Ep 192 – Should You Take Steroids?

TRANSCRIPT:

Ben:

Do it. Okay. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Ben. I’m here with John, and this is episode 192. Okay, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. Dani and Giacomo may have made a grave mistake in letting me take over the podcast solo here, so we’ll see how long this lasts. But I’m here with my good friend John, and today we are going to be talking all about you, John, which I think maybe is a little bit of a change of pace. Usually, you know, on your podcast with Brooke, you’re the doing the interviewing, you’re asking the questions. And I know you do get invited on podcasts every now and then, but today is really going to be talking about you, your personal bodybuilding journey, and then kind of segueing that into a. I guess a kind of a candid and casual conversation about natural versus enhanced bodybuilding.

Because I think, especially in the vegan space, for some reason, this is a very hot topic that people have a lot of strong opinions on. I know we’re both active over on the R slash vegan fitness subreddit, and that in particular, I think is kind of a spicy one that we’ll get into in just a little bit here. But I first wanted to kind of open up the conversation because I’m not sure if you have been on the Vegan Proteins podcast before. I’m sure that some of our listeners will be familiar

with you, and I know that we have had cross paths, obviously, with you and and Giacomo at various events and such, but I wanted to kind of open up the floor to you and let you give kind of an elevator pitch, so to speak, for yourself. So without further ado, John Thomas, AKA the Bodybuilding Vegan. Can you tell our audience a little bit about yourself, what you do, and we’ll go from there?

John:

Yeah, dude. Thanks for having me on, Dani. Giacomo. Sucks for y’all. We’re just going to hang out, have a good time. Now that, you know, I was excited to see them, but when I. When I heard it was just you, I’m like, I might get to hang out with my buddy for a little bit. So thank you for mentioning at the end there, the bodybuilding vegan, because nobody knows who John Thomas is.

That’s. That’s my birth name given to me by my parents. It’s actually, like, genius in a sense. Like, I don’t think they knew about the Internet when I was born. I don’t think it was around. But you Google John Thomas, you’re not going to find me. You Google the bottom being vegan. I’ll be right there. Basically, yeah. Like what we’re gonna get into, I guess you’re gonna interview me, which is not new for me.

It’s just not what I’ve been doing lately. And then, you know, we’re gonna talk about drugs. All things about drugs. Everybody loves drugs, right? Even the natural gas. No, just kidding. Some of them, there’s. And the whole controversy behind can you be a vegan and use performance enhancing drugs? Because so and so said such and such. If you go on Reddit, you’re going to get turned around a lot of times.

Yeah, I don’t remember there was an initial question or something, but I am John Thomas the bodybuilding vegan. If you guys haven’t heard of me, that’s totally okay. I don’t really identify. Even though I think I fall under the category of influencer, it doesn’t really go to my head. Like, I still get shocked when people say they know me in public and I’m like, oh yeah, you found my handle on the back of my shirt.

And they’re like, no. Like, I followed you for years. And it’s like, whoa. Like, that’s kind of crazy. I didn’t even know that this was a thing. So backstory on me, I think. I think I like to go with the quote, we, we are all born vegan. Someone just teaches us not to be. I don’t think any of us inherently love violence. I think even violent people, if we can trace it back to their childhood or their developmental stages, it was probably some sort of coking mechanism.

They had to fight to survive or to find ways to elevate themselves in the society and the place that they were put in. So I think humans, I want to believe that humans in general are instilled with kindness first and then everything else second. So, I mean, I remember being four and being very upset that my dad was going to kill a fish so we could eat fish.

I think that was the first time that I realized the fish in the sea were the same thing as the fish on the plate. At 10 years old, that’s when I became vegetarian. I had a friend that tried to guilt trip me into not eating hamburgers so that I didn’t kill cows. And her logic checked out. So I decided to try that. And about 13 years old, I read a PETA magazine that said vegetarians is not enough.

And me, being an argumentative, debating person, went into this magazine ready to debate it, and it won that debate. And I realized that you still, if you’re a vegetarian, are contributing to the deaths of animals simply because as soon as they cows stop making milk, as soon as chickens stop laying eggs, or if you’re a male version of those species, you’re probably just killed a lot earlier on, you’re still going to die in a horrible way.

And so I want to move away from all that. So I tried being vegan for a week and now it’s going on 19 years. So that’s kind of the vegan story, bodybuilding story. I’ve always been interested in sports in some capacity, kind of in pushing myself. I wrestled at 14, going on 15, and then at 15 when the season ended, we did a little bit of weightlifting and I never went back to wrestling.

I just fell in love with lifting weights. I didn’t really know where I wanted to go with it. I just knew I wanted to do it and get bigger and be stronger. So I started working out twice a day, six days a week, riding my bike to the gym because I was 15, can’t have a car, made absolutely zero gains. But I spent so much time in the gym that I started to accrue knowledge and also started to hear that you can’t be a vegan bodybuilder.

Everybody, including the big bodybuilders at the gym, said it’s just not possible, it’s impossible, you can’t do it. So I don’t think I set out to do what I’ve done. I think I just set out just to lift and enjoy it and see what I could do, see how far it could go as a vegan. And then I started to realize, working with competitors, competing myself, that I just think nobody’s done it.

Not that it can’t be done at very, very high levels in the sport. Just no one’s tried or no one has had the genetics because let’s be real here, a lot of people don’t want to talk about this. A lot. A lot of people that haven’t achieved anything say they haven’t achieved it because of genetics. But a lot of mid level competitors won’t break out of that simply because genetics are such a big part of the sport.

If I’m moving around on the camera, I am multitasking, tasking, I’m stretching, I really need to do my lower body mobility and I always push it off. So doing that right now, if anybody’s watching, if you’re listening, you won’t see it, but I’m doing it. The thing is you know, I, I became the bodybuilding vegan, I didn’t become the next shack.

I’m not, I mean I’m like six foot even maybe five foot eleven and three quarters, but I’m going with six foot. We’re going to round up there, but I’m not going to be in the NBA. I just know that no matter how much it was in my heart and I feel like a lot of people don’t feel the same for bodybuilding. They don’t realize that like even, even if you respond to drugs really well, even if you work hard at it for 20 years, you just might not have the muscle insertions.

I mean it just comes down to that, like it’s, there’s so much to the sport and I think there are some guys at the top level that not only could they achieve everything they’re achieving on a plant based diet, I think they could do it for longer based on the blood work that I’ve seen. Eating plant based is just more in line with I think how humans were originally created.

We don’t have giant teeth, we don’t have fangs or claws to go kill things. Like I, I could see us prehistoric eating animals, but probably things more like rats every now and then, maybe some fish if we can catch it. We weren’t eating these giant land mammals all the time and we definitely weren’t falling cows around sucking out of their cow nipples to get milk as adults. So I just don’t think physiologically we’re meant to run as much on meat as many people are.

And I think that if some people at the top level of sport could try a plant based diet, they might find that it, it works even better as far as longevity. So I don’t know, I don’t know where that question started and I’ve just rambled on. I, I do that a lot. So I’m going to hand it back to you.

Ben:

I do it as well and thankfully I’m with you on a lot of those attendants. You have the wheels turning for sure. For me, the one thing that you were kind of talking about that you wanted that you touched on with genetics, which I’m just going to go there, I’m going to go on this little side, side trip with you. It’s like people look at other sports and they understand that you have to be born with God given talent in order to excel in those things.

