Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 534 - Is EVERYONE Enhanced?! Ft. Robb Beams

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

Today we had an amazing conversation regarding performance enhancing drugs with Coach Robb Beams. Is everyone at the top really on something to make them "enhanced"? After speaking with Robb today, it sure does seem like it. Coach Robb is a Nutrition and Performance Coach catering to individuals that have a desire to feel better, look better, and perform better with nutrition and exercise. Coach Robb was a former professional BMX racer reaching #8 in the World rankings his first year as a Pro athlete. Soon after turning Pro, he was selected for the Triathlon Development Team at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Bruh, Encima, what do you plan on having for dinner tonight, man? I'm going to have a center cut ribeye and a flat iron times two from Piedmontese. Wait, how many steaks is that? It's three steaks. Oh my gosh. Three steaks, two flat irons, one center cut ribeye. And the great thing about these steaks is that they have a decent amount of fat, but it's not so much that if you had three steaks, you're going to be,

you know, eating a massive amount of calories. So that's why it's called the diet steak. Yeah. So for myself, it's Friday. I'm like kind of, you know, a whole day or a whole week, I should say of like some pretty solid eating. Like I'm in on my game. So it's like today I just want to go like, I just want to go crazy on the big old steak. So I'm going to have a bovet. I know. And the funny thing is, it's like I'm still going to be 100% on my plan because that whole thing has 100 grams of protein. I think only like 16 grams of fat. So I'm going to have that, probably some potatoes. Just, oh, my gosh, I can't wait, dude.

I'm going to. So if you guys want to enjoy some of these amazing steaks, higher protein, less fat, which just means more jackedness, less fatness, head over to pbontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Head over there right now. What up, Power Project crew? This is Josh Sett aka SettleGate here to introduce you to our next guest Rob Beams. Coach Rob is a nutrition and performance coach catering to individuals that have a desire to feel better, look better, and perform better through proper nutrition and exercise. Coach Rob is a former professional BMX racer reaching number 8th in the world rankings for his first year as a pro athlete. Soon after turning pro, he was selected for the triathlon development team at

the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Unfortunately, a car accident ended his Olympic dreams, but the knowledge he gained from this experience became a core component for the performance training methods and strategies he uses today. Since then, he has dedicated his career to teaching others the importance of health and wellness, which ultimately leads to improved performance. Over the last 35 years, Coach Rob and his experienced staff have helped over 6,000 clients become healthier, leaner, stronger, and faster in reaching their personal and athletic goals he currently offers complete educational programs and products for weight loss nutrition running triathlon swimming cycling stick sports speed and agility motocross bmx mental performance

injury prevention as well as recovery on a side note coach Rob has also paired with the all-natural supplement company Infinite to create his very own Energy Fuel. Energy Fuel is a mix of supplements, vitamins, and minerals that is personalized by Coach Rob for every athlete's needs and nutrition profile. But that is a different story for a different time. Please enjoy this conversation with our guest, Coach Rob Beams. Poop does smell pretty good. Does it really? Yeah. It wouldn't surprise me. It shouldn't. Goat poop. I haven't had goat in a minute, which is unfortunate. What? I haven't eaten any of mom's cooking in a little bit.

That just sounds funny. Dude, you're going to need some goat brains for your upcoming competition, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk about performance enhancement. Hey, now. I want to cook some liver this week. I really do. I think it'll give me a nice little boost.

Are we on air? Yeah, we are. Are we allowed to talk about your competition coming up? Yeah, we can talk about it. In Atlanta? In Atlanta. Hot Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia.

Yeah. Never been there before, so it should be fun. I think The Rock did a lot of filming there recently. Is that really why you're going? Competition? Just be truthful. Are you following around The Rock? No.

That didn't sound convincing. No. No. I didn't know he was going to be there this weekend filming a Facebook show. You're doing some jujitsu-ing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like to try to fuck with you about it just because. Because I know that's like, you know.

Like a jujitsu chop. Yeah, yeah. Jujitsu chop. I called it kung fu yes just kung fu just to be annoying one day i'll end up in a hold and something will break and everyone will everyone will know why be like oh yeah he's been talking shit for years he deserved that yeah that's awesome man uh is this like a national competition world competition um ibjjf so they have like a bunch of opens around us in different places like miami uh atlanta vegas etc so i have this one coming up in atlanta

june 12th and 13th and i have another one coming in vegas june 24th and 25th they're both opens and then i have pan ams and then uh when worlds comes out i'll sign up for worlds you must be excited because it's been a while since you competed right i haven't been able to compete as a Purple Belt. So I had a bunch of Purple Belt competitions scheduled for 2020. Then our Coco happened. So, you know, I wasn't able to compete. But, yeah, it's going to be my first comp as a Purple Belt.

Do you feel like you're a lot better than them? I don't like. I don't even know how you would, I guess, describe that. But do you feel like your skillset has improved a lot? Yeah. I feel very confident in, in, in my current skillset.

What was, uh, maybe a hole earlier in your game? If there was like any, any one particular critique, I guess maybe you would have of yourself or maybe your coach had of you. Well, when I was a white belt,

um, I didn't have much of a bottom game. Hey, now, you know, I didn't have much of a bottom game. Hey, now, you know, I didn't have much of like a guard game, a bottom game. So like,

that's, that's a, that's a thing with like big guys because they, when they train with people, they can generally just stay on top and mall people. They don't develop anything from the bottom like guards. Um, so I started trying to just focus on doing jujitsu like a smaller guy would

from the bottom. Uh, and I plugged that hole fairly well like it's not like there's still holes there there's still a little bit of water seeping out of the hole but it's it's plugged for an ultra heavyweight so um that's a big hole for ultra heavies like they don't have good guards generally imagine their holes are big yeah they have a big they have a big hole in their guard game and i've i've tried and that's the thing i try to do my my jujitsu i try to replicate what a smaller guy trying to fight

a stronger opponent would do rather than what a big guy would do you probably want attributes of a smaller guy and a bigger guy whether you're in a smaller weight class or a larger weight class right absolutely you want the strength of a heavyweight but you want to be able to move like a little guy like if you're able to be strong like a heavyweight, but then you're nimble and you're fast and you're quick and you can do things that a smaller guy would be able to do, that shit's dangerous. Is it weird going against people that are tall and kind of just lanky? Does that cause any problems or not really? Not really, unless they get you in some weird thing where there's something called a spider guard, where their feet are here, and maybe they have another foot here. And since their legs are so long, they can create some distance.

But it's generally not too rough dealing with long guys. Not too big of a deal. Yeah. I think the more compact individuals are more so annoying. Little squatty guys yeah very compact just guys because like they're like they're they're they're hard to just like move sometimes yeah but they also like uh mike from rpe right like he might be he's he's stout right i've never seen mike in person i'm actually very curious like how how big of an individual he is but he would be an interesting role he just looks like he would sink you know if he jumped into water

he really does right mike you're jacked if you do manage to listen to this but yeah so like those guys that just like have no neck yo that's like impossible yeah no neck dudes they're you're like i don't know what to do with this guy. Yeah, sometimes they're a little rough. If any of you guys are curious about something, there's a, who's that rapper from Odd Future, Wolfgang? Tyler, the Creator. Look up Tyler, the Creator, buff neck. Just type that in on YouTube.

It's a freestyle, and it has to do with what we're talking about here, but it's kind of hilarious. It'll make more sense when you listen to it. It'll make more sense when you listen to it. Maybe. Do you think the lockdown and everything, I don't know, as far as your competition, do you think other people were also able to improve? Do you think maybe it might have stunted some people's progress? Oh, man. Like, what factor does that play into competitions now?

I mean, it just, I mean, the people who are competing, I think a lot of them maybe were probably able to train during lockdown. But, you know, I think lockdown in general messed with a lot of people's progress because the mental health aspect of it, you fall off of a habit that you've been doing for a long time. And when it starts again, some people are having anxiety about what's going on. They don't want to go back to jujitsu. It's, it's tough. It's really tough,

but certain people that did certain people that didn't, I was lucky enough to be able to, once I was able to start training, I started training again. Yeah. Has there been any notorious drug busts in in uh jiu-jitsu tournaments because you there have been they do test right yeah yeah yeah yeah there there have been and it's an interesting thing because jiu-jitsu testing doesn't seem to be very stringent um but they

did catch this guy kanan duarte he's uh he was a he is a very good black belt he was like one of the up-and-comers who was beating all the top black belts he was a super heavyweight and i forgot what they caught in his system um but yeah he was banned for like a year or two or something um and uh i think they've caught some other big competitors but kanan was the most recent biggest one that the ibjjf caught jiu-jitsu is really interesting because in other federations like fight to win and stuff they don't test at all it's like it's like some of these athletes are almost encouraged it's like they want sometimes they want athletes to take some things uh is there a little bit of money involved in those fight to win yeah fight to win um so that might be why because it's like entertainment like the guy's big and jacked like that's the way the pride fighting championships were and wwe forever like they

didn't test you know for they got some sort of protocol they do now but for years they didn't test it just wanted the guys to look as jacked as possible yeah yeah so but ibjjf tests although it's not from what i've seen and i mean i could be totally wrong but it doesn't seem to be crazy strange and i think they just test who they like they They look at, they're like, let's run a test on that guy. Like he's, he's, he's big and Jack, let's run a test on it.

Cause Canaan, Canaan was built. He got built. And in my understanding too, with today's guests that we have on today, uh, Rob beams, um,

he talks quite a bit about, you know, uh, utilizing performance, enhancing drugs in some unconventional sports. I think we mainly think about it for like football like in america right but we're not really thinking about it for hockey basketball not really for hockey no we're just not thinking about it in those terms like it definitely could be like there's no reason to not be suspicious of dudes in the nhl they're

fucking freaks like they're genetic anomalies like these are guys a lot of these guys are six three six five uh in tremendous shape uh they play a lot they play almost as many games as basketball players do but but it's more contact than football it's like wait i maybe or maybe they're just crazy maybe they're in shape i'm not saying that they are, that they all are, or they're all clean or anything. I just, just suspicion around all, you know, all forms of competition. And today's guest talks about Adderall. He talks about EPO, the expense of EPO, like it costs thousands upon thousands of dollars to test. $16,000. Yeah, to test for EPO.

And like, what would EPO do for you in jujitsu? Like if you can breathe better, shit sounds like God, that would be a further along. But part of some of the testing is to not only try to make things somewhat even, which things are never even a guy that can pay to go to class, you know, seven days a week is different than a guy that can only make it twice a week or

just doesn't even have the money to train at all, train at all with a professional or whatever. So things will never really truly be like even. But you're kind of hopeful that at least some of what's going on is to protect the athlete a bit. In the case of EPO or insulin or some of these things, you could die like and you can die instantly. You can take it and you can fucking be gone. You could take it one minute and be gone the next. So I think it's to try to discourage like, Hey, let's not just make it like all, you know, just go for it.

Because if we do, then maybe people will really just go for it. But when people are just going for it and they're doing so in their quote unquote, like basement with their buddy, maybe that's worse. Maybe it'd be better to say, hey, go ahead and go for what you want. But, you know, we have doctors that can help you with this stuff that can kind of guide you through it. I don't know what the right answer is. Yeah, I think like, oh, shit, I think it was Jesse Burke was saying like something like

table tennis is like just run rampant with like PEDs and stuff. And it's like, what the fuck? That and then uh esports i mean there's a lot of money being thrown around on esports and i suspect there's a lot of adderall there's tons of adderall in there yeah and it's a performance enhancing drugs and sometimes i'm sure they look the other way because they take away your caffeine bro and you ain't shit yeah for me for sure you don't know how to make make Mario jump backwards over those fucking barrels without caffeine? Dude, not a lot of people can do that.

It's hard, man. That's a technique. You gotta fucking switch them back just last second. You gotta be super quick. With a joystick, it wasn't bad. Like, in the arcade, it wasn't bad, because you can just kind of do it that way, but on a regular controller, it's kind of hard, man. Yeah, see, like, when I would see it in the arcade, I never played i'm like i got that shit at home i only play gold you would waste like 20

bucks in 20 seconds it's impossible yeah esports is crazy though like i've seen i've seen like pro fortnite players play and it's like just the amount of inputs that's going on on the on the fucking screen when they're keys and shit yeah my god it's like the complexity it's not it's not normal just like yeah you know call of duty or whatever this stuff is it's complex have you been playing anything on ps5 uh this game called return i've been able to play it in weeks i've been able to play it in weeks i've been hella busy but i've been wanting to check that out it's good yeah e3 is this week oh really yep waiting for some you got you got two nerdy co-hosts yeah yeah where's it at some big halo halo infinite news i don't even i think

it's just all online unfortunately oh but have any of you guys done adderall i've been very curious about it i've never tried adderall never tried adderall i so i don't know the sounds like a lot of fun it does it really does sound like a great time i i want to say i did like the slow release one because it was all the one you put in your ass yeah yeah it was wait what he swallowed eight inch slow release go ahead yeah it was it was someone's prescribed like actual like they had like the thing and it had the name on it and everything yeah i'm like yeah i always wanted to

try and so i tried that i didn't feel a damn thing so i don't know and then i tried like the faster one which wasn't prescribed and that one i kind of was like this is pretty cool but like it wasn't i don't know i think and Andrew's attention deficit is too great. I think so. I wonder if there are non-responders. Because what I've been hearing from Adderall, people are like, you see things that you wouldn't be able to see. It's just like, what?

There could be non-responders, because you could have extra dopamine or some shit in your head or whatever the hell it is. Or it's like in the negative. Like it just... Just making you a normal human dose yeah yeah i mean i mean you guys are like super interested in all these cognitive enhancers and yeah it's like that's like kind of like the top tier and it's just hard to get your hands on it because it's like okay anything that's hard to get your hands on means it probably works you know like steroids because yeah a lot of kids are

are using it for all kinds of different stuff yeah so i don't know i'll dabble again once i figure out how to how to obtain it and when something report back then yeah when something looks too good like i've i've heard people talk about adderall and it's it's cognitive benefits and in college i had a few friends that used that at all and they offered they they're like try it out i was like i'm good because it just seems too good yeah you know and i feel like if it's that good and let's say that i'm getting i'm just like on point and i'm just my brain is just zoned in i i feel like i'd like it too much man yeah like that's that's the thing that's why some some doors i don't open because i'm just like that door is too good yeah well somebody about the back door you're silly today well i already got that one anal joke in i might as well keep going

that's safe for the person i put a ring on the finger oh there we go that's right the back wait a second wait what, what? Don't, don't even ask. Andrew, go before he asks. There's qualifications to get access to that back door. Let's start. Let's start over.

And we're live. How much kratom have you had today? None. None? Good for you. You're just high on life. I did eat my first meal of the day already, so maybe that's why I'm all excited.

Okay, how the hell are you doing it that early, and then making the rest of it, like, what's going on here? Yeah, I don't know. I just wanted to try it for today. I did this one other time, and, you know, it makes you go, like, it makes you fast a little longer, because then I probably won't eat until, like, tomorrow night. So, I don't know. Just kind of messing around with different things it seems like when i eat later in the day uh that i tend to want to eat a fucking crazy amount i'm trying to have

like i'm trying to have like one and a half meals you know what i mean like maybe a little extra protein than that almost like a full day's worth of protein but have it be like one and a half meals rather than like three meals at one time almost so that's kind of what it's i've kind of become a professional eater through this process because you do get pretty hungry and i'm like wow i can really clear out some food like i never even like i did when i was a kid like i haven't been able to eat like that a long time so i was like well let me try a different strategy if i eat in the morning i eat like that a long time. So I was like, well, let me try a different strategy. And if I eat in the morning, I don't usually ever have time.

So I'm like, this is going to restrict the amount of time that I have. So I'll just do it this way. Let me get this straight. Whoa. Sorry. Are you eating in the morning right now? One meal.

Uh, yeah. And are you doing that every day? Uh, I have been eating one meal a day for the last about two weeks. And I've only eaten just in the morning a couple times. Okay. By the way, Andrew, are we live?

No, not live. Okay. Our guest on, though. This is going to be fun. Hey, good morning, guys. Morning. Good morning. How are you?

