Modern Wisdom - #994 - Sam Sulek - The Endless Pursuit of Progress

Episode Date: September 15, 2025

Sam Sulek is a professional bodybuilder and YouTuber. From zero to millions of fans, Sam Sulek’s rise has been nothing short of explosive. In just a few years, he’s become one of social media’s most-watched and talked-about creators. Sit back as we dive into the story of the man behind some of the internet’s most beloved vlogs, fueled by hefty scoops of chicken and rice. Expect to learn what Sam would be doing if he wasn’t doing fitness and bodybuilding, why so many people are drawn to Sam’s content and if he expected at all to become an ASMR channel, if there are any pressures to brand himself as anything different than his most authentic self, what Sam’s relationship with the mirror is like, if Sam has any concerns over longevity in his current pursuits, how to keep pushing even when motivation is low, Sam’s thoughts on science based lifting, Sam’s top 10 exercises of all time, and much more… Sponsors: See me on tour in America: ⁠https://chriswilliamson.live⁠ See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D, and more from AG1 at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you weren't doing bodybuilding, what do you think you'd be obsessing over instead? I think it, I mean, it would have to be something, but honestly, I was kind of lucky starting off body. I didn't even say bodybuilding. The only, and this is something people say anyway, if you don't compete, you're not a bodybuilder. Like it's a little, because when someone does their first show, you know, they kind of want to express this, like, you know, glamour about it. It's like, I'm a bodybuilder because I compete. you just but I kind of leaned into that so before I actually competed I always I'd always describe myself like just I'd say a lifter because that is the point wasn't more so to compete in bodybuilding like when I'm working at arms I'm not thinking like okay I need arms to be a little bit bigger

so that I can beat this guy on stage it's more so I want them to be bigger for me and then that kind of played into once I was at a certain level like okay Now it's about time to compete. Like, it was always on the list, but it wasn't like the point, especially not in the beginning. For me, I'm like, I just want to get big. I did gymnastics when I was like 11 to 16. I think it was good, but I wasn't like going to be college level scholarship. Like no Olympic, but it was fun.

And there's one guy named Connor who is, he's the older dude. And now I might not look at him the same way. But at the time, he was nuts. He was huge. so we all whenever we do like strength or conditioning that's how I think that was probably some of the C that got planted because I was doing like four hours a day like middle school early high school so you already had one obsession so that was like it like every it wasn't and I never had to be dragged to do it because like I was excited it was fun so once I quit doing that to switch it with the bodybuilding just happened to be something I was already kind of interested in and it just fit perfectly like We would talk every summer where some of the guys would be like, okay, this summer, we're actually going to work out. Then we never did it.

But once I actually quit doing it, that's what I replaced it with. But if it wasn't bodybuilding, let's say there was an alternate universe Sam, or I've got the itch where it's like, oh, it'd be awesome if I could play guitar like Rob Scallon. He's a, he's a YouTuber who's into guitars and everything, or just anything. Like, that could have been it. But it happened to be like, okay, I'm going to get into working out really serious. And that also just happened to be.

the perfect match for me. Have you held on to the bendiness from gymnastics at all? A little. I can, like, when I stretch, I can loosen up. But when I'm off-season, full of carbs,

like, it actually kind of sucks to squat because I get, like, how tight, everything is. Everything is tighter. When I'm dieted down, I can get my hands under a squat bar fine. But when I'm eating a lot of food, like when I'm more like a two-70,

like I'm sitting there for five minutes just trying to stretch out. Mike Isretel had some back surgery thing on him, and he's cut open, they've removed fat, they've got rid of fat cells, they've stitched him back up. It's like a big traumatic surgery. And I asked him what the most painful thing that he went through was. And it was that he said they'd laid him on his back with his arms like this. And so he woke up, and the most painful thing was the fact that he'd been in an overhead position with his arms over his head for a few hours. And that always makes me. me laugh. I never heard that part. I did see that though. Some of those, if I had something done like that, for whatever reason, I probably wouldn't post that surgery picture with like the bloody shirt. That man has no shame. He just... But that's kind of cool too, because he actually gets to show it off. Well, I think, you know, why is it that people have resonated with you? A very sort of transparent look into... Even if people don't see themselves directly in

Mike getting his back cut open or you spending a lot of time obsessing about the gym, what they do see is a person being transparent, right? And that's where relatability comes from, I think. Like, authenticity breeds relatability. And, you know, if Mike had just disappeared and come back with a smaller waist and some scars, people would have been like, hey, what's going on? And I think that that wouldn't feel very legitimate. Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it.

That's one thing where I didn't plan for it to be like. that but I got a lot of questions this whole weekend where it's like any all of us do like everyone who's semi six any even like you've got 10,000 followers like it's okay what's the secret and it's the same thing with bodybuilding what's the one set that I can do where it actually completely makes it super easy and it all just happens like nothing and it's um like usually if somebody wants to start posting things you're trying to do anything it's always like okay what are people doing let me try to emulate that and like recreate it or just like jump on a trend which like is fine maybe try to change it up a little bit but it's like the best thing that you could do

is pick something that you already do and you already like and just try to like document that like if you're a um and it's to the point now like where if you weren't doing that you're almost missing out or like if you have a small business or if you're into like restoring cars or you have some kind of random interest, like the, what I really like about social media is there's so many niches that no matter what you're into, you could make it a thing. And so I guess if I could say one tip, being able to talk on camera helps a lot. Because then you actually, like, when I look at people, I've seen guys post things in the gym before I posted anything. And they're still posting the exact same thing. And I've seen this guy for like seven years and he's super big.

but he's never like spoke on video and I'm like that's the whole point I want to I want to know who this guy is so I can kind of like get back to those experiences yeah so it's like it's almost a situation where you already have something really valuable and it's your own individuality and to try to like you know conform to what everyone else already does is basically to lose that so you're already your own individual guy like no one has lived your life try to show that part off. But I'm also not the best source of that kind of tip because my first YouTube video is the same as this one.

There was, there's the same as the most recent one. So there is no like, okay, I went through years of study and data and analytics. And this is the, like, it wasn't a Mr. Beast story of I analyzed the whatever. If somebody told me they were going to post like what I posted, I don't think it would work. if you tried to plan it in advance it would have probably sounded like a failure yeah so it just happened to line up who was inspiration for you coming up both content creation side but also mindset's physique wise yeah in uh so i really watched a lot of callum von moger that back when i was you know or a 16 year old because the guy who got me into the gym like i mean i was getting into it anyway but he was

the guy from my high school who actually bodybuild he competed Like, at the end of when he was a senior and I was a junior, like we were both like the bodybuilders of the school, you know, like a high school level. But he got me into Callum. And then eventually I started watching all the rich piano bigger by the day videos, which then you can kind of see the similarity where it's, okay, he's posting a video every day. He's in the car.

He's doing a real workout. And like I only thought about it. Like, I like that format. I go to the gym. and I work out and I drive back to record that as like nothing like it's it's very seamless for my routine but it uh it was also just something like nobody was doing like I was when I was coming up before posting anything I'm looking at regular influencers I'm like oh you guys wouldn't even work out if you didn't have a camera and I'm squatting in like a dead gym it's like two in the

morning no one's like I recorded the set for me nobody else watch it happen and that's what that was like on my shoulder thing of like it doesn't even matter there's no one in here i'm still getting after it because i want it and there's nothing that's going to change that so when i started like actually posting things once i saw a group of brothers who went to my school really blow up one summer and i was getting kind of like jealous i'm like okay now i got to start doing it i was going to do it eventually but that was like the starter god list i was like i've always kind of hemmed about this where it's like am i a different guy now that i'm recording all these things and trying to like talking about it and putting it out there and like I would just always think

about that and like the back of my mind because now these workouts are not just me alone now there's an observer so it's like is the experiment altered because now people are watching it and I don't think it is like after all this time I think I'm still if anything it's a little bit of an accountability factor because if I didn't think you know maybe I wasn't totally into it I know somebody's watching so I might go a little extra hard so I think it hasn't taken taken away too much. But maybe I did a little bit. Yeah.

But if you get distracted by it, it's like the workout should come before the recording of the workout. I've always thought. Have you found it hard to hold on to authenticity now that millions of people are watching? Well, now it'd be, if I made a video that was inauthentic, it'd be strange. Like, I'll, uh, because I'll record, because now I'm kind of getting around doing all these events. I get to talk to everybody and sometimes it's hard to actually separate someone's social media persona versus their real like human personality because sometimes we look at a video as like you're kind of hosting a show and a TV host does not talk offset the same way you talk on set. Like it was like, all right, we're going to hit a chest date today.

And I'm doing like a YouTube intro and there's like sounds like that's just not what I do. for me i think that'd be silly anyway so it's um i think it's for me kind of a cool mentality where i'm not exactly even thinking like okay i want to improve my content engagement i'm trying to improve my reach or like anything like that because i almost boil it all because it's so one-dimensional like it branches out i talk about everything but it's like i want it to be about the gym specifically so for me it's like this kind of branching off point of motivation where in my mind I feel the better that all my workouts are not only is that better for me because I want them to be good but it will just bleed and like bleed out and raise

everything else up because it's all stemming from the working out anyway there's four-hour compilations of your car talks to go to sleep to did you anticipate that you'd become an ASMR channel eventually but I actually heard that before never in high school but when I was in college my it was like my second year I gave a couple

presentations like one time I one of my curricular or extracurricular credits was mafia cinema history so it was following that's niche but yeah

it was following like from the first what would you call a soundless movie oh okay yeah yeah where in between frames of like actual video they just had a black screen with the words that got said like it started from there what a funny way to put a movie together but it's like that's all you had they can they can't they can they can't they can't they can't they went up like all the way through godfather and everything else and i had to make a group video where it was clips from all these movies and someone had to overlay their

voice and edited it all together and i was posting like little tictox at the time like fitness TikToks so i almost volunteered for the editing voiceover so i could get a little like that was the first video that i ever edited it technically and people told me after when they heard it they said dude you should do like an audiobook or something and i didn't hear it i did not like i couldn't hear it because it's my own voice but then i gave a different presentation in a different class and the two guys sit next to me said the same thing so i don't know what what changed over the course of those or if, like, maybe I got a little older and I could be more outspoken and, like, not shrink down and be so nervous because I'm, like, talking to someone.

But that's part of it where when I think of how you could, like, do a, like, do the books on what all the just success came from, it's like, I think posting a lot of videos, actually, like, meaning what I'm talking about and really working out and, like, being behind it. Like, that's something I could tell anybody to do. And I always say the X factor was involved. Because a lot of it was things that just could not be predicted, but happened to work out really well. I would subscribe to a Samsung, like, Sleep Stories app. If that goes out on Audible, you know, like, I get curious by doing just audiobooks.

