How To Go Hard, Even When You Don’t Want To - Sam Sulek - #1157

Sam Sulek is a professional bodybuilder and YouTuber. Expect to learn Sam’s thoughts on evidence-based exercises, how Sam is balancing married life with his career ambitions, how to lock in on your diet and exercise for the upcoming Winter, why Sam chose to coach himself instead of hiring coaches, what to do if you’re feeling lost and not where you want to be in life, and much more… Sponsors: Get 10% discount on all Gymshark products at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get 160+ lab tests for just $365 and save an extra $25 at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get up to $50 off the RP Hypertrophy App at https://rpstrength.com/modernwisdom See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠ Get ChatGPT to explore ideas, solve problems, and learn faster at ⁠https://chatgpt.com Timestamps: (00:00) How Sam Keeps Raising the Bar (09:40) Why Mastering the Basics Beats Over-Optimisation (15:05) Is Boy Kibble Better Than It Looks? (20:04) The Art of Managing Your Exposure (23:07) How Has Married Life Changed Sam? (33:42) How to Boss Your Winter Arc (42:04) Why Changing Direction Is a Superpower (48:25) The Best Way to Enter 2027 With Momentum (52:40) How to Escape a Downward Spiral (57:31) The Trailblazers of Bodybuilding Culture (01:05:41) What Has Sam Learnt From Chris Bumstead? (01:16:27) The Benefits of Coaching Yourself (01:24:44) Whose Bodybuilding Advice Would Sam Trust? (01:26:36) Why Sam Is Invested in Peptides (01:36:39) Would Sam Ever Try GLP-1s? (01:40:21) Where to Find Sam Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠ Email: ⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  People of the UK and Ireland, I'm coming to you live. Imagine that, me on stage in your city. Dublin is completely sold out, but everywhere else has got limited tickets left and you can get yours now at chriswilliamson.live. This is a custom-built live show. I absolutely adore it. I've spent over a year working on it. So if you're a fan of everything modern wisdom, come and see me on stage this October around the UK and Ireland. Chris Williamson.live. You have spent a lot of time training physically. I'm interested in how you think about training mentally, how that comes into your development goals.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  Who for? Like for me? Or?

• 0:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 0:34Speaker 01

  Because I mean, I feel like I end up splitting like what, how I'm thinking about training between myself, of course, because I care about my own training. But with all the videos I make, I'm talking kind of to everybody because I want to be able to give reasonable tips, at least from like my own experience. So I'm like half thinking like, okay, what kind of bar do I want? But also like what's semi reasonable for someone else? Because for me, I'm going to say, even when I go out to a steak dinner like last night, okay, this Wellington's probably 50 grams of carbs, probably 20 grams of fat. I can tell it's a little greasy. And however, like super specific about all sorts of stuff, but I'm not going to say like that is the bar for somebody who just started working

• 1:16Speaker 01

  out. Because like you gotta creep your way up to it. So it's like, you know, I always make this sort of analogy where it's not necessarily where you are specifically, right? I mean, we're about to see the Olympia this week. There's gonna be dudes who are, they wouldn't even, they would fill the frame right here. Like you wouldn't, they'd have to adjust the camera.

• 1:36Chris Williamson?

  Quite a lot, yeah.

• 1:38Speaker 01

  And I don't look at that and think, oh my God, I'm so small. All I'm really kind of proud of is like, man, I, every time I see a picture of like younger me, and I'm like, I don't even know if you'd believe it, like where I'm at now. But it's like just gradually raising the bar for yourself, meeting it. But now you gotta raise it again because now you've met it. And it's like normal. So it's, that's probably the biggest thing I think about is like even now, like I've been working out for, it's like eight years pretty much. I'm still thinking like, okay, I want to raise my own bar. Like there's no, there's no end to it either. Like there's no end point where I'm like, okay, now I'm totally perfect and I know everything. And like everything I do is awesome. It's like I'm always just trying to creep up like, what can I do a little better? Like what can

• 2:21Speaker 01

  I do a little bit harder? And like, the more you do that, going harder becomes more normal. And now I feel like I'm kind of spoiled because the dude who's at your gym, who's like the most jacked, just looks insane. He looks like he's going the hardest. He actually has it the easiest because now he is like adapted himself

• 2:39Chris Williamson?

  His baseline.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  to doing that. For him, this is a normal day. If you think he's going crazy hard, it's because you're not used to that level. But it's almost like I wanna, like I've got two sort of approaches. Like I want to bring it super hard, but I also want to like be able to tell myself, I could do this set as hard as possible, just like that, like nothing. Like I want it to be seamless, but still actually really bring it extra hard.

• 3:08Chris Williamson?

  Effortless effort in that way.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's this, I don't remember where I heard it. Someone commented on one of my videos after I said it, but I really like this analogy. It's called practice without striving. So you're going as hard as you can, but you want that going as hard as you can to just be seamless. Like it's just what you do. Like with the gym, I mean, what, how long until you look like you've done something? How long until you look like you lost a bunch of weight? It's like years. Guys will come up to me at a fitness expo and it's like, look at this picture. 200 pound guy, 500 pound picture. And I've been making these videos for so long that he says, your videos got me to start doing this. And it just feels

• 3:54Speaker 01

  like totally crazy for me to even hear that. Because every time someone is like, you know, I've been tracking my calories, I've been doing my cardio. Like I know they actually are thinking about things differently than regular people, which I kind of blame just regular American upbringing. You know, everybody just thinks bread makes you fat and, you know, just eat your vegetables. And like, that's the extent of what a healthy diet is. But it's, um, yeah, there's a lot of just going harder than I've gone before.

• 4:23Chris Williamson?

  I find so many times, it's a fortune, I think, that you have, and I know that I have as well. Whatever like autism adjacent audience I've decided to cultivate, some of the comments and the feedback that I get are, I'm like, I then end up citing that in future. I'm like, that's essay worthy. It happens all the time. And you know, someone just comments on one of your videos and you're like, oh, that's now an idea handle that explains the shit that I thought I came up with better than I could have done. So like, thank you for this. It's like a human centipede, but like you're all attached to each other.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:00Chris Williamson?

  Like just helping each other to sort of feed. On the sort of lowering the baseline or raising the minimum level of bad performance or

• 5:08Speaker 01

  Pretty much.

• 5:09Chris Williamson?

  What my worst day looks like. There's this great line from Floyd Mayweather. I think he's talking about, I think it's actually about his fight with Logan Paul, which makes it way less romantic. But Floyd Mayweather talks about facing an opponent and he says, I don't got to beat you with my A game. I could beat you with my C, D, or E game. And I fucking love that idea that even on my worst day, I'm still better than I need to be to do what I want to get done. And that's obviously in a competitive environment. But similarly, it could be, I can still make progress on a day when I don't want to go in because I've drilled the basics, the muscle activation, the diet. I've got all of the

• 5:51Chris Williamson?

  things sorted, controlled all of the shit that I can, so that when some of the stuff that I usually can control gets out of control, progress is still made and I still move forward.

• 6:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's, I think a lot of people right now are kind of falling for this tutorial-based mindset where they're thinking, okay, what are the steps that I need to do to achieve whatever my goal is? And it's like, the step is a workout and dieting in a certain way and like cardio and whatever. Or it's kind of an always me, guys will be essentially just hyping up very, it's just strange workout movements, like doing a curl in a very weird way where they lean over in a certain, or like climbing into a machine and using it backwards, which I'm not always against. Because sometimes I'll do stuff in the gym where I'm like, um, it's just kind of funky.

• 6:43Chris Williamson?

  Have I seen you do curls with a hamstring machine before? Did I make that up?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  Leg curls on a leg extension.

• 6:49Chris Williamson?

  That's it.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  You stand on it backwards.

• 6:51Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  And it's the same as a leg curl. But that actually works. So it's not like I'm saying you can't change this stuff up.

• 6:57Chris Williamson?

  I mean, I have seen people get into Smith machines from the ground up. That's usually interesting to see. You know what I mean? Like they put a couple of yoga mats underneath them and now they're doing a inverted leg press using the Smith machine.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd categorize that as funky.

• 7:11Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  You've got to, you've got to see some of the stuff. These dudes are like, they're doing a squat variation on a seated cable row.

• 7:22Chris Williamson?

  How?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  They like put a straight bar on their hips and like they then load it from there.

• 7:29Chris Williamson?

  Okay, facing the other way. So facing away from it.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  It depends on the machine. Either way, you wouldn't catch me doing it. But it's this just idea that if I do something this right way specifically, it will work for sure. And they're highlighting this like just, and I mean, that's kind of how we're all raised, right? First grade, you pass your test, second grade. And it's like, you know, is that really that much of an accomplishment? It's kind of just like status quo. But getting into the gym, it's like, if I do this workout right, and if I do 10 reps, that's perfect. Whereas in my head, I'm like, well, there, you could put me in a hotel gym with just 40 pound dumbbells and I could probably get a good workout in for any body part, like even legs. Then during COVID, what I would do is I would take a belt, like for your

• 8:17Speaker 01

  pants, wrap it around a dumbbell onto my ankle, sit on a

• 8:22Chris Williamson?

  Now we're getting funky.

• 8:23Speaker 01

  Well, this is because there's nothing else to do.

• 8:25Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah, yeah.

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Sit on the

• 8:26Chris Williamson?

  This is a survivor gym.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  Sit on a bench and you're doing a leg extension.

• 8:30Chris Williamson?

  Single leg, leg extension with your leather belt.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  On your foot, like things like that. And I just think it's way more important to just, like, this is the most simple thing anybody could ever say, but just go harder. Like a set of straight dumbbell curls, which anybody, everyone in the world would know. If you ask them, how do you build your biceps? They'd say, do a dumbbell curl. They wouldn't say, do a inverted preacher curl triple drop set. They wouldn't say, do self-assisted whatever. They're just gonna say, do a dumbbell curl. So I think there's as much value as there is in like, super specific training and everything. Like if you just go harder, you're probably going to get better results.

• 9:10Chris Williamson?

  So you're, the secret to building muscle is just go harder?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Well, there's more to it.

• 9:15Chris Williamson?

  But

• 9:15Speaker 01

  But

• 9:15Chris Williamson?

  If you were to look at a training principle.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like as a theme, I think that's overarching, way more important than necessarily training right. And I get myself in trouble because by saying that, that sounds like I'm saying, don't train right, just train hard. It's more like, this should be first and this should be second.

• 9:33Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Like they're, they're, they're close to equivalent values, but I'd rather train super hard than super smart is kind of how I would put it.

• 9:40Chris Williamson?

  What do you make of the exercise science sort of optimal structure that's kind of a big

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I'm a little annoyed. Not annoyed, but what kind of like peeves me is the people in these studies are not me. And they're not a lot of other people who want to work out super hard either. I mean, they're based on like the regular dude. And what's the regular guy? Like FDA-based, what, 5, 9, 180 pounds, 2,000 calories per day, 50 grams of protein per day? I mean, no activity, you know, what regular person has like cardio actually in their routine? You know, you're just not normal. These studies aren't, um, it's just not necessarily directly related. So I'm not saying they're not, but you're gonna have more, or you, there's more to gain from just going into the gym and going harder

• 10:32Speaker 01

  than sitting at home, reading a book about training is how I feel about it. But again, that doesn't mean I'm not saying that this information isn't valuable, but there's like intellectual value and there's practical value. You know, intellectually, guys are gonna be very interested to say, oh, well, we just came up with this new, with this new like life asated fat for this protein bar, uh, like, you know, the David bars where they have this thing where it's like, I don't know, I don't know the specifics, but it's like, oh, we have this really crazy specific thing. And like, oh, that's very interesting. And that probably does have benefits of you can eat something that makes you feel more full, but you don't actually break down the calories or whatever, or you just not eat as much.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  And they both result in the same end state. So I think it's, um, you know, guys are gonna look at that and say, oh, well, man, if I just eat thirty David bars every day, I guess I'm gonna get lean. And it's, it's like, no, that's just not even.

