Lyle McDonald Critiques Mike Israetel's Fitness Advice and Bodybuilding Career

Well he used to have nothing but the utmost flattery yeah until I was mean to him and L listen I think you're brilliant I have the utmost respect for Lyall I think Lyall probably smarter than me now Mike can't even hear my name without losing his mind ly Lyall listen ly we need your help Lyall McDonald we need your help hey ly McDonald Fu you be like you ly McDonald well that depends debating Lyall McDonald like if he was in front of me it would take the world for me to not choke him to death

so I always move out of arms length um I'm not getting stronger weak to weak am I training wrong if you're getting stronger week to week you're under training as we actually have the genetics to grow muscle unlike him and that is meant as an insult because I don't like ly my methods work Mike and you proved by your own logic that yours don't the only Reason I compete is to illustrate to people that the methods that we espouse at Renaissance periodization are effective it it worked for you if by work you mean abject failure

at the only sport you ever tried to be good at you started this L you made fun of me first I have more willpower than you I'm just better than you Lyall I know one of well he now his ex coach some of the questions that Mike world's bodybuilding expert has asked him and he and also in Every category of human behavior I'm tougher than you I can train closer to failure than you I can do it for longer I'm funnier than you I'm smarter than you and I'm better at being in than you Dr

Mike Israel is a competitive bodybuilder and highly successful YouTuber who's known for making critiques of other people's Fitness advice on the Renaissance perod Channel Mike criticizes the way people train the way people eat and even the way people Take performance-enhancing substances from Fitness influences to Hollywood cele ities and even professional bodybuilders but what about Mike's own advice and practices in competitive bodybuilding can they be criticized well if you were to ask Mike then the answer would most likely be no because Mike only accepts criticism from Top experts in his field I don't know why I

up if you think you know you are presuming you know more than me about the thing I'm One of the top experts in the world in and also the thing I'm literally involved in myself so whatever ideas you have about how I can improve just [ __ ] right off by his own admission Mike can't figure out why he effed up in competitive bodybuilding it truly is an enigma we need a top expert on the case they aren't easy to find but folks I have just the right men ly McDonald welcome back hey thank you

for joining me um thanks for constantly giving me Shout out on your YouTube channel by the way my buddy Solomon Nelson uh who does some fantastic videos oh yeah no absolutely it's more people need to know about you're doing the stuff that I used to do or wanted to do and never got around to so I I want more people to see more fact and evidence-based examinations of the nonsense that goes on in this industry because there's a lot of it Mike and ly go way back tell me about that volume debate Mike just Talked

in circles absolutely give qualification it was 90 minutes of wasted time truly wasted time in fact Mike used to hold Lyle in high regard I have the utmost respect for Lyle I think Lyle probably is smarter than me and knows a lot of [ __ ] now Mike can't even hear my name without losing his mind why go listen to everything I said I said I don't care how he trains perfectly fine with how he trains his Information is [ __ ] and he's telling you what he's telling is wrong and apparently 5 six years

later it still bothers him the details of that will come later in chapter 3 for now I'll outline the structure of this video in Chapter 2 ly and I critically analyze Mike's Fitness advice in chapter 3 we critically analyze Mike's rebuttal to one of ly's past criticisms of Mike which is that what Mike claims is muscular failure actually isn't In chapter 4 we critically analyze Mike's competitive bodybuilding career such as it has been I conclude in chapter five by discussing what you can take away from this whole expose the first thing I asked Lyle to

do was critique Mike isel's Fitness advice in a similar vein to the way Mike criticizes everyone else's advice we went through several of Mike's claims here's what ly had to say about Them he says that to have a very low body fat percentage even to the point where you have stried glutes isn't unhealthy low body fats not being healthy it it just is resting on an I'm sorry forgive me it's resting on an empty assumption people see stried glutes and they go that can't be healthy and I would love to be in real life with

that person instead of over social media and say okay now I hear you why not but Can you explain to me why it's not healthy and usually they can't okay that is a well he does make an exception for women in the form of the estrogen goes down they lose bone mineral density it actually leads to long-term bone loss so fat goes out the window being lean for females very lean is definitely not a good thing but yeah he says stried glutes aren't inherently unhealthy what does he think happens to men's hormones at that level

he goes ah Testosterone goes down but you know that doesn't mean you're less healthy certain biomarkers like testosterone estrogen generally the sex hormones they definitely take a hit when you're very very lean slight downside okay um testosterone goes to castrate levels of at that level and I dare say the data on hypogonadism and health is pretty well established so um yeah now I'm actually G to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one not in what he said but in That a defense could be made in his case because something that has fascinated

me for years we knew about all these adaptations to dieting metabolic rate thyroid nervous system appetite muscle loss all this stuff we knew it all happened you looked at what happened to hormones testosterone goes castrate T3 levels go down cortisol goes up uh estrogen progesterone go down um you know the hor Whole hormonal profile muscle grow blah blah blah protein synus goes down all these things happen appetite goes up but if you go back and look at the way drug using bodybuilders what they sort of through trial and error figured out to do for contest

prep they were replacing or fixing every one of those systems testosterone goes down take anabolic steroids T3 drops take thyroid Medication sympathetic nervous system goes down CL butol growth hormone screws up growth hormone apti appetite suppresses now you got the glp1 drugs going to put me out of a job whether they knew that not they were fixing each of these problems that occurred now leptin would fix it all but it never got out of the research stage right other than for one one disease condition but that so letin injections would have fixed all this at

the central Level because the body would still think that you were fat and eating but NE neither here nor there if you look at a natural bodybuilder in contest shake their system is completely yeah was a famous study on uh it was something it's got a turgid title uh hormonal and endocrine responses to a high St basically it was a bunch of Special Forces guys that were forced to live on no calories 16 hours of of Exercise of pack work and very little sleep they all ended up in like 5% body fat testosterone was castrate

cortisol was up T3 was down igf1 was down all this like I mean Bas that's a natural bodybuilder in contest sh yeah because contest dieting is simply controlled starvation we're getting as close to death as you can without actually dying one thing Mike says it's not the leanness as such that is unhealthy but rather the dieting process Large part yes they're not in great health right there but it's because of the diet fatigue not the lenus itself God Almighty how many hours do we have there is both truth and falsehood to that but it doesn't

ultimately matter even at calorie balance at 5% body fat your hormones are still Fu period now if you were to look at a drug using bodybuilder at 4% body fat you'll Be physiologically normal in hormonal sense they'll be that's why they'll be perfectly fine they absolutely can't stay that lean year round because they're replacing everything with a needle or a pill so again I'm giving him a Ben of the doubt he doesn't deserve because he would never qualified in this sense he didn't actually mention the Natty or not question which I thought was hilarious so

he's telling natural lifters in the general population that To have stried glutes isn't unhealthy sure sure yeah your testosterone takes a hit but big whoop you got all these Improvement cast rate levels it is it is at like zero right it is not a matter of it taking a hit it is not that it's down a little bit it is hypogonadal and we know the health consequences of that and they are not good he only knows some modicum of leanness because of his drug stack which We'll get to later yes so yeah that's that's ad

hominum but I just wanted to throw in that Bub I'm not saying that itself undermines his argument it's just a like but literally I mean like every piece of science says that's wrong we know factually even IM male immune system is optimized between 12 and 15% low energy availability red s all that data on both women and men right you go look at extremely like horse jockeys of all Things are one of the male athletes that see all the same problems as female athletes because they do all the same crazy stuff all that low energy

availability data there is Decades of this most of it has been on women but the data on men is now emerging and it's showing the exact same stuff it happens at a later level compared to women in terms of energy availability and I want to get into that but like men's bodies are Proportionally more robust in the sense that they don't see the problems as soon but at that level you absolutely do that's just asinine and it's I dare say a little bit um disingenuous isn't the word I'm looking for irresponsible yeah uh that's yeah

criminal would be a little bit too strong but yeah it's irresponsible will tell people that because it's wrong yeah yeah it's that's right up there with during the metabolic damage thing apparently laye Norton said That you know he wasn't it wasn't his responsibility to tell women they shouldn't stay super lean all the time because he's a Libertarian and he's not [ __ ] you it is desperately unhealthy and we know this but whatever it's yes I think that's irresponsible to tell people that how about some other irresponsible advice take a month off to see massive

gains growth hack the growth hack is to take a month off of Training once a year every year to grow more that's a fresh very resensitized muscle sensitive to muscle growth sensitive to training because it hasn't experienced it in a while resensitization oh Jesus the whole resensitization thing is from areas I mean it's been around for a while and you know they've done the occasional paper there's a weird paper where they had people take train was beginners three weeks on three weeks off three Weeks on and they ended up the exact same place but these

were neural strength gains and it was waterers shifts anyway and there was another one to take a week off and like yeah you see these there's a paper that got a lot of press last year and they did they're look molecular markers and yeah it caused these molecular markers to improve for growth but the paper itself said well might be resensitization or it's probably just detraining and this Really argued for consistency in training right so way back so we go way back let's go way back way back the old T Nation days if you ever

heard about the ABCDE diet this anabolic burst cycling diet and exercise program and there was this idea at this at one point that by deliberately causing muscle loss by eating low protein and overtraining would cause all these adaptations they were basing this on people like underweight kids and Mal Nutrition and ketchup rapid ketchup growth that occurs like when you fix protein energy malnutrition like quari oror and marasmus and stuff that you would get this big rebound growth because you see this decrease in protein breakdown and blah blah blah and like yeah and that's true and

you get rapid growth right until you gain what you lost and then you're right back to where you started right this is like the guys that that Swear just swear up and down that post competition there is an anabolic rebound where you are primed to gain muscle mass despite the fact that every system in your physiology is geared towards fat regain Eric Trexler did a paper on that first few days there is a huge increase in lean body mass it's glycogen in water and then over the next six weeks 90 celling 97% fat game like

every system in the bo the idea that you are primed to grow at the end of a contest Diet because people yeah you get this big Jack you know so yeah you take a month off and you shrink yeah I bet you do get accelerated growth it's called muscle memory and you get right back to where you were at which point and if you'd spent that month's training you'd be further than you are now it doesn't work that way right response and the science doesn't support he he said that you'll generate More growth training six

days a week compared to fewer days of training per week so six outperforms four and he said that without qualification in a YouTube short six time a week training allows you to train your body harder and Signal more muscle growth than training for or five times a week you would get better gains if you train six days a week of course you do there's no you know you've done videos on this and I've talked about it too there is no Nuance to the Discussion I mean some of the things that I'm saying now because I'm

not going to spend hours doing a full treaties right to discuss any of these Concepts frequency intensity proximity to failure volumes you cannot discuss them in isolation how many sets you can or should do per workout or per week will depend on your proximity to zero reps Reserve saying six days a week is better than four well under under what Conditions given what parameters also and again this is a point you've I know you've brought up is who are we talking to what population are oh here was another good one you might have missed this

one of one of Mike's brilliant rebuttal to me another one of his videos about about how he was recommending submaximum those my videos are aimed at those college kids that train too hard or something roughly to that effect from my experience the kind of demographic That we're talking about a lot of college students and uh folks out of you know in high school and just out of high school they're the guys that are getting stapled with everything they're the guys round back pulling to failure all the time uh there's tons and tons of people that

I've run into into the gym the kind of young male audience that goes on YouTube are the kind of people that want to bleed out of their eyeballs and training and they do it all the time uh I don't think that those folks benefit very much from going harder dude I've been in a gyms for 30 years you know many people I've seen training too hard that is a population of people that don't exist only exceptions being 15-year-old kids bench pressing with their buddies that's it right if I'm in the gym on any given day

and see one or two people even getting within three reps of limits that's a lot most people it's at most Half maximal reps of that yeah but that again that was well well my video okay then why are you not qualifying that in every video you are saying this is how you should train not if you're going to grinding failure all the time you need to back it off again it was just it's endless madeup ad hoc on the Fly [ __ ] to avoid addressing the actual facts and that is what he's best at

realiz this is the man that said sleep is better than steroids so of all Of the drugs you could take for muscle building sleep is the best drug so to speak an hour of extra sleep that brings you from sleeping two hours less than you need to one less than you need is unreal powerful and comparable to tons of anabolic drugs how anyone can take this guy seriously is beyond me yeah how anyone can listen to that and I did so I made a post about that on on Facebook and there was one guy well

if you haven't slept for four days straight oh My God if that's what it takes then you know if that's but but these are the kind of defenses the kind of counter arguments people have to come up with this one like you know that's not what he's saying so stop trying to be an apologize apologist stop trying to give this guy the benefit of the doubt when he's spouting pure bollocks right yeah at a certain point there only so charitable you can be sure also and someone else a buddy of Mine who I think you

you correspond with Joseph made a point that he only slept like four hours a night I sleep at very weird hours and I really don't don't sleep a lot like what basically to take that at face value all right if we have two people and I think you made this point that are both sleeping four hours a week I give one guy 600 milligrams of testosterone and get the other guy eight hours of sleep Mike is saying this guy will grow Better bold face lie I mean it's just flat out like I do wonder I

did an Instagram thing about this and I was like when you wake up every morning and ask what lie you'll tell yeah because but this is also you see this a lot in steroid users they try to downplay the role of the drugs and that's a point I for years Mike would never actually my special Sports supplements you lying [ __ ] did you hear him talking about how drugs aren't a shortcut since the mechanism by which they work is letting you work harder he said that in a pod cost he did it's not a

shortcut because performance-enhancing drugs allow you to do more work they allow you to recover faster better you do more work it's not a shortcut it's the opposite of a shortcut you're doing more so when people say oh that guy's taking a shortcut by taking steroids like if the Shortcut means he has to eat six times a day sleep nine hours a night take 10 other drugs to counteract the effects of steroids that are negative take five other drugs to boost the effects of steroids in a synergistic way walk around like a zombie all the time

fight his own mentality day in and day out and train like a monster not exactly a shortcut it is a long cut so and yet he doesn't work hard I what I Mean in other sports maybe not they allow you to train more intensely because other sports require you to train intensely and the way he trains is not that's right I mean I guess he was a powerlifter at one point and and I mean Joseph Point like Point like early you can go fun he's got results up power they were decent from what I can

tell because he is I mean he's built like a troll he he's got better far more better biomechanics for that than he ever did For bodybuilding but you know and why doesn't he go back to that well in powerlifting training you actually have to train hard and in bodybuilding I'm sorry I mean crutch is a loaded word but it doesn't you can take drugs without training at all and grow that doesn't make any sense whatsoever it may I mean okay I don't it does that doesn't no I don't again you see this with drug Users

they want to downplay the role of the drugs oh I work it's because I work hard it's not the drugs okay then why do you bench 500 on and 365 off if it's not that why not just fck Paul Carter once said a true genius among men once said and I quote the reason Naturals aren't as big as Pros because they don't train hard and they follow if it Feats your if it fixs your Macros kid You not that's what he said because we know natural bodybuilders don't train hard sure natural bodybuilders don't eat clean

so I asked him hey Paul if that's true why do you take steroids why don't you just train harder and eat clean at which point he made a slur about my mother and then probably blocked me because okay yeah that's why Naturals aren't as big as the pros because they don't train Hard enough well then why you Pro take drugs at all if if it's not the Dr but that's real common you see that among among drug users really down wanting to downplay what the role I mean I'm not saying and and of course that

leads the other thing the whole you know the the drugs are a crutch thing gets used like Ben Johnson when he got disqualified it's like ah he was a cheat and he just couldn't do it clean it's like no he trained he was already great before he Started using he had to train his absolute balls off and yes Charlie Francis did admit it allowed you to train harder more frequently because your recovery was better it allowed it but it still wasn't a crutch because he still had to put in the word and bodybuilding is unique

