How To Go Hard, Even When You Don’t Want To - Sam Sulek

Key Takeaway

Raise your baseline instead of waiting for motivation. Today, choose one action that your future self will thank you for—buy the gym membership, take a 10-minute walk, prep one protein-rich meal, or go to bed on time—and repeat it tomorrow. Small actions create momentum, while skipped actions compound into a downward spiral. The goal is not a perfect routine; it is making useful behavior so normal that you can still do it on a bad day.

Episode Overview

Sam Sulek and Chris Williamson discuss how sustained effort becomes easier when you progressively raise your personal standard rather than relying on motivation or perfect conditions. They explore training principles, resilient routines, upward and downward habit spirals, privacy online, commitment, and why robust fundamentals outperform over-optimized tactics.

Full Transcript

Transcript of How To Go Hard, Even When You Don’t Want To - Sam Sulek from Modern Wisdom. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

People of the uk and ireland i'm coming to you live imagine that me on stage in your city dublin is completely sold out but everywhere else is got limited tickets left and you can get yours now at chris williamson dot live this is a custom built live show i absolutely adore it spent over a year working on it so if you're a fan of everything modern wisdom come and see me on stage this october around the uk and ireland chris williamson dot live. You have spent a lot of time training physically i'm interested in how you think about training mentally.

How that comes into your development goals who for like for me or because i mean i feel like i end up splitting like what how i'm thinking about training between myself of course because i care about my own training but all the videos i make i'm talking. Kind of to everybody because i want to be able to give reasonable tips at least from like my own experience so i'm like half thinking like okay what kind of bar do i want but also. What's semi reasonable for someone else because for me i'm gonna say you want to go to a steak dinner like last night.

Okay this wellington's probably fifty grams of carbs probably twenty grams of fat i can tell it's a little greasy and how would like super specific metal sort of stuff but i'm not gonna say like that. Is the bar for somebody who just started working out because i gotta creep your way up to it so it's like. You know i i always make this sort of analogy where it's not necessarily where you are specifically right i mean we're about to see the olympia this week there's gonna be dudes who are they wouldn't even do they would fill the frame right here like the one that have to just quite a lot yet.

And i don't look at and think oh my god i'm so small is all i'm really kind of proud of is like man i every time i see a picture of like younger me and i'm like. I don't know if you believe it like where i'm at now but it's like just gradually raising the bar for yourself. Meeting it but i gotta raise it again cuz now you met and it's like normal so it's a that's probably the biggest thing i think about is like even now i've been working out for like eight years pretty much i'm still thinking like okay i want to raise my own bar.

Like there's no there's no end to it either like there's no end point where i'm like okay now i'm totally perfect and i know everything and everything i do is awesome. It's like i'm always just trying to creep up like what can i do a little better like what can i do a little bit harder and like the more you do that. Going harder becomes more normal and now i feel like i'm gonna spoiled cuz the dude who's at your gym who's like the most jacked.

Just looks insane he looks like he's going the hardest he actually has it the easiest cuz now he is like adapted himself baseline to doing that for him this is a normal day if you think he's going crazy hard it's because you're not used to that level but it's almost like i wanna. I got. To sort of approaches like i want to bring it super hard but i also want to like be able to tell myself i could do this set. As hard as possible just like that like nothing i want to be seamless but still actually really bring extra effort in that way yeah there's this.

I remember where i heard it someone commented on one of my videos after i said it but i really like this analogy it's called practice without striving. So you're going as hard as you can but you want that going as hard as you can to just be seamless is just what you do. Like move the gym i mean what how long till you look like you've done something how long until you look like you lost a bunch of weight like yours guys will come up to me at a fitness expo and it's like look at this picture.

Two hundred pound guy five hundred pound picture and i've been making these videos for so long that he says your videos got me to start doing this. And it just feels like totally crazy for me to even hear that because every time someone is like you know i've been tracking my calories i've been doing my cardio. I know they actually are thinking about things differently than regular people which i can blame just regular american upbringing you know everybody just thinks bread makes you fat and you know just eat your vegetables like that's the extent of what a healthy diet is but it's a lot of just going harder than i've gone before.

I find so many times it's a fortune i think that you haven't and i know that i have as well whatever like autism adjacent audience i've decided to cultivate some of the comments and the feedback that i get. I'm like i'm i don't end up sighting that in future but that's a worthy happens all the time and someone just comments on one of your videos and that's now an idea handle. That explains the shit that i thought i came up with better than i could have done like thank you for this it's like a human centipede but like you're all attached to each other just helping each other to to sort of feed on the sort of lowering the baseline or raising the minimum level of, bad performance or pretty much what my worst day looks like this is great line from floyd mayweather i think he's talking about i think it's actually about his fight with logan paul which makes it way less romantic but i'm.

Floyd mayweather talks about facing an opponent and he says i don't gotta be with my a game i could be with my cd or e game. I fucking love that idea that even on my worst day i'm still better than i need to be to do what i want to get done and that's obviously in a competitive environment but similarly it could be i can still make progress. On a day when i don't want to go in because i've drilled the basics the muscle activation the diet i've got all of the things sorted.

Controlled all of the shit that i can so that when some of the stuff that i usually can control get out of control progress is still made and i still move forward yeah i think there's. I think a lot of people right now are kind of falling for this tutorial based mindset where they're thinking okay what are the steps that i need to do to achieve whatever my goal is and it's like the step is. I work out and dieting in a certain way and like cardio and whatever or this kind of noise mean guys will be essentially just hyping up very strange.

Workout movements like doing a curl in a very weird way where they lean over in a certain like climbing a machine using it backwards which i'm not always against because sometimes i'll do stuff in the gym where i'm like. It's just kind of funky i've seen you do calls with a hamstring machine before i make that up. Leg curls on a leg extension that's it you stand on a backwards and it's the same as a leg like that actually works so it's not like i'm saying you can't change the stuff up i mean i have seen people get into smith machines from the ground up, that's usually interesting to see you know what i mean like they put a couple of yoga mats underneath them and now they're doing a inverted leg press using the machine yeah i'd categorize that is is funky okay you gotta you gotta see some of the stuff these dudes are like they're doing a squat variation on a seated cable row.

How they like put a straight bar on their hips and like they then load it from there. Okay facing the other way so facing away from it it depends on the machine either way you want to catch me doing it but it's this just idea that if i do something this right way specifically it will work for sure and they're highlighting this like just and i mean that's kind of how we're all raised right first grade you pass your test second grade. And it's like you know is that really that much of an accomplishment it's kind of just like status quo but it's getting into the gym it's like if i do this workout right and if i do ten reps that's perfect whereas in my head i'm like well.

You can put me in a hotel gym with just forty pound dumbbells and i probably get a good workout in for anybody part like even legs and then during covid what i do is i take a belt like for your for your pants wrap it around a dumbbell. On my ankle sit on it now we're getting funky well this is because there's nothing else to do okay yeah sit on the survival gym sit on a bench and do the leg extension single leg leg extension with your dumbbell.

On your foot like things like that and i just think it's way more important to just a like this is the most simple thing anybody could ever say but just go harder. Like a set of straight dumbbell curls which anybody everyone in the world would know if you ask them how do you build your biceps it's a do dumbbell curl they wouldn't say do a inverted preacher curl triple drop said they wouldn't say do self assisted whatever they're just gonna say do dumbbell curl. So i think there's as much value as there is in like super specific training and everything like if you just go harder you're probably gonna get better results so you're the secret to building muscle is just go harder.

Well there's more to it but but as a training principle yeah i guess a theme i think that's over arching way more important than necessarily training right and i get myself in trouble because by saying that. That sounds like i'm saying don't train right just train hard it's more like this should be first and they should be second right there they're close to equivalent values but i'd rather train super hard than super smart is kind of how i would put it. What do you make of the exercise science sort of optimal structure that's kind of a big.

I'm a little annoyed and i'm not annoyed but what kind of like peace me is the people in the studies are not me and they're not a lot of other people who want to work out super hard either i mean they're based on like the regular dude and what's the regular guy like fda based what five nine. Hundred eighty pounds two thousand calories per day fifty grams of protein per day. I mean no activity you know what regular person has like cardio actually in their routine is it you know you're just not normally studies aren't it's just not.

Necessarily directly related so i'm not saying they're not but you're gonna have more are you there's more to gain for just going to the gym and going harder. Been sitting at home reading a book about training is how i feel about it but again it doesn't mean i'm not saying that this information is invaluable but there's like intellectual value and there's practical value. You know intellectually guys are gonna be very interested to say oh we just came up with this new like life is a did fat for this protein bar like you know the david bars where they have this thing.

I don't know that i don't know the specifics but it's like we have this really crazy specific thing and like that's very interesting and that probably does have benefits of you can eat something makes you feel more full but you don't actually break down the calories or whatever. Are you just not as much and they both result in the same and state so i think it's you know guys are gonna look at that and say oh well if i just eat thirty david bars every day i guess i'm gonna get late and it's it's like no it's just not even has tried that.

It's interesting there's a trend online at the moment which you might have been tracking and it seems like you're talking about the same thing but in health and fitness which is a pushback against over optimization. It's called grind slot in my world which is people sort of over obsessing about always trying to optimize each different part of the day the perfect morning routine and then the perfect nutrition habits and then, ensuring that sleep and wait time is is completely dialed and no room for resilience or redundancy that's in there and it seems to me like that trend of people feeling like everything is homework.

I'm overwhelmed with this is too much i'm a bit fatigued and exhausted i do think that the volume of information people consuming through social media and a i plus uncertainty about whether i'm gonna have a job in future and weather the geopolitical climate is gonna cause me to you know is this country even gonna exist in the next fifty years who knows. All of that is just making people feel a bit burdened by things and it feels a little bit like what you're saying here is learning.

