Dom Kuza Breaks Down PEPTIDES, THYROID, PEDs, and His Coaching Methodology on the OptiCast Ep 26

🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO
In this episode of the OptiCast, we dive deep into the world of physiology, peptide protocols, thyroid management, and drug stacking with Dom Kuza. Known for his transition from a bodybuilding coach to a formulator and educator, Dom shares his insights on building systems over cookie-cutter programs. He emphasizes the importance of foundational health checks before delving into advanced peptide therapy and highlights the risks associated with unsequenced mitochondrial peptides.

Dom debunks common thyroid myths, explaining the nuances of T3 and T4 management during dieting phases. He discusses the impact of lifestyle, stress, and mentality on recovery and progression, offering strategies for setting effective dosing for both men and women. Simplifying drug stacks to optimize safety and results, Dom provides techniques for maintaining athlete motivation and discipline.

Throughout the episode, Dom shares practical insights for managing expectations and responses to PEDs, focusing on performance metrics and physiological understanding. He stresses the importance of psychological and environmental factors in coaching success, advocating for performance-based dosing rather than arbitrary milligram targets.

Listeners will gain valuable takeaways, such as experimenting with new approaches, re-examining lab results, and thinking systemically about their training and health strategies. Dom's transparency and depth of knowledge offer a rare glimpse into the high-level thinking required to excel in this field.

For more resources, visit The Blueprint Education Hub, Relive Health, and explore peptide resources at Blue Sky Peptides. Connect with Dom Kuza on LinkedIn, Twitter, and his website for further insights and updates.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What are the main things you see backfiring when there's like no real sequencing and a phasic structure behind him? And like what specific physiological or like behavioral criteria, if any, do you have in place before you're comfortable saying to a client like you actually earned the right to use some of these more?

SPEAKER_00 0:17

I mean, dude, I think it's uh the peptide, I think if you start to treat peptides similar to how you would treat PEDs with somebody, that would kind of be the same groundwork criteria.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

This podcast right here is just for instant purpose. I am not epictor, not an nutritionist, or personal trainer. I am very fun qualified for red coaster. As real flame or so wisely said, I don't share a fuck, so don't trust me, don't listen to me or you're here just for chips and deals. If you trust me with health advice, that's just a natural selection at work. Don't do drugs, always listen to your GP and the data split out of the way with this.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

Welcome to another episode of the Opticast with me, Nathan, and me Apri. Where we take complex human physiology, coaching systems, and pharmacology, and then we translate this into clear, usable operating principles that you can actually run on yourself and on your clients. Now, if you listen to this, you're probably not the type of person who just wants another cookie cutter program. You're fucking tired of that, and so am I, honestly. You want to understand why things work. You want to know where they break, like how to build an actual system that doesn't fall apart the moment life stops being fucking perfect. And the payoff order from this episode is exactly that. You're going to hear how one of the most respected minds in our industry actually thinks about pettics, thyroids, offset, physics, coaching systems, like everything that you need to know so you can actually tighten up your own logic across some of the gaps in the stuff that you've been doing, and then stop depending on the surface-level copy and paste protocol. It's someone we follow closely because it literally checks all the boxes that we care about, its academic rigor, real-world outcomes, and the ability to architect our systems instead of just handing out fucking programs. It does to coaches what I do to my clients and my audience and teaches you how to think about it, not just what to do. Doncza is a master's level exercise physiologist, a retired competitive bodybuilding, a seasoned coach, a product formulator, and the founder of the Blueprint, which in my opinion is one of the few education hubs that are those coaches should actually be attention to. And in this conversation, we're gonna dive start with how Don made that shift from coaching bodies to engineering products and then teaching other coaches, and what are some of that made them realize like that education and formulation were necessary if we wanted better outcomes for the industry. From there, we're gonna dig into peptides on why running these limitless or mitochondrial stacks in the wrong phase can actually do more harm than good. We'll peel back some of the thyroid myths that exist, and look at how Dom actually reads and manages the full cascade in prepare recovery. We'll move to off-phase and architecture, how he pushes push phases, health phases, when, how to escalate drugs, and all of this good stuff. We'll spend some time talking about PEP more broadly. And if you are a coach, you're going to walk away with this episode with a much clearer picture of what a high level actually looks like in practice. If you're a serious lifter or a competitor, you'll get a rare look into how someone at Dom's level actually thinks about your physiology and your programming, not what he writes on the plan. Dom, we've been really looking forward to this for a really long time, so thank you for being here, brother.

SPEAKER_00 3:15

Brother, you knocked that intro out of the park. Thank you. No, I appreciate you, man. Thank you again for having me. Thanks for accommodating the schedule and everything. So again, again, I'm excited for today.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

No, I I appreciate it, man. Like one one thing that I respect about like what you've built is that you clearly think beyond just like sets, reps, and check-ins, right? Like you've you've moved into formulation, education, which is the sort of the same direction as my own work has like pulled me as I've gone deeper into like physiology and systems. I want to know what pulled you in that direction, like towards supplementing and also teaching other coaches rather than just trying to scale one-on-one coaching. Like what problems did you feel you could finally solve by going all the way upstream like that?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Uh I mean, so I've been coach, I've been I so I was a personal trainer 2016-17. Uh, and then I started like coaching a little bit during that. So it's almost been 10 years. That being said, it that was a long time to be coaching uh and coaching a lot of people. At one my highest roster count at one point was like it was over 200 people. Uh and and you know, some people might say it's a lot, but if you have your systems down, like it's pretty doable. Everybody was spread out, everybody it was a check-in day every day. That way it was like you know, 30, 40 people each day. It was easy to manage, easy to handle. And just doing that for so long, right? That was part of it too. Um, getting into the competitive space, competitive coaching, like I haven't won an Olympia, I haven't won an Arnold, but like I've won pro shows with people, right? I had you know, recent I I've won overalls nationally, I've won pro cards, I've done a lot of that accomplishment, and and that was great, and that was awesome, and I I I owe my life to bodybuilding in that regard, and it really kind of helped me get my career, you know, foot ground going. But really, the biggest transition for me was like I just wanted to impact more people, and coaching, you know, it does that, right? It has ripple effects too. But when when I got the opportunity to help revive, it was to just educate on the products. So like my original job at Revive was hey, we want to we want you to come in, we want you to lecture on our products to our athletes so that they're better educated when they go to talk about our products. And then that slowly started to turn into just like bringing in different formulas, suggesting things, and then obviously, like, you know, Matt is one of my closest friends, and you know, we'd be reviewing like labs, and I'd be like, Hey, why don't you use this product and this product? And I go, dude, why don't you have like a cortisol support product? And he's like, Well, make it and let's see if we'll do it. And then I made it. I wasn't even working on Revive yet. I made it and I sent it to him, and then that was cortisol support, which Revive still carries today. Um, and yeah, that's kind of what got the ball rolling as far as like formulating goes, and but like supplements always interested me. My master's thesis, a big chunk of it was on like creatine and amino acids and like hyper insulinemia and amino acid use intra workout. That was a big thing that I did in my master's thesis paper. But that was uh that's really what transitioned me. And then I remember like when they when they hired me, I told them like all I want to do is just impact people, and the best way to do that if I can make a product that helps people, like I'm gonna touch way more people's lives than I could ever do coaching. And then that's what also brought the passion for the coaching education. If I can help, you know, for every ten of of you guys inside a blueprint, that's three, four, five hundred people that potentially are getting some sort of benefit from what that coach is learning from me. Um and that's how I look at it. I mean you'll see you've you've seen enough, but like I always I always preach in there like impact over hype, impact over attention. Like that's that lasts a lot longer than than you know just numbers. But that's really what sh moved the needle for me a lot, stepping away from bodybuilding personally. Like that was more so like genetically, like I was a I could get peeled and I was I was you know decent muscle tissue, like as far as like how big I uh uh as I was. But then once we had kids, it kind of just my whole process changed thoughts and everything, and I had B tier genetics at best, so I knew I wasn't gonna be an Olympian, you know, and and then I started coaching heavily with competitors, and that was when I retired from competing. I said retired, like I competed like 20 times, I competed three times, but when I when I stopped competing, that's when I just doubled down hard in competitive coaching, and then that's when I had a lot of really good wins, a lot of really big success in that regard.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Mm-hmm. Dude, that's fucking awesome. I love that. I love that story. I actually didn't know that one. I've listened to every podcast that there is to be listened on Domkuza, and I'm working my way through completing the blueprint now for the second time.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

