#204 James Magnussen Returns: Life on PEDs, Enhanced Games & the Anti-Aging Industry

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, my Boris, and this is just straight talk.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
James magnuson, welcome back, Thanks for having me. It's good
to say one year ago, exactly to this day, one
year ago, you were sitting in that chair and you're
about You're a skinny little butt, not a little tall,
but slightly smaller than you are right now. I'm looking
at your your biceps and you and you nearly broke
my hand when you showed my hand out the front.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
I don't know if you did it on purpose.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I feel like you want to go to challenge you
in an arm wrestle or something like that. I feel like,
like really small and everything sitting here alongside you because
I saw you.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
I saw a photograph of you yesterday. I think it
was yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
You might have put up on your Instagram, but Tom,
you had your your skins on, swimming skins. But it
was like a sort of like a sawn off version
of skins, Like it was like a sleeveless type thing,
and your fucking lats and shit were hanging out through
the back and it was weird, man, Like it was huge.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, that photo or that footage seems to have gone
pretty viral earlier past couple of weeks. I think the
photo I put up yesterday that's had three million hits
in twenty four hours. WHOA, so people are eating it up.
The most common message I get. I'm getting all these
guys in my inbox. What was your stack? What we're taking?
How do I look like that? Well, we're going to
get into it. I'm looking to find it. So let's

(01:20):
just reacap a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
So what do you want now?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Right now? So I've got back from America and I've
been trying really hard to get my body weight right down.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
So let's say when you had the event and you
tried my.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Peak, I was about one hundred and fifteen kilos at
six percent body fat on a Dexa scan, which is
super accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
So and what we when you said here a year ago,
probably about one hundred so like were took about fifteen kilos.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Ten kilos, yeah, peak peak, and that was I was
a lot leaner there as well than I was last
time I was on here.

Speaker 2 (01:53):
So, and if I could just ask you, how did
you feel? That's how you looked wide, but how did
you feel.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
In the water? I felt one hundred and fifteen kilos
on land? I felt like a juggernaut, which was this
really interesting balancing act that we were trying to get right.
And being the first swimmer to openly do this, there
was no textbook that said this is the power to
eight ratio you need, this is the point of no
return where you're too big, too heavy, too much drag.
Because swimming is a very unique thing and that you

(02:22):
know you want to be like a speedboat going through
the water. When you got these massive lats and shoulders
hanging out of this suit, it in the end proved
to be a little bit too much drag. But on land,
I felt like a juggernaut. I was waking up each
day so much energy. I had a fifty inch firt jump,
I could squat two hundred and thirty kilos, I could

(02:45):
bench press almost double my body weight, Like I was
a juggernaut on land, but it didn't fully transfer the
way we anticipated at times into the water.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
Because I remember when you were in the Olympics and
winning world championships, getting medaling in the Olympics, I remember you,
remember watching you in one race because I'm a swimming
fan and one of the observations I remember watching you,
and I remember also seeing people like Phelps et cetera.

(03:17):
Similar You were broad, but sort of thin, and not
much legs, not much in the legs, long legs, but
not much in the legs. And you sort of I
used to think to myself, unscientifically but in a biomechanical sense,
I used to think you sort of sat on the water,
you sort of planed on the water a bit. Then

(03:40):
I thought to myself, when you build a lot of
muscle a lot of weight, whether that translates to more displacement.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, so there was certainly a tipping point. And what
we found from this basically I started the protocol and
I started full time training, so it came out of
retirement and just went full waring.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, you were consider full time training for Olympic event
that level.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
That level, Yeah, twice a day. I actually was doing
twice a day, seven days a week. Not more than
probably more. It's more than your body should be able
to do. And I had this really steep progression of
swim speeds increasing, strength is increasing, athleticism is increasing, energy

(04:23):
is increasing, but body weight is increasing at the same time. However,
to a point that didn't matter because everything was tracking upwards.
And then What we found was there's certainly an ideal
period of time to make the most of a protocol,
which is why athletes get caught in competition. I always thought,
you know, these athletes test positive in competition. Surely if

