The Peter Attia Drive - #28 - Mark and Chris Bell: steroids, powerlifting, addiction, diet, training, helping others, documentaries, and living your best life

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

In this episode, Mark and Chris Bell discuss their love of powerlifting, their unbelievable personal records, and what prompted the making of their now iconic film, Bigger, Stronger, Faster. They also very openly discuss steroid use, their tragic family history with addiction, the many inspirations that lead to their multifaceted success, and their dedication to having a positive impact on others in fitness and life. We discuss: The impact of Bigger, Stronger, Faster, how it got made, and how it challenged Peter’s set of beliefs regarding steroids [4:45]; Chris’s personal story of addiction and how he’s using his experience to help others [17:30]; Importance of sharing your struggle, and the danger of comparing yourself to others [28:00]; Early life, their love of pro wrestling and what motivated Brothers Bell to be great? [33:45]; How they got started lifting weights, powerlifting vs Olympic lifting, and personal records [43:30]; Lifting weights: the importance of challenging yourself, how to avoid injury, monitoring progress, and staying motivated [1:02:30]; Chris on how changing his diet changed his performance and life [1:09:15]; Best resources for those wanting to get started lifting weights effectively and safely [1:14:00]; Teaching kids strength training early in life, the negative impact of sitting and how we can minimize it [1:18:30]; Benefits of bodybuilding, Mark’s prep for his first competition, and the role of the ketogenic diet [1:27:15]; The steroid controversy: Mark’s use of them and Peter’s perspective [1:42:15]; Testosterone: Peter’s approach to improving it in patients, and the impact of sleep, cortisol, and statins on production [1:51:00]; Upcoming nutrition documentary [2:03:00]; Parting advice from Mark [2:05:00]; Kratom, a powerful plant with the potential to help opioid addiction and more [2:06:15]; The many resources and ways to follow Mark and Chris [2:07:45]; and More. Learn more at www.PeterAttiaMD.com Connect with Peter on Facebook | Twitter | Instagram.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Peter Atia Drive. I'm your host, Peter Atia. The drive is a result of my hunger for optimizing performance, health, longevity, critical thinking, along with a few other obsessions along the way. I've spent the last several years working with some of the most successful top performing individuals in the world, and this podcast is my attempt to synthesize what I've learned along the way to help you live a higher quality, more fulfilling life. If you enjoy this podcast, you can find more information on today's episode and other topics at peteratia-md.com.

Hey everybody, welcome to this week's episode of The Drive. This week I had two guests. This was a first. I've never interviewed two people simultaneously, which is not to say it's rocket science. I think a monkey can figure it out and I'm at least as good as a monkey so I was able to figure it out. But it did stress me out a little bit because I was trying to figure out how do you keep two people engaged.

But it seems like we did a pretty good job and I think you'll enjoy this episode. My guests were two guys who I just referred to as the Brothers Bell, but they're obviously known more commonly by their actual names, Mark Bell and Chris Bell. Some of you may recognize these guys, especially if you're interested in powerlifting or if you've ever paid attention to some really interesting documentaries in particular, bigger, stronger, faster, which was sort of the breakout performance for Chris Bell. That is, I believe a documentary that, if you look at all of its downloads on Netflix,

would certainly put it in kind of the top 10 docs of the last decade. I could be wrong on that, but I feel like I remember reading that somewhere. Prescription Thugs was also a follow-up documentary. And there are a number of others, including one that is in the works at the time of this recording that we'll link to as well. His brother, Mark Bell, his younger brother, is an absolute legend

in the world of powerlifting, and he owns a number of records, all of which are staggering, and we'll get into those during the episode. This was also a bit of a first for me in that it was the first time I interviewed people I didn't know personally. So obviously I'd communicated with Mark and Chris through email a bunch leading up to this, but I didn't have a rapport with them in the way

that I've had with every person I've interviewed to date, which actually is a little harder. You have to pay a bit more attention when you're doing your homework. So I hope that doesn't come across as being strained. I don't think it did. I think we were definitely getting along well and having fun. The other thing that may or may not come across here is we were exhausted. We did this interview up at a place that Mark Bell was renting for the month up in Malibu.

And so I went up there and they interviewed me for their documentary slash podcast. I just took about three hours and 15 minutes. We took about 45 minutes off to play patty cakes and grab us and eat. And then I proceeded to interview them for about two hours. So I think by the end of that two hours,

we were all collectively exhausted. So that may or may not come across. Anyway, all those caveats aside, this was a super interesting podcast because what I really wanted to talk about was not just their stories and their lives, which I think are very interesting and touch on so many of these themes that I've become quite interested in. If you've seen either bigger, stronger, faster or prescription thugs, you'll know that their older brother, Mike died and they talk about that quite openly in this podcast. And it's actually quite touching and it's actually quite emotional.

Chris gets kind of emotional at one point during this and it's sort of palpable in the room as we're talking about it. They talk a lot about their parents. They're upbringing, I obviously am completely fascinated as to what kind of upbringing could produce such remarkable human specimens, and they are remarkable human specimens. Let's make no mistake about that. I also get into some of the details about like their training and very fascinating to understand like how relatively low volume their training was and yet how it produced such remarkable achievements.

So I guess I would say the following. If you've never heard of these guys and you're not that interested in powerlifting or strength training, I still think you will find this interesting, though there may be some parts you want to fast forward through once we get into the technical details of some of their lifts. If you have any interest in strength training, you're going to want to get to know a lot about these guys. And one of the things I actually learned in the interview, I hadn't even done enough homework before the interview to know this is the YouTube channel that Mark Bell has, which I've since looked at. And it's an incredible resource for someone who is trying to learn how to do the major lifts correctly. So without further ado, here is my interview with Mark and Chris Bell. What's up, Chris?

Thank you so much for making time to talk to me about this kind of stuff today. Thank you. You know, this is kind of unusual for me. It's too first. It's the first time I've interviewed two people simultaneously and also interviewed people that I don't know much prior to this. But I kind of feel like there's some for you. Please do.

You can only interview one person at a time. You've learned this during the documentary. It's just the way it is. If we both talked at the exact same time, then this would not work. It could be trouble. We will try to keep that in mind. But I do feel like a kind of know you guys, which is weird. I'm kind of know you guys, which is weird. I'm sure something that you guys have experienced before when someone's watched one of your films

or seen a documentary that you've been in or a part of and it's sort of like they meet you and they sort of think they know something about you, right? It's, you're like, well, I know what this guy's all about because he said XYZ and so I'll try to free myself up from that. I get a lot of hugs because of it. People like, I feel like I know you. Can I give you a hug?

Yeah. So it just depends on who it is, whether or not I like that or not. Well, when people do that, what are they thanking you for? Because I'm sure people do thank you a lot. It's a really bizarre thing. I never thought anybody would thank me for like making a movie. But I guess it's had a profound effect on their life. So they say thank you for making that with my film prescription

thugs, for example. A lot of people see that and realize that i have a opioid problem i have a drug problem and uh... they'll go do something about it so i think with bigger stronger faster is like more getting off your ass and going to do something with your life and want to be somebody you know that's something that i think is really important to a lot of people

uh... trying to prove that you know it's another bump from the neighborhood you know to think about bigger stronger faster that I found so appealing and surprising. And I think that's, I would guess at least part of the reason why 10 years later, it's still endured is the vulnerability of it. You didn't hide your own issues, your family's struggles. I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but your parents come across as like the two most lovable people on the planet. Like I actually didn't have the urge to hug you,

but if I walked in here and saw your mom, I would absolutely have to get her a big hug. You know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. Was that designed or did you, that just happened by accident that you realized, hey, I'm just gonna show my family. It was really weird.

When we did the movie, we had a lot of great people helping out. My philosophy is like, go find the best people and do it. So like if you're going to make a documentary, I was like, who's a good documentary filmmaker? Oh, Michael Moore, he's won an Oscar for Bowling for Columbine. I thought Bowling for Columbine was one of the best, whether you agree with the politics of Red and Otte, that's not the point. The point is, is one of the best written documentaries I've ever seen, and I actually won an Academy

Award for the writing of it and it really inspired me And I just said I want to make a movie about steroids So I want to adopt the same style so I watch bowling for Columbine I literally wrote out every scene from bowling for Columbine and then tried to define What that would be if it was about steroids like what that particular scene would be and And doing that developed like this style and then I actually brought people in that worked on that movie So the editor of bowling for Columbine was an editor in a and help on our movie as well and That's sort of how I got into making the movie about stars

That's how I approached it was getting the best people and putting them in the right spot So I had learned a lot like in the course of making the movie as well. Well, he directed the cameras at us once he started to get into some of the basics of the film. I think for a long time you were kicking around the idea of he knew that there's something magical about Goldgim Venice. He knew something was magical about a lot of the things that we're doing, the environment we're in.

But it wasn't until he got into some of the actual ideas of what the film ended up becoming to where he started running through these different scenarios with his producers. And he's like, yeah, my brother's, you know, my brother, Mark does this, my brother Mike, you know, he was doing that. And, you know, I did this and they were like, wait, hold on a second. Your brothers are taking steroids right now. And he's like, yeah. And he's like, yeah.

And he's like, we need to get that on film. Yeah, and the point I was getting to is those people that worked on these other great movies were the ones that defined that to me. So when I was on the phone with my producer, Alex, well, no, I was like, hey, you know, my brother's on Marks on steroids and Mike's on steroids. And I'm in the middle and I'm just trying to figure it out.

And as soon as I said that, he was like, that's the movie right there. That's exactly what the movie is. It's like you're the middle brother and you're conflicted whether or not you should take these drugs or not. Regardless of whether you've tried them in the past, you tried them once, you felt a little guilty. Let's just tell that story. And what I found is in making films just being honest and telling the actual real story

that's going on is the best place to be. Right now we're embarking on a documentary about nutrition and I keep going back to like, keep trying to manufacture what the movie should be in my head. And I'm like, going back to it should just be what is going on right now. What exactly is going on right now? I'm conflicted about my diet. I don't know how I should eat. I'm trying to find answers and that's really what it should be.

The most honest representation of that and not a representation of like, here's what I think about the ketogenic diet. And here's why you have to do it. And so by taking this approach, I think it's allowed us to be pretty open-minded about the whole thing. There's something about that movie also

that I've watched it, obviously, probably half a dozen times if not more. And each time I see it, I'm struck by this feature which is the empathy with which you approach people. Even when I think the viewer can tell, like you don't necessarily agree, so I'm blanking on the boy's name but the high school kid who'd killed him so I wouldn't. Yeah, that's right. When you spoke with his father, that's a very touching scene. If you're watching that purely through the lens of what the research in the data would

say, it's pretty clear that steroids probably had nothing to do with that tragedy. That boy might have ended up in that situation with or without steroids. At the same time, I think if I were doing that interview, I worry that I would have come across as condescending or like I know it all, but I was very touched by the fact that that wasn't at all the case. Like, he didn't press the issue at all. The guy just said it.

The guy said steroids had nothing to do with my son's death, and that was that. And I thought it was spectacular as well when you're watching it. Like that interviewer right there, even though it's my brother, he had an opportunity to kind of jump on that guy. Like, wait a second, how could you say that?

But it never goes any further than that. And it shouldn't need to. And that's the beauty, because you were able to sort of, look, there are people where you can cross-examine them, but you don't cross-examine the father who's lost his son. Like, there's absolutely no role for that. And so there's a certain level of civility that I think there were Other questions where I'm like there's I think other ways to approach it right rather than go

I'm gonna jump down his throat say well why don't I just pose a question to him that is Comparative saying like hey look your son died from steroids. That's what you're saying That's what you're telling me he died from steroids But also like you know my brother died in a sober living facility and drugs were involved. And so I'm trying to compare in his case, I was like, well, hey, look, you're gonna have a steroid awareness night in this baseball stadium

where fathers are going with their four-year-old kid and they go in and drink six beers and then they drive the kid home. And it's like, what's the difference there? Isn't that ironic? So I was just trying to like figure out ways to not be mean-spirited to the guy, but yet like sort of come across where it's like,

just make some points to him and hopefully like it'll sink in with him. I don't know if it ever did or not. I don't know if it does or not, but that's sort of my approach is to like not really go in there with a mindset of like, I'm gonna destroy this person because think about it all realistically.

We are all human beings. We're all in this big soup together. We're all here, we're all in this planet together, and we all have to function together. So like, to pick aside and stand there, just doesn't seem to make any sense. And what makes more sense is like, when this movie's over,

that guy's still a human being. He still has a family, he still has things going on, right? And so I'm not trying to destroy that guy. I just want to try to figure out what his point is and move past it. And so I think that that's, you know, my philosophy is that try to keep the piece so that after the film, we can still continue to have a relevant and smart intelligent conversation about the subject matter. So I remember seeing the movie for the first time, probably in 2009. And I really, I'm not saying this just because you're sitting here, but I really do credit

that documentary with being the thin end of the wedge that got me to begin to revisit a set of beliefs that I had just taken for granted. So one of the challenges of medicine is it's not necessarily a discipline that's full of critical thought. And part of that is just the nature of you, there's too much stuff you got to learn. You know, so you can't approach it through the lens of inflectual curiosity all the way. It's just, these are a set of facts. Cholesterol causes heart disease. Well, maybe it turns out to be the light but proteins and inflammation and a few other things.

But look, the zero-thoreter answer is, and of course, one of those hugely dogmatic things is animal like steroids. That's got to be like one of the most dangerous things on the planet. And so all through my medical training, I've never really given this any thought, and I just sort of assumed that stuff's got to be bad. And I even remember as a kid when Lyle Alzato died, I remember the cover of sports illustrated, I distinctly remember the day he died. I had just come home from a run.

It must have been the hottest day of the summer. And I remember reading the newspaper about it. And it was pretty clear, like, Lyle Zato died, because he took steroids. I was in high school at the time. And it was like steroids are bad. Your movie comes along, and I collect quotes. So I've got, I have a file of just my favorite quotes.

I'm going to read you one of my favorite quotes, which I think applies to so many things we do. This was, John F. Kennedy said this, I believe it a Yale commencement in 1961. For the greatest enemy of truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears.

