#994 - Sam Sulek - The Endless Pursuit of Progress

Summary

Modern Wisdom #994 — Sam Sulek: The Endless Pursuit of Progress

Release Date: September 15, 2025
Host: Chris Williamson
Guest: Sam Sulek

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Episode Overview

This episode features Chris Williamson in conversation with Sam Sulek—a prominent bodybuilder, fitness content creator, and exemplar of authenticity in an increasingly performative digital world. The discussion ranges from Sam's early obsessions, the philosophy of progress, dealing with criticism, body dysmorphia, the realities behind content creation, and the discipline required for elite pursuits. Sulek’s unvarnished approach to fitness and social media makes for an insightful, relatable, and often humorous examination of growth, motivation, and self-realization.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins of Obsession & Authenticity

• Obsession Transfer:
  Sam’s journey into bodybuilding was less about competition and more about channeling his innate need for obsession (00:04–02:31).
  • Gymnastics Foundation: "It was just fun. I never had to be dragged to do it." — Sam Sulek (01:43)
• Authenticity in Posting:
  Sulek resists performative influencer culture, emphasizing documenting genuine routines and interests over manufacturing content trends (04:21–06:50).
  • Not Chasing Trends: “The best thing you could do is pick something you already do and just document that.” — Sam Sulek (05:36)

Balancing Transparency & Performance

• Challenges of Public Persona:
  As his audience has grown, Sam remains adamant about not letting the pressure of an audience change his workout ethic or authenticity (09:20–11:15).
  • On Being Watched: “If anything, it's a little bit of an accountability factor...” — Sam Sulek (08:45)
• Relatability Through Realness:
  Chris points out that highly transparent and authentic content, even showing discomfort or failures, is key to audience connection (03:42–04:21).
  • “Authenticity breeds relatability.” — Chris Williamson (03:47)
• Performativeness is Inevitable:
  Both recognize there’s always a bit of a gap between someone’s real self and their recorded persona, but striving for minimal distance is the goal (15:09–15:19).

Dealing with Criticism & Self-Worth

• The Nature of Hate Online:
  Sam explains that hate comments mean content is reaching new people, a sign of growth, and should be viewed with detachment (18:16–21:00).
  • Quote: “If you post on social media, you’re asking to get hated on. But if you’re unapologetically into something... it doesn’t matter.” — Sam Sulek (16:05)
• Resilience & Stoicism:
  Cultivating resilience toward criticism is a key lesson—separating critique from hate and not internalizing random negativity (19:25–21:00).
  • “It’s your responsibility to try to be impervious to it...you’re suffering in your own mind because it was your choice to let it in.” — Sam Sulek (20:30)
• Philosophy of Stoic Acceptance:
  Sam describes his evolving stoic mindset—controlling what one can, not lamenting what cannot be changed, and recognizing responsibility for one’s own emotional state (21:00–22:38).
  • “Was today a good day? If I make myself upset about like the stupidest things, well then I'm stressing myself out for no reason.” — Sam Sulek (21:02)

The Reality of Consistent Progress

• The Endless Grind:
  Both Chris and Sam stress the necessity of doing repetitive, unglamorous “boring work” for consistent progress, even at elite levels (32:04–35:45).
  • “It’s the world champions that are prepared to do the most boring work with the least complaining.” — Chris Williamson (34:05)
• Motivation vs. Discipline:
  Sam doesn’t consciously think about discipline—the workout is a non-negotiable. The hard-headedness of consistency has more value than fleeting motivation (71:31–73:00).
• "There is no... the idea of, okay, I need to take a break today or I need to take a rest day today... I treat it as this, like, this is going to happen." — Sam Sulek (71:31)
• Adapting Goals Over Time:
  As Sam evolves, so do his goals—moving away from ultra-extreme standards or desires as needs and perspectives shift (60:34–63:11).
  • “The bigger I’ve gotten, the more I’m content with the size I already am.” — Sam Sulek (60:34)
  • “If at any point that would happen, then that’s what I would do.” [on stepping away from bodybuilding] — Sam Sulek (63:11)

Social Media, Authenticity & Changing One’s Mind

• Growth in Public:
  Discussing the pressure of having past statements called out as “hypocrisy” vs. simple evolution of thought—maintaining openness to changing one's mind publicly (80:42–82:45).
  • “If you know that you have had a few things where you look back and say, yeah, I actually don't do... what I did at the time.” — Sam Sulek (81:52)
• Influence on Followers:
  Sam shares touching stories of fans—especially significant transformations from followers who applied his advice on discipline and consistency (48:53–52:57).
  • “When someone does that, honestly out of everything... I'm always more impressed... Like that's what I want to hear.” — Sam Sulek (52:25)

Body Image, Male Dysmorphia & Progress

• On Body Dysmorphia:
  Post-competition body fluctuations are tough, but Sam has developed comfort in his own skin, not chasing perfection for others (44:07–46:39).
  • “I'm not so concerned with how do I look today for everyone who's going to see me.” — Sam Sulek (45:56)
• Social Rewards & Gender Realities:
  Discussion about motivations—Sam humorously confirms that, contrary to the stereotype, bulking up is more respected by men than it is attractive to women (53:25–54:49; 54:50–55:21).
  • “If you get big enough, girls will talk to you because... they will come up and ask you for a picture for their dad.” — Sam Sulek (54:50)

Diet, Mistakes & Muscle Building

• Dieting: Consistency & Simplicity:
  Muscle building is primarily about calorie/protein tracking and adherence. Mistakes often come from overcomplicating or lacking consistency (87:06–89:26).
  • “Nobody’s going to be on their diet 50% of the time... That’s not going to work.” — Sam Sulek (87:06)
  • “Five minutes unfiltered in a pantry, you can completely undo all your work.” — Sam Sulek (88:43)
• Nutrition Fads & Bro-science:
  Chris and Sam reminisce about past diet fads, with Sam advocating for basic, steady protocols and learning from trial and error, rather than chasing “secret hacks” (99:36–102:10).
• Bioavailability:
  Sam stresses importance of counting only “direct animal proteins” toward protein targets for optimal muscle building (98:26–99:36).

Evidence-Based Fitness & Individualization

• Skepticism Toward “Perfect” Systems:
  Sam is wary of elitist, “evidence-based” factions that dismiss all other methods, emphasizing the importance of experience, individual response, and enjoyment (105:22–113:00).
  • “It’s a snake oil of an idea instead of a product.” — Sam Sulek (107:41)
  • “I’m not so much against any particular style... I’m not pleased to see people so unopen to discussion...” — Sam Sulek (113:00)
• What Really Matters:
  Progress comes from experimentation, commitment, and tailoring one’s approach—science can inform, but not replace, experience and consistency (110:26–111:13).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Consistency:
  “Those are the glorious, gloryless battles which, when won, add up to a seamless victory.” — Sam Sulek (31:00)

• On Social Media Success:
  “A lot of it... just could not be predicted but happened to work out really well.” — Sam Sulek (13:47)

• On Criticism:
  "If you’re unapologetically into something... you wouldn’t be offended by criticism. You’d think I’m weird for criticizing you.” — Sam Sulek (16:05)

• On Motivation:
  "I want to have an understanding that I know I can get where I want to go. ...Maybe in the beginning it was from optimal delusion, but you might even need some of that just to get started." — Sam Sulek (41:00)

• On Eating Post-Show:
  "I've never blown my calorie deficit from breakfast. It's always later in the day." — Sam Sulek (90:56)

• On Changing Practice:
  “I used to do basically three to four times the amount of volume in a workout that I do now.” — Sam Sulek (94:36)

• On Enjoyment vs. Efficiency:
  "I'm half chasing maximum enjoyment because I like to be in the gym." — Sam Sulek (109:18)

• Advice to Young Lifters:
  “If you're trying to follow the beaten path, you might miss opportunities to do awesome things—really do what you want to do instead.” — Sam Sulek (38:23)

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Practical Takeaways & Recommendations

• Document What You Already Love:
  Don't try to fit into trends; let your genuine routines and interests shape your content.
• Be Accountable—But Not Performative:
  Accept the spotlight as motivation but resist altering your values or process for the audience.
• Stoic Mindset for Criticism:
  Treat hate as a mark of growing reach, not personal failure—embrace control over your reactions.
• Prioritize Enjoyment for Adherence:
  Find a training and nutrition approach that you enjoy—the best plan is the one you'll stick with.
• Update Your Views Proudly:
  Growth involves changing your mind; don’t fear being “called out” for evolving.
• Progress is Built on Boredom:
  Embrace the mundane—“boring work” is where transformation is forged.

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Noteworthy Segments: Timestamps

• [00:04–02:31] Sam’s journey from gymnastics to bodybuilding.
• [04:21–06:50] Authenticity and content creation advice.
• [09:20–11:05] Accountability factor of filming workouts.
• [16:05–19:25] Handling hate and criticism.
• [21:00–22:38] Stoic reflections on self-worth and stress management.
• [34:05–35:45] The necessity and value of “boring work.”
• [44:07–46:39] Body image, dysmorphia, and finding comfort.
• [52:57–54:21] What impresses Sam most about followers.
• [60:34–63:11] Adjusting goals and weighing health vs. aesthetics.
• [71:31–73:00] The discipline–motivation dichotomy.
• [87:06–89:26] Common diet mistakes and the pitfalls of inconsistency.
• [105:22–113:00] Evidence-based vs. experiential training approaches.
• [115:47–128:55] Sam’s “desert island” top 10 exercises for bodybuilding.

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Final Thoughts

Chris and Sam deliver an in-depth, refreshingly honest look at the psychology, discipline, and philosophies underpinning both bodybuilding and personal growth. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking substance over shortcuts, curiosity over dogmatism, and sustainable progress through radical self-honesty.

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“To be the same guy over time is, you know, just suck.” — Sam Sulek (80:43)

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End of Summary

Transcript

[Chris Williamson]

If you weren't doing bodybuilding, what do you think you'd be obsessing over instead?

[Sam Sulek]

I think, I mean it would have to be something. But honestly, I was kind of lucky. Starting off body. I didn't even say bodybuilding. The only. And this is something people say anyway, if you don't compete, you're not a bodybuilder. Like it's a little. Because when someone does their first show, they kind of want to express this, like, know glamour about it. It's like, I'm a bodybuilder because I competed. You're just. But I, I kind of leaned into that. So before I actually competed, I always, I'd always describe myself as like just, I'd say a lifter. Because the point wasn't more so to compete in bodybuilding. Like when I'm working at arms, I'm not thinking like, okay, I need my arms to be a little bit bigger so that I can beat this guy on stage. I guess more so I want them to be bigger for me. And then that kind of played into once I was at a certain level, like, okay, now is about time to compete. It was always on the list, but it wasn't like the point. Especially not in the beginning for me. I'm like, I just want to get big. I did gymnastics when I was like 11 to 16. I think I was good, but I wasn't going to be college level scholarship, no, Olympic. But it was fun. And there was one guy named Connor who is, he's the older dude. And now I might not look at him the same way, but at the time he was nuts. He was huge. So we all, whenever we do like strength or conditioning, that's how I think that was probably some of the seed that got planted because I was doing like four hours a day, like middle school, early high school.

[Chris Williamson]

So you already had one obsession.

[Sam Sulek]

So that was like it like every. It wasn't. And I never had to be dragged to do it. Cause like I was excited. It was fun. So once I quit doing that, to switch it with the bodybuilding just happened to be something I was already kind of interested in. And it just fit perfectly. Like we would talk every summer where some of the guys would be like, okay, this summer we're actually gonna work out. And we never did it. But once I actually quit doing it, that's what I replaced it with. But if it wasn't bodybuilding, let's say there was an alternate universe, Sam. Or I've got the itch where it's like, oh, It'd be awesome if I could play guitar. Like Rob Scallen. He's a. He's this YouTuber who's, you know, into guitars and everything or just anything like that could have been it. But it happened to be like, okay, I'm going to get into working out really serious. And that also just happened to be the perfect match for me.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you held onto the bendiness from gymnastics at all?

[Sam Sulek]

A little. I can. Like, when I stretch, I can loosen up. But when I'm off season full of carbs, like, it actually kind of sucks to squat because I get, like, how tight everything is. Everything is tighter. When I'm dieted down, I can get my hands under a squat bar. Fine bone. I'm eating a lot of food. Like, when I'm more like a 2:70. Like, I'm sitting there for five minutes just trying to stretch out.

[Chris Williamson]

Mike Israel had a. Some back surgery thing on him, and it's cut open. They've removed fat, they've got rid of fat cells, They've stitched him back up. It's like a big traumatic surgery. And I asked him what the most painful thing that he went through was, and it was that he said they'd laid him on his back with his arms like this.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

And he said he woke up. And the most painful thing was the fact that he'd been in an overhead position with his arms over his head for a few hours. And that always makes me laugh.

[Sam Sulek]

I never heard that part. I did see that, though, some of those. If I had something done like that, for whatever reason, I probably wouldn't post that surgery picture with, like, the bloody shirt.

[Chris Williamson]

That man has no shame. He just.