Robust principles that work in a lot of different environments inside of the gym is more useful than trying to just have individual tactics that you snipe each time in the same way as i try to get enough sleep and if i'm tired i go to bed. Understanding the principles of regularity duration it's cold dark quiet stuff like that. That is a better principle to follow then i will completely obsessively have this. The particular routine because that has fragility break into the suspect into the system to be break it then it no longer works that like a fat comparison do you think i think i think it's a similar it's like a crap my my house is about to burn down.

Well i can't call 911 my phone is blue light i gotta go to sleep i can't look at blue light right now i guess i'm boned yeah that's like a stupid extreme yeah yeah it's um you know it would i get this comment getting back to like how the comments are a good reflection where a guy. What is full day of eating i mean a big bowl of egg whites and rice in this chicken pot pie casserole my wife made me sweet steak rice cakes like just.

What i would consider an effective day of eating for what my goals are not gonna say specifically the best for someone else but for me this makes sense and these are all pretty solid foods all the protein was what i'd call like s tier like beef chicken. Some dairy eggs fish that's like s your protein i got comments what about the protein in the rice. I'm gonna call that d to your protein if it's in there i'm not counted it's like it's very it might just be one of the amino acid chains which is really gonna do anything for you.

But the comment basically was like i can or what i said in the video was. Look you're not gonna see me make an extra fancy avocado toast with like a perfectly sliced thing and let's show you the picture and it looks really nice like that's just for fun for like an instagram full day of eating like oh i eat my avocado toast every morning with um my himalayan salt that i get imported from overseas like that's fun to look at but like that's just not even real and the comment was basically just like.

Thank you i've seen so many avocado toast videos i've been working out for twenty years i wish more people were hyping up just the basics of like. Get your protein in, get however many carbs you need, don't eat too many fats, like, you know, kind of things like that. What's that trend? Is it called boy kibble or like man kibble or something? Yeah, it's, um, oh yeah, it's like just the guy bowl. It's slop. It's, yeah, it's eat, eat, eat, eat, eat your slop. It's some form of meat with probably potatoes or rice.

And a sauce. In a, in a large bowl with some sauce. And if it's vegetables, they're on, they're in a different location. They don't, there it is. Viral social media trends. There it is. So it's this, it's that, it's all of those things. It's just, you take a carb, a protein, and then some sort of vegetable or sauce. You just mix it all together. And look at that guy in the tank top. There it is. Down, down one from the cursor on your left. Yeah, there it is.

What is boy kibble? All about the viral trip. Boy kibble to girl dinner. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He definitely knows how much protein and how many carbs and how many fats are in that bowl. You know what I love? Every man, every Jim bro has a favorite bowl in the house. I remember for a good while. I must have had fuck. At least 50% of my life calories for probably about five years from in one bowl and I couldn't get it again. It was discontinued in Ikea.

I was treating it like a fucking Bitcoin. I'm like, there's a limited supply. I can't get that non fungible. I can't get this bowl back again. But like the perfect bowl, I think is an underrated hack. It needs to be high sides. Salad bowl. You can stir this thing without spilling it. Yep, exactly. Yeah, it needs to be high side. So you can have it for small meal, big meal. Needs to be microwave safe because you are going to, you're going to reheat or like eat a little, I've heated it in the glass tupperware, but it needs a little bit more.

It just needs another minute. I'll pop it in. But yeah, I think a high quality bowl is an underrated life hack for most guys. Yeah, I think so. I've been, I guess mine must have evolved over time because if it used to be like a smaller Pyrex. Now, if I'm looking in the cupboard, I'm like, okay, we've got this set of plastic ones, you know, maybe. No plastic bowls. Come on, Sam. Hey, sorry. I haven't been using them as much. That's what I'm saying. Okay, but it's like if I want a bowl, it's big enough to mix all this stuff in and not spill anything.

Strong salad bowl. It's got to be like a full, maybe two gallon. It's a big salad bowl. It's like a beach ball that's being cut, the top half of it's being cut off. Yeah, it's perfect. Yep. Just bring it, bring it wherever you, wherever you're going. Very, very strong on that. But no, I know what you mean around like the way that food looks. I would make one argument, which is any bread, either toasted or untoasted, cut corner to corner, as opposed to side to side, immediately tastes about 20% better if you cut it corner to corner.

There's something about the aesthetic of that type of bread, I think, which highly improves it. Second thing is Rob Henderson's got this fucking awesome line. He says, uh, working class food tastes better than it looks and upper class food looks better than it tastes and every bit of boy kibble or Jim bro food. If you were to post it online, it's like that, that slop, you've posted a bowl of slop on the internet. No one cares about it, but you're like, that will taste better than some perfectly garnished thing.

That's well presented on a bunch of wood. Yeah. I think one thing that's kind of underestimated about it too, is like, well, there's a different method of enjoyment when you eat a bowl, a bowl of food like that, because most people like regular kind of folk, let's say they're not as tapped in with like, they don't count their carbs or whatever. Well, they're looking at food as though this is just a thing for me to enjoy right now. I want to enjoy this. Why would I eat this bowl of rice and steak?

That seems crazy. Whereas for somebody like us, I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, I get the food enjoyment because for one, it does not taste bad. You guys are eating with your eyes and I'm still going to feel super full after. So like the enjoyment of the food for me is still fine. But also I get this extra enjoyment of nice. This is good for me for what my goals are. So now I'm enjoying it in two different ways instead of just a, you know what?

Treat yourself, get some canes or something. Yeah. If you're going to spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. And honestly, who wants to be in the background of a TikTok is highlight reel dressed like a chump. Gymshark makes some of the best men's and women's training gear on the planet. And something that I realized a few years ago is that when you actually like what you're wearing in the gym, you show up differently. You train harder, you stay longer and get way more high fives.

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That's gym.sh slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom 10 at checkout. You, uh, you jump scared people with your marriage announcement a couple of months ago. Yeah, that's, uh, this is something I get. Sometimes I get another comment, not to just bring up all the comments, but it was essentially like, you know, Sam, we see you all like every day for the last like four years. There's so much. We still don't know. That's like secret wife, secret fiance. Exactly. And wife. Yeah, that's a, that's a long time in the making, but yeah, it's like, I'll see dudes where it's not as though I think you're setting yourself up for like failure.

But what I think happens is they, they make videos. If you make videos about the gym, it's very repetitive. I mean, I've, I don't know if I could even estimate how many chest days have been uploaded. It's in the hundreds. See if you can chat GPT, how many chest days has Sam Sulek uploaded on his YouTube channel? That'd be hilarious. It's probably about two 50 cause there's like 1200 videos and it's usually chest every four days. So a quarter, so at least two 50 of a chest day.

And for me, I'm like, well, this is just what I'm doing. This is a thing to build over time and it's just kind of fun for me to do. So I like it, but some guys, they get very view obsessed and it's a well over 200 videos. Exactly. We didn't need chat GPT. We had some GPT here. Yeah, I already knew the data, but I think they, this is just maybe some that's fitness centered. I'm sure it happens to people who post about everything else too, when it's just them, they need to spice it up.

They start adding different bits of their life in. But they're like, well, what can I talk about? Ooh, let's talk about drama, which is usually step one. But then, ooh, let's talk about my own drama. I'm like, why are you, you guys are crazy. Not like I'm saying I got, I got a bunch of drama I'm hiding, but it's like, I've got a, there's like on the camera, Sam. And then my normal day is just like for me. So that's just how I go about it.

Mary Harrington talks about a digital hijab. She says that there's certain parts of her that are for the internet and then there's certain parts of it that are for private. And, um, it is interesting. I I'm really glad that I did the type of content vertical that I have done, which is where it feels like there's still bits of life that are for me and I can choose to open up about them or not. Um, but you know, as a piece of advice for anybody that's considering pursuing writing or video or, you know, short form aphorism stuff or fuck me like music or whatever.

Um, when you open the door to that part of your life, it's very hard to close it. So I think levels of personal disclosure should be done very carefully with a lot of thought of if you bring up this relationship, if it ends in future, people will still be asking you about the relationship. And if you're in a new one, your new missus is going to be mad at the fact that your audience thinks that you're now, and then they're just going to having a relationships hard, having a relationship and public's got to be like infinitely harder.

Uh, so all of that, like the level of personal disclosure, I think is. Is a, an interesting one. How, from your side, how has married life changed your conception of, of you and the way that you sort of face the world? Is there being that personal philosophy changes now that, that, that home base is fully, fully like cemented? Yeah, I think so. Maybe, um, I don't want to compare marriage to the gym. That's a little go on, but what I was like answer ever tell me about how marriage is similar to the gym gone.

I know. Right. But it's a, so this is just something I've thought forever, uh, about guys who've been, cause now I've been, you know, I've been making these videos. They've been all kind of blown up for like years at this point. So I see guys who are in my position in different kind of areas and I'm like, Oh, you're 35 and you're, you're like dating around. Ooh, you should, you should be doing cooler stuff than that. Uh, like I think now probably the biggest flex that I see is when it's like Chris Hemsworth surfing with his kids.

I'm like, that is sweet. I like, I gotta, I, uh, I got another question. I was like, Sammy, you ever going to have kids? Totally. Cause like that's, um, when I look at a guy like that or hear what they say, I mean, he'd probably trade any material thing that he's gotten or whatever for that, but he knows that that's the most valuable thing he's got. Look at Seabum. Seabum did trade everything that he'd worked for, for his wife and his kids. Well, it helps that he got everything first as well.

Of course. So a little different, but yeah, it's like, there's, um, so again, you get like social media, you were like, Oh, you're super cool. And like, you're doing your, uh, your videos and you're going up on stage and whatever, but it's like, you know, you're also you for the rest of your life. There's things that you want to kind of progress in over time. So making like that gym comparison, like, well, what's the difference between like 20 year old you versus 30 year old you are like now 24 to, you know, like 30, like there's things that, uh, that just take time, you know, or like when guys are, and I get, this is probably different for younger guys now where it's, uh, everything's very career focused, like, oh, well, you know, I don't, I don't have time for kids right now.

