WHOOP Podcast - Steve Cook discusses finding solace in the gym and picking yourself up after life knocks you down

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Steve Cook is one of the most recognizable people in the fitness space. He took a lifelong interest in working out and staying active and turned it into a successful bodybuilding career on stage and creating content online. This episode is about following your passions and finding your identity. Steve explains how he found solace in the gym after his football career stopped and his marriage ended. He says those trying times resulted in a change of direction in his life that allowed him to get to where he is today. Steve discusses charting a new path in life (2:47), pursuing your goals (6:56), getting into fitness at a young age (10:32), his bodybuilding career (11:57), how WHOOP warned him of COVID (20:27), recovery (22:37), HRV (24:44), the dark side of bodybuilding (33:00), practical vs. optimal in fitness (41:20), accountability (42:40), enjoying the journey (51:22).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

Hello, folks. Welcome back to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Amit, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. We've got a terrific and very strong guest this week. But first, I want to remind you that you can get 15% off a WOOP membership if you use the code, Will Ahmed, that's W-I-L-L-H-M-E-D. If you have no idea what Whoop does, I recommend checking it out at Whoop.com.

Okay, this week's guest is Bodybuilder and Fitness Personality, Steve Cook. Steve is one of the most recognizable people in the fitness space. He took a long interest in working out and staying active and then all of a sudden turned that really into a successful career on stage and creating content online. This episode is about following your passions, finding your identity, and really following through on goals. Steve explains how he found solace in the gym after his football career stopped and his marriage ended. You want to talk about someone who kind of was face down and picked themselves back up?

That's Steve. He says those trying times resulted in a change of direction in his life that allowed him to get to where he is today. Steve discusses the dark side of bodybuilding and what he learned about himself. along the way, the importance of enjoying the journey as you pursue your goals, the difference between optimal and practical when it comes to fitness, how whoop and his respiratory rate warned him of his COVID infection. That's right, folks. Keep monitoring your respiratory rate and how he uses whoop in his everyday life. Great guest, very positive. Without further ado, here's Steve.

Steve, welcome to the Woof podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. It's a real pleasure. I've followed your career. How do you like to describe yourself? That's always something. When any time I have to fill out paperwork and says, like, you know, what do you do for work?

I'm like, yeah, what do I say here? Usually fitness personality is typically how I like to describe it because obviously there's the fitness side. But then there's the content, YouTube, TV, personality stuff. So fitness personality is what I go with. So, you know, growing up, you were an athlete. You played football in college, linebacker. Looks like you were studying biology, physiology. And then right around like in your early 20s,

it feels like you kind of got to this point where it all fell apart a little bit. Talk about that. Yeah. I think a lot of people over the years have kind of resonated with the story of, hey, I grew up as an athlete. That was my identity. I played college football. Even though we weren't great, that's who I was.

And I was married at the time. And after my college career didn't pan out, didn't transition to an NFL career, my marriage, I got married to 21, very young. And by the time I was 23, got divorced. So all of these things, kind of who I was, kind of came to a screeching halt. And I had to reevaluate and kind of changed directions in life, kind of had to pivot. it. And it was good because at the time, I didn't really know who I was. I was, again, my identity was on these things, football, you know, being, being a husband at 21. And all of a sudden, now I had to shift and really find out what I was about. So it was a crucial time in my life that

allowed me, really, I think, to get to where I am today. So you're 23 years old. You're fresh off a divorce, college dropout, and your football careers is over. What? did it take to make a change? What was day one of that? I mean, getting, getting, you know, through the divorce, moving back home in with my parents who I had lived with since I was 18, it was really like, okay, what can I control? What can I control? I can control what time I wake up and what time I go to bed. I can control what I put in my mouth. I can control what I do with my free time. I was working two jobs at the time, going to the gym twice a day. That was my relief. It was always like, you know, I really found solace in the gym because I'd always had that. And that was

one thing. You know, it's not like I was going to football practice anymore. So I couldn't find, find, you know, solace in that. So the gym was like my place of refuge. It was this place where I could go in, I could dedicate myself. I signed up also to do a bodybuilding show, got deep into the diet, the training, the mentality for that. And it was a way for really me to focus my energy on, on kind of everything else that I had been focusing on up until that point and shift it into more of a fitness lifestyle. I'm at the same time, I moved back down to finish my college degree. I kind of had, I was figuring I was going to finish it online. But I went back to school, 16 credits, prepped for, I think, the muscle and fitness model competition. And it was the best

thing that I could have done because it required 100% of my attention and focus. And what were the two jobs you were doing when you moved back on your folks. I was working at Texas Roadhouse, good old Texas Roadhouse. And then I was working at a nutrition shop. So just a small nutrition shop that really allowed me to, A, get a discount on supplements and B, really educate myself on, you know, weight protein powder, just a whole gamut of things that you get with a supplement company. And then working at Texas Roadhouse at nights, when I ended up going back to school and finishing my degree. I kept that Texas roadhouse job and would wake up at about 6.30 every day have all my meals pack and I'd be off to school to the lab to work out to Texas Roadhouse and then

do cardio. So I was gone from like 6.30 in the morning to 1130 at night. And it was just so focus on getting my degree and then also getting prepped for that meal. The muscle and fitness male model search at the Mr. Olympia contest is what it was. Well, what I respect so much about your story is that you really you really had to build up from from the bottom so to speak of all this to become what you are today which is a globally recognized fitness icon and the you know just in listening to it i mean there's so it's such a deliberate story i mean you had to you had to dedicate all of the time that you had to getting your your life back on track and now ultimately being a huge success you know just the amount of hard work and discipline i imagine that it required

to get really fit to work out twice a day while also doing two jobs. I mean, that's pretty intense, man. Yeah, and at the time, I didn't really look at it like that, like where I was like, I was like, hey, I just got to go through this. It's going to suck, but I got to go through it. No, it was, I was almost in like survival mode where, and I've noticed this about my life is that like when my back's against the wall and we're forced to perform, we go one of two directions.