and that you don't and again the science proves that I mean and that was for years nobody believed it they were just like ah drugs don't Help that much and then bason did his study and it's like yeah I got bad news guys yeah they do oh yeah I mean one great example of how much drugs have helped Mike's physique is take a look at his neck he's admitted that he doesn't train his neck like you you know what I'm saying your boy here I got a pretty [ __ ] big neck and I've never

trained neck in my life and I don't plan on it now I grapple too so that's plenty of neck training but my neck would be like Maybe half an inch smaller if it didn't grapple I never [ __ ] train my neck maybe it gets a bit of training when he does BJJ but no direct training and yet it grew plenty from when he was natural to now yeah and that's do any training for hean yeah I mean you don't have to because the traps just traps and delts blow up I've told this story in

my group years ago in Salt Lake City I was training some female traine of mine and she was using you know 40 pounds per and Dumbbell semi-strict lateral raises she had decent shoulders there's a girl across the gym that was training her and her boyfriend were obviously juw yeah 15 pounds each hand [ __ ] about tapped just Cannonball bels drugs absolutely like I said in other sports yeah you still have to put in the work and the drugs may allow you to train harder but I mean he can't have it both ways he can't

say well it's not a crutch because it allows you to train harder but Natural should be training harder without drugs and what the [ __ ] like oh yeah there's no consistency my favorite you should probably train more than the pro bodybuilders you follow you should probably train more than the pro bodybuilders you follow yes you did that video on that and I mean that is baffling to me I can't believe it the only way again to give him the benefit of the doubt would if he was saying that Oh Pros just let the drugs

do the work that would probably be more honest and close to accurate than just the statement the assertion did he ever give a reason for that assertion I mean I watched your video but I don't remember yes he does um so his basic argument is smaller natural individuals need to do more volume because per set when you're bigger each set is more disruptive basically you're Moving heavier loads it's going to take more time to recover so whereas a very uh enormous Juiced up ifbb Pro bodybuilder might not be able to recover from more than eight

sets eight hard sets once per week you as a natural would be able to recover from more than eight sets just once per week and so you would be leaving gains on the table if you didn't do more sets more often than most ifbb Pro bodybuilders but one of my unpopular Opinions will of course turn out which of course is right even if nobody accepts it yet is that as you get more advanced you need less volume not more and this is again I'm giving Mike far more the benefit of the doubt than he deserves

because if I can explain his argument better than he can um or I can make him at least a fake plausible as people get do get bigger and stronger yes every set every will be significantly more of a stress to the Body right Ray Williams who's squatting a thousand pounds he is not squatting High volumes he sure as [ __ ] not squatting high frequency because for him 80% is still 800 pounds on his back right this whole idea that I think Mike does sort of adhere to that you should do more volume as you

get more advanced that came out of drug fueled Russian training they ramp their volumes as they ramp their drugs just like Mike does but if you're Done that a natural yeah as you get to a more advanced level you need less volume not more but at that point you're also talking about specialization Cycles that's a whole separate thing he's also said Advanced lifters need more volume and that contradicts every whatever argument whatever charitable interpretation of train more than the pros there might be for advanced the bottom end is higher three sets minimum in most cases

and up To as many as 12 sets per session is a really good Target for hypertrophy intermediates con gr volumes which for the advanced in some cases cause well either really gains or only stagnation as your body gets used to training its work capacity improves and that means that if the work capacity is in order and is higher and if your recovery ability still hasn't been maximized doing more volume that's right more sets which the hit folks like it all is Actually a great way to continue to challenge the muscles but then Mike is saying

you should do tons more volume when you're dieting in a deficit and your recover is down there is no consistency to anything that's being said there is never any qualification when this stuff is talked about just do this high volume is good high frequency is good low whatever it is good bad like there is no Nuance there is no qualification of who we are talking About a 22y old obsessed male competition physique athlete a 45 year old with the life this is never discussed yeah never there's no consistency or logic to this he says whatever

he feels like saying and thinks is true today and we'll say something completely different tomorrow and then say the third thing the next time there is no consistency to any of it um so like I said it's like arguing With fog yeah yeah totally does volume beat Progressive tension overload believe that's one of Mike's older claims no so if we're really serious about saying it's it's tension it's Progressive and tension progress and tension that we're really going after um you know are we really prepared to defend that with uh data and experimentation and even just

uh uh just a a mental a thought experiment and the Answer is really when it comes down to it no we're not volume is the boss and intensity is the assistant boss is useless without the assistant but you know the boss is more important so I've been thumping the the drum of progressive tension overload over time for my entire we've known since the fuing 70s that is the stimulus for growth even the papers you read go tension is the initi is the initiator of growth and then they BL about volume Right every paper that supposedly

shows that volume is the primary driver of hyper all have Progressive tension overload built into the study design with like four exceptions they all we added weight to maintain the proper intensity everything else is being studied on a base of progressive tension overload Argo that is primary right because you can prove this to yourself that in the long term Agressive tension overload is the key long term go find any dude in your gym who's not on Mike special Sports UPS what he's benching let's say it's 90 kilos for 10 185 pounds in in non-com units

come back a year later if he's still only benching 185 by 10 I do not give a how many sets he's doing he will be no bigger period come back and he's now up at 245 11 15ish kilos he will be bigger yep Simple fact is that if you look at there are no small sorry there are no big natural bodybuilders who are not strong or who more importantly have not gotten much stronger right because this all that matters you should just be able to do one maximal isometric and grow I go well no that's

not well that's they were saying that that would be sufficient I go but it's not I go there is we know That there is some number of high tension contractions required to turn on the growth mechanisms we don't know how many it is yet but we know that there is some number that is going to be required but but yeah so in the long term and and there's and people go but you know well and I I've had people I've say that they like well you know but I only squat you know 365 by eight

I go look I'm not saying your Elite powerlifter strong I go but you cannot go from B squatting 135 by8 to squatting 365 by8 pounds and not have bigger legs or be bigger it's a bad example because specs but you know what I mean yeah show me someone who's only who's never squatted more 85 by8 they they will not get bigger it is a matter of getting stronger relative to yourself in the same exercise done in the same F like there's a whole there's a zillion qualifiers I wrot like a five-part series about tension on

my website but I'm like I hate that I have To make all these qualifiers but you people are determined to misunderstand it it would take but it's too long for me to say to write this paragraph This is what I'm saying but it is assuming that your form is not changing as you add weight and like yeah if I take someone who's using too much weight on rows and I reduce the weight and let them use proper form their back is now getting a stimulus well see see lighter W was grow like no but we're

not talking About an exercise we're talking about the muscle and God Almighty are you going there it's like it's aggressive illiteracy sometimes but in the long term and there's a reason a lot of good natural bodybuilders cross comped and powerlifting there's a lesson to be had there there are no big weak natural bodybuilders period you cannot find even the pros ignoring Mike and there are guys that get away with you know lighter Pump your training and let the drugs do the work most of those guys are pretty damn strong Dorian was a monster right Coleman

was a monster who got injured because he talked about ego lifting um going back to your previous video like most those guy you watch those the the guys that succeed they they get pretty strong now are they pushing the way relentlessly like someone who's natural no because connective tissue and injuries and and you don't have to so That level again that that workout is an overload for quite some time at the advanced level when Mike's like want to train like me get my app no people should not [ __ ] train like you because without

your drugs it will get them [ __ ] nowhere and too many people have learned that the hard way I mean even I see the ads for the RPA and they use part what their athletes they're like oh you know train like this guy this RP athlete with Our app and I mean I'll put in the comments every time I go don't even pretend this guy got this bit from the app you are lying to people but this entire industry is based on that and always has been and always will be but yeah he just

tells boldfaced lies Mike was like well if you don't get sore or a pump you need to do more volume if you get no pump at all from your training man the app's probably gonna tell you to do more sets cuz this not enough the app Is going to ask you hey how sore did you get and it uses that data to inform how much volume it gives you for that session it's asking about next time neither of those things being a relevant metric for grow and if you put that into the app you ended

up [Music] doing tell me more about your thoughts on this notion of using pump and soreness as a gauge for whether or not You should ramp up your volume throughout a mesocycle if you like which physical physical standpoint the pump has nothing to do with anything as far as I'm concerned at best it tells you that you're actually working a muscle but as far as actual physiological stimulus it has nothing to do with anything right if all you do is nothing but heavy sets of fives we know that'll get a gross stimulus you're never going

to get a pump yeah the pump has As far as soreness and because I did a piece on this a bunch of years ago I said basically I'm like stop chasing Dawns right delay onset muscle sess because and I made a number of points and I would make new points now because there's even more research now about that which is a there's the question of you know what delayed on what Doms actually is because there's this weird research group right because how here's how you test to see if muscle Damage has occurred you do something

downhill running ecenter training whatever it is you take a muscle biopsy right little set of scissors you take a chunk out of the muscle and you analyze it well this research group asked what if what happens if you take a biopsy of an untrained muscle and they did that and they found that there was a great deal of muscle damage because when you cut a chunk of muscle out it causes disruption of the Muscle at least to some degree some of the muscular damage that was being seen was due to the F method of biopsy

okay so that's number one even beyond that okay in a practical sense most people find that they get the most sore early on in a training cycle and grow worse and get less sore as the cycle progresses and grow better doas has shown fairly incontrovertibly that in the earliest stages of new exercise the first three Weeks even though muscle protein synthesis goes up muscle damage goes up and you don't get any growth it's not till after muscle damage goes down that you start getting the growth well if you're going to argue that sorus is due

to damage if anything Doms is inversely related to growth and they people you can get they're I mean also Do's point he's got a whole paper on why muscle damage is not part of this concentric only training generates Growth it doesn't cause damage doesn't cause dos other work has suggested that what we think of is the is connected tissue damage got a good review paper on that another one thinks it's actual pinching of the Nerds due to local inflammation Doms does not necessarily have anything to do with actual muscle fers and it's got jack [

__ ] to do with grow so using Doms as a metric for when to increase volume is and I wrote that And Mike apparently didn't handle it well he wrote this angry piece about well here's a list of 20 things that correlate with soreness and growth not Lyle's best piece yeah but I'm right and you can now go find I think he did a debate with little Milo about is muscle soreness a stimulant like and I'm sure he's saying that something different now but that was what the the app is if you didn't get sore

you weren't doing enough sets and that's got nothing to do with It you shouldn't Chase I mean also there's just a simple fact people that train a muscle once a week tend to get more sore the people that train a muscle more frequently and people that train a muscle more frequently tend to grow better if anything Doms is actually oppos like is the opposite of growth oh yeah if you want the sorest quads you'll ever have go run a marathon is that going to generate much growth compared to doing a quad work out with barbell

Back squats and leg extensions no sess has not because again it's based on this old idea of that you know growth is stimulated by breaking muscle down and it growing so you need to get sore which is indicate muscle damage and that's not how muscle grows it's not it's never been an issue of breaking it down and building it back up it's a matter of continuous gene expression VI meano transduction and mtor and FK and all that deep molecular stuff the same Reason that super compensation as it's typically described is not a thing that's not

how adaptation occurs so yeah soorus and the pump are a relevant metrics and it's Mike isrel who's arguing that in an aggressive caloric deficit you should do very high volume high frequency High rep lifting you should train five to six days a week week with very high volume sets of 10 to 30 short rest intervals to get the most anabolism catabolism throughput in the Muscle right doing a protein sparing modified fuss that's how you should train according to him today's topic is how to transform your physique fast five to six days per week of Weights

because you want to present that best physique you got to put as much throughput into the muscles catabolism and anabolism is possible you train twice a week you look fine you train five to six days a week for you know six weeks You're going to look you know pretty cool at the end high volume generally you're pushing the limits because you want the most throughput possible high volume training not only builds the most muscle it breaks down the most muscle and requires the most calories to repair so if you do relatively high volume training then

your total amount of body change is very high both on the fat burning end and the muscle building end we want to want to maximize that a lot a Lot of this and this is what it's always colored by this idea that should train more on aggressive deficits this all comes out of drug fueled bodybuild it always has you go back to the 70s where supposedly guys like Arnold and their ill they claim that that's that they didn't bring the anabolics until contest PR now is that true we will never know I've heard both sides

of it argued I don't know who to believe we'll never know for sure that's what They claim and what you would see is that they would ramp their volume up going into the cont test now they also talked about gaining weight as they leaned out that alone tells you that something weird was going on right they did these very short 12-week diet Cycles number one because they had drugs number two they to be nearly as lean as they need to now that's a whole separate thing but you would see also they didn't do a lot

they were using this high Volume High rep short rest period weight training essentially as cardio because they didn't do a lot of cardio in that era by and large so they were ramping their volume up along with the and you know and there was this idea High Reps to etch in the cuts and burn in the separation May was burn in the cuts and chch in the separations that you know High rep leg extensions to get cut lean and like that I'm like well okay but they were using High volume weight training as a calorie

burn but they had steroids to save off muscle loss because when Naturals do that they Hemorrhage muscle well Mike is actually advocating for the lifting to be a kind of calorie burner and set a five just don't burn as many calories and here we're trying to burn so many calories that your weight training workouts as illustrated by the short rest intervals being okay they double as caloric Burn workouts so sets of 10 to 30 reps will be brutal especially if you do it in super set style but boy oh boy will that burn a whole

lot of calories for you it's free burnt calories so you may as well do high rep high volume short rest interval training you could just walk on the treadmill and not cut into your C recovery all the time yeah or you could just do that yeah rather than burning yourself out in the weight room which is what everybody does but when Naturals do that and shift from Heavy training and they remove the tension component all they do is lose muscle mass without fail I know because I know I knew the ones that did it back

in the day they follow the advice of the pros lighter weights higher reps short rest intervals during contest prep and they got smaller and you burn out yeah and you train because what have I been saying for going on 25 years now in a diet you need to do less volume and even even Outside of that even among the evidence-based professionals they're still saying oh what builds muscle maintains it oh [ __ ] we've got Decades of work on maintenance training and that's just not true this idea that you need to maintain your training volume

all the way through diet prep to maintain muscle mass is nonsense it's like a sound bite that just sounds good but that has very little evidence Supporting and it sounds physiological what builds muscle maintains it except we know that's not how maintenance works the calorie learn from lifting weights is Jack and Sh not that cardio is much more but it doesn't putut into your recovery but again when you've got drugs to let you overtrain and burn out I guess you can do that I mean but again Nuance for drug you maybe I mean whatever I

mean it still do get mik in Shape so maybe not whereas you know the guy I just helped get his Pro card I had him doing low volume full body every two or three days and he didn't lose an ounce of muscle and came in absolutely shrink rat so because it's just not that energy is better put somewhere else yeah the idea of training again lifting more in contest prep that comes out of drug fueled bodybuilding yeah when Naturals do it they always burn out always and They end up wrecked by the time they get

there assuming they make it to stage at all yeah thank you thank you um yeah really that push back against that horrible advice is needed I mean seriously if he would like if he said he just said look this works when you're on drugs and don't want to do cardio I would take no issue with that statement I still do it that way if I were Co but I don't work with people on props it the the the G the rules are Different and that's perfectly fine at that point screw cardio just take dnp if

you've got the balls like just you're gonna do it do it for real right just screw cardio you if you can just take DMP and be done with it but the rules change when you got that fixing the problems I deal with Naturals and that stuff doesn't work as has been proven for de now people will but the guys who win do it survivorship bias survivorship bias yeah I don't care About the six who made it the stage I care about the 99.9% that ended up injured broken with an eating disorder like higher volumes let