Like, not that like I'm saying, I'm going to have a kid in like two months or anything, but the logic is like, oh, well, you know, I'm not ready. Or, and when I hear that, I'm like, well, when, when are you going to be ready, man? You know, like time's kind of ticking. So I think if you ever get into a situation where you could see like, okay, there's actually a really long-term thing that we can build here. And like, it's super valuable. Like you just love it.

Like literally, well, why wouldn't you want to do that? But a lot of guys are very, um, I mean, you tell me what you think, but I think anti maybe not anti, but just like afraid of commitment like that. It's like, oh, I want to keep, I got to keep my options open. I ask, uh, the live show that I'm doing. I did one last night. And, um, uh, partway through the show, I asked the women in the audience, what are the problems that they're hearing from their girlfriends, uh, from when they're dating men.

And one of the most common ones is won't commit. And, uh, there's this weird situation that people get into. I think where I cynicism is a good defense against heartbreak and betrayal, which is very effective at doing that. But the trouble is that you get so good at it that you accidentally defend yourself from ever falling in love or ever being committed. And yeah, I like to, you know, fly the flag for a generation of, of guys who certainly focused on the build first, there is, there is something to be said for working your own shit out and getting yourself set.

There is something for that, but the situation I think you're pointing at is if you find the person feel like, oh, this is my fucking person. This, there's nothing that's missing from this. And still you decides to do the postponed thing because you've got your eyes set on something else. That I think is almost unanimously just a, an error. It's like what a good career and an unhappy marriage will make you miserable, but a bad career and a happy marriage will mean that you probably don't give a fuck.

So like, just weigh those priorities appropriately. Like, and you don't know what you don't know either. If you're someone that's very focused on career, you can't understand how fulfilling having a deeply connected relationship could be. And if it made all of the other things in your life sort of pale into insignificance, even a little bit, or maybe a lot, well, fuck. Like, why wouldn't I do that? It's just a huge performance enhancer where you can step on stage at the Olympia knowing that you've done absolutely everything that you can really trying your hardest, being proud of what you've done.

And whether you win or you lose, you go back to your partner and she still thinks that the sun shines out of every part of you. You're like, that's like, I literally, even if I lose, I win. And I think the same thing is true for women now as well, is that, you know, increasingly having to have careers and pressure on them to be professionally successful and stuff like that. So yeah, I think the relationship, like competitive advantage, not to talk about relationships as a productivity tool, but the competitive advantage of having someone that's just always in your corner.

The rest of the world kind of is that love is mostly predicated on what you do, not who you are and being in a relationship with somebody that really cares about you is predicated on who you are and doesn't really give a fuck about what you do, which is pretty great. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to, I don't know. It's hard to advertise that though, because now someone might be thinking like, okay, I need to find this thing, but it's like, it's not necessarily something you find.

It just kind of happens. But, uh, what you just said about the idea of like having everything set before, like looking for a long-term relationship, like I've been hearing that a bunch, like when I talked to some of my friends about it, it's like, well, you know, once I, once I get this business started and, you know, once I sell this thing, I'm like, well, how long is that going to take? So now you're just delaying what you definitely think is probably the fun part, which would be like, uh, like I'll, I told my one buddy, I'm you definitely know that in the future you're thinking like however many kids house you and her, like that's like retriever.

Yeah, exactly. Like you, you definitely are thinking that's where that is at the end for sure. So what, how are you not acting in a way that would like build towards that now? Because if you fast forward, you would want to think like that is way more important than any of this other stuff I have not to say you don't also want it, but you can just do both at once. I think you're, uh, an example of unusual self-awareness in that regard. Like most people, certainly me included.

I actually had my head on my own ass until I was about 28, 29 building the business thing. And this is why I said sort of speaking for. the generation of guys, fortunately, there are conversations like, and examples of people like you or like Chris Bumstead, like C-Bum's only what, like 32, something like that, I think, 32, 33. So still like pretty young, but he's 30, everything he's fucking done. Oh yeah. Um, that 15 years ago when I just left university after doing two degrees, the internet wasn't talking about that.

Like YouTube was PewDiePie videos and maybe not even that, right. It was, it was bullshit. Like there wasn't any personal development in the same way that was made to be applicable and really curated for the stage of life that you're in. You know, personal development books were like Tony Robbins unleashed the power within, which is great, but it's like broad ranging and a little nebulous compared with, this is a specific message for you at your stage of life. And then, yeah, you kind of, I think it's less so that people are choosing to do something else.

It's that there's lots to do and they're not thinking about where do I want to be in future? You're right to bring up, Hey, if you know that you're going to get there, why not get there a little earlier or why not think about the end destination when you're starting off on the journey? I certainly think that, you know, that is for the guys that can, I mean, fucking Kevin, social media guy, when'd you get married? 20, 23, 22, 22, 22. Then his Sunday is church, Costco and coffee.

I like you are the 22 going on 52. It's kind of crazy. Um, but it's pretty talk to me. So what. Married, but also still obsessed with the gym. What does a wife have to tolerate if you're married to a bodybuilder? Uh, Ooh, yeah. So the, the preps were definitely the trickiest part, because honestly, for me now with like regular go to the gym, eat in a normal way, like my normal. So however different that is from like real normal, uh, that's kind of seamless. Like that's all the stuff I just do on my own, like normal.

Like, it's not, um, I don't necessarily need to be catered to or anything. It's like, all right, I'm gonna go to the gym right now and then we'll come back and we'll do this later. And like, it's, it's not in your face or whatever, cause I've been doing that the whole time, but like the actual show preps, uh, now it, it almost makes me like, this is an angle where it makes me like resent the bodybuilding shows. Not that that's the most I think about it, but just that percentage.

Cause it's like, you just want to do nothing. You do, you do your workout. All you're thinking about is like this show on this day. And the ones that I did were in the winter coming into March. So it's the full winter period of time. And I'm just like, I'm not stewing, but a lot of time where we would normally be much more casual. It was kind of just me like, all right, get an hour cardio in 20 minutes, just whatever. And it's, uh, you know, we, so I'll, I'll look back at pictures during some of the preps.

I'm like, man, I don't even remember this day cause I was thinking about this, this show and this like competition and everything, cause I'm putting so much stuff into it. And it's a, so that could be a little, cause it's just, you end up drawing back a little bit, which is kind of like, it w not so much in the second prep. Cause you learn it from the first one. But when we were, when those were both done, it was like, okay, yeah, now we can get back to totally regular chill.

And, uh, but in the scheme of things, you know, I think I handled it pretty well, like even just with the regular bodybuilding and stuff, like, you know, I don't think I'm walking around apart from like the size, just like advertising to everybody, like, oh man, I'll bodybuilder only, which might sound funny for me to say, cause I guess that kind of is the perception. Uh, but at least in my head, I don't feel like that. You've got too many cats to be bodybuilder on. So you, you rarely seem dependent on perfect conditions.

How should people get better at that? Especially going into winter, which removes a lot of the external motivation. Yeah, I think there's, um, well, you would know this, there's a little physiological angle. You got no vitamin D cause you're not getting out in the sun. However much that is really affecting people. But I think more so, you know, it's just, it's colder. I'm not going out and having as much fun, you know, cause in the wintertime, the only stuff that you really do activity wise would just be usually in your house or like you're going to a club or something.

And like, who actually is going to clubs for real? Like who really goes to their, what a badminton club or something? I'm not saying that wouldn't, like, I'm saying that would be cool, but who's actually going out and doing it and making sure that they're still maintaining like this certain amount of like fun activity in the winter. It's, you just kind of end up getting a little more seclusive, but it's, um, for me at least, uh, this is kind of how I think it's more important to have this wiring in your head of like, okay, the harder I go, the more progress I'll make.

Because if I'm wired like that, well then if I wake up and, you know, maybe I'm not feeling as good or as like motivated to get after it, you know what I mean? For a while I was doing, I'd wake up instantly, sit in the bike for an hour, come back, go work out a couple hours later, come back, go do the bike again for an hour, come back. Like, it's very much just the same stuff over and over again. Yeah. And it's like, where's the, where's the fun?

Or at least for a bodybuilding show, the fun part is at the end. So it's like, you're doing a lot of extra work with basically no fun until that later portion. And it's, um, you know, you could either look at that and think, oh my God, this freaking sucks. Or you could, in my head, I like to imagine like maybe the fictional version of Sam, where this version is like, oh man, so it's extra hard today. All right. Sweet. Good. Do it even harder than before.

Have you ever heard Tyson being asked about why he gets up at 4am to go for a run? Because everybody's still sleeping. Yeah. Can you find that Mark? This is like the best winter arc justification ever. And look, I, I did five years of pretty aggressive monk mode, a thousand days sober, 500 days without caffeine. They weren't crossed over. That would have been fucking miserable. There were two separate things, experiments, and this really elaborate morning routine where I was doing stretching and going for a walk and Rom ward and fucking meditation and breathwork and journaling and all of this stuff, like this unnecessary cathedral of things largely, but it was me trying to work out who the fuck I am and like locking in.

And it wasn't for five years completely, but it was a good chunk of it. And that took me from 27, 28 to like 32, 33. And then I moved to America at 34 and the amount of progress that I made there. Yeah. I sacrificed a lot of things. I wasn't going out as much, but then I'd spent a decade going out two nights a week and partying until three in the morning for, you know, a good bit of it, running nightclubs and doing all the social thing.

I'm like, huh. And you're ahead from that time. Yes. So you have this delayed gratification. Yeah. And then I'm now like, okay, I need to lock in and do the me thing. So I think the, the winter arc for guys and for girls, although I don't want to mansplain, can, uh, can be a really good tool. If you have a period that you're facing that, you know, is going to be dark and difficult, just deciding, okay, this is going to be tough and I have the choice to either lock the fuck in or complain about it.