We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. I was before we got a man on the moon. Oh yeah. That was when the man on the moon was an idea. Right. So when I think about bigger, stronger, faster through the lens of that, I realized that my understanding of steroids was primarily the comfort I had of opinion. It was an opinion that had been passed down, passed down, passed down, but I actually hadn't really submitted myself to the discomfort of thought. And I don't think your movie is meant to necessarily make the case that,

hey, steroids are good, steroids are bad. I mean, that's also part of the beauty of thought. And I don't think your movie is meant to necessarily make the case that, hey, steroids are good, steroids are bad. I mean, that's also part of the beauty of the movie is the way it ends with you, Mark, is actually a very powerful ending. Super powerful. Like, the last scene of that movie is one of the most powerful things ever, because it deliberately doesn't try to say here's the answer. But what it did, at least for me, was it said, dude, like, I don't actually know Jack

about this topic. Yeah. So before I form an like, I don't actually know Jack about this topic. Yeah. So, before I form an opinion, I might be wise to start thinking about it. One of the interesting things about filmmaking is we come across these things by accident. We were editing the movie, and my editor, like, left the computer on one day and went back to the computer, and there's my dad and my mom, and they're cheering like, yeah! And they're like, they're cheering after Mark, Mark one thing and we're kind of looking at like that's kind of an awesome shot Kind of like end the movie on like it's like the family and we're like look at Mark

He's on steroids like he's awesome, you know, and and that kind of feeling, you know and see him hit a few more Dinger's that part with the Simpsons and so when you're making a movie there's a lot of happy accidents like people go You're a brilliant for you went out and got these day laborers and you brought them into your house and you guys made supplements and your kitchen. Those guys worked outside my office. They were there every day and every day I joked. Like, I'm going to just get these guys to make my supplements for me. And I just joke around.

Like, is this joke? Then when it came around at the time where we have to shoot a scene, I'm like, why don't I hire those guys? They're so cool every day. I'd like to put some money in their pocket. So I paid them all hundred bucks to come make supplements with me for that. And no idea what was going on. And I'm sure they probably still don't know that they're even in a movie, but they were. And they were, they were an awesome part of it. It just shows you, it just shows you how wide open this industry is and how things aren't what they seem.

You think, oh, supplement must be made in some factory with everything's all through the FDA and it's like, no, the world's just not like that. So prescription thugs sort of carries on in the theme of the same type of investigation, but also it's very, very personal. Yeah, it's a little dark. So, you know, I remember the first time I saw it, I was confused at the very beginning because I was like, but wait, their brother died.

Why is, did they film this earlier than I thought? And then I realized, of course, no, that was B-roll. Basically, that was film you had before you started making prescription films, right? Yeah, and so right off the bat in the beginning, I was like, I want to make this movie. And I just remember how his phone called my dad and my dad's like, my dad was crying, and he doesn't cry that often, Mark will tell you, right? And you know, you know, here I'm crying. He was kind of like, like, choked up. Pretty much. And he said,

this is the legacy, this is it, Chris, this is like, this is what your brother meant in bigger, stronger, faster. And he said, I know there's something out there that for the world to hear, but I don't know what it is. He's like, this is the message, the message that you don't need drugs in ball of all, right? And what was really fascinating about that is my dad comes back around full circle again, the point where I was in trouble and I wasn't doing too well.

My dad called me and said, the only time he's ever yelled at me. And he said, I don't know what's wrong with you, but you're a drug addict or an alcoholic or something. There's something going on with you. And I can't figure it out, but you're not right. And I just cried for an hour afterwards. You know, just like, oh shit, I let my dad down.

Like, that's the worst feeling I get choked up now talking about. I was like, the worst feeling you could possibly have is like, you let my dad down. Like that's the worst feeling I get choked up now talking about. I was like, the worst feeling you could possibly have is like, you let your father down. And so for me, he was very instrumental in just being there for me and being like, for him to show his anger just once, I think is what saved my life. Do you remember that time, Mark?

When he was going through some stuff, yeah, of course, yeah, it was hard, you know, we already lost one and, uh, you know, I guess one thing that's important to share with everybody is that it's never over. People ask a lot of questions about success or getting jacked or bench press and more weight. You could take steroids and you can do all these different programs and you can do all these different programs and you can do all these different diets. But it's never over. You never, there's never a spot you get to and you're like, fuck yeah, this is perfect.

This is where I wanted to be. I'm gonna hang out right here. Every once in a while, you catch glimpses of, you know, your own set of greatness, right? And it feels good. But with his battle, it took so much support. And it's still, it's still, it's still a lot of support. There's still a lot of, he's come such a long way, but there's still a lot of healing that has to continue to happen for his life to be as prosperous

as it possibly can be. And for him to reach, he has a lot of big goals, but he's not even halfway to some of these big goals because he's still in the healing process and he's heading towards all those things now, which is amazing to see after where he came from. But it was almost like his life kind of restarted that 40 years old or so. And his girlfriend at the time called me

and it was a weird number. I don't even really answer my phone that often, but I was just like, this is a weird hour tonight. It wasn't too late, but most people don't really call me past like seven, eight o'clock. I was like nine, 10 o'clock. And you know, I hear this voice on the other side, just real frantic and really upset.

And I was like, didn't understand who it was. And then started talking about Chris. And I was like, didn't understand who it was. And then she started talking about Chris. And I was like, oh, it's Lauren. Okay. That's why phone numbers from the East Coast and stuff like that. So, so then I said, okay, well, where, you know, where is he?

What's going on? Can you calm down? Can tell me more? I guess he was inside their apartment. She was outside the apartment. And she just didn't know how she was going to find him. Like what condition he would be in. And I said, well, as bad as it could possibly be, I was like, you're the only like family he has there. I was like, I need you to go and check

it out, you know, because if he's really sick or if something happened, we need to figure out a way to try to handle it. And so I said, sure you just take his key remove his keys from the house That way he isn't going anywhere And I said and call me back and let me know he's still alive You know, so she called me back. She was still kind of hysterical. She's like he's still alive But he's passed out. I took his keys and I talked to my wife Andy who just somehow always knows the right thing to do with the right thing to say And I talked to her about it. She goes, we're going to book him a flight.

We're going to get him up here. And we need to book Lauren a flight too, because if we don't book both of them, he's not going to come. He probably won't be able to get to the airport in the morning, and he'll probably just figure out a way to miss the flight. And we're going to get him here. And we're going to safe-proof everything around us, and we're going to figure out a way to miss the flight. And we're going to get him here. And we're going to safe proof everything around us. And we're going to figure out a way to help him. And that's what we did.

We flew him to Sacramento. I had a long time family friend that was an alcoholic herself. And she explained to me some of the things that we're going to go through that process. She gave me the place to send them for, what is that, where you go? Talks. Yeah, detox, there we go.

For like three or four days, you know, they take your phone and they give you certain pills and it's very strict, regiment and thing, you know, contact with anybody. And, you know, that said everything in motion, but what I always try to share with people, it's a very long process. Even though that was only three days, it then led into him going into rehab for another 60 or 70 days, and then it was just constant communication, trying to figure out what he wants, what he needs.

I think the coolest thing that came from it all was sitting down with him, and we had kind of this intervention thing, which really buck and piss me off because he didn't remember any of it, but he did say some things in there that were that really helped a lot, helped me a lot and it helped everybody understand a lot better of what was going on. And he said, I feel alone. And when he said that, I was like, I understand he's in L.A. and he doesn't, you know, he kind of has a girlfriend, but he doesn't have us. We're not there. He flies up here for Thanksgiving, but he doesn't have family. All he has is a bunch of fake ass motherfuckers around him that are in Los Angeles.

That's what Los Angeles is made of. Sorry, LA. But LA is like that. People come and go in your life in a flash. I mean, they do in regular life no matter where you live, but you see that a lot in Los Angeles. You just meet a lot of people who are striving to be actors, actresses, and you find out that most of these people are full of shit a lot of time. Every single day you meet the person

that's gonna change your life or they have the deal for you, you know, every day. But anyway, you know, we were able to surround them. My parents obviously played a huge role in all that. And we were able to, you know, have them here still today, what, five years later, four years later? Four years later. Yeah, it's weird, because even thinking back to those times,

like, that's just not the same person. You know, it's just a completely different person. I was, I guess I was in that body, but I wasn't registered in that body. Now I feel like just a completely different human being altogether than I was a couple of years ago. I think that you have to go through some of these things to get, like if you want to, for me,

there are certain things that I wanted in life and there was certain things I had to go through to get it. I never wanted to be a drug addict or an alcoholic, but I thank God for it because I think that it's helped me to really help other people. That's sort of the bigger goal is like, well, how can I use all this to help you? How can I use it to help other people? I was inspired when I was a young kid to lift weights and do these things. When I got older and realized that it was all bullshit, I made bigger stronger faster. I just wanted to help people understand the coolest people in the world asking us questions all the time. Joe Rogan's texting him asking about the carnivore diet. Donald Trump Jr.'s

asking me how to improve his squat. I mean, there's some crazy, which is a cool person in the world, but there's some crazy weird shit going on though. Yeah. You know that, you know, we're kind of unlikely heroes, I guess, in some really crazy, the kind of people, even even being able to talk to you. It's like, you're somebody I've listened to every podcast. We've been chasing him down for a long time.

I've read everything. You know, like, I read all the blogs. I'm like, I just somebody I've listened to every podcast. We've been chasing them down from red everything. You know, like I read all the blogs. I'm like, I just consume this stuff like crazy. So even to like be able to talk to you is to me amazing. And I think that that's something that if we can spread that message to other people that, you know, look, get involved in something. Be proactive about it.

Be excited. Get other people on your team and go for it in life. And it doesn't matter what you do, but to me that's what makes our life fun. And it's like now I have all this opportunity to do all these fun things. Like Mark and I are going to go see Joe Rogan perform tomorrow night. To me that's amazing to be able to get invited to do something like that from somebody like Joe. And he's like, hey you guys want to come? Of course we want to go.

And that to me is what it's all about. could do something like that from somebody like Joe. And he's like, hey, you guys wanna come? Of course we wanna go. And that to me is what it's all about. And what it's all about is like, I just told you about when we did prescription thugs, well, my partner on prescription thugs, who's sitting right across the room is Greg Young, GB Young and Greg on prescription thugs save my life. He was the person who was able to communicate

with the other producers at Chris is in trouble. We have a man down, but he's not going to die and he wants to save the movie. So he could have easily went to the other producers who was actually Peter Billingsley who was the little kid in Christmas story, Ralphie. He was our producer, but he went to Ralphie and he said, hey, Chris is going to be okay, but he's in a rehab and we got a man down and this is serious business and we got to take care of it. So because he did that, obviously, as this loyalty to us, when it came around to make this film

that we're making about nutrition, we brought Greg on. And Greg, when he started, it was about 330 pounds and now he weighs about 280. So he's already lost about 50 pounds, just doing like a keto diet and he comes and trains with us. And so to me, that's what it's really all about. It's like getting in there and helping somebody else change your life because I know Greg well

and I know what he's gonna do is he's gonna turn around. He's already told the next three people that are gonna tell the next three people and tell the next three people. And all it is is we're getting people on the side of being healthy. That's all we're trying to do. As mental health has improved big time,

he's more determined, he's in the gym now, he's never been in the gym before, which that takes a lot of courage to even work up the steps just to even get your button in gym. And before he said he didn't even wanna get up off the couch. And the thing with it is, we're not really selling anything,

we're just trying to help people with their lifestyle. Mark sells products, obviously, and that allows us to be able to do these things, which I think is a really cool way. Our approach to everything is 10 minute walks, go lift some weights, stop being so fat, stop being such gross foods, that's our prescription for everything.

Yeah, but again, I think what's interesting is it doesn't come across, at least to me, and maybe that's because I've gotten to know you guys a little bit Since you first reached out to me, but it really doesn't come across as the way a lot of people in the fitness space come across which is Again, I'm not gonna name names, although I've got a long list of people that I think are complete and total douchebags in this space Yeah, yeah, yeah occasionally my Twitter account Will release my criticism of some such individuals, but you know, there's this sense of, look, you just got to work harder.

You know, without acknowledging, hey, man, if you're down in the dumps, if you're 330 pounds and you're eating poorly and you're sitting on the couch, like, it's not just a matter of willpower. Like, you have to make some other changes to at least get the inertia to make these changes. And again, I just think it comes down to this, I suspect it comes down to something you can only learn having suffered. You know what's amazing to me?

It's like through doing this, like Greg's a guy that I work with, you become closer to the people too. And so you also, you're drawing your friends in more, right? You're rather than like pushing your friends out and excluding them and things like, you're sort of including them now and everything. And it's easier to be friends with somebody that has the same dietary habits as you.

It's easier to be friends with somebody that does the same things as you has the same habits. And like, if I want to be successful, I'm not going to let their bad habits sway me in a bad way. I'd rather let my good habits sway them. And building them out, I think it's also, I think people sort of don't realize that once you start to let down sort of barriers and you can sort of communicate this vulnerability about your own struggle in this case, it's amazing what that does for other people. Because

I think many of us kind of go around thinking we're the only one struggling with problem X or problem Y. I've talked about David Foster Wallace a number of times. He's sort of someone I obviously never had the luxury of meeting, but I love his work. And he's talked about this so eloquently, right? Which is every single one of us is only experiencing the world from our own vantage point. We only know what's in our head. We only know what we see.

And it's so easy to think you are alone, which goes back to what you said earlier, which is Chris's, he's's falling apart because he feels alone. Perspective is such a huge thing and a lot of times it's easy to be judge mental, but I think about my own life. And I think I had to what I could would consider perfect parents. Both my parents were there for everything. My dad was like our baseball coach and I can't remember my dad ever telling me

no, that he couldn't hang out with me or throw a football All around with me or whatever I can't remember a time where my mom didn't cook dinner like you know, they were just Just around there was no shortage of we can't complain no shortage of like resources basketballs weights money No shortage of hugs no shortage of love no shortage of encouragement So when somebody asked me certain questions about whether it's my lifting or whatever, my lifting, you know, I started out in a way different spot than maybe somebody else. Maybe somebody else grew up with abusive parents. Maybe they didn't even find fitness until they were 40.

Whereas I founded at 12 because we had it in our basement because I was privileged enough to have parents that were always heading in the right direction always trying to do right by the family and we're really trying to build build towards something whereas there's other people that maybe their dad wasn't around maybe their mom wasn't around maybe their alcoholics maybe the being abused or, the list of things is unbelievable, but your starting point is a big factor in where you start to end up.

And Mark talks about that a lot, and I think that that's the, you know, he said, he says, not everybody starts at the same spot. And so, we can't really compare ourselves to other people. Mark and I right now are training with Michael Herne. Michael Herne's a freak. Ever since he was 14 years old,

he looked like a professional bodybuilder, right? So, he's not just having the worst transformation in the history of the world, because at 14, or actually more like 16 or 17, he looks the same as he does now at 48. Yeah, he's always been jacked, so exactly. So, you know, for us, we're like, man, if we were to compare ourselves to him,

we'd just feel like crap every day. If I compare myself ourselves to him We'd just feel like crap every day if I compare myself to Mark I'm gonna feel like crap every day because he's bigger than me and stronger than me and leaner than me right now He's he's getting ready to do a bodybuilding show But you know in my head my goal is to try to beat him You know like we're still brothers So in my in my head I'm starting way back from him and I'm not comparing myself to him But I still in in some weird way, go like, man,

I hope I surpass him somehow. I hope I can sneak in. I'm hoping after his bodybuilding show, he has one too many days of cheating, and I can still beat him in something, but I used to always beat him in powerlifting. I used to tell him emphatically, you will never be as strong as me.