And for some reason everyone thinks that they can be a professional bodybuilder if they just put in enough time and effort, which is kind of a nice idea because I think a lot of us who get into the sport have this attitude of personal responsibility where it’s like I have control over my own destiny and my fate. And it’s kind of. I think it’s an inbuilt aspect to humans where we want to feel like we have autonomy and agency over everything that happens to us in our lives.

And I think that more often than not, that is the most helpful attitude to take, but it’s also understanding that it’s not always the most reflective of reality and there are things that we have control over. And I think you have to almost in a way have that mentality to be in the sport for a long time. Because, you know, if you kind of let that get to you, the fact that there are certain things that you don’t have control over, you’re probably not going to get as much enjoyment from the

process. Which, you know, if you don’t to some extent enjoy the process, of course sometimes you’ll enjoy it less than others. You’ll go through ebbs and flows, I think in your career where you enjoyed a little bit more, a little bit less. But I think the people who stay in it long term kind of continue to show up and tick those boxes, you know, most days because they, they understand that that is what is going to lead you to get closest to where you can be relative to what, you know, you

were, you were born with. And. But it’s like people look at images of, I don’t know, I’ll use some of the best bodybuilders of all time, like Ronnie Coleman or Jay Cutler, when they were natural before they kind of started taking anything. You know, you post that kind of physique these days, like, you know, blur out the face or whatever, just post the physique on R slash, you know, natty or not.

And you’re going to get everybody in the comments saying like, these people aren’t natural. And I think that that’s what people don’t understand. Every single, almost every single human trait to a certain extent is on a genetic spectrum. And it’s like you can be born over here and you can be born over here. So like, why wouldn’t that apply to bodybu.

The propensity to put on muscle, the propensity to respond to drugs, and not only to be able to respond to drugs, but to be able to escalate those or, you know, get more out of lower dosages so that you can maintain your health for longer and continue to stay in the Sport, you know, so many things that people don’t consider. So I’m totally with you there.

I think people, A lot of people underestimate what they can do. But, you know, once you get to that kind of upper echelon, um, you know, with that right in that cusp where you’re trying to become a professional at this thing, um, even if you look at other sports where, like, I think bodybuilding is kind of like a misfit sport, you get a lot of people who were, like, almost pro in another sport, and then they come over to bodybuilding because they had enough genetics to take them far

enough, where, like, there’s a massive talent pool because there’s more incentives to make money. And, you know, these other sports, basketball, football, whatever it might be, they just weren’t good enough. But you come over to bodybuilding and now they’re like the star of the show because it’s all the people who did didn’t make it there.

Or like, I don’t know if you see this a lot, but I feel like you get a lot of people who come into bodybuilding who didn’t play sports growing up, and I think they have a lot harder time in certain ways because they’re not used to, like, almost like, pushing themselves in that way. So you get a lot of athletes who. You’re kind of having to pull them back more than you are pushing them when they’re coming from more of a sporting background.

So there’s. There’s just a lot of layers to it. I know I’m. I’m kind of veering off a little bit here as well, but I want to bring it back to you and when you first started getting into competitive bodybuilding, because you kind of said, like, this was never really my plan to, like, become the bodybuilding vegan and to have this mission. I know you’ve mentioned being, you know, the first open pro, IFB vegan bodybuilder as something that you are working towards.

And that was never kind of like initially when you started that, that wasn’t necessarily something that you had thought about actively, and it was something you kind of stumbled upon along the way. So at what point in training and at what point in bodybuilding did you get into competing?

What was your first competition season like? And then kind of talk me through, like, your competition history, how many times you’ve competed, maybe your most recent season as well, and then how that’s transitioned into the phase that you’re currently in.

John:

Okay, I do want to hit on, like, two quick Things before we, we jump into that. I worked at a jail for about three and a half years and so I got to see guys that had been locked up for at least a year or right around a year and some of them would have failed on the natty or not subreddit. And these guys are literally working out, doing push ups, pull ups on the stairs underneath.

And they weren’t allowed to do this, but they would take trash bags and fill them with water to do curls. They’re eating the worst quality food possible. And I could promise you they had no access to drugs. And these guys are still bigger than some guys you see on stage. And it’s like it is just genetics for some people. I’ll put it this way. I think every human should be able if their goal, every human male, if they dedicated enough time they could bench three plates in their lifetime,

like naturally. I’ll also say this, I have some friends that are pros and they benched three plates the first time they walked into a gym. Your first day at 16 going with a cousin and hit three plates. There’s just different levels. So I guess that’s what I wanted to throw out there. Back to like how wildly it can vary. Um, so for me, Yeah, I felt 15.

I started lifting weights. I got to my biggest and strongest around 20 years old. I got up to about 200 pounds. I could hit 405 to depth on squats for a few reps. I’m pretty sure I could bench 315 for one or like 275 for five somewhere in that range. And I saw that there was a bodybuilding show coming up like eight months away. And I emailed the promoter and I was like, would I be able to do this show?

And he’s like, yeah, you just pay and register here. And I was like, oh my God, he’s going to let me do the show. Maybe I’ll try it. I didn’t realize anybody, as long as you pay and register, as long as you have money, you can do a show. So I started self coaching for that, prep for that. Absolutely destroyed myself. Got down to like 155 pounds from 200 pounds.

I remember logging like 225 for eight on bench. Coming from 275 for five or more, like lost almost everything to do that show just because I didn’t have a coach. I had no clue what I was doing. And at that time I was like 21. So this is back in 2014. I got off stage, I binged after the show I looked way better. I didn’t place the way I wanted and found out, hey, I just had not carved up or filled out properly.

So I jumped in another show and I, I won at the novice category at that show and then I hung it up for. I didn’t even think about competing again until 2019. So 2014 to 2019, I was like, I’m lifting, I’m lifting the whole time. But I didn’t want to compete 2019. I had decided I was going to hire a coach this time and give it two years. I did that. I got on stage in 2021 at two different shows.

After the second show I realized I needed a new coach based on what other athletes would bring to the stage. I found my current coach, Justin Jacoby, who’s a very top level IFBB prep coach. He works with some Olympians and we worked together for two years to get me on stage in 2023. In November I did one show I did not place where I wanted, just not big enough.

Still after all this time and we are currently, we’re still working towards that pro card. That is the goal. The goal I had set out in 2021 was to try and turn pro eventually. I thought two years was plenty of time. Turns out it’s probably like more to a four to five year investment. So we’re thinking 2025, 2026 would be maybe reasonable if I stay on this current trajectory.

And my whole goal for that was to be, I want to play a hand in the first vegan Men’s Open pro in the ifbb, whether that’s me or someone else. And, and because I thought that would drive impact, I thought that would legitimize vegan bodybuilding. We’ve never seen it done before and it doesn’t have to be me. I just want somebody to do it. I want somebody to open that door.

I’m a better coach than I am competitor. I can just, I can just say that because I, I have my genetics, I know my body better than anyone else. I’ve worked with a coach for five years now and I’ve seen what I’ve been able to do. I’ve also seen what I’ve been able to help other people do. So for a while I had some self doubt. I thought maybe it’s because I’m vegan, you know, maybe I would have been able to make more progress like my non vegan counterparts.

But coaching has kind of saved me from that. I have a lot of vegan athletes doing some really, really good and so I realized this is just some of it is my own genetic limitations. You know, it took me, I don’t know, probably like three, four years to hit three plates on a bench. And that was somebody that’s reading and trying to learn. Yeah, I should, I probably should have hired coaches back then, but I could have progressed faster.

