Lee Haney - 8 Time Mr Olympia - How I Became the Greatest Bodybuilder on the Planet

Full transcript: Lee Haney on London Real

2:52 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Lee Haney, the former American professional bodybuilder who was crowned the Mr. Olympia champion an incredible eight consecutive times from 1984 to 1991 and considered one of the sport’s greatest champions.

3:18 You won your first event as a teenager in 1979 and are the only champion to remain undefeated before retiring from the sport at the age of 31. You were renowned for your pioneering science-based approach to training and nutrition, which allowed you to combine size with a classical physique. You have been critical of modern training techniques that leave many athletes with long-term injuries and irreversible damage, hence your mantra, stimulate don’t annihilate.

3:46 Since you’re retiring, you have trained professional athletes and celebrities while also helping young men achieve their potential through the Haney Harvest House, your mentoring program that aims to create a clear definition of manhood. Lee, welcome to London Real. Thank you, Brian. It’s a pleasure to be here. Heard a lot about your show.

4:05 Incredible. Thank you, Lee. It’s so great to have you on here, and the truth is, we kind of owe our success and popularity to Mr. Olympia in some ways, because back in January 2013 when nobody was doing this independent broadcasting stuff, we had a guy on the show named Dorian Yates, and to be honest, I didn’t know much about Dorian, and he came down, and I remember thinking we might need a bigger chair for this guy. You know, I just didn’t know much about, you know, who was gonna show up, and the audience didn’t either because my audience didn’t necessarily know who Mr. Olympia was, and when he sat down in the chair, his episode was our biggest episode ever at the time, and I think, Lee, people were surprised by how intelligent Dorian was, how articulate he was, how spiritual and how knowledgeable he was, because I think for some reason they expected a Mr. Olympia to be something else.

4:58 And you know, I was wondering, maybe we can start off there, Lee, and tell me, you know, what does the world not understand of what it takes for a bodybuilder to become Mr. Olympia, that champion on stage, all the sacrifice behind the scenes. What does the world not really know about what happens behind the scenes to get there? Well, you know, it takes a level of… a super level of commitment. I’m sure Dorian explained while he was being interviewed and so forth, and by the way, Dorian is a great friend of mine.

5:32 He’s an incredible athlete, also an incredible competitor. You know, doing my era, so I have the greatest of respect for him. I mean, so we know what it takes to get there, you know, and the discipline that goes into it, and the stick-to-it-ness. It’s a whole other level, but such is that in any professional top-level athlete. There’s a lot of professional athletes, but the ones that are on the top of the ladder, at the top of the chain, they’re made from, cut from a sort of a different type of mold.

6:04 To commitment there, of the the commitment to diet, the commitment to time management, commitment to making sure you’re where you need to be and doing what you need to do and not making excuses. You know, a lot of athletes can find excuses as to why they’re not committed to a specific thing, you know, why I didn’t, I wasn’t as good, and well, you know, it’s okay to be second or third plays well, hardcore, nitty-gritty athletes, myself and Dorian Yates. We don’t feel good about second place.

6:42 Second place in our book is for nothing but losers. We care about nothing but first place, and what does it take to get there? That’s what a true top-level champion mindset is all about. Yeah, I remember asking Dorian how did he celebrate when he won Mr. Olympia, and he said, “What do you mean, celebrate?” He said, “I was supposed to win.

7:05 I went home that night and I started training the next day.” That’s exactly right. You know, you don’t… you have your meal, okay? You went to work. You’ve been worked for the last several months.

7:18 Guess what? You gotta raise, you get paid. You be smart with your investments, use your money wisely. Then you back to work the next couple of days. You give the body a little time to recover, okay?

7:31 Now we back to work, but the other thing too is this thing inside of you: once you become number one, you don’t want to lose that position. You don’t want to lose that spotlight. So you’re thinking ahead of time as well: how do I stay here? What do I need to do differently than what I’ve done before to keep me here? Let me look at this training.

7:51 Let me look at this nutrition. Let me analyze this supplementation. Let me do all of those things. It’s going to keep me on the top, because when you’re on the top, there’s nowhere else to go but down. You got a lot of guys snapping at your heels.

8:05 They’re looking to take your place, so as a true champion, you want to make sure that don’t happen. So you take your butt to work the next day. It’s very different from becoming the champion to stay the champion, to stand on top of that hill, because everybody wants a piece of that, and you know you got to get even better in order to hold that, right? Yeah, that’s true, and that’s where it gets… it can get a little dicey, because you can tend to overtrain, which is one of the statements that I adhere to: training to stimulate, not annihilate.

8:42 It’s easy to overtrain and not give the body enough time to recover when your mindset is that. So you really have to step back and balance it out and don’t overload the systems, which I’ve been guilty of doing that, and of course Dorian has been guilty of doing that. That’s why he sustained some injuries during doing his training. Debut, you know, listen, when you’re up there you want to do everything you can to stay up there, and in doing so you can actually do harm, more harm than you can good, but hey, that’s the price you pay for being a gladiator.

9:18 We’re not regular people. No top athlete is a regular person. Which, sometimes when I hear regular people like commentators make comments, well, each of the dead doesn’t die. I’m like, listen to these guys. They are not in our shoes.

9:33 They don’t know what it feels like to run a jump or the lift of your heart is about to jump out of your chest. They don’t, they know nothing of that. Gladiators, at least in in times past, they fought to the death in the arenas. That’s what they did. That’s how they’re made.

9:50 That’s their psyche. So, but thank God today we have referees. We have restrictions and guidelines so they don’t end up destroying ourselves or destroying those in which we compete against. So that’s the only thing that changes. the… the is what’s have the outcome.

10:15 We have guidelines and we have restrictions. Other than that, that gladiator mindset still exists and will always exist in top-level athletes. We’ll, we are testifying monsters. We’re not guys who sit behind a desk, and then you know, and then with a principal or a typewriter. That’s not who we are.

10:34 Gladiators are gladiators. That’s what top-level professional athletes are, and it’s, oh, no, he’s acting a certain way. Why don’t mean he that’s a certain way because he geared a certain way? They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. Exactly.

10:52 Modern-day gladiators. You know, one of the things I realized when I was talking to Dorian is that as incredible as he was as a champion, he was also incredibly knowledgeable, and I know to this day he trains a lot of athletes, but his knowledge of the body, of the stress systems, of the nutrition, of the recovery protocols, was incredible. When we dove deep into it, and you know, he would tell me, he said, “Brian, you don’t understand, there was no internet back then.

11:21 I had no coach. All I had was my own experimentation, my own log books, and maybe a couple magazines or a passed around black-and-white book, you know, that I might have.” And now I’m thinking about your era, Lee. You know, eight years earlier you might have had even less, and I know you didn’t have a coach. Can you walk through some of the young guys these days as to what it was like back then, having to discover it for yourself and actually really create the science yourself?

11:51 Yes. You know, it was during an era in which there was very little information out there. You had your magazines like Muscle & Fitness, then you had Iron Man, you had Muscle Training Illustrated, very, very few. And during that time the magazines mainly consisted of training and nutrition. It wasn’t as commercialized as you see them now.

12:18 So it was all about real good quality knowledge, and then the other thing that was very good. I know growing up in my hometown, you would find some of the older guys in the gym, and they would share with you different training principles. “Okay, you want to do that, you don’t want to do those. Okay, that’s too much weight you’re using.” So those kinds of tips and principles that was handed down through the generations helped me to become the person that I am today, as far as my knowledge of training and knowledge of nutrition.

12:51 I mean, at the age of 11 years old, I asked my parents for a set of weights for Christmas, and they got them for me, and from inside of that little package of weights, there was a Charles Atlas book that had the basic principles of training, maybe one exercise per body part, the foundational exercises, and from those foundational exercises everything else grew, but I stayed true to the principles that I had read there, which also matched up to the principles that was being given to me by some of the other senior weight lifters that I met at the YMCA I met at some of the other gyms, such as Knowledge Fitness Centers and those kinds of things during that era, and then what I read in the magazine, you know, programs handed down by Robbie Robinson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, Pete Grimek, Albert Beckles, which is from Great Britain, and you know, Roy Callender, a lot of the different guys, Franco Columbu, who created these programs, and there, and they were true to the science of it.

14:02 It wasn’t any craziness, and you didn’t see what it’s called coaches helping you. These were guys who trained together. They had training partners, and so I implemented the tools of what I had learned from looking into and studying their exercise routines and so forth. And I ended my first bodybuilding show when I was 16 years old, did very well, didn’t win, then place, but I was told by the judge, “You got a lot of great potential.” And I continue to follow those principles I learned.

14:36 As much as I could about nutrition through reading the magazines. I mean, I grew up in the country, where, you know, sweet potatoes and yams was the mainstay, so it was pinto beans, so it was corn, so it was chicken, so it was eggs, so all of the good quality nutrients were there from day one just for my… from growing up where I’m from. And so by implementing the training principles, good basic nutritional principles, I was able to imitate what I had read about, and my physique continued to grow and get better and better, so by the time I was 18, I ended my first regional show.

15:14 Let’s back up. When I was 16, I ended my first shuttle missile South Carolina, didn’t place, as I mentioned earlier, but I did very well. A couple of years later, I entered the Mr. Palmetto and won the show at the age of 18. I beat guys who was in their 30s and they’re in their 40s. and then I went on to win the Mr. South and again at age 18.

15:38 So because of having great information, because of following very good nutritional guidelines, I was able to super exceed guys who was older than me because of my willingness of my desire to follow the science that had been handed down to me by some of the lasers of bodybuilding. So you were eating whole foods back in the day, before it became a thing and a whole marketplace. You go to back in the day, that’s what you grew up on, being in the country. Exactly, I mean, that’s the way we ate.

