Successful Bodybuilding Talk - How Minerals, Supplements, and Training Changes Can MUTATE You

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🎓 ABOUT THIS VIDEO 
In this episode, Nathan and Aubrey dive deep with Alex Marlier on the realities of building a serious physique, addressing common misconceptions about steroids, nutrition, and recovery strategies that work in the real world—not just social media highlights. If you're passionate about sustainable muscle growth and health, this conversation is golden.

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🧠 TIMESTAMPS 
00:00 - Introduction: The realities of building a serious physique in the modern world
02:20 - The importance of foundational training and mental principles
11:50 - Steroid protocols: high-dose trends, mechanistic insights, and safe practices
16:00 - Mineral and nutrient demands for enhanced performance
20:00 - Cycle length, biofeedback, and managing health during bulking
25:00 - Insulin and other supplements for optimizing nutrient utilization
30:00 - The role of fat, fats, and nutrition strategies for longevity
35:00 - Community, mentorship, and the limitations of self-coaching
40:00 - The importance of collaboration among coaches and athletes
45:00 - Future directions: peptides, mitochondria, and optimizing cellular health
50:00 - Lifestyle vs. competitive bodybuilding: managing expectations and long-term health
55:00 - Final advice: tracking, stress management, and sustainable progress
1:00:00 - The impact of stress on gut health and performance
1:05:00 - Balancing lifestyle and bodybuilding: practical strategies
1:10:00 - The role of community and mentorship in bodybuilding
1:15:00 - Nutritional strategies for enhanced athletes
1:20:00 - Closing thoughts and future directions in health and bodybuilding

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Stop being a fucking retard. Understand how we think about peptides in the same way that we talk about steroids. You don't just go on and mix DECA and Trend. You also don't go and you stack all of the fucking DHTs, these things for steroids. You should know these things for fucking peptides as well. And dare I say for supplements. If you want to do this thing, you kind of have to have a fuck ton of knowledge. Welcome guys to another episode of the Opticast with me, Nathan.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

And me, Aubrey.

SPEAKER_02 0:26

Where today we're pulling back the curtain of what it actually takes to build a serious physique in the real world. Not the highlight takes of, you know, that you see, but like on social media, but the real like sequencing, the constraints, the mistakes, the recovery failures, and the decisions that separate people who make continuous progress from people who just keep cycling through the same ceiling. We're talking off-season construction, training philosophy, the GI absorption, and the problems that no one wants to address until they're forced to when the drug stacks become the problem instead of the solution, and what self-coaching actually looks like versus what people ride themselves on. So my guest today is someone I have tremendous respect for. Alex came for uh back for bodybuilding after a decade away. And rather than just picking up where he left off, he rebuilt the entire foundation from scratch. And the results I think speak for themselves. In roughly a year, this dude went from 165 to 225 leaner than he's ever fucking been at his previous peak, doing it under the guidance of one of the most respected coaches in this industry, Kurt Havens, while simultaneously applying everything he was learning to his own clients. Alex trains and coaches out of a place of genuine first principles thinking. He's not running what forum say, he's not copying what work for someone else. He's mapping his own biology, his own constraints, his own response patterns, and building from there. His approach to training, to nutrition, to recovery, and compound selection is methodical, precise, and rooted in the level of self-awareness that most people in this space just never get to develop. He's also a coach who works with real people inside real lives, not just competitive athletes in ideal conditions. And that distinction matters enormously in how we think about what really works. Alex, welcome to the show, brother.

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Thanks for the introduction, man. That was a hell of an introduction. I appreciate it. That's awesome, brother.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Good to have you here. Thank you so much for your time. So you you you walked away 200 pounds, and then you came back a decade later at 165. Fuck, I know that story. That's almost exactly what happened to me. And within a year, you're 225 leaner than before. Now, most people coming back, they either panic and just add like everything back to the same like doses and all of this shit and just like run the same peak, or they skip the foundation completely. Like, what did you actually do first before you touched anything aggressive? And when did you realize that the order of these things matter more than the compounds themselves?

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Fuck, man. So tell that story. So when I decided to do this, so I had herniated discs in my back, like horrible herniated discs for um Is that what took you out? Yeah, no, no, that wasn't what took me out of bodybuilding. What took me out of bodybuilding, and I think this is important for people to understand, um, bodybuilding isn't something that you can just hap-do. You can be a lifestyle guy or you can be a bodybuilder. There's no in between. And I think a lot of people kind of make that mistake. So I'll take the drugs and then uh I'll just fucking throw it on my lifestyle. And they don't get the results, they blame the genetics, they blame this, they blame that, they blame everything other than realizing that they're just not living like a bodybuilder. So I was at a point in my life where I could no longer live like a bodybuilder. And that doesn't just mean chicken and rice. Like the way that I had my diet laid out, the way I had my nutrition laid out, it was like living like an athlete. You know, I kept myself to a very high standard because I knew what was needed. You know, when we put these things in our bodies, so if you look at a performance athlete, if you look at an NFL player, because of the way that they train, because of the way that they have to perform, you can't look at RDA values on anything. You can't go, oh, I just need this much vitamin C and this much magnesium and this like you're in a whole different ballgame. And that's a natural athlete. You now have higher needs of minerals, higher needs of antioxidants, higher needs and not just like a little bit higher minerals, greatly a lot higher.

SPEAKER_02 4:18

It's not like going from three to four hundred milligrams of magnesium. It's a little bit more than that.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

The magnesium is not even the hardest part for people. That's anybody can supplement magnesium. You're talking very high levels of potassium, very high levels of calcium. And calcium, nobody's ever eating enough potassium. They're never eating enough calcium.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

That's why I supplement with both.

SPEAKER_03 4:38

Yeah. And so on a performance level, when you go from natural, so and that's and you also have you're talking about B vitamins, everything up to run all the systems your body, there's the inputs, and people forget about that. And like we talk about peptides, we talk about steroids, and how does anybody get interest in these things? They look it up online and they read a bunch of cool shit. If I were to send you what like vitamin A does to the body, and no one I didn't put vitamin A on there, I just put a random compound. People will be like, holy shit, give me that.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:10

Yeah. But like you tell somebody, like, hey man, you need more of this, more of that. They're like, oh, fuck it. Like, what that's not important. And it's like, dude, come on. So, like, you throw growth hormone, testosterone, every other anything else that into that stack at the level that you need to put on a certain amount of muscle. You now have astronomical nutrient needs that you might not even be able to keep up with. That could be, and I have some theories of part of the reason why things fall apart towards the end.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Fuck, dude. I was just thinking that. That is such an interesting take.

SPEAKER_04 5:44

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 5:46

Because I I always like, I'm trying to figure out, like, oh, is it training volume or is it the drugs? Is it too many different drugs, or is it certain species? Like, what is it exactly? I'm trying to isolate the variables and make some changes. And you just made me realize, like, dude, it could just be that you just can't keep up with the demand. Like, literally the same problem that we face with mitochondrial peptides when we are just like putting in the state of revving up the engine, but there's nowhere to go. So the the new reactions that you have inside with mitochondria create more reactive oxygen species, and you don't have enough of a balance for that anymore. So your peptides literally start backfiring and you start feeling worse when you're taking them. So that's fucking interesting as shit. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

What do people do? They crank it up more.

SPEAKER_02 6:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:26

They're not realizing they're exacerbating a problem. And so now that you've because you've done that, you now need even more off time. But people don't want to take that off time. So they don't take enough off time. They've cranked everything up or they stay on too long. And now they get to a point where they never actually build because they never get to a point of like frustration, right? Where you set a new baseline. You have to go back to natural, you have to replenish the body, you have to get to a point where sleep is good, everything's good, because all that is telling me if my energy is good, my sleep is good, everything's good, nutrients are probably back where they need to be. But we can also test these things. We'll go into that later. But I've ran some of these tests myself recently, because now we have the technology to do that. And yeah, when you run high amounts of gear, you become nutrient deficient, no matter what your fucking diet is.

unknown 7:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

You lose the body. There's no way to keep up.

SPEAKER_03 7:15

Yeah. There's no way to keep up with the oxidative stress. Like I was looking at the outcome of a man that if I didn't know, if I wasn't looking at myself, I would have assumed this person was just eating like shit. Chicken, rice, nothing else, diet. No supplements, nothing, just had to start from square one. And then you add that this person's taking all these things at high levels that they're deficient in, and you go, okay, this is starting to make sense why I feel this way, why I need to come off. Yeah. And now I know how to structure off, right? But these are things I kind of intuitively knew and was taught. I had a really good coach when I first started. His name was Aminali. He's not really around anymore. He was a very popular coach. He put some guys on the Olympia stage back in the um early 2000s. And he taught me more than anything, nutrition. He taught me how to eat. And um, I grew a lot because of that in a short period of time. But I knew what the training needed to be like, what sleep needed to be like, what eating needed be like. So I went to build my business. I ended up building a commodities trading business. I didn't have time to do any of that anymore. And then I got married, life happened, everything happened. So at some point, I got into kind of like a hybrid strongman trading. And um, I remember I was on a trip visiting family, and I'm doing these um, what was it? It was like eight sets of two reps on squat. And on the eighth set, and I know like my form's starting to slip, and I'm like, fuck, I got just one more set. I just feel this weird thing where I thought like I pulled a hamstring or something. And like, dude, like I just kept like, I'm like, well, fuck, dude. It's just like I can kind of lift through it. And so I just kind of like over the weeks kept moving through and it kept getting worse and worse until like I'm like, I can't fucking bend over and shit anymore, but it doesn't feel like my back. It feels like my hamstring. And I'm like, oh, like I've herniated a disc. Like it's on my nerve, it's pushing on the nerve. But it took a while until I realized, like, oh, that is what's happened. Because I've never I'd never really injured myself before. Like I had like little tears and shit that get black and blue, but nothing off the bone, nothing like no back injury. There's no back injury with my family.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

They get black. Okay. Little tears. I put a grocery bag wrong inside of the car today, and my shoulder is fucking hurting. Like, that's what I consider a small little micro tear or something, not black.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

But not like debilitated, you know what I mean? Like, there's like there's injuries where it's like, dude, we can move from this, and then there's debilitated. That's great. Um, and so like at that point, dude, I was limited in what I could do. I didn't know how to fix it. I'd gone to BT, I did all these things. Eventually I went to a surgeon, got the fucking surgery, and uh, and that was the outcome. I was 165, I wasn't moving, I wasn't doing anything. My wife was pregnant, and I was like, fuck, I think I only have like seven months to get it done. And I knew what I needed to do. I knew where I wanted to be, I knew how to get there, and I knew I had to lock the fuck in. And like, I was like, I'm going to fucking run a cycle, I'm going to eat the food the way that I know how to do it, I'm going to do the training, and I'm going to lock in. And that's what I did. And still do. Like, and I just haven't fallen out of it since. I fell in love with it again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

I love it. I love it. That's uh that your your story is actually very, very similar to mine, right? Like in the way that you like stepped out and the way that you came back and stuff. And I find that very interesting. So let's dive a little bit into the details of what this looks like. You ran 800 fucking milligrams of trend in an off-season, while the majority of coaches won't even touch it outside prep, right? And your argument for it is mechanistic. Trend has a higher affinity for the androgen receptor than testosterone. So doing a gram of tests and microdosing trend has the logic kind of backwards. So, what conditions actually do you have to be true before trend belongs in an off-season? And what's like the thing that most people are missing when they're either avoiding it entirely or running it without the dietary or the monitoring infrastructure that makes your results actually work?

