Chris Bumstead: 6X Mr. Olympia’s Peptide Stack, Supplement Guide and Recovery Protocols | TUH #197

Bodybuilding is not a healthy sport. There's a lot you put your body.

Through anabolic steroid use, cutting weight, bulking up weight. This is hard on your organs. The vast majority of bodybuilders say that exchange is worth it. I'm willing to borrow from my future for the gain today.

Before I ever won an Olympia, I got really sick. I had this insane amount of inflammation. Even myself, I'm sure I was still ignorant to what I was doing at the time, but I knew that the more stress I would put on my body, the worse it would push me back.

You put guardrails on the amount of risk that you were willing to take, but you still achieved the top spot in the world most multiple times.

There's only so much you can really learn about bodybuilding. Once you have good form, you get your protein in and you train hard. But to do that every day for 10 years, that's what makes it hard.

You know, I was expecting you to give this laundry list of supplements and you basically said, I had my nutrition dialed in. I was taking creatine and protein powders. The greatest longevity science and anti aging experts now have come full circle.

Sometimes you got to boil back to just training hard, eating right and doing consistently.

Lots of people want to enjoy the view, but they don't want the climb. How did you keep that very myopic view of being the best bodybuilder from spilling over, over into every other aspect of your life?

It's a great question, and I mean the very nuanced answer, and it's the honest answer is a lot of it is probably like.

Hey guys, welcome back to the ultimate human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecker, where we go down the road of everything, anti aging, biohacking, longevity and everything, everything in between. And as you know, my heroes are the movers, the shakers, the game changers in all forms of industry, whether they're PhDs, MDs, biohackers, researchers, or just people that have solved a major problem in their life. And today's guest is no stranger to that. Six time Mr. Olympia champion in the physique division. You know who he is. A lot of you have been anticipating this podcast. Welcome to the podcast, Chris Bumstead.

Thank you, sir. It's an honor, it's an honor to be on here.

It's an honor to be intimidating, given.

The guests you've had, but really excited to be on here.

This is my guess is I'm not intimidating. Well, you too.

You're exciting to talk to. I feel like I need to be the one interviewing you so I can learn a little.

Well, we could go back and forth. You know, we actually like all my podcast guests. You know, when we get here early, we run half the podcast before the podcast. Like, we should talk about this on the pod. But, you know, one of the things we talked about, which is a common theme on my podcast, and I really want to unpack this a little bit with you, is that I feel like the most impactful people, like the most inspiring, passionate, purpose driven people are people that solved a major problem in their life. And one of the things we talked about before the podcast was, you know, it's. It's not so impressive to me to be, like, great once. It's impressive to me to be really great over a long period of time. And you held the number one spot in bodybuilding for more than half a decade, which is a long period of time, which means you solved a lot of problems. And by problems, I mean probably internal demons and external forces. And I would love if you would unpack that a little bit and just talk to my audience about, let them into the mindset of C Bum. You know, when you're already at the top of your game and you've achieved this astounding level of success, what was it inside you that didn't make you just say, I'm going to take the award and go home. I did it. Like, you know, a lot of people run one Traffic, one Kona Iron man in their life. They're like, there's the plaque. That's it.

It's a great question. And I mean, the very nuanced answer, and it's the honest answer is a lot of it is probably, like, great genes set up to do the right thing, a lot of luck set up in the right place, and potentially, honestly, a lot of faults or demons and insecurities of mine that I was trying to use some level of success to seek after. You know, I find a lot of people who reach a high level of success are kind of potentially compensating at the beginning. And when I started to feel like maybe I was seeking a sense of belonging or validation, my journey began to become more than just like, becoming a better body, but a better self. How can I use the challenge, pushing myself to new limits to discover parts about myself I didn't know before and become a better version of myself and to be able to grow mentally, spiritually, emotionally, relationally along this physical journey. And I think that's what consistently drove me is Every year was like a hero's journey where, like, you're working up to this huge moment and inevitably there's this like chaos and challenge that comes in the way where you feel defeat and you need to find something inside of yourself to get through that, to get to this success. And then it repeats every year. Every year. So I was continuously finding new pieces of myself I didn't know before of what I needed and how I operated best. And my journey started with something very health related. In 2018, before I ever won an Olympia, I got really sick and I didn't know what was going on.

Kidneys.

It was autoimmune to my kidneys. Yeah.

Okay.

So I had this insane amount of inflammation, edema in my legs. Like I put on like £15 in a day. And I had like no knee, no ankle. It was just inflamed. Didn't know what was going on. I was put in the hospital, put on loop diuretics, IV diuretics, and all this stuff just to get the water off. And they didn't know what was going on. And it was a. I talked through the story quick now, but in the moment, I was like 22 years old, terrified from my life at the time.

Yeah.

Not knowing what was going to go on.

You were bodybuilding then?

I was in the middle of prep. I was four weeks out of the Olympia.

Whoa.

At this point. Yeah. So it was like the biggest, one of the biggest moments of feeling powerless. Just completely powerless.

Yeah.

And there's a pastor I believe in this, Richard Rohr, who talks about, like every man experiencing a journey of powerlessness which leads to a sense of like, just humility and gratitude for the rest of your life because you realize you're not fully in control. There's so much you can do, but there's always a level beyond what you're capable of. So I think my journey starting with that, really led to every moment of success. And everything that I did win, it was like, yes, I did this, but there's so much out of my control that got me here. And there's so much out of my control that could take me from here. So it kept me with a sense of humility.

Yeah.

Throughout my entire journey. And also what led to that was me knowing I need to approach things differently. Like there was a reason I got sick. And bodybuilding is not a healthy sport at all. There's a lot you'd put your body through. So me needing to manage a. What started to what felt like it was just physical health. And then What I was learning, because it was not an immune thing, was a lot of stress, cortisol, mental stuff, stuff that I held into my life that was causing some kind of reaction in my body to not feel regulated and heal efficiently. So that was kind of how my journey started. And then every year from there was like, how can I just grow and become better? And my mission in life was to become the best version of myself internally and externally. And you know, there's only so much you can really learn about bodybuilding once you have good form, you get your protein in and you train hard. What's beyond that? It's the mind, it's what's making you show up consistently.

Yeah.

Like someone could show up in my peak off season or in the peak of my prep and follow me for a day and do everything I did easily. It's not that hard. But to do that every day for 10 years, that's what makes it hard. So that's, it becomes a mental game. And you know, you gotta figure out the things that are driving you. And if those fade, why did they fade? The things that are holding you back, Is it self doubt, like minimizing beliefs, whatever it may be. And my journey was just this long journey of self discovery more than anything.

I think it's especially true from my perspective in something like bodybuilding because I would imagine, and I've never been a bodybuilder, but I'm, I would imagine that it's a very lonely sport.

Yeah.

You know, because it's not a team sport, it's very individual sport. So you don't have a team maybe other than your trainers and stuff holding you accountable. You're not showing up for other people, you're showing up for yourself. And I think most of life is a very individual sport, you know, and, and they say like it's very lonely at the head of the herd. Right. The all you get to do is enjoy the view. Right. And, and you know, lots of people want to enjoy the view, but they don't want the climb. And to do it on your own by yourself, who are you competing against? Like, were you competing against yourself? Were you just constantly like, I want to be a better version of myself. And how did you keep that very myopic view of being the best bodybuilder from spilling over into every other aspect of your life? Because you know, as I went down the rabbit hole preparing for this interview, there are a lot of bodybuilders that have actually ruined the, their lives outside of the sport. Yeah. People talk about how difficult they were to get along with, how self centered they were, how they were tough in their marriage. You somehow been able to navigate all of that. I mean, I find you to be a very genuine, humble human being. I have the deepest level of respect for that, completely devoid of arrogance. But you, in this pursuit to be the best version of yourself, how did you keep the rest of your life in balance?

I mean, I'm definitely wasn't always the easiest to deal with for sure. You know, anyone's dieting that. There's moments where my wife would be rolling her eyes in the grass. She said, he's so easy to deal with all the time.

My wife does the same thing. People are like, oh, he's so smart, you're so lucky.

She's like, she's in the background. No. Yeah. I mean the first thing I could attribute to was just the way I was raised in my family. I have an incredible family who I love very much. And they taught me like just good morals of staying true to like who you are and what's most important is treating everyone like with respect and equal kindness. And I guess just I had this idea of myself where like as hard as I was working, it didn't make me any more special than anyone else. And it always was really like a me versus me kind of thing. And bodybuilding is a very egocentric sport. It's very vain, it's just like intense. And there's like almost like a stereotype that's very accurate of the way people are like trying to be beat better than the next guy. Comparing to this guy. It's a comparison sport, subjective. You're being the pageantry on stage, being judged, you know. And I think a lot of bodybuilders before me, they were like, you got to be on stage, you got to be stepping on. They're saying you're going to beat this guy. You see him, you know you're better than him. Be like that. And when I was young I was like, okay, that's how I have to be to win. But it never made, it never drove me. It didn't make me feel like I was getting better. If anything, it stressed me out. It made me anxious because I was comparing myself to others and like trying to be what they were. But especially in bodybuilding where it is so subjective, you have no control of what the judges do. So if you're trying to beat them or do what the judges do and then the judges switch what they want, then you're just pissed because you didn't do what you want, you might as well just be doing it for yourself. Creating the body that you are proud of, that you think is the best and being the best version of yourself. And there's no way to continuously improve unless that's your goal. If I'm trying to beat the next guy, when I beat him, I'm done, then my motivation is gone. But if my goal is just best version of myself, that's limitless. It's just continuous progress of the journey that you love and I think I mean the most. That super popular saying, the man who loves walking walks farther than the man who loves the destination. You know, I love bodybuilding and I didn't just love working out and starving myself and eating 400 grams of protein.

