197. Chris Bumstead: 6X Mr. Olympia’s Peptide Stack, Supplement Guide and Recovery Protocols

The bodybuilding world’s best-kept secrets are finally revealed in this discussion between six-time Mr. Olympia Chris Bumstead and human biologist Gary Brecka. Learn how peptides like BPC-157, TB-500, and growth hormone-releasing compounds became the difference between career-ending injuries and championship-level recovery. Chris opens up about his autoimmune kidney condition that nearly destroyed his career at 22, and how it led him to pioneer a more intelligent approach to performance enhancement. Join the Ultimate Human VIP community for Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Get Chris Bumstead’s book, “Secrets to a Classic Physique“ here: https://amzn.to/41Ab9x7 Connect with Chris Bumstead Website: https://bit.ly/3JEjtG9 YouTube: https://bit.ly/4mEqhlx Instagram: https://bit.ly/4mML1aU TikTok: https://bit.ly/4ncS0cZ Facebook: https://bit.ly/4p9oQgP LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/461OZp0 Thank you to our partners H2TABS: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD: "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP: SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E COLD LIFE: THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP: JOIN AND GET 1 FREE MONTH!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS: 20% OFF FIRST ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY: “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE AION: “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD A-GAME: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: http://bit.ly/4kek1ij PEPTUAL: “TUH10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4mKxgcn CARAWAY: “ULTIMATE” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC HEALF: 10% OFF YOUR ORDER: https://bit.ly/41HJg6S BIOPTIMIZERS: “ULTIMATE” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/4inFfd7 RHO NUTRITION: “ULTIMATE15” FOR 15% OFF: https://bit.ly/44fFza0 GOPUFF: GET YOUR FAVORITE SNACK!: https://bit.ly/4obIFDC GENETIC TEST: ⁠https://bit.ly/3Yg1Uk9 Watch the “Ultimate Human Podcast” every Tuesday & Thursday at 9AM EST YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3RQftU0 Connect with Gary Brecka Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/4hH7Ri2 Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro of Show 02:43 Battling through Autoimmune Disease 07:06 Achieving the Best Version of Himself through Bodybuilding 20:55 His Wife as Chris’ Safe Place 27:37 Parenting Experience and Insights 35:08 Don’t Start with Steroids 39:00 Chris’ Bodybuilding Coaches 41:03 Recommended Protein and Vitamin Sources 48:35 Peptides, Steroids, Stem Cells, and Gene Therapies 58:48 Different Types of Peptides and Effects 1:14:05 Post-Professional Career Life 1:26:21 What does it mean to you to be an Ultimate Human? Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not provide medical advice. It is not intended for diagnosing or treating any health condition. Always consult a licensed healthcare professional before making health or wellness decisions. Gary Brecka is the owner of Ultimate Human, LLC which operates The Ultimate Human podcast and promotes certain third-party products used by Gary Brecka in his personal health and wellness protocols and daily life and for which Ultimate Human LLC and / or Gary Brecka directly or indirectly holds an economic interest or receives compensation. Accordingly, statements made by Gary Brecka and others (including on The Ultimate Human podcast) may be considered promotional in nature. 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.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Bodybuilding is not a healthy sport. There's a lot you'd put your body through.

• 0:03Gary Brecka?

  Anabolic steroid use, cutting weight, bulking up weight. This is hard on your organs. The vast majority of bodybuilders say, that exchange is worth it. I'm willing to borrow from my future for the gain today.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  Before I ever won an Olympia, I got really sick. I had this insane amount of inflammation. Even myself, I'm sure I was still ignorant to what I was doing at the time, but I knew that the more stress I'm going to put on my body, the worse it would push me back.

• 0:25Gary Brecka?

  You put guardrails on the amount of risk that you were willing to take, but you still achieved the top spot in the world multiple times.

• 0:32Speaker 00

  There's only so much you can really learn about bodybuilding. Once you have good form, you get your protein in and you train hard. But to do that every day for 10 years, that's what makes it hard.

• 0:39Gary Brecka?

  You know, I was expecting you to give this laundry list of supplements and you basically said, I had my nutrition dialed in. I was taking creatine and protein powders. Greatest longevity science and anti-aging experts now have come full circle.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  Sometimes you gotta boil it back to just training hard, eating right, and doing consistently.

• 0:55Gary Brecka?

  Lots of people want to enjoy the view, but they don't want the climb. How did you keep that very myopic view of being the best bodybuilder from spilling over into every other aspect of your life?

• 1:05Speaker 00

  It's a great question. And I mean, the very nuanced answer and it's the honest answer is a lot of it is probably like.

• 1:25Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything, anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. As you know, my heroes are the movers, the shakers, the game changers in all forms of industry, whether they're PhDs, MDs, biohackers, researchers, or just people that have solved a major problem in their life. And today's guest is no stranger to that, six-time Mr. Olympia Champion in the physique division. You know who he is. A lot of you have been anticipating this podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Chris Bumstead.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Thank you, sir. It's an honor. It's an honor to be on here.

• 2:05Gary Brecka?

  It's an honor to be sitting with you.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Intimidating, given the guests you've had, but.

• 2:09Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Excited to be on here.

• 2:11Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it's just my guess is I'm not intimidating.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Well, you too. You're exciting to talk to. I need to be the one interviewing you so I can learn a little.

• 2:18Gary Brecka?

  Well, we could go back and forth, you know? We actually, like all my podcast guests, you know, when we get here early, we run half the podcast before the podcast. Like, we should talk about this on the pod. But, you know, one of the things we talked about, which is a common theme on my podcast, and I really want to unpack this a little bit with you, is that I feel like the most impactful people, like the most inspiring, passionate, purpose-driven people, are people that solved a major problem in their life. And one of the things we talked about before the podcast was, you know, it's, it's not so impressive to me to be like great once. It's impressive to me to be really great over a long period of time.

• 3:03Gary Brecka?

  And you held the number one spot in bodybuilding for more than half a decade, which is a long period of time, which means you solved a lot of problems. And by problems, I mean probably internal demons and external forces. And I would love if you would unpack that a little bit and just talk to my audience about, let them into the mindset of Sebum. You know, when you're already at the top of your game and you've achieved this astounding level of success, what was it inside you that didn't make you just say, I'm going to take the award and go home? I did it. Like, oh, you know, a lot of people run one track, they would, the one cone of Iron Man in their life.

• 3:49Gary Brecka?

  They're like, there's the plaque. That's it.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  It's a great question. And I mean, the very nuanced answer in this, the honest answer is a lot of it is probably like great genes set up to do the right thing, a lot of luck set up in the right place, and potentially, honestly, a lot of.

• 4:06Speaker 00

  Faults or demons and insecurities of mine that I was trying to use some level of success to seek after. You know, I find a lot of people who reach a high level of success are kind of potentially compensating at the beginning. And when I started to feel like maybe I was seeking a sense of belonging or validation, my journey began to become more than just like becoming a better body, but a better self. How can I use the challenge, pushing myself to new limits to discover parts about myself I didn't know before and become a better version of myself and to be able to grow mentally, spiritually, emotionally, relationally, along this physical journey? And I think that's what consistently drove me is every year was like a hero's journey where like you're working up to this huge moment and inevitably there's this like chaos

• 4:50Speaker 00

  and challenge that comes in the way where you feel defeat and you need to find something inside of yourself to get through that, to get to this success. And then it repeats every year, every year. So I was continuously finding new pieces of myself I didn't know before of what I needed and how I operated best. And my journey started with something very health related. In 2018, before I ever won an Olympia, I got really sick and I didn't know what was going on.

• 5:15Gary Brecka?

  Kidneys?

• 5:16Speaker 00

  It was autoimmune to my kidneys. Yeah.

• 5:18Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  So I had this insane amount of inflammation edema in my legs. Like I put on like 15 pounds in a day and I had like no knee, no ankle. It was just inflamed, didn't know what was going on. I was put in the hospital, put on loop diuretics, IV diuretics and all stuff just to get the water off and they didn't know what was going on. And it was a, I talk through the story quick now, but in the moment I was like 22 years old, terrified from my life at the time.

• 5:42Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 5:42Speaker 00

  Not knowing what was gonna go on.

• 5:43Gary Brecka?

  You were bodybuilding then, right?

• 5:44Speaker 00

  I was in the middle of prep. I was four weeks out of the Olympia.

• 5:47Gary Brecka?

  Whoa.

• 5:48Speaker 00

  At this point, yeah. So it was like the biggest, one of the biggest moments of feeling powerless, just completely powerless.

• 5:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  And there's a pastor, I believe in this Richard Rohr, who talks about like every man experiencing a journey of powerlessness, which leads to a sense of like just humility and gratitude for the rest of your life because you realize you're not fully in control. There's so much you can do, but there's always a level beyond what you're capable of. So I think my journey, starting with that, really led to every moment of success and everything that I did win. It was like, yes, I did this, but there's so much out of my control that got me here and there's so much out of my control that could take me from here. So it kept me with a sense of humility.

• 6:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Throughout my entire journey and. Also, what led to that was me knowing I need to approach things differently. Like, there was a reason I got sick. And bodybuilding is not a healthy sport at all. There's a lot you'd put your body through. So me needing to manage, A, what started to, what felt like it was just physical health. And then what I was learning, because it was not a immune thing, was a lot of stress, cortisol, mental stuff, stuff that I held into my life that was causing some kind of reaction in my body to not feel regulated and heal efficiently. So that was kind of how my journey started. And then every year from there was like, how can I just grow and become better? And my mission in life was to become the best version of myself internally and externally. And, you know, there's only so much you can really learn about bodybuilding.

• 7:11Speaker 00

  Once you have good form, you get your protein in and you train hard. What's beyond that? It's the mind. It's what's making you show up consistently.

• 7:17Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Like, someone could show up in my peak offseason or in the peak of my prep and follow me for a day and do everything I did easily. It's not that hard. But to do that every day for 10 years, that's what makes it hard. So that's, it becomes a mental game. And, you know, you got to figure out the things that are driving you. And if those fade, why did they fade? The things that are holding you back, is it self doubt? Maybe like minimizing beliefs, whatever it may be. And my journey was just this long journey of self-discovery, more than anything.

• 7:45Gary Brecka?

  I think it's especially true, from my perspective, in something like bodybuilding. Because I would imagine, and I've never been a bodybuilder, but I would imagine that it's a very lonely sport.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:57Gary Brecka?

  You know, because it's not a team sport. It's a very individual sport. So you don't have a team, maybe other than your trainers and stuff, holding you accountable. You're not showing up for other people. You're showing up for yourself. And I think most of life is a very individual sport. You know, and, and they say like, it's very lonely at the head of the herd, right? The, uh, all you get to do is enjoy the view, right? And, and, you know, lots of people want to enjoy the view, but they don't want the climb. And to do it on your own, by yourself.

• 8:35Gary Brecka?

  Who were you competing against? Like, were you competing against yourself? Were you just constantly like, I want to be a better version of myself? And how did you keep that very myopic view of being the best bodybuilder from spilling over into every other aspect of your life? Because, you know, as I went down the rabbit hole preparing for this interview, there are a lot of bodybuilders that have actually ruined their lives outside of the sport.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:01Gary Brecka?

  People talk about how difficult they were to get along with, how self-centered they were, how they were tough in their marriage. You somehow been able to navigate all of that. I mean, I find you to be a very genuine, humble human being. I have the deepest level of respect for that. Completely devoid of arrogance, but you in this pursuit to be the best version of yourself, how did you keep the rest of your life in balance?

