 The thing I could say to describe bodybuilding, it's extreme attention to detail. How has that skill of paying attention every damn detail helped you in other areas? Oh, it's really helped. I think having that obsession of, like you said, those details, you know, am I hitting 11 reps or am I going to go for 10? Scratch my head over this one. That attention to detail would have an effect into so many other areas of your life. Like you said, whether it be the finances, when I get invited to go out on a Saturday night, you know, you may think this is terrible, but I'm like, no, I have to be in bed. And I enjoy that. I really enjoy that structure because I guarantee you, when I get up at four o'clock in the morning, I don't regret not going out. I don't get that FOMO. And I just feel that has just had a positive effect because I'm a better person to be around now. Chris, thanks for coming on the show, man. Hey, my pleasure, brother. Now, you've been doing this for a long time. You've been in the space for quite a bit and you've worked with some of the most influential organizations in our space. I'd like to go back a little bit and talk a little bit about, for people who don't know, and if you don't know, Chris, you haven't been in fitness for very long, but tell us how you started and because you've got a very interesting story, how you ended up where you're at now. Well, maybe I've stretched the truth in the past. But I'm from Wales originally and I raced motocross for about 11 years and it was injuries that put an end to that. And I was seeing chiropractors, osteopaths, massage therapists, everybody. And nothing was alleviating me of the pain at that time. Kind of went down a slippery slope because my identity had been associated with adrenaline. So I was getting out of adrenaline now from drinking, partying, drugs. This is when the rave scene first come about in the early 90s. So I hooked onto that bandwagon and it was through physiotherapy, resistance training to help with my back pain was the only thing that alleviated me of that. And that's what took me down a rabbit hole of studying a little bit more about weight training nutrition. Went to college then for three years in the mid 90s to study it. And that was my ticket out of Wales at that time because I was just around good people, but it was just the wrong circle of people for me at that time. And I knew that there had to be something else out there for me. Like I hated school, couldn't retain anything in school because I just didn't like it. But then when I started studying everything about health, nutrition, training, bodybuilding magazines, I realized that I could retain that content because this is something that I was interested in all of a sudden. So I kind of went down that rabbit hole, got my qualifications, worked on cruise liners for a little while, moved to Australia, owned a gym there for a little while. Well, I was doing personal training first and I started competing in bodybuilding at that time because I needed that sense of urgency to work towards something. So I would go on my cardio in the morning around Sydney, Australia with these tri-fold leaflets of my personal training services and I'd put them in letter boxes and that would be my cardio in the morning as well. And I had a client base for a couple of years, trained people in their homes, on the beaches, in the parks, which is great. So I'd go surfing in between clients and then saved up for a gym, which was probably the worst decision of my life at that time because all of a sudden I'm opening the gym doors at 6 a.m. and closing them at nine. So I didn't really have much of a life. I wasn't very good at delegating at that time. And then I started realizing, you know what, I want to reach out to more people. And I wanted to start putting out content. So I bought, I think it's called Miriam Webster's book on journalistic writing, taught myself how to write and started submitting content to magazines and then reaching out to more people. And then I covered the Arnold Classic in like 2001, I think it was. So I flew over with the editor-in-chief of Flex Magazine and Muscle and Fitness Magazine from Australia, Gary Phillips and started covering the shows. And I thought, you know what, I want to do this full-time. So I decided to sell everything and I took the risk, moved to Venice, California, become a pain in the ass to Peter McGoff who was the editor-in-chief at that time of the magazines and got myself a writer's contract and a photographer's contract in 2005 at Flex Magazine. I was doing a little bit of personal training in golds as well at that time. And then after about a year of that, I was like, you know what, I don't like the way that my content is being edited. It's kind of being watered down. So I started my own publication for two years called Caged Muscle because I covered what was Caged Fighting, MMA back then is called Caged Fighting. And in the other half of the magazine was Bodybuilding. And I was doing a little bit of freelance work for Bodybuilding on Karma at that time. And that's what got the attention of Ryan DeLuca, the then founder of Bodybuilding on Karma. I got the job as editor-in-chief in Boise, at Bodybuilding on Karma in 2007. So that's how I kind of meandered up the ladder. There's so much there there. I know. Like you didn't hit a bunch of things. I didn't know the cruise line, I think. So tell me what that was like. Yeah, what did you do on the cruise liner? Were you a trainer? Yeah, well, I had my personal training qualifications, but I also had my massage qualifications in Swedish massage, remedial massage, and sports massage, and a Roma therapy massage. And I noticed I'd never really spent much time in the U.S. other than when I said I came over to Santa Cruz and Carlsbad. And I noticed the massage therapists were getting tipped more. I don't come from a tipping background. People in the U.K. don't tip, or in Europe they don't tip. And I noticed that the massage therapists were getting tipped more than the personal trainers. And I was like, you know what, I'm gonna swap. And I said, hey, I can do sports massage. So I started doing the massage on the cruise liners then as well. So I did that in a latter half of my contract, but it was tough work, because I was the sports massage therapist. So I was getting these big people that needed working on. So I was in pain. It sounds like, sounds kind of fun though, right? Cause you're basically traveling the whole time. For a single guy, that sounds awesome. Yeah, yeah, it was great. You know, you'd have a couple of days. Like, this is the crazy thing. It didn't matter if you were a really good therapist. It mattered if you're a real good salesperson on the cruise liners. So you're selling a lot of the products. One of the products that you're selling is basically cow's bile. You'd spread it on that person. You'd do like what's called ionothermia. You know, you'd put the clay mask on there that conducted electricity so they'd get the contraction of the muscle. And they'd basically lose a lot of fluid. So you'd measure them before and measure them after and go, you've lost three inches. Here's a home kicked. It's cow's bile, you know? If you were really good at selling, you'd get more days off and you'd get more commission. I'd have more days off than the majority of the people there who were much better therapists than me. Yeah, so by the way, it does work. Those things do work at shrinking inches off you, but it's very temporary. But I can see when you're on a cruise, you're gonna go out to the pool. I don't think they cared. Well, it's a similar effect that you get from those, they're heat wraps, right? Yeah, the wraps they do or they do all that. Exactly. You just suck out the water, right? I mean, this is a five-star cruise liner, celebrity cruise liners, and you add like a lot of rich, older female clients and I was like, yeah, I'll buy it. What's up, everybody? Here's the giveaway. The Prime Bundle, Maps Prime, Maps Prime Pro together. You can get it for free. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If you do that, and then if we like your comment, we'll notify you in the comment section that you won the Prime Bundle, cost you nothing. Also, these are the final hours for our big August sale. We put together a bunch of workout program bundles, a whole bunch of them. So combinations of two and three programs, every single bundle that you'll find on this page, mapsaugust.com, every single one, $99.99, that's it. So we're ending it soon because it just went crazy, but it's still available right now if you just watched this episode right when it dropped. So again, it's mapsaugust.com, every bundle on that page, $99.99, there you go. Go check it out. Here comes the show. Now, you said something about a gym, which as you said, it was a terrible, obviously, terrible business decision. It's funny, we get people all the time who ask us, hey, I want to open a gym. I'm a personal trainer. This is what I really want to do. And we always tell them, if you want to make money, don't do that. That's one of the hardest ways. Did you, I mean, you must have learned that the hard way, like, okay, I'm going to open this up. It can be great. And they're like, okay, this is a very tough way to run a business and make a living. Yeah, it was tough. It fed me at the time because I was competing in natural bodybuilding at that time. So I was like, you know, my head was just submerged. I'm kind of an all-or-nothing character. So as long as I had somewhere to train, I was good. I'd close the gym at like two o'clock on a Sunday and I'd go train somewhere else on a Sunday. That's my holiday. And it was tough because of the hours that I was working there. It was exhausting. It was very difficult to recover. And I guess if I was in the mindset that I am now, it'd be a little bit easier because I delegate so much more. I've learned how to delegate. Back then I didn't. You know, I only trusted myself and I'd try to do everything myself. So it was tough. I kind of broke even on that gym. I really much preferred my lifestyle that I had prior, you know, training people at their homes, in the parks, on the beaches. I do have a gym franchise now in India and that's difficult. Like people think, oh, you've got a franchise. You must be successful. It is difficult. We're dealing with a franchise partner right now who just hasn't paid their rent. You know, the powers off. We're dealing with members that have come into us and complaining, hitting me up on my socials, posting about it. And like, it's the franchise partners that we're dealing with. And we're fixing that. It's going to take about 20 days. We're going to get a new partner in. But it's difficult. It's very, very difficult. What brought you to India? I mean, that's super fascinating in terms of also then seeing opportunity to put a gym there. Like, where did you see