It's with a heavy heart that @themrsfitho and I have decided NOT to be competing this weekend 😔 My eyes are getting way more sensitive and my headaches are increasing in frequency. I'm no quitter but when you start to be unable to read things properly... that's a red flag that something is really off 🚩 I'm all about going hard or going home but I know my limits and before there's any permanent or long lasting damage to my eyes, kidneys, or liver, I'm going to draw the line here ⚕️ It's gotten to the point where I can't even reply back to my clients, change their diets, or give them new workouts because as soon as I open Microsoft Word and see that big white screen my eyes feel like someone is slowly squeezing them into my skull ☠️ It's one thing to affect my health but another to affect my clients and my business... 😢 As of this year I've now completed 20 freaking NPC shows!!! 😳 In this season alone: 4 shows done back to back, 4 first place class wins, 1 second place class win, and 1 Overall title... 🏆 It's been a good season and a very very educational one. On top of it all, I got to meet THE @thebranchwarren!!! This is a guy I used to listen to religiously while doing cardio for my VERY FIRST NPC show ever about 5 yrs ago! If someone told me 5 yrs later and after 18 NPC shows Branch Warren would be walking over a stage to hand me an Overall trophy, shake my hand, compliment my physique, and tell me to go to Nationals... I 100% would not believe a single word 😂 There's just no way! But when you follow your passion, you'll be amazed at how Life will unfold for you. Life is good right now and that's all the win I need 😊 Time to apologize to my body, give it TONS of Pedialyte, and finally focus purely on recovering... 💙

#tbt to what seems like a whole other lifetime but really it was only a few years ago 😂 Damn I looked young... Well, stress can definitely age you 😔 Side Note: @themrsfitho kinda loathes me for this but the greater majority of my friends are women 😅 In my defense, I really don't like watching sports and drinking beer 🍻 I find it boring and unproductive in my opinion... BUT I do LOVE cooking with new pans and recipes plus randomly organizing things 🤣 So you can kinda see why I don't get along with a lot of guys 😁 To @theraquel_ on the far left... I know you're doing so well on the West Coast. I see nothing but great things keeping up with you on social media 🙏 Keep it up and keep doing what you're doing in medicine. It's a unique approach that I think will definitely open a lot of people's eyes to things other than just popping a pill when symptoms arise in hopes that it'll get better. The world of medicine is changing especially with the down turn of healthcare reform. People need to be more preemptive with their health before it's too late and the cost are too high. I always tell my clients either you pay now or you pay later but either way you're going to have to pay.

Holy crap, what a freaking weekend! I'm still coming down and recovering from it all 💪 Everyone has asked how did i do it... I'm not going to lie, it was HARD keeping this from her. We live together in a studio apartment with our dog and no doors other than the bathroom. So if I'm not busy at work (which i work about 50-55 a week), I'm either taking care of the dog or with my now fiancee. Finding the time and the privacy to plan this out was nothing short of a miracle 😂 First, i knew she l loved opals over diamonds. It's her absolute favorite stone so i did my research. There are about 5 to 8 different opals in the world and the crust of North America only really holds 1 type which is the most common of them all, the white opal. To get rare specialty type opals like the black opal, mermaid opal, or the dragonfire opal you had to order them from Australia. I knew she also loved pictures and prints of galaxies so i decided on a rare Australian black opal with red and blue streaks. 7 weeks of transportation and customs i finally got the damn thing to a retired ring maker in Portland Oregon. She was suggested by an online client of mine who lived in the area. Not only does she specialize in HANDMADE rings, she specially made opal rings 🙏 She emailed new pics of what she had in mind and i had to keep it short with her as i didn't have much time to myself to write her long emails. We agreed on a design and casted a ring out of silver. 3 weeks later it was ready to go! 💍 BUT... There was a problem. 3 days before Badger State Championships, she emailed me saying the opal is too dark for a ring. It wouldn't catch enough light on the setting its in to properly show off its colors 😔 So she suggested a trade. In 2016 Ethiopia opened their opal market to the world for the first time ever. Due to the elevation and higher mineral content of the Earth's crust there, the white and black opals where significantly lighter and brighter than any of the other opals in the world. She suggested to trade my Australian black opal for her faceted white Ethiopian opal 🙌 2 days later, we're engaged! The end! LOL #wcw

