0:09 people were telling me I was the best bodybuilder in the country honestly like looking back on my life it's almost like a movie that played out and I knew I had to put like my heart and soul into this I had to change my life I had to I didn't want to I had to it was my destiny how far can I take it I'm supposed to be something different I have to be something different and I'm going to change my life with bodybuilding I don't want to have a normal job I don't want to be unemployed I don't want to uh get a wife and a kid and a small house and a job and a normal life try to find a picture of me smiling and was Mr Olympia is very difficult this contest should be the best of the best and the thing that I loved about bodybuilding was this is an individual thing
0:54 I think people now they they don't like hard work they want to have the results but they don't want to take the journey because you overcome you overcome overcome you're going to push yourself you're going to be sweating you're going to be in pain if you want to be successful can I create a new a new level the main Drive was I am not like everybody else I don't want to be like everybody else I have something inside which is burning deep down I knew this was going to helpen
1:56 in hey Dorian Welcome to our podcast and thank you so much thank you for having me on man thank you so much for coming I'm so honored to have you here and my pleasure thanks I have so many questions uh first of all for for the people that are watching now and maybe they don't know exactly what what is that Mr Olympia what is this contest and what does it mean to be Mr Olympia okay so um Mr Olympia started originally the first Mr Olympia was in 1965 yeah yeah uh organized by a guy called
2:49 Joe weeder yeah who's uh you know Legend in bodybuilding as a promoter magazine publisher and supplement company and everything like that his the guy that uh kind of brought arinal swena to America and everything like that the idea was as you had um and I think back in the in the 60s probably the most well-known contest was the Mr Universe MH so Joe weider's idea was like we have these great bodybuilders and they go to win the Mr Universe maybe but it's difficult for them to continue to pursue and and try to be better and better because yeah there's not a lot of money in the sport so his idea was to create a contest a professional contest and that this contest
3:39 should be the best of the best yeah so you get the best bodybuilders in the world coming to the contest and there's going to be one person that wins the Mr Olympia contest and that person then would be recognized as the Undisputed uh best professional bodybuilder in the world that was the idea and I think since maybe there was some competition between the Mr Olympia and the Mr Universe because it was this some federations but by early 70s I think is accepted in the bodybuilding Community Mr Olympia is the ultimate so this is Ultimate Prize for bodybuilding like I don't know World Heavyweight Champion boxing but even in boxing you have some different federations
4:27 uh but in bodybuilding it's generally accepted Mr Olympia is the best professional bodybuilder in the world so it's not a contest you can just say hey I would like to enter that you know you have to go through different stages of uh for myself I had to be National Champion so I had to be the best in my country as an amateur yeah and then when you achieve this you can then apply for professional status and compete in professional contests and then to get into the Myst Olympia uh is a little bit different now the qualifications but basically it was like you had to place in the top three mhm of a pro contest yeah in order to get an invite for the my Olympia so we have the several contests through the years and uh at the end of the year you have the Mr Olympia and see
5:13 who's uh who's number one in the so you've been there and you've been uh the best bodybuilder in the world for for six years in a row yeah year by year what was you doing different than than others what's what pushed you there and how could you stay there for for six years in the row this a matter of uh passion and drive and and focus and how much do you want it yeah that that's something and I wanted to try to be the best that I could be and then this turns out to be you want to be the best in the world but for me it was a bit more than this it was like I once I got to be the best I wanted to see like how far can I take it as a personal Challenge and and for the sport as well
6:05 can I create a new a new level this this was a thing and uh it's generally accepted that that I did because I was not interested in just winning and I know this is not something I'm going to do all my life mhm so let me see really you know how far can we take this like in a in in running if you like nobody could run a mile in under four minutes nobody could do it until one guy actually his British guy Roger Roger Bannister he broke the four minute barrier for a mile once he did it everybody started doing it because you You released a mental uh a block a mental barrier so
6:54 when I achieved the level of muscular development and conditioning uh and set a new standard then you see the everyone else's standard start to elevate because they see this is possible and the removes a barrier and then they aim for this so it it raised the whole level of the sport I think uh with my um unrelenting uh passion to try to pursue that goal yeah and you did it in like the first Mr Olympia you got in 1992 yeah first one was the first Mr Olympia I competed in was 91 I got a close second okay which was I think the first time somebody had done that in their in their debut so I had a uh second in my first one to Lee Haney who was already seven times Mr Olympia very
7:43 dominant champion and I was able to uh at least to push him a bit you know I couldn't beat him but next year he had retired and uh title was open so 92 was my yeah was my first Mr Olympia yeah and how C can you explain us just a little bit how how in the Mr Olympia you have a jury that give you you have a judges yeah judges yeah and how they decide who's who's better is it by size by shape by It's a combination of uh factors so it's muscle size obviously is bodybuilding um but it should be proportionate and then there's the conditioning of course uh professional body building is very
8:30 extreme the conditioning when I say conditioning I mean very low body fat which is combined with the with the muscle mass which is very hard to achieve um so there's three rounds uh it as I say I don't compete now so some things have changed a little bit but um when I competed there were three rounds so you stand in a relaxed position from the front from the side from the back from the side from the front so four positions and you're judged on that so it's like a relaxed or semi- relaxed so they're looking at the shape yeah the flow of the body the proportion and then the second round is like seven muscular poses they're called compulsory poses because it shows every part of your body so these seven poses really I think it is the core of the judging so you have round one
9:21 which is relaxed or semi- relaxed really round two is seven poses which everybody has to do and then they com compare each other this guy to this guy and so on and see who basically wins the majority of the positions poses and then now um I believe in the mystery Olympia open class they don't have this anymore but they used to have a third round which is your presentation of your physique to to music so you know okay uh there were three rounds of of judging and the one who obviously came with the basically how they score It Is by placing so if they think that you're first they give you a one yeah okay okay and if you're second you get a two so the guy with the lowest score is is the winner the lowest score so that's how they judge it over three rounds normally yeah that's how they
