Latest / Drawn of History / Joe Rogan Experience _1489 - Ronnie Coleman(M4A_128K)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Mr. Coleman.
- 0:01Speaker 2: What's going on?
- 0:02Speaker 1: Great to meet you, brother. It's a real honor. I mean,
- 0:05Speaker 1: you are, when I was really into bodybuilding and reading
- 0:08Speaker 1: the magazines, I always said that you looked like a
- 0:12Speaker 1: dude who they invented in a Marvel comic book to
- 0:15Speaker 1: kill the Hulk. That's what you looked like when you
- 0:18Speaker 1: were in your prime, man.
- 0:19Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt like I probably could, too, back in
- 0:22Speaker 2: those days.
- 0:23Speaker 1: I mean, God damn, you were freakishly huge. It was
- 0:26Speaker 1: crazy to see. It was like, you know, I remember
- 0:28Speaker 1: paying attention to bodybuilding from the beginning, like the Franco, Colombo,
- 0:32Speaker 1: and Schwarzenegger days to what you guys had become, you know,
- 0:36Speaker 1: when you were in your prime. You just redefined everything.
- 0:38Speaker 1: Everything was just so extreme.
- 0:41Speaker 2: Yeah, we were pretty tough back in those days. Everything
- 0:47Speaker 2: was hard, you know. The guys I was competing against
- 0:49Speaker 2: were real good. I just came out of nowhere. I
- 0:54Speaker 2: got in bodybuilding real late. Where I'm from, we didn't
- 0:56Speaker 2: have it. I didn't find out about it until I
- 0:59Speaker 2: graduated college, went out to Texas, and started working for
- 1:02Speaker 2: the police department.
- 1:03Speaker 1: How old were you at the time?
- 1:04Speaker 2: I was about 24.
- 1:05Speaker 1: So that's when you started bodybuilding.
- 1:07Speaker 2: That's when I started. But I had been working out
- 1:09Speaker 2: since I was 12, 13.
- 1:11Speaker 1: For sports?
- 1:12Speaker 2: Yeah. I was on the powerlifting team.
- 1:14Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
- 1:15Speaker 2: I did powerlifting in high school. So I was on
- 1:18Speaker 2: the powerlifting team and, you know, I'm from Louisiana, a
- 1:22Speaker 2: real small town. A lot of the guys are kind
- 1:25Speaker 2: of big like me, kind of strong like me. You know,
- 1:29Speaker 2: a lot of people don't understand, but strength is something
- 1:32Speaker 2: like a natural gift, you know. You can work on
- 1:37Speaker 2: it and get better at it, but you also have
- 1:39Speaker 2: to be gifted a little bit.
- 1:41Speaker 1: Have to have a nice base.
- 1:42Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to have a nice base and you
- 1:44Speaker 2: have to have a little talent. Yeah. You know, like
- 1:48Speaker 2: this guy, I think I can't remember his name, but
- 1:51Speaker 2: he deadlifted 1,100 pounds.
- 1:53Speaker 1: Oh, that Game of Thrones guy?
- 1:56Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:58Speaker 1: The mountain?
- 1:58Speaker 2: That's a gift. You know, that's talent.
- 2:01Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 2:01Speaker 2: Yeah, he's gifted. Everybody can't do that. You know, I
- 2:03Speaker 2: did 800, you know. for a couple reps, but I
- 2:08Speaker 2: don't think I can do 1,100.
- 2:10Speaker 1: That's a lot of weight.
- 2:11Speaker 2: That's a lot of weight.
- 2:11Speaker 1: He's an enormous human being, though. That's a Viking right there.
- 2:16Speaker 2: You have to have a lot of weight to be
- 2:17Speaker 2: able to pull a lot of weight like that, too. Yeah.
- 2:20Speaker 1: You, in your career, you were known for lifting large
- 2:24Speaker 1: amounts of weight, too.
- 2:26Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I was saying, I started powerlifting
- 2:29Speaker 2: when I was in high school. I had the gift
- 2:32Speaker 2: of strength. I was pretty strong in high school. you know,
- 2:36Speaker 2: all throughout my college days. And, you know, it was
- 2:40Speaker 2: just something that I think I was kind of born
- 2:42Speaker 2: with a little bit, you know, because you don't just
- 2:45Speaker 2: start lifting heavy weights like that all of a sudden.
- 2:48Speaker 2: You know, you have to have a, like I said,
- 2:50Speaker 2: you have to have some kind of natural talent for it.
- 2:52Speaker 1: Well, there's some crazy photos of you during the Mr.
- 2:54Speaker 1: Olympia days when you were a police officer. Is that you?
- 2:58Speaker 1: Look at that.
- 2:58Speaker 2: Yeah, that's me in the ninth grade on the left,
- 3:01Speaker 2: and that's me winning.
- 3:02Speaker 1: The, What happened to your arm on the left? You
- 3:03Speaker 1: got a cast on.
- 3:04Speaker 2: Yeah, I broke my arm.
- 3:05Speaker 1: You fucked somebody up.
- 3:06Speaker 2: Yeah, no. I got to fuck myself up. I was
- 3:10Speaker 2: playing football, and I think I fell on my wrist
- 3:13Speaker 2: or something and cracked it or something. And that's me
- 3:16Speaker 2: winning the Mr. Universe, turning pro in the middle. And
- 3:22Speaker 2: that's me winning the 99 Mr. Olympia for right there. Wow.
- 3:28Speaker 1: Damn, you were big.
- 3:29Speaker 2: Yeah, I was kind of big a little bit there.
- 3:32Speaker 1: A little bit?
- 3:34Speaker 2: Well, you know, I got a lot bigger than that.
- 3:35Speaker 2: That was my second Olympia. I only weighed about 255 there.
- 3:39Speaker 1: What's the biggest you ever got?
- 3:40Speaker 2: I was 295, my seventh one. So I put on
- 3:46Speaker 2: a little bit more weight as I got on up there.
- 3:49Speaker 1: But is it one of those things where you just
- 3:51Speaker 1: kind of have to keep up with everybody else and
- 3:53Speaker 1: everybody just keeps getting bigger and bigger?
- 3:55Speaker 2: No, it was that thing when I was trying to
- 3:58Speaker 2: distance myself from everybody else. So I kept getting bigger
- 4:01Speaker 2: and bigger so nobody would catch up with me. And
- 4:05Speaker 2: what a lot of people don't understand is you see
- 4:08Speaker 2: me big up there like that, but it took a
- 4:10Speaker 2: long time for me to get there. That didn't happen overnight.
- 4:14Speaker 2: I put on about five pounds of muscle, between five
- 4:17Speaker 2: and ten pounds of muscle a year. And that came
- 4:20Speaker 2: from all that heavy lifting, a lot of eating. A
- 4:25Speaker 2: lot of eating.
- 4:26Speaker 1: What was a standard meal for you?
- 4:29Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't a lot to me, you know,
- 4:33Speaker 2: but if somebody, you know, normally tried to eat it,
- 4:36Speaker 2: it'd probably be a lot. So I'd eat probably like
- 4:39Speaker 2: a pound of chicken, grilled breast, you know, with half
- 4:45Speaker 2: a cup of rice.
- 4:46Speaker 1: That was a normal meal?
- 4:47Speaker 2: Yeah, that was normal.
- 4:48Speaker 1: And how many of those did you have a day?
- 4:49Speaker 2: I had about six meals a day, you know. It's
- 4:53Speaker 2: kind of hard to eat. Like that, you know, so
- 4:55Speaker 2: I would have to wake up in the middle of
- 4:57Speaker 2: the night to eat and go back to sleep.
- 5:00Speaker 1: Really?
- 5:00Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 5:01Speaker 1: Was that annoying?
- 5:02Speaker 2: No, no.
- 5:02Speaker 1: I would think that'd be annoying. You're tired and sleeping
- 5:06Speaker 1: and got to wake up to eat.
- 5:08Speaker 2: No, you kind of get used to it. When you
- 5:11Speaker 2: eat like that, you get, you hunger every three hours.
- 5:13Speaker 1: Oh really?
- 5:14Speaker 2: Yeah. Every two to three hours you're hungry. Cause I'm not,
- 5:17Speaker 2: I'm not eating a lot of fat, you know, it's lean,
- 5:21Speaker 2: you know, I'm not eating a lot of carbs. So
- 5:24Speaker 2: it's a little bit of food at a time. For me,
- 5:27Speaker 2: it was.
- 5:28Speaker 1: And you would get down to what percent body fat?
- 5:31Speaker 2: I was 0.33. 0.33? What does that mean?
- 5:34Speaker 1: Is that less than 3%? That's less than half a percent.
- 5:35Speaker 2: Oh, 0.33. Like what?
- 5:36Speaker 1: 0.33. How does a human get that low?
- 5:38Speaker 2: I got to attribute it to my genetics.
- 5:50Speaker 1: But was it also like a trickle-down system? Like off-season,
- 5:54Speaker 1: say if you– like how many weeks would it take
- 5:57Speaker 1: for you to get ready for Mr.
- 5:58Speaker 2: Olympia? 10 to 12.
- 6:00Speaker 1: 10 to 12. So at 12 weeks out, how much
- 6:04Speaker 1: body fat do you think you were carrying around then?
- 6:07Speaker 2: About 3%.
- 6:09Speaker 1: So three was a high?
- 6:10Speaker 2: That's the highest, yeah. Jesus. Jesus. Would you get tired
- 6:14Speaker 2: all the time? I'm 330 pounds at that, though.
- 6:17Speaker 1: Oh, my God. Would you get tired all the time.
- 6:19Speaker 2: With that little body fat? I'm real good in fat.
- 6:25Speaker 1: That's good in fat. 3% body fat is good in fat.
- 6:28Speaker 1: That's hilarious.
- 6:30Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 6:30Speaker 1: Jamie, see if you can pull up a picture of
- 6:32Speaker 1: him winning the seventh Mr. Olympia title when he was
- 6:36Speaker 1: at his heaviest. I want to see what that looks like.
- 6:39Speaker 2: I was pretty big at that one.
- 6:40Speaker 1: Yeah, you were big, man. I remember looking at the
- 6:43Speaker 1: magazines and shaking my head. Today, I would say, oh,
- 6:46Speaker 1: that's Photoshopped. They didn't have Photoshop back then.
- 6:49Speaker 2: No, they didn't have it back then. I was a
- 6:52Speaker 2: little bit too big for that one. They had me
- 6:53Speaker 2: to come down a little bit for the next one.
- 6:55Speaker 1: Oh, really?
- 6:56Speaker 2: So I came down to like 275.
- 6:59Speaker 1: So when you said they, coaches?
- 7:00Speaker 2: Some of the judges.
- 7:03Speaker 1: The judges?
- 7:04Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 7:05Speaker 1: The judges were telling you you're too big?
- 7:07Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 7:08Speaker 1: That's when you know you fucked up. That's when you're
- 7:10Speaker 1: getting crazy. When the judges at Mr. Olympia are telling you,
- 7:15Speaker 1: a guy who's won it multiple years.
- 7:17Speaker 2: In a row. Seven years in a row, yeah.
- 7:18Speaker 1: They're telling you you're getting too big.
- 7:20Speaker 2: Yeah, getting too big.
- 7:21Speaker 1: Ronnie, take it down a notch.
- 7:22Speaker 2: Yeah. Because, you know, the guy next to me is
- 7:25Speaker 2: only like 250, you know.
- 7:27Speaker 1: But why were they saying, you still looked amazing. Like,
- 7:31Speaker 1: why were they saying you were too big?
- 7:32Speaker 2: Because I was at the time.
- 7:34Speaker 1: It really was too big?
- 7:35Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for the standards back then, you know. How
- 7:40Speaker 2: do they define that, though?
- 7:42Speaker 1: It's really just taste, right? Like, they look at it
- 7:45Speaker 1: and they decide.
- 7:46Speaker 2: Subjective, yeah, in a way. It's kind of subjective in
- 7:48Speaker 2: a way.
- 7:50Speaker 1: What year was the seventh one? I think it was 05.
- 7:53Speaker 2: Was it 05, Ryan? No, that's the eighth one. 04
- 7:58Speaker 2: is number seven. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, that's it
- 8:05Speaker 2: right there.
- 8:06Speaker 1: Wow.
- 8:07Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 8:08Speaker 1: God, you were huge. That does look like a guy
- 8:13Speaker 1: who comes out of a lab to kill the Hulk.
- 8:15Speaker 1: You know, like some evil genius. Like the Hulk is
- 8:18Speaker 1: working for the Avengers. Yeah.
- 8:21Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 8:23Speaker 1: So how do they make that conversation with you when
- 8:26Speaker 1: they say, Ronnie, you're too big?
- 8:27Speaker 2: Well, they're just talking to my nutritionist. You know, I
- 8:30Speaker 2: have a nutritionist that did all my diets and all
- 8:33Speaker 2: that kind of stuff for me. So they're probably just,
- 8:36Speaker 2: you know... told him real nicely. Yeah. Break it down
- 8:41Speaker 2: a notch.
- 8:42Speaker 1: I remember there's a photo of you when you were
- 8:44Speaker 1: still on the police force and you were also, I
- 8:47Speaker 1: don't know if you were Mr. Olympian when you were
- 8:48Speaker 1: on the police force, were you?
- 8:49Speaker 2: Yeah, three times, yeah.
- 8:50Speaker 1: And then you eventually left the force.
- 8:52Speaker 2: Yeah, uh-huh.
- 8:53Speaker 1: You were so big. You're sitting there with the uniform on.
- 8:56Speaker 1: I'm like, there is no way that's a regular uniform.
- 8:59Speaker 2: No, it's not. No, it's not a uniform.
- 9:01Speaker 1: Did you wear those shorts? That can't be real. Did
- 9:05Speaker 1: you arrest people with those shorts on?
- 9:07Speaker 2: No, I made those shorts myself. But we did wear shorts, though.
- 9:11Speaker 2: We did have shorts for the police department. I think
- 9:14Speaker 2: you see that picture right there. I got on shorts
- 9:17Speaker 2: in the briefing room, but they're not showing my legs
- 9:19Speaker 2: right there. Right there? Yeah, right there. I have on shorts.
- 9:25Speaker 2: That picture is actually bigger than that, but you just
- 9:29Speaker 2: can't see it.
- 9:29Speaker 1: Did that inspire other guys you worked with to start lifting, too?
- 9:33Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much.
- 9:35Speaker 1: I imagine.
- 9:37Speaker 2: We had a gym at the station. Oh, really? We
- 9:40Speaker 2: had about four or five stations. Every station has a gym.
- 9:44Speaker 2: We have a training center with a huge gym.
- 9:46Speaker 1: Really?
- 9:47Speaker 2: Yeah, I started working out there when I first hired on.
- 9:50Speaker 2: I worked out with me and the chief and some
- 9:52Speaker 2: other guys. We all worked out together there for a while.
- 9:55Speaker 1: And this is in the beginning before you were gigantic?
- 9:58Speaker 2: Yeah, before I got real big. big. You know, I
- 10:01Speaker 2: had to start small. Of course.
- 10:03Speaker 1: Everybody's a baby at one point in time.
- 10:05Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was 215 when I first started.
- 10:08Speaker 1: Now, when you first started, did you have this idea
- 10:11Speaker 1: that one day, was this a dream?
- 10:13Speaker 2: No, no, no. I did it because the guy gave
- 10:16Speaker 2: me a free membership to the gym. I never had
- 10:19Speaker 2: a dream. I just wanted a free membership because I
- 10:23Speaker 2: was poor back then. I couldn't, you know, afford to
- 10:25Speaker 2: pay for a gym membership because I just hired on there.
- 10:28Speaker 2: And coming from Domino's Pizza where, you know, I had
- 10:31Speaker 2: to eat pizza every day to survive because I didn't
- 10:35Speaker 2: make that much money. By the time I got to
- 10:36Speaker 2: the police department, I was still struggling and trying to
- 10:40Speaker 2: get back on my feet. And I couldn't afford membership still.
- 10:42Speaker 1: And this is when you were 24?
- 10:45Speaker 2: Yeah, I was 24.
- 10:46Speaker 1: So you were just a big guy.
- 10:49Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been big and muscular my whole entire life.
- 10:53Speaker 1: But regular big, not like Mr. Olympia big.
- 10:57Speaker 2: Well, I would say put a picture up there that
- 11:01Speaker 2: somebody took not too long ago. Because when I first
- 11:05Speaker 2: got into the sport of bodybuilding, I was doing security
- 11:10Speaker 2: at a Mr. Olympia event. And most of the people
- 11:13Speaker 2: in the audience thought that I should be on stage
- 11:16Speaker 2: back then. I didn't think so, you know, what they
- 11:19Speaker 2: thought that. I had 22, 23-inch arms back then. I
- 11:23Speaker 2: had those 22, 21, 22-inch arms in college.