Right? Yeah. That you can't fall in love with that.

Exactly. I loved seeing the direct results that came from it, you know, like there's few things in life that you have so much control over where you've put X amount of effort in, you'll get X amount of result. The gym is one of the things, you know, business doesn't work, relationship doesn't work like that. You don't know what's coming from it. But when you eat, when you eat right and you train hard, you get the result. And when you put yourself in the difficult situations, you're forced to be in a place to grow mentally. And I love that aspect of bodybuilding. So there were times where I didn't necessarily, or plenty of times where I had self doubt, where I didn't want to show up to the gym and work out. I didn't want to train hired, but I knew how much I love the end result and I knew when I consistently did it, the person it made me become. So I continued to push myself more and more and every year it was really, you know, I was, I guess, blessed to have a mindset where I was just looking at what was right in front of me.

Yeah.

You know, I had plenty of years of obstacles like, like an injury. X amount of weeks at the Olympia where I was like, there's no way. I tore my lat. One year, eight weeks at the Olympia. Wow, that's no way I'm gonna be able to compete.

Yeah.

All I could do was, okay, well what can I do today? You know, I was in Canada, a deal was there. I was like, I need some PRP right now. I'm flying home, you know. Yeah, I got that done. The next day was like, I can't train up her body. I can go train Legs. Train legs every day. Okay, well, I'll train them every other day because I need to do something and just progressively doing it one day at a time, focusing on what was in my control.

And you still won that year.

And I still won that year, yeah.

Wow.

And I think one of my other biggest cheat codes was I was really, like many men these days, really bad at feeling emotion and, like, letting myself be an emotional state. I was very avoidant and just like, push it off. And when I came face to face with being bad at that, I was like, I was very a person. Like, how do I prove what I'm bad at? So then if I'm bad at feeling stuff and it's making me feel worse and more anxious, what's the opposite I can do? Just embrace the shitty emotions I'm feeling. So if I was like that moment, I had my lat tear, and in that moment, it might be like, oh, you hurt yourself, Compete next year. But that was my life. I dedicated my life to bodybuilding. So to me think of dropping out the Olympia, it was like, I'm losing a piece of my life right now. It was devastating. Right. So instead of avoiding that, I learned to let myself feel that emotion. Are you feel like you're gonna break down? The world's ending and crumbling right now. Okay, well, be that. Cry for a moment. Like, be in that and lean on the people who are there and who love you. And luckily, I've met my wife right after I got sick, so she was with me through every limpy I ever won.

So you met her in your early 20s?

Early 20s to now, married with a child, and then through that whole relationship, she's a very emotional being, so she helped teach me to lean into my emotion, to share it with her. And it's so much. It's so hard to explain. And maybe some men out there can kind of relate to me in that sense where you feel like you just need to suppress it cause it's a bad emotion. But to just let it out, there's no result to come from it. No answer, no solution. And to have someone that you can share it with, it just like releases this block and creates energy in you to move forward. And I think being able to apply that throughout my journey and learn how to do that, just, it kept moving me forward.

That's so, that's. That's so amazing. The. The injury that you had. Well, I mean, you had a lot of injury, but the, the kidney injury. I've heard you when you were talking to Patrick David and some others. And you talked about how that injury made you limit the amount of risk that you took. Yeah. And I think that that's fascinating because I think in bodybuilding, again, I've never been a bodybuilder, but I would assume that it's win at all costs. And there's an exchange for that, right? I mean, anabolic steroid use constantly, you know, cutting weight, bulking up weight. I mean, this is hard on your organs. It's hard on your liver, it's hard on your kidneys, hard on your heart. And I would assume that the vast majority of bodybuilders say that exchange is worth it. I'm willing to borrow from my future for the gain today. But when you had that injury and you had this swelling and you realized that I have a real critical kidney issue landed me in the hospital.

What.

Were some of those risks that you weren't willing to take? Because I find it even more fascinating that you put guardrails on the amount of risk that you were willing to take, but you still achieved the top spot in the world multiple times. And that is really what's fascinating to me. And it might be a message for other, you know, younger bodybuilders that are on that journey that, yes, it is about the gear that you're gonna run, but it's also about the. The path that you set for yourself. So talk some. A little bit about some of the guardrails that you. You. You set for yourself.

For sure. Yeah. I mean, it's very important for anybody build to understand using any level of PED is a serious health risk. You know, like the gear you have to run to be a professional bodybuilder, it's not healthy. You, like you said, you're boring from your future life. And even myself, I'm sure I was still ignorant to what I was doing at the time, but I knew that the more stress I would put on my body, the worse it would push me back. So there are specific compounds that bodybuilders take. There's an array of them. You know, bodybuilders have always been the guinea pig of. Exactly. Yeah. We've always been guinea pigs for stuff. Even when it comes to peptides. Like, right. We were taking peptides before they were ever anything, because we were like, we'll give it a shot.

You're like, research purposes only. Sounds great.

Wait, it helps injuries.

It worked in a rat and a monkey.

Exactly, Exactly.

Yeah.

But no. So when I got to that point where I got sick, I was like, okay, I Was doing X and I got sick. What if I do half of X if I don't get sick? Maybe there's something that was causing it, that was too much of a stress on my system. And everything's a multitude of issues. You know, it's not like just the drugs were making me sick. It was the stress, my lifestyle. I was just gone out of college. I was drinking a lot in between my off seasons. There was a lot I was doing. So then my shift went on to my health. I focused shift my focus on you.

Shift your focus to your health.

And then so then everything I was.

Putting my body that moment, made it threw it in your face. Whoa. I'm not immortal.

I mean, coming out of that. So I still compete in that Olympia where I ended up in the hospital. Probably shouldn't have done that, but I was very stubborn and I was on. I had a journey of a goal. I wasn't going to quit on it. And then after that, Olympia, my coach, my sister, my family, myself, like sat down and were like, you shouldn't compete anymore. You should stop this. Like you put your body at risk. Like it's telling you something, you should stop. And I was like, I'm just not ready to stop. You know, if I was given that decision right now, I would stop. But I was 21 years old.

You can't be killed by a bullet at 21.

You know, one of my favorite stories is that I got a 21 year old.

I thought he was sitting in here, but yeah, he's in the house.

That, that F1 story of like back in the day of Alonzo racing Schumacher, and they go into a corner, Alonzo behind Schumacher, and he rips by him in the corner and like, how'd you know to get by him there? He's like, he has two kids at home. He was going to break. You know, wow. Life changes over time. You're on a different journey and nothing wrong with either. But when I was young, dumb, ignorant, no family, send it, you know, just get after it. I'm 30 now, as kids, but looking back, I wouldn't have made that the same decision. So I'm grateful I did because I got it with my health still. But that's also why I chose to retire when I did too, because now decisions are different. But yeah, no, the guardrails I put on that were just limiting how much I took and what I took. Specific things like trend are one of the hardest things on your liver, specifically, they're super toxic on your body, they're the ones that work the best. Yeah, sadly hardcore.

They're hardcore.

That's, yeah.

For a reason.

That's hardcore. For a reason. That's more adverse effects and benefits for sure from when you get to that level. So I just kind of like essentially cut what I was taking in half and was like, I'm going to try it again. I'm going to take care of my health, I'm going to take care of the food that I put in my body. I'm not going to be like, oh, I need protein. I'm going to go to five guys. No, I'm going to go get a grass fed steak and sweet potato and like switch everything I'm putting in my body now. Because bodybuilders back in the day was just like, macros are all that matters, you know?

Right.

But it's a lot more, I've heard.

Some people on, you know, even on Instagram today there like macros, calories in, calories out, and, and there's a lot of science to disprove that too. But for sure, I mean you can get your calories from donuts, but you, you, Right, there's consequences to that. And, but what's, what's also fascinating to me is there's so much about bodybuilding that's like not done in the gym. And you know, I think some of the, some of the leading entrepreneurs in the world, Kevin Leary, for example, some, some of the leading financial entrepreneurs in the world will say the greatest decision you'll ever make is the person that you choose to spend the rest of your life with.

Yeah.

