 Boom, what's up, mind pump time. Ooh, this is a fun episode. We had Ben Pollock on the show. He's a very strong, very muscular, big, and very smart individual. And in this episode, we talk about bodybuilding versus powerlifting. Pros, cons, the carryovers. This guy's really smart too, so he lays it all out. He's also an open book. We even talk about anabolic steroid use and the differences between powerlifting and bodybuilding. You're gonna love this episode and here's the giveaway, okay, for today. I'm gonna give one of you free access to MAPS PowerLift. This is a MAPS program designed for powerlifting. By the way, we created that with Ben Pollock back in the day. In fact, if you buy or get MAPS PowerLift in there, there are videos of Ben coaching you through powerlifting. So it's a great program. One of you gets it for free. Here's how you can get it. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Make sure to subscribe to this channel and turn on your notifications. Do all of those and if we pick your comment, we'll notify you and then you'll get free access to MAPS PowerLift. Also, we have a sale going on right now this month and it's a massive sale. Check this out. It's called the Power Bundle. MAPS Strong, which is a resistance training or strength training program that's strongman inspired. So some unconventional lifts. You develop an incredible posture, your chain, back and butt. Everybody loves this program, very popular. And we combine that with MAPS PowerLift, which is the program we created with Ben Pollock. It's a powerlifting inspired workout program. Get your bench, your deadlift and your squat to new levels, okay? Both programs, if you got them normally, without the sale would cost you 300 bucks. Right now, get them both. The Power Bundle, $79.99, huge discount. If you're interested and you wanna sign up, head over to mapsmarch.com. Once again, it's mapsmarch.com. All right, here comes the show. I'm actually really excited to have you back in the studio. I didn't realize that it has been over three years because that was the Austin trip. I know we did the program with you, but we didn't do a podcast. So it's been since Austin. And I know that's at least three or four years. And so a lot has happened since then. And I'm really excited to hang out, dude. It was good to see you. Yeah, me too. Yeah, you know, you're in a unique position. I've always liked finding people like you because I have a lot of questions around kind of similarities and differences between different training methodologies. And you were a highly competitive powerlifter who then went into bodybuilding. And a lot of similarities. Obviously both lift weights, you know, getting stronger, building muscle, but very different competition-wise. There's differences in how you train and diet and all that stuff. And I'd love to kind of dive in a little into that. What you saw, the differences were and how it felt and maybe start with why. Why did you switch from a powerlifting where you did have a great career into the sport of bodybuilding, which is a lot different in terms of the judging competition. Yeah, so that's actually an easy question for me because it was a very, it was a decision I struggled over for a long time. So when I finally made the switch, I was very clear that this is what I was gonna do. So it was about a full year that I was trying to stay 181 for powerlifting because I wanted to total 2,000 at that weight class. And I was, before that, I was walking around around 215, right? So that's more of a cut than I was capable of doing. The biggest cut I ever did, my walk around weight was like 205 to 181. Now I would blow it up higher than that in the off season and stuff like that, but then kind of died down closer to the show. And I guess I did one cut that was bigger than that, but that was a bad experience. So trying to stay that light, I was eating almost nothing, which I could deal with that, right? Like that's just discipline. But because I was trying to stay that light, I ended up getting hurt over and over and over again. It was bad to the point where I'd be walking in the gym cramping up before I even started lifting. I'd actually have to warm up for half an hour so the cramps would go away. Oh, interesting. And so whether it was like a little minor, a campaign or something like more major that was holding me back, it just kept happening over and over and over again. So I was training for the US Open in, I believe it was 2019. And training was actually going really well. I was walking around, it was about 200, 201, something like that. So actually relatively easy cut to 101. And I had hit a 760 squatting training, pulling about the same, all my lifts were going really well. And I ended up developing 10 and 90s on my knees, that was both knees, so bad I couldn't even walk upstairs or anything. And I had to drop the meat for that. I ended up getting cortisol injection one. It went away, but it was just, I had really pushed hard for that prep mentally. And after that I was like, I just can't keep this up. I got to get my body break. So that was the point when I started training, training, I was still doing power lifting training, but my goal shifted towards bodybuilding. Now, what was it about bodybuilding that attracted you in terms of, cause you're injured and was it just that, okay, now I can allow my body to grow or that I don't have to train as heavy? Like what was it that attracted you? It was, I'm somebody who has to have a goal. Like I don't have a goal. It's not that I'm not gonna train hard. It's not that I'm not gonna follow my diet. I'll just kind of go nuts. Like I need something to push for. So I had a goal that would still allow me to train in a way that was intense and a way that was, you know, kind of directed at something, not just training for the enjoyment of it. And I could train a little bit lighter. So I wasn't gonna beat myself up as much. But I really, at first I was not invested in the bodybuilding world at all. I really just wanted to have that goal that would be something external that I could work towards that wouldn't beat me up as much. Did you have any concerns with, because one of the biggest differences that I see in powerlifting and in bodybuilding is in powerlifting, either lift the way you don't. So you win or you lose. It's objective. There's no arguments. I mean, there could be arguments on, I guess the way that they judge a lift, but it's not a subjective sport like bodybuilding where you're on stage and then someone says you look better than the other guy. So was there any concerns with that at all or? Well, no, because when I was starting out, I didn't realize that, right? And so I thought, well, this is essentially the same as a weight class competition. All I have to do is be the biggest guy on stage. So I'll do another crazy water. Wait a minute, you really thought that? I really thought that. Super objective. I really thought that. And I remember the phone call and he called me after that show and I remember having to talk him off while he was ready to rip every space. So I was like, Ro, calm down, relax. This is part of it. He told you about your question. Yeah. So that's what you experienced. So you went in there thinking, oh, it's just objective. I'm going to be bigger, more ripped, and I'll win. And then you, like, how did you feel when you figured out that's not quite how it is? Well, I was so hungry at that point that I was like, I didn't feel anything supposed to. It was terrible. I think after that show, I ate for like eight hours, not eight hours. It was like three or four hours just straight shoving my face. Just hunger would not go away. Oh man. It was terrible. What was the prep like for, because, okay. So here's another big difference. And these are all coming to me now as I think about it. As you're leading up to a powerlifting competition, your goal is to be as strong and aggressive and energetic as possible. Yup. Bodybuilding. It's like, how close to death can I get without actually dying? They call walking dead men is what they call them. That must have been weird for you. Like, what was the, how was the prep for bodybuilding versus powerlifting? So I didn't mind, like, I kind of, like, I like pushing myself, right? So the fact that I was feeling like, shit, that I could kind of at least embrace. Like, this is a challenge. Like, I can wrap my head around that. What I couldn't wrap my head around was the fact that you're supposed to get on stage and just be calm and enjoying yourself. And I'm like, I'm supposed to be fired up. Like, I'm supposed to be snorting ammonia. I'm supposed to be like screaming. So that, I got off stage and I was like, I didn't even do anything. Like, what, what was the last 12 weeks for? Like, to just walk across the stage, I could have done that at the start of prep. That was really weird for me. That took me a long time to- Circling back to the training, I know that this part could get very nuanced and we don't have to get in crazy detail, but I am a little curious, like, what were some of the major shifts as far as the training from shifting, lifting wise, like, did you dramatically change the programming completely? I mean, did you, what was the focus like and what did you kind of get rid of that you were doing before? Well, so at first, I was pretty misguided because, so again, I wasn't super invested in bodybuilding itself, right? And so I saw it as an excuse to let myself train more often, right? Cause I was, now I can do a body part split. So I can do push pull legs instead of having to, you know, squat and deadlift on the same day. So I can put in five or six training days. And that's, it's not like your recovery is any better cause you're training for something different, right? So that didn't go that well. Once I tried, once I started to get a little bit more familiar with what the training was supposed to be like, then it got, it was really pretty simple, right? It was including more isolation work. It was including more direct arm training, more direct shoulder training, but it was still primarily a powerlifting program. Like, I just enjoyed the heavy lifting too much to kind of cut that out completely. Even though I don't think it was super beneficial for me. Yeah, I remember we interviewed Stan Effarding and he was somebody that kind of did that as well, right? And he