So Yeah, and for the record, he's the only person to actually complete the thing. Like, he's the only person to actually finish it. I mean, yeah, which is impressive.

SPEAKER_02 8:35

I I actually have a little bit over a hundred pages worth of notes on it already, and now that I'm going back the second time, it's just gonna be like I'm gonna swallow that bitch hole. It's gonna be it's gonna be awesome.

SPEAKER_03 8:45

This is our dinner conversation, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 8:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

That's I'm glad for that.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Now, no, like when when I'm like in in my world, right, I see people getting uh really hard, like people who get hurt by peptides. I I figured out the ones who are layering a bunch of random peptides into what I call an unstable system. So they'll be like they don't have a clear understanding of which phase they're in, they don't have a clear understanding of what is actually broken if it's a very broad like mitochondria or something like that. So I'm I'm actually really conservative when it comes into play. And like when you when you look at these people who are using all of these like mitochondrios or like limitless style of like peptides right now, like what are the main things you see backfiring when there's like no real sequencing and and a phasic structure behind them? And like what specific physiological or like behavioral criteria, if any, do you have in place before you're comfortable saying to a client like you actually earned the right to use some of these more?

SPEAKER_00 9:39

I mean, dude, I think it's uh the peptide, I think if you start to treat peptides similar to how you would treat PEDs with somebody, that would kind of be the same groundwork criteria. Like I I just had a client recently who, you know, wasn't like hitting their food all the time, wasn't, you know, wasn't hitting their food all the time, and then was like, all right, you know, what am I gonna use for my next cycle? And I'm like, well, we're not starting another cycle until you get these things under control because why waste the exposure? Why waste the toxicity? If all the basic groundwork stuff is not optimal, you're not gonna get the most out of what you're about to put your body through. Why would you do that? Which is always receptive, right? When you paint the picture like that, it it does make a lot of sense to them, and they're usually really receptive of it. And I like I think of peptides the same way. I mean, I think peptides are even more fragile in that regard, right? Like, if we're putting that into like a really, you know, oxidative body, if we're putting that into somebody who's super inflamed and super, you know, super stressed, bad sleep, and there's just so much foundational work that needs to be addressed for a lot of these people. And I think, you know, for a lot of the peptides, it's probably like taking it and not really feeling anything from it, and really just paying for stuff that's probably not really doing much for you. When it comes to like the limitless pill stuff, like I mean, dude, I've seen people complain about like chronic headaches and chronic migraines and sensitivity to light all of a sudden. You know, uh a big one is like they take stuff and it just ramps up their thought processing so fast that they have a hard time articulating. Like actually talking is is a little bit challenging because they're thinking so fast. Uh, I've seen that, and that's happened to me firsthand, like some days where like I probably took maybe too much methylene blue with some CIMAX and dihexa and Nupept and all these things, and and I'm like, my head's rolling, but the words aren't coming out at the same rate. You've probably even seen me in lectures that you've been in where I'm like almost stuttering, yeah. Because I'm like a sentence ahead in my head, but I'm not done with the sentence that I I was finishing. And that's a real issue that I see a lot of people um SL. So I just like I treat them like pet PEDs, dude. Like your your base foundation should be set before you start any PED cycle, and it's the same for peptides.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

Yeah, no, and I I think that's very good. Like, that's actually what I do. Uh peptides are under PEDs because they are performance enhancing something, you know. So like it's it's it it it only makes sense. Like, let's uh let's jump a little bit into my favorite topic, which is thyroid power. So like I actually end up spending a lot of time reprogramming a lot of thyroid myths with the athletes that I deal with, especially the idea that like thyroid T3 is gonna help muscle and that like if you go through prep with something like this, like it's gonna you know break your thyroid, which I like that terms just kind of pissed me off. But uh like when I'm saying like lab stuff, it's more about like context and just like mismanaged stress than actually like a destroyed gland. Like when you're looking at these two narratives in light of like how the thyroid actually actually functions, uh, and when you see issues post-prep and stuff, what are the key things to look at to distinguish true gland problems from metabolic speed mismatch or just just a badly handled transition in this process?

SPEAKER_00 13:01

I mean, most of the time it's a badly handled transition where you either didn't have enough like cofactor support, enzymatic support, and that's usually what a big problem is because if you look at PrEP specifically, prep is one of the most stressful things we could put our body through. A lot of the genes with thyroid health are really stressed, very stress-influenced, right? They're very stress-sensitive. So, and that makes sense, right? Under stress, slow down metabolism is defense, right? The body wants to survive, not push through stuff like that. So I think a lot of the times it's really just mismanaged as far as like transition with minerals, transition with cofactors that could be fixed. I also think a lot of people, when it comes to like actual glandular issues, they you know, ignore things like this is where I think it's actually problematic to ignore things like TSH because like certain TSH markers and levels with in relation to certain free hormone levels, you actually could be potentially looking at a signaling issue where like you've probably seen some people who have like low free levels and then they have like a low TSH, and you're like, that doesn't that doesn't make sense to most people on paper, but that could be a signaling problem, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:18

No, I I literally had a case with that, and we corrected that with cortexin. Yeah, just just working straight into hypothalamus, you know?