And I've heard you talk about your wife a lot as that foundation, as that rock. And I, I find it to be very sincere. I don't think that you're just on a podcast trying to pay homage to your wife. I think that, you know, when you're competing in a sport as lonely as bodybuilding and you're sort of taking your family on the journey whether they want to go or not, it has to take a very special person to constantly support you and be willing to make sacrifices on their side of the table. You know, I, I, I find this area particularly fascinating because for me I found a lot of like, love and gratitude and foundation after I met my second wife, Sage, and we did all the things that you're not supposed to do. Right. Moved in together, built a house together, started a business together, you know, combined our families. And I think maybe the greatest relationships are the ones that go through everything that's meant to tear you Apart, but you're still together. Yeah. And so I wonder if you just talk a little bit about, you know, what kind of foundation or strength you got from her. How important was that decision? Because I think men, we're weaker than we profess to be, for sure. And we're, we're a lot more emotional creatures than we also let out. You know, we're taught to suppress our emotions and not show fear, not, not show gratitude. That's weakness. Not talk about her faith and not talk about her family relationships. But, but you're very open about it. So how, how much of a support system did you have from her? And like, how did that matter so much to your career? You think you would have made it six times and in a row? Not bad for her. If you know me, you know, I'm a huge believer in the benefits of hydrogen water. H2TAB delivers cost effective portable tablets that generate ultra clean molecular hydrogen at 12 parts, one of the highest concentrations on the market. With over 1300 published studies showing benefits of oxidative stress, energy recovery, brain function, and so much more, Taking charge of your health has never been easier or more cost effective. Just drop a tablet in water, let it dissolve and drink it back. It's less than a dollar a day, science backed, and part of my daily routine. I never travel without this and it is my favorite biohack visit. Drink H2 Tab. That's drink H2Tab.com and upgrade your hydration today. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. I. I'm assuming she's watching us. If she's watching.

You know, I think there's a difference between making it and then losing yourself along the way and still making it. And I think that makes all the difference. So if you ask if I would be successful with her, absolutely not. Could I have won some Olympias?

Sure.

But to me, success isn't just having some trophies on my shelf. It's, you know, finishing my career, like, proud of who I am, how I treated people, the relationship I built and kept along the way. Like that, to me, is success. When I go to sleep at night, it's not because of trophies. It's because of the peace I feel at my heart with my character, my relationships, and the love I have for my wife. And knowing that, that is like my constant rock in life. And so what she has helped me with is beyond what I could really ever explain. And like you were saying, we're not the best at feeling or expressing emotion, but I think the more we hold things in the bigger reaction they have within our body, whether from a scientific point of producing more cortisol or just physically feeling numb, you know, And I was definitely someone who would numb things out. And in one of my Olympia speeches one year, the something that I, like, learned from her was that if you numb the bad, you numb the good. If you're trying to suppress everything, you're, like, putting yourself in this box of what you can feel. You might be trying not to feel negative emotion, but you're putting glass ceiling on the positive motion. You can feel, too. You're just like this, like, numb being. So she really taught me to just open that box up and allow myself to be seen, you know, as humans were wired for a connection. And you can't feel connected unless you're letting your genuine self be seen.

Yeah.

You know, to, like, in a moment. I was just talking about this with Henry. We were, like, filming something, and I had my official wedding two weeks ago now, and.

Oh, you did?

Yeah. We've been married, but we have the official wedding.

Yeah, we're going to Sage, and I got to do the same thing. We've been married for years, and we never actually had. Where did you celebrate?

We were in Italy. Tuscany.

Oh, dude, that's awesome. Our son's going to get married.

Oh, that's like Lake Como.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Is that in Tuscany? No, that's.

No, no, it's.

Where is that? Sorry. Mid South South. Anyway, it'll be engaged there, and he's also going to get married there. And. And my. My wife for a while didn't want to tell people we were married because we hadn't had the ceremony.

Yeah.

And so you had it in Tuscany?

Yeah.

So was it, like, small family?

Oh, yeah. We had eight people there.

No.

Yeah, it was. It was my parents, siblings, her mom siblings, and that was it. And our daughter and your daughter.

Yeah.

Yeah. And even in that small thing, there was this moment where, like, we had this live band playing music. It was an emotional day. We wrote our vows by hand in the morning, you know, like, lots of stuff coming up, and they're playing this song, and I just, like, had tears coming to my eyes where I started crying because I'm just so grateful for, like, the love that we were sharing the day that we were in. And I noticed myself just, like, we're on one side of the table, and there's only six people on the other side. And I just turned to her because, like, that was my safe place to, like, feel and be seen and whatever. Like, my True vulnerable self was like, she, I can share that with her and I'm not alone in that. So, like, even though with my closest family there, she's still my safest rock to be with. So I turned and she was the only one who could see me cry. And she, like, knows who I am, and she, like, saw me, put a hand on me, didn't say anything, was just, like, there for me. And that kind of, like, ability to be seen and unspoken connection and trust between us, like, that's the kind of confidence that can instill you to be able to do anything. You know, you come home from a day and you're like, I'm fucking injured. I feel like, shit, this happened. Like, how the fuck am I going to win another Olympia? Like, this is. Why am I even doing this, you know? And to be able to share that with someone who knows you and sees you, and for them to be there for you in that moment, like, to let that out and then to get to the true thing that's unraveling, it's like, okay, what are you really dealing with? Why is this pain coming up? And to be able to process that not alone. Yeah, that's what instills confidence. And to me, those are the kind of things that allows you not to win once, two, three, four, five, six times, and become a better person along the way, not lose yourself on a journey of excellence.

Yeah, that's so awesome, man, because you grew in. You grew in mind, body, grew in spirit, you know, And I guess about 15 months ago, that's when God gave you the greatest blessing, right? Your daughter. Yeah, yeah. That had to be a material change. Did that factor into you retiring?

Absolutely, it did, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So when my wife was like, I don't know, four or five months pregnant at my second last Olympia, and that was supposed to be my last, I was like, ready to retire on that one. And that was the year I tore my lat. And just a lot of stuff felt like it was lining up for me to be done.

It was your last one that you tore your last.

Second, last one.

Oh, second last.

When I was. I planned to retire.

Okay.

And then from there, there was some things that I was going through internally, and I was just like, I want to finish on a little bit more of a positive note, you know, stepping away, not from fear, but from just a choice of power. But then like, that same story of that guy, you know, breaking into the corner, it's like, okay, I have my family at home, I've had my success One's enough. Enough. You know, like, you never get that.

Tom Brady, Michael Jordan. I got one more in me, of course, Constantly. I think he did that six times.

He did, yeah.

And he crushed it.

But I don't think that is faith. I'm sure I'll be. Yeah, I'm sure he'll be 80 years old. We'll be chilling. Be like, I could have done more, you know.

Yeah, well, he wants to play in the Olympics now, so.

Yeah, true, true.

He actually, you know, interestingly, Tom reminds.

Me a lot about you.

He has a childl fascination with performance and optimal health. You know, all of our discussions have always been centered around, like, how can he take better care of himself, how can he sleep better, how can he perform better? So I find it fascinating with someone who's had a career like that too. Yeah, that's still trying to be the best off the field at what he does for, you know, for himself. But I. I had a daughter first, too, Maddie. And that is a life changing experience. You know, it's really kind of strange for me because the very first day that we brought her home, I kind of felt like it was a foreigner in my house. I was like, is somebody going to come pick this thing up? Like, is this, like, going to stay?

You know?

And then.

Terrifying. Just.

It's terrifying because there's no guidebook. Like, you don't know what to do.

They're like, yeah, but.

But then what's crazy is this whole. I get goosebumps telling this story. And this was my first wife, Amy, the mother of my kids, who's amazing, amazing person. Still. Still very close friend of mine to this day. But was. Was so astounding to me was, you know, we bought this thing home and I'm like, I feel like I'm gonna break it. I don't know how to feed it. It's so. It's so small.

Fragile.

It's so fragile. And then. But something in her, she just knew what to do. I was like, where'd you get all this knowledge? Like, you've been reading books. Like, she's like. Like my daughter would cry and she go, oh, she's gassy, or she needs to eat, or she wants me to come in and hold her. I'm like, how the hell do you know that? It just sounds like noise.

Yeah.

And then she knew the difference in the cries. And it was like, so it was really cool was to see this whole, like, woman come out of your wife, at least. Yeah, that was my experience that just showed up because there was a kid all of a sudden in the house. Like, God imparts this wisdom upon them somehow.

Yep.

They sort of know what to do because you and I are just fumbling around in the dark, like, just trying to help. Bottle here. What do you need me to do? Yeah, what do you need me to do? I'm, like, so scared. But now she's so. She's 15 months. She's pulling herself up on stuff, wreaking.

Havoc, walking, running around. Yeah.

Yeah.

You have any advice? Having an older daughter than me? Tips. I need to know.

Yeah, you know, it's. It's. You're gonna cave and you're gonna melt, and there's, you know, my only parenting advice. And I've raised three kids. I have a fourth one now with Sage that she had from previous marriage. My only advice is just incorporate your kids into your daily life. Like, do not stop your life and turn it all onto your kid. Like, we. We brought Madison to busy restaurants. We brought her out to eat. We traveled with her even in the little. They had this. The. The coolest stroller at the time was called the Bugaboo. It's made out of aircraft aluminum. So, like, I was a scientist. Like, oh, it's aircraft. It's so cool. And so we got one of these. But literally, you know, we would go over to some of our friend's house and they'd be like, shh, the baby's sleeping, the door's closed. They gotta go to exactly six o'. Clock.

And.

And so we tiptoe around. Then they wake them up exactly 5:30 in the morning. And. And we were like, oh, we brought our baby with us right in the house.

But.