[Sam Sulek]

But that's kind of cool, too, because he actually gets to show it off.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, I think, you know, why is it that people have resonated with you a very sort of transparent look into. Even if people don't see themselves directly in Mike getting his back cut open or you spending a lot of time obsessing about the gym, what they do see is a person being transparent. Right. And that's where relatability comes from. I think, like, authenticity breeds relatability. And, you know, if Mike had just disappeared and come back with a smaller waist and some scars, people would have been like, hey, what's going on? And I think that that wouldn't feel very legitimate.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, that's a good way of thinking about it. That's one thing where I didn't plan for it to be like that, but I got a lot of questions. This Whole weekend where it's like. And every. Any. All of us do, like, everyone who's semi. Any even, like, you've got 10,000 followers. Like, it's okay, what's the secret? And it's the same thing with bodybuilding. What's the one set that I can do where it actually completely makes it super easy? And it all just happens like, nothing. And it's like, usually if somebody wants to start posting things or trying to do anything, it's always like, okay, what are people doing? Let me try to emulate that, like, recreate it. Or just like, jump on a trend, which, like, is fine. Maybe try to change it up a little bit. But it's like the best thing that you could do is pick something that you already do and you already like and just try to, like, document that. Like, if you're a. And it's to the point now, like, where if you weren't doing that, you're almost missing out. Or like, if you have a small business or if you're into, like, restoring cars or you have some kind of random interest, like, the. What I really like about social media is there's so many niches that no matter what you're into, you could make it a thing. And so I guess if I could say one tip, being able to talk on camera helps a lot because then you actually, like, when I look at people, I've seen guys post things in the gym forever before I posted anything, and they're still posting the exact same thing. And I've seen this guy for, like, seven years, and he's super big, but he's never, like, spoke on video. And I'm like, that's the whole point. I want to. I want to know who this guy is so I can kind of, like, get back to experiences. Yeah. So it's like, it's almost a situation where you already have something really valuable and it's your own individuality. And to try to, like, you know, conform to what everyone else already does is basically to lose that. So you're already your own individual guy. Like, no one has lived your life. Try to show that part off. But I'm also not the best source of that kind of tip because my first YouTube video is the same as this one. There was the same as the most recent one. So there is no, like, okay. I went through years of study and data and analytics, and this is the, like, it wasn't a Mr. Beast story of. I analyzed the. Whatever. If somebody told me they were going to post, like, what I posted I don't think it would work.

[Chris Williamson]

If you tried to plan it in advance, it would have probably sounded like a failure.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. So it just happened to line up.

[Chris Williamson]

Who was inspiration for you? Coming up, both content creation side but also mindset physique wise.

[Sam Sulek]

So I really watched a lot of Callum Von Moger, like back when I was, you know, or a 16 year old. Because the guy who got me into the gym, like, I mean, I was getting into it anyway, but he was the guy from my high school who actually bodybuild. He competed like at the end of when he was a senior and I was a junior. Like we were both like the bodybuilders of the school, you know, like a high school level. But he got me into Callum and then eventually I started watching all the rich Piana bigger by the day videos which then you can kind of see the similarity where it's okay, he's posting a video every day, he's in the car, he's doing a real workout. And I only thought about it like, I like that format. I go to the gym and I work out and I drive back to record. That is like nothing. Like it's very seamless for my routine, but it was also just something like nobody was doing when I was coming up. Before posting anything, I'm looking at regular influencers. I'm like, oh, you guys wouldn't even work out if you didn't have a camera. And I'm squatting in like a dead gym. It's like two in the morning. No one's what like I recorded the set for me, Nobody else watch it happen. And that's, that was like a chip on my shoulder thing of like, it doesn't even matter. There's no one in here. I'm still getting after it because I want it. And there's nothing that's going to change that. So when I started like actually posting things once I saw a group of brothers who went to my school really blow up one summer. And I was getting kind of like jealous. I'm like, okay, now I gotta start doing it. I was gonna do it eventually, but that was like the starter catalyst. I was like, I've always kind of hemmed about this where it's like, am I a different guy now that I'm recording all these things and trying to like talking about it and putting it out there? And like I, I would just always think about that in the back of my mind. Cause now these workouts are not just me alone. Now there's an observer. So it's like, is the experiment altered because now people are watching it and I don't think it is. Like, after all this time, I think I'm still. If anything, it's a little bit of an accountability factor because if I didn't think, you know, maybe I wasn't totally into it. I know somebody's watching, so I might go a little extra hard. So I think it hasn't taken away.

[Chris Williamson]

Too much, but maybe I did a little bit.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, but. But if you get distracted by it, it's like the, the workout should come before the recording of the workout. I've always thought, have you found it.

[Chris Williamson]

Hard to hold on to authenticity now that millions of people are watching?

[Sam Sulek]

Well, now it'd be. If I made a video that was inauthentic, it'd be strange. Like, I'll. Because I'll record. Because now I'm kind of getting around doing all these events. I get to talk to everybody. And sometimes it's hard to actually separate someone's social media Persona versus their real, like, human personality. Because sometimes we look at a video as like, you're kind of hosting a show and a TV host does not talk off set the same way.

[Chris Williamson]

Hey, guys, welcome back to the on set.

[Sam Sulek]

Like, it was like, all right, we're gonna hit a chess date today. And I'm doing like a YouTube intro and there's like, sounds like, like that's just not what I do. And I, for me, I think that'd be silly anyway. So it's. I think it's, for me, kind of a cool mentality where I'm not exactly even thinking like, okay, I want to improve my content engagement. I'm trying to improve my reach or like, anything like that because I almost boil it all because it's so one dimensional. Like, it, it branches out. I talk about everything, but it's like I want it to be about the gym specifically. So for me, it's like this kind of branching off point of motivation where in my mind I feel the better than all my workouts are. Not only is that better for me, because I want them to be good, but it will just bleed and like, bleed out and raise everything else up because it's all stemming from the working out anyway.

[Chris Williamson]

There's four hour compilations of your car talks to go to sleep to. Did you anticipate that you'd become an ASMR channel?

[Sam Sulek]

Eventually, but I actually heard that before. Never in high school, but when I was in college, my. It was like my second year, I gave a couple presentations like One time I. One of my curricular or extracurricular credits was Mafia Cinema History. So it was following.

[Chris Williamson]

That's niche.

[Sam Sulek]

But yeah, it was following, like, from the first. What would you call a soundless movie?

[Chris Williamson]

Oh, okay. Yeah.

[Sam Sulek]

Where in between frames of, like, actual video, they just had black. A black screen with the words that got said. Like, it started from there.

[Chris Williamson]

And what a funny way to. To put a movie together.

[Sam Sulek]

But it's like that's all you had. They can. They can time sync audio with a clap like we can now. But then it went up, like, all the way through Godfather and everything else. And I had to make a group video where it was clips from all these movies and someone had to overlay their voice and edit it all together. And I was posting like, little TikToks at the time, like fitness TikToks. So I almost volunteered for the editing voiceover so I could get a little. Like. That was the first video that I ever edited technically. And people told me after, when they heard it, they said, dude, you should do like an audiobook or something. And I didn't hear it. I did not. Like, I couldn't hear it because it's my own voice. But then I gave a different presentation in a different class, and the two guys sitting next to me said the same thing. So I don't know what. What changed over the course of those years or if, like, maybe I got a little older and I could be more outspoken and, like, not shrink down and be so nervous because I'm, like, talking to someone. But that's part of it where when I think of how you could, like, do, like, do the books on what all the just success came from, it's like, I think posting a lot of videos actually, like, meaning what I'm talking about and really working out and like, being behind it like that, that's something I could tell anybody to do. And I always say that the X factor was involved because a lot of it was things that just could not be predicted but happened to work out really well.

[Chris Williamson]

I would subscribe to a Samsu, like, sleep Stories app. If that goes out on Audible.

[Sam Sulek]

I get curious about doing just audiobooks.

[Chris Williamson]

I think it'd be great. Like, you're just describing an afternoon walk through a gentle meadow or something.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. And then I'd probably. I'd get to read the books because I'd be. I'd be reading it and it'd be a little more. You wouldn't say literate, but you'd be a little more just.

[Chris Williamson]

I could look, dude, if this bodybuilding thing and all this gymshark stuff, you know, if that doesn't go well, I genuinely think that there's a. An opportunity, you know, a nice collaboration with Karma Headspace or something like that. Sleep stories would be good. So, you know, just lingering on what we said there, this authenticity with millions watching, and it is. There's a. There's a degree of performativeness that you want to. You're always compelled to do.

[Sam Sulek]

Because, yeah, like, in a way, I think there's kind of like a Sam on video and then there's like a Sam when I'm talking with my buddies or a group. But I almost don't think it's too much of a like thing because you will naturally act differently based on who you're with. And for me, when I'm working out alone and I've got just the camera, like, I thought I'd get a camera guy because that's what everyone does, but it's so natural for me to have that, like, actual back and forth. It's all just things that I get to think of, like, even though I'm probably a little less energetic, because obviously if you're in a group, hanging out, whoever, like, you're going to be a little more jumpy. But when it's just me, like, I don't think that's like, as. Even though it's a little different than my typical back and forth. Like, even now, this probably wouldn't be exactly how I talk, like, in the world, but it's not intentional in a way.

[Chris Williamson]

I think the goal is to try and reduce the distance between those two people.

[Sam Sulek]

Right.

[Chris Williamson]

Get them as close as possible.

[Sam Sulek]

It's like you'll dress up for a fancy restaurant. That doesn't mean you always dress up.

[Chris Williamson]

But you just also doesn't mean that you in a suit is somehow authentic. Yeah, but, you know, I think even the lowest followed person with a couple of hundred followers on their Instagram, if you turn the camera around on yourself and you press the button, oh, fuck, I need to do. There was a statistical increase in cosmetic surgery. I think it was called Zoom Face after Covid, because people were seeing themselves on camera so much that they were observing their own flaws. And, you know, that's you just on a live call with your boss or either your assistant or your team or whatever. So. Holy shit. Like, if that's how people are feeling just with video calls on Covid, imagine what it's like when you start posting or you put an Instagram story.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, I never, I never heard about that. But that's one thing where, because the body, like even getting into bodybuilding and everything that comes along with it and like bringing like a prepped meal to school or just whatever, it's still a little like off the beaten path. It's getting super normal now because everybody's in the, into the gym, which I think is perfect because now gyms are going to, you know, not substantially, but gradually increase in value because there's just more of a demand. So it's like the more the merrier. But just from knowing that it's kind of a thing where, like if you post on social media, you're asking to get hated on. It's just the nature of it. But bodybuilding is like also a guarantee because it's, it's. You could play into it, like maybe someone's insecure about how they look and they're going to go after someone who they like. Whatever. It's just part of it. But already knowing that, like to, you know, get into it and see anyone say anything. It's like if you're unapologetically into something, like if I saw you eating a bowl ice cream and I said, I can't believe you're eating vanilla. That's the worst flavor. You're a total loser. But you really liked it. You wouldn't be offended by that. You'd think I'm weird for even trying to criticize you for it because you really are into it. So that's something where it's its own skill to be able to put yourself out there and only take criticism for what it is. Like if someone posted or made a comment on my video, and this is more like when I put my director producer hat on and they say, this video is Mike or this video's audio sucked, delete your channel. I'm going to take that as all right. I might need to fix my audio. I don't need to take the hate with a critique because I can take. I want the critique. That's the good.

[Chris Williamson]

Thank you for your feedback.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, like you can, you should be able to separate that from the context of how it's said.

[Chris Williamson]

What have you learned about dealing with criticism and, and self worth and stuff like that? Because if the plan was, hey, it'd be cool if some people watched this and then there's an awful lot of scrutiny and you're young and are approaching this from a little bit of a different angle, it's going to invite in criticism.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

How, how have you learned to deal.

[Sam Sulek]

With that, it's not like, I totally did not even think about it in the beginning, because when you first start getting, like. Let's say you're posting something, you get like, a few thousand followers. It's, you know, it takes a second. But if you look back on it, it's really a milestone that your videos are being shown to more people. Because if the same 10 people love every video in the comments, that means your stuff's only getting shown to them. It's not getting shown to anyone else. So once people start giving you, like, you know, just saying regular just hate, that means that they're someone who got shown your stuff for the first time. So it actually means your things are moving out of, like, a small little scale bubble and scaling. But it's. I don't know. For someone who's struggling with it, I'd say, like, remember, this guy just scrolled away. He doesn't even remember saying it. It's just a weird thing where, you know, your phone is a totally different communicative device than real life. So maybe judge what people actually say to you in person and just. I don't know. For some people, it's much harder to get over.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm sure it's a good point that that comment someone just made is flippant, passive. Whereas for you, that might linger. I mean, I know for me, you know, over the thousand episodes I've done this show, there's certainly some comments where I've gone to bed at night and I'm like, for fuck's sake, think about it. Like, that's the thing that you're gonna think about as your head hits the pillow, but you just remember the insults and forget compliments. That's kind of the way that the world works.

[Sam Sulek]

And it's a. And even just try to. Like, this is one thing I really like is trying to imagine anything where it's not a debate, but just, like, two sides of an approach. Like, okay, do I want to read every hate comment and take it personally and, like, really only look at those, or do I want to, like, look at the system as it really is? There's, like, always way more real comments. So why does that. Why does the negative one get so much impact and 10 other? Like, how many good comments even outweigh one bad one? And if that one actually hit you in a weak spot, there could be no number, and that could just be it. So I think that's where it's. It's almost like it shouldn't be, but it is. It shouldn't happen. People shouldn't be mean, but they are going to be. That's just how it is. So that's where it's actually your responsibility to try to be impervious to it. Because you're kind of suffering in your own mind because it was your choice to let it in and get upset. Because if you were a little kind of like, I don't want to say mentally tougher but kind of if you could take a little more stoic approach like that, then you wouldn't even get upset about it in the first place.

[Chris Williamson]

What does that stoic approach look like to you?

[Sam Sulek]

It's just not making a fuss about something if it doesn't actually require that. Because I think about that a lot. Like my, my whole thing is or one thing I like to think is like okay, was today a good day? Like net. And it doesn't have to be crazy good but like on average I feeling like pretty good. Not too stressed out about things. If I have a to do list, it's not like, like I'm taking the proper steps to actually complete it. Like it's, I'm not letting anything linger too much and if I'm making myself upset or like if I'm tired and I'm going into situations with a negative starting point, well then you're already, you can be upset about anything. Oh, this weekend was so busy. Oh, it sucked. Oh, I'm so tired. Like you can instantly do that and it's like nothing because it's this weird self depreciation. Like boomy things are so hard and it's, it's a. I mean I get the logic because it's, it's a comfortable like retreat. Everything is so hard. Everything sucks. I can do nothing about it. It's just how it is. So there's nothing like it's a taking your hands off the wheel of things. When you're not six years old, you reach a point where you're responsible. I've still got some stuff in my parents house I'm going to go pick up and things. But at this point now 23 year old Sam, I'm completely responsible for all my own stuff. So I got to actually take a hold of it. And if I make myself upset about like the stupidest things, well then I'm stressing myself out for no reason.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Sam Sulek]

That's a good one.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, it's. It's nice. All of this stuff makes sense, but.