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah. So, you know, that's that's another thing that I think like true glandular problems are usually pretty blatant, and you'll really be able to tell. I think in a prep scenario, though, it's like very rare. It's like I mean like thyroid, like I mean, you know, it's all relative to context, right? Like I hate I don't I'm a I'm not a fan of when people like demonize anybody using 50 micrograms of T3 in a prep, it's not it's not black and white to say that that's bad, right? The context needs to be there. Myself personally, like if I look at my past preps um starting prep at like a 2.3, 2.2, like I'm gonna end up getting at 50 micrograms of T3 because as I downregulate through dieting, I'm gonna need a bigger dose than 25 micrograms to actually support a healthy free T3 level. Which again, context is always needed when it comes to dosing. That's what I've always told people too. Like, don't don't be so quick to judge a uh uh old client's plan if they don't give you all the context. Like, if somebody comes to you and they're taking, I don't know, they're taking EQ and AIs and they have and you're like, dude, that's so stupid, but you don't know how they aromatize yet. What if that what if that was what they needed? You you don't know those things. So I always tell people, like, don't jump the gun on like picking apart somebody's plan. Unless it's like hurting them or not really working, and there's clear signs of all that, then yeah, that's fine. But that's how I have always treated thyroid is just always minerals, cofactors, stress support, and then you can layer in your thyroid hormone afterwards.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I like that. I like that a lot. Um, I also see like this um sort of like a two-way split between the people who are terrified to touch T3 because they think that if they do that, their thyroid is just gonna be wrecked for the rest of their lives. And then you have like other people who are just relying on T4 in prep when like their bodies are already physiologically struggling to fucking convert all of this in the anyway, anyway. So like in your experience, what are really what is really happening to the thyroid axis after you know the prep or like how how do you how do you go about bringing this back to baseline, like after prep? And in in the same context, like why is it that you see T4 only protocols as being largely ineffective during prep? What do you what do you think about those approaches are missing about like conversion, reverse T3, TPOs, and stress side of the equation?

SPEAKER_00 16:59

I think the T4 is like looked at as a safer approach, right? You're relying on your body's ability to convert it, but obviously we know in a PrEP with stress and cortisol and all those, you know, we look at gene activation of like the enzymes required to convert thyroid hormones. So, like you look at deidinase type 3, and that activity could actually go up in a high cortisol stress situation, which would convert more T4 to reverse T3. So, take somebody in prep, barely sleeping, doing a bunch of cardio, doing a bunch of training. My train of thought is like that probably doesn't make the most sense to use T4 in that case. I would rather just give the active hormone at that point and use that. I know a lot of good coaches that use T4, but they always end up using T3 at the end. So it's like, could you have just you have just avoided all that? And then we do know that like you know, too high of doses of T4 can elevate thyroid binding globulin. So like if you are actually converting some of it, you could also be potentially binding a lot of it too, and that's a problem in and of itself. I do think having some T4 is not a terrible thing though, right? We don't want reverse T3 like non-existent, we do want to have some reverse T3 present just to offset some of that T3 excessive activity. But I I do I I I'm a big fan of just active T3 and preps. But then if I look at like the opposite of like I don't want to touch it at all type of people, I don't know, man. I think that's like I think that's just irrational, uneducated fear, which is which is fair, right? A lot of these people who are coached or a lot of these athletes and clients who are coached by people don't know those things. They don't know that you know they're they've just always thought and always been told and always heard, you know, my coach messed up my thyroid, or right, uh, I I don't want to touch T3 because it'll hurt my thyroid. I mean, unless you're taking like 200 micrograms, 150 micrograms, and you're just like nuking the amount of T3 you're taking, you know, potentially then maybe you'll have an issue. But you know, you're taking replacement therapy doses, and not even just that, but the thyroid is a really resilient gland. Like it can really do, I mean, I'm pretty sure there's some decent research showing like return of thyroid hormone functionality within like a week after something.

SPEAKER_02 19:25

It's two weeks, yeah. Two weeks it was better.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Yeah, like yeah, so like now context dependent, right? Prep, nutrient depleted, you're not getting you know, digestion is maybe a little messed up at the end. Maybe you went and went bonkers on the weekend after your show, and now you have all this stress in your stomach and gut. Now it makes sense why it's taking longer, but like that's why like after preps, I always keep people on T3. I always keep them on for like a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_02 19:50

Yeah, yeah, and you you titrate it down as well, right? Uh-huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

So like if I'm on like if I'm let's say we end up prep like 37 and a half. First week post-show, they stay on that. Second week post-show, we go to 25. Third week post-show go to twelve and a half, and then by a month after we're we're done. Part of that also, too, is to come not, you know, it's it's also to help support like the potential calorie influx from cheating and and uh everything like that. You know, like Dr. Dean said it best in a post, he's like, it's not that your coach shut your thyroid down so you didn't shut your mouth after eating or after competing. I mean, that's that's the truth. Like, if you just like from a mechanistic standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

Yeah, no, absolutely. Do you think this stems a little bit from I don't want to be rude, but I I I I think a lot of coaches have a very shallow understanding of how the thyroid actually works.

SPEAKER_00 20:44

No, I mean I don't think that's rude, I think that's valid. Like, I think a lot of people have knowledge gaps that they're just not willing to admit, and they rather be known listen, most people would rather be known as the coach who plays it very safe than the coach who pushes it. That's just that is bodybuilding coaching one-on-one, right? You want the reputation that you are the safe exposure dude, and that's it, right? Because that reputation is not attached with a lot of drama and not attached with a lot of issues. And that's I think that's why some people just kind of will push that blind eye to it and not really want to advance their knowledge in it and don't really approach it like that anymore.

SPEAKER_02 21:25

Yeah, no, that makes sense. Now I want to talk about something that I actually don't know a lot about in your approach. I I I tend to think in terms of of blocks. So I I push, I consolidate, or I restore. So when I when I see people talking about these, like, oh, I have a gap between show of like I have eight weeks for a growth phase for an off season or twelve weeks for a growth. I have a really hard time believing there's much like structural change happening in that short window of time. Like in my mind, what what separates the in like a serious productive off season from just a bad one in terms of both length and structure and within that larger block, it's like what kind of time frames do you usually work with for growth phases? Like health phases or consolidation phases while you're watching all the the progress and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Long man, like my preps are usually like twenty weeks at a minimum. Um my off season same thing, my like growth pushes will be twenty, twenty-four, thirty weeks. Um and and and that's just because of my approach with drugs, really. It's because a big thing that I do with PEDs is I'm a big fan of like titrating testosterone only for a while and just like milking just as higher test dose for a while. Which for a lot of the times the the people's blood work stays completely the same and like doesn't really get affected. So like I got a guy right now, for example, had some major surgery, got through it, uh obviously was like at not atrophied, but you know, lost lost size and whatnot from it. Got him back on his like 200 megs a week, did that for like six weeks, then went to 400 for six weeks, then went to six hundred for six weeks, then we went to eight hundred for six weeks. Now we're at this eight hundred mark, and I'm like, listen, man, we can maybe just stay here and then start adding. But like in my head, I have like, yes, some people might listen to this and be like, what do you like? I don't really I feel like it's like the pre-exposure cycle to the actual cycle that I'm gonna end up putting this guy on. Because if I ran his labs right now, which we're planning on doing, they're probably gonna be pretty much normal. Mm-hmm Aside from maybe some col maybe some col like red blood cell, maybe at a minimum. And that's what and then from that point I'll start layering in other compounds. That dude, that's like a 25, that's probably like a 25-week exposure timeline, but it's it's titrated, it's slow, it's not like knock the socks off day one type of approach. Yeah. Now in a prep, I'm the I'm kind of the opposite. Like in the in a prep, I try to work to the higher doses a little bit faster just because the timeline is usually shorter. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 24:02

How does that change when you're working with women versus women?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

I I women, I do have some strict rules just for myself ethically. Like six to eight week maximum exposures, and then I always do time on equals time off or double. Like, so time on equals double time off. I never try if I'm trying two compounds together for the first time, we do shorter window. If I'm trying a higher dose of one compound, then I might add from like the last cycle we tried. But I'm pretty strict with myself when it comes to women PEDs, just because like I don't want to be responsible for any hard viralization that maybe that female is gonna regret in ten years.

