Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 664 - How To Go From 100lbs to IFBB Pro ft. Ben Pollack & Taylor Gohn

Episode Date: January 20, 2022

Ben Pollack is an IFBB Pro and professional powerlifter and holds the all-time world record raw total of 2039 in the 198-pound class. He has won best overall lifter at the largest raw meets in the world, including the US Open, Boss of Bosses, and Reebok Record Breakers. Taylor Gohn is a Strongman athlete and coach to Pro Bodybuilders, Powerlifters and Strongman competitors. Follow Ben on IG Follow Taylor on IG: https://www.instagram.com/taylordrol/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb 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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #BenPollack #IFBBPro #BodybuildingMotivation

Ready, Andrew? We are rolling. I definitely hit record this time. Sounds like the fat guy over here is breathing into the microphone. In SEMA? Who was doing that last time? Somebody was breathing in. Stan.

Stan? Yeah, Stan was really blowing up on our show. I was like, are we at high altitude? What the hell is going on here? This is not a good advertisement for the vertical diet, Stan. He's like, hee, hee. So this is what high blood pressure looks like. 100%.

I was struggling this morning. I was running some hills in Tahoe, and I got smoked. I had to actually stop. It's been a while since I had to do that because I'm like, oh, you know, I could keep moving my feet. I could keep going. I was like, I can keep going. I can keep going. Then I was like, this is totally unsafe.

Like, this isn't a good idea. I'm going to die in the snow. Ben, you are pushing yourself in the gym like crazy. I'm seeing some of those things that you're doing where, I mean, it looks like you're just literally passing out. I've gotten close a couple times, actually. Especially during the last bodybuilding prep. We were training at MI40

with my friend Adam Bremmer. He coached Ben Paluski or worked with Ben Paluski while he was at his competitive career. Man, we did a set of hack squats once and I swear it took me like 20 minutes. I was like, God, I hope they don't have to take me to the hospital because I do not feel good right now. I felt like I was going to throw up for three days.

It was bad. It was good. You know, everyone has kind of different philosophies when it comes to that. I think everyone would be in agreement that you do need to challenge your body to a certain extent. But some bodybuilders in the past will use maybe short rest intervals, and they'll hammer themselves that way, and they'll do their sets of 10 or 12, but some guys are like, no, man, you've got to go deeper and darker than you ever thought was possible. What is your stance on that, and what do you think people might need?

So in my experience, it's kind of like a progressive thing, right, just like anything else. But when you're starting out, when you're a beginner, if you're trying to push yourself to that level, you're probably just going to hurt yourself, right? Because you don't have that great technique. You're not too familiar with what your body's capable of. And a lot of times, if you don't hurt yourself, that work's not going to be all that valuable, right? You're beating up your joints more than you're beating up your muscles. And as you get more and more experience, as you get better and better and more comfortable doing the lifts that you're doing whatever day,

then you can push harder and harder and harder. And so that's why you have a guy like Dorian who can do one hard set per exercise and be Mr. Olympia for however many years, and you have other guys in the gym who just can't grow on that amount of volume or can't keep training on that amount of volume. What camp are you on with that?

What's up? What camp are you on with that, like your up? What camp are you on with that? Like your training volume and how deep you go on training sets? Yeah, is this just stuff we're seeing on Instagram here and there? Or like, are you doing this like a lot? I'm doing it a lot. But honestly, most of the stuff I do, I don't feel like is completely all out. So for me at this point, I need to work on my weak points.

And I've always trained that way, right? Like I've always tried to really push myself really, really hard. And so it's worked for my back. It's worked for my legs really well. It's worked for my core really well. But not so much for the chest and the shoulders and the arms, which is, you know, really important if you're going to be on stage. So for those muscle groups, I've had to pull back a little bit because I find that, you know, I'm not at that level where I can push myself all out and still grow. So I tend to have a little bit more volume for those and have a little bit less volume for

the back and the legs. I think the area where I really differ from most bodybuilders, I come from the powerlifting background. I still like the heavy stuff. I still want to incorporate the heavy stuff in my training. And I think doing that is beneficial, but you got to find a balance for that too, right? I don't want to be pushing so hard or so heavy that I'm tearing a quad on an 800-pound squat because I wasn't in shape for it. Are you going in the gym each time with, I guess, programming? Or is it because it's bodybuilding? Because bodybuilders don't follow exact programming

the way that some powerlifters might do. Do you have more freedom over your workouts now? Or what does it look like for you? Yeah, that's a great question, honestly. When when i first started bodybuilding it drove me nuts how little programming there was it was like they have a list of exercises and that's it how are they supposed to do anything with this and so over time that's kind of evolved and i've talked with a lot of really good friends in the industry have helped me kind of form some ideas around that so taylor and i are really big on auto-regulating everything. Like at this point,

you know, in our level of development, that's really necessary because sometimes you go into the gym and you feel great and you can push really, really hard and you can hit PRs. And sometimes you go in and you feel like trash. And if you're trying to push yourself, you're not going to get much out of that session. You're just going to beat yourself up more. So we have a lot of freedom with regard to what kind of reps are we going to do? What kind of sets are we going to do? What kind of weight are we going to do? But then there's also kind of a big picture strategy of, okay, so this mesocycle, when we get back, for example, the next 20 weeks or so, Taylor's going to be focused on strength. He's going for a strongman show. I'm going to be more focused on

hypertrophy, right? And so I'm not going to be pushing my limits in terms of how much weight that I'm lifting. And instead, I'm going to be working in the higher rep ranges and really trying to focus on perfecting my technique, all that sort of stuff. It's really sick that you mentioned the auto-regulation, though, because both of you guys are in deep... You guys have probably been training for over a decade at this point. And when a beginner hears about auto-regulating, you should maybe do that to an extent. But maybe you can explain to someone what that is,

because when you become more advanced, you can't just follow the numbers of a program, the sets and reps because some days you might be able to push a little harder and some days you're so fatigued that you really have to back off so you can recover. So if you could explain that concept to people from a beginner to advanced athletes like yourselves. So when I was in grad school, my advisor was Jan Todd and her husband was Terry Todd. So I worked very closely with them. So they've been in the industry for longer than I've been alive. You know, they were champion powerlifters when the sport was very, very new. They ran the Arnold Charmin Classic.

Terry's passed now. But one of the things he told me, because he's coached champions. He coached Mark Henry. He coached Lamar Gant, Bill Kazmaier. Like, they've worked with the best guys to ever do this. Those are some, like, ridiculously strong people. And he said the most important thing about a coach is that they've worked with the best guys to ever do this. Those are some ridiculously strong people. And he said the most important thing about a coach is that they can go in the gym and they can see while the athlete's training, okay, what are they capable of today? What's enough for them and not too much?

That's the role of the coach. And that's true when you're training people at that level. But just to your point, when you're starting out, I think I mentioned this earlier, you don't really know what your body's capable of. And even if you do know what your body's capable of, you're probably not comfortable enough with the movements that you're doing to be able to push them that hard. So if you're trying to auto-regulate, which just means every time you go into the gym, you're trying to assess how you feel, what you're capable of based on how you slept, how you ate, how your warmups are moving, and then you're going to adjust the loads and the sets and the reps that you're doing accordingly. When you're first starting out, I think there's a whole lot of value in following a very

structured program where no matter how you feel, you're doing the exact same thing, maybe adding a little bit of weight each time, because A, you have to develop that discipline, whether it's going to the gym and being consistent going to the gym or what you're doing in the gym, being consistent with the movements that you're performing, how you're performing them, what weight you're performing them with. And there's no hurt with that program being like conservative because when you're new, you're going to gain off of anything. Exactly. Yes.

Yep. I coach a 16-year-old kid. He can train once a week. That's all he has time for to get in the gym. And he's adding like 20 pounds to his list every week. It's like, I think that's a kind of missing element for a lot of beginners is they don't realize you know, okay, it does say

to do 275 pounds but if 275 is moving like shit there's really as far as I'm aware, there's no coaches that want your reps to look like shit. They don't want your set of five with 275 to be looking like all single rep maxes where you're all hunched over in a squat or something like that.

You want the exercises to look pretty clean. And if someone's doing a five by five or three by five or three sets of three, it's the last couple of reps of the last couple of sets that might be a little bit like where we're talking about. It's starting to get a little sketchy, right? Yeah. And back to your point earlier, like when I mentioned with my own training, if I'm pushing that hard on the bench press, the reps are going to look pretty shitty. If I'm pushing that hard on the squatted deadlift,

I can probably hold good technique. So that's why I have kind of different phases to what I'm doing. And we brought Taylor in specifically because he has not eaten a carb in the last, how long has it been? Like an hour. That's bad. I'm kind of worried.

How do you guys eat? Because I know that you guys are throwing down some carbs. I know you guys want to be fucking big and strong. It's important. And we talk about this a lot on this show, and I talk about it often. But as much as I talk about it, I did write a book called The War on Carbs. Everyone's like, he's all keto. And that I'm not in favor of carbs, but obviously they have their place.

I'll be honest. If I wasn't training for bodybuilding and I just wanted to look good and feel good, I'd be doing that, man. I'd probably have some carbs around my training because I like carbs. They're tasty. But at the same time, I feel better. I have more energy the lower my carbs are. Really? Oh, absolutely.

100%. The problem is that doesn't work too good for bodybuilding. When you're trying to add a lot of size, especially for bodybuilding, where you want to have that kind of like round, full look to your muscles, that's all that glycogen that you're pushing in there. So for me, carbs are the main source of calories in my diet. And it's not comfortable, but at the same time, that's kind of part of the game, right? Like if it was comfortable, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Right. What about for you? I was actually going to say like when I'm injured or off season, stuff like that, it's pretty much, it's not no carbs, but it's just like intra-workout carbs. And then just pretty much kind of what you promote, like I call it like adjusted keto or modified keto. But I kind of think of the carbs like a supplement where you're only going to take in as much as justified by the training and the goal. We say that all the time. That's how I look at it too.

But even for you, training for strongman, it's important after the strongman competition is over for you to drop some LBs, right? Drop a little bit of weight because there's just no good reason to be that large for that long. I do intend like part of my prep every time I compete in Strongman is to have an extra 10 to 20 pounds, even if it's just to hook it on my belly. So, yeah, that typically drops off every time after a show with the goal of kind of maintaining the strength that I gained from that cycle, you know? Right.

But, yeah. So years ago I had a magazine called power magazine and uh i was trying to highlight some of the strongest people and i was also trying to find uh maybe make people aware of some folks that they just weren't made aware of yet and try to highlight some people that i thought were you know lifting some big weights and doing some cool shit and ben uh kind of came across my eyeline with some of the lifts that he was doing. And I just remember in communicating with you back and forth, Ben had like no pictures. I'm like, he's like the only power lifter that has like hardly any pictures. There's hardly any video.

This guy is like a fucking vampire. He's doing all these crazy lifts. And on top of that, he was shredded. Like he looked amazing. I'm like, who has striations going through the serratus muscles and has world records and doesn't have any fucking pictures of it? Why didn't he have any pictures back then? So when I first started lifting, man, I was really shy. Didn't like to take my shirt off. Didn't like people watching me while I was lifting.