you grow more I think that's another just blanket assertion that he's made high volume training not only builds the most muscle it breaks down the most muscle and requires the most calories to repair like there are 52 set per week programs 45 set per week programs 27 set perek programs 18 set perek programs that all Outperform the smaller set per week programs that were compared in those studies directly more volume equals more growth okay cool story bro um you know return on investment you shaped curve n it's just more volume equals more growth without any

okay cool um you know I'm still oh the other thing this paper talked about the when they talked about the super high volumes they also mentioned this will get left out one we did not address Was you know the long-term sustainability or and burnout issue they also brought up the fact that in most of these super high volume studies they're only looking at like one or two muscle groups right that is still the question I'm waiting to have answered about this 52 set study it was quads only hamstrings were like four sets and upper body

was just they gave a little something to do on the side okay assuming 52 sets per week oh also That 52 sets is only for two weeks that's not how any of this was presented they didn't do 52 sets for 20 weeks they built up to it that was two maximum volume weeks and the growth was still insignificantly better for the two and a half times but I asked the question and I still ask the question let's assume 50 sets per week gives better grow based on this study in quads only how do you do

that for full Body it's just that simple right chest back delts biceps triceps quads hamstrings glutes eight or nine muscle groups depending on how you want to count it are you going to do 450 hard sets a week no because it cannot physically be done even in this study they barely you know they even talked about the highest volume group was really tired at the end of two weeks that's two weeks of those I did a video You while back sustainable training right even if and this was Mike's thing oh and the back to the

volume debate that was another one of Mike's arguments about using super high volumes well you know maybe if you use really high volumes early in the C your career maybe you can eek out a little bit more growth above your genetic limit if you get somewhere faster you have gotten to a point in which you're still More youthful less injury uh prone and more likely to put on more gains if someone reach es the tip of their spear at age 40 gez you're 40 it's you know like there's only so much you can gain after

that but if someone reaches the tip of their spear abilities by the time they're 30 they're still young and they still have a potential to take that even further so I think there's an absolute difference there as well that's not what a genetic limit is Knuckle okay doesn't matter how you get there you end up at the same point even if you get and because somebody asked me that question it's Q&A you're like will you gain faster or reach a higher level than you would by using moderate vams for a long period go no because

the genetic limit is a genetic limit is a genetic limit you're going to get to where you're going to get maybe because Michael's like well maybe if you get closer in three years Versus because he was like well you know rather than taking seven years to reach your genetic limit you get there in five it only takes three to four if you're doing it right the seven was just a thrown out number that is completely illegitimate but the guy asked me it's like once you get I go yeah you'll get to the same point and

you won't burn out you won't get injured right because even if these short-term studies are showing what they're purported to show which They're usually not what do you do for the rest of the year because as I like to jokingly say and this is anecdote so I know I'm the Science Guy but my experience being hurt is not good for games and when people do this [ __ ] they get hurt all the people that jumped on the high frequency thing ended up with 10 and with joint problems all the people who did the mrv

stuff ended up overtrained and injured rather than trying to get 5% Every eight weeks by doing triple the volume and then being injured for three months you're better off getting 3% over and over and over and over and over and over and over again because the increase in gains by doubling your volume is never double the return on investment is microscopic assuming most people get it anyway so I said you cannot do high volumes for all body parts it can't be done even if you look at like go back to Brad's study When you actually

a look at it okay so it's 9 versus 27 versus 45 CS ostensibly except that it was mostly compounds and they measured isolated muscles so first let's math this out rationally you cut that set count in half right they did nothing but compound chest and measure triceps was not 27 and 45 sets for biceps we're like 4 and a half 13 and 22 okay I absolutely believe that 12 was better than four and a half we're going From suboptimal volumes to op even then we thought about 10 to 20 BN out to 12 yeah absolutely

absolutely and 12 to 22 there was no improvement okay 12 to 20 same [ __ ] thing as always is the same for the others if you go from suboptimal volumes and do more to an optimal range yeah you probably get more growth but even if higher volume that's what this paper showed was that you know as the volumes went up growth kind of did it was a big ASM toote like it never Flattened out completely but again there's only a couple really high volume studies super high volumes but it was just the return on

investments right the proportional gains for every and like I said this was in usually single muscle group this cannot be sustained or done yeah because they they never factor in injury risk these proponents even though Mike tried to walk it back yes he is a proponent of high Volumes right and they said look these people obviously the average length of the study was 10 weeks so yes these people obviously survived the training for 10 weeks but that doesn't mean that in the longer term it would be sustainable or not cause burnout or since we're only

looking at very individual muscle groups in these papers because they typically measure you know one or two tops if that that other work at these same high volumes might have a Positive effect negative effect like you just you know and that's and again it's not to say these studies are meaningless or useless or wrong you have to they have to be kept within the context the study did what the study did and the 52 set study looked at quads only for two weeks at the end of a study that's it to then go 50 sets

per week per muscle group for everything that is not how you extrapolate science it did absolutely not yeah and that's exactly What everyone did he there's no such thing as joke volume that 52 set [ __ ] last year were even it was so bad it was so badly misrepresented even the researchers had to get on Instagram and go you guys are all misrepresenting what we did and what we found even the researchers were like you guys are getting this wrong and they were saying what I was saying so and then you know so on

and on and on and I just saying the same things 2002 because nothing has Meaningfully changed in my opinion about any of so then yeah so that's the volume thing in a video he did about Mike men's training he said people used to character people have mischaracterized me as a high volume guy he said that when I've never been a high volume guy I was exploring an earlier in my career maximum coverable volume so you know advocating that hey like sometimes 25 sets a week is what grows muscle the best it's by the way very

true for many People in many cases I got sort of this uh uh labeled as a high volume guy which was always wrong anyways there's nobody who labeled me that had any Nuance or actually write anything I wrote and yet train more than the pros right well I mean and this I mean and then you go back and look at what he was recommending in the mrb charts and that is objective ly provably false but it doesn't matter because the facts don't matter and the evidence Doesn't matter and the truth doesn't matter in this regard

so then over the next four or five years everyone started to walk their volume recommendations back and I did a video a few years ago Mike isrel Mr maximum recover volume Mr defender of Brad study did a video that said titled and I sh you not are you doing too much volume are you doing too much volume well yeah because you [ __ ] told them to Mike you lying sack you told these people to do all this piss ass volume I don't think and I don't think he's support those old mrb charts you ever

get a chance to see them hilarious utterly hilarious I couldn't find them I went looking but yeah I think they I used to have a copy of it I think they've been disappeared well certainly there's been stuff Mike's ridden that's disappeared from the RP website that I've only been able to find with uh yeah Web archiving tools but at one point it it was recommending 36 sets a week for abdominals which makes me wonder why Mike never had any but we'll get to that we Wills a week for traps Jesus Christ are you kidding me

hamstrings four times a week there was no logic to any of it none and people that did it got hurt he he he cannot have forgotten what his old mrv charts were he cannot have forgotten the videos that he has done previously or the workouts that he has shown he Cannot and I bet if you asked him he'd say no it's not true it's amazing but that's I've seen that on the internet for years I've gotten into arguments with people you have too and and they'll say something and you'll criticize them and they'll go I

didn't say that and you show them a screenshot this is what you said no go no I didn't say that it's amazing it's truly phenomenal to watch there's Actually a great example of none other than Mike himself doing exactly this is check it out but some people are like yeah man Mike really wanted to turn pro to prove that his methods work I'm just like whoa if if if Mike was so unscientific to think like an N of one was going to prove anything he'd have to retire as PhD and just cow and shame the

rest of his life please don't please don't tell me that like that's absolutely not the reason I'm doing it So what is it like I get everything you said man the only reason I compete is to illustrate to people that uh marginally more than they would otherwise believe the methods that we espouse Renaissance periodization are effective that so transparent I like so you think that's absolutely not the reason I'm doing it uh Solomon Nelson actually did a really good video on that I will I will link it below but yeah if you also going back

to the whole bar speed thing in technical Form of this there's a video somebody might put up about bunch of people that like train under him or with him or something and there's a bunch of guys using admittedly perfect form with the most piss ass weights you've ever and he caught all kinds of flag for it was like yeah Mike these people's form is meticulous but they're not lifting real weight this won't get you anywhere in the real world and he probably took that down too because Mike doesn't handle Criticism well I looked at some

Instagram comments on a post I made a little while ago about another lifter that's in our kind of um little for and his great technique and there's people on there just dunking on him and the thing is like whoever you are out there listening to this there's a very high probability that I'm much better at making fun of people than you are as a matter of fact I can sit face to face with you and slam dunk on your entire Life it just be real bad news things I wouldn't even feel comfortable saying that is

just true about you oh this was another beautiful straw man Mike has been thumping this from for from the debate and he did he did this paper for the strength and conditioning Journal where he tried to make a case for this volume escalation model having left out that this volume escalation model is utilized with a drug Dosage escalation because I know where that comes from and then Eric Helms and his team rebutted that paper and pour to Pieces it was phenomenal watching them just shred this thing but here's what he said to me talking about

the volume thing about adding sets and he goes well you can't add weight to the bar every week and it may be safer to add sets instead of squatting 400 pounds every single week or anywhere between 4 420 for every Single week for six weeks but you add sets instead of doing that what you do is you know 400 410 430 440 Etc and you end up at 460 at the end of that 6 weeks I think that ending up at 460 in is now a high fatigued State and very heavy weights versus uh in

a high fatig state from the volume but with life weights it is at least by no means clear to me that the volume condition is more likely to get you hurt and if I had to take a gamble on it I would say the higher Intensity condition is more likely to get you hurt well when did I ever said you had to add weight to the bar every week never never that's when I said it was never it was a beautiful straw man because somehow in this industry oh Progressive overload has somehow come to mean

you must add something to your training every week to make progress and that's not what the Term does or has ever meant Progressive overload is overtime let's say whatever your best 10rm is 100 kilos and you're doing 85 right 85% you know which is a suff or you're doing 100 kilos for eight reps right two reps in reserve we know that that's an overload we know that that's a training stimulus we also know that bar speed will slow as long as you as long as that is Still within right until you have adapted to the

point that that eight reps is four reps Reserve or less it is still an overlay that might be two weeks if you're a beginner it might be a month if you're an intermediate and it might be eight weeks if you're Advanced the same the same the exact same workout in terms of weight on the bar sets and Reps is an overload until it's Not and it's not when you've adapted to the point that is no that an overload and Progressive overload have gotten confused in this industry so why I'm doing this long ass series on

basic exercise principles they are different things overload is the cute a workout a week even a month the overloading workout you're doing is an overload till it's not that's when you have to add weight this idea that you need to add anything week To week to week only the hiters I think are still thumping that drum and they're still wrong right and it's funny because no other athlete you don't see a track Sprinter doesn't expect to go faster over 20 meters week to week to week they may bust their nuts for 12 weeks to get

500s of an improve or you know whatever point that I made I kept bringing up Sumi in all these videos that I've done right I coached her for eight years to a Number of World Records I never deliberately took her to muscular failure once she missed the occasional rep because that's what happens when you're training hard I never had her deliberately go to muscular failure ever ever because it wasn't NE she trained hard she always trained within a one rep in reserve for damn sure never actually had her go again occasional misrep it happens it

would take me 13 weeks to get her a 2 and a half kilo PR right this is An elite powerlifter grinding to get half a percent every 13 weeks and truly gr I mean exhausting workm so this idea that I mean yeah but again just okay so think about conceptu you know in terms of volume versus Progressive tension overload in the short term I guess but this idea of like starting with suboptimal volumes and building up to near Breaking Point volumes and then dropping back is just not a model I like I would rather just

pick an optimal Volume and stay there until the adaptation occurs and it's funny if you read Helms as rebuttal to Mike's P they say the exact same thing they're just like just none of this m you can't the inferences Mike was making from the papers were not what the papers were saying and the rebuttal they just said basically you just stay at an appropriate volume based on science or past experience and add weight as you're able over time I'm like well gee that Sounds familiar so I don't I just prefer to now there there are

exceptions if you're a beginner if you're coming back from a layoff where you may start with low volumes and have to build back up like that's a separate thing you're not long-term training i' rather just pick what I consider optimal volumes under a given set of conditions stay there when the adaptation occurs add a little bit of weight do that for eight to 12 weeks Back cycle do it again ly how about this gem if you're getting stronger weak to week then you're under training he may have walked back from this what yeah if you're

getting stronger we do want me to send it to you no I believe you getting stronger weak to weak you're under training uh okay should you be getting weaker week to Week I mean what was there more to it than just that one blank assertion I mean there never is the time stamp so we can investigate what' you say 107 what 1076 cool yeah I I think um I think you know what when really comes down to the application I think if you take Eric's approach and my Approach and you integrate all of that together

with proper D loing and active rest the yearly average volume is probably going To be about the same but what the reason I push mrv is I say look within an accumulation phase you got to [ __ ] work hard and yeah you can just you should barely just be able to recover and there's lots of good data on this that if you are getting people here's a common question again um I'm not getting stronger weak to week am I training wrong if you're getting stronger weak to week you're under training because you're obviously not

supplying enough Fatigue to have any create any you're not overloading properly okay I mean both of those seem wrong no you shouldn't be getting a stronger week to week unless you're a beginner to begin with that's just dumb that's old hit stuff but I don't see that the counter argument that that is indicative of anything um but this seemed that must have been older that's when Mike was still pushing maximal recoverable volumes oh you got to Generate this fatigue and blah blah etc etc etc like no just train at optimal volumes over longer periods of

time you get to the same place you don't chase fatigue you don't chase Doms you don't chase exhaustion you chase progress and and this whole thing I just I just don't know I just don't know how to even response to any of this anymore it's all just so dumb um so Okay as ly and I have demonstrated much of Mike isel's Fitness advice is absurd irresponsible and lacking in scientific support but how does Mike respond to criticisms of his information we answer that question in the next chapter a a set taken to zero reps in

reserve or zero R for short is a set where you couldn't possibly have done another concentric repetition this is roughly how the final rep of a set taken to zero R Looks zero R is truly hard training in 2020 Lyall McDonald made a simple observation watching one of Mike's workout videos what Mike claimed were sets taken to zero R were actually several reps shy of zero R Mike didn't handle ly's criticism well in this chapter we'll go over the context behind and specifics of ly's criticism how Mike replied to L why Mike's reply fails how

Mike has Contradicted his own reply in recent times and what this all might say about Mike Mike israels bar speed [ __ ] yes what is that for those who are unaware what was your original observation your argument your criticism whatever how did that the history of that so five or six years ago and I don't know what motivated me to do this right like so at the time now really you know Mike Mike and I we had talked and we had debated Brad's volume Study prior to this and if you go if you go

listen to that you can just watch him do what he does best which is talk in circles not say anything but at the time he he was telling he was doing all these videos about oh biceps work out to zero reps and reserve and showing this training that was nothing of the sort folks the sets are taken to zero R right the the definitions of zero reps and Reserve in in the research and what happens at that point is very very clear And very very laid out which is zero reps and Reserve means you could

not do another full range repetition there's all kinds of data and and so what he was telling people was wrong and I was watching this and I'm like he was claiming the training that he was doing he was claiming it was you know to failure in zura and it wasn't but I'm like okay I want to go ahead and make make a point about oh and I just for and also I think for some reason I'm Like I decided to do this series on what muscular failure was and it started there and at this point

