- Oct 31, 2012
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Interview by: tri-terror
I’m going to be tackling some topics regarding training, and what you can do to help bring your physique up to the next level.
Our first training method is none other than Doggcrapp training, known from here on out as DC training. Most of you reading this have no doubt at least heard of this program. DC training is without a doubt one of the quickest and most surefire ways to both add muscular size AND strength. In fact the core tenet of DC training is that size is a result of progressive strength increase over time. DC training falls under the umbrella of “HIT” training ala Arthur Jones, Mike Mentzer, and Dorian Yates.
I’m going to touch on the basics of DC training in a later article. For this article we are going to delve into the topic of the 3 way split for the guys that have been slugging away packing on the LBM with the 2 way already. The 3 way split is what an advanced trainee get’s put on after building sufficient size overall to have lagging body parts that need extra attention. The fastest way to put on size is with the 2 way split because of its higher training frequency, you hit each muscle a little bit more often than on the 3 way.
To get us started I have a Q&A with none other than Dante Trudel himself, the man who invented DC training. We’re going to take a look at some of his ideas regarding the 3 way split and advanced techniques to bring up weak points in your physique. I also ask him a little bit about his supplement company True Nutrition and his plans for the future. In the next article I will go into setting up your own individualized routine. So, without further ado, here is the interview!
TT: I guess first off is what kind of criteria do you have for taking someone off the two way and putting them on the 3-way? Is it a certain amount of LBM gain, time training or something else?
Dante: I kind of make that decision when I feel a person has enough size but needs to bring up some weaker body parts. Unfortunately most people want 21 inch arms overnight and don’t care if they have 22 inch legs, so it’s a constant battle for me to keep someone on the path of "hey you are only 195 pounds at 6 foot tall YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE 21 INCH ARMS AT 195 POUNDS! NOONE DOES!" Most of the time in bodybuilding 'over eagerness' in wanting to be there tomorrow outdistances 'smart planning' and the 'correct game plan'
TT: My understanding is that the 2 way is the fastest way to put size on pronto, and the 3 way gives you a little less overall growth(due to reduced training frequency), but allows you to focus on weak points. Is that estimation on my part correct?
Dante: That estimation on your part is 100% on the money.
TT: On the 2 way we only see widow makers used for quads, and on the 3 way we introduce them to weak body parts. Can you give me a few examples of what these might be? I know it should be something that you can get in a groove with and really progress in reps and weight over time. Do you have favorites though that seem to work with many/most trainees or is it way to individual for something like that?
Dante: I have to kind of look at their body and make some deductions, but what I try to do is (for lack of better words) "get weird with it", which means put them in mechanical positions they aren’t regularly in or put them in an exercise which they can really be progressive on. If someone had weak biceps I would find an exercise that would pull their arm backwards (and THEN they would start the curl)...such as facing away from a low cable pulley, or for triceps I would stick them on some kind of dip apparatus or dip machine (in which if you can get really progressive on it works for virtually everyone). Shoulders, maybe a wider grip upright row up only to the lower chest level, where you have to pause for a count of 1 before lowering.....things such as that. Usually all done for a higher rep range while coming down rep wise and up weight wise over time.
TT: I suspect that we would not be doing widow makers on all muscles, but do you have an upper limit on how many you would have someone do?
Dante: I would like someone to remain in reason. I’ve had the argument before of "Hey you want to widowmaker chest shoulders triceps and biceps. Your hamstrings suck, yet you don’t want to widowmaker them....do you see the problem I am seeing with this?" LOL
TT: Do you have any other techniques besides a widow maker that you would use to bring up a weak body part? Like maybe an extra rest pause exercise or one set to failure on an additional exercise?