• 11:27Chris Williamson?

  Someone has tried that.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's interesting. There's a, a trend online at the moment, which you might have been tracking. And it seems like you're talking about the same thing, but in health and fitness, which is a pushback against over optimization. So it's called grind slop in my world, which is, um, people sort of over obsessing about always trying to optimize each different part of their day, the perfect morning routine, and then the perfect nutrition habits, and then ensuring that sleep and wake time is, is completely dialed and no room for resilience or redundancy that's in there. And it seems to me like that trend of people feeling like everything is homework. Um, I'm overwhelmed with this. This is too much. I'm a bit fatigued and exhausted. I do think that

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  the volume of information people are consuming through social media and AI plus uncertainty about whether I'm gonna have a job in future and whether the geopolitical climate is gonna cause me to, you know, is this country even gonna exist in the next fifty years? Who knows? All of that is just making people feel a bit burdened by things. And it feels a little bit like what you're saying here is, um, learning robust principles that work in a lot of different environments inside of the gym is more useful than trying to just have individual tactics that you snipe each time. In the same way as I try to get enough sleep and if I am tired, I go to bed. Understanding the principles of regularity, duration, it's cold, dark, quiet, stuff like that.

• 12:58Chris Williamson?

  That is a better principle to follow than I will completely obsessively have this the particular routine, because that has fragility baked into the syst- baked into the system. If you break it, then it no longer works. Is that like a fact comparison, do you think?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think it's definitely similar.

• 13:14Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Uh, it's like, oh crap, my, my house is about to burn down. Well, I can't call nine one one. My phone has blue light. I gotta go to sleep. I can't look at blue light right now. I guess I'm boned. Yeah, obviously, that's like a stupid extreme.

• 13:28Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, you know, it would, I got this comment, getting back to like how the comments are a good reflection, where a guy, um, what are this full day of eating? I mean, a big bowl of egg whites and rice, eating, uh, this chicken pot pie casserole my wife made me. It was sweet. Steak, rice cakes, like just what I would consider an effective day of eating for what my goals are. I'm not gonna say it's specifically the best for someone else, but for me, this makes sense. And these are all pretty solid foods. All the protein was what I'd call like S tier, like beef, chicken, some dairy, eggs, fish. That's like S tier protein. A guy comments, well, what about the protein in the rice?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  I'm gonna call that D tier protein. If it's in there, I'm not counting it. It's like, it's, it's very, it might just be one of the amino acid chains, which isn't really gonna do anything for you. Uh, but the comment basically goes like, I can, uh, or what I said in the video was, look, you're not gonna see me make an extra fancy avocado toast with like a perfectly sliced thing and they show you the picture and it looks really nice. Like, that's just for fun, for like an Instagram full day of eating. Like, oh, I eat my avocado toast every morning with, um, my Himalayan salt that I get imported from overseas. Like, that's fun to look at, but like, that's just not even real. And the comment was basically just like, thank you.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  I've seen so many avocado toast videos. Like, I've been working out for twenty years. I wish more people were hyping up just the basics of like, get your protein in, get however many carbs you need, don't eat too many fats, like, you know, kind of things like that.

• 15:05Chris Williamson?

  What's that trend? Is it called boy kibble or like man kibble or something?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, oh, yeah. It's like just the guy bowl.

• 15:15Chris Williamson?

  It's slop. It's eat, eat, eat, eat your slop. It's some form of meat with probably potatoes or rice.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  And sauce.

• 15:23Chris Williamson?

  In a, in a large bowl with some sauce. And if there's vegetables, they're on, they're in a different location. They don't, there it is.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Viral social media.

• 15:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a trend. There it is. So it's this, it's that, it's all of those things. It's just.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  You, you take a carb, a protein, and then some sort of vegetable or sauce. You just mix it all together. And look at that guy in the tank top.

• 15:43Chris Williamson?

  There it is. Down, down one from the cursor on your left. Yeah, there it is. What is boy kibble? All about the viral trip. Boy kibble to girl dinner. Yeah, exactly.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. He definitely knows how much protein and how many carbs and how many fats are in that bowl.

• 15:55Chris Williamson?

  You know what I love? Every man, every gym bro has a favorite bowl in the house. I remember for a good while, I must have had, fuck, at least fifty percent of my life calories for probably about five years from, in one bowl. And I couldn't get it again. It was discontinued in Ikea. I was treating it like a fucking Bitcoin. I'm like, there's a limited supply. I can't, they're non-fungible. I can't, I can't get this bowl back again. But like, the perfect bowl, I think, is an underrated hack. Needs to be high sides.

• 16:28Speaker 01

  You go start this thing without spilling it.

• 16:30Chris Williamson?

  Yep, exactly. Yeah, it needs to be high side. So you can have it for a small meal, big meal. Needs to be microwave safe, because you are gonna, you're gonna reheat or like heat a little. I've heated it in the glass top away, but it needs a little bit more. Just needs another minute. I'll pop it in. But yeah, I think a, a high quality bowl is an underrated life hack for most guys.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I've been, I guess mine must have evolved over time, because if it used to be like a smaller Pyrex. Now, if I'm looking in the cupboard, I'm like, okay, we've got this set of plastic ones, you know, maybe.

• 16:59Chris Williamson?

  No plastic bowls. Come on, Sam.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Hey, sorry. I haven't been using them as much. That's what I'm saying.

• 17:04Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  But it's like, if I want a bowl that's big enough to mix all this stuff in and not spill anything.

• 17:10Chris Williamson?

  Strong salad bowl.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  It's gotta be like a full, maybe two gallon. It's a big salad bowl.

• 17:15Chris Williamson?

  It's like a beach ball that's been cut, that the hot, top half of it's been cut off.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's perfect.

• 17:19Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  Just bring it, bring it wherever you, wherever you're going.

• 17:21Chris Williamson?

  Very, very strong on that. But no, I, I, I know what you mean around, um, like the way that food looks. I'll make one argument, which is any bread, either toasted or untoasted, cut corner to corner, as opposed to side to side, immediately tastes about twenty percent better if you cut it corner to corner. There's something about the aesthetic of that type of bread, I think, which highly improves it. Second thing is Rob Henderson's got this fucking awesome line. He says, uh, working class food tastes better than it looks and upper class food looks better than it tastes. And every bit of boy kibble or gym bro food, if you were to post it online, it's like that, that's slop.

• 18:06Chris Williamson?

  You've posted a bowl of slop on the internet. No one cares about it. But you're like, that will taste better than some perfectly garnished thing that's well presented on a bunch of wood.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think one thing that's kind of underestimated about it too is like, well, there's a different method of enjoyment when you eat a bowl, a bowl of food like that. Because most people, like regular kind of folk, let's say they're not as tapped in with like, they don't count their carbs or whatever. Well, they're looking at food as though this is just a thing for me to enjoy right now. I wanna enjoy this. Why would I eat this bowl of rice and steak?

• 18:37Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  That seems crazy. Whereas for somebody like us, I'm looking at this and I'm like, okay, I get the food enjoyment, because for one, it does not taste bad. You guys are eating with your eyes and I'm still, you know, feel super full after. So like the enjoyment of the food for me is still fine. But also I get this extra enjoyment of nice, this is good for me, for what my goals are. So now I'm enjoying it in two different ways, instead of just a, you know, treat yourself, get some canes or something.

• 19:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. If you're gonna spend an hour in the gym, you might as well look hot and feel comfortable while you're doing it. And honestly, who wants to be in the background of a TikTok is highlight reel, dressed like a chump. Gymshark makes some of the best men's and women's training gear on the planet. And something that I realized a few years ago is that when you actually like what you're wearing in the gym, you show up differently, you train harder, you stay longer and get way more high fives. The hybrid shorts are my go-to. They are the perfect length, super lightweight, easy to wash and dry. And they're sleeveless t-shirts, what I've trained in every day for basically the last decade. They're the ideal fit. They're breathable. They hold their shape perfectly. No more looking like Adam Sandler's, your stylist. Basically, everything they make is unbelievably well designed. You already know about them. They're high quality.

• 19:46Chris Williamson?

  You get thirty days of free returns globally with global shipping and a ten percent discount site wide. So get that ten percent discount by going to the link in the description below or heading to gym.sh slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom ten at checkout. That's gym.sh slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom ten at checkout. You, uh, you jump scared people with your marriage announcement.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Chris Williamson?

  A couple of months ago.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, uh, this is something I get sometimes. I, I get another comment, not to just bring up all the comments. But it was essentially like, you know, Sam, we see you all, like every day for the last like four years. There's so much we still don't know. It's like.

• 20:24Chris Williamson?

  Secret wife. Well, secret fiance.

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 20:27Chris Williamson?

  Turning wife.

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a, that's a long time in the making. But yeah, it's like, I'll, I'll see dudes where it's not as though. I think you're setting yourself up for like failure. But what I think happens is they they make videos. If you make videos about the gym, it's very repetitive. I mean, I've, I don't know if I could even estimate how many chess days have been uploaded. It's in the hundreds.

• 20:51Chris Williamson?

  See if you can chat G P T. How many chess days has Sam Sulek uploaded on his YouTube channel? That'd be hilarious.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  It's probably about two fifty, because there's like twelve hundred videos. And it's usually chess every four days, so a quarter. So at least two fifty of a chess day. And for me, I'm like, well, this is just what I'm doing. This is a thing to build over time, and it's just kind of fun for me to do, so I like it. But some guys, they get very view obsessed, and it's a

• 21:17Chris Williamson?

  Well, over two hundred videos.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 21:21Chris Williamson?

  We didn't need chat G P T, we had Sam G P T here.

• 21:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I already knew the data.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  But I think they, this is just maybe some that's fitness centered. I'm sure it happens to people who post about everything else, too. When it's just them.

• 21:34Chris Williamson?

  They need to spice it up. They start adding different bits of their life in.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  It's a little different, but they're like, well, what can I talk about? Ooh, let's talk about drama, which is usually step one. But then, ooh, let's talk about my own drama. I'm like, why you you guys are crazy. Not like I'm saying I get a bunch of drama I'm hiding. But it's like I've got a, there's like on the camera, Sam. And then my normal day is just like for me. So that's just how I go about it.

• 21:57Chris Williamson?

  Mary Harrington talks about a digital hijab. She says that there's certain parts of her that are for the internet and then there's certain parts of it that are for private. And it is interesting, I I'm really glad that I did the type of content vertical that I have done, which is where it feels like there's still bits of life that are for me. And I can choose to open up about them or not. But you know, as a piece of advice for anybody that's considering pursuing writing or video or, you know, short form aphorism stuff or fuck me like music or whatever.

• 22:32Chris Williamson?

  When you open the door to that part of your life, it's very hard to close it. So I think

• 22:38Chris Williamson?

  levels of personal disclosure should be done very carefully with a lot of thought of. If you bring up this relationship, if it ends in future, people will still be asking you about the relationship. And if you're in a new one, your new missus is going to be mad at the fact that your audience thinks that you're now, and then they're just gonna, having a relationship's hard, having a relationship in public's got to be like infinitely harder. So all of that, like the level of personal disclosure, I think, is is a an interesting one. How, from your side, how has married life changed your conception of of you and the way that you sort of face the world? Has there been like personal philosophy changes now that that that home base is fully, fully like cemented?

• 23:23Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. Yeah, I think so. Maybe, um, I don't want to compare marriage to the gym. It's a little

• 23:31Chris Williamson?

