Episode 340: BJJ has Steroid problem! Have you ever looked at Gordon Ryan and wondered how he looks like that? For the normal Jiu-Jitsu folks doing thousands of Dollars worth of Performance Enhancing Drugs is not a good idea, for your health and finances. JT & Joey discuss the blatant use of steroids in BJJ culture and why this sets unrealistic expectations for how you should look and perform on the mats. There is a better way and it's not TRT. If you want to be lean and jacked and stay healthy it's going to take time, effort and dedication. Steroids are the high interest Credit cards of your health, you may feel super good now but there will be a huge interest cost to pay later. If you are Natty or Not let us know in the comments and how it affects your health and BJJ.
Get all the juicy details on everything BJJ - Tap,Nap and Snap! The Newsletter for grapplers https://www.tapnapandsnap.com/?utm_source=BPYouTube
Stay Hydrated with Sodii the tastiest electrolytes in the Game! Get 15% OFF: BULLETPROOF15 https://sodii.com.au/bulletproof
Parry Athletic - Best training gear in the game... Get 20% OFF Discount Code: BULLETPROOF20 https://parryathletics.com/collections/new-arrivals
Episode 340: BJJ has Steroid problem! Have you ever looked at Gordon Ryan and wondered how he looks like that? For the normal Jiu-Jitsu folks doing thousands of Dollars worth of Performance Enhancing Drugs is not a good idea, for your health and finances. JT & Joey discuss the blatant use of steroids in BJJ culture and why this sets unrealistic expectations for how you should look and perform on the mats. There is a better way and it's not TRT. If you want to be lean and jacked and stay healthy it's going to take time, effort and dedication. Steroids are the high interest Credit cards of your health, you may feel super good now but there will be a huge interest cost to pay later. If you are Natty or Not let us know in the comments and how it affects your health and BJJ.
Get all the juicy details on everything BJJ - Tap,Nap and Snap! The Newsletter for grapplers https://www.tapnapandsnap.com/?utm_source=BPYouTube
Stay Hydrated with Sodii the tastiest electrolytes in the Game! Get 15% OFF: BULLETPROOF15 https://sodii.com.au/bulletproof
Parry Athletic - Best training gear in the game... Get 20% OFF Discount Code: BULLETPROOF20 https://parryathletics.com/collections/new-arrivals
you better listen very carefully. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready.
Speaker 1:This episode is brought to you by Parry Athletics, the exclusive apparel sponsor of the Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. We've been working with these guys for quite some time now. We absolutely love the company. We love their gear, both for training and also just looking slick off the mats. They've got excellent no-gi wears, shorts, t-shirts, all that cool stuff. If you want to get yourself into some Parry clothes or you want to rock the Bulletproof for BJJ exclusive merch, you've got to go through Parry, go to parryathleticscom and use the code BULLETPROOF20 to get 20% off your order. They ship internationally. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast, natty or not, bjj version.
Speaker 1:Now it is apparent there are many people in jiu-jitsu doing steroids, but people don't really factor this in. They kind of forget after a little while. People just go wow, the guy's just so lean and jacked. All the time Like how do you do that? Fuck, these elite guys are so jacked. Wow, it's amazing. What program are they on. Yeah, could I just do that one exercise to look like that? Could I just not eat the one food that undoes all that? Yeah, it's like guys. It's pretty simple. They're taking a lot of steroids. Now I do. Um, can you just clarify natty or not, because I think not everyone's gonna know that reference. Okay, so, uh, who's the kenny coo? Is it kenny? There was another. There's another guy, is it bradley? Whatever big buff dude who he would interview people in the gym and go like isn't that kenny coo? Isn't that his thing? No, well, it's a few people have done it right. It became a very popular thing, yeah, uh, whether it be on instagram or tiktok, where someone who's pretty jacked is in a gym and they'll be walking around like so, natty or not, and and the person would like wait, and they'll be like natural, but no, what? And then you get these jacks just like like muscles on muscles that are like swollen face. I'm natty, you're like, oh, really, really okay, but what's cool or what, what? What was amusing was when dude would push back and he'd be like you're not dude, you're not natural, like tell us, tell us your stack.
