#235: Dorian Yates on High Intensity Training, Injury Prevention, and Building Maximum Muscle

Dorian Yates (@dorian_yates https://twitter.com/dorian_yates/) is a six-time Mr. Olympia who has taken the already extreme sport of bodybuilding to a new level. He's one of my adolescent heroes whose innovations in training (e.g., Occam's protocol http://tim.blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to-freak-how-i-gained-34-lbs-of-muscle-in-4-weeks/comment-page-2/) influenced what I later put into The 4-Hour Body http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/030746363X/theartofchapo-20. In this particular conversation, we dig into all sorts of topics that I've been dying to ask Dorian since I was a teenager. We discuss his relationship to pain, specific workouts, how he warms up, common mistakes and misconceptions, self-talk, his favorite books, and much more. I sincerely hope you enjoy this conversation with Dorian Yates as much as I did! Show notes and links for this episode can be found at www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/podcast. This podcast is brought to you by Soothe.com https://www.soothe.com/, the world's largest on-demand massage service. Because I've been broken so many times, I have body work done at least twice a week -- so I have a high bar for this stuff. I do not accept mediocrity, and I wouldn't expect you to, either. After much personal testing, I can affirm that Soothe delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I was amazed at the quality of service and convenience. Think of it as Uber for massages, available in fifty†cities worldwide. Download the app at Soothe.com https://www.soothe.com/ and use code TITAN20 to get $20 off your first massage. This podcast is also brought to you by WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim, my go-to platform for 24/7-supported, zero downtime blogging, writing online, creating websites -- everything! I love it to bits, and the lead developer, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. Whether for personal use or business, you're in good company with WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim -- used by The New Yorker, Jay Z, FiveThirtyEight, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, and Time, just to name a few. A source at Google told me that WordPress https://WordPress.com/Tim offers "the best out-of-the-box SEO imaginable," which is probably why it runs nearly 30% of the Internet. Go to WordPress.com/Tim https://WordPress.com/Tim to get 15% off your website today!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Tim Ferriss?

  Now, what is the appropriate time?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:23Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. What? And let me tell you, I have a high bar for this stuff. I have bodywork done at least once a week because I've broken my body. I have 30-plus fractures and 100-plus MRIs. I need bodywork, so I have a very, very, very high bar for that. Soothe, which I've tested, I tested, my assistants tested, my employees tested, delivers a hand-selected, licensed, and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel, or office in as little as an hour. I've tested them in San Francisco, I've tested them in Austin, I've tested them all over the place.

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  And I have to say, I was really, really amazed at the quality of therapist. And I do not accept mediocrity at all in this area. The process is super simple. Think of it as Uber for massages, right? You choose the kind of massage you want, say Swedish or sports massage, deep tissue, whatever. Then if you want, you can opt for a couples massage. I imagine that's an edge case, as the tech people say, but whatever. You set the length of your massage. So let's say you want 60 minutes, 90 minutes, two hours. And let's be real, if you want a proper massage, go for 90 or 120 minutes, for God's sake. And you select the gender of your therapist and then click. You're off to the races.

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  And they bring the massage table, sheets, oil, music, so you can unwind no matter where you are. And I have used this at Airbnbs, hotels, et cetera. Soothe is in 50 cities, including most major US cities, as well as London, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver. So, number one, download the app, Soothe, S-O-O-T-H-E, in the iOS App Store or Google Play Store, and then use the code, let me try that again, use the code, Titan20, T-I-T-A-N, two zero, Titan20.

• 2:28Tim Ferriss?

  All caps to get $20 off of your first massage. That's a lot. That's a very good discount, so you should use it. So again, download the app, Soothe, S-O-O-T-H-E, and try out the code TITAN20, all caps, for $20, not percent, $20 off your first massage. And if you're anything like me, I have been paying and I've been enjoying, so give it a shot. Try out Soothe and your muscles, nervous system, and sleep will thank you for it. What the fuck kind of read was that? It was pretty good, that's what I think. Okay, enjoy, bye.

• 3:12Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for blogging, writing online, creating websites, everything. I love WordPress to bits. My site, every site just about that I have, is run on WordPress. And the lead developer of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, has appeared on this podcast many times. The very first episode in particular is amazing. The second, I took a ton of notes on, so you should check it out. But WordPress, where do I even begin? I mean, The New Yorker uses it, Jay-Z, Beyonce, they use it, 538, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, Time. Whether you are looking to create a personal blog, a business site, both, neither, something else,

• 3:57Tim Ferriss?

  you'll make a huge impact when you build your website on wordpress.com. And directly from some friends at Google, I'm not going to quote them by name, but they say that WordPress offers the best out-of-the-box SEO, that's search engine optimization imaginable. So if you're on WordPress, you immediately have a leg up on everybody else on search engines and so forth. In my experience, I'm no medical doctor of search engine optimization, but I will say that I used WordPress for years and fell in love with it to the extent that I became very close friends with Matt and then became an investor. Slash advisor to automatic which runs WordPress.com.

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  That is how much I believe in this and that's how a lot of my most successful products and investments have come about because I'm in love with X and then I seek out X. Nearly 30% of the internet is run on WordPress and that includes everything from the huge sites that I mentioned to neighborhood sites and it is super easy to get started. There's no need to worry about security or upgrades or hosting. They offer 24/7 support and handle all of that, which allows you to focus on creating the highest quality content that you can with the least amount of friction. I don't have to worry about downtime. I don't want to have to worry about getting emergency emails if I'm on vacation or something like that and WordPress is my go-to solution for all of this.

• 5:27Tim Ferriss?

  I trust all of my most important text on the internet to WordPress and they can't buy that with a sponsorship, they can't buy that with anything. I want uptime, uptime, uptime and quality and that is what I have selected after everything that I've looked at. So, check it out. Go to WordPress, that's W-O-R-D-P-R-E-S-S.com. WordPress.com forward slash Tim to receive 15% off of your website today. That's WordPress.com forward slash Tim. Okay, here we go. It's a late night, folks. That's Abu from Aladdin and this is Tim Ferriss.

• 6:08Tim Ferriss?

  Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show where it is my job to, every episode, deconstruct a world-class performer of some type. They could be from chess, they could be from entertainment, sports, business, et cetera. In this episode, we have a very special guest because he is one of my childhood slash adolescent icons, heroes, role models, Dorian Yates. Dorian Yates took the already extremely extreme sport of bodybuilding and took it to a new level. He's a six-time Mr. Olympia and a lot of what he did in terms of innovating and training influenced what I later put into, say, The Four Hour Body in terms of Occam's Protocol

• 6:53Tim Ferriss?

  and many other things. You can say hello to him on Twitter @DorianYates or on the Facebook. He is Facebook.com/DorianYatesDY. And he, along with, I would say, Coach Dan Gable of Iowa, who is coming, I promise you that, had a huge influence on a lot of my thinking and a lot of my physical training. In this particular conversation, we dig into all sorts of topics that I've been dying to ask Dorian since I was 14 or 15 years old. We talk about his relationship to pain. We talk about specific workouts, like his leg workout. How does he warm up? Common mistakes, misconceptions about him. When has he surpassed limits?

• 7:37Tim Ferriss?

  What is his self-talk when he's going for PR, a personal record? We talk about his favorite books. It goes on and on and on, including why he views freedom as not giving a fuck. He is a fascinating guy to speak with, came from nothing, built himself up into a hero in his chosen sport, and has since reinvented and redefined himself in Spain of all places. So, we cover it all, and I sincerely hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. There are many cases when you meet your heroes and they have clay feet. You're disappointed. But in this case, I came away having much more respect for Dorian, and I already had

• 8:22Tim Ferriss?

  a lot, and much more fascination with this character who is truly multifaceted. So, without further ado, please enjoy this conversation with Dorian Yates. Dorian, welcome to the show. Okay, Tim, thanks for having me on. I am so excited to have you on the show, and I would like to start with thanking you on behalf of a young lad. This was probably somewhere between 17 and 20 years ago, who emailed you out of the blue because he had a sports nutrition company, and you got on the phone with him, and you were very, very gracious. Ultimately, he couldn't make it worth your time to become any type of sponsored athlete

• 9:05Tim Ferriss?

  or affiliated with the company, but you really took the time, and it was very memorable, and that person was me. I did not know that.

• 9:16Tim Ferriss?

  And the company was first brain quick and then body quick and then body quick and it moved around and ended up just fine, had taken me on my own journey. But I have followed you and your career from as early as I can really remember gathering a handful of icons in my youth. And we had Dorian Yates and then we had Dan Gable, legendary wrestling coach. And I was very much impacted in terms of how you think and approach training to start with. And there's a lot more to that. But what I was not familiar with at the time, and I'm sure a lot of people listening have no context on, is a bit of your background

• 10:00Tim Ferriss?

  and childhood. Could you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what your childhood was like?

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, initially, I guess it was quite idyllic because I was brought up on a little, what we call in England a small holding. So it's kind of like a very small farm. And we had horses there and dogs and chickens and all kinds of animals and stuff like that. So that was pretty cool. But everything changed when I was 13 and my father died from a heart attack. And then my mom was going to get remarried. We moved to Birmingham, which is second biggest city in UK. So I went from a rural, you know, kind of a more

• 10:45Speaker 03

  rural existence to, you know, my father dying and moving to the city. And when I was 16, I left home. My mom wanted to go live back in the, you know, back in the countryside and so on. And I decided to stay on in the city. So I was 16 years old, no qualifications from school, and nowhere to live, really. I was living at a friend's place and stuff like that. And when I was 18, I got arrested on, it was really just a stupid thing. Me and some friends were drunk and in the wrong place at the wrong time. But anyway, I got

• 11:26Speaker 03

  sent to a detention center when I was 18, which is like a youth jail facility, I guess.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  The idea is to put the, you know, young guys that are getting in trouble, put them in there for a short period of time. And it's very kind of military, they're disciplined, you're marching everywhere, you do a lot of sports. And you like try to learn some kind of skill or, you know, job or something like that while you're in there. Um, in any case, uh, they had weights in there, which I'd done a little bit of previously. And, you know, saw the magazines and everything. And I think I trained for about six months when I was at school. Uh, I was doing karate first and then started doing a bit of weight training. So I had an interest and a little background in there. And, uh, in the facility, they had weights in there and I got, you know, you had to do this.

