed. And we went through a whole period of that back, you know, probably 15 years ago. Do you remember a kid named Taylor Hootin who killed himself? And they blamed it on this. Well, his father went on this crusade, you know, and he got testified in front of Congress

Starting point is 01:09:20 during the baseball hearings and made this big stink about how steroids killed his son. And, you know, the miraculous thing was not before and not since him has anybody killed themselves with steroids. So it was anomaly, you know, or it was just bullshit. And of course it was bullshit. He was on, he had psychological issues. His whole family does. His sister tried killing himself. His mother was on antidepressants. He was on antidepressants. And it was the antidepressants. He had psychological issues. His whole family does. His sister tried killing himself. His mother was on antidepressants. He was on antidepressants.

Starting point is 01:09:48 And it was the antidepressants that clinically showed. This case was covered in a bigger, stronger, faster documentary. Okay, I remember that. Yeah, we actually had them on there, don't we? Yes. So there was a whole movement to vilify steroids in the media. And you could, in the movie, we had a whole montage of reporters saying, well, steroids are kill you, steroids are bad, steroids are poison, steroids are kill you.

Starting point is 01:10:13 And that's what everybody believed was the mind. So you talk to anybody on the street and you say steroids, oh, they'll kill you. Why? How do you know? Because they heard it on the news. But it was totally not true. So right there, you have to pull back and say, well, how did this whole thing happen? And you got to go back to the story control act of 1990 and understand how Joe Biden, former vice president,

Starting point is 01:10:40 Joe Biden and Tom Lunder and Congressman bulldozed this law through Congress which is just all bullshit in spite of all the positive testimony from members of the AMA the DEA the Department of Health and Human Services all these departments Recommended against Scheduling steroids. It was only one lunatic psychiatrist that was a paid shill by By somebody in the in the and Biden's team that talked about psychological dependency and suicidal ideation and blah blah blah, which is totally not true. But the media already had it and already did the damage.

Starting point is 01:11:16 So right immediately you have the public mindset that they're bad, but they're not. So how do we know they're not? There's tons of studies that show they're bad, but they're not. So how do we know they're not? There's tons of studies that show they're not. In fact, you can find a recent study just came out that showed how high testosterone levels in older men reduce instance of heart attack. So you can find tons of positive studies that show the efficacy of steroids, especially in aging men. Just aging men right there, when you're testosterone replacement, that should be, you should be able to buy that at the supermarket. You shouldn't even have to go to the drug store for that. You know, I mean, my hormone levels are declining.

Starting point is 01:11:56 I want more. Why can't I get them? They're mine. My body used to produce them in enough quantity, and now that it's going down, if my body doesn't produce enough insulin, I can get on insulin, how come that's okay? It's not okay for testosterone.

Starting point is 01:12:09 So, right there, you gotta unravel that whole, you know, quagmire bullshit. Now to play devil's advocate, at some astronomical doses, there's some pretty bad side effects, right? Like some of the doses that people will use that don't know any better, because when they do these studies,

Starting point is 01:12:24 they're talking about high testosterone, they're typically within the range of what's considered high or low and normal, right? They're not like, you know, insane amounts of... Yeah, they're not Phil Histos, right? Right, right. Yeah, what are the, what are some of the dangers of taking the real real high doses? And is it mostly just the benign side effects? You got to, you got to quantify what that super high level is.

Starting point is 01:12:50 Too much sex is bad, too much money is bad, too much food. Too much food is bad. Too much of anything is bad. You can die drinking water. You got to quantify what's too much. I know personally a athlete has taken 5, you know, five grams a week. And the interesting thing about steroids is once you stop, in a man, not a woman, but in a male,

Starting point is 01:13:12 and once you stop, everything goes back to normal, okay? Within time, everything goes back to normal unless you've really fucked yourself up, but everything goes back to normal. So there's no, there's no, you know, long-term, negative side effects. I mean, there is the fact that, you know,

Starting point is 01:13:31 you may suppress your own production to the point when you get, you know, 40 or 50 years old, you're gonna have to go on replacement. But pretty much anybody 40 or 50 years old should go on replacement. It just renders how much? Does there also concern the concern for youth in the developmental process with that and getting introduced to it too early? Absolutely, but drugs in alcohol