I had to fact check with several mutual friends today bc I thought maybe this was a hoax or something. It seems that the Bodybuilding world has lost a legend as @jeffphotographermaster is confirmed to have passed away. For those who are not in the Bodybuilding world, Jeff was a famous photographer who did over 200 magazine covers for RX Muscle, Muscle & Development, and Flex Magazine. Chances are even if you're not in the Bodybuilding industry, you've definitely seen his work somehow as he's also the photographer for thousands of fitness related articles all across the internet. I've known the big guy for almost 8 yrs now. Every month or so I'd catch up with him but it was mostly about my dogs. The man loved rescues (especially pitbull rescues) and would remind me constantly that he did. I wish I had driven up the Michigan so he could've met my pups 😞 What some ppl might not know is Jeff suffered from DISH disease (diffused idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis). It's a form of arthritis that causes tendons and ligaments to calcify into basically bone causing horrible back pain. About a month ago he told me he finally met up with that NYC he's been talking about that invested a NEW surgical procedure to help STOP the calcification through a unique way of bone fusion. I couldn't believe it but he showed me the X Rays as proof. I was so happy for him!!! The man has been dealing with this shit since he was 24 🤦🏻‍♂️ so obviously this was HUGE news but he was still recovering... Wherever you are big man (I know you usually call me "big man" but I'm really not), I hope it's a place where you're no longer dealing with that shit. Thank you for the honor of getting to know you, letting me see your work, and always complementing my rescue doggos. Other than that I'm really at a loss for words nor can I think straight atm. Thank you for the vacuum picture that went viral on Reddit which caused me to have much of the social media following that I have now 🙏 I owe a lot to you for this picture and yeah, like you said I was Classic before there was a Classic division 😊 You've made some of my biggest dreams come true and I just cannot be more thankful for that.

Some ppl think Bodybuilding is like a Couch to 5k, Mud Runner, or Spartan Race where you can just start moving and do well. There's nothing wrong with those challenges but just moving and dieting usually won't win you anything in Bodybuilding. Why? Because you need to BUILD the BODY to present it on stage. It's literally in the name of the sport 🤣 You don't build or grow much at all in a caloric deficit. If anything you lose muscle tissue in a cut. So why do people think they can magically grow into their dream body in an unhealthy extreme caloric deficit? 🤷🏻‍♂️ It doesn't make sense and it's actually a recipe for failure because no one wants to get up there on stage wearing less than your regular underwear covers in front of a giant panel of judges and hundreds of people to be judged head to toe on only how you look then being told you don't look good enough to even get a medal/trophy. That's devastating for some ppl yet many people do it 🙅🏻‍♂️ If you want to do a show, do what @geotheleo33 did. Do an off season to grow THEN cut off just only the fat from your body by being laser sharp & precise with your nutrition and programming, and finally step on stage. Just jumping into this is like watching the NFL and then thinking you can get up off the couch after doing barely anything to try to get signed up in the Draft 🤦🏻‍♂️ It takes way more than just exercise and fat loss to win a Bodybuilding show. As I look at these check in pictures of George, I can't fucking believe it. The fucker looks better than me and in such a short time 🤣 WTF 😭 I have Men's Physique pros, Classic Pros, but I haven't made a Bodybuilding Pro yet... George, you're going to be my ticket to checking off one of my bucket list items 🏆 Let's get you that pro card soon 💪 But first, let's win in New Mexico 🔥 #peakweek

Same energy then, same energy now 🤣 Happy Memorial Day to all that have served our nation 🇺🇲 But also those currently serving the military🎖️🪖 I guess the IDF does count since Israel was the first major non-NATO ally in US history and we do spend millions every year to fund their military 😅 To the US & our allies military personnel, thank you for your service especially those who have died doing the work that sometimes needs to be done in order for us civilians to live our peaceful lives because there are some crazy leaders out there who will not listen to just mere words. I think it takes a certain kind of person to really excel in the military and @themrsfitho is definitely that type of person. Military ppl always make the best clients because they thrive off of structure, routine, and are accustomed to always pushing themselves to their limits both physically and mentally. It's actually perfect for sports in general. That's something I've always admired about veterans as this mindset, strength, and drive is highly uncommon in the civilian population due to how peaceful our every day lives are thanks to our veterans. Needless to say, the US doesn't do the best to take care of our veterans after they have served especially from my experience working on VA clinics 🙄 Outside of today, which is dedicated to mourning those who died in service, thank your veterans every day. It can be from saying thank you out loud to paying for their meal/drink in line to giving them a hand if it looks like they need it. Where our govt falls short, we civilians can at the very least show our appreciation. Side Note: Military women 😍🙏🙌👌🤌 Talk about strong independent women... Not that bullshit smoke you often hear. No, these women are built different. Perfection imo 🤤 That's the peak of attractiveness for me 😂

