S3E13 - Cheekbones for Days: Path to the Natural Pro Stage feat Eric Helms

Eric Helms shares his journey from amateur to WNBF Pro and his preparation for upcoming shows in Taiwan and Sacramento. He discusses how his approach to competition prep has evolved to create a sustainable bodybuilding lifestyle where the difference between off-season and prep is minimal.

• Getting his WNBF Pro card in 2023 after 17 years of competing in natural bodybuilding 
• Planning to compete at the WNBF Taiwan show in October with nearly 400 competitors
• Aiming to earn a Classic Physique pro card while also competing in the Pro Bodybuilding division
• Creating a sustainable approach by making small modifications to his daily routine rather than drastically changing his lifestyle
• Moving away from strict macro tracking to a more auto-regulated approach based on biofeedback
• Developing body awareness through experience to make real-time adjustments to nutrition
• Understanding that novice competitors should start with structured approaches before developing intuitive skills
• Upcoming release of the 3rd edition of the Muscle & Strength Pyramid books with completely updated content
• Working on the Iron Culture documentary with expected release later this year
• Why advanced competitors should strive to bring their off-season and competition habits closer together

Follow Eric at @helms3DMJ on Instagram to stay updated on his competition journey and upcoming content releases.

MASS: https://massresearchreview.com/

3DMJ: https://3dmusclejourney.com/

Muscle and Strength Pyramid: https://muscleandstrengthpyramids.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction and Catching Up
• 10:57 Eric's Pro Debut and Competition Plans
• 22:15 WNBF Pro Card Qualification Systems
• 34:08 Current Prep Approach and Strategy
• 49:22 Evolution from Tracking to Biofeedback
• 1:09:34 AI in Bodybuilding and Judging
• 1:18:09 Upcoming Documentary and New Books
• 1:24:08 Mass Research Review and Latest Science

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Now you can even see my wife's microscope, because she's a geologist. You can see my. See, she has a microscope. I have a filming selfie stick, right, so that tells you who's the real scientist.

Speaker 3: 0:18

Yeah, it's been quite a minute since we last spoke. Last time we spoke, you still haven't got your pro card.

Speaker 1: 0:25

yet Was it early 2023 when we talked Something like that.

Speaker 2: 0:30

Yeah, that sounds about right, because I think I was competing that year. So, yeah, no, it would have been early 2023. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Yeah, we've traded cheekbones, so yeah.

Speaker 3: 0:41

And now, yeah, and now.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Also this guy.

Speaker 3: 0:49

So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, well, yeah, we all got it this year we both got it this year, so yeah, there you go.

Speaker 3: 0:51

Yeah, everything was just came really really well, uh, very, very good, um, but yes, we've got the whole hour to just all talk all about you, because you have a lot going on now we've. We want to first start off with you. Know, let's talk a little bit about your prep. I think that is something that we highlighted, and this is your going to be your second debut show yes, so technically, my pro debut was seven weeks after I got my pro card.

Speaker 1: 1:25

I competed at worlds which the WNBF extends to first time pros. That having to do a pro show to qualify after turning pro in it was, let's see, mid November versus early October. Um, when I got my pro card at WNBF Australia in 2023. So it's hard to call that a pro debut. All I could really do was like let's peak really well, let's get a little bit tighter and, you know, let's polish up that posing and basically just see how does my top amateur physique compare against literally the best in the world and the WNBF pro world's middleweights? And, unsurprisingly, I placed seventh out of ninth. So which, to be clear, I'm not down on myself for that. I'm very proud of that. I even would have been proud if I placed ninth out of ninth. But the fact that there are some other pros who I'm better than, even if I'm in kind of that, you know, lower quartile, you know what, that's where I expected to be.

Speaker 1: 2:28

It took me 17 years, since my first IMBF pro qualifying competition, to actually turn pro. So I don't anticipate, I'm just going to walk into the pros and be like by the way, do you know, my name is Eric Helms. I'm here to kick some ass. So yeah, as soon as I stepped off stage, I said you know what? Let's drop the hammer, let's make a commitment, let's get on stage in 2025 and give myself a full, dedicated, exclusively focused on bodybuilding. Turn over every stone off season for the rest of 2023 and 2024, and even into early 2025, start prep and take another shot at Worlds. So now we are approaching that eventuality and time has flown quickly, my man.

Speaker 3: 3:20

It is. It's going to be in LA this year, very, very beautiful city, which I was fortunate enough not to have been yet. But we're really excited for you. You've made a post a couple days ago of your physiques up to date in a very favorable lighting, and you've made an extremely long paragraph. So, for those who haven't seen TLDR, where are you at? Where are you at at your prep right now?

Speaker 1: 3:43

Yeah. So TLDR, I started prep mid-April. My first competition is going to be October 4th and 5th at the WNBF Pro Show in Taiwan. For those who don't know, despite my American accent, I have been living and live in New Zealand for the better part of 13 years, since I moved here to do my graduate work and this is where I call home. So the closest pro shows because we don't yet have any pro shows in Australia or New Zealand, although that's coming in the future are in Southeast Asia, which has a really strong presence, and Asia has kind of blown up, not just in terms of bodybuilding broadly, but bodybuilding not just in terms of bodybuilding broadly, but bodybuilding, natural bodybuilding specifically.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So I judged last year at the WNBF Taiwan. They have a season A and a season B show and their October show and they had nearly 400 competitors. It's a pro-am show, so they had like 30 pros and then like over 350 amateurs on day one. I believe it is currently the biggest show outside of Worlds in the WNBF or right up there. And Singapore, malaysia, korea, japan, macau and Hong Kong all have big shows and India is starting up pretty soon. Vietnam just had their first show. So Asia is really blowing up, which is cool. So, yeah, that's going to be my quote unquote pro debut, if you will, if we count my off season for the first time. So that puts me right now, 10 weeks and a few days out. It is a two day event, for amateurs on day one and pros on day two, and my current plan, with the release of the new classic division classic bodybuilding in the WNBF, is to actually try to get my classic pro card. I think, with me being not a huge bodybuilder but having reasonably good symmetry and being a pretty good poser, that might be a good place for me, especially considering I'm six foot and I am often the largest, like middleweight or just on the cusp of the heavyweight division or in the light heavies. When that's offered, that it might be a good comparison for me because it is height class based rather than weight class based. So we'll see.

Speaker 1: 6:03

But, like I mentioned, this is a nearly 400 person show, so trying to turn pro in that environment, even as a top amateur, even with someone with a pro card, there are absolutely. You know it's not like. Because you get your WNBF pro card, you can therefore automatically know that you will beat all WNBF amateurs. The reality is is that people who turn pro at the Taiwan show often are immediately competitive, and we saw from me I went from being one of the best amateurs to not one of the best pros. And if you look at some of the guys who've turned pro at Taiwan, some of them literally go on to place top three or win their division or category of world, like Zach Chow. There's a few others. There's some notable, excellent pros who come out of there. So when you win your pro card at a show like that, you are already a good pro. And the person who placed third in the amateurs and did not get a pro card would probably be better than even mid-tier pros. So I have no illusions that I will necessarily turn pro on day one, but I'll give it a good shot. And the one nice thing about competing in asia is that no one's over six feet tall then not no one, but it's rare, you know. So there's a I I'm going to give you some inside baseball guys or inside natural bodybuilding. Um, I've been having the pleasure of volunteering and working with the WNBF to try to, you know, improve some of their judging standards. And that's not, you know, that's not public knowledge yet, but it is going to be coming out and I'm consulting with some of the central leadership, which I'm really appreciative of, and it's an honor and one of the things we're doing is trying to standardize the way that competitions are run across regions or at least make the rules that are currently being used an optional rule for everyone.

Speaker 1: 7:51

And when you have 400 people, the typical approach to pro qualifiers and turning pro it doesn't quite fit. So traditionally, when you look at North American bodybuilding shows for the WNBF, they have kind of two models. There's the non-pro qualifying show. That's just not big enough. You don't have eight or five in the category, so you can't award a pro card. But if you get to that cutoff then we can give a pro card. Or you have a super pro qualifier where it's pre-designated as that it's known to be a big show.

Speaker 1: 8:24

And then each individual class within a category where there are eight or five or more, depending upon the category, you can get a pro card. And then in the overall, if there is someone who came from a category that did not have eight or five and they place ahead of someone else who won a category weight class or height class with eight or five, then they can also get a pro card. So you might have something and this is common, because that might have been confusing to hear, but I'll give you an example. Let's say you got a bodyweight class light, middles and heavies and you got 10 lights. You got nine middles but you have seven heavies. So that means that the lightweight and the middleweight winner automatically get a pro card and a super pro qualifier, and then the heavyweight does not. But if the heavyweight places ahead in the overall, places second or first in either one of them, then they have now earned a pro card. So that is the traditional way it's been done in the US.

Speaker 1: 9:18

Now, outside of the US, where there's less dilution in natural bodybuilding, especially in places like Asia, they use slightly different systems and what you will sometimes see is that the top two from each class will go into the overall and they're locked in so that the person who beat them in their class is still going to place ahead of them. But the reason this is important is also they don't have balanced distribution between the weight classes. So, for example, when I was judging the novice men's physique category in Asia, there were 39, not in the novice men's physique. In the novice men's physique short, oh my God. And they broke it up into five height classes, not three. So that means there were five classes. One class in the novice men's physique, 39 competitors, and that was the most populated class was the shortest class because it's Asia, right? So when you looked at the heavyweight class in the bodybuilding or when you looked at the tall classes in men's physique, there were still more than eight.