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

That's my thought process at least. And I have I only have a couple female athletes still, but they're like figure physique now. But even them, like off-season push, six, eight weeks, take a break for like eight to ten weeks, and then just rinse and repeat. Which I feel like with women it's cooler because you can get a lot more faster exposures doing it that way, versus like a guy's is more prolonged, big health gap, prolonged, big health gap. With females, that turnover is a little bit faster. And then I just I just don't push just don't push drugs that high, so like there's never really much to fix afterwards.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

Have you ever tried taking the same approach that you take for women and applying it to guys?

SPEAKER_00 25:30

To be honest, no, no, I I yeah, to be honest, no. I mean, like, I could look at myself, for example, like I don't really use PEDs anymore, but like I might do like a stint of Annavar for four weeks, five weeks, take a four or five week break, do it again for four or five weeks, you know. I'll do I've been trying that with myself, but I haven't really I haven't really done that with anybody. And I and the reason why I think for the guys, I I think it I trend towards that longer exposure timeline is just because like we're trying to make like massive muscle gain jumps. As like women when we're exposed to these androgens, it's just so much more amplified and so much more short of a time. Whereas like with the guys, I just feel like it's you know, more tissue, more receptors, more like it just gets longer and longer, or doses eventually have to go up. But yeah, I mean the doses thing, even too, like Nathan, you asked me like you asked me a question recently. You said like what's your approach with scaling out total milligrams, yeah. Uh to be honest, like a lot of the times I'll even look back at like a productive cycle and be like, we're just gonna do the same thing. And a lot of times it works really well, and I don't I know there's good rules to increase doses and and increase total milligrammage and total milligram exposure so that you can learn how you respond at certain things. But sometimes, like, especially for people who have like touched that two gram mark, like I feel like there's a certain point where you just don't need more. It's probably a point where now we can we can kind of look at it in a way of like, why don't we try different compounds at the same milligram age and just maybe change ratio? Like last time you ran like a moderate test dose with this higher MPP. Why don't we try the opposite? Like a lower MPP with a higher test dose, and just try things like that, but keep like the total milligram pretty much the same.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Where where do you find like the starting dose usually for women?

SPEAKER_00 27:31

Like, how do I?

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah, like for for myself, like in general, we're gonna start with two milligrams just on training days. Like, that's just like kind of where we go for like about four to six weeks max as a first exposure. Like, what how do you like normally handle? And then we go all the way up to like as far as it's tolerable, like by increasing by two to five milligrams at a time.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Yeah. Uh the TRT is always my like first thing. I'll always say, like, let's optimize your tests. If we optimize your tests, you're gonna get some of the best results you've ever gotten. And then usually from there, I'll usually do training day only oral, two and a half to five milligrams of Anivar, and then, or I'll do like 10 milligrams of primo twice a week. See how they do on that. Primo or anivar is my first try, and then I'll do that for like four to six weeks, and then and then you have an then kind of what I teach and what I also practice myself is you have two options for the second cycle. You could try another compound, run them at the same time, but you don't do it longer than the previous cycle's timeline because it's you know, now you're increasing total exposure. So the one thing we can control is the duration of that exposure. Let's let's do the minimal. Or if I want to try the same compound but a higher dose, now I might expand that timeline a little bit longer than the first time just to see.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

Okay. And for guys, you're just you're pushing the testosterone first, finding out what's the tolerable limit, and then as you like more tissue is necessary and they're not getting the same response, then it's when you layer, you know, other compounds.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Yeah, um, for the most part, yeah. Like I'll layer in the testosterone and just work it up to like their highest tolerable dose with like aromatization, and then from there I'll start layering in their other compounds from that point. Like I usually always use like uh I always use like a Masteron, or I always use like in a growth phase, I usually will use like a Masteron, an EQ, maybe some MPP, and then I'll I'll maybe I'll even I'll even throw orals in on training days for short stints. I'll use those for like plateaus, like if they're plateauing while training, if they're plateauing with the scale, I'll you know, I'll bring in, hey, take 20 milligrams of Anivar on your training days for the next two weeks, three weeks, then we take a break. So it's not like a long exposure to the orals, and it's not a daily exposure for the most part, which then I've noticed just really doesn't affect their digestion at all. Which I know like a lot of people have the understanding of like not using orals in off seasons, but I think they're I think there is applicability if you do it right, and if it's also not disruptive to digestion and things like that, you probably can get away with it from uh like pushing through a plateau standpoint.

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Yeah, I'm actually having to use orals now to fill in the total milligrams, so that's something that I'm looking forward to because I've I've never had any like liver markers or anything like that that was bad.

SPEAKER_00 30:24

Like, I mean, well, I mean, dude, and and the problem with the oral conversation is that everybody just associates it with like the classic bodybuilder dose, like Yeah. Half of these things weren't even designed to be taken at these doses.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

Some of them were designed to be taken at higher doses, like the like the study of Anodrol that had women taking 150 milligrams a day, or or like I mean, an even Anovar that's like 20 milligrams multiple times a day if you're a child or a woman that has burns, you know?

SPEAKER_00 30:51

Yeah, so but like even then, like you can look at it from that perspective too, like uh a low dose of something might get you a lot further with no problems at all. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

Yeah, actually like we're kind of thinking uh we we had a like her push phase and where she asks, like, are we gonna do blood work? And I'm like, I I know what it's gonna look like. We literally did blood work recently, like there's no reason. I just I we we kind of know like what uh it's it's gonna say your liver is bad, you know, like or something like that, like max, you know. Do you do you know exactly why women have sort of like uh like the same side effects that a guy will get with like a hundred milligrams of Anivar, a woman will get with like 15 or 20. Like why why is it that like physiologically they actually like the response changes and we have to have like all this like ton of supplementation for women who are taking like really low doses compared to what guys are taking, but the supplements look almost the same.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

I mean, I think a lot of it has to do with just female adaptation thresholds. Like females are really good at adapting, like if we just look physiologically, that's why they're like you know, that's why people struggle to diet, that's why people struggle to actually get them to push certain like phases, and it's because women are really are really good at surviving, right? That's essentially what that's why women they're designed to survive, right? So I think a lot of the side effect potential comes down to the metabolism of the drug themselves, and again, a woman might metabolize a drug a little bit more aggressively than a guy, maybe from a defense mechanism standpoint. That's my rationale, that's my thought process.

SPEAKER_02 32:27

Okay, that makes sense. Now, when I'm when I'm building like a growth phase, I like to keep the drug menu sort of relatively tight and just let sort of their physiological response do the talking instead of like just always chase another compound or like I get the sense that you're sort of in a in a similar way. Like when you're putting together like PDs for an off season, how do you actually think through the compound selection? Like what uh what tends to form the core of your stacks? Like what do you avoid or reserve for just certain circumstances? Like how do you how simple or like complex do you like to have them their their stacks and those like on the support side of that as well? Uh like what's your default approach to like cardio and nutrition and like supporting an off-season as well?