Speaker 1:So, even though I have been critical of craig jones about his promotion of his lifestyle. He is open about his use of steroids. Yeah, you got to give him credit. You got to say, okay, like he is one of the one of the only people, and that has put pressure on someone like gordon ryan to confess to his use of steroids. You know which is which I actually think it's better to, yeah, be be more transparent about these things.
Speaker 1:But this is the thing that has bothered me lately that there are coaches out there who have athletes who are on steroids and they go. You know, strength conditioning it's okay, you know like it has its place, but it's actually not that good for jiu-jitsu. You should spend time focusing on technique Well, your technique of injecting the hormones into your arm which give you the benefits of athletic abilities like strength and improved endurance, improved energy, etc. If you're not aware of it, there's obviously a whole host of different drugs that you can take PEDs, performance enhancing drugs which can improve your abilities. We're not going to go deep into the chemicals, but talk more about if you're a regular dude or chick and you're like I'm just trying to get more energy, feel stronger and do stuff for BJJ, there is ways that you can do it, which has nothing to do with drugs, but, for the most part, the people that you're seeing on Instagram, the people that you're seeing in your feed a lot and it's even unfair for women. Also, there's many models who are taking lots of drugs to look the way they look, and women are like I don't know, I can't, I don't have abs all the time, how can I look like that person? Well, you can't, can't like, and yeah, and, and.
Speaker 1:There's a big difference between, uh, someone who's enhanced, someone who's taking performance, enhancing drugs, versus someone who's not, yeah, so I wanted to talk about this because I feel like people are putting unrealistic expectations on themselves. Yeah, I think it really. It really scrambles, the sort of scrambles your view of, like, your potential and everything you're doing and the returns you're getting on your efforts. Right, whatever your efforts are. Maybe you're trying to eat a bit better, train jujitsu more consistently, maybe you're lifting following the program you know like, but it's really easy to look at, to look at those people and be like, fuck, like. I'm so far from that and I feel like I'm doing good stuff, doing everything. I'm kind of doing everything I can.
Speaker 1:I wanted to mention, for example, brian Johnson. Right, he said like you know, is he a strong man? Why die? No, brian Johnson is the longevity guy. Oh, that guy, he's very pale and you know I'm not against Lecherous, no, I mean I'm not against Brian Johnson. Like, what he's doing in terms of self-experimentation is interesting. So he's leading, he's one of the leaders in this movement of like live forever kind of shit, yeah, and he spends a lot of money on that, right, but then he comes out and says stuff like gosh, you need to sleep more. You know, he still says very common sense things, right, he's not saying, in my opinion, revolutionary things other than he's like look, I'm doing this like red light sauna procedure, I'm doing this or I'm doing that and it's. It is interesting from an entertainment perspective.
Speaker 1:But there's a lot of guys out there who are like yo, I need to get up on that brian johnson shit. And it's like you just shine a red light in my asshole. Yeah, basically, bro, can you help me out? I can't find it. Yeah, look, I just yeah.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing. What you don't realize is feels so good, brian johnson has taken folistatin. That's gene editing, right, that's the next level steroids. That's your billionaire ceo type shit where it changes your d DNA so that you are lean and jacked for as long as that holds out, that modified, gene edited bacteria works. So the next level in steroids is gene editing, right. And so Brian Johnson has taken folistatin.
Speaker 1:Now folistatin is not like guaranteed you're going to be a fit, healthy person. You know johnson works out, he does that stuff, but it's a bit of an unfair advantage because it's very expensive. It's also illegal in the usa to do, you know, gene editing therapy. Yeah, those guys go overseas. Yeah, you've got to go down to peru or you've got to go down to you know whichever, like puerto rico, like a country where they allow it. Yeah, so there's people out there with an unfair advantage and you're comparing yourself to them and being like fuck, why don't I look like that? And this is body dysmorphia.