Yeah, we're doing fantastic. We'll just dive right into this. It's great to have you on the show today. We appreciate your time so much. Oh, absolutely. Thanks for having us. And I consider it a significant pleasure and an opportunity. So thank you. Like one of the reasons why so many people seem to be obsessed about performance enhancing drugs is it. Do you think it's because a lot of times are regulated in sports or you think it's the allure to try to go above and beyond what we're capable of as, I guess, natural human beings? Yeah, I would say it's definitely the latter of the two. I've been in the endurance sports now for, hate to show my age here, since 86, full-time and as a professional coach since 91 after not making the Olympic team in triathlon. I've talked to a lot of people when you get into the performance side of things and you look at the people who ask, I bust my butt, I work super, super hard. How is person X, Y, and Z able to do that much more than me? I think anybody that's dedicated

themselves to high-end performance, they recognize there's a point of diminishing returns where the more you do, you don't see those incremental improvements. So you start looking elsewhere. How else can I get them? You go some of the benign ways like adding, you know, you guys know it as well as anybody else. You go to something like an ergogenic benefit like caffeine or creatine, you know, some relatively benign ways. You go, wow, cool. I got a little bit of an incremental lift. don't show any signs of fatigue, doesn't show any signs of regression, no performance plateaus. And I think that triggers everybody's brain to go, what is that person able to do or is doing that I'm not able to? So I started doing some research with some people who got tested positive or on a public forum. Hey, look, I've got a three-year ban for EPO or cortisteroids, or as we know it, the cocktail, you know, EPO, cortisteroids, HGH, that's going to be the combo,

particularly in the endurance world. And I talked to a couple of them and they said, Rob, it's not only just the performance results, it's that mental aspect of, man, I can elevate my game and come back tomorrow, act like I didn't even smash myself yesterday. So I really believe it's that. I think it's the allure of, man, how could I get that much more? And then that enjoyment of sustainability, which is obviously the big thing that we all strive for. We don't want those little sporadic pops. We're looking for that longevity of, man, how can I keep this going? This is a great feeling.

I saw you on a podcast where you were talking about performance enhancing drugs the first time I ever was like introduced to you and I started listening to, and I just found it to be so fascinating. I'm like, wait a second. He's talking about riding a motorcycle. Yeah. And I, you know,

I don't have much familiarity with riding motorcycle except for when I was a kid and I was on a little tiny motorcycle. So I don't know. I don't understand the impact forces that these guys are experiencing. Can you kind of explain that to us and kind of walk us through that? Because I think people are like, why the hell would anybody ride in a dirt bike? You need to take steroids, but there's actually a lot more to it than just anabolic steroids. There's a lot of other forms of performance enhancing drugs as well, right?

Yeah, that's exactly it. Most people think when you watch these guys on television, they make it look so simple. It's like, well, how hard can it be? The motorcycle's doing all the work. If you look at it from a physiological standpoint, there is, of all the athletes that we do max heart rate assessments with, for the listeners that may not know anything about us, our business has four verticals. We have a speed and agility, which is ball and stick sports. We have our endurance division, which is triathletes, marathoners, and mountain bikers. We have a motorsports division, which is motorcycles, car racing, the whole nine yards. And then we have a very large general fitness and weight loss division. When you look at the motorsports division, the max heart rate numbers that we

see on the motorcycle surpass what we see track and field, Ironman, even short distance Ironmans, excuse me, short distance triathlons, like an Olympic distance where they're pretty much redlining for just under two hours. Is the heart rate like 180 or so? Well, genetically speaking, we've seen some of the motocross guys, they'll hold 208, 210 for 33 to 35 minutes. And it's amazing. I'm very, very, very big on heart rate training. I'm not a brand ambassador. I'm not paid by Garmin, but Garmin is the platform that I like. I think the dashboard is the most

user-friendly of all of them that are out there. Again, I don't get a kickback for saying that. But to answer your question, when you look at the max heart rate numbers, and let's just take sports backwards. If you look at the max heart rate on a motorcycle, it is by far the highest no matter what. So if I look and compare that against running, it'll be about 10 to 15 beats higher than running, which tends to be the highest of the three, against running. It'll be about 10 to 15 beats higher than running, which tends to be the highest of the three, swim, bike, run, and triathlon world. If you look at, we do a lot of work with some downhill mountain bike pros and stuff like that. Their heart rate numbers get elevated, but that's more of the adrenaline, not so much for the sheer output. But I want to go back to your question about the motorcycle. You got to remember a typical 250, which is our middle

discipline displacement bike, is about 200 pounds wet. When we say wet, that's with gas oil and radiator fluid. You got to remember that you're pushing and pulling a 200 pound bike for 30 plus minutes. That in itself is difficult enough. Now for you guys, extremely strong, 200 pounds, pretty insignificant, but you got to remember, you got to offset that push pull against the velocity of speed against hitting obstacles. So for every, you know, for every action, there's an equal and equivalent reaction, but then you have to add velocity to it, which I'm not trying to go outside the law of physics, but it's like you take 200 pounds and you hit a jump. Yes, the bike suspension is going

to do a portion of that. But you guys know this, what's the worst body part to work in the gym? Legs, right? Because the quadriceps are the largest consumer of oxygen. So the heart rate's going to go the highest. And that's why most of us have a tendency to stay away from the legs. Well, imagine how many times do they stand up and sit down on a motorcycle in one lap? How many times does that bike have to do an air squat at velocity and speed? And they're doing that for 32, 35, sometimes 38 minutes. Heart rate is going to be through the absolute roof. And this is where you see PEDS coming in.

Because if we look at the fact that a motorcycle's raw power is like the way you guys would look at raw power in the gym. Muscle, I always refer to as the size of the piston on the motorcycle. How much power can it produce? Well, what's the aerobic capacity of that individual? It's like the carburetor on the motorcycle. We have a lot of EFIs, electronic fuel injection now. But the idea that those two have to be supplementary to one another. So a lot of people think, well, you're not going to have a high heart rate on a motorcycle.

It's the exact opposite. Heart rates damn near pinned right from the beginning. And what is the biggest limitation? The ability to get enough oxygen to sustain that level of output. And that's where you start to see PEDS because if you go to something like an aerobic based sport, like Tour de France, professional cyclists or Ironman professional triathletes, what's the physical limiters? Muscular power and aerobic capacity. So let's just take EPO, the obvious one. What does it do? As Lance Armstrong's Dr. Ferrari always said, it's all about the red blood cell count. That's what drives the machine. So if we can get that red blood cell count up, we can deliver oxygen, you know, almost to the end of the time.

What's the next limiting factor? Muscular power. So within motocross, is there stringent testing? I mean, obviously we can see how beneficial EPO can be for some of these athletes, but like, you know,

hearing that a lot of athletes do that, do a lot of athletes end up getting caught or is it just everyone just gets passed? I want all the listeners to go back and watch that movie Icarus. That movie Icarus absolutely will open your eyes to that. There's a lot of semantical games that are going on here. Answer your question directly. Yes, there is testing that goes on. But then we get into the semantical game of, did you ask the question, is there testing? Sure, there's testing. Okay, so that's number one. But was anything done with the test samples that were taken? There's where we get into semantics. If there was something done with the semantics of, yes, we had it tested, all right, did you pay to get the results back? And then does the organizing body actually implement a penalty for the findings that came back? That's where you get into the real gray zone.

So yes, if you were to look at most organizing bodies, Supercross, Motocross, they do test, but then it gets into the hands of the organizers. And that's where you and I are pretty much at a loss because of HIPAA rules and laws and everything else. We are not privy to that information, just like a TUE. You know, a TUE is so easy to work around. A therapeutic use exemption is very easy to do a workaround. You guys know it. I know it.

If you look at, doesn't matter if you could look at, you know, the Williams sisters in tennis, you can look at motocross. You can look at anything. You get a TUE and then you understand how Icarus was exposing the fact that there's a lot of semantics associated with, is there testing? Yes. Are the tests actually evaluated? And if they are evaluated, are there, is there going to be an actual implement? Are the actual ramifications going to be put into place? If they're implemented, then you would have a different result. But then you get into very smart doctors that know how to do micro dosages that even if they do do a test, is it going to be accurate? No. I mean, Lance Armstrong, I don't know how long you guys have been following me,

but I was on public platforms for a long time going, how in the hell Lance Armstrong has to be clean? Because there's been nobody tested more than him. Well, I had never been exposed to micro dosages. I had heard about, they go out, they go into the mountains for three months training camp. Well, that's when you run a full cycle, you know, train high race low was always the mantra, but we didn't know about micro dosages. Dr. Ferrari was leading the train on that. You know, if you understand when the testing morning, you know, they can't test after a certain time at night, and they can't test before a certain time in the morning when it gives you a certain amount of hours and you just create a dosage that's non-detectable after that period of time.

It was brilliant. Of course, I felt like an idiot because it was like right here in front of my face and didn't even notice it. I think it got us all. Yeah, and with Lance, he did some interesting stuff too where sometimes it's like, well, this is illegal, but now we don't even know about this other thing because it's brand new. He didn't invent it, but my understanding is he would train as hard as possible at the highest altitudes possible. They would take his blood. His blood was therefore more oxygenated than previous blood. And then they would have him like sitting in like an RV and they would bring that blood back into him the day of the race. Is that right? And what does that

do? Well, there's a couple of things that you bring up there. First of all, Lance Armstrong, if you look at his human performance physiology, he produces very little lactic acid. physiology. He produces very little lactic acid. He has a huge aerobic uptake. They say that his aerobic uptake is on par of nothing that's ever been seen before. The three ways that you can get the red blood cell count up is exactly like you said, train high, race low. Whenever there's a minimal amount of oxygen in the air, your body produces more red blood cells. So that's step number one. What you're talking about is having the blood drawn, kept in a refrigerator and then reintroduced. That's number two. Or you could take something like EPO, which increases that red blood cell count. Here's the dangerous part. Think about taking a water hose and hooking it up

to a fire hydrant, because that's what ends up happening inside. If you understand that arteries are what brings oxygenated blood out of the heart, capillaries are what brings, when you look at the veins, bring in oxygenated blood back. Well, that's a closed network. Well, it can only handle so much pressure inside of it. So if all of a sudden you go and you double and maybe doubles in exaggeration, maybe you increase it by 2% or 3%, can the capacity of that closed network hold that increased volume? And that's where the danger comes in. That's where you saw in the Tour de France when that Danish team had three guys die because of EPO overdose. Their heart literally exploded in their chest in their sleep. So like you say, that's some

real problems. You bring up a really interesting point in the fact that once uh once someone does get tested uh now you're leaving it up to somebody whoever's running these blood tests to be extremely scientific and then aside from them being extremely scientific and having to have good protocols in terms of what they do with that blood sample or urine sample and even how the blood was drawn and who saw the urine going where or whatever. There's so much that goes into that. Then there's like a litigious side of it, too, where like I could really see really easily how a good lawyer can help you kind of talk your way out of these situations because

they could say, well, yeah, his testosterone is a little elevated, but so is his estrogen, you know, and that they can start to kind of, and then it's like, well, I, you know, what are, you know, what are the rules? And it gets to be something that's black and white ends up turning very, very gray. Very quickly. And if you watch, if you have been any kind of a student on the Lance Armstrong, Floyd Landis, Tyler Hamilton, the whole demise of that U.S. Postal and that huge lawsuit that was put against it, to your point exactly, and I hope the listeners will go back and do some research on it, the exact comment by the lawyer was, because just for the Cliff Note version, what they do is they look at hemocrit levels and red blood cell count. And they, so there's a range. And to your point, what the lawyer said was, well, how do we know that that is a legitimate range? How do we not know this is that double negative? How do we not know that the range should be X plus three? And so all of a sudden it puts it back into, well, wait a second, who established the criteria that deems this as excessive,

whether it's RBC red blood cell count or hemocrit levels or whatever it is. And like you say, now we get into an interpretation issue, which is a feeding frenzy for any lawsuit, anytime, anywhere. Yeah. Imagine someone new comes in and you test them. It's their first year, you know, in whatever sport. And then, you know, two years later, they win a championship and you test them again and their percentages are, you know, 15% greater. That doesn't necessarily mean anything because, you know, blood work in general is just a snapshot of where your body's at at that particular moment. So it's hard to, it just leaves a lot of gray, I guess.

It really does. And you bring up two good points behind the scenes without you even realizing that comment, incremental gains and biological passport, because a lot of people who may not be familiar with blood testing, they go, well, if you just get a snapshot and you use that as a baseline and a benchmark, wouldn't you be able to catch them if there's a big deviation? Well, no, as you just articulated, if you bring somebody new into the sport and they know the And you use that as a baseline and a benchmark. Wouldn't you be able to catch them if there's a big deviation? Well, no. As you just articulated, if you bring somebody new into the sport and they know the history of testing, what do they do? You go and you get on a juice program.

So the first time they take your blood, you've already got a passport that includes the incorporation of a ped program. So now your benchmark includes the ped program. Does that make sense? Absolutely. And then you get into incremental gains. That's where I, as a physiologist, have a problem when you see somebody in the cycling world, we call it the junior development side. You see somebody coming up through juniors, getting waxed by everybody. They sign with a particular team that has a history, and all of a sudden that person catapults past people that he's never beat before at a professional level, that incremental improvement doesn't add up. We also have what's called Google images nowadays. So you can go and look at,

you can go look at photos, look at somebody four years ago, now look at them a year later, a year later, and all of a sudden you get the separating of the teeth, you get squaring of the forehead, excessive hair, and you parallel that with performance improvements. And I don't know about you guys, but when you're dealing with elite athletes like you guys are and who you deal with, what does it take to get 0.1 improvement out of somebody? Not double digits, 0.1, 0.2. And that's when you have to, and people get really pissed off at me. They're like, oh man, you just, you don't understand hard work. That's probably one of the stupidest comments I've ever heard. I've been a professional coach for 38 years. There's nothing new in the realm of training. You have aerobic capacity, you have strength numbers, you have strength to weight

ratios, you have VO2 max, you have certain performance evaluation. And there's only so many ways the body can adapt, whether it's volume, intensity, or frequency. We all know it. So how do you justify this abnormal incremental improvement? And we have to take it a step further. Mark, if you are beating me and I get popped for a ped program, who in their right mind would think that you could beat me completely clean when I'm on a ped program that has got pop positive for? Which is what was it? What was a huge epiphany for people when they looked at the Tour de France? Because when they crucified Lance and then it came out that, OK, they're going to DQ him and his seven tours. There wasn't anyone in the top 20 that had not already failed a drug test. So if you're going to strip the winner, you have to go back to the 21st guy before you're

going to find a guy that hadn't tested or admitted doing pets. We've seen this. That's where I think the listeners have to kind of look a little deeper. Go ahead. We've seen this in track and field quite a bit too. I remember there was a race where, you know, the first person got popped and as they kind of looked through it more and investigated more, it's like the fourth or fifth, fifth place winner, uh, won a gold medal. I actually had a friend who was a thrower who I think he won a

silver medal and he was gifted or earned a silver medal at an airport in Atlanta. Uh, because that's just like where they finally caught up with him and arranged to give him this medal. But he was like, it was so after the fact that he's like, I still lost. Like, he's like,

I lost in front of everybody. And like, yeah, maybe that guy did do something, but he's like, I don't even care. I just viewed it as like, he threw the shot further than I did.

That's interesting. And for the listeners, we have to remember, as much as we all like to get enamored by the physical achievement, I mean, I still get goosebumps thinking about the Olympics and what it originally represented. You either bypass college to start making money, or you stayed in college with the hopes of trying to get one, maybe two rounds of the Olympics. And it was a complete, true amateur sport. There were no pros. You had to make an executive decision. You were either going to go for the money or you were going to go for the gold medal in an education. Well, that's now,

as you say, been muddled. And then think about your buddy. What about the endorsement deals? I don't know if they caught the guy a year later, 18 months later. No, this is 10 years later. 10 years later, right? So there's no Wheaties box. There's no product endorsements. There's no shoe deals. There's no supplement deals. So what's the lost opportunity cost of revenue for somebody who did do it clean? And then, and I'm not here to get into the moral and the ethical side of it.

But when listeners say, oh, Rob, you're just jaded. You know, you're out, you're on a witch hunt. I'm like, no, I just don't like it when somebody's out there acting like they're this superior individual or athlete, or you've got a training program that likes to say, well, I've got this, I've got this liquid, I've got this, that was almost a Freudian slip there. I've got a magic formula, if we will, that's going to create these superhuman results. I'm like, dude, trust me. I've been an athlete at the Olympic Training Center. I've got degrees more than I'd like to talk about. And there's nothing new under the sun. As you get into the uniqueness of the individual, you may find that this formula works a little

better for one. Maybe this guy needs more rest than the other guy, or this one needs a little bit more head time than he does physical. That's individual. But heart rate ladders, negative splits, HIIT training, I mean, it's nothing new. It's individual, but heart rate ladders, negative splits, HIIT training. I mean, it's nothing new. It's just finding that right ratio of work to rest ratios and then factoring in other things like flexibility, strength to weight ratios, those types of things that really factor into performance. I'm kind of curious about this. There's the logical Rob who can see everything that's going on, who understands like people's drug protocols and all that

type of stuff. But what would the rob that ideally when you look at sport, ideally when you look at motocross, Olympics, et cetera, track, when you look at these sports, what would you like to see? Would you like to see drugs being regulated and athletes being allowed to take certain things to keep that even, even though if that was even, somebody would still try to take something that would get them over the hump of everybody else? Or would you like to see a way to make sure that all athletes are stringently tested enough

so that nobody gets passed, if that were even possible? But what would be the ideal? Yeah, selfishly for me, I'd like the latter of the two because I'm not a naturally gifted athlete. My brother, he could look at anything that I two because I'm not a naturally gifted athlete. My brother, he could look at anything that I worked on for two years and kick my ass, hands down. He's just that much of a natural athlete where I was the guy that had to really grind it out. So I'm always going to be biased towards the individual that has to work for what he gets.