Really, really anxious about all that stuff. And my best friend in graduate school, Dominic, he and his girlfriend were using Instagram when it was pretty new, right? Just first starting out. And they really encouraged me. Hey, look, just make something that's really fun. You get to connect with people. It's really cool and all this stuff. And this was in Texas, right, at the time.

And so I did that and I put up a lift once in a while. Well, Texas, like the gym we trained had no AC. It would get like blistered. So I trained without a shirt on. I was like, I'm going to pass out if I don't. And so I post one of the squat videos because I was happy with the weight, right? And I wasn't wearing a shirt.

And the thing got like 100 times how many views I usually get. It's not like 10,000 or something. I had no followers at the time. I was like, oh, people are going to actually watch me if I do that. So after that, the Ensema theory. Oh, man. Well, okay do that. So after that, Ian Seema theory. Oh, man.

Well, okay. So on top of that, you at that point, how much did you weigh? Because this is something crazy about you. How much did you weigh when you were putting up those records? So when I was competing at my best in powerlifting, I was right between 181, 198. So really hard cut to 181 or not quite fill out 198. Okay. So now you're how how heavy 247 248

in the morning and when we were talking in the break not in the break room but in the room up there how would you how how heavy you when you started your lifting journey when i started lifting i was a freshman in high school we started lifting for uh wrestling and i was wrestling 103 103 yeah holy shit you're also a cross-country runner right yeah yeah that just that first year not good at that were you were you always strong when you first started lifting when you're not so i was trying to deadlift when i started out i remember i couldn't bend press 95 i couldn't squat 95 i mean i could like quarter squat it like football squat it um but i couldn't actually squat 95. But I could pull 225 for reps.

Wow. And my coach comes over while we're deadlifting, and his eyes get real big. He's like, you know, you keep doing that, you're going to be a pretty good wrestler. I actually enjoyed that more than the wrestling part. What do you think makes you a good deadlifter? You don't really look – sometimes deadlifters, they have really long arms. Do you have kind of long arms? My arms are kind of long.

It's really my torso is really, really short. There's not a whole lot of space between my ribcage and my hips. And so that puts you in a good position. Too much space. All right. So he's cheating, right, Taylor? He's cheating. A hundred percent.

He's pulling sumo with his hands on the outside. And do you also think, because like, okay, so there's kind of the series. So Stan Effer didn't keep playing soccer. There's a lot of these athletes who can handle a lot of training volume that came from sports that were very endurance-based. And I'm curious, do you think that has any of the reason why you're able to handle such high training volume as well? That's a great question. I know when I was starting out in trying to really get focused on training stuff, I was following the programs from the magazine right and it's like you got a million different reps and sets so you know I had that kind of background as well yeah um but I do think there's something to like

the genetic aspect of you're going to be good at soccer you're going to be good at running you're going to be good at wrestling you're probably going to err towards the side of I can handle more volume I can handle more work both physically can handle more work, both physically and mentally. What were your eating habits when you were at 103 pounds, you said? Oh, shit. Not eating much at all. I've never had a big appetite, honestly. That's been the biggest challenge for me by far.

I remember there was one match where I didn't make weight for wrestling. I was shocked because I never had to cut, never had to do anything. I just stepped on the scale that morning and I guess had too much to drink the night before or something and and was over it was just nuts to me um so i didn't follow a set diet until after i graduated from undergrad and then i at that time i you know was still into bodybuilding and really wanted to uh to compete at some point and ended up hiring a coach who's my coach now just by coincidence and so i was on kind of like a carb cycling diet when i was first getting serious

about nutrition but then i started training for strongman and tore my bicep and i was like well the biceps gone and we're gonna be a good bodybuilder so then i got into powerlifting tell them about the spinach oh man so this is when i was competing at 181 so to make 181 i was walking around around 205 and i'd already using performance dancing drugs at that point right so i was my my body weight was inflated and to make weight it was extremely difficult right so at that point i was following a strict diet but it was it was starving myself man so like back to your point about the carbs. I'm training with 700 pounds of squat and deadlift regularly.

And I'm walking around at like 200, and I'm having carbs. I had a sweet potato before training, and I had a bowl of oatmeal. I can't remember how much oatmeal it was, but that was before and after training. And then I had a plum at night. And those were my carbs for the day. And I was so fucking hungry that to get food and without calories i was eating just like bags and bags of spinach so like six bags of spinach a day just to keep food to myself oh my god my potassium was so high on my blood

test i was in danger of having a heart attack shit fuck yeah i was it was nuts, dude. Were you eating any protein at that point? I was eating protein. So it was almost all protein, right? Like very low fat, very low carb. And, man, dude, I felt like trash. My blood work was trash. But I could make weight.

And eventually it got to the point where I was so depleted I was just getting hurt like every other training session. And that was when I was like, I can't do this anymore. But, Doug, why spinach? Like why not something else? Well, like what are are you gonna have that's a lot of volume with very few calories right it's spinach celery like a lot of chewing lettuce spinach yeah exactly russell sprouts russell sprouts are actually kind of high in carbs and fiber fuck yeah yeah okay really pushing the envelope over there even broccoli man I was like oh I don't know if I can afford that asparagus was one

how did you guys develop a bromance how did this happen because having a good training partner is massively important that's a great question we met online we met right after COVID

or right as COVID was going down the first time i don't know what time we're on now but um you moved there for your coach at the time justin and that kind of all fell through so i was i was just that's where i grew up was the grand rapids michigan where he moved to uh and i managed the gym that he ended up training at. So that's just kind of how it started. Can we tell them more or is that for after the podcast? Is there more? There's more. Tell them because I don't know, obviously.

The first time we're chatting, I guess Taylor's nervous or whatever, and we're hanging out. I don't do that. I was trying to find something to pose it with. I don't do that. Trying to find something to talk about. I was like to find something to post it with. I don't do that. Trying to find something to talk about. I was like, you want to smoke some weed?

He was like, hey. He was like, I got some good stuff. I was like, all right, cool. So I had to get rid of Break the Ice.

Okay, on that, yeah, so I was like, actually, I was expecting Kaler Willem because the guy said, hey,

that Dr. Deadlift guy is coming in. I was like, cool, I'm a Kaler fan, so I'll get to meet him. Fucking short guy. But I was like, cool, I'm a Kaler fan, so I'll get to meet him. Fucking short guy. But I was like, oh, well, he's famous and shit, and a lot of people talk to him

and try to get stuff out of him. So I'm going to offer him, like, I don't know, a shit ton of weed. Ask him if I can ask him questions about training and drugs and stuff. And he's like, hey, man, take this so you know I'm not using it. Peace offer. Real quick, because we're going to get to the drug stuff.

But I'm curious about this. We have Andrei Milanochev in the gym. When he came to the podcast the first time, he said something that was really dope. And I was like, I totally agreed with. He said that when individuals start training, that they should start by building a base of volume and a base of muscle before they get into strength training and moving really heavy loads. He said that people should do that for maybe three or four years before they start lifting heavy. It kind of sounds like, unless I'm wrong, that's kind of what you ended up doing with like you were focused on volume and bodybuilding and building muscle, and then you moved into

the strength stuff. Am I correct? Yep. Yeah. So it was kind of a weird trajectory for me because when I first started out, yeah, I wanted to be a bodybuilder. And I started training and stuff, and then i met my undergraduate roommate had some records in the apf and started getting more into the heavier stuff but i still i wanted to be a

bodybuilder like i want to have a lot of muscle and everything and i mentioned tearing my bicep and that how that was kind of the end of it but even before then i was starting to realize i'm better at being strong than i am being big yeah Yeah. Right? Because I'd always been a little guy. So that's just my training naturally started to gravitate towards strength. And then after I did tear the bicep, I was like, I'm not even going to worry about how it looks. I'm just going to try and get really strong. But it seemed like you did have a good base before you moved into powerlifting.

I think that's fair to say. Absolutely. And what would your suggestion be for somebody who wants to get into lifting? Like, Mike, like, I'm curious, do you even know if you have a propensity for strength if you've never really lifted before to produce force? You know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. And you don't, you can't possibly know that.

So the way I suggest people get into lifting, when they first starting out, I think they should go for the simplest thing, which in my opinion, one of those 5x5 programs. There's like strong lifts, Texas Method. Those types of programs, 5-3-1. Yes, exactly. That's what I started with. You're performing the same major compound lifts week in, week out. You're getting really good at those.

You're starting to figure out, okay, how do I move my body around in the gym? Once you have that, then I think you should have a fairly decent amount of muscle. You should be pretty comfortable with lifts. Then you can start trying to focus a little bit more on strength, see if you can build that strength base up. If I'm just going to throw out numbers, and obviously it depends on your body size and everything, but the basic starting point, 400 squat, 300 bench, 500 deadlift. If you want to say based on body weight, it's one and a half times body weight bench, double body weight squat, two and a half body weight deadlift. Once you're there, then you can decide, okay, do I want to push strength? Do I want to push size more? But

regardless, no matter which path you go down to really be the best, you're going to have to push both at different points in your career. So let's explain that a little further. So having, like getting into those ranges that you just discussed, what will that do for you if you get towards that strength level? What will that do for you in terms of your options when you're venturing down the path of bodybuilding? So that's a great question. In my opinion, and I don't have any research to back this up. I'm not a huge research guy, despite the fact that I spent six years in grad school. I think when you look at the top bodybuilders, they're really, really strong. Whether or not they train like that, they're really, really strong.

We trained with Derek Lunsford one time and the majority of his training is kind of like pump work that Phil Heath, Kai Green type stuff. But he can put up 150 dumbbells like they're nothing, like if he wants to. So I think there's an absolute level of strength that's required for each individual person to be able to put on a lot of size.

And that's well above those 1.5 to 2.5 numbers. But the thing is, the fact that they're capable of it doesn't mean they have to train for it all that time, right? So there's trade-offs there. There's also some limitations in bodybuilding if you're not mobile. Like I've noticed that guys that are more flexible that can move better, they just tend to be able to recruit the muscle fibers better. And you can make an argument for the guys that are more flexible that can move better, they just tend to be able to recruit the muscle fibers better. And you can make an argument for the guys that are stronger as well.

Someone that can bench 500 pounds knows how to recruit their muscle fibers really well with 275 pounds. They don't really need to push it or do anything crazy. They can use those weights. And then same thing with the mobility aspect. For me, like when I was trying to grow my chest for some bodybuilding stuff that I did, it was hard for me to get those deep angles of really pushing the elbows up and driving the elbows out. Like, you know, powerlifting,

you try to keep them in and you try to protect yourself in a different way. But you know, I think mobility is a huge factor of bodybuilding that's not really discussed much. That was the first thing Taylor said to me when we started training together. He's like, look, dude, if you want to be a good bodybuilder, you've got to be able to move. Like, you've got to be training like an athlete.

You can't move at all. You're like, forget this. Your sport is showing your body on stage. And if you can't put your body in the right position, you're never going to do well. So, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, even something like a side chest pose or that tricep pose. If you're stuck, if you can't rotate your hips the way that you need to, you can't show your body the way that you need to. Even if it's not just stuck in a range of motion, your muscle might be bound up or not activating.

