RAWTALK - Layne Norton Reveals The Best Science Based Fitness Secrets

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Ah, today's the day. Better late than never, what else? I'm never lay. Let's go, Chess. Come on, let's hear. Alright, we have leg day, okay? Okay, fine. We're gonna hit legs. I just need menager drinks. Let's go to Vitamin Shop. Easy, right across the street. Yeah, Jim Wheat is up every single vitamin shop starting now, so... Let's go, you're wasting my time.

Let's go. Let's go. Perfect, my favorite. Give me the pineapple. No, I don't, give me the pineapple. Perfect. Thank you. Cheers. Vitamin Shop, go check it out. Go check it out.

Nationwide right now. Here we go. Here we go. So, no, honestly, I, I told, I believe you're Natty. They do. It's good to know. But there was, there was times when I'm like, no, because it'd see you competition. I'm like, oh, come on, dude.

Like, but I believe it. I believe it. Well, you were, so did you, did you find me when I was like still mostly in bodybuilding? yeah yeah so that would have been like late 2000s 2010 time period yes that's when i first started like kind of really getting into social media like literally had started the beginning of instagram um i think i knew about you before like social media yeah yeah i was on the bodybuilding dot com forums and stuff yeah were you ever on teenation no but they talk about me a lot yeah yeah because i how did you get started in all this like

science stuff and understanding like did you did you go to school for it were you self-taught like um so because you're a huge nerd huge nerd which is dope yeah i always described myself as either a nerd who likes to lift heavy or a meathead who loves science so you pick pick one right um so i got i got into lifting because i got bullied a lot like growing up um bullied a lot didn't get much attention from girls so i was like all right i'll start lifting Lifting didn't really solve either of those two problems. Yeah, mostly dudes. Yeah.

I think I've seen a meme where it's like what dudes expect to happen when they start lifting. And it's like, you know, a chick hanging out all over a guy. And then it's like what actually happens. And it's a bunch of dudes like, nice buys, bro. Yeah, I'm with your bench. Classic. And everyone's like, how do I get fucking this? How do I get that?

It's funny. So I started lifting for that. I fell in love with lifting. I originally wanted to go to college from marine science. I wanted to study sharks. I love sharks. I know, like random, random. So you went to college for marine science?

Well, I wanted to. I went to, so I wanted to go to Eckerd College in St. Pete, Florida. I'm originally from Indiana. Okay. And, but at that point, like age 18, I was really getting into lifting. So I was like, oh, I don't really know what I want to do. So I went broad to start. So I went with biochemistry because I'm like, all right, if I want to still want to do marine science,

I can take electives and then do that in grad school. But I had no idea what I really wanted to do. Because after I did my first bodybuilding show, I was 19 years old, 2001, dating myself now. Yeah. And so crazy. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a bit. Time flies.

It does, dude. So after that, I was like, I won the teen class. I won the novice class. And I was, like, hooked. You know, like, I want to do something like this for my life. Yeah. But, like, natural bodybuilding is no money in it, you know. And there's no money in bodybuilding, really.

Period. Yeah. Unless, you're at the top of the game, you don't have. to leverage the branding. I mean, you're, you're, yeah, and even then, like, if you're one of the top competitors, you're not making money. I mean, you make money from winning shows, but that's not where the bulk of your income is coming from. No, you got to learn how to leverage social media at this point.

Otherwise, you're especially bodybuilding. Yeah, exactly. Because the amount of money it takes to be at that level and, like, stuff you got to do for your health and all this stuff you got to do for your health and all this. It's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. So I was like, okay, I was getting, like, my junior year. I was doing a degree in biochemistry.

loved it because I'm learned about the human body and everything I'm learning, I'm trying to relate to how do I get jacked and shredded, you know? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, got to junior year and I'm like, man, I, like, at the time, this is like 2003. I mean, to make money in the fitness industry, you kind of had like four choices.

Go try to be Mr. Olympia. Yeah. And get sponsored by a supplement company. Start your own supplement company. Open a gym or be a PT. Yeah. Those are kind of your choices, right? And I'm like, you know,

I didn't come from money and I had no idea about how like raise capital and stuff and then the idea of being a PT on the gym floor all day didn't really appeal to me so I'm like oh damn I was like well let's look at grad school

I'll go to grad school get a master's or a PhD and hopefully I won't be in the unemployment line you know maybe I'll figure it out while I'm there and so I looked around for different programs ended up settling on University of Illinois how are you funding all this

without having making like how are you making money to fund that? to go to grad school? Yeah. So I actually got paid to go to grad school. So when you do... Well, how do you get paid to go to grad school? So when you, in the sciences, in the hard sciences, if you're conducting research, not

always, but typically, especially at big universities and good programs in Illinois, at the time, I think it was ranked number two for nutritional science in the country and was really, I went to a really well-funded lab. So as part of, like, when they write grants and whatnot, they, they, write in funding for the students. But you have to be smart enough to get this funding. Like you have to be considered some sort of... I mean, they're not...

Hopefully, if they're good program, they're not going to bring in candidates. They're not worth a crap, right? Yeah. So basically, like, as a PhD student doing research, they don't want you having another job, really. Because you're spending so much time in lab, it'd be tough. Now, some students

they get what's called teaching assistantships where they're like teaching some classes for undergrads, you know, to help the professor. I was lucky enough that I got a fellowship, which was a higher paying entry. So I got a fellowship for three years, and then the research assistantship for three years. So the fellowship paid me like $22,000 a year. And then the research assistantship was like $15,000 a year. So it wasn't a lot of money, but my tuition was waived.

And so like I could, you know, I could focus on that. So I'm going to go to grad school. I wanted to study protein metabolism because I was, you know, bodybuilder. into protein, you know. Build muscle. And Don Lehman, who was my Ph.D. advisor, he was, like, I just went to PubMed. PubMed was really new at the time. Because I was, like, going to all these different schools, trying to find, like, an

advisor who was studying something I was interested in. Because you really, when you go to grad school, you want to pick your advisor. Because if you pick an advisor who's not doing anything you're interested in, you're just going to end up doing his shit. Whatever he's doing. Or their shit, you know, because females, too. Unless you can convince them that your stuff's more interested in. than their stuff, you know?

Yeah. So I would like go to like all these different big state schools trying to find. And I'm like, man, it's taken forever. And then PubMed had just come out like a couple years earlier. And I'm like, what if I just go search what I'm interested in and see who's publishing the research? When did PubMed start? I can't remember. I feel like everyone references that.

Early 2000s probably. So I just typed in what I was interested in. Lucene skeletal muscle protein synthesis and Don Lehman's paper was the first one or second one that popped up, the first one that popped up was from a guy named Tipton who I emailed, but he wasn't taking grad students. And then Lehman was second. He was like, yeah, I've got some openings. You know, you sound like you're well qualified. So what sort of research do you start to go do? So he was looking kind of specifically. So he had some human trials and then we had more like mechanistic data that he was looking at like in terms of, okay, it seems like this amino acid

Lucine is important for muscle protein synthesis. We have a lot of mechanistic data showing that if you give lucine and increases muscle protein synthesis, but as a part of like whole diets or complete protein sources, does it actually matter, right? That was kind of one of the questions that he had. And so when I came in, we talked about the research he was doing where he thought I could fit in. And I was very interested in that question as well.

And so, for example, like I would say the best study I did, or the one of the most proud of is we fed like different level different types of protein and these are lab rats right but rat is actually a very good model for human protein metabolism and our results got validated in humans later we fed wheat soy egg and weigh but same calories same total protein and we looked at all right is there a difference in like protein synthesis and actually like muscle mass as well we did a longer term study. And we're actually able to show that, like, yes, muscle protein synthesis was different and it was mostly based off the leucine contents of those different protein sources. So the takeaway was, you know, it's not just the bioavailability of a protein or another

measure is what's called PD cause. It's also the leucine content of the protein makes a difference in terms of like how anabolic it is to muscle tissue. And even like... So is it safe to say like if you ate like a meal and then followed it up with some leucine, it'd be better, it'd be more efficient for building muscle? Yeah, I mean, you could, but I mean, if you're a body built, like I tell people, if you're eating like, you know, one gram per pound of body weight, kind of the old school, you don't need an extra on top of it. What if you're like super trying to be try hard and like get lean and like maintain muscle mass? Is that when it matters more? You know, the research on supplemental leucine, it just doesn't really seem to show

anything because mostly unless you're like low protein and then it probably helps. But if you're getting in enough protein, it's, it seems to not really make a difference. So overall. So, so this, because I want to talk to you about this stuff. But it does, it does, let me, let me put a caveat out there. It does make a difference in terms of like, so let's take like a people doing a plant based diet, right? Um, one aspect of that is now you can build as much muscle on a plant based diet as you can on a omnivore diet. You just got to pay a little more attention to your your sources. Yeah. Because one, the, the protein in plant material. is bound up in the fibrous material of the plant,

like the intact plant sources. So let's say you're eating like beans or legumes or whatnot. And then they can have a decent amount of protein, like 16 grams. But it's only about 70, 80% bioavailable because it's bound up in that fibrous material and not accessible to some of your digestive enzymes. And it tends to be lower in essential amino acids and leucine.

So what I tell people is if you're plant-based, you know, you probably need, you know, an extra 10, 20% protein total to get kind of the same amount of high quality protein that you'd get if you were like omnivore, yeah. And you can do it, but I think most, you know, vegans, if they're looking to build muscle would do well to kind of supplement

with like some kind of isolated protein powder just because it makes it a lot easier. I see. So I kind of want to get into this conversation about like, like counting your macros and relationships, to like, you know, everyone's like, oh, all it matters is if I just eat enough, right? Like, so when we talk about like, you know, let's say, because I always get into this, this like conversation with people and they're like, what do I eat? And it's like, there is like this

overall calories and calories out, right? But then beyond that, like the sources of like carbs, for example, have to have an effect. You know how like, I'll hear stuff where people are like, they're just eating like candy or this and that. But it's like, but it's in the macro. So it's fine. Yeah. I'm like, how is that really affecting? the body because at the end of the day that's not taken into account blood sugar yeah from a so it does have an effect probably not in the way that a lot of people think um so from a completely like just mechanistic perspective like um body composition perspective right yeah if you and they've done like really highly controlled studies where they've done like say high sugar versus low sugar

there was one study where they like provided all the food to participants one group was getting 10 grams of sugar a day, another group was getting over 100. Both were in a calorie deficit. Both were consuming same calories, same protein. So macros were the same. Macros were the same. Okay. And they've lost the same amount of weight, same amount of fat, retained same amount of lean mass. They both improved, had similar improvements in blood markers of health like. Even blood markers were the same. Yeah, yeah. The only thing that was a little bit different was LDL improved in both groups and improved just a little bit more in the low sugar groups. that's probably though because they had more fiber

and fiber can lower LDL cholesterol but so so what I will say is I know that being said I don't think it's a good idea to purposely consume a lot of sugar right yeah but from a mechanistic perspective if you eat carbohydrate it winds up as sugar anyway when it gets to your bloodstream and if you look at something like fruit you know it's got a lot of fiber also has a lot of sugar right but we know that, like, people who eat more fruit are healthier, live longer, have lower rates of cardiovascular disease. Yeah.

So one of the things I tell people is it's sugar isn't necessarily the problem. It's the fact that if you're eating a lot of sugar, you're probably eating pretty low fiber as well. So balance the two, right? Now, if you're eating a lot of candy and stuff, like, you're not going to get enough fiber in. And fiber is really important, not just for cardiovascular disease risk, cancer risk, mortality, like there was a recent meta-analysis, which is just for, in plain speak, is basically a

study of studies. Okay, so they have certain inclusion criteria, and they basically say any study that is, what fits this inclusion criteria, so similar studies, we're going to lump them all in together and see what the overall effect is, right? So they're going to combine those data points. So is it like the most effective sort of outcome? It's kind of like the highest form of evidence. The meta. So it's like when people are playing CalDoo, they get the meta guns. It's like that's the gun set. Yeah.

I mean, you can do a bad meta analysis, but for the most part, when we look at like meta analyses, they're considered kind of the highest standard of evidence. So what they found was that in like just under a, the total data points was just under a million people in all these studies. And they found that each 10 gram. increase in fiber had a corresponding 10% decrease in the risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer, and all cause mortality. Now, it's important to point out, you know, eating 100 grams

of fiber today is not going to make you immortal, right? Because people, I can see people doing that math, right? I'm never going to die. It's a relative risk. So when we say, well, we think so. When we say risk, we mean relative risk. So for example, if you're 60 years old, for example, in your absolute risk of dying in the next 10 years is say, let's just say 10% right? A 10% relative risk reduction is going from 10 to 9%. 10% of your 10%. Right, exactly.

So when you see these headlines like X increases cancer risk by 15% or this, you know, your absolute cancer risk, I think is something like around 5%. Like it's going up to 5.5. Like it's not like you just massively jumped up, right? Now, important, but again, fiber is so helpful for, one, satiety. Feeling full. Yeah, feeling of fullness. Two, it really, I think a lot of the effect on cancer risk is just specifically on colorectal cancer, so colon cancer.

Fiber has a very strong effect on reducing colon cancer risk. And colon cancer is one of the more common cancers out there. So when you reduce the risk of colon cancer, you see an effect overall. And then fiber also can lower LDL cholesterol, and we think that's one of the ways in which it reduces cardiovascular disease risk. And we now know also based on the gut microbiome research, that fiber, especially soluble fiber, is one of the main fuels for the gut microbiome, for the bacteria there. and people who eat more fiber tend to have a more diverse and healthier gut microbiome

and the fermentation products so soluble fiber used to be referred to as fermentable fiber because your bacteria can ferment it and produce gas, short-chain fatty acids which are like butyrate, propionate. Those short-chain fatty acids seem to have some pretty impressive health effects

like in terms of improving insulin sensitivity, lowering inflammation, some really impressive stuff so all that umbrella is probably why we see these effects with fiber so all that's circling back to you know it's the sources of carbohydrates

for your body composition could you build as much muscle and lose as much fat eating candy if you hit your macros based on the evidence we have it would say yeah but it you you probably wouldn't want to do it that way. One, you'd be really hungry, you know, if you, especially on a diet, if you're

consuming a high sugar diet, right? Blood sugar crashes, yeah. Well, not even that. Just, I mean, think about volume, right? Think about, like, um, you know, 300 calories from a snicker versus 300 calories from a big ass salad, right? Yeah, it's way fast. Way, way different. Um, in terms of, you know, gut hormone secretion, all those sorts of things. A lot, in fact, a lot of these gut hormones actually that tell us that we're full respond to stretch so, you know, volume.