And I think I've always kind of been the type that I do my best work when my backs against the wall and I'm against the clock and like for me it was okay this is I knew that I was on my own and it was a pivotal time if I it was a put up or shut up moment and I think that it allowed me for the first time in my life to realize that I could do something on my own I could do something that you know I'd always had a team I'd always had coaches I'd always had you know parents a wife that was kind of in my head like you know that crutch sometimes I would use but this was the first time it was like okay whether you sink or swim is on you And I think that a lot of time young men in their early 20s, you know, 19, 20, 21, we get lost.

I think it's a time where we're kind of figuring things out and it can be difficult. And it's a time that if you really can make strides in your life and focus in on what it is that you think you want, even if it's just what you think you want, you know, I think it's there's the old like, you know, jump into the river and just start swimming. You might not know exactly where you want to go, but if you follow your passion, you might not make money at it at first. You might have to work at Texas Road at first, but follow your passion, and eventually you'll find your niche in that. I mean, that's such a good life lesson. I started whoop when I was 22 years old, and I probably spent like at least two and a half years or three years before that thinking about it and researching it. And like, in a lot of ways, building the conviction to tell myself that I could do it or start it. And so your point about, you know, swimming in the river and making sure that you're

sort of building this self-resilience or this even self-confidence, right, to kind of take yourself to another level. That really resonates for me. Yeah. And I'm sure you could speak on this, too. It's like your passion, you didn't feel like you were forcing yourself. You had this passion. You had this goal.

You had this idea in your head. And naturally, you gravitated. You didn't know how you were going to do it at the time. You didn't know what it was going to take. but you knew what you wanted to do. You knew that there was this, there was something there. And I'm sure it was on your mind. And it naturally you gravitated towards those things.

You didn't have it all figured out when you started. Yeah, I certainly didn't go into it saying I want to start a company as a college undergraduate or a 19, 20 year old. And in a lot of ways, that focus and that kind of commitment to thinking about an idea pulled me through where the end result was I realized all there was left to do was start a company. But it was it was a product of what you just described, which is that sort of daily commitment. Yeah. I'm sure you get asked this quite a bit, you know, like, oh, I want to do what you do or, you know, I'm thinking about starting this or I want to do, you know, I want to travel

the world and do fitness. And it's like no one starts out, you know, with a amazing successful company. No one starts out with millions of followers. There's like, there's so much work that goes in behind the scenes. Fortunately, for me, I had like a dad that always impressed upon working out and exercising those things. So even before I realized I wanted to do what I'm doing now, it didn't even exist. I had this base because I had this athletic background. So I think it's it's a kind of accumulation of all these things in your life that you then put into, really into a purpose. Now, at what point did you realize you were good at bodybuilding? Yeah. It's, you know, it was always something that, you know, you get complimented on your physique, even in high school.

I can remember actually in sixth grade, the first time I ever was complimented on my physique, a girl asked to touch my pecks. I don't even know if I knew what a peck was at the time. I was just like, oh, I was like, what? Like, I'm in sixth grade and somebody's asking him to touch with a sudden, I was like, oh, this is nice. Like my dad used to make me do push-ups during commercial breaks. All of a sudden, I'm getting this, you know, basically it's paying off. I'm getting attention from the opposite sex and things like that.

So I think there was always this idea. And you were, just to be clear, you were strong young. I mean, in sixth grade, you could bench 225 if I'm reading this. Yeah, I was my dad, you know, I think we all have that potential for whatever it is that we're doing. You know, for me, I think I could put on muscle fairly easy and I was fairly strong, even as a kid. But a lot of that came from my dad, the environment I grew up in, which was, hey, he was an athletic director. If I wanted to watch TV or if I wanted to go over a friend's house, it was 50 pushups every commercial break. And I was the only one in my family that I think enjoyed that side of things.

My brothers and sisters, I'm one of seven. They didn't love the physicalness of actually exercises quite as much as I did. But yeah, my dad used to take us to the track. From the very get-go, I had a real passion for lifting weights, doing push-ups, anything that involved strength. okay so you go to your first competition the boise fit expo's fit body contest and you just straight up win right yeah yeah that was really like that was a bodybuilding dot com event um this is at the tail end yeah this is this is actually right after i got divorced before i moved back down to to finish my degree and it was just a you know not necessarily local was kind of a northwest thing bodybuilding dot com at the time

was this massive company that was out of Boise, Idaho, and I was able to enter into this competition. It was board shorts, and I kind of knew right off the bat. I didn't want to be this 280-pound bodybuilder. I just realized for me, I always love being athletic. I always love being able to try new sports. And I realized right off the bat, that kind of IFBB professional bodybuilder look wasn't what I was aspiring to.

So when this board short division kind of came out, I was like, oh, I have enough muscles. you know i was 240 pounds playing college football but i have enough muscle be all through the years of just doing basic heavy compound exercises that if i diet down i think i stepped on stage right around 207 at that show wow i'm going to have enough muscle to be bigger than a lot of these guys and again it's getting back to the fact that like i didn't know i was preparing for a bodybuilding show when i was 10 11 12 13 years old but i used that to my advantage later on down down the line so So, yeah, I stepped on stage, and I love the theatrics of on stage. I love kind of, you know, the old school posing.