Dante: With very advanced trainees I go over to this split
Sunday chest
Monday biceps calves abs
Tuesday hams quads
Wednesday off
Thursday shoulders triceps
Friday back width back thickness abs
Saturday off
And with this split I might add another exercise for a body part if I think it is key, and ill really try to 'get weird with it' either exercise or mechanical position wise if I can. Let’s face it, if you lift for 8-10 years and you have a crappy body part, you have done those same 5-9 exercises for that body part every single guy across the USA has also done for up to a decade...ITS NOT WORKING! So don’t keep doing the same thing! It’s not that you aren’t doing enough sets, it’s the exercise, it isn’t working for you, so you have to get intuitive and find a tweak or a weird positioning that works for you and then progress weight wise in a safe rep range with it.
TT: Is there any input you can give on the thought process behind setting up a 3 way from start to finish? Like how do you go about laying it out?
Dante: It really is based on photos. I look at photos and come up with what I think will work best for a person’s physique....it truly is 'my thinking out' of mechanical positions. You can tweak a simple exercise and make it work for you for the next decade if you are smart about it. I couldn’t count the number of people who got nothing out of incline smith presses that I told them to do the following
1) Lift your sternum high, roll up a small towel and put it behind the small of your back if you have to so as to remind you on every rep
2) Every time the bar lowers inhale air until your chest is raised and high, inhale from the very top until the bar comes down and hits your chest, and then keep your chest positioning like that thru-out the movement.
3) lower the bar to the lower chest so your elbows are forced to travel downwards at a 45 degree angle (and again keep your shoulder blades pinched backwards into the incline bench with chest and sternum held high
If more people did their incline presses exactly like the above starting from the very moment they unlocked the bar off the racks (chest high, shoulder blades pinched back, lower to lower chest so elbows travel down and not out) they would see the incline bench press become a very successful exercise for themselves.
That sounds simple doesn’t it? Yet a simple tweak like that can be all the difference from having a 2 inch thick upper chest or a decade in futility.
TT: And lastly about the 3 way, is there anything at all that you would like to mention regarding it, or DC training in general that maybe you haven't put out there yet?
Dante: Yes, please think of everything in these terms
a) Two way split is Dante trying to put muscle mass on you as fast as humanly possible. And that is done by training body parts OFTEN progressively.
b) After a few years you are now a pretty good size (and you did it in 3 years instead of everyone else’s 5 years it took them), so you do the 3 way split and in that split you lose frequency of body parts trained but you really go to town on weak body parts that aren’t developing as fast. This is also the point where I might question a bodybuilder’s cadence or method of operation on certain exercises. If their quads suck at this point ill make them do all their quad exercises with a 1 second pause at the deepest point before powering back up (not explosively but steadily)....that usually separates the mice from the men and also shows people how much they were cheating themselves by doing movement halfass. There is no halfass if you have to drop down into a very deep squat for a 1 second pause before coming back up. It’s a very humbling experience that will turn your 455 for 6 you brag about into 225 x 10. But in the long run you’ll do a true 455 x 10 and also develop gigantic quads. So to answer your question it’s about method of operation at the 3 way split point, it’s about finding exercises someone can really develop a progressive power groove on, and again "getting weird with it".
TT: Do you change anything regarding diet or supplementation or is that pretty consistent?
Dante: I fix problems at that point (appetite, weight gain stagnation etc) diet wise. Unfortunately bodybuilders being the obsessive creatures they are want to scrap everything and think "Lets eat 10 thousand calories a day!" when a simple "whoa slow down their trooper, we only need to add a tablespoon of all natural peanut butter here and here, and a tablespoon of EVOO here" will do the trick.
TT: What is the one supplement that should be on EVERY bodybuilder’s shelves? And why?
Dante: The most successful supplement there is and has ever been. Creatine. Again I feel half my job used to be debrainwashing bodybuilders. Creatine makes you hold water so bodybuilders always feel they are getting fatter and look like crap on it. But the big picture is this. Water and bodyweight is leverage coupled with the strength gains Creatine gives you and it’s a recipe for success for long-term muscle mass accumulation. Any product that allows you to beat what you have previously done in the gym either weight wise or reps wise is a valuable tool for long-term success. And that is creatine. Yes you look smooth on it, yes you look bloated, yes your face looks rounder. But the bottom line it this, you are gaining muscle mass on creatine much faster than you are without it, and all the detrimental effects of bloat and smoothness are temporary. They all go away and within 2 weeks of you getting off of creatine everyone will look like their old self.
