Piers Morgan Uncensored - Phil Heath: Seven-Time Mr Olympia Winner

Episode Date: April 10, 2024

Phil Heath is a seven-time Mr Olympia, and one of the first guests in a long time with a physique to Piers'... His new documentary - produced by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson - charts an unprecedented quest for an 8th title in the most prestigious bodybuilding contest in the world. He has big arms, and big views on health, motivation and resilience. Now Phil Heath goes Uncensored.  YouTube: @PiersMorganUncensored X: @PiersUncensored TikTok: @piersmorganuncensored Insta: @piersmorganuncensored Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Phil Heath is a seven-time, Mr. Olympia, one of the first guests in a long time with a physique to rival my own. His new documentary produced by Dwayne the Rock Johnson, Charles' Unprecedented Quest for an eighth title, the most prestigious bodybuilding contest in the world. If you don't own it, it will show up on that stage. He's got big arms, big views on health, motivation, and resilience. And now, Phil Heath, goes uncensibly. You have to be vain. You just to spend a lot of time adoring your physique.

What's with the tiny trunk? I mean, they always seem to be about three sizes too small. This is true. We wear them pretty high up a little bit. You've had a few tensions with Arnold, haven't you? He criticized bodybuilders with a belly. You definitely have to have the biggest calves,

the biggest everything. How would you feel about this whole issue of trans athletes? What's your general view of that? They told me that you hired a trainer. I think I'm a challenge. You know I came ready. We'll have a little feel. One, two, three.

Feel, great to see you. Yes, thanks for having me. You are almost certainly the, strongest person I've ever had in here. Awesome. How do you feel about that? I feel really damn good about it, to be quite honest. When you've won Mr. Olympia seven times, same number as Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Yes. Does every bar you go into anywhere in a world, does some guy with big muscles come and try and have a whack? If anything, they're trying to ask me what my routine is. Really? Yeah. But they try and have a fight with you. No, initially in my career, as an amateur, you know, I was working at a bar, actually.

Yeah, had a few, you know, interactions. How does that end for the others? Not so good. Not so good. They also got arrested, so I was, you know, helping run the bar. So I already knew the cops. So I was like, yeah, get this guy out of here. It takes unbelievable iron will self-discipline to get to the stage where he can win Mr. Olympia.

Yes. When you give it up, how do you maintain that iron will so it doesn't all, all that work, doesn't just disappear? Right. Well, just like anything, right? You want to make sure that you keep a certain level of personal excellence. After achieving all those titles, you know, I know how to eat. I know how to train. The last thing I need to do is just get lazy.

And like Arnold would say, be useful. So I'm going to use those muscles. You know, I'm going to go to the gym. I'm going to continually do my cardio. I actually recently lost 40 pounds. So I'm happy about that, you know. What's your gym routine like that? Oh.

Arnold told me a few years ago that when he's a lot of you, he goes to the gym now, he does much smaller weights, but more repetitions. Yeah, so I've adopted that as well. In fact, we were just training a couple days ago out in Birmingham, and we were doing exactly that, like very short resting periods. And still moving some good weight around, but reducing the resting periods, you can only go so heavy at that point in time. What can you bench press these days?

Gosh, these days, with the dumbbells, like 150s. 150s? 150. Yeah, 150. Yeah. Pounds or? No, not kilos. No, no, no.

Pounds. Yeah, sorry. Because I'm up to 27 and a half kilos. Okay, that's good. That's 50-odd pounds on each arm. Yep. Right? I'm getting there.

You are. Now, they told me that you hired a trainer. I have. How's that been working? Good. I mean, I think I'm a challenge. But I do like it and I like the competitive part of it. Yeah.

I get why you guys get so obsessed with it. Mm-hmm. Because the competition is fun. Yeah. What do you find? most difficult, though? For me, it's the lifestyle that has to go with it if you want to actually get really, if you want to get lean, I know what I have to do.

I have to give up drinking, alcohol. I have to eat really healthy food. I like to go, I'll probably go home tonight. I'll probably have a glass or two of a fine red wine from France. And I'll probably, if my wife is watching, I'll have some cheese with some crackers, right? And I love that. That brings me genuine pleasure. So I don't want to be Mr. Olympia, which is probably just as well.