• 12:16Speaker 03

  I remember the first, one of the first times we were in there in the sports hall, you know, uh, they give us this like circuit training to do. You know, squats, um, pull ups, push ups, all kind of like in a circuit. And you had to go around the circuit three times and do so many reps. And, you know, when you're finished, sit down. So I went around, around that thing three times and, and sat down. And the prison officer was like, you know, thought I was making fun or something. It was like, you gotta go, you gotta go around three times. I'm like, I did go around three times, uh, you know, and, uh, he didn't believe me, so he made me do it again. Um, so I was, uh, stronger than, there was a few hundred guys in there, I was stronger than most of them.

• 12:58Speaker 03

  And had, you know, the best physique and I was good with the weights. And, uh, I, I, you know, at that point, I think I found something that was, you know, stop screwing around. There's something here you can be, you could do something with, I think at that point was, was as far as I went, you know?

• 13:15Tim Ferriss?

  When you left home at sixteen or separated from, or what, separate path from your mother? What was that conversation like? I mean, was there a particular dinner? Did she see it coming? Was it a total surprise?

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Uh, no, um, well, the story is my mother moved to Birmingham, um, after my father died to remarry. Uh, another gentleman and then quite tragically had a heart attack as well within, I think it was in, within two years. So, um, my mom had no reason then to, to stay in the city, I guess. So she wanted to move back and she discussed with me whether I'd want to do that or not. And I said I didn't want to do that, so I just decided to go my own way, you know?

• 14:03Tim Ferriss?

  And so I was watching a documentary about you recently, which was at least co-produced by the person who introduced us, well, introduced us, I should say, the second time, 17 years later, Brian Rose of London Real. And there was the observation that there are very few pics. It's hard to find a picture of you smiling before 1997.

• 14:26Speaker 03

  No, that's something I, you know, I didn't really realize myself, I guess. But I think it was a case of me being so tunnel-visioned in the pursuit of what I was doing. It's almost like, it's not that I wanted to do it, it's I had to do it, you know? And there wasn't much time for fun, you know, really. You know, people used to say to me, why, why don't you smile on stage? Because previous to me, most of the girls, you know, they would pose on stage and smile and try to look happy. And I just couldn't fake it. I mean, by the time I got to a contest, you're totally exhausted and tired and you're dehydrated

• 15:10Speaker 03

  and your body fat's low and you've been on a diet for three months. And for me, it was a competition, it was a war. I was going there to win. So I was not really in a, you know, smiling kind of mood. So I think I brought a new, a whole new kind of persona to the sport that wasn't there before. Not purposely, but just by being myself, I think, but just being genuine.

• 15:32Tim Ferriss?

  Why did you, or how did you get the nickname The Shadow?

• 15:36Speaker 03

  I got the nickname A Shadow from a good friend of mine and probably the most respected writer in bodybuilding. His name's Peter McGough. And it's a funny story because Peter McGough was a reporter for a small British magazine when I did my first competition. And eventually Peter would become the editor of Flex magazine, which is Joe Wheeler's, you know, famous bodybuilding magazine in the States. Anyway, Peter was the one that came up with that nickname because I was kind of the opposite to...

• 16:17Speaker 03

  What bodybuilders generally were at that time, you know, quite extrovert and wanted to bring attention to themselves and I was the opposite. And my policy was to go to a contest, like my first contest turned up and people, you know, never heard of me and they were quite shocked at how good my development was. And then I would, you know, disappear and keep covered up and keep in my gym and, you know, there's no internet, no social media or anything like that. So the only exposure you'd get through was through the magazines. And so I'd go to a contest, win the contest and disappear and just go back to my gym and concentrate on my training. So I was somewhat elusive, I guess, compared to the other characters in the sport. So that's where the name The Shadow came from.

• 17:02Tim Ferriss?

  And what was, what was the gym like where you built your physique when you would vanish and go back across the pond to the UK? Could you describe the gym where you were building your physique?

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, the gym was, well, it's right in the center, city center of Birmingham.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  And the building is probably one of the oldest buildings in the center, you know, very few hundred years old, I guess.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  And it was in the basement of this old building where the gym was. And I think it was something like, including the changing room and everything, it's less than 2,000 square feet, so very small. You go down some narrow stairs into this basement. So it's very much like a dungeon. It reminds me of some of the dungeons I've seen in old castles. I mean, they're always in the, you know, you go down, there's no windows down there. So you kind of get down there, you're totally isolated. And I remember people used to be nervous to, to come through the door and go down the stairs because, you know, it's like the steps into descending into hell or something. You don't know what's down there and you can hear all these weights clanking and smell,

• 18:16Speaker 03

  you know, smell of sweat and hear people grunting and groaning. So people were actually kind of real scared to go down there. Well, it was a good thing it wasn't a commercial venture at that point. Actually, it was my gym and I opened it in the eighties when gyms were far and few between, at least in the UK. So we're doing good business, but in the nineties, it really became my base for training.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  We didn't care too much whether, you know, trying to get the members in and so on. So it's kind of like, if you like it, you can come down and train here and pay your fees. If you don't, we don't really care, you know? So it was not a commercial venture at all.

• 18:58Tim Ferriss?

  So workshop, it comes to mind that a lot of people listening are perhaps not familiar with bodybuilding or have done some training, don't know much about your career. When you were at, say, your peak in terms of training, whenever you felt like it was most dialed in, what did your workout split look like over the span of a week or two weeks? Is there perhaps an example of what that might have looked like?

• 19:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was kind of evolving over the time, but what I settled down to when I was professional, and let's be clear, if you're a professional bodybuilder, then this is your profession, so you can dedicate all your time to doing this. But even having said that, there's a limit to amateurs you can train if you want it to be productive. So I'd split my body into four different workouts. It would be chest and biceps, one workout. Legs would be a separate workout, and I would include hamstrings and calves in there. I really had pretty strong calves from the time I started, so they weren't a priority.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  So other people might want to do things differently, you know? You've got to design everything tailored to the individual. So that was two workouts back to back, then I'd take a day off, and then have a back workout, and the next day after that would be shoulders and triceps, and another day off. So that's a six-day cycle, and that was flexible as well, depending on how I felt. So very often after a leg day, it was so exhausting and so depleting, not just on the legs, but on the whole, you know, your whole system and nervous system and so on. So very often it would be a two-day break after that. So that meant that I was getting around to training everything just once a week, or

• 20:56Speaker 03

  once every six days, seven days, depending on how I was feeling.

• 21:00Tim Ferriss?

  So I've seen footage of people vomiting after your leg workouts, and you mentioned people would be intimidated or afraid when they went down into the dungeon, and it seems like that was particularly... Common with those people you invited to do leg day with you, what, what did your leg day, what might a work, a leg day workout look like?

• 21:21Speaker 03

  Well, you know, if you work, if you write it down on a piece of paper, it doesn't mean much, it doesn't look like much, it's nothing special. So let's, let's, let's say how it would look on a piece of paper. It would be three sets of leg extensions, three sets of leg press and two sets of squats on a hack squat machine or a Smith machine. Earlier in my career, I did do free squats, but I stopped doing them as I felt they weren't that productive and the injury risk was, was too great for me. So that would be quads. And after that would be two sets of leg curls, two sets of step legged deadlifts, two sets of standing calf raises and two sets of seated calf raises. So, hey, that looks like a breeze,

• 22:05Speaker 03

  right? That's not much written down on a piece of paper. But the point is, is what you put into it. It's the intensity that you put into those sets. And even, let me take you through the first exercise, leg extensions. The first set would be quite light and quite easy. So the, the goal there is to get in touch with the muscle, you know, feel the muscle contract and stretch and get the blood in there. So it's warming up. The second set would be more difficult, but not to absolute maximum. And then the third set is the one that I call the working set or the one that really, really counts. Cause the other two,

• 22:47Speaker 03

  they're within your capacity. So they're not going to do anything, quite frankly, apart from warming you up. Because your body has no reasons to change if it's working within its capacity. Well, you know, why would it? You have to overload. You have to give it something that it's not used to, that's, that's going to be a shock. Basically, muscle growth is an adaptation to stress. So you've got to give your muscles more stress than they're accustomed to, otherwise they won't change. Quite basically, that's it. So that last set. You've just got to put everything into it and it's not about throwing weights around and screaming and shouting, it's about concentrating, it's about doing the movement correctly,

• 23:30Speaker 03

  it's about moving the weights slowly and under control, even when it gets absolutely torturously hard and impossible to do those last reps at the end, that's where we have a training partner to come and help you squeeze out those last couple of reps. And when you do go to what's true muscular failure, with a large muscle group like legs and glutes and so on, I mean, it's absolutely exhausting because you use so much oxygen. So after that set, you'll, you know, you'll be breathing like a train, you'll probably start to feel very nauseous and so on. So if you're not, you know, if you're not used to that kind of work, then very often people do vomit, yeah. It's not my goal, it's not

• 24:13Speaker 03

  my goal particularly to get them to do that, but you know, sometimes it's a bit of a shock. But most people don't train with me all the time, so I'm trying to like, part of my job as I see it as a trainer is to take them, to show them where they can go. So which I'm very good at because I can observe people and I know exactly what they can do, where their limit is, and they don't know that yet. So it's like me taking them by the hand and then like taking them out there and like, you know, this is where you've got to be.

• 24:44Tim Ferriss?

  And the third set is to true muscular failure.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  True muscular failure and then, in my opinion, you don't need to do another set on that particular exercise. So we move on to another exercise which for argument's sake could be leg press. Now we're involving the glutes and maybe a little bit around the lower back that we didn't hit on the leg extensions. So we're going to warm up again, one or two sets, depends what you need. And again, then absolute failure, you're going to have one guy either side of the leg press machine. To make sure, you know, you're safe while you go to absolute failure and perhaps they're gonna help you a little bit on the last, uh, last two reps. Um, so it's all about the intensity, probably get through this, um, workout in around forty, forty-five minutes.

• 25:33Speaker 03

  Um, so very intense, uh, to, to stress the muscles, give them something they're not used to, and then the rest of your job as a bodybuilder is really recovering from that stress and repairing your body, you know? You've got to, you've got to recover first and then you can repair and hopefully overcompensate a little bit.

• 25:53Tim Ferriss?

  And if, if we were looking at, say, the leg extension exercise and hypothetically, let's say your, uh, your working set weight is a hundred pounds.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:05Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, how, what is the repetition range or the time or tension range that is your target for failure if you have one? And then if it, if a hundred pounds is your working set, what might your first and second set use?