I was still writing on the website and did videos as well and I kind of did a and now I just don't bother with the website because I don't think people read them anymore by and large um so I just can't be by it's just it's too too so I did this whole examination of the physiology and I looked at you know the details in fiber Recruitment and for output and this and The other and like here's what physiological muscular failure represents and I was very clear in my language because I do try to be

very specific and that physiologically it's when the muscle cannot produce sufficient Force to get through the full range of motion right it's like not form failure not volitional failure which means people just choose to stop which is an asinine definition like I was very specific in my terms and then I sort of Use this as an opportunity to take a pot shot at Mike to go look when you train to True physiological failure this is what happens to Bar speed it goes fast fast fast fast slow slow slow grind and then you miss right and

I put up a bunch of videos first I took them of my self trining showing look here's what this looks like and I got again this is when I was particularly motivated I did a Time analysis of the duration of the concentric rep which was an absolute Pain to do um because I had to go you know had to remember to put R in my video software and make it 60 frames per second and count frames and it's an absolute pain to do but again spy is a fantastic driver for me and I did all

this and I'm like this is what failure is and this is what Mike sets look like and I basically called him out and going Mike what you're telling people is not failure it's not zero reps and Reserve you sir Are lying to people and I don't know if I put it in exactly that language but that's exactly what I was saying yeah so you are claiming you are telling people this is zero reps reserve and it is not because the bar speed is never slowing period because all the science says that that's what happened all

the videos and I finally I think this was probably later was after everybody came in and attacked me in the comments with a bunch of [ __ ] I said well fine Prove me wrong I go look send me videos of you doing this proved me wrong and I finally shamed a bunch of people like 20 or 30 people sent me videos of them doing sets to tr and I did the same thing I dropped in my software I did rep byre analysis and whether it was a set of five or a set of 12

or a set of 30 the last three or four it it all showed the exact same pattern of slide I said this is what physiological muscular failure looks like and if the bar speed Doesn't slow you are nowhere close to zero rep Reser period science says it the videos show it everyone who understands it shows it Mike what you're telling people is wrong and he lost his mind oh yeah he didn't take your criticism so well as it would happen he responded to you in a video he did with his colleague James Hoffman Lyall McDonald

has watched some of our training videos and has concluded that because there is not as much of a loss In repetition speed towards the end as he would like to see as he thinks is related to failure proximity that we are very far away from failure couple of things wrong with that he raises four objections to you before going into an ad hominum attack on you well don't forget the first objection which was [ __ ] you [Music] Lyle you could have done 80 trillion more hey L McDonald [ __ ] you you know Howad

Mike thinks he can train a failure but he really can't because you know I mean I stand correct right that is theultimate rebuttal from a someone who plays up the fact that he's an exercise scientist with a PhD there is no greater fact than [ __ ] you Lyall along with having his two training Partners say equally moronic [ __ ] in the background after doing their piss ass SS go ahead let's review his responses other Than simply [ __ ] you ly number one is he takes technical failure very seriously so whereas some trainees

don't take technical failures so seriously uh he he holds himself back um fearing that the very next rep would be technical breakdown first of all L is talking about concentric failure not technical failure technical failure is when you know your next rep in order to be done will have to be done improperly like you'll have to scoot your butt off Of the leg curl machine in order to make it happen as RP goes we're going to be sticklers on technique and we always will be and that's just our prerogative other people maybe not and I

think that's where maybe there's like a little disconnect there yeah um sorry to cut you off I just I just thought I don't know yeah yeah that's that's totally valid so that's that's one concern is the technical failure absolute failure Discrepancy another concern is so so at the end of the day when we're going close to failure in our videos it's not it's it's a we're going close to the point where think in our heads another rep will result in very poor technique or significantly altered technique right and this is on leg curl set um

what do you think of that okay now if you go back and look at the article series or listen to videos I addressed that and I made it very clear what I was discussing I was not discussing technical failure I was not discussing valish I was very clear in what I was talking about he was making the argument about something was not talking about because that's what he's best at what technical failure is there to occur on a leg curl what what I uh I we're not talking about back squatting we're not talking about deadlifting

the simple fact is that if you have any good any decent skill you can do barbell complex Movements to physiological failure now I'm not saying you should and most absolutely shouldn't because it is not it can be very dangerous but if you were a highly skilled lifter you absolutely can do it without ever breaking form I put up videos of myself doing it I put up videos of other people doing it irrespective of that there is no technical failure on a [ __ ] leg curl or a leg press or a leg extension spare me

but since it was just a it was one of Mike's Famous Straw Men well I'm stopping before technical failure what technical failure is there to occur on a machine for God's sake maybe he's concerned about his back getting off the pad which is hilarious because he did a video recently with some other fellow fellow Aussie actually named Eugene ta to something like that where Eugene was talking about how he was back squatting 200 kilos and then had a spell where he became really neurotic about technical Failure and had to go down to 80 kilos because

he wouldn't accept even he wouldn't admit of even a slight deviation in barath or tripod foot or whatever and Mike's sitting there nodding going oh yeah you know you can be too neurotic about technical failure right so he's contradicted himself a number of years later I was hyperfocused on two things my foot pressure the weight on my heel the weight on my um the the tripod stance the heel pinky Pinky baller foot and the ball of foot said you got to keep those things planted I see those videos I've got hundreds of videos spanning about

a surprisingly short amount of time of me squatting from the side being like like oh my God I can see that little millimeter shift forwards my bar path wasn't perfectly vertical I was dumping onto my knees and I can't go heavier I've got to regress again and it got me into literally it wouldn't the infinite Regress it yeah how much of this is really helpful for myself but also for other people be thinking about all these technical things is it really dangerous if your knees cave in a little bit on a squat maybe for some

people probably not for most people it's probably something that has to happen is avoidable but I was back then you know a little bit of knowledge is a very dangerous thing and you get that oh my God over analytical and you know I was lucky that I got Frustrated enough to talk myself out of Contin but that was literally I would say close to two years it was at least year between one to two years of me regressing myself losing a ton of muscle and going very far backwards in my training but deluding myself that

it was a good thing I was like no no there's no point in me squatting you know five plates when I can't squat one plate with perfect technique and it looks beautiful and and well there are multiple types of Failure I go and if you go look I was so clear I am talking only about physi because physiological muscular failure which is simply when the muscle cannot generate enough Force to get you through the sticking point to finish the repetition nothing more nothing less absolutely I care about the physiology because from a growth stimulus standpoint

your muscle doesn't give a [ __ ] that your form broke your muscle doesn't give a [ __ ] that you decided Halfway through the set that you had failed right your B your brain can't go well you could have done 12 but you decided this six was failure I'm still going to adapt right Mike tried to make an argument along those lines somewhere as well something purely just nonsensical right from a physiological standpoint the muscle only knows the amount of tension fatigue whatever mechano transduction all that stuff that Has experienced okay now this objection

seems completely ad hoc but it's this Mike deliberately slows his cont concentric repetitions from rep one so you can't gauge his proximity to failure based on the rep velocity throughout he said in addition to that I think the failure stuff people forget that they assume that failure training there's a drop off in velocity the underlying Assumption very few people state is that you're going for maximum velocity on every rep to begin with and the only reason you slow down is you just can't go as fast and at some point the external velocity is identical but

the internal fraction of my muscles I'm turning on to keep that velocity up is higher and higher and every rep is the same speed wise looking out from the outside from the inside I'm like oh my [ __ ] God it's hard to keep up the speed so then I might rack and someone's like dude you never even slow down like inside the muscle I depleted the entire time but because I capped my velocity concentrically at the beginning all you saw was a tiny little bit of a Slowdown but I promise if I try to

do another rep it's just not there yes sure you can they do that they do that in the research too it doesn't matter what the speed starts at as you get closer to Zero reps and reserve it will get slower than that because there have been others that will use that that they say that that muscular failure is when you can no longer maintain the goal repetition Cadence or Tempo it doesn't matter if you start at a two-c concentric deliberately and of course if you watch his videos he's not doing that anyway no he's not

as explosive as anyone ever has and in my little video I put up a thing of I'm taking Chris stuff and through a Set and Chris is exploding on the concentric as well so a because he was like yeah you know I use a speed cap blah blah blah and stop when speed slow like this has nothing to do with it doesn't matter what the initial speed is as you get closer to zero reps and reserve it will become slower than that because it and it's simple and it is honestly just it is simple physics

in terms of ma minus mg and the relationship of as muscular Force output Drops maximum muscular Force output to the amount that's required bar speed has to slow because your ability doesn't matter where you start it will still slow at limits no matter what you do I've done super slow I've done that 10-second concentric stuff when I was hurt years ago as you approach physiological muscle the it just gets even slower than that it's basic physi and literally every study don't on bar speed every single one of Them shows this that basically the final repetition

of a limit set moves about as quickly as a one rep max because in a physiological sense that's what it is so it doesn't matter again that was just another he was like well I'm already moving slowly so you can't tell yeah you can sure you can it's a bunch of crap continuing to talk about this because I clearly it bugged him so much that that I called him out on this Because he complained to someone else I know with man what's up with Lyle and this failure like it really got skin which is perfectly

fine with me because I was right he spent the next five years he was still doing videos about this you know what the one thing he never ever did in the entire time failure yeah like and I said like it would take you two minutes just do an allout set to Absolute limits till it won't move anymore and let's see what Happens that's all it would have taken to either prove me wrong or prove me right anyway so that was number two that was number two instead he would rather than you know do an allout

set continue with these asinine objections what the hell was that I drank out of the wrong an old soda can okay okay it happens so objection number three is his fast twitch dominant unlike you ly which is what he specifies so his reps don't Actually slow down as he approaches zero R Lyall McDonald has watched some of our training videos and has concluded that because there is not as much of a loss in repetition speed towards the end as he would like to see as he thinks is related to failure proximity that we are very

far away from failure sometimes it's hard to tell externally when that happens but nonetheless it happens another thing is we're all much more fast twitched than Lyle because we Actually have the genetics to grow muscle unlike him and that is meant as an insult because I don't like ly and I want him to feel ashamed of himself and to hate himself because he's a hateful person by the way I didn't start this fight I'm just finishing it really well fascinating stuff because you can go to any powerlifting meet and see grindy slow reps are all

those guys not fast twitch I mean is every person that's ever been in every single study Magically not fast twitch what does this have to do with anything right the fiber like the fatigue profile might look a little bit different but the drop in force relative to force requirements doesn't matter if you're slow twitch or fast twitch it means nothing it doesn't because again there's plenty there's watch Olympic lifters who are as fast twitch as they get you can watch them grind through front squats and grind through back squats and their Rep speed absolutely slows

because I put up videos of them doing it is Mike gonna say those guys are aren't fast twitch okay cool story bro next I mean like it's just the whole thing is just it was excuses again these are just like these weird side arguments that I'm not saying they don't have validity but you can see just as many Elite guys that will grind through the sticking point and take 10 seconds to finish a rep don't tell me they're not fast Twitch I I put up eventually I'm just like okay look I went found videos of

Dorian y spring that man wents failure Inc controvert I did the exact same rep speed analysis and they all went to grindingly slow failure they all ground at the end where he even had a little bit of help from a spotter mik gonna say that Dorian isn't fast twitch okay cool story bro Mike at some point later I don't I never Followed the logic tried to then somehow argue that Dorian wasn't actually going to failure in those set I never I can't follow his gibberish most of the time because he talks in circles for 10

minutes it doesn't say anything but yeah you can find lots of highle bodybuilders that are all I guarantee you just as fast twitch as Mike and those guys actually win competitions and their stuff slows down just like everybody else's so moving On I'd like to voice objection number four which in my view is the closest one to just flat out admitting that you're right um which is basically even if you are right what does it matter I'm still growing just fine Mike argues and sure maybe it's the drugs and genetics because for ly it's all

drugs and genetics but also maybe I've got the whole bodybuilding training thing figured out and I don't have to train as close to failure as Lyall Thinks I do so the ly thing lastly is that uh he doesn't think that we're going close enough to failure he may have a point maybe we're not but my my counter to that would be close enough for what hypertrophic stimulus is a the the literature that was my that's what I was thinking like sure what what's your point like it seems like doing just fine right first of all

but it could all be drugs of course it's all drugs with L But in any case just the world's worst fing dog genetics for lifting which I don't harp on them because you know [ __ ] sucks happens right so maybe Charlie and I and Jared are just getting goodbye on aad of drugs and good genetics but if you look at the actual data which ly seems to be a fan of when it's convenient the hypothesis that very close to failure training is incredibly more beneficial IAL to muscle gain it's just not an Evidence it's

just not an Evidence okay you can train three or four reps away from failure all the time and be just about as big as anybody else so I think we're probably getting three or four reps away from the technical failure or having a high degree of effort and and so far I have not seen my result decline or inability to make gains because I'm not going close to failure furthermore in my own training I've experimented many many times often for years but going much much closer to Failure going Beyond failure I did not see any

increase in results and often a decrease in results so Lyle's argument about what he sees in the training videos is in bad faith doesn't understand the complexities and background of what technical failure is to make even make a decent point and uh no one's having a problem no one asked for his advice so L can go [ __ ] himself that was never that never had anything it wasn't yes sorry I went interrupt you Keep going no that never that that was the other track tack Mike took which was basically I wouldn't let Lyle coach

me and tell me how to train go back and look at any of what I did in the video I never once criticized his training not once I don't give a [ __ ] how he trains I don't give a [ __ ] how anybody trains I was criticizing his information and I was extremely clear about this because again I'm not saying that train of failure is good or bad or Indifferent the point is that until you have determined where failure lives you don't know what any of these metrics mean but that wasn't going to

change it Mike being a good politician relies on people believing what he says I said rather than what I actually said yeah because later this would spin out even further and then I know we'll get to the next point so then he started going on podcast and just telling lies he did a thing with Mike Matthews and he said Lyle Advocates training to failure nope go listen to it I never said in fact I said repeatedly I'm not advocating you train to failure I said it at least half dozen times because at one point I

made a collection of them I never put it up I went back through every video and collected every single time I said I am actually not advocating training to failure I am saying this is what it looks like and I was saying that what I will say And I'll be very clear about this now if you were going to try to use a reps and Reserve approach to train you must know what zero reps Reserve actually is and that absolutely means spending some amount of time training to Absolute limits in fact hilariously if you look

at my body of work over 30 years I arguably recommend training to fa to True muscular failure physiological muscular failure less than most people in this Industry most people in this industry be like oh you know you can take your final step to failure you can do I mean it's way more nuan than that because this this whole discussion is just dumb as hell not between you and I in the industry because we're leaving out too many variables whether or not failure is good or bad or indifferent depends on frequency and exercise and volumes and

there's all these other variables yeah so you were never saying he's training Wrong for him which is how he uncharitably misconstrued your point sure I never it was about the infation he was misleading people exactly so it's not just that and this was another thing that um James Hoffman who Mike was talking to in his rebuttal to you um stated he said well you know what what's your point Lyle uh so what if Mike is factually wrong about what zero R is um what's your point what is your point so like even if they Are

their their r calcul is off for whatever reason like I you can document the progress over time that you've been making you know what I mean keep it so it's like with your point L it's it would be like a hilarious Epiphany where it's like oh you can actually train five rir and make huge gains when you're on drugs drugs are amazing right like that's great you don't have to train that close to family tell everyone else on drugs to stop Training a failure and endangering themselves so it's like what are you trying to get

out of the what are you trying to get out of it just trying to um like it's just like a smear Campaign which is like hilariously misplaced like well I think your point can be charitably interpreted this way it's that Mike is a public Fitness educator he's an expert the exercise scientist as he likes to call himself and he made his mistakes about how zero R looks in Public and in so doing he misled his audience about how failure looks which means that his viewers who are predominantly natural might then go on to train way