[Sam Sulek]

We'Re just, we're saying it in a hypothetical.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah.

[Sam Sulek]

When you're in it.

[Chris Williamson]

I got this conversation later on today with a couple of young philosopher bros, and they do logic, right? So it's a very sterile, rational way to sort of look at situations. Honestly, the more that I've done a little bit of research into logic, the more it feels like it just completely falls apart. The second an emotion comes in, you're like, oh, this sounded so great. But you're not an equation. You're not a sterile laboratory.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, it's something that's fun on paper because you could read that and think, oh, my God, if I start thinking that this way, I'll never be upset again. And it's like, you're not a freaking robot. I bring this up a ton where I'm like, just because you can use Excel doesn't mean you don't have to run around like we used to do when we were hunter gatherer. We're not that much different. Like, we can do way different stuff, but you're still like, genetically right there. You gotta run around and freaking move. But yeah, same thing. You can't like the idea to kind of like almost be afraid of your own emotions where you don't want to even get into it and just like thug your way out of it where it's like, I don't care. So that's like any kind of extra masculine.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you heard of ACT acceptance and commitment therapy? It's not too dissimilar to cbt. It's kind of CBT adjacent, I suppose. But in many ways, CBT is teaching you the thinking patterns, the way that your brain works so that you can better see and move through challenges. Acceptance and commitment therapy, A lot of that is about this thing is happening and you sort of allow it to move through you.

[Sam Sulek]

So.

[Chris Williamson]

So it's CBT I for insomnia is very popular and ACT I for insomnia is also pretty popular, but the approaches are very different. So acceptance and commitment therapy for insomnia, a lot of the time is just, okay, I'm awake. What would it be like if I was okay with being awake? Not cbt, which a lot of the time feels like you're in battle with it. Oh, that's catastrophic thinking. That's anchoring bias. That's, you know, and at least in my experience, using ACT for challenges that you've got in your life. You said before, do I feel sort of generally pretty good about the day? Am I not too stressed? What would it be like if I was just okay with this? What would it be like if I was just my knee, I've got a little bit of a knee injury or something and you go, I can fight against it or I can reverse engineer it. You know, this is a challenge that I need to get through. This is where the real work begins. The you go, my knee hurts. What if I was okay with my knee hurting? Yeah, I'm still need to go and do the thing. But at least for me, and maybe it's different for different physiologies. For me, I just like that sort of ease regulation thing. For me, that's, that works quite well.

[Sam Sulek]

But then that's where, like when I talk about the logic of taking things like two extremes, well, what do you do? Like just take everything negative that ever happens to you and say, this is just how it is, that's okay. Like, that's completely forgetting.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't need to fix it. I can just let it fester and get worse.

[Sam Sulek]

Like it's, it's. Are you going to lower your standards to the problems that you're dealing with or are you going to raise your standards and fix those problems and be in a better position so you can't fix everything? But some of the things it's, that's where the middle ground comes in. The things that you could fix, you should fix and the things that you can't, you shouldn't worry about.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, that's the stoic fork, right? That dichotomy of control thing. So you mentioned there about training at the gym. Two in the morning, kind of getting it done. This is me on my own. How difficult has it been to maintain a simple lifestyle now? Because I can't imagine that training in the gyms near you is quite as peaceful as it used to be.

[Sam Sulek]

Maybe a little, but it's actually. It's the best there out of anywhere.

[Chris Williamson]

Apart from people have seen you a million times.

[Sam Sulek]

I've been at this gym since I started working out, so I see all the same people working. If anything, they're probably like, oh, he's on my machine. Like, oh, my God, Sam's on the Smith. I wanted.

[Chris Williamson]

He's going to be there for 30 minutes.

[Sam Sulek]

It's a. And it's. And it's just like an exposure thing, you know, like, just from being there so much. But when I. When I get to visit places, that's where it's a little crazier or like even it's kind of a classic trope of, holy, my Instagram just blew up. Go to la, I'm out of here. And it's. You're kind of boxing yourself in because now you're doing what everyone else does. For me, I've been like, the gym is gonna have the same weights anywhere. The whole point of social media is you can do it from anywhere. I don't need to uproot my whole life and everyone that I know just because that's what other people do. So it's at home, it's like very normal, but it's definitely different. But as different as it is, I got this a lot. It's like, how crazy is this? And objectively, it's totally crazy. I can still see that from before to now, but you do get a little bit exposed to it just from. It never just happened. First it was one guy at a Kroger said, whoa, dude, I saw you on my phone earlier and it was a video that had like 2,000 views. Like, it just happened because he was. That was the start. And then like the next week there's another guy. And then it like all very, like 0.1% increases over time. So there was no moment where the frog jumped out of the boiling water because it just raised temperature super slowly. But it's. It's definitely crazy how big it's all kind of scaled, but at home, it's. It's pretty Normal.

[Chris Williamson]

How do you not get distracted as more options come onto the table?

[Sam Sulek]

I think I've still got a little bit of that kind of, I don't want to say hater preconception, but almost like hard headedness of like I know what I'm doing, I know what I want to do. I know who I wouldn't want to like get involved with because it's not like everyone on social media is always the nicest person ever. Like it's, it's like anything. So I can see guys where I would say, I like this guy. This guy's cool. We have talked before, let's do something. But even. And I always think about this at the Expos, like to see an expo. Everyone just left London and they are getting after it. This year is their year. I saw Sawyer Cloud, I saw David laid. Phil Heath was there. This is going to be sweet in a week. That motivation, it's going to dwindle because this is the just for show part and in the moment it's super flashy. But even the workouts I got to do with some of the gymshark guys like Jackie Gills and Marcus. And it was really fun because I get to live with guys who are kind of higher level advanced. Jack Eagles is a total beast. But that's countered by the three months of workouts I just did on my own which were only for the purpose of like progress. So it's, it's like there's a ratio of like fun to work where like you know how many there would be a million hours of. I always reference the basketball players because they're such a good example of a lot of practice before performance. And it's like how long would you sit and watch like a Kobe Bryant shoot free throws? Like how long would you watch LeBron do dribbling drills? You wouldn't. But that's the kind of. I see a lot of quotes where it's like those are the glorious gloryless battles which when won, add up to a seamless victory. But it's like you can't forget that all happened before. But it's easy to when all you see is that end result. Like when we're all in matching tracksuits. We're a freaking Gymshark team. Don't forget everybody is now going back to where they belong. Not belong, but back to where they're.

[Chris Williamson]

From to do the boring stuff.

[Sam Sulek]

And they're all going to get back to back to work. They're all going back to normal.

[Chris Williamson]

Dude. It's the same with the show, it's. This is fun and it's cool.

[Sam Sulek]

But that's not over this.

[Chris Williamson]

I landed on Thursday, I had the athlete venue thing on Friday with all of us going. I didn't get to do the athlete workout on the Friday afternoon. Cause I had to go back and prep and read and then I had to do it before we left on Saturday and then left early on Saturday and then on Sunday did it all morning and then didn't get to go to the product showcase last night for the same thing. So yeah, you're right. It's 95%, 98% of it is all of this stuff, which is me looking at a laptop or me with a Kindle, or me with a book, or me with notes, or me walking and going, what the fuck do I think about that thing? Like, what's the idea? What's the name for that concept? What's the whatever? And then, okay, I get to come back and finally some fun. But there's a, a cool story from Atomic Habits by James Clear. And I think it was the lead coach of maybe the Chinese weightlifting team, or maybe this is Ben Bergeron's Chasing Excellence. It's one of the two. And they spoke to the lead coach of Chinese weightlifting team. They said, what's the difference between the guys who are elite and the guys that are world champions? And he said, it's the world champions that are prepared to do the most boring work with the least amount of complaining. And I just really like that idea because especially as things become more successful and this is like a really unpopular talking point on the Internet because everybody wants to hear the 0 to 1, not the 50 to 55 or 80 to 85 or 95 to 96. They don't want to hear about the top end stuff because it doesn't sound, it sounds more exclusionary. Right? Because by definition most people are on the come up as opposed to closer to the top. But I think it's important to give people an idea of what are the pitfalls that are coming up for you if you do what you say that you want to achieve, which is become better in whatever it is that you want. Even becoming better as a parent, becoming better as a dog owner, becoming better as a friend or whatever. As you become more advanced, there will be fewer and fewer people that can give you advice about what you're going to come up against. Anyway, point is, people that are prepared to show up and do boring things as their situation becomes more luxurious feels sort of opulent. You know, if you're a world champion Chinese weightlifter, I imagine you've probably got your meals cooked for you. You'll have bodywork, you'll have a coach, you'll have a mindset person, you'll have friends, you'll be living in a house that's probably quite nicely put together, a bed that's constructed for your particular physiology, firmness, all that sort of stuff. And you think, how do you remain hungry to go in and do an hour of mobility work four times a week when you have your meals cooked for you and you've got a custom built pillow and stuff? And that preparedness to accept, no matter how good I get at this thing, I will always have to do boring shit. And that's not a bug, it's a feature. And not only is it a feature, it's a source of competitive advantage. Because as things get more salubrious, as you raise up through the ranks, other people will have the same thought that you do, which is, I shouldn't need to do this shit anymore. You go, okay, so if you can continue to lean into the stuff that you did at the start, at the end, that's where the competitive advantage lies, I think.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, I was just doing the math to make sure I knew what it all added up to. But not even including, because before the bodybuilding show that I just did, like I was dieting for like five months, but just counting the year from January until that first show, a three month period, there was five days straight of cardio, it was a hundred, it was 120 hours because it was, it was 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes after the workout for two of those months. And then for one of those months was an hour in the morning and an hour after. So five. Like who would even be able to watch five hours or something like that, let alone, or five days of something like that, let alone do it. And that's the stuff I don't show off because, I mean, for one, nobody would even care to watch it. But it's like, it's like a hidden quest in a video game where it's actually the most valuable thing. Or like it's straight out of Indiana Jones when he's got to pick. The premise is he's in this kind of magical cave, if you haven't seen it. And there's a million gold, like there's a hundred gold chalices and they're all super flashy. And if you pick the correct one, you get eternal life or something, whatever. So there's two guys that show up, it was Indiana Jones and then another, like, villain guy. And he picks the flashiest, most diamond encrusted one he could get his hands on. Like, what he thinks would be the trick. Drinks from it, instantly dead or something like that. It's been a while. And then Indiana Jones picks the scrappy wooden one. And that was the secret, the one that was understated. And it's. So that gets me motivated to do that kind of stuff and track all my cardio and calories and everything, because I know its value, because I've done it and gotten the value from it. So I know that it actually is the trick. But if you've never done it, you don't have that proof. And it's always a what if. And that's everything. Honestly, that's the. At least stateside, that's. You're kind of programmed to do that. Middle school, high school, okay, you have to go to college to get this job to do this. Like, the idea of getting into like a trade or getting into, like, I think I have this awesome business idea that is the minority by far to branch off from this conditioned path. And it's not like it's bad, but so many people might have been able to do so many awesome things if they could really do what they wanted to do instead of just, you know, following the beaten path.

[Chris Williamson]

Bro, if you're succeeding at a life that you hate, imagine how great you'd be at one that you actually enjoyed that. There's so many people that are crushing it and they're not fired up for what they do. Imagine how good you could be if you actually woke up on the morning and were excited for what you were about to do.

[Sam Sulek]

Like, it was a. And that might just be a time thing. Like, there's a video of Seinfeld in an interview. And, you know, I don't. I don't know if I'd call him the greatest source of whatever, but he's like, you know, back, you know, back in the, in the 90s, back in the 80s, the Flex was like, what do you do for work? And that's a little different because, I mean, inflation and, you know, whatever. But at the time, at least it was, oh, this guy has a cooler job than me. Oh, this guy works at a guitar shop. That's cool. I'm a freaking accountant. That's just paper everything. And it's like, it's very monetarily driven. Like, what are the three classics? It's like Sex, Drugs and money. That's, you know, Monetized social media wise in its own way, the sex side, but in regular Instagram and when it comes to, or at least the money side, that you don't have to do anything, you don't have to be an interesting guy at all. If you get your hands on a super fancy car and make some videos about it, you didn't even have to. You could know someone who had it and he let you. And that's your whole gimmick, just the fact that you, like, have something this valuable. And for me, I'm like, that sucks. You didn't do anything to get that. And the ones that did, well, they don't even care to show it off because they are kind of comfortable enough with wherever they're at. Where it's like guys who say, oh, dude, I'm going to do a bodybuilding show, I'm going to make it, I'm going to be the next whoever. My thought on that is always, you're trying to essentially argue your case to the universe and internally in your mind. That kind of idea to want to propel, like, convince everyone you can do it may come from an internal doubt of, I don't know if I can do it, but I want to do it. I don't know if I can do it, I'm going to tell everyone I can do it, and then maybe I'll be able to convince myself. So it's not bad to want to say that and then still really go after it. But however I'm wired, I don't exactly want to talk about what I'm going to do. And it might be a little bit of a defense mechanism for me because if I have a plan to do something and then it totally flops, well, no one knew I was going to do it.

[Chris Williamson]

You don't set a goal, you can't fail.