I would tell him, you won't even get within a hundred pounds of my bench press. And for a while, that was like so true. And now I'm not even close to him. So it's like, it's funny how those things happen and can we ever say never? Yeah, never say never. That's right.

To me, the journey's kind of everything. My brother, he has a more eloquent way of saying it. And I'll sort of bastardize it, but the gist of it is, you don't judge a man by where he stands, you judge him by how far he's traveled to get there. And, yeah, I always thought of that. I mean, he said this even when we were young, and I remember, I think I just always grew up

with such a chip on my shoulder that, whenever I sort of felt myself being compared to someone who was better than me, or that I would assume was more privileged than me. I would not necessarily verbalize it, but internally I would think, well, screw them, I've traveled weight. I might not be where they are, but I've traveled way further to get here.

I have always been in negative energy. It doesn't help you to totally, totally, right? No, I'm still completely fascinated by whatever it is that motivated the three of you as brothers to be, you know, trying to be anything other than ordinary. And again, I don't think anybody just wakes up and says, I'm programmed to be ordinary. But you know, you guys have accomplished kind of remarkable things. I mean, I want to come back and talk about the physical stuff because it is, I'd like to be able to put some of that in perspective for people who don't really

fully understand what some of these lifts mean. And so we'll certainly come to that. But it's interesting because it's not the story I would have expected, right? What I would have expected is something in childhood wounded you guys, you know, and it's like your entire adult life has been a way to cope with some pain. And that's been channeled into mostly positive things, but then sometimes it's gone off the rails. That's the narrative I would construct if I didn't have any background. I have really honestly, when I said January 23rd, 1984, it was a day that changed my life forever.

I meant it. I have really meant it. When Hulk Hogan beat the Iron Sheik, we were fanatics. We were nuts, man. We were like, well that's so mean. We loved it so much and we wanted to be part of that. Without all we could see as ourselves inside of a wrestling ring. We had the ability to dream

because our dad provided and mom provided that for us. That's all we had to worry about as kids was the dream big. That's it, that was the only thing. When I remember like the smell, I remember everything about like getting our first Nintendo. I remember all these different things. I remember watching that match. You know, I don't know about all that was.

Seven, I don't know. There's such a difference. Like I really remember those. Those are really strong memories for us. I don't know. There's such a difference from when we got involved in watching wrestling to before it. Like I don't remember anything before it.

I just remember the, actually don't even remember to tell you the truth, not even January 23rd, it was before that. January 23rd was the big day where Hulk Hogan pinned the cheek, but before that, this was WrestleMania one, correct? That was before that even. This was 1984 WrestleMania one was at 8 or 7.

No, it was about 85. 85 WrestleMania one. Was WrestleMania one with Hulk Hogan and Mr. T? It was the year after he had his after, he had to help for you, whatever. But yeah, before that, Mark and I were watching wrestling and Mark, you staffed to hold the clothes hanger. We had a metal clothes hanger that was attached to the antenna so that we could get, you know,

so that the TV coming, I can't really watch it. I could kind of be like, he was like, hold up. But he was only like five, seriously, he was like five or six years old. And Mike was two years older than you. Yeah, a year and a half older than me. You're four years older than Mark. Yeah, so he was like a little kid.

He's like five, maybe I'm 10, right? And Matt Dogg's like 12. And we're watching wrestling. And we're watching this body slam challenge. Every time Big John Stutt would come out and they'd hold up the bag full of money and they'd be like, we're gonna $25,000 Body Slam Challenge. Smallest bag for some reason.

Yeah, the tiny little bag. And like, $2, not even hundreds. And we're like excited, like, who's gonna try it this week? And we know the guys never gonna get them and Body Slam them, who's gonna get them this week? And it's like, Chief J Strongbo. So we're kind of him this week? And it's like chief J Strongbo. So we're kind of bummed out. Like, God, chief J Strongbo, he's not gonna do shit.

So chief J Strongbo, like walks out and he's standing there and he just starts shaking his head, like, no, he's like got his hands crossed, he's like, no. And he turns around and Andre, the giant walks out behind him and we're like, oh my God, it's Andre. And we were so excited, we thought Andre was gonna come down and slam him and take the money, but it was even better because Andre came down and tried to slam him and then the manager smashed him in the back

And Andre took the money and threw it out to the whole crowd to us like those moments were like bigger than life They were the hugeest things that happened It's like so much to where we would my dad would always you know say hey if you guys want to do something special I'll do one one thing a year and it was like, let's go to Madison Square Garden and watch wrestling. Let's go to WrestleMania. You know, it was always something to do with wrestling. So for us, it was a huge influence on our lives. We're just like what we saw in the movies and on TV.

And we lived in. I do think seeing our dad being a suit and tie every day was not anything that we wanted for ourselves either. And he worked for IBM and he poured so much into that job, he would do anything for that company. And he worked there for nearly 20 years. I think right around the time he got to a point where he would get some privileged things upon retiring, like around 19 years or so, is when they let him go. And it was like, wait, what? Like all this, this work that you put all this time into, you're just out the door. And he

realized it himself, like, that was a huge lesson for us. Well, he had, he said he, you know, later he told us, he had no ownership of anything. He's like, I didn't own the fucking stapler. I didn't own the paper that they had. I didn't own. He's like, all I own was myself. He's like, I said, so, and after that, he, I think he had like a knee surgery and some things. So he went through his own process, but went through probably a lot of personal development, which maybe he didn't even really realize that he needed to go through, because he was stuck in corporate America, who's like frozen. His brain was frozen in time, whereas corporate American family, corporate American family,

you go back and forth between those two things, didn't leave time for anything else, but when he lost his job, I think he paused for a minute, took a breath and said, I'm actually really smart. I'm gonna be an accountant, he was already doing some of that. I'm gonna go in a real estate. He picked back up, I think within three years, he was not only making the money, he was making making an IBM but he was doing it and then some. Our grandfather was an entrepreneur.

Our grandfather could tinker and fix anything. He had a used car lot and I think a lot of our creativity- And he owned back yard. Yeah, his own yard. He built his own home. So when I look at I look at my grandpa, and I look at my dad, like I feel like he and I are giant steps backwards compared to what those two are able to accomplish. Well, there's something you said that I find really

quite, quite powerful, which is despite the fact that your dad was working for the man, Boston has asked he'd give anything for IBM, he still gave you guys everything. Yeah, you said, absolutely. You never were without a hug. You never, there was never never were without a hug.

There was never a moment when you wanted to play with your dad and he wasn't there. And so my guess is that would make it a lot more palatable when you get shit on by the man. Because can you imagine the guilt that would rest upon you if you're doing all this stuff in service of your family, right? You're working this hard to provide for your family, obviously. But in the process, you gotta make these hard sacrifices to not spend time with your family.

And then in the end, you get the shafts. That's where my mom came in. She had the strength to pull them aside one day and say, you're not here enough. And he was like, what? He was like, I'm trying to be. She's like, yeah, you keep getting these promotions. You keep making more money, but you're not here.

And he was like, oh my god, he got lost in it. He didn't know. And so my mom pulled them back in and that, that really helped. Well, your parents athletic when they were growing up? No. Our mom was. Our mom was slightly, but she came from a family, a big family. And she was the babysitter. You know, she had a lot of responsibility as a young woman, literally raised. She raised seven other kids, basically. You know, my grandmother, at the time, my grandmother was going through alcoholism as well,

and same with our grandfather. So our grandfather was the chief of police on my mom's side in the family, and he was dealing with alcoholism. And he dealt with that up until he died. My grandmother got sober, and she'd been sober for like 30 something years, I think when she passed away, which was like last year maybe.

Our grandparents lived down the street from each other and we would go, we didn't realize the dynamics of that until we got older that my dad and mom met on the bus and my dad like winked at my mom or something when they were like 13, but they were literally like just a few- For neighbors. Few football fields away from each other.

But when we go to my mom's side of the family, the house was real dark and you didn't want to hang out there as a kid. It smelled like alcohol, it smelled like cigarettes and it just had unease, just sitting just like fogging through the whole household. You just knew you didn't want to be there. You didn't know why, but you knew you didn't want to be there. No one was mean, really, but just. It was like kind of like the movie The Fierce.

Where everything was like, the house is just depressing. You know, it's like, uh, yeah. But then we would go to my dad's side of the family and everything was like bright and everything was wide open. And then somebody dressed up to Santa Claus on Christmas. Somebody's, you know, was holding around an axe randomly for some reason, some unsupervised kid,

and then someone's got a, my grandfather, tennis ball, and someone's got a wiffle ball bat. Our grandfather would pull stunts. So he would pull stunts, like he'd blow out his birthday candles and the cake would fall through the table.

He would, he would just do crazy. And he'd film it. He'd blow the filmmaker. Yeah, he was a filmmaker. He would blow, he'd blow his candles, and then the cake would go flying across the room and Smash into the wall and as kids were like, oh my god

He's a woman. He does funny things like he put like a little pulley in a string underneath And he's like when I blow out the candles and I make the cake fly across the room the kids are gonna go nuts And it was always my grandfather every single year Every single year and they still do it in our family You pull the rope because he will always put the trap for Santa Claus. So the day after Christmas, you pull the rope, and you always get Santa Claus's boot and it's full of candy, and that's what the kids do

every single year, and they still do it in our family because my grandfather started those traditions. So we've always been like 14, you know, like this stupid. You know, I've got to still pull the rope, you know. Come on, grandpa. But I think those things that are ingrained in us, we had a great life growing up. We had a fun life growing up.

We used to go fishing with our grandfather and things like that. We just grew up close. When did you realize just from the standpoint of strength, you guys weren't normal? I was in 11th grade and I had, so my knees were really bad. And when I was in, I was in 10th grade. And my knees were really, they just always hurt. And I had no idea why.

And so I went to the doctor and the doctor said, oh, you got these bones spurs in your knees, we got to remove them. So I did this like arthroscopic knee surgery. And I had to be off my feet for, you know, a couple weeks or whatever. And I did that, but I was always in pain. I didn't really know why. It's because I had arthritis,

but I had no idea when I was younger and nobody diagnosed me with it at all. So I was playing football at the time, and I went to see this chiropractor who was also our strength coach, and he taught me how to squat. And so it just started out where Mad Dog was going to the gym all the time.

He was playing football and he was really good. And he could squat like 400 pounds or something. I'd say whatever. He was 16. Yeah, he was strong. He was pretty strong. And I was like, man, right. And Mad Dog's pretty strong. And then by the time he's like 18, you know, he was even a little bit stronger. And my chiropractor, this guy who was trying to help me fix my knees, said, well, you know, to fix your knees, you need to squat. And I said, oh, no, I've been reading the bodybuilding magazines. That's the last thing you want to do.

It's bad for your knees and it hurts your knees. He's like, no, it doesn't. I've been a power lifter forever. Just trust me, just squat. And I was barely until even like working out. So I started with a broomstick. And I just prided myself and going back to that doctor every day, every time, not every day, but once a week,

saying, hey, now I did a hundred pounds. Now I did a hundred and ten pounds. And you're how old here, like, 12? 16, 16 at this point, yeah. And this guy squat at 700 pounds, that's right around weighing around so much. I'm like 16 years old, turning 17 about. It's going to be a long, shit.

And I started squatting a broomstick, and within six months, I'm squatting 315 for like eight reps. People are like, what is going on with the sky? People in my school were going like, this is weird. And when you say that, you are at this point, are you doing like top of the thighs or breaking parallel like a high-end squat? Yeah, these are powerlifting squats pretty much.

There were powerlifting squats. There was nobody really just training at the time. But then pretty soon I was up over 500 pounds, like in high school squatting over 500 pounds, and squatting over 500 pounds for working out, doing reps. We responded really well to not doing a whole lot. So we'd go in the gym and we'd do one heavy lift and we would leave.

And our coach, we had like a guy that was trying to coach us and he was like, Hell brother, just squat and leave. He's like, you don't even do any assistance work, but like, yeah, that's all we need. Who do you mean? And he ended up squatting 675 that way at around 18 or 19 years old.

Yeah. So we were like, no, we think it's working. Yeah, I mean, I think the fact that less training stimulus helped and we were like really into Mike Menser. We were just talking about him before. And Mike Menser was our uncle's favorite bodybuilder and he was all about like doing less and getting away with

just going in and working really hard for a short amount of time and we took those lessons. But we realized that we were strong early on, but for Mark what was insane was there was this day. It's like this is sort of the day lifting started, like the day lifting began. For the whole world. For the whole world.

For the whole world. For the whole world. For the whole world. For the whole world. For the whole world. For the whole world. For the whole world. For the whole world. Going to like a Rocky montage. Yeah. If this was the movie of Mark's life, there's this day where my cousin, Stephen came over to visit. Stephen's like, I can't, I know I can't bench it much as you, but I know I can. I can. Steven's his age.

Yeah, Steven's my age. He's like, I'll kill Mark. And I'm like, I don't think you will. And he's like, no, I'll kill Mark and bench. I can bench like two or five. Yeah, I'll kill Smellian. Ben. And so they get on the bench, you start going,

it's like 135, 145, 155. We just keep going up and up. And I'm like, I'm thinking Mark is really getting strong, like whatever we've been doing has been working. We get up to around 205. That's not any idea how strong I am because he's only had me do set to like six to 10 reps usually. And as we were going up and wait, we just kept adding fives and tens and five and 10, five and 10. I'm like, I got him on this bench off with my cousin,

my cousin fails at like, I don't know what he failed at, but then like two or five or something. And Mark did like 240 or 250 pounds. At what age? He was probably like 13. 13 maybe 12 or 13. Like young, like what the hell is going on here? I definitely didn't look like I could do that my mom actually on the same day my mom bench 135

And she had never lifted in her life. She just picked it up off the and it was weird to be like she just was like like this And she started laughing all in like syncing into her boobs and everything. Yeah, yeah Boom and she just like smashed it out. We're like, oh my god Yeah, you guys remind me of a family I grew up with, which is just, and it's actually, the sad thing is it's an equally tragic story. So not that anyone listening to this, I don't know if they'll ever hear this,

but their name was the Stuparix. So there was Rob, Matt, Russ, and there was one other, Stuparic. And they were from another planet in terms of strength. So, you know, even though boxing was my thing, like I found a great place to lift weights, which was this Dungee little gym at the University of Toronto that was mostly just grown men powerlifting.

And then there was me and my best friend from high school who were like, you know, they hated the fact that we were there. But by the end, they grew to respect us because they basically got us into powerlifting. And it's so funny, everything you say reminds me exactly of the Stu Parix, which were they literally only benched or spotted or deadlift, nothing else, and their strength was redonculous.

