After 10 years of training, studying and fighting, I hired my first personal bodybuilding trainer, who was none other than Scott Abel.
I couldn’t have picked a better trainer as Scott may be the most successful bodybuilding trainer of all time… Without a doubt, he is by far the most brainpowered person I have ever met in the entire industry, period. Trust me, Scott’s intelligence is in the high IQ zone.
Bill Pearl told all the current bodybuilding experts, guys like Chis Aceto, Tom Deters and the like “that Scott Abel is going to do great things in this sport” and that was over 10 years ago.
With Scott’s guidance, I learned the final pieces of the bodybuilding puzzle directly from Scott himself and developed a great relationship with him. After my first Nationals in 1998, I hung up the trunks when I went into business, learning the ropes in the supplement industry, an area Scott had shunned after the whole “Venice Beach” supplement company scene had faded. messed up
Sure, Scott wrote articles for MuscleTech and also for another company “that currently also sells before and after photos of their clients” for sponsorship ads, but I can tell you from first-hand experience that he doesn’t recommend any supplement periods to his athletes. competitive. . I know that in the years I trained with him he never told me to take a product. It was all training and diet.
bodybuilding naturally
Now I wanted to go the Natural Route and realized that the only way to improve bodybuilding was if someone somewhere provided a new way to grow and stay healthy without resorting to drugs.
After competing in my first Nationals in ’98 as a naive kid from the Canadian backwoods, I was shocked to see what really goes on in bodybuilding. Trust me, I saw where the sport was going and it wasn’t pretty. I decided on a different path for myself, which led me to work at all levels of the supplement industry.
My early years in the supplement industry were also eye-openers for me, and I realized why Scott was so shy about getting involved with any of the companies.
(Okay, I know I’m on a tangent… but it’s important to understand the evolution of thoughts, goals, visions, and the historical conclusions one comes to to illustrate my point)
So in 2002 I decided to compete as a vegetarian to first prove that the whole meat thing was a myth and that you could build a great physique without pharmaceuticals.
I rehired Scott as my consultant to work with me. He was totally against vegetarianism and he warned me that many of the guys he was competing against were passing the test.
I told him “it wasn’t about winning, it was about developing a new possibility for natural athletes.” Scott was skeptical but somewhat impressed with my intentions and commitment. Note: he didn’t let me know about this until years later, but getting a compliment from Scott Abel isn’t the easiest task in the world… LOL
He agreed to help me, but he wasn’t sure how successful I was going to be given my choices and the “restrictions” I was subjecting myself to.
The failures within my own success
Over the next two years I managed to win both the Canadian Western and National Championships and represent Canada at the World Championships in 2003, which is certainly one of the highlights of my competitive bodybuilding career.
Although during 2003 I paid a high price for the constant diet of the 5 competitions in 2 years and the current style of training, diet and supplementation. The bottom line was that there was no way a natural athlete could train and stay healthy.
After Mr. Universe 2003 I gained 42 pounds of water and fat in just 11 weeks and was unable to train during this time. This was perhaps one of the biggest challenges of my career.
I vowed to get my form back for the 2004 Nationals, doing it my way using a much healthier approach. I went back to competing, but for the 6 months leading up to the competition, Scott and I clashed due to my unwillingness to follow “traditional bodybuilding” dietary protocols.
This was also a challenging time because I respect Scott so much, but on the other hand, he didn’t have as much experience with a natural athlete of my caliber, or one who was a vegetarian, etc. My instincts told me that he needed to forge my own path.
So I managed to get in great shape for the 04 Nationals, but peaking for the show soured for the first time. The traditional format for the peak didn’t work with my new diet and I ended up missing Nationals. Trust me, the margin of victory at the highest level is extremely small, as everyone at the top has absolutely fantastic physics.
This was a crossroads because I had already been working on my system and had some key training and nutritional strategies that I wanted to try that the rigors of training would not allow me to.
The student leaves the teacher and discovers…
So with that, I told Scott I was leaving. As much as I loved competing, my heart wasn’t in it because I was getting so much more pleasure from training other natural bodybuilders and developing my own nutritional products.
Of course he had met Dr. O’Brien and the missing pieces of the supplement picture began to come together and he was excited to try O’Brien’s theories in bodybuilding.
So I started furiously trying everything I could for the next 3 years. Training, diet, etc.
I teamed up with my good friend and kinesiologist Matt Gallant and we built Freaky Big Naturally. We continue to develop the principles behind the Endless Growth programs and illustrate the mechanics of exercise in the Elite Exercise Performance guide.
We then went on to develop some of the world’s most powerful supplements using principles discovered by leading physicians in the world of health and nutrition.
MassZymes, hemp protein, and soon our own probiotic formula are all products of that incredible journey.
We also find out how to make healthy gourmet raw foods that make growing bigger and stronger a joy instead of a chore.
We also combined and tested all the training integrations and created the Mastery Training Courses…, which are divided into three different styles… Power, Size and Endurance.
I also found a way to illustrate how to build, combine, and manipulate your training to produce whatever results you want. In other words, I illustrate how I think and how to design your own custom programs geared specifically to your goals and your genetics.
I go back to look for my old teacher
Which brings me back to the story with Scott.
Scott and I have the deepest respect for each other. We regularly talk and exchange information about training, diets, supplements and the current state of bodybuilding.
The fact is that we have become partners who contribute to the sport we love and have gone far beyond the coach-client relationship. Several of the athletes who came to him with severe metabolic damage have been successfully treated using new training protocols and my enzyme product.
Keep in mind that my enzyme products would never have been developed if I had stayed with Scott. Hemp protein would not have become as popular as the ultimate protein supplement either, and ultimately the probiotic formulation I recently developed would never have come into existence.
The reason all of this happened is because I snapped, trusted my instincts, and went the way my heart went. I refused drugs, did not accept the normal “bodybuilding ways” and delved into extremely advanced super nutrition with some of the best doctors the world has ever seen and brought it back to the world of bodybuilding.
That’s what every great student needs to do eventually… break away from the teacher and become a teacher themselves. This is what leads to the evolution of the planet. It is also the creative spirit that should be injected into this sport instead of a bigger syringe of juice.
Scott has been delighted with my recent discoveries and it has also taken him down a different path towards some new breakthroughs. Now together we are both better, sport too and we are not going to stop.