Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 67 - Hany Rambod
Episode Date: June 7, 2018Hany Rambod, “The Pro Creator”, is the founder and CEO of Evogen Nutrition. Hany has been constructing championship-winning physiques for over 20 years. By the use of his ground-breaking FST-7 Tra...ining System, he was able to help his clients win a total of 19 Olympia titles. He has worked with 7X Mr. Olympia Phil Heath, 4X Olympia Men's Physique Jeremy Buendia, 4X Ms. Figure Olympia Nicole Wilkins, 4X Olympia Jay Cutler, and many more. Rewatch the live stream: https://youtu.be/1kj7k3Tj90c ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I love the setup.
Yeah, not too bad, huh?
Yeah, man.
How much did this all run?
It was expensive.
I would say like all in, what were we talking about, 20 grand or something?
Does that sound about right?
I think closer to 30.
Okay, there we go.
I'm going to start the stream.
But we charge our guests, so that's how we make our money.
Okay, so yeah.
Is that why they asked me for my credit card number?
Yeah, that's why Steven collected it before you started the podcast.
That's why they give you the name Smokey.
Couldn't see that coming.
He actually has the name Smokey.
I think everyone thinks that he gets high all the time, but he has the name Smokey because he looks like one of those little Smokey sausages.
You ever see those?
They're called little Smokeys. L-I-L
smokies. Are those like those little Jimmy
Deans? Yeah, like little pigs in a blanket.
That's how he got the name.
That's why I was asking, how do we
slice this guy up? That's awesome.
I think
we can save it a little bit.
I got some ideas for you
guys. As we
dive in
you were mentioned
using some isometric training
just a little bit ago and we just had
do you know Josh Bryant? No I don't
Josh Bryant's a strength coach, powerlifting coach
he's coached
probably about
I want to say maybe 10 guys
or so to 600 pound benches
and he uses a lot of isometric training.
We don't hear people talk about isometrics that much. How are you using isometrics with
bodybuilding? Oh, we're using it with, uh, time under, uh, time under tension. So with my personal
style of training, which I created FSC seven trainings for, to be able to grow into a pump.
What I did was I tried to increase intensity and find different ways of increasing intensity.
So you have simple ways, which are,
when I consider simple,
are the ones that are the most obvious,
like partials and doing negatives
and doing forced reps or doing supersets.
Then to create more time under tension,
what I created was what I called isometric static holds
or just statics for shorts for short
and what will happen is we're doing a positive rep whether it's on a hammer press or whether
it's a dumbbell press and then holding one side while doing repetitive um doing reps on the other
side and so by doing that you're getting time under uh time under tension from not only the side that you're using
uh we're repping out but you're also being able to get time under tension on the opposite side
on the static so that's that's been implemented more and more for me and my athletes the last
couple years and so i utilize that i utilize again the uh the amplifiers of the intensity
amplifiers which i call those other things that i mentioned earlier like the the partials and
doing forced reps and negatives so that along with being able to to work around the muscle
meaning also throwing in things like uh ladders and doing different types of range of motion
when you're doing an actual exercise to be able to get a complete look.
Because we're all going for a look.
In bodybuilding, it's all about the aesthetic.
And in helping all these people get super jacked and become Phil Heath,
hopefully he's on his way to his, uh, eighth victory in a row.
Um, and you, you've worked with so many other top pros, um, in, in helping all these, uh,
all these people out. Um, do you kind of have a little bit of a Bruce Lee approach where you're
not afraid to like use and try everything over the years you kind of have, uh, you know, used
high rep, low rep, high fat, uh, high carb, like you kind of have mixed
it up and run the gamut of things that you've tried. Absolutely. I think that has been probably
one of my biggest strengths is I'm not closed minded. I use different things, different
techniques, different dieting techniques, different training techniques. Uh, just when it comes to
training in general, your body adapts. So what you need to do is you
need that diversification so that your body creates a new stimulus and you're using stimulus
to be able to grow. And you have to do that. And it can't be just with diet. It can't just be with
training. It can't just be with supplements. It needs to be, you have to run the whole gamut with
that, especially when you are training for a year after year after year and your body adapts.
So, um, it's, it's really important that you create variety.
And I do along lines of, of all of the things we just mentioned.
A lot of people will say, and I've heard it many times on this podcast, especially when it comes to diet.
on this podcast, especially when it comes to diet, um, you know, again, it's important for us to just throw it out there that most of the time when we're talking about diet, most of the time we're
talking about diet, at least on this podcast, we're usually just in reference to people trying
to look better aesthetics, people just trying to, you know, uh, lose some body fat. And there's the
other side of it, which is gaining muscle, which is the side that people kind of, uh, tend to lose
sight of. But we have a lot of people that make the statement. They'll say, you know, everybody's
different. And then they just kind of like, they don't follow up the statement with, with anything.
Like they just kind of say, everybody's different. And it's almost like a lazy way out of like
trying some sort of hard diet almost, I feel. Uh, and somebody might say, I can't, I can't take in
carbs. And it's like, do you really know that?
Do you know that you can't take in carbs or have you not followed, uh, the rules?
Like there's rules to follow when you take in carbs and something else has to give, right?
You're probably going to have to drop your fat down.
Right.
And when you go on a high fat diet, uh, you'll probably have to drop your carbs down.
Right.
And so I think a lot of times we get people on here and they'll say, everybody's different. And then just kind of leave it at
that. What have you seen? Is everybody quite different? Yes. Everybody is quite different,
but you have to create what I call, I create is I create a blueprint and that's why I don't work
with a lot of people because the deeper you dive into somebody's, you know, know program the more you have to break apart what aspects you want to
go deep into and whether it's the training whether it's the the diet and now we're kind of focusing
on diet right now we're talking about diet if if somebody is used to giving a cookie cutter diet
to somebody and says hey listen i just do keto just do keto, just keto. And here's my blanket
keto diet that I give to everybody that I charge X number of dollars online to with all these online
goobers now. And I'm going to turn around and I'm just going to give this to you. Well, how do you
know that guy doesn't get ripped off of three or 400 grams of carbs? And that's my, been my argument
all along for years, because there's so many people out there that have these blanket cookie cutter bullshit, like here you go, one size fits all programs. And you're not really maximizing what's
best for them. It's just what's best for you because you're trying to create an easy way out
instead of really diving into what's best for their genetics, what's best for their training,
what's changed from their training previously to where they're at now, how's their age, injuries, all of the things that
are affected.
I mean, when you have diets and if somebody is getting ripped off of 400 grams of carbs
and getting strided glutes, why the hell am I going to put them on a keto diet?
Right.
You know, and it makes sense.
And I mean, and again, we're trying to create in, in, in that aesthetic physique, you know,
industry that I'm in, we are trying to create a look, a three-dimensional look.
Whether it's a girl, whether it's a guy, we're trying to get a little bit capped shoulders.
We're trying to create a bigger chest, rounder chest, upper pecs.
We're trying to get the arms looking a little bit fuller to fill in the sleeves, whether they're getting ready for a competition or whatnot.
So all of those things are affected by the diet.
whether they're getting ready for a competition or whatnot.
So all of those things are affected by the diet.
So if I can turn around and carb cycle them,
or if I can put them on higher carbs,
then why throw them on something that's just,
is going to be counterproductive?
So, because I want to be lazy and I just want to email over some cookie cutter diet.
A lot of times on my Instagram,
I'll just make a post and I'll say like,
hey, here's a bunch of foods that you should be,
that you should be eating.
And I usually just say,
like, if you're trying to lose weight and you've been stuck in the past,
you haven't been able to figure it out, just try it.
And then people still get all up in arms over that.
It's just free information.
I'm just listing out some foods.
And basically, you know, what I've learned over the years is we need to figure out a way to remove junk from our food.
You know, you can get ripped. I mean, we've seen people get ripped by,
uh, just, uh, finding their caloric needs and, and, uh, adjusting, uh, the right way, but it,
it always really comes down to, uh, you being at least an eight or a nine on your diet. Is that
correct? Yes. I mean, in terms of getting, I'm assuming you're like, you're, you're like talking
about like, if it fits your macros type. Yeah. Right. So, I mean, here's the deal. This is how, what I believe in if it fits your macros.
If you have, if you have the capability, whether it's genetic or whether you're burning off the calories to be able to get lean and eat within a calorie spec and eat donuts or eat, you know, cookies or muffins.
And you can do that and stay within the, if it fits your macros type of
scenario, then God bless you. Most can't because most the biochemistry of your body and the
physiology of your body is in a way dependent on the types of foods that you're taking in,
not just the overall macros. And why do you believe that? Because I, you know, I'm a nutrition, you know,
I've been studying nutrition for a long time, but my, my, my degrees in biology with emphasis in
neurophysiology and biochemistry, right? So that was my emphasis. So even though my degree from
UC Santa Barbara was from biology, I was a bodybuilder when I was like 15 years old. I
started competing as a teenager. I was, you know, uh, reading every clinical study I possibly could
on supplements, on diet, on training. I
studied Arthur Jones. I studied tons of different training principles and different diet principles.
And one thing that I realized when I started training people at a very young age and as I
was a teen, I started training people, was that you could turn around and you could get a,
there's more than one way to skin a cat.
And one thing that I realized.
Why is that a saying?
I don't know.
It's kind of like twisted.
It is a twisted saying.
I don't know where it came up, but it actually. I don't really like cats, but it's still, it's still, it's still fucked up.
But, but if you had to, there's, I guess there's many ways to do it, but, but there, you know, at the bottom, the bottom line is this, when you are, are using carbohydrates and again, why I'm so into this is because
when you're using simple sugars and you're sitting on a, if it fits your macro program,
what tends to happen is just the biochemical response is the fact that your body's is going
to release insulin.
And the simple version of it is that when your
body releases insulin, it shuts off fat burning. So therefore, even though it fits your macros,
your endocrine system is releasing a hormone that is, you know, anabolic, but also it's going to
stop fat burning. So we need to kind of pick and choose
when we're going to release that hormone almost, right? Exactly. Exactly. And if your body can
actually handle the hormone and then when we start getting into insulin sensitivity,
right, which a lot of people don't understand. So when you are heavier and you're a little bit
overweight, um, or if you're genetically inclined to have type two diabetes, or if you are, you're
just, again, your body fat's a little too high.