I think it would be great. Like, you're just describing an afternoon walk through a gentle meadow or something. Yeah. And then I'd probably, I'd get to read the books because I'd be, I'd be reading it, and it'd be a little more, you wouldn't say literate, but you'd be a little more just, I could look dude if the if this bodybuilding thing and all this gym shock stuff you know if that doesn't go well I genuinely think that there's a an opportunity you know a nice collaboration with calmer headspace or something like that sleep stories it'd be good so I you know just lingering on what we said there this authenticity with millions watching and it is there's a degree of performativeness you want to you're always compelled to do because yeah like in a way I think there's kind of like a sam on video and then there's like a sam when i'm talking with my buddies or a group but i almost don't think it's too much of a like thing because you will naturally act differently based on who you're with and for me when i'm working out alone and i've got just the

camera like i thought i'd get a camera guy because that's what everyone does but it's so natural for me to have that like actual back and forth it's all just things that i get to think of like even though I'm probably a little less energetic because obviously if you're in a group hanging out whoever like you're going to be a little more jumpy but when it's just me like I don't think that's like as even though it's a little different than my typical back and forth

like even now this probably wouldn't be exactly how I talk like in the world but it's not intentional in a way the goal is to try and reduce the distance between those two people right get them as close as possible it's like you'll dress up for fancy restaurant that doesn't mean you always dress up but it also doesn't mean that you in a suit is somehow inauthentic yeah but you know i i think um even the lowest followed person with a

couple of hundred followers on their instagram if you turn the camera around on yourself and you press the button oh fuck i need to do um there was a statistical increase in cosmetic surgery i think it was called Zoom face after COVID, because people were seeing themselves on camera so much that they were observing their own floors. And, you know, that's you just on a live call with your boss or either your assistant or your team or whatever. So, holy shit. Like, if that's how people are feeling just with video calls on COVID, imagine what it's like when you start posting or you put an Instagram story. Yeah, I never heard about that. But that's one thing where, because the body, like, even getting into bodybuilding and everything that comes along with

it and like bringing like a prepped meal to school or just whatever it's still a little like off the beaten path it's getting super normal now because everybody's in the end of the gym which i think is perfect because now gyms are going to you know not substantially but gradually increase in value because there's just more of demand so it's like the more the merrier but uh just from knowing that it's kind of a thing where like if you post on social media you're asking a hey on it's just the nature of it but bodybuilding is like also a guarantee because it's it's you could play into it like maybe someone's insecure about how they look and they're going to go after someone who they like whatever it's just part of it but already knowing that like to you know get into it

and see anyone say anything it's like it's if you're unapologetically into something like if i saw you eat in a bowl ice cream and i said i can't believe you're eating vanilla that's the worst flavor you're a total loser but you've really liked it you wouldn't be offended by that you'd think i'm weird for even trying to criticize you for it because you really are into it so that's um that's something where it's it's its own skill to be able to put yourself out there and only take criticism for what it is like if someone posted uh or made a comment on my video and this is more like when i put my director producer hat on and they say this video's mic or this video's audio sucked delete your channel.

I'm going to take that as... All right, I might need to fix my audio. I don't need to take the hate with a critique. Because I want the critique. That's the good... Thank you for your feedback. Yeah. Like, you should be able to separate that

from the context of how it's said. What have you learned about dealing with criticism and self-worth and stuff like that? Because if the plan was, hey, it'd be cool if some people watched this. And then there's an awful lot of scrutiny. and you're young and are approaching this from a little bit of a different angle,

it's going to invite in criticism. Yeah. How have you learned to deal with that? It's not like I totally did not even think about it in the beginning. Because when you first start getting, like let's say you're posting something, you get like a few thousand followers. It takes a second, but if you look back on it,

it's really a milestone that your videos are being shown to more people because if the same 10 people love every video in the comments, that means your stuff's only getting shown to them. It's not getting shown to anyone else. So once people start giving you, like just saying regular or just hate, that means that they're someone who got shown your stuff for the first time. So it actually means your things are moving out of like a small little scale bubble and scaling. But it's, I don't know, for someone who's struggling with it, I'd say, like, remember, this guy just scrolled away. He doesn't even remember saying it.

It's just a weird thing where, you know, your phone is a totally different communicative device than real life. So maybe judge what people actually say to you in person. And just, I don't know, for some people, it's much harder to get over, I'm sure. It's a good point that that comment someone just made is flippant, passive. Whereas for you, that might linger. I mean, I know for me, you know, over the thousand episodes I've done this show, there's certainly some comments where I've gone to bed at night and I'm like, fuck's sake.

Think about it. Like, that's the thing that you're going to think about as your head hits the pillow. But you just remember the insults and forget the compliments. That's kind of the way that the world works. And it's a, and even just try to, like, this is one thing I really like, is trying to imagine anything where it's not a debate, but just like two sides of an approach. Like, okay, do I want to read every hate comment and take it personally? and like really only look at those

or do I want to like look at the system as it really is there's like always way more real comments so why does that why does the negative one get so much impact and 10 other like how many good comments even outweigh one bad one and if that one actually like hit you in a weak spot there could be no number and that could just be it so I think that's where it's um it's almost like it it shouldn't be but it is like it should

it shouldn't happen people shouldn't be mean but they are going to be that's just how it is so that's where it's actually your responsibility to try to be impervious to it because you're kind of suffering in your own mind because it was your choice to let it in and get upset because if you were a little kind of like i don't want to say mentally tougher but kind of um if you could take a little more stoic approach like that then you wouldn't even get upset about it in the first place what does that stoic approach look like to you it's just not a you know know not making a fuss about something if it doesn't actually require that because i i think about that a lot like my my whole thing is or one thing i like to think is like okay was today a good day like net and it doesn't have to be crazy good but like on average it was they feeling like pretty good not too stressed out about things if i have a to do list it's not like i'm taking the proper steps to actually complete it like i'm not letting anything linger too much and if i'm making myself upset or like if I'm tired and I'm going into situations with a negative starting point well then you're already you can be upset by anything oh this weekend was so busy

oh it sucked oh I'm so tired like you can instantly do that and it's like nothing because it's this weird self-depreciation like boomy things are so hard and it's it's a I mean I get the logic because it's a comfortable, like, retreat. Everything is so hard. Everything sucks. I can do nothing about it. It's just how it is. So there's nothing.

Like, it's a taking your hands off the wheel of things when, you know, that's six years old. Like, this is, you reach a point where you're, you're responsible. Like, I, you know, I've still got some stuff in my parents' house. I'm going to go pick up and things. But at this point now, like 23-year-old Sam, I'm completely responsible for all my own stuff. So I got to actually take a hold of it. And if I make myself upset about like the stupidest things, well, then I'm stressed myself out for no reason.

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It is a strange thing to try and deal with the criticisms of people that you don't know, at least in my experience, the amount of times that you can try and reverse engineer, well, would you, don't take criticism from someone. you wouldn't take advice from don't accept that's a good one yeah it's it's it's nice all of this stuff makes sense we're just we're saying it in hypothetical yeah when you're in it all of this i got this conversation later on today with a couple of young philosopher bros and uh they do uh logic right so it's a very sterile um uh rational way to sort of look at situations honestly the more that i've done a little bit of research into logic

the more it feels like it just completely fucking falls apart the second an emotion comes in. You're like, oh, this sounded so great, but you're not an equation. Yeah, yeah. You're not a sterile laboratory. Yeah, it's like, it's something that's fun on paper because you could read that and think, oh my God, if I start thinking that this way,

I'll never be upset again. And it's like, you're not a freaking robot. I bring this up a ton where I'm like, just because you can use Excel doesn't mean you don't have to run around like we used to do when we were hunter-gatherer we're not that much different like we can do way different stuff but you're still like genetically right there you got to run around and freaking move but yeah same thing you can't

like the idea it's a kind of like almost be afraid of your own emotions where you don't want to even get into it and just like thug your way out of it where it's like I don't care it's just like any kind of extra masculine have you heard of act acceptance and commitment therapy it's not too dissimilar to CBT it's kind of CBT adjacent, I suppose, but in many ways, CBT is teaching you the thinking patterns, the way that your brain works, so that you can better see and move through challenges, acceptance and commitment therapy. A lot of that is about this thing is happening, and you sort of allow it to move through you. So it's CBTI for insomnia is very popular, and act I for insomnia is

also pretty popular. But the approaches are very different. acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia or a lot of the time is just okay I'm awake what would it be like if I was okay with being awake not CBT which a lot of the time feels like you're you're in battle with it oh that's catastrophic thinking that's anchoring bias that's you know and at least in my experience using act for challenges that you've got in your life you said before do I feel sort of generally pretty good about the day. Am I not too stressed? What would it be like if I was just okay with this? What would it be like if I was just my knee, I've got a little bit of a knee injury or something.

You go, I can fight against it or I can reverse engineer it. You know, this is a challenge that I need to get through. This is where the real work begins. You go, my knee hurts. What if I was okay with my knee hurting? Yeah. I'm still needing to go and do the thing. But at least for me, and maybe it's different for different physiologies, for me, I just like, that sort of ease regulation thing. For me, that's, that works quite well. But then that's where, like, when I talk about the logic of taking things to like two extremes, well, what do you do?

Like, just take everything negative that ever happens to you and say, this is just how it is. That's okay. Like, that's completely forgetting. I don't need to fix it. I can just let it fester and get worse. Like, it's, are you going to lower your standards to the problems that you're dealing with, or are you going to raise your standards and fix those problems?

and be in a better position. So you can't fix everything, but some of the things, that's where the middle ground comes in, the things that you could fix, you should fix. And the things that you can't, he shouldn't worry about it.

Well, that's the stoic fork, right? That dichotomy of control thing. So you mentioned there about training at the gym, two in the morning, kind of getting it done, this is me on my own. How difficult has it been to maintain a simple lifestyle now? Because I can't imagine

that training in the gyms near you, is quite as peaceful as it used to be. Maybe a little, but it's actually, it's the best there out of anywhere. Because people have seen you a million times. I've been at this gym since I started working out. So I see all the same people work there. If anything, they're probably like, oh, he's on my machine. Like, oh my God, Sam's on the Smith.

I was going to be that for 30 minutes, motherfucker. And it's just like an exposure thing, you know, like just from being there so much. But when I get to visit places, that's where it's a little crazier. Or, like, even, it's kind of a classic trope of, holy, my Instagram just blew up and go to L.A. I'm out of here. And it's, you're kind of boxing yourself in because now you're doing what everyone else does. For me, I've been like, the gym is going to have the same weights anywhere. The whole point of social media is you can do it from anywhere.

I don't need to uproot my whole life and everyone that I know just because, that's what other people do so it's um at home it's like very normal but it's uh it's definitely different but even as different as it is um like i got this a lot it's like how crazy is this and like objectively it's totally crazy like i can still see that from before to now but you do get a little bit exposed to it just from it never just happened like first it was like one guy at Kroger said whoa dude i saw you on my phone earlier and there was a video that had like 2000 views like it just happened because he was a that was the start and then like the next week there's another guy and then it like all very like point one percent increases over time

so there was no moment where the frog jumped out of the boiling water because it just raised temperature super slowly but it's it's definitely crazy how big it's all right it's all kind of scaled. But at home, it's, it's pretty normal. How do you not get distracted as more options come onto the table? I think, uh, I've still got a little bit of that kind of, I don't want to say hater preconception, but almost like hardheadedness of like, I know what I'm doing, I know what I want to do, I know who I wouldn't want to like get involved with. Because it's not like everyone on social media is always the nicest person ever. Like it's, it's like anything. So I can see, guys where I would say

I like this guy this guy's cool we have talked before let's do something but even and I always think about this at the expo's like to see an expo

everyone just left this Lyft London and they are getting after it this year is their year I saw Sawyer Cloud I saw David Laid Phil Heath was there

this is going to be sweet in a week that that motivation is going to dwindle because this is a This is like the just for show part. And in the moment, it's super flashy. But, you know, even the workouts I got to do with some of the gym short guys,

like Jack Eagles and Marcus. And, like, it's really fun because I get to lift with guys who are kind of higher level advanced. Like, Jack Eagles is a total beast. But that's, you know, countered by the three months of workouts I just did on my own, which were only for the purpose of, like, progress. So it's like there's a ratio of, like, fun to work. where, like, you know, how many, there would be a million hours of, I always reference the basketball players, because they're such a good example of a lot of practice before performance.