  Go on.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  But what else?

• 23:32Chris Williamson?

  Sam Sulek answer ever, tell me about how marriage is similar to the gym. Go on.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  I know, right? But it's a, so this is just something I've thought forever about guys who've been, because now I've been, you know, I've been making these videos. They've been all kind of blown up for like years at this point. So I see guys who are in my position in different kind of areas. And I'm like, oh, you're thirty five and you're you're like dating around.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  You should be doing cooler stuff than that. Like, I think now probably the biggest flex that I see is when it's like Chris Hemsworth surfing with his kids. I'm like, that is sweet. I like, I got a, I got another question, it's like, Sammy, are you ever gonna have kids? Totally, because like that's, um, when I look at a guy like that or hear what they say. I mean, you'd probably trade any material thing that he's gotten or whatever for that. Like, he knows that that's the most valuable thing he's got.

• 24:25Chris Williamson?

  Look at Sebum. Sebum did trade everything that he'd worked for for his wife and his kids.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Well, it helps that he got everything first as well.

• 24:35Chris Williamson?

  Of course.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  So a little different, but yeah, it's like, there's, um, so again, you got like social media you, or like, oh, you're super cool. And like, you're doing your, uh, your videos and you're going up on stage and whatever. But it's like, you know, you're also you for the rest of your life. There's things that you want to kind of progress in over time. So making like that gym comparison, like, well, what's the difference between like twenty year old you versus thirty year old you? Or like now twenty four to, you know, like thirty, like there's things that, uh, that just take time, you know? Or like when guys are, and this is probably different for younger guys now, where it's, uh, everything's very career focused. Like, ah, well, you know, I don't, I don't have time for kids right now. Like, not that like I'm saying I'm gonna have a kid in like two months or anything. But the logic is like, oh, well, you know, I'm not ready.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  Or, and when I hear that, I'm like, well, when when are you gonna be ready, man? You know, like time's kind of ticking. So I think if you ever get into a situation where you could see, like, okay, there's actually a really long term thing that we can build here and like it's super valuable, like you just love it, like literally. Well, why wouldn't you want to do that? But a lot of guys are very, um, I mean, you tell me what you think, but I think

• 25:44Speaker 01

  anti, maybe not anti, but just like afraid of commitment like that. It's like, oh, I want to keep, I gotta keep my options open.

• 25:52Chris Williamson?

  I ask, uh, the live show that I'm doing, I did one last night. And, um, halfway through the show, I asked the women in the audience, what are the problems that they're hearing from their girlfriends, uh, from when they're dating men? And one of the most common ones is won't commit. And, uh, there's this weird situation that people get into, I think, where like cynicism is a good defense against heartbreak and betrayal. So it's very effective at doing that. But the trouble is that you get so good at it that you accidentally defend yourself from ever falling in love or ever being committed.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:27Chris Williamson?

  And, yeah, look, to, you know, fly the flag for, uh, a generation of of guys who certainly focused on the build first. There is, there is something to be said for working your own shit out and getting yourself set. There is something for that. But the situation I think you're pointing at is if you find the person, feel like, oh, this is my fucking person. This, there's nothing that's missing from this. And still you decide to do the postponed thing because you've got your eyes set on something else. That I think is almost unanimously just a, an error. It's like, what?

• 27:05Chris Williamson?

  Uh,

• 27:07Chris Williamson?

  good career and an unhappy marriage will make you miserable. But a bad career and a happy marriage will mean that you probably don't give a fuck. So like, just weigh those priorities appropriately. Like, and you don't know what you don't know either. If you're someone that's very focused on career, you can't understand how fulfilling having a deeply connected relationship could be. And if it made all of the other things in your life sort of pale into insignificance, even a little bit, or maybe a lot. Well, fuck, like, why wouldn't I do that? It's just a huge performance enhancer. Where you can step on stage at the Olympia, knowing that you've done absolutely everything that you can, really trying your hardest, being proud of what you've done. And whether you win or you lose, you go back to your partner and she still thinks that the sun shines out of every part of you.

• 27:52Chris Williamson?

  Like, that's like, I literally, even if I lose, I win. And I think the same thing is true for women now as well as that, you know, increasingly having to have careers and and pressure on them to be professionally successful and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think the relationship, uh, like competitive, not to talk about relationships as a productivity tool, but the competitive advantage of having someone that's just always in your corner. The rest of the world kind of is, their love is mostly predicated on what you do, not who you are. And being in a relationship with somebody that really cares about you is predicated on who you are and doesn't really give a fuck about what you do, which is pretty great.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's it's hard to, I don't know, it's hard to advertise that, though, because now someone might be thinking like, okay, I need to find this thing. But it's like, it's not necessarily something you find, it just kind of happens. But, uh, what you just said about the idea of like, having everything set before, like looking for a long term relationship. Like, I've been hearing that a bunch, like when I talk to some of my friends about it. It's like, well, you know, once I, once I get this business started, you know, once I sell this thing. I'm like, well, how long is that gonna take? So now you're just delaying what you definitely think is probably the fun part. Which would be like, uh, like I told my one buddy, I'm like, you definitely know that in the future, you're thinking like, however many kids, house, you and her.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Like, that's like

• 29:20Chris Williamson?

  Golden retriever.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, you you definitely are thinking that's where that is at the end, for sure. So what, how are you not acting in a way that would like build towards that now? Because if you fast forward, you would want to think like, that is way more important than any of this other stuff I have. Not to say you don't also want it, but you can just do both at once.

• 29:42Chris Williamson?

  I think you're, uh, an example of unusual self-awareness in that regard. Like, most people, certainly me included, I actually had my head up my own ass until I was about twenty eight, twenty nine. Building the business thing, and this is why I said, sort of speaking for the generation of guys. Fortunately, there are conversations like and examples of people like you or like Chris Bumstead, like Sebum's only what, like thirty two? Something like that, I think. Thirty two, thirty three, so still like pretty young.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  No way, he's thirty.

• 30:15Chris Williamson?

  Everything he's fucking done.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:18Chris Williamson?

  That fifteen years ago, when I'd just left university after doing two degrees, the internet wasn't talking about that, like YouTube was.

• 30:29Chris Williamson?

  PewDiePie videos, and maybe not even that, right? It was bullshit. Like, there wasn't any personal development in the same way that was made to be applicable and really curated for the stage of life that you're in. You know, like, personal development books were like Tony Robbins, unleash the power within, which is great, but it's like broad ranging and a little nebulous compared with this is a specific message for you at your stage of life. And then, yeah, you kind of, I think it's less so that people are choosing to do something else. It's that there's lots to do and they're not thinking about where do I want to be in future. But you're right to bring up, hey, if you know that you're gonna get there, why not get there a little earlier? Or why not think about the end destination when you're starting off on the journey?

• 31:14Chris Williamson?

  I certainly think that, you know, that is, for the guys that can, I mean, fucking Kevin, social media guy, when did you get married? Twenty twenty-three? Twenty-two?

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Twenty-two.

• 31:26Chris Williamson?

  Twenty-two. Then his Sunday is church, Costco and coffee. I mean, like, I mean, you are the twenty-two going on fifty-two. It's kind of crazy. But it's brilliant. Talk to me, so what? Married, but also still obsessed with the gym. What does a wife have to tolerate if you're married to a bodybuilder?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. So the preps were definitely the trickiest part. Because honestly, for me now, with like, regular, go to the gym, eat in a normal way, like, my normal, so however different that is from like, real normal. It's kind of seamless. Like, that's all the stuff I just do on my own, like, normal. Like, it's not, um, I don't necessarily need to be catered to or anything. It's like, alright, I'm gonna go to the gym right now, and then we'll come back, we'll do this later. And like, it's not in your face or whatever, because I've been doing that the whole time. But like, the actual show preps, uh, now, it almost makes me, like, this is an angle where it makes me like resent the bodybuilding shows. Not that that's the most I think about it, but just that percentage. Because it's like, you just wanna do nothing. You do your workout, all you're thinking about is like, this show, this day.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  And the ones that I did were in the winter, coming into March. So it's the full winter period of time, and I'm just like, I'm not stewing, but a lot of time where would normally be much more casual was kind of just me like, alright, get an hour cardio in twenty minutes. Just whatever. And it's, uh, you know, we, so I'll look back at pictures during some of the preps. I'm like, man, I don't even remember this day. Because I was thinking about this, this show and this like, competition and everything, because I'm putting so much stuff into it. And it's, uh, so that could be a little, because it's just, you end up drawing back a little bit, which is kind of like, not so much in the second prep, because you learn it from the first one. But when we're, when those were both done, it was like, okay, yeah, now we can get back to totally regular chill.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  And, uh, but in the scheme of things, you know, I think I handled it pretty well. Like, even just with the regular bodybuilding and stuff, like, you know, I don't think I'm walking around, apart from like, the size, just like, advertising to everybody like, oh, man, I'm bodybuilder only. Which might sound funny for me to say, because I guess that kind of is the perception. But at least in my head, I don't feel like that.

• 33:39Chris Williamson?

  You've got too many cats to be bodybuilder on.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:41Chris Williamson?

  So you, you rarely seem dependent on perfect conditions. How should people get better at that? Especially going into winter, which removes a lot of the external motivation?

• 33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's, um, well, you would know this, there's a little physiological angle. You got no vitamin D, because you're not getting out in the sun, however much that is really affecting people. But I think more so, you know, it's just, it's colder, I'm not going out and having as much fun, you know? Because in the wintertime, the only stuff you really do, activity wise, would just be usually in your house, or like, you're going to a club or something. And like, who actually is going to clubs for real? Like, who really goes to their, what, a badminton club or something? I'm not saying that wouldn't, like, I'm saying that would be cool, but who's actually going out and doing it and making sure that they're still maintaining like, this certain amount of, like, fun activity in the winter? It's, you just kind of end up getting a little more seclusive.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  But it's, um, for me at least, uh, this is kind of how, I think it's more important to have this wiring in your head of like, okay, the harder I go, the more progress I'll make. Because if I'm wired like that, well, then if I wake up and, you know, maybe I'm not feeling as good or as like motivated to get after it, you know, I mean, for a while I was doing, I'd wake up, instantly sit in the bike for an hour, come back, go work out a couple hours later, come back, go do the bike again for an hour, come back. Like, it's very much just the same stuff over and over again, yeah. And it's like, where's the, where's the fun? Or at least for a bodybuilding show, the fun part is at the end. So it's like, you're doing a lot of extra work with basically no fun until that later portion.

• 35:17Speaker 01

  And it's, um, you know, you could either look at that and think, oh my God, this freaking sucks. Or you could, in my head, I like to imagine like, maybe the fictional version of Sam, where this version is like, oh, man, some, it's extra hard today? Alright, sweet. Good. Do it even harder than before.

• 35:36Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever heard Tyson being asked about why he gets up at four AM to go for a run?

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Because everybody's still sleeping.

• 35:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Can you find that, Mark? This is like, the best winter arc justification ever. And look, I, I did five years of pretty aggressive monk mode. A thousand days sober, five hundred days without caffeine. They, they weren't crossed over, that would have been fucking miserable. They were two separate things, experiments. And this really elaborate morning routine where I was like, doing stretching and going for a walk and romwad and fucking meditation and breathwork and journaling and all of this stuff, like this unnecessary cathedral of things, largely. But it was me trying to work out who the fuck I am, and like, locking in.

• 36:23Chris Williamson?

  And it wasn't for five years completely, but it was a good chunk of it. And that took me from twenty-seven, twenty-eight to like, thirty-two, thirty-three. And then I moved to America at thirty-four. And the amount of progress that I made there, yeah, I sacrificed a lot of things. I wasn't going out as much. But then I'd spent a decade going out two nights a week and partying until three in the morning for, you know, a good bit of it, running nightclubs and doing all the social thing. I'm like, huh.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And you're ahead from that time.