said, one of the biggest challenges for him was changing from like maximizing biomechanics leverage and technique for a lift versus making it feel harder and feeling it in the muscles more and doing the, you know, maybe more reps or whatever. Did you have a tough time transitioning from, you know, I'm squatting 600 pounds to I need to squat 315 and just really feel it in my quads type of deal. Yes, it was definitely very mentally challenging. Physically, I don't think it was that challenging for most of my body parts because for, especially for my back and legs, I already had a pretty strong mind muscle connection, right? So from a physical standpoint, that was pretty easy. It was definitely hard to get over the ego aspect of, okay, we're gonna knock the weights down and this is still supposed to be productive training for the pressing muscles in particular, right? So my chest, my shoulders, my triceps. Bench always helped me back in powerlifting. Those muscles helped me back in bodybuilding. It was still kind of a thing where I had to put in a lot of time and a lot of patience and really almost start from square one, trying to figure out exactly what you're saying. Okay, we're gonna try and feel the muscle actually working. We're not just trying to move the weight and then trying to isolate those individual muscle groups to pretty difficult for me because my shoulders have been beat up my entire powerlifting career and if you don't have good mobility, it's very, very difficult to put yourself in positions where you can really get that mind muscle connection. Where did you notice the lack of mobility? Was it just the full extension overhead? Anything overhead, man, not just full extension, but yeah, any type of vertical pressing was really, really difficult for me. Even incline pressing was really, really difficult. And I had to do a lot of mobility work to kind of get over that and it would kind of manifest itself outside of just pressing work, right? Like when I was gaining all that weight, I couldn't even get on a squat bar. My mobility got so bad because I'd added all that muscle, but I hadn't added, I hadn't built the flexibility to go with it. So that was actually really, really difficult. Were there any like specific exercises that you added into your routine that you saw like massive benefit from like that you weren't really doing before? Definitely isolation work from, not isolation work, but direct back training, upper back training because I was only doing deadlifts. And hold on, so when you were a powerlifter, you didn't do a lot of pull-ups, pull-downs, rows. I love that because you're an example I use all the time when I get into this argument. And I'm sure you've seen this. There's some trainers. Deadlift is not a back exercise. Yeah, that's right. And say deadlifting is not a back exercise. And I always point to your Instagram as an example. And I actually didn't know you weren't doing any. I'm just like, here's a guy who I know mostly only deadlifts and look the fuck at his back. So tell me it's not for your back. So I don't wanna say never because I would throw it in at the end of the workout randomly, but it was never programmed, right? It would be like, oh, I'm bored. I have some time. I still have some energy. Let me do some lap pull-downs, something like that. There was never any one more reason to it. And same with so isolation work for my shoulders, never messed with like lateral raises or anything like that. Those were probably the biggest thing because once I started actually using my shoulders, a lot of that pain went away. Surprise. Oh, interesting. So you actually had a correctional aspect from the bodybuilding type movements. Yes. Yeah, and for a long time, I still couldn't do lateral raises, right? I'd had to find other types of shoulder training that I could do without pain. And once I finally, Brett Wilkin, who's competing at the Arnold next week, he showed me how to do lateral raises in a way that I could without pain. And that made a huge difference. Now, one thing that I noticed that's different with I guess training for strength specific type stuff versus just hypertrophy is strength specific type stuff. You tend to do a lot of sets of one exercise or two exercises. So I might do 10 sets of squats because that's the exercise that I'm trying to get strongest in versus bodybuilding where I'm doing a lot of different exercises, maybe less sets per exercise, but just, did you do that? Were you just throwing, like maybe doing less of your other, you know, traditional lifts and doing just more of other stuff? I was definitely doing less of the squat bench and deadlift, right? Because there's only so much stimulation you can get for your whole body with those three. Right. But I definitely wasn't doing as many exercises as I think you'd find in a traditional bodybuilding program. Not because I think that's wrong, but because I couldn't wrap my head around, okay, if I'm doing three different types of rows, how am I gonna know whether all three of these are progressing or if I'm just exhausting myself in the first one? So I've nothing left on the third one. That kind of messed with my head because like you mentioned earlier, bodybuilding is really subjective. So if I didn't have those objective markers of, okay, I'm progressing in the gym, I just, it really got to me. Yeah, because I can imagine that, you know, when you're, it's hard. I guess this is good to talk about for people listening. When you're training for performance, right? Powerlifting, which is strength. Mentally speaking, it's a different feel in the gym. Here it's about leverage and strength and technique and energy, whereas a bodybuilder, it's like feel the pump, feel the muscle. Am I getting it tired? And the weights are really just the means to an end. It doesn't matter how heavy or light it is as long as you're, so that's such a different, I know it sounds easy talking about it, but that must have been a really hard transition mentally just the way you worked out. Yeah, and I'm still not really great at it because I'm, I mean, I'm probably addicted to the dopamine rush at this point, right? But those big lifts where you kind of get that fight or flight response right before you get under the bar, that to me is really fun. Being in that moment and be like, okay, got to calm myself down so that I can do this properly. I really enjoy that. The bodybuilding is more meditative where it's like, okay, this is going to be a long process and you need to be focused the entire 90 minutes that you're training. That takes a different type of mental strength. Yeah, the pump is, that's a big, bigger focus on bodybuilding and powerlifting. Only powerlifters care if they get pumped or not. Were you getting, were you seeing different levels of that and how it felt in training? Yeah, that had it been cool. Big time, very cool, right? Very cool. Yeah, and I mean, that goes hand to hand with nutrition, right? If you're eating any carbs for powerlifting, so adding both those in the different training, the different nutrition, the pumps were insane, man, to the point where they'd be like painful in a fun way, but that's cool. Yeah, because you don't want that in powerlifting. You don't want to power a painful pump where you can't do your lifting. In some circumstances, I will give my guys, the powerlifters, I coach, I'll give them exercises where I want them to get a pump, but it's either going to be, the two times that would be is they're trying to get over some type of joint pain, right? And I feel like the blood flow is beneficial for that. Or they have a fault in their technique where they're really not using a certain muscle group. You want them to feel it. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly how it used to apply. Now, what about the development in your physique? Because there's a lot of criticisms with powerlifting and how it develops your physique versus bodybuilding, for example, powerlifter might have a thick, deep back, but maybe the lats aren't very developed or the arms aren't gonna match the rest of the body or you may have good quads, maybe hamstrings might not, maybe not so much, that type of stuff, or maybe, here's a big one, the blocky waist, right? Versus the small waist and bodybuilding. Did you run into any of these types of issues with your physique as you? Absolutely. And again, that was another big mental challenge because it's a chicken and egg thing, right? Are you gravitating towards powerlifting because you have this structure that's better to lift than weights? That's a great question. Or did powerlifting develop this structure for you? I still don't know, because I took physique pictures when I was powerlifting, right? But I'd always be trying to get the perfect angle. They weren't progress pictures like you would do for check-ins for bodybuilding. So I have no idea. Now I will say, definitely, the extremities in particular, right? The arms, the shoulders, the calves, those things way underdeveloped in powerlifting. You just don't train them that much. Even the lats, I saw pretty big difference from adding in that back work other than deadlifts. So I definitely think there's an aspect to it, but you're gonna get a lot of quad growth from squats. You're gonna get a lot of back development. You're gonna get a lot of back development from benching. So I don't have a good answer for you, but I do know that a lot of the powerlifters I look at have a far different shape, even given how strong they are on those lifts than you would expect. You look at a bodybuilder who can do the same amount of weight, they're gonna be massively bigger and they have a different look to their physique. They're gonna have more cap shoulders. They're gonna have rounder pecs. They're gonna have thicker arms. Yeah, and here's something that's hard to explain that I've seen, and I remember first reading about this years ago, I remember Arnold wrote about this in probably in the 70s, and the article was something about how adding powerlifting training develops a more dense granite look to the physique versus always doing bodybuilding, which is more of this kind of round, full bubbly look to the body. Now, what's interesting is when I see powerlifters convert to bodybuilding, it seems to prove true. You definitely have the granite hard look and not the bubbly, flex-wheeler look with