SPEAKER_03 11:17

Of course. So there's two parts to this. One, like going into the mentality of it, you got to remember like when I saw bodybuilding, we're talking about like 2015. Well, when I learned how to bodybuild 2013 to 2015, 800 milligrams of trend is not a lot of trend.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Right.

SPEAKER_03 11:32

The starting dose for your first trend cycle was 350 milligrams. And most dudes just did 700.

SPEAKER_02 11:38

GH15 used to say that once you get to 150 milligrams of trend a day, that's when things get fun.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

Yeah. Yeah. So, like that was, dude, that was what I was coming from, where like 800 wasn't a big dose. And so everybody's like, You want 800? I can't take over 100. I'm like, I didn't know people did that. Like, I've never, I never even thought about taking 100. I remember reading one time on like a European forum, people were taking 100 milligrams of trend with 100 milligrams of test as TRT. And like a doctor was like proposing that. So in the UK, people were just taking trend for TRT. Like it doesn't do anything. Like, so to me, like 100 milligrams is like taking a like a Tylenol. And like I know today that's not true, and that's not the message I'm trying to get across.

SPEAKER_02 12:20

I think it's a little bit more than a Tylenol.

SPEAKER_03 12:23

But like that was my mentality. Like, I had never taken a small dose of trend. Like the smallest dose of trend, like my coach was like, we're just gonna do a little. And he put me on 350 a week, cranked it up to 75 a day towards the end of that. And I was like, oh, cool. Like, great, that's how you do it. And so when I was like, hey man, like we could crank this to 800, like there wasn't like, oh, I was like, okay, cool.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Sounds about right. Do you do you think there's there's something to this, right? To maybe 19 Norse? I was talking to Tom Schuster, and he is running a very high uh amount of DECA. And in the past, he has not been able to tolerate DECA at all. Why? Because he was always doing high test, low DECA. So when he swapped to doing high DECA, actually he didn't get the side effects at all. He actually got a better mood and like a completely different response. Have you noticed anything like that since you've been with like such a different range in trend balone where like after a certain threshold, it's not like it hurts more and perhaps it just helps in different ways.

SPEAKER_03 13:27

So, like dosing-wise, what is the thing that people are afraid of? What do people complain about the most with the dose? It's psychological side effects and it's sleep. If you're gonna get the sleep, you're gonna get it on any dose. True.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

Why? Because of the oxarin receptor, right? Like it trend balone interacts exactly with that, which is why you should be using a very specific medication to deal with sleep and trend balone because it targets that receptor exactly. But let's all sidetrack here.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

Yeah. So, and there are things you have to do for sleep. You know, you have to be intelligent about how you're going to manage it, monitor it. And for me, like with Trent, I accept the fact that like I can fall asleep on Trent, I can stay asleep, but I'm not sleeping nine hours a night. I'm not sleeping eight hours a night. I'm waking up six to seven hours, seven if I'm lucky, probably around six, but I'm not tired. Like I'm good. I'm not tired during the day. I'm not napping. Like I'm let's go. And then so like you either can manage it, you either have everything in place to deal with it. You kind of you gotta be intelligent. You don't just want to take this stuff. You gotta think about what's going on. Like you're talking about. I don't know the medication that you're talking about. Maybe I've done it, I don't know, because I've I've been able to figure out the sleep thing through trial and error. Um, but the psychological stuff, like that is very much you either you either are or you aren't, right? And if like you're somebody who has the psychological side effects, it might not be a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Yeah, like like for me, I can tell the difference between going from like 20 milligrams to going to 30 milligrams of trend a day. Like it's it's visible in the people around me can notice it. It's very, very like fast, right? So I'm trying trend balone and anthate now in the off season. I think I'm gonna be able to tolerate a higher dose just because of like I don't have any like punch of trend balone like multiple times every single day, you know.

SPEAKER_03 15:17

I I agree with that part. And uh even doing the everyday, so when I take trend, I'll usually do everyday enanthate injections to keep it super stable.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:27

The other thing I do is I'll run what is it called? Makuna prinas or whatever. Yeah, macuna prians. Um and I run that with P5. So P5P I'll take towards nighttime and the macuna I'll take before I work out. Um managing estrogen, keeping your like if the estrogen goes high, for me, like estrogen high on its own is the only thing that makes me irritable. That gives me some kind of psychological side effect. So if my estrogen is high and then I add in a 19 noir, there's problems.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:59

But my I don't let my estrogen. I learned that a long time ago, so it's never I've never had that issue.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

So for you high or low, where do you keep yours? I usually like to keep it in the 20s. Uh below 60. Okay, yeah. I can't tolerate that much. Like it's it's way too much for me. If like 17 is too low, 23 is fucking amazing. 27, I start feeling weird. Like it's definitely.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Yeah, I mean, anywhere, yeah. I've been anywhere between 20 to 40. Like, um, if it's like even 60, like I might be like, fuck it, but usually I'm like, it probably needs to be a little bit lower. When it goes above that, that's when I've noticed. Like, just and I don't know for sure. I just know like when I've seen a test above 60, I'm like, that explains it. When it's below and I feel fine and it comes back at like 45, I'm like, huh, or like 55. I'm like, huh. I thought it was lower than that.

SPEAKER_01 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

And I'm like, okay, well, I guess it's that's fine. Usually Kurt will be like, oh, we could get it a little bit lower. And I'm like, ah, you know, yeah. What if it gets too low? Like, fuck it, just leave it.

SPEAKER_02 16:54

Now, the the trend here also with Kurt's like theory, and that's that's the stack that I'm running right now as well. You ran 50 milligrams of Anadrol, and you find that to be sort of like a hard ceiling. 100-100, right? And you found that to be like sort of your ceiling, right?

SPEAKER_03 17:09

I would never take 100 milligrams of Anadrol again. But you would do 50, right? I would do 50, yes.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Yeah, because you on the on the podcast, you actually mentioned that you found like 50 to be like a good ceiling of like where you would go, like again, right? So and and then like that's the part where you where things stay productive. And and I think most people they either abandon orals entirely or they abuse the fuck out of them. So, like, what's your framework for using something like Anadrom intelligently? Like, how long are you using at what point in the cycle? And what are some signals that tell you that it's actually working versus the system is like absorbing it, but it's costing more than it's returning for you.

SPEAKER_03 17:46

Yeah, so with Anadrol, with any oral, right? Like, you realize that you're ending your cycle now. Because you're even if you don't, your cycle's done no matter what. Like, what's it?

SPEAKER_02 17:55

It's like a clock starts.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

It's yeah, it's you and you can't stay on for a long term because what they're doing, like we talked earlier about like nutrients and everything else, you're damaging a system of your body that you need to keep growing. And you're going to put it into a state, unless you're you're genetically gifted, which I'm not. When it comes in my liver, dude, like it is going to crap out with anadrol within three to four weeks. And at that point, if I don't cut it, yeah, for me, that's that's what I get. Dude, that's wild. Yeah. I used to get longer. I'm 37 now, so I don't get a lot of, it doesn't give me a lot of time anymore. But like back in the day, it used to be a little bit longer. I used to be able to run. I remember like my first coach had me run 50 milligrams of anadrol two days in a row. And then he was like, oh, we got to take the water off. So we do Annavar and then Anadrol and old school shit, dude. Um, I don't recommend doing it that way anymore. But we could I could do that for 12 weeks and be fine. By the end of it, I'm like, I'm done and I don't want to eat anything, but like I'd be fine. Now, three weeks and I start to notice like not so much my appetite, but I notice based on my digestion and stuff, that I'm starting to get a little um my liver's getting a little backed up. I can tell that bile ducts are becoming an issue, all that.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

But then you start supplementing for that, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:12

I supplement in the beginning. That's when I I start to that's for me. At that point, around that time period, I've gotten a lot out of the cycle. Strength has gone up. I've already kind of been risky. To me, it's like I'm done. You know, the moment I get the red flag. With trend like eight to ten, I would say I don't have like I don't have like a set time frame. It kind of goes like this. I'll have really, really good results, and then I'll have a point where it kind of gets, I'm like, eh, it's just not moving like it was. Yeah. Let's throw the anadrol in. And then we'll throw the anadroll in and I'll get to a point where I'm like, it's still moving, but like I don't really feel good. Like I'm starting to get bloated, digestion's slowing down. And so I've got to wait. It's like I'm either gonna create a digestive issue that could be bad enough where it could really slow me down for a bit, and I don't want to do that. I don't want to create that problem.

SPEAKER_02 20:09

Um I really're essentially letting you're essentially letting your biofeedback regulate the length of your cycles.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

Yeah, yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

That's interesting. I like that a lot. I am not currently doing that, but I like that a lot.

SPEAKER_03 20:21

Yeah. So, like, and I've had Kurt been like, well, you could we got one more week. I'm like, fucking out, dude. We're done. That's it.

SPEAKER_02 20:27

Yeah, it's just like I I decided I decided to auto-regulate my like my health phase. I was gonna do eight weeks at the sixth week. I was like, Jesus fucking Christ, I am fucking ready to start this shit. I can't wait anymore. And all everything is looking good health-wise. So I got to week seven, I'm like, fuck it. I'm starting this thing on week seven. Yeah, so I should have the same ability to like, if I'm feeling like shit and my joints hurt and my sleep is shit and all this stuff, I'm pulling it, which is what I've done in all the previous phases. But I'll still plan out, like, okay, let's try 26 weeks, let's try 24 weeks. But then I might get to week 19 and just be like, I can't fucking do this anymore. I'm tapping out. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:05

Well, because think about it, like how do I do that? Yeah, we take away from potential options, right? So, like, if I can cut something off sooner, so this is what we did, uh, Kurt and I. We cut it off as soon as there becomes any kind of issue because the thing is, like, now I don't need instead of running like a four 12 week, 14 week, 16 week, whatever, we do it like that, and then there could be a small cleanup period, kind of in between, yeah, you can see. Then I can I can continue. So then like now, like I have an even longer growth period by shortening my growth period and having like the cleanup phase in between where I'm able to kind of like get back into it. But you know, we kind of made a mistake with the trend where we didn't give it a long enough period of time. Which is my fault, honestly. I was like, I think I'm fucking because dude, my results were phenomenal. Like I got so stoked, and I'm like, I uh like you. Fork. I'm like, I'm gonna, it's just I'm gonna be 240.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

You know, and like you kind of get carried away. And Kerr was like, we need to go a little bit longer. Let's take more time off. And I'm like, it's been like this about. And I had the bigger SD podcast coming up. I'm like, I want to make as much progress as I can. So I hopped on too soon and like, big mistake, dude. The problem with doing that, and again, it comes back to what I'm talking about. Like, you have to have enough time to get your body back to a state where it's sufficient to grow again.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 22:27

Otherwise, it's kind of like you're digging yourself a deeper hole. And that's what I did for myself. I just wasn't growing, dude.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

And you know what becomes really concerning when you don't even have to do anything to sleep on Trent. Because what that told me at that point, dude, is like I've tapped out my fucking nervous system to the point where like the trend isn't even, dude, it's not even fucking with my sleep anymore.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Yeah, that's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 22:50

Because there's nothing, there's there's nothing for it to push on, dude.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Yeah, no, at that point, we're pulling the face. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. So you you you'd like on your second off season, you were waking up like destroyed and you had like upper body stalling, your your legs were growing on on the least amount of volume, and like your instinct was to lag more volume to the lagging body parts. Like, what does it feel like from the inside? Like when you're like you're you have momentum, but like you're you have to make a decision here, like what you're gonna do. Like, is are your your legs are growing more with less volume, but we should add more volume to the upper body parts? Like, what what is like what's what's the what's the approach that we take here?