So it's not a great idea for that. The blood sugar changes. We used to think that that was driving possibly appetite and, you know, maybe even some downstream negative effects. That appears to not make as big of a difference. But... You know I find so interesting about all this shit

is how much things have changed over all the years. And that's, you know, For supplements, for everything. I like, you know, BCAs used to be it. Now it's like EAs or the thing. And I even was like, you know, hey, I used to, you know, I actually had something in line with BCAAs in it. And now in my more recent line, I don't have it.

The EAs, right? I don't have any EAAs, but I do think EAAs probably have more application than BCAAs. Right. But, I mean, that's what, you know, good science does is it, you know, you have ideas. And then as research comes out, you know, you make, you course correct, you know. Yeah. And I think not to divert too much and get us canceled, but like one of the problems

and the distrust around science with, was with God, fucking damn it, bro. I hate, no, I'm good. I love talking about this. But, oh, that was such a. You know, the problem and, you know, people were like, oh, you know. Because now you say trust in science, everyone's like, nope. Well, the problem is, and I said this right at the beginning, I'm like 30 years from now,

we're going to be able to look back and go, this was good, this was bad, we should have done this, we should have done this, but it's basically like trying to sail the ship while you're building it.

I'll never understand that. You're like basically like, okay, we think, you know, the idea was like, all right, lockdowns will flatten the curve,

it'll help from overwhelming health care system. And now looking at the retrospective studies, it seems like lockdowns didn't really help that much. Yeah. You know, mass didn't really seem to do a whole lot. You know, this is going to get me in trouble because I'll get hate from both sides. The vaccine works.

Do some people have side effects? Absolutely. Yeah. But on balance, does it, so this is where people have a really hard time with like holding two facts that seem to be opposing, right? Which is, yes, some people get myocarditis from the. vaccine like this this is shown okay terrible but the rate of myocarditis from the vaccine is still significantly lower than the rate of myocarditis from people who get infected with so so still people who just never took it got myocarditis through at a higher rate than people who had it

so when you're when you're looking at stuff like this you know as a person if you get the vaccine for example and then you get myocarditis from the vaccine you're like this vaccine right but it also saved a lot of lives now when we're making decisions i think this is what people don't understand the concept of risk right you can wear your seatbelt and have an airbag and still die in a car crash yeah that doesn't mean those things don't help right and sometimes seatbelts and airbags kill people yeah but it doesn't mean that on balance on the average that we see a benefit right so this is the problem that a lot of people are struggling with is they're getting this information about these bad things with the vaccine

and then on the other side you have people say no there's no side effects it's all perfectly safe this is all made up you know it's you know everybody should have it in the 15th booster and all that's I think the problem is not so much in the science itself it's in the the presentation and the sides that are pushing it versus not pushing it and here's the problem too and it becomes political which is like what the fuck is going on but here's the problem. If you give people all that nuance, sometimes you just confuse them, right? Yeah. And then if you're, so I'm, I would, again, I'm myself in trouble, but I don't care. Doesn't matter.

I'm an independent, but I'm most closely aligned as probably a libertarian, okay? But, you know, if you're the government and you think that, like, the research data suggests that this vaccine will save a lot of lives. Is it more important for you to give all the information and possibly confuse people or just be like, just take this damn thing so we can save people's lives, right? Yeah.

So it's like the Machiavellian, do the ends justify the means? Yeah, it's fucked up. There's always why I always say, I'm glad I'm not in charge. You know, I'm glad I'm not in charge. I see, I guess the thing that I didn't like during that whole time was like the lack of,

like, focus on everything else that had also affected. The way that they perform the whole lock, all the other stuff that came along with it that was like, what about all this other shit that also is killing people and people are now dealing with and livelihoods and all this other stuff that's also just being complicated.

That's the problem is there's always unintended downstream effects that you cannot predict, right? Yeah. I mean, we're seeing it with the schools, with kids that are, we have a whole generation of kids that's way behind. Yeah. You're seeing it with people who were on social media before,

but now it's like even worse, you know, in terms of just being completely like sucked in. And I put myself in that category because I kind of do, you know, social media is kind of my job now, weirdly. But like, I'll even find myself sometimes like doom scrolling and being, and I'm having to be like, what the fuck am I doing?

Yeah, and it's such a weird thing, man, because like it wasn't like this five years ago. It wasn't like this even feeling like four years ago. It's like it's almost all started to happen the way it did. after I think and it's just like you get sucked into whatever thing you start clicking on you just get pulled more down that ideology of like this way so then you it's people are just pinning everyone against each other and that and that's part of the you see this in the nutrition tribes too the polarization of stuff and how people just get really entrenched in a position right and you see

so much cognitive dissonance which is why like even i don't even identify as a libertarian because I see libertarians saying, where I'm like, come on, guys. Like, no, no. I think the thing that really gets me frustrated is like, same thing when it comes to, some kid comes to me, go, what's the best diet for this?

And I'm like, exactly. There is literally, I cannot give you an answer because I, there's, the only way you know is if you put in the time to see what really works for you. And that's why you say when you talk about even like the whole like, do this or don't do this thing, like, because they don't want to get into all the nuances of like why this or why that or maybe this

maybe a little less of that is because it's not that simple. No and unfortunately simple you know click baity do these three things. That's all people want. You know avoid these three things. Yeah. And I think more than that

you know I've talked about this whether it's politics, religion, diet, training whatever. People get tribal about damn near everything. Chevy versus Ford. Yeah. People get tribal about everything it's a human nature thing it is and i think that speed ramped now that's the issue yeah and what you're having is people they you say one thing like if you just take a snapshot of me saying

you know the vaccines probably saved lives people would take that and be like you lived hard you know yeah and it's like well that's also now the digestion of how people are just getting info now they're not watching the full thing it's all out of context clips and they go this and you also we tend to go into information silos, right? I said this actually like 10 years ago before social media got bad was, you know, the people I kind of hung around, hung around a lot of, you know, other scientists,

people who, you know, weren't really dogmatic thinkers who were not. We're not. Yeah. And, you know, we'd have discussions and disagreements. And like you just, when you're talking to a person, like one-on-one, I always say a person is, relatively smart people in groups are really dumb and so

I just being in that group I'm like I'm like you know I don't see why everybody's so upset about things and then I'd go out and I'd like see some of these things on Twitter and I'd be like how are motherfuck this dumb like I it actually is blows my mind but you realize it's not even

it's not even a silly intelligence thing because you have really smart people who believe really dumb shit all you need to do is go down the list of you can find this on on a list of Nobel Prize winners who believed in absolute fucking craziness in other fields like you had you had no I'm not kidding there's there's multiple Nobel Prize winners who believed in eugenics there were multiple Nobel Prize winners who believed in like healing crystals and Linus Pauling thought that you know 18 grids don't work God damn it

my whole fucking stay tuned for Bradley's crystals coming out with this new line you know

but just because you're smart in one discipline or you understand things smart people actually get

worse cognitive dissonance in general than than unintelligent people because they use their

own intelligence to justify well I wouldn't believe in bullshit right yeah

and so I think this and I really have to give a lot of credit to my PhD advisor, Don Lehman, because he crushed so many of my, in a kind way. So many of the things that I believe to be true that I just got to the point where I was okay with being wrong, you know?

And I was okay with saying, oh, you know what, that's a good point. I never thought of it like that before. You know, that's a great point. Like I, uh, Chris, do you know Chris Williamson? Yes. Okay, so he posted. Yeah, he posted something the other day about a new study came out showing that like birth control was associated with depression

and women. And I just left to comment I was like, you know, I haven't read the study, but just be quick, just be careful, jumping to conclusions everyone, because, you know, there's a lot of confounding variables here. You know, that is also the age when people start taking birth control where they get more on social media and that has been linked to depression.

So like, just be careful. And like, the amount of, first off, the amount of women who are like, you can't comment on this if you're not a woman. And I'm like, okay. All right, I'm not going to comment on your body and your experience, but I can read data, okay? But then one person said, well, yeah, but the people who weren't taking birth control, you know, were they on, they probably were on social media too. And I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, I didn't, that's a good point.

I'm like, you know, I can admit, like, that's a good point. Like, you know, unless I have data to show that people who take birth control tend to be on social media more than people who don't, that's kind of a null and void. So that person actually made a great point. And I have no problem admitting that, right? Because it's like, I tell people at the end of the day, I care more about getting the right answer. Now, I like being right. Don't get me wrong.

I'll do cartwheels in my living room if I'm right. But I care more about getting the right answer than being right. Because my, like the most horrific thing for me would to be the dude who's still parroting the same shit from 15 years ago say, no, bro, this is how it works. This is how it works. Because whatever. and I'm like, yeah, but there's 80 studies that show it doesn't, right? Quick and over for the podcast, one of the most important interruptions.

I've talked about this many, many times. I'll continue to talk about this because of how important it is. Mental health, guys, if you have ever considered therapy, you're on the right path, okay? Now, is therapy alone going to fix all your problems? No, of course not, right? But sometimes learning from an unbiased perspective, someone kind of can help you decipher your situation is so valuable so that you can then change your actions, change yourself, change your future, change where you want to go, right?

Otherwise, you just kind of go in circles. So I promise you, give this a shot, BetterHelp.com. I've been talking about, again, it's almost a year of me doing ads about this, but it's important because it's so important for people to take this serious. Your physical health is obviously the most important thing,

but your mental health is the thing it's gonna dictate physically, everything else in your life. If you're not good mentally, you're gonna be bad everywhere, okay? I've been there, I go in and out of there, but the reality is like, I've developed enough skills over time.

I've done therapy. I've done talk therapy. I've done tons of forms of my own types of therapy, like the gym therapy. But I've developed enough skills over time now being 34 years old to deal with the issues at hand. You guys may be younger, maybe haven't developed those skills, right? And therapy can help you do that if you haven't developed any of those skills or if you need to develop more of those skills. So go to betterhelp.com slash raw talk. That's better H-E-L-P dot com slash raw talk to get 10% off your first month. Let's get back in this podcast. Yeah. So it's like, I guess in regards to just the, I, ideas that people have and like them that the dogged kind of like this is the only way would you would you

would you would you say that that kind of like that thought process is getting worse or i think it's getting worse i think it's getting worse um and because of social media because you you most people don't follow people who are going to intellectually challenge their ideals right yeah um you know i mean listen i'm a i'm a firearm owner i love shooting it's one of my hot and I do believe in the Second Amendment, but I don't follow people who are anti-Second Amendment, right? Like, you know, that's an example of an information silo. Now, so, you know, I follow, if I follow anybody,

it's people who are going to probably be pro. So I'm not getting those other arguments, you know, and like I can admit this about myself, right? but and I think you know even with that particular thing like I tell people when it comes to anything being nutrition politics legislature there are no solutions everything is a tradeoff right that's the problem that's one of the big problems is people don't want to admit the tradeoffs right so I can I can say a great example about this is if you want something else that's really hot right now is seed oils okay oh and

Everyone's been talking about this. It's always the craziest fucking people, too. Everyone's talking about this. I'm like, look at these people's eyeballs bugging out of their head. I'm not going to lie. I was tripping on C2Os for a bit. I'm not going to lie, bro.

I think I saw something you were talking about. Brad's throwing all the shit out of this house. I was like, everything I can see to Ireland. No, everything does, though, dude. Well, so. So is it going to kill me? Is it giving me cancer? All right.

Break this down. So a great example of this is, the way the people who are anti-seed oil kind of package this is well if you look at the last you know 50 years an increase in type 2 diabetes and obesity and it tracks with increased seed oil consumption right but the problem with that is seed oils are in a lot of processed foods high caloric density and the the biggest contributor to the increased caloric intake in the last few decades has been added oils and which is mostly from seed oils or basically polyunsaturated fats, omega-6s.

Yeah. And so they'll say, okay, look at that. Now look at this like in vitro or animal data where they give a bunch of this stuff and they see these negative outcomes, right? Well, here's the thing. If you overfeed anything, you overfeed carbs, you overfeed saturated fat, you overfeed anything, you have negative outcomes, right? So I, what I said? That's a certainty. What's that?

That's a certainty. Yeah. If people, if you add weight, add body fat, like excess body fat, adipose tissue is inflammatory. Adipose tissue itself secretes adipokines, which are inflammatory, adipose tissue itself in excess, because I don't think people are thinking, well, I'm 5% and I got to 8, so I'm unhealthy, no. Although some people will say, well, aren't I considered obese? Well, by BMI, yes. Yeah.

But not by body fat percentage. Body fat percentage is the true definition of obesity. solid now just a quick side note on bMI because people will say oh bMI sucks well here's the problem if you want to get a large data set of people like 50,000 people for example and look at the effects of obesity you're not going to find 50,000 people who've had a dexidon you know what I mean or even calipers so bMI is a great proxy for obesity now for somebody like you or me yeah it's not applicable but we're like how many people this is going to sound like arrogant how do people look like us walking around the streets like we're in the fitness industry so

we have body dysmorphia right terrible we're like we're like okay horrible everyone looks like like kai green right yeah and then like go to the beach you know what i mean like go to the beach you're you're you're you're you're a freak like it's weird on the fitness industry this completely destroys your your your your image of yourself yeah especially when you start like you know you show day or like when you and your best peak and then like me and like trying to like look my best for social media and then I'm like if it's not good enough it's just like terrible for me well and then people leave comments and you're fucking fat dude you're lost up you you're like wait I'm like legit yeah so BMI is a good a good proxy it's about 80 to 90% accurate

we'll say right so anyways so getting too much fat is bad for you now if you what I'll say is okay. Let's compare apples to apples, right? So if you, because most of these folks who are anti-seed oil are like pro-saturated fat, they're like, oh, steak and butter is good for you, it's healthy. Okay, well, let's look at human randomized control trials where they reduce saturated fat and put omega-6's polyunsaturated fats in place of them, okay? And when we look at metabolic health like liver fat insulin sensitivity um cardiovascular disease risk cancer risk like you're kind of hard outcomes right like stuff that is actually what we care about for health health markers you either see a neutral or positive effect okay now i'm not saying seed oils are

innocuous because they are in a lot of processed stuff highly palatable easy to overconsume so if it's causing you to overconsume calories, yeah, it's still a negative, but it's not something inherent to it itself. It's the fact that you're basically having energy toxicity, right? Like, I very much doubt the people out there who are in really bad health, it's because they're cooking with canola oil. You know what I mean? No, they're having potato chips and a bunch of process crap with a lot of calories. All the time. It also has these things in them, right? Yeah. And so getting back to the original thing, which was, so Paul Saladino, who's a big proponent of the carnivore diet and a big seed oil.