And especially as a performance coach, when you get a lot of kids with a lot of natural talent, you guys know it, you've been around it. They're the biggest thorn in your side because they're so good. They're so cocky. They're so arrogant versus the humble guy over here that just realizes without the grind work, I'm never going to be successful. So yes, in an idealistic world and not to get onto a personal note, but my family has been destroyed by drugs. I've got brothers that'll spend the rest of their life in jail that will never get out because of drugs. So it resonates with me hard because there's been people that have died because of drugs. I've seen my brother on his deathbed because of drug overdoses. I've seen where it takes us. And people go, oh, Rob, you're misconstruing street drugs with PEDs. No, we just mentioned that there was three Danish

riders in the Tour de France that died in their sleep because of an EPO overdose, but they died in the bed next to their partner. If you read the stories of these partners talking about hearing your husband, hearing your partner die of a heart attack while their heart exploded in bed next to them, how do you put a price on that? You know what I mean? So selfishly for me, I'd love to live in my little utopic world. I had a military dad. I'm going to sound like a goody two-shoes, but after seeing what my brothers went through, I never touched a drug. You couldn't even get me remotely close to it. I was petrified of it. Plus I had a reverence for my dad because he'd whip my ass with a paddle like nobody else's. Not an abuse. I'd get disciplined, right?

ass with a paddle like nobody else's, not an abuse. I'd get disciplined, right? So we grew up in that era. I would love to see a clean sport that's legitimate. And I hate to say this because it sounds very textbook cliche-ish. As soon as you put a dollar at the end of it, you're never going to have clean because the money motivates. Whether it's a physician that has a workaround, an athlete that's willing to sacrifice their health. And I think there wouldn't be any listeners that wouldn't agree. You get on a heavy pet program. For those of you that like motors, whether it's cars or motorcycles or whatever, if you mod the motor of a vehicle, you better build the infrastructure around it to support it, or that motor is just going to destroy the infrastructure that you've dropped it into. That's what goes to, I thought you had a really good question there because on your first example,

let them just run with a brum. Okay. I'm okay with that, with one stipulation that you're under the direct supervision of a doctor that's going to look at your blood work to make sure that you don't die of an EPO overdose, you know, and all the negative health ramifications that come with it, because we all know you see guys that get jacked up on steroids. What do they end up popping next? A tendon or a ligament? I mean, we've seen people snap bones because the bones don't grow with the density of the strength of the muscle. Well, we don't think about that when we're getting into it. We only think about it after the ramifications have happened. And we got to think, oh, shit, how do I back myself out of that? That's the hard part. So that's a great question. I mean, I've had some public discussions about, you know, just let them run what they've run. Unfortunately, we'd be our own worst enemies. Because if two is good, our mindset's four is twice as good. That's just where we go. strongman and in powerlifting where there's organizations that just don't test and it's

people are okay with it they're like hey yeah whatever bring whatever you got i'm gonna bring whatever i got and we're gonna kind of roll the dice and kind of see what happens the interesting thing is there's not really any money involved so i would say that even before the dollar signs start to come in, I think there's something else at play. And I think that this is the creator of CrossFit once said this, he said, men are willing to die for points. And that's kind of what it is. It's a game. And I'm going to try to beat you whatever way I can. And my morals are my morals and your morals are your morals. What do you think is the moral dilemma that surrounds performance enhancing drugs in general? Because how is it all that much

different of taking a supplement like alpha lipoic acid, which might help regulate your blood glucose versus taking like insulin? Like insulin is more powerful, but there may be, maybe someone can argue they're doing something similar. Like, what are your thoughts on that? Because, uh, people do take any and everything, but once it actually works and is actually like a, there's a measure that we can say, okay, well that should actually really work. Like testosterone really fucking works. Once something works, then all of a sudden people have a problem with it. So I wonder like, what do you think in your opinion is the, is the moral dilemma that sets people back? Is it the rules that have been regulated by our sporting organizations or is it something else at play here?

I apologize. Elaborate just a little bit in regards to the moral dilemma. Somebody crossing that line and saying they're going to do it. Yeah. One guy deciding to do it, one guy deciding not to do it. I mean, what do you even think is, like, so my, in my experience, the only moral dilemma behind not taking steroids is the fact that most of them are injectable. If they weren't injectable, like, you know, now we have SARMs, and people are like, yeah, sure, I popped a few SARMs here and there. we have now we have SARMs and people are like, yeah, sure.

I popped a few SARMs here and there. So that's kind of the, I think that people, it's really easy for people to put a stigma behind steroids and say, that's cheating. It's like, no, you're not committed to taking a shot is what this is about. You don't want to stick a needle in your arm. So that's, you know, I just kind of wonder like, what's the, like in your opinion, like, what do you think is like, maybe the – why are they even illegal in the first place, I guess? I think it's because of the health ramifications at the end of everything.

Because it's easy to look at the front side of it and lose perspective of the back side of it. What's the long-term ramifications of blank? I agree with that. It's fair. I mean, look at people who gain weight training for an Ironman or a marathon. That seems counterintuitive. And you start looking at high adrenal fatigue. You look at high cortisol levels and you, but my goodness, you know, they're putting on five, 10 pounds of body fat running 60, 70 miles a week. That seems counterintuitive. I think the moral dilemma for a majority of the people is the health

ramifications. The problem is to your point, most people are not people is the health ramifications. The problem is, to your point, most people are not aware of the health ramifications. They run into it headlong. No disrespect to physicians, but if you go in and you're like, hey, I've heard from a friend, from a friend, wink, wink, I'm just asking a question. If I say that I'm having a hard time getting an erection and I can get on this testosterone cream, what's that going to do to my clean and jerk? It's like, oh, all right, well, now we're really getting to the meat of why you want to know what you could or couldn't do, or you're trying to cut weight or whatever. I think that moral dilemma is cost benefit. That's really what it's going to boil down to for somebody that has

the potential, because I say this all the time in the motocross world. I can't imagine being 17 years old, making a moral dilemma on the potential of making four or five, 10, $15 million over the course of a career. Can you imagine being 17 and you've got this care, the ultimate carrot, which is money, fame, fortune, women at 17. I mean, it's easy for us at our age now to go now I could pass really at 17. Do we have that much common sense? I would say not. And then you have to look at your immediate, who's your network of people? Do they really have your health at the forefront? Usually they don't. Yeah. Getting involved in these things,

getting involved in these things that are early ages could be really detrimental. It's interesting. We look at like, from a music perspective, we'd look at it differently. You know, someone was smoking some weed and making some great music. We'd be like, Hey man, It's interesting. We look at like from a music perspective, we'd look at it differently. You know, someone was smoking some weed and making some great music. We'd be like, Hey man, that's great. Yeah. Sounds fantastic.

But when it comes to sports, it's a little different, but I do agree with you that people don't know the ramifications, but I also would argue that people don't know the ramifications of much of anything. Taking in too much sodium, taking in too much potassium, you know,

too much, too much of this or too much of that. They don't know how much their vitamin C is doing and so forth. Yeah. And that's where you get anything. And that's what I have a disdain towards the internet is everyone's an expert. And, you know, the dangers that are associated with that, because all it takes is somebody that, you know, gets on a rampage, starts promoting something, has a little bit of success behind the scenes, and then everybody thinks that's the gospel. And that's a very, very

frightening place to be. And to me, it's an ironic twist because you look at the proliferation of information that's available, and yet people aren't using the information that's available to go out and create really bad health decisions to then have to deal with the ramifications of a lack of doing some research on the information that's available, but you didn't apply it to me. It's just an ironic dichotomy because there's a lot of physicians out there that if you go in and say you're having problems in the bedroom or you're having problems with sleeping or whatever, and they're like, okay, well, let's, let's do a topical this or topical that, or let's do a shot or a pill or whatever. There's other ways, but where's the code of ethics of the physician that realizes the person really doesn't need it. And at the end of the day, hey, if I

don't write you a script, I'm not going to make money other than your office visit. But if I can get you on a script, which comes back indirectly to, you know, just follow the money. And I don't want that to sound jaded. It's just reality. Follow the money. It tends to supersede common sense. It tends to supersede true moral agenda. And then we're left with the aftermath of it.

Yeah, I wanted to ask a very unfair question to everybody. a very unfair question to everybody but if it is you know if if it's the health ramifications um there doesn't seem to be much moral dilemma on like alcohol and like that's everywhere and like we can you know purchase that at any corner store it's there we do know some of the health ramifications but yet nobody cares it's at you know barbecues every weekend. Nobody's giving up. No one cares. Or what about the way we eat? Yeah, so that's another thing. But I just wanted to put it on a certain quote-unquote drug.

But I just wanted to see what you guys thought about that. Well, for myself, it always boils down to self-responsibility and accountability. If I don't have enough money in the bank, I'm responsible for that. Either go make more money or cut costs. If I don't like my strength to weight ratios, I need to be more consistent in the gym. It always boils down to me. As much as I have a disdain for the government, the government isn't looking out for us. Follow the money. Like you were just saying, Andrew, the whole, the whole idea is they're, they're going to be making alcohol as readily available as possible. Why? I mean, here we are, look at the whole COVID situation. They didn't shut down the liquor stores, you know? And if you look at the death rate associated with COVID, what was the statistic? I think don't hold me to it. I saw a couple of statistics. I think it was 94% of the people that died of COVID had another

comorbidity issue, high blood pressure, obesity, et cetera. You don't see the government going out and saying, hey, why don't you just give me a free membership to the gym? No, they want you to go get a shot, right? And if you follow the money, the government's behind the shot. So to Andrew's point, it doesn't matter what the government, I don't care if they make alcohol free. At some point, we have to be responsible because it starts out pretty benign. Seems fun. Hey, check it out. We're having a good time until someone gets what?

In a car wreck and kills somebody because of the excessive drinking. Well, who did that? Nobody made you drink that. So to me, at the end of the day, whether it's an ethical decision about PEDs, excessive alcohol, excessive alcohol, cigarettes. It was interesting when we were in Australia, we were doing a couple of performance camps. And if you look at the pack of cigarettes in Australia, they literally show a fetus as a by-product of a mom that smoked on the pack. On the other side of the pack, it shows a set of lungs associated with smoking and it's

on the package. What is it? It's a deterrent to try to keep people to go, Hey, this, this is what's happening to me when I consume this. Isn't it interesting that the government and that, because it goes back to the original question that Andrew had, it doesn't matter. You could put on there this, you're an idiot. You're going to die. You can put on there whatever you want. I mean, there's already little statements that say, Hey, this causes cancer.

Hey, this causes birth defects. And yet we still run down and spend $7 for a pack of cigarettes. Accountability and responsibility. And you and I, all four of us could do a fun show on, what if we just had some absolutes? But there may be some listeners that are offended on that. But at some point, wouldn't it be cool if you had a healthcare system where everybody agreed to the same code of ethics that said, I'm not going to eat white sugars and I'm not going to eat white starches and I'm going to exercise 30 minutes a day and I'm going to stay in heart rate zone two to reduce the production of free radicals. And I'm going to make sure I sleep nine hours a night and I'm going to get five sleep cycles and I'm going to get two hours of deep sleep.

All the things that we know are necessary for health, wellness, and then performance. That seems kind of idealistic, but why is it so far-fetched? Absolutely. That actually, that kind of made me curious on something. When you're looking at a lot of the individuals within, I guess, sports, right? Mm-hmm. sports right when you have guys that are like really genetically gifted and there's there's like such a range right i think this is kind of what i think it's kind of simple when you're looking at a sport and there's a certain rule set ideally you want just to follow the rule set when

we look at bodybuilding there are like there's the npc and the npc is the national physique committee and they don't test at all so that's why you have bodybuilders that are able to be 270 300 pounds and they're massive and there are other federations that test and guys that compete in those federations uh they're tested for different types of drugs like 30 40 pounds less and they're like exactly, 40 pounds less. And they're like, exactly, 30, 40, 50 pounds less. But it's just really tough within sport because you can have guys like you mentioned, like your brother, who can do something for a few years and be really good. People that are just really, really,

they have a lot of talent for something and then they train a lot and then they're really good. And you have guys that really love it. They want to put their all into it, but they can never measure up to the guy that legit just has that right so it's it's it's weird because it's like whenever people look at a lot of these sports because of what we're talking about here they're like everybody at the top is

taking something and i don't necessarily believe that to an extent i believe that there are a lot of people but i also think that there are a lot of people there that are just like extremely gifted that aren't like even in football or like sports where people have to be pretty big and strong. There are a lot of people that are just really just gifted at that and they don't have to, but it kind of muddles the whole thing. I would have to agree with you. It's almost like a statistical ratio if you think about it, because if you take a hundred of those guys out of a thousand that are naturally talented and they're doing a ped program, the other, we're screwed. We're screwed before we even get started because we were already at a disadvantage on natural talent.

And we're not using it as an excuse or a crutch or we're, you know, we're not whining and need a tissue to wipe our tears. We just realize, Hey, I'm not as gifted as you. Then you take a gifted athlete that gets on a ped program. And now the gap is insurmountable. And that's where you almost have to have two classifications. Those that are just, you know, Hey, I'm on it, run what you brung. And those that are going to say, you know what? We're not, of course, there's going to be those that say that I'm not on something that still will cheat. I mean, that's just, it's been around since the beginning of time. But yeah, I wish it would be that simple and that black and white in regards to a decision that switches on or off. The answer is yes or no. It'll never stay that definitive, whether it's ego. And that's where you start getting back to

self-accountability. And I always say to my athletes, especially when you're dealing with motor sports, you know, money can buy a motor. That's a lot faster than the one that I can afford. So am I not going to race because I just don't have those resources? And I always say to them, look, what you've got to do is find where your weaknesses are. So let's say you guys are beating me. I always micro analyze itze it and go, okay, where is his weaknesses on the racetrack?

Where in the racetrack could be Ironman Hawaii race course, or it could be, you know, at Loretta Lynn's Amateur National Championship for motocross. I always say to my athletes, we have to race your strengths to expose their weaknesses. So if they're not good in crosswinds on the bike and we get an excessively windy section on the bike, you've got to react their weaknesses. So if they're not good in crosswinds on the bike and we get an

excessively windy section on the bike, you've got to react and go. But that's where that being properly prepared, and it sounds a little cliche-ish, but be ready for everything and surprised by nothing. You've got to always have your arsenal, your data bank of strengths, your portfolio of strengths has to outnumber the other guys. So if he or she is only good in one area and you're good in five, well, you can take those extra four and expose their weakness, but you've got to execute the competition by exposing to that weakness, which is then what comes back to proper preparation. I see too many, and I hate the word performance coach, trainers, it's such an adulterated word anymore. The bottom line is you need to know the

individual. It sounds, again, pretty cliche. Start where you're at. Look where you want to go. What stands in between you? Those are usually frustrations. Convert those weaknesses into strengths. Take those strengths and use them to expose your competition's weakness. So you get somebody that's more naturally gifted, but maybe they don't take sleep seriously. You come in rested, well-fed and hydrated. You have stabilized blood sugar. What are you able to do? You're able to focus and rip their head off just because you're more properly prepared, not because you have a better arsenal of resources. You just caught them off guard because they didn't come in.

The mental resiliency, you get to a racetrack and all of a sudden skies open up and it starts to rain. Well, if you've been around little ones, if they're a little bit low blood sugar and they're a little tired, the littlest thing just sets them off. Right. So when you get into high levels of competition, if you can come in controlling what I call the non sweating components of performance, sleep, food, hydrated, good range of motion, mentally focused. That all has to happen before you walk into the competition arena. Then you can go ahead and get the upper hand, catch them off guard. I always screw this comment up by Mike Tyson. What does he say? Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Yes.

But it's that guy that can get up five times after being knocked down four and says, I plan, you know, nobody ever plans to get knocked out. Nobody plans on getting off the mat. But if you do hit the mat, you're like, all right, what do I need to do? Maybe it's a little more diaphragmatic breathing. Maybe I'm holding my breath. Maybe my oxygen penetration rate's not in the blood as high as it should be. I got a guy in my corner that yells, BB.