I remember, I think it was Rob, at a weight of 185, he had hurt his shoulder so bad that he could only narrow grip bench, and he's narrow gripping 385 for 10, like here. It's like, because my shoulder hurts. So I gotta get this shoulder hurt, so I gotta go narrow. I gotta go narrow, I gotta get this to my tries. Yeah, and these guys were freaks of nature. And I don't know if any of this shit was true, but the rumor was that they were, you

know, they came from Viking stock and their mom could apparently bury any one of their friends in an arm wrestle if they brought a friend home. That's great. Like, you want arm wrestle, their mom, you're going through the tape. Yeah. Well, it's funny because we were like that, but we weren't even the strongest kids in our high school, or we weren't even the strongest kids in our area. Come on.

In Pekipsi, I think it's like in the water or something. I mean, there were people, we were the strongest. We were by far, we'd kill people in strength, but we had dudes that were huge in high school, that were just like monsters. We went to a pretty big high school. I mean, when I went to school, you were just smaller. Yeah, a lot of people did steroids on the Kipsey.

So when I grew up in Pekipsey, I had a belt that said, Reidsucked on it. It said, Reidsuck, and it would make everybody in the gym mad because everybody was on the juice and I was stronger than all of them. And they would get so pissed

because they'd see me coming in and squat and some people that were on steroids then too. Yeah, man. They'd see the belt, right sucks. And I, you know, you're on shit. Oh, I think everybody would always say that I was on stuff and I just never was. You know, I just didn't happen.

So to me, all growing up, it was funny that we, I ended up making bigger, stronger, faster because I had that, I had that written in big block letters across the back of my belt, right suck. And I ended up making this movie about steroids and talking about how they, maybe they're not that bad. So how old were you, Chris, when you peaked?

And what, give me, just give me, well first of all, let's take a step back. So when you guys explain, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're done, it's all downhill. When you guys want to take the liberty of explaining to the listeners what powerlifting is, what Olympic lifting is, why those are sports in and of themselves.

Let Mark do that. He's the expert. Mark, tell us what they are. So, Olympic lifting is what you might see on TV when the Olympics come around. Powerlifting is not an Olympic sport. Olympic weightlifting is a clean and jerk and a snatch. Those are the exercises that you do. Basically involves taking away from the floor and figuring out some way to get it over

your head. There's different rules in both of them, but that's the gist of it. You get three attempts on both of those lifts, and the accumulation of both of those lifts is called your total. So in powerlifting, you do a squat in this order, bench press, and then a dead lift, and you get three attempts at each one of those, and accumulation of those, that goes into what is called a total. Powerlifting is really difficult because it's hard to have leverage on all three of those movements. Olympic lifting is very difficult, but it requires a whole different skill set.

Mobility becomes a big factor, speed becomes a big factor. You're trying to like, basically move your body around the barbell, whereas power lifting is not even like a good move in the bar. Yeah, power lift, it's just not even a good term for it because it's not really a definition of power, but... Right, power has a speed component to it. Yeah, right, yeah. Which seems more important to you.

And you are doing it as fast as you can, but it's so heavy, it doesn't look fast. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, in powerlifting, you know, for the squat, we're required to try to get our hip crease below where the knee is, which is always in controversy because the human body can't process looking in two places at once, so that rule should have been changed

a long time ago, but it never has been. So that's a squat. When it comes to the bench press, you need to pause the weight on your chest for a moment. The referee will say, press, you press the weight back up to full lock out. And the deadlift is pretty simple. You just pick the damn thing up from the ground and until you're able to stand up with it fully erect as they say. And then they just give you a down signal and that's powerlifting. And you alluded to something earlier which your numbers are actually quite interesting.

So I was not a particularly good powerlifter. I just did it as sort of ancillary training for... Let's talk numbers. Yeah, so at a weight, I weighed 158, 160. My bench was my weakest. I think my best was 270 or 275. It's respectable. So let's just say 275.

Okay, so my squat was about 495. I think pound for pound that was my best lift. And my deadlift was about 505. It's just a little man here. He didn't even give himself the five pound bump on the squat. So you would agree though that I was more of a squat deadlift guy than a bench guy. I was a pretty weak bench guy actually. Like I was the weakest guy in the gym. Mark said you can only be good at one and we were guy than a bench guy. It was a pretty weak bench guy, actually. Like I was the weakest guy in the gym. Mark said, you can only be good at one, and we were really good at bench press. Well, that was our main thing.

Yeah, sometimes you get it too, and sometimes like somebody might be somewhere in the middle of the road on all three, and then they're able to raise up all three over years and years. But your PRs, Mark, are remarkable. I don't have them here, but if I recall, you actually benched more than you deadlifted at a PR. So give me your PRs. First of all, there's kind of two parts to my lifting career, or maybe even three parts,

but I guess to make it more simple, I used powerlifting gear, which is a supportive gear that gives you assistance that allows you to lift more weight. It started out being protective and then the company's made things more and and more extreme and so therefore you're able to actually lift more weight. I did a thousand eighty squat 854 pound bench press and a 766 pound deadlift and that's all in equipped power lifting When it comes to raw lifting in the gym. I've squatted 700 pounds raw before I benched 578 in competition And I think my best deadlift might be like 715 I believe lifting in the gym, I've squatted 700 pounds raw before I benched 5, 78 in competition. And I think my best deadlift might be like 7, 15, I believe, somewhere in that range.

So you can... So right now, that's an interesting distinction. To be clear, raw means no knee wrap? Yeah, so the raw power lifting that I did was no knee wraps, no squats. So belt only? So belt only, yeah, belt wrist wraps, no squats. So belt only. belt only, a belt wrist wraps. That would be it. Sometimes people still consider knee wraps being raw,

just because you're not wearing like a squat suit or a bench shirt. But yeah, those were the numbers. At that time, I was so locked into what I was doing. I did every and anything that I could to be stronger. You know, I've made the statement before and it might sound arrogant, but I just said, you know, if you met me at that time I would bend the most savage powerlifter you would have ever met because not because of my strength I wasn't the strongest guy in the world

Although I posted numbers that rivaled some of the strongest guys in the world for that time I was as strong as I could be. I don't think I could have squeezed any more out of that I pushed it as hard as I could. I got as big and as strong as I could be. I don't think I could have squeezed any more out of that. I pushed it as hard as I could. I got as big and as heavy as I could. I tried eating healthy to get big. I've tried eating. I'm discussing, like, gross to get big. I've tried to do all kinds of different things.

And I think I pushed that envelope pretty good. I think maybe the one thing that could have been a little bit better is I could have slept a little bit better looking back at it, but I Was just so big it was hard to sleep. I think he's right on that I mean, I know we know a lot of people in powerlifting and he just put everything into it You know, there was times where just like we even the amount of food he would eat and stuff and I would say like Aren't you worried about this or that? It's like I'm just worried about winning

You know like he wasn't worried about about this or that? It's like, I'm just worried about winning. You know, like, he wasn't worried about anything. Like, everything was so laser focused in on these big lifts and these big weights and the amount of energy and the amount of seriousness like it was and it was so dead serious in the gym all the time because like, kind of was life or death. When you're squatting a thousand pounds,

there'd be like a lot of fights and arguments and in the old super training because it was highly competitive and people would, you know, like, somebody would mess up, like just get in the rack, somebody would go to rack it and they wouldn't put the monolith down a tight runway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they'd get in the yellow each other and it was getting more fight. And it was just so aggressive and a crazy lot of intensity.

It's sort of where you had to go to get there in the sport of powerlifting So what were your PRs assisted? So I did like 675 squat I I never did raw powerlifting never came into the fray like as far as I was there But I was actually there. It's not interesting. I was there before the equipment was really good But not when it went raw so So really like a single ply squat suit, I get like 675 squat. I did a 472 bench in competition, but in bigger, stronger, faster in just a bench competition, I did 501 in a bench shirt. I think the best I ever

did in gym was like 585. That's what the shirt. The best I ever did. I think raw in the gym is 500 But you know now I blew out my shoulder and those things don't work like that anymore to give some people perspective You know everything in my gym is specialized the plates are specialized the barbells are specialized At the time when we when I was lifting those big weights. We had a bar Which is called the iron wolf bar. And this thing has so much crazy knurling on it. It's like a cheese grater that it kind of ruined

the inside shape of our squat rack because when you try to move the weight around and roll it at all, it would shear metal off of there. And if you went to duck underneath it to do a squat, it would tomahawk you. It would just frickin' cut the top of your hair right off. I could just pull them like a razor. So everything in there is specialized.

And that bar was designed that way. So it stays sturdy on your back, and it was extra thick so that there was no whip when you're trying to squat, because when you have that much weight on your back, if the weights are flopping around, it's gonna be really hard to try to stabilize it. You're gonna end up probably falling on the ground.

And also we had, you know, we used kilo plates, which are super, super thin, or we had to always buy, you know, thinner 45 pound plates. And to give people an idea of what some of this stuff looked like, I mean, to be very common to walk into super training gym on a Tuesday or on a Thursday night, Tuesday was a big squat night, Tuesday was a big squat night, Thursday was a big bench night,

and you would see six, seven, eight, nine, 45s on each side of the bar. One time just to do it, just because I wanted to try it, I could have easily used our kilo plates and stuff, but I was doing some math and I was like, holy crap, I can bench press 20, 45 pound plates. I'm like, I'm gonna fucking try that tomorrow. And so it was 10, 45 pound plates on each side if you can envision that.

How much is that? And now that's a special bar too, because it has an extra sheet. That's 900 pounds plus the bar, 9, 45. Yeah, it's like, yeah, right. Yeah, and I did it off of boards and stuff. It's a sin context for people. Like for me, I understand these numbers, because I just know, I remember this,

I was never even able to get to 25 for 10. I could never quite get there, which I always thought was, until you can do to 25 for 10, you're not actually benching. And I remember I could only get to about eight. And so I was just such a pathetic bench presser. But I also know how heavy that is. So the numbers you guys are talking about, I don't even understand what eight,

57 bench press means. I'm just trying to think, you could bench press the back of a car. You could lay under a car and at least get the car out of its suspension. Right, I don't know an easy way to try to explain something that's a little bit complicated to people that might not understand it. All I know is that typically when you go into a commercial gym, somebody might be moving around a plate to plates, maybe

three plates in the strongest guy at some of these commercial gym, sometimes they're pretty strong, but usually you're going to see somebody use 405, you know, four plates on each side. It was very common that weekend and week out at my gym and still is very common where there's groups of people, you know, one after another. I guess where you can make a comparison is a friend of mine was a collegiate wrestler and he ended up being an alternate on the Olympic team. And when he went to train at the Olympic training center, he said, you remember there were some guys there after he was there for a while,

there were some guys there that would brag and they're like, oh, I'm an all-American from this place or that place. Or I'm, you know, all-state from this college or whatever, whatever their thing was, whatever their championship was. And he was just like, we all are. You know, what's special about you,

you're not a special snowflake, You know, what's special about you? You're not a special snowflake, you know? And so inside the walls of the gym, as we were building up, and making ourselves a lot stronger, that's what we would see day in and day out. It was just commonplace to see somebody squat 700 pounds, 800 pounds, deadlift 800 pounds, things like that. I think that was sort of, I took it for granted as a kid

that from my first exposure lifting weights, which was starting at 13 till 19, I only knew that one gym. So I only knew exactly what you're describing, which is, we were the weakest, me and my friend were like the little babies there, but you would see these guys who were simply from another planet,

and everything was only counted in plates. It was like, is it six places, is it seven places, eight plates? And of course, this was such a crappy gym that the bars were all bent. Like, you know, you had to know how to position yourself under the bar to squat because the bar was so permanently deformed. Dangerous. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just crazy. And now, as you said, I go into like crunch, which is where I lift weights when I'm in New York. And it's like, you don't see anybody really going above two or three plates, typically look they're still strong dudes but what you're describing is a different

world. Looking back on it I wish I knew more when I was doing it. Looking back on it we tried to learn as much as we can as we were doing it but along the way I've gotten injured and being hurt is worse like to me now it sucks because I'm hurt. I can't fix it. So I got hurt from I tore my tricep just from pushing things too hard, pushing too much too hard. Two or three years ago maybe or what? It was like five years ago. And it just never healed

right. And it never, when I went to the doctor to see if I needed to get it reattached. It's like, it's torn, but it'll probably heal pretty good and ball of bond. Like, you know, so I just didn't get it reattached. And also it was right before I went to rehab. So I wasn't in a good state of mind to go get it reattached and whatever. And it just never came back. And so I wish I knew more now.

But what's nice about now coming back around is a lot of the things that are injured. I've been able to rehab and been able to fix as well. So I still lived in pretty heavy. But I just wish we had that knowledge be able to fix as well. So I still put it lift in pretty heavy, but I just wish we had that knowledge back then of like, you know, not getting hurt. So knowing what you know, and you guys have heard me talk

about the importance of weight training, I, it's probably the only thing that for me is never compromised. My life sort of revolves around weight training. So I have to get in the gym three days a week. My hotels when I'm on the road are planned around where those lifts are going to be and when and blah, blah, blah. Yet it doesn't mean that every week I can squat and deadlift and do all the things that

matter, but almost without exception. This stuff's important, but the other thing I'm fond of saying is, rule number one is don't get hurt. If someone's listening to this and either like you know these numbers don't mean anything or whatever but they still get the gist of it which is hey I probably ought to be lifting weights and let's say they're thinking hey I want to be able to squat and deadlift and bench. I want from each of you guys a really you know sort of the most important thing that you know after all of your years of both watching coaching and

experiencing that you would pass on to somebody years of both watching, coaching and experiencing, that you would pass on to somebody. So let's start with you. The hard part is rule number one is to challenge yourself. Rule number two is to not hurt yourself. So that's where things get to be a little difficult. As we get older, a lot of times that shifts, right? But in the beginning, you need to get hurt.

