S2:E16 - Mark Ottobre interviews Charels Poliquin on his Career

Ladies and gentlemen, today is a sad day in the world of strength, fitness, and performance. We lose a true legend today, Charles Poliquin. Charles has had an amazing impact on my career, and I mean so many other people's careers. And, you know, this, this for me is, is quite— yeah, it's, it's, it's quite— I don't know, I don't really have the words. I really wanted to say goodbye to Charles. I booked into November's course because I just had a feeling that maybe November would be his last and it'd kind of be the last time that I'd get to say thank you and actually goodbye in person to Charles. And now, I don't get that chance. And you know, Charles, wherever you are now, Thank you, sir. Thank you so much for raising the standard, being the example, and really putting trainers on the map and legitimizing this industry. And yeah, through, through all the haters, through all the difficulties that you, you insisted with and persisted with, rather, you know, you really did rise above and you, you made an impact. And listening back to this interview, I think those of you who know Charles will find it tough listening to this interview, and in a good way, not in a bad way, but you'll really remember the guy for the legend that he is. And he talks about in this interview what he wants to be remembered as. And Charles, I think, mate, you definitely accomplished that. So thank you. This interview was done in 2014, and I really hope you enjoy it. I haven't edited it since. It's got the same intro as what I did when I edited it. It got taken off iTunes because it's an old interview, but I thought today, wow, We've been trying to re-release our podcasts that I did back in the day in 2011 to 2016. Some of them are still available, some of them are not. But yeah, wow, this one, given the day, I thought, wow, we've gotta re-release this and share it with the people. So thank you, Charles. Thank you for everything. You've impacted my life.

You've made me better.

You've made so many other people better. And for that, you know, we're just all— for those who got to know you and learn from you, we're all very blessed. So thank you. We love you.

And may you rest in peace.

This podcast is proudly brought to you by Enterprise Fitness, Melbourne's premier personal training studio. Hey, hey folks, it's Maximus Mark and welcome to the show that punches you in the face with information. but in a good way. And today's guest is Charles Poliquin, the Muhammad Ali of the strength and conditioning world. Charles has left a legacy on health, fitness, and strength. Having trained a multitude of strength coaches and personal trainers around the globe, he has raised the standards of health, fitness, and strength worldwide. Poliquin is where the leaders of this industry turn to for advice, and with good reason. Having trained countless Olympic medalists and a multitude of, in a multitude of different sports, and more world champions than you can poke a stick at, Charles is the real deal. Today's podcast is about how Charles Poliquin became Charles Poliquin, one of the world's most, if not the world's most successful strength coach. With greatness and influence over an industry comes a mixture of support and challenge. And in today's show, I don't want to ask questions about, hey Charles, what nutritional supplement do you recommend? Or hey Charles, what training protocol can you recommend to help my bench press? No, that information is out there, and to do a service for yourself, I'd highly recommend you get yourself down to a lecture or a course that Charles is running, you go on his site to find out where that is. Just get yourself down there. No, today's show is for the real fans, the ones that will still be here in 10, 20 years. So if that's you, I thank you for tuning in. Today we find out how Charles became Charles. It was Sir Isaac Newton who said, stand on the shoulders of greatness, not in their shadows. Or stand— another way to say it, stand on the shoulders of giants, not in their shadows. Well, what does that really mean? Well, to me and a lot of other people, Charles is a giant in this industry. So I hope this interview gives you— this interview is here to inspire you to see where someone like Charles, who has absolutely achieved greatness in the field of health, strength, and conditioning, how Charles Poliquin started. And I hope from learning about his story, it inspires you to do your own unique thing in whatever field that may be for you. Enjoy the podcast and I will speak to you guys on the other side of this awesome podcast. Alrighty, welcome Charles, welcome to the show. Absolute pleasure to have you on. Today obviously we'll be talking more about, you know, everyone always asks you questions about how to train, how to diet, all these kind of things. What I wanted to do today was really reflect on your career and the amazing career that it's been so far. So I wanted to start with an easy question. What was it like for you growing up as a kid?

Well, I'm a recovering Catholic, so I grew up in a family of 8 kids with what it entails. I mean, it's good. My father was a journalist, so he was very well educated, spoke 9 languages. And my mother went back to school when she was 46, became a lawyer. She still had 8 kids at home. So, you know, I've learned the value of working hard from a very early start. It was good.

We—

my father was big into education and, you know, didn't shove it down our throats. But, you know, he— like I said, I've learned the value of it from him. And we— and of course, having multiple siblings, you learn quite a few skills for life.

And then, um, so you were, you were the youngest, or fifth?