That's what I was going to mention, by the way. Seed oil destroyer, seed oil disrespecter. He, I cited these studies and he says, well, look at this study, though, which was a human randomized control trial where they showed polyunsaturated fats versus saturated fats increased, lipid oxidation, okay, or pro-oxidation. That's a negative thing, but that's what we call a mechanism, okay? So when we look at human outcomes, cardiovascular disease risk, cancer, insulin sensitivity, body fat gain, these are like hard endpoints, okay? A mechanism is basically like you're saying it activated this pathway, it did this thing,

which may be negative. but that doesn't necessarily mean there'll be an outcome from it. Let me give you a financial example. So a mechanism is like a single stock, okay? Outcomes are like mutual funds, right? So what he's doing is basically saying, oh, this mutual fund, don't invest in this. Look at this stock in it that's down 50% this year. But what if the overall mutual funds up by 25% who gives a shit about that one stock, right?

so what I'm saying is whatever you consume probably has positive and negative effects and the question is what is the overall effect what is the overall summation of it right yeah and so a lot of people when they argue this stuff like I can admit okay maybe that's a negative effect of omega-6s right but that single negative effect obviously isn't powerful enough to offset the positive effects that are producing better insulin sensitivity, lower cardiovascular disease risk, lower cancer or cancer risk was kind of the same, lower liver fat, those sorts of things, right? Does that make, does that kind of make sense? Yeah, well, it's isolating something and saying this is, this is the reason why it's bad

instead of like looking at the whole picture. And same thing with like another example will be like ketogenic diet. People will say, well, on a keto diet, you burn way more fat, which is true. You do. You burn more fat. but fat burning or fat oxidation and the loss of body fat are not the same thing so explain okay so you know like with gaining muscle it's the balance between protein synthesis and protein degradation right so you have to be synthesizing more tissue than you're breaking down but both are always happening

at the same time yeah loss of body fat is the balance between the amount of fat you store versus the amount of fat you burn both things are always happening happening simultaneously okay so even the calorie deficit, you're still storing fat, but you're just burning more fat. In a calorie surplus, you're still burning fat, you're just storing more fat. Does that make sense? Yeah. So when you, so like take a ketogenic diet, for example, and compare it in studies where they equate calories and equate protein, low carb diets versus low fat diets, they don't show there's no difference in overall fat loss. But how could that be possible when the keto diet is causing people to burn so much more fat. And it is a pretty significant effect.

Well, dietary carbohydrate isn't really stored as fat. Okay, so they've done metabolic tracer studies where they give glucose that's labeled with like a stable isotope and then they can track where it winds up, right? Less than 2% of the fat that you store in adipose originates as dietary carbohydrate. Over 98% percent of the fat. percent comes from the fat you consume, okay? So that means if you're eating a high-fat, low-carb diet, you're burning a lot of fat, but you're also storing a lot of fat. If you're eating a high-carb low-fat diet, you're not burning much fat because insulin suppresses lipolis and whatnot. But you're not storing much fat. But you're not storing much fat. Wait,

what the fuck? When did this come out? Has been out for a long time? Well, I mean, the, so studies basically showing that there's no difference in actual fat loss that a meta analysis that kind of like put the put the exclamation point on it came out in 2017 or 18 by Kevin Hall okay and then like the tracer studies are all like early 2000s and stuff but you could see like you're trying to like tie this stuff together to paint a picture that makes sense right yes and so like to me people will cite these studies and this is what you see with social media folks all the time the ones that sound like they know they're talking about like well there was a study i can tell you

don't like paul i don't have a personal beef with pa i don't like i don't like the fact that he i love this i don't like the fact that i'm sure he's a perfectly nice person yeah he's a nice guy i seen him um i'm at my gym once nice and i you know i okay so this is something i have changed my mind on I think most people who are making false claims I don't think it's malicious and I don't necessarily even think it's to primarily to make money

now like people with like Paul who have big following don't end up making money off their stuff right but I don't necessarily think that I do think he wants to help people I think he actually believes the stuff he's saying right and the problem is when you're so entrenched in an idea

and you have such a strong belief system that's where cognitive dissonance comes in because you can't and especially when you've made something in identity right of course so you notice like I'm I mean you know like macro tracking flexible dieting I was kind of the one who popularized that yeah where's flexible dieting in my Instagram handle or my bio right right right when you branded it as your brand where is IIF I am guru right no because I don't want to be tied to something like that well because it's also so changing it sounds like everything is so like fluid exactly like i want to like tomorrow if i i have about a point zero zero zero zero one percent chance that this would happen but if a bunch of studies came out

then i was like oh wow carnivore diet does look like the healthiest diet i don't want to be like well you know i can't change my mind because of all this stuff i've done i've said i want to be able to change my mind you know so i think the problem becomes when you've made an identity and especially now when your livelihood's tied to it. You got to stick to it. You kind of got to stick to it. And it's why I really respect people. Like, I just did Thomas the Lauer's podcast.

I used to call Thomas out all the time for stuff he would say. And he actually, like, changed his mind on a lot of stuff. And he's like, dude, it's crazy because, like, half my audience, like, gets really mad at me now for this stuff. And I'm like, yeah, it's because, like, you know, that was their identity, too. And they're going to view you as like, trader you know yeah it's weird it's almost like us versus them you know it's even the same way with for content creators this is on a different scale but where it's like if you start out like if

i start out making fitness content and then i stop making fitness content forever they're like wait what the no you're that thing yeah that's you that's you for you get back in your box yeah it's it's interesting but so so so okay it's paul right so on that note what do you think about the liver king what do you think about the liver okay i've got some funny liver king stories again sure if you met him he's a perfectly nice guy you know great character right but that's what it is yeah this is I said this for me I'm like this is not a person this is a marketing company okay crushed they did 100 million dollars dude

like you know and now the emails from Derek came out you can see the arc of what happened you know um but I do so recently he came back was like I'm back on stairs did you see that yeah I'm like I'm off I'm soft And then he came back, he's like, you know what, fucking I'm on. Well, if you read like some of the emails, too, he definitely has some body dysmorphia stuff going on. Well, that was a lot of steroids. It's not just like $10,000 of GH just by itself. It's not normal.

That's not normal. That's not even like normal body bill. Right. That's like, I don't know. Anyways. So. I want your perspective on that whole, that whole, because that was a craze for a minute. Yeah.

So I think like when it comes to people like Paul. So for example, if I show this evidence, he has to find someone. is credited because he can't like I can acknowledge okay you show that paper on LDL oxidation maybe that is a negative effect of omega-6 but the overall effect is still either neutral or positive so I'm you know like I'm not really worried about seed oils at least from a physiological perspective even though they're significant contributed calories people may need to limit them right yeah but you know he he's made his identity around this he can't he can't he can't admit that

like if he did it be hard for him to go back. Even when he, like, started eating carbs again because he was, uh, he started eating honey and some fruit. He's like, oh, I felt better from like an electrolyte perspective. Like, no, dude, you feel better because you're eating carbs. Like, carbs are great. But he can't, but he can't, he can't say that because, and maybe he's changed on his tune

because I don't watch his content religiously. Um, but like, it's hard for him to say that because he, you know, was knocking on carbs for so long you know now the liver king thing i think honestly so i remember people started sending me his videos and i went to his page and he had like 12 000 followers and i'm like this is a joke i'm like nobody's going to fall for this shit dude and then i went back and it's like a million followers and i'm like oh fuck me people it's the internet though you know and a lot of people were like you know i follow him just for entertainment okay cool but you have to understand like you're still actually helping them like you're still hoping to make money because people go there

let's say half the people follow them just for entertainment value right yeah people go and see a million followers and they go credible yeah i mean as dumb as it is i've had people actually say to me you're just trying to bring paul down he's got 1.7 million followers and you've got you know under 900 000 i'm like i'm doing okay like i'm not really i make a good living and i'm not really worried about it like i don't i'm a pretty simple you've always seemed to care more about like just like realistic shit like working versus not working

like this work or not like that's all I've ever seen from your stuff I just like veracity you know what I mean like I'm a big I have this weird so I'm like ADHD if I'd gotten tested for autism when I was young I probably would have been on this

I probably am on the spectrum yeah there are certain things with me where it's like Wapner at 6 like you know what I mean like rain man like where I'm just like Like, I can recall the authors, the year of all these different studies. And there's something about, like, things that I know are demonstrably false where I'm like, nope, not going to let it slide. You know, you go after it.

And I go after it, you know. So with the liver king, I was just kind of like, honestly, I'll be real. It kind of, I don't want to say depression. I wasn't depressed. It made me kind of sad because I'm like, like, this is obviously, like, who actually believes this? An act. This is obviously an act.

Even Rogan, who has been known to entertain people who are not the most, you know, accurate scientifically at times, he's like, come on, guys, this is, you know, like, he's like, come on. and so I'm like man like here I am I've been in this industry 20 years working my ass off and don't get me wrong I make a good living like I'm very I consider myself very fortunate yeah um but it ain't like a hundred million dollars you know what I mean and so it it wasn't that I was jealous of that it was more like damn you can just make it up and in a couple years you can be rich you know yeah and it's it's it's it's kind of sad you know and i what i tell people is the reason it makes me upset is because everyone was ignorant at some point i was ignorant at some point

you were you know some people have a better bullshit detector than others you know and you benefit you're just people are benefiting financially from it right which is and it it can be in some ways harming people as well. Like maybe not physically, but even like the, the emotion of, like, you feel really desperate to find something that works and you hear everybody raving about this and this person saying it's the answer.

Then you do it. It doesn't work. And even more demoralized. Exactly. And some of the people are like, well, you know, and I don't mean to pick on the carnivore community, but it's just the most popular, the more popular thing at the moment. People are like, well, look at all these people who are having these great results. It's like, you know who

doesn't talk about stuff? in these groups, people who get fucked up by it. Like, because guess what happens when, and I've seen this, because I, I lurk on some of these forums and Facebook groups, guess what happens when somebody is like losing their hair or they're actually having, like you can get that this has happened, people get like cholesterol deposits around their eyelids where it's like yellow and bulbousy and shit? I'm going to assume that they kick them out. People are like, you must be having seed oil somewhere in your diet.

or you must be sneaking carbs or you're sneaking alcohol or it's like this gas sliding what can't possibly be from the carnivore diet you know and so if you see that and you start having negative effects what are you going to do you're not going to post about it because you don't want to get bullied by this group

you know what I mean? The world is so weird you're going to either stop doing it or just like be quiet about it and so I think that's the thing that upsets me is it's like why can't we just hey like I'm not anti-animal protein like some of my funding for my research

was from a dairy council egg nutrition center and national cattlemen's beef association like I'm all for like animal proteins as high quality proteins but let's not like pretend that there's no downsides to like some of this stuff or or like overdoing it you know and so I think that's just the hard part is

you know I always tell people like when I talk about this stuff or I do debates or whatever it is or I'm posting about the stuff. Hey, I'm I'm not really worried about trying to change somebody's opinion who's fully entrenched. I know that that's probably not going to happen, right? Or if I'm, you know, debating with somebody in a comment section or whatever or on Twitter, it's not for their benefit. I'm hoping that people are watching. It just gets them to start being like, oh, I never thought of it that way. This is what it comes down to. Because there is, I mean, in so many things, man, it doesn't matter if it's a nutrition.

if it's in like branding, if it's in just social media in general, it's like everyone just wants to be right and everyone just wants to know that they're doing the right thing. But people are not willing to, number one, admit when they're wrong or see when they're wrong. And the problem I think lies in it's just like, and I've talked about this so many other different ways and other conversations on podcasts with tons of other people

that I really look up to and respect. It's just people need to learn to be able to think for themselves and to critically think for themselves. And that's the biggest problem that, like we have such a great ability now to share what we know but not everything we know and the way we know it is exactly right for every other person and the problem with the internet is that like now like you said you get these these like these almost cultish type followings around certain things brands people ideas and they go this is it and then like you said even if we're not even talking about

politics same thing though you go down that hole you just get more from that hole you go deeper into that whole and then when something it could be like this could also benefit you and it's but it's over there and it's not agreeing with this it's it's just wrong and that's the problem is like people are losing their abilities to think because they just go almost everything like i don't need to know i just got to look at my phone yeah my phone's going to give me my identity and that's what's happening that's really weird on the internet on all scales it's so scary it's scary and it it makes me scared about like the conflicts that are going on and how quickly those things can escalate.

I don't watch the news because otherwise I would just, you know. Bro, and it's all just like, it's like, it's so weird. It's like people post this, people post that. I will say this one thing I saw was just really freaking freaked me out. It was a guy who his whole page right now is devoted to like being like Israel sucks, right? Right.

And in it is also like Israel sucks. And again, I have no skin in this game. I can't sit here and say this or that. I don't know enough about it, but it's like Israel sucks. He's like a picture of him going like this. And then his, and then under it's like, join my course. It's like, what the fuck are we doing? Like, are we like, it's, are you, it's like, you're using like people's lives and people's, people dying to like sell some.

That's crazy. I can't, I saw the other day on Twitter and I was like, that's insane. It's a guy like this is something about Israel with the little Israel flag and then selling his course. right under it. I'm like, this is fucking... Again, this is like, you're the devil, dude. I think more to the point, one of the things that makes it tough to get factual information and receive it is here's the other thing. People tend to follow people who tell them what they want to hear. Yeah. Right? So this is why what I say, and I tell people, I'm like,

I mean, you know, because I've been around the industry forever, right? Yeah. But a lot of people, I've only like, I would say in the last couple years gotten like really popular where like more mainstream folks are kind of finding me. It's fair I knew about you 10 years ago. Right. It's taken 20 years to get here, right? Because my message isn't really that sexy. It's like, nope, you know, it's mostly consistency and doing these fundamental things right.

That's what works though. Adherence. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, I don't care. You give me any job, sport, whatever. I talked about this on, I was on Gabby Reese's podcast the other day. I'm like,

I, I know very little about your career arc, but I'm guessing you were, you, you had some genetic advantages for sure. Me. Like you and Gabby. But you were really consistent.

You worked really hard. And you probably had to overcome some pretty significant setbacks. Yeah. Yeah. That's with anybody. Yeah. Entrepreneurship,

business, whatever. You can pick anything. That's not really sexy. what people want to hear is the three foods that will turn you into a fat burning machine

do three minutes cold plunge per day and you know incinerate fat you know like that's that's the sexy stuff and you people want to believe in bullshit

because it's much more palatable than you know what it's actually a lot of personal responsibility and just you doing a ton of work yeah exactly what do you think about cold plunges long period of time

for real though okay because I love them holding two things and both hands Rake it down. I love them. There are no solutions, only tradeoffs.