But I, I wasn’t one of the genetic elites and I, I have think that has nothing to do with my diet. I still, like, I think I’m relatively strong, but I also see training around the best bodybuilders in the world, just how different it still is. I’m usually the biggest vegan in the room, walking around 240, £250 with ABS. But where I train, I’m usually nowhere near the biggest bodybuilder in the room, like training next to literally current and past Mr.

Olympias. So somewhere in here we got to talk about drugs. I did after that first show back in 2014. Never bounce back. Getting down to 155 pounds, eating about 1600 calories a day for the last four months of that prep, doing over an hour of cardio a day, lifting six days a week, and being probably the second leanest I’ve ever been in my life. I got pretty lean for this last show.

I definitely caused myself some hormonal issues and I tried to stick it out for about a year, really honing in on sleep, on diet, pulling back a little bit on training, pulling back on cardio. No matter what I tried, I pretty much just gained fat every time I added any calories and lost strength anytime I took any away. And so at that point I went and started getting blood work done and found out that I had low testosterone.

And a lot of people are gonna be like, oh, it’s because you’re vegan. And I hear you. And I had already been vegan for 13 to 20 years, eight years, seven years hitting those four plate squats for reps at 20 years old. And all of that was vegan and natural. And the only thing that makes sense to me is that I really, really rolled the dice, didn’t get a coach and up my hormones and did that during competing because it was, it was directly around that time.

And so for those of you wondering, that was when my non natural, bodybuilding, vegan journey changed. I originally, I was very distraught because I knew originally, I think the original goal was to be one of the best vegan bodybuilders in the world in the natural organization, basically try and be another Robert Cheek. That was that was where I wanted to end up.

And I realized by competing without a coach and not knowing what I had done to myself, not realizing the repercussions like that you could permanently alter yourself and have. Have to give that up. So I wasn’t, like, looking to get on drugs. I wasn’t looking to start testosterone replacement therapy. It was something I was really upset about, to be honest.

However, I’m grateful for it. It opened some doors. Uh, my endocrinologist sucked, so I ended up taking things into my own hands. I cared about my blood work, I cared about my health. And she didn’t. So ended up deciding to go my own route and then still never thought I would compete again, but figured I would just try and become a big vegan and see how far we could take things.

And so, yes, for those of you curious, I am not natural. And as a, that is a very controversial topic for a lot of vegan people out there. But my goal with this isn’t to say, hey, look at me. Turn vegan and you’ll look like me. My goal is to say, hey, look, you can go into any sport, you can be a bodybuilder. If you want to be at the top of the level, at the top of the game, being vegan won’t hold you back from that.

So hopefully that clears things up for some people. I’ve been a pretty big open book on this the last couple years. When I first was going this route, I was afraid of being bullied and judged the same as I was afraid of that when I first went vegan. So I didn’t really openly talk about it. But now, now I want to be an open book and even promote harm reduction. A lot of people don’t get blood work done, they don’t check their blood pressure, they don’t take certain supplements to help with

heart health and lipid health and things along those lines, kidney health. And so I try to be a very big promot proponent of that and a safe space. I have a lot of people on Instagram reach out and be like, hey, I’m doing this, or hey, my coach wants me to do this. What do you think? And it’s nice to be able to offer people a second opinion and a safe place to talk about a rather taboo subject.

Ben:

Wow, that was very insightful. And I have so many directions. My, my brain wants to go with this, but I’m going to start kind of on the last point that you said there. I think it’s really important for there to be vegans in all spaces, doing all things to normalize the idea and to break down the stereotypes of what a vegan is or what a vegan looks like.

Because veganism at its core is about harm reduction to all living beings that we share this earth with. And not having as many stereotypes around veganism. Sure, a lot of people adopt a plant based diet or a vegan diet for health reasons, for environmental reasons, whatever it may be, and we welcome that as well. But having people like there are going to be people who use steroids who aren’t vegan and people who use steroids who are vegan.

And like you said, I think it’s like, why wouldn’t we want there to be harm reduction strategies in place for those people who are going to make those choices regardless. Like they’re, they’re going to make those choices. So why not help them instead of projecting things that, how we feel about certain things onto those people and perhaps leading them to make decisions that are not as alignment with their health.

Like, if you truly care about people’s health, then you should try to like support them in their decisions. Because we all, like, at the end of the day, we all have autonomy. We all, as long as you’re not breaking the law and you’re doing harm to other people, we can, you know, have autonomy over our bodies and choose to do what we want with them.

So why wouldn’t you want people to be able to do that in a less harmful way if possible? And that means providing education around it, which is something that you’re doing, providing support through mentorship, through coaching, through just destigmat, destigmatization and saying like, hey, if you’re going to choose to do this, there are better and worse ways of doing it.

And here’s what they are laying it out, letting people make their own decisions instead of invoking things like shame and guilt onto people, which is just going to either make it so they’re kind of feel like they’re alone in this and maybe they go down paths that aren’t the best for them or they just feel like they can’t share. And I think, you know, a society in which people feel like they can’t be honest about what they want to do or what they’re doing just, just leads to negative

consequences. So I think the fact that you are willing to kind of be that person and say, like, hey, I’m here, I’m sharing my journey. This isn’t where I thought I would end up. This wasn’t initially my intention. But like, I’M rolling with, you know, the hand that I’ve been dealt and making the most of it. I think that that is very admirable. And you know, I’m sure that there would have been a lot of people in your position who either would have just stayed kind of in that like, like kind

of misery of and like the way that you were feeling in your own body and just been like, well, you know, this is, this is just the way that things are. But you wanted to do something about it. You wanted to kind of like take it into your own hands. You found that whatever kind of treatment you were getting wasn’t working for you. And so you put in the time and effort in order to do that for yourself.

And yeah, like you’re also able to say, hey, this like again, I wasn’t like looking for an excuse to hop on drugs. Which is something that unfortunately I do see a lot of times especially, especially with younger kids these days. You know, Instagram, TikTok. It’s a complex topic. I don’t really know how to tackle it, but I just, I do see a lot of individuals who feel like, I guess they feel like they, they have no other choice. They can’t achieve a, you know, an impressive physique

naturally and they, so they have to hop on drugs. And that’s just a completely different scenario to what you described with yourself where it was basically like, hey, I did, you know, such an extreme thing going through my first prep without a coach doing things this certain way that made it so I, you know, I kind of didn’t have another choice. And I think most people aren’t looking for a reason to, to go on. On steroids or on drugs.

John:

Sure do.

Ben:

Maybe you get some people out there who, who are. But most of the time, like if you look at some of the statistics about TRT usage, I think it’s like 85 to 90% of people who go on are like off within a year, which is hard because then you’re mind blowing. Yeah, you’re just taking your hormones and you’re crack. Like you’re just gonna, you’re not.

Like some people can maybe recover from that, but I would say probably most cannot. And then you’re just living in this state that is, is not optimal for your own well being, health, longevity. And I’m sure you have kind of more knowledge than, than me on this. But just just seeing kind of like the lengths to which some will go to promote things like TRT clinics, just encouraging drug usage before it becomes necessary.

And I think this is a good kind of segue into who should consider using versus who should not consider using. Maybe some caveats around, like, what age, like, and for what purposes. Of course, first, like, it’s your body. If it’s, if you’re not breaking the law and you’re doing, you know, you’re not hurting anybody, then do whatever you want.