And it's like, how long would you sit and watch, like, a Kobe Bryant shoot free throws? Like, how long would you watch LeBron do dribbling drills? You wouldn't. But that's the kind of, I see a lot of quotes where it's like, those are the glorious, glorious battles which when one add up to a seamless victory but it's it's like you can't forget that all happened before but it's easy to when all you see is that end result like when we're all in match track suits we're a freaking jimshark team don't forget everybody is now going back to where they belong not belong but back to where they're from to do the boring and they're all going

to get back to work they're all going back to normal dude it's the same with the show it's this is fun and it's cool but that's not over this weekend you know i've been i landed on thursday i had the athlete venue thing on friday with all of us going yep i didn't get to do the athlete workout on the friday afternoon because i had to go back and prep and read and then i had to do it before we left on saturday and then left early on saturday and then on sunday did it all morning and then didn't get to go to the product showcase last night for the same thing. So yeah, you're right. It's 95%, 98% of it is all of this stuff, which is me looking at a laptop, or me with a Kindle, or me with a book, or me with notes, or me walking, and going,

what the fuck do I think about that thing? Like, what's the idea? What's the name for that concept? What's the whatever? And then, okay, I get to come back and finally have some fun. But there's a cool story from Atomic Habits by James Clear. And I think it was the lead coach of maybe the Chinese weightlifting team. Or maybe this is Ben Bergeron's chasing excellence. It's one of the two. And they spoke to the lead coach of the Chinese weightlifting team. They said, what's the difference between the guys who are elite and the guys that are world champions?

And he said it's the world champions that are prepared to do the most boring work with the least amount of complaining. And I just really like that idea because especially as a very important. things become more successful and this is like a really unpopular talking point on the internet because everybody wants to hear the zero to one not the 50 to 55 or 80 to 85 or 95 to 96 they don't want to hear about the top end stuff because it doesn't sound it sounds more exclusionary right because by definition most people are on the come up as opposed to closer to the top but I think it's important to give people an idea of what are the pitfalls that are coming up for you if you do what you say that you want to achieve, which is become better in whatever it is that you are, even becoming better as a parent,

becoming better as a dog owner, becoming better as a friend or whatever. As you become more advanced, there will be fewer and fewer people that can give you advice about what you're going to come up against. Anyway, point is, people that are prepared to show up and do boring things as their situation becomes more luxurious, feels sort of opulent. You know, if you're a world champion Chinese weightlifter, I imagine you've probably got your meals cooked for you, you'll have body work, you'll have a coach, you'll have a mindset person, you'll have friends, you'll be living in a house that's probably quite nicely put together, a bed that's constructed for your particular physiology firmness, all that sort of stuff. And you think, how do you remain hungry to go in

do an hour of mobility work four times a week when you have your meals cooked for you and you've got a custom built pillow and stuff and that preparedness to accept no matter how good I get at this thing I will always have to do boring shit and that's not a bug it's a feature and not only is it a feature it's a source of competitive advantage because as things get more salubrious as you as you raise up through the ranks other people will have the same thought that you do which is i shouldn't need to do this shit anymore you go okay so if you can continue to lean into the stuff that you did at the start at the end that's where the competitive advantage lies yeah i was i was just doing the math to make sure i knew what it all added up to

but not even including because before the bodybuilding shows i just did like i was dying for like five months, but just counting the year from January until that first show, a three-month period, there was five days straight of cardio. It was 100, it was 120 hours because it was 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes after the workout for two of those months. And then for one of those months was an hour in the morning and an hour after. so five like who would even be able to watch five hours of something like that let alone or five days of something like that let alone do it and that's the stuff I don't show off

because I mean for one nobody even care to watch it but it's um it's like a it's like a hidden quest in a video game where it's actually the most valuable thing or like it's straight out Indiana Jones when he's got to pick the premises he's in this kind of magical cave if you haven't seen it and there's a million gold or like there's a hundred gold chalices and they're all super flashy and if you pick the correct one you get in eternal life or something whatever so there's two guys that show up it was indiana jones and then another like villain guy and he picks the flashiest most diamond and crested one he could get his hands on like what he thinks would be the trick drinks from an instantly dead or something like that it's been a while

and then Indiana Jones picks the scrappy wooden one and that was the secret the one that was understated and it's um so that gets me motivated to do that kind of stuff and track all my cardio and calories and everything because I know its value because I've done it and gotten the value from it so I know that it actually like is the trick but if you if you've never done it you don't have that proof and it's it's always a what if and that's everything like that's

honestly that's the um at least state side that's your kind of program to do that middle school high school okay you have to go to college to get this job to do this like the idea of doing getting into like a trade or getting into like i think i have this awesome business idea that is the minority by far to branch off from this condition path and it's not like it's bad but so many people might have been able to do so many awesome things if they could really do what they wanted to do instead of just, you know, following the beaten path. Bro, if you're succeeding at a life that you hate, imagine how great you'd be at one

that you actually enjoyed. There's so many people that are crushing it and then not fired up for what they do. Imagine how good you could be if you actually woke up on a morning and were excited for what you were about to do. Like it was a, and that might just be a, a, time thing. Like, there's a video of Seinfeld in an interview. And, you know, I don't, I don't know if I'd call him the greatest source of whatever, but he's like, you know, back in the, in the 90s, back in the 80s, the flex was like, what do you do for work? And that's a little different because, I mean,

inflation and, you know, whatever. But at the time, at least, it was, oh, this guy has a cooler job than me. Oh, this guy worked at a guitar shop. That's cool. I'm a freaking accountant. That's just paper everything and it's um like it's very monetarily driven like uh it's one of the three classics it's like sex drugs and money that's you know monetized social media wise in its own way the sex side but in regular instagram and when it comes to um or at least the money side that you don't have to do anything you don't have to be an interesting guy at all if you get your hands on a super fancy car and make some videos about it you didn't even have you could know someone who had it and he let you and that's your whole gimmick just the fact that you like have something this

valuable and for me i'm like that sucks like you didn't you didn't do anything to get that and the ones that did well they don't even care to show it off because they are kind of you know comfortable enough with wherever they're at where it's like guys who say oh dude i'm going to do a bodybuilding show I'm going to make it. I'm going to be the next whoever. My thought on that is always you're trying to essentially argue your case to the universe and internally in your mind that, you know, kind of idea to want to propel, convince everyone you can do it may come from an internal doubt of, I don't know if I can do it,

but I want to, I want to do it. I don't know if I can do it. I'm going to tell everyone I can do it. maybe I'll be able to convince myself. So it's not bad to want to say that and then still really go after it. But however I'm wired, I don't exactly want to talk about what I'm going to do. And it might be a little bit of a defense mechanism for me. Because if I have a plan to do something and then it totally flopped, well, no one knew I was going to be.

You don't set a goal. You can't fail. Nobody knew I was going to do it. So I don't know. But I don't think it's as much of that as it is. Like, you know, on the social media side, if I set a, was going to do a bodybuilding show in six months, the whole time people would, people would say, like, he's not going to do it. So I'm like, I don't want to even talk about it. So usually it's like,

okay, 12 weeks out videos, you know, transformation programs, like just really hyping it up months in advance. So for me, with mine, he was like, all right, we're doing a show in like three days. We're already ready. Yeah. Not even to give anybody the opportunity to think it wouldn't happen. because then you just do it. And that's already way more impactful because anybody could say they're going to do it. But to actually have that belief very firmly

or it's not even a belief. It's like an under, it's, I want to have an understanding that I know I can get where I want to go where it's to the point where you don't believe

that if I knock this water I was going to spill everywhere, you know it. You know that's what is going to happen from the circumstance. So if you're really, and maybe in the beginning, I'm sure some of it was just from optimal delusion, but I think you might even need some of that just to get started.

But now it's to the point where I know what I'll be capable of, or I know what I am capable of, and I want to at least reach that level of effort and consistency with the things that I'm really into. I'm not like that with everything. But with the working out, at least very specifically, like that's my thing. you know all your eggs and not all your eggs in one basket most but if most of them are in there

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When it comes to prep, first bodybuilding show this year, male body dysmorphia is on track to overtake female body dysmorphia within a couple of decades. what's your relationship with the mirror like i was definitely feeling it a little because you are it's one day where you just really depleted all your water like you will never look like that on a regular day-to-day basis and also i mean it's also kind of an interesting look like do you really want to look like a stage bodybuilder all the time like i get so i get the allure there for the day but afterward like actually eat more food and kind of getting a little bit softer just from because that's the nature of it

that was actually when I did feel it a little because I was just looking at the absolute craziest version of myself ever and now I'm not that but it's kind of uh it's it's more of a mental thing where what do you imagine yourself as when you think of Chris Williamson are you thinking awesome lighting huge jacked ripped

pumped up yes keep going I'm thinking or at least I try to like imagine myself more so is like just like how I look in the day like the the more that or the large I've gotten just in like the pursuit of size, the more comfortable I've gotten with like just the fact that I'm as big as I am, where I don't feel the need to like only post my biggest picture and like even go so far as to like Photoshop it or like that's just that sucks. Not only is that like you're just lying by doing that, which for the people you're showing is

that's stupid, that's rough, but you're lying to yourself because you're definitely looking at that picture and thinking, you know, that's how I love. look. And that's not how you look. When I'm, when I'm pumped up in the gym, that is its own circumstance, which is cool in its own way, and then I can go back to what I normally look like. And for me, I've been so like real progress driven with the gym, where I'm not so concerned with how do I look today for everyone who's going to see me. And those guys are the guys who stay lean all year round, always posting Instagram. Because they're scared of getting too fluffy to make the longer term progress. Well, maybe not scared in every case. Because if that's,

the look that you really want, then you're good. That's sweet. Like, you actually kind of did it. But if you're someone where you actually are scared of that, then that's the motivation. It's just fear of, you know, looking a little softer or anything. And, I mean, we're not helping. You know, guys who post a really crazy picture aren't exactly helping the situation because they're showing a totally crazy version. But it's, that's where, I mean, it's just how it is. So it's kind of your responsibility to try to grasp it more objectively. Like, these guys look like this because of everything that they're doing. You can't forget that.

Do you see this with the fans that you interact with? You know, you've got young followers. What's your demographic? What's the... It's wide. It's probably evenly dispersed between 18 and below, 18 to like 30, and then 30 and above. Okay. Because I'm getting off flights.

And like this older pilot is like, has my landing, Sam. I was like, it took me a second. But, like, way wider than I ever would have guessed. Well, even within that, right, guys, I guess of all ages. Yeah, we're, everybody's in the gym as a guy. The male body dysmorphia thing, just, I think it really fascinates me. I think we've got a good cultural narrative and archetype around, you know, body positivity for all that there were lots of things that was maybe a little contrived with that for women. Yeah.

I don't think we've had the same sort of a movement for men. And I think that that's where this male body dysmorphia thing really, really ramping up. I mean, you saw bigger, stronger, faster, right? Where Luke Skywalker action figure in the 60s was sort of like nerdy dude. And then in the 90s, you know, he's been doing five by five for a few years. And then by sort of the 2000s, he's been on a very, very heavy course of trend. And you go, why does Luke Skywalker need striated delts? So you've got this big flation thing that's going on.

But that's not new. I mean, when did Rocky come out? That's true. That's true. But I think if you were to look at how prevalent that's been the saturation level. Much more late. Yeah, if Rocky as a boxer is ripped, yeah. Is it unrealistic?

Many boxes that built? Probably not. But at the very least, the nerdy dude that swings the lightsaber around, probably not him. But there's no area now that's beyond somebody being jacked for it. I'm just interested in what you're seeing from your audience and what you think for sort of younger generations, even younger than you, that are coming up now to try and have this balance. I want to look better, but I don't want to feel in deficit, and I don't want to go through life hating the mirror. Yeah, that's definitely an angle I have to bring up. That is someone like to be looked at.

but in terms of the situation I think guys are always going to have it easier because as much of a standard as there is it's still not the same as for women and guys are more likely to look at things as like shit man I'm just fat or like if you're if you're like that could just be like guys will joke around with each other like that

because like that's just kind of how we are it's a little more I don't want to say playful but you could say kind of blunt like that but it's not as likely to eat at us out of you know I'm not exactly the guide to go to, to be like, what was it like to lose 300 pounds? I could try to guess. I don't know for sure.