10:12 did it so you're looking at uh your presentation to music it's your interpretation and it's your way that you want to present your physique and uh a lot of guys were before I competed it was a bit more like artistic maybe yeah and and uh bit more Greek statue type you know and uh flowing to the music and everything but I had a very powerful physique and this was my personality and this was my the way I trained was like all out uh intense training so when I had the presentation it was always something very dramatic and Powerful music and so I presented my physique uh where another guy may be more flowing and you know so everyone is an interpretation of my physique yeah uh in
11:01 the third round what music did you use in your uh I used different music some classical music which is very powerful and uh maybe some rock music but it was music with power uh Kamina barano was one that I used a couple of times yeah because it's very hating and very powerful yeah so I used to mix that with something else I had a house mix with that and different things so it was always with uh with power because that's what I wanted to present yeah so the first Mr Olympia you won is 92 yeah it's about 30 32 years ago I was five I was five years old you're making me feel old I was five years old and I remember that but that time we had no internet yeah we had no knowledge
11:51 about nutrition about what protein is how how how should you mix your food uh we had no gyms at all or or maybe I remember that as 5 years old I uh my brother had a friend that was doing kayak my brother was doing kayak by a lake by a lake by by nearby and he had a colleague that was doing kayak with some uh weights he lifted in his um in his basement yeah so that was the level of uh Fitness uh industry by then yeahia I guess in that because it was still a communist at the time switching over we just we just switched and I talk about Republic of mova that's where we are from okay yeah I think in Romania it was uh almost the same because we came in 95 and there
12:41 was no no gyms uh where where you could go maybe some sport clubs when you have some weights to live how was it in the UK I mean I guess when they were communist countries they were more concerned with the Olympic type Sports because this is where you get the Kudos and so maybe they have for those athletes some facility with weights and so on um but yeah we had no internet so how how did the information get out and how did it grow this sport yeah magazines magazines magazines they were like the Bible you know I when I was young and I started bodybuilding there was one store in Birmingham that's where I'm from one store which had the bodybuilding magazines from America but you never know when there magazines coming in so we used to go like every week to this little store
13:27 and see if they were there and uh then it's there ah it's like spend all day reading this magazine and then later on when I traveled to um to Russia and places like that they were telling me they were getting the magazines like on the black market it was very like valuable to get this magazine very difficult to get it and read about all the at this point really the 80s and into the early 90s bodybuilding was very much us-based sport was not start to get a bit proper in England and some European countries I think but really all the top bodybuild and all the gyms that you heard about and everything was in the US at that point now bodybuilding is much more International we have a Mr Olympia from Egypt and Mr Olympia now from Iran but before actually myself it was always
14:13 competitors from the US even sweno which everyone knows is Austrian but he was living in California in the US when he was winning Mr Olympia so now it's much more International now the whole world knows about bodybuilding but yeah for decades it was just uh magazines that's how you find out about I read about the the top guys that's how you read about training and uh nutrition and everything like that it was magazines was like the Bible especially the magazines from America from um from weeda yeah okay so I I'm curious now when did you start how how did you start and at which point I mean how much how much of what you did you did by yourself and at which point did you
14:59 get a mentor a trainer uh well I started being interested in I guess Fitness you know Fitness and physique and bodybuilding maybe when I was like 14 15 and I also was big fan of Bruce Lee yeah so Bruce Lee was skinny but he had a he was ripped you know he had some kind of physique so I was not doing bodybuilding but I used to do like push-ups and and situps and squats in my room just in the home just uh you know no what was the drive I mean was it like to to look better to uh um to have a better place in competition for oh I mean to attract like other girls or maybe
15:45 it was just for you to look better or what is for you to to be able to stand up against somebody on the trade what what was the main Drive uh well this was just uh something what I did corrup yeah and when we did Karate we also did conditioning you know like freehand squats pushups CH and I found I was enjoying this more and then I started doing some weights and I'll really connect with that but I didn't do bodybuilding properly until I was like 20 21 because I left home at 16 MH and I had uh you know sometimes nowhere to stay stay at friends houses a job not a job and uh when I was 19 I got into a bit of trouble I went went to a Detention Center that was sent there for 6
16:31 months which is like a youth jail facility yeah and in there they had weights as well okay and I realized like hey there's 300 guys in here yeah and I have the best physique and everybody treat me different the guys the officers everybody and uh they could see I was very disciplined with any kind of training because that was one of the things we're going to get these kids who's uh you know undisciplined and a problem we're going to give them military discipline we're going to give them physical training we're going to give them they try to teach us some skill I learned Plastering you know for the walls and all that stuff I never used it but that was the idea but uh in a way was a bad experience but in a way it was like let me observe I'm in a place
17:16 with 300 guys same age between 17 and 21 and I have the best physique and uh I'm stronger than nearly all these guys and I really like this and even the officers were in there saying you have to you should do powerlifting because it was a powerlifter the physical training guy so he said you should do powerlifting but I already know in my mind I don't want to do powerlifting I want to do bodybuilding and um what was the main Drive the main Drive was I'm not like everybody else I don't want to be like everybody else I have something inside which is burning and I look around and this life and everything I I see is not for me I'm supposed to be something different I have