• 36:54Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  So you had this delayed gratification.

• 36:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And then I'm now like, okay, I need to lock in and do the me thing. So I think the, the winter arc for guys and for girls, although I don't want to mansplain, can, uh, can be a really good tool. If you have a period that you're facing that you know is going to be dark and difficult, just deciding, okay, this is going to be tough, and I have the choice to either lock the fuck in or complain about it. I'll take the locking the fuck in, thank you.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm always thinking, okay, what would me, three months, want me to do right now?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Are you out running four thirty, five o'clock in the morning and not later in the day? Or why do fighters do that?

• 37:40Speaker 03

  Because I don't want to do it. You know, I mean, if the discipline is to do things that you don't want to do. I think I might get a four and run. Sometimes I get up and run, I see guys, and I like to hang out. I see people in the car, they party, it's came from partying, hanging out. Guys are having fun, I'm running.

• 37:55Chris Williamson?

  I think that might be Cam Haynes. I'm not sure who that is. That's a very white Mike Tyson, if that was the dude that was running. But I think that might be Cam Haynes.

• 38:02Speaker 01

  That was somebody else.

• 38:03Speaker 04

  We got, we got Tyson at the end.

• 38:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, cool, cool, cool.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was in there.

• 38:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it is.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  But it's like, what would you in a year want you to do right now?

• 38:11Chris Williamson?

  I love that question.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  Wish I would have locked in. I like, and I feel like, nobody thinks like that, because every time you're kind of retrospecting and you're like, it ends up, guys just love putting themselves down. This is, um, and I'm not upset when I hear people talk like this, because it's not necessarily your fault. If you're in this slump of like, everything sucks, some of it might have been my fault, some of it is just kind of, you know, life, you don't, you never know what might happen. Sometimes you just get dealt a totally shit hand. But it's like, to just crumble into yourself and be, you know, ah, everything sucks, what's the point? Oh, you know, and then you just never get after it.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  And when I hear that, I'm like, well, you know, if, if, what would you in a year have wanted you to do? Because I, uh, I went on a big kind of rant about this, where when you're really freaking out, anxious about something, and maybe you're, some things really deserve real anxiousness, but some things you over freak out about. So when you're really tweaking, you don't actually know, because you're in it, you're not looking at it from like, a third person perspective. But it's like, you know, even if I was going through something like that, or I'm in this like, what might even feel like a pit of like, I got no hype, I'm not excited about whatever I'm doing, it's like, what's the point? I don't even see it.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  I'm like, well, if in three months, you somehow get out of your funk, which normally sometimes will just happen, it's just a time thing, well, now, you are three months into the future, three months, you could say wasted towards whatever your certain goal may have been.

• 39:51Speaker 01

  The veil's been lifted, you're back to your normal kind of like thought process. You're like, holy crap, gained fifty pounds? Yep. Well, now you're really screwed. So getting back to what I was saying before about being able to bring it, but have that be like just your normal state of being. Well, even if you do go through a funk, like something really rough, you know, I can even tell you, this is like up to, up to the listener to know what your funk is. If by the time you get out of it, you still kept up your normal routine of things, maybe it wasn't at like a hundred percent, but you were still going through your motions. You're gonna feel way better about it. But even me saying that, I could see how there's no kind of energy to want to do that because I just said, go through the motions.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Nobody, people would rather do nothing than going through the motions. Like they only want to do it when you're extra motivated to do it.

• 40:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, people believe that motivation is an unnecessary precursor to doing the thing. It's this optimal mental state where you feel like you want to do it, or it's good to do it, or it's easy to do it or something. But feeling motivated is an unnecessary middle step between where you are and doing the thing. You can just do it anyway. You can do it without the motivation. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You train regularly, you eat reasonably well, you feel fine, but you're just kind of going off vibes. Most people have absolutely no idea what's going on inside their body. And that is why I partnered with Function. Function gives you access to more than a hundred and sixty advanced lab tests spanning hormones, heart health, kidney function,

• 41:24Chris Williamson?

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• 42:08Chris Williamson?

  I was talking about emotional redundancy, but the same thing is true with resilience generally. Engineers build systems with spare capacity because systems operating permanently at one hundred percent are fragile. Bridges aren't engineered to withstand precisely the weight that they carry on an average Tuesday. They're built with a safety margin and you probably want the psychological equivalent. If your emotional life requires ninety-five percent of your available capacity merely to remain operational, anything unexpected becomes catastrophic. And that's the same as we're talking about here, that if your baseline capacity is way more than you need to operate, that's redundancy in the system. I've done, when things are good, I've pushed myself really hard so that when things are bad,

• 42:51Chris Williamson?

  I have so much momentum and so many good habits. And I, look, I'm speaking from personal experience because I've been kicked in the nuts a lot over the last couple of years from a routine perspective, like an energy perspective. And you can see why, there's this idea called the Matthew principle. It's from the Bible and it says, to those who have nothing more will be taken, to those who have everything more will be given. And it kind of explains why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Good habits compound, but so do bad habits. Some stuff spirals up, some stuff spirals down. That's why people end up being bankrupt and addicted to drugs and out on the street and with no relationship to their family. And other people end up being smart and in shape and with a great partner and having, both of these things can occur in that way.

• 43:35Chris Williamson?

  And sure, the external environment's going to throw insults at you a lot. But the core driving force, the core momentum is largely your sense of hope and agency over what you're going to be able to do. And, uh, yeah, the ability to go like, to wake up one morning and just say, okay, that's enough of that. I'm going to go in a different direction is kind of a superpower. And I wish I could, I know, bestow it onto someone that feels like that's not something that's accessible to them.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Right. I, uh, I guess I never, I never say the downward spiral of the gym as much. In the core, I'm going to say, I, I, I've probably said this twenty times by now. I'm talking about this upward spiral where, okay, work out really hard. When you first start working out, you don't even notice till like, what, maybe two months in? But like if you, let's say you're a high school dude, you start working out one year, you visit your grandma again the next year. She will notice and like, that's super validating to see that.

• 44:33Chris Williamson?

  There is no compliment more validating than the grandma compliment. You're right.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But, uh, but just anything like that. But so once you're in a groove of like, you're making steady progress. Well, how I look at it, getting back in like the mental wiring thing is like, okay, I go really hard. I come home, I eat more food because I'm maybe hungrier from going hard because I actually trained hard. I'm going to sleep better because I trained hard and now I'm tired. I'm probably thirstier, so I'm going to drink more water. And then I'm going to wake up and because I was hungry and thirsty and sleepy, I drank, ate and slept well. I'll be able to train hard again the next day. And then over time, that just keeps moving forward. And once you start actually seeing yourself a little bigger, like at least in like a size gaining phase. Well, now you got this extra angle of motivation, like holy shit, what I'm doing is working.

• 45:18Chris Williamson?

  Even the pump, like chasing.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, chasing the pump, you're slightly bigger.

• 45:23Chris Williamson?

  In the gym and you're like, dude, if I keep going in four months, I look like I do pumped, flat. And then, but then when I get there, what I look like pumped will be in another four months, what I look like flat. And then you're just permanently chasing. It would be like if, if learning a language, like if learning Italian meant that during your Italian lesson, you were somehow four months better at Italian. But that's not the way that it works. It's one of the reasons I think that the gym is particularly addicting. And that's a good thing because it's something that's good to, to get stuck into. One of the reasons that the gym is so addicting is that you get a preview of where you will be if you keep going during the process.

• 46:01Chris Williamson?

  As opposed to learning fucking Italian, which is just being frustrated in the moment and then finally getting there in a few months' time.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, there's a lot more positive feedback with the gym.

• 46:11Chris Williamson?

  Bingo.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  But it's, uh, but yeah, the downward spiral is just as bad. Uh, well, I skipped three days this week. Well, you know what? Screw it. Rest week.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  Do I want to cook a bunch of ground beef right now and do a little meal prep and make some rice or something? Or do I just want to get some in and out?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  All right, I should probably go to bed. I gotta wake up tomorrow morning at six. You know what? Screw it. I'll skip that class. I'll just stay up on Discord playing games. Now you're sleeping terrible, you're bloated because you've been eating trash. You're not working out, so now your base metabolism is going down because you're not stressing out your system. You're just starting to pack on additional body fat, which all four of those, or all three or four of those things you know are negative. But each one probably feeds into that next negative step. Here this like, I'm already in this bed. Okay. You know what? Give me some chips or something. And it's like, all you'd have to do is change it to what you said, like, okay, I just gotta change it. I'm just going to wake up today and totally flip all my habits. But that's not something I can tell you how to do.

• 47:12Speaker 01

  That's where all my motivational speeches end. I go, I can't tell you any more than that. I can tell you what I do and how I feel about what I do and how far I've come or how far I've, how far I've gone. But I can't actually tell you how to do it because you're you and I'm me.

• 47:27Chris Williamson?

  There's an interesting insight here. So we're what, toward the end of September? Three months before the end of the year, so three months until January first, which is when most people want to hit the ground running. They don't want to try and reverse direction on January first because that means that it's going to be very hard to do. I went out to Thailand ten years ago and I wanted to go to a bunch of different Thai boxing gyms and I wanted to learn to fight. So I spent nine months before I went to Thailand doing Thai boxing classes. Because what I thought was, hey, if I've learned a lot of the basics, when I get out there, I'll get to learn really cool stuff, like more advanced techniques, or at the very least, I'm not just going to spend my trip around Thailand, learning to throw a jab properly. So I spent a good bit of time drilling the basics.

• 48:12Chris Williamson?

  And then when I got out there, sure enough, I was able to actually really tap into some of the expertise. So I sort of used the momentum in advance to carry me into this period that would be an extra boost when I got there. So given that we're three months away from the end of the year now, if someone wants to enter January with as much momentum as possible, what do you think they should start doing now?

• 48:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think they should just start a, well, I guess you'd say, or at least what you did was you did your homework first. So if you're thinking, I mean, every January that shows up, and now I've been through, I think this will be the ninth one. Obviously for the first one, that was a year into the gym for me, so I'm still the beginner. But at this point, depending on how much of a regular you are at a gym, you know who the real regulars are and who the guys who just showed up today are. And I'm not dogging to them for showing up, but it's like, you know, the, uh, you know, that little marble toy where you flip it upside down and it always ends up in the same distribution, like no matter what. Like, look, I'm glad you're here, but I know a bunch of you guys are just going to flake out and be done.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I mean, if you could just start easing into it, which is not a cool thing to say. What's cool about the gym is, you know, bring it, just go totally nuts. But in reality, it's like, well, you should probably just ease into it. When I'm talking to guys, uh, or just, you know, getting into like what you should do when you start working out. Like what's your level at right now? Are you at zero gym days per week? Well, guess what? One is more than zero. And one, after you've actually done it, it's not that bad. And so now two is probably a little bit easier, three, or even just getting a membership in general. I think a lot of these guys, they might even fail the launch in that sense. Because it's like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go in at six and get my membership.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Well, you're setting yourself up for failure, man. Why didn't you get it before? Why didn't you do all the, just do a little bit before? But yeah, just easing into it. Because that whole, you know, if right now my bar is like, well, I want to get to the point where I can just go a hundred percent all the time without fail and like, you know, I know I didn't just give up on that rep because it was hard. Well, that's just my bar where I'm at. But way down is the bar of, I got my membership today. And I went to the gym three days a week today. I did ten minutes of cardio today. Like it, to start from zero is half the hardest part, but also half the easiest part. Because the smallest incremental changes are percentage wise huge.