You know, like you're saying, it's not firing, so you can't actually, like lats, for example, you go to show your lats. They might be a little tucked behind. They can't fully come forward. tucked behind and they can't fully come forward. We've kind of found that that reflects on your squat and your front rack position and everything that would require that front lat motion. You can kind of see how to fix your mobility from both sides. Don't be calling me out on my own show here. This is embarrassing.

I wasn't expecting you guys to do that. Would you guys say, I mean this is for everybody, like going to bring up a very obvious athlete, but Russ Swole started out powerlifting. He's going to start dipping into bodybuilding. Started off with football, actually, before that. I know him as a powerlifter. You know what I mean? And he's going to fucking crush every, well, I don't want to jinx anything, but he's going to destroy a lot of people when he steps on a bodybuilding stage.

people when he steps on a bodybuilding stage. So is that like, if somebody does want to be a bodybuilder and they're so hyper-focused on bodybuilding, like maybe they should start off with powerlifting or at least, I don't know, dip into powerlifting as a regular thing instead of just, nope, I'm a bodybuilder. I'm going to eat chicken and rice and do bicep curls. So I think this goes back to that absolute strength thing that I was talking about before. Some people are just going to be naturally gifted and they're going to look at weights and they're going to grow, right? They're going to be naturally gifted, and they're going to look at weights, and they're going to grow. They're going to do that pump work, and their muscles are going to get bigger each time they train. But those people are going to know it.

They're not going to be the ones who are watching this podcast asking me for advice. Those people can do whatever they want. The people who are really struggling, who are like, man, I'm doing all these sets and reps, and I'm not getting anywhere, those are the people who need to really focus on strength and build up that level where then they can come back to the lighter work and grow from it. The other thing too is, oh, sorry.

No, no, you're good. Go ahead. Go ahead. The other thing too is not specializing too early. By that, I mean specializing all the way in powerlifting, all the way in bodybuilding. How many times have you seen local powerlifters, they're competing meet after meet, just hitting the bench squat deadlift and they're not really getting that much better meet to meet. meat, just hitting the bench squat, deadlift, and they're not really getting that much better meat to meet.

So you almost kind of cap and stall out your progress and you'll see those plateaus if you go all in on one direction. But if you develop fully as an athlete, reach that full development and then start to specialize, that's kind of how you avoid those plateaus. And I want to piggyback off of what both of you guys just said because when I started lifting, I started lifting when I was 13. But my focus in training was just building muscle and bodybuilding. I only started focusing on strength training when I was like 20 or 21.

But when I started focusing on strength training and moving the big three and getting stronger with those movements, it's like I had a new boost of muscle gain because I was getting stronger. And when I was getting stronger with these lifts, I started busting through plateaus when it came to my bodybuilding lifts because I was absolutely stronger. And it's like, it's, it's something that, like you mentioned, athletes should try to get both in. It's like, you don't have to do singles, but moving fives, threes, fives, et cetera, that can make a big difference in terms of somebody's muscle progression. It's crazy.

In terms of bodybuilding, do you think a regular bench press is a great movement or like where do you kind of stand? I know like I guess it's like really individual thing. Actually, with what you said earlier about the angles, I think it could be just fine of a movement if you're having that exposure on the pecs. I think it could be just fine of a movement if you're having that exposure on the pecs, but you're not going to get a full stretch in the muscle if you're using other muscles to support the weight. Right. If you're benching like a powerlifter, you might be avoiding actually using the full potential of the chest. So that's the problem, right? If you're benching like a powerlifter where your shoulders are in a safe position,

then you're not really exposing your chest to the full load. If you're benching like a bodybuilder where you have a lot of internal rotation, your elbows are flared, most big guys aren't going to have the mobility for that. And that's going to put them in a dangerous position where they're at risk of tearing a pec. So it's hard for me to say that, yes, that's a good movement for bodybuilders. Instead, I'm going to kind of bullshit a little bit and say that whatever strength movements you pick, you have to practice them enough that you can hold that perfect technique before you load them heavily.

Yeah. Because otherwise it doesn't matter whether it's a bench or a squat or a, I don't know. Machine press. Yes, exactly. You're risking it by pushing those weights. I love what you're saying right there because we have a tendency to look at what everybody else is doing. And so you might see somebody just got done doing 455 on the flat bench for reps, and they got a huge chest.

Now that's your focus. But meanwhile, you're plenty proficient at doing dumbbells. You're plenty proficient at doing incline bench. You go and watch that video, and you go to try to do the same thing, and there goes your shoulder. There goes your pec. You regress backwards eight weeks because you can't figure out how to bench the same way as this other person. But I don't know why we do that so much. Our intuition and the things that we're already pretty good at, we're like not grateful enough for. It's like, man, I'm already good at these

five or six exercises. I don't need 10 more. You know, it'd be nice to maybe open up the playbook once in a while, have a couple extra fun things to try, but staying in your lane is probably the most important thing. I absolutely agree. And I'm curious, how did you, when you started focusing on bodybuilding and getting bigger, how did you work on your mobility? Were you just slowly increasing your range of motion for these movements and what was comfortable? Did you do any purposeful stretching or anything like that?

What did you do? So I put on a lot of size really fast. Yep. And in some ways that worked against me. Why did that happen? So I had been, let's see, I started like focus. I started in bodybuilding, not classic physique, right? Started that right after my first classic physique national show, which was August of 2019.

Or maybe it was the last day of July, right around there. Before then, I had spent a year prepping for classic, right? So my weight cap, my height is 190. Before that, I had spent a year and a half trying to stay 181 for bodybuilding. So I'd essentially been dieting for two and a half years straight, like starvation dieting. So after that, when I was trying to put on size, I probably tripled my caloric intake at least. And to what? From where to about where? 1 where 1800 to whatever three times that is

so i um oh and i doubled my drug use right because to stay 181 stay 198 190 i couldn't be using much like if i was taking 500 milligrams of test i was was out of my weight class. Right. So by the time I, uh, I did all that at the same time coming off my contest show, had my contest rebound two and a half years of dieting, new drugs. So I put on, let's see,

I went from one 84 on stage. I don't want to give an exact date cause I can't promise, but it was by like January, right? So we have August, September, October, November, December, six months. I was 260. Between, wait, wait, not these two.

No, so those are both in contest shape. I was 260 off season, right? Jesus, man. Look at the confidence of the pose to the right, you know, and how he opened up a little bit more as opposed to the left. And then just look at the density of like his legs and shoulders it's fucking wild um so yeah if i could get my legs legs legs and shoulders and chest up a little bit more being in shape you said your legs your shoulders your legs okay your legs are chest and shoulders and triceps yeah that's what you gotta work on what do you

have to do with your legs because your legs look insane yeah it's gotta get like what sliced up a little bit more so i'll be honest i have pretty good genetics for legs and back i i train it once a week i don't honestly push that hard like i can push them a lot harder if i needed to um so i'm just trying to balance that a little bit more right now it's not necessarily done but it's prioritized less because other shit has to be brought up we know how to fix it right very straightforward try a little bit more cool question are chest and triceps some of your weaker body parts they're my weaker body parts also bench presses my weak lift right hey we're twins bro because for me it's the same thing i'd like i can do low volume legs and low volume back and that she'll just grow but my chest and triceps

my chest is my bench is my weakest lift yep hey it's interesting how those muscle groups kind of correlate huh who would have thought you uh said something amazing just a second ago you said just uh we know how to fix it just try a little bit harder what's what's that mean and what have you guys been able to do that with previously remember what i was saying that if you're starting out in bodybuilding and some people can just like look at the weights and grow they do that pump work and that works fine for them so So for me, I can train my back and legs heavy and they're going to grow. And so I know this is how we get them bigger.

I already know I can do this. I've proved it. I know I have more in the tank for that. It's not something that I have to figure out. Whereas the chest and the shoulder and triceps, it's like, well, try going heavy. That doesn't work. So either I'm going to lighten up a little bit.

I've tried different movements. I've tried different training frequencies. It's got to be something else and I haven't quite figured that out yet. So, that's the real challenge, I think.

I think some of the truth of it is like, some people are just like, wider than they are thick. I think Encima's like, fucking wide, like real wide shoulders. Yep.

John Cena is similar and then John had a hard time like getting that density and that thickness of his chest, especially at such a young age. His body was just insane and super mature. If you watch Peacemaker, he's naked pretty much the entire show. And he looks amazing.

I think he's like 44 or 45 years old, and he's got veins running through his stomach and stuff. He looks absolutely insane. But from a bodybuilding perspective, that was always kind of a hard thing for him to do. His chest looked amazing, but it just didn't have that fullness of those top-tier bodybuilders. And that's what I really like about it. It's like, okay, so now you have a challenge. How are you going to figure this out? And maybe you don't, and maybe you never get better as a bodybuilder.

But if you do, that's something that's really cool to me, is figuring out how your body can work in different ways, get different results. It's a tough sport. As far as bodybuilding, you're already an IFBB pro now. If you could tell us actually part of that process, but also how far, what is your goals for that? I mean, with what you did in powerlifting, I'm assuming you want to take it to the top if you can. So that's a great question, a really great question,

because I am getting older, so I'm 34. And in bodybuilding, we can push pretty long, right? Like you can push – Dexter Jackson was close to what, 50? Yeah. So it's not like age is as much of a factor as it is in the strength sports where your joints are just going to be like, no, sorry, bro. I'm not in it anymore. So I have time, but there's also those tradeoffs with health, right? You were mentioning earlier like strongmen probably don't need to be walking around

as big as they are for health purposes. Probably don't need to be taking that many drugs. Probably don't need to be eating that much food. Those things are things I'm starting to consider. I would love best case scenario, make it to the Olympia stage, make top five at the Arnold, win the Arnold. Those are things that are kind of floating around in my head.

But honestly, I want to be able to do it as long as I can and enjoy it for as long as I can. So that's the big goal. But yeah, obviously I want to push myself. Try to get up to 280 in the offseason. My hate, that'd be a lot. And then I think I'm pretty good at getting shredded. I really enjoy getting shredded.

So to be one of those guys like John Meadows who could come in the most conditioned every single show, that would be cool for me too. What's going on with the Strongman stuff? What's the guy doing with Strongman? What's going on with that? So actually, can I tell him a little bit about what we've been talking about? Every week I see you're posting. You're like, I'm not supposed to be doing this, but this is too fun.

Exactly. You're picking up stones. Oh, 100%. You're doing log presses. You're like, whoops, I did it again. This is actually kind of a cool issue that I haven't experienced with an actual athlete other than in my own head.

He's obviously an extremely mature athlete. He's coming, not towards the end, but he's at the last quarter. He starts getting really old. Jesus Christ. And one of the, one of the flaws he has as an athlete is not, not being in prep and having an immediate goal to push really hard for and, you know, making progress when we don't have those goals.