SPEAKER_03 23:32

So it's not like at first I'm putting two and two together, right? I'm kind of like it's like you look at pictures after and you're like, oh fuck, dude, like this is growing and this isn't, like this should be growing and this shouldn't. Fuck, but like part of that too, couldn't, and then it comes back to this thing. Could have my legs even grown more? Yeah, like why wasn't I responding to the volume too? Like, why couldn't I handle anymore? Like I was already tapped out. So anything that I was trying to build by adding more and more and more, like, dude, I was waking up, like my shoulders were so if the only thing that woke me up in the middle of the night was my shoulders were so sore, it would ache. Like my upper body would ache. My arms, my tendons, my joints, like everything just ached, dude. And like I'm like, but my legs felt fine. My legs felt fine, they're recovering great, they're growing. But like even then, they could have grown more and everything's aching because, like, dude, my body's spent. Like, I need to take time, I need to one, take a D load, I need to come off the gear, I need to come off everything. I need to run a health phase, I need to clean up my digestion. Like, dude, I was having horrible bloating because I never gave enough time between the anadrol and then pushing food again. Yeah, yeah. Like, we took like the food down for two weeks. I'm like, oh no, like let's keep going, like, you know, and it wasn't all a loss, man. Like, and it's a lot of dumb shit that I did. Kurt was like, I don't know if we should do that. I'm like, dude, we got like it've got to go on the momentum. And so, like, there's times it's funny. There's there's Alex the coach, there's Alex the athlete, and then there's Alex the athlete coach. And the problem with being an athlete coach is it's easy to fuck myself because it's like I've got to, it's a learning experience. It's just for the good of my future clients, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:07

Well, you have so many ways of fucking yourself up. And and the worst thing is you have good reasons for it.

SPEAKER_03 25:14

Yeah. Kind of, yes. Kind of. Like would I tell someone else to do it? No. But it's like, let's find out. Now I can tell you this is why you should not do this thing that I did. Yeah. Because here's what happened, right? And then when I went and did the neutral testing, so I tested all the metabolites that are coming out of my body. So I did like basically you test urine, you test blood, and you look at all the organic acids. And it basically tells you based on these acids what's all fucked up. And like, dude, it was bad. Um, my neurotransmitters are really good, which is great. Like plenty of GABA, plenty of everything else. I'm like, okay, serotonin's fine. But like the candida overgrowth. I had some um dysbiosis markers popping up. I had some absorption markers popping up. I had things telling me that like my it wasn't even my body wasn't even transporting most of the amino acids that I was eating.

SPEAKER_02 26:07

Yeah, I was just thinking like you were probably, wasn't this the time that you were eating a fuck ton of calories as well?

SPEAKER_03 26:12

Like, at this point, I was eating no, not seven. I was eating, at this point, I was eating probably 350 grams of protein, which is a bad idea. Bad idea. We that brought it down to 300. Because I wasn't counting, I wasn't counting, I was only counting direct protein. So I was counting direct protein, which was 270, and then I was eating a thousand grams of carbs, and then I was eating like no fat, which is another really fucking dumb idea. So, like, what else comes back? Like, oh, my omega-3 balance is omega-3 is great. Mega six was done, dude. There's none. I had nothing. I had no omega 6.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

It's in fast food, but it's like, no, you need a balance of so necessary. You need a balance of them, dude, just like we need ALA. And no one gets ALA. No one is fucking eating hazelnuts.

SPEAKER_03 27:00

You can't build muscle without omega six.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Like you can, but not efficiently. Yeah, you want you want to fix your GH problems with your hands and your nerves? Eat fucking hazelnuts. You want a yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:12

I use for me, it's like my fats that I I I push on. And like now I eat a lot more fat. I like personally, I like hemp oil. I like walnuts, I like olive oil, I like avocado oil. Sometimes I'm mostly using olive oil, hemp. What about coconut oil? Walnut. I eat coconut oil in the form of coconut kefir.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Okay. Because coconut oil is like the actual fits for good. No, it's great in like everything.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Yeah. Flax oil and dairy, dude. Um, but yeah, I have probably, if I combine it all, I'm probably up to like any day between five to ten grams of fat from coconut. Um good. And then a lot of fat from I like walnuts a lot, dude. I like hemp a lot, I like olive oil a lot. Those are probably my favorites. A little bit of flax and dairy, dude. Dairy, I think dairy fat, if you get the right source, is really good.

SPEAKER_02 27:59

Yeah. Well, dude, I I eat milk. I have milk, I eat cheese, and I supplement with calcium every single day. And I do it with calcium hydroxypatite, which has it's newer, but it has like some very good head-to-head comparison with citrate and better in terms of bone, like the density itself of the bone, not just the structure of it. So I'm using that because I've I've had like stress fractures and shit like that before. But people generally don't get enough calcium, they don't get enough ALA, they don't get enough magnesium. I mean, now people are supplementing with magnesium, but still, like, how much magnesium do you actually need? And we still we still have like misunderstandings that people have is like magnesium glycinate is for sleep. No, the fucking glycine is for sleep, not the magnesium.

SPEAKER_03 28:46

Yeah, magnesium is magnesium at the end of the day, it's something you absorb.

SPEAKER_02 28:50

Magnesium 308 just is just less studied. That's all it is. That's why we don't think it's wild claims.

SPEAKER_03 28:57

Dude, yeah, and that's why I tell people I'm like, take whatever you tolerate. If make sure you shit your brains out, try a different one.

SPEAKER_04 29:02

Exactly.

SPEAKER_03 29:03

Like it doesn't have to be that complicated. By the chip. And it's easy to it's easy to eat a lot. Dude, you can eat a lot of magnesium. People are like, You can't you can't get it from your diet. I'm like, that's bullshit. Yeah, you can. Bullshit. You can, and you supplement a little bit on top, too. Like there's times I've had in my diet over 800 milligrams of magnesium without supplementing.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Yeah, dude. That's around what my my daily markers look like.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

Yeah. Potato, spinach, black shrap, molasses. Like, that's a lot, dude. You eat enough of those three things, you're gonna get a good amount of it. Then you add in all the other shit on top of it throughout the day and you add it all up. Like, it's not hard.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Yeah, it's really our electrolyte drink that we use actually has magnesium in it, like a very small amount of magnesium. Oh, which is electrolytes, I mean, they're a sensitive topic, but I just do it because it's flavored water.

SPEAKER_03 29:49

Well, why is it a sensitive though?

SPEAKER_02 29:52

Well, it's a sensitive topic because one like minerals are not stored long term like uh like people assume, right? So that's uh we need we need to be constantly intaking them. Absolutely. And we also expend a lot of sodium. We are we are told to not use too much sodium on our diets, and we're also not exposed to enough potassium, even though I eat a lot of spinach and potatoes. But a lot of people don't like it because it's like, well, you can get most of your needs from your diet, and like the industry is just like a multi-billion dollar industry that's like prying on selling salt and flavored shit and stuff like that. And I'm like, well, there are some that are really good, there's also some that are really bad. Like the reason I stopped using this one that has magnesium is because it has too much vitamin B6. I don't want to have permanent nerve damage, so I'm not trying to get like 50 milligrams of vitamin B6 a day. So like you gotta you gotta think about all of these things. And and people don't generally think about these things, right? Where they're just like, oh, it's more vitamins, it's more, so it's better. It's like more is not always better, you know. More be sea salt. Yeah, like mm-hmm, like more is better in terms of like going for like vitamin B, right? It has no ceiling, but you need to know which vitamin you're talking about, and there's quite a few of them, but in any case, I think the the mineral.

SPEAKER_03 31:11

Sorry, go on. No, no, no, go ahead. The mineral thing is interesting. Like, I there's this really cool guy I came across recently, and I've been uh consulting with him. His name's Adam O'Mackie. He's this bodybuilder from Australia, he's a coach, brilliant guy, fucking nuts, too. Like, really fun to listen to, very uh aggressive, argumentative. He fights with a lot of people across the industry. He called out like Milo Sarkov and had this whole thing with Phil Vies, and it was epic, dude. It was epic because this guy is actually really fucking smart. And he put out this electrolyte framework, and it was the first time I've seen anybody really say it as it is. And it just kind of shocked people who read it because he's like, look, if you're a hundred kilogram enhanced athlete, enhanced bodybuilder, you probably need anywhere from 10 to 12 grams of potassium a day. Anywhere from probably five to eight grams of sodium with that, okay, about a gram of magnesium and three to three point four grams, about three point four grams of calcium. And people hear that and they're like, that's a fucking lot, dude. Like, what's your blood work? Like this, that it's like I'm curious, so what do I get? So I tried it. Talked with a guy, and I'm like, fuck it, dude. Like, I'll try anything, you know, especially when it comes to nutrition. And I can tell you it's the best performance I've ever had in my life. Like, because his whole argument, and it's pretty, if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. You look at the research, it makes sense. Like, we talk about the big buzzword is fatigue. Everyone's fatigued, fatigue this, fatigue that, fatigue this. Back in the day, people used to just train and not worry about that shit. Now, these days, like everyone's nervous system is like fucking fragile. But what is the nervous system? Outside of like B vitamins and all that stuff, it's all conducted on minerals. And so if somebody comes in there and they've only eaten like 300 milligrams of calcium in the last few days and they expect to recruit as many motor units as possible or make it through a long workout, they're not going to. If they're if their sodium is a four four thousand and their potassium is one, right? Magnesium's at 200 milligrams, like, yeah, dude, of course you're fatigued and you feel like shit. Is that because you trained hard or is that because you're you just didn't think about performance nutrition at all? And I think that's the issue people are forgetting. Like, again, we are asking ourselves to be F1 race cars in some ways, but we want to treat it like we're a fucking Volvo. And it's fine if you're a lifestyle guy.

SPEAKER_04 33:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:37

Most of my clients are lifestyle guys, they're older. They just they're longevity people. They're not doing anything to failure, they don't have to worry about mega dosing minerals and doing all this because they're not athletes. They're just trying to feel good and look good. I only have to optimize them for longevity. And it's still more than what people are eating, but it's a very manageable amount. When you get to performance, people are like, that's really hard. I'm like, yeah, but you're taking 10 IUs of growth hormone and 1.5 grams of gear. What did you think was gonna be the requirement? You're just not you're gonna take it and good shit happens, just then there's no my body doesn't need anything else. It's fine, just the way I've been running it for the last few years. Like, come on.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Yeah, you just feel great, bro. You feel you feel very good on high amounts of gear and high amounts of GH. You feel really nice. Because the because the body doesn't fight back, right? The body wants to grow and be as big as possible. It's not like actively trying to limit every single anabolic process in your body, right?

SPEAKER_03 34:34

Yeah. And so, and I don't know like what the actual, you know, I'm learning a lot about it. I've done some experiments on myself over time. Like I've been having clients do more, not to the same level, but bringing their mineral content up. And I've had the same result with people every single time is that as the ratio improves, their performance greatly improves. As calcium gets especially like around two grams for a lot of guys, their performance improves. And the other thing why people look at like the calcium is like that's really high. It's like, but how much is actually being absorbed? What's your vitamin D levels at? Right? Like how much sodium are you consuming? Because if you're consuming a lot of sodium too, which we need, along with the higher amounts of potassium, you're going to pee out a lot of calcium with that. You're going to excrete more calcium. And then you also need more magnesium, which the balance between magnesium and calcium is also really important as well. And so it's about the balance, it's more about the balance of all these things at the right quantities, more than just, I think some people just megadose one. Like everyone will megadose sodium and magnesium now. And like that's what I see every single time when I ask guys, I'm like, let me see your mineral content. And then as soon as I adjust it, it's just, it's a it's wow. Like, I don't have any drop-off in the gym anymore. I used to do this many sets and then get tired. Now I can do this many. Like my own training, I was doing like I got to the point, especially after the trend cycle, I'm doing like one working set for these groups. I'm like, I must have just gotten that strong or something. Like, no, dude, I depleted my body. And I wasn't focusing enough on these things. And so I got back into it, looked at like my middle content, and cranked everything up, dude, especially with the calcium.