16:16 You know, I, my grandpa had cows, he had peas, he had chickens, he had all of that, so my food was organic and grown right from the land, and you know, nothing’s changed as far as that’s concerned. You know, we don’t say protein, carbohydrates, fats. You know, now they say micros, the macros. It’s the same thing to models. To models, they just change the name a little bit, and that’s basically it.

16:40 And no, we didn’t have coaches. Didn’t need coaches. We had training partners. You know, we’d say, “Okay man, you look a little bit flat today, you know, so you need to increase your carbs a bit.” So we knew what caused carbohydrates is the life force of the physique.

16:54 To get a nice pump, protein was there to repair cell and tissue and be a good quality muscle. If you have more protein and not carbohydrates, then you’re not going to fill out and develop as you should. So it’s got to be a happy medium there. So the science of writing down, people… we had this little tablet where we would write down what we ate in the course of a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner, you know, how many grams of protein, how many grams of carbohydrates, so that as we look better, we were able to go back and figure out why we were looking better.

17:27 If we looked a bit flat, we could go back scientifically and say, “Oh man, look, I’ve only had 100 grams of coffee and I feel a bit sluggish, so guess what? I need to increase my carbohydrate intake.” “Oh, oh man, I didn’t have… I don’t want to have five glasses of water today. I need to go back in and add more water, so we… we experimented with nutrition.

17:52 We experimented with training, not just training, the nutrition just pulled out of the sky, but by the guidelines that have been handed down by those before us. I didn’t make Lee Haney, not by myself. Neither did Dorian make Dorian by himself, but we then, but we did have to find out what worked good in our bodies individually, what made us feel good, what would allow us to grow better and recover better. Those are things that only you individually can know through nutrition.

18:27 Nobody can do that. Bam, that’s what you need. 100, because they don’t know because they are not in your body. You’re in your own body. Yeah, tell me about competition, especially the night of and maybe the days coming up to that, onstage competition.

18:44 I was actually just watching footage of you and Dorian, I think competing at Night of Champions, maybe in ’91? I’m not sure what it was. It was right when the kind of transition happened from you to Dorian. But what’s it like when you’ve got the young gun coming up trying to take your spot? You know, your reign is coming to an end, but you’re also thinking, no, no, no, this is happening when I want it to happen, and then I might reflect on Dorian’s mindset, because he’s looking, he’s competing with a guy that he’s looked up to for six, seven years.

19:17 You probably inspired him when he was a kid, and now he’s got to beat the guy that’s the hero in his dreams, and maybe you can use that against him. So tell me what’s that whole mindset process like, even behind the stage and on the stage? Well, you know, if you kill the mind, you can you can impact the body. So this ability to try to psych out your opponents is very important if you can make it happen, and if you can reach into their heads, because we’re dealing with several Olympians here.

19:54 These guys are the best of the best. They’re not passive. They’re not… you know, they’re not kids. They are, they are gladiators, and they’re ready to. So how did you, how do you sort of move them from their game?

20:10 I tell you what I did, on one this particular time leading up to that last Olympia, is I would wait until, because there’s a period of about 20 minutes before hitting the stage that the head MC, or the person extraditing would say, “Okay, guys, you got 20 minutes to go. You want to start warming up? Okay.” What I would do is, about when I’m feeling that starting to happen, I would, ahead of time, have my assistant to unroll me while all the other guys are sitting, sitting around waiting on the call.

20:59 So ahead of time I would have them take my robe off, and I hit a few poses, then they’d throw it back on me. And so it was at that moment when they would see me at my… at the very best I was going to be for that particular day, and and trying to throw them off their game, or have them say, “Wow, man, Lee Haney looks great. I don’t stand a chance.” That was my mindset, to mess with their heads, and so I had a tendency to do that on purpose. And as I look back and as I’ve heard later, it worked on several occasions with several of the competitors, whether it worked with Dorian or not, I’m not sure, but I do feel, still, as hard as Dorian tried to say, well, and I’ve really said in an interview, “This guy’s my enemy now.

21:58 I can’t look at him in the same… can’t look at him in the same light.” And that’s that’s correct, but I still feel that that level of respect and that level of awe was still there, because it was there for me when I stood on the stage beside Frank Zane, Berto Fox, Roy Callender, and Sergio Oliva. You know, I was the youngest cat coming up, and here I am at the 1984 Olympia. You better believe it was in my head that these guys was on… I was on the stage with legends that I had looked up to and mimicked some of their training routines, so I knew that was in Dorian’s head, too.

22:38 So I felt, and I knew without a doubt, I had the upper edge of his psyche. I strongly felt that. Did he look fearful on the stage? Of course not. Gladiators don’t show fear.

22:53 They do what they got to do, but I was fully confident that was going to be my last set of my best set, and I knew that Dorian was coming along so I had to be at my very best. When you’re going for your eighth Mr. Olympia win, you have to do something differently to look differently on that last one, because you’ve got this new mass monster coming, and the audience has been watching you for the last seven years. So what can you show them that you haven’t shown them before?

23:26 And so at that last Mr. Olympia, I was at 254 pounds, which is four pounds heavier than the previous Mr. Olympia. My physique was fuller. I used a training system that I would normally drop about four weeks from the Mr. Olympia. When I say train the system, the system I generally use was called a three on, off one, which is Monday, Wednesday, Friday on, off, then Monday, Wednesday, Friday on, off. I was generally switching that system to a straight six for the last four weeks.

24:09 But what I noted in switching to the straight six the last four weeks in the previous Mr. Olympias my body stayed fatigued until a day or two, a day and a half before the actual show, where the muscle really started to fill out and pop, so I took a chance And not so much taking a chance. I just studied closer my body as I was following through on the three on, off one all the way to the last four weeks, and I said, “Listen, this is already working very well. My muscles are full.

24:48 My legs recovered with the on three, off one, so let’s not fix what’s not broken.” So I stayed with the on 3rd one which allowed me to stay fuller, allow me to stay bigger when I hit the stage. It was a done deal. Everything was just as I wanted it to be. My, I feel out, and my… my carbohydrates hit the sales just as I wanted to be, so all the science worked out.

25:16 So that last Olympia was my best, but guess what? It had to be the best, because Dorian was there. That was my last set, best set, too. That’s it. Let somebody else fight with this youngster.

25:29 I’m out of here. How good is it to have someone like Dorian coming in at that time and then later going on to kind of change the game with that mass monster style? I mean, I guess at the time it’s probably not a pleasant thing, but in retrospect it gets you to go the extra mile, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re only as good as our competitors. You got that right.

25:54 Dorian was, he had side that was unparalleled to anybody else that I had competed with previously, you know, style. And Dorian, the outsides, when I say, you know, I was 254, and Dorian, I believe, at the time was probably about 240,245, I believe, something like that in his first Olympia. And of course, you know, he got bigger for his Olympias after that, but that was a whole nother era. My era was one, I would say, more of a classic physique. I had a 31-inch waist, you know, so it was more of a sweeping type of let’s say Arnold, Zane, Robbie Robinson type of physique.

26:37 Dorian was one more of a hard, grainy, larger style, which is a different type, but it was then becoming a different era, you know, and that era said, okay, this is what bodybuilding should look like. That is what that era… Dorian was the beginning of that era, because after Dorian, you had… uh, uh, you had Ronnie Coleman. After Ronnie Coleman, you had you had… um, uh, I can’t think of his name, but Blonde? How the other monster mass muscle, but anyway, they followed this section with mass and more sides and so forth.

27:27 So my physique was what it was, and it was what the judges wanted to see for that era, and Dorian in that era was magical for me. It may be Mr. Olympia eight years in a row, and when the next era came, it was then Dorian’s era, which, that’s what the judges and that’s what bodybuilding wanted to see for that era. So all eras have their champions and have the thing that it loves and wants to see, and his fans who wants to see it. So yeah. So, uh, I, uh, I texted Dorian to see if he had a question for you before, uh, before we came on.

28:09 Yeah, and, uh, again, Dorian’s an incredible man. He’s, you know, become a great friend and a mentor as well. We had him on the show back in 90 in 2013, like I said, January. We had him back on a couple years later, and he was trying to transform him in front of our eyes, just becoming this kind of a sage and a real spiritual and a real mentor type man to a lot of young, young people. And he invited me down to Marbella, and we went down with the film crew and we made a documentary about him and how he kind of transitioned, because I think a lot of guys get stuck thinking, I’m a bodybuilder my whole life, you know, and they don’t know when to kind of transition to someone else, and Dorian did that really well.

28:47 So I asked him about any questions. He didn’t say he had a question, but he wanted to say this, so I’m going to tell you exactly what he said. He texted me back and he said, quote, “I never told Lee what a huge inspiration he was to me, especially as a family man and a champion. He was a role model, but I didn’t tell him when we met, as I was so competitive.” Unquote.

29:09 What do you say to that? Wow, that’s quite a compliment coming from Dorian. You know, but it doesn’t surprise me. Dorian has always been to me a very humble and beautiful beautiful person. Look, funny too, you know, I was, when we were in that ladder at one of Mr. Olympia, so of course I retired and doing all keeped up and looking good and everything.

29:35 He says to me, “Leo, what do you think, we have another go at it?” I said, “Dorian, are you kidding?” I said, “I’m going fishing, man.” That was so funny. But also prior to that, which was brought to my attention by a guy named Peter McGough.

29:52 Peter McGough is from Great Britain. Peter writes for Flex magazine, Muscle & Fitness. He’s one of the last of the historians of bodybuilding, brought past to present. And I was in England doing a guest appearance at one of the shows, I think was the British Bodybuilding Championship, and so anyway, I needed some carbohydrates, you know, because we were supposed to eat about every two hours or so, and it was this youngster in the audience, that was sort of helping backstage.