What ends up happening is you go through metabolic syndrome where your body cannot process the carbohydrates efficiently.
Or let's say you just don't have the ability to get into the gym as much as you want to.
So therefore, there's other diets that are a little bit easier to be able to handle.
What was the saying that you guys have you and
your buddies what was that oh which one which one about getting in shape oh um you just said it
before the podcast came on can't even remember we were talking well you just you basically said uh
if you're in shape you're not making enough money yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah when you when you start
working really hard and you're working with a lot of clients and you're traveling all around the
world like we do what ends up happening is we all look at each other.
We had a show here last night, NPCIFBB Pro League Show, and there was like five or six top trainers there.
And we're all looking at each other and we all look at each other and go, okay, who's making the most money?
Because whoever's out of shape is making the most money because we can't take care of ourselves.
And they're like, oh, Honey must not be doing well because he's lost 20 pounds, you know? But it's, um, but it's, it's, it's convenient.
Certain diets are more convenient as well. And they're more easily, uh, manageable, uh, whether
you're eating out traveling or whether you're dealing with the fact that you're, um, cravings.
Right. So therefore, um, I'm, I'm a big believer in believer in using keto at specific times and with specific people. But the whole thing is that when you are sitting under, if it's your macro type diet and you're releasing insulin, your body is now going to crave more carbohydrates.
harder to fit your macros because now you're, it's like smoking weed and not getting the munchies.
People go out there and smoke weed and they go, oh my God, I can't stick to my diet. And it's,
it's very similar to that. So same thing happens with alcohol. I think there is room for alcohol in your, your average person who just wants to get a little bit better shape. I think they can
have some alcohol. I mean, telling them they can have some always leads them to having way too much,
but ultimately what happens is people do drink too much and then they end up eating brownies and ice cream and pizza and
whatever else. Right. Right. Absolutely. End up going way off the diet. And that's, and that's
the thing. And then it's like, it starts a cascade effect. So, um, you know, everybody who's ever
done a keto diet knows that, Hey, the minute you start hitting those carbs, it's really hard to
back off. And it's really, you know, so you have to have a game plan. So I game plan my
athletes, you know, so whether it's a person that I'm working with as an executive that is just
trying to lose weight because they're getting ready for a big family vacation that I've worked
with, or whether it's an athlete that's getting back in shape, I always understand ahead of time,
it's like a chess match. You have to think many steps ahead. So when you know that this person
is going to hit carbs, you're going to know that they're going to start having these cravings. So what are you going to do to help
those cravings? Because you're going to leave them on their own and be like, Hey, hopefully it works
out for you, buddy. And you're not going to stop eating, you know, I mean, hopefully figure out a
way to manage it. Yeah. Yeah. So I have different ways of managing it. I have, you know, I have
methods that I use to help manage the eat ups and how to handle the eat ups and how to deal with the
aftermath of the eat ups and, um, what I tend to call and how to deal with the aftermath of the eat-ups and
um what i tend to call the hangover of the hangout of the carb um the you know the carb rush sometimes
you can even just train you know like if you like let's let's hypothetically say that you ate
whatever you wanted on a friday night and now it's saturday morning uh if you train and training
fasted but not for any other reason than just because you're just,
you're trying to reset yourself. It's not for the benefits of fasting. You fast that day,
you get your training out of the way on Saturday and you kind of reboot it almost.
Yes.
Would that be something that you might recommend? Something along those lines?
Absolutely. So the way I do it specifically, I'll actually go over it. So the way I do it is I look
at it a couple of different ways. Number one, if it's somebody who's just trying to lose weight, what we do is I put them on a fasted cardio or a fasted training program the day after their eat up.
I also will give them a, if they haven't been on for very long or not at all, a fat burner.
I'll put them on a fat burner.
You know, I design on my own product so what i do is i give them something with a little bit of caffeine a little bit of
uh advantage which i'm a huge believer how long you've been doing that for how long you've had
this uh i've been designing well i started evagen about god uh i think i incorporated a little over
10 and a half years ago wow and when i incorporated it and believe it or not i started with one
product a non-stem 60 non-stem fat burner I started with one product, a non-STEM $60 non-STEM fat burner
when the number one product on the market was a super STEM $25 fat burner.
And I started the company that way.
But I started designing supplements about 20 years ago.
And so I was doing it for my personal clients.
And then I would make certain products at certain times because I didn't feel like the marketplace had things that I needed for my type of athletes.
So, you know, whether it was a pre-workout, whether it was an intra-workout, whether it was an NFL player, whether it was an Olympic athlete.
And then I would turn around and try to make the cleanest product for what they needed.
But I would prescribe a program for somebody coming off of an eat-up on a keto program.
And I would say, listen, you're going to have these cravings.
This is what's going to happen.
So I would, first thing I would do is deal with the emotional, dealing with the emotional.
I mean, it's, it's, it's again, this is an emotional thing because you're going to have
cravings.
Your, your brain, you know, really craves two major things and it is sugar and caffeine.
I thought you were going to say pussy.
I thought for sure. Listen. I thought for sure.
Listen, I thought for sure.
That's not your, that's the other head.
There's four guys in this room.
That's the other head.
So that's the other head.
But, you know, and I'm talking about males and females here, okay?
I thought this was a family-friendly show.
I didn't know what this was all about.
You didn't know it was going to go downhill.
Yeah, it goes quick.
It goes quick.
But honestly, what happens is your brain craves sugar and it really craves caffeine. So what we're trying to do is we're replacing the sugar craving with a caffeine craving. And that's what we're doing. We're adding that in to help what I call bridging.
call bridging. Okay. And you hear me use that term a lot, you know, when it comes to hormones, when it comes to supplements, when it comes to diet. So what I'm doing is I'm helping get
caffeine into the blood brain barrier because I'm trying to stop the craving of the sugar going into
the blood brain barrier. So you're not turning around and triggering the pancakes and you're
ending up at IHOPs the next morning. and you're like, okay, you know what?
I can handle another full day of eating.
That's interesting.
I've never heard anybody talk about that.
And even if like, even if you were to break it down a lot further, like let's say the,
uh, the place that the caffeine hits in your brain is slightly different than the sugar.
Who really cares?
At least you get, at least you threw yourself a bone.
Exactly.
Right.
At least you gave yourself something.
Right.
Right.
And that's the thing.
So it's, it's my version of methadone right so it's it's basically saying
okay let's get you off the heroin and let's put you on methadone for the day and so and then what
you do is the next stage is is what you mentioned is the training so now what's going to happen is
your body is going to go through a whole different biochemical process by burning off the excess
glycogen so that you're not only less
likely to turn those carbohydrates into fat, but now all of a sudden you're getting endorphins that
are going to help also mitigate, you know, be able to give you the, the endorphins that are needed
to help so that you're not getting the endorphins from the pancakes, the Taco Bell, the salt, the sugar,
all of the shit that you eat that makes you feel good, that pump up your serotonin levels.
So now you're getting that from the training. So what we're doing is we're, I use a multi-stage
approach. It's a very scientific way. And when it comes to, when you look at it in terms of you know the basis of of hey i'm trying
to create a bridge and every piece of the bridge to get us to the other side which is basically
then back into ketosis and then back into what we talked about earlier into burning diesel right
because your body you know i consider the gasoline being the carbohydrates and and in the sugars and
then the diesel being the ketones
have you ever experimented with something like 5-htp to boost those serotonin levels yep yep yep
i actually use 5-htp and sometimes in my fat burner too that's awesome so that's that's why
i do it and they go well why would you 5-htp because it's it's 5-htps for sleeping not
necessarily and they don't they get the difference between tryptophan and 5-hydroxytryptophan mixed up.
And being that I designed my own product, I do actually use 5-HTP.
Dude, that's fucking awesome.
Dude, I really like that.
Yeah.
So it's really important that you understand the chemistry of the brain and how everything works and what the actual solution is.
Because for me, it's not selling a product.
It's creating a tool for the actual solution of what you me, it's not selling a product. It's, it's, it's creating
a tool for the actual solution of what you're trying to do. If I'm trying to bring somebody
into three or four or 5% body fat, or if I'm taking somebody from 30% body fat down to 15%
body fat, all of those things, you need to be able to have a Batman style, you know,
ammo belt and that you can turn around a utility belt that you have to pull out some different things.
Well, isn't the truth, you know, especially if somebody has never done it before, if you're
a seasoned dieter and you've gone from 20% to like 13%, probably, I mean, it's going
to be tough, right?
But probably not that bad.
You've done it before, you know, you know what it takes.
And maybe, uh, you know, maybe in some cases, uh, people are naturally leaner, but they
get a little fatter here and there, probably not a huge deal.
in some cases, uh, people are naturally leaner, but they get a little fatter here and there,
probably not a huge deal. But ultimately when you are a heavier person, uh, that's a, that's like a crazy change, right? To start to get in this single digit body fat, it's huge. And that has
to be managed 24 seven. Yes. That's what makes bodybuilding, uh, such a cool sport in a lot of
ways is that, you know, you can look at other sports and say, oh, well, nutrition's important
for all this, you know, for basketball and stuff like that, but you're not physically being
judged, uh, by what you eat on a daily basis, you know, in a game, in a game of basketball
necessarily.
Right.
And so, uh, bodybuilding is 24 seven and you have to figure out ways of managing that all
the time when somebody is trying to lose that amount of body fat.
Um, I mean, that's gotta be just such
a huge change for them. How do you manage? I know you're mentioning, you know, the caffeine and some
of these things. I mean, ultimately isn't the person eating less or is it, uh, enough strategy
involved where, where the calories come up, they come down, they come up, they come down. Is it,
there's a little bit more a method to the madness to kind of ease that pain of that much change.
there's a little bit more a method to the madness to kind of ease that pain of that much change. Yeah, it, it, it works in two ways. When you're talking about a competitive bodybuilder,
depending on what level they're at, you're trying to do one of two things. Either you're trying to
go after titles, whether it's the USA winner or the nationals, or you're trying to turn
professional, or you're trying to win the Olympia. That's a whole different scenario. When you're talking about trying to get into shape,
I feel like it's a completely different scenario.