But I think that like from where I’m sitting and I’d like to get your opinion after this if your sport requires it. So if you want to be an IFBB professional bodybuilder, chances are unless you’re, you’ve got 0.00001% top genetics, you’re going to need to take performance enhancing drugs to make it in the IFBB pro league, if that is your goal and your dream.

And I would say you should probably get an honest assessment from someone like a coach who works in this space before you make that decision to say, do you think I have what make in the space? Like, because there are the anomalies where like, they don’t, they don’t look naturally like they would have amazingly impressive genetics. The one person that comes to mind for me is someone like a Nick Walker who, like, you look at him when he was training naturally and like, you would never

know that he would become, like the signs weren’t there. But I would say for the majority of individuals, you can tell like their response to training, their natural proclivity is going to indicate how they are going to respond, where they’re enhanced or just like their propensity to, to put on muscle. So I would say if you want to pursue the sport at the highest level, it’s probably going to be a necessity, maybe not for like bikini.

I know you guys have talked about this on your podcast. I think maybe that’s. But even then it’s like most, most bikini competitors are using things. It is an advantage and most. Let me, yeah, go ahead, jump in.

John:

Let me jump in here because you hit a few really good points and I feel like you and I are both, we have so much to say and it’s not a bad thing. It’s the worst thing is when you’re on podcast and you can’t talk at all. So first thing is, is being on gear vegan because we got to cover that because people are going to ask. So I’ve been called out so many times, you’re not vegan, you take drugs, you’re not vegan, you use steroids.

And vegan is not the same as plant based vegan. Is an ethical ideal and no one will be perfect. If you’re watching this, the screen you’re probably watching this on was made probably by child labor somewhere. If you drove a car anywhere in the last ever, you’ve ran over bugs walking around outside, you step on bugs. Vegan is about harm reduction at its core.

Doing anything reasonable and I would say not eating a hamburger is pretty reasonable. It’s not that hard to get a veggie burger or to not even eat burgers, to eat something entirely different. Like it’s very, very easy to do that. It’s very easy to not buy a leather belt. Or if you run out of belts and you need another one, it’s easier to go get a plant based, plant based belt versus finding a cow, killing them, taking their skin and making a belt.

Like it’s, it’s about what’s practical. So then we get into the whole like super vegans, I’m not going to do anything that’s not vegan. Like if Tylenol was ever tested on animals, I don’t care how much pain I’m in, I’m not going to take Tylenol. Even if the tests were a hundred years ago, I’m not going to do it. So are steroids vegan? Are they made from animal body parts?

That’s a great question. That would, I would really quickly rule out vegan or not. Testosterone is synthesized from yams or soybeans. So testosterone is free. And then people might be like, I heard somebody say, oh, I heard that growth hormone comes from horses. Well, they said, actually they said human growth hormone comes from horses.

Well, human growth hormone comes from human pituitary glands. So bodybuilders in the 70s were getting growth hormone out of humans from cadavers. The more, you know, now that’s all synthesized. It’s made from amino acids in a lab. Vegan approved. Now these drugs, all of them, every drug, Tylenol, probably just about anything in your life that you use has been tested on animals.

Is the testing ongoing or was this historical test done decades ago? Testosterone not tested on animals anymore. We know it works. It’s cleared. It’s a pharmaceutical drug that was tested at one point in time. So I, on my vegan journey would not tell somebody that’s using testosterone that they’re harming an animal because it was tested on animals in the past.

Same with Tylenol. You know, like the person that told me, I take testosterone, so I’m not vegan. Then I guess I’m not vegan because I had a tooth removed and I took Tylenol. Guess I’m not like, if I don’t fit your standard, that’s fine for me. My ultimate goal in life, I’ve assigned this to myself this year, is to end factory farming. That’s a pretty lofty freaking goal.

We kill 80 billion animals a year. I don’t know if that’s going to happen, but that’s my goal. If you’re a hunter or a fisher, you’re not really making a dent. You’re too small. But these giant factory farms killing 80 billion animals a year, that’s why the world is gonna. That’s why these hurricanes are happening. That’s why global warming, climate change, all this stuff.

So anyways, get off my soapbox. But, yes, you’re still vegan, even if you use performance enhancing drugs. Are you a natural vegan? No. Are you the world’s healthiest vegan? No. But you’re vegan. Then I just wanted to hit on, like, there are those people that are the moral, superior, superior people that are like, hey, you’re not natural.

That’s wrong, that’s bad, that’s illegal. Well, it’s illegal to go eat a hamburger. It’s legal to go shoot your own cow whenever you feel like it’s. It’s illegal to use drugs that don’t hurt anyone other than your own health. Okay, well, then I’m going to be the world’s best natural bodybuilder. Oh, wait, I tried that. I didn’t have a coach and I ruined my hormones for life.

There’s a lot of different angles that can play here, Ben. I mean, you know, competing naturally is not healthy. It’s not healthy. And even if your body was healthy, we know it’s not exactly mentally healthy either. And I will urge you, though, go find me any athlete, top 1% in the world that’s healthy. You think David Goggins can run a hundred miles unbroken because he had a great, happy, fulfilling childhood?

Nope. He went through some and he uses that to push himself harder than just about any other human on the planet. It’s. How do you use what’s happened to you? For me, I messed up my natural hormones and now I’m the bodybuilding vegan. That. That is usually the biggest vegan in the room. And I use that as a way to encourage other people to get in the gym, to stop eating meat, to be a literal walking billboard so that when people see me, they ask me questions because I’m an introvert.

I don’t Want to talk to people. I mean, I like you Ben, but like it’s, it doesn’t fill my cup. I’m by an introvert standards. It decreases your energy, it stresses you out to be in front of large crowds. I can do it. I’ll show up and perform. You’re darn right I’ll show up and perform because there’s animals lives on the line. But it doesn’t fill my cup.

It drains me. It’s not where I want to be. If the world was vegan, I wouldn’t be on a damn stage. So anyways, all of those things to say, you can be vegan, you can use drugs, you can be vegan, you can compete naturally. None of that’s necessarily healthy. There’s a lot of things that we can jump into you there as far as people wanting to get on drugs.

I think a lot of kids just have no clue what this sport takes. And I think I have no clue. Like I had already been lifting for seven or eight years before I started using anything. I’ve now been lifting 16 years and I still got a couple years at least before I could turn pro. I had no clue what it took. And back to your Nick Walker analogy. For people that don’t know, Nick Walker is one of the best pro bodybuilders in the world, probably top five.

He didn’t look quite like that before getting on gear. I don’t think he had the best coach from what I recall, or he was self coached or something along those lines. However, part of the genetics, you’ll see it. You’ll see guys that look great naturally go on gear and not a whole lot changes. And you’ll see guys like, maybe more like Nick that had not really realized their potential.

And then everything changes once they go on gear. So a lot of this is genetics. And like you said, everyone in the IFBB at the top level is on drugs, including the bikini girls, I promise you, for every single one of them. And even Ronnie Coleman, arguably the best genetics of all time, right? Like probably arguably best genetics of all time.

He got far naturally. I talked to his trainer and this was off camera and I think it’s okay to share. But he was adamantly against using needles. He was scared of them. And so supposedly his first Olympia, he got 16th place as a natural bodybuilder. Maybe, maybe the next year, I believe he took first and something happened in that year. So if you’re able to place that far as a natural, then yeah, maybe that, that would be something to consider for your Career.

But if you’ve been in the gym two years, three years, four years, and you haven’t been locked in on a meal plan, locked in on sleeping eight hours or more a night, locked in and with a coach probably to help make you make the progress you need to make, then gear is not that magic fix. It’s just a band aid that’s eventually going to get ripped off.