30:28 He was helping backstage, and he had some apples and fruit, and so he offered me what he had. And come to find out, by Peter, that youngster was Dorian. You know, wow, wow, it’s amazing. You know, the same way with O.J. Simpson meeting Jim Brown as a kid, and here he is knocking on my door a few years later.

30:52 So, man, I… it’s an awesome journey, man, to see where Dorian feels now. His transition, how he’s enjoying life. I mean, I really get a thrill seeing him now into yoga, taking care of his body. Listen, his gladiators, man, you know, we put our bodies through a lot of craziness, and the body, don’t forget all that. You’ve left your joints still say, “Hey, man, you remember that, right?”

31:20 Every time you wake up in the morning, you remember all of that crazy squatting you did. I’m still here, just waiting to get you. And Dorian has been wise enough to change gears, you know, with the yoga and the cycling, and to bring the weight down so that he can live a healthier life. You know, I myself have done the same thing. I’m into more functional training, using the ropes, using, uh, using medicine ball, you know, doing yoga stretches, all of those different kinds of things.

31:51 You know, it comes a time you have to put the squat off as a gladiator and the helmet and the breastplate and say, “Okay, now this is for you, young guys. Let me show you how to do it.” Now I’ve been there, done that, so both of us are more on the teaching scale of showing young athletes what to do and what not to do. And then the other side of it too, we know that that we’re finite creatures. We’re not going to live forever, and if we can use what we’ve accomplished over the span of our lifetime as a competitor to impact the lives of other young athletes, other people, then, man, what a thrill to do.

32:35 So that’s what’s so cool about the second half of the journey, being able to impact those younger athletes and point them in the direction of being successful at it, but also letting them know too that this doesn’t last forever, and you need to do it in such a way that you don’t destroy your physical body, because at the end of the day you still want to be functional. You want to enjoy your grandkids. As I am, I have three beautiful granddaughters. I’m still able to run with them, not full speed, but we still able to do fun stuff together, and I got my health, and that’s, that’s what it’s all about.

33:16 Your health is your wealth, and you want that at the end of the end of the day. That’s really well said. You know, it’s interesting now, because a lot of the, the kids these days look back to, you know, Dorian’s era, your era, and they say that your bodies look better than the guys do nowadays, and there’s this interesting, you know, kind of a throwback to where they’re like, man, maybe these guys were the peak of the game, as opposed to nowadays. What are your thoughts on that?

33:43 I know that, you know, as humans, styles always change. You know, you see music and hairstyles and fashion changes, so it’s natural that, like you said, the judging of bodybuilding would change. But what do you think of the kids now looking back to those eras, saying these guys were better looking than the current ones? Well, you know, something, it takes a time. It takes time to build a masterpiece.

34:10 The era in which Dorian and I got our language of training from Griffin, that of Arnold and Frank Zane and Robbie Robinson, form technique, training principles. Nothing was done overnight. It took time. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of Dorian when he was like 15 years old. Look how, you know, that amount of time that it was taken to develop his physique.

34:36 I mean, I was lifting weights when I was 11 years old, then by the time I was 16, I was competing in bodybuilding competitions. It takes time. What I see now in this era is a lot of the athletes they train extremely heavy, too heavy, and they, the training principles which they adhere to are not principles as it relates to building quality. You know, you see some of these training approaches now where a guy may train once every seventh day. So what in the world is that?

35:09 And when you look at the physiques on the stage, you see the results of that. You don’t see definition as much of muscle separation or muscle maturity. It takes time to get muscle maturity, one of my favorites, a guy named Albert Beckles. We talked earlier. Albert is from Great Britain.

35:28 Listen, when I won my second Mr. Olympia in Belgium, in 1985, Albert was 56 at the time. 56 years young. He looked absolutely incredible, placing second to me. He would have guided me if I hadn’t been in tip-top shape, but even at the age of 31, when I had retired, I never reached the pinnacle of muscle maturity like Albert Beckles, because I was in and out of the game. Well, Apple was still competing when he was in his 60s and looking incredible.

36:07 It takes time to build a masterpiece. It takes the proper training principles, and the training once every seven days, or once every fifth day, it’s ridiculous. Those are the training routines of power lifters who need the extra time for heavy weight training. And if you did more than that, more than seven days within muscle groups, you can end with a lot of injuries which is now taking place with a lot of athletes in our sport, whereby with the three on, off one, or the straight six, which there’s a little bit like, as I said earlier, tends to overtrain the body a bit.

36:44 But of course, during Arnold’s era that’s what they did, but at the same token, they didn’t train as heavy. They trained more frequently but not as heavy. The three on, off one gives you an ability to sort of train a slightly heavy and still at the same time give the body the extra recovery time. So the lack of the proper routine, the lack of proper training principles has caused the physiques of today to be bigger but lack quality. You see a lot of guys look like mutants when, during the course, you were the mass monster.

37:21 And then, as you saw, Ronnie’s mass and Jay Cutler, you still didn’t look like a mutant. You know, things would steer proportion. It was larger, but Dorian’s physique still had the symmetry and the balance to it. See, that’s what you don’t see now. You’ll see guys with little calves, big thighs, you see a guy with huge shoulders but then narrow width or high lats, because the ability of the tools or the knowledge to develop a complete physique with everything where it’s supposed to be long last, full calves are not there in the training principles that we are here to growing up totally different, which also also Brian, is why I created those.

38:13 I wrote this book here called Totally Awesome. I published this book in 1986. 1986. I did it again in 1991 after my last Olympia, and I recently did it again last year. The reason being is the lack of proper training information that’s out there.

38:36 I’ll talk about the three on, off one, why, why is it better? Why is it better than a straight seven? I talk about the straight six and when you use it, and then when the back away, I talk about a three-day power circuit, as to the benefits of it after your body has gone through a competition that’s been traumatized, let’s give it enough time to recover. That, then, and only then should a once-every-seven-day routine be used, not as a regular part of your daily training.

39:04 So that’s how a lot of these guys get so mixed up, because they follow a lot of these so-called gurus and coaches on the internet who haven’t won the creek water USA or the creek water of Great Britain yet, and they adhere to these, these, these judges. I mean, these, these coaches who don’t know diddly squat. Yeah, there’s a lot of that happening today, and I want to get into that for sure. You just broke down exactly what’s flawed about the current bodybuilding today in an amazing way, so thank you for that, Lee.

39:40 I actually just became more comprehensible to me explaining those different eras. One of the things you mentioned was Arnold. Now, Arnold had the seven, you got the eights. Arnold was there back in the early days when you look back now, where you’re at now, in 2020, what did Arnold contribute to the sport, both good and bad, and what was it like for you to beat him in that number of competitions? Was that something that was on your mind?

40:06 It was obviously a big deal for everybody, but what was that like in your own head? Well, you know, like I said, Arnold really gave bodybuilding a footprint that is well respected all around the world. He put bodybuilding right in front of the entire world, you know, and thanks to people like Joe Weider with Muscle & Fitness magazine and Flex magazine, Shape magazine, who gave bodybuilding a voice. So that was extremely important, you know, and not to mention the importance of the… of you know, who was there, who started the Mr. Universe, all of that.

40:56 It started great right there in Great Britain. So that was even before the IFBB was formed, so I gotta really give my hats off to the earlier pioneers who gave Joe Weider a platform to step from. So you have to give credit to them too. It was right there in Great Britain that it all began to happen. So, but yeah, but Arnold took it to the screens.

41:21 He took it to the politics. He did an incredible job. And my being able to come off of some of the successes of Arnold and then take bodybuilding and go, you know, to the next level, was also incredible, and I have to give thanks to him for drawing attention to the fact that, hey, bodybuilders are special people. We’re smart, we’re intelligent, we’re approachable, we’re a benefit to society. You know, I had my show on ESPN, Lee Haney’s Championship Workout.

41:59 I had a show on the Trinity Broadcast Network, which is a Christian network that’s internationally called Totally Fit. I was chairman to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sport under President Bill Clinton, and I’m also in the International Sports Hall of Fame. So it’s a lot of different things that has been made possible through the sacrifice and the success of people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and where I am now in this era, I’m still enjoying what I do.

42:35 I’m able to share what I do in so many different ways, and it is truly a blessing to be where I am, you know, to have traveled to more than 30 different countries around the world, and to have a fellowship of iron brotherhood with people everywhere, is awesome. So hats off to all of the people who made that possible for me to step into the shoes of was it important that you beat his seven with your eight Mr. Olympia championships? Well, you know what? When I set out, I didn’t think, okay, let’s, let’s, let’s win Mr. Olympia eight times.

43:18 Listen, to win the Mr. Olympia one time is a miracle, you know, and after I won the first one, I’m like, wow, I just, I just became Mr. Olympia. That’s just became the one thing that I desired to do, and reading the magazines ever since I was a youngster, and I’m him now. And so okay, let’s train for the next one, and I win that. Then one of my training partners, great friend of mine, and we worked out together, he said, “Lee, man, let’s, let’s go ahead and hit this three.”

43:48 Then guess what? I won the third one, because Frank Zane had got three. I said, “Well, if I get three, man, you know, at least I’ve tied Frank Zane.” And then I said, “Well, let me go for five.” So this thing, you know, I hit five.

44:02 So, wow, man, you know, Arnold got six in a row, and maybe I could hit, count that record, do six. So next thing you know, I hit six, and now, okay, let’s, let’s, let’s go seven. Seven is a record in itself. Nobody’s done seven in a row, but still, I don’t have the record of seven overall. So the next thing you know, I hit seven, and at seven I said, “Well, man, seven Mr. Olympias in a row, that’s the record, and it’s time for Arnold.”

44:34 And I sat down and I had a talk with my wife, Shirley. And you know, Shirley was my second great sweetheart growing up, so we’ve known each other forever. Athlete. She played volleyball, she was in track and field, name it, baseball, basketball. She did, as a matter of fact, she was the president of the sports club going through high school, and I was the vice president.

