Dorian Yates - Return Of The Shadow

Full transcript: Dorian Yates on London Real

5:22 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Dorian Yates, who is an English professional bodybuilder who won the Mr. Olympia title six consecutive times from 1992 to 1997 and holds the fourth highest number of Mr. Olympia awards of all time.

5:37 You are widely considered to be one of the top athletes in modern bodybuilding history. Dorian, welcome back to London Real. Thanks. Thanks for having me back. Two and a half years later, and who knew the impact that show was going to have when I just walked in here one day and we sat down and we just started talking.

5:56 Huge impact. I pulled out a tweet that you sent out on January 3rd. It was a few days before you were going to come in and you had wrote, guys, I’m on London Real TV and I’m going to pull no punches. And I remember getting that a few days before. And I was just like, I was like, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

6:14 So I was very excited. But well, it was an opportunity for me to talk about and answer questions on whole wide variety of subjects that normally wouldn’t get asked because everybody wants to ask me about my profession and my achievements in the sport and so on, which is great. But we went on a whole wide range of subjects. And a lot of that resonated with people apparently, you know, it touched on something in them. And they were very interested in what I had to say on a lot of subjects.

6:48 The feedback was massive, even like from different podcasts and websites. And a lot of people got in touch with me wanting me to, you know, to elaborate further and to speak on those subjects and everything. And I didn’t really take up any of those opportunities because I didn’t want to water down what I said.

7:09 But I did meet a lot of people through that, you know, through the London Real that I probably wouldn’t meet. I had a guy that got in touch with me about meditation and sent me a lot of meditation tapes and things like that that I was kind of getting interested in. So it helped me along in my path as well. Some people came out of the woodwork and got in touch with me. Over two million people watched that on YouTube.

7:35 It’s our most watched episode ever. Yeah, it’s amazing. And a lot of people apparently that were not maybe directly from bodybuilding or, you know, were not listening just because that I was a bodybuilder. So we reached a really wide audience. Yeah, I was saying to you earlier on, a couple of times I’ve been stopped in the street and it’s like, hey, you’re that not Mr. Olympia.

7:58 You’re that guy from London Real. You’re the guy that talked about the ayahuasca and everything. Man, that was cool. I like that. So great.

8:05 Yeah, and I get stopped too. You’re the guy that interviewed Doreen Yates. And neither one of us thought that was going to happen that day. We just came together. No, it was just like this.

8:15 Let’s see where this talk goes. There was no real format of what we were going to talk about. So we went to some interesting places. Yeah, definitely. And with people with you, it’s not the bodybuilding that interests them as much.

8:26 It was probably more of you talking about just being a human and being spiritual, right? Well, you know, if you do something, a profession or a sport or whatever, that doesn’t define you. That’s not the whole of you, you know, surely or shouldn’t be anyway. But obviously, people want to know about that because that’s a huge part of my life that I did, you know? And it got me to a position where people listen to what I say.

8:55 So trying to say something interesting and important. And why at that time, like two and a half years ago, did you feel like talking about those things? Because in the past, you didn’t do a lot of media. I didn’t, not really like a media. You know, I don’t really like to push myself out there.

9:12 That’s not my way. And most of the media that I did, you know, it depends on what they want to talk about. I mean, most of the media is from a sporting point of view. They want to know about my training, they want to know about my nutrition. They want to know about the psychology and the mental side and the discipline and how I achieved what I did in the sport, which is great.

9:36 So I don’t usually get asked questions outside of that box much. But obviously, I’ve got opinions on a lot of subjects and the interest in life. So it was good that we touched on some of those things. Yeah, and I want to kind of get back to a few of those topics. I must thank you, because after you spoke about DMT that day, I made a resolution to do a show about DMT.

10:00 And it’s one now that- Yeah, I haven’t watched that yet. It’s one now that, you know, some people say you should never have done and, but it’s one of the most popular shows as well. But I did a before and after DMT episode. Well, we were talking about that when I came, almost like, listen, one time we’ll come and we’ll do this on the show so we can talk about it. So I guess you went ahead and did it without me.

10:20 Yeah, well, because you were like, we should definitely do some DMT together. And I think it planted the seed. And so I think, yeah, I just went ahead and did it. And so we did a before and after episode and I had never done it before. And I talked about my thoughts, my concerns, and then afterwards, what it was like as an experience.

10:36 And you did the experience and then you filmed afterwards. Yeah, right afterwards. So not during, obviously, but just before and after. And I really- Did you find it like an important episode in your life? Has something changed afterwards or you made some different realizations?

10:52 You know, I had had three ayahuasca ceremonies before that. And so I had already had some experience with a real heavy, obviously a DMT compound in a different form. So I found this one different. I know you find it very powerful. I found my ayahuasca seemed to be more memorable for me, but I only did it that once.

11:12 But it was still very evident to me that there is obviously another plane. There are a lot of other things going on that we don’t know about. And you get there in about five minutes. Yeah, well, what I got is we’re just, this is an experience that we’re having and it’s based on information from your five senses. And that builds your experience.

11:33 But there’s a whole lot out of sight of that, you know? Five senses that’s accessible to people. And you know, DMT is kind of, or ayahuasca is like a quick route to get there and have a look. But a lot of people do get to that same kind of place with different methods, you know? Meditation, chanting, every culture had its different things.

12:00 American Indians used to have the sweat lodge, you know, that would get them into that kind of a… Basically, I see it as changing your vibration. Your vibration changes and just like a radio station, you can turn the dial and you can go from radio one to radio two and classical FM or whatever. They’re all, we could access them all in this room. Thousands of radio stations, we’ve got to access them all in this same space here.

12:24 So they’re all here at the same time, but it’s just tuned into one or the other. Right, and what we experienced, as you said last time, is just such a minute slice of what’s happening out there. Excellent, exactly. What we’re aware of, you know, what we perceive through those senses is just information. And I remember that picture we took with your tattoo that says one love, one heart.

12:47 You know, you were saying with your DMT experience that you really kind of noticed that we are all one and one is everyone. Yeah, it’s like one consciousness having billions of different experiences at the same time. But it’s coming from the same source. So once you come to that realization, then there’s no point kind of fighting with people and getting angry, because it’s just like you’re fighting with yourself, but you’re in a different place, you know? That’s the way I see it.

13:18 Did you always have that feeling when you were Mr. Olympia, or did it take kind of after that, getting out of it and then thinking about the world? Or did you always feel very connected? Well, there’s this spiritual aspect to train and to sport. As an athlete, you almost go to some places or zones or something, almost you shift a little bit under extreme stress and pain.

13:44 Sometimes it just kind of melts away and you go to a different place. Happened to me the first time I did that was when I was a kid and I was at school and we had this charity run. It was run around the track, run around the 400-meter track. And I was always like ragging like I’m a good runner. I can run fire and everything.

14:07 Then it came to this day that we were going to run around this track. And I remember I went around the houses and like, can you sponsor me for that? I think it was for a minibus for school or something like this. It wasn’t the point of why I was doing it. It was just a challenge.

14:21 So I’d go around all the neighbors. Can you sponsor me like whatever it was at the time? Five pence, a lap or something for the minute. Oh yes, they all signed up on this thing. And it was one of my friends who was a boxer and he was like a lightweight.

14:35 No, so he could just run all day and his whole family were boxers and they used to go running every night. And I was telling him, can do more than you, whatever. So we all started running after about 15 or 20 times around the track. I was dying and it was just me and him left. I was like, I’m not going to give in.

14:53 I’m not going to give in. And then for some reason he dropped out and I kept going. And I remember just going through something where I just didn’t feel anything anymore. And I was just going around the track, around the track, I think, 45 laps. Everyone had gone home except for me and the teacher that was observing how many laps I was doing.

15:11 And I remember it being a huge thing at the time. FA Cup Final was the big soccer final every year. And it was that day, the FA Cup Final was on. It was starting at three o’clock. I just said, you got to stop because I got to go home and watch the FA Cup Final.

15:25 So you need to stop. And then I went back later in the week to all these poor people that signed up five pence a lap who expect me to do five or six laps or something. It’s all right. Gone back like 45 laps and they got to cough up the money. So I learned something earlier on that you can go into a zone.

15:42 So as an athlete, you do learn. There’s a spiritual side to the training and to the discipline. So I already connected to that through the sport, I think. But when I retired, it was a lot of turmoil in my life because I’ve been totally focused on this one thing in a tunnel for many years and everything else. I kind of neglected or swept under the carpet.

16:08 It was not a priority. I had to be in this tunnel. So when you retire from that kind of tunnel vision in a sport, it’s pretty traumatic. A lot of athletes go through this and a lot of athletes lose their way because they’ve had this focus and they’re all consuming and now it’s not there anymore. Now, who am I?

16:30 What do I do? All these questions came up and… The world doesn’t need me anymore. Yeah, a lot of things came up. I got divorced from my wife and a whole lot of things changed and it just made me question everything and a lot of things.

16:46 And that’s where I started looking more actively into the spiritual side of life and religions and while trying to make some sense of it. And so it just carried on from there and being more curious where before I was just… I was buried in this tunnel and doing like a lot of people are. Most people live in a tunnel, go to work, come back and not really having time to look up or to think about these things. You mentioned your childhood.

17:15 I was wondering if you could tell us where you grew up and what your childhood was like. I grew up… First of all, I was born in Solihull, which is a suburb of Birmingham. I think we lived there until I was about three or four because my dad worked at the Rover car plant that was in Solihull. And then we moved to what’s called a small holding.

17:37 It’s basically like a little small farm more out away from the city like 20, 25 miles. And I think initially my parents was a chicken farm. But I guess it didn’t work out. So they sold all the chickens and my mom then was doing horse riding instructing. We had a few old horses and all the local kids used to come horse riding lessons and stuff like that.

18:03 So we had horses. We had dogs. I had some ducks. We had a whole place was full of animals. So it was kind of cool, I guess.

18:14 I had a lot of space to run around. My friends lived a couple of miles away. So either you were walking, running, or riding a bike all day outside. So kind of healthy lifestyle. But my dad had a heart attack when I was about 13.

18:28 He was only 42 years old and boom. So that was a huge, huge change in my life. Shortly after that, my mom met somebody else and we moved to Birmingham together. And tragically, I think it was less than a year later, a new husband-to-be had a heart attack as well. So yeah, there I was in Birmingham.

18:54 And my mom was more like a country person. She loved horse riding and all that kind of stuff. So she was stuck in Birmingham and then when her new partner died and when I got to 16, she was basically like, I don’t want to stay here. I’m moving back out. You know, I changed the country.

19:11 So what do you want to do? And I said, well, I’m staying here now. So at 16, I left home and went to crash on my friend’s couch and you know. How did your father’s death make you feel? I mean, at the time, I mean, it had a huge impact on my life but I can see that now.

19:30 At the time, it was just very confusing. And at 13, you know, you’re just coming into puberty and my dad was teaching me to drive the car around the fields and stuff. You know, stuff like that, you know, that your dad does, right? Your dad teaches you to drive. Dad teaches you how to be a man and now all of a sudden, that guy’s not there anymore.

19:48 So who’s going to do these things? And who’s going to teach? That was my immediate, you know, kind of maybe I was in shock but just practical. Were you angry? I was angry that my mom was going to marry somebody like very quickly straight afterwards and move me out of the place that I was, you know, comfortable with my friends environment and everything.

20:07 So yeah, I was pretty pissed off about that. So when I was seven years old, my parent got divorced. And I think I got angry. I got angry at the whole world because it was like all the love structure that was set up just was just ripped apart. And so I couldn’t trust anyone or anything else and I just…

20:24 Well, we don’t have like what you would call a typical very close family unit. Anyway, my mom and dad, I think they just kind of tolerated each other and they had a child together. That was we never went on a family dinner together. We never went on a holiday, you know, so there wasn’t real close family structure. But anyway, I had my dad.

20:42 I had a mom, you know, then my dad wasn’t there anymore. So, you know, I stopped really giving a shit at school and these kind of things. I wasn’t, you know, I was just less interested. I guess now I can look back and see that. Right. So at 16, I think you’ve once said you were either a skinhead, a punk or a mod.

21:01 Yeah, that was just at the times, you know, if you want to go out and be on the scene and go to all the concerts, it’s one of those things. Yeah. So actually, I think me and my friends were like, we bought some mod suits and stuff first. You know, we went to a few mod things and we’re like, nah, let’s shave our heads and let’s get into the skinhead scene, you know. So, yeah, I was there two years of my life, two summers, really, that, you know, we were going to concerts And head dressing like that.

21:26 And everything until I went to jail for a little bit and then I came out and the fashions changed and I didn’t. So, it’s just, you know, people make a big issue out of it because there’s pictures of me of a teenager’s skinhead and everything. And, you know, it’s part of the story that I came from that. I was able to be the best bodybuilder in the world from that start. You know, I had nothing, literally nothing.

21:49 Even when I started bodybuilding, I had, financially, I had nothing. Even when I was a British champion and I was still catching the bus to the gym and back to work and hey, we’ve got the British champion trophy at home but, you know, no TV crews outside the house, no sponsorship checks, nothing pretty much changed, really, you know. Yeah. What happened in 1981? You were sentenced to six months at White Youth Detention Center.

22:14 How did that happen? And in retrospect, was that a good thing in any way? Really, I shouldn’t have been there. I mean, I didn’t do anything much to deserve to be in there, just part from being in the wrong place at the wrong time. There was some, like, riot vandalism.

22:28 Yeah, there was a lot of riots on the streets in 1981 in the summer. It was like, started in, I think, Brixton and Bristol, all the West Indian, Jamaican communities, basically. OK. So Birmingham was one of them as well. We weren’t involved.

22:45 We were just actually going to a party from one side of Birmingham to the other side. So we had to go through the city center and change night buses or something. And being already half drunk, and actually, like, we didn’t look at all these shut windows are like, all the glasses out and all the dummies are just there. And, you know, we kind of forgot what had gone in the daytime because we weren’t involved in it. Half drunk and my friends thought, ah, look at this.

23:07 Let’s take some of these hats and it wasn’t even something we wanted. It was just like stupid. We’re going to walk in a party with these hats on and these coats that just, you know, from this nerdy shop, right? That was his idea. So he pulled one of the mannequins and it came down, but it took all the rest of the glass out, made a big noise and place must have been crawling with police, obviously.

23:26 So within about 20 seconds of like 20 police on top of us. And we got put in the jail cells for about three days. I remember there’s no toilets, no showers, because they arrested so many people on that weekend that they had nowhere to put them, you know, so we’re stuck in there, which was horrible for three days. And then we got sentenced six months apiece to go to the detention center, which is young offenders. I don’t know if they have them anymore, but the idea was put these guys in there and give them like a military regime.

24:00 So you’re going to wear a uniform, going to wear a tie. You get up in the morning, you go to the yard and you do square bashing. You do like military, marching around and then you go to your works where you learn some kind of skill, hopefully, or you do some physical training. So all day you’re doing something not just sitting around. They’re trying to like, the idea was, I think it was Margaret Thatcher’s going from a short, sharp shock, like, you know, shock these guys into like, you know, being nice, responsible members of society.

24:33 In a way, it worked for me because when I was in there, I was like, I don’t ever want to be in this situation again. You know, I came from a freehold in a farm running around with animals and I was very independent, do my own thing. Now you’re like a number and you go and you do what you’re told and you’re a number and you know, I was like, I don’t want to be in this situation again. Did you overhear a conversation between one of the guards? Yeah, I did something that stuck in my mind and I even know the guy that said it.

25:01 I still will see him sometimes and his future came true and so did mine because the officer said to him, like, you better change your attitude or otherwise you’re going to be in and out of jail the rest of your life and the guy just looked at him And said, I don’t give a fuck. I was thinking, Oh, I do. I don’t ever want to be in here again if I can avoid it. And because we had the weights in there and I’ve done a little bit before and I was just. I had a better physique than pretty much all the guys in there and I was stronger and the circuit training I was faster, I was fitter.

25:35 And even the prison officers that were running the PT, they’re like, Yeah, you know, when you get out. One of the guys wrote me a gym down in Birmingham, I should go to this gym. His friend had a powerlifting gym. I didn’t want to be a powerlifter, I wanted to be a bodybuilder. But it was a point of realization that like, This is not your path, this is not your life, you know, and this you can see that you’re good at this, so let’s do this.

25:59 And then I started doing it and getting results very quickly. Then I started thinking about I want to compete, and maybe one day I’d like to be a British champion. That’s pretty much where I was when I started. You know, and you saw that early bit of success and that made you think, Okay, I can do this. Yeah, because you got 300 guys in there.

