Dorian Yates - Into The Shadow - Redux

Full transcript: Dorian Yates on London Real

0:05 After over two years of filming London Real with over 150 episodes under our belt here in the studios, I always get asked one question over and over again when I meet people on the streets or in the tube or people that come over here for the first time. And they always ask, what’s your most popular episode? And it’s a simple question to answer since I always have the numbers in the back of my head. And I always blurt out Dorian Yates and sometimes I hear awesome and sometimes I hear who?

0:38 And I try to explain he was the sixth time Mr. Olympia, one of the greatest bodybuilders in the world, and how he came on the show and spoke with such presence, such heart, such intelligence that it really blew people’s minds. And on top of that, this is a man who is probably the most media shy in all of history. And one thing that Dorian told us when he came over here almost one year ago is he said he had had offers before from the BBC to come and speak with them, but they always insisted that afterwards he put on his swim shorts and pose for them.

1:19 And that was always insulting to Dorian. I think he was upset that they wouldn’t want to speak to him for himself, just like any other normal person being interviewed, and even though posing was his business, he objected to that type of treatment by the media, and so hence his name, The Shadow, he’s someone that was always very elusive in the bodybuilding world. People didn’t know who he was, where he was, how he was training. You had Arnold and the boys pumping iron on Venice Beach and living large and getting tans and you had Dorian up in Birmingham pumping iron, you know, for 12 months a year would show up at competitions, blow everyone away and then go home.

2:03 And he was also typically, you know, not in the media, not doing interviews. So when we had the opportunity to host him on London Real, I didn’t realize it at the time but it was a big event and it was a big decision on his part to come and speak to us and we were blown away and quite honestly blown away by the reception. At no point did I ever realize that this would be our most popular episode of all times. We’re about to hit the 200,000 view number on YouTube which probably equates to so many million minutes that people have watched Dory and it’s not even funny.

2:46 Out of all of our guests we’ve had on, we’ve had powerful people on, like Jacque Fresco of The Venus Project, we’ve had Tim Ferriss of The 4 Hour Workweek, we’ve had Max Keiser, Eric Thomas, The Hip Hop Preacher. I just think of these names that come to me, and they’re big names, and it’s Dorian Yates that pretty much takes the cake when it comes to episodes. behind him is a 96 year old Jack Fresco, just a few thousand views behind him and then it kind of tricks down to our episode on DMT and goes from there but it’s always fascinating to me that that’s such an amazing interview and I think it’s for a few reasons.

3:28 I think most importantly is that Dorian never has done and probably never will do very much media. It’s just not his style and so it’s great to have Tim Ferriss here and we had a great conversation with Tim, but when we put it out in the world it competes with the thousands of other interviews with Tim Ferriss, and so it doesn’t really necessarily gain that much attention as a single piece of work. So that was one of the reasons. The other reason is that Dorian has a huge fan base, especially among men that used to train when they were younger and men that train now, whether you’re British or anyone around the world. If you go to any hardcore lifting gym, I would say today and definitely in the last 10-20 years there will be a picture of Dorian Yates on the wall. You know he’s got a hundred and some odd thousand likes on Facebook so the potential was always there. We just didn’t know what would happen and also we didn’t know what to expect. I had seen very limited footage on what Dorian was like. I didn’t know what we were going to talk about. I didn’t know whether he was going to address the steroid issue. I didn’t know what he was going to talk about and so So as usual on London Real, it’s all live, it’s all unscripted, it’s unedited.

4:42 We’ve never met the people before most of the time, including Dorian. He had showed up in our studio 15 minutes before and we rolled the tapes. So whatever you get is real, it’s genuine. And sometimes that can mean a quiet or a somewhat snoozy show and sometimes it can mean Dorian dropping science about DMT, about his conspiracy theories about what it was like to train with such a low body percentage that he had no padding left on the bottom of his feet to protect the bones from the ground and he could feel it when he was walking around. You know, the dreams he would have about certain foods when he was cutting weight, how he never stayed out past 11 o’clock at night no matter what during training just in order to keep the regiment going and so I’m just as enthralled as you are when you’re listening to Dorian because I’m hearing it for the first time and a lot of people used to joke with me about the way I look at people I have a really intense look because a lot of the times I’m just like wow looking at these people and I always try to be present in the moment and and really try to listen to what people say A because it’s my job B because I find it really interesting and C because you need to know where to go with the next question It can’t be scripted if it doesn’t mean anything.

6:02 You might plan a question for a week that you want to ask, but if it doesn’t flow, then there’s no point in doing it. The feedback afterwards was tremendous. We knew it was going to be reasonably big, but we just didn’t know it would have the impact that it’s had. I get tweets every day that say, Dorian Yates, that’s one of the greatest interviews I’ve ever seen. And I get people from the bodybuilding community that are just so amazed that an idol of theirs has a mind that equals his body.

6:42 People always ask how we book Dorian Yates on London Real. And the reason is quite simple. We had an intern named Diego who was quite into his weightlifting. I think he trained some jiu-jitsu as well. And he was so hardcore that he contacted Dorian and went up to Birmingham for a private training session with Dorian.

7:04 And Diego was stopping by and doing some work for us and helping us promote episodes. And he was like, I just trained with Dorian Yates. And I was like, what was it like? And he was like, really intense. And he said an anecdote.

7:15 He was, you know, he’d just done some deadlifts and he was waiting for the next set. And typically you’ll wait a certain number of minutes for your body to recover. And he asked Dorian, how long should I wait? Dorian was Dorian said if we’re talking it’s time to go again so you know Diego had suggested Dorian you know funny enough I was never a huge weightlifter when I was young so Dorian really wasn’t on my radar once people talked about him I I knew who he was and for two weeks before the show I mentioned that Dorian would be on the show and all of my male friends were they couldn’t believe it they were fawning over they wanted to come by and you know take photos and and and be involved somehow and that’s how I start to understand you know the power of Dorian and we had traded a few dates with him back and forth and he was coming down to London to see a show I think he was gonna take his girlfriend and his son to you know West End show and he he scheduled I think it was a Monday morning or Monday afternoon when he came in and you know was prepared, doing my research, trying to find out a bit more about him, and he tweeted out the night before to his people. He said, going on, you know, London Real tomorrow, it’s gonna get real, you know, and I remember saying, Jesus, I think he’s really gonna bring it tomorrow. So, you know, we had our A-game on and didn’t know what to expect, really. It’s funny, I’m sitting in the chair that all

8:45 The guests sit in, and it’s quite an interesting chair because I think it’s got a lot of energy in it. And I remember thinking, do we need a bigger chair for Dorian Yates? Now I feel really stupid saying that because, you know, he’s a man, you know, he’s not necessarily in just frame that much bigger than anyone else. He was just the guy that was able to make his physique, you know, the best in the world for six years. But he sat just fine in this chair. And I remember just trying to think about little things.

9:15 But he came in, really relaxed guy, great conversation, very cool, was ready to roll. He was the first guy that rocked the one-year piece in that you’ll see on the show. He’s got one earbud in, one ear out, and it’s funny because now when I get guests on, we used to have the guests wear these big headphones, these big cans like you see on a lot of podcasts on Rogan. And then we’re not on a radio show and we’re all within touching distance of each other on the show.

9:42 So I was like, what’s the point in having these things? you really want to hear your voice I gave people earbuds and it made it a little easier for me to slice things up on screen and we’ve now pretty much demolished it because it’s really just like having a conversation between people and I just keep it in mind just in case we have a few sound failures. Dorian rocked the one ear and so I used to tell people afterwards I’m like you can wear two or if you want you can rock one like Dorian Yates did so if you’re ever in the tube with one with one earbud in you’re doing it So, you know, Dorian came on and he was talking to us, Nick brought up the steroids issue, it was in my list of questions, we were definitely going to ask him, obviously, you know, in a respectful way, but we know we need to ask these questions.

10:27 So we brought it up, Dorian hit the nail on the head right away and he said, a quote which I use to this day is that, steroids are used in all sports. And this was kind of pre-Lance Armstrong coming out and getting busted, I think, at time or right around that and it was just poignant when he said that because when you really look under the surface, it is used in many sports. It’s just obviously in bodybuilding, it’s maybe more obvious. Maybe a Tour de France runner doesn’t put on 20 kgs of muscle but if he puts on 4, that’s going to make him win.

10:59 So Dorian had a very interesting way of presenting that and presenting what happens. The other thing he said is, you know, if steroids were the one thing you needed to be the greatest bodybuilder in the world, then how come everyone wasn’t doing it? And that was very well said, which goes back to his discipline, his genetics, his focus. And so that’s how it happened. Then Dorian started talking about three-quarters of the way through, started talking about he took ayahuasca when he was down in Brazil, I believe, with his girlfriend, and then he started talking about smoking DMT.

11:33 And I mean, literally, I don’t know if you can see it in my face, but I’m almost falling off my chair. I’m like, Jesus Christ, you couldn’t have scripted a better guest for London Real, especially at the time. You know, we had, we were pretty much kind of fresh off the ayahuasca experience. You know, we had talked about DMT a little bit and it was like, wow, here’s a major icon of a sport. Now talking about counterculture psychedelics right here in our studio and there’s no takes.

11:59 There’s no edits. There’s no cuts. Dorian’s just bringing it. And it was just amazing. And then he went into some conspiracy theories, not all of which I agreed with, and you know, it was great.

12:09 You know, it’s a show. London Real is a show where you can agree to disagree. And I welcome people’s points of view on the show, even if I don’t always agree with them. I just think it’s important to get them out there and get the people to express them so we can talk about them. And Dorian did that in droves.

12:24 And there’s one thing from the show I’ll never forget. We asked him if you celebrate after your wins as Mr. Olympia, and he said no. He’s like, I don’t celebrate, I never celebrate it. I was supposed to win.” And he’s like, I didn’t go to any parties, I went home and started training the next day.

12:39 And it’s just amazing to see his kind of driving focus and, you know, I think it has a lot to do with the longevity of this episode. It’s still funny to me, I meet very famous British people and when I tell them that Dorian Yates has been on the show or it’s one of our greatest shows of all time they say who? And you know, that’s a very interesting statement, you know, it was just never embraced as a sport I think in the UK it was always kind of a counterculture sport when the Arnold days and before it got popular but I think the UK never embraced it, they ever embraced Dorian which I think is a little bit a bit sad because I think he’s one of the greatest British athletes ever obviously. So I would just hope that you enjoy this episode we decided to give you the Redux edition so we’ve gone back and cut this through with a single person single camera just to see if you can get a bit better look and maybe draw you deeper into Dorian’s frame of mind and his soul and what makes the man tick. I hope you guys like this. If this is well received maybe we’ll go back and for a few special episodes recut maybe the fresco or a couple other ones just so you can kind of have that more of a typical conversation video flow and and maybe get a lot out of it. And I just want to say a big thanks to Dorian Yates for coming down here for just helping us promote it.

14:00 He constantly answers people’s Twitter compliments to him about the show. He’s very active and it was a pivotal part in the success of London Real. And it just goes to show ya, I never know who’s gonna walk in the door, what they’re really gonna be like, what impact they’ll have on the show or on themselves. And I think as a piece of media, I think we are probably had the most impact on Dorian Yates and his exposure to the world is a couple of guys in a brick loft building in East London were able to promote a man in a way that I could argue maybe a documentary couldn’t have even done justice to.