But I do want to have a balance of life where I get some pleasure, which I know is probably not that good for me. But I also go to the gym so it's not all catastrophic. That's really where my mind is. I like that because even throughout my career, there would be times where I'm not competing. So being Mr. Olympia, I'd normally only train for one show a year. That would be about 16 weeks out from the competition. And then even while I'm touring around, such as now, Last night, we had our premier breaking in Olympia.

And I had one glass of champagne, right? And normally I wouldn't drink a whole lot. So I just had one. And previously in my career, I'd have a couple shots of this and that, just to get a nice taste of things and figure out what I do like. But I overall felt that with bodybuilding, when you're training at the highest level, you just have to know that that alcohol, those pizzas, those burgers will always be there. But for right now, I got to be strict.

There also must be a mental strength aspect to being a champion. I'm just sure of it, right? Where there are lots of people that were good bodybuilders in your era. What made you the best? My intention. My intention was to be my best version of self and not always compare myself to someone else. A lot of time I think we look at our peers, especially now with social media, right? Like we always look at this phone and see other people's highlights.

You're literally looking at peers now. Well, this is true. This is true. And we recognize that I can steal my own joy with the passion that I have with bodybuilding by always comparing myself to someone else. I always looked at my pictures. I would print them out. And then I would just stare at that and ask myself,

what do I feel like I want or truly look like? And that way I can envision it for my next workout. So I would actually take a marker and etch out. Really? Yeah. Like I would get very meticulous with this. What tiny bits of your tall, Yeah, so I would, I'm not a real artist, but like I would scratch in like some better calves or better delts, better chest, and ask myself, okay, that looks really cool.

Now I can reference the different exercises that I've done in the past and say, what else can I add in or take out? And that way, I kind of have a better method to my madness. And then after a couple more weeks, I then reassess. So it's like a constant audit. And that way it keeps me in line with always having that point. 1% improvement that people talk about, but then having some real data metrics to do it. And even with your career, I mean, gosh, like you're very accomplished, obviously. That required a lot of mental fortitude, a lot of attention to detail.

You would actually take on guests such as me and then review certain things of asking yourself, did I ask that right question? Did I pay attention to his body movement, this and that, so then you can be better? We're all in that pursuit of perfection. Well, the constant pursuit of excellent. Absolutely. I think is what drives the best at anything, right? Yes.

It's what makes the difference. But also, I think, a lot of self-sacrifice. I mean, you have to give up a lot. A lot. To be Mr. Olympia, the best bodybuilder in the world, what did you sacrifice? I sacrificed a total, a little bit over 10 summers. So the Mr. Olympia contest would generally be in September. That would mean if you go four months back, you don't really have much of a summer.

And I was living at the time in Denver, Colorado, where, you know, it's a great time there. You know, it's not snowing. So, you know, of course, friends want to have. and what not, and there would be weddings or even some of my college teammates having children. You would do that for any of us? No, and if I was, I remember going to a wedding by one of my former high school teammates by the name of Jamal Crawford, who played in the NBA for about 19 seasons. He invited me to his wedding, and I was like, gosh, I'm literally four weeks out from the Mystery Olympia,

and I don't want to mess this up, but he's one of my really good friends. I brought my meals to his wedding where I was literally going back to the car. Park, eating a meal, going back, because I can't eat the meals that they provided. So I was still trying to be as sociable as I could, but those are the sacrifices you make when you want to be the best. And just knowing how to communicate to your family and friends, because they're not always going to understand why, you know. In fact, probably the opposite.

Dwayne the Rock Johnson, as an exec producer of this documentary, Breaking Olympia, he's a great guy. I mean, I find him very impressive character, both, both. professionally personally, it seems to have got his life balance right with work. And obviously, you know Arnold very well. I mean, these two are the two of the most iconic people, I guess, in terms of big guys. Yeah, for sure. What have you gained from your relationships with both of them?

That they always work hard, like no matter what, like whether it's two hours of sleep or no hours of sleep. I mean, they will go hard. Arnold just a couple days ago, we were training, and he said, his team hit me up and said, hey, Arnold wants to work out. They said 8.30. I got there at 8.30. Guess what time he was there? 7.50.