Benefits. Reduces inflammation, reduces soreness, improves time to recovery from exercise. Downsides. It actually seems to attenuate the gain of lean mass in people who resistance train. So they've shown that it can actually depress muscle protein synthesis. What?

I thought it was the opposite of that. No, no. So now, people will hear this and they'll say, like you said you couldn't build muscle on a cold plunge. We'll just look at Bradley. God damn it. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying on balance,

you can still build muscle doing coal plunges. The research just seems to indicate you're not going to build as much as you would if you didn't, okay? So they've shown that cold water immersion is kind of what they call it in the literature, that it depresses muscle protein synthesis and they've actually shown, you know, over time,

people, you know, if they have one group, if they're both doing the same training programs, the group doing the coal plunges tends to gain a little bit less muscle than the group that's not doing them. Now, that being said, I'm not saying don't do cold plunges. Some people are like,

well, I like the way it makes me feel. Yeah, do it. You know, not everybody's goal is to be Ronnie Coleman. You know what I mean? Right? Or some people have said, well, you know, like let's take in and A fighters, right?

Like you're getting ready for a fight. Well, what do you have to do to get ready for a fight? You've got a fight. Well, guess what happens when you fight? You get beat up, right? And you inflammation, you've got swelling, you know, well, cold plunge for those guys make a lot of sense. They don't care if they're the most muscular version of themselves they can possibly be.

Like, you know, they want some lean mass, but mostly as it just relates to, you know, them being strong. So, you know, I think cold plunges are a useful utility. Yeah. I think if you are a specifically like competitive bodybuilder, probably not optimal. for what you want to do. If you're an athlete or you're, especially people who are like, you know,

peaking for some sort of competition that involves a lot of training where you're really sore and beat up a lot. And even like, for example, if I'm a power lifter, I still compete in powerlifting. If I had a meat coming up, it may be that, you know,

doing a couple cold plunges is more beneficial for me to not have soreness from my next training session so I can actually, lift effectively than whatever little amount tiny amount of muscle it may suppress you know so again tradeoffs right you just got to decide what you pick uh personally i hate cold water but i love that shit but some people love it you know and i get the appeal too like you know like Andrew human kind of talks about this like yeah hey you're doing something you don't like

that's hard and when you do that it actually kind of improves your mood for the rest of the day because you've done this hard i totally get that it's like even just a cognitive thing. Yeah. Yeah, I totally get that. But again, I'm like, hey, here's all the upsides, here's the downside. Now you make informed decision on what you want to do. What about like a nice hot bath?

So what's interesting about recovery modalities, so if you look at research on recovery using heat, ice, compression, massage, dry needling, even compression garments. anything is better than nothing. Like even compression garments have been shown to like improve recovery. Yeah. So part of me thinks it might actually be a placebo thing

because like you can't really placebo a cold plunge. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like you know you're in cold water. And when I say placebo, so this is, I think you'll find this very interesting. When I say placebo,

I think a lot of people get really offended by that because they think Well, Lane's saying I'm making it up. Whatever my experience is, is just in my head. That's not what I'm saying. In research studies, placebo in some cases has been shown to be as powerful as pharmaceutical drugs in terms of like actual physical outcomes. Well, this concept is so insane then because that's, that's like directly saying how strong

your mind is. Yeah. So let's be a freaking example. We know creatin works, right? Like, we have thousands of double-blinded, randomized control trials, which, so double-blinded means that one group's getting creatin, one group's getting placebo, the people getting it don't know what they're getting, and the researchers don't know what they're getting either, okay? So when you do a double-blinded, you have to have a company come in and basically, like,

make sure that the researchers don't know and, like, the information about who's getting what, is kept until it's time to analyze the data. So this is important because, you know, researchers could bias the study because maybe they yell a little bit louder on the last few reps for the people getting creatine versus the people not, you know, that sort of thing. But if it's double-blinded, they can't do that, right?

Or maybe they're the ones backing the test, like someone's paying them to do the thing. So we know that creatin works. Yeah. But there was a study where they had four groups and one, so one group didn't get creatine, told they didn't get it. Another group

didn't get creatin told they got it. Another group got creatin told they didn't get it and the last group got creatin told they got it. Didn't matter what they gave them.

What it matters is what they told them in terms of performance and crazy. And strength. Now people will misinterpret that and go, oh, creatin doesn't work. No, no, no.

It just means your beliefs about what creatin does are more powerful than what it actually does. Oh my God. Another one. The research told subjects or didn't tell them that they were getting it nobody got animal

steroids but they told them hey we're giving you this fast acting steroid that makes you stronger and they got stronger like their one rep max I think the average increase was like 5% you imagine putting 5% on your one rep max or something so so explain this is just how that's how powerful the mind you're you're taking the governor so I can't believe I can fly and actually fly right but if My neurological inhibitor on me, for example, like I don't think this would happen to me because my training and like all the competitions I've done,

I've learned how to take that inhibitor off. You know what I mean? And really maximize. Yeah. But for people who don't have, you know, 20 years of competitive experience, really like sharpening the mental aspect of things, like it's probably removing that inhibitor, right?

where you just believe it so much that now you're actually realizing your actual potential. Does that make sense? So again, it doesn't mean that creotin doesn't work. It just means that what you believe about creatin is more powerful than what it really does. And even there was a study where I think it was a little bit longer duration where they told people, hey, we're going to give you anabolic steroids. One group was told they got them. Another group told they didn't get them.

And wouldn't you know it, the group told they got them over time gained more. more lean mass. Bro, that's amazing. Now, some people might say, well, they're just training harder because they believe and they're recovering, maybe they're recovering better because they believe. And so, like, they're just able to push more weight and that, and that's why, right? But we've actually seen this effect like other things that aren't subjective. So, for example, there was a more recent study.

They gave people two pre-workouts. Both were placebos. One was a clear liquid. One was a pink liquid. Which one do you think people got better results from the pink liquid? Yeah. Yeah. So those people got about 5% more reps on bench press.

Bro, what the fuck? This is cool, though. It is cool. And then like another study, and I'm going to butcher the study because I read it a long time ago, but essentially, are you familiar with grelin? Yeah. It's a hormone that, like, signals that you're hungry. Yeah, I'm hungry.

Leptin signals that you're full. Yeah. Yeah. So they had people, and it was part of a larger study where they're kind of looking at genetic polymorphisms of people who secrete more or less grelin, but they had them and they measured their levels of grelin and then they randomly told them what they were, right? So same like four quadrants, right? you had people who were low-grelin told they were low-grelin,

low-grelin told they were high-grelin, high-grelin told they were high-grelin, guess what mattered? Oh, my God. What they told them. What the f***, dude? Yep. So it's just like our, it's just our minds are really that sharp.

Well, I think, you know, we used to view, and actually I've gotten really into the research in, like, pain literature. Because, you know, I've gone through, like, herniated discs in my, back and you know I I there was a point in 2017 where like for a 36 hour period I couldn't stand up like I just literally laid on my side because I was in so much pain so I got kind of there by the way for as much woo as there is a nutrition science if there's any any like other discipline that has more woo it's pain science um of people just saying it's completely nonsense and people believing it um we used to think that your mind and body were

kind of separate, right? Like your mind is the master control center and your body's a bag of meat, right? And if you poke the bag or punch the bag or burn the bag or cut the bag, your brain goes awy, right? Except it doesn't really work that way. Pain is more like an emotion.

So I'm not a pain expert. This is what I'm pulling from people who are experts and from some of the studies I've read. Okay. So like, for example, some people will say, so you're telling me if I got shot, it wouldn't hurt. Depends.

There are soldiers who get shot with non-mortal wounds who don't know they've been shot till later because they're so goal-orientated that

and their adrenaline is so high they don't feel it, right? By same token, there are people who lose limbs who have pain where they don't even have a limb. They call it phantom pain. when it's gone, though.

Right. Yeah. Right. But, like, they're not feeling it here. They feel it here. But imagine that's gone. Right.

Yeah. So the other thing is people kind of, let's take bulging and herniated. If someone cut my hand off of my, my hand hurts. Like, dog, you don't have a hand. Right. Okay.

So, yeah. So let's take a bulging disc and herniated disc, right? So people assume, all right, you have a bulging desk, herniated disc, you have back pain um

they took I think it was Americans over age 40 who did not have back pain did you know that over half of them had herniated and bulged this

asymptomatic so so so so basically what you're saying is Dave and Goggins got it right that's what you're saying it's like not necessarily so pain is more like an emotion

and there are certain things that can they referred in this paper I read to pain is like a gate okay and there are certain things that will lower erasure gate.

So, um, for example, this is really going to piss some people off. But the research on like static stretching, reducing injuries, it, it pretty much doesn't exist. Oh, um, here, here's what reduces injury risk. Um, not being under recovered.

Um, did you know, psychological stress raises your risk of injury? That makes sense. Uh, lack of sleep. So they did a study where, um, I think it was in Army, people and might have been Army Rangers, but I'm not sure. But they, like, four versus eight hours of sleep, guess how much it increased injury risk? 230 percent from that much less sleep. From four hours less sleep a night.

Holy shit. You know, so, and you can have tissue damage with no pain and pain with no tissue damage. Okay. So these things are very complicated. And so people ask me like, how'd you fix your herniated dis? I don't know if I did. If you MRI in my back now, they're probably still there, you know, but you can desensitize yourself to pain. You can also sensitize yourself to pain. So actually one of the most effective ways to decrease pain is through what's called. exposure therapy. Now, you may have heard of this in kind of like a psychological sense or like a therapy sense, right? So let's use the example of like a spider. Okay, let's say you have a fear of

spiders, okay, like a really bad one. If I put, if I'm like, well, we're just going to get you over this right now. And I put you in a room filled with spiders. You are not going to get over it. That's going to be a traumatic event, right? So that's like if you have some really bad back pain and you go, now I'm going to plow through it and you go and try and squat heavy, over time you will actually sensitize yourself more to that pain, right? You'll feel it more, yeah. Oh, it'll be way more painful. You're not necessarily causing more damage,

but you're perceiving more pain because this is all cross-talk between your brain and body, okay? But you could also desensitize yourself through exposure therapy, which is like, okay, if you had a fear of spiders, what we might do is, okay, Bradley, we're going to have you sit here. I'm going to have a spider in a glass case on the other side, that room and over time

we move that glass case closer right to the point where eventually you care less you become more comfortable with it so how do we do this in regards to the body so because people always I got injury I got this how do we do that in regards to the body so and again I would recommend people you know work with the qualified

sports physical therapist who's used to working with athletes if this is you know because they're the professionals yeah so I'll give you an example in 2000 from 2000 16 to 2020, I dealt with like hip pain in both hips on and off. To the, where it started out, it was like kind of painful to by the time I kept trying to plow through it, I couldn't even squat the like 135 below parallel without like 10 out of 10 pain. And in 16 weeks from starting

exposure therapy, I basically got to a tolerable pain level for full squatting. So what did you do? So here's what I did. So with exposure therapy, you want to kind of, essentially, you're trying to touch that pain just a little bit without making it worse, okay? So you don't want to have your threshold be absolutely no pain whatsoever. So if you've been lifting long enough, I think you and I know, like we know when we got a little pain that like we could kind of work through it and we're not going to make it worse. We also know when there's the oh, like that's bad. And if I keep going, it's going to get worse. yeah so it does take some like practice and experience but what I did was I found okay full squatting

was out like I just couldn't do it and like I tried modifying tempo like even if I went slow it was still painful even if I decreased the weight it was still painful so then I was like okay can I limit the range of motion and I found that I could do a pin squat about five six inches above parallel slow to pins, pause, come back up with a low to tolerable amount of pain, right? And so... Like out of ten, like a four? Like a three or a four. Yeah.

So I started there, right? And I did kind of like a normal workout that I would do. And then if that went okay, the next week, or not always the next week, but it was like, okay, can I lower the pit? And it was like probably, you know, my best squat. I mean, I was doing this for like sets of three to five. But my best squats for like my, I think my best squat I ever did for a set of five was 600 pounds.

Um, which is incredible. But like, especially being a fake nattie. But my, like here I'm doing like 400, you know, for three to five. Yeah. So like six inches above parallel, right? Like this is,

yeah, this is pretty light and high for me. um but over over time it's like okay can i lower the pins i can increase the weight a little bit you know and then if i felt like okay that pains a little bit more than i feel like then i would regress it for a week and then try and go back because recovery isn't really linear i don't know how many injuries you've dealt with but you know you know when you're coming back like sometimes it gets worse and then it continues to get better like it's not necessarily a linear process so you know i just kind of embraced all right when i feel good and I feel like I can lower those pins, I'll do it.

When I don't feel good, then I'll just hold steady, you know? In over 16 weeks, I basically got to the point where I could do a full squat, slow tempo, to like a three or four out of pain. But when I started, it was a nine or ten. So you have to kind of, obviously, you have to gauge this by your own accord, essentially. But it's the range of motion is what you're saying is that you... Well, it's not always. Sometimes, like, for example, I've been able to like, if I'm not like so sensitized to it, it, I've been able to just slow down

the tempo and like that makes it tolerable, right? Got it. So I'll tell people like if you have to modify, like let's say you're, like take my case of a power lifter, right? Bodybuilding is way more valuable. Like there's so many ways to build muscle.

You could just go to leg press and it doesn't hurt my back at all. Exactly. Like just there's and the research shows you can, I mean build basically as much muscle doing machines that you can free weight. So like the world is your oyster in bodybuilding. Yeah. And even like isolation versus compound, the research suggests you can still build about the same amount of muscle.

But in powerlifting, I mean, you know, if you want to get better at squat, bench, press, and deadlift, you have to do it. You've got to do those lifts at some point. Yeah. So, you know, the first thing I'd recommend, like, okay, if you're having pain that's, you know, consistently more than like a five out of ten, okay, lower the weight a little bit.

Does that help? If that doesn't do it, lower the weight, slow the tempo down. Okay, that doesn't do it. Try lowering the weight, slowing the tempo, and doing a pause. That doesn't do it. Lower the weight, slow tempo, pause, and modify the range of motion. And if all those things don't work, then you got to regress. You're done, dude.