• 26:18Speaker 03

  Well, absolutely, we've got this all documented because now I am, uh, I have my certification program, D Y H I T, so Dorian Yates High Intensity Training. So we've got this all documented and the guideline would be if your maximum set, so Tim, you, you, you know, you reckon you can do a hundred pounds on the leg extension for, for ten reps, that, that, that'll be your max. So we'd probably start with half of that, like fifty percent, uh, for your first set, nice to light, uh, second set probably seventy percent, so seventy pounds in this case. Um, and then, you know, ready to rock and roll on, on the hundred pounds and you thought you could do ten, but we will probably get like thirteen or fourteen out of you.

• 27:04Speaker 03

  But we'll get you beyond what you thought and then, uh, that's the lesson in itself to say, hey, you know, you can go a little bit more and these are the ones that count. The last one or two reps at the end of the set, that's the magic, that's where the magic happens, you know?

• 27:18Tim Ferriss?

  Definitely.

• 27:18Speaker 03

  And if you, and if you can do a hundred pounds on a leg extension for ten reps last week. If you did that last week, you can do that for the next, the rest of your life, man. And nothing's gonna happen. That I'll guarantee you, and I see it happen all the time.

• 27:35Speaker 03

  People will get some progress first year, maybe 18 miles. But then the body becomes accustomed, becomes smart, you know, we don't want to keep adapting to this stress. So it just, you know, you gotta, you gotta really push it to get results beyond that point.

• 27:50Tim Ferriss?

  And I won't spend this entire time in the weeds, but I'm so curious just to whet people's appetite for the documentation that you mentioned. Between the, say, first light set, the second heavier set, and the third work set, how much rest do you take between those sets? Or how do you, how do you know when you're ready to go to the next?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  I don't like to work with too much with, you know, a stopwatch.

• 28:16Speaker 03

  I kind of observe somebody if I'm training them, or I teach them to observe themselves. And basically, the guideline is you rest in between the sets as long as, as long as you need, so that you will be able to do the following set to muscular failure. So let's say we did, you know, we did a set of leg press and you're breathing like a steam train, and we jump on and try and do another set after 30 seconds. You're gonna fail due to cardiovascular failure, rather than real muscular failure. And on the other hand, if we rest, you know, way too long between the sets, we're gonna

• 29:00Speaker 03

  lose, use, lose some of the intensity of the workout. So it's kind of a balancing thing. You gotta rest long enough so your breathing is somewhat normal, so that you're not gonna run out of gas on your next set. And so it would depend on the size of the muscle groups being trained. If you're doing a squat, leg press, deadlift, exercises like that, multi-joint exercises that are using the largest muscles in your body, there's gonna be a huge oxygen debt if you go to failure. So you're gonna need to rest longer between those sets as opposed to, hey, we're just on a bicep curl, you know. So I think if it's really heavy leg training, it could

• 29:42Speaker 03

  be three or four minutes between the sets easily. Whereas, you know, bicep curl or deltoid raise, it could be a minute or less.

• 29:49Tim Ferriss?

  Got it. And what, there's one back, well, it's not limited to back, but one exercise I would love to talk about, and that's the bent row. So I remember way back in the early 90s, I saw a lot of photographs of you performing bent rows with a palms up supinated grip. And so for, for people listening who may not be able to easily distinguish, I had a lot of trouble remembering supinated and pronated. And so if you want to have, drink soup out of your hand, then you have to turn it up. So if with the palms up.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  There you go. Palms up, supinated, yeah.

• 30:24Tim Ferriss?

  And do you, could you describe how you performed the bent row? It doesn't have to be that variation, but

• 30:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:34Tim Ferriss?

  And or how you teach people to do it? Like, what is the right way to do a bent row in your mind?

• 30:39Speaker 03

  Well, you know, first of all, I should say I'm a, you know, I'm very studious. I like to study things. I studied nutrition right from, you know, from day one. I bought books on nutrition and studied nutrition. I bought, you know, I must have had every book that's been published, every magazine from the early 80s until the day I retired. So I've read everybody else's training articles and books and everything. So gleaned a lot of information from here and there. And the bent over row, I came up with that position, lifting my body up above parallel. The old traditional way to do bent over rows was with the body parallel to the floor, fairly wide grip and pulling the bar into the chest.

• 31:24Speaker 03

  Which is fine if you want to work the upper back, rhomboids and lower trapezius and so on. But the area that I saw that was lacking in most bodybuilders was the middle to low lats. And when that's fully developed and it's thick and you get that Christmas tree separation, it looks really dramatic, you know?

• 31:42Tim Ferriss?

  And just, just to pause there, for people who don't know what that might mean, I was gonna bring this up later, but just Google Dorian Yates' Christmas tree back to see what this looks like.

• 31:53Speaker 03

  Well, you get the Christmas tree kind of shape, the separation between the, where the lats attach and the spina erector. So obviously you've got to be in very lean condition, literally no body fat there. So you can see all the separation, fine separation of those muscles. So what I was trying to do was to thicken my mid and lower lats.

• 32:20Speaker 03

  Naturally, my, my lats are very wide, always had a good back. But I got beaten twice in professional bodybuilding. The first was my debut in the professional ranks. And I was beaten by a guy called Mohammed Ben Aziza in my first show, which was called Knights of Champions in New York, 1990. If anyone wants to go and look, Mohammed Ben Aziza was an incredible bodybuilder. Very short, I think it was only like 5'4" or something like that. But anyway, he beat me and his back was like 3D thickness, you know? And mine wasn't quite there yet. So I got inspired by that. And start working on my lower lats mid back and I realized with the reverse grip, I could really kind of pull the elbows

• 33:05Speaker 03

  further back at the top and squeeze and really contract that, the lower lats.

• 33:12Speaker 03

  So that's why I started working with the reverse grip and between Mohammed Ben Aziza, who beat me in my first contest, and Lee Haney, who beat me in my first Mr. Olympia, where I got second. And Lee Haney again was, had that super like three dimensional thickness on the lower lats. He wasn't quite as lean with the separation, but he had very impressive thickness. So those two guys pushed me to like, you know, further concentrate on that area and thicken up and actually I became really well known for that in the end, probably more than those two guys.

• 33:46Tim Ferriss?

  I would, I mean, certainly based on my Obsessive reading of all the magazines at the time, I think that's that's certainly true. And when you're performing an exercise like that form of row, do you think much about tempo in terms of the speed of lifting? Are there any pauses? How do you think about that?

• 34:06Speaker 03

  Absolutely. Well, first of all, you need to understand the function of the muscle and the exercise and how that's performing the function. You need to kind of get your head inside the muscle. So you feel it stretch, you feel it contract, you almost become like part of the fibers. And I often say bodybuilding is really the opposite of weightlifting or powerlifting, where their job is to get the weight from point A to point B. However, you know, the easiest or best way to do that is, so they use momentum, they use mechanics, you use as many muscle groups to lift the weight. Whereas a bodybuilder is using the

• 34:49Speaker 03

  weight as a tool, so to speak, in order to put maximum stress on the particular muscle group, they're trying to isolate and work. So it's very important to move the weights in a controlled manner and not to create any kind of swing or momentum to move the weights. And the most important thing that people don't realize is that you have different phases of the rep. You have the positive, which is the lifting, which everybody kind of concentrates on. And then you've got the lowering of the weight or the negative phase, which people kind of just tend to rush through. But I think a lot of the muscle damages occurs

• 35:32Speaker 03

  on the negative part of the rep. So, you know, we could argue which one's more important, the positive, the negative. I say, I don't know. So let's do both of them to the absolute maximum, you know? And you're always stronger in the negative phase of an exercise. So unless you're slowing down the negative, unless you're consciously slowing down the negative part of the movement, you're never going to fully tax that part because you might fail on the lifting. You know, say you're doing bench press and you're pushing it up, right? And you can't push anymore in a positive, you know, way of pushing the weight up. But if somebody lifted the weight to the top tier, you could probably lower two or three more because the negative phase of the muscle is not exhausted. So in order

• 36:17Speaker 03

  to get somewhere near exhaustion of the negative phase, you need to slow that down. So I tell people, you know, do the positive quite explosively, but not swinging, and then consciously slow down the negative, although I don't like to, you know, count seconds and so on.

• 36:32Tim Ferriss?

  How did you, how did you connect with Mike Mensah and who is Mike for people who don't know?

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Well, as I said, I did a lot of studying and I think I'm quite a logical thinker. And Mike Mensah was Mr. Universe, professional bodybuilder, and top competitor in Mr. Olympia. And Mike was around and in the magazines when I started reading magazines. And he was, had a kind of unique training system, I guess, called heavy duty. And this was short, relatively compared to how the other guys were training, anyway, short, intense workouts. And Mike would be the first one to say that he got pretty much all his principles

• 37:22Speaker 03

  from a guy called Arthur Jones, who made a line of exercise machines called Nautilus machines way back in the seventies. And Arthur Jones was, I guess, a pretty brilliant guy. And he was a self-made billionaire with no financial interest in the bodybuilding world, really. He just made these Nautilus machines because he felt they were the best way to build muscle and was something he was very interested in. He used to have Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Mensah, Casey V. A. To all these guys go out to his place in Florida to train. Anyway, Arthur was the first guy to say, you know, what's the science behind muscle growth? And to point out that the intensity is really the key factor, intensity and recovery and

• 38:07Speaker 03

  so on. So all the principles.

• 38:11Speaker 03

  Of heavy, high intensity training, weight training. Come originally from Arthur Jones, got refined by Mike Mensah, and Mike Mensah was somebody that I admired very much and, you know. So I guess I took those methods, maybe refined them more over the years. But the guy that deserves the credit for originally pointing out a lot of facts, is the first guy to talk about genetics, you know, about previously to that, you know, it would have been sold a story that, you know, everybody could be Mr. Universe or Mr. Olympia if you train like Arnold and eat like Arnold and so on. Arthur Jones is the first guy to point out scientifically that's, you know, that's not possible.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  People have different genetic abilities to build muscle, just like they have for running and jumping and singing or whatever else it is, you know.