What kind of meals should you indulge in when you want to go all out on food for a day but still want to make optimal muscle growth instead of more fat accumulation during a caloric surplus phase in your fitness journey? (Wow that's a really long question but I think you guys get what I mean 🤔) High protein? High fat? Or high carb meals? It's often pushed in the fitness industry that eating more carbs would cause more muscle growth. It's not uncommon to see ppl posting about smashing some cookies or downing donuts for "gains". However based upon the scientific literature this is NOT true. Actually overfeeds of high carbs and or high fats resulted in higher accumulation of body fat and lower growth of lean body mass versus overfeeds high in protein. In fact it was also found in the same meta analysis that high protein overfeeds was protective against fat gain during times of caloric surpluses (PMID: 29399253). Also it's shown that overfeeds in protein intake causes increased muscle tissue growth in healthy adults (PMID: 25169440) ESPECIALLY more so if they are ALSO regularly performing resistance training (PMID: 22958314). So between 2 pints of Ben & Jerry's for "gains" vs say a beautiful filet mignon or some fancy pan seared duck 🤤, which is the better option if you still want to prioritize your results? The option with the higher protein seems to be the right choice. However that's not to say why not just eat the Ben & Jerry's PLUS some steak instead of bit*hing out? 🤣 Do a bit of cardio for the next few days and you're good to go 👍 I call that "balance" 😂 Tonight's Ben & Jerry's can say hello to my steak from earlier 💪 How about just whatever you do, include protein in it? 🤷🏻‍♂️ What you eat some shit? Eat it but just add some protein in it. Simple 🙄 I'll say hi to my abs in a few days. Absence makes the heart grow fonder or whatever they say. Feeling some Baki leg vibes tonight 🙏 Some rest and recovery work really makes them feel like fluffy pillows 🥰

Felt a bit juicy after glutes today so I had to humble down a bit by comparing myself to my idol: Machio 😂 One day!🙏 Anyways, today's topic: Misinterpreting the mental battle to overcome pain as a pathway to muscle hypertrophy is a common mistake because you hear it all the time in the fitness industry. "If it hurts, keep pushing", "No pain, no gain", "Feel the burn!", etc. Actually feeling the pain/burning sensation is just muscle metabolism. Muscle metabolism is so far shown to do very little for muscle hypertrophy. What that sensation can tell you is that you might be working the target muscle. I say might bc pain can often times be referred pain due to tightness and not actually mechanical tension but rather a byproduct of poor mobility. So overall it's an good indicator for hitting the target muscle but that's the best benefit you'll get from a concentration of muscle metabolites. Yes, metabolites! The pain/burn is also often thought to be caused by lactic acid which is absolutely not true at all (PMID: 24142455). It's actually caused by a combination of lactate, hydrogen, & ATP. This also means that feeling sore is not a good indicator of stimulating muscle hypertrophy either. For example: Marathon runners often feel burning, pain, & soreness yet their activation of muscle hypertrophy is very low due to the low mechanical tension that comes from running as an exercise. The reason for this is bc the proven main driving force for muscle hypertrophy specifically is mechanical tension. Forcing a muscle to failure from excessive metabolite build up or electrolyte imbalance stopping the muscle's ability to contract (Peripheral Fatigue) is NOT the same as forcing a muscle to failure due to the inability to contract under high enough mechanical tension (Central Fatigue). This is why they have different terminology. It's not about keep pushing until you can't push any more. It's about pushing against a resistance as HARD as you can within a range that optimizes both stamina and force output at the same time to force the body to adapt by activating muscle hypertrophy (Wallmann: Sports-Specific Rehabilitation 2007, pg. 87-95) & (PMID: 31294822)

Exercise selection DOES matter. Don't just throw a bunch of pushing, pulling, & leg movements together for no reason and expect your body to look exactly how you want it to. Design your workouts around what YOU need on YOUR physique. Just adding more weight to your body isn't much progress especially if you just look like a bigger version of your old self. With @dela_fit it's obvious we needed legs but that doesn't mean you just give the man a bunch of leg exercises. 1st there's the issue with imbalances caused by over development of certain muscles. For example: Giving someone a ton of compound movements when they are already quad dominant is pretty silly. Yeah they will have a bigger leg but their proportions will be the same in relation to other muscles in the area as the dominance will play a huge factor in motor units activated during compound movements. If anything, with Mitch, we are moving towards more unilateral movements to work around his tight left hip, adductors with both adduction & thigh extension movements, lots of hamstring shortening of semimembranosus & semitendinosus using hip extension so that bicep femoris is taking up the majority of the load (look at those beautiful hamstrings now 👌), lots of eccentric loading through the posterior chain to stretch out a lot of tightness from powerlifting, finally a lot of stretch mediated hypertrophy training up top to really shape the outer fibers of those shoulder & chest muscles. It's not about just doing a generic workout plan you can probably find on Bodybuilding.com. Once you get further along, you have to start thinking about HOW you want to shape your body and what tools/techniques can you use to chisel out those little details that really make a statue or a sculpture look like an expensive work of art. Mass without changes in proportions is really just you zooming in on yourself to make yourself look bigger 🤣 That's not change. You can gain 40-100 lbs but if your proportions/shapes stay the same due to poor programming then you'll look just the same. There should be a reason for every exercise in your programming in order to create the look you want instead of blindly moving around weight.