The cool. And then I realized the next day, I'm going to beat him to the gym. Now he's at 7.30. So he's such a competitive person. With Duane, similar. I go to the gym. I was lucky enough to go to Iron Paradise, where he gets after it and sends us those amazing videos and we were able to really get after it and I noticed when I went up in

wait he went up in wait when I was who's stronger we kind of both looked at each other and kind of gave each other the nod like okay we're gonna stop right here before someone maybe get hurt but we have that great respect of one another because with bodybuilding you have to maintain a certain level of ability to remove that ego and it's hard when you're with a couple big guys in the gym you want to really truly get after it, but he's a strong dude, man. He has... You've had a few tensions with Arnold, haven't you?

Like, he criticized bodybuilders with a belly. Yes. You talked about his lack of legs. Yep. Is that all part of the... Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, I feel that when you're Arnold and you've put your entire life toward health and fitness,

he has championed, not just on the stage, but he creates his own stage. but he creates his own stage at the Arnold Classic. He just wants the best product for his show. And yeah, back in his day, it's just like other sports. They transcend. So back then in his day, you didn't have to have the biggest ginormous quads to win a competition. You had to have the biggest chest, you know, the best abdominals and the best arms. Now you definitely have to have the biggest calves, the biggest, you know, everything.

And it is a good friendly banter if you, you know, I enjoy it. How does the current Mr. Olympia compare to you guys? The current Mr. Olympia compared to Arnold and myself, we're much taller. Right. So there's a lot different. And that gentleman came, Derek Lunsford, he came from the men's 212 division. So he's a little bit smaller, but very well developed. And I've known him for quite some time.

he actually trains with my old trainer, Honey Ramboad, and he's a really good competitor. I give him a lot of credit because of him being so much shorter. He packs, like, per pound, the best package. So he's... Do you have to be vain to be a bodybuilder? You have to spend a lot of time looking at and adoring your physique. I don't think we adore it, to be quite honest. I think we're looking for the flaw.

When you're doing the whole, like... I mean, there's a slight self-adoration, isn't it? Or not? Now, I know for myself, like it was more of, I don't really like that. Yeah, that looks pretty cool, but I could still do this. So you're still appreciating what you've created. But at the same time, you're trying to have a better understanding of what the judges might, you know, ding on. And what's with the tiny trunk we were just looking at?

I mean, they all seem to be about three sizes too small. This is true. Back in Arnold's day, I mean, they were, you know, kind of like blooms. You know, like, you know, now, like, we wear them pretty high up a little bit. And it's because of the glute development. We want to see more of that. Like, the striations in someone's glutes, they almost look like grill marks, you know. And that requires a total commitment to exercising your glutes as a male, doing massive amounts of cardio.

In order to get that level of conditioning, you have to do, like, you know, two to three hours of cardio a day. Really? A lot of weight training. Oh, yeah. Like, two to three hours of cardio. Yeah. Never mind anything else with the weights. Which is insane.

I mean, but anyone... What'd you do? The step mill, you know, the revolving stairs. Yeah. And the key... It's your absolute peak. When you were like as good as you've ever been. Yeah.

Talk me through the day's training. Oh, my gosh. So you're waking up at 4.45, 5 a.m. doing cardio for 45 minutes. What's the first thing you do? Get up. Get up. Get up. To eat or drink or drink?

Nothing. Just, well, drinking something, you drink some water. Definitely bring some water with you to the cardio machine. Luckily, I had one in the house. So I do that. I redo the step mill for good 40 to 45 minutes, hopped out of that. I have a Votars 320. That's a H-Bot machine.

It's a hyperbaric machine. Hopped in that, did that for 45 minutes, came out, did a shake, then do, oh, gosh, 35 to 45 minutes of infrared sauna treatment, and then I get my first meal in. And thereafter, I'm either doing neuromuscular massage or doing some P-E-E-M-F, because I want to remove all the EMFs around me and stuff like that. So I have one of those mats, the grounding mats and stuff.

And everything is about biohacking. I'm doing three to four. How much would you eat? Oh, gosh, five to seven meals a day plus two shakes. And what are you eating in the meals? Oh, two and a half cups of egg whites, two egg holes, 200 gram of oatmeal or farina. And then you're doing a good 300 gram of steak, chicken, or fish, you know, five times.