TT: A big part of DC training is not just the training itself but the diet. Has anything changed for you over the years in what you recommend or is it pretty straight forward? Carb cutoffs at night, pro/fat and pro/carb meals, fasted cardio, green tea extract etc? How would you formulate peri-workout nutrition?
Dante: I hardly ever talk about diet anymore because that has changed so much for me. Research has changed. Anyone doing anything diet wise that they were doing 15 years ago has been left in the dust. I like to put most of the carbs ingested during the day around and directly after workouts still. I like to still use fat burning supplements (of mostly the non jittery kind) such as acetyl l carnitine, green tea extract, guggulsterones etc etc etc. I am much less a believer in any kind of feasible cookie cutter approach to diet, I tried to do it once to help people out and it backfired on me as it worked in a general sense for some but not for everyone. Diet is truly a hands on situation with an individualistic person by person approach. On a personal level I get worried about the lack of cardio conditioning that’s in bodybuilding now. If quad size isn’t a grandiose problem then I would very much prefer someone do some sort of walking (slight hills) or treadmill walking at least 5 times a week. Want a no doubt way to be able to do 20 rep squats without your lungs failing before your quads do? Do some sort of brisk walking cardio 5+ times a week. Want to know a surefire way to stoke your appetite if you cannot get enough food in? Brisk cardio done 5+ times a week will have you hungry as a horse. One thing that I feel is key to successful bodybuilders is BCAA's. Post cardio, pre workout, post workout and maybe even pre bed...BCAA's with extra leucine is a key weapon in a bodybuilder’s arsenal. Is it something you are going to see in 3 weeks? Nope. But it is something you will see over a year’s time body composition wise and when you diet. Long-term consumption of BCAA's at key times in my opinion is the difference between a person having 5-8 more pounds more LBM two years from now or not.
TT: You've made some pretty significant changes working with Dusty Hanshaw over the years. What kind of thought process goes into evaluating a top tier physique like that and coming up with a game plan to advance him?
Dante: There has been alot of "getting weird with it" over the last few years. You have to when someone gets that big and is at that level. Again it drives me nuts in this sport when I see guys that have done 10 years and 3000 sets of pulley rows, back pull downs, hammer rows, and every other regular back exercise that regular gym doers do yet their back still sucks......and they think "well maybe I’m not doing enough volume".......WHAT?!?!?! If 3000 sets over the last 10 years hasn’t done something dramatic to your back width and thickness, then you have to get very ingenious and think this stuff out! That’s kind of how I came up with Rack chins with a bar in your lap and your feet crossed....because you cannot cheat that exercise, if you are going to pull your chin over the bar you have to do it with your lats.....your feet are crossed so you cannot use your hamstrings to help, and the bar in your crotch/legs area makes you do the movement upright....you are stuck in the correct mechanical position, and it’s basically stretch and then pull, stretch and then pull. So at someone such as Dusty's level (size), he has done all the exercises multiple of hundreds of times, we keep what works, throw away what doesn’t, and we do weird things in certain mechanical positions to make further changes.
TT: Secondly, I wanted to talk to you about True Nutrition a little bit. You have had some big changes over the last year, changing from True Protein to True Nutrition, and adding familiar brands to your lineup. Do you have any other big changes (or little ones) in store for the company? I think I remember reading about a possible East Coast operation for you? What is your goal for the company and where do you see it in five years time?
Dante: We had to change from True Protein to True Nutrition, we were just carrying so many products that are outside of the protein spectrum that we just had to.
Changes that we have coming (where do I start?)
1) Slew of new products (alot of food related products, we want to not only be peoples supplement source but their regular diet source also)
2) People have craved more "do it yourself" workability and we are going to offer that alternative to them.
