EP8

The Barbell Alchemy Podcast Episode 8 welcomes guest Big Rich Christensen, a former bodybuilder. Rich shares his love for bodybuilding and how he was inspired by Dave Draper and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He discusses his training experiences at Gold's Gym and the influence of Doug Deaver. Rich also talks about the use of steroids in bodybuilding and his own decision to use them. He reflects on his regrets and the challenges of the sport. Welcome to the Barbell Alchemy Podcast, Episode 8. Woo! You made it this far. We are now in the prime time. We want to thank all of you, all of our 83 audience members. And in special Episode 8 style, we actually have a guest for the first time. We'll be introducing him in a second. I will caveat the introduction with a snowflake warning. If you have feelings that are easily upset, you may want to just move on. These stories are going to be raw and real and unedited, because it doesn't make sense to edit out the story of the guest that we're having on the podcast. And today's guest is Big Rich Christensen, a former... I will let him do his bio. Actually he's looking at me. He's like, hey, that's my line. Anyway, all right. Rich, take it away. Introduction. Richard Christensen. Oh boy. Where did it begin? My love for bodybuilding started actually in the 1960s. And if I can, I had a long buildup through the NPC that I want to touch on. But I'll tell you the boring story first and get to the good stuff. I can remember reading comic books as a kid, blah, blah, blah, blah, and in the comic books were these ads for bodybuilders. And Dave Draper was the big bodybuilder at the time, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, always had women around, the surfer girls and whatnot. And I said, Dad, look at this guy. And I said, have you ever seen him? And he said, yeah, that's Dave Draper. He's the muscle guy. He does all the movies. And Dave was in the Beverly Hillbillies and the Monkees, and everyone's seen him. He was the blonde-haired bodybuilder whenever you need somebody in the 60s. And I said, where does he live? And he said, probably California. And I said, well, how did he get that way? Because you've got to keep in mind, I was like seven, so I didn't know. And he said, by lifting weights. And I said, God, I'd love to meet him someday. And he said, my dad said, you never know. You might. Life is funny. And I thought, well, how am I going to get to California? We're living in Virginia at the time. So fast forward, once again, the older I get, the more I realize how stupid I was and how smart my father was. And I thought it was just the opposite. I thought I knew everything. Years later, I'm training at his gym in Santa Cruz, befriend him and his beautiful wife, Marie, train with Bill Pearl at his gym. And it's just my love affair started there. But it wasn't until the early 70s when I went to the original Gold's gym, back when there was one. Right. The original. The OG. In fact, the picture you have of Arnold was right around the time I met him. He was preparing for the Olympia. He wasn't even at his apex in that picture. And I walked in there with my father, who is a very muscular weightlifter and a career Marine veteran of wars. And my father had a very commanding voice and presence about him. And Arnold walked over and I was just agog looking at him. I'd never seen it. It's hard for people to nowadays because we have the Internet. We've got photos. We've got TV shows. Back then, you never saw a bodybuilder. You never. And somehow they didn't exist in reality. They were only pictures in magazines. But when he walked towards me, he was just in those blue trunks they had. And that was it. He was training. And for some reason, I said, Mr. Schwarzenegger, how big are your calves? I'd never. And he said, two feet around like that. And I just I was looking at him. I couldn't believe the muscularity, the size. And he was he was training. Franco Colombo was doing deadlifts with 800 pounds in the corner. And then he'd follow that up with pull ups, 20 pull ups and a super set. Dave Draper was in their training. Frank Zane. It was like the magazine come to life. And it was right then and there that I said, obviously, I'm not going to get as good as one day. I said, I'm going to be a bodybuilder. And that's what it started. And then segwaying on is when I first met Doug Deaver. And Doug was such a character. Rest in peace, Doug. He was a he was a great guy. But he took me under his wing. He was he was training at the not training. He was managing the Europa Health Spa, which is just for geriatrics, you know, it was a job. But he trained at the Orange Avenue gym. And the Orange Avenue gym was a gym in Orlando. It's still there as a boxing entity. It's not a bodybuilding gym anymore. But it started in the 1950s under Milo Steinborn, who you guys heard of Milo Steinborn, one of the old time strongmen, turn of the century, 1900, you know, but he was old when he opened that in 1950 or something. And it was a hardcore gym. And Arnold trained there. And it was just training with Doug Beaver. And then when Arnold came to town, of course, he didn't remember seeing me as a punk kid a couple of years earlier, but I was training there and I got to watch Arnold and Doug Beaver and the way they trained and the intensity and just a couple of quick stories and then I'll shut up because I'm going on too long. I remember. Well, we've got time, Rich, don't worry, OK, Doug, who went on to I think he won the junior USA and the junior Mr. America. I don't think he ever won the America, but he was training alongside Arnold and I was just hanging on doing my I was just I did my set to give them time to rest. I was just up and coming before I started competing. Right. And Doug said to Arnold, he goes, Arnold, I'm using the 50s to curl and you're using the 