(04:47):
you're cheating, you do it better than that. Surely you
wouldn't be anything. Yeah, but it turns out that you
really do need to be peaking on race day with
your protocol but also with your training. And we kind
of got to this point, probably ten weeks into the protocol,
where I was hitting my absolute peak. I was right
on world record police in training, and we're in training,

(05:10):
We're going, let's do this thing. That was about Christmas time.
The problem was we were doing we're filming the documentary.
It wasn't ready to go yet. We couldn't find a
pool to race in. We had to book out a
whole aquatic center for seven days, decad out with cameras
and lights and officials, and everyone had to sign NDAs
to say that they wouldn't talk about this record attempt.

(05:30):
And in that time, so about Christmas time, I'm flying.
I'm big, but I'm flying, which is the main thing.
I'm probably about one hundred and eight to one hundred
and ten kilos. I don't end up racing until the
last week in February, so you're talking about another six
weeks or eight weeks. Eight weeks, yeah, eight weeks, maybe
just just longer. And in that period, my weight keeps

(05:53):
tracking upwards, but suddenly my performance starts going in the inverse.
It starts tracking downwards. And by the time we got
to that attempt in Greensboro, we were kind of looking
at each other going, like, we know, based off what's
been happening in training, we're not there right now, but
this has all been part of the journey. We've got

(06:15):
to have a crack at this record while we're here.
I'm forever an optimist, so I said, let me add it.
I still want to go for it. But now what
I've got, which was the first documented process of a
protocol of training of an athlete, a thirty four year
old athlete, I know exactly what to do next time
for the actual Enhanced Games.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
And the Enhance Games is until next year May next year,
one year, so you will start. We'll come back to
them in a second. I want to understand from your
point of view, because there's been a lot of talk
about it, like obviously current Olympians, lots of other past
Olympians seeing the swing so saying this is terrible and
blah blah blah, it's encouraging with all sorts of things.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Let's just cast the side or park the morality of it.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Let's call it morality or the ethical sort of side
of it. A park it for a second. I don't
be honest, I don't want to get into it because
I think every man to himself, you make your own
decisions what you do with your own body.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
That's my view.

Speaker 2 (07:16):
If it's not being deleterious, if it's not dangerous to
a person, then it's fine. It's only where it's dangerous
to a person or it is cheating and everyone you
were competing against to doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
It's not cheating.

Speaker 2 (07:28):
But if I could just put that aside for a moment,
do you see this whole process as an experiment.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
I think I did at first. Now I see it
as a separate industry, and I think actually the wording
and the promotion of the Enhanced Games now has changed
quite drastically from where a disruptor it's US verse the Olympics,
to where a whole new world where it's bigger, brighter, faster,
stronger industry which is backed by a by the anti

(08:01):
aging industry, I guess, and that's why I believe going
to become the biggest industry in the world. We're backed
by some of the most successful individuals in the world
who haven't had many misses in business over the years.
And they're not getting into this because they want to
get into a sporting event. They're getting into this because
they see it as a whole new world, a new industry.

(08:22):
Things start with sport and they filter down into general population.
So when people start saying to me, but the Olympics,
but the kids, but this, I'm like, this is not
for kids. This is not in competition with the Olympics.
View this as a new product. This is completely separate.
We're no longer comparing ourselves to the Olympics.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
It's like a study though they're the using athletes ye
to study the effects of enhancements, and we'll go through
the enhancements in a moment. But molecular enhancements, what effect
does it have on athletes? How can they improve? And
how can we correctly wrong? How do we can we

(09:01):
translate that to say me correct.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
And how do we break down that stigma? Because you know,
I remember growing up I would take creatine from probably
thirteen years of age. I've had it every day in
my life till today. Now I'll watch all this content
creatine is the new super drug. It's this crazy thing.
Every this cognition and I'm going women especially yeah, yeah,

