The Bodybuilding.com Podcast

UK-based athletic adventurer Ross Edgley talks with Nick and Heather just days before undertaking an unbelievable feat: swimming all the way around Great Britain at a very muscular 220-plus pounds. This is a true deep-dive into the limits of human training and performance, philosophy, and "strongman swimming," all of which come together in Edgley's new best-seller, "The World's Fittest Book."

Highlights:

- His day today: An impromptu 30km swim, aka, "an eating competition with a little bit of swimming."

- On mental thresholds versus physical ones, and "craving" the insanity of extreme challenges

- His rule on training: "I have to be able to say in a single sentence what I'm training for."

- The push-and-pull relationship with muscle and endurance sports

- The unique advantage that muscle can provide in water

- The advantage and disadvantage of muscular weight for runners and other athletes

- Ross's "shapely hips" as a life-saver for swimming

- How he landed on the "Tree-athlon," and on swimming as the arena to push his limits

- The strange advantage that swimming while pulling a tree provides (it's mental)

- On swimming around Great Britain: "It could be as little 3,000km, or as much as 5-6,000km."

- "A successful swim will be a byproduct of efficient feeding strategies, prehab, rehab, sleeping correctly, taking care of any wounds, abrasions, chafing, salt mouth. The swim will be a byproduct of doing all of that right basically. So the swimming's not even the hard part in a weird way."

- The 10-year journey that resulted in The World's Fittest Book

- Why he tries to teach "methods" rather than programs

- His fitness utopia: "I would love it if ultrarunners are no longer scared to go and you know chat to the powerlifters and hang out in the squat rack. And equally, if powerlifters and bodybuilders won't be scared to go and run an ultramarathon, or even just a 5 or a 10k, in fear that their muscles'll waste away."

- On reading philosophy versus reading fitness books prior to his greatest challenges

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UK-based athletic adventurer Ross Edgely talks with Nick and Heather just days before undertaking an unbelievable feat: swimming all the way around Great Britain at a very muscular 220-plus pounds. This is a true deep-dive into the limits of human training and performance, philosophy, and "strongman swimming," all of which come together in Edgely's new best-seller The World's Fittest Book.

Highlights:

- His day today: An impromptu 30km swim, aka, "an eating competition with a little bit of swimming."

- On mental thresholds versus physical ones, and "craving" the insanity of extreme challenges

- His rule on training: "I have to be able to say in a single sentence what I'm training for."

- The push-and-pull relationship with muscle and endurance sports

- The unique advantage that muscle can provide in water

- The advantage and disadvantage of muscular weight for runners and other athletes

- Ross's "shapely hips" as a life-saver for swimming

- How he landed on the "treeathlon," and on swimming as the arena to push his limits

- The strange advantage that swimming while pulling a tree provides (it's mental)

- On swimming around Great Britain: "It could be as little 3,000km, or as much as 5-6,000km."

- "A successful swim will be a byproduct of efficient feeding strategies, prehab, rehab, sleeping correctly, taking care of any wounds, abrasions, chafing, salt mouth. The swim will be a byproduct of doing all of that right basically. So the swimming's not even the hard part in a weird way."

- The 10-year journey that resulted in The World's Fittest Book

- Why he tries to teach "methods" rather than programs

- His fitness utopia: "I would love it if ultrarunners are no longer scared to go and you know chat to the powerlifters and hang out in the squat rack. And equally, if powerlifters and bodybuilders won't be scared to go and run an ultramarathon, or even just a 5 or a 10k, in fear that their muscles'll waste away."

- On reading philosophy versus reading fitness books prior to his greatest challenges

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Also check out our latest articles in the Apple News and Google News mobile apps.

Registered dietician and co-founder of the International Society of Sports Nutrition Doug Kalman gives his perspective on a wide range of currently popular supplements for performance, and enhanced cognition. Plus, he answers the age-old question: Is brown rice really any better than white rice?

Highlights:

- On creatine: Are we really still having discussions about its safety and efficacy? Really?

- The persistence of the "supplements are all snake oil" argument

- "Nutritional shortfalls" aren't just a thing of the past. They're very real today as well.

- "We're born with teeth, and we're born to use teeth for a reason. And it's not just to take an apple off of the tree. It's also to eat that cow, or to eat protein foods."

- Why the brain benefits from being treated "as a muscle."

- Creatine and neuro-protection against "the facts of life," or "You can trip walking down your driveway with the gifts that you just bought for your family and hurt your head."