So when you're in bodybuilding, it really comes down to wanting—
I guess that makes sense.
Your ass isn't really on the line when you're just trying to get in shape.
Exactly.
You're just trying to get in shape.
Then you turn around and go, okay, I want to be healthy.
I want to live longer.
I want to feel better.
Now you take a little bit more care of trying to be able to be on this planet a little bit longer.
You're trying to spend time with your family.
Sleep more.
Sleep more.
Sleep better.
I mean, you know, I mean, it really like when I sit down and I'm talking to a person about weight loss, I'm talking about how they can get their inflammation down from going on a certain diet and getting the sugars out and getting the inflammation down so that they can train again.
Because sometimes, you know, just simple cardio is banging up their knees because they have too much inflammation from hitting too many processed carbs and doing too many sugars.
And the inflammation kicks up.
Now they can't do anything or it's exacerbating their sleep apnea.
And so it's not just the weight or the aesthetic thing.
So it's a two-pronged approach.
When you're talking about bodybuilding, what you're trying to do is you're trying to actually,
and again, I always use cars as reference points because that's my hobby.
I like to race cars.
But when you turn around, and you can turn around and put more and more modifications
onto a car to be able to make it win races. But if you're trying to get out there and want to just make sure that you have
a daily driver that can get you to point from point A to point B that can last your next 200,000
miles, that's something a little bit different because you're trying to do that for overall
health. And so it's, it's a totally different mentality. Exactly. Cause, cause then when you
start to get to the extremes, health is not always a concern.
It's just the aesthetic or the performance aspect of it.
Right.
You know, so it's not the healthiest thing to be 300 pounds off season.
Right.
You know, even though your body fat's 12%, you know.
So at the end of the day, it really comes down to what your end goal is.
Some people are, you know, really confused by insulin.
You know, you have, uh, and it starts
these huge fights online all the time. And then, uh, some people are like, wait, I will wait. I
think people, I think bodybuilders sometimes use it, uh, to get bigger. What, why would a body
builder use, utilize something like insulin? What does it, what's it doing for them?
Oh, it's a very anabolic hormone, but it's one of those things that I, I'm not a huge believer in
that. And believe it or not, everybody probably thinks I am. Uh, and I, and I know because they see bodybuilders that I work with, they have a
very 3d look and they think, Oh, insulin, insulin, insulin, and insulin is, it's got so many negative
drawbacks to it. But when you, when you're running insulin, people think, Hey, listen,
it's such an anabolic compound that you must be doing it to be able to bodybuild. And they don't
realize so many bodybuilders don't use it. It's just that it's been in these, in these kind of
like this, this taboo mythic mythic type of like, Hey, you know, this is what it is. And it's so
anabolic and it's so needed and it's not, it's what's needed is you need to get your body to
be able to utilize its own insulin at such a high efficiency.
Therefore, your body will take what it needs and then it'll downregulate the rest.
But when you're sitting there trying to take extra insulin, your body will do the side effects that go along with it, you know, with possible death are so high risk.
And that's one of the reasons why I think a lot of these guys are passing away, you know, with possible death are, are so high risk. And that's one of the reasons why I think
a lot of these guys are passing away, you know, because if you take an extra CC, a testosterone,
chances are nothing's going to happen. You're going to get a little bigger, you get a little
bit bigger, or, or, or you might get some gyno or, you know, your, your blood pressure will go up,
get a boner, you know, you know, something, something along those lines, you know, you'll
get, you'll get a little bit of that. But if you take a little extra insulin and you don't do some carbs in time, you're dead, you're dead. And a lot of people,
it's become such a mythical thing. People think that, oh my God, this is what the secret is. And
they don't understand that all of the drawbacks that go along with it, besides the fact that you
could kill yourself in minutes, um, that you end up having all of the different side effects. You
get, you know, distension, you get this, you get that.
The list goes on and on.
And then also, after the first time you use it,
then it downregulates
because now all your insulin receptors downregulate.
So then you have to take more,
then the risks become exponentially worse.
So the key is to try to get the effects of it
through your own efficiency of your own insulin.
And again, we're creating more insulin sensitivity.
Would you say some of the key, uh, some of the same keys that you've mentioned for insulin would be the same for any performance enhancing drug?
Really trying to just elicit your body's own, the more that you can tap into your, what your body can naturally do, probably the better off you're going to be. Absolutely. I think that what happens is you want to be able to utilize as much
of what your, your, your natural hormones as possible. And then when you know that that is,
it comes to a complete halt, let's say your testosterone production just isn't working.
Let's say you're 45 years old and you're no longer being able to produce
more than a couple hundred milligrams of, you know, natural tests in terms of,
just let's say, you know, you're natural supposed to be on a blood test above 400.
You know, 400 to 800 is the optimum range.
And your body's at 200 nanograms per deciliter.
What happens is now you have to make a decision.
Okay.
You want to try to maximize your testosterone.
What I do is I say, hey, client, client A, what are you doing?
Are you getting enough sleep?
Are you, are you basically, are you able to, you know, do you have issues with your sleep?
Whether it's not enough, whether it's sleep apnea, because all of these things can actually contribute to having low test. And then you turn around and go, Hey, how's your diet?
You know? Oh, I'm, I'm, my diet's great. I eat, I eat these bars that are really good for you.
They have tons of soy protein in them. And I don't know why I've got bitch tits, you know?
And it's like, there you go, Steven. Um, and so, you, you know, you go through the process of elimination.
You go through a process of seeing what a person's program looks like, how their rest patterns are, how their training programs are, all of those things.
Are you working out?
Because those things can increase tests.
But if your testosterone still doesn't go up or it's so low, then you have to go into hormone replacement therapy.
Then you also have to say, okay, great.
This didn't work.
I tried this, this, and this. Now we have to turn around and we have to go into hormone replacement therapy. Then you also have to say, okay, great. This didn't work. I tried this, this, and this.
Now we have to turn around and we have to replace. And that's when, obviously, you go in, get a prescription,
get some blood work done.
The doctor prescribes you a CCA test a week,
and you go from there.
Or a cream or a gel or whatever they want to prescribe for you.
But the key is to try to maximize what you have,
whether it's your own natural testosterone, whether it to maximize what you have, whether it's, you know, your own natural
testosterone, whether it's your own natural insulin, whatever it is, you're trying to maximize
that first. That's always trying to be, you know, the primary goal. Shifting gears a little bit,
in America, you know, obesity is one of the things that hits us the hardest, there's just so much food out there that's convenient, that tastes amazing.
What do you think some weapons that we can grab a hold of to fight against obesity?
What are some things that people can do to try to get, maybe steer the ship back the other direction if it's even possible?
You know, I think convenience is
one. I mean, the thing is, everything is about making sure that whatever you decide to do,
that it's convenient for you to do. In regards to diet, it would be meal prep, right? Get with
a meal prep. There's so many meal prep companies now. There's ones that will deliver a couple
times a week. There's ones that you can go pick up daily. They have lockers where you can go to supplement stores and pick them up.
Meal prep is really important because it helps provide convenience.
Because a lot of people switch to the alternative of not having clean food
because fast food is so abundant.
So it's a lot easier to run through a Burger King or a McDonald's drive-thru
than it is to have grilled chicken breast, salad, or a lean steak and some vegetables.
And so what ends up happening is when you have the ability to invest in yourself a little bit, and it might cost a little bit more money because good food costs a lot more money than processed food, especially when you realize what they do to try to make it so cheap.
It really makes a huge difference because now you have the ability to have something that's more convenient
and you can either pick that up, you can have it delivered, whatnot.
Now, all of a sudden, you don't have to go through it, you know, and not eat for five
or six hours.
And then now you have to make a bad choice because you're starving.
So that's the first thing.
The first thing is to make sure that you're trying to, you know,
create more organization throughout the day to be able to make better decisions.
Maybe even like don't even think about a diet necessarily.
No.
Just get better food around you.
That's it.
If you start there, that's going to start there.
It really starts there.
If you get that, then you're going to turn around and be like,
okay, now let's make a plan where I can make 30 minutes, 40 minutes a day to be able to do some kind of exercise,
whether it's get up, do facet cardio, get up, train, get, or train after work, middle of work,
whatever it is. I tend to have my athletes do a lot of facet cardio because I believe in facet
cardio. I like the blood sugar nice and low so that you, when you go in, you're going to, your
body is going to tend to burn more body fat. There's a lot of people out there that are, uh, that are the
best at what they do and they still want to get better. Yeah. And there's like a Phil Heath,
same way. Yeah. Phil, Phil, Phil is a perfect example. I mean, Phil is a guy that's genetically,
they call him the gift. Right. And you know, he, he just has it all. He doesn't work for it. Yeah.
He doesn't have to sweat it. What it thinks what everybody thinks right and or they think he just gets shredded on his own he just he doesn't barely have to do cardio and it's so opposite the truth
because he's a type of person who because he's yes he's genetically gifted with some roundness
to his muscle bellies but he's not a guy like dexter jackson who who is just naturally lean
damn dexter jackson's great and And Dexter Jackson's 48 years old.
And the guy is just amazing.
I mean, he's like the Energizer bunny.
And I'm just sitting here looking at the whole thing going, okay, Phil is going to be, I
think, what is he going to be?
39 this year, 39, 40.
And I've been working with Phil since late 2005.
We started working together and it's been almost 13 years.
He, I've seen him get so fat in the off season, you know, and back in the beginning of his
career.
I hope he's not listening to this.
No, no, I hope he is actually, but he does because he'll, he'll, he'll, he'll attest
to this.
He used to get really pudgy and when he would guest pose and whatnot, and then as he's matured
and everything, he's kept in better shape and he's, his body's gone, but he's worked for it. He's worked for it. And I'm blessed to be a part of the team, but
when people turn around and go, Oh, he's so, you know, it's so easy to work with or this, that,
no, he works hard. You know, people go, Oh, he's got genetics. And that's why he, you know, he
wins. It's not because genetic it's genetics and what he calls it with hard work.