• 9:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I'm definitely wasn't always the easiest to deal with, for sure. You know, anyone's died in that. There's moments where my wife would be rolling her eyes in the crowd. She said, he's so easy to deal with all the time.

• 9:40Gary Brecka?

  My wife does the same thing. People are like, oh, he's so smart. You're so lucky. She's like, ah.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  She's in the background, like, yeah, sure. No, yeah. I mean, the first thing I could attribute to was just the way I was raised in my family. I have an incredible family who I love very much. And they taught me like, just good morals of staying true to like who you are. And what's most important is treating everyone like with respect and equal kindness. And I guess just, I had this idea of myself where like, as hard as I was working, it didn't make me any more special than anyone else. And it always was really like a me versus me kind of thing. And bodybuilding is a very egocentric sport. It's very vain. It's just like intense. And there's like, almost like a stereotype that's very accurate of the way people are like, trying to be beat better than the next guy, comparing to this guy. It's a comparison sport, subjective.

• 10:30Speaker 00

  You're being the pageantry. You're on stage being judged, you know? And I think a lot of bodybuilders before me, they were like, you gotta be on stage. You gotta be stepping on the stage, you're gonna beat this guy. You see him, you know you're better than him, be like that. And when I was young, I was like, okay, that's how I have to be to win. But it never made, it never drove, it didn't make me feel like I was getting better. If anything, it stressed me out, it made me anxious because I was comparing myself to others and like trying to be what they were, but especially in bodybuilding where it is so subjective, you have no control of what the judges do. So if you're trying to beat them or do what the judges do, and then the judges switch what they want, then you're just pissed because you didn't do what you want. You might as well just be doing it for yourself, creating the body that you are proud of, that you think is the best and being the best version of yourself.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  And there's no way to continuously improve unless that's your goal. If I'm trying to beat the next guy, when I beat him, I'm done. Then my motivation is gone. But if my goal is just best version of myself, that's limitless. It's just continuous progress of the journey that you love. And I think, I mean, the most, that super popular saying, the man who loves walking walks farther than the man who loves a destination. You know, I love bodybuilding and I didn't just love working out and starving myself and eating 400 grams of protein.

• 11:46Gary Brecka?

  Right, yeah, you can't fall in love with that.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Exactly. I loved seeing the direct results that came from it. You know, like there's few things in life that you have so much control over where you've put X amount of effort in, you'll get X amount of result. The gym is one of those things, your business doesn't work, relationship doesn't work like that, you don't know what's coming from it. But when you eat, when you eat right and you train hard, you get the result. And when you put yourself in the difficult situations, you're forced to be in a place to grow mentally. And I love that aspect of bodybuilding. So there were times where I didn't necessarily, or plenty of times where I had self doubt, where I didn't want to show up to the gym and work out, I didn't want to train hard. But I knew how much I loved the end result and I knew when I consistently did it, the person it made me become. So I continued to push myself more and more.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  And every year it was really, you know, I was. I guess blessed to have a mindset where I was just looking at what was right in front of me.

• 12:40Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:40Speaker 00

  You know, I had plenty of years of obstacles, like, like an injury. X amount of weeks at the Olympia where I was like, there's no way, I tore my lat one year, eight weeks at the Olympia.

• 12:48Gary Brecka?

  Wow, that's a big one.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  No way I'm gonna be able to compete.

• 12:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  All I could do was, okay, well, what can I do today? You know? I was in Canada, a deal was there. I was like, I need to PRP tomorrow. Now, I'm flying home, you know?

• 12:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Speaker 00

  I got that done. The next day was like, I can't train upper body. I can go train legs. I gotta train legs every day. Okay, well, I'll train them every other day, because I need to do something. And just progressively doing it one day at a time, focusing on what was in my control.

• 13:12Gary Brecka?

  And you still won that year.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  And I still won that year, yeah.

• 13:14Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  And I think one of my other biggest cheat codes was, I was really, like many men these days, really bad at feeling emotion. And like, letting myself be in an emotional state. I was very avoidant and just like, pushed it off. And when I came face to face with being bad at that, I was like, I was very, a person like, how do I prove what I'm bad at? So then if I'm bad at feeling stuff and it's making me feel worse and more anxious, what's the opposite I can do? Just embrace the shitty emotions I'm feeling. So if I was like that moment, I had my lat tear and in that moment, it might be like, oh, you hurt yourself, compete next year. But that was my life. I dedicated my life to bodybuilding. So to me, think of dropping out of the Olympia. It was like, I'm losing a piece of my life right now. It was devastating.

• 13:57Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  So instead of avoiding that, I learned to let myself feel that emotion. Are you feel like you're gonna break down, the world's ending and crumbling right now? Okay, well, be in that. Cry for a moment, like, be in that and lean on the people who are there and who love you. And luckily, I've met my wife right after I got sick. So she was with me through every Olympia I ever won.

• 14:16Gary Brecka?

  So you met her in your early twenties?

• 14:18Speaker 00

  Early twenties, to now married with a child. And then through that whole relationship, she's a very emotional being. So she helped teach me to lean into my emotion, to share it with her. And it's so much. It's so hard to explain and maybe some men out there can kind of relate to me in that sense where you feel like you just need to suppress it because it's a bad emotion, but to just let it out, there's no result to come from it, no answer, no solution. And to have someone that you can share it with, it just like releases this block and creates energy in you to move forward. And I think being able to apply that throughout my journey and learn how to do that, just it kept moving me forward.

• 14:55Gary Brecka?

  That's so, that's, that's so amazing. The, the injury that you had, well, I mean, you had a lot of injury, but the, um, the kidney injury. Um, I've heard you when you were talking to Patrick Beck, David, um, and some others, and you talked about how that injury made you limit the amount of risk that you took. And I think that that's fascinating because I think in bodybuilding, again, I've never been a bodybuilder, but I would assume that it's win at all costs. And there's an exchange for that, right? I mean, um, anabolic steroid use, um, constantly, you know, cutting weight, bulking up weight. I mean, this is hard on your organs. It's hard on your liver. It's hard on your kidneys,

• 15:40Gary Brecka?

  hard on your heart. Um, and I would assume that the vast majority of bodybuilders say that exchange is worth it. I'm willing to borrow from my future for the gain today. But like when you had that injury and you had this swelling and you realized that I have, I have a real critical kidney issue, you know, landed me in the hospital. Um, what were some of those risks that you weren't willing to take? Because I find it even more fascinating that you put guardrails on the amount of risk that you were willing to take, but you still achieved the top spot in the world multiple times.

• 16:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:19Gary Brecka?

  And that is really what's fascinating to me. And it might be a message for other, you know, younger bodybuilders that are on that journey. Um, that yes, it is about the gear that you're going to run, but it's also about the, the path that you set for yourself. So talk some, a little bit about some of the guardrails you, you, you set for yourself.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's very important for any bodybuilder to understand. Using any level of P E D is a serious health risk. You know, like the gear you have to run to be a professional bodybuilder. It's not healthy. You're like you said, you're boring from your future life. And even myself, I'm sure I was still ignorant to what I was doing at the time. But I knew that the more stress I'm going to put on my body, the worse it would push me back. So there are specific compounds that bodybuilders take. There's an array of them, you know, bodybuilders have always been the guinea pig of. Exactly. Yeah. We've always been guinea pigs for stuff, even when it comes to peptides.

• 17:12Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  We were taking peptides before they were ever anything. Because we were like, we'll give it a shot.

• 17:16Gary Brecka?

  You're like, research purposes only? Sounds great.

• 17:18Speaker 00

  Wait, it helps injuries?

• 17:19Gary Brecka?

  It worked in a rat and a monkey?

• 17:21Speaker 00

  Exactly. Exactly.

• 17:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  But no, so when I got to that point where I go sick, I was like, okay. I was doing X and I got sick. What if I do half of X? If I don't get sick, maybe there's something that was causing it. That was too much of a stress on my system and everything's a multitude of issues. You know, it's not like just the drugs were making me sick. It was the stress, my lifestyle. I was just got out of college. I was drinking a lot in between my off seasons. There was a lot I was doing. So then my shift went on to my health. I focused, shift my focus on my health.

• 17:54Gary Brecka?

  You shift your focus to your health.

• 17:55Speaker 00

  And then, so then everything I was putting in my body.

• 17:57Gary Brecka?

  Cause that moment made it, threw it in your face. You're like, whoa, I'm not immortal.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  I mean, coming out of that, so I still competed in that Olympia where I ended up in the hospital. Probably shouldn't have done that, but I was very stubborn and I was on, I had a journey of a goal. I wasn't going to quit on it. And then after that Olympia, my coach, my sister, my family, myself like sat down and were like, you shouldn't compete anymore. You should stop this. Like you put your body at risk. Like it's telling you something, you should stop. And I was like, I'm just not ready to stop, you know?

• 18:29Speaker 00

  If I was given that decision right now, I would stop. But I was 21 years old.

• 18:34Gary Brecka?

  You can't be killed by a bullet at 21. Yeah.

• 18:36Speaker 00

  One of my favorite stories is that.

• 18:38Gary Brecka?

  I got a 21 year old. I thought he was sitting in here, but he's not. He's in the house.

• 18:42Speaker 00

  That that F1 story of like back in the day of Alonso racing Schumacher. And they go into a corner Alonso behind Schumacher. And he rips by him in the corner and like, how'd you know to get by him there? He's like, he has two kids at home. He was gonna break, you know?

• 18:56Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 18:56Speaker 00

  Life changes over time. You're on a different journey and nothing wrong with either. But when I was young, dumb, ignorant, no family, send it, you know? Just go after it. I'm 30 now, as kids, but looking back, I wouldn't have made that the same decision. So I'm grateful I did, but I got it with my health still. But that's also why I chose to retire when I did too. Now decisions are different. But yeah, no, the guardrails I put on that were just limiting how much I took and what I took. Specific things like tren are one of the hardest things on your liver specifically. They're super toxic on your body. They're the ones that work the best sadly.

• 19:31Gary Brecka?

  When they say the hardcore, they're hardcore.

• 19:34Speaker 00

  That's, yeah.

• 19:35Gary Brecka?

  For a reason.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  That's hardcore for a reason. It's more adverse effects and benefits for sure from when you get to that level. So I just kind of like essentially cut what I was taking in half. And it was like, I'm gonna try it again. I'm gonna take care of my health. I'm gonna take care of the food that I put in my body. I'm not gonna be like, oh, I need protein. I'm gonna go to Five Guys. No, I'm gonna go get a grass fed steak and sweet potato and like switch everything I'm putting in my body now. Cause bodybuilders back in the day was just like macros for all that matters, you know?

• 20:03Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  But it's a lot more.

• 20:05Gary Brecka?

  I've heard some people on, you know, even on Instagram today, there's like macros. Calories in, calories out. And, and there's a lot of science that just proved that too.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 20:13Gary Brecka?

  I mean, you can get your calories from donuts, but you, right? But there's consequences to that. And but what's, what's also fascinating to me is there's so much about bodybuilding that's like not done in the gym. And, you know, I think some of the, some of the leading entrepreneurs in the world, Kevin Leary, for example, some, some of the leading financial entrepreneurs in the world will say, the greatest decision you'll ever make is.