(09:25):
And I'm going well, yeah, no, biggie, like this has
been around in sport for years. You know some of
the peptides and things that are being used now. I mean,
you know, I don't like to bring up the past,
but the Crinala, sharks and Essendon we're using them back
in twenty sixteen. Things have been around, but they take
time to filter down into general population. What I think
enhanced will do the games that the athletes, the data,

(09:48):
the research. It will speed up that process that that
speed to market for consumer products that in that world,
and it will break down the stigma by showing And
you know, I'm the first one to openly and honestly
do it now. And I can show people my data,
talk about my experiences, but most importantly talk about my
health and what I did, and they feel, yeah, probably

(10:11):
more importantly didn't feel that the side effects that I
didn't get, So.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
I didn't grow a third nipple or a third still.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Got my hair for now, I don't have any acne.
I'm not angry. I haven't got a hairy back. All
these scary things that we were told about still got
two nuts. Yeah, yeah, all these scary things that were
told about. And you know, within reason, when you look
back at education, there's a lot of things that we're

(10:39):
told about a lot of different substances to scare us
off from using them.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
It was sort of to something sense of the establishment
trying to stop us from doing anything that they would
not that they haven't already endorsed for the last hundred years.
And like penicula is probably something was an issue when
it first got discovered.

Speaker 1 (10:59):
COVID is a good example of all this.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
You know, like we were sort of battered.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Into submission with.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
You know, historical information about what you do when there's
a period and you could just lock yourself down. And
I got friends who were saying, I've a mectim was
the thing you should be taken along with vitamin D.
And along with vitamin D a doxy cycling, which is
a well known antibiotic and zinc. All of a sudden,

(11:27):
Vitamind's not the big deal. Everyone says, like take vitamin D.
I've a medican still being flicked. It's still a little
bit because you know, the big farmers don't like it,
because you know they're the ones who have one a
coup with the viral drugs that you take when you've
got to say COVID.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
What is this reveal to.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
You about the farmer farmer a sceutical world. You know, governments,
how governments try to control things.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
What does this.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Reveal to you as a former athlete, but now something
has gone down there.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
I think it's quite eye opening the products that are
out there, some of the research that has been done
on these products, but behind the scenes, the ease of
access of these products. You know, in America, I was
able to go into an anti aging clinic, work with
a doctor, get prescribed everything that I needed for the games.

(12:22):
There was no issue if I was here in Australia.
I mean, I'm sure I could if I looked hard
and I'd find someone, but it's not easily accessible and
so I was quite surprised at the different opinions or
different views on this industry between the US and Australia.

(12:42):
I was actually quite surprised and it was a bit
of a jolt of reality when I came back and
saw how the media in Australia reacted to the enhanced games.
You know, I was over in the US doing interviews
with the New York Times, the Washington Posts, the BBC,
some of the biggest publications in the world, and they're
sending their top political reporters, their top the top science

(13:06):
or pharmaceutical reporters and stuff. And then I'll get back
to Australia and it's as you run in the mill
sports journal going, this is outrageous, it's cheating. What about
the kids? I was like, it's sometimes it's a bit
disappointing that we're so conservative and that we're not at
the cutting edge like we think we are.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Or do they or do you think it's journalist thinking
that that's what the public wants to hear. I was
just going to write to them they want to.

Speaker 1 (13:30):
Hear I think it is. I think it is, And
what I've noticed is a very different perception from the
everyday person. I've been stopped in the street, you know,
more times in the last two weeks than in the
past seven years since I retired, and it's it's people
saying good luck, can't wait to see the results. I'm
interested in trying this myself one day. It's been really positive.

(13:56):
And the other one that you know you spoke about
four is their doorstopping swimmers and saying well, what do
you think of this? And that's a really hard position
to be in. And I've been on the other side
of that before, and you're kind of like, oh, I'm here,
I'm in the media. I've got to give my opinion,
and I'm rushed and I haven't thought about it, I
haven't read about it, and I go, oh, no, it's cheating.