SPEAKER_00 33:09

Yeah, so I like I like a small menu during the off-season as far as drugs go, just because I've also noticed that people are able to stay on their cycles a little bit longer when they're not on a ton of different compounds. Like and I think that's from like uh just a toxic exposure to multiple different drugs at once. Even with the same like milligrams if the drug lose door losses are.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

I've noticed that some people start feeling like shit at like 16, 20 weeks into this blast, and it's hilarious because I literally have a mark on my 16 week on my planning that like here's the time you want to put NAD plus just to get a little bit of a push and some Matsy, because that's when it gets rough. And I usually do that.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

And I think that's a toxic load issue from like being on too many compounds at once. But for me, it's like usually a high dose of tests, and that's all relative to whatever the person, how big they are, and everything, but a high dose of test, either EQ or primo, and then usually some MPP. So it's really only three drugs. And then I'm a big fan of growth at high doses, like what's a high dose? I mean, really, if you can afford 15 IUs a day, take 15 IUs a day. Yeah. I mean, it's really comes down to that. If and then anybody using growth, I make them all like you know, blood sugar measurements every single day, just keeping an eye on insulin sensitivity. So most of my people are on growth 8 to 10 IUs on average, probably daily. And then I'll use insulin intermittently with people if I need to, as far as like blood sugar control goes. I also think insulin is really good for people who lack mind to muscle connection because if you take some insulin potentially around workout window, a couple hours out from workout window, you might you'll get a much better pump. So that could help a lot with mind-to-muscle connection.

SPEAKER_02 35:00

I do that on chest days because it's my weekday.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

And that's a that's a that's a little good practice there. But yeah, I mean that's that's kind of the premise of like an off-season growth push for the most part. And then like it supports. I like cardio in an off-season, like most of my people will do four or five days a week still. It'll be maybe 15 minutes, whatever, but it's still there. And then, as you know through some of our like group calls, but like I'm a big fan of pushing fats high. I like to get carbs to like a performance point, but not to like where you feel bloated all day point. And then I'll layer in extra calories from like the fat. And then also just using I'm a big fan of like animal meat, animal fat. So, like a lot of people's off seasons slowly transition to almost like all red meat, all whole eggs, like not that much chicken, not that much like white fish. It's usually a lot of either fatty fish or fatty fish, eggs, and and red meat.

SPEAKER_03 35:57

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

Mm-hmm. That's actually good. You were the one that put me on higher fats, and uh that's when I started digging into cholesterol and all of the research of that, and I just realized I was very incredibly wrong about low.

SPEAKER_00 36:08

Dietary cholesterol.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

Yeah, I was very, very wrong about that. So that's something that I changed my mind radically, and it also made my quality of life so much better, just being able to eat more fats, man, and not have to pound like 500 grams of rice per meal, and then you're hungry an hour later because it's just fucking insulin, you know?

SPEAKER_00 36:24

Yeah, you're just you're just like empty for that.

SPEAKER_02 36:26

Yep, yep, now uh talking a little bit about health phases, because I I think this is something that we also do very similarly, but I I don't see a lot of people actually thinking in terms of that. Uh so I I see like on like two groups here. Like one is like uh those coaches that are gonna be constantly like uh uh attacking the problems with like ancillary so they can just continue fucking pushing forever, uh, and those who would rather just separate things cleanly and dedicate like an actual time to restoring the system before the next run. Like where do you lend on that spectrum of just trying to make this as short as possible and just go to TRT and just let the system heal itself from all of the abuse that I've been doing and the debt that I've been creating, physiologically speaking? But like where where do you align yourself in terms of like how building a health phase?

SPEAKER_00 37:10

I'm probably I probably lean more towards like let's structure this out, but it's also timeline dependent. If I have somebody competing at a you know, has a lot of potential, there's a big show they're doing, you know, their chances of you know turning pro are really high. We don't have that maybe I don't have the luxury to do like how I would, you know, lay out all like the glutathione support, the SS31, like all these things that I would like to do after a push. You know, that might be a little bit condensed just because of the timeline, but for the most part I lean more towards like actually getting your body back to back to normal, reducing all the exposure and all the stress that we just like pushed your body through and everything. I think that's the proper way to do it. I think it's a good way to support that. Um like uh you know, this is this is the first year that I'm pretty much uh making everybody do SS31 before a prep or before a big push, just because my personal experience, like anecdotally, like me physically, uh has been amazing with like doing SS31 before like diet shift points or training shift points, like where before that plan like shifts and changes, uh you know, just responding so much better to things.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

And you're doing like a relatively low dose compared to like what LMIPRT is actually prescribed as like 40 milligrams, you're you're not doing something.

SPEAKER_00 38:38

No, no, no, no. I do like five milligrams a day.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

Okay, okay. I'm doing 10 right now, and I'm I'm I'm starting to notice a little bit of an uptick in energy, not so like super noticeable, but I my tolerance for stimulants has decreased drastically. I was taking 10 milligrams of Adderall twice a day plus all the nootropics. Uh most days I'm not taking anything. Maybe like two milligrams of Adderall or 5 milligrams of Adderall, but like uh I just can't tolerate those things anymore. And it just uh it's really hard to uh explain to someone who doesn't believe the mitochondria is a thing, like that these things don't work or something like that, uh that they're not doing anything. Like, how do you how do you get this like buy-in from people in terms of like uh hey, I really believe that this compound can actually provide you with something meaningful? It's going to be uh very painful in your wallet, but I believe it's something that we should give it a try.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

You know, that's a great question, because the buy-in is tough with some of these things, especially the peptide world, just because of like how I don't know, taboo some people claim it is, and how you know when people say mitochondrial health is not a real thing, like that's that's actually wild to me. But I don't think that's what they actually mean. Uh I think the best way to do that is a couple ways. It depends on who you're talking to, and like personality types matter a lot. So, you know, you might be talking to a client or a family member or whatever, and the personality type is like hardcore data. Like, if you can prove it to them, then they'll probably try it, right? So maybe that's like the person you show a clinical paper to, maybe that's the person you show a like a mechanism of action image, you know, that's somebody who might need to see it like that. And that's just like a personality type. So, like those case situations where like I'll have to do that. Like, like, for example, I relive, right? I do a lot of education at relive. I pretty much design their relive health university. So, like, takes an NP and just trains them everything functional medicine, right? From A to Z. And we get I get pushback a lot, right? I'm not a physician, that's kind of how they that's how they think, which is fair. And then uh so like we'll get we'll get people that are very like on board. This is awesome, great information. I learned so much, and then some people that just question it, which is fine because it's it's their personality type. So those people like I have resources, references for everything, and send them all that, and then that's all they have to see to really just be like, oh, you know what, okay, you know, this is good. I can do this, like this all makes sense, right? That's that this is valid. This is I can prove the validity, you know, and what and I think sometimes that's what we just have to do. And then honestly, trying it, man. Like, I think some people just need to just try shit and just do it. Yeah. Yeah, honestly. Like, like, I mean, it's it's amazing what these things can do, and if you put them in the right terrain and the right body, like they really work really, really well.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yeah, especially the right terrain is the big catch. And uh I I feel like a lot of people they are not very much um aware of how to actually do that, like how to actually optimize the terrain. And that's that's where I think you know, you guys watching you definitely want to look into the blueprints, because uh one thing that Dom does that I absolutely love is you're not gonna find a lot of protocols in his blueprint. Like, what you're gonna find is a lot of mechanisms and information on how shit actually works and then do your homework, man. Like actually learn how to think about these things, like you can build your own protocols because I uh like a lot of these compounds have so many different things. You know, you can buy 500 for like a lot of copper for that as well. You could buy it for like there's so many like different things. This compound is for joints. This compound is for it's the same logic is like this compound is for drying out, this compound is for bulking. It's it's you know, it feels like we're back in the 2000s, but just in terms of peptides, you know, supplements are the same way.