Well, you and I know it's code for belly breathing, diaphragmically breathe, get that oxygen content up. All of a sudden the heart rate comes down. This guy's just breathing like a cheetah that just chased down an antelope. And then you just picked yourself off the mat. You regroup, wham, you knock his lights out. And what's the highlight? Holy cow. You went from off the mat to just pop the dude and knock him out. me there's a plan it's i didn't expect to get knocked out but i better plan for that so that's where taking your weakness converting them to strength taking that list of strengths and exposing their weaknesses is key catching them off guard i love that first off i love that you use that analogy because like that breathing aspect is

so important i think a lot of athletes who don't really even pay attention to that aspect of things as far as their breathing is concerned but with the amount of experiences that you've had through sport, looking at a bunch of different sports, and when people watched Icarus, now there's this idea that everybody at the top is on something. But personally, working with so many athletes, seeing so many top level athletes through sport, have you seen athletes that legitimately are at the top that you know haven't taken anything to be there do you know of any personally or from what you've seen is it really that a majority of athletes that are at the top of their sport or at the very top are likely doing something that's not tracked well here's what's cool about what you just said it's you know the challenge that you run into is

age groups you know i've got i've got a young man logan best very young on a factory yamaha program right now he is probably one of the top national racers in the world but there's going to become a point where he will get a pro contract and that transition is going to have to be made because you're walking into an arena where everybody's made that executive decision to cross that line. So you'll go, you're on that trajectory of improvement. His incremental improvement every year has been about a half a percent to a percent, which is expected. Hormones have kicked in, puberty's kicked in, the strength to weight ratios, everything is on par. So to answer your question,

anybody that's at the elite part of their game, you've got to look at their age, because some of these sports are very young person's age. Look at tennis. Some of these kids are 21, 22, ranked seventh, eighth in the world, right? So moto is the same way. A lot of these guys are 22, 23, and they're in the prime. There are some now that are getting closer to 30, but for the most part, and I think to answer your question, that's where there's a transition. No, no, no. Some are, some are, everybody is. There's just a point of diminishing returns because it goes back to what we said. You get guys that have the natural talent that you can, you can cultivate that with strength to weight ratios, improved endurance, strength, flexibility.

You can get that going, but then it hits a point in diminishing returns where, you know, you jumped into the, a different pond, you know, you cross the street and went to another pond. And particularly in something like motocross, I mean, these parents will kind of do anything for their kid, right? Like, you know, maybe some have different morals than others, but it seems like there's a heavy cost to even get into it. Like, uh, you know, maybe some have different morals than others, but it seems like there's a heavy cost to even get into it.

Like, uh, you need a bike. First of all, you need a helmet. Like these things are expensive. Uh, they crash these things a lot. They need to be tuned up and fixed a lot. And then you need a trailer. You need a truck to drive the trails to drive the trailer. And you can't just get any old truck because you have to have a bad-ass truck because it has to be better than the guy that parks next to you.

And, and there's time on the racing track and stuff. So I imagine like parents and the children and the family is like really, you know, well vested in this whole thing. And there might be some well-meaning people in the beginning and they're supportive and they're like, my kid's excited about this. I'll just do any and everything for him. Sounds great. But now the kid starts to feel pressure. He starts to win. And like you said, as he gets older and more mature, maybe he's like, man, there's just

a lot at stake here and getting better in the gym is fun, but it's actually pretty hard. I do need to probably put on a little bit more muscle. I do probably need to be a little bit better on the track. And next thing you know, they're probably off kind of doing similar. And then plus the conversations that are in the locker room and so on. And eventually the pressure probably gets to most of them, right? Yeah, it really does. The typical, I would say to race at that elite level to hit all the amateur nationals, you're looking at a quarter of a million dollars a year.

And you're talking with a kid that's nine, 10, 11 years old. So you look at that, you know, if you're going to try to maintain that there's a very popular rider, you guys may even be aware of him. Brian Deegan. I started metal, metal militia.

He was part of that whole freestyle motocross. Well, he's got an up and coming rider, his son's Hayden Deegan. And he was on a public podcast. It's probably the same one that you saw me on Mark with a Jace with gypsy tails and he said he's already spent a million dollars and so you know now that's to perform at the very very top of the level some of it comes through sponsorship right some of it but you'd be surprised how much these parents put out even though there's their

riders are sponsored but to your point, the challenge that you run into is we're a very young man's sport. So you've got a very limited window of time. So when an injury ensues, that's the biggest dilemma that we all face. Doesn't matter what, but let's face it, you have a higher propensity of getting hurt racing a dirt bike than you do being a triathlete. Now, as soon as I say that, I'm going to sound like a hypocrite because I've actually looked this statistic up because I say that, I'm going to sound like a hypocrite because I've actually looked this statistic up because I was like, well, what percentage of people that race motocross, what's the percentage of injuries? And then I looked it up and said, all right,

what was the sport that has the highest level of death rate? Please or not, it's cycling, which my favorite sport, I personally participate as the half fireman. I love, I feel like I can race that distance competitively. Well, you think about it as a percentage and the law of percentages, it's more deadly than motocross because of the sheer numbers. So I made it, I made a fool of myself because I brought that up to my wife. She's like, oh, motocross is so stupid. And I'm like, no, no, no. I said, you know, let's take a look. And she does a lot of Ironmans and stuff. And all of a sudden I find out her sport's deadlier than motocross is. But going back to your point though, Mark, that's where we see a lot of introduction. But going back to your point though, Mark,

that's where we see a lot of introduction to drugs because if anyone has a torn ACL, they go get a knee surgery, what do they drop in? Some synthetic HGH to facilitate that recovery. Well, now all of a sudden you go to a riding coach who is old school, who had a riding coach that was old school, that was old. Now we're back to the football mentality that we grew up in high school. So go take HGH. What's that going to do? It's going to make me excessively lean. You're going to recover quicker. Well, if I just got banged up, I've got a sponsorship obligation

to a particular, we call them OEMs, the manufacturers of the bikes. All of a sudden, I've got an obligation to an OEM and I've got to race in three weeks. You damn sure can imagine they're going to be looking for some ways to get that body to heal up quicker than what's healthy and natural. To play devil's advocate again a little bit, it's my understanding that, you know, redlining your heart rate and getting your heart rate, you know, above 180 for excessive periods of time is, could maybe be argued as being just as unhealthy as not doing anything because of the potential damage to the heart. So if people were concerned about their health, if health was the main concern, wouldn't they just not ride dirt bikes?

Or wouldn't they just not compete? If you're really considering health, because once you start to compete against somebody, that's normally when we start to get hurt. 100% agree. And this is the dilemma that I swim upstream against in every single vertical of business that we're in. Because I've been fired more times than I've been hired because people will say, hey, I thought you were going to bust my balls and really take me to the next level. And I'm like, well, looking at all your biofeedback

indicators, you've got suppressed appetite, you have low sex drive, you're craving simple sugars, you have night sweats. You can't even give me an hour of deep sleep, much less two. And you want me to give you more volume? You want me to give you more intensity? That's counterintuitive. And I don't want the listeners who don't know me from Adam to go, oh, he's just a goody two shoes. I feel, and this is something as a company that we're going to be launching in 2022, I believe coach accountability has got to be taken to the stratosphere. And I'm going to put my money where my mouth is, and we're going to release something

in all four of our verticals that nobody's ever done before. And it's all going to be based on verifying the health and the wellness of an individual, not even getting into the performance realm. We'll get there eventually, but I will guarantee you that I will keep you in a mode of health, i.e. blood chemistry is healthy, adrenals are healthy, all of the different systems in the body. Now, there's going to be some, this is where it'll bring our conversation full circle. This is where there has to be accountability. If you're not going, as you say, Mark, if you're not going to put the heart rate monitor on, keep a governor on that number. Now, what we do is we do max heart rate assessments with our clients every six to eight weeks. So that way we know we're training with accurate heart rate zones because as the aerobic system develops,

your heart rate zones are going to deviate sometimes by only a half a percent or one, but that could be that fine line between overtraining and undertraining. So we're very meticulous with that. For some of the listeners that go, oh yeah, but heat and dehydration, it all influences numbers. You're exactly right. Even more so if you're realizing that the surface area of a cell is not carrying as much oxygen because you're at 4% dehydration level, hopefully that's an epiphany that you realize the importance of hydration. So what we're going back to is your point, Mark, is if you're doing something and you know it's unhealthy and you continue to do it, then I cannot be a part of that self-decision

that you're willing to make. Again, I'm not putting myself on a pedestal, but no matter what our ages are, you are somebody's child. You are somebody's child. You are somebody's partner. You are somebody's, somebody cares about you. And so when you boil that kind of stuff down and you say to yourself, how do we keep that from happening? So I'm doing a coaching certification program that any coach that I release, if any of our

clients ever get diagnosed with health-related issues, we will give 100% of our money back to that athlete because I'm willing to put my nuts on the line. Now, there are some things that you're going to be held responsible for. You have to get blood work drawn. You need to be able to allow us to look at your dashboard. I have a programming department that's developed a human telemetry dashboard where we can rate heart rate data in real time. So I can have an athlete in Australia that steps on the scale and it updates my file folder in my server in real time. So if you step on and I see that there's, because we look at

your body weight in the mornings is my sign of inflammation and swelling and your body weight in the evening is a sign of, excuse me of your hydration levels. Well, your hydration levels are based on basal metabolic needs and sweat rate. So if you step on the scale in the evening and I see that we're outside of that 2% range of loss, on the immediate, I can change your workout when you wake up in the morning. Your workout could be changed in real time. But here's the caveat. If you've hired me to take you to that top of the spear and I'm telling you, you need to back off, what do they usually say? Clipped. And I'm okay with that because I sleep really, really good at night knowing that no one's going to call me up and say, you roached my adrenals,

you're a dick. And that's what I have to sleep with. You know, I've got three little kids. I say little, they're not 21, 18 and 16, but they're always going to be little to me. Right. My goal is to leave them a legacy to leave them, you know, and again, this for someone who doesn't know me, maybe like, Oh, this guy's a little fluffy. You know, my goal is to leave the world a little healthier. And I found it. And when I was growing up, I was a fat little kid all the way up to seventh grade. And there was a guy that was the PE coach. And at the time in middle school, he had sixth, seventh and eighth grade. And he came to the sixth grade, he came to sixth grade class. He says, I'm opening this gym up Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning from 6am to seven and school started at 720. I'm a fat little kid. I'm in fifth grade coming into sixth grade. And

all of a sudden this guy's like, I'm going to teach you everything you need to know about strength training. I went home, asked my dad. He goes, yeah, you can go. You got to walk yourself there. Well, school starts at six. Excuse me. Sun's not up until after seven o'clock. So I'm walking myself to school scared to death because that's when Friday the 13th was out and all the guys are out to kill you. But that gentleman, Randy Lauder's changed my life forever because I'm now 53 years old. And my entire career has been based on that one gentleman opening up a gym to teach me how to turn my health around. And it wasn't that I had bad parents. They didn't know that we don't know what we don't know. And it's so cool because to me, he made my life better. And I feel fortunate that I can try to shed information that

I learned at the Olympic Training Center, things that I learned in school and cut through the quagmire of bullshit and really get people to understand how the body reacts to, as you said, Mark, stress, excessive stress, free radical damage, adrenal fatigue. What causes that? You know, more is not always better. And I've been slammed on social media by being declared as somebody who's against HIIT training. I'm not against HIIT training. What I'm against is somebody that is sleeping three hours a night, already shows signs of adrenal fatigue and the big four, night sweats, no sex drive, craving simple sugars, tired and you can't sleep. And then you want me to give you HIIT training intervals. That makes me irresponsible. And if you want to fire me for that, or you want to say that I'm anti-HIIT training. No, I just don't feel like that individual has shown that he or she is capable of handling more stress. We understand exactly what you're talking about. And I think maybe the easiest example would be something like mobility. You know, if you're in a sport that let's just hypothetically say, uh, you need to be able to touch your toes. Uh, well, we want you to be above and beyond that. You know, it'd be great if you

could put your hands on the floor, uh, in that particular stretch and same thing with like a deadlift or bench press a squat. If you're going to handle 400 pounds in any of those lifts, it would be nice if you had the capacity to maybe do about 425 so that when you do it, it doesn't suck the life out of you and mess you up for days and sometimes weeks to come and fry your nervous system and so on. So we're in 100% agreement and alignment with a lot of the information that you're given today. And I got to say, I got to point this out before and Seema asks a question here is, you're one of the most articulate people that I think we've ever had on the show. We have really outstanding and intelligent people on the show, but you're doing a great, like I'm throwing stuff at you, like knowing that it's kind of halfway bullshit,

but I'm just kind of, I'm just kind of spit balling to make it argumentative on purpose. And you're doing a great job of dissecting it and giving us great information. So I appreciate it. and you're doing a great job of dissecting it and giving us great information. So I appreciate it. No, thank you very much. And it's, you know, having a platform like this is, I think, the benefit of the Internet. There's a lot of bad stuff on the Internet. When I mean bad, just a waste of time. You know what I mean?

The two most valuable things in life. And I just find the Internet sometimes is just full of so much garbage. And it's become a personal vision and a mission for myself is to try to break through that misinformation that's floating around out there. If you're going to fire me because I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear, I'm okay with that. But when somebody comes to me and says, yeah, if I had heard this 15 years ago, where would I be? That's what breaks my heart. And if I can get in front of a million people that now all of a sudden they can look at things a little bit differently and put it in the right perspective, you bring up one mark that I think is so important. What value is strength without flexibility? You know what I mean? And when you get into

the biomechanics of movement, and let's just go back to motocross, you know, we have a, when you come into a deep corner, you want to keep that foot up because otherwise you'll grab, it's what we call, what we call dabbing your foot. You wear those big boots, you catch your toe in the corner. And what happens is because you have so much velocity, it will, it'll blow the knee out. You'll get an ACL, PCL tear, torn meniscus, just like that. Cause you come in at 30, 40 miles an hour. Well, when I hear somebody tore their meniscus, tore their ACL, PCL, because they don't have the hip flexibility to keep their foot out of a rut, that to me shouldn't be happening, which is what like we have a network of MotoE facilities. MotoE is our motocross division. We have a network of facilities.

And when you go to those facilities, our riding coaches are advocating the importance of flexibility to the point that you just said. It's not fun. It's not doing trigger point therapy and foam rolling and contrast therapy. It's not enjoyable. It's like watching grass grow. We all admit it. But when I can get them to resonate with the idea that that's going to improve my corner speed and reduce my risk of injuries, now they're in. And you're talking seven and eight-year-old kids that need to be more flexible. You guys see it all the time. But that's where it comes back full circle is what good is strength without flexibility? I've gotten my balls busted on public forums because I don't allow my athletes to do squats. They're like, oh my gosh, it's the most functional movement. I'm like, you fucking can't even do a squat up against the wall with a fit ball. And you want me to put weight

on the top of your shoulders. And then you want to be, you've got a bulging disc now and you have a herniated disc now because you put not even a lot of weight, just fucking put a 45 on either side. They can't even squat 130 pounds with good form, but it's a functional movement. You've got functional movement with no flexibility. What the hell is that worth? It just blows my mind. And then again, people take it out of context. And I did a CBS special with one of our top pros, and I'm very big on ice cream.

I think ice cream is a good reward. I think it's a good flavor food. And I'm not talking junk ice cream. I'm talking about good ice cream. The only thing CBS could focus on is when I asked my rider, did you have your ice cream yesterday? So I became known as the coach that advocates ice cream. They didn't ask me about why I suggest ice cream.

Well, the only two macronutrients that satisfies appetite is what? Protein and fat. Well, what's in good Haagen-Dazs ice cream? Protein and fat. Now, if you want to have three eggs and two avocados and some EVO and sea salt before bed, go for it. I'm doing Haagen-Dazs ice cream, protein and fat. Now, if you want to have three eggs and two avocados and some EVO and sea salt before bed, go for it. I'm doing Haagen-Dazs. Sorry. That's just the way it is. And I know there's sugar in it and I know it's not the healthiest thing, but it's a feel good food for me. Hey, I'll wear it. But when I'm sitting here at 6% body fat and you're telling me

I can't have my Haagen-Dazs, then we're going to have a debate. I want to know, because you work with a lot of youth athletes. And one thing that I've noticed on the internet over the years is I was lucky enough to start lifting when I was 13. When I was 13, there was not much stuff on YouTube. I wasn't even on watching YouTube until I was like 16 or 17. And I didn't understand the world of drugs until I was like already years into lifting. And I was like, I'm good. I've lifted long enough. I've made some good gains. I don't need to do that anymore. But now when I'm on the internet, I see some of these young kids like, shoot, there's a TikTok thing going around where these young teenagers are taking SARMs because they

see people taking SARMs. Like there's a TikTok trend of kids talking about taking SARMs at 15, 16 years old. Right. And there are all these channels that are talking about, oh, this person's taking drugs and this person's taking drugs. So all these kids are like, well, if I want to be that big, I have to take some drugs. Right. So with you working with all these youth athletes and them not being naive because there is YouTube, there is TikTok, there's all these types of apps. What are you seeing new challenges and trying to deter them from that route? Or like, what have you been noticing? You're 100% Johnny on the spot. The one that really rocked my world was two years ago, I had a dad that called me up. He had an 11 year old boy and wanted to know when he should start taking HGH.