that? Were you just traveling through there and you know, you just kind of saw the need for that? Well, I guess we'll get to this bit in a moment, but we were talking before the podcast started that I was thrown out of the US. And at that time I had written a book for bodybuild.com and with bodybuild.com called Body by Design. I was supposed to go on a big, huge promotional tour to push that book. It was through Simon and Schuster's, which was the second largest publisher at the time. Couldn't do that, because I'm stuck in the UK now. But I was able to do a book launch and book signing in India at an event there. That got noticed by a celebrity, a Bollywood celebrity and he wanted me to transform him. So I gave him a consultation and I was like, this guy's serious. He really needs to get in shape. He was dealing with back issues, definitely a foodie, smoking, alcohol, put on a lot of weight. So I transformed him over a nine week period. We were supposed to do 12, but you know, this guy was very intuitive to his body and he reacted very, very quickly. And so that just got mainstream media. Everywhere, absolutely everywhere. And you know, these actors aren't seen as actors, they're like gods. Oh, it's huge. Yeah, massive. So I was traveling a lot around India at that time. I started flying in other trainers because they weren't taking the Indian trainers seriously. So I had to bring in international trainers. Neil Hill was one of the guys that I flew over, a couple of guys from the UK and US. And I noticed that there was just a huge void needed for gym, good gym facilities, but the infrastructure, the personal trainers weren't respected. They, a lot of them weren't educated. They were selling steroids on the side to try to make ends meet. It was just a bad way. So myself and my business partner, Jagchima decided, you know what, let's open a gym here that would consider academy that will continue to educate these people. And they will be respected and we'll teach them how to be respected. This is a profession, just like you being a doctor, dentist, engineer or anything like that, which personal training isn't so as much. Even though they're very important, they're needed, then not seen that way. So that's how we kind of started the franchise model. It's interesting because obviously here in the US, the fitness gym industry has been around for a long time, but you see these developing, you know, these industries developing other parts of the world. And I remember, God, this would be about maybe 15, I wanna say more or more actually, maybe closer to 20 years ago when I was grand opening clubs for 24 hour fitness, they were opening clubs in Asia and that market had just started taking off with gyms and they were crushing over there. And I'm talking about like, where were they open? I'm Singapore was one place they were opening. Hong Kong was another place that they were opening these clubs. And India seems to be this, like I have read a lot about this. Their interest in fitness, health, bodybuilding in particular is exploding over there. Is this the way, okay, is this true? I'd say it's about 10, 15 years behind here. Like when I first moved there, this is like 2013, I noticed, okay, this is America and the UK like in the 80s when you had that action heroes of Van Damme, Stilow, Duff, Lung Green, Arnold. And that was happening there specifically in Bollywood, you know, so if a lot of these actors needed to be in action hero shape and then everything followed, the supplement industry was growing, the fitness industry from the gyms, everything is growing. And you know, just like a lot of other countries, they looked to the US for that next move, you know? So if Keto becomes massive here, three years later, it'll be massive there. It could be bastardized, but it usually, you know, is several years behind. Yeah, it looks like the places that I'm noticing, India, it's really explained, the Middle East, bodybuilding seems to be exploding over there. I said Asia like Hong Kong, but they've now been growing now for a while. Are these are all still emerging markets? Would you consider these good opportunities? Oh, for sure. Okay. You know, you just make sure, you have to price it accordingly for them because the income just isn't there for a lot of these places, but huge discoveries, you know, the, you know, we're talking about bodybuilding in our car earlier, you know, they would be getting like 500,000 unique visitors a day. India would match the U.S. in those visits. Just by themselves. U.S. was number one, India was number two, just by visits, not conversion. Conversion wasn't even in the top 10 because they have massive taxes that they have to pay. They usually, 70% in taxes, in port duties, you know, so the conversion wasn't there, but the numbers is just huge. The fitness interest is massive. I was just gonna say the interest. Now, what about the challenges that you have to encounter? Cause like, if I look here, you still see this challenge now, but not nearly like it was 20 years ago, where convincing women, for example, to not just work out, but to lift weights, 20 years ago was like a big uphill battle. You still get some of that now, but not like it was 20 years ago. Are those the challenges you're seeing in some of these other markets like in India? Like are the men adopting it and the women maybe not so much? What does it look like? Yeah, for sure. It all depends on the state, the area. Like south of India, it's very difficult for women to be more accepted because, you know, it's definitely more of a male dominating state. So myself and my business partner, Jag, we're associated with a charity called the All Girls Orphanage, where a lot of girls, when they're babies, they're discarded because it's a female. And the guys that, you know, if they're working on a farm, it's like, well, they're not gonna help on a farm. So they discard them. And then an orphanage picks them up. So in a lot of those areas within the US, you don't get many females training. We try to empower females. We'll have female personal trainers within our facilities to try to educate, to try to encourage women to train, but it's still a very much a male dominating country and industry. What about nutrition culturally? Are there any different challenges that you're encountering? So there's similarities, right? Like, okay, overeating, you know, maybe processed food. I know that's per meaning now, most of the world, but are there culturally any challenges there? They have a very big, excuse me, vegan population, correct? Yeah, about 62% of the population is vegetarian or vegan. Yeah, it's massive. So that can be a challenge, but you know, I've got clients that have transformed really, really well on a plant-based diet. The biggest thing is that they are quote unquote foodies and very cultural with their foods, a lot of sauces. A lot of, it used to be a lot of ghee, but now unfortunately, with the West Nide world actually imposing their figure there, they're eating a lot of vegetable oils, refined vegetable oils. So in parts of South of India, like in 1960s, one area was like a blue zone, now it's one of the highest rates of diabetes. Oh, wow. Yeah, it's just gone quite the opposite. So there's a combination, now they've got Starbucks there and the majority of what you see at Starbucks is not the coffees that they order, it's the big frappuccinos or whatever it is along with the inactive lifestyle. They pick up the cake. So there's a lot of that going on. So unfortunately, diabetes is through the roof. Obesity is becoming a pandemic there now at the moment. Do they view obesity the same that we would view it here or culturally, I know in old cultures, because India is a very old country and I know old cultures, obesity was viewed as a sign of wealth. Has that changed or is that kind of an uphill battle? It's probably in between where we would look down upon it, maybe some people judge and say, you're obese, that's gonna be unhealthy, you're looking for an early demise, whereas not so much, they're like, hey, I'm healthy, why don't you eat more? You see clients that are getting in very good shape there and it's frowned upon by a lot of the families because they look sick now. They're not healthy and if you're healthy, you're a little bit more robust around the waist. Yeah, because the opposite of that was malnutrition, whereas now it means something very different. Obesity means malnutrition, whereas in the past obesity meant you had enough and not the other way around. Very interesting. Let's talk about bodybuilding.com. This is very fascinating to me because I've been doing this long enough to where I remember when bodybuilding.com was, it wasn't just the place to get good cutting edge, fitness, health, muscle building, fat loss information. It was also one of the top searched and visited websites, period, online. It was a massive site and they've taken a huge decline in terms of views and I would have assumed revenue and you were there. Were you there during that kind of transition or what did it look like? I was there during the growth, as opposed to the decline. So you could say it was all down to me. But I didn't say that. No, it's like when Ryan DeLuca sold, everything kind of spiraled down and Ryan DeLuca was the founder. He was a visionary, still is. And when I first started there, there was like 30 of us in the office and then when I finished, there must have been over 450, 500 people there. Like the growth was unbelievable. Well, you were part of the first 50 employees there. Yeah, so it was first 30, first 30, yeah. And it grew at an unbelievable rate. But the thing with Ryan, he always thought about the customer first. You know, on biz rates, you have the rating of customer satisfaction. They were at the top for I think seven years straight. Consistently, every single year, because he'd always think, what can we do for the customer? Customer, customer, customer, be the head sponsor at all the major bodybuilding shows, given away so much free stuff and did whatever we could for the vendor. So if the vendor came and said, hey, I wanna sell your product, hey, let's give you contents as well. We've got in-house video crew, we've got content team. Let's help you and maybe go on the forums as well, educate people. So all these platforms were given to all the vendors as well. And there's a lot of content that was going up 62 articles a week, along with video content, podcast, so much, so much content. Yeah, some of it could contradict each other, but it was content nonetheless. It was just a wheelhouse and obviously the community was a massive part of it. But then when Ryan decided, I've had enough of this, I'm gonna move on to different things. Now he's doing virtual reality. Then it just become a little bit more of a numbers game when they sold to Liberty Media and they've sold several times since. And then they started charging for