• 20:43Gary Brecka?

  The person that you choose to spend the rest of your life with.

• 20:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:46Gary Brecka?

  And I've heard you talk about your wife a lot as that foundation, as that rock. And I, I find it to be very sincere. I don't think that you're just on a podcast trying to pay homage to your wife. I think that, you know, when you're competing in a sport as lonely as bodybuilding,

• 21:04Gary Brecka?

  and you're sort of taking your family on the journey, whether they want to go or not. It has to take a very special person to constantly support you.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:14Gary Brecka?

  And be willing to make sacrifices on their side of the table. You know, I, I find this area particularly fascinating because for me,

• 21:23Gary Brecka?

  I found a lot of like love and gratitude and foundation after I met my second wife, Sage. And we did all the things that you're not supposed to do, right? Moved in together, built a house together, started a business together, combined our families. And I think maybe the greatest relationships are the ones that go through everything that's meant to tear you apart. But you're still together.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:48Gary Brecka?

  And so I wonder if you just talk a little bit about, you know, what kind of foundation or strength you got from her? How important was that decision? Because I think men were weaker than we profess to be.

• 22:05Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 22:06Gary Brecka?

  And we're, we're a lot more emotional creatures than we also let out. You know, we're taught to suppress our emotions and not show fear, not, not show gratitude. That's weakness, not talk about our faith and not talk about our family relationships. But, but you're very open about it. So how, how much of a support system did you have from her? And like, how did that matter so much to your career? You think you would have made it six times in, in a row for her? If you know me, you know, I'm a huge believer in the benefits of hydrogen water. H2 Tab delivers cost-effective portable tablets that generate ultra-clean molecular hydrogen at 12 parts per million, one of the highest concentrations on the market. With over 1,300 published studies showing benefits of oxidative stress.

• 22:52Gary Brecka?

  Energy, recovery, brain function, and so much more. Taking charge of your health has never been easier or more cost effective. Just drop a tablet in water, let it dissolve and drink it back. It's less than a dollar a day, science backed and part of my daily routine. I never travel without this and it is my favorite bio hack. Visit drink h2 tab.com. That's drink h2 tab.com and upgrade your hydration today. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast.

• 23:25Gary Brecka?

  I'm assuming she's watching this.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  If she's watching. You know, I think there's a difference between making it and then losing yourself along the way and still making it. And I think that makes all the difference. So if you ask if I would be successful without her, absolutely not. Could I have won some Olympias? Sure. But to me, success isn't just having some trophies on my shelf. It's, you know, finishing my career, like proud of who I am, how I treated people, the relationship I built and kept along the way. Like that to me is success. When I go to sleep at night, it's not because of trophies. It's because of the peace I feel at my heart with my character, my relationships and the love I have for my wife. And knowing that that is like my constant rock in life. And so the, what she has helped me with is beyond what I could really ever explain.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  And like you were saying, we're not the best at feeling or expressing emotion. But I think the more we hold things in, the bigger reaction they have within our body. Whether from a scientific point of producing more cortisol or just physically feeling numb, you know? And I was definitely someone who would numb things out. And in one of my Olympia speeches, one year, something that I like learned from her was that if you numb the bad, you numb the good. If you're trying to suppress everything, you're like putting yourself in this box of what you can feel. You might be trying not to feel negative emotion, but you're putting glass ceiling on the positive emotion you can feel too. You're just like this like numb being. So she really taught me to just to open that box up and allow myself to be seen.

• 24:52Speaker 00

  You know, as humans, we're wired for a connection and you can't feel connected unless you're letting your genuine self be seen. You know, to like, in a moment, I was just talking about this with Henry. We were like filming something and I had my official wedding. Two weeks ago now and.

• 25:09Gary Brecka?

  Oh, you did?

• 25:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, we've been married, but we have the official wedding.

• 25:12Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, we're gonna, Sage and I gotta do the same thing. We've been married for years and we've never actually had. Where did you celebrate?

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Uh, we were in Italy, Tuscany.

• 25:19Gary Brecka?

  Oh, dude, that's awesome. It's where my son's gonna get married.

• 25:22Speaker 00

  Oh, that's awesome.

• 25:22Gary Brecka?

  Like, like Como. Yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 25:24Gary Brecka?

  And that's, is that in Tuscany?

• 25:25Speaker 00

  No.

• 25:26Gary Brecka?

  Or that's, no.

• 25:26Speaker 00

  No, it's.

• 25:27Gary Brecka?

  Where's that? Sorry.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Mid.

• 25:29Gary Brecka?

  South, south. Anyway, Italy is beautiful. My son got engaged there and he's also gonna get married there. And, and uh, my, my wife for a while didn't want to tell people we were married because we hadn't had the ceremony.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:41Gary Brecka?

  And um, so you had it in Tuscany?

• 25:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:44Gary Brecka?

  So was it like small family?

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, we had eight people there.

• 25:47Gary Brecka?

  No.

• 25:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, it was, it was my parents, siblings, her mom, siblings, and that was it. And our daughter.

• 25:54Gary Brecka?

  And your daughter, yeah.

• 25:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, and even in that small thing, there was this moment where like, we had this live band playing music. It was an emotional day. We wrote our vows by hand in the morning, you know, like lots of stuff coming up and they're playing this song and I just like, I had tears coming to my eyes where I started crying. So good. So grateful for like the love that we were sharing the day that we're in. And I noticed myself just like, we're on one side of the table and there's only six people on the other side. And I just turned to her because like that was my safe place to like feel and be seen and whatever like my true vulnerable self was like, she, I can share that with her and I'm not alone in that. So like even though with my closest family there, she's still my safest rock to be with. So I turned and she was the only one who could see me cry and she like knows who I am and she like saw me, put a hand on me, didn't say anything, was just like there for me.

• 26:39Speaker 00

  And that kind of like

• 26:41Gary Brecka?

  Unspoken.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  Ability to be seen and unspoken connection and trust between us, like that's the kind of

• 26:49Speaker 00

  confidence that can instill you to be able to do anything. You know, you come home from a day and you're like, I'm fucking injured. I feel like shit this happened to like, how the fuck am I gonna win another Olympia? Like this is, why am I even doing this? You know, and to be able to share that with someone who knows you and sees you and for them to be there for you in that moment, like to let that out and then to get to the true thing that's unraveling. It's like, okay, what are you really dealing with? Why is this pain coming up and to be able to process that, not alone?

• 27:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 27:16Speaker 00

  That's what instills confidence. And to me, those are the kind of things that allows you not to win once, two, three, four, five, six times.

• 27:22Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  And become a better person along the way, not lose yourself on a journey of excellence.

• 27:27Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, that's so awesome, man, because you grew in, you grew in mind, body, grew in spirit, you know, you, and. I guess about 15 months ago, that's when God gave you the greatest blessing, right? Your daughter?

• 27:38Speaker 00

  My little girl.

• 27:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Yeah. That had to be a material change. Does that factor into you retiring?

• 27:44Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 27:45Gary Brecka?

  It did?

• 27:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, so when my wife was like, I don't know, four or five months pregnant at my second last Olympia, and that was supposed to be my last, I was like, ready to retire on that one, and that was the year I tore my lat. Just a lot of stuff felt like it was lining up for me to be done.

• 28:02Gary Brecka?

  It was your last one that you tore your lat?

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Second last one.

• 28:04Gary Brecka?

  Oh, second last one, okay.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  I planned to retire.

• 28:06Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 28:07Speaker 00

  And then, from there, there were some things that I was going through internally, and I was just like, I want to finish on a little bit more of a positive note, you know, stepping away not from fear, but from just a choice of power. But then like that same story of that guy, you know, breaking into the corner, it's like, okay, I have my family at home, I've had my success, one's enough, enough.

• 28:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  You know, like.

• 28:27Gary Brecka?

  You never get that Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, I got one more in me?

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Of course. Constantly.

• 28:32Gary Brecka?

  I think he did that six times.

• 28:33Speaker 00

  He did, yeah.

• 28:34Gary Brecka?

  And he crushed it.

• 28:35Speaker 00

  He did, he did.

• 28:37Gary Brecka?

  But.

• 28:38Speaker 00

  I don't think that is faith. I'm sure I'll be like, I'm sure he'll be 80 years old, where he'll be chilling, be like, ah, I could have done more, you know?

• 28:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Well, he wants to play in the Olympics now, so.

• 28:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, true, true.

• 28:49Gary Brecka?

  He actually, you know, interestingly, Tom reminds me a lot about you, he has a childlike fascination with performance and optimal health. You know, all of our discussions have always been centered around like, how can he take better care of himself? How can he sleep better? How can he perform better? So I find it fascinating with someone who's had a career like that too, that's still trying to be the best off the field, that what he does for, you know, for himself. But I had a daughter first too, Maddie, and that is a life-changing experience. You know, it's really kind of strange for me because the very first day that we brought her home. I kind of felt like it was a foreigner in my house. I was like, is somebody gonna come pick

• 29:34Gary Brecka?

  this thing up? Like, is this like gonna stay?

• 29:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, terrifying.

• 29:38Gary Brecka?

  It's terrifying because there's no guidebook. Like, you don't know what to do.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  They're like, um.

• 29:43Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, but then what's crazy is this whole, I get goosebumps telling this story. And my first wife, Amy, the mother of my kids, who's amazing, amazing person, still, still a very close friend of mine to this day, but was, was so astounding to me was, you know, we bought this thing home and I'm like, I feel like I'm gonna break it. I don't know how to feed it. It's so, it's so small.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  So fragile.

• 30:07Gary Brecka?

  It's so fragile. And then, but something in her, she just knew what to do. I was like, where'd you get all this knowledge? Like, you've been reading books? Like, she's like, like my daughter would cry and she'd go, oh, she's gassy, or she needs to eat, or she wants me to come in and hold her. I'm like, how the hell do you know that? It just sounds like noise.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:27Gary Brecka?

  And then she knew the difference in the cries and it was like, so it was really cool was to see this whole, like, woman come out of your wife, at least, that was my experience, that just showed up because there was a kid all of a sudden in the house. Like, God imparts this wisdom upon them somehow.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 30:48Gary Brecka?

  They sort of know what to do because you and I are just fumbling around in the dark.

• 30:51Speaker 00

  Just trying to help.

• 30:52Gary Brecka?

  Bottle.

• 30:54Speaker 00

  What do you need me to do?

• 30:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, what do you need me to do? I'm like, so scared. But now she's, so she's 15 months, she's pulling herself up on stuff, wreaking havoc.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  Walking, running around, yeah.

• 31:03Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  You have any advice having an older daughter than me? Tips I need to know?

• 31:07Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you know, it's, it's, you're gonna cave and you're gonna melt. And there's, you know, my only parenting advice, and I've raised three kids, I have a fourth one now with Sage, that she had from previous marriage, my only advice. Is just incorporate your kids into your daily life. Like, do not stop your life and turn it all on to your kid. Like, we, we brought Madison to busy restaurants, we brought her out to eat, we traveled with her, even in the little, they had this, the coolest stroller at the time, it's called the Bugaboo. It's made out of aircraft aluminum, so like, I was a scientist, like, oh, it's aircraft aluminum, so cool. And, um, so we got one of these, but literally, um, you know, we would go over to some of our friends' house,

• 31:51Gary Brecka?

  and they'd be like, shh, the baby's sleeping, the door's closed, they got about exactly six o'clock. And, and so we tiptoe around, then they wake him up exactly five thirty in the morning. And, um, and we were like, oh, we brought our baby with us. Not in the car, we brought it in the house. And, and it just made it so easy and adaptive, and then we noticed, like, when we would take flights, people's babies would be screaming and just bouncing off the wall, because they knocked them off their schedule. But Madison was just so used to sleeping when, where she had to sleep. There was noise in the room, there was noise in the room. I mean, we didn't purposely disrupt their life, but her, her, you know, nursery room door was open, and we would have folks over for dinner, we'd have the family, and it was noisy.