14:40 So that’s always amazing to me and just want to thank everyone who watches and supports and forwards to your friends. I mean, it wouldn’t happen without you guys. So it was a great combination of a fantastic London Real support group and a fantastic guy like Dorian Yates. Cool, so I’ll just start the show off. I’m gonna introduce us introduce you I’m gonna kick y’all with a question and then we can just go wherever we want to go with this I’m so excited this you typically do an hour, but I honestly think we’re gonna go over a bit of whatever man Let’s just roll. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, let’s just have fun. Seriously. Just forget is being recorded Good stood pros. All right, let’s do this guys This is London Real I am Brian Rose This is Nick Gabriel and joining us today is mr. Dorian Yates who is a professional bodybuilder and a six-time winner of the mr.

15:35 Olympia title Welcome. Thank you very much for having me guys Something different. Thanks for being here. It’s a real pleasure having you here You know, we’ve had a lot of different people on the show before we’ve had members of Parliament We’ve had best-selling authors like Graham Hancock We’ve had Olympic athletes, but when I told people that Dorian was gonna be on the show it’s like especially males like this weird sense of like awe comes across them and then and they talk about you almost in like a supernatural way and I was wondering if you could explain how you work in bodybuilding why it has such a like a visceral almost like carnal response from from people like that well I started competing in UK back in the 80s and quickly worked my way through the ranks to go to compete in the professional bodybuilding, which is, or was, and probably still is, basically an American-based sport. Most of the athletes and the whole industry is from the States. So I think the fact that I came from the UK where we have, you know, basic facilities and the sports aren’t that big here, and I was able to go from the UK and actually still training in the UK and going to be the best guys in the world who mostly were US-based.

16:56 I think that inspired a lot of people. And a lot of guys that go to the gym during the 90s when I was at the top, when I was Mr. Olympia, of course, I’m in all the magazines. So I get tremendous feedback from people telling me that I was the first kind of guy that they saw in magazines and the gyms and everything and inspired them to go to the gym and to train. And of course, it’s a masculine sport, I guess, right?

17:25 You want to get bigger and stronger and so you can lift the most weights and build the best physique and everything. So it is a very male sport, I guess. So perhaps that’s why you get the reaction. Think about this. This guy sitting next to us in our studio was the best-built human being on the planet for a large portion of the 1990s.

17:45 Yeah, doesn’t that blow your mind? That does kind of blow my mind. And not only was I unique because I came from UK, and previously all the champions were in the States, training in the States and everything like that. I came along with a totally new method of training, which was against the grain. Pretty much everything I do has been against the grain, but it’s worked for me.

18:08 So my training approach and my training philosophy was much different from the people that came before me. So we’re spending much less time in the gym, but the workouts were very, very intense and brutal. So before, people were spending maybe two hours in the gym, six days a week, and so on. But my belief was, and still is, that that’s counterproductive. You need to go in and give your body a very intense, kind of sharp for a short period of time.

18:34 So probably less than an hour in the gym and three or four times a week. So that was totally against the convention. But the physique that I was able to build with that kind of training, was literally reshape the sport. It was a huge leap ahead. And kind of a Roger Bannister moment in running when he was the first guy to break the four-minute mile, whatever.

18:55 And then once he achieved that, the people saw that it was achievable. Then more people came along that was able to do that. So I think I had that kind of effect in bodybuilding and a huge effect on the way people approach the sport nutritionally, training-wise, and everything. So it’s more than Dorian Yates, you know, the great physique winning contest. It’s the influence I had on the sport and kind of a no bullshit approach, you know, that I think people appreciate it.

19:27 Yeah, you know, speaking of your no bullshit approach, I remember reading an interview with you when I was maybe 16 or 17. It’s when I first really got into working out and it was a transcribed interview in a magazine in a magazine that you’d given live just after Mr. Olympia. And some guy in the audience said, oh, Bill Phillips recommends you do this. And you just said to him, well, if you want to look like Bill Phillips, then go ahead and do that.

19:55 And I thought that just went down. That was pretty much the proof is in the pudding. This is your high-intensity training, like, system that you create. Yeah, it’s very intense and heavy, but short. Audible is not an endurance sport.

20:08 Guys were spending two hours in the gym. They were breaking themselves down as much as building themselves up. So yeah, it’s a short. It’s very intense. It’s hard work, but it’s not a long period of time.

20:19 And then as a bodybuilder, I mean, the rest of your job’s outside the gym. And that’s very taxing, mentally and so on, because you’ve got to eat the correct food, the correct time. You’ve got to get enough rest, all these things. So it’s pretty much, although you’re not in the gym 24 hours a day, it is pretty much a 24-hour day job. You never leave it behind.

20:40 You play soccer, you play golf, you play your golf clubs in the cupboard, and that’s it for the day you’re finished. But bodybuilding, it’s with you all the time. You’ve got to be conscious. You’ve got to what you’re eating. You’ve got to eat at certain times to get the most out of your training, and so on.

20:52 Is it the hard part, resisting those temptations, resisting the pint, or resisting the cakes? Is that the harder part of the job? For me, anyway, for me, going to the gym and lifting heavy weights, it’s hard work, but that’s fun. but to actually fight against all your instincts and everything that’s coming from your body. This is more the contest phase.

21:15 In the off-season, where you’re building more strength, you’re building more muscle, you’re building your body up, your diet’s somewhat still restricted, but you’re eating quite a lot of food. When you’re getting ready for a contest and you’re trying to strip the body fat down and maintain as much muscle mass as you can, which is basically a contradictory goal. And so you’ve got to restrict your calories whilst most athletes, if they’re going to train harder for a competition or do more training, they’re going to eat more.

21:44 That’s natural, right? With bodybuilding, you’re doing more training. You’re doing more cardio exercise. You’re still training hard with the weights and everything. But you’ve got to eat less food.

21:53 So every instinct in your body is telling you, you must eat. And you’re saying, no, I’m not. So it’s a challenge, which I always enjoy the challenge. So that’s the toughest part. That’s what separates the men from the boys.

22:06 You see a lot of big guys walking around, but how many guys, big guys get into shape and win contests? That’s a different matter. That’s tough, and that’s, you know, you’ve got to have a really firm goal in order to be able to deny the short-term pleasures. That’s pretty much the advice I give to people. You must have a goal if you’re going to give up, you know, you’re going to be able to give up the short-term kind of pleasures and so on for the long-term goal.

22:34 Of course, most people are not competitive bodybuilders. A lot of people go to the gym, I just think you need to have a goal in mind, whatever that is. You wanna lose a bit of fat, you wanna build muscle, you wanna put 10 pounds on your bench press. It’s always good to have those goals in mind and that pretty much goes anything you do in life. Things I’ve learned from bodybuilding and discipline and so on, you can apply that to anything, to business, to run into anything in life.

22:58 And you’re a big fan of writing goals down and being specific about the goals. Absolutely, I started training bodybuilding back in 83 and I retired in 1997 from competitive bodybuilding and I’ve got every workout written down from 1983 to 1997, every single workout and I got them all in exercise books and everything, it was funny because I was showing them to my son about a year ago and showing like this is what I did, you know, I could see every workout and also writing down all the different diets I did. If I change my workouts, I would do one thing at a time, so I can analyse, is this good or is this bad?

23:35 If it works, I keep it, if it didn’t, I throw it out, and eventually I’ve got a game plan together, you know? Is that expression, that that is measured, improves? And I guess you’re the living embodiment of that, right? Yeah, you know, if it ain’t broke, I won’t fix it. Keep it, if it’s broke, throw it out and don’t worry about it, you know?

23:51 Just move along. I was reading Schwarzenegger’s autobiography recently, and he said when he first started lifting. Seeing the way different people would lift really helped him out a lot because he would think I can only do this and he’d see a guy blast through you know 10 more reps than he thought or an extra hundred kilos on the calf raise and he’d be like that’s an aha moment but these guys were all together in Venice Beach pushing each other. Now you got you in Birmingham in the middle of nowhere without a lot of outside you know stimulus. How do you come up with the system and how do you get all these ideas? I think because I’m very much an individual and perhaps that’s why bodybuilding and appealed to me, and you’re not on a team, right?

24:28 It’s just you. And Birmingham was not a big bodybuilding town, as you can imagine. So there was only a couple of little gyms there, and a few guys that were competing, and so on.

24:43 But I was confident enough to educate myself by reading as many books as I could on nutrition, on training, and then going to the gym and actually trying things out. And I picked it up pretty good. If something wasn’t working, I could sense it quite quickly. And of course, all the guys in the gyms who are older than me and more experienced than everything at the time were like, what the hell are you doing? This kid doesn’t know what he’s doing.

25:08 He’s, you know. But I wasn’t swayed by that. I just stuck to my guns, and the results spoke for himself. He didn’t have a coach, really. I didn’t have a coach.

25:19 It’s quite popular now to have a coach and a nutritionist and all this kind of stuff. But for me, that was the fun part of it, is learning. It’s your body. If you listen to it, really nobody should know better than you, because you’re living inside it. So you should be able to sense which kind of training works better for you, and nutrition and everything.

25:39 Not to say that you shouldn’t listen to other people. I listened to a lot of people. But I took what I could, and ultimately I decided whether this was working or not working. So having a coach was not something I would be comfortable with, because I couldn’t just follow blindly what somebody else did. Other people, they want that, and they need that, and they’re like that, you’re going to train on this day, you’re going to do this, and you’re going to eat that.

26:02 And they feel that they’re an athlete, and they’re going to do their job, and the coach is going to tell them what to do. And of course, Americans are much used to that, because at school you have a coach for basketball, football, or whatever. So it was a little bit different. And that’s very popular now to have a coach. But for me, the whole appeal was this is an individual sport and I’ll be successful or I’ll fail.

26:25 It’ll be down to me. A lot of people were intimidated by the Americans, quote unquote, right? Yeah, when I started, everyone was like, shh. They’re talking to me as if these guys had 10 arms and 10 legs or something. They’re like me and you, they’re from the States and they have better gyms there.

26:44 They have access to better nutrition and supplements and so on. Not so much now. Now it’s more even. But back then there was a big difference. But they’re men. They’ve got two arms, two legs, and they’re like me and you, and they lift weights. And why not? And so I didn’t accept that. And then it was when I got to be British champion, so I was the best guy over here. And that qualified me to be a professional and go and compete in the States against the big guys over there in the professional ranks and I didn’t get much positivity then it was like oh okay so now you’re kind of on a par physically with them but there’s a lot of politics involved and you know you don’t know the judges your pictures never been in America magazine nobody knows you all this is gonna go against you so if I’d have listened to that and take that as gospel it probably it probably would against gone against me or I’ve gone with the wrong attitude but my attitude was well I’m gonna go I’m going to be the best that I can be, and if I’m really that good, it can’t hide me away somewhere.

27:50 People are going to notice, they’re going to see, it’s going to be obvious, you know. I went to my first professional show in New York, and it was the first time I’ve been to the States as well, you know. When I was training in Birmingham, when I was in my early 20s, I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have money for a car. I didn’t have money for nothing.