But I think it's definitely increasing the more prevalent fitness is becoming. But it's something where another middle ground, like, okay, I either have to look like a Ronnie Coleman or like a Greg Plitt or I'm completely worthless, which is this side of the scale, which that sucks. Or, man, I don't care how it. look i'm gonna be 400 pounds and i'm gonna love it there's no problem with this at all and that's that sucks too so there is a middle ground of where i think it's important to you can be your own like worst critic but it's different if your own worse if you're your own worse hater

you can tell yourself you have things that you want to work on but to really like self-depreciate and like i'm just such i i hate to hear it i'll see guys where they i'm into the gym and it's always the same guy I reference here because it was so egregious every time I'd come in to work out he's like oh how you do man he's like shit squad today I hate it I want to get out of here but he's not joking and I mean for him that's where it goes back to like sometimes it's a self-soothing behavior to say oh this all sucks so bad and you're like releasing your responsibility for the situation like oh everything sucks oh just how it is but it's um Yeah, that's what I really like to hear the most.

Because for a high school guy to go from like 160 normal looking dude to pretty big, I mean, after a year of only working out, no diet at all, you can look pretty good. Like, you're drastically different. But it didn't take that much because you do get that early starting point of, well, you were already pretty lean. Newbie gains are real, dude. Yeah, newbie gains. Right in the beginning, you're the most susceptible to your training. so for someone to show me their

you know fat loss transformation like dude look at this picture and it's not the guy I'm looking at right now like it's 150 pounds so these guys will be in like my gyms that I go to and he's with his dad and like we get a little picture and then you know he walks off and does a set and then his dad's told me he's like dude

he started watching you talk about dieting like he really got into it I never could have guessed this what happened like completely changed the dude's life but not because i said something but because he like took the action to do it and when someone does that like out of honestly out of everything even someone who like had a regular like maybe they started off a little leaner they got pretty big they had a big bench or something like i'm always more impressed and i can actually like get a look just something about like i know that you know about the things that i really value like doing

cardio a ton, tracking your calories, going into your kitchen and like, I want to eat something. I'm not going to do it, though. I'm going to handle this internal battle. I'm giving myself and actually making it happen and like losing, because losing so that much weight is like, I don't know about 10 times, but it's up there in a multiplicity of difficulty from just working out and liking it and getting a little more muscle. So those are the guys where when I hear that, I'm like, we're going to talk for a little longer. Like, we're not, I'm going to, we're going to have a little chat here. Like, that's what I want to hear. You mentioned sort of some of the differences between guys and girls that you've gained,

what, 100 pounds-ish, probably, something. Yeah. Yeah. From bottom to top. About 100, yeah. Yeah. A lot of muscle, great condition. You look fantastic on the stage.

Given that, most guys go to the gym in order to get attention from goals, what is the ratio of attention that you get from guys and guys? girls now that you are in the big 200s. Yeah, right. I don't know, I don't know about the, if the social media stats or any indicator, or like what your gender demographics are, but at least from my like long form videos where people are actually coming to watch me talk about working out and like the things that go along with it, it's, um, I, I call them the four percenters because it's the

four percent female viewers. And I mean, it's not like unreasonable because I'm talking about working out as a guy. from a guy's perspective. But I mean, I'll chime in because sometimes I'll be like, I'm sorry, I'm not, I don't, I'm not the guy to watch for glute training. So it's sometimes where if someone's, you know,

dude, I want to get into a serious, like I'm going to really lock in. I want to know what it's like to lose 300 pounds. I want to know what it's like to whatever. Like that's where I'm going to say, I can tell you what I know, but if you want to watch someone who did it, then you get to watch somebody else

and kind of get inspired from their track. What about IRL? because, you know, guys that might not even know who you are as you're getting bigger. Like, dude, like, what are you doing for arms? Yeah. The many goals that come up and go, Sam, like, you're your forearms are getting so big. So that's one thing, which was not the motivation, because the guys who think, like, even the idea is strange, oh, if I was a big, if I was just bigger, it grows will be all over me.

If I, if my doubts were a little, that's not, that's not the value system for sure. That's not how it works in your experience. But, uh, but if you get big enough, they will come. up and talk to you and they'll say, my brother loves you. My boyfriend loves you. Could you take a picture so I get sent it to him? Because I see you on his phone so much that they, they don't watch the videos, but they see them like secondarily. So it actually, if you get big enough, girls will talk to you because they will come up and ask you for a picture for their dad. There's a meme online that you have a fear of women.

So that plays back into the earlier TikToks where my formula, which I just thought was funny, but like how all my things were was if you want to post a video about working out in like a 10 second, little short, like you might think you want to talk about how serious the gym is or have like a, like don't even do a caption, just say like, grind or like you don't know what it takes but how i've always looked at it is like if you're big you have already said that you are serious like unspokenly just from how you are as a guy or what the the video was like clearly you're serious because you have these results that you're showing off in the video to say anything like a motivational just thing on top of that which like if it's a

motivational video that's different but in terms of like regular kind of content like you're putting a hat on a hat. For me, it's like post a workout video that's just really cool and hype of the workout. And I'm like lifting bench at 315. But then the caption is like just something silly. Something you wouldn't expect because it's like, you know, the only reason I would get strong is so I can protect my cats at home. Or like, it's like I had to cut this workout short today. My mom had to pick me up to go get groceries. So like something silly because that's not something you'd expect. And everybody always. post it like you'd want to post like oh i'm so serious or grind sets so yeah so it's it's almost like

you know just you can be if you're serious enough about something it's even funnier when you're silly with something else what's that got to do with the fear of women thing because that's his own joke right you would think big brolic guy like just from what we were saying before it's like oh you're working at it's a get girls that is kind of and i didn't come up with that joke like i saw it before it kind of just like it happened to scale a little more with me but it's like that's its own joke of like oh you It's just big, like masculine dude, whatever. Like, can I work in with you? And then in the video, I just, like, disappear.

Like, teleport. Because that's, that's just something that you wouldn't expect. Like, it's funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But then it, but, you know, then it bled into, like, real life where, like, we did meet and greets. And, like, the first time I ever took a picture and there was a girl there, all the comments were like, what the, I thought he was. What? They feel like they'd been betrayed.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, what do you? In a world where that was actually the case, you want there to be like, guys, this meeting greets guys only. Yeah, well, that wouldn't, you're at least going to get 4% based on your demo. It's 4%. Yeah, exactly. The Instagram's 20%, but that's because it's Instagram.

Because that's not like really watching your stuff. Like I think the most real viewers and the most real feedback and comments, that's on the YouTube. Because there's a lot of intent to watch a whole workout, or even some of a workout. whereas on Instagram you can just something can be shown to you scrolled away it's like nothing you were posting on you may still do Spotify video I think there's stuff that gets reposted there that's not you that's not your channel I'll get into it it's I've got a couple of things where it's like on the list of things that kind of like track down or get control of they do video now so you can basically just plug it over there the whole thing I think that'll be good because people it would certainly work to listen to yeah because you can just listen the whole thing maybe I'm cutting in there that's that's something where if it was an audio form I'd probably cut some of that out. Instead of the workout's sounds and ASMR, I'd probably just say what the workout was in its own little minute segment in the middle

and then talk about it after. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I, yeah, that's its own joke. Like, it'll be, dude, don't watch this video without headphones. Or my wife came in and she thought I was watching, like, whatever. Yeah. And so I actually think, like, I don't know, I just, for me, that makes me feel like I'm keeping it real,

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drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinkag1.com slash modern wisdom. Bodybuilding's already a rough sport, physically, psychologically, hormonally. How much are you thinking about longevity at the moment and tradeoffs? That's one thing I'll bring up because it's like guys will ask me, it's like, are you going to move to open? Are you going to? Or it's, can't wait to see you as Mr. Olympia. Like, as though it's a, it's, that's the track that I'm on. And for me, it's more so, it's like, okay, what am I willing to do that adds to this whole thing with bodybuilding that will

take me, you know, a certain degree of distance, right? Because if you're a top level, Olympia competitor, that comes with its own things, you know, like, it's not as though bodybuilding on a competitive level is, and, you know, I might not be the one to say recommend, because I'm not like a complete G of bodybuilding, like a Jay Cutler or like a real commentator or a judge would be who's been in the sport for years. But it's like, it's not something to be pursued forever. Like, actually, the bigger I've gotten, the more I've started to be content with the size that I already am, where I used to imagine 300 pound Sam Seulik. I'm like, yeah, once I get to 300, that'll start to be. But it's, it's something where when you actually get,

to a different position, just over time and, like, through progress, you're going to have a different perception of, like, what you actually want. Because even though you may have reached that level from having a certain goal, now you're a completely different person with different circumstances. And as good as that goal may have been to motivate you in the beginning, sometimes that can change. Yeah, dude, that's such a giving up. It's just you've gotten a better perspective,

and now you know more to make a better decision. That's a really, Fantastic point that adjusting your goals as you get closer to them to some people feels like seeding ground. You've already done the hard part. Why are you not applying more pressure and really, really pushing? But the same as what you considered to be a good dish when you were starting out as a chef will not be what you consider to be a good dish as you become more sophisticated. And that dish may be more simple.

So you may start out making these really complex things with 500 ingredients. And you think, well, actually, you know, just a good pasta. Like, I can just nail a good pasta and I think that that's pretty sweet. So, yeah, the ability to discern good from bad, like taste, like what's something that's a tasteful goal for me to go toward? What's something that resonate? How do I realize as I get closer to something that maybe the ladder I was climbing was kind of leaning up against the wrong wall a little bit? So I'm just going to adjust it. and I'm going to keep climbing over here.

And with bodybuilding, at least, there's a few examples. I mean, actually, I'm sure there's thousands where it's just, it's not highlighted on social media, so I wouldn't have any input on when this might happen. But with bodybuilding, it's not something I'd recommend for everyone. Like, when I see the, like, I'd say it's prevalence now, like the idea of I need to be a bodybuilder or, like, a younger guy saying, I have to be able to get on stage at a certain point.

I think it's a bit overinflated in its value because it's very showy. You only see that little flashy kind of point at the end. And it's also in a scope of social media where, like, as much as I'm not trying to overdo it and make myself look cooler or better, like, portray a crazy lifestyle that I might actually live, like, it's still kind of flashy in its presentation.

So if you get obsessed with like the idea, idea of something to actually approach what that real thing is and now your idea of it is actually going to become a real understanding of it and you'll realize like shit man i wouldn't like there's guys where they have gone pro like they really got into it they were 100% serious and then they realized this isn't for me i'm gonna i'm gonna not like back pedal isn't the right word i'm gonna just redirect towards something which i actually value now and if at any point that would happen then that's what i would do how do you now personally weigh health versus aesthetics you've got this well i mean everybody uh there's actual like numerical metrics you know everyone's

getting there like honestly i think everybody should be getting their blood tested even just out of curiosity that's something you're doing regularly yeah yeah so that's that's definitely like anybody who's serious about bodybuilding they're all getting relatively extensive blood tests pretty regularly and if they're not then like you are missing out but what sucks is actually it's um i'm kind of spoiled because my general practitioner will order all my stuff like a full panel of everything whereas a lot of doctors like i'll hear stories where it's like you know can i just get like can i just get my test leveled a normal dude nah you're young you don't have to worry about something like that and it's um like i mean i'm sure you've got your own take on it but it's just

kind of this behind the curve sort of thing because that's something like could what if you're a guy where you're straight up hypogynatal and you're you might be literally whatever value is barely any that could totally 50s or the 200s or something well I'm saying like if there were somebody where they were under a hundred and it's like you didn't have any control over that and if your hormones are totally out of whack then that would be warrant for intervention And that was something that would be totally like doctor viewed, but what I see a lot is you could take that statement and stretch it as far as it could go to justify the craziest things. Like it's with that, and I see a lot in training, a 50-year-old X-900-pound squatter, complete, like, real experience and respected in the space, will make a video and he's training now still. And he's been training for 40 years or 35 years.

and he'll say, you know, right now it's back squats. They're just not, the reward, wrist or reward ratio, it's not there. It's too much on my lower back. My knees are, they've been kind of worn. So for me, I've got to stick to more, like, lighter leg press and, you know, just more kind of stable movements. And that's backed by his situation. And someone who is kind of starting a little earlier in the gym, they might have an awesome

like grasp of everything. We'll hear that. And then that's an easy argument to say, well, this guy said, you don't even need to squat. I'm not squat. Dude, squats, like, not even an acceptance of, like, I don't want to squat. That's why I don't do it. But just this, you know, trying to bring the bar down to their level of like, well, I'm not willing to squat. I don't want to do it.