It sounds foolish to mention that, but we've all been hurt in the gym and we've all learned a lot from it. And I'm not saying that you should have Hasley jump in there and not warm up and stuff. But the truth is we could sit here and promote warm up and stretching and stuff. And no one's still going to do it. Well, but hang on, but let's talk about it. You got your eyes are big on warming up the glute mead. You've got you sell a thing that one of the things I'm hoping you either have here,

or I'll have to buy it on the website, but I like your little, your hip circle. Your hip circle. So, I mean, that was one of the most important insights of my life was you can't squat or deadlift until your glute mead, your TFL, are working. It's foolish to, it's foolish to start a workout

without warming up. You gotta move around. If you're gonna do any sort of upper body stuff, you've got to get the elbow joint warm. You've got to get the shoulders warm. There doesn't have to be any science to it. There's nothing to be anything in particular to it. If you're going to squat, you throw on something like a hip circle, you walk forward, you walk backwards, you walk side to side, and maybe you do some sort of bending exercise where

you're picking up barbell or plate, and just bending from the hips basically. But you have to warm up for your workouts, but if you're not challenging yourself and you're missing out in a big piece of the puzzle because you're never gonna get the results that you're looking for, people always think that when they look at other people on social media, when they look at Jeff Bezos, the guy that owns Amazon,

if they look at Elon Musk or they look at the rock, people are like, man, that's so cool. That would be awesome to be them. It must be easy. It must be easier because they're them, because they have that money, because they have that freedom. It is 10, 20, 30, 100, 1000 times harder to be them. It gets to be harder and harder

to be yourself as you continue to grow and fitness. And so that's the reason why you have to challenge yourself each and every day. You have to figure out a way, how can I be better than I was yesterday? It doesn't always mean that you have to do more weight, but you have to challenge yourself in something. There has to be progress. Without progress, I don't believe you can even have happiness. And so the progress is going to be very, very motivating to you as well. It's going to be something that will help keep you on track. Before I go to you, Chris, I want to follow up more on that. Talk to me about some of the ways that you would monitor progress. When you're already at the

level of the world's best Which you were the days are long gone where there's a PR every day in the gym You PR once a year. That's a good year So what are you doing to motivate yourself day in and day out when you're still benching every week and still squatting and still deadlifting? Like how are you finding out what are these incremental goals you chase one thing, something else starts to fall apart and they'll be tipping point. You want to be really strong? Well, maybe you run into an injury just cause.

Like sometimes we're sitting there and trying to think about it and we're like, well, I don't know, maybe your hips are tighter, maybe it's like, how about it's just you try to lift up 700 pounds and you'd be doing it for the last three or four weeks and that's just that, like that's just the way the body is gonna be. So there's always something to work on.

There's always something to improve. You always have that kind of white belt mentality where you're like, I don't know everything, I don't pretend to know everything. There's still so much to learn, expand upon. And when you look around, you're like, are there other people that are better than me in this lift? Are there other people that are better than me in this lift?

Are there other people that are stronger than me? Of course there is. Are there other people who've gone further than me? Of course there is. So that means I have a lot to work on. There's always a PR to chase. There's always something to chase. It might not be on that lift.

It just might look like something different. One of the magical things that I've learned in the gym and it's one of my favorite things is just, and I share this with everybody, do you know a way to get a PR every single time you step foot into a gym? Low standards, start low. Well, that's my life right there. Yeah, low standards. No, to try to try something you've never done before. You know, what's your max set of seven with incline dumbbell press? You have no clue, right?

What's your max set of three sets of seven with one minute rest on incline dumbbell press? You have no idea or machine or like you can get excited and you kind of make it anything and you can start to kind of make it into a little bit of a game. And that's where it gets to be really fun. Oh yeah, last time I tried this, I did,

I think I only did 95 pounds. I'm gonna try 100 pounds, I'm gonna try 105 pounds. And at first, a lot of those things will go up and up and up and up. And after a while, they will dissipate. But you can always think of, well, maybe I'm gonna try sets of 25 today just because I've never done it before.

So what about you, Chris, all the hard knocks you've learned, what's the advice for the person listening to this who wants to get stronger and doesn't want to be intimidated when they walk in the weight room? Yeah, the number one thing for me that really changed my life altogether is my diet. Like what I put in my mouth affected

what I did in the gym. And I never saw that correlation when I was younger because I just ate like crazy and was a power lifter. But I can really see now that every competition that I won once I moved to California. So I explained to you before we were even on the podcast, I was telling you, when I moved to California in 1993, I met up with a group of power lifters. One of them was Michael Hurn and other ones my my friend Ron Fedko, who is a maniac. And he was a, so Ron Fedko was a power lifter. He was getting a degree in applied mathematics at UCLA, getting his PhD.

And now he's the head of the computer science department at Stanford. This guy would bench press, he bench press 526 with no bench shirt. He swatted 804, something like that. And that lifted like, close to4, something like that, and deadlifted like close to eight, something like that at 198. And when he met me, he said to me, you're too fat, you need to lose weight. Like one of the first things he said to me

when I was like, hey, he was so weird stuff too. And you were like, I said, I'm wondering, he told us about like the mitochondria and stuff, man. Oh yeah, way back. He's like, my red blood cells are way off. I should be able to press that for more reps, really. What? Yeah, he's off. I should be able to press that for more reps really what?

Yeah, he's always like he benched 225 for 64 reps Yeah, he was a maniac. So anyway, he told me one of the first things he said was like you're you know You're just too fat to be a good power lifter like he just had no He was rough around the edges. Yeah, he's rough around the edges But he's like you know, but if you lost weight, you'd be pretty good. I'm like, well, I have no idea how to like really lose weight. I've been trying to lose weight. That's why I'm in the gym.

The entire time from the day I stepped in the gym, my goal was to lose weight. And I'd never been able to until I figured out this keto diet, you know? So you talk about how you were chubby as a kid, Chris. Mark, were you chubby as a kid? I was fat too. I got chubby as a kid. Chris, Mark, were you chubby as a kid? I was fat too. I got fat around 13 and continued to build

because we didn't know anything about eating. Everything we ate was snack wells and granola bars. Wait, is that bad? Yeah. Pretty good. I was a little bit more in the middle, I guess, but by around 16 years old, I was 240 pounds, but I was like kind of big.

I was kind of big and fat. And then, I started to learn more because he was picking up stuff, relaying information to me, and then I started to kind of slim down and get in better shape. But when I met Ron in 93, and the very first thing he said was like,

hey, go get a piece of paper and write down everything I said. So I ran and did it. I got the paper, I was all excited. I'm 23 years old getting information from this great power lifter and he just says, red meat and water. And I write it down and I'm going, okay, what else? That's it. That's your diet. Red meat and water. I don't even want to see you chewing a stick of gum. And I was kind of scared of Ron. So of course, I didn't even chew a stick of gum. And I went for like two or three weeks on no carbs,

just literally ground beef. This is before grass-fed beef was even a thing. I don't even think you'd be able to find it if you had to. It was those big fat tubes. Those tubes went around back then. Yeah, those big fat tubes of a beef, the five pounders. Just. And I would just cut bones and those up.

And I did that for a couple of weeks and lost like over 20 pounds won the powerlifting competition that I went into. And then continued to do that down to like 198 weight class. And the next meet after that, I'd started around 240 and got all the way down under 198. And how much strength did you lose when you got 40 pounds?

You actually got stronger. Way stronger. Yeah, yeah, way stronger. And the thing is, so, because I lost weight, I was able to grab the bar now. I was able to squat better, right? I was able to get down to the bar. And so it was hard doing, like,

losing the weight and getting there, but once I got there, I was, I stayed relatively strong. But my biggest problem was that for some reason, there wasn't any research on a keto diet back then. There wasn't any research at all on a, there was research, but I didn't know how to get through it, you know, especially the internet wasn't even around, right? 1993, right? So barely around.

What I did was I stopped doing it because I was afraid that the diet, I didn't know anything about it. I thought we needed carbohydrates, I thought we needed. So for me, the biggest lesson I learned was that I should have never got off the original keto slash carnivore diet that worked really well for me. I'd gotten off of it for like 10 or 15 years until getting back on it more recently in the past two years,

but I feel like those years in between were lost. I feel like I ruined them. I feel like because I wasn't optimizing my training along with my diet that I kind of wasted those years, you know. If someone said to you, hey, I want to learn how to squat, but I can't come to you and your gym. What do you point them to? I typically point people to videos that are ripetomex. Yeah, like who are you liking on YouTube? Do you have instructional stuff on there? He's got a lot. Yeah, I have over 3,000 videos on YouTube. So we, you know, we have a whole

media team and we pump out a lot of information. The most exciting thing is that he's got videos from Ed Cohn on there. Ed Cohn's best squad or ever, you know, and videos from Stan Efforting, strongest raw powerlifter ever, you know. One thing that Mark Ripeto did really well is and people will bash him because they don't like, there's a lot of people that don't think Mark Ripeto did really well, and people will bash him because they don't like, there's a lot of people that don't like the way that he squats, but really what he's trying to do is he's trying to show you a universal way to squat, and people are like, I don't have a very safe way to squat.

Yeah, yeah, by how much I want. Yeah, it is very safe. A lot of people will say, all he's leaning over way too much. Well, most people can't squat in an upright position. They just don't have the ankle mobility, the hamstring mobility, and he's just trying to, he's trying to do in a five minute segment, tell everyone how to squat.

And I think people lose sight of that. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Crossfit is a great place for people to start. So that's interesting because there's some people that argue the opposite, right? Which is Crossfit tries to take relatively untrained people and get them to do Olympic lifting. And even when you look at Olympic lifters, they don't do that much Olympic lifting. I'll say this, there has never in the history of the world has there been a better fitness program than what CrossFit puts out. Nobody spends more time and more money on what they put together. I know because I've been on the back end of it.

I've seen what they do. I've seen what they do with their website. I've seen what they do. I've seen what they do with their website. I've seen what they do with all the different things. I'm not even across fit. I don't even care about CrossFit really, to be honest with you. One thing I don't like that they do is the gymnastics element with adults is kind of a weird thing just because it's so hard to learn as you're older, but so what? It's a deeper and stronger challenge, right? But when you start to learn that they spend millions and millions of dollars, obviously,

they make millions and millions of dollars, but when they spend millions and millions of dollars, setting up a fitness contest that has over 200,000 participants, and it narrows it down to the number one man and number one female in the world, I think that that's fucking awesome. And that's one of the coolest human studies that's going on. They also tell a lot about nutrition.

That's important. When you go on the back end of their website, if you try to take one of those coaching courses, you will get absolutely slaughtered. I don't care how much you know about fitness. You will get destroyed in that. It is so hard to try to figure out how to like, referee some of these things or how to even answer some of these questions that are on there.

They have done an amazing job. I know that they're reaching out to a lot of leading researchers when it comes to the nutrition aspect. I know they used to have Rob Wolfe and they kind of have moved around a little bit. I'm not sure if you ever spoke with them, but I know some others that have. They do a good job of investigating and poking around and finding the right thing.

I'm not saying a sense of for everybody, but if you are somebody that just has no clue on where to start, I'd recommend try a CrossFit box because they're everywhere. They're all over the place. Also understand that your first experience may not be great, just like if you went to a therapist or you went to a healthcare professional, like they might suck, right? So go and try another spot, go and try some worlds. You should typically find that they're very encouraging, the environment is very encouraging. They want you to exercise, they want you to get better. Their business model isn't that of a huge chain gem where we just want you to sign up

for 20 bucks and never see you again. So I think CrossFit offers a lot. Teach people how to squat, teach people how to deadlift. I do wish that they paid a little bit more attention to people trying to gain muscle, a little bit more bodybuilding stuff, but they keep evolving and they keep moving with the times. Let's actually talk a little bit about that because you're in the process of doing exactly what you just described.

You're training for bodybuilding competition. That's probably by the time this podcast come out that bodybuilding competition will have already taken place because it's in a few weeks. But I was saying before we started this, I think you and I, Chris, we were just playing patty cakes in the kitchen and I was like, yeah. Hey, no. I was like, there are a few things I know less about than bodybuilding. Now, it wasn't to say that growing up, I wasn't obsessed with it, right?

Like I freaking had every copy of every magazine. I had pictures of Lee Haney all over my wall. Obviously, I know every single line of pumping iron, including all the outtakes. So you know enough? No, no, I mean, I know that, but the point is, I don't know line of pumping iron includes all the outtakes. So you know enough? No, no, I mean, I know that. But the point is, I don't know anything about how to like, make a person big. Like if someone came to me and said, Peter,

I wanna get jacked, what should I do? My answer would be, I have no clue. Like, I don't think it involves what you eat and how you lift, but that's about all I know. So to me, this is like a super interesting art. So what have you guys learned about this? And I wanna specifically hear what you're doing. First things, first, I is like a super interesting art. So what have you guys learned about this? And I want to specifically hear what you're doing. First things, first, I would say a lot of bodybuilders and a lot of people that are into bodybuilding

get their start because they start lifting for football or baseball or boxing or whatever they're doing, they start like lifting weights for it to get prepared for something else and then they get bit by the bodybuilding bug. So I think powerlifting is a great place to start for most people. And I think it's where most people do start. It sort of like started, I started benching for football and then I started squatting and then next thing and I was into bodybuilding.

So I think like a great way to just dive in and get started is through some sort of lifting program that might aid something else that you're trying to do. That way you're also killing two birds with one stone, you're getting better at what you're trying to do. And then, you know, who knows? This might be something that you enjoy and wanna pursue. And then-

And powerlifting to me is, I don't think I'd ever let my kids box. I just, I feel fortunate that I got out of it alive, minus the IQ points I don't have. But I would love it if each of my kids at least spent some time powerlifting because whatever you go to do later in life, you will have correctly learned the mechanics of the most important movements in the human body, which primarily come down in your area, San Diego. Is this his name, Jeff Martin?

Oh yeah, Jeff CrossFit Kids. CrossFit Kids. Okay. He started that. He likedFit Kids. CrossFit Kids. Okay. He started that. He's like dissolved the name of Jeff Martin. Yeah. Now it's called X Brand X something. But anyway, so yeah, his thing is awesome.

Great. He's got all these kids involved in powerlifting, right? So I went, Mark. That's awesome. Mark's company, Slingshot, they sent me down to San Diego with a camera and said, go film this powerlifting meet for kids. And it was all kids from like I think ages like Seven or eight up to like 15 and

Out of everything we've done on that channel and everything we did when Mark's YouTube channel That was the most fun I've ever had just hanging out with kids that were like, you know, between the ages of eight and 15 and having them say Mark Bell changed my life. He wasn't able to make it He had it like something else going on that day at the gym ages of eight and 15 and having them say, Mark Bell changed my life. He wasn't able to make it. He had something else going on that day at the gym, but to go there and be able to interview those kids and I would say, oh, I'm Mark's brother. They would get so excited that I was Mark's brother.

It's like, no way. You know, Mark, I'm like, hey, it's my brother. Like, no way, you grew up with him. And to me, it's like the joy of seeing these kids get involved in powerlifting was just exciting. I did a seminar there and it was incredible to see the way these kids can move. I was like, oh my god, I was like really apprehensive about doing a seminar because it was like, what is that going to look like?