Speaker 1:For jujitsu, we see things which we have associated with health in the past, like, oh, they lean. Oh, they got abs. Oh, look, they're quite muscular. Oh, they're very strong. Wow, that person fought weight and absolute. They did 12 fights in a day at a world class. Like, how did they do that? Performance enhancing drugs.
Speaker 1:The majority of the top level guys have also been busted in jiu-jitsu, yeah, you know, and that's the thing that we tend to forget, because it's a slap on the wrist, it's like all right, you cannot compete for 12 months or 18 months, and it's not just the big guys, it matters even less now, because it's like back in the day, if you couldn't compete in IBJJF, you were done. Well, there's like only one or two other tournaments every year, yeah, whereas now it's like you've got a whole host of events you can do. Yeah, you can do super fights for money. There's events in Russia and Europe and shit. There's stuff going on everywhere. You go all over the map, make money as a grappler, and being enhanced is not penalized. So it's become much more normalized. And this is where we start getting into.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about TRT, which is much more socially acceptable. It's just steroids, my friends. It's the socially acceptable word for steroids. Oh, go to the doctor. Doctor's like oh, oh, don't worry, I get a kickback for this. It seems your t levels are a little bit lower than they should be, not? Hey, you know what? You should sleep a bit more. Uh, you know what you should. You should change your diet a bit. I can get you on some crt real quick. You got the budget, you got 1500 bucks a month. Let's go, yeah, and that's that's. Look, you know. If that's what you want to do and you're cool with it, that's okay. But let's be honest, you guys are taking steroids. You juice monkeys. That's where you are.
Speaker 1:The natty or not is a very clean line. Are you using drugs that enhance your performance or are you not? And that sets the expectation. So why am I bringing this up? There are coaches who train individuals who are on steroids Andre Galvan. Andre Galvan does 20 rounds of sparring, then gets off the mat, does his strength conditioning and then also does a wrestling session. It's like the guy's been training for fucking three or four hours.
Speaker 1:People are like wow, the heart of a champion, the liver of a fucking bodybuilder, like swollen and painful, so fucking jacked. He's so jacked. Now, I'm not hating on andre, but it sets an unreasonable expectation for someone who's like but how do I be like him? You shouldn't expect that you can be like him. I mean, obviously he has a career of juj. He has 30 years of jujitsu in him and being a top level competitor most of his entire life. So there's that. But also, you can't expect to train that much jujitsu and look that jacked.
Speaker 1:So I was having a conversation with a friend of ours who is cutting weight currently I won't name this person and they were complaining that they don't look jacked when they're cutting weight. So they're not eating as much carbohydrate, they're minimizing their calories, they're starving themselves, they're still training and they're like, oh man, I look flaccid. This is the last word a man wants to associate with himself. I'm flaccid, droopy. So here's the thing you can't expect to look pumped and ripped and jacked if you're denying yourself these calories, and you know you're not. Yeah, of course, you're always going to look like shit when you're cutting. Yeah, tell me.
Speaker 1:Go back to your point. You mentioned the coaches thing and then you mentioned Galvan. Yeah, like. So what are you getting at here? Okay?
Speaker 1:So what was highlighted to me when I did an advanced strength conditioning course under a gentleman, phil Wright, and Phil Wright competed in Mr Australia multiple times and he I don't know if he ever won he lost to a very famous Australian bodybuilder multiple times, but this happens right. He got second multiple times. But this happens right, he got second multiple times. We could say he's the craig jones, the first bodybuilder. Yeah, but he had highlighted that you can look at a program and know what the program means.