I'll take the locking the fuck in. Thank you. Yeah. I'm always thinking, okay, what would me three months want me to do right now? Are you out running four 35 o'clock in the morning and not later in the day or why do fighters do that? Because I don't want to do it. I mean, just if the discipline is to do things that you don't want to do, I don't think I want to get up for a run. Sometimes I get up and run. I see guys and I like to hang out and see people in the car, they party.

It came from partying and hanging out. Guys are having fun and I'm running. I think that might be Cam Haynes. I'm not sure who that is. That's a very white Mike Tyson, if that was the dude that was running. Uh, but I think that might be Cam Haynes. That is somebody else. Yeah. File footage. We got, we got Tyson at the end. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Cool. He was in there. Yeah, it is. But it's like, what would you in a year want you to do right now?

I love that question. Wish I would've locked in. I like, and I feel like nobody thinks like that because every time you're kind of retrospecting and you're like, it ends up, guys just love putting themselves down. This is, um, and I'm not upset when I hear people talk like this because it's not necessarily your fault. If you're in this slump of like, everything sucks, some of it might've been my fault. Some of it is just kind of, you know, life, you don't, you never know what might happen.

Sometimes you just get Delta totally shithand, but it's like to just crumble into yourself and be, you know, ah, everything sucks. What's the point. Ooh, you know, and then you just never get after it. And when I hear that, I'm like, well, you know, if, if what would you in a year have wanted you to do? Because I, uh, I went on a big kind of rants about this where when you're really freaking out, anxious about something and maybe you're some things really deserve real anxiousness, but some things you over freak out about, let's say when you're really tweaking, you don't actually know.

Cause you're in it. You're not looking at it from like a third person perspective, but it's like, you know, even if I was going through something like that, or I'm in this, like, what might even feel like a pit of like, I got no hype. I'm not excited about whatever I'm doing. It's like, what's the point? I don't even see it. I'm like, well, if in three months you somehow get out of your funk, which normally sometimes it'll just happen. It's just a time thing. Well, now you are three months into the future, three months, you could say wasted towards whatever your certain goal may have been.

The veil has been lifted. You're back to your normal kind of like thought process. You're like, holy crap, gain 50 pounds. Well, now you're really screwed. So getting back to what I was saying before about being able to bring it, but have that be like just your normal state of being, well, even if you do go through a funk, like something really rough, you know, I can't even tell you, this is like up to, up to the listener to know what your funk is. If by the time you get out of it, you still kept up your normal routine of things.

Maybe it wasn't at like a hundred percent, but you were still going through your motions. You're going to feel way better about it. But even me saying that I could see how there's no kind of energy to want to do that. Cause I just said, go through the motions. Nobody, people would rather do nothing than going through the motions. Like the only one to do it when you're extra motivated to do it. Yeah. People believe that motivation isn't a necessary precursor to doing the thing. It's this optimal mental state where you feel like you want to do it or it's good to do it, or it's easy to do it or something, but feeling motivated is an unnecessary middle step between where you are and doing the thing.

You can just do it anyway. You can do it without the motivation. Tell me if this sounds familiar, you train regularly, you eat reasonably well, you feel fine, but you're just kind of going off. Vibes. Most people have absolutely no idea what's going on inside their body. And that is why I partnered with function. Function gives you access to more than 160 advanced lab tests, spanning hormones, heart health, kidney function, and even detects early signals linked to more than 50 types of cancer. To put that in perspective, your typical annual physical might test 20 markers.

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That's functionhealth.com slash modern wisdom. I wrote this thing this weekend, which is kind of interesting. Um, I was talking about emotional redundancy, but the same thing is true with resilience. Generally engineers build systems with spare capacity because systems operating permanently at 100% of fragile bridges aren't engineered to withstand precisely the weight that they carry on an average Tuesday, they're built with a safety margin, and you probably want the psychological equivalent. If your emotional life requires 95% of your available capacity merely to remain operational, anything unexpected becomes catastrophic.

And that's the same as we're talking about here, that if your baseline capacity is way more than you need to operate, that's redundancy in the system. I've done, when things are good, I've pushed myself really hard so that when things are bad, I have so much momentum and so many good habits. And I look, I'm speaking from personal experience because I've been kicked in the nuts a lot over the last couple of years from a routine perspective, like an energy perspective. And you can see why there's this idea called the Matthew principle.

It's from the Bible. And it says, uh, to those who have nothing more will be taken to those who have everything more will be given. And it kind of explains why, uh, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Good habits compound, but so do bad habits. Some stuff spirals up. Some stuff spirals down. That's why people end up being bankrupt and addicted to drugs and out on the street and with no relationship to their family and other people end up being smart and in shape and with a great partner and having both of these things can occur in that way, ensure the external environment's going to throw insults at you a lot.

But the core driving force, the core momentum is, is largely your sense of hope and agency over what you're going to be able to do and, uh, yeah, the ability to go like to wake up one morning and just say, okay, that's enough of that. I'm going to go in a different direction is kind of a superpower. And I wish I could, I know, bestow it onto someone that feels like that's not something that's accessible to them. Right. I, uh, I guess I never, I never say the downward spiral of the gym as much in the car, I'm going to say, I, I probably said this 20 times by now I'm talking about this upward spiral where, okay, work out really hard when you first start working on it, you don't even notice to like, what, maybe two months in, but like if you, let's say your high school dude, you start working out one year, you visit your grandma again the next year, she'll, she will notice.

And like, that's super validating to see that there is no more validating than the grandma compliment. You're right. Yeah, exactly. But, uh, but just anything like that. But so once you're in a groove of like, you're making steady progress, well, how I look at it again, back in like the mental wiring thing is like, okay, I go really hard, I come home, I eat more food because I'm maybe hungrier from going hard because I actually trained hard. I'm going to sleep better because I trained hard and now I'm tired.

I'm probably thirstier. So I'm going to drink more water and then I'm going to wake up. And because I was hungry and thirsty and sleepy I drank eight and slept well I'll be able to train hard again the next day and then over time that just keeps moving forward and once you start actually seeing Yourself a little bigger like at least in like a size-gaining Phase well now you have this extra angle of motivation like holy shit what I'm doing is working even the pump that chasing Jason the pump you're slightly bigger in the gym, and he liked it if I keep going in four months I look like I do pumped flat and then but then when I get there what I look like pumped will be in another four Months what I look like flat And then you just permanently chasing it would be like if if learning a language like learning Italian Meant that during your Italian lesson you were somehow four months better at Italian, but that's not the way that it works It's one of the reasons I think that the gym is particularly addicting and that's a good thing because it's something that's good to to get stuck into One of the reasons that the gym is so addicting is that you get a preview of where you will be if you keep going During the process as opposed to learning fucking Italian Which is just being frustrated in the moment, and then finally getting there in a few months exactly yeah There's a lot more positive feedback with the gym finger, but it's a but yeah the downward spirals.

Just as bad I will I skip three days this week You know what screw it rest week Do I want to cook a bunch of ground beef right now and do a little meal prep and make some rice or something or Do I just want to get some in and out? All right, I should probably go to bed. I gotta wake up tomorrow morning at 6 You know what screw it. I'll skip that class. I'll just stay up on discord playing games now. You're sleeping terrible You're bloated because you've been eating trash You're not working out so now your base metabolism is going down because you're not stressing out your system You're just starting to pack on additional body fat which all four of those are all three or four of those things You know are negative But each one probably feeds into that next negative step here.

That's like. I'm already in this bed, okay You know what give me some chips or something And it's like all you have to do is change it to what you said like okay? I just got to change it. I'm just gonna wake up today and totally flip all my habits But that's not something I can tell you how to do. That's where all my motivational speeches end I go I Can't tell you any more than that I can tell you what I do and how I feel about what I do and how far I've come or how far I've gone But I can't actually tell you how to do it because you're you and I'm me.

There's an interesting Insight here, so we're what toward the end of September Three months before the end of the year so three months until January 1st Which is when most people want to hit the ground running they don't try and reverse Direction on January 1st because that means that it's gonna be very hard to do I went out to Thailand Ten years ago, and I wanted to go to a bunch of different Thai boxing gyms in order to learn to fight so I spent Nine months before I went to Thailand doing Thai boxing classes because what I thought was hey if I've learned a lot of the basics When I get out there, I'll get to learn really cool stuff like more Advanced techniques or at the very least I'm not just gonna spend my trip around Thailand learning to throw a jab properly So I spent a good bit of time drilling the basics and then when I got out there sure enough I was able to actually really tap into some of the expertise so I sort of used the momentum in advance To carry me into this period that would be an extra boost when I got there So given that we're three months away from the end of the year now if someone wants to enter January with as much momentum as possible What do you think they should start doing now?

Well, I think they should just start a well I guess you'd say or at least what you did was you did your homework first? So if you're thinking I mean every January that shows up and now I've been through I think this would be the ninth one obviously for the first one that was a year into the gym for me So I'm still the beginner, but at this point Depending on how much of a regular you are at a gym You know who the real regulars are and who the guys who just showed up today are and I'm not talking to them for showing up, but it's like a you know the You know that little marble toy where you flip it upside down and it always ends up in the same distribution Like no matter what Like look, I'm glad you're here, but I know a bunch of you guys are just gonna flake out and be done So yeah, I mean if he could just start easing into it, which is not a cool thing to say What's cool about the gym is you know bring it just go totally nuts But in reality, it's like well You should probably just ease into it when I'm talking to guys are just you know getting into like what you should do when you?