If I can justify why I don't need to do it, then actually I'm not skipping anything. I'm doing it right by doing less. What's the line, what's the linkage or analogy between, that in the bloods yeah well it's just um because then some you know somebody could say oh you know my test was probably super low anyway they didn't even get a test somebody could say it's like you know i i looked at i was looking at wmmd and it's like the so i don't bring that up as much but the the normalcy and like the um generally the conditioned of just like that's not a big deal like that's not something i'm bro let me give you that

let me give you this according to the american urological association 25% of patients on t rt never had the testosterone checked one third weren't even deficient i saw that last week but what's the age demographic because if that's if that's still like what somebody would conventionally say a normal age to be like a 35 above i think that's a much different situation than anything earlier because you're literally still a developing dude you know like you that's that is a thing that you are messing with which is not just like yeah it's just you know whatever we were talking before we got started about um some of the challenges you have help wise with bulking up and what that does to you the way that you feel you've already

mentioned mobility uh what what is some of the unseen uh side effects of gaining so much weight in such such a short space of time as a young dude yeah And it's, um, so that's one thing that's kind of interesting because there's this sort of, I almost want to say just what you would call your, how you're carrying the weight that you're carrying. Because right now I'm, I'm like, I'm 250. And I'm actually a little bit lighter from this whole week of everything we've been doing and not eating as much food and traveling. But still, like, I feel very light. Like, I do not feel as though I'm, I'm super heavy. Because in the range of like, my big and bulked weight to like my lighter carb depleted maybe a little less hydrated weight like

I'm on the bottom end of that scale whereas like two years ago for me to really bulk up to 250 and be a very water retentive like it felt completely different like bend over to put your shoes on and like you can feel you're like almost holding your breath because there's so much pressure like you got a full stomach like just things like that but the scale really could i mean it's it's so gradual or no it's so extensive because anything that i could say like like i fit in an airplane seat fine like i still that's not that's an eddie hall rony coleman rindshaw problem yeah yeah like i'm big but i'm still like relatively human shaped you know like muscle does not exceed my frame like if you looked at um like a very good example would be

a derrick lunsford yes and i i'll bring him up sometimes because he's got a really interesting look Because you could basically describe him as you took a regular, I mean, you took a regular lean guy and you just dragged the muscle scale all the way to the max. Because, I mean, sometimes to even get to that size, like, it just has an effect. What's a C way? He's got to be heavy. I don't know any exact terms. And it's different when you're shorter too.

So someone who's 6'4 at 200 is very different than someone at 5 foot 4 at 200. So he's a, well, he's heavy. but he's like crazy big so for him he's got his own that's where like when we were talking on our panel talk yesterday when the guy said like what if he had to change about your sleep

from being so big like those guys must have their own stories or like maybe they industrial strength CPAP machine I can't even say that'd be for them yeah yeah how do you think about discipline

I'm interested in where you go for drive when motivation is low yeah i think because i don't usually think to my i never have self-talk in my mind or i say like i need to be more disciplined right now because and it's maybe just because of what motivated me to get into it in the beginning like i just never like that was never my mantra of a word and with anything working out related i um i guess i almost feel like I'm on, like sometimes I feel a little hypocritical when I'll say, like, typically good motivational, like, okay, even if you feel like you're not going to get after it, like, you just

got to, like, know that you're going to regret it. If you don't, things along those lines, but for the most part, like, I kind of treat it as this, like, this is going to happen. Like, there is no, like, the idea of, okay, I need to take a break today, or I need to take a rest day today. I'm getting better at it because it is objectively necessary at times. I'm getting better at taking a rest day. I think they're unnecessarily taken a lot, which makes me like a little more tentative

because it's like I know people are skipping just because they didn't want to do it. And it's the same thing as the logic of the guy who actually did an objectively correct thing. I'm a little fatigued. I can feel it. The muscle that I was going to hit today is even a little sore. and I didn't really get a lot of food or water today. If I stay home and really refuel and get a good night's rest and do this workout tomorrow,

it will objectively be better for my long-term progress. And someone could pretend they're using that logic and justify, I don't want to go today. The rest days are actually good. You know, rest days are good. And then they take two weeks off. That's the other extreme. I think of on the scale of no rest days ever

to two weeks at a time on the regular this isn't a middle ground that's like right here it's much more on this side of things and it's a I think you're a different guy if you go even when you don't want to or when you subjectively have extra difficulties because now you're the guy who did it even when it was hard and it's like you know

nobody knows that you did it even when I was dieting for a few few of the workouts towards the end like I was super low energy like I'm like I'm doing three sets of pull downs and I don't feel warm at all until like the fourth one and I'm recording it and for me it's like there's different levels of actualized thought or like if you think something you know and you constantly think the same thing you can start to ingrain it in your mind but if you say something and you consistently say like oh man I'm so tired I'd you're convincing yourself that it's true

you're making it true and also I'm not gonna I don't like guys when they complain in a prep because if I'm trying to watch someone else's video of like them working towards something I don't want half the things they're saying to be like I feel like shit man this sucks I really don't even want to be here

so I don't even like the idea of anything like that but so for that workout where I'm dying like it was really hard like 400 milligrams of caffeine was not getting it's direct translation but oh all right that was a good one let's move on to the next one walk walk turn the camera off but but it's like because i and it's not even like a portrayal of that

because i bring that as soon as that show was done like i brought that up i'm like guys i was dying on a few of those lifts like hard i don't want to show it though because like i want to you know you're kind of you've got this mental version of what the world is when you think about it And if you can think about it in a better way, it'll kind of bleed into, like, actual reality. Yeah, you're sort of faking it until you believe it. Yeah, sort of. Look, the devil's in the details with this. When should I take a rest day versus, like, am I taking a day off because I might get injured today?

I'm not slept while I really need it. Exactly. Or am I selling myself short? Am I not allowing myself to say these things out loud or attach much worth to these thoughts because I'm denying what is actually true because this is better for me in the long run because it's a positive mindset. Am I being honest with the audience

if I don't put forward the weaker version of me that I don't want to be? Or am I being more honest? If I do put it forward, it's infinite spiral of... I think at least that last portion gets a little... Well, I think it'd be its own thing where it's a completely different perception

and then I'm like portraying. I think it's different when he's like, you might say something then, like in a situation like that. And then later like, guys, remember when I was super high energy for that back day? That was not it.

I think it kind of bounced out when you say that later. But that's something to think about for all of them, for sure. Well, how many times of people in an argument with a partner said something that they then later regret? Right, right?

In the moment, a heated moment of a diet or an argument. We often say stuff that's random. Yeah, that's one thing getting back to, we were saying something a second ago, about like different kind of thought processes and things and one of uh probably one of my first like what you kind of call eureka moment of like self-realization i was like in high school and i imagine sam sulik pissed like beyond belief and it's like you know for whatever not even

anything serious like in the moment this was the worst thing ever i'm in the shower i'm like sitting there just doing and i was i take a sign and go dude being this upset is just so tiring like what am i doing like that and i hadn't been into any kind of uh or like motivational speaker like thought control kind of not thought control but like thought like you know kind of controlling your own thoughts like what you think of things or anything like that but that was the first time i had a certain kind of reflection of like what am i even doing right now this is not this is not even necessary and this also sucks and it's like a good little All right, let's chill out here.

Do you get angry? You seem pretty chill all the time. I'm much more chill now, I believe. Like, I was never not chill. Like, I was never, like, fighting anybody or anything. But I think over time, I've become much more chill, for sure. Is that a cultivated practice, or do you think that's just you? A little.

A little cultive. Like, I was, there's this one YouTube channel. It's called Gravemind. Right. And it's kind of small, but they, it's a lot of, um, it's all of just excerpts from, like, all sorts of like Marcus Aurelius kind of or like the stoic mind like all sorts of little books like that like I've never gotten into like where I sit and I read a whole thing or anything like some of those ideas are very kind of translatable to the training so it was half training because it's like the better of a you know kind of head and direction a thing that's controlling your training the better the training will be so it wasn't exactly a like you know self-help thought process of trying to learn more about how you are as a person. It was like, this is actually going to make my training better. That was kind of the motivation.

But it definitely extends into just all of life. But it's like, you know, there's things you can't control. There's things you can't control. To be upset about anything unnecessarily, you just, you're stressing yourself out for no reason. And you're creating your own negative energy by like looking at something in that light. So just a lot of, like I got into that for like a couple of, I don't see maybe like a month. I watch a lot of those videos, and I took whatever I took from them, and I think it was, it put me on a better mental path. And it's, but, like, it's a little silly to say, just for the regular person to hear, because it's like all the cliches of, like, you know, the grass isn't always green on the other side or, like, you know, just whichever ones.

And they're so just, like, random. Like, you just spit them out. You don't even really take it in. But if in, like, if you ever have a situation in life where you screw up. or something bad happened or whatever and then you think of one of those because you're like oh shit that was actually true that that was literally me just now where it's um you know you're going to come across a problem you didn't expect and to you know kind of cower from it or just like pretend it didn't actually happen it's it's something where you kind of and i think with a training

for me when i'm doing all these videos and like really it's a lot of self-reflection practice Because now instead of just a thought about how my training is going, I'm putting it out into like real words and really like, you know, because I don't, the whole point of all the things I post is the objective take on, you know, working out from Sam of the perspective of whatever that day was. So even if I said something that may have been in the moment, objective, like I was saying, like, this is what I believe. A year later, I could say something else. I reserve the right to change my mind. I'm a different guy. Yeah. I'm a different guy. I've done different things. I've seen different things. I've met different

people. To be the same guy over time is, you know, just suck. But that would be even less authentic. Yeah, there's a, I think one of the problems with anybody putting anything out on the internet, whether you're a content creator or a person that, your mom that posts on Facebook, because we have this concrete record of everything that everybody has ever said throughout all of time, what you end up with is the opportunity for, for people to call out what on the outside looks like hypocrisy, but from the inside is just updating your worldview and learning and developing and growing. And confusing those two and the quickness of people to say,

well, you didn't say that before. You didn't agree with 45 minutes of cardi, I thought it was 30, Sam. Was it not 30 in the last prep? And the incentive there is for people to not say that they have changed their mind when they've changed their mind if and it also encourages people to never actually state their opinions that's that's what i was about to say if you know that you have had a few things where you look back and say yeah actually don't do i don't drink a protein shake with 100 grams of sugar in it anymore i did at the time and i'm like was that something you used to do

it's like well post workout you're very sensitive to an insulin response it fucking will be if you put a hundred grams of sugar a hundred grams is literally just straight sugar and like two scoops of protein. You're kidding me. Well, it was dextrose. Right. Okay. The highest glycemic index sugar there is.

And it's like it didn't work. I bet you felt great after that. One of them came back up when I got back to the, uh, when I got back to the apartment. And then I made another one to replace it. But that was like, I had just eaten a huge meal too. So, but so I would, I would not recommend them as much now. But also, I can't say that it was like completely foolish because it worked towards what my goals were. So it's just something like...

The physique is partly built by hundreds gram sugar protein shakes. Exactly, yeah. So it's like, you know, it's just part of the journey of things. And that's something bodybuilders, like that's another, like, if you could say something, it's a little different about how I've talked about everything is for them. It's always been this portrayal of, I'm only eating rice and chicken and broccoli, and that's all. And I never cheat.