28:05 I spent half the day on the public transport, going from the gym to work and back again, And all that time I was just dreaming about what I could do with my physique and what I could, you know, how I could win and everything. Anyway, I went to the States in New York and there was a big line up there. I think it was 26, 27 guys and a lot of guys who are well known their publicity in the magazines and all that stuff. And I was there for five minutes and the New York crowd, well, they were known to be very vocal.

28:35 You know, they’re not shy people in New York, right? So I was wondering, like, you know, how’s the crowd going to be and stuff? Within five minutes from nobody in the auditorium knowing my name, I guess, you know, we walked out and the whispers went round and after five minutes, people must have known what the name was because I started to hear Dorian, Dorian, Dorian. That was amazing, you know, for me, coming from the UK and not really know what to expect and all that stuff.

29:04 So at the end of the day, I got second place there out of 26 guys and a lot of experienced professionals. So I kind of spat out to myself and said, you know what, it’s all bullshit. And I’m like, if you’re good enough, you’re good enough, right? Of course, there’s politics and this and that. It’s part of life, right?

29:20 But if you’re good enough, you know, can you rise to the top, rise to the top, man? Is bodybuilding fairly transparent? I mean, if you got the 27 guys on stage, I mean, will the best guy ultimately win or place in the top three? You know, who is the best guy? It’s a matter of opinion, right?

29:36 Because it’s subjective. You have seven people judging there. And what they’ll do is they’ll have seven scores, and then they’ll eliminate the highest and the lowest. So you end up with five scores from five people. And we have a criteria for the judging process.

29:57 You know, it’s bodybuilding, so you’re looking for, obviously, looking for muscle mass. but the muscle mass should be proportionate. So it should be proportionately distributed. And of course, contest condition in bodybuilding means very low body fat, extremely low body fat. What kind of percentages are we talking about?

30:16 You know, I’m not sure that there’s really an accurate way to measure body fat. I think underwater weighing is probably the most accurate, but I never had access to that. We used to use skin fall calipers, but I found once you get below a certain level, They don’t read that well anyway. And ultimately, it’s like you’ve got judges and the crowd sitting here and looking at you on stage. So they don’t know what your body fat is.

30:40 They can’t measure it. But I would guess that my body fat was somewhere around getting down to 3%. It was super low. I remember a couple of concerts when I was a professional at first, I was walking around backstage. And backstage is a wooden floor like this, right?

30:57 And literally, my feet were really hurting me and I was limping and people were like, you’re okay, dude, you’re cramping up or something, you’re dehydrated. I’m like, no, my fucking feet are killing me. And I couldn’t understand why my feet were really hurting me until I looked in and I saw there’s a fat pad under the heel and under the ball of your feet, there’s a pad there, like, you know, cushioning. And I guess my body fat was that low that this pad of fat on my feet was actually getting depleted.

31:25 It’s the same as that, dude. So dangerously low levels, aren’t there? Yeah, I mean, it’s a temporary thing, though. You’re not trying to maintain that for any period of time. That definitely wouldn’t be healthy.

31:37 You’re peaking for a contest. Probably take 12 or 14 weeks of specific dieting and training to get your body fat down to that level. And trust me, it doesn’t stay that long. It doesn’t stay that low for long, you know? I mean, a week after the contest, most guys have gone up 10, 15 pounds easily.

31:54 What was the one meal that you looked forward to the most, or was the one you always wanted to eat the most at the end of the conference? Yeah, there was nothing exotic. It was usually a really good steak, which was, you know, most of the contests were in a state, so you can always find a good steak there right now. Here you can’t, but in the states you can. Good basic steak and fries and a good ice cream and stuff like that, you know.

32:16 But that’s what I had, but you know, your mind pays tricks with you. And I used to fantasize about all kind of strange food that never really would eat. Or even when I finished my diet, I didn’t, I don’t want it now. But you know, because I guess because you’re dietary fat and taking so on so low that you start craving spicy, fatty foods and stuff. And I used to have dreams like I remember one day waking up and just in a panic in the middle of the night because I had a dream that I went downstairs and ate a load of sausages.

32:46 I thought, no, I didn’t really, did I? It was impossible. I don’t have sausages in the house but that’s the kind of tricks your mind plays on you and nighttime is very tough when you’re dieting for a bodybuilding contest because it’s hard to sleep properly because basically you go to sleep, your body wakes, if your blood sugar drops below a certain level, it’s like an alarm system, you’ve got to wake up, you’ve got to eat so the sleep is very, it’s kind of broken sleep because you get that throughout the night.

33:13 What’s your diet like when you’re cutting, like those last four weeks? Keep in mind that when I was competing I was around 260-270 pounds, so if I looked at my diet that I was eating for a contest, it’s probably more calories than I eat on a daily basis right now, but we’re talking about 4,000 calories, but in the off season I’ll be like 6-7,000 calories, so it’s quite a drop gradually from that level, and of course you carry massive amounts of muscle tissue and you’re working out and everything so there’s a lot of demand on your body but it’s over a period of time I generally tried to lose two or three pounds a week over about 12 weeks or something like that you know typical diet was mainly lean proteins like ed whites chicken breasts protein shakes maybe a lean beef those are the protein sources and then the fats were fairly low some carbohydrates from oatmeal brown rice and a lot of vegetables, obviously broccoli, spinach, things like that. A little bit of fruit, but not too much. Hey Darren, you know, sooner or later Brian and I had to bring this up. You tweeted out on a couple of days ago that you were going to pull no punches on the show. And we’re not sensationalist people. We’re not going to try and trick you, but we really would like an honest account of steroid use in bodybuilding. No problem, man. Can you tell us about it? Can you tell us What you use can tell us what the guys are using nowadays. I mean is there anything you’d like to start? Okay. I mean, I think

34:51 The first mr. Olympia was 1965 I believe Larry Scott won the first mr. Olympia in 1965 and Larry Scott’s on record Saying that he used steroids for that So steroids have been used in bodybuilding and and other sports since the early 60s one of the Earliest steroids available is Dyna ball, and this was actually produced for the US athletes You know because the Eastern Bloc had their their their had their equivalent So the US developed this and that’s that’s pretty much how it got Developed and you know what our steroids first of all and how do they work?

35:33 You know steroids are derivatives of testosterone, which is a male hormone gives you your male characteristics but it also has ability to build and repair tissue. So they give it to, they used to give it to people, for instance, in hospital situations, if they got burns and so on, because the tissue is damaged and it needs help to repair more quickly. So that’s what bodybuilders use steroids for, athletes, any athletes where increased speed and strength is required, trust me, they are using them.

36:06 Yeah, just that bodybuilders is maybe more of a minor sport with, we don’t have major sponsors that we need to, you know, keep happy and all that kind of stuff. So we can be more open about it and just say, oh yeah, we use them. But trust me, they’re using other sports, maybe not as much in some sports, but they use, you’ve got people that are in a competitive sport, you’ve got competitive people and they’re going to do whatever is required to perform the best in their sport.

36:35 So steroids are a derivative of testosterone, a male hormone, so what the scientists tried to do is minimise the masculine effects and maximise the anabolical, the repair building effects of testosterone, that’s what steroids are basically, and yeah, they’ve been used in bodybuilding, they’ve been used in track and field and American football and baseball and whatever, all these sports, they’ve been used since the mid 60s, early 60s, so there’s There’s nothing new under the sun here. And you know, you’re able to train harder and recover more quickly. I think, you know, your body gets to a point with training where to increase the response you’ve got to, you know, increase the training and make it more stressful, more stressful.

37:25 It gets to a point where your body just kind of plateaus because it can’t recover from this stress anymore. So it just plateaus because it’s, you know, your body’s intelligent, right? If I keep responding, this guy keeps going to stress, I mean, it’s going to be never ending. So at some point it’s going to find a balance and just, you know, going to respond anymore. And that’s where steroids work.

37:44 They can get you over that barrier because your body, you know, you’re increasing your body’s ability to recover from the stress. So you know, a lot of people look at bodybuilders and I look at these guys, they just take steroids because we look so different, you know, you know, huge muscle mass veins and no body fat for competition. We don’t look that all the time. That’s a competition look. But because we look so different, it’s obvious you can point a finger and say, look at this guy.

38:09 He takes steroids. Well, a little skinny 10-stone guy that zips around mountains all day long, and he tore to France. He looks like a normal dude walking down the street. But trust me, those guys are used as much pharmaceuticals as any other sport. So they’re used in all sports, pretty much.

38:26 It’s just the degrees. Well, I’m really interested in both the positive and the negative effects. When you were in hard competition training and you were doing cycles of deco or deannable, wherever it was you were using, I know you wanted, it’s my understanding, I don’t know if it’s true, I’d like your answer. You were one of the first bodybuilders to experiment with growth hormone and? Well, I don’t think so.

38:48 I used growth hormone in the early 90s and it’d been used before that. Oh, okay, okay. I don’t really think so. Growth hormone’s another thing. Growth hormone can increase muscle mass and minimize body fat, but it’s not, just because of the name, growth hormone, It sounds like it’s, you know, um, but combined with steroids, I think it took everything to a different level, you know, Schwarzenegger and those guys in the seventies, they were just using steroids when the growth hormone came in.

39:15 I think it allowed people to get, uh, you know, to help them to get to a higher level. Perhaps it had an influence, but not, not huge. Okay. So, I mean, I’m quite interested to know, like you’re, you’re in your competition phase, you’re putting this stuff in your body and I mean, personally, I don’t make any judgments on that. I think you had, you did what you had to do to peak in your sport.

39:34 I’d just like to know what kind of things you experienced, obviously became bigger and stronger and you healed more quickly, but were there any negatives? Did you ever get bad mood swings or what? You know, I guess every drug there’s negatives, but I can only speak from personal experience. For me, I took steroids on and off, you know, on and off from when I was competing at amateur competitions, you know, British Championship level, up into a professional level from 85 to 97 when I retired.

40:07 So that’s 12 years of fairly consistent use. And of course, athletes don’t use the recommended dose of steroids. They use way more than their recommended dose. But I can say in all that period of time, I did probably get some side effects like water retention, So Macne, yes, your aggression levels definitely are higher, but it depends what you do with that aggression. I took it out, I utilized it for my training in the gym.

40:38 You’re more positive, you’re more aggressive. That’s great for training. But if you’re out somewhere and you have a few pints and you’re in a club or something, it’s probably not a good thing. And I’ve seen people that work in that environment work on the doors and things like that. They get themselves into trouble because of this.

40:55 But it varies, again, from one person to another. We all know that alcohol can make people lower their inhibitions and make them more aggressive. And one guy can have a few points and turn into a total aggressive asshole. Somebody else could be totally chilled. So it depends on the individual.