Speaker 1: 10:24

So there was still a sufficient number to give a pro card if they use the traditional super pro qualifier standards. But the thing is they were closer to like nine, 10, 11, or 12. And when you have 10 people in one class and 40 in another, you can't guarantee that the top athlete out of 10 is actually better than the second or third place in the athletes out of 40. So what they often had was an overall of 10 people locked in so that the first place winners are always placing ahead of the second place winner in their class. But then they have a certain number of pro cards. They win only in the overall. So you don't even get a pro card if you win your class. And they might go right out of these 10, we're going to give three or four pro cards, and what happened in several of these overalls was that the top two lightweights or the top two light middleweights or the top two short or middle short categories were often winning their pro cards. So if you use the super pro qualifier approach that is common in North America, you end up giving pro cards. So if you use the super pro qualifier approach that is common in North America, you end up giving pro cards to people who aren't necessarily the best in that class and you have other variations of that. That just ensures that we're only awarding the top athletes pro cards when you have smaller shows. But basically, you need to beat at least eight or five people or, sorry, seven or four people, depending upon the category you're in to get a pro card. And if there's more than that, then you can potentially award more pro cards based upon the, the field and whether the judging panel feels that there's a sufficient number and I know this wasn't your direct question, but it's important to understand this.

Speaker 1: 12:00

So, for example, in australia, I uh the lightweight bodybuilding category. The heavyweight winner won his. We went to head to head in the overall. He beat me, but because we had, uh, 10, 10 or more competitors and it was a really competitive field, cause when you only have one WNBF show in a region, it tends to bring out the best competitors. We had a lot of really good WNBF Australia representatives. They said, hey, you know what, we're going to give out two pro cards. So they had to figure out, okay, who's the best bodybuilder, the overall winner Great, you're a pro. Shout out to Mohamed Bouaké, he beat me. But who is the second best? Because it could be Eric who won the lightweights, but it also could have been the guy who placed second, lawrence Greaves. Shout out to General Muscle BDU, the guy who he beat in his weight class. So we need to actually do a second overall comparison to figure out who's second overall out of the whole lineup for that second pro card. So they brought Lawrence out and me out and we had a post down and that's how I got my pro card. I was the second pro card winner in that division.

Speaker 1: 13:08

So those rules are now becoming more stipulated and established and they're really helpful to ensure that the top athletes are awarded appropriately in a non-North American biased model of competition, which I'm really excited to see, model of competition which I'm really excited to see. So even if I go there and do well in the tall class I might get mopped up by all the short guys. So no illusions. But I am going to compete to try to get my pro card as an amateur in the classic on day one of the Taiwan show and then I'm going to jump into the bodybuilding division as a pro and then from there I'll have about five weeks before doing the muscle mayhem in Sacramento which is a pro-em.

Speaker 1: 13:49

And right now, of course, everyone's lives are what they are and you never call a November show in July to be guaranteeing that everyone's going to compete. We may have the original founders of 3DMJ all competing in that same competition Brad, jeff and Berto, or at least several of us, which I'm really excited about. I'll try to do the same thing again jump in the pros and amateurs If I really need to, and I'm still not getting my classic card, I'll try to do it at Worlds as well, because you can cross over or maybe do Masters, we'll see. The shows are locked in. But the specific divisions and crossovers and what I do and when, if I turn pro, at the very least I can tell you I'm going to be doing some bodybuilding pro shows and some classic physique amateur shows, and we'll see what happens after that nice.

Speaker 3: 14:36

yeah, that's, that sounds like a hell of a season. So just, we're going back to uh, I know we're kind of just trailing off, but it's. It brings to my attention that I'm sure you remember Marvin from Hong Kong, yeah, yeah, so he did his WNBF Hong Kong show and he placed second. With that extreme conditioning he placed second and I realized just watching that show is all Asia shows?

Speaker 3: 15:04

Have they somehow just get so many competitors onto one show easily couple hundred, um, and that's something that we don't see very often in in canada here, and so I can. I can understand why they want to use that that way to justify who the higher quality athletes actually get rewarded accordingly, but it is a little bit hard to just really try to catch on. But for you, instead of having 39 athletes in a short quote, unquote, short class and maybe only 10 in middle and maybe medium height and then maybe just five and tall, would you prefer having a rule that sets these limitations, or would you prefer actually gathering all the athletes, measure them all up and then averaging them out into each class?

Speaker 1: 15:56

And that's actually what they do in the pros, typically Not always. As you saw, like at Worlds, there was a tremendous number of lightweights. I think the way I think it should be done is you simply have an athlete's meeting and you talk to the athletes and you figure out how they feel about it. It's done in consultation. I think what you don't want to do is set a standard and then break it or just have no consultation with the athletes and it really depends upon what's going on in the field. I think it's also important to understand that if you have 39 in a short class, you're not going to have five in the tall class, you might have like 12. So, just using something more representative, realistic example, but it is not uncommon at all to have like 15 and five. But when you're talking, you got like there was, when you have there's, there's shows that have 40 people. So when you have a height class within the novice division of one category that has 40, you're going to be having a sufficient number in each class. That's decently competitive.

Speaker 1: 16:53

But, um, I think, to answer your question more directly, I think consulting with the athletes and, uh, having an athlete's meeting and making sure everyone's good with it and making sure that it also fits the time schedule. To make sure the show runs smoothly of the promoter and also the stage is actually quite important. Some stages simply don't accommodate really, really large classes, so you need to break them up or not everyone gets a fair look because you can only have so many people on stage at a time and do call outs, so you have to figure out elimination rounds or something to accommodate that, and there are special approaches that need to be done. When you have a show that large, um, and when you have a show that outgrows a stage, that can create problems that you know it degrades the quality of judging and it also degrades the competitor experience. So these are all logistical things that it's very difficult to get insight on if you've never been behind the judges table or consulting with the promoters. That need to be considered.

Speaker 2: 17:53

I agree Makes sense.

Speaker 2: 17:54

When it comes to judging, I know you mentioned trying to like standardize it across, like countries and stuff like that can be quite difficult.

Speaker 2: 18:02

Um, I had an idea a while back like I'm sure it'd take a while to implement, but like being able to have ai do the judging and like be able to like, like, have a video like showcasing, like a live stream of like the individuals on stage and then having like a score like based off of like the amount of an x frame, having like a score like based off of like the amount of an x-frame that they have, or some ability to track like how like their muscle is or how good condition they are, and like, over time, have like a point system so that, like everybody could be like pointed and then like over time, as years goes on, like you get to compare people to like this year to that year and like, see, like, okay, like was the way slightly higher, slightly better, and I don't know like. I've always thought about like with ai getting so popular now that like that could maybe be utilized in judging.

Speaker 1: 18:51

I don't know if you've ever had thoughts like that before I like the spirit of what you're getting at, the idea of trying to remove the human subject subjectivity element, um, and I think good judging criteria, uh, become more clear and more objective over time and that's part of the goal, the refinement. One of the things that is so important in bodybuilding is to make sure that in an inherently subjective sport, we're doing literally everything in our power to be as consistent and subjective as possible. So I think, in the spirit of that, the idea of AI doing that is a great idea. I don't necessarily think the tech is there yet, but from a kind of spirit perspective, yes, and I think in the interim, what you need to do is have very, very clear criteria and non-ambiguous wording. So, like, if something says a harmonious physique, like what does that mean? And you will find some judging criteria that says that or where it says you know a softer, look Softer relative to what you know. So doing things like having pictures of representative competitors specifically delineating the bikini class should have visible muscle separation, but not cross striations in these muscle groups as an example, because there are very like, if you ask judges in physique sport about what are the persistent issues we see, they will tell you the same things, even if they come from different countries. So, for example, a really common thing that happens but shouldn't happen is that bikini competitors who are in world-class, pro-level condition when they compete in an amateur show, they get marked down as being too hard. And that's because, to your point, brandon, we're not purely judging based upon the criteria, we're judging based upon who was there on the day relative to the criteria. So if the criteria is ambiguous or not clear and it has adjectives without a reference point, like softer, harder, less lean, more lean, but talking about what, then the reference point becomes what you see in front of you, and too hard is going to be whoever the hardest person is.

Speaker 1: 21:07

However, if you make it very clear and you're saying specifically in the rules that all competitors are judged to the highest world standard, archetypal physique. Here's a picture of the WBF world winner demonstrating what we have written in the criteria that there should be quad striation sorry, there should be quad separation, but not striations. There should be cap delts, but not, you know, vascularity. And we should see glute and ham separation, but not striated glutes or hams, then you, oh well, they don't have that level of hardness, so I'm not going to mark them down and they will do well. But you get this strange conundrum where you can get bikini competitors placing hugely variable depending upon where they're at, and that's also semi-common but not as common in, say, men's physique, and it is also an issue in classic right now. So having extremely clear criteria is, I think, the first step and is in spirit of what you're getting at. So ultimately, I agree with you.

Speaker 1: 22:08

I think AI is probably not quite there yet and comparing across years is very difficult because it's different stages, different lighting, different photography and I know it's said a lot online like if you weren't there you can't truly judge it, but it is 100% true and what you can see from the judges table versus the pictures versus the back of the stage versus the judges table, when they're on the far left versus the far right versus the center, depending upon the lighting, and also when they're on the far left versus the far right versus the center, depending upon the lighting, and also if they're in two categories and whether they were not fully filled out at 6 am but at 4 pm, they looked amazing. All of these things go into some of the reason why you see people online like what the hell. Are these judges blind? Um, not always. Sometimes you just don't have good judges. But that is. Those things all need to be considered and some of that is not solvable at this stage with AI.