And so having some more fun and also doing some conditioning stuff like this. The shoulder press is obviously going to bring up his weak muscle groups. Trying to have some fun this year, do a pro debut next year. Strongman pro debut? No, no. Pro bodybuilding to set him up better physically and mentally you know mentally

being most importantly because that's what's going to cause the longevity right? so that's kind of where we're sitting on that to chill out and have some fun you have to have Ben have a focus

otherwise all hell's going to break loose in the gym that's kind of what you're saying well that's how it's always been beats my ass at home that's how it's always been. Beats my ass at home. That's how it's always been.

And you've got to change that at some point. Like, that's not sustainable. That's how I ended up getting hurt in powerlifting all the time. So trying to embrace the off-season. And if that means doing stuff that, hey, maybe this isn't optimal training, but it's fun and it's going to keep you mentally engaged, that's really important. What you said there, though, is it's one of the big differences between bodybuilding, powerlifting, and other sports.

Because powerlifting, some powerlifters can compete three bodybuilding, powerlifting and other sports. Cause powerlifting, some powerlifters can compete three, four, maybe five times a year. Some compete more bodybuilding. If you want to make progress, you can't compete that often because you need an, you need an off season to gain muscle.

Right. That was one of the things that like, that's why I picked up powerlifting after I did my prep in 2015. Cause I was like, fucking training is boring. I need something to do. Exactly. Exactly.

You mentioned earlier, I think you said something about like 20 weeks. And then anytime I hear Nsema talk about people prepping, people getting ready, you know, I'm thinking in my head like, oh, probably a person's got like eight or 12 weeks. He's talking about a year or two usually. He's like, oh, it'd be good if the guy bulked for like two years and then came back. I'm always like, fuck, that's a long ass time. Well, coming from the strength background, you're prepping for 20 weeks. Your joints are not going to be happy with you, bro.

Or your brain. Or your brain. Yeah, you want to shotgun it. I'm curious about this. Okay, so I don't know how long you've been using PEDs in general, but you've talked about it on your YouTube channel. It seems that you've been doing things safely. And one thing that I've noticed, we had somebody else on the podcast who I mentioned his breathing was normal. That's something I don't see often when guys use quite a bit of stuff.

Their breathing ends up being pretty labored. How have you been able to navigate that while making sure everything is super safe? And how long have you been taking PEDs? So first of all, I'm going to be upfront. You can't make it super safe, right? You can make it as safe as you can. But I started using PEDs in the spring of 2016. My first untested meet was Texas State, which was April 2016.

So I want to say I did six or eight weeks before then. I can't quite remember. But so that's when I was starting. And I haven't come off since then. I've done blasting crews where I'll drop down to like 200 milligrams of testosterone in between cycles. And recently, since I've gotten bigger, it's been 200 milligrams of testosterone, 200 milligrams of nandrolone. But when I started out, I didn't know jack and i wasn't using super high doses because again couldn't let my body weight get that high so i think the highest i ever went for power lifting was i want to say and i i did not do a good job of tracking any of my gear use like i'm not going to swear to this but i want to say my heaviest cycle off-season was 500

tests, 300 DECA, and 50 ANIVAR for like eight weeks. In-season, I could push the androgens, like the Halo, the Tren, the stuff that's not going to add a whole lot to body weight. I know I went up to at least 500 Tren at one point, and I know I did 40 Halo for

four weeks. It might have been five weeks at one point. I pushed the drugs, but in terms of absolute, nowhere near what it Kilo for four weeks. It might have been five weeks at one point. So I pushed the drugs, right? But in terms of absolute, nowhere near what it would be for bodybuilding. So from 2016 to 2019, right? So the first three years of using it, it was, I would say, low dose, moderate dose, just for practical reasons. Like I wasn't going to be able to reach my goals with more. And that means you were 28 when you started using PEDs, right?

I'm going to take your word for that because I can't do that. Because you're 34 now. That was six years ago. 2016, you said, is the first time? Yes. So you're already training for a long time. How long were you training before? I started training in 2001. And by the time I got... Honestly, the reason I got on was

USAPL Raw nationals in 2015 i placed second to john hack i deadlifted 500 at 183 and 500 700 at 183 and john comes back 15 minutes later right in the next flight and just destroys it at like rp6 and i'm like i'm not competing against this guy he's just gonna kick my ass and so i was like all right well i'll go to the untested division where he's not, where he isn't. And so that worked until he decided, like, all right, I'm going to go to the untested division. Didn't they drug test you that day and not him? They gave me like the WADA drug test.

And I was like, I didn't even win. This is kind of bullshit. And that kind of pissed me off. It was me and the other guy's name was Alex Trotisky. And we were like, we were the most jacked guys of the meet. So it's like they pick and choose. I was like, this isn't gonna work for me dude that's actually that's actually really crazy because okay 2016 you trained for 15 years and you were already

100 and how many pounds before you did anything 183 and i had to cut for that i remember i cut from 190 and it was a hard cut because at the time like it's a lot harder to cut when you're natural but i think that's a that's something that I want a lot of guys to pay attention to because you started in high school at 103. You got to 180-something pounds jacked without having used anything. And then you pulled 700. And then you pulled fucking 700. That's huge.

I think if you look at the guys that wait the longest to get on, those are the ones who tend to do the best. Yeah, and you mentioned you pulled 700 at that body weight, and you mentioned your best deadlift in competition is 800 pounds or 804. 815. 815. Yeah. So I think that a lot of times people think they're going to take steroids,

and 100 pounds, let's face it, like that is a lot of weight, and especially when you're already that strong. However, we don't really know what you could have pulled had you just not taken anything. Right, yeah. And if you would have went up in weight naturally, we don't really know what you could have pulled had you just not taken anything. Right. Yeah. And if you would have went up in weight naturally, we don't know. Exactly. So my best total ever natural was like 1650, right around there. My best total ever on stuff was 2039.

But that was 15 pounds heavier with knee wraps, with a deadlift bar bar with a 24-hour weigh-in with a huge cut better training better training how long have you been training between those four years so four more years exactly right so it's like how much you're getting out of the the drugs from for a strength perspective probably 10 to 20 percent at the most now from a size perspective you get a whole lot more yeah but yeah i I think people really, really, really overestimate how much the drugs can do for strength. And they just give you that one jump, though. They don't give you a continuous jump forever, right? Absolutely not.

And that's another reason why I think it's really important to not get on until you really have pushed yourself as – maybe not all the way that you can naturally naturally but pretty far because you need to know how to train if you just get on from day one the drugs are going to do a whole lot for you and you're going to try to keep progressing by adding more drugs and more drugs and more drugs and you're never going to realize hey i don't need more drugs i need better training and if you start out focusing on the training you're like okay this is what works for me i'm going to add this you know an o2 O2 boost, essentially. Then you can always come back to those training methods that work for you. They're still going to work. They might work even better because you can handle a little bit more training volume, but you're always going to have those core principles that are going to get you, help you continue to progress.

I think when it comes to steroids, performance enhancing drugs, I think there's a lot of problems that make it like really hard to detect how dangerous they really are. Most of us have a lot of other good habits. A lot of lifters don't really get too crazy into drinking, and people that are getting into bodybuilding and taking it really seriously, we value our sleep. We are obviously exercising plenty, right? What happens, though, is if you take a lot and you get way deep into the weeds of this sport

or strength sport, as you're moving along, you're like, you know what, I better get my shit checked out. Something's probably not good. You have a nosebleed during a squat or something. Or you have a nosebleed tie on your shoes. You know that things are probably not great. So you get your blood pressure checked.

It's through the roof. You look at some of your other blood work. Your red blood cell count is high, right? You do things to address some of these things. You also taper down the amount of stuff that you're taking. And then you're, quote, unquote, fine again. And you keep looking at that, and you're like, oh, I'm good. But we don't really know the long term.

You and I can stand here, or all three of us can stand here and say, we don't really know what the fuck's going to happen. Yep. We made a choice. It was a particular decision and we don't really, I just want to make that very clear to people. We don't truly know. We can look at our blood and we can be like, hey, I'm doing pretty good or I'm running

nowadays. I'm doing other things, but I don't really truly know what I did or didn't do with the amount of stuff that I took for my powerlifting career. Absolutely. I'm curious what your advice would be because nowadays on social, I've watched some of your content, and the way you put forward the content in terms of your PEDUs is super responsible. You preface things. You make sure people understand what the fuck they're getting themselves into but man like i'm watching some of these like 20 21

year old dudes 23 year old dudes that are talking about oh i'm on trend and like all this shit and they're just like yeah 500 milligrams this and whatever but they don't seem to help people understand what the fuck they're getting themselves into when they do choose to go down that route. Yeah. So a couple of things there. First of all, one of my posts on Instagram got flagged for promoting drug use. So I'm going to have to tone that down a bit,

even though I do try to be really responsible about it. Second thing is I know what I don't know, right? So when I was getting my PhD, it was at the university of Texas. I did a lot of work with Victoria Felcar. So she is one of the top PD experts in the world who actually understands this stuff. What's her name? Victoria Felcar. We've got to get her on the podcast.

Absolutely, yeah. She'd be happy to. She actually understands. And talking to her, it's like, so I have no idea what's going on, so I can only tell people, this is what I know. Talk to somebody else who is more knowledgeable. And I feel very comfortable doing that. The most important part, I think, if somebody really knows what they're doing with PEDs, they either are not going to share that because that's what's going to, that's a service they can sell, right? They're going to be able to coach you and take you to a top level and charge you a lot of money for that. Or they're not going to tell you because they know, hey, this is really individual. This can really fuck people up if I just give generic advice

and it's not a safe thing to do. So the people who are putting out free information about PDs don't know what they're doing. And unfortunately, that's what propagates because people don't want to have to pay for information. They think that that should be free. So it ends up kind of snowballing and puts us in a situation where, A, performance-enhancing drugs are really demonized, right, because people end up using them irresponsibly. B, there's very few good sources of information because they get clouded out by the noise from the bad information. And C, people who think that they're doing their research, they're putting in the time, they're going through all this information, but they don't necessarily actually get good information out of it. And that's in contrast to things like training where we can do studies, right? It's ethical to – you talked about this in your documentary.

It's ethical to take somebody through a hard training session and see how their body reacts. It's not ethical to give somebody two grams of Tren and see how their body reacts. Yeah. In Russia it is. Okay. So you mentioned good sources of information. Victoria Falker, we got to get her. But who else do you think, if people, like, they really want to go down that rabbit hole and they want to get some good info because everybody's throwing out information on this shit, who should people be paying attention to? So, I mean, I know they're sponsoring this podcast, but Merrick Health reached out to me recently, and they have been fantastic.

Because with them, I could get, like, so you go through a normal, like, blood panel, whether it's through your doctor or through one of those websites or whatever and you get kind of the basic information, right? You're getting your metabolic profile. You're getting your lipid counts. You're getting your testosterone, your hormone levels checked. But you're not getting some of the other stuff, right? So like for example, when I went to America, my vitamin D levels were like really, really low. And that's one of the smaller things, right? Like there was also some issues where signs that, hey, maybe my insulin sensitivity is

not the best. Maybe there are things we can do to improve that. So I think there's a lot to be said from the performance enhancement side, but also the fact that, hey, they're actually willing to work with you. They realize, well, you know what? Your goals aren't exactly normal goals. So maybe you don't need exactly normal levels of testosterone. What can we ethically do to help you?