Speaker 1:So he was getting us to analyze sets and reps and he he gave us like a multiple choice of of workouts and the bottom workout was ridiculous, like Like workout D was fucking crazy. It was like 10 sets of squats, 10 sets of leg press, leg extension, hamstring curls, and I was like and Phil said, oh guys, what do we notice about these workouts? I'm like that last workout's fucking crazy. He's like yeah, you know why. It's a steroid workout. You can't do that. Unless you are enhanced, you cannot do it.
Speaker 1:A normal human will die in an attempt to finish that workout and it won't actually make you better. It'll put you on a detriment For the regular human, for a regular human. Right, there's many athletes out there who are on steroids and like yo, get my workout plan, get my mindset DVD, whatever you know. Like they're doing all these things where in the past if you took steroids, it was kind of embarrassing, it was like a sign of weakness or that you couldn't work hard enough to achieve the thing that you could achieve by your own physical means, et cetera. Right, there's coaches out there who are like well, look at the workout I do with my athlete. Well, let's look at the fucking athlete. Your athlete's a cyborg and on a gang of steroids. Like that workout is not applicable to a normal human.
Speaker 1:Simmering this all back. If you are doing BJJ and you admire these people and you're like, really, is Gordon Ryan on steroids? That's not possible. Be realistic. Like, if you can't digest food and you've got digestive problems, how do you put on 15 kilos of muscle? You almost cannot, because you can't get that nutrition in. It's really hard to put on muscle if you can't digest food. Uh, therein lies the conundrum. Without our man called ryan but for you you're a regular person you barely got money to fucking, you know, buy extra dog food, let alone feed your kids, let alone. I haven't got spare two thousand dollars to pay for steroids. That's ridiculous. You can get stronger, you can get more athletic, but it will be time. You will have to give up a bit of time to work out in the appropriate way.
Speaker 1:If you do this, you can enhance your performance naturally, and there are many great athletes who are natural, like Isaac Daudelaine. He actually had on his back at the Brasileiro Natty, that was his name Instead of it being like Cobrinha Jr, which is like Cobrinha's son, kennedy Kennedy. He had Natty on his back as his flag. Roberto Jimenez also sworn Natty. We can look at the Rotolo brothers hardcore sworn Natty like they're not taking performance enhancing drugs. The difference is, for a lot of these athletes, they already have 20 years of jujitsu in them, which is a part of the reason why they can perform as well as they do, but this may also mean we may not see them down the track.
Speaker 1:A lot of athletes have extended their careers using steroids. Now, if you're a regular person and you're just trying to feel stronger and fitter, you shouldn't compare yourself to these people and listening to coaches ie John Danaher, who's had more steroid athletes under him than most and hear him talk about how the role of S&C is maybe not that important. You should spend more time on technique. It's a bit of a joke because your athletes are getting a benefit from something which you know. I'm sure they're doing S&C as well. You know like they're all trained to an extent, but it kind of discounts the fact that oh yeah, just do jujitsu, that's good enough. It's not good enough to just do jujitsu. Yeah, you need to learn your technique, but you need to spend some time, allocate some time to get yourself a bit fitter, a bit stronger, so you can wear the battles of jujitsu, and that is not done taking drugs. Does that make sense? Like this is my problem with people at the moment. Yeah, yeah. So I guess to offer a pushback, because I'm thinking you know some people are like, yeah, but, yes, gordon, obviously juices. Don't know much else about. You know not sure about Dana. Has other athletes right that he's currently not training with them.
Speaker 1:All of B team was DDS, sure, sure, yeah, right, yeah, but they were kind of kids back then. Now they've just turned into like grown-ass men within like I don't know, like a few years. That's a big one, by the way. When someone just like looks 10 years older and like has 10 years worth of muscle mass on them In two years, in two years, you're like hang on a second, what the fuck just happened? Yeah, um, but that happened to craig, right, craig had a bit of a kind of like a baby face, but he had a skinnier face, yeah, like boyish, and now he's got like rogan face kind of swollen, and you're like, holy shit, that hairline is fucking running away. That is a line of rabbits running away. He always had had that hairline. How many hats and crowns have you got away? But he's very open. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:And just using him as an example because everyone knows him, yes, he's a good example. Everyone can relate to the guy. Or everyone's like yeah, I'm familiar with that dude, gordon as well. But here's the thing with that Gordon uses yeah, sure, sure, probably some of the other danaher guys do, but they're all like gordon is also clearly a technical um whiz. Yeah, right, like he is extremely committed on that front. Yeah, so people are like well, hang on, are you throwing the baby out with the bath water by saying I'm not saying you can't learn from gordon, right? No, no, this is, this is not about jujitsu technique. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, for example, if you see a coach online, they use steroids. Their athletes use steroids.