the content. The content that was once free was now being charged for. I remember that and I remember thinking, oh, this doesn't seem like a good idea. From the outside it looked like Amazon was the reason why, because of the supplements, but it sounds like there's way more of the story. Yeah, so obviously Amazon was a big griller in a room at that time, because they were marking down things cheap. But unfortunately, they got into a price war with Amazon. You're not gonna win that one. And then they had to obviously hit the vendors a little bit harder to get more margin in order to be a little bit more promotional, which was tough. So some vendors said, well, we can't afford to do that. We'd have to go elsewhere. And then when the content was being charged for as well, the transition back then wasn't good for that content. I think the content that was free should have remained free. And if there's content that you're putting out in the future, because a video trainer would cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars to put out, then charge for that in the future. That transition was a little bit rough, I think for the community to take. So, you know, they started purchasing elsewhere. And then if there was any content that was for free, they would take that, but they weren't gonna pay for anything that was once free. Do you remember what Ryan sold for? You remember what it was? It was about 500 mil. 500 mil. Yeah, wow. I think that, yeah. And the original model was really just, they gave out all this incredible free content. And then they were just making all the money on all the supplements, right? And then vendors, I would think. Those are the two main sources of income. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Wow. And they used to pay a lot of money for the head sponsorship for all the events. And they'd do free, you know, the webcasts of these events. You'd watch the Olympia Live and the Arnold Classic Live. And you know, that would cost him a couple hundred thousand as well, but they never, ever, ever charged for, they charged the community at all. You know, Ryan was all about, I don't care about customer satisfaction, I want customer loyalty. And that's exactly what he got with all this free content. Are they still, I mean, they've been known forever as having the largest section or booth at almost all the events. Are they still buying out like the biggest spots or is that even? They haven't been a part of an event for years and years now. That's crazy. The thing I personally valued most about bodybuilding.com were the forums. Yeah. Like so many different forums, sub forums. It was minimally moderated, meaning obviously you can't, you know, just harass somebody or whatever. But we could discuss fitness and health information and, you know, whether it was approved or unapproved or, you know, followed the common narrative or not. It was a wonderful place to get cutting edge information. In fact, that was one of the first place. I used to go to bodybuilding.com to find topics to look up studies on. So I would go on there and I'd read what people were saying about this diet or this compound or this thing that they did. And then that would prompt me to say, let me look and see if I can find some studies to support some of these very interesting anecdotes. It was actually bodybuilding.com that first introduced me to fasting. So I, like you, I got into, well, maybe differently, but I was into bodybuilding as well and I was into trying to build my body. The last thing I ever wanna do was avoid food for longer than two or three hours. I thought if I did that, you know, muscle would fall off my body, I'd get real skinny. So I was like, I'm never gonna do this. And there were people on there talking about, at the time it was the warrior diet book. And you had all these guys on that were like, oh my God, I'm doing this. I'm not losing muscle. And I feel great. And to me it was so opposite from what I was used to that it piqued my interest, especially cause guys were on there saying, no, I don't lose any muscle at all. And I'm totally fine. And then I went and looked up the studies. And those forums, do they even exist anymore? Is that like... Good question. I don't think they do. Yeah, I remember when those, the forums, all the forums there on MD, Get Big, bodybuilding.com were just absolutely massive. And I used to, you know, even though I was working there, I'd be in there all the time, you know? And I remember brands such as, you know, Mark Lawbliner of he had, he had salvation back then. And I was pretty much born out of the forums because he was relentless on there at providing free information, but also, you know, pushing the product. And then, you know, he went on to, you know, big pastures, you know, we'd fly him into the studio in Boise to film a lot of content because he was like, I want to provide content. What can I do? And like, yeah, we need content. And he was phenomenal at that. If you took advantage of it, much like social platforms today, you know, it can really help. It also reinvigorated, this is my opinion, but I think they played a huge role in this, and reinvigorated debates and discussions around training. And what I mean by that is for a while there, if you go back to like early muscle building, it was all about the training, training techniques and it's this superset versus this superset and peak contraction and what about the stretch and, you know, doing it this way creates more muscle. And then it turned into, it wasn't really about the training and hardcore bodybuilding was more about the drugs and it became all about the supplements. And believe it or not, it was the forums that reinvigorated the conversations around multi-set versus failure versus frequency versus training full body. That was discarded for a long time. Full body workouts, that's not, it's all about body parts splits. It was in the forums that you would see debates and discussions and people saying, hey, this is how guys trained way back in the day and I've been trying it and here's what's working. And I don't think a lot enough credit goes to these forums and even bodybuilding.com and its influence on the fitness industry at large. I know it had a huge influence on me. How big of a role did those forums play in the success of just bodybuilding.com during that time? Massive because a lot of the, if you look to the search engines it wouldn't go to an article or a video on bodybuilding.com it'd take you straight to the forum because it was just getting so much play, unbelievable. And then we started doing these video trainers and we'd have people like Dorian Yates would flame out and he would do like a blood and guts video trainer. And then part of the contract was is that then he'd have to be on the forums to answer people's questions about his certain style of training and whatnot. So you'd hear it from the horse's mouth as well exactly what that person does. And you can try it, see if it works for you or you try this video trainer over here with Jamie Eason or Steve Cook or whoever at that time, Jim Stapani. So there's just so much content out there that then people could interact with that influencer through the forums and ask them questions. Yeah, it was huge. All right, let's talk about bodybuilding for a second. You're the perfect person to ask questions about the state of bodybuilding. There's been recently, and now I do wanna be clear bodybuilding, competitive bodybuilding is like all competitive sports is extreme. So if you like to drive a fast car and then you look at NASCAR or Formula One you're gonna see a lot of extremes, right? If you like to rock climb but then you look at competitive rock climbing there's gonna be extremes. Bodybuilding is the extreme competitive side of trying to build and shape muscles, okay? So you're always gonna see extreme behaviors but this conversation tends to get reinvigorated every 10 years, at least or five years in my opinion. Cause I remember this back in the 90s and then it kind of went away and then it came back. We're seeing or hearing about bodybuilders dying again. These in the 40s or 30s, has something changed or is this just par for the course? It's just unhealthy to go that extreme. Like what are the speculations? What's going on? Or is it what everybody always says? Oh, it's the drugs. It's always the drugs. You know what? I think it's a number of things. So we've seen over the past couple of years people dropping from any type of sport, whether you're a professional soccer player, American football player, even in a question, competing in a question. This is the elephant in the room right now you're pulling up, keep going. And there's even a, I know a professional mountain bike rider in Boise, Idaho he ended up in a hospital, a heart attack. And I think there's just other, we are so connected to bodybuilding we only see it in bodybuilding. But over the past couple of years this happened in various arenas. Now just to stay specified on bodybuilding. Yeah, of course, it's an extreme sport. And people are doing extreme things they're doing things that other people aren't to try to get these results that other people can't. Now of course that happens in a gym but with these extreme body weights that we're seeing now, particularly in the off season and they're not doing really that much cardio in the off season, it's putting a tremendous amount of strain on their hearts. You know, Dorian was like the first mass monster and he'd be competing in like in the 250s. Now we get a lot of these guys competing in much higher than that, you know, like almost 300 pounds. Yeah, Hunter Labrada just posted this morning that, you know, he's had just had a stomach bug. He was fasted at 279 this morning. How tall is Hunter? He's probably about 5'10, probably about the same height as Dorian. Oh no, probably a little bit. No, he's shorter actually, shorter. He's about my height, about 5'8. Yeah, let's take as Lee as his dad is a little smaller. Yeah, he's about 5'8. So Dorian was much taller and he's a lot heavier. Now I'm not saying that, you know, Hunter's unhealthy but I'm just giving an example of the extremes that are out there at these extreme body weights. And I think that, you know, there's only so much the heart can take. You know, we saw with Sean Rodin this year, you know, I was with Sean probably about two months prior to his passing and, you know, the guy's massive. He hadn't even competed for like four years. Again, I'm not saying that this was it but it has to be a contributing factor. These extreme body weights just have to stop. Yeah, it seemed, that's always been the trajectory if you follow the competitive bodybuilding world. It definitely seemed like in the 90s, they really ramped it up and then it hasn't slowed down. I mean, you had Dorian when he walked on stage, everybody was like, what the hell is going on? This guy's a mutant. And