Starting point is 01:13:50 or tobacco are falling to the same terms. Putting out an age limit to it. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's so funny to me. We live in a society where the two most dangerous drugs in the world are legal. Are legal. Right. and the government makes money off them okay tobacco and alcohol and then you put you know marijuana comes along oh yeah and they're for madness this is gonna you know you know you watch that video yeah I mean what a joke are you kidding me yeah I was like the driving the car and killing somebody yeah Yeah. I was like, I just kept my favorite dog that talks to him. I'm so disappointed in you. As a plot smoker, I'm always watching that go like,

Starting point is 01:14:31 I wouldn't find that shit. No, I'm just hilarious. No, what you got to do is smoke pot and then watch it. Because it's a whole new world. Where is that at, man? I'm missing this. Well, it's funny because, I mean, what you're saying is not, is not, I'm, I always, I supply think all drugs should be legal to some extent I think

Starting point is 01:14:47 people should be able to make those decisions for themselves I don't think it should be illegal to hurt yourself if that's what you decide to do or whatever but I do find it hypocritical that you know women can buy female hormones left and right as birth control and arguably female hormones are probably more dangerous to mess with than testosterone. Sure. Or you can be a girl and decide you identify more with a male and start taking testosterone.

Starting point is 01:15:12 That's perfectly acceptable legal and I'll give you your own bathroom. So it's so much hypocrisy wound up into this that it takes forever to unravel. But you know steroids are probably the least harmful of all of the drugs out there that people take. Certainly alcohol and tobacco are far worse and along with all the other ones. How about that one all? 80D medication these days. Yeah, it's fucking legal math. Crazy, right? Or Adderall or Riddlein or any of those drugs are given to kids for peace of mind. So steroids are really, by comparison, innocuous. I mean, you would have to take tons of them

Starting point is 01:15:57 for anything to really happen to you. And what, excuse me, once it did, is a 99% chance, it's gonna go away. So, like I said, women are, it's a different story. There's some of their side effects are permanent. Yeah, because their body actually tries to become male. It just, there's receptor sites in certain areas and a female body that are gonna be,

Starting point is 01:16:21 more susceptible to androgens than any other part, and you're gonna get lasting side effects, or voice is gonna change, or clits gonna grow, they're gonna get hair on their face, and their chest on their chin. But, and to some degree, that abates, but not completely, but I've never run into one that I thought was repugnant from that standpoint anyway.

Starting point is 01:16:45 So, I think some of the, and maybe correct me if I'm wrong, some of the biggest risks with, and just from my experience of being around people who've used them, are the side effects when you're on them or you can get estrogenic side effects, the potential, when you go off of them of feeling shitty for a few months because you're not producing any testosterone, hair loss which can become permanent acne. And then you'd have to use quite a bit over a long period of time and combine it

Starting point is 01:17:13 with kind of a shitty lifestyle that sometimes a company's lots of antiballic steroids. Let's be honest, a lot of times guys use a lot of steroids because they feel very insecure. But what goes along with that is force feeding yourself and doing crazy other drugs. And, you know, and you're not, by the way, you're not talking about, let's be clear, you're not talking about things like insulin and growth hormone, which are probably more, more risky. Well, growth hormone is not insulin is. Yeah, you know, I think if you, there's, there's no such thing as a safe drug,

Starting point is 01:17:45 okay, you can take too much vitamin C and have problems, okay, so to walk into this realm thinking that this is safe is preposterous. You have to, these are powerful hormones and you've got to treat them as such and you've got to use them intelligently. The problem is using them intelligently because there's a positive intelligence

Starting point is 01:18:05 when it comes to this subject matter. And then you get the internet experts that their expertise is determined by how many likes they have. So not their education. So there's a problem with that walking into it. But if you know what these side effects are going into it and you accept them, it's not like the side effect

Starting point is 01:18:30 is gonna ultimately turn it to something that's gonna give you cancer and kill you. The other thing is there's predispositions that are enhanced by hormone use. So psychological and physiological, if you're an asshole and you take testosterone, you're going to be a bigger asshole, not only in size, but in propensity. So that's just going to enhance how much of an asshole you are. If you have a propensity towards testicular

Starting point is 01:18:59 cancer and you take massive amounts of testosterone, you're probably gonna aggravate that situation. If you have other cancerous activity in your body and you take a lot of growth hormone, you may excite or speed up that potential problem. You may have mentioned of the diet before, these guys are saying how the steroids give you a heart attack. It's not saying how the steroids give you a heart attack. It's not really the steroids that give you a heart attack