Then you've got to regress to a different exercise until you can build your tolerance back up. I think the mistake a lot of people make is, it's what I used to do, which is either, okay, well, I can't. train so I would just stop training or I try to plow through it it was like two speeds right and so man I think about like I probably wasted not wasted but I probably spent five years where I could have been still really competitive just doing this up down of going through like dealing with all this pain because as soon as I got to the point where you know I'd come out I'd I'd pretty much do nothing or I'd stop squatting completely and then I would start again, and I'd be like, okay, I feel good, go hard, here we are again, you know. Whereas if I had just, when that pain had initially happened, now, like, I tell people, so I won master's worlds for my weight class and age in 2022 for the IPF. Yeah. And I won nationals again this year for the IPF affiliate, which IPF is basically the IFBB of powerlifting.

And I dealt with back pain on and off during that time. Like, it flares up. And like my coach and I, he's great. His name is Zach Robinson. He actually is doing his PhD in exercise science. Really smart guy also competes himself. And he said it. He's like, listen, as we get into ramping you up for worlds,

you like, this stuff is going to rear its head. And we just have to be ready. And we know the formula for this. And so the formula was, okay, when my back pain would get to an intolerable level because as the volume's coming up and the intensity is coming up as we're trying to peak for this,

we would treat it very aggressively. So, you know, initially, rest and we would like basically back the weight way off. And then we would build volume and intensity through something like belt squats where my back's not hurting. Less pressure on the back, yeah. And honestly,

within one, two weeks, I'd be back going home. heart again. And it was like just being, just keeping myself mobile and doing some active recovery, huge difference. Whereas before I'd be like, I've got to plow through this or just completely rest. And you don't want to just completely rest either because what happens, and I didn't realize I was doing this to myself, is even if I completely rest, let's say, eight weeks, right? Go back in the gym. I'm still really strong squatter. Like not as strong as I was, but I'm still really strong. And if I have not been practicing technique during that time, guess what I'm likely to do?

And I've detrained. So my recovery, like you're, as you train more, your body recovers faster over time. Because, like, everybody remembers, like, first time you ever did legs, you restore for, like, 10 days, you know? And I got to the point where I was training squats like four times a week, right? my body built up to that recovery level so when you detrain now your recovery isn't as fast and your your technique is not as good you're actually more likely to re-injure yourself going back right right so and even like the other things that don't seem to make much of a difference for injury risk is like so everybody was you know big on you got to have a straight back deadlifting got

have a straight back deadlifting uh so the research doesn't really support it to be honest But don't you want your back to be not bent? If it's a mechanical advantage for you, then yes. But some people have a better mechanical advantage, certainly with a rounded upper back. Yeah. But some people even have it. And you see some people who, I mean, like cat back deadlift,

deadlift a lot of weight and don't seem to get injured more than other people. Yeah. But here, and here's, I actually started. But they're cheating. Aren't they normally doing the sumo? All right, Kenny. That's cheating, dude. Isn't it cheating?

Okay, so let me finish this thought, and I'll get to the sumo is cheating. So I actually started training myself with a little bit more of a rounded back, and here's why. Because I found that when I got heavy and was in a fatigued state, I would start out straight,

and then my back would round, and that's when I would get injured. Because if you have not trained those tissues, in that position yeah you're going to like the injury risk is higher and so you're better off

if you are going to end up in that position to train that position right yeah I mean one of the best squatters sorry the best squatter female squatter in the world at 63 kilos is lea boiotelli I think I pronounced her last name right

sorry Leah so she's 140-ish pounds and squats on like 470 right now when she does it she's very narrow stance and her knees go like this right and everybody's like you're gonna blow out your knees you're she's never had knee problems she's always squatted that way those tissues are used to that sort of stress now if she always squatted knees out and then gets heavy and goes knees in then there is an increased risk okay so now Your question about is sumo cheating? Yeah.

All right. So in research studies where they have people pull conventional or pull sumo, they don't see a significant difference in one rep maximums. They also see similar activation of muscles. Now, the one difference is lumbar spine has a bigger activation in the conventional. And I believe glutes and quads have more of an activation in the sumo, I believe,

if I remember the research correctly. But here's the thing. If sumo was easier, every single power lifter would do it. Every single one.

I don't care what anybody says. Nobody's trying to make it harder on themselves. Yeah, but isn't it, isn't it just the way you're built then at that point? It is, but also consider this.

So, and people like, get on me, but I'm like, you guys don't know this, but back in like 2009, I pulled 700 conventional. There's a video you can find on my YouTube if you go all the way back. That's a good pull.

And my best, my best sumo at a similar body weight is 716. So it's pretty close, right? Yeah. The reason I switched to sumo was because I just found the conventional plus a lot of squatting.

My lower back was so fatigued all the time. You know, so I just found that I could handle more squat volume if I did sumo. I see. I would say there are more power lifters that pull sumo than pull conventional. So it does appear at a top level that your top end strength that you're at the top level of power lifters probably favors sumo. But not all. There's plenty of guys who pull conventional who are stronger and conventional. and a lot of it pulls down to the trade-offs.

So here's the trade-off. If I ask you to jump as high as you can, are you going to get into a sumo stance? No, because you have the most power when your feet are directly under you. But with sumo, you're reducing the range of motion, right? So it's that trade-off. You're giving up power for less range of motion,

but like I said, if sumo was easier, every single power lifter would do it. But you would argue that conventional was more, not in not for this specific thing but it translates to other things better then um well so like if we're talking about athletes i'd probably just happen to a trap bar dead you know what i mean because of safety well i just it's it's when you're dealing with athletes who you know i live to get better at lifting right not like most athletes which lift to get better at their sport right you're just worried about like getting more lean mass and getting somebody stronger

who gives a shit if they're stronger at a trap bar deadlift compared to a conventional deadlift yeah competing in that exactly so i would do that just because it's like to get somebody to be a really proficient like free bar squatter or conventional deadlifter or even a sumo deadlifter it takes a lot of time and work but most people can pick up a trap bar and get pretty decent at pretty quick, right? Yeah, I see. So if you're looking at your time investment with an athlete, does it make sense to try and get them to learn all these really complicated lifts

that require a high degree of specificity in training that, by the way, maybe they end up injuring themselves on because they haven't had that much training on them? No, it makes sense to give them stuff that they can pick up pretty quickly. Yeah, it's fair. So, yeah, I think, you know, again, it just depends on what you're going for. And, you know, I think a lot of people, and even in powerlifting, their top-end conventional might be better than their top-end sumo, but the problem is, you know, you're fatigued from squatting by the time you're done. This happened with the guy, I beat, his name is Michael Garazo, I beat him at nationals, and then he beat me at North Americans by a single pound, because he had the last pull. That'd be terrible.

I would hate to lose by that. I would be so fucking that. It actually was a really interesting. I'll get into it here in a second. but anyways he pulled conventional at nationals because he's like my best pull was conventional but by the time I got to you know deadlifts after my second pull my I was blown you know yeah but then at um north americans doing sumo he just felt like he had more endurance more in the tank um and that's been my experience too so um yeah that was an interesting situation

because the meats were eight weeks apart and I had I had a great meat I went nine for nine. I hit great numbers on all my lifts. And so this is where powerlifting is actually does have quite a bit of strategy to it in certain particular circumstances. So when you weigh in, there's what's called lot numbers. And a lot number almost never matters. So if you have a lower lot number you weigh in earlier, higher lot number you weigh in later, right? Well, you would say, well, the lower lot number is the advantage because you can weigh in

and then you've got more time to rehydrate and get some food in, right? But here's where a lot number matters. If two people pick the same weight, the higher lot number will go second. Okay, so Mike and I are tied, I think we were tied going into the last deadlift. So, whatever number I choose,

he's just going to put the same number down. No, he's going to put the same number. Here's why. because if I miss, he can just back it down to whatever he needs to beat me and do it. Oh, that's annoying. And if I hit,

he can just add a half kilo, chip it and beat me that way, right? And so it's actually a much more difficult decision for me and my coach. It almost goes back to that placebo thing we said too where it's like, well, he did that, I'm going to do this. Because how much harder is it to pull one more pound?

But, you know, in our case, my coach and I, Ben's great. And Mike's game day coach was Susie Gary, who's legendary. we're looking at okay we have to pick a number that we feel like

is really going to push him but it's also going to push me right so we have to do something that we're we think I can hit but it's going to be a stretch kind of when it starts into you because we're pretty close on pretty much every lift

and so Ben picked 706 pounds he's my game day coach and he was like you know I was like 6040 60 I didn't think you were going to get it I'm like child please So I go out and get it Mike puts on 707 gets it

And wins it you know You should have gave him the clear pre-workout You should have took the big up But yeah No so anyway like I'm kind of indulging myself here Because of my own competition No no it's fair

It's I think you know That's one of the things I actually enjoy About power lifting is there's actually a lot more strategy to it than people think At a high level where there's a lot of competition Yeah So switching gears a little bit, obviously still about nutrition, but I know this is the corny question that everyone is going to want certain answers to, but I got to ask this, what do you

think are the most important supplements when it comes to performance? Okay. And then we'll do second important supplements when it comes to building muscle mass. Okay. They're all pretty similar. They're all pretty similar. Yeah, but I just want to, let's get your take on it. All right, click interrupt for the podcast.

This is for all my sleepless sleepers, all right? These are for all the boys who they lay in bed and they wake up and they wake up and they're like oh my sleep was bad And they're complaining their friend like man my sleep was bad and your other friend's like you're never sleep is bad It's a solution okay hostage state check this out you may not understand this but don't even think so hard about it Just know that your body's ability to like recover your efficiency and sleep like your alertness everything during the day like if you're breathing through your nose It's gonna be 10 times better 10 times better than breathe your mouth mouth breathers efficiency oxygen wise not great breath smell and you're going to gonna have like breast smell like you're gonna be like probably drew all over your bed i was one of those guys i'm like waking up and i'm like oh like this and it's like even like going down here

you could fix all that and make your sleep better like honestly why not like it's going to make you better athletically mentally clear everything focused better like sleep is 100% one of the most important things for anyone for any goal physically like mentally if your sleep is everything you do is going to be just less i mean that's that's an undeniable factor Okay hossus tape for all the mouth breathers get better sleep sleep more wake up more rest in all that good stuff I love it I've actually did I did it for a while and I said this before but I did it for a while I'm not I had sleep apnea because like when I was bigger I was like waking up in the middle of the night I was getting terrible sleep like waking up in the middle of night so started covering my mouth and started making sure my nose is always clear and I was getting incredible sleep feeling better in the gym better in life everything so so so the guys make a shot go to hacious tape dot com slash raw talk buy two get one free right now More forever. Hold your piece. What?

So you laugh because they got the pain of it? Right. You're like to slam the dash out as fucking just a little. Yeah, I didn't need it. It's just a fucking, so we don't know what I do there. Oh my God. Yeah. Let's get back in this podcast, dude. So I'm going to do a slight variation off that if it's okay.

Yeah, go for it. So I have my supplements in tiers. So I have a first tier, which is very confident recommending these hundreds of studies across multiple countries over decades of research. I don't know what these are going to be. for creatin caffeine way protein that is your Mount Rushmore of supplements right there

there's just so much research data to show that hey these things work right now second tier would be things like good example be like Ashwaganda something that it's like you know we have studies a couple studies

showing improves lean mass we have studies showing it modestly increases testosterone lowers cortisol I just want to see it over a longer period of time across more labs and just consistency, right? But I'm pretty bullish on it. And that's why it's in some of my products. It's in my recovery product.

Rodeola would also fit in that category. Both of those are adaptogens. So adaptogens basically like help your body manage stress, essentially. And so Ashwagana tends to be a little more in the relaxants. side, whereas Raleola tends to be more on the stimulant performance side. So Aschamaglata tends to improve recovery. You see modest increases in testosterone, decreases in cortisol, and improvements in sleep. Rodeola, you tend to see better exercise performance and cognition.

So it seems to increase neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin. And not only do you see improvements in like fatigue, but also, perception of fatigue. And what's cool about rodeola is you see like physical, it helps you handle physical stress better. It also, like, I think it reduces soreness as well. But psychological stress as well. So there was a clinical study where they gave rodeola and actually saw improvements in symptoms of depression and people with mild to moderate depression. Now, I want to be very clear. I am not suggesting that rodeola is a cure for depression or that you can stop your antidepressants if you're somebody who's on antidepressants or whatever best practices are out there.

That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying in this population, it seemed to improve those a little bit. Yeah. So it seems to help with physical and psychological stress. But in both of those cases, the mechanisms aren't really well understood. Now, we already talked about I'm bigger on outcomes. am on mechanisms, right? But I do think it is important to, if something is working, we should understand why it

works, right? Like, we know why creatine works. We know why ratein works. We know why caffeine works. So they're starting to get more of that research going, so I want to see more of that research before I say, you know, this is going to move up to my, you know, tier one. And then things like citraline, beta alanine, betane or trimethylglycine would be on that list. And, you know, people who.

who see this base say, well, he's got a conflict of interest because all those things are in his supplements. Well, of course you'd make stuff. Yeah, because I take this stuff and I think that this is the stuff that works. Melatonin would be on that list as well. Really?

Yeah, so there was actually a study where they gave melatonin. They actually saw improvements in lean mass. And interestingly, you know, my first thought was like, this is probably secondary to they're just sleeping better and recovering better and having better performance in the gym.

but some people have argued that there might be a mechanism for it even outside of that. In relationship to what? Well, we're not sure, but there... I can't remember what it was, but somebody suggested that maybe there's like a melatonin receptor in other places.

I would love to see how it affects protein metabolism. Like we have seen that like, you know, even acute sleep deprivation can affect performance, appetite, even a 14-day study where they had people sleep restrict. So they had people on a calorie deficit. One group was sleep restricting.

I want to say it was five and a half hours or less. Another group getting over eight hours. The group getting over eight hours lost almost all their weight from fat. They didn't have a difference in weight loss. The group that was sleep restricting, almost half of their weight loss was from lean mass. What the fuck? Yeah.

So recovery is a big thing. Again, this is the shit. It kind of boils down. People don't want to hear this stuff because it's like, you know, tell me how I can sleep four hours and still get jacked as hell, you know? And like, listen, you can find people who sleep very little who are jacked. But the point making is they'd probably be more jacked if they got more sleep. Yeah.

And so, you know, I do think melatonin can help. Now, I will tell people like, hey, Like, I know for me, if I want to go to sleep at like 10, 10.30, I'm probably taking my melatonin at like 8. And I use about two milligrams. That's what's in my supplement. You don't need a bunch. If I take like 5, 10 milligrams, like right before I go to sleep, I am absolutely groggy the next day. Like, I feel it. It spills all what you say? Anecdotally for me, yes.