And. And it just made it so easy and adaptive. And then we noticed, like, when we would take flights, people's babies would be screaming and just bouncing off the wall because they knocked them off their schedule. Yeah, but Madison was just so used to sleeping when where she had to sleep, there was noise in the room. There was noise in the room. I mean, we didn't purposely disrupt their life. But her. Her, you know, nursery room door was open and we would have folks over for dinner. We'd have the family, and it's noisy.

Yeah.

She would sleep through it. And that's my only advice. I don't. I don't like to give a lot of parenting advice. I become a better parent after my kids were adults than when I was. When they were younger.

As long as you figure it out.

But I think our role as, as. As fathers is to Just believe in our kids until they learn to believe in themselves.

Yeah.

And now I'm seeing that switch in my kids, like as they're starting to believe in themselves and they're starting to stand on their own two feet and they're starting businesses and they're really making their way in the world. And that for me is the greatest level satisfaction. So my only parenting advice is just don't slow your life down. Bring your daughter with you wherever, and if people don't like it, get them out of your life.

They're the problem, man.

Yeah, they're the problem.

They were a baby too. On screen.

They were being embarrassed. Have a kid. But it's. You know what's awesome too, is that there's this fear of the unknown. Like, am I parenting right? Am I raising them right? Am I doing the right thing? Am I being the right role model? But eventually, like every stage gets better and better. Like there is nothing in this world better than watching your kid play a sport or like the first time you go and watch your daughter sing at the Christmas Players. It's just so amazing. And now they're my best friends as adults. I mean, I could truly say my kids are my best friends. There's no one I'd rather travel with. There's no one I'd rather be in business with. There's no one I trust more than them. So.

That's awesome. Yeah.

Extent that helps. That's. That's all I got.

Good advice. It's good advice. You just took her to, to our trip to our wedding to Italy and.

Oh, you did.

It was chaos. We're like, we're never going back to Europe with a baby again. Bad decision. So maybe we'll travel closer than a six hour time.

Well, I mean, that's, yeah. You just went all in out of the gate. You know, that's a little heavy.

Doesn't do much.

But, But I think the more you do with them, the more adaptive they become. You know, they, they will learn way more from observation than they do from what you try to teach them. For sure. And they are way more observant than what you think.

Yeah.

You know when those first sentences start coming out of their mouth and you realize how much they know about the world around them because when they're not speaking, they're observing.

Yeah. They learn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're formulating their own opinions, so. Sorry, I, I. Great. The mother of my kids is a great, great woman too. And so when we decided we were going to separate, we only separated the husband and the wife, we never separated, the mother and the father. And I think that was a big plus for, for kids, too. So I want to switch gears a little bit. I mean, obviously you have one of the greatest bodybuilders in the world on your podcast. We got to talk a little bit about your journey. Everybody's going to want to know, what did he take? How did he. What did he do, you know, to get there? I. I also found it fascinating on a podcast I was watching of yours when you talked about time where a young kid came up to you that was going to start bodybuilding. And, and he was like, should I start using steroids? And you told him no. He said, that's a really bad idea. And I thought that was really interesting, you know, because here you are, one of the greatest bodybuilders of all time, dominating the sport. It's clearly, you know, using PEDs. And your recommendation out of the gate to this young bodybuilder starting out was, don't start with steroids. You said that on the PET podcast, just as a reminder. So why did you do that?

I mean, the easy response to that, someone watching that be like, yeah, easy for you to say you're a hypocrite.

Like, yeah, yeah, exactly.

I want invalid too. You know what I mean? With a decision that serious, if you're going to walk up to a stranger and let their answer depict. If you're going to do something that's potentially harming your health, you need to be making that decision for yourself. You need to be understanding what the risks are. You need to be understanding how small the benefits are. People can look at my life and be like, wow, I want that. How many people actually make it in any sport, let alone bodybuild? How many people are gym? Then how many people become Mr. Olympia? And beyond that, there's people who are second place at the Mr. Olympia and they're making that cash, that check for that prize money is like 20 grand for sponsors. Maybe some of these people are making, like, low six figures a year. Like, it's not a life of lux. And then your shelf life is done when you're 30. What do you do from there? Like, it's not as exciting as you might think. It's a really high risk. And most people don't see the success that they think they're going to see, you know, So I definitely tell anybody young who's trying to take that seriously is to really tick off all your, like, boxes. And that being the last one, like, have you spent consistent years training hard, learning how to train with proper form, proper periodization, good programs, you know, good nutrition, good rest, and doing everything that you can to get to a point where you can actually see what your genetic capabilities are. Because one of the biggest things that limits a bodybuilder is your genetics.

Right?

You know, once you're on the Olympia stage, everyone's the top 0001% in the gene pool of not only your ability to put on muscle, but just your ratio of like joint to muscle, belly to waist size to like your ability to grow legs and lats so you can create an expert. Like all the little things are so dependent on that. So if you just jump into jumping on steroids at a young age, before you know any of that, then you have horrible genetics. You've just put yourself at risk for no reason.

So that's a really good, that's a really good point. I mean on this path that you went on, I mean there's not really, you've even talked about it before. There's no real guidebook. It's not like, hey, go read this book. It's, it's, it's bodybuilding steroid 101. You start here. This is what you do. Month one, month six, month 12. There isn't really a guide. And I kind of feel like maybe the guys at the top of their game aren't really that willing to share their, what they're doing behind the scenes because any little edge that they have is an edge that they keep for themselves. And so what were you using as a resource? Like where were you getting your training advice from? I mean you, obviously you go and you lift heavy but you would have gotten a lot more injured a lot more frequently if you didn't know what you were doing. So where did you get, where'd you get the guidance from for training? Where did you get the guidance from on your gear, on your nutrition? Or were you really just figuring it out along the way?

A lot of specifically training at least started with my brother in law. He was a young bodybuilder, wife's brother, My wife's husband. Sorry, my, hopefully not your wife's husband, my sister's husband.

We, we just found a polygamist in our midst.

Expose myself on the ultimate human. Yeah, my sister's husband, they were dating at the time when I was in high school. Than me he look a bodybuilder and he was just to this day like he became a professional bodybuilder as well. And he was like notoriously one of the strongest, hardest training guys in the whole league, really. So me being able to be in grade 12 and that being like my training partner some days gave me like a massive cheat code. Another moment of like being right place, right time, like God's timing to be in the right position of like this young kid who loves training now. He was this incredible bodybuilder with insane work ethic who is the guy I'm looking up to. So that's cool. He taught me more than anything just what true intensity was. You know, people think they're training hard in the gym, but the idea of taking like every set, close to failure or to failure every single day and pushing every single week after week, year after year, it's. It's different, you know. So that was my standard when I started training at like 16 years old. And that was like my huge cheat code to this day, where I'll train with big, bigger bodybuilders than me and I often have better form and stronger than them because I've just, that was just my like blood, you know, what I've been doing. So he was a huge resource for me. He coached me through the beginning of my.

So he was actually in the gym with you, coaching you?

Yeah, yeah.

That's awesome.

Doing my diet, nutrition. And I really think so much of is so much more simple than people realize. And yeah, I imagine you see this a lot too when people stressing about health, trying to find his perfect solution answer. Yeah, sometimes you got to boil it back to just training hard, eating right and doing consistently.

I totally agree with you and I told you one of my favorite comments that you ever made that was shocking to me was, you know, you talked about going into Mr. Olympia Prep and you know, I was expecting you to give this laundry list of supplements and this laundry list of, you know, peptides and all of this stuff. And you basically said, I had my nutrition dialed in. I was taking creatine and protein powders and I was like, wow. And I often talk about that how like the greatest longevity science and anti aging experts now have come full circle and we're like getting back to the basics. Yeah. Sunlight, vitamin D3, grounding in, breath work, whole food diet, focusing on sleep. Like the basics, the things that you can't manage your way around. I'm sure you couldn't train your way around a crappy diet and you couldn't eat your way around poor training. And so there's some, just those fundamentals. It's like the fundamentals of longevity. If you Follow the blue zone. Whole food, diet, sense of connection and purpose and mobility into later in life. The. That's what the data says. Right. And I, and I think you're saying bodybuilding is like nutrition, train, hard sleep, recover, repeat.

Yeah, for sure.

Major oversimplifying it. But, but I do want to go into the supplement bandwagon a little bit. I, I got a list of some of your, some of your favorites and I, I wondered if you just talk about these and like how you incorporate them into your daily regimen and how important they were for you. Whey protein was like the, the big one. Was that your main, in addition to whole foods, was that your, your main other source of protein? Trying to get to what, 200 grams of. Yeah, protein. 210 grams.

I mean, I would typically aim to get like at least 200 to 250 grams from whole foods of protein.

Wow.

And then I would stack on anywhere from 50 to 100 grams from protein shakes. But the goal was always whole food. But when you're eating 300 plus grams of protein, it's just a lot of food.

Yeah.

Especially like life is busy or whatever. You walk out of a gym just being able to have that in your bag, mix it with water and go is. Yeah, it's super simple and convenient. So that's probably, you know, been a. Over two days. I haven't taken protein powder in the last decade.