I go to all these crossfit boxes and I get asked to come in and teach a seminar on how to squat bench and deadlift and it takes me hours and hours on end because it's very, very difficult to teach people how to squat. Meaning to teach adults how to squat who haven't, who are tight in the hips? Yeah, tight in the hips. Maybe they don't have a lot of experience lifting or they just have bad experience lifting and they haven't learned enough yet. Getting with these kids was crazy, though. I was so shocked. Their form on everything was impeccable. I was like, holy shit. Because he runs a tight ship down there. He has the kids. The first thing that you see when you walk in is, first of all, it says,

parents, please wait outside for your child. They don't allow the parents to hang out in there. If you want to come in and check the place out for a minute to make sure there's not a bunch of creepers around, you obviously you can. But they want you to drop your kid off there. And the second thing that you see is there's a room where kids go and they do their homework. And so it sends a message like, you know, you're stopping here first. You're gonna do your homework first.

We're gonna check in with you, make sure you got all your stuff done. Then we're gonna go lift weights. I feel like we got a really... I have a feeling his kids are gonna end up at this... Well, it seems to be pretty good. This is a Ramona. So when I remember... when I saw my boy,

so I have a one year old and a four year old, and then I, who are both boys, and then I got a 10 year old girl, or almost 10 year old, and the boy who's four, because he still isn't in school, meaning he's only in like, you know, whatever, like goof off school.

He doesn't actually, he never sits in a chair. He's a goof off school. So anytime I watch him squat to pick something up, I go, oh, stop there, I gotta get a picture. Yeah. Because it's like, the form is great. The form is ridiculous.

Here's heels are down, knees are open. Oh my God. Back flat. Her, it's like, he looks like a little, he looks like a little Hercules. And then conversely, my daughter who used to be able to do that now, you know, she's whatever just finished fourth grade, her squats worse than mine.

Like her form is horrible when I say, Olivia, get down and squat for me. That's something I look at all the time and I say, how do we maintain that in our children? Like, I wish I could have maintained that. And I think that that's something that somebody needs to figure out. Well, I mean, I think the answer is we're born with it

is the first thing. Yeah, sure. We are all born knowing how to hip hinge. Exactly. And I would argue that sitting is the thing that cripples us. It's a big part of you. And so how do you maintain it? Well, you can't eliminate sitting, but you can minimize it, right?

So if every kid had a standing desk in school, for example, that's a step in the right direction, because most of that sitting comes at school. And then secondly, it's like how do you teach people the types of exercises to do? There's people working on the standing desk thing. Our friend Kelly Staret is leading that charge. Kelly and Juliet Staret. Leading the charge have kids have stand-up desks and they're doing programs with a reason money

to make that happen. Do you know Kelly Staret and Mobility? Well, he's a cross-fig guy. And they've had great success. They find that kids do better in school when they stand too. So they've been... Another big element of having children progress with some of those things rather than go backwards would be to simply

have the physical education have a little bit more emphasis than it does. It used to. A real physical education. And now you can't really do it anymore. Kids can't do pull-ups or push-ups or run a mile. And everyone should be able to do some version of that. I'm not saying everyone should be like super proficient at it, but

you know, when you start in kindergarten, you learn your ABCs, you start to learn some math, and as you keep progressing, your English progresses, your math progress, you learn more stuff about history. It starts out with like George Washington, and you progress to learn more about American history and so on. But when it comes to the physical education, not much really changes. It's like, it just is like playing, and then it goes into like a little bit more stuff, and then it just completely fizzles out.

And now it's a lot of times not even in school anymore. Hey, we used to have that presidential physical fitness thing, right? I know. It actually was like a program that made sense, but then they just completely discontinued that kind of stuff. And I think that like getting kids to be active at school all day, and then like gym class is like, nobody wants to get dressed for gym class,

and nobody does anything. A lot of times kids want them. Just take the kids out for a walk or something. You know, I mean, I don't know what to do. Throw a ball around with a kid. I or kick a ball around with a kid. I or kick a ball around with a kid. Did it, I mean, if they're five, six, seven, I do this stuff with, with, with my daughter when she comes in the gym with me in the morning, because in San Diego,

I just work out at home. And one of the things I've got her doing, which is a competition is what's her, how long can she dead hang in a channel? And she's, you know, I forget what her record is now, but it's like, you know, the first time she did it, she could only hold 17 seconds or something like that. And now she's like, over two minutes dead hanging. Really? Yeah. She's a savage, pretty good.

And, you know, she's light as a feather. Yeah, but that's still pretty cool. Right. So now it's like, I can hang for two minutes, like, die after 30 seconds. Well, the fact that she's getting an idea of what that's doing, too. Well, and the funny thing that I love about doing it is explaining to her the mental fitness. So that time she failed at 17 seconds. She just went from hanging to failing.

And I was like, Olivia, I didn't even see you shaking, I didn't see you suffering. What the hell is going on here? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't think you understand the purpose of this exercise. You are trying to test the limit of what you're capable of by definition that is going to hurt.

And the other thing, oh, this is funny, maybe I was wrong. That actually is interesting. A kid doesn't actually start. Super healthy, though, too. Because sometimes in competition, a kid may be more discouraged to swim next to the other kid next to them

because they're like, I don't, I just think if I try harder, I'm not gonna get any further ahead. The kid's still gonna whip my ass. In this, it's just her versus her, which is cool. Yeah, and then I even, once she started to get the bug in her and she wanted to do it every day,

she would go in and do it and I was like, look Olivia, you gotta take a couple days off. Like if you really wanna hit this, you need to rest and recover a little bit and we'll start planking and doing all these other things. So, I hope we can meet you. I hope we can meet you in the electrolytes and we need to get you out some BCA days.

How many egg yolks have you had today? I'll leave you if you really want to do this, we're going to push it. You're going to be the Olympic Hanging Champion. So what, your first experience with bodybuilding was when? No. This is it. This is your first. Yeah, 41 years old.

So, I'm dying to know, like, can I not look like a pathetic guy? Like, what would I need to do if I wanted to be half as jacked as you? Bodybuilding is amazing. You can make changes really, really rapidly. Make changes really, really fast. For me, I'm very fortunate. I'm around a lot of people that have a lot of great information. And so I have the ability to have some accelerated success

with the amount of people that are surrounding me in this effort. But the diet is interesting. The cardio is interesting. We're in a country that's so fat that there's studies that show that cardiovascular training is bad for you. That shows it increases your estrogen and your cortisol so much, you can't release fat.

I mean, just some of these things are, it's really crazy to think that people are trying to even study something like that. When you look at bodybuilding, bodybuilders for years have done these certain things very specific ways and it works time and time and time again. It just continues to work every single time. Bodybuilders are partially responsible or probably largely responsible for ketogenic diet, even sticking around in the first place because they will always introduce some form of low

carbohydrate living. That's how I learned about it many years ago. But the discipline to do all the things that you don't want to do when you normally don't want to do them is really, really powerful. Stopping yourself from eating extra. Jake Cutler came into our gym recently. He's four-time Mr. Olympian. He's set on a podcast that he- Can you explain to people what the difference is between Mr. Olympia and any other bodybuilding conscience? Yeah, the Mr. Olympia contest is the biggest one. This is Super Bowl.

Yeah, that's what Arnold Schwarzenegger was. That's what he was famous for during the eights and those guys. So, you know, this isn't just some schmock, this is a top guy in the world. Bodybuilder for four years. Yeah, he said he ate seven times a day. And I just sat there and went, wow. That's a lot of dedication to eat seven times a day.

It means, you know, all your meals are prepped and everything. And he said he ate the same food at the same time every single day. He did his cardio at the same time. He did his weight lifting at the same time. He would go tanning at the same time. He would get a hot tub, get a massage and so on and go to sleep. All you know, all these things were regimented out. So that way he never skipped a beat and that way he could be precise, that way he could be the best. regimented out so that way he never skipped a beat and that way he could be precise not way he could be the best As he was talking about all these things I kept kind of dwelling on that seven meal thing because I've tinkered with some

Intermittent fasting and I've teared with some different things, but I was fixated on that. I'm like As I got into this bodybuilding stuff. I started asking some other guys. I'm like like, what can you do this and can you do that? They're like no I'm like I can have like I'm supposed to have like 150 carbs a day 65 grams of fat 350 grams of protein. I'm like can I just have like a hundred grams of protein in one shot and have like a big steak meal? They're like no I'm like trying to figure out all these loopholes are like there there's no loop holes. This is the way it's got to be. It's 50 grams of protein at every meal for seven meals. It's 350 grams of protein. That's what you're supposed to

do. And so I finally got it through my fat head. That's what I'm supposed to do. But these things are lined up in a very specific manner. Now, when I went and started to try to look and poke around and figure out how many times a day the average person eats, it was 15 times a day. Because there's so much snacking. Yeah. There's so much snacking. And I just never, I've never even thought about it, but I'm like, I'm on a diet all the time. I'm always trying to lose weight and boy do I sabotage the fuck out of myself. Because I do that all the time, I'll grab, you know, and it's stuff that's, you know,

within this reasonable, healthy menu. Sure, sure. It's an asshole of almonds or whatever. Yeah. Oh, a cheese stick. And you think you're so hungry and you think you need it to recover and you think you need it to be jacked, but you just don't. You can actually handle eating a lot less than you're currently eating is one thing to know.

And you can actually handle a lot more training. Now, I'm not trying to suggest that you just get in this crazy mode of over-training and develop body dysmorphia and all these things, but I do think you could probably push yourself a lot further than you know currently. And when you, if you go from not implementing bodybuilding stuff to implementing bodybuilding stuff, it makes a huge difference. I know you've been on Joe Rogan's podcast. We've been fortunate enough to be on this podcast as well.

He's the perfect example. He takes somebody like that already has a good structure or yourself. And you mentioned kettlebell training, and you mentioned some different things. You were speaking with Daniel Rego and telling him some of the things that you've been doing. I know, and Daniel knows,

because we train with Michael Hurn, that if you implemented some bodybuilding stuff, or not even some bodybuilding stuff, if you just embraced bodybuilding period, you'd be able to look so much different four weeks from right now. So give me an example, like a practical example, because I'm a guy who...

Probably up your protein, too. That's usually one, I don't know what it is now, so I can't really say that, but... Right now I'm in ketosis, so my protein's pretty low. It's probably about 100 grams a day. Yeah, you probably want more like 1.7. So the science that I've heard, 1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight will elicit muscle growth, right?

So we need at least that much. For me, it's 135 grams. So I think it's just like finding that number, sticking to that number and like marks that incorporating some bodybuilding stuff. For me, the changes with extra protein happened immediately and like he'll tell you, it just changed. It was like one day I was skinny fat and next day I was muscular and it was kind of Kind of like that but you can is this rule of 50 grams per meal times the seven meals. I mean presumably that's because amino acids have a relatively short residence And you've got to kind of keep the exposure to those things high for a longer period of time right and I at least get the hypertrophy Right, and that's specifically for me,

that's for my body weight, that's for the energy expenditure, that's for my age with a general understanding of, you know, what I can do in a gym. I mean, maybe taking a step back, cause I don't know how much I'm up to 30 pounds. But you're getting close to competition. So as you wanna show up at the competition,

weighing what, you personally. I'm just gonna kinda end up where I end up, but I would imagine it would be another 10. There would probably be another eight to 10 pounds of actual weight loss before now and then, and there'll probably be another five to 10 pounds of water weight that's dropped. I don't really know what they have in store for me,

but I guess your body fat percent will be on the day of time. Oh, I don't have any idea, but I think I'll probably weigh about 215 pounds or 210 pounds. I think actually really the lower, the lower that I weigh, I feel like the bigger that I'll probably look without getting, you know, not getting out of hand with that. So that all starts to look like on. And at the peak of your building phase,

before you began this taper, how much did you weigh? I didn't have one because I was just kind of, you just came straight out of powerlifting and yeah, I just kind of got shoved into it because I was, I I didn't have one because I was just kind of... You just came straight out of powerlifting. And... Yeah, I just kind of got shoved into it because I was dropping some weight, but I was probably about 240, 240, 45. So that's what I'm talking about. It's the difference.

It's only been, it's only been about 10 pounds, but it's crazy because like even just on my YouTube channel, we posted a video a few days ago, but it's from about two, three weeks ago when I started all this, and it's me working on some posing. I just flat-out look fat, you know, compared to now. Obviously not with fat, but it's just fat, flat-out look fat. Mark is, like you said, he's got, he's in a position where he can talk to some of the best people in the world about training, diet nutrition. And what he was doing was a podcast with a honey rhombod who is the nutritionist for Phil Heath, who's a seven.

Phil Ween will win last year. Yeah. So he's now one seven consecutive eight. Seven eight. And how many did Ronnie Coleman win eight eight? That's the most. Have you seen Ronnie Coleman's documentary? I know that it is.

I haven't mentioned that because it was a really great. Lee Haney story. Lee Haney story. I thought Lee one seven. Oh, did Lee win eight. You're right. 84 to 91 and then Yates one like six or both those guys won eight. Yeah. So Mark's work of a late honey rhombod who's helping him do his diet and stuff, which I think is amazing to be able to have access to like the top people in the world. And he was working the other day with Charles Glass Do and posing and Charles is known as the Godfather of bodybuilding. He's at Gold's gym every day He trained extra Jackson for the 2008, you know, Mr. Olympia contest as well as like a ton of other Like it'll hurt an amazing person too, you know, he's been helping us both a lot

You hear different things about the guy, but he just he trains at four o'clock in the morning He wakes up at about two thirty. He eats at three. He makes sure he gets his ass to the gym. When he gets, when he gets to the gym, he's not full of like motivational talk or anything like that, but a lot of times one of his first questions will be, would you eat this morning? And if somebody says they didn't eat anything, he's just kind of, he doesn't even really say anything. He just kind of like walks off. But it's almost like, oh, I guess you're not all in. I guess you're not, I guess you're not as into this as I thought, because this is the

method that we're going to use. So the nutrition is clearly important. And I mean, if there's one thing that's clear in everything you're saying, it's just how empirically wise this this sport is right. I can't even eat at a restaurant because I can't afford to have any oil or I can't I mean there cannot be I can't have a day where I have 120 grams of fat. I'm supposed to have you know 65 grams of fat in a day and for some reason something was off and I had 70 or 80 wouldn't be the end of the world but I'm supposed to be by and as far as percentage of macro what percentage of your calories

are protein fat carbohydrate right now. I don't really know that. They know you'll have to run the math over there but Daniel can you write those numbers for us man? 350 and protein 65 grams of fat and 150 grams of carbohydrates. Sometimes the carbohydrates are up a little bit from there, but the fats are 65. And you said the carbs, 135?

150. Oh, it's a math gulane. But, you know, it's, like I said, it's very specific. And carbohydrates, just to try to clear everything up for people that are listening, because I know you're a keto proponent, and we love the ketogenic diet. Keto-genic diets always worked really well for me,

because it's allowed me to keep control over the amount of food that I eat. It's one of the few things that has burned off my hunger. It's one of the few things that have burned off my cravings. It's the only thing that has ever done that before. We're in the body building cycle. Tell us, would it? Oh, hang on, what's it?