- Low-dose creatine: take it and forget about it

- The performance benefits of caffeine, Nitrosigine, phosphatidylserine, and Alpha-GPC

- The decision tree he uses to help match athletes and supplements

- Why you should consider periodizing supplements

- The biggest job of any nutritionist: help the athlete stay healthy

- The first question to establish an athlete's base: "Have you had five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables today? Probably not."

- The other "base items" on his nutritional list

- Why he doesn't like multivitamins with iron for men

- Two essential supps for vegan athletes

- Why genetic testing might be helpful for athletes

- Why you should never do something new on the day of competition

- What you need to know about teacrine, theanine, and other current popular nootropic supps

- What he took for the six months leading up to a recent boxing match

- His number one advice for taking any supp: "Follow the label directions. They are there for a reason."

- Why he likes to read supplement reviews

- Brown rice vs white rice: Is there any metabolic or blood sugar difference?

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Aaron Marino, better known by the title of his immensely popular YouTube channel Alpha M, comes by the Bodybuilding.com offices to talk lifting, grooming, confidence, and his new fitness program, "Tailored: Six Weeks to Living Lean."

Highlights:

- How it all started: "I had a video camera and a big mouth."

- "My mom tells the story of me, first day of kindergarten, not wanting to go with wide-legged pants, so I wrapped a roll of scotch tape to make sure they were a little more tapered. I mean, this is how deep this goes."

- How being on YouTube has forced him to be a better person

- "Everybody thinks I'm a huge douche."

- "I really felt like in today's world, you need a different set of skills in order to sort of dominate and kick life's ass. And so I wanted to be one of the voices letting guys know that it's okay if you're not 'this.'"

- How ultimately, it all boils down to confidence

- How fitness was his "first love," and how he found it

- On competition: "The one day that you look your best, you feel your worst."

- "I love working out just by myself. Put my earphones in. It's a time for me just to kind of be by myself and do my thing."

- The essential life lessons that the gym taught him.

- His nutritional approach: A little bit of planning, a lot of healthy habits, and almost no counting

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Our favorite bodybuilder-turned-triathlete stops by to discuss his latest challenge and triumph, a 50-kilometer high-desert ultramarathon in the middle of winter. The man who has famously "never missed a meal in 19 years" also talks about his recent experiment with intermittent fasting, and his next adventure: an unsupported ultra-triathlon in Yellowstone National Park!

Highlights:

- Why an ultra? "I wanted to show people that, look, you can be 'muscle-bound' and do these things."

- On the post-competition emotional "abyss."

- "It was relatively low-cost. It's like an hour and a half drive from my place, so, if I was crawling over the finish line by my lips, I wouldn't have far to drive home and collapse."

- How he prepared and scheduled his training—both running and bodybuilding.

- The value of the BOSU-ball squat for runners (it's all about the ankles).

- His low-volume approach: "I have to look at the point where I'm gonna have diminishing returns."

- On competitiveness: "Because I think it's good to just participate in all these things, yeah, I'll probably walk away with a lot of participation medals and never a winner. I was very, very competitive [as a bodybuilder], but now I look a bit further from that because I enjoy the process more."

- On the power and positivity of the ultra-running community: "They're having such a great time. And, I think there's lot of benefits that can be done and you can really improve your longevity by not going to the extreme, but just participating and enjoying the process."

- Race day: What he expected, and his inspirational experience—except when "I got my balls handed to me."

- What he ate and drank and used for supps during the race.

- "You can't go by your watch or your heart rate monitor or anything like that. It has to be very intuitive: Can you keep up this pace for the next 30 miles with this elevation, not really knowing how much elevation is to come ahead?"

- On pain: "When it does come to you in a race like this, it's like OK, now we're just gonna be partners for the next two or three hours or so."

- "Everything was either up or down, so after running for the first eight miles up, I was thinking, 'God, I can't wait to go down,' and then after running six miles down, I'm thinking, 'Oh my God, I can't wait to go up.'"

- His biggest mistake: Stopping at 20 miles to eat. "I should have just ate whilst walking."

- "The senses are heightened to no end. If anybody was cooking something, say, 16 miles away, I'd probably smell it."

- His bodily changes during training, and his intense fasting protocol prior to the race.

- On fasting: "It all comes down to changing your perspective. So, I was thinking, 'Look, I'm not dying here, I'm not gonna starve to death, I'm not one of these people that could be in a third world country that doesn't know what they're gonna be eating. I'm OK, I'm fine with this.' It was just hard to train legs."

- The importance of protein for runners.

- His next adventure: an unsupported ultra-Ironman through Yellowstone Park.

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Kym "Nonstop" Perfetto, star of Bodybuilding.com's new program Home Body, talks about her past in reality TV and her present as a fitness star and bike racer. General silliness, off-color humor, and kale-massage jokes abound.