Really. I remember I, I had a very short stint as a triathlete and I actually was the age group champion amateur for the, for my age group in Florida. And I went so psycho that one year, biking, running, swimming, biking, running, swimming, that I did the Chesapeake Half Ironman. And I came home and I hung my bike up on the garage and if I still had that garage, it would still be there. That was 18 years ago. Like. And so, and that's part of what fascinates me so much because the grind and the mental fortitude that it has to take to, to maintain that level of intensity over such a prolonged period of time is just still fascinating to me. Creatine was one of your must haves.

Yep.

And I say every woman over 40 years old needs to be on creatine. It's no longer a bodybuilding supplement. It never has been, but I mean, no, no longer just for bodybuilders. I think it's fallen into that bodybuilding category. But for cognitive function, it's dirt cheap. You took creatine monohydrate, right? Yeah. How much of that were you taking?

Typically 5 grams. And then in like competition season, I would be doing 5 grams pre and post workout, so up to 10 grams. And then just recently I was just learning about the cognitive benefits too. So, yeah, before I do like a podcast or something, I'll take 20 grams of it and just.

Yeah.

Get ready to go sipping on electrolytes and creatine on my way here.

Oh, were you really?

Yeah, on the car, I think we.

Did what, hydrogen water and a couple other things. You know, on the way in here, you also talked about multivitamins. You had a basic multi that you took, which is to cover the bases. Like B vitamins.

Yeah, exactly. More so just even learning like, you know better than most is the nutrients in our food is pretty lacking right now.

Yeah.

And when you get them, A, nutrients in our food is so much lower than it's been in the past. But B, when you're dieting, super strict, near the end of prep, like, you don't even have the luxury, I'll start cutting out vegetables and foods. Because your calories are so low, everywhere you put it matters, you know, so you're not going to get enough nutrients when your priority is getting enough protein and, and then enough energy to get through your workout. So being able to take a multivitamin for me was also something that was super beneficial.

That's great. And you, you've also talked about glutamine, which I'm also a big fan of. What were you taking the glutamine for?

For my gut health. Yeah, I would throw that into pretty much every shake I had. I'd put like at least 10 grams into that.

Listen, there's what I share on this podcast and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here but my VIP community. That's where the real magic happens. Picture this. You're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really set sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights when I have incredible guests on the podcast. VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols. The exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to Perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than a hundred dollars a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for Life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now, let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. Yeah, I'm. First of all, I agree with all of these. And then resveratrol, which I take a pisied form of resveratrol. Resveratrol is grapeseed extract. That's why a lot of people say that red wine's good for you. Like, you know, like, you can actually lose the alcohol and still get the benefit. The polyphenols and the resveratrol and. And the few studies that were like, oh, a glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away. Like, no, it wasn't the wine. Yeah, it was the polyphenols and the resveratrol.

Either way, they can convince himself, though.

So you added the resveratrol, turmeric and curcumin. You took a lot of electrolytes. Interesting one that I. I found, which I'm also a big fan of, is something called bergamot. And what were you taking the bergamot for?

It was for, like, cardiovascular health. Cholesterol.

Yeah.

The big thing in the body of the community, it's been just something that was always spoken about. You need to be taking this.

So you're like, okay.

I was like, can't miss that.

I don't want to be missing out.

Exactly.

I did a podcast with Dr. Gundry and he's a cardiologist, cardiovascular surgeon, and I have the genetic predisposition to lipo A. Cholesterol is amazing, triglycerides are amazing, and I eat very clean, but I have the lipo little A, which there are no pharmaceutical solutions for, but bergamot and slow release niacin. He told me to start taking those and it dramatically reduced those for me. And so those are the real. Those are the dangerous ones for cardiovascular disease. And, you know, because we know that steroid use is going to be hard on the liver, it's going to be tough on your cholesterol. I imagine you stopped drinking.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, that's been gone for a long time.

Yeah.

But because these things were so hard on the rest of your organs, you were supplementing to kind of offset that.

Exactly.

Yeah. You know, I, we were talking before we came on the podcast that, you know, I believe that things like peptides are going to be, some of them are going to be as common as a multivitamin in as, as soon as five years.

Yeah.

Because peptides are amino acid sequences. When you put them in the body, they act a bunch of different ways. They can act like mimetics and mimic other compounds in the body. Um, they can act like secret agogs and cause organs and glands to secrete things that they would normally do. And there's a whole host of peptides. I, I, I actually wanted to go through some of them. Tissue healing peptides, repair peptides, not a scientific dive into them. I'm just curious which ones you've used and supported. And in full disclosure, you and I are partners in a peptide manufacturer called Visalis Visalius Longevity Labs and they manufacture peptides called Peptual. But this is not a commercial for Peptual and this is just a discussion on peptides. But just in full disclosure, first of all, proud to be your partner in that. And so is the crown prince of Saudi. Is our, one of our partners now too. Yeah. So if you want have an extra 747 lying around, I know you try to give one to Donald Trump. I'm also in the market for a private 747 if they have an extra.

Not sure I could afford to upkeep that thing. Yeah, exactly.

We could accept the gift, but that actually not fill it with gas.

Flip it. Yeah, yeah.

But I'll just park it and put my friends on it. Party. But I think the world of peptides is fascinating. It's been around a lot longer than people think. And then there's this whole new emerging world of some of these designer approaches to modulating human performance. You know Dr. Mike from RP Strength, you know who he is? He's got a podcast. I, I actually really like this guy. I think he's super intelligent and he toes, toes the line very well between the valid science and the risks and things. He's actually called me out a lot on social media and, and it pisses me off. But then I'm like, ah, he's right, you know, and I have to go and delete videos.

You're like, he got me there.

Yeah. But I'm like, but he helps me sharpen my. Because I'm like, dude, he's actually right. But he, he, he's one of the few guys that I trust in this whole ped category is being just Authentic, knowledgeable. And he was talking about these non androgenic anabolics and I know that's a mouthful and I forget the two drugs he was specifically referring to, but one of them was like the follistatin gene therapies, it was similar to that and it inhibited myostatin, which is one of the compounds that actually stops our muscles from growing. And he was hypothesizing that the whole era of steroids may very soon be going away because we can safely enhance and modulate the body's ability to grow massive amounts of muscle by harnessing our own innate genetics and our own innate ability to turn genes off that are inhibiting our ability to grow muscle. I mean those areas of science are so fascinating to me, like safer.

Those are the same genes though that are inhibiting like cancer cells from growing too, are they not? Or.

Yeah, I mean I, I think they are and I think that's where things get a little bit dicey and I think as with any new, you know, therapy, there's obviously got to be the risks. But, but peptides, you know, there's been enormous numbers of scripts written for these with very few adverse events. I think they fall into several major categories. I just wanted to run through some of them. For tissue repair, have you used BPC157, TB500?

Yeah, those are like, those are. We say it'll be a multivitamin to the average person, another multivitamin to the average bodybuilder. Yeah, at least the last.

They're like oh those are baby.

No, When I talk about injury, IGFLR3. When I talk about injuries I've had throughout my career, there's few that I've gotten through where I've healed. Like how'd you heal so fast? Where I wasn't taking those spot, injecting it right into my lat, my shoulder or whatever it may be.

I will tell you anecdotally, you know, I've seen miracles with these kinds of peptides and can't recall adverse events except when people are online getting them from like Chinese pharmacies and whatnot. I think one of the reasons why we back this physalias longevity labs is you're gonna stand behind peptides. They've gotta be GMP certified and you've gotta know the source of them and they have to be stability, sterility, potency tested. But TB BPC157 is known for its anti inflammatory properties. It's a gastric pentadecapeptide. It's Actually synthesized from gastric juice. One of the things I have seen in tens of thousands of patients that came through our clinic system was significant improvements in gut healing and gut repair. I don't think we approached a single Crohn's patient or diverticulitis or a patient that had irritable bowel syndrome that our clinical team didn't think about. BPC 157, is that both injectable and.

Oral or just oral? Mainly for the gut.

Oral. You know, the interesting thing about BBC 157 is because it's synthesized from gastric juice, it's actually tolerated very well orally. You can do it through an intranasal spray, you can do it in oral capsule form, or you can like you did, side inject it. So post surgical repair, wound repair, gut permeability, especially in leaky gut, just fascinating accelerations. And it's kind of sad that these are not NSF certified because you're only harnessing the body's ability to heal itself. Yeah. And you know, what I wanted to discuss here was, you know, you used a lot of these peptides, maybe not to get bigger or give you an advantage, but to recover and heal from the damage that you were doing.

Yeah.

And everybody listening to this podcast has some kind of nips and Bibbles. Right knee, hip, shoulder, rotator cuff, low back, elbow, something. And if you don't, good for you. But I, I feel like it's just one of those universal peptides. When did you, when did you first start discovering peptides and when did you first start using them right out of the gate?

I think it was right around 2018. Around that time when I got sick too, because one of the first ones.

I get sick a lot, dude.

At the same time. The same time. Okay.

This is the same one time. Okay, good.

It was just a big moment in my life.

Okay. So big signals.

But because it was autoimmune, I had a local guy tell me about Thymus and Alpha 1 and like the immune regulation modulation that can come from that.

How?

Like there was a lot of studies already at that point, helping people with autoimmune prevent flare ups and being able to just regulate the immune system, preventing it from attacking itself and.

Very true.

So when I heard that, I was at that point, I was just like, I'll try anything. So at when I bought into that, that's when I learned about the BPC and the TV as well. And you're never not injured as a professional bodybuilder somewhere.