SPEAKER_00 42:30

You can use supplements for so many different things.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

Yeah, yeah. Wow. And uh and like how it varies. Like, I was I was talking to her about like how melatonin actually changes the mechanism of action in a dose-dependent fashion that it it actually doesn't go through the same pathway at all if we're taking like a hundred milligrams or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

What's crazy is people don't realize like melatonin is one is such a great free radical scavenger.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, exactly. I use it as an antioxidant, like that's it.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Yeah, like people don't even realize that. So, like it's again, but but most people go back to the mitochondria thing. They think that what might melatonin is bad. It causes addiction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's cra, you know.

SPEAKER_02 43:11

You're jabbing yourself with trend every cycle, but melatonin causes addiction.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

Honestly, what's kind of funny, dude, is like the people out there like giving crap to the people using GLP1s and preps, but are taking like three grams of gear and like people, you know, people need to work harder.

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:29

But they're on like an astronomical amount of gear and other things.

SPEAKER_02 43:33

So yeah, or when they say, like, you know, it's like, oh, back in my day, you had to actually suffer. You couldn't cut corners. I'm like, bro, it's bodybuilding, it's all about cutting corners, it's about getting there faster.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah, every drug is designed to get you there faster.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Exactly. Like, what are you talking about? You have to earn it first. What are you talking about? Ten years of natural training before you can, you know, be coached by me or something like that. I I find that kind of ridiculous. It's like, you want to ride a car? Oh, cool. First you're gonna learn how to ride a fucking horse. Like, why? Like, why? Why would I do that? Now, from the outside looking in, it it's very clear that you're not afraid of drugs, right? You're also not playing the more as always optimal game. So you don't have like a rule of like 20% increase every phase or something like that. Which is very similar to how I look at it, like the appropriate dose, the appropriate phase, the appropriate terrain. And for the average like male competitor that you're working with, how do you think like about what's actually sane in terms of like dose ranges and what's like the truest, like smallest, effective dose mindset look like in like day-to-day programming for you? That's a good question.

SPEAKER_00 44:35

I think for like smallest effective dose, I really look at performance metrics a lot. So the main thing that I like to do with that is really just lean into performance. So like one of my biggest sections on my check-in is training feedback. Like, if if training feedback is progressing and this person is visually changing and their weights going up, and all these things are just moving along along the line well. I mean, does that always mean that I have to increase the drugs? Like, probably not. And that's why I think like, listen, dude, I was the guy that went from like two and a half gram cycles to 500 milligram cycles to you know, I tried it all with people, with myself, like, and and eventually I fell right somewhere in the middle of it all. Like, there's times and places where people need to push their drugs higher, and that's fine, but then there's times and places where people probably don't need to push their drugs higher. Now, I'm not like a low exposure guy, but I'm not by any means. Like, you know, at a minimum, you're doing a gram. You know, you're gonna be up in the gram and a half range eventually, two grams, but like at two grams is kind of rare. But like my super heavies are at two grams. Like, that's you know, that's me being transparent and realistic with everybody. And I think that's the problem, is like I said earlier, people gatekeep a lot of that stuff and lie about a lot of that stuff because they don't want the reputation to be known as that person, right? And then part of the reason why it's like you know, a lot of these things are coined the way they're coined is because that's what gives somebody the not the edge, but that's what gives somebody the like perspective from other people, right? Like, and that's I don't know. I keep it real, dude. Like I'll tell I'll show you cycles, like I don't really care. Like yeah, it's bodybuilding at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_02 46:31

Like yeah, no, a hundred percent. Have you like for me, I believe that like my I feel really good around like 1400 milligrams, and then my cap is about like 1800 1900 milligrams or so, but I'm also someone that responds very poorly to drugs, like my testosterone of all kinds, like my testosterone, when I'm taking 50 milligrams a day, my testosterone is like in the 617 or 7700s, like not it's not wild, like it's natural, like it's a replacement dose for me. Like, what what have you found like in working with people like this that are just a little bit more resistant, like their organism just doesn't it just doesn't translate things very well. Like, what what have you found like is an approach that like actually works for these people finding their maximum tolerable dose?

SPEAKER_00 47:14

Again, I'll go back to the training portion. Like I I look at pumps, I look at logbook progression, like all those things are super important to me because at the end of the day, these are performance-enhancing drugs, right? They're meant to increase your performance, right? So, performance is a metric that I I think a lot of coaches forget about and they just look at the visuals a lot. So, like for me, that's where I I pay a lot of attention to. Like, like, let's say you were my client, like, and you're telling me that 1800 milligrams is kind of the top end, like the one thing I'd be paying attention to the most is like, is he starting to complain about his motivation in the gym? Is he starting to complain about his logbook progression? Is he is he slowing down with his rep scheme? Like, are things changing negatively in his performance now? Which probably means that we're probably at a too high of a milligram total. If I pulled it back, would he start to feel better? And then that's when I'll make that adjustment or make that change. And that's and again, I think I think that's kind of gotten forgotten about because a lot of people just associate PEVs with visual change when at the end of the day, PEVs are performance-enhancing drugs, like so performance, and you dude, you can go ask any of my clients. Like, I ask about performance all the time, and I always ask about that even from a diet perspective. Like, I have people prepping right now, and I'm like, hey, I'm gonna add some more food on your high day because I just want to continue to support your performance, right? Because performance is the key to keeping tissue in a prep, right? It's it's a key to a lot of things. Performance is always, and and honestly, that probably comes from school. I'm exercise science masters, so like everything was performance-based. Just like that thought process in my head, at least.

SPEAKER_02 48:54

Yeah, so that that actually makes a lot of sense bearing the performance with the physiological response on like how you're feeling, which is interesting because I don't think people catch a lot on that. On in terms of like listening to a lot of interviews from bodybuilders, like a lot of the times just the best off season that they had was the one that they felt the greatest. You know, it's uh it's never.

SPEAKER_00 49:11

Because they're able to train the longest and they're able to train at their full capacity. And that's even the problem with like the high too high carb diets and all these things that people do. Dude, if if your stomach and you're bloating and all these things are getting in the way of you working out, why do you think this is productive? Because it's not.