SPEAKER_02 36:12

Yeah. Yeah, I was looking at my numbers. I run 1.5 grams of calcium a day. So it's not super high, but it's still that's still pretty decent.

SPEAKER_04 36:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:21

And that's because I'm I'm only eating 2,000 calories a day. So I'm not having like a full glass of milk. I'm having 60 grams of milk. So it probably looks significantly better on a regular, you know.

SPEAKER_03 36:31

Yeah. So I've got my training days are five, just under 5,000 calories right now.

SPEAKER_02 36:35

Oh man, I can't wait to get there.

SPEAKER_03 36:37

And I don't, but dude, I don't I'm hungry. I'm hungry, dude. I'm hungry all the time. Well, you're eating a fuck ton of carbs, right? So my my total breakdown right now is 230 grams of protein total. Like I count everything. Um, on a training day, it's 80 grams of fat and then 800 grams of carbs. And then non-training days, I crank the fat up to 100. And I'm gonna keep cranking the fat up a little bit more, a little bit more. Right now, I just started my massing phase. So I just started, I just hopped back on cycle. I was off for I think like six weeks or something like that. Not a super long time, but enough for like I felt great, dude. Everything I needed to get done felt, I was done, and I was like, okay, let's go. Just like we're talking about. That's what I did.

SPEAKER_01 37:14

That's what I did. I just that's what I was telling you. I just pulled it a week seven, I'm gonna say, fuck it, let's run it.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

Like, I don't even know the weeks to be honest. I can kind of look at it and go, I think it's roughly this, but I hit a point where for like over a week, dude, two weeks, I'm like, fuck, I feel good, dude. Like, let's go. Like, I want to push. And then uh I start with a holding phase, like this time I'm starting with the holding phase and not running trend. So I start with a I'm doing 600 tests, 300 EQ, 400 DECA.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 37:41

And my first four weeks, I'm I'm just trying to hold my weight on the calories that I have, right? So I don't want to see any weight gain. The water comes on, I want to let things kind of kick in a little bit. I'm okay with being hungry, I'm okay with anything that's going on. I don't want to create because you push food too early, what happens, right? You can run into a lot of fucking problems. One, you start having water on top of water.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Yeah, two, you get fat.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

You get fat, right? Like there's something to be said about letting every all everything kick up. Now, if my weight were to fall down or performance would drop, obviously food would go higher. But I want to find a baseline where then I can bring my food up from there without like pushing body fat up. I want to push performance higher. I want to push nutrients higher.

SPEAKER_02 38:27

Yeah. I actually only raise food after my weight stops moving with the gear escalation. So I let I let the gear do its thing because I know that I'm growing at like whatever maintenance amount it is. Like if I'm gr if if my if I'm like my numbers are improving when I'm just on TRT, if I'm on a gram and a half of shit, like even if I'm on maintenance calories, like I am fucking growing. So once the weight stagnates there, then I keep bumping the calories and then I'll keep bumping the calories and bumping the calories. But I'm I'm someone that needs very few calories to go up, but a lot of calories to go down. So like a surplus for me is like going from 4,000 calories to 41 or 4200 calories a day. But a deficit, it's 2,000 calories a day. Otherwise, my weight does not fucking come off at all, you know? Yeah, like tell tell me about the calculations of like 1% body fat weight a week. Like I would have to eat 1,200 calories a day. I know that because I did that like a few weeks ago. Like it's insane.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

For me, I feel like you bump my calories up a ton.

SPEAKER_02 39:28

I do bump your calories a lot, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

300 calories at a time.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Yeah, but that's also that you respond well that way, you don't have that issue. Like you she's she's eating 600 grams of carbs a day, and she's like she was like 140 pounds. And so, like your metabolism is is very good to like process that type of stuff. I if I'm on 600 grams of carbs, bro, I can't think. Like my brain doesn't fucking work anymore.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

Okay, I have a question, and I don't know if you coach a lot of female athletes, but the whole mineral conversation and calcium amounts and all of that. Is there any difference between male and female as far as Yes, absolutely?

SPEAKER_03 40:02

And I'll send it to you. I have it all written down. This is very new, and I'm learning from again the guy who's been teaching me, it's Adam O'Makia. I always like to give people credit who have built the IP. Yeah. So this isn't something that like, you know, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_04 40:16

I found it because I was interested.

SPEAKER_03 40:18

Yeah, I was looking into it. Like I was interested because I started seeing through my own data that like I was nutrient deficient on cycles. So I'm like, well, what does that mean? What is that? Because I'm already eating all their stuff. Like I'm already having like a pretty nutrient dense diet.

SPEAKER_00 40:32

Because I'm not sure if for the fatigue aspect, because I got super fatigued. I mean, I had a bunch of life stuff going on too, but super fatigue.

SPEAKER_02 40:39

You had a lot of stuff going on, like life-wise, and I like we can't underestimate that at all. That was probably the biggest hole in your bucket.

SPEAKER_00 40:45

Yeah, but I'm but we also don't know what my calcium levels are.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

I'll send it to you.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

I'm gonna send you the levels for females so that you have that.

SPEAKER_02 40:53

But now now she's also doing like she's doing a higher dose of magnesium, she's doing a higher dose of zinc, she's doing uh of B vitamins, like a higher dose of B vitamins, she's doing um higher dose of omega-3s, so it's like there's a higher dose of vitamin E as well. Yeah, that's good. Like we changed a lot of stuff, and that like I was telling her, like, your skin looks so much better. We added dim and and CDG and like this on its own alongside some GHK, which was very minimal. The GHK was I don't even I I feel bad mentioning it because it was so minimal compared to the changes that we made to the supplement stack. Yeah, so like I I told her like and also like her demeanor, like it it changed like the once the stress period had like ended, it was like two days, and she's like a different human being, you know. And then like we added the other supplements, and there's like another like 20% increase. So I'm like, dude, fuck yes, this is this is major, and we're not even playing with peptides. Like, that's that's fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

You can get a dude, you could do a lot without throwing a lot. Yeah, people forget that the basics aren't basic, dude. They do all the things that are like mountains.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

I feel like like the peptides are good, but it's not like I don't believe she has mitochondrial dysfunction. I believe she has adrenaline insufficiency. Like, I believe she has hormono-driven acne, not like uh a fungal thing. So that's why I'm not putting a cream, right? Like it's it's it's it depends on like what do you think the root cause is of something, right? But absolutely, yeah, with the mineral stuff, I really think this is an interesting one. I definitely need to think more about this, especially with the gear, because like I I take that approach when it comes to mitochondrial health. I know what gear does to the fucking mitochondria. It's horrendous. Like it's horrible, dude. What gear does to your body is absolutely fucking terrifying. So, like, I need to be very intentional about running health phases that look like health phases with SS31, with MOTC, with NAD plus, with glutathione, and so forth and so on. And I feel like people are not doing that, they're just thinking in terms of like, oh, I'll take this for energy when I'm tired, or like, oh, I'll do this for a fat loss. And I'm like, stop being a fucking retard. Understand how we think about peptides in the same way that we talk about steroids. You don't just go on and mix fucking DECA and Trend because you know they're 19 NORs and it's probably not gonna end up going well. You also don't go and you stack like fucking all of the fucking DHTs because you're probably also not gonna have a very fun time estrogen-wise. Like, you know these things for steroids, you should know these things for fucking peptides as well. And dare I say for supplements too. Like, if you want to do this thing, you kind of have to have a fuck ton of knowledge, you know? It's not so simple. And people, every single person that I know that is like, oh, I'm just doing my thing, you know. I'm just like, yeah, you mean you're taking drugs and then acting like a fucking retard? Yeah, you're doing your thing. Every single one of them has issues, and it's joint issues, it's like my libido is fucked up, oh my gut is fucked up, my reflux. Oh, I was running like 800 milligrams of DECA and 100 milligrams of Dianabol and or some shit like that. And I'm like, what the fuck are you motherfuckers talking about? Like that is. Insane, you know, that was a hyperbole, but it's still it's still wild shit that you see out there.

SPEAKER_03 44:05

Oh no, I've seen some dude. I've seen people do some really crazy shit and not even get results for it because of the stuff that we're talking about, right? Like it's not just about just like peptides gear, anything. You don't just take shit.

unknown 44:16

Right?

SPEAKER_03 44:16

You have to think about like why, why is this here? Why why am I doing this? Why am I doing that? Like I look at my own stack, it's like, okay, like you have the base of testosterone. Now, to me, it's it's not as important as like, okay, well, I also have the deck, I have the EQ. So how am I gonna shape these things? Well, I know I could just do a 400, 400, 400, but I know the EQ is gonna crash my test. Or sorry, my my estrogen. So I need enough tests to have the estrogen in my body and also have some kind of some anabolic properties to that as well. I think there's a little bit of benefit to having the DHT that comes from the testosterone. I think obviously the estrogen. And uh but from the antigen receptor, it's not doing anything unique that the other shit's not doing, right? But for me, I need 600 tests so that I have enough estrogen to get the effect that I need because the EQ is gonna drop it down. I like the EQ because I get the digestive benefit from EQ. For me, like it increases gastric emptying by a pretty decent amount. I notice a vast difference between how flat my stomach is and how hungry I am between meals. And it doesn't, not everyone gets this, by the way. I don't get that at all. Yeah, I get I'm ravenously hungry.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

Dude, I get no fucking hunger from EQ.

SPEAKER_03 45:27

Yeah, it's weird, dude. Some people do and some people don't. I've never been able to figure that out. Because we don't have the fucking studies. We don't know.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

You know what EQ does to me? Huh. This is gonna blow your mind. It lowers my estrogen, yes, okay. But how the fuck is EQ lowering my DHT? That's odd, dude. Yes, I have blood work going from testosterone to testosterone plus EQ, and it went from like fucking 244 to 73. What the fuck?

SPEAKER_03 45:58

Wow, dude, that's interesting. Yeah, like it makes no sense.

SPEAKER_02 46:02

I want to know why. I've asked so many people why, and everybody has like a theory, but I'm like, it doesn't really make sense that it would go both ways. Was I using something that wasn't EQ? Yeah, what other fucking steroid lowers DHT like that and does and like lowers estrogen at the same rate that EQ does? Like, that's that's weird. I I feel like the Occam razor here would be it is EQ is just something that we don't know. And since people don't normally order DHT, we have way less information on DHT, which by the way, DHT is important, it's actually a bigger predictor of mortality than testosterone is when you look at the androgens that are responsible for predicting this stuff. But in any case, it's very like underappreciated.

SPEAKER_03 46:40

I've seen that somewhere. I didn't, yeah, dude, it is underappreciated. Like, I don't memorize sometimes. Like, I'll look at things, I'll see enough of it, and I'm like, okay, this is good. We're gonna keep this here. You know what I mean? And then, like, and when people ask me later on, I'm like, they're like, Why do you like it? I'm like, because it's good. They're like, Why is it good? I'm like, I don't know. I just know that it's good. And so, like, to me, it's like, I remember I was taught a really long time ago that you want DHT. You want the DHT from testosterone, you want the estrogen from testosterone. And so then I I've always just kind of followed that logic, probably a little bit blindly, to be honest, but I follow it and it works, dude. Um, I mean, it's also Kurt's echoed, too.

