EPISODE 395: THE TRUTH BEHIND COMPETING with Carson Labrecque

The host of the podcast, Coach Sal, introduces himself and his intention to share his stories and experiences to help listeners improve themselves. He is joined by a guest, Carson, and they discuss their views on bodybuilding and the importance of pursuing other interests and careers alongside it. They both emphasize the need for balance and not letting bodybuilding consume their lives entirely. They share personal experiences and the realization that there is more to life than just bodybuilding. They highlight the importance of entrepreneurship and finding fulfillment outside of the gym. They also touch on the challenges of finding like-minded people in the bodybuilding community. What is going on, fam? Welcome back to another episode of the Shift Your Mind, Change Your Life podcast. This is your host, Coach Sal, founder and owner of Team Evolution Coaching. For those who don't know, I'm a former athlete, turned bodybuilder and entrepreneur. And in this podcast, my intention is to pull back the curtain, share my stories, experiences and lessons learned. That way I can help you turn into the best version of yourself possible. So sit back, relax, enjoy the episode. Thank you for spending a couple of minutes with me here today and hope you get some value. Let's get it. What's going on, beautiful people? Today we're back and I'm joined by one of my brothers in Carson. How do I pronounce your last name? So I don't bother, right? Lebrecq. Lebrecq. Okay. It's in French. Fellow Canadian, absolute stud. And we're here to talk about everything with bodybuilding, training, nutrition, all that good jazz and a couple of things. So how you doing, brother? I'm good, man. Yeah, I'm excited to get on here and just chop it up. Like I kind of mentioned, I'm just trying to spend more time with people that I actually have common values. And it's definitely hard in the bodybuilding space because there's so many meatheads. But it's like other people, other coaches that are actually doing the work, not even just in the bodybuilding sense, but in the business sense, personal life, spiritual side of things, it's hard to be able to find good people around. And actually, here we are. You're on the other side of a different country, but here we are. Right. So I guess I'm not a fucking slut then. So that's cool. You're not, buddy. Well, thank you for that. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I was chatting about that actually this morning on my live stream. It's just like, with bodybuilding, it's only a piece of your life, right? Would you agree with that? 100%. I think it's going to come in seasons, right? So we can kind of talk about this as like you're in prep and I just finished a show. You're going to go through seasons where it's going to be a few weeks, a few months where things are going to be all consuming. And it kind of has to be that way. But that's going to be like six weeks, eight weeks, maybe ten if you're really pushing for a show. Or maybe you hit a qualifier and then you're going to hit a pro qualifier and you're lengthening out an extra couple of weeks. Okay. It's going to be consuming. At the end of the day, we're eating food, we're working out, we're sleeping. What are you going to do the other 12 hours of the day? Are you just going to sit around and do nothing? No, let's do something like work a job, have a career, have some ambition, right? It's something that drives me nuts and it's something that I hammer into a lot of the younger clients that I deal with. Like, hey, you're not going to be C-bomb. I'm sorry to break your heart. Have yourself set up for a career. It's not a cheap hobby. Bodybuilding is expensive. And if you're thinking that you're just going to become this influencer and live off your supplement sponsorship that you're never going to get, it's going to be a long road, kid. So set yourself up, right? Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. Because what do you really get from a supplement sponsorship as far as compensation? It's not a lot. Unless you have a huge following, it's like, okay, you get 150, 200 bucks worth of supplements a month. That's nothing, right? The end of the day, it's nice, but... Absolutely. I'm very blessed and thankful to work with Redcon, but it's not like I'm relying on that for my sole income, obviously. But that's kind of where I've gotten myself is like competing is only a small percentage. I think I kind of fell into that trap a little bit a couple of years ago. I don't know if you've dealt with that. Have you let it continue at all at times in the past? Oh, yeah, I did. From 18 to 22, basically until I had kids. And then it was an eye opener of, holy smokes, there's more to life. You really have other people that depend on you. You're going to have to build this empire. I've always kind of had this entrepreneurial desire. Both my parents come from that side. They're both business owners. So I've always kind of been drawn towards that. So it's been a little bit of a push that way. But it's definitely come in seasons, for sure, where you're just... Especially when you're young, you don't have a bunch of responsibilities. And if you want to spend four hours in the gym training all day, and you just want to cook your meals and just bodybuilding, bodybuilding, bodybuilding, okay, that's fun. But honestly, I don't think you're going to make any better progress than you would if you were pursuing other things as well. Right. They can come and say, yeah, 100%. You know who's actually a really good advocate of that? Dusty Anshaw. Do you follow him at all? I'm not sure. I don't think so. Okay. So he's retired now, but one of the kind of drawn, so like the guy who's coached me for a long time, another one of the mutant athletes. And he's spoke a lot about when he was bodybuilding, he was a business owner. And he was like, dude, like I was running supplement stores that he owned. And he was like, you step into the back, you eat a meal as quick as you can, you go back out. It's not going to make a difference. Your food is your food. It doesn't matter if you're sitting around in between it or if you're sitting on a computer making money. You're still going to grow the same. Yeah. That's the thing, man. It's like, how long are you really in the gym? 45 minutes, an hour. Maybe 90 minutes on legs if you're like with a partner or something, right? Yeah, maybe. It's really not. And I think that's the thing is people think competing is like this huge fucking thing. I mean, obviously it's a commitment, but it's like, yo, I'm going to eat and train anyway. So like what could have maybe taken a step further? And obviously maybe taking a lecture at curriculars too. Maybe we could go that path. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely one of those things that I think it can be all consuming. And I think it's easy to let it be all consuming, especially when you're in a prep because kind of your validation starts to come from that as well, where people are asked, oh, you're looking great. Are you doing this show? Oh yeah, I'm doing this show. Like maybe people that don't even generally talk to you or are paying you attention all of a sudden. Okay. Well then you're going to start talking about it. Okay. Now that you're getting this dopamine hit in your brain, makes you want to talk about it more. It makes you want to dive even deeper into it. And the next thing you know, that's all you are. It's like, there's nothing worse than having a conversation with somebody and you're just like, do you know anything else? Like I love bodybuilding. I fucking love it. I don't want to talk about chicken breast all day, bro. What else you got going on here? I'm glad you resonated with me on that because I was having a little bit of that phase, you know, because like you said, you can let it consume you if you want, but like, I'm not about that. I think there's so much more to life, bro. I'm like, I'm all about the other stuff too. It's like, I'm really just anchoring myself with the coexistence with all that. So I'd be curious, man, is there maybe like a certain scenario that occurred for you to make that switch? Cause you said you were kind of all in like 18 to 22, right? I think the biggest switch for me was so at, maybe it was 21, whenever it was, I dropped everything. I was living in Calgary, Alberta and COVID had hit and I just got into a relationship with the boy's mom. And she was living in Vancouver and I didn't really have anything going for me in Calgary. I had finished my football career at UFC. I was done. I just literally like stopped my lease, sold everything I had and I just moved out here. And I was like, I'm just going to figure it out. And I worked at the front desk at the gym. I had a couple of clients. And then when over the next, you know, six, 12 months, that's when COVID was happening, everything was shut down. That's when I started my online business. So like everyone else is like, my life fell apart. It was the worst two years of my life. Like this was the most productive two years of my entire life. So that's all it was. So I think that was a big part of it was the realization of like, you can do shit. And it was, it was like, Oh, it's just like bodybuilding. It's inputs and outputs. Right. It was okay. I put this amount of work into my business. I should be getting this amount of output out of it. And then realizing like, Holy crap, I don't have to be working for $15 an hour. I don't have to be on the gym floor for 10 hours a day. Like I can do this myself. And I think that's where it sparked for me. And then it also was like, Oh, and I can make my bodybuilding even better. Because now I can schedule things in the way I want. So if I want to train at eight o'clock in the morning after meal one, yeah, I'm going to put my day together in that way. Instead of being like, Oh, I've got eight clients today. Short story on the side, Wednesdays, I always would have clients doing legs. And I did legs on Wednesdays too. Oh man. Like I would put guys through, it'd be five or six guys in a day that I would put through legs. By the end of the day, I wouldn't even want to train. It's like, I don't even want to be here. That's when things really transitioned out. And it was like, okay, like I don't even want to be in the gym. What the hell am I doing? So that's when it was, yeah. What about yourself? I was kind of in the same boat. I started out in person right around like late 2019, early 2020. And then the gym shut down. So you really had to quit it. But also at the same time, like I had an interesting experience like with in-person training. But like, man, how long can you count the reps for? Like, it's awesome. But also like when you're talking about serving a client at your highest capacity, you can only do so much for them when you're face-to-face, right? So it's like now with online, we give them way more. It's a fraction of the cost. We have more freedom. It's more convenient. And honestly, I just think it's 20 times better all around. Right. And I'm sure you agree with that too. I agree. You know, both have their like pros and their cons. I found with some clients in person, you can build some pretty cool relationships. Like some of my best friends were like people that came as clients. And then they used to spend a couple hours a week with them. You vibe, you mash, you become good friends. But yeah, like at the end of the day, if somebody is sitting in your phone, it's a lot easier to be like, hey, like this is going on. I'm out for dinner right now. I'm freaking out. What do I order? Where are you? What restaurant? Okay, order this. Next time, this is how we're going to prepare for this, right? Rather than seeing someone once a week in the gym, then that's it. Yeah, I just, there's only so much you can do with that. But I do agree. Like I definitely built some awesome relationships and I'm thankful for that. But I think it's different for everybody. Maybe some people enjoy that. There's still obviously a lot of in-person trainers that are doing that. But I know for us, we're trying to really focus on helping more people. And that's really, I guess, interesting for people that are listening. How are you able to connect with so many people online? Because I think sometimes people get skeptical. I don't know if you deal with this. Do you ever encounter that at all? I have, yes. I got this one client, his name is Scott. He came to me about seven months now. He's down like 80 pounds. I remember this guy came to me and he was like, this feels like a big risk because I've never met you. He lives in the States. I'm in Vancouver, Canada. And he's like, I don't know. It feels a little weird to be sending like, I think he did a six-month package. It was like a