41:12 Because the mainstream media would have us believe that you cycled steroids for 12 years. I mean, you should have a horn growing out of your forehead now, but you look like a relatively healthy guy. You look better than my dad than when he was 15. got to say of any pharmaceutical drugs that you could take for 12 years, way over the dosage that’s recommended, that’s going to be a very mild drug. I mean, this is a hormone, you know. I got a friend who is now looking at a kidney transplant and because he destroyed both of his kidneys through his bodybuilder and I asked him, no, it wasn’t through steroids. I don’t know anybody that’s had you know you’d have to really really super abuse it and take the pissed before you get any anything severe side effects this guy is talking about having a kidney transplant and losing his kidneys because he took neurofen and neurofen is over-the-counter drug you know if you get a bottle of aspirin from the pharmacy now and drink that and take a whole bottle of aspirin they’ll burn through your stomach lining you’ll die you know neurofen this to destroy the guy’s kidneys and these are things you can get over the counter you know so that kind of puts it in perspective a little bit I think so hypothetical scenario you mentioned you have a son he came to you and said dad like I’m thinking of doing a cycle would I mean you’d be cool with that well he’s 20 years old so that’s already happened yeah absolutely I mean if if you decide

42:41 I tell people look if you’re thinking about it look at all the facts get as much information as you can factual information I mean when I started doing it in the mid 80s there were a couple underground books that are out there I mean photocopied underground steroid book from Dan Duchenne that was probably the only thing out and then there was another book anabolic steroids in sports by dr. James Wright who I’m both these guys I actually met as well that was about it I mean there’s no internet no you know there’s there’s just gym rumors and stuff and actually back in the 80s we were very cautious because we did think shit this stuff you know I’ve heard it can damage your liver and all all these things and I was very lucky they had a doctor that supervised all my blood tests and everything throughout the years and he there was nothing ever anything in those blood tests for results for him to show any concern and say hey you know you’ve got to give it a break or you should stop doing this and everything, but if you’ve ever seen a film called Super Size Me about a guy that ate McDonald’s three times a day, after he did that for two weeks, his blood results were so off the chart his doctor was begging him to stop. So two weeks of eating McDonald’s three times a day was much worse than me taking steroids for 12 years. Did you ever have a hard time sourcing them? Did that ever affect your training? No, no, no. It was, you know, they were freely available back in the

44:08 Eighties and nineties and there’s less availability now because in the eighties and nineties what you had was steroids that were produced by legitimate pharmaceutical companies and there was a lot on you know floating around now that’s pretty much dried up and all the steroids available now more at least the great majority of them they’re black market they’re underground so they’re made in underground labs. They might be good they might not be. I was never trying to get huge you know but just naturally huge. It just seems so dangerous because it’s like in this sport and in many sports people are going to take them because they’re competitive but there’s you know there’s no science there’s no direction you’re getting them from the guy in the locker room and then you’re tripling it because you’re an intense competitive person And then what’s the solution to that problem?

45:04 I mean, there’s a bigger problem now because you don’t know really what you’re getting. I mean, it’s usually, I guess they’re made in sterile circumstances most of the time, but it’s not a pharmaceutical company, so you can never be sure of that. And because it’s not controlled and it’s a profit business, then of course people are gonna be cutting corners and they’re probably not getting, some of the doses that I hear about people taking now, I mean, it just freaks me out.

45:31 It’s scary. But then I’m thinking, are they really taking that much? Because perhaps what they’re taking is only a 50% strength or something. Perhaps that explains it. Just to me, it’s another example of how government intervention and crackdown fucks things up.

45:45 The war on drugs just made shittier drugs, like, you know what I mean, through underground sources. If everything was just regulated and you were taxed on your steroids the same way you could be regulated and taxed on the marijuana joint you buy in Amsterdam. It would be a way better system for everyone. It would be way better if all drugs were non-criminalized. Yeah, I agree with you.

46:04 Well, they take away a lot of problems. How do you think it should be treated in other sports, like the Tour de France you were talking about earlier, Olympics? I mean, do you think we need to get to a point in the future where steroids are allowed, and they’re regulated and tested? My opinion is that, yeah, the guys should be able to do what they want to do. Because the media is like pointing fingers at people and look at this guy as a cheat, you know, but how is he a cheat when everyone else is on the same playing field, you know, on the same level. And you know, Lance Armstrong now, you know, what a tremendous individual that is. And now he’s getting his name, they’re trying to drag it through the mud because he used EPO and stuff to, you know, what so is everybody else using it. So, so what I had that realization the other day that came out about Lance and I was like, Oh, he’s on drugs. And then I woke up the next day And I was like, so was everyone else.

46:56 And he got up the hill. But he’s still the champion, right? Because he pushed himself. And we’ve got this saying in bodybuilding, if you took the steroids away, the guy that’s number one would still be number one. He might be 20 pounds lighter, but he’d still be better than the other guys.

47:10 So it’s like whatever percent it gives you, it gives it to everybody. I mean, I think very few people are training in their particular sport. And I think, oh, steroids are going to be the answer for me. What happens is they reach the plateau you spoke of, They take steroids so that they can train harder so that they can do more work. Well, you know when I started in the sport in the 80s Anyone that was taking steroids at that point was a serious competitive bodybuilder And you know, it’s something you considered seriously. I didn’t take any for like until I was doing my first competition, you know, I wanted to learn about training or learning about nutrition and You know get something out of it now There’s way more people that takes steroids now it goes across all sections of society you know you see people in the movies now that obviously are on using steroids people in hip-hop you know it’s fashionable learn to have a physique these guys are all high school kids I got people that come in my gym they never ever have any intention of going in into a bodybuilding contest but they just see it as a as a shortcut to to get the physique and the look that they want to get you know personally my advice would be unless you competing I wouldn’t really consider it but times have changed now and now it’s you know everybody knows about steroids right one of our fans asked about some of the weeder magazines the muscle magazines and how they they give

48:34 Training advice but they don’t ever make reference to the drugs it’s almost like this big elephant that’s in the room when they read these magazines but isn’t that the same with all the sports like you know don’t we watch the Olympics and pretend it’s all, you know, it’s all good and, you know, nobody’s using any drugs or anything unless they get a positive drug test. Yeah, I just… That’s not the case. I think it’s, for me, it’s quite a difficult thing because, you know, when you’re a young kid and you’re 15 and you’re reading a bodybuilding magazine and you read how Ronnie Coleman is doing 30 super sets, you know, but he’s taking this whey protein.

49:12 And then you want to go and emulate that, and you wonder why you can’t walk for three Three days afterwards, it doesn’t explicitly say, Ronnie Coleman is also taking this stack of steroids, et cetera, et cetera. Well, that used to be the case, and now I write for a magazine called Muscular Development. It’s probably one of the biggest magazines in the sport, maybe bigger than what used to be the Weeder magazines, which were Flex and Muscular Fitness, and I got my column in there, and I think I’m the first guy, or I’m the only guy, professional, definitely the only Mr. Olympia that wrote, I wrote an article in there about steroids and was totally honest. I even listed what I used, how I used it, what my opinions were and everything because I thought, listen, you know, the best policy is just to be honest. But I understand the dilemma because the question I ask myself is if I’m totally honest and I put all this stuff down, am I going to be encouraging some kid that’s young, that shouldn’t be doing this year, but surely it’s better to just put it out there and people can make their own decisions, you know, and I was able to do that in the magazine where I had no problem with that.

50:19 Where in the past that would have been, you know, would have been a no-no, because the Weeder Empire wanted to present this image of bodybuilding and they didn’t want us to talk about steroids. You once said training, genetics, nutrition, steroids, in that order. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

50:41 Because, you know, without the training, let’s put it this way. If you sit on your ass at home and watch TV and take steroids, what’s going to happen? Nothing. You might get a bit bloated and hold a bit of water. Nothing’s going to happen.

50:54 But if you just trained and didn’t take any steroids and just ate a normal diet, something would happen, right? It would get some response. And so therefore, training is more important than steroids, you know? Because if you just trained and you didn’t take steroids, you would get some results. If you just took steroids and trained, you wouldn’t get any results.

51:11 You know, steroids don’t build muscle, you get that right. They repair damage. You’ve got to go to the gym to create that damage and lift some weights in the first place. Yeah, one of the quotes of yours that I read quite recently, I hadn’t read it before. You said that genetics can be broken through hard training.

51:29 Do you still believe that genetics can’t be broken you can’t change your genetics maybe there’s a misquote but a guy let’s say you’ve got a guy that’s that’s super gifted somebody is not as gifted as him can make up the difference through hard work yeah that’s that’s pretty much my point I’m sure there were guys that I competed against who had phenomenal physics but they were not anywhere near as dedicated as I was. Is that how I work them basically? I just outwork them, yeah.

52:00 If they worked as hard as me, and I’ve been recording and saying this, there’s a couple of guys that worked as hard as me and as dedicated as me and as consistent as me. I mean, it’s not just about training hard for a couple of months here. We’re talking about the results of consistency of 10 years of dedication, day in, day out. Absolutely getting the most out of each day. Every workout to be as good as it could be.

52:24 Every day in the nutrition to be as good as it could be, and to be eating at the right time, everything. I was fanatical about everything. So all those little things add up to making a big difference. So if my competitor’s not paying so much attention over a long period of time, that can make a difference. But not to mislead people here, it’s not like everybody that can be a competitive bodybuilding champion.

52:50 And this is where you get some of the frustration misinformation and misuse of steroids, because a lot of guys just think, well, if I take more stuff, I’ll look like that, you know. And these are the people that end up, you know, with potential problems, because the guys that win professional contests, these guys are all very genetically inclined to build in that kind of a zeap, you know, they’ve got genetic advantages, long muscle bellies, naturally low body fat, body structure that’s balanced, all these kind of things. you can’t get that from an injection or from a tablet.

53:26 You can get bigger, but there’s a lot of big guys around, but they don’t win contests because they’re not balanced. What are your thoughts on the idea that’s floating around the sport now that these guys have pushed it beyond a point where it’s aesthetically appealing and they just look grotesque? Do you have any opinion on that? Yeah, sometimes it can be. If the guys are not in proportion and they’re not in good condition, But then I think these guys don’t win contests.

53:56 There’s a lot of big lumps walking around. But to win a contest, you’ve got to be in shape. You have to have the proportions where everything’s balanced, and you’ve either got that or you haven’t really. Do you think the current state of bodybuilding is better or worse than when you left it? I have to say I think it’s worse, because I don’t think the guys now, now they are really looking to come into contest bigger and fuller and everything and they’re sacrificing the condition that perhaps we used to go for in the 90s although I was known for my muscle mass going into the contest I wanted to come in like shredded you know super low body fat separates and everything I didn’t want there to be any difference between me and a middle weight or a lightweight as far as the conditioning goes you know where now you’ve got big guys who are winning pro contests and you You can find guys who are in better shape in amateur contests.

54:48 I think if you’re the ultimate in your sport, you should be the best in every department, not just bigger and whatever. You should be bigger, you should be better balanced, and you should be in better condition. Brian, you know the thing that strikes me when we’re speaking to Doreen is just pursuit of excellence in every aspect of what he does. And it’s a common thing with the successful people that we interview, isn’t it? Yeah, I mean, he’s also a very, very intelligent guy.

55:14 I got off the phone the other night and I was just like, okay, this is a smart guy. And I just I was thinking about his diet like in the off season or sorry, in the on season. It doesn’t seem like it would be difficult for someone like you. You seem very focused and I was very focused. I knew what I wanted to do pretty well, you know, from the start, I wasn’t thinking, hey, I want to be Mr.

55:33 Olympia. That wasn’t the first thing. But I actually came into the gym. I want to compete. I want to do this as a sport.

55:41 This is not to impress my friends, or impress the girls. None of that was a motivation. Because if you look at my physique, I’ve got shots of my physique about six months after I started training. And everyone’s like, I’d like to look like that. A lot of people are like, I prefer to look like that than you did in a contest.

56:00 Because this is perfect. This is all I need. So if I wanted a physique, an impressive physique with good amadonna, I had that already. So I didn’t go into this sport because I wanted to get bigger because I was being picked on, or I wanted to impress the girls. And none of that was a motivation.