• 50:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Relatively massive, absolutely small.

• 50:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they might feel small. So it's like, if you have this perception of, oh, well, I don't want to be the three gym, I don't want to be the three day a week gym guy. Well, fuck, man, you're the zero gym a day a week guy. Like you gotta get to three. You know, you're not better than three. Everybody came in to get their one membership for the first time and they didn't know what they're doing and they were kind of anxious. I mean, I remember I'm on vacation, I went to the YMCA in Florida and I'm, uh, I'm like two years in at this point. I'm shoulder pressing the fifties, I'm maybe one seventy and I'm thinking.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  These guys looking at me like, like just very self-conscious a little bit. Well, relative to now, now I don't think like that, but it's um, yeah, it's like you can't, you can't be above the small steps because I think so many people are in their head. They think, all right, well, you know, if I, I mean, I'm sure you hear this. Well, you know, if I dieted, I could get shredded. Guys are gonna show up to the Olympia. Now, you know, if I really bodybuilder, I could get that big, bro. Like, okay, well, you're not even doing any of it right now. You're doing totally zero. So it's like, could you really actually? And it's this idea that it's like, if I can't be perfect, it's not even worth trying.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  But that's combined with the pretentiousness of, I totally could do it. I could do it for sure.

• 52:05Chris Williamson?

  If it wasn't for the skill gap and the consistency and the ability and the hard work and the time and the duration.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Cause it's, it's easy to tell yourself, I just don't want to do it. Because it's just a preference thing for me. I don't really want to. It's not very fun to say, yeah, I'm just, I don't, I don't want to go that hard. I don't want to actually work out.

• 52:22Chris Williamson?

  I don't want it that hard.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  I'm nervous about it.

• 52:24Chris Williamson?

  I don't want it that hard. I don't want, you don't fucking kid yourself, dude. I could do it if is I don't do it.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, every I, every I could do it if is more of a, I don't want to do it because.

• 52:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:36Speaker 01

  But you're lying to yourself by saying, well, it's, it's because of 10 other things.

• 52:40Chris Williamson?

  What would you say to the guy who is currently going through that downward spiral? They don't think that they've got the capacity to do what they want to or what they're used to. They've talked themselves into a rut.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  I think they would just have to, I mean, I think the best example to get good at anything, or not even just get good, but get like inspired to do anything is just to watch people who have done it. Like when I'm training legs and thinking squats, it's like if I see a Tom Platts workout added on my phone. Holy crap. And like, it's so basic. Oh, I'm watching this guy do this thing that I'm about to do. Oh, that's making me excited about it. Like just monkey see, monkey do. But like, if you're, um, you know, I, I pretty much say this to everybody. It's like, what's your beginning state right now? Where are you at? If you can find someone who has been there, documented it and showed it off from where they were to now where they are. The guy who was 500 to 200.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I can, I can tell you the basics of like, you know, do your cardio and like diet and everything, but I haven't lived that exact like scenario. Like I can tell you tips that I think would apply. But if you want to hear from someone who's really done it, then you've got to find someone who has, and hopefully they've been posting stuff about it.

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  Can we find a Tom Platts leg training motivation? I try and find a short. There'll be some unreal edits of this.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  It's crazy. But just seeing something, seeing someone do what you want to do. I think it's probably the most motivating thing you can, because now not only are you seeing somebody do it, but you're just getting it proven in your own head. Like this is totally doable.

• 54:16Chris Williamson?

  Bro, I remember.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  This is also another guy. I'm a guy.

• 54:19Chris Williamson?

  He's just some dude. I remember watching Greg Plitt as a early twenties guy. And he used to do videos outside of the gym in the parking lot, the middle of the night, like three in the morning. And uh, that guy was just so fucking positive. And so I often think this is kind of a weird fork to imagine in reality, but if Greg Plitt and Ziz hadn't passed away. I think that we would have a markedly different gym culture today. I think that they were so formative and at the time, like think about where Ziz would have been. He was in 2012.

• 54:59Chris Williamson?

  He was probably 23 or 24, something. So he's like similar, similar age to me. So he would have been absolutely ripped. When Instagram comes along, would have been like peak, peak shape. He wouldn't have stopped that whole culture, which was. Would it have survived me too? Maybe it would have had to have been sanitized a little bit, but it wasn't like he was super toxic. He was more like his whole line of disregard women, acquire dance moves was like kind of proto lux maxing incel, but without any of the toxic elements of it. But I think him and Greg Plitt and fucking Rich Piana, dude, like we lost some of the greats. The last decade and a half.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  That's a big three.

• 55:44Chris Williamson?

  Is that they are the big three. That's the Mount Rushmore. That's three of the Mount Rushmore. I don't know who the fourth one would be of the influencer world for, probably Sebum, I guess. But yeah, fuck, if we've got one or three, have we got a freakish video?

• 55:59Chris Williamson?

  This is where he's just doing partials, isn't it? Screaming more.

• 56:06Chris Williamson?

  If you didn't know what was happening to the lower half of his body. You could be quite surprised if you didn't know gym culture.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, like the, the normal person would look at that. Like if they walked, uh, let's say that was like a gym with a garage door. Next to a sidewalk of like a town and like a normal person walked past, instant reaction. What are they doing? These guys are totally nuts. But like, once you're in it, I'm like, nice. That's a good, that's, that's probably a really good set.

• 56:31Chris Williamson?

  It's kind of sick. The supplement industry is full of products making claims that they can't back, which is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentus. Their co-founder Jeff Byers played in the NFL and saw firsthand just how wildly the quality of supplements can vary. So he built Momentus around a higher standard. Every product from Momentus uses evidence-backed ingredients, transparent doses and independent third-party testing. Everything is NSF certified for sports, so what's on the label is actually what's in the tub. It's why Momentus is trusted inside all 32 NFL locker rooms. It's why I've trusted them with my own supplements for years. Best of all. Momentus offers a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can buy it and try it for 29 days. If you don't love it, they will give you your money back. Plus they ship internationally.

• 57:14Chris Williamson?

  Right now you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below. Heading to livemomentous.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's L I V E M O M E N T O U S dot com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. Wasn't there a thing that Tom Platts, was he chewing tennis balls or something? Didn't he say he was like working his mandible job with maybe he was using mastic gum or some early version of mastic gum or something?

• 57:41Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't hear it, but maybe.

• 57:43Chris Williamson?

  I swear that he was saying, I mean, there was an era, this is, this is something for me to mansplain to you or generations explain to you. For a second, there was a beautiful era in the world of bodybuilding where we didn't know the truth about lots of things. And it meant that you wasted shit tons of time and effort and money on stuff that was completely pointless. But fuck, it was exciting. Like, is this new blueberry extract perhaps the reason? Why? Maybe it is better than steroids. And then you have to go on this weird Russian website and order blueberry extract and like if the just, you're on the Misk forums of bodybuilding.com, like desperately trawling, trying to find the guy that's got the secret to big delts.

• 58:25Chris Williamson?

  And like, now it's, bodybuilding is largely a solved problem. And at the time, it felt much closer to like the frontier. We knew enough to know that some stuff worked, but there was still enough unknowns to be able to be super experimental.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:39Chris Williamson?

  But fucking Rich Piana's eight-hour arms workout was something that people were like, that might be the answer. That might actually be the answer.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  I'm a, I guess I'm actually, if you asked me like a year into the YouTube videos where they're actually taking off. I probably would have said that I've definitely have done the eight-hour arm day by now. I haven't done it yet. I guess I probably should sometime.

• 58:58Chris Williamson?

  That would be a huge request.

• 59:00Speaker 01

  I wouldn't, I wouldn't be opposed to it just for the fun of it.

• 59:02Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 59:02Speaker 01

  But yeah, it's um, yeah, it's definitely different now. I think the, one of the bigger changes, bodybuilding wise, is uh, just the, the performance angle of it. Because when I look, when I think bodybuilding character or like someone who, uh, maybe not even that, but someone who actually gets me like excited about it, just the gym in general, you know, cause that's kind of the precursor to even getting on to the stage is the training part. Like that's, that's the part I really get excited about. But it's like watching a Tom Platts or back in Pumping Iron, like everybody had a lot of personality. Or I mean, even Dorian Yates, which compared to like an Arnold, a person with a personality from a completely different side of the universe. But they still were able to like portray what they did and how they did it.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  In just like such a cool way. And I think it was, um, you know, maybe a combination of just the fact that you, you would, now I would kind of call that social media, but that was like CDs and just documentation. And like since it was so new, they maybe didn't have this like mental construct of, okay, I should put on an act. In a certain kind of way.

• 1:00:06Chris Williamson?

  What is up with that? Because I would, I would agree, even the last era of bodybuilding, bodybuilding that I think people really obsessed over the competition itself and the characters that were inside of it was Jay, Ronnie. Like that run, uh, Branch Warren, um, like that era. And then, I don't know, something just, obviously like Sebum is a phenom. But it was about him. It wasn't really about the competition. And there's other guys that have got great physiques, but I don't think anybody cares about the the personality in quite the same way. And I don't know, I know that Hadi Chupan's like a

• 1:00:50Chris Williamson?

  absolute turbo freak, like massive jack guy. I don't know anything about him and maybe that's me just growing out of it and aging out of it. But I get the sense that it's not just that. I feel like the, the world of that has sort of fallen away. Am I right there?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I, I, I think about this all the time. Or maybe not, not just when I'm like sitting, but when I talk to anybody about bodybuilding, it's like, yeah, the nineties, early 2000s. Like it was, uh, it was to the same prestige as like the WWE, like these guys were.

• 1:01:19Chris Williamson?

  It was like the WWE.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  They were characters. They were coming out. There was like more, uh. And it was also the, what's kind of weird is it was like the most competitive era. Like even now, people will do an interview with Ronnie Coleman. And he's like, Ronnie, what do you think of all these current guys? And he's like, they don't got it. And he's just telling, he's just saying a fact at that point. Like they just had, they had something, but there was also this character and this charisma to it. And it wasn't even so much that they were the most competitive. Like Ronnie and Jay were, I mean, I can't even imagine how they like really felt about each other. And like the most competitive period of that time. But like, I've never heard Tom Platts say, you know, I need to win. I need to win this show.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  And yeah, all the stuff that I hear him talk about was like, even when he'd go up on stage too, or just talking about training. He's like, just the enjoyment of doing it, being around other people doing it with him. And he's like, you know, you just come out and there's this, I'm trying to just say what he said, like almost verbatim. But he's like, there's just this energy from the crowd and they're all just cheering for you. Like he just wanted to do it. He didn't care if he came in last place. Whereas now, I mean, there's a, like, there's different videos of guys, like more current bodybuilders, where it's like a full on interview, like day in the life of the show, like mini documentary. And the guy's like, you know, if I don't, if I don't place in the, if I don't place in the top five, I'm, I should quit bodybuilding.

• 1:02:46Chris Williamson?

  So it's much more performance focused, much more outcome focused. I would actually, I want to amend my previous era finishing point. I do think Phil Heath and Kai Green.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say, they also.

• 1:03:00Chris Williamson?

  Still, and that was what, early 2010s ish?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:03Chris Williamson?

  Probably. And then it was after that. But yeah, the WWE analogy is perfect. It's like Branch Warren was the sort of skinhead, nu metal, heavy metal, like hard, long shorts, boots guy.

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, everybody was like, just so interesting.

• 1:03:17Chris Williamson?

  Kai Green was the artist philosopher with the hair and the dance moves and stuff. Phil Heath was like the all American college ball athlete. Like you had different roles that everybody took. Jay Cutler was sort of like classic Florida man on like a lot of, a lot of drugs.

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:33Chris Williamson?