26:19 So I’ve got a cross-section of people and I could see that I had more natural potential for building a physique or strength for lifting weights than, you know, 298 of these guys or whatever, you know, so here’s something that I really enjoy doing And I’m actually pretty good at it. I got something to work with here and that’s pretty much all I did have to work with because I didn’t pay attention at school. I’d say I’m reasonably intelligent, probably more than average, but I wasn’t interested in what they were.

26:53 You know, I wasn’t interested in the whole regime, and now I can see how correct I was because I just. It’s not education, it’s just indoctrination. It’s just teaching to be there at nine and leave at four and it’s teaching to wear a tie. and it’s teaching you to like, you know, to be a part of this machine and I never felt comfortable with it and I don’t think a lot of people that was at school, they’re like, something’s wrong here. Like, why are we spending so much time learning so much useless information?

27:22 You know, what did I learn at school? Learn to write, read and some basic mathematics. Those are the only things that I’ve learned at school that’s been of any use to me in life, you know, most of the time was just wasted by putting, locking these kids in eight hours a day Inside a classroom and getting them used to that is not natural. And then they say, All right, here’s some homework to take home with you. So we’re going to stick you here for eight hours.

27:52 And now, when you go home, when it’s sitting in a room and do this bullshit for another two hours. and I never ever did any homework and got in trouble for a lot of time but I just was like, I’m not doing it, you know, I’ll do my best while I’m here. I don’t really want to be here but when I leave, I’m going to do what I want to do, you know. Right. So you left the detention center and is that when you moved into Casa Vail, which is Tower Box and?

28:15 Yeah, I got, well, first of all, I moved that to a friend’s place and just living on the couch and the house was quite crowded and she had two young babies and stuff like that. So the council came out and I’m sure a single man wouldn’t get a council flat these days, you know, but then it was different. I did get a flat in one of the least desirable addresses, I think, for most people, for me, I was happy to get that apartment because it was near to where a lot of my friends lived and stuff like that.

28:46 So yeah, Casa Vail has changed a lot. Actually, the high rise blocks that they built in their sixties, they’ve all been knocked down. That’s where I was living on Casa Vail for about, I think four or five years. I was living there and as I said, at the first note, just catching the bus. I probably spent two or three hours a day on the bus going back, going to work, going to the gym, going to my girlfriend’s and all that stuff like that.

29:11 And at this point, you were learning, right? You wanted to learn about nutrition, but you were dedicated. You had a goal. I studied a lot before I started because I’m like, before I started, I’m like, this is a mission. I’m not starting casually.

29:28 When I got out of the detention center, I knew I had to find a job. I knew I needed an apartment. I needed these things before I could go to the gym. Otherwise, you know, I need stability. So I’ve got these things secured.

29:39 And then during that process, I was reading as much as I could, magazines, books. I’ve probably got every bodybuilding magazine and book that’s been published in between 1980 and 95 and even a lot more before that because people would see that I was collecting and people used to give me their old Iron Man magazines and things like that. I had a huge collection, which unfortunately. got damaged in storage and stuff like that. But I just absorbed all this information and then started sorting out and what worked and what didn’t work, what’s made sense and what didn’t make sense and having goals.

30:16 I’ve got every workout I ever did from 1983 until 1997. I’ve got every workout written down. I’ve got every exercise, every rep, every weight, everything written down. I’ve got a stack of books like that all handwritten. I’ve got all my diets in there.

30:34 Everything is logged down and I was doing this and I taught myself to do this and every month I would write, this is my weight. This is my bicep measurement. This is my waist. This is my maximum bench press and I’ll have all these next month. My goal is 10 pounds increased on the bench press.

30:52 It doesn’t sound much. Yeah, but if I did it every month for 12 months, it’d be 120 pounds. It’d be massive. So I always broke it down into little achievable goals like that which I didn’t always achieve but I had the goal to aim for and constantly going forward. So I kept records and if I change something in my diet, change something in my training, I would put it down and I’d change one thing at a time And then let’s see from what effect.

31:18 This has positive or negative and then whatever it was, if it was positive, I’d keep it. If it was negative, I wouldn’t agonize about the whys and even if I read somewhere Arnold Schwartz the next day this exercise is the greatest thing but I’m doing it’s not working. I’ll just simply eliminate it and move on. I wouldn’t wonder why it’s not waste energy on that. So very meticulous in my planning and very analytical about the whole process.

31:44 Like a scientist. This is a scientific method. Yeah, it was my own scientist cross between in a science experiment, a sport and an art. It’s like the whole thing combined because it was so individual. I think we were having a conversation earlier on and I said it’s great to hear my daughter.

32:03 She’s I think she was 13 at the time and she said to me, Dad, I’m growing up too quick. I don’t want to grow up. I just want to stay a kid. Why is that then? She’s like, yeah, because when you’re a kid, you just have fun.

32:14 There’s no responsibility. There’s no paying the bills and I just want to, you know, it’s great. I just want to stay like this. And I thought to myself, that’s lovely that she feels like that because when I was at that age, I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I wanted to grow up and be able to be responsible for my own life because these people that supposed to be looking after me, they’re, you know, they’re screwing up.

32:33 That’s the way I thought anyway. So bodybuilding was so individual for me. I had to study the nutrition. I had to do the training. I had to find out how it worked with my body.

32:46 There were no teammates. There were no family. There was nobody to let me down. It was just all down to me. Win or lose.

32:53 And that’s that was the appeal about bodybuilding for me. I was almost psychologically just perfectly built for it. Perhaps, you know, yeah, mentally. Yeah, you always said bodybuilding was about self mastery, about discipline, overcoming pain. And then later at the contest level, the desire not to eat.

33:12 Yeah, that that was. That was my spin on it. Anyway, everyone has got their own approach. Somebody else who professional bodybuilding might say, you know, this is more of an art for me or whatever. But that was for me.

33:25 The biggest thing was it was a discipline. It was a personal challenge, you know, and if you can overcome. If something’s painful, you don’t want to do it, right? But if you can overcome that and like if your body is telling you to eat and you can and you can like discipline yourself to say, actually, no, I’m in control here. Then other obstacles in life not going to be so difficult when you come to face them.

33:48 And if you want to achieve everything, the same kind of approach could work. If you’re in a business, you need some strategy, some plan, you know, with your business. It’s the same. There’s things that I learned goal setting and so on. I learned from the sport.

34:04 You can apply it to anything in life, really. You said for two years you live like a monk. Is that when you were at Castleville getting ready for that? Two years I live like a monk. I’ve probably stayed more like the whole 12 years I was competing was was living like a monk.

34:22 Got a bit more relaxed, I suppose because I had a family around me. I had my wife and my son and stuff when I was professional or living together and had more more security like that, but was very disciplined almost to the extreme that wasn’t necessary, but I didn’t know how to do it any other way, you know, so I wouldn’t go out. I wouldn’t go to a movie if it meant I was going to get home after 11 30. Because I need to get a bed at 12 and I need to eat at 11 and all these things, everything had to work around, so it’s almost like.

34:59 I was trying to create the perfect environment all the time for me to get the results from the training and that’s the thing with bodybuilding is not just the training when you go to the gym and then you can like, Oh, I forget about that When you go home, nice. It’s with you all the time because you’ve got to you know, you’ve got to eat the right things at the right time and you’ve got to eat very frequently every two and after three hours you’re going to have the required nutrition and so on. So it’s like a real regime, and I kind of bent everything around that.

35:26 And everything had to fit in with that. And this is pre-internet so all the information like you said, it’s copies of articles, it’s old books, it’s the strength of your career is probably based on the strength of your library to a certain extent. Yeah, I had a lot of books, a lot of books on training. I had my books on nutrition with all the breakdowns of foods, protein, calorie intake and so on. So I was weighing my food and calculating the calories and the protein and the carbs way before like many people were going to that extent.

36:02 You know, people were just guesstimating or going by instinct. I didn’t like to do that. I like to be very meticulous with the whole thing. And same with your sleep schedule. That was all planned.

36:12 Yeah, it was all planned. You planned naps and things. Probably a pretty boring guy to be around. I used to sleep eight hours nine hours a night. I used to insist on having a nap every day after training for an hour and a half.

36:24 And, you know, you’ve got a family. Everyone kind of has to like fit in with that schedule. But I could justify it, I guess, because this was my profession and this was bringing in, you know, we had a nice home and all these things that would have been out of reach to me, probably, you know, if I wasn’t a professional bodybuilder. Like I said, you know, they say don’t put all your eggs in one basket, but I only had one egg, one basket. So, you know, I did put everything into it.

36:56 And you become British champion in 83. 86, I was British champion. And did you know that was going to happen? Was it? Well, the big breakthrough came really earlier than that.

37:07 My first contest I did after about six months training. So there’s some early photographs of me with bushy, 1980s hair. You’re wearing what? 200 pounds? Around 200 pounds.

37:22 I just started. I think I’ve done six months training and the guy at the gym said, look, I’m doing a little intergym contest for all the gyms in the Birmingham area across the street. Why don’t you enter the first time? I was like, you’re looking great. You know, I’m like, it’s not in my plan.

37:37 You know, it’s not in my plan. And I don’t think I look good and I think so. Thanks. But I don’t think so. Anyway, I got sick.

37:46 I got flu or something like that. And I was out for about a week and I couldn’t eat properly. And I was sweating. I looked in the mirror and I lost like, I don’t know, five or six pounds. And I was looking shredded.

37:56 I was naturally lean anyway. So just that little bit. I was like, maybe I’ll do that contest. Yeah, let’s do it then. You know, I remember shaving was just weird.

38:08 And then I must have the whitest skin. My hair is almost going into red a little bit. So, you know, I got that skin that’s just really, now it’s totally different because I live in the sun and various things which we can discuss why I’ve got a color now and I couldn’t get it for 20 years, which is interesting. But at that time, I was like white like a milk bottle. And we had no professional tanning products.

38:32 I just went to Boots, the chemist, you know, and they had this tanning mousse called Sudden Tan that ladies used to use on the legs or something like that. So I’m getting the sponge and putting all that on and thinking, wow, look how brown I am. I look like a brown guard, you know. I see the pictures on stage. It was just still totally white, you know.

38:50 So, six months, I won the contest and I beat some guys that, you know, they’ve been around for a few years, right? So that was good. And then I went back to the drawing board and I said, one year’s time, I want to try to compete for the Novice British Championship. Not the British Championship, but the Novice one. Yeah, one step at a time.

39:10 So I went to a qualifying contest in Morecambe in 1985. And the people that there like remember this day, the day that Dorian Yates, the star was born. So I went along there to the Novice contest and I remember being backstage looking around. He’s pretty good. He’s pretty good.

39:27 I got a good chance. Like I was just feeling like that. But when I see the pictures, I was like, there’s no comparison. I walked on stage, I did some poses and when I came off, the head of the British Federation was there who was a judge in the Mr. Olympia and very high up in the international bodybuilding community and he’s like, who the fuck are you?

39:44 Where do you come from? What’s, what are you doing? What are you in this contest for? I’m like, I come from Birmingham. This is my first contest.

39:52 So I’m in the Novice contest, right? It’s like, you should be in the heavyweight contest. I’m like, yeah, but I didn’t think I was good enough for that. It’s like, not good enough. Not good enough.

40:02 It’s like, you’re probably the best heavyweight we’ve got in the whole country right now. This guy, he’s joking, right? So they invite me to compete in the world games, which coincidentally was being held the following weekend, which is a level of a world championship. So we want to come and try out next weekend to be on the team for the world games as a heavyweight. So I was a bit reluctant because again, it was not in my place to plan and your plan was meticulous and you weren’t in a rush, were you?

40:31 No, I wasn’t in a rush. One thing at a time, but you know, these guys were like very nice and they were like, you know, Ron Davis was the guy’s name. He was the head of the Federation. He was a judge at the Mr. Olympia and he was saying, look, you know, you’re ready for this.

40:45 You can do this and you’re going to, you know, you can beat a lot of these guys that are pros and okay, I went along to do the world games and I got seventh place there out of 13 guys. But these were like, these were the top amateurs in the world. So I finished in the middle of the pack after a year and a half straining, which was great. And I got that recognition and you know, that yeah, you are doing the right thing. You are in the right place.

41:08 You do have the potential. But on the other hand, I was very disappointed that I let myself being taken off track and put into a contest where I didn’t feel I was really ready yet. And I wasn’t really there to win. I remember when I was a kid, my mom, you know, we had the horses and my mom used to take me to these Jim Carne’s, you know, like horse shows and have level competitions and my horse was so slow that I always had no chance of winning. Always used to lose.

41:33 And I just don’t know that stuck with me. Like, I’m like, this we’re not prepared properly, you know, you can’t win in this situation. So that kind of stuck with me. So it was good. But at the same time, I was like, I’ve learned something not to let anyone persuade me that I go with my plan and my instincts and my things that I wanted to do.

41:52 So the World Games was really a breakthrough and they showed a little bit of it on TV at the opening ceremony. And at the opening ceremony, I was there with a girl called Dela Shahabi. She was a British competitor. But we’re there with a tracksuit top and we took the bottoms up into the legs and did some posing. So of course, got all these sports there, water skiing, powerlifting, like loads of sports.

42:12 World Games is like, it’s like Olympic games, but sports that haven’t made it to the Olympic games yet. Okay. So there’s a lot of sports there, but nothing interesting visual going on at the opening ceremony apart from these people with the legs and the body. So all the TV cameras came over and that got on TV and a lot of people then recognize me and I got my first paid guest appearance at a contest to fly to Northern Ireland. Some guys that have been at the World Games and saw me and that’s a guy with the low potential and probably pretty cheap as well at the time.

42:43 So if you’re under a quid and their ticket, they got me over to Northern Ireland and I did a guest posing there at a contest. That’s the first time I did a guest posing and the first time that I ever went on a commercial airplane was from my sport. How did that feel? Feel great. I didn’t even have a car at the time.

43:01 So, you know, looking back, I’m thinking I didn’t have anything, but it didn’t bother me at all. I was just happy that I was just immersed in this goal, you know, all consuming goal and it was exciting. It was enjoyable. Let me ask you a question. There’s a movie called Senna that came out recently.

43:19 It’s about a Brazilian. Did you see it? Yeah, I did. There’s a point at the end of the film and it’s a very interesting film because you kind of get to live his life in real time, right, by the footage and everything. At the very end, there’s a point where he says, you know, sometimes he used to miss back when he used to be a go-kart racer because there was no money.

43:38 There was no politics. It was just pure competition. He missed that sometimes. I was wondering if, did you ever miss it when you were in a fourth time, fifth time, sixth time, Mr. Olympia?

43:49 Did you ever miss like that first contest? No, because I didn’t really change my approach or my attitude and I isolated myself very much. I always thought, you know, if I became successful, if I became Mr. Olympia, I want to move to the States and move to California because that’s where it’s at and that’s what I read about when I was a kid and that’s what’s inspired me and Arnold on the beach with his girls and all this stuff, you know. So I thought that’s where I’d want to be.

44:16 When I got successful, I realized if I was there, there would be a lot of pulls on my time, you know, a lot of pressure to go to this event and do this and do that when I was over in the UK. It’s a lot more difficult to get hold of me And, you know, ask me to go into an event because I’m on the other side of the world. So there would have been a lot of distractions and a lot of pressures of me in the States and I wanted to keep that, you know, Club Alang, Eye of the Tiger, you know, I didn’t want to get too comfortable.

44:46 I didn’t want to go to events with celebrities and all this kind of stuff. So I stayed in Birmingham, where I was not accessible to do those kind of things. and where I could just be still almost religious about my training and regime And everything that got me to be at the top, because there’s the dilemma, You know, you do all this hard work. to get to the top. And then when you get to the top, you get opportunities to make money, but it’s going to take away from your time and dedication that you put in to get there.

45:16 So it’s a lot of people fall down on that. You know, amateur bodybuilders turn professional and then all of a sudden they’re not so good anymore. Why? Because they just got so many distractions and now they become successful. Also get so many people in the air telling them, well, you should have done this and you should train like this and you should have done that.

45:33 And then they forgot just basic hard work that got them there in the first place probably. So I isolated myself and that also had no strategy about the way I did things. It was just me being me, but it almost could have been a strategy because it worked out, you know, the whole shadow mystique, unaccessible guy from across the water. The only monster that only comes out now and then roll up, roll up, buy your ticket. You know, like every show I went to in America and I could still speak to the promoters now.