I had a flare for that. So it was something that I enjoyed and it brought a lot of kind of almost like, hey, this is paying off. All this hard work I've done are going through, going through the two workouts a day, the eating crazy strict food. Like I like the reward that I got from that. Well, you've got a natural charisma for it, which I think is also why you've been able to build such a big fitness personality.

Now, you've won seven bodybuilding events, if I've got that right, and I think you've finished top 10 in the Mr. Olympia twice, which is kind of like the Super Bowl of bodybuilding, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Mintz's physique side of things. I started up doing natural bodybuilding, and that was tested. That was a federation that they polygraph and your analysis. And then once Mintz, yeah, once Men's physique came along, I was like, oh, this is going to give me an opportunity to get on that big stage, that Mr. Olympia contest. mince physique wasn't around when i started into bodybuilding but then i was the third mince physique

pro ever and then i competed in the first two mr olympia contest for mince physique and uh yeah a lot of fun a lot of great physiques out there all of a sudden you realize that just like anything else like there's there's a you know you think you're you come from idaho or somewhere where you know you might not see you know the amount of great physiques that are out there but all of a sudden it's just like anything else you step on stage and everyone's everyone's got a great physique and great posing and stage presence and things like that now explain to me uh or just for our audience like what goes into being a great bodybuilder yeah what goes into even winning these events yeah so i think what goes into being a good body builder i always tell people because i'll get people

saying like hey i want to compete in this you compete in that you have to have some genetic muscle tie-ins, where our insertions and the origins and insertions are at in our muscle bellies. There's a potential to be a great bodybuilder. Phil Heath has this great shape. He had it when he played college basketball. And you see the grades, just like Usain Bolt, he was the fastest man on the planet, not because he worked the hardest. That was a big, big part of it, but he had this crazy genetic potential. So I think that just like anything else in life, you have a certain potential that's set through your genetics and then where you land on that spectrum and your potential is really going to be based upon hard work and how much time

you dedicate and things like that. So I think that what goes into a bodybuilding show is is having enough muscle, gaining enough muscle mass, whether that's off season where a lot of bodybuilders kind of balloon up and weight and then diet down or some people do it nice, slow and steady and kind of never get too fluffy in the off season. But really, it's getting down to that single digit body fat. I think I usually competed right at 4%. Wow. And yeah. And it's kind of like golf and that what I'm experiencing is, you know, the better you get to go from like a nine handicap to a three handicap. It's a lot harder to do that than it is to go from a 25 handicap to a nine. Like, so that's kind of the same way as in body fat. The closer you get to, to, you know, single digits,

the harder and harder it becomes. So, you know, you learn a lot. You learn a lot about your body. You learn a lot mentally. There's so much that goes into it. It's very selfish, I will say, because everything you do revolves around. The times are eating when you're waking up and going to sleep when you're working out. So I fortunately had a lot of time on my hands. I wasn't obviously, it wasn't in a relationship, wasn't married anymore. So it was a way for me really to devote insane amounts of time and learn an awful lot about my body, but also, again, just realizing that it's not livable. I couldn't live at 4% body fat year-round and sustain that and be healthy. What do you live at today? Probably right around eight, eight or nine, depending on on kind of what my

goals are. And you know, you see some of these great crossfitters. And I think a lot of them, you know, seven percent, seven percent is I think probably what most of these bodybuilders or most of these crossfitters, the leanest of the lean are living at, maybe even down to six. It's pretty remarkable. And those are people who are competing athletically as well? Yeah. In the crossfit space, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. So when I kind of look at the crossfitters these days, it's amazing to see the level of leanness that they stay at. Part of that is their nutrition, obviously, a huge part of that. They can't be too lean to where you're now starting to, you don't want to have too much body fat, obviously, because you have to move that body fat,

but you don't want to be too leans where it starts really taking away from your performance because being lean, you don't have the cushion around the joints, you're more susceptible to getting injured if you're extremely lean. So I think that you see these crossfitters living at these single digits that's pretty remarkable. And competing at that level. Yeah, and doing work at that level. And again, when we get back to that genetic aspect of things, we see NFL guys.

We see D.K. Metcalf of the Seattle Seahawks living his life, you know, I'd say he's 6%. Like he's just genetically gifted. Not everyone's body, not everyone's natural, you know, where they're going to be comfortable, where they're going to live. Some people want their body wants to hold more body fat and they have to work to that. Some people, whether it's their metabolism, I mean, all this data that we could talk about even with Wu, people have different baselines. And that's important really to look at my baseline, you know, I can be healthy now and stay right around 8 or 9%. It would be hard for me to live at 6%.

So you mentioned whoop. How long you've been on WOOP? About seven, eight months now. Kind of got introduced to it and liked the idea. Lots of data at first, and I love the data. You know, when I prepped for a physique show, every single meal, my water consumption at the end, my sodium consumption. So I'm a big data head.