[Sam Sulek]

Nobody knew I was going to do it, so I don't. But I don't think it's as much of that as it is, like, on the social media side. If I said I was going to do a bodybuilding show in six months, the whole time people would. People would say like, he's not going to do it. So I'm like, all right, I don't want to even talk about it. So usually it's like, okay, 12 weeks out, videos, transformation programs, just really hyping it up months in advance. So for me, with mine, it was like, all right, we're doing a show in like three days. We're already ready. Not even to give anybody the opportunity to think it wouldn't happen because then you just do it. And that's already way more impactful because anybody could say they're going to do it. But to actually have that belief very firmly or it's not even a belief, it's like an under. It's. I want to have an understanding that I know I can get where I want to go. Where it's to the point where you don't believe that if I knock this water I was going to spill everywhere. You know it, you know that's what is going to happen from the circumstance. So if you're really. And maybe in the beginning, I'm sure some of it was just from optimal delusion, but I think you might even need some of that just to get started. But now it's to the point where I know what I'll be capable of or I know what I am capable of and I want to at least reach that level of effort and consistency with the things that I'm really into. I'm not like that with everything, but with the working at least very specifically. Like that's my thing, you know, all your eggs and not all your eggs in one basket, but if most of them are in there, you should give it a lot of attention and I know I'll feel better if I do.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Sam Sulek]

I was definitely feeling it a little because you are. It's one day where you just really depleted all your water. Like you will never look like that on a regular day to day basis. And also, I mean it's also kind of an interesting look. Like do you really want to look like a stage bodybuilder all the time? So I get the allure there for the day, but afterward like actually eating more food and kind of getting a little bit softer just from. Because that's the nature of it. That was actually when I did feel it a little because I was just looking at the absolute craziest version of myself ever and now I'm not that. But it's kind of, it's more of a mental thing where. What do you imagine yourself as when you think of Chris Williamson? Are you thinking, awesome lighting? Huge, jacked, ripped, Pumped up?

[Chris Williamson]

Yes, keep going.

[Sam Sulek]

I'm thinking. Or at least I try to like imagine myself more so as like just like how I look in the day. Like the, the more that or the larger I've gotten just in like the, the pursuit of size, the more comfortable I've gotten with like just the fact that I'm as big as I am, where I don't feel the need to like only post my biggest picture and even go so far as to photoshop it or that sucks. Not only is that you're just lying by doing that, which for the people you're showing that's stupid. That's rough. But you're lying to yourself because you're definitely looking at that picture and thinking that's how I look. That's not how you look. When I'm pumped up in the gym that is its own circumstance, which is cool in its own way. And then I can go back to what I normally look like. And for me I've been so like real progress driven with the gym where I'm not so concerned with how do I look today for everyone who's going to see me. And those guys are the guys who stay lean all year round, always posting.

[Chris Williamson]

Instagram because they're scared of getting too fluffy to make the longer term progress.

[Sam Sulek]

Well, maybe not scared in every case, because if that's the look that you really want, then you're good. That's sweet. Like you're, you actually kind of did it. But if you're someone where you actually are scared of that, then that's the motivation. It's just fear of looking a little softer or anything. And I mean, we're not helping. Guys who post a really crazy picture aren't exactly helping the situation because they're showing a totally crazy version. But that's where, I mean, it's just how it is. So it's kind of your responsibility to try to grasp it more objectively. Like, these guys look like this because of everything that they're doing. You can't forget that.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you see this with the fans that you interact with? You know, you've got young followers. What's your demographic? What's the.

[Sam Sulek]

It's wide, it's. It's. It's probably evenly dispersed between 18 and below 18 to like 30 and then 30 and above. Okay, because I'll get. I mean, I'm, I'm getting off flights and like this older pilot is like, how's my landing, Sam? I was like, it took me a second, but way wider than I ever would have guessed.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, even within that. Right, guys? I guess, of all ages.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, we're. Everybody's in the gym.

[Chris Williamson]

The male body dysmorphia thing just. I think it really fascinates me. I think we've got a good cultural narrative and archetype around, you know, body positivity for all that. There were lots of things that was maybe a little contrived with that for women. Yeah, I don't think we've had the same sort of a movement for men. And I think that that's why this male body dysmorphia thing really, really ramping up. I mean, you saw bigger, stronger, faster. Right. Where Luke Skywalker, action figure in the 60s was sort of like nerdy dude. And then in the 90s, you know, he's been doing five by five for a few years. And then by sort of the 2000s, he, he's been on a very, very heavy course of trend. And you go, why does Luke Skywalker need striated delts? So you've got this bigflation thing that's.

[Sam Sulek]

Going on, but that's not new. I mean, when did Rocky come out?

[Chris Williamson]

That's true, that's true. But I think if you were to look at how prevalent that's been. The saturation level, Much more latent. Yeah. If Rocky as a boxer is ripped. Yeah. Is it unrealistic? Are many boxers that built? Probably not. But like, at the very least, the nerdy dude that like swings the lightsaber around, probably not him. But there's no area now that's beyond somebody being jacked for it. I'm just interested in what, what you're seeing from your audience and what you think for sort of younger generations, even younger than you, that are coming up now to try and have this balance. I want to look better, but I don't want to. I don't want to feel in deficit and I don't want to go through life hating the mirror.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, that's definitely an angle I have to bring up or that is something to be looked at. But in terms of the situation, I think guys are always going to have it easier because as much of a standard as there is, it's still not the same as for women. And guys are more likely to look at things as like, shit, man, I'm just fat. Or like, if you're, if you're a guy, like, that could just be like, like guys will joke around with each other like that because like, that's just kind of how we are. It's a little more, I don't want to say playful, but you could, you could say kind of blunt like that. But it's not as likely to eat at us out at, you know, I'm not exactly the guy to go to, to be like, what was it like to lose £300? I could try to guess. I don't know for sure, but I think it's definitely increasing the more prevalent fitness is becoming. But it's something where. Another middle ground. Like, okay, I either have to look like a Ronnie Coleman or like a Greg Plitt or I'm completely worthless, which is this side of the scale, which that sucks or man, I don't care how I look. I'm going to be £400 and I'm going to love it. There's no problem with this at all. And that sucks too. So there is a middle ground of where I think it's important to. You can be your own worst critic, but it's different if you're your own worst hater. You can tell yourself you have things that you want to work on but to really self depreciate and like, I'm just such a. I hate to hear it. I'll see guys where they. I'm into the gym. And it's always the same guy I reference here because it was so egregious. Every time I'd come in to work out, he's like, oh, how you doing man? He's like, shit squatting today. I hate it, I want to get out of here. But he's not joking. And I mean for him that's where it goes back to. Like sometimes it's a self soothing behavior to say, oh this all sucks so bad. And you're like releasing your responsibility for the situation. Like, oh, everything sucks just how it is. But it's. Yeah, that's what I really like to hear the most. Because for a high school guy to go from like 160 normal looking dude to pretty big. I mean after a year of only working out, no diet at all, you can look pretty good. Like you drastically different. But it didn't take that much because you do get that early starting point of, well, you were already pretty lean. New gains are real, dude, you got newbie gains. And right in the beginning you're the most susceptible to your training. So for someone to show me their, you know, fat loss transformation, like dude, look at this picture. And it's not the guy I'm looking at right now. Like it's 150 pounds. So these guys will be in like my gyms that I go to and he's with his dad and like we get a little picture and then you know, he walks off and does a set and his dad's telling me, he's like, dude, he started watching you talk about dieting, like he really got into it. I never could have guessed this would have happened. Like completely changed the dude's life. But not because I said something, but because he took the action to do it. And when someone does that, honestly out of everything, even someone who had a regular, maybe they started off a little leaner, they got pretty big, they had a big bench or something. I'm always more impressed and I can actually get a look, just something about. I know that you know about the things that I really value doing cardio a ton, tracking your calories, going into your kitchen and like I want to eat something. I'm not going to do it though. I can, I can handle this internal battle I'm giving myself and actually making it happen. And like losing, because losing so that much weight is like, I don't know, about 10 times. But it's up there in a multiplicity of difficulty from just working out and liking it and getting a little more muscle. So those Are the guys where. When I hear that I'm like, we're gonna talk for a little longer. Like we're not. I'm gonna, we're gonna have a little chat here. Like that's what I want to hear.

[Chris Williamson]

You mentioned sort of some of the differences between guys and girls that you've gained, what, £100? Ish. Probably something. Yeah, yeah. From bottom to top.

[Sam Sulek]

100.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah. A lot of muscle, great condition, you look fantastic on the stage. Given that most guys go to the gym in order to get attention from girls, what is the ratio of attention that you get from guys and girls now that you are in the big two hundreds?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. Right. I don't know about if the social media stats are any indicator or what your gender demographics are, but at least for my long form videos where people are actually coming to watch me talk about working out and like the things that go along with it, it's. I call them the 4 percenters because it's the 4% female viewers. And I mean it's not like unreasonable because I'm talking about working out as a guy, from a guy's perspective. But I mean, I'll chime in because sometimes I'll be like, I'm sorry, I'm not the guy to watch for glute training. So it's sometimes where if someone's, you know, dude, I want to get into a serious, like, I'm going to really lock in. I want to know what it's like to lose £300. I want to know what it's like to whatever. Like that's where I'm going to say, I can tell you what I know. But if you want to watch someone who did it, then you got to watch somebody else and kind of get inspired from their track.

[Chris Williamson]

What about irl? Because guys that might not even know who you are as you're getting bigger, dude, what are you doing for arms? Are there many girls that come up and go, sam, your forearms are getting so big.

[Sam Sulek]

So that's one thing which was not the motivation. Because the guys who think even the idea is strange, oh, if I was just bigger, gross would be all over me. If my doubts were a little. That's not the value system for sure.

[Chris Williamson]

That's not how it works in your experience.

[Sam Sulek]

But if you get big enough, they will come up and talk to you and they'll say, my brother loves you, my boyfriend loves you. Could you take a picture so I could send it to him? And because I see you on his phone so much that they they don't watch the videos but they see him like secondarily. So it actually, if you get big enough, girls will talk to you because they will come up and ask you for a picture for their dad.

[Chris Williamson]

There's a meme online that you have a fear of women.

[Sam Sulek]

So that plays back into the earlier tiktoks. Okay, where I my formula, which I just thought was funny but like how all my things were was if you want to post a video about working out in like a 10 second little short, like you might think you want to talk about how serious the gym is or have like a, like don't even do a caption. Just. Just say like grind or like you don't know what it takes. But how I've always looked at it is like if you're big, you have already said that you are serious. Like unspokenly just from how you are as a guy or what the video was like. Clearly you're serious because you have these results that you're showing off in the video to say anything. Like a motivational just thing on top of that. Which like if it's a motivational video, that's different but in terms of like regular kind of content. Like you're putting a hat on a hat. For me it's like post a workout video that's just really cool and hype of the workout and I'm like lifting bench at 3:15. But then the caption is like just something silly, something you wouldn't expect because it's like, you know, the only reason I want to get strong is so I can protect my cats at home. Or like it's like I had to cut this workout short today. My mom had to pick me up to go get groceries. Like something silly because that's not something you'd expect. And everybody always posted like you'd want to post like oh, I'm so serious outdoor grind set. So it's almost like just you can be if you're serious enough about something. It's even funnier when you're silly with something else.

[Chris Williamson]

What's that got to do with the fear of women thing?

[Sam Sulek]

Because that's his own joke, right? You would think big brolic guy. Like just from what we were saying before, it's like, oh, you're working as a get girls. That is kind of. And I didn't come up with that joke. Like I saw it before and kind of just like it happened to scale a little more with me. But it's like that's its own joke of like, oh, you such. This big, like, masculine dude. Whatever. Like, can I work in with you? And then in the video, I just, like, disappear. Like teleport. Because that's. That's just something that you wouldn't expect. Like, it's funny.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sam Sulek]

But then it. But you know, then it bled into, like, real life where, like, we did meet and greets. And like the first time I ever took a picture and there was a girl there, all the comments were like, what the. I thought he was.

[Chris Williamson]

What did they say? Like they'd been betrayed.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, what do you. In a world where that was actually the case. What you want there to be like, guys. This meet and greets, guys only.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. Well, that wouldn't. You're at least going to get 4% based on your demo.

[Sam Sulek]

It's 4%.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Sam Sulek]

Instagram's 20%. But that's because it's Instagram. Because that's. Because that's not like really watching your stuff. Like, I think the most real viewers and the most real feedback and comments. That's on the YouTube because there's a lot of intent to watch a whole workout or even some of a workout. Whereas on Instagram you can just. Something can be shown to you scrolled away.

[Chris Williamson]

It's like nothing you were posting on. You may still do Spotify video.

[Sam Sulek]

I think there's stuff that gets reposted there.

[Chris Williamson]

That's not you. That's not your channel.

[Sam Sulek]

I'll get into it.

[Chris Williamson]

It's.

[Sam Sulek]

I've got a couple of things where it's like on the list of things to kind of like track down or get control of.

[Chris Williamson]

They do video now, so you can basically.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. So you just plug it over there.

[Chris Williamson]

The whole thing. Yeah, I think that'll be good. Because people. It would certainly work to listen to.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. Because you can just listen to the whole thing.

[Chris Williamson]

Maybe grunting in there.

[Sam Sulek]

That's something where. If it was an audio form, I'd probably cut some of that out instead of the workouts sounds and asmr. I'd probably just say what the workout was in its own little mini segment in the middle and then talk about it after.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sam Sulek]

Because I. Yeah, that's its own joke. Like it'll be, dude, don't watch this video without headphones. Or my wife came in and she thought I was watching, like, whatever.

[Chris Williamson]

Yep.