SPEAKER_02 49:30

Yeah. Or like in the prep when you have too high of a stimulant dose and you can't push yourself during training anymore.

SPEAKER_00 49:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

What?

SPEAKER_00 49:36

Yeah. I mean, dude, that's why I'm happy there's things like SLU, there's things like Mats C like all these things are available now because like preps, I'm using X less stims with people now.

SPEAKER_03 49:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:47

So like their sleep is not jacked up. They're they're able to train well still. Like, I do think part of the prep issue with brain fog is stim based too. I don't think it's just food and just ex uh just tiredness. Because what happens when you plug in a crazy stimulant in somebody who's you could potentially overstimulate the brain and get into these brain fog issues and stuff. So I think that's another piece too that I'm I like. I mean, and peptides have been around for a long time. I dude, I was using peptides from Blue Sky Peptides. I'll never forget the website. It was like I was still living at my parents, so I wasn't even married yet. So like that had to that was seven years ago at a minimum. Like, that's how long ago I knew about BPC and Ipamorlin and all these things. I don't know why they got so popular all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_02 50:35

Yeah, I think it's really the GOP ones that pushed it.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

I think that opened the floodgates to like researching what a peptide was. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then everybody saw the others and they're like, wait, there's more of these things?

SPEAKER_02 50:47

Yeah, yeah. And then now, like every single rat study that comes out, it's like this is the most promising thing that ever will exist, you know. And it's like, isn't that just the Storms conversation we used to have like 10 years ago? Like it's just always the new thing until we find out.

SPEAKER_00 51:02

At least these are at least these are amino acid chains though.

SPEAKER_02 51:04

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, on on the other side, like we've we've all run like into like compounds or practices where like after enough like real world preps or like rough like fat loss phases, I think you start realizing that the risk reward just isn't there no matter how you like dress it up. So which drugs have you essentially like removed from your toolbox at this point and what led you there? And also specifically with women, like what are the main differences in how you design and run protocols for them compared to men? We already covered that a little bit, but like the margin of error for it for them is so small in the side effects, like some of them are so irreversible. So, in terms of like compound doses and like uh compound choice and and dose ceilings, like are there any hard rules that you have for like formulate, like thinking about how you think about compound usage itself?

SPEAKER_00 51:51

Yeah, so like from like a toolbox component, I don't really use clen that much anymore just because of like MOTS and SLU. I just rather use those than Clen. I also think that was a personal preference because I hated taking Clen like myself.

SPEAKER_02 52:05

Uh dude, I feel so bad. I feel so fucking bad. It jacks my sleep like at 10 micrograms.

SPEAKER_00 52:10

Yeah, it's clen's definitely one I I I don't use a ton of anymore. I've I mean I've used it with people last year and stuff, but not I 20, 30 micrograms at the time supporting role now. Yeah, uh but that was one um as far as injectables and stuff. No, I still use everything. I never got on the bandwagon of like calling EQ bad because I just knew that that was not true. Uh looking into trend. Trend trend I've been around the block. Like I've taken doses as high as 500 MIGs a week. I've you know, I've taken doses as low as 50 MIGs a week. So trend is something that I usually start at a low dose or like not early in a prep, but like probably more midway, rather, probably earlier than most people, but I'll start at like 50 megs a week. I'm really just supporting anti-catabolism function from it, cortical steroid, you know, cortical receptor activity from it. And then I'll slowly titrate it up. But I'm definitely not getting people over like 150 MIGs anymore. But I used to, like I said. I don't oh, I don't really use Halo much anymore. Really?

unknown 53:19

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

Yeah, Halo I never really saw like really helping like visually.

SPEAKER_02 53:24

Yeah, I think Windstro is much better than Halo for that.

SPEAKER_00 53:26

Yeah, I rather use I that was my argument. I said I'd rather use more milligrams with Winnie than I would with Halo. The only time I like using Halo is with somebody who like doesn't have that like aggressiveness to them. I'll usually layer it in like the last couple weeks just to help them get through their training, just because of the aggression component that we can get from it. And again, some people get that, some people don't. So I don't really use Halo all that much anymore. Uh I like Anadroll. I like Super Drawl. Again, I I think all these drugs have their uses. They have their cases and they have their context that they could be used in. Uh Superdraw, I don't use a ton anymore, just because like I've I've seen some bad liver enzymes on Super Draw, my mine included. Like in the hundreds? Yeah, I I've been in the thr I've been in the three hundreds on Super Draw. Like, and that was only on like twenty megs a day.

SPEAKER_02 54:17

For like how long? Like four or five weeks?

SPEAKER_00 54:20

It was like four weeks, and I was doing it on training days only.

SPEAKER_02 54:24

Like four weeks on training days only, and you're you get so fucking jacked up, it's uh So I like Anadrol.

SPEAKER_00 54:30

Yeah, I mean I use I use all those all those compounds. The one Halo is one I don't touch much anymore, Clen I don't really touch much anymore. But everything else I pretty much use.

SPEAKER_02 54:39

I need I need to ask this one just because otherwise people are gonna give me shit, but what about DMP?

SPEAKER_00 54:43

A DMP? I've taken it.

SPEAKER_02 54:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

I've taken it a couple times. I think it's not that big of a I I don't think it w I I was honestly like a little underwhelmed by it. I thought it was gonna like I thought it was like gonna be the bees' knees and like like as far as like like I remember I was nervous the first night I took it. I bet. And then I and then a couple days into it I was like you know what this isn't really that bad. Yeah. I'm just a little hot, and that's really it. But to be honest, man, I don't think I've really used it with anybody.

SPEAKER_02 55:16

Did you really like accelerate your rate of foul loss significantly enough to like warrant the use of it?

SPEAKER_00 55:21

No, and that's uh probably why like I've never really suggested it to anybody. Okay. Because like I didn't see like this like 20 pound weight loss all of a sudden from it. But but yeah, no, I don't really I don't really use it. I don't even know where to get it right now, to be completely honest with you. I got you numbers. Nobody needs to cut that. But yeah, no, I've taken it. I've taken it a couple times and uh I gave it a shot once, and then uh uh I tried I tried like a hundred mix a day for like ten days, then I tried like two hundred mix a day for ten days. The 200 obviously had more fat loss, but then the side effects too. T MP is interesting because like once you hit the five day mark, you're kind of at the max saturation point. Like if you can hand like the side effect potential at five days into it usually carries over to the last like whatever days follow after that. So some people argue online that like if you can make it past the first five days, it doesn't get worse.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

Interesting. Could you could you essentially like lower the city?

SPEAKER_00 56:23

Like fatigue could get worse, but yeah, but like as far as like the heat and stuff like that, when I was self-experimenting, like everything I was reading was saying, like, if you can make it past the first five days, it's usually pretty consistent after that.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

Okay, okay. Now, in in my own coaching, I think the cases that really taught me the most and helped me grow the most were the ones that really like forced me to like break the template and just learn to rely on like firsthand just principles of physiology instead of just my habit or whether my approach generally is. Like, can you share like one or two of the strangest or like most challenging DED situations you had to troubleshoot? Like where the client's response or or their labs made you rebuild the approach from the ground up, and then like if you take all of these experiences together, like how much of what you do at the end, like at the high end, would actually like you say it's pure prescription versus reading signals, like adjusting the model, and then managing the behavior.