40s, but your arms are so much bigger than mine. And Arnold said, well, that's that's because I use my biceps and you use your mouth and everything else to do. So even then, Arnold's focus between sets and I, I just want to impress upon the young weightlifters listening today. In that group, there was another bodybuilder, I think it was George Navarretta, who later went on to win the Florida. And he said, you know, he was he was talking about, oh, my God, after this, we've got to do pullovers and then we've got to do inclines and then we've got to do flies. And Arnold slammed the weight down. He said, no, we don't. We've got one set and it's a set we're working on. And it's like Dave Draper told me he had to. You can say what you will about him and I'll you know, I could tell you some stories, but he had the ability to focus. And like when people come into the gym today and they do nothing but play on their phone and bullshit and talk, I mean, refer to your phone, yes, but I'm talking today, they'll stay on it for 15 minutes. If you watched Arnold train, he was locked in to every set, every rep like nobody I've ever seen in my life. But anyway, that's how it that's how it started. And then I got the fever and started in the AAU thanks to Doug Beaver. So that's a lot of big names. If you guys want to go back and look at these actual pillars of bodybuilding is, you know, actually all the people he was naming are pillars. We have all of us have interesting questions. I will. Chris is completely fangirling right now, so I'm gonna let him go. Yeah. So how Richard described how he looked at Arnold. That's pretty much how I look at Richard whenever he I see him. That's, you know, I didn't ask about his calves, though, you know, about his forearm, king of the has-beens. That's me. No, no. So I guess I just want to stop. I know I know the topic is taboo. But at what point did you realize or did you just know going in that you had to use steroids? I had an inkling in the beginning. I had an inkling in the AAU. They had a whole series of smaller contests in Florida because at the time, and I'll answer the question, but at the time it was levels 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, then the regionals or junior nationals, nationals, regionals, and then the upper echelons. So you had to work your way up. So I did a number of those contests and I knew I had the propensity. I knew I had the genetics to really do something with this. How high? You know, there's too many factors, too many X factors. But watching the guys and listening to them and watching what they took, I can remember there's a person I mentioned a couple minutes ago. I remember sitting inside his office and he would, it's back in the days when you could just get anything from a doctor and he had bottles of Dianabol and he was just shoveling them into his face like skittles and I was aghast. But he was getting ready for the Mr. World Contest and I figured, well, wait a minute. Once you get past these beginning contests, you can have the greatest genetics in the world, but if you're going to train for a year and get up on stage against four or five other guys, why would you train for a year and then finish fifth out of the running out of the money out of everything? Everybody on stage is doing it. People think you can just take it and that will allow you to enter a top level show. No, no, no, no. You still have to do the work and therein, that's where it separates the wheat from the chaff. If you can train twice a day, pose for an hour a day, do cardio each and every day and limit your eating going up to the contest and be carb depleted, if you can do that, then you may win a contest, but just coming to the gym and working hard, it's not going to happen. So I had an inkling early on, but I trained for and competed for at least 10 years before I even touched anything. Oh, wow. So I had to bump it up to the next level, you know, so get to the mid-range. Eventually, I had a blowout of the heart right when I was at the finish line, but I had worked up. That was a long-winded way of saying, early on, I was lucky because I got to see how to navigate the bodybuilding world and what you had to do and that taught me that if I want to bump it up at some point, I'm going to have to make a conscious decision. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I guess my question for you is just, it's pretty vague, but do you have any regrets, whether it's training style or overall with bodybuilding? That's a fantastic question. The doctor at the Mayo Clinic, two of them, said to me as I woke up from my reverie of the drugs I was on after my quadruple bypass, do you have any regrets? And it's like I told them, I wouldn't do it now, but to have the life I led, I would do it again because I had a goal, I had a dream. I wasn't just doing it to do it, to go to the gym and do it. It was a goal and so, plus, no one can tell me that that alone caused the heart blockages. It exacerbated what was going on already inside, but it didn't cause that. The training, no regrets about the training because everybody says, well, if I would have known that 15 years ago, but this, I know you're going to laugh at me, but the joy is not the contest because you feel like shit in a contest. You feel like shit the day before, the whole week before and after. The joy is in the doing, building up to the contest, if that makes any sense. So the camaraderie, which was a key component back then, not so much now. Then the friendships, the fun, the laughter, the camaraderie, the parties after the show, that's the real sweet spot. That's what you remember. If I hadn't gone through trial and error in the beginning, it wouldn't have allowed me to reach. So I was glad I went through the trial and error, in other words, so no regrets with the training. I just, you know, I look