Then you win, right?
Because when you, when you combine those two things together and what's really important
is that for people to understand that, you know, I don't care how blessed you are in
genetics, a guy with half your genetics that can work really hard will still beat you.
Okay.
Branch Warren's a perfect example.
When you start looking at bodybuilders, right? The guy genetically doesn't have it. I'm sorry. He doesn't genetically. I
mean, he has in terms of like the small ways that Dexter Jackson, let me just get shredded by doing
10 minutes of cardio and, and, you know, sitting there, you know, literally he would joke about it.
Dexter would joke and say, yeah, I didn't do any cardio for the show with Arnold after he would win the Arnold
classic.
And then he'd be like,
how much car Arnold would say,
Dexter,
how many minutes of cardio did you do?
And he's like,
I didn't do any cardio.
Uh,
how long did you train for this show?
It must've been hours.
And the guy,
you're like,
yeah,
40 minutes.
Like,
you know,
everyone's like,
fuck you,
man.
Right.
Like we're sitting here killing ourselves.
But then you look at somebody like branch Warrenren who's just fucking hard work man the guy's in
there and he trains like he's out gutting a pig he just wants to murder it right i mean like
all kidding aside that's what he does you know that right you know yeah yeah and he like literally
like honey i took this long knife and i stuck him and i'm like oh wow i mean like you know that right yeah yeah and he like literally is like honey i took this long knife and i stuck him and i'm like oh wow i mean like you know and that's how he trains he's a savage
he's a savage he doesn't hold back and the guy is just a beast and um and that's what he he makes up
for that like oh i don't have a small waist and i don't just get shredded by by playing playstation
you know or xbox you know like some of these other guys do. Um, and that's the thing.
And there's branch, you know, and, and, you know, he's been as high as second to the Olympia
the year I trained Jay in 2009, he was second to Jay Cutler.
And that was the, you know, I mean, if Jay wouldn't have, you know, came in on in shape
branch Warren would have been Mr. Olympia.
Sorry, branch.
But, you know, I mean, but, but, but in all honesty, it literally like the guy is made
up for a lot of his lack of genetics, uh, quote unquote with savagery, savagery in the
gym and hard work.
And people think that, Hey, listen, it's just genetics or it's just drugs or it's just this
or it's just that it's not, it's not, it's hard
work busting your ass and doing the kind of shit that other people are not willing to do. And that's
just what it's, and that's what life is about actually. When people are out on the road, when,
you know, when you see people out on the road, um, you know, Instagram and Facebook and all these
other things that you see people go out and do. And, you know, when we're going out and doing the things that other people are not willing to do.
So it's about hard work.
Is it easier to go from being thin to jacked
or from fat to thin?
What do you think?
Oh, I think personally,
because I've always had an easier time
putting on size.
I always think it's the opposite.
AKA you've always been fat.
Right. I've always, always like, it was one of those things that it was always one of those
things for me to, it was very difficult for me to get lean. So for me, it was, I think it would,
it's always harder to get lean. Um, because when you're already lean, you already have one portion of your um it's like if you look at you know old
picture of dory yates and you see him and you go oh god look the guy was really kind of lean and he
had structure and he had um just the shape and then when he put on all the size what happened
what happened was he was able to kind of just transform without having to worry as much about conditioning.
And then when he got bigger, he was still conditioned.
And so I feel that it's a little bit easier doing it that way.
Are there any top bodybuilders that have been fat?
I've seen top bodybuilders that have gotten fat in the off season because bodybuilding.
But I mean like fat as a kid.
Not that I can remember.
Because usually you don't Like from what I've seen
Like
No because if you look at Jay right
Jay started competing
As a teenager
Branch and Jay actually
Used to compete against each other
In the teen nationals
Oh wow
And those guys compete
You know
Competed against
And Branch is still
I think planning on coming back
He took a little break
But word has it on the street
That he might be coming back
Jay is done
For now
I think you know
I'm still trying to talk him into putting on some board shorts and
doing men's physique against Jeremy.
But all in all.
That would be pretty epic, right?
Yeah, it would be.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I'm going to have you go on stage, too.
I haven't told everybody.
But I think it's, we need to get you some board shorts.
I need to work on these glutes.
Well, no, no, board shorts.
That's what that division's for.
You can wear, you know, the longer shorts that go to your knees. There we go. I don't have to worry about my quads. No, you don't have to worry on these glutes. Well, no, no. Horseshorts. That's what that division is for. You can wear the longer shorts that go to your knees.
There we go.
I don't have to worry about my quads.
No, you don't have to worry about your quads.
I got decent calves.
You got decent calves and you're just a razor and some oil away.
Might as well go for it.
The show's only about 15 minutes away from here, too.
Yeah, see?
Let's walk on.
What do you think, Smoke?
Yeah?
Smoke, you'll shave them, too. This is definitely the leanest I've ever been. That's a on. What do you think, Smoke? Yeah? Smoke, you'll shave him too.
This is definitely the leanest I've ever been.
That's a lean, absolutely.
I'm still working on it.
I'd like to still get leaner, but for me, it's had to happen in stages because of the effort that it takes.
I mean, I'll sometimes take two, three weeks, not off of a diet.
I don't go off of it, but I'll just do something different for a little while. We'll go through stages where I'm just
like, you know, I'm just going to fucking eat more. I go through stages where I'm like, up,
I'm going to use some fasting. I'll go through stages where I'll do some sprint work and do
some other things to try to, you know, get the fat burning going a little faster. And you just,
you can't have that flame burning that bright all the time.
So I try to just, uh, manage it because I'm not in like a real rush.
But now that you said I have to go do a bodybuilding show today, I should probably hustle.
Yeah.
Well, I think we have to put the plan together.
I'm not kidding.
I'm not kidding.
No, why not?
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, we just be a Tom file.
Who's a power lifter here in the gym and a former bodybuilder.
He's been, he's been dying for this moment.
He's like, I got to oil you up.
I don't know why he wants to oil you up.
I just think that you've gotten in such good shape that literally there's light at the end of the tunnel in terms of like a 10 week prep, 12 week prep, and then turn around and just put you on stage.
Might as well.
Yeah.
As long as I don't have to do a double bicep, I'm all good.
No, you don't have to do a double bicep. All you do is a front
and a back pose. It's just
front relaxed, rear relaxed, and you wear
board shorts. The only thing you're going to need to do is
we've got to put some protein, some paint
on you, and then we've just got to
have Smokey shave you. Stuff the front with
some tube socks. There you go.
Smoke, that's your job.
Some eggplants. Some eggplants. There you go. Smoke, that's your job. Some eggplants.
Some eggplants.
Some emojis.
But in all honesty, I mean, you've gotten to a point where you should do it.
Because you would be doing yourself and your viewers and all of your followers a disservice by not doing it.
Son of a bitch.
He's putting me on the spot. Yeah. Fuck it. I'll give it a shotervice by not doing it because son of a bitch man he's putting me on putting me on the spot seriously yeah i fuck it i'll give it a shot why not all right you guys
heard it here okay i'm gonna need a coach though you know anybody no um no no you let's put it this
way it's done we're doing the show all right okay so august sounds good okay we got we got we got
the august golden State coming up.
It's only about 15 minutes away from here in Sacramento.
That's true.
So NPC IFU Pro League Show.
It's great.
You know, I know, I know in some of these bodybuilding federations that they use performance enhancing drugs.
I'm totally against that.
So I'll be complete competing in the drug free.
That's right.
Well, like I said, I think that you've made such huge changes.
And all joking aside, it's been great because I've been able to see you at 300 pounds all the way down.
And so it'd be great.
It'd be great to get you on stage.
It would probably be fun.
I never had to really try to, I guess guess I never had a goal like that. So
I don't, I don't even know what it's like, you know what I mean? So it'd be, it'd be cool to
give it a shot. No, I think, I think it would be awesome. Um, you know, in, in bodybuilding,
you know, you were mentioning some of these guys with the off season stuff and how, how big they
get and people used to get really big. And then now you kind of see more people. There you go.
and people used to get really big. And then now you kind of see more people. There you go. There's a before and after of me. There you go. Wow. You see, uh, you see more, more people nowadays,
they stay closer to their stage, their stage, uh, stage ready, right? Uh, what's been the big
change in bodybuilding? Why are people, uh, staying leaner? They, they find kind of diminished
returns after getting, you know, so fat in the off season type thing. Okay. So there's a couple of different reasons why. Number one, uh, what you just mentioned,
when you start to burn body fat, you're also going to burn off muscle, especially at the
higher amounts of body fat. Always. So always. Yeah. Always. Oh, especially, especially the
higher you go. So what happens is if you go, Hey, listen, I'm going to put on another 10 more pounds
of muscle mass, but you got to put on another 10 or 20 more pounds of body fat,
you have diminishing returns.
The math's not going to work out so great.
Exactly.
So now all of a sudden you're sitting there trying to prep
and you'll never get shredded because you're just trying to get lean
because you've gotten so far out of shape.
So what you want to do is you want to get within a target
of being able to get in shape in between
12 to maximum 16 weeks, depending on your genetics and depending on kind of how your body's seasoned
12 to 16 week prep. Okay. Bodybuilding closer to 16 weeks, men's physique guys are closer to the
12 week mark. Some guys are even a little bit less, some guys a little bit more, but on average it's 12 to 16 week prep.
And what happens is when you were doing that, it also, and you stay in closer shape to where
you're supposed to be, you're more marketable because if you have your sponsors that you
have to go do, um, appearances for, if you're doing stuff for Instagram, you're doing videos,
you're doing content, you're doing all of these things.
It becomes exponentially more powerful because you look the part, because if you only look the part for a
couple of months, and this is how it used to be, you look only the part for a couple of months out
of the whole year, what is anybody going to be able to do with you? What are you going to be
able to do in terms of content? And that's, that's the thing, you know, um, as a coach,
I don't personally have to worry about, except for my health. And that's thing, you know, um, as a coach, I don't personally have to worry
about, except for my health.
And that's why, you know, I, I've just said, you know what, stop the madness.