the muscles. Is that something that you guys talk about? Have you observed that yourself? Definitely observed it. I've also, I've tried to look into it from research perspectives. I haven't found a lot that's gonna support that, but it seems to be true, man. It definitely seems like the guys who train, who incorporate a lot of pumping work for lack of a better term, they do have that bubblier look to them. Again, you gotta wonder, are they bodybuilders because they had that naturally? Is that something that develops through their training? Is it something related to the diet where their carbohydrate intake means they're gonna store more glycogen so they're gonna have that fuller look? I don't know. I believe that has to do more with training. Personally, myself, I remember- I've seen the change in myself. I was the opposite, right? So I actually started as a young kid training like a bodybuilder. It wasn't until I got older did I start incorporating more powerlifting. And the biggest difference that I noticed, there's a lot of different things, but one of the things I always struggled with as a young guy lifting and training for hypertrophy for the pump all the time is I look great in the gym. But then as soon as two hours later, I would feel like it deflated all the way back to like a normal looking physique. When I started to incorporate powerlifting and training really heavy, I didn't feel like I aired up as much, but I felt like that muscle look stayed on me throughout the day, if that makes sense. I looked more muscular when I was flat and not pumped up. So maybe it wasn't as extreme looking, but then I built this muscle that stuck on me. It's hard for me to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it because there isn't any science to really support what we're saying, but I've seen it in several friends of mine that have experienced it in both directions. I've experienced myself and I really believe that that has more to do in my opinion with the training than the body type. The other one I think has more to do with the body type. I do believe that when you see someone who has kind of like boxier hips or like that and they're also badass powerlifters, I think that that's helps. I think it's half of what makes them really good at that. Just like you see, like I get this question a lot with female CrossFit athletes. Like a lot of times girls are afraid to train some of those lifts because they're like, oh, all the girls in CrossFit have these really boxy hips. And I think that they are good at CrossFit because they have those hips, not those hips gave them. And then you get the weird anomalies like Ronnie Coleman who had a really small waist and they're lifting 800 pounds for reps. So there's stuff like that that happens. What about the stamina stuff? Because I've trained both ways in transitioning from lots of sets, lots of rest, low reps to, now I'm doing 12, 15 reps and squats and lunges and rest is a lot shorter. It's like, man, if the stamina is just, the lack of endurance I have transitioning to that was just ridiculous. Did you find that for yourself? Yeah, and again, I put on all that size really quickly, right? So it was hard for me to walk upstairs for a while. But yeah, it's definitely a lot different. And I think part of the transition was figuring out, okay, how can I make it so that I can push myself really, really hard, push my muscles really, really hard without just having my lungs being the limiting factor. Yeah, yeah. So what did you, would you end up doing or did it just take time? It took time, time was the big one. There was some degree of movement selection and then there are other strategies you can use, right? Like supersetting muscles that aren't antagonistic, you know, like doing chins and squats together. You can do more work done in the same period of time or doing a lot of cardio helped. Do you, what are the, I guess advantages you think you had competing at the level you did in power lifting and going to bodybuilding versus the other people who were just pure bodybuilders? I think the biggest thing was I had already put in a lot of time weight training, right, like, because yeah, I was starting out from ground zero in bodybuilding, but I had still developed a lot of muscle from all that powerlifting. And so that gave me kind of a headstart. The things that having the knowledge of, and I don't want to say biomechanics just on a degree in that or anything, but having that kinesthetic awareness that I built through learning to squat and deadlift and bench and have all my muscle, muscle groups work kind of synergistically, that definitely helped me to learn how to, because posing is a lot like that, right? Like your body has to move as one unit, even though in the gym, when you're training for bodybuilding, you want to isolate those muscle groups. It's different when you're on stage, when you're actually performing. So I think it helped in that regard. I also think a huge advantage that you had too was we, and we talk about this on the show a lot, some of the best programming out there comes from powerlifting. Like because it has- So it's objective. Yeah, and you have to be seeing this progress on weight on the bar. So you have to be very smart the way you program. And I think that there's not as much of that in bodybuilding. Absolutely agree. I think bodybuilding is- A lot of bodybuilder, people who bodybuild kind of fool themselves because it feels this way, it feels that way. It's hard to fool yourself when you're powerlifting or Olympic lifting because are you stronger? It's either yes or no. So I could see that as an advantage as well. I'd absolutely agree. I've also, one of the guys I work with, Mike Desherre, who's a great powerlifting coach, one of the best powerlifting coaches out there, he made the really good point that in powerlifting, the training drives the progress. In bodybuilding, to a large extent, the food and the drugs drive the progress. So the weight on the bar increasing to some degree can be just a result of the fact that you're eating more and you're taking antibiotics. Oh well, that's a dream. Now what about the camaraderie? Like, you know, is it a different feel? Oh yeah, did you like- Competing with powerlifters was by like one community more than the other? That is a great question. So I actually, it was so hard for me at first, it was so hard for me because I really, you know, there's the stereotype of the, you know, the douchebag bodybuilder who's posing in the mirror and everything. And I didn't want to be part of that crap. I actually worked with a sports psychologist because it was like, it was bothering me. And it was like, I really want to train with my powerlifting friends of powerlifting Jim, even though I'm competing in this. And she's like, well, you know, challenge yourself to make new friends, essentially. And I had the advantage of, okay, I already have a pretty big following on social media. So people were more likely to talk to me and that made it really easy. And in hindsight, probably the single coolest thing about bodybuilding is that I did make so many new friends because everybody, I don't think that stereotype holds true at all. All the bodybuilders I've met have been really, really cool, really, really supportive of each other and really not egotistical at all. What about competition day? Like, how different is that? Everybody's dead on competition, I was talking. Everybody's sitting there staring into space being like, I just want to get this over and eat. And powerlifting is not like that? In powerlifting, I think everybody's kind of like, they're amped up, but there's a lot of camaraderie there that you don't get on stage because you have to be warming up on the same bar in the same back room. Like you're trying to help each other out. You're trying to make sure everything goes smoothly. You've got people volunteering to help you. And you have that in bodybuilding too, but there's a lot less work to do in bodybuilding you're saying, okay guys, it's time to pump up. Versus, okay, what do you need for your next attempt? Who's going when? You have this long until you need to be on the platform. There's a lot more logistical stuff that goes on. And I think that means people are going to be helping themselves. Not helping each other. Now it seems like in terms of like going from powerlifting to bodybuilding, there are some advantages there, but it doesn't seem like there's any advantages if you start off as a bodybuilder and switch over to powerlifting. What would those be, if you could think? I think that the volume of training that bodybuilders do for their upper body really seems to carry over well to the bench press. Bodybuilders almost universally seem to have really impressive bench presses. But that would be kind of like the big one. And then I think also, powerlifters tend to neglect hypertrophy training. And if they do, if they do it at all, it tends to be more of an afterthought. Especially right now it seems kind of popular to just do squat bench and deadlift. And I think that is selling most lifters short. I definitely think there's vanished including those lifts in hindsight I'm saying. Now you mentioned too with your shoulders like how you'd notice like that lockout and like that definitely benefited your overall performance physique. Like what about your legs? Like did you do any split stance training? Did you do anything? I did a little bit, but I definitely think genetic wise my legs were pretty good to begin with. So I didn't add a whole lot. One thing that I had to add, I added in leg extensions. And the reason was one of my first posing classes was with Derek Lunsford who's the 212 Mr. Olympiano. And we're in the posing room and he's trying to teach me how to do an Aventai pose and he's trying to get me to get the upper quads to separate, I just, I can't, I don't understand what he's telling me. You didn't have the control. Exactly. And he's like, do you do any leg extensions? I'm like, I kind of scoff. I'm like, I don't do leg extensions, but I do squats. We didn't have me do the hip and upduction machine. Yeah. And he's like, well, you gotta start doing leg extensions at the top. You're really trying to feel that kind of squeeze where you've got the hip flex, but the knee extended. So I started doing them. Of course he's right. He's Mr. Olympia, no sort of