then you had, you know, Ronnie Coleman come out and, you know, all those guys come out and it just looks so insane, which everybody's like, how far can this possibly go? And what it seems to be happening is it's going to continue going that direction but now you're seeing this splintering. It started with men's physique but now you're seeing what they call it classic. Yeah, bodybuilding classic. Is that, do you think that that's the, I hate to say the future of bodybuilding. What I mean by that is do you see that being the mainstream wing of bodybuilding now? I wouldn't see it because people like a freak show, you know, like I always competed as a natural bodybuilder. I got second in a natural bodybuilding championships but I'd never go to a natural bodybuilding show. It bore me. You know, I just went to a motocross on a weekend. I'm not going to go to a local show, a local race. I'm going to watch the professionals. And I think that's what we like. You know, maybe we don't want to ever look like that but it's a freak show and we get attracted to that. So I think that will always be the main event. Now with classic physique, it's definitely going towards that freaky look already. You know, like remember with women's bodybuilding, they put a mandate in there where they had to lose their muscularity by about 30%. I don't know how you measure that. But I could see that possibly happening with the classic physique as it's just getting more, it's getting bigger and bigger. Remember, Danny Hester, he won the first classic physique Olympia. How would he place now? He's outside of the top 10. He's one of the smallest guys. But to me, he's got the best physique up there. But everything's just surpassing that now. I agree with you. I think it's just a money grab. I mean, they're opening up more categories because there's more people that are interested. I think people will always be drawn to the most extreme versions of it. And as that category grows and gets popular and then they'll just open up another category that's a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter and put different. It's interesting. You brought up female bodybuilding. You know, people are like, oh my God, they look so crazy. They're so whatever. You know, Bev Francis, I don't know if you guys know who she was. She competed in the 80s. If you saw, you know, in 90s, early 90s, if you saw a picture of Bev Francis, she's the freakiest looking female bodybuilder. And that was back then. She's a power lifter as well. That was back then. Some of the best gyms, by the way, were the Bev Francis. So I think it was the power house if I'm not mistaken. And that was back then that she looked that way. So the potential was always there. And yes, people are definitely drawn to that. I wanna ask you about the training trends that we see in bodybuilding. And the reason why I wanna ask you that is because a lot, and people might not, the average person may not even know this. And maybe the average fitness influencer won't admit this, but a great deal of gratitude and appreciation needs to go to bodybuilding. Because a lot of the training techniques that we use now maybe take for granted, exercises, started there. So a lot of the trends start there and then you can extrapolate and maybe apply them to how you train your client or yourself. But the trends are really fascinating to me and I'll bring up one as an example. So in the 90s, it was not in fashion for bodybuilders to do barbell squats or deadlifts. It wasn't really a big thing. I remember in the 90s, one bodybuilder, Michael François, he was a deadlifter, but nobody really did that. Everybody avoided barbell squats. They all did leg presses. Everybody did behind the neck shoulder presses. That was the way to do a shoulder press. And then it started moving in the other direction where you're starting to see more people squatting and deadlifting. And even pro bodybuilders now are starting to go in that direction. Are there any other exercise trends that you're seeing and what people are saying about them? And any... You know, the only thing that I'd say that the trend is for a little while there got a little bit ballistic with the rep tempo and I was one of those guys because like I'm more of an aggressive person. So my aggressive personality would just show itself in a gym. You know, whether that's the right way or the wrong way, it just felt... It's like a Branch Warren style. Exactly. Like I've trained with it Branch many a times and that's definitely my sort of style. Do I do that now? No, I'm a little more fragile now, you know. Which by the way, how does he even keep doing that? I don't. Have you guys ever watched Branch Warren, this guy? Yeah, I'll be with him next week. The guy's very care. Oh, it makes no sense, yeah. Yeah, but I've noticed now the trend seems to be you watch people like Nick Walker, you watch like Hunter, you know, the top guys now, they really seem to be slowing down their rep tempo. Yeah, really controlled and really there's gotta be three second negatives a lot of the time there but they're training with extreme weight. You know, you look to see at James Hollingshead from the UK, he is growing but he's doing those, like you said, those traditional lifts, the dead lifts, the bent over road, the barbell squat, the Smith machine squat. It's definitely the basics they've gone back to especially at the beginning of the workout when they're feeling they're absolute strongest. That's where they're hitting the compounds first, not the isolations as they did a little bit more in the 90s. Yes, what's his name? Chris Bumstead, big deadlifter. Yeah. And you've seen his deadlifts progress and I as my personal opinion, you see it in the reflection in the muscularity of the back. Do you think that these basic lifts, the reason why they're doing them more because it's more, because it's fat or because they're rediscovering the value of some of these lifts and what they could do for the body? It's a bit of both, isn't it now? Because we have access to everybody through social media. So we see some people evolving a little bit quicker than others and they see that they're doing these basic lifts and they're like, okay, that's something that I need to apply in my arsenal. Hadn't they seen that? Maybe they wouldn't have applied it but now they are and they're seeing the effects from it. So it's catching on where in the 90s or even early 2000s, you'd see people like Dexter Jackson and Melvin Antony, they wouldn't touch a deadlift because they'd think they'd blow out their waste. Oh, go ahead. No, but then obviously on the other end of the spectrum you had people like Ronnie that's doing like 700 pound deadlifts. Yeah, I was just gonna say like you brought up social media and I was curious whether or not you've seen an uprising in terms of interest in bodybuilding as social media kind of brought some people to the forefront or if you've seen potential people that would have got into bodybuilding find more of a career in being an influencer instead and because of the fact that like supplement companies aren't really able to pay them the same as they used to back in the day. Yeah, so I'd say the interest as a whole whether you wanna go the competitive standpoint or the influencer way, maybe both is definitely growing. The downside to that is that people want to have that status and they wanna hit that 500 pound deadlift yesterday. They wanna look shredded now. People don't have the attention span or the patience to do it the right way. So again, a lot of people that are getting sick, they're getting injured, they're feeling let down, they're comparing themselves to others. So it's leading to a lot of disorders in various ways but how people are making a living out of this now is absolutely unbelievable. It's phenomenal. Cause I'm like more old school and I remember going through some events probably about 10 years ago and seeing people who's like a friend of mine now, Ulysses, who would have a massive line and I'd see Kevin Lavrone there and I'm like, he's got three people waiting for him. This is wrong, this is so wrong. I'm pissed off. But now I'm like, you know what, I really applaud it. If they are influencing people, if these teenagers are going up to them and saying, hey, what do I eat? Because my family are feeding me McDonald's or whatever, then good on them. Hopefully we can influence them in the right direction to make better decisions and give up the couch and Netflix. I remember the first time that I went to my first Olympia show and I called these guys. It was right when we started, we're starting the podcast. So this was about seven years ago and I remember freaking out that there was this crazy line and this is the first time I was ever introduced to like these influencers that were this popular and it was the Shreds guys. And they were, and then you had Jay Cutler and he had like nobody in his line and then around the whole entire building was waiting to meet these kids. Joe Swoll and those guys. Yes, yeah, these kids I had never even heard of before and I remember calling, and then the banners they had, they came in with their own security. I mean, it was just crazy over the top. It's unbelievable what social media has done in that space. What is your personal experience? What are the things that you liked or loved about bodybuilding and what are the things you don't like? What I love about bodybuilding is that for me personally, it's just to help, always having my pivotal foot in the gym, I've been able to do so much with it. Like I find that I'm one of those people that life can be a white knuckle ride unless I'm extreme with myself. I'm more extreme with myself than I am with my clients because I know I can go the other way. And it's helped me so much with the structure of, waking up at a certain time, going to bed at a certain time because I've been so regimented in the past with my meal time. So I need that structure. Making sure that I'm getting up very, very early in the morning, doing some form of activity, getting blood flow to my brain. So I know from a cognitive standpoint, I'm on point a little bit more. And knowing that the funny thing is a lot of people rely on energy drinks and they think, okay, is this as good as it gets when it comes to a clout, brain fog and whatnot. They're not feeding their brains with the right nutrients. People are always reaching for something whether it be Adderall, whether it be Medaffinil or caffeine to get them through the day. It's like, have you ever tried eating properly and hydrating yourself? And you learn these things from bodybuilding that has a transference effect into other areas of your life. And of course, if you're an active individual, you've got kids, then obviously kids learn by observation. They hopefully are gonna be influenced by that and become a little bit more active and make better food choices