Dying to Compete: Dying to be Huge: Dying to Win:
The Common Word is Dying
You know I would really like to do some Blogs about things I enjoy and concepts I am so jacked about like MET training, and the concepts behind it, and how people are loving it etc. That’s what I would like to do. But things keep coming up leading me in other more important directions. This Blog is an important Blog. I know, for some with open minds it may help. For others, the ones it is really aimed at, it will unfortunately for the most part, fall on deaf ears. And still for others, who don’t know much about the bodybuilding game at the competitive level, it may be more information than you wish to know.
I will make no apologies for the tone presented here. Truth is, this Blog comes with a considerable amount of anger and emotion. Even if I wait till I “cool off” to write it, that won’t help. So know that as you proceed to the content of this Blog, I will try to be as “diplomatic” as I can, but I still need to get this off my chest.
It isn’t often that contemplating a Blog keeps me up at night. This one has kept me up, tormented me, induced some tears, and as I said, also threads of anger. I haven’t been angry in a long, long time, about anything. So it takes something to knock me off my steady base. This something is not one thing, but a perpetual and steady flow of the same thing over and over again, to the point of ridiculousness. So I need to comment. If one of you gets this before it is too late, then it has been worth my time, and emotional energy.
Let’s get something straight first of all. I train athletes. I don’t train bodybuilders. I didn’t realize till lately that I never have trained bodybuilders. Whether you come to me just to lose some weight and feel better and have more energy, or you come to me to rectify metabolic damage, my approach is the same. I train athletes. You don’t even need to consider your self an athlete. But the approach we take together, will establish a mode of communication between us, where you will begin to think, feel, and act like an athlete. Eventually you will “be” an athlete, in the way you approach almost anything. That may mean being a winner or being a champion, but it will be beyond the goal for why you hired me. I’m sure most of my long term clients from all walks of life will concur on this. So again, I don’t coach bodybuilders.
Athletes under my charge may express themselves as athletes in bodybuilding shows, but that is far different than me saying I coach and train bodybuilders. Again, I just realized lately, that this is a unique distinction in me vs. other “trainers” or coaches in my field.
Now this is certainly a long pre-amble to the topic at hand. But here goes:
I have already addressed Metabolic Damage, in other Blogs, so I will leave that out of this one. Suffice it to say these ridiculous “veggie diets” and other crazy and conceptually bankrupt practices are now leaving more victims than champions, in their wake. Well in male bodybuilding the drug craziness is getting more and more absurd and I need to speak up about it.
In 2004, I Guest Posed at the Toronto Pro Show. It is a fairly low level pro show to be sure. I have been backstage at many Olympia’s and Arnold Classics, and other pro shows of course, but it had been some time for sure. What I saw there changed my desire to be involved any more at that level. I left that show after my appearance out the back door to the parking lot, and vowed not to be involved at that level ever again. This sport has changed and has gone to the dogs: Guys with welts from site injections, all up and down the vastus lateralis. Another guy “feeling nauseous” cause to hear him tell it, he stayed up all night injecting esiclene in all his body parts, some 50-60 insulin needle injections, and his body showed the signs of it. There was of course more, but I had seen and heard enough.
I honored my commitment, and left out the back door. I knew right then, that if you aren’t part of the solution then you are a part of the problem. I was supposed to have a little booth there to sign pics and be there for pics but I couldn’t even bring myself to do that. This was no longer my sport. Not the one I signed on for when the legendary Bill Pearl took me under his wing some years ago, at the 1989 Muscle Camp, Los Angeles. Bill proclaimed in front of everyone, that this guy (meaning me, was going to do something special in this sport) I never forgot that.
Since then I have watched the sport digress and devolve to even more ridiculous levels. Only in the bodybuilding industry do we indulge so much the “lunatic fringe” and the idiot base. I think it’s a travesty that one of the most read magazines out there gives a monthly column to that idiot whose arms blew up. I read that column once, just to be fair, and I was disgusted. The way he talked and degraded women, degraded himself and to my mind degraded that magazine and the whole industry, just furthered my desire to not be associated with the sport if this is what it has become, and how it would be represented. Then A and E does a special on this guy. Well he doesn’t represent me. He never has. This is not bodybuilding. I don’t know what it is, but it is not bodybuilding. And it for sure has nothing to do with athleticism.