46:03 20 years later, they say they’ve never seen anything like it. They would sell out their shows immediately when people knew I was there. There was no internet to see me in the flesh, to see me or to talk to me or have access or anything like that. So when you turned up at a show those days there was a huge demand. Huge demand for everybody, but I was number one because I was so inaccessible and so different and the physique that had changed the sport and everything like that.

46:31 So Where did that nickname come from? Do you remember who? The shadow? The shadow was coined by Peter McGough. Who’s an author, the first guy to ever do an interview with me outside the contest.

46:44 The first contest I did in Wacom. I got my trophy for winning my class and everything. I remember going outside with my girlfriend at the time and I didn’t have a car as I said. So my friend coincidentally was in the detention center with me. We used to train together in there.

47:01 When he came out he carried on train and I carried on train in our separate gyms and everything. But he rented a car. So he rented a car to drive me up to the contest. So it was actually I was actually going outside to put the trophy in the rented car. And Peter McGough followed me out.

47:19 He was writing for a British magazine. Think it was Muscle & Co or something at the time. And he wanted to interview me and I was like he said you had the look on your face when I asked you to interview was like total like why? So that was my first interview I did with Peter McGough. And he’s the guy and then he went Peter McGough coincidentally his writing career almost went parallel with my bodybuilding career.

47:46 He ended up being the editor of Flex magazine in California which is the biggest bodybuilding magazine in the world and very respected in the sport for his writing and for his knowledge and everything. So Peter is the one that coined The Shadow because he’s like this guy. He comes out of his gym in Birmingham goes to a contest devastates everybody. He’s like the opposite the antibody builder because he’s not an extrovert he doesn’t tell everybody how great he is all the time and all this stuff that people expect.

48:19 He just goes to the contest win it and disappear and everyone’s like who’s that guy? Where does he come from? All this enigma and then disappears in his gym for another year or two years and just trains and doesn’t let anyone see him because he’s got sweatshot on all the time and then pops up again And just blows everyone’s mind and disappears again like a shadow, so that’s where it comes from, and it’s a funny thing. because I had a pony when I was a kid and his name was Shadow and obviously he didn’t know that so little coincidence that you get in life.

48:47 And it was never a plan of yours To kind of be that guy, but that was you, so it’s not my plan to be that guy. I was just me being me, which I find always works out for me, people that appreciate that. And when I went to California and I was, you know, one of my first pro show. And I was flown out to California by Joe Wieder to do the photo shoots for the magazines and everything. First of all, they asked me to wear sunglasses and they wanted to spray this water bottle on me.

49:13 So it looks like I’m sweaty and take pictures and pose and hold the weights, and I’m like, This is bullshit, I don’t train like this, I don’t wear sunglasses, yeah, but we want it. It’s like what they want. I said, How about we do something different? How about lift that fucking 200 pound dumbbell and you get a picture of that, can you do that? I’m like, Yeah, I can do it, but I can’t do it and hold it.

49:32 And, you know, like, you got to get this shot, and that was. That was my first front cover that shot 200 pound Dumbbell. I’m doing a one arm row in goals gym, with all the veins coming out, my neck and everything, because I am actually lifting a 200 pound dumbbell. That’s what it looks like when you lift. But people saw that shot and they know it’s real and they feel inspired and they get energy from that shot.

49:53 And that from then on, pretty much it just changed the whole. The way that people did things, they wanted to shoot you with real weights in the gym, now in black and white and real grainy stuff. And I did my training video, blood and guts,

50:12 And I was the first one to film a real, genuine fly on the wall. Hardcore No shit training, why? Because I’m a fan, I was a fan or I am a fan of bodybuilding, and I read every magazine. I watched every video, everything trust. Me and I used to watch the guys training on these training videos and get ready for the limping.

50:32 I was like, This is bullshit, like it’s just not inspiring me. Surely they don’t train like this? And what I noticed was when I tried to do it. You get a video production company and they want to shoot a professional video from their point of view, so they want the correct angles. They want the correct light and all that, that’s what they’re concerned with, because that’s their job.

50:51 I said that nobody cares about that. Yeah, they want to see the action, they want to see how much weights I’m lifting, they want to see the effort that goes into it. So I got a friend of mine to rent a film camera. I said, Right, I want you to film me, don’t ever talk to me. Just be there, try to get the weights in the shot so people can see how much weights I’m lifting.

51:10 But apart from that, just get it in there and I don’t worry about the angle and all this stuff, because I don’t think it’s important. I want the energy I want to capture the joint and work out. So I’m really glad I did because obviously I can’t. I don’t lift those kind of weights anymore. So it’s there, recorded for for history.

51:25 And it’s got to be the most popular training video, and now it’s on DVD that’s been made in a sport because it’s real. When was that film? It was filmed in 96 in Temple Gym. Yeah, when I watch blood and guts, I see a man putting in work. I mean, it is just work, it is relentless work.

51:45 It’s unglamorous, you are just piling the weights on and doing all the things that you do, and it’s fascinating to watch. This is before reality TV, that is reality TV, and it’s, you know, that’s a result of preparation as well. Before I went to the gym, I would do like a rehearsal almost, so I would sit down with my diary of what I did last time. So I did X200 for eight last time. And now I just visualize myself at the gym and like breaking that eight, getting the nine.

52:17 Or whatever, and the whole thing I would just like, kind of play it through my mind first and record it. And then when I was going to the gym, I was almost like in a trance like nobody could ever talk to me. Because I was not there. I wouldn’t, I would. I purposely wouldn’t make it.

52:31 I can’t turn up with anybody anyway, because I didn’t want to be just in my own world. So between the sets, I just mainly like, Look at the floor or talk to my, you know, training partner, how much weight not like, what did you do last night, or anything like that? There’s none of that after training, yes, but not before and not during. Like, Got there and we’re in the zone, do the job and it’s not just, yeah, I’m lifting heavy weights, but it’s not just lifting heavy weights.

52:56 It’s almost an art form of how to lift them. To put the maximum stress on the muscle, a bodybuilder is the opposite to a weightlifter or powerlifter. Their job is to get the weight from A to B. However, they can, you know, using as many muscle groups using as much momentum and body movement. Whatever it takes to get that weight with a bodybuilder, you got to eliminate.

53:17 All those things you’ve got to try to put maximum stress on whichever muscle it is that you’re trying to isolate and trying to work. So there’s a real mental aspect to that, you know, and is that part of your your hit high intensity training, if you’re only going in for an hour, maybe less than an hour? You have to have it all focused in your head because you don’t want to take two hours. Matter of fact. That’s counterproductive, exactly, and you can’t train like with super intensity and focus for very long.

53:46 Is Mike Mensah, who was, you know, one of the predecessors to me with this kind of training used to say, Well, you know, if I say to you to go outside and sprint, how long are you going to sprint for? Before it turns into a semi jog? You know you can’t sprint for very long, but you can’t go all out for very long. It’s the same thing with the weights you can’t give all out effort for very long. So probably 40 45 minutes was the average for my workouts four times a week.

54:16 And they’re all mentally rehearsed before you get all mentally rehearsed, and, you know, I know the function of the muscle. I can visualize the fibers. I’m almost within the muscle when I’m doing it. Were you doing that from the beginning? Trying to like, Think about the fibers and think about, absolutely, yeah, control the weights on all aspects of the, you know? Lifting the weight, the positive, lowering the weight, the negatives and exhaust all those phases of the muscle.

54:43 So, yeah, I’m actually doing a certification now for personal trainers, so they come and train with me and they get all these points. We go over so that that my training methods are translated correctly because, like you said, bodybuilding is different than powerlifting, and it’s different from weightlifting as in. You’re thinking about the best way to stress that fiber exactly if you do a bench press as a power lifter. You bring the bar down to your chest and you’re going to get it back up to there.

55:08 So, first of all, you can arch your back to reduce the range of motion you can bring. You know, bring it back into it, you can have a wider grip, various things you can do, try and get that. Weight from A to B. If you’re doing it as a bodybuilding, you’re trying to like, use your pecs as much as you can, so it’s a different movement. You come up probably a bit higher on the chest, probably a narrower grip.

55:31 More control on the way down, you know, and focusing on the pec and, you know, trying to isolate the other muscle groups. So it’s more of an art form in bodybuilding, which may or may not come across in when you watch the video. But if you watch the body positioning and the lack of movement and stuff, and then you’ll probably see it. They’re intense videos. I’m glad you recorded them.

55:53 Yeah, me too, because otherwise I’d be telling stories to my kids and my grandparents about the weights I used to lift instead of I’ve got proof now, talk to me about the Americans. I mean, obviously they were always in the magazines. You were seeing the Golds, gym and the guys in Venice. The first time you went to compete in America, you went to New York City. I just wanted to know what you thought of the Americans, what are the guys in? The gyms in Birmingham were talking about the Americans, What did they tell you it was going to be like to compete with them.

56:17 Ah, the Americans, the Americans, people used to talk. To me about the Americans as if they had like four legs and four arms or something like I’m like, Okay, they’ve got better. Gyms over there. Access to better food and there’s more people and there’s more people lifting weights. That’s the big thing people don’t realize, maybe in the states that most of your schools or colleges would have a weight room.

56:40 Am I correct? Yeah, it would. No school in England has a weight room. You’re not going to be introduced to weights at school, you’re going to have to decide for yourself. Oh, I would like to do weights, and where is there a gym?

56:53 And let me find out, you know, and go to the gym and find out about this. So it’s not something you stumble across at school while you’re playing football or basketball, or baseball, or track and field or whatever, and you do weight. So it’s fair to say that a lot of people that go to school or college in the States, they have done weights. At some point, you know, for whatever reason, they’ve been introduced to those weights, so you’ve got just a bigger pool to pool from.

57:20 Plus, the whole sport was based in America, you know, mainly in California, because of the Weeders, the Weed magazine Flex muscle builder. All that stuff, and Arnold, and on Pin iron and so on.

57:34 So somehow the Americans had a mythical status and of course, there was no Internet. So if there was an American, it used to be a circuit. You know, of people coming to do. Seminars, seminars were very big, so you get to see the guy hear him speak. Just to hear them speak was like, Worth the price of the ticket?

57:53 Because these guys are from magazines, they’re like mythical guys here. He really is now and he’s talking. And then you can ask questions you have a Q A. And then at the end the guy will come out and do his posing. So that was very popular, and people are.

58:11 I don’t know if you can beat the Americans. That was at first. And then, you know, when I won the British Championship the second time 88 and just really walked there and took the championship, people started to recognize that. Maybe I’ll be good enough as a pro. But there was still a lot of negativity about, especially before Night of Champions.

58:31 Because I had no publicity, you know? And they said, That’s going to affect me negatively, because everyone’s influenced by publicity, even the judges. They’re going to be looking for Eddie Robinson and people like this that had a lot of. Hype in the magazines. So they’re going to have an advantage over you and you don’t know any of the judges and you don’t know the right people.

58:53 And no, no, no, no, no, I said, I’m not going to listen to this, I’m just going to train so hard and we’re going to be that good that, you know, I can’t be ignored, so I’m just not going to listen to that. Do my best. So I went to New York, which was a huge thing for me. First time in the States and bam into New York and Manhattan and walk around like this with the skyscrapers. Because I’ve seen this on TV before.

59:19 Is this real or am I on TV in New York and then Night of the Champions? I went there and a lot of the top pros were there and they all knew each other and everything. So I was, you know, I’m just feel like a bit of an outsider as well.

59:40 And New York is New York, right? And I heard that the crowd at the night of champions were typical. NEW YORK Very vocal. And if they like you, they’re going to let you know if they don’t like you, they’re going to let you know. So I didn’t really know what to expect from the crowd day, you know, the English crowds were pretty boisterous, but I heard the New York was like, You know, it was the one.

1:00:01 So I went there and I think some went around the audience, like, Who’s this guy number, whatever? I can’t remember what number I was, but I don’t know how much it was into the contest. That the whole crowd just started chanting. Darien Darien Darien. So I was like, Yeah, I don’t need to worry about the New York crowd then. I guess they’re behind me now.

1:00:27 And New York became my second home because later on I met some very good friends. Bev Francis Steve Weinberger BEV. Francis was an athlete from Australia, she competed in the miss and impure, and so on. They had a big gym in New York, so I became friends with them and that was my base. Then, for all my things I did in the States, it was not California, which is the usual base.

1:00:49 I based myself in New York, and I felt more comfortable in New York. You know, like New York’s, more like, I don’t know the guys in New York. The gyms in New York and New Jersey and Boston, the whole East Coast, were much more hardcore and blue collar, more like the British bodybuilders, I think, were you something special that night for that contest in New York? If you look back at what you looked like, were you really kind of coming into your own? I was, yeah.

1:01:15 But I had a pretty traumatic week before the contest, which was usual for me that I overdid everything. So I was probably in great shape four or five weeks out before that contest. And I kept dieting because I wanted to get leaner, and then I got in New York and it was quite stressful. I didn’t know anything, didn’t know anybody in New York, so I asked the British Federation, Where do I stay, where do I train? Like? Well, New York.

1:01:43 So they got in touch with the contest promoter and I guess that he’d gone into some local gym. Not having much respect for British bodybuilders, because we never did anything up until that point. So this guy from England wants to come over and they’ve called me to find something to look after him. So I went to some local gym and probably, hey, some guy at Bodyball who wants to put him up, I will. So we went to me and my wife arrived three in the morning and we went to this apartment.

1:02:09 This guy, that not gonna have any problem with it. He was clearly gay and a lot of gay pictures on the wall. And then it was like a little camp bed on the floor somewhere or something, and I’m like, Man, I can’t stay here. I’m very sorry, but you need to get me a hotel right now, you know, so that was like, Oh my God, you know, I’ve been praying for this contest for months. And now I’m here, and now I don’t have anywhere to stay and cook my food and everything.

1:02:35 But eventually we got the Chelsea Hotel in New York and I stayed there. And then when I was there, it twigged on me that this is where Sid, Vicious, stayed and murdered his girlfriend. And I was like, Wow, this is a coincidence, you know? So the whole week was interesting but very stressful, which and I lost even more weight than I should have done. So I was below my weight because all you know, doing too much.

1:03:02 So I remember being very. I was very lean, very shredded, but I’d gone down below my ideal weight, but I got pretty close second to Mohammed. Benaziza was a great professional at the time and I got. I made an impact. You know, the crowd were behind me more than the other guy because I was new out of anywhere.

1:03:23 And I think because of my stage presentation and my physique and it was quite aggressive. And maybe that went well with the New York crowd, you know? But it was very encouraging and I didn’t tell. I don’t know if I told anybody, but I told myself if I didn’t place in the top five in that contest, I wouldn’t compete again. Because it wouldn’t be worth all that absolute focus and dedication that I was giving to the neglect of mostly everything else.

1:03:56 I couldn’t justify it anymore because I would say, if I can’t make the top five and I’ve given it my best shot, then that tells me I’m not good enough to really do this, and there’s a lot of people that were hanging around that were in that situation. You know, right, you didn’t want to be on the pony again. Ah, because you know, they’re not making a living, really, they’re just getting by. And you know, you’re living this, your family’s kind of suffering, because your time and your emotions are not there.

1:04:20 Because it’s all into this sport, you know, you’re restricting yourself from many opportunities like I would, you know? I had a gym, and I decided if this, if I didn’t have a future in the professional competitions, I will open another gym, or maybe another gym, I will. You know, I’ll have my time and focus to do that. I can do anything I want and already proven that by doing this, so I can transfer that effort to something else. So that would have been the route that I took, and Dorian Yates’ Mr. Olympia never would have existed.

1:04:48 If I hadn’t got top five in that contest was so fortunately I got second and I got flown out to California. For Joe Wieder’s Flex magazine, which is everybody, builder’s dream at that time is that when you did the 200, yeah, I did that first. And you said, You said, you probably ushered in a new way of people looking at bodybuilders. I mean, you know, kind of a more of a blue collar or guys, you know, working, as opposed to being sunglasses. And Arnold on the beach type Well, the whole thing is really, that was an illusion that was being sold, that was being marketed.

1:05:18 You know, look, hey, get your protein shake and be on the beach with these girls, and but it didn’t really exist, nobody was really doing. Maybe Arnold, a couple of guys who got time to go sit on the beach, but in the 70s they do right. Yeah, in the movies. But in the 70s, there’s no contest prize money, there’s no sponsorship deals. So how the hell are you gonna do that?

1:05:35 Sit on the beach? So perhaps it did exist in California, but California is not everywhere. The majority of guys that were lifting weights all around the world were just working class, blue collar guys like me. They didn’t live in the sun, they didn’t wear sunglasses. When they’re trained, they changed some dank gymnasium and, you know, lifting heavy weights with two sweatshirts on in the winter with their mates.