I got it.

So you start with that and that's kind of what kicked off my journey.

What about now? Where do you have any lasting injuries from it? I mean, you seem like you're getting around really good.

I move pretty. I'm like, my body's tight. No crazy injuries. I just had a shoulder operation a few months ago that's bouncing back. So right now I took a couple rotator cuffs.

A couple rotator cuffs?

Yeah, like three. So super deal. Actually did stem cells right in there. So.

Right.

That helps heal that up.

But subscapularis.

Yeah, yeah, no, still just like light nagging little things, but nothing crazy. Luckily, knock on wood.

Well, I mean, three tears in the rotate. There's only four muscles in the rotator, so you are three quarters of them.

So it's moving now though.

Yeah, I remember in chiropractic school they're like, it only really does the first like 15 degrees of abduction and internal rotation. So when you have big delts like that, it's pretty common too with like pitchers because you have this big deltoid and then all of a sudden it handle it hands all this load over to these four tiny little muscles and they can, they can snap. But you started talking about stem cells for a moment too. I'm a huge fan of stem cells. For a while it was on the NFL Alumni Associations Athletica. And that organization is full of repetitive use injuries. And so most of them are not major traumatic injuries, just repetitive use like what a bodybuilder would have, what every 50, 60 year old man or woman is going to have. And stem cells, which contrary to popular belief are legal in the United States, you can do them into your joints. And there's some states like Florida now that I think you can do them intravenously.

Yeah, I think as long as they're manufactured in Florida or something. Yeah, there's some guidelines still, but they're open now.

Yeah, yeah. Ye Pradeep. Dr. Pradeep, who also sits on our board at Visayas Longevity Labs, he was instrumental in kind of helping the legislation get through Florida. But I, I think that's important because now, you know, for most of these treatments, people have to go to third world countries. And I don't have anything against Costa Rica or Medellin, Colombia or Panama or, or Tijuana, Mexico. But I think if I were the fda, I would say before I let everyone just leave the country and go into these foreign countries where you have no reach into their. Maybe we should take a look at the safety profile on some of these. They Bear a lot of risk too because obviously they get misused like anything else. But how important would you rank peptides like TB500, BPC157, even your stem cell injections in your ability to have recovered?

It's really hard to say, but I would say they were definitely a massive cheat coat for my career. For me to be able to push like I did for as long as I did, especially with an autoimmune condition and keeping my body's inflammation low, ability to recover.

The kidney conditions was determined to be autoimmune.

Yeah.

And where does that stand now?

I mean, I haven't had a true flare up since that 2018 one, which is incredible. Get knock on wood, but changed my lifestyle a lot from that. Now that I'm retired, hoping it's only going to get better.

But you still take the Thomas and Alpha?

I do, yeah.

Okay, great.

Not all year, but I take it in cycles throughout the year. So it's been, my health has just been increasing since I retired and typically, I mean, appreciate it, no offense. Typically they had a system every year where compete and then focus on my health as long as I could and then compete again. And it was just like never progressing. So now that I'm retired, my focus is just on anti aging.

I know, yeah. You actually text me in November. Do you remember that you sent me a dm? Yeah, I pulled it up and I, and I thought it was really cool because I was like, oh, Chris, Bump says hit me up on the DMS and do you mind if I talk about it?

Yeah, sure.

Okay. And you were asking me about the genetic test because you said, you know, I beat my body up a lot bodybuilding and I just want to get to the next level. And I was, I was like, I love this guy because, you know, you're, you're not just giving up, you're, you're like now in that post, professional career pursuit of excellence, which is like, how can I just live the longest, healthiest, happiest life possible? That's probably why 95% of people come see me. Yeah. For you. I imagine a lot of it's driven by your daughter.

But yeah, I took years off my life from competing. I need to add those back on.

Yeah, yeah. She's expecting you around for, for a long. You can have more.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. I love having a tribe.

Yeah.

You know, I remember when we had. I know we're bouncing around a lot, but I remember when we had our third child, I used to mess with my wife all the time, because she would, like, go out of town and like, listen, I've got adhd now we got three. So pick your favorite two and I'll have them here when you get back. But I can't promise three.

The third one.

Don't ever talk like that. It's a joke. It's a joke, but you're outnumbered, dude.

Yeah.

Two to three at that point is a big jump.

That's what we're calling grandma and grandpa.

Giving you a heads up. Once you get to three, screw it. You might just get a family bus and just have at it. Yeah, yeah.

Once you can't fit in a regular car, it's game over.

Yeah. What was that show that used to be that the reality show was like 17 and counting or something?

Oh, yeah.

Do you ever see that?

I remember seeing some of us.

How much family had a whole bus?

Insane.

I'm not going there. Yeah. There's another peptide called ghkcu. It's a copper peptide. Cu being. Being the copper stimulating collagen production. I see it showing up in all kinds of skincare products now. It's also topical for hair. Have you ever used the GHKCU peptide?

I was just recently recommended that to. For part of my shoulder injury and just the overall recovery, but I haven't. I've. My wife has some of it in her skincare products, but I haven't dove in deep into that one.

Yeah, I think the combination of BPC157, TB500, and GHKCU is about all you could throw at massive tissue repair. If I was. If I was recovering from surgery, that would be, you know, the stack that I would be on. And then there's this whole category of fatty acid metabolizers. Fat. I won't say fat burners, but help the body mobilize and metabolize fat and. And growth hormone peptides. And I think here's where peptides have a very, potentially very special place in performance, maybe even bodybuilding, because we know that anytime you take something from outside the body and put it in, you're potentially reducing your body's ability to replace that on its own. Testosterone, for example, if you take it exogenously, you're gonna reduce your own testicular production of that hormone. A growth hormone releasing peptides and growth hormone releasing hormones like CGC 1295, hypermorelin, sirmorelin. Somorelin's probably the one that I know has been around the longest. I want to say that it was FDA approved in 1983, right? Around there for dwarfism and pituitary tumors or pituitary adenomas. So we have a lot of data on these peptides. There's a, there's a prevailing wisdom that they're not safe, but they're amino acid chains. They've been around in most cases for decades. Voluminous amounts of people have taken them with very little side effects. And when I compare things like that to pharma, who has a tendency to attack these, these things and say they're for research purposes only, they only work in rats. But then you see mass populations of humans that have benefited from them. I'm really hopeful that the regulatory lanes will widen for these things so they can become less expensive, more available to the public. But have you used the growth hormone peptides?

Those I have not, no.

Okay. You just went straight to the good stuff. Yeah, to the good stuff. Cut that out, please. So, yeah, what, what's really cool is if, if you can stimulate. You know, I always say that no matter what anyone tells you, there's no better hormone than one the body produces on its own. So competitive bodybuilding, you probably need to go beyond that.

But metabolism is a lot different than the average person trying to be healthy and optimizing their body.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I got these guns with growth hormone peptides. They're not those guns. They're not even close to those guns. This is a water pistol in the gun category. I don't even need a permit to carry these. But you know, when, when, when we talk about these growth hormone peptides, the reason why I wanted to just bring them up on this show is because I would think that somebody like yourself that had used synthetic growth hormone for so long might, might be switching to something like a growth hormone peptide. But you still are massive, dude.

Yeah.

How are you maintaining that size and you're just off all the gear?

I mean, you'd be surprised what the body can do in terms once it's had something for a decade.

Yeah, you know, muscle, you're not thinking yourself to guns. You got to be doing something.

I was just meditating. I mean, I still train full tilt, just without the.

Okay.

The boost I used to have. But I've definitely been looking into these peptides, especially the growth hormone inducing ones, because I haven't taken growth hormone down extended period of time at all. And I wanted to make sure my levels would come back naturally just as they were. So then I've been definitely looking into these peptides for the future.

Amazing. Because I think some more hypermoreland or CGC 1295.

And what about Tessamorelin?

Is that Tess is probably the most powerful.

Yeah.

Of all of them. You know, Tess, Marlin, you know, the. There's growth hormone releasing peptides and growth hormone releasing hormones, which is why you don't see, you know, Tess, you. You use them in combination. One mainly acts on the pituitary, one mainly acts on the hypothalamus. Because in the body and physiology, we have something called a negative feedback loop. Or, why do your testicles not keep secreting testosterone and it just keeps climbing? Because there's a feedback loop that tells the pituitary, hey, we've got enough testosterone, and it starts to turn the signal down. Luteinizing hormone, follicle stimulating hormone. What's fascinating about the human body is scantly, a single gland in the body decides how much hormone it produce. It almost always has a boss. It's like these speakers in this room. They don't determine how much, how loud they play. There's a tuner somewhere. And if I turn the signal up, the volume increases. And so if we can discover, if we understand that very often as we age, our bodies don't lose the ability to produce youthful levels of hormone, growth hormone, testosterone, and other compounds. Very often the signal just gets turned down. So when peptides act like signaling molecules, they turn this volume back up and you go, wow. I walked into the room, I couldn't hear the music, but I found the tuner, and boom, the music's loud. And so I. I realized that I could turn up my testicular production of testosterone. I realized I could turn up my pituitary's production of growth hormone. And because these secret agogs act very quickly, you can take them and time them with your normal circadian pulses. Like, we have our largest pulse of growth hormone at night right before bed. So if you take peptides far enough away from a meal and right before bed, you match what is your normal circadian pulse of that hormone. So it can deepen your sleep, improve your muscle mass, improve your lean muscle mass. It can improve the way that you metabolize and mobilize fat with very, very little downside. And there's pretty good studies on tachyphylaxis, which is the desensitization response that, you know, over prolonged periods of time, taking the right breaks, like five days on and two off, you can. You can safely use these things over a prolonged period of time. I don't know if I'm gonna get in trouble for saying that, but hope not.