56:18 My motivation was like, this is a challenge, and I want to do this, and I want to do it like a sport. And I always approached it as an athlete, as a sportsman, which was a little bit unique, I think. Did you ever get tired of your training? I mean, you did this six times in a row and won Mr. Olympia.

56:34 I know you had some injuries at the end. You can talk about those. But was there a point where you just lose interest? I find that anyone has a passion for something, that passion has a half-life. Yeah, well, I’ve got to be honest, 97 was my last competition at the Mr. Olympia.

56:50 And I got a very severe injury a few weeks out. I tore the tendon, detached the tendon from my elbow. But I do remember earlier in my preparation for this contest, I was starting to think to myself, man, this is starting to feel like a job. This is starting to feel like a chore now, where before it was total passion, drive and passion. want to, hey, this is exciting. Like, how far can I take this?

57:12 You know, how, you know, how far can the human body go? How far can I take my body? Like, I’m in uncharted territory here, because at the time, no one had gone there and done that, you know. So that was all exciting. But it was starting to get a bit old. And because of the way I approach things, it was absolute 100%. I didn’t ever go out to a nightclub and drink alcohol. I didn’t ever go to the movies with my wife if it finished after 11 because I had to be home and eat my meal at 11.30. I had to be in bed at 12. I mean this was for 10 years this approach no let up even after the competition some guys would take a month off even two months and not even go to the gym when I was in there next week you know so it was intense and I guess nobody can keep that up forever so it was time to get a little bit old the last year and then Then I got the injury, which was very severe, and I had surgery and so on after that contest.

58:11 Went back into training to see, you know, how things were like, and I had to be honest with myself, like, this is really affecting my training now, one side of my body, I already had one injury on this side, now I had another one. The training was, you know, I wasn’t going to be able to do it, and I didn’t want to try to do it with one arm literally almost tied by my back, and go to the contest and then get beaten by somebody who probably wasn’t as good as me, but just because I wasn’t able to be at my best. You did something that very few athletes do, which is you left at the top of your game.

58:43 Yeah, fortunately. And the thing for me, though, was it was a bit traumatic because it wasn’t a choice. It wasn’t planned. Everything else I’d done was strategic. It was planned, the contest, when I should do it.

58:56 It was planned out, it was military, you know? And here, boom, like, what are you gonna do now, you know? But perhaps I’m philosophical about it. Perhaps that had to happen because my life had to change a direction. It was very limited.

59:12 So yes, I won the Mr. Olympics six times. And it’s a huge part of my life. But there is other things in life. And at that point, I wasn’t into anything else.

59:24 I was in a tunnel. Yeah, I mean, your mommy was speaking to you. I have a very good friend who is a young kid, 22 years old, physique, like nothing you’ve ever seen before, huge into bodybuilding. But I sometimes wonder that it’s maybe it controls him. I mean, we’d go to a movie, and he’d have chicken breasts in his pocket wrapped in tinfoil.

59:48 And it’s where do you draw the line in this self-discipline, but where is the point where it’s no longer fun? Yeah, I remember me and the guys, We used to go to the movies and stuff, and it was funny because when I went to the movies, I didn’t want to take my chicken breast, and I wanted some popcorn and a cornetto, like everybody else. So sometimes I let my hair down, but that was about it.

1:00:15 But it depends on what your goals are. Very quickly, I got to be the best guy in the country here, and then to be professional and go and compete in America. So there’s motivation there to restrict yourself like that and everything. If this is your career, if this is your business and everything, then you can justify it. But I see a lot of people doing it and neglecting everything, neglecting their jobs, their family, relationships, all these things begin to suffer.

1:00:44 And I’m like, well, why are you doing that? Because you’re never going to win a contest. Or if you do, it’s going to be a Mr. whatever, Mr. Birmingham or something.

1:00:53 It’s not going to change your life man, is it worth it? So you know, individuals have to answer that question themselves but it was a checkpoint for me where I won the British Championship here and then you get your professional status, go compete in America in my first professional contest. And I didn’t really tell anybody but I had this in my mind, I’m going to go to this professional contest and I took a good period of time out like 18 months from my British championship win to train for this first pro show so I’m taking time out I’ve got time here I’m giving it my best shot listen if I don’t get in that top five of that contest then it’s telling me mate you haven’t got what it takes yeah you’re not gonna get 10th place one year and then next year you’re gonna win historically you look at the competitions the guys who are really good they’re usually really good from the start it’s apparent so I put myself under that that kind of pressure. And to be honest, is it worth the sacrifice? Is it worth the sacrifice of the people around you? Is it worth the sacrifice because you’re not having time and energy to put into business and to other things and so on? So I was like, if I don’t get in the top five of this contest, then that shows me I don’t really honestly have the potential to be a top professional. So I won’t compete anymore. Of course I will train and I had had a gym at the time, I had my gym in Birmingham, and I was like, this doesn’t work out, I’m

1:02:20 Going to train and everything like that, but I’m going to maybe open more gyms or something. That takes time, and that takes focus, and that takes energy. History shows I got second place and went from there. The next year I won the night of champions, I got second place in the Mr. Olympia, and then the year after that I won. But yeah, I was trying to be honest with myself and say, hey, look, if you haven’t got what it takes, then you might as well chill out and just enjoy the training and open some more gyms or do something like that, you know?

1:02:50 What was your 1998 and 1999 like, you know? Man, it was tough, you know, really tough mentally because I’m getting in the morning and what do I do now? What’s my motivation? I’m going to the gym in the morning like I always used to, but what’s after that? It was like, you know, fortunately I was able to get into a business and be involved in that, in the supplement business with a partner here in the UK. So I had something to go to, you know, and financially you got money coming in, but it’s not the same. You know, this all-consuming thing as an athlete, I came to the conclusion that a lot of people seek to replace that. And I know a lot of top, I mean, high level super, you’re talking about Sugar Ray Leonard here and people like that.

1:03:46 Frank Bruno as well. And a lot of people get into the whole drugs thing. And I got the theory on that because they’re looking for that high, that thing that you got from competition. But I realized pretty quickly, you’re not going to replace that. You cannot replace that because it is what it is.

1:04:01 Yeah. And certainly drugs are not going to do it for you. So I changed my hey, instead of crying about like, I’m not doing this anymore. How about the one million and one things you can do now, you know, you got time now And this is the way people need to think dude You know what I mean anyone whose life isn’t working this is the way they need to think and you know life changes, right? nothing stays the same and You can be stubborn if you want and try and fight against the energies of the universe or whatever that’s telling you to go That way, but you want to go this way and you’re just gonna end up hurting yourself and being frustrated man You’ve got to go with the flow. So I’m a totally different person now from the guy that was competing, that was a one-dimensional person because all I concentrated on, all I thought about and all I knew was this sport.

1:04:54 Of course I’m aware of other things going around but it’s a tremendous focus and kind of tunnel vision that you get and then you come out of the tunnel and then you’ve got to find your balance, your way back in life and that did take me a few years to do that to be honest. Speaking of energies of the universe, you told us just before this show started that you drank ayahuasca in the jungle in Brazil, which absolutely blew my mind. I never would have thought that you would have done that.

1:05:21 Would you be willing to speak? Yeah, sure. I mean, I went through a period of time, almost perhaps like a mental, spiritual, and emotional crisis coming out of this whole competitive bodybuilding thing. And of course, I’m looking for answers, And I become curious about the whole thing, actually. I started reading religion, reading a lot of stuff, and I started questioning a lot of things.

1:05:44 And I guess I had time as well, because I had made nothing like, normally you’re wrong here. We’re not talking soccer, play figures here, right? But I made some decent money from the sport, and I was able to kick back for a little bit. And I think question the nature of reality and what life’s all about and everything. There’s a big question we should all be asking pretty much all the time.

1:06:10 Brian and I are asking it all the time. You’ve got to be asking this question all the time. What we’re here, what we’re doing, what’s it all about, you know? All this kind of stuff. So I realize that the nature of reality and whatever that’s projected to us through religion, through education, through the media and everything, a lot of it’s just bullshit.

1:06:31 It’s false. And the real reality is nothing like most people think. So one of the things on this journey that I did, I went to Brazil, actually met my future wife over there. And we went on a trip down the Amazon in Brazil. And I had the opportunity there to try Alaska, which is a plant over there that they used in ceremonies, shamans in the Indian.

1:07:03 But if you look in ancient cultures all around the world, every ancient culture has a plant that they use in ceremonies and they used to communicate, if you like, with the spirit world. There’s a world beyond what we can see and touch here. This is nothing. This is just a minute slice of reality. But this is the only thing we can see in here.

1:07:24 And this is the only thing that we’re aware of here. But ancient cultures know there’s a lot more. And there’s a way to get them. There’s a way to transport yourself there. So every culture, whether it be mushrooms, ayahuasca, there’s tons of plants that ancient cultures use in order to do this.

1:07:44 And I tried ayahuasca in Brazil. And I’ve got to be honest, it was like something I would never do again. It made me as sick as you can. I mean, this stuff was just like drinking paint stripper. It was just to get it down was a chore, you know?

1:08:00 And I was, you know, the guy that gave me was an Indian. He said, listen, man, he said, you’re going to throw up. He said, when I took it, I threw up. I shit myself and everything. So I just met my future wife.

1:08:10 And I said, look, I’m going to take this stuff now. And she said, oh, I’ll look after you. I said, probably going to puke and shit myself. So if you still fancy me after this, it’s going to be on. So yeah, she looked after baby sat me on it.

1:08:24 Slept or laid out on a kind of a beach on the Amazon there and took this stuff. But as far as revelations and hearing things and seeing things, I didn’t get too much. I was quite disappointed, to be honest. And then I looked more into this. And what I realized is all these plants, all these plants contain the material that’s the active material and that’s called DMT. Now your body produces DMT. You’ve got a gland in your brain called the pineal gland that releases DMT every night. When you go to sleep, you go to dream, you transport it to a different world basically. And apparently when you die then your body releases massive amounts of this. So in the end after a few years, quite recently like last year I was able to get pure DMT powder and smoke that and this just I mean this is just a direct route straight to the spirit world and you know it’s not something that’s the easiest to describe the experience there it’s just you got to kind of do it yourself. What do you take away from those DMT experiences? Ah tremendous amount of information that you get in and when When you go there, you go to a place that’s full of energy and it’s colors, it’s numbers, it’s geometric shapes, and what you realize is that everything is connected.

1:09:55 The thing that I got is everything is one, and one is everything. Everything is connected, and we’re all part of it, you know, and we feel like individuals, we’re all part of the collective just experiencing itself. You know, your infinite consciousness experienced itself through Brian. I am through Dorian and so on and so on and so on. I realize we’re all connected and sometimes it’s, you know, in this world, in this reality, it’s hard for me to believe because I see some people and I think, how is he connected to me?

1:10:27 He’s just a nice, total prick, you know? He’s a total piece of shit. But it’s just because he doesn’t know and he’s so removed from what he is, you know? I guess that’s what it is, and that’s the biggest thing. I was spoken to by, if you want, by God, but it wasn’t.

1:10:45 It was me as well. It was like the higher me talking to me and telling me the biggest problem we have here really on this plane is the ego, you know? The ego gets in the way of everything, and the ego is not really you. The ego is just a construct we’ve formed in this. Was ego what built your whole career?