Starting point is 01:19:27 because plenty of science shows the opposite. It's the lifestyle that make you the heart. Eating 20 chicken breasts a day is not a good idea, even though it's chicken. So there's definite, there's diet factors as lifestyle factors, there's environmental factors as psychological factors, as physiological factors, there's environmental factors as psychological factors, as physiological factors, and family history, factors at all play a part of that,

Starting point is 01:19:51 and you should know what those are before you embark on any of this. If my kid came up to me and said, hey, Dad, I'm gonna take Ritalin. And I'd say, wouldn't you want testosterone instead? I mean, that's really to the point it's at. I don't think, in my experience, they're specific to Androgens and steroids.

Starting point is 01:20:12 They're not the ancillary drugs, like, you know, everything else we talked about a minute ago. Just the steroids and the Androgens, there is very, very little downside to using them if you use them correctly. Now, you had alluded to that you had suffered some of the consequences of your past lifestyle. What are some of those, was it just the shutdown of your testosterone? That's all it was.

Starting point is 01:20:35 Oh really, okay. Yeah, well getting old is a rude awakening. Okay, you start realizing shit that, man, I can't believe this has happened to me. So lower in testosterone is one of them. And there was about 10 or 12 years when I didn't take any drugs. In my, I guess late 30s to late 40s.

Starting point is 01:21:00 And I had started feeling really terrible. Like, you know, I think it was my, you know, a 45, 46, 47 somewhere around in there. And I was cold all the time. I had no energy. It was hard to get going into morning. I had my workouts sucked. I had just everything sucked.

Starting point is 01:21:16 And I just had a bad attitude and nothing was good. And somebody, I think it was Pulumbo, I was like, go check your test levels checked, and they were 130. Oh wow. So 300 being the, you know, in the low end. So I just started taking a CC of Scipion A at every week, and my test levels went to 1250 with one CC.

Starting point is 01:21:38 Wow. So obviously I had degradated my, you know, my system. So yeah, I mean, that was, and yeah, I mean, there was a point back then when I was taking, we were trying to figure this shit out, we were taking all kinds of stuff. We were just hoping for the best because there was no other way to find out.

Starting point is 01:21:57 So, it's like taking one for the team. We just had no choice. And this is the price I pay now that's okay. But there the team. You know, you kind of, we just had no choice. And if this is the price I pay now, that's okay. But, you know, there's other stuff that happens, your prostate gets bigger, you know, and you've got a P more often, and you get up in the middle of the night more. And, you know, you just,

Starting point is 01:22:16 the process of aging takes a lot away from you, and you start noticing it when you get, you know, on the other side of 50. So, John, do you still write for publications or? Yes, well, I haven't in a few months. I took a little bit of a break. I was writing for a T-Nation for a while. Great, great, great organist.

Starting point is 01:22:35 Great organist. And a lot, yeah. And a lot of followers. I mean, I get, I get, you know, my articles, we get like 250,000 hits in the first 24 hours. You know, there's a lot of people there. I mean, some would go to 800,000. They're one of the one organizations

Starting point is 01:22:50 that we will even share because they reference them. Yeah, because actually post good stuff. Not only they post good stuff, they have a thunder dome of contributors. I mean, I almost am intimidated to submit work to them because they have such a amazing pool of talent, you know, working for them. I took a little bit of a break because I just got burned out. I feel like I said everything, you know, and I mean, when you guys called it was like, wow, somebody still wants to talk to me. And not that I felt like, I mean,

Starting point is 01:23:24 because I still do my podcast with Palombo and RX Muscle? And you know, that's a very limited, that's a very inside baseball, if you will. You guys are more broad, broad, as is T Nation, they're very broad. And that's why I think they work. But yeah, I mean, I still get work out there. And-

Starting point is 01:23:42 You said you started the first, one of the first podcasts? Yeah, well, Dan Solomon and Bob Chicarrillo were doing, forgot what their show was called, but they were doing it for, I don't know if they were doing it for weater or just for themselves, I got to think in a name of their show, but they were doing, they were doing their podcasts and they were the only ones doing it. And when Dave Palombo and I were at muscular development, you know, I was senior editor of muscular development, print, and we hired Dave to be senior editor of Muscle Development Online,

Starting point is 01:24:11 and we didn't have a website. And he and I worked together, mainly him, but you know, he and I worked the other to build the community. He built the nuts and bolts of the website. And you know, we started a podcast to go head to head with Dan and Bob. And- What was this?