further from failure than they should because they trust him yes that was they'll see bad results because they don't have Mike's drugs so it's a public good to call him out on his misinformation which is what you did that's and then I made that point very very clear he was telling people that These warm-up sets were zero reps and Reserve he is misleading people that trust him that's bad enough yeah worse is that he was so secure his ego was so hurt he is such a [ __ ] sociopath he would rather continue to mislead

these people than admit he was wrong about something right right life is very short it's embarrassing these people trust him to give them good advice and he is wasting years of their relatively short training Careers by not only providing that which look we all make mistakes he wasn't making a mistake I guarantee you he knew from The Gap Maybe didn't we all make mistakes and if you make a mistake and you're a man and you're an adult you fix it and correct it you don't triple down on it with lies and [ __ ] because

he would then it up it went further than that right so then he went and he he debated Greg ducet right About this and despite the fact I don't I mean I don't watch any of this but I'm always informed on it and Greg pretty much you know wrecked him because Greg's I don't particularly care for Greg's style of screaming at the screen but whatever he said I don't watch most Fitness content but pretty much my understanding is that Greg won that debate didn't stop Mike afterwards going be like yeah you know I Eed Greg

in the a because apparently That's something that you say as a PhD um there's this guy in my group the lifting dermatologist he was been on my Facebook group and had put up a video of himself doing an allout set of chin to failure and it looked exactly like all my sets to failure that I put up of myself and other people and he let Mike spend an hour defaming Greg and I with a video title who would you rather coach you Lyle or Greg do now Greg is an ifbb Pro with a pro with

who also is a judge He has done more in bodybuilding than Mike ever has but it didn't change the fact that Mike had a opportunity to just defame us because he was like I wouldn't have ly as my coach and he suck like I never and I again go listen to my videos and like Mike I I wouldn't want to be your coach because I coach uncoachable people it's never about your training it's never about me wanting to coach you it's about your information and he never addressed that and he flat out said ly Advocates

training to failure for all people under all conditions and that is a boldfaced lie it is a boldfaced lie and you can go look at anything I actually said and see that is a bace lie didn't matter people will believe what he says I said rather than what I actually said and I've told lot a lot of people in this industry who defended Mike for that I've just been like you can get which brings you bring the last Point Well yeah I mean I think um that that that's actually it that was his uh rebuttal

to you such as it was in its entirety except um he did go on this ad horum laid an invective against you where he said things like well this whole thing is about Lyall doesn't think I'm tough well no one thinks you're tough ly uh and here's the reality I can train closer to failure than you I can do it for longer uh I'm just better than you ly at every conceivable thing uh I'm Funnier than you I'm smarter than you and I'm better at being a seword than you he he he literally said all

of this it seems that everything everything he says about this comes from this perspective of we're not tough like that's that's the real gist I'm getting of it he's like you don't know how to train to failure he goes come come through come over and I'll show you how to train to True failure like it's like a wrestling coach kind of mentality of Like you don't know what hard is like Lyall nobody believes your tough nor will they ever and also in every category of human behavior I'm tougher than you I can train closer to

failure than you I can do it for longer I have more willpower than you I'm just better than you Lyall in almost every way you can measure except for probably weird masturb habits and prity to play video games you started this ly you made fun of me first in a way that was in bad Faith and actually tried to hurt my feelings the only reason I'm saying this I'm just mirroring it back to you so anytime you want to be nice I can be nice to you again Lyall but if you want to keep being

a I'm funnier than you I'm smarter than you I'm better at being a account than you oh man all right folks before we shoot ourselves in the foot we're going to sign off on this one uh I'm smarter than you I've got a higher I than you and you can't handle it oh Poo K i going smell your breath from here did you know this didn't he say he benched more than me in high school he said that too yeah but that you can no longer find that by the way because that was something he

said with Steven DeVos and he took that down um okay uh cool um I I think most of those things are I mean I I would be I would have loved to had the opportunity to you know take him through one of these high volume workouts because I guarantee you He would have been puking his guts out for real not not performatively doing it on Instagram like he was there for a little while like I would have had him laying on the floor I would love to have had the opportunity to like have him go

train with Dorian just once he would find out what true failure training is and he would find but Mike would never actually put himself on line like I said all he had to do is one hard set none of that had anything to do with anything Certainly have anything to do with the evidence or the facts it just had to do with him well I can't bring anything approaching factual any to to this discussion so I'll just attack him personally and I know that my little 14-year-old [ __ ] followers would be like yeah [

__ ] you Lyall cool story guys I'm not saying to train like Dorian but the point of this being that drugs cover drugs make anything work and the studies show that incontrovertibly my point was Never with this training yeah and again that was just him looking for anything other than addressing the fact because the science all said I was right the 30 videos I put up all showed that I was right and before he moved on all he had to do was do one allout set to prove that I was wrong and the fact that

he never did it tells you that he knew I right for sure yeah and he would rather just make all of these ad hoc rebuttal and uh attack your character and Behavior than address the substance of your actual argument but he also knows that it'll work right because if the people that had aligned themselves with him right and attached themselves to him who were going to double down and not want to admit that they'd back the wrong horns if they can look at the video evidence that I put up of this is what this set

looks like and think that [ __ ] you ly rebuts That I'm sorry they beyond help let's talk about the backpedal um so you're aware that Mike isrel has uh inadvertently contradicted his own objections to you in some recent videos he's made um so for instance he made a video criticizing Lee priest's training Lee Priest the ifbb pro bodybuilder who stood on the my Olympia stage and did very well also he he had the gold criticize Dorian y's training oh right yeah and Ronnie Coleman's and Jay Cutler and more recently Tom platz's anyway so in

his critique of uh lee priest's training he states that Lee Priest can get away with predominantly sit sets of six to8 because that's what Lee Priest did because he's fast twitch but I think for Lee barbells and sets of six to8 work best because I believe his arms just have to be more proportionate fast twitch fibers than the average person's arms um but also he observes that Lee Priest is training a few reps shy of failure on his curls how does he make that assessment based on his bar speed okay Scott was that a warm-up

set or a work set all the exactly like that LE priest seemed like never went to failure day in a life from any video I have ever seen I don't know what r that was but it looked like five to me starts to illustrate that failure training is not a requirement for awesome gains so in this video we have Mike admitting That even in fast twitch individuals rep velocity is a gauge of proximity to failure so he's contradicted the first two of his objections that he made to you sorry the objections two and three yeah

okay seems about right yeah but he knows that nobody nobody watching his videos now will remember that right that this is the other problem with the fitness industry every two or three years there's a new group of people coming in so the people that Are seeing is stuff now are like well that's completely they they won't see what he said two or three years ago and that's probably part of why he deletes it because he wants to make sure that is not available anymore yeah like yeah he had the he had the goal the man

that said you should only take advice based on how big someone is and who they've trained he had the goal to go Dorian Yates four times a week that just doesn't seem like very much okay so the Whole bar speed thing right like you had this years I said Mike bar speed slows that's what happens when you're close to limits you need to if it doesn't slow was a works up that's pretty much what I was saying wasn't saying you have to go to zero reps and Reserve other than to know where it is and

then you can adjust your sets so Mike now that I think now that he's become a laughing stock as a bodybuilder Truly yeah truly a laughing stop somehow like shf before him he's convincing all these high-end podcasts that he's an expert worth talking to and he did something some Elite CEO strength cast some [ __ ] somebody sent me and he goes go to this time point where Mike is talking about training intensity and he says so you know overload is important and when you're watching someone do a set if you can't tell if it

was a warm or warmup or a work set i'm Paraphrasing it it and you you'll go find the clip you'll probably put it sent it to me yeah and then you know you can't he goes you know if it's truly a hard set then you should either be able you know it it the effort should get hard or it should hard to start to get really hard and slow where that final repetition looks like and I'm like you have got to be [ __ ] kidding me then we move in to the principle of Overload

which means you have to challenge yourself if most of your sets someone else watching them can't tell if you're warming up or doing what's called a working set like a real set you have a problem so towards the end of all of your sets either the weights are slowing down or even if it's the same speed to you they feel perceptively harder you know you do this this this and in a couple reps you're Like that's what you want now he did qualify that within or it has to feel perceptively more difficult whatever nobody knows

perceptively di harder for he know I realize that he qualified that but even to give that example that it should do this slow grinding effort okay cool okay now would any of these people who've ever backpedal who ever walked it back ever have the guts to go yeah well I was right of course not because they'll just pretend never happens yeah Said what they said they'll IGN that way and if anyone I mean although I'm told again I don't read look I don't read YouTube comments I don't go into that however I do see them

every once in a while more and more people are waking up to it one of Mike's notable responses to Lyle was a sarcastic comment about lyall's physique reflecting on his expertise ly listen we don't know how to go to Failure your physique reflects your knowledge this raises an important question does Mike meet the same standard he uses to dismiss Lyle in other words if Mike's physique reflects on his knowledge then how knowledgeable is he we Ponder this question in the next chapter by Mike Israel's own admission he effed up in competitive bodybuilding I don't know

why up in this chapter ly and I examine the reasons why Mike's Competitive bodybuilding career has been a failure we we speculate about issues that Mike can fix ones that he can't why Mike doesn't or perhaps can't fix his problems Mike's relationship with his coaches whether Mike's competitive bodybuilding career was doomed from the outset the extent to which Mike's failure in competitive bodybuilding speaks to his expertise or lack thereof and what Mike should do from here on out Mike Isel has expressed Ambitions Publicly to become an ifbb Pro bodybuilder so for me I'd love a

go kick in the pants to kick me out of the sport with a pro card and I I I can't quit bodybuilding before I at least take a nice big sword something a best my best and if my best isn't good enough that whatever like I'll just settle for being a you know Jiu-Jitsu killer famous millionaire fine but like oh man I want that [ __ ] however Mike hasn't had the success he sought in competitive Bodybuilding bu and this is despite having a $250,000 Home Gym training in excess of six times a week I

train with weights a lot 10 times a week I walk 12,000 steps a day and I train Jiu-Jitsu and all the stuff being on a dangerous life shortening cocktail of drugs which we went through earlier coupled with his morbid obesity and uh also ostensively having committed his entire life to bodybuilding When I want to put my full hor behind something was a professional effort I am a sports arst after all what I to do like lift a couple weights and go on stage no I'm gonna run my life around this so I really want to

take that shot at it because uh it would be an awesome finality Mike's placings have been abysmal and after a dreadful showing just a few months ago where he placed six at a relative nothing of a show he announced that he was going to step away From competitive bodybuilding as you'll recall Lyle Mike Israel appeared on Steven dores that is the lifting dermatologist podcast well now deleted now deleted podcast episode from a few years back in which St asked Mike whom he'd rather have as a coach you or Greg duet yep and in response and

we went through this to Steven's question Mike proceeded to slander you as a person and as a coach right now I want to be to you what Steven DeVos was to Mike Isel so could you remind me what in your perspective as a coach are the problems with Mike's approach to competitive bodybuilding and how would you help Mike if you were his coach in the first case and again I made this point numerous times during the videos I did which is I would not coach someone like Mike because Mike is fundamentally uncoverable but he's uncoachable

in the sense that He is like many athletes I've known before in that he's the kind of guy that would hire an expert because I've known some of his previous coaches think he knows better because Mike has the problem of thinking that well I have a PhD and I know this and I'm a drug expert and I'm a this expert Ergo I know better than my coaches you are pursuing you know more than me about the thing I'm one of the top experts in the world in and also the thing I'm Literally involved in myself

so whatever ideas you have about how I can improve just [ __ ] right off so he would hire someone not listen to them and then blame them for his failure I've known athletes like this before they are uncoachable for that reason but he wouldn't even listen to his coaches because I know one of well he now his ex- coach and I've heard stories that I won't share because he he And I discuss these things privately and he's told me some of the questions that Mike world's bodybuilding expert has asked him and he doesn't know

[ __ ] like basic basic stuff that you would know like just amazing stuff well the one that that I that was related to me Mike called n so how can you tell if it's water or that you're just still fat wow where did you get did you get your PhD out of crackerjack box I mean it's real simple if it's a bodybuilder If you think it's water you fat sorry it's just that simple right trust me but you should know that if after that many years he doesn't know the difference come on um I

have like a big love handles that store a lot of water from back when I got fat on purpose to try to like do the spirit bulk well failed bodybuilders like Mike tend to surround themselves only with people who tell them what they want to hear in general if anyone looks at Mike Uh and they're like if they're either even like are you NY or if they're like uh I'm not um impressed by your physique then they're just glueless Mike has objectively Pro bodybuilder level stats and you see this all the time some guy at

the gym and all his buddies are like yeah man you look great you look this and then they go to show and they get hammered and it's like ah it's all politics this is [ __ ] you look great right and then that's all they'll listen To and is Mike Mike handles criticism like a 5-year-old who's had a cookie taken away from I.E like a petulant child it's very funny that you should bring this up his his inability to take criticism because there's this after one of his Dreadful showings where he in his own words

[ __ ] up he goes on a podcast I don't know why I [ __ ] up and if you think you do then you're presuming that you know more than me about something I'm one of the world's top experts in and I'm involved with myself so just [ __ ] right off that's what he says like almost word for word Memory Lane Norton has said similar things to the effect of if you can't squat more than me you have no business you can't tell me Hawkins go watch it he is his Squad is tragic

he's blown his back out twice he's another person never listen to anybody else and will not accept Criticism so that so on the one hand Mike is un coachable let's say let's say I was going to coach Mike and I did I I did a couple I made a bunch of videos years ago on everyday thing with him where I looked at some of his previous because if you look at his early bodybuilding pictures they're even worse his early he got up he didn't even have unab much less ABS a dreadful case of gynecomastia well

that was the ne I think that was the Next show I I mean like I went and just picked random pictures off Google I didn't try to correlate them with when or where it was I didn't care that much other than just go look this is Mike on stage this is how I would objectively what I would have done so those early ones I mean he was months out of shape and had I been coaching him I would have flat out said you're not g to make it pick a later show or I'm gonna have

to put you the ringer and do an aggressive Diet because that's the only chance you've got of making them it's funny yeah go ahead Mike isrel goes in a podcast with Steve Hall that he says something to this effect well people say you could just do a protein sparing modified fast but I know what happens to me when I do that I just lose muscle and I look worse overall so it turns out I misremembered Mike's reasons for not wanting to do a protein sparing modified fast to get in Shape for his bodybuilding show for

those who don't know that's a diet where you only eat protein and only take in Trace carbs and fats still the reasons Mike gave for not doing a psmf are dumb even dumber arguably than what I thought he said originally I've written my thoughts on screen like if it was all willpower and grinding willpower I have I could just not eat I could just straight up not eat or or just eat protein I've done that before for weeks On end and and if all that worked it would work but it doesn't because your training energy

goes to sh uh and all this other crazy stuff happens with body water uh okay that's okay this idea that I mean that's a whole separate thing that you lose more I mean no what happens is you flatten out and you run out of glycogen and water and you lose lean body mass but apparently Mr PhD doesn't know the difference between lean body mass and muscle mass So okay he's not alone in that but two different yeah you will flatten out and as soon as you carload it comes right back so that would be number

one is if I'd been coaching him for that first show the one where he went up with zero ABS on stage you have to be at a certain place by a certain time point to have a chance of making it sted especially mean we know what modern conditioning requirements are we know how lean you need to get we Know where you need to be and part of being a coach is looking at that physique and going you're not going to make it no matter what we do or without going super aggressive and even then you