Speaker 2: 23:06

Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. I was just thinking, as it develops, that maybe it can pinpoint those things. But I guess it's probably so hard to develop something that could look at all those different features and understand and know how conditioned they are, based off that photo, that video.

Speaker 1: 23:23

And then, yeah, if the lighting's off or if the camera's not, in the right position like there would be a lot of different factors that would come into play for sure, brandon, I'll tell you this when ai, when you, when you ask ai to generate an image, and stops randomly giving you a second forearm on your right arm, then maybe we can start thinking about it. Or, like a sixth finger, then we can maybe think about the AI generated. You know judging criteria, but I think, just like large language models are not necessarily the promised land of getting everything perfect yet, I suspect that the video and AI image capturing and the subsequent judging outputs are not going to be there quite yet. But suspect that the video and AI image capturing and the subsequent judging outputs are not going to be there quite yet. But we need a lot of other things.

Speaker 1: 24:04

There's so much to be done, like, for example, transparency and judging, where each judge declares their conflicts of interest that are listed, they're uploaded, you see each judge's scores and you also see the images from the class and they come out oh, I don't know immediately, and then there's actually a database of every results and we actually know who won last year. Like there's some really low hanging fruit that we're not quite yet accomplishing a natural bodybuilding that is very doable and is getting easier and easier with AI that can help us. So, for example, asking AI to look at judging criteria and say, hey, can you generate a quiz for judges based upon this Large language models would knock that out of the park, right? That's the type of thing where I think we absolutely should be considering these things. So yeah, but maybe not actually having a terminator sitting in the head judge's spot but speaking, yeah, speaking of which?

Speaker 3: 25:02

on the topic of ai and managing criterias for judges, like, let's say in in your words, you know, creating a quiz and just making sure the judges are up to par to make sure that they're meeting the criteria for being judging on the other side as an athlete, on potentially AI, or creating training programs for specific athletes. Have anybody tried just generating an AI program, a training program for prep or even peak week?

Speaker 1: 25:30

just through AI. I mean, there's probably a tremendous number of coaches who don't actually do their own job and just ask ChatGP to spit stuff out. In fact, I know there are, I've seen it. So, yeah, people doing that all the time. Yeah, you are probably paying chat GPT to do some of your work, to figure out your stuff. So, yeah, people are doing that all the time. Yeah, and there's a bunch of apps that use large language models to, you know, inform their training prescription and that's something like, for example, you know, myoadapt, I think you know Packen and Milo Wolf are working on and that's built into many training apps. So, yeah, that time is now and it was three years ago. So it's yeah, take a look, it's out there and it'll give you some crazy stuff and sometimes it'll give you some useful stuff. I think it's really just important to understand that.

Speaker 1: 26:21

Um and you see this, in academia, which I'm involved with, stupid people do stupid things with ai and smart people do smarter things with ai. Right, so you can have one meeting with a whole bunch of professors and researchers talking about how useful it is to, uh, you know, feed, feed their manuscript into ChatGPT to help them summarize and write a quick abstract, you can say hey, make this under 250 words, please summarize my main points. They edit it for five minutes and it saves them three hours of work. And then those same academics will go into a meeting discussing students and they'll be like, yeah, so they took the assignment, fed it into ChatGPT and spit out something that was complete nonsense. It was obvious. They didn't even look at it. They know nothing and I've now failed this student.

Speaker 1: 27:07

So, like you know, you can use it as an intellectual crutch and not learn anything in the last minute. Like, oh shit, I got to do something, and if you're not an expert, you don't know when AI is wrong. And if you're not an expert, you don't know when AI is wrong. And, however, experts are using AI to save time. Like, why am I going to write something that just takes time if I can? And if, instead, I could just edit what the AI put out and make it accurate, because I know what's accurate and it allows me to get more work done. So dumb people are not going to be able to get around being dumb with AI yet. So that is something I've seen a lot Like. You can see content coaching and people attempting to get degrees with AI all the time and remaining stupid. And you can see very, very smart people, or even moderately intelligent people who just know their stuff, saving time and working with AI to basically be a digital assistant.

Speaker 1: 28:08

And when you hear people talk about AI, they generally display their level of ignorance on the topic, because they look at it in very black and white terms, like oh, is AI good for this? And it's like no, things are good for a thing. You know like that, for what purpose, what aspect of it, so you can immediately see, um, when people try to be like you know what, we can move forward with ai on this? And it's like in what way, I don't know ai like okay, this is not magic, you know like it does specific things in specific circumstances, not specific limitations, and it's changing every quarter. It's moving quickly.

Speaker 1: 28:45

So I think at this stage, we just need to think about what needs to get done, not get distracted by the shiny object, and then think, okay, well, how can something like a large language model which can quickly put out not perfect, but a decent content or what's really good? It's good at summarizing things. It's good at listing things. It's good at collating things right. It's like having a librarian who can really quickly search a bunch of stuff, but the librarian is not an expert on anything you're asking it to search, so it's going to bring you back things that are not perfect. So you need to know your stuff and we're not at a point where you can have non-experts. You know, use AI and get to the point of it being an expert, and I don't think we're there for a while.

Speaker 2: 29:32

And when it comes to research too, I think, is there a paywall for certain research articles, so like it can't really go into that article if, uh, if there's like some sort of paywall between that, like I remember like seeing something about that as well. So like, if you're trying to gather information from this article using chat gbt, it might only get the abstract and not be able to actually dive into like the full detail of it.

Speaker 1: 29:54

I'm not sure if you you've heard of that before as well yeah, something like% of the current research articles are behind a paywall, but many are archived. So, yeah, it can only access what is accessible for sure.

Speaker 2: 30:08

Sweet, sweet. Bringing it back to your prep. Is there anything different, this prep that you're doing, that you didn't really do last prep? Or is it quite similar approach?

Speaker 1: 30:20

to it. Good question, man. So this is kind of like the best combination of my 2019 prep and my 2023 prep. So in 2019, what I did really well was that I had a pre-prep phase where I got down to like the leanest I can be without being in a dieted state. To start prep, I was roughly 10 kilos over stage weight and it made it a really smooth sailing ride and immediately, every time I saw a change on this on the scale, I was seeing a change in my physique. You don't have that tweener phase where, for a dude, you go from like 19% body fat to 16%. You look just as soft but just depleted and you're like, oh cool, have I lost muscle? No, no, no, you're just. You should have been leaner in the off season. So I've done that. In 2023, I started at like 96 kilos and my stage weight was just under 80. So in 2019, similar stage weight, but I started at like 89, 90. So like that's, you know, 13 pounds of fat that I started less with, and that was really nice and it didn't have to diet as long. 2023 went great, you know. Obviously you just give yourself more time, you'd manage it well.

Speaker 1: 31:31

But one thing in 2019. That I wasn't able to do was I had to kind of deal with the reality of my life at that time and I had a really, really packed and rough schedule in June. So I was like I told Berto like listen, it'd be nice if we could just kind of coast, coast, coast and get leaner and steadily chip away and then be stage ready by you know, late June and then have a couple of weeks to eat up in my first show. Instead, what we did is we were like all right, let's kill Eric in May. Like actually kill him and you know, 1400 calories on low days, lots of steps, because June's not a good month for him to be dieting. And then I ate up, and I was really impressed with how that went In, so much as the amount of fullness that I lost was startling, but the amount that I regained was impressive.

Speaker 1: 32:19

It would be better to not do that in the first place, probably. So the best of both worlds is you start lean, you get lean without killing yourself to do it. You chip away and you basically have a smaller and smaller deficit as you get leaner and leaner and leaner, so you're not asking your body to liberate a larger proportion of fat stores later than earlier, because losing a kilo when you have 10 kilos to lose is 10% of your fat on your body. That's something it can do without risking muscle loss or fullness loss or your sanity or exacerbating diet fatigue symptoms, if you will. But when you are 82 and you're trying to get to 79 and you ask yourself to lose a kilo that's a third of the losable fat on your body that you're trying to get to. You're going to do that in a week. You can lose a kilo in a week.

Speaker 1: 33:05

When you're 5 pounds over stage weight, it will not all be fat. You should not do it and you won't look better. That's something that any experienced bodybuilder or coach knows is you simply cannot rush shredded. You can rush, not lean enough to lean enough, but not elite level conditioning. Elite level conditioning is going from what many people consider stage ready to something freaky and it's not just another four weeks, sometimes it's another 12. And you really have to sit on it and it's a process of making sure that you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater being muscle tissue and unrecoverable fullness, sanity and just being there too long and you have to balance that a bit of a tightrope with the fact that you can only be super, super lean for that person for so long before that in and of itself, not even with a deficit, starts to become a problem, and I ran into that in 2019. So I was basically running around.

Speaker 1: 34:02

I did it for my first show in April, my last show in August and I was in good stage condition, like kind of legally shredded, if you will, in April. So I'm sitting below my lower intervention point, where my body's not going to be fully recovered, no matter what I do calorically unless I'm in a surplus and regaining body fat, matter what I do calorically unless I'm in a surplus and regaining body fat for four months. It's a little too long. And then pushing in that stage in May great, I was eating up all the way from June into my mid-August season finale and in August the wheel started to fall off a little bit. So I've got the timing better this time. Now, like I said, I'm inside of 11 weeks out. I'm probably in similar condition to that.

Speaker 1: 34:43

I got on stage in April, but it ain't April, so it is the end of July and I am 10 weeks out, which is a good spot to be in, and I'm also not going to have this big digging phase in May.