You’re going to realize there were other fundamentals that needed to be fixed. So I think that was all to get caught up because you had asked me a question. Oh, when, when. Or I will, I will pause. Is there any rebuttal or anything that you want to say before I get into when people should make that decision?

Ben:

No, I don’t think so. I’ll just add some kind of quick points in there into what you touched on. One, the vegans who are like the level 9,000 vegans who, you know, people are getting debates about is sugar vegan because of the bone char thing, you know, focusing on like, oh, they added like vitamin D3, which is source sourced from lanolin to this cereal and I bought it and it’s not vegan.

Like these are the tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little pebbles that people fight over and people like direct your energy to the bigger issues which like you said like 99.999% of like all animal suffering comes back to factory farming. So totally agree on that part. Second, when we talk about what is healthy. Healthy is such a broad term, right? Like, so when people say like this is healthy, this is not healthy, how do you define healthy?

Which is why I think generally I prefer just getting into the specifics or what are we talking about? Are we talking about hormones? Are we talking about certain like tissue functions, Heart, liver, kidneys, etc are we talking about, you know, and I think we’ll, we’ll get into, in. I want to save this for a little bit. Talking about some of the differences, maybe competing and like pros and cons of doing it naturally, doing it enhanced, you know, what different specific side

effects could you expect to experience? But yeah, like, you know, what you think is healthy versus what someone else thinks is healthy. Someone might look at someone who’s 9% body fat and think that’s healthy for majority of people, it’s probably not. They probably feel like shit. And then like somebody might look at someone who’s 20% body fat and be like, oh that’s, that’s so unhealthy. And maybe for them, like actually their, their, you know, blood work and everything, like

they’re, they’re doing great. So what someone defines as healthy often gets conflated with, like, what we aesthetically find pleasing as, well. And just people. There’s just no objective definition for healthy. Sure, we can come up with some, but those were kind of two things that I wanted to touch on before we get into when and maybe consider using, you know, when is that? When does that come into the conversation?

John:

Yeah. So I would never advocate anyone begin any type of drug protocol without having their blood work done first. You don’t know. You don’t know if your testosterone is low. If you haven’t had blood work done. You can’t, you can’t just know. You might have symptoms, but those symptoms could be something else. Maybe you have a thyroid disorder.

Maybe you have something else. Like, why are we gonna add another variable to the mix if you’re already having symptoms, if we don’t know what’s causing those symptoms, and then we wanna find out what’s causing your testosterone to be low, you know, like that, that would be the next thing. Are you not sleeping? Are you doing shift work? Are you drinking a six pack with your buddies most nights of the week?

All these things can decrease testosterone. And maybe you don’t need to go on any drugs to have your testosterone get back brought up into the normal range as far as an age guidance would be considered. So I’ll talk strictly just for health, not for bodybuilding. Like, just for. For health purposes. I would argue Anything under 25 is not where I would want to see somebody begin.

Trt. Well, really, I guess it does just come back to blood work if you’re 21. Like, I was 22 because I had competed and I had fucked myself up by 23 is when I started getting blood work done and had multiple repeated tests showing that I was clinically deficient. It made sense to go ahead and do it, like, wait another two years of feeling like. And like symptoms, not able to make any progress in the gym.

Of course I list that as number one. But like, number two, I wasn’t having boners, I didn’t want to have sex, I was not interested in dating or anything. Like, I was a shell of, of a human. Like really just like the basal innate human desires were just not there. So it was, it was definitely impacting quality of life. So all of those are like, like prerequisites, I would say, like at least the blood work coming back.

And then if the blood work does come back low, like if I. If you maybe not you, Ben. Well, maybe You. I don’t know. If somebody was a new client, they signed up and we got it done. And test is low. Okay, good. Good to know. This is our baseline. Let’s do everything we can to improve this. Here’s your new meal plan. Here’s your sleep. Here’s your training.

Oh, yeah, you’ve been doing two hours of cardio every day for the last year. Yeah, we’re gonna drop that down. We’re gonna get, get cortisol a little bit lower and see, over the next three months, can we make any improvement? If they follow the plan to a T and there is no improvement, then that’s probably a real time to sit down and have the discussion.

Are you ready to get on TRT for life? Are you ready to inject yourself with a needle at least once a week until the day you die? And if they say, yeah, that sounds better than not having boners and never making gains again, then I say, let’s do it. You know, like, let’s try to get a doctor to sign off on it. I don’t believe legal means. Right. I will, I will stick by that.

Oh, we’ve, we’ve outlawed abortion again in this country. I don’t think that means that’s right. Legality and morality are like a Venn diagram that sometimes intersect. Same with eating animals. But then I’m gonna throw a curveball. Ladies, Ladies. Yes, ladies too. Testosterone is often considered a male hormone. It’s a human hormone.

A little bit higher concentrations in men, but still vitally important for women. So HRT for women is becoming a much, much more popular thing now. People are starting to realize that women need testosterone too. So same thing. If their levels are coming back clinically deficient, they have locked in and eaten on a meal plan, done everything they can to be healthy there.

They’re doing the right things with training and sleep, and they’re still coming back low. Then, hey, they might want to get that checked too. And that’s, that’s something I do with some of my female clients as well, because if they’re deficient in testosterone, they’re not going to be able to make progress in the gym or have the most optimal life.

And the biggest thing I think is like you guys that want to get on trt cuz you want to make gains. Like this isn’t really about making gains. Like it’s, it’s about getting you healthy and getting your body to where it should be. Because if you’re like, ooh, the doctor’s going to give me a Little extra or I’m going to take a little extra. If you take any more than your natural body is meant to have, your body is not able to fully heal itself.

Your hematocrit and hemoglobin, your blood thickness levels, those are going to rise over time. Your cholesterol levels are going to slowly and slowly get more and more out of whack. If you’re even more unlucky, your. Your kidney function so like your egfr, your creatinine levels, those are going to come out of whack. And this isn’t like the alcoholic that can regrow his liver after 20 years kidney function, once it drops a percent, once it drops 10%, it never comes back up.

So if you run your kidneys from 100 down to 80, I don’t care how clean, how healthy, how good you get your blood pressure, the rest of your life, you’re not getting that kidney function back there. A lot of pro bodybuilders that don’t check blood pressure and don’t do the right things, and they’re on kidney donor lists and still competing, and it is fucked up.

So all those things to say for health reasons, it’s not the devil, but it’s also not the magic fix for everyone every time. And it needs to be done right. And unfortunately, doctors in this country just don’t know a lot of the time. Testosterone is a cheap drug. It’s not a highly profitable drug for pharmaceutical companies. Doctors aren’t paid to push it, so there’s no real incentive for them to be knowledgeable unless they’re just trying to be a good doctor.

But most doctors are overtaxed anyways, so what all I’m trying to say is you need to do your own research. You need to have an idea of what an appropriate dosage is. You need to have an idea of what your blood level should be coming back before your doctor says anything. You got to check them. Otherwise, I literally have had female clients prescribed 100 milligrams a week for reference.

I was prescribed 75 milligrams a week. And I’m a male. Literally, like, women are being prescribed, we’re being prescribed. I’ve seen it twice now in my coaching career. A man’s doses of testosterone because their testosterone came back low. And I had to have the conversation, are you trying to transition from female to male? And they’re like, what? No, I’m a mom. I’m staying a mom. And I’m like, well, you’re well on your way to being dad. Number two, and maybe that’s insensitive,

but that’s the truth. And their doctor had no clue until they brought it up and advocated for themselves. So you just gotta be careful. These are hormones we’re dealing with. You gotta be careful. If you’re natural and you’re competing, you got to be careful if you’re enhanced, whether or not you’re competing. So I don’t know. I’ve probably been on five different tangents. Please pull me back in.