[Sam Sulek]

And it's. So I actually think, like, I don't know, I just. That for me, that makes me feel like I'm keeping it real. But is it too much so I don't know. I'm not too worried about it.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Sam Sulek]

That's one thing I'll bring up because it's like guys will ask me, it's like are you going to move to Open? Are you going to. Or it's can't wait to see you as Mr. Olympia. Like as though that's the track that I'm on and for me it's more so it's like, okay, what am I willing to do that adds to this whole thing with bodybuilding that will take me know a certain degree of distance, right? Because if you're a top level Olympia competitor that comes with its own things, you know, like it's not as though bodybuilding on a competitive level is. And you know, I might not be the one to say recommend because I'm not like a complete G of bodybuilding like a Jay Cutler or like a real commentator or a judge would be who's been in the sport for years, but it's like it's not something to be pursued forever. Like actually the bigger I've gotten, the more I've started to be content with the size that I already am. Where I used to imagine 300 pound Sam Sulek. I'm like, yeah, once I get to 300, that'll start to be. But it's, it's something where when you actually get to a different position just over time and like, through progress, you're going to have a different perception of like what you actually want. Because even though you may have reached that level from having a certain goal now, you're a completely different person with different circumstances. And as good as that goal may have been to motivate you in the beginning, sometimes that can change. And it's not a giving up. It's just you've gotten a better perspective and now you know more to make a better decision.

[Chris Williamson]

That's a really fantastic point, that adjusting your goals as you get closer to them, to some people, feels like seeding ground. You've already done the hard part. Why are you not applying more pressure and, and, and, and really, really pushing. But the same as what you considered to be a good dish when you were starting out as a chef will not be what you consider to be a good dish as you become more sophisticated. And that dish may be more simple. So you may start out making these really complex things with 500 ingredients and you think, well, actually, you know, just a good pasta, like I can just nail a good pasta. And I think that that's pretty sweet. So, yeah, the ability to discern good from bad, like, taste, like what's something, that's a tasteful goal for me to go towards. What's something that resonates. How do I realize as I get closer to something that maybe the ladder I was climbing was kind of leaning up against the wrong wall a little bit. So I'm just going to adjust it and I'm going to keep climbing over here.

[Sam Sulek]

And with bodybuilding, at least there's a few examples. I mean, actually, I'm sure there's thousands where it's just, it's not highlighted on social media. So I wouldn't have any input on when this might happen. But with bodybuilding, it's not something I'd recommend for everyone. Like, when I see the, like, I'd say it's prevalence now. Like the idea of I need to be a bodybuilder or like a younger guy saying I have to be able to get on stage at a certain point. I think it's a bit overinflated in its value because it's very showy. You only see that little flashy kind of point at the end. And it's also in a scope of social media. Where as much as I'm not trying to overdo it and make myself look cooler or better portray a crazy lifestyle that I might actually live, it's still kind of flashy in its presentation. So if you get obsessed with, like the idea of something to actually approach what that real thing is now your idea of it is actually going to become a real understanding of it. And you'll realize like, shit, man, I wouldn't. I, like, there's guys where they have gone pro. Like, they really got into it. They were 100% serious, and then they realized, this isn't for me. I'm gonna. I'm gonna not, like backpedal isn't the right word. I'm gonna just redirect towards something which I actually value now. And if at any point that would happen, then that's what I would do.

[Chris Williamson]

How do you now personally weigh health versus aesthetics? You've got this.

[Sam Sulek]

Well, I mean, everybody. There's actual, like numerical metrics, you know, everyone's getting there. Like, honestly, I think everybody should be getting their blood tested, even just out of curiosity.

[Chris Williamson]

That's something you're doing regularly.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's definitely like anybody who's serious about bodybuilding, they're all getting relatively extensive blood tests pretty regularly. And if they're not, then you are missing out. But what sucks is actually I'm kind of spoiled because my general practitioner will order all my stuff, like a full panel of everything. Whereas a lot of doctors, I'll hear stories where it's like, can I just get my test leveled? A normal dude? Nah, you're young. You don't have to worry about something like that. And it's like, I mean, I'm sure you've got your own take on it, but it's just kind of this behind the curve sort of thing, because that's something like could. What if you're a guy where you're straight up hypogonadal and you might be literally whatever value is barely any that.

[Chris Williamson]

Could totally 50s or the 200s or something?

[Sam Sulek]

Well, I'm saying, like, if there was somebody where they were under 100 and it's like you didn't have any control over that, and if your hormones are totally out of whack, then that would be warrant for intervention. And that was something that would be totally doctor viewed. But what I see a lot is you could take that statement and stretch it as far as it could go to justify the craziest things. And I see it a lot in training a 50 year old ex 900 pound squatter, complete real experience and respect in the space. Will make a video. And he's training now still, and he's been training for 40 years or 35 years. And he'll say, you know, right now, back squats, they're just not the reward to wrist to reward ratio. It's not there. It's too much on my lower back. My knees are, they've been kind of worn like it's. So for me I've got to stick to more like lighter leg press and you know, just more kind of stable movements. And that's backed by his situation. And someone who is kind of starting a little earlier in the gym, they might have an awesome grasp of everything, will hear that. And then that's an easy argument to say, well, this guy says you don't even need to squat. I'm not squatting. Dude squats like not even an acceptance of like, I don't want to squat, that's why I don't do it. But just this, you know, trying to bring the bar down to their level of like, well, I'm not willing to squat, I don't want to do it. If I can justify why I don't need to do it, then actually I'm not skipping anything. I'm doing it right by doing less.

[Chris Williamson]

What's the line? What's the linkage or analogy between that and the bloods?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, well, it's just because then somebody could say, oh, you know, my test was probably super low anyway. They didn't even get a test. Somebody could say it's like, you know, I was looking at wemd and it's like the. So I don't bring that up as much, but the normalcy and like the conditioned of just like that's not a big deal. Like that's not something I'm.

[Chris Williamson]

Bro, let me give you this, let me give you this. According to the American Urological Association, 25% of patients on TRT never had the testosterone checked. One third weren't even deficient. I saw that last week.

[Sam Sulek]

But what's the age demographic? Because if that's still like what somebody would conventionally say a normal age to be like a 35 above. I think that's a much different situation than anything earlier because you're literally still a developing dude. You know, like you, that's, that is a thing that you are messing with, which is not just like, yeah, it's just, you know, whatever.

[Chris Williamson]

We were talking before we got started about some of the challenges you have health Wise with bulking up and what that does to you, the way that you feel. You've already mentioned mobility. What are some of the unseen side effects of gaining so much weight in such a short space of time as a young dude?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, and it's. So that's one thing that's kind of interesting because there's this sort of. I almost want to say just what you would call your, how you're carrying the weight that you're carrying. Because right now I'm, I'm like I'm 250 and I'm actually a little bit lighter from this whole week of everything we've been doing and not eating as much food and traveling. But still like I feel very light. Like I do not feel as though I'm, I'm super heavy because in the range of like my big and bulked weight. So like my lighter carb depleted, maybe a little less hydrated weight. Like I'm on the bottom end of that scale. Whereas like two years ago for me to really bulk up to 250 and be a very water retentive, like it felt completely different. Like bend over to put your shoes on and like you can feel you're like you're almost holding your breath because there's so much pressure. Like you had a, you got a full stomach. Like just things like that. But the scale really could, I mean it's, it's so gradual or no, it's so extensive because anything that I could say like, like I fit in an airplane seat fine. Like I still, that's not, that's an Eddie Hall, Ronnie Coleman, Brian Shaw problem. Problem. Yeah, like I'm big but I'm still like relatively human shaped, you know, like, like muscle does not exceed my frame. Like if you looked at like a very good example would be a Derek Lunsford.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes.

[Sam Sulek]

And I'll bring him up sometimes because he's got a really interesting look because you could basically describe him as you took a regular, I mean he took a regular lean guy and you just dragged the muscle scale all the way to the max because I mean sometimes to even get to that size it just has an effect.

[Chris Williamson]

What's the he weigh?

[Sam Sulek]

He's got to be heavy. I don't know any exact terms. And it's different when you're shorter too. So someone who's 6 foot 3 at 200 is very different than someone at 5 foot 4 at 200. So he's, well, he's heavy but he's like crazy big. So for him he's got his own. That's where like when we were talking on our panel talk yesterday when the guy said like what if you had to change about your sleep from being so big? Like those guys must have their own stories or like maybe they industrial strength CPAP machine. I can't even say that'd be for them.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How do you think about discipline? I'm interested in where you go for drive when motivation's low.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, I think because I don't usually think to my I never have self talk in my mind or I say like I need to be more disciplined right now and it's maybe just because of what motivated me to get into in the beginning. Like I just never, like that was never my mantra of a word. And with anything working out related I, I guess I almost feel like I'm on. Like sometimes I feel a little hypocritical when I'll say like typically good motivational like okay, even if you feel like you're not going to get after it, like you just got to like know that you're going to regret it if you don't. Things along those lines. But for the most part like I kind of treat it as this, like this is going to happen. Like there is no like the idea of okay, I need to take a break today or I need to take a rest day today. I'm getting better at it because it is objectively necessary at times.

[Chris Williamson]

I'm getting better at taking a rest day.

[Sam Sulek]

I think they're unnecessarily taken a lot which makes me like a little more tentative because it's like I know people are skipping just because they didn't want to do it. And it's the same thing as the logic of the guy who actually did an objectively correct thing. I'm a little fatigued. I can feel it. The muscle that I was going to hit today is even a little sore. And I didn't really get a lot of food or water today. If I stay home and really refuel and get a good night's rest and do this workout tomorrow, it will objectively be better for my long term progress. And someone could pretend they're using that logic and justify I don't want to go today. The rest days are actually good. You know, rest days are good and then they take two weeks off. That's the other extreme I think of on the scale of no rest days ever to two weeks at a time on the regular. This isn't a middle ground. That's like right here. It's Much more on this side of things. And it's. I think you're a different guy if you go even when you don't want to or when you subjectively have extra difficulties, because now you're the guy who did it. Even when it was hard, and it's like, you know, nobody knows that you did it. Even when I was dieting for a few of the workouts, towards the end, like, I was super low energy. Like, I'm Like, I'm doing three sets of pull downs, and I don't feel warm at all until, like, the fourth one, and I'm recording it. And for me, it's like, there's different levels of actualized thought where, like, if you think something, you know, and you constantly think the same thing, you can start to ingrain it in your mind. But if you say something and you consistently say, like, oh, man, I'm so tired, as you're convincing yourself that it's true, you're making it true. And also, I'm not gonna, like. I don't like guys when they complain in a prep, because if I'm trying to watch someone else's video of, like, them working towards something, I don't want half the things they're saying to be like, yeah, I feel like, shit, man, this sucks. I really don't even want to be here. Like, that's so. I don't even like the idea of anything like that. But so for that workout where I'm dying, like, it was really hard. Like, 400 milligrams of caffeine was not.

[Chris Williamson]

Getting touching the sides.

[Sam Sulek]

It's direct translation, but. Oh, all right, that was a good one. Let's move on to the next one. Walk, walk, walk. Turn the camera off. But it's like. Cause I. And it's not even, like, a portrayal of that, because I bring that up as soon as that show is done. Like, I brought that up. I'm like, guys, I was dying on a few of those lifts, like, hard. I didn't want to show it, though, because, like, I want to. You know, you're kind of. You've got this mental version of what the world is when you think about it. And if you can think about it in a better way, it'll kind of bleed into, like, actual reality.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, you're sort of faking it until you believe it. Look, the devil's in the details with this. When should I take a rest day versus, like, am I taking a day off? Because I might get injured today? I'm not slept well. I really need it.

[Sam Sulek]

Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

Or am I selling myself short? Am I not allowing myself to say these things out loud or attach much worth to these thoughts because I'm denying what is actually true? Because this is better for me in the long run, because it's a positive mindset. Am I being honest with the audience if I don't put forward the weaker version of me that I don't want to be? Or am I being more honest if I do put it forward? It's infinite spiral of.

[Sam Sulek]

I think that at least that last portion gets a little. Well, I think it'd be its own thing where it's a completely different perception that I'm like portraying. I think it's different when he's like. You might say something then like in a situation like that. And then later, like, guys, remember when I was super high energy for that back day? That was not it. I think it kind of balanced out when you say that later. But that's something to think about for all of them, for sure.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, how many times have people in an argument with a partner said something that they then later regret?

[Sam Sulek]

Right, Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

In the moment, a heated moment of a diet or an argument, we often say stuff that's random.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, that's a. That's one thing. Getting back to. We were saying something a second ago about like, different kind of thought processes and things. And one of. Probably one of my first, like what you kind of call eureka moment of like self realization. I was like in high school and I imagine Sam suck pissed, like beyond belief. And it's like, you know, for whatever, not even anything serious, like in the moment. This was the worst thing ever. I'm in the shower. I'm like sitting there just stewing. And I take this and I go, dude, being this upset is just so tiring. Like, what am I doing? And I hadn't been into any kind of. Or motivational speaker. Thought control. Kind of not thought control, but thought kind of controlling your own thoughts, what you think of things or anything like that. But that was the first time I had a certain kind of reflection of what am I even doing right now? This is not. This is not even necessary. And this also sucks. And it's like a good little just. All right, let's chill out here.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you get angry? You seem pretty chill all the time.

[Sam Sulek]

I'm much more chill now, I believe. Like, I wasn't. I was never not chill. Like, I was never like fighting anybody or anything. But I think over time I've become much more chill for sure.

[Chris Williamson]

Is that a Cultivated practice or do you think that's just you a little.