(14:17):
People need to be able to sit down, digest it,
think a little bit laterally and think, all right, is
this actually cheating? Are they actually racing against clean athletes? No?
Is this a direct competition to the Olympics, Well for now, No,
it's a separate thing. It's going to be every year,
not every four years. It's going to be different rules
and regulations. And sometimes I do get frustrated a little

(14:40):
bit coming back to Australia and reading some of those things.
But I am very buoyed by the opinions of people
that I meet in the street, because I think, as
Ossie's that the day to day person, that the everyday
man actually is a lot more progressive than the media
will have us believes.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
To be clear, you're not saying that anyone swimming in
the normal Olympics, the usual Olympics, the ones you have
swam in, that they should be allowed to compete against
other non users. In other words, no one should be
enhancing themselves in those games.

Speaker 1 (15:12):
You know what, I'm actually more staunch in my opinions
now that clean sports should to stay clean than ever
before because I've used this stuff difference, I know what
it does. It gives you superpowers. Yeah, and the fact
that I know I was raising my whole career against
certain countries, certain athletes that are pretty unashamed in using

(15:32):
these products and cheating the system, And it actually pisses
me off even more now because I've used those products. Now,
I've seen that world, and I understand how effective and
efficient it can make you as an athlete. So more
now than ever, I am staunchly against performance enhancing drugs
in clean sport.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
So if you just go back now to the event
which was held at the end of Ebruary. That was
for a million dollars if whoever could the world record
US dollars, which is real money. So who's behind it? Like,
who's running that event as opposed to or is it
the same mob is going to run the Enhanced Olympics.

(16:12):
They different mobs.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
It's the same mob, same mob in terms of officials
and actually event organizers. We use the same officials that
they used for the US Nationals swimming Championships. Who's the
same pool, same officials, timers, touch pads, all the what
about swimming swimming outfits? So the swim suits. So this
became a big, a big issue, a big point of

(16:35):
contention for me and for the Games. And so when
I originally said what I said, I said, I need
the juice for lack of a better word, and a
suit these supersuits that they wore in two thousand and nine,
because I knew it was going to make me bigger
and I needed to be floated, and so I really
wanted one of these suits.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
You might just explain it. Because the supersuits, which I
think thought he had one, as I recall, yes.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
So they wore they stopped wearing them in two thousand
and nine. So basically they made from one hundred percent polyurethane.
It's thinner than a wet suit, but basically what it
did it held you up, You kept you buoyant on
top of the water, and kind of held you all together.
So as you fatigue, your core relaxes, you start to
sink in the water, you sit lower, the whole thing
becomes more I.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Feel like you're dragging a piano bind you.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Correct, particularly T one hundred and fifteen killers. Yeah, but
what happened back in two thousand and nine that they
developed these really good new suits, every single record was broken.
Every single record in the swimming world was broken. The
one remaining record from two thousand and nine when they
bann the suits is the fifty meters freestyle. It's the
one that I was chasing. It's within reason, probably the

(17:45):
hardest record in the books because it hasn't been broken
in sixteen years now. The problem was when they burn
these suits in two thousand and nine, that they completely
stopped manufacturing. So we reached out to a couple of
the companies that had manufactured those suits in nine. They said, well,
there's actually a chemical that we used in the manufacturing process,

(18:06):
which is now banned for environmental issues. So even if
we wanted to, we couldn't make the same suit again.
And there's no there's no real market for it, you know.
I said, oh, I want a half a dozen of these,
try them out.

Speaker 2 (18:18):
They want to make two hundred thousand or a million
of them.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
They want to mass produce them. So they said, we're
not going to produce them. So we start scrambling looking
for these suits from two thousand and nine, sixteen year
old suits. One that might fit you, yeah, one that
would fit me, the biggest, the biggest that we could find.
And we found a couple and we eye bought them.
They looked the real deal. They wore the suit worn
in two thousand and nine. And then we had some backups,

(18:42):
some open water swimming suits. So in the open water,
the ocean swimming, they can still wear a suit. It's
not as good as the one in two thousand and nine,
but it's all right. So we had a couple of
those as a backup. So the night before I race
in Greensboro. I've had these suits now for a couple
of months, and we've said just don't touch them because
they're sixteen year years old. We don't know how they're

(19:02):
going to it. Didn't try them out, haven't tried it on. Yeah,
so the night before I race try on. I think
I tried on three in a row. They all break,
all three like the whole split them, split them, and
so we were left with no supersuits, which was a
bummer because I was of the opinion that that would
probably give me another second, half a second to a second.