might not make pick a later show then so that would be a general statement about that but I think if you look at his over and the next show yeah his gy he was a little bit leaner in his terrible case of gyno she presumably had cosmetic surgery To fixed I think so I think you're right I think if you look from that point to the next gynecomastia is a risk in males I've actually had gynecomastia removal surgery myself um because I got gyo and I was like that I I don't need this in my

life so that's it's a cosmetic but a very annoying and a big deal something I will tell people I tell Naturals this all the time when they ask how long of a diet contest diet should I do I go well take how long you think it Will take you and double it because trust me your body fat percentage is higher than you think and the fat loss will be slower than you hope and all the theoretical calculations never work out now can you start too early for contest prep sure but but you can always slow

a diet down a lot easier than you can speed it up right if you get behind it can be it can be done right if you're willing to Suffer for two weeks through protein sparing modified faster rfl or whatever it can be done it's a whole lot easier to slow it down if you're ahead of schedule right I'd rather have someone be ready two weeks out so they can cruise into the show then be like all right we have to diet you up till the Wednesday beforehand like which a c you know so the learning

from that the learning should be okay this show I dieted for 12 weeks I didn't make it I should probably start earlier next time or leaner right one of the two or both because if you go look at at Mike's pictures because like you know like all good narcissist he's got to put up endless pictures of his physique on his Instagram because nothing I mean nothing screams academic nothing screams academic like Shir selfies and butt and gluteal Moon poses nothing screams academic to me I think even by Bodybuilding standards some of these uploads are a

little lewd yes oh yeah exactly because people insist on sending like I don't want to see this I don't want to see like doing a bent over grab your ankles Moon pose they B for reason and one thing that that ran through Mike's postc contest excuse making yeah needed four or five more weeks to really get into shape you shouldn't say that more than Once right you shouldn't ever say I needed more time why didn't you start this prep earlier why did you not learn from your past show that you need longer all like I

said you're always better off starting too soon rather than too late because you could always slow it down and honestly in the modern era conditioning standards are so high unless you are dead you really can't be too conditioned you can't not in bodybuilding in the Other shows the other divisions maybe yeah but he never learned but then you see him in the off season and he gets positively sloppy oh yeah he gains way too much body fat in the offseason and there was this was last year he put up some picture of him hack squatting

shirtless big old belly and everybody jumped on on the comments and he got super defensive about oh no it's postal and everyone in my family has This big distended gut later down the line I'll probably get some um plastic surgery going um I have like a big love handles that store a lot of water from back when I got fat on purpose to try to like do the spirit bulk and so I'm probably going to get them shits cut off and maybe even get my waist tightened cuz like genetically everyone in my family has a

pot belly like you've seen my like waist and waste out sh just tired of having a big gut all the time So I might have that I've got some consults lined up to see if they can cinch it in no Mike just that yeah just it's pitiful it's pitiful so a you don't get so sloppy in the offseason that's because he apparently thinks that a giant bowl of Captain Crunch post-workout is how you get the best the optimal results Lots sugary cereal so he tended to get real sloppy in the offseason Mike made the same

mistake every single time that would be followed by excuses one of my favorites being because this is when he left his original coach and went to a new Guru who I also know but I won't name him because I I do like the guy I mean I like both of them but and he's like yeah you know I'm going to a new guy to really help me is a with his diuretic protocol the a new water Guru and I think not this most recent show the one in 2023 and he said yeah my My my

body holds water differently than other people's I also have quite unique physiology which Tak me like two or three days of water depletion to look my best and almost everyone I talked at the time was saying like water depletion is overrated you don't need to Peak which for people on drugs and people with my physcal response is like backwards total nonsense and so I ended up catering he 20 pounds of body water on a stage that's thoroughly Embarrassing you're a unique you're you're a unique snowflake Mike it's amazing translation for people that don't know this

this area that means you [ __ ] your diuretics right you Shane used to write about that it also means people want to think that the fat they have lost is water they want the magic water pill and as I you can't you can't dry out fat so I ended up K I need 20 pounds of body water on Stage there were a number of things that I would identify like again if I were coaching M yeah one he needed to either start leaner or start his diet earlier period he just never got lean enough

I mean he got leaner over his career but in the last two shows he said yeah I needed about five more weeks yeah maybe three months realistically to get to where you needed to be he was never dry because again all the dryness in the world doesn't matter if you're still Carrying body fat you can't can't dry fat he never got lean enough in the era of the internet you know what you're supposed to look like and yet so but anyway Mike got lean is he never got nearly as lean as everyone else he didn't

get his dry anyone else because he never start because he just started too fat and didn't die it long enough I think he would have done better smaller yeah the tighter waist way better ABS um Obviously leaner and drier like conditioning at least can make up you can be freak conditioned that can at least you know make up for some of it his logic I think what he figured is well the reason I didn't place is I'm not big enough that was the that was the Trap he fell into and bodybuilding yes the mass monsters

do rule the world but even those big guys they're taller and they have the to pull it off and there's Still a lot of people don't I mean even Dorian I mean he competed at what 280 275 he I mean he was he was also pretty tall 5'9 or so yeah so and it me I mean the way I mean the human body it scales fractally is I mean height height area and volume scale you know Linear by the square and by the Cub so you tend to stretch things out a little bit more I

mean if you squat Dorian down to Mike's height he would look like a square right you just can't bodybuilding is still About Symmetry and shape and lines and all that stuff I will say the the recent Trend in competitive bodybuilding has been they're getting shorter I think if you look at height Trends in the Mr Olympia the average winner has been getting shorter over time which I don't I don't follow I truly have never because again I find I find most sports boring unless I'm competing someone the problems are what interest me dieting someone down

to 4% without muscle loss Fascinates me what happens on stage I couldn't give a damn again thing with powerlifting I would never go watch a powerlifting meet if I was not handling someone because I find it utterly Bor I like I watch skateboarding I like watching that's fun but that's also not it's barely a sport whatever yeah so yeah so I think you know what was I going with this uh the macros are I mean what he was eating was fundamentally dumb but it would have worked if he just Started early enough I mean and

we're in a deficit I mean that much we even know yes and I mean I don't know if Greg ever like added up what he was supposedly eating I mean obviously he was losing fat to some degree he just didn't get the last five kilos off um and if you're not lean enough all the dehydration in the world won't do you any good but if I had someone like that you fire them because they are on because They'll hire you ignore what you told them and then blame you when they failed but Mike had so

he had that the ego is one thing but he never learned from his past experiences ever even it wasn't even people telling him what he was doing wrong you should be able to look at what happened and go well I needed five more weeks well then why did you start your diet too late the next time around oh I started too fast well then Why didn't you start leaner I don't the inability to learn from past mistakes is baffling but that goes along with the again it's part of the narcissism nothing is ever your fault

ever which means why would you ever need to analyze what went wrong or adjust it or fix it better just blame your tanning company still sake that's just beyond right that's just absolutely that's even worse than it's all politics which was the old the old one that's just beyond as an Excuse the excuses about the tan were truly painful people that aren't aware of this drama in his last show he said that the reason he didn't Place higher because he didn't get the right tan and I think he blamed his tanning company so we got

tanning done by tanning company I won't say them what name they are because it's just not polite but They undertand the living crap out of me apparently they were the one himself sure if after a decade plus of competing you cannot figure out how to get your tan right you are truly a [ __ ] I mean truly but wasn't his fault it was the tanning company's fault sure and I believe he even claimed that if he that if he'd had a tan the judges told him you would have placed higher no judge would ever

say That sorry they wouldn't now the argument people will make and I think Mike even said this at one point one of his he was making a pre excuse before the show he said well you know I just do this for fun oh [ __ ] people run marathons for fun people will powerlift for fun occasionally nobody puts themselves through the grind of drug fueled bodybuilding for [ __ ] fun but he like I don't care about the playing I'm just doing this for fun he Was making a pre excuse for come on nobody does

this [ __ ] for fun right there are not there are wreck marathon runners there are not wreck sprinters right whatever and Greg you said did that hilarious video tearing Mike's contest diet is just baffling Gatorade and like what sugary cereal post workout and I guess subpar Powerlifting did a meme about this which I thought was even there jumping on him I it was hilarious and I guess at one point he was eating protein bars and soft tortillas the [ __ ] like this on contest prep right like look I'm all for flexible eating I'm

all for clean eating being a pro like don't get me wrong like that's I wrote about it first but we can argue about the lore of contest dieting till the cows come home We can but success does leaves Clues to some degree to at least some degree there is a reason that most people do things more similarly than not because it's what works yeah yet somehow Mike thinks he's special and unique and does not that on any it's it's baffling I don't understand how he has no grasp of how to diet for a show despite

being so deeply immersed in the bodybuilding world I mean like you were saying you figured it out decades ago with the Flexible dieting thing but it's become widespread right like and it's dead simple um yet somehow an expert like might Mike seemingly can't cook one of the literally hundreds of high volume protein fiber whatever Franken food recipes that you can find online he's eating Cheerios and drinking Gatorade instead how it is truly baffling to me especially for someone that's going to go on about I'm an expert I know this and my top level Nutrition and

like nobody eats like this during contest prep they don't they don't I eat better meals as general eating like if I weren't with you I was going to be having steamed vegetables with chicken breast and rice for dinner tonight um with some point like I don't get that like again fun you want to have the occasional thing but his contest di is nothing like what literally everyone else that's ever been successful in the Sport has ever done ever even the dumbest bodybuilder with no degree with no with no anything could figure out and look at

what other people have done for contest prep and make it work right there there are Duan once pointed out that most bodybuilders are not rocket scientists and they're not because he even said he's like how hard is this to diet from 10% to contest level it's not right I heard Pro bodybuilder years ago Say this this is the approach to contest prep says buy as many drugs as you can and starve for as long as you can stand it that's contest prep in a nutshell because when you got drugs to solve all the other problems

you just got to starve you just got to go the distance it's there's way more concerns as the natural they about muscle mass LW there's a lot of other variables that go into that which is why it's a more interesting problem and why I spent so Many so much time addressing it but there is so much information to just go find a basic contest prep. even again we can argue about clean versus unclean flexible don't care doesn't matter we know what works to 95% success rate and the dumbest [ __ ] bodybuilder in the world

can go read the dumb [ __ ] article on bodybuilding.com and figure it out and yet exercise scientists who critique story and Yates can't do it but Even without that even without having learned to do it is a natural Mike could follow the most generic dumb diet on bodybuilding.com and just do that and it would work if he started early enough so there's the leanness was a big part of it that's pretty easy to solve I mean what would you do on the diet front as he's coach I mean again a get him to spend

that money he spent on four lateral raise machines for $3,000 home gym dude pay someone to do Your meal prep for you get one of those Food Delivery Systems to deliver you proper bodybuilding food for [ __ ] sake I eat better than that um start sooner I mean it's it's really just that don't get as fat in the offseason and start your diet sooner just that just to make sure that you're you stay on schedule yeah without once you throw drugs into the mixs anything works and that's why that Training is all over the

map because it doesn't matter light weights heavy weights high volume low volume you know usually the right training is whatever the current Mr Olympia is doing so when Dorian was winning that was blood and guts was the way to train when Ronnie was winning it was high volume and etc etc and at the end of the day you find that it doesn't really matter um because the drugs I mean in Keeping with that as far as coaching Mike goes would you train would you do anything differently with his training I mean I honestly don't know

like it's so hard to pin down what he's exactly doing since he seems to change his tune every single time I mean it seems like he just his training seems random to me said the mrv chart is like hamstrings four times a week Why I mean realize this is the same industry that like in one breath they'll say oh the research doesn't support more than once a week and then go well I'm doing high frequency like there's no consistency to any of it like I don't know that I again I don't know that it matters

like genuinely like I mean yeah it it obviously got him big along with the drugs he was taking do I suspect he could take a lot lower doses with more wellth thought out training yes Does it really matter I mean he's right in the sense that what's the point well my point is that the information you've been telling people is wrong the other point being that how you train I don't give a f about yeah so it would be more about like okay what are strong and weak body parts I mean that's where bodybuilding gets

so different this dumb video I finally did it's like the training is about muscles not movements or performance it's about like okay if This muscle group's fine let's cut back the volume here and you know bring up weak points or whatever it is but with Mike I think it would be more just scaling every his entire body size down how about the drug standpoint would you change anything there I don't I don't know enough about it honestly and I don't know his full stack like well I know enough to be dangerous I just like I

said my my feeling based on the coaches I know Whose opinions I do trust is that when you do more than random [ __ ] training and I mean Progressive tension overloads still like there's yeah you can't just push weights heavy all the time but you can get away with lower doses if you are training more just better you know more you know more intelligently more reasonably probably you there there's a fine line right like again I'm not saying going to failure but there is a big difference between Literally eight plus reps in reserve right

like I put up in my little internet [ __ ] thing I put up a video of that I'd been saving for years that's of Might taking Chris Duffin through a set there was this every once while like powerlifter does bodybuilding work and it's just dumb social media and so the video people who haven't seen it Mike is talking Christof and who's a top-notch powerlifter and I'll make it clear this is not aimed at Cris this is Not a criticism of him he showed up and did what what the video told him to do okay

this is this is about Mike Mike's talking through the set and I only got the people doing renissance periodization videos thought that they were [ __ ] movie director oh my God just set the camera down and quit it you're making me nause like so I don't know how many reps he had done it it started in the middle of The set and so he gets three four and my goes all right good set and and Chris stops and goes can I keep going one more you got one more let's go yes M go oh

you want to keep going let's go you want more Chris pumps out eight more I counted seven whatever something like that and still in my opinion his bar speed still didn't really his movement speed still didn't really slow and he was doing he Was accelerating the concentric and again M it's how Mike was talking him through it right explode squeeze [ __ ] slow controlled concentric speed cap lying [ __ ] right and he stopped so he got seven more and I I could have got him through two or three more grinders at least at

least might stop that set at least seven reps from and probably more than that that's what Mike thinks works up it's just that Simple and of course Mike argue about that back forth but the fact that he never actually showed a limits up I mean we don't know for sure but I can guarantee that that's what he thinks is one ah you that's enough you've done some that's enough yeah and it it may well work with all the drugs as you but but is it but you know that e even with the benefits of the

drugs and all that they do in terms of recovery and growth and everything else I do think a Mistake people make at least I've read of people making is they fall into the Trap of oh well I'm taking this so I'm just going to do double the volume failed athletes make excuses and the athletes that become great fix problems and that's something was never willing well he did he tried to fix it by just throwing more drugs at it he figured that he thought red at TR tide was going to be the the big magic