• 39:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right, yeah, I mean, it's, it's the, the raw materials that you begin with, whether it's you have better myostatin inhibition than someone else, or fill in the blank, there's so many variables known and unknown. And for people who have only now heard the name Arthur Jones for the first time, I highly recommend, he's a very colorful character and a good writer also, checking out some of his earlier, his bulletins that he would put out and some of his writing. He had a crocodile farm, he was, he was a very, very odd and eccentric, but smart guy.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  He had, you know, he had gorillas as well. One time, there's a picture of one of the gorillas in the Nautilus pullover machine. I think they had to, must have had to put the gorilla on some heavy sedatives or something to picture in the Nautilus pullover machine, but that's a pretty famous picture. Yeah, he's a colorful guy and obviously a very, very smart guy and a thinker and, you know, I, I read all his stuff, I read Mike Mensah's stuff, and then that was kind of coupled with my own observations in the gym, that if I did.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  More than a certain amount, or if I trained more often, my progress would just come to a halt. And then I would, you know, get run down, get tired, take a week off. And guess what would happen after I had a week off from the gym? I'd go back and boom, I was stronger. Why was that? It was because my body was exhausted and depleted and it wasn't recovered. I took a week off and it recovered and rebuilt itself and I was stronger. So, uh, there was a lesson there. You've got to train, you've got to put stress on the muscles, you've got to break them down, and then you must let your body recover and, you know, that takes time and it takes, uh, good nutrition as well.

• 40:56Tim Ferriss?

  When you, uh, observe people who are attempting, or hear from people who are attempting some form of high intensity training, or some type of, uh, rational, limited volume to failure training, what are the most common mistakes, uh, that you see? Or the most, some of the most common misconceptions, either?

• 41:20Speaker 03

  I, I think the most common misconceptions is, um, that you've got to use a ton of weight.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  You know, if you look at my training videos, Blood and Guts, uh, that we filmed, yes, I'm using what can be considered very heavy weights in there. But I'm using them in the correct way. So if I wanted to lift more weights in those particular exercises, I probably could have done, but I would have to do it in a form that was not, you know, was not putting the maximum on the muscles that I'm trying to train. So, um, the first misconception is that you're going to be throwing around tons of weight. You're going to be using the weight as a tool. That's, uh, I think that's the main mistake that people make. And also because they've read about beyond failure training techniques.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  So for people that are not familiar, if you're lifting a weight and it gets to a point where you're, you're stuck, you can't complete the rep, then that's failure. You can go beyond that point if you've got a training partner there to slightly assist you just to get one or two more reps right at the end of the set. Uh, that's the correct, uh, way to do force reps. Um, but people get carried away with it and then in the gym, they've got too much weight on there and they're doing like one rep correctly and then the training partner's helping them on the second and third rep and that's, you know, uh, that's not going to get you anywhere apart from injured.

• 42:46Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd love to talk a little bit about the mental and self-talk. So in 1990, I want to talk about that loss, but could you place for us in 1990, where were you living? What were you doing when you were not on stage competing?

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Okay, in 1990, I was living with my first wife, or I don't think we were married at that time, we were living together with my son. And we were living in a two-bedroom council estate, Mason, so I don't know, people in the States wouldn't know what a council estate is. I guess it's like, I don't know what you call it in the States, but government housing.

• 43:31Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, affordable housing.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Affordable, government housing, whatever. It's not, not the best place to live, probably. You know, you used to have noisy neighbors, always stuff like this, problems going on. So I was living there. I was making a living from the gym, which I had had for about three years at that point. And there were not a lot of gyms around, so that, you know, I was making okay living from the gym and supporting my wife and child and, you know, the expenses that I incurred in bodybuilding with the diet and the supplements and all that kind of stuff.

• 44:14Speaker 03

  So that's where I was at. And I was the best, you know, I'd won 1988, I'd won the British Championship heavyweight and overall, and that qualified me to be a professional. And I chose the show, Night of the Champions, as it was called at the time, which was kind of a very prestigious show to like try and do a debut at and quite well respected. And if you go in the top five of that show, you could go on to compete in the Mr. Olympia. So it's quite an attractive show to do.

• 44:48Speaker 03

  So at this point, you know, I've been doing this thing for five years now, competing and training and really absolutely putting everything into it and, you know, sacrifice social life, sacrifice friends, time with the family. And, you know, if you've got a family, then that means they're sacrificing as well, so.

• 45:11Speaker 03

  I observed a lot of people around me, a lot of people following this bodybuilding dream, you know, and they weren't getting anywhere and they weren't going to get anywhere because they didn't have what it took, but you know, they were still making all these sacrifices and, you know, damaging relationships and business and money and lots of things, you know, that you're totally focused on this thing. So I said, I don't want to be one of those guys. And I've observed the way things work. If you're going to be a top professional and you're going to make it in the sport of bodybuilding as a professional, then you're pretty much going to make a mark from, you know, from your first contest. You don't, you don't go into a pro contest and get 15th place and then next year win

• 45:55Speaker 03

  Mr. Olympia because it doesn't work like that. So if you've got what it takes, it's going to be apparent.

• 46:01Tim Ferriss?

  You have all of these sacrifices that you're making. You are living in a place with its own problems or challenges, certainly. When you found out that you did not win, and after that, maybe it's the night after or the day after, what was your self-talk like? What were you saying to yourself, if you remember?

• 46:26Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you what the self-talk was before I got there because that's, that's pretty relevant. So I saw everything that was going on around me and I said, right, I'm going to do this. I'm going to take 18 months off after my British Championship win. I'm going to take 18 months off. I'm going to give 100% focus to this contest, absolute everything I've got. And if I don't place in the top five of this contest, then I won't compete again, you know, because I haven't got what it takes, basically. So I'll concentrate on the gym, maybe I'll open another gym, something like that. But as for, you know, being a competitive professional bodybuilder, that would be the end for me

• 47:11Speaker 03

  if I don't place in the top five. So I put myself under a bit of pressure. So in the end, I got second place. But I mean, it was a great lineup and some people in there like Robbie Robinson. I mean, this guy was a hero of mine when I started, you know. Um, and before I went to America, I was pretty much told by everybody that I didn't have much of a chance because I didn't have any name recognition. Uh, I wasn't known by any of the judges or the promoters, had no publicity in the magazines, da, da, da, da, da. And plus you're English and they're going to favor the American athletes and, you know, all this um

• 47:51Speaker 03

  negative stuff, which I didn't really listen to. I just thought if I'm good enough, I'm good enough. That's it. Um, so I made a huge impact to the show. Um, the crowd was very vocal and I was their favorite. Um, and from that showing, I got invited to, to California to go to Gold's Gym and do a photo shoot for the Weeder magazines. And all this stuff. So although I didn't win the contest, um, I probably got more out of it than the guy that did win it.

• 48:22Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 48:23Speaker 03

  Because, because I was brand new and such a different look and a sonar and everything and the crowd was going crazy. Um, so I was not disappointed at all in getting second. It was like a vindication for me. It was like, wow, I am good enough then. Cause I got second in this first pro contest with no publicity, no nothing. And it was a close second as well. And I beat a lot of really good seasoned bodybuilders and professionals. So maybe I do have what it takes.

• 48:53Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, what would you say from, so we're looking at nineteen ninety, was that a similar experience to your first Mr. Olympia competition? Was the self-talk before and after the same or did it change at all?

• 49:06Speaker 03

  Uh, it was different because um, at this point, my confidence was building because um, the following year, ninety-one, when I did my first Mr. Olympia, earlier in the year to, to qualify for the Mr. Olympia, I did the same contest again, Night of Champions.

• 49:23Speaker 03

  And this time won it and you know I was improved from the previous year. The seat was better. I was feeling more confident, more comfortable with being on stage and doing that part of it. So the one hurdle really was that Lee Haney was Mr. Olympia when I started training. And you know, so he's the guy that I've been looking up to all these years, you know, as Mr. Olympia. And now I realize I've got to change my mindset because this is no longer the, you know, the hero, the guy. I gotta go there and try and beat this guy. So if I have this, you know, this approach to it, wow, it's Lee

• 50:06Speaker 03

  Haney, it's Mr. Olympia. And wow, yeah, you know, of course, great respect, but I had to go as a competitor. So I had to say what, you know, now the guy's a competitor. And you know what, he's a man, he's got two arms, two legs, he lifts weights. And I think maybe I can beat him because nobody lifts weight harder than me. So that made me, you know, gives me a lot of confidence going into it. So it didn't happen. But once again, it was a very close second. And it's the first time that anyone got second on their debut event at Mr. Olympia. So there was a couple of firsts there. And I was happy with the placing, you know, some people at contests said, oh, you should have won and

• 50:49Speaker 03

  what have you. But I think at the time, it was a fair result.

• 50:55Tim Ferriss?

  So the, the next question is going to be about 92 to 97. And obviously, feel free to take this off track somewhere else. But I've, I've always in watching videos of you, watching, looking at photographs of you training, wondered about your relationship to pain. So let's say during that 92 to 97, how did you think about pain or relate to it? And I don't know if that's a good question or not, but I've always wanted to ask it.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  I don't know. I think you become accustomed to pain, you know, and make friends with it. And I even look for it. I mean, I was, I was talking to, I was talking to somebody and I was explaining, look, my legs were sore, like can't sit down on the toilet sore.

• 51:44Speaker 03

  For three or four days of every week of my life for like more than ten years.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if I was not hobbling around for a few days of every week in pain, uncomfortable to sit down, uncomfortable to sleep, I wasn't happy, I wasn't doing my job properly. So, you know, um, with me, it almost became like I had no fear. And it became, it made me maybe a little reckless at times and perhaps that's why I got injured going ready for a con. Cause I was doing stuff before contests that probably wasn't necessary, I realize now. Um, and you know, your, your intake of nutrients is less, you're more dehydrated, you're tired. So the injury risk uh gets greater going to a contest.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  And the two serious injuries I had would have been in the last six weeks before a contest. So, um, but you know, I literally used to go and attack the weights and uh, you know, you, you, I felt I was indestructible. You often do when you're young, you know?

• 52:53Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, so I, I had a certainly not to that extreme necessarily, but well, let me just ask. I mean, how much, how much weight in terms of water and dehydration would you lose in the last twenty four to thirty six hours? Or forty eight hours prior to a competition?

• 53:13Speaker 03

  Um, probably not a lot, hopefully. I mean, um, some people used to do extreme things, but because I was very calculated, I'd probably be within uh, within five or six pounds of my contest weight from like a couple of weeks out.

• 53:29Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, that's fantastic.

• 53:30Speaker 03

  So, yeah, and then the last week I would just manipulate um carbohydrates and water and so on to try and get uh a little drier uh between the skin and so on. So you get the separation of the muscles coming out, but I probably lose a couple of pounds the last two days. It wa- it wasn't very drastic, but it, you know, it was the end of. Usually I take 12 weeks to specifically dial in for a contest.

• 53:58Tim Ferriss?