(19:23):
So we raced in the open water suits. As you saw,
it wasn't a comfortable fit. It was the biggest size
that they make, but I don't think there's ever been
a simmer that size before. So now basically for the Games,
I've been personally sort of putting some feelers out to
manufacture my own suit. I think the Games will manufacture

(19:46):
a suit. But I love that there's so much technology,
I mean with AI and you could body scan and
say what materials should we use, how should we do
the seams of the opinion, we should be able to
create something better than what was around.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
And also customize it customer.

Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, custom for that person's shape, that that that body figure.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
And just remind us your best time at your peak
period when you were competing in the Olympics, normal Olympics.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
Now, what was that fifty twenty one point five, what
did you go? What you do in the in February
twenty two point seven, So basically around December, I was
probably a bit quicker than my fastest ever.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
You were, yeah, cool, and we're doing time trail, did you.

Speaker 1 (20:33):
We were doing time trials and we're tracking really nicely,
And did you.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
Feel yourself getting bigger beyond that point?

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Yeah? Yeah, And this is what happened. We spoke with
the doctors and then monitoring everything, and they're kind of going, okay,
it's just tracking nically. But once you start getting too big,
it's very hard then to lose that weight leading into competition,
eating in a calorie deficit, cutting levels. It's it's exact

(21:00):
sort of what you want to be doing. It turns
out that and it's probably part and parcel of being
a sprint athlete, being explosive athlete. I was what they
would call a hyper responder to these products. So and
it boiled down to the science of it, the number
of androgen receptors in your muscle that basically soak in

(21:20):
these things and use them and how that affects your body.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
So basically what you're saying though, is as you supploy
your body with more, say testsosterone, it doesn't do anything
unless you've got receptors in your muscles which called endrogen
receptors to actually grab hold of the testoster and otherwise
it just keeps floating around your system doesn't go anywhere.
So your body type is one of those body types,
or your your cellular muscle cellular system has lots of

(21:44):
androgen receptors, which means you're a hypo whatever hyper I
should say, not hypo, but a hyper absorber you And
so your muscles get more of this juice so.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Called and build Yeah, and it can be compared to
a normal person. And they were eating it up. I
was waking up of a day and I had a
hunger to train. When I would start hurting myself in training,
really pushing through that barrier, I wanted more and more
and more my body just mentally, mentally, yes, physically more

(22:17):
than anything. Physically. I would start to hurt and just go,
I want to go again, like I don't know what
it was, And it was amazing. I'd leap out of
bed every morning for five months. I didn't have muscle soreness.
No matter what I did in the gym, no matter
what I did in the pool, I'd wake up the
next day and say, my coach, let's go again, which,
in hindsight, again was another little mistake we made, because

(22:40):
you are still human and you do still need to
recover and rest at certain times. And I think I
just ended up burying myself in a lot of ways
as well, because physically and mentally, I was just waking
up every day, zoned in, didn't eat a chocolate, didn't
have a drink, didn't go out past nine o'clock for
five months straight. I was just military and what you

(23:01):
saw was a great product physically, but I didn't balance
the whole, the whole preparation out properly. And that's why
I believe I was swimming so fast in December and
I wasn't able to maintain that.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
So isn't that, James, isn't there just amount of en now?

Speaker 1 (23:19):
You know that?

Speaker 2 (23:20):
Isn't it a sort of amount of titration? Like you
sort of say I peaked too early? You know, you've
got to more be more scientific than I'm talking about,
But scientifically you might be in a position to peak
much better than you did for February by the time
the enhanced games comes, and you might be able to
put yourself into position into in terms of optimal And

(23:43):
you know what weight.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
You sort of should be. Yeah, yeah, about.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
One hundred and ten or something like that. Is that
sounds like the sweet spot?