couple of grand. It feels a little weird, but you know what? I'm going to take the risk. But within a month, he was like, this is the best decision I've ever made. He said, I was skeptical. It sounds like a scam. I don't know you. And you're like, once you get past that kind of barrier, it's like, oh, right. That's how things work nowadays. It's all online. But definitely it is an interesting kind of like little barrier that comes up between people. Are you real? Is this a scam? I'm sure you get it all the time too. Someone will like hop in here, you're going through your DMs and you get these messages or these followers and you go to message them and it's just like someone selling gear online. No one's buying. No, I know. Yeah. It's sad sometimes. And I don't know if you've experienced maybe a little bit of recently with people kind of having more of a guard up because maybe there's some coaches in there who have burned them. Have you dealt with that at all? Yeah, actually a lot. So I primarily work with competitors. About like 70% of my people are competitors. And a lot of them actually end up coming to me either after their show where their reverse goes terrible and I end up taking them over or they have had a terrible experience with another coach and they come over to you and they'll have that conversation with you where they were like, I never wanted to online coach again because this was, you got burnt, right? I'm doing it right now with this chick where she got burned by multiple coaches and I'm just like, Hey, like, let's, it's very hard to want to like work through this, but you have to explain to them like how you're different, what you're, what's going on. And then you really have to like show them upfront for the last, like first few weeks. Like you got a message of every day. You got to break that wall. Yeah. And then once they break that wall down, they're like, okay, you're actually good at what you do. You know what you're doing. You're not trying to make a buck on me. Right. Or even like, this is something we were kind of chatting about. Talking about risk mitigation and stuff. A lot of coaches are just, they're there to get a result. So on their page, especially competitive coaches. Right. Oh, the first show this chick won her overall. And I'm like, take a look at her blood work. Like you killed this girl to get her up there. Did she know that you were going to do that to get her up there? Was this the right move? So post-show, how was she doing? Right. It's just a disaster. It's a very slippery slope when you get into that, if I could get that word out, because that's the thing is like, you don't really know what's going on behind the scenes, but it kind of, it concerns me because like, you know, ethically, like if you're a good person, like what's the right thing to do, you know? And it's like, I feel like once you kind of go past that line and start to really push it, it's like, where do you take the person into consideration? Well, because they're a human being and they got to life, you know, it's not really something just to play a fucking game. And I take that shit very seriously, you know? Yeah. It's for a long time because, you know, we're younger guys. My demographic was working with younger guys and having that conversation with them of, they're like, Hey, I want to jump on a cycle. Like, Hey, you might be ready physically, but you're not ready mentally. Maybe you're not really understanding the risks that come with this. Or even as a coach running what like I, what I do is I do a risk assessment with them of like, Hey, what are you wanting out of this? Is this something that you're wanting to pursue as a career? Do you have the genetics to pursue this as a career? Is this something that's actually like doable? Okay. Cause I'm not willing to kill some kid to get up there for the next 10 years and hammer him with drugs to get a regional win. Right. Some coaches, well, that's not me. I'm going to have that conversation of like, Hey, you can bodybuild. That's awesome. Don't put all your eggs in this basket. We're going to run lower risk cycles. We're going to make sure that everything is really good and clean and blood work wise. But Ted, like I said, you're not Chris Bumstead. I'm sorry. It's not going to happen for you. Yeah. And people don't want to hear that. Right. Like it sucks. Yeah. You got to ride that line too. Right. Of like, you want to be a little bit, I'd rather have someone that's like delusionally optimistic of like, I can do it. I can do it. I can do it. I'm the best then rather than pulling someone. But it's also having realistic expectations of what's going to happen in this sport for you. Like if you're coming into this sport at 25 years old at 145 pounds. Right. With terrible bone structure, skinny fat. And like, I totally hear you. Yeah. It's going to take 15 years to put the tissue on. Right. And now you're 40. Right. Yeah. So I guess maybe I'm curious then, man, in that risk assessment. So there's like very specific questions that you're asking inside of that. Yeah. So it's, it's depends on where the client comes to you in their competitive career too. Right. If somebody comes to you and they're a first time competitor, it's always, we're always going to go low risk. Like we're going to be using compounds that are going to be less toxic. You don't need as much when it's someone that's going to be. Right. Right. Or even natural guys. Right. Whatever. But it's going to be, okay, let's run this risk assessment. What are you wanting out of this sport? Some guys come to you and they're like, this is just a bucket list thing for me. Right. I want to hit one and I'm done. Awesome, man. Okay. Well then we don't need to hammer you with a bunch of shit. Let's go in. Let's have a great time. You're going to look awesome on stage and we'll go from there. Then there's other guys that come to you and maybe they're on the edge of a pro card. Okay. The risk assessment's going to be a little bit different. Okay. Maybe we're going to push things a little bit higher. Pretty logical, right? It is logical. And it's also looking at potential of the athlete. And that's where it comes in as a coach, where you might not have that conversation directly with them, but being, you know, taking a look at them and being like, Hey, you got it or you don't. Yeah. And you kind of know, like right off the bat, because genetics we