I never eat anything else when you record like a CD for bodybuilding. But really, these guys are eating all sorts of junk. like Lee Priest is a he's he's unapologetic in the sense that he's going to say everything how it is a fat boy and he's he's like i mean McDonald's i mean i'm just eating to get big man if you get fat in the off season that's how it is then you can diet so i um for me and now my statement or what my current take is on like trying to leverage growth from increased calorie input is like you know bulk but don't get too fat like because if you they'll call it a perma bulk where it's like, dude, you have, you have gained 40 pounds and 30 pounds of that was not muscle.

And that's where, well, now you're kind of screwed because you've got to lose it. But there is a, there is a sweet spot where you will gain a little bit of body fat, you know, 10 pounds, whatever. And I think what throws people off is, for one, like, maybe they want to, they want to do it. They want to eat for like a couple months, get a little bigger and then die back down. I think it could be like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to diet. I know people don't like diets. They've never done it, but they hear what people say about it. I don't know if I could do it, maybe.

I don't want to do it. But it's also, man, I've got my bicep vein right now, though. I can see my abs right now. I don't want to lose that. And for me, I get a, I've got a picture, and it's a three-month difference, and it's insane, because it's me, like, eating a bunch of trash. Well, not even, not, actually, it's improved gradually. Like, now more food is, like, you're putting more, it's, I think about it, like,

putting more things through, like, a fine filter. and it's like the more additives and just like whatever like not as though i'm picking out specific ones like i'm never going to eat red 40 because of it but it's like just on a basic convention biased like i know this is a good a big bowl oatmeal and ground beef and like a semi-natural barbecue sauce is going to make me feel good but more so it won't make me feel bad yes and i can eat more of those so it's just an objective take that that is better but in the time when i was eating like a full pint of, like, vanilla ice cream and a protein shake. The logic goes, well, there's a ton of calories in this.

I can eat it very quickly. I am gaining weight. The goal that I am trying to achieve is being achieved. Is it exactly the most optimal way? Sometimes you kind of have to, you got to screw up. I said a good way of saying this. But it's like you have to learn from your mistakes so that you can be better later. So it's not make mistakes on purpose.

But when you do, like, and you read it. realize they were wrong. Up being the world view. Yeah, exactly. So the problem isn't making them. The problem would be not learning from them. A quick aside, if you've been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, focus, and performance. But most people have no idea where there's our and what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with function because I wanted a smarter, more comprehensive, and more convenient way to work out what's happening inside in my body. Twice a year, function run lab tests that monitor over 100 biomarkers. They've got a team.

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and save $100 by going to the link in the description below are heading to functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. What do you think are the biggest mistakes that people make when it comes to diet when trying to build muscle? I, because it's very black and white, I feel, because you're either a real hardcore,

like I'm going to track everything, I got to scale, or I'm like pretty good at reading all the nutrition labels and I'll make sure I eat enough food because it's really you're either eating enough or you're not. And for someone, like no one is going to track their calories 25% of the time. Like the, nobody's going to be on their diet 50% of the time.

And even if they were, well, then it's not going to work. You're not going to notice any substantial, changes from it because um like dieting the scrutiny i consider close to the scrutiny of like uh getting a medical degree it's not like getting a business degree or an accounting degree or something where you know you got a 2.0 GPA here you go you did it you know 70 average you pass like if i only dieted 70% of the time or 70% as you know somehow 70% of what was actually necessary, then if I went on stage, I'd look a fool. I'd be literally way too soft. And in relation to the guys who actually did it, like, or even someone just trying to lose weight, you can be on it

70% of the day. You could be on it 95% of the day. And that five, do a lot of damage in that 5%. Five minutes unfiltered in a pantry. You can completely, you can completely undo. That sounds like a Sam Sulick sex tape. You can five minutes unfiltered. the dinner pan. But you can completely undo all your work. And that happens a lot. I was good today. I'm going to have a milkshake.

Just ruined it. Just with the one thing. Well, the margins are very tight, right? Yeah, because you're either in a deficit. And it's not necessarily on a day by day, because sometimes you throw refeeds in or whatever, but you're either in a deficit consistently on average week by week, or you're not.

Or you're in a surplus consistently average week by week, or you're not. And even if you, and it's like, honestly, a week is probably a good chunk to describe because if I was in a good six days, I can, I can undo that in a day. Yeah. I can undo, so 300 calorie deficit for six days, 18,800 calories is like a meal. It's a meal. That's one meal. Or it's like half of a crazy meal if you're like really nuts and you're already, because you're already in a dieted state, like you're already subject to like. suck up carbs like i've had um you know because rather than just reverse dieting very slowly

like i've had like a 10 000 calorie day one day and it wasn't like 10 000 calorie challenge like that was i tracked everything just because i want to know i'm like that's just what happened because i let the floodgates loose 10 000 like a 4 000 calorie day on a sunday could throw off all your stuff saturday to friday so it's um you know it's something where these they either someone could either step it up enough where they actually make it happen or they're kind of just caught toiling or they just don't even want to deal with it and I know it's I'm not saying it's easy but I'm saying if you do track everything on a scale and you count it all and you like disperse your meals

evenly throughout the day so that you are not like dying hungry because you just starved yourself all day well then the likelihood that you'll actually like get lean if you did everything right It's like 100%. Where are the biggest vectors of weakness in dieting for you? It sounds like you and me have the same thing, which is nighttime snacking tends to be a big temptation, which means if you can just discriminate a little bit more calorie expenditure toward the end of the day,

you can go to bed feeling not like you're going to go do the pantry sex day. I have never blown my calorie deficit from breakfast. It is always later in the day. So what I do is I just wait till, sometimes I'll just wait until kind of as light as I feel like. Usually noon is a good, like when I, because right now I'm going from eating a ton of food to now eating like basically a normal amount of food, which just that change, even though I'm not in a serious deficit, is still enough to start to get me a little bit lighter and actually get some fat reserves burning. But nothing like really what you call locked in yet. Like fast forward a few months. We're like, okay, I've got 2,500 for today, and I need to make them count because I'm getting hungry.

I'm going to wait until maybe one, usually not beyond one, and it's not because of the magic of intermittent fasting. But you can skip breakfast, and you're not dying. You can wait a little bit, and then I just want to time it where it's, I'm hungry, but I'm not starving. Because if you wait until you're really starving, well, then now you're starving. You want to eat a ton. so you have that desire to eat. Yeah, so there's like a threshold of hunger where if you wait until you're too hungry,

it might make you more likely to overdo it. I had an Achilles repair after playing cricket, which is the most British way to snack on Achilles. And the advice from the surgeon was don't chase the pain when he was talking about using the painkillers, that you always want to be out ahead of the pain a little bit. And it's kind of the same, like, don't chase the hunger with this. Allow yourself to get, I'm starting to feel it a little bit

and I'll just, I'll nip that in the bud, as opposed to being ravenous. And that's how you go from needing a 500 calorie meal to a thousand calorie meal. And you go, that was two-fifths of my entire day on 2,500 gone in a single meal. God, the rest of the day is going to suck. Right. So that's something I always have to, it's like a dichotomy of trying to get good at anything, or trying to really progress at something, because there is a perception that I have to, to be either Rocky Balboa and do 10 miles every morning

and drink egg whites and or if I can't do that, I'll do nothing. Like that's, yeah, there's a good reference. A guy was like, people will have a slashed tire approach to dieting where if one tire gets slashed, like you had a bad day, I've had days where I cheated. I didn't say it till later, but I had a couple really big days on my diet, but the idea that, okay, today was a little off,

screw it done like it's either perfect or nothing which is it's so crazy because it's uh it's like just what you'd call someone's hypothetical like perfection where they imagine like the perfect version of themselves and they set the bar there and like real life is nothing like that but now to like if they think that this is the bar to be anything short makes them feel comfortable like it's just not for me if i can't be perfect i don't want to be anything at all but with with working out like what i was about to really get into is it's a combination of for one you do have to be serious like with dieting the whole point is literally on average you are hungrier than you are not hungry and you don't get to eat a lot of stuff like it's just it's difficult

it's something hard so as you have to like kind of raise to the occasion like i can handle this i will be tougher to be able to do it and like really bring it and put a lot of effort into it but at the same time you want to give yourself a routine that makes it the easiest for you so for me to say like you know if you if i really time out my diet well it actually doesn't feel like i'm dieting that hard because i had very low calorie high volume meals and like an egg white omelet with a full pack of like a salad mixed into it. It's just so it's um, but that only comes after that hardheadedness of saying, I'm going to do it in the beginning.

Because if your first instinct is to coddle yourself, well, then that's not a position where you're ever going to, you know, deal with it when it gets hard. Yeah, but you have to be able to like, that's where I like, I used to do basically three to four times the amount of volume in a workout that I do now. My mind was five sets on five movements. So for one chest day, as a 165-pound Sam, I was doing five sets of bench, five sets of inclined bench, five sets of flies, five sets of dips, five sets of something else. And like, it was a little fluffier volume. Like, I was incapable of the intensity that I can reach now from doing it for so long. but in my mind more is better

I don't care that it's going to take a while and be long like that's just this is what I want to do and this is how I'm going to do it dose response increase dose increase response nothing is going to change that so it's this like hardheadedness where it was hard for me to even go from 25 sets down to 11

because that's I just cut it in half is then half the work more results I think that's nuts but you know it's something where even though you're reluctant and still trying things like that and changing it up. Like that's sort of the whole point.

Like you want to optimize this routine so that you can do it the most efficiently. But you can look at that as though, oh, for me, an optimized routine is, I go to the gym once a week. Sometimes I don't even go. Like that's just the routine that's optimized for me. And that's where it's more of a coddling

than it is like a brilliant. You either raise the bar or you lower yourself to the bar. What is some of the more Did you ever have a non-just macro-tracking approach? Did you ever do any more wacky diets? Well, I wouldn't say like wacky, but when I started working out, I just made sure I hit my protein, that was all. Like main gaining, you're a beginner.

I was also still doing diving at the time. And as a beginner, just from eating your protein, like, that's, no one is eating 250 grams of protein a day just because, just because they're hungry. I don't think anybody flukes more. than probably 120 to 150 grams like that one accidentally falls backward into 150 grams of protein never happens like you're i mean when i was a kid i was like oh back from school eat a whole bag of croutons i'm like that was good let's go do something like that was a meal or that was like a snack or whatever and uh so i protein was the thing i would track and that was all and like anything else i ate whatever and that worked pretty well because i coupled that with like really hard

training but yeah nothing too wacky for a while i i really got into drinking egg whites like cracked into a cup okay and my only gripe is the or the only thing stopping me from still doing it is the fact that the uh like the egg protein raw is so bound up with itself that its bioavailability is like 50 percent so if you're eating 150 grams of protein worth of egg whites in a raw form you're only breaking it down at 25 and i'm not going to eat double than what I like I'm not going to counter that do you think people need to think more about that

about bioavailability when it comes to protein consumption because you can hit your 250 if it was all through egg whites it's 125 yeah right so but usually with the proteins like my rule is the proteins that I would really count towards my number of like this is the ones I want to get in the day

is kind of a like what I call direct animal proteins like a dairy maybe not a cheese because you know they're filtering things out but like any kind of milk or yogurt or kind of cheese that's in there that's solid that's you know every amino acid necessary whatever or like any meats or eggs like that's pretty much what counts and then everything else like the the the proteins that are in you know the two pieces of bread you made a sandwich with like sure they are proteins but it's like you know

taking amino acids like you don't make a protein shake out of you know BCAAs because it's only specific ones like you want that whole chain of everything So I always just break it down to those And things that you would conventionally call protein Like you're good Like beefs and chicken and anything like that Like that's not something to worry about It'd only be weird if you

You know if you're the type to say Okay I need all this to be Plant-based you know Legumes or soy or whatever And that's something where Difficult restrictions going on here That's something where I'm not the guy to ask Because that's not what I do

There was a The reason I asked about the wacky diet thing Me and my friends I started training 20 years ago So 37, I started training when I was 17. And bodybuilding.com, the Misk forums on there. That world, before we kind of just understood it was Kiko meets if it fits your macros. And then we need to kind of filter it through.