talking about. But when you do those sorts of movements that are gonna mimic what the positions you're in on stage really helps a lot to develop that control. Yeah, you know, it's fun. If you don't mind, I'll be a little objective about your physique when you first transitioned. Please. I didn't need to know you were a power lifter to see on stage when you were ripped and posing that you were a power lifter. Now of course there's the like, okay, you know, power lifters don't work their arms as much and all this. But one thing is when you turned around and your back dwarfed a lot of the other bodybuilders. Now I could see the lat area, you know, obviously you probably didn't do a lot of lat work, but the thickness and development in your back dwarfed other bodybuilders. And I typically see that with power lifters who transition into bodybuilding. And my best, I guess explanation is the deadlifts. They just bodybuilders don't deadlift. And there's this argument about whether or not deadlifts are good for bodybuilder. Do you think bodybuilders should all deadlift? I don't know if they all need a deadlift, but yes, I think most bodybuilders should absolutely be deadlifting. I think it should be. Now it doesn't necessarily have to be back specific training, right? Some people are gonna have leverages where their deadlift is gonna be more of a lower body lift. And if they wanna incorporate that on their leg day, I think that's fine. It's still gonna have carry over to the back development. Honestly, when I'm looking at bodybuilding programming, instead of coming from a body part standpoint, I'm coming from a movement pattern standpoint. So I'm gonna tell any bodybuilder you need to have a hinge in your program. If it's a deadlift, if it's an RDL, if it's some other type of hinging movement that you can feel where your erectors and lats and glutes and posterior chain are all engaged, you're good. Yeah, that makes a big difference. Were there any exercises or things that you see yourself forever incorporating now in your training that wasn't there before? Like, were there things that bodybuilding highlighted or showed you? That's a good question. So absolutely calf training. I think every single power lifter needs to be doing that because if you're training your calves through a full range of motion, you're gonna develop a lot of dorsiflexion. You're gonna develop comfort having your calf under load. And when you're in the bottom of the squat, that's exactly what's happening. And I see a lot of power lifters who develop ankle or knee injuries and they never do any calf training. And I think if they did, they would have a lot fewer problems. That's so highlight, something we just talked about on the show. I was telling the guys, when I worked on my squat depth, right? I had before I had a really short, I could barely break 90 degrees, had poor ankle mobility. I put a lot of work in that and now I comfortably can sit ass to grass on my squat. One of the side effects of that that I would not have seen coming was I'd develop my calves more from that. And that's such a great point. I think a lot of people neglect that. Any other ones besides that? So calf training for sure. So for me in particular, not so much of an issue because I, you know, I think I do genetically have pretty good leg development. But one of the things that I learned and I learned this training at MI40 was that a lot of power lifters seem to have very weak upper hamstrings. And so I think a hamstring curl, like a lying hamstring curl. Oh, like the leg bicep. Yeah, cause you don't do anything for that. It's all hip hinging. Yes. And it's shocking to me, you can put a power lifter who can squat 800 pounds, you can put them on a leg curl and you can try to have them use 50 pounds just at that end range, right? Just where they're really trying to get that upper hamstring engage and they can't do it. They'll just kind of, you know, use momentum through that part of the lift. So that's something that I think I would definitely incorporate in more programming, maybe not for myself, but in general. Now, did you notice any carryovers to your deadlift from strengthening, from doing leg curls? It's been pretty cool that I, and I was telling Adam this before we started recording, even though I haven't specifically been training for a heavy deadlift, it seems like my deadlift strength has really increased since I've started about it. What about your biceps? Because I've, you know, I have powerlifter friends and they don't like to train their biceps, what I don't need biceps for or whatever. And then, you know, I had one friend who started training his biceps and was like, I feel more stable in the deadlift with stronger biceps. Did you notice anything from that or is it just a show muscle? So I had, I've had problems with my deadlift grip because, so I gained a lot of weight, right? Yeah. My hands got a lot bigger. And so I have hard time holding on to the bar before I pulled hook grip. And now that I'm bigger, my movement pattern is a little bit different. It's very difficult for me with a conventional stance to pull in a straight line. With hook grip, if you're pushing the bar away from me, even a little bit, the bar's gonna spin and you're gonna lose that. Oh yeah. A lot of the, I don't know the physics term, but it's gonna be a lot harder to hold on to the bar. So I can pull a sumo fine because then I do have a straight movement pattern but I don't know whether the bicep training has helped my grip strength at all. Yeah, that's, that makes a lot of sense. So do you have to go alternate? No, so I've tried that. I tried hook grip. The only thing that I found that consistently works is a sumo stance with a hook grip. And that's really one of the reasons that I haven't competed seriously in power lifting since I started bodybuilding was I haven't really figured out how to fix my grip issues. So I'm gonna ask you maybe an offensive question to a power lifter, but what about wrist straps? Why not use wrist straps in your, you know, straps? I do, but it's not allowed in competition. Okay, yeah. Oh, dude. If it were allowed in a meet, 100% happy out there. 100% happy out there. Totally. All right, well, let's get into the diet side because this is something, this makes perfect sense. You compete as a power lifter in a weight class. Yup. You could not allow your body to get too heavy. So you as a bodybuilder, which people, when they picture, if you just say power lifter versus bodybuilder, people tend to think the reverse. All power lifters eat whatever they want, which is true if you're at the top weight class and you have, there's no more limit, but if you're in a weight class, you can't do that. You have to keep your weight down. Whereas in bodybuilding, you know, if you're on stage and you're lean, if you have more muscle, I guess the better, right? So what was that like? And, you know, what were you eating before and how did you change that? I was eating so little. When I was trying to stay 181, like I was talking about that last year in power lifting, I was eating something like 1,800 calories a day. Wow. Holy cow. I'm squatting and deadlifts 700 pounds of reps week in and week out. I still look back, I'm like, what the hell was I thinking and how did I do that? Because it's just, it seems even more terrible in hindsight. So I was, there was at one point where I was eating like six bags of spinach a day because it's low in calories, but higher in food volume just so that I wouldn't be like feeling starving all day long. My potassium from all that spinach was like, it got elevated and high potassium puts you at risk of heart attacks. It's like, it was scary. So when I actually started eating for bodybuilding, I was able to put it on a lot of sides really quickly. But I think we talked about this before the show too. The gut health issues, it's like it's really uncomfortable trying to eat that much food, especially all those carbohydrates that I wasn't used to. And, you know, they taste good, but you don't really feel good afterwards. You feel kind of sluggish. So where did you, did you just go from 1,800 to 5,000? Or did you have to slowly? So my first prep was for classic physique. So I really wasn't eating anymore. And I ended up on stage at 184. But yes, after that, when I started training actually for bodybuilding, I went straight from, I can't remember how many, it was slightly more because I was no more activity for bodybuilding, but I went straight from that to over 5,000 a day. Wow. Holy cow. And how'd you feel? Dude, at that point, I was so hungry after dieting for so long that like I was still hungry on that. That I was, it was probably four or five months of eating that food. Plus a new training stimulus and everything too. So your body was just, It took a long time until my body was like, okay, we've had enough food. And how did you, you had to break it up in the meals throughout the day. Oh yeah. I'm assuming. Now, looking that you went from one extreme to the other with the weight and the food, what would you say, if we weren't competing at all in anything, if you were just looking for general health, where do you think like your calorie intake and weight would look like? I'm not gonna lie, I think about that a lot because I really want to give you the point where, I just want to feel good, right? Like I don't want to feel so uncomfortably huge. I don't want to be like starving all the time. So I think for me, it would probably be around 215, 220. When I was competing at 198 in powerlifting, I was pretty comfortable. Didn't have to do those extreme weight cuts was eating an amount that kind of felt right. I think for me, calories would probably be around 3,500 because I'm still gonna train. I love training. I don't want to back off on that, but yeah, probably probably a good 30 pounds less than I weigh right now. I'm probably about 30% fewer calories. So let's see, what was your, you were walking around, you said like what, 210 when you were a powerlifter? When I was competing in, competing at 198, I was walking around 215. 