This was two years ago. So like you say, TikTok, I don't think TikTok was about all the way then, but like you say, it wasn't trending like it is now. But yeah, it's unbelievable. And this is where you get into the football mentality. I'm doing it because he said do it and he said it and he said it, but nobody's getting into the science of it because if you get into the science of it, you talk too much. And I'm like, well, it goes back to the beginning of our conversation today. Let me walk you through the long-term ramifications because that's my responsibility to reverse engineer this. It's really easy to get excited about decreased body fat, increased strength to weight ratios, and bigger VO2 max numbers, and all the telemetry information. But at what cost are we going to get that? So absolutely. And the worst part is you have snowflake parents that have snowflake kids and you get that combination going and it's a double screw because they think everybody should

be a champion and they run into this mindset. Well, if they're doing it, we should do it. It's your freaking kid. You know what I mean? Are you going to literally, are you going to start smashing the growth plates and then be pissed off that they don't grow the way they're supposed to? And you're throwing them into certain ranges of motion exercise wise that is destroying their knees, not even counting what they're doing in a sport-specific environment. You look at something like soccer, football, anything that involves acceleration, deceleration, pivot, and re-acceleration. Think about the amount of torque, lateral torque on those knee joints, hip joints, lower back. And now you want to try to add another dynamic of juicing up their performance when biomechanically they're not even stable

enough to handle a non-juiced up environment. Like you were saying there, you know, you take somebody that's 14 years old, they look like a drunk giraffe running. I mean, they have no dexterity. They have no, I mean, they just look like an absolute mess of bones running, right? And now you want to throw more weight on that because you put on some more muscle mass, which then they can't handle the original inertia. Now they certainly can't handle this inertia. And then we get just a cascade of issues, tendon issues, ligament issues, muscle strain issues. And then, not to sound cynical, the frustrating part is then they come back and say, fix it.

And I'm like, well, you should have listened three years ago. We told you. And I don't want to sound cynical. It's not like I told you so, but I fucking told you so. So I don't know what you want me to do now. You want me to undo what I told you was going to happen. And that's when I, I have to be very respectful when I say this, I'm very selective with who we work with because I'm not here to try to convince you anymore. I didn't create physiology. I didn't create the principles of nutrition, but I respect them. And if you're not going to respect them,

what do you expect out of me? Because when you try to, when you try to overdo the principles of physics, you overdo physiology, nutrition, there's going to be a negative fallout. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. And again, I don't want the new listeners to think that I'm an asshole. It's just, I'm not interested in picking up the pieces that you chose to blow apart when you knew better.

Now, when I get somebody that comes from another program, 17 years old, can't get an erection, can't sleep through the night, I'm more than happy to help you. More than happy because you didn't know. Now, the hard part about it is is this is going to sound a little bit awkward. The person that's already smoked his adrenals at 18 and 19, he will listen to every single thing I say because he's already bought the T-shirt. He's the best guy to work with. Unfortunately, he's already prematurely fatigued and he'll never reach his potential. I've never, ever seen it.

Somebody that's been diagnosed with Epstein-Barr or adrenal fatigue ever reach their full. Notice I said full potential. I didn't say that it kept them from becoming number one, but I'm saying their full potential because then we get into psychosomatic issues and things like that. What are some things that can benefit sleep and are there any performance enhancing drugs that help with sleep that actually would work that would, I guess, not offset all your natural stuff that you need to sleep properly? Yeah, sleep to me is an interesting animal because it's so simple, but yet people have convoluted it. There's only you think about the hierarchy of needs when you go to bed at night. And I always use the example of a young infant.

Take an 18 month old child. Can you imagine it's fussy? And you go, no, no, little Johnny, we're just going to go to bed. It'll be good. That little guy is going to scream, get out of the bed. He's going to do it. That's the easiest example I can ever give of hierarchy of needs. What I mean by that is for people that are not satisfying appetite, that's number one always. You go to bed hungry, that hierarchy of needs is going to be like, screw sleep, feed me. I don't like this. And when did the rules change when we had an 18-month-old to when we were 18? When did those rules change?

I still haven't figured out when that transition took place because it's still fundamentals of physics. It's still fundamentals of nutrition. So to answer your question, though, Mark, when it comes to sleep, you got to satisfy appetite. You have to go to bed sexually satisfied. You need to have that room super dark and super cold, no light, no audible sounds because our brain wants to engage in any conversation it hears. If you have to even sleep with earplugs, foam, and a white noise with the fan, get it cold. So what we do is with these garments, they've come a long way that we can actually look at sleep patterns. I look for a minimum of five

sleep cycles a night. I look for a minimum of two hours of deep sleep, and it's what we call sleep ratios, deep sleep to awake time. I'm looking for two hours of deep sleep to as close to zero of awake time, unless it's to get up to urinate or something like that. But you mentioned the idea of, I know you called it performance enhancing drugs for sleep. Let's go with some of the more benign ones, melatonin and some of the other ones that are out there. And I need to be very careful when I say this. If your doctor's got you on sleep meds, I'm certainly not a doctor. I'm not trying to supersede a physician, but I do want you to educate yourself on just a couple things. When you take some of these sleep drugs, they don't increase your deep sleep. That's why I love the watch. The watch is a non-emotional evaluation of what's the quality of sleep. Just because you laid there for nine hours doesn't mean you

rejuvenated your body. When you know that deep sleep rejuvenates your body at a hormonal level, and you know that the light sleep is what rejuvenates you mentally, that has to be job number one to evaluate what leads to that, which goes back to what I said. Satisfy appetite, go to bed sexually satisfied, make the room dark and cold and have no sound. When you artificially put yourself into a mode of sleep, what people don't realize is it's not allowing you to get into the rejuvenation cycles. It's putting your brain in a false sense of it's asleep, but there's nothing physiologically beneficial coming out of it. That's a pretty frightening thought. And that's what I like about the watches. And again, anyone that's listening, please don't go off your medicines, but go question your doctor as to, or do yourself a

favor. Let me take a spoonful of my own medicine right here on today's show. Get yourself a watch and look at your sleep patterns. Take it, look at your sleep patterns. Don't take it, look at your sleep patterns. Now we take it a step further. We can look at sleep numbers, but how are you performing in the gym? How are you performing athletically? What's your mental clarity? Are you still really moody or are you all of a sudden a new person? Now we're onto something. This is why we require our athletes. I mean, they don't have to be like obsessive compulsive with it, but we ask them to maintain a food log. We use MyFitnessPal personally only because it's easy to copy and paste and move it forward and it integrates with the Garmin platform.

So what am I able to do? I'm able to avoid a huge calorie gap. I was mentioning Logan Best. He'll burn six to 7,000 calories a day in one ride session. And when I get him to understand an extra large egg is only 75 calories, and yes, the egg is the amino index of an egg is 100%. We get that, right? And I always say to them, get your calculator out. How many eggs do you have to eat to get 6,000 calories? When you're telling me you're full eating three at breakfast. Because I want these young athletes to understand calorie density versus nutrient density.

Fruits and vegetables are nutrient dense. That's awesome. But they're calorically anemic. And so when you have an athlete that's burning three, four, five, 6,000 calories, they feel like they're at a feeding trough all day long. So that's what goes back to what you're saying, Mark, is it's like, yeah, you get your sleep dialed. But if you wake up in the morning and you're still not performing well in the gym, you're not performing well in the office, you're not performing well in bed, you're a jerk to everybody around you because you're like a young child that's sleep deprived and has low blood sugar. Isn't it funny when our children are like that? What's the first thing we do?

We go feed them and we give them a nap. And as adults, we go, no, we got to go to the office. Like, no, dude, you need to eat and take a nap. He's tired. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And people get, go ahead, brother. I'm so curious. You've mentioned the Garmin multiple times. So do you use that to track everything? Like, do you use that to track sleep performance? Is that like an over, like tracks everything? Or do you use another wearable to track other things too? We only use the Garmin exclusively. And the reason why I wanted to throw that caveat out there is there used to be what was called the basis sleep watch.

I don't know if you guys remember that it was the black and silver one. And it would be the only watch that was designed for sleep. Well, Garmin got smart and said, hey, we'll just put a sleep feature on here. And it put basis right out of business. Now you have the whoop that's out there. And now the Garmin is putting in what's called a sleep battery, which is essentially going after the same telemetry. So to answer your question, we wear it 24 seven. And what we do is the battery, even if you work out with it three times a day, the battery will last about a week. So what we always say is find a definitive day of the week.

It takes one hour and it fully charges because the batteries have come so far. So my point being is I'm only losing one hour of total data input over a seven-day cycle. And it does track when you fall asleep. It tracks when you wake up. And this is why I've had my programmers working so diligent behind the scenes, because I want to be able to tell you, not because I like you. I don't want you because I always say I have to earn your trust. I can show you and discuss concepts all day long, but until we quantify it, it's just a nebulous concept. I'm never going to get your confidence in the concept itself and to experience it. So yes, with the watch, I can show them, hey, you laid down at

10 o'clock, but you actually didn't fall asleep till 1115. That's a problem. And there's other things that we have, there's what we call a dashboard on the computer. And then they actually have an app on your phone. And the app on your phone has a couple reports that you don't have on the computer dashboard. So it makes it really, really a nice interactive because the athletes can see it in real time. They come off the track, they come off the bike workout or whatever. They can look at their data right there. And then there's ways that you can, you know, look at your calorie burn rate, look at your food log for today. And it's only 11 o'clock in the morning. Are we already creating a pretty big gap? If so, probably explains why your performance is subpar.

You get the athletes that are not biomechanically hitting their points, low blood sugar. Are you a fan of mouth tape? Say it again. Are you a fan of mouth tape, tape in your mouth when you go to sleep? No, I'm not. No, I'm not. And I know there's people out there that are real big sleep gurus and all that. The reason why is I'm not educated enough in it to say yes, it works or no, it doesn't.

I know there's a lot of new breathing tests that are out there, you know, in through the nose. And I know there's probably a lot of credibility. The reason why I say no is because I know nothing about it. I would be speaking out my a-hole if I said something. Does that mean it doesn't work? No, sir. I'm not insinuating that at all. I just don't know anything about it. What about some nasal breathing and training? Do you mess around with that?

You're going to laugh at me when I say this. When we're trying to maximize oxygen uptake, I don't care if you can breathe through your earlobes. You know what I mean? I do agree with the idea that it creates something to focus on. This is something that I see as a huge disjoint with individuals, especially when we get into the heated competition, is we haven't trained our brain to stay relaxed, even though we may be wanting to kill somebody. I always say to my athletes, you may be dying inside, but you never let it be known outside. It's like, say you're in a triathlon and you bridge up on somebody, you don't want to come up breathing like a banji. You want to act like you're totally in control.

And then you throw in a surge. Now, when you get by him, you can go back to breathing like a cheetah and can barely catch your breath. But it's all about playing the head game of controlling the narrative of the event. But I do agree with you, Mark. If you get people to focus on diaphragmically breathing or in through the nose and out through the mouth, that gives you something to focus on diaphragmically breathing or in through the nose and out through the mouth. That gives you something to focus on. Maybe you're just doing an easy tempo workout, bike ride, row session, ski or swimming, whatever it may be. Having them focus on something like that,

I think is fantastic. I have a lot of my young kids. You were teasing a little bit about TikTok. Think about what TikTok and social media has done for the attention span of both adults and children. Think about what TikTok and social media has done for the attention span of both adults and children. Okay. And when we're at a motorcycle race, we have what's called the two-minute board. Then we have the one-minute board. And that's when they're giving you the indication that the gate's getting ready to drop. Okay. Board goes sideways.

You know you've got between three and eight seconds before the gate's going to drop. Watch the young divisions on the starting gate. Watch their helmet. They physically cannot focus for more than two to three seconds. Is it any surprise? Now, Mark, think about when we used to go into the stores like Best Buy or Circuit City. Remember they would have all those televisions up on the wall? Did you remember that every television was on the same channel? And the reason being is they wanted you to come in and they wanted you to enjoy this, but they didn't want you to get, can you imagine if every channel was on different?

Your heart rate would go through the moon, right? Well, think about what's happening with these kids as they're getting inundated with five seconds of information. They're sliding, they're sliding, they're slipping, they're clicking. What we're seeing now, there's some research that's coming out that we're starting to see early dementia in young kids because of the overindulgence of information that the brain cannot process. It's information overload, no pun intended. So what I do with my athletes is I'll have them take an eight and a half by 11, put a black dot on it, and I'll put them in a chair and have them stare at the wall. Just give me 30

seconds. Try not to look outside that circle. Literally retraining them to focus, which Mark goes back to, like you're saying, learning to breathe through your nose. It gives them something to focus on. Diaphragmatic breathing gives them something to focus on. I call it your quiet place. When the three of us are out and we're doing a hard bike workout, my oasis is the beach. So I've trained myself that when I'm putting out a high level of output, maybe it's a race setting or bar-to-bar action, I'm at the beach constantly. That's that mental headspace. Some people have keywords. I have key environments.

But then while I'm at the beach, what am I focusing on? Diaphragmic breathing. And we take this into our testing sessions. We do a static wall squat evaluation. We into our testing sessions. We do a static wall squat evaluation. We do box hop evaluation. We do stars. And I say to them, at what point did you focus exclusively on this hurts like hell and I want to stop? Because at the end of the day, what tapped out first, the brain or the muscles, but something tapped out. And that's how we can elevate the potential of output is getting them to think about what

they're thinking about when they're in a heated competition. I know that sounds a little bit of an ironic, almost contradicts itself, but most of the time we're not taught to think. We're like, yeah, just you're super strong. Get out front, lead. And then they get out front and they don't know how to handle it. They don't know where to think. They're just thinking about, oh man, don't fall. Let me give you an example of how powerful the brain is. Don't think about a pink cow with black spots. Don't think about a pink cow with black spots. So when you're out there leading the race

and you're like, don't fall, don't fall, don't blow up, don't, don't, don't, the brain goes the exact opposite. But we don't train ourselves to counter balance that negative thinking it's so much fun you know real quick i know you said you weren't like sponsored by garmin or anything but do you recommend a certain model because i know they have a bunch and i i don't know like where to even start like you have a recommendation it's the new garmin 6 has just come out um i like that one a lot. There's the Garmin 945 is good as well.

The one that I'm showing you guys here on this is a Phoenix five. I just ordered the new six for one reason, because I like to if a client asks any questions about it, I like to be able to answer questions. But I will show anybody that's interested. I have purchased every single Garmin. I own 13 of them. Because all my kids have them. My wife has them because my son's a fire. He's in firefighter school.

And I told him ever since high school, if you want to be the best firefighter, he loves downhill mountain biking. You want to be the best downhill mountain biker? Be rested. If you'll come in rested and you go get thrown into a situation like a fire, do you really need to go in there and your adrenals are already smoked and you're already running on three hours of sleep? That was before you got to work because you wanted to squeeze another workout in. It doesn't work. And I think we all need to contemplate that.

So to answer your question though, Andrew, the Garmin five is being replaced with the Garmin six. The reason why I bring it up for the listeners is because that means the six is out. That means the five's a lot cheaper and I'm all about saving money. So if you can get the five and the one thing I want you guys to be paying attention to is when you contact, and by the way, contact Garmin directly, they have great customer support. You want to get the watch that has the body battery because whether you like human telemetry or not it's a pretty simple gauge it'll show you what your recovery rate is if you guys are

familiar with the whoop it's doing the same thing you know it gives you a recovery score so say you needed eight hours and 11 minutes of sleep and you got six and a half so you got a 72 percent recovery score that's where garmin is going with it and again i hope all the listeners understand i i'm not i'm not even a brand ambassador. I just want you guys to get what works. And it's kind of like in cycling. Everybody runs out and buys power meters and no one knows how the hell to read the information that comes out of them. And so I don't want you to buy something and go, it's information overload.

I want you to be able to actually use the info. And the body battery is fantastic for that. Yeah, I have a curious, since we're talking about Garmin a little bit here. Whoop has something where it's like a monthly payment is Garmin the same thing, or can you just buy the watch and you can utilize all the, yeah, that's it. That's exactly why I like the Garmin. You get all the information you buy the watch once. And what's really cool is like when you upgrade your watch, it will sync with your dashboard. So you don't lose all your historical information. This goes back to what Mark was talking about earlier. I'm very anal about incremental gains. I have a lot of reports. We're an analytics company. That's what we do. And so that's why I've had the programming

department behind the scenes so that I can offer this guarantee that you're never going to get exhausted on our program. Now, your progress may be a little bit, if I may use the word slower, but it's going to be almost guaranteed because it'll be incremental and realistic. But the idea here behind the scenes is what is it that we're making that decision off of? It's the telemetry that comes out of the watches. The reason why that's important, the more historical data you have on yourself, like we look at year to date. So the easiest example I could give you is if Mark was a CPA, we know that in the month of end of March, beginning of April, he's going to be wide open. Not a good time for somebody to decide to put an event on the race calendar

because we know that historically about you as an individual professionally. Now I can help you athletically. So the human telemetry that you're able to gather. Now think about this. The information that's in these watches that's so cool is this is a personal profile on you. When you first start wearing the watch, it's just running your age, your height, your gender. It's just running it through a basic, a logarithm. And then what happens is as it gathers more data on you, it skews the information to be about you. It starts with you as a generic individual. So the more you wear it, because this will literally say you're over training based on your history of training.