2600 calories, what's the percentage of the macros? We're getting some information from Daniel Larego off screen here for those that are interested. Oh, yeah, yeah. What's a Peter wanted to know the macros for the... The fat's probably, I'm gonna get 15. So it's 2600 calories, is what you're saying? That'll hold a lot of calories.

But, you know, one thing on that is I don't feel deprived at all. I feel like I'm eating because I'm eating every two and a half, three hours. And everyone keeps talking about how brutal it is, how hard it is. And I know that it will get worse because you do start to calorie restrict and everyone says like the last two weeks kind of feel like a zombie. But I've been feeling really good. And as I mentioned earlier, the progress is the motivation. As every day, I see something new or different on me.

And I'm like, wow, I just didn't even have any idea I could do any of this. I've tore both my biceps. I tore my pec three times. I tore my hamstring. I've torn a bunch of stuff. And I never tried to consider it to really body build because I was like, man, if I'd died a down, I'd look weird because I've torn all consider it to really body build because I was like, man, if I'd died a down, I'd look weird because I've torn all the shit off my body.

People kept asking them for years. When you're going to do a show, you should get, you know, you're getting lean. I kind of thought I was done. I was done power, if thing. I didn't have a lot of direction. I wasn't sure what I was going to do next. And so this challenge came, it came at a perfect time. And I don't, the challenge came from a podcast with honey, right?

Yeah, he was like he was on his podcast and he said, well, why don't you do a show? You look great Well, you said yeah, he said he said it even more than that He was like I signed you up for one. Oh, I know yeah, you're doing it So where does the ketogenic diet make sense for the bodybuilder? What phase of you know, or is it when they're trying to get leaner? Yeah, I see. So for, for, for some of the like pro bodybuilder guys, the ketogenic diet probably doesn't play into anything they really want to mess around with unless they've been destructive for a while with their behavior. Like if they, if they have eaten, if they've gone way off the rails and eaten, but a pro doesn't do that.

Professional bodybuilder, somebody who's being serious who's trying to win money at these shows, they would not be somebody that would be doing that. So they wouldn't even need to utilize a ketogenic diet. Where a ketogenic diet would play into, where it would really help, even somebody like myself, former fat kid, is it will help me to kind of continue to tighten up. And it will also give me some mental freedom.

I think one of the worst things you can ever do, whether it's business or any aspect of your life lifting, is get stuck in one thing because a lot of times you're focused in on that one thing and you can't see anything else. And so if you were always just doing a bodybuilding diet and if you were always utilizing cardio for 45 minutes every day, all these things would become less effective. So where the ketogenic diet can come in,

you could utilize the ketogenic diet to become technically, it works out pretty good on paper, but I don't know how it works in theory, would be, you could become more sensitive to carbohydrates It works out pretty good on paper, but I don't know how it works in theory. You could become more sensitive to carbohydrates by dumping in a ketogenic diet at certain points and changing up the style of exercise that you do for a while. Bodybuilding competitions, obviously Olympia is not a drug-regulated competition, correct?

So you can't compete at that level without lots of drugs. What about at the level outside of Olympia? So this competition you're doing, is it considered a drug-free competition? I don't even know much about. I've never even been to a bodybuilding show. So this is all very new to me. I've only caught the tail end of a bodybuilding show

at the Arnold Classic where I went to go see Brian Shaw and some of the bodybuilding stuff was finishing up and it was It was impressive. I mean it was it was pretty crazy to see those guys because there's some of the best That's effectively the Olympic level. That's that's a limpia level bodybuilding. They got extra jacks and up there is 51 or 52 years old I mean there's some real savages there, but uh Yeah, I don't even know like I know the posing I've been working on that But I don't know like the categories and I barely know So for this competition are you using anabolic steroids or diuretics or any of the sort of aids that one would you know as as in bigger stronger faster?

You know I talked about utilizing them from the time I was 25 I've been using them. You know, I've been I say in the movie I'm gonna probably be on and off them the rest of my life. And that's what I believe. It's direction I chose. When you choose a certain thing and you like the result of it, like I don't feel like there's any reason to go back. And for me, for now, as well, I get it prescribed, which is kind of an added bonus to making sure

that it's like, I guess, more on the up and up. but to me, it doesn't really make any difference whether you grab it from some dude at the gym, whether you get it from a doctor, I actually think that the, I think that, you know, there's, they're not going to be all that regulated anyway, no matter how you slice it. But what are the, again, I don't know anything about how bodybuilders use steroids. What are the, what are the, you know, body masses, the main thing. So people get confused about what they actually do. People get confused about what steroids do. I think people think that steroids automatically make you strong.

And they don't necessarily automatically make you strong. What they do in most cases is they allow people to gain more weight. Now there's some cases where people don't gain a whole lot of weight and they do in most cases is they allow people to gain more weight. Now, there's some cases where people don't gain a whole lot of weight, and they do gain strength. But if you don't continue to gain weight, at some point that strength will only level up so much. So when you introduce steroids, steroids don't multiply on top of themselves. They only work to a certain level.

So you're on level one with your lifting, and you progress in your genetics, and everything allow you to get certain level. So you're on level one with your lifting and you progress in your genetics and everything allow you to get to level four. You take steroids and maybe over period of time you get to level six but you're still not going to be able to get to level eight, nine or ten. Where these guys like Jay Cutler and some of these mammoth people are because of their genetics, because of their environment as children, because of X, Y and Z, you're probably just never going to be able to level up to their potential, but. Which is an important distinction,

because I think a lot of people are working. You're starting plans, we've got to. Yeah, well a lot of people look at, let's just fill Heath, because he's the best in the world today. And you're like, I think it's all drugs. It's all drugs,

but I don't think people understand, I could inject a human being with every anabolic steroid period. Like let's get the world's supply of anabolic steroids and inject it into me. I couldn't look one-tenth of what that guy looks like. And the best coaching and the best whatever it's like. People like to make things easy and simplify it.

And they can't come close to Phil Heath. They can't even come close even with a ton of drugs. So they just want to say, oh, it's just steroids. It's not like, oh, this guy works harder, this guy's better. And I do think that steroids cloud the sport. I do think that if there was a way to get steroids out of the sport, that it could be more popular

across the mainstream. However, I hate you. Well, it's part of the reason why it has become more popular because they do have like men's physique and they got some of these different categories now where you're seeing more men and women. It's gone more mainstream with some of that stuff. But there's classic physique.

But there's classic physique. Body types don't look as crazy, right? Yeah, now there's a category called classic physique. And it's like, it's interesting because like in the very first year of classic physique, my friend Danny Hester, he won Mr. Olympia Classic Physique. He's about 190 pounds. He looks awesome. He always looks awesome. He's about my height.

190 jacked shredded looks amazing. And then the next year, the guy that wins, it's like 240. You know what I mean? He's like, this is not classic physique anymore. Like yeah, like what happened to the little guys that were in great shape, you know? And the guy that won looked, he looked amazing.

But it's, and it's a different look than the bigger bodybuilders, but it's not like, and it's a different look than the bigger bodybuilders but it's not like and it's not yet a natural thing it's not like one guy's natural one guys on it's like they're just on different levels right yeah so classic doesn't mean drug free it means you're trying to produce a phenotype that is you're trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger is like what's funny is like now they have a category Arnold Schwarzenegger was mr. Olympia seven times he was considered in the Guinness Book of World Record the greatest male physique which is just he couldn't win a California bodybuilder

that's what I'm saying he can't win anymore like it so so they if you look like Arnold you'd win classic physique now yeah which is kind of crazy so what's your favorite 70s 80s bodybuilder Frank Zane Mike Menser Mike Menser yeah and Arnold Arnold's a really big Influenza, and he eats to you know, we blood and guts a lot of that was my he was like he was later right 90s Oh, yeah, and Menser and Yates actually have quite a bit in common. So they trained they trained together too And I trained with Mike Menser when I first came out here when I moved out here in 93 like you see people at the gym And you're a meat head first thing I did was I'm training with Mike Menser when I first came out here. When I moved out here in 93, like you see people at the gym, and you're a meat head, first thing I did

was I'm training with Mike Menser, you know, I don't care. He blew out my knee because he had me do these crazy squats on the squat machine, and it messed up my knee for like six months, but I still had got to train with him, which was cool, but at the time I got to train with him, I showed up at the gym, and he was outside smoking a cigarette and he was all fat.

And it was just like, this is Mike Mentor now, this is what he is. And it's like, you know, a lot of times in life, especially me, I've met all my heroes and pretty much everybody's let me down. So it's just the way life is, I guess. Have you ever met a hero that, where they exceeded your expectation? I don't know. Let me see. Have we?

Yeah. We have many times. I'm sure we have. don't know. Let me see. Have we? Yeah, we have many times. I'm sure we have. Ed Cohn. Yeah, Ed Cohn. Stom Cold Steve Austin's one of my favorite people in the entire world. He's so intelligent. Joe Rogan's fucking cool. He's so well researched.

Like he just, he's just awesome to be around. Like there's, there's people like that, I think, where we, the rock is amazing, dude. Like when you meet the rock, you're like, well, it's all probably just an act. There's people like that, I think, where we... Jake Butler was like... The rock is amazing, dude. When you meet the rock, you're like, well, it's all probably just an act. But the rock will look you in the eye, shake your hand, and say, how's your mom doing?

And he means it. You can feel that he means it. And that's important, especially when you're that big of a celebrity and stuff like that. One of the things I struggle with, and I was actually talking about this a little bit when I was on Joe Rogan's show, I've been pretty vocal and open about my view that once I really spent like five years learning everything there was to learn about anabolic steroids,

I came to the conclusion that, well, I can't speak to what happens in bodybuilding because I think that takes it to a different level. But certainly within the level of how they're used in cycling or more physiologic levels of use, I can't see any evidence of harm. Now, EPO is different. You can certainly take too much EPO and cause problems, but once you start talking about testosterone, stanas, all, oxandrolone, these drugs

that are typically used in sports, again, I was having a very hard case. I'll show you right here, my tricep. That's one. I was bench pressing 455. After it, my triceps hurt a little bit, there was sore. And then I popped my tricep. I've never been hurt lifting in my entire life.

At the time, I was on a ton of juice. So you're a human being that you just didn't have the tendon strength necessarily. Yeah, and I attribute that to steroid use. For sure, 100%. So to say that there's no ill-effects of them or no side effects, you know. Yeah, I guess I'm thinking more of the cardiometabolic.

Yeah, liver, kidney, cardio, no. But can you injure yourself? You know, Joey Diaz, one of my favorite people in the world, he's hilarious. He says, he's like, you see these guys in the gym and they're like 50 years old, and they used to take steroids, and now they just like a bag of shit.

I kind of agree with that statement too, that there are a lot of people that have taken steroids and abused them and gotten really crappy skin and crappy. Just things that don't look good. Not necessarily aesthetic and probably not healthy. I'm sure that they've driven a lot of people's blood in a bad direction, which could lead to other things possibly, right? But not definitely. So I think that's where we're looking at like the detrimental effects of steroids would be among. It's

like among the users that are losers, if that makes sense. It's like it's among the users that aren't paying attention to everything else. Yeah, and I guess under medical supervision, though, when you're again, doing these things within physiologic doses, which is pretty different than what the average person is doing. We're talking like something that a doctor would prescribe. Like it's one of the drugs. Well, you know, for example,

you take somebody who's testosterone is like two standard deviations below the mean, and you revert them back to the mean or median level of testosterone. If we're going in that respect, I would have to go back and say that you're 100% right. I haven't seen anything like even a muscle tear on a normal dose, but I was, I was using pretty good doses.

I was using trin... Well, at the time I was using trend-belone and I was using testosterone together and then I was taking some other oral stuff. It was like, right after I got out of rehab I got to get jacked, you know, and it's funny because I tell you in AA that a few on steroids It affects you from the neck up and you're not a lot of take them so people got on my case about and how much to Testosterone right?

Just 200 milligrams a week. I've always stuck to the 200 milligrams I never really went above that because I never never wanted to get puffy, you know. Which is interesting because I don't think I've, if I've ever replaced a person's testosterone which I've done many times exogenously for patients who are low, I've never had a patient that high. And 200 is not high from a performance stand. Yeah. I've seen guys show up paying for that.

What is it usually 100? I mean, yeah, if I'm going to start a patient, again, I have, it's much more complicated and you know, there's sex and we're binding globulin, there estrogen, there's free testosterone, is really what we're trying to fix, but very unusual that I would ever start a patient, anything more than 50 milligrams twice a week. It's interesting, because everybody I know

goes the same doctor, has the same dose. So it's, it's just a... Well, and again, it's a very different, it's a very different thing, where I try to optimize forming my interest in replacing testosterone is resolving insulin resistance preserving muscle mass Like it's it's a bunch of other things. It's interesting that you say that and it actually gives me a lot more confidence in Going to somebody talking to somebody like you it's like I just know almost everybody's on testosterone

They all take 200 milligrams like I don't think I think I think I might I think I've once had a think I might have 200 milligrams. I think I've once had a patient take 100 twice a week. So I think it was pretty high. I think when you're saying it, it's like, oh wow, you actually don't give everybody the same dose. Well, first of all, I don't even like, I mean, most patients that I need to replace testosterone

in which is still a minority of patients, I'm not using testosterone, right? But my first goal is, can you get them to endogenously make testosterone? So, you know, the way I have a... And what are you utilizing to do that? Yeah, so I start with the final thing I care about is free testosterone. So a free testosterone is low, and I define low is somewhere between one and two standard deviations below the mean of our reference range in the lab and symptomatic.

So you have to have these two things in my opinion. So if the number is low, but I see no evidence of symptom, meaning they're not having a difficult time maintaining muscle mass, they don't have too much adipose tissue, they're not insulin resistant, libido is fine, all of these things, then I don't believe in fixing the number. But let's assume you have someone who's symptomatic and who's low. So a free testosterone is low. The next question is, is free test astronomer low because

test astronomer is low or because sex and we're binding globulin is high? Because free test astronomer, which is what matters, is proportional to test astronomer and inversely proportional to sex and we're binding globulin. So once you answer that question, if sex and we're binding globulin is too high, you have to investigate why. And there are really only four reasons for it. Insulin, thyroid hormone, estrogen, and genetics. So you do your investigation, you figure out what's going on.