Speaker 1: 34:55

I'm just chipping away from here on out and I will probably be eating up either a week prior to my Taiwan show or maybe just right after it as I go into my final shows that are, you know, uh five and uh seven weeks after that for worlds and the mayhem. So that's kind of it's not different, but it's basically the best of both worlds and I did a really good job setting myself up. Um of both worlds, and I did a really good job setting myself up. And the final thing I'll say for this prep itself is not on the setup, but just that I'm purely focused on bodybuilding In 2023, I did a powerlifting meet halfway through and I was kind of bolting on powerlifting training to my bodybuilding. So it's been a much lower stress training environment with a higher stimulus. Maybe not much, but it has been much more focused and targeted on bodybuilding, which has paid off some big dividends that's awesome.

Speaker 2: 35:49

Yeah, that's, that's awesome man like with your diet, like I know I remember you talking about doing like the default diets in your off season. Do you take kind of a similar approach? Uh, when you are in competition prep, are you tracking your macros? Are you kind of just slowly taking away, um, a little bit of calories from here, there, from my carbs, your fat sources, or are you kind of going back to tracking macros? What? What does that look like for you when you're in prep?

Speaker 1: 36:16

so real quick. The default diet is not a um, a tracking or non-tracking approach. That describes what do you do qualitatively on a day-to-day basis, no matter what. The default diet is kind of like what is your lowest calories in prep? It's kind of your skeleton, and then how do you modify it for off-season refeeds or dieting. If we want to talk about to what degree am I using external guidance like target macros and hitting numbers, kind of regardless of biofeedback or any kind of auto-regulatory approach? Great question.

Speaker 1: 36:53

I did some of this in 2019. I took a non-tracking approach for probably the first two-thirds of the prep and then I was on numbers, which were auto-regulated to some degree but largely dictated by Berto in response to my check-ins and he's basically been encouraging and I've been encouraging myself and exposing myself to how do I leverage biofeedback and auto-regulation more and more, and this is something that takes experience. So in 2023, I didn't open a tracking app a single time and I definitely used a food scale at times when I was like I'm not actually sure how much this large Nashi pear weighs and it could be like some of those suckers are big, like is that 400 grams or is that 300? Because it's the difference of you know, a fair amount of calories and that can add up on a day-to-day basis. So there's times I check things on there or hey, I'm eating something that is kind of outside of my normal wheelhouse, but that's pretty rare, to be honest. So where the default diet does intersect with this is that, long-term, the athletes who have sustainable careers and incur the least amount of stress and are struggling the least amount from the transitions between off-season prep and the recovery diet phase are those who have very, very similar lifestyles prep to off-season, to recovery from a qualitative perspective and by qualitative I mean not the numbers, which is quantitative, but what it would appear to be on the outside. So they have a similar training program, they're consistent with their training, no matter what. They have a similar level of activity, they're being sufficiently active, they have a lifestyle, they eat at similar times, they have a very consistent meal rhythm. They prepare most of their own food or it's done in a similar manner. The foods are very qualitatively similar and the only thing that changes is the numbers. So prep just happens.

Speaker 1: 38:53

So, for example, every morning in the off season, my wife and I we go on a walk and we go to breakfast, and I'm not one who goes. I've got to flip the switch. No more meals that are prepared outside. I'm going to control it all. No, I'm still going to breakfast, but now I get something that has a very narrow range of variability.

Speaker 1: 39:09

I get three poached eggs on toast with a side of spinach and mushrooms. You can go to any cafe across the world and get that, and you're going to have a probably a 100 calorie range, especially if you do things like, hey, can you put the butter on the side? Or hey, when you cook the spinach and mushrooms, can you largely just saute it without a ton of butter, or something like that. And even then spinach and mushrooms are only going to absorb so much oil and butter. We're looking at a difference of 100 calories at most, right? So when I get that breakfast, I know it's somewhere between 400 to 500 calories. That's it, unless they give me massive pieces of toast and then I can look at that and I go, okay, so it's 600 calories. Today I'm not going to have a banana, later I'll have blueberries. It's like not a big deal.

Speaker 1: 39:53

So every morning I'm doing that, and then my lunch that I have at home is literally the same thing every day, and the difference between the off-season is I have an extra piece of fruit, the protein source is a little higher in fat, and that's pretty much it. And then my breakfast in the off-season include smoked salmon instead of just the eggs, and I might get oatmeal as well. So I've cut out 150 to 200 calories at lunch, 200, 250 calories at breakfast. And then my dinners we make different decisions. Sometimes we do eat out, but I might get something like uh, you know, let me get. There's this place called Burger Burger that we go to, right, um, in the off season I will get a uh, like a, a pan fried fish burger with like some hot sauce on it and some other stuff in prep. I get their broccoli with the pan fried fish. So, boom, I cut out 300 calories, right, um? And then before I go to bed, instead of having a low fat Greek yogurt, I have a nonfat sweetened yogurt. Right, cut out another hundred calories. So instead of getting sufficient levels of activity to get 7,000 steps, I get 9,000.

Speaker 1: 41:06

So just by doing that, if someone watched me live my life, it would be indiscernible to them that I'm actually prepping. They would just notice that I'm getting way too prominent cheekbones and sometimes talking slower right. Um, and if they were in bed with me, they might notice that sometimes at 4am I wake up and I have to like, meditate and fall back asleep and then one day I'll fuck the guy who got shredded. What, what, what, how did that happen? What was he doing differently? Um, and to me it doesn't feel different, which is the key. So that's kind of where the default diet comes in. You're just making these minute modifications, but you're living the bodybuilding lifestyle.

Speaker 1: 41:42

It is the early stage, novice and intermediate athletes. Unfortunately, sometimes the experienced athletes who just kind of just have a huge difference between prep and off-season. They do not live a bodybuilding lifestyle in the off-season. When they flip the switch, it becomes all-encompassing focus that they deal with binge eating disorder and this kind of burnout and this push-pull where they feel always restricted. I rarely feel restricted. I don't think about this stuff. I don't have decision fatigue. I'm not playing macro Tetris, I'm just living my life. So there's no need for me to track the same goddamn thing every day. So there's no need for me to track the same goddamn thing every day. And, more importantly, I think many athletes think that it is somehow more like it takes more discipline, it's more virtuous or it's better from an evidence-based perspective to measure things and manage it and be on your P's and Q's.

Speaker 1: 42:36

And I want to hit my macros within five grams on a day-to-day basis. And they ignore the fact that your activity changes on a day-to-day basis. You're doing algebra right. You don't know. You're solving for Y on a day-to-day basis. You're looking at and in retrospect, y being are you getting leaner? Is your scale weight going down? And you only know the input, you do not know your output. And so you are basically going am I losing at the appropriate rate? Is my performance maintaining? Am I looking leaner and not flatter? How am I feeling psychologically? Is this sustainable? And then I'm adjusting my macros, kind of like one to two weeks in retrospect. Wouldn't it be better if maybe you could figure out some type of biofeedback to do that on a day-to-day basis? And the answer is, of course.

Speaker 1: 43:29

But bodybuilders often don't develop the skill to do that because they're unwilling to actually listen to their body. In fact, they typically see it as virtuous or higher discipline or more hardcore to ignore their body's signals and go like I don't care how it feels, I'm hitting my numbers, no matter what. And then they think that's what makes them a good bodybuilder. But I ask you, in what sport are the highest level athletes and the best competitors purposely ignoring their body feedback and their body signals? And isn't in every single other athletic sport? The definition of an expert is that they're incredibly body aware and they can make adjustments on the fly. And guess what, if you actually hang out with a bunch of pros and veterans, most of them do this in one way or another and they can be a little more quantitative minded and they might have a score for their sleep, they might have a score for their hunger, they might have a range of calories and they might decide okay, my steps were higher, my sleep was poor, my training, my loads went down. So therefore, tomorrow I'm going to do a refeed, but I only have three refeeds per week and it's always the same numbers. But it's still some type of system for auto-regulation, so that's what I do. There's a number of biofeedback signals that I use to auto-regulate within a range and, importantly, because I track my numbers quite literally.

Speaker 1: 44:49

For five years straight and this is my sixth prep and I'm coming up on my 20th show I've been lifting weights for 21 years and I've coached over 100 people to the stage. Very important context I'm not saying you, hey, first, second or even third season should do this. I'm saying you would not be able to. But you will never develop the skill if you only use macro tracking as a crutch. You have to actually expose yourself to it and I was describing how I did that incrementally In 2019, I did a little bit of it.

Speaker 1: 45:17

One of the ways you can do it is, say, during a diet break, you go. You know what I'm going to try to eat at maintenance by feel I know what an appropriate level of hunger is and hint hint, like when you're five pounds over stage weight maintenance is going to feel like a deficit and you don't know that if you don't know that. So that's some of the things is, you have to actually know what it's supposed to feel like. If we all think back to our first time competing, we didn't know what was the appropriate level of suck and people were saying contest prep is brutal, it's hard. So you think all levels of suck are appropriate and you dig yourself into the ground and you think, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to be and a veteran would be like that shouldn't be that hard. Or you push what you think is hard, but maybe you don't have an athletic background, maybe you've never dieted before and you didn't push nearly hard enough and you think it'd be impossible to get into stage shape. But then guess what? Next season you get leaner because you've built the self-efficacy and you kind of understand that oh, I didn't break, I'm okay.

Speaker 1: 46:14

And everyone comes to the sport with some different level of background experience. Were they a marine? Were they a high-level athlete? Or is this literally the first time they started lifting weights and they wanted to do a bikini show their first time, and this is quite the rooted awakening. But eventually they get there. So what you do have to build is that experience, because if you don't know what a normal level of hunger is at a high body fat level, a moderate body fat level and a low body fat level, and how that interacts with having a high deficit, what does it feel like to be 20 pounds over stage weight in a 700-calorie deficit and a 100-calorie deficit? What does it feel like to be 1 pound over stage weight in a 700, 400, and 100-calorie deficit? And how should I feel when I'm six weeks out versus 16? I know those things and I know that if I feel like death four months out, I'm doing something wrong.