back and say it is what it is. It was a ball and it opened my eyes because there is a seedy underbelly to the, even the amateur bodybuilding world, there's a seedy underbelly. But it was fun and you remember the friendships. I don't know if that makes sense. One of my questions would be, and I'm sure everybody who ever gets an opportunity to speak with a competitive bodybuilder, for a younger demographic, which are the guys in high school all the way up until their mid-twenties before they really know any better, what did you notice is the evolution of your training? Like how did you train when you first started versus maybe later on in your career when you were at that, you could say elite level, right? Where you were, you were doing two a days, as you mentioned, and also doing posing and what did that, what did your, that transitional period look like, you know, run, run through a workout day or something? Okay. Initially, to give you the, you guys tell me if I'm just prattling on to please prattle. Okay. I just want to give you the whole, the big picture. When I started, when I said I was so grateful for guys like Doug Beaver, he said, no, no, no, no, no, don't, don't do what I do. He was so far advanced. He goes, you've got to build the house first. And I thought, what the F is he talking about? And he said, no, when you go to build a house, you don't start working on the ornate window shutters, you build the foundation. So he said, learn how to squat, how to bench press, how to deadlift. And he had me on a modified reg parks, five by five. And it started with the bar and I was in the gym with some monsters. And I felt like I was getting frustrated. I felt like this sucks. I'm using a bar, but he said, unless you learn how to do it right, don't bother me. So I had to learn with the bar and do the basic building blocks. I started with that and started building a base and I put on muscle rapidly from there. He was doing contest training. I wasn't at that point yet. So I moved from the five by five into kind of a split training where it was like it was the old gold gym split with chest and back and then legs the next day and then shoulders and arms a third day and then you rest the fourth day and you just repeat the cycle. And what piqued my interest in everybody else's is that not only was I putting on size, but it was starting to become sculpted. So you realize, hey, I'm getting pretty good at this. This is, you know, I may not have 100 people. I'm certainly not number one, but I'm better than 95 out of 100 and I'm like number five. This is pretty good. It's working. Yeah, it's working. So after that, I finally graduated to the contest training where it was double splits and we probably trained too much back then. It was probably overtraining, but it was so much fun. That's what I said earlier when I was talking about the Diana Ball and the what not we were taking. We didn't just sit around and take scoops full like in the office, but I mean like a candy bowl full of it in the office. It was. But I think they came in little from Saiba and there were little blue little pills, different kind of blue pills. But we're talking about Viagra if you're playing the home game. It's a five milligram tabs and you take them throughout the day at different junctures. But it wasn't a ton. We weren't taking a ton of it. And all it did was give you the recovery of the nitrogen to recover faster so you could do more work. And for the youngsters, that's the key. So you could do more work. So we were overtraining, but we were compensating, getting the nitrogen, but that's that's how it is. And for a while, I went I was training with in Cleveland at the Overload Facilities, which is just Josh Trentine, a pro bodybuilder. And that was pure hit training like the old well, kind of I don't want to kind of what Dorian Yates did, but you remember the Colorado experiment experiment with Casey Viator and Arthur Jones in the 70s, it was more just massacre your body with force negatives to the point where you'd get off like the leg press machine fall over. Literally, you couldn't stand up. You're heaving. And that that helps put on size. It's not that won't help you get into competition shape, but it'll help you put on massive size that you can then spend the next two months chiseling into. So that's how my training evolved. Were you were you guys. So I guess now the bodybuilders cycle year round for. Did you guys cycle year round as far as your steroid use? Most did not. In fact, if you looked at Arnold back then, there were sweeping differences. He would after the Olympia, for instance, or when he did the universe, you'd notice he'd go to Austria for a month or two and visit his well, his dad has passed, but his mom and he was there was a noticeable difference. He dropped. So he wouldn't do it. There were guys. Everyone was chasing Arnold. So they figured, well, I'll just take more year round. But they called it bridging instead of taking testosterone and decadarabin and Arnold's favorite Prima Bola Depak, which is a very strong, clean, I mean, it won't put on massive size, but use in conjunction with what else he was taking, his genetics, it just exploded. But other guys use that to bridge saying, well, I'm not I'm not exactly taking a contact contest that, but I'm I'm bridging. But your bridge went on for six months, so you're taking a year long bridge. Yeah. So most most did not. But some did. I mean, for instance, Frank Zane was called the chemist. There's a reason, you know, he was very, very smart, you know, without there were people that took it. I guess my next question is, how is your stance on bodybuilding today? And what advice would you give to someone who is pursuing it right now? I want to I want to temper my response because I don't want to sound like an old buddy. Back in my day, everything was, but