- 11:29Speaker 1: How big were they when you were at your biggest?
- 11:32Speaker 2: 24. 24, that's the biggest they got.
- 11:35Speaker 1: That's like a waist.
- 11:38Speaker 2: Yeah, some girl.
- 11:39Speaker 1: Yeah, but like a runner.
- 11:40Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
- 11:43Speaker 1: Like Zack Bitter? I bet Zack Bitter got a 24-inch waist.
- 11:46Speaker 2: Actually, my waist was like 29 when I first started. Wow. Yeah.
- 11:50Speaker 1: I remember Holyfield, when he was the heavyweight champion of
- 11:52Speaker 1: the world, he had a 28-inch waist.
- 11:53Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.
- 11:55Speaker 1: That's a V right there.
- 11:56Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
- 11:58Speaker 1: Yeah, crazy. So you do this security for the Mr.
- 12:02Speaker 1: Olympia event.
- 12:04Speaker 2: 91, yeah.
- 12:04Speaker 1: Did that get like the bug in your head? Did
- 12:07Speaker 1: you start thinking?
- 12:08Speaker 2: No, no, no. I never started thinking that.
- 12:12Speaker 1: How did it happen?
- 12:14Speaker 2: I won the first one in 98.
- 12:17Speaker 1: So how do you enter it? What makes you want
- 12:19Speaker 1: to enter something like that?
- 12:20Speaker 2: Well, like I said, if you compete, I give you
- 12:24Speaker 2: a free membership to the gym. So I was just
- 12:27Speaker 2: competing for a free membership to the gym because I
- 12:29Speaker 2: worked full-time at the police department. I had that job.
- 12:32Speaker 2: I had a couple of security jobs on the side.
- 12:34Speaker 2: So I didn't really need money from bodybuilding. I had
- 12:38Speaker 2: benefits and everything. I didn't need money from bodybuilding.
- 12:42Speaker 1: So you were just doing it for a free membership?
- 12:43Speaker 2: I was just doing it for a free membership.
- 12:44Speaker 1: So you do it, and obviously people go, this guy's
- 12:47Speaker 1: got real potential.
- 12:50Speaker 2: I guess they were saying that to themselves. I never
- 12:51Speaker 2: heard anybody say that.
- 12:53Speaker 1: So what did you do? You just decided to keep going?
- 12:56Speaker 2: I just kept going for the free membership, yeah. I'm
- 12:59Speaker 2: not going to give it up.
- 13:01Speaker 1: So competing just was about free memberships at one point
- 13:04Speaker 1: in time. When did it become serious?
- 13:06Speaker 2: When I won my first Olympia in 98.
- 13:08Speaker 1: That's when it became, when you won your first Olympia?
- 13:11Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 13:12Speaker 1: Do you know how many bodybuilders right now want to
- 13:13Speaker 1: jump out of a building? Yeah, but you.
- 13:15Speaker 2: I'm not, they're going.
- 13:16Speaker 1: To go right to the top floor and fucking leap
- 13:19Speaker 1: out a window.
- 13:20Speaker 2: Yeah, but see, my dream was always to be a
- 13:22Speaker 2: professional football player. Oh. So I played football, junior high,
- 13:27Speaker 2: high school, college, and all that kind of stuff. And
- 13:31Speaker 2: when I got drafted, I was like, okay, I got
- 13:33Speaker 2: a degree so I can get a good job, you know.
- 13:35Speaker 2: with an accounting degree, and I graduated with honors and
- 13:38Speaker 2: all that kind of stuff. And I figured I'd just
- 13:40Speaker 2: be an accountant and make good money there. So I
- 13:44Speaker 2: never had no dreams or aspirations of being a bodybuilder.
- 13:46Speaker 1: But you never were an accountant?
- 13:48Speaker 2: No, I never made it.
- 13:49Speaker 1: You never did?
- 13:50Speaker 2: I never got a job.
- 13:51Speaker 1: So you just got a job in the police department instead?
- 13:54Speaker 2: Uh-huh. Yeah, exactly. I tried for about two years.
- 13:56Speaker 1: To get an accountant job?
- 13:57Speaker 2: Yeah. I tried real hard. I did a million interviews
- 14:03Speaker 2: to some of the biggest accounting firms in the world.
- 14:05Speaker 2: In the United States anyway. And nobody never hired me.
- 14:08Speaker 2: So I like two years later, okay, I'm done. This
- 14:13Speaker 2: ain't meant to be. Ain't nothing happening here, you know.
- 14:16Speaker 2: That's two years. And I always saw an ad for
- 14:22Speaker 2: police officers. And when I got the newspaper every weekend.
- 14:26Speaker 2: And it was always a big ad, you know. So
- 14:28Speaker 2: it stood out. So I'm like, hmm. They hiring and
- 14:33Speaker 2: you don't need experience. Because all the jobs I went on,
- 14:35Speaker 2: you know, the interviews I went on, they always want
- 14:39Speaker 2: you to have experience. I'm like, well, if you don't
- 14:41Speaker 2: hire me, you know, you have no experience. So I'm like, well,
- 14:44Speaker 2: just give up on this. You know, just go give
- 14:46Speaker 2: me a job where you don't have to have experience.
- 14:49Speaker 2: And like I said, the police officer was the thing
- 14:52Speaker 2: that stood out the most. And I'm like, that sounds
- 14:55Speaker 2: like a job where I can have a lot of fun,
- 14:56Speaker 2: you know.
- 14:57Speaker 1: Laughter I can't believe that you didn't really get serious
- 15:02Speaker 1: until after you won Mr. Olympia. That's hard to believe.
- 15:05Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Well, you got to understand, you know, I
- 15:10Speaker 2: never had any dreams of being a Mr. Olympia. I
- 15:14Speaker 2: never had any dreams of being a bodybuilder. I only
- 15:16Speaker 2: did it because the guy gave me the free membership
- 15:18Speaker 2: to the gym.
- 15:19Speaker 1: But once you started getting going— and you won Mr. Olympia,
- 15:24Speaker 1: and you realized, wow, I'm the best. I gotta throw
- 15:29Speaker 1: myself into this. Because the way you worked out, man,
- 15:32Speaker 1: I watched a video of you working out once, and
- 15:36Speaker 1: just the intensity. And thinking, this guy's doing this for
- 15:41Speaker 1: 12 weeks straight. The intensity that you had in the gym.
- 15:46Speaker 1: There's a certain level, no matter what the sport is,
- 15:49Speaker 1: Champions have a certain level of focus and dedication. And
- 15:53Speaker 1: I remember watching that video and going, that's what a
- 15:55Speaker 1: champion looks like. That's what a champion looks like.
- 15:57Speaker 2: Well, you got to also realize that I started working
- 16:01Speaker 2: out when I was 12. I kind of fell in
- 16:03Speaker 2: love with it when I was 13. It just kind
- 16:06Speaker 2: of became a hobby once I joined the powerlifting team.
- 16:10Speaker 2: So I enjoyed working out.
- 16:12Speaker 1: When you won the first Mr. Olympia, how old were
- 16:14Speaker 1: you then? 34.
- 16:15Speaker 2: 34.
- 16:16Speaker 1: Okay, so you had a solid eight years of lifting.
- 16:19Speaker 1: This is after you were on the force for a while.
- 16:22Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And I already had the base, too, being
- 16:27Speaker 2: in high school on the powerlifting team.
- 16:30Speaker 1: Now, powerlifting and lifting heavy is always a very controversial
- 16:35Speaker 1: thing amongst bodybuilders, right? Because some bodybuilders never lifted as
- 16:38Speaker 1: heavy as you did.
- 16:39Speaker 2: No, no.
- 16:40Speaker 1: What was your philosophy on that?
- 16:43Speaker 2: To each his own. I lifted heavy because that's what
- 16:45Speaker 2: I like to do. And that's what I was able
- 16:47Speaker 2: to do. Like I said, I just was kind of like,
- 16:50Speaker 2: in a way I was kind of gifted to be
- 16:53Speaker 2: strong like that. And it was something that I always was.
- 16:57Speaker 2: Even when I was in high school, I was benching
- 16:59Speaker 2: about 350. Wow. I was four. In high school. I
- 17:04Speaker 2: was squatting five, over five in high school.
- 17:07Speaker 1: So that's just always something that's been a part of you.
- 17:10Speaker 2: Yes, that's always something that's been a part of me.
- 17:12Speaker 1: Now, when bodybuilders work out, for the most part, it's
- 17:16Speaker 1: a lot of high reps with weight that's not in
- 17:18Speaker 1: the center. How would you do it?
- 17:20Speaker 2: I did it the same way. You know, I started
- 17:22Speaker 2: out at, you know, like 20 reps, you know, warming up,
- 17:26Speaker 2: and then 15 reps, then like 12, 10, something like
- 17:31Speaker 2: that on my last heavier set.
- 17:35Speaker 1: So you still were doing a fairly large number of repetitions.
- 17:38Speaker 2: Still doing them fairly. A large number of repetitions.
- 17:41Speaker 1: But much higher weight than a lot of folks were.
- 17:43Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, so when I went up, I squatted,
- 17:46Speaker 2: I went up to like 600. I would do like,
- 17:49Speaker 2: you know, 12 to 15 reps with that. And benching,
- 17:55Speaker 2: I would go up to like 400. 12 to 15
- 17:59Speaker 2: reps with that.
- 18:02Speaker 1: That's a tremendous amount of weight.
- 18:04Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds like it. Yeah. Until you
- 18:09Speaker 2: go up against some of these guys that are doing
- 18:11Speaker 2: crazy amounts of weights.
- 18:13Speaker 1: Now, you've also, since then, you've had a bunch of surgeries.
- 18:18Speaker 2: Thirteen so far.
- 18:20Speaker 1: And what started that off?
- 18:23Speaker 2: Well, I kind of hurt my back in high school
- 18:25Speaker 2: when I was powerlifting. And then I hurt it again
- 18:28Speaker 2: in college when I was playing football. Hurt my back
- 18:32Speaker 2: and neck. And I did chiropractic for a long time.
- 18:37Speaker 2: And then one day in the gym, I hurt it
- 18:40Speaker 2: like in 96. I kind of herniated the disc. And
- 18:46Speaker 2: I guess it just got worse over time.
- 18:51Speaker 1: So when you herniated that disc, what did you do
- 18:53Speaker 1: to treat it?
- 18:55Speaker 2: Nothing. Nothing. I went to chiropractor. Chiropractor. Yeah. I've been
- 18:59Speaker 2: doing chiropractic all my life.
- 19:01Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 19:01Speaker 2: So I didn't have surgery or nothing like that when
- 19:04Speaker 2: I herniated that disc. They offered it. I mean, I
- 19:08Speaker 2: have surgery, I told no one.
- 19:11Speaker 1: So the surgery they wanted to do was probably trim
- 19:13Speaker 1: the disc down because it was pushing against the nerve.
- 19:16Speaker 2: Yeah, anemonectomy, whatever they call it.
- 19:18Speaker 1: Yeah. And so 13 of those, huh?
- 19:22Speaker 2: Now 13 surgeries. Eight back, like two or three hip,
- 19:27Speaker 2: two or three neck.
- 19:30Speaker 1: And did this all like happen all at once where
- 19:33Speaker 1: it's like it felt like everything was falling apart? Or
- 19:36Speaker 1: was it like you get a surgery and then you're
- 19:38Speaker 1: better for a little while and then you hurt something else?
- 19:42Speaker 2: Yeah, something like that, yeah. Because the first one was back,
- 19:46Speaker 2: the second one was back, and then I think the
- 19:48Speaker 2: third one was neck. And then back, back, and hip, back, back, back, hip.
- 19:59Speaker 1: And what did you get done to your hips? Did
- 20:01Speaker 1: you get your hips replaced?
- 20:02Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, both of them. And, like, what was I?
- 20:05Speaker 2: What year was I at? Fourteen, I think. Yeah, fourteen.
- 20:09Speaker 1: And how are those now?
- 20:10Speaker 2: I just had a hip surgery in January. It's holding
- 20:16Speaker 2: up a little bit better now. One kind of went bad.
- 20:20Speaker 2: Socket's broke. And they had to replace both of them.
- 20:26Speaker 1: They say they only last a certain amount of years, right?
- 20:28Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every night, I had the titanium ones.
- 20:33Speaker 2: The titanium ones are the hardest ones because they rough
- 20:37Speaker 2: and they titanium and they kind of hard on the
- 20:39Speaker 2: body oh yeah and because of that you know and
- 20:42Speaker 2: me working out and all this kind of stuff and
- 20:45Speaker 2: it kind of just broke the sockets.
- 20:47Speaker 1: Well i follow you on instagram and uh i watch
- 20:50Speaker 1: your workouts and it's it's inspiring that after all this
- 20:53Speaker 1: you still love working out yes you can really tell
- 20:56Speaker 1: i mean you enjoy.
- 20:58Speaker 2: It still a hobby look forward to it every day.
- 21:02Speaker 1: Does it give you any pause at all knowing that
- 21:05Speaker 1: you've been through all these surgeries and Nah. No?
- 21:09Speaker 2: You know, when you're doing something that you truly love, enjoy,
- 21:11Speaker 2: and doing, that's what you look forward to doing all
- 21:14Speaker 2: the time. Regardless of, you know, how you feel. Of course,
- 21:19Speaker 2: I'm still in pain and all that kind of stuff.
- 21:21Speaker 1: Are you in pain all the time?
- 21:23Speaker 2: Yeah, but as long as I'm doing what I love doing,
- 21:26Speaker 2: I'm okay. If you take that away, then I probably
- 21:30Speaker 2: won't be okay.
- 21:32Speaker 1: So just even sitting here right now, you're in pain?
- 21:35Speaker 2: Just a minimum amount. It's nothing serious. If you're an athlete,
- 21:42Speaker 2: you're in pain all your life. I can remember in
- 21:46Speaker 2: high school and college, I was in pain some days.
- 21:51Speaker 1: All the time.
- 21:51Speaker 2: All the time, yeah. After a while, you kind of
- 21:54Speaker 2: get used to it and it doesn't really bother you.
- 21:57Speaker 1: That's why I'm imagining that you have a spectacular tolerance
- 22:02Speaker 1: for pain.
- 22:02Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a high tolerance. I remember when I
- 22:05Speaker 2: herniated my disc. I finished my workout. I was squatting 600.
- 22:13Speaker 2: I remember like it was yesterday. I was coming up
- 22:16Speaker 2: on rep number eight, and all of a sudden, pow.
- 22:20Speaker 2: It was a loud gunshot time. You know, I do
- 22:24Speaker 2: 600 for like 12, 13 reps all the time. This
- 22:28Speaker 2: time I took a couple weeks off, and I thought
- 22:30Speaker 2: I was still as strong as I was, you know,
- 22:33Speaker 2: when I took the time off, but I wasn't. I
- 22:35Speaker 2: lost a little strength. And that's why that disc snapped
- 22:38Speaker 2: on me like that. I heard it and I felt it. But,
- 22:44Speaker 2: you know, the athlete in you is like, you know,
- 22:49Speaker 2: let's go on. Let's finish this up. So I finished up.
- 22:54Speaker 2: You know, I did leg press and some other exercises.
- 22:59Speaker 2: Every time after I finished working out, doing legs, I
- 23:03Speaker 2: always had a... a real bad pain in my back.
- 23:08Speaker 2: Every single time. But it would always go away in
- 23:12Speaker 2: like an hour. This day it didn't. And I was,
- 23:17Speaker 2: I just went home, ate, put on my uniform, was
- 23:20Speaker 2: headed to work. And I'm like, wait a minute, my
- 23:24Speaker 2: back is still hurting. It's two hours, almost two hours later.
- 23:27Speaker 2: Something's wrong. I ain't going to work today. I'm going
- 23:31Speaker 2: to the emergency room.
- 23:32Speaker 1: Oh, wow. It's that bad?
- 23:33Speaker 2: Yeah, it was that bad. Yeah.
- 23:36Speaker 1: And so he went to the emergency room. They're probably like,
- 23:39Speaker 1: what the fuck are you doing to the size of
- 23:41Speaker 1: this guy?
- 23:44Speaker 2: Yeah, like, we don't see nothing wrong with your back.
- 23:48Speaker 1: They probably couldn't get to it.
- 23:49Speaker 2: Well, they did x-ray, and they're like, we don't see anything.
- 23:55Speaker 2: So that's when I had an MRI a couple days
- 23:57Speaker 2: later and found out it was herniated. So I stayed
- 24:00Speaker 2: at home for a couple weeks and sat on the
- 24:05Speaker 2: couch and didn't do anything. And two weeks later, I
- 24:07Speaker 2: went back to the gym. First exercise was squats. Oh,
- 24:10Speaker 2: my God.