215. And then for 181, it was 205, 210. Okay. So, and then bodybuilding, where are you hitting your, you've obviously put on a lot of size. What do you weigh in the off season? What do you compete at? The highest I've ever weighed in on the off season was 272. And my- So hold on, that's a 60 pound, essentially 60 pounds heavier. Yeah. Okay. All right. And then when you, and you don't, by the way, people don't follow your Instagram. You always have abs. I've never seen you have, not have abs. So it's not like you're 270 fat. No, I mean, that's just genetic. It's not like a, do anything special for that. But yeah, I always stay pretty lean. That's not hard at all. It's still uncomfortable. It doesn't matter if it's muscle or fat, right? Like it doesn't feel good. Such a good point, you know? Yeah. But yeah. So 272, the absolute highest point in the off season. My stage weight for my last show was 246. Wow. Okay. So you could, so the difference is literally lean body mass wise, it's probably more than this cause you're obviously more shredded on bodybuilding stage, but it's at least 50 pounds. Yep. How fast did that come on? So I put on most of that size, I think in the first eight months or so. Like it's great when I started eating it. What is that per month? It's like, that's like almost, that's like seven, eight pounds a month. Honestly, a lot of, so a lot of it was like water retention, right? Sure. Like the first three months, I put on something like, it had to be something like 60 pounds in the first three months. Water, right? Like including all the muscle. Okay, half of it is still 30 pounds of muscle. Yeah. It was, it was insane. Like the, I'd take my socks off and my feet would, you know, had that edema. Yeah. It was crazy. So most of it was all at once. And then it took me a long time cause I don't remember if we were on air when I said this, but like hard to walk upstairs and stuff. So I had to stay there until I kind of like got comfortable. And that was around the 240 range. Then I had another big push and got from there to about 270. And that's kind of been where I've stalled out, just getting past that is. Now, even though you're switching over to the bodybuilding type training, I gotta imagine you putting on that much muscle, that much weight, you're also seeing strength gains too. Yeah, it's interesting because they haven't been as large as you would expect. And a lot of that I think is because your leverages changed so much. When I was competing in powerlifting at the lower weight classes, my technique was weird. I don't think there was, from a technical standpoint, I think it was sound, but it looked very uncomfortable. It looked very unconventional because I had to work around my leverages. So I developed these movement patterns that worked for me when I was that size, but they don't work anymore. So I had to change those. Didn't you have more of a forward bend in your squat when you were lighter versus now you look more upright? Way more, way more because there was almost no hip engagement in my old squat. It was all quad. And I just didn't have the hip muscles should have support that weight. So now that I do, I can use my hips and it does seem to have made a pretty big difference in my squat. I don't think that I haven't like pushed, pushed my squat, but I think if I did, I could probably get to 800 and sleeves and stuff. That has to be so weird to, I mean, that's like taking, to put that in perspective, imagine like a tiger woods or someone who's been swinging a golf club the same way for their whole career as a professional. Then all of a sudden we're, you know, add 15, 20 pounds to your body and we're going to swing different like. Well, if, okay. So to give you an example, it's like when you see a kid grow, like go through their teenage years and they grow really fast and then they move awkwardly. They're not used to their body. And I experienced this and when I competed in jujitsu, I put on 15 pounds, took a couple of months, a few months off, went back. My technique was off. And it was not because I don't remember the techniques because I didn't know how to use my body with it. And that was 15 pounds. So going to the gym with 60 more pounds on your body, was it like totally new? Yeah. And it wasn't like, it wasn't fun. It was kind of a, it kind of mess with me a little bit because you've done this thing for so long. You feel like you're really competent at it. And all of a sudden you're not and relearning those movement patterns. Once I kind of got the hang of it, it was like, Oh, this is cool. Look, I can do this differently now. But at first it was really, really difficult. And like I said, I still haven't completely figured out the deadlift. So let's talk about your peaks then. Okay, let's talk about your highest deadlift and squat and bench when you were at your lightest. And then what are those numbers look like at your biggest? How close are they? So at my lightest, so when I was 181. So I squatted 760 in the gym at 181. But I think my best meet squat was 750 or 749, one of those. My best squat now I've done, let's see. I did 730, so that was in reps. I did 735 pause and sleep cause I'm doing all these weird variations. I did a total of, I think it was 725 bar weight and another 135 chains. And that was the sleep. So not that crazy like you said for someone who's got 50 more pounds of muscle on his body, not that much more. No, definitely not. My best deadlift at 181 was 782. I think it might have been 771, it was one of those. And my best deadlift, well, I pulled 855 down with straps, but without straps, I don't think I could do 782. Wow. My bench went up a lot. My bench bench at 181 was 402 and I benched 484. Now we didn't go, we were going through most of your muscle groups and you were kind of saying, and I actually before Salon and I wanted to ask you if there was anything related to the chest that you that you attribute to like as far as how you were training, did you do something different? Whether it be dumbbell stuff or machine work, what did you do for your chest? I will admit, I love the Smith machine for chest work. It's so nice because one of the things that you're doing in powerlifting is trying to really optimize your bar path and to make it as efficient as possible. And with the bench press, that means you're, the bar is gonna kind of drift over your face, right? As you press, because that's gonna help you get, it's gonna help you utilize your triceps. I was gonna say as you're coming down, you're kind of, it's almost got this like arch too. So training that way is really minimizing engagement of the pecs at the top. And I developed a really, really hard sticking point where if I wasn't in the perfect groove, there's no way in hell it's gonna lock out that bench press. So being able to train in the Smith machine where it's a straight bar path really helped me develop the skill to push through that sticking point if I was a little bit out of the groove because I was more used to training my muscle in that position. Did you mess with like elbow flare and stuff on the regular bench press too? Did you do things like that? So I tried, it didn't help on the regular bench press but it does help on the other movements, right? So if I'm pressing with dumbbells or I'm pressing with the Smith machine, that way I can engage my pecs a little bit more. It doesn't feel safe to me on a heavy bench press. Like the stretch on the pec under 450 plus, it's not something I want to risk. Yeah, I tried doing a guillotine press with heavy weight. And you can really feel that in the upper chest. Oh, absolutely. So heavy you're not gonna feel. You're not gonna feel. Any weird exercises that you did that you've never tried before? Ooh, that's a good question. Let's see, weird exercises. There have been a few, Chris and I just the other day we're doing, we're trying to do like a sissy leg press where you got your feet real low and real close. Yeah, your hips come up off the pad. Yeah, that was pretty cool. Let's see, what are some other good ones? We've done a lot of weird supersets. One that I really like is a mechanical drop set where you're doing kind of a seated row and you start leaning way forward. Then when you fatigue there, you sit straight up and then you start leaning back. So you make the leverages easier as you go. Yeah, that type of stuff is really interesting to me. But I don't know that there's anything that I've come up with that other people wouldn't have seen or anything. What are some of the things that you, like what do you think power lifters could learn from bodybuilders and vice versa? So power lifters, I think I mentioned this earlier, but I really think they need to be doing more isolation training. I think that whenever you're trying to address a weak range of motion in one of your lifts, there's almost always going to be a weak muscle group associated with that. Very similar to what I talked about with the Smith machine on the bench press. And I think that if you're able to identify those connections, you're gonna be a better power lifter for that. Bodybuilders, I think they should really periodize their training more. We talked about how bodybuilding training is really simplistic and it's almost always some type of linear progression, but if you're an advanced bodybuilder, how long is that gonna be sustainable? Of course. How long are you gonna be able to add 10 pounds to your leg press? Like if you periodize your training, you're gonna make progress for a lot longer in terms of strength, and eventually that is gonna be manifested to size. Yeah, so going back to when you gained all that size in that short period of time, like was it weird, did it hurt? Like what did it feel like? Cause that's a very, the only time I think most people ever experienced that percentage of lean tissue growth is probably when they're babies or maybe even teenagers. So as a grown man gaining that much lean body mass that short period of time, was it weird? Were you sleeping all the time? Was it like? It was bizarre. It was really weird, yeah. So yeah, my sleep was a lot better. I think my energy levels throughout the day were better and that was probably because I wasn't starting myself, but it was extremely uncomfortable. Like putting on shoes was really difficult. Going upstairs was really difficult. And it just, you know, even walking, like if I was trying to go for a longer walk that was, I get winded faster. And it was all completely new to me because I had been that size for my entire adult life, right? So it was really, really challenging to try to get used to it without getting emotionally attached to the way I used to