OK, then and now, then there was a strong sense of camaraderie where you train together, eat together after you train, you'd go to a restaurant down the street and the waitresses will all be a dog because there'd be 10 bodybuilders coming in there. You'd go to contests together nowadays because money's entered the picture. It's become more hype. Look at me. It's all about me and F.U. and you can swear this is the YMCA. There's a more haughty attitude now is that the camaraderie is not there anymore. And I admire the pro bodybuilders today look better than well, they're bigger than they ever have been. Better is subjective because it's a subjective sport, but it's an extreme sport. Back in the day, there was it was primarily training. And right before the show, you put on the final coat of paint with the anabolics. Nowadays, it's just as much anabolics and genetics as it is training. So the it's evolved, it's changed. It's not for me. Well, I couldn't do it after my heart problems anymore. But I admire the bodybuilders of today. But you've got to ask yourself, why are they dropping like flies now? The young ones, the Dallas McCarver and all these bodybuilders, they're genetic freaks. But I will say this, and I'm not castigating any of the guys because I admire them and the ladies that do it. But in the day you could put you could line up the Mr. Olympia competitors and put your hand over their heads and you could say, oh, that was Franco Colombo. That's Dave Draper. That's that's Arnold. That's Ken Waller. Just name a name. Nowadays, you cover them up and say, well, hell, I don't know. They all look the same because it's the same drugs. It's the same bloated physique with the gargantuan thighs that are too big and the calves that aren't big enough for the thighs. And it's just all about putting on meat and muscle. It's not aesthetic anymore. They've lost that. That's what's going on now. So to me, the classic physique for now is. It's just my opinion. It doesn't mean I'm right, but the classic physique is more about what bodybuilding should be. You're putting the body into proportion, symmetry, and you're like a living sculpture. The mass monsters of today aren't living sculptures, they're just monoliths. The classic physique guys are sculptures. But then again, that's just my opinion. And rightfully so, there's multiple categories. I mean, Chris, which category did you compete in? I just did men's physique. And so they have classic, right? They have the mass monster that you're referring to, which is what everyone, the open. Yeah. So that's the one everybody usually sees on the cover of Muscle Fiction magazine and bodybuilder.com. And then they have, what's, what is the other, there's other categories now, isn't there? Oh, yeah. It's a, you know, you go up from the Bantam weights to the middle weights to the, it's all sorts of subdivision wellness categories. So, but a lot of that is designed by the powers that be, like at the NPC that, here's money. Because this is, I know this is going to rub people the wrong way. Back in the day, they only handed out a handful of pro cards every year. A handful. Now they're handed out like candy. Why? Because to renew your pro card, it's hundreds of dollars a year times how many hundreds of people are getting it. If you finish second in a contest, theoretically, now you can get a pro card. But if you didn't beat anybody, how in the hell are you a pro? I don't get that. And not only do you say you get your pro card, you're like, oh, great, I got a pro card. Well, great. You and 10,000 other people know that. And then you hire a trainer for thousands of dollars. And then you buy a plane ticket. And then you buy the hotel room, not to mention all the super supplements you have to take to get there. So now you're in hock thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars. And you go there and instead of being in the cock of the walk and being in a local contest, now everybody on stage is 20 people and everyone looks just as good as you and you can put a piece of paper in between people. And you finish 20th. And then every time you enter a contest, it's a hundred some dollars to enter this division and that division, all the different subdivisions. So it's just it's that's what got away my long winded way of saying that's what got away from the fun and the camaraderie to more of a money making enterprise now, right? Do you think it's, I know it went on probably even back in Arnold's day, but I see it now even more so, so like just go back to say Ronnie Coleman, Jay Cutler, I'm not talking shit about Ronnie Coleman. I think he's a good bodybuilder, but I don't believe he deserved every one of his eight Mr. Olympia's. And I would say the same about Arnold. Do you believe that it's to they get to a point where everybody else is just competing for second, like the judges already know before prejudging who they want to win? No doubt. Even in I'm the biggest Arnold fan as a bodybuilder, as a bodybuilder, not as a politician or anything that's come since the biggest Arnold fan on the face of the earth. But in my humble opinion, and he doesn't give a damn what I think, but in my humble opinion, he didn't deserve the 1980 Olympia and people he did deserve when he when he broke through and beat Sergio Oliva. And if you look at 1974, just Google him in 74. People say, well, I've seen pictures of him when he didn't look like Mr. Olympia. He's the most photographed bodybuilder in the world. You might have seen him 10 years after that. He's a movie role weighing 205. He doesn't walk around looking like that. But if you if you Google 1974, Mr. Olympia, he would hold up to if you're going to go judging by the strict criteria they have. My God, even today, he would be his arms and his chest and his calves, his side chest. I mean, tell me three other bodybuilders in the last 