Speaker 1: 47:09

My first season, I just said, it doesn't matter what I feel like, I am death incarnate. I will drive myself into a wall, and that's a good skill to have, and most bodybuilders do have it. But that's not how you compete at a high level. That's how you get to decent condition and hate yourself because you binged or maybe you don't binge during the prep, but you gain a whole lot of weight in the off season and you know you lose a lot of muscle and you're never in your peak condition and then they just keep doing that and eventually you say this sport's crazy, I'm bowing out. So where you eventually want to get to is something that is a more optimal approach and leverages your body awareness with some type of system that fits your personality and your comfort level, and you do that in consultation with a coach, because everyone loses objectivity as you get towards the end. So, like for me, if anything, I tend to push too hard, flatten out and diet too much. Like.

Speaker 1: 48:04

The big thing that we had to deal with is I recently got back from Europe, so I was in Italy and Spain and I was supposed to take a diet break for the last half of that. I was supposed to diet for the first half and then actually have a nine-day diet break, post a diet for the first half and then actually have a nine day diet break. I lost like four and a half pounds in those two weeks while I was in Spain and Italy and I had to take three days at maintenance after I got back from supposedly being on a diet break Because, realistically, what I did was I had maybe a three day diet break out of my 14 day trip and an aggressive diet for the rest of the time, and that was even with Berto going. Hey, I need you to try to doday diet break out of my 14-day trip and an aggressive diet for the rest of the time, and that was even with Berto going. Hey, I need you to try to do a diet break while you're there.

Speaker 1: 48:46

But when I'm presenting, interacting with people, I'm walking around, I overcorrect because I want to make sure I'm on my P's and Q's when I'm out of my environment. Other people do the opposite. I'm sure this is fine. I'm getting a lot of steps I've. You know this gelato is lower fat than what they have in the States. For me it's like well, you know, I'm not sure if I got 10,000 steps or 20,000 today, let's assume 10. Is this grilled fish really grilled without any oil? All right, that's fine, and I end up over-correcting to the point where you know I didn't hit the target.

Speaker 1: 49:26

But having that feedback from a coach and being able to notice when, oh man, like you woke up today shredded like let's, that wasn't the goal we're supposed to be getting, you know, like maintaining and looking fuller, fuller, okay, now I need to eat more.

Speaker 1: 49:37

So like I could correct within a couple days while away, but I can correct on the day when I'm at home, in my own environment.

Speaker 1: 49:44

I'm getting a scale weight every morning and I'm able to, you know, like my phone's connecting to the internet so I can see what my step count is and I have access to more data that I can use to modulate things and communication is easier with, you know, my coaches and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: 50:00

So I know that was a long kind of rambling answer, but basically I am using an auto-regulated approach to my dietary intake, but I'm still trying to be in a what I would describe as probably a 200 to 300 or 400 calorie deficit on average per week at this stage and I have an auto-regulated approach to having two or three refeed days and I've had one diet break and I'll probably have another and the goal is to start eating up, but it is not like here's your targets every day. I have kind of like a minimum intake of protein that I know I need to hit in a calorie range and my low days are typically between 16 to 1900 calories and then my high days are around maintenance, which is probably around 2100 ish on average, but it ranges from 2000 to maybe 2400.

Speaker 2: 50:54

Nice.

Speaker 2: 50:54

Like I couldn't like I resonated so much with what you're saying there because I experienced that Zach's same thing with, like my prep three or no five years ago, I guess now where like I would be super OCD with macros, trying to get within five grams, and like being like super obsessed of being like listening to like really hardcore podcasts, like all or nothing kind of mentality and like like I got decently lean but like I hit a wall so hard and like diet fatigue was through the roof and then like that prep actually got canceled due to covid, so there was extra stresses coming into play and then I like blew up after I couldn't follow the macros. I was like probably had like a minor eating disorder during that time frame just because I was so like obsessive. And then, like the three years ago when I worked with jeff, like we kind of made it more flexible. We had like more macro ranges um, I was still able to eat out on the weekends and like made it fit into my lifestyle so much easier. And then this last prep made it even looser not quite to the same extent as yourself, but but like giving myself larger ranges, having implementing more refeeds, starting my competition prep literally like 10 pounds above stage weight and then just slowly working my way down and like like my behaviors around eating are so much better.

Speaker 2: 52:16

The recovery was like so much better as well. I'm only up like 10 pounds and the show was like 10 weeks ago. So, yeah, it's. It's cool to see how just pulling back a little bit not like trying to redline it so much all the time can really help like preserve that that energy too. Right Cause, yeah, I just thought that I feel like there's only so much you can do, or like there's. If you get too close to that, that red line too often, like you're gonna just explode when it comes to the eating. So, knowing when to pull and when to pull back, I I found this been very useful and like I've gotten a lot of that from your guys's podcasts and just um listening to what you guys have to say.

Speaker 2: 53:01

So no, I definitely resonate a lot with that.

Speaker 1: 53:04

Yeah I agree. Agree, you know, your experience is not, is not in isolation. That's something that a lot of people get. And one thing I want to make really clear to the listener, because I can be sometimes a little aggressive on this, like, hey, you know, um, and it's because, for one, there are people who are really, really attached to the identity as a bodybuilder of someone who's hardcore and can do anything and anything that sounds like it might make it easier or it isn't optimal, pisses them off.

Speaker 1: 53:34

And I want to be clear, like I'm a crazy, psychotic, hardcore, optimal dude and if I didn't think this was actually better for performance, I wouldn't do it, but it is, and I think that's a tough pill for people to swallow because many of them are not doing that. It's a post hoc rationalization going no, no, no, I'm doing this because I'm hardcore. It's actually I don't have the braveness to try to learn this new skill. I'm uncomfortable with it, it lowers my sense of control and that makes me feel scared, whether they can recognize that or not. So they will never develop the skill. And that's where a good coaching comes into play. That's where people like kind of walking that path and showing you that it is possible and is better is really helpful. But I think the important thing is to see like, okay, if you hear someone talking about this and you have a visceral emotional reaction, that's not you logically assessing it. It's almost an existential challenge to your identity or the way you think things are supposed to go, and that's fine. But just admit it, you know. Be like no, I'm not ready for that, because the one thing I'm not saying is that, hey, first prep, second prep, third prep, early stage. You know competitors. Hey, first prep, second prep, third prep, early stage. You know competitors, even intermediates should be doing this. You quite literally can't. How do you know what's an appropriate level of hunger when you're six weeks out? You've never been six weeks out before or you've only done it once, right? So I think this is the type of thing that is the ideal evolution of a bodybuilder, is the ideal evolution of a bodybuilder, and it can be intentional or it can be unintentional or it can be actively discouraged, and we don't want to be in that last category, to where you spend your whole life just tracking and ignoring body signals and you go through a whole career like that because it'll be brutal. It'll be brutal and it's a short timeline of when you think you can do it.

Speaker 1: 55:22

Unintentionally, it does happen for many people because they just start to question why am I doing this? Like, why am I tracking this meal? It's the same thing I eat every day. Like I know what these are and I don't feel like tracking it. Maybe it gives me a sense of comfort. Or you just start to notice things like man today's supposed to be. You know my 2000 calorie day, but I feel dead, dog tired and my weight's dropping too quickly. Maybe I should just have an extra banana today, like is that so bad? And you know from prior preps that the banana is not going to derail you. And then you have a great training session, you feel better and you hit a new low two days later anyway and you're like huh. That's kind of the unintentional version of this.

Speaker 1: 56:04

But the intentional version is actively seeing this as a potential benefit, leveraging more information, giving you more ability to auto-regulate and be more fine-tuned, with an appropriate deficit size, so you're not running a thousand calorie deficit unintentionally, or that you're actually in a surplus when you're meant to be in a deficit on other days and that you are preserving as much fullness and training quality while getting leaner and really acknowledging the fact that you know, the biggest risk for bodybuilders natural bodybuilders is in the end stages, their condition falling apart because they are pushing too hard if they want to get to a lead level of condition. And the only way that gets done is with some individualization and on the ground agility, and that's a skill you have to learn. So I think I just want to be super, super clear. If someone is using strict macro tracking and they're in their first couple of seasons, or even third or fourth season, you are not doing it wrong. You have to develop that skill first. You have to be able to eyeball foods and comfortably estimate macros, be able to spot when you're full, when you're flat, have an awareness of what's your hunger and how the course of a prep is supposed to go, and you probably need to have been shredded at least once before. And you need to know and you need to have a stable bodybuilding lifestyle, like right now.

Speaker 1: 57:22

If you track during prep and the off season you just kind of live normal life and try to eat high protein foods. That's totally fine, but the goal should be to work towards the point where qualitatively, like I was saying, life always looks the same and prep is just life in a deficit. That kind of just happens and one day you look up and you're like why am I so lean and why am I hungry and cranky and I don't sleep very well? Oh, it's because the life I'm living has produced a 500 calorie average deficit per day rather than I need to. Like. This is an active thing I have to do. When your baseline habits are sports supportive, then you have kind of aligned the two and bodybuilding is a lifestyle. Even if it seems crazy the idea I can't live in prep. You're not living in prep. It shouldn't feel restrictive. You're just slowly moving towards this being an integrated thing with your life.