• 32:37Gary Brecka?

  She would sleep through it.

• 32:39Gary Brecka?

  And that's my only advice. I don't, I don't like to give a lot of parenting advice. I've become a better parent after my kids were adults than when I was, when they were younger.

• 32:48Speaker 00

  As long as you figure it out.

• 32:49Gary Brecka?

  But I think our role as, as, as fathers is to just believe in our kids until they learn to believe in themselves. And now I'm seeing that switch in my kids, like, as they're starting to believe in themselves, and they're starting to stand on their own two feet, and they're starting businesses, and they're really making their way in the world, and that, for me, is the greatest level of satisfaction. So, my only parenting advice is just don't slow your life down.

• 33:13Speaker 00

  No, dude.

• 33:13Gary Brecka?

  Bring your daughter with you, wherever, and if people don't like it, get them out of your life.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  They're the problem, man.

• 33:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, they're the problem.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  They were a baby too, once screaming.

• 33:21Gary Brecka?

  Never be embarrassed to have a, have a kid. But it's, you know what's awesome too, is that,

• 33:28Gary Brecka?

  There's this fear of the unknown, like, am I parenting right? Am I raising them right? Am I doing the right thing? Am I being the right role model? But eventually, like, every stage gets better and better. Like, there is nothing in this world better than watching your kid play a sport. Or, um, like, the first time you go and watch your daughter sing at the Christmas players. It's, it's just so amazing. Um, and, and now they're my best friends as adults. I mean, I could truly say my kids are my best friends. Um, there's no one I'd rather travel with. There's no one I'd rather be in business with. There's no one I trust more than them. Um, so.

• 34:05Speaker 00

  That's awesome.

• 34:05Gary Brecka?

  To the extent that helps, that's, that's all I got.

• 34:08Speaker 00

  Good advice. Good advice. We just took her to, to our trip to, or wedding to Italy.

• 34:13Gary Brecka?

  Oh, you did?

• 34:13Speaker 00

  It was chaos. We're like, we're never going back to Europe with a baby again. Bad decision. So maybe we'll travel closer than a six-hour time change.

• 34:20Gary Brecka?

  Well, I mean, that's, yeah, you just went all in out of the gate. You know, that's a little heavy.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Doesn't do much.

• 34:25Gary Brecka?

  But, but I think the more you do with them, the more adaptive they become. You know, they, they will learn way more from observation than they do from what you try to teach them.

• 34:33Speaker 00

  For sure.

• 34:33Gary Brecka?

  And they are way more observant than what you think.

• 34:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:38Gary Brecka?

  You know, when those first sentences start coming out of their mouth and you realize how much they know about the world around them. Cause when they're not speaking, they're observing.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, they're still learning.

• 34:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, and they're formulating their own opinions.

• 34:50Gary Brecka?

  So, sorry, I, I had a great, uh, the mother of my kids is a great, great woman too. And, and so when we decided we were going to separate, we only separated the husband and the wife. We never separated the mother and the father. And I think that was a big plus for, for my kids too. Um, so I want to switch gears a little bit. I mean, obviously you have one of the greatest bodybuilders in the world on your podcast. We got to talk a little bit about your journey. Everybody's going to want to know, what did he take? How did he, what did he do to, you know, to get there?

• 35:21Gary Brecka?

  I, I also found it fascinating on a podcast I was watching of yours when, uh, you talked about time where a young, uh, kid came up to you that was going to start bodybuilding. And, uh, and he was like, should I start using steroids? And you told him no. He said, it's a really bad idea.

• 35:40Gary Brecka?

  And I thought that was really interesting, you know, because here you are, one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, dominating the sport. It's clearly, you know, using PEDs. And your recommendation out of the gate to this young bodybuilder starting out was, don't start with steroids. You said that on the Patrick David podcast, just as a reminder. So, why did you do that?

• 36:05Speaker 00

  I mean, the easy response to that, someone watching that, be like, yeah, easy for you to say you're a hypocrite. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And valid too, you know? Right, right. I mean, was a decision that serious? If you're gonna walk up to a stranger and let their answer depict if you're gonna do something that's potentially harming your health? Like, you need to be making that decision for yourself. You need to be understanding what the risks are. You need to be understanding how small the benefits are. Like, did, people can look at my life and be like, wow, like, I want that. How many people actually make it in any sport, you know?

• 36:38Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Let alone bodybuilder. How many people at gym had it? Then how many people become Mr. Olympia? And beyond that, there's people who are second place in the Mr. Olympia and they're making that cash, that check for that prize money is like 20 grand. Their sponsors, maybe some of these people are making like low six figures a year. Like, it's not a life of lux. And then your shelf life is done when you're 30. What do you do from there? Like, it's not as exciting as you might think. It's a really high risk. And most people don't see the success that they think they're going to see, you know? So, I definitely tell anybody young who's trying to take that seriously is to really tick off all your like boxes.

• 37:17Speaker 00

  And that being the last one. Like, have you spent consistent years training hard, learning how to train with proper form, proper periodization, good programs? You know, good nutrition, good rest, and doing everything that you can to get to a point where you can actually see what your genetic capabilities are? Because one of the biggest things that limits a bodybuilder is your genetics.

• 37:35Gary Brecka?

  Right.

• 37:35Speaker 00

  You know, once you're on the Olympia stage, everyone's a top 0001% in the gene pool of not only your ability to put on muscle, but just your ratio of like joint to muscle belly to waist size to like your ability to grow legs and lats. So you can create an expert, like all the little things. Are so dependent on that. So if you just jump into jumping on steroids at a young age before you know any of that, then you have horrible genetics, you've just put yourself at risk for no reason. So.

• 38:00Gary Brecka?

  That's a really good, that's a really good point. I mean, on this path that you went on, I mean, there's not really, you've even talked about it before, there's no real guidebook. It's not like, hey, go read this book. It's, it's, it's bodybuilding steroid 101. You start here. This is what you do month one, month six, month 12. There isn't really a guide. And I kind of feel like, um, maybe the guys at the top of their game aren't really that willing to share their, what they're doing behind the scenes. Cause any little edge that they have is an edge that they keep for themselves. And, um, so what were you using as a resource? Like where were you getting your training advice from? I mean, obviously you go and you lift heavy, but you would have gotten a lot more injured, a

• 38:42Gary Brecka?

  lot more frequently if you didn't know what you were doing. So where did you get, where'd you get the guidance from for training? Where did you get the guidance from on your gear? On your nutrition? Or were you really just figuring it out along the way?

• 38:57Speaker 00

  A lot of specifically training at least started with my brother-in-law. He was a young bodybuilder.

• 39:03Gary Brecka?

  Your wife's brother?

• 39:04Speaker 00

  My wife's husband. Sorry.

• 39:07Gary Brecka?

  Hopefully not your wife's husband.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  My sister's husband.

• 39:11Gary Brecka?

  We, we just found a polygamist in our midst.

• 39:13Speaker 00

  I expose myself on the ultimate human. My sister's husband, they were dating at the time when I was in high school, much older than me, a local bodybuilder. And he was just, to this day, like he became a professional bodybuilder as well. And he was like notoriously one of the strongest, hardest training guys in the whole like league.

• 39:31Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 39:32Speaker 00

  So me being able to be in grade 12 and that being like my training partner some days, gave me like a massive cheat code. Another moment of like being right place, right time, like God's timing to be in the right position of like this young kid who loves training. Now he was this incredible bodybuilder with insane work ethic, who is a guy I'm looking up to.

• 39:49Gary Brecka?

  Ah, that's cool.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  He taught me. More than anything, just what true intensity was, you know? People think they're training hard in the gym, but the idea of taking like every set close to failure or to failure every single day and pushing every single week after week, year after year, it's, it's different, you know? So that was my standard when I started training at like 16 years old. And that was like my huge cheat code to this day where I'll train with bigger, but bigger bodybuilders than me and I often have better form and I'm stronger than them because I've just, that was just my like blood, you know, what I've been doing. So he was a huge resource for me. He coached me through the beginning of my career.

• 40:25Gary Brecka?

  He was actually in the gym with you, coaching you. Yeah. That's awesome.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  My diet, nutrition, and I really think so much of it is so much more simple than people realize.

• 40:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:33Speaker 00

  I imagine you see this a lot too, when people stressing about health, trying to find his perfect solution and answer.

• 40:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Sometimes you gotta boil it back to just training hard, eating right and doing consistently.

• 40:43Gary Brecka?

  I totally agree with you, Ben. I told you, one of my favorite comments that you ever made that was shocking to me was, you know, you talked about going into Mr. Olympia Prep and, you know, I was expecting you to give this laundry list of supplements and this laundry list of, you know, peptides and all of this stuff. And you basically said, I had my nutrition dialed in, I was taking creatine and protein powders.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 41:08Gary Brecka?

  And I was like, wow. And I often talk about that, how like the greatest longevity science and anti-aging experts now have come full circle and we're like getting back to the basics.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:20Gary Brecka?

  Sunlight, vitamin D3, grounding and breath work, whole food diet, focusing on sleep, like the basics, the things that you can't manage your way around. You know, I'm sure you couldn't train your way around a crappy diet.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:35Gary Brecka?

  And you couldn't eat your way around poor training. And so there's some, just those fundamentals. It's like the fundamentals of longevity, if you follow the blue zone, whole food diet, sense of connection and purpose and mobility into later in life.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:48Gary Brecka?

  That's what the data says, right? And I, and I think you're saying bodybuilding is like nutrition, train hard, sleep, recover, repeat.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:58Gary Brecka?

  I'm major oversimplifying it. But, um, but I do want to go into the supplement bandwagon a little bit. I, I got a list of some of your, some of your favorites. And I, I wondered if you'd just talk about these and like how you incorporate them into your daily regimen and how important they were for you. Whey protein was like the, the big one. Was that your main, in addition to whole foods? Was that your, your main other source of protein? Trying to get to what 200 grams of protein, 210 grams of protein?

• 42:31Speaker 00

  I mean, I would typically aim to get like at least 200 to 250 grams from whole foods of protein.

• 42:39Gary Brecka?

  Wow.

• 42:40Speaker 00

  And then I would stack on anywhere from 50 to 100 grams from protein shakes. But the goal was always whole food. But when you're eating 300 plus grams of protein, it's just a lot of food.

• 42:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 00

  Especially like life is busy or whatever. You walk out of a gym, just being able to have that in your bag, mix it with water and go is.

• 42:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  It's super simple and convenient. So that's probably, it hasn't been over two days I haven't taken protein powder in the last decade.

• 43:02Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 43:05Gary Brecka?