Starting point is 01:24:32 This was 2000, Shhh, four, five, five, somewhere in there. That's back when you listened to your podcast on a computer. It's like one of the first, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was back then. Yeah, we, ProBody Building Weekly was Dan and Bob,

Starting point is 01:24:52 and we were the muscle mob. Heavy muscle, no, it wasn't heavy. Heavy muscle radio was the one we did at our website. That's what you know even to this long time to get your own name. Yeah. That and all the wheat I saw. They forget everything. website. That's what you know even to this long time to get your own name. Yeah. That in all the wheat. I saw.

Starting point is 01:25:13 They forget everything. But yeah, but um, yeah, we were that we we we were so we had the first rivalry of, you know, head to head. And it wasn't really a rivalry. We were very different shows. Um, it just was was was cardio entertainment. People would download it and, you know, people that would tell us, we are we do. You make our cardio sessions go by so fast and we listen to Bob and Dan and I mean, Bob and Dan and we listen to you and Dave and you know, an hour's gone or two hours are gone or whatever. So that was, you know, that was, and everybody came after us, you know. That's awesome. What do you think of a space now? Do You still keep an eye on it? Crouted. But in a good way, I mean, you know, what I like about the sharing of technology and the sort of proliferation of social media

Starting point is 01:25:53 is that it has brought people to the forefront who you never would have seen. Okay, back in the magazine days, it's very prestigious to be printed because you had your name in a magazine and it was in print. And then the internet came along and any Tom Digger Harry could have their name and have a byline.

Starting point is 01:26:13 And all of a sudden, we went from making $2,500 in an article down to making 10 bucks. Or I actually the lowest I was ever offered to an article was $35. By the way, I was like, are you kidding me? I was making a buck a word in my crime. Slap in the face. Slap in the face. Because anybody will do it, people do it for free. Just to get their name out there.

Starting point is 01:26:37 But as bad as that is for me as a writer, there's people I never would have heard of before, who are probably pretty brilliant in the real world if you look at it. Aside from the brilliant thing, I mean, we're an example of that. You would have never heard of who we were just three trainers in our neighborhood, or in our town. We were well known, or we were great at what we did, but this has allowed us to even

Starting point is 01:27:01 get our voice out there. Well, the barrier to enter the market, it's almost nonexistent. I mean, you were asking us about equipment and how we did this. This would have cost 10 times as much, 15, 20 years ago. Sure, yeah. So it's really dropped and lowered the barrier

Starting point is 01:27:16 and it's just the more free-flowing information and more information tends to benefit humanity, but with that comes a lot of noise, right? Well, yeah, you gotta weed it all out, you know? I mean, if I listen to you and three other guys, how do I know if I don't know anything about this stuff? I'm just finding out. I'm just put, you know, bought my first pair of shorts to go to the gym. I'm on a warrant, learn how to work out, learn about nutrition, learn about drugs. How do I know who just, who should I believe?

Starting point is 01:27:41 Yeah. You know, so, you know, that's the first kind of obstacle you have to overcome. If it's just a regular sales job, you can blow over that objection pretty easily. But when it comes to people's health and well-being, you have a higher responsibility, a more important question on your hands. I think the arena today is very crowded. I think there's a too many people that don't know shit that think they do and unfortunately, even more people that think that they think they do,

Starting point is 01:28:17 you know, that support them. And I find that, you know, really disheartening. Do you think it's gonna get, you know, filtered out though? No, it's gonna get worse. You can get worse. Cause it's getting you think it's gonna get filtered out though? No, it's gonna get worse. It's gonna get worse. Cause it's getting bigger. It's gonna get worse before it gets better. Well, yeah.

Starting point is 01:28:30 I think one of the things that we, and then again, we like to think that we're part of the ship that's, or we're trying to move the ship of this new era of like exactly what you said. Anybody all said is an expert. And that was really kind of the formula is, you know, hey, we're not gonna come out and try and tell you anything about us being experts.