  You know, he was great. And, and I don't know, I, it's strange that a sport can be carried so much by individual characters. And I suppose it's because it's such a small pool. How many NFL players are there, including all of the squads? Fucking thousands, thousands and thousands. And people can support the team and the team plays as part of a group. Like even tennis, yeah, sure, you can have generational talents and stuff, but like tennis is a sport outside of the people that just play it too. It's like a thing. I don't think that bodybuilding is. I think that bodybuilding in particular is reliant on not just the bodies, maybe even more the personalities of the people that are involved in it.

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  I think so. And it's, um, I'm kind of coming up with this thought as I'm saying it. But I think the, it's like, what is the nature of bodybuilding anyway? Right? We say bodybuilding competition, but it's a bodybuilding show. And what I think is different now is everyone can post their own videos and their, their, their, uh, their preps and their training and their everything. It's just how it is. Whereas before, all these guys, I mean, you did a couple of DVDs every year, but pretty much the show was the show. And they came there to show off and that was just, just something about it had some theatrics. Whereas now I think with the social media side of things, somehow that's changed, like the hype that just gets built up behind it.

• 1:05:00Chris Williamson?

  That's strange, right? Because it's more transparency, but seems to be less relatability. But I feel that I have, there is not a person on the planet I have less in common with than Kai Green. Right? If you were to pick two humans on opposite ends of every spectrum, it would be me and Kai Green. However, I feel like I knew him to a degree, or I feel like I know him. I don't feel like I know the only person I think that's, the two people I think that have broken through are you and Sebum. And that's one of the reasons that maybe even in a world where there's more opportunity and more people attempting to try the relatability thing, there is a sparser supply and an even greater demand. You got to spend a good bit of time with Sebum. What did you learn from hanging out with him?

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, now it's, um, oh, I tell you this, I don't know if I've told this story before. So I'm at, we're at the Olympia, this was maybe two Olympias ago. This is, I think the first one they did in Vegas. So this would be two ago, maybe, maybe one, I don't remember. But this was one of the Olympias where they do this little press conference with a lot of the classic guys first. So Chris is up there, Erz, everything. And I remember just walking backstage and, you know, I'm just like chatting with everybody and I see Chris from like a distance. And this was pre, like, I think he was competing the next day, maybe the day after that. But just like, he was standing with so much aura, it was nuts. Like I think it was, it wasn't necessarily how he was standing, but you could kind of sense how everyone's standing around him.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  And like in the outskirts of where he was, like was acting. And like, he was just super intense focused. Like I've seen, the only time I've seen something with that much like, just, you know what's called stopping power of like people around? Was I get to do a little back workout with Arnold at Gold's Gym, which was nuts. Cause he just rolled up on an e-bike and it was just him coming.

• 1:06:55Chris Williamson?

  I've seen that video.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Coming to hit a workout.

• 1:06:57Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  And, um, but when he walked in, just looking across the gym was like, like somebody's holding, uh, like somebody's holding like launch codes or something.

• 1:07:08Chris Williamson?

  It's a reality distortion field.

• 1:07:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:10Chris Williamson?

  That's around this one person.

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  Like in a, in a positive way, but just like, that's Arnold right there. Like it was just crazy. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, getting to talk to him like normal, I'm not a, I haven't been spamming all the Sebum videos. But just from all the different back and forths, it's crazy. I'll just kind of casually is, but I'm not always, um, like prying, like for, for tips and everything. And maybe half of that is just because I'm like, I kind of want to figure it out on my own. Like that's part of the fun part of it. But no, every time, usually with all the gym freak stuff, like anytime we're at a different shoot or different events or things.

• 1:07:45Chris Williamson?

  Trying to go bit with him, right?

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, with David.

• 1:07:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's just kind of cool.

• 1:07:49Chris Williamson?

  David got shouted at for being on his phone.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  A little bit, but no, he's a, yeah, it's crazy to see somebody who's done so much like that.

• 1:07:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he's a unique guy. I think Chris is a very unusual candidate for someone that goes on to be as well known as he is. He's not got the construction or desire for much of the notoriety that he's ended up being afflicted with. It almost does feel a little bit sometimes like, maybe, uh, not quite an affliction, but so maybe somewhat closer to a burden. Like fuck, like the guy that kind of is introverted, smart, thoughtful, deep dude.

• 1:08:41Chris Williamson?

  Now trying to navigate this insane level of attention, like the most attention of anybody in what was and still is to some degree, one of the most cult following sports ever. And, uh, yeah, he's just the complete dad mode now, which is cool. I mean, he's, I think, I absolutely think the world of him and he's been massively influential on me. But yeah, like a really odd, I think about this to do with Rogan a little bit as well. We're very fortunate that the first person we got in the world of podcasting was like a benevolent leader. Largely for all of the criticisms that people that don't like him can have about him.

• 1:09:24Chris Williamson?

  Joe is a fucking, even the people that don't like him have to concede, like he has been amazing for the world of podcasting. Like he's so pro-social, he's so positive some, all he wants to do is lift up other people. He very, very rarely starts beef. Like he's not backbiting, he's not, uh, fucking people over for money. It's not, there's never headlines about Joe Rogan does this with his cash or invest in this thing or whatever. Like it's just, all he wants to do is train, commentate, do comedy and do his part and that's it. You're like, fuck, like we could have had the most descendant medium of the last 20 years be headed up by someone that was a total asshole. Right? Like a complete like tyrant.

• 1:10:07Chris Williamson?

  And we got someone that was like a really wonderful figurehead that's just trying to make the industry bigger and help everybody along that he can. And the same thing's kind of true for Chris. You know, you reignite classic, or ignite classic, basically with this one guy. And he's openly talking about crying in his girlfriend's arms weeks before he goes on stage. And singing the song of how beautiful it is to have a baby and to get married and to live a simple life. And then he moves away to Nashville to like have an even simpler life and the, you know, whole ranch thing. I, I don't know, I, I think people can have problems with whoever they want, but you need to accept, hey, if we rolled the dice,

• 1:10:51Chris Williamson?

  there aren't many universes where we would have got a better person that was the figurehead for this particular industry. And I think we've done it, we've done it pretty well in two different domains though.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's, um, yeah, there's something, an X factor with guys like Chris. And I feel, it feels kind of weird for me to say that about me, cause it's like now I'm talking about myself.

• 1:11:09Chris Williamson?

  I would agree. I think you've done it as well.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Just with social media in general, like getting back to like why it's different now compared to before. Like I, uh, you know, how you just said, there's so many more people getting into it. Cause now, now it's the thing. Now social media is the, you know, the gold mines in California, which this is what I gotta do to be successful at whatever I'm doing. And I always think that the guys who end up doing the best are the ones where what they're doing is just what they would be doing anyway. So there's, there's, I guess you'd call it different kinds of social media. Cause there's ones where guys might be like putting on a show like this. Like this isn't necessarily something that would just happen casually. Like this is a little bit more put up.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  But, um, when it comes to anything that's like activity based or like just personality based, like following. Like for me, it's, it's like seamless because I would already work out anyway. Honestly, my days don't feel like the addition of the recording takes away at all from the gym. Like it's almost second nature. I just pick up the camera, move a little bit.

• 1:12:10Chris Williamson?

  It's just maybe a bit more talking out loud.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot more talking out loud, that's for sure. Like in the car. But it's, it's just something I would do anyway. So with that being the setup for it. I just talk about what I would already talk about. You know, I don't have, um, I'm not hitting like script lists of the video. Yeah, cuz it's, um, but that's kind of what I think people try to chase when they say like, okay, well, you know, you gotta be relatable. Or I'm always scrolling on my phone way too much, but I'm, I'll see like a TikTok live with like four different people on it. And they're talking about what they wanna do. And they, uh, they boil down the social media to like the specific angles that you can change to try to somehow make it successful. They're like, oh, man, you gotta start being way more relatable, bro.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  Or like, no, you just gotta find your niche. You just gotta find your specific niche and just, and it's like, well, oh, yeah. You're boiling down what I would consider maybe a YouTuber who I really like. Or, um, like, look at like the Outdoor Boys guy. He just was doing that. And then he said, you know, let's start making videos about this. I don't know the exact origin of when he started, but this is a thing that he already does, is good at. And then he was able to talk about it and like make a video out of it. But since he would already do it anyway, it's not extra for him. Like the way that it comes off is so natural. And I think now there's however many thousand times more people posting things and trying to get into different subjects of like even tech videos or the gym or anything.

• 1:13:42Speaker 01

  But they're trying to force this relatability. They're trying to do something for the sake of this like endpoint of like, oh, I wanna get like this many followers or something or whatever. And it's, um, I can't even relate to it almost because for me, there was never this like analytical plan of, oh, I should start talking more something or anything. It was like, this is what I do. I'll just keep doing it. And then the X factor for me was I got really lucky and it just started taking off really well.

• 1:14:10Chris Williamson?

  The, it is far fewer people than think it are good enough actors to be able to pretend to be something that they're not. Like, most people can see through the bullshit in that regard. And, uh, yeah, speedrunning authenticity is not an option. Like you, you can't like growth hack relatability. You can either just be yourself or not. And, uh, there's a guy, can you just find Henry West Gaming? I think he's called, so he's a British guy and he dresses in like 18, he has like a bugle and a monocle and he plays over the top war games, bro. Fucking Henry, go to his shorts, go to his shorts. This guy fucking rips.

• 1:14:53Chris Williamson?

  Uh, just go by most popular, top right, uh, top left, yeah. Um, yeah, let's go to the shoe on head video ultimate.

• 1:15:02Speaker 05

  What is the ultimate male fantasy?

• 1:15:05Speaker 04

  Company on my order. Company, company. Sean, go on.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have a sinking suspicion that he's having a lot of fun right now.

• 1:15:20Chris Williamson?

  Best time.

• 1:15:22Speaker 04

  John knows they're doing it, look at that.

• 1:15:25Chris Williamson?

  Like, I just can't, I can't, I can't hate on him. In other news, if you're trying to go from Joey Chestnut to Joey Swole, the RP Strength app is the best place to start. I've been in the gym for 20 years and it wasn't until the past few years that I had the best training sessions of my life and RP was a massive part of that. Actual scientists built this thing around one obsession to beat up their high school bullies and provide the most science-backed effective path to maximizing muscle gain. It tells you your exercises, how many sets, reps and weights that you need to do, everything. So all that you have to do is show up and lift. If the RP app could wipe your ass for you, it probably would. And it adjusts automatically every week based on how you're actually progressing. For me, following a proper evidence-based plan has made a massive difference.

• 1:16:10Chris Williamson?

  And if you're serious about training, it'll do the same for you too. Right now you can get up to $50 off the RP hypertrophy app by going to the link in the description below. Heading to rpstrength.com/modernd wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's rpstrength.com/modernd wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. You talked about sort of doing it yourself. How come you chose to coach yourself for your prep?

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Um, by then the social media was really big and I've seen guys where, uh, they're like my demographic of like an influencer, bodybuilder type dude. And, uh, they always just get drama when they get a coach.

• 1:16:45Chris Williamson?

  Really?

• 1:16:46Speaker 01

  Well, it's not always, of course, but it's, um, but I mean, this, it was like in the first year of the bodybuilding channel. Or like my workout videos, it was like zero to like 1.8 million on YouTube. We're like just nuts. So that was two years before the first bodybuilding show. So by then they're like the, the infamy of like Sam, like Sam was like a character, uh, in the space. And it's, um, for one, I just think I could handle doing it on my own because it's like, that's how I do all the other stuff about the gym. Like one of the best parts about it is just the fact that like, it's my thing. Like it's my version of like the sanctuary where

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  like the point almost isn't to try to push the envelope to the absolute maximum with like 10 different coaches and with the bodybuilding. You know, there's not like 10 different pharmaceutical like char, you know, like guys like a, like a Hadi Chupin, like are these the Olympia bodybuilders? Like everything that they do is this regimented, like it's just, that's just not even the point for me. But the fact that I do it for me makes it more fun. Because if you gave me a piece of paper that had the workout for the day and my meals for the day, for me, I would feel like, uh, this is, this guy just gave me a bunch of homework to do, even if it was.