  I remember I, I had a very short stint as a triathlete and, um, um, I actually was the age group champion amateur for the, for my age group in Florida. And I went so psycho that one year, biking, running, swimming, biking, running, swimming, that I did the Chesapeake half ironman. And I came home and I hung my bike up on the garage. And if I still had that garage, it would still be there. That was 18 years ago. Like, um, and so, and that's part of what fascinates me so much because the grind and the mental fortitude that it has to take to, to maintain that level of intensity over

• 43:48Gary Brecka?

  such a prolonged period of time is just still fascinating to me. Creatine was one of your must haves.

• 43:55Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 43:56Gary Brecka?

  Um, and I say every woman over 40 years old needs to be on creatine. It's no longer a bodybuilding supplement. It never has been, but I mean, no, no longer just for bodybuilders. I think it's fallen into that bodybuilding category, um, but for cognitive function, um, it's dirt cheap. You took creatine monohydrate, right?

• 44:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:17Gary Brecka?

  How much of that were you taking?

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Typically, five grams. And then in like, competition season, I would be doing five grams pre and post workout, so up to 10 grams. And then just recently, I was just learning about the cognitive benefits too. So

• 44:30Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Before I do like a podcast or something, I'll take 20 grams of it and just

• 44:34Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  get ready to go, sipping on electrolytes and creatine on my way here.

• 44:37Gary Brecka?

  Oh, were you really?

• 44:39Speaker 00

  From the car.

• 44:39Gary Brecka?

  I think we did, what, hydrogen water and a couple of other things, you know, on the way in here. You also talked about multivitamins. You had a basic multi that you took, which is to cover the bases, like B vitamins.

• 44:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. More so just even learning, like you know, better than most is the nutrients in our food is pretty lacking right now.

• 44:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  And when you get them, A, nutrients in our food is so much lower than it's been in the past. But B, when you're dieting super strict, near the end of prep, like, you don't even have the luxury. You'll start cutting out vegetables and foods because your calories are so low everywhere you put it matters, you know, so you're not going to get enough nutrients when your priority is getting enough protein and and then enough energy to get through your workout. So being able to take a multivitamin for me was also something that was super beneficial.

• 45:24Gary Brecka?

  That's great. And you, you've also talked about glutamine, which I'm also a big fan of. What were you taking the glutamine for?

• 45:32Speaker 00

  For my gut health.

• 45:33Gary Brecka?

  Gut health.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would throw that into pretty much every shake I had, I'd put like, at least 10 grams into that.

• 45:38Gary Brecka?

  Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for our private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge, tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use

• 46:24Gary Brecka?

  Water fasting, gut optimization and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Yeah, um, I, I'm first of all, I agree with all of these. And then resveratrol, which um, I take a Pisces form of resveratrol. Resveratrol is grape seed extract. That's why a lot of people say that red wine is good for you. You know, like and actually lose the alcohol and still get the benefits.

• 47:10Gary Brecka?

  The polyphenols in the resveratrol and, and the few studies that were like, oh, a glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away. It was like, no, it wasn't the wine. It was the polyphenols in the resveratrol.

• 47:22Speaker 00

  Either way, they can convince themselves though.

• 47:24Gary Brecka?

  So you added the resveratrol, turmeric and curcumin. You took a lot of electrolytes. Interesting one that I, I found, which I'm also a big fan of is something called bergamot.

• 47:35Gary Brecka?

  And what were you taking the bergamot for?

• 47:38Speaker 00

  It's for like cardiovascular health, cholesterol. The big thing in the bottom of the community has been just something that was always spoken about. You need to be taking this.

• 47:46Gary Brecka?

  So you're like, okay.

• 47:47Speaker 00

  Peds, I was like, can't miss that.

• 47:49Gary Brecka?

  I don't want to be missing out. I did a podcast with Dr. Gundry and he's a cardiologist, cardiovascular surgeon. And I have the genetic predisposition to lipolipol A. My cholesterol is amazing. Triglycerides are amazing and I eat very clean. But I have the lipolipol A, which there are no pharmaceutical solutions for. But bergamot and slow release niacin, he told me to start taking those. And it dramatically reduced those for me. And so those are the real, those are the dangerous ones for cardiovascular disease.

• 48:26Gary Brecka?

  And, you know, because we know that steroid use is going to be hard on the liver. It's going to be tough on your cholesterol. I imagine you stopped drinking.

• 48:36Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:36Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. I mean, that's been gone for a long time.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:39Gary Brecka?

  But because these things were so hard on the rest of your organs, you were supplementing to kind of offset that.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 48:45Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Um, you know, I, we, we were talking before we came on the podcast that, you know, I believe that.

• 48:54Gary Brecka?

  Things like peptides are going to be, some of them are going to be as common as a multivitamin. And as, as soon as five years. Because peptides are amino acid sequences. When you put them in the body, they act a bunch of different ways. They can act like mimetics and mimic other compounds in the body. They can act like secretagogues and cause organs and glands to secrete things that they would normally do. And there's a whole host of peptides. I, I actually wanted to go through some of them, tissue healing peptides, repair peptides, not a scientific dive into them. I'm just curious which ones you've used and supported.

• 49:37Gary Brecka?

  And in full disclosure, you and I are partners in a peptide manufacturer called Visalis, Visalius Longevity Labs, and they manufacture peptides called Peptule. But this is not a commercial for Peptule. And this is just a discussion on peptides, but just in full disclosure, first of all, proud to be a partner in that.

• 49:58Gary Brecka?

  And so is the crown prince of Saudi, who's our one of our partners now too. Yeah. So if you have an extra seven, four, seven lying around, I know you tried to give one to Donald Trump. I'm also in the market for a private seven, forty seven, if they have an extra.

• 50:13Speaker 00

  Not sure I could afford to upkeep that thing.

• 50:15Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I know. Exactly. We could accept the gift, but that'd actually not fill it with gas.

• 50:19Speaker 00

  Flip it, yeah.

• 50:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, but I'll just park it and put my friends on it and have a party.

• 50:24Gary Brecka?

  But I, I think the world of peptides is fascinating. It's been around a lot longer than people think. And then there's this whole new emerging world of some of these designer approaches to modulating human performance. You know, Dr. Mike from RP Strength, you know who he is? He's got a podcast. I, I actually really liked this guy. I think he's super intelligent and he toes, toes the line very well between the valid science and the risks and things. He's actually called me out a lot on social media and, and it pisses me off, but then I'm like, ah, he's right, you know, and I have to go and delete videos.

• 51:03Speaker 00

  You're like shitty got me there.

• 51:04Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, but I'm like, but he helps me sharpen my sword because I'm like, dude, he's actually right. But he, he's, he's one of the few guys that I trust in this whole PED category as being just authentic, knowledgeable. And he was talking about these non-androgenic anabolic.

• 51:22Gary Brecka?

  And I know that's a mouthful and I forget the two drugs he was specifically referring to, but one of them was like the folistatin gene therapies was similar to that. And it inhibited myostatin, which is one of the compounds that actually stops our muscles from growing. And he was hypothesizing that the whole era of steroids may very soon be going away because we can safely enhance and modulate the body's ability to grow massive amounts of muscle by harnessing our own innate genetics and our own innate ability to turn genes off that are inhibiting our ability to grow muscle.

• 52:07Gary Brecka?

  I mean, those areas of science are so fascinating to me, like safer.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Those are the same genes though that are inhibiting like cancer cells from growing too, are they not?

• 52:17Gary Brecka?

  Or? Yeah, I mean, I, I, I think they are. And I think that's where things get a little bit dicey. And I think as with any new, you know, therapy, there's obviously got to be the risks. But, but peptides, um, you know, there's been enormous numbers of scripts written for these with very few adverse events. I think they fall into several major categories. I just wanted to run through some of them for tissue repair. Have you used BPC 157, TB 500?

• 52:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, those are like, those are, we say it'll be a multivitamin to the average person. Those are multivitamin to the average bodybuilder.

• 52:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 52:57Speaker 00

  At least the last.

• 52:58Gary Brecka?

  They're like, oh, those are baby peptides.

• 53:01Speaker 00

  No, when I talk about injuries.

• 53:02Gary Brecka?

  I G F L R three.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  When I talk about injuries I've had throughout my career, there's few that I've gotten through where I've healed. Like, how'd you heal so fast where I wasn't taking those spot injecting it right into my lat, my shoulder or whatever it may be.

• 53:15Gary Brecka?

  I will tell you, um, anecdotally, you know,

• 53:20Gary Brecka?

  I've seen miracles with these kinds of peptides and can't recall adverse events, except when people are online getting them from like Chinese pharmacies and whatnot. I think one of the reasons why we backed this Visalia's longevity labs is you're going to stand behind peptides, they've got to be GMP certified and you've got to know the source of them and they have to be stability, sterility, potency tested. But BPC 157 is known for seeing inflammatory properties. It's a gastric pentadecapetide. It's actually synthesized from gastric juice. One of the things I have seen in tens of thousands of patients that came through our clinic system was significant improvements in gut healing and gut repair.

• 54:05Gary Brecka?

  I don't think we approached a single Crohn's patient or diverticulitis or a patient that had irritable bowel syndrome that our clinical team didn't think about BPC 157. Is that both injectable and oral or just oral mainly for the gut? Oral, you know, the interesting thing about BPC 157 is because it's synthesized from gastric juice, it's actually tolerated very well orally. You can do it through an intranasal spray. You can do it in oral capsule form or you can, like you did, site inject it. So post-surgical repair, wound repair, gut permeability, especially in leaky gut, just fascinating accelerations.

• 54:45Gary Brecka?

  And it's kind of sad that these are not NSF certified because you're only harnessing the body's ability to heal itself. Yeah. And, you know, what I wanted to discuss here was, you know, you used a lot of these peptides, maybe not to get bigger, give you an advantage, but to recover and heal from the damage that you were doing. Yeah. And everybody listening to this podcast has some kind of nips and bibles, right? Knee, hip, shoulder, rotator cuff, low back, elbow, something. And if you don't, good for you. Jealous. Because, yeah, he's jealous. But I feel like it's just one of those universal peptides. When did you, when did you first start discovering peptides? And when did you first start using them? Right out of the gate?

• 55:30Speaker 00

  I think it was right around 2018, around that time when I got sick too, because one of the first ones I took.

• 55:36Gary Brecka?

  You get sick a lot, dude.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Well, at the same time, the same time.

• 55:39Gary Brecka?

  This is the same one.

• 55:39Speaker 00

  The one time.

• 55:40Gary Brecka?

  Okay, good.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  It was just a big moment in my life.

• 55:43Gary Brecka?

  Okay, so big signals.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  But because it was autoimmune, I had a local guy tell me about thymus and alpha one. And like the immune regulation modulation that can come from that.

• 55:50Gary Brecka?

  That one's amazing for the immune system.

• 55:52Speaker 00

  How like there was a lot of studies already at that point, helping people with autoimmune, prevent flare ups and being able to just regulate the immune system, preventing it from attacking itself. And when I heard that, I was, at that point, I was just like, I'll try anything. So when I bought into that, that's when I learned about the BPC and the TB as well. And you're never not injured as a professional bodybuilder somewhere.

• 56:12Gary Brecka?

  I got to imagine.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  So you just start with that and that's kind of what kicked off my journey.

• 56:16Gary Brecka?

  Um, what about now? Where, do you have any lasting injuries from it? I mean, you seem like you're getting around really good.

• 56:22Speaker 00

  I moved pretty, I'm like, my body's tight, no crazy injuries. I just had a shoulder operation a few months ago. It's bouncing back still right now. I tore a couple rotator cuffs.