Fifth. Yeah. And then we lived in France for 2 years, which exposed us to, again, different cultures. My father was big into taking Sunday trips, so we drive to Belgium, go to Switzerland, stayed in Spain for 2 months. So very early on I got to appreciate other cultures and other languages. So it— I think it's really good for a child to see that more than your neighborhood or your country. And very few people that I meet— I mean, not my students, but traveling overseas— I'm always amazed at some people I've never left their town. I mean, I've got so many employees when I used to work in Rhode Island, they only sell the state of Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and that was it. And they explained a lot of their frame of mind.

Yeah.

So did you play sports as a child? What led you to—

I did a lot of martial arts early on, and then in, again, in there you You learn discipline, you learn hard work, especially the sensei I had who was a narrowish guy that was quite tough on us. I mean, if he did today what he did back then, he probably would have got arrested. But for us in Canada, you know, with the hockey mentality, a lot of things get accepted there. Hitting the students. For me to get hit by a bamboo stick on a calf or on a wrist if I was not aligned properly, to me it was normal. I would do that nowadays, I'd be in jail. So the thing is, is that you learn, you learn very early on, um, there's no such thing as ADD. When you get hit with a bamboo stick, your memory improves. Pretty dramatically.

Yeah, and so you did martial arts. How, how far did you take that as a child? It's still something you practice today?

Youngest ever black belt in karate, right? And then after that, once I became a black belt in karate, I studied jiu-jitsu, became a black belt in that, and I've done 6 different ones.

So as a child, you started— what age did you start martial arts? 10. So from there, that really— would you say that, that was the entry point into health and fitness that basically sparked your interest on how to punch harder? I suppose? Is that how the story goes?

What happened is that the way I got into that is that, you know, again, as a kid I was very disciplined. So one day they announced a snowstorm on the news and I didn't want to miss, so I got up an hour earlier. I knew the buses wouldn't be running and I walked to the dojo in the snow, snow up to my mid-thigh. I showed up. I was the only kid who showed up. So my sensei said, well, if you're willing to wait, I'll work out and I'll drive you home because there's no buses. So I said, sure. So what are you going to do? He goes, I'm going to lift weights. And back then, you got to realize, in 1975, lifting weights was for weirdos. But oddly enough, Bruce Lee was into lifting weights and Bruce Lee was saying to everybody in martial arts world that lifting weights made you faster, punch harder, blah, blah, blah. And my sensei was big into lifting weights. So I worked out with him and then I was bit by the iron bug. We had a small weight room, probably the size of my dining room in the corner of the dojo and lifted there. And then my brother who always took good care of me, was the second oldest one, gave me— oddly enough, some guy owed him money, the guy couldn't pay him, so he paid him with weights. So I had cheap cement-filled plastic discs. You know, they didn't weigh the same. So as I made pocket money, I would buy metal weights. You know, a few pounds here and there, and I sort of built a weight room in my house in my mother's basement. And then by age 17, I was big enough that I bought my first Eleiko set. And I bought my Eleiko set from working as a busboy in a sushi restaurant. So I guess Omega-3s paid for my Eleiko weights. But you realize an Eleiko set is not exactly cheap. And at 17, to own your own liquor sets means commitment.

Yeah.

And then I came across a welder who made homemade equipment. So I started to make homemade equipment and then training that. And then I got into university very young, I was 17, and I was training in a weight room. And the guy on the national volleyball team said, hey, you're pretty strong, can you help me out with my programs? And he was my first client. It turns out he was one of the best volleyball players in the world. I got him strong, and then a friend came the next summer to train with them, and a third friend, and then, uh, by the time I was 21, they offered me to, um, train the national volleyball team. So that was my first national team contract. It was also the first time that anybody in Canada ever got paid to be a strength coach by the federal government. And I got a whopping $400 as an honorarium for my whole work for the year. But you got to realize that back then, there was no strength coaches. And the industry has moved a lot. I remember when I went to get my NSCA CSCS in '84, the average salary for strength coach in the US at that time was $15,000. So do the math, it's about $7.50 an hour. If they work at a college level, that's probably more like $4 an hour. So nowadays, Division III Strong coaches make $75,000. Some guys, they make half a million, plus car, plus this, plus house, plus tuition for their kids, meal allowance. So probably something around more like $750,000 a year. So the industry has changed a lot, but I've been through it all as it went through the years.

So as a child, when you were doing martial arts, did you ever dream of being a martial artist, or was the dream always there to develop nutrition, training, and supplements methods and then travel the world teaching them?

No, actually, when I was a kid, I wanted Tarzan's job. I thought he had a pretty cool job. Didn't have to get dressed to go to work, save, you know, people from the bad guys, live in the jungle. It took me a while to realize it wasn't a job. All kidding aside, I thought Captain America was pretty cool.

Yeah.