- 24:12Speaker 1: Did it hurt again?
- 24:13Speaker 2: No, no, no. I was getting ready for a show.
- 24:16Speaker 1: So it was okay?
- 24:17Speaker 2: Yeah, it was okay.
- 24:18Speaker 1: Two weeks after you herniated your disc, you're doing squats again?
- 24:21Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 24:22Speaker 1: With how much weight?
- 24:23Speaker 2: I only did 300.
- 24:25Speaker 1: Oh, only 300. Yeah.
- 24:27Speaker 2: That's the most I could do for 10 reps, you know?
- 24:29Speaker 1: Wow.
- 24:29Speaker 2: 10 to 12 reps, so I'm like, okay, this is
- 24:32Speaker 2: good enough, you know.
- 24:33Speaker 1: But you knew that something was wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 24:35Speaker 2: I couldn't do 600 no more, you know, so.
- 24:38Speaker 1: So after that, how long before you got your first surgery?
- 24:41Speaker 2: 10 years later. 10 years?
- 24:44Speaker 1: 10 years later. So it was just intolerable pain, like
- 24:47Speaker 1: what was going on?
- 24:49Speaker 2: I couldn't walk, like, no more than, like, 25 feet
- 24:53Speaker 2: without my leg being on fire. Oh, wow. My feet
- 24:57Speaker 2: being on fire. And a lot of. A whole lot
- 25:01Speaker 2: of pain.
- 25:02Speaker 1: Wow.
- 25:03Speaker 2: So I knew it's time to get something serious done
- 25:09Speaker 2: here now.
- 25:10Speaker 1: So what was the first? Did they fuse it?
- 25:13Speaker 2: Lemonectomy. They shaved it off.
- 25:15Speaker 1: Okay. So that was the first one. Yeah.
- 25:18Speaker 2: Yeah. And I was good for a while. You know,
- 25:20Speaker 2: I went back to squatting and everything.
- 25:23Speaker 1: While you're still Mr. Olympia?
- 25:25Speaker 2: No, you know, I retired. I retired in 07. So
- 25:27Speaker 2: I had my first surgery in 07.
- 25:30Speaker 1: Okay, so this is after you retired. Yeah. You're not
- 25:33Speaker 1: doing too bad, just in a little bit of pain.
- 25:36Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 25:36Speaker 1: So how does it all go downhill from there?
- 25:42Speaker 2: I think maybe the second, about a year or so later,
- 25:47Speaker 2: I started having problems again, being in pain again.
- 25:50Speaker 1: Same area?
- 25:51Speaker 2: Same area.
- 25:53Speaker 1: Were you squatting heavy still?
- 25:55Speaker 2: Yeah. 600 pounds still, that kind of stuff? No, because
- 26:00Speaker 2: I wasn't competing, so I was probably doing about 400
- 26:02Speaker 2: or 500, somewhere in there. But, you know, it's still
- 26:06Speaker 2: kind of heavy. Yeah. And I didn't have the weight
- 26:10Speaker 2: I used to have either. You know, I wasn't 300
- 26:12Speaker 2: and some pounds or more. So it was a little
- 26:15Speaker 2: bit more difficult. So it just kind of went bad
- 26:19Speaker 2: on me again, and I had to have another surgery.
- 26:22Speaker 1: Same kind of surgery? They trim more off of it?
- 26:28Speaker 2: Actually... They did what you call like, I forgot actually
- 26:34Speaker 2: what they did. It's been so long ago. That was
- 26:36Speaker 2: back in like 2008, 2009, somewhere in there. They kind
- 26:41Speaker 2: of like did a refresher. I think they did trim
- 26:44Speaker 2: a little bit more off it, though. But, you know,
- 26:49Speaker 2: it was all pretty much kind of like down here
- 26:52Speaker 2: from there.
- 26:53Speaker 1: And so after that injury and that surgery, then how
- 26:57Speaker 1: do you wind up with the other 11 surgeries?
- 27:00Speaker 2: Well, I think like the first time you herniate a disc,
- 27:07Speaker 2: it's like you stack a bunch of cans on top
- 27:09Speaker 2: of each other and you snap one out. Well, after
- 27:14Speaker 2: a while, the other ones are going to start falling
- 27:16Speaker 2: out of place too. And that's kind of what happened.
- 27:19Speaker 2: The other discs started just herniating on their own. Of course,
- 27:22Speaker 2: I was working out too.
- 27:23Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 27:25Speaker 2: And I still have one now.
- 27:28Speaker 1: You got a herniated disc now?
- 27:29Speaker 2: Mm-hmm, yeah.
- 27:31Speaker 1: How many discs have you had operated on?
- 27:33Speaker 2: All of them.
- 27:34Speaker 1: All of them, every single disc?
- 27:36Speaker 2: Every single one.
- 27:36Speaker 1: So this one that you have a herniated disc on now,
- 27:40Speaker 1: have you already had it operated on before?
- 27:42Speaker 2: No, this will be the first time. This is the
- 27:43Speaker 2: last one.
- 27:44Speaker 1: The last one.
- 27:45Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow.
- 27:46Speaker 1: And so what do they do with your back? They
- 27:48Speaker 1: basically fuse everything together now?
- 27:49Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 27:50Speaker 1: So the whole spine is fused?
- 27:51Speaker 2: Yep. Wow. Neck and back.
- 27:55Speaker 1: How much mobility do you have?
- 27:57Speaker 2: I mean, I can still, you know, bend over and
- 28:01Speaker 2: tie my shoe and do all that kind of stuff.
- 28:03Speaker 1: But your back is one solid piece. Yeah. So there's no, like,
- 28:08Speaker 1: articulation of your discs in your spine, your spinal column.
- 28:13Speaker 2: No.
- 28:13Speaker 1: Nothing. Wow.
- 28:14Speaker 2: Nothing like that.
- 28:15Speaker 1: What does that feel like?
- 28:18Speaker 2: I mean, I guess it just feels kind of normal
- 28:20Speaker 2: after a while. You know, you get used to it.
- 28:24Speaker 2: It happens over time, so it's like a gradual thing.
- 28:27Speaker 2: So it's not all of a sudden. So it's just
- 28:31Speaker 2: like one day, you know, I used to be able
- 28:35Speaker 2: to just bend over and do all these stretches, these
- 28:37Speaker 2: crazy stretches. Well, I can't do all that no more.
- 28:41Speaker 2: I can just bend over a little bit, you know,
- 28:44Speaker 2: and do a minor stretch.
- 28:46Speaker 1: Now, are the doctors confident that this is the last one?
- 28:53Speaker 1: I mean, you've got them all fused.
- 28:55Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always something, though. When you're an athlete and
- 29:00Speaker 2: you're always working out and always in the gym, it's
- 29:02Speaker 2: going to always be something.
- 29:03Speaker 1: You just accept that.
- 29:04Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. You're used to it after a while.
- 29:08Speaker 1: For a lot of people, that's a hard thing to accept,
- 29:10Speaker 1: this idea that you're just going to keep smashing your body,
- 29:13Speaker 1: but that's just you.
- 29:15Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I got used to it now. It's been
- 29:20Speaker 2: like 07, 13 years now. Wow.
- 29:24Speaker 1: Now, are you in this wheelchair all the time?
- 29:28Speaker 2: No, no, I don't have crutches. It's just that I
- 29:31Speaker 2: left them at home. I can walk uh maybe about
- 29:37Speaker 2: from here to that wall unassisted but you know after
- 29:42Speaker 2: after so so after being up for so long my
- 29:46Speaker 2: legs get.
- 29:47Speaker 1: Real weak and is it because of your back yeah
- 29:49Speaker 1: because my back is it something that's like cutting off
- 29:52Speaker 1: the nerves.
- 29:53Speaker 2: Or something yeah exactly cutting off the.
- 29:56Speaker 1: Nerves yeah and is there anything they can do about that.
- 30:01Speaker 2: I mean, you know, maybe one day they'll come out
- 30:04Speaker 2: with something that'll help get it stronger. I was thinking
- 30:07Speaker 2: about trying the stem cell thing. They said that should
- 30:11Speaker 2: help a lot, too, right there.
- 30:13Speaker 1: Well, there's a bunch of places that they do it
- 30:16Speaker 1: where they could do it with a lot stronger stem
- 30:18Speaker 1: cells than they could do in America.
- 30:20Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 30:20Speaker 1: A place in Columbia does it, and there's a place
- 30:23Speaker 1: in Panama that I actually sent my mom.
- 30:25Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 30:25Speaker 1: My mom, they wanted to give her a knee replacement.
- 30:29Speaker 1: And doctors just didn't want to operate right away. And
- 30:32Speaker 1: I was like, let me see if we can send
- 30:36Speaker 1: you down to Panama. Let me see if Dr. Reardon,
- 30:38Speaker 1: he'd been in here before with Mel Gibson, and he
- 30:41Speaker 1: was talking about Mel Gibson's dad. And Mel Gibson's dad
- 30:44Speaker 1: was in real bad shape when he was 92. And
- 30:46Speaker 1: then now he's 100, and he's fine. I mean, he's
- 30:50Speaker 1: gone back there a bunch of times, keeps going back
- 30:52Speaker 1: for stem cells. Long story short, my mom was scheduled
- 30:56Speaker 1: to get a knee replacement. I sent her down to Panama,
- 30:59Speaker 1: and six months later it started to feel good. Eight
- 31:01Speaker 1: months later, no pain at all.
- 31:03Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 31:04Speaker 1: It really did a great, and then I sent her
- 31:05Speaker 1: down a second time. It's pretty amazing stuff what they
- 31:08Speaker 1: can do.
- 31:09Speaker 2: Yeah. So that's my thing to do next.
- 31:12Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 31:12Speaker 2: And people I talk to, they think it will do
- 31:17Speaker 2: me a lot of good.
- 31:18Speaker 1: So is it there's scar tissue around the nerves that's
- 31:22Speaker 1: pushing into the nerves now? Because if all the discs
- 31:24Speaker 1: are gone and everything's fused, What's irritating the nerves?
- 31:28Speaker 2: Scar tissue, all that hardware. I got 14 screws, two cages.
- 31:38Speaker 2: I got two rods about this long in there, too.
- 31:43Speaker 2: So it's a lot of hardware, a lot of cages.
- 31:47Speaker 1: What do the cages look like? So it's a cage
- 31:51Speaker 1: around your spine?
- 31:52Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 31:54Speaker 1: And what's the purpose of that?
- 31:56Speaker 2: I hold the disc together, keep them in place. After
- 32:00Speaker 2: a while, they don't want them to come loose, so
- 32:03Speaker 2: I put cages around them, keep them together.
- 32:06Speaker 1: So you're like RoboCop in there.
- 32:07Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much. So I got that in my neck
- 32:11Speaker 2: and back.
- 32:12Speaker 1: You have a cage in your neck?
- 32:13Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 32:14Speaker 1: You got an x-ray of any of this shit?
- 32:16Speaker 2: Yeah, I sure do.
- 32:17Speaker 1: Where is it at? Is it online?
- 32:18Speaker 2: Yeah. I posted a couple times online, yeah.
- 32:21Speaker 1: On your Instagram page?
- 32:22Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 32:23Speaker 1: See if you can find any of that, Jamie. That's crazy.
- 32:26Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 32:26Speaker 1: You're just laughing about it. Like, you're fine with it.
- 32:29Speaker 2: Well, you get used to it after a while.
- 32:30Speaker 1: But is it also that you look at, like, you're
- 32:33Speaker 1: a legitimate legend. And so do you look at it like, hey,
- 32:37Speaker 1: this is the price that I paid to be a legend?
- 32:41Speaker 2: I look at it like, hey, I'm still alive and
- 32:44Speaker 2: I can still work out every day. I'm still normal.
- 32:48Speaker 2: So I'm good. Wow.
- 32:50Speaker 1: That's a great, healthy attitude, man. You're obviously still huge.
- 32:54Speaker 1: You're still very strong.
- 32:56Speaker 2: Well, I'm not as strong as I used to be.
- 32:58Speaker 2: I'm not as big as I used to be either.
- 32:59Speaker 2: I'm only like 250 now, you know.
- 33:01Speaker 1: But when you say that, you're judging it on you
- 33:04Speaker 1: being a multiple-time Mr. Olympia. That's not a regular person saying,
- 33:10Speaker 1: I'm not as big as I used to be. You
- 33:11Speaker 1: can't stay that big. It's not possible.
- 33:13Speaker 2: No, no, no way. No way.
- 33:14Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 33:16Speaker 2: I can't eat like that no more.
- 33:18Speaker 1: I bet it's nice to just be able to eat
- 33:20Speaker 1: when you want.
- 33:20Speaker 2: I don't eat half the food I used to eat.
- 33:22Speaker 1: I can only imagine.
- 33:23Speaker 2: I used to eat six. I don't eat three now.
- 33:27Speaker 1: That's a normal person.
- 33:28Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 33:30Speaker 1: You got anything, Jamie?
- 33:31Speaker 2: That's going to be hard to find.
- 33:33Speaker 1: There it is. Oh, my God. That's crazy. That's what
- 33:37Speaker 1: a cage looks like?
- 33:38Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
- 33:39Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Wow, all that stuff's heavy duty. The size
- 33:45Speaker 1: of those screws in that picture on the left.
- 33:47Speaker 2: Yeah, they're about three inches long, two to three inches long. Yeah,
- 33:54Speaker 2: and they got screws on the end of them, bolts
- 33:58Speaker 2: on the end of them. You can see on the
- 33:59Speaker 2: end right here, on that one, on the left, those
- 34:03Speaker 2: are bolts right there. And all the big screws in
- 34:07Speaker 2: between there too. Wow.
- 34:09Speaker 1: Wow.
- 34:10Speaker 2: Yeah, that goes all the way up. God.
- 34:13Speaker 1: All the way up your whole back.
- 34:14Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 34:15Speaker 1: To my neck.
- 34:16Speaker 2: To my neck. My neck is the same way. Wow. Three, four, five,
- 34:21Speaker 2: and six.
- 34:23Speaker 1: And so in doing this, they've saved your back, but
- 34:28Speaker 1: all the hardware is what's fucking with your nerves.
- 34:30Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. All the hardware. Yeah. It's pinching on the nerves,
- 34:34Speaker 2: causing pain and stuff.
- 34:36Speaker 1: And what does the doctor say about that stuff?
- 34:38Speaker 2: There ain't nothing they can do about that. It's going
- 34:41Speaker 2: to be like that. They say they can take your
- 34:43Speaker 2: screws out maybe one day, but it's a major surgery
- 34:46Speaker 2: to do that. Yeah. They got to cut me from
- 34:50Speaker 2: all the way top to bottom and take all those out.
- 34:54Speaker 2: There's 14 of them. That started from the top all
- 34:56Speaker 2: the way down to the bottom.
- 34:58Speaker 1: Would that be possible that if they did that, it
- 35:00Speaker 1: would alleviate some of the pinching on your nerves?
- 35:02Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sure.
- 35:03Speaker 1: Have you thought about it?
- 35:04Speaker 2: Yeah. I just went to the doctor and talked to
- 35:06Speaker 2: him about it last week.
- 35:08Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, what does he say?
- 35:08Speaker 2: He say, I got another herniated disc.
- 35:10Speaker 1: Oh, boy.
- 35:12Speaker 2: And they need to fix that before they think about
- 35:14Speaker 2: taking it off.
- 35:14Speaker 1: And where's the one that's herniated, the new one that's herniated?
- 35:18Speaker 2: It's up top. See, all the lower ones are already fused.
- 35:20Speaker 2: Just the one on the top is the one that's
- 35:23Speaker 2: herniated now.
- 35:24Speaker 1: Now, is it bulging or is it herniated?
- 35:29Speaker 2: He said herniated, so.
- 35:31Speaker 1: Pushing out. I had a bulging disc that I had
- 35:34Speaker 1: fixed with something called Regenikine. Have you ever heard of Regenikine?
- 35:37Speaker 2: No.
- 35:38Speaker 1: They invented it down in Germany, and a lot of
- 35:42Speaker 1: athletes like Kobe Bryant and Peyton Manning, they all went
- 35:46Speaker 1: to Germany. It's like this blood-spinning procedure.
- 35:49Speaker 2: Have you heard of it? Yeah, I've heard of it.
- 35:50Speaker 1: They do it in America now. They have an office
- 35:53Speaker 1: in Dallas. They have an office in Santa Monica. And
- 35:56Speaker 1: I went to the one in Santa Monica. And they
- 35:59Speaker 1: take your blood out. They spin it, and they apply
- 36:02Speaker 1: some medication to it. And then it becomes this yellow serum.