Starting point is 01:28:47 We're gonna help present the experts and help curate that information for you. We vet all our sources. Right. Most people have a desired outcome to sell you X, Y, and Z. And so that's why they're pushing their message where we were gonna come out with, listen, we're gonna present people

Starting point is 01:29:03 and that we think that are people that you guys should be listening to by no means are we going to try and say worthy experts, we have all the knowledge that would be naive and stupid and ignorant in my opinion. I think that anybody who tries to come out there and we see in the space all these camps and you kind of touched on it earlier of, you know, oh my, it's all it's turned into this like me shitting on your camp and just trying to prove how we're more right than you are. And what's happening is all the really good information is getting lost and all this debating back and forth.

Starting point is 01:29:36 And I see it in a lot of these young kids that are presenting information. The way they're presenting it is just these battles. I was like, man, you haven't even spent enough time on the iron, you haven't trained enough bodies to even really have a fucking good opinion. It's like, go train. Like you mentioned, you said something really great earlier. Like, I'm not impressed because you took some fancy, somebody who already had a great genetics and body and got them in shape. You starved their body for fucking two months and they got

Starting point is 01:29:57 shredded. Like, this isn't impressed me. Give me the fucking six-year-old woman that's been, that's gone through menopause and that's been struggling with, it has thyroid conditions and help that fucking lady out. And help 10 of those out and find out, holy shit, they're all different. I got to help them all in different ways. So we really try and speak to that and address the psychological part of this space. And I feel like the one positive thing about social media

Starting point is 01:30:24 and platforms like this now is at the beginning, it allowed a lot of shucksters to come in there. But what's happening is people are becoming more savvy and more educated because there are so much good information, it's just you gotta learn to filter out. And it's starting to expose all those people. And I think that the future of this base is the raw transparency.

Starting point is 01:30:45 Just keeping it real and telling you straight forward. And I think that the cream will rise to the top. But I think you're right that it's going to get worse before it gets bad. Yeah, it'll get worse. But yeah, we'll make it through, I think. Yeah. You got no question about you guys that, but you know what? There's no, there's not a creativity. There are 20 people are trying to copy. And you know, in Mexico is a great sort of looking glass because they're like 20 years behind. So now you have the benefit of having the 20 years of experience and then looking back at your point.

Starting point is 01:31:15 You're like, you saw that like a 90, 90, 90, 90, 90. You take your time machine and you just drive like that. And it's hysterical because you see the trainers there competing so hard for their point of difference and they You know when I woke them down there. It's because you know they copy everything I do and it got annoying to a point Where I like it's like I can't even walk in the gym because I know I got 10 guys wearing beanies Or you know to copy in my workouts or whatever and so one day I just got fed up with it I was in one of those moods.

Starting point is 01:31:46 So I got, I don't know what it's called, but the half of Bo-Soo Ball, you know, the half of the Swiss Balls got the, that's a Bo-Soo Balls. So I got the Bo-Soo Ball, and I got a jungle gym, you know, with all the cables, and there's a column supporting the cardio balcony above me. So I take the Bo-Soo Ball and put it against the comet, lean my back on it. I kind of squat down I put one foot out

Starting point is 01:32:08 I had a cable and one hand was doing a crawl with I'm like doing this just to see you do it or what I got you filmed it the Stad after noon he was teaching it to a client You sent him up good. I went outside on the roof I was laughing my ass off and my partner goes, what are you laughing at? I go, you got to look down there. Like you're like, I made that up yesterday. I made that up this morning. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:32:36 You had said that you coach some CrossFit athletes. I do. What do you think of the sport across fit and then the way they train there? Because that's so, that was so different from how weights had been used in the past. Wow, is it ever. Yeah, CrossFit is, it kind of funny how when it first came out, it was instant rival real bodybuilding, you know, I guess cause we used the same gym.

Starting point is 01:32:56 But, um, cro, look, anybody who is good at CrossFit is a great athlete, only because CrossFit is fucking hard because there's, you got to do like a hundred moves and how do you train for a hundred different things? You know, you got Olympic lifting, you got rowing, you've got running, you've got lifting, you've got the answer, I don't think anybody knows. No, no, that is exactly true. And you'll ask them, nobody knows. So what I learned with them, and the funny thing with them is that the guy, the chubby guy who invented CrossFit,

Starting point is 01:33:36 is, here we go. Is, probably a very good businessman because he's successfully successful at it. But the whole thing was this whole holier than thou attitude that they started with. They don't have it now, but like our workout, the art of war on them is your workout, it's kind of a thing.