Okay. Um, so I think there is something to like, you know, kind of an optimal dose, you know, a U-shaped curve, maybe different for different people. I know some people that will take, oh, shit, there it is. I know some people that will take, say, I took my melatonin before I came in. He can go to bedside? I'm on East Coast time, baby. Yeah. I do know some people who can take five, ten, even 20 milligrams and, and not have negative effects.

I think there is a tolerance thing that does happen. You know, there was a, I want to say I read a study one time where they were giving like 100 milligrams of melatonin. That sounds toxic. I wasn't toxic. But they still saw like improvements in sleep. But I would love to like see like short term how those people felt. But have you ever had any weird melatonin dreams?

I very rarely dream. Oh, sure. Really? And they're like really basic. Damn. I've had like some weird ass dreams. dreams on Melaton. I couldn't imagine a hundred. Every once in a while I have like a dream that it's not just like I'm running or I'm falling or, you know, doing something else. Um, you know,

every once in a while I'll, I'll have like a semi more complicated dream, but I just, I just don't dream that much. Or I dream and I just don't remember it. Yeah. That's another thing. A lot of people do dream and just don't remember what they dreamt. Um, so yeah, I, I like melatonin. Um, Theanine, another thing that may have some good, not really necessarily a sleep aid, but kind of a relaxant and like an anti-anxiety sort of effect. And there's more things I could put on that list, but it's not, I don't want to say it's exhausting.

What about like the fish oil? Fish oil would be on there. Yeah. Good multivitamin would probably be on there. But yeah, you know, unfortunately, like this stuff is not sexy, right? Yeah. But what I'll tell people was like, You know, people get ho-hum about, oh, creatine monohydrate.

It's like, well, there's a reason it's cheap and it's boring because everyone makes it because it's been around forever because it works. Yeah. It never went out of style. Like, look at. Do you remember when it was like a stifference to everyone? That was good. I remember when I started, I took it.

Oh, you take creatine? Oh, that's like. 16. And my parents were like, oh, man. It's pretty funny. It is, it is fun. And actually, like, there's a lot of research that suggests creatine might actually be really healthy. Yeah, I think it's a good for your brain as well.

Yeah, there appears to be some real cognitive benefits to it. Yeah. And it, honestly, it is the safest, most effective supplement that we have tons of data on. The one thing that people will say is, oh, it causes hair loss. Okay. Yeah. So let's talk about that. So there was one study in 2009 that didn't show hair loss.

It showed an increased D.H.T. Now, this study has never been replicated. And D.H.T. is, I believe, a metabolite of testosterone. And, but their testosterone, so the precursor, so they measure D.H.T. The precursor and the metabolite of D.H.T. in this study. the precursor and the metabolite didn't change, only dhth, which to me is kind of weird. So you're basically saying through some unknown mechanism, creatin increases the synthesis of dh-hty in this one mechanism.

So I'm not really sold on creatin causing hair loss. and like I said, it was a study from almost 15 years ago that has never been replicated. So I don't want to say it doesn't cause hair loss, but I don't think there's really good evidence that it does. Yeah, I love creatine. I think it's dope. I just recently started taking it again.

But again, like, so let's take, for example, you know what's funny, I can remember back in the early 2000s, HMB, colostrum, ectosterone. Yeah. What's coming back into Vogue now? God damn it, dude.

All that shit. It's just like, it's weird. It's TikTok has, oh, Ashvogat. It's like, bro, Asphagod has been around forever. And all of a sudden, I was like, two years ago, it was like, this is the best shit out there. No, it's, it's the internet, dude, the cycles of things. Yeah. It's like fashion, right?

Well, even pyruvate is coming back. Like, so it's funny because it's kind of like, companies don't make money on creatine monohydrate. because it's like big screen TVs, right? You remember, like, I don't know, 15 years ago, I remember I bought my first, like, flat screen, like, yeah, you were balling, man. God damn.

42-inch Phillips flat screen for like almost $1,000. Bro, you get a 40-inch screen TV for a pack of bubble gum right now. Yeah, like 100 bucks? Yeah, for nothing, right? Why? Because the market is so competitive because every company makes it, and it's just got easy to manufacture because it's so ubiquitous, right?

Same thing for creatine. Everyone sells it. So, hey, how can we make some more money? Oh, creatine, Etheluster. Oh, Buffer Cretton. Oh, yeah. Cretton, whatever, you know? And I'm like, hey, just,

in the case of creatin, ethelester, the two research studies that were actually on it showed was actually quite a bit worse than regular creatine. It is weird, though, how it's like become this, like, race to just sell, like, Dude, I think the people who did it almost the craziest before social media ever really was a thing was T-Nation. They were selling single item products for like crazy prices. I was like, holy.

I remember you read these like these articles they would put. This is before social media and influencers were like, bye, this is my favorite shit. But they wrote these really compelling articles. And I was like, I need that. Yep. They have all these graphs and shit. I was like, these motherfuckers got me. And it was the most simple shit.

Well, and even it's, you know. And so now, now it's coming back. to like social media influencers are like, this is the best shiper and it's like, so it's like buy it from this company at this price when it's like, you know, that's like this much

over here, you can just buy it over here. Yeah. It's interesting. Well, and even like, again, ectosterone getting popular again, but you didn't hear about ectosterone for like 10 years, right? Yeah.

Creatin never went out of style. Way protein never went out of style. Caffe never went out of style. You know what I mean? Yeah. Because those fucking things work, you know? And so, you know, I tell people like, hey, just look at the stuff that sticks around.

You know what I mean? Yeah. And I get it. It's hard to make money off these things. And so people feel like they've got to be novel or whatever. Yeah. And so they try and reinvent the wheel. But the shit that works is the shit that works.

You know, and it's as you get to people who have been around longer, the list of supplements I take has dwindled significantly. It has not expanded, you know? I have hoped that, you know, we'll find more stuff. What do you think about alpha-GPC? A couple studies showing improved performance. I used to have it in my old pre-workout. I think we need more research. It's somewhat promising.

I just decided to keep it out in favor of stuff that I felt like was more, had more research to support it. Yeah, I love alpha-GPC. What about nicotine? So that's something There's a negative connotation around nicotine Yeah, big time, hugely obviously is the cigarettes Right

But if you look at I mean I think the vaping literature has made this very clear It's the smoke itself that's really negative Because even vaping raises your risk Of lung cancer, cardiovascular disease Seems to be a little bit better than like regular cigarettes cigarettes Vapes Yeah

yeah okay they can still raise risk um so it's like people like ask me about marijuana i'm like edibles kitties edibles better than smoking yeah i mean just smoking is just you know it seems just to act literally of smoking period yeah yeah yeah yeah it appears to be uh and listen i love a good cigar every now and then yeah and um but you know i it's not good for me i know that yeah um so but people thought oh well there's nicotine in this stuff and so nicotine must be bad. It's only bad in that, you know, like caffeine, it's a stimulant. It seems to be a very good neotropic, like cognitive enhancer.

In fact, one of my best friends, he doesn't take caffeine because it bothers his GI. But, man, he's got a thing of the pouches and he's always got a Zen in. Yeah, yeah. So a lot, yeah. And as far as nicotine itself, doesn't appear to have much negative literature on it, other than the fact that you can kind of become dependent on it, much like you can become dependent on caffeine, you know?

So what I would say is, it seems to be a pretty good cognitive enhancer. Yeah. So it's just like, isn't it more so the way which you are the application of it and how you're getting it? Yeah. Keep in mind, like it was in cigarettes because people liked the feeling

that they would get from a cigarette or, you know, whatever. Also, people who smoke cigarettes like, Jacob, my God, he stopped reasonably. he thought he looked cool doing it because he fits the vibe he got the tattoo he got a snake tattoo dude the guy's a snake tattoo so he's like I look cool doing this shit oh he's trolling for the snake tattoo

but no but so yeah because nicotine dude recently I was I was joking around and I was like I'm gonna I was like I'm gonna get addicted to nicotine to beat the addiction just because I just wanted something to overcome did you you know so I'm not

saying I'm fully addicted to it but I do when it's around I guess it's this is when you start to get addicted you're like hmm i don't need that but i could sure take it yeah and it's starting to get there and and uh i think once i get fully addicted then i'll reel it back and see how hard it is to get it is it hard very hard to get off nicotine you i'm assuming you don't know i don't know uh personally um probably just depends i mean it's hard for me to get off caffeine so yeah but i like i like the i like the mental stimulus in it yeah and that's that's what my friend likes it you know it's it's a it's a different

type of, and I'm not at all trying to get people convincing people to take this stuff. Like, I'm not, like, trust me, it is an addictive chemical. I know that for sure. But it is different. It's like this, like, calm, clear sort of focus. Versus, like, caffeine sometimes to me can feel in higher amounts. It can feel like somewhat like fluttery. Yeah, like jittery.

Yeah, I, I'm probably a bad example. Like, I've tried the nicotine pouches because Mike's like, dude, you got to try this. My brain, it's so hard for me. me to stay on one thing. You can probably tell by the way I talk. You know, I'm like, this thing, and this thing and this thing. And so I'm probably a bad person to ask about like nicotine or caffeine or whatever because, dude, I could take 300 milligrams of caffeine and go to sleep. Yeah, that's insane. I can't even drink caffeine past 5 o'clock. I won't go to sleep. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so sensitive. Yeah. And I mean, to be fair, it probably does,

it probably if I did that, I could sleep, but it would impact my sleep quality. Like there's Yeah. There's actually some pretty compelling evidence that even like, even though the half life of caffeine is like six hours, then if you have, I think it was something like 300 milligrams of caffeine in the morning, it still can negatively affect your sleep like 12, 13 hours later. Yeah. Like your sleep quality.

So RIP my afternoon workouts. Yeah. Have you ever, I know you, the natty thing, have you ever considered started or would you ever take them? So I got this, I got this question the other day. And, you know, it's going to sound very, people are going to be like, oh, bullshit. Not really. Only because I never really had the desire to kind of look like a cartoon character.

I like the idea of competing. I like competing. But I had natural bodybuilding and I have, you know, powerlifting drug test. Everyone was like, oh, people can beat the test. Yeah, I know, I know. But like, listen, first off, natural bodybuilding, like, there's five people in the show and there's no money so like the incentive to cheat is pretty low you know like if you cheat in that you're you're I what about Logan Paul box and Dillon

Dennis incentive to cheat there pretty high what's oh yeah and I don't know if he did but I mean it's pretty high incident to cheat well that's like listen you know how easy you think it is to beat the P test uh depends on what kind of P test you're doing and like are we talking this was a Vata P test yeah so if it's in competition pretty easy because you know know when to get rid of it. After competition. If it's random. No, just right after. Yeah, I mean, that's, that's if somebody knows when, if they know when they're getting tested, I mean, my understanding is it's pretty darn easy to beat. Yeah. What's nice about the IPF is if you're one of the, you know, a world level lifter, you have to fill out a whereabouts form where basically

they can give you an hour notice and show up and piss test you. Yeah. And I've had it happen before so I was actually at a seminar um this is like 2016 I want to say I was at a seminar in Virginia giving a seminar and there was a meet next door and they're like oh lane's here hey while you're here pee in this cup is in this cup you know and so like hey there's no perfect way of doing things but just that people know that they could at any time I think that's a pretty strong you know pretty strong deterrent yeah and they do catch people but no I you know for me it was like I just want to be able to compete at a high level push myself and I can do that without stuff you don't think at some point just health-wise you might choose that

so I I've had ever since I've gotten my testosterone done the lowest my testosterone has ever been was 750 and it's been above a thousand multiple times when I've had it tested as well so I just don't need it yeah you know like I'm good and I have a lot of things energy like my uh my my my friend uh my best friend mike he jokes he's like bro when i'm around you for like three hours i need a nap afterwards you're like you know um yeah i just mental energy than physical i guess it's kind of both both but like dude like i train you know my my sessions are like two three hours if i didn't have that dude i'd be a fucking nut job yeah like i i i'm just like I got to get it out.

I got to get out. Even like if I'm on the phone, I'm like pacing back and forth. Yeah. You know, I'm fidgeting. I'm moving my hands and stuff. I talk fast,

you know. So yeah, I just, I think that, you know, I kind of got blessed with a pretty good engine. You know what I mean?

But I also took care of myself as well. You know, I talk about that. Like, you know, most people in their 20s, they went pretty hard, you know,

with their partying and, you know, staying up late and stuff. And like, I had my moments of that, you know, but I, literally like I can count less times on one hand the amount of times that I've been drunk

to the point where I felt sick or you know couldn't form coherent thoughts well you know yeah and so I just never really beat my body up that much and I always was good about like if I wanted to go to sleep I just went to sleep you know and and or if I just didn't want to go out and party I with my friends I just didn't do it you know yeah so I was always pretty protective about that kind of I joke, I've partied way more in my late 30s and I ever did in my 20s. Me too. So I think...

I never went out, ever. Right. I've got out more in the last two years I have like just in my whole life. Yeah. So I think that like that helped as well. You know, and probably a little bit of genetics as well. So, but hey, like, okay,

let's say five years from now, I'm feeling low energy. My libido's in the trash. And I go and get measured. My testosterone's down. would I consider it if it was negatively impacting my quality of life of course I would you know

like I there's no judgment here like me choosing to not take steroids is not me saying hey all you guys who take steroids you're all cheaters and pieces oh like I got plenty of friends who are on TRT or are on standards or whatever that are perfectly great

people you know like to me I don't really you put in your own body you know but when it comes down to competition addition. Here's the other thing. It's easy for me to say this because power lifting, bodybuilding, you have a choice. You can compete non-tested, right? So in my mind, if you choose, if you have the choice to compete tests or non-tested and you're like purposely trying to cheat the tests. Come on. Why? Why? You know? Because bodybuilding is like, it's pretty understood that it's in that sport. Right. Untested. Right. So go compete there. Right. But, but. I am not judging somebody in Major League Baseball who's the backup shortstop who's making a million bucks a year

maybe knowing the guy in front of them is on the sauce making $20 million a year. Yeah. Like, it's easy for me to be high and mighty about it when it's not my money on the line, you know? Yeah, I get it. So, and I'm, listen, I'm not saying

all Major League Baseball players cheat or all professional athletes cheat. I think they do. And I think they should, right? I was having this conversation with like another guy but a sports fighting commentator guy because we were talking about in regards to fighting it's a little different I think because it's like

no it's the guy named Wade but it's because we're they're actually hitting each other it's a little different when you have like that much more power or strength in a in a martial art it could just be more detrimental to the to the fighters brains basically like that's people like man aren't you worried about what's going to happen to your body later

with power lifting I'm like I'm like dude power lifting is really not that bad like hard on you like yeah like I'm gonna have some aches and pains but show me somebody who's 60 who doesn't have pain I'll be good luck right

you can be strong and have pain or you can be weak and have pain you choose yeah you know but like combat sports bro I mean there's real repercussions to your dude that's why I just NFL football

like oh this guy's holding out this now I'm like, hey, man, first off, average career is like three years and they are losing years off of their life, most likely, and probably some significant cognitive decline in those later years. So let them get their money. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, they're paying a pretty steep price.