And I, I've lost 25 pounds and I, I, I'm going to lose another 20.
But my thing is, you know, cause I'm so used to taking care of everybody.
That's that, that's the thing.
You got to be their shrink.
You got to be their doctor.
You got to be their lawyer.
You got to be their, their relationship counselor.
You got to be all of these things for these people to be able to keep their head
on straight, to try to get them to mountain Olympus. So that's the thing. And then you've
got to build a condo there and stay for a while. I mean, that's what I try to do. I guys went four
when girls went four or five, seven, whatever it is, you're trying to be up there and stay up there.
And it's not like MMA or this or that, where somebody can get a lucky
punch and knock you off. If you can stay at the top of your game, you can be up there for a while
and create a dynasty. And so what happens is when I turn around and put all of this together and I
say, Hey, listen, you guys should be within a certain percentage of what your stage weight is.
You should be for a male or a female. Uh, I have Lauren Finley, who's one of my athletes,
who is not even pro, but she is a person
who looks like she's always eight to 10 weeks out.
And Lauren is one of those people that are like,
hey, when is she gonna compete?
And right now she's traveling so much
and she's doing so many different things
and she's doing content and she's doing all these things.
And her following grew.
I think she had like, literally,
I think she had less than a thousand followers when,
when I hooked up with her and she became an even athlete and whatnot.
And now she's got over,
she had more than me.
She had like 400 and I don't know,
50,000 followers.
And she's won a show in New Jersey.
She's looking at possibly trying to turn pro,
but it's not what defines her.
What defines her is how she looks and how she's able to connect with people, with her training, with her nutrition, with all the things that she's endorsing and whatnot.
And what happens is you're just much more marketable.
And so I feel that it's super important that you stay in better shape, especially if, you know, you can't just, you know, kind of go off for nine months like you used to back in the day because you used to not have social media now you have to do that and then again you have your
obligations have you had people mess up um you know like uh they're coming down to the final
they're coming down to the wire they got two weeks left and they just fucking blow it like
whatever reason they're mentally they just can't handle it anymore have you ever had anybody do
anything like that and they and they couldn't really recover from it?
You know, back in the day, yes.
Now, because I work with more elite athletes, you know,
and they make their living doing this, they don't tend to do that.
But in the beginning, it happened all the time
because people can't handle pressure.
Can you get thrown that sideways from like just a bad day or two or.
Yeah.
Because what'll happen is they'll, they used to fucking go off the radar, like, like literally
off the reservation.
They would be like.
And now you got your phone attached to you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I, you know, next thing you know, you don't talk to somebody.
I used to have a client and, um, and this guy literally would, he would get depressed
or stressed out for something, you know, uh, a fight with his ex-girlfriend or whatever.
And he was trying to turn pro.
And he would turn around and I would call him and check on him.
And I was living in Santa Barbara, going to UC Santa Barbara at the time.
And I would check on him.
And he lived in the Bay Area in San Jose.
And I'd say, hey, listen, I know you're stressed out. I know you got problems
with your girlfriend, but I need you to stick on your, to your diet. And he's like, well, how do
you know I'm going to go off of it? And I said, somebody called me and told me they saw you eating
pizza over at the round table, round table pizza. And they ran into you. That's the phone calls
you're going to get about me. I'm like, I don't know. You say he's doing this show in August. He's at Rip Shack
down the street.
But,
but yeah,
so I would get,
and then he would self-sabotage
and then he would just go off
and then it would,
I wouldn't hear from him
for three days
and then I would drive
from Santa Barbara
four and a half hours
to San Jose
and then I would literally
have to walk him
into the gym
and watch him do cardio.
Otherwise,
he would sneak out the back,
you know,
and,
you know,
I won't mention
his name. I'll mention his initials. His initials are Ray Artie. So, um, you know, it was funny
because we joke about it because Ray would do that. And, um, and this was back in 2003, 2004,
and then he eventually got his shit straight, won the nationals and turned pro in 05 and then
eventually made it to the Olympia stage. But it was literally having to micromanage Ray to do that because he would
self-sabotage pressure this,
that in a lot of people do that in lots of different ways.
And he was the type of person who would do that.
And I would literally have like one of the security guys at gym,
like post up in the back because we would sit there and tell him to do cardio
and we would go train.
And then we would see his car, you know, he had a Corvette or something at the time he had the car
and he'd jump in and we'd see him taken off. And we're like, how the hell did he get past us?
And he went through the back exit and then he would take off and it was like a game. And we're
like, what, what the fuck is this? Right. That's, that's, that's pretty, that's pretty impressive
to be that dedicated to wanting to
go out, wanting to go off your diet. How do bodybuilders stay on the plan? Like, you know,
you see sometimes these guys having like tilapia and rice and broccoli. And I think from some
outsiders looking in, I think people are like, just how in the fuck do they do that day in and
day out? I think, uh, it's really what motivates you. Some people will create motivation within because of that mental drive and fortitude because they don't want to embarrass themselves on stage.
And that's how most people do it.
Other people do it by the fact that they want to make sure that they extend their legacy because they're winning and they don't want to lose.
And then other people will do it for financial reasons so they'll they'll find a particular
goal and they will basically attach their thought process to how do i create this uh you know this
vision into reality and whether it's winning a trophy and wanting to beat some people that it
might be in their gym or whether it was because that's what happened to me when I used to compete. I used to have some people in the gym
and we would compete and it literally bets would be going off. And, and, you know, the managers of
the gym were like, Oh, I got this guy. And this other, these other guys are, I got honey. And,
you know, and we'd go out there and it was like, you had to, you don't want to embarrass yourself,
but you find your motivation. And that's what it could be um with the guys like phil heath i mean it's not a matter of winning the mr olympia it's a
matter of trying to think about i'm trying to set my legacy here i'm going to be tying you know he
just tied arnold schwarzenegger with seven if he wins one more god willing knock on wood coming up
he will tie ronnie coleman lee haney if's able to extend that, then he will solidify himself as being the best ever.
There's only in bodybuilding with 50 plus years of bodybuilding, Mr. Olympia's, you know, competitions.
There's only been 13 Olympia champions.
Yeah.
And he's number 13.
So it's been that way now for seven straight years.
So what he's trying to do is he's trying
to solidify his legacy. So for him, it's not just a matter of trying to win and do that, but it's
also the fact that, Hey, listen, how's it going to feel not to be Mr. Olympia anymore? That's also
another thing that, you know, uses motivation, right? You know? Yeah. He, he just is, uh, doing
it year in and year out. how are these guys doing some of this
uh even working through injury because i think he had like a hernia or something like that too
you're you're jeremy uh torres peck yep jeremy torres he might still compete at the olympia
right yeah yeah right now he is looking at competing right now i mean his body is healing
up very very quickly um it was originally thought that were going to have to take the year off. He's won four of the five
since Mr. Olympia
Men's Physique Division was created.
He's won the last four
out of the five.
Now
it's to the point where he tore his pec
right after the Olympia last year.
Again, when we talked about it earlier
today before the podcast started,
he was doing it on a flat bench.
I'm not a huge proponent of the flat bench for my bodybuilders, especially after shows, especially at 450 pounds.
A guy that weighs like 190, 200 pounds.
Because everything is so brittle.
Your body is so dried up in terms of your joints and whatnot.
And he was doing it for a charity event.
And so I had even called him the day before and said, Hey, listen, do not, please, please
do the deadlift.
Do, do anything else.
Just don't flat bench.
Okay.
Got all fired up.
Got excited.
Exactly.
And it's like, you feel like Superman and, you know, he's putting up 300 on the close
grip.
He's doing this.
He's doing that.
He's, I don't remember how heavy it was going, inclined dumbbell presses but i mean probably 150s 160s you know i mean he throws around some serious
weight for a guy that barely 200 pounds and he's super strong and he trains like an open body
builder the intensity and this is coming from a guy that's wearing board shorts on stage and he
trains legs like he does open bodybuilding as well so yes was last week he was he was squatting 455 for reps
and um you know with good depth and everything so the guy is no joke but when it came to that
you know i felt like he he did it he felt like he was going to be noting problems but
unfortunately the tors pack yeah had surgery had it reattached and now i don't know of anybody who
has been able to reattach it and be able to compete the same year.
I know Kevin Leveroni did it, but I don't know if he did it at the same time when he tore his jet pack, if he was able to compete the same year.
I think he had to take a year off, I believe.
But Jeremy is basically looking at a really quick recovery, and now he's 15 weeks out from the Olympia and, um, he's going
to try to make a run for it. So we're going to see how his body responds in the coming weeks.
But, uh, so far it's been, it's been recovering tremendously well. It's demoralizing when you
have an injury like that. Cause you, you know, like that's what you associate yourself with.
You associate yourself with lifting and then you tear a bicep or tear a pack or whatever it might
be. And then you don't have it anymore.
So like in his case, how was he able, is he, was he staying on his diet or did he give himself a few weeks to, to just kind of.
I think, I think he went through, he went through a lot of different emotional issues because him like a lot of.
Makes you depressed.
Yes.
Like a lot of other people use it as therapy.
Makes you depressed.
Yes.
Like a lot of other people use it as therapy.
And the training is, I couldn't consider it natural Prozac for him.
And so when he didn't have that outlet, it was really, really difficult for him.
And I've seen Jeremy at his highest highs and his lowest lows.
And what I noticed was the fact that because he didn't have that outlet, it was really, really difficult for him to find an outlet. So therefore it's kind of like, what am I doing? What's going on? Is my career over? You know, like all of a sudden now it's like, you know, at the ripe old age of 26, you know?
So what, you know, I think he had just turned 27 when it happened, something around that time. But
at the end of the day, it's hard because if you're using that as therapy and you don't have that therapy what's your outlet and he it was very
difficult for him so i saw him eating shit he was going on instagram eating three double doubles and
eating fries and oh that's where that food came yeah i was wondering yeah i didn't know he got
hurt but i saw the food yeah yeah and and not to say that he doesn't do junk here and there because
we we give him refeeds today he's supposed to be doing a refeed today. I know because he's actually right from Roseville.
So he's eating at his parents' house and they're having barbecue.