feel. Let's see. Now you had mentioned bodybuilding, a lot of it relies on drugs and diet whereas powerlifting relies on training. If it's okay, I'd like to get into the drug aspect of professional, of these professional sports. Yeah, how different are they? So I've always read that power lifter. I know there's certain anabolics that power lifters favor because of their effect on aggression and strength and then bodybuilders like other kinds because of the size or whatever. Like what are the big differences that you see in the drug use in the different sports? Well, yeah. So the first point I think bodybuilders at least in the off season, you're trying to minimize the endogenic side effects you're getting as much as possible, right? Because to a large extent, the higher the dose, the more size you're gonna put on. And if you're getting these out, like you're getting a lot of aggression, you're getting a ton of acne, you're getting night sweats, you're getting insomnia, all things that typically are associated with some of the stronger androgens, you're not gonna be able to make it that much progress as if you're recovering better or you're feeling better. So bodybuilders really try to minimize the androgens in the off season. They're gonna lean more towards the anabolics, gonna put them more in size. So things like Deca, things like EQ, things like Primo. Power lifters want those androgens because typically the androgens are ones that are also going to have some effect on the central nervous system that are gonna result in better contractile output. Think you're stronger. Exactly, right? So for those, you're gonna have the compounds that would be typically associated with a bodybuilding meat prep, or bodybuilding meat prep, bodybuilding show prep, right? So things like Mastron, things like Tren, things like Halo, things like Anadrol, which I guess wouldn't really be in many bodybuilding show preps, what I've heard of it in a few. That's because they give you a harder look to your physique. So bodybuilders, we use it. And also there's a fat burning effect from the high androgens, is that correct? That is, yeah, but I think power lifters are specifically using it because, and I don't know the pharmacology enough to be able to explain this in detail, but those androgens tend to help your muscles work better, right? Because you can get trained through a number of different ways, right? You can make your muscle bigger, you can get better technique, your central nervous system get more efficient. And steroids can help with all those, maybe not the technique aspect, but in some ways, you can make an argument for like better neurological learning, right? So the androgens will have a more of a direct effect on the power lifter success than the antibiotics will. The other thing is, and you mentioned this earlier, the power lifters are trying to stay in a weight class for the most part unless they're a super heavy guy. So they're gonna be limited in the total milligrams they can use, because like I said earlier, typically a higher dose means bigger size. So if you're trying to stay, in my case, 198 or 181, you're not gonna be able to use 700 milligrams of testosterone because you're gonna be outside of your weight class. And if you're gaining size to add this strength and your goal is to compete, well, you're not gonna be more competitive because you're gonna be up against bigger guys who have that same advantage. So because of that, would you say in bodybuilding you see a lot crazier doses? Way higher doses. Like astronomically higher doses. Oh, wow. Yeah. Oh, wow, interesting. What about in the unlimited weight classes and power lifters still? Honestly, the super heavy guys that I've talked to and worked with, they tend to use some of the least amount of gear. Wow. And I mean, I think that goes to the point where generally a bigger muscle is a stronger muscle. So if you can put all that size without the gear, well, then you're gonna be just as strong, right? So they, at least from what I've heard, they don't push the doses crazy hard. It's more of those lighter guys who are running high levels of drugs that aren't gonna add much size. So you don't use in hundreds of milligrams of anivar or lots of halo or trend or things like that. Yeah. Was it hella testin? Is that you're referring to? Yeah. Yeah, that's a very, I mean, bodybuilders talk about that being like a waste of time. Like, oh yeah, you get stronger and aggressive. You don't really add any size. Power lifters love it for that reason. Yup. You know, cause they get that. Any commonalities? Is testosterone a commonality between the two? Just the dose is different? Yeah, for most people, I think everybody uses testosterone. I don't know, I don't know anybody personally, well, I know one person who avoids testosterone completely and he can be some parallel if you're used to. But I think pretty much everybody uses testosterone because, I mean, everybody has a life outside of competition, right? You don't wanna give up the biological functions that testosterone's gonna provide. What about growth hormone? Is that, I know that's a bodybuilding drug. Power lifters mess with growth hormone? Generally, at least at the top levels, they're gonna be running fairly low amounts, right? I don't know of anybody who runs more than about three I use a day. And I definitely wouldn't recommend it because the water retention in your hands you're gonna get is really gonna mess with your grip. You don't need more than that for recovery purposes, right? You're gonna get the benefits from sleep recovery joints, all that. You're gonna get that from that low of a dose. So it's definitely beneficial to an extent, but it's a small extent. You've now had the opportunity to probably experiment with a lot of different antibiotics. Do you have favorites and why and any least favorites and why? Yeah, so my philosophy now is to try to stay as much as possible in the antibiotics that have been tested in humans and approved for human use, because that's gonna be safer. That's like three or four, I think, right? Yeah, there's not a whole lot. So generally, the safest compounds are gonna be the bio-dentical ones, right? The ones your body produces naturally. So testosterone, growth hormone. If you're talking about peptides, things like PPC, those are gonna be safer than the synthetic ones as a general rule. Then, if you're trying to add size, my go-to is always gonna be primable and it's probably the cleanest, that's a very vague term, but it's a very tissue selective. So it's gonna make your muscles bigger but it's not gonna have other types of side effects, right? That you might get from harsher antigens. Yeah, I read that was Arnold and Franco's favorite drug back in the 70s and 80s. They brought Primo from Europe and that's what they would use over here while everybody else was using deca. Yup, and the similar things to primaboner are gonna be the other DHT derivatives, right? So we talked about Mastron, Anivar is another one. Those are gonna be kind of the compounds that I would lean towards. They're gonna be safer and they're pro, for the most part, you're gonna get more or less the same benefits milligram per milligram that you would from other drugs. It might not be as fast, but if you're just trying to rush things, well, you're not gonna get the best results anyway. Now, at some point, I think for bodybuilding, I don't know any bodybuilders who can get away, get on stage without using Tren, as harsh as it is. It gives you a look that other compounds seem not to. For powerlifting, I really don't like Tren. I think that for me, it's insomnia, right? And when you're not able to sleep, you're not able to recover, you're not able to lift heavy weights. The training has to come first for powerlifting. So those are typically the ones that I kind of lean towards. I try to stay away from the ones that either failed clinical trials, which there are a lot of them, or the ones that have the kind of scarier long-term side effects, especially like the neurodegenerative issues, which it's not, we don't totally understand these drugs. It's not ethical to run studies where you're giving somebody hundreds and hundreds of milligrams of dynamite all day and seeing what happens over 10 years. But I try to err on the side of caution as much as possible. Any surprising effects? I remember the first time I experienced D-balls, I was so blown away by the strength gains. It was like freakish. Every time I got to the gym to do shoulder press, I had to add 10 to 20 pounds to my lift every time. Anything that surprised you like that, that was abnormally crazy. The only one that sticks out to me like that is Methyl Tren, which is one that, I wouldn't recommend people use because it's not really a very healthy drug, but I can take that small amount, like 500 micrograms, so half a milligram before training, and it feels like a cheat code, man. It feels like just anti-gravity. I didn't even know that existed. Is that a newer compound? I don't really know the history of it, but it is getting more pop, I mean, at this point in both sports, I think it's kind of an anything goes, whatever you can get your hands on type deal. So. Now I'm sure people are listening like, oh my God, what about your health and all that stuff? And there's definitely, I mean, let's be very clear. When you're looking at using antibiotics in a medical setting, replacing hormones, there's the very healthy, when you're using them outside of it, it's not a lot known, there's lots of risks, right? Potential health issues, and we see this in some pro bodybuilders, what happens later on. Do you get monitored? Do you get your liver enzymes and kidneys checked and all that stuff? Yeah, so I get blood work regularly. I've gotten, I've had my blood, so what is it, February? So I've had my blood work done three times in the past three months, right? So I get pretty regular blood work and I consult with a doctor and all that to make sure that there's nothing, definitely nothing that's gonna be acutely concerning, right, nothing short term, but also nothing that looks like it would be a long-term problem if it is, it's something that we gotta address at least in the off season, right? If you're prepping for a competition for a short period of time, you gotta do what you gotta do. Now what I haven't done and what I do need to do is