  I was, when I had a number of my most serious injuries and needed reconstructive shoulder surgery and had a number of different tendon and ligament issues, it was always while I was dehydrating for making weight for competitive wrestling. So I wrestled for more than a decade and almost all of the major injuries and chronic injuries and issues that I have now, I can trace back to a period of extreme dehydration.

• 54:27Speaker 03

  Well, that could have been the case with me. I don't know if it was extreme dehydration or a combination of slight dehydration, extremely low body fat, tiredness.

• 54:39Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 54:39Speaker 03

  You know, it could be all a combination of all those factors, but dehydration absolutely is going to increase your risk.

• 54:47Tim Ferriss?

  I want to come back and hopefully I'm not beating a dead horse here, but I think it's really valuable for people to hear, and I'm fascinated by it, the how you utilize self-talk because in this conversation with you, in conversations that I've heard of yours, you seem very good at speaking to yourself well, giving yourself instructions and feedback well. And what brought this to mind was watching footage of you looking at old training journals. And in the journal, not only did you have the specifics of a given workout, but you, there was one line, and I'm not going to be getting this perfectly

• 55:28Tim Ferriss?

  right, but it was something like, "I am ashamed of this workout. From this point on, it's all guns blazing," or something.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Yes. Stop screwing around.

• 55:40Tim Ferriss?

  Could you describe how you used that type of written feedback and so on?

• 55:45Speaker 03

  It's just notes and motivation. And what I would do as well is like, set goals. And whenever I advise people, I tell them this, it's just, instead of saying something, get a pen, get a piece of paper, and write it down. It just makes it 100 times more powerful. You know, I'm gonna do this. I I wanna lose this amount of weight. I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do, you know. But you gotta be realistic. I'm gonna do this in four weeks. I'm gonna lose. No, no, no. I'm gonna lose four pounds in in four weeks. And write it down. And then how are you gonna do that? Write it down. You know, all everything I wrote, everything down.

• 56:29Speaker 03

  So I had a plan and I'd even rehearse. It's funny. It's almost like instinctively. I think some of it is instinct and some of it was studying. Uh, the whole sports psychology, I pretty much got it down uh very quickly, you know? I didn't need anyone to to coach me on it. I kind of found out myself. And plus, you know, reading all the stuff I did and other people. I think Mike Mensah used to advocate keeping a training diary. So I probably picked that up from there. Um, and even before going to workout, I would sit down with the training diary and I'd look at what I did last week. So this is what I did last week. These are all exercises, all the sets, these are all the reps.

• 57:12Speaker 03

  Okay, so this is what I wanna do today. I wanna do, I did two hundred and fifty pounds for six reps last week. I wanna do seven or eight this week. Alright, so I have seven or eight on that bench press. And when I get down on that bench press, the weight's gonna feel like this and I'm gonna bring it down, it's gonna feel like this. And I'm gonna be wearing this shirt. It's like literally used to visualize the whole workout before I even went to the gym. So I know exactly what I was doing and what order and and everything. And that was just dialed in. So I wouldn't even talk to anybody when I went to the gym. You know, I would just do my workout. So you gotta have a plan. You know, if you're just wandering the gym and think, oh, what shall I do today? You're not gonna get anywhere.

• 57:54Tim Ferriss?

  So when you walked in with a plan and let's say you get to a particular exercise where your work set is gonna be a new PR for you, a new personal record.

• 58:03Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:04Tim Ferriss?

  What is going on in your head between either like when you walk in the gym or in the minutes prior to that uh that set?

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Well, it's just really confirming what you're gonna do and, you know, why you're doing it. You gotta, you gotta have motivation, man. You're not gonna put yourself through pain and discomfort unless there's some kind of motivation there. So what's your motivation for doing this and how bad do you want it? And for me, it was like life or death, really. You know, that's, that's how it felt. Anyway, life or death. I gotta do this. I gotta change my life and this is what I gotta do and this is the road I'm gonna take and nothing's gonna stop me. But, you know, that was my personal motivation. You gotta, everyone's gotta find their own. Uh, but you're only gonna push as hard as you're, you're motivated, basically.

• 58:55Tim Ferriss?

  So let's, let's dig into that a little bit because I, uh, so after one of the Mr. Olympias, maybe multiple, you were asked, when are you gonna start training again? And then you would say, uh, very straight face, next week. And it sort of boggled, boggled people's minds because they were like, why don't you take a few months off? And you're like, why don't you take a few months off of sex?

• 59:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, like in other words, if you enjoy it, I like training, so I'm gonna take it, you know? Maybe, maybe it would have been good sometimes, like a couple of weeks off, probably give my joints a rest and so on, but I was a man with, with a mission and, you know, uh, it's hard to like control that fire sometimes.

• 59:35Tim Ferriss?

  When you say life or death, what was feeding that fire? Was there anything else that was, was driving you or was it just a?

• 59:41Speaker 03

  I mean, who knows? Deep psychological reasons, perhaps, uh, who, who knows? Um, I'm sure that, um, because I didn't have an easy childhood and, and, you know, particularly close and loving family and all these kind of things that other people might have. Um, I think if I had a really comfortable upbringing like that, I probably wouldn't be the driven person I was, you know? So I'm sure there's something there in that, in wanting to achieve or wanting to be recognized or something. But, uh, in any case, it, in some ways, it felt like I already, already knew that I was gonna do this or I had to do this.

• 1:00:23Speaker 03

  I don't know if that's easy to understand, but it's yeah, it's almost like I had to, I knew I was gonna do this.

• 1:00:31Tim Ferriss?

  What are certain beliefs that you had then that you think were unhelpful now? If you look back at your competitive career or the period of time after that, after you were sidelined, taken out by injuries, what are beliefs that you had that were unhelpful? Or things that you've really changed your mind about a lot in the last, say, decade or two or since competing?

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  I think what I struggled with, and I think this is very common with athletes that have had tunnel vision, is like, who are you, you know?

• 1:01:14Speaker 03

  Who are you now that that goal has been, is not there or it's been taken away, however you want to put it? With me, it was injury. So all throughout my career, I was very controlled, you know, controlled everything and when I competed and all this kind of stuff. And this I didn't have control of because it was like, you're injured and you can't compete anymore and that's it. So I didn't have control over that.

• 1:01:42Tim Ferriss?

  And these were, this was bicep and tricep?

• 1:01:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was, bicep was the original injury.

• 1:01:48Tim Ferriss?

  Which people can see photographs of. It's basically from your tips of your fingers to your armpit is just black on one arm.

• 1:01:55Speaker 03

  That was six weeks before the contest in 1994. And again, you know, six weeks out, maybe, maybe a little dehydrated, tired, body fat slow, and I was training too heavy for that phase of my training. I was doing 440 pounds, bent over rows. And

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, the bicep popped. Um, so it wasn't indestructible, you know?

• 1:02:26Tim Ferriss?

  And what did you find helpful or unhelpful for finding peace with yourself after losing that singular goal?

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

  I think it takes time, you know, it takes time because you've been doing this one thing for so long and, you know, it's kind of like that's all you know. So it takes some time to readjust and rebalance and, um, come to the realization of like, okay, that's over, but, you know, there's, you can do anything you want, you know, anything you want and you have more time now, you have more freedom to pursue things and interests and that wouldn't be possible before because I was on such a strict regime. So in the end, I came to appreciate that, but it did definitely take time.

• 1:03:19Tim Ferriss?

  You've undergone a transformation. Uh, I think many people would say, or certainly the people who've had close exposure to you, uh, among other things, you know, now practice yoga.

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Tim Ferriss?

  You, instead of wearing only black and gray shirts, you wear white and colored shirts, which oddly enough is something that I've started doing in the last two years. Uh, and you've changed locations, you know, you've, you've made a lot of, of changes to your life in the, in the last, say, five years.

• 1:03:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular experiences or teachers who have helped you to undergo that transformation? Because you seem like a far happier human being or at peace human being, uh, now than certainly in, in anything that I've, uh, seen of you during competition or shortly thereafter?

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think it's a case of constantly adjusting and.

• 1:04:19Speaker 03

  Um, I don't know, at some point I felt, wow, I'm just kind of, you know, doing the same things. Um, maybe I need some more variety, so I just, I started doing some different things and

• 1:04:33Speaker 03

  I was looking at my body, you know, uh, I got quite a few injuries, I got the bicep, the tricep, and the supraspinatus torn on the left side, so, um, me pursuing what I was doing before, you know, trying to push the weights in the gym, was starting to be kind of, in some ways could be detrimental and lead to more injuries. Um, so, um, yeah, I don't know, I, I, uh, I kind of had a message internally that I need to do something different, and I wasn't sure if it was yoga or tai chi or something along those lines, but I started doing yoga and, um, I found it amazing for

• 1:05:13Speaker 03

  the, the physical side, uh, a lot more mobility, I didn't realize, because I always did some stretching when I was training, so quads and hamstrings and, you know, basic stretches, I was pretty good on for, especially for, uh, a bodybuilder, I guess. Um, but a lot of the mobility and twisting and things like that was quite limited. Uh, I remember I was talking to a chiropractor friend of mine and it was like, you know, people didn't used to get back problems, you know, hundreds and hundreds of years ago, uh, because they used to sit so much around the campfire in that squat position, and, you know, they sit like that for hours, uh, and if you can sit like that and you're comfortable, you probably won't have any back problems. So I thought, that's interesting, let me sit in a squat, and it was like, kind of uncomfortable and tight and didn't feel right, you know?

• 1:05:58Speaker 03

  Um, so, yeah, I was, uh, I was led to do the yoga and I enjoyed the physical side of it, the mobility, the stretching, and also the kind of spiritual side as well, and I do meditation, uh, as well as the yoga. And, uh, but I, you know, I still like to push physically, I do cycling over here in Spain, we've got some good, steep hills, so I do cycling up the hills and, you know, people can hear me shouting and screaming at myself going up the hills, uh, so. I still like to push myself. I do some functional training in the gym with ropes and pushing sleds and stuff like that. So, you know, I still love to challenge myself. I'm gonna do it, you know, I'm gonna still go pretty hard. And I'm very interested now

• 1:06:42Speaker 03

  in just keeping cardiovascular fitness, mobility, flexibility, all the things that are relevant to me as I'm getting older. You know, this vehicle that we have, that we live in, this machine, the body, is the only thing you've got to function in this, you know, in this reality. So if it's not working very well, you're not gonna have such a fun time, you know. So, really, that's, you know, my training's all geared to that now, to keep it efficient, same as a diet. And, you know, I honestly feel great, tremendous. I'm fifty-five next month, and I feel great. I feel better than when I was thirty-five.