And understanding that, hey, maybe you're going to choose to do a little bit more. That's your choice. And at least we can try and make it healthier. The other guys I talked to, Joe Jeffries is a friend of mine. So he is a bodybuilding coach that also, just like Victoria, he knows a lot of really, really good information. And he's helped me set up my PEDs for bodybuilding in a way that it's something that I feel at least you're never going to know. You're never going to know is it actually safe, but I feel like, okay, I know the risks I'm taking. I'm at least maximizing my safety as much as I possibly can. What are some of the differences between things you would take for bodybuilding versus things you would take for powerlifting?

For me, it really comes down to the anabolics versus the androgens. Again, that's because I'm typically a weight class guy for powerlifting? So for me, it really comes down to the anabolics versus the androgens. And again, that's because I'm typically a weight class guy for powerlifting, right? So the androgens are typically going to have less of an impact. They're not going to push up your body mass that much. You're not going to retain as much glycogen from them, but you are going to get some of those other benefits that are going to translate into strength down the road. And again, it's a little bit over my head to talk about, you know, from a biological perspective, how that's happening. But I think it's a fair generalization to make. For me, for bodybuilding, it's really about the anabolics and it's okay.

So what anabolics can we tolerate without side effects like the heavy breathing stuff? I think I forgot to get to that. Oh, yeah. But those are the ones that are going to help me add more size. So for me, that's really testosterone. And then maybe I can use a little bit of nandrolone without side effects. But testosterone seems to be the one that I do the best with. And then doses. It's like for powerlifting, you can be taking three grams of stuff

and you're probably still going to get that 10% to 20%. For bodybuilding, it's really how much can you tolerate. You're going to get bigger. We were actually talking about this last night kind of on the anabolics versus androgenics. It might be more valuable for bodybuilding to stay on these cycles for longer but have less harsh compounds. Whereas in the strength, you don't have to spend all that time ramped up on shit. You can peak properly in training, peak properly with your diet, and then there's more game day stuff, faster acting stuff that you can peak as well. Andrew, see if you can find that family tree.

Also. That steroid family tree. I'll look it up. Tell people how to get Merrick real quick. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, you guys are going to be hearing Merrick way more because they got Ben on it, Stan was talking about it, and, of course, we are all using it as well. So if you want to be like us and get your blood work done at Merrick, head over to merrickhealth.com. That's M-A-R-R-E-K

health.com. And at checkout enter promo code powerproject10 to save 10% off all of your labs. Again, this is if you already know what you're going for. So if you want to get your test levels checked, you want your estrogen, whatever it may be, add those all up in your cart and use promo code powerproject10. If you don't know where to start, head over to MerrickHealth.com slash PowerProject and you guys will get the PowerProject panel. And that's 26 different labs. It's going to cover everything you need. And make sure you use promo code PowerProject to save $101 off of that. So what was the steroid tree you said? Yeah, steroid family tree. Steroid. I'm like, are you eating something?

No, dude, I was literally about to cough and then like you said that so i'm all about my bad oh it's all right so here it is while he's finding that i want to talk about the breathing thing that's a great question so i mentioned how the anabolics i tend to get side effects from when i push those doses right and for me it's water retention to the point where it's really uncomfortable to tie my shoes and walk upstairs and so right now i'm not on high doses for me, right? It's still probably high doses for most people, but not for me. And so 500 tests is what I'm running.

Plus, like, I'm taking blood pressure medication, glucose, whatever. 500 milligrams of antibiotics. So I can breathe fine at this dose. It's not an issue. But when I'm pushing, you know, if I'm on a gram of testosterone, then, you know, all train, I'll have a bunch of carbs around training and my whole face will be like bloated because my whole body's bloated it's all pumped up pictures yes and i can't breathe through my nose and so i'm like gasping for air the heaviest i've been was 272 that's the heaviest

i've ever stepped on a scale um and so that's gonna look gnarly right yeah so that wasn't first thing in the morning but still that heavy and yeah it's it's a challenge to breathe it that way even at this weight if i'm like if i take a pre-workout that's gonna pump me up and then i uh and i get a bunch of carbs and it'll still be difficult to breathe through my nose yeah uh but it's not just it's not like it's just the nose right like my feet have grown two foot two shoe sizes since i started gaining weight of the the blood or why i don't have an answer for you man i don't know my my hands are so big i can't hold on to a deadlift bar anymore did your hands get bigger oh yeah okay so i'm really curious about this because you're not just talking about like liquid retention you're saying like you're literal

your your your extremities have gotten bigger yes muscles in your hands yes because i mean you can see my hands they're not blo bloated. They're just fucking meaty. Right. Wow. Was that a result of growth hormone maybe as well? Maybe.

So I've never pushed the growth that hard. So my off season was five IUs when I was adding all that size and I went up to eight for prep.

I went up to eight for prep, which from what I hear is, you know, moderate. You wouldn't think of that much of a, that's a pretty,

two shoe size is pretty extreme, right? Like from 9 to 11. That's significant. That's huge, dude. Yeah. I bet you some of that has to do with, too, like the suppression. Like your whole life you were a wrestler and then you were – That's what Taylor was. Competing in those weight classes and kind of stuffing yourself into those weight classes for so long.

And then when it was time to grow, your body's like, hey, nutrients. Well, you think about the diet face where your face is all hollowed out. It could be hands and feet like that too. This is the anabolic family tree and it has just, it gives you an idea of testosterone and DHT derivatives and things like that.

It goes from boring on the left to fun on the right. I was going to say you're missing the cool family members. Who are the cool family members? The methylated ones. They've got Halo in there. I'm just kidding. What about SARMs and shit like that?

You guys mess without you. Do they do anything? I'm not a fan. No. I've used Carterine before, which is not a SARM, but it's one of those gray area things. I did a cycle last year where i just my intention was to i was getting so many questions from my clients on sarms that i was like fuck this i'm gonna try them all um and i just at the same time no no no i i pictured

yeah it was like a whiskey flight right you? You just line them up. No. I just kind of did them back to back at a moderate dose and had a couple weeks break between each one. And then didn't really notice anything. Was kind of pissed off by the end of it. And I did another six-week cycle of 20 milligrams of Anivar, and it blew all of them out of the water by a lot. So I don't think too highly of them. What about peptides? We're fans of BPC and I tend to get allergic reactions when I use TB500.

So I stay away from that. But yeah, definitely a fan of those. Oral specifically and the BPC for me. I've been recommended MK677, the growth hormone one. I've never used it though. BPC comes in oral form as well? Yep. Oh, I didn't know that.

It really helps my digestion and when I'm getting heavy, you've had that acid reflux shit at the top and it really helps a lot with that. In my experience, I always seem just subjectively to have done better with the injectable

after I strain a muscle or something. I seem to do really well pinning right into that injury, stick that right in there, which does not feel good. But I mentioned Joe Jeffries who's helped me out with my cycles. And he said based on all the research, there's no difference between taking it orally. However you get in your body, it's going to work.

That's the one that has the research behind it with the rats and their severed Achilles tendon growing back or something wild like that, right? Absolutely. Obviously, they don't have the same studies in humans, but there's a lot of empirical evidence from a lot of people taking it saying, hey, look. What is it we're talking about again, right? It's called BPC-157. It's a peptide. That's something that I feel like they should just make legal for athletes.

Right? Because if it's helping people recover, join health. I think they may have just made it illegal, right? Oh, I don't know. They actually, I think they're from NAC. They just banned because it helps with COVID. They banned, yeah. They banned NAC.

Big surprise, right? There was something recently,AC. They just banned because it helps with COVID. They banned, yeah. They banned NAC. Big surprise, right? There was something recently, yeah, they just banned too. I want to say maybe it's BPC-157. I can look it up. I'm curious. I think it's always been gray market. There's an oral though? Like how do you, like where do you get that from?

It was a little harder to find, but it hasn't seemed to be any harder to find than the injectable stuff, right? I don't think so. It's just more expensive. Yeah. But for me, I've had the injectable stuff. I can't really feel them on anything. And with the oral stuff, it definitely is pretty noticeable. Do you mix it with other stuff?

Because BPC mixes good with TB500 from what I hear, but you said you had a reaction to that. If I can afford it, I'll take 500 micrograms to a milligram of oral BPC every day, no matter what. And obviously it's going to pair better with growth hormone. And I don't really know if there's like actual synergy with the anabolics, but I'm sure indirectly. I did something weird to my shoulder recently, and I'm getting it worked on, and I didn't get like an MRI or anything. I don't have any idea what I did. It just hurts.

Like one day I just woke up and I couldn't pick my arm up and it just got really weird and just something in like the rotator cuff. So I'm like – and I had BPC-157 because I'm an idiot. I just order stuff and I just have it laying around. I'm like, I got that sitting around. I should just shoot that in my shoulder. So I've been using it and I'll let everybody know if I have any results with it. So far, I've only done it for like three days.

So that's not enough time to really notice anything. Yeah. Ben, I want to ask you this. I asked you this when we were beforehand, but you gained muscle really, really fast when you started changing things up. First off, how much, how many pounds was it in what time period? So it was, i remember when we first got to michigan it was like the second when was that march april 2020 was a high point no 240

was my like contest weight um before we depleted before the show um no the heaviest i got i got up to 270 it was like first second right like i chugged a bunch of water and ate a big meal and got on the scale and hit 270. But it was 184 on stage the end of July. So that was August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April. So say nine months, 270, 180. So 85 pounds, 86 pounds. And not all muscle, right? That's the water and fat and all that crap.

But then ended up doing that bodybuilding prep. I weighed in for that bodybuilding show at 236 yeah so it was 52 pounds and that was yeah 13 months how did it feel mentally and physically putting on that much weight that quickly because the only other time where people put that much weight on that fast is like puberty it felt terrible and my coach at the time told me it was normal, and it obviously wasn't, which is why it's like I could do that again. I'm sure I could get to 280 and just force feed myself and smoke before every meal and take a bunch of drugs, but it's like – I actually have a really funny story on this. It's not going to improve my physique at this point, right?

I've got to bring up my weak points, and it's definitely not healthy, but it did not feel good at all, man. It felt kind of scary. healthy but it does not feel good at all man it felt it felt kind of scary so i've always been like you know fatter and heavier kid growing up and one of our buddies we were hanging out with that day a day he was feeling particularly shitty he's also pretty fat and uh he's the way he's describing this stuff to me sounds like a blood work issue right and i'm like what the fuck is going on i can't figure it out and i look over at my friend he's not doing a goddamn thing he's just sitting there i look at him he's sweating and he looks uncomfortable i'm like, what the fuck is going on? I can't figure it out. And I look over at my friend. He's not doing a goddamn thing. He's just sitting there. I look at him.

He's sweating, and he looks uncomfortable. I'm like, wait a minute. Ben, you don't understand what it's like to be fat, do you? You're just going to have to suck it up. Yeah, this is how it is. Yeah. You've got to always try to figure out how to ventilate yourself. You've got some big old meaty hands there.