3) A rather large expansion from our West Coast home base
4) My goal used to be "Enough of these companies selling pipe dreams and false promises with fancy made up terms "Anabolic quad linked matrix"? What?!?!" LET’S PUT SOME TRANSPARENCY OUT THERE. And it was that 9 years ago and is still is that today. It saddens me when people cannot figure out that the company over there paying 13000 dollars per page in magazines to entice you with fancy charts, made up science, and catch phrases using the word 'hypertrophic'.....are having someone like us make their product for them. So that person pays 44.95 for a jug of something with a color blinding label, with scrabble winning words on it, yet they could buy the raw materials that are actually in it, on our site for 20 bucks. Oh well what can you do....the education process of customers continues. I am proud that we have become the dirty little secret of the educated people in professional sports/MMA/bodybuilding/crossfit. My goals for the company? We take care of 3 NFL teams currently, I want to take care of all 32...LOL. Where do I see myself 5 years from now? It’s scary because I want to become the place that supplies any and all athletes with the tools (supplements and food) that they can design their daily nutritional intake from....but to do that is a huge undertaking, and I'm not going to lie, it’s probably going to involve a journey that is going to have me swallowing my pride somewhat from being "the dirty little secret".....I don’t want to be mainstream. I don’t want to be "oh everyone knows about that place" but how do you educate the masses or take care of all the NFL/MMA athletes/Olympic athletes without getting well known? I am just going to try to keep doing it the way we have been and everything will fall into place.
TT: And lastly I wanted to thank you very much for your time. I know you are a very busy man and to take any time out at all for something like this means a lot to me and speaks volumes about you as a person. You have gone above and beyond the call of duty many times for bodybuilders such as myself and I really want to give you a heartfelt thank you for all the information and ideas you have shared over the years.
Dante: Hey I appreciate that greatly Michael, I hear something like that and my chest sticks out, my chin raises high with pride and then my wife ruins it by yelling "please take out the trash, its Thursday!"
Take care, thanks
TT: A lot of info to chew on and digest in that interview! Next month I’m going to talk about setting up your 3 way split DC routine. Everything from exercise selection to widow makers and “getting weird with it”! Until then keep eating, keep lifting and keep growing true believers!
I’m going to be tackling some topics regarding training, and what you can do to help bring your physique up to the next level.
Our first training method is none other than Doggcrapp training, known from here on out as DC training. Most of you reading this have no doubt at least heard of this program. DC training is without a doubt one of the quickest and most surefire ways to both add muscular size AND strength. In fact the core tenet of DC training is that size is a result of progressive strength increase over time. DC training falls under the umbrella of “HIT” training ala Arthur Jones, Mike Mentzer, and Dorian Yates.
I’m going to touch on the basics of DC training in a later article. For this article we are going to delve into the topic of the 3 way split for the guys that have been slugging away packing on the LBM with the 2 way already. The 3 way split is what an advanced trainee get’s put on after building sufficient size overall to have lagging body parts that need extra attention. The fastest way to put on size is with the 2 way split because of its higher training frequency, you hit each muscle a little bit more often than on the 3 way.
To get us started I have a Q&A with none other than Dante Trudel himself, the man who invented DC training. We’re going to take a look at some of his ideas regarding the 3 way split and advanced techniques to bring up weak points in your physique. I also ask him a little bit about his supplement company True Nutrition and his plans for the future. In the next article I will go into setting up your own individualized routine. So, without further ado, here is the interview!
TT: I guess first off is what kind of criteria do you have for taking someone off the two way and putting them on the 3-way? Is it a certain amount of LBM gain, time training or something else?
Dante: I kind of make that decision when I feel a person has enough size but needs to bring up some weaker body parts. Unfortunately most people want 21 inch arms overnight and don’t care if they have 22 inch legs, so it’s a constant battle for me to keep someone on the path of "hey you are only 195 pounds at 6 foot tall YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAVE 21 INCH ARMS AT 195 POUNDS! NOONE DOES!" Most of the time in bodybuilding 'over eagerness' in wanting to be there tomorrow outdistances 'smart planning' and the 'correct game plan'
TT: My understanding is that the 2 way is the fastest way to put size on pronto, and the 3 way gives you a little less overall growth(due to reduced training frequency), but allows you to focus on weak points. Is that estimation on my part correct?