I like knowing, okay, how long did I sleep? How much of that that was in my rim cycle? some crazy things that, again, based on the algorithm and everything else, it's a trend that you need to look at. You can't just look at one day and decide everything. You have to look at, you know, my HRV over the last three months is averaging this right now. And that gets back to the individual. You can't just look at everyone and say, oh, this is, this is healthy. This isn't. Well, it's a very important point with Woop data. In general, it's better to look, it's better to compare your physiological metrics to yourself than it is to compare them to other

people. It gets interesting if you want to understand, for example, how you sleep relative to other people, your age or something like that could be informative or relative to other people trying to perform at the top 1%. But in general, that's absolutely right. You want to be comparing metrics to themselves. Now, since you've been on Woop, have you gone through any period where you've tried to really cut weight? I did about a month and a half ago. So my last year, it's been interesting to look at my sleep and got COVID during that and it was amazing I went into my COVID test telling them I had COVID and it was because of my woo it was because I had a one percent recovery I didn't I didn't even know if you could get that low I had one percent recovery my disturbance in is in my

sleep my my respiratory rate was through the roof when I was sleeping so I went into it and I was just like hey I got COVID like and sure enough came back positive and how did you feel at the time did you feel okay? No, I didn't know. I felt like it was, I felt like it was, it wasn't like being sick, but it wasn't at the same, like I just didn't feel comfortable in my body. I couldn't get comfortable in bed to sleep right. I was moving around all the time. I had a low grade fever, but it wasn't like a flu, weird pains and aches in places that I wouldn't simply get them, got super tight. I actually had a massage the night that I started feeling really bad thinking, oh, I just need to get some work done. I need to get a massage. And when that

massage, when it got worse after that, I was like, okay, this is, I felt like I was coming down with something, but then it never really moved past that. It was just, it was weird. It was weird, like sinus pains. I can't really. And was that your first first, first one percent on whoop from my, yes, yes. It was my first single digit. That's for sure. Yeah, that's, that's equally hard. Just like losing, you know, getting down to single digits percent body fat. Very low single digits recovery. You have to do some things to your body. You need to get COVID, get the flu, drink an insane amount of alcohol.

You have to do something bad. Yeah. And it's been really cool because in my life, there's, I, 2020 has been obviously difficult year for all of us, being apart from my, my girlfriend Morgan and going through, I did, I moved in that time. I sold my house and moved. So I know there's like a, there's a scale of kind of a stress test you do. to look at all the different things that are changing in your life, I would have been extremely

high on that stress level. And I think that that's really allowed me to rely on Woop. And some days, whether it's just like the stress of being apart from your significant other, from moving, from doing different business, starting up a business. We'd started up a swimwear brand. I've really had to rely heavily on my Woop to be like, wow, you know, like I'm feeling crappy or I need a lot more sleep than I typically would to recover. And to really have my whoop justify that or to back me up on that is really cool because I don't sit there and second guess myself. I'm a guy that's like, oh, you know, you're just, you're not working hard enough or

you're just feeling like that because you don't want to go do your workout. But when you have something that gives you that data that you can systematically look at and say like, oh, yeah, no, I'm not sleeping as well. My recovery rate is way down or I am, I'm not getting my respiratory rates way up. It's, it's been eye-opening. Yeah, it's such a good point. I mean, for a hard driving person like you, having a product that can hold you back or give you kind of the opportunity to get more rest when you otherwise might say, no, I got to push through this. I got to push through this. Because in a lot of ways, pushing through stuff is what got you to where you are today. And it's this sort of catch 22 that many professional athletes, hard driving executives, you name it. People trying to perform at a very high level, they deal with. I mean, I started whoop in large part because of my experience as a college athlete, I was when he used to overtrain. And I didn't really know why. I just figured I'm working out every day really hard,

like I should just keep getting fitter forever. And it was because I didn't pay attention to the other 20 hours of the day. And so that's where it's, I think it's really interesting hearing you say that it's something I've heard from a lot of high performance individuals. Yeah, it's almost like a coach. Somebody, you know, in bodybuilding shows or, you know, they have good coaches know when to push and when to back off and I feel like having it's almost like another set of eyes on you where you can rely on and like oh okay like this is this is telling me that I need to maybe you know get an extra hour of rest tonight or or don't do that second round of cardio today whatever that is for people that are really like you said

hard driving what are some things you've you've seen in your data or something you've learned maybe about your sleep or your recovery that you otherwise might not have known yeah I think for me my my hrb is is lower on average than a lot of other people and i was like man what's going on but doing a lot more research on that finding out that everyone's hrb is going to be kind of a different base level we talked about that yeah but i noticed it's been crazy the lack of of sleep especially in in in getting like i might be in bed for seven and a half hours but i'm really only in um i'm really only sleeping at five hours and 45 minutes for that I'll sometimes just get up and get going.

I've noticed that like no matter what, I have that internal clock. So it's been a lot more important for me to take naps during the day. So I've always, yeah, I've always kind of been like, ah, napping is for people that are lazy. But just because my sleep habits are, I don't know if it's just from years of travel or getting up early no matter what as a kid. Like I have a hard time sleeping past 6 a.m., especially with Morgan being in Australia. sometimes I'm up late or just working on deadlines. And so naps have been a really crucial part for me to get enough sleep. That makes a lot of sense.