[Sam Sulek]

A little cultivate like I was. There's this one YouTube channel, it's called Gravemind, right. And it's kind of small but they, it's a lot of, it's a lot of just excerpts from like all sorts of like Marcus Aurelius kind of or like the Stoic Mind. Like all sorts of little books like that. Like I've never gotten into like where I sit and I read a whole thing or anything. Like some of those ideas are very kind of translatable to the training. So it was half training because it's like the better of a kind of head and direction, a thing that's controlling your training, the better the training will be. So it wasn't exactly a self help thought process of trying to learn more about how you are as a person. It was like this is actually going to make my training better. That was kind of the motivation, but it definitely extends into just all of life. But it's like there's things you can't control. There's things you can control. To be upset about anything unnecessarily, you just, you're stressing yourself out for no reason and you're creating your own negative energy by like looking at something in that light. So just a lot of like I got into that for like a couple of. I don't see maybe like a month. I like watch a lot of those videos and I took whatever I took from them and I think it was, it put me on a better mental path. And it's. But it's a little silly to say just for the regular person to hear because it's like all the cliches of the grass isn't always green on the other side or just whichever ones and they're so just random, you just spit them out. You don't even really take it in. But if you ever have a situation in life where you screw up or something bad happened or whatever and then you think of one of those because you're like, oh shit, that was actually true. That was literally me just now where it's, you know, you're going to come across a problem you didn't expect and to, you know, kind of cower from it or just like pretend it didn't actually happen. It's, it's something where you kind of. And I think with the training for me when I'm doing all these videos and like really it's a lot of self reflection practice because now instead of just a thought about how my training is going. I'm putting it out into, like, real words and really, like, you know, because I don't. The. The whole point of all the things I post is the objective take on, you know, working out from Sam, of the perspective of whatever that day was. So even if I said something that may have been in the moment, objective, like I was saying, like, this is what I believe. A year later, I could say something else.

[Chris Williamson]

I reserve the right to change my mind.

[Sam Sulek]

I'm a different guy. Yeah, I'm a different guy. I've done different things. I've seen different things. I've met different people. To be the same guy over time is, you know, just suck.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, that would be even less authentic. Yeah, there's a. I think one of the problems with anybody putting anything out on the Internet, whether you're a content creator or a person that your mum that posts on Facebook, because we have this concrete record of everything that everybody has ever said throughout all of time. What you end up with is the opportunity for people to call out what on the outside looks like hypocrisy, but from the inside is just updating your worldview and learning and developing and growing and confusing those two. And the quickness of people to say, well, you didn't say that before. You didn't agree with 45 minutes of cardio. I thought it was 30, Sam. Was it not 30 in the last prep? And the incentive there is for people to not say that they have changed their mind when they've changed their mind. And it also encourages people to never actually state their opinions.

[Sam Sulek]

That's what I was about to say. If you know that you have had a few things where you look back and say, yeah, I actually don't do. I don't drink a protein shake with 100 grams of sugar in it anymore. I did at the time.

[Chris Williamson]

And I'm like, was that something you used to do?

[Sam Sulek]

It's like, well, post workout, you're very sensitive to an insulin response.

[Chris Williamson]

Will be if you put 100 grams of sugar.

[Sam Sulek]

100 grams is literally just straight sugar and like, two scoops of protein.

[Chris Williamson]

You're kidding me.

[Sam Sulek]

Well, it was dextrose, the highest glycemic index sugar there is. And that was. And it's. It's not like it didn't work.

[Chris Williamson]

I bet you felt great after that.

[Sam Sulek]

I. One of them came back up when I got back to the. When I got back to the apartment, and then I made another one to replace it, but that was like, I had just eaten a huge meal too. So, but, so I would, I would not recommend them as much now. But also I can't say that it was like completely foolish because it worked towards what my goals were. So it's just something like this partly.

[Chris Williamson]

Built by hundred gram sugar protein shakes.

[Sam Sulek]

Exactly, yeah. So it's like, you know, it's just part of the journey of things. And that's something bodybuilders like, that's another like if you could say something that's a little different about how I've talked about Everything is for them. It's always been this portrayal of I'm only eating rice and chicken and broccoli and that's all. And I never cheat and I never eat anything else. When you record like a CD for bodybuilding, but really these guys are eating all sorts of junk. Like Lee Priest is a, he's, he's unapologetic in the sense that he's going to say everything how it is. He's a fat boy and he's, he's like, I'm eating McDonald's. I mean I'm just eating to get big man. If you get fat in the off season, that's how it is, then you can diet. So I, for me, and now my statement or what my current take is on like trying to leverage growth from increased calorie input is like, you know, bulk. But don't get too fat. Like because if you, they'll call it a perma bulk where it's like, dude, you have, you have gained 40 pounds and 30 pounds of that was not muscle. And that's where, well now you're kind of screwed because you got to lose it. But there is a, there is a sweet spot where you will gain a little bit of body fat, you know, maybe ten pounds, whatever. And I think what throws people off is for one like, maybe they want to, they want to do it. They want to eat for like a couple months, get a little bigger and then die back down. I think it could be like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to diet. I know people don't like diets, they've never done it. But they hear what people say about it. I don't know if I could do it. Maybe I don't want to do it. But it's also, man, I got my bicep vein right now though. I can see my abs right now. I don't want to lose that. And for me I get a, I've got a picture and it's a three month difference and it's insane because it's me like eating a bunch of trash. Well, not even. Not actually. It's improved gradually. Like now more food is like you're putting more. It's. I think of it about it like putting more things through like a fine filter. And it's like the. More additives and just like, whatever. Like, not as though I'm picking out specific ones where I'm never going to eat Red 40 because of the. But it's like just on a basic convention biased. Like, I know this is a good. A big bowl of oatmeal and ground beef and like a semi natural barbecue sauce is gonna make me feel good, but more so it won't make me feel bad.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes.

[Sam Sulek]

And I can eat more of those. So it's just an objective. Take that. That is better. But in the time when I was eating like a full pint of like vanilla ice cream and a protein shake, the logic was, well, there's a ton of calories in this. I can eat it very quickly. I am gaining weight. The goal that I am trying to achieve is being achieved. Is it exactly the most optimal way? Well, sometimes you kind of have to. You got to screw up. I know what I said a good way of saying this, but it's like you have to learn from your mistakes so that you can be better later. So it's not make mistakes on purpose, but when you do and you realize they were wrong. Yeah, exactly. So the problem isn't making them. The problem would be not learning from them.

[Chris Williamson]

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[Sam Sulek]

Because it's very black and white, I feel, because you're either a real hardcore, like, I'm going to track everything I got a scale, or I'm pretty good at reading all the nutrition labels and I'll make sure I eat enough food. Because it's really. You're either eating enough or you're not. And for someone, no one is going to track their calories 25% of the time. Nobody's going to be on their diet 50% of the time. And even if they were, well, then it's not going to work. You're not going to notice any substantial changes from it. Because dieting, the scrutiny I consider close to the scrutiny of getting a medical degree. It's not like getting a business degree or an accounting degree or something where you got a 2.0 GPA. Here you go. You did it. 70 average. You pass. Like, if I only dieted 70% of the time, or 70%, as you know, somehow 70% of what was actually necessary, then if I went on stage, I'd look a fool. I'd be literally way too soft. And in relation to the guys who actually did it, or even someone just trying to lose weight, you can be on it 70% of the day. You could be on it 95% of the day.

[Chris Williamson]

And that's a lot of damage in that 5%.

[Sam Sulek]

Five minutes unfiltered in a pantry, you can completely. You can completely undo that sounds like.

[Chris Williamson]

A Sam Sulek sex tape. Five minutes unfiltered in a pantry.

[Sam Sulek]

But you can completely undo all your work. And that happens a lot. I was good today. I'm going to have a milkshake. Just ruined it just with the one thing.

[Chris Williamson]

But the margins are very tight, right?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. Because you're either in a deficit and it's not necessarily on a day by day, because sometimes you throw refeeds in or whatever. But you're either in a deficit consistently on average week by week, or you're not, or you're in a surplus consistently average week by week, or you're not. And even if you. And it's like Honestly, a week is probably a good chunk to describe because if I was in a good six days, I can, I can undo that in a day. Yeah, I can undo. So 300 calorie deficit for six days. 18, 1800 calories is a meal.

[Chris Williamson]

It's a meal.

[Sam Sulek]

That's one meal. Or it's like half of a crazy meal. If you're like really nuts and you're already, because you're already in a debt, in a dieted state, like, you're already subject to like suck up carbs. Like I've had, you know, because rather than just reverse dieting very slowly, like I've had like a 10,000 calorie day one day. And it wasn't like 10,000 calorie challenge. Like that was. I tracked everything just because I want to know. But I mean, that's just what happened because I let the floodgates loose. 10,000, like a 4,000 calorie day on a Sunday could throw off all your stuff. Saturday, Friday. So it's, you know, it's something where these, they either someone could either step it up enough where they actually make it happen, or they're kind of just caught toiling or they just don't even want to deal with it. And I know it's. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying if you do track everything on a scale and you count it all and you disperse your meals evenly throughout the day so that you are not dying hungry because you just starved yourself all day, well, then the likelihood that you'll actually get lean if you did everything right, it's like 100%.

[Chris Williamson]

Where are the biggest vectors of weakness in dieting for you? It sounds like you and me have the same thing, which is nighttime snacking tends to be a big temptation, which means if you can just discriminate a little bit more calorie expenditure toward the end of the day, you can go to bed feeling not like you're going to go do the pantry sex day.

[Sam Sulek]

I have never blown my calorie deficit from breakfast. It is always later in the day. So what I do is I just wait till. Sometimes I'll just wait until kind of as late as I feel like. Usually noon is a good. Because right now I'm going from eating a ton of food to now eating basically a normal amount of food, which just that change, even though I'm not in a serious deficit, is still enough to start to get me a little bit lighter and actually get some fat reserves burning. But nothing really. What do you call locked in yet? Fast forward a few months where like, okay, I've got 2,500 for today, and I need to make them count because I'm getting hungry. I'm going to wait until maybe one, usually not beyond one. And it's not because of the magic of intermittent fasting, but you can skip breakfast and you're not dying. You can wait a little bit, and then I just want to time it where it's. I'm hungry, but I'm not starving. Because if you wait until you're really starving, well, then now you're starving. You want to eat.

[Chris Williamson]

You're at the mercy of your desire to eat.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah. So there's like a threshold of hunger where if you wait until you're too hungry, it might make you more likely to overdo it.

[Chris Williamson]

I had an Achilles repair after playing cricket, which is the most British way to snap an Achilles. And the advice from the surgeon was, don't chase the pain. When he was talking about using the painkillers, that you always want to be out ahead of the pain a little bit. And it's kind of the same, like, don't chase the hunger with this. Allow yourself to get. I'm starting to feel it a little bit, and I'll just. I'll nip that in the bud. As opposed to being ravenous. And that's how you go from needing a 500 calorie meal to a thousand calorie meal, and you go, that was two fifths of my Entire Day on 2500 gone in a single meal. God, the rest of the day is going to suck.

[Sam Sulek]

Right. So that's. That's something I always have to. It's like a dichotomy of trying to get good at anything or trying to really progress at something. Because there is a perception that I have to be either Rocky Balboa and do 10 miles every morning and drink egg whites and. Or if I can't do that, I'll do nothing. Like, that's. Yeah, there's a good reference. A guy was like, people will have a slashed tire approach to dieting, where if one tire gets slashed, like, you had a bad day. I've had days where I cheated. I didn't say it till later, but I had a couple really big days on my diet. But the idea that, okay, today was a little off, screw it. Done. It's either perfect or nothing. Which is so crazy because it's just what you'd call someone's hypothetical perfection where they imagine the perfect version of themselves and they set the bar there and like real life is nothing like that. But now to like, if they think that this is the bar to be anything short makes them feel comfortable. Like it's just not for me. If I can't be perfect, I don't want to be anything at all. But with, with working out, like what I was about to really get into is it's a combination of. For one, you do have to be serious. Like with dieting, the whole point is literally on average you are hungrier than you are not hungry and you don't get to eat a lot of stuff. It's difficult, it's something hard. So you have to kind of raise to the occasion. I can handle this. I will be tougher to be able to do it and really bring it and put a lot of effort into it. But at the same time you want to give yourself a routine that makes it the easiest for you. So for me to say if I really time out my diet, well, it actually doesn't feel like I'm dieting that hard because I had very low calorie, high volume meals and an egg white omelet with a full pack of a salad mixed into it. But that only comes after that hard headedness of saying I'm going to do it in the beginning. Because if your first instinct is to coddle yourself well, then that's not a position where you're ever going to, you know, deal with it when it gets hard. Yeah, but you have to be able to like that's where I like. I used to do basically three to four times the amount of volume in a workout that I do now. I used my mind was five sets on five movements. So for one chest day as 165 pound SAM, I was doing five sets of bench, five sets of incline bench, five sets of flies, five sets of dips, five sets is something else. And it was a little fluffier volume. I wasn't capable of the intensity that I can reach now from doing it for so long. But in my mind more is better. I don't care that it's going to take a while and be long. That's just this is what I want to do and this is how I'm going to do it.

[Chris Williamson]

Dose response, increase dose, increase response.

[Sam Sulek]

Nothing is going to change that. So it's this hard headedness where it was hard for me to even go from 25 sets down to 11 because I just cut it in half. Isn't that half the work? More results. I think that's nuts. But it's something where even though you're reluctant, still trying things like that and changing it up. That's sort of the whole point. You want to optimize this routine so that you can do it the most efficiently, but you can look at that as though, oh, for me, an optimized routine is I go to the gym once a week. Sometimes I don't even go like that's just the routine that's optimized for me. And that's where it's more of a coddling than it is a brain. You either raise the bar or you lower yourself to the bar.

[Chris Williamson]

What are some of the more. Did you ever have a non just macro tracking approach? Did you ever do any more wacky diets?

[Sam Sulek]

Well, I wouldn't say wacky, but when I started working out, I just made sure I hit my protein. That was all right. Like main gaining. You're a beginner. I was also still doing diving at the time. And as a beginner, just from eating your protein, like that's. No one is eating 250 grams of protein a day just because I don't think just because they're hungry.

[Chris Williamson]

I don't think anybody flukes more than probably 120 to 150 grams. No one accidentally falls backward into 150 grams of protein.