Ben:

I don’t know if I’ll be doing that, but I’ll definitely hit on some of the things that you touched on there. I think kind of, you basically said all I wanted to say. I think it’s basically like, okay, you are experiencing negative side effects that you believe is related to your hormones. You’ve got the blood work to kind of back it up and you’ve done all that is in your control to try to modify that through lifestyle, behavior.

Maybe you’ve tried some like, different, like supplement protocols and nothing’s working. And I think at that point, like you said, it comes down to making that decision like, is this trade off worth it? Understanding that it’s something that is a life commitment. It’s not something that, you know, you can just do for a couple of weeks and then you’re, you’re fixed and you’re solved and you’re all good.

I think that’s really important to say. And then we also already kind of touched on like, yeah, if you want to compete at the highest level, probably something that you’re going to need to use there. And obviously we know a lot of athletes in their sports are using it, not talking about it. So those are kind of the main usages that I see. One thing that I did want to touch on while we are on the conversation of, well, two things really.

One, continuing to talk about maybe some of the ways that steroid usage or just performance enhancing drugs, because not all PDS are steroidal. Talking about some of the ways that that can affect your body. Just because I think some people just don’t know. They genuinely don’t know. And then we’ll talk into like, like naturally, what are some of the consequences of maybe undergoing a contest prep, which I think is probably the, the most like the, the, the, the riskiest and

stickiest situation because kind of in your, in your off season, in your natural, there’s not too much harm that you can do other than maybe getting. Because we know that just being a larger human is not good, regardless of whether you are enhanced or you’re natural, like just being a bigger human?

Yeah, for lots of reasons, body fat dependent or not. I think there’s research on this. Like just larger people tend to live less long. Like smaller people are living, living longer lives.

John:

Anecdotally, how many hundred year olds have you seen that are over 6ft tall or over 200 pounds? Yeah, yeah, none to me, at least. I, I can’t think of one. Like all my grandparents like that got into their 80s and 90s. They weren’t that big. They really just weren’t.

Ben:

Yep.

John:

Um, but yeah, let’s dive into that. So if you’re, if you’re enhanced and you’re a man, what are some side effects you have to look out for as far as health is concerned? Your blood can get thicker, which can lead to heart attack, strokes. Your body weight’s probably going to go up, which can lead to an earlier death. Other health concerns, blood pressure can go higher, which will eventually hurt kidneys.

Most of those are somewhat mitigatable. Other than the size, what else? Neurodegenerative aspects, especially with some of the harder drugs, like, like Tremblone, you know, kind of like an Internet meme drug. But it’s, it’s real and it works. It, it has been tied to Alzheimer’s and early onset of such. So from brain health there, you know, there’s just a lot short term, if your hormones are imbalanced, you’ll get acne.

Usually acne is actually caused not by being low or by being high, but by fluctuations. So if you’re only injecting once a week or if you’re going up on a dose or down on a dose, you’re more likely to get acne. Hair loss in certain places, hair growth in certain places, that’s, that’s mostly it for men. Again, when you’re taking androgenics, so like masculinizing compounds, they will convert for the most part into estrogen.

So if your estrogen’s not monitored, you can start to develop breast tissue called gymastia. So there’s definitely, definitely a lot to know and understand before you begin down this journey. And if you don’t fully have a grasp of it yourself, you should get a good coach that has some kind of a clue of what they’re talking about. For women on the enhanced side, basically everything that the men had but the virilizing side.

So women can grow facial hair, women can have their voice be deepened, they can have their clitoris enlarge. So all the other negative side effects for Men, but also those for women, it can, it can make their jawline more accentuated, basically slowly turn them into a man. So from the competing side for women, they really need to have those things dialed in very well and make sure that even more so, like if a man takes a different drug on accident, like let’s say you’re a man and

instead of taking Anavar, you take Diana Ball or another oral steroid, you’re probably just going to get whatever side effects come with that. If you’re a woman, in addition to the side effects, you’re probably going to viralize a lot harder. So just things to be even more concerned with.

So yeah, on the other hand side, there’s a lot. And then on the natural side, basically what happened to me could happen to a man or a woman. For testosterone purposes. You’re, you’re not gonna get like, Ben, I know your testosterone, if we checked it was, was low when you competed.

Ben:

There’s no, there’s no doubt, like, okay, so just for context, when I got, I did actually get it tested in the spring when I was still, I think this was probably before I started to incur a lot of like the negative prep side effects. Like, I still subjectively felt pretty good, but I had been, I basically had been like wrapping up like my pre prep diet.

So I had already dropped probably like like 20 pounds and in a short matter of time. Right. Because so coming down from peak body weight, it’s going to drop off pretty quickly. So I was probably in a pretty aggressive deficit and I went from like 190. I think when I got it tested I was probably like low 170s or high 160s. And I remember like all my other blood work was, was, was good.

But then I remember looking at testosterone and I like didn’t believe the number when I first saw it. I think I’m probably somebody who is already naturally like on the lower end of the spectrum. And if you take a look at like competitive natural bodybuilders, there’s a whole range like Lane Norton and some other people are maybe up closer to like a thousand Doug Miller.

But then you have people who are like on the lower end and you wouldn’t necessarily expect it from how they look on stage. But just to you know, cut off this tangent here, I think it came back as like 85, which is like incredibly low. Yeah, like I, I, I knew that I was going to raise some eyebrows and at the time I felt fine. But you know, you stay in that state for too long and like I think that’s, you know, what happened to you.

You said you were eating 1600 calories and, like, basically killing yourself in the gym for four months straight. And I think the length of time for which you expose yourself to those conditions can make a big difference as well, because, you know, I mean, I cut my. I’ve talked about this. I cut my prep off early for the fall shows because I saw where things were heading, and it was not heading in a good direction.

Like, I think I was probably doing around that level of, like, calories and cardio and training for, you know, a month or two, because I had kind of competed in the spring, come back up, and then I was going back down, but I definitely lost. Lost some more tissue there. And so it was like basically having to push harder than I did for that first stint of prep. And it’s like, at a certain point, you know, if you can keep pushing against the wall, but you’re not going to continue to look

better, you’re just going to keep looking worse, and your hormones are going to keep getting downregulated. So, thankfully, I’ve been able to bring that back in, like, a pretty short period of time, or at least what I figure based on, like, the. The side effects that I’m experiencing. But, you know, had I stayed in that state for the rest of my prep, who knows, like, what. What could have happened as a result of that?

John:

I know. Yeah, done that.

Ben:

Exactly.

John:

See, I wasn’t smart enough or educated, and there weren’t podcasts like this back in 2014 for me to go get information on. I. I just was of the mindset. More is better if I don’t. Like, I literally, every single day would have a weighted average of my scale weight, and if it didn’t go down at least half a pound to a pound a week. Oh, take away 50 calories.

Oh, add. Add another 50 calories of cardio. And I. I was like 200 pounds. And I think I got down to, like, 180 in four months. And then I was like, okay, pre prep’s done. Time to prep. And then it was the four months of 1600 calories and everything else, so it didn’t happen overnight. And if I’d had your foresight, might not have it be having this conversation.