SPEAKER_02 47:15

Not crushing your hormones, sounds, you know, it's it's it's uh yeah, it sounds like a good idea.

SPEAKER_03 47:20

Yeah, and I you look at what happens when people um take DHT blockers. It's not good.

SPEAKER_02 47:25

No, dude, it's not good. It's also not worth it. Man, the risk is not fucking worth it. I don't fuck with it. I think there was only one paper that shows something to like post-finasterized syndrome or something like that, but we had zero. Now we have one. Like, it's like I just see so many reports of this type of shit, and also the libido and sexual performance side of things. Like, I don't need that shit. I rather be bald or go to Turkey, you know.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

Yeah, that's where I'm at. It's like, dude, I'm either luckily I I haven't gone bald. I don't get a lot of shedding or anything. But if it happens and it fucking dude, like we know what we're doing. Yeah, people like I don't want it to happen. It's like, then don't take steroids. Like, I don't know exactly what are we doing here, dude.

SPEAKER_02 48:07

Todd Todd Lee Todd uh Todd says that he's like, if you want to have pretty hair, just don't do gear.

SPEAKER_03 48:13

Yeah. You know, and he's right, dude. He's right. Like sometimes people forget that there's like an option to just not take gear.

SPEAKER_02 48:19

Also, like I would go beyond that. I would say, do you want to have great skin? Don't do gear. Do you want to have like do you want to have like a very good and stable libido? Don't do gear. Maybe be on TRT, but don't do gear. Like, it's not what you think of. It's like for girls, you put in a little bit of an vanavar and they become like sex animals. For guys, depending on what you give them, it fucking destroys them. Like you have no more interest in life or anything whatsoever. You literally start reading Albert Camus, and like it's just shit goes downhill, you know.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

Become a monk. Yeah, I always laugh at people be like, Well, I don't know what's causing it. I'm like, the gear. Like, what about it? I'm like, I don't know. It's just the gear, dude.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

Yeah, doing business.

SPEAKER_03 48:58

I don't fucking know. I'm like, cause of doing business, man. Like, it's just part of it. Like, did it happen to you? I'm like, yeah. Yep. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad. There's like what did it do?

SPEAKER_02 49:07

Is it this? Like, I don't know. I don't know, but it's it becomes unpredictable. It's just something that you have to accept. Like, you might you may just have randomly something that just decided to switch off. And like you can't, just like in prep, you can't assume. Like, people don't understand. It's like, oh, how did Martin nail Prague and then he messed up on the next show? I'm like, because bodybuilding is not something that you learn once and then you apply forever. You can't just learn it once. You have to learn it in real fucking time as it's happening. This is why I say this shit is complex as fuck.

SPEAKER_03 49:36

It's not just it and forget it, you know? You're shooting a moving target, dude. And it's yeah. At all times. And sometimes you you pull it off flawlessly. That's prog. And other times, like it just doesn't fucking, and that's when you get mad as a motherfucker and do some crazy shit because it's like, why didn't this work? And he suffers, dude. People don't realize like you suffer to get that look that you hate. You don't get that time back, dude.

SPEAKER_02 50:03

Props to him just posing with a smile on his face, you know?

SPEAKER_03 50:06

Yeah, yeah. You know, the after a fact of fuck, but dude, man, competing's a bitch, dude. Like being a competitive athlete, like it's a tough, it's a tough gig. It's not good when you when you do your best, you try your best and you can't perform your best. Like it's true across every single sport, any single professional athlete you ever talk to, there's times when it's just like they just couldn't show up. There's nothing worse, especially when you're playing the playoffs or the fucking whatever your championship is, man. And for whatever reason, with all the work that you've put in, with everything you've done, you've showed up, you've done everything you need to do to show up perfectly that day. And you for whatever reason, you're just you can't. You know, what drives that for anyone. Yeah, you know one of my brother's good friends that I got to learn some of this from, like really like the mentality of an athlete was uh captain of the blackhawks when they're winning the World Series back to back to back. It's interesting when you talk to anyone, dude, about the pressures in any sport and what goes into being your best on any given day. It's it's fucking some of it is just luck. Yeah. Yeah, and being a really great athlete. You gotta be the great athlete. But then luck and how it actually turns out, you know.

SPEAKER_02 51:13

Yeah. Now there's also the danger of like how we talked uh before on the um we were talking on Instagram about this on applying rules that are like in expectations of bodybuilders and athletes onto lifestyle people.

SPEAKER_03 51:25

Like Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:27

Like that, because that happens a lot. Like if you when I say that we have a huge problem in coaching, like I'm not, I'm not, it's not a sales pitch, bro. It's legitimately like the fact that uh you're if you pay for coaching, you're generally getting a spreadsheet and a WhatsApp message here and then. Like it's this is something that works very well for a lot of athletes in bodybuilding who are driven and self-starters and like just need the fucking do this, like literally. Here's your protocol, run with it. Let me know if you have any issues. Like, most people are not like that. Like, there's a reason why lifestyle is also more expensive than bodybuilding in general. It's because it's much more complex. You're not just dealing with a robot, you know, like you're you're dealing with real human beings. So, like, what walk me through a little bit of that on like applying this to different scenarios and stuff.

SPEAKER_03 52:12

Yeah, so for me, dude, like I have two, I'm very strict about it. You're either lifestyle or you're bodybuilding. There's no in between. There's no fucking lifestyle plus your lifestyle.

SPEAKER_02 52:20

Lifestyle plus. So, but a bodybuilder is like someone who wants to compete or is competing.

SPEAKER_03 52:26

Yeah, they don't have like I don't need you to be a fucking like I don't have the best genetics or be a guy on stage. Like if you have that goal, you have that dream, like you have that fire within you. Yeah. You're a bodybuilder. I don't care if you're 130 pounds or 300 pounds.

SPEAKER_02 52:41

So it's also about the lifestyle. It's also like if you live like a bodybuilder but you don't compete, you're a bodybuilder.

SPEAKER_03 52:47

Yeah, if you can, if you want to commit to it, but it's also understanding that like you are not going to downgrade yourself to anything other than bodybuilding, or I will not coach you.

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Because there's only there's like I'm not saying like here's the strictest diet, like you have to eat this only, but like we need to hit targets because I don't want you one, I want you to have the best results that you can have. And I want you to learn how to become a bodybuilder. It's my job as a coach to teach you how to be a bodybuilder. If I'm a fucking hockey coach and I'm teaching professional hockey players or little week hockey players, I can't have them showing up with a volleyball and deciding today they're going to play volleyball. I need you to play fucking hockey. Let's get your head in the game, right? So, like, I need you to take the supplements. I need you to get your blood work done. I need you to do the fucking training and eat the food and have them bright mineral ratio. I need you to have all these things in place. And then, like, we need to start you if you're very, very new to it. We need to find out how you respond. We need to start with the basics. We need to find out, like, with everything perfectly, do you have some kind of genetic disposition for blood pressure? And what do we need to deal with that? Like, what do we need to deal with the things that like genetics are kind of fucking you on? And can they be dealed with? Are you somebody that's just not a good fit for this sport? And I've had that with people where like we've tried to fix some shit and just, and I just have to be like, dude, like I can't, like, if you want to do lifestyle, man, I'll get you in the best shape of your life. But when it comes to you, like the goal you have, when we have to push to that goal, your body is most likely not going to take it.

SPEAKER_02 54:20

What what what do you mean like what are some signs that like it's not ready? It's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_03 54:26

I just had somebody recently with some kidney issues, like most likely genetic. They probably need to get some scans. There's things there that they're not seeing that I'm not seeing, and it's making blood pressure inconsistent, but it's also making that like when they take something, their fucking system C just jumps, dude. Like, not like to like a one, like fucking hi. Hi GFR starts to come down, everything just gets a little bit wacky where it's beyond what I won't feel comfortable with. Where now it's like we need to go see a doctor, and they're kind of like, ah, I don't want to, you know, but everything's fine when I'm not, it's like, well, dude, like I can't, like this is an extreme case, right? Where I do believe somebody has a genetic thing going on where they need to meet with a nephrologist. Like, but I'm not a doctor to say that. Like I can't confidently say that, but that's my belief based on what I'm yeah, but that's super fucking clear.

SPEAKER_02 55:15

If your kidneys are done before you even start, or like when you're starting, like you can't do it because kidneys don't regenerate like every fucking thing else.

SPEAKER_03 55:22

Yeah, and he might only have like one kid. I don't know, he might have one kidney. I don't know what's going on. Like it's not, it doesn't make sense. Like it's not like working with a regular person. And there's some shit where it's like some people just like have a little bit, like they they get on and their blood pressure jumps up. And sometimes it's more of like a sympathetic thing. Like you give them like two mil, like 2.5 milligrams in a bivalone, and it's like fine, you know, and it's like, oh, okay. And like for whatever reason, yeah, they'll go from like a 150 over 90 to just wake up the next day and it's like 123 over 70.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

Fuck.

SPEAKER_03 55:54

You've never seen that before?

SPEAKER_02 55:55

No, no, never.

SPEAKER_03 55:57

Yeah, no, it's uh I just had a client recently where I was like, I don't use nabivalo a lot.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

I use propranolol more because propranolol has direct effect in the dopaminergic receptor and nabivalo does not. So I I use a lot of propranolol, and then because we it's very short-acting as well. Like, so because of that reason, you're able to take it at night to help you sleep when you are on train, for example, for instance.

SPEAKER_03 56:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 56:21

But it it won't affect your training performance in the morning or in the afternoon or something. Now, it's a better choice if you want 24-hour control, but you're not going to get the dopamine like receptor part of the deal.

SPEAKER_03 56:34

That's really interesting. I didn't know that about Propenola.

SPEAKER_02 56:36

Yeah. Um it's it's a very good one. But it does help performance a little bit.

SPEAKER_03 56:41

Yeah, that's it. And that's that's never been a thing that deterred me, to be honest with you. When I'm like using the bival, it's just because like I had a doctor put me on it when I was 23, 24. Yeah. Or no, 25, whatever it was. And it just fucking worked, dude. It worked really, really well. Yeah. And then as I started building my business, even when I wasn't on gear, my blood pressure would go higher. And I was like, okay, like I would take this and like, poof, I'm like, okay, like this works for like when you have some like sympathetic shit going on.

SPEAKER_02 57:06

So I've tried that people, but even then a lot of it depends on what type of high blood pressure you have, whether it's called caused by your lungs or if it's caused by your blood vessels, or like if it's your breathing, like it could be a bunch of different things, and each drug is going to target something specifically. So just like certain people legitimately do get significant drops in blood pressure with beetroot juice, it's because it was very mild and it got it like it's specifically because of their blood flow. If it was something that was like uh, you know, uh lacinopril, well, now we're actually talking about something way more targeted, you know, like we're we're we're not just like broadly speaking about blood flow, you know, like theoretically, even BPC could improve blood flow um you know throughout systemically. So um it's um I think like once you once you figure that out, you know like which drug works for you. The the thing is that it's mostly trial and error.

SPEAKER_03 58:03

There's a lot of trial and error.

SPEAKER_02 58:04

And there's a lot of times, dude, like someone has expensions that you buy and you're like, I'm never gonna use this in my life. Fuck.