- 36:06Speaker 1: And then they inject the yellow serum directly into the
- 36:09Speaker 1: area where the disc is. And it alleviates all the
- 36:12Speaker 1: inflammation and the disc slowly goes back into place. For me,
- 36:16Speaker 1: within two weeks, I had extreme relief. Within two weeks.
- 36:21Speaker 1: And then now there's no bulging disc at all. I
- 36:24Speaker 1: went back after I did the full round of treatments,
- 36:27Speaker 1: which I think was, if I remember correctly, five or
- 36:30Speaker 1: six different treatments. I went back. I got a new
- 36:33Speaker 1: MRI and there's no bulge anymore.
- 36:34Speaker 2: Yeah, that's. Sort of like what they do when they
- 36:37Speaker 2: do a PRP.
- 36:38Speaker 1: Yes, it is like PRP. It's just more advanced. It's
- 36:41Speaker 1: just another level of PRP.
- 36:42Speaker 2: They do the injection thing.
- 36:43Speaker 1: Did you do the PRP?
- 36:45Speaker 2: Yeah, I did all that.
- 36:45Speaker 1: Did that help your neck at all?
- 36:47Speaker 2: No, it didn't do anything for me. It did my
- 36:50Speaker 2: neck and back, actually.
- 36:52Speaker 1: Well, I would wonder what would help you, like stem
- 36:55Speaker 1: cells and getting.
- 36:57Speaker 2: Those screws out. That's pretty much the only thing that's
- 37:01Speaker 2: going to help me, I think.
- 37:02Speaker 1: So all this stuff with your legs, though, that wasn't
- 37:05Speaker 1: the case before the screws and before all the.
- 37:07Speaker 2: No, no, no.
- 37:08Speaker 1: Yeah, I would imagine that's what's going on, man. It's
- 37:11Speaker 1: all fused up, right? It doesn't have to be screwed in, right?
- 37:14Speaker 2: No, no. That's why I went to the doctor because
- 37:17Speaker 2: they said after about a couple years, everything would be.
- 37:21Speaker 1: Fused up?
- 37:21Speaker 2: Yeah, fused up and I can take the screws out.
- 37:23Speaker 1: So does the doctor want to operate on your neck
- 37:25Speaker 1: as well?
- 37:26Speaker 2: No, he just fixed my neck a year ago.
- 37:28Speaker 1: But the new bulge.
- 37:29Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the new bulge in my back now.
- 37:32Speaker 1: Oh, it's in your back.
- 37:32Speaker 2: Yeah, this is my back, yeah.
- 37:34Speaker 1: Oh.
- 37:35Speaker 2: That's why, that was the result of a cast can
- 37:39Speaker 2: I had done last week.
- 37:42Speaker 1: Damn, dude, you're at a hospital like every couple weeks or?
- 37:48Speaker 2: No, it seems like it though, but I was just
- 37:51Speaker 2: wanting to get the screws out because I'm, you know,
- 37:54Speaker 2: it's been a long time and. It's still in pain
- 37:57Speaker 2: and like I said, it's still pinching me and still got,
- 37:59Speaker 2: you know, the nerves being pinched. And I think, you know,
- 38:03Speaker 2: my legs are numb too. My foot's totally numb. Yeah.
- 38:08Speaker 2: And I was thinking maybe if I took the screws out,
- 38:11Speaker 2: I'd get some of this numbness to go away. Yeah.
- 38:14Speaker 2: And I'd get some strength back also.
- 38:17Speaker 1: Do you think you're going to wind up doing that?
- 38:19Speaker 2: If possible, yeah. One day I would like to.
- 38:21Speaker 1: Man, I'm hoping someone hears this that's a specialist that
- 38:24Speaker 1: has a solution for you. How many different doctors have
- 38:26Speaker 1: you seen?
- 38:28Speaker 2: Right now, just one.
- 38:31Speaker 1: Just the one doctor?
- 38:32Speaker 2: Mm-hmm, just the one.
- 38:34Speaker 1: Is that a local guy near you?
- 38:36Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, local guy in Fort Worth, Texas. Also, my
- 38:43Speaker 2: first surgery, no, no, no, probably like my fourth or
- 38:47Speaker 2: fifth one, They operated on me for about 13 hours.
- 38:54Speaker 2: They cut me in the front, turned me over on
- 38:57Speaker 2: the side, cut me on the side, and then they
- 39:00Speaker 2: put me on my back and cut me on my back. Jesus.
- 39:04Speaker 2: And that gave me a lot of problems. That started
- 39:08Speaker 2: the immobility thing right there.
- 39:11Speaker 1: And what was this surgery?
- 39:12Speaker 2: I was good until I did that surgery.
- 39:14Speaker 1: What kind of surgery was that? It was another fusion?
- 39:17Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 39:17Speaker 1: Why did they have to cut you in so many places?
- 39:19Speaker 2: Because they had to fuse so many discs, put in
- 39:24Speaker 2: so many screws. And that was intense. in 15, I think.
- 39:31Speaker 1: Wow.
- 39:32Speaker 2: In 16, December 15. I remember getting off the plane
- 39:35Speaker 2: in Russia. In Russia? Yeah.
- 39:38Speaker 1: You got that done in Russia?
- 39:39Speaker 2: No, no. I remember getting off the plane in Russia
- 39:41Speaker 2: and I'm like, man, my back is hurting. And I
- 39:45Speaker 2: was walking fine to the hotel. The next day, my
- 39:51Speaker 2: mobility got worse. And the day after, I was on crushes.
- 39:57Speaker 2: And I've been on them ever since.
- 40:00Speaker 1: Just so out of nowhere.
- 40:01Speaker 2: Out of nowhere, yeah.
- 40:02Speaker 1: And how far out from the surgery was this?
- 40:05Speaker 2: The surgery was like the next month.
- 40:08Speaker 1: Oh, so this was before the surgery?
- 40:10Speaker 2: Yeah, this was before, yeah.
- 40:12Speaker 1: Okay, so then they cut you open in the front,
- 40:14Speaker 1: the side, the back, and then everything's downhill from there.
- 40:17Speaker 2: Yeah, everything went downhill from there. Man.
- 40:20Speaker 1: I'm really hoping that somebody listens to this and some
- 40:23Speaker 1: doctor hears about this. Well, one thing is you're in
- 40:25Speaker 1: Fort Worth.
- 40:26Speaker 2: Dr.
- 40:26Speaker 1: Reardon, his office is in Dallas. That's pretty close to you.
- 40:29Speaker 2: Yeah, that's real close to me.
- 40:30Speaker 1: I'd love to connect you to him and see if
- 40:32Speaker 1: there's anything that he could do.
- 40:34Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be nice. Because I'm always looking to
- 40:38Speaker 2: get better because these crutches are getting... On my nerves.
- 40:43Speaker 1: I can only imagine.
- 40:44Speaker 2: After five years now.
- 40:46Speaker 1: And a guy who is the level of athlete that
- 40:48Speaker 1: you were when you were in your prime. And how
- 40:51Speaker 1: old are you now?
- 40:52Speaker 2: I just turned 56 two weeks ago.
- 40:55Speaker 1: But you look great.
- 40:57Speaker 2: Well, I'm still working out every day and eating good.
- 41:02Speaker 1: Yeah, it would be nice if they could do something
- 41:05Speaker 1: to turn this back around.
- 41:07Speaker 2: I like to get my strength back.
- 41:08Speaker 1: Yeah, I guarantee Dr. Reardon could probably help.
- 41:12Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 41:12Speaker 1: I don't want to guarantee, but he's a real expert
- 41:15Speaker 1: in stem cells and the benefits of stem cells.
- 41:19Speaker 2: Well, maybe I'll give him a call one day.
- 41:21Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll connect you to him for sure. So what's
- 41:24Speaker 1: a normal day like for you these days?
- 41:26Speaker 2: Well, I've got four kids at home, five, six, eight, nine.
- 41:34Speaker 1: So that keeps you busy.
- 41:36Speaker 2: That keeps me extremely busy. I'm taking them to Burger
- 41:42Speaker 2: King every day. And I'm just, you know, riding around
- 41:48Speaker 2: with them, doing what I do, you know. If I, like,
- 41:52Speaker 2: go to the car wash and wash the car, they're
- 41:54Speaker 2: with me. I go to a friend's house with them,
- 41:57Speaker 2: you know. They're with me.
- 42:00Speaker 1: And most of the time you're just walking on these crutches?
- 42:02Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm always on the crutches. So, yeah, I hang
- 42:08Speaker 2: out with them all day now. That's my day. Before,
- 42:13Speaker 2: you know, I was going on the road every other
- 42:15Speaker 2: weekend or every two weeks.
- 42:17Speaker 1: Seminars and things like that.
- 42:19Speaker 2: Seminars, you know, all that kind of stuff, appearances. But
- 42:22Speaker 2: since the virus, I've been hanging with them. They've become
- 42:27Speaker 2: my best friend.
- 42:28Speaker 1: Are you enjoying that?
- 42:29Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 42:30Speaker 1: There's something that a lot of people found some enjoyment
- 42:33Speaker 1: from this being locked at home.
- 42:35Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of fun, yeah. Yeah.
- 42:37Speaker 1: Because it forces you to take time off.
- 42:39Speaker 2: Yeah, I got used to it now. I got lazy.
- 42:43Speaker 2: Now I just want to stay home now.
- 42:45Speaker 1: Well, there's something nice about being home a lot. I mean,
- 42:48Speaker 1: I've only been on the road a couple times since
- 42:50Speaker 1: this lockdown.
- 42:51Speaker 2: There's a lot of niceness about being home.
- 42:54Speaker 1: It's nice, yeah. And the big thing for me that
- 42:56Speaker 1: I found is health. Like, you feel better because you're
- 42:59Speaker 1: not traveling all the time.
- 43:01Speaker 2: Exactly. Well, you know, I don't get sick, so.
- 43:04Speaker 1: You don't get sick ever?
- 43:06Speaker 2: No, no, never.
- 43:07Speaker 1: Really?
- 43:08Speaker 2: No. Wow. I can remember like two or three days
- 43:11Speaker 2: in my life I've been sick.
- 43:12Speaker 1: The way you said it was funny. I don't get sick.
- 43:15Speaker 1: Like you're not talking about I don't usually get sick.
- 43:17Speaker 1: Like I don't get sick.
- 43:18Speaker 2: No, I don't really get sick. Wow. I don't get
- 43:21Speaker 2: colds and flus and all that kind of stuff. I've
- 43:24Speaker 2: had like a stomach flu like two or three times
- 43:27Speaker 2: in my life. Wow. That's about it.
- 43:30Speaker 1: But traveling on the road does wear you out though, right?
- 43:33Speaker 1: Like get a little run down.
- 43:35Speaker 2: You get used to it. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, used to.
- 43:38Speaker 1: Did you have any strategies to, like, beat jet lag
- 43:40Speaker 1: or anything like that?
- 43:41Speaker 2: I didn't get jet lag after a while.
- 43:44Speaker 1: You don't get colds. You didn't get jet lag.
- 43:46Speaker 2: Yeah, when I first started traveling, I used to get it.
- 43:48Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 43:49Speaker 2: But after a while, you don't get it anymore.
- 43:51Speaker 1: Do you just get used to it?
- 43:52Speaker 2: You just get used to it.
- 43:54Speaker 1: So when you would land somewhere, would you just immediately
- 43:56Speaker 1: work out?
- 43:56Speaker 2: Go to the gym.
- 43:57Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the move, right?
- 43:57Speaker 2: I'd get off the plane and go to the gym.
- 43:59Speaker 1: That does reset you.
- 44:00Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 44:00Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my favorite thing to do. I love it.
- 44:02Speaker 1: When I land in a hotel room, I have it
- 44:04Speaker 1: set up like, you know, after you eat, you brush
- 44:07Speaker 1: your teeth. When I land, I go to the gym.
- 44:10Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 44:10Speaker 1: That's what I do.
- 44:10Speaker 2: That's what I do.
- 44:11Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 44:12Speaker 1: That is one way.
- 44:13Speaker 2: It sucks.
- 44:14Speaker 1: Like, you're tired, you're worn out from travel, but if
- 44:16Speaker 1: you can force yourself, you feel a lot better.
- 44:18Speaker 2: Well, I've made it to where I can sleep on
- 44:20Speaker 2: the airplane, and I sleep pretty good. So by the
- 44:25Speaker 2: time I get to where I'm going, you know, I'm
- 44:27Speaker 2: all rested up. I'm good to go.
- 44:29Speaker 1: Now, when you were competing, were you, I mean, you're
- 44:33Speaker 1: eating all these meals a day. Were you drinking a
- 44:36Speaker 1: shitload of water, too? Like, how much water are you drinking?
- 44:39Speaker 2: Like a shitload of water. Like you said, I was drinking, like,
- 44:42Speaker 2: two or three gallons a day.
- 44:44Speaker 1: Two or three gallons a day.
- 44:45Speaker 2: The gym I worked at, there's no A.C., and it's 150.
- 44:49Speaker 2: 510 sometimes.
- 44:51Speaker 1: Oh, it's in Fort Worth?
- 44:52Speaker 2: It's in Arlington, which is right next to Fort Worth.
- 44:55Speaker 1: That's hot as fuck.
- 44:56Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And then I worked for the police department.
- 44:59Speaker 2: I had this vest on all the time, so I
- 45:01Speaker 2: was drenched every day after work. So I'm always drinking
- 45:05Speaker 2: water there. So you have to drink a lot of water.
- 45:10Speaker 2: You have to.
- 45:11Speaker 1: Now, as far as supplements and nutrition and vitamins and
- 45:14Speaker 1: things along those lines, you were talking about what you ate,
- 45:16Speaker 1: but what other stuff would you take?
- 45:20Speaker 2: I had a nutritionist, so he did my whole plan.
- 45:23Speaker 2: And some of the stuff I don't even remember that
- 45:27Speaker 2: he had me doing. But it was quite a bit
- 45:31Speaker 2: of stuff.
- 45:31Speaker 1: Was it based on blood work? Do your blood work
- 45:33Speaker 1: and then?
- 45:34Speaker 2: Yeah, I did blood work probably like three times a year.
- 45:38Speaker 2: And he made sure I got plenty of vitamins and
- 45:43Speaker 2: plenty of minerals and other things. Because I didn't. I
- 45:48Speaker 2: didn't like vegetables, so you would kind of supplement vitamins
- 45:53Speaker 2: and stuff for that.
- 45:55Speaker 1: You didn't eat vegetables at all?
- 45:56Speaker 2: At all.
- 45:57Speaker 1: Really?
- 45:57Speaker 2: No.
- 45:58Speaker 1: Some people think you don't need them.
- 46:00Speaker 2: That was me.
- 46:02Speaker 1: There's a bunch of people that are on what's called
- 46:04Speaker 1: a carnivore diet. Have you heard that?
- 46:06Speaker 2: Yeah, that's me.
- 46:08Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a bunch of people that don't eat vegetables.
- 46:11Speaker 1: They basically mostly eat meat.
- 46:13Speaker 2: Yeah, I would eat baked potatoes. And rice, that was
- 46:22Speaker 2: about it.
- 46:22Speaker 1: But why is it mostly chicken? Why do bodybuilders mostly
- 46:25Speaker 1: eat chicken? Because it's so lean?
- 46:27Speaker 2: Lean, yeah. Lean. Chicken breast, you know, it's the leanest
- 46:31Speaker 2: you can get pretty much. I also had steak at
- 46:34Speaker 2: least once a day also. Lean steak, you know, like
- 46:37Speaker 2: filet mignon. So I'd eat chicken three times a day,
- 46:43Speaker 2: turkey also, and steak.
- 46:46Speaker 1: Now when the competition was over and you won, Did
- 46:49Speaker 1: you pig out? Did you go crazy?
- 46:50Speaker 2: I went crazy. Every single time. I started out at
- 46:54Speaker 2: Pizza Hut. I'd eat that first. I had that in
- 46:58Speaker 2: the room when I got back. As soon as Pizza
- 47:02Speaker 2: Hut was over, I went to McDonald's. I pig out there.
- 47:06Speaker 2: And when we got left there, I went straight to
- 47:08Speaker 2: the strip club.
- 47:12Speaker 1: And pig out there?
- 47:12Speaker 2: And pig out there.
- 47:17Speaker 1: Now, how long would you do this before you get
- 47:19Speaker 1: back to work?
- 47:20Speaker 2: Oh, just that night.
- 47:21Speaker 1: Just one night?
- 47:22Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 47:23Speaker 1: And then back to the gym on Monday?
- 47:25Speaker 2: No, no, no. I took three months off after that.