Speaker 1 (23:49):
Probably? I think even less. I think if I can
maintain that strength I had it that that one hundred
and fifteen kilos and come in I'd love to come
in down around one hundred kilo mark. That's a big reason.
It's a huge difference. And with the doctors I've been
speaking to, basically they've said the dosages of the products
you were taking were on the low side. That the

(24:12):
biggest dosage you had it at any time would have
been considered potentially moderate but mostly low dosages. And that
was the end product. But that's because you're for you.
Because I was a hyperresponder, I had a lot of receptions.
Now now we know that going in and starting so
basically we started the protocol at this level, we edged
it up and then we were like, oh wow, he's responding,

(24:33):
let's bring it back a bit. But once that weight
gain really hit a certain point. It was kind of
a point of no return for that preparation. This time around,
the doctors saying basically, we're going to use different products,
but essentially microdose. You know, it's just just going to
be this tiny cherry on top. You're going to get
to peak physical condition naturally, and then we're just going

(24:53):
to use this as the last couple of percent. Whereas
before I gone seven years no training, Let's go back
in the full training at the same time I go
into a full protocol at the same time I go
completely militant with my lifestyle. And at thirty four years
of age, that was probably just a bit too much
all at once.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
So you just like peel back a little bit. Could
you explain to me the protocol? So let's start from.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Who was like who do you see?

Speaker 2 (25:25):
Like, do you have to choose the doctor that's going
to the ndaging place or whatever it is the doctor
that you need to see? What do they say here, James,
this is a dude that's allocated to all the swimmers,
and this is the dude allocade to all the burners.
Whatever it is is that at work or did you
go and choose your own person.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
I'm very careful. So I gave myself three layers. We
had the enhanced doctors and their medical and scientific team.
I then had a doctor on the ground in America
who I'd see weekly, and then I had a doctor
back in Australia and an endochronologist back in Australia who
I would consult with all three levels to say, is
this safe? Am I tracking right? Is everything on board?

(26:03):
And I felt like that gave me the best transparency
so that I was sure that nobody was saying, let's
just give him a bit more to make him a
bit faster. And I think that's the That's sometimes people
look at it and they go, look what he looked
like behind the blocks. He must have been taking everything.
It must have been risky, it must have been, you know,

(26:24):
really dangerous for his health. Well, no, it wasn't. I
looked like that because and it was part of a
parcel of being that the type of athlete that I was.
But at all times my health was was at a peak.
I was actually the healthiest I've been probably ever, but

(26:47):
only since I retired.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
How much of a being so healthy or feeling so
good and looking great do you think could have been
could have been just the discipline for that period of time,
you know, seven days a week, nine o'clock bed, no booze,
no chocolate, no shit, and just mentally psyching yourself up.

Speaker 1 (27:09):
Have you sort of done that? Yeah, it was certainly
a big factor. It was certainly a big factor. But
the one difference was so before I went away, I was,
I was doing some training, and the max I could
do was one solid hit out a day. So if
I did a heavy gym session in the morning then
tried to swim in the afternoon, my body was just
like I was cooked. I was fried, or vice first.

(27:31):
Or if I did a heavy swim session and tried
to lift that night done. So what the protocol allowed
me to do was just stack these workouts day after day,
without rest, without giving an example. Couldn't we have an
example overseas? I would do a two hour swim session
in the morning, go home, have lunch heavy. What are
we talking about? So really high intensity, higher pays, but

(27:52):
just efforts, high effort, high speed, high intensity, a lot
of resistance work. And that's probably everyone keeps asking me
the secret to the lats that they saw on When
you say resistance work. Yes, So what we'd tie like
parachutes to me in the water resistance cords, we'd have
weight stacks attached to my waist, so I'd be pulling