play a huge role. I know we were chatting about that. Right. And I think that's sometimes a little bit of a difficult conversation, but I think that's a person has to be up front with them. Otherwise they're going to be able to just string them out and tell them what they want to hear. That's not how it works. Right. Yeah. Well, lots of coaches do that too, just to string you along and keep you coming along as a client. Right. Yeah. But that's where I go back to that, like ethical lines. Like they know what they're doing is wrong. So it's like, how can you sit there and try to like, you know, I just don't get that. Just be a good human. It'll come out in the long run. Right. Those people end up getting burned in the long run. There's a reason why a lot of the good coaches are around for a long time. And there's a reason why the shitty ones, you know, they might pop up for a couple of years and then they kind of drift off into the sunset and you never hear about them again. Right. I think there was one recent, I don't know the name, I've never seen a lot of shit on social media about like there, there was a previous client's time exposure. I think she was a female coach. I don't know if you saw that recently. I can't recall the name and I'm not one to talk shit. But I just think my point is that eventually if you're doing things the wrong way, it will come out. And I do believe that. So I'm always somebody like, Hey, let's do things the right way. Take it slow. Take the questions. That's what I believe. Otherwise you got to look over your shoulder. And that's just not a fun place to be on either side. Right. Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. You don't want to be doing that. And yeah. Do you, do you work a lot with competitors or do you work primarily with like myself? Good question. So I'm just getting into that the last few months, more transitioning from lifestyle. I wanted to take my courses and like get all that situated first. Maybe it was a little bit of a shittier mindset, but I want to be educated. I'm going through J3 right now. Yeah. So I'm almost done with that. Very dense. It's taken me, I've been going through it for a few months now, but I'm pretty close. So I wanted to get that under my belt and, you know, obviously put a few guys on there. So right now we're actually growing the roster. I got seven people right now that, you know, which I, which I feel good about, you know, that's only the last couple of months that we've been, you know, making that pivot. I just wanted to make sure that I'm educating myself as best I can. You know, obviously it's been more of a routine mindset with that type of stuff. I'm making sure I do everything on my mind. But the trajectory, you know, you gain some soul fruit, you get some people out there, it'll grow. And I know that you just got to be patient with it, you know? Yeah. That's what I was about to say. Like you don't care about Chris Asito doing the J3U courses. No, it's experience over 20 years of time as well, right? Like you're going to learn so much just by working with athletes and trying to figure out like, okay, this worked, this didn't. Next time that comes up with a different athlete, you have that tool in your back pocket. And it just takes time to just like accumulate that. But as long as you come into it with like good foundations, like you're going to accumulate five years of experience by paying whatever, a couple thousand bucks for a course, like it's totally worth it. And you know what you're doing, you're not going to hurt somebody. Yeah, it definitely helps. Yeah, absolutely. I'm a huge advocate for investing in yourself. That's a really good coach that I've worked with over at Team Miller. I just feel good about what I've done. You know, I mean, I am newly, I guess, more passionate about bodybuilding because I was a former athlete. I don't know if I shared that with you. Yeah, I played college baseball and I finished up back in 20. So like within the last five years is where I've gotten into bodybuilding stuff. And originally it was just kind of like, hey, this looks really good. But once I started taking more of a competitive route, I was like, oh, this is pretty cool, man. You know, now I'm giving that that's kind of a trajectory. And I think over the next, you know, six, 12, 24 months, you're definitely going to start to put yourself on the map, which I'm excited for. Yeah. Cause you had done the one show a few years ago, right? Yeah. I mean, it was summer shredding. I did pretty well. I placed top five, but like, it wasn't anything crazy. I wanted to do it naturally. I wanted to prove to myself that I could compete against guys who were taking stuff naturally, which was pretty dumb, but you know, I don't think so. I'm actually like a huge advocate of like, okay, if you've never competed before, let's compete naturally. Do a show naturally to see if you even like it. There's so many guys that they'll compete and they go, you know what? I'm never doing that again. That's absolutely fine, man. It's not for everybody rather than taking these huge health risks and then being like, Ooh, I didn't like that. No, I agree a hundred percent. I think just, obviously I just, you want to win. Nobody wants to sign up and just get a little fourth place medal. You know, it doesn't feel good. That was the point, but I think that's where we're going now and what I've learned and what I've gained is it was really awesome, man. And I think that kind of triples into what I wanted to ask you earlier. It's like, how are things been going for you? I know you've been competing. Why don't you talk about that? Yeah. So I had taken, this was like two years, two and a half years between shows. So the last show that I had did was like 20, late 2021, 2022. And I had won an overall, it was a smaller regional show. Yeah, I got the W. I mean, it was a smaller show. I did well in classic. I have good lines, but I was smaller and it wasn't super conditioned, but I looked good, but I knew that I needed to take some time and I had a young kid at the time. And then we had another one and business was taken off. So, okay, I need to take some time and just let things cement. Right. So going into these shows, so the shows that I had done was the band open, which is a regional show out here. And then if you place top three, you get invited to the pro qualifier the next weekend. So that is