Start working out like what's your level at right now? Are you at zero gym days per week? Well guess what one is more than zero and One after you've actually done it It's not that bad So now two is probably a little bit easier three or even just getting a membership in general I think a lot of these guys they might even fail the launch in that sense because it's like I'm gonna do it I'm gonna go in at six and get my membership Well, you're setting yourself up for failure, man.

Why didn't you get it before? Why didn't you do all the just do a little bit before yeah, yeah, just easing into it because that whole You know if right now my bar is like Well, I want to get to the point where I can just go a hundred percent all the time without fail and like you know I know I didn't just give up on that rep because it was hard well, that's just my bar where I'm at but way down is the bar of I got my membership today and I went to the gym three days a week today.

I did ten minutes of cardio today like it to start from zero is Half the hardest part but also half the easiest part because the smallest incremental changes are percentage wise huge. Yeah Yeah, yeah relatively massive. Absolutely small. Yeah, but they might feel small So it's like if you have this perception of I don't want to be the three gym And I don't want to be the three day a week gym guy. Oh Fuck man, you're the zero gym a day week guy like you got to get the three, you know You're not better than three everybody came in to get their one membership for the first time And they didn't know what they're doing and they were kind of anxious.

I mean, I remember I'm on vacation I went to the the YMCA in Florida, and I'm I'm like two years in at this point I'm shoulder-pressing the 50s. I'm maybe 170 and I'm thinking These guys looking at me like like just very self-conscious a little bit well relative to now now I don't think like that, but it's um Yeah, it's like he can't you can't be above the small steps Because I think so many people are in their head. They think all right Well, you know if I I mean, I'm sure you hear this.

Well, you know if I died it I could get shredded Guys, you're gonna show up to the Olympia. You know, if I really bodybuilder I could get that big bro, like, okay Well, you're not even doing any of it right now. You're doing totally zero. So it's like could you really actually and It's this idea that it's like if I can't be perfect It's not even worth trying but that's combined with the pretentious system of I totally could do it I could do it for sure if it was just not a skill gap and the Consistency and the ability and the hard work and the time and the duration because it's easy to tell yourself I just don't want to do it Because it's just a preference thing for me.

I don't really want to it's not very fun to say Yeah, I'm just I don't I don't want to go that hard. I don't want to actually work out I'm nervous about I don't want it that hard. I don't want you. Don't fucking kid yourself, dude I could do it if is I Don't do it. Mm-hmm Yeah, every I every I could do it if is more of a I don't want to do it because yeah But you're lying to yourself by saying well, it's because of ten other things.

What would you say to the guy who is? Currently going through that downward spiral. They don't think that they've got the capacity to do what they want to or what they used to They've talked themselves into a rut I Think they would just have to I mean, I think the best example to get good at anything We're not even just get good to get like inspired to do anything It's just to watch people who have done it. Like when I'm training legs and thinking squats It's like if I see a Tom Platts workout added on my phone.

Holy crap and like it's so basic Oh, I'm watching this guy do this thing that I'm about to do. Oh, it's making me excited about it Like just monkey see monkey do but like if you're you know, I pretty much say this everybody it's like what's your Beginning state right now. Where are you at? If you can find someone who has been there documented it and showed it off From where they were to now where they are like the guy who was 500 to 200 Well, I mean I can I can tell you the basics of like, you know Do your cardio and like diet and everything but I haven't lived that exact like scenario Like I can tell you tips that I think would apply But if you want to hear from someone who's really done it then you've got to find someone who has and hopefully they've been posting Stuff about it.

Can we find? Tom Platt's leg training Motivation I try and find a short there'll be some unreal edits of this crazy, but just seeing something Seeing someone do what you want to do I think it's probably the most motivating thing you can because now not only are you seeing somebody do it? But you're just getting it proven in your own head. Like this is totally doable, but I remember this is also another guy I'm a guy he's just some dudes. I remember watching Greg Plitt as a early 20s guy and he used to do videos outside of the gym in the parking lot the middle of the night like 3 in the morning and That guy was just so fucking positive and so I often think this is kind of a weird Fork to imagine in reality, but if Greg Plitt and Ziz hadn't passed away, I Think that we would have a markedly different gym culture today I think that they were so formative and at the time I think about where Ziz would have been he was in 2012 he was probably 23 or 24 something and so he's like similar similar age to me.

So he would have been Absolutely, when Instagram comes along would have been like peak Shape, he wouldn't have stopped that whole culture, which was Would it have survived me too, maybe It would have had to have been sanitized a little bit, but it wasn't like he was super toxic He was more like his whole line of disregard women acquire dance moves was like Kind of proto looks maxing incel but without any of the toxic elements of it I think him and Greg Plitt and Fucking rich Piana, dude, like we lost some of the greats the last decade.

That's a big three is that they are the big three That's the Mount Rushmore. That's three of the Mount Rushmore I don't know who the fourth one would be of the influencer world for probably see bum, I guess but yeah, fuck if we've got one of three and we got a freakish video This is where he's just doing partials, isn't it screaming more If you didn't know what was happening to the lower half of his body You could be quite surprised if you didn't know gym culture Yeah like then the normal person would look at that and like if they walked Let's say that was like a gym with a garage door Next to a sidewalk like a town and like a normal person walked past Instant reaction.

What are they doing? These guys are totally nuts But like once you're in it, I'm like nice that's a good that's probably a really good set It's kind of sick The supplement industry is full of products making claims that they can't back which is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentous their co-founder Jeff by is played in the NFL and saw firsthand just how wildly the quality of supplements can vary So he built momentous around a higher standard every product from momentous uses evidence-backed ingredients Transparent doses and independent third-party testing.

Everything is NSF certified for sports So what's on the label is actually what's in the tub? It's why momentous is trusted inside all 32 NFL locker rooms It's why I've trusted them with my own supplements for years best of all Momentous offers a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can buy it and try it for 29 days if you don't love it They will give you your money back plus they ship internationally right now You get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below Heading to live momentous comm slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout at livem o m e n t o us dot-com slash modern wisdom a checkout Wasn't there a thing that Tom Platz was he chewing tennis balls or something?

Didn't he say he was like working his mandible job with maybe he's using mastic gum or some early version of mastic gum or something I didn't hear it. But maybe I swear that he was saying I mean there was an era This is this is something for me to mansplain to you or generation splain to you For a second. There was a beautiful era in the world of bodybuilding Where we didn't know the truth about lots of things and it meant that you wasted shit tons of time and effort and money on stuff that was completely pointless But fuck it was exciting.

Like is this new blueberry extract perhaps the reason? Why maybe it is better than steroids and then you have to go on this weird Russian website and order blueberry extract And like if that just you're on the misc forums of bodybuilding calm like desperately trolling trying to find the guy that's got the secret to big delts and like now it's bodybuilding is largely a solved problem and At the time it felt much closer to like the frontier that we knew enough to know that some stuff worked But there was still enough unknowns to be able to be super experimental Yeah, but fucking Rich Piana's eight-hour arms workout was something that people were like that might be the answer that might actually be the answer I'm uh, I guess I'm actually if you asked me like a year into the YouTube videos when they're actually taken off I probably would have said that I've definitely have done the eight-hour arm day by now.

I haven't done it yet I guess I probably should sometime that would be a huge request. I wouldn't I wouldn't be opposed to it just for the fun of it Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's um, yeah, it's definitely different now. I think the one of the bigger changes bodybuilding wise is Just the the performance angle of it because when I look and when I think Bodybuilding character or like someone who maybe not even that but someone who actually gets me like Excited about it just the gym in general, you know Cuz that's kind of the precursor to even getting on to the stage is the training part like that's that's the part I really get excited about but it's like watching a Tom Platts Or back in pumping iron like everybody had a lot of personality or I mean even Dorian Yates which compared to like an Arnold a Person with a personality from a completely different side of the universe But they still were able to like portray what they did and how they did it it just like such a cool way and I think it was, you know, maybe a combination of just the fact that You would now I would kind of call that social media, but that was like CDs and just documentation and like since it was so new They maybe didn't have this like mental construct of okay.

I should put on an act In a certain kind of way with that because I would I would agree even the last era of bodybuilding bodybuilding that I think People really obsessed over the competition itself and the characters that were inside of it was Jay Ronnie like that run branch Warren like that era and then I don't know something just obviously like see bum is a Phenom, but it was about him. It wasn't really about the competition and there's other guys that have got great physiques, but I don't think anybody cares about the Personality in quite the same way and I don't know.

I know that how do you Chupan's like a Absolute turbo freak like massive Jack guy I don't know anything about him and maybe that's me just growing out of it and aging out of it But I get the sense that it's not just that I feel like the the world of that has sort of fallen away Am I right there? Yeah, I think so Yeah, and I think about this all the time or maybe not not just when I'm like sitting But when I talk to anybody about bodybuilding, it's like yeah the 90s early 2000s like it was it was to the same prestige as like the WWE like these guys were it was like they were characters.

They were coming out. There was like more And it was also the what's kind of weird is it was like the most competitive era like even now People do an interview with Ronnie Coleman and it's like Ronnie. What do you think of all these current guys? and he's like, they don't got it and He's just telling that he's just saying a fact at that point like they just had they had something But there was also this character and this charisma to it and It wasn't even so much that they were the most competitive like Ronnie and Jay were I mean I can't even imagine how they like really felt about each other and like the most competitive Period of that time but like I've never heard Tom Platts say, you know, I need to win this show and You know all the stuff that I hear him talk about was like even when you go up on stage to her just talking about Training.

He's like just the enjoyment of doing it being around other people doing it with him And he's like, you know, you just come out and there's this Oh, yeah I'm trying to just say what he said like almost verbatim But he's like there's just this energy from the crowd and they're all just cheering for you Like he just wanted to do it. He didn't care if he came in last place Whereas now I mean there's a like there's different videos of guys like more current bodybuilders where it's like a full-on interview like Day in the life of the show like doc mini documentary and the guys like, you know If I don't if I don't place in the in if I don't place in the top five Um, I should quit bodybuilding.