And today is supposed to be his eat up day. But but after that peck tear, it was really bad.
It was psychologically it was really tough on him. Very tough.
With these refeeds, do you allow people to kind of eat whatever they want or is that kind of like one meal type of thing?
I set it depending on who it is and where they're at in their program.
So what happens is I set a program where if somebody's in the middle of a prep or they're,
we're going to prep. So let's say it's an off season, but it's a competitive bodybuilder.
I will sit down and set parameters. Um, I like, uh, what I call clean sheets and dirty sheets.
So a clean sheet would be sushi. Um, that's a clean cheat. Um,
doing, um, doing stuff like, uh, you know, uh, steak and steak and potato with an appetizer.
Those are more of what I consider the clean cheats. Um, and, uh, and a dessert. Um, those
are clean cheats. The dirty cheats would be the pizzas of the world, stuff like that, where you're
not really getting much protein. You're getting a lot of fat and a lot of carbs. So, you know, or fried foods,
those are the dirty cheats. So I limit those. Now you're talking our language.
And I limit those. And, um, but sometimes psychologically I throw those in because I,
it's like I said, it's a chess match. Psychologically, I have to turn around and
think several steps ahead because sometimes I do it not because I feel that their body needs it, but because their mind needs it.
Because if they don't, if I don't give it to them, they're going to do it themselves and not tell me.
And then they're going to fuck everything up.
And maybe a little bit of positive reinforcement too for them getting in better shape.
Like, oh shit, this guy's lost, you know, our girl has lost six or eight pounds of body fat.
They're doing good.
They're kicking ass.
Go ahead and have fun. Absolutely. It's really important to do that because if you don't
think about the well, I mean, the mind is a very, you know, complex organ, your brain,
and what needs to happen is you need to give that stimulation. And when you're putting together a
diet or training program and you're trying to get somebody to change, you need to be able to give them rewards. And sometimes it they're physical because you're trying, it's a performance
based. So you're saying, Hey, listen, I like to do a cheat meal. And then what I like to do is
do a weak body part after that. So when I create a program and I say, Hey, we're doing a sushi
cheat on Sunday and somebody needs to work on their chest, I will have them train chest the
next day because they'll push the sodium and the carbs into that weak body part. That's, you know,
I've been doing that for years and years and years, and it's catching on because I see more and more
coaches doing it now because I talk about it so much. And what you want to do is you want to push
that into number one, you're coming off of a day off. So you're coming off of a rest. So you're
getting a workout in fresh that you need your weakest body part in the beginning of the week. And number two,
you're throwing that cheat meal into that weak body part. So if we need to work on you and we
need to work on your arms, let's say, then I'm going to have you do a cheat meal the night before
arm day. And that's what we're going to do. Get all that pizza flown right into the bicycle.
Yeah. You're going to get in the pepperoni pump, you know, it's, it's the pepperoni pump.
So you turn around and you do that,
but that's,
but it's a functional cheat meal now.
So we're actually going to help burn it off and it's going to create that fascia stretching
pump that we want.
This is all smokies that heard the whole thing.
Yeah.
So just,
I just saw,
you're like that,
you're like that emoji with a mind blown.
Mind is blown.
Pepperoni pump.
He just wrote it down.
Like he just, he just put it into a spreadsheet.
He's going to do it for every body part.
But he didn't hear anything else that you said
the entire time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
His eyes were glazed over.
So, so yeah.
So basically it's, it's a matter of being able
to do that.
How do you manage stress?
Like you personally, because you're dealing
with a lot of people and they're dumping stuff
on, on you.
Hey, my girlfriend broke up with me or this happened or that happened.
I mean, they're dumping a lot of things on you.
You're a married guy.
You got your own business and you had it for a long time.
How are you dealing with stress?
Several ways.
I try to, the immediate way is to have, if I can get into the gym, it really helps me.
So if I can do that, I'll do that.
If it's something where I can do, I can't do that,
or I need to get something off of my shoulders and get off of my back,
I discuss it.
I'm a person who likes to talk.
Obviously, I'm sitting here rambling.
But it's a person, I'm a person who likes to talk.
So I like to talk through it.
So I can talk to my wife and say, hey, listen, this is what's going on right now.
And she just, it's not even really getting her opinion, just her listening to me to be able to get it off my chest.
That helps a lot emotionally to have that support, that sounding wall.
And then the third thing is, honestly, I like to go to places where I can completely shut down.
Third thing is, honestly, I like to go to places where I can completely shut down, whether it's a movie theater where I can turn my phone off for the next two hours and just kind of emerge myself into a movie.
You know, it's I'd love to be able to just check out for a couple hours.
And then if it's and then my my hobbies were racing.
So I like to go racing. So I would take, you know know i live next to two world-class racetracks
sonoma raceway as well as laguna seca and so uh me and some of my friends were very big into
into going out there and and it's like adult playstation yeah so we go out there i take out
my viper acr or one of my other cars and and we go out there and we chalk it up with you know and
talk shit in between sessions and do that.
So that's kind of my hobby.
So when you see my intro to my videos on my YouTube page, you'll see cars.
And people go, what's the deal with the car stuff?
And some of those videos will come out more because I'm kind of trying to hybridize my channel about making it about me, not just about training, but just also my hobbies.
And one of them is that.
I like being able to go out there and take the cars, what they're made for and put them out there on the track and go out there and blast.
Do you have to set parameters on your on your work?
Like, do you have to say, you know, hey, like when I get home, I'm throwing my phone in the drawer or like I'm shutting it off at 6 p.m.
Or you have any rules like that you try to follow or you or you just keep trucking along?
There's definitely boundaries now more
than ever but i did that kind of through being able to uh reduce my client workload and now most
of my time is now working on my evision brand so i develop i do all the r&d and working on all the
products and then i have consultants that also work with me on, on different projects and whatnot. But at the end of the day, what happens is I have been switching
from 90% training people and 10% Evagen to now 90% Evagen with 10% consulting athletes and whoever
else I work with. So what happens is now naturally I don't stay on the phone until two o'clock in the morning anymore, but when it does happen and when I do need to do that, there's the crew.
When I do do that, it's really important that I, you know, try to create boundaries because in the
past there were none. So I don't care if it was two o'clock in the morning, one o'clock in the
morning, whatever it was, I would focus on making sure that we would, uh, just if somebody
has to sit there and talk to me for an hour, because they got in a huge fight with their
girlfriend and it's midnight or one o'clock in the morning, I would do it. I would do it. I would
sit there and talk them off the ledge. I would, you know, they had a bad day and, and we don't
know what was going on or they have a, some, whatever it was, I would have to deal with it.
Again, you, you wear more hats than Michael Jackson. So you, you,
you know, there were no boundaries back then. So now I've been able to create more boundaries.
So therefore I can spend more time. I've got a five-year-old now. And so very, very, been very
blessed. Um, and being able to spend time with him is amazing. And, um, so I've definitely created
more balance and my wife's helped me do that. Yeah. He doesn't care who you're texting.
You know, he don't care who you're emailing back.
Actually he does because he knows if it's uncle Phil or, you know, Hey, who is that?
You know?
He knows he can mess with him.
Yeah.
Because he knows it.
Or if I'm talking to him, he says, I want to say hi.
And he puts it on speaker.
Oh, that's cool.
He has to say hi to him.
And then he throws a, he throws a pose.
Cause he knows he's like, I think you should do most muscular uncle Phil.
I'm coming for your trophy.
Yeah. He says that. Yeah. My son already talks shit at five. Damn. Crazy. Got some questions, Andrew? Yeah, Alan
on Facebook, he has a question that I have as well. For a skinny guy
like me, it's hard to eat more. It's hard to get more calories,
especially when it's the good calories that we're supposed to be eating.
Do you have any tips on somebody trying to up their calories that are, you know, having a hard time?
So overall, an easy way to do that is through making sure you up your fats.
Because the hard thing to do is upping large amounts of carbohydrates because they tend to bloat you.
upping large amounts of carbohydrates because they tend to bloat you.
And if you're taking in calories, upping fats, so again, avocado.
I like to keep to the vegetable fats more,
but it's really important to throw in red meat as well,
especially if you're trying to put on some size.
Coconut oil maybe? Yeah, coconut oil and salmon.
I'm a huge believer in, I love salmon, and salmon.
And so putting in foods that have higher fats, you know, using olive oil on top of your salad,
getting those calories in like that, they're so calorically dense that they help you without bloating you.
But if I'm sitting here trying to hammer 12 ounces of sweet potato or baked potato, it's going to be really, really tough.
The other thing I do too to try to make things
is I use carb powders.
And I made a carb powder to be able to drink too
because you can get 50 grams of carbohydrates
in literally like six ounces of water.
And so that helps as well with the carbohydrates
so you don't have to sit there
and take down a potato all the time or take down oatmeal.
So doing those types of things will help go farther without bloating and doing that.
Awesome.
Are you familiar with Stan Efferding's vertical diet?
No.
I'm familiar with Stan, but I don't know what his diet is.
That's what I've been following.
And I've been having some success, like at least maintaining weight.
And just to simplify it, just ground bison, white rice, eat that as much as I can. And it keeps me full,
but I find myself getting hungrier faster because it's high in sodium. Um, but I was just curious
if you knew anything about that. Um, where does the name procreator come from? Uh, you know,
when I started winning a lot of my athletes, I should say, started winning a lot of pro qualifiers,
what happened was I got a phone call from the owner of Muscular Development Magazine, Steve Blackman,
and he had asked me, and this is back when 2001 I had Quincy Taylor win the USA overall.
Then in 2002 I had Idris Wardell win the overall in the USA.
And this is back when they used to only give one or two pro cards out.
And they didn't have the divisions they have now.
So it was really, really difficult.
And everybody that turned pro, everybody knew who they were.