• 56:31Gary Brecka?

  A couple rotator cuffs?

• 56:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, like three, so a deal actually did stem cells right in there. So that helps heal that up, but.

• 56:39Gary Brecka?

  Subscapulars, yeah.

• 56:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, still just like leg nagging little things, but nothing crazy luckily, knock wood.

• 56:44Gary Brecka?

  Well, I mean, three tears in the rotate, there's only four muscles in the rotator cuff. So you tore three quarters of them, so.

• 56:51Speaker 00

  It's moving now though.

• 56:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I remember in chiropractic school, they were like, it only really does the first like 15 degrees of abduction and internal rotation. So when you have big delts like that, it's pretty common too with like pitchers, because you have this big deltoid. And then all of a sudden it handles, it hands all this load over to these four tiny little muscles and they can, they can snap. But you started talking about stem cells for a moment too. I'm a huge fan of stem cells. For a while it was on the NFL Alumni Association's Athletica and.

• 57:25Gary Brecka?

  That organization is full of repetitive use injuries.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 57:28Gary Brecka?

  And so, most of them are not major traumatic injuries, just repetitive use, like what a bodybuilder would have, what every fifty, sixty year old man or woman is gonna have. And stem cells, which contrary to popular belief are legal in the United States, you can do them into your joints. And there's some states, like Florida now, that I think you can do them intravenously.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think as long as they're manufactured in Florida or something.

• 57:54Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  There's some guidelines still, but they're open now, yeah.

• 57:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah. Pradeep, Dr. Pradeep, who also sits on our board at Vaisys Longevity Labs. Yeah, he was instrumental in kind of helping the legislation get through Florida. But I think that's important because now, you know, for most of these treatments, people have to go to third world countries. And I don't have anything against Costa Rica, or Medellin, Colombia, or Panama, or Tijuana, Mexico. But I think if I were the FDA, I would say, before I let everyone just leave the country and go into these foreign countries where we have no reach into there, maybe we should take a look at the safety profile on some of these. They bear a lot of risk too, because obviously they get misused like anything else.

• 58:41Gary Brecka?

  But how important would you rank peptides like TB500, BPC157, even your stem cell injections in your ability to have recovery?

• 58:55Speaker 00

  It's really hard to say, but I would say that we're definitely a massive cheat code for my career, for me to be able to push for, like I did for as long as I did, especially with an autoimmune condition and keeping my body's inflammation low and ability to recover.

• 59:10Gary Brecka?

  The kidney conditions was determined to be autoimmune.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:13Gary Brecka?

  Hmm.

• 59:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:14Gary Brecka?

  And where does that stand now?

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Um, I mean, I haven't had a true flare up since that 2018 one, which is incredible. Get knock on wood, but changed my lifestyle a lot from that now that I'm retired and hoping it's only going to get better, but.

• 59:27Gary Brecka?

  You still take the Thomasin Alpha?

• 59:28Speaker 00

  I do, yeah.

• 59:29Gary Brecka?

  Okay, great.

• 59:29Speaker 00

  Not all year, but I take it in cycles throughout the year. So it's been, my health has just been increasing since I retired and typically every year.

• 59:38Gary Brecka?

  I mean.

• 59:38Speaker 00

  Appreciate it.

• 59:39Gary Brecka?

  No offense.

• 59:40Speaker 00

  Typically they had a system every year where compete and then focus on my health as long as I could. And then compete again. And it was just like never progressing. So now that I'm retired, my focus is just on anti-aging.

• 59:52Gary Brecka?

  I know. You actually texted me in November. Um, do you remember that? You sent me a DM.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:56Gary Brecka?

  Um, um, I pulled it up and, uh, and, uh, I thought it was really cool because I was like, of course mom says, uh, hit me up on the DMs and do you mind if I talk about it?

• 1:00:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:00:06Gary Brecka?

  Okay. Um, and you were asking me about the genetic test. Um, um, cause you said, you know, I beat my body up a lot, bodybuilding, and I just want to get to the next level. And I was, I was like, I love this guy because you know, you're, you're not just giving up. You're, you're like now in that post-professional career pursuit of excellence.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:26Gary Brecka?

  Which is like, how can I just live the longest, healthiest, happiest life possible?

• 1:00:31Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:00:31Gary Brecka?

  And that's probably why 95% of people come see me.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Gary Brecka?

  Um, for you, I imagine a lot of it's driven by your daughter.

• 1:00:38Speaker 00

  But yeah.

• 1:00:38Gary Brecka?

  Is that covering your mind?

• 1:00:41Speaker 00

  I took years off my life from competing. I need to add those back on.

• 1:00:44Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Yeah. She's expecting you around for, for a long time. You gonna have more?

• 1:00:48Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:00:49Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, dude, I love having a tribe.

• 1:00:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:52Gary Brecka?

  You know, um, I remember when we had, uh, I know we're bouncing around a lot, but I remember when we had our third child. I used to mess with my wife all the time because she would like go out of town and like, listen, I've got ADHD. Now we got three, so pick your favorite two and I'll have them here when you get back, but I can't promise. The third one, we never know. Like that. It's a joke. It's a joke, but you're outnumbered, dude.

• 1:01:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Gary Brecka?

  Two to three.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  At that point.

• 1:01:15Gary Brecka?

  Is a big jump.

• 1:01:16Speaker 00

  That's what we're calling grandma and grandpa.

• 1:01:17Gary Brecka?

  Giving you a heads up. Once you get to three, screw it. You might just get a family bus and just have at it.

• 1:01:22Speaker 00

  See you later, yeah.

• 1:01:23Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. Once you can't fit in a regular car, it's game over.

• 1:01:25Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Well, was that show that used to be that the, uh, reality show was like 17 and counting or something?

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:01:31Gary Brecka?

  Did you ever see that?

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  I remember seeing some of us.

• 1:01:33Gary Brecka?

  A college family had a whole bus?

• 1:01:35Speaker 00

  Insane.

• 1:01:35Gary Brecka?

  Um, I'm not going there.

• 1:01:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:38Gary Brecka?

  Um, uh, there's another peptide called GHKCU.

• 1:01:43Gary Brecka?

  It's a copper peptide, see you being the copper stimulating collagen production. I see it showing up in all kinds of skincare products now. It's also topical for hair. Have you ever used the GHKCU peptide?

• 1:02:01Speaker 00

  I was just recently recommended that to for part of my shoulder injury and just like overall recovery. But I haven't, I've, my wife has some of it in her skincare products, but I haven't dove in deep into that one.

• 1:02:14Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, I think the combination of BBC 157, TB 500 and GHKCU is about all you could throw at massive tissue repair. If I was, if I was recovering from surgery, that would be, you know, the stack that I would be on. And then there's this whole category of fatty acid metabolizers, fat, I won't say fat burners, but it helps the body mobilize and metabolize fat and, and growth hormone peptides. And I think here is where peptides have a very, potentially very special place in performance, maybe even bodybuilding, because we know that anytime you take something from outside the body and put it in, you're potentially reducing your body's ability to replace that on its own.

• 1:02:59Gary Brecka?

  Testosterone, for example, if you take it exogenously, you're going to reduce your own testicular production of that hormone. But growth hormone releasing peptides and growth hormone releasing hormones like CJC 1295, ipomorlin, sermorlin, sermorlin is probably the one that I know has been around the longest. I want to say that it was FDA approved in 1983, right around there for dwarfism and pituitary

• 1:03:26Gary Brecka?

  tumors or pituitary adenomas. So we have a lot of data on these peptides. There's a, there's a prevailing wisdom that they're not safe, but they're amino acid chains. They've been around in most cases for decades. Voluminous amounts of people have taken them with very little side effects. And when I compare things like that to pharma, who has a tendency to attack these, these things and say they're for research purposes only, they only work in rats. But then you see mass populations of humans that have benefited from them.

• 1:03:59Gary Brecka?

  I'm really. Uh, hopeful uh that the regulatory lanes will widen for these things so they can become less expensive, more available to the public. But have you used the, the growth hormone peptides?

• 1:04:12Speaker 00

  Those I have not. No.

• 1:04:13Gary Brecka?

  You just went straight to the real sauce.

• 1:04:16Speaker 00

  Good stuff.

• 1:04:18Gary Brecka?

  Do the good stuff. Cut that out, please. Um, so yeah, what, what, what's really cool is if, if you can stimulate, you know, I always say that no matter what anyone tells you, there's no better hormone than one the body produces on its own. So competitive bodybuilding, you probably need to go beyond that. But.

• 1:04:40Speaker 00

  Metabolic is a lot different than the average person trying to be healthy and optimizing their body.

• 1:04:46Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. I mean, I got these guns with growth hormone peptides. They're not those guns. They're not even close to those guns. This is a water pistol. Um, in the gun category. I don't even need a permit to carry these. Uh, but you know, when, when, um, when we talk about these uh, growth hormone peptides, the reason why I wanted to just bring them up on this show is because I would think that somebody like yourself that had used um synthetic growth hormone for so long, might, might be switching to something like a growth hormone peptide, because you still are massive, dude. Yeah. How are you maintaining that size and you're just off all the gear?

• 1:05:24Speaker 00

  I mean, you'd be surprised what the body can do in terms, once it's had something for a decade.

• 1:05:29Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:29Speaker 00

  You know, muscle.

• 1:05:30Gary Brecka?

  You're not thinking yourself into guns. You gotta be doing something.

• 1:05:33Speaker 00

  Just meditating. I mean, I still train full tilt just without the, the boost I used to have, but I've definitely been looking into these peptides, especially the growth hormone inducing ones, because I haven't taken growth hormone down in extended period of time at all. I wanted to make sure my levels would come back naturally, just as they were. So then I've been definitely looking into these peptides for the future.

• 1:05:57Gary Brecka?

  Amazing. Cause I think, I think semorlin.

• 1:05:59Speaker 00

  Semorlin.

• 1:06:00Gary Brecka?

  Ipomorlin or CGC 1295 and.

• 1:06:02Speaker 00

  What about tesamorlin? Is that?

• 1:06:04Gary Brecka?

  Tesamorlin is probably the most powerful of all of them. Um, you know, tesamorlin, uh, you know, the. There's growth hormone releasing peptides and growth hormone releasing hormones, which is why you don't see, you know, tesamorelin, somorlin. You use them in combination. One mainly acts on the pituitary, one mainly acts on the hypothalamus. Because in the body and physiology, we have something called a negative feedback loop. Or why do your testes- testicles not keep secreting testosterone and it just keeps climbing? Because there's a feedback loop that tells the pituitary, hey, we've got enough testosterone. And it starts to turn the signal down, luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone.

• 1:06:45Gary Brecka?

  What's fascinating about the human body is scantily a single gland in the body decides how much hormone it produce. It almost always has a boss. It's like these speakers in this room. They don't determine how loud they play. There's a tuner somewhere. And if I turn the signal up, the volume increases. And so if we can discover, if we understand that very often as we age, our bodies don't lose the ability to produce youthful levels of hormone, growth hormone, testosterone and other compounds. Very often the signal just gets turned down. So when peptides act like signaling molecules, they turn this volume back up.

• 1:07:28Gary Brecka?