themselves. And that's where I see bodybuilding. Bodybuilding has helped me with my finances because I'm more structured with it. Obviously it can help you with your sex life. Hitting those squats, those deadlifts produce a little bit more testosterone. So we like to think. It has so many benefits. That's what I do like. What I don't like is the typical arrogance that can sometimes be associated with it. When you're in bodybuilding, when I've competed in bodybuilding, everybody tries to keep everything to themselves. They look down upon you a little bit. Whereas like I've competed, as we spoke, I think last week, I've competed in Ironman Triathlon several times and Ultramarathon. And I like that community. Everyone's really supportive. Somebody could be overtaking you on the run and they're like, come on, bro, you're doing really good. I love that encouragement. So that's the only thing that I've seen that's a little bit darker in bodybuilding. However, I still have great friends in bodybuilding. I do like that camaraderie, but sometimes it can be a little bit condescending. Do you feel it made you a much better coach and trainer going through it? For sure. That's why I like to participate in so many things. I had some clients that said, hey, I'm doing Spartan. I'm like, okay, I'll go and compete in one so I can relate to you a little bit better and give you maybe better advice. So for sure, it's definitely helped competing in various sports. Yeah, it's funny when I look at the pursuit of bodybuilding. So we'll take out competitive or competing on stage, although I think there's potential value there too. Also some potential negatives, but it's almost like as you continue the pursuit of bodybuilding for yourself, as you get older and continue to do it, you just start to become more and more wise with things. Like maybe you get into it because you want to be bigger because you want to look good or maybe because you're skinny or you're insecure and maybe that's where you get that ego where you keep things to yourself. But you ever meet an older bodybuilder? Guy has been bodybuilding and he's 50s, 60s. The nicest, most open, we'll talk to you about anything. And also it starts to lead to pursuing growth and I don't mean in terms of muscle growth but just as personal growth in other areas of your life. Did you experience that as you've, we talked earlier and you're a little older than I am and you've been doing this longer than I am or I have, have you seen that with yourself where it started one way and it just started to grow into this much bigger thing? Yeah, no doubt about it. Like when I was first really into training, I'd have my eyes to the floor hoodie on. I didn't want anyone to talk to me. This is my office. This is my work. Don't come and talk to me. Probably a bit of an asshole. But being around a lot of the older bodybuilders, like I mentioned that I met Dave Draper back in the 90s and then hung out with people like Bill Grant, Robbie Robinson, trained with Tom Platt in the 90s as well. And these guys are so giving, so humble. And they wanted to take their time to talk with you. And I found that so refreshing. And now as I'm a little bit older, not that I'm putting myself on any pedestal, but if people come up to me to the gym now, I'm usually the one that's hanging onto them and not letting them go because I want to give them my time. And I appreciate that sometimes people feel a bit awkward coming up to you into the gym. And I didn't respect that before, but now I definitely do. I very much change. I want to give a little bit more. And I have obviously I'm a little bit wiser. Yeah, if there's one thing I could say to describe bodybuilding, it's extreme attention to detail. And in the extreme case of competitive bodybuilding, you're paying attention to everything. Water, sodium, obviously, proteins, fats, carbs, sleep, supplements, training, volume. I mean, like the more detail that you can focus on and manipulate, the more likely you are to look a particular way at a specific time. And unless that becomes or you're allowed to be dysfunctional, I feel like that's a skill that you can take and run in all kinds of other directions. You mentioned like financially and personally, like how has that skill of paying attention every damn detail helped you in other areas? Oh, it's really helped. So I remember my father saying to me once when I was younger because I'd be leaning back in my chair trying to fit more food in. Cause I felt if I fall over, I can't get enough into my stomach. And he's like, dude, you're obsessed. And I was like, yeah, I know. That's right. I love it. But I think having that obsession of, like you said, those details, you know, am I hitting 11 reps or am I gonna go for 10? Scratch my head over this one. That attention to detail would have an effect into so many other areas of your life. Like you said, whether it be the finances, when I get invited to go out on a Saturday night, you know, you may think this is terrible, but I'm like, no, I have to be in bed. And I enjoy that. I really enjoy that structure because I guarantee you, when I get up at four o'clock in the morning, I don't regret not going out. I don't get that FOMO. And I just feel that has just had a positive effect because I'm a better person to be around now. If I'd put other things first all the time, as I see so many other people do, I would have put my health last and I wouldn't have been such a good person to be around because I'm so attentive to the details in everything that I do. And now I try to take what I've learned from bodybuilding. I still always have my pivotal foot in the gym, but I'm trying to help people with their longevity because as we know, with extreme bodybuilding comes with a lot of inflammation and not everybody is looking at the sources of the food that they eat or the supplements that they take in. So I'm trying to match those two now and bodybuilding has fed that. Are you drawn still to adrenaline a bit? Are you still looking for that? Yeah, hence the black eye for mountain biking. Yeah, what are you into these days? Yeah, so snowboarding, but we're talking about being attentive and focused when you're in a gym. And I've never really encountered any injuries in the gym, but I tore my tricep off the bone last year, snowboarding. I tore my hamstring, heliboarding in the Himalayas a couple of years ago, separated both my EC joints and tore my rotator cuff down hill, mountain biking, motor cross injuries, torn pec. I've torn a lot and broken a lot, but I don't think it'll slow me down. I went snowboarding this year and maybe not as crazy as I did the year before, but I love it. I absolutely love it. You were talking about a structure and discipline that you got from bodybuilding. How do you feel that this translates into rehabilitation? I don't mean rehab in the physical sense, but you take somebody who has got issues with substances or with relationships. I remember here in California, when they banned weights and basically gym equipment out of prisons, I thought, what a terrible... Yeah, unbelievable. What a terrible, terrible idea. I remember pumping iron, there's that scene where Arnold is posing with the inmates and he used to do volunteer's time and teach them how to work out. And there's lots of studies that show the positive effects on just the personal growth and the pursuit of changing yourself and the structure has on rehabilitation. So I thought that was such a bad idea. How about you've said a couple of times on here, I know myself and if I didn't have that structure, I might be over here. I might be doing that. Like, how does that help to you? Because of discipline. The discipline of hitting the gym, no matter what, is mental therapy. It's an outlet for me. And it is for a lot of people, a lot of people that deal with depression, anxiety, any sort of mental disorder, a lot of the time I'm not saying it's a cure, it's gonna fix it, but it can certainly help by just working out, it's getting rid of a lot of this pent-up anxiety or stress or energy that you need to release. And if you look better, you are gonna feel a little bit better. You're gonna have more confidence. If you're bullied growing up and you have insecurities now when you compare yourself to other people online, well, you usually feel better after you have worked out. It's just, it's a small sacrifice that you make for that long-term success that you feel from it. Yeah, is it, the early morning's tough? Yeah, sure. But I get my clients, for instance, if I feel that this person is lacking in motivation, or discipline, then maybe we need to start having some cold showers instead of warm. People a lot of the time, they seek comfort and they do things that they feel like doing. Well, if you do things that you feel like doing all the time, you're probably gonna eat cake all the time, probably gonna sit in your ass, I'll do the same, I'm gonna sleep in. But you have to get comfortable being uncomfortable and I think the gym environment or even working out at home, whatever it may be, whatever you need to scratch your itch with is definitely of benefit with resistance training. You know, as you've mentioned in your book, everybody of every single age bracket should be working out, not only for mental health, but bone density. So are you telling me that you're gonna feel good when you break your hip as you get older? No, it's not gonna be good for your mental health. So make sure that you do whatever you can with resistance training, even if it's just getting up and down from the seat 50 times a day to ensure that you've got bone density. Have you encountered going into these other fitness pursuits like Iron Man and mountain biking and stereotypes where, what I mean by where they knew you or you told them, yeah, I'm from the bodybuilding world. Did they have preconceptions that you kind of shattered when you would go into their world? Okay, can you tell us something? Yeah, so Michael Riley, who is famous in the Iron Man circles of saying, you are an Iron Man as you cross the finish line. He said he saw me at the start line. He's like, this guy's not gonna finish. There's no way because I was 220 pounds then. Which is massive for an Iron Man. Huge, huge. But now when I was competing in motocross or bodybuilding, I was thinking number one, it has to be number one and that is it, which can be good to ensure that you're bettering yourself. You're always hungry, you're always striving, but at one point that you have to give in. And I was very happy to participate in Iron Man. I just wanna finish, I just wanna finish these events and I've become very comfortable with that. But I just wanted to show people, you can be a hybrid athlete like Crossfitters do it. They look phenomenal, but they're fit, they're big, but they're fit. And so I wanted to encourage people from the bodybuilding circles, you can participate in that 5K, 10K