Dante: That estimation on your part is 100% on the money.
TT: On the 2 way we only see widow makers used for quads, and on the 3 way we introduce them to weak body parts. Can you give me a few examples of what these might be? I know it should be something that you can get in a groove with and really progress in reps and weight over time. Do you have favorites though that seem to work with many/most trainees or is it way to individual for something like that?
Dante: I have to kind of look at their body and make some deductions, but what I try to do is (for lack of better words) "get weird with it", which means put them in mechanical positions they aren’t regularly in or put them in an exercise which they can really be progressive on. If someone had weak biceps I would find an exercise that would pull their arm backwards (and THEN they would start the curl)...such as facing away from a low cable pulley, or for triceps I would stick them on some kind of dip apparatus or dip machine (in which if you can get really progressive on it works for virtually everyone). Shoulders, maybe a wider grip upright row up only to the lower chest level, where you have to pause for a count of 1 before lowering.....things such as that. Usually all done for a higher rep range while coming down rep wise and up weight wise over time.
TT: I suspect that we would not be doing widow makers on all muscles, but do you have an upper limit on how many you would have someone do?
Dante: I would like someone to remain in reason. I’ve had the argument before of "Hey you want to widowmaker chest shoulders triceps and biceps. Your hamstrings suck, yet you don’t want to widowmaker them....do you see the problem I am seeing with this?" LOL
TT: Do you have any other techniques besides a widow maker that you would use to bring up a weak body part? Like maybe an extra rest pause exercise or one set to failure on an additional exercise?
Dante: With very advanced trainees I go over to this split
Sunday chest
Monday biceps calves abs
Tuesday hams quads
Wednesday off
Thursday shoulders triceps
Friday back width back thickness abs
Saturday off
And with this split I might add another exercise for a body part if I think it is key, and ill really try to 'get weird with it' either exercise or mechanical position wise if I can. Let’s face it, if you lift for 8-10 years and you have a crappy body part, you have done those same 5-9 exercises for that body part every single guy across the USA has also done for up to a decade...ITS NOT WORKING! So don’t keep doing the same thing! It’s not that you aren’t doing enough sets, it’s the exercise, it isn’t working for you, so you have to get intuitive and find a tweak or a weird positioning that works for you and then progress weight wise in a safe rep range with it.
TT: Is there any input you can give on the thought process behind setting up a 3 way from start to finish? Like how do you go about laying it out?
Dante: It really is based on photos. I look at photos and come up with what I think will work best for a person’s physique....it truly is 'my thinking out' of mechanical positions. You can tweak a simple exercise and make it work for you for the next decade if you are smart about it. I couldn’t count the number of people who got nothing out of incline smith presses that I told them to do the following
1) Lift your sternum high, roll up a small towel and put it behind the small of your back if you have to so as to remind you on every rep
2) Every time the bar lowers inhale air until your chest is raised and high, inhale from the very top until the bar comes down and hits your chest, and then keep your chest positioning like that thru-out the movement.
3) lower the bar to the lower chest so your elbows are forced to travel downwards at a 45 degree angle (and again keep your shoulder blades pinched backwards into the incline bench with chest and sternum held high
If more people did their incline presses exactly like the above starting from the very moment they unlocked the bar off the racks (chest high, shoulder blades pinched back, lower to lower chest so elbows travel down and not out) they would see the incline bench press become a very successful exercise for themselves.
That sounds simple doesn’t it? Yet a simple tweak like that can be all the difference from having a 2 inch thick upper chest or a decade in futility.
TT: And lastly about the 3 way, is there anything at all that you would like to mention regarding it, or DC training in general that maybe you haven't put out there yet?