45:03 I mean, my wife was the ace, become you know, that did, and I was under her as a VP. So anyway, I sit down with Shirley. I’ll say, “Well, baby, you know, we’ve done seven Olympias. That’s a record in itself. What do you think?

45:18 You know, should I just, you know, call it quits after that?” She looked at me and said, “Well, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? You got to do it. What’s the matter with you?”

45:30 I mean, I was almost embarrassed because I even mentioned the fact of stopping before eight. And so with her pushing me, and, uh, always being there to support me, I said, “Okay, eight years, eight did eels.” And so I set out to prepare for that eighth Mr. Olympia. And there she was on stage with me, along with my son Joshua, who was three and a half at the time, of my daughter Olympia, who was about nine months old. So they all celebrated the Mr. Olympia with me for the eighth consecutive time.

46:08 Incredible. No, you don’t start saying, well, I would admit when I’m not still Olympia eight years in a row. That’s, that’s a miracle just to win it, a miracle, but eight in a row, man, that’s crazy. You know, which is why after every Mr. Olympia win I would always bow on my knees on stage, and people said Well, you okay, man? Are you dizzy?

46:28 No, I’m on my knees thanking God for that moment, because it was a miracle in itself. Amen to that. Wow, now I’m asked a question, maybe people have asked you this before, but I’m going to hit you with this. If you had wanted, could you have done the ninth? And also, based on the way Dorian started coming up, could you have won it?

46:50 You know, something beauty is in the eye of the beholder as far as the judges are concerned, and as far as the era in which the audience is satisfied with, you know, my heart was that as I questioned, if I sit down with Shirley and say, “Well, baby, what do you think? You know, is seven enough?” And no, she pushed me to do eight. Seven was really enough for me, you know, but her pushing and inspiring me, “Okay, let’s do eight, let’s set this record.” And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that eight was it.

47:34 I wanted to go no further, because let me just say, Brian, after that seventh Mr. Olympia, a week, a few days after the show, the contest, I woke up and my entire body was wrecked with pain. My knees hurt, my shoulders, my elbows, everything hurt, and I’ve never felt that before, but I mean, listen, seven Mr. Olympias, well, eight really only plays third in my first Mr. Olympia in Germany in 1983. So it’s really, you’re talking eight Mr. Olympias, not to count the IFBB World Championship or the NPC Nationals or the Junior Nationals.

48:19 All of those shows leading up started in 1982. So man, I was in pain everywhere, and I thought to myself, said, man, “I’ve never felt like this. Can I recover? Will I recover?” And I gave myself just a little time off, gave my joints enough time to recover, some good food, detox the body.

48:44 I always believe in detoxing, cleaning the liver, the kidney, the bloodstream and the urinary system through using a combination of herbs like milk, pencil, burner root, garlic, red clover, all of these different things, and colon cleansing, and just a whole week of fruits and vegetables and water to detox the system. And within two weeks, two and a half, three weeks, my body had fully recovered, and I felt good, very good, good enough where I said, “Well, you know something, I’m okay. I can move forward.

49:23 I can go farther than doing this, because I didn’t have any specific injuries to joints, knees, hip or back. It’s just everything just hurt.” You know, but after what the eighth Olympia, I mean, you’re traumatized. Everybody who trains for a show on that level, be it bodybuilding, be it basketball, LeBron James, you better believe he’d wake up in pain. Magic Johnson, all of the guys who were the best of the best of what they did, you know, athletes, you are traumatized.

49:55 Your body didn’t forget none of those none of that that you had to go through. So with that, I was able to push forward and do that eighth Mr. Olympia. But beyond that, oh no, I wasn’t afraid of doing Dorian or anything. Fear is nothing that real hardcore gladiators have. We don’t fear nothing.

50:19 Fear, what, particularly, not anything standing on two legs like us. So no, there’s no fear factor, or no, like, “Oh, during this coming night, doing this coming…” Guess what? It just made me up my game a little bit more, but I knew at the eighth Olympia that’s enough. You can’t stay too long, you know.

50:39 And again, my philosophy: train to stimulate, not annihilate. My body was sending me a signal, and I strongly feel that going beyond the biological clock of where your natural hormone levels are in the body and your natural testosterone levels are, you put yourself in danger. I know that every Olympian that went past 40 ended up with injuries, life-changing injuries. I got out when I was at the peak of biologically, where my hormone levels and testosterone levels were, to repair myself that hit.

51:23 I took after that seventh. You know, the seventh Olympia win was like, okay, we’re telling you something now. So you got to know when to hold them, when the phone, when to turn when to run away, and don’t count your money while you’re sitting at the table, you know. You’re quoting me country songs back to me, Lee. I love you, right, man?

51:46 The Gambler, that’s a good one, man. Now, I know what you mean. I mean, when Dorian talked about his sixth competition, I mean, his tricep tendon was barely still attached, you know. He was really at a crossroads whether he was even gonna compete, but he pulled it off and put on that gladiator face like you talked about and went on that stage. But Dorian, I don’t think he ever even vaguely considered the seventh.

52:11 He knew he was done. The body was done, and I think that it’s so taxing mentally to show up year after year after year, and it’s one thing to become the king of the hill, but to stay on the hill when all the guys are coming up, and the doubters and the naysayers and everything you deal with, it’s… it’s taxing physically, emotionally, and it sounds like you picked the right time to go, and I think Dorian did as well. Yeah, man, that’s it. That mental part is a whole nother level.

52:40 You know, one of the things that I’ve always look to, it’s my relationship with God as a follower of Jesus Christ, because Brian, when I was 17 years old, I got on my knees one night before going to bed and I prayed. I said, “Lord, if you see fit to make me the best of the sport that I love so much, I’ll go before the world and give you the praise and the glory.” So I with all of my heart believe that my journey actually began with that prayer, because it wasn’t for the sake of glorifying myself, but for the sake of giving God honor and glory.

53:22 So at every Mr. Olympia, I was on my knees saying, thank you, and every seminar and interview, and what I do as a man of God is about bringing honor and glory to God for impacting the world for good, not about having a big head about self-gain, self-glory, those kinds of things. No, I’m an instrument to be used of God to do good in the earth, to impact the lives of these young people, the young athletes, to make a difference, to influence. That’s what the whole journey has been about.

54:02 I really feel that the Lord placed me in this position as I prayed to, and then maybe to just watch, will He do what He actually said He would do if I honor Him with this blessing? And I’ve tried my very best to do just that. So I don’t think, by being Mr. Olympia eight years in a row with no injuries, was an accident. I have no injuries, even today, after stretching a little bit extra, like Dory do. But listen, I am blessed, man.

54:34 I feel good. I’ve been married to the same beautiful girl for 38 years. I got two beautiful adult kids. I’ve now got grand youngins. So man, I… it don’t get no better than this.

54:48 How come you former Mr. Olympias are so wise? That’s what I want to know, because Dorian said to me point blank, you know, in the same studio at the end of his second interview, he said, “Brian, we are all one.” That’s what he told me. He said, “We are all one.” It took me a while to figure that out, but once I figured it out, it changed the way I interact with the world.

55:07 And you know, it’s a similar way of saying what you said, you know, spirituality, religion, whatever you want to call it. It’s a lot of that same energy and spirit, but both of you seem to embody it. You know, I don’t know if that’s a coincidence or not, based on what you’ve been through, but I heard it from both of you in this studio. Well, it’s amazing what time teaches you, and what Dorian and I both have experienced is being men of the world. There’s 190 different countries in the IFBB federation.

55:38 We’re part of that. I mean, I have friends in Russia and Germany, Switzerland, Sweden, Japan, Great Britain. Name a country, Singapore. Name a country, you know, Brazil. I’ve been there.

55:50 Canada, been there, done that, and have been able to see the world, that is round and is not flat, to see that all people have something in common. You know, we all want to live. We want to prosper. We want to love. We want to be.

56:12 We want to have a free will to live our lives, and I know that the guidelines to doing so has already been established. I like to say, you know, I don’t know what the Bible has to say, which is called the basic instructions before leaving Earth. You know, it tells me how to be a man of honor, a man of integrity, a man of the utmost humility, how to treat my neighbor, how to love my neighbor, how to treat my wife, how to raise my children, how to honor those that have been set in authority, and praying that those who have been put in authority, and our voting and that kind of thing, are people who also honor God, because you can get a nut in authority, too, which we see a lot of that around the world.

57:06 You put the wrong person there, you can really tear up a lot of principles that make people miserable. But we’ve seen the world, and we’ve been around the world. It really makes your… it expands your mind, and it spans also your view of the world. You know, I’ve had people say, “Lee, you’re religious?” I said, “No, no, I’m not religious.

57:35 Don’t use that word, not as it relates to me, because it’s got a lot of people killed. People are still getting killed for religion today. Let me be clear about what religion is. Religion is a man’s way of trying to communicate with God. See, God is communicating with man through fellowship and relationship.

57:59 As a follower of Jesus Christ, I know, and as I’ve read and I’ve studied, and I’ve prayed about, He healed the sick. He gave sight to the blind. He fed the hungry. He did all those things that are beneficial to humanity, and what draws humanity to say, yes, I love that, I appreciate that, I want that, that was His. He was the ultimate role model of that.

58:28 That’s who He is, and as His followers, that’s who we are to be. Not religious. Religious is messed up, because a lot of people use it to overpower the minds of other people, or for their own financial or monetary gain, or to hold a particular position and to hold a particular race of people or statement of people down, to use control. See, that has nothing to do with the relationship of God. The Lord wants relationship, fellowship.

59:03 I mean, hanging out with Him, said, “Lord, what do you think about this? I, how should I approach that, you know? Oh no, I’m not supposed to be acting that way. Forgive me. I’m sort of stepping outside of your will in your way.