Then we have all these genius websites where the whole goal is to dispense pharmaceutical advice. Not from trained medical professionals, mind you, but from other plateheads. It’s sad that websites exist called “…… Juice Monsters” I don’t know the content within that site and I don’t want to know. What is the message being sent here anyway?
We all know the sport has lost some people over the last few years. I don’t need to name them. Many others now have serious medical and health problems for the rest of their lives. But there are so many “wannabe” builders out there on the local levels doing this to themselves on a regular basis. The message is just not getting out there. Is competing as a pro, in a sport with ZERO rewards worth a shortened life or a life of serious medical problems??? I have tried in vain to counsel many guys and gals that the “more is better mentality” is a myth. But I am losing that battle. At the same time I am also losing acquaintances and friends, who are just even a little susceptible to the prevailing myth out there, that modern bodybuilding is a chemical arms race. I know several competitors who have died.
In the last year I have received e-mails from guys that fall in to these categories. 13 with chronic hepatic dysfunction serious enough that they may not be able to work again. 7-8 with failing kidneys, diseased kidneys, and general renal type ailments. A whopping 12 have contacted me since the end of last season with serious cardio myopathies, of various types. Many are also reporting undisclosed blood borne bacterial infections, and staph infections from dirty needles and dirty drugs (home brews so readily available now)
With the overuse of insulin now many have pancreaitis of varying degrees and forms. Many need to be and will be on medication for the rest of their lives, if their lives are not shortened. They are worried, they are afraid, and they just want to feel, and be normal again. That will never happen. Why?
The bodybuilding mentality to which they were over exposed for so long, got to them. With all the attention and various websites that cater to the “juiced produced mentality” it can understandably be enticing. Even a “just one stack to see the difference” type of thinking has lead to irreparable medical damage and death in so many. Few talk about it beyond being gym gossip. It is the dirty little secret that exists everywhere but everyone assumes it is that one “isolated guy” in their area. Wake up people and see the warning signs. I do not need to lose any more people I know in this industry. I almost lost one last week.
His, is not my story to tell so I won’t. Like so many he didn’t want to hear my message of “less is fine” and time to hang up the posing trunks when medical conditions arise! So like so many, they avoid me, in regards to information on what they are doing and how they are doing it. They just don’t want to hear it from me. (then it is too late) 6 people I know have now died, and they were in their 30’s to 40’s. Others are permanently sick, for the rest of their lives. All because of the “internet bodybuilding extreme mentality” out there.
People think on various sites, Scott doesn’t know what is going on these days. Let me enlighten you Einsteins out there. Scott knows! Scott knows more than all of you. Scott chooses to not be a part of that abuse mentality. It’s ironic that I have been to the top in this sport and stayed there for many years, with many clients. Yet people that have never been there think they know better. Listen; to all you internet “experts” out there. Because you post 1,000 times on various boards, doesn’t mean you know what you are talking about, or that you have anything meaningful to say.
Ok, where to start on all of this. Last year, three different people wrote to me to dial them in for one of the top pro shows in the sport. I turned every one of them down for various reasons. One guy sent me his stack to “look at” It was something like this:
Growth Hormone, IGF1, Insulin, Testosterone Propionate, Sustanon, Trenbolone, Decca Durabolin, Masteron, Proviron, Winstrol V, Cytomel, Cytadren, Arimidex, Clenbuterol, Anavar. We won’t even discuss doses. Of course on top of that, he was now taking medication for high blood pressure, and medication for high cholesterol. And like almost 70% of long term steroid users I have come in contact with in the last little while, he was also on anti-depression medication, anti-anxiety medication, and sleep medication. That is 20 different kinds and strengths of pharmaceuticals being metabolized in one body, at one time, in supra physiological doses. His liver function tests would be off the chart if he even bothered to get any. And the thing about liver function, is that it may not get you now, but when it does it will be intense and it will be serious. Some have found out the hard way that four months after their last stack, they go on an antibiotic or something, and then all hell breaks loose medically speaking.