triathlon, whatever it may be. And it's the same with the people in the endurance world that you could benefit from some type of resistance training. So I've really tried to merge that gap by doing so. Yeah, that's great. Chris, share with me a little bit about your business journey. Where's the business acumen come from with you? Was that something that you've had since day one? You've developed that? Is it passed down from dad? Like where's the business knowledge come from? I'd say a little bit of it's passed down from my dad and it's something that I've never really set out to do, I just do. I don't really think about it. It's when people say, how do you stay motivated? I'm like, I don't know, I just do what I do. So we grew up on a farm and didn't have much money at all. But my father bought the rich dad, poor dad book by Robert Kiosky, but he actually applied it. A lot of people are students of learning but not really students of application, he applied it. And then next thing he's got 50 properties and we left the farm and I kind of learned a little bit from that. And obviously having to get up very early in the morning to help on a farm before going to school, I had the work ethic, that's for sure. But I just didn't have the knowledge. And like I said, when I got into bodybuilding and I realized I can retain that, I just found an interest in things that I enjoyed. And when I did so, I was able to retain it and apply it as business. I think when people go into engineering or dentistry because their parents told them that they need to do it and they're not enjoying it, they're not gonna excel or exceed. I don't exceed at one thing. I don't think I'm built that way. That's why I like to do several things and maybe together I can excel at it. But it's usually, they cross pollinate each other. The supplements, the gyms, the coaching, the books they're all within the industry that kind of help each other out. So did your financial success was it something that just kind of compounded over time or did you have a pivotal point in your journey where things really took off for you? No, no, no, no. It's just a little bit at a time. I don't make any money out of the gyms. Maybe when we exit we do. It's the same with the supplement company. We don't really take a wage. Maybe when we exit that we do, there's other things. We spoke about like the property investments. That's more where the money is. But I do have an interest in that. I just love doing anything within the fitness space because it gives me purpose. It makes me feel good. I don't feel like I'm working. I'm kind of working here, but it doesn't feel like it. This is great. I love this. When you said last week, can you come down? I'm like, I'm there. Let's do this. Yeah, let's talk about the supplement space because it's hard to separate fitness from supplements. I say over the last maybe at least a couple of decades but definitely the last few decades. And I'm a huge fan of the supplement space. I've always bought supplements. I take them. I think they're really fun. And I've seen them go through, I've seen so many changes in the space. Like I remember when Bill Phillips just really rewrote the book on how to build a successful supplement business. And it just changed everything. I remember when there was no pre-workout supplement category except for maybe ultimate orange. Remember that back in the day? And then all of a sudden you had these like Super Pump 250 and all these other pre-workout supplements which is now one of the largest supplement categories. I also remember buying my supplements at the local supplement store. And then it became GNC and then it became online. Like can you talk about the progression of this industry and kind of where it's at now and where you think it may be going? Yeah, it was interesting because it's funny, isn't it? Where people complain today if the flavor isn't good. I'm like, you didn't taste these products 20 to 30 years ago. This is beautiful. What are you complaining about? Oh, you're so soft. But yeah, it was very interesting. Like I remember when I first got into bodybuilding I literally spent and I didn't have much money but I saved up and I spent like $800 on MedRx supplements. Oh, MedRx, yeah. I was thinking, this is it. I'm gonna go to the moon. MedRx protein or whatever. Yeah, and I had the Cybergenics kit as well with the VHS video that came from America to the UK so it wouldn't play. Chris, I tell that story. Finally, I meet somebody who did the same shit. I told that story to these guys so many times where I bought as a kid, I saved up my money and I saw the ad in, I remember it was a Flax Magazine maybe and it was Cybergenics and it came with like seven different pills, supplements. Yeah, and droppers. And droppers and I thought, well, this is gonna work. If I'm taking all this stuff and the before and after so I'm so glad I finally met someone that didn't say it. Yeah, it didn't work, did it? No, it didn't. Yeah, none of that worked. I remember I took up all my father's conservatory space with all these supplements and it didn't work. But it's interesting because even if there was a placebo effect to it, hey, you know, what's wrong with that? But the evolution, unfortunately, it went, I think it went down a bit of a downward spiral for a little while. You know, obviously you had the pro hormones here, especially in the US. So people are screwing up their testosterone or hormonal levels. That's me. Pretty quick. Yeah, I did the super draw and the methyl one test and the, you know, the, you know, halodraw. Yeah. And they were called pro hormones, but they were designer steroids. Yeah. They definitely negatively affected my for sure. Like it blew me away when I first came over to the Arnold and the Olympia in like 2001, 2002 that they had all these pro hormones there and they were giving them away. They get, I'm like, this is insane. This is insane. Obviously I was competing in natural bodybuilding. So I was like, I have to be very, very careful on what I use here. And it just blew me away. But then unfortunately, I think it went down a bit of a downward spiral, kind of much like, you know the CBD industry today is a bit of like, like the Wild West. Yes. You really don't know what you're getting. And you didn't know what you were getting there for a little while. And I knew this firsthand because when I started doing what's called video trainers, daily video trainers on bodybuilding.com, I was like, okay, now I've got a responsibility. I'm telling people what to take. I'm going to test some of these supplements. So I put my hand in my own pocket and I tested each one of these supplements that I was suggesting. And there was some products that were out there that nobody had heard of. And they were testing really, really good. But then there was some of the massive brands that weren't testing good at all. What'd you find? That just, you know, maybe- Like there's nothing in it that it says? Yeah. Amino, spiking in the proteins, you know. Yeah, all sorts, all sorts. Just wasn't basically what was written on a label. You were basically putting your hands together and hoping what you were taking was written, you know, that was inside the bottle. So it was a little bit dodgy back then. So I started purchasing raw ingredients and just putting them together myself. But of course the viewer that's watching this is not going to do that. So, you know, I'd only suggest the products that I had tested. So that wasn't everything because it's costing me at least $250 per test. And so that's when I just started formulating my own brand a little bit later. Well, it wasn't myself, it was myself and Brian Rand who was the formulator at bodybuild.com. He did the Platinum series and the early Jim Stepani line. And then the CFO at bodybuild.com, he helped kind of finance. So we, because I was, even though I may not look it with the tattoos at a Mohawk back then, I was very, very health conscious because I'd just dealt with mold toxicity. So I was looking in everything. I was looking at the coffee, I was looking at the grains that I was eating and obviously I was looking at the supplements. So I wanted to make sure that of course what I'm suggesting is merging the health sector with the sports performance sector because even though we're in the health and fitness industry, a lot of these supplements just weren't promoting health which was kind of weird to me. So, you know, I think it's helping now. It's starting to go in the right direction with certain brands. You know, there's certain brands I could name here that I think are doing absolutely phenomenal. They're doing it in the right direction. But then there's others that go, you know what, I don't have the money to put it in the R&D because I've got this much set aside for marketing, it's all gonna go into marketing. It's very difficult to do a little bit of the both. Were you aware of the margins in supplements? Like a lot of people think there's tons of money to be made and it's very, very thin margins. It depends what products you make. And if you're going for genetic dosages or generic ingredients and you're fairy dusting, you've got prop lens or whatever, you can make a big margin, of course. If you're white labeling, you can make big margin, but if you're doing it the right way, it's difficult. Like in the beginning when GNC approached us, it was like, we can't do business with you guys. If you're asking for 50 points, we'll be out of business, you know? Yeah, some of the smallest margins are the most consumed products, like protein powders and- Yeah, it's nothing in there. Yeah, very, very little. Okay, so list to me some of the most, I guess you would consider maybe important supplements for an athlete or someone looking to change their body. And you can't say creatine. That's a very easy one, because creatine's the most studied. We know what it does. It's got health benefits and all that stuff. Are there other supplements that you would say, you know, that you say, okay, these are the ones you should probably look to first if you're trying to take some? For sure. I'd say like it's gonna be like a protein powder or meal replacement because the majority of the people aren't able, because it's inconvenience, because they've got families, because of work, they're just not sitting down and eating the meals that they require and they're going and eating fast food. So I'd say meal replacement, you know, try to go for a meal replacement that has, you know, organic vitamins and minerals, maybe has organic carbohydrates in there, protein that has like digestive enzyme, less than one gram lactose, something along those lines. Further from that, dependent on the individual, if they're not eating grass-fed or wildcourts or something like that, maybe an omega-3 oil because if they're having more pro-inflammatory omega-6s, they probably need some anti-inflammatory omega-3s and obviously help with hormonal production. And then electrolytes. I think electrolytes is very important. A lot of people aren't hydrating enough. They're drinking a lot of caffeine today and of course you can have fluid, but if you're in an environment that you're sweating a lot, the fluid volume isn't going to hydrate you enough. You want to have some magnesium. You want to have some electrolytes in there as well. So I'd say those three. Yeah, I can definitely get on board. Yeah, the electrolyte one blew us away recently. There was a company we work with called LMNT. Yeah. And, you know, they sent us a box and Rob Wolf works with them. We love them. Yeah, yeah, Rob's great. Respect about a bit. And we saw it and we just kind of left it there. Yeah, sat in the studio for like six months. Yeah, or like electrolyte powder or whatever, you know. And, you know, then we tried it and, you know, also when you look into the amount of sodium that you actually need as an athlete, especially if you don't eat heavily processed foods, taking more sodium, I couldn't believe the difference I felt in the energy and the pump from having the more sodium in my diet, which we've been told for so long is like so bad for you. It's like the mineral version of creatine. Yes. It just helps with that cell volumization and you feel stronger from it. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. Okay, so what about a very popular fun, I'll call this a fun category of supplements because for me, it's fun. I love pre-workout supplements, not because I think you need them, but just because you feel them and they're enjoyable for me to get that feeling, whatever. Caffeine, obviously a core ingredient. Are there other ingredients that you see being more important to give you that, that feeling that you're looking for or, you know, maybe even a little extra performance? Yes. You know, a lot of people like beta-alanine or that, you know, the Patsy diversion, carnicine because it can depend on, like if you're a high volume trainer, like I am, I like to do a lot of reps. A lot of reps, a lot of intensity. So a little bit more towards like the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. But I do both, I do both. I find that carnicine or beta-alanine really helps with the lactate buffering a little bit. Along with, this is weird. Now this could be placebo, but when I started doing a lot of Ironman training, a lot of endurance, the carnicine with the BCAAs seem to really help with me. Now I'm an EAA guy, I like essential amino acids, but when I put those two together, again, I don't know if it was placebo, just really helped with lactate buffering I found. You know, I just didn't find that I'd burnt out as quickly as I once did. Interesting, there could be a synergistic effect having that. Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely. But carnicine is definitely one of them. Now, citrulline, obviously, you know, like a fermentant, you know, I don't usually go for a citrulline that's bonded with amalic acid. I just want pure citrulline. That can help, obviously, with blood vascularation, if you've got, like, for instance, your posterior chain, you're not getting that mind-muscle connection because it's not a mirror muscle. If you've got more blood flow to that area, much like a personal trainer, tapping that muscle group, I just feel that you get better connection with that blood flow with citrulline. So citrulline is one for me. And obviously, caffeine. Yeah, what about appetite-suppressing supplements, which I would put in the fat burner category? Now, we grew up during the ephedra, caffeine, aspirin stack, which I don't think there's anything that compares to that these days. You see anything coming out that may be comparable? Yeah, there's peptides. There's one that I'm totally gonna bastardize the pronunciation, it's semagalide. Oh, yes, somatoglide, I think it's called, yeah. Yeah, you say it. But that seems to be from what I've heard that has quite a good effect. Now, you can, I think you can get that in a capsule form as well. It was an injectable form, but I think you can get it in a capsule now, and that seems to be having an effect for people's appetite. Is there a pharmaceutical company that makes that right now that can be, I wanna say I bought some shares of this company, because in the studies, it made people just eat less, and it lasted for a while. It was actually one of the more effective- Yeah, I know there's a couple of companies out there that do it. You'll get a lot of these HRT clinics out there that are providing it. I know peptide sciences does one as well. Yeah, there's a few companies out there doing it. What are your thoughts on SARMs? SARMs, I don't really have much experience in SARMs to be honest with you. From what I know, for instance, like MK77, there doesn't seem to be that many adverse effects. Obviously, you'd wanna make sure that you're being supervised correctly, taken them, but from what I know, I don't have much experience. I'm a little bit more experienced in peptides. I haven't seen or heard of any negative effects. Yeah, interesting. I've been toying with Abhidham Oran a little bit. Oh, yeah, yeah. Very interesting effects. Seems to be a bit of a mass builder. I noticed I gained a little bit when I take it, but it's a very interesting class of, I don't know if you wanna call them supplements or compounds, but it's totally new. Here's a question I'd like to ask you, because you're so integrated into that professional bodybuilding world for so long that I used to think that the biggest, most muscular bodybuilders were just the ones that took the most drugs. And I keep reading articles from bodybuilders who may be retired, guys that for all intents and purposes, I don't think are lying, like Lee Priest. Lee Priest, he tells you what's on his mind, at least he comes across that way, good, bad, or otherwise, and they're coming out and talking about what they used and it's not a lot. Like Lee Priest has talked about, he would use 700 milligrams of combined anabolic at the most, which is for anybody who knows what people use in gyms, that seems like such a low amount and the guy looked like total freak. Is it a myth that the biggest guys were taking the most stuff? Is it mostly just their genetics and how they responded to some of the stuff? Absolutely, 100%. I know a couple of those guys personally and I know they're not bullshitting. They've got no reason to, especially after retirement, what are they trying to sell? They don't have to worry about sponsors or anything like that and people are a little bit more open about it now. But no, I know Lee, he was a freak as a teenager. They stopped him from getting his pro card for quite a number of years because it's like we can't have a 16 year old getting his pro card, it shouldn't happen. And then obviously Dorian's intensity was just on another level to anybody else. Like I remember after one of the Olympias, Pino Burgoff has called his then wife, Debbie, on the Monday after the Olympia, he's gone flown straight back to the UK. Yeah, well, this was on a Saturday, the show was. On the Monday, he's called him for his interview and Debbie said, it's leg day, he's at the gym, you know? And that was just the intensity that he had. So that was his steroid. His stack on top of that was a very minimal amount. But of course, he looks like a freak. So of course, people are gonna assume that he's taken so much more. Yeah, you know what's crazy is that when he went from being in second place to first, and we should put a picture up. Hopefully if someone's watching this, we'll have that. He made this, it's those famous black and white photos. Kevin Horton's photos, yeah. Yeah, where it's just like, what did he do? And everybody's speculated, oh, it's IGF-1, it's growth hormone, it's crazy. And he said, no, I changed my training. I went from high volume to more of a high intensity, low volume style training influenced by like Mike Menser, Arthur Jones style. That's what he said, did it. And as I get older, I more likely believe that now. And when I was a kid, I was like, no way he's lying. Yeah, for sure. And he said that he felt that he didn't over diet in this show where previously he'd over dieted a little bit. And in retrospect, he thinks that he over dieted in a lot of those shows because, you know, he was peeled at three weeks out, but he's like, okay, I'm definitely the biggest. I need to be even sharper. But I think he just lost a lot of muscle. Interesting. Dieting down. And but that year, he didn't see hit the nail on head. He was about nine, 10 pounds heavier. Interesting. Okay, what are some of the best gyms you've been? Cause there's some of these gyms are legendary. You talked about working in Golds, Venice. I've been there before. Really interesting. I've never, I've always wanted to visit where Dorian worked out back in the day. I don't even know if that gym still exists. Doesn't, I'm afraid. I've always wanted to see the gym that, you know, Ronnie worked out in, in Texas. And you know, have you been to a lot of these facilities? What are some of the best ones? Definitely Dorians, even though it wasn't anything flashed, there was just something about the aura of intensity there. I can't explain it. You know, you're in this dungeon. There's literally no windows, right? You have to go downstairs and to, okay. Nothing, nothing, no windows. So, you know, it's funny all us talking about vitamin D and how important that hormone is. You know, he was pale as anything. But yeah, it's just the aura of intensity. Like the equipment that he'd hand picked, you know, a lot of the nautilus, you know, the chain driven stuff. It was tough. You'd put three plates on. It's like, oh my God, this is my max. Very, very heavy. It's funny, even the dumbbells felt heavier there than anywhere else. But it was just something about the equipment and that aura of intensity. And then probably I was training with Dorian a lot of the times in near that probably fed it as well. And I'd trained with his training partner, Leroy, several times and him screaming down your ear. Probably, you know, led to that as well. And I trained with Branch many times in Metroflex as well. And for completely different reasons, you know, completely different temperature, you know, training in like 115 degrees where like you're freezing cold in Dorian's gym. Very different. But again, the intensity, the people, the aura, the camaraderie is just phenomenal. So those two were probably my standout facilities that I've trained at. Is there really no AC at Metroflex? None, it's just a fan. It's just a fan. So, you know, you throw it up during those leg workouts because of the heat as well as that intensity. Yeah, because, you know, as a kid, you watch those, you know, how much is this is real, how much? So there's no AC. It's just big-ass fans, hot-ass Texas summer and they're lifting