18:04 to be something different and I'm going to change my life with bodybuilding I don't know uh exactly how it's going to change but I can continue down this road with the and be a criminal or or not and I have something else the other guys maybe they don't have something else I have something here and I want to do this and hey maybe I can be like a I don't know a British champion one day maybe I can have my own gym this was how I started you know and then quickly uh I got very successful within two years people were telling me I was the best bodybuilder in the country I did then
18:49 win the British Championship to be uh to get the pro status so it was not something where I wanted to attract the girls or I wanted to be stronger to protect myself because I was already okay this was not the motivation the motivation was to change my life because what I see around me is not for me I don't want to have a normal job I don't want to be unemployed I don't want to uh get a wife and a kid and a small house and a job and normal life whatever whatsoever is normal but that's the average existence was not for me I knew I was going to do something different and I knew I had to put like my heart and soul into this bodybuilding I had to change
19:39 my life I had to I didn't want to I had to it was my destiny and honestly like looking back on my life it's almost like a movie that played out that was predetermined deep down I knew this was going to happen I knew that I was destined for something different and that was the motivation change my life get out of this everything what's around me I don't want it and for me this was a huge motivation Do or Die really like this is not for me so and this is what I'm supposed to do this is what I'm good at and I love doing it and uh I never really had a mentor or a coach and the thing that I loved about bodybuilding
20:28 this is an individual thing basically everything's down to me yeah I have to go to the gym and do the training at this point there is no such thing as a coach in bodybuilding I'm not a big fan of bodybuilding coaches uh because the reason I did it is because this is individual soul Endeavor I have to do the training I have to do the research I have to find about nutrition I have to find about supplementation I have to find about steroids I have to find about everything MH so this was fascinating for me and as you say no internet you have bodybuilding magazines then I went to the bookstore and I bought books on nutrition and uh you know calorie breakdown macro breakdown like really yeah nobody knew even what that was I just went and I bought the books and I
21:17 learned for myself uh and also from the magazines and articles that are the bbls is written so I planned my training I planned my diet I and everything and yeah there was some people along the way that was encouraging and helping like the guy that ran the BR British Federation at the time yeah Ron Davis he was very um encouraging and he was a judge at the Myst Olympia so I could respect his opinion as he has seen the best bodybuilders in the world yeah and he was like you can beat these guys and it was telling me after two years I've been training you can beat these guys you can be Mr Olympus so was good and I had a guy with a supplement company one of the very early
22:02 ones in in UK and he gave me a little sponsorship okay you know some financial help was not a lot but it was was helping me out and uh I opened my own gym as well so at that point the gym I mean there was not many gyms in the 80s even in the UK and Birmingham was I don't know 1.5 million people yeah I think when I started training there was maybe four gyms that I knew about now I have no idea maybe there's 50 gyms but it's different those were like real spit and sawdust as we call them hardcore gyms now it's I don't think they're gyms they're not gyms I mean they're Fitness facilities they're they're they're sterile they're sterile I can go into one of these
22:51 gyms where you I don't know they have these gyms in England where you pay 20 152 pounds a month yeah it's nothing and they have uh 30 treadmills they have tons of card they have everything yeah but the people in there don't look like they even go to the gym yeah that's true because it's a sterile environment uh they don't encourage you uh Hey sh don't make a noise don't don't sweat on the floor like it's a it's it's like a a clinic a gym should be a place where you go and you you know you can lift and if you lift weights and you push yourself you're going to scream you're going to shout it's going to be noisy that's the way it is and uh it's all about hard work and uh I
23:39 think people now they they don't like hard work mhm they want to have the result yeah but they don't want to take the journey and it's the journey which makes you not the result it's the journey which strengthens you when you push yourself to the limits and you push yourself to the limits and you find out about yourself and you become stronger because you overcome you'll overcome you overcome and you build strength um I don't see that in a lot of kids these days everything's too easy too accessible and it's almost too much information where everyone wants the technical information yeah okay I can give it to you but you got to work hard there's no way to uh go around this there's no magic tricks you're going to work hard you're going to push yourself you're going to be sweating you're going to be in pain uh if you want to be successful and
24:28 of everything not just bodybuilding everything life everything is too too easy now people are weak I think that the drive you you you told me about that moment when you sat in detention and you saw this guy yeah and you decided that you you want to be different that you are different and you are going to follow a different path and the fact that you didn't just wanted that deep inside you believed in that that's something you cannot buy from a personal trainer no I mean you can buy I mean I know why people take a personal trainer I some as a doctor I to somebody that is not uh I see he has no drive and he has no motivation to study I recommend to people to take a personal trainer for two three months for him to say to you what you should eat what how how should you train
25:19 listen for the average person I I use this analogy yeah I like my car I like to drive a car MH but I don't have time to study about something when my car goes wrong what do I do I take it to my friend he's a mechanic he knows all about the cars because he studied this yeah yes so I give my car to him and I say okay fix my car yeah it's the same thing for the average person but I'm not the average person I'm a high level competitor but for the average person yes you have your family you have your life you have your business you have many things going on you don't have time to study the best way to train the best way to eat and supplement so yes in this case a personal trainer can be very useful but high level competitor at in in in
26:06 competitive bodybuilding this is your profession I think MH so in that case not a big fan of uh of coaches and yeah true this was my Approach but for the average person yes they don't have time or inclination to find out about all this it takes a lot of time and and effort and everything so the average person yes you have a trainer um to help you with your training and the diet I think is a good thing but it's a bit of a uh how do we say you know there's a lot of bad trainers out there yeah and a lot of people who's I see trainers in I don't spend so much time here but in England you got some young guy who did a course you know he did a course for a few months even I