59:15 You know, help me to do better. You know, that’s being a follower of Jesus Christ, and that’s what I liken myself to as I try to each and every day of my life, you know, not to say, not to say, “I turn my cheek, you smack me, I’m going to smack you back and I’m going to smack you hard, too well, you won’t think about doing that again, you know.” So there’s a… the Bible is a big book. It’s not a bat, you know. It’s not about you being crushed or being weak and puny.

59:47 No, no, no. If you read the whole Bible, God has His gladiators too. Those are our Secret Service guys, those are our Navy SEALs, those are people who do what they got to do to protect the well-being of our country and our community. Hmm, that’s super well said, and it’s a great point you make about you being able to see the world through Mr. Olympia, and it’s something Dorian talked about as well. I mean, that was his ticket out of a pretty bad situation in Birmingham here, you know, where he was really at the bottom, and the only way he could get to see the world was battling his own will and going into that basement gym every day, you know, alone, in England, while the guys were on Muscle Beach, you know, posing with the girls, and he was there, you know, pushing himself, and that was his ticket to ultimately this, you know, freedom and spiritual experience that he’s gone through.

1:00:37 And so I see why you guys both, you know, talk about it, you know, in that way. Just want to finish up with Mr. Olympia, and then I want to hear more about what you’re doing these days with the young men, and, you know, and your charity, etc. When you then retired and watched what Dorian did, and then what Ronnie Coleman did, and I had Ronnie on a few months ago and chatted with him. Um, what, what did you see happen then, because we saw Dorian show up, I think it was like in ’93, much bigger, and then Dorian was big into his conditioning, where he would just cut so much weight and was so lean that, you know, he made other guys have to step up to their conditioning, and then we saw then Ronnie go after that.

1:01:18 What was your read on those two eras that Dorian and then Ronnie? Well, you know what, both of them was they were real different, totally different than me, but so was I different than Arnold. You know, Arnold, like 2 30, you know, 2 22, that kind of deal, where here I am, come along, 240 up to 254. And so as the science of bodybuilding has gotten better, then here come Dorian, then here come running, so the advance of our sport, the advance of nutritional knowledge, supplementation made them who they are.

1:01:57 You know, and so both of them are different eras. They sort of fed upon each other, and I love what I saw happen, man. The thing that I sort of a little bit envious of is, man, they got big checks, man. I was only getting six and five thousand dollars. These guys leave, like, three hundred four thousand dollars, four hundred thousand dollars to win a Mr. Olympia title.

1:02:21 So yes, I was envious of that. I wish I hadn’t got more money, but of course I don’t know where she had got more than I did. I mean, you know, so each era has its benefits, and then I was excited for them, because the fact that they were able to really go to the next level as far as, you know, what athletes deserve for their sacrifice. You know, you had all of the different supplement companies that were available, you know, starting and during that era. You know, during my time, you only had Weider was the only game in town.

1:02:58 Then, of course, there was Twin Laboratories, who gave me a new start, and so I left Weider, went to 20 Laboratories, which was huge, because nobody else has ever walked away from the company who owned all the magazines, so there was 20 Laboratories who then had Muscle Development magazine, that I then partnered with, and they gave me an awesome contract at that time, so I went where nobody else has gone before in that era. But then other companies came around. Other supplement companies, Weider was no longer the only game in town, so there was other choices, and these guys were banking big time, so it really gave bodybuilders opportunity to really benefit from all that hard work and sacrifice.

1:03:54 So of course we’re still not making as much money as those in the NBA or the NFL, you know, the major sports. But listen, we’re doing a lot better than we did before, and I love all the benefits that come with the sport of bodybuilding. The brotherhood is huge. But then also, you know, we get to see the world. You can’t, if you say NFL or you say NBA, that’s not a… these are neither, neither, world, world sports.

1:04:27 When you say bodybuilding, you’re talking about the world. You’re talking 191 countries. That says a lot. Then you get to go out and greet and do meet and do seminars and all those kinds of things, to impact the lives of the athletes, get to shake their hands, create relationships all over the world, which is a riches far beyond anything monetary. And what about Ronnie Coleman?

1:04:54 He hit the eight, like you did. Did you feel like that was a competition or not? And also, you know, he’s still going through lots of surgeries. He still trains. You know, what do you make of that whole career, and did he pay a bit much for going hard?

1:05:09 Well, you know, when Ronnie hit that eighth Olympia, I thought, I thought that he was gonna gonna break the record and get the ninth one. I was there to hand him the trophy, had that happen, because his honor was there. He said, “You know, records are made to be broken.” When I broke his record, I was there to encourage Ronnie, you know, “Go get it, man. You know, it’s yours to have.

1:05:33 That’s made to be broken.” And of course he didn’t, but, and then to see later, you know what? I see more from the positive side. What Ronnie was, a lot of positive here’s his business model. Ronnie’s doing an incredible job with his finances and setting up his business models, you know, with the supplements and so forth.

1:06:00 So he’s done a fantastic job, because at the end of the day, that’s really what counts, all those hard-working sacrifices. You have to develop some type of economy with this. I mean, you can have eight million trophies. I don’t care how much ketchup or tomato sauce you put on them, you cannot eat them. So at the end of the day, you have to be smart enough and wise enough to turn that into an economy to take care of you and your family, because as athletes, one day you’re going to lose… you’re going to leave the arena, and what do you do then?

1:06:41 That’s what’s important. That’s what Ronnie took care of. That’s what Dorian is taking care of now. The cost that he’s paying, beyond that. Listen, Ronnie is a gladiator.

1:06:52 He would have done it whether he got five cents or not, and if he could still do it, he would do it all over again. That’s just how gladiators are made. He didn’t get killed in the arena. He just got wounded, but his mind said, it’s still a better… he’s a gladiator. That’s why he’s still training, and still not saying no to defeating gladiators.

1:07:17 That’s how we are, and that’s what I say to people. So well, you know, Ronnie, God, lead, man, look, I listen, he’s a gladiator. He understood the price, and he was willing to pay the cost for it. So, hey, he’s… it is what it is. And you know, you’ve had several surgeries and so forth, you know.

1:07:37 My mindset, I got out early. You know, Ronnie won his first Mr. Olympia and at the age of 35, I was gone at age 31. But as I said, once your growth hormone levels start to decrease, that means the ability of the body to recover starts to decrease, and the wear and tear on the joints starts to escalate, and so I think Ronnie finally walked off the stage at the age of 44. You know, in athletics, that’s older, but for a gladiator, our mindset is gladiator to the end, and that’s running.

1:08:21 Yeah, there’s that old quote by Teddy Roosevelt. You know, there’s the man in the stands and the man in the arena. You know, there you go. And the man in the stands can criticize and comment and point out all the mistakes you made, but the man in the arena is the one who knows what time, it is, he’s there bleeding, sweating, maybe dying, but they know what it’s all about. They know what life is all about, and they had that mindset like you said.

1:08:48 That’s right. That’s right to the last breath, man. It’s so true, man. It’s so true. You know, Lee, the most popular question that we’ve ever asked Dorian, or the one that people always want to hear from a former bodybuilder, is their thoughts on steroids.

1:09:05 And I want to ask you, because Dorian always said something really prophetic in his first conversation with me. He looked at me and he said, “Brian, steroids are used in all sports,” and everyone was like, “What are you talking about? Tennis and golf?” And I think it was around that time that the Lance Armstrong thing came out, and he said, “You know, you might not see it when you look at a cycling guy,” he said, “but in bodybuilding it’s just more obvious.

1:09:29 But any time where men or gladiators are competing and looking for an edge, it’s a possibility that it gets introduced.” But he also went on to say that doesn’t mean that if you took it out, the champion wouldn’t be any different, whether that’s Lance or someone on the stage. Just want to get your thoughts on that component, because I think a lot of people misunderstand it, that aren’t in the sport. And as Dorian used to say, “Well, if it was just that, then how come you don’t see everybody on the stage?”

1:09:57 So what is your… what is your thoughts on that sensitive topic of steroids? Well, you know something, what Dorian said is, I agree with it 100 percent. You see a lot of layman people who are not athletes would say, “Well, you know, they became a champion because of steroids.” No, no, no, no. They became a champion because they are genetically gifted and born with something different, far different than the average person.

1:10:28 Gladiators are naturally born. You’re not, you can’t make a gladiator. Steroids can’t make a gladiator. That’s like putting a fifteen-thousand-dollar saddle and golden horseshoes on the donkey, jackass, at the end of the day. He’s still going to be a jackass.

1:10:47 He’s not going to be an Arabian. That’s just his genetic makeup, period. So it’s the same psyche and mindset, you know? It cannot make you a champion. As Dorian said, if it could make you a champion, then it’ll be millions of Lee Haneys, millions of Dorian Yates, millions of Ronnie Coleman.

1:11:09 There’s only one of each. Each era makes only one. Each era, every so often, Mother Nature says, “Okay, here you go. Here’s your ultimate person, or your ultimate athlete, for this particular era.” You have Serena in tennis.

1:11:29 You have Tiger Woods in golf. You have LeBron James. Listen, you can’t duplicate people like this. Muhammad Ali. These people are differently gifted, and I feel it’s a gift for era, a gift for time.

1:11:48 And no, steroids cannot make people like that. It can help the body recover. You know, that’s the main thing. Can it make you can it work without science? No, it can’t.

1:12:02 You still have to understand protein, carbohydrates. You still have to understand training principles, all of those science. A steroid can actually only give you maybe ten percent, maybe even that, maybe five percent. The rest has to be you. It has to be knowledge.

1:12:27 It has to be your genetic blueprint that was only given by God. You cannot make that. Our super athletes, gladiators, are born. They’re not made in a laboratory. But it will probably always be part of bodybuilding, because it’s so in front of you and so visual, and people want that extra 10 percent.