And if we play out a day in the life for you, you wake up in the morning, what's kind of the first thing you're doing right out of bed? That's a crazy question. Honestly, because it's changed so much over the course of the last 10 months. When I was living in my old house and I had Morgan here, we would get up. We usually go for a morning run, take the dogs for a walk. and then we would actually start kind of our day with a breakfast and then going over everything we needed to do, getting to the gym about 11, filming some content after our

workout. So after we got our own personal workout it, then it's like, hey, we need to focus on the content we need to get. And then after that, it's kind of the busy work that doesn't take a lot of brain power, getting back to emails, planning out trips in the future, looking ahead to what we might have content-wise, scheduling-wise, with videographers and whatnot. But if I kind of be creative in that morning space after I move, it's like if I can get up and move, you know, whether it's stretching, whether it's going for a walk, whether it's jumping on the Peloton, whatever it is, then it kind of gets everything else flowing, have breakfast, have a little creative session, kind of look at what we got that day, then go do a workout. After that, kind of focus on content, then busy work. Maybe later on at night, it's a fun activity. And we would do things like pickleball. So I'm a big fan of doing things I'm not good at. enjoying them so like enjoying getting better if that makes sense sure so always always trying new things so whether it was pickleball we kind of had a battle of the sexes videos that we were doing where Morgan is an absolute weapon of a human being she's a gymnast and she just she's she's

really good at everything it seems like so we we had fun playing pickleball or ninja warrior stuff so we would always be active in in the afternoon just if it was more sports right now it's been golf for me the last 10 months since Morgan's been gone Um, so even if it's nine holes, I'll try to play nine day, nine holes, you know, three times a week just because I'm, I'm really wanting to get better. Um, and then, hey, let's, let's try to shut things down around seven. We read every single night together. And that kind of changes depending upon what she has going on because of the time difference. Like nine, my nine o'clock is her 11 a.m. tomorrow. So it's kind of screwy with that. Um, but always trying to kind of like shut things down and wind down around. that time period so I can get some sleep I am not staring at a screen because I definitely stare at this too much along with a computer screen and I know like hey if I want a good night's sleep I got either at the worst have blue light blockers on wearing some some blue light blocking glasses or if I can just just shut things down and open up a book wow that sounds like a great

a great day I'm not going to lie that feels like something I'd want to do on vacation Yeah. Your general life is that sounds great, active, happy. Talk about the diet side of it for half a second. So it sounds like you've got breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I missed a meal there or do you do some snacking along the way? Yeah, I'm a four meal, a guy. I like four meals and then I am a snacker. So for me, if I eat breakfast around eight, you know, I won't eat breakfast as soon as I wake up. I'll eat breakfast, you know, 738. I'm waking up at six. coffee caffeine yeah i'm a i'm a coffee guy to start and i never was it's interesting i feel like coffee for me in the morning has only been like something i've done the last three years and i just it's as a kid as a you know as in my 20s i never was a big coffee drinker but i do get some coffee in the morning i usually start my day out with some bcas before i go on that that walk or before i do my stretching um i was meditating i haven't done that probably need to get back to that just because I do feel like that makes a difference.

But with a little bit of BCAs, vitamin D in the morning, iron, kind of just getting my day started. It's more of like how much of a difference is that making? I don't know, but I know it's almost like a placebo effect. If anything else, it's like, hey, I'm putting in the effort. I'm doing things to make sure that I'm investing in my body. And then I'll get my four meals of the day, which is usually, like you said, breakfast. And then I do a lunch pre-workout meal around 11.

post-workout, you know, whether it's a shake or another meal, you know, hour later. And then I typically eat at like five and then I'll eat right before like eight and I'll go to bed at 10. So I am one of those people. I wake up hungry and I go to bed hungry. I am just I like I like eating. Well, your your lifestyle also probably burns a lot of calories. Yeah. How many calories do you burn in a day, you think? I think baseline right around 3,500. It is, is if I'm doing that workout around 11 or noon and then something else, either a run or the golf or whatever it is, like I can easily burn 3,500 calories and not, and yeah, it's just easy and not even realize like, oh, I have only eaten, you know, 2,500 calories today.

If I want to maintain my weight, maintain muscle mass, I need to make sure that, especially for me, it's getting that amount of protein to recover. On a day-to-day basis, are you able to just intuitively now? how many calories you've eaten or are you actually calculating every calorie yeah that's a good question i get so i counted calories for years and logged them every day in either my notebook or my fitness pal so from that i kind of have where on the majority i i have my plug-ins my go-to meals that i know if i go to chick-fil-a and i have a grilled chicken sandwich with an eight-count grilled nugget you know i'm going to be getting around 60-some depending on if it's an eight-count grilled

I'll get a little bit more than that. I know exactly how many protein carbs and fats that is and I eat that, you know, at least once a week. So for me, there might be meals that I plug in. But for the most part, I know that, okay, if I have four meals that I have a decent amount of protein in, I have a carbohydrate source, I could be off on any given day, 50 grams on carbs and proteins and then on fats, probably 10 grams off. But I just because over the years, I can kind of eyeball it now.

But I always tell people, like, if you are new to counting macros, you don't have to do it your whole life. Do it for a month because that'll lead to profound change. And if you're reading labels, all of a sudden, you're realizing just the foods you might not even be thinking about dressings or you might just all of a sudden that popcorn you're eating late at night. There's substitutions you can make. I always think of macros like a bank account. you know you budget every single month you know what what you can spend on different things and day to day that's that is exactly how you should be looking at at calories if you want to see that profound change in in body composition or even performance i know right off the bat if i don't get

enough water and if i don't get enough carbohydrates my workouts i'm going to feel like crap yeah i mean you can really only manage what you measure to your point and that seems like you got to a place where you get so good at measuring it or that you kind of built up your own internal system for understanding it. Is there a dark side to bodybuilding or to pushing yourself to three or four percent body fat? And like how have your relationship even with calories evolved? Because I could That's a great question. I mean, at times feeling like an enemy. Yeah, there's a there's a dark side. Let's just say there's a dark side to everything if you don't keep it in check. You don't keep it in balance. And I think that that's that is especially true with.

bodybuilding, obviously you have the performance enhancers that people talk about all the time that, you know, again, you see a lot of people out there that do use and abuse those things. And I think that ultimately, that's a decision that, you know, if you're stepping on stage, that's something that people will have to make down the line because they are, it is something in bodybuilding that is prevalent. And when you say performance enhancers, what are you referring to? Yeah, I'm talking about, talking about steroids. I think that it is something that, you know, we would be lying if we didn't say in bodybuilding right now.