Highlights:

- How living a fit, athletic life prepared her for the rigors of The Amazing Race.

- The lessons she still carries from her time in Reality TV

- How being a (temporary) fitness model compares to bike racing or globe-racing. Spoiler: It's just as hard, but in a different way.

- How she takes her training experiences and blends them together to fit her style

- On making home-based fitness and working from home function: "It's always about scheduling, and sticking to your schedule, the same way you would when someone else is expecting you. You have to be expecting yourself and show up for yourself."

- On the limits of sport-specific training: "When things start to fall apart and you have any kind of back pain or neck pain or shoulder pain or you tear something, that's when you realize you've really been neglecting everything else. Your body will always tell you."

- Her experiences with 8-week and 12-week programs, and what made the difference

- Her love affair with bands

- "I wasn't clean-cut enough for the fitness model side of things, and then I wasn't rough around the edges enough for [bike racers], but I just found my own little niche and I feel like that corner of the fitness world has definitely grown since then."

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Over the last 9 years, Kyler Jackson hasn't missed a workout. When he started the journey, he was a depressed teen looking to bulk up to protect himself. Today, he's an up-and-coming coach, YouTuber, and the newly crowned Bodybuilding.com Spokesmodel Contest Winner. He shares his story with us.

Highlights:

- How he found his place in fitness, and found refuge in the gym

- On his first few workouts: "I remember an empowering feeling, a feeling of having control of my own life or an aspect of my life."

- "Once you actually get into it and you start, it becomes very clear very quickly that you have control over this thing, and you can become who you want to if you really put the effort in."

- On the loneliness of his early days in the gym, and how he found community there

- The most popular T-shirt in his clothing line? "Leave me alone."

- The struggle and thrill of being an introvert onstage in bodybuilding

- "The first time I [set foot on stage, I] definitely blacked out, and then kind of glimpses of it came back to me over time."

- On how fitness helped him control his depression and "balance out extremes"--and how he became a little too extreme with his own fitness

- What he would tell his teen self now: "That he could enjoy his life a whole lot more."

- Why he feels like pre-show water depletion is a ritual that needs to end

- On his experience with an early version of the Super League training competition

- Post-Super League: "It felt like stepping off a football field, like you just gave something your absolute all, and your brain is gone, your adrenaline is pumping like no other. It was just a different feeling, but it was really cool."

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The CEO and co-founder of the International Society of Sports Nutrition stopped by Bodybuilding.com to talk about his research into high-protein diets, and share the current state of the research on protein dosage, creatine, glutamine, and plenty more.

Highlights:

- The RDA on protein, aka "enough to feed my hamster."

- What he views as the real "baseline" for athletes

- How he decided to start studying truly high protein intake levels

- What they observed in bone health, body composition, and others

- "Don’t change your diet. Just throw a whole bunch of protein on top."

- About "protein is bad for your kidneys": "It's like saying, 'Hey, I live in south Florida. I sweat all the time. Hey, my sweat glands are working hard. Maybe it's bad for my sweat glands.'"

- Why there is such resistance to high-protein diets in popular press

- "Protein sensitivity" in aging populations

- The Antonio rule: "If it helps or has a neutral effect, just frickin' try it."

- His approach to caffeine (he's a highly caffeinated guy)

- On clinical doses vs. "dustings"

- His retort to the deniers of the so-called anabolic window: "Why not do the shake immediately post-workout? Does not eating ever help you?"

- "The right way to look at it is, well, if the anabolic window is that long, take advantage of every frickin' part of the window."

- On protein upper limits per meal: "Imagine you've been starving for two days. You finally catch a deer. You want to eat, and your caveman buddy says, 'You know what? 30 grams of protein, that's it. Stop.' And you're hungry. You just want to eat and eat and eat. You want the whole deer leg. It makes sense, from a biological standpoint, that your body can take in and utilize a lot of protein, certainly a lot more than 30 grams."

- Why he loves creatine and thinks "it may actually be healthier than taking a vitamin."

- Why he's still a believer in glutamine

- On branched-chains: Maybe only for "the top one percent"

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IFBB physique pro Jason Poston is busier than ever, representing the sport around the world and sharing the details of his training and life with his fans. He gives an in-depth look into his 17-year lifting history, how he broke into the fitness industry, his wild experience with becoming a type-1 diabetic at age 28, and how everyone could benefit from "eating like a healthy diabetic."

Highlights:

- The secret of gains: Egg McMuffins?