So it's much more performance focused much more outcome focus Yeah, I would actually I want to amend my previous Era Finishing point. I do think Phil Heath and Kai green Yeah, I was gonna say they also still and that was what early 2010s ish Yeah, probably and then it was after that. But yeah, you're the WWE analogies perfect It's like Branch Warren was the sort of skinhead new metal heavy metal like hard long shorts boots guy Everybody was like just so interesting Kai Green was the artist philosopher with the hair and the dance moves and stuff Phil Heath was like the all-american college ball athlete you had Different that roles that everybody talked like Jake Cutler was sort of like classic Florida man on like a lot of drugs Yeah, you know, he's great.

And and I don't know I'd It's strange that a sport can be carried so much by individual Characters and I suppose it's because it's such a small pool How many NFL players are there including all of the squads fucking thousands? Thousands and thousands and people can support the team and the team plays as part of a group like even tennis Yeah, sure. You can have generational talents and stuff. But like tennis is a sport Outside of the people that just play it too. It's like a thing.

I Don't think that bodybuilding is I think that bodybuilding in particular is Reliant on not just the bodies maybe even more the personalities of the people that are involved in it I think so and it's um, I'm kind of coming up with this thought as I'm saying it But I think the it's like what is the nature of bodybuilding anyway, right? We say bodybuilding competition but it's a bodybuilding show and What I think is different now is everyone can post their own videos and their their their their preps and their training and their everything Is just how it is Whereas before all these guys, I mean you did a couple DVDs every year but pretty much the show was the show and they came there to show off and that was just Just something about it had some theatrics.

Whereas now I think With the social media side of things somehow that's changed like The hype that just gets built up behind it. That's strange, right because it's more transparency But seems to be less Relatability, but I feel that I haven't there is not a person on the planet I have less in common with than Kai Greene Right, if you were to pick two humans on opposite ends of every spectrum, it would be me and Kai Greene However, I feel like I knew him to a degree I feel like I know him I don't feel like I know the only person I think that's brought the two people I think that broken through a you and see bum and That's one of the reasons that maybe even in a world where there's more opportunity and more people attempting to try the relatability thing there is a Sparser supply and an even greater demand.

Mm-hmm. You got to spend a good bit of time with see bum What did you learn from hanging out with him? Yeah now it's Oh, I tell you this. I don't know if I've told this story before so I'm at we're at the Olympia This was maybe two Olympia's ago. This is I think the first one they did in Vegas. So this would be two ago Maybe maybe one I don't remember but this was one of the Olympia's Where they do this little press conference with a lot of the classic guys first so Chris is up there or is everything and I remember just walking backstage and You know I'm just like chatting with everybody and I see Chris from like a distance and this is pre Comp like I think he was competing the next day Maybe the day after that, but just like he was standing with so much aura.

He was nuts Like I think it was it wasn't necessarily how he was standing but you could kind of sense how everyone's standing around him and like in the outskirts of where he was like was acting and Like he was just super intense focused. Like I've seen the only time I've seen something with that much like just Is it almost called stopping power of like people around was I get to do a little back workout with Arnold at Gold's gym, which was nuts because he just rolled up on an e-bike.

It was just him coming I've seen that video and hit a workout. Yeah, and but when he walked in just looking across the gym was like Like somebody's holding like launch codes or something. It's a reality distortion field yeah, I get around this one person in a positive way, but just like That's all right there like it was just crazy but uh, but yeah, I mean getting to talk to him like normal I'm not a I haven't been spamming all the c-bomb videos, but just from all the different back and forths.

It's crazy I'll just kind of casually is but I'm not always like prying like for for tips and everything and maybe half of that is just because I'm like I kind of want to figure it out on my own like that's part of the fun part of it But now every time usually with all the gym truck stuff like any time we're at a different shoot or different events or things I'll try to go bit with him, right? Yeah a little bit. Yeah with David. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just kind of cool David got shouted out for being on his phone a Little bit but now he's uh, yeah, it's crazy to see somebody who's done so much like that. Yeah. He's a unique guy. I think Chris is a Very Unusual Candidate for someone that goes on to be as well-known as he is. He's not got the Construction or desire For much of the notoriety that he's ended up being afflicted with I almost does feel a little bit sometimes like maybe a Not quite an affliction.

But so maybe somewhat closer to a burden like fuck like the guy that kind of is introverted smart thoughtful deep dude Now trying to navigate this insane level of attention like the most attention of anybody in what? Was and still is to some degree one of the most cult following sports ever and Yeah, he's just complete dad mode now, which is cool I mean, he's I think I absolutely think the world of him. He's been massively influential on me, but Yeah, like a really odd. I think about this to do with Rogan a little bit as well We're very fortunate that the first person we got in the world of podcasting was like a benevolent leader Largely for all of the criticisms that people that don't like him can have about him Joe is a fucking Even the people that don't like him Have to concede like he has been amazing for the world of podcasting like he's so pro-social He's so positive some all he wants to do is lift up other people.

He very very rarely starts beef Like he's not backbiting. He's not fucking people over for money It's not there's never Headlines about Joe Rogan does this with his cash or invest in this thing or whatever? Like it's just all he wants to do is train commentate do comedy and do his part and that's it You're like fuck like we could have had the most ascendant medium of the last 20 years Be headed up by someone that was a total arsehole right like a complete like Tyrant and we got someone that was like a really wonderful figurehead that's just trying to make the industry bigger and help Everybody along that he can and the same thing's kind of true for Chris, you know you reignite classic but ignite classic basically with this one guy and He's openly talking about crying in his girlfriend's arms weeks before he goes on stage and singing the Song of how beautiful it is to have a baby and to get married and to live a simple life And then he moves away to Nashville to like have an even simpler life at the Reno whole ranch thing I I don't know I I think people can have problems with whoever they want But you need to accept hey if we rolled the dice There aren't many universities where we would have got a better person that was the figurehead for this particular industry And I think we've done it.

We've done it pretty well in two different domains there. Yeah, I think there's um There's something an x-factor with guys like Chris and I feel it feels kind of weird for me to say that about me Is this like now I'm talking about myself I agree I think you've done it as well just with social media in general like getting back to like why it's different now compared to before like I You know how you just said there's so many more people getting into it because now it's now it's the thing now social media is the you know the gold mines in California, which this is what I got to do to be successful at whatever I'm doing and I always think that the guys who end up doing the best are The ones where what they're doing is just what they would be doing anyway So there's there's I guess you'd call it different kinds of social media Because there's ones where guys might be like putting on a show like this like this isn't necessarily something that would just happen Casually like this is a little bit more put up But when it comes to anything that's like activity based or like just personality based like following Like for me, it's it's like seamless because I would already work out Anyway, honestly my days don't feel like the addition of the recording takes away at all from the gym Like it's almost second nature.

I just pick up the camera move a little bit. It's just maybe a bit more talking out loud Yeah, a lot more talking out loud. That's for sure like in the car. Hmm, but it's a it's just something I would do anyway, so With that being the setup for it. I just talk about what I would already talk about You know, I don't have I'm not hitting like script lists Yeah, cuz it's um, but that's kind of what I think people try to chase when they say like, okay Well, you know you got to be relatable, right?

I'm always scrolling my phone way too much But I'm I'll see like a tick-tock live with like four different people on it and they're talking about what they want to do and they they boil down the social media to like the Specific angles that you can change to try to somehow make it successful They're like, oh man, you got to start being way more relatable, bro Or like no, you just let me you just got to find your niche You just got to find your specific niche and just and it's like well, oh Yeah, you're boiling down what I would consider maybe a youtuber who I really like or I go look at what like the outdoor boys Guy, he just was doing that and then he said, you know, let's start making videos about this I don't know the exact origin of when he started but this is the thing that he already does is Good at and then he was able to talk about it and like make a video out of it But since he would already do it anyway, it's not extra for him.

Like the way that it comes off is so natural and I think now there's however many thousand times more people posting things and trying to get into different subjects of like even tech videos or the gym or anything But they're trying to force this Relatability that they're trying to do something for the sake of this like end point of like, oh I want to get like this many followers or something or whatever and it's um I can't even relate to it almost because for me there was never this like Analytical plan of oh, I should start talking more Something or anything?

It was like this is what I do I'll just keep doing it and then the X factor for me was I got really lucky and it just started Taking off really well the it is Far fewer people than think it a good enough actors to be able to pretend to be something that they're not like most people can see through the bullshit in that regard and Yeah, speed running authenticity is not an option you can't like growth hack relatability you can either just be yourself or not and There's a guy can you find Henry West gaming?