SPEAKER_03 58:10

And if somebody's new, usually what I do is I'll be like, hey, go to your primary care doctor, tell them about what's going on here. Like get a little bit of a checkup, maybe like see if you can get a visit to a cardiologist without paying for it. Because I'd rather not be the one telling somebody what to do. But a lot of guys, dude, have already done the fucking experiments. You know, a lot of times when someone's coming to me and you probably can agree with that's probably the same. Like they've done a lot of their own bullshit and they fucked around. They're like, I'm not understanding how to do this. It's not working the way it's supposed to. Can you just do it for me? And it's like, okay. And then um, a lot of times, dude, like I pulled people off the fucking blood pressure mass because once you get everything in line, they feel fucking great. And sometimes they just need to, like you said, they need a sleep study. They go and do an at-home sleep study. Oh, I got sleep apnea that fixes sleep apnea. Oh man, my hematocrit's great and my blood pressure is fine and my sleep feel great every day.

SPEAKER_02 58:58

I don't I don't put a lot of credit on the sleeping score, but my sleeping score goes from like 30 to 80 when I sleep with my CPAP on. Like, that's insane.

SPEAKER_00 59:07

To the point where he'll let me wake him up in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_02 59:10

Yeah, it's the only it's the only thing I would never ever do. Don't fucking wake me up. But like, if I am sleeping without my CPAP, I tell her, like, please wake me up. I need to put that shit on. It's that important.

SPEAKER_00 59:20

So it's helpful.

SPEAKER_03 59:21

Yeah. No, I always the CPAP's huge, man.

SPEAKER_02 59:24

I just wake up feeling like I'm dying a hundred and fifty times a night. Like, what the fuck? Like, that's not very restful.

SPEAKER_03 59:32

And then I wake up and I'm like, why do I feel like shit? My head hurts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 59:37

No, some days I'm so tired that I just like I'm doing my check-in and I just fuck, just fall asleep, you know. Um, and then I forget my CPAP and I wake up the next day and I'm destroyed. I'm wrecked, I feel awful. You know, it's so bad. So yeah, I do think that sleep app, the the sleep apnea variable is very good. You did mention that on the pod with Steve. Um and it does like it does impact not just like your recovery, but also your blood pressure, also your hematocrit, you know. Like I do think a lot of people's first instance will be just throwing medications at stuff as opposed to fucking breathing well. But I would highly suggest that you start with something that is like essential for your mitochondria, like oxygen delivery, uh, to generate ATP, you know, to generate the thing that you need to grow fucking muscle. So you prioritize that a little bit, and then later you think about PPAR delta agonism and shit like that.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:33

Yeah, and that's so working with going back to the working with clients thing. That's always a big thing. Is like one, like is somebody can somebody handle bodybuilding, right? For the most people, people can. And there's usually a mentality that I can tell when I'm like talking to someone for the first time, kind of interviewing them. Um, it's gonna sound fucked up, but the people that seem to do the best, if they haven't, if they haven't already had experience in the sport that I know are gonna do really well, it's almost like they're dealing with they've had some trauma in the past, like just the right amount of trauma, you know, where they feel driven towards this thing, where they're able to really like it has like just like a deeper meaning to them based on whatever it was, whatever it was that they're compelled. Yeah. So when I tell them to do these things, like they just, dude, they're just bought in. They're like, I have to do this, like I'm motivated to do this. This is how I'm gonna succeed, and this means so much to me. Whereas like some people I can tell they're just kind of like it doesn't have that, and they're kind of like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna do all those things. And then it's like you ask them, like, hey man, like show me your uh show me your micronutrients, like what's going on? Like, show me what you've been eating, show me your minerals and all that. Oh, yeah, let me get back to you. A few days go by, and it's like, hey man, I need to see this, you know. And um, you can kind of tell by the check-ins and just some of the feedback, and then you're like, you're looking at like, okay, hey, send me a workout video, and you can just see that there's just kind of this this like, I don't have to do all this shit attitude. Like this doesn't apply to me. And like, I don't know, you know, it's for me, I don't know the difference between it, but it just seems that the guys, when like, because I get to know, I don't coach a lot of people. I don't keep a big roster because I want to give the best. It's not my only thing. I got my business and I have this too. And I have a certain, I'm really OCD about the way that I coach. Like, I have to have a relationship with my guys. I got to make sure that they can tell me what's going on. They can tell me, like, hey man, like, here's what I actually ate this week. Not what they want, but what I want to hear, what would actually happen because it's fucking fine, dude. And if you tell me that, then it's some weird shit's going on. I know what's going on. And like, if you're not eating a certain food, then like we can change that out and add something else, it's still gonna meet the requirements that we need for you to actually get there. And like, we can start building something that's sustainable for the person versus like, and this is how I always know is when I give somebody a plan and they're just like, no, it's fine, perfect. I'll just do this. Which there are a few people that can do that, but for the most part, for most people, it falls apart somewhere. Like, I'll give like the recommended food and it's almost like a test. It's like, let's see if they're like, I kind of been fucking up on the spinach, dude, you know, and like I'll wait for the thing because there's always something that doesn't sit right with somebody, and then I can modify it. And when something just sits perfectly with them, it's like, dude, you're either just like really bought in, like way too bought in, in which case, like, talk to me, dude. You don't have to be this bought in. Like, you can be a human being. I don't want this to become overly stressful. So I want you to not force this because you gotta get there. I want you to understand that you can breathe and you can talk to me and like I'll help you get there. But I need I need my athletes, the bodybuilding guys, to trust me and to do the things that I ask them to do because I need them to stay healthy. I need them to not be needing to push gear. Because, like, again, I was kind of if you set up a cycle design the right way and you have all the different elements involved, which a lot of coaches aren't thinking about, you don't have to push anyone element aggressively. Like, even when I go back to like the 800 trend that I ran, there was a better way that I probably could have done that where I could have leveraged a little bit less. But it still worked really fucking well, you know. Like, what would have happened if like I added a little bit of thyroid in, especially when I'm asking for so much output and I don't have it? You know, how would that have changed things, right? When I got up to the very, very, very high levels of food, how would have adding a little bit of insulin have assisted things a little bit during that time? And not from the standpoint that people think of like the thing that insulin can do that's interesting at a very low dose is it could help actually like because one thing I found at the end of my cycle is that I wasn't utilizing a lot of the amino acids I was taking in. Like I was losing a lot of nutrients and stuff like that. I could have reduced a lot of the breakdown and I could have actually gotten a lot more transport from just like the tiniest bit of insulin, I believe, which could have made that a little bit more effective.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:51

I think that's I I agree with that a lot. On my first uh push phase, I ran insulin because I was a chronic user of omeprazole, and uh these drugs are known for causing chronic nutrient metal absorption. And every time I did my blood work, like something was a little bit like low. Like I found that I need 15,000 I use of vitamin D to maintain an 80 on the test, you know, like it's it's really hard. And so, like, I need like a gram of magnesium. It's uh it shit gets kind of expensive. Yeah, you know, so it's um like the way that I think about this is a little bit like the individuality of it and finding like the thing that works for you is so important and so relevant, but also again, going back to the trial and error thing, you're just finding that as a coach is is difficult with an athlete, but like finding it with yourself is very hard. And we talked about like self coaching before, uh, in in the sense of like no one is really self coaching at the high level, like people assume they are. Like, what people think. Is happening is that like Nick Walker now that he learned everything, he's just doing his own thing, and so is Sam Sullick. They're just like, I mean, Sam Sullick is cataloging everything, so he's just he's he's just alone. Guys, this is not how it works. Like, I am paying for consults with people, people pay for consults with me. Like it happens in this world that we're all helping each other out. Hear it from from me, you know, like that the self-coaching aspect is, in my opinion, logically impossible because you need to be objective in your decisions, and you can't be objective with yourself. You're trapped within your own subjective thinking. So your decisions will always have an emotional component in it, and that's always gonna blindside you. So it's uh, yeah, it's not really something that I recommend, which is like why I started my community. It was like a way to get people help when they can't afford coaching yet. You know, like, oh, you can't you can't actually afford this thing, cool, but at least get some fucking guidance, you know. Like you can ask me a hundred questions a day and I'm gonna reply to them all. We can build your fucking cycle in front of everyone. Like, I don't fucking care. But it's just going solo, it's not something that happens, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:07:12

No, and like what's interesting, dude, is like the best athletes I see and the best coaches I've seen, I've had a lot of coaches, both of them, because they've learned from so many different people. And not only have they learned from these people, but they've probably earned the respect of these people, and they can call them and they can converse with them over anything at any time. Like Kurt is an amazing coach, dude, but he's also worked with some amazing coaches. He built good relationships with them. Like, he can call those guys if he ever has any questions, if he ever has anything. Like, we don't have all the answers. No one person has all the answers. But as a community, we probably have most of them. You know?

unknown 1:07:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:48

To me, like the best coach anyone can sign up for is a guy who knows how to leverage the community because that's also gonna be the guy that understands all the things that we're talking about. Like, we're not the only ones that understand this stuff. We understand it because we've learned it, but we learned it like where did the information come from? It didn't come out of thin air. We learned it from all the people that came before us, right? Some of them put it into things that we that are teachable, that are seminars, others from actually being coached. We've learned some things not to do from coaches, especially probably in younger years. I know me, I know for you. Um, and that's important because the worst coach is a guy who's only coached himself and doesn't have any other thing other than himself. And the worst athlete is a guy who's never talked to anybody, it's just doing his own thing.

unknown 1:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:37

Because it's like, dude, like what do you who do you talk to when things go wrong? Like, oh shit, I'm not getting this effect, and my own brain doesn't know. I don't know how to fix this. Like, I'm not, I've never dealt with this problem. Yeah, like Sam Sullick, fucking Nick Walker, all these guys, they know a bunch of people that have all of these things.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:56

Yeah, and like it's not the same thing, bro.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:58

Yeah, and like when you're any one of these guys, you can call anyone in the bodybuilding community. Like, well, you think something vigorous Steve told you is pretty cool. I'll call him. It's like, yeah, you can call him. Steve will big, hey, what's up, Nick? Sam could call him. Yeah. Any of these guys, like Visters, any of them, Summers, they could just call Steve. He'll answer any of their questions, dude. And like they all know each other, they all get along. And so, like, it's it'd be silly to think that people aren't having these conversations. It'd be silly for them not to have these conversations. Right, right. But then, like, you know, back to our topic on like the lifestyle, like, because bodybuilding guy, like, there's a way to do bodybuilding and there's a way to do lifestyle, and they're completely opposite, right? Completely different.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:40

Because a lifestyle person, they're not trying to be the F1 race car. They're just trying to look good and be healthy, live a long life. Like they're usually dealing with some kind of a lot of them are dealing with some kind of problem, a lot digestive, some energy issues, XYZ. And uh they it's just making things really easy. Like, it's really easy. Lifestyle is really easy, but it they've been brainwashed, I guess, is one way to put it. Not really brainwashed, it's confused. There's so much fucking marketing and shit fluencers and everyone trying to make money and telling people this, this, this, this, this, that it's gotten so complicated for them that they don't know how to do anything anymore. And so it's like, hey, here's like how you still like you can achieve all these things that I'm talking about and still go out to dinner every single night. And it's not going to mess you up. You're gonna be very, very healthy. And the clients that I've worked with, like my dad was my first client. If you look at his blood work, you'd be like, this guy's a 20 to 30 year old. Doesn't take TRT, doesn't take it, doesn't need it. Um, it's crazy. And he's fucking 60, you're gonna be 68 years old. Like the things you can optimize on anybody just by getting them to understand not only like the basics of like, because at the end of the day, we all kind of eat the same foods, right? Like people don't like wake up and go, like, okay, what like exotic breakfast am I gonna make for myself today?