And the Benefit of that versus taking growth hormone is you're not shutting off that negative feedback loop and your body's still using anytime.

Yeah, anytime you tell the pituitary we've produced a lot of growth hormone, and then what happens is the boss, which is the hypothalamus, which is the pituitary's boss, is gonna send a signal to the pituitary to shut off the production of growth hormone. One of the reasons why you use both is because one is acting on the pituitary's boss and one's acting directly on the pituitary. So you don't know when you take a growth hormone peptide if you've recently had the. If the pituitary has recently released growth hormone. So if you just took Somorelin, for example, and your pituitary had recently secreted growth hormone, the Samorelin would do nothing. But if you took CGC 1295 and ipomorlin or, you know, Samorelin and Tessamorelin, you would find that even if you had just recently had a pulse of growth hormone, you would still get another pulse because you've overridden that feedback loop. The only one that I'm not a major fan of is the MK677. It's called Ibutamoran, because the more research I read on that, the more it seems to cause, instead of a bolus dose of growth hormone, it seems to cause what's called a hormonal bleed. So sort of as your pituitary is making growth hormone, it's leaking it into the bloodstream, and that's very fatiguing to these glands. Yeah. So if I were going down, and I am not a physician, not licensed to practice medicine, but if I was going down the road taking a growth hormone or looking at taking, you know, one of these growth hormone peptides, I would combine the GHRP with the GHRH. I would leave MK677 alone. Just my personal opinion, because the longer, more well studied, more viable ones will get you as, you know, as far as you want to go. And in terms of like tissue repair and post surgical repair, I mean, these things are miracles for people. Thymus and alpha. You said you've already been to, you know, you've already taken. You want to talk about some of the sexual health ones? Because I know you've taken those. No. Like PT141, oxytocin.

Have you tried it? I have it. No.

Chris, come on, man.

I guess I'm missing out.

Dude, your wife's gonna love me I.

Didn'T even know these were out there.

Yeah, yeah.

Bodybuilders are so single minded. We're like, how do we get jacked?

PT141, you've got to sneak into your wife's ham sandwich. It makes women go crazy.

It's the one you're gonna get in trouble for.

This is. All right, that one I'm gonna get in trouble for. Can we cut this out? I'm just kidding. But it, it improves arousal. It, you know, it improves sexual desire.

Men and women.

Yeah, and men and women. Yeah. In, in Lotus. So you have to use it, right? Oxytocin is the, is, is the one that they say is in Cupid's arrow. It's part of the psychosomatic response of creating erection and arousal and libido. And so sometimes people, they, they, they miscue love and attraction with libido and arousal. Like, you can be madly in love with your wife, madly attracted to her. She can be madly in love with you, madly attracted to you, but not have any libido. Right. It's a completely separate thing. And I know that that wreaks havoc on a lot of relationships. I've seen it over the last decade of having a functional medicine clinic where people think that when one spouses or the other sexual desire goes away, that the love and attraction is leaving. And that's not what's happening. The emotion, the psychosomatic response of arousal and libido is going away. And that's different. And a lot of times these can be brought back with PT141 or oxytocin. Oxytocin is often combined with tadalafil. And then at lunch we were talking about some of the longevity peptides, which are epitalon, which is a telomerase lengthener. So I'm really surprised you haven't gone down this road. You tiptoed into it. But if you want protein to build lean muscle but without the caloric impact or need to cut, you need perfect amino. It's pure essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in a precise form and ratio that allows for near 100% utilization in building lean muscle and no caloric impact. So we build protein six times as much as whey, but without the excess body fat we normally get during bulking. This is the new era of protein supplementation, and it's real if you want to build lean muscle without having to cut. But you need perfect amino. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast, Tiptoed.

Yeah, it's Been very like, okay, I'm injured. How do I fix it?

Yeah, yeah. It was all. It was all based on.

I just came out of, like the bubble of bodybuilding into the real world now. So.

Yeah, now I'm already talking to him about hydrogen baths and methylation. Yeah. We're going to turn you into the post Mr. Olympia superhuman.

That's the goal. All right, we're gonna go. I'm emulate your condo in my backyard.

Yeah, it was funny. We were walking around, he's like, my wife would love this place. Like, she's.

He.

He and I have the boat. Both have the same issue. We don't. We're not into watches or cars, but we're into biohacking stuff.

Equally as expensive.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, no, it can. It can put. It definitely put a strain on. On your budget. So I want to. I want to bring this full circle for a moment and just get back to the. The post professional career. You know, I think there's. There's so many things that you've done in your life that are applicable to anything. Business, marriage, being an entrepreneur, starting a company. I mean, pushing yourself to the top of an industry, maintaining that spot for more than half a decade. There's no question that you have discipline. And for you, was that always more important than being motivated? Had to be a lot of days that you were not motivated.

Yeah.

How did you handle that? Did you just walk into the gym even if you felt like. Did you ever just look at the weights and go.

There were. There were plenty. There were days where I would, before going to the gym, like, have to put my shoe on and look down at my shoe and be like, I don't have the energy to bend down and put my shoe. How am I supposed to go?

Like, were you, like, aching from the.

Workout before and either aching or just so exhausted, like, you know, when you're 250 pounds, eating 1400 calories, doing an hour and a half of cardio and training for two hours a day, like there's nothing left in you, you know? So pulling from that, it definitely comes. Yes, there's bursts of motivation, but usually, though, they're all burned out by the end of a prep. You know, you have a goal, you have a passion. You know, it's remembering why you started doing something and knowing how worth it the result will be. But it really comes down to discipline, comes down to systems, I believe, you know, systems. Anyone who's any entrepreneur will tell you, like, the best way to run a business as growing is have the systems in place to make sure it's actually happening. And bodybuilding is the same thing. Especially when you, when you've been dieting, you're tired, you're having a shitty day, whatever it might be. Having a system in place where you don't even have to think. It's just you're rolling forward through the day. Like I wake up at the same time, I eat, drink the same thing, take the same supplements, eat the same thing at the same time, go to the gym at the same time. It just becomes like so habitual after you do that same thing. So if it's a 16 week prep, first 10 weeks you have a little bit more energy. The last six weeks you're just following back into that routine, that system.

I've seen videos of guys just passing out on the stage in the middle of a post, just dropping.

Usually those guys are doing some crazy shit. The top guys, who knows what they're doing, they don't do that. Those are some people who like push weird loop diuretics and do some weird like potassium loading things on top of diuretic in order to help them get like lean and full. But people who know what they're doing aren't really doing that crazy shit. Okay, ideally aren't passing out, but you are dehydrated and exhausted up there for sure.

But that's like when you're dehydrated, you're exhausted. That's like that to me, that's like the mental sandpaper. It just never goes away. It's always just grinding on you, grinding on you. And it's like, it's like chronic pain almost. It just breaks the will of the strongest people. And I've seen it happen to family members of mine that would have like a serious back injury and like this just strong, bold, vibrant person in the beginning of the injury, they're like, I'm not letting this take me down. Pain's not going to stop me. And then you know, the edge, that willpower goes from a 10 to a 7 to a 5 to a 3. And somehow you're still going into the gym at a three. And when you, when you would walk in there and just the monotony of doing, maybe it's different movements, but it's the same, same every day. That is a grind. You know, like they talk about the number of foul shots that Michael Jordan shot they take. Talk about the number of times that Kobe Bryant would show up to practice early and shoot foul shots. Foul shots got to be the easiest thing for a Professional basketball player to do, but to just show up and grind. And he talked about how he did the really, really, really boring things so he would still love the game. Yeah, I kind of understand that. But, like, purposely torturing himself mentally so that he'd never lose the love for the game. It's like, when my kids started playing sports at a young age, I remember the coach would be like, the aggression's gonna come. Just get him to like it. Yeah, but. So at some point, you loved it, but at some point, you had to hate it.

Yeah.

And those are the moments I want to talk about. Like, when you walked in there, spent, dehydrated, hungry, frustrated, and you had to pick up the same weight and do the same. Yeah. What was it that. Where was you? Did you have a. Why were you thinking about your family or you just, like, this is what I do.

I don't think there's a genuine.

Like, I'm looking for the trick.

There's no trick, because I want to.

Write a book about it.

That's the thing.

Everybody is. Maybe there's not. I mean, they're on.