Speaker 1: 58:18

And that's not for everyone. And maybe you don't want to compete in your 40s like I am, or my plans to compete in my 70s, and maybe you want to have a run at this. And maybe you don't want to compete in your 40s like I am, or my plans to compete in my 70s, and maybe you want to have a run at this. And then you're like you know what? I want to have cookies be a regular part of my life in the future and that's this just isn't in the cards for me.

Speaker 1: 58:33

That's fine, you know, but I think this is really important to note. This isn't doing it wrong or doing it right. This is what does the education and the transition from being a novice to intermediate to an advanced bodybuilder. And the only thing I really hate is when people look at these kind of more auto-regulated approaches that advanced bodybuilders are using even if they sometimes don't admit it or it doesn't look the same as the way I do it and go no, that's soft, that's weak and it's like well, bro, these are the guys at the top of the game. If it's soft or weak, then let me know what they want to do, because I'm not interested in virtue signaling my hardcoreness. I'm interested in being the best bodybuilder I can be that makes sense, makes sense.

Speaker 2: 59:14

Um, another topic I wanted to bring up too with uh, I remember I think one or two years ago you guys were doing some filming for a documentary. Do you guys have that coming out pretty soon? Are you able to talk about that?

Speaker 1: 59:30

I am able. So big shout out to Brandon. He is. We have a kind of like a rough cut of the documentary and we were currently working on finalizing the iron culture documentary and it is going to be awesome, so I'm really excited for that. That will be coming out, probably this year, when exactly or what the release schedule is? I've got to sit down and talk to Omar, but yeah, that is definitely still happening.

Speaker 1: 59:57

It's just, I think people, including myself, did not anticipate what actually goes into finishing a documentary. Including myself did not anticipate what actually goes into finishing a documentary. You know, like we did a total of, you know like four weeks of filming, a ton of content, and then we had to do, okay, we're done. No, no, no, we need to do interview backfill. We need historical footage. We need to get together in a hotel room next time in the States and do some narration. We need to coordinate. We need a storyboard, um, and okay, what? What b-roll footage do we need to get? And then how do we build the narrative out of this? So, like it's um, if you've never done a documentary before, like filming is maybe a third of it. So we finished the filming in 2023, but we're looking at releasing like the end of 2025 and that's not slow, that's like par for the course when you look at um even independent small documentaries like this yeah, makes sense.

Speaker 2: 1:00:49

Makes sense. Where were you guys releasing it? Is it going to be on youtube or is there any platform that you guys are putting it?

Speaker 1: 1:00:56

on or you know yeah well, I mean, yeah, if I, if I could snap my fingers and put it on netflix, then that would be. Yeah, you know it'll be coming out in a theater near you, buddy. Yeah, just you know, we got George Clooney playing me. It's pretty good. No, it's. Yeah, it's probably going to be released on YouTube initially, and then we'll go from there. We'll see. We're still ironing out those details, but the first thing is just finishing it and it's real close, which is great.

Speaker 2: 1:01:27

That's awesome. I'm really looking forward to it. Another one was on the muscle strength pyramid books. I believe I heard something about that a couple months ago. Are you getting pretty close to finishing those as well? Yeah, those are written.

Speaker 1: 1:01:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah so though the, the third edition of those books are written, and now we are doing the final copy, editing um, making figures, tables, figuring out the color scheme, cover and then what's a good release date, and communicating with our translation partners, because the pyramids are translated into Japanese, traditional and simplified Chinese, spanish and Italian. So there's, you know, similarly to the documentary, finishing filming and finishing writing are not the equivalent to releasing the book or releasing the documentary. So for both of those, we're looking at kind of like a fourth quarter release, most likely, sweet, sweet, and the book is going to be released in digital form and hard copy. For both. That's right, you can get it, as we have done previously, on Amazon, as a hard copy or digital form, you know, via the muscle and strength pyramidscom.

Speaker 3: 1:02:39

That's good. Is there a way to get a signed copy?

Speaker 1: 1:02:43

If you meet me in person and you got your book, I'll sign it. But uh, unfortunately that's. That's not the way uh printing works, it's. We're not sending it out ourselves, it's print on demand via amazon oh, that's great, was.

Speaker 2: 1:02:55

Is there any specific topics in the new version that, um, you had to change around quite a bit. Or is it like uh, yeah, maybe like? Is there like one topic that you've added in that's quite a bit? Or is it like, uh, yeah, maybe like is there like one topic that you've added in that's quite a bit different than the last version?

Speaker 1: 1:03:10

it's been five years and we've seen a rapid rise in the in in the rate of research being released in sports science and sport nutrition, so it's actually a complete rewrite. Um, some of the things that are most notable is I have a really big discussion at the start of each book on what is evidence-based practice and how do you integrate knowledge from your experience and the individual, as well as research, into a cohesive format. Versus the prior books were just kind of like here's the best information and trust me. But of course, I would justify it and I'd walk through the study and I'd say, hey, based on my coaching experience. So you know like of course, nothing was just due to what I say I'm Eric Helms or anything like that but I think I've realized, just with the information overload that we're dealing with in 2025, that's only going to get worse. I need to teach people a bit of a framework of how to understand this information so they don't read the book, go out in the wild, find a contrary claim and just go. I don't know how do I deal with that. They can evaluate it, I think, with some of the learnings from the book If they choose to really opt in and read that part, they might just be like whatever, what's the protein rex? And then they're going to miss out on that. But you know, that's that's. That's your choice, if you, if you want to be constantly confused and you know, going from the snake diet to the carnivore diet, to the, to the whatever diet on a day-to-day basis. For those who wish to educate themselves, this is a very powerful addition to the books.

Speaker 1: 1:04:37

Some other major things that are kind of cool is I've challenged the traditional approach to macro tracking of having specific targets for protein, carbs and fats and instead said hey, what's a reasonable minimum intake based upon your goals, condition, individual differences for protein, carbs and fat? And then what's a reasonable calorie range? Because it's really hard to justify that 300 grams of carbs is better than 255 grams of carbs with 60 versus 40 grams of fat. And for the savvy macronators you might've noticed that's an equivalent isocaloric exchange 45 grams of carbohydrate is 180 calories, 20 grams of fat 180 calories. It doesn't matter, right? We're not endurance athletes, we're not soccer players who need to make sure we get hydration, electrolytes and a specific number of carbs at halftime or we're going to bonk in the second half of it. We have like an arm day, right?

Speaker 1: 1:05:35

So the reality is that you can find bodybuilders on ketogenic diets and high-carb diets. You can find bodybuilders on what I would and high carb diets. You can find bodybuilders on what I would all describe as high protein diets, but you can find them on really high protein diets or moderately high protein diets, low fat, high fat. And the reason why you find that is not just because we're all special snowflakes and we all respond differently. It's because it doesn't matter. Like, the things that matter are what we need to focus on, and if you are getting a sufficient minimum intake of protein, carbs and fat, the thing that does matter is an appropriate energy balance, and that gives you infinitely more flexibility.

Speaker 1: 1:06:14

Like when you hear these conversations of how do I track alcohol? I don't have a fourth macro target Never drink again. Okay, sweet. What do I do when I eat out? How do I estimate this? It's a lot easier to estimate calories on things and that's actually what restaurants often provide than the specific macros and you agonizing over whether you're at 275 grams of carbs or 230 grams of carbs or 340 grams of carbs, when you're still at the same calorie intake, it doesn't matter, and whether you are at 1.8 grams per kilogram of protein on a given day, or 2.5, probably doesn't matter, especially for one day. So this is an empowering thing that also helps from my coaching perspective.

Speaker 1: 1:06:58

Like asking someone to hit the same macros in Malaysia and New York is not the same thing, right, asking someone to try to follow a low-fat, high-protein diet when they're a vegan or when they are an omnivore is not the same thing. But if I ask someone to hit a certain calorie range and hit reasonably low minimums, like, say, for example, if I told you I need you to consume, as a middleweight bodybuilder, at least 45 grams of fat per day, at least, let's say, 150 grams of carbs per day and let's say at least 140 grams of protein per day, but 2,600 calories, you'd be like, oh, that gives me like wiggle room of 500 calories plus. So what should I do, eric? And I go listen whatever you normally do, because that default diet thing like I think people mistake that sometimes as like what I'm going to have these huge swings in carbs and fats, like no, just eat the same damn thing you do every day, and then if and when you need to adjust or you're unsure of your macronutrient intake, there's. No, it doesn't matter, like I'm not actually sure whether my carbs or fat were high or low, but I know I hit the minimum and I had a beer because my body buddy from college is out of town and I, you know, I made sure that I was within a hundred calories of my target and I hit my minimums. Is that okay? Of course it's okay. We should only care about the things we care about. So that embedded amount it's basically a better way of doing it to fit your macros. That reduces another level of potential neuroticism that can lead to downsides.

Speaker 1: 1:08:38

And if someone does have wild swings in carbohydrate, fat and protein using that system, that's the problem. That means they don't actually live the bodybuilding lifestyle, they don't have a meal rhythm, they don't have consistent food intake, and that's what they should focus on in more kind of food-centric, meal-centric approaches. And that's something that in the micronutrient chapter, if you look at previous editions, I kind of talked about fiber, talked about micronutrients, said which ones are typically deficient. This time I talk about micronutrients through the lens of food. Okay, what are reasonable, healthy dietary patterns, based upon the research, that also support strength and hypertrophy development? How should you construct your kind of lifestyle and then make sure it hits these minimums and then make sure you scale it to your energy needs, um, and that's something that I think is really cool.