- 47:26Speaker 1: Oh, three months.
- 47:27Speaker 2: Really?
- 47:28Speaker 1: Three months with no lifting at all?
- 47:30Speaker 2: No lifting, no nothing. I ate what I wanted to
- 47:32Speaker 2: eat and didn't work out, didn't do cardio, nothing.
- 47:37Speaker 1: Why did you take that much time off?
- 47:39Speaker 2: Because I felt I needed it. Really? Yeah. I was
- 47:43Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, recharging the batteries. Because I
- 47:47Speaker 2: knew once I started back, there wasn't going to be
- 47:51Speaker 2: no non-lifting kind of stuff.
- 47:54Speaker 1: Is it weird to make that transition from this crazy
- 47:57Speaker 1: Spartan life of 12 weeks of just hardcore training to boom,
- 48:04Speaker 1: shut it off?
- 48:05Speaker 2: No.
- 48:05Speaker 1: Three months.
- 48:06Speaker 2: No.
- 48:07Speaker 1: It was nice?
- 48:08Speaker 2: After that 12 weeks of hardcore training, you're looking for
- 48:12Speaker 2: a break.
- 48:12Speaker 1: I would imagine.
- 48:13Speaker 2: Yeah. And, you know, I had also worked out before that, too.
- 48:19Speaker 2: So I'd take off. The show was always in September.
- 48:23Speaker 2: So it was like October, November, December, nothing. And then January,
- 48:29Speaker 2: start back up.
- 48:30Speaker 1: And then when you start back up?
- 48:31Speaker 2: Go all the way to September.
- 48:34Speaker 1: And when you would start back up, do you start
- 48:35Speaker 1: back up full force, hardcore?
- 48:37Speaker 2: Start all over. Start all over. Start all over. Wow. Wow.
- 48:42Speaker 1: So you just had it down to a science. You
- 48:44Speaker 1: knew what to do and when to do it.
- 48:45Speaker 2: Yeah, because I hurt myself that one time where I
- 48:49Speaker 2: didn't start all over. So you learn from your mistakes.
- 48:53Speaker 1: That was when you hurt your back. When you stopped,
- 48:56Speaker 1: when you retired for good, was that difficult to do?
- 49:00Speaker 1: Is it difficult to change your life?
- 49:01Speaker 2: That's still difficult to do. Still? Yeah. Yeah, I missed
- 49:05Speaker 2: working in the police department and competing, both. Yeah, yeah.
- 49:13Speaker 2: I miss them tremendously.
- 49:14Speaker 1: Just because of the action? Yeah.
- 49:16Speaker 2: Yeah? Mm-hmm. Being, having... a purpose.
- 49:21Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 49:21Speaker 2: Basically.
- 49:24Speaker 1: Obviously, this is a crazy time for the police.
- 49:27Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. It wasn't like that when I was police. Yeah.
- 49:29Speaker 1: What was it like?
- 49:30Speaker 2: Oh, it was much easier.
- 49:32Speaker 1: Well, where you were was probably a more relaxed place?
- 49:36Speaker 2: It was some crazy people.
- 49:37Speaker 1: Yeah?
- 49:38Speaker 2: Yeah. We had a lot of crazy people, actually. A
- 49:42Speaker 2: lot of crazy people. I didn't know people were that crazy.
- 49:44Speaker 2: So you joined the force? Yeah. We had, what, we
- 49:48Speaker 2: started with 300-something thousand when I got there. When I retired,
- 49:52Speaker 2: it was about almost 600,000 people. The city grew that
- 49:56Speaker 2: big over, what, 15 years. So I worked there over
- 50:02Speaker 2: 15 years.
- 50:03Speaker 1: Well, we're in the middle of a crazy time when
- 50:06Speaker 1: it comes to police and police brutality.
- 50:07Speaker 2: Oh, man.
- 50:09Speaker 1: Did you see a lot of that shit when you
- 50:10Speaker 1: were on the job?
- 50:11Speaker 2: No. No? No, we didn't. You didn't have to mistreat
- 50:15Speaker 2: people back then, at least me. And most of the
- 50:19Speaker 2: guys I worked with, we were all professional. Everybody had
- 50:21Speaker 2: to have a four-year degree. The use of force was
- 50:32Speaker 2: appropriately applied. So I remember I got in trouble a
- 50:38Speaker 2: couple times Well, one time I got in trouble where
- 50:45Speaker 2: I almost used too much force on the guy. But
- 50:49Speaker 2: I was vindicated, and all I did was just bend
- 50:52Speaker 2: his arm back and put handcuffs on him. But in
- 50:56Speaker 2: the process of doing that, he got a bloody nose
- 50:58Speaker 2: and a bloody mouth and arm ripped out of the
- 51:01Speaker 2: socket a little bit. But, you know, you're just doing
- 51:04Speaker 2: what you had to do to, you know. Subdue him. Yeah,
- 51:07Speaker 2: subdue him, yeah. So. That was the only time that
- 51:12Speaker 2: I really got, you know, use of force filed against me.
- 51:17Speaker 2: And I got a lot of commendation out of that
- 51:19Speaker 2: because I was a writer back in the day. I
- 51:22Speaker 2: used to write for the college newspaper, and I was
- 51:26Speaker 2: sports editor also. So I was good at writing. I
- 51:31Speaker 2: could write real good, and I could apply use of
- 51:34Speaker 2: force techniques that they taught me in the academy. So
- 51:38Speaker 2: that report that I wrote, on that use of force complaint,
- 51:42Speaker 2: they use that report to train recruits.
- 51:47Speaker 1: Do you think that that's what's wrong with these abusive cops?
- 51:50Speaker 1: Do you think it's a lack of training or do
- 51:53Speaker 1: you think it's hiring the wrong people for the job?
- 51:55Speaker 1: What do you think it is?
- 51:57Speaker 2: Hiring the wrong people for the job. That job is
- 52:00Speaker 2: so stressful.
- 52:01Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 52:02Speaker 2: I mean, you have to be real confident in your
- 52:05Speaker 2: abilities to protect yourself. And I was very, very confident.
- 52:13Speaker 2: I never had to even use my nightstick on anybody. Well,
- 52:17Speaker 2: you know, come on. I went to, sometimes I would
- 52:24Speaker 2: go to work looking for a fight. And I was
- 52:27Speaker 2: so bored, you know. And it never happened. Nobody never
- 52:33Speaker 2: fought me.
- 52:33Speaker 1: That's the size of you, man.
- 52:34Speaker 2: And then, so all the guys that were half my size,
- 52:39Speaker 2: I would just run to their fights.
- 52:44Speaker 1: Try to help them out?
- 52:44Speaker 2: Help them out, yeah. Because nobody would ever fight me.
- 52:47Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, man. Still? Still.
- 52:51Speaker 1: What do you mean still? You're 300 pounds.
- 52:53Speaker 2: Well, that's when I was in my twos.
- 52:55Speaker 1: Oh, the 290.
- 52:56Speaker 2: Yeah, 215 when I first got there. Oh, okay. 220, 230, 240, 250. Yeah. Now,
- 53:02Speaker 2: of course, you know, heavy I got. I didn't expect
- 53:07Speaker 2: it then, but. When I was in my twos, I thought,
- 53:10Speaker 2: for sure, somebody. But I had, like I said, I
- 53:12Speaker 2: had 22-inch arms.
- 53:13Speaker 1: Right.
- 53:14Speaker 2: You know, I had those uniforms that were tailor-made, so
- 53:17Speaker 2: my arms stuck out.
- 53:18Speaker 1: Do you think that, I mean, there's all this talk
- 53:20Speaker 1: now of defunding the police. I keep hearing this about
- 53:23Speaker 1: defunding the police.
- 53:24Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been hearing that, too, but I don't know
- 53:28Speaker 2: if I can agree with that. Because you need the police.
- 53:32Speaker 1: You need the police.
- 53:33Speaker 2: You need the police. I agree. Yeah. I agree. You
- 53:35Speaker 2: can't defund the police. You really can't. There are people
- 53:39Speaker 2: that really need the police. Yeah. I've never needed, but
- 53:43Speaker 2: I went on a lot of calls where I needed
- 53:47Speaker 2: to be there.
- 53:48Speaker 1: Right.
- 53:49Speaker 2: So I don't know if I really agree with that.
- 53:52Speaker 1: I think they've got to get rid of abusive cops.
- 53:55Speaker 2: That's what they've got to do.
- 53:56Speaker 1: That's what they've got to do.
- 53:57Speaker 2: They've got to get rid of the bad apples. Yeah.
- 54:01Speaker 2: Once you get rid of the bad apples, then. It's
- 54:05Speaker 2: all good.
- 54:05Speaker 1: I try to explain to people when I talk about it,
- 54:07Speaker 1: I'm like, you got to understand that there's millions of
- 54:09Speaker 1: interactions that people have with cops every day.
- 54:11Speaker 2: And most of them are positive. Most of them are positive.
- 54:15Speaker 1: If you get a hundred people in a room, just
- 54:16Speaker 1: a hundred random people in the room, what are the
- 54:18Speaker 1: odds that one of them is a fucking idiot? It's
- 54:20Speaker 1: pretty good, right? Well, that's the same thing with cops.
- 54:23Speaker 1: You have, I don't know how many millions of cops
- 54:25Speaker 1: there are in this country. I don't know how many,
- 54:27Speaker 1: what the number is, but. you're going to have a
- 54:30Speaker 1: certain amount of cops that should never have that job.
- 54:32Speaker 1: They're bullies, they're mean, they're sociopaths, they're undisciplined.
- 54:38Speaker 2: They're abusive. Yeah, they're not built for that job. That
- 54:42Speaker 2: job is not for everybody.
- 54:43Speaker 1: It takes a strong mind.
- 54:44Speaker 2: It takes a strong mind. It takes a lot of heart.
- 54:48Speaker 1: And how many cops do you think are dealing with
- 54:50Speaker 1: just crippling PTSD every day?
- 54:54Speaker 2: It all depends on where you are, I think.
- 54:56Speaker 1: Like New York City?
- 54:57Speaker 2: Yeah, like New York, L.A., Detroit, Chicago. Chicago, yeah. Places
- 55:03Speaker 2: like that, yeah. I can see it, but not where
- 55:06Speaker 2: I'm from.
- 55:06Speaker 1: I was just reading a story about Chicago that over
- 55:09Speaker 1: one weekend, 25 people were murdered. Yeah.
- 55:12Speaker 2: So we had about six, seven a year where I'm from.
- 55:16Speaker 1: That's a lot better number.
- 55:17Speaker 2: Yeah. They probably had six, seven a day.
- 55:20Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, 25 in a weekend is just crazy.
- 55:23Speaker 2: That's the craziest thing you could ever hear.
- 55:25Speaker 1: Chicago's bad. It's bad.
- 55:28Speaker 2: Unimaginable bad.
- 55:30Speaker 1: So if you're a cop and you're in an environment
- 55:32Speaker 1: like that, you're essentially in a war zone.
- 55:34Speaker 2: Kind of.
- 55:35Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 55:37Speaker 2: I bet you don't look forward to going to work
- 55:38Speaker 2: every day like I did when I worked.
- 55:40Speaker 1: Well, now today, I mean, people are so mad at
- 55:42Speaker 1: cops that they just want to openly disrespect them and
- 55:46Speaker 1: yell at them.
- 55:47Speaker 2: But some people know the good cops.
- 55:49Speaker 1: Yes. Some people do, but some people use it as
- 55:52Speaker 1: an excuse to say that all cops suck. And, you know,
- 55:56Speaker 1: that guy that— I don't remember his name— that guy— that killed
- 56:00Speaker 1: George Floyd. That guy is an example of everything that's
- 56:04Speaker 1: wrong about police officers.
- 56:05Speaker 2: Everything that's wrong.
- 56:06Speaker 1: Everything that's wrong. He'd been doing it a long time.
- 56:08Speaker 1: He'd been abusing people for a long time. He had
- 56:10Speaker 1: a bunch of complaints against him.
- 56:12Speaker 2: 17 complaints is what I heard. Yeah.
- 56:13Speaker 1: But yet they kept him on.
- 56:15Speaker 2: Kept him on.
- 56:16Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 56:17Speaker 2: I don't think you could have more than like two
- 56:19Speaker 2: or three where I'm from.
- 56:21Speaker 1: That's how it should be.
- 56:22Speaker 2: And we don't have unions and all that kind of
- 56:24Speaker 2: stuff either. Once they fire you, you out of there. Yeah.
- 56:27Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of guys got fired for bad reports.
- 56:32Speaker 2: One guy told me he got fired for not writing
- 56:35Speaker 2: enough tickets.
- 56:37Speaker 1: That's fucked up.
- 56:39Speaker 2: What?
- 56:40Speaker 1: That doesn't make any sense to me because what if
- 56:41Speaker 1: nobody speeds? They say you have to write X amount
- 56:45Speaker 1: of tickets per week. What if everybody follows the rules?
- 56:48Speaker 2: That's the first time I ever heard that. That's the
- 56:51Speaker 2: first time. I'm still kind of reluctant to believe that.
- 56:57Speaker 2: I should have asked somebody that was in high power,
- 57:01Speaker 2: you know. When I worked, they always told me, you
- 57:06Speaker 2: need to write more tickets. I'm like, okay. So I
- 57:08Speaker 2: go out and write a ticket. I'll be done with it.
- 57:11Speaker 2: You know, that's more tickets, you know. That's one more
- 57:16Speaker 2: than I had during my last review. So, but they
- 57:20Speaker 2: never say, we're going to fire you. You know, you're
- 57:22Speaker 2: going to write.
- 57:23Speaker 1: Maybe there's other things as well.
- 57:25Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 57:26Speaker 1: But is it a different police department you worked for?
- 57:29Speaker 2: All in the police department?
- 57:30Speaker 1: No, the guy, the other guy that you were talking about.
- 57:32Speaker 2: He worked for the same one. That's why.
- 57:34Speaker 1: Maybe they were just trying to get rid of him.
- 57:36Speaker 2: It had to be. Yeah. It was probably something he did,
- 57:39Speaker 2: you know. Because, you know, a couple guys I worked with,
- 57:44Speaker 2: they got in trouble once. And they're like, no more.
- 57:48Speaker 2: And you get in trouble again, they fire you. Because
- 57:53Speaker 2: they told you no more, you know. They're real strict
- 57:55Speaker 2: where I work, you know. I think that's how they
- 57:58Speaker 2: have to be. You can't have no 17 complaints. Two
- 58:01Speaker 2: or three and you're out of there.
- 58:03Speaker 1: That makes sense.
- 58:04Speaker 2: You are out.
- 58:05Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's such a rough job to begin with.
- 58:07Speaker 2: Yeah. And I'm from a tourist town also. We got
- 58:11Speaker 2: Six Flags. We got Cowboys. We got Rangers. So you
- 58:16Speaker 2: have to be good to the people there.
- 58:21Speaker 1: That makes sense. Yeah. That should be the whole country.
- 58:23Speaker 2: You can't be mistreating people.
- 58:25Speaker 1: That should be the whole country. I think cops should
- 58:27Speaker 1: get paid more money. They should be treated better. They
- 58:29Speaker 1: should be trained better.
- 58:30Speaker 2: We got paid a lot of money, but we was
- 58:32Speaker 2: like the top five in the state.
- 58:36Speaker 1: Always. Well, I mean, I feel like that's the only
- 58:39Speaker 1: way you're going to get really good people for the job.
- 58:42Speaker 2: And you have to have a four-year degree. You can't
- 58:44Speaker 2: have like two years in a diploma. You can't have
- 58:47Speaker 2: 20 years of service in another department and come work there.
- 58:52Speaker 2: You have to have a four-year degree.
- 58:54Speaker 1: So they want people educated, respectful, do a good job.
- 58:58Speaker 1: That should be the whole country.
- 59:01Speaker 2: I totally agree. But you know how many guys would
- 59:03Speaker 2: get hired if it was like that?
- 59:05Speaker 1: Not as many.
- 59:06Speaker 2: Not as many, yeah.
- 59:07Speaker 1: But shouldn't that, I mean, I just feel like... like
- 59:10Speaker 1: we're at a tipping point in this country.
- 59:13Speaker 2: I totally agree. I mean, it's real sad that the
- 59:19Speaker 2: people you call to help you hurt you.
- 59:22Speaker 1: Yeah, and all the time.
- 59:25Speaker 2: All the time. That's a sad, sad environment to be in.
- 59:30Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like defunding is just going
- 59:33Speaker 1: to make it worse.
- 59:34Speaker 2: Make it worse.
- 59:35Speaker 1: Yeah, and make these crime-ridden neighborhoods even more dangerous.