Like any other kid, we had superheroes, and then superheroes were buffed, you know. So as a kid, I can't not remember admiring strength, but very much so in French-Canadian culture because of Louis Cyr. For centuries, men who were strong were admired, so In France, they're admired for bad breath and smoking. In French Canada, they're admired for being— Yeah. So, you know, as a kid, even in grade school, they would tell us folk stories of guys that were very strong or powerful. I mean, there was a guy that was famous for winning all these bar fights. And I remember in grade 2 reading a paper, like it was a kind of a magazine for kids, and there's an article about a guy who could kick people in the head really well, and he was a French Guinean hero. So it's a lot different from country to country. So strength has always been praised, and you know, there's guys, for example, from my father's village, their stunt is they would put a horse on her back and climb a telephone pole to show how strong they were. So I mean, strength was all over my culture. You know, the Turks are like that too. I mean, there's quite a few cultures that admire strength. In Finland or Iceland, strength is admired. You know, some countries, they don't give a shit. So when you have that in mind, as far as the nutrition, My father used to read Adele Davis, which was one of the first popular nutritionists. And because he was a journalist, he went to her press conference, bought her book, and then my father got into like the high protein breakfast. He went on a crusade, so we weren't allowed to leave the house unless we had high protein. And basically for him, his father was a butcher, right? And my other grandfather was a nutmeg. Milk, eggs, meat were staple as a kid. So luckily for me, I didn't grow up on Captain Cocoa Puff.

Was there a moment for you where you basically said— because it sounds to me like you had a few different avenues. You could have basically gone into a sport or a discipline like martial arts and developed yourself as an athlete. But you went the other path. You went the path of coach. So was there something that influenced that path of going from—

I would say part when I started to lift weights. I just got— this is what happened. I grew up Catholic, so Catholic kids, you got to go to church. I had to go to church on Sundays, and I hated it, to be frank. I thought it was so boring, and I thought it was super critical. I mean, I saw some people sitting at church, and I knew what they did outside the church. I wasn't really Impressed. And then one day I said, screw that, I'm not going. So beside the church, there was a university and the university library. So it was basically 400 meters from it. So instead of going to church at 10, at 10 I was in the university library and I went in the magazine section and I came across a Belgian periodical, scientific periodical called Kinesiology. And the first article I ever wrote was on arthritis and the knee. Search me. Catholics will tell me it was God giving me a message, but that was your path, I don't know. But I got really interested, so then I said, okay, is there anything on weight training? So I learned how to use the— back then, I mean, there was no internet. We used the Dewey Classification Index, which actually was invented by Edgar Hoover, the FBI guy. So I went upstairs and I read everything they had in French on weight training, bodybuilding, weightlifting. Didn't take long, maybe 8 or 9 books because it was not that popular as a topic. But interestingly enough, I have those books now, I bought them, and some of these guys had better stuff than what's coming out than most internet sites now. For example, people talk about bands, "Oh, I invented bands." Well, I could show you a book from 1948 where the guy's using bands attached to weights. So, you know, it's kind of ironic when people claim all these things.

1948, wow.

So I read these books and then guys were talking about eccentric training and pause isometrics. So And then I said, well, I got to read more. And there was only stuff in English. So I said, well, I better learn how to speak English. So I had some English at school, so I would read, pull out the dictionary. And of course at 10:48, I would beat out of there to look like church goes at 10:50 and I'd be home for my second breakfast. No one ever noticed. So I did that for years. And then one day my father says, okay, you guys do whatever you want. You don't have to go to church. That had been only 3 years since I'd gone, but I kept that masquerade forever. And then we, by then I spoke English fluently. Then I started to notice that the best stuff was German. So I said, okay, I'll learn German. So I taught myself German and when I was 21, I took German formally after my undergrad and studied it. And then I learned Russian, which didn't really give me an advantage because it takes too long to be proficient in Russian. But what I did find was German translations of Russian books. So because, you know, the East Germans back then would get a lot of their information from the Russians. And that's basically how I educated myself at strength training, because at the university, even though I was doing a kinesiology degree, we were— in 4 years, we had about half an hour on strength training, right? You know, back then it was aerobics, aerobics, aerobics, aerobics, aerobics, aerobics. If you lift weights, you're going to die, you're going to have patellar tendon cancer.

I mean, there was So were you very, very much the, the outcast of your class?

Oh yeah, oh yeah, I was the weirdo. Yeah, and then it was a weight room, you know, a really small weight room for university, and only the football players and the closet meatheads would train in there. And once I finished my degree, weight training started to become popular. So this is like 1982. So there was an economic crisis back then. So I got hired by university, but I had like 7 jobs, 7 part-time jobs. And what I did is I convinced the athletic director to improve the weight room. So I got 2 weight rooms and I upgraded the equipment. It was about 1984. And then I made the money, made university money. So this is the first time they were actually making money. Even they were charging $32 a semester to train the students, which is obviously not much, but it became very rewarding for the university. And then by then, I would say '84 was a turning point in the industry. So that's when strength coaching started to become accepted as a thing, and then more and more guys would do strength programs for national teams.

What do you think, '84? What happened in '84 that, that switched the industry?