10 years that can do a side chest like him, you know. But yes, the gifts were have been given out. I mean, I had some placings where, God, I was just so annoyed. But I this is going to sound like an excuse. But no, because I was in other contests where I said, well, I want it. I deserve to win it. And I was somewhere I finished third or fourth. And I said, no, I looked at the pictures and I said, no, they're right. I wasn't the best and I deserve to win. But I had some where I finished so low, I can remember one where it was like nine guys in my weight class and I finished fifth or sixth. And you look at the pictures and then lo and behold, I found out who there you go. Lo and behold, it you know, you find out that this person was dating the head judge or was doing there. There's there's all sorts of behind the scenes stuff and bodybuilding. The behind the scenes story and bodybuilding is some of the most fun and interesting things. Now we're going to get into the juicy part of it. So not to steal your question, but you're going to anyway, no to piggyback off to keep it down the behind the scenes. So well, this is probably going to ruffle feathers too, but steroids are expensive. And then you topple that with competition fees, you got to eat, you got to have a roof over your head. And I know there were allegations with Kai Greene dabbling into, I guess, gay porn. But I mean, that's not a new thing. I mean, you have to do something to be able to pay for your your livelihood. Was that going on even back, I mean, back in, say, Arnold's day? Very much so. And even predating Arnold's day, little backstory. When Arnold trained at Gold's, and around the time that the picture downstairs, Gold's was owned by Ken Sprague. Now, originally, just to backtrack just a minute, it was Gold's was created by Joe Gold in 1965. And he had it up to about 1970. And then there was some furniture salesman or some, I don't know what the hell he was. And he bought it for two years, thinking it was just some tax write off. But he was losing money because Zabo Kozlowski, who was another good bodybuilder, managed the place. And he was he was called the chief. And the reason he was called the chief, he was a great guy, and everybody loved him because he was they called him the chief of nothing. He never did anything. He would he would leave the gym, he would put the phone off the hook on the receiver, the old telephone, he'd go to the beach, which was just like a block and a half away. And guys are just coming out and not paying using the gym. And so that furniture dealer said, like, well, I do this is, you know, so I'm going to sell it to Ken Sprague and Ken Sprague bought it. And then Ken Sprague was a very handsome guy. And he was a model and he got into the old cult studios of the gay magazines and the gay movies and whatnot. A lot of bodybuilders help their bank accounts by doing a lot of those films that they've never thought they'd never see the light of day. So who cares? Or they do casting, mass casting calls and TV shows and just as background extras. But see, Ken owned he had enough wherewithal to buy property. The Gold's Gym started really booming and he had everybody, if he noticed, even in Pumping Irony, he had the crew and people in the background all wearing Gold's Gym shirts. So that created subliminal advertising. So those studios were a source of income for him and whatnot and doing legitimate films too. But that opened up the door to a lot of rich benefactors. And you got to think if somebody flies from Europe and wants to train at Gold's Gym and they're sleeping on the roof of Gold's Gym, they don't have a house, they're sleeping in the gym, taking showers in the gym. You got to eat. How do you make money? Well, there's a strong gay for pay undercurrent, especially even then where there's a lot of rich benefactors. And if you play the game, well, then you can be a bodybuilder. Do you think that played a factor in why Chris Dickerson did not win the Olympia? In 80? I think Chris was close. I'll answer the question. Menzer always had a tantrum about it, but you know, Menzer was fifth. If anybody should have been fifth, it should have been Chris Dickerson. He was second. I don't think by then Chris was so classy that he kind of, even though he made no secret that he was a gay man, he didn't, he wasn't being, he didn't throw it up in your face at the gym or he was there to train. So the 1980 Olympia, I mean, Arnold's friends, all the judges were his friends. And don't forget the guy, I forget his name now, Graham that promoted it was, Arnold was involved in a side business with, I think it was Paul Graham that Graham wound up going to jail and Arnold was in touch with some of those shady dealings going on. I'm not going to just say enough about that. But there's money involved, Arnold was promoting the new Conan movie and Chris Dickerson was just collateral damage. I don't think it had anything to do with him being gay with, because hell, judges, there's judges, there's a head of, he's deceased, the head of the magazine of Empire that created his brother. Certainly the person I'm alluding to was at least bisexual. There's a lot of that stuff going on, a lot of it. And what's bodybuilding is, that's why I said, when Brooke was asking me earlier about the fun part and what's missing, the fun part was the camaraderie because the more you go up the ladder, you, it's like the wizard of Oz, you see the hologram and the fireworks and the smoke and you're like a dog and like, oh my God, it's so cool being here. And you peel back the curtain, you see that there's machinations, there's people moving the strings, there's favors, there's drug money, there's sexual things going on. It goes a lot deeper than people think, like any politics, anything. I guess even outside of bodybuilding, just going broad spectrum, just the