Think about that. So I live in Orlando, Florida today, it's going to be 94 degrees and a hundred percent humidity. We just got back from California. We did a performance camp out there. It was 49 at night and only hit 72 during the day. So I was able to run longer. I was able to run faster, but I had a lower strain score because I didn't have the external heat and humidity. Garmin factors that in.

It literally knows the temperature that you're exercising in. So it factors that into your strain score. Does that make sense? Yeah. And something to factor in, in any sport where you're wearing a helmet, like in any of these cycling things, or even like football, I mean, it's going to be hot. You got all the heat kind of locked in. In your case, you're wearing a gi, you know, in jujitsu. So the heat factor can be tremendous. It's unbelievable. And when you understand that the body's only goal is to never die of a heat stroke or to freeze to death, that's always going to be hierarchy number one.

So this is why nutrition during exercise is so difficult because it throws out nutrition for the sake of thermal regulation. for the sake of thermal regulation. And to your point, Mark, when every square inch of your skin is covered, that exothermic process is now inhibited. Yes, that's going to factor into your stress score. It's going to negatively affect your performance ability unless you prepare for that situation. This goes back to what we said earlier about being surprised by nothing but ready for everything. If you know that your body is going to be in that environment with that type of covering and you come in dehydrated, I do this with my wrestlers all the time. I always have my wrestlers go up in age group or weight category because I know the category above they're coming in dehydrated and starving to death. They have no mental resiliency. So my guys go in the weight up hydrated, well fed and really rested.

We rip heads off because I know I'm already racing a guy that's, excuse me. I'm already wrestling against a guy that's at a disadvantage, but yet you've got programs that go, nope, this is what we've always done. I'm like, that's cool.

Keep doing it. Cause my guys are going to continue to kill you because we're doing it. The way physiology is based, not based on a coach's coaches, coaches, coaches input from 1973. It's crazy. It is. That's awesome. But it's fun. It's a lot of fun. I'm curious. Cause you, you actually mentioned melatonin. Um, do you like, cause I, I haven't won. I've never taken melatonin cause like, yeah, I didn't, it just seems kind of strong, but do you suggest people take melatonin as a sleep aid? OK, cool. So what's your reasoning? I don't agree with AIDS at all. OK, good. and that's not good.

Is it bad for the opposite? Because sometimes I literally just can like look at a pillow and I pass out and I fall asleep within seconds. Like my wife gets frustrated sometimes because she'll be telling me something and next thing she knows I'm completely asleep. And she's even like timed it at times because she can tell by my breathing. She's like, it took you literally 15 seconds to fall asleep. So I'm pretty sure that's not great, but I'm curious what your take is and what are some of the negatives with that?

Maybe. Well, and think about how, how cool that question is from Andrew, because that's the ideal scenario that we want. If you think about when our kids are little, right. You know, you want to get them to their, I mean, they're looking forward to their bedtime where, you know, you, you walk towards the crib and like their head's like diving for the crib. They can't wait to get to bed because they're so exhausted. And the way Andrew is describing it, that's the way we all should be. When our head hits the pillow, and we can do a whole show on this if you guys want to, but this is where looking at circadian rhythms is so incredibly important. looking at circadian rhythms is so incredibly important. And I have the ability to look at the sleep logs behind the scenes and I can show people their circadian rhythm. And it's really

difficult when they're awake, when they should be asleep and they're asleep, when they should be awake, firefighters, first responders, those types of things, police officers, doctors, nurses, and they wonder why they're gaining so much body fat when their cortisol levels are getting jacked up and they're throwing off the circadian rhythms. If you can get them to understand that. Now, again, that's remember what we said earlier, you know, that comes with the profession. So we have to learn to work with it. But there's nothing wrong with the idea that your head hits the pillow and you're out.

That's the ultimate dream for everybody. The key is, is when you fall asleep. And this is where the Garmin dashboard will show you how quickly you fall into deep sleep, because deep sleep is where your body releases HGH and testosterone. So if we don't get there, doesn't matter how much work we do in the gym, if the body's not naturally producing HGH and testosterone asleep, you're not getting anything out of the workouts that you're doing because you're not officially recovering. anything out of the workouts that you're doing because you're not officially recovering. That's where people get a little bit annoyed with me because I'll say, you're never going to get good in your sport by doing your sport. You're never going to get strong by going to the gym. You're going to get strong and good in your sport by sleeping and eating. Because if you don't have that foundation, you could work your ass off all day long. You're just eroding yourself, whether it's cannibalizing your own muscle tissue for fuel,

whether, I mean, the list goes on and on But the sleep quality that's why we look at how quickly you fall into deep sleep. We look at sleep in two coefficients quality and quantity Did you get at least nine hours of sleep? And did you get at least two hours of deep sleep if you did I know that your body went through it's Okay, i'm ready for tomorrow because rem one light sleep is what rejuvenates the brain deep sleep is what rejuvenates the body at a hormonal level and we want to stay out of the transitional as much as possible rem two have you seen any

anything assist with uh getting to deep sleep a little quicker whether it be like magnesium or zinc uh vitamins minerals Have you seen anything have any improvements? I like Epsom salt baths before bed for sure. ZMA works really, really good. And it goes back to like you were saying, Mark, a lot of times people will see or read that and think that that's the answer to everything. We need to make sure that the listeners understand there's an assumption that all the preliminary work is in place. And then that ZMA, those Epsom salt baths, those things are going to work because now we're giving the body what it needs. It's like when we get into the subject of electrolyte deficiency, people want to argue, is it potassium? Is it magnesium? I don't know. We can go get that

evaluated. But at the end of the day, if you're eating fruits and vegetables, what are they high in? Electrolytes. I mean, it's just, and I don't want that to sound cynical and snippy, but it's like you guys, and I say this all the time, I'll get people that'll contact me. Hey, how many grams of protein should I have per day? I'm like, whatever you want, just don't ever be hungry. But I can't get people to step on the scale twice a day. And you want me to get you out a scale and start calculating how many grams of protein? My point is this, is I can give you a number. The problem is, is 99.9% of the people won't do it. I like what you're saying too, because somebody could be, a lot of times we hear that same thing and somebody could be eating 75 grams of protein a day. And now we say, Hey, do one gram of protein

per pound of body weight. Cause we're just trying to give them a number. Now they went from 75 to two 75 and they're like, I'm on the toilet all day. It's like, well, because we didn't account for where you were before. And I agree with a lot of the stuff you're saying there. It makes sense. Well, I appreciate it. It's not about being right. It's about our listeners having that aha moment where what we talk about resonates with them. If it doesn't resonate with them, again, it's just a bunch of theories and concepts. And until someone experiences it, that's how we get their confidence. And how do we get confidence? Results. That's it. And there's never one shoe fits all. And that's what people get a little annoyed because they're like, oh, it's complicated. No, it's not. It's actually

quite simplistic. We make it complicated. They're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, if you got hungry within a two-hour window, you probably didn't eat enough at your last meal or your snack. Now, if you want to get into blood sugar levels and stabilizing blood sugars and insulin index, sure, we can do a whole show on that. But if you ask me, am I eating enough? I'm going to simply ask you, did you get hungry before the two hour window? And then we can look at insulin resistance and all that other high tech stuff.

But just as a general 10,000 foot rule, did you get hungry in a two hour window. And then we can look at insulin resistance and all that other high-tech stuff. But just as a general 10,000 foot rule, did you get hungry in a two hour window? Did you eat protein and fat at that last meal or snack? If you had protein and fat, the only two macronutrients that satisfies appetite and you got hungry, eat more and we'll try it again next hour. If you got hungry within the two hour, keep eating until you're not hungry up to that two hour window and then eat something similar to that every two hours. So stabilizing blood sugars. Do you believe that there should be a drug testing and that it should be

rigorous just in sports in general? That's a, that's a really loaded question. If I'm a, if I'm a TV broadcaster, run what you brung, I want to see some of the badass dudes ever out there competing. I get it. And I know that's what the fans want. The fans, when you think back to the days of Spartacus, that people would get together to watch guys kill each other, fight to the death. We get that as fans. We want to see the best. For the health and the longevity

with having three children. I always run it through that filter. I wouldn't want my kids to live like that because now they're out of the limelight. They're not getting compensated to be an athlete, but they're left with smoked adrenals and all kinds of biomechanical issues. And now they can't get on the ground and play with their children. And that to me is not a good environment. And that's where I don't want people to think I'm naive. I just like to think of the long-term ramifications. I just have to go back to, I saw what drugs did to the long-term of my family. And I always have to use that as my litmus test. And then how do we know if people are suspect? I've heard you speculate on this before about kind of incremental progress that someone

might make when they're already great. Yeah. I have to go off of just incremental improvements. If you've been around and you guys are athletes yourselves, you know how hard it is to get that smidgen of an improvement and then be able to maintain it, much less, you know, continue to incrementally improve it. That, and just look at physiological changes. You changes. If you understand, as you said earlier, you can only take in so much protein, i.e. amino acids. You can only, in a perfect clinical setting based on the amount of load, the amount of food, and the amount of rest, the body can only produce about one ounce of lean muscle mass per day. So do the math backwards. When somebody all of a sudden puts on 47 pounds of muscle in eight months, that mathematically doesn't add up. That's not me. That's not you guys saying, oh, well, he's cheating. That gain mathematically with a

calculator based on what the clinical settings have validated simply doesn't add up. There's no such thing as a revolutionary new superset that's going to build muscle quicker. There's no new amino acid that's going to build muscle quicker. We've tried it for since the beginning of time. So when we look at that and then look at the physiological changes, like we said earlier, you start seeing the squaring of the forehead. You start to see the gapping of the teeth. You see excessive amounts of acne. You see excessive amounts of facial hair. And again, I don't want the listeners who aren't into Modo to think I'm being cynical here. When you see a

young kid whose balls haven't even dropped yet, and then three months later, he looks like freaking Grizzly Adams. He's got facial hair. That just doesn't naturally happen, man. I'm sorry. And thanks to Google Images, there's enough stuff out there. You can see the timeline doesn't add up. So those are my two things is incremental improvements and physiological changes so uh you know i guess people that have like we'll say gone to the dark side um we hear it a lot that say that you know the peds don't help as much as you think and then on the other side natural athletes will give all the credit to that athlete's performance to PEDs. So one side say they do nothing. The other side says it does everything. Which side do you think is more accurate? unsurmount. You can't even begin to deny the physical improvements. I mean,

this is where Google will be good. Don't go on somebody's bullshit website, go to like clinical tests that were done at legitimate facilities. Look at the percentage of improvement on VO2 max, strength to weight ratios, threshold of fatigue, all of those variables. There's no denying the physical improvements, performance improvements that come from the all of those variables, there's no denying the physical improvements, performance improvements that come from the introduction of those substances in the body, hands down. But I will agree with you, Andrew. The other thing to take a look at is the psychosomatic side. Talking, I hate to say this, but Nina Kraft is a German triathlete. She got popped for EPO at Ironman Hawaii. Unfortunately, she took her life last year. My heart goes out to her family.

I got a chance to speak with her when she was serving her band. And I said, what was it like being on it? And that's what I alluded to you guys earlier. She was the one that told me, she goes, it's not just the performance enhancements. It's about you could smash yourself for six hours today, wake up tomorrow and feel like you're at vacation. And she said, it's that every day you can just get back to that full volume, full tilt. So psychologically, you know that you've been performing, you've been practicing at a level that nobody else can even remotely get to. Now here's what becomes really cool. Think about Lance Armstrong, somebody who's a naturally talented badass, who has incredible work ethic, who compliments that with peds. That's why you have a seven-time champion. And I'm sorry, I'm always going to side on the side with Lance. Everyone was doing it. And if you read his story, the first year they went to the tour as Team Motorola, he got his ass handed to him.

He was on a flight coming back. Somebody that was from the Tour de France said, you guys are trying to win on bread and water. He goes, what does that mean? The guy said, do some research. Lance said, I don't know what the hell he's talking about, but I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do it better than anyone else. And here we sit 25 years later with the history of you've learned how to do it better than anybody else. So, Andrew,

to your question, I think it's a synergistic. I think there's definitely a psychological lift, but there's definitely a physical lift as well. And you put those two together and that's why you see athletes, the three of us know it as athletic poise. You just know when someone's going to that starting line, they know there's nobody that's going to have anything for him. Go back to Ben Johnson in the sprinting. We all know that he failed the drug test. Look at his eyes. They're strange colors. My point is for the listeners, go back and watch the video. Look at his disposition when he went into the starting blocks. You could just tell he knew that he was on something that nobody else could beat him with. He was definitely in shape. All you had to do was not fault start.

And he knew just based on mathematics, if you go and you look at the physiological benefits, you can see that mathematically he's putting out more power per step. He knew he was going to win and his body language said that. Did Hussein Bolt break his records clean? There's discussions that there's no way on the face of the earth that he's clean. And if you study the way that the PED program and the testing program goes, by the time the testing agents get off of the plane, he's already in the jungle. You're not going to find him. And then you get into that whole discussion about you could miss the drug test and you've got a window of time and all that. They've got it to a science. And look at the ethiopians that are right now they're banned

his body's so different though i mean usain's like an athlete where i'm like he's so much longer and bigger than all the other sprinters and i'm like maybe it was in his case it's possible because no one was built like him you know but you well i felt that way with lance i'm like you know he's getting tested how could he that's true it wasn't until icarus explained it and, you know, but you, well, I felt that way with Lance. I'm like, you know, he's getting tested. How could he, and it wasn't until Icarus explained it. And then, you know, you've got these other doctors that have explained the mathematics of the incremental improvement mathematically could not be done without the enhancement of drugs. It's not my opinion. I didn't do the test. Let's, uh, let's play a little game of natty or not. How about Michael Phelps? I would say a hundred percent. i would think anybody that's at the top of the game

is on it because you look at how many guys have gotten popped below them and these guys are still beating him now it doesn't it doesn't hurt it's called the ape index where we measure from fingertip to fingertip that's what we measure in swimming i mean he's got the largest ape index of anybody i think ever born like you were saying with Usain Bolt. I mean, you look at the biomechanics, he's a perfect specimen for sprinting. Phelps is a perfect specimen for swimming. And then you add the other elements, good strength program, good flexibility program, good ped program. Nobody's going to be able to prove it to me otherwise, not based on my biased opinion, but based on everybody that's been caught, everybody that has tested positive, everybody who's admitted, and these people are still beating them, they just haven't gotten a

positive test. There's no way that you can physiologically beat them based on what's coming out of clinical studies that show the physics. You can't cover the same amount of ground at the same speed without it. If all variables are held constant, does that make sense, Mark? If all variables are held, no doubt he's i mean he's probably one of the biggest advocates for it with the bulls and that whole dynasty there's a lot of documentation that he was you know he wasn't shy about it he's like i will do whatever it takes mike tyson it would be i'm going to say no on him only because of the of the age that he drew up on it he may have been jacked up on coke because we see those pictures that very common with boxers

yeah yeah well we see those pictures of yeah uh where he's like um like i had a street party and you can see he's got the white and they say oh oh, you know, I mean, so it's not like we didn't know he was doing it. I will say with Mike Tyson back in those days, I don't think that the drugs, A, I don't know enough about boxing. I don't know if they were doing drug testing. So if they weren't, absolutely, he's going to be on some amphetamine, cocaine, whatever it may be, because a lot of people may not realize that Tour de France used to fuel themselves on nicotine and cocaine.

That's what they did as their primary stimulant to get through a three-week race. But going back to Michael Tyson, A, he's just a genetic monster. I would never, ever imagine getting hit by somebody like that. You add a stimulant like cocaine in an environment where I don't think there was testing, I would say probably some level of drug, but probably more cocaine. I personally think Tyson took stuff when he came back. How about Tiger Woods? 100%.

Phil Mickelson. I would say anybody that's on that top level of PGA because Tiger Woods did what Armstrong did. And Williams sisters, they kind of have a story with the Williams sisters, right? They have more TUEs than anybody in the entire tennis association. Really? Yes.