• 1:18:03Chris Williamson?

  But if you have to design the homework for yourself.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  If I make the homework for me is better. It doesn't feel like work. Like if I had a listed workout, I think I wouldn't, it just wouldn't feel the same kinda. And that's just maybe a me thing.

• 1:18:14Chris Williamson?

  Is there a level that you think you would get to where you would consider a coach more seriously?

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think like if, um, if somehow it turned where I'm like, okay, you know what? Now we're, we're switching gears. We're gonna aim for an Olympia debut. So that'd mean I'd have to get big enough to win a pro show. Or you can kinda cheat it. You could do a bunch, you could schedule a bunch of pro shows that are like in, um, you know, South Mexico or Ireland or just do all this.

• 1:18:46Chris Williamson?

  Are you saying that the South Mexicans and the Irish are not that jacked?

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Well, more so you could do a bodybuilding show that is somewhere that not a lot of people will be.

• 1:18:54Chris Williamson?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  So the difficulty of the show is only how difficult are the competitors there? So typically everyone goes to like the New York Pro or the, uh, the Pittsburgh Pro, like these. But some guys will go to like the tiniest, corny corner of the world show. And maybe they're not at the biggest level they could be at, but since they wanted, they would qualify. So you can kinda game it. But yeah, if that were the point, then that would kinda demand like a team. But, uh, but for my first shows, it's like half, I just wanna do it on my own because that's fun for me. And for me, that's like this mental flex of like, ooh, if I do it for real, that means I didn't. It was my, and this whole thing has kinda been my thing like from the beginning.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  But also here's what would happen if I had a, going, getting a coach for the second pro show. Or the second show that was like the pro debut at the Arnold earlier this year. Like if I look decent, which I did, uh, well, he got a coach this year. He got a coach this year. I guess the coach reeled him in. This, uh, this is the dumbest dude ever, but the coach figured it out for him.

• 1:19:59Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:20:00Speaker 01

  Or if I do bad, the coach is gonna say, and maybe they wouldn't, but I wouldn't be surprised. Oh, well, this guy just wouldn't listen to my program. And I'm like, save me the trouble.

• 1:20:11Chris Williamson?

  It feels like you want to own the consequences, good and bad.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, if, if I showed up and I looked like total trash, I guess I'd have to just be like, all right, guys.

• 1:20:20Chris Williamson?

  I don't know what I'm doing, sorry.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  Whoops.

• 1:20:22Chris Williamson?

  I guess I.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  And for me, like the, uh, I don't know, some of the, that approach to it, I just liked.

• 1:20:28Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  But beyond that, I, uh, yeah, I mean, I've been working out on my own for, from the beginning and.

• 1:20:35Chris Williamson?

  There is a difference though, right? Than getting yourself in shape to getting yourself stage ready. And there are a lot, just by design, there's fewer and fewer people that know the absolute elite level procedures for, okay, what are you doing with your salt? What are you doing with your carbs? What are you doing with your water and timing and body fat coming in? And how can we hack the, your, uh, mental state so that you feel in a good way? All of these different things, which I'm sure that Chris has got dialed down to a T. But yeah, as you get more and more attuned to a higher and higher level, I imagine that maybe at some point you're gonna have to pick up the phone.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and maybe this is just kinda how I think about things, but when it comes to like looking, let's say looking big, just walking around. In my head, I'm not thinking I wanna wear the tightest shirt I can. I'd rather have a bigger shirt and fill it in. So I'm not necessarily trying to optimize the tiniest, the like if we, uh, or if I, when I first did an expo, I remember taking a picture of somebody and I like make myself like extra big. Now I'm like, whatever. If I'm big, I should.

• 1:21:39Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's because you're big.

• 1:21:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:41Chris Williamson?

  You don't need to make yourself like extra big when you're like an outhouse.

• 1:21:44Speaker 01

  But it's like, if I'm, if I'm trying to be big, well, for one, I should just be big. But also why would I wanna tell you? Like that would be insufferable. Hey, do you see how big I am?

• 1:21:54Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:54Speaker 01

  Well, if you did see that, why would I even say that?

• 1:21:58Chris Williamson?

  This is like the trolley problem for the skinny dude. Like if you knew how big I was, I wouldn't be so big. And now that you do, what about, what was the hardest decision that you had to make during your prep as your own coach?

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  I don't know if it was a, a specific hardest decision. It was, uh, I guess you just kinda say doing it anyway. Cause you gotta plan this sort of thing out. And with the, uh, with the NPC shows, which you'd call the little league. And then the IFBB pro shows are like the big league.

• 1:22:26Chris Williamson?

  NPC, highly unfortunate acronym now.

• 1:22:29Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:22:29Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, non-player character.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, you're right. I wouldn't want to, I wouldn't want to enter my little league bodybuilding show though.

• 1:22:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  I'd prefer NPC.

• 1:22:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  You're right about that. But they're, uh, they're not always scheduled until like semi short notice. So I, um, I was asking around, I'm like, okay, which show can I do that's right before the Arnold? Cause that would be the point. You do the qualifier show and then the.

• 1:22:55Chris Williamson?

  You roll the condition into the next one.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So you only have to do one prep for both. So once I got that figured out the year prior, like, okay, and like, we're gonna do the show in February in Vegas. That basically broke down like, okay, so now I'm here in October and now this is middle of February. So by here to there, I gotta get into my version of show ready. But other than that, it's kind of just the doing it. Like, there's no one day where I was like, okay, now I really gotta bring it. Except for when I worked out with Jay Cutler.

• 1:23:22Chris Williamson?

  What was that like?

• 1:23:23Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, Jay's super cool, very, if you've ever talked to Jay, just very casual, like lighthearted. And I think that's because he, with his career, he ended it very well. So he got nothing to be like bitter or.

• 1:23:36Chris Williamson?

  Doesn't feel unrequited or unfulfilled.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And he's doing so good. He doesn't need anything from anybody. So guys like that are the most chill.

• 1:23:43Chris Williamson?

  What is he doing now?

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  Just all sorts of stuff. I mean, into.

• 1:23:46Chris Williamson?

  Business shit?

• 1:23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, like different kind of realist, like that was something that people have been hyping up Jay forever. Like there's a.

• 1:23:52Chris Williamson?

  Smart business mind.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Different stories about how after every Olympia win, he put all this stuff into something and then he spent three months like touring, like he's a, he was hyping up Instagram as soon as they came out, like to the other guys, like you guys gotta get on Instagram and YouTube. Like he's a, he's ahead of the game.

• 1:24:09Chris Williamson?

  Like the Gary Vee of bodybuilding. Interesting.

• 1:24:12Speaker 01

  But I remember, this is like a two or three months before the show, we were doing a little workout, go in the posing room. He's like, right, your condition's decent. That was like the, that's like the clipped line. Uh, cause it's like, you gotta look reasonable at that point. But when he said that, he, he didn't mean like in that bad of a way, but he, what he really said was like, you better get serious. So I did a little, I started doing a little extra cardio after that.

• 1:24:36Chris Williamson?

  Isn't it interesting that a compliment could be one of the biggest motivating things? Because you're like, that should have been a better compliment. He's being somewhat polite there. Do you think there's anyone who's bodybuilding advice you would accept without questioning it at all?

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  Hmm. Uh, I mean, so it's not like I don't, I guess it's more so, I just don't want to be, uh, what would you say? I guess, I guess, I don't know where I can think of it is like commanded. Cause if you have your coach now, you're essentially given this coach, like this control, right? Like that's kind of the nature of it. But I wanted to, I'm taking advice from everybody. So it's like, I want to be constantly open to what this guy's saying or what this guy's talking about. Okay. This makes logical sense in my head. Like things like that. Cause also this was just a regular person and he just learned all this knowledge. It is not as though he is just magically knowledgeable. The knowledge is out there. So in my head, that's almost its own challenge of gathering it for yourself.

• 1:25:31Chris Williamson?

  So I can find it.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or he found it and he just told it to me. Now I gotta.

• 1:25:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now I stole it from him. So thank you for that. But that's why people use, go to experts, right? Like when you think about, think about this from a book perspective, somebody goes and writes a book and they have spent decades, decades and decades of their life looking at this one particular area of this one particular part of the world. And you now get to look at this entire life synthesized down into a single, single 60,000 words, like bit of paper. This, you go, okay, how long did it take this person to get to this stage? And I just get to read it and like draw out, like sucking water out of a sponge. I get all of the concentrated information. And

• 1:26:17Chris Williamson?

  that's why you go to experts. That's why you go to the Chris Bumsteads or the Phil Heaths or the Jay Cutlers. Cause you.

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:26:23Chris Williamson?

  You've got all of this stuff in there.

• 1:26:26Speaker 01

  So it's not as though I'm saying, do not get a coach. It's more like, for whatever reason, I just don't want one right now. And I reserve the right to change that.

• 1:26:34Chris Williamson?

  I plead the fifth.

• 1:26:35Speaker 01

  In the future.

• 1:26:37Chris Williamson?

  You talked about co-owning a peptide company. What's that been like?

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, it's, um, oh, certainly not bad on my end in terms of like actually how they're moving forward. We've got a kind of a bigger, not even called a release, but they're just changing the, uh, the nature of it to more of like an actual telehealth, like doctor prescribed thing, October 1st. But yeah, peptides are very, I mean, it's not like they're new, but it's quite the topic now because they're the thing. Remember when ashwagandha was the thing and turkesteron was the thing?

• 1:27:12Chris Williamson?

  I lived through the turkesteron era. Yeah.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's just the thing, but it's like, you know, every time I, um, like I've just got BPC and TB 500, like just at all times.

• 1:27:22Chris Williamson?

  What's your experience with peptides? What, what do you, what have you found to be useful?

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  Definitely those two for sure. And then as of late, uh, you ever hear of GHK?

• 1:27:31Chris Williamson?

  That's the copper thing. People use for skin and hair?

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've been doing some of that. I feel like that's been kind of clearing me up a little more. So it's like a more of an inflammation reduction kind of thing. And then that extra collagen upregulation. So I haven't noticed like, I'm not sprouting hair everywhere, but I can definitely tell my skin's looking a little better from that one. Like every time I would actually tweak something or like when guys, uh, so so far I haven't, I don't talk about it as much in the videos because for one, once everything's like fully regulated, there's a huge percentage of people that are just waiting for that. They're not thinking, they're not thinking for themselves per se, it's, there's a green light. Now it's, now I'm fine with it.

• 1:28:11Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:28:11Speaker 01

  Which is just kind of unfortunate. And then the 10% who are knowledgeable and have done them know this is just a thing. My shoulder's out of whack and I hurt my rotator cuff and my golf swing hasn't been the same. I started doing BPC for two weeks and now I'm back. And like, that's kind of the extent of it. But it just gets overhyped, you know? Cause now, I mean, you get all the, all the TikTok kids and like literally kids, these guys are like teenagers and they're on like a TikTok live hyping up like, oh, you get 10 vials of so and so that they're just ordering.

• 1:28:41Chris Williamson?

  Tassimorala and all, whatever the fuck.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  And it's, um, it's kind of, I'm, I'm trying to think of something else that is a good comparable situation, but it is just this thing that has legitimate use case, but it is so overhyped and just like dramatized because of just everything involved with it. Plus now pharmaceutical companies are more involved. Once Eli Lilly, like patents Red A True Tide, like it's funny, every TikTok ad, buy anything, two vials of Red A True Tide included. Cause all these companies are about to get cease and desisted. So.