1:12:50 Do you think it’ll always be part of that sport? I think they’ll always be part of every sport, you know. Notice, no sports say, “Well, there was no steroids or antibiotics used, or, you know, wasn’t used.” It just says who got caught. So as long as sport exists, they are going to exist.

1:13:13 And I think when athletes, if, listen, there’s something going to help you perform for another three to four years in your sport, to take care of your family, then by all means, it’s your choice to do that. So for people to sit behind a desk and push a pencil, and their way of making a living is totally different than that of an athlete, they have no right to cross that line and be judgmental. You know, I’ve heard recently, this morning, this young lady was this person, or got a TV show, saying, “Oh, you know, shame on them.”

1:13:48 But wait a minute, you have all these enhancements as far as, you know, your eyes, your lips, your chest, your, you know, all these different things, and yet this athlete’s trying to make a living to take care of his family, and you’re doing it for the vanity. And so how do you judge that? You know what I’m saying? What is right and what is wrong? I see if a guy is going to help him repair, to take care of his family, to stay in the game longer, then there you go.

1:14:20 I think if they’re going to do it, to monitor, it should be maybe monitored, so that all athletes, if they want to, they’ll have the opportunity to. But when you get athletes that’s 35 years old or 30 versus 24, it should, there is a difference, because your hormone level is different at age 30 than it is at 24. So that’s something for the science community to come up with and make the decision on. You know, we just call it these days, when you’re 50, 60, you call it age management medicine.

1:14:54 It’s the same thing. It helps to manage your age. It keeps you in the game of feeling good and being functional, and who doesn’t want to feel good and be functional? Yeah, no, that’s true. And what do you think, that some of that spread started spreading like in the ’90s and the 2000s into hip-hop and all these other things, and pretty soon guys that would never take steroids are now taking them, and you know, now sometimes it’s down to the high school kids, and they think it’s the magic solution.

1:15:21 Do you think it’s gone too far, or do you think everyone should be able to make their own decisions? Well, I really think it’s gone too far, you know, particularly talking high school and and college kids and those kinds of things. You know, I think it is too far. I think so many people want the… they want to achieve success quicker without paying the price. But that’s, that’s America we live in, a microwave society.

1:15:50 Everybody wants it now. You know the word, delayed gratification? You don’t hear about that anymore. It’s something that I learned about through my college professor growing up talking about delayed gratification. It’s not going to happen overnight.

1:16:05 Let’s take your time and do it right, so that you’re appreciative of the journey. You know, so few people want the journey. Everything is like quick, I want it now, which is, which is bad, you know, which is bad, I think, to you. We’re talking about this, about those coronavirus vaccine that’s out here. You know, they, they speeded the process up to get it out there in front of everybody quick.

1:16:32 Well, why did they do that? Well, my theory is that the world economy, financially, the world has been hurt, so they’re trying, okay, we got to get something to get people back to work, and those, get these economies jump-started again. So, well, what about the end result of this? Did you give enough time to these studies? You know, so all of those things got to be looked at, but, and again, we live in a microwave society.

1:17:00 You know, you know, and then you’re not hearing any word that relates to, well, listen, the… the key to fighting virus or any kind of infection is having a strong immune system. So you’re not hearing any media or talk about the importance of exercise, proper nutrition, detoxing the body to jump-start the immune system back on the level which it can deal with with bacteria and that kind of thing. You don’t hear them talking about elderberry. You don’t hear them talking about zinc or vitamin D3.

1:17:34 You hear none of that. All you hear is, “Heal the vaccine. Here, I’ve been taking. Okay, now, microwave.” And the results of microwave ain’t never good.

1:17:47 Yeah, it’s something I was frustrated with, when you know they were, we were coming out of lockdown, they opened up the pubs and they didn’t open the gyms, you know, and they, you know, they, nothing was to invest in your health, because the problem with investing in your health is there’s no immediate gratification. Right? You got to put in the weeks and the months and the years, or to be Mr. Olympia, sometimes you got to take 10, 14, 15 years to build the muscle mass up to win.

1:18:12 You guys understand that game. But like you said, more and more these days, with the public and now probably with the internet and Instagram, everybody wants it now. They think they can get it now. People act like they got it yesterday, and it becomes this kind of vicious cycle. Exactly.

1:18:27 That’s the problem with society, you know. It takes time to build a masterpiece. It takes time to do anything right, you know, and it takes time to gain wisdom. You know, the people that Dorian and myself, when we were 15 years old, you know, I’m 61, and Dorian is, I think, in his mid-50s now. It took, it takes time to gather wisdom and how to use wisdom and when to use wisdom.

1:18:59 You know, it takes time to learn those things, and that’s why we’re where we are now, and why I feel that we are an asset to those in our industry who want, you know, to be where we are or trying to get where we are and what do you make of the social media these days, the influencers? I mean, obviously you guys didn’t have those tools, so you had to rely originally on kind of the Weider monopoly to be in the media, and then for the supplements, you know, you’re one of the first guys to branch out, like you said, with another company. But these days, as you can see, is that everybody potentially can be an expert.

1:19:39 And I guess there’s so many mixed messages out there. What’s your read on that, and for young men or young women up and coming, how do they sort through all the noise? You hit it right. There’s a lot of noise, man. A lot of noise.

1:19:56 It’s just, it’s confusing. And I get to hear from a lot of young athletes who come up with these weird types of theories, and they ask me different questions, and I’m wondering, you know, not wondering. I know where to get it from, but It’s amazing how people are easily influenced by things that they… that have no proof. You know, I like to say people drink the Kool-Aid without even questioning where it came from. You know, and that’s how society is, which is sad.

1:20:39 Let’s say the mindset of people are that way, they’re easy to follow, and this internet has created a monster as far as those kinds of things are concerned, where people read and they experiment on themselves or allow somebody else’s experiment on them, and you’ve had several athletes die from, let’s say, something as simple as using diuretics, to pull the fluid out of the body. There’s other healthier ways to do that, and a lot of them feel like the kind of knowledge that myself or Dorian have, well, is outdated. We don’t do that anymore.

1:21:20 You know, this is the new crop. These are the new people, and you look at the backgrounds of these so-called coaches. They never competed in their lives, and they’re using a lot of athletes as guinea pigs, you know, because the internet is full of them. All of a sudden, you know, I have what is called the International Association of Fitness Science, which is my logo, which is the first certification organization created by an Olympian. This is the only one of its kind.

1:21:50 I created it because there’s a lot of ignorance out there as far as training, how to manipulate the body of the body to come by way of results and so forth. So we talk nutrition, we talk training principles, we talk age management, supplementation, we talk all of that. We have two different certifications, one dealing with bodybuilding science, that’s where me and Dorian came from, but the other one that deals with functional training, that’s overall functional, now, functionality of wherever you are or whatever you’re trying to achieve.

1:22:32 For instance, when I trained Evander Holyfield, he wanted to put on weight, but he wanted to make sure he maintained his flexibility and explosive power while doing so. So we had to use weights in a ballistic way and use plyos at the same time, and also create what it was called, what is called anaerobic threshold training, to take his pulse rate all the way up to sometimes 180 to 200, then get it back down to 120 for the next round to start. So his functionality was that of getting in the ring, making sure we have enough energy to outdo his opponent and recover in 120 seconds before the next round start.

1:23:22 So his training had to fall in line with those kinds of things, not the regular science of bodybuilding. Two different science. So you have to have an understanding of that, so having been there, done that for Evander Holyfield, Gary Sheffield, Shannon Shaw, and then entertain those that I’ve trained, like Steve Harvey. Well, Steve, functional training was just to be pretty he didn’t want to be an old ball-headed fat guy. He wanted to be in shape, look good, maintain the functionality as he hit 50, and now it’s been over 12 years to 62 years old.

1:23:58 So functionality depends on the goal of that particular person. It’s really age management fitness. So in this certification program, we teach on both ends, ultimate bodybuilding, that’s bodybuilding science, or functional training, so we give them specific knowledge as to how to accomplish their goals. And so that is why my organization exists, to give people real been-there-done-that knowledge, and I’ve also seen on several other certification programs, I had to actually write training programs with people that’s been certified on the other organizations.

1:24:39 I’m not throwing any organization under the bus, but they give you a lot of information, but they don’t show you how to put it together in a way that it can be used. So that’s what we do with the IFS. And so having resources that can really teach you the real fundamentals of training and nutrition can be a life-and-death thing, you know, if it’s done the wrong way, which I talk about, how to, you know, bring your fluid down as you prepare for a show. I never tell you to stop drinking water.

1:25:18 I tell you what to do in order to do that, to maintain your mineral levels and a certain amount of water in the body to reach your goal on stage without you passing out and endangering your kidney or destroying your health. So there’s ways that can be done, but you got to know the science of how to do it, and that’s what I teach, even in my book, Totally Awesome. I teach that. Matter of fact, we ship a ton of these books already to Great Britain and England.

1:25:50 Yeah, with good science. You know, speaking of age management, I had Roy Jones Jr. on the show a couple weeks ago before he had his fight with Mike Tyson, and I want to know, what did you think of those 50-something-year-olds getting in the ring? And is it true you’re training Evander Holyfield to fight Mike next? I’ve had a lot of questions about that, trying to be better. The question is no.

1:26:15 I reached out to Evander, and I asked him, “Man, did you plan to… don’t fight Mike Tyson?” He said, “Not that I know.” You know, I think that would be an exhibition fight. It would turn into something else. So anyway, but I really admired what Roy Jones and Mike Tyson were able to do, particularly, you know, in their 50s.

1:26:38 I thought they’d look great. And see, what most people don’t understand is he’s got the 50, but listen, when you talk about a world-class gladiator, 50 is still 35. Their condition is a whole another level. Anyway, so don’t think they’re the average person. Even at the age of 60, they’re not the average person.