Speaker 1: 1:09:29

So the first few chapters I think are a much better blend of how do we take numbers and translate them into behaviors without it becoming something that is neurotic or restrictive, uh, that focuses on the things that matter and not waste your energy on things that don't. So that's the nutrition book. That, I think, is the biggest change that is really strong In the training book. A lot of this new data that gives us a better idea of the relationship between volume, frequency, intensity, proximity to failure and strength and hypertrophy and load has now been integrated, and also a better understanding of not just what's optimal but what's going to get you really good gains if you're time restricted. What's going to get you really really good gains if you want to take a minimalist approach, like how do you get the biggest bang for your buck?

Speaker 1: 1:10:18

And then, if you are a maximalist and trying to get everything out of you, how do you know what's too much and how far to take it? And let's set some realistic expectations. If you want to do high volume, what are the downsides and is it worth it? And then there's a lot more that expands in the exercise selection chapter about understanding how to evaluate what is a good exercise for hypertrophy, as we integrate more knowledge about training at long muscle lengths. For hypertrophy, as we integrate more knowledge about training at long muscle lengths, exercises that effectively target a given muscle versus another, resistance profiles, and what is it about range of motion that actually makes it better versus our kind of blanket good-bad full range of motion, short range of motion perspective we might have had a few years ago. So there's a lot more illustrative context and understanding of anatomy in the exercise selection chapter and there is a broader understanding of those relationships between the big picture variables of volume, intensity and frequency, which is pretty sweet.

Speaker 1: 1:11:15

And then I've revamped the sample programs, the examples, so that people can see how to take those guidance and then put it into either a two, three, four, five or a six-day split, whether it's for powerlifting or bodybuilding. And then finally, on the training side, one other thing is that instead of kind of giving this overview of like, here's daily undulating periodization, here's linear periodization, here's block periodization and here's how you would progress this exercise, I boil it down to what are the key elements of periodization that make sense for hypertrophy and then for strength. And then here's a system that embeds it. That's far simpler so that you can kind of auto-regulate your progression. So, essentially, it's better aligned with the evidence but also easier to follow, which is a fantastic outcome and one of the main reasons why I wanted to write the books.

Speaker 1: 1:12:05

Because, as good as people say the second editions are, I got to a point where I was looking back and I was like I don't want to put my name on that anymore. It's like this itch in the back of my mind. So when people ask me, oh, when are you going to do the fourth edition or why did you do the second edition, it's basically at what point does it annoy me that it is too out of step with my current thinking, my evaluation of the research and my skills as a writer and a communicator to where I'm like I? I cannot live in a world where eric helms's name is on the second edition anymore and when we're there. So the third edition is going to be, um, something I'm uncomfortable with, at least until I'm in my late 40s that.

Speaker 3: 1:12:43

That sounds like a lot of really good information and I think it's very helpful for a lot of individuals, such as myself, who don't read that much, to actually be able to understand it a lot more. Not clear, but it's much more easier to understand and I'm very excited for the book. Honestly, I can't wait to get my hands on one. Hopefully, bring it and get a sign and I'll probably sell them for you before fortune after that.

Speaker 1: 1:13:10

It's an investment strategy and an educational opportunity for you. Adrian, I will gladly sign it. Just don't forget me when you were richer than me because of my signature and you've got the yacht and I'm just the has-been I'll come do lectures on your yacht. You just, you know, let me get the free shrimp and I'll be happy.

Speaker 3: 1:13:26

I'll give you more than the free shrimp man.

Speaker 1: 1:13:30

You get the oysters you get all the protein in there. My man, he's got me at least two dishes.

Speaker 3: 1:13:38

I love it, but regardless, within all this new information coming into the new book, it does me to it. One of my questions is there's a lot of people that might not be on mass if you're not already, hop on, eric. You are one of the main writers of mass, and what has been any of that new research that is coming up?

Speaker 1: 1:13:59

oh man, there's so much that's constantly coming and and that's what is great about mass is that we basically keep our finger on the pulse of what's relevant, what matters, and then how does it integrate into what we've already known? One of the issues currently is that to be relevant, even as a well-meaning, evidence-based content creator, is you kind of have to make content sexy, no matter what? You kind of have to make content sexy, no matter what. This is why the evidence-based scene is blown up, but it's also why some people are frustrated with it, because every time a new study comes out, it feels like whiplash, and I don't expect the average person who is interested in taking a science-based approach to be aware of 90% of the studies on a topic to go okay, does this one study shift our overall perspective? And most people don't really realize that no study changes everything. That's not the way it works. When you take eight people in a lab and you have them trained for eight weeks and you measure like their bicep, it's like oh my God, you know like. No, that's not what happens. This is, um, kind of like. The way I like to think of it is.

Speaker 1: 1:15:03

There's this actual bell curve distribution of how do people respond to? Let's say high volume, right, and if we had everyone in the world do a high volume program, I could tell you on average, with a fair amount of distribution around that average, this is how people respond. We don't have that. Instead, what we have is that, with a paper sheet in front of it that we can't see through, and then we have a paintball gun and then each time we do a study from about 50 yards away, we shoot one of those non-rifled, cheap I'm not talking about the high quality paintball guns, but the one of the ones you get, like the fair and it like immediately starts going at an angle and it hits somewhere on that piece of paper. And if it hits far to the left the first time, you're like, oh man, high volume does not work. Look at, look at all that there's no difference compared to to low volume. And you shoot it again. It goes all the way to the right and you're like, oh my God, high volume is amazing. Science is flip-flopping. It's like no, it's not. We need to understand how every bodybuilder on the planet you know millions of people respond, and that's 10 of them for eight weeks only looking at the biceps in this one lab in, in, in, in Connecticut or whatever, right, and the other ones. You know some, some lab in the UK and it's for 12 weeks and it was on the quads and they had to do totally different exercise and that one guy got sick in that one group and he happened to be a hyper-responder. Like all of that stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:16:26

You have to take a lot of shots on that piece of paper and no one should be expected to follow all that unless they're an active researcher or staying up to date with this stuff. So that's what we do right with this stuff. So that's what we do right. We look at each one of those shots, we look at the overall piece of paper and we summarize it and we say here's what's actionable, here's what matters. Hold your horses. This study had these issues. These studies did not.

Speaker 1: 1:16:52

And guess what? We could put this in video format. We can write it for you, we can do an audio summary, we can create a training guide and we've been doing this since 2017. We have over a hundred issues and we have you 2017. We have over 100 issues and we have over a thousand pieces of content. There's a reason why we've got thousands of subscribers because they have shown us the trust and respect to kind of facilitate that education and keep them up to date. So that's what we do.

Speaker 1: 1:17:15

So what is the recent stuff coming out, man? So much you know, there's the evolving field of training at long muscle lengths. There is the evolving field of manipulating training frequency, intensity and volume. We have a better understanding now of how does a high protein diet operate in and out of a deficit when you're less lean or more lean. Um, we have a better understanding of how diet breaks and refeeds can impact people and we're getting a better, clearer understanding of how do non-tracking versus tracking methods impact psychology as well as outcomes like body composition change, when only just a few years ago these were kind of theoretical debates. So, um, yeah, it's, it's an evolving field.

Speaker 1: 1:18:01

We're in the middle of what we call a replication crisis in sports science, where two studies get published on the same thing and they find very different results, and that could be something that is very intimidating and also confusing for someone who's not embedded in academia and doesn't understand how to really dig into the research. But the tendency of just saying you know what I'm going to, throw the baby out with the bathwater and I go back to 1990 and just do what the big dude does is even worse. Like all the limitations of science, it's that times 20 when you decide to just go with your anecdotal experiences. So we are trying to be that flashlight in the darkness for people to accept the limitations of science, work around them and glean what can be gleaned from it, and having realistic expectations and understanding how to integrate it with practice and experience.

Speaker 3: 1:18:53

Is it just me, or are there just more researches just based on lower body compared to upper body?

Speaker 1: 1:19:00

No, I don't think you're wrong there. The quadriceps are a really nice model for being able to study them. It's easy to delineate between different heads of the quadriceps using an ultrasound and it's a little more relevant outside of the world of bodybuilding. Like sport is obviously jumping, cutting, running, dashing. You know if you're in endurance sport, obviously a cyclist is very interested in. You know the quadriceps and the metabolic and physiological changes there, so you'll generally see if you you know, if you were to go how many studies do biopsies or cross-sectional area or muscle thickness assessments you're probably going to see 40, 50% be in the quads. That's not at all a misperception.

Speaker 3: 1:19:45

Just bias. We just wanted to grow upper body and so it's all we care about, and we just wanted to see a little bit more research on. I know it's challenging to do a lot more research with like the lats or the yeah, the lats is a hard one Zero studies on on lat hypertrophy.

Speaker 1: 1:20:02

There's never been a study that has measured hypertrophy in the lats.

Speaker 3: 1:20:06

Is it like impossible, or just nobody has done it yet.

Speaker 1: 1:20:09

It's very challenging because you have to think about uh, how do I do a cross-sectional area assessment of the lat? The lat attaches across your entire back. How do I get a consistent landmark to do an ultrasound muscle thickness in one spot? Considering an ultrasound is not that big. Okay, if I'm going to chuck someone into an MRI, I have to. You know you guys ever had an MRI with the. You know like all the loud noises they got to sit there, hold still takes an hour, and then I have to evaluate what 10 cross-sectional slices by hand. This is actually a place where AI is becoming much more useful. It can start to do that for you. And then you know who has an MRI Not a sports science university. So now you've got to go across to the medical. You know university facilities and beg and plead, give them authorship or pay a lot of money to get that done. So, but the good news is that both your quadricep and your lat are made of muscle tissue, so they are actually quite similar and we have no reason to believe that there's a lot of generalizable principles that come from making quadriceps grow to lats or delts or biceps or triceps. And despite what some uh content creators will say about how there's a completely different response to, you know, shortened or lengthened, bias training in the biceps or triceps, or the arms or the delts. Um, we've actually seen either null or positive results in every single muscle that's been studied and we have data, even though it's mostly quads. We have data on quads, glutes, hamstrings, calves, triceps, biceps and pecs and the one study even though this is one on the delts and that will probably become a little more common over time. So, yeah, we have some definitely generalizable findings, Not to say that there aren't differences between muscle groups.