So when the magazine started writing about me and mentioning me and the internet just had these chat rooms and they had some boards,
people were like, oh, this guy's turning a lot of
people pro they came to me and said hey could you do an article and i said okay you know so what
was it going to be called i'd love to do an article and they said i don't know we're going
to come up with a name so we were trying to figure out a name and then all of a sudden somebody
popped up with one that said the pro creator because you're creating so many pros right and
i was like okay pro creator and then all of a sudden it stuck and then i kept creating more and more pros and then in the last five i don't know eight
years the the i don't want to say it's easy to turn pro but it's much easier now than it was
before and then people started calling me the o creator because i was winning so many olympias
and now it's 19 olympias and it's like but the original pro creator was because of the
fact that when i had the article for muscular development that ran for over 10 years every
month in that magazine um it was the name of the article and then they called me the pro creator by
honey rambod and then it was like everybody i'd go to trade shows oh it's the pro creator it's a
pro creator and it kind of just stuck at that point. That's awesome. But even though I don't try to emphasize turning people pro as often,
I still do, but not as often.
But now my emphasis is trying to win Olympias.
But I do have clients that do want to turn pro,
but I don't emphasize that as much as the people
that I'm trying to keep Olympia titles going.
The O Creator might also be like a porn star name too.
That's true.
I never thought of that. I never thought of that.
I never thought of that.
You got pro creator, O creator.
More than one career.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was like, yeah.
I believe me.
I had a lot of nicknames.
That was just add to it.
Hey, speaking of that, is there any differences with training women and the diet for women?
You know, what it really comes down to with women is, especially for the the competitors is the rebounds. The rebounds are much more severe with women
with guys, you know, you could be a pro bodybuilder or let's say, you know, men's pro
men's physique guy and go out and hit up some, you know, double doubles from in and out burger
and still be okay with women. The biggest thing is making sure that after their shows,
Women, the biggest thing is making sure that after their shows, they don't blow up because they go from, you know, a really good two hour, you know, sometimes they're doing two hours of cardio, 45 minutes twice a day, a cardio. I try to keep away from doing that with my athletes by keeping them a bit leaner, but a lot of them do.
And I get these questions all the time at seminars I do.
And they say, hey, how do I get metabolic damage?
How do I not deal with these rebounds?
Because now I've gained 40 pounds or 30 pounds.
And what happens is working with women is trying to create balance.
Because one dark side of competing is that if you have a tendency to have any kind of food issues,
or if you have a tendency to have some kind of food issues, or if you have a tendency to have, um, some kind of
eating disorder, it can pull out and exacerbate the eating disorder. And so what happens is you
are ending up going from one extreme eating to another. So you go from eating fish and chicken
and, uh, avocado and brown rice and whatnot to now all of a sudden going, oh my God, I'm going to be
dieting like that again. So I better eat like shit because, and then every day is like, almost
like you're getting ready for another show. So it's creating that balance is really what's hard
for women. And then they go from cardio, doing cardio every day, training every day and eating
very clean every day to now all of a sudden they're either not doing cardio or not doing so
much exercise and
then eating like shit. And it can really make a huge dramatic difference compared to a guy that's
got a lot more muscle. So they burn the calories at a much higher rate so they can eat a burger
too. It won't really affect them. But if you turn around and you're doing that all the time with a
woman that's only 115 pounds or 125 pounds, it can really affect
them. So it's really a matter of teaching them balance because they have a lot less body mass
and the foods can affect them differently. And then also when you're training them,
trying to stay away from exercises that can thicken their waist, because when you're doing
bodybuilding and fitness shows, what's happening is you're looking for that maximum X, you know, the V taper and that
X frame.
So if you're doing tons of deads, you're doing tons of squats and whatnot, it'll help,
it'll thicken your torso.
So you got to be careful not to go too heavy with those when you're doing bodybuilding
because if you start doing that too much, it can make you stockier and thicker through
the torso and the midsection.
So you have to try to make sure you minimize that.
So you want to be able to hit the glutes, hit the quads, but you don't want to thicken up your obliques too much because it can take away from your X-ray.
That makes sense.
It might be part of the reason why the CrossFit girls, you know, they're shredded, they're jacked, they got abs, right?
But they have very muscular and thick midsections. Yeah. Yeah. Rather than looking
like a bodybuilder. Right. Right. And that's because of all the functional training they're
doing. And you can just see, like you said, they're shredded. They look amazing. Yeah. But
are they the best for bodybuilding or any of the type of bodybuilding type of, uh, competitions?
Not necessarily. What's the safest way for a female to just drop body fat?
You know, honestly, it's similar to the guys.
It's just making sure that the safest thing to do is get fast at cardio.
I'm a huge believer in fast at cardio.
Fast at cardio and then just make sure that you're at calorie deficit.
And if you have a lot of body fat to lose,
then the same thing that I do with my men.
I make sure to try to make sure to bump up their fats,
bump up their protein, cut back their carbs,
and then make sure to start cycling in, you know,
a really good exercise program and cardio program
along with that to keep their cravings down.
Should every workout be fasted
or like just a couple of times a week?
Cardio, I like to do fasteded to five days a week on cardio.
And then depending on what their work schedule is, I'll create a program that's either after work, if they have a work schedule or if they're an athlete or they're a trainer where they can have a flexible program.
Then I like to get them to train after their second meal.
Awesome.
How fast are we talking about?
Like what if somebody doesn't have the opportunity to do it right in the morning?
Is two, three hours good enough? Or is it got to be like seven, eight? Like what are you trying to shoot for?
So there's two ways of doing fasted cardio and in my programs.
One is just waking up doing fasted. The second is I'll throw in an intermittent fasting program.
And the intermittent fasting will usually go until about noon.
And then they'll turn around and eat from noon to 6 or noon to 8.
And then they'll shut it back down again.
So it just really depends on which program that I'm putting them on.
But I believe in both intermittent fasting and keto and carbs and whatnot.
So I like to use, again, a lot of different tools in the ammo belt.
When you're talking about cardio, what do you prefer?
I prefer what most people can just fit in their house.
I mean, when we do contests, I like the step mill because the step mill burns a lot of calories.
It kills you.
Yeah, it kills you. That's why I like it. And I've loved the step mill burns a lot of calories. It kills you. Yeah, it kills you.
That's why I like it.
And I've loved the step mill from day one.
I remember using it for Ronnie Coleman's girlfriend that I was training.
And at the time, she was competing in pro fitness.
And I would have her do step mill.
And so this was like 2002, 2003.
And so he ended up buying one step mill for the house,
first house, first home gym.
And he ended up starting to use it because she was on it.
And he ended up coming up,
coming in at the highest weight ever by utilizing that in terms of like
condition in his glutes that following year, 2003, where
he was a monster.
And so what happened was that she would end up wanting to fight over it with them.
And then they ended up buying, he bought another one so they can do it together.
So they had two of them.
So my thing is, that's my favorite.
If you have the higher ceilings and you can handle putting a step mill in, that's my number one.
If you don't, then obviously a treadmill would be second because then you can change the,
the elevation to it. And then if you have issues with joints or this or that, then,
you know, like a recumbent bike or what. Are you getting technical with it and checking like
the heart rate or you don't really care? Just, just kind of work hard and go for like an hour.
Uh, depends really in the beginning. It's just a matter of just
getting in there and getting a sweat going. Uh, then what happens is we start getting a little
bit more technical with it. Uh, the more advanced the athlete, the more technical we get. So if
it's somebody who's just trying to lose weight, it's just a matter of, Hey, hit three miles an
hour, you know, this check your heart rate. That's it. But then when we're getting a little bit more
technical and we're getting ready for shows, then we're hitting hit. We're doing hit.
We're doing different types of steady state.
We're mixing it up.
And then we're going up to 80% of maximum.
We're doing carbonin.
We're doing a bunch of different formulas that once I get a little bit more technical on it.
And I don't always tell the athlete, hey, listen, I'm doing this, this, and this.
I'll just tell them, hey, listen, I already know what their age is.
I already know what their thing is.
And I'll say, hey, I want you to get to 150 to 160 beats per minute,
then bring it back down. We'll do like a one minute up, two minutes down. So we're going
high for one minute and then we'll bring it back down for two minutes. And then, so it'll be 150,
160 beats per minute, and then back down to a hundred to 120. And then obviously the more shape
better in shape they are, the faster their body will recover and bring their heart rate back down.
And some of that's just to throw your body a curve ball, but also you're trying to preserve
muscle mass as you come down to stretch, right? Correct. Correct. And then, and then the opposite
will be true too. So when we go back into a more steady state, then what we're trying to do is
we're not trying to beat up the body. So we're not going into that hit cardio. So then what we'll do
is we'll do steady state and just do like power walking. Cause what we're trying to do is just burn some excess calories, keep the metabolism going without
having to really make sure that your body's just trying to maintain every ounce of muscle mass
because you're getting so close. Your body is so close. You don't need to worry about trying to
get deep, deep into the mat, you know, intermuscular fat. Uh, who's your favorite bodybuilder of all time oh jesus i mean it's it's different because
i work with phil so i'm a little bit biased about him so i try to kind of like keep him off thing
because he's so complete ronnie was the freak was a freak of nature and he was just so crazy to watch
and so about even from like the time you were a kid, almost Dorian Dorian was very big when I was competing.
And I,
you know,
when I was,
uh,
in the nineties and whatnot,
it was Dorian.
Dorian was like the guy that was throwing in a lot of the Arthur Jones
principles with the high,
uh,
high intensity training.
So I,
Mike Menser,
I would read all his,
his stuff.
And,
um,
it,
I, I just, I liked everybody for
what they brought. So I would take just kind of like my program. I would take bits and pieces
of everybody, but I didn't have this one person to be like, Oh my God. But when I was competing,
Dorian was the man. Dorian was kind of like, they call him the shadow because nobody would see him.
Nobody would hear from him. There was no internet back then.
And it was kind of like,
you'd come in,
you'd win.
And I would literally like,
I would call up gold to Venice and be like,
where do you guys have the results for the Olympia yet?
And they're like,
no,
we'll have them in a couple more hours,
you know? And we're like,
call back in two hours.
And I would literally have to get,
that's how we would get the results for the Olympia.
That's great.
And,
uh,
but yeah,
so,
so Dorian was somebody I really,
he was also covered head to toe all the time. Like he didn't show off. He didn't, he didn't
really see a lot of stuff of him like flexing or posing or, uh, except for, you know, some of
those famous pictures from a flex magazine. Yeah. But you didn't see, see, or hear anything from
me come in and just kill everybody. Absolutely. Kevin Horton, who took those pictures as a friend
of mine. Yeah. And, um, and I've worked a lot with him in the past.