• 1:07:23Tim Ferriss?

  Well, happy early birthday, number one. And number two, do you remember what your first yoga class was like? Or do you have any notable yoga, early yoga experiences that you could describe?

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  I do, yeah. I have a funny story. So, I got this thing, you know, I wanted to do yoga. But I didn't want to just go to a yoga class, or, I said, you know what, if I concentrate on this, if I think about it enough, the person will come along, kind of thing. So, you know, I put it out there, I want a yoga teacher on it. And I asked around, and through a friend of mine, he said, yeah, I know somebody, and she's good, and think you'll like her. And so, me and Gal, we went along, and the first class with this lady we did. And I thought this yoga stuff, you know, it looks like a piece of cake, right? So you just stand there and do this. And some of the stuff I'm not gonna be able to do, because

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  I'm physically too big, but, you know, it should be all right. And I didn't realize how difficult some of the poses are, and how long you hold them. And, you know, your body's not used to that, it's not accustomed to that. If you're used to just powerful, you know, powerful stuff, it's a different kind. So, I was holding a pose, and like a lunging pose, and my legs just gave way, and I fell on the floor, you know.

• 1:08:46Tim Ferriss?

  So this is like, this is like a warrior pose, one of those.

• 1:08:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, warrior, but yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was like warrior two, I think. And I just, my legs just buckled. I couldn't stand up. I fell on the floor. And the yoga teacher looked at me and wrote, you know, lifted her eyebrows up and kind of went, ah, Dorian, you know, like, that's so easy, is it, you know?

• 1:09:06Speaker 03

  So, you know, it got easier now.

• 1:09:10Tim Ferriss?

  So I think this is actually a good point to ask, that there are many different listener and fan questions that came in. You have a lot of fans in my audience, but one of them is, I think, closely related to what we're talking about. This is from Nicholas Meyer. Knowing what you know now, what do you wish you could change about your training program back when you were competing? If anything, like diet, high intensity training versus volume, anything?

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I've had this question before, so it's something I've pondered on, you know? Right, the only thing that I think would be, well, two things that would be beneficial to me if I could go back and change them would be not training with super intensity to the absolute maximum the last two months before a contest where your calorie intake and so on is restricted and you're doing more cardio and you may be dehydrated and avoid those injuries. That would be great. The other thing is, I don't believe I ever

• 1:10:14Speaker 03

  really presented the best physique I could on stage because I generally looked better, in my opinion, and I can confirm this now by looking at photos and, you know, from a different perspective now because I'm not quite so involved. The best physiques which I present would probably be like two or three weeks before a contest. So I always overdid it a little bit, you know? Dorian Yates would never underdo anything. I was always, always a tendency to overdo and that's the thing that needed to be controlled a little bit, perhaps. So those two things are the only things that I would have changed. But would I change them?

• 1:10:59Speaker 03

  Because those events led me to where I am now. So if we went back in time and stopped me from getting injured, this whole story would be different. Maybe I would have competed longer and maybe that wouldn't be good, who knows? So I don't live with any regrets, you know? So in fact, I probably wouldn't change it.

• 1:11:26Tim Ferriss?

  So if you were though tasked with going back in time and trying to convince younger Dorian to leave a little bit of slack in the system for the weeks leading up to competition to underdo that a little bit because you look back at the photos and you're a better three weeks out, what would you have said to that younger Dorian?

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  Well, I was kind of conscious of that the last couple of years and I was trying not to do it, but still a tendency to overdo it. And, you know, I had good friends who, when I won in Mr. Olympia in 93, and it was probably the most devastating win in the history of the contest, that it was just outright first place and it was a physique, size and condition that had never been seen before. So everyone was saying to me then, well, you know, you've got to stop that crazy heavy training you're doing because there's a risk involved with that, you can't do that forever. And maybe just kind of cruise now and, you know, hold your position and earn your money.

• 1:12:31Speaker 03

  And that probably would be wise advice, but it wasn't exciting for me, you know? I wanted to, I still wanted to try to push the envelope to see how far we could go.

• 1:12:42Tim Ferriss?

  Did you ever have, this is, this came up a number of times from different people and I'm curious as well, what was your plan B if bodybuilding didn't pan out? If you, if you had one?

• 1:12:56Speaker 03

  I didn't have a plan B really. I knew that bodybuilding was gonna do something good for me. And in a very short time, I won the British Championships and got a financial back up because of that. Because I didn't have, you know, two pennies to rub together. I didn't have a car. I didn't have anything. Somebody backed me and financed me with the gym because I was British Champion. So, very quickly, you know, I was already earning a living now from this thing that I love doing. I've got my own gym. I'm doing my own equipment that I chose and everything. I'm making a nice living. So, that was already happening. I think the question was whether I would be a successful professional bodybuilder

• 1:13:41Speaker 03

  or not. If I wasn't, then I probably would have opened some more gyms. And who knows? I was never the guy that was gonna be, you know, working for somebody else or doing nine to five. That was never gonna happen.

• 1:13:56Tim Ferriss?

  So this next question is from Tierney Eaton. And she asks a question that also came up a number of times and comes up a lot. So I'm sure you've heard some variation of this. What is the best way for women to build beautiful lean muscle? Higher reps with lightweights or lower reps with heavyweights? I'm reading books on both, but would love to hear his opinion.

• 1:14:18Speaker 03

  It's exactly the same that would build big muscles on a male. It's absolutely no difference, in my opinion. There's a lot of hype and a lot of marketing around women's training. If women wanna change their appearance, so we say, change their appearance, there's only a couple of ways you can do that. You can build muscle and/or you can lose fat. That's the only way. I mean, you can't change your bone structure. So what makes your shape apart from your bone structures, your muscles and body fat?

• 1:14:56Speaker 03

  So you need high intensity training, rep range, you know, eight to 12 reps in a set. Going to failure and the rest is diet, you know, to make sure you're getting sufficient protein and eating regular small meals and keeping a control on your calories. So it's not too much, but it's enough. So there's a lot involved, but it's, you know, I don't see anything different from a lady training to a guy training. They've got the same muscles in the same places and they respond to stress in the same way.

• 1:15:34Tim Ferriss?

  I'd like to just underscore that because I get this type of question a lot and I don't have an opportunity to answer it publicly or I haven't taken the opportunity much. So a few things, just because I think what you said is so important underscore. There's a lot of sales and marketing to women that is very, I think, insulting frankly, because they use words like toning and lengthening when you can't.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  Son, don't start with the toning, man.

• 1:16:01Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:16:02Speaker 03

  That's my pet hate.

• 1:16:04Tim Ferriss?

  Oh, well.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  What the fuck does that mean?

• 1:16:07Tim Ferriss?

  It doesn't mean anything. And then.

• 1:16:09Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what it means, actually, what a lady means when she says toning. She means that she's going to look leaner and tighter, right? So her tone is going to look, her muscular tone is going to look better. Although it's a nonsense word, I know where you're coming from. And how do you get that look? Easily. Well, not easily, but how do you get it? Is you build your muscle and decrease the body fat. So the ratio of muscle to fat is higher and then you're going to look leaner and you're going to have that look that you call toned. But there's no magic exercise that can do it for you, no magic diet.

• 1:16:51Speaker 03

  It's, you know, consistent weight training in the gym and good diet. And it's not, you know. It's not that much of a difference in a woman's program to a man's program. It's just, you know, if I'm dealing with a client, I just deal with that client on an individual basis. Whether a man or a woman, it doesn't matter to me. I just, you know, I figure everything out depending on the individual.

• 1:17:17Tim Ferriss?

  Right, and also just for for women who might be listening and are concerned about getting too bulky or whatever it might be, number one, I would say you have, and I'm estimating here, but let's just say one tenth to one twentieth the free testosterone of a male. And a lot of men have difficulty adding mass, so you're not going to become, you know, Mrs. Olympia overnight as a surprise. So you can very much notice the changes.

• 1:17:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're not gonna, you're not gonna build muscles by mistake, you know.

• 1:17:47Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:17:48Speaker 03

  It takes a lot of work to to build muscles. But I I know where the lady's coming from. Maybe they start lifting and, you know, first few weeks the jeans get a bit tighter or something like that because you're starting to build muscle. But you, as long as you control your diet, you will be losing the body fat at the same time. So you'll get this this look that you're looking for. It's called less body fat and more muscle.

• 1:18:12Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:12Speaker 03

  And that's what you're looking for. And that's why you're called toned and all these kind of nonsense terms. But that's what it is. So if if a lady wants to change her body, she's got to do weight training. She's got to do resistance training and she's got to be conscious about her diet. And that's it, same as a guy. Is it more difficult for a woman to build muscle and lose body fat? Yes, probably generally speaking, yes, but it's the same process.

• 1:18:39Tim Ferriss?

  Even if you look back at some of the physiques that I think have been iconic female physiques, and I'm not saying they were physique competitors in the modern sense at all, but even Marilyn Monroe actually did resistance training. There are photographs of her doing dumbbell work.

• 1:18:53Speaker 03

  Absolutely. We we had a big black and white poster of Marilyn Monroe in the. Ladies changing room at Temple Gym down in the dungeon. I say it's the ladies changing room, it's just like a little cupboard in the wall really. Anyway, room for one lady to get changed in there. And we had a big black and white of Mallory and Monroe doing bench press with dumbbells.

• 1:19:17Tim Ferriss?

  And you've spent, I mean, you've spent a good amount of time also, just so people have context of time around female competitors and who are testing all these different protocols and regimens right alongside the men. So I don't want them to get the impression that you haven't had a lot of direct experience, both coaching and interacting with.

• 1:19:39Speaker 03

  Absolutely. You know, my wife is a world champion, figure champion and Brazilian champion, South American champion. So, you know, I live with somebody that trains as well.

• 1:19:55Tim Ferriss?

  So we talked a little bit about gender differences or lack of differences in terms of training protocol. Here's a question from, I really prefer personal names, but this is from a Facebook page, I guess. Perfect Body Quest. Okay, fine. That tells you. But in any case, the question is, please ask them about the differences in training and nutrition for enhanced versus natural lifters. And we can define some terms here. And I'd like to actually clarify something because it's just a personal note. And so the first is enhanced. It can go by a number of different terms. Could be using gear, could be using

• 1:20:40Tim Ferriss?

  anabolic, could be using PEDs. There are many different ways to phrase it. But also, this is just something that drives me nuts. So I'm going to point it out for people. If you look at my Wikipedia page right now, there is, at least there has been a line that says something along the lines of, "Tim Ferriss has admitted to using like sustanon 250, HGH, etc. after surgery." And that drives me nuts because it's what they would call on Wikipedia, weasel word. I wrote an entire chapter in my second book about the sort of benefits and risks of.