- 59:38Speaker 2: Yeah, you need police everywhere.
- 59:41Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 59:42Speaker 2: Everywhere. Like I said, defunding is just going to make
- 59:46Speaker 2: it worse. You have to have a lot of resources.
- 59:49Speaker 2: You have to have a lot of training.
- 59:50Speaker 1: Yes.
- 59:51Speaker 2: It's a lot of training. You have to be training
- 59:54Speaker 2: all the time. All the time, no matter... How many
- 59:58Speaker 2: years you been there? You have to be trained up
- 1:00:01Speaker 2: all the time.
- 1:00:03Speaker 1: Yeah. That's, I couldn't agree more. I mean, it sounds
- 1:00:06Speaker 1: horrible for people to hear, but I think they needed
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: more funding.
- 1:00:08Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: Even though the police are fucked up, they need more education.
- 1:00:12Speaker 2: They need more money.
- 1:00:13Speaker 1: More money, more training.
- 1:00:15Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: And I feel like they should be trained the same
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: way the military is trained. And that, that way they
- 1:00:19Speaker 1: weed out the weak people too. Yeah. Weed out the
- 1:00:21Speaker 1: people with the weak minds. Weed out the bullies. Weed
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: out the sociopaths.
- 1:00:25Speaker 2: Yep. But, uh, I guess it's just a hard job
- 1:00:31Speaker 2: to get, you know. A not wanted job, I'll say.
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think there's also just people in everything.
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: Every job there is, there's people that suck at it. Yeah,
- 1:00:42Speaker 1: that's true. And you can't suck at being a cop.
- 1:00:46Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:00:46Speaker 1: You know, you just.
- 1:00:47Speaker 2: You can't, but like I said, it's.
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: A lot of people do. Yeah.
- 1:00:51Speaker 2: Yeah. And like I said, it's kind of hard to find.
- 1:00:55Speaker 2: good candidates sometimes.
- 1:00:56Speaker 1: Are you still in touch with all the guys in
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: the force that you worked with?
- 1:01:00Speaker 2: No, all the guys I worked with retired.
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: All of them did?
- 1:01:03Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that was a while ago. See, I started
- 1:01:09Speaker 2: in 1989. So you got to remember that's, what, 30-something
- 1:01:12Speaker 2: years later. So most of the guys retired. We had
- 1:01:16Speaker 2: a 20-year retirement.
- 1:01:18Speaker 1: They must have really enjoyed having a guy like you
- 1:01:21Speaker 1: as a cop on the force.
- 1:01:22Speaker 2: Yeah, I did a lot of recruiting trips for the
- 1:01:24Speaker 2: police department. Police department. So they told me when I
- 1:01:28Speaker 2: won the Olympia, chief said, you don't have to come
- 1:01:30Speaker 2: work if you don't want to.
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: Really?
- 1:01:32Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:01:32Speaker 1: You could just get paid?
- 1:01:33Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:01:34Speaker 1: And just lift weights.
- 1:01:35Speaker 2: If I don't come to work, I don't get paid.
- 1:01:38Speaker 1: Oh.
- 1:01:38Speaker 2: What the fuck is that? I was making a million
- 1:01:41Speaker 2: dollars a year being Mr. Olympia. So I don't need $ 45, 000
- 1:01:47Speaker 2: from the police department or $ 50, 000, whatever they was paying me.
- 1:01:50Speaker 2: So sometimes I didn't go to work. Like when I
- 1:01:55Speaker 2: got ready for the Olympia, I didn't go to work.
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: So they just let you take time off?
- 1:02:00Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
- 1:02:01Speaker 1: And then after you'd win, you'd come back?
- 1:02:02Speaker 2: I'd go back to work, yeah.
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: Was it weird to go back to work?
- 1:02:05Speaker 2: No, no. You got to remember.
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: Did you ever get pulled over?
- 1:02:08Speaker 2: I loved that job.
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: I appreciate that you enjoyed that job. But was there
- 1:02:12Speaker 1: ever a time where you pulled people over and they're like,
- 1:02:14Speaker 1: holy shit, are you Ronnie Coleman?
- 1:02:16Speaker 2: Yep. And that's why I quit pulling people over and
- 1:02:19Speaker 2: writing tickets. Yeah.
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: That's why? Because of that? Yeah. What did they assign
- 1:02:22Speaker 1: you to after that? No, no.
- 1:02:24Speaker 2: I still worked patrol. I just didn't pull people over. Oh,
- 1:02:27Speaker 2: I see. You know, that's subjective. That's something you want
- 1:02:31Speaker 2: to do.
- 1:02:32Speaker 1: Oh, you make a decision.
- 1:02:33Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. You can always just answer calls. Right. There's
- 1:02:37Speaker 2: always a disturbance. There's always an accident. I mean, there's
- 1:02:41Speaker 2: always a fight.
- 1:02:42Speaker 1: Did you ever see the TV show where Steven Seagal
- 1:02:44Speaker 1: was a cop?
- 1:02:45Speaker 2: No, never.
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: I couldn't watch.
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: I couldn't watch any cop shows without being warned. Really? No,
- 1:02:52Speaker 2: because that's what you do. Right. You don't want to see.
- 1:02:55Speaker 2: It's like something you do all the time. You don't
- 1:02:58Speaker 2: want to do it in your spare time. I understand.
- 1:03:00Speaker 2: You're looking for other stuff to do.
- 1:03:01Speaker 1: Yeah. It was a real funny show.
- 1:03:04Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: Steven Seagal was working as a real cop for a while.
- 1:03:09Speaker 2: I heard about it. I heard about it.
- 1:03:10Speaker 1: It was the most ridiculous shit you've ever seen in
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: your life. He would pull people over, and they're like,
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: are you fucking Steven Seagal? And, you know, it was
- 1:03:21Speaker 1: real weird, man. All of a sudden, I mean, he
- 1:03:23Speaker 1: was in Louisiana, so he adopted this fake Louisiana accent,
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: like real heavy.
- 1:03:30Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a lot of heavy accents there.
- 1:03:32Speaker 1: But he all of a sudden had one.
- 1:03:35Speaker 2: You can develop it from being around those people.
- 1:03:38Speaker 1: I can imagine, but it seemed like he was just
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: adding it.
- 1:03:42Speaker 2: Well, you know, he's a professional actor.
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: But he was a real cop. He was really pulling
- 1:03:48Speaker 1: people over. The whole thing was so ridiculous.
- 1:03:53Speaker 2: I guess he was bored.
- 1:03:54Speaker 1: I think he was bored. I think he was, you know,
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: in between movies.
- 1:03:57Speaker 2: Well, you know, that job can be pretty exciting. It
- 1:04:00Speaker 2: can be real exciting.
- 1:04:01Speaker 1: Look at him. I mean, you imagine you're a guy,
- 1:04:06Speaker 1: and you're in your house, and maybe you're smoking some weed,
- 1:04:08Speaker 1: and the cops break down the door, and it's fucking
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: Steven Seagal holding you down.
- 1:04:13Speaker 2: Well, yeah, most of the guys, they're trying to get away,
- 1:04:16Speaker 2: so they're not looking at the guy.
- 1:04:19Speaker 1: I understand, but I mean, why are you getting cuffed?
- 1:04:22Speaker 1: You've got to be looking up going, what the fuck
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: are you doing here, man?
- 1:04:26Speaker 2: I have video of me arresting people on video also.
- 1:04:30Speaker 1: Oh, yeah?
- 1:04:31Speaker 2: Yeah, I was... doing these videos and me with training
- 1:04:35Speaker 2: and sometimes I would have a guy just follow me
- 1:04:39Speaker 2: the whole shift and he would film me the whole
- 1:04:42Speaker 2: shift and I was able to put some of them
- 1:04:46Speaker 2: on tape I had to get approval from the police
- 1:04:48Speaker 2: department did you.
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: Put them on YouTube or something yeah oh so they're
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: out there right now yeah out there right now did
- 1:04:53Speaker 1: you learn any martial arts or anything from the police
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: department yeah of course what'd you learn.
- 1:04:57Speaker 2: I mean they just taught you basic stuff how to
- 1:05:00Speaker 2: take people down pressure points and all that kind of
- 1:05:02Speaker 2: stuff You know, so it's probably not a martial art.
- 1:05:06Speaker 2: It's just takedown techniques and stuff like that. Pressure point.
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: I would imagine a guy like you just grabbing a
- 1:05:13Speaker 1: hold of someone, they must have felt like they were
- 1:05:16Speaker 1: made out of pillows.
- 1:05:17Speaker 2: You know what? To be honest with you, I never
- 1:05:20Speaker 2: had to really grab anybody.
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: That's amazing.
- 1:05:22Speaker 2: Nobody never wanted to fight me.
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: That's one good argument for being a huge person.
- 1:05:29Speaker 2: Yeah. It was real good and real bad. Bad in
- 1:05:34Speaker 2: the sense that, you know, I missed out on a
- 1:05:36Speaker 2: lot of action. Good in the sense that I missed
- 1:05:40Speaker 2: out on a lot of action.
- 1:05:42Speaker 1: Bad and good at the same time, but you kind
- 1:05:45Speaker 1: of itched for.
- 1:05:45Speaker 2: It a little bit. I itched for it every single day. Really?
- 1:05:49Speaker 2: You got to remember, I played football for 15 years,
- 1:05:52Speaker 2: and you used to, you know, actually.
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: Contact.
- 1:05:55Speaker 2: Contact, yeah. So you kind of missed that after a while.
- 1:06:01Speaker 2: You want to engage in a little bit. Every now
- 1:06:03Speaker 2: and then. But you can't violate rights. Of course. So,
- 1:06:08Speaker 2: you know.
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: Well, that shows amazing restraint that you wanted to do
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: it every day, but you never did it.
- 1:06:12Speaker 2: Never did it. Yeah.
- 1:06:13Speaker 1: Maybe they sensed that.
- 1:06:14Speaker 2: Maybe once or twice.
- 1:06:16Speaker 1: Maybe once or twice.
- 1:06:16Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: But nothing serious.
- 1:06:18Speaker 2: Nothing serious, you know. Yeah. I may have, you know,
- 1:06:25Speaker 2: pulled somebody's arm out of the socket or dislocated somebody's
- 1:06:29Speaker 2: shoulder or something like that. Yeah.
- 1:06:30Speaker 1: Because they probably had weak joints.
- 1:06:32Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. There you are. They said, well, yeah.
- 1:06:35Speaker 1: Just imagine this dude walking into your house.
- 1:06:37Speaker 2: See, I got on shorts right there. Look at the.
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: Size of you. Oh, my God. You were so big.
- 1:06:43Speaker 1: That's so crazy.
- 1:06:44Speaker 2: I'm 315 pounds right there.
- 1:06:46Speaker 1: But it must have been so crazy for people.
- 1:06:49Speaker 2: 2% body fat. That's hilarious. We had our body fat
- 1:06:52Speaker 2: done at the police department. And the highest I ever
- 1:06:55Speaker 2: got was 3%.
- 1:06:56Speaker 1: And that was with calipers?
- 1:06:58Speaker 2: Yeah, with calipers.
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: Did you ever do a dunk?
- 1:07:00Speaker 2: When I had the 3.33 was dipped underwater. Wow. It
- 1:07:06Speaker 2: was negative numbers. It was minus 2.
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: That's so crazy.
- 1:07:11Speaker 2: Minus 2% body fat.
- 1:07:13Speaker 1: That doesn't even make sense. Your arms are so big,
- 1:07:17Speaker 1: it looks like you barely pick your arm up to
- 1:07:20Speaker 1: lift your wrist.
- 1:07:21Speaker 2: They're 23 right there. I'm almost 24. Yeah.
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: I just can't imagine.
- 1:07:26Speaker 2: See, they got shorts right there.
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go.
- 1:07:28Speaker 2: Those are the company-issue shorts, though. And they fit you? Yeah, yeah.
- 1:07:32Speaker 2: Everything was tailor-made. The city has a tailor. So I
- 1:07:36Speaker 2: went to the city tailor for all my clothes and
- 1:07:40Speaker 2: all my vests and everything. That's hilarious. Yeah.
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: Did you keep any of that stuff?
- 1:07:45Speaker 2: Yeah, I still got it.
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: That should be in like a bodybuilder slash policeman's hall
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: of fame somewhere.
- 1:07:50Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what? They actually took my badge and
- 1:07:55Speaker 2: put it on display at the station.
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: Oh, yeah? Oh, that's cool. Yeah, look at the size
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: of you. Does it freak you out when you see
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: yourself that big? No. You're like, wow.
- 1:08:05Speaker 2: No, you don't really see it after you've had it
- 1:08:09Speaker 2: for so long. But not looking at it now, I'm
- 1:08:14Speaker 2: kind of missing it. Do you? Oh, yeah.
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: Really?
- 1:08:16Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Too bad you can't stay like that forever.
- 1:08:23Speaker 1: Well, I'd imagine a lot of your identity gets tied
- 1:08:28Speaker 1: into that.
- 1:08:29Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. You hate getting old, but it happens to everybody. Yeah, well.
- 1:08:33Speaker 2: The father's time is undefeated.
- 1:08:35Speaker 1: It's old for sure, but it's also for you. It's
- 1:08:37Speaker 1: just the amount of destruction, all that hard training is
- 1:08:41Speaker 1: done to your body.
- 1:08:42Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. All the fun I had in the gym.
- 1:08:45Speaker 2: I had a lot of fun lifting all that heavy weight.
- 1:08:48Speaker 2: People ask me if I had any regrets. Yeah, I
- 1:08:50Speaker 2: had some regrets. I didn't go heavy enough.
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: Really?
- 1:08:56Speaker 2: That was one time I was squatting at 800. I
- 1:08:59Speaker 2: thought it was going to be heavy because I had
- 1:09:01Speaker 2: deadlifted already. But I was squatting at this time, and
- 1:09:06Speaker 2: I didn't take into effect the gravity of the situation.
- 1:09:11Speaker 2: When you're pulling from the floor, gravity. When you've got
- 1:09:14Speaker 2: it way up here on your shoulder, gravity is way
- 1:09:17Speaker 2: down there, so that's pull-ins. So when I went down
- 1:09:20Speaker 2: for the first rep, I'm like, is this 800? And
- 1:09:23Speaker 2: I came back up, let me do another one. It's
- 1:09:27Speaker 2: still easy. But I had in my mind two because
- 1:09:30Speaker 2: I had already done two on the deadlift. And I
- 1:09:34Speaker 2: put it up and I'm like, oh, man, I could
- 1:09:36Speaker 2: have did at least three or four more.
- 1:09:38Speaker 1: That bothers you to this day?
- 1:09:39Speaker 2: That bothers me to this day. To this day. But
- 1:09:42Speaker 2: I went to the leg press and did 2,300 pounds
- 1:09:46Speaker 2: on the leg press for eight reps.
- 1:09:52Speaker 1: How much?
- 1:09:52Speaker 2: 2,300.
- 1:09:52Speaker 3: 2,300.
- 1:09:52Speaker 2: That would crush me now. Eight reps? Eight reps. Yeah.
- 1:10:01Speaker 2: That's on YouTube also.
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: That doesn't even make sense.
- 1:10:03Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a car. You had to add it up
- 1:10:06Speaker 2: with a calculator. Yeah, I had to bring out a
- 1:10:09Speaker 2: calculator to add it up. There's so much weight.
- 1:10:13Speaker 1: Why would you lift so much weight?
- 1:10:14Speaker 2: Because I could. No other reason. There it is right there.
- 1:10:20Speaker 2: Look at this. Look at that. Yeah.
- 1:10:21Speaker 1: This is so ridiculous. How many times have you done
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: this before?
- 1:10:25Speaker 2: I did that one time.
- 1:10:26Speaker 1: What the fuck is that? That's so crazy, man.
- 1:10:31Speaker 2: That's 2,300 pounds.
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: That is so crazy. Yeah. I saw a video of
- 1:10:35Speaker 1: a girl trying to use one of those things and
- 1:10:37Speaker 1: her knee bent backwards and snapped.
- 1:10:38Speaker 2: And see, I came all the way back. Well, some
- 1:10:41Speaker 2: people that put that on there, they didn't come that
- 1:10:42Speaker 2: far back, you know. So this is right after the
- 1:10:47Speaker 2: 800-pound squat. You got to remember that. So I'm a
- 1:10:50Speaker 2: little tired. I'm a little tired. Not real tired.
- 1:10:59Speaker 1: That is insane.
- 1:11:01Speaker 2: Yeah. Back then it was. I couldn't, I can't do.
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: How many reps are you doing?
- 1:11:08Speaker 2: Eight. I think I did eight.
- 1:11:12Speaker 1: That's very hard to believe.