26:55 couldn't believe it there's a coaching uh company in UK they do everything online yeah I say so you you certify your coaches online You' never even seen him he's never even been in front of you and lift it away no no it's just videos so a lot of people with a with a piece of paper saying they're coaches uh I would look at what experience they have what is a good trainer for you I mean what should we look for uh when uh an average person like me looks for a trainer I mean what should I look for I would look for somebody with some track record some experience of you know helping people and uh getting the results and um you know also is a little bit of psychology
27:43 mhm to get the most out of people to try to keep the motivation going and everything like that so uh and nutrition of course a trainer should also know about nutrition unless you're going to get a nutritionist as well but ideally because if you train correctly but you don't have the nutrition it won't work vice versa you need both together because when you go to the gym you're not building muscles in the gym you're damaging them you're breaking them down you're you're causing stress yeah afterwards the compensation process is where the the growth takes place but this takes materials you don't BR build a house without bricks and without concrete mhm so no point to
28:30 remodel your house oh I want a nicer bigger house so I'll knock this wall down and knock this wall down but you don't have the bricks to to rebuild the walls yeah so you have to have the training and the nutrition together goes hand in hand so preferably somebody that knows about both of those subjects would would be ideal yeah okay um so you told me you of course in your position you didn't need a trainer you was your own coach your own trainer you studied you you had that uh that drive inside and the belief you had that it will happen plus they didn't exist there was no personal trainers yeah okay yeah there wasn't any but I I you know I wouldn't I'm not very coachable
29:21 yeah because I mean I I can learn from people I used to learn from a lot of people and get all the information and and then trial it out uh and and see if it works for me but ultimately I had to make the decision I do this or I don't do this and uh when I win the contest or I don't win the contest is me I don't say oh I had the wrong coach or the I get the wrong advice ultimately you're the competitor you're responsible for everything yeah so that's that's the way I think you know you know what what I mean is like when I was young at um uh 11 12 my my father took me to the gym for the first time and it was kind of the gym we say the Cartier it was like average
30:11 gym will where uh the guys were gather Gathering and train we had no trainers there so it was a proper gym as you yeah you encourage each other and all that stuff and that was so cool I mean I was going from from like one post to other and everybody was uh giving advises to uh to everyone and he was like Hey that that move is not good you have to keep your you you have to stay like that show your uh show your spectrals and make the move like that you know and everybody everybody everybody was sharing knowledge also uh yeah yeah you had those uh those uh guys that was like heavy lifting and screaming and stuff like that so it was raw and real I kind of
30:58 is that now because now when I go to the gym yeah I love that this is a fitness trainer uh fitness facility yeah we have a nice Spa we have AC uh we have water everybody everything is clean but it's really sterile you either sometimes it's too comfortable you know yeah and back then as well it was more like um it was a more male environment mhm it was like a man's club yeah at least my gym was we had some ladies coming but rarely yeah it was not a lot you know yeah was not a lot and would have baggy baggy sweatpants on baggy tops nowhere you know you go in the gym now the girls the half naked M oh cool if you want to look but not really the best when you're lifting weights I don't want to see that but yeah it's a different environment now
31:45 because many more people go to the gym mhm but I don't think uh I I actually think there's less people that are doing bodybuilding than they were doing in the 80s and 90s yeah bodybuilding per se now it's people going to the gym for fitness and uh you know a lot of fashion with the clothes and all this stuff uh it's kind of a lifestyle thing now that that people follow yeah and uh I everything changes nothing stays the same but you know I look back on those days with Nostalgia when it was just a you know hardcore lifting gym and a a male environment a boys place you know type of uh that's how my club was anyway we only had like 100 120 members but serious everybody
32:35 came down even if they were not competing that was the atmosphere and this is what I talk about the the Gym's now a little sterile where you where you would go in the gym in the past and you would feel the energy and hear the music and you see people lifting and wow the energy has hit you as soon as I'm gonna train yeah let's go now you're going in the gym and it's nothing it's uh it's like in a doctor's office or something yeah that's true I can't no atmosphere I didn't notice that until you told me because yeah that that that's how the gym was was before I mean I'm I I'm so proud that my my my father took me to the gym and I saw that you know and that was really that energy I was not in that energy mood because I was like 12 11 12 I just learned to lift weights properly at this age
33:23 you know but right now yeah everybody's like on the phone making some moves once in two minutes and they're not getting results I I really go to a gym and I see people in there actually was with my wife about a year ago we went back to UK in Birmingham and we wanted to train do some cardio so we went to one of these big Fitness Gyms where you have to get a code online and put it in the thing and there's no human there you know and we're in the gym I don't know it's like 30 40 people in there right yeah I say to my wife look have you ever been in a gym where everybody in in the gym looks like they don't go to the gym it's like yeah it's what it's like I mean what are you doing in there guys it's you know bit of cardio or something maybe I don't know but
34:08 uh young guys uh is different from from my day you know it's like I don't know you're a young guy me and you we're friends I want to see if I can lift more weight than no I lift more weight than you and then you got another friend and it's like that is is that kind of uh male competitiveness we had you know I'm thinking now I have something like that like uh one of my friends he's also the director of uh the TV show that uh I'm the host of it's medicol it's like the biggest medical TV show in we have in Romania and the director his name is Vladimir deminsky he is one of my friends from the high school uh and now he's director he's director of the TV show this this is yeah so we have this
34:55 medical TV show that we do a lot of research about health and stuff like that right so we are making some competition but even like we are a bit shy to compete on who's uh who can lift more weight but we are competing like hey look what Shake I've did this morning look how many vegetables I have here then he s me pictures of look I stood 30 minutes uh uh uh after my my swimming I stood 30 minutes on the sun with my feet uh on the ground like that's that's how guys in each other you know I still do it with my friends they still love that now I do like a you know rowing machine or something you know how fast can you do 500 meters or 1,000 meters I still do it with my friends hey