Look at these things. Put that fist on the hands there. Look at these things. Put that fist on the desk there. Look at that thing. Fuck, it's another strongman thing. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Imagine getting punched by that. That would suck. Slap in the face.

Ask Chris Bridgeford. Yeah, knock your whole head off. Another thing that we were mentioning is your squat form. One of the things that I found really interesting when I was looking at your constant a lot years ago, because I was paying attention to your mechanics on things. First off, mechanically, you were a very efficient lifter in terms of the way your lifts looked. Everything was – you didn't look like you made certain lifts struggle more than others. But your squat form was different than other people's.

Number one, your hands were like here. I don't know if we could even find it. Yeah, really close. Your hands were super close. And when you squatted, it's like your feet were straight forward and you loaded into the knees as you were going down. Dude, that's the cue I used. Yeah. The cue you used was loading into your knees?

So I was so shocked. Was that more of a knee wrap thing or you just always did that? That was more of a knee wrap thing. Okay. Yeah. Really? So nowadays, though, when you look at your squatting, it looks more like a power lift or squat. And you mentioned that's because of the muscle you gained.

Yep. Do you think that people could, if they do find that they can't squat that wide, should they focus on trying to really strengthen their adductors over time? Hey, that's up to them, man. Because well,

strengthening your adductors. Absolutely. Right. I was still doing adductor work at the time. Like, cause I knew they were a weak muscle group. I just couldn't, I didn't have the room to gain size.

I couldn't gain any muscle. I had big quads and I had an overdeveloped lower back. And so I had to figure out how to use those for literally all three lifts, right? Because I couldn't afford to add the muscle that would actually make me stronger. And pound for pound, I was a hell of a lot more successful doing that than I am now. But when I was able to add that size to my hamstrings, my glutes, my adductors even, you can support that weight in different ways, right? You can distribute the weight that you're lifting over more muscle groups because you

have those muscle groups now. And it's exactly the same with the back thing, right? So I was working with Susie Gary to set up my squat form originally, and she's a great IPF lifter. And she's the one that calls all the attempts for people and stuff too, right? Yeah. She's got it all like precise and stuff. Yep.

Yeah. Pretty awesome. So she like precise and stuff. Yep. Yeah, pretty awesome. So she was like, look, the big guys are going to tell you you want to support the weight with your upper back. And that's because they have all this upper back. Like they have that muscle. We're little people. We can't do that. You've got to get your chest under there as much as you can.

And to do that, I had to push my elbows, try and get my chest as big as I could. So that's why I ended up in that position. So, yeah, it wasn't necessarily optimal, but it was competitive, if that makes sense. What's with the barefoot stuff? You're training barefoot a lot, it looks like. Part of it is because I grew two shoe sizes and didn't want to buy all my shoes. He's got shoes with holes in them. To be honest, yeah. The other thing is that, so I have flat feet.

And, again, for a long time, especially with that narrow foot, feet forward squat stance, you can get away with that because you're not going to have a whole lot of inward motion. There's nowhere for the knees to go. With a wider stance squat, when you are trying to recruit that posterior chain more, you really have to have a good rooted position with your foot. And so for me, being barefoot forces me to focus on that more than if I'm wearing shoes. I can be more mindful of how the floor feels under my feet and how my weight is distributed over the foot.

What's your cue for your feet? Because that's actually a pretty big deal. So how do you cue in to root your foot? That's a good question. I don't have a mental cue. When I was first starting, Taylor had me go through some drills with my toes, with my foot pressure. And so I'm a big kinesthetic guy. So I try to, when I figure out, oh, this is how it's supposed to feel, I just go off in a corner

and I close my eyes and I just kind of visualize that feeling, right? I'm not thinking about any words. This is a tip Mike Teixeira gave me. Don't try and verbalize because if you try and verbalize, you're going to have so many things running around your head. You can't focus on lift. If you think about, okay, this is the feeling of that lift, it's a lot easier to implement. It was kind of fun coming up with verbal cues to like accommodate for that. It was almost like there was very little time to understand a whole lot of thoughts. It had to be a very direct and simple cue. I remember one time I was trying to get him to activate his feet and I said calves and I was like, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that. And he was like, no, say that. That clicked.

So it doesn't matter if I say, go shit your pants. If that gets him to put his feet into the ground, that's what I'm going to say. Yeah, and I think there's a lot to be said for that mind-muscle connection. I remember when we started working on bench, one of the first things he told me, he'd come over and pokes my tricep. I was like, you're supposed to be using that, buddy, not the other muscles. And that was really helpful. I don't think Chris would mind if we told, so Chris Bridgeford, you know, he just did a meet, did really well, hybrid showdown.

He was having some problems figuring out his squat form after knee surgery, after hurting his squat and everything. And so one of the things Taylor was doing with him was like poking at his hamstrings, glutes, be like, use these. You don't have to be all quad sit back a little bit more yeah um so or down a little bit more but yeah so i think those types of things are very very helpful and a lot of people are just reading all this stuff in the information reading all this information on the internet they're like these keys don't make sense

to me it's like not every key someone else yeah exactly we got to back up a second because you mentioned mike to sheer yep and there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. Mike Tashir used to go in his garage and do a mock meet, mock competition by himself, no one around, no music, just him and some weights. And he would total 2,000 pounds, 2,100. I mean, it was fucking insane. I remember it never made any sense to me, especially at that time. Uh, a lot of the geared powerlifting was still really popular. You saw a lot of people, uh, playing a lot of like heavy metal or gangster rap and head buttoner themselves on the, on the bar and like getting bloody and like just doing these kind of like down and dirty,

like lifts that you would see. And then there was Mike, there was no music, no nothing. He, he would bend down, he would get himself set for the dead Mike. There was no music, no nothing. He would bend down. He would get himself set for the deadlift. He'd wiggle around a little bit, wiggle his head, his hips, and then he would pick it up, and then he'd put it down, and he'd go look at his tendo unit. And he'd be like, I produced X amount of force. And he had these fucking spreadsheets and shit.

And I'm like, this guy is amazing. I don't understand. How does he do it? It's funny you told that story, because when I was starting out in powerlifting, that was around that time. And I tried the headbutt in the bar and getting angry. It wasn't working all that well for me. I saw Mike.

I was like, oh, it looks like he's actually thinking about that stuff. Maybe that will work better. So I'm not nearly as smart as Mike. I still don't understand all the stuff he does. But trying to incorporate a little bit more of that really, really helped me out. Man, he's a great lifter. I was curious about your knee health because the way you squatted. It seems that because you're doing that,

I'm assuming that your knees are actually perfectly healthy and your knees feel strong, right? Yep. How could people, because we've had a lot, like we've had knees over the toes on the podcast, et cetera, and I found that even this year as I started quite literally deliberately loading into the knees when doing movements, starting off slow, not like loading up heavy weight and loading into the knees. But when I started deliberately loading my knees with light

loads and strengthening that, my knees are the strongest and springiest they've ever been. What have you found to be maybe beneficial for yourself or beneficial for other people? What would you suggest to people to do? Because a lot of lifters, for example, when they squat, they hip hinge, load into the hips. They don't, they'll put barely anything to the knees, but they find that their knees feel like shit. So what would your suggestions be? Okay.

So this goes not just for knees, but really for any joint. I think that optimal form isn't necessarily textbook form, right? So there's a lot of considerations that you have to make for an individual's body type. I think optimal form is going to be whatever technique is distributing the load that you're working evenly across all the muscle groups involved. When I say evenly, it doesn't mean actually proportionally, not evenly, right? So it's not necessarily going to be even. If you're like me, you have overdeveloped quads, overdeveloped lower back, you're going to favor those and that's okay. You still have to be engaging the hips and the glutes and the hamstrings, whatever.

Which comes from the feet. Yes. So when they're trying to develop that form, they have to keep that in mind. And if they struggle with a particular muscle group, they're used to sitting back, right? And they're not really familiar with that feeling of loading the knee and the cues aren't working for them. What I'd have them do is in between sets of their compound movements, they're doing very light. This isn't to failure,

but doing very light supersets with an isolation movement where they can feel that muscle group working. So if you're doing a squat, right, and you have a very posterior chain dominant style and you find that my knees hurt and I'm not getting enough quad activation XYZ, well while you're warming up and you have 315 on the bar for your top set of five or whatever, you're going to go, you're going to do 20 really light leg extensions, nowhere close to failure,

but you're flexing those quads. And then you're going to go over the bar and squat. You're going to feel your quads working. And once you develop that feeling, it's going to be a lot easier to transfer over to your work sets. So it doesn't just have to be quads. It can really be any muscle group. I even find this works for abs, right? You have somebody who tends to fold over in the squat because they're not bracing properly. Have them do ab work in between their squat sets it's gonna eventually click and it's gonna click faster than if you just keep throwing words at them that they're not really comprehending that's what the bench press is the one i pair a lot too how are we able to to transition into eating 5500 calories a day was that like a really hard thing and would you be it wasn't would you be pissed at

yourself if you didn't get your calories in and stuff like that I was so oh my I can't even describe the hunger after that first bodybuilding show dude it was terrible there was one point as a super heavy I don't have to diet hard like my calories are so high now that dieting is not uncomfortable but back then

holy shit dude I was eating so little and I was I remember I was doing my cardio my night time cardio was like a 15 minute walk around the block and it was like I it was with either I would alternate doing my cardio either with my mom who lived close by or my girlfriend at the time

and because I couldn't do that much cardio alone I'd go fucking nuts so we got halfway through and I'm like breaking out in a cold sweat and like I can't I can't do this and I just sit down on the sidewalk they have to go get the car we're like half a mile from the house like I can't walk the half mile back so by the time we get to the show dude I can't even describe this hunger

I really can't it was insane so after the show we go to the grocery store and I just I buy the whole store and I'm like I know I'm not going to eat this but dude I ate it all it was insane how many calories do you think it was? You just totally guessed it.

I can't even guess. Dude, it was just, I kept going. It was like, it started at nine, and it was like one in the morning, and I was still hungry. And I wake up the next morning, and all I can have all day, so we go to the gym because we're in Pittsburgh, and there's a good gym there, Strengthening. No, it's not Strengthening.

Shit. I'm sorry. I can't remember the gym. But we go there and I want to train and do some heavy work. And I can't eat before my stomach's so upset. And halfway through the training session, I start feeling a little like, I don't want to say hypoglycemic, but you know that feeling. You feel lightheaded.

You don't feel great. So I go to the vending machine and try to eat like a protein bar. Have to go lie down after that. I'm so like I'm fucked up. All I can eat the rest of the day is like a protein bar, have to go lie down after that. I'm so like, I'm fucked up. All I can eat the rest of the day is like a roll of Tums. But after that, it's like, then after that day, my stomach was kind of normal. I was just eating all day long and for like seven or 10 days just after that. And I think I put on something like 20 pounds in that week or something, something crazy.

But like that hunger didn't go away for months. Damn. Months. And this was two and a half years of dieting, plus that really hard push at the end. So no, it was not hard at all to get that food volume up. It's got to have some feet to grow. Yeah.