Starting point is 01:33:56 And they were just this elitist group of, I thought of, they all wear, IZOD shirts and khakis on their off, on an orange him. When they're not wearing $75, Reebok, you know, tank tops. So, um, they, they, I, you just get sick of them. We're looking at them, you know.

Starting point is 01:34:17 And then, you know, back in the day, I would have, you know, the majority of my clientele would be bodybuilders getting ready for shows. Now, it's the majority of my clientele would be bodybuilders getting ready for shows. Now, it's the majority of my clientele are crossfitters trying to beat the drug test. So, you know, now they went from all this natural, great, incredible athletes. Now I got like 10 of them trying to, you know,

Starting point is 01:34:36 I got it back, I got it, I got it getting to the games and winning the regionals, you know, and I get the drug testing starts in May and I got to be clean by, you know, you saw, like, you know, we're running around all year doing drugs, and you know, we're doing it in such a way that they're gonna show up to their drug testing and be clean, because I believe in competing clean rather than masking,

Starting point is 01:34:56 because you just perform better. Oh, yeah, we figure that out with runners, with sprinters. Sprinters ran faster off gear than they ran on gear. Oh, interesting because of the masking agents. No, well that no, I just think it's because when you're off your muscles have less water in them They're more supple you're lighter and you really don't lose any strength now What about their natural testosterone levels you get those back up to normal before they well the in a lit in Olympic sports your you're you're you're not really it's not really the testosterone level is that ratio of testosterone Epitestosterone and you have to be four to one or or lower so the the trick is

Starting point is 01:35:34 using you know a really short-acting testosterone like suspension or propionate and knowing ahead of time because we do our own testing How long it's going to take for your T. your TE ratio to get from wherever down to four. So that's kind of how you do it. They've made it a little more complicated now. It's a little more tricky now with whereabouts, forms, and kind of surprise testing and out of season stuff. If you're in that pool of highly tested guys. But CrossFit is a, you know, an enterprise

Starting point is 01:36:08 and they are, I don't know this for a fact, but I couldn't pretty much suppose that you're not gonna take your number one guy with all the Reebok sponsorships and throw them under the drug because his TE ratio came back at 15 to one. When it's your call, whether or not you pay for the carbon ice atop ass your call, whether or not you pay for the carbon

Starting point is 01:36:25 isotope, assay to determine whether or not that elevation was animal-based or protein-based, plant-based or animal-based. So, it's up to HQ, whether or not they want to fund that secondary test. And a lot of times it's... So the drug is different than that? It's no different than baseball. Yeah, exactly. It was just like that, right? So the drug use now is pretty prevalent now in the CrossFit world. Come on, look at it.

Starting point is 01:36:51 We just look at it. They look a lot different. It's like, did you paint your car? No, it was right yesterday. It was blue today. What do you mean you didn't paint it? No, no. That's what you're looking at.

Starting point is 01:37:06 So what's the strategy for the typical cross-fitter if you're going to try and pass the drug test, and you want them to train off, how long do you cycle them off, what does that kind of look like? Well, there's the guys who are not on the radar and then the guys who are on the radar, you had to treat them both differently. The guys that are on the radar, I'm not going to talk about because I charge them a lot of money and I don't know what to let that out of the bag.

Starting point is 01:37:29 But the other ones are, you have the whole year. So if you know what you're doing, you can plot the clearing times of the things you're going to use. And then as the date gets closer to where they're in danger of being tested, you are completely off of everything. And there's a big misconception a lot of guys have, if I took my last shot of whatever yesterday, I'm gonna be 30% weaker today.

Starting point is 01:37:55 It's just not the case. I mean, the effect is lasting, especially if you're eating right and training right and resting enough, you're not going to notice a loss of performance for months. It's very easy for me to get these guys. You just have to know how fast things clear. We do a lot of our own testing.