If testosterone is too low, the next question is, is it too low because you're siphoning too much of your testosterone into either dihydrotestosterone DHT or estradiol, yes or no? If yes, you can block both of those, right? You have five alpha reductase inhibitors, you have aromatase inhibitors. If it's low, not because you're siphoning too much away,

then the question is, are you not producing enough? And if you aren't producing enough, are you not producing enough because you don't have an FDHA, which is a substrate, or do you not have the pituitary signal is your FSH and LH2 low? So there are actually nine steps in understanding someone's testosterone and free testosterone level,

and we can actually impact every single one of those steps pharmacologically if we're trying to put this in service. So yeah, it's a much different approach when you're doing it for medical management. This kind of blows my mind too, because I'm going like, wow, there's now. So this is like, you know, you learn something new every day. It's like, I'm just used to people taking 200 milligrams

of testosterone. Now you just turn me on used to people taking 200 milligrams of testosterone. Now you just turn me on to nine different ways that I can increase. You know, it's like. Right, you can give a person LH. You can give them something that stimulates LH or FSH production. So there's a pre hormone, it's a synthetic hormone

that mimics, well, mimics basically an estrogen molecule at the hypothalamus that then tells the pituitary to make more FSH and LH. That in many ways is a good thing. Now, you're putting this in the practice clinically and you're seeing awesome results with it. This is one of those things that we learned from people who were doing this, but it's now actually become, I mean, I would hesitate to say mainstream because I don't think people

are fully mainstream in understanding this, but now you're seeing this stuff published in medical literature that says, hey, there are really reasonable safe ways to increase a person's testosterone without even giving them testosterone. Well, you can also start with a... I think more interested in that. Well, even without supplementation, right? There could be certain foods, right? There could be certain foods to avoid.

Maybe somebody doesn't have a sound diet. I mean, a sound diet has to throw you off. To me, the first step in evaluating a male for hypogonatism, which is just the technical term for low testosterone, especially if the, so this is a not uncommon finding. The guy has low free testosterone, but his estradial is not too high. His sex and my bine and gliblin is not too high. His DHT is not too high. His DHA is not too low. He's not making enough testosterone. But his FSH and LH are also low. He's not making enough testosterone. But his FSH and LH are also low.

So what does this mean in English? This means this guy's brain isn't making the signal to tell his body to make more testosterone to spike the fact that his testosterone is low. So that tells you where the problem is. The problem is in the brain. And the number one diagnosis for that is sleep deprivation. So when I finished residency, I didn't measure free testosterone. I only knew my total testosterone, but it was 220.

That was on a scale where two standard deviations below the mean was 350. Two standard deviations above the mean was 1200, and I'm 220. Yeah, after my hip replacement, I was 49, that's where I got on it. Yeah, 49. I mean, most women have a higher testosterone. My doctor just said, I don't know how you get out of bed. Yeah. I don't know, I just do. So, in my case, my testosterone went from 220 to about 650 by just sleeping. But once I went from not sleeping four hours a night,

boom, that improved. So a lot of Americans are not sleeping because they're obese because they're heavy. So if they could figure out a way to get momentum, get the diet straightened out, get the sleep a little bit better, they could start heading the right direction too. Yeah, and the other thing is cortisol.

So if you have hypercortisolemia, that is going to negatively impact testosterone production directly and indirectly. What is hypercordisol? High levels of cortisol. That's all it is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In medicine, we have to come up with fancy ways to say things because it makes this feel

smarter. So if you have too much cortisol, one, you have a shunt, right? You have something called a pregnant-alone shunt or steel, where you start to steal precursors of testosterone to make more cortisol. So that's depleting you of substrate to make this. But I think perhaps the more sinister issue is these high levels of cortisol impair you from entering what's called delta wave sleep, which is where you make the FSH and LH to make the testosterone. You only make this stuff when you're sleeping. What about, you know, there's a lot of doctors that are prescribing stuff to people

and they'll prescribe some of these cholesterol, you know, medications. Statins. These statins, yeah, they're probably damaging, right? I mean, some of these things are probably damaging towards just a natural male testosterone and even with the females and stuff. Aren't these things kind of...

It's actually plaguing us a little bit too. In theory, you could make an argument that says, if you take a statin which is inhibiting cholesterol synthesis and given that you need cholesterol to make sex hormones, that should be depleting them. But we don't actually see that in the data. So even though it's... Wow, really? No, you don't actually see that.

Now, that doesn't mean that at extreme levels, it won't show up. I think I've been saying that for years. Well, like it blocks your cholesterol, and then that's what makes our whole mind... Yeah, and it turns out that's probably overly simplistic. The body is more complicated and more rigorous than we give it credit for. So the body will prioritize its use of cholesterol for two things above all else, which is forming cellular membranes, because cholesterol is what gives a cell its fluidity, membrane fluidity, and then hormone production. So particularly glucocorticoids and sex hormones.

So does that mean that you couldn't staph and eyes a person into the next millennium end up suppressing? No, it doesn't. You probably could, but I think at the levels that most people are taking them, the evidence would not actually suggest that we're inhibiting endogenous testosterone production. And I think like with what I do, I was made the movie prescription thugs and then I'll send them like,

statins are bad, like stay away, right? And then I listen to you talking, you had a really intelligent conversation with Dr. Crouse. Ron Crouse. Ron Crouse, right? And then the guys are all talking about statins, the whole time, like, wait a second,

these guys don't know that they're bad, and then like, well, these are the guys that actually know what they're talking about, they treat people every day. And so it kind of opened my mind back up to statins. So I think like a lot of times when we're doing research or we're trying to find out the truth or whatever, like I was like, oh, statins are all bad,

and I just think all one way, and I'm trying to not think that way about things, like where oh, statins are all bad. And I just think all one way. And I'm trying to not think that way about things, like where I'm thinking nothing's all bad, nothing's all good, right? And that's kind of the way to bring this thing full circle as we probably wrap up so we can let you guys get back to your day. At the outside, I said, you kind of, in many ways,

open my eyes to revisiting something that I just took for, I just assumed was dogma. Stereoids are bad. If you have one milligram of testosterone sipping eight injected into a human being, you will kill them. That was dogma. Stereoids are bad. If you have one milligram of testosterone sipping it and injected into a human being, you will kill them. That was my view. And then I come away from bigger, stronger, faster.

And I'm like, I don't, maybe I got to rethink this. Now, it's not to say I have any understanding or expertise of how steroids are used in body building or things like that, where I suspect they can still be harmful if abused, but certainly within medical physiologic levels. Yeah, where is it relevant to your life? I now honestly believe that

anabolic steroids when used at physiologic levels are safer than Tylenol. Yeah, absolutely. You know, are far less toxic and frankly, far less likely to lead into morbidity. And so similarly, maybe you'll leave this discussion thinking, okay, maybe it's not statins are all bad. Maybe the idea is they got to have a time in a place. The overall overarching thing I've learned from making this movie about nutrition, that

Mark and I are working on right now is that nothing is all good and nothing is all bad. And Mark has been really illustrating that to me as we go through, he goes, see carbs are all bad, right? See, they're all bad. And it's like, well, no, now I can see how you can use them as a tool, right? And then statins are all bad. No, no, now I can see how we can use them as a tool. And we can keep people alive longer.

And certain people, you might need this tool only for a couple of weeks to get you to this point. And then you can get off of it or whatever. It's allowed me to think more openly about everything that we put in our bodies and everything that we do to try to be better. Yeah, that, that, when we were inhaling some food before this and you shared your salmon with me, which was fantastic, by the way, especially with that Himalayan sea salt.

That was damn good. I can't take credit that way. All the way to the Himalayan is for that. Yeah. The way if you cook that up too, so I can't take credit. Oh, that was wonderful. But that was a great example of, I mean, again, I know you're in the midst of a bodybuilding competition prep,

but it was beautiful to just see how regimen it. It's like, I'm gonna have this many grams of salmon, I'm gonna have this many Japanese sweet potatoes, and it's like, you know what, in this moment, these molecules are the tool I need. And I think that's the takeaway to me is, a statin, a carbohydrate, or whatever, it's a tool. And the key to me, if you wanna be a great carpenter in life,

which I think is should be our, all of us should wanna be the best carpenter in life, is have the most tools, know how to use each tool, and know when to use each tool. And when I have patients say to me, Dr. I am morally against fill in the blank. I am morally against statins. I am morally against supplements. I am morally against Phil in the blank. I am morally against statins. I am morally against supplements.

I am morally against XYZ. I say, okay, I'll never force you or try to talk you into doing anything, but that's sort of like a contractor coming to my house to rebuild it and me saying, I just don't want you using the Phillips screwdriver or the saw. You can do anything else, but don't use those two. That's right.

Can he still build the house, of course, but I've just taken away two tools and in the hands of a good carpenter that, you know, that seems like a bad idea. So you guys have opened my mind up to a set of tools known as steroids and... You opened our minds up. Well, very well. Open your mind. Guys, where... So tell me when's the doc gonna come out? So we don't know, I mean, one question I should just say, a lot of people ask us when's it gonna come out and they also ask us like exactly what it's gonna be about

or what we're trying to say. And I can tell you, I don't know either answer at all. I have no idea. So every film that I do is a journey. I never know when it's going to end. It makes a lot of people that work with me mad and I just say, well, that's just how I do it. If you go, okay, we're going to make this movie, we're going to film for six months and

we're going to edit for three months and then we're done. And you can do that. That's like a way to do it. But I feel that, for example, Mark and I started this this movie he had no idea he was going to do bodybuilding show so but that's got to be in the movie that's awesome that's like a really cool thing that's actually happening so what if i just decided like in the beginning of the movie when we first started film and i decided i only wanted film this then we wouldn't have this whole bodybuilding thing which could end up being what adds a layer to it that makes it connect all the dots. Totally makes it more nuanced.

Or whatever, right? So, we don't really know, but I would say that in general, we're planning on it just coming out next year, because we're not worried about it for this year. And we're just planning on making the best thing that we can. And so, we like to encourage everybody, like like people send me a lot of information, people give me a lot of tips, and I'm open to all of it. I listen and read all my comments and everything

because I'm open to whatever's gonna make the best film. I'm not trying to set out to make one specific thing. So between when this comes out and when this film comes out, what is the best way for people to reach you, Chris? They can just find me on Instagram at big strong fast. It's kind of the one thing that I check all the time. Okay.

And what about you Mark? Twitter too. You can't get ahold of me because I've got too much shit to do. But one thing I want to encourage everybody to do is really simple because nobody ever knows where to start. And we don't get a lot of answers because people that are smart don't give you definitive answers because that's just the way it goes. Just try to start walking.

You know almost all of us are lucky enough to have the ability to put one foot in front of the other. Try to go for a 10 minute walk every day. Talk to your son, your daughter, your mom, your dad, if they live close by or if you can get a second with them. Do it after lunch, do it after dinner. Preferably, it'd be great if you can do it more than once a day, but it's just a great place to start. A great way to clear your mind. There's a lot of shit going on nowadays. If you have an hour and a

half or whatever it might be to be on Instagram all day, you certainly can carve out 10 minutes for yourself every day to go on a walk, really, really simple, easy thing to do. And because people aren't going to be able to reach out to you directly, they want to be able to take advantage of the amazing stuff you've already done. What's your YouTube channel? Yeah, the YouTube channel is super training 06. You can also check out my Instagram, which is at Mark's Millie Bell. And you can also check out my website, which has all my products, a slingshot, the hip circle,

some of the stuff you've seen, which is markbellslingshot.com. And I also have my own pod-cats. Well, one thing that we haven't talked about, but it'll leave it up to people to go watch it, is my new film, A Leaf of Faith, which is about cratum. That's right, we didn't even get to that. Well, we didn't really get to it, but I'll explain it really quick.

Cratum is a plant that comes from Southeast Asia that a lot of people are using to get off of opioids and they're also using it just to feel better. Like for me every day I use it as a pre-workout. It just makes me feel great before I get in the gym. I've gotten a lot stronger because of it. I've gotten in better shape because I can focus better. So a leaf of faith is available on iTunes.

It's available on Google Play, YouTube and Amazon. It's not on Netflix, yeah. It's on Netflix on August 27th. And then when it comes out August 27th, I think that's going to be sort of the real launching point for it because with all my movies, I put them on iTunes and they go around. When it gets in Netflix, that's when people start talking about it. So I'm excited. I'm going to say a good segue into a, he and I have created a product together. You will be believing in creatives so much.

It's helped us so much. It's helped us manage pain. It's helped us to continue on our diets even. Sometimes in life you just need something else to do. You need your mind to be a little bit distracted from your day to day grind. And it's a great product. It gives you some euphoria.

It's helped me with creativity and business and stuff like that and the product is going to be called Mind Bullet and you'll be able to get it at MindBullet.com. All right. So we're going to link in the show notes to where people can find you, Chris, on social, where they can see all the stuff you've put out. I'm actually really excited to hear. I didn't even realize I'm embarrassed to say that you had this YouTube channel with all of these videos because I'm always looking for ways.

If I can't plug one of my patients into a trainer that I trust to teach them the correct mechanics, I actually don't want them to just learn to squat on their own. I kind of want them to be able to see how it's done. So this will be a great reference. As somebody that's contributed content to Mark's YouTube page, I could say that he puts in more effort and time than a lot of people that I see that are putting out videos.

They put out almost, is it a video a day? They're still like, they crank it like a breakneck speed to like, it's like a movie studio over there. So he's just constantly cranking stuff out and it always features like all these people from the fitness industry that people love to see. He's always got great information. So I commend him as a filmmaker, I'm giving my brother props for having a great time.

We spend probably over a quarter million dollars a year just on our YouTube channel, just to get information out there. Obviously, it promotes the brand, promotes the product, but I really love trying to get that information out there. To arm people, give people information that they need. Anybody listening to this podcast, that ever wants to come check out

Super Training Gym, Super Training Gym is free. I can't always guarantee that I'm there, but if you want to look up that Instagram, it's at Super Training Gym as well. Hit up whoever answers questions on there, and they will let you know, if and when I'm around, and when you can come in, but the gym is free.

In and of itself, that is just an unbelievable service. Guys, I want to thank you both, not just for your generosity and time today, but obviously more importantly, for all the work you guys have been doing over the past decade plus to share what you've learned with not just me, so I'm personally grateful for that, but obviously by extension, many more people.

So thank you so much. Well, we're personally grateful as well. We're huge fans right back at you and I love your podcast So I'm excited to be on it and be part of it Well, you guys are part of the inaugural set and if the podcast ends up sucking you guys will know that you were you managed to be in that Exclusive where we're in good company of sucking your sucking podcast You can find all of this information and more at pterotiamd.com forward slash podcast. There you'll find the show notes, readings, and links related to this episode.

You can also find my blog and the Nerd Safari at pterotiamd.com. What's a Nerd Safari you ask? Just click on the link at the top of the site to learn more. Maybe the simplest thing to do is to sign up for my subjectively non-lame once a week email where I'll update you on what I've been up to, the most interesting papers I've read, and all things related to longevity, science, performance, sleep, etc. On social, you can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, all with the ID, Peter, Tia, MD.

But usually, Twitter is the best way to reach me to share your questions and comments. Now, for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing, or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice. And note, no doctor-patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to the podcast is at the user's own risk. The content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment. Users should

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