But, hey, I’m okay with the way it turned out. I’m happy with where I’m at now. I’m glad that, honestly, one of the things that I do the most for my clients is advise on hormones. And I’ll be the first to say, I am not a doctor. I have taken zero formal courses for this. It’s just stuff that I have researched the hell out of and tried to find out in the community, both the health community and the bodybuilding community, like, what is reasonable and, you know, 85 nanograms per deciliter

for you. That’s not reasonable. That’s, that’s, that’s not good. And then, you know, my, my female clients that are taking a hundred milligrams a week, like, I know that’s not good. Like, a, a regular female dosage is something like 6 to 9 milligrams a week. So to be giving someone a hundred, it’s just, it’s. To me, it’s medical malpractice.

It’s like, oops, I slipped a zero. It’s like, well, you slip a zero with water, you drink 10 gallons instead of one, you’re gonna die. So why are we doing those hormones? But thank you for sharing your side because it shows. It kind of confirms to me that I know you, I know how hard you work. I know you’re not cheating on your meals or skipping cardio.

And like, it’s, it’s, it’s just the nature of this sport. And I agree, off season, natural bodybuilding is not super unhealthy. That’s probably the healthiest athletes will find. The upside to competing as an enhanced person is your testosterone doesn’t drop while you compete. I think I talked about this, I believe, with Giacomo, might have been with somebody else.

I’ve talked about it before, but like enhanced bodybuilding at the extreme, taking all the drugs to get all the size to do all the things versus natural bodybuilding. I’m going to basically starve and deplete and kill my body with no chemical assistance. Neither of those are healthy. If we had like the TRT Olympics, oh, God, that’d be great.

If everybody had a test within a certain blood level, there were only certain drugs that they could use at certain amounts. That’d be the best of both worlds. It’d still be less healthy than just being a fit, active vegan, but it wouldn’t be nearly as bad as what the current hands that were dealt. I don’t, I don’t think natural or enhanced bodybuilding.

If somebody wants to work with me and I ask them, is health important to you? And they’re like, oh, yeah, I have to be as healthy as possible. I’m like, well, we just can’t compete. Like, you have to, you have to understand, you are sacrificing some health to compete. How much depends on your goals, depends on what you’re doing. But I think you had asked me one other question too.

I think we’re going to talk about, oh, the, I guess the dangers of enhanced competing versus natural. So, yeah, natural is basically what happened to me for the ladies. Every single one, except for one of my female competitors, have lost their periods during prep. I mean, when I think about this, at least biologically, humans as a species, when I look at other animals, we typically allow our species to continue through procreation, through having sex, through having babies,

during times when things are healthy. Makes sense for a lot of animals. That’s in the spring when they can go find food. For humans, we have our period when we’re healthy. Just because you’re, I don’t know, women, it’s a little different. 10% body fat ripped out of your mind on stage and you look great doesn’t mean you’re healthy. And by lack of a period, that’s your body telling you like, hey, we can’t bring a baby into the world right now because we’re not healthy enough to do it.

So it’s just another aspect of the sport, the natural space. And so whether you’re natural and vegan or not, it’s still not the pinnacle of health. And maybe that’s not what people want to hear, but I wish podcasts like this had been out prior to my first journey to the stage. I was so stubborn, I might have still stuck it all out. But maybe if I had heard this full story, I would have hired a coach that would have helped reel me in or I would have been as smart as Ben and pull myself out.

There’s no shame in that. Honestly, it takes a bigger person to take a step back than to be me and just be like, I’m too good to take a step back. I work too hard to take a step back. I, I’ll outwork this. Sometimes outworking things is regrouping and having a smarter approach. So I don’t know where we go from there, but that’s, that’s, that’s my reply to your reply.

Ben:

Yeah, yeah, no, that, that was all great. I think I have a couple of follow up slash topics that I wanted to get into that we touched on a little bit earlier. One would be so females starting into the enhanced realm and potentially not being fully educated on what that means. I’ve seen this with coaches where, um, they get somebody who, I don’t, I don’t know how common you’ve seen this but like maybe they are a trainer in a gym and they notice somebody who looks like they have the

genetics, maybe that’s because of structure and muscularity to compete. And so they approach them and say, hey, I think you would do really well in competing. I have a team of athletes here, you should join my team, I’ll coach you. And then they get into bodybuilding without really knowing what is in store for them. And maybe like they, you know, they, they get told to take 5 or 10 milligrams of of Anavar and like, you know, something else.

And then before they know it they’ve kind of like gone down their, this enhanced route without even knowing that that was something that they were really like signing up for. And then that is, I mean there’s a spectrum, right between like how like virilizing certain compounds are. But then you have like coaches maybe. Who are your thoughts on coaches?

Maybe like how often do you see it where you have coaches who are maybe introducing or suggesting kind of going down that route before maybe it’s warranted or without explaining all the consequences and side effects of what that entails. And I had a follow up question from there, but we’ll start with that.

John:

Yeah, let’s start with that. And I got to give you about like a hard 10 minute stop here for me. Sounds good. So I don’t know how often that happens. More than it should is the current correct answer. It should never happen. Me as a coach, when somebody comes to me and says that they want to compete, I always ask them why. If they’ve been bullied their whole life and this is their chance to get on stage and prove their worth something or their dad died and they told their dad they were going

to do another show for him. Like if you got a really good reason, I’ll, I’ll walk you through it. It. But I don’t really, I don’t really want to, I don’t really want people to compete. I just know some people are and I want to hold their hands as best I can and give them the right advice and the right guidance so that two things happen. One, they do the least amount of harm to themselves and two, they get the most out of it because there’s some shitty coaches out there that just care about the

paycheck. They just care about putting bodies on stage to say, hey, I put 30 bodies on stages here. No mention of the quality, but they just want to put them on there. And if somebody approaches you and says you should compete, you should join my team. Oh My gosh, that just, that seems so predatory now. If there’s an experienced competitor, if Nick Walker puts up that, hey, I’m thinking about going vegan and I want to compete.

Okay, I might talk to Nick. That’s really boasting. Like, I don’t know if I’m qualified for that, but you know what I mean? Like that, that, that’s, that’s one time. But I would never go approach a woman or a man at the gym. Gym say, oh, wow, look at your genetics, dude. How long you been working out? Only two years. Damn. Come over to my team, man.

Like, we got five competitors here. I’m the local dude, I’m the big dog in town. I’ve run this crunch little gym. You know I’m gonna get you, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. We could put you on stage. Yeah. I know you’ve never done a posing session. You’ve never been to a show, you’ve never followed a meal plan or a training plan or a diet plan or a cardio or anything.

But yeah, we can throw you some drugs and get you on stage. I’m not sure that’s exactly how the conversation goes, but I think I’m pretty close. What you do is you go in and you find somebody that’s looking for community. They’re already in the gym. They’re looking to improve themselves. You blow some smoke onto their ass and maybe even it’s true, maybe they do have great genetics.

But you’re the first person that believes in this person wants to bring them under your wing and then you give them illegal drugs and maybe or maybe not tell them that they’re illegal drugs regardless of legality, that these are drugs that have permanent life altering consequences even if everything goes according to the plan. That part of the reason I coach is because of other bad coaches.

That’s honestly part of it. I’ve seen it happen to so many friends. I had a woman that wanted to sign up with me as a natural competitor. I told her, do not, do not work with this other coach. You’re 12 weeks out and he’s got you on 800 calories a day with 50 minutes of stairs every day and training and all this stuff. I was her in person trainer. I helped her for that.