what happened. I got both top three in the open, in heavyweights and in classic. So the way that it worked really well, it just kind of left me a little confused of like, okay, if I'm placing in both categories, where do I fit? Like, where do the judges really want me? And that's where the next weekend where I jumped on stage as a heavyweight, I just like, I felt small where I was, the guys that I was competing against were five, 10 years older. And maybe they didn't weigh that much more than me, because we're all in the same categories, but just the, the muscularity was different. They had more mature muscle. And then I had done pretty well. Like I got third in classic and it was like, okay, this is, this is the route I'm getting. So as much as I want to be a big, freaky open bodybuilder, it's going to come eventually, but I'm going to have to work through the transitions of, okay, stay in classic, max out the classic cap, push for a pro card, get that extra 10 pounds, max out that cap and go from there. Right. Are you staying in classic? Yeah, I'm going to stay in that classic route. It's funny. I was actually talking backstage with this guy named Mike. I think it was in the tanning room. And we were talking about how he's a big dude. He was like, he's a master's guy, but he's big as fuck. And he was going, you have such beautiful lines, like nice structure. Like you're going to do so, so well. He said, I'd love to look like you. And I was looking at him. I was like, I would love to look like you. Isn't that always funny. Yeah. It's always grass is greener on the other side. Right. Where you're like, I just wish I looked like Nasser. Like I wish I was massive. And then the big guys are like, man, I wish my 40 inch waist was 28. Right. Right. Isn't that funny. We're always like, well, I want what that guy has. Yeah. You're always kind of looking over your shoulder. And that's, that's the hard part about the sport, right? It's kind of hard to be happy with where you're at when realistically you are being compared all the time. Like that's the sport you're being compared. Your body is being compared to other people's. So it's easy for you to want to compare yours as well. But having that, like, I think, I think it's a maturity piece as well of being like, okay, like own my own shit. Be my best version of myself, instead of trying to play the game of trying to be someone else's best physique. Right. I think what keeps me in the mind as you said that is like, what are maybe some good tips on navigating body shape? There's certain things that you felt wrong. I hear that all the time. And I mean, are you seems like a leader in something that like that cripples people? It's definitely in the sport. Yeah. It's very hard to have a realistic look of kind of where you're at, especially when you're so ingrained in that community. So like the gym that I train at West Coast Iron, like there's not a lot of, there's more than there was, but there's not a lot of like gen pop people. Like you go there and like 90% of the people are jacked. So you're kind of like, oh, I'm just like, I look like everyone else. Like maybe I'm a little bigger, but like, I look like everyone else. Dude, go to Walmart. We'll walk around. Like people are going to be staring at you a hundred percent. So it's very hard to take a step back and like truly analyze kind of what you're actually looking like. And that's where I think stage-wise, a good coach comes in. It's very hard to prep yourself because that is always in the back of your brain, but having a good coach come in and be like, and accurately assess where you're at, where you sit and kind of give you feedback on that is so many people are guilty of it, right? Where you're going to get into that place where you're, I'm not lean enough. I'm not lean enough. I'm not big enough. I'm not big enough. And then you go through your show, things go pretty well. You look back at your pictures three months from now and you're like, I was shredded. I thought I was fat. What about yourself? No, absolutely. I remember the same thing. I remember like, dude, I feel like a fucking string bean. Like, oh my God, I'm a toothpick. This is so bad. And then I looked back and I'm like, holy shit. I had days in my 400s. I was like, what, bro? Dude, you're like post-reverse, like last week that you posted. I think I commented on it. That was fucking enough, bro. That was only a week since you posted. Yeah. Well, kind of two weeks because of the first show, right? They were back to back. Yeah. Yeah. I've rebounded pretty hard. My prep was so high fatiguing that I've kind of gotten to the point where, so my cardio was super high, like two hours, like 15K steps. Like the stimulant usage was really high. Basically, my body just didn't want to do what we wanted it to do. And we kept pushing and kept pushing. And I just kept getting worse and worse and worse. And I wasn't really getting any tighter. A little bit here and there. I kept getting sick. I wasn't sleeping. Like that's still something that I'm dealing with. I'm up four to five times a night, which is post-show. I'm like waiting for this to go back to normal. It might take a few weeks. Normally with a client, I would slowly reverse them out because hopefully they wouldn't get to this place where their fatigue is so high. For myself, I just went like, you know what? I need to get to a place where gym performance is back. Number one, because all of my training was dog shit for like the last three, four weeks. I was so sick. It was like going in and just like tick, tick the box, go in and just, okay, I made it to the gym today. Like instead of pressing four plates on an incline, okay, I got two plates today. We got to get back performance, number one. Number two, I need to get this fatigue coming back down. Diet fatigue, prep fatigue. Okay, so I pretty much pulled cardio from as much as I could possibly do in the day to like almost none right now, which like not super optimal, but with where that's the conversation of, okay, sometimes there's rules to this and sometimes there's frameworks that just go out the window. For me, I'm like, okay, I'm just going to let my body do what it wants to do. I'm going to come up. Like I was 255 this morning. I weighed 222 on stage, so it's been like three weeks and I'm up 30 pounds. Yeah, but I mean like a rebound like that is pretty normal in the sense of like you're