SPEAKER_02 1:11:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:09

You either go buy yourself breakfast somewhere, and it's probably the same place that you know is gonna be good.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:15

Or you're making it yourself. So, whatever it is, let's find out what you like and let's find out what you need. You know, like when we're talking about minerals, it's like in nutrient-dense food. Dude, most people love milk. That's one of the easiest things that I can add.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:30

That has fucking superfood, bro.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:33

It's dude, it's amazing. It's like, hey, okay, let's add a glass of milk to that, or let's cook your oats and milk. Wait, I can do that. Yeah. Yeah, you can do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:42

It tastes better too. We can make it chocolate milk too.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:45

We can throw some yeah, which is fine for a lot of these guys, dude. They need higher fat, especially if they're natural, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:51

Yeah, I eat I eat high fat cottage cheese. I eat like high fat Greek yogurt as well, like five percent.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:59

Eggs. I eat you know, coconut oil, olive oil, nuts, love nuts. Um it's I find that people under-eat fat a lot. You know, like obviously if you're in a caloric deficit, we understand that for a time it might be necessary or but is it though, dude?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:16

Is it?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

I mean, like if we have to if we have to push carbs like under a hundred and you're 200 pounds, I kind of want to touch fats.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:23

Yeah, you're right. You're right about that. But like it's so short term because I would say that's even one of the issues in bodybuilding. Like, especially now, everyone's afraid to be fat. So the new trend is very low fat, and uh it's not doing anyone any favors. And I honestly think even going into looking at people stepping on stage, some of the depletion of fat might actually be contributing to some of the the looks that aren't showing up that great. Because look what happens after somebody competes. They go and they eat a bunch of fat and they look better. So what's happening?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:53

Yeah, I mean, it can give you a lot of that hardened look, you know, because of the, you know, like the where it's stored in the muscles.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:01

There's that, but there's also the integrity of the cell membrane to actually get nutrients to get minerals to get everything into there, right? So if I if I'm eating the right types of fat, the fats that we're talking about, it's going to increase the permeability of the cell. Shit's going to get into where it needs to go easier. And that just doesn't just mean glucose. Everyone's like, oh, insulin sensitive, easier to get glucose in. It's everything. It's the minerals, it's hydration, it's fucking um amino acids. It's everything that I need to get into every cell of my body. It's going to make everything more efficient. It's going to make mitochondria more efficient. It's going to not only reduce inflammation, but balance inflammation in the way that we need it, right? Like the amount of things our thought process, like the way our brain works, like everything. We need fat for these things. And if we deplete it at like if you're in a contest prep or you're just dieting and you're depleted of fat for 16 weeks, 20 weeks, or nowadays the whole year. Because God forbid we get a little fluffy during off season. Which still, like, what is this whole thing where fat's the thing that gets us fluffy? Like, too much olive oil, bro. Like, get the fuck out of here. No, you didn't, dude. You ate too much cookies and ice cream. That's what happened. Like, let's be real.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:13

I mean, like, it's easier for a unit of fat to be stored as fat than it is for a unit of protein or carbohydrates. So there's like some rationale behind it, but calories equated, come on.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:25

Thank you. And that's the thing. It's like, and I think that's where it's getting pushed. It's like, well, I have more leniency to go overboard. But then what do they make it up with? They eat a bunch of fucking sugar, dude. I can't tell you how many diets I see now that are like marshmallows and fucking rice krispies and uh not rice crispies, sorry, like uh I like rice fruity pebbles, fruity pebbles, all that shit, dude. Like it's just so much sugar. And then they're like, they wonder why they have gut issues. Like, oh, I think I got a candida overgrowth. Like, oh dude, you really have a lot of overgrowth, bro. You probably I didn't know that that happened, too. Maybe some H. pylori, too. It must have been that 20 grams of fat you ate. Like, dude, it's like it's everything, man. You're feeding, you're feeding.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:04

Yeah, but you want you want something that will actually kill gut bacteria? Coconut oil.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:10

Coconut, you're right about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:12

It's actually like it's it can be used as a mouthwash to kill certain bacteria that are antibiotic resistant. Think about that shit.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:20

Also, a lot of the fat, the vitamins, the fat absorbing by what the fuck? I'm like having a brain fart right now. Fat soluble vitamins, dude. Like have a lot to do with the processes that keep our gut healthy. Like vitamin A being a big one, man. So like it's just supplement with high dose vitamin A. Yeah, man. It's like it drives me nuts, and people like have all these issues, and I look at the diet, I'm just like, and like, I don't want to get fat, dude. I can't, I can't up it to that. I'm like, I'm just asking you to eat 60 grams of fat, dude. Like it's not yeah. What are you worried about? Like, it's like tomorrow they're gonna wake up and be like, I better get Honozempic. Like, yeah, yeah, dude. And and it's funny, so we go back to the lifestyle guys. When I deal with them, it's very easy, dude, to be like, hey, you can eat this and you should eat this, you should eat this, you should eat this, and get them some balance. And then like when they go out, because most of these guys, what they want to do is they want to be social. They want to be able to have their drink, they want to be able to have their meal, and they don't want to think too much about it. Now I can tell them, like, hey, let's not eat the super shitty thing on the menu. You know, there's probably you're gonna look at a menu, there's gonna be three things that you think are tasty that you could you could settle with. There's gonna be the one thing that's super fucking healthy, and you're like, eh, there's gonna be the thing that's like way fucking overboard, but there's gonna be that thing that's in the middle that's gonna be just as good. That's gonna be good enough where you're not gonna miss the thing that's overboard. Like, what's go with that? And when it comes to dessert, just take a bite, dude. Enjoy it. Like have a few bites, depending on like what you've done that day and that week and everything else. Like, but you don't have to eat the whole thing. Enjoy yourself. Like, have some fun. Like you've worked hard, like, especially if you're an older individual, you've worked hard your whole life. You're trying to enjoy the years that you have with your family, your friends. Enjoy them. Have your drink, have your food, and then during the day, like what's just like revamp the things that are kind of like they're not really trying, no one's like sitting there, like, I gotta have the tastiest breakfast, I've got to have fucking chocolate chip pancakes every day. Like, dude, when I have them like, okay, we're gonna have a couple eggs, we're gonna have some milk, maybe some oatmeal, like whatever it is, like when we're building out the diet, whatever that comes to, for meal one, meal two, and that's usually it, meal one, meal two, meal three, it's easy to do the meal one and meal two, and like for their meal three, I pretty much know where they're gonna go because people like to eat shit that tastes good, so they don't usually go to new places unless it's like this brand new place that opened that like someone needs to have them try. And maybe it's good enough to enter the roster, usually not. And so for the majority of the year, they have three meals a day over 365 days, right? So that's gonna be which is fucking equated to about 1100 meals. If fucking 50 of those are like some random place, like okay, whatever. Like, I don't even need even if only like 900 of them are pretty good, I'm good with that. But people don't think of it like that. They think of the day or they stress out, they don't think like over the long run, you have a lot of room to kind of like fuck up.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:08

And still be really healthy.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:10

Yeah.

unknown 1:18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:11

What's funny? With my lifestyle clients, they get a lot of like flexibility in general, you know. Like I I I have guides specifically on them for like what we're gonna do when we're traveling, what we're gonna do when we are like just in a deficit, and why we're gonna do it, and here's what we're gonna do when we're in a growth phase and stuff like that, and just giving them some strategies and stuff because I one, I do think that you know, not protein, nutrition itself is very important. So learning how to manage the variables there is is super important, but yeah, man, it's uh I don't I don't always see that though.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:44

Like yeah, but also for a reference real quick, my lifestyle, people are usually over the age of at least 50, but most of them are over 60.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:52

Well, okay, okay. I only have I only have a couple of clients that are over 60.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:57

Yeah, so I just want to make that reference for anyone listening. Like, I'm not talking about like it's you things get different if you're in your 20s, you're trying to look good, you're trying to get laid and stuff like that, or like 30s and like fan, like but for the majority of what I work with.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:09

Yeah, I build like post-bender protocols for my for my lifestyle clients, you know, because it's like I know we're gonna go to festivals and shit, so let's let's fucking do it with the the the least damaging way possible, you know. But I I wouldn't I wouldn't do that with uh someone who's you know 60. Yeah, I know we are running different protocols, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:19:29

That's the one thing I kept up with. Like I've been coaching lifestyle for like older individuals for fucking forever when I got out of bodybuilding. I kind of did that because I started with my dad with some, you know, and then it's just been like a word of mouth. Like friends, then they're friends, they're friends, this friends, and then it's just it's kind of become like a consistent thing that I love. And then I took some of that brand of bodybuilding for a long story short. But yeah, that's my reference. I don't know, you know what, dude? I haven't had because again, like I've got a good enough of lifestyle guys that usually like when people come to me in bodybuilding, they're wanting to take shit, right? Like they probably saw me in bigger Steve, or they're like, I want to be big or whatever. They want to take stuff, and like that's just how do you work with that? And I'm interested to hear it, dude, with lifestyle because I'll get guys that want to do some shit in lifestyle, and I have a hard time with it because a lot of my lifestyle guys don't even take tests, they're just naturals, you know?

SPEAKER_02 1:20:19

So a lot of my lifestyle guys are natural. I actually do enjoy working with naturals a lot. I was talking to someone today about this stuff. Um, I'm building a whole course for my community on like how to like optimize your like your metabolism, your health, your fat loss, and all this stuff as a natural because because I do think it's different. Fucking nicotine.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:38

It's different, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:39

God damn, fucking nicotine just hit me. But uh, this also happens when I'm recording lectures, by the way. This it's hilarious. Um, so fucking bad. But what was I saying?

SPEAKER_03 1:20:50

Um You're talking about building out framework for um natural agents.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:54

So like because I do enjoy working with naturals a lot, but I do have guys who are enhanced. I do say I do think like I have a higher threshold for like what I consider optimal testosterone levels because when you come to work with me, like we're trying to push the limits, right? Like we're trying to optimize the like one area of your life, and with that you end up learning that okay, things touch. Like it's you it's like a spider web. You touch one part and everything moves, right? Like that's how I approach it. It's very integrative, right? Like that's how I ended up in the functional health space. Um, so if someone in lifestyle wants to be enhanced, I I'm going to do that in the least damaging way possible. So I I've taken a few things from like the the um safer use model, not everything, but like for instance, I will put someone on TRT if you know they're not feeling so great and their test levels are like on 400. Yeah, I'll I'll put them on TRT. If you're like I consider anything under 750 to not be really that great, right? Like I and I've seen I've seen I've seen one natural guy on 16 fucking hundred. So like I'm not expecting just to see bad numbers because you feel fatigue. Like fatigue is could be co-Q10 deficiency, bro. Like it could be so many fucking things, you know, like like the fact that you're not recovering between your sessions might have nothing to do with your training volume, might have everything to do with your NAD storage. Like, good point. Yeah, it's it's it's it's it's kind of like wild. So like I will be like taking care of these things as we are going the enhanced route. Like, so we're supporting like multiple things at the same time, but we're never relying on just one thing and then hammering the fuck out of that. So like we're not going like you want to do TRT to gain some muscle? Cool. I like I have guys putting on 20, 30 going into 40 pounds on 25 milligrams of test a day. Like it's great, it's fantastic. I love seeing it. Not not they don't want to compete, but like your blood work look looks absolutely amazing. You feel fucking great, your life has changed. Like, I don't of course, like I'm I'm all I'm all for that, you know. Like I'm all I'm all for people doing the things that they want to do. So like I'm here to keep you alive, I'm here to like help you out within your limits. So like I because I'm not gonna say that one is honorable and the other isn't when it comes to bodybuilders to purposefully harm their health and saying that's okay because I'm getting I'm going for a plaque and a little plastic bed metal, you know, like cool, but then the guy who wants to do it because he feels so much better and his confidence is back, and he just always wanted to look fucking jacked since he was a child. Like, what's the fuck? He eats right, he does cardio, he trains right, he fucking sleeps, prioritizes his nutrition, he takes all of his health supplements, gets blood work any fucking time I ask. Fuck yeah, you're pretty much a bodybuilder already.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:48