I think he's called so he's a British guy and he dresses in Like 1800 he has like a bugle and a monocle and he plays over-the-top war games Bro fucking Henry go to his shorts go to his shorts. This guy fucking rips Just go by most popular top right top left. Yeah Yeah, let's go to the one had video ultimate what is the ultimate male fantasy company on my order company company yeah i have a sneaking suspicion that he's having a lot of fun right now best time i can't i can't hate on him in other news if you're trying to go from joey chestnut to joey swole the rp strength app is the best place to start i've been in the gym for 20 years and it wasn't until the past few years that i had the best training sessions of my life and rp was a massive part of that actual scientists built this thing around one obsession to beat up the high school bullies and provide the most science-backed effective path to maximizing muscle gain it tells you your exercises how many sets reps and weights that you need to do everything so all that you have to do is show up and lift if the rp app could wipe your ass for you it probably would and it adjusts automatically every week based on how you're actually progressing for me following a proper evidence-based plan has made a massive difference and if you're serious about training it'll do the same for you too right now you can get up to 50 off the rp hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below or heading to rp strength dot com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout that's rp strength dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout you talked about sort of doing it yourself how come you chose to coach yourself for your prep um by then the social media was really big and i've seen guys where uh they're like my demographic of like an influencer bodybuilder type dude and uh they always just get drama when they get a coach really well it's not always of course but it's um but i mean this it was like in the first year of the bodybuilding channel or like my workout videos it was like zero to like 1.8 million on youtube we're like just nuts so that was two years before the first bodybuilding show so by then like the the infamy of like sam like sam was like a character uh in the space and it's um for one i just think i could handle doing it on my own because it's like that's how i do all the other stuff about the gym like one of the best parts about it is just the fact that like it's my thing like that's my version of like the sanctuary where like the point almost isn't to try to push the envelope to the absolute maximum with like 10 different coaches and with the bodybuilding you know there's not like 10 different pharmaceutical like care you know like guys like a like a hottie chupin like are these the olympia bodybuilders like everything that they do is this regimented like it's just that's just not even the point for me but the fact that i do it for me makes it more fun because if you gave me a piece of paper that had the workout for the day and my meals for the day for me i would feel like yeah that's just this guy just gave me a bunch of homework to do even if it was but if you have to design the homework yourself if i make the homework for me is better it doesn't feel like work like if i had a listed workout i think i wouldn't it just wouldn't feel the same kind of and that's just maybe a me thing is there a level that you think you would get to where you would consider a coach more seriously yeah i think it like if um if somehow it turned where i'm like okay you know what now we're we're switching gears we're gonna aim for an olympia debut so that'd mean i'd have to get big enough to win a pro show or you can kind of cheat it you could do a bunch you could schedule a bunch of pro shows that are like in um you know south mexico or ireland or just do all these things that the south mexicans and the irish are not that jacked well more so you could do a bodybuilding show that is somewhere that not a lot of people will be yes yes yes so the difficulty of the show is only how difficult are the competitors there so typically everyone goes to like the new york pro or the the pittsburgh pro like these but some guys will go to like the tiniest corny corner of the world show and maybe they're not at the biggest level they could be at but since they wanted they would qualify so you can kind of game it but yeah if that were the point then that would kind of demand like a team but uh but for my first shows it's like half i just want to do it on my own because that's fun for me and for me that's like this mental flex of like oh if i do it for real that means i didn't it was my and this whole thing has kind of been my thing like from the beginning but also here's what would happen if i had uh going getting a coach for the second pro show or the second show that was like the pro debut at the arnold earlier this year like if i look decent which i did uh well he got a coach this year i guess the coach reeled him in this this is the dumbest dude ever but the coach figured it out for him right or if i do bad the coach is going to say and maybe they wouldn't but i wouldn't be surprised oh well this guy just wouldn't listen to my program and i'm like save me the trouble feels like you want to save the trouble the consequences good and bad yeah if i showed up and i look like total trash i guess i'd have to just be like all right guys i don't know what i'm doing sorry whoops i guess and and for me like the uh i don't know something about the that approach to it i just liked but beyond that i uh yeah yeah i mean i've been working out on my own for from the beginning and there's a difference though right than getting yourself in shape to getting yourself stage ready yeah there are a lot just by design there's fewer and fewer people that know the absolute elite level procedures for okay what are you doing with your salt what are you doing with your carbs what are you doing with your water and timing and body fat coming in and how can we hack your mental state so that you feel in a good way all of these different things which i'm sure that chris has got dialed down to a t but yeah as you get more and more attuned to a higher and higher level i imagine that maybe at some point you're gonna have to pick up the phone yeah and maybe this is just kind of how i think about things but when it comes to like looking let's say looking big just walking around in my head i'm not thinking i want to wear the tightest shirt i can i'd rather have a bigger shirt and fill it in so i'm not necessarily trying to optimize the tiniest the like yeah or if i when i first did an expo i remember taking a picture of somebody and i like make myself like extra big i'm like whatever if i'm big well that's because you're big yeah you don't need to make yourself like extra big when you're like an outhouse but it's like if i'm if i'm trying to be big well for one i should just be big but also why would i want to tell you like that would be insufferable and do you see how big i am yeah well if you did see that why would i even say that this is like the trolley problem for the skinny dude like if you knew how big i was i wouldn't be so big and now that you do it what about what was the hardest decision that you had to make during your prep as your own coach i don't know if there was a specific hardest decision it was uh i guess you just kind of say doing it anyway because you gotta plan this sort of thing out and with the uh with the npc shows which you'd call the little league and then the ifbb pro shows are like the big league npc highly unfortunate acronym now really yeah well not like oh yeah yeah you're right i wouldn't want to enter my little league bodybuilding show though yeah exactly i prefer npc yeah yeah you're right but they're uh they're not always scheduled until like semi short notice so i um i was asking around i'm like okay which show can i do that's right before the arnold because that would be the point you do the qualifier show and then the you roll the condition into the next one yeah exactly so you have to do one prep for both so once i got that figured out the year prior like okay and like we're gonna do the show in february in vegas that basically broke down like okay so now i'm here in october and now this is middle of february so by here to there i gotta get into my version of show ready but other than that it's kind of just the doing it like there's no one day where i was like okay now i really gotta bring it except for when i worked out with jay cutler what's that like well i mean jay's super cool very if you've ever talked to jay just very casual like light-hearted and i think that's because he with his career he ended it very well so you got nothing to be like bitter doesn't feel unrequited or unfulfilled yeah he and he's doing so good he doesn't need anything from anybody so guys like that are the most chill what is he doing now just all sorts of stuff i mean into business shit yeah like different kind of realist like that was something that people have been hyping up jay forever like there's a smart business mind different stories about how after every olympia win he put all this stuff into something and then he spent three months like touring like he's a he was hyping up instagram as soon as they came out like to the other guys like you guys got to get on instagram and youtube like he's a he's ahead of the game like the gary v of bodybuilding interesting but i remember a this is like a two or three months before the show we're doing a little workout to go in the posing room he's like all right your condition's decent that was like the that's like the clipped line uh because it's like he had to look reasonable at that point but when he said that he he didn't mean like in that bad of a way but he what he really said was like all right you better get serious so i did a little i started doing a little extra cardio after that isn't it interesting that a compliment could be one of the biggest motivating things because you're like that should have been a better compliment he's being somewhat polite there do you think there's anyone whose bodybuilding advice you would accept without questioning it at all i mean so it's not like i don't i guess it's more so i just don't want to be uh what would you say i guess i guess the only word i could think of is like commanded because if you have your coach now you're essentially given this coach like this control right that's kind of the nature of it yeah but i want to i'm taking advice from everybody so it's like i want to be constantly open to what this guy's saying or what this guy's talking about okay this makes logical sense in my head like things like that because also this was just a regular person and he just learned all this knowledge it is not as though he is just magically knowledgeable the knowledge is out there so in my head that's almost its own challenge of gathering it for yourself so i can find it yeah or he found it and he just told it to me now i gotta yeah yeah now i stole it from him so thank you for that but that's why people use you go to experts right like when you think about think about this from a book perspective somebody goes and writes a book and they have spent decades decades and decades of their life looking at this one particular area of this one particular part of the world and you now get to look at this entire life synthesized down into a single single 60,000 words like bit of paper this you go okay how long did it take this person to get to this stage and i just get to read it and like draw out like sucking water out of a sponge i get all of the concentrated information and that's why you go to experts that's why you go to the chris bumsteads or the phil heaths or the jay cutler's because you've got all of this stuff in there so it's not as though i'm saying do not get a coach it's more like for whatever reason i just don't want one right now and i reserve the right to change that in the future uh you talked about co-owning a peptide company what's that been like yes well it's um oh certainly not bad on my end in terms of like actually how they're moving forward we've got a uh kind of a bigger not you wouldn't call it release but they're just changing the uh the nature of it to more of like an actual telehealth like doctor prescribed thing october 1st but yeah peptides are very i mean it's not like they're new but it's a quite the topic now because they're the thing remember when ashwagandha was the thing and terkesterone was the thing um i lived through the tecasserone era yeah so it's just the thing but it's like you know every time i um like i've just got bpc and tb500 like just at all times what's your experience with peptides what what do you what have you found to be useful definitely those two for sure and then as of late uh you've heard ghk that's the copper thing people use for skin and hair yeah i've been doing some of that i feel like that's been kind of clearing me up a little more so it's like a more of an inflammation reduction kind of thing and then that extra collagen up regulation so i haven't noticed like i'm not sprouting hair everywhere but i can definitely tell my skin's looking a little better from that one like every time i would actually tweak something or like when guys uh so so far i haven't i don't talk about as much in the videos because for one once everything's like fully regulated there's a huge percentage of people that are just waiting for that they're not thinking for themselves per se it's there's a green light now it's now i'm fine with it which is just kind of unfortunate and then the 10 who are knowledgeable and have done them know this is just a thing my shoulder's out of whack and i hurt my rotator cuff and my golf swing hasn't been the same i started doing bpc for two weeks and now i'm back and like that's kind of the extent of it but it just gets overhyped you know because now i mean you get all the all the tiktok kids and like literally kids these guys are like teenagers and they're on like a tiktok live hyping up like oh you didn't get 10 vials of so-and-so that they're just ordering tessa morella and oh yeah exactly the fuck and it's um it's kind of i'm trying to think of something else that is a good comparable situation but it is just this thing that has legitimate use case but it is so over hyped and just like dramatized because of just everything involved with it plus now pharmaceutical companies are more involved once eli lily like patents reddit trutide like it's funny every tiktok ad by anything two vials of reddit trutide included because all these companies are about to get ceased and desisted so that's interesting they're just trying to give this yeah so for them they're like this is going to be worthless to us because we're not gonna be able to actually sell it in a legitimate way interesting so a lot of stuff like that but it's um sprinting for the finish in an attempt to try and get rid of all of their stock yeah exactly wow but it's um yeah but it's so crazy that it's just like a lack of knowledge because would most people say that ozempic is a peptide they wouldn't know that it is they wouldn't know they just say ozempic is ozempic and it's uh and then that's funky too because i don't know how you feel about um actually i would imagine i know how you feel about reddit trutide but it is just a thing that beyond uh of course i'll change my opinion.