get like heart scans because blood work can only tell you so much, right? And with, you can get a pretty good feel of, okay, are my kidneys okay? Are my, is my liver okay? But when it comes to the heart, it's like you can get blood tests for your heart to see what your heart is functioning at, but unless you get that scan, you don't really know anything. You don't know if it's grown. Exactly. Yeah, because that becomes an issue, right? It's the heart growth. And even some of the other tests that are looking at heart function don't give the full story unless you get like an echocardiogram at EKD. Did you get any red flag? Have you had any red flags going through this? I mean, you gained so much muscle and you had changed your anabolic use. You talked about insomnia. I would imagine you would have seen some changes in the blood work that you had to address. Honestly, since I've gotten bigger, my blood work has been awesome. It's, wow. Almost, the only red flag I ever had was when I was trying to do those crazy cuts. I think I mentioned this. My potassium was like elevated to scary levels. And that was when it was like, oh, I gotta change something. That's six bags of spinach. Yeah. Wow, that's really interesting. Now let's go back to the insomnia. I also hear, I mean, putting up that much size, look, I've gained 15 pounds and I started snoring, which I haven't done in a long time. Did you get any like sleep apnea, any snoring issues? Yeah, yeah, I got really bad sleep apnea to the point. Oh man, this, so I forgot to mention this when he asked about adding all that size because I've had a CPAP now for close to six months, I think, and it's been night and day. But before that, dude, I was scared to go to sleep because I would go to sleep and I would have dreams of like suffocating to death. Oh my God. And I would wake up just like gasping for air and I'd be scared to go back to sleep and be like, I don't wanna have that dream again. It'd be like you're underwater and your lungs are filling up and you're gasping for air and trying to talk through yourself. Just calm down, calm down. And then you wake up and be like, oh man, that was scary. All right, so I read a study on this. Do you know what they attribute that to? The size, the growth of the muscle of the tongue and then the throat. So those muscles grow and then they kind of get in the way of breathing. So it's like, it's such a weird thing, right? That was terrible. And the other thing that was terrible with sleep was the heartburn, which from what I've read is can be associated with sleep apnea. But there were points that I don't know if it was cause I was putting down so much food, right? But like I would throw up in the middle of the night and just wake up. Oh my God. And it was so terrible. I remember one time I was supposed to have a cheat meal and like I wasn't hungry, I didn't wanna eat anything. And I decided I could put down some Cheerios. So I have like a whole box of Cheerios and I throw the Cheerios up in the middle of the night and it was, oh, just that sour taste just stuck with you. I have not had Cheerios since then. It's been like three years. There's no side effects to getting that big effect. There's definitely people in our audience are listening going like, what the fuck? This guy is crazy. Why would you do all of this to yourself? Why push yourself to that limit? Well, it's really hard for me not to be competitive. It's like, I get my mind on a goal and the goal involves competition. It's like, I'm not gonna stop until I get there. Yeah, you probably almost relish in the challenge at these hurdles, right? It's a lot easier. It was fucking easy. Everybody could do it. Yes, it's a lot easier for me to mentally deal with the fact that this is really hard and I really wanna accomplish this and I gotta figure out a way to do it than where I'm at now where it's like what do I want to achieve, right? Trying to fit answer that question is extremely difficult. Yeah, I had this conversation with a family member where we were talking about this and like, why would anybody wanna do something crazy like that? I said, you know what's funny? Nobody asks a professional football player that question or a drag racer that question, right? Like, they're just as crazy. It's just as dangerous. Especially if you look at the like, for example, pro football, it's an easy one. You look at their lifespan. They're living to their 50 something, 60 years old. They're literally hitting each other with the force of a small car collision every game. So it's not any crazier. It just sounds crazier, I think, because people are not, you know, there's not many fans of bodybuilding. It's not as accepted, that's all. Yeah, to the general population, it seems we're freaks or weird, it's different and so you're right. That's a great point though. Yeah. You're also not making the money they are. Yeah, that's another question. I can't argue that. You live in your apartment. You barely can afford anybody to do all this to yourself to have a deal. So now has this been good for your business because, okay, I could see the benefit in lifting a lot away being light. That's like, wow, that's really impressive. But then there's the other side where social media, it definitely rewards looking a particular way, especially if you look extreme. There's a certain type of fan that, oh my gosh, he's so massive, he looks so crazy. Did it affect your business positively to make this transition? It absolutely did, but I actually think it did because I was reaching a new market as opposed to the people that I was reaching before really wanted to see this type of transformation. I think it's more just like people were interested in bodybuilding before and now start following me, right? Now start asking me for advice. Do you get any hate? I was just gonna ask that from the powerlifting community for leaving it to you. Or even the bodybuilding community for how dare you come into our sport and think you could do well. No, it's really, really funny. In powerlifting, I had a lot of haters, right? They were, my squat form really upsets some people. I remember there was one comment, I can't remember if it was Instagram or YouTube, but somebody said my squat ruined his life. I was like, geez, dude, get a life. But no, everybody from both sides, super, super supportive of bodybuilding, which was really, really cool to experience. Oh, that's really good to hear. Yeah, because you always think that there's gonna be a little bit of issues with one side versus the other. I mean, I definitely get people telling me, oh, I wanna see you come back to powerlifting. I want you to do a pro show. And but it's always like good nature, right? Like they're encouraging. Now, what do you think, because earlier when you were talking about the weight that you can lift versus the size, right? People, I think sometimes have a tough time understanding like you gain 60 pounds, but you can only lift another 15 pounds all the bar or maybe none, doesn't make sense. And we've explained this in other episodes that strength is more of a skill than anything. There's a lot of technique involved. It's very specific to the way you train. Bodybuilding is really about fatiguing a muscle and trying to minimize actually in some cases how much you can lift so that you can continue to build more. So it's very different. But now that you have the size, now that you've got all this extra muscle, if you went back to pure powerlifting to just see what you could do, what do you think that would land you? Okay, so if I were to go 100% in on powerlifting, let's say for the rest of my career, the absolute upper ceiling, I think would probably be somewhere around 2,300. And I think probably more reasonable, would be 2,200 total. So that would be the best squat bench that I lift. My best at 198 was 2039, right? So I would be 50 pounds heavier or lifting about 150 pounds more. So figure out about 50 pounds to each lift, which is a pretty moderate amount. That would assume that 100% of my training is dedicated towards powerlifting. That total is gonna be far, far, far less competitive than my 198 was. First of all, because powerlifting has grown a lot and so you have a lot of new people with a lot of skill and a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of great genetics who are now competing at that level. And second of all, because the people I was competing with before have this whole time that I've been bodybuilding, they've been working on their powerlifting so they've gotten better. So from a competitive standpoint, compared to other people, I'd be way worse off. Just comparing against myself, I'd be stronger, but maybe not as strong as you would expect having at it all that. Oh, I see. Now, from like, if you had to train a particular way forever, now just to be healthy and fit, forget the drug extremes because then it's easy to make this comparison. But let's just say, you know. Your training style. Yeah, training style for the rest of your life. Which one do you think is more conducive to better longevity and quality of life? Oh, I honestly think it would be a combination. I think it would be... Good answer. Yeah, using some sort of, you know, typical powerlifting program but not training for maximum weights. Training more with the typical bodybuilding kind of set and rep scheme. Yeah, you know what I'm finding is I get old. So I've done both. I have fun doing both. I love strength. I love it. It's just fun. But I found that once I got, now I'm 43 and I've gotten to a certain amount of weight for my body, which is a lot, that I prefer now more bodybuilding because like to add more to the bar, the risk versus reward just isn't great anymore. Now, if I had 10 more pounds, that's great. I'd be excited, but I feel like my injury risk would be up too high. I just wouldn't make any sense. I completely agree. I just think that there's also a benefit to doing, you know, I think the full body training has a lot to be said for that. So it's like maybe you don't need to do a squat but you can be doing a hack squat as your squat variation. And then you can be doing, you know, some type of heavy row that you're doing in a bodybuilding style instead of doing a deadlift on a particular day, some type of pressing movement that's maybe not a straight bar bench for us, but you know, maybe it's a press on the Smith machine. I think that type of training, at least for me, that would be more enjoyable and probably for that reason more productive than doing a typical body part. I imagine that's gotta be one of the, I mean, fears you have of now getting this big and then going back to powerlifting is potentially injury. Cause you were already at the peak to try and squeeze out a little bit more. We've already talked about your movement pattern is changing a little bit. And then also thinking you're gonna add weight to the bar, you little fear around that? Absolutely. And at age to that too, right? Right, right, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There's definitely a big risk when you're trying to lift maximal weights no matter what the circumstances are. And I think the things that I've done in the past few years have only added to that risks. And the guys I bet, the guys I was competing with when, you know, I was at my peak in powerlifting, a lot of them have had to deal with that stuff and they've done excellently in doing that. But I look at them and like, man, what would I do in that situation? My friend, Andrew Herbert, he tore his adductor training for his last meet. And it was like a bad one where he needed a surgery and stuff. And, you know, it was on a 400 kilo squat, right? 