Speaker 1:Let's go to dr mike israel, my favorite guy, whose head is bigger than the rest of his body. He's like a lego man. His head is. He's like a Staffordshire Terrier, like he has muscles everywhere around his head. That guy knows how to build muscle, right, and I'm not saying Mike has ever claimed that he's natty, but you know, whatever, he's a big, big, big unit, right? When you have a coach who has built muscle, built their business around building muscle and has done it using drugs, it's very different to someone who's trying to build muscle just eating, eating food and lifting weights. It's a very different thing.
Speaker 1:And so people like, yeah, I need to take the advice of a coach who writes programs for people who are enhanced. You won't be able to keep up on the program. But wait, are you, are you putting you lumpingher and Israetel into a box here? I'm just saying, because one's a strength like, one's a gym guy, one's a jiu-jitsu coach, yeah, and I'm saying I am lumping them together because they are both coaches and they have coached athletes that are on gear.
Speaker 1:I don't think the advice is as solid because there is a bias towards doing too much Right, but Dana doing too much right, but dana has not issuing strength programs. No, he's not. He's talking about technique. He's arguing that strength is not that valid. Well, it's. It's not something he deals in, right, yeah, but past the point, yeah, it makes sense that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like, the context of that conversation was like oh, like, trying to take your deadlift from 200 pounds to 300 pounds, who cares? The baseline argument, or the simmered back, is once you're at a certain level of strength, it doesn't help you as a jiu-jitsu athlete to be much stronger, and we actually agree on that. Once you have a certain level of strength, you're good. But for most people who we're talking to right now, who are listening to this, they're not lifting. They're not necessarily lifting, they're not lifting right then they're not necessarily listening, they're not necessarily no stretching, they're not doing the additional stuff right. People see a certain conversation and the the spin might be oh yeah, well, danaher says you just shouldn't. You know the amount of people who have said to me in comments oh well, marcello said a strength conditioning is a waste of time. Yeah, you know all these kinds of conversations, but now we're all prone to our biases. We are, we are.
Speaker 1:If you are watching videos of famous coaches, whether they be jujitsu coaches, strength coaches, anything you have to consider. Are there athletes on steroids, because their programs probably lean towards that? Yeah, like two different species of humans. Yeah, so you shouldn't be trying to keep up in that race. It's like encouraging body dysmorphia. It's like she's a skinny woman. You should just be a skinny woman. Oh well, she also has an eating disorder. You don't know how healthy she is as a person, so why are you comparing yourself to that? But you can't cherry pick a quality in someone and think I just want that when you don't know there's a whole host of really unhealthy things that can go along with it. Yeah, yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1:So when we write a program, we factor in you've probably got a job. Yeah, we factor in you've probably got a family. We factor in that you probably can't train jujitsu five, six days a week. So what are we going to do to help you get better? Well, we always talk about the minimum effective dose, and so we want to make sure that you are doing enough work to get the benefit and have a good life. That's what we're about. That's why we program the way we do and that's why we generally encourage people to pursue jujitsu in a sustainable way, whereas when you look at many, many top athletes, it is not sustainable. They will flame bright and then flame out and then you don't see them. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:It's easy to look at like someone like Gordon Ryan and be like fuck, what are they doing? I need to get on that kind of thing. But the reality is, he's using his training for a very different reason than what you are using your training for or what we are using ours for. Right, he is absolutely trying to maintain like he's the best in the world, which is only going to go for a fucking short amount of time, and it may already be over, potentially, but there's a question that he may not be at the next ADCC, depending. I was about to fucking issue the challenge to him. It may already be over Potentially, but there's a question that he may not be at the next ADCC, right, depending. I was about to fucking issue the challenge to him as well. But since he's not going to be there, don't worry about it. Throw down the gauntlet, come for the ground.
