The Reality of Extreme Conditioning

I swear to God, that is an ask Madden play-by-play for how the industry is going for a lot of the uppercutters. 100%. It is unpopular, but what you just said, earn your right to be on stage. That's like an old-school mentality thing that needs to be brought back. Back in the day, you had 20 people on stage. There was one person that should not

gotten on stage now there's like 10 people that shouldn't have gotten on stage like and their coach didn't have the nuts to tell them you're not even close let's pull out and let's do the next one i would never i would never put somebody on stage to look like that because that makes me look bad yeah and it fucks them up yeah i remember um i was training a girl she won uh ifbb i want ifbb physique she won her nationals um because a little bit different as you know in america where You have to do like amateur and then you get a you get your shot in nationals and you got to win at nationals. You get your pro card. So she and she was lifetime natural and she ended up winning and got a pro card for the IFBB. And I'm like, OK, now it's going to the next level. And then the WBFF called her and said, hey, we'll give you a WBFF pro card if you'll compete at in the WBFF. She goes, yeah. So we had just gotten off of a contest and she calls me and goes, hey, in 12 weeks, I want to do worlds. I'm like what what do you mean you want to do worlds she goes yeah I think I can I can play I can do well in worlds and I go you've never done any steroids all those girls are hopped up on a shit ton of steroids especially in physique like you're not even close you need to put like 15 pounds on are you willing I said are you willing to do steroids if you're willing to do steroids we can try to make it work she goes I'm not gonna do steroids and I was like you're not doing the show you're just gonna humiliate yourself she goes no no I'll do fine she calls me from worlds crying oh my god these girls are 15 to 20 pounds heavier than me i fucking humiliated myself and i went i fucking told you i fucking told you and then she stopped competing after that that's how that's how devastating it was and that's the that's the part that kills me is like it's one of the one of the big things like i played i played a lot of team sport like from like i was like four years old right through like australia it's australia our culture is like you get into team sport as young as possible my brothers were playing like i played my late cricket we played off-season touch we play afl we played rugby league was our sport as a family played that for 20 years before i'm a car accident my back i was living and breathing sport every time at different coaches i can still pinpoint the coaches that changed my life and the things they said like there's there's like those those remember the titans coach carter moments without these like the things they say to you stick and you're like fuck this guy changed the trajectory of what i thought about myself and the big thing for me is i use bodybuilding as i guess you call the vessel the vehicle to teach the lessons of high performance and life development and the byproduct of that optimization is a successful physique unfortunately we get these people that just they don't view bodybuilding as this lifetime long-term endeavor that like this is going to take you a long time it's a it becomes such a like you watch an in valley air or nick walker now on social media but you weren't following them 15 years ago to see what they were doing what they've given up but now because you can see their day-to-day you're like i would be that guy in two weeks time i'll be that guy like next year and it's like you're seeing the instant gratification or like the instant posting that comes with this content but you're not seeing what took 10 to 15 years to do or 20 years to do and then being like dissatisfied with the place that you got because you weren't prepared because you weren't willing to work and wait like we my like my show the last season i competed i won my my novice division made call out for my open division and i was like i'm still too fat that was just the straight up fact that i want a division and was like i am just too still fat and small in my frame it's taking two and a half years off now to know enough to take another year off to get there because like if i want to be contentious for open heavies i need to be bigger and i need to be leaner those two things coincide take a long time be bigger and be leaner at the same time the fact that like a lot of people look at this now and just go well i didn't win i didn't want to wait i rushed to it and now now bodybuilding's fucking me up they aren't willing to take the lessons of physique development through life and go where else does it benefit me and how does it serve me what can i learn from this let's go well i didn't win or like my coach is a piece of shit or bodybuilding disorders reality is you shouldn't have fucking started that's just plain and simple to me in my opinion well that's that's the common thing now is don't take personal responsibility for your bad choices find somebody else to blame i think a lot of people get coaches just so they can blame the coach because they're a shithead and they didn't do what they need to do and it's look it's not like out of every sport i've ever competed in but physically bodybuilding has been the easiest yeah it isn't it isn't fucking rocket science you add load to a muscle do the volume rest eat enough protein and you're gonna get big and strong it's not it's not fucking rocket science the hard part though that i think a lot of people getting into the sport don't understand is the mental and psychological aspect because they don't seem to understand like if going from say like 30 body fat to 22 24 for women that's not that difficult beginning from 22 to 15 is a completely different animal and going from 15 to 11 is so astronomically difficult people don think they I think well you know I spent 12 weeks and I lost like five six kilos And I like yeah but that not going to happen The leaner you get and you can try to rush it but then you going to get on stage and you going to be stringy and you not going to be full and you going to look like shit Like you going to have to slow this down So they don they don understand that Like the time that you have is you need a lot more