1:06:02 So when I came and I was genuine with what I was doing. And with the video, and with the photos and everything, they’re like, Wow, this guy is one of us, we can relate to that. So that’s why I think I was so popular because I offered an alternative. Where before you know, you’ve got Sean Ray and these guys always out in California, driving a Corvette by the beach. And it’s nice.

1:06:23 Yeah, it’s great and but we’re not from there, we’re not doing that. So it was almost like this guy’s like us, so they felt people felt a bond with me at the time. Lee Haney Is Mr. Olympia, Yeah. um which he held for eight years were you thinking at that time in New York I got to start thinking about Lee well there’s a thing Lee Haney was Mr. Olympia the first time in 1984 I started training in 1983 So Lee Haney had been Mr. Olympia pretty much for the whole time that I’ve been training and climbing up and everything.

1:06:55 And so here’s the icon in the sport. And he was had a good shape, but it was a lot bigger than all the other guys that was. His thing overpowered them right? And by the time I got to, I got second in the first night of champions. And then I came back the following year and I won that outright and I did improved.

1:07:18 And then people and myself were thinking I could maybe take this guy, you know, and I had to change my mental approach. From, Wow, it’s Lee Haney’s Mr. Olympia to like, No, no, no hold on. It’s two arms, two legs, lifts, weights. And one thing I can guarantee he does not train as hard as me, he does not dedicate himself as much as me.

1:07:44 How do I know that because it’s not possible, it’s not possible to be training harder or more consistently or more dedicated than me? Because I couldn’t give a single ounce more. To any aspect of this thing that I’m doing, so that makes me feel pretty powerful. I’m pretty confident because I know other people are slacking sometimes. Or maybe they didn’t have a great workout today.

1:08:10 It was okay, mine was great every time, you know, because I put everything into it, you know, nothing else exists. Almost. Arnold made the point in his movie. You know, someone stole his car, his house was on fire and on the way to the gym. So I just called the insurance company.

1:08:29 I’m going to a gym, you know, that’s my focus. I will not be distracted by anything. So at one point, what year did you cross that mental barrier where you were like? I think that year

1:08:43 Would have been 91 when I won that night of champions. and then later in the year was the Mr. Olympia that I was going to go and compete against Lee Haney

1:08:53 Which I knew would be tough I mean seven times Mr. Olympia greatest physique of all time really? Can I beat this guy? Yeah why not? Why not?

1:09:05 That’s what I was thinking by the time I got there and you know that always gave me a lot of strength and a lot of power that knowledge that knowledge That nobody could have done that. Well, I’ve done nobody, you know, I know they haven’t done that, and it just makes you feel very powerful. Everything you’re talking about just sounds like a mental game, whether it’s your intensity, when you go in for those training sessions, whether it’s all the hard work, the writing, the planning to where you know, deep down in your soul, there’s no man on the planet, everything’s mental, everything’s a thought.

1:09:41 You know, you create your reality with your thoughts. We just live in a virtual reality world and you make it what you’re. You build your story with your mind, you know, and I built this story. I want it to be Mr. Olympia.

1:09:54 That starts with a thought. Then come the actions and I’ll learn from that, that I can apply that to many things you know, and it can bring things into your reality, you can change your, you can change your life. If you went out today, just had a fight with your wife or something like you’re in a pissed off mood. You go out, you go to the gym, you go here, you do your things right and you’ll have an experience now. Imagine for that day it was the same day, but in the morning you sat down and you meditated and you got yourself into a peaceful place.

1:10:31 And you got love in your heart and you went out and you went to the same places and met the same people. You have a totally different experience because your vibration. That you’re giving off will bring a different experience, try it one day, try it and go. You’ll see people smiling at you for no reason. Well, there is a reason, but they don’t really know why it is.

1:10:56 So everything starts with your mind, your thoughts and you can change your existence, change your reality almost, and no one taught you that you’ve picked that up. No one taught me that, and I know that now, you know more. I did it then, but it was almost like I had a feeling that I had to do this. It wasn’t like, you know, I had to do it, I had to do it. It was life or death, kind of passion that I put into it, and now I look back.

1:11:25 It’s almost like I knew it was going to happen. You know, I had to make it happen, but I almost knew that it would. It was going to like it happened before. Do you remember when you first won Mr. Olympia?

1:11:37 Do you remember how you felt, Do you remember that night, Do you remember what was going through your head? Yeah, that when I people always criticized me for being like, not being like emotional on stage and not smiling and all that stuff. But I learned that at an early age when my dad died, I learned to kind of control and hide the emotions. I don’t know why it was just a big thing that when I went back to school I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want people to see me break down.

1:12:07 I didn’t want to see me cry when I went back to school after that, you know, and I didn’t, and I think I always had that thing inside that I kind of suppressed and the control. But the first time I won the night of champions and the first time I won the Mr. Olympia. If you look at the footage, you see, I’m biting my lip that’s like to suppress to keep it. I did feel like breaking down and crying because it’s accumulation of all this year’s training and all this.

1:12:33 But I had to kind of control it because that was something I’d practiced for many years and got quite good at, you know, so yes, I was emotional, Yeah, I was like, Wow, this is amazing, but it probably didn’t come across like that to other people. Do you think it was healthy suppressing those emotions? Ah, probably not, probably not, you know, but that was how I learned to cope with things from that early age. I think, you know, so, you know, now I’m aware of all these things.

1:13:05 I wouldn’t be aware of it at the time. I can look back and analyze it because I’m somewhat removed from the situation. Did you celebrate that night? Yeah, I think I had a diet coconut piece of ice cream or something, because the next day was being held. A contest in England.

1:13:19 And I had to compete there, so I had to wait a little bit to let loose. But it almost, you know, it was almost a bit surreal at first. Like, you know, is this really happening? And I even had some doubt going into that contest because I wasn’t chasing anybody now. Because Lee Haney retired, so the title was vacant.

1:13:42 So the fact that I came second to Lee Haney and now I wasn’t competing probably made me, logically, the favorite. But there was some new Americans coming up and so on, so people still hadn’t. Really. Maybe this guy was a one hit wonder. And they hadn’t really accepted my place yet because I wasn’t here and I just came bang on the scene like that.

1:14:05 So I never really knew where this guy was going to go. But then I won the title, and the second time I won, the title was in such a convincing fashion. That people knew that this guy is here to stay. Second time you were away about the cut, yeah, second time was like, presented a physique that no one had ever seen before in terms of muscle mass and combined with the super condition that I was known for. And all the guys competing that year said that they knew straight away they knew they were competing.

1:14:39 For. Second place, which is for a competitor, is a good feeling. Let’s talk about conditioning, that’s what you call it. When it comes down to the weight you strip off in order to be right for the contest, something you take very seriously. Yeah, well, there’s certain things, you know, like your proportions, which is mostly genetic.

1:15:02 What it can do with your training. You know, if you emphasize one area more than another, so you’ve got proportions, you’ve got muscle mass, obviously, which takes years of heavy training. And then the other aspect is what we call condition in bodybuilding, which basically means having your body fat very low and somewhat dehydrated. To show all the separations between the muscle fibers and the different muscle groups, and so on. So that was something I was meticulous about, and almost maybe too much that I would come into contest a little bit kind of a little bit flat and a little bit under my potential weight.

1:15:41 But I was prepared to do that in order to get that level of conditioning so that I wouldn’t be weak in any area. It wouldn’t be like Yates, he’s got huge muscle mass, he’s a little bit soft, not really super shredded. I wanted to be. I had the muscle mass of a heavy weight bodybuilder, but the conditioning of, like, a lightweight or middleweight guy. So that’s what I was aiming for and that you know, that along with my dedication and the type of training I was doing.

1:16:13 I was able to reach another level for the sport that hadn’t been achieved before, and it pushed everybody else up like everyone else’s game. I mean, maybe at the time the guys weren’t too happy with me coming over there and taking their trophies and their checks. But now we’re late and we can all look back. First of all, I got great respect for the guys that competed against me because they were all so good. You know?

1:16:38 And we can look back now and realize. And they got respect for me because I raised the bar, which made them better. You know, they couldn’t take their foot off the gas because of this crazy guy from England who knows what he’s going to come. Looking like in 12 months and you dropped your body fat much lower than previous contests. I mean, you were really ripped when you showed up.

1:16:56 Yeah, I was always ripped, but the thing was in 93 was combined with size that nobody had ever seen before. Perhaps you’ve seen guys big before, but not super shredded at the same time. So it was a combination of all those factors, and that’s what a winning bodybuilder is. It’s a combination of the proportions muscle, mass condition and of course, you’ve got to be able to present the product as well. You always said, That’s what separates the men for the boys is the new nutrition and the conditioning.

1:17:22 Yeah, because training is fun, right? You know, it’s hard work, right? It’s hard in the gym, you know, you got to push yourself and it’s hard, but it’s fun. Well, it’s not fun when you’re starving all day long, when you feel hungry all day long and you feel hungry at night. And your sleep patterns are broken because your body is waking up all the time, telling you to eat.

1:17:41 You know, all the things, all the survival instincts, all the bells are ringing, you’ve got to eat, you’ve got to eat. Nope, I’m going to eat, I’m going to eat at this time, and this is what I’m going to eat, because that’s what you know. That’s what I need to do to achieve where I’m going, and you’ve got to constantly override those those instincts, you know, it’s just. It’s an ongoing battle for two or three months, and that’s where a lot of guys fall down. You know, a lot of guys can do the training and they can get big.

1:18:11 But the discipline that that requires for a contest to get into that extreme condition is something else. So it’s two or three months before competition, you’re starting to scale back your food. I guess it’s all written down, probably it’s all written down. And not only are you scaling back your food, you’re doing more activities, not necessarily more weight training, because it’s still like short and intense, more cardio activity. A couple of times a day, maybe four to five minutes to an hour, we’re doing some cardio.

1:18:41 You’re doing the posing presentation that required to do to be like a professional on the stage. Sometimes the contest takes two hours for a prejudging, and you’ve got to stand on stage. Even if you’re not being compared. You’re like just to stand there with a semi<unk>relaxed position and tense. Everything make everything look good, it’s really hard work and you’ve got to do it while appearing to be kind of relaxed, you know, so that’s something. Also, I used to work on almost like a workout, and it showed when I was on stage because I was always very holding my position.

1:19:13 And not. They never see me bending over and drinking water and wiping the towel and just looking weak, you know, and that was all done by yourself. You created that those posing routines and practicing, actually, my wife used to help me with the routines. Okay, you had some pretty epic, yeah. And then I had a guy in the states that used to put together tracks for me, like, mix this and mix that.

1:19:33 So we had quite a few cool mixes. And the thing was to present your physique and your personality in a way that represents your personality and your physique. So the music and so on, should show that. So mine was always kind of very powerful. Some classical and rock music was mainly what I used because I had a powerful physique and a persona, so I had to reflect that.

1:20:02 But there was some good entertaining routines. I think there was some footage that we released and I think in a trailer we did for you. And you’re moving your arms like these pieces as you went up, and your body fat is so low because your cheeks are in. And maybe this might have happened. Yeah, I used to scare people, man on my face.

1:20:18 It was like a walking skull, which you don’t really see on the competitors these days because they don’t get to that. But, you know, we used to turn up a contest and they’d have a competitors. Meeting where you draw your numbers. And you listen to the rules and all that stuff, and you’ll all have track suits on. And everyone will be looking around like looking at the faces.

1:20:37 Because you can tell from the face what the body is going to look like. If a guy’s a bit puffing, ah, he’s off, he’s off. But when I used to turn up, I literally used to have Sinews like in my jaw that you could see. You could always see the muscles in my face. I was that lean and the eyes and sunk in the head a little bit so yeah would guys know then?

1:20:56 Would you beat him then? It was scary man Was there posturing that used to go on backstage before the contest? I think you said Lee Lee one time you know kept his he kept his robe on yeah I don’t know Like the first time I was there, you know, with Lee Haney, he was getting dressed near to me and it took his his tracksuit top off with his back to me. And I was like, Oh shit, you know, seeing the thickness in the back and everything. I was like, I don’t know if he did it on purpose, but my thing was always built on my shadow, you know?

1:21:31 So first of all, they want to see they want to know these because most of the guys would see each other throughout the year. At the gym, like, you know, eyes looking big, looking small. They didn’t see me at all. So there was, you know that this, something you don’t see, you don’t understand, you fear it a bit more. So there was that.

1:21:51 And then I would make a point of like taking my own room and being away from everybody. And I wouldn’t take my tracksuit off until, like, almost like the last minute. So I knew that everyone was waiting for me to do that, you know, so I would wait and then boom take it off and hopefully they’ll be like, Oh no, not again. And so that happened six more years as you defended that title. Yeah, I mean, you know some of yours.

1:22:15 Were higher than others. Because a couple of years I had a serious injury, which really potentially could have put me out of the contest. 94, I tore my bicep six weeks out from the contest, and I had to cope with the whole thing of that. And when I initially did it, I thought, you know, I had just made the biggest impact in the sport. In 93 94.

1:22:37 I got injured and I was thinking, It’s all over, you know, like, I’m not going to be able to compete with this injury. This is, it’s over, it’s over like, you know, for a day or half a day until I turned it round, devastating, it was, yeah, devastating. Like, you know, my whole career. Everything’s gone until I was like, No, let’s let’s see, let’s see what we can do with this. This is the situation.

1:22:59 Let’s see, let’s carry on with the diet and you get treatment on this and see what you can do. So 94 went to the contest. With that, you know, all that disruption and so on going on, and so that affected me a little bit. You know, like, even if you’re stressed, you can make your body retain water, and if you’re in a normal state, of course nobody’s going to notice. These things.

1:23:23 But if you’re like super lean and dry, just some stress or something like that, can you know you can? Your body can retain water and you can look overnight, you can look different. It sounds strange, but in that extreme condition that can happen. And on the morning of the contest, I started feeling my stomach pains like, I don’t know what it was and I was holding. Water could just be all the stress, or it could have been some food, poison or something like that, I don’t know.

1:23:48 So in the night, this contest was separated into two parts in the morning, the night, so in the night I recovered and looked and felt better. Fortunately, when you’re on stage and the lights are on you, I mean, do you feel like you’re on the edge of life and death? I mean, are you just at a point where you’re so dehydrated, probably stressed, grumpy, short,<unk>tempered, absolutely. You might look like a Greek God statue, but you know, you feel like crap. If you feel good the last month before a bodybuilding competition, then there’s something wrong.

1:24:21 You’re doing something right because you know if you’re at that level of body fat and this is accumulation of months. And you know, by the time you get to the contest, you’re pretty damn exhausted and dehydrated. I used to get so lean that walking around backstage on wooden floor like this and I was limping and everyone was like, Oh, have you got cramp? Have you got cramp? Because a lot of the guys get cramp because they’re getting so dehydrated, start cramping up, I haven’t got cramp.

1:24:48 My fucking feet are killing me, and I didn’t know why my feet were hurting me so much until I went to my Anatomy book and I saw that. On the bottom of your feet, under your heel and under the ball of your feet, you have a pad of fat. That’s like cushioning. Right? So it’s that lean that I guess those pads of fat are almost like disappeared.

1:25:07 And I was walking on bones backstage and my feet was in pain, but that was, that was the extremity of the situation, you know? So, yeah, you do not feel you don’t feel good or healthy at all at that point, but, you know, fortunately it’s a temporary situation and you could smell food everywhere you have. Cravings. Oh, man, going to New York for my first night of champions was like, Got to be the worst place in the world to be on a diet? No, it’s just like chocolate peanuts.

1:25:36 On the corner and all kind of, I was asking the guy there, What does this mean, what’s heroes and what’s this? And like stuff I’d never heard of, just like, and all this food, I was thinking after the contest, I’m going to eat all this stuff. I actually had my first Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream in New York after the contest. They didn’t, they didn’t have that in UK. Then I was like, What’s this?

1:25:54 This is amazing, a whole tub of it. After the contest, I remember that Ben and Jerry’s chunky monkey with. With Haney doing eight competitions and I think it was Arnold, it did seven. Where those numbers always in your head, when you’re starting to get four and five consecutive, not at all. For some reason, everyone was like, You’re going to try and beat Haney’s record, you know, I got two, I got three, I got four, I got five.