1:11:07 Probably. Initially, why would you want to be the best in the world at something? I guess it must be your ego. But the ego can get in the way of a lot of stuff. I mean, I don’t regret anything I did because it was tremendous for me.

1:11:23 But not only that, I’ve been able to touch a lot of people. Even talking about this, how many people are going to listen to this and think something and do something? It’s going to have an influence. So, you know, I got thousands of people, literally thousands and thousands of people around the world saying, Dorian, thank you. You know, you put me on a path, I went to the gym because of you, and because I went to the gym, it made me a better person, made me feel positive, and on and on and on and on.

1:11:49 So, and I actually feel a responsibility now with this position. You asked me about steroids, I feel a responsibility to be totally honest and to say how it is, and everything else that I know, I just gotta put it out there, And if it helps somebody, it helps them. It’s not going to hurt them. Maybe it’s time that your fans learn about ayahuasca, and DMT, and consciousness, and breaking down your ego. Maybe that’s your face, too.

1:12:15 Yeah, that’s the new message. I mean, I’m in a new place now. So I’m able to give new information. I wouldn’t have known this two years ago. At least I wouldn’t be able to speak as confidently about it, you know?

1:12:27 Brian, you know, I just have to say that this is one of the coolest days of my whole life. If you had told me five years ago that I’d be sitting with Dorian Yates talking about psychedelics, I would have said you were a star craving moon. Like, this has just been a long time. Let me go somewhere with this now. And because the pineal gland in your brain, which not a lot of people, I didn’t ask me 10 years ago what a pineal gland is.

1:12:52 It was a tiny gland in your brain. But there is a concerted effort to stop that functioning in everybody. because the powers that be the small group of people that control the world and control the nature of what we believe is reality, they know this is like our antennae to touch the spirit world, the real reality. And you can look it up, you can search it, you can find it on the internet. Pictures of the pineal gland that’s totally covered in a calcium-like deposit to stop it functioning.

1:13:28 And this is from the fluoride in the water, in the tap water. Not only is it stopping you from connecting with your higher self and functioning, it’s also a poison. So please, don’t drink the tap water. I never drink tap water. I don’t use it for cooking or in my kettle or anything.

1:13:48 During my second ayahuasca experience last year in London, I felt my third eye, my pineal gland, start to reactivate I could feel it like pulsing and it was I think was probably shedding the calcification. Exactly, I felt exactly the same thing I didn’t know what it was at first when I took DMT just before I go into a like you know you kind of sit back and go into a dreamlike state I mean you know when you take DMT same with Ayahuasca I can talk to you and you can respond you’re still in the room but you’re not you’re somewhere else as well. Why do you think these powers of B are doing that? Why do you think they’re trying to suppress the functioning of our pineal glands.

1:14:29 Because if we all realized how powerful we are and the nature of reality, we wouldn’t be so easy to control. And it’s all about control and controlling people. And, you know, if you’re a conscious person, you’re not going to go across the other side of the world and shoot somebody just because you’re getting paid, you know, you’re going to start questioning things, you’re going to start. They’re not going to be able to control people. if everybody was able to think freely and to realize, you know, what we are and who we are,

1:15:05 Would be uncontrollable. That’s why. There’s a concerted effort to dumb down a population. You can even see it with a TV and the magazines. It’s just all bullshit now.

1:15:14 X factor and who’s fucking who on magazines and shit. Who cares about that? That’s got to do. how about the children that just got blown up in Afghanistan and innocent people and what’s going on in Gaza Strip and everything. But they don’t, you don’t see that, you know, people, they’re just fed bullshit. Unless they really become conscious and ask questions and go out there and look, it’s not going to be fed to you through the mainstream, you know.

1:15:41 And everything that’s presented through the mainstream is accepted as reality. You know, a bomb, 9-11, Salman bin Laden did it. Oh, okay, then that’s the truth then. Well, no, if you look clearly, it’s total bullshit, you know? Brian, you said you were, you having thoughts on that?

1:15:58 Yeah, I try to think about this, and I mean, the only problem I have with conspiracy theories is I just wonder if there’s a secret number of people that can actually keep it quiet, but I do think that the reason that psychedelics- Well, there’s no conspiracy theory. Right. There’s a conspiracy fact, and it’s documented. If you care to look it up, you can find it. I think that what I think is that it’s not in the capitalistic interests of many of these companies, or even like Dorian said, the army, or all the people that sell McDonald’s and want you to get the better sneakers and want you to do all these things.

1:16:29 But once you start taking psychedelics, you start questioning being part of that Western consumer role. And I think the pharmaceutical companies and just everyone in general doesn’t have any interest economically. Dude, I’m holding back tears, I’m so proud of you. No, if we do that, that’s my theory. I just think that people kind of try to hang on to the businesses that they have.

1:16:48 Well, if I said to you that there is a cure for cancer, or in fact, there’s many cures for cancer that’s out there and freely available, how would you feel about that? I would listen. Because there are people out there, and they’re curing their own cancer. And the whole cancer industry is just, that’s what it is, it’s a massive industry. Why would you want to cure people?

1:17:16 Even the cancer charities are refused to have anything to do with them because it’s a business. You know, you’ve got a guy called Rick Simpson, Dr. Rick Simpson in the States, and he’s cured literally thousands of people. Guess what he’s cured them with? He can freak you out.

1:17:29 No, he’s cured with THC, which is active compound from marijuana. He breaks the plant down and concentrates it into oil and people that have terminal cancer. They’ve been told their terminal are being cured. I’m sure there’s other cures out there as well, but it’s not in their interest. If marijuana is a plant, you can’t pay attention to it. There’s no profit there.

1:17:52 You know, I don’t want to go too much on about ayahuasca. And we just did a big show, which I told my experience in Peru. But I’ve just come back from Peru, and there was a very clear message that was given to me during my fourth ceremony by the jungle. And it was saying that, where you come from, people are sick. The world is sick.

1:18:14 We’re sick because we’re disconnected, totally disconnected from where we should be, that’s what I think. And people got no idea what’s really going on or what’s the reality. Because their reality is fed to them through schools, religion, and media. And all those are controlled organizations. And I think it’s systematic.

1:18:40 How do we break that cycle? Do you have plans to try to educate people? Well, you know, I’m just being me. And I speak to a lot of people and do what I can do. And I just try to touch somebody with something that will spark something, will start them questioning things and looking for themselves, you know?

1:18:59 Because I’m not right about everything. And I don’t know everything. But I know things are not right. I always knew that. But I know it more clearly now.

1:19:07 The older I’m getting you know. Yeah it’s funny you’re talking about you look at the X Factor and all these things on TV and Nick said the other day when he saw one of those free papers in the tube it was just like he didn’t want to look at it because it’s like all this negativity. I look at it like a poisonous snake that’s trying to bite me. Like a poisonous snake because it wants to suck you in by trying to get in all this she did this and he did this and he did that and you know that’s why we do this show really we want to give people an option. Yeah what about your life what about your life instead of reading about other people’s bullshit lives. It’s bullshit anyway Because I can pick up one newspaper that says Jordan’s with this guy and then another one that says Jordan’s not with this guy I don’t give a fuck anyway, but you know, it’s just it’s just bullshit and when you read all when you read all that crap about Celebrities making up and breaking up and doing cocaine and all the chaos in their own lives You’re taking it in through your through your senses and then you start to repeat that same cycle and people wonder why They can’t hold a relationship or they wonder why there’s so much Well, these people are held up for us to admire. These are our role models. These are the idols, right? That’s what they’re supposed to be. I mean, what kind of role model is that? There’s much better things out there and unsung people who are doing good things, you know, I’d rather

1:20:19 Read about them. What’s next for you in the next year, five years? What keeps you excited? Well, I’m still involved in, you know, I’m still involved in bodybuilding a lot, actually, you know, still traveling around the world, speaking to people. I got my own nutrition line now, DY, Dorian Yates Nutrition. So we sell that all around the world. Last year I was in Brazil, Australia, Canada, you know, some places in the US, some other countries in Europe. You know, so I’m still traveling and meeting a lot of people and everything, which is exciting. And now when I’m traveling, if I can’t make it to a gym or if I have have to eat food that I don’t really… So what? So I can enjoy it now, actually.

1:21:03 One of the tremendous things I had through bodybuilding is actually the experience of being able to travel all around the world and have friends. I’ve got friends in Australia that can call, I can go there anytime. All around the world, it’s made me a more rounded person I was a guy from Birmingham you know and you’re only it depends what you’re exposed to you know and you’re gonna expose to a certain amount of thing if you stay in one place or with one you know one culture and one group of people but I’ve been all around the world and experienced different things I’m sure it’s had a huge effect on the way I look at things. What do you miss about the bodybuilding community and what don’t you miss? I don’t really miss anything because of the competitive thing I did that you know I love to train but I don’t do just bodybuilding train I don’t train real heavy I do a lot of circuits with weight so it’s kind of you know it’s cardio but it’s muscle building as well I do sometimes I would train with some martial arts guys some fighters and stuff and sometimes I do a bit more conventional bodybuilding but I love to train I love to go in the gym and train so I’ll always do that you You know, that’s the part of bodybuilding that I love, but to be honest, going to watch bodybuilding competitions and stuff like that, that’s not something that I choose to do anymore.

1:22:28 But you were always kind of removed from the, I mean, your nickname was The Shadow. Yeah. Can you explain that nickname? Well, The Shadow started because when I started competing in the mid-80s over here, and it could have been a marketing plan, I guess, a strategic plan, but it wasn’t. It’s just Dorian being Dorian.

1:22:50 I’m a more extrovert now, perhaps, and more confident and so on. But when I was a young guy, I was kind of introvert. So I wasn’t a guy who shouted about himself how great he was or went everywhere. And you’d know, if I walked in the room, I’d be the quiet guy. You wouldn’t really notice me that much.

1:23:10 And what I did is I trained, and I was getting better and better and better. There was no internet then, but it’s a small community, so a word gets round about it. This guy from Birmingham, I was a young kid, he looks great, and then I went to a competition and I won it. Actually went to a novice competition, it was a small one, but I went there and it just freaked people out. They’re like, what are you doing in this novice competition, you’re way too good.

1:23:35 I’m like, yeah, what’s my first show? And why aren’t you in the heavyweight class? I don’t think I’m good enough now, is it my first show, you know? Not good enough? You’re probably better than our best guy we’ve got right now.

1:23:48 I mean, where the hell did you come from, you know? And then I disappear again. Go back to the gym. Nobody to hear anything from me. Just go back to the gym and train and train and train.

1:23:59 And of course, there’s rumors, but nobody knows. And boom, then I turn up at the next competition, blow everyone away, and off again, go back to my gym and just isolate myself. And I did the same thing as a professional. I went to America. I thought, what the hell?

1:24:13 Who’s this guy from England? What the hell? Boom, went back to England. Don’t know anything, can’t see me, you know? So it was like a genius masterful marketing ploy.

1:24:27 It was a genius psychological plan to psych out my competition. But it wasn’t. It was just me being me. And when you get to professional ranks, especially in the 90s, the whole thing was really around Gold’s Gym in Venice, California. That’s where all the pros trained and lived.