The same goes for renal impairment. Trenbolone is causing serious renal issues in the bodybuilding world.
Of course I turned him down. I won’t be a part of that at any level. What jolted me more, was that he wanted me to look at the stack in case I wanted to “add anything” What are you insane?
Cutting edge medical experts say that the root of all disease, ailments and cancers of the modern era is a result of too much acid in the blood. That is the one root cause regardless of how it manifests in varying forms of cancer. (Wade could comment on this in greater detail I am sure) What these experts also know is that the one biggest contributor to too much acid in the blood is prescription pharmaceuticals!!!! So imagine the effect on metabolism and physiology when someone willingly takes 20 + medications at a time. If this is the number one contributor to serious illnesses and cancers and heart diseases, then why would anyone be so insane with their bodies? This just sets it all in motion. And it may not happen during that “stack” of abuse. It may come weeks or even months afterward.
Most people I am hearing from now have a mountain of regret. They want to change other bodybuilder’s perspectives but they don’t want to put their own case out there for public consumption. Most people will jump from site to site and one person’s medical emergency just becomes the latest juicy gossip in the gyms and on the Forums of various sites. It’s human nature I guess.
But it is a much different perspective when someone you know, is in hospital, and you go to see him and he is on life support; combinations of machines keeping him alive, and not knowing if he may see morning. No family or family member should have to endure that. And for what?
My friend Tommy Hall wasn’t lucky enough to get more than one warning. His warning like many bodybuilders writing me now, began with sleep apnea. Sleep apnea for most bodybuilders should not be an issue. It is usually for fat people. But gaining weight through “bulking up” or by being fat is still a structural strain. Tommy’s next warning was a massive heart episode that took his life.
I sat at his visitation, for the entire time. I could only wonder why, and I could only see tragedy and waste. The week before he died he had told an associate, “I just want to be a freak!” He never got his wish. He had stopped asking me for advice on such issues because once again, he didn’t like my message.
This leaves me with another issue. Expertise. What does that even mean in bodybuilding now? I know what it means to me, but it seems to mean something else out there to those who claim to be “Hardcore” Recently I know a guy won a high level championship last fall. He reportedly weighed about 225lbs at his show. Right after his show he was told (by his top level coach) to get up to 300 lbs by Christmas! What are you kidding me? This is expert advice? How is gaining 75 pounds in three months functional, healthy, or related to performance enhancement. That kind of sudden and substantial weight gain would produce performance breakdowns of all kinds, not enhance strength. The messages are just getting more and more perverted all the time. And they make no sense to me, or little at all.
And to the person or people advocating the previous mentioned “pro stack” above. How is that an application of “expertise” or “expert advice?” It is instead the application of drug abuse in a sub culture that condones and embraces it. It is the application of “extremism”
And before people start saying I am trashing “so and so” let’s get something straight once and for all. There is an old saying, “small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events, superior minds talk about concepts” When I talk about methods of training or dieting as making no sense, I am talking about any concepts behind them, not the people behind them. And when it comes to the lunacy behind the “juice mentality” the same goes.
The problem is that it is just so pervasive of an attitude out there. These websites are terrible for mis-information, and really is the blind leading the blind.
I’m tired of hearing wannabe bodybuilders telling each other that Dr’s don’t know what they are talking about. Just once I want that statement to come from a bodybuilder with a medical degree. But as always it takes an education, to appreciate an education. But I’ll tell you, Dr.’s do know how to read blood tests. They know how to read kidney enzymes, and liver enzymes indicative of acute illness. They know how to determine if cardiac function is normal or distressed. The fact is it’s the bodybuilders that don’t know what they are talking about when it comes to this stuff. Ignorance is no longer bliss.