And even like, I mean, look at people talk about, again, people talk about powerlifting is hard in your body, but look at golfers, man. Look at Tiger Woods. swing in the club bro if you do if you push something to the limit there's going to be a price to pay for it you know

um bowlers you go for your shoulders yeah yeah pitchers you know elbow shoulder like it's just you know you push your whenever you get to that high level what it takes to make progress further progress

is almost always going to be right now to what's going to get you injured. Yeah. You know, because you're always pushing that limit of your recovery to just get a little bit more, you know,

this is why when people are like, oh, you know, these guys are like, you know, you actually just one set, you know, you know,

just do less. That's how the secret to gains. I'm like, in what other area of life is that actually true? It doesn't exist. Talking about like one giant set when the giant set guys.

These folks who are like, oh, training volume doesn't matter. It's all about just taking one set to failure, you know, like a hit is kind of having a comeback now. And I'm like, okay, but here's like all these meta analyses that show that like volume. It's a pretty strong predictor of long-term hypertrophy. Yeah.

You know, and I think people like misinterpret sometimes because they'll, they'll, a lot of times people come to hit because two reasons. They might have been over, they might have been overreaching for their current recovery level at that time. gone back to doing, like, less, started to see progress. Well, it's not because of that one set. It's because you actually, your body's now recovering and you're actualizing some of those gains, right? Yeah. Also, some people, like, doing multiple hard sets of compound lifts

is very taxing. Like, I'll tell people, like, oh, oh, you train a 7-8 RPE on your squats. I'm like, yeah, come train with me. Go ahead. Come train with me doing, I don't know, like back in my prime when I set the world squat record, I was doing like 20 to 30 plus sets of over 500 pounds squats for reps per week. Yeah. You know, like hard sets, most of them not to failure.

But let me tell you what, you might have been able to hang with me for a set. or a session. But try stringing, you know, four, six weeks together of doing three to four squat sessions per week with two deadlift sessions per week. Oh, it's hard.

Four bench sessions per week. The accumulation of that. But I got strong as fuck. You know what I mean? And right now, like, I'm about 95% of the way back to my all-time highest strength. And a lot of what just limits me

is like I don't have the same recovery. capacity as I used to. Stair. Look at that. Problem solved. There you go. I mean, obviously that's not where you're going. But that's what I'm saying.

Like at some point, like, dude, what if you just like, because then you have, I, you know, there's another guy who's a powerlifting coach, my buddy Joey and Natty, his whole career whole time. Joey flex. Yes. I love Joey. Good friend of mine. And I'm always like, you know, it's like you've mastered it this way.

You're mastering these things this way. It's like at some point, why not just master at the other. other way too and you're best of both worlds yeah but then like you get you your original guys are like you f*** cheater you suck you know i don't worry so much about that i guess like for me the decline at some point is inevitable right yeah and it's more about like how do you mentally approach that right um i'm not saying just like like i'm not gonna like go gentle into that good night you know what i mean yeah but like like Like, I'll just take it as it comes.

Yeah, I get it. I get it. And for me, it's like this has been more honestly. I love to compete. I love to push myself. Let's find something else to do. You know, but I'll still train. I'll always love to train.

Yeah. And who knows? I mean, they got masters all the way up to 70 plus years old. So, yeah. So let's talk about this, the idea, I guess, of stare at a little bit in general. Because I'm not at all trying to say, like, people should just take, and in fact, I think nowadays on the internet and social media,

it's like really glorified and so much more talked about that it's like a good and a very bad thing because like you got a lot of young kids who were just like I talked about this before in another pod but like I've had a kid come up to me at my gym and be like how I'm like he comes up to me and goes should I take trend and I'm like how long you've been training for

of like a year year and a half oh my god and I'm like what what are you saying because it's so popularized because of the social media figures and you know this kind of shit and I don't really know much about the individual compound It's like, I know generally about testosterone, you know, but, um, but like, Tren is like,

trend would be like, from what I understand, people are like, Tren is like the one that's the most powerful, but also with some pretty significant side effects. Exactly. And that's the thing. It's like, there's all, for every gimmee, there's a gotcha. But it's like, why would you first question be like, should I take Tren, dude? It's like, well, it's because, you know, when you're young, you want everything fast, you know, and, um, you, you see what, you know, some of the subculture is doing like there's a pretty strong subculture i mean you had your rich pianas and you had no boston lloyd they were kind of some of the people who were glorifying that stuff and hey like i you know i never knew rich uh bostas used to train at my

the gym i was out in tampa for a while seemed like a perfectly nice guy you know um but i mean like look what happened yeah you know like and i i'm in no way saying they deserve that or anything like that. Yeah, of course not. So many people with NFL, combat sports, are kind of the same, which is like, they're like, yeah, I know there's a cost, but I'm totally happy to pay it until it happens, right? Like, there's, you think when you're young,

because you can't imagine not, we're so, it's kind of like a narcissism almost, like we're so like in how we feel in a moment. We just can't imagine it being different than that, you know? Like, think about when you're sad. It's hard to imagine feeling happy. You know what I mean? Right. And when you're having a great time, it's hard to imagine feeling sad.

Like, I don't know, it's probably some survival mechanism we have, right? But so when you're young and you feel strong and you're not having really any, like, negative effects that, you know, other than like, you know, some acne and like whatever happens, you know, you go, yeah, I'm totally cool with, like, if it takes five years off my life. probably going to feel differently when you're at that time, right? So I guess, you know, my thing is when it comes to steroids, I'm all about informed consent, right? Like, understand this has, you know,

there's tradeoffs here, right? And there's not probably a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. You know what I mean? Like, I think a lot of people are like, listen, this is one thing I tell people these days. Like, these days is not good enough to be just good at one thing. You got to be good at a couple things. Here's why.

I don't care how jacked you are. Unless you're Mr. Olympia, somebody out there is more jacked than you, right? Yeah. So if your thing is just, I'm jacked, okay. Don't care how good looking you are. There's somebody out there that's probably better looking than you, right? don't care how great a video is you make. There's a lot of great video editors, right?

Like you got to have something like, so for me, it's like, hey, there's funnier people, they're smarter people, there's stronger people, there's more jack people. Not a lot of people put all those things together like I do though, you know? Yeah. So just thinking, I think some of these kids are like, well, you know, this guy on social media, I follow, he got real famous because, you know, he blew up and he was jacked. And it's like, yeah. But like, you know, like Rich Piana, he was a personality.

Huge personality. Whether you liked it or not. Yeah. Like you didn't have like in between feelings about Rich Piano when you saw stuff, right? Like you either loved him or you hated him, right? Yeah. Which is a great way to build a following because you're a personality, right? And so I think, you know, for younger guys, if you're going to do that stuff, all right.

But understand, like that is not going to be sufficient. to like get you rich and famous you know and um you know also consider that if you think because this is why a lot of people start lifting why I started lifting I'm like oh if I was just looked like this I would be happy so never I'm sure you can dude some of the most oh it's never enough and I can tell you like some of the most. miserable human beings I have ever met, had fucking incredible physiques. Like, so I'm like, listen, you're forever small, man.

Forever small. I tell people like, hey, I love lifting. You know, lifting may be more confident, maybe more resilient, but not because of the physique and the strength I got. It's because lifting taught me resilience. It taught me consistency. It taught me how to work through setbacks.

you know like I learned all that stuff from lifting and so then I was able to go and apply those lessons I learned to other aspects of life you know to stuff that was way harder you know like psychological stress um you know losing businesses um all kinds of that was way harder than anything I ever dealt with at lifting you know but it I wouldn't have had the confidence to take those things on if I hadn't had that experience through lifting yeah so yeah you know I guess you know the The big thing is like, hey, if you want to do stuff, okay, cool. But like, spend some time actually lifting without it, you know? For sure, you need to. Like, spend some time just doing the work. Like, like, some of these kids, it's like, bro, you're 18. Yeah, like, you don't even know what you can do. You don't know what you can do.

And listen, like, you know, I'm not going to be one who says, you got to get to your natural max first. No, you don't have to do that. But, like, spend some time learn. the lessons that it's going to teach you before you put a supercharger on your, like learn how to drive a normal car before

you go and throw a supercharger on it. Yeah, you burn out the clutch because you don't know how to shift and ship properly. Exactly. Exactly. So it's like just, you know, just have a little bit of patience, you know? I think that's the one thing that A just taught me is, you know, patience really can be a superpower,

you know, when it comes to stuff. Like, especially in business. I've been around so many people like, we've got to execute this right now we gotta go right now and i'm like hey hey hey hey hey hey money ain't going nowhere let's make sure we do this right you know let's make sure we have our ducks in a row let's just yeah you know take our time so what do you think what do you think about i kind of cut you off sorry what do you think about uh sam sullick have you seen him you've been blowing up i've only seen what other people have said about it um from my understanding he's a young guy who's taking a lot of

I don't know if he's saying a lot. I mean, I have no idea. He's jacked and he's young and he's fucking blowing the fuck up because he posts like what to me is what people posted like 10 years ago. Which is funny how things come back and all back to cycles where it's like everyone got tired of the hurrah.

Look at his nice edit and all this shit. It's just like this guy's like tripod. Look at me work really fucking hard and take this shit real serious. So do I know about it? I don't. I'd love to talk to him about it. but, like, yeah, you see what people say, right?

They're assuming because of, I think, his development at such a young age. Yeah. My apologies then, Sam. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'm just reading from what other people say, right? I'm all, I mean, I'm certain he takes steroids. I don't know to what degree he takes them. Right.

But, you know, there's, it's just, it's, the thing's interesting. Like, his popularity is really interesting to me as far as, like, how fast it, like, went from zero to, like, millions. Yeah. Because of the content he makes. well and that's the man i i'll tell you that's a whole other issue wrapped up there i kind of this is going to sound weird i kind of feel bad for him because can you imagine getting the kind of popularity you have now at like age 18 or 19 or something like that um yeah like i'm really glad that this has actually been a slow climb

for me um because typically when young kids get a lot of popularity and money, it does not end very well. Because you just don't have the maturity to be able to handle that shit at such a young age, you know? You know, I talked to him on the phone. He got, apparently he's going to school to get like an engineering. This guy's super smart. Great.

And I, you know, I hope he's got, you know, smart people in his ear. Because like so much, like, it's so hard to like stay centered. And but what I mean by that is, hey, I've been guilty of reading my own hype and being like, yeah, like, I'm the bad. you know, um, uh, yeah. And I've also been guilty of reading the negative shit and go ahead. Maybe I am a piece of shit, you know, like, um, and so I think like over time, I've gotten better about like, all right, you know, um, I need to be careful of how much my hype I read.

I need to be careful about how much of my negative stuff, I believe, you know, um, and I think that that just comes with time and experience. But when you're young, like, you can take stuff so. personal you're still learning you know you're still learning you're still man like sometimes I'm like I don't really think like I even got close to emotionally maturing until I got in my like mid 30s you know um and just thinking about like I was like just a totally random different thing but I'm like thinking about people who have kids when they're like 18 years old like have baby or something like that I'm like oh my god I could imagine I cannot imagine because I have two kids

and I know how fucking hard it was for me, and I felt like I was ready, you know? So, yeah, I would just, like, hopefully he's got some, like, you know, good support and... Seems like he does. That's good. Yeah. You know, it's kind of like...

He also seems to be, like, a very, like, lone wolf. Like, I don't see him doing a lot of stuff with many people. Well, and that's the thing... I think that's part of his allure, though, too. I mean, that's good. I mean, you just got to be... It's funny because, you know, you hear these kind of, like, touts or kind of cliche things of like you know if you it's lonely at the top or you know people will

try to use you for different stuff and I was like yeah yeah and then it happened you know oh yeah and it's like I've been there yeah and it's like that's one of the things now is it's like I have a tendency that like I'll make friends too quick you know what I mean like I'm like oh they're really nice and cool and then I thankfully now

I have people in my life were like you know that act as my filter you know who are much more discerning because I kind of like everybody like when I meet them and hang out you know but you know

it got me in trouble quite a bit because it's like not everybody has your best interest at heart. And I don't even think it's necessarily like a nefarious thing all the time. It's just like if you bring somebody into your circle and they're getting

certain things from it, if that goes away at some point, they're like, hey, that guy's not my friend anymore. And then you're left like, well, hang on. I thought we were friends because of a connection we have and like, you know, showing up for each other in terms of like listening

and giving advice. But you were just wanting this thing, you know? And so I don't necessarily think it's a nefarious. thing there are people who are definitely nefarious and clout chasers for sure right um but yeah it's it's a it's one of those things where i tell people like you know i like my life i wouldn't trade it but there's ups and doubts you know there's there's tradeoffs there's no solutions only tradeoffs so i guess for this kid like hey man just be careful and go slow yeah you know like if you're if you're

slowing up say no to more stuff than you say yes to that would be that would be the first thing I would say like saying yes to too much we'll get you in a world of trouble real quick yeah yeah that was one of my biggest issues that I had going through it all was like you think that everyone's going to have the same sort of like good in them that you have and you you know what I'm saying we view other people through the prism of our own lens right yeah and that's I think that's one of the things people really struggle with with I don't know if empathy is the right word but you have to understand that

everybody has the same life experiences as you or the same upbringing or whatever and like I remember I've been around people who are very like and somebody close to me who is like it seemed like every person around them they're like what are they trying to get out of it or they're trying to do this to me

or this trying to I'm like what are they done that would make you think that? It's like, then they ended up kind of being a crappy person themselves and like, oh, you think that because that's what you're doing, right? Like, that's your prism. Whereas like, you know,

typically people who are happier and a little more trusting, not saying all the time, there's always, you know, outliers and exceptions. But with the most part, people who have like a default, like greater happy setting, you had a better upbringing they trust people more you know they because they also are not trying to like screw people over so i mean that's one of the things you know i won't say fame because it's

just fitness fame you know yeah but kind of taught me is like not everybody has the same perspective right what have you dealt with personally like that you're you're speaking to i mean um that you're comfortable sharing obviously yeah so I think one of them would be like, um, uh, I started a company about seven years ago called Avatar Nutrition that, um, is, it was a website. It's similar to my app, Carbon, now Carbon Diet Coach, which is basically like an algorithm based coaching app. Um, it's done great. But Avatar was a website, but essentially it was algorithm based coaching. Um, and, you know, it got really successful. Like, We had, I think at the peak when I was kicked out of the company, we had 26,000 members.