Trick of, like, the thing to do with. I think it's having the conscious awareness that it's a decision and that everyone has the ability to make that decision every single day. But what's going to separate you is the people who can make the tough decision and do the thing they don't want to do versus not everybody, no matter what you're doing, is going to have days where you don't want to do it. But what separates the people from who are successful and those who aren't are the ones who do it on the days they don't want to. And I had plenty of days where I was in there and I didn't want to do it, but. But it was like I was saying before, just getting through one moment at a time, one set at a time, one rep at a time. Like, I'd literally be like, I'm gonna finish this workout early. I don't have the energy for this, but I'm just gonna do one more set, then I finish that set, and I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna do one more set, and I get through a full workout just like that. And then you finish that workout and you realize how good you feel. And it's just remembering those small little wins. Yeah. Every single. Every little win that you can add up and stack in your mind before thinking, oh, I'm gonna win the Olympia. It's like, oh, I finished my Set. I got an extra rep that set. And being able to be proud of those wins, you know, those little wins that nobody ever gets to see. Those moments where like you chose to do something that no one will ever know.

Yeah.

You know, it's moving you towards your goal. You just gotta be a little crazy and those gotta be the things. Yeah, yeah. You gotta have a screw a little up.

Yeah, yeah.

It's just the way it works.

So what is the post professional career look like for you? What's going to replace that drive, that addiction? It's got to be. You've got a director for some because it's just who you are now. Yeah. Where is that going? Is it going into your supplement company? Is it going into your family? Is it going into your next career as an entrepreneur? You're young. Yeah. You got a big long life ahead of you.

I mean, to be fully transparent, I think I'm still figuring that out. I think I've come to the conclusion and the honesty answer to myself that nothing will replace that. Yeah, there will be other things in my life that are just as important, but they're not the same. Maybe more important, but they're not the same. That feeling of that competitive drive. Like we all watch a sports movie and they're like, I want to compete and do something and like be better than people. And like there's something beautiful about competitive sports.

Yeah.

And being able to like compete and it's gotta.

Dude, I, I, I try to put my. I've watched a lot of your videos and, and things and just the thought of like you're standing up there, you're posing on that stage. Everything comes down to that one moment. It's in totally in somebody's hands. So it is somewhat subjective.

Yeah.

It's not objective. I mean you could have beat someone and you might have lost. Like it's like boxing. There's three judges and maybe they didn't count. Every punch that landed and you get robbed. I mean the anxiety and do you find out right away, like do you find out the day that you finished?

Yeah. You're on stage, they tell you with your all standing up there, they tell.

You I that's so yeah.

They line you up and is it.

Is that moment like as the countdown's going on and the announcers reading that? Are you there had to be the thought in your mind. Maybe not this time.

There, there definitely are. There were years and near the end I was truly like, I think one of the biggest things I learned mentally to do was to Let go of that result, especially in that moment. The idea of being present is to let go of what you believe the future is going to be, let go of what the past was and just be in the moment. And those are some of the most vivid, beautiful memories I have from competing is standing on stage. They would call 5, 4, 3, and then they'd bring up the next two to stand there. And then the Olympias thing that they do is they call first place before second place just so they have that moment to celebrate. And every single year I remember they called me up, I'd pull there and I'd close my eyes and I would just like, I would turn, I would look at the Olympia stage, I'd see my family.

I'm so anxious right now. I'm so anxious.

It was, it was the most like human experience of just like presence. There was so much just like, you're just there. There's nothing going on in my mind. We talked about meditating in that Theta State. It's like I learned how to access that on stage of just like, just whatever happened, I remembered what it took to get me there. And just standing there in that moment, like the most beautiful moment ever. I used to visualize every day doing cardio that whole peak week leading up to that moment. Really get chills and tears running down my eyes on the treadmill, just waiting for them to call my name. And really when I was up there in the actual visualizing, I was able to just be present and it was incredible. Those were, those are, that's the moment where I talk about like, I will never get that again. Yeah, and that's, it's sad, but it's also why they were so beautiful, because they're so rare.

You know, I, I, I have a very good friend of mine named Billy Davis. He's a two time super bowl champ. He went to this super bowl with the Cowboys and that tells you how long ago it was and, and Ravens. And I was asking him that same question. I'm like, dude, how, how as a professional athlete, you know, all of a sudden you start to gain some fame, you start to get, you start to get some money and, and yet you got to stay at the top of your career, the nightclubs and the women and you're single and you're, you're wealthy. People start to know who you are and you're on the main stage. So I get it. You know, you went in and did this once, whatever prolonged period of time, and he described something very similar. Just reminded me of it. To what you're describing. He said, there. There was a moment. I never heard an athlete describe it like this. And it just became so crystal clear for me. And it made so much sense. I go, wow. Get it. Because there was a moment. I'm getting goosebumps, actually, just talking about the story. He said I would break off the line. I'd be running down the side of the field. And he said, 70,000 people or something in a stadium, all screaming. But I could hear one voice, like, my hearing was so alert, I could hear one voice going, go, Billy. And he goes. I could feel the ball get released. I knew it had just gotten released. I wasn't looking back at it, but I knew that it was in the air. And. And he said, I could feel the defender coming across the. The field to, like, hit me. And I knew he wasn't coming to give me a kiss. And so. And he would turn around, and right before he turned around to, like, grab the ball, he could tell that the trumpet player that was too close to the sideline was going to be right where he was going to go out and he was going to get tackled and run right into that guy. And then the moment would happen, and it, like, it would happen so fast, and he would hit the trumpet player, he'd be blasting out the sideline, and he was like. That moment, that second before the ball hit my hands, before the defender hit me, before I got knocked out of bounds. Undescribable.

Yeah.

He's like. It was like. Like the best buzz, with the best orgasm, with the best night's sleep, the best drug with the best. You know, he's like. It was just a. A cascade of emotion. He's like, I chased it like a rat. Yes.

They've done a lot of studies on, like, the flow state.

Like, wow.

They're the anathlete's ability to access that flow state where you can, like, shut off your conscious mind and access, like, everything your brain's capable of doing by being fully present like that. And. Yeah, it's obviously more conducive in a athletic sport like that.

Yeah.

Versus being able to enjoy them calling your name. But still, it's. Yeah, like you said, there's plenty of things in the world that feel like that.

Everything you've done in your life is coming down to one second.

Yeah. Yeah.

And the winner is. Bang. I mean, that's just got to be amazing, Chris. You know, it's. It's been amazing having you on. Before I let any of my guests go, we I have a private VIP group that these are my just most loyal followers. We're going to go into that private room because they, they have some questions for you. They're the ones that I tell who, who's going to be on the podcast before they come on the podcast. So there's some really good questions for you. Got you got some big fans in in there waiting for you. If you're interested in becoming a VIP, you can go over to the ultimatehuman.com forward/vip sign up to be a VIP and then you can have a private podcast with any of my podcast guests. But I wind down all of my podcasts by asking my guests the same question and there's no right or wrong answer for this, but is what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? Damn, like, I wish I prepped for that one.

I guess to me, an ultimate human. I would say this thing about champion mentality because the idea of being a champion is like the objective winning, but having the mentality is like the subject of being. So to me, it's the ability to be the best version of yourself. It's not necessarily the best, but what the best you is. And that comes more so than just putting in the work, but taking the time to reflect on what your most important values are. You know, when you're young, maybe it's being jacked, making money. And then as you get old, like you need to be wise enough to re. Reflect, have the introspection to see as that changes and it becomes family and presence and gratitude and different things that it evolves. So I guess to me, the ultimate human is someone who is able to consistently reflect on what those values are and to actually work every day to be the best version of themselves within that. And also on top of that, I guess people who like, do the hard, there's like, there's that person who can run 100 miles at 4am on a Tuesday, which doesn't mean it's still hard.

David Goggins.

David Goggins. You know all this.

Yeah.

But a lot of what I've learned is the hard of what, like I talked about in the podcast is like being vulnerable, being having the courage to be seen in your relationship, to have set a boundary with a parent who's having hard. Have a hard conversation with a child, you know, doing those kind of hard things.

Yeah.

And being able to ask questions of yourself. Okay, what are my highest values? You can say out loud, my kids are the most important thing to me. But I'm a Professional bodybuilder. Still. I won six Olympias, but I'm going for seven because I selfishly just want more success. But it's sacrificing time with my family, stress at home, my ability for my daughter to play with me because I'm tired. Like, being able to actually reflect internally and be honest enough with yourself. If you're really living up to what you say is most important to you, and then having the courage to make the changes to do that and to continuously be that best version of yourself and smart enough to understand what that even is.

Yeah.

To yourself.

Wow. I. I think that might be the best answer we've gotten, dude. I really do. You know, I love that you. I love that you have the courage to admit that you don't have all the answers. I mean, it might be the most humbling thing I've ever seen anybody do, because I think in your position, people look up to you and think, he's got all the answers.

Yeah.

And I love that you're still just figuring it out, you know, what your afterlife after professional life is going to be like. I think that's one of the most profound answers ever. If my audience wants to know more about you, where can they find you?

Instagram is C Bum. YouTube is Chris Bumstead okay? Not hard to find it. Google my name. People are good at the Internet these days, you know.

There you go. Well, you got 25 million people that know where to find you, so you're doing just fine for yourself.

Appreciate it.

Chris, this has been amazing.

Thank you for having me on the privilege and excited to learn lots more from you.

Oh, we're about to start our journey, too.

For sure. Yeah, we'll report back.

Maybe we'll jump back on in a few months and see how it's going.

Yeah.

And until next time, guys, that's just science.