• 1:21:18Tim Ferriss?

  A very methodical anabolic use, say after reconstructive surgery, which I used after my shoulder was reconstructed. So that's something I just want to clear the air on. I didn't admit it. It makes it sound very shifty. Wrote an entire chap- chapter on it, folks. So, uh, so that all having been said, what are your thoughts on training and nutrition differences for enhanced versus natural lifters?

• 1:21:42Speaker 03

  Well, the thing with anabolic's and, uh, I mean, how they work is they enhance your body's ability to recover from the stress. Um, at some point, your, your body's not going to be able to recover from the amount of stress you're putting on it. And then you're going to reach a plateau. Um, so athletes use, uh, mainly anabolic steroids, which are derivatives of testosterone, male hormone, and, um, also to some degree, growth hormone, um, to recover and repair from the workouts. So if somebody's using, uh, enhancement,

• 1:22:26Speaker 03

  or anabolic steroids, just call it enhancement for argument's sake, if anyone, if someone's using enhancement, they're going to be able to recover, uh, more efficiently, uh, than somebody that's not. And they're going to be able to, they're going to take things to a, a higher plateau,

• 1:22:44Speaker 03

  before again, they plateau, you know? Um, so if you're not using anabolic's, you're not going to be able to train like a lot of the guys you read about in the magazines. They might be training five or six days a week and two hours a day and everything. It's not something I recommend, but, you know, some guys do, some professionals do train that much. Um, if you try to do that, uh, without enhancing your hormone level, um, you know, you're going to get overtrained very quickly and you're not going to get the results you're looking for. So. I mean, whether you're using alibolics or not, the process is this, you go in the gym

• 1:23:25Speaker 03

  and you put stress on the muscles, and then they have to recover. If after they've recovered, there was sufficient stress, then they overcompensate. So you need to allow enough time for that to happen. So I use this analogy at seminars, sometimes very, very simple analogy, but it gets the point across. If I was to take a piece of sandpaper and rub it across the palm of my hand until it's kind of bleeding a bit and damaged, if I was to leave that for a few days, it would heal up and the skin would be, you know, marginally stronger and thicker than it was before because it wants to protect itself from that stress. And that's basically, you know, what happens with muscle growth.

• 1:24:10Speaker 03

  So let's say we take that situation again, I get the sandpaper, rub it across the palm of my hands, it's all red and bloody and, you know, I leave it for a day or two, it's not quite healed yet, it's still a bit red, and I go and do it again. We're not getting anywhere, right? We've just got bloody hands. So it's the same thing with training in the gym. You've got to apply stress and then you've got to recover. If you're using steroids, you'll be able to recover more quickly and train more frequently. So it's all about the recovery. Whether you're using or not, you have to be aware of recovery. So it's going to enhance your ability to recover from that stress and you're going to be able to go further than if you're not using it. That's, you know, very basically how they work.

• 1:24:55Tim Ferriss?

  And I should also say, obviously, I'm not a doctor, don't play one on the internet, but there are, there are potential risks associated with use and abuse of any of these things for people listening. And if you're two months into your training protocol or a year, whatever, and you're not a professional, there are very few circumstances in which I would recommend certainly any cavalier use, but medically supervised use of a lot of these compounds. It's not something to be taken lightly as a decision, but it is a reality of almost every competitive sport that has endurance, power output, oxygen carrying capacity as

• 1:25:36Tim Ferriss?

  primary determinants of placement, whether it's cyclists or sprinters or otherwise. Even in something like the biathlon, people are wouldn't... Potentially use something like beta blockers to calm their nerves so they can take more effective shots after elevating their heart rate. So.

• 1:25:55Speaker 03

  Well, we got a couple of things in England, at least when I was a kid, they used to call sports. I don't know why they're called sports, but you've got one called darts, where the guys throw the darts in the board, right? And the other one, snooker, which is a bit like pool.

• 1:26:12Speaker 03

  And, you know, even these guys, they're using beta blockers and drinking beer to help calm their nerves and enhance their game. You know, if it's competitive, people are gonna do whatever they can to get the edge. And I don't recommend them to anybody. I don't tell people what they should do. I just kind of be frank about my experiences and leave it to other people. But to be honest, if I was not a competitive bodybuilder, I wouldn't, I don't see the point in using steroids and perhaps opening yourself up to potential health risks, which, you know, which are there over the long period. And then you have the other subject of, you

• 1:26:56Speaker 03

  know, using it therapeutically for older guys that their testosterone level's declining. And this causes age-related illnesses and diseases, which can be stemmed by putting your testosterone back to normal, hormone replacement, so to speak, or recovering from surgery and other applications. So, you know, they have uses outside of sports.

• 1:27:28Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, yeah, there are definitely legitimate applications, even in wasting diseases, where you have, say, decreased T-cell count. So, a lot of, there are some HIV-positive patients who will use oxandrolone and things of that type. So, for folks interested, I'd suggest educating yourself. And it's a fascinating subject with, there's some documentaries out there. I think it's Bigger, Faster, Stronger, which was done by Chris Bell, features his brother Mark Bell, who has become a friend. Fascinating documentary, and people can do more homework on their own. So, the next question is from Mohammed Samar Ghulzar. At the peak of your career, were there any days you felt stuck when things weren't moving?

• 1:28:13Tim Ferriss?

  What did you do then?

• 1:28:17Speaker 03

  Well, you know, when you get to the level of top competitive level, Mr. Olympia and so on,

• 1:28:25Speaker 03

  the more developed you get and the higher up you get, the actual changes and the gains are very, very small. You know, if you put, you know, three or four pounds of muscle on over the year, when you're a professional level, it would be considered a pretty good gain. So things really do slow down and you're not going to get the kind of progress you got when you, you know, when you first started out. So it's more of a, you kind of cycle the training, you know. You train hard for five or six weeks and then you back down a little bit, you train lighter and then you go up again. So you're looking for small gains over the course of a year at that point.

• 1:29:10Speaker 03

  So you're not getting the feedback you used to get where, you know, you go in the gym and wow, look at the progress I made since last month or something. It's more or less like maintaining it and trying to improve on certain areas and things like that.

• 1:29:25Tim Ferriss?

  So Dorian, one question that I would love to ask that's maybe related is, if you look back at the period of time between the end of your competitive career and now, what have been one of your darkest periods or dark period for you? And how did you find your way out of it? What were the things that helped?

• 1:29:47Speaker 03

  The darkest period would probably be kind of the couple of years, the first couple of years after I retired.

• 1:30:00Speaker 03

  You know, there was, I was, I didn't even know what was going on. I was waking up at night. I couldn't sleep. I was feeling nervous and I was diagnosed with clinical depression. You know, I just... Being forced retired from this thing I've been doing for so long. And a lot of things kind of came to the surface that maybe because you got such tunnel vision while you're doing it.

• 1:30:29Speaker 03

  I realized there was problems in my marriage that maybe I hadn't really looked at because, you know, you're just in this tunnel and keep going and keep going. So all these kind of things, you may be swept under the carpet, so to speak. They all, you know, they all start popping out.

• 1:30:46Speaker 03

  So, you know, I had been retired from this thing that I was doing, which is, you know, can be quite traumatic for people retiring from their profession in any case. My marriage was breaking up. Somebody very close to me passed away. So all these things like, you know, perfect storm of stress all at the same time for me to deal with.

• 1:31:13Speaker 03

  You know, the one thing that kind of got me through it was going to the gym, although I didn't have that goal of training for a Mr. Olympia, just to go to the gym and train was like a form of meditation for me, where I would forget about the outside world and problems and so on. So, yeah, and even now, I just love to train. I'm not really, I'm not doing weight training as I used to now, but you know, whether I'm riding my bike or swimming or doing yoga or, you know, functional training, whatever it is, I really love to exercise. And I think that, you know, that helped me get through that period. And it took quite a few years before I started, you know, balancing out and maybe, you know,

• 1:31:58Speaker 03

  now it's 20 years since I was competing, you know? And I think, I feel like I'm in a, you know, really good place now, but that's a lot of time, man, 20 years.

• 1:32:08Tim Ferriss?

  What helped you to find meaning in the sense that, I mean, was there just a day when you surprised yourself and you're like, oh, the clouds are not hanging over my head? Or did you sit down and journal or have some type of friend or mentor who helped you to find a direction or a purpose after being a competitor for so long?

• 1:32:31Speaker 03

  I think, I think a lot of people kind of. You know, and a lot of reading and stuff I did, it's kind of, you kind of got to figure it out for yourself. And at one point, I, you know, say, hey, I've been doing this thing for 12, 15 years, and I haven't been able to do this and do that. So let me, you know, go out and party and be crazy and go to nightclubs and let me travel and go here and go on safari and things I couldn't do before. So I started to realize, instead of like looking at what you lost, look at what you gained.

• 1:33:06Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 1:33:07Speaker 03

  You know, I couldn't imagine living that lifestyle that I was living as a professional bodybuilder now, you know, it's, it's, it's just, you know, be way too restrictive now. I couldn't do it, you know. So, yeah, it took me some time to find a balance. But the benefits are, I feel much more a free person now, not, you know, I don't have to eat six times a day. I don't have to, you know, be at the gym at this time, or, you know, I may maintain some discipline on, you know, because that's my nature. But then I've had to learn to sometimes not have discipline, you know, that makes to get balance.

• 1:33:47Tim Ferriss?

  No, it does make sense. And you mentioned books. I'd love to.

• 1:33:52Speaker 03

  I love to read. I mean, that's, I always love to read. And I think that was a huge advantage for me. When I did bodybuilding, I just consumed books on training and nutrition and kind of worked it all out for myself. And that was half of the fun of it, you know. Now guys have got nutritionists and trainers and managers and God knows what else. For me, the whole, this bodybuilding was an individual pursuit, an individual test of character and everything. It was not a team, team sport, you know.

• 1:34:25Tim Ferriss?

  Are there any particular books that you've reread or gifted to other people?

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Well, I'm reading a lot of stuff at the moment. I've, I've read quite a lot of books from, from one guy.

• 1:34:40Speaker 03

  On a spiritual level, which has helped me, so I'll just say his name, his name is Eric Peppin, that's P E P I N. If you guys want to check him out, I think he's a great spiritual teacher and techniques and meditation and things like that I find interesting at the moment, so.