[Sam Sulek]

It never happens. Like you're. I mean when I was a kid, I was like, oh, back from school, eat a whole bag of croutons. I'm like, that was good, let's go do something that was a meal, that was a snack or whatever. So protein was the thing I would track and that was all. And anything else I ate, whatever. And that worked pretty well because I coupled that with really hard training. But yeah, nothing too wacky. For a while I really got into drinking egg whites like cracked into a cup. How'd that go to you? My only gripe is the fact or the only thing stopping me from still doing it is the fact that the like the egg protein raw is so bound up with itself that its bioavailability is like 50%. So if you're eating 150 grams of protein worth of egg whites in a raw form, you're only breaking it down at 25. And I'm not going to eat double than what I like. I'm not going to counter that.

[Chris Williamson]

Do you think people need to think more about that, about bioavailability when it comes to protein consumption? Because you can hit your 250 if it was all through egg whites, it's 125 yeah, right.

[Sam Sulek]

So but usually with the proteins, like my rule is the proteins that I would really count towards my number of, like this is the ones I want to get in the day is kind of like what I call direct animal proteins. Like a dairy, maybe not a cheese because they're filtering things out. But like any kind of milk or yogurt or cottage cheese that's in there, that's solid, that's every amino acid necessary, whatever. Or like any meats or eggs, like that's pretty much what counts. And then everything else, like the proteins that are in, you know, the two pieces of bread you made a sandwich with, like, sure they are proteins, but it's like, you know, taking amino acids, like you don't make a protein shake out of, you know, bcaas because it's only specific ones. Like you want that whole chain of everything. So I always just break it down to those and things that you would conventionally call protein. Like you're good like beefs and chicken, anything like that. Like that's not something to worry about. It only be weird if you, you know, if you're the type to say, okay, I need all this to be plant based, you know, legumes or soy or whatever. And that's something where difficult restrictions going on here, that's something where I'm not the guy to ask because that's not what I do.

[Chris Williamson]

You know, there was a, the reason I asked about the wacky diet thing, me and my friends, I started training 20 years ago, so 37, I started training when I was 17. And bodybuilding.com, the MISC forums on there that world before we kind of just understood it was Kaiko meets if it fits your macros. And then we need to kind of filter it through.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, like sure. To get to a bodybuilding look.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. And then when you, when you're thinking about lifestyle, you just factor in what you've done, which is I don't want to feel like shit. I should probably try and eat mostly whole foods, mostly simple balance, blah blah, blah, like colorful plate and stuff.

[Sam Sulek]

So you, did you ever mess with like the.

[Chris Williamson]

We didn't know that 20 years ago. We didn't know that. Sam. This is new fucking unearthed evidence and some of the stuff we were adamant that skip loading. I tried to tell you about this yesterday. So skip loading was a version of car backloading where you went all week carb free and the goal was to hit at least a kilo of carbs on a Sunday. And the argument behind this was you wanted to avoid metabolism dropping off too much. So by spiking it really high on the Sunday, it would allow you to sort of keep the metabolism burning going. It doesn't lull your body into a false. Don't try and assess the fucking science. Okay?

[Sam Sulek]

I'm just thinking about it as like my bro science mind of like, good.

[Chris Williamson]

That'S the hat you need. You need the bro scientist, not the real scientist hat. And then there was another argument that was, I think skip loading was also done as a part of bodybuilding prep. You might even do this where you do your full refeed and then wait to see how long it takes your weight to come back down to the pre refeed weight. And that was okay. That's how much sort of drop off I've got at the moment. That's how much I'm burning. Carb night, which was carb backloading but once per week, but only on an evening. Carb backloading was this whole period that we went through. There was a time when Christian Thibodeau had blueberry extract in this Nalgene bottle. But you needed to get. It was. You were drinking this much of it. And we were like, it's the blueberry extract that's really what's going to cause the fat burning to work. And it was a wonderful time. We were. You said Indiana Jones. I felt like an explorer, you know, got the hat on, got the little assistant running around trying to find stuff and turns out most of it didn't work. But it was a, it was an adventurous time. You, the golden era has gone, dude. You just know that it's protein and calories.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

But it might have been blueberry extract.

[Sam Sulek]

It's a different look now though. Like, what? But my whole. Even with any kind of training is I'm not so picky about someone's like, I'm going to look at someone and think, what is that guy doing? If he's doing something that is egregiously strange. If you're doing something weird, I'm going to say dude or I'm going to at least think it. I wouldn't just tell somebody this like in real life if I saw him. But with the training it's like guys are doing now over here. What? Oh, man. Hy trox.

[Chris Williamson]

Hyrox.

[Sam Sulek]

Hyrox.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. I mean it says it all that.

[Sam Sulek]

You called it Hy trux, but all sorts of different kind of training. And there's some of the Chinese weightlifters where they, they're, they're doing a freaking back Double bicep. This guy's back looks like a freaking pro bodybuilder. Like all the cuts and everything. So what's. Is it, is it that your training was better than this guy's training? Is it that? And then it's, oh, well, this guy's training only worked because of his genetics. And it's like, well, then it still works for him. So I'm looking at as though it's not exactly what you're doing, but I can boil down the basics. These guys worked hard. They do a lot consistent. Their diet's reasonable and like, they care about it, so they put energy into it. So it's like if you're doing a full body workout every day and like that's your thing and it's, I think we've come, or we're about to come full circle because there's, I think it's, there's been a progression since what we call the golden era of who is trustworthy. And it's, you know, it requires some nuance to actually know the real answer. Because Arnold era, man, Arnold is huge. All these bodybuilders are huge. They work out. I'm going to do their workout. Fast forward, fast forward. Okay, now these bodybuilders are getting extra big. They must be getting extra smart. And then, you know, Q Rocky four steroids are involved. Q. The David Laid era. Cue the natural era. Cue. These guys work out and they're just like me. These guys know what they're doing. Fast forward a little bit. Okay, now that's, oh, these guys are lying. This is the fake natural era. I can't listen to these guys because they're not actually telling the truth about it. And then now we're in the scientifically explainable era where it's not the gains that I have, it's the training and the explanations why I do the training that I do, which makes me superior because I can explain it very well and I have different studies to support it. But at what point could I give you, like, let's say I was working on my own energy drink or something like that? At what point could I tell you, hey, man, I've got 10 studies that say this is the best thing ever and then you drink it and it tastes like shit. Can any amount of studies and data and science make you think that that actually tastes good? So I think we're to the point where it will almost revert back to a point of your results will begin to speak for themselves under the context that, you know, what went into Those results.

[Chris Williamson]

That's interesting. What do you make of the world of evidence based lifting, science based stuff at the moment?

[Sam Sulek]

I think, I think there's people who are gimmicky about it and make it a thing because they know it's like, because an older person or an older guy who works out is going to stick to the basics that he know works for him, which is, you know, sweet. But you know, he's, it's going to be harder for him to accept new ideas. So for a younger guy it's kind of this like clout mentality of like, oh, I'm on the new wave train. But some of it's a little silly. I don't think all of it is. So I'm not, I would never. The point isn't exactly what they're doing, but a lot of the idea behind it and it's kind of its own subculture is, it's very like it's a weird elitism because it's not like it's Chris Bumstead saying like this is the or and like their whole thing is this is right, you are wrong. And like that sucks. That's not cool. And that's not even true because there's so many people that get so many different results doing so many different things. Like the idea that they're following is if I'm not perfect, then there's no point. And it's getting back to the conditioning of preschool, middle school, high school, college. I want to get a degree so I know I can get a job. I want to know it's going to work. And that's the demand of being able to explain it with studies. Because going into the gym at all is kind of uncomfortable for the non beginner of any age where you've never worked out before. It's always like, oh, are people going to watch me working out? I've never done it. I'm uncomfortable because I've never actually gotten experience doing it. Do I need to get one of my buddies who works out to bring me to coach me? Well then they're going to know that he's coached. It's something where it does have an inflated kind of situation. You don't get nervous about going into a freaking Starbucks. But the gym is a little different because it has that physicality. So for them to, you know, just think like, okay, this is actually the solution because this is perfect and this will work. It's a, it's a snake oil of an idea instead of a product. Because.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you mean that?

[Sam Sulek]

Because the convincing point is that if you do it just like how we're saying to do it, we can guarantee that it will work for you. When really, I think the best guys who work out and lift, just what you call the best lifters would be the ones who actually get their hands on their own wheel and learn it for themselves and then they get a deeper understanding. Because I could read a book about, you know, let's say for some reason I was raised in captivity and I read a book that was like how to act normal. As much as I could read it, it would never translate to actually being a regular guy because you have to do these things to learn them. It's a different kind of experience because the working out isn't something you can just say on paper. You have to actually become experienced from doing it and then you'll be different in the future. So to say, like, and even just to say something so blatantly, at least what I would consider at least ill advised of this is the perfect way to do anything. That's not true, man. You're just saying that.

[Chris Williamson]

How much of it do you think is uncertainty reduction?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, exactly, A lot. And I think in a way it's a little bit bringing it down. Like I talked about either raising to the bar or like kind of coddling yourself and making it seem like less of a thing. If you bring it and you get serious, you say, okay, the gym is full of guys who really get serious. I'm going to do it and I'm going. Or I'm going to do these things, which people said is the perfect way to do it. And it's not, you don't have to go that hard or you don't have to do that much. Like, things like that, I feel is a lowering of the difficulty, but it's argued as an improvement of the efficiency. But for me, I'm looking at that as though, like, do you hate working out? Like, if you hate working out, then you want a routine where it's like one set a day. Like the ideal. Well, I guess the idea would be zero sets. Like in their world, it's. I wish there was a pill. Like a real. Where it's, you never have to work out again. And this is where my bias could come in. Because it's not an objective. Like, I'm just adding to a conversation. Like, I can't say anything completely objective. But from my perspective, like, I like it in the gym, if a workout took, if I could do 20 sets, and that was actually like pretty efficient. And it worked. That's what I would do. But it's not because that's like I'm not chasing a maximum efficiency. In a way I'm, I'm half chasing like maximum enjoyment because I like, I like to be in the gym.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, I think that's a good. Well, you've said yourself you went from 25 sets, reduce that down because you were more efficient that you, some could say you're updating your worldview. You have accumulated some evidence that has now changed and informed the way that you're going to show up in the gym. But I think there's definitely an argument to be made that we are not equations. And I guess the, the, the slight addition to what you've said there is the assumption there is a science based approach to lifting or an evidence based approach to lifting causes a less enjoyable sort of routine. But some people may go in and say like just imagine for a second that the evidence based routine happened to be more fun. I don't know how or why or whatever.

[Sam Sulek]

If for me it clicked as more fun, I'd have to do it.

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. Then you'd be like, oh wow, I've got both things. I've got both efficiency and I've got enjoyment coming through both. But yeah, if you're. Dude, I say it again. The era in which I sort of came up learning about lifting, we didn't. Is it 5, 3 1? Is it 5 by 5? Is it German volume training? Is it drop sets? Is it rest pause? Is it Meyer sets? Is it Meyer? Like, you know, there's so many. And ultimately when you look across what most people's points of failure are for the normal left for 99% of people that are going to the gym, which is still only what like 3% of the population or something? So it's a tiny amount of a tiny amount. The point of failure is compliance and the reason for the failure in compliance is typically motivation and enjoyment. So what you should be optimizing for what this is what the science, the evidence based lifting community should do. They should make their workouts as fun as possible. So that would be a great study. What is. And this would be a fucking, actually a fucking phenomenal study. What constitutes an enjoyable workout. I would have to assume that variation across the year in terms of exercises would be one of those variation in terms of sets, reps, progressions. You know, you don't want to be doing drop sets all the time, but it's kind of fun to do that. You don't want to be Doing pump stuff all the time. But that's also kind of fun. You don't want to have to be doing squats all of the time. But I can switch those out. Maybe I'll do some walking lunges, maybe I'll do suitcase lunges. I won't just do back rack lunges. Oh, that'll give my like shoulder's a little bit of a rest and I don't need to warm up so much. Okay, so where can you maximize compliance through enjoyment as well as through efficiency for effectiveness on the other side? So there's an equation that you can reverse engineer somehow.

[Sam Sulek]

But so if I had to put a little more of like my current 2025, you know, September 1st take, it would be not so much that I'm against any particular style at all. It's more so I'm not like it does not please me to see people be very unopen to discussion and very just hard headed with a take like that because I've changed my mind and learned different things very drastically. Even the videos. My training looks incredibly different now than even a year and a half ago and I think it'll look different in a year and a half from then. But one more thing about the studies though, I'm personally not the kind of person in a control group study by any stretch of the imagination. So that's my own bias of is a study from 180 pound guys who are starting to work out, who don't eat all the protein that I'm eating, who aren't doing all the cardio, who just have not been having this whole lifestyle with everything that goes along with it. That is not me or any of these more kind of older school or hardcore bodybuilders or power lifters. So it's as though those studies aren't invalid, but it's just not. It's like if you canvass what's the best TV show and it's things intended for children, not to say that that's intended for a 65 year old guy who's in the nature of sure it could be the best show for that intended target audience, but it probably wouldn't be the same for me. So then that can make me kind of backpedal and say actually for the younger audience to the untrained audience to look at these studies if they would be the people who were in them, well then I guess I could see a little more and I'm just trying to exert my will in the way of thinking that what I do works and that it should be working for everyone.

[Chris Williamson]

Advanced lifters by design are going to be less represented in these things, right?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, exactly. But that's where, like, I don't want to do that. Like, I don't. I'm not trying. And I always. I'll usually if I say anything kind of statementy, I'll try to preface it because I mean it to be. This is my take. Like, it is not. The. The videos are not meant to be like this objective thing. It's like how I think about any given thing at any given time. So it's like if you're watching a Sam video years in the future, and it's a clip of me saying something like, look at the upload date and just take it into account.

[Chris Williamson]

Correct at the time. All right, let's say that you only had 10 exercises for the rest of time to build the best body that you could. What are you going to choose? Talk me through the philosophy.