If a certain study comes out revealing this crazy side effect, which there's no leads of yet, but of course, if there were, then I'd say, well, don't do this. But it's like, are you mad at somebody for taking caffeine when they're tired? It's a little bit of an extra step to stretch that to like a red a true tide, but it is just taking an intervention of what you'd call a normal human process without that much of a, in terms of like a negative effect. So it's like, I think some guys still hate on caffeine for free.

They're like, you shouldn't be taking caffeine for pre-workout, man. I mean, David Goggins says that you shouldn't ever train with music on. So there are levels of puritanism that you can get to from red a true tide at one end to David Goggins, dark thoughts as a soundtrack on the other. But yeah, I know exactly what you mean. A lot of it I think is because of the delivery mechanism. Like if anorectics and GLPs were first released as a shot that you, you took a shot or it was just a tablet or something, or maybe it was a patch or something else.

There's something very intimate and medical and some for some people icky about the needle thing. If you can do the needle thing or that takes it to another level of medical supervision that's needed as opposed to, well, if I just pop this pill or if I drink this shot, or if it's a shake or something, if it was a special shake that you had, that was like a meal reduction shake, not a real replacement shake where when you drank it, you didn't want to eat for the rest of the day.

One meal a day shakes. Not only do you need to have this, but it'll make you feel full for the rest of the day. I'm sure that you could do that. It wouldn't surprise me if we ended up having that at some point and you go, okay, if that was the original delivery mechanism, I think people would feel somewhat different about it, but because it's not, I mean, cause you can do the opposite. There's ways that you can encourage ghrelin release. Like you can make yourself more hungry.

And does, is that, do people look at that as being a, like a weird kind of hack? Well, that would be like, um, that'd be people talking about MK-677, which I guess, I don't know. We, we need Huberman right here to really tell us the total crazy specifics. Have you ever tried to, this isn't really that cool anymore, but it was 15 years ago, GHRP-2 and GHRP-6. So it's growth hormone releasing hexapeptide. And, uh, you used to take that with mod GRF. So it was a endogenous way to get your body to create more growth hormone.

One of the side effects of it was fucking insane ghrelin release. So bro, when me and my housemate, this was 2010, 2011, I was using it. So I knew bacteria, static water, research use only peptides. This was fucking 2010. And, um, drawing, drawing it up. And we used to do it the way that I was able to do it post-training. The only way I could do it is if I was already cooking when I shot it, because by the time that the meal was finished, I was like, like fucking starving.

And it was, I've never had hunger like that before, but it was two good things. If you're looking to put a little bit more in or a lot more in from a calorie perspective, it's really encouraging. You'll get that. Yeah. There's definitely, I mean, it's just a, it's just a huge subject anyway. Cause like where's the line, right? Because between, uh, cause like if you look at something like when guys talk about, um, I guess not even like HCG. So now you're promoting natural production of your testosterone.

Same thing would be true with Clomid. Right. But it's, well, you're still raising it by taking this thing, but just because you went through three other steps. What about Tongkat Ali? What about Boron? What about like the studies where your testosterone is raised just from training legs versus not? You're not allowed to do that. Like where's the limit or something like that? Yeah. Well, if you get enough sleep, you raise your testosterone. Yeah. But I think the, it's just like a knowledge thing. Like the smarter people get in terms of actually knowing what things do and not even that, but like even with the diet and everything else, it kind of just opens the door to like, okay, what should I be doing or what would be like unnecessary?

I think two things are, uh, anchoring and adoption. So what is the current status quo and how much of people anchored to what now is considered to be normal or typical or whatever. And the new thing is always going to break the status quo. So people are always going to be skeptical or feel like that is some kind of different intervention. That's not, not, uh, familiar with. And then the other one is adoption because so many people use caffeine. Very few people would point to caffeine and say, that's an unfair competitive advantage because so few people use MK six, six, seven.

They're going to point at that and go, well, you know, that feels alien. That feels like an unfair competitive advantage. But if you end up with anchoring bias changes changing, which is just a matter of time, it's just time under tension. And then adoption changing, you end up with a very different world. Yeah. Yeah. I think probably within the next, well, I mean, I don't know what's the, what's the year cycle of when the next thing is. It depends if, if, if I had to stick about for a while, I mean, you don't know what's going to come next, but I think a lot of peptides I'll be interested to see if RFK, when he leaves, if this peptide thing gets rolled back, because at the moment there's a level of use that's permitted.

And I don't know if that's going to continue on the other side of it. Um, but I also know that there are some companies collective OS is, is one of them that are trying to make, um, like access to peptides and presumably your place as well. Like, okay, this is not Chinese bathtub gray market bullshit. Like this is legitimate, high quality peptides that, you know, from a source that's presumably inside of the U S okay. Like I have that. And over time, as that rolls out, it'll be interesting to see, but who knows, maybe we'll come back around to, uh, uh, blueberry extract that I was using fucking 15 years ago, desperate to work out Christian Tebow and his blueberry extract.

See if that works. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. No, I think, uh, as soon as that, what you'd call the uninformed majority, here's FDA green light. Now we'll switch to the next thing that is still waiting for like, well, is this thing? Okay. Cause, uh, this is something I ended up bringing up with everybody when they talked to me about, um, about like Reddit, true tide, or like if somebody is actually like, Oh, is it cheating your diet? And in my head was just in general, I'm like, well, okay.

How many like middle-aged housewives are going to lose like 30 pounds before people start saying like, ah, okay, this is probably just a good thing. Yeah. Have you tried any of the GLPs? Not yet. Okay. Would you maybe consider it if like, Oh, I need a bit more help in my diet or it seems like you're pretty locked in as it is. Yeah. It's I'm kind of right in the, I call it a sweet spot of diet. Um, that's got an appetite where it's like for me to eat more food than necessary or to eat slightly less food than necessary.

Isn't too wild, but for somebody who's just constantly starving all the time and it's hard for them to even get any like app definition from diving down. Well, it's like, that's kind of just luck of the draw. Some guys are going to walk around like bone dry shredded cause their appetite is at zero. So they just kind of have this natural predisposition of like, I don't know. I had like a couple of chips this morning and I had a coffee. Yeah. Uh, Robert Plowman, who is I think the fifth most cited psychologist in the world in the 20th century is the guy that founded the field of behavioral genetics.

I was one of the guys that really, really sort of pushed it and popularized it. Twin studies environment versus nature versus nurture. And he was giving me this example about there's many ways to get fat. He was saying, and he used the example of himself where he said he wasn't a massive fan of exercise, just exercise doesn't make him feel all that good. Uh, but also if he walks past a bakery, that's baking bread, his desire to eat is fucking massive. And also apparently he can put away quite a bit of food and also, and also, and also the fact that he's a pretty in shape guy, he's got, you know, this stack of five different comorbidities that are contributing to him supposedly being a fat guy.

Right. And he has to work super hard, but you can imagine a world in which the total opposite exists. I enjoy training and exercising. And so do you. It makes me feel good. And I, I started doing it when I was young, but I almost don't choose to do it. Like I feel worse if I don't than if I do. And for a lot of people that might feel worse if they do than if they don't. And well, I'm not really that fussed about eating that much food and, and, and you go, okay, that's the same species.

Right. But two completely different worlds when it comes to training and diet, which are the big leavers when it comes to your body composition. So yeah, it's not blanket advice is right. Like calories in calories out, progressive overload over time, train regularly. Right. Okay. That way in sleep. Right. Okay. There we go. That's like most of it. That's 90% of training like progress, but each person, you can't just throw that at Robert Plowman with his bread fetish and say that he's going to take the same advice in the same way that you might do.

Yeah. So I think it's a, so when I talk about guys like that and it's like, all right, man, if you're trying to cut down and you just don't have an appetite, I guess you're spoiled. If you're the guy with a huge appetite, uh, you're kind of just boned, but that's just how it is. So you can accept or not accept, but like understand these core principles and then know based on like your own situation, what you should do or how you should like acts going forward.

You know, you can teach me how to like replace a tire on like a NASCAR car and like put the bolts in or something. But if there was an actual problem and maybe something was off kilter or whatever, since I don't know any of the core basics, all I know is you told me to bolt this thing in, I can now do nothing. And I'm like totally useless. But if you told me the basics of like all the different things that go into whatever that little trick would be, I'd be able to like keep an eye out for it and make adjustments.

Yeah. Principles versus tactics. You're right. Like tactics are very fragile and principles are much more robust, which is why, because you did eight years or whatever, six years of training yourself before you then decide to try and compete. Okay. Well, I have an understanding of the principles. Yeah. These are the principles. Yeah. And just work based off those. Yeah. Heck yeah. Dudes, I appreciate you. Where should people go to check out everything that you got going on? I guess it depends. You know, I, uh, I throw an Instagram up every so often.

I think it's, it's Sam underscore Sulek. I don't think Sam Sulek was taken. Let me check. Let me, let me actually check to make sure I'm not certain. But either way, if you look up Sam Sulek, it's definitely the first one. If you're not the most followed Sam Sulek on the planet, I'll be very surprised. Yeah. Same, same underscore Sulek. Cool. And then the YouTube account, Sam Sulek, that's every day. So I'll post one today and the next day, you know, there's 1200 so far, it's probably going to be, it'll, I'm sure that'll be a day where I'm like, Oh, 2,500.

It's crazy. Yeah. But yeah, just everywhere like that. If you want to see a good workout, that's for sure. Okay. Appreciate you, man. Of course. Until next time. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude. Comes great deniability. I'm not the earth nanny. Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under $17.90 without parent.

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