Recently a client sent me this link:
http://www.professionalmuscle.com/forums/showthread.php?t=16710It is basically someone confessing to a near death experience from his stack. I don’t go to other bodybuilding sites, ever. I read this because of questions and concerns my client had regarding the thread. But it just reinforces to me how crazy and out of hand all of this is getting and has gotten. The experts that exist in bodybuilding as I have said many times, exist more in reputation than in real terms. It’s hurting many out there. It’s time for one person to say crazy, when crazy is what it is.
It is time to get people to train with a concept of self-respect and dignity. These don’t come to you from getting bigger. They come to you from a “process of learning about yourself” while undergoing a long term project like bodybuilding or athletics etc.
You won’t find out what you are made of from doing a stack and getting bigger. That’s an easy thing. I’ve always said in my seminars that the problem I have always seen with the “juice mentality” is that if you are a jerk at 180 lbs, and you take up bodybuilding but don’t work on your self, and go do a stack and gain some size, well guess what, now you are just a bigger more visible jerk, at 220 lbs or whatever. We need to stop this insanity folks. Take a look at what you are doing on levels beyond your local affiliations.
One thing is also quite clear. Some of these local bodybuilding scenes are messed up! They are some of the most hostile and toxic environments I have ever witnessed. I am talking now about the social subculture of it. We can clean this up, but it needs to start somewhere. What is going on now is crazy. What I call dis-oriented thinking. Some people’s thinking strategies, are in reality, stinking tragedies!! Do you want to die, or be permanently ill because of a desire to get a better body, or to say you competed at the "next level"
Oh, this could never happen to me, is what most people are thinking. I beg to differ given the mentality out there right now.
Am I saying I don’t train people for bodybuilding shows? Of course not. As of right now I have about 9 people in Nationals this year. I am hoping through their experience with me by the time they take to the stage they will be “athletes” not bodybuilders. You don’t have to compete to excel. As many of the Figure girls with Metabolic Damage know, I have counseled most of you to not even compete for a few years. Often that is the best thing to get back in touch with why you started doing all of this to begin with.
Last night on Larry King, he had on some previous years contestants from American Idol, none of them winners. When asked what their overall message was, they all conveyed that they are all doing better and doing vocations in life now because of their experience with American Idol. They noted you don’t need to win on that show to benefit from it, long term. It changed their lives.
It gave me pause to acknowledge there is so little of that experience in the bodybuilding industry. So many of these competitive environments are so toxic and hostile, and competitive not in a way that encourages but in a way that perverts the competitive spirit.
It is not supposed to be about all of this folks.
I know I am getting a little side tracked. The reason is, even thinking about this for too long saps my positive energy as well.
But there is an old saying among coaches. “If you want me to be responsible for cooking the meal, then you better let me buy the groceries” Our industry needs a serious overall in terms of who is representing it, what voices are being heard, and what is the prevailing mentality and thinking strategies behind it all.
I’m tired. I’m tired of getting letters from strangers frightened and confused about sudden medical issues that have now taken their lives in a completely different direction: A direction totally avoidable. I’m tired of hearing about former clients, acquaintances, and competitors dying or almost dying, of the most ridiculous of “un-natural causes”
Why? To have a 20 inch arm? To compete in a pro show? It’s crazy. It makes no sense. If this is what it takes now, then count me out. And let me be perfectly clear, if any of you think this is indeed what it takes, then it was never yours in the first place.
Winning, earning, and triumphing, they come from within. Not from a bottle. You can’t ever inject that spirit.
I love the fact that many of you with real lives come to me for coaching. It takes expertise to get people to reach goals worthy of accomplishing. But it is also nice to have and keep a healthy perspective. Bodybuilding as a process, like so many other processes out there, can change your life, for sure. Competition, can be a worthwhile part of that, but the process is where the winning comes from, the contest is second to that.
I don’t have the answers and I don’t claim to have the answers. I do know right now, in this industry, the messages getting out there to the masses are mixed up and screwed up. I think it is time to get back to some basics; hard work, real sacrifice in the gym and at the dinner table; self-respect, self dignity, self-reliance, self-motivation.
The antithesis of that is that the notion that the path to gold lies in supplements, drugs, powders, potions, lotions, schemes, and voodoo.