35:40 what's your time I I'm my friend in England what's your time now he's the same age as me you know so we still have that little competitive thing going on that's cool that's cool yeah so okay let's get back to Hey listen it's great that you're a doctor yeah yeah and you're concerned with health and diet and all the other things which does it not come with your training right yeah I don't know about in Romania but I know in England yeah we have no we train I think a doctor does one one day one day on nutrition yeah we have two hours of nut this crazy yeah so it's great that you're looking into you know uh let's say non- pharmaceutical means uh of helping people to be healthy not that Pharmaceuticals don't have their place but uh I mean they they don't make you healthy maybe
36:30 they help you fix some problem but let's try to not have the problem in the first place minimize it doct the doctors don't make you uh healthy the Pharmaceuticals the pharmaceutical yeah because like doctors we are trained to uh to fix disease or to keep you alive with the disease but not to prevent it no we we we we are not trained to do that no and I think we I don't I mean people think that's what I think people think that doctors should kill keep you keep you healthy that's not our job no I mean that like people get sick then they go and they seek doctor's advice then nobody comes to the doctor at here like 20 years old and say hook look tell me what should I eat how should I train what should I do to stay healthy nobody cares preventative medicine yeah nobody cares the problem at least now people start to care and this is what like Peter is is calling that medicine
37:21 3.0 and probably we're going to have I'm have a podcast with him in uh few weeks time really yeah he's coming on to my podcast tell him tell him that I salute him he doesn't know me but I I watch I watch his podcast in the middle of reading his book at the moment yeah this is so cool yeah this is medicine 3.0 so so he's a doctor he he quits medicine and he actually he quits uh his clinical um job and right now he's uh he is doing medicine 3.0 that means he tries he he helps people prevent but there's no science uh and no training facilities for that probably we're going to have that in um in short time well there's financial reasons for all this you think so also so why
38:07 would you want to prevent somebody from getting a disease that would then mean that they won't use your product later on yeah that's true but by the other uh like by by the other hand you yeah I think it's everybody's own drive you you need to understand that and you want to like you uh you need to want that prevention for yourself and I think there there's an industry for that also I mean it's growing it's growing um of course pharmaceutical companies make pharmaceutical so yeah and that's what they stud they invested in that all right exactly yeah and I mean you you have diseases you want to treat you make the studies they are so I mean the studies are very
38:53 very expensive like if you make a study and that bill doesn't work nobody's going to give you the money back I mean you lost the money so that's why they they to have a return yeah yeah but they get pharmaceutical businesses have a good return yeah but in the end like if you think like if you are a big boss of pharmaceutical company and your like your main income is from selling uh a pill that keeps you alive with the disease and then you you have another pill that cures the disease will you sell it will you keep it for yourself to make profit if a CEO own is is the you there to make the maximum profit so whatever that is of course would be the long-term treatment of course so uh
39:42 if you're a CEO of a pharmaceutical company then yeah I understand that but it's up to us you know and that's what's slowly happening yeah um that people are becoming aware all this information is getting out there and um then people need less Pharmaceuticals M and then maybe they have to change their approach a little bit yeah I always say to people look um you know McDonald's for instance to use as an example yeah if everybody or the majority of people say hey I'm not going to buy that anymore M because it's poisonous it's [ __ ] I'm not going to buy it and this gets momentum McDonald's have two choices go out of business yeah or change change their strategy
40:28 and give people more healthy food which is which is what they want I guess so it's uh people will make the difference you know by their own by our choices things will change eventually that probably we need more generation of people too to make that choice we do what we can do man you know and the information's coming out and uh this is the good thing about the internet in I know can be bad as well information information but it's out there and people are being more motivated yourself about it Peter attia um uberman who's a biologist a lot of information coming out so people are taking a different approach once they get the information and here's the thing uh it's about quality of life mhm yeah not just staying alive not just being uh alive it's about the quality
41:17 of life it's about how do you feel how do you function um I'm in my 60s but I feel great I have some little injuries from my sports career but doesn't really bother me that much but apart from that I feel great I get up in the morning I feel great I eat a good diet I exercise I keep my body as good as I can and so I have a quality a good quality of life and I'm trying to keep that as as long as I can it's not about to live to 120 years or something if the last 30 years of your life you can't uh you can't move and you can't function and have a good quality of life so I think that's what people people are realizing now is about the quality of life and yeah you could if you have diabetes you could take insulin but maybe it could just also stop eating
42:06 carbs not take the insulin which is what used to be recommended in whatever before they made the insulin right just don't need carbs yeah that's true I I'm very curious about what you do now to have a good quality of life but before that I would like to like take it chronologically and talk to ask you about your method of training and because you was your own coach you was doing your own research yeah I think you was not the only one that had the drive the belief that you can achieve your goals there were was were like many other guys probably that had the drive and the belief but what what made the difference that made you Mr Olympia six times in a row what what was like the different approach or the thing that you discovered that helped you in your training
42:56 and your your press well as I said I did a lot of reading whatever bodybuilding magazine uh magazines I could get and people used to donate them I had a big collection unfortunately got destroyed in a flood had something like last night in Spain one day and came in the basement and had to throw them all away so it's it's a shame but uh I came across uh Mike mener who was a Mr Universe and um controversially didn't win the Mr Olympia in 1980 where Arnold Scher won it but anyway I was very impressed with the the writing of Mike mener and about high intensity training and the logic which came really from Arthur Jones is a guy that had the Nautilus machines