SPEAKER_00 57:14

I think a big one for me was like anytime you give somebody enough NPP, you could always run into an estrogen problem without it actually showing you on like on paper. Yes, yes. Just because of like Nangelone's ability to make you so much more sensitive to estrogen. Like, for example, like I would get gyno at 200 plus MIGs of MPP, but then if you ran my labs, my estradiol looked normal.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

That must be how I actually had gyno. Because I well, I had gyno natural, just like my dad had gyno as well, and so my grandfather. But when I added DECA, I did have a growth of that, but my blood work was normal, so I couldn't understand why. And my theory was, oh, maybe it's like tissue specific or something like that. And then no, it's not a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 57:58

Yeah, sensitivity. It's like mammomary tissue sensitivity goes uh because of like Nandrelone's structural component, right, and its ability to bind upesterone receptors and in mammary tissue, you'll become more sensitive to estrogen when you're on higher doses of nandrolones. So, like your aromatization, I mean, and technically on paper it can aromatize a little bit, but like your your sensitivity to estro estrogen shifts, and that's why a lot of people all of a sudden start getting issues. Yeah. When I don't a lot of people think it's a prolactin problem, so then they start taking like V6 or K-Bur and then it didn't go away. It's it was probably more of an estrogen issue. So like you could take a high dose of DIM or you could take like an Olvodex or something.

SPEAKER_02 58:46

Yeah, can also deglucurate as well to support like the whole thing. Yeah, no, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 58:51

Yeah, I I well DIM's useful because it binds to receptors. Okay, okay. You can use it kind of like an olva in a way for that purpose.

SPEAKER_02 59:00

Yeah, I actually have majority of people running DIM actually, I find the very versatile compound for issues. So the last piece that I wanted to touch on is something that I think gets very ignored at high levels, is like how much the coach's own psychology shapes their approach, right? So if we're reactive or if we're too emotional to like a certain narrative that the client has, like the whole feedback loop gets really distorted for how is it that you manage like your own mentality and your bias like day to day so you can stay as objective as possible with your athletes and with the real obsessive like high performers? Like, what are some of the concrete ways you actually enforce some high standards around training, execution, adherence, fatigue management while keeping them bought into the structure long enough for the physiology actually catch up with the processes to actually work?

SPEAKER_00 59:45

You know, I that's something that takes time and like takes exposure to working with a lot of different personalities. I will say that. So, like experience is a big part of developing that over time. But if you look at things like in that regard, you know, it's just it really, man, it's just like being strict about stuff. Like, you know, I'm super strict with my cutoff time. Like, you you pass your cutoff time, like I'm not responding to your check-in. I'll go to your I'll go to your sheet, I'll update your data, but then I'll make a note that you checked in late. And yeah, like your sheet's ready for the next week, but I'm gonna make that note that says you checked in late. And really, it's just like from a sports, even a sports realm, like people who show up late to practice don't play in the game, right? If you're skipping practice, you're not gonna play in the game. And it needs to be treated like that. And some people argue, well, they're paying you, and I get that, but there's a contract, buddy. Like, it's yeah, if you want this is a two-way street. If you want me to perform a service, you have to do your part of the service too. So, like, you know, that's a big one. I'm really, you know, expect uh I always will utilize like my check-in sheet. I'll utilize like data I have that I can show somebody. Like if they start to complain about something, I could say, Well, look, you know, this has been progressing positively in this direction, or you know, if they're saying they're not really growing or something like that, I can say, Well, you don't submit your check your training videos. I don't even see any training videos from you anymore. You know, Scooby one time, Jason, had told me, he goes, I said, How like this was I mean, dude, this had to be this was years ago, but I remember I asked him, like, how do you get somebody to get blood blood work if they're not like listening? He goes, Tell them you're not doing their check-in until they get their blood work. And I was like, Okay. So then like I started to have like these mindset shifts and just was a little bit more stern, but and you're you're you'll lose people in that process, and that's normal, but you probably weren't gonna really mesh well with them anyways. And then over time, the your environment of your athletes adapts to that, and it's and now everybody kind of functions on that bandwidth with me now because it's that that is the gr that is this is the coaching experience, right? This is what this is how it works here, and it's not to dude, you you've you've you've known me now well enough, like I don't know how, but people say like I'm intimidating at first, but I don't I don't get that. But like I'm super friendly and I'm so easy to talk to. But like, and and and that's but like just do what I'm telling you to do, do it how I'm telling you to do it. Let's be respectful on that end, and I can be your friend outside of that. But if you want me to help you get to where you're asking me to get you to, where you're paying me money to get you to, these are things that are non-negotiables that you had just have to do. Yeah. So I've created that culture, and I mean that took time. And it just takes time with being stern and being okay with upsetting some people. Yeah. And I've always I've always said to myself, like in those situations, like I can't control somebody's response to what I'm about to say or what I'm about to do, but it's the right thing to say, or it's the right thing to do. So we're just gonna see how this pans out. And then I've never, if if we're getting into like a not an argument, but like a heated conversation, that stuff, like once it gets to the point where I'm starting to become reactive and I'm not thinking, I don't answer them till the next day. I just stop answering. Yeah because then I know I'll have a much more clear answer or conversation the next day.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:17

Yeah, I've I've done that before. Like when I came out of surgery, I really couldn't handle the the like doing my check-ins. So I literally just told people, like, hey, I'm gonna do your check-ins tomorrow, because today I just can't. And then they get a high quality piece as opposed to getting like a single paragraph of just keep doing what you're doing. You know, like I don't I don't want to be that coach. So thousand six anymore. You know, Dom, that was really fucking dense. Thanks again for coming in and opening up the hood for us, not just on on what you do, but how you think about all of this stuff. It's it's really rare to get this type of transparency around peptides and and and thyroid and TDs and like from someone who simultaneously work with like teaching coaches, formulating projects, and still in the trenches with real athletes. Like, we just appreciate you making the time and brands. Oh, yeah, that's a full box, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:58

Yeah, and that was fun. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:01

If you made it this far, you're clearly not into just tell me what to do, crowd. You're the kind of person who wants to understand what's actually happening in your system. And Dom just handed you a lot of fucking levers that you can start re-examining today, whether it's like where you're throwing peptides, how you're treating your thyroid, like how serious your off-season really is, and like whether your current approach is operating just off of templates or true physiology. Like, take away one thing, just one single thing from this episode, run and experiment with it. Like audit your own logic, ask better questions about your labs, rebuild your own like off-season phases. And the the edge of the space really belongs to people who think, not just to people who grind. We've got we've got more of these episodes coming every single Friday. We're dropping another Opticast episode with someone who's actually operating at this high level, people who can talk about programming, physiology, and business without dumbing it down or hiding behind a bunch of buzzwords that just makes you unable to understand what we're talking about. So if it's the way that we think it did, make sure you're subscribed, share with the coach or a training partner when you hear it, and be ready for the next deep dive. Dom, thank you again. And for everyone listening, stay curious, stay rude, that's what you're thinking, and we'll see you next Friday. Peace out.