Dante: Yes, please think of everything in these terms
a) Two way split is Dante trying to put muscle mass on you as fast as humanly possible. And that is done by training body parts OFTEN progressively.
b) After a few years you are now a pretty good size (and you did it in 3 years instead of everyone else’s 5 years it took them), so you do the 3 way split and in that split you lose frequency of body parts trained but you really go to town on weak body parts that aren’t developing as fast. This is also the point where I might question a bodybuilder’s cadence or method of operation on certain exercises. If their quads suck at this point ill make them do all their quad exercises with a 1 second pause at the deepest point before powering back up (not explosively but steadily)....that usually separates the mice from the men and also shows people how much they were cheating themselves by doing movement halfass. There is no halfass if you have to drop down into a very deep squat for a 1 second pause before coming back up. It’s a very humbling experience that will turn your 455 for 6 you brag about into 225 x 10. But in the long run you’ll do a true 455 x 10 and also develop gigantic quads. So to answer your question it’s about method of operation at the 3 way split point, it’s about finding exercises someone can really develop a progressive power groove on, and again "getting weird with it".
TT: Do you change anything regarding diet or supplementation or is that pretty consistent?
Dante: I fix problems at that point (appetite, weight gain stagnation etc) diet wise. Unfortunately bodybuilders being the obsessive creatures they are want to scrap everything and think "Lets eat 10 thousand calories a day!" when a simple "whoa slow down their trooper, we only need to add a tablespoon of all natural peanut butter here and here, and a tablespoon of EVOO here" will do the trick.
TT: What is the one supplement that should be on EVERY bodybuilder’s shelves? And why?
Dante: The most successful supplement there is and has ever been. Creatine. Again I feel half my job used to be debrainwashing bodybuilders. Creatine makes you hold water so bodybuilders always feel they are getting fatter and look like crap on it. But the big picture is this. Water and bodyweight is leverage coupled with the strength gains Creatine gives you and it’s a recipe for success for long-term muscle mass accumulation. Any product that allows you to beat what you have previously done in the gym either weight wise or reps wise is a valuable tool for long-term success. And that is creatine. Yes you look smooth on it, yes you look bloated, yes your face looks rounder. But the bottom line it this, you are gaining muscle mass on creatine much faster than you are without it, and all the detrimental effects of bloat and smoothness are temporary. They all go away and within 2 weeks of you getting off of creatine everyone will look like their old self.
TT: A big part of DC training is not just the training itself but the diet. Has anything changed for you over the years in what you recommend or is it pretty straight forward? Carb cutoffs at night, pro/fat and pro/carb meals, fasted cardio, green tea extract etc? How would you formulate peri-workout nutrition?
Dante: I hardly ever talk about diet anymore because that has changed so much for me. Research has changed. Anyone doing anything diet wise that they were doing 15 years ago has been left in the dust. I like to put most of the carbs ingested during the day around and directly after workouts still. I like to still use fat burning supplements (of mostly the non jittery kind) such as acetyl l carnitine, green tea extract, guggulsterones etc etc etc. I am much less a believer in any kind of feasible cookie cutter approach to diet, I tried to do it once to help people out and it backfired on me as it worked in a general sense for some but not for everyone. Diet is truly a hands on situation with an individualistic person by person approach. On a personal level I get worried about the lack of cardio conditioning that’s in bodybuilding now. If quad size isn’t a grandiose problem then I would very much prefer someone do some sort of walking (slight hills) or treadmill walking at least 5 times a week. Want a no doubt way to be able to do 20 rep squats without your lungs failing before your quads do? Do some sort of brisk walking cardio 5+ times a week. Want to know a surefire way to stoke your appetite if you cannot get enough food in? Brisk cardio done 5+ times a week will have you hungry as a horse. One thing that I feel is key to successful bodybuilders is BCAA's. Post cardio, pre workout, post workout and maybe even pre bed...BCAA's with extra leucine is a key weapon in a bodybuilder’s arsenal. Is it something you are going to see in 3 weeks? Nope. But it is something you will see over a year’s time body composition wise and when you diet. Long-term consumption of BCAA's at key times in my opinion is the difference between a person having 5-8 more pounds more LBM two years from now or not.
TT: You've made some pretty significant changes working with Dusty Hanshaw over the years. What kind of thought process goes into evaluating a top tier physique like that and coming up with a game plan to advance him?