1:26:20 Surely never, ever was was anything that I was interested in. I was just listen, I’m going to do this one year at a time, as long as I’m enjoying it, and I feel like. There’s something I can do, that’s what I’m going to do, but I never had that that number in my mind, and I remember in 96, which would have been in my six. It was starting to get tedious, it was starting to get. This is like a job now that I keep, you know, I did this last year and I know it’s like a job now, and the joy is going out of it, you know?

1:26:55 And in 97, I had another injury, the Tricep tendon tear that I had three weeks before the contest. Again, how do you compete? I’m going to be out of the contest like three weeks out of the contest. I was doing an exercise, what happened, it was giving me a lot of pain all year round. And what I really needed to do was take a break and get treatment and get this inflammation down and get it recovered.

1:27:18 But because of my personality and the drive, and because I’m at the top and you got everyone chasing you, you don’t really feel like you’ve got, you know, two months to do that. So I was training around it and it was a lot of pain. Every time I trained, I had to ice it after training. I took into inflammatory drugs all this stuff to manage it, and then I had what I considered to be bad advice. I had a cortisone injection in there to take the inflammation and the pain down, which, of course, works.

1:27:47 But it actually is destructive. It’s catabolic to the tissues, so you’ve got a tendon that’s already probably damaged and slightly torn. That’s why you’ve got inflammation and pain there. You know it’s a signal. So you’re taking the inflammation and pain down, which is taking the warning signal away and now further weakening the tissue that’s probably already weak.

1:28:08 So I see that as the reason that my tricep tendon actually tore three weeks out from the contest. And, you know, three weeks this time, not six weeks, three weeks. So three weeks before the contest, I was not able to train at all no weights three weeks before this contest. I only do cardio exercise and I continue with my diet. I figured, Well, look, I’ve been doing this for like, 15 years.

1:28:33 If I don’t train for three weeks, it’s definitely not ideal. But how much of this am I going to lose in three weeks from that training, you know? And I didn’t actually know that I was competing at the contest until about three days before because I didn’t know if it was possible. I had a lot of therapy on my arm to get the swelling and the bruising out. And even the night before the contest, my physio came and it took about 15 or 20 mil out of the elbow of blood and fluid.

1:29:02 That was like swelling up around the elbow. And so that was for me, the worst. Mr. Olympia, and it was like I wasn’t there in my usual way. Because usually I’m, or that whole year around year around, I’ve been training and, like I said, I felt super powerful going to the contest.

1:29:20 Powerful and confident that even people said that they could feel heat generating off me. They knew they felt like, You know something, but 97 didn’t feel like that. I felt weak, I felt vulnerable, I was on painkillers to be on stage. Or, you know, I was just hoping to get through this contest with No. Because there was my tricep tendon and apparently it was 95 detached.

1:29:45 So it was like, kind of holding on by a little thread and a clash of elbows. That sometimes can happen when you’re doing the pose down or too much. I didn’t know, so I was like going there very gingerly, hitting the poses and not my usual positive, aggressive self. And the guy that came second, Nasir al<Unk>sambati, was in his best shape ever. And a lot of people in the audience probably felt that he should have won.

1:30:11 So it wasn’t the happiest most, the easiest Mr. Olympia at all. And after that, I had surgery on the tendon to repair it. And got back to training. But it was very obvious that this injury was now like, you know, it was causing some real imbalance, especially on lifting, and it would cause more injuries.

1:30:32 And I would go, you know, I wouldn’t be able to get back to where I was before. And I would lose the contest. Because not because somebody was better, or that they trained just because I was not able to. So that was the time for me to say, This is it, and I actually now seen as a blessing in disguise. That maybe that had to happen, and it was such an extreme, or at least my approach to it was such extreme.

1:30:56 I didn’t hang around the sport and do guest appearances and stuff for a few years and make more bank. And I just dropped out. You did a real shadow, I just finished and I was almost thinking, like, Right, the Mr. Olympia, things are over now, what am I going to do with my life? That’s over, but of course it’s not over.

1:31:16 It’s a huge part of me and it always will be. That’s what I come to realize. But I almost had to like, I’m not that guy anymore, who am I? You know and go away and live my life, and not in that circle all the time, almost for a little bit, you know, so what happened those two years afterwards? Did you keep lifting?

1:31:33 I always trained, I always trained, even like when I retired from the sport. And then, you know, a lot of realizations, a lot of thinking. I got divorced, somebody very close to me died. All these things happen in one time and that kind of led me to be very depressed as well. But I always see it now as like, a You know, it had to happen, a transformation for me to become what I would say.

1:32:03 A multi<unk>dimensional person, rather than just one dimension. Which was, of course, very good at, because that’s all I focused on. But you were very one<unk>dimensional then, yeah, absolutely, you probably were spiritual but not aware of your spiritual. I was, I was spiritual, in that I knew there was a spiritual aspect to training and to the discipline. And to the,

1:32:27 You know, the extent you have to go, there is a spiritual aspect to that. You’re almost cutting yourself off from everything else you know, and to go to the extremes in training. Sometimes, you know. You’re pushing and you’re lifting. And I can only hear silence, you know, everything goes.

1:32:49 So when I made the The Blood and Guts Training video, everyone was like, Bloody hell. Your training partner is great and he’s too loud and he’s shouting in your ear all the time, doesn’t that bother you? I’m like, I’m hardly aware of it, you know, I kind of hear it, but then it’s like, sometimes just thrown out, and I’m almost like, Not, not in that space, you know, I don’t think a lot of athletes that push themselves to to that degree or probably can relate to that. You know, whatever runners call it the zone, yeah, you know, call the zone the pain barrier or whatever, but there’s something that you can go beyond, right.

1:33:22 So that transition was never going to be easy because you went from the greatest in the world at this discipline to not having it. So you didn’t have it for yourself, and the world wasn’t demanding that from you. and so there’s no way to make that transition no and you know most people if they’re Mr. Olympia like like Ronnie Coleman is a Mr. Olympia after me I mean he’s he just transitioned from not competing as Mr. Olympia still being Mr. Olympia doing appearances and doing I still did some appearances and so on but it was I never took my shirt Off on stage again, it was almost like, I want to show you this faulty, broken thing that I’m not happy with now, you know?

1:33:59 So it was an extreme stop. But in a way it’s good because people, I’m in demand now for this and the knowledge that comes out of there, I don’t. People don’t necessarily need to see me with my top off and everything I’m not. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a bodybuilder now, you know, I do some bodybuilding weight training as part of my lifestyle and fitness, but I’m not that guy anymore. That wants to be the biggest bodybuilder, the most muscular man in the world.

1:34:29 However, if that’s your thing of it, you want to do, I’m a goddamn expert on it, you know, because I spent my whole life studying it and I really did study it. I read it, but I did it practically as well. So a lot of athletes are good athletes, but they have a trainer. They have a nutritionist, they have a team of people to support their athletic skills and so they don’t have to deal with all these other aspects. But I did, and it’s fascinating to me and it’s still fascinating to me.

1:35:01 You know what nutrition and training can do, and I think it’s even more and more evidence that’s coming out all the time. There’s a lot more that you can do with your training and your nutrition to influence your health and even the health of the next generation. Your own DNA, you can influence, you can change it. What’s the state of bodybuilding today? Versus 18 years ago, when you left it well, I think bodybuilding, professional bodybuilding reached the peak almost like critical mass, you know, and then it’s now regressed a little bit.

1:35:41 There’s some good guys competing now, but generally the standard and especially the conditioning of the guys is not as it was in the 1980s. There’s some big guys around now, but the quality of the physics is not as good. So I would say the sport reached the peak in the 90s around 2000, and now the level of competition is not so good. But the whole thing is diversified. So in the 90s you had professional bodybuilding, now you’ve got bodybuilding, but you’ve got men’s fitness, which is a category where there were board shorts.

1:36:16 So save you some time you don’t need to train your legs, you just need a good, you know, a good, lean physique, a beach body, basically, that’s what it is. Abdominals, a bit of shoulders and pecs and lean. And the women’s Bikini Contest, which is the same, which is like a beach body, and it’s basically easily achievable, you know? Like everything else in society, mass market, everything’s got easier. So if you want to be a professional bodybuilder, I was an exception to the rule.

1:36:42 I was competing in the contest after a year and a half, two years of training. That’s very quick, though, so, you know, an average bodybuilder you have to train for three or four years before you can think about doing a competition. Even if it’s Mr. Yorkshire or whatever it is. You know where men’s fitness or women’s bikini, you know, if you’re a young person, fairly lean, do six, 12 months of training, you can get up on stage, so there’s more people going for that now.

1:37:08 Then, you know, of course you’ve got MMA, which was not, was very in its infancy in the 90s, just starting up, so a lot of people might go to that. That would have gone. Perhaps the bodybuilding before you’ve got Crossfit, which is another phenomenon that’s massive people competing in that, so you’ve got different things that people might go into. And I think bodybuilding is interest and the standard has peaked because less people are involved. And I mean, the conditioning.

1:37:36 Does that mean they’re just not putting in the hard work? Is it the standard not to the top level that it was. It’s like almost like the bar’s been lowered, you know, so if this guy is going to come in. Like, you know, big and cut, but not super shredded, and I’ll do it as well. And it was the same thing in the 90s.

1:37:57 The 80s is going to be in shape, man, we’ve got to kill ourselves, you know, try and keep up with this guy, so I think the bar has been lowered a little bit. There’s some guys, maybe bigger, but the whole, the package, the quality is not there. And there’s, you know, a lot of talk in a sport at the moment. Because Arnold Schwarzenegger actually spoke up and said, Look, you know, why are the guys going on stage with the big bellies hanging out? And then, you know, the physics not looking good. Now they just look like lumps.

1:38:26 And so there’s a lot of debate, a lot in the sport, about that aspect of it now, so maybe things will change a little bit. I asked you about Arnold Schwarzenegger. The last time you were here, I think I had to ask you twice before. You wanted to say at first you said that, maybe if you don’t have something nice to say, Don’t say anything at all. I was just wondering if your thoughts about him have changed in two and a half years.

1:38:46 And you know, if you put it more in perspective, not really, I mean, you know, to put it in perspective then. I think the people that I’m friends with, they’re just the regular guys from the gym and so on. Mr. Schwarzenegger is friends with the Rothschilds and people like that, so that’s that’s all I’ll say on a subject. You know, okay, you know, we’re totally different, absolute opposite in personalities anyway, you know, I’m an introvert.

1:39:18 Arnold’s an extrovert. I don’t have any ambitions of conquering the world or making my next 20 million or 30 million in a movie, or going into politics or anything like that. My goals now, yeah, I have my personal goals and business and, you know, leading a nice life and everything. But what’s my main purpose? What’s why am I doing this interview with me? Now?

1:39:47 It’s to try and help other people along their journey. And I think at this point in our evolution, people are waking up spiritually and they’re starting to ask all these questions. And that’s what’s important now trying to make the world a better place. And how do you do that that people are saying, How do you change the world? We know about all this shit that’s going on.

1:40:11 People know now the real situation in the world, they know it’s a lot of illusion. They know things are being controlled. They know these excuses for wars and terrorism is false. They know that, but what can they do?

1:40:27 Change yourself, that’s, you know, that’s the message that I’ve learned. If you change yourself and you change yourself internally, you will change the world around you, and that’s all you can do as an individual. So that’s what I’m trying to do. What’s your plans for the future? What are you trying to do?

1:40:43 I’m not going to hear, well, I’m going to like. Open a hundred gems and I’m going to take over this and that I may do that, but that’s that’s not the main thing. The main thing is I’m raising my vibration right, as opposed to just changing my vibration, making it more positive. So that’ll affect the collective vibration that we’re all part of. We’re all drops in the ocean, you know?

1:41:06 So to change the ocean, I can only concentrate on this drop. And that may have a domino effects and affect other people. I had so many people email me and talk to me and so on after the last one. Because it touched something that people were already thinking, you know, and set them along their path. And even for me,

1:41:28 I’ve advanced since then and spiritually. I would say a guy got me from the interview, said, Hey Dorian, you know, like you’re very interested what you were talking about. And, you know, I do this meditation, binaural meditation, music and tapes and stuff like that. So he sent me his stuff, so that helped me on that path in meditation, I think has helped me a lot. I’ve been doing yoga, so there are like disciplines in order for me to get more advanced and more in touch.

1:42:02 Where before. I kind of had knowledge, but no wisdom. You know, I knew about things, but I wasn’t actually doing anything about it. So I’m, you know, those are the things that I’m working on now. It’s interesting to me that to see two men who were at the top of their sports and who held titles for six or seven times.

1:42:19 And, you know, one, maybe, such as Arnold, is off there. Kind of acquiring more and trying to take over more project power more, accumulate more. But it’s all an illusion. What’s the point of accumulating more and accumulating more? I mean, you know, this whole thing is an illusion anyway.

1:42:33 So of course I’d like to have a comfortable life, you know, and I can do that. But achieving more and more for what you know. More and more things, more and more cars that will turn into rust and go into the ground eventually. They’re nothing you know, so the real things in life are the experiences you have, they’re real. Yeah, you keep, they’re real.

1:42:56 And the effect that you have on your fellow man and the world around you, and that’s real as well. So I’m trying to, you know, trying to be a trying to be a white cell here in this body. I believe the planet, the earth is a living thing. And as we have cells inside our body, our body is made up of billions of cells. We’re, I think we’re cells in this living organism.

1:43:23 And it can be a good cell, it can be a cancer cell, and I’m trying to be a good cell. That’s all not a cancer cell, right? What’s it like being married to a bodybuilder and being with Gala watching her train well, Gala I wouldn’t say she’s not really a bodybuilder, but, yeah, she’s. She did compete in body fitness and and so on. So in a way, it’s great because we’re both following a healthy lifestyle.

1:43:51 We both love to train, we’re both very determined so we can relate to each other. I wasn’t really too keen when Gala was competing because it was like, That’s a whole lifestyle thing, which I just left. But of course, I understand the challenge and that you’ve got to be supportive. So, but it’s 24, seven, right? Yeah, and if you’re not in it, I guess maybe it’s probably maybe even harder for a partner to be in it because you’re not invested in all of the.

1:44:19 Yeah, well, it kind of like, if you’re with somebody, you kind of do get drawn into it, you know, a little bit the regime and everything. So. But I, you know, gals, my wife and she’s got her thing she wants to do, and I couldn’t tell her not to do that. I didn’t think it was the best idea, but she did compete and she won one contest and then another one. They just didn’t call her out, which is.

1:44:43 I guess there’s a lot of politics in women’s contests and bodybuilding and stuff. So now she just trains for herself and stays in shape for herself, which is probably the best. And in women’s contests anyway, there’s not. There’s no real career there or money there is, but it’s not a lot. You know, you said she was very spiritual and she was at your first Ayahuasca ceremony on the Amazon.

1:45:05 Yeah, well, we met in Brazil, really, and we decided to go together from this. We actually did a seminar. A friend of mine put a seminar together in Brazil. But he was playing Cupid because he knew Gal, he was her trainer and he used to train with me in Birmingham and he’d gone back to live in Brazil and become a trainer. And he met Gal and trained her, and he told me, He’s actually like, This woman was so different, you know, she’s such a different personality.

1:45:36 And guys were trying to hit on her and she was just like, Knock them all back and wasn’t interested, you know? And I told her, Listen, I got another guy that you’ll like, You know, my friend Dorian from England that, you know, taught me all this training and everything. And she said, I remember him telling me that, but of course, you know, yeah, whatever you know. And then we met in the States and he introduced us. And he said, Look, I’m going to put a seminar together in Brazil with you, two guys together.

1:46:02 So you come over and do the seminar, and we met there and we, you know, we got on great. And I said, You want to come to the Amazon and we’re going to do a little trip in Amazon. Going to go out on a boat for a couple of days and one of the guys was an Indian. And I said, Can you get Ayahuasca? I really want to try that one.

1:46:20 You had heard of it. Yeah, I heard of it, I’m like, Yeah, you had any psychedelic experiences yet, Uh, no. I probably took acid when I was a kid once a little bit, like, you know, didn’t really think about it. I always always smoked weed, so I knew that side of that had a spiritual connection, but this thing I heard so much about it, I wanted to try it. I said to go, I’m going to do this thing tonight.

1:46:42 I said, If you want to babysit me, I said, But I’m probably going to Puke, but I’m definitely going to Puke. I’m probably going to shit myself. It’s not going to be pretty, you know, so if you still like me afterwards, then maybe we’ve got something to talk about. So, yeah, a girl babysit me through that whole thing and I was puking up all night and she still liked me in the morning. It’s a great test, yeah, for a good way to find a good way, exactly, and that experience, you just said you didn’t have any big.