going to have that window where you're going to like really have all those things, right? So like obviously you want to mitigate that, but what you're saying right now is that like you have so much fatigue and so much stress that you're trying to, and what I'm hearing is you're trying to go a little bit more intuitive with how you're doing. Did I get that right? Kind of. I was like, I need to squash this fatigue. I need to enjoy training. I was hammered down for so long that it's like, okay, you know what? I'm not going to compete again. Like my rough plan is 2026. So it's not like I'm losing three months here and I'm going to be on stage again in nine months after that. No, no, no. If I got to clean this up in a few months, I'll clean it up. That's no worries. I'm not super worried about it. So everyone's a little bit different, but yeah, I put like 30 pounds on in a matter of a few weeks. I'm still relatively tight, but it's a lot of it was fluid management and stuff too, right? So like going into the show, running growth hormone, keeping that in, keeping it in, keeping it in. And then at 10 days out, we pulled it. So immediately I dropped like five pounds of intracellular water. Post show, I put it right back in. So right away my body was like, and then I went from having sub a hundred grams of carbs a day. Okay. I put it to 300. Everything's just blowing right up. So my calories went from roughly 1700 to 2700. My maintenance is maybe 2,500. So when you look at it, it's like, that's not that crazy, but it's just that drastic swing from where you were at, right? I was actually having a conversation with one of my clients the other day. So her reverse, I took over her reverse from another coach. Cause he kind of ghosted her. She weighed like one, one Oh nine or something on stage, bikini girl. And she is four or five weeks post show. And she was like, I'm almost hitting one 40. And I'm like 30 pounds on you is not the same as 30 pounds on me. Right, right, right. Like 30 pounds on you is like a third of your weight, right? We can't have that. Like we need to bring that back down and tighten that up. And then explaining to her that like, she was kind of like, well, how come you're, you're not doing that. And I'm like, cause my 30 pounds is a lot different than your 30 pounds. My 30 pounds is on a 225 pound frame. That's like 15% of my weight. Yours is half your body weight in a matter of a month, right? Yeah. It's different for sure. I've heard things where people say like, Oh, your fat cells are fine to like soak shit up. Like, is that true? Is that something you get behind? I think it is first of all, very individual. You're going to have these frameworks of an ideal way that a prep was ran. Okay. There's going to be an ideal reverse out of it in a prep that didn't go the way you wanted, which sometimes fucking happens. Okay. Well, then you're going to have to make these audible game plan calls along the way. Normally, if somebody is post show, I usually give them like three to four days where I'm like, enjoy some food first night post show, eat whatever you want. Usually it's the Saturday, right? Go out for a nice meal, spend some time with your friends, take the Sunday off. Don't even train, have some fucking pancakes with your kids, with your girlfriend, whatever, enjoy the day. And then as the week goes on, we'll cut that back to maybe one meal out a day. And then next week we're going to get back to what our previous plan was plus or minus, sorry, plus like 250 calories. We're going to slowly let that come back up and then we're going to reverse out of it. And as our body weight kind of increases slowly, we can kind of tweak things and look at fatigue management, make sure that sleep is coming back, whole lab work. Especially if we're looking at natural athletes, is your hormone function coming back? If we're looking at females, hormone coming back, is your menstrual cycle coming back? Super important, right? A few tips to mitigate this like hunger craziness that comes after the show. The foods that you were eating pre-show in your prep, those are generally not super palatable. Like they're bland. They're bland for a reason. It's because we're not wanting to have these huge hunger spikes. There's a reason why you eat a huge plate of potatoes, you're like, man, that was pretty good. If I give you a brownie right now and you're two weeks out of a show, it's going to send you into a spiral. It's the same thing post-show, that hunger signaling doesn't just stop because your show is over. No, it's still right there and it goes crazy. So usually when guys are post-show, guys or girls, okay, we want to keep these foods simple still. We can enjoy a little bit here and there, but we want to keep the food simple. We don't want to have a bunch of stuff that tastes like super, super delicious because you're going to start this this spiral downhill where you're not going to be able to stop eating. Two, three weeks goes by, that hunger signaling is going to start to kind of drop back off. Okay, now we can start to incorporate maybe a cheat meal back in every week now that it's manageable. If we start to have a cheat meal kind of right out of your show, it's going to just hit you like a brick and you're just going to want more and more and more. It's the same thing as if, like I always have my guys have cheat meals at the end of the night, generally. Because say you're going to bed at 10 o'clock, at eight o'clock you're going to have your meal. Okay, you eat your meal at eight o'clock, nine o'clock comes around. How much damage are you really going to do in an hour if you have an extra little bit? You'll be okay. You start your day by having brunch. It is very hard to go back to chicken and rice. It's the same theory with a reverse. It's very hard to go back to almost no carbs with veggies, fruit and protein when you just had pizza the night before. Then you're screwed. So it's kind of that same principle of just like, okay, let's go back to kind of shittier tasting food for a little bit. We can increase the calories. We'll let our body kind of push the hunger signaling down once that's down and it's manageable. Okay, now we can start to swap some things back out for things that you enjoy, right? Oh, I lost the audio on you, buddy. You call that, you classify them as cheat meals? Cheat meal or a treat meal. It depends on the person. Some people, I