43:41 in the early 70s and it's the first guy to really ask a lot of questions and get the answers about what is it muscle growth what you know why is it happening what's causing it um and he discovers it the intensity of the exercise yeah so it's the intensity where you you push that muscle within parameters of uh you know bodybuilding training which is usually whatever 8 to 12 repetitions over the exercise it's really how much time is under tension but we use that as a guide repetitions um and pushing that to the point a maximum in in a set that that's the key so uh you could do let's
44:30 say a set well it's below Your Capacity let's say you could do eight rep uh you could do 10 reps with with a certain weight yeah but you stop at seven or eight you don't go to 10 or 11 you go seven or eight is not enough intensity oh yeah but I do more volume it's not enough intensity you know you could do this uh Mike men used to use an analogy which I like you know it's like if you have a stick of dynamite and you hit it with a pencil it doesn't go off right yeah why the impact is not enough the intensity is not enough yeah so if you tap the dynamite with a pencil and it doesn't go off if you tap it the second time and the third time and the 100th time will it
45:19 go off no because the intensity is not enough but you hit it one time with a hammer yeah boom message sent job done so my training was when I started three times a week or an hour okay okay when I was Mr Olympia it was maybe four times a week or an hour okay so I Mr Olympia the best bodybuilder in the world and I didn't spend more than four hours a week lifting weights come on I spent more in a gym yeah but you didn't train with me after half an hour you want to go home because it will be that intense and that hard trust me I had guys train with me for half an hour and they
46:06 feel nauseous they feel sick and they want to go home what do you do go home okay go home sleep eat rest when you're when you're in the gym you're just damaging you're breaking down fibers and then it's like U muscle growth is a reaction to stress yeah okay why do why do you get some color when you go in the sun because the sun is coming the ray is stressful for your skin so it produces melanin to protect itself from this future exposures to the sun that's it yeah same thing in the gym you're lifting weights you're putting stress on the muscle it's not used to it's got to compensate it's got to get a bit bigger and a bit stronger so next time the stress won't be so much
46:54 and it's continually increasing the stress so okay I'm going take you to the gym we're going to do a chest workout yeah okay it's it's nice to do it like this because I can talk about it but hey yeah what does it mean what are we really doing here yeah it's okay let's go for a chest workout you do a little warm up in a gym whatever five minutes on a bike or across just to get your body temperature up okay uh we might do some light movements just for the shoulders the surrounding areas we're warming up yeah okay let's go to First exercise let's do incline pressure okay I'll say to mik what do you think you can do eight reps with your maximum maximum oh I think I can uh bench press 100 kilos okay so let's start with the 50 kilos okay warm up set easy 50% of this estimated
47:48 maximum okay you do one set rest minute minute and a half we do another set now with around 70 to 7 5% of your projected so these two sets are warming up mhm they're getting your your um nervous system used to the movement they getting blood in the muscle it's warming up it's preparation yeah okay now we're going to take the 100 kilos okay on the third rep yeah on the third set take the 100 kilos and I'm going to watch you yeah I'm going to be close to the bar and you're going to push and I'm going to shout and you're going to push you're going to P you're going to get to the point where you cannot you can't do anymore then I'm I'm going to help you a little bit to complete that rep then we say m come on one more one more and you're going to again give your maximum effort
48:35 but it's failing it's failing but I help you a little bit so we're going just past failure yeah then you put the weight down okay we finished with this exercise now we go to a second machine press we already warmed up all the muscles in but it's a different angle let's say it's flat now where we gone from incline to flat so we do one set to warm up the 70% the medium one yeah we just do that there's not point to do the first one we do it we warm up same thing we go to failure but this time you're on a machine so it's controlled yeah not like the free weight yeah so you go to this point again to failure I kind help you a little bit and then I might even bring it to the top and you lower it down because we have three phases of strength in an exercise at the pushing we only have two because there's no resistance at the top but let's say there's a resistance at the top the
49:24 lifting of the weight which everyone is thinking about this is the weakest part of the movement okay yeah so even if you failed here ah I can't do anymore yeah but you could lower more because the negative failed you can put more weight to do to do a negative you can yes that's why you should always slow it down when you're doing an exercise M more explosive slow it down more explosive slow it why because we're trying to we're trying to text this part of the movement yeah so you failed here but I can get the weight and lift it to the top okay lower it I'll lift it to the top you lower it so even though you failed positively we can do a couple of extra reps maybe negatives and and I love so we gone past failure now yeah we've done two sets yeah move on now we're going
50:10 to do dumbbell flies same thing one warm-up set one set to failure so you also it's one one so it's not four usually when I go for the chest I I do four four four four sets they wasting a lot of time and energy yeah I lost a lot of time yeah because those warm-up sets are warm-up yeah they're within your capacity if something is within your capacity it will not change you please listen people if you can lift whatever let's say 20 kilos for eight reps you can go to the gym for the rest of your life and do this weight for eight reps and nothing will change yeah nothing will change because why your body wants to keep status quo you know it wants to keep balance it doesn't
50:55 want to build excessive amounts of muscle you got to and after the first year in the gym or the year and a half this is my observation I see people that go to the gym they make some progress for the first year because the body's not used to it yeah so even the training is a bit ineffectual if you've never done a push-up if you do 10 push-ups it will work yeah but pretty soon you're doing 15 and 20 and it's not really working anymore so you got to be always pushing it and always Progressive and um this type of training I do for about six weeks and then I would do maybe two weeks lighter training to like Del load let the nervous system and the joints relax a bit mentally six how would you say six weeks six weeks this is a guideline because you have to listen to your body but six
51:40 weeks of all out training getting one more rep getting stronger going up going up you get to uh kind of reach a plateau you know and then you go back down train Light Within Your Capacity you're resting your nervous system resting your joints a little bit in your mind even so you make for like three times a week for one hour when for the chest for example you you said we've been at this the third exercise you just do one uh to warm up War up and then one out okay and you got to focus you know you got to feel it you got to lift the weight you got to slow it on the way down you know you got to put everything into this set and uh I don't know guys please leave your phones at home or at least in the locker yeah in the locker like you shouldn't be
