 trying to gain muscle, but you're over 50 and you want to do it naturally. Listen to this. Our next caller is Mike from Delaware. What's up Mike? How can we help you? Hi guys. I've really enjoyed your podcast and wanted to thank you for having me, allowing me to ask a question. I just a quick background. I'm 53, gonna be 54 this summer. Came up on my 50s in the worst shape of my life and decided to set some pretty audacious bucket list goals. And one of those was centered around fitness and I quickly discovered new about myself. If I didn't set a big goal, I probably wouldn't stick with it. So I went from nothing to setting a goal to win a over 50 bodybuilding competition. I'm happy to report that within with three years of dedicated work and some great help from folks like Craig Capruzzo and my trainer at the YMCA. I achieved my goal. Good job right on. Hell yeah. So it's been a really fun ride. I've I feel great. I'm in probably second best shape of my life. Maybe the best shape was when I was in the military, but I achieved that goal and I sent my photos into the the judge and said, what do you think? How could I do better? And not really thinking that I'd want to do another competition per se. But he said, you know, if you put on three to four pounds of lean muscle, you'd be competitive on a national stage. So that just totally reset my paradigm, I guess. And now I'm considering prepping to do another competition. And I don't know if that's a realistic goal for somebody my age. I feel great about what I've achieved. But I went from like two 10 and 23% body fat to the day I walked on stage, I was about 164. And by my little resistance scale, I was somewhere around 11% body fat. But I don't know if I can I've done pretty good at shredding, but I don't know if I can get bigger or not. Yeah. Okay. That's a that's a that's a pretty good question. Doug just pulled up your photos look really good. Right there. Yeah, that's him right there. Wow, fantastic. Yeah. By the way, say hi to Craig for us a good friend of ours. Yeah. Okay, so is this pot first off, I want to say something about bodybuilding judges. They're always going to say something like that. Keep coming back. Yeah. And, you know, be very careful. Don't get caught in the trap of, you know, sacrificing your health for a trophy, because it's it's an easy thing to do, especially once you start winning. Now, is it possible to gain three to four pounds of muscle? It totally is. It is it's going to be hard. But it's totally possible. And you did indicate in the written part of your question that you're doing this without any hormone treatment or anything like that. It's totally natural. Is that correct? Yeah. And you mentioned Craig, I don't want to overstep anywhere. He's been invaluable to me in this process has done a great job. And he's he suggested I look into that. And he also put me on to your podcast. I become a mind pump junkie. I listen to it when I'm driving all the time. So and so I just am hesitant. And I'm I'm seeking information, I guess. No, that's a good question. What you know what, Mike, we have a free hormone forum that is, you know, managed by actual hormone doctors. It's it's I believe it's my is a mind pump hormones on Facebook. So you can go there, join there, you can ask any questions. Now, I'm going to give you what I what they've said before on this particular question. But I do want to make sure you know I'm not the doctor, I'm not a hormone specialist. Now what they have said is that you can go on testosterone replacement therapy therapy go back off, and you'll go back to where you were before with the right kind of treatment. So a lot of people believe, once you go on, you have to stay on that's not necessarily true. Now my advice is this, I don't think it's a good idea to go on hormone replacement therapy just to build more muscle. I think it's more of a improve your quality of life thing. If you get your hormones checked, and you feel good, and you're not bad, and you're doing okay, I don't necessarily see why any why you would need to go on them. Now, would you gain muscle on hormone replacement therapy? Yeah, I mean, if it raises your testosterone, it could probably help. But if it's if your quality life is great, and you're healthy, I don't necessarily see the need for it, especially not for, you know, bodybuilding, I really don't see the value in it for, for, you know, competing, you know, on stage, especially if that's not your, your absolute passion. I do think it's totally possible to gain three to four pounds of muscle. You just started working out a few years ago, three to four pounds is totally possible by manipulating your training and your diet and really fine tuning things with everything. And maybe the pre contest diet portion, working on that a little bit. And then last thing I'll say, and Adams, you know, he said this many times, and I'd love his input on this. Sometimes the way you, how lean you come in or how conditioned you look makes