I think in the US was the LA Olympics came, you know, to the US. So there was like, okay, we need to produce What do the bad communist guys do that we don't do? And the Russians lift weights and East Germans lift weights and we don't and we should. So, and what happened is that a lot of Canada's track coaches and swimming coaches, diving coaches, gymnastic coaches were actually refugees from the communist bloc. So they were like, "Hey, where's the weight room?" "What do you mean a weight room?" So then people got into having weight rooms. So that was a change in the industry, a big change in attitude.

So you've spoken before about the search for the perfect program, and I think you said once in the '90s you thought you found the perfect program, and you realized— you started training everyone using the kind of same system, and then you had a realization that there is no such thing as the perfect program. So when was it that you realized that there is no such thing as the perfect program? Program and yeah.

No, actually it was in '82. I got through friends copies of every world record holder in powerlifting, this program. So Marv Pascoli helped me out and he had his friend Michael Lambert who gave him programs and through a lot of begging, bribing, or whatever else, I got copies from the Communist Bloc on weightlifting So I did a meta-analysis of everybody and I saw some common trends. Where I screwed up was actually in '92 after having 5 medals at the Olympics. I thought that I discovered the best way to train and it turned out it was horrendous because there was too much variation in it. It only took me a summer to figure out that I screwed up. It took me 4 months, but then after that, you only— this is what they say, good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment. So I made bad judgments, gave me experience, they came to good judgment. And that's when I realized that there was 3 types of athletes. I didn't invent that concept. I mean, Bondarchuk talked about that, Lou Ferriger talked about that. And basically you have volume respondents, you've got variation respondents, and you got intensity response when we're talking about the strength training world. So after that, I started to change my philosophy, and then, I mean, I always be— I've always been big into individualization of training. So, and for the biggest— yeah, go ahead.

I was gonna say, for the record, how many gold medalists, Olympic gold medalists, have you actually trained?

I don't Lost count. Gold? Not that many. I've had, I don't even remember. At least in the medalists, at least it's 17 different sports, it's an average of 3, probably between 50 and 60. I basically didn't even bother counting. The ones that I know is like 10. The ones I'm most proud of is world record holders, and that's in 10 different sports. The reason why I'm more proud of that than Olympic medals is that if you run, swim, lift, whatever, the fastest in the world, and no other humans have ever done it, for me, that's something to be proud of. To win an Olympic gold, yeah, it's great, but you were the best guy on that day, but it doesn't mean you're the best guy in the world. Right?

Yeah.

Some guys choke out or get injured or they got a family issue which messed up their prep, whatever. But to set a world record, like in speed skating alone in world championships, I think it was '94, I had 14 or 17 medals. So, you know, that was a big year. '94 was a big year for me. I think in '94 I had 7 world champions. But 6 of them were female. I always thought it was easier to coach women. One, there's less competition, but two, they don't have an ego like guys do, so they tend to listen to what you say.

Yeah, definitely.

Young males tend to say, "I'll improve it." So the guy who didn't improve what I gave him is the guy that actually won the World Championships. So the thing was, after that, Once I realized I was more successful with females, I realized, okay, what's missing with the males? So then I figured out how to motivate them better. So every— it's the growth mindset. You have to— you look at all the successful coaches, they're never happy. I mean, or the athletes. I remember being on the bus going back to the airport after the Olympics, and every single Olympics I went to, I went to 3 of them, my athletes would give me a report on how they did and what they wanted next. So this girl had just won a bronze medal. She was, okay, Lilly Amherst is coming in 2 years. I need to win the gold. I only won the bronze. This is what you need to work on. But she had just won the medal a few days before. And she was already organizing her year. Yeah. For the next 2 years. So that's a common trait I've had. The guy I worked for who was one of the best mentors was Yves Nadeau. He's had over 286 medals in World Cups or World Championships or Olympics. And after every Olympic, he would give me a report card, literally like A, B, C, DF, you know, and he would say like, I'm not happy with this, you better change that.

So was it in the '90s that you really got onto the functional medicine and functional physiology and researching things like this to improve, or when did that really come into play for you?