Speaker 1:But so the you know he's trained to be the absolute best, and so when you're trained to be the best, you are sacrificing heaps of other things in your life, which is the noble pursuit of any elite athlete, right? Ask any Olympian. Same deal they're choosing to burn out, like to take years off their life in order to live at a higher peak for this short period. Yeah, whereas I'm not trying to do that. No, you're not trying to do it. And for you guys listening. We imagine most of you are not trying to do that because you're like no, I'm not trying to be the best, I just want to be as good as I can be, whatever that while still being good at other shit that I do in my life.
Speaker 1:Of course, we do live in the age of social media, right, and it does tend to make us look outside ourselves a lot more and compare ourselves a lot more, and we've discussed this many times and like that's why we're here, that's why you're to this, like you're seeing our faces or you're listening to our voices, because of social media and we, we benefit from that as much as you benefit from that, right, and we value that relationship and therefore that's why I'm so passionate, in an borderline, unhinged kind of way, to call out motherfuckers who are not healthy and maybe corrupting you spiritually and mentally on this busy day path. So when I see people doing things which I think because my fucking podcast, I'm going to say what I want, also Joey's podcast, but that's why Joey will also say hey, man, I don't agree with you. That's wrong. Might've said it once or twice just here and there, a little bit of pushback, a bit of feedback. But that's the thing guys like we want to give you or help you in the best way we can, which is we want you to be healthy. That's where we started before.
Speaker 1:We were BJJ folks, we were fitness folks and we've fucked up plenty along the way, right, but at no point in my life have I taken steroids. The closest thing I've come to steroids is bit of ointment on my skin for my eczema, like 0.01% cortisone, because I had really bad eczema, right, and that's it. And the thing is, I would never advocate for it because I believe if you train the right way, you can be really strong and you can be really fit. And I do my best to try and represent that. And I want to call out motherfuckers who are not, because you are doing yourself a disservice if you think one, you can be like those people, or two, you should be like those people. You're going to do your own head in chasing those ideals and that, when you simmer it back, if you can be a healthy, happy person doing BJJ, that's the best and that's why it's better to be Natty. Better to be Natty, that's what I would say. Well, yeah, you're going to pay a price if you do want to chase that thing and you are also probably going to fail in it if you are. Also, if you have these other parts of your life that you have to be committed to work, family, you know, whatever, it's going to be really hard to be like making the most of this expensive drug regime that you're on. It's like don't, don't try and be elite if everything, if you're not prepared to go all in on being elite, that's right, it's, it's there's, there's. At the moment there is no like.
Speaker 1:You know, I think a lot of our listeners, like us, would have been very influenced by rogan. Yeah, and if you listen to rogan, you can't help but come away thinking man, trt is fucking sick. Yeah, right, like, and and I and I've spoken with plenty of people who are on TRT and they're like it's pretty fucking good and you're like man, hard to doubt, you know. So for me, right, when I'm talking to someone who's whatever 50s, and they're like, yeah, I'm like, fair enough, like you're well and truly an adult and you know whatever Make do with it. But when it's like a fucking 20-year-old or a 30-year-old, but when it's like a fucking 20-year-old or a 30-year-old, even like a late 30-year-old, 40-year-old.
Speaker 1:I think you're just taking shortcuts because other parts of your life aren't in order. You're just not prepared to fix your fucking sleep, to eat properly, to lift regularly, and so you've gone and bought this drug that just allows you to fuck up everything else and still have the physique, and I think that's really the wrong way to go about it. It's physique and I just I think that's really the wrong way to go about it. It's just like a shortcut that I'm like I'm not with it. It's, but it's.