  And you go, wow, I walked into the room. I couldn't hear the music, but I found the tuner and boom, the music's loud. And so I, I realized that I could turn up my testicular production of testosterone. I realized I could turn up my pituitary's production of growth hormone. And because these secretagogues act very quickly, you can take them and time them with your normal circadian pulses. Like we have our largest pulse of growth hormone at night, right before bed. So if you take peptides far enough away from a meal and right before bed, you match what is your normal circadian pulse of that hormone. So it can deepen your sleep, improve your muscle mass, improve your lean muscle mass,

• 1:08:09Gary Brecka?

  can improve the way that you metabolize and mobilize fat with very, very little downside. And there's Pretty good studies on tacophylaxis, which is the desensitization response that, you know, over prolonged periods of time, taking the right breaks, like five days on and two off, you can, you can safely use these things over a prolonged period of time. I don't know if I'm gonna get in trouble for saying that, but I hope not.

• 1:08:32Speaker 00

  And the benefit of that versus taking growth hormone is that you're not shutting off that negative feedback loop and your body's still using its natural.

• 1:08:39Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, anytime you tell the pituitary, we've produced a lot of growth hormone. And then what happens is the boss, which is the hypothalamus, which is the pituitary's boss, is going to send a signal to the pituitary to shut off production of growth hormone. One of the reasons why you use both is because one is acting on the pituitary's boss and one's acting directly on the pituitary. So you don't know when you take a growth hormone peptide, if you've recently had, if the pituitary has recently released growth hormone. So if you just took simorlin, for example, and your pituitary had recently secreted growth hormone, the simorlin would do nothing. But if you took CGC 1295 and ipimorlin or,

• 1:09:20Gary Brecka?

  you know, simorlin and tessa morlin, you would find that even if you had just recently had a pulse of growth hormone, you would still get another pulse because you've overridden that feedback loop. The only one that I'm not a major fan of is the MK677. It's called ibutamoren, because the more research I read on that, the more it seems to cause, instead of a bolus dose of growth hormone, it seems to cause what's called a hormonal bleed. So sort of as your pituitary is making growth hormone, it's leaking it into the bloodstream. And that's very fatiguing to these glands. So if I were going down, and I am not a physician, not licensed to practice medicine, but if I was going down the road,

• 1:10:05Gary Brecka?

  taking a growth hormone, or looking at taking, you know, one of these growth hormone peptides, I would combine the GHRP with the GHRH. I would leave MK677 alone, just my personal opinion, because the longer, more well-studied, more viable ones will get you as, you know, as far as you want to go. And in terms of like tissue repair and post-surgical repair, I mean, these things are miracles for people. Dimus in Alpha, you said you've already been, you know, you've already taken.

• 1:10:37Gary Brecka?

  Want to talk about some of the sexual health ones? Cause I know you taking those.

• 1:10:44Gary Brecka?

  No, like PT 141, oxytocin. Have you tried it?

• 1:10:48Speaker 00

  I haven't, no.

• 1:10:48Gary Brecka?

  Chris, come on, man.

• 1:10:50Speaker 00

  I guess I'm missing out.

• 1:10:51Gary Brecka?

  Dude, your wife's gonna love me.

• 1:10:53Speaker 00

  I didn't even know these were out there.

• 1:10:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:56Speaker 00

  Bodybuilders are so single minded, like, how do we get checked?

• 1:10:58Gary Brecka?

  PT 141, you've got to sneak into your wife's ham sandwich. It makes women go crazy.

• 1:11:05Speaker 00

  It's the one you're gonna get in trouble for.

• 1:11:06Gary Brecka?

  This is, alright, that one I'm gonna get in trouble for. Can we cut this out? I'm just kidding, but it improves arousal. You know, it improves sexual desire.

• 1:11:18Speaker 00

  In men and women.

• 1:11:19Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, in men and women. Yeah, in low dose. So you have to use it right. Oxytocin is the one that they say is in Cupid Zero. It's part of the psychosomatic response of creating an erection and arousal and libido. And so sometimes people, they miscue love and attraction with libido and arousal. Like, you can be madly in love with your wife, madly attracted to her. She can be madly in love with you, madly attracted to you, but not have any libido. Right? It's a completely separate thing. And I know that that wreaks havoc on a lot of relationships. I've seen it over the last decade of having a functional medicine clinic where people think

• 1:12:02Gary Brecka?

  that when one spouse's or the other's sexual desire goes away, that the love and attraction is leaving. And that's not what's happening. The emotion, the psychosomatic response of arousal and libido is going away. And that's different. And a lot of times, these can be brought back with PT 141 or oxytocin. Oxytocin is often combined with the Dolephyl. And then at lunch, we were talking about some of the longevity peptides, which are... Epitalon, which is a telomerase lengthener. So I'm really surprised you haven't gone down this road. You tiptoed into it, but. If you want protein to build lean muscle, but without the caloric impact or need to cut,

• 1:12:46Gary Brecka?

  you need Perfect Amino. It's pure essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in a precise form and ratio that allows for near 100% utilization in building lean muscle and no caloric impact. So we build protein six times as much as way, but without the excess body fat we normally get during bulking. This is the new era of protein supplementation, and it's real. If you want to build lean muscle without having to cut, you need Perfect Amino. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

• 1:13:17Speaker 00

  Tiptoe'd, yeah. It's been very like, okay, I'm injured. How do I fix it?

• 1:13:20Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah. It was all, it was all based on.

• 1:13:22Speaker 00

  I just came out of like the bubble of bodybuilding to the real world now. So.

• 1:13:26Gary Brecka?

  Yeah. Now I'm already talking to him about hydrogen baths and methylation. Yeah, we're going to turn you into the post Mr. Olympia superhuman.

• 1:13:34Speaker 00

  That's the goal.

• 1:13:35Gary Brecka?

  All right, we're gonna go.

• 1:13:35Speaker 00

  I'm gonna emulate your condo in my backyard.

• 1:13:38Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, it was funny. We were walking around. He's like, my wife would love this place. Like she's, he and I have the boat, both have the same issue. We don't, we're not into watches or cars, but we're into biohacking stuff.

• 1:13:48Speaker 00

  Equally expensive.

• 1:13:50Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, it can, it can put it, definitely put a strain on, on your budget. So I want to, I want to bring this full circle for a moment and just get back to

• 1:14:03Gary Brecka?

  the, the post-professional career. You know, I think there's, there's so many things that you've done in your life that are applicable to anything, business, marriage, being an entrepreneur, starting a company. I mean, pushing yourself to the top of an industry, maintaining that spot for more than half a decade. There's no question that you have discipline. And for you, was that always more important than being motivated? Had to be a lot of days that you were not motivated.

• 1:14:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:14:34Gary Brecka?

  How did you handle that? Did you just walk into the gym, even if you felt like shit? Did you ever just look at the weights and go, fuck this?

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  There were, there were plenty, there were days where I would, before going to the gym, like, have to put my shoe on and look down at my shoe and be like, I don't have the energy to bend down and put my shoe. How am I supposed to go like?

• 1:14:52Gary Brecka?

  And were you like aching from that workout before?

• 1:14:55Speaker 00

  Either aching or just so exhausted, like, you know, when you're 250 pounds, eating 1400 calories, doing an hour and a half of cardio and training for two hours a day, like, there's nothing left in you, you know? So pulling from that, it definitely comes, yes, there's bursts of motivation, but usually they're all burned out by the end of a prep. You know, you have a goal, you have a passion, you know, it's remembering why you started doing something and knowing how worth it the result will be. But it really comes down to discipline, comes down to systems, I believe, you know?

• 1:15:27Gary Brecka?

  Systems.

• 1:15:27Speaker 00

  Anyone who's, any entrepreneur will tell you, like, the best way to run a business as it's growing is to have the systems in place to make sure it's actually happening and bodybuilding is the same thing, especially when you're, when you've been dieting, you're tired, you're having a shitty day, whatever it might be, having a system in place where you don't even have to think, it's just you're rolling forward through the day. Like, I wake up at the same time, I eat, drink the same thing, take the same supplements, eat the same thing at the same time, go to the gym at the same time. It just becomes like so habitual after you do that same thing. So if it's a 16 week prep, first 10 weeks, you have a little bit more energy, the last six weeks, you're just following back into that routine, that system that you built.

• 1:16:03Gary Brecka?

  I've seen videos of guys just passing out on the stage in the middle of a post, just dropping.

• 1:16:07Speaker 00

  Usually those guys are doing some crazy shit. The top guys who knows what they're doing are hard, ideally not doing that. Well, there's some people who like push weird loop diuretics and do some weird like potassium loading things on top of the diuretic in order to help them get like lean and full, but people who know what they're doing aren't really doing that crazy shit. Ideally aren't passing out, but you are dehydrated and exhausted up there for sure.

• 1:16:28Gary Brecka?

  But that's like, when you're dehydrated, you're exhausted, um, that's like, to me, that's like the mental sandpaper. It just never goes away. It's always just grinding on you, grinding on you. And it's like, it's like chronic pain almost, it just breaks the will of the strongest people. And I've seen it happen to family members of mine that would have like a serious back injury and like this just strong, bold, vibrant person. In the beginning of the injury, they're like, I'm not letting this take me down. Pain's not gonna stop me. And then, you know, the edge, that willpower goes from a 10 to a 7. To a five, to a three. And somehow you're still going into the gym at a three.

• 1:17:13Gary Brecka?

  Um, and, and when you, when you would walk in there and just the monotony of doing, maybe it's different movements, but it's the same shit every day. That is a grind. You know, like they talk about the number of foul shots that Michael Jordan shot. They take, talk about the number of times that Kobe Bryant would show up to practice early and shoot foul shots. Foul shots gotta be the easiest thing for a professional basketball player to do, but to just show up and grind. Um, and he talked about how he did the really, really, really boring things so he would still love the game.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:49Gary Brecka?

  Um, I kind of understand that. Um, but like purposely torturing himself mentally so that he'd never lose the love for the game. It's like when my kids started playing sports at a young age, I remember the coach would be like, the aggression's gonna come, just get them to like it.

• 1:18:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:06Gary Brecka?

  But so at some point you loved it, but at some point you had to hate it.

• 1:18:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Gary Brecka?

  And those are the moments I want to talk about. Like when you walked in there, spent, dehydrated, hungry, frustrated, and you had to pick up the same weight and do the same shit. Like, what was it that, where was, did you have a why? Um, were you thinking about your family or are you just like, this is what I do?

• 1:18:34Speaker 00

  I don't think there's a genuine, like.

• 1:18:37Gary Brecka?

  I'm looking for the trick.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  There's no trick.

• 1:18:39Gary Brecka?

  Cause I wanna write a book about it.

• 1:18:41Speaker 00

  That's, that's the thing.

• 1:18:42Gary Brecka?

  Everybody is, maybe there's not.

• 1:18:44Speaker 00

  There's a trick of like the thing to do. It's, I think it's having the conscious awareness that it's a decision and that everyone has the ability to make that decision every single day. But what's gonna separate you is the people who can make the tough decision and do the thing they don't wanna do versus not, you know, everybody, no matter what you're doing is gonna have days where you don't wanna do it. But what separates the people from who are successful and those who aren't are the ones who do it on the day they didn't want to. You know, and I had plenty of days where I was in there and I didn't wanna do it, but it was like I was saying before, it just. Getting through one moment at a time, one set at a time, one rep at a time. Like I'd literally be like, I'm gonna finish this workout early. I don't have the energy for this, but I'm just gonna do one more set. Then I finish that set and I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna do one more set. And I get through a full workout just like that.