Uh, probably '95. I was always big into supplements and maximizing recovery, but In '95, I started to realize, well, there's more than just protein and carb shakes, you know. So I got into that, and then in '98, I was invited to take a functional medicine course, and I slipped through the crack. It was only offered to medical doctors, but some reason I got in, and then I met Jeffrey Bland, who started the IFM. And then after that, it was a big revelation. I said, okay, I gotta change. I was always used to the concept of working with a team, but once I met a few doctors— but also when I worked in Monaco, I met the first, probably one of the first functional medicine practitioners in the world. He was a French guy, and I was amazed at how fast he could make the guys recover. And I remember I had overtrained All the guys, and some of them basically had almost mono from the overtraining, and the doc showed up and he pulled out 60cc syringes and made these cocktails. I mean, there's nothing bad in it, but he shot up everybody and then they all got out of bed like nothing had happened. And we went to the gym and this bobsled guy did 5RM with his 1RM. So I said, hmm, maybe he's got a point. At lunch I asked the doctor what's in it. He goes, well, this is a thing called the Myers cocktail, but this guy taking it to the extreme. And then every time he showed up, he had all these kits, you know, to make the guys recover. And then I said, you know, the guys have poor concentration. He goes, I'll take this and this. They were two benign ingredients. There are products available in France. He goes, alone they don't do much, but once you combine them, they do great. I was like, really? So I give it to the athletes. They're, wow, this stuff really works. At that time, my girlfriend was studying to be a cop, but she couldn't remember all the codes, you know, for the different types of crimes going on. I said, "Hey, try this." And then she was blown away how her short-term memory improved and how she could study. So once I got into that, then he showed me things like, for example, vitamin E. I had my antitoxin profile done, and we're talking here 19— 1993. Okay, this is over 21 years ago. He said you have too much D-alpha tocopherol, you're deficient in gamma tocopherol, blah blah blah, and you have the wrong fractions of tocopherols because you need to take this vitamin E and you're actually doing yourself harm by taking too much of the wrong antioxidant. Now they're talking about it in functional medicine, but this guy has been saying that since '93, and I remember being in '98 at a conference and Jeffrey Bland said, asked the audience, "Can you take too much alpha-tocopherol?" And I raised my hand and said, "Yeah, actually, you know, there's a ratio between gamma," blah, blah, blah. And the guy looked at me like, "How do you know that?" Because it was just newly in the literature. But that French guy, he had all the data. Years before everybody else.

Needless to say, after that experience, you were hooked and just had to learn more, hey?

Yeah, and I said it, you know.

You said that once at 21, you consulted for the New York Giants. Am I getting that right?

Yeah.

How did you find yourself as a 21-year-old consulting for a major pro team?

What happened is that I already had results, and then Some guy, the strength coach for the Giants was Johnny Parker, and Johnny asked around, and my name was, oddly enough, this is before the internet. My name came up a few times. He said, this guy's very young, but he's pretty smart. So he called me, and oddly enough, the next day, the strength coach for the Denver Broncos called me, flew me in for consults, and both teams met in the Super Bowl that year. So at number 1 and 2, I could solve it for her. But by age 21, because of Pierre Roy, I had learned quite a few things about sets and reps, and I was ahead of the game. I think mathematically, and I give entirely the credit to Pierre, I knew the math, the right math for sets and reps, tempo, rest intervals. I was doing tempo I was maybe 19 years old, right? And then, so that was very, very young. And now it's like maybe 50% of strength coaches do that. So it, I was ahead of the curve probably 20 years before everybody else. But a lot of it had to do with the fact that I could speak German. And, you know, I would spend all my spare money. I would go to Finland, I would go see Dr. Komi, then I'd go see Dr. Schmidt-Bleicher in Freiburg University in Germany. So I invested a lot of money, like all my top students do, whether it's you or Nick Mitchell or Kelly Martinovich or Juan Carlos Simon. All the guys who lead the industry, or any industry for that matter, are information junkies. But the biggest difference is that they apply it. I see guys that take a lot of seminars, but I can tell by their business that they learn but don't apply. So applied knowledge, not applied, is a waste of time and money. Absolutely. So I learned early on that you need— so I read 16 hours a week minimum on training. This week is my week off from work, so I'll probably end up reading 32, 40 hours.

Wow.

What would you say—

So I was going to ask, what would you say was your breakthrough moment in your career?

The inflection point?

Yeah.

I would say it was probably '92. After going to the Olympics, just the fact that you go to the Olympics is different than sending people to the Olympics. So the government recognized that having a strength coach there could make a difference. So bobsleigh took me over. And then Canada won 7 medals in that winter sport, and 5 of the medalists were mine. So after that, my market value— so my name got into the paper quite a bit. And then the national teams who had not hired me yet all offered me positions. I had a lot of part-time jobs, you know, and I would— so that's why I got to do a lot of national teams. But I think once I switched from summer sports to winter sports, which was '88, I mean, there's always a few inflection points. But I would say '92 was the greatest where, for example, one hockey team hired me not to work in hockey. So they paid me for a year and basically I was told don't work. And I was like, I asked the guy, why are you paying me not to work? He goes, I don't want you to help anybody out. I'm restructuring the team. I don't want you to increase market value of any players. I mean, it's rare that I hear that. She had paid not to work. So, and then '95, the internet started to get popular. I remember being at a conference and somebody asked me for my email address. What? I didn't know what it was. It was just starting with AOL.com. And then, but now, we get emails to our phone. So, and my daughter, she doesn't know that at the Explanatory there was not email when I was a kid, or cell phones. And then we've become, I mean, for example, today I was reading a piece where the guy says time management is dead. And I would say that's true because when I was starting up, I would read books on time management and have these ABC systems, you know. And now it's like, screw it. It's basically the power of focus. And if I've learned something in the last 2 years, it's that I've worked way too much. So if I knew then what I know now, I would have worked less and probably spent more time educating myself. With computers, you know, there was a lot of advantages. Also in '92, I went to the Olympics, met— I was coaching a guy, a few skaters, they won medals, and then the long track skaters, they can yell us out. So I got a contract with long track speed skating after my success with the short track. And then the guy said— I would send my programs on Word. He goes, you're an idiot. He goes, why don't you use a database? I said, what do you mean? Like, I barely knew how to turn on a computer. So for me to write programs on Microsoft was a lot better than typing— I mean, than handwriting. So he built me a database, which eventually became my strength software. But the point was, is that once the database was set, I could write programs in a fraction of the time, which allowed me to take on more national teams. So in '92, that was another inflection point, technology getting in. I mean, there was quite a few things that were synergistic. I had success, I had better equipment. All those things. But I worked from '86 to '98 in the summers. It was common for me to work 20 hours a day. Wow. So that's great. I always say, hey, this guy's lucky, you know, look at all these pretty— well, you know, one thing anybody successful will tell you is high correlation between how hard you work and how successful you are.