- 1:11:14Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:11:14Speaker 1: It's very hard to believe even looking at it. Look
- 1:11:15Speaker 1: at all those 45s.
- 1:11:16Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:11:16Speaker 1: It's like 50 some plates.
- 1:11:18Speaker 2: Yeah. 50 of them.
- 1:11:22Speaker 1: That is bonkers, man.
- 1:11:23Speaker 2: Yeah. That's bonkers. I bought that machine specifically to do that.
- 1:11:27Speaker 2: Because a regular machine, you couldn't do that. Because the
- 1:11:30Speaker 2: first time I put it on there, that bar bent.
- 1:11:33Speaker 2: So he had to reinforce the bar so I could
- 1:11:38Speaker 2: do it.
- 1:11:39Speaker 1: How are your knees right now?
- 1:11:41Speaker 2: My knees are perfect. Because I wrapped up all the time. Wow. Yeah.
- 1:11:45Speaker 2: Wrapped all the time. And I went heavy.
- 1:11:47Speaker 1: That's crazy. The knees are okay.
- 1:11:48Speaker 2: No problem whatsoever. And everything else is all banged up. Yeah,
- 1:11:52Speaker 2: just back and neck. Yep. I miss those days. God damn.
- 1:12:01Speaker 1: Now, what kind of steroids were dudes doing back then?
- 1:12:07Speaker 2: I mean, basic. You know, you got your tests, D-ball.
- 1:12:14Speaker 2: It's just basic stuff. You know? And back then, you know,
- 1:12:18Speaker 2: because the DA had come in and, you know, was
- 1:12:23Speaker 2: trying to find out what we were all doing, they
- 1:12:26Speaker 2: made us do it legally. So, you know, you had
- 1:12:29Speaker 2: to go to the doctor and get all these prescriptions.
- 1:12:33Speaker 1: And you would get prescriptions for steroids? Yeah. What kind
- 1:12:36Speaker 1: of steroids would they give you a prescription for?
- 1:12:38Speaker 2: Like, any kind of test. You need it. Growth hormone.
- 1:12:43Speaker 2: They give prescriptions because Once the DEA came in, they
- 1:12:47Speaker 2: was like, what are y'all doing? What are y'all taking?
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: But when you think, like, the DEA, shouldn't you be
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: out there catching people selling meth? Why are you going
- 1:13:00Speaker 1: after bodybuilders who are also cops? That seems ridiculous.
- 1:13:03Speaker 2: Because they had kids out there that were taking it
- 1:13:06Speaker 2: and committing suicide. See, I didn't know what that was
- 1:13:10Speaker 2: when I was a kid.
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: They were committing suicide because they were getting depressed from
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: the steroids.
- 1:13:17Speaker 2: Coming off of it? Coming off of it.
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:13:19Speaker 2: So they're trying to figure out, you know, what are
- 1:13:22Speaker 2: y'all doing? We got to get y'all off this stuff.
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: And so that's when you got a doctor that was
- 1:13:32Speaker 1: willing to prescribe everything. So was this while you were
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: doing Mr. Olympia?
- 1:13:37Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: So all that stuff was above board. It was all legal.
- 1:13:40Speaker 2: Yeah. Everything was legal back then.
- 1:13:43Speaker 1: Is that the case now?
- 1:13:46Speaker 2: You know what? That was just when the heat was on,
- 1:13:48Speaker 2: you know. I don't think they got the heat on
- 1:13:51Speaker 2: the guys like that now.
- 1:13:53Speaker 1: So the DEA would come to you and you would
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: just say, hey, here's my prescriptions.
- 1:13:57Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:13:57Speaker 1: And they would go, all right.
- 1:13:59Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:14:00Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. One time, if you didn't have a prescription, they
- 1:14:03Speaker 2: took your stuff. Really?
- 1:14:05Speaker 1: Yeah. So they'd find whatever you had and take it
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: from you. Yeah. Hmm.
- 1:14:09Speaker 2: Yeah. Hmm.
- 1:14:10Speaker 1: How did they know where it was?
- 1:14:12Speaker 2: You told them.
- 1:14:13Speaker 1: Oh, okay. Because otherwise they put you in jail.
- 1:14:18Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Search your house, you know, get a search warrant.
- 1:14:22Speaker 2: But I got this and this and this.
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: Well, I'd imagine you would have to take something to
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: be as big as you were when you were at
- 1:14:29Speaker 1: your peak.
- 1:14:29Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: It's not really possible to be.
- 1:14:32Speaker 2: That big without it. Without it, no, no. You can't
- 1:14:36Speaker 2: get that big. Another thing you got to have, too,
- 1:14:39Speaker 2: is genetics.
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: Yes.
- 1:14:41Speaker 2: You know, look at the baseball players that have taken stuff.
- 1:14:45Speaker 2: And look at us.
- 1:14:46Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:14:47Speaker 2: You know, they can't get that big. They're not gifted
- 1:14:50Speaker 2: for it.
- 1:14:51Speaker 1: Well, they didn't try either, right? They weren't trying to
- 1:14:53Speaker 1: get that big. Guys like Ken Sago, he got pretty
- 1:14:56Speaker 1: fucking big.
- 1:14:57Speaker 2: They couldn't get that big if they wanted to.
- 1:14:59Speaker 1: Really? So it's a small percentage of the population that
- 1:15:02Speaker 1: could get that big.
- 1:15:03Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
- 1:15:04Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:15:05Speaker 2: And probably like 1% that could get as big as
- 1:15:08Speaker 2: I got. And I was the only guy. Nobody duplicated
- 1:15:13Speaker 2: that since. And be in that condition. Right. And be healthy. Right.
- 1:15:19Speaker 2: I don't have any health problems besides the back.
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: The injuries.
- 1:15:22Speaker 2: The injuries, yeah. My liver and my kidneys and my heart,
- 1:15:26Speaker 2: it's all good.
- 1:15:27Speaker 1: Did you, while you were doing things, did you get
- 1:15:31Speaker 1: frequent blood tests?
- 1:15:33Speaker 2: Every three to four months.
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: And the doctor would go over everything and make sure
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: everything was fine.
- 1:15:39Speaker 2: Everything's always good.
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: That seems to be the big misconception about steroids is
- 1:15:44Speaker 1: that people think steroids kill you.
- 1:15:45Speaker 2: And people think you're taking tons of stuff. I wasn't
- 1:15:48Speaker 2: taking tons of stuff. I probably wasn't taking no more
- 1:15:52Speaker 2: than what those baseball players were taking.
- 1:15:55Speaker 1: Just working out more, lifting more.
- 1:15:56Speaker 2: Working out, lifting more, and gifted genetically for it.
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: Dorian Yates said basically the same thing.
- 1:16:04Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:16:05Speaker 1: It wasn't that he was taking a lot.
- 1:16:06Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: Not compared to a lot of guys.
- 1:16:08Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, yeah. People think I was taking massive amounts
- 1:16:12Speaker 2: of stuff. If I'd been taking massive amounts of stuff,
- 1:16:15Speaker 2: I don't think I'd still be here. I don't think
- 1:16:17Speaker 2: I'd be as healthy as I am now.
- 1:16:19Speaker 1: Right.
- 1:16:20Speaker 2: You know, besides my back surgery and neck surgery, I'm
- 1:16:25Speaker 2: all good. Like I said, my liver and my kidneys
- 1:16:27Speaker 2: and heart and everything still hold up real good.
- 1:16:31Speaker 1: Now, when you would get off for that three-month period,
- 1:16:34Speaker 1: would you cycle off of everything?
- 1:16:36Speaker 2: No, cold turkey.
- 1:16:37Speaker 1: Cold turkey?
- 1:16:38Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:16:38Speaker 2: Really? Cold turkey. I didn't take anything or nothing.
- 1:16:41Speaker 1: And what did you feel like over those three months?
- 1:16:43Speaker 2: Normal. Really?
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: Normal.
- 1:16:44Speaker 2: Didn't bother me a bit.
- 1:16:46Speaker 1: So you got just great genetics, man.
- 1:16:50Speaker 2: Craziest ever.
- 1:16:51Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, obviously. There's no way you could take all,
- 1:16:54Speaker 1: you know.
- 1:16:55Speaker 2: Cold turkey, I stopped everything. One day, I'd be taking,
- 1:16:59Speaker 2: you know, a bunch of stuff. Next day, nothing.
- 1:17:01Speaker 1: And your body would just feel normal?
- 1:17:03Speaker 2: Body felt normal. Didn't bother me a bit.
- 1:17:05Speaker 1: That's so crazy.
- 1:17:06Speaker 2: Didn't get depressed or nothing, you know.
- 1:17:08Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:17:09Speaker 2: Felt normal.
- 1:17:11Speaker 1: That's just genetics. Yeah.
- 1:17:12Speaker 2: I still was strong. Wow. I could still, you know, squat,
- 1:17:16Speaker 2: you know. I could squat, you know, 700, 800 naturally.
- 1:17:21Speaker 1: Wow.
- 1:17:21Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
- 1:17:22Speaker 1: So you basically kept a lot of your gains. Yep.
- 1:17:25Speaker 2: Yep. I was still 300. I'm still 300 pounds, you know.
- 1:17:30Speaker 2: Without taking all that stuff.
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: And so then after three months, then you would slowly
- 1:17:34Speaker 1: ramp back up?
- 1:17:35Speaker 2: Slowly ramp back up, yeah.
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: And all this under doctor supervision?
- 1:17:39Speaker 2: All this under doctor supervision. And all the while, I'm
- 1:17:43Speaker 2: getting my blood work done every three to four months.
- 1:17:47Speaker 1: So a lot of guys, after they're done competing, then
- 1:17:50Speaker 1: they have to get on testosterone replacement therapy because the
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: endocrine system is kind of messed up.
- 1:17:54Speaker 2: Exactly.
- 1:17:55Speaker 1: Did you have to do that as well?
- 1:17:56Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
- 1:17:59Speaker 1: It seems like that's just a part of the sport, right?
- 1:18:01Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, it is.
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: It's interesting, though, because for the longest time, these guys
- 1:18:07Speaker 1: were doing these ads in magazines, and they were attributing
- 1:18:09Speaker 1: everything to some supplement that they were selling or some
- 1:18:13Speaker 1: creatine or some this or that. All that stuff does something.
- 1:18:16Speaker 2: It helps you out a little bit.
- 1:18:18Speaker 1: But it's not going to get you.
- 1:18:19Speaker 2: It's not going to get you 330 pounds with 3%
- 1:18:21Speaker 2: body fat. No. No, it's definitely not going to do that.
- 1:18:26Speaker 1: Was that something that you were allowed to talk about
- 1:18:27Speaker 1: while you were competing?
- 1:18:30Speaker 2: Uh yeah i mean did it come up yeah yeah
- 1:18:34Speaker 2: yeah i talked about it i didn't uh have no
- 1:18:39Speaker 2: reason to hide it people because.
- 1:18:40Speaker 3: It seems like people were not stupid no when you
- 1:18:43Speaker 3: got that big yeah but it seemed like there was
- 1:18:46Speaker 3: an era where bodybuilding kind of tried to pretend that
- 1:18:49Speaker 3: they weren't taking that.
- 1:18:50Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Because of all those people committing suicide and
- 1:18:56Speaker 2: kids taking all that stuff and doing it the wrong way,
- 1:19:02Speaker 2: not having it prescribed and all this kind of stuff.
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: Also, the more is better philosophy.
- 1:19:06Speaker 2: Black mark to get bad stuff.
- 1:19:07Speaker 1: Right.
- 1:19:08Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:19:08Speaker 1: Yeah. But there were some guys that would just say, well,
- 1:19:12Speaker 1: the way to win is to take way more than
- 1:19:15Speaker 1: everybody else.
- 1:19:16Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: And see what your body could tolerate.
- 1:19:17Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. The more you take, the better you're going
- 1:19:20Speaker 2: to be.
- 1:19:21Speaker 1: I knew a guy like that. Yeah. And he wound
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: up having a heart attack.
- 1:19:24Speaker 2: Exactly.
- 1:19:24Speaker 1: We used to call him garden hoses because his arms
- 1:19:27Speaker 1: looked like garden hoses for veins.
- 1:19:29Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:19:29Speaker 1: Just these giant veins all over his arms. Didn't make sense.
- 1:19:33Speaker 1: But he was just on everything.
- 1:19:34Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
- 1:19:36Speaker 1: But he didn't make it to 30. He died before
- 1:19:39Speaker 1: he was 30.
- 1:19:40Speaker 2: Some people, yeah, they do it the wrong way. I
- 1:19:42Speaker 2: didn't start taking anything until I was 30.
- 1:19:45Speaker 1: Really?
- 1:19:45Speaker 2: Yeah. Remember, I was drug-free for a long time. I
- 1:19:52Speaker 2: did everything naturally for a long, long time because I was,
- 1:19:55Speaker 2: like I said, gifted. Right.
- 1:19:57Speaker 1: What inspired you? What made you decide when you were
- 1:19:59Speaker 1: 30 that you had to do something?
- 1:20:02Speaker 2: I got tired of getting my ass kicked.
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: In competitions?
- 1:20:08Speaker 2: Yeah. The highest I would place was like third or something,
- 1:20:12Speaker 2: you know. And after a while, you know, you're competitive.
- 1:20:16Speaker 2: You're shit. The other guy's got a competitive advantage on you.
- 1:20:23Speaker 2: So let's make this thing equal.
- 1:20:26Speaker 1: Is this something somebody suggested to you?
- 1:20:28Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:20:28Speaker 1: Yeah. So people in the gym, like, hey, Ronnie.
- 1:20:32Speaker 2: No, one of the competitors suggested that to me. Oh.
- 1:20:36Speaker 2: A guy by the name of Flex Wheeler.
- 1:20:38Speaker 1: Oh, okay.
- 1:20:38Speaker 2: My best friend in the world.
- 1:20:40Speaker 1: That guy was fucking huge.
- 1:20:42Speaker 2: Huge. Huge. And he taught me everything I know.
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: Did he really?
- 1:20:46Speaker 2: Yeah. Mm-hmm. He also got me the best nutritionist ever.
- 1:20:53Speaker 2: That's how I won my first Olympia.
- 1:20:55Speaker 1: So is that how most guys find out about steroids
- 1:20:58Speaker 1: from other guys who are competing?
- 1:21:00Speaker 2: If you're smart, that's the way you would do it. Successful.
- 1:21:03Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:21:03Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, what they're doing is somebody that's successful at it,
- 1:21:09Speaker 2: not some dumb trainer. Right. That think they know. Right.
- 1:21:15Speaker 2: You know, Flex had won, you know, major contests. And
- 1:21:21Speaker 2: I was a real experienced bodybuilder at the time. You know,
- 1:21:25Speaker 2: I'm still new to the sport.
- 1:21:27Speaker 1: Right.
- 1:21:27Speaker 2: I didn't get into it until I was, what, 24.
- 1:21:29Speaker 2: You know, I think he started probably when he was
- 1:21:32Speaker 2: like 16, 17, somewhere in there. I never did that.
- 1:21:36Speaker 2: Because we didn't have it where I was from.
- 1:21:38Speaker 1: How much of a night and day difference was it
- 1:21:40Speaker 1: once you started taking stuff?
- 1:21:43Speaker 2: As far as the condition, night and day.
- 1:21:47Speaker 1: Night and day and your ability to work, to put
- 1:21:50Speaker 1: in work?
- 1:21:50Speaker 2: No, no. The condition of your body? Yeah, the only
- 1:21:53Speaker 2: thing that changed was conditioning. My strength didn't go up
- 1:21:58Speaker 2: that much.
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: What do you mean by conditioning? The way you looked?
- 1:22:03Speaker 2: Yeah, the way I looked.
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: So like leanness.
- 1:22:05Speaker 2: My definition and, you know, leanness and kind of, that's
- 1:22:08Speaker 2: the only thing that really changed.
- 1:22:09Speaker 1: Well, your strength didn't go up that much.
- 1:22:11Speaker 2: My strength didn't go up that much. I was still,
- 1:22:13Speaker 2: I was deadlifting 750 pounds. Wow. You know. Yeah, well.
- 1:22:20Speaker 2: Because I was, you know, I was still doing powerlifting
- 1:22:22Speaker 2: shows when I was doing bodybuilding. Were you really? Yeah.
- 1:22:25Speaker 1: At the same time?
- 1:22:25Speaker 2: At the same time, yeah.
- 1:22:26Speaker 1: That's pretty unusual, isn't it?
- 1:22:28Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, that was something I loved
- 1:22:31Speaker 2: to do.
- 1:22:31Speaker 1: But those powerlifting guys are usually quite a bit fatter.
- 1:22:34Speaker 1: They don't mind having a lot of body fat.