Yeah. Like, to get to a bodybuilding look. Yeah. And then when you're thinking about lifestyle, you just factoring what you've done, which is I don't want to feel like shit. I should probably try and eat mostly whole foods, mostly simple, balance, blah, blah, blah, like colorful plate and stuff. So did you ever mess with like the we didn't know that 20 years ago we didn't know that

Sam this is new fucking unearthed evidence and some of the stuff we were adamant that skip loading I tried to tell you about this yesterday so skip loading was a version of carb backloading where you went all week carb free and the goal was to hit at least a kilo of carbs on a Sunday. And this, the argument behind this was you wanted to avoid metabolism dropping off too much. So by spiking it really high on the Sunday, it would allow you to sort of keep the metabolism burning going. It doesn't allow your body into a fossil. Don't try and assess the fucking science. Okay. I can see you're trying. I'm, I'm just thinking about it as like my bro science mind of like, good. That's the, that's the hat you need. You need the bro science, not the real scientist hat.

And then there was another argument that was, I think skip loading was also done as a part of bodybuilding prep. You might even do this where you do your full refeed and then wait to see how long it takes your weight to come back down to the pre-refeed weight. And that was, okay, that's how much sort of drop off I've got at the moment. That's how much I'm burning. Carb night, which was carb backloading, but once per week, but only on an evening. Carb backloading was this whole period that we went through.

there was a time when Christian Tebowdo had blueberry extract in this Naljean bottle but you needed to get it was you were drinking this much of it and we were it's the blueberry extract that's really what's going to cause the fat burning to work and it was a wonderful time we were you said Indiana Jones I felt like an explorer you got the hat on got the little assistant running around trying to find stuff and um turns up most of it didn't work but it was a it was an adventurous time you the golden era has gone, dude. You just know that it's protein and calories. Yeah, but it might have been blueberry extract. It's a different look now, though. Like what, uh, but my whole, even with any kind of training is I'm not so picky about someone's, like, I'm going to look at someone and think, what is that guy doing? If he's doing something is egregiously strange. If you're, if you're doing something weird, I'm going to say, or I'm going to at least think it. I wouldn't just tell somebody that's like in real life if I saw him. but with with the training it's like you know guys are doing now over here what um oh my

high trucks high rocks high rocks yeah i mean it saves it old that you called it high trunks yeah but uh but all sorts of different kind of training and there's like some of the chinese weightlifters where they they're they're doing a freaking back to a wiceb this guy's back looks like a freaking pro bodybuilder like all the cuts and everything so what's is it is it that your training was better than this guy's training? Is it that, and then it's, oh, well, this guy's training only worked because of his genetics. And it's like, well, then it still works for him. So I'm looking at as though it's not exactly what you're doing, but I can boil down the basics.

These guys worked hard. They do it a lot. Consistent their diet's reasonable. And, like, they care about it. So they put energy into it. So it's like, if you're doing a full body workout every day, and like, that's your thing. and it's um i think we come or we're about to come full circle because there's um i think it's there's been a progression since what we'd call the golden era of who is trustworthy and it's

it requires some nuance to actually know the real answer because arnold era man Arnold is huge all these bodybuilders are huge they work out i'm going to do their workout fast forward fast forward okay now these bodybuilds are getting extra big they must begin extra smart and then you know Q Rocky 4 steroids are involved Q the David Late era Q the natural era

Q these guys work out and they're just like me these guys know what they're doing fast forward a little bit okay now that's oh these guys are lying this is the fake natural era I can't listen to these guys

because they're not actually telling the truth about it. And then now we're in the like scientifically explainable era where it's it's not the gains that I have. It's the training and the explanations why I do the training that I do, which makes me superior because I can explain it very well and I have different studies to support it. But at what point could I give you like let's let's say I was working on my own energy drink or something like that. At what point could I tell you, hey, man, I've got 10 studies that say this is the best thing ever, and then you drink it and it tastes like shit? Can any amount of studies and data and science make you think that that actually tastes good? So I think we're to the point where it will almost revert back to a point of your results will begin to speak for themselves under the context that you know what went into those results. That's interesting. What do you make of the world of evidence-based lifting, science-based stuff at the moment? I think there's people who are gimmicky about it and make it a thing because they know it's like – because an older person or an older guy who works out is going to stick to the basics that he know worked for him, which is, you know, sweet.

But it's going to be harder for him to accept new ideas. so for a younger guy it's kind of this like clout mentality of like oh I'm on the new wave train but some of it's a little silly I don't think all of it is so I'm not I would never

the point isn't exactly what they're doing but a lot of the idea behind it and it's kind of its own subculture is it's very like it's a weird elitism because it's not like it's Chris Bumpstead saying like this is the and like their whole thing

thing is this is right you are wrong and like that sucks that's not cool and that's not even true because there's so many people that get so many different results doing so many different things like the idea that they're following is if i'm not perfect then there's there's no point and it's getting back to like the conditioning of preschool middle school high school college you know i want to get a degree so i know i can get a job i want to know it's going to work and that that's the demand of being able to explain it with studies because, you know, going into the gym at all is kind of uncomfortable for the non-beginner of any age where it's you've never worked out before. It's always like, oh, what are people going to watch me working out? I've never done

it. I'm uncomfortable because I've never actually gotten an experience doing it. Like, do I need to get one of my buddies who works at to bring me to kind of coach me? Well, then they're going to know that he's coached. Like, it's something where it does have an inflated kind of situation. You don't get nervous back going into a freaking uh starbucks but the gym is a little different because it has that physicality so for them to um you know just think like okay this is actually the solution because this is perfect and this will work it's a it's a snake oil of an idea instead of a product because what do you mean that because the the convincing point is that if you do it just like how we're saying to do it, we can guarantee that it will work for you.

When really, I think the best guys who work out and lift, what you call the best lifters, would be the ones who actually, you know, get their hands on their own wheel and learn it for themselves, and then they get a deeper understanding. Because I could read a book about, like, you know, let's say for some reason I was raised in captivity, and I read a book that was like,

how to act normal. As much as I could read it, it would never translate to actually being a regular guy. Because you have to do these things to learn them. Like, it's a different kind of experience. Because the working out isn't something you can just say on paper. You have to actually become experience from doing it, and then you'll be different in the future.

So to say, like, and even just to say something so blatantly, at least what I would consider, at least ill-advised of this is the perfect way to do anything. That's not true, man. Like, you're just saying that. How much do you think is, like, uncertainty reduction? Yeah, exactly. A lot.

And it's, I think in a way, it's a little bit bringing it down. Like I talked about either raising to the bar or, like, kind of coddling yourself and making it seem like less of a thing. if you bring it and you get serious, you say, okay, the gym is full of guys who really get serious. I'm going to do it and I'm going. Or I'm going to do these things, which people said is the perfect way to do it.

And it's not, you don't have to go that hard or you don't have to do that much. Like things like that, I feel is a lowering of the difficulty. But it's argued as an improvement of the efficiency. But for me, I'm looking at that as though, like, do you hate working out? Like, if you,

you hate working out, then you want a routine where it's like one set a day. Like the ideal, well, I guess the idea would be zero sets. Like in their world, it's, I wish there's a pill, like a reel where it's, you never have to work out again. And this is where my bias could come in because it's not an objective. Like I'm just adding to a conversation. Like I can't say anything completely objective. But from my perspective, like I like it in the gym. If a workout that took, if I could do 20 sets and that was actually like pretty efficient and it worked, that's what I would do. But it's not because that's like, I'm not chasing a maximum efficiency in a way. I'm half chasing like maximum enjoyment because I like to be in the gym. Yeah,

I think that's a good. Well, you've said yourself, you went from 25 sets reduce that down because you were more efficient that you, some could say you're updating your worldview, you have accumulated some evidence that has now changed and informed the way that you're going to show up in the gym. I think there's definitely an argument to be made that we are not equations. And I guess the, the slight addition to what you've said there is the assumption there is a science-based approach to lifting or an evidence-based approach to lifting causes a less enjoyable sort of routine. But some people may go in and say, like, just imagine for a second that the evidence-based routine happened to be more. fun. I don't know how or why or whatever. If for me it clicked as more fun, I'd have to do it. Yes. Then you'd be like, oh, wow, I've got both things. I've got both efficiency and I've

got enjoyment coming through both. But yeah, if you're, dude, I say it again, the era in which I sort of came up learning about lifting, we didn't, is it 531? Is it 5 by 5? Is it German volume training? Is it drop sets? Is it rest paurs? Is it myersets? Like, you know, there's so many. And ultimately, when you look across what most people's points of failure are, for the normal left, for 99% of people that are going to the gym, which is still only, what, like, 3% of the population or something. So it's a tiny amount of a tiny amount. The point of failure is compliance. And the reason for the failure in compliance is typically motivation and enjoyment. So what you should be optimizing for.

This is what the science, the evidence-based lifting community should do. They should make their workouts as fun as possible. So that would be a great study. What is, and this would be a fucking, actually a fucking phenomenal study. What constitutes an enjoyable workout? I would have to assume that variation across the year in terms of exercises would be one of those variation in terms of sets, reps, progressions. You know, you don't want to be doing drop sets all the time, but it's kind of fun to do that. You don't want to be doing pump stuff all the time.

But that's also kind of fun. You don't want to have to be doing squats all of the time. I can switch those up. Maybe I'll do some walking lunges. Maybe I'll do suitcase lunges. I won't just do back rack lunges. That'll give my shoulders a little bit of a rest and I don't need to warm up so much. Okay.

So where can you maximize compliance through enjoyment as well as through efficiency for effectiveness on the other side? So there's an equation that you can reverse engineer somehow. So if I had to put a little more of like my current 2025, you know, September 1st take, it would be not so much that I'm against any particular style at all. It's more so I'm not, like, it does not please me to see people be very unopened to discussion and like very just hardheaded with a take like that. Because I've changed my mind and like learned different things very drastically. Even the, like the videos, my training looks incredibly different now than even a year and a half ago. And I think it'll look different

in a year and a half from then. But one more thing about the studies, though, I'm personally not the kind of person in a control group study by any stretch of the imagination. So that's my own bias of is a study from 180-pound guys who are starting to work out, who don't eat all the protein that I'm eating, who aren't doing all the cardio,

who just have not been having this whole lifestyle with everything that goes along with it, that is not me or any of these more kind of older school or hardcore bodybuilders or powerlifters. So it's as though those studies aren't invalid, but it's just not, you know, it's like you, um, you know, if you, if you canvass, what's the best TV show and it's things intended for children, like not to say that that's, so intended for like a 65 year old guy who's in a nature, sure, it could be the best show for that intended target audience, but it probably wouldn't be the same for me.

So then that could make me kind of backpedal and say, actually, for the younger audience, to the untrained audience to look at these studies, if they think, or if they would be the people who were in them, well, then I guess I could see a little more. And I'm just trying to exert my will in the way of thinking that what I do works and that it should be working for everyone. Advanced lifters by design are going to be less represented in these things, right?

Yeah, exactly. But that's where, like, I don't want to do that. Like, I'm not trying, and I always, I'll, usually if I say anything kind of statement-y, I'll try to preface it, because I mean it to be, this is my take. Like, it is not, the videos are not meant to be, like, this objective thing. It's like how I think about any given thing at any given time. So it's like, if you're watching a Sam video years in the future, and it's a clip of me saying something like look at the upload date and just take it into account

correct at the time all right let's say that you only had 10 exercises for the rest of time to build the best body that you could what are you going to choose i've got me through the philosophy i've got a roster set up so when it comes to legs i think that the idea of a crazy heavy squats or leg press all the time as a quad builder it just wouldn't be it for me because i've had periods of time where I basically did a leg extension exclusively. Usually when I diet, my leg extension volume increases because, I mean, squeezing-wise, activation-wise, you know, if you slapped electronic pulse indicators, maybe you could get a real readout of how much they're activating.