1:47:10 Well, I did. It wasn’t what I expected, though, but now I can look back and see that. I didn’t get a message from it because I kept getting in my head and stop poisoning yourself. And I’m like, You know, but what’s all the answers, Where are you, what’s the meaning of life? And I’m not poisoning myself because I was drinking at the time I was going out drinking.

1:47:31 I was doing party drugs, sometimes all those things, which I was poisoning myself. So it’s like, That’s the message I got from that stop doing that shit, and then you can learn more. That’s pretty much all I got, but now I can look back and like, That’s the message. It’s probably only the message I needed at the time, so that’s all I was getting. You always get what you know what you want, you got what you needed there and then later on.

1:47:55 Of course I tried the DMT. and that showed me a lot more. And then since our last show, then I’ve been studying more, looking into things. And what did it mean, what did all these numbers mean? And then I found there’s a numerical sequence that’s in all living things, called a fibonacci sequence, and there’s a tree of life and certain shapes.

1:48:21 And that is in every structure. It’s the fabric of everything. And I think a scientist from NASA was saying The reality is just, it’s just like a computer program. It’s made up of computer codes, numbers, it’s made up of numbers, shapes, vibrations. And I saw that in my trip, but I didn’t really know what it meant.

1:48:45 Then I would go and read these things from quantum physicists and so on, and it’s all it’s all there. It all makes sense, so it’s almost like I went there and then I went back to find out. You know, intellectually, a little bit what it all meant, and it set me on a path of trying to connect back with this source. With this higher self. With the true like, this experience here is kind of like, a I’ll put it like this because it’s like a computer game.

1:49:16 It’s like a virtual reality game that we’re all agreed to play in, but we’re all the same thing. We think we’re separate, but we’re all the same thing having an experience. So I got that from the DMT trip, but now I got it more because I’m taking time to meditate. Try to do How’s the meditation working for you? Did you meditate before? Before?

1:49:42 No, no, really. I was interested in it and I tried, but I didn’t really get it and I didn’t really know how to do it. And what it meant. And the guy that got in touch with me from from the last show he sent me these tapes. Called Guided Meditation.

1:49:57 There’s many ways to meditate, you know, you could say that even painting or something is meditating or in training. Lifting weights is a form of meditation because you’re focusing on one thing and relaxing everything else, so it’s a form of meditation, But as a discipline to really have some effect on yourself, you’ve got to have some process, you know, and the different ways to do it. What I’m doing at the moment is called binaural beats, so that’s something like I know exactly.

1:50:27 But with the headphones, it’s like the left and the right ear slightly out of sync, or something like that with the sounds. And this works on the patterns in your brain brainwaves. And I feel like it’s kind of slowed everything down for me and it slowed down my thought process. Because when you’re doing meditation, thoughts come in your head and it’s not like you’ve got to stop the thoughts. Because if you stop the thoughts and you’re thinking about stopping the thoughts, so whatever comes in comes in.

1:50:56 So you just got to see it and look at it and like, just just let it go. But it’s almost allowing me to slow things down, so now I don’t react, you know, I don’t react. It’s almost like I’m sitting back at a situation and I’m able to have time, so I feel like doing this. Yeah, but if you do this, this will be this, and this will come. And, oh no, so that’s not good.

1:51:18 I won’t do that. All this whole thing goes on very quickly, whereas before maybe I just react and it wouldn’t be the best thing for myself. It wouldn’t be the best thing for the situation or the other person involved. And so it’s like, I’ve slowed everything down and I can now, you know, I’ve got that peace and that calmness to like, look at the situation, and I feel more in touch with that true self. The higher self that I probably, I guess I visited on the DMT, which is not something you want to do all the time.

1:51:48 You know you have no desire to do it, in fact. You know, it’s almost a little scary that you don’t want to do it too often. Yeah, yeah, I’ve had my one experience I did for the show and I haven’t done it since. But as again, you see these geometric shapes, you see, I saw them, I see them Iowaska as well. I see if I take Psilocybin.

1:52:05 And, well, what it really tells you right away is that, like you said, this is what we think is our reality is nothing like it. It’s just, you know, a tiny, tiny slice. Yeah, it’s just a five sense thing. And in order to have an experience in the five sense world, you need a physical vehicle, that’s this is the body. I’ve got a custom made one that I’ve been working out a little bit, but it’s just the body, you know.

1:52:30 And when this thing cease to exist doesn’t mean I will cease to exist. I always exist. You know, it’s eternal, but just this body is a, and this experience is a temporary thing. Do you feel more connected to other people other humans like? In the last 10 years?

1:52:46 Yeah, humans, animals, everything. Even my eating has changed and it hasn’t been a like, Oh, I’m going to stop eating meat now, because that’s a bad thing or whatever it’s just. I don’t feel like killing animals anymore. I don’t want to like, be responsible, and if I eat meat now that if I eat beef, I actually tried a couple of times. Last time I did it, I felt sick, I got diarrhea.

1:53:09 It’s just, it doesn’t go with my vibration where I am now, I guess you know, I’m eating. Still some fish and some chicken. Maybe I’ll continue doing that, maybe I won’t, I don’t know, but it’s just how I feel at the moment, and and that leads me to. How has this miracle happened that I’ve actually got color in my skin because for 20 years, a professional body, well, that was my weakest point. You tan, I can never get a tan, I can go in the sun on the sun, beds, it’s all day, every day.

1:53:45 I just go red and afterwards I go back to white and I figured I don’t have enough melanin in my skin anyway, to to go around right? So that’s that. I’m nearly almost one door next to Redhead, where you got no pigmentation, so that’s it. Then I went to live in Spain and a friend of mine told me about juice and about juice and vegetable juice and everything. And showed me a documentary about a guy in the 1920s that used to cure cancer by just getting people to get these nutrients from the juice.

1:54:21 And and it’s live and it’s got enzymes in it, you know, it’s not touched by heat or anything, and just the juice. So your body doesn’t have to spend any energy, breaking the fiber down and extracting the nutrients. It’s like a nutrient shot, and if you’re sick, when you’re sick, you don’t want to eat right because your body’s trying to use all its resources to heal. And it doesn’t have the energy to digest food. But at the same time you need the nutrients, so it’s the ideal way to get the nutrients.

1:54:45 Anyway. I bought a juicer, I started juicing all the vegetables, spinach, carrots and so on. And then I noticed I was going out in the sun and I wasn’t like burning and I was getting a bit of color. And then I thought, How about? I’m just not going to wear any sunscreen I didn’t wear any sunscreen, got Browner, never got burnt.

1:55:05 I can go out in the sun now, I don’t get burnt, I get brown, no sunburn, no sunscreen, which I think is bullshit by the way. Sunscreen will probably increase your chance of getting cancer because it’s shutting yourself off from the sun from the vitamin D. That’s really essential for your immune system, so while you’re doing that and covering yourself in chemicals and the most absorbed. And part of your body probably not a good idea. So anyway, I’m able to go out in the sun now.

1:55:29 40 degrees Spanish sun and get a tan and not burn. Because the amount of vegetable juices I’m having, I’m having such an anti<unk>inflammatory effect on the skin. I guess that doesn’t get chance to like to inflame and get rid. So, wow, I wish I knew about this when I was competing. And for you, you’re the scientist, your body’s, your laboratory, so you notice these things.

1:55:52 Now. My interest in nutrition and supplementation and all these things now is not so much. How can that help me be the biggest, most muscular guy in the world? I’ve got my own nutrition company, DY Nutrition, and it’s primarily for athletes and bodybuilders, so I’m still interested in that and I’m making products. But from a personal point now, I’m interested in how it can affect you.

1:56:17 As you’re aging, how you can avoid age<unk>related diseases, perhaps, and how you can increase your quality of life as you’re getting older. None of it’s going to live forever, but it’s the quality of life. People get in diseases and then your quality of life goes down as you get older and so on. So how can we avoid that, and can we avoid it? I’m sure, yeah, we can.

1:56:39 You mentioned Spain, sure, we can avoid it through a degree. Yeah, I don’t want to talk about that. You mentioned Spain, you spend a lot of time in Spain, you don’t spend, I live in Spain, man, you live in Spain, you like the vibrations. They’re better than I love the place it’s full of, first of all, the environment. You’ve got the sea and you’ve got the mountains, and we’re in the process now of building a gym there.

1:56:59 DIY gym in Marbella, which is going to be great. It’s going to be a place for people to visit because we’re, you know, we’re by the beach, we’re by the sea. It’s like the Venice lifestyle we’re going to create with a healthy restaurant and everything, so that’s great. And all the people in Marbella, you know, they’re positive, whereas in England, if you’re like raising above the crowd and you’re doing something. They feel a lot of resentment and a lot of negativity.

1:57:24 And it’s just not good to be in that environment all the time. So I feel much happier over there and the weather. I love the weather, I love the sun and everything, and I don’t even go to the gym that much to do weights. I’m training outside, do cycling up the mountain there in the sun, paddle boarding and swimming and doing yoga outside. Go to the gym, probably do weights once or twice a week.

1:57:47 So I’m enjoying doing things that I couldn’t do before, and because you know when I was a bodybuilder, you don’t, you can’t do anything else, I don’t know. It seems like you really seek out what works for you, you know whether it’s less meat or the sun. Yeah, I’m doing, you know, I’m very interested in that, like how you can improve your health and a lot of it is mental as well. A lot of it is down to controlling your thoughts. You can literally make yourself sick or make yourself heal with your own mind.

1:58:18 You know, because it’s all everything is predicted from the mind. And that’s why controlling your thoughts, and or first of all, to control them, you have to be aware of them. And by doing meditation, it slows you down and you start to be aware of these thoughts coming in, negative thoughts coming in and you recognize it. Oh, it’s coming in negative thought, Well, I’m not going to react to it. Whereas before you wouldn’t even know, you wouldn’t even be conscious of what’s motivating, what’s making react, what’s making you behave the way you are, you know?

1:58:45 So, yeah, it’s a great lifestyle for me out there, me and not the wife. And we didn’t talk about the cannabis oil yet, so we couldn’t do it. So, yeah, let’s talk about that. Talk to me about cannabis oil. You touched on this last time, but tell me about your thoughts on that.

1:59:02 And cancer. Yeah, well, the cannabis oil. And I understand when people first hear this, this sounds strange and unbelievable, and even me I remember I was about. I’ve always smoked a bit of weed, and I know that it’s beneficial for a lot of things, and I know that. It’s a super antioxidant.

1:59:23 And it can delay a lot of diseases, age,<unk>related diseases, and it’s huge benefits. I knew this, yeah, but I met a guy in Brazil, he was on the beach in Brazil and he was like, Yeah, it cures cancer as well. And I’m like, Oh, I like this stuff and everything, and it’s cool, and I know it’s got a lot of benefits, but that’s a bit taken a bit far. And then I started reading about it, and I read about this guy called Rick Simpson. I think he was from Canada and he published a book and a movie about his experience, so thank you, I don’t know exactly, but he had some kind of illness and he found this, he said.

2:00:03 I didn’t invent this shit. This recipe, this formula, is thousands of years old. People used to use it before, and it’s in all the old ancient texts from Egypt from India used to call it different things a lecture of the gods, something that’d give you wisdom and give you health. And it was a drink that they had. Some guy wrote a book about it and he’s broken it down, and it’s, you know, it’s a form of cannabis, so what it is.

2:00:30 THC is active compound in a cannabis psychoactive. That’s the one that makes you high and gives you the munches. All that, whatever THC basically causes, is if I pronounce it right. Apoptosis of the cancer cell, so the cancer cell commits suicide. It just folds in on itself, and so it promotes the healthy cells and destroys the cancer cells without any side effects.

2:01:01 But the problem is it’s not patentable, you can’t patent it, it’s from plants and it’s cheap and it’s easy to make. I know personally for people personally I know that had cancer and took cannabis oil and literally the cancer cells. Just dissolve and go away. And then they go back to the doctors and oncologists, and they’re like, Oh wow, and it’s the miracle. No, it’s not a fucking miracle.

2:01:29 THC cures cancer, and it’s not like maybe, or maybe in some people. As far as I can see, it’s just unless somebody’s like, Got one day to live, it works. Even people with stage four terminal lung cancer are now surviving. Do you think it’s similar to like pharmaceutical companies that don’t want anything to do with psychedelics? Because it’s a plant medicine?

2:01:53 You can’t patent it, and we’ve got all these opiates. Well, there’s a company in the U.K. can’t remember the name of them, but they invested a lot of money in finding a cannabis<unk>like drug to do something. But they’ve got to change the structure, they can’t patent the fucking plant and the THC, so they’ve got to try and do something different. And guess what invested all the money?

2:02:20 And it doesn’t work. Why don’t just take the it’s ready, it’s working. Because they can’t, they can’t patent it, they can’t make any money from it, so they’ve got no interest in that. That’s just the way the industry is. It’s not black and white, it doesn’t mean that everyone that works in the pharmaceutical industry is conspiring and evil.

2:02:37 But you know, if you’re in industry, why are you going to promote something that’s going to make you lose money or lose your job? Why would you do that? Yeah, I had a guest in her name, Anita Morjani, and she was just inundated with cancer, a really low body weight. And she just had this kind of transformational mental experience that kind of brought her out of it and she was actually cured and she later just talked about the mentality. And she thought it was a mental change and she thought she brought on the cancer in many ways, mentally.

2:03:03 And yeah, that’s so. I think most diseases come somewhat brought on mentally and you need to change. But here’s something that really physically works as well, right, you know, so a combination of having the right mindset and the right nutrition, you know, getting oxygen to the cells through various means and the cancer cell can’t survive, so it’s not, you know, it’s got to get rid of this fear. If you get cancer, you can get rid of it. You know, good. Well, thank you, I appreciate you educating us.

2:03:36 I see this is your TED talk. Maybe, yeah, maybe could be, Yeah. And further down the line, we’ll have more. You know more experiences and more stories, you know, last time you were here, you made a statement that rings in my mind, and it’s something that I always think about, and it’s funny. Ever since you said it, I seem to see it everywhere I go.

2:03:55 And that was the bold statement of steroids are used in all sports and at the time, Lance Armstrong It’s just kind of the information to come out. And since then I’ve watched the UFC. And since then we see things that have just been announced and say, WaDA or the Olympics. And it’s just something that when you say something like that, most people are like, they just maybe don’t listen to it. But as the more and more that people listen to you saying that, I think people see it in so many places.

2:04:22 Yeah, I mean, they use more extensively in bodybuilding is more a key part of bodybuilding, but not just bodybuilding, any sport like strength related sports. So it always amuses me when people watch World’s Strongest Man, and it’s sponsored by whoever it’s sponsored by and it’s on TV. And they won’t put bodybuilding on TV. Because the so<unk>called steroid thing, you think these 400 pound guys lived in cars and stuff. You really think they’re not using steroids, it’s just you think they’re just big farm guys, or they just spawn like that.

2:04:54 Of course not. And sport is what kind of people do sport at the top level, what kind of people highly competitive individuals, highly ruthless, competitive individuals, are they gonna turn down anything that? Give them advantage and possibly their competitors doing it, even if it gives them like one centimeter on a hundred meters or a little bit. You think they’re not gonna do it if they can, of course they’re gonna do it.

2:05:26 So I think it’s easier if it just didn’t have drug testing, because if you have drug testing, the people are finding ways around it. So whoever’s got more sophisticated means to avoid the test or whatever, they’re gonna have advantage over somebody else. So it’d probably be fair if you just say, Hey, like, let’s just get rid of this nonsense, right? Because like, say, the Olympics. It makes it more unfair to the people who can’t afford to have the steroids that, yeah, I read something in the paper this morning.

2:05:53 The British athletes are complaining because certain countries don’t have the stringent testing. That the British Athletics, you know, like the guys in, they don’t test as much in Russia or this or that. So it’s not an even playing field, you know? So I think not just drugs and sport, I think drugs just make them legal. They did it in Portugal, they decriminalize all drugs in Portugal from cannabis up to crack cocaine, and their rate of drug addiction and criminality has just dropped massively.

2:06:24 So there’s a test case that it’s nonsense, and you think in sport we should just abolish, as opposed to playing this illusion. Hey, listen, if there was no such thing as steroids or performance enhancing drugs. If you like, I’d be the happiest man out there. That would be great, because then you would just be. Judged on your efforts, you wouldn’t have to enter into something that may have potential health consequences because you feel that you had to to compete.

2:06:52 So that would be great if there were no performance enhancing drugs. But unfortunately real world there are, and there have been, and there was in bodybuilding. I started competing in 1985, it had been around in bodybuilding already for over 20 years. So isn’t that something that I decided? It’s like it was already there?