1:27:00 They are different, very different, very unique, and don’t think if you’re 20 you can still get in the ring with these guys even when they’re 60, because they’re smart. They’re, they’re, their fitness is a whole another level. What’d you think of the fight? I thought it was, I thought it was very, it was very good. I thought it was very good.

1:27:23 I was happy with the results, and it was a really eye-opener as to what’s possible at that age. Yeah, I agree. It was incredible. They both put a lot of work in. You know, maybe tell you what, tell you what, Brian, I wouldn’t get back on stage.

1:27:40 Stay with Dorian. Let’s do it, man. I told another deal, let’s do it. I’m telling you, it’s happening right here. You heard it here first.

1:27:49 It’s happening. I don’t think nobody wants to see me endure without clothes off anymore. I don’t know. You never know. I thought those guys looked great.

1:28:00 It was great inspiration, and it, they took a lot of hard work. Tyson put in the work to get in that shape, man. He really did, and they did it for charity, and like Tyson said, much like you just said earlier, Lee, he said, “I’m doing it now, not for me. It’s not about how great Mike is and how many more cars or boats he can buy.” He said, “I tried that, and that leads nowhere.

1:28:20 That leads to depression and addiction.” He said, “Now I’m doing it for the glory of others and the help of others,” and he said it’s a totally different energy now, and you could feel it in Mike, and it was a real lesson, I think, for the younger generation of maybe what life’s all about. Yeah, I agree with that 100%, man. It’s nothing like giving, you know. As I have a Haney Harvest House, a mentoring program for young men, you know, giving them manhood principles, authentic manhood principles, and then allowing them to see the lives of other professionals, you know, and then they’re doing community service, you know, helping the seniors.

1:29:02 So it makes a… it’s beautiful, man. We’ve knighted several of these young men. We call the program, the program they’re on, this call raising a modern-day knight. So we’ve had some of these boys, man, when they were like six, seven years old, we’ve taken them all the way up to 18, 19, 20. Me and my wife was recently out at one of the shopping plazas, this young man walks up to me and said, “Hey, Mr. Haney,” and gave me a hug, and I’m looking at him like, okay.

1:29:32 He said, “Mr. Haney, it’s me, Michael.” I said, “Michael.” He said, “Sir, I united me. I went through your whole program, United Me. We have a big four- foot-tall Excalibur sword.

1:29:45 Nice, that we have a ceremony, and we unite the guys, and he was one of them. He said, ‘Sir, I’m working in the city now, so I’m doing great, and I just want to say thank you for being part of my journey.’ And man, let me tell you something, I mean, if it was something to die to go to Heaven for, then that was it, man. You know, to see these young people come up and say to you what the impact you have in a life, that’s what the whole journey is all about.

1:30:14 That’s what it’s all about. That’s the greatest of satisfaction there. Like Mike was saying, it’s not about the glory of self or a new car, all of this kind of stuff, that stuff fades away. Only what we do to impact the world for good, for humanity, and to the honor and glory of God, will last. Yeah, it took me about 42, 43 years to figure that one out, but I finally got it.

1:30:39 Once I got it, I want to go, you got it, man, you got it. Once you get it, I went all in on it, and it’s paying, it just pays back 10,100-fold in just great energy in your life, and great things happen to you when you’re serving others, and it’s what’s the most valuable lesson I think anybody can learn, especially young men and young women can learn. Unfortunately, when you used to turn on MTV, I guess nowadays it’s the Instagram, sometimes you see the opposite of that.

1:31:05 You know, it’s, it’s my jet and my car and my chain, and then this and that, and, and I think they get programmed. That’s what it’s all about, but then when you try that out, it takes 10 or 20 years, but you realize that that’s not what it’s all about. So it’s important to try to put another message out there, and I know that’s what you do, you know, with the Harvest House. Yes, that’s exactly what we do. You know, we get, have other men and other women come in.

1:31:30 They talk. They’ll share their journey. You know, one of my friends, he left home when he was like 15 years old. He became one of the first African-American carpet manufacturers in the United States. He went to college with no money.

1:31:45 He said some of the guys who ran numbers raised a bunch of money and put it in a bag and put him on the bus, got him a chicken, and sent him down the southern Mississippi stand in the dormitory, and all of a sudden the overseer said, “Son, how are you here? You, you, you’re not even in the role. You stand in the dormitory,” and he says to the person over it, “I, I don’t know. I don’t have anywhere to go.” To say, “Well, listen, you need to go see whoever the lady was.

1:32:14 I can’t think of her name,” and so he said he went to see her, and she said, “Well, wait here. Do we finish with me and go back to your dummy? Say I don’t have a dog.” He said, “I’m just here.” She said, “Well, son, hold on for a second.”

1:32:24 Call her into the meeting. Anyway, she stopped what she was doing, met with him, man. Long story short, she made sure that young man finished his education free. He did community service, and now he’s a millionaire. But she took time to care.

1:32:45 But the guys who were running the numbers, you know, up in New York, right up in the Harlem area, they had enough faith in them, put them on the bus, send them, send them on you know, here yesterday. One of my, one of my still, one of my clients, one of my buddies, I’ve known for 25 years now, but this just goes to show where you take out your time and pour into the life of a… of a somebody, particularly a young person. The dividends is huge. You know, now my buddy is doing greater things and helping other young people with endowments and all kinds of things, because somebody cared enough for him.

1:33:24 Yeah, but make the journey worth it. Yeah, if you change a child, you can change a community. And about 10 years ago, I got hooked up with an organization here in London, and I took on a 12-month mentorship process with a nine-year-old boy here, with, they called it behavioral difficulties. You know, he was struggling. His single, single mom, and you know, she had been in and out of prison, and, and all I did was go spend time with him every Saturday, and he just craved being around a role model.

1:33:51 And you know, I’ll be honest, we didn’t do anything in particular, but we spent time together. So we built things and we learned things, and, and just being around me just brought everything up, his confidence up, and it was an incredible experience for me and for him, and it, it makes me already thinking, how can we do more of that in our communities, and how can we just give these young men a little something? It literally changed the course of their life.

1:34:16 Yeah, yeah, you’re so right about that, Brian, and you know, this alone is going to make all the difference in the life of this young man. He’ll never forget that. He’ll never forget that, and we as men have to be proactive in our communities. We have to be gatekeepers. We can’t mind our own business.

1:34:37 God didn’t put us here to mind our own business. He put us here to impact the world and be gatekeepers of the communities, gatekeepers of our families where there is not a man present in the home. Then we need to fill that gap, and we need to give structure to these young men. I mean, what you see happen in society with our young people is the lack of the presence of a Godly man. Now, you know, anything, everything walking with two legs is not a man.

1:35:09 You know, when I see a man, I mean a real man, that has the principles of authentic manhood. There’s a lot of men out there that’s terrible for kids, you know, terrible for them to be around. They, they don’t, they have no idea why they’re here. Anyway, they’re not men on a mission, and any man on a mission that don’t have Christ is the head of his… his mission. He’s on the mission impossible, because it’s not going to work.

1:35:38 So it’s important to have the right type of man, men impacting the lives of young boys, you know, to I said in one of my Facebook messages, probably about a couple weeks ago, I do not want it to be said that I spent my life on the golf course chasing a friggin little ball on the boat, riding up and down the water, catching fish. Why, there’s a lot of young men that, out there, that need to be caught, that need to be saved, that need to have a conversation. You know, I’d rather spend my life pouring into the life of another young man instead of dying from diabetes and having sex with my butt and rotten away from luxuries.

1:36:25 That’s what happened to a lot of so-called men, and at the end of the day, we will all have to give an account of what we did with our life. What was our journey all about? Did we just mind our own business and just take care of us, or did we impact the world for good, that we honor God by making the world a better place, that we influence in the right way. That’s what the journey is all about. Yeah, so true.

1:36:52 I got young boys now, three and four years old, and they’re always watching me, and I always know that, and I’m always thinking, now that I’ve been fortunate enough to have some practice as a male role model, now, now, it’s go time, it’s game time, and so I’m constantly watching myself. What am I telling them? What messages am I giving them, consciously, subconsciously, with my own actions? You know how they see me treat others, that they’re recording it all, you know?

1:37:17 It’s like a hard drive. They see everything, and I’m already seeing it coming out in their characters, so it’s fascinating, and I agree. I think, yeah, man, you, you’re the first Superman that they see. Yeah, you’re the first Superman in the first role model, man. That’s huge.

1:37:33 I never will recall my son. When he was, always recalled my son when Josh played football going through high school and college, but he went to a college called, give her, the Citadel. Yeah, of course. Yeah, military college, right? Yeah, he chose the Citadel for himself.

1:37:54 He had offered some other colleges to play football, but he chose the Citadel, and I’m like, man, that made me proud. I didn’t push him to choose either one. I was with him on the different visits, and I heard him say, when they had the senior game on graduation, they would play over the loudspeaker for the seniors. I heard him say, “I’m so glad that my dad was there. He taught me how to be a real man.”

1:38:22 You know, they had pre-recorded that, and, man, when I heard that, it’s like, man, wow, I am so glad I was there. And Josh today got two little girls of his own. He has an excellent job. He’s a wonderful father. He’s everything that I tried to be, and he saw growing up, you know, he saw, he saw me honoring my wife.

1:38:47 He saw me in the place as to where I should have been as a father. He saw those things, so he’s a carbon copy of that. I mean, I stepped back and I looked at, wow, man, this is so surreal. You know, but be there, raise a modern-day knight. Matter of fact, Brian, that’s the name of my program, but that program was developed by a guy named C.S.

1:39:12 Lewis. You’ve heard of C.S. Lewis? Yeah, of course, so forth. Yeah, there’s a men’s study we did in the book called Raising a Modern-Day Knight that I really push, oppress, upon fathers to get, particularly when it comes to raising their sons.