fitness industry, how do you feel about today's influence and how do you feel about the authenticity or lack thereof when it has to do with steroids being a fake natural or even as far as plastic surgery? Boy, that's a lot. Butt implants, Brooke Lynn, are we talking about butt implants? Even beyond that, I mean, for the girls, of course, it's a huge thing. Yeah, no pun intended. And then for the guys, I know there's been multiple people coming out recently and over the past couple years of people claiming that they're all natural, never taken steroids a day in their life when they very obviously have. Liberty. Yeah. I have no problem with any, at a certain level, somebody just saying it, this is like pro sports because, I mean, I have a, not to get off on a tangent, but like I think there should be a dividing line. I don't have a problem with a major league baseball player, say, doing it for sport, but I think there should be a dividing line in the record books because if Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs and then some juiced up monster hit 762, well, give Hank Aaron that. He would have hit a thousand home runs. Just be honest about it. That's the only thing I don't, you know, and I don't, when they say there's a war on drugs and there's a war on this and they're monitoring this. I can tell you this. I helped some of the MLB teams train in Arizona and certainly in the NFL. I mean, I mean, that goes without saying, but there's ways around drug testing. There's many ways around it. Some guys, a lot of those guys aren't just simply aren't bright and they don't, and are they just so arrogant? They figured, well, but they primarily they catch who they want to catch. It's a, you ever noticed that there's some gigantic names in sports and why aren't they ever the real gigantic names? Well, there's a reason because they're bringing in revenue to the sport, but if you're a mid level guy and you're a pain in the ass and, and causing trouble with it, somehow you get pegged. It's, it's, it's a game. It's a game. So I have no problem with the influencers or whatnot, but I will say this, that while there's a lot of good information out there, there's nothing new under the sun. Dave Draper once told me the secret is there is no secret. Do the work, figure it out. You'll get big, maybe not as big as Mr. Universe, but you'll get bigger if you learn and do it right. But that's, that's the problem in gyms today. Like you'll see people fucking around on their phones, sitting on the machine for six minutes and then doing one half, no intensity set, and then going back to the phone for another six minutes looking like, well, what I should find this program. This is what's going to make me big. This one here. No, put as much effort into lifting the weight as you do playing on that goddamn machine. And then you might have some size. So the influencers, I think there's too much emphasis on look at me and not enough on, put the phone away, put your head down, focus. Like Arnold said, no, we have this set and this set only focus. That's I think it takes away from the focus, but therein lies the sweet spot because you can, people talk about getting higher, getting whatnot. And I know this sounds metaphysical, but if you're training in a bodybuilding gym and you've got a good training partner or partners, and you're getting a great pump going and you're working towards a goal, you're almost in a euphoric zone. Nothing exists, but you can feel, you're, you can feel the muscle, you can hear your heart pounds. You can feel the blood. You can just look in the mirror and see you swelling up like airplane put into an inner tube and it's, it's cathartic. I think that that's missing with the influencer thing, even though I'll admit I'm an old fuddy duddy, you know, I'm in my mid sixties and so I'm not up to date with it, but that's just my impression. So the, you and I have discussed off pod obviously about your medical conditions and your way back from said surgeries and you know, et cetera, et cetera. The big thing that I'd like you to talk about for longevity is you had someone tell you recently and I'll have you name or not name them, but you can identify what they do for work. Yeah. Tell you that, uh, well, all of it was a waste of time because look where you are right now. So you can, you can fill in, you know, exactly the conversation we were talking about. Yeah. And it's funny how things can trigger you because even you just mentioning it, I felt my blood pressure spike because I know, um, that it was, um, therapists as well as a cardiologist that said that, um, they asked me, well, do you regret what you did? And it's like I said earlier, I wouldn't do it now, but I don't regret it working towards a goal, but doctors are due respect. I am not saying what they do is easy. However, they tend to pontificate too much. They may have graduated he or she 67th in their class. It doesn't mean that there's some brilliant medical mind. It just means they passed their doctor. So, and they spend maybe five minutes on physical fitness and training and they're not exercise physiologists. They don't, they don't have a background. They don't know that much unless they go into sports medicine, but your general doctor, they'll still talk about it. Like they know, and they don't know. That's what drives me insane. Like I would, the list of things that I don't know about, or I'm not well versed in, we could talk about that for two hours. I don't know most things. The difference is I don't go into it acting like I do and then giving advice, but it just, it pisses me off that people that put limits on you. Now, you know, when you've had, in my case, like heart attacks and bypasses and stents, you know that you're not, you never will be where you were, but that, but if you sit down and just say, that's it, I'll never fight. It's