What did that food look like? I mean, at post-show, obviously, you ate a bunch of junk. But when you got into conditioning for bodybuilding, what did those 5,500 calories look like? Almost all clean stuff, man. It was a couple of cheat meals a week. But even my cheat meals, it's like I've – because I've never had that super crazy appetite and I don't do well with a whole lot of dietary fat. So it's like eating like big bowls of cereal and stuff like that.

And one of the challenges for me in the off season is that like – What kind of cereal? Every kind. Cinnamon Toast Crunch is the best. Taste you can see. I had Cinnamon Toast Crunch backstage at a meet once, and Dan Green was there. He was like my powerlifting hero. And he was like, what you got there?

I'm like, Cinnamon Toast Crunch. He's like, yeah. It was definitely my favorite cereal. So one of the challenges for me in this off-season is I have very arguably overdeveloped core from all the powerlifting work, all the bracing. So keeping my food volume low is really important to be able to add that size without also adding more waist thickness, right? So having to eat smaller meals is going to mean getting used to that more calorically dense stuff, even if it's kind of like dirty food, junk food. But just trying to figure out how to get those calories down without eating so much that I'm stuffed every meal. The heavy squats and things like that,

you think that adds to maybe the size of your waist? It's so hard to say, man, because I've always just genetically had wider hips and had overdeveloped obliques even since I started lifting, probably because of that short torso. There's not a whole lot of room for that muscle to be distributed. It's all got to be right here. It's not stretched out like people with longer torsos.

But at the same time, in bodybuilding, it doesn't matter what your structure is. What matters is what you can show on stage. So even if it's like, okay, relative to other people, I didn't add that much. Let's say I add an inch to my waistline, all that squat and heavy squat and deadlifting. For my proportions, I have to minimize that as much as possible so even if other people can do heavy squats and deadlifts and the difference to their waist size is going to be negligible for me it's not negligible and so that's why it's important so for you you might do like a set of leg extensions before you do a hack squat or something pre-fatigue maybe extra things like

that yep and what my thing when i do that type of'm not trying to, a lot of people will be like, you got to train hard. You can push everything to failure. Look, if you're pushing your leg extensions to failure and then you're going over and you're doing your squats, your hack squats, your front squats,

and you're doing those to failure from workout to workout, you don't really know how you progressed, right? So you're going to keep those leg extensions that, that pre exhaustion set, that's going to be the same every training session. So that's an, that's not a variable you have to worry about.

Then you can actually try to progress. And the other ones, you'll just be able to use lower weights. And I can get away with that with my legs and back because I already have that absolute strength, not so much with the upper body. Do you feel that your mind-muscle connection has increased at any certain point in your training career? Like when you started maybe focusing more on bodybuilding or maybe after you gained all this weight, do you feel that you can activate certain muscle groups better than you could in the past? So I'm just going to keep going back to that strength thing, right?

It's like the stronger the muscle group, the better that mind muscle connection you're going to have. Okay. So with my back and legs, phenomenal. Like I can get a pump just standing here flexing. With my chest, my shoulders and tricep, it's still really, really, really, really difficult. And honestly, like that's one of the value of supplements, right? People say, well, the pump doesn't do much for you.

If the pump helps you build that mind-muscle connection because you can feel the blood in the muscle, that's really valuable. Maybe it's not directly adding to muscle growth, but over time it's going to. You told me during prep that when you got super lean, there was a noticeable amount of more muscle connection. That's a really cool feeling. When you're really, really lean and you're like flat as fuck, you notice the differences a lot more. So you have your carbs before training.

You have your pump supplement before training. You go in the gym. It's like these pumps feel insane even though you're flat as shit. But it feels relative to how you're walking around all day. It feels crazy. Like the contractions are so hard that it's a really cool feeling. People make a big deal about the pump. What are your thoughts on that?

Do you have to get a pump and then kind of ride that out a whole workout or what have you found? This is something I told Taylor very early on is I think when you're training for a pump, I think it's an important part of bodybuilding. There's too much anecdotal evidence. We can look at too many top bodybuilders and see how many train for a pump right i think the point where it stops being beneficial is where it stops getting more like so you'll start you'll be doing a set of curls on the first set you won't have much of a pump the second set is going the third set is

really good fourth set it's probably the same as the third once that pump's not getting better you've gotten as much as you're getting out of that going to the next thing it's kind of a mind fuck too because for us we really really, really want to push it. And more often than not, it's kind of easy to get to that point where the muscle's completely pumped. And it's like, what, did I just really do anything? Yep. Yeah. So weighing 100 pounds in high school, what do you think skinny dudes are just missing?

It's kind of mathematical you know you being a caloric surplus lift and you're going to gain size i think everyone at this point understands that myself included but what do you think people are missing when it comes to adding size is it tracking is it you know lying to yourself like what do you think people are actually missing yeah what do you think people oh yeah missing? What do you think people... Oh, yeah, because even I've said, oh, I eat as much as I possibly can, and then I start tracking. I see those dudes are like,

oh, I ate a whole pizza and this and that and the other thing, and I'm like, how many times did you do that this week and next week? Okay, so first, I'm sympathetic because when you're skinny and you're trying to add size, it's a little bit of a mind fuck.

If you're a big dude and you're trying to add size and you add five pounds of fat, you're not going to notice it because you already had 200 pounds to build on. You're 100 pounds, trying to add size and you add five pounds of fat you're not going to notice it because you already had 200 pounds to build on you're 100 pounds all of a sudden you got five pounds of fat and you're like well shit this isn't working at all even if that's not true right you're adding size to your hamstrings right and you're adding fat to your waist so it looks hopefully so it is a mind fuck in that regard there's no real way around it my

solution was to get really really fucking strong strong, right? While staying really lean, you have to add some muscle or you're not going to have anything to build with. So I just went really, really slow at first, built up all that strength and then kind of exploded. So that helped me a little bit. But a lot of it is just going to be embracing the fact that you're going to be more uncomfortable than other people are. Pat, Roger, family, how's it going? We talk about sleep all the time on this podcast. That's why we partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses. Now, this mattress is the Tesla of sleep. It's the Tesla of beds. Its technology tracks your heart rate, your heart rate variability. It changes its own temperature based off the way you sleep so that you get better sleep every single night. It is

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project to receive 150 off your pod pro cover or your pod pro cover and mattress combo links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the podcast and also the time aspect to it man like i'm gonna go back to this again but you were lifting for 15 years and you didn't put on all that size immediately like yeah you probably put on the good really slow but it was slow yep i just don't think a lot of guys are patient enough to do that consistently over time to gain that type to gain that muscle. Yep. Absolutely. Kind of emotionally tied to the way they look or feel. Yes. And almost like, it's like, do you not trust yourself to lose the fat after you're done

bulking? And a lot of them don't. No, they don't. But realistically, like, that's a pretty simple thing that everyone should be able to do. And it's kind of an emotional thing, you know? What you said there, there though that's what a big deal is this like your focus was strength and power lifting performance when a guy is always paying attention to the way he looks let's say he's focused on bodybuilding and he's like i gotta

gain muscle i gotta gain muscle and and that's his focus not performance it can that can that can lead you to maybe starting to do something before you necessarily should. But since you're performance-based, you add these metrics of the squat, the bench, the deadlift, maybe OHP and other movements that you were performance-based and getting better at, you saw that progress over time. And yeah, of course, you're probably paying attention to your body, but it wasn't the single focus.

Well, that kind of takes the emotional side out of it, right? How many times have we been there and you're looking at the check-in pics and you're like, it's not fucking working, and then we're like, but numbers say it's working. So don't think about that. You just got to stick to it. I think it's a big reason why when you're starting out and lifting, just be pumped that you're making some sort of consistent effort.

100%. We've talked about it all the time. You mentioned Andrei Milanochev and Andrei also says, think less. Just go and we all started out training the same way. We all did three sets of ten. We all fucked around on a bunch of different machines. We probably messed around in a high school

weight room somewhere and just kind of mess around. And then eventually you start to take it more serious or you're like, I'd like to get more out of this. So I think I'm going to read a magazine or read an article. And you're like, oh, I think I need to eat more protein. And you start having more protein and you start to kind of slowly but surely integrate stuff.

And I think now, where the point that we're at now, it's easy to kind of tell people like, oh man, you got to get all in. You got to be this way. And we kind of forget. Like in the the beginning we were all pussies too it took a long time to be like really devoted to the game to a t right to the letter yes you got over there andrew no i'm still just i'm laughing at myself because you know you guys were talking about sarms i did sarms you're talking about not being patient i've been been impatient. And as I'm getting older now, I am starting to just understand that like, okay, I've been lifting for, it's going to be 10 years now. I have added about 20 pounds, but I'm still like really hard

on myself. And it's exactly what you said. It's like the mental side. I still identify as a skinny guy, but look who I'm around though too. You know, like you're, you know, the sum of the people you hang out with and I hang out with these two guys more than anybody. So when I look at them who I'm around though too you know like you're you know the sum of the people you hang out with and I hang out with these two guys more than anybody so when I look at them I'm just like fuck damn tiny but if I hang out with somebody else maybe it's not so much but um it's that that mental side of things that's really fucking with me so what you guys just brought up is just like very important I hope a lot of people are paying attention to that yeah so two things on that note first of all embrace the fact that people you're around make you tiny because that's what's going to push you to get better.

But at the same time, have a little bit of boundary around that. So the tip that I like the most, quit fucking looking at yourself in the mirror all the time, right? Just pass me or don't look, keep your analysis of your physique to your check in pictures. And when you take the check in pictures and you look at them,

cause you're going to fucking look at them. You're not just going to send them to your coach, turn the phone upside down so that you're not looking at yourself like you would in a mirror. And that'll help you look at it more objectively. You can actually look at what your physique looks like. You're not saying, oh, that's me. I look like shit. What about weigh-ins?

Don't just pass by mirrors. Any reflections. Any reflections. Oh, yes. Yeah. What about weigh-ins? Yeah. What about scale?

I'll jump on the scale almost every day. Quit jumping on the scale. It's because I'm tracking stuff. No, see, I think that's important. You've got to track day to day because otherwise you won't be consistent. That's a skinny guy thing. I know that. So the thing to remember, though, you want those, instead of trying to analyze my weight is down,

try to think about reasons why it's down because I think that's an important metric. So for me, it's fluid. I know if I'm pushing the fluid hard one day, my training is going to be better. I'm going to look better in the gym. My weight is going to be lighter that next morning because I'm going to have peed out more of that during the night. And so that's okay, right? You're learning more about your body, but you're not as attached to the fact that the number on the scale means progress. The number on the scale doesn't mean progress.

I weigh exactly the same as I did. When were those check-in pictures? Which ones? We were looking last night. We were looking at two different check-in pictures. This was a year ago. Oh, so we visited Denver and I trained with Brett Wilkin, who's going to win the Arnold Classic this year. So after we took check-in pictures there, I remember I was really, really happy with them. I was like, man, I look

a lot better than I thought I did. I actually did make progress. So then this morning or yesterday, I go back and look at my last check-in pictures and compare them. I'm like, wow, I didn't think I was focused on bodybuilding that hard, but I still made progress. Even though my body weight's the same, I'm using half the drugs that I was then. I'm more proportional than I was then, and I have a better idea of how I can target my weaknesses. So it's just very, very slow. It's that two-year thing versus the 12-week thing. Who's the guy that's going to win the Arnold?