Absolutely.

So You know, these things like, oh, I gotta do a 37-hour week. I mean, you still, I think you still have to do 70 hours, but the thing is, is that you have to learn to focus on the one thing. So that book, The One Thing by Gary Keller, I think is probably the most important book one should read. I wish I Gary had written that when I was 12 years old. Yeah. And then by reading The One Thing 2 years ago, I've actually been able to work less and less and enjoy more free time. So now my daughter is old enough for us to spend a lot of quality time together, and we enjoy the same things. She loves martial arts, she loves to shoot, she loves to run, she loves— so For example, we're going a month to Sweden just to do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And then we get a cultural experience between workouts. We go see museums and stuff like that. Excuse me.

So let me ask, a principle of life, the closer you get to your goal, the less motivated you can often become to achieve it. So for example, if you want to be a millionaire and you you make, let's say, $950,000, you can start to lose motivation because you're getting very close to your goal. Now, I use that as an analogy because you've already undeniably left and you've built a legacy and now you undeniably left a legacy on the industry. So I suppose my question is, what is keeping you going? What makes you, after all these years, why are you still pushing the boundaries of what is possible? I mean, you've run so many seminars, you've written so many books, your blog, all those kind of things, but your schedule that you keep now It still sounds as intense as it was many years ago.

Well, here's the deal. If you live your passion, you don't really work. Good point. Everything I do, I actually enjoy it. And if one thing I've learned is to delegate more and then I would say one of the biggest mistakes I've made was not to delegate, right? And then because I wanted things to be done right, which is not very smart. I mean, there's a lot of guys who could do some of the menial stuff. So once I start to delegate, like for example, giving a guy a contract to make me a software, that helped out a lot. And then You know, I can't see myself retiring. To me, that's not even a concept that goes into my brain. I mean, I can see myself working less and doing even more stuff that I enjoy to do. But— go ahead.

I was going to say, so in your eyes, in your career, what do you feel is not hasn't been done yet. So what's left not done in your eyes?

This weekend I gave a private seminar to Utah State University on strength training for football. So I only had the coaching staff and they brought 6 or 7 of their best players. They asked me to evaluate them and tell them what to do. It was a great weekend, but I was like, I'm amazed that some stuff should be like general knowledge and it's not yet. So that keeps me motivated. I really like working with the guys. The coach who brought me in, his name is David Schultz, but the guy is like, I can see a lot of me in him at his age. One thing I've never done was taking a job in the pros full-time. I would do one of those jobs like in soccer just to prove the soccer, how retarded the sport is and how much you could improve. I mean, if I see a sport with a lot of potential, it's soccer. But the one thing that's been shown is hitting the ball with your head so often creates ADD and loss in IQ. So maybe these soccer players who become soccer coaches and soccer general managers are dumb from playing soccer. Maybe it's not their fault.

Yeah, I tell you what, it would be fun to watch if you coached a team, you know, big soccer players playing, you know, midget soccer players basically.

You know, the thing is that I've been to pro soccer games and the speed is so slow for what it could be. Watching paint dry is more exciting. Watching Amorites recess. I mean, it's a waste. So, I mean, if you— the best thing they could ever do for soccer is take those guys and take them to an NFL locker room and show them how deficient they are. Yeah, I remember being— I've been in about 5 of the top one of the best pro soccer clubs in the world. And you look at the guys in the locker room, and if you told me you're at a shoe salesman convention, I would believe you. There's no indication whatsoever that these guys are athletes. You go to a hockey locker room or a rugby locker room or an NFL locker room, you'll see some studs. Yeah, but in soccer, so just to prove a point, I'd like to take a team for 3 years. Obviously, with what I just said, I'm not going to make friends and influence people, but I would say, I would say that's a sport that could do a lot better.