She comes to me at the show, hey, I want to do a natural show next year. I said, okay, great. She’s like, yeah, but my coach is having me take this clam Butyl. So how much longer do I take it for? Because he stopped talking to me after the show and I’M like, where’d you get it? Oh, he gave it to me. Okay. Did you know that was a drug? You’re not allowed to compete as a natural.

Now you’ve handed in your natty car to do very poorly at an enhanced show and wreck your hormones and metabolism, and you didn’t even know it. And it’s like, it just it. If somebody approaches you in the gym and says you should compete, they don’t care about you. I would never tell somebody to compete. People that come to me that I can’t talk out of it, those are the ones I put on stage, and they’re usually the ones that do.

Well, if I can talk you out of it, you didn’t really want to do it anyways. If you hearing that you have to take drugs to get to your goal is something you don’t want to do, then you didn’t really want to do it. If you come to me and say you’ll do anything to look like Ronnie Coleman, anything encompasses a lot. And I can’t promise Ronnie Coleman. I don’t have those genetics.

But, yeah, I guess it hit on a sore spot. Just because I care about the people that this sport just turns out. It. It’s like a meat grinder, in a sense. And. And it. It’s really sad because they do pull you into this community and make you feel like you’re a part of something just so they can get a paycheck and they don’t care if they ruin your blood work and, oh, once it gets too confusing, well, you must have done something wrong.

Off the planet. I’ve had that happen to close friends that I literally watched them, like, for months on end accidentally pour an extra gram of oats and fish it out and put it back in the. In the. In the container because they can’t have that extra gram of oats. And their coach is like, you must be doing something wrong on the plan. You’re not following all the things.

Oh, but yeah, I put you on sarms and all this, and you’re a college student. Like, anyways, yeah, yeah, there’s bad coaches out there. Do your freaking homework. Talk to, like, you know, if you guys want to go work with Ben, go find three of his clients, talk to them, talk to other people in the sport. What is your thought on him? Same with me. Don’t just take my word, because you heard me on a podcast, anybody can get behind a camera.

If you got 50 bucks to borrow a camera for a podcast, like, go do some research, Talk to current Clients see what their track record is. Ask them, are you going to do my blood work? Coaches will run drugs with clients that have. I get clients coming to me all the time that, hey, this is what I take. I say, okay, where’s your blood work?

Oh, I’ve never done that before. How, how, how. Who. Who failed you so colossally outside of yourself? I understand this isn’t common knowledge to everyone, but if you had a coach prescribing drugs that never did blood work. Anyways, that’s my soapbox. I don’t know if that was all the questions or not.

Ben:

Amen.

John:

Happy to hear amen.

Ben:

Amen. There’s. You’re preaching to the choir there. I just found myself nodding along to everything that you were saying. And, you know, this is what it sounds like when you have coaches who are in coaching for reasons that are not to make money or to, you know, because it’s an easy career path. It’s not an easy career path. If you want to actually make a living from coaching, like make a living from coaching, it’s not easy.

You have to give a shit about your clients. You have to put in a lot of time and effort, and it takes energy. Like you were saying, John, like, especially if you’re somebody who is more introverted, like yourself, like myself, you know, having the energy to give to our clients. We give a lot. We give a lot. And you have to. You have to genuinely care, because if you don’t, then the coaching quality is going to suffer and the client experience is going to suffer.

And that’s how you get all these stories of people coming from coaches who didn’t give a shit because they were just in it for the money. So there were so many things that I have written down here that I wanted to touch on. So I think we might just have to, at some point get you back on for a part two discussion. Getting into some of the specifics, you know, training, nutrition, supplementation, kind of some, some nuances there, natural versus enhanced, and some more of these, These

topics. But thank you so much for your time today, John. I’m wondering if you can just take a couple minutes here to let people know where they can find you, where they can follow you, any, you know, services, things like that that you want to kind of make known to people. And then I’ll close on. On. Close us on out here.

John:

Thanks, man. As time flies with you, dude, you’re such a good, kind, genuine person. I really appreciate you having me on here, asking me some good questions, getting me thinking and Just doing what you’re doing, man. How old are you again?

Ben:

I’m 25 years old.

John:

You’re young. I’m 32. I wasn’t doing any of this at your age, brother. So you’re, you’re light years out of me once you hit 32, like, I can’t wait to see where you’re at. So, so try not to be too hard on yourself. Keep it up, man, because you’re, you’re doing great things. You, you’re like inspiration to me because I hope, I hope I feel this way for Robert Cheek.

I hope he looks at me and like, oh, I don’t have to do some of the things because John’s going to pick it up and I’m like, I don’t have to do some of the things because Ben’s going to pick it up for me. So, yeah, I just want to throw that out there and say, I really appreciate you, dude. But yeah, if you guys want to follow along or learn more, you can pretty much, like I said, you can Google me to find me.

The bodybuildingvegan.com is my website and that’ll have link to my YouTube, my Instagram, pretty much any of my contact info, but obviously on Instagram too. The Bodybuilding Vegan YouTube is now Bodybuilding Vegan TV, so you can find me there. And, you know, I like to work with competitors. I like to work with vegans. I am kind of lucky in the sense that I’m, I’m working with a lot of people right now, so I’ve been raising my rates.

I really want to work with people that are serious about changing. I’m not here to hold hands in the sense of, of being a cheerleader, but more of I want to be the gps. You tell me where you want to go and I’ll give you a few different routes and options on how to get there. I will close out. Ben, you do a really good job of this. I appreciate you. We all get to be a walking billboard for veganism.

If you want to go get the head tattoo, I got a great vegan artist I can send you to or you could wear a T shirt. And if every vegan every day wore a vegan T shirt, not only would we find a lot more vegan friends to hang out with with, we’d probably convince a lot of other people to come over to this side. So, yeah, I’m all about wearing vegan apparel. And literally somebody asked me, how vegan are you yesterday?

Because they wanted me to hold up a non dairy protein shake, saying, I endorsed it. I’m like, I got the head tattoo, I got an arm tattoo, I got a hand tattoo, I got a vegan shirt, I got a vegan fanny pack, a vegan hat, vegan socks, and vegan shoes. You asked the wrong person. Let me show you a video on Instagram of how that dairy cow was treated before you got the milk in your hand. And they’re like, oh, yeah. I said, yeah, get the vegan protein.

I’ll hold it up next week. So, yeah, man, I just want people to. I wasn’t doing it at your age. I would never wear anything vegan at your age. I was too not secure with who I wanted to be or how I wanted the world to change. So I’m trying to inspire other people to get started before me, because you don’t gotta be in your 30s to do this shit so well. Keep it up, dude. I’m proud of you.

Ben:

Well, you did that for me. I will say, like that. Wearing the vegan stuff to the gym, you know, outside of the gym, more so now, and actively seeking out more vegan apparel, supporting vegan businesses and using that as a way to start conversations. Because, you know, you’re always thinking about, how can I do more? And this feels like a simple thing that I can do that is just doing a little bit more each day. Thank you again for your time, John. And thank you, everyone, for listening

to another episode of of Vegan Proteins Muscles by Brussels Radio. You can find us at Vegan Proteins at Muscles by Brussels on Instagram. You can find John at the bodybuilding Vegan over on Instagram. If you want to get in contact with us, you can go over to veganproteins.com hit the contact button. We’ll get back to you ASAP. Thank you for listening, and we’ll catch you guys in the next one, all right?