1:39:32 Okay, I appreciate that. That’s great insight. A couple final things. Tell me, what’s Lee Haney doing 10 years from now? What will you actually be doing then?

1:39:41 Do you think, you know, what, Brian, I’ve been, you know, a while back, I owned the Ford Acre ranch. I had horses, pigs, chickens, rabbits, all of that, so my son and daughters and the whole neighborhood grew up there. We had summer camps. We would have churches come out and spend overnight. We had the houses, baseball field, basketball court, all of that was happening there, and the airport expanded, and so we still have the program, but we moved it to another place, so it’s not as big.

1:40:17 So I’ve been looking. Matter of fact, me and Shirley went looking yesterday for some land to maybe create that same type of facility, because I really feel that when young people are connected to the land, there is a level of maturity and respect that they have, you know, and they develop so that was important for me growing up as a country boy. You know, you got responsibilities. You got to feed the chickens. You got to clean out the horse stalls.

1:40:49 You got to plant new seeds. You got a garden. You got to get out there and water the garden, get the weeds out, all of those things create a good fundamental of work and sacrifice and reward, you know, because they really pick the tomatoes or the cucumbers out of the garden. Well, they work to plant them, and they grew seed time and harvest. So we want to create that again.

1:41:15 So we’ve been looking, and I’m really into organic farming too, organic food. So that’s what I’m looking at now, you know, and the mentoring, growing that, staying, keeping my hand on the pulse of young men. And so I’m excited about that. So I’m, I’m about looking. I’ve been praying about it, you know.

1:41:38 So, and I’m being about it too. You know, you just don’t pray and sit down. You pray, you go looking, you ask for God to guide us as He leads us to the different places. So that’s what I’ve got in my heart to do next. I love that connection with nature.

1:41:51 It’s so important and so hard to quantify, and we’ve lost it a lot these days, and you know, a lot of the answers are in nature. Some people say all the answers are in nature. That’s right, that’s right. Like I did, I did a Facebook message yesterday where I was talking about how so many people rely on a doctor, putting a health and as a responsibility on the doctor. You should be responsible, intentional about your own health.

1:42:22 Your health is your wealth, not the doctors. You know, you got to be intentional and proactive about researching what’s good in the way of nutrition. You know, you gotta, you gotta do those kinds of things, and, but a lot, and you know, the Bible tells us in Matthew, I think the ninth chapter, said, “Our food is medicine, and our medicine is our food.” So by understanding the nutritional makeup of foods that are high in fiber that are good for allowing the body to recover and cleanse the system, and so forth.

1:43:05 These are life-giving foods, which gives life to the body, whereas dead foods, dead calories, like processed foods and so forth, their food creates dead bodies. So we have to be proactive when it comes to things like that. Brian, another book I came out with too is “Fit at Any Age.” This book talks about age management fitness, age management nutrition, and age management supplementation. So you have to imagine the age should start the time a person enters the world, the time a child is born.

1:43:43 The mother, the father should put a program in place to help make sure that young person, up until the time that they leave, has been programmed about the importance of vegetables and fruit and water and proteins like chicken to fish, antibiotic- and hormone-free, that’s in and out of the system, in and out foods, not foods that hang around in the gut that create chaos in the body and destroy the immune system. So all of that is so important, and so we got to be proactive in teaching that and following those basic principles ourselves. That way we can manage age, see, that’s what took place in the countryside.

1:44:29 People who live off the land, live in the country, sunlight, natural sunlight, live longer than people who live in the city with no sunlight, no exercise, eating dead food. It makes so much sense when you put it that way. Lee, a couple, couple final questions about you. What was the best day of your life and the worst day of your life? If you’re totally honest, what comes to mind?

1:44:55 Well, you know what, man, I never, I never had worse days in my life. I just haven’t. I’ve dealt with each and every, well, Okay, Lord, what we’re gonna do about that? You’re in control, so I’m not, so my hope and, you know, is totally in You. I’m Yours.

1:45:20 You’re mine. I remember I had, let’s say, a trying day when, I had to close down one of my fitness centers. I had been trying, you know. I put it in the part of the community which is more minority-based, because the need was there, and I tried very hard to make that center work for seven years. It didn’t work.

1:45:45 I basically had to close it after seven years. And I’m thinking to myself, I said, Lord, you know, I wanted to do good for this community. It needs to be there. And I did all of the, you know, the studies, you know, making sure that the traffic count was there. You had your major stores, like a Home Depot.

1:46:06 Those things were right within the three to five mile radius, and it still didn’t make it, because the fact of the matter is, when you talk about a minority mindset, the minority mindset is more about survival. It’s not about the leisure of exercise and fitness. That’s why minorities are number one with high blood pressure, heart disease, and those kinds of things, and diabetes, because fitness has never been a priority. We want it to be, but the minority mindset is, listen, if I got an extra 25, I got to pay my rent.

1:46:46 I can’t go to a gym. I mean, that’s a fact. That’s why I had to close that facility, and then after closing that one, it couldn’t have been but six months later they announced the selling of the building in Atlanta that had my second facility. So here I am, you know, two gems that are gone, that’s more than over six hundred thousand dollars. But you know what?

1:47:13 My prayer was, Brian, I said, Lord, you know, everything I’m yours and your mind. I’m not gonna file bankruptcy, because you’re going to do something. I don’t know what you’re going to do, but you’re going to do something. And then jokingly now I say, because if you don’t, it’s not going to look good. I put it back in His hand, and lo and behold, He answered that prayer through a property my dad purchased years ago, that was back by the airport.

1:47:49 I had gotten it for 65,000 for 40 acres, and lo and behold, I sold it for 2.4 million. Paid off all of the debts, then allowed me to purchase other income-producing properties, which I still have today, that are bringing, you know, monies and funds in, and I’m able to do a lot of other great things with it, take care of my mom and my wife, mom, and, you know, it’s just amazing how God worked things out for your good. I mean, I didn’t cry about, oh, what I’m going to do, and oh no, it’s, it’ll, what, no.

1:48:31 I said, Lord, I’m yours, you’re mine, you’re going to do something. I said, I don’t know what you’re going to do, but then I said, Lord, if you do nothing, I’m still yours, and you’re still mine. That was my prayer, and guess what, He did exceedingly abundantly above that which I could think or even ask. So I haven’t had any worse days, because I knew at the end of this journey, even if you know, my life ends, that’s not my worst day. Matter of fact, it’s a glorious day, because I do believe in Heaven.

1:49:05 You know, the Lord said that He prepared a place for me. That’s John 14, chapter, and if He prepared a place, He will come again and receive me unto Himself, so that where He is, I will be also. So that is a promise to those who are followers of Jesus Christ, so we don’t have bad days. We have trying days, but no bad days. That’s a great answer, Lee.

1:49:28 Uh, what scares you? Well, I’m concerned about the world in which we live in, you know, the politics in which we presently have, having to deal with. But I also know there that God is in control of that, because He says again in His Word, in Timothy, that He did not give me a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and a sound mind. So I know that He’s in control, but I also know, with Him being in control, He’s going to guide me, lead me, and instruct me that I’m not standing by on the sideline and not running into the fight.

1:50:10 As a believer, you run into the fight. You don’t accept passivity. You don’t look the other way. You lead courageously. You take responsibility.

1:50:22 You say, “Okay, where’s the problem? I have a solution.” Let’s get it done. I’m a gladiator, so no, I’m not. I’m not scared of nothing.

1:50:32 I fear nothing. I fear no man. Never had Lee. I always finish with a few questions. I’m going to ask you those now.

1:50:41 If you could pick up the phone and call up 20-year-old Lee Haney, 20-year-old, so you would have won a couple of those early competitions, but you still had a little ways to go for your Olympia journey to start. If you could give that young man some advice based on everything you know now, what would you tell the 20-year-old version of That’s an incredible story. It’s an incredible message to everybody, and, uh, you know, it just makes me think, you know, a man who’s been everything that you have been and who’s won those eight Mr. Olympias You’ve also got a lot more than trophies.

1:51:45 You’ve got this incredible life experience and perspective that you can, you know, drop on other people out there. And I really appreciate the time. I appreciate you You exceeded my expectations for this conversation, and your Haney Harvest House is an incredible foundation, and we’re gonna donate to it, and I encourage everybody listening to go and donate to it as well. What’s the best way people can get to that website and find out about it? Okay, thanks again, Brian.

1:52:13 It’s haneyharvesthouse.com. That’s H-A-N-E-Y-H-A-R-V-E-S-T- H-O-U-S-E dot com. Yeah, there you go. And Lee, seriously, I mean, I know Dorian’s watching this right now, and I’m sure he’s like, “Man, I knew Lee was a cool cat, but I didn’t know, man, it was this good.” So I really appreciate the wisdom.

1:52:36 You know, a lot of young men will find you because of the physique and the accomplishments, but they’ll stay because of the wisdom and the enlightenment. So I really appreciate you, and these messages are so important. I mean, in a way, Lee, we’re actually mentoring young men, all and women, all around the world right now with this piece of media we created. This is gonna last long after we’re gone. So, really, I appreciate you.

1:53:01 I appreciate the time, and you know, keep doing what you’re doing, and promise me the next time we do this, in person, either in London or in South Carolina, I most certainly will. Thank you so much, Brian, for having me on, and thanks for all that you do. And Dorian, please stay off the bicycles, be careful. Yeah, Dorian just had a bit of a spill, so sending him all of our love and wishes to recover. I’m sure he’s gonna be back out there soon.

1:53:30 So thank you so much, Lee. You’re a legend, and keep doing what you’re doing. We really appreciate you, and I appreciate the wisdom for today. Thank you all for watching, and we’ll see you next time on London Real. Take care.