He's not going to be like, oh, you're chummy with Craig Doucette, my enemy.

And I feel like at some point, I'm going to get both of you guys together with me.

I've already said I welcome being on a podcast with you and Mike.

I don't want to debate.

I've always been talking to him.

Do you know, not Mark Bell, but his brother, Chris, Chris Bell.

I remember Mark quite well.

Look at him.

Chris, he did Bigger, Faster, Stronger.

I know him very well.

I watched the show.

Yeah, he came to my house because he was in town.

But in this interview, I feel like it was, might've been like the best I've spoken like in any interview ever.

And I thought really deeply about it.

And I was like, this one time I saw a guy who was blatantly natural, very, pretty athletic guy.

And I just remember looking at him smile.

And then like, he saw his wife, gave her a hug.

And then he had like his kid.

And he was like, hey, don't do that.

And he had just got done with the workout.

And I saw him and I've never been more motivated in my entire life.

Wow, just from that.

I was just from that.

I was like that, like, it gives me the chills just thinking about it now.

That guy has an understanding of fitness that is intrinsic.

He has an understanding of mental fitness of what actually makes him happy.

The things that actually, maybe not even move the needle in like the terms of like, we were so obsessed with progress.

I mean, look at this shit, dude.

I got no, it says no excuses, just improve.

You see that?

Weightlifting for me was one more pound on the bar.

I don't give a shit about anything else.

And that was actually really healthy way for me to look at it.

I never had a single goal, not one goal.

I still, to this day, don't have goals.

My idea is just improve.

It sounds like he moved you so much because you could see a lot of him in yourself and he was kind of like a goal.

Like maybe that's what you're aspiring to be.

Like, for sure.

But what I'm saying is there was an evolution beyond no excuses, just improve that I'm kind of on right now.

Because the idea of no excuses, just improve.

You're gonna create stress just in the name of improvement.

Yeah.

And I'll tell you right now, that's a slippery slope in itself, unless you have a grasp, unless you understand that.

Because if you look at a guy like Alex Eubank, how the fuck he gonna improve? Gotta take steroids to improve.

And my thing is like, oh shit.

When I saw that guy, he had like kind of visible abs.

I would say he's probably like 15% or maybe less, like 15, 12.

Just super healthy.

Yeah, super healthy, smiling, great.

You know, like attractive wife, kids, like that goes through problems.

Like probably went to bed at like 1030.

Probably woke up at like 730.

You know, had a breakfast of like a bagel and a coffee.

An important process is implementing gratitude in your life too, because if you can't be gracious or happy with what you've accomplished, then you're never gonna be happy.

So my question to you though, Greg, is it possible to have that understanding as a male unless you go hard in some way?

And the idea, I think, I'm beginning to think for my message to people out there is to go hard.

Lose yourself in your training, become a little bit toxic, but do not make mistakes that you cannot be unmade.

So if you are training naturally, I would urge you to train seven days a week.

I would urge you to overtrain.

I would urge you to not sleep as much as you should be.

And I would urge you to maybe mess with some relationships because they're getting in the way of your gains.

And then when you do learn your lesson, when you do see that God that you wanna be, you'll be okay.

The problem is if you push that limit and you take trend and you take grams of steroids, that day when you have that real revelation, you've now made an unchangeable mistake in your life.

I think some people don't understand that there's more than one way to improve in your life.

There's more than one way to get dopamine and to be a better man.

And it's not just about the physical, there's physical, mental, social, spiritual, anything in your life you can improve.

I am beyond my capabilities.

I'm 49.

I can't get bigger and stronger and faster than when I'm setting records.

So could I keep getting bigger?

No, I tried.

I kept upping the dose, took more and more tests, trend all of it, and it worked for a while.

But eventually you get to a point where you can't get any better.

And so then you pivot.

I couldn't get any better at bodybuilding, but I bet I could get better at cycling.

So I got on my bike and I started improving at that.

And not only that, I stopped watching TV.

Like I literally don't watch TV.

I have all these amazing TVs in the house.

I don't watch them.

I read books and I study a third language.

Well, four, if you count Gen Z, I'm speaking four languages, Spanish, Gen Z, English, and French.

And so I'm progressing in all aspects of my life.

And not just in reading, understanding, also in relationships, trying to have better friends, how to talk to friends, how to treat friends.

And so I'm trying to get better with everything.

And so whether you're trying to improve on your physique, your social ability, your skills, maybe your girlfriend, how to talk better to your partner, being a better father or wife or husband, there's so many things that can get better.

And so why focus on just one?

The body, it's one out of four.

You're focusing on 25%.

And so when you said, you know, go all out seven days a week, maybe fail a relationship.

I don't really believe that.

I believe that 100% is from all four factors.

Try to maximize all of them.

Again, it's a working theory, Greg.

I don't know.

You do have to make mistakes to learn.