You can go Google that. And Google, I apologize, I don't remember which sister it was, but when the drug testing crew showed up to test her, she ran into her safe room and called 911 saying that she was being broken into. And then right behind that, she called the president of the Tennis Association and said, get these assholes away from me right now. And the president of the Tennis Association called the testing agency and said, leave. That is on Google. Go research it yourselves guys so as obvious as like barry bonds mcguire and that whole home run race was because of what you referred to as this kind of this exponential leap amongst greats uh i think it's i think it's fair

to it's fair to speculate that a lot of people are doing this and to say all is probably not correct but to say that a lot of people have done this or to say all is probably not correct but to say that a lot of people have done this or have looked into this regardless of whether they're the worst player in the nfl or they're the best player in the nfl the best player in the nfl would like to keep it that way right so they're in the league for nine years things start to fall down a little bit maybe they never did have to do anything maybe they have been extraordinary the whole time. I just find all of it to be very fascinating, very interesting. Why are we so fascinated with someone who's just born with it? You know what I mean? We're just fascinated with Superman, but Superman's

a fucking alien. He's from another planet. He's an alien. So it's easy for him to kick everyone's ass. And so I find the whole thing really interesting, whether you take a substance or whether you're an alien. Well, and I don't mean to interrupt you, Mark, but you bring up a really good point. Because if you look at Lance Armstrong, just based on his what we call basal metabolic numbers, you know, his natural VO2 max, his natural muscle to bone density to body fat. muscle to bone density to body fat. And then you take somebody like that, that goes to the Tour de France and in his own words was racing on bread and water because he didn't know any different, right? He didn't know what to be on, gets his ass kicked single-handedly. And then as soon as he starts the program, that team is an immediate contender. Because I don't want the listeners

to think that I'm saying everybody's a cheat. I'm not. What I'm saying is when you look at the history, which we now have a lot more of, when you look at how many people tested positive or admitted to doing the drugs when they have no vested interest to not tell the truth anymore, you look at all that. It does make it fascinating to us because we're like, man, how cool would it be if we could somehow, I don't know how we could do it. If you could somehow, without a doubt, show that there's one person in that mix that's done it clean. And like you said, Mark, still kicking everyone's ass, knowing everyone else had to do it.

That would be the story of a lifetime. I don't know how we could validate that. Maybe we could get somebody nowadays where you have cameras with them 24-7. You have ways to do blood. Who wants to raise a child where you're like, them 24-7, you have ways to do blood. I mean, who wants to raise a child where you're like, you're a science experiment. We're going to show you that you can go the distance and never take a drug and we're going to take blood samples every week. What kid's going to sign up for that, right? But there's no other way that you could invalidate what we're talking about unless you do it that way.

Can't be Tom Brady though. I was just going to say that. I've been waiting for you to say it and I'm like, if he doesn't say it, I need to jump in here. I mean, he didn't get that much better from the time he was 21 to the time he's 43. Well, but if you look at, you know, if you look behind the scenes of where they, the HGH and the testosterone and all of that kind of stuff, and then we're getting to a point now where there's enough information that's circulated around because let's face it, when one of our listeners was doing drugs back in high school, it was you and a couple of buddies

that were talking about doing drugs. And then the more people you partied with, the more people knew you do drugs. Well, now look at social media. People can take pictures of you doing drugs. So now it's captured in time forever, right? So we're getting to a point now where there were things done in the early 80s and 90s that there was no documentation of, but people are coming out. And now you get one person. This is what brought Lance down, by the way. You have one person that gives their testimony to another person that just happens to have the exact explanation as the first guy.

And now the fourth guy is saying what the first three did. And now you get the consistency of the story, kind of like a police department doing some investigation. Is it a point where you can say causation correlation, or do you just say, okay, and again, that's how the dominoes started to stack up against Lance. Started with Tyler Hamilton being subpoenaed, and then the dominoes started falling. Then you get the massage therapist, and then you get the Dr. Ferraris, and then you get the whole story together. And that's where it starts to become very interesting on the Barry Bonds and all these other guys. What I think is most interesting is, and you see it, and I'm not going to name any names because there's about every professional out there. They all are taking a play from Lance's handbook.

There's about every professional out there. They all are taking a play from Lance's handbook. If I can get in front of this screen and go out and I'm going to support drugs, I'm going to pay for drug testing at these events. And they know how to play the game. They know how to play it. And they say, look, I'm investing in drug testing. I'm willing to be drug tested all the time. They're out there on the forefront.

I mean, look at Lance Armstrong, like literally in press conferences going after the guy that wrote the book that called him out. I mean, what kind of balls does that take when you know you're guilty? You know you're guilty and you know that this film is going to be forever in time. And unfortunately, all of those videos got used as a whipping tool against Lance on intimidation and all the antics that he used. But everybody that's denying that they're doing, go back to track and field again. Help me out here. The female was Carl Lewis and then- Like Flo Jo or something. Not Flo Jo, Marion Jones.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. She was the golden girl. She was pretty. She was on the cover of Wheaties. No way. And then she's like, there's no way. And then she finally comes clean that she was on drugs. And her boyfriend even too.

Well, that was where I was going to go next is you start getting into the layers. And then we get to find out where it trails from. And all these so-called speculations come to fruition. That's where I think we're at now as a sport, as the um, as a sport, as the entire world is involved is there's a lot of information. And when somebody can go sell a book and sell it for a million bucks and they go and get three or four people to coincide with them, then all of a sudden now it gets exposed. I, I, I argue with it because, you know, I don't want to sound like a hypocrite. If you guys are going to go do it, please do it with the supervision of a doc so you don't kill yourself for the sake of your family and friends.

I personally can't imagine being shoved into or shuffled into that executive decision at 17. So I don't want to sit here and have the listeners call me a dick or something for saying, oh, well, no, I get it. I just I wouldn't choose to do it. If the question's asked, I'm giving you my opinion based on what information I have, not just hearsay and what I think. It's not my opinion. There's enough information out there that validates that it's going on. Icarus exposes quite a bit of it. There's enough documents, documentaries on YouTube that are by people that have no vested interest. Just follow, follow the, you know, I hate to say it, but follow the money. That's always where it goes and see what you got yeah i want to i want to mention this

because when you mentioned that athlete that um you know she was talking about when she was on stuff and how like her recovery was just like she could work out for six hours and recover great the next day i can imagine that the mental ramifications of that or the psychological ramifications coming off of something like that and not being able to perform at that level, I think that should be something that people think about. Because I can imagine if like that, that's an, that for me is a psychological deterrent. I want to be able to perform at a high level. And if I need to use something to perform at such a high level and when I'm not on it, I can't, that would mess me up in the head. I feel like that messes up a lot of athletes. Like I, I believe I don't think I'd have the motivation to actually even work out unless I were continuing to take something because I know my capacity could be here, but now it's here. Right. Think about the vacuum that's already created by these athletes when they go from being in the magazines and being in the newspaper every day, every month, every week.

All of a sudden, you're no longer. Phone's not ringing. Text messages. Endorsement deals dry up. Think about that vacuum of depression that already creates because you go from being everything, you know, essentially from a hero to a zero. I hate to say it, but we see it all the time. Leads to a lot of substance abuse and other things like that. So you have that ramification. And then I always look say it, but we see it all the time leads to a lot of substance abuse and other things like that. So you have that ramification.

And then I always look at it. I even see some of these young kids that feel like they have to go to the gym, jacked up on creatine and all this other stuff to get a good workout. And I'm like, dude, you're spending like $13 a workout to get a good workout. And like you said, though, now you've got this psychosomatic dependency on, well, if I don't have it, well, of course the workout's going to suck. And not only is that expensive, but then that becomes counterintuitive because it's not even a healthy environment. And I don't want that statement to get convoluted. I have to agree with you a hundred percent. I don't want to feel like I'm dependent on anything for my performance.

want to feel like I'm dependent on anything for my performance. Now, I don't want to be naive. I don't want to sound... I took a creatine load for a triathlon that I got second overall in, which was very important to me, but I knew that creatine load, I had already tested it. I didn't have dehydrating effects. I was already using phosphol as a lactic acid buffer. I had tested it. Yes. Do I contribute that success? Yeah. But it wasn't something that I took every day. I built a foundation and then loaded that over a seven-day period. And I knew I was going to get the benefits of it.

I'd already tested it. But that was completely in the legitimate rules of if I took a drug test, that's not an illegal substance. So I'm okay with that because it falls into that ergogenic side, just like caffeine versus a pet. So if you don't have a book yet, you need to write a book. Where can people find it? And where can people find out more information about your training?

Oh, I appreciate guys. Just coach Rob with two B's coach rob.com. That's always a good starting point for you. We've got all of our different sports partitioned off there. And then if you're a big YouTube guy, it's Coach Rob with two Bs, Coach Rob Beams on YouTube. We've got all kinds of concept videos. And I always say this, and I say this as humbly as I can. Nobody wants to hear me talk and nobody wants to see me on video. When you go to YouTube, it's usually for a frustration, a need, a want, or a desire. And I have a video up there that I shot.

You guys remember the old flip cameras where it was the yellow and white one, you plugged it into your computer. It has almost a million views on how to use a swim kickboard. And it's funny to me because we were just at the pool. Somebody asked me about it and they said, why don't you put it on video? That's my first video. And people leave me all kinds of hate messages. It's like, man, turn the volume down in the back. I'm like, it's shot at a college on a pool deck with a fucking flip camera. And it has a million views.

Like at the time we didn't even have a video department, but I get slaughtered on it. And all I can say is, yep, you're right. I'm an idiot, you know? But yeah, check it out. Something I heard you say on a podcast, you said you like to find an athlete's frustrations. Can you expand upon that just a bit? You find their frustrations and that's where you focus on. Yeah. Think about the four of us. If I were to say to you, what's your goals

and objectives, if we filled them out on a piece of paper separately, and then we brought them in collectively, they're probably going to be 95% the same. So for our listeners, goals and objectives really don't mean squat because what is it we want? We want to be the best. So for our listeners, goals and objectives really don't mean squat because what is it we want? We want to be the best. We want to be number one. We want to be fit. We want to be, we all, all of your listeners have the same goals and objectives. We want to look good. We want to live long. We want to have good health. So goals and objectives don't mean squat. My question is what's kept you from where you wanted to get to, whether it was over the last year, the last three days, last three hours, that's where frustrations come in. What keeps getting in the way of your success?

And if you take it to the high level of performance, why is it you didn't win this race? Well, let's reverse engineer it. Let's take those frustrations and address them head on. And that's where we said earlier, take that frustration, which more likely is going to be a physical or a mental weakness, convert it to a strength, and then use that to whip everyone's ass. Have a great rest of your day. Thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you, guys. Always a pleasure. Take care. Really? I clicked too many times. Yo. Man.

Do you need some consulting? This is is like it hurts my heart man i still believe i still believe i think you can believe one way or the other you know because you know no one really has no one's gonna really probably ever know these things yeah um but he makes a great point and it's a point that i've been discussing for a long time uh if someone's you know laying it all out there and they're always talking about wanting to be the best and it appears like when you watch the jordan documentary um it appears that his morals are quite different than a lot of the other players on the team not that there's anything wrong with his morals they're're just different, right?

He seems very almost malicious. Now, in that story, in that documentary in particular, there's really no mention of his family. They don't talk about his kids much. There's no talk about his wife. There's no talk about any of that other stuff. So we don't have any idea what that looks like. But the way that when you watch the documentary, you think this guy is singularly focused on this.

You're not thinking about Michael Jordan as a dad. You're not thinking about him in these other areas. My point being is that he's so laser focused on basketball that that could lead to potential flaws in other areas of his life. Potentially. I don't know anything about his life. I don't know anything about his kid's life. I don't know anything about his relationships or anything. But I'm just saying that I know for myself, when you get singularly focused on one thing,

it tends to pull on a lot of the other aspects of your life just because every single one of us, no matter whether you're Michael Jordan or not, we only have 24 hours in a day. We've only got 365 days in a year. There's only so much time to devote to these things. And I think that a lot of these guys, when you're thinking about the competitive drive of some of these individuals, that's kind of what they're known for. so i i wouldn't uh i wouldn't be surprised wouldn't be surprised if they did stuff uh i also really wouldn't be disappointed because i just understand like yeah i think that's kind of for some people that's part of it i get it i get it there's definitely some, too, that are taking stuff that just are not getting anywhere either.

Yeah. You know, and so that's, again, I find that part fascinating. Because, like, Barry Bonds has never officially, I don't think, been found with anabolic steroids or performance-enhancing drugs. with anabolic steroids or performance enhancing drugs. It was just all speculation. And there was a lot with his trainer and his coach and Balco and all these different things. He did get significantly bigger. There's a lot of changes in his game,

but also Barry Bonds is one of the greatest of all time. So who's to say that he can't just kind of flip and switch things up a little bit. I don't know. But the bomb home runs, the way that he was doing and Mark McGuire was doing and Sammy Sosa in that time frame sort of came out of nowhere. There's some speculation that the ball was juiced and the ball would hop off

the bat a little bit more back at that time because baseball before that had a, like a lockout and it was dead. And that home run race kind of... Rejuvenated. Yeah, brought it back a little bit. It's hard to really know. It's hard to really tell. And then baseball didn't really have that many...

It didn't even test for steroids for a long time. Until Jose Canseco started chirping and then they... They had to do something. They had to do something. You know what? I'll say this though, again, because like the people who I really want to attack with this is,

is the younger athletes, teenagers, you know, early twenties get, you know, get a focus on your big three, your training, your nutrition and your sleep.

Okay. Focus on those. And if you're a young guy, if you're a young woman, give yourself time because at the end of the day, like what I've noticed by seeing a lot of comments, responding to a lot of people over the years is that one thing that people don't give themselves as time,

you know, especially it's like, let's talk directly to lifters since lift, you know, a lot of people listen to this podcast are people who want to get bigger, stronger, et cetera. And it,

and it takes time no matter what you do. They work for two years and they're like, I've been lifting for two, stronger, et cetera. And it takes time, no matter what you do. They work for two years and they're like, I've been lifting for two years and I haven't. So you've been lifting for two years. I've been lifting for four years and I haven't. You've been lifting for four years. That is not a lot of time. That is not a lot of time to get big. That is not a lot of time to get strong. And if you haven't seen the height of results you wanted to see within that time period, give yourself more time. Get more understanding on your training, nutrition, and your sleep. Yeah, supplements are cool. They'll add a bit. And definitely, absolutely, performance-enhancing drugs will boost you. But as we've talked and we've heard in this podcast, there are ramifications

to starting and doing things like that, that you cannot get back. The psychological thing is something that I'm just thinking so much about right now. If you get yourself to a point where you are physiologically doing things that you wouldn't be able to do otherwise, do you ever see yourself stopping? Right? Like you're not going to stop. And when you do, you're always going to remember who you were when you were doing this and you'll never be able to compare do you want to live the rest of your life that way are you ready to do that because most of you probably aren't right and all performance enhancing drugs that we kind of discussed today not all of them are created equally there's ones that are there's ones that are kind of naturally flowing in your body that you can

take especially when you're older you can take with especially when you're older. You can take it with some responsibility, and one could argue that it has negative health implications, and someone else can argue, look, if you stay in these certain ranges, it actually is healthy and even or healthier. There's signs that people with low testosterone have heart attacks as well as people with very high testosterone, so you probably want to be somewhere in between. But where it matters most is if you are ever going to take anything, for what? You know, what are you going to take it for?

How long are you going to use it? What's your exit strategy out of it? You know, to recover from a steroid cycle might take about six months or so, depending on how long you've done it and depending on, and I'm talking about coming off of it, like completely coming off of them. Like if you take them for multiple years and then try to come off them, I'd imagine that would be a little bit worse. But there is that thing to consider of like you may have to utilize them forever because I don't know if you want to wait like six months doesn't sound like much. But six months when you're in the middle of it is a long time. And imagine gaining 10, imagine gaining 10 pounds of muscle, 10 to 15 pounds of muscle, looking a little leaner, looking a little bit better, uh, being a little bit stronger, recovering from your workouts a little bit better. And then imagine someone, uh, you know, just pulls the rug out from underneath you and that's not there anymore.

You know, are all the glasses, you know, you do pull that, uh, you pull the tablecloth off the table. Are you able to keep all the glasses still standing up? Probably not, you know, are all the glasses, you know, you do pull that, uh, you pull the tablecloth off the table. Are you able to keep all the glasses still standing up? Probably not. You know, those gains don't stay. Uh, I don't know what, uh, the information says or the science shows or says, but like, I don't think you keep hardly any of it. Um, you know, how had I tried it when I was at my biggest, I don't know, but if you watch Bigger, Stronger, Faster, there's scenes in there where I'm natty, and if you pay attention, you can tell, you can be like, whoa what happened, like I shrunk down a lot, because I was off for about 18 months having Quinn, and luckily for me, everything worked out

but I could look back at it and say, you know I don't know what my life would have been if it didn't work out like Quinn is an amazing part of my life now so I you know not being able to have a second child would have changed Jake's life too and then you start to think fuck man well that was kind of selfish maybe I shouldn't have you know been utilizing that shit but around the time that we had Jake was around the time I decided shortly after that to, to go on some stuff.

But these are all things to consider. You want to have kids. Um, you want to have good sexual function your whole life. Like people think I'm going to take a bunch of tests and my, I'm going to walk around with a boner all day long. That kind of happens at first, you know,

but then you're also shutting down your natural production. I mean, there's a lot to think about. And if you are to come off stuff, what's your sexual performance going to be like for that? I mean, there are things to help you bridge the gap, but one month, six weeks, three months, six months of any of that is not a good spot to be in. So there's a lot to consider when you're just thinking, man, I just really want to pack on some muscle. And then you're not free of any of these things with SARMs.