After a while, people will simply say you look a certain way because of genetics. I only hear it often because my wife and I no longer do chest and arms together (her chest & arms grow faster than mine 😭). So when we are apart I can hear what others say about her in the gym. The "too manly" comment is a funny one only because it oftentimes comes from dudes smaller than her. However I've heard a lot of women say my wife looks like that because of genetics: "she's just born that way", "she has always looked that way", "she's just lucky to be like that" 🤣 I can't really vouch for my wife's genetics because on the left was one of her first check in pics with me. One of her main concerns as a client that was written on her questionnaire was: "If I ever look like I'm just genetically not made for this, please just let me now." I told her you won't know what you're good or not good at until you try. Not just try a little bit like one or two shows. Consistently trying as in several shows and I'll let you know after all of that 🤷🏻‍♂️ Here we are several shows later. Obviously she needs to be leaner. At every show I've always tried to get her in leaner and leaner. The very WEIRD thing is on the left she looks very skinny but I promise you, and my wife will agree with this, she was all body fat with almost no muscle tissue, essentially "skinny fat". This was because of severe depression causing loss of appetite which lead to her lowest adult weight of 86 lbs on the left. On the right was the night before the @wj_classic weighing in leaner at 124 lbs 5 yrs later. Does she have the "genetics" for Wellness? Imo, yah 😂 Who would've thought those legs would blow up the way they have? 💪🥩 You don't know your potential until you really try BUT just because someone looks a certain way doesn't always mean they didn't put in hard work. Yeah there are genetic anomalies out there, unfortunately my wife is just NOT one of them 🤷🏻‍♂️ Instead she's just someone who works really fucking hard all the time. Her genetics is mostly hard work 🧬 because she definitely didn't look this way half a decade ago and she definitely wasn't born with it 😅 She works harder than I do 😂

I feel like @geotheleo33 could break a Mexican coke bottle with those ass cheeks 🍾 Nothing but PURE FAT stripping off of him this prep 💪 It's easy to come in skinny & shredded. It's hard to come in big & shredded. Slash calories TOO much or TOO fast, cut your carbs out TOO quickly, and you might cause the body to use the Alanine Cycle TOO much. This is where a lot of people in general go wrong with diet & exercise just to purely lose weight. Forget about weight. It's fat loss that you want. What is the Alanine Cycle? It's your body's response to low blood sugar levels. Fatty oxidation metabolism takes a while to start moving because there's a whole process that must happen within the fat cells first then fatty acids are shuttled away to be processed for energy. You can expect it to take well over an hour for fatty acid metabolism to start fully running. Whereas the alanine cycle serves 2 purposes: 1. This is your body's way of preventing low blood sugar levels from causing you to pass out. It's a fast biochemical process meaning it'll start within minutes, not hours. There are far less steps in this process & no need for transport of anything as glucose can be used instantly. This is why the body is faster at burning muscle tissue than it is at burning fatty acids. This is a huge part of the reason why it's easy to lose WEIGHT but not as easy to lose body fat nearly as fast. Muscle can broken down very quickly in long term catabolic states which is most of a show prep or weight loss challenge 🤮🤷🏻‍♂️ 2. Less muscle tissue on the body will lead to a lower basal metabolic rate (BMR) due to the fact that muscle tissue REQUIRES calories to be sustained. This means the more muscle tissue you have, the higher your BMR will be in order to sustain that amount of muscle tissue. This also means if you break down a lot of muscle tissue due to reckless cutting methods, your BMR will also be pretty WRECKED resulting in massive rebounds often seen with Bodybuilding competitors but also The Biggest Loser contestants. Do this wrong and you can have long term metabolic issues. You want to keep every ounce of muscle possible when cutting/dieting.

You know how some farm houses have a rooster to wake up people at the crack ass of dawn? Well, I don't live on a farm and I'm pretty freaking sure I don't own a rooster 🐓 Instead, I have this thing waking me up at the crack ass of dawn for no goddamn reason... 😮‍💨😂🤦🏻‍♂️ Before @tanquitto, I didn't even know there was a special type of pit called the #bluenosepitbull 🤷🏻‍♂️ It's like a cross between a grey land seal 🦭 but with the vocal chords of a baby cow 🐮