Starting point is 01:38:20 I will, in the course of a year, you have a lot of time. So I can plot, you know, a course of a, you know, a cycle, and then I can plot drug testing to go after that. So I can now know on a timetable how long it takes X to clear, how long it takes your TE ratio to get back to normal. And then I use that, you know, as we get closer to the, to the, you know, test dates or the, or the era, period of time where they're going to be in danger of being tested to, um, to make sure they're not on anything. I, I got a question for you, John. I get a lot of questions now on these gray market, uh, drugs that are supposed to make

Starting point is 01:38:57 it feel like, like, storms and these peptides. And I know a couple of CrossFit athletes got busted using these peptides and storms. What's the, what's the deal with them? I have my opinion, but I'd love to hear it from you because I think you're so much more educated on this. My jury is out on those things because we just don't have enough science. We don't have any science on most of them. The concept of a selective Androgen modulator is interesting because it's like why

Starting point is 01:39:26 shotguns something when you can pinpoint, you know, a shot. I like that concept. I just, I mean, other than Nolvadex, and, you know, I don't really know of one that's so effective that I would say use that instead of this. I have found that once the wheel was invented, the concept of rolling the object was impenetrable. That was gonna be forever, okay? Then they put spokes on it, they made a amount of aluminum, they made a amount of metal, they made a amount of wood,

Starting point is 01:39:58 they all made all different variations of the wheel. It's still a fucking wheel, it's still a roll, okay? So my position on all of that is the drugs that we used 30 years ago work still great today. And I have not seen an athlete that's taken the Sarms root or the peptide root and has turned up any better than the guys doing the traditional root. So, and at least we know what the traditional stuff does. We've been using it forever. These are, um, nobody fucking nobody knows.

Starting point is 01:40:30 I read in these forums kids are like, oh, oh, one of the side effects you get from this one is your night vision is off. Or there's a yellow tint to like, are you fucking kidding me? What are you doing? Yeah. Take Decker. Well, I get a lot of flack for this, but that's exactly what I say to a lot of these.

Starting point is 01:40:45 I think, and this goes back to your point about, you know, it's really unfortunate how media came in and made steroids seem so scary and bad because that's what's caused these kids that are already wanting to dabble in this world, but they're scared because they've been scared by bullshit media. I don't think they go take a damn shower. So they take something like, songs, which we don't have any fucking real research on or the little bit of research we do have is so short that it's like I would and so when I tell kids it's like listen if you're gonna go risk that like why wouldn't you just go take

Starting point is 01:41:15 testosterone. I mean we know so much more about it and the risk or in my opinion lower. You are so right and and I battle this all the time. You know, I get people call me up and say, have you ever heard of blah, blah, blah? And I go, no. And I have no problem saying I don't know. It's one of my favorite things because I don't know. And I'm not gonna bullshit you

Starting point is 01:41:37 because that's not what I do. So I'll look it up. Oh, it's a growth hormone precursor or a growth hormone stimulating release, or blah, blah, whatever. I'm like, why not just take growth hormone? Why are you doing it this way? You're getting, you're paying more money.

Starting point is 01:41:56 It's, there's no science behind it. Whatever effect you're getting is certainly way less than the real thing. And who knows what's gonna happen in a 10 years from now? Take the shit we know about, you know? It reminds me of, there's some kids that have died from using the synthetic marijuana drugs, like spice or whatever, overdosing and dying, and the whole reason why that's fucking

Starting point is 01:42:17 happening is because the safest form of it, the real thing, marijuana, is illegal, and a lie is placed. So they're in the synthetic should think about the gas station and they're dying as a result. You're also talking about a generation that eats tide pods. So what the fuck? You got to factor that one in. Yeah, you have to.

Starting point is 01:42:35 It's extremely important point. We were making the analogy the other day when we were talking about like stupid shit that we did is like young kids, like where you would just take like bloody knuckles Taking turns slamming it's like it's that year is there Is there version of it is like let's take this fucking detergent See the new one where where kids are inhaling propane and then blowing blowing it out in a fire to make it flame

Starting point is 01:43:02 Yeah, you know fucking dangerous that shit is What yeah, I have not that and then blowing it out in a fire to make it flame. Yeah, you know fucking dangerous that shit is some of these kids doing it. What? I have not seen that yesterday. Inhaling propane. Yeah, like, bringing it and blowing it out and lighting it like the breathing fire, but that's gotta be one of the most dangerous things you possibly do.

Starting point is 01:43:15 It's smart. The Darwin Awards are gonna really be impressive. Oh, shit. Well shit, John, this has been fucking awesome, man. I am really, really glad I invited you on the show. I'm glad I can't We have to do this we have to do this again Absolutely, I didn't have to pee so bad. It's a little keep rolling for another hour two hours

Starting point is 01:43:33 No great times man, I appreciate you coming on I'm so done. Definitely big fan of yours forever. Thank you. Thank you 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 Superbumble at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbumble includes maps on a ballad, maps performance and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by South Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs.

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Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 922: John Romano

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