over. My life is over. That's not living. Living is dying with your boots on and doing what you love and being as good as, I mean, this sounds like a silly commercial, but being as good as you can be, you know, it's not going to be what it was. So don't you, because you memorize drug lists, that's all you do and dispense drugs. Don't you limit me. That's what irritates me about it. Now for some, some ground setting. So now currently you're in cardiac rehab prescribed and you unbeknownst to them, because if it's your decision, it's your body, you've decided to continue to train. So at mid, mid sixties, you are, I mean, ultimately it's a pendulum squat machine, but you are squatting up here. How much the other day, I mean, I saw you on it, I forgot it while you, while I was doing reps at that, at that point in time, I had three 45s and a 10 on each side. Okay. So one 45 on each side. Okay. So that would be about three 35 ish on the pendulum. And that's in mid sixties guys. And after multiple heart attacks a number of stints, how many stints, 11 or 12, I lost track. It's a collection. I have stents within stents. So it's 11 or 12. Jeez. So, I mean, that's mid sixties, you know, lifelong fitness guy, and he's still squatting over 300 pounds. Yeah. And you know, for reps, right, right. And the one thing that is missed in all this, not by you guys, because you understand it, but I asked the doctor at the Mayo Clinic after my quadruple bypass, I said, how in the hell was I still alive? And he said, collateral veins. And I was like, what? And he said, all of that bodybuilding grew collateral veins. Your arteries are like a highway. All your highways were clogged up, but you had a million side roads that were just supporting the heart. But eventually that's going to go. But because of that hard training, he was and he was the only one that recognized the weightlifting, but it's no coincidence that he wasn't just a Joe Blow doctor hanging out a shingle. He was the head of the cardiology at the Mayo Clinic. He realized it. So weightlifting, it is the fountain of youth done right. Not coming in and playing on your phone and bullshitting. And also there's a wide range. You don't have to come in and train like Arnold on his double, it would kill a normal person. Dave Draper told me that if you trained as hard as Arnold, you would literally die. There's very few people that had the will or could do that. But you can go in the middle between somebody that doesn't work out at all in Arnold's training. You can go in the middle and maintain strength in your legs, mobility. I'm nothing special and there's people out in the world that have gone through far worse than me. There's nothing great about me. But again, three heart attacks, quad bypass, two laser surgery, 12 stents, you know, I'd have every right to just sit down and mope. But I realized there's people that have it far worse than I. So I'm nothing special. So just go in and do the work. Plus I love it. I'm going to die doing this because it's the only thing I really like. And I'm so I'm not good at very many things, so I just want to stick with what I'm good at. When I think of the perspective of medical staff is because they have no idea, they don't probably train themselves. Now, granted, there are doctors out there who are lifters and they see the value in it like you're dying in the Mayo Clinic. But the mass majority of them are going to look at you. They're going to classify. I mean, Rich is a large man. So they're going to classify you as morbidly obese, overweight, and you shut up and listen and do what I tell you because I'm the doctor. They don't take into account what training has done for you physically, mentally, emotionally. The fact that you've survived such adversity in just living right with the after effects and, you know, life, there's other things that factor with with heart issues and stuff like that. It's not just steroid induced or anything like that. It does add certain what we were referring to here. It does add a little bit of spice to the problem, but it's not the main like you said early on. It's not the main issue. Right. But the fact that you've come out on top, still above the ground and able to talk and pay this guy's salary, who's telling you that you shouldn't be lifting anymore. That devil's outside of his scope and I told this to you when we first had this conversation in the lobby. It's like he's now messing with mental health and he is not licensed for that because it will affect you. And it did because I saw it in your eyes the day you told me about this, that you took away the one love you had in life. It's like you, I'm next to your, you know, your spouse or your whatever, the things in this world that you love, but you take that yourself, you know, but I mean, you, you take the one thing that has allowed you to have the life you've wanted, survive the life that you wanted and still be on this earth. You take that away. What that's going to do to someone is that will put them into the ground. Absolutely. And with said physician, I can remember being in his office and he didn't even look at me and this is not even in competitive shape. If he, you know, well, I'll tell you a story about the competitive shape after I finished this one, but he didn't even look at me initially. He just flipped through the pages, didn't even read it, which he's supposed to do. And he comes in without any background. He goes, well, I can tell you that one of the problems right off the bat is that your weight is an issue. He goes, you register on the morbidly obese scale. And then he took the gown off and he said, wow, your musculature is quite pronounced. And he was like, so what have you done that to begin with? But he's just going on quick, flipping through, he doesn't know that, you know, I remember when I was at the Mayo Clinic, I