- 1:22:37Speaker 2: The more body fat you have, the stronger you're going
- 1:22:39Speaker 2: to be.
- 1:22:40Speaker 1: Why is that?
- 1:22:41Speaker 2: Because you got more cushion around the muscle, more water
- 1:22:48Speaker 2: around the muscle, and all that stuff makes you stronger,
- 1:22:52Speaker 2: gives you more energy. Really? Especially if you're naturally gifted
- 1:22:56Speaker 2: with strength.
- 1:22:58Speaker 1: So did you ever feel like, Was that ever pulling
- 1:23:01Speaker 1: you back, like powerlifting? Did you ever think about getting
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: back into that again? Or were you just completely committed
- 1:23:07Speaker 1: to bodybuilding.
- 1:23:08Speaker 2: At that time? Yeah, after a while, I kind of
- 1:23:09Speaker 2: just got committed to bodybuilding. Because I was working full-time
- 1:23:13Speaker 2: in the police department, trying to do powerlifting, trying to
- 1:23:15Speaker 2: do bodybuilding. It was just too much. And I had
- 1:23:18Speaker 2: all these jobs, too. I would do security at Denny's
- 1:23:22Speaker 2: on Fridays and Saturday nights from 12 to 4. Oh, Jesus.
- 1:23:25Speaker 2: I would work in my apartment complex.
- 1:23:27Speaker 1: That might be the most dangerous spot in the world.
- 1:23:30Speaker 1: Denny's from 12 to 4 on the weekends?
- 1:23:32Speaker 2: My first fight was at Denny's.
- 1:23:34Speaker 1: Oh, was it really?
- 1:23:35Speaker 2: Yeah, my first one. The one that I got the
- 1:23:38Speaker 2: use of force filed against me was at Denny's.
- 1:23:42Speaker 1: Yeah, Denny's can be rough. Late night, drunks, showing up
- 1:23:46Speaker 1: to eat.
- 1:23:47Speaker 2: Yep. Oh, my God. It was a drunk guy. Of course. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:23:52Speaker 2: Want to try to resist me? Yeah, yeah.
- 1:23:54Speaker 1: Who the fuck is sober at Denny's at 3 o'clock
- 1:23:56Speaker 1: in the morning?
- 1:23:56Speaker 2: Exactly. Hardly nobody. Yeah.
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: So when you were 30, you started taking steroids and
- 1:24:03Speaker 1: you won the Olympia for the first time when you
- 1:24:05Speaker 1: were 34. So that's like four years.
- 1:24:08Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:24:09Speaker 1: That's insane.
- 1:24:10Speaker 2: Yeah. But you got to remember the base I had
- 1:24:13Speaker 2: before that.
- 1:24:13Speaker 1: Right. It's base and hard work and also genetics.
- 1:24:17Speaker 2: Yeah. All that together.
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: It's the perfect storm.
- 1:24:19Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:24:19Speaker 1: Do you think as a bodybuilder you really need like
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: the perfect storm of things to be a champion?
- 1:24:24Speaker 2: You do. Yeah, you do. You're not going to be
- 1:24:28Speaker 2: it if you don't have it. It's just like trying
- 1:24:31Speaker 2: to be president of the United States, you know. Only
- 1:24:33Speaker 2: certain people are going to be president of the United States.
- 1:24:36Speaker 2: Everybody's not going to make it at that job.
- 1:24:40Speaker 1: Well, it's like when I look at some Mr. Olympias,
- 1:24:43Speaker 1: it's so hard. I'm looking at one, two, three, and four.
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't, I'm not. You have to have
- 1:24:50Speaker 1: an eye for it.
- 1:24:50Speaker 2: You have to be trained, yeah. Because I used to
- 1:24:52Speaker 2: be the same way. I thought everybody looked the same.
- 1:24:55Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how I looked at them.
- 1:24:57Speaker 2: So I know exactly what you're talking about. Everybody was
- 1:25:01Speaker 2: just big to me.
- 1:25:02Speaker 1: Huge.
- 1:25:02Speaker 2: Yeah, huge.
- 1:25:03Speaker 1: Yeah, everybody looks preposterous.
- 1:25:04Speaker 2: And I thought I could never, ever attain that.
- 1:25:09Speaker 1: But you did.
- 1:25:09Speaker 2: I did, yeah.
- 1:25:10Speaker 1: Not only did you set the gold standard. Isn't that
- 1:25:13Speaker 1: crazy looking back?
- 1:25:14Speaker 2: It's crazy looking back.
- 1:25:15Speaker 1: You ever wake up and just say, like, what the
- 1:25:18Speaker 1: fuck did I do?
- 1:25:19Speaker 2: Look what I did. Yeah, look what I did. Because
- 1:25:21Speaker 2: when you're doing it, you're always in that mindset of
- 1:25:25Speaker 2: doing it.
- 1:25:26Speaker 1: Yes.
- 1:25:26Speaker 2: You're not enjoying it.
- 1:25:27Speaker 3: Right.
- 1:25:28Speaker 2: Right.
- 1:25:28Speaker 1: You just sit and grind.
- 1:25:29Speaker 2: You can't sit around and enjoy it. Right. You got
- 1:25:32Speaker 2: to stay focused and dedicated. You got to be always,
- 1:25:36Speaker 2: you know, mindful.
- 1:25:38Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:25:39Speaker 2: You know, so there's no enjoying all that when you
- 1:25:43Speaker 2: have success like that.
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: Well, I think that mindset, too, is the only way
- 1:25:47Speaker 1: you become a champion like yourself.
- 1:25:49Speaker 2: Exactly.
- 1:25:50Speaker 1: That just keep going, keep grinding mindset, don't enjoy anything.
- 1:25:53Speaker 2: Yep, yep. You enjoy it later. Yeah. After it's all
- 1:25:57Speaker 2: over with. I only enjoy it now.
- 1:26:00Speaker 1: There's such a small handful of Mr. Olympias. I mean,
- 1:26:03Speaker 1: that is the elite of the elite club to be
- 1:26:06Speaker 1: in for bodybuilders.
- 1:26:07Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:26:08Speaker 1: I mean, you've got to have an amazing sense of satisfaction.
- 1:26:12Speaker 2: And a lot of guys that win it, win it
- 1:26:14Speaker 2: multiple times.
- 1:26:15Speaker 1: Yeah, why is that?
- 1:26:16Speaker 2: Because it's only elite number of guys can be Mr. Olympia.
- 1:26:23Speaker 2: And once you get there, you found the formula. Yeah.
- 1:26:28Speaker 2: And it takes a while for somebody to come in
- 1:26:31Speaker 2: and knock you off because nobody's found that formula like
- 1:26:34Speaker 2: you have. Eight in a row for me. Eight in
- 1:26:38Speaker 2: a row for Lee Haney.
- 1:26:39Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 1:26:40Speaker 2: Seven for the Arnold. Six for Yates. Cutler, four. You know,
- 1:26:46Speaker 2: look at all those. Look at this. How many guys
- 1:26:50Speaker 2: I just named, and how many years is that?
- 1:26:52Speaker 1: That's a lot of years, right?
- 1:26:53Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:26:54Speaker 1: I mean, what an elite group of human beings.
- 1:26:56Speaker 2: Just me, Lee, and, I don't know, it's 25 years almost. Yeah.
- 1:27:05Speaker 1: That's crazy.
- 1:27:06Speaker 2: Yeah. Three guys, 25 years.
- 1:27:09Speaker 1: When you say the right formula, it's the right amount
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: of training, the right amount of rest, the right amount
- 1:27:14Speaker 1: of food, the right nutrition, all the above. Yeah.
- 1:27:19Speaker 2: And that's hard to do.
- 1:27:20Speaker 1: Hard to dial it in.
- 1:27:21Speaker 2: It's hard to dial it in.
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: And did you dial it in with the help of
- 1:27:25Speaker 1: a coach?
- 1:27:25Speaker 2: Nutritionist.
- 1:27:26Speaker 1: Just a nutritionist.
- 1:27:27Speaker 2: I couldn't have done it by myself.
- 1:27:29Speaker 1: But what about a coach?
- 1:27:30Speaker 2: That's the same thing.
- 1:27:31Speaker 1: Same thing. But does a nutritionist maintain your schedule for
- 1:27:35Speaker 1: your workouts as well?
- 1:27:36Speaker 2: Yeah. I had my own workout schedule.
- 1:27:39Speaker 1: So you did that all yourself?
- 1:27:41Speaker 2: All myself, yeah. He did all my other stuff.
- 1:27:43Speaker 1: So he did all the food, made sure your body's well-fueled,
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: but all the weightlifting, all that was set up by you.
- 1:27:51Speaker 2: Yeah, that was me.
- 1:27:52Speaker 1: How did you know when it's enough and when it's
- 1:27:54Speaker 1: not enough and when it's too much?
- 1:27:56Speaker 2: Well, you can only do so much. You can only
- 1:27:58Speaker 2: do what you can do. You know your limitations, and
- 1:28:02Speaker 2: you know what you got to do. So once you...
- 1:28:05Speaker 2: Figured all this out. That's your formula. And that's what
- 1:28:10Speaker 2: you take from year to year.
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: And that formula is based on your body.
- 1:28:14Speaker 2: Your body. Everybody's body is different.
- 1:28:18Speaker 1: Did you ever have guys coming up to you? I mean,
- 1:28:20Speaker 1: you must have had guys coming up to you saying,
- 1:28:22Speaker 1: what do I have to do to be like you?
- 1:28:25Speaker 2: All the time.
- 1:28:25Speaker 1: What did you tell them?
- 1:28:27Speaker 2: High personal trainer.
- 1:28:29Speaker 1: That's what I had.
- 1:28:31Speaker 2: I wasn't able to do all that on my own.
- 1:28:37Speaker 2: The guy who gave me the free membership to the gym,
- 1:28:40Speaker 2: Brian Dobson, is the guy that taught me all this stuff.
- 1:28:44Speaker 2: He taught me how to pose. He taught me how
- 1:28:46Speaker 2: to train as a bodybuilder and not a powerlifter. It's
- 1:28:49Speaker 2: two different types of training. He taught me everything I
- 1:28:53Speaker 2: needed to know, and he was kind of like my
- 1:28:55Speaker 2: personal trainer. Yeah. You know, if he wouldn't have taught
- 1:28:59Speaker 2: me all that stuff, I wouldn't have knew nothing. And
- 1:29:03Speaker 2: so I always tell people, if you want to know something,
- 1:29:06Speaker 2: learn from somebody that knows all this stuff. And that's
- 1:29:10Speaker 2: how you get the right formula.
- 1:29:13Speaker 1: Was this guy with you throughout your whole career?
- 1:29:15Speaker 2: No, no.
- 1:29:16Speaker 1: Just in the beginning, just to teach you the basics?
- 1:29:17Speaker 2: Basics, yeah.
- 1:29:18Speaker 1: And then from then on, it was all you?
- 1:29:20Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to get other trainers and nutritionists. I
- 1:29:26Speaker 2: had some... Trainers and nutritionists that weren't that good along
- 1:29:30Speaker 2: the way, like a couple. And I finally found the
- 1:29:34Speaker 2: right guy from Flex Wheeler. He turned me on to
- 1:29:40Speaker 2: the guy who helped me win my first Olympia, Chad Nichols.
- 1:29:43Speaker 2: He's the guy that found the right formula for me.
- 1:29:48Speaker 1: And when you had this right formula, how many workouts
- 1:29:52Speaker 1: a day were you doing?
- 1:29:54Speaker 2: One.
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: Just one?
- 1:29:55Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:29:55Speaker 1: Just one long workout?
- 1:29:57Speaker 2: An hour and a half.
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: An hour and a half every day, that's it?
- 1:30:00Speaker 2: An hour and 15 minutes.
- 1:30:02Speaker 1: Really?
- 1:30:03Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:30:03Speaker 1: So it was just about the intensity.
- 1:30:04Speaker 2: It was about the intensity.
- 1:30:06Speaker 1: And was there a time where you were working out
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: more than that?
- 1:30:08Speaker 2: Never.
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: You felt like it was too much?
- 1:30:09Speaker 2: No.
- 1:30:10Speaker 1: You just always had it dialed in?
- 1:30:11Speaker 2: I always had it dialed in.
- 1:30:13Speaker 1: Wow.
- 1:30:14Speaker 2: You know, I had to do two hours of cardio
- 1:30:15Speaker 2: a day.
- 1:30:16Speaker 1: Two hours of cardio?
- 1:30:17Speaker 2: An hour in the morning, an hour at night after
- 1:30:19Speaker 2: I got off work. Wow. Yeah.
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: What kind of shit? Like elliptical or something?
- 1:30:23Speaker 2: I did Stairmaster. I would do the elliptical. And the treadmill.
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: You would run on a treadmill?
- 1:30:30Speaker 2: Well, I ain't going to call it running.
- 1:30:34Speaker 1: I'm just thinking you're so big.
- 1:30:35Speaker 2: Yes, well, I call it running.
- 1:30:38Speaker 1: What did you do?
- 1:30:39Speaker 2: Just kind of fast walking? Yeah, like two, about three
- 1:30:42Speaker 2: miles an hour.
- 1:30:43Speaker 1: Oh, okay, okay, okay.
- 1:30:44Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
- 1:30:44Speaker 1: Yeah, that makes more sense.
- 1:30:45Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for an hour. An hour.
- 1:30:47Speaker 1: So this is just to burn off the fat.
- 1:30:49Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Wow.
- 1:30:50Speaker 1: Goddamn, you must hate cardio now.
- 1:30:52Speaker 2: No, I still do it.
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: You still do it?
- 1:30:54Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 1:30:54Speaker 1: But I would imagine that that would be enough cardio
- 1:30:57Speaker 1: for the rest of your fucking life, two hours a day,
- 1:30:59Speaker 1: every day. I'd be like, oh, my God, if I
- 1:31:01Speaker 1: never see another piece of cardio equipment again for the
- 1:31:03Speaker 1: rest of my life.
- 1:31:04Speaker 2: Well, you get used to it after a while, you know.
- 1:31:05Speaker 1: What do you do now?
- 1:31:07Speaker 2: I can only do, I do bike now. I can
- 1:31:09Speaker 2: walk on the treadmill, but I have to hold on.
- 1:31:11Speaker 2: Hold on the handles. Yeah. So I don't do it.
- 1:31:13Speaker 2: I just do the bike. Yeah.
- 1:31:16Speaker 1: Well, listen, man, after this show is over, I'm going
- 1:31:18Speaker 1: to connect you to Dr. Neil Reardon, who is in Dallas,
- 1:31:22Speaker 1: and I really hope that he can help you. It
- 1:31:24Speaker 1: would be great if he could. The next time I'm
- 1:31:28Speaker 1: coming here.
- 1:31:28Speaker 2: I'm never giving up on him.
- 1:31:30Speaker 1: I know you're not giving up on anything, man. Guys
- 1:31:32Speaker 1: like you don't give up on anything.
- 1:31:34Speaker 2: I'm going to walk again unassisted. I guarantee that.
- 1:31:37Speaker 1: I believe you. If anybody can do it, you can
- 1:31:39Speaker 1: do it.
- 1:31:39Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. If I can't do it, it can't be done.
- 1:31:42Speaker 1: I want to connect you to him and wish you
- 1:31:46Speaker 1: the best of luck. I appreciate you, brother. Thank you
- 1:31:48Speaker 1: for coming in here, man.
- 1:31:48Speaker 2: I appreciate you inviting me. Oh, I got a new
- 1:31:52Speaker 2: book out. Oh, okay. What is it? It's called Yeah, Buddy. Yeah, Buddy.
- 1:31:55Speaker 2: That's one of my sayings.
- 1:31:56Speaker 1: That is one of your sayings.
- 1:31:57Speaker 2: Get it on Amazon. And my company is Ronnie Coleman
- 1:32:01Speaker 2: Signature Series. That's how I make my living now. I
- 1:32:04Speaker 2: own my own supplement company, RonnieColeman.net is that. And my
- 1:32:10Speaker 2: book is called Yeah, Buddy, one of my favorite sayings.
- 1:32:13Speaker 2: yeah but in my incredible story you can get it
- 1:32:15Speaker 2: on Amazon.
- 1:32:16Speaker 1: Alright folks go get that book go to RonnieColeman.net RonnieColeman.net
- 1:32:21Speaker 1: get some of.
- 1:32:22Speaker 2: Those supplements we got 25 30 different products.
- 1:32:25Speaker 1: Beautiful I hope we sell a bunch of them.
- 1:32:27Speaker 2: Oh we have been selling a bunch
- 1:32:29Speaker 1: Sell some more thank you brother appreciate you Ronnie Coleman
- 1:32:32Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen yeah buddy that was great