• 1:34:58Tim Ferriss?

  Is there a book of his that you would suggest people start with?

• 1:35:00Speaker 03

  The one to start with would probably be Handbook of the Navigator or Meditation into Eternity, that'd probably be the best one. Either of those two, the meditation book is more, you know, teach you, and Eric Peppin is very much like Arthur Jones or, you know, Bruce Lee, I call him Bruce Lee of spirituality because it's kind of like spirituality slash science. And now, science and spirituality are now pretty much coming together to be the same thing with, you know, quantum physics and stuff like that. So I find his stuff

• 1:35:38Speaker 03

  very logical, you know. So anyway, if people are interested in spiritual side of life, I'd recommend go and read some of his stuff.

• 1:35:49Tim Ferriss?

  So this is gonna seem like a left turn, but I don't think it, I don't think it totally is. So you mentioned to our mutual friend Brian once, and I'm simplifying here, but freedom is not giving a fuck. And maybe I'm misquoting you, but I would love to hear you elaborate on that. And maybe you can give context as well.

• 1:36:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think I was talking to myself at first, you know, because, you know, there's still that thing, you're Mr. Olympia, right? Six times Mr. Olympia, legend in the sport. So I guess you feel like you have to maintain some kind of image or whatever it is, you know. And I thought, you know, am I doing this now? Am I trying to maintain some kind of, you know, am I doing this training, maintaining this level of physique for myself? Or am I doing it for, you know, for other people or other outside forces?

• 1:36:57Speaker 03

  So I think it was a question for myself at first, like, do you, are you gonna live your life or make decisions or in any way be controlled by the opinions of other people or what you perceive to be the other opinions of other people, which might not even be their opinion anyway. In any case, in the end, you've got to live your life the way that you think you should live it at that time and not be controlled. And we all are, you know, we're controlled all the time from the day we're born. We're controlled by our parents' opinion, by the school's opinion, by the government's opinion, by

• 1:37:39Speaker 03

  the media's opinion, and so on. And I want to be free of that. So basically, the greater suspect, I'm gonna do what I need to do, taking care not to hurt anyone else. And that's it. I don't really give a fuck what anyone else thinks about that.

• 1:37:58Tim Ferriss?

  And I've heard you also say that, and there are a few different metaphors, but that that life is like a movie. And I enjoyed hearing you talk about that. I don't know if you could maybe elaborate on that as well, because it seems like it's pretty closely related.

• 1:38:13Speaker 03

  You know, we can go into quantum physics and stuff on this, but I mean, what quantum physicists have discovered is that the reality we live in is not what we think it is. And it's made of computer code, and it's kind of our thoughts interact with this code. So therefore, your thoughts can help create your reality. So, you know, you're on the Truman Show, man. What do you want it to be? You know, what do you want to do? What do you want to play in this movie? You know, create that, that story with your mind, you

• 1:38:57Speaker 03

  know, and take steps to make it happen. And it can happen. So that's what I mean by it being a movie or a video game or something like that, you know?

• 1:39:10Tim Ferriss?

  Being the director in your own movie.

• 1:39:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you're in a holographic movie, man. Check it out.

• 1:39:18Tim Ferriss?

  There's a lot of other subject matter that we could discuss that would definitely veer into that territory very quickly. At some point, we could talk about that.

• 1:39:27Speaker 03

  We just whet people's appetite for next time.

• 1:39:30Tim Ferriss?

  This whets people's appetite. And for people listening or wondering what the hell I'm talking about, you can also look up Johns Hopkins and psychedelic and research in my name, and you'll see a number of things pop up. But the, one of the last questions, just one or two more, is if you had a gigantic billboard, and you could get a message out to millions of people, what might you put on that billboard? Does anything come to mind?

• 1:39:56Speaker 03

  We are one.

• 1:39:57Tim Ferriss?

  We are one.

• 1:39:58Speaker 03

  We are one.

• 1:39:59Tim Ferriss?

  We are one. Well, I think that's it.

• 1:40:02Speaker 03

  We're all part of one thing, man. We're all connected. Just like cells in a human body, they're all separate cells, but they make up the body. So they're part of one thing, right?

• 1:40:14Tim Ferriss?

  We are one. I think that's a good place to wrap up. Dorian, I thank you so much for your time, and...

• 1:40:21Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, man. It's been fun. So, you know, people want me back again, and they want to ask more stuff, let me know where it is, and we'll get chatting, you know?

• 1:40:32Tim Ferriss?

  I will let you know. And I'm sure we'll have plenty of questions. Where can people best find you online, say hello, see what you're up to, learn more about the certification we mentioned?

• 1:40:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's, well, there's various places. Instagram is the Dorian Yates, Facebook, we've got DY Nutrition, a DY Nutrition website, and DY HIT website. So if you search Dorian Yates Nutrition, Dorian Yates High Intensity Training, you know, in various ways you can get in touch with me.

• 1:41:05Tim Ferriss?

  Well, once again, this has been, I feel like, a conversation 20-plus years in the making. So I'm really thrilled to be able to connect via...

• 1:41:15Speaker 03

  And I didn't remember that phone call we did 20 years ago.

• 1:41:19Tim Ferriss?

  It was a long time ago. You've had a lot of phone calls. But the point being that you, at the time, were... The equivalent of, say, reaching out to Bruce Lee from me, and you were very gracious in that phone call, and that stuck with me, really stuck with me, that you made the time, even though it was a polite decline, you were very, very gracious.

• 1:41:41Speaker 03

  So in seeds, man, look what happened to the seed.

• 1:41:45Tim Ferriss?

  Now, here we are. So I want to, number one, thank you for the time, and for everybody listening, you can find links to everything we've talked about, all the books, the certifications, the websites, where you can learn more about Dorian and his Instagram in the show notes for this episode. You can find the show notes for this episode and every other episode at tim.blog/podcast, or just search Tim Ferriss Show and show notes, and it'll pop right up. And that is all. So, everyone listening, I hope you enjoy this as much as I did. And until next time, keep experimenting, be safe, and question your assumptions.

• 1:42:25Tim Ferriss?

  Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered, it could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric, as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends,

• 1:43:08Tim Ferriss?

  for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com, all spelled out, and just drop in your email, and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by WordPress, my go-to platform for blogging, writing online, creating websites, everything. I love WordPress to bits. My site, every site just about that I have, is run on WordPress. And the lead developer of WordPress, Matt Mollinwig, has appeared on this podcast many times.

• 1:43:51Tim Ferriss?

  The very first episode in particular is amazing. The second, I took a ton of notes on, so you should check it out. But WordPress, where do I even begin? I mean, The New Yorker uses it, Jay-Z, Beyonce, they use it, 538, TechCrunch, TED, CNN, Time. Whether you are looking to create a personal blog, a business site, both, neither, something else, you'll make a huge impact when you build your website on wordpress.com. And directly from some friends at Google, I'm not going to quote them by name, but they say that WordPress offers the best out-of-the-box SEO, that's search engine optimization imaginable. So if you're on WordPress, you immediately have a leg up on everybody else

• 1:44:35Tim Ferriss?

  on search engines and so forth. In my experience, I'm no medical doctor of search engine optimization, but I will say that I used WordPress for years and fell in love with it to the extent that I became very close friends with Matt and then became an investor/advisor to Automattic, which runs wordpress.com. That is how much I believe in this, and that's how a lot of my most successful products and investments have come about. Because I'm in love with X, and then I seek out X. Nearly 30% of the internet is run on WordPress. And that includes everything from the huge sites that I mentioned to neighborhood sites. And it is super easy to get started.

• 1:45:19Tim Ferriss?

  There's no need to worry about security, or upgrades, or hosting. They offer 24-hour support and handle all of that, which allows you to focus on creating the highest-quality content you can with the least amount of friction. I don't have to worry about downtime. I don't want to have to worry about getting emergency emails if I'm on vacation. ...or something like that. And WordPress is my go-to solution for all of this. I trust all of my most important text on the internet to WordPress. And they can't buy that with a sponsorship, they can't buy that with anything. I want uptime, uptime, uptime and quality. And that is what I have selected after everything that I've looked at. So check it out.

• 1:46:00Tim Ferriss?

  Go to WordPress, that's W-O-R-D-P-R-E-S-S dot com. WordPress dot com forward slash Tim to receive 15% off of your website today. That's WordPress dot com forward slash Tim. This episode is brought to you by soothe.com, the world's largest on-demand massage service. What? And let me tell you, I have a high bar for this stuff. I have bodywork done at least once a week because I've broken my body. I have 30-plus fractures and 100-plus MRIs. I need bodywork, so I have a very, very, very high bar for that. Soothe, which I've tested, I tested, my assistants tested, my employees tested, delivers

• 1:46:44Tim Ferriss?

  a hand-selected, licensed and experienced massage therapist to you in the comfort of your own home, hotel or office in as little as an hour. I've tested them in San Francisco, I've tested them in Austin, I've tested them all over the place. And I have to say, I was really, really amazed at the quality of therapist. And I do not accept mediocrity at all in this area. The process is super simple. Think of it as Uber for massages, right? You choose the kind of massage you want, say Swedish or sports massage, deep tissue, whatever. Then if you want, you can opt for a couples massage. I imagine that's an edge case, as the tech people say, but whatever. You set the length of your massage.

• 1:47:27Tim Ferriss?

  So let's say you want 16 minutes, 90 minutes, two hours. And let's be real, if you want a proper massage, go for 90 or 120 minutes, for God's sake. And you select the gender of your therapist and then click. You're off to the races. And they bring the massage table, sheets, oil, music. So you can unwind no matter where you are. And I have used this at Airbnbs, hotels, et cetera. Soothe is in 50 cities, including most major US cities, as well as London, Sydney, Melbourne, Toronto, and Vancouver. So, number one, download the app Soothe. S-O-O-T-H-E. In the iOS App Store or Google Play Store and then use the code.

• 1:48:12Tim Ferriss?

  Let me try that again. Use the code TITAN20. T-I-T-A-N two zero. Titan20. All caps. To get $20 off of your first massage. That's a lot. That's a very good discount, so you should use it. So, again, download the app Soothe. S-O-O-T-H-E. And try out the code Titan20. All caps for $20. Not percent, $20 off your first massage. And if you're anything like me, I have been paying and I've been enjoying. So, give it a shot. Try out Soothe and your muscles, nervous system, and sleep will thank you for it.

• 1:48:56Tim Ferriss?

  What the fuck kind of read was that? It was pretty good, that's what I think. Okay, enjoy. Bye.