And really, even across the board, whether we've seen it in baseball with, you know, Barry Bonds. And again, not necessarily saying that, oh, there are steroids, but performance enhancers, whether they're over-the-counter type of stuff that wasn't necessarily approved. There's always going to be people in any kind of competition that are trying to get a leg up. Bodybuilding is no different, obviously. Sure. And so I think that that's always going to be there. I think that when you approach it from a health perspective, which I kind of had to pivot in my life, and really it was like, hey, I can go one up two directions.

I can keep competing and I'm going to have to cross this road and I'm going to have to look at what it's going to take to be the best on that stage. Or I can change and try to go more YouTube and that's the route I ultimately took that I could be more just health-based. Meaning you knew if you were going to keep competing, you're going to have to start taking a lot more stuff. Yeah. Performance enhancers. Yeah, I kind of felt like that was kind of the direction I felt like things were going. And so for me, I was like, you know, I want to be able to do this when I'm 50 years old. I want to still be able to hike and ride a bike and swim and do all of these things.

So I kind of was like, you know, I can still have a productive career and be really passionate about health and training and even bodybuilding still without going down that road. and just being a sole bodybuilder, if you will. So for me, you know, the dark side is, is like I touched on earlier. It's a selfish sport. It is one of those sports where, and again, I think any professional sport, you have to be so dedicated. If we talk about professional golfers, they're on the road, baseball, whatever. It's the exact same thing.

I think with bodybuilding, the difference is you're stepping on stage for, you know, maybe five to 10 minutes. And there's something that it's, the goal of it is, it's kind of, it's more subjective. It's not like in most other sports, it's,

there's a hard fast. It's white and black on who the winner is. Bodybuilding was never like that. So I was just kind of like, you know, to do all of this work just to get on stage and have a panel of four judges who all like different things, judging my physique doesn't really make sense to me.

And I'm curious, how do, how do those judges, get those jobs like what is it do they have like a great eye for this is it is it an inside game you know you know the right people you become the judge over yeah i think i think there's a little bit of both if i'm on if i'm not yeah there's a little bit of both in there and again i think you know it it's it's interesting but i mean you can get it's it's it's amazing when you've been in in the fitness industry and especially the bodybuilding industry you hear just countless

countless times oh this person had a this judge knew this person or or this judge. Again, there's like, I can't, I can only control what I can control. Um, if there's politics, I think politics probably play a role in everything in life. So it's like life isn't fair type of thing. You can only can. So if you go into a show like thinking like, I'm here to win this, which is hard coming from an athletic background. Like that I want to win. I always want to win. I had to quickly realize like, you know, there's only so much that I can do. And some judges might think, you know, oh, he's too muscular for men's physique or he's not lean enough or he's too lean so really it's it's such a subjective sport that ultimately i was like you know it's it takes

so much out of it so much out of out of me to be doing the diet the training the sleeping all of that kind of stuff that um ultimately i could put all that energy into something else and and had to be a little bit more fruitful yeah that makes a lot of sense now in in your healthier pursuits uh obviously creating content is a big theme i feel like people don't fully appreciate how much work that requires you know it's not just a great smile and you know photos with your shirt off like it takes a lot of work to build these platforms you know build these followings and and subscriber bases that you've built talk a little bit about that process yeah i've appreciated content a lot more lately um due to COVID and not traveling my content used to be easy it used to be again like

it was I was just passionate about making videos and doing fun things traveling travel collaborating doing different videos, it's only been of late where, okay, you know, again, like there's other stresses in life that are kind of coming in first that all of a sudden it's like, ah, content's a job, content. I got to go to the gym and make fitness videos. So I think that ebbs and flows in life, just like anything else. But when it, when it is your job, there are some days that you're just like, I don't feel like doing another bicep workout for YouTube. But I think that that's where if you're always continuing your education, if you're always trying to grow, again, traveling comes in handy. Being around, Morgan isn't handy. We just kind of feed off each other, feed off each other

well. And then obviously having a training goal, that's a big thing too. If I can get ready for a specific event, whether it's a triathlon, whether it's a bodybuilding show, whether it's a military fitness challenge. So you kind of have different, over the years, I've kind of seen like, okay, I have my collaborative pieces that people are going to watch just because there are two personalities that they both follow, the people follow that they want to see interact. That's true for podcasts. well. Then you have the educational side of content, which is like, hey, we're going to get into the details of why we're doing specific exercises. Jeff Cavalier is a person on YouTube, but obviously has excelled at that. Then you have more of the funny entertainment, we'll call it like the TikTok

content, which is just like, hey, I'm scrolling. I don't want to be thinking. It's late at night. I want to watch people do silly things. And that's where Morgan and I battle the sex is. That's a fun video. It's pure entertainment value. So I kind of break up my content into those types of different pieces subcategories now you've been the coach on the biggest loser tv show where do you feel like your role is as being a coach what are things that you're trying to to bring to other people when you talk about health and fitness yeah that's a that that was something that i looked my family my brother is a basketball coach my dad was a high school basketball coach um had a lot of teachers and and coaches in my family treat and for me it was like hey what do what are these

people that are going through this journey need more than anything. And I think rather than being a trainer, it's, hey, you got to be a coach. You got to be somebody who's going to be there talking about why. How did we get here? I'm a biology, psychology background. And those two things are so tied in when you start talking about the reasons we do things, the reasons we've been jeet. And we had, obviously, we had therapists, we had doctors, we had athletic trainers on on there. But it's kind of that I'm that first line that not not not necessarily a friend because I'm going to call you out when you do things. I'm going to be there for you. The great UCLA coach, John Wooden, who it's, he's so old school that I only probably know about him because of my dad.