you look easily three to four pounds more muscular. So you don't necessarily have more muscle, you just got to look like you have more muscle. Yeah, Mike, you, you sound like a client that I would love to train because you seem like the type of guy that if I whatever I tell you to do, you're going to follow to a T based off of the discipline it takes to get yourself in the kind of shape you did in the time you did it, which I think is is awesome. I think if you were my client, I would actually just kind of challenge the way you're thinking as far as like, you know, we can stay in this bodybuilding phase and we can bring you an even better physique the next time around. And I had a lot of fun doing that myself. I did six shows over the course of three years and had a blast doing it. And I'm very competitive. So what turned into a thing of first proving, can I do it? And then I did it. I got on stage in place like fifth, my very first show, which gave me kind of the bug. And because I'm competitive, I then turned it into, okay, let me get on a national stage, see if I can do that. I did that. Then I took my first first place show and then I went pro. And so it became this like very, very fun, challenging time of my life that I enjoyed. Now I also sacrificed a lot of other things during that time. I probably wasn't the best, you know, partner. I know both in business and in my relationship, because I was so consumed with myself and my sport and what I was doing. If you have that freedom to do that and maybe you don't have the same type of responsibilities today that you maybe had 10, 20 years ago or whatever, then why not? We could do this. We could definitely bring you into the next show, you know, leaner and tighter, a couple pounds more muscle on you and do that. Now if you were allowing me to be coach and say, you know, what do you think, Adam? I'm at 50 something years old. I just put myself in some of the best shape of my life. What's another good goal for me to do? I would love to make you run through something like a maps power lift and let's see what we can do with your strength. Or I would love to put you through maps performance and say, you know what, dude, let's, let's, Mike, let's see how, how much we can improve your mobility. Let's, let's check out your squat. Let's check out your debt. Let's check out some of your movements and let's, let's see if we can improve some of these, these movements and get you not only looking the best you've ever lived in your life, but now let's start looking at the best movement or feeling the best you've ever felt in your life. And I would take your same, your same attitude and discipline that you obviously applied to competing bodybuilding. And I would want you to apply that in maybe a direction towards bodybuilding or maybe a direction towards powerlifting or strength, right? So if you allowed me that, right? If you allowed me to intervene on your, on your goals and what you would do, what you're open to doing, that's where I would push you because I think you would, you would overall benefit the most from that. But if, if you're focused on the bodybuilding thing to your original question, absolutely, we can put on three to five pounds of muscle. We could do that naturally. In fact, especially a body that's been as lean as you've been coming back the other direction is some of the best muscle gains I've ever had is after I've dieted really hard for a show, I reintroduced calories, I changed my programming up a bit, and I guarantee muscle is going to come on your body even at your age. So long as I, you know, hormones are, are fine, which I'm assuming they probably are if your body's responding the way it is. So, you know, the answer is really, is diving into what is it, Mike, you really want to get out of this. And if, if bodybuilding is something you find you're passionate about right now, absolutely, we can go after that and bring an even better physique on the next show. But if you were open to suggestions and ideas, I would want to push you in the direction of let's get, let's get really hyper focused now on mobility for a while, or, hey, let's work on strength and see what we can do with your discipline there. Such great advice, Adam. I 100% agree. And then as far as the hormone stuff in your question you asked about, you know, chances of cancer with increased testosterone, the best studies now show that your cancer risk actually goes up with low testosterone, not with high testosterone. Of course, we're talking about within the range of what's considered, you know, healthy. We're not talking about super physiological bodybuilding doses. Nobody knows what the hell that will do long term. But again, we're not doctors. So if you go on that forum, you can ask questions. And if you want a consultation, you can actually talk to an expert and then ask those questions. We're not the ones that are, you know, we're not qualified really to answer anything, any questions along those lines. But