time than you think you need yep right and it's going to get mentally difficult because honestly like going to the gym and training hard enough is not that difficult right dealing with doms not that difficult being 100 on point with your fucking nutrition when it's time when you need precision and accuracy and every gram counts that's real fucking hard telling yourself no when you're really fucking hungry that's really fucking hard going to bed hungry waking up hungry and just being hungry all the fucking time like during this cut there was a point i was doing some pretty extreme shit i was sending food shit to to zoe and she was like you're really feeling it now i'm like yeah and i'm just sending her recipes recipes i'm looking through recipe books i'm not i'm not masturbating the porn hub anymore i'm masturbating betty crocker like i'm like i can't wait to eat this cake oh it's gonna be so good oh god and like people that are said you're gonna feel like that for months yeah and then it's it's fucking true though it's it's something that i've i've propositioned proposed a lot now is the getting stage lean getting stage genuinely stage competitive condition is a skill dieting in of itself to be genuinely adherent and consistent is a skill and a lot of people that training proficiency is a skill knowing how to train close enough to failure knowing how to take your sets to full proximity and knowing how to stick to your food and be consistent in training nutrition those are skills and usually a lot more of it is mental than it is physiological like a lot of time we have these like it's one of the things that when i take someone long term is i gradually i expose them to different levels of proximities of extreme so they understand the differences right like you said to me uh going from like for a guy getting to 10 that's that's pretty lean for the average person we're looking like you're healthy 10 to go to five percent that's fucking hard to get that last two percent off your body thanks forever final eight weeks of your prep to get that two percent off but people will think like i got the 10 that's like i did that that's fine and i'm like yeah that's well and good but that final five percent that really needs to come off your category that's the rest of the prep that's the actual game yeah now you're actually playing ball what you're doing that was the first half and it took you the first half just to get you know 10 off it's going to take you the rest of the game to get that two percent off and that's out variables are up and that's where i'm like i i if i get someone long enough like we've been marketing heavily like to start with me i want 18 months minimum before you want to compete if you're like sure absolutely certain you want to compete not just expose yourself to it i want at least 18 months because realistically i'm going to take you through a surplus phase where you're comfortable being soft and know you can handle large amounts of food without getting too fat and then actually have a decent metabolic rate and a decent turnover of calorie before you start prep and then i know that you can handle being hungry because i'm going to take you to somewhat of a deficit maybe only 20 or 30 but if you're going to struggle at 30 deficit i've got guys that'll do the first six to eight weeks at a 40 deficit to get ahead of it and we're just a tidy up phase where you're in a 40 reduction in food and they struggle so if you can't even handle a 20 or 30 deficit we're not starting to prep you'll break in the first two months why the we do that when you know it's better to have you prepared exposed over time right it's no different to any school sort of skill development you scaffold the skill acquisition can you handle 20 cool let's try 30 cool next time let's get like before we start a comp prep let's see if you can get photo shoot lean cool now you photo shoot lean how hard was that that hurt well guess what happens from a photo shoot you still got eight weeks to go photoshoot lean is like eight weeks out i see all these boss babes do like a photo shoot and they look 20 weeks out from stage being like i look great it's like you're so stage ready that's not even close to what's going to take you on stage but that exposure i can then say confidently okay you have the fundamental skills you are just as much now mentally prepared as you are physically prepared and we can probably get you on stage with minimal margin of error give me one second we gotta pee real quick okay sweet right right about to clear the blood is uh we're gonna rave a lot of shit but it's it's funny too like there's so many things that people don't actually talk about that you're gonna experience when you're that lean your joints are gonna hurt yes fitting hurts like you know if you don't have a padded seat like i i go buy one of those old person donuts inflatable donuts because when you when you like that lean your tailbone is going to be fucking mangled on every hard surface you sit on like standing up walking around you going to be tired all the time Like people really need to be more, if you want to, if you want to compete and win, you just have to understand that you're going to go through some, like some really uncomfortable things. Um, and you were talking earlier about like, you know, bodybuilding and health, like there's nothing healthy about any competition, especially at the highest levels. But that's why it's so important to take care of your health before you start that. Because like my concept is we want to be healthy until it's time to get unhealthy. Yes. And unfortunately, if you want to win, you're going to go through a period where you're unhealthy. So you want to try to be healthy everywhere else. Even like with my power lifters, you know, we'll try to raise and keep their HRV pretty high. We'll try to keep their weight, like try not to let them get fat. We'll try to minimize issues with compression and joints. Like there's a lot of stuff we're doing. Most of my powerlifters, I won't do any of their competition lifts until it's time to start getting ready for me. We're working on a lot of other stuff that's similar, but different. So they're not constantly doing the same repetitive shit with heavy loads. What do you mean? Yeah. You just bench squat deadlift all year. 10 sets of three just four by six for the whole year fuck it just go but yeah there's