He's somebody that I look at one more NCAA championships. He won more NCAA championships. He had a system. And I think that, you know, I can't sit there. At times you need to be a motivator when somebody's right at their breaking point in a workout you need to motivate them and get them through there but more importantly than that it's setting them up on a system for winning and that's like hey if you do x y z will happen and i think that that's that's helping educate them helping to get them on a proper nutrition program that they can understand because we can always talk about things that are optimal in a test tube but when you put them into practice into real life they have to be somewhat flexible um so again it's it's like hey you can

do this, eat this many calories, but all of a sudden, if someone can't follow that, it's not optimal for them. So I always kind of cringe January 1st every year when people are like, oh, New Year's resolution, eat healthier. And it's like, I'm going to eat, you know, rice and chicken and broccoli. It's just like you're setting yourself up for failure. So let's talk about ways that we can work around that. What are some realistic goals? What happens when you inevitably mess up? Because that that's going to happen. So these are all kind of the things that we talked about on the biggest loser, and then working with those health professionals, kind of getting a holistic approach coming out of from that 360.

Yeah, I love these themes of creating systems, consistency. I mean, I'm sure you get asked this all the time. I certainly do. Like, what are the hacks? What are the hacks for better health, for better sleep, for whatever? And building a big business, whatever. And I think that hacks are often overrated. So much of, so much of success comes from creating these systems and being really consistent. Yeah. That word consistency. And it's setting yourself up. I think if there is a hack, it would be to surround yourself with people that are going to hold you accountable. Yeah. That's good. Surround yourself with people that are going to call you out when you're not doing what you should be doing. Because I think that we really are the, you know, the, the, you know, the

accumulation of the five people we surround or five close, you hear that all the time. And I really think that that's true. The best times in my life is when I've had other people around there kind of pushing and helping you and lifting you up, whether it's a training partner, whether it's your spouse or significant other people there that are going to make you support you and then also hold you accountable. Yeah. When you hear the expression optimal performance, what comes to mind or who comes to mind? Oh, optimal performance. I mean, there's some Crossfitter is obviously like Matt Brazier comes to mind when I hear that optimal performance people at the top of their game Tom Brady that guy does every single thing that he needs to be doing and again

he kind of broke the mold with I'm not going to be the fastest guy I'm not going to you know necessarily would be the most talented guy in the room I'm going to work hard and then I'm going to take my strengths I'm to really develop those and then I'm going to work on my weaknesses and I think what he's done with like TB12 and that might not work for other positions meaning like you know a defense alignment. The way Aaron Donald trains is going to be very different to the way Tom Brady trains. Right. But I think that Tom Brady has kind of, you know, re-invented himself, or I shouldn't even say that, but evolved into somebody that has talked about longevity. If you can be healthy and play, that's the name of the game of the professional level. So I think that we have gotten this

really, we've come into this really cool space in the sports world where we're no longer talking about bigger, faster, stronger. We're talking about the longevity. And how do you do that? Well, let's let's look at recovery. Let's look at mobility and pliability. Let's talk about diet stuff. Not the sexy stuff. It's not the bench press and the 40-yard dash. All of those things you can manipulate and be really good at them for a short period of time. But if you're so quick twitch that you always get hurt and you're not working on, okay, and balances in the body and how do we correct those things, then, you know, you might be the biggest, fastest, stronger as guy, but you're not going to be on the field consistently.

The late great David Stern, who was commissioner of the NBA for 30 years, he became a friend and an investor in Whoop. And he would say to me, you know, if you could take every professional athlete and just give them one more year in their peak, it would completely change sports. And I think we're going to end up seeing even something much more dramatic than that. But that vision always resonated for me, especially with a lot of the work that we're doing with Whoop, because it is based on being. able to create consistency and longevity. Yeah, amen. I think, geez, the amount of time, money and energy going into that now, whether it's golf, whether it's, you know, you see LeBron James, anyone who's at the peak of their craft, they want to be able to extend that. And if you can do that, which obviously is what whoop is gearing towards, you know, there's always going to be a need. Now, a lot of people

follow you. Who are people that you pay attention to or you listen to or you follow if you're looking for inspiration or more information on podcasts or business or whatever yeah so again i kind of separate things up between educational sides of things i follow i like following people that are first and foremost passionate about what they're doing and then that are educational so i follow guys that's depending on what it is for for prehab rehab rehab stuff i i follow people that are going to be um really good at you know actively stretching i whether whether it's a physical therapist or a chiropractor, I follow all sorts of different people that are really lending their expertise

towards how do we make the human body perform better? I follow, I follow people in the CrossFit space. I follow Rich Froning. And a lot of people are like, you're a bodybuilder? Why do you follow CrossFit? I was actually doing CrossFit.