52:27 looking you should be just here and even for your mind this is beneficial to leave the electronics and you have this hour in the gym which is just you and your body and your focus and it's like a meditation if you're deep into training you forget about everything else you forget about your job your bills your relationship whatever you're just in the workout and this is great for your mind because you need a break from all this uh information all the time these days so I see training there's a kind of meditation as well that you so you're training three times a week what should we do uh chest shoulders triceps take a day off back biceps take a day off wait chest shoulders triceps push chest and shoulders in the same day yeah triceps uh ah chest shoulder triceps
53:17 you do that in the same same day yeah yeah why not you know why uh why not because uh like until now it took so much time to do four four four as I said you're wasting a lot of time and energy I mean I can make you're doing four four4 but the only sets which is really possibly counting is the last set on each exercise right the other ones are in Your Capacity so you're just spinning your wheels body is used to this yeah why you don't need three warm-up sets and if you do incline press and then you do flat press is the same muscles it just changed the direction a little bit so okay do one one one just to get the movement just to get everything and then go it's so cool I I hope I'm going to start to grow again like I like I did in the first year when I let's find out
54:07 let's find out um and one thing I want to address because a lot of people bring this up and it's totally the wrong way around yeah oh yeah that's okay you only train for one hour four times a week because you're on steroids yeah yeah a competitive bodybuilding will be on steroids but steroids what do they do help your recovery ability yeah right so if you're a natural bodybuilder who's not taking steroids and you train hard you cannot train more than three or four times a week you won't recover so what you have is professional bodybuilders take steroids and they train six times a week it's not ideal yeah it's too much but they can recover because of uh the help that they get from the from the steroids to recover but I was like I would rather do the most effective
54:56 training unusual steroids together rather than using the steroids to overcompensate for some ineffective training that's the way I see it and if you're not taking steroids which I don't recommend unless you you know have some ambition to really compete at a good level maybe um you're not going to recover try to do Ronnie Coleman's training see what happens you get smaller because you will not recover from the stress you're breaking down breaking down not building up that's true yeah breaking down breaking down so you can't do that guys if you're training three times a week try this so try it for a month I will try so the first day is chest shoulders triceps yeah and you can see for chest we did seven sets total seven sets yeah we did three sets
55:42 right two and two yeah that's it oh yeah that's it seven okay okay shoulders overhead press two sets Naturals two sets triceps push down two to three sets uh lying extension mhm two sets of course if you write it on a paper it looks like nothing every time I come to the guys and they train with me I said what do we do six seven sets so yeah but if I told you we're going to do six or seven sets and I wrote it on a piece of paper what is this this is nothing yeah looks easy it looks easy but it's the intensity that you have to put into it not the volume if it was the volume I would be in the gym all day I was best professional bodybuilder in the world if
56:30 it required me to be in the gym 10 hours a day I would have been in the 10 hours a day I would eat dog [ __ ] whatever it required I would have done it but it doesn't require bodybuilding is not an endurance sport it's short intense training and overload so I I've did this sets chest shoulders triceps back biceps and legs back and biceps is another workout it's back and B back uh okay and how many said seven seven I would do for back one pullover movement which you try to isolate the lats with so that's your first movement you're probably going to do three sets do a couple of warm-ups and a failure and then um pull Downs with a close grip reverse grip
57:16 to the chest maybe two sets on there uh barbell row mhm two sets cable row two sets Okay and uh biceps two exercises two exercises that's it yeah how many you how many how many exercises you do for coughs I usually skip the the legs day and that's not a joke like I mean yeah it's a joke that's the hardest day that's the most productive day yeah really yeah because you're working the biggest muscles in your body and it has a knock on effect like a dropping a stone in a pool so if you just did Legs squats let's say your arms would also grow a little bit okay because it's like a systemic effect yeah yeah so the stress from training the legs is the most beneficial workout
58:07 you can do of course it's the toughest yeah but the reason I asked you how many exercises you do for calves is because I said two exercises for biceps and you seem to be surprised which is a normal reaction what biceps the most the muscle that everyone shows the most but yeah but what does it do it only has two functions bend the arm and yeah supernate the wrist yeah how many exercises do you need so I see guys they want to do four exercises for biceps but they don't do anything for coughs or they do one or two yeah but you have two muscles here the gastrus and have the cus underneath you have two muscles so you need at least two exercises in order to exercise this muscle right at least two why don't do three or four because it's coughs people don't
58:58 think about it it's this is the muscle that you associate with hey I've got muscle since you're a kid right so yeah people tend to want to do more for biceps but why it's like one of the smallest muscles in the body with a very simple function two exercises if you don't do it forget it you know okay yeah I got well three times a week I can do legs also yeah you do legs once a week you do once a week on the third on the third day I do legs and leg extensions isolation followed by compound movement leg press or squat mhm which one you know uh suits your structure better some people don't feel with a squat they feel it in the back and and things like that and maybe they
59:44 better with a leg press yeah um and then the third one I would do hack squats okay very deep isolated and so three exercises for quads MH um two for hamstrings like a leg curl and maybe a stiff legged deadlifts or rdl's as people call them now uhhuh uh and two for coughs you need one with the leg straight okay to to work the gastonis which is the main calf muscle that we see and underneath this lies the stos mhm and this works best when they're 45° so seated C Raaz is the only one that really hits that properly so you need at least two exercises to hit the whole calf okay and in the legs day I do only the legs yeah yeah and uh what what what would you say about about the apps