Five times a day. And lots of vegetables? Not a whole, well, it depends. You're doing carbs of, you know, different starches. So for me, I really, I like rice, but I actually like sweet potato a lot better for my physique. I'll try to rotate different carbs and different proteins and just try to gauge, like, how my body's digesting those proteins and carbs. and then some avocado for healthy fats. And then as far as vegetables are concerned,

I'm doing zucchini, squash, saute spinach, the normal thing. What do you make of the body positive movement, which seems to be the complete opposite, where you have people who are massively, maybe even morbidly obese, not remotely fit, and they're put all over the cover of magazines as body positive. Everyone should love themselves and love their body. I'm not a fan of this,

because I think, why would you encourage people to think, being morbidly obese and really unhealthy is a good thing. Why celebrate it? I guess there's some people that just love what they love, right? But for me, I agree with you. I think if we were to look at obesity and what it means, you know, health-wise, looking at those blood markers, I think we would be able to see through blood work that they're not as healthy as they seem. And although they love themselves, we want them to live a healthier life. So therefore,

type 2 diabetes, you know, that's a big deal. Type 1, type 2. I want people to just be as healthy as they can. But I do want you to love yourself through it. But when we see the TV shows of like a person being heavily overweight, they usually is some type of illness mentally or psychologically. Their emotional attachments to food is a big thing, especially in America. And, you know, we can only do so much as far as educating.

But at the same time, I just want to implore everybody to try to, be the best version of self. And you don't have to be a Mr. Olympia. You don't have to be, because look, that takes a lot of work, but obesity can kill you. We don't want heart disease.

We don't want high cholesterol. We want, you know, the A1C levels and all those things. We don't want you to have to live off of, you know, we don't want you be in the hospital. Like, who would want someone because of the being, you get, or, you know, diabetes, like, you know, have to have an amputation.

You know, I would hate to see that. I get sad just thinking about it. there's so many people that suffer from that. Yes, absolutely right. The issue of performance-enhancing drugs in bodybuilding, is the reality that everyone did it? At some point, for sure, I'm sure they dabbled in that. To what extent I can't speak of, right?

Yes. And what do you feel about that? I think it's something that is of a personal choice. I think it's based on one's blood work. As far as I'm concerned, my biggest thing was to make sure that number one, I compete naturally as long as I could. And I actually did that. In fact, my first couple bodybuilding shows,

I was competing against guys that I didn't realize were unnatural. And it was as a joke, my friends were like, no, I used to do this bodybuilding show, and I do this bodybuilding. I was like, why is this guy like all these veins and this and that? And I asked, I said, hey, excuse me, where do we go pee, you know, for the test? And they're like, oh, there's none of that at this particular. And I was like, oh, my gosh. But what it taught me was that, wow.

there are people that do those things, Phil, like you've always been an athlete your entire life. If you were to ever do something, make sure you do one major thing. And you know what that is? And I'm sure you've done it. Get your blood work done because you don't know what you don't know. And sometimes you tend to realize why am I comparing myself to somebody else? That's why I'm doing these PEDs because I want to get the gains as fast as that person. but you don't even know how to train, how to eat, what cardio to do.

Given how much of this is in sport generally, illegally, obviously, in most cases, in all cases. I mean, there's even a games now of enhanced games they want to do where everyone's on it. But is there an argument for just letting everyone do what they want to do? I think there's been various sports that we kind of can say that has occurred, right? Like, you know, you always talk, not you, but like, we've all heard in baseball, like, there was an era. Cycling. There's been an era. I'm sure in wrestling or sprints, there's been an era.

I think there's always going to be someone that wants to try something different to maximize their potential. With these enhanced games, I'm actually curious to see who's actually going to sign up for that. Right. Because I don't think it would be any big names, do you? Well, no, because immediately they're signaling themselves to be. cheats, right? To the rest of the world. Right. They wouldn't be in those games because everyone's effectively cheating. Right.