• 1:29:21Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting. They're just trying to give the stock away.

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  So for them, they're like, this is gonna be worthless to us because we're not gonna be able to actually sell it in a legitimate way.

• 1:29:28Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  So a lot of stuff like that, but it's.

• 1:29:30Chris Williamson?

  Sprinting for the finish in an attempt to try and get rid of all of their stock.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But it's, um, yeah, but it's so crazy that it's just like a lack of knowledge because would most people say that Ozempic is a peptide?

• 1:29:44Chris Williamson?

  They wouldn't know that it is.

• 1:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they wouldn't know. They just say Ozempic is Ozempic. And it's, uh, and then that's funky too. Cause I don't know how you feel about, um, actually I would imagine I know how you feel about Red A True Tide, but it is just a thing that beyond, uh, or of course I'll change my opinion if a certain study comes out revealing this crazy side effect, which there's no leads of yet. But of course, if there were, then I'd say, whoa, don't do this. But it's like, are you mad at somebody for taking caffeine when they're tired? It's a little bit of an extra step to stretch that to like a Red A True Tide, but it is just taking an intervention of what you'd call a normal human process without

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  that much of a, in terms of like a negative effect. So it's like, some guys still hate on caffeine for, they're like, you shouldn't be taking caffeine for pre-workout, man.

• 1:30:36Chris Williamson?

  I mean, David Goggins says that you shouldn't ever train with music on.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:40Chris Williamson?

  So, you know, there, there are levels of puritanism that you can get to from Red A True Tide at one end to David Goggins' Dark Thoughts as a soundtrack on the other. But yeah, I, I know exactly what you mean. A lot of it, I think is because of the delivery mechanism. Like if, uh, anorectics and GLPs were first released as a shot that you, you took a shot or it was just a tablet or something, or maybe it was a, a patch or something else. There's something very intimate and medical and some, for some people icky about the needle thing.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:31:17Chris Williamson?

  If you can do the needle thing, or that takes it to another level of, um, medical supervision that's needed as opposed to, well, if I just pop this pill or if I drink this shot, or if it's a shake or something, if it was a special shake that you had that was like a meal reduction shake, not a real replacement shake. Where when you drank it, you didn't want to eat for the rest of the day. One meal a day shakes. Not only do you need to have this, but it'll make you feel full for the rest of the day. I'm sure that you could do that. It wouldn't surprise me if we end up having that at some point. And you go, okay, if that was the original delivery mechanism, I think people would feel somewhat different about it. But because it's not, I mean, cause you can do the opposite. There's ways that you can encourage ghrelin release. Like you can make yourself more hungry. And

• 1:32:00Chris Williamson?

  does, is that, do people look at that as being a, like a weird kind of hack way?

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  That would be like, um, that'd be people talking about MK677, which I guess, I don't know, we, we need Huberman right here to really tell us the total, total crazy specifics.

• 1:32:16Chris Williamson?

  Have you ever tried, uh, this isn't really that cool anymore, but it was 15 years ago. GHRP2 and GHRP6. So it's growth hormone releasing hexapeptide. And, uh, you used to take that with mod GRF. So it was a endogenous way to get your body to create more growth hormone. One of the side effects of it was fucking insane ghrelin release. So, bro, when me and my housemate, this was 2010, 2011, I was using it. So I knew bacteria, static water, research use only peptides. This was fucking 2010.

• 1:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, like 15 years ago.

• 1:32:50Chris Williamson?

  Drawing, drawing it up. And we used to do it the way that I was able to do it post-training. The only way I could do it is if I was already cooking when I shot it. Because by the time that the meal was finished, I was like, like fucking starving. And it was, I've never had hunger like that before, but it was two good things. If you're looking to put a little bit more in or a lot more in from a calorie perspective, it's really encouraging. You'll, you'll get that.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's definitely, I mean, it's just, it's just a huge subject anyway. Cause like, where's the line, right? Because between, uh, cause like, if you look at something like when guys talk about, um.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  I guess not even like HCG.

• 1:33:28Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:33:28Speaker 01

  So now you're promoting natural production of your testosterone.

• 1:33:31Chris Williamson?

  Same thing would be true with Clomid.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  Right, but it's, well, you're still raising it by taking this thing, but just because you went through three other steps.

• 1:33:40Chris Williamson?

  What about Tongkat Ali? What about Boron?

• 1:33:42Speaker 01

  What about like the studies where your testosterone is raised just from training legs versus not?

• 1:33:46Chris Williamson?

  Not allowed to do that.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Like, where's the limit?

• 1:33:48Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, if you get enough sleep, you raise your testosterone.

• 1:33:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think the, it's just like a knowledge thing. Like, the smarter people get in terms of actually knowing what things do, and not even that, but like even with a diet and everything else, it kind of just opens the door to like, okay, what should I be doing? Or what would be like unnecessary?

• 1:34:05Chris Williamson?

  I think two things are anchoring and adoption. So what is the current status quo? And how much are people anchored to what now is considered to be normal or typical or whatever? And the new thing is always going to break this status quo. So people are always going to be skeptical or feel like that is some kind of different intervention that's not, not familiar with. And then the other one is adoption. But because so many people use caffeine, very few people would point to caffeine and say that's an unfair competitive advantage. Because so few people use MK667, they're going to point to that and go, well, you know, that feels alien. That feels like an unfair competitive advantage. But if you end up with anchoring bias changes, changing, which is just a matter of time.

• 1:34:48Chris Williamson?

  It's just time and detention. And then adoption changing, you end up with a very different world.

• 1:34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think probably within the next, I mean, I don't know, what's the, what's the year cycle of when the next thing is?

• 1:35:01Chris Williamson?

  Uh, it depends if peptides stick about for a while. I mean, you don't know what's going to come next, but I think a lot of peptides. I'll be interested to see if RFK, when he leaves, if this peptide thing gets rolled back. Because at the moment, there's a level of use that's permitted, and I don't know if that's going to continue on the other side of it. But I also know that there are some companies, Collective OS is one of them, that are trying to make

• 1:35:28Chris Williamson?

  like access to peptides and presumably your place as well. Like, okay, this is not Chinese bathtub gray market bullshit. Like, this is legitimate, high-quality peptides that you know from a source that's presumably inside of the US. You know, right, okay, like, I have that. And over time, as that rolls out, it'll be interesting to see. But who knows? Maybe we'll come back around to

• 1:35:53Chris Williamson?

  blueberry extract that I was using fucking 15 years ago, desperate to work out Christian Tibodo and his blueberry extract. See if that works.

• 1:36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll see. But yeah, I think as soon as that, what you'd call the uninformed majority, here's FDA green light.

• 1:36:11Chris Williamson?

  You've outsourced your thinking to.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  We'll switch to the next thing that is, that is still waiting for like, oh shit, is this thing okay? Cause this is something I end up bringing up with everybody when they talk to me about, about like, read a true tide. Or like, if somebody's actually like, oh, was it cheating your diet? And in my head, just in general, I'm like, well, okay, how many like middle-aged housewives are going to lose like 30 pounds? Before people start saying like, ah, okay, this is probably just a good thing.

• 1:36:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Have you tried any of the GLPs?

• 1:36:42Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 1:36:42Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Would you maybe consider it if like, oh, I need a bit more help in my diet? Or it seems like you're pretty locked in as it is.

• 1:36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I'm kind of right in the, I call it a sweet spot of diet.

• 1:36:55Speaker 01

  Let's call it appetite, where it's like for me to eat more food than necessary, or to eat slightly less food than necessary, isn't too wild. But for somebody who's just constantly starving all the time, and it's hard for them to even get any like app definition from dieting down. Well, it's like, that's kind of just luck of the draw. Some guys are going to walk around like bone dry shredded because their appetite is at zero. So they just kind of have this natural predisposition of like, I don't know, I had like a couple of chips this morning and that was it. And I had a coffee.

• 1:37:24Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Robert Ploman, who is, I think the fifth most cited psychologist in the world in the 20th century. He's the guy that founded the field of behavioral genetics. Or he's one of the guys that really, really sort of pushed it and popularized it. Twin studies, environment versus, nature versus nurture. And he was giving me this example about there's many ways to get fat. He was saying, and he used the example of himself where he said he wasn't a massive fan of exercise. Just exercise doesn't make him feel all that good. But also, if he walks past a bakery that's baking bread, his desire to eat is fucking massive. And also apparently he can put away quite a bit of food and also, and also, and also.

• 1:38:06Chris Williamson?

  The fact that he's a pretty in shape guy, he's got, you know, this stack of five different comorbidities that are contributing to him supposedly being a fat guy, right? And he has to work super hard. But you can imagine a world in which the total opposite exists. I enjoy training and exercising and so do you. It makes me feel good. And I, I, it's, I started doing it when I was young, but I almost don't choose to do it. Like, I feel worse if I don't than if I do. And for a lot of people, they might feel worse if they do than if they don't. And well, I'm not really that fussed about eating that much food. And, and, and you go, okay, that's the same species, right? But two completely different worlds when it comes to training and diet, which are the big levers when it comes to your body composition.

• 1:38:49Chris Williamson?

  So yeah, it's not, blanket advice is right, like calories in, calories out, progressive overload over time, train regularly, right? Okay, there we, and sleep, right? Okay, there we go. That's like most of it. That's 90% of training, like progress. But each person, you can't just throw that at Robert Ploman with his bread fetish and say that he's going to take the same advice in the same way that you might do.

• 1:39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think it's, uh, so when I talk about guys like that, and it's like, all right, man, if you're trying to cut down and you just don't have an appetite, I guess you're spoiled. If you're the guy with the huge appetite, uh, you're kind of just boned, but that's just how it is. So you can accept, or not accept, but like, understand these core principles. And then know based on like your own situation, what you should do or how you should like act going forward. You know, you could teach me how to like replace a tire on like a NASCAR car and like put the bolts in or something. But if there was an actual problem and maybe something was off kilter or whatever, since I don't know any of the core basics, all I know is you told me to bolt this thing in. I can now do nothing and I'm like totally useless. But if you told me the basics of like all the different things that go into

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  whatever that little trick would be, I'd be able to like keep an eye out for it and make adjustments.

• 1:40:03Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Principles versus tactics. You're right. Like tactics are very fragile and principles are much more robust. Which is why, because you did eight years or whatever, six years of training yourself before you then decide to try and compete. Okay, well, I have an understanding of the principles.

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, these are the principles.

• 1:40:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  And just work based off those.

• 1:40:21Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Heck yeah. Dude, I appreciate you. Where should people go to check out everything that you got going on?

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  I guess it depends, you know, I, I throw an Instagram up every so often. I think it's Sam underscore Sulek.

• 1:40:31Chris Williamson?

  Fucking Sam Sulek was taken.

• 1:40:34Speaker 01

  Let me check. Let me, let me actually check to make sure I'm not certain. But either way, if you look up Sam Sulek, it's definitely the first one.

• 1:40:40Chris Williamson?

  If you're not the most followed Sam Sulek on the planet, I'll be very surprised.

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sam, Sam underscore Sulek. And then YouTube account, Sam Sulek, that's every day. So I'll post one today and the next day. You know, there's 1,200 so far. It's probably going to be, it'll, I'm sure that'll be a day where I'm like, oh, 2,500. It's crazy.

• 1:40:58Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  But yeah, just everywhere like that. If you want to see a good workout, that's for sure.

• 1:41:02Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Appreciate you, man.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Of course.

• 1:41:03Chris Williamson?

  Until next time. Goodbye, my beauties. Dude.