1:24:44 When there was this huge community there. So these guys could see each other every day. Brian’s not looking that good. He looks a bit fat, what do you think? You know, it’s kind of, Dorian, we don’t know anything about him.

1:24:56 Like, and that’s kind of scary. Like, is he looking good? Is he looking, what’s happening? I don’t know, nobody knows, you know, like that kind of thing. That’s cool.

1:25:04 So, you know, it wasn’t a strategy, but it was just me being me, but it did have an effect, you know? You know, Brian, I think I’m gonna start calling you the shadow from never answering your text message. It’s such a cool name, you know. How many head games go on backstage when you go to these competitions? Well, you know, you had the pumping iron film, right?

1:25:22 I don’t know if you’ve seen that with Arnold in there. And that’s just like dramatized for the movie, right? You know, I guess this whole thing could be a bit boring to an outsider. So they tried to put a drama in there. But not much, really.

1:25:38 Excuse me. Because by the time you get to the competition, look, you’re either got the goods or you don’t. It doesn’t matter what I say or do or whatever. But still, I had my way of doing things. I remember I competed in the first Mr. Olympic competition against Lee Haney.

1:25:56 Now Lee Haney was Mr. Olympic when I started training. And now I’m competing against this guy. So cool.

1:26:04 But I changed my point of view at that point to when I got there, who’s no longer Lee Haney, my idol. It was Lee Haney, the guy I want to beat now. But I do remember being backstage there and pumping up and everything, and he was close to me, you know? And he had his, still had his track top on, and he was pumping up and everything. Oh, looking over.

1:26:23 Then he took off his track top, with his back facing me. And I was like, oh, shit, you know? So I was like, oh, all right. So after that, I always stayed covered until like the last minute, and I could feel all the other guys waiting and watching and like, you know? the last minute to see what I was looking like and I’d leave it until the last minute and then boom.

1:26:45 And this, oh no, shit, you could feel that going around. So I guess that was, I always try to have my own little spark, my little changing room and stuff, things like that. That’s little tips. You know, you’re known as being a super intense guy when you do train and I was just wondering where that comes from. I know a lot of guys that are top bodybuilders come from tough childhoods and broken homes and they use that some way to fuel themselves.

1:27:10 Yeah, I didn’t have an easy time as a kid and stuff like that, so perhaps that’s where it comes from, the motivation, but it was always like a pride thing for me, you know? Like I can train harder, you know, I push myself more than everybody else. You know, it was always like a pride thing as well. And the same with a diet, it was a discipline. And if I broke that diet, I mean like I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror, I would have let myself down.

1:27:39 So this whole thing was not about building, it was about building physique and about building the best physique and everything, but it was beyond that. It was a mental thing. It was almost like mastery of yourself. Because who wants to go and put 600 pounds on your buck and squat up and down until you’re nearly puking? Who wants to do that, you know?

1:27:59 Brian, you said something to me once. You said, I don’t believe that all men are created equal. And when I meet a guy like Dorian, I completely understand that. there’s very few people that have the genetic, spiritual, physical, mental disposition to be able to do things. The other thing I noticed is that you see a lot of top, top athletes and people in any field, and it’s usually the ones that are competing with themselves that get that success because they’re not really trying to prove it to everyone.

1:28:26 They’re just trying to prove it to themselves. That was pretty much what I had. I mean, I had guys that are competed against those professionals that I had to beat, But when you’re number one, that’s not so much a motivation as before, because you already beat this guy now. So now you’re the guy that everyone’s looking at. Everyone’s chasing.

1:28:46 So who do you chase now? Chase yourself. Try to beat yourself. And the same thing with a diet. Every instinct, every impulse is telling you, you must eat now.

1:29:01 And you’re saying, no, I’m not going to eat now. Because that’s not my plan, I’m going to override you? No. So it’s a mental discipline, you know? And as I said before, I mean, the training and stuff is hard.

1:29:15 But for me, it was fun. I enjoyed that physical challenge. So that’s hard. But the hardest thing is the diet. Mentally, it’s very hard.

1:29:23 And that’s separating the men from the boys, I think. Like, there was a lot of big guys around that never made it to that stage, you know? Because they couldn’t handle the diet. Wow, what are your thoughts on Arnold Schwarzenegger? Well, they say you even don’t think good to say you don’t say anything, so.

1:29:40 We’ll get that off the record. I mean, let’s be serious. Arnold has done more than any individual to bring attention to bodybuilding, first through pumping iron, and then through the big mainstream movies and everything. So he gave the sport a big boost through that. So we have to be thankful for that.

1:30:02 But honestly, I don’t know him really that well. We had a bit of a, well, he felt that he had to attack modern bodybuilding and myself as the leader of modern bodybuilding in the mid-90s through the magazines. And I did a reply to him, which kind of he shot himself in the foot because he was criticizing myself and the sport and everything. And I just replied like, I don’t know how he can criticize me or the sport because he doesn’t know me. met him. I’ve never spoken to him personally and he doesn’t know anything about the sport because he doesn’t come to watch the competition. He never goes to Mr. Olympia. Arnold does exactly what’s good for Arnold. So at that point he wasn’t coming to the competitions and I made the response in the magazine and I think the feedback they got mail wise and everything at the time was pretty much 100% in my favour because Arnold’s achieved a lot And perhaps because he has a huge ego, you know?

1:31:00 And there’s a guy called Mike Mensa. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Mike Mensa. Mike Mensa and Arnold were big rivals. And Arnold won the 1980 Mr. Olympia over at Mike Mensa.

1:31:16 And it was very, very controversial, because Arnold came and bowled up at the last minute and entered the contest when the rules clearly stated that you had to enter at some time period before. but the rules were bent because it was Arnold, and Arnold’s friend was a promoter, and a lot of Arnold’s friends were on the judging panel, and Arnold won the contest, and pretty much everybody in the sport knows and accepts that he shouldn’t have won that contest, so it wasn’t probably that great for him. So Mike Menscher and Arnold had this rivalry, I guess, from there, and I was associated with Mike.

1:31:51 I trained with him, and I knew Mike, Mike told me Arnold Schwarzenegger is very aware of you and he’s gonna be really bothered because you’re better than him and actually I couldn’t believe it I was like come on Manny I’m gonna give a shit he’s he’s done what he’s done he’s Arnold I mean now he’s in the movies it’s a big star he’s a multimillionaire he’s not gonna care about who’s a Mr. Olympia right now and Mike Manson said to me trust me you don’t know him he cares and he cares a lot and that became apparent because a couple years later I got the attack in the magazine I I wanted to actually ask you about Mike Mensa, because he seems like such a progressive guy. He was always looking at different ways to train, and he was thinking out the box.

1:32:34 I wanted to know what your opinion was on his death. I know he died of a heart attack at a relatively young age. Do you think it was because he was pushing himself? I know he was studying philosophy all the time and doing these incredibly intense workouts. Do you think he just pushed too hard?

1:32:49 What do you think the story was behind that? Mike, you know, I get I think after 1980, Mr. Olympia and anyone that knows Mike knows and when I met him, I was very struck because Mike was like my idol when I started training. And, you know, this subject came up very quickly after I met him about the 1980 Mr. Olympia and Arnold. And I could see that this guy was this was 1011 12 years later. Still, this was like, right, you know, was in the forefront of his mind and really really bothered him and I do know he had problems with amphetamine use and that you know he said you know that didn’t help him psychologically and I think I’m not sure of all the facts but I think he was sectioned once or twice something like that you know he heard stories about him doing erratic things but actually when I met him and the time I spent with him he was very lucid very clear very intelligent guy but But sometimes when someone’s very intelligent and always questioning things, do get these problems.

1:33:52 So I don’t know if amphetamine use had any, I know it’s not good for your heart and everything. Maybe it had some effect. I don’t know, but the time that I spent with him, he seemed okay. I could tell he was really bothered about the 1980 thing and he hadn’t let go of it, which is not a good thing. And he was trained a lot of people on Gold’s Gym.

1:34:14 Was this thing is training business but he didn’t train anything himself he was you know he got a bit of a belly on him and stuff like that which I kind of find hard it hard to understand because for me I always train you know that’s you know someone pissed me off because I felt you know I didn’t win a contest or whatever so what that’s contest but hey training exercise is a huge has a huge mental benefits, you know, it keeps you, if you work hard, like, yeah, it’s like it’s like a natural high, right? Your body releases natural endorphins, painkillers, you feel good, you know, you human body is supposed to do things. It’s supposed to exercise, you know, it’s not supposed to sit around all day, like, we’ve only done that for the last couple of hundred years, not even that perhaps, and we have thousands and thousands of years, we have to work, we have to hunt, we have to survive, the body is meant to do that, you’re meant to use it. If you don’t use it, it’ll break down. So yeah, I really don’t know what caused his untimely death. And the freaky thing about it is his brother Ray passed away like within days of Mike passing away. And you know, his brother passed away.

1:35:28 Maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger had them assassinated. I don’t know. You said it, not me. Now we’re gonna get sued. You know what I was just thinking?

1:35:36 I think Dorian should start his own podcast. Yes. Definitely. Well, we should come back on ours at least. Yeah, that’s true.

1:35:42 But you call it Dorian Real. Yeah. But you know, you really should. You can have guests and talk to your fans. Well, you know, I do.

1:35:47 I got a Facebook page and I put a lot of posts on there that, you know, that start people thinking. I had a lot of people write back to me and say, hey, listen, shit, you’ve started me on a whole. I’ve gone down the rabbit hole now, you know? Once I see something that’s not right, you know, I’ve done a lot of posting about the 9-11 and the banking system and, you know, things that have presented us through the media over here, about situations abroad and on all that.

1:36:17 It’s like, it’s so removed from reality, you know? I think people are going to be blown away, especially talking about, you know, the DMT and all that. Just, it’s great to see someone like you with new ideas, you know? Well, you know, like I said, I do my monthly column with Muscular Develop magazine. We covered, you know, we covered the steroids in bodybuilding and my experience and my views and all that stuff.

1:36:40 And I also did one on marijuana and marijuana use in athletes and what the facts are there. And there’s I think there’s a 30 year study they did in California on naturally on lung damage from smoking marijuana. And what was the result was they didn’t find any. They were looking for it and expecting it, but they didn’t find any. So, you know, my point in the article there was a lot of athletes use marijuana to whatever, relax, whatever, you know.

1:37:11 So and that’s something that’s been demonized falsely through the media. And, you know, if I sell people like, hey, you know, marijuana can cure cancer, they just totally freak out because it’s like, you know, what are you talking about? This drug, this dope, this, you know, this negative thing that I’ve heard about. These are my beliefs that have been given to me and I’ll hold on to these, you know, it’s Like everything else the reality is sometimes quite different I think a lot of people are changing their views on cannabis But it’s it’s slowly moving east and it’s gonna take I think another five or ten years to get to the UK I mean, probably you got two states now in the US It’s legal and you also got I mean, I think Portugal of decriminalized all drugs Man, next time you’re in the state store and you’ve got to go on the Joe Rogan show, Joe would have a field day chatting to you.

1:37:59 Oh Joe Rogan, yeah he’s cool man, I’ve read a lot of his stuff and yeah I think Joe is a guy that probably five years ago if you’d asked him he wouldn’t have believed any of this stuff. I don’t think he even tried marijuana five years ago because of his views you know. He was a very late bloomer on that because yeah he was sold the same thing, pots for these loser potheads, marijuana’s for this type of person, even Eddie Bravo. Yeah, look, it’s going to make you lazy and achieve nothing in life.