you're in a pretty damn good place, Mike, at your age, getting to where you did, what Adam said is great. And I think if you did that, if you went mass performance or power lift, I think it would be great for your body. It's very different than what you were doing before. And that might be what actually puts that muscle on your body because it's so much more strength and performance focused. And if you don't have those programs, we can send that over to you, Mike. Oh, gosh, no, I don't know. And I don't want to ask for that. I mean, this has just been really, really helpful. Just, and Adam, I love what you're doing it. I don't want to take, this was part of a larger goal I have, which part of the reason I've enjoyed your show so much. I'm an ag guy, I grew up a farm boy, and I was still working agriculture. And my real dream is to give a TED Talk. And my TED Talk was to say how I won an over 50 bodybuilding competition, eating GMOs, whole milk and eggs. So I've enjoyed your like the Zbiotics episodes and things like that. And so much of what you say just makes sense. And I just like I say, the competition piece, I like where you're going with that, Adam, that that makes a lot of sense to your suggestions, because the competition was I don't, I don't have a burning desire to go back on stage, but I am very competitive. And when they kind of threw that carrot out there, I was like, well, I wonder, I like pushing myself for something that I never thought I could do. I could, I could tell Mike, I could direct that. Yeah, I could tell. And that's why I said you'd sign up for a powerlifting competition. One of those clients that I used to love to get a hold of your very rare. And when I get a hold of a client like you, I would try my best to influence you on what I thought would be, would be best for you. And if you allowed me to do that right now, that's kind of the direction I think I would push you considering that your main goal isn't just to be the best bodybuilder in the world as you basically set that goal for yourself and fucking crushed it. And now I'd be challenging. All right, let's look for so other goals and other pursuits within, you know, health and fitness and see what what else you could do. I bet a powerlifting competition would be a blast. I bet you'd have a lot of fun doing that. And they have age categories for that and of course weight categories. So it's a pretty, you know, somewhat level playing field. I bet that would be a lot of fun. Yeah. And even if you didn't get and compete on, on stage in that, I think just competing with yourself saying, okay, let's check where your, your deadlift, your squat, your benches and let's write a program and follow it and dial in your diet and let's see how much we can improve that over the next three to six months. We'll set, we'll send those over to you, Mike. Okay. Josh, guys, thank you so much. Thanks for what you're doing. Really enjoy your show and keep it up. And thanks, thanks for answering my questions and giving me some ideas. Yeah, no problem. And send Craig our love. Yeah, yeah. Keep us posted, Mike. Let us know how you do. I sure will. Thanks. Thanks so much. Thank you. That's a great position to be in. Oh, I love, I love, you could tell, I could tell this is like my, one of my favorite type of clients to train right here. I mean, you got the discipline at, at his age to put himself in that kind of shape and to get up on stage like that and perform that well. Like that's one of the things I love that I loved about competing is and why I know what we've, I ragged on it a lot early on in the show when we first started, but it did have tremendous value as far as the one, disciplining yourself to be that consistent for that long of a period of time to get there. And then you learn so much about your own body and diet and how it responds to things by going to that level. That's why I was trying to, after you said mass power lift, it like so many bells went off for me. It would be so perfect. That makes so much sense. It's competitive. It's objective, right? It's not judged. It's you lift the weight or you don't, and it's a different direction than bodybuilding. Nobody cares how you look. It's all about how much you lift. And I bet that would depriving yourself, you know, nutritionally. Yeah. It's now it's like, let's really add into that and build the muscle. So exactly what he needs to, if you wanted to go back to power. I bet you that's what puts the three, four pounds muscle on him. So that would be my guess. Well, that's kind of where I was thinking too, is like he wouldn't have to abandon this whole idea of maybe even competing again. Yeah, it could be down the road. Yeah. Go run, go chase strength for a while, get really good at that, try and improve that. And it'll only feed into his physique if he wants to go compete maybe next year. Totally. Hey, if you enjoyed that clip, you can find the full episode here, or you can find other clips over here. And be sure to subscribe.