And therefore the argument is that by all cheating, no one's cheating. Right. Because everyone's got the ability to do it if they want to do it. It'd be interesting to see how they would flip that to see, oh, well, based on this data, we were able to get this person this much faster or jump higher or whatever based on these medications

and how it can actually proliferate better, you know, That's right. I'm really curious about that. But with other sports, you know, I never heard of like certain scandals like in hockey or even basketball with this. I mean, we're seeing people playing at, you know, very high speeds. Why is that? I have no idea. Maybe because the money's involved in a certain way. You want to protect certain people. Punishments also maybe. Yeah. Like, like, I know for one thing, like, you know, the NBA, like there's been only like a handful of guys that ever got popped for the. this, but I'm thinking, like, how do you play, like, certain amount of games throughout 20 years or whatever, and, like, you're able to look a certain way? I mean, there's certain guys that were freaking jacked at one point, and these are basketball guys. But who's to say? I don't know,

but I will say that it's always important because I'm 44 years old. So I know my testosterone is not the same as what it was when I was 20 years old. But it's very, very important to educate these athletes, these trainers, get their blood work done. I work with a telehealth medical company called Transcend and that's what we do and we make sure that any person from all walk of life actually know, are you type 1 type 2 diabetic? Do you have any type of different markers or hematocry, your hemoglobin? Actually, people don't even know what that is. How would you feel about this whole issue of trans athletes? I mean, in bodybuilding, if you wanted to, I guess you could be Phyllis. Phyllis. And go and compete against.

Yeah, and go and compete against the women. Put on a wig? Yeah, just reduce your testosterone a bit, but your body mass would be the same. I mean, what's your general view of that issue? I think that they should just have their own league. Yeah. I think it's just don't make it so confusing. I guess for me, like I don't care.

Live your life. Like, these are things that I just, I want everybody to live their life. Of course. No problem. But I think under a... It's a form of cheating, though, isn't it? I think so. I think so.

It gives you a performance in hearts. I just don't understand. But I don't understand why you wouldn't want to just. as a competitor. I'm thinking I'm a very competitive person. Take part in fairer. Right. Just say, well, I'm trans.

I want to go against trans people. Yeah. Why would you want to be? Or against your biological sex, right? I mean, if you've competed as a man and then you transition to be a woman, why can't you, physiology means you can still compete against a man? Actually, I like that. Why not?

I don't. I should. I don't see any problem with that. I don't either. I think maybe we do see that in our lifetime, but I think it's just, this is all fresh. This is all new. and, you know, it brings out better conversation. But I think even having this discussion

has been even beneficial to me because I don't hear this very often, right? I think anyone that is, you know, considering the transition and wants to compete in sports, like what was the, like the swimmer? Yeah, Leah Thomas. I just want to maybe understand the psyche of like, hey, well, I think the psyche is extremely selfish

and it's cheating, firstly. When you watch you're winning a race by 50 seconds, is this a joke? Yeah. You know, what are you doing? You weren't successful as a male swimer. And now you're killing all these biological women. It's like, to me, it's nuts.

Wouldn't it have made sense for, like, all the women of these different Division 1 programs to just boycott? Yeah. That's what I think they should do. They should have just done it. I think if all women athletes said, we're just not going to do this anymore, it would stop tomorrow. Do you think that, like, feminism has died in a way because of this? Yeah, because women are too afraid to stand up for women.

But that's crazy. It's nuts. It goes against like all Title IX and everything. Women won't even say what a woman is because they're terrified of being cancelled. Yeah. Think about that. It's crazy. We've got to wrap it, but I just couldn't let the moment go, given my workout regime.

And obviously I do my... You know I came ready. Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. All right. I know. No, holding back, Phil. Okay.

Oh, gosh. These guns, mate, there. It's your show. First of all, have a little feel. Have a little feel. Not too bad. Huh? Drug test him right now.

Thank you. Thank you, Phil. Hey. I want to say what this is actually going to be like. Oh, man. Okay, one, two, three. I can do this all day. Can you?

Yeah. I can't. Go on then, try and beat me. Go on. Well, go on, Phil. You're supposed to be Mr. Olympian, mate. I just like being on TV. I'm hanging on quite well here.

My sheet, maybe I could get... I'm going to let him win. I'm going to let him win. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Come on! Mwha!

M. L'A. Middle East. Mr. Olympia seven times. P. Morgan. Mr. Olympia, no time. Vini Veechee. You know your Latin. Great to see you. Right on.