Dante: There has been alot of "getting weird with it" over the last few years. You have to when someone gets that big and is at that level. Again it drives me nuts in this sport when I see guys that have done 10 years and 3000 sets of pulley rows, back pull downs, hammer rows, and every other regular back exercise that regular gym doers do yet their back still sucks......and they think "well maybe I’m not doing enough volume".......WHAT?!?!?! If 3000 sets over the last 10 years hasn’t done something dramatic to your back width and thickness, then you have to get very ingenious and think this stuff out! That’s kind of how I came up with Rack chins with a bar in your lap and your feet crossed....because you cannot cheat that exercise, if you are going to pull your chin over the bar you have to do it with your lats.....your feet are crossed so you cannot use your hamstrings to help, and the bar in your crotch/legs area makes you do the movement upright....you are stuck in the correct mechanical position, and it’s basically stretch and then pull, stretch and then pull. So at someone such as Dusty's level (size), he has done all the exercises multiple of hundreds of times, we keep what works, throw away what doesn’t, and we do weird things in certain mechanical positions to make further changes.
TT: Secondly, I wanted to talk to you about True Nutrition a little bit. You have had some big changes over the last year, changing from True Protein to True Nutrition, and adding familiar brands to your lineup. Do you have any other big changes (or little ones) in store for the company? I think I remember reading about a possible East Coast operation for you? What is your goal for the company and where do you see it in five years time?
Dante: We had to change from True Protein to True Nutrition, we were just carrying so many products that are outside of the protein spectrum that we just had to.
Changes that we have coming (where do I start?)
1) Slew of new products (alot of food related products, we want to not only be peoples supplement source but their regular diet source also)
2) People have craved more "do it yourself" workability and we are going to offer that alternative to them.
3) A rather large expansion from our West Coast home base
4) My goal used to be "Enough of these companies selling pipe dreams and false promises with fancy made up terms "Anabolic quad linked matrix"? What?!?!" LET’S PUT SOME TRANSPARENCY OUT THERE. And it was that 9 years ago and is still is that today. It saddens me when people cannot figure out that the company over there paying 13000 dollars per page in magazines to entice you with fancy charts, made up science, and catch phrases using the word 'hypertrophic'.....are having someone like us make their product for them. So that person pays 44.95 for a jug of something with a color blinding label, with scrabble winning words on it, yet they could buy the raw materials that are actually in it, on our site for 20 bucks. Oh well what can you do....the education process of customers continues. I am proud that we have become the dirty little secret of the educated people in professional sports/MMA/bodybuilding/crossfit. My goals for the company? We take care of 3 NFL teams currently, I want to take care of all 32...LOL. Where do I see myself 5 years from now? It’s scary because I want to become the place that supplies any and all athletes with the tools (supplements and food) that they can design their daily nutritional intake from....but to do that is a huge undertaking, and I'm not going to lie, it’s probably going to involve a journey that is going to have me swallowing my pride somewhat from being "the dirty little secret".....I don’t want to be mainstream. I don’t want to be "oh everyone knows about that place" but how do you educate the masses or take care of all the NFL/MMA athletes/Olympic athletes without getting well known? I am just going to try to keep doing it the way we have been and everything will fall into place.
TT: And lastly I wanted to thank you very much for your time. I know you are a very busy man and to take any time out at all for something like this means a lot to me and speaks volumes about you as a person. You have gone above and beyond the call of duty many times for bodybuilders such as myself and I really want to give you a heartfelt thank you for all the information and ideas you have shared over the years.
Dante: Hey I appreciate that greatly Michael, I hear something like that and my chest sticks out, my chin raises high with pride and then my wife ruins it by yelling "please take out the trash, its Thursday!"
Take care, thanks
TT: A lot of info to chew on and digest in that interview! Next month I’m going to talk about setting up your 3 way split DC routine. Everything from exercise selection to widow makers and “getting weird with it”! Until then keep eating, keep lifting and keep growing true believers!