And that Bodybuilding.com, the BFE Fit Body Competition that you read off, I actually did a hybrid of CrossFit bodybuilding to get ready for that show because I felt like it's easier for me to train a little bit harder and do things like, you know, there's the old like bodybuilder like, oh, walk on a treadmill on an incline, you know, like restrict your calories. And for me, it's like if I can get, if I can get my central nervous system to be up to handle it, and that's just through proper training leading up to something like that,

I can increase my total volume. My workouts can be more hit rather than just the slow, the steady state. So I was doing a hybrid of bodybuilding and CrossFit. I was actually working out of CrossFit Meridian in Idaho and doing a lot. At the same day, I won that show, I did 40 pull-ups, strict pull-ups. And I look back at that. And I'm like, that was like, I was really, I was dialed in. Not only looks-wise, but physique-wise.

And there was something to be said with the training. Like too oftentimes I see bodybuilders, oh, you know, it's time to get ready for a show. We're going to really increase the reps and not train. heavy and it's like that's that's not what got you there like you need a combination of both but so i follow people in every single i follow bodybuilders i follow crossfitters i follow uh triathletes um i follow obviously the big name professional athletes out there um i follow strength conditioning coaches um so yeah whether it's just whoever is out there that i think that it's can be either motivational educational educational to me i'll give them a follow

Yeah, that reminds me of a question I get asked a lot, too, which is, like, what are your favorite business books or something? And I actually, my response to that's like, well, I actually like to look for inspiration outside of business, for business, right? Like you listen to what an actor said or what an artist said or what a designer said and how they built their careers or, you know, what they excel, that. And you try to bring that into your own practice of what you're trying to do. And it reminds me of how you've thought about being a great bodybuilder. Well, and to that point, like, I just read Matthew McConaughey's greenlight. So when you said, like, you know, listening to other people that, and what's worse for them, that kind of popped into my mind.

Because really, what it takes to be successful in anything, like, you know, we look at some of these great athletes and, yes, they're blessed with amazing genetics, but also the amount of hard work, it's, it's no different than a CEO of a major company. It's no different than an actor who's at the top of their game. They're perfecting their craft. They're taking that potential that they have, and they're dumping work, and they're getting help from people around them to get them at the top of their game. And it is funny when you when you talk to different people, whoever is at the top, they have a very similar mentality. Yeah, I think

that's right. I've been fortunate to meet a lot of really successful people and across all walks of life. And it's true, there's a lot of themes, a lot of really like really obvious themes, in fact. Where are you hoping to be in the next five years, Steve? Five years. for me, yeah. That is a good question. For me, we'll probably be either getting ready to move to Australia or being or will be in Australia. You know, my hopes, obviously settling down, having a family continuing on with YouTube, but allowing change, like getting back to that river analogy, and if I think, you know, I have to be this, if I create this box and I have to be this person that stays in that box, I think you really limit yourself because in life,

life's that river and it's going to flow and kind of take you to wherever that is so you know i might be doing you know more more fitness stuff that involves being you know well-rounded with yoga meditating whether whatever it is that as a family guy hopefully will have that family um kind of talking to people that are in that same position whether it's dads out there that want to get healthier or you know strengthening relationships uh personal relationships but always having uh fitness be at the the center of that because I really do believe that so many of the things that in life, even

in COVID, like when you're not at your best physically, eventually every other area suffers. So I'll probably be leaning more towards longevity. So I'll probably will be doing more, you know, looking at how again to extend my health

peak to where, okay, now I'm 40 years old. Okay, what is the goal this year? You're always having that goal, but realizing that when I achieve any goal that I've achieved in life, it doesn't bring as much satisfaction as maybe as it should because really it's about that journey. It's about that grind. As soon as you always tell this the biggest loser contestant, as soon as you reach that goal

of I want to lose 100 pounds, all of a sudden you're going to want to lose 25 more or you're going to want to do something else. So we're always changing. We're always wanting more. That's who we are as people. But we have to realize that you're always going to feel like that. So find that joy in the journey. Find that joy in whatever you're doing, the struggle, because no matter.

what when you get to that success even the people that are at the top of their game they're not satisfied like they always want more so it's like about finding happiness in that journey if that makes sense yeah it does look i think you got a great i think you got a great vision for yourself and a great message for uh society at large uh this has been a real pleasure steve where where can people find you or learn more about some of your projects yeah so i have uh fitness culture is our programs we have everything from you know bodybuilding programs to athlete programs to improve, you know, whatever it is, functionality, your explosiveness. So we have different programs that we've curated at fitness culture.

We have some really cool strength coaches that we work with, even a University of Houston's basketball strength coach, Alan Bishop, he's one of our, kind of our board members. So really doing some cool things from not only a bodybuilding perspective, because yes, we all want to look good, but if you, if your only goal is to look good, you're missing out on a whole other opportunity and fun side of things. So we also have culture, culture supplements. And then Apollo and Sage is the swimwear brand Morgan. I started. And then you can just find me Instagram, Steve Cook, and YouTube, Steve Cook. And yeah, I appreciate the time. It's been fun. All right. Well, we'll put all that in the show notes. Steve, this was a pleasure, man.

Thanks for coming on. Thank you. You guys have a good one. Thanks to Steve for coming on the podcast. A reminder, you can use the code Will Ahmed. That's W-I-L-L-A-H-M-E-D to get 15% off a WIPP membership. You can find us on social at WOOP at Will Ahmed. Stay healthy, folks. Stay in the green. Thank you.