I made all the mistakes.

So I'm coming from a guy at 49.

When I was your age, I was blasting hella gear.

The thing is like, you gotta, you have to tell people to go make mistakes.

But you have to be like, don't make the wrong ones.

Yeah.

That's what, that's my thesis.

And maybe I said it in the wrong way.

Like messing up a relationship probably is not ideal, you know, but maybe that wasn't the best example.

It's hard for me to say, relax, you know, maybe.

There's things you can't undo.

Like go fucking hard.

Go hard.

Perk!

Go hard.

Perk!

Then when you have that revelation, just don't be so far gone that you can't, that you have these regrets.

Yeah.

There's things you can't undo.

Once you start taking steroids, you can't undo taking steroids.

You can get married and get a divorce.

You can't take Trend and then be natty.

So once it's something permanent, that's just like, this is it.

Like you're going to take the steroid.

That's forever.

Like HRT is forever.

You could say, oh, I'm going to stop.

That's a big difference.

Girlfriends, they can come and go.

Relationships, friends, all that can come and go.

But using drugs, this is a big decision to make.

So, you know, Pete Rubish.

Yes.

I've competed with him in powerlifting way back.

Pete is probably one of my greatest influences in this entire sphere.

I will say that right now.

What he has done is one of the most amazing feats in this entire industry.

And it has gone unsaid for far, far too long.

This guy was on grams and grams of gear.

We're talking about like the era of like elite FTS.

You remember elite FTS era, like Testosterone Nation era, where we had powerlifters going hard, like changing the game, putting up like Dan Green.

That guy.

I competed with Dan Green.

I remember all these guys.

That guy did more gear.

And these guys do crazy amounts of gear.

And Pete Rubish was like, oh, this is what we do.

This is how it works.

And Pete Rubish went, and I'm pretty sure he's not taking anything.

Yeah, he went natural.

He was on a lot of steroids.

He was deadlifting with the freaking washer dryer in the background or whatever it was.

And going crazy and screaming.

He was like a kind of like a Larry Wheels of the time.

He obviously is hypogonadal currently, and he might never get his balls back.

He might, I don't know enough.

I haven't talked to him in a while.

We did a podcast and I just was like, dude, you're incredible.

Like I can't, off the top of my head, I cannot think of another person who's doing what he's done or has, you know, or is attempting, at least in the face of all that he's done.

I don't know of another guy.

I would say you're pretty motivational in the way that you're like, I'm obsessed with these bike races.

I love cardio.

I love reading.

I love these things now.

Like there are parts of this that like we can make a difference.

There was a fuck ton of gear use and there still is.

But these Russians and even the East German team, a lot of these people died.

They became very violent.

They killed themselves.

They had liver diseases.

And this was back in the day when we didn't really keep track of these people.

We just let them die.

We just let them become shells of themselves.

Yeah.

Speaking of these lifters, I was in China and the, I think his name was Yao something.

He's the three-time gold medalist in Olympic lifting, had all these Chinese records.

And me- Liu Xiaoshan.

Is it Liu Xiaoshan?

He gave me two sets of shoes and stuff because I'd made a natty or not, or he had failed a drug test for EPO or whatever.

And I made a natty or not and said, this is not what he would do.

So I basically defended that he was natural.

I argued that this guy was natural.

And so in that country, they're like, what a great guy.

This great guy is so great.

I made a video also saying the United States, I don't believe that they're natural.

And the swim team, they were having the blue face and everything.

I argued they were taking different kinds of drugs to improve their ability to use oxygen and so on.

And so he's sitting next to me and I made a video on this guy.

This guy is jacked, like maybe not my size, but pretty big.

The guy sitting next to me was 150 pounds.

He had no muscle.

He looked like a basketball player.

Maybe he looked like a bike race, a bike rider, and not like me.

And so I'm like, this is the guy I said was natural.

And a year and a half ago, he had 25 pounds more muscle.

And so I'm like, what happened?

So I just thrown out there, like, are these guys actually natural?

Like, I mean, I said he was, but how do you lose that much muscle?

So I looked at old videos, old, I mean, so my back squat was 510 pounds, like full depth high bar.

You know, my deadlift was up to 660.

I barely deadlifted 500, like a couple of weeks ago.

And mind you, I'm not training nearly as hard.

My body type, which is, this is actually a video that I kind of want to do.

I was never a good, I was always like athletic.

So in the weight room, I could do well.

And I think a lot of my strength coaches loved me for that.

They were like, damn, dude, you don't look like you're that strong for what you're able to do.

I've always been that guy.

But I've never been the strong guy in the gym.

Never.

Well, with 660, you must have been.

No, but no, but I wasn't.

I promise you.

You were in a really hardcore gym then.

No, I was always- The gyms I go to, it's like, you don't see that.

I was always good at deadlifting.

The first day that I deadlifted, I did 465 pounds.