Speaker 1:It's meant to be testosterone replacement therapy, not trend replacement therapy. Like it's not. It's meant to be that your t levels are low, but for the best part, most people are fine, but it's become normalized like oh yeah, I felt like you know my t levels a bit low, so I had to go to. Yeah, but I think most people are chronically low because, like people don't fucking sleep enough, they don't eat well, they drink too much alcohol, like all these other lifestyle factors, definitely they're like yeah, of course you're going to be low, but so instead of the doctor being like, well, let's address all that. They're like bam, like people are making money on this and that's the thing.
Speaker 1:Like no one explained to me like I didn't have a really good, uh, financial education. Right, my parents had credit cards, they had mortgages, you know, and they, they scrambled to make sure that we got looked after. And I'm not in no way I'm I'm speaking bad about my parents here. They did everything they could for us. I love them dearly. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:I got a credit card in my 20s. That was a fucking mistake, because no one tells you about interest payments, right, they were all about that. My parents were, like you've got to get a credit rating, you need to have a credit score, yeah, fuck. So I got a credit card, especially when I was traveling, because you need. Oftentimes you have to give, like in Brazil. They won't extend your visa if you don't have a credit card to tack onto that. So they can just fucking fine you if you fuck up. Right, they're taking six grand real quick. So I got a credit card.
Speaker 1:But what I didn't realize was, once you start down this path, which is oh man, I'm a bit short, I need a grand. Let's put it on the credit card. I got free money sitting on the card right here. You're not thinking about interest because, like, three grand turns into five grand. I'm shouting everyone acai, oh y'all. And then, before you know it, you get back from your travels. You're like I'm 20 grand in the hole. And what does a fucking 15% interest rate look like on that when you pay money monthly? If you do, you're just paying the interest, you're not paying down the principle, and so then it takes you 10 years, if you you know, that's what it took me from my mid twenties to my mid thirties to just get on top of this shit. Wow, yeah, and I never thought about. No one ever told me.
Speaker 1:And steroids are a very aggressive credit card debt. Yeah, you're good now. Oh man, I've got unlimited energy. I'll go as hard as I like. Look at my fucking six-pack dog man. My knee healed in two weeks. I just fucking injected that growth hormone straight into my knee. It feels fucking awesome. But here's the thing you are borrowing from tomorrow. Don't borrow from tomorrow, because when you don't take it, well, suddenly you've got this huge deficit and there's nothing to say that. Your hormones just automatically re-regulate. That's when you've got to go all in and become the next Rich Piano. Well then, you've got to pay. How's this?
Speaker 1:I always love a freak story. We had a guy in the gym who was a male stripper making heaps of cash, heaps of cash being a stripper, taking a bunch of gear keeping him lean and jacked. But also he did get a critical point road rage and he threw, like a 30 kilo dumbbell, out one of the big windows front windows of the gym because he had a huge argument with Lindy who was the gym manager. So they so they kicked him out anyway. He also assaulted one of the bouncers at the strip club that he worked at, so he lost his stripping job. That bouncer got his ass beat by a stripper. He got grinded on sit down, motherfucker, it's lap dance time, yeah. And then he lost his income. So he didn't get to cycle off in the way that many kind of people who take a lot of drugs do. He just lost it and he got what's it called Gynecomastia Gynecomastia he grew tits Bitch tits, yeah, but not bitch tits boobs on top of pecs. This is a big chested man and now he's starting to get little baby boobs going off the bottom with the nips hanging right. And now this is a pretty vain guy, like a good-looking dude, but he can't walk around with fucking titties on right. So he had to pay $35,000 for the elective surgery to have the breasts removed. Oh, wow, yeah, right, and so, anyway, that's a freak story, but it's kind of funny anyway. That's heavy, that's heavy.