Let's take a look at him. Brett Wilkin. I got Brett Wilkin. Over Nick Walker? Nick Walker's not doing it. He won last year. He doesn't have any desire to win it again. I think Nick –

Nick Walker's fucking big. Nick Walker's going to win the Olympia. I bet Taylor 50 bucks that it'll be this year. It might not be this year, but he's going to win. Nope. He's got some size on him. That's just ridiculous. Jesus.

Yeah, look at this guy. Jeez. And look at his midsection. Dude. Nutty. That's a big boy. What does he weigh? 265 when we talked to him.

260, yeah. On stage? No, no. I think it's like 240, yeah. But this was last year. It was his off season, so he might be it's like 240. Yeah. But this was last year. It was his off season. So he might be a little bit bigger. Jeez.

You think he, you, you legitimately think he's going to win the Arnold? The Arnold? Yes, I do. So the lineup isn't as stacked as it's been the last few years, is it? I don't know. Actually, I don't think it quite is. A lot of guys are still having issues getting over with the pandemic and everything, getting over to the United States. Oh, wow.

God, he looks incredible. So at that show, at the Chicago Pro, he came in second to Hunter Labrada. It was really fucking close. And Hunter finished fourth at the Olympia this year. So Brett's up there. Brett's up there. Top ten in the Olympia this year I would put money on. Taylor, have you figured out what he's a doctor in?

I would put money on. Taylor, have you figured out what he's a doctor in? So actually it's funny because I told my mother that he's a medical doctor so that she would feel safer about me taking steroids. So she has no idea that he's just full of shit and I'm just a drug abuser, you know. What'd you go to school for, Ben? So my undergrad was in finance. My doctoral program was in the history of powerlifting and bodybuilding. Whoa.

So the formal name was Interdisciplinary Sports Studies, and then they changed halfway through to Physical Culture and Sports Studies. But essentially I had a degree where I could focus on any aspect of sport over the past 200 years and do my dissertation about that. So it was bodybuilding and powerlifting. What was your dissertation on? It was a biography of Jack LaLanne. Oh. I'm sure you're familiar with him, yeah.

Yeah, he would fucking like swim with like tugboats behind him and jump, right? Yep. Yeah, he was unbelievable. Absolutely. Tell us more about Jack LaLanne. Okay, so Jack LaLanne. Lived to be almost 100 years old, right? Yep.

99 years old. 96. 96. So Jack was, you know, traditional kind of skinny kid who you know shorter kind of he liked to tell the story like he was picked on and everything but he was an athletic freak dude like he was all-american in two different sports and like star quarterback in his high school team so like he was short but he was an athletic freak from like day one and so he when he uh you know it was starting world war ii when he was kind of like i guess early 20s i can't remember the exact dates

i probably should um so he's on these ships and he's one of those guys who had started lifting out weights really really early and so while he's deployed he's training with guys on the ships you know he stuck some dumbbells on and he's doing his calisthenics and stuff. And so when he comes back from the war, he opens his own gym. He actually opened it a little bit before, but it really blows up because he had talked to all these guys while he was deployed. They all come back. They start going to his gym, and he really starts to make a living as a gym owner. Well, television starts right then, and he's known as a gym owner in the Southern California area.

So he gets an audition to be on a show to have like a fitness show on television. So he has the first, it wasn't the first ever, but it was the first really popular fitness show on television. And you can imagine he makes a huge reputation out of that because people are just starting to get into this stuff. Gyms are getting more popular. People are more concerned about weight because they're eating all these TV dinners out of their refrigerators that all of a sudden everybody can afford. So he makes this huge reputation off of it and ends up doing a whole lot for the fitness industry, honestly, just because people didn't know how to train. At least he had some pretty good ideas. I remember seeing stuff with him.

He would just have – there he is. I didn't know he was that jacked. I only know him as like the older athlete, but holy shit. He was super jacked, super strong. Do you think performance enhancers are being used at the time? At that picture, no, I don't. And the reason is testosterone is available in the 1930s, but honestly, it wasn't popular among athletes like that

until it started to get introduced in Olympic weightlifting, and that was just very small amounts of Deanna Ball. And it was after that. Is that the small amounts of Deanna Ball? Look how defined his arms are right there. I mean, that's a really good definition. Just nutty. I remember he would show, like, people what to do with just, like, a chair.

He'd be like, oh, you can squat off this chair, or you could, you know, stretch off this chair. And I remember seeing things where he would talk about, he said some really wild stuff because I think he wanted to really prove his point. He said that he saw his dad kill himself in front of him, but then he kind of follows it up by saying it was with food because his dad was diabetic and he kept overeating. So that's a lie. Holy shit.

Yeah, Jack told a lot of lies. He probably did. Like just straight up lies. He probably did try to pump things up a lot. No, so Jack's father was an alcoholic and eventually he was committed to an alcoholic and eventually got, he was committed to an institution. He died of alcoholism.

Oh, damn. But Jesus. He pushed a physical culture really, really well. He had a lot of his, a lot of his records and stuff were kind of weird, like where he was swimming with the boats and different things.

I think it was just to get hype, you know, get people excited. Absolutely. A hundred percent. What was the feat that he did? This elk, elk dress? Yeah Absolutely, 100%. What was the feat that he did, this Alcatraz? Yeah, so one of his was to, somebody drove, he was taken on a boat to Alcatraz Island, and he was handcuffed, and he had to swim back to shore, back to the mainland.

So the issue was, the big issue, right, besides the fact that you have to swim handcuffed, which is possible, you can do kind of a modified breaststroke, called a porpoise stroke, you can just kind of like do like an eel little thing in swim handcuffed, which is possible. You can do kind of a modified breaststroke called a porpoise stroke. You can just kind of like do like a little thing in the water. So it is possible. The problem was the water was cold as fuck. So to practice, he would sit in an ice bath. He would have his wife just pour ice over him over and over and over again.

He would sit for up to an hour in the ice bath. And then when he did the stunt, he covered himself in like animal fat, like as kind of like insulation, which was a thing for, for cold water swimming at the time. But when he was trying to do this, he didn't account for the fact that there were going to be tides. So it was a really windy day and the tide pushed him further than he thought. So he ended up having to swim some like two miles like that.

Just nutty. As a muscular ass dude, to be able to swim like that, that's actually very rare. Well, so I mentioned that he was a quarterback, like a star quarterback in high school. His senior year, he got destroyed, right? And the doctor was like, I'm not sure you're going to be able to walk again, let alone do other stuff. So he just trained himself to walk up hills.

But after that, he could never run again as cardio. So he took up swimming as his big thing. So you were at the University of Texas. Is that right? Yes. Uh-huh. Oh, awesome. And you were studying like physical culture.

Like that's a rare thing. I believe that in Texas, don't they have a powerlifting team? Yes, they do. Good one. And were you part of that? So I was too old. You have five years of collegiate eligibility, but there was also an age cutoff. And I was past the age cutoff.

I think it was 25. It's like one of the few schools in the country that has like a scholarship program, right, for powerlifting? So I trained with the team. I just didn't compete with them. So I was on the team at the same time as Ian Bell and Preston Turner and a couple other really, really good IPF lifters that they had there. That's pretty awesome. I don't think we even really touched on this much, but for you and your training practices, you move a lot of training while you've done both powerlifting

and you do a lot of bodybuilding. What are some habits or habits you have each day that just yield better recovery that you make sure you do not miss? So it's a tough question because I think a lot of people think about recovery and they're expecting some really beneficial thing. And I think all these things are going to be kind of minimal, right? But really good about sleep, even though my sleep isn't the best quality, just because I've always had problems sleeping.

That's been really helpful. Have a CPAP. Try to make sure that I'm staying away from the phones and everything before bed. So that stuff is absolutely beneficial. Taylor and I are really good about when we have something that's just a little bit jacked up. It's not hurt, right? It's not injured, but it's hurt. We're really're really good about staying okay this muscle group we need to work on we're not wasting an hour in the gym every time we go in film rolling but when something is an

issue we take care of it that makes a big difference and then walking really really big on making sure you're doing like it's hard to do a lot of cardio and trying to gain a lot of weight but walking is one of the ways that you can kind of get that in. What does walking help you with? Because we walk a lot. Yeah, what does walking help you with? I mean, you want to take this one? Yeah, so for me, being a strong man, always trying to get bigger and bigger and also minimizing the health risks of that.

I've kind of found that just your quality of life and how you're feeling is going to be a lot better. The other thing, too, is like, you know, you've been so bloated that you've fallen asleep on the bench press and feel like shit. And so it kind of helps me push more weight because I'm accounting for being that big. You know what I mean? So it's just kind of a preventative measure, I guess. I also practice my breathing while I'm walking, so I'm either holding a vacuum, right, trying to build that abdominal control, or practicing nasal or diaphragmatic breathing so that I don't have so much of a problem breathing through my nose.

It's actually pretty funny. We'll be sitting there, and he'll be practicing breathing through his nose. I'm like, dude, are you fucking pissed off? Are you okay? He's like, I'm just practicing my nose breathing. Yeah, I think just walking in general I think helps digestion. Maybe it just helps reallocate the

calories that you're consuming and puts them in the right place rather than in the wrong spot. That's not any sort of real scientific thing, but there is some research where they did test metformin versus walking and they found the walking to be as beneficial or more beneficial to something that is supposed to help with the uptake of glucose.

So walking is extremely beneficial and it's just kind of simple. Like if your legs are real sore, you do something cyclical, running, maybe even biking, like getting on an Airdyne bike. And if your legs are really really sore from a training session you get on a bike and move around a little bit and you'll find you'll get some

pretty good relief from that even though you would think in your head you're like that's just going to make everything ten times worse because I'm already

fucked up but it will help a lot we're kind of made to move you know Andrew want to take us on out of here buddy sure thing thank you everybody

for checking out today's episode please like this video and make sure you guys are subscribed if you're not already and um leave us a comment down below let us know what you guys think about today's episode please follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where can people find you and sema ending on instagram youtube and sema union on tiktok and twitter make sure to comment down below what you guys found was the most cool thing from this episode

because there's a lot of shit. Ben and Taylor, where can people find you guys? PHDeadlift on everywhere. Instagram, YouTube, Facebook. Taylor Droll on Instagram. Thank you guys so much for coming out. Ben, I really appreciate it. I think I met Ben in person probably like eight years ago.

Yeah, it was right around there in Austin right? yeah we were at On It Gym and I was doing a seminar and I started to speak and I'm like trying to talk about how cool I am and I'm like oh this like dude in the crowd lives way more than me I'm fucking out of here

Ben take it over just teach these people how to lift anyway thank you so much for your time both of you guys really appreciate it strength is never weakness weakness is never strength catch you guys later