Pill because it's new and it's special and he thought it was going to do a lot more than it actually did but glp1 drugs are a whole separate thing for why that wasn't um that wasn't and you're not the first one who brought who mentioned to me that the appetite thing that that Mike's probably the type that when he goes off of it he'll just start going back to overeating even more because he wasn't using it as an aid to his already super Strong willpower he was using it as a Band-Aid solution he's got more

willpower than you ly I have more willpower than you okay got more willpower than just about everyone on Earth according to him um things like you just need to learn to put the fork down and [ __ ] like that and what I wanted to say is I just want to reach out to them and say you've never met anyone with as much willpower as me I I I don't give be that Mystics Are what they are but I i' bet decent chunk of change on it and whatever is you think you're good at in

your life I'd probably take about a year and and become an authority in the field in which you think you're good well and his results certainly uh that's why he's gotten the results that he has apparently um I mean the proof is in the pudding right and the pudding was in his post-workout meal yeah that was good Somebody told me once Mike whenever people criticizes him he'll rage against them to the effect of I could be better at what you do in a year and I'll destroy you and I'm so much better than you like

dude seriously man you need to like Mike I mean this very genuinely if you're watching this there's many brands of decaffeinated coffee that tastes just as good as the real thing Buddy like yeah it's something like this Lane is Lane is Waring with everybody over everything at all times and I'm like Jesus Christ guys it used to be about the science it used to be about the music what happens they bought I don't know I don't know if they bought into their own hype or what but somewhere it changed I think when it comes to

diagnosing Mike's fundamental issue I think a part of it could be that he never figured out How to do it as a natural beforehand I mean it's said that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior and here you've got a guy who bulked up to 270 pounds at 5 foot6 that's morbidly obese you find me the the single natural bodybuilder you won't find me a single natural bodybuilder nor strength athlete of that size who's competing at a high level the only reason why anyone ever gets that big is a lack of control over

appetite I'm come back yeah he says that No one you've never met someone with as much willpower as me you would say things that uh that really got on Rescue and um things like you just need to learn to put the fork down and [ __ ] like that and what I wanted to say is I I want to reach out to them and say you've never met anyone with as much willpower as me and whatever it is you think you're good at in your life I'd probably take about a year and and become an

authority in the field in which you Think you're good sorry but aam's razor simply suggests that he can't control his appetite and that's why he can't get in shape so I think he should never even gotten into it in the first place that's why he also made a big deal about using a brand new drug he used R true tide as his new dieting drug which is glp1 drugs is my current area of interest that we can talk about that a whole separate thing later to try to to try to fix it and yes I

do think the natural thing is A big part of it this goes about some think I mentioned that duchan said is that when you can simply throw more drugs at the problem you never actually learn how to train or eat because you don't have to and that will get you obviously pretty far right hit a plate up the dose why examine your training why adjust what you're doing when you can just take more right and and again I know you know you know I've known Coaches who've worked with drug using bodybuilders and who use because

like no mistake drugs will beat scientific training perfect training every single time period duchan W famously said with the new supplement Technologies natural bodybuilders will surpass drug users which is both hilarious it's so hilarious like whatever however drugs plus good Training will be drugs plush training and I know enough coaches that have worked with drug using bodybuilders who were just throwing higher doses at it and put them on better training they got better growth usually with less right I I've got a good buddy and he maintains heal about 240 lean yearound the most he's ever

used to grow is 500 milligrams a week and he maintains on 200 but that's because he lives the lifestyle he knows how to Train and he knows how eat and he figured that out so yeah I do think that's part of it I think it helps to have a background in here's how to diet naturally without a cocktail of drugs before you decide to take that next step oh yeah yeah wouldn't you at least want to know that you can get truly ripped with no or minimal drugs before trying to get a pro card I

mean it was almost doomed from the outset here in Mike you've got a guy who's just way too big For no reason as a natural all of a and deciding that he wants to be a pro bodybuilder but did he compete naturally no I don't know he didn't he just went straight on drugs and then started going for these very lofty Ambitions take it till you make it yeah and I think I mean you know again I know you and I probably you I know you have a very different stance on this but even the

people that talk about drug using bodybuilding talk about yes you need to Learn what you're doing as a natural first but there were fundamentally much larger problems with Mike's as a bodybuilder which is that his terrible Lines no waste no shape no symmetry terrible muscle bellies there was nothing he could have ever done that was going like bodybuilding is one of those awful sports that certain factors about your shape Muscular tie-ins are immutable and the best are born with them and if you especially at the higher like you can get by at the lower level

without having that but as you get to the top level everybody knows how you know everybody has the same drugs everybody there there's a limit to how leaner you can it's a matter of were you born with the right shape and Mike never had it period but I think he Went even beyond that right I mean he had a thick waist he had terrible High lat tie-ins Terri just terrible shape and J but he exacerbated that and I think that was a lot of what Greg duet I didn't listen to duet's videos but I think

same thing pretty much just like Mike was never going to be successful at that sport never I said it is one of the most genetic competitions in existence it's Funny our mutual friend Joseph shares the same perspective goes Mike had terrible genetics um sadly for him and uh it's just a case of him with all of his drugs and training and everything polishing a turd and I replied polishing is generous yeah I mean and that's I mean that's just it is the reality of it if you're not cut out for a sport it is what

it is and this would have been like I said If I were coaching my the biggest suggestion I would have made to him he's what 5 fo4 5 fo five on a good day he's not 56 I don't no I don't think I don't even think he's 56 regardless he's not tall he was never ever gonna look good at that body weight because he has the shape of a square right right classic bodybuilding even the giant even the Giants now look At Dorian great Vaper what they used to call the classic X shape you know

he had great lines uh what's the what's do you know lumpy princess from yeah from Adventure Time he looks like lumpy princess he is a blob you go back to the old like the early is the early growth hormone days there were some bodybuilders back then that looked to S because they were too big for their height or in Mike's case he was too Heavy for how short he is I put it that way because I know he's insecure about his height no that that's that that's why he shoots all of his videos like this

because it makes him look taller with the big man don't watch any of his videos he shoots them from a low angle because it makes him look taller than he is um I maintain that if Mike were ever gonna have a chance to be successful in Bodybuilding he would have to cut back too if he came in at 195 PBS ripped maybe to be to try to hold to try to be 240 at that height no way he looks like a blob I mean go go back and look go look at Franco Columbo who was

like 5 foot five 5 foot six he competed at 185 pounds Mike was trying to carry 60 pounds more than that and so his already terrible shape was simply exacerbated by what I think is obvious Bigorexia he has obviously he's got some severe body dysmorphia because he thinks bigger is better Greg you said did that entire video no Mike bigger is not better someone must m Mike Isel well there's how Mike views his physique and there's how the rest of the World Views his physique for instance in his ad honm Laden response to you on

the failure to fail thing he said Lyle has bad genetics implication unlike me I have good genetics he says of Mike mener I'm bigger and stronger than Mike mener I know more things than Mike mener uh I'm more educated than Mike mener am who am I compared to Mike mener well I'm bigger and stronger than Mike mener that's it so all of a sudden that changes the game I I'm more educated than Mike mener I know more things than Mike mener that's hilarious for its own reasons because um I'm getting a little off topic but

in that was a video he did with Johnny Shrie ostensibly they're criticizing Mike men's training and training protocols and yet Mike is saying that he's bigger and stronger than Mike Men first of all that's delusional but both are both object are both objectively false he might be heavier than Mike mener but bigger who cares bodybuilding bigger is not better that was G it's he might be bigger but is he better and strength no he's not stronger I guarantee you that's not true Mike lifts Pansy ass weights and always has um he screams a lot while

he's doing it and then goes and throws up with conveniently placed cameras that was always fascinating when he was going through that stage of throwing up for his followers it's like wow the camera just happened to be set up there how strange how can convenience to prove that he was tough and he trained hard okay it's it's just funny coming back to your thing of how He's at once the exercise scientist who says don't listen to the biggest person in the gym are the big guys good sources of info probably not and they certainly don't

know more than the science nerds in the industry but also I'm bigger and stronger than Mike Mena hence I am more of an authority than he was I said that's he'll he'll he'll make his decision on which argument to make based on the moment yeah but it's funny I in The moment it didn't even work because hello he's Mike mener he stood on the Mr Olympia stage he was Mr Universe what has Mike done in competitive bodybuilding I mean even if Mena came back today he'd have smoked Mike at that most recent show that Mike

that is Mike Israel yeah but I mean even look at you know his whole thing with like yeah you know [ __ ] great D said and they had a big falling out and they're no they're buddies anymore and Greg and and like People have put photos of Greg and Mike next to one jet has a pro card and he's a judge and yet somehow Mike is still better and more knowledgeable than him Mike he's accomplished something you never have and both of the other guys from RP Jared feather and Charlie they got their Pro

cards too that's right congratulations to them yeah why well among other things they had better shape in genetics but I bet they listen to their coaches In a way that Mike never did and never would the suggestion that Mike maybe you would look better at 195 because he would I mean he wouldn't look any worse but I think he could actually have decent lines he could have a waste that wasn't so damn blocky you might also live to C60 well yeah that's a whatever Elite Sport's not about health I don't care about that again I

know that's one of your thumping like Elite Sports not About being healthy so who gives them um but yeah but from the standpoint of actually being comp itive he's trying to hang with the mass monsters and he doesn't have the height to do it period he's just he's simply Too Short um with the biomechanics and the shape of an Ooma Loompa but Ooma loomas have actually better Tans if you look at there than than Mike did in a video I pulled it out of a video I did but I I put a side by side

of of Mike and an oal Loom because actually was because Mike is doing a double bicep and the oal looma kind of was too so it was me being super obnoxious but that's what I do um that would have been good um one thing with bodybuilding is that if you learn to pose well you can at least accentuate good body parts and you know there that is part of the illusion I don't know how far it really gets you with Um uh you know if you're doing call outs or whatever but um you mentioned in

one podcast that he knew at his first bodybuilding show you know the one where he had gynecomastia not a single AB that he was seething on stage that he was on the edge you know because they put the good guy in the center and they put the crap guys on the outside and he was seething and you could see it in his face just angry angry angry and uh he explained that even his wife told him Hey you should cut that out you look angry so he he he's he's expressed that he doesn't have much

of an interest in as he puts it the pageantry side of bodybuilding the other part of bodybuilding here's what can be termed the pageantry posing um skin care Tanning uh all that stuff but for me personally the pageantry skin care tanning presentation posing it's especially the minute sort of Tricks again it's a wonderful thing but for me personally I couldn't give a flying [ __ ] about it and I'm actively like oh that's right this is a Thing but that's what all of it is I at a competitive level that's all all that it is

for right or for wrong I mean it is pageantry it is basically a it is a beauty contest of sorts it is a dieting contest um more than anything it is a who can starve themselves longest contest I mean what what else would it be I I find that very baffling um but okay you have to be honest with someone that you've come as far as you can go well I Don't see it happening Mike needed someone to tell him that early early on but he never would have listened so where to from here for

Mike do you reckon he should just retire I think it's what he says he's gonna do he says he's stepping away from bodybuilding to focus on his content creation stepping away doesn't have a great degree of finality to it though does it I don't sounds temporary I think he said he was Yeah but you and I both know and I think anyone that is familiar with this Saga such as it is knows full well this is not permanent if Mike had any sense if he's truly gonna walk away from it which you and I both

know he's not because what is he what do he said you did a video on this too when that hilarious neurot Tropics where they talked about getting stoned the whole time yeah didn't they delete that one Too they did funny funny that not funny haha but funny that and he said he's like constant W rage I'm constantly like homicidal I constantly want to kill like oh yeah that's worth it like I'll read an Instagram comment and feel like how dare you like I'll read a comment when I'm on Plenty of sh and it's as usual

a highly disrespectful comment on Instagram and I want I fantasize about meeting that person in real life walking up to them in the gym way too close to Their face be like say something you say it say it and watch them cower and just relish as they cower and then as they cow away hurt them physically so that everyone can see and then eat their [ __ ] organs this these are thoughts that I have like daily sometimes multiple times a day randomly but bodybuilding you're doing all this to yourself for what a plastic trophy

if that for the accolades of a of heads Online to put yourself through this especially at that level to say I'm constantly homicidal all of the health issues that we now go through all the people drop for what plastic Trophy and so a bunch of people on Instagram tell you you're right really might any might any sense he would downsize drop all of the extra body weight to a normal human level that he might actually be healthy and not full Of Rage all the time but he won't even if he's ostensibly retired at least until

he decides in a few years he's gonna try to come back and we both we all know he will he won't be able he needs the narcissist needs the accolades too much and he won't get that doing content about how to talk to women which was a recent video of his by the way I've never met a single girl who I was convinced was actually attracting To intelligence if girls liked intelligence I'd be swimming in that from day one okay um he needs guys to tell him how awesome he looks he will come back and

he will do just as badly because when I'm truly being a dick I will say Mike couldn't win a show if he was the only one on stage even in Masters where I think he thinks wants to have he might have a Better chance he's still going to be dealing with guys that were great when they were younger Masters competitors can be just as good oh yeah they're good better because they they usually started younger and they're just older versions of their great younger selves but he will not stay retired and he certainly is not

going to cut his because if he gets smaller a who he sees in the mirror won't be what he wants to see because he Thinks bigger is better and he won't everybody have everybody in his Instagram feed tell him yeah dude you Fus and this and that and the other so he's going to keep in my opinion he's going to keep doing exactly what he's doing the same number of drugs the same diet and you know we'll see I guess we'll see what happens with the Deadpool going forwards it seems like it's a weakly thing

these days of course there's why Mike juices uh there's why sorry there there's what there are the reasons he tells you for why he juices and there's why he actually juices the reasons he tells you are well I want to win an ifbb Pro card the actual reasons well we can only speculate we can however the speculation will probably be more correct than not this was something actually that came up in this documentary you tend to see a very Common background in a lot of people that get very deep into bodybuilding natural or otherwise but

I think here which is and I think and this shows in in the overall personality profile and how he deals with criticisms you've got people that were bullied scared insecure and thought if I can get big and strong I can protect myself against the scariness of the world do you know who Bob Paris is yes very famous bodybuilder beautiful physique and he well he's openly he's out he's he's openly gay but he was not then and he was dealing with actually they mentioned him in this documentary and he talks about that when he came out

in the 990s he lost 85% of his sponsors and his income because it was still like that but he was a gay man in a world where he could not be open and he wrote this book called gorilla suit which Refers to he got into bodybuilding to build himself a suit of muscular armor to protect himself against the world and what I see when I run into these people like Mike who deal or Paul Carter is another good example people these big strong muscular guys that 13-year-old insecurity is still there they're hoping that they can

make themselves big and strong and muscular and that will make them scar but deep Down they're still scared little children because how else can you explain their responses to the most legitimate of criticism lashing out like [ __ ] fiveyear olds these are little boys in a adult's body but the insecurity is still there and I'm sure when Mike saw it as a way to get big and strong yeah that's why he does it that's why I'm I mean I'm not saying like it Just is what it is there's a re you know some athletes

do it so they can be the best at their sport but bodybuilding is not a sport it is such a unique activity in the sense that like again you when they talk about the history and the background of these people it's kind of always the same thing and it's like sort of grew up in these little Midwestern towns and W and then they found bodybuilding it's like and it made me feel like someone and being big and Strong and muscular and powerful and all of this and then steroids come in and make you feel like

a [ __ ] god from what I you know this is why people don't come off anymore right used to read about all the stuff with post-cycle therapy and guys it wasn't you know we can debate if drug if anabolics are physically addictive and I don't think they are in the sense that other recreational drugs are but I think they can be very psychologically addicting oh Yeah how could you ever go back to Natural training after having experienced the highs of 600 milligrams of test you know and when you between just either the physiological Euphoria

or aggression the fact that your your poundages have doubled and you've gained 20 or 30 pounds overnight or whatever it is right you're always because well I mean you go off and you crash first off you're you know 50% worse than you would be if you were natural that was all the Post-cycle therapy stuff now nobody goes off ever right yeah like because you usually see these guys standing next to other big dudes yeah I'm on the airplane Ronnie is in two first class seats still spilling like still looking cramped it is inhuman so yeah

to go from that to even semi-normal cannot it just can't be done I mean it it certainly takes a different mindset and I think in bodybuilding especially when you Got when your whole identity is tied up with being big it's that much worse yeah I mean and I mean it depends on the sport though like some people you know they never quite quit I think between Mike's identity being tied up and being big also for right or for wrong part of his social media presence part of his authority comes from his physique and yeah that's

me being an [ __ ] in as much as he has one yeah he's not he would lose you know for the Same reason that he would lose followers if he ever admitted he was wrong that's why gurus can't do it right because if they admit that they're wrong they might be seen as infallible and that can't be you mean yeah that they must be seen as infallible to the true to the True Believer yeah not admit they are wrong ever unless it's for just the most utterly superficial stuff they'll just change what they're saying

and hope Nobody notices and block anyone who points it out whereas you know this is also there's also the little boy component something else you you know when you're when you're a boy you think that admitting you're wrong is a sign of weakness and when you actually grow up and turn into an adult you realize that admitting you're wrong is a strength yeah takes way more balls to admit you're wrong Than to double down but yeah so they will never they will NE but there's it's just it's the the in So yeah so Mike is