Yeah, I know we're short on time, so I just want to get in a couple of quick questions. What was the biggest challenge you faced along the way in your career?

Um, the biggest challenge I would say is all the myths, like you can't full squat, it's going to injure your knees, uh, you're going to get big, therefore you'll get slow. I was able to reverse those myths in hockey. For example, starting hockey, I had to go with that, but after 4 months No one ever asked those questions ever again. Hmm. Because guys that I was training showed up bigger, but they were faster, meaner, more feared, and they were winning. And every guy that I trained was doubling to tripling their salary. So guys would say, hey, I guess gaining 9 kilos helps with your career. So then the guys could put 2 and 2 together, so it wouldn't even bother asking the question. And when I stopped What was interesting, it was one of the biggest selling features from other athletes was like, hey, go train with him, you don't have to do cardio. Yes, I want to try that. And guys were like, would verify in the first interview, is it true you don't do cardio? I said, that's right. They go, oh, cool, man. Like, well, before they would worry about it. And once I built a reputation, no one bothered that. And then the first year, oh, full squats are bad. My athletic trainer told me that. Shut up, just do what you're told. And then after that, guys would come in, they wouldn't even bother to ask you the question or even dare to ask it. And then, you know, when I said, okay, you got to cut carbs, that was another one. I mean, all the standard myths around, I had to disprove them. But after a while, once you have the reputation, and those myths don't even get brought up.

Results speak louder than words. Results speak louder than theories.

That's right.

Yeah, yeah. And what would you want to be remembered for by the industry?

Well, that's a good question. I think One thing that's been well demonstrated is that no one has had the same amount of success in a short amount of time.

No one has had what, sorry?

The same amount of success with Olympians as I did.

Yeah.

That's clear. Will someone ever beat me at that? Well, so far, no one has even come close. The guy who's come the closest was a Norwegian man, which I respected a lot, unfortunately. The reason why I say respected is because he passed away. I would still respect him. Him and I had very similar traits and personality. And we didn't see each other as competitors. We used to share actually quite a bit of equipment. Not equipment, sorry. Information. So we didn't perceive each other as a threat or competition. So he, for example, taught me a lot on eccentric training. I always did eccentric training, but with him, he was better at adjusting loading parameters. He showed me techniques on how to do eccentric training that I'd never seen. He was a very good man, and we actually used to compete against each other in the same sport, but we were more interested in improving performance than competing against each other. So, you know, and there's a lot of very good guys I've met. Louis Simmons quite a few times. He's the same type of guy. Him, he just cares about lifting more weight, so he will share it with you. So you look at the guys at the top of the game, they actually have zero secrets when you go with them. And what you'll find is they'll show you what they do, and they will also ask you what you do. Well, you will find that the losers will show you what they do and not ask you what you do. The guys with no results, and they assume that there's nothing better than them. Absolutely. For example, this summer I'm going to Eastern Europe to visit a guy who is from Romania, and he has the most success getting guys to squat a lot of weight. Success leaves clues. Everybody that goes to that club gets very strong legs. I wanna know how he does it. So I don't have the pretension that I know it all. It's like, if I could spend, let's say, an afternoon with Mark Houston, I feel like Forrest Gump because I don't know much about cardiovascular disease. If I spend the afternoon with Bishan Purat, I realize I need to learn about insulin resistance. If I spend, you know, with David Perlmutter, I need to educate myself on the brain. So I think a secret to success is what Carol S. Dweck calls the growth mindset. So as far as legacy, as an epitaph, I guess I would like to be remembered as the man that brought the strength training world forward. But, you know, I've had so many teachers that, you know, on my epitaph, they'll be there. So also credit those teachers. So yeah, what I'm really proud though of is how well my students do, because the strength coaching profession, like I said, In 1984, guys made $7.50 an hour if they were lucky. So now it's a recognized job and people get paid very well, and a lot of people forget that or didn't even know they didn't pay well. So in 1994, the highest paid pro strength coach made $150 grand. Now number 10 in the US at the college level probably makes $350 grand. So the industry has changed quite a bit, and now people value how well strength training can do for you.

Well, I know all good things must come to an end, and I know we're running short on time, so before we say goodbye, what's on the cards next for you?

Well, the Bioprint is the new system I developed for body composition. It's doing extremely well, and there's more and more demands. Every class is sold out. So I'm refining the protocols, uh, and then trying to refine some of the algorithms so we can pick up more stuff. That's on the cards. Um, I'm looking at doing more work that's in the plan for the fall. I'll be working with the top functional medicine doctors in the US to do lectures. So we're looking at doing lectures with Dr. Peratt and Dr. Houston on the treatment and the prevention of cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. And they want to put a large emphasis on the effects of strength training. So I'll be teaching the exercise part and these guys will teach nutrition. Supplementation and meds part. So it's, for me, it's a big honor to teach with the top 2 functional medicine practitioners in the world. So that's what's on the cards.