But for me, like, if I had to pick a quad movement, I would just kill it on the leg extensions because you can really pump them up, go a little heavier. Like, if I had to pick one, that would be, that would be it. Okay. Then hamstrings would be, I'd be a little torn, but I'd probably pick, I'm very torn, either seated or laying curl, but either way, a hamstring curl. I've got to pick one. I'm afraid, Sam, you can't.

I guess I'd have to pick the, I'd ask to make laying. So you get a little bit more stretch? Well, I just like, not even because of that, because you would actually, in a seated position, if you pull forward. Would your, you know, hips not be more. round it over where your hamstrings tie in. So now they're actually more stretched. Like you feel your hamstring stretch when you bend your torso to touch your toes,

not when you're laying down. So like the idea when people talk about there's more stretch on the laying curl, I don't even see it. Well, that depends if you're sat like this, because often there's handles, people press themselves up. Yeah, yeah. So that would be you've pushed this off as opposed to pulling yourself in.

So I guess it depends how you position yourself. So I guess, but right now, I'm on a kick of laying curl. All right, so quad extension, lying hamstring curl. And then for back, I'd probably just have to do regular pull downs. But you can also cheat them into a row by leaning back extra far. All right, okay. Yeah, that's acceptable because you've just got the one machine.

It's the same handle, it's the same setup. Okay, all right. But for me, anyway, I need more lots because I want them to be wider. Like, the thickness of my back is actually fine. Like, I want them to extend out. Like, that's what really gives that sort of look illusion What do you think about when it comes to lap, pull down, hand position, cues, what are you thinking? Because then you can change it up pretty drastically.

Like if I do a lighter set, which is normally toward the end, I can put my hands extra far out. And it's a bit, a little bit more like, rather than pulling my shoulders up and down, which kind of gets like a lot of my lower lats, a kind of erector, like middle thickness. Rather, you know, having wider hands and rotating around my shoulders, that gets me a little more upper lats or you could also make it super heavy and do a closer grip and you get a little forearm and bicep

just from the nature of a... Like that's more of a compound movement of a row but then you can really load it too. Okay, so quad extension, lying hamstring curl, lat pull down with a little bit of fuckery on the handle.

What's for? Yeah, four for chest. I think I'd have to pick... Oh, I'm a little torn. But honestly, if I had to only pick one... No, you can... You've got ten in total. Total.

So you can... But you get a lot of muscle groups. You got at least cover your bases. So I would say, there was a time when I would say inclined barbell. If I was on an inclined barbell kick. But it's a little trick in your shoulders because it's very, like, directly mounted. Like, the only time I ever get my shoulders is usually inclined barbell. When I like it, I like it, I wouldn't do it all the time.

So that's where I would say dumbbell. But even then, dumbbell is very limited because you can go really heavy. and the individual loading and the fact that they can move out the entire way you'd still squeeze at the top you can rest a bench with a bar at the top because it's all just going through your bone structure not so much with dumbbells so it's always adjusting yeah you're never going to relax on the top of a dumbbell but what i think i'd have to pick now it would actually be a a seated cable press so if you've ever seen seat here cable here cable here you pull it in you kind of like this okay Because that is... Are you staying neutral throughout that? Pretty neutral, yeah. Yeah. So you're not allowing yourself.

Not incline, not decline. I kind of hands up a little bit. Yeah. Because that's a much more versatile set. Because I can do it really heavy, like a conventional press. But I could also go lighter and be much more squeeze emphasized. Because there's like the two bases I basically cover for every body part. If I do a heavy one, I'm going to counter it with a lighter squeezing them.

And to do only one, I think you'd be limiting your stimulus. So that puts us a word. That's four now. So there's definitely on incline dumbbell press, which I think for every guy is always going to be up there for chest. It feels good on your shoulders. It's always one of the first movements that you do when you get into the gym. You feel like it's building the bit of the chest that you want, which is up here. But if you do a really light set, you just don't feel it the same as you do if you're on cable.

So I understand that tension, especially because you're being pulled that way, not that way, right? So you always have that kind of, you know, widening force even at the top. Yeah, that's a good point. All right, so that's four. So extension, curl, pull down, cable press. Yeah, is that on a little incline, 30 degrees? Just flatish. Basically flat, flat loaded.

All right. Because then you can also put your hands up a little and get more upper chest, put it down a little, get more. Being very cheeky. Okay, number five. So a five and six for arms would be, well, for triceps first, I'd probably have to pick just an easy bar curl push down. So not the V bar. Like 90 degrees is too much. Straight is also a little too much on your wrists.

So a little camber, more like a 120, that's about right. Because I can also do that light and squeezing, or you can really get into it and have some heft. What are you thinking about with cues for that? are you more upright if you got a little bit of bend in the hips? Yeah, decently upright. But if you're, if you stand too upright, well, then now you're like turning in an app exercise because you're loading your arms downward and you have to keep yourself tense to

stay there. So I, I'll hunch over it. Or if I'm doing a hard one, I'll put my head to the side of the cable and kind of wrench it a little like that, not for all of them, but for some of them. Okay. And then dumbbells is just dumbbells, it's hard to beat. Seated standing soup. suponated.

With it with a count as different movements. Yes. Got to pick one. I guess I'd have to just pick standing. Standing. Suponated. So more of a regular, a classic twist of neutral,

your, you know, your hips into superinated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because just the, with some movements, being able to change the load

completely changes the style of the movement. Because I could do the 30s and really hold it and squeeze it. Or I could try to do like the 70s and have it be a much heavier kind of brunt sort of thing so that's uh all right we're getting close to six now so you got four left yeah so six now i can chill on shoulders because i don't i haven't done a real shoulder workout for like years at this point because they're just they're already big like they don't relatively my arms need to grow so i i would want to add a a forearm curl cable okay so you're holding the one d handle you know cable up here i'm loading it down this way like this is the force

okay and I'm just doing this okay and it's not a huge movement yep but it's like enough where you're actually kind of picking this up and I used to do a ton of that

and then my forearms got big enough and then I never did it again at least not back on it because the arms have caught up now I'll add it a little more but it's uh yeah and honestly for it just I think it was a joke

that Hugh Jackman or someone or Stallone worked their forearms like crazy because when you're acting you're not always shirtless but you're usually sleeveless and having big forearms

makes you like extra cool so I guess after that I'd probably have to add a calf raise just because standing seated? Seated. Seated is a little bit better. Okay. Even though you're going to be hitting I always get these the wrong way around

gastrox versus. For me I feel it and my calves will grow from it so I've got my own anecdotal evidence of it worked. Okay, you've got two left. So the next one has to be the cardio bike which not many people would add because they are thinking, I don't even need to do cardio

because it's not in their mind. But that's, yeah, so seated and then the pedals are like where my feet are over here. It's kind of a recline. It's a reclined position. And it's the easiest one. Little backrest. My torso does not move.

So I can pedal as much as I want. I'm just sitting playing my phone for 30 minutes. Like, you can do it and also make it easy. Have you got a preferred machine for that, like to pre-core, make a particularly good? Just, and some of them, they have little handles. Sometimes the handles are too close to where your knees are, and you'll bump your knee on them. That's my only gripe, but I'm not picky.

The one I have at my house is like, I mean, it's the equivalent of one that you would get for free if you picked it up from like this out of the road. But it still works. And actually, that one's harder on a, well, it reads harder. Because sometimes the math that they do to calculate calories burned, it's not completely, because if someone like me peddled for 30 minutes, minutes at X difficulty at X speed, an Olympic cyclist or like a marathon cyclist could do it at the same speed and the same difficulty and he would actually burn less calories because he's more efficient and I'm less efficient. So it's not necessarily I always aim for the same number. It's like I know the feeling of like this is hard but it's not too hard. This is the right

energy expenditure level. I did that on a I've been getting into inclined treadmill walking to get to zone two. Zone two for me is really hard to hit. It's like, way faster than a normal walk on the road and it's way slower than a jog and yeah my incline preferred is like 3.5% three point or for me 3.2 at 15 yeah is is nice but I don't know what the metrics are of the whatever the machine is that was in the UK and it was 3.2 15 and I was like this doesn't feel right okay I'll just keep going up four like four still doesn't feel right What the fuck is this number? It got to 5.3.

It's about there. Speed is off. Is that miles per hour or? I don't know, because it wouldn't be kilometers over here because it would still be miles per hour. Whatever it was, the exact same. You go, I can go to a new machine. And after you've done, you don't even need that many sessions, what?

20, 30 sessions before you go, I kind of understand how I'm supposed to feel and where my heart rate is supposed to be at, like just by a sense of breathing. Okay, so you got one left. What's left? Yeah, one left. Well, haven't we done?

You haven't touched abs, you haven't touched glutes directly, you haven't touched shoulders directly. What else is missing? I think that's it. Lower back, I guess. In a bodybuilding sphere, you'd want your lower back developed enough where it's got like a little texture. But if it gets too big, it'll take away from your waist. Because the whole point is this illusion of wider shoulders and a smaller waist. So now that they're already developed, I probably wouldn't, I don't hit my abs.

because they get worked, you know, kind of secondarily from, like, even doing dumbbell curls, I'm keeping myself stable. Like, once they're there and you're actually still working out, they're not going anywhere. Because you're, and then every time you look at yourself in the mirror, you're going to flex them. Like, they get worked enough to be maintained. So that's, like, that's where there's not a lot of ab workouts. Because I did a lot before, and now they're just not going to go anywhere. Like, same with shoulders.

So, oh, I'd have to, I'm a little reluctant, but I can't think of anything else I'd want to do. I'd pick the ad-ductor machine. So that's where you're squeezing your legs together. Okay. Why? It makes your legs a little thicker in the middle. Because it's this whole kind of like system of like kind of, it ties in kind of below your knee, more hamstring. But it's this sort of just piece right in the center where if your adductors were completely undeveloped and you just sit up straight with your knee straight, you'd have a really big gap between your legs.

And you think you wouldn't be able to fully get that with the extra. extension uh the only extension is just quad because that's a quite like a knee flexion and this is uh like leg well you know i don't even know what you call it that yeah yeah they uh yeah the joke is the uh well it's i know there's like two versions of a joke because they'll call that one the ball crusher because that's what you know you're squeezing legs together but the older like the joke that people would say before was that was either the good girl or the bad machine. One's forcing it apart, one's forcing it together.

Yeah, yeah, okay. I don't really, I don't want to perpetuate that name. But that was, that's kind of a reference to those. Okay, very good. Sam Sulek, ladies and gentlemen, Sam, you're awesome, man. I really loved hanging with you this weekend. Yeah, it's a freaking fun. What's next?

What can people expect over the next few months from you? Nothing, a couple people asked me that. It's like, all right, man, what are you working on? And I'm like, well, like, I got some renovations going on. I got to clear out my garage. It's a, like, I've got, I've got, I've got my, uh, I've got a few lists. I kind of couple them into one because it's all like my thing, but I've got like social media list, like getting, uh, I say it's, you could say it's more for the production value,

but I just like camera stuff. Mm-hmm. So I'm always trying a new camera thing just because it's, but it's, you know, it does directly play into how the videos look. Like that's my little fidgety tinker thing to get into. Just it writing. Yeah. Exactly. But in terms of the, I mean, there's not a lot of flash with real working out.

Clear out the garage. There's not going to be Sam 2.0. It'll only be a gradual evolution. So it's like, you know, check back in two years and we'll have a lot of updates. Fuck yeah. I'm looking forward to it, man. Appreciate you. Yeah, sweet. When I first started doing personal growth, I really wanted to read the best books, the most impactful ones, the most entertaining ones, the ones that were the easiest to read and the most dense and interesting, but there wasn't a list of them. So I scoured and scoured and scoured and then gave up and just started reading on my own. And then I made a list of 100 of the best books that I've ever found and you can get that for free right now. So if you want to spend more time

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