- Fitness (and Fitstagram) culture in Brazil

- Leg and butt training in Brazil: "Women are not afraid to lift heavy weight. They're doing heavy squats. You see a lot of them doing proper forced reps."

- The exploding Chinese fitness culture: " They're building their fitness world. You're going to see more bodybuilders, you're going to see better and better CrossFitters. You're going to see all sorts of better fitness people coming out of China."

- His initial disappointing experiences with his fitness heroes, and how it inspired him to be a better ambassador for his sport

- How Jason's mom provided him with his initial fitness and bodybuilding inspiration

- On Flex Lewis and Greg Plitt, and how they helped him figure it all out

- "I never wanted to be a competitor. I never really dreamt of it because I didn't think it was possible."

- His 17-year lifting quest: "This is a marathon. You have to be patient."

- On talking to people during his workout: "You could say, yeah, there's a time to focus, but there would be nothing to focus on if it wasn't for the fans. There would be no point. There would be nobody watching. The fans are always first in our small industry."

- 2011, the year he lost all his weight and discovered he had type-1 diabetes

- "They prescribed me insulin. I was walking down the hallway, and I felt amazing within like five minutes. They said, 'Go eat some food," and they told me exactly what to eat. I went downstairs, ate, and felt like I had energy for the first time in seven months."

- "I immediately gained 15 pounds back in one weekend. I got to, I remember, I was like, Alright, 160, here we go." One sixty then turned into 180. I gained 30 pounds back in 30 days." Six weeks later, he's back on the stage.

- "What was just a hobby and a way to live a new life with a disease, that work ethic, I think, and dedication, just helped me rise to the top."

- Why he got serious about YouTube vlogging: "Your best followers, your most loyal clients, your best friends, your best family are always the people who want to hear more."

- The secret to health and performance: "Eat like a healthy diabetic."

- How he radically changed his nutrition in response to his diagnosis

- His experience with ketogenic dieting: "It's a very taxing, detailed diet lifestyle… If you don't know what you're doing with keto, you could not like it. I think everyone should try it. Do it right, though."

- Why he misses in-person personal training

- His competitive future in classic physique

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IFBB pro Branch Warren has been a world-class bodybuilder for so long, it's easy to forget he's still just 42 years old–and still as huge and shredded as ever. "The Texas Rattlesnake" opens up about his history, his favorite game meats, and how he trains today–including his personal "strongman biathlon."

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Highlights:

- On his first show at 154 pounds: "My goal was 'not get last place.'"

- How he began powerlifting, but kept bodybuilding as his "first love"

- "You know, the second bodybuilder I ever saw in my life was Ronnie Coleman."

- His introduction to Metroflex and real lifting–at age 17

- "All these big, jacked dudes walking around, and I remember thinking to myself, I just made it to the promised land. This is home."

- His unique membership agreement: "If you represent the gym, and you win, you don't gotta buy a membership. If you don't, you're gonna work it off."

- The difference between health club lifting and training with the big boys

- "I learned early on, you don't ask questions. If they say do 20, you don't ask why. You shut the fuck up and do 20."

- "[As a bodybuilder] you're more of a nutritionist than anything else."

- How he got started with hunting and eating game meat: "I grew up in west Texas, in the country. And the only two things to do out there was drink beer, and hunt. The two best-looking girls in my school were my cousins, so there wasn't much to do, man."

- On game meat: "I think it makes me stronger, tell you the truth."

- How he prepares his game meat

- How he feels in his 40s, and how he views competition: "I don’t want to say I'm retired. I'm just not competing."

- How becoming a father changed everything for him

- On the burden of eating: "I'll be up 'til one in the morning, sometimes, trying to finish my food. And you take a bite, and you chew it up, and you get some water and swallow, and then you get the next bite. And I just cuss my food."

- "Yeah, I got to where I hated food. Because it was always, you're either force-feeding yourself, of you're getting, you're hungry all the time because you're getting ready for competition."

- On his training: "I've got nothing to prove. It was fun, but my goal right now, when I'm in the gym, is 'Don't get hurt.'"

- Why he loves "functional" and strongman-style training

- The challenge of mixing training with shooting

- His introduction to strongman-style training from Tony Sentmanat

- "I like it because it's something different, and it's a new challenge. After doing what I've done for so long, it's just something new. Plus it's outside, you can do it outside, and it's just a new challenge, something different."

- His legacy in bodybuilding, and how he looks back on his accomplishments: "I wish I would have enjoyed it a little bit more, but at the same point, I don't know if I would have accomplished what I did, because I was so focused. No matter what you do, it never was good enough. I never looked in a mirror and was like, wow I look great. I looked in the mirror and pick myself apart."

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