• 1:19:29Speaker 00

  And then you finish that workout and you realize how good you feel. And it's just remembering those small little wins.

• 1:19:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:35Speaker 00

  Everything, every little win that you can add up and stack in your mind before thinking, oh, I'm gonna win the Olympia. It's like, oh, I finished my set. I got an extra rep that set. And being able to be proud of those wins, you know, those little wins that nobody ever gets to see. Those moments where like you chose to do something that no one will ever know.

• 1:19:52Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:52Speaker 00

  You know, it's moving you towards your goal. You just gotta be a little crazy and those gotta be the things that drive you.

• 1:19:57Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, you gotta have a screw a little bit.

• 1:19:59Speaker 00

  You gotta be a little fucked up.

• 1:19:59Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah, I gotta be a little fucked up.

• 1:20:01Speaker 00

  It's just the way it works.

• 1:20:02Gary Brecka?

  So what does the post-professional career look like for you? What's gonna replace that, drive that addiction? It's gotta be, you've gotta direct it for some, because it's just who you are now.

• 1:20:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:13Gary Brecka?

  Where is that going? Is it going into your supplement company? Is it going into your family? Is it going into your next to career as an entrepreneur? You're young.

• 1:20:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:20:21Gary Brecka?

  You got a big, long life ahead of you.

• 1:20:24Speaker 00

  I mean, to be fully transparent, I think I'm still figuring that out. I think I've come to the conclusion and the honest answer to myself that nothing will replace that.

• 1:20:35Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  There will be other things in my life that are just as important, but they're not the same. Maybe more important, but they're not the same. That feeling of that competitive drive, like we all watch a sports movie and they're like, ah, I wanna compete and do something and like be better than people. And like, there's something beautiful about competitive sports.

• 1:20:53Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:53Speaker 00

  And being able to like compete.

• 1:20:55Gary Brecka?

  And it's gotta, dude, I, I, I try to put my, I've watched a lot of your videos and, and things. And just the thought of like, you're, you're standing up there, you're posing on that stage. Everything comes down to that one moment. It's totally in somebody's hands, so it is somewhat subjective.

• 1:21:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:21:13Gary Brecka?

  It's not objective. I mean, you could have. Beat someone and you might have lost. It's like boxing. There's three judges.

• 1:21:22Speaker 00

  Possibly.

• 1:21:23Gary Brecka?

  And maybe they didn't count every punch that landed and you get robbed. I mean, the anxiety. Um, and do you find out right away? Like, do you find out the day that you finished?

• 1:21:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're on stage. They tell you withdrawal standing up there.

• 1:21:36Gary Brecka?

  They tell you why. That's so.

• 1:21:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, they lined you up and they count down.

• 1:21:40Gary Brecka?

  And is it, is that moment like as the countdown's going on and the announcer's reading that? Are you? There had to be the thought in your mind, maybe not this time.

• 1:21:50Speaker 00

  There, there definitely are. There were years and near the end, I was truly like, I think one of the biggest things I learned mentally to do was to let go of that result, especially in that moment. The idea of being present is to let go of what you believe the future is going to be. Let go of what the past was and just be in the moment. And those are some of the most vivid, beautiful memories I have from competing is standing on stage. They would call five, four, three, and then they'd bring up the next two to stand there. And then the Olympias, like, thing that they do is they call first place before second place, just so they have that moment to celebrate. And every single year, I remember they called me up, I'd pull there and I'd close my eyes and I would just like, I would turn, I'd look at the Olympia stage. I'd see my family in the crowd.

• 1:22:32Gary Brecka?

  Pass out, dude. I'm, I'm so anxious right now, dude. I'm so anxious.

• 1:22:35Speaker 00

  It was, it was the most like human experience of just like presence. There was so much just like, you're just there. There's nothing going on in my mind. We talked about meditating in that theta state. It's like I learned how to access that on stage of just like, just whatever happened, I remembered what it took to get me there and just standing there in that moment, like, the most beautiful moment ever. I used to visualize every day doing cardio. That whole peak week leading up to that moment.

• 1:23:02Gary Brecka?

  Really?

• 1:23:03Speaker 00

  Get chills and tears running down my eyes on the treadmill, just waiting for them to call my name. And when I was up there in the actual moment, I was able to just be present and it was incredible. Those were, that was the moment where I talked about like, I will never get that again.

• 1:23:16Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 00

  And that's, it's sad, but it's also why they were so beautiful because they're so rare.

• 1:23:20Gary Brecka?

  You know, I, I have a very good friend of mine named Billy Davis. He's a two-time Super Bowl champ. He went to this Super Bowl with the Cowboys. I can tell you how long ago it was. And, um, and Ravens. And, um, I was asking him that same question. I'm like, dude, how, how, um,

• 1:23:38Gary Brecka?

  As a professional athlete, you know, all of a sudden you start to gain some fame. You start to get, you start to get some money. And, and yet you gotta stay at the top of your career. The nightclubs and the women and you're single and you're, you're wealthy. People start to know who you are and you're on the main stage. So I get it, you know, you went in and did this once, but over a prolonged period of time. And he described something very similar, just reminded me of it to what you're describing. He said there, there was a moment, I never heard an athlete describe it like this. It would just became so crystal clear for me and it made so much sense. I go, wow, get it. He goes, there was a moment, I'm getting goosebumps actually, just talking about this story. And he said, I would break off the line, I'd be running down the side of the field.

• 1:24:20Gary Brecka?

  And he said, um, 70,000 people or something in a stadium all screaming, but I could hear one voice. Like I would, my hearing was so like alert, I could hear one voice going, go Billy. And he goes, I could feel the ball get released. I knew it had just gotten released. I wasn't looking back at it, but I knew that it was in the air. And, and he said, I could feel the defender coming across the, the field to like hit me. And I knew he wasn't coming to give me a kiss. And so, and he would turn around and right before he turned around to like grab the ball, he could tell that the trumpet player that was too close to the sideline was gonna be right where he was gonna go out and he was gonna get tackled and run right into that guy.

• 1:25:04Gary Brecka?

  And then the moment would happen. And it like, it would happen so fast and he would hit the trumpet player and he'd be blasting out the sideline. And he was like, that moment, that second, before the ball hit my hands, before the defender hit me, before I got knocked out of bounds, undescribable.

• 1:25:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:25:22Gary Brecka?

  He's like, it was like, the best buzz, with the best orgasm, with the best night's sleep, the best drug, with the best, you know, he's like, it was just a cascade of emotion. He's like, I chased it like a rat to chase.

• 1:25:36Speaker 00

  They've done a lot of studies on like the flow state.

• 1:25:37Gary Brecka?

  It's like, wow.

• 1:25:38Speaker 00

  They're the, the an athlete's ability to access that flow state where you can like shut off your conscious mind and access like everything your brain's capable of doing by being fully present like that.

• 1:25:47Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:48Speaker 00

  It's obviously more conducive in a athletic sport like that.

• 1:25:51Gary Brecka?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:52Speaker 00

  Whereas just being able to enjoy them calling your name, but still it's,

• 1:25:55Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:55Speaker 00

  like you said, there's a few things in the world that feel like that.

• 1:25:58Gary Brecka?

  Everything you've done in your life.

• 1:26:02Gary Brecka?

  Is coming down to one second.

• 1:26:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:26:05Gary Brecka?

  And the winner is bang. I mean, that's just gotta be amazing. Chris,

• 1:26:14Gary Brecka?

  you know, it's, it's been amazing having you on. Before I let any of my guests go, we, I have a private VIP group that, these are my just most loyal followers.

• 1:26:30Gary Brecka?

  We're going to go into that private room because they have, they have some questions for you. They're the ones that I tell who, who's going to be on the podcast before they come on the podcast. So they have some really good questions for you. You got, you got some big fans in, in, in there waiting for you. If you're interested in becoming a VIP, you can go over to theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP, sign up to be a VIP and then you can have a private podcast with any of my podcast guests. But I wind down all of my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. And there's no right or wrong answer for this. But is, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

• 1:27:05Gary Brecka?

  Damn. I wish I had prepped for that one.

• 1:27:11Speaker 00

  I guess to me, an ultimate human, I would say this thing about champion mentality. Cause the idea of being a champion is like the objective winning, but having the mentality is like the subjective being. So it's, to me, it's the ability to be the best version of yourself. It's not necessarily the best, but what the best you is. And that comes more so than just putting in the work, but taking the time to reflect on what your most important values are. You know, when you're young, maybe it's being jacked, making money. And then as you get old, like you need to be wise enough to re-reflect, have the introspection to see as that changes. And it becomes family and presence and gratitude and different things that it evolves.

• 1:27:52Speaker 00

  So I guess to me, the ultimate human is someone who is able to consistently reflect on what those values are. And to actually work every day to be the best version of themselves within that. And. Also on top of that, I guess people who like do the hard shit. There's like, there's that person who can run a hundred miles at 4am on a Tuesday, which isn't me, that's still hard.

• 1:28:15Gary Brecka?

  David Goggins.

• 1:28:16Speaker 00

  David Goggins, you know, all this shit. But a lot of what I've learned is the hard shit of what like I talked about in the podcast is like, being vulnerable, being, having the courage to be seen in your relationship, to have, set a boundary with a parent who's having hard, have a hard conversation with a child. You know, doing those kind of hard things.

• 1:28:33Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:34Speaker 00

  And being able to ask questions of yourself, okay, what are my highest values? You can say out loud, my kids are the most important thing to me, but I'm a professional bodybuilder still. I won six Olympias, but I'm going for seven because I selfishly just want more success. But it's sacrificing time with my family, stress at home, my ability for my daughter to play with me because I'm tired. Like being able to actually reflect internally and be honest enough with yourself if you're really living up to what's, you say is most important to you, and then having the courage to make the changes to do that. And to continuously be that best version of yourself and smart enough to understand what that even is.

• 1:29:08Gary Brecka?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:08Speaker 00

  To yourself.

• 1:29:10Gary Brecka?

  Wow. I, I think that might be the best answer we've gotten, dude. I really do. Um, you know, I love that you, I love that you have the courage to admit that you don't have all the answers. I mean, it might be the most uh, humbling thing I've ever seen anybody do because I think in your position, people look up to you and think he's got all the answers.

• 1:29:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Gary Brecka?

  And I love that you're still just figuring it out. You know, what your afterlife, after professional life is going to be like. I think that's one of the most profound answers ever. If my audience wants to know more about you, where can they find you?

• 1:29:48Speaker 00

  Instagram is Sebum, YouTube is Chris Bumstead.

• 1:29:51Gary Brecka?

  Okay.

• 1:29:51Speaker 00

  Not hard to find it. Google my name. People are good at the internet these days, you know?

• 1:29:56Gary Brecka?

  There go, well, you got 25 million people that know where to find you, so you're doing just fine for yourself.

• 1:30:01Speaker 00

  Appreciate it.

• 1:30:01Gary Brecka?

  Chris, this has been amazing.

• 1:30:02Speaker 00

  Thank you for having me on, the privilege and excited to learn lots more from you.

• 1:30:06Gary Brecka?

  Oh, we're about to start our journey too.

• 1:30:08Speaker 00

  For sure, yeah.

• 1:30:09Gary Brecka?

  We'll report back, maybe we'll jump back on in a few months and see how it's going.

• 1:30:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:12Gary Brecka?

  And until next time, guys, that's just science.