Mike's identity and his authority is tied up in his physique the idea of him Smalling becoming smaller and downsizing even if it would make him healthier he won't do it it's kind of a prison of his own making because you can blow up on YouTube Fitness without being a big roed Behemoth for instance you've got athlex Who's got in the order of 10 million subscribers you've got Jeff nippard whose subscribe counts just soaring he's got like 5.6 million Mike isrel though I mean you would think that maybe his size has helped him because you know

in this superficial era of uh brain rot and Optics um you you have to look the part but honestly I think had he never touched you know any dose above 250 milligrams he would have looked the part to to the Extent that he could have been credible right you don't have to be big you don't have to be as big as he was to get that following but once you have been identified as being that big as part of your appeal to Authority there's no going back again exactly that's the that's the point I was

trying to make yeah that well okay that may okay let's that's not entirely true I guarantee you there's people who will still go yeah Dorian knows his stuff but that's Because Dorian had the success that went along with it right was an eight times Mr Olympia winner that is where his authority came from was from his actual success yeah Mike didn't have even that no and Mike said to Omar ISF I asked you this an hour going I'm still mispronouncing es thank you and I guess Mike said I want to prove my methods work by

getting my Pro card so what is it like I get everything you said man the only reason I compete is to Illustrate to people that uh marginally more than they would otherwise believe the methods that we espouse at Renaissance periodization are effective that so transparent I like so you think well by his own argument Mike your methods don't work period because you never got your pro card you never never even placed worth a [ __ ] on stage I mean it wasn't like he got se he barely missed wasn't his best placing like third out

of four at some Masters Competition a couple years something like that in 2020 I believe was he's best something something yeah so by Mike's own logic since he never won a pro card Aro his methods don't work and they don't meanwhile despite his you know list of the People based on who they've coached well I coached Elite female powerlifter hoods some ungodly number of Records State national and World across two age three open two age groups and two weight Classes and I helped a guy in my Facebook group you mentioned this guy named Larry didn't

coach him I'm not going to claim I did but I helped him dial in his final stuff coming into his last contest he was using my ultimate diet too figuring out the timing on carbing up and water and drying out and stuff like that and hey Mike he wanted Pro he won his natural Pro card his first show out you can [ __ ] about whether Greg or I I never would have coached you and you couldn't have afforded me if you'd even wanted me but I can't guarantee you would have won but you wouldn't

have looked as bad as you did because I know how to get people into shape and you don't even know how to get yourself into shape so if you're watching this buddy you too great great again people that will follow my information and my advice that I will not claim to have coached except In as much as they did what was in my books and stuff and they all look Mike ever has um I like I said Sumi she did a photo shoot she was leaner and drier and darker uh than Mike ever been on

stage so yeah my methods work Mike and you proved by your own logic that yours don't so the most epic self-own I mean it like yeah you can only get away with like you need to save that type of thing for after the fact right you you can only you can only Praying people forget that line well yeah but like you get like you can only call your shot it only works if it if you actually won right you can't talk that much smack unless you win you wait till after you get your pro card

and go see that proves My Method works don't use that as a as the predictor because that will come back to bite you in the ass I guess that that is you know fundamentally the difference between confidence and Cockiness confidence is based on what you have accomplished cockiness is based on what you think you're gonna accomplish and as the old say you know don't count the chickens and that sort of thing it's true I mean God it kills me it kills me to watch these events online and you'll see these races and someone starts celebrating

too early and gets beat beat at the line no no you wait there's time for celebration Afterwards you do not celebrate until until after until after it's over um that is in a way what Mike was doing yeah he was basically pre- celebrating what he thought he was going to accomplish no you got to wait afterwards because otherwise that will absolutely come come back to bite you in the ask yeah as much as I know anything about I suspect that he to your point was just using lots and lots and lots More drugs to make

up for what was clearly inadequate training and nutrition because he can say it worked for him and I mean yeah it it worked for you if by work you mean abject failure at the only SP you ever tried to be good at me I at least had the sense like I did I had powerlifting me I enjoyed it was never going to be more than mediocre at it so I moved back to something I could be good at which was inline go with your strengths but yeah I Mean yeah Mike your diet and training expertise

sure worked um I mean I don't know I know people have been like the Jared feather got result does Jared train with Mike anymore I don't think so I don't know I don't really follow it I know Charlie's not part of that crew anymore um I know he was working with someone else and he got his Pro card which again congratulations to him but yeah so Mike you definitely proved all you set out to in bodybuilding I guess that's apparently that's I'm told that's what his apologists are are saying now well it's okay for Mike

to retire he he proved everything he had to bodybuilding and what was that exactly what exactly did he prove with all of this other than you can lose all your hair get gyno take who knows how many years off your life have constant anger Issues and still be an abject failure that's what he proved sponsored by sponsored by Renaissance periodization by their app train you you too can train like Mike wrote To You by op great great this industry man I just I mean it's always been like this it's always going to be like this

nothing is going to change ever it's the nature of the Beast um and It's just the reality and as much as you and I enjoy doing this the reality is it's not going to change a damn thing as much as I love to gloat about how Mike's own methods don't work by his very own logic I think we can say a little bit more about Mike's failure in competitive bodybuilding Mike's failure in competitive bodybuilding is instructive showing us what not to do he showed shows us what happens when you don't Learn from past mistakes he

shows us what happens when you try to play the mass game when you don't have the genetics for it he shows us what it looks like when drugs are used to cover up flaws in training and nutrition he shows us what happens when you're hubristic in all events it doesn't end well in this video we put Mike under the same scrutiny he applies to others in the fitness industry in Chapter 2 we Showed that Mike's Fitness advice is terrible in chapter 3 we showed that Mike can't handle criticism of his bad advice in chapter 4

we provided a diagnosis of Mike's failures in competitive bodybuilding we've talked a lot about Mike but I want to expand this discussion briefly into something about more than just Mike occasionally I get a comment from someone who asks what my problem is with Mike is it that I have some kind of personal Vendetta the answer is no I focus on Mike for a particular reason I focus on Mike because he's not just a person he's a paradigm a phenomenon Mike is a personification of the most degenerate aspect of the fitness industry like many who have

come before and many who will come after Mike is a perpetrator in the fitness Industry his bad information has misled countless natural trainees he backpedals on his old nonsense with new nonsense he can't take criticism he inadvertently glorifies drug abuse with his fame money and influence but Mike isn't just a perpetrator he's also a victim the fitness industry LED Mike to take bodybuilding way way further than he should have the fitness industry LED Mike to take the dangerous cocktail of Drugs that compromises his physical and mental health in that sense Mike is also a victim

of the very cycle he perpetuates I hope that we can break that cycle I also hope that Mike changes his destructive course of action because as I've stated elsewhere the counterfactual Mike who stayed natural would be happier healthier and a better role model my concluding remarks are these one day there will be another mic A superficial man or woman who cultivates enormous influence with smooth talking and a given set of credentials please cast a critical eye on him or her that means don't be sucked in by The Confident or self assured presentation don't be sucked

in by his or her credentials and authoritative delivery look at the fact supporting the individual claims if there is none then dismiss the claims Outright in the end I hope this video helps you negotiate with the [ __ ] that pervades the fitness industry and everyday life it's I think most people who who they triple down even more and they'll just be like yeah they're never going to admit that they back the wrong horse yeah yeah I mean I I can understand why people back him in the first place I this is this okay um

it's because People hear me up hear me up when I say people I don't mean uh people who are deeply immersed in you know the evidence-based bodybuilding world people like you for instance I mean general population they don't have all the time to do deep investigations into all literature and correct training and eating practices so they look at Mike and they see this big guy who's articulate who has a degree and they use that as a heuristic They're like oh I think I can probably trust him so then they just take what he says at

face value um yes and it's it's sad because people rely on juristic I don't blame them how could they not um but that's why it's important to call him out well and that's characteristics alone fail us correct and the fitness industry is unique among Industries and that it it allows so much of this to happen I've written a bunch of ranty stuff in my Facebook group don't think You can find other industries that are like this because as an example you can't find like if you are a car repairman or you are an aerospace engineer

there are not a million things that appear to work and you cannot use a drug that will make the training and nutrition not matter right the car either works or it doesn't the plane either flies or it doesn't we don't get to argue about physics right or Wing design Beyond a certain point Right aerodynamic but in bodybuilding in Fitness in nut Nu a a million things seem to work but B when you have drugs covering up all the endless mistakes and making the training and nutrition literally not matter Beyond a certain point right and you

go that's just an excuse no it's not when 600 milligrams of testosterone will make you gain 10 kilos of lean body mass in 20 weeks the majority of which is muscle with the most I forget did bason have them train At all in one of the studies he didn't in one of the studies it was very basic stuff doesn't matter that is a Year's worth of training for a beginner if they're lucky in 20 weeks and they go 600 milligrams is a baby dose maybe a daily dose right and people and every thought I was

kidding about that and then a few years later Dallas McCarver passed away and it was estimated that he was taking 15 grams a week of anabolics over two now and others have Said well it was a blood draw problem it doesn't matter I've seen Pros you can find them on Instagram put up their weekly doses it is three to five grams a week of various injectables orals and that doesn't even count the insulin the GH the untested peptides 600 milligrams a week will make you grow better than the most perfect training in the world these

guys are taking five to 10 times that I mean I I shudder to guess what The doses are at the highest level the 320 pound monsters that are out there right now right the drugs make it not matter and this is the only field where that can happen so basically people they're their the heuristic people are applying their expertise mean hey supposedly the F Well I have a PhD yeah i' seen what university you got it from don't be too impressed but that is the peeled Authority and like look there's plenty of phds and MDS

that are complete Morons and SC I mean Etc and then if it's not that it's their physique and don't get me wrong yes that could be part of it but when you throw drug drug into the mix drug drug Based training people that are honest about it will point out that yeah the training that works or is best when you're on juice it's completely different than what a natural should be doing I did a big ass podcast with bradick about brri shz about that a bunch while ago like I said And I even admitted as

far as the way Mike was training I said this repeatedly I go yeah look not only do I not care how you train but there is probably like there is logic to not pushing to limits all the time because you get hurt right when the drugs are making that much stronger although if you look at most of the best guys and look at their training sets they go until the bar speed slows go watch some of those guys doing heavy hacks they are not stopping eight reps Out they are not setting a speed cap they

are work they are not well go watch Dorian I'm not saying to train like Dorian but the point of this being that drugs cover drugs make anything work and the studies show that incontrovertibly don't people recognize you in the gym no like when 30 years 30 years two people have ever recognized me ever which is fine with me because it means I can actually get my workout Done without being bothered and even in those couple of cases every once while somebody come be like are you li McDonald and here's and here's what I do and

I'll be like be like you li McDonald well that depends because that could be a hey I love your stuff online and want to talk to you or that could be hey I want to kick the [ __ ] out of you so I always move out of arms length no I don't think Most people unless it's Mike isrel who's being a lot of people voal about his violent ideations I've been threatened many times by people online which I find to be hilarious oh Mike said that he wanted to strangle you debating Lyall McDonald like

if he was in front of me it would take the world for me to not choke him to death I'm easy to find Mike I live down in Austin he was here apparently he was here a while back I'm easy to find it's Easy to be a sh talker online I mean talk about talk about a lame ass threat Mike like yeah I'm tough like okay and you're threatening me online to strangle me I do want to correct you on a small thing okay please now you did a podcast with a fellow Aussie named Daniel

peic recently it was a great podcast you brought me up in it I've got a buddy you Solomon Nelson don't know him probably not oh no what did I what did I get wrong well you told Daniel that I'm in My 30s you he's in his 30s I'm actually 25 okay but I'm flattered that I make a mature impression I yeah I I'm sure I was just on that one I was guessing out of my butt I didn't do my research and it does uh that's I mean you I think it's just you do you

certainly seem more mature than the typical 25y old let's put it that way thank you but let's well that's just because you're I don't Know for good or for bad and many people would see this was as bad and part of the reason we get along is I see elements of myself at your age in You by which me and I don't by which I mean a compulsive obsessiveness to facts and EV like is I know I made it I made a joke about that the first time we talked before we about I made I

made a speedrunning joke and you were like oh by the way I'm a speedrunner I'm like I believe you completely when you say this Because I basically was like look all these speedrunners are totally on Spectrum I didn't say it exactly that way but I'm saying it that way because I live in America and people lose their mind over words and then you were like oh yeah I speedrun Halo rocket jump and I'm like yeah that doesn't foress too yeah yes you have a certain and that was me right I I I am of the

opinion in as much as you know BuzzFeed quizzes are the answer to everything that if the Diagnosis had existed when I was younger they absolutely would have put me on the spe and I see elements of that so I I just assume you were older and unfortunately it makes for it's not necessarily the Happ you mean you good at you you'll be be good at lawyering because that is the thing where you have to just know every detail known to God and man and have it all you know on par uh I appreciate that you

have some confidence In me well I mean it's just like I said you can just I can see the I can see that I see it in your videos like I can see just like trust me you're at the point you're you put way more energy into yours than I do into mind but I'm just too lazy to edit um I'm too L to go find all that video clip stuff anymore that's just because I'm old but when I was younger I was like that right when I when I still had the youth a considerable

amount of effort into your Videos like timing the Reps and everything oh that yeah I yeah that was a whole separate thing that was me when I get those those brief moments of spite you know I can do it for a little while but compared to my 20s and 30s like my obsessiveness like I don't have the fire the way I used to and I still love this feel I still keep up with it I still read everything it still fascinates me from a physiological sense but the industry is exhausting and after 30 Years I

tried I've tried to fight the good fight my entire career I've tried to fight against waves of Relentless increasing amounts of stupidity and bad information and I stand by it I you know i' written books and written articles and I think the mistake I made when I was younger the mistake we're making now the reality is that the grand majority of people are not going to listen the people that have attached themselves to Mike no amount of evidence matters it's Like politics and we talked about that briefly before you started recording you can show factual

evidence of something to someone about their political party or who they and it won't change a thing the cognitive dissonance is too much I've gotten to the point like you can only help who you can help and and I no longer have the energy to try to change people's minds until they're ready to listen you are still you you're still Young oh just wait just wait you wait till you get into law just wait well I don't know what I don't know what I don't yeah I don't know what specifically you're going to go into

but you know there is a idealism of Youth there is you think you can change the world and you can't but you don't realize that to your older all you can do I mean you can do the best you can do and you can help who you can help so that's me you do the best you can Hopefully this video that I've just made with you plays a small but significant role hopefully more than a small role in combating misinformation I hope so I mean there you know there isn't again I know I'm overgeneralizing there

are people that absolutely will see that you know and you can make that argument right there are people that will see and they will double down when you show them you know factually that they're wrong they will Double down there are people that already agree with you and there probably is a proportion of people that will see this and maybe start thinking about it critically and may change their mind or maybe in a while la [Music]