find if somebody is more susceptible to kind of having that higher hunger drive, I'll call it a refeed. Generally, if it's a refeed, we're going to have something that's going to be cleaner rather than a cheat meal. When you think of a cheat meal, you're thinking burger and fries. When someone says you go have a refeed, you're like, okay, what does that mean? Okay, we'll double your rice for the day. There's a little bit of stigma. At the end of the day, it's generally just an off-plan meal. The whole purpose of it is to one, either have a social aspect back to your life so that your stress is going to go down. You can dump some cortisol. You'll feel better. Number two, sometimes people are so plugged up that they haven't shit in a few days. We're going to send you for a cheat meal to push things out. It really does work. Or number three, we're just wanting to have some more calories. Maybe it's around a lagging body part day. Maybe it's to help stave off some fatigue. Maybe it's to grab some data of like, okay, what does your body look like the day after a big cheat like this? What does your body look like two days after? Your coach should be doing this during your prep as well with your refeeds or with your cheat meal. I have a client right now, Brayden. He's eight weeks out, nine weeks out. His refeeds are, I give him 40 pieces of sushi. This is his refeed. It's a lot of sushi. It's a lot, yeah. Okay, we did it three weeks ago. Send me pictures the next day. Send me pictures the day after that. Okay, now I know when we have this amount of sushi that these are the looks correlated to this. I line it up on the same schedule as his show day so that we can kind of think of it as a peak so that we can kind of think of it as a peak and your body starts to kind of think of it, okay, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, I start to eat. It starts to fill up. Last week I go, I want to give him something a little bit heavier, something that's going to spike and see what that look does. So I sent him for his 40 pieces of sushi and then I say, go grab, there was a Domino's next to the sushi place that he was at. I said, go grab two of those lava cakes, right? The chocolate molten lava cakes, whatever. Grab one of those. Send me pictures in the morning. Send me pictures the next day. Now we can kind of take a look at this and go, okay, this is what this happened to this look. Is this what we're wanting? Was this too far? Could he have had more? What happened to his fatigue? How was his hunger coming out of this? How was his bowel movements? It's just data, right? At the end of the day, the more that you can collect, the better. This is if you're in a good spot in your prep to do it. Sometimes people don't get cheat meals. If their body isn't working the way we want, sorry, you might not get a refeed at eight weeks out, 10 weeks out. Yeah, that's where I was going to go. If somebody is not progressing the way that you'd like as far as fat loss, especially during a prep, can you warrant something like that? Does that make sense, especially if you have a timeline? Maybe not, right? It's going to vary person to person, you know, which is interesting. That's why for me, having a good coach is important. And if you're listening to this and you don't have a coach, you should probably get a coach because then you're just going to watch YouTubers and think that you just copy them and that's fine and it's not really how it works, right? So that's good, man. I know we covered a lot of stuff. We're getting close to the end here. Is there any other maybe questions you want to ask me or anything else you wanted to share on this topic? Yeah, I want to hear about your prep. What show are you doing? How's it going? You're going to do classic, right? I did classic last time. I'm sticking into it. I just don't want to hide my legs, man. I think genetically I got some good wheels down there. Obviously, there's always room for improvement, but I don't know. I just don't want to hide in the board shorts. And also, I feel like that posing is kind of just really boxy and boring and I just don't really fuck with that. Yeah, to answer your question, classic physique. I'm set to get back on here November 9th, MPC Movie Championship down here. So super excited. I honestly do. It's been going so good. I'm like, is it this easy? I'm kind of like, oh, fuck. This one's a lot better though because I have a lot better understanding of how I respond to certain things. I took two years, kind of similar to you, to really grow and build with the coach and take time. And we added a lot of size, which is great. Was this the same coach that you've been working with throughout the whole offseason? Yes, same coach. The previous one that prepped me was a different one. But now, once I decided that I wanted to take it a little bit more seriously, he put me on with his coach. So I was originally working with Patty Lips, and now I'm working with Dylan under Team Miller. So that's been about a year and a half, almost two years with him, which has been awesome. Added a lot of size, but it's going really well, bro. I'm crushing my cardio. Hunger is not that bad. We're tightening up really fast. We started a mini-cut maybe six, seven weeks ago at 240. I'm down to 225 already. So I'm responding really well, which is great. My strength is pretty much the same. If anything, I kind of feel like I have more energy. Do you feel that at times after coming out? Yeah. You're at that good... What are you... It's like 14, 15 weeks out? I think 14. I've got to double check. 