Awesome.

And of course there's a tour with Dmitry Klokov in Australia and Canada. I mean, Klokov is a beast and it's an honor for me to be able to share a teaching platform with him.

Yeah.

I've signed up for that, so I shall see you guys in Melbourne.

Alright, mate.

Yeah.

Thanks for the podcast.

Best place for people to learn from you is at Strength Sensei Facebook and the blog?

Strength Sensei Facebook, which will lead to my StrengthSensei.com website.

Cool. Thank you so much. On behalf of the fitness industry, I'd like to thank you for the contribution that you've made to strength coaches and personal trainers all around the world. So thank you, Charles. It's been an absolute pleasure learning from you over these years and also for taking time out of your busy schedule to do the podcast.

Yeah, well, thank you, Mark, and thank you for the audience for listening.

So there it is, guys, the Charles Poliquin Podcast. Now, this is something that I've been wanting to do for a while, and let me just back up for one sec. Just in case you're new to the podcast with me, I always like to give a summary after the show. Just sit in and listen up because I've always got something interesting to say. But nonetheless, this is something that I've been wanting to do for a while since having the podcasting show, and I've definitely been fortunate to interview pretty much all of the people that have really made an impact on the way I go about training, the way I go about doing nutrition, the way I go about doing supplementation and consulting. So Charles was really for me one of the people that I had to interview and obviously now our schedules aligned. Although I should say the planets aligned to make this happen. And finally I got the chance to interview him and I didn't want to do the standard show. If you guys could tell, I didn't want to do the, hey Charles, what supplement should I take? I didn't want to do that show because I believe that you can get that information from doing a BioPrint course. With Charles, or doing any really course with Charles. You know, it's not like he's not going to tell you. You pay for the money, you do his course, he'll give you the answer, right? So I want to do a show celebrating the career that is Charles Poliquin, or, you know, because it has been an amazing career if you really look at it. And whether you're a massive advocate of Charles Poliquin's philosophies like I am, or someone who's kind of on the fence, or someone who even is maybe a little bit negative towards it, undeniable the influence that Charles has had on the industry. Absolutely undeniable. It's absolutely amazing what he's accomplished. So that is something that should be celebrated. And as an example for people starting in this industry, or even people who've been in the industry like myself for quite a while, what is possible. And to have that influence over, over the industry and over the way things go. So I really wanted to take this time out just to thank Charles Poliquin for all that he's done, not only for myself but on behalf of all the strength coaches and trainers around the world. You know, you've really made a difference in my life, from my training, nutrition, to supplementation, to my business life. So personally and professionally, thank you, Charles. Thank you on behalf of the fitness industry. You're an absolute gem, and obviously, you know, you probably leave a legacy for many years to come. It's been an absolute pleasure learning from you all over these years and having you on my podcasting show. So thank you. And for the guys who are new to this podcast, I'm Maximus Mark Ottobre, Maximus Mark Ottobre, and I've got a blog which is www.maximusmark.com. It also streams on iTunes, and we've also got the Enterprise Fitness blog, which is hosted at enterprisefitness.com.au, so you can check that out as well. I run obviously a personal training studio called Enterprise Fitness in Melbourne. We run internships over there and we run two different internships. We do a How to Train the Female and basically a general internship for personal trainers wanting to expand their knowledge and both the courses are very different. So you can check those out at our websites. Additionally, I've interviewed, as I said before, a lot of different guests from Johnny Badd and Dr. John Demartini Andre Benoit, who was actually Charles's first assistant, Derek Woodskey, Scott Abel, Bruce Jones, Leah Keith, Dr. Art Devaney. I mean, the list goes on and on and on, and now it looks like the who's who list in health, fitness, and nutrition. So get yourself over, check it out. It has absolutely dynamite information on there. It's all content-rich. I know you guys will love it. But yeah, just if you would leave a review on iTunes, to help our ranking. That'd be much appreciated. And if you like the interviews that much, also you can share them on Facebook. So until I speak to you on the next podcast or blog post, I want you guys to supplement smart, train hard, and eat well. So there it is, guys, the Charles Poliquin Podcast. So if you're still listening to this, we're back It's Mark Ottobre.

Yeah, I mean, that podcast now is difficult to listen to. I didn't want to edit the outro or the intro. I wanted to leave it as is when I released it. But yeah, I suppose today has left me speechless, folks. Shows you how short life is and you've got to live it to the absolute fullest. If you want to learn, you want to step up, if you want to do the things you want to do in life, if you want to be great, you got to take charge. So Enterprise will be running an event in tribute of Charles. Stay tuned to our blog for details about that. And yeah, I don't really have much else to say.

So I'm going to go.

Peace out, my friends, and train hard, supplement smart, and eat well.