There's actually just less known about SARMs. So there's that part. It's more of a roll of the dice. It's just, it's just a little bit more of a roll of the dice. And somebody could just say, oh, well,

you know, this MK six, seven, seven, or whatever only affects my growth hormone or whatever. But does it? We don't know. You know, no one's out there really rigorously studying this stuff. No one even knows where it came from.

And SARMs haven't even been around for that long. I can't even find it. I've been trying to ask. I mean, I know a lot of people, but I don't even know the fuck they can't. Who create like there must have been a dude Somewhere along the lines that created them somebody made creatine. Yeah, I don't know. All we know is like there was a Like with MK or whatever like or sorry with like Austrian the one that I was taking it was to help You know muscle loss in I believe

Well patients that had a hard time eating and maintaining muscle mass. So help prevent muscle loss? So to help prevent muscle loss by not having to do too much invasive, you know, stuff. My brain's not working, so all this information. But yeah, I mean, I got, I posted my labs before and after and it did something. I'm damn sure it did something you know and it's yeah it's i don't know man you hear people and i was one of those also like especially during like the sarmageddon thing it was like like oh i'm not here for a long time i'm here for a good time

you know it's like kids are not i'm not thinking about kids right now like like heck no like but no you're right mark you know i think back like think back like, you know, before my son, I was like, dude, what? Like, no, I'll be good.

And then now it's like, shit, what would have happened if, you know, I came off of everything and I couldn't have, you know, I couldn't make a baby. Like that was just the worst thing ever.

Even though if I didn't have, and you wouldn't truly know. Yeah. I wouldn't truly know that it was the worst thing ever. Now the thought of not having them is the worst thing ever. So it's really hard. And, you know, yeah, dude, coming off of everything, I just thankfully have a great wife. I'm like, I promise it's not you.

I promise it's not like I got my fix somewhere else. Like, I want this really bad, but I just, it's, I'm sorry. You know what I'm saying that it's just like a weird it's so fucking weird you know we do all this shit to be masculine and have muscles and be badass and it's like here's the one thing that like we all want to do more than anything it's like it's not working gotta punch it and yell at it yeah i do or yeah yeah no i gotta punch yours you have to punch mine got it that's what we're here for that's why we're bros yeah yeah and then the last thing like

within sema like what you're you're getting at um this is like a weird way to try to connect them but like the saying like the the person that believed they would win and the person that believed that they would lose were both correct. So, great example. Definitely, the most natty person on this podcast has always believed that this could be achieved naturally is also probably arguably the most jacked person on this podcast is still natural, which is

Nsema, and he's going to continue to believe that some of his childhood heroes are natural, and he's still going to be the most jack motherfucker you guys have ever seen. So if he can do it, you damn sure can. This is a realm where I purposefully choose to just not drink the Kool-Aid. And you also can't say a ton either because then people are like, boy, I still think he's on shit. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But like... I agree. I side up with you more than i side up with what he was saying i that entire podcast i was acting a particular way to try to see how he would handle some of the questions like i'm not an idiot i i i don't believe that everyone's doing shit i just don't i don't really buy it. Um, I've been around steroids a lot. I know who sells shit. I know who doesn't, you know, I, I kind of know where a lot of them come from in, you know, in, in different capacities. And like, I do know a lot of athletes that not only don't know much about them, but they're not even around someone that knows much about them.

You know, sometimes I could say that guy told me he doesn't know much about them, but his coach is pretty... I know his coach, and I know his coach does, and therefore it doesn't really make any difference whether that guy knows anything about steroids or not, because his coach could be having him on a particular protocol or whatever it is. This idea that all these crossfitters are on them, Matt Frazier and Rich Froning and, um, and,

and guys like Kalipa who are in great shape that won the CrossFit games. Like, um, I've trained with these people. I've been around these people. I don't know them, know them to the point where I've like, you know,

went through their fridge and went through all the stuff in their bedroom and flip their house upside down. Like I'm a DA agent or something, but, uh, I've been around them enough. Uh, and, and even, you know, and went through all the stuff in their bedroom and flipped their house upside down like I'm a DEA agent or something. But I've been around them enough. And even some other lifters and bodybuilders and powerlifters. There's some people that I'll just always kind of speculate and think, yeah. I just think based off of history and based off of my interactions with them and what I've seen them do and what I've seen them perform, I don't necessarily believe that they're natural. I don't always believe

they're natural when they tell me, but for the most part, I just don't think that everyone does it. I think there's people that pay particular attention. Tom Brady is a really interesting case because in a 20-year, some 20- time frame from the time he came out in the NFL draft and ran like a 5-1-40 and kind of looked like a ostrich when he was running and had a you know not a great physique and you know till now he has a much better physique he was able to take care of himself really really well but you just hear all the different stuff that Tom Brady does and what he's done over the years.

Same with Jordan. Same with Kobe. Same with LeBron. All this off-the-court preparation, off-the-field preparation. Are they doing that in combination with something? Possibly. You know, I don't know. But, like, I'm not going to just believe i'm not going

to i'm certainly not going to chalk it up to performance enhancing drugs i'm not going to be like yo it's because those guys are doing stuff what i would speculate maybe more on is that they might take something to kind of keep themselves at some sort of even par with where they were when they were younger you know yeah i i can understand what you're saying there um but this this is a big thing that i i really just want people to kind of focus on here um when you watch i think a great example this is this guy named filion on youtube he's he's a guy who does all these natty or not videos and like he'll he'll you know he'll look at shredded fitness personalities or whatever and

he'd be like i mean look i've been lifting for this long and like there's no way that you know this dude being this lean and this shredded there's no way blah blah blah it's impossible without use of peds there you lean all year around all that type of shit right um and when i see that it it's it's almost kind of sad because the dude like he has a lot of people follow him a lot of teenagers follow him and when you pay attention to the way he speaks about this it's it's already defeating yourself like it's already defeating yourself from whatever capacity you have this is the thing everybody has a different starting point everybody has a different end point just because you train like me doesn't mean you'll be as big as me or as strong as me. You could be bigger and stronger.

You might not get there. But at the end of the day, you with enough time training, you will become a much better, stronger version of yourself. And by that time, you'll probably actually be pretty happy with the way you look if you've put in the time. But if one already puts in their mind, I believe that a majority of people at the top of whatever this thing is that I'm trying to do are on drugs. You're then already giving yourself an excuse to go down that route.

You're already like, there's no way I can do that. You're telling yourself that. And I mean, if you're already telling yourself that, you're not giving yourself the shot. You're not going to actually be patient enough to give yourself the time you're not going to do the necessary things to get there because you're already in disbelief that it's possible so all i'm the only reason i have this mindset about things is because i do want to believe it's possible i've always wanted to believe it's possible and if i go down that route of that everybody's on shit everybody

at the top has taken something whatever i've already fucked myself yeah and there's there's nothing wrong with you truly believing that usain bolt right i can tell that one that one hits you because i just your face right you're like well hold on like kind of hoping that he would change his but it doesn't matter you believe that and that's fine because there's another thing that people can't prove that believe wholeheartedly called religion you know so like what's wrong what's wrong with believing in that absolutely nothing what's wrong with believing that you're like i said you're heroes there's nothing wrong that. If y'all think I'm naive, fuck it, I'm naive. Yeah, be naive and be jacked. I also would say this, that if you were to

let's just say you had an athlete that took some stuff and you got their levels to be real optimal and then you investigated and looked at every single number, every single metric that you can possibly examine it's my understanding that hussein bolt uh doesn't even actually run that well in terms of what people consider to be the best running mechanics now what i would say to that is like maybe he just found a different way that's better and no one else is even recognizing it because that's actually usually closer to the truth. But anyway, that's my shitty understanding of sprinting.

Um, I would say that if you investigate every little marker of blood that you could possibly, uh, look into for him versus somebody that competes against him and runs the exact same time, let's just hypothetically say that takes stuff. You wouldn't find anything in the blood that would probably determine why

Usain Bolt is consistently better than this other person, I don't think. Like, I don't think, I don't think you would just find like a spiked testosterone level. I don't think you would find just a spiked growth hormone level or IGF-1 or cortisol or estrogen to testosterone ratio. Like, I don't, I don't think testosterone ratio. Like I don't, I don't think it's possible. I don't think you can find like what that measure is because there's like femur length. There's the length of the person's shin bone, the size of their feet.

Michael Phelps has giant feet. He's got giant hands, right? He's got flippers to get them through the water. St. Bolt has incredibly long legs. Another athlete who's kind of freak is Giannis Antetokounmpo in the NBA. Oh, yeah.

The Greek freak. His Achilles tendon is like ridiculously long compared to every other athlete around him. Like his Achilles, it's just weirdly long. No one's ever seen an Achilles that big. So who's the worst player? Let's just say the worst and the shortest player in the NBA. Line him up next to the tallest and who we view as the best player in the NBA. We wouldn't say, oh, it's growth hormone.

We wouldn't say, oh, it's probably a combination of testosterone and growth hormone that made that other guy that much taller that much bigger that other guy has that much bigger hands and feet and wingspan and uh endurance and this and that because he takes all these different things you know you line up lebron james next to whomever is like barely hanging on you know on a basketball team and you're not going to find an attribute in their blood and you're not going to find a chemical

that you could take that could exponentially fix, even if you could find a hormonal profile that matched everything that was in LeBron James' body, it still wouldn't make you him. There's something that makes him unique about him being him. And I think that's kind of what Encima is hoping to believe in and hoping to buy is

that I would just like to think that Hussein Bolt's a little fucking different. I kind of think that's cooler to believe in. I have to agree. I kind of think that's a little cooler to believe in. It's not as fun to believe like his team's probably just better and they know like, you know, better shit to dump into his body,

you know, and they know how to time and they know how to time it. But it's, it's hard to say. And there's always going to be speculation around the best. I mean, there's speculation about, uh,

Hussein bolts shoes and shit like that just because he's who he is, you know? Um, I would say that, you know, through, uh that you know through uh just training and nutrition and my like brief knowledge of it when i was young uh i was able to get far and then would i be able to would i be able to look the way that i look now i would say yeah within i maybe i wouldn't be like as vascular because i think steroids they kind of

push your your veins out a little bit but uh i had a picture i'll send to andrew right here of me at like 22 or four or so you know before i ever did anything i don't look fucking spectacular but uh i'm like 10 pounds lighter than I am right now. Maybe a little more. This is in my wrestling days. I mean, my arms are pretty jacked. My stomach is in pretty decent. Oh, shit. Yeah, you're damn.

Oh, yeah. And I'm probably too... I weighed 231 this morning. I was probably 225 there. So really, um, yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, could I have put on six pounds and 20 years, you know, probably. Yeah.

Could I, and, and could I, you know, be leaner? And I guess at that time my main, uh, like weakness was my legs. My legs weren't nearly as big and stuff like that. And as in shape as they are now but yeah you know i and i have my genetics are better than many because i remember like the first couple times i benched against my friends i lifted more than them but it's not wasn't just my genetics it was like my overall size and i think you probably experienced something a little bit similar and then what can't be forgotten with you is your soccer background yeah like how much more running did you do uh how long do you play soccer for 12 years 15 years 15 years yeah 15 years of soccer how much to 21 6 to 21 but three

of those years i couldn't play because i had a slaughter i would still try to like use a ball though and drill i just couldn't run. That was from 13 to 16. You basically ran for like a decade straight. Yeah. Where Andrew and I didn't really. I played football and I played other sports, and you kind of ran for them. There's drills, but a football play is just a couple seconds. I think in soccer, I think you're kind of moving around the entire time.

The field's fucking enormous. Yeah. Right? So, I mean,'re kind of moving around the entire time. The field's fucking enormous. Yeah. Right? So, I mean, you spent your whole childhood running. It makes sense that being lean isn't, like, you're not a stranger to being lean. Like, your body's been used to being lean for many years. It's like an optimal body weight for you, probably.

Yeah. Yeah, it's like, athletically, you can't discount that. Just like, who's the guest that we were just talking about? Jim Wendler. You know, when he was talking about just the importance of kids going out, playing sport, the difference it makes on your metabolism. Younger listeners, go out and do something. Or parents, put your kids in something. It will make a difference for the rest of their life. But i do think that did play a role um i do think it's it's helped but i mean again being on topic with what we're talking about now like i think that mindset's a huge part of things um for like again the the rough thing is trying to compare trying to compare your body to somebody else's body or your strength to somebody else's strength. Because I think that this is where people, like, this is what I hear so much. Like, you're lying to people because you're telling them if they work out, they're going to get as big and as strong as you. Nah, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying you will get as big as as strong as you can be if you use these training principles.

what I'm saying. I'm saying you will get as big as as strong as you can be if you use these training principles. And by the time you get there, you probably will be very impressed with what you've been able to achieve, like what you achieve there. Yeah, you have good genetics, but even if you don't, and the picture is pulled up on the screen right now, people, even if you don't have the highest or best genetics in the world, if you are consistent with some sort of strength training or whatever over time, you're going to get somewhere good good but i'm also not discounting like when we had jeff and dr whitmer and jeff whitmer on the podcast when i'm 45 50 50 or whatever if if i see like if if i need to take some test or whatever at that point i might do some hrt when i'm older right and i'm not competing in a sport that's tested for that stuff. But I haven't needed it because I've put in time. I think that time training has helped me to feel good all the time.

Not much different when we talk to Kyle Kingsbury and he talks about examining yourself through some psychedelics. Do we think someone at 16 years old should be messing around with that? Probably a really awful time. I can't even imagine, you know, I mean, I can barely imagine being around now just with social media, what it could potentially do to my mind, much less drugs and other things. So, you know, hopefully when we do talk about this stuff, and even though I've enjoyed a lot of success through my use of performance enhancing drugs.

I do hope that you guys take it with a heavy heart. And I hope that anybody that ever considers to do it, I hope they really look into it. Hope they investigate it. That is why we talk about it so much. We are not talking about it to promote it and to say, Hey, this is awesome. I will talk about it in that sense for people that are adults.

I do think that there may be a place for it in some people's lives that are especially suffering from low testosterone or just not making the progress that they want. And they're 35, 45 years old. But again, you got to keep in mind, even at 40, how long are you going to ride that out for? You can take it through your 70s and 80s. I mean, for now, that's my plan is just to kind of keep rolling with it. I don't know. There may be a time where I discontinue them and disappear off the face of the earth. I don't know. But until that time, you know, we'll figure out what's going on. But I really did enjoy today's guest.

And, man, he did a really good job of breaking a lot of this stuff down and simplifying it. He didn't give us any, like, complicated answers, I didn't feel like. But they were all very simple. And then him kind of straight up answering about Phelps and Jordan, I thought for sure he would maneuver his way away from those, and he didn't. And that was pretty fucking badass. Yeah, he didn't hit us with any it depends type of answers. He was talking about three dummies.

Yeah, he had to dumb it down. He's like, I better just, I better just talk about protein and farts with these guys. Yeah. And maybe protein farts. Bruh, on the topic,

man, I, I think that bulletproof thing is really, cause I got to go again. And I've been having, I've been having to like use the bathroom again for the past 30, 40 minutes. Might be that MCT old powder in there.

I think it's that because bruh, like, oh my God. Your face, I was actually concerned. I was like, is he like sick, sick? Like I thought like maybe like, oh dude, like maybe he had to go throw up or maybe something's wrong. No, I was really over here trying to just hold it together and squeeze super tight. And you were like, nah.

I can't. Oh God. You took Andrew's advice though. I saw the knees were bent. I can't Oh god You took Andrew's advice though, I saw the knees were bent You were in a good position as you waddled across Andrew's best, that's your best advice man Still Yeah, I got terrible form everywhere else But if you have to poop, keep the knees bent

So that way you can kind of catch Some of the Oh my gosh The shock, you're absorbing the shock absorbers there you go yeah yeah because if your knees are straight you're going to shake some stuff loose i think runners might know what you're talking about runners trot probably yeah yeah it's it's sort of like um you got to imagine you're you're uh because you technically are holding a cup of water but like as you move you want that you want that mother you want it to

you don't want to spill any water. Because if you spill some of that water, you got shit in your pants. You gotta be careful. I do gotta go again. We need a cartoon to go with that. Take us on out of here, Andrew. On that note, Piedmontese.com

Links down in the description as well as podcast show notes. Code Power Project for 25% off your order and free shipping on that note, Piedmontese.com, uh, links down in the description as well as a podcast show notes, uh, code power project for 25% off your order and free shipping on any orders of $99 or more. Um, please make sure you find the podcast at Mark Wells power project on Instagram at MB power project on Tik TOK and Twitter. My Twitter and Instagram is at I'm Andrew Z and the Andrew Z on Tik TOK

and SEMA. Where are you at? And SEMA and Yang on Instagram and YouTube and SEMA yin yang on Z and the Andrew Z on TikTok. And Sima, where are you at? I'm Sima Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. I'm Sima Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. At Mark Smelly Bell on TikTok and everywhere else. And if you want to pick up any of the performance enhancing drugs that we shared today, go to AndrewZ.com. Catch you guys later. Strength is never weak. This week, there's never strength.

Bye.