was telling you about that. I think this story is funny, I hope it doesn't bore you, but I was 2010, yeah, 2010. And they wheeled me into the emergency room and I was in a fog because I was having a heart attack. And the pain was, God in heaven, I, you know, it's beyond belief. So it was dissipating because they were giving me all sorts of drugs and whatnot. But they also, they, you know, catheterized me, went up through my heart to look at what was going on. And I remember the physician saying, oh my God, both at what was going on and about the musculature. Because, you know, because looking at it originally, according to him, well, we've got some morbidly obese patient on there, but looking at the body, he was like, you know, he was perplexed as to what, but then he started putting it together, bodybuilding, steroids and whatnot. But it was genetics combined with that. But when he walked over to me, he said, you have four main arteries to your heart. And I said, yeah, okay, because by then with the morphine and everything else, I was feeling pretty good. And he said, he said, well, three of yours are a hundred percent blocked and the fourth one is 90 something percent. And I was like, well, I mean, I just, I was flabbergasted if you were anybody else, you'd be dead. Yeah. If I hadn't done the training and grew the collateral veins, but, but I will say this, the nurses were taking, not that I'm anything great because I'm not, but they were taking a lot of liberties looking at every inch of a competitive bodybuilder. And if you, if you did that to a lady, there would be repercussions. Only if you were a male nurse, but no, you're a straight male nurse. So you know, there is that, but yeah, it was the bottom line I take from that is without the years of training, I wouldn't be able to, he said it, I wouldn't be alive. And that was 14 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Did you have your first heart attack? That, that one? Well, I actually had, I had one earlier that I was in a quandary about, I said, could this be a heart attack? But they'll show you the mindset of, I was getting ready for a show. I was living in Pittsburgh and the show was in, it doesn't matter where, but I'm just trying to remember now so many, it was like Virginia, West Virginia, something like that. It doesn't matter. West Virginia. West mountain mama. But I was, I was getting ready and I was, I remember I was doing curls in the gym and I said, Oh Jesus, God, why does it hurt so? And I felt like there was a truck sitting on my chest and I sat down and I started sweating like somebody who was just, I was taking a shower and I went into the locker room and I just collapsed and I said, well, shit. And I knew I had to, I knew later I was going to take a shot of insulin and some other steroids. I said, I got to get up. So I got up and I drove home and it was, I can't say for certain, but I knew the pain of the second one when I was at the Mayo Clinic and it mimicked what happened the second time. So, and he, and he did tell me, you have had heart attacks before. And so that had to be one of them. It had to be. Yeah. I mean the pain in the middle of your chest. I mean, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Not much else. You know, but you know, it's like those old, good old days at the original Gold's Gym where they used to, in the men's locker room, they had a giant bullseye put up on the wall and you have to, you take your injection of Sustanon or whatever the hell you wanted. They would harpoon it. And then you'd go back there and laugh like hell because it'd be like 50 needles hanging on the bullseye. Unbelievable. One of the wild days of bodybuilding. And then you'd have girls in the, taking showers with you and, oh, those were grand old days. Well, there's that. I was born in the wrong time. One of the perks. Do you. And on that note. Yeah. On that note. Now, have you ever thought about just competing again? I mean, a surgery to scar down your chest, it's got to give you some points with the judges. I would think. Sympathy points. But it's kind of the stress that you have to go through to get into the shape. Minus. I mean, I could do it. I could enter a level four or level five now and not even worry about it, but I could not go back to what I was doing. Sure. But if I wanted to, yes, I've thought about it. But the stress of the diet and the diet alone, my heart couldn't take it. Because I find this fascinating with bodybuilding and the pro bodybuilders today. What you do is a couple of days beforehand, you're pounding water like there's no tomorrow. That's the flush everything out of your system. And then you stop the water and you just suck on ice chips. And at that time, you're taking Trenbolone and other hardening agents, Masteron and Anavar. And but the problem is you're so dry. That's when, you know, training and under those auspices is where you start tearing things and tearing ligaments and tearing muscles. But it's so painful and so hard for the heart that it's I don't see it as a viable option right now. And it's the yes, I wish I could have said I left it on my own terms. I wish I would have it. I wasn't able to. And so what? My life isn't rough, but I don't see it as a I love lifting weights. I just I don't want to die for a plastic trophy. I've been there, done that 30 some times. OK. Yeah. Yeah. No, I get it. Well, we want to thank you, Big Rich, for coming by. Thank you. It's been an honor listening to these stories. We'll do the closing remarks. Broccoli, go ahead, do your thing. Go ahead and make sure to follow us on Instagram at Official Gig Harbor Strength if you don't already. You can also check us out on Facebook. Check out the website. And if you're in the area and you haven't been here, go ahead and stop by and check us out. Great, Jim. Thanks, Rich. Thank you. Thank you.