Speaker 1:But what I wanted to say is that what they don't tell you about any kind of drug you might take, right and this is not because I'm freaking people out. I've been around kind of PED culture my whole life and always pushed back on it. There is nothing to say that when you stop taking testosterone, that your estrogen levels regulate normally, because as you increase your testosterone levels, your estrogen levels will go up and that's what the body does. But you drop that testosterone off. Who knows what's going on. There's nothing to say, it just automatically goes back to normal. Same thing with growth hormone. You take a whole bunch of growth hormone. Your body goes oh, we don't need to do this now, that's okay. It might take a long time for your body to even come back and naturally start producing it again, or it might just not. And then you've got a lot of hormone problems also, like you're not shrinking. Um, james smith pt talked about yeah, when you start all shrink because they stop producing testosterone, they don't need to right, yeah, so, yeah, but I mean, rich Piano is always like yo, but my dick stays the same size and if I've got smaller balls it makes my dick look bigger. So what the fuck? But Rich was a monster. But you know, yeah, look like… Also died of a massive heart attack, you know, this happens.
Speaker 1:Like my mum, you know, went through menopause, right, which is when it's a big hormonal change women go through after they have ended their time being of reproductive age, sure, and their hormones go all over the place, right, yeah, it's a big deal for them. And afterwards, like a lot of women, have a really shit experience of life post-menopause, or even like during and pre-menopause, because shit goes haywire. Now, as dudes, dudes, we don't even know what that's like because our hormones are generally pretty consistent, more or less. In any case, it's very common to for them to go and get hormone replacement therapy. So I remember my mom doing she's like fuck, changed my life. Like, so she takes these little fucking chemicals, whatever tablets or something that basically change the way her body works, right, yeah, amazing, now it's a big deal. Yes, when you, as a dude, are like I want to get a bit bigger and you go and take, now it's like it's one thing for a woman in her like mid-40s to go and do this thing and start replacing their natural hormones with exogenous hormones Synthetic, yeah, yeah. But for you, as a fucking younger person, to start putting external, it's a fucking big deal. Man Like you are messing with shit, yep. And so that's why I'm like, yeah, I don't mind If you're older and stuff. Then it's like go for it, but if you're on the younger side, it's like you're fucking around with nature in a big way there. Yeah, and we don't really understand what the costs are. Yeah, other than we do know that there is a compensation.
Speaker 1:You can look at multiple, multiple videos of bodybuilders in their prime to them only five years later, not on gear, and it's night and day, from the greatest bodybuilders of all time to just retired dudes. They look super average, but now they have a lot of health issues. I mean, some have done it well. You look at Arnie or Dorian and they look amazing, but they've also They've still had health complications, for sure, and they've also had the absolute best medical care. And all of that Plenty of their counterparts have died. Yeah, they have. But then there's also those guys who are still around who, just like flex wheelie, just looks like a dad bod.
Speaker 1:Now, you know, that guy was known as the most symmetrical, amazing physique. You look at Foza, he's super average, you know. I mean, ronnie Coleman is a perfect example of somebody who really pushed as far as you can go, was considered the goat, and now the guy can't walk, you know? And he it wasn't just building muscle, he pushed the strength side. He was considered one of the strongest guys of all time and it's tragic to see him have to sit there and watch other people lift and everyone be like, oh look at me, Ronnie, that poor guy. He's looking at all these fucking dudes.
Speaker 1:It's really hard to watch and we know that all you want to do is do BJJ, not be in pain and feel good, and that's what we want to encourage you to do and that's what we do with the program. And the reason why I really want to talk on this more than anything is there's a lot of people out there who are not open about their steroid use and you should not just take it on surface that that person is like you. You should think more about your own training, how you're improving and how healthy are you and if you can move the meter on your health, it will be easier to move the meter on your strength and everything else. Bam hey, don't forget to like, subscribe to the show, give us a five star review, appreciate it. See you next time, yo.