like just animals. Yeah, and I think that's why, you know, people like Branch, you know, staying in such good condition all year round because you have to be fit to train in that heat and with that intensity and with the volume, you know? And he doesn't do any. So you did work out with Dorian then? Yes, yes, several times. Both here, he stayed with me when I lived in LA. We're training golds together. Funny story, if you don't mind me just taking a little bit of a rabbit hole here. So I was working for Flex Magazine and the one day, myself and Dorian are going into golds and, you know, all the pros back then, they go in for free. And, you know, the female asked Dorian, you know, it's $25, whatever it was. And he says, I'm a pro. And she said, well, do you have your pro card? He didn't have his pro card. He, you know, been retired a couple of years and there's a massive picture of him right behind her. She said, is that enough? And she took, you know, the woman didn't know she wasn't trained or whatnot. And I thought, this is a great article. So I put this piece and it got published in Flex Magazine and Matteo, who was the manager of golds, then he wasn't happy. He pulled me aside, he wasn't happy. I was like, hey, it's any publicity is good, isn't it? You know? That was quite funny that she wouldn't let Dorian in. It's so funny you bring up the chain driven Nautilus equipment. When I first worked in gyms, because I worked in, I started 24 hour fitness, which used to be 24 hour Nautilus. So they had a partnership with Nautilus. Oh, wow, okay. And they would have the original and the chain driven Nautilus machines I have yet to find any plate loaded, you know, select rice equipment that's as good. And I know why they got rid of it because you got a chain on a gear. I mean, one finger in there and you're losing your hand. But I have yet to use equipment that has that same feel. I have yet to find it. And if I find- The lat pullover machine, the best. Adam and I talked about, if we ever see that, that's we're using that for sure. So it really made me upset that they went in the opposite direction and making things so, I don't know, comfortable or whatever. The feel of those was just incredible. I think a lot of the equipment now, they want people to feel empowered like, hey guys, I'm doing a whole stack. Yes. So you're gonna go back to that gym. You know, it's like if you've got the big mirrors, you're going back to that gym for that effect. But that chain, the chain driven stuff is still out there. I was with Julian Smith just last week and he's picked up the preacher curl that Dorian had in a temple as well. So it's out there. Oh, great stuff. Chris, you are approaching 50 years old. What has been your journey with hormones? Are you on HRT right now? Have you got into that? At what point did you- No, I think I'm about to though. Okay. The reason being is that I had long COVID and believe it or not, that had, like I've always had pretty good testosterone levels. I think ever since I've really focused on kind of biohacking my health, going to bed at 7.30, increasing my fats because fats were the devil and managing my stress, going on silent retreats, earth, things, sunlight, whatever, you know? I get a little bit woo-woo there. I make sure that I block all the MFs and whatnot. My testosterone levels have always been pretty good and I've been very lucky with that. When I made these changes, my body felt better. A lot of the inflammation that I felt in my joints, I thought was from weight training, it was from my lifestyle. So it's good. But then I got the dreaded C-word last year and I definitely had the long COVID and it's had a negative effect on my testosterone that hasn't really bounced back. Oh, interesting. So I think for longevity purposes because I'm here for the long run, I'm definitely gonna have to go on, I definitely have to go down that street now for sure. And I've got no qualms with that. I'm not gonna step on stage again. I don't have to worry about being tested but for the purpose of my health, I think it's the right move to go. Wow, so you never used anabolic to your whole career? No, no, no. Wow. Like I've been, but it's funny, you know, when you're online, you know, you're definitely exposed to it. People use all steroids, Photoshop or whatever. And I always tell them, I put on like less than a pound a year. You know, it takes time. If I've been training for 23 years now and I train intense for 17 years, I didn't miss one meal if you believe that. So like, you know, you came across fasting on the forums. Like I knew about fasting, but I'd put that much pressure on myself that I've never missed a meal. I can't miss one now, even if I wanted to, you know? But when I went and I had to go for a colonoscopy because I'm at that age, I was like, I had to fast. I thought, okay, I'm gonna give this a go. And I enjoyed the effects of it, you know? But, you know, I don't know how I'm meandered off there. But for sure, it's something that I'm gonna do to optimize my health for the future along with a lot of other things. Yeah, and it's just been, it's been something I've always wanted to ask you because I have seen people because I know how the internet can be that will, oh, he's definitely on steroids. He's not true. I had that for my very first bodybuilding show. Very first bodybuilding show when I was in the local paper. And I was like, I look like I'd come at a concentration camp, really. But, you know, people don't see it that way. So you're an even better person to ask this question. I love to ask people that have been training as long or longer than we have. You know, can you recall the very pivotal moments in your training career that like light bulb, we talk about all the things we did wrong early on and then you change that volume, talk about that. That was a big one for me. Like I was the seven days a week hammering the body like crazy, literally just reduced my volume and I grew like 10 pounds that summer. It was crazy. Do you remember those very pivotal moments in your training career that were the things that were like really changed for you? Yeah, it was the opposite. It was me increasing my volume because I always came from like the Arthur Jones, Mike Mensa, Dorian type of heavy duty. And, you know, I'd go really heavy. I remember myself and Danny Chou who was the natural Mr. Olympia then. We were trained together in Australia and we'd be working up to seven plates a side on squats. And it'd take us about 45 minutes to get up to that weight. And my structure I realized just wasn't built for that especially with the back issues that I had for motor cross and I was getting niggling issues and bicep tendonitis, my elbows, knees. And at one stage it got so bad where I thought I have to either stop training or really lighten the load. And because I need the therapy mentally, I lighten the load and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna reach failure at 50 repetitions. So I do that. I'm like, okay, that's comfortable. And I do sets of 50. And then the next week I'd go, okay, I'll start with 50 but then I'll go up to 40, you know, increase the weight. And then I'd go 30 and then 20 and 10. But always starting at 50. So at 50, 40, 30, 20, 10. And I found that my body just responded so much better from that volume and that intensity. Yeah, I was going through a lot of calories and it was exhausting from a cardiovascular standpoint. But I'd always done some form of cardiovascular exercise every day, every day. So I love, I'm one of those rare people that love cardiovascular exercise. And I just found that my body really responded to that. So that was the pivotal moment for me. Okay, it isn't all about the ego. It isn't all about the weight. Yes, I can combine both but a lot of the time it came from volume. And it's very convenient, you know, staying at a hotel and there's just a minimal amount of equipment. It's like, okay, I'll just stay on here for 20 sets. But I'll do 50 reps and 40 and 30. And by the time I get down to 10, then maybe I'm not gonna be as strong. And I'd usually rest a lot longer between the lower repetitions to ensure my ATP was replenishing itself. But from what I understood about, like, you know, that was more than my fibula hypertrophy. But what I'd known a little bit more about the glycolytic energy sources and psychoplasmic that even though my brain and body is telling me to rest when I've done like 50 repetitions before I'd do another 50 or 40, I'd keep that rest period very, very short, about 45 seconds. And I found that really worked. Interesting, you know what's funny about hearing this is the trends in bodybuilding are dictated where people would get stuck. So like if you started bodybuilding in the 70s and 80s, it was high volume, lots of volume, lots of angles. And then, you know, you'd hear Dorian come out and you know, heavy duty. And everyone's like, oh my God, it's low volume, high intensity. And it's just funny to see how it, you know. Yeah, because I was the reverse of Chris. I was the opposite. I was like super hypertrophy, pump, pump, super sets, high reps. And then I had never like, I never did a five by five type of style training till way later in my career. And just, I always thought like, oh, I don't want to be a power lifter. So why don't I don't care about weight? I didn't care about being strong. It was all about the pump and chasing that. And that flip for me actually exploded my body because that was the inverse. You definitely learn from your mistakes. And I think we have to look at our genetic structure to a certain degree as well. Like my father's side of the family are just horrendously strong, just naturally bigger people. We're on my mother's side, they're much smaller. And you know, I feel that I've got my mother's maybe bone structure, but I've got my father's strength. It didn't really mix well together. Things started falling off pretty quick. So, you know, you have to kind of adhere to that. You know, much like I adhere to our ancestors, circadian rhythm, I'm in bed early. So I adhere to, you know, my genetic structure. Good deal. Well, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you. I'm very, very glad we had you on the show. Appreciate it. Now that we know you're just a small plane right away, dude, you have to come back over here more often, so. Hey, if it's a route not to, once I get back from India, I'll be here, buddy. For sure. Be careful what you wish for. Thanks for coming back on. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it, guys. This one's really important. And that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and three or four weeks of, let's say, 15 to 20 reps and then they'll throw in some supersets, at the end of that year, you're gonna see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out. And less injury, that's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.