I would define him as a bodybuilder, I would define that guy as a bodybuilder.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:52

The people that I work with are very highly disciplined people, you know. So, like they they even the lifestyle clients, the guys who are natural, who are like, I don't know about any of these supplements, man. So I need to like explain everything and stuff like that. A lot of my guys are water tested as well, so they complete compete in like the pro level and stuff. So it's gotta, it's gotta be like, I gotta manage like multiple ways of dealing with someone. And where we're going the natural route, I think we have some great tools. Like we have just been talking so much about the power of supplements. Like we have so many tools that can we can change things. Like I've I've really, really helped guys testosterone levels. Like I've seen that shit double on supplements, right? Like the the first route is never like just oh TRT. It might be because I think maybe it works better for you for the type of person you are, for the discipline lifestyle you have. I think you might have earned that. So I might suggest it, you know. But it's it's once is ultimately your decision because it's you are taking the risk, you are making the decision here. I'm just here to keep us as safe as possible. So I'll tell you which route to go to end up in the destination you want to go. But I'm like just the GPS, I don't have morality involved, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:25:01

Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that, dude. I do. I agree with that. Um, yeah, it's interesting because it's like hard for me sometimes to look at it as like I guess it's like see a lot of it's usually younger that'll come in and um how do I define it? Like they just want to take shit. They just want to take stuff, and I do not know what category to put them in. So I put them in the lifestyle plus, like, which is kind of a joke, lifestyle plus, because it's like you aren't really, you don't really have a goal. Like you don't really have, like you do, you have, you have I don't even know what to call you have a delusion. You have a delusion and you want me to participate in that delusion with you. Like you want me to tell you how to take 20 different peptides at the same time and tell you that it's okay. You want me to tell you that's not that at all.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:48

I normally, I normally cut that off in the in the in the pre-consult call.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:52

Yeah. You want to eat whatever the fuck you want and take 800 milligrams of trend and figure out where do I get the ATIUs of GH? And it's like, dude, we're not, no, like I'm not there for that. We're not taking this ride together. But it's like, I guess it is in a lot of ways all the same. Like at my clientele that I look at, it's just like, I just need to know that like you're willing to work towards this goal, and that whatever like you decide to put in, we're able to match that. We're able to keep up with it, right? Like if someone wants to rev the engine pedal to the fucking metal, dude, like give me the full stack. Like, cool, dude. Like, here's what it's gonna look like. And like, can you do this 90%? Even for the lifestyle guys, can you do this 90%? I don't need you to be perfect, but I need you to be telling me when you're not perfect. I need to know like what's going on and stuff like that, and not to reprimand you, just so that we can redirect, we can fix things, we can keep you healthy.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:48

Yeah. For the true lifestyle clients, that's exactly how we roll. There's no there's no such thing as like, oh, I failed. Motherfucker, you're not, you don't have an end point. Like you just want to look better and feel better. Like, you know, like you didn't fail shit. You just you just ate more food. Okay, cool. Then let's just fucking roll with that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:07

There's a lot more room, too, with the lifestyle guys. The fuck it's like dude, there is no fucking up. It's just what you said. There's no fucking up. Like, we're going to get here. It could take a couple months, it could take a couple years. Yeah, you can't get it. But we're gonna get here. Yeah, we're gonna get there. And like you're gonna be healthier every day. You're starting here. So, like, if you get here and then here and then here and then here, things are improving.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:30

I literally had someone, someone ask me uh this week, like one of my clients asked me, like, hey, when do you think like we can set up a deadline to hit like you know, losing another 30 pounds to another 20 pounds? To which I said it's probably needs to be 40, so let's meet in the middle and do it 30, uh, just to give you some wiggle room, right? Okay, cool. But now we just have to like the timeline wise thing, it depends on things that I am not sure your body wants to give us, you know. Like if we can't push cardio. And we can't push training and like we can't push up steps, and food is already detrimentally low. Like, there's not really much anywhere else we can go. We just need to roll with what we have because we're gonna reach that point. What I'm gonna do is make sure that the timing of things like refeeds and like monitoring your recovery markers so that we can supplement those things and make sure like you're keeping your hormones in level and you know, suggesting like a T3 or something like that, maybe, or or like a lot of supplementation beforehand. But T3 levels come down, so I actually like having T3 in place. I agree, I agree. Yeah. Um, so yeah, it's uh there's it I find that approach to be so chill. It's it's what I did in terms of fat loss. It's what I'm doing right now. I'm not counting calories, I'm just eating less food and just making sure I hit my protein and it works, but I know I know how many calories I'm eating exactly.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:54

Yeah, it's it's different for um Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:58

I don't I don't think people can do that. It's just like I'm eating the exact same thing every day and I still weigh my food. I'm not going by vibes. Like I I literally put it in a container, and then if I like don't remember, like, did I have 10 grams of olive oil or did I take that out because of my deficit? And then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna check my app and then like I look five, 10 days before and I'm like, okay, that's what I did. I do, so I do the same stuff. So that's that's my me not tracking, okay? Like that's that's what I mean. But if I go back like very rigid, the pressure is so much that if I don't have like a reason why I need to be lean, I crack every single fucking time. So I just found that the other approach, it fucking works, you know. I I I kind of diagnose it because I I noticed that like, yo, when I am not tracking, which I normally don't do during health phases, I never binge. Also, you know, you know, when I never binge, it's like when I'm just eating whole foods, you know? So I'm like, I have to do this gut protocol, so I'm gonna have to eat whole foods and I'm gonna be able to eat shit anyways. I'm just gonna not track my shit anymore. The dude, it's just a few days, and I literally go from like having to eat 8,000 calories to feel full to now I'm eating 2,300 and I'm like, no, this is actually pretty comfortable. But if I was intentionally putting myself in a deficit like that, I would fucking crack the exact same day, you know?

SPEAKER_03 1:30:20

I agree with that, dude. And like that's it's funny, man, because like I tried it, that's that's my goal for every lifestyle guy that I have. And honestly, even like enhanced guys, like bodybuilders, like I want you bodybuilding, and just call them enhanced, call them the enhanced population because sometimes bodybuilders, people think competing, like you don't have to compete, dude. Just um, but like there's something to be said, and like I'm really glad you said this because I feel like people are afraid to talk about this in this sport. I've noticed that people suddenly their digestion gets better, everything gets better, their look improves, and they stop stressing about like, dude, was that five grams or was that six grams? Yeah, like, dude, you know what it looks like. You've done it a thousand times. This whole fucking thing. How many times have you weighed that ball, dude?

SPEAKER_02 1:31:03

A hundred grams, I don't mean a hundred and five. Shut the fuck up. God damn it. I mean, sure, do it for consistency's sake. So if you're always gonna go five, always go five. But but we're like, what the fuck are we talking here? Unless you're in contest prep.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:17

That's yeah, that's the only difference. Because offseason, dude, there's times when and I'm dude, I know I'm hitting the same amount every single time because my weight doesn't move. It stays the same. I know I'm adding my calories, but I noticed the same thing. When I became very, very rich, and I'm still weighing and stuff, but it's just not like it's like every now and then, like you said, I'll go back to it. But sometimes, like, even sometimes, like, can I just put it in? I'm like, okay, this looks like enough. Or like if I'm cooking dinner with my family, I'm not weighing everything I'm eating. I'm like, okay, I know if I eat about this much of this and this much of this, this much of this, it's probably gonna be about this. And like I've noticed that I have less stress, I don't have that same amount of hunger afterwards. Like I finish my food and I'm good. So it's it's funny you've had that experience too, and you're not the you're not the first person that I've had this conversation with. They're like, dude, this is just a better way to do things. Like people grow better too.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:07

Yeah, it's less stress, man. Like less stress is so important.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:12

It's huge, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:13

It's uh it's huge because like you, you've you've you've talked about this with Steve about like the the impact that the stress has in the gut. I totally agree. Like, I I when I was talking to Mike White, I was saying, like, hey, like my my gut, like in terms of IBS, I can eat a lot of food. I can tolerate almost everything on that list now. Uh like we're almost saying that like I'm I'm almost beating IBS, you know? We're so close. But like if my stress levels are high, I'll have all the IBS symptoms.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:41

Funny you said that, dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:42

Which I can get it from just putting in like something like testofensine that just like very much hyperactive in the brain. Just give me that. Give me Vivance, give me Adderall, give me caffeine, give me your himbean, give me clymbuterol, give me whatever the fuck it is that is stimulative, I'm having IBS symptoms. Why? Because of the effect on stress.

SPEAKER_03 1:33:01

And it has like a dude, like when that hits me too, it's not like, okay, fix the stress, it's good in a day. Like, it'll go for like I'm like, when is this gonna fucking like get back to normal, dude?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:11

Yeah, so what I what I do now, it's I'm very intentional about my rest period. So what I started doing is the reverse of what most people do. So instead of doing high days being the training days, I am going under the theory that you're training on yesterday's food, bro. You're not you're not repleting glycogen as fast. We know this from the research. The liver repletes very flat, very fast, muscles do not. So you're training on yesterday's food. Cool. Yes, that's why you feel better when you train the day after Thanksgiving, not the day the same day. The day after is insane, you know? So um I I have started doing on the rest days, we increase food and then we go lower on the training days. It's only two to three days, anyways. And training doesn't deplete it as much, so we're still gonna have enough from the high days. Some days it's like over over a thousand calories higher, you know, just becoming we go high fats and low carbs, for instance, and then we cycle back to like say high carb, low fat to replete. That works very well for the thyroid. Um, I'm able to keep people working like without having to touch thyroid stuff for a longer time by doing this, but also gut health gives your gut a break from just to such the high volume at all times, or just not getting your needs from fats for your brain and you know, your overall hormone uh panel and stuff like that. So it's just again another thing that we have to consider and another variable that you have to be paying, you know, attention to if you're going to be doing this yourself, and which uh, you know, I've I figured like we we already talked about this, it's uh a good spot for us to end here with uh just the fact that, like, hey, if you want to do this thing right, I feel like we we can both agree that the people who can help you the most are the people that have been helped the most. And and by that, it is like find someone that is working with other people, you know. Like I I'm everywhere on the internet, on every forum. Like just I'm in every call, uh, you know, like I'm in every group and every mentorship, like uh just fucking uh fucking do your part if you're gonna do this by yourself. If you don't want to be spending literally thousands of dollars every month to learn this shit, you can also just hire someone. And if you're not in a place where you can hire someone, join my community, bro. It's less than a fucking vial of your favorite peptide, anyways. You know, just uh prices is going up as you know, we I increase more courses and give you more apps. But if this episode hit for you, and I really think it did, do me a favor and share with one person in the world who needs to hear it. Not the person who's gonna argue with it, I don't care about them. It's just the people who've been grinding, who's been doing everything right on paper, and they still feel like their system is just leaking somewhere. They can't find this episode is for them, you know. And if you're not already subscribed, you need to fix that share right now because we're dropping a brand new episode every single Friday with guests that operate at this level, you know, conversations that go this deep and zero fluff, no motivational speeches, no generic advices, just people who have actually figured something out sitting down and showing their work. The lineup we have coming up is genuinely something special, and you do not want to be catching up with these late. So, Alex, thank you for coming up and giving us your real vision. And people are going to get a lot out of this podcast. And that's all for me. I'll see you guys next Friday. Peace out.