1:00:29 I would say if you're lean enough you'll see them if you want to do some exercises fine but I had abs before I started so I'm not I don't I only did a little bit before competition basically if your body Fat's low enough uh your abs are engaged in a lot of this stuff so if you want to do some AB training uh crunches and maybe hanging hanging leg raises on the tun okay uh but mainly it's uh it's it's a matter of having low body fat if you have low body fat I can take a guy on the street who never trained in his life if he has low body fat it will'll see his abdominals MH that's true yeah yeah so it's just a sign of that you're in shape you know I I I never really did that much abdominal training yeah okay so yeah that that's that's kind of achievable but you need you need
1:01:18 a partner yeah to help you ideally you would train with a partner or or a coach yeah yeah because you need somebody there to to spot you and to make sure that you're doing it correctly and like I mean you're doing incline press with the barbell if you're on your own can you go to failure no because you could get stuck with a bar it's a safety thing yeah so if you're on your own I mean you can go to failure safely on a machine yeah that's true so you could use more machines um or you could do um let's say a drop set you know you go as many as you can and then reduce the weight maybe 25% and go again to you could do you could do that um but if you're really focusing and you know and you're slowing down the negative and you go to failure for most people there going to be
1:02:08 enough MH and if you have a training partner there that can really like that's great I always like to train with somebody else and uh I like the energy as well between two people that were pushing each other and we had a similar goals I used train with people when I was bodybuilding that were competitors MH okay yeah I mean amateur competitors I didn't train with another Pro because it was not another Pro where I lived and probably if you're a professional then you have your own you know your own agenda and you don't want to train with another professional as your competitors uh but I trained with guys that competed on the British level MH okay uh what about so we talked about um weightlifting what about cardio do you do any anything for for
1:02:57 that uh I when I was bodybuilding yeah on those days off I would do like half an hour moderate moderate cardio is just really walking fast or walking fast stationary bike stuff like that cuz my idea was like just to do some cardio to get uh you know blood around the system and keep some level of cardio conditioning 30 minutes yeah but I didn't do intense cardio and then when I was getting ready for a competition would do like an hour and a half a day why ah to get rid of to burn body fat like 45 minutes in the morning 45 minutes in the evening that would be fast walking or or a bike just as a calorie burning exercise okay not intense because if you go very intense with the cardio then you can interfere with your recovery from the weights and at the end of the day if
1:03:45 you're doing bodybuilding it's bodybuilding it's not uh insurance training yeah you know you have to be specific with the demands that you put on your body what do you want from it uh if you want to some strength yeah and some cardio and everything yeah cool mix it up probably for the average person that's good but for me it was specialized training it was just the for muscle mass but what what would you recommend for an average person that well I I'll tell you what I do now um so for me my goal with the weight training is really like more or less to maintain the muscle that I have yeah and not irritate the injuries which I have so I don't lift that much weight and I do once a week upper body once a week lower body so I do twice in the gym okay I do twice a week uh interval cardio now this is going to sound like nothing but trust me this is a
1:04:36 hell on Earth yeah how how is that is that I do uh the the most ideal equipment for me is the assault bike you know the one where it has a handle so you're pushing and pulling at the same time yeah and you're doing the legs elal yeah no no it's the air bike it's called um uh I think uh Rogue make One MH they're not even expensive but the thing is why I like to use this is because you're pushing and pulling so you're engaging all the upper body yeah yeah and the lower body and when you go all out on this so I would do a little warm-up couple of minutes on there you know mhm and then I would do a 20 seconds absolute all out crazy burst on there and then I would do a minute easy and then I'll do 20 second bust and then I do a minute easy and a 2 so three
1:05:25 or four intervals it takes you like eight minutes yeah but if you do it properly is like uh it feels like leg day when you're going to do it you're like oh no not that again you know even now I feel a little bit bit nervous if I do that because the time you do that fourth interval in fact most people I I do the first time they can make it to the fourth one and I do three or four intervals okay so the whole thing is like eight minutes yeah and there have been studies on this on the changes in the V2 Max using this or 45 minutes of regular cardio yeah the same okay 458 minutes and 45 minutes I'd rather do eight minutes okay and push the heart rate right at like 160 165 or
1:06:12 something I get up to okay so I do that twice a week yeah yeah and then I do what I'll call two longer sessions yeah so I go mountain biking okay and I go hiking oh cool so bit you know some walking some biking there's beautiful mountains in Spain biking is very popular there because it's beautiful outside you live in Spain now I live in Spain yeah so there's good mountain roads there I can do mountain bikes um so to sum it up I do some resistance training although it's not my priority now because I did it all my life so now it's just to maintain as I get older to maintain the muscle I do high intensity cardio maybe twice a week and I do lower lower intensity maybe twice a week and also do um Lattis or yoga once a week which is more for the flexibility and Mobility yeah what
1:07:04 okay uh pil right now I'm doing Pilates because I have a hip problem and the yoga irritates it and pilates is very controlled with the with the bench the reformer bench yes this is important because uh you can increase the resistance where if you're just doing stretching with your body you just got your body weight but with the reformer bench you got Springs on there so once it get easy you can add the resistance you would you recommend that yeah for I mean I'll tell you my attitude towards it yeah you know I was super hardcore Macho bodybuilder right so I saw Jay Cutler doing Pilates that's gay man what are you doing that for you know like yeah and then later on I'm doing yoga I'm doing Pilates because um you know I'm in a different stage of my life with different requirements so what do I require I require not to be too heavy because as you get older that's not
1:07:54 good right so I brought my body weight down uh and it require muscle mass and strength cardiovascular fitness flexibility and Mobility so I like to take all all the boxes MH would you recommend some Pilates if you could to the Doan Gates 30 30 years ago no definitely I would do it once a week because you're working uh on keeping your range of motion um because you lose range of motion when you lift weights you know because we're only moving this and this we don't you don't turn a lot of things so you get kind of limited and you know you see your bodybuilders walk is like this you're very limited with your range of motion so um I wanted to have uh you know to be able to do
1:08:40 the splits and uh everything like I want to be good in all the areas not MH competitively it's
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