14? Yeah. Yeah. There's that magic spot I find between 12 and 8, usually, where you're not having to process all this extra food. So you're not in this carb coma all the time, but you're not depleted to be tired. You're having just enough to have performance increase. Generally, this is when some of the super supplements start getting pushed in there, so your performance is feeling good. This is a money time, right? You feel great. And then usually six weeks comes around, six weeks out work, and it's like, slap. I know it's coming. I know it's coming, especially because we just pulled drugs out a little bit within the last week or so, the last check-in. So I'm sure within the next few weeks, I'll probably start to accumulate a bit more fatigue, but we'll see. I don't know if I asked you that, actually. Do you have just really quick, maybe one or two tips when you're on prep with really managing fatigue? Is there certain things that you do? Because obviously, you're trying to push yourself. You're trying to lose body fat. So it's like, what do you do within that? You know what I mean? Yeah. Okay. Training performance, always number one. We want to make sure that our muscles are sticking around. How do we give them a reason to stick around? In the gym. So if our training starts to really drop off in the gym, we need to take a look at, okay, why is it dropping off? One, are we doing way too much cardio? Is our cardio too intense? It really comes down to like, how much is your output? Okay. We can also take a look at your training directly. Say you come into this prep, you're doing whatever, two working sets per exercise and five exercises, and maybe a couple of drop sets or something in there as well. Some intense parts. Okay. Well, we need to start pulling things out like that. Generally, you'll pull the drop sets up. Okay. Maybe you get a little deeper and you're starting to notice some of these numbers are dropping off. Okay. Well, let's pull maybe a little bit of volume out as well. Okay. Let's take a look at our cardio. Are you doing an hour on the stairs? Okay. Maybe we pull you off the stairs and we're going to put you on something a little, maybe an elliptical and we'll split your sessions twice a day. Okay. That's going to help with fatigue a whole bunch. It's also looking, okay, let's take a look at your sleep. Are you sleeping? Are you waking up every other hour? Like it really comes down to that kind of stuff. When we're talking about certain compounds or certain compounds that are going to ruin your sleep. A lot of guys, if you put Trenin, Trenin is supposed to be this magic miracle drug that's all you hear about on social media. I'm like, sometimes it's not the move. Sometimes you put Trenin and somebody's sleep drops off. Now their performance drops off in the gym. Sleep is super, super, super important. I would way rather be getting eight hours of sleep than taking 200 extra mgs of Trenin a week. That's going to make way more of a difference, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I think that's super important. Yeah. Anything, are you noticing any like changes right now that you pulled drugs to like your training or anything like that? That's a good question. I mean, maybe a little less weight. I still feel strong. Like I noticed, you know, maybe on the overhead press on the strength machine, I'm not doing three plates for reps. Maybe it's like down to two and a quarter with a little bit more of a struggle, but like nothing, nothing like drastic, you know, but I mean, I'm getting pretty lean, which is great, you know? Yeah. I was going to say like, you look fricking awesome compared to like the last, like obviously the biggest change is going to be in the first few months when you're just getting that first little bit of fluff off. It's like, Holy, I was like, you look good, man. I'm stoked to see you hit the stage. Like it's going to be a drastic difference. And one of the best things about competing as a coach, one, you get experience so that you can lead your clients a little bit better, but you're also going to get like, you're going to get a lot of clients every time you compete. You do well on stage, people see that and they go like, Oh, I want to, I want to do what that guy's doing. Right now, for sure, man. That's going to help your business too. Absolutely. And thank you for that. I appreciate it. Also with the guys that I'm coaching as well, you know, like they're in different states, you know, Missouri and Arkansas. So just puts our brand into, you know, other people's eyes, you know, which I think is important. So it'll take time, but I think November is going to be a big month for our team because we have a few athletes that will be on stage and also myself included. So it's good, man. I think that's pretty much all I wanted to cover. Did you have anything else? No, I'm good, man. That was, that was awesome. I'm excited to be able to kind of jump on here every now and again and stay in touch and watch your prep and then watch me get fat and happy over the next off season. Let's put some size on that was my biggest kind of coming out of this show was like, I just need to be bigger and I need to be leaner. So it's like, okay, how do you do that? Yeah, this takes time, right? How old are you? 27 going on 28. So yeah, so I'm 26. It's the same thing, right? We're young in the sport and there's these guys that have been around for a long time and it's how do you get there? It just takes time. So that's all it is. Yeah. I've recently really dropped into that man and just trying to embrace the present moment. Like I could sit here and get pissed that I'm not this award-winning honey Rambo. It's like, why would you, how would you possibly logically try to do that? The guy that's been in the game for what, 20, 30 years, you know, whatever longer. So it's like, how can you fake that experience? You just can't. So it's like, let's just be here right now and do the best that we can. And I think that's helped me a lot. And just, you know, trying to just be here right now and just know that it'll come and having faith in that, you know, and that's it, bro. Yeah. Being present in the moment allows you to actually enjoy it. Right. That's the biggest part of even competing, like coaching aside, like it goes by so quickly. Like you might only do 10 shows in your whole career. Remember them, enjoy it, enjoy the preps and enjoy looking crazy and walking around the gym and feeling like Superman, right? Because before you know it, it's, it's done and it's not going to be around forever. So it's spend the time and enjoy it. That's the goal, brother. Cause maybe, you know, maybe another 10, 12 years, if we're lucky for joints hold up, you know, push the way that we want. That's the thing, right? So it's not a lot depending on how much time you take in between that. So that's good. But bro, appreciate your time, man. Thank you for hopping on. Maybe we'll run a part two soon. Who knows? Maybe. Thank you, man. I appreciate you. We'll chat soon. Okay. All right, buddy. Have a good day. Hey, just want to send you a massive thank you for your time and energy with us here today. We don't take that lightly. 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