Speaker 1: 1:22:03

Some of them obviously do have different properties and they operate at different ways and lengths. For example, the quadriceps don't seem to respond as well to really really long muscle length training. It's not worse, um, but long enough is a shorter length than it might be for other muscle groups, just based upon, uh, some of their properties. Um, when the hamstrings might be one that is kind of like longer is better, type of deal, or or the or the calves. So but, uh, you know, understanding that research is designed to give us generalized principles rather than specific things that we do on Tuesday is a really important thing.

Speaker 1: 1:22:42

What is the broad relationship between RIR and hypertrophy? What is the broad relationship between frequency, independently, and hypertrophy? What is the broad relationship between volume and hypertrophy? What is the broad relationship between training at longer muscle lengths or having higher tension when you're at a longer muscle length in a given exercise in hypertrophy? And when you understand those things, that's you're like okay, cool, and then I can go from there. But I think some people they don't. Sometimes they think like, oh, things can be drastically different from one muscle to the next. Or one person might respond to high volume, but another person they get smaller if they do high volume. And it's like that's not actually how it works. They might not have the recovery environment to be able to benefit from high volume. But if they could they still would, but they don't. So we kind of have to put our practitioner and real world hats on. So that's, but that stuff, you know it's it's difficult to understand. So science communication is not an easy job and that's why I'm not out of work.

Speaker 3: 1:23:43

But yeah, that's a very, a lot of exciting stuff, man, I think you shared. I think what I'm most excited about is you know your personal life is where it's at now and your upcoming season and things that you've done differently, which excites me. I think one of the bigger things is getting that news out there, in incorporating and making coming from a novice to intermediate to an advanced bodybuilder, living that lifestyle and actually understanding the body and that biofeedback. I think that's something that's still very overlooked. But I'm glad you also mentioned that for novice bodybuilders or somebody who's actually just getting into the sport, you must live that life in order to be able to get these data and having them understand what their body is telling them.

Speaker 3: 1:24:30

I think a lot of people overlook that and they just want to jump into 20 years ago. Everybody's just doing the same thing. You know I die If I die, I die that kind of mentality. But yeah, I think that's a really good thing that you're here speaking about it more and then we can post about this and then just getting that news out there, and I think making prep would just be not so much happier, but at least they'll get to enjoy the process more, more yeah, it is a huge part of making bodybuilding a sustainable, long-term endeavor, if someone chooses to do so.

Speaker 1: 1:25:04

Um, but yeah, you're right, everybody kind of wants to find the way, or they want to be like the pros immediately, and the one mistake that I I want to make sure I'm not making is to to say, like what are you doing? New kid learning to ride the bike? What's with those training wheels? You're going to keep those on forever? Why don't you just try it? And they're like you know, like you need to acknowledge the fact that, if you you know, this is actually a funny story and I'll use the bike riding analogy further.

Speaker 1: 1:25:32

I was not a privileged child. I did not learn how to ride a bike until my 20s. Okay, well, make fun of me and consider, like what hell hole did this child grow up in? It wasn't that bad. I'm fine, I made it. But when I first learned to ride a bike, I had already learned how to drive, but I'd never ridden a bike.

Speaker 1: 1:25:49

And adults trying to teach other adults how to ride a bike they don't know how to do it Like, cause I'm asking them logically. I'm thinking like an adult, not just kind of feeling it like you know a little. You know, in a learning machine four-year-old or five-year-old I am I want to turn the bike, so I want to go left. You know what I did? I kept like turning the handle and I would just immediately like fall over and hold my foot down. And they're like that's not how you turn a bike. And I'm like, well, how do you turn the bike? And they go and they had to like get on the bike and try. Oh, you lean. And I'm like, oh, but it took me like 30 minutes of my uncle and my wife just watching me look like a complete fool and then being like, why can't this guy turn? And it's because I'm like trying to drive it like a car, because that's the learning experience I have. And once they just showed me oh, you turn it like a small degree and then you lean, that's how you turn. I was like, oh, but you don't know how to teach that. So I think it's just really important to understand like if you that's that's an expert trying to communicate to a novice and being unable to do so, do so. So you have to have like teaching people many times experts if they're not actual teachers as well they don't know how to reverse engineer the skill they have. They just do what they do and for something that is as simple as riding a bike, that is not formally taught in a school environment that we haven't dissected.

Speaker 1: 1:27:13

You know, I don't want it to appear like just get on there and try it. Bodybuilding is far too hard, dangerous and costly and disastrous in normal life to do that with. So I do think you need a system, and the system would be hey, this is first prep. Let's get out the macro tracker, let's weigh our foods, let's hit these targets. Give me some feedback. I want you to pay attention to your hunger and see how you feel, and this is how you should feel, but there's no getting around needing to have the training wheels on.

Speaker 1: 1:27:43

And then the other important piece is that before someone is a competitive bodybuilder, they need to be a bodybuilder in life. They need to kind of have a healthy diet. They need to kind of have a healthy diet. They need to have a consistent lifestyle. And then we're just kind of turning up the volume a little bit when they get into prep. We're just kind of doubling down on that and we're having a more goal-directed outcome and we're accepting that we're not feeding enough for muscle growth anymore. It's just a slightly different ballgame.

Speaker 1: 1:28:09

But what you don't want to do is do what I did have literally no nutritional competence and just be the guy who ate a high protein diet and followed the seafood diet, that's see, and then learned about if it fits your macros and then it was just like cutting protein bars in half and having teaspoons of olive oil to hit his macros, because never thought about satiety or hunger. I was just a skinny dude who lifted weights and then you gain nearly 50 pounds in two months post-show because you had no behaviors or habits to fall back on, and then you need to wait five years to develop those skills. That would have been really nice to have someone save me that pain by kind of teaching me a system and knowing where I was trying to get to and acknowledging where I started, this being normal. You know like, hey, let's. Maybe, eric, we should build like a consistent lifestyle of bodybuilding in the off season and get you through a non-competitive cut first and then we do a prep.

Speaker 2: 1:29:01

But you don't know what you don't know yeah, I don't know how much more time you got. I know we've been at it for an hour and a half. Um, what, sorry? What did you say that?

Speaker 1: 1:29:13

not much, not much, yeah, okay, yeah we'll call it here, we'll talk here yeah, uh, is there.

Speaker 3: 1:29:20

Do you have any? You don't have any final questions, right, brandon?

Speaker 2: 1:29:23

oh no, I'm good man, you're good yeah you've.

Speaker 3: 1:29:25

I think you've covered a lot of uh topics that I think not only we have to hear, but I think a lot of others who are listening to the podcast, or a lot of bodybuilding influencers must, must, must hear. I think it's a very good step up from what we all used to know. Words of wisdom, any last words for our listeners? And, of course, where can we find you?

Speaker 1: 1:29:50

Yeah, the main thing is respect where you are, but also stretch yourself to get exposed to things that you otherwise wouldn't. Most bodybuilders, when they think they need to get better, they try to control more. They try to restrict their social lives, cut out extraneous foods, weigh things more, be more diligent when, in reality, what they actually need to do is expose themselves to more challenges of how can I, instead of controlling my environment, how can I bring my environment with me? How can I make it so that, whether I'm traveling, whether I have friends out of town, whether I'm in season or off season, my baseline habits come with me and they are just who I am, they're integrated.

Speaker 1: 1:30:33

Rather than flipping the switch and going hardcore for 12, 20, 24 weeks, 36 weeks and only knowing how to drown out the rest of the world and just kind of changing everything and being the super extreme black and white swing between off-season and prep.

Speaker 1: 1:30:50

It's okay if that's how life is now, but you should at least know that your success will not come from drilling down more and more and more and more and increasing that disparity between off-season and prep if you want to get leaner next time.

Speaker 1: 1:31:05

But ironically, it'll come from relaxing more in the not relaxing but being more flexible and more biofeedback, auto-regulated in the prep phase and then being more structured in the off-season, so kind of bringing those extremes towards one another from a qualitative, not quantitative, perspective. And then, if you're interested in more content like this and you're interested in mass, like we talked about, or the pyramids or just more bodybuilding stuff, probably the best place to go for bodybuilding, which is heavily what we've talked about, is 3dmuscledoonycom or mass research review. If you're a super nerdcom or muscleandstrengthpyramidscom, you you opt into what you think is the best fit for you. And, of course, if you want to see me appear on awesome podcasts like this, where I've been invited onto other people's platforms so generously, which I appreciate, please do follow me at Helms3DMJ. I'm almost always collaborating on Reels, resharing those things and talking about when I've had the opportunity to have awesome conversations.

Speaker 3: 1:32:10

Thanks so much again. We will link all of those links down in the comments section so you guys don't have to go scrambling through all the words and stuff. We'll just put the direct link in there. Look out for all the documentaries that we talked about. That's going to come up on, of course, netflix. And then there's also his third edition of his Muscle and Pyramid book. Get your copy, get it signed, sell on eBay, make a fortune. Don't forget about him and otherwise. Thank you again. I really, we really appreciate you hopping on and sharing the story. We hope to see you guys on the next episode again.