And originally it was me and another guy. We had 50-50 ownership. And then we brought in a registered dietician because I thought it was important to have a registered dietitian. And she did do a lot of work for the company and was very critical. And the other person was like, hey, like we should give her some equity. Like, you know, she's done a lot of work. So we both gave up 10%.

Well, the nose two formed a personal relationship. And so, though, they had 60% of the company. And, you know, they had their reasons. Like, they, they, I think they became resentful of me because I was the face, even though they were kind of doing the day-to-day grunt work, right? And that's how shit works, though. I was, you know, because I'm looking at this, like, isn't it more important that I'm, like, bringing people into this, you know, and I think we,

When we did statistics, it was something like, we did a branding experiment. It was like 70% of people were like brought to it by, like directly by me. And it's probably higher than that because, you know, people also listed like social media as a way they found it. Well, what social media? Do you think they found it through, right? Right. So anyways, you know, I walk into a, what I think is a meeting one day. And there's an attorney there and they're like, you're out.

And it was at the same time I was going through a personal divorce. And their justification was that I had violated my fiduciary duty to the company, which is a very nebulous term in Florida law. But basically, they were claiming that I was in competition with them because of my company I've had for 15 years, biolene, you know, which is my coaching company. and before I even started working on Avatar I'd started working on like a

what we call a workout builder which we still have which is kind of like different workout programs on our website that are template based they're not algorithm based but it is like somewhat flexible and modifiable and it's done well for us and people love it

but they were saying that that was in competition with what they were doing even though they didn't have any training portion to their website and I had been working on it from before I even started with them. And then they actually sued me for that. But it was all, okay, my opinion was the lawsuit was kind of a, just kind of a bully tactic to get me out.

Because the negotiation would start with, well, here's what we'll give you for your shares and we'll drop the lawsuit. And I was kind of like, no. It was just pushing you out. Pay me what my share. shares are worth and then if you still feel like suing me go ahead right yeah um but that was all during the time where I was going to my first divorce um I had like injured my back I mean it was a very rough time and like it got to the point where I mean like net worth wise I was okay but like I owed more

money to attorneys than I could write a check for at the time yeah you know it was scary as fuck and um not to get too technical but essentially my attorneys outmaneuvered their attorneys and i just had the facts on my side and um ended up getting a fair buyout for my shares and they dropped the lawsuit and you know um i mean they're still around to this day and no like hey i'm like sincerely not mad about it um because i don't even think i don't think it was like their intention was to come in and eventually do this and kick me out, I think it, you know, kind of boiled down to a lack of communication. They had certain expectations that weren't communicated. I had certain expectations that weren't communicated. It's why kind of any relationship breaks down, right?

Yeah. So, you know, and it led me into other things that have been like way better. So I'm not mad at all about it. But it was kind of that first experience of like, but I thought you guys were my friends you know like I thought you guys like had my back you know and um yeah it was it was a pretty rough time yeah but i've definitely been there in so many ways i mean i think you you talk to you know i was talking to my attorney about this uh i was like you know you know how do i protect against this in the future he goes don't have business partners and i'm like yeah you know now i will say like i have some really excellent business partners now and I will say like good business partners oh if I had like more of the good ones I'd have 50

of them you know because yeah good ones like a good partnership it relieves stress because they take over the stuff that you don't like doing like at work I have a business partner there and he's phenomenal like I told them when we started this I'm like listen I want to formulate and promote and that's it I don't want to deal with logistics I don't want to deal with shipping You know, like, I got custom, like, none of that stuff. He's like, cool, I got that. And he's been great. Yeah.

And we have great customer service. We have great, like, he does a phenomenal job. And it allows me to do this stuff I'm good at. And we get along great. Yeah, it's about finding the synergies where it works for sure. It is. It is. And having, I mean, there was clear communication of expectations on the front end, you know.

And I think that's a huge thing. But yeah, you know, I've just had to learn that the hard way. So you said, you said, had a kid that's special needs yeah what kind of special needs uh he's on the autism spectrum okay so my son robert is 10 and he is uh nonverbal so he like nothing uh he'll say mama da da like that sort of thing but what is he is he really good at something though i think he was like really good at one thing yeah like uh he's a great swimmer he loves the water he's always in the water um like pool is his therapy like he's really good at it

but he's a great kid and he like he can communicate like he has an iPad where he like picks different pictures and tells me what he needs you know it's intense yeah so um and he's he's actually like in some ways he's difficult because like um he's so quiet he's kind of like and if he finds something where he gets fixated on it like any place we go he'll find like a little toy or like one of his things is he always is holding like some small items in his hands always he never doesn't have small items in his hands and so i think it's like a soothing thing for him and uh so if we go in a store and it's got like like little knickknacks or something like that he'll like take off right and so um like if i'm out in public it's like my head is always on a

swivel because my daughter is the exact opposite. Livia is the loudest, most talkative human being. I mean, she's me. It's like every time I start to complain about my daughter, I'm like, oh, you know, I don't know where she got that from. Yeah. But she's like so demanding of my time because she wants so much interaction that it's like tough for me to also pay attention to Robert. So my head's like constantly on a swivel. So when we're home, he's super easy. because he kind of does his own thing you know um which actually i have had to make a more concerted effort to like make sure that i spend one-on-one time with him because live will just monopolize my time not intentionally like not try to do it against robert but if i don't like

make it a point to like spend some time with my son you know um but he's a great kid he's happy you know what else can i ask for yeah for sure is he into is you think he's going to get into working out or um i don't know some dumbbells live is live is actually into working out now oh she's she's seven and she deadlifted 71 pounds that's her PR right now um you teach her how to do it yeah that's cool man i want kids bro yeah that's what i want i mean it's it's very challenging i mean her her attention span his like nanoseconds you know so trying to get her to like focus is tough but she grew up on the phones and she she has a an iPad

and I really try to limit that screen time but I will be fighting against her having a phone as long as possible. I mean, if you listen to like mental health experts to delay it as long as you possibly can. It makes sense nowadays, man. I mean, it's scary too because like, you know,

I used to put my kids on my Instagram a lot more because it's like it's just, you know, I never realized like my Instagram has actually a business now, you know, before it was just my life, you know. And, you know, had people start making comments about my kids. Like, I've had people make comments about my son deserved to get autism because I got him vaccinated, you know, or like, I gave my son autism or like whatever it was. I don't think it's how autism works. No, it's not how it works. Um, you know, I've had people make comments about, you know, my kids in other ways as well, just like really nasty,

You know, to me, which by the way, if you do that to another human being, like, I don't care how much I dislike somebody, I would never comment little kids, though. Those can't be adults. No, I mean, unless they're Russian bots, you know, that's also possible. Yeah, it just can't be an adult. I think people, yeah, I don't know. I think when people can't get a reaction they're looking for, they, they love, some people level it up, you know.

They level up the hate comments. But like I always just say like you I appreciate the love man Yeah yeah yeah Hey you're getting me engagement out of the way Appreciate the love You're getting engagement

Like I'll get the DMs I talked about this before But like I get the nastiest DMs And then I'm gonna be like yo man I really appreciate the love like thank you They'll switch up real fast Oh bro I love you man I'm just like

I'm gonna be my last DM I should do more of that You fucking loser Dude I've had it It's so funny like everyone wants to Like I don't get to all my DMs But I do try to like you know go through like i love i love reading my idea going through as much as i can but it's so funny

like you'll see like hey man huge fan you know oh yeah yeah yeah and all of a sudden fuck you you motherfucker you know like and i'm like oh just going through the rollinx trying to get attention you know but something you know my daughter i've been i still put them on my instagram but it's it's much less and it's usually just in stories yeah but like we did something and Livia's like, you should post that. And I'm like, oh, fuck. You know what I mean? Yeah.

Like, oh, how old is she? She's seven. And she's also had the experience of being out with dad, who's just dad, but see people come up to me as fans, right? I remember the first time this happened, I was taking her to see Frozen, like the play, the musical, and get out of the car. And somebody stops me, like, oh, I love your stuff. Like, I lost 40 pounds doing, you know, this isn't it.

And I was like, oh, you know, thank you really for, can we take a picture? I'm like, yeah, you know, I just got my daughter with me so if we could just be quick, you know. So we took a picture and they walked off and Livy looks at me and she's like, I think she was five. And she goes, Daddy, what just happened? And I'm like, oh, like some people know me because, you know, I do stuff that, you know, people follow. But now, like, as I've gotten more popular, like we were at the Florida Aquarium the other week. And I probably got stopped like four or five times, you know. And so I'm seeing, like, now she's starting to realize, like, oh, dad is known by a lot of people.

And so saying that, I'm like, oh, man, she doesn't realize, like, what the ramifications of some of this stuff are, you know? So I've, I've really... She's like, tag me. Yeah, tag me. Yeah. No way. No, I, you know, so it's like, I don't know, some of this stuff, you know. I do worry about that kind of.

That's part of the worry of having just having... having kids in general is like the way this is going i'll tell you you will never sleep the same after you have kids and not even because they wake you up because there's just always this like low level anxiety of worry you know like you just never even now like they're with my my my my my ex-wife uh isabel um it's like i'm always thinking like i hope everything is okay you know whatever like fortunately we have pretty good communication and we like keep each other updated and stuff and so like you know if i ever want to talk to the kids i can always face time them or whatnot um but it is like it's so scary but it's also like you have

to embrace it in some ways because like you can't control everything around them forever you know you got to hope that like you can give them enough tools that when they're all teenagers are going to be sheds and up you know sure you just hope they up small enough that it's something they learn from and grow from it as opposed to some like really serious you know yeah

I mean that makes sense I mean that's when I think about having kids like I know that like people got to learn at their own pace like dude it's it's funny even like talking to some of these like up and coming like streamers and influencers in the space because I tend to interact with a bunch of these guys

it's like seeing how like how serious they take all this stuff because it's serious because it's like, they get these big audiences so fast. And there's a lot of pressure that comes along with it. And like, like, I feel like people always, obviously naturally humans always want to just make the right moves and like do the right thing and like for themselves

or make the best move possible. But like it's also just not realistic to do it all right and never make mistakes. It's just literally not going to happen. I, this is more at entrepreneurship stuff, but I heard a quote, I think it was from Mark Zuckerberg. and they were asking him what mistakes should young entrepreneurs avoid

and his response with something on our forgetting he goes don't even bother trying to avoid mistakes just be ready to learn from them and pivot quickly you know

and I think that's like mistakes are fine like that's actually where you learn most of your shit right like if you don't make mistakes you're never going to learn anything right like you're if you don't make mistakes

you should be a really jacked billionaire right like you've got everything figured out you know um it's i think the biggest thing is like you just start walking the path and that's my one motivational speech i've ever given as a keynote was the i don't have a title for it but my kind of crux of it is perfectionism and paralysis by analysis has killed way more dreams than failure ever has yeah they're like the same fucking thing because you never start you know like so many people are just scared to start because they want like everything lined up whether it's entrepreneurship or right you see this with people like overanalyze every detail of lifting or nutrition it's like do just go yeah

like just go hard and consistent and yeah you're going to screw up some you're going to fuck it up and just pay attention when you f*** up as to why you f*** it up right and then you can go and course correct and over time you get better right i think that's a lot of the reasons why my social media has gotten so much better in terms of like being able to acquire more of a following because i've just paid attention to what works and what doesn't work you know um same thing with lifting it's like okay that worked that didn't work do more of this right yeah same thing with entrepreneurship okay this shit worked this shit didn't seem to work so we're going to do more of this Like, just pay attention.

I think, but too many people get ego wrapped up in that as well, where it's like they get so invested in something that has to work, right? Yeah. They don't, it's like the sunk cost fallacy. They don't know, like, you got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, and know when to walk away. Yeah. And, uh, but you can only learn that through experience.

So you just, sometimes you just got to go. That's it, man. That's fucking perfect. That's how we end the pod right. There you go. That was fucking perfect, man. He crushed it. Fucking great meeting you, man.

For real. Yeah. Especially first time because I've known about you for years, like a long long time. We actually met at 2015 Olympia. I must have been drunk. You were. I have no idea. You and Mike.

Oh, I was definitely drunk. Oh my God. Yeah. Whoa. So I was at a, I think it was the win nightclub actually. Oh, I was for sure. It was after party. Yeah.

Holy shit. I think I've still got the picture, actually. Holy fuck, dude. Oh, man, I'm definitely drunk. I apologize, dude. You fucking crushed it. You're brilliant, man. I think you're really fucking smart.

And again, like, I've watched your stuff over the years. I've taken a lot from it. I've learned a lot from it. So thank you for coming and sit down with me for real. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. So everyone, yo, subscribe. Every Tuesday, 11, we're on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, everywhere.

Apple, iTunes, whatever. And check out your stuff. tell them where they can find you. Yeah, so my Instagram is my digital business card. You can find me at BioLane, and I'm at Biolane in most platforms. I saw everything in the fitness industry pretty much. I mean, a supplement line outworked nutrition. I've got my app I talked about, Carbon Diet Coach, you know, algorithm-based nutrition

coaching. I mean, we've had people lose over 100 pounds, and we've had people win pro cards and bodybuilding physique stuff using the app, and it's less than $10 a month. we also do offer one-on-one coaching through my team of coaches team biolane and I've got like the workout builder like I talked about on my website biolane.com and we have a research review so if you're somebody who like wants to learn more about stuff but you don't really know how to break the research stuff down yourself we kind of break it down and put in layman's terms so that you can learn like what the

studies really say rather than what the headlines are saying yeah and then I also have like courses for people who want to learn how to become coaches. I have a mentorship program with Professor Bill Campbell that we created. It's basically the equivalent of a college degree and how to get people jacked in terms of like build muscle, burn fats called physique coaching academy. And that's actually something I'm really proud of. That's really phenomenal. So yeah, that's kind of all the shit I sell and the full gamut. And yeah, man, appreciate you having me on. Absolutely, man. Thank you so much. Thanks, brother. Good to see you. Cool.