2:07:11 So my question as a competitor was like, If I want to compete, I want to be on an even level with these guys. Then I’m going to have to do this. Am I going to do it, or am I not? You’re saying one of the worst things about steroids is that people discount everything that you do on them. Yeah, because especially a bodybuilding looks so different, right? Especially in like in a contest condition extreme with these veins coming out. And, you know, no body fat and everything, so it’s like this guy looks so extreme.

2:07:42 That’s quite easy to relate that with the drug because nobody looks like that, so they must be taking drugs to make them look like that. Well, not many people can do the Tour de France in like the time they you know. It’s an extreme application of a certain body type and a certain type of training and diet and everything. So, of course, yeah. Steroids enhance that process, and you’re able to get to a level of muscle mass and development that you wouldn’t without it.

2:08:09 You know, did you experience now that you’re even a bit older now? Whether did you experience any bad effects from steroid use for your career? Yeah, I mean, bad effects. Some changes in my blood results, some things like more cosmetic, like water retention, acne. I had a raise in blood pressure.

2:08:30 Some of the levels went up on the blood test, but it wasn’t everything ever like, Wow, you’re in immediate danger. But like, this is not good to keep doing this for a long time. You know, it’s like because it’s showing that it’s putting some stress on your body. And I was a bit concerned last time after we did the talk on steroids because I can’t sorry. I don’t remember the other guy’s name that was here, but it was the way that he presented the question that I responded to that. Some people thought I was a little cavalier about it, like, Hey, you know, I wasn’t saying steroids aren’t dangerous.

2:09:03 I was responding to him like I heard. It’s like all these horror stories, and I’m saying, Well, there’s other things out there that are also bad for your health and also dangerous. But you can go and buy them over the counter right now and go outside and buy a 20 pack of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka and another packet of aspirin can be damaging. So, yeah, as long<unk>term steroid use bad for your health. Yeah, it is like smoking cigarettes is, but if you smoke cigarettes for a year.

2:09:31 And you’re stopped would it have any long<unk>term effect on your health? When you got older? Probably not. You smoke cigarettes for 10 years, you know, and you’re stopped, maybe some bad effects, maybe not. You’re smoking for 20 years.

2:09:46 We all know you’re going to really increase your risk of cancer, you’re going to damage your lungs, you’re going to have heart disease. All these things. So I see it like that. The longer you use it, the more you use it for the more risks you build up. So yes, there are health risks there and there are increased amount of people having heart disease, heart attacks that have used steroids for a long time.

2:10:09 So there are dangers there, there are health risks. But have they been exaggerating a certain quarter? Probably, yeah, and the question was that, well, you know, I heard. If you take steroids, all these things happen to you and you grow horns out your head and all that. So I was responding to that.

2:10:23 Well, yeah, it was a good answer. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of nonsense about it, but it’s not without risks, you know, so everyone’s got to be responsible for their own choices. Educate yourself, learn as much as you can about it and make a decision from there. If I wasn’t a professional bodybuilder, I wouldn’t if I had not continued with my professional bodybuilding career at that point. That critical point where I went to Night of Champions, I wouldn’t have taken steroids after that, I would have stopped right, you know?

2:10:55 And also there’s a psychological side to it psychological addiction, perhaps to steroids, maybe more than psychological. Maybe it’s slightly physical as well, but a lot of people get into this sport because of insecurity because they don’t feel good. And then they want to build up. And to feel stronger, to feel more powerful and, you know, steroids, I’ll allow you to take that to the next level, you know. So if your whole importance of self is built up in how big and muscular you are, you’re never going to want to stop taking those steroids because you’re going to lose that. When you can’t, it’s not, you know, you can’t keep that level of development.

2:11:32 When you stop taking those hormones, you will come down to a degree. So and there’s going to be a crash, there’s going to be a physical crash, there’s going to be a mental crash. All those things you need to, you know, before you step on that merry<Unk>go<unk>round, you need to think about those things. Did you stop right away in 97? did you scale back? I mean, do you know what I did like? My normal typical approach is black and white, so I actually just pretty much stopped, which was not the wisest decision.

2:12:01 My testosterone levels were very low. I was still married at the time and we were thinking about to try for another child. And my sperm levels was nearly nearly non<unk>existent. After 18 months, two years, my daughter was conceived, so things were coming back to normal, but I was 36, 37 and my testosterone did not come back. In the normal, healthy range.

2:12:26 It was suppressed, it was somewhat under, so at that point I decided to take testosterone replacement, which if I hadn’t taken steroids, maybe I wouldn’t have had to take that. Or maybe it would have been later or so on. So, you know, there was some long<unk>term implications and that it shut down my own production. Okay, do you still take? Yeah, I take.

2:12:46 And probably most people as they get middle<unk>aged. It’s actually better for your health to keep it in that range than to have low health. That’s what they’re finding now. People with low testosterone have a much greater heart disease, more of that aging related disease, diabetes, arthritis, these kind of things, actually one of the guys that is, you know, kind of promoting. The male hormone replacement is from Birmingham.

2:13:12 And he said he’s had patients that have been on multiple medications for, you know, for these diabetes, arthritis, different, different things, and he put them on. A testosterone replacement basically is off all the other medications, so maybe it’s a cheap way for the NHS to avoid. You know, all those other medications and problems that come with aging, they’re all age<unk>related diseases. You know, do you think steroids are too easily accessible now for the high school football player, you know, for the for the girl who wants to get in shape for the beach, maybe that’s not the best example.

2:13:46 Or for do you think there’s too much of them out there? Because when you started, only bodybuilders took, yeah, because it was some subculture, and it was only in that world and people outside if I hadn’t really heard that much and I remember when I first started training, I asked a couple of guys in the gym and they were a bit like, You know, Oh no, no, we don’t take them. Oh, you know, it was a bit like that. Like an inner circle. They have to penetrate and like, you know, to really find out, yeah, like, you know, you need to learn how to train kid first and all you know, stuff like that.

2:14:17 But now they’re, they’re in the mainstream steroids, people are conscious about them and everybody wants everything quickly. I know girls that are taking steroids and they’re taking as much that I took from our first contest as a male. Girls are taking them no competition, not even being nothing just to look good and to look leaner. I know a lot of women. Take it a lot of them come to me and say, Hey, I heard about this stuff, Anna VAR and you know, do you know what this is?

2:14:50 Well, no, it helps you get leaner, right? Yeah, but it’s a male hormone or derivative of, you know, and I explain all the things, Oh wow, I didn’t know that, like, so, yeah, women are taking them, young girls are taking them to look leaner and so on. And of course, guys, you know, it’s very widespread now, and it’s, you know, you look everywhere in the movies, you see the physique and the kind of shape that people get in in the movies. Look at the hip<Unk>hop videos look 15 years ago and have a look now.

2:15:19 How different the guys look, yeah, because they’re all juicing, they’re all juicing. I was watching a video called Going Back to Cali. It’s LL Cool J from like the early 90s and he’s got his shirt off and, you know, he was always in good shape. LL But look at Cool J. Now I know it’s like he wouldn’t be seen dead with his shirt off the way he used to look.

2:15:36 Yeah, but now, yeah, everyone is, yeah, so it’s now. It’s fashion not to be extreme, like bodybuilder, but people now want to be in shape, they want to have the abs. They want to be lean, yeah, and they just see this as a shortcut to doing it. Which, yeah, it is. Maybe, perhaps, but you’ve got consequences and forget this kind of physique.

2:15:57 You can do it without steroids. Just take a little longer, a little bit more effort, a little bit more, you know, looking into things and doing things properly. But people don’t want to hear that they want a shortcut. And, you know, it’s now just a It’s a cosmetic thing, like women having Botox or women have a chest implants. Guys see it like that.

2:16:17 Well, they you know, they do that to look good. So we just take a couple of shots a week. And, you know, it’s a cosmetic thing, right? So maybe not a little too far. Yeah, and when you’re young, you know, you don’t think about it as much either, you know you just want what you want.

2:16:30 Even though when I was young as an athlete 25 to 30, I was not as concerned or aware of the effect as I am now. You know, I think back, and I think that was a lot of stress to put on your body. You know, I want to finish this off by asking you just about growth hormone. We asked you about it last time. I know you wrote a couple articles where you weren’t that impressed with some of the effects.

2:16:51 But some people talk about the 90s being the growth hormone decade. And then I know the phrase itself can be a misleading, so I just wonder what you thought. Well, yeah, definitely, I think started being used extensively in professional bodybuilding, probably late, maybe mid 80s to late 80s. And then pretty much became more like standard for guys to be doing on a professional level in the 90s. And I didn’t use it myself until I think

2:17:22 Night of Champions, I use a very small amount and I didn’t really notice anything. It’s when I use larger amount and more consistently over a period of time. So 92 and 93 I was able to. It’s almost like I reached almost like a plateau. I think I was getting stuck around 280 pounds in my off season 280 and I was like, Don’t really get over there.

2:17:47 And then it. Just somehow that barrier broke. Then I was 285, a few months later I was 290 and so on. So, yeah, there was a different level of development that I was able to get with the growth hormone. And people started using insulin as an anabolic later on as well, and I didn’t think that was anything positive.

2:18:09 So, yeah, I think growth hormone bought another level of the development of muscle mass, and there’s a lot of derivatives now. People using peptide growth hormone release. There’s a lot of things that I don’t really even know a hell of a lot about now. But somebody who asked me send me a mail yesterday. and they’re like you know what do you think about this?

2:18:32 What do you think about that? And all the guys are doing now and I’m like look I don’t really know but I’ll just tell you like this do they look any better now? It’s like no they look worse I said that probably Answers your question I have all these things that you’re asking me. They’re probably not beneficial, then, are they? Because otherwise the proof’s in the pudding, right?

2:18:50 Are they overusing growth hormone Is that why you’ve got to get the palabinism? I think I think the people are just overusing everything. And I don’t hear a lot of people really debating or asking or thinking about the training aspect of it anymore. It’s almost like, that’s whatever we just do what it, you know, just do the same kind of stuff. But which drugs can we take?

2:19:12 You know, and it’s took that, you know, that work ethic out of it. I think people are looking like it’s just a chemical combination. And it’s not. Because if it was that, then there are a lot more drugs available now people are taking them in greater quantities. Why aren’t why are the physics not improved?

2:19:30 If that was the case, so obviously it’s not the case. Can I ask you a couple things that about your daily routine, or just like your current outlook on life, that that make you successful? Was there something that you remember changing up specifically in your game? And maybe it was meditation, or maybe it was changing your outlook, but that had a real. Improvement in your life?

2:20:38 I think it’s disgusting that somebody, just because of their birth, has so much power and money and so on. The world’s so imbalanced. It’s wrong,

2:20:55 And it’s a total myth that there’s not enough to go around and that people need to be starving. There’s resources on this planet so that everybody could live in paradise. But it’s been manipulated and imbalanced so that a very, very few mining group of people control nearly all the resources on the planet. And they want it to be like that, and it doesn’t have to be like that. And there’s technology.

2:21:27 There’s inventions out there that have been suppressed because they would change the situation. For instance, Nikola Tesla, You know, he developed free energy, free energy because it’s all around us here is energy everywhere. He was able to harness that so that we wouldn’t have to pay. Electric bills and gas bills and all this stuff. But they don’t want people to be able to be free like that, or they don’t have to worry about their bills and stress and run around.

2:21:55 They might have time to start thinking and realizing what’s going on, so that’s why they don’t want that. There was a guy invented a car that can go from coast to coast in the U.S. on a few gallons of water. And it was often up to a million a billion dollars. I think for his invention so they could shelve it and he wouldn’t do that, he wouldn’t sell it.

2:22:17 Then he died. Mysteriously. Henry Ford was able to build a model T Ford out of hempcrete hemp that’s made into a solid structure. And he fueled it on hemp ethanol, so he built a car and fueled the car on weed. And it was lighter than steel, it was stronger than steel, it lasted longer than steel.

2:22:43 But his financial backers told him, No, no, no, you’re not, because we invest in the steel industry and the petrochemical industry. You’re not going to go ahead with this because we won’t finance you. So you use steel and you fuel it with petrol, so that’s how things can be manipulated. So the world has the potential for everybody. To be living in paradise.

2:23:07 So the story that we’ve been told, it’s too many of us, there’s not enough to go around. It’s bullshit, there’s loads, there’s loads of resources to go around. It’s just being hoarded and manipulated, and that power structure, you don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t want to be part of that power structure. No, I don’t, because

2:23:27 Why would I want to be, you know, why would I want to accept a ward off these people? They’re scumbags. I don’t want anything to do with them, you know? So why would it be proud to have some award off them? You know, off the British Empire, what about No. And I understand I’m happy that the people that are from my sport recognize what I did and that they feel upset more than me. Probably that I haven’t had their recognition.

2:23:53 And they’re the people that are saying Dorian should have an OBE, should be sportsman of the Year and not all these other people. And so on. Because Dorian is from England. And it was the best in the world at what he did. And you know, it wasn’t based in his country, went overseas to defeat people.

2:24:08 And we want this bloody recognized, you know, for him and for ourselves and for our sport. We want this recognized cool. They want it recognized, but who by? I don’t want to be recognized by these people. I don’t give a shit what these people think, you know?

2:24:21 So I wouldn’t take a night, I wouldn’t take an OBE, I’m not interested in any of that stuff. Will Britain recognize what you did as a sportsman?

2:24:33 Well, I don’t know what you mean by Will Britain. Will the mainstream media give me some recognition for what I did? Well, we just did a pretty good article in The Daily Express, and that was on. I was very happy that that was on the sports page, but it will never been on the sports page before. And sticking. There is some curiosity to fill some space up. Maybe, but it was on the sports page and it was word for word.

2:24:59 What I said, it wasn’t manipulated, it wasn’t changes. So that’s great that we got in the mainstream. And I think the feedback from people from the fans, they were really happy to see that in the mainstream. And that I was explaining, You know, what’s required in a sport. All right, yeah, I look like a texturos, do I?

2:25:17 Yeah, that’s right, because I did, but, you know, I also 10 years of total dedication, isolation to my sport. That was very demanding and I was able to be the best in the world and I am from England. So it’s good that those people, you know, are proud and I’m recognized. By my peers and the people that that know the sport and understand it. As for the rest, I’ll really give a shit.

2:25:45 To be honest. I think in five or ten years you’re going to be embraced in a big way. And I think, well, it’s strange that there seems to be more mainstream interest in myself now than ever before. And it’s nearly 20 years since I did that contest. So that’s great.

2:26:03 It means whatever I’m doing, whatever I’m saying right now is relevant to people. We recently had Chris Eubank in here, the boxer who we all watched, you know, he’s in the fights. Yeah, I watched all Eubanks fights when he was at the top, Eubanks and Nigel Ben, and so on. I watched Eubanks fight in Birmingham actually with Prince, something I can’t remember African guy, but I watched him fight in Birmingham anyway. I went to the show and this is what, 20 years after, you know, his heyday, or even longer.

2:26:31 And it feels like Britain now is recognizing that. This is, you know, one of the great sportsmen after the fact, you know. And now they’re looking back and saying, Wow. He’s just one of the great, greatest sportsmen we had in the 90s, and there’s something. Very British about not really putting somebody on a pedestal, or at least if you do put them back down afterwards.

2:26:49 You know something very British about that, you know, in England, it’s like, This is like, if you’ve got a nice Rolls Royce parked outside your house in England, you’re going to be careful that someone’s not going to key that straight away, I really, who do you think you are arriving above your station and making us feel bad? But in the States, it’ll be more like, Wow, man, you got a roller well done, you know, so it’s a different attitude. Culturally, right and well, maybe, and maybe that’s why, over time, it will take them time to recognize.

2:27:20 Yeah, and maybe they’ll look back. And you know, your banks was a great your banks, prince and esteem. I mean, they’re world class, as I was in the 90s. Yeah, but at the time, not necessarily embraced by the public. Yeah, well, at the time, the body people are in this bodybuilding.

2:27:36 In the UK, they they knew what I was doing, but general public they didn’t know because they didn’t get access to the information. I did some mainstream stuff, but it was never on the sports page, it was always curiosity, and they’d have changed. My. I did one with one Sunday newspaper, and it was that it was almost like the opposite of what I said. Because they asked me about Arnold.