[Sam Sulek]

I've got a roster set up. So when it comes to legs, I think that the idea of a crazy heavy squats or leg press all the time as a quad builder, it just wouldn't be it for me because I've had periods of time where I basically did leg extension exclusively. Usually when I diet, my leg extension volume increases because, I mean, squeezing wise, activation wise. If you slapped electronic pulse indicators, maybe you could get a real readout of how much they're activating. But for me, if I had to pick a quad movement, I would just kill it on the leg extensions because you can really pump them up, go a little heavier. Like there's. If I had to pick one, that would be it.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Sam Sulek]

Then hamstrings would be. I'd be a little torn, but I'd probably pick. I'm very torn. Either seated or laying curl, but either way, a hamstring curl.

[Chris Williamson]

I've got to pick one. I'm afraid, Sam, you can't.

[Sam Sulek]

I guess I'd have to pick the. I'd ask wick laying.

[Chris Williamson]

I would've picked a little bit more stretch.

[Sam Sulek]

Well, not even because of that, because you would actually. In a seated position, if you pull forward, would your hips not be more rounded over where your hamstrings tie in? So now they're actually more stretched. You feel your hamstring stretch when you bend your torso to touch your toes, not when you're laying down. So the idea, when people talk about there's more stretch on the lane curl, I don't even see it.

[Chris Williamson]

Well, that depends. If you're sat like this because often it's handles people press themselves up.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, yeah. So that would be.

[Chris Williamson]

You've pushed this off as opposed to pulling yourself in. So I guess it depends how you position yourself.

[Sam Sulek]

So I guess. But right now I'm on a kick of laying curl.

[Chris Williamson]

All right, so quad extension, lying, hamstring.

[Sam Sulek]

Curl, and then for back, I'd probably just have to do regular pull downs. But you could also cheat them into a row by leaning back extra far.

[Chris Williamson]

All right. Okay. Yeah, that's acceptable because you've just got the one machine.

[Sam Sulek]

It's the same hand, it's the same setup.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. All right.

[Sam Sulek]

For me anyway, I need more lats because I want them to be wider. Like, the thickness of my back is actually fine. Like, I want them to extend out. Like, that's what really gives that sort of look. Illusion.

[Chris Williamson]

What do you think about when it comes to lat pull down hand position cues? What are you thinking?

[Sam Sulek]

Because then you can change it up pretty drastically. Like, if I do a lighter set, which is normally toward the end, I can put my hands extra far out and it's a bit more like rather than pulling my shoulders up and down, which kind of gets like a lot of my lower lats, a kind of erector like middle thickness, rather, you know, having wider hands and rotating around my shoulders. That gets me a little more upper lats. But. Or you could also make it super heavy and do a closer grip and you get a little forearm and bicep just from the nature of a. Like that's more of a compound movement of a row, but then you can really load it too.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, so quad extension, lying hamstring curl, lat pull down with a little bit of fuckery on the handle.

[Sam Sulek]

What's for. Yeah, for. For chest, I think I'd have to pick. Oh, I'm a little torn. But honestly, if I had to only pick one.

[Chris Williamson]

No, you can. You've got 10 in total. So you can.

[Sam Sulek]

But you got a lot of muscle group, so you got to at least cover your bases. So I would say. There was a time when I would say inclined barbell if I was on an incline barbell kick. But it's a little tricky on your shoulders because it's very like directly mounted. Like, the only time I ever get my shoulders is usually inclined barbell. When I like it, I like it, but I wouldn't do it all the time. So that's where I would say dumbbell. But even then, dumbbell is very limited because you can go really heavy and the individual loading and the fact that they can move out the entire way, you'd still squeeze at the top. You can rest a bench with a bar at the top. Because it's all just going through your bone structure. Not so much with dumbbells.

[Chris Williamson]

So it's always adjusting.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, you're never going to relax on the top of a dumbbell. But what I think I'd have to pick now would actually be a seated cable press. So if you've ever seen seat here, cable here, cable here, you pull it in, you kind of like this.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Because that is staying neutral throughout that.

[Sam Sulek]

Pretty neutral, yeah.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah. So you're not.

[Sam Sulek]

You're not allowed. Not incline, not decline, like kind of hands up a little bit. Because that's a much more versatile set. Because I can do it really heavy like a conventional press, but I could also go lighter and be much more squeeze emphasized because there's like the two bases. I basically cover for every move, every body part. If I do a heavy one, I'm going to counter it with a lighter squeezing one. And to do only one, I think you'd be limiting your stimulus. So that, that puts us at what that's.

[Chris Williamson]

That's for now. So there's definitely on incline dumbbell press, which I think for every guy is always going to be up there. For chest, it feels good on your shoulders. It's always one of the first movements that you do when you get into the gym. You feel like it's building the bit of the chest that you want, which is up here. But if you do a really light set, you just don't feel the same as you do if you're on cable. So I understand that tension, especially because you're being pulled that way, not that way. Right.

[Sam Sulek]

So you always have that kind of, you know, widening force, even at the top.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, that's a good point. All right, so that's four. So extension, curl, pull down, cable press. Yeah. Is that on a little incline, 30 degrees.

[Sam Sulek]

Just flattish, basically. Flat, flat loaded.

[Chris Williamson]

All right.

[Sam Sulek]

Because then you can also put your hands up a little and get more upper chest. Put it down a little, get more.

[Chris Williamson]

You're being very cheeky here. Okay, number five.

[Sam Sulek]

So five and six for arms would be. Well, for triceps first I'd probably have to pick just easy bar curl, push down. So not the v bar, like 90 degrees is too much straight is also a little too much on your wrists. So a little camber. More like a 1 20. That's about right. Because I can also do that light and squeezing or you can really, like, get into and have some heft.

[Chris Williamson]

What are you thinking about with cues for that? Are you more upright? If you got a little bit of bend in the hips?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, decently upright. But if you're. If you stand too upright, well, then now you're like, turning into an ab exercise because you're loading your arms downward and you have to keep yourself tense to stay there. So I. I'll hunch over it. Or if I'm doing a hard one, I'll put my head to the side of the cable and kind of, like wrench it a little like that. Not for all of them, but for some of them.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Sam Sulek]

And then dumbbells is just dumbbell curls. I think it's hard to beat.

[Chris Williamson]

Seated, standing, supinated.

[Sam Sulek]

Would they count as different movements?

[Chris Williamson]

Yes. Gotta pick one.

[Sam Sulek]

Well, I guess I'd have to just.

[Chris Williamson]

Pick standing, standing, supinated.

[Sam Sulek]

So more of a regular. A classic twist of neutral at your, you know, your hips. Into supinated.

[Chris Williamson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sam Sulek]

Because just the. With some movements, being able to change the load completely changes the style of the movement. Because I could do the 30s and really hold it and squeeze it. Or I could try to do, like, the 70s and have it be a much heavier kind of brunt sort of thing. So that's. We're getting close to six now.

[Chris Williamson]

So you got four left?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, so six. Now I can chill on shoulders because I don't. I haven't done a real shoulder workout for, like, years at this point because they're just. They're already big. Like, they don't relative. My arms need to grow. So I would want to add a forearm curl cable.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Sam Sulek]

So you're holding the 1D handle, you know, cable up here. I'm loading it down this way. Like, this is the force.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Sam Sulek]

And I'm just doing this.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay.

[Sam Sulek]

And it's not a huge movement.

[Chris Williamson]

Yep.

[Sam Sulek]

But it's like, enough where you actually kind of thicken this up. And I used to do a ton of that, and then my forearms got big enough, and then I never did it again.

[Chris Williamson]

At least now you're back on it because the arms have caught up now.

[Sam Sulek]

I'll add it a little more, but it's. Yeah. And honestly, for just. I think it was a joke that Hugh Jackman or someone or Stallone worked their forearms like crazy. Because when you're acting, you're not always shirtless, but you're usually sleeveless. And having big forearms makes you look extra cool. So I guess after that I'd probably Have to add a calf raise.

[Chris Williamson]

Just because standing. Seated.

[Sam Sulek]

Seated. Seated is a little bit better.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Even though you're going to be hitting. I always get these the wrong way around.

[Sam Sulek]

Gastronk versus Soleus, whatever. For me, I feel it and my calves will grow from it. So I've got my own anecdotal evidence of it worked.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, got two left.

[Sam Sulek]

So the next one has to be the cardio bike, which not many people would add because they're thinking, I don't even need to do cardio because it's not in their mind. But that's. Yeah. So seated. And then the pedals are like where my feet are over here. So it's kind of a reclined.

[Chris Williamson]

They're a little bit further back.

[Sam Sulek]

It's a reclined position and it's the easiest one.

[Chris Williamson]

Little backrest.

[Sam Sulek]

My torso does not move, so I can pedal as much as I want. And I'm just sitting playing on my phone for 30 minutes. You can do it. And also make it easy.

[Chris Williamson]

Have you got a preferred machine for that? Like to pre core make a particularly good.

[Sam Sulek]

Just some of them, they have little handles. Sometimes the handles are too close to where your knees are and you'll bump your knee on them. That's my only gripe. But I'm not picky. The one I have at my house is like. I mean, it's the equivalent of one that you would get for free if you picked it up from, like the side of the road. But it still works. And actually that one's harder on a. Well, it reads harder because sometimes the math that they do to calculate calories burned, it's not completely. Because if someone like me pedaled for 30 minutes at X difficulty, at X speed, an Olympic cyclist or like a marathon cyclist could do it at the same speed and the same difficulty, and he would actually burn less calories because he's more efficient and I'm less efficient. So it's not necessarily. I always aim for the same number. It's like, I know the feeling of, like, this is hard, but it's not too hard. Like, this is the right energy expenditure level.

[Chris Williamson]

I did that on a. I've been getting into incline treadmill walking to get to zone two. Zone two for me is really hard to hit. It's way faster than a normal walk on the road and it's way slower than a jog.

[Sam Sulek]

And yeah, my incline preferred is like.

[Chris Williamson]

3.5, 5%, 3 point for me, 3.2 at 15 is. Is nice, but I don't know what the Metrics are of the. Whatever the machine is. That was in the UK and it was 3.2, 15. And I was like, this doesn't feel right. Okay, I'll just keep going up. 4. Like, 4 still doesn't feel right. 5. What the fuck is this number? It got to 5.3 and, like, about that.

[Sam Sulek]

The speed is off. Is that miles per hour or kilometers?

[Chris Williamson]

I don't know. Because it wouldn't be kilometers over here because it would still be miles per hour. Whatever. It was the exact same. You go, I can go to a new machine. And after you've done, you don't even need that many sessions. What, 20, 30 sessions before you go. I kind of understand how I'm supposed to feel and where my heart rate's supposed to be at. Like, just by a sense of breathing.

[Sam Sulek]

Exactly.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, so you got one left. What's left?

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, one left.

[Chris Williamson]

What haven't we done? We haven't. You haven't touched abs, you haven't touched glutes directly, you haven't touched shoulders directly. What else is missing? I think that's it. It's lower back. I guess if that's in a bodybuilding.

[Sam Sulek]

Sphere, you'd want your lower back developed enough where it's got, like a little texture, but if it gets too big, it'll take away from your waist because the whole point is this illusion of wider shoulders and a smaller waist. So now that they're already developed, I probably wouldn't. I don't hit my abs because they get worked kind of secondarily from even doing dumbbell curls. I'm keeping myself stable. Once they're there and you're actually still working out, they're not going anywhere. And then every time you look at yourself in the mirror, you're going to flex them. They get worked enough to be maintained. So that's why there's not a lot of ab workouts, because I did a lot before and now they're just not going to go anywhere. Same with shoulders. So I'd have to. I'm a little reluctant, but I can't think of anything else I would want to do. I'd pick the adductor machine. That's where you're squeezing your legs together.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay. Why?

[Sam Sulek]

Makes your legs a little thicker in the middle because it's this whole kind of system of it ties in kind of below your knee, more hamstring, but it's this sort of just piece right in the center where if your adductors were completely undeveloped and you stood up straight with your Knees straight, you'd have a really big gap between your legs.

[Chris Williamson]

And you'd think you wouldn't be able to fully get that with the extension.

[Sam Sulek]

Well, the extension is just quad because that's like a knee flexion and this is like leg. Well, you know, I don't even know what you call it. That. Yeah, yeah. The joke is the. Well, it's. I don't know, there's like two versions of a joke because they'll call that one the ball crusher because that's what you're squeezing legs together. But the older, like the joke that people would say before was that was either the good girl or the bad girl machine.

[Chris Williamson]

One's forcing it apart, one's forcing it together. Okay.

[Sam Sulek]

I don't want to perpetuate that name, but that's kind of a reference to those.

[Chris Williamson]

Okay, very good. Sam Solick, ladies and gentlemen. Sam, you're awesome, man. I really loved hanging with you this weekend.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, this is freaking fun.

[Chris Williamson]

What's next? What can people expect over the next few months from you?

[Sam Sulek]

Nothing. A couple people ask me that. It's like, all right, man, what are you working on? And I'm like, well, I got some renovations going on. I got to clear out my garage. It's like. I've got a few lists. I kind of couple them into one because it's all like my thing. But I've got like social media list. I say it's. You could say it's more for the production value, but I just like camera stuff, so I'm always trying new camera things just because it's. But it's. You know, it does directly play into how the videos look like. That's my little fidgety tinker thing to get into.

[Chris Williamson]

Just iterating.

[Sam Sulek]

Yeah, exactly. But in terms of the. I mean, there's not a lot of flash with real working out.

[Chris Williamson]

Clear out the. Clear out the garage.

[Sam Sulek]

There's not going to be SAM 2.0. It'll only be a gradual evolution. So it's like, you know, check back in two years and we'll have a lot of updates.

[Chris Williamson]

Fuck yeah. I'm looking forward to it, man. Appreciate you.

[Sam Sulek]

Sweet. Trip planner by Expedia. You were made to outdo your holiday, your hammocking and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.