1:38:24 Look at me. I’m a perfect example of that. You’re going to be unmotivated and not going to achieve anything in life. Of course, bullshit. Well, you know, Joe’s and Joe’s spread the word about this just by talking about it.

1:38:36 You know, I think Nick and I started talking about ayahuasca about 10 months ago. And, you know, people hear this stuff. You’re talking about DMT now. It starts it kind of starts the cycle of change, you know, for sure. But it’s it’s tricky over here.

1:38:49 You were saying that in England there’s no respect for the bodybuilding as a sport. Absolutely. I mean, you know, how many six times consecutive world champions do we have in any sport in this country? I don’t know. I don’t think we have any, right?

1:39:06 So during the 90s, I was this guy. But any attention from the media, they wanted to put a negative slant on it straight away. My first experience with the media was a mainstream tabloid. And they came to do an interview with me. And the reporter spent the best part of an afternoon with me.

1:39:29 And I thought I had some rapport going with this guy. And I thought I could get my point across and everything. And one of the questions he asked me was, what do you think about Arnold Schwarzenegger and his success and everything like that? I’m like, yeah, that’s cruel. That’s great.

1:39:40 That’s Arnold, though. I have no ambitions to be a movie star or a billionaire or in politics. That’s not me, right? I just want to be the best bodybuilder I can be and see how far I can take this and how far you know, that’s my thing When I read the newspaper is like I’m gonna be bigger and better and richer than Arnold like this fucking nothing us is total Opposite to what I was talking about. So then from that point on during any newspaper magazine interviews I always had a dictaphone and I taped it just in case I came up against this situation again and then You probably know yourself here. The the media is a small world so as soon as one newspaper or one TV program found out about it’s like they’re all calling me yeah, and There was a couple of TV breakfast shows That called me up, and I was like yeah, okay. I’ll be interested in coming on there Okay, yeah, but I want to come on with my clothes on and I want to sit down and I want to talk to you And if afterwards you want me to pose or you want to show some footage from competition. I’m like that’s great Yeah, oh, no, no, no, no, we wanted to come on and do your posing stuff and everything I’m like, listen if I come on there as a performing monkey in my briefs Yeah, I’m just gonna be there as a spectacle for you to point out and I’m not gonna be able to get my point across I have no interest at being on TV, you know, which blue they might they think everyone wants to be on TV

1:41:03 And they’ll sell their soul to go on TV. I was like personally have no interest in being on TV I don’t need it to promote myself, you know, I’m already where I am in my sport But I would like to go on there in order to get my point of view across and to educate people about the sport and what it’s about. And I need to be able to talk to do that. Yeah. I need to sit down and talk.

1:41:22 And the guy’s like, he didn’t understand me. And I said, look, at the time, Paul Gascline was the most famous soccer player in the country. Gazza, right? I said, if you invite Gazza onto your show, you want him to come with his football kit on and do tricks with his ball behind while you make comments or something. No, you’re going to sit him down.

1:41:38 He’s going to wear a suit. You’re going to talk to him. And I just want the same respect, you know, and they wouldn’t do that. So I wouldn’t go on a program good for you consider how much more effort and Maybe you could even argue skill went into what Dorian did to achieve what he achieved in comparison to a guy who kicks a ball around a field, you know, like suck don’t get me wrong football’s great and Those guys are good athletes and all but it’s it’s just incomparable, you know, it’s just not the same lead Well once you hear that him talk about it, you know when they see these images of these these these They don’t understand well, that’s that’s exactly my point. You know if you look at a bodybuilding you ask people What do you think about this of course you’re gonna get a ton of negative comments from from probably from the average person They’re just looking at a picture. Yeah, but to be honest I’ve never really had any negative reactions from the public people on the street and everything come and talk to me They want to learn wow what you do and you know they want to let off can I lose this what can I do?

1:42:33 You know it’s always very very positive, but it just seems the media all they want to talk about is the sensational or the negative They want to talk about steroids or something like that because it’s you know, it’s more sensational Maybe it makes better news. But how about telling the truth? That would probably be a good idea, you know, yeah Do you enjoy getting older? Yeah, I do because You know the bodies gets older and it doesn’t work as good as it used to but mine’s still pretty good because I’ve been looking After it so I can still go in the gym and then an outtrain 25 years old no problem Really? Yeah, no problem. They don’t want to do it. They don’t want to come with me in the gym.

1:43:10 Trust me. I hear legs are your specialty. No one wants to train legs. Because legs, you know, that’s the toughest training. It’s the biggest muscles in your body. It’s a huge oxygen that you get and everything. So, you know, it’s tough. You feel very nauseous and stuff when you really push to the limit. So not most people don’t want to do that with me. But the whole thing of getting older is hopefully getting wiser, you know, and getting more in touch and getting nearer to what reality is. I think that’s, you know, I’ve got my business and stuff, I don’t concentrate on that, but just to enjoy life and travelling, experiencing new things, that’s where I’m at now and trying to evolve as a person I think have evolved tremendously since I left the sport and been through a period of probably depression after that and then you get out of that and you know, a lot of questions but now I’m in a good place now, I think, you know, good, good understanding of life. I got just recently remounted a couple of years ago to amazing, beautiful woman from Brazil, who’s also very spiritual. So she helped me on my, on my pathway there as well, I think. Do you think your, your injury in some way was a blessing in disguise? Yeah, I see it as that now, because if that injury didn’t happen, I don’t know, maybe I would have carried on. Who knows, you know, like, Like, maybe it had to happen to Dorian, you know, maybe it had to be, boom, that’s finished

1:44:36 For you now, mate, yeah? Otherwise, maybe I would have stayed on too long. Who knows, you know? When you refer to Dorian, you were kind of referring to that Mr. Olympia Dorian, as opposed to who you are now.

1:44:47 Yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah, because maybe that guy would have just carried on. I don’t know. You know, we’d all like to be able to control and plan our lives and everything, But you can only do it to a degree, you know, sometimes the outside forces and circumstances come along for whatever reason. And it’s usually for the best reason, you know, it’s very things can be very, you know, like retiring from a, you know, from a job or a sport, or, you know, losing a relationship, all these things are upsetting and negative at the time.

1:45:19 But later on, you might look back and say, hey, that was all for the best, you know, It almost comes back to non-attachment, which is the foundation of Buddhism that you hold on to is going to hurt you. So try not to hold on to anything too tight, right? Wow, that’s deep. I just got a couple more questions and we’ll wrap this thing up. Something we ask people a lot on this show is if you could pick up the phone right now and make a phone call to the 20-year-old Dorian and give him a few words of advice.

1:45:48 What would you say to him and would he listen to you? 20-year-old Dorian, I wouldn’t tell him anything because, you know, I was on a pathway there. The only thing, you know, but then you go and we’re changing things, right? I could go back and tell Dorian, listen, that, you know, you need to take a bit more slack. You need to take a bit more time off.

1:46:12 If you get a little injuries, you need to take care of that and if you need to take time off, you need to take time off and you can chill out a little bit more. You can enjoy life a little bit more. I could have done all that, and maybe I would have avoided those injuries, but if I’d avoided those injuries, then we’re on a whole new pathway. So I’m just going to say, whatever happened, happened perfectly, that’s the way it’s meant to happen, and I’m where I’m supposed to be.

1:46:38 So I wouldn’t go back and change anything. Good enough. Good answer. And what advice would you have for that 20-year-old out there who’s thinking about a career in bodybuilding? Yeah.

1:46:48 About a career. It’s too young, you’re too early to think about a career. How many people genuinely make a career out of professional bodybuilding? So you can pick up the magazines and you can look and it looks all glamorous and these guys all look like superstars and they’re promoted as such, but how many of them really make a career? A real professional.

1:47:10 That means that you, that’s your sole source of income and you’re doing well off that. guys in the world 10 10 12 whatever somewhere around there that you know they’re bringing in good a really good income you know you know if you look at the mr. olympia I think the first place is about hundred and fifty thousand dollars or under 75 something like that but you get down to 10th place 11th place 12 places you’re looking at a couple of grand you know it’s like even pay your expenses.

1:47:44 They spend more than that on chicken breasts. The image that’s presented is perhaps not reality. So if you’re going to give up everything, you better make sure that you’re getting something back. A 20-year-old guy thinking about a career in a sport, don’t think about a career yet. If you enjoy doing it, enjoy doing it, set yourself some realistic short-term goals.

1:48:10 All right, you might want to be a professional bodybuilder, you might want to be a Mr. Olympic, but put that maybe sometime in the future. Right now, you’re 20 years old, you need to build your foundation, you need to compete and win a competition and a little one, you need to be the bigger one. If you can get to be the best guy in England, to be the Mr. Britain and be the best guy here British champion then you can maybe start thinking about it but I don’t even think about it for then you know because it’s it’s an illusion it’s not there there’s only a few guys that can do it you have to be very very good to do that and there are thousands and thousands of thousands of people around the world probably thinking the same thing you know not saying I’m not being negative saying you can’t do it but when I was 21 22 23 start competing I wasn’t thinking about you know being mr. limper at that point and I was very you know Obviously it became apparent quite early on when I was competing that I was you know, I was ahead of everybody else Wow, I just wanted to say thanks to one of our interns Which is Diego Ferreira who put us in touch with you and I know you’re still there. Yeah, that’s my wife’s name Is it really? Yeah, I think that’s his surname. He was a Brazilian guy. He went up and trained with you I know you’re still doing personal training But I just how do people get a hold of you you are still doing personal training sessions

1:49:32 Yeah I do limited amount of personal training because I do most of it here in UK And I’m not here all the time, but DorianYates.net, that’s my main website. You can go on there. You can contact me through there. You can make requests for personal training. You can read about my nutrition.

1:49:49 Everything if you go through that site, you can pretty much get everything. Okay, and your Twitter is Dorian underscore Yates. Is it? Yeah, it is, it is. And yeah, on the topic of ayahuasca, if you want to listen to Nick’s recent experiences in Peru. We’ve just published Ayahuasca, My Heart of Darkness, which is Nick’s two-hour description of his time in Peru just two weeks ago.

1:50:12 I might be able to listen to that myself. And as usual, if you want to get ahold of us, you can find us on LondonReal.tv. We’ve got a great forum there. We’re on Twitter. We’re on Facebook. And if you’re listening to this on iTunes, you can come see our faces and see the extremely good-looking Dorian on YouTube, our channel is LondonReal.

1:50:31 Checks in the mail there but I mean for 50 you know that’s pretty good man and that episode was just fucking fantastic epic if you would have told me Dorian would have been dropping science on DMT yesterday I would have slapped you in the air laughs in your face well I kind of got a feeling we were gonna go there some point I don’t know why yeah that was all good so um thank you so much for the time so much thanks for coming down really appreciate great thanks for having my guys and you know hopefully we’ll do it again right sure we will I’d love to have you down okay thank you until then it’s all about the journey it’s about the journey indeed thanks guys this week London Real meets UFC fighter Dan Hardy honestly I’m a fighter that’s trying to be a martial artist his wins and his losses I said I’m done I’m not enjoying it anymore this is not fun for me anymore.