And it's one of those things where that mentality was something that I personally believed in.
Like keeping covered up, doing, you know, just not showing off, not doing any of those things.
That's completely the opposite of what everybody does today.
Right.
Right.
It was kind of like the old school mentality of going in the cave and not coming back until you're ready to kill you know yeah he had a cool uh mystique about him just the way that he trained the uh the training
in that like dungeon and uh those guys were always wearing those big baggy yeah baggy clothes and
walking around with a gallon jug and had the whole thing going on i remember watching the blood and
guts videos and i had his book huge fan yeah yeah Hayes fan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
All VHS.
I've been a huge fan of his for a really long time.
Who do you think has had the best physique in the history of bodybuilding?
Again, I think Phil's has the most complete because he's so deadly when it comes to three-dimensionality.
There's not many. It's really weird when he does like most muscular or something.
He flexes and you're like, he's got like 20 or 30 other muscles that nobody else has.
Right, right, right.
It's weird.
They flex and you're like, oh shit, everybody looks jacked.
And then Phil like flexes harder and there's like extra stuff that comes out.
And you're like, I don't understand what just happened, but he clearly won.
He has that three dimensionality that everything looks like it's Photoshopped.
And I think that's the thing that you end up. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a little bit photoshopped,
but it's, uh, but it's one of those things where, um, that's an exaggerated photo of what he looks
like, but he has got super 3d muscle. And when you look at him, it just, like I said, um, it looks
like it's photoshopped, but I think that there's every bodybuilder out there.
Like when I worked with Jay in 09, he had such fucking detail and he got so dry and
so full.
And I used to be a huge critic of Jay because I would always say, man, you look like two
different bodybuilders from the front and back.
Okay.
And so from the front, he would always look crazy, crawds, striated, everything else.
And then from behind, he'd pull his elbows back
and everything, and you're like,
eh, I kind of see a little Christmas tree.
His glutes aren't super shredded.
Yeah, that's a good picture of Phil right there.
And that's actually not Photoshopped.
And so it really was really cool to see him
when I was working with him in 09 to get him shredded.
And he was one of his lightest, but he looked so massive because he was so dry and you're able to get that micro detail.
And in 09, I thought that was one of the best looks ever presented on the stage.
So again, uh, if Dorian's best look versus Jay's best look versus Phil's best look versus Ronnie's best look,
that would be kind of pretty epic, right?
If they all came in their best
and then we're all on stage at the same lighting,
it would be a whole different level.
But I think that they all presented a super package.
I think Dorian's second year, I believe it was 1993,
where he looked crazy.
His first year, he was a little too depleted,
but he still won. And the second year, he looked crazy. Uh, his first year he was a little too depleted, but he still won.
And the second year he looked really 3d.
Um, he put like 20 or 30 pounds on.
Yeah.
And if you ask him during his interviews, how did you do that?
You know, do you remember what he said?
No.
He said half of it was muscle that I didn't lose to try to get too ripped.
Uh, and then the other half of it I put on in the year that I was trained.
So it was like 20 pounds of muscle or whatever.
And it was because he had over dieted because he was trying to, you know, he overthought
it and says, I don't need to lose this much muscle.
Everybody just thought he found a magic drug.
No, no, it was, it was that, but now he's all into yoga.
And if you watch, uh, you know, some the different things that he's done i'd love to uh
interview him i think andrew's dying over there coughing up a storm um well so what's uh what's
next for you what do you got going on next so what's going on next is i'm going to be getting
ready to go on some trips um i'm going to be going to uh to go travel a lot huh yeah yeah travel a
lot uh i was in philippines uh i was in germany for
fibo i was in the philippines doing a lot of different trade shows with uh evagen um and then
i go down and from time to time see bradley down down south so him and i gotta get to get back
together and and do some stuff i can't wait to do some stuff with him which is cool because he's so
used to doing a lot of different functional stuff now. And even though he's competed in the past,
um,
but,
uh,
get ready to go see Phil.
Um,
being that we're 15 weeks out,
uh,
he's just getting back from New York,
um,
doing his guest posing over the weekend.
So I'm scheduling that trip to go see him,
uh,
and then getting Jeremy ready.
And then now also,
um,
I've got some looming trips in the middle East.
I got to get it out to,
I want to get out to Dubai.
And then I'm going to go see one of my Iranian athletes, Hadi Chopan, who's a 212 guy, who's making some noise.
What's your ethnicity?
I'm Iranian too.
So my mom and my father are both Iranian.
I came over.
I was born in Kuwait.
So it's kind of weird.
I have an Arabic name, but both my parents are from Iranian. I came over, um, I was born in Kuwait. So I, so it's kind of weird. I have an Arabic name, but I was by my, both my parents are from Iran. And then when I was two years old,
they moved to the United States and, uh, we've been in the Bay area since. Oh, cool. So, yeah.
So, and there's, and they're still around. And then later my, my brothers and sisters, uh, had
moved. And, um, uh, it's, it's one of those things where
there's a big Iranian community, uh, that is really into bodybuilding. Huge. Like if you go
and see a lot of my comments and stuff that you see so many people, because bodybuilding is like
soccer to them, like to a lot of countries. I mean, you, it's because it's not a really open
country because of all the politics, but they are so big into weightlifting, powerlifting and bodybuilding.
There's something also too in other countries about individualism that gets people fired up because they don't have it a lot of times in other countries.
It's like, no, you're going to look the same and be the same as this person.
You're going to have the same job and make the same amount of money and have the same car.
Everything's going to be the same.
you're gonna have the same job and make the same amount of money and have the same car everything's gonna be the same so i think that that side of it too that side of it if it's like
it's your freedom to like look whatever way you want i think is intriguing to a lot of other
countries too yeah i never thought of it that way i thought it was just because you couldn't drink
and you couldn't go out with girls and it was like you know yeah openly and it was it was that but
yeah yeah because i've had like going to some of these trade shows, especially getting a chance to go overseas and,
and talking to some,
some people that they were kind of mentioning that.
And I never thought about it either.
I was like,
my God,
I never even,
there's like,
that's what we love about America is that you guys,
you're,
uh,
almost encouraged to be different,
which is kind of cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And obviously the land of opportunity,
there's so many things that we can do here.
And,
um, you know, it's really, uh, we're blessed. We're. There's so many things that we can do here. Right.
You know, it's really, we're blessed.
We're blessed to be able to do what we want because of the people out there that are preserving our freedom.
And, you know, with Memorial Day just last week and everything else,
it's good to be able to be somewhere where when you travel.
How nice is it to come back home?
Yeah.
It's fun to travel, and then you're like,
oh shit, I'm going back to the United States. It's going to travel. And then like, you're like, oh shit,
I'm going back to the United States.
It's going to be great.
Yeah.
And people don't understand it until they go out there and see what,
what the rest of the world's like.
Where can people find you?
Uh,
honeyrambod.com is my training and services.
Uh,
evagennutrition.com is,
uh,
my supplement company site.
And then obviously just honeyrambod,
uh,
for Facebook and for Instagram.
What a supplement you're most proud of that you have.
God,
you know,
right.
Probably like an old one that you made a long time ago.
Yeah.
You know,
everybody talks about my,
you know,
like I'll sell cam my intro workout.
That's still been around for nine years.
And I'm,
I'm,
I'm working on,
uh,
reformulating now because it's,
like I said,
it's been working on nine years,
but believe it or not,
like my new greens formula,
my new greens formula because I'm not good at taking in veggies.
Nobody is.
Yeah, and it's like such a pain in the ass.
And then you go, okay, well, I eat a lot of salad,
and now all of a sudden they say don't eat salad because of the lettuce scare.
People are dying.
Yeah, people are literally dying from eating vegetables.
And I'm like, what the fuck is going on?
Yeah.
So now with the ability to get in fruits and veggies on a scooper, all natural, organic,
you know, I created a formula that's also performance-based.
So, and it has natural anti-inflammatory properties like pomegranate extract, and it's got probiotics
in it so that you can help with your immune system.
It's a lot different than just taking a vitamin
because when you take in something like a vitamin C,
it has an absorbic acid, and supposedly we can't even handle that.
So when you're taking it through fruits and vegetables like this,
you can digest it a lot better.
Yeah, it's amazing.
I've got to give you some, actually.
Yeah, I'll give it a try.
But the nice thing about it is the two grams of spirulina in there is not only organic, but it also helps with recovery.
So I've noticed a huge difference in the recovery component of it.
And I've given it to a lot of athletes.
I've given it to different people that literally are either taking no greens or have maybe tried greens in the past, but they didn't taste very good.
no greens or have maybe tried greens in the past, but they didn't taste very good.
And being all naturally sweetened and everything else, it makes it, you know, it doesn't feel like I have to force it down.
And so that kind of makes it easier.
I think Smokey would just sprinkle it over his pizza.
You know what?
That's not a bad idea.
I don't know.
Functional pizza.
But yeah, so I think that's probably my favorite right now because it's kept me from getting sick because I normally get sick by this time three or four times a year.
Yeah, all the travel and everything.
From all the traveling.
And sleep deprivation.
Spirulina is pretty rough.
Does it taste pretty good?
Yeah, I think it tastes great.
Awesome.
Yeah, I've actually got some in the car.
I'll give you some.
Yeah.
Which supplement has 5-HTP?
Because that sounds really interesting.
Actually, the 5-HTP is in the fat burner.
What's it called?
Liposide.
L-I-P-O-C-I-D-E, which basically translates to fat death.
Lipo is fat, side, death.
I think that's pretty powerful.
Yeah.
I mean, the death of fat.
Didn't you say something about death of fat, the death of fat. Yeah.
So didn't you say something about death of carbs or something?
Yeah.
War on carbs.
Yeah.
There you go.
Yeah.
There you go.
The war on insulin resistance.
All right. That's all the time we got strength is never weakness.
Weakness is never strength.
Catch you guys later.
Thanks.