The 'Team No Cardio' Fallacy

i remember i was sitting in a seminar of his and um and uh dean mckillop was putting it on and i remember that yeah yeah dean and i are good friends and he said hey do your cardio talk and i'm sitting in the back going oh like this is a guy notorious for pushing the the limits of drug use and hypersomnia this isn't gonna go one of two ways he's either gonna say do your cardio or he's gonna go fuck cardio fuck cardio and he got up there and did this whole rant on stop being idiots do your cardiovascular conditioning stop calling it cardio call it cardiovascular conditioning and don't fucking die and i was like fucking right on man i like that that's it but i've i've noticed it's like i remember you probably noticed it too remember it from back i reckon probably 10 15 years ago there was like this big hashtag team no cardio it was like the memes got hashtag fuck cardio it was like but it wasn't me there was actual coaches pushing this idea that doing cardio not doing cardio to prep was a brag and not like i get my guys lean without cardio and i'm like cool what's their blood markers like what's the values like what's the valves looking like what's their fucking cholesterol markers looking like what's their what are these combined factors showing us where you're bragging about having done no cardio to get lean or just a diet but you're only looking at the the output variable of going i got the lean through deficiency through deficit like the deficit of food but we're not looking at the long-term health values of this individual the the heart function like you added a whole bunch of compounds that increase stress function on the heart the decreased functionality the valves the block the valves are going to increase pressure through them and then going yeah but i didn't do any cardio with this prep and i've been a big proponent of for a long time in my guys programming is especially if it's someone that i know that i'm going to enhance that they want to compete and that they want to run off season uh sorry that they want to come into a show at least three days a week 20 minutes 120 to 130 bpm just something consistently easy like that you know level two where it's like a phase two so we're not looking at anything drastically intense that we're going to disrupt signaling or interfere with any sort of growth signaling but it's enough where like i'm going to give you an extra five years since we're playing with things we're going to potentially pull down five years can we give you that five years back in another factor which is your heart health yeah and with that you're going to have a greater proficiency for oxidation you're going to have a greater proficiency for aerobic recovery which means you have a greater proficiency recovery between sets which means you can train you can train sooner harder for longer without exhaustion meaning you're going to have a stimulus to signaling you have a greater stimulus to hypertrophy you're going to have a greater response to recoverability because you replenish oxygen faster with nutrients around and you're not going to die when we start into introducing greater uh blood pressure increase or like increasing repel cell count compounds like the stuff that people don't comprehend when they look at this it's like oh i just take tests and my test levels go up i've got to protect my liver and kidney that's cool but we start adding in certain compounds we start adding in higher dosages of tests beyond the TRT range, we start adding in Masteron, Sprema, Bollens, Tremblones, we're going to start getting an increase in production of red blood cell count That means at a certain point if the valve is only so big that it only going to fit so much through i going to keep adding pressure to that system and so to me it always made sense at a bare minimum you not having to do fucking you know 30 minutes an hour a day of cardio every single day if you want to do a light state like that cool that's on you but at a bare minimum to get prepared for a what will be required in prep but also just to be fucking healthy as a bodybuilder 20 minutes three times a week if you can't find 20 to three times a week for your health as an athlete don't fucking tell me you want to compete yeah but see there's this it's just it's just a weird thing because bodybuilders it's bodybuilding is a sport of extremes and it is a and you know it's a it's one of the out of all strength sports it's like uh very much like american politics you're either team a or team b so you get people and and i would even say it's almost like a third world country where you have like five percent of guys who actually know what the fuck they're talking about and the rest of them just repeat the same stupid bullshit because it confirms their bias and they all sit in this echo chamber and go i got these people lean without doing any cardio i and i i'm not disagreeing that you can get people lean without cardio i'm all for that if they're healthy to do that but if they're not why don't we do some cardio get them healthy and then pull the cardio out and just work if you want to starve yourself to get lean and you want to put in dnp and fucking thyroid and you put some Sinomel and some Clin or whatever, go for it. But all these things are compounding to add stress to your system. And people aren't looking at, you know, you're only looking at acute variables of how they feel. Oh, I took that. That Clin was way stronger than I thought. I took way too much. Okay, you're buying underground shit. That's what happens. But they think that they just, well, I'll just skip a dose and I'm fine. But you don't see what's happening in your vessels. like you don't actually see that you're creating inflammation and building up some plaque you're not and you're you're strong enough where you don't see that until it's been 20 years and all of a sudden you start getting angina you go in and you've got 98 blockage in your arteries but they're not thinking about that because they're just thinking about a stupid fucking plastic trophy and yeah literally and this is the the exciting thing i think has made content as much as i despise instagram in a lot of ways in the influencer realm content has made some of this knowledge a little bit more applicable where we're seeing guys like companies like merrick health like i've been fortunate enough to be able to put some content on their page which is awesome but we're seeing places like merrick health exists where we're looking at don't stop letting the health go as if like this idea that using health as a byproduct of bodybuilding is just fucking redundant the idea that you can't be healthier and be a successful bodybuilder is just stupid it's just that no one ever tried they were so caught up in it's like watching boxers do weight cuts they all think the same way that it has to be this way because my coach did it and his coach did it and his coach did it and so it's like an ancestry level of knowledge that's just retarded and you're basically doing these drastic dehydration little fucking protocols to get to get into to make weight we have the same approach in bodybuilding and saying this is okay it's just a byproduct to be extreme yeah okay but at a certain point you don't want calcification in your heart you don't want calcification in your vessels you don't want calcification your fucking brain you don't want plaque build up in your brain you don't want to just get to a point where you're like you know i've seen this linear progression of people where it's you know the more trend they take the more the more 90 nords they start throwing in and you start seeing like their belief in very heavy like tinfoil hat like conspiracy theories and it's like really in australia the ones who are like like these really outspoken former bodybuilders it's like as they've gotten older did nothing to protect their health you can just tell brain atrophy is a curve or like brain something's damaged up there for sure and it's like this this notion that it's it's oh let's let's try and reactively heal it after the fact and then think it i'll get some tests done when i finish competing i'll get this done once every two years yeah and so much damage has been done already and you go oh it's too late i'm something like prep who cares i'm gonna do it anyway i need like it doesn't matter we get so caught up in this i'm a tough fuck mentality roughneck hardcore did not realize and like broderick said you know it's not hardcore dropping dead to win a trophy yeah you know it is hardcore doing the stuff you don't want to do like everyone's all in on bodybuilding until it's doing the stuff they don't want to do which is taking care of blood work looking at blood markers looking at the heart values looking at their blood pressure doing their insulin their faster blood glucose testing you're not doing those things but you're all in on bodybuilding and you're going to do whatever it takes to win well winning might be a 5-10 year journey but you're a daughter for that