Mentorship with Charles Poliquin and T-Nation

But I guess my career career started in 1992 when you had muscle media and like TMAG came out and you get exposed to Charles Poliquin, who became my main mentor for strength and conditioning. So him and Paul Cech and all these guys. So Charles started doing certifications and I couldn't really afford to do one. So I just saved up. And in 2007, I flew to Chicago and met Charles, and then I was hooked because the culture he had at Polycon Strength Institute at the time was amazing. You didn't find that anywhere else. And so I started doing everything I could with him. And then eventually I got asked to come on and do assistant teaching. Presenting and all that sort of stuff. And you can learn more about that in the first episode. So you said Paul Cech because I know we've consumed a little bit of Paul Cech. Is one of his philosophies like this pillar thing? Yeah, the totem pole. The totem pole. Yeah. And then what was some of the other so like you said, 2007, that was probably like the forum days and and all of that sort of stuff. Like, how did you come across Poliquin? I came through Muscle Media. Muscle Media. And then what's that like a magazine or something? Yeah they online now So it was you remember EAS the supplement company No So creatine Yeah Everybody knows Charlie knows creatine Creatine yeah So Bill Phillips, he created EAS and brought creatine to the market and a bunch of other supplements and kind of the first proper meal replacement powders that actually tasted good and protein powders that tasted good. So he created a magazine called Muscle Media and it was like super hardcore. They were talking about drugs and they were talking about all sorts of shit. then he sold out sort of going mainstream but in the early days you had uh paul check was in the magazines you had uh charles staley was in the magazines paula quinn yeah all those guys so then then when they sold out they started an online thing called testosterone.net and that's what t-mag is now i think it's called t-mag now or t-nation t-nation yeah so they were super hardcore and then they had some of the best uh strength and conditioning guys nutrition guys steroid guys on it and then now they kind of petered out now they're not really that big of a thing yeah so t-nation was huge now yeah it's there that was the that was one of the big rocks of like our development we chatted about this last week in like our initial uh people that influenced us and how we got to where we're at now but um t-nation was a fucking massive rock that was where we found majority of the people that yeah it was and it was cool back then because they it wasn't like now where they just throw up random articles they always threw up articles on friday so you'd sit your computer and you just keep hitting enter keep hitting enter keep hitting enter and then we figured out how to get the the articles before they were out because we figured out how they were doing the source code yeah yeah so then we could get it on like a tuesday or wednesday yeah we consumed all that she took all their supplements the spray on t19 and all the other stuff well that's it i was i was joking off here but i think they sort of lost their way when they realized you can make a ton of sales online and it just sort of turned into this like every article there There were some articles that were fantastic and then they're like, the piece that puts this all together is this thing. Like it was just this specific supplement, something mag or mag tan or some shit like that. Yeah, yeah. That was definitely my transition was finding bodybuilding.com. My old man bought me old muscular development magazines. That and muscle and fitness because he was like this 80s bodybuilder or whatever the fuck else. Choco. He was a trend boy, wasn't he? no that's 250 was his deal his deal I still I rip him one I use that to piss mum off I go to mum I'm like hey mum I'm getting on it next week just fucking no you're not and I'm like you can't talk shit I'm like old man was on it and then he's like oh yeah I'm like but just know that I'm stronger and bigger than you natural fucking dog but I'll always use that I'll always use that to piss mum off for the rest of my life I forgot where I was at with that but muscle and fitness Muscle and fitness. Yeah, so it was that and then bodybuilding.com and then into T Nation. And it was like, it was such a good resource. It was. Such a good resource. But something I wanted to ask you, because you mentioned like Charles Staley and I think of like the escalating density training and methods and you've just done this talk over the weekend on bodybuilding methods and it's almost like historical methods that I think that make training fun. You know what I mean? Like you can stick to a 3x8 to 10 forever really and probably make gains, you know what I mean? What I wanted to ask you is how much of looking into history of physical culture and training like that, how much of that informs your program design process now and what do you think it's done for you in your development from a programming standpoint?