881. And, you know, so taking that type of weight is still like in sleeves, it's just like astronomical. But then I look at that and I'm like, how would I cope with that injury right now? Like, is that something I want to deal with? Yeah. Is there a powerlifter and a bodybuilder that you're like really impressed with or that you kind of keep an eye on on the each category? Well, I mean, John Hack right now is doing just incredible things in powerlifting. It's really fun to watch. And he and I were competing together at a lot of meets on 2016, 2017, 2018. So yeah, he's definitely, definitely the powerlifter that I look up to. For bodybuilding, that's a tougher one for me. Cause I mean, there's the guys that I like to watch cause they're entertaining. And then there's the guys I try to, I would want to emulate, right? Right, look like whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, the guys that I would want to emulate are the ones that are able to kind of step back from competition, able to have, you know, kind of broader lives, I guess you could say, while still maintaining that sort of physique. Speaking of a lot broader lives, and we talked a little bit off air, but what's in the future for you business-wise? What are you currently doing right now? What's going on with that? So right now I'm mostly focused on coaching. I'm trying to get a little bit more into coaching nutrition for strength athletes cause I do think that's an overlooked area where I could add some value. In terms of competition for myself, I want to do a pro show at some point. It's, again, we've talked about the sacrifices you have to make to do that, but I want to know what it kind of feels like to get on a pro stage. I still love powerlifting. My training partner competes in Strongman, so that's something I would want to have fun with. Oh, I saw you doing some Strongman type stuff. Yeah. How's that? It's fun, man. It's a blast getting to move like that with heavy weights. It's really, really cool. But in terms of like pushing myself to those same extremes, I'm not sure those are trade-offs that I'm going to want to make forever. Yeah. So yeah, we were talking off air. Like one of the goals I have for myself, I want to get on Joe Rogan at some point on this podcast. I think that would be cool. That's a good goal. I mean, it would be a good goal, but at the same time it would take me, it would allow me to kind of push myself in ways that aren't directly physical, right? Yeah. So, and I think that's something that would be healthy and probably be fun for me. Well, I imagine that you're back to the age thing, right? You're probably getting to an age now where you're starting to think like that. Okay, I recognize that I need to have some crazy goals in my life, but they don't always have to probably be super physical. So trying to reframe that for yourself. It was funny. I was on a call with Dave Tate a few months ago, I guess a couple of months ago. And so he owns the Lead FTES, one of the biggest powerlifting companies out there and he's been a mentor of mine for a long time. And I'm talking about the same thing with him. And I'm saying, man, I want to do a pro show, but I'm getting older. It might be time to hang it up. And he cuts me off. He's like, you've been telling me that for at least five years. Just do the show, like pit-line yourself. That's hilarious. You know, going from one strength sport or I guess resistance training strength, training type sport to another, it probably didn't make you feel more open to other types of strength training. Like, you know, you have powerlifting, you have bodybuilding style training, you have strongman style training. Then you have kind of the performance that you see in maybe some CrossFit style training or people who are more athletic minded. What I found personally, and this is how we write all of our programs is we find that, well, the average person's gonna, there's something you can take from each one of them. And oftentimes people will get stuck in one, develop their camp and not even realize that there's benefits. Did it make you more open minded to all these other ways of training? Absolutely. And it's funny because my graduate degree is in the history of physical culture, which is all types of training. So you'd think going to school for six years for it, you'd be open minded to begin with, but no, until I started bodybuilding, I really like, I was very set in my ways. I was like, this is the way powerlifting is trained. This is how I want to train. I want to be a powerlifting. And now it's a lot broader. Have you tried any sled work? Oh yeah, I love sled work. Oh yeah, so let's talk about that. So that's something that no powerlifter and no bodybuilder did for a long time. And now you're starting to see it permeate the strength, but it was like purely athletic. What benefits did you get from that? Well, first of all, it's fun, right? Second of all, you're getting some type of conditioning work in. And I think from the bodybuilding side, the benefits to that are obvious, right? From the powerlifting side, I think a lot of people go in with the idea that, oh, well, you know, I've squatted this in the gym and I bench-pressed this and I can deadlift this. So I can do that to me easy. And then they get to the meet and they realize by the time deadlifts roll around, they're exhausted. So including more conditioning work of that sort, it allows them to kind of build up their endurance in that regard, right? It's not the same type of endurance you would have running a 5K. You don't need to be able to do that, but you do need to have some gas in the tank if you're gonna be doing the long run. I noticed a total, like it's gotta be the lowest risk type resistance training. Like I didn't notice my joints felt, maybe because there's no eccentric portion of the rep, but I could drive a sled for 40 minutes and never have issues with my knees or my hips. Did you notice anything like that? Oh yeah, absolutely. You'll get crazy sore from it too, right? Yeah, oh yeah. And I think that has something to do with the lack of an eccentric portion as well. I actually think my training partner and I were discussing this the other day, there's no real term for the lifts that you don't have to perform the eccentric on, right? Things like sled work, things like deadlifts, you don't really have to perform an eccentric. Olympic lifts. And even though those should probably never be the bread and butter of your hypertrophy training, I do think they have a place. Hard for some. So we were trying to come up with a name for it and if you guys watch Rick and Morty, the cartoon show. I fucking love it. Yeah, so they have the plumbest and nobody knows what a plumb is. So that's the plumbest part of the rep. The eccentric that you don't have to do. Yeah. So we're trying to figure out how to work that out. I think it's less of what it does for you and more of what it doesn't do to you and then how that allows you to program it. Like it's a great way to build volume without all the extra damage. Absolutely. I can drive a sled every day and not have too many negative effects on my recovery and my joints, whereas other exercise with these antrics, I can't. I can't so much. Have you messed around with isometrics or holds? Yes. What do you think about that? I think I like them. I think they can't be used in isolation. Back in the 70s, I think there was a big push for isometric training and it got to the point where that would be all people would do and they wouldn't see the same results. Now that was also the time when steroids were getting more popular, which helped isometric training kind of get in a vogue, but I definitely think there's a big, a lot to be said for isometric training, especially if you're incorporating it into your regular sort of training, right? So if you're doing isometric holds at the top of every rep of leg extension, I think you're gonna be a lot more out of that set because leg extensions are not the most demanding exercise, but if you're training your muscle to be comfortable in that position for lack of a better term, I think that has a lot of carryover for both size and strength. You know what's funny? You bring up isometrics and people, power lifters or bodybuilders, the general typical one, we're like, I don't know, I don't really want, but if you really look at their training, power lifters, you use versions of isometrics all the time. They do pause squats and they're constantly changing the tempo of a lift and strength in a particular, which is a form of isometrics. Bodybuilders pose and pre-contest, they will add 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour of posing to their training, which is all isometrics. So the reality is they all do isometrics. They just don't even realize that it's programmed that way. Yeah, oh yeah, I love them, absolutely. Very cool. Yeah, good stuff, man. Yeah, it's great talking to you. I like seeing you succeed in this way. So it's really cool to get that kind of insight. So thanks for coming on, man. Always good seeing you, brother.