2:27:58 And do I want to be like, Oh, and I said, No, Arnold’s Arnold, and he’s doing his thing. I’m doing mine. I’m not interested in, you know, trying to make that much money or being movies or being politics, not of any interest to me. And then when it came in the newspaper, it’s like, Yeah, it says, I’ll be bigger than Arnold and have more money. And like, I didn’t say that as opposite, so, but that’s what you wanted.

2:28:20 That’s how you wanted to present me in the newspaper. So they did it anyway, so that did put me off a bit. And the TV programs, of course. They wanted me to go on there, but they wanted me to go on there in the underwear posing. And people have done that before.

2:28:33 Lee Haney’s done that in America. Ronnie Coleman And they just end up looking like chumps, you know, like you’re in no position to get your point across when you’re in your underwear, you know, so I’m like, for me, to personally go on TV, doesn’t matter to me. I’ve got no interest. But if I can go on there and promote and educate people about the sport that I do and what’s involved. I’ll do that, yeah, but not in a position to do that if I’m just going to be there posing.

2:29:01 And, you know, like a monkey in a cage for your entertainment, right, so you always said no to that stuff. I always told them that’s what I wanted to do, and then they were like, Well, no, we wanted to do this. I’m like, Well, it’s not going to work in a bit, and they’re always very surprised because they’re used to. People almost like, Do anything to get on TV and I just didn’t really care. Did you turn down supplement deals to you? Back in the day?

2:29:24 It was all part of the shadow, but did you turn down? I turned down the deal? asked the first night of champions when I won the sum of twelve thousand dollars for second place and, you know, twelve thousand dollars, not a lot. I got to pay my own airfare over to the States and put myself up in a hotel. And this and that.

2:29:43 So twelve thousand dollars. Was what I earned from professional bodybuilding? At the point where Vince McMahon, with the WWF or WWE? As it became professional, wrestling, planned to start a professional bodybuilding circuit and contest. And he was about signing up all the, you know, guys that he could right, and he was looking for different characters, different genre, like, you know.

2:30:17 And they saw me at the night of champions second place and they liked my look because it was very rugged. And, you know, so, yeah, that guy would fit in this, you know, and then this guy. So they flew me out from Birmingham to Connecticut somewhere. It’s where the studios are, where they make everything. So they flew me out first class, never been first class before for me. Out first class to New York, Tom Platts, who was the nearest thing to a hero of mine, was working for them.

2:30:46 He picked me up at the airport and drove me to the offices. And this guy you know, I met, I didn’t make Vince, but I met his wife, who’s also very involved. I met some of the wrestlers, and I went around the whole TV station and seen the little dolls. And, you know, like, you see how big this is, professional wrestling. We’re going to do this with professional bodybuilding when we want you on board.

2:31:09 And I think they offered me something like 150, 000 a year for a two or three year contract, and I was living in Ladywood, in Birmingham. Which what’s the Ladywood famous for? I think having the highest unemployment rate in Birmingham, I was living in a council flat there. I had the gym, which was giving me an okay income like, you know, getting by, but that’s it. And then 12, 000 for my champions, so here I am, they’re offering me.

2:31:41 This is a life<unk>changing thing. This is getting out of the council estate and living in a nice house in the suburbs. You know, for my wife at the time, for my son, that would have been great, great for the family change of life. So I asked my wife at the time, What do you think she’s like? To her credit?

2:32:03 She said, I’m not going to say anything. This is totally you, you’ve got to make this decision, you’ve got to be comfortable with it, so I don’t know what to say here.

2:32:14 I thought about it, thought about it, and I was like, You know what? If you want to be the best bodybuilder in the world, it’s Mr. Olympia. That’s the number one thing and these new guys of the new federation. I asked them. When I was there, I said, Look, I consider myself to be an athlete, not an entertainer, in any way.

2:32:35 I’m an athlete, yeah, and I want to compete in contests against other athletes. So if you’re seeing this as anything other than that, I’m not interested, you know, if it’s going to be. Predetermined placings something like that. Or, you know, I’ve got to do crazy stuff and to entertain people and pretend I’m going to hate this guy all that. It’s not me.

2:32:57 I cannot and will not do it. So they assured me that wouldn’t be the case. It would be a serious contest, but I still had a bit of a doubt there about that and that. And plus, the fact that Mr. Olympia is Mr. Olympia is what it is.

2:33:12 I called Tom Platts and it was one of the hardest things I had to do because that’s Tom Platts as well. It was like my hero, he wanted me on board, like Tom, listen, sorry, I thought about this and everything, and it’s a great offer. Can, you know, really appreciate it? But I think it can be Mr. Olympia, and that’s what I’m going to go for, so I’m going to stick it out right now.

2:33:35 So that was a tough turn down. All that money and everything for a very uncertain future was tough. But I went with this, you know, yeah, and it was the correct decision. You’re a man of serious principles. Yeah, I like to think so.

2:33:52 I always ask a few questions, and at the end of the shows, I’ve asked you these before, but I’m going to ask you again because you might have some different answers. But if you were to make a phone call to the 20<Unk>year<unk>old Dorian and give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell him, was he just coming out of that detention center? At that time? You would have been out for a while.

2:34:13 Well, I don’t think I would say anything, you know. Because if that 20<unk>year<Unk>old knew too much, it might not help him. So I would just say, Well, just do what you’re doing, you know, I don’t believe in going back and changing anything, even though I can clearly see my mistakes in the past and things that didn’t benefit me and didn’t benefit other people. But however, all that led to where I am now and the person I am now all those experiences. So sometimes you’ve got to make mistakes, sometimes you’ve got to do the wrong thing, so I’m very happy where I am now.

2:34:58 So I wouldn’t want to go back in the past and pull the threads of time or change anything. You know, that guy at 20 years old, he knew what he wanted to do. So I don’t need to go back and tell him anything change one thing, he might change everything, so that’s my philosophy. I don’t regret anything, just try to learn from it. Were you destined to do that, or do you feel like there was a higher power or a higher purpose in doing what you were doing?

2:35:31 I always felt like I was different, like I didn’t really fit in, especially in Birmingham. Maybe because I came from outside. I could see people their life mapped out before them. So I’m going to get this job, I’m going to go to work. And then I’m going to get a wife, and I’m going to have some kids, and I’m going to keep doing that job.

2:35:56 I’m going to have food in the morning, I’m going to have something to eat. I’m going to have a shit. I’m going to go to the job, I’m going to come back home, and that’s the rest of my life. I’m sure some people, they’re very satisfied with their normal life, but some people have got something inside them. It’s just not like I want to do this.

2:36:14 Nah, it’s like burning something inside that you’ve got to do this, or you’ve got to do something different, you feel different. Like, you don’t fit in. At least I did. I don’t know if everyone feels like that, but I don’t think they do. You know, I could never envision having what you call an average life.

2:36:34 So if I wasn’t the professional body, I would have done something else that would have taken me out of that environment and that very small world, you know, I know people that live in Birmingham that have never been outside the country. Some people have never been to London that live in Birmingham, so they live such a limited experience. And that definitely was never for me. I wanted to experience a lot of things, that one of the main things as a young person. What I dreamed about was to see as many places around the world as I could, and, you know, that came true through my sport.

2:37:11 I’ve been in so many places Japan, Australia, Russia, South America, all over the states, all over Europe. There’s not many places that I would like to go to, that haven’t been, I haven’t been to China, I haven’t been to Iran. Those two places are on the cards, maybe in the next year for me to go to visit. So, yeah, I wouldn’t want to change anything. Although there’s a lot of stuff that I went through that was painful and maybe other people went through through. That was painful because of my actions.

2:37:42 But that was all necessary. You know, to get where I am now. Yeah, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

2:37:56 Don’t do too many sets. No, I really don’t know the best advice I received. There’s not like I really had many mentors in my life. You know, that I could learn. I took little bits from here and there.

2:38:14 But there was not, you know, I didn’t have one kind of mentor or anything like that, anyone that was giving me advice. So I probably got advice second hand through reading and so on and through, observing other people that were successful. If you like that word, you know, so I can’t really recall one piece of advice. Everyone always asks me for one piece of advice, very hard to give one piece of advice. I always say consistency, you know, consistency.

2:38:50 Oh, no good getting all excited. And, oh yeah, I’m going to do this, I’m going to get all positive, and, oh, and for five minutes, you know, it’s not going to work. You need to be consistent with all application of everything you’re doing if you want to get to a goal in bodybuilding, you got to be consistent with your, you know, training and your enthusiasm consistent with your diet. And like I always say, it’s like building a building, it’s like building a house.

2:39:14 You know, if you do perfect training and eating and everything, maybe that’s one brick on your wall. So I used to think every time I go to the gym, I’m putting a brick on my wall. But maybe those guys in California, they’re competing. Maybe he broke his diet today, maybe he had a bad day and it affected his workout and he didn’t put his brick on that wall. You know, and maybe that happens every now and then.

2:39:37 Yeah, so each time he didn’t put that brick, I still was putting a brick. It means slowly and slowly I’m getting more ahead. It’s not about, you know, one day or one workout, right, it’s about the, it’s about the long run. It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, you know, any kind of any kind of success. One thing I would tell a 20<unk>year<unk>old Try to enjoy it a little bit more, Mate, still gonna happen, you know, did you enjoy any of it?

2:40:05 I enjoyed the challenge, but I was not a fun guy to be around. I wasn’t laughing and smiling a lot. I was just like a driven person, you know, and just that was always at the front of my mind. Like, you know, I might be out shopping with a wife or whatever she could drag me out, but I’ll be thinking about tomorrow’s workout. You know, I’m thinking, How many calories?

2:40:27 I’ve just eaten, just a constant something going on there, you know? But that’s I think if you speak to anybody that’s like the top of their field, you’ll find they’re a little bit OCD a little bit. You know, we always do a little bit more than, you know. I could have got away with less, I could have got away with not going to bed at 11, 30 every night. Probably would have made that much difference, but it would have made it to me.

2:40:50 I would have felt like I’m slacking off here or something, and then you might not have felt, yeah, and then your mental condition is not the same. You know, I felt indestructible because I thought, No one’s doing this. Everyone’s having a night off, I’m having a night off and it just makes you feel more powerful. I remember there was I was still living in Ladywood in the council flat. And it’s about two or three miles to the city centre where the gym is.

2:41:14 And there was a big snow storm, actually, there was no cars on the road. So there’s no cars. You can’t get a car out on the road, there’s snow like this. No cars, right? So there’s no cars and no buses, there’s no transport.

2:41:28 So probably would have been normal to take a day off that day. Yeah, but I wouldn’t do it. I’d trudge through that snow up past. My knees to the gym took me about an hour and a half to get to the gym from, like, a couple of miles. It didn’t usually take 20 minutes to walk, or something took me an hour and a half and I got to the gym with a key.

2:41:45 And nobody was there, opened the gym, and I thought to myself, You know what, those fuckers in California? Right now, they’re driving their Porsche and their Ferrari out in the sun, going to the beach. I’m here trudging through the snow, and they’re going to pay for that, and I’m not taking a day off, you know, so it was just a mindset really, that all these little, if I took a day off there, it would have made no difference physically. But it made a difference to my mindset and it was just that. I was always painting myself to be the underdog, you know, like, until I was Mr. Olympian, I couldn’t do that anymore.

2:42:23 Yeah, so then how do you stay on top? Then? I just got to think about all the guys chasing, you know, and trying to keep them at bay. But now I think about it. That’s the only advice I could give it to. The 20<Unk>year<Unk>old.

2:42:38 Maybe just enjoy it a little bit more and chill out a little bit more. Maybe, you know, the last part of this sequence is, you know, to the 20<Unk>year<Unk>old. That’s listening to us out there, and I’m going to ask you two different questions. I usually only ask one. What I usually ask is.

2:42:53 To the 20<Unk>year<Unk>old, that wants to become Mr. Olympian someday. and I want to get your thoughts on that but I also want to know what you think of what about the 20-year-old that wants to be more connected you know the 20-year-old that wants to find out what’s really going on out there what’s your advice to those two people? Well 20-year-old that wants to be Mr. Olympian Then that’s a long journey of many steps, you know, so it’s okay to have that role, if you like.

2:43:25 But it’s like being at the bottom of Mount Everest and saying, Oh, I like to get to the top. It’s so far away, so daunting, it’s okay to say that, but really what you’ve got to concentrate. I was getting to that first base camp or the first ledge or whatever whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, that’s your short<unk>term goal, so concentrate on that and do that. And when you get there, think about the next base camp or the next ledge and break this mountain down into like little achievable goals along the way.

2:44:02 And if you get to the first one and the second one and the third one and so on, yeah, maybe you will get there to the ultimate goal, but that’s the long way off. It’s a long way off, so concentrate on the steps along the way and the 20<unk>year<unk>old that wants to be more connected. Then seek and you’ll find pretty much. If that’s what you want and that’s what you focus on, that’s what you’ll get. Whatever you focus your energies on the most and whatever vibe you give out, that’s what you’re going to receive back in your experience.

2:44:42 So, you know, goes around, comes around calmer, like reap as you sow. You know, we’ve been told a thousand times the same thing and it’s absolutely true. It’s like, if you’re, you know, if you’re a positive and you’re have empathy and you have love and all these things. That’s what you continually project. And that’s the kind of experience you’re going to get back and the kind of people that you’re going to meet in your life and so on.

2:45:07 So it’s all about whatever you want to be more connected. You want to be Mr. Olympia, you want to whatever you want to do. It’s all starts here, it’s all projected from there, and you think you have to start from inside, as in work on yourself first. Before trying to change the world or change other people, the only way you can change the world is change yourself anyway. You know, it’s all the reflection of you, the world, so you start changing yourself, you start to see the world around you.

2:45:38 Changing your experiences is going to change and you have an effect on the collective. Like a drop in a pool, you know it, just it ripples out. So maybe I said something today in this thing that maybe has an effect on one person. Sure, it’ll be more than that, but even if it’s only one person and that starts there, you know, starts their journey. They start vibrating out this, you know something good.

2:46:08 Eventually, there’s a tipping point where you know the good is going to overpower the not good or the evil or whatever you want to call it. So obviously all around us, man, like, kind of worlds we live in. You get to turn on the TV or have a look like people being murdered and killed like all over the place you know might call it war, but it’s just murder. It’s the same thing you’re killing people you know and fuck, don’t you think it’s upside down? You know, it is upside down, everything’s upside down, so it’s got to change, but first you got to realize it’s upside down, you know, and not just, except in this is the way things are, things are messed up, it will change and I can feel it changing and nothing grows without resistance.

2:46:56 So as more people are awakening, you can also see more bad things going on in the world. It’s like, you know, one is growing with the other. And I think people who kind of control things, they know what’s going on, they know what time it is, and they’re panicking and struggling. Very hard to try to suppress this awakening. But it’s not going to work anyway.

2:47:22 It’s already, you know, what’s going to happen is already written, it’s already going to happen and I’m just happy to be part of it. You know the tattoo on your on, your on your shin, one love, one heart, why what does that mean to you? It means we’re all one thing, and all separation is an illusion and divide and conquer is the fucking tool that’s being used against us all the time. Put us in different camps, you know, and make us fight against each other. Christians and Muslims, gays and straight, black and white.

2:47:54 It’s all bullshit. We’re all the same thing, you know, we’re all from the same source and we’ve got to respect each other. And if you, I think of it like this, if you like, we’re all God, we’re all God who’s broken himself onto a million little bits to have experiences, and it’s like he’s got amnesia. So I’m you and you’re me, so if I damage you like, I’m just damaging myself. You know, it’s all connected, it’s not disconnected, we’re not separate.

2:48:29 So whatever you put out there is going to affect other people as well. It’s going to affect everything else. It’s going to affect the collective. It’s got to stop, you know? I appreciate your thoughts on that, thank you for opening our eyes to all this.

2:48:43 I think we covered everything I wanted to get kind of your story from, like cradle to where you are now, so, you know, thanks so much for coming. Thanks for having on Brian’s pleasure. Yeah, pleasure of mine. I appreciate the time last time as well. I think just to open up everyone’s eyes and and you know, it was a big, big moment for I think. We both were surprised about the, you know, the impact that it had and how many people watched it and how many people related to it.

2:49:07 I don’t know. I mean, you had some heavy hitters on this show. A lot of respected authors as a movie, people, athletes a whole lot, and to hear that mine was the most popular is amazing. And maybe it’s just because people can feel I’m just, yeah, I’m just being straight, I’m just saying how it is. You know, it was real talk from the soul.

2:49:29 I think that’s why people London, Real man, not London, bullshit. As we say, it’s about the journey. Dorian, please come see us in a couple of years. Absolutely, absolutely. thank you all, right, thank you very much.