(28:14):
up to like one hundred kilos in a a weighted
pulley and swimming hard against it. And historically sports specific,
sports specific. Yeah, and this is it's a little bit
new in swimming as well. It hasn't been done for
a long time. We saw kem mckivoid did a lot
of this leading into the Paris Olympics and it worked

(28:35):
really well for him. So this is kind of cutting
edge stuff in a way. But because I was on
those protocols, this is really intense muscular and my body
is just eating it up and so that's that's contributing
to me growing day after day. And so I think
that type of training again, I will alter a little

(28:56):
bit knowing what I know now and how I respond
to that train.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
And we talked about the stack in the second. But
in terms of nutrition, what was your protein protocol? So,
because obviously just no good unless there's protein going down
the system, what were you doing in relation to that?

Speaker 1 (29:16):
So I was eating four five hundred calories a day,
you have three hundred grams of protein a day, three
three hundred.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Other words, that's multip by thirty hundred.

Speaker 1 (29:28):
That's three.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
That's like like fifteen hundred grams of meat or something
like that.

Speaker 1 (29:34):
So it's shakes, it's meat, it's Greek yogurt, it's cottage cheese.
Every meal is just rammed with protein. Yeah, and what
about carbs cabs? We weren't tracking, Yeah, we did well.
I had a meal plan, but my main goal every
day was to hit my calories and hit my protein. Yeah.
How we filled that out? I basically and again this

(29:55):
is part of being militant. My dietitian would send me
my meal plan and time she'd say, you know, there's
not much variety in there. Do you want me to
change it up? I just saying, if it's chicken, rice
and broccoli for lunch, I'll eat chicken, rice and broccoli
for lunch. I don't care. And I think that's been
one of my biggest strengths throughout my career, and it
was it was really nice to get back into that

(30:16):
mindset of I wake up and my job is to
swim fast. I don't worry about businesses or relationships or responsibilities.
I wake up and I swim fast, and I'll tell
you that was very refreshing as a thirty four year
old who's lived life now and has a perspective on
life and life's hard, the life's stressful. To wake up

(30:37):
again as an athlete and go through that process. Man,
it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Let's talk about this what you were taking and how
you took it. So are you taking things like BBC
one five seven? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (30:48):
So a lot of my protocol was around staying injury
free and reducing that muscle soreness. So peptides are a
whole new world that way. So which can you can
you mention which peptoles you're taking? I mean it differed. Yeah,
your bpcs that that was That was a cornerstone and

(31:10):
something that I will continue to take, I think throughout
my life because I had all these historical injuries and niggles,
and as a swimmer, you're doing a thousand rotations a day.
It's really unnatural thing for your body. It's like running
on the road and bends up your knees. So just
just explain the BPC on seven. Were you taking that
in tableform injection? Injection form injection? Yeah, pretty much everything

(31:30):
I took was an injection form. It's it's the fastest uptake,
it's the most efficient.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
So when we're doing that first thing in the morning,
how does that work? You get up in the morning,
start injecting yourself where you do it during the day.

Speaker 1 (31:41):
Usually morning or night. So depending on what I was on,
on what times I might have so three or four
injections a day, which.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Which whether cocktails or were they just one.

Speaker 1 (31:56):
Single single things in single needles or pre drawn someone
did at the doctor. So I go to the doctor
and pick up say fifty pre drawn syringes with the
right amounts, you know, in a freezer bag that you
keep cold. So there's no guesswork. There's not like I'm
measuring out what do I take? What do I do?
It's very it's down to the Miller liter. Yeah, yeah,

(32:20):
there's no guesswork in it. And you didn't have to.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
So you weren't the person drawing the whatever whatever the
compound was into the needle where you can make a mistake,
et cetera, too much not enough. It was actually everything
was measured so that there was someone was able to
report on exactly what you had.

Speaker 1 (32:39):
And that's what I was able to do really easily
in America with these anti agent clinics that I was
going to.

Speaker 2 (32:45):
So you just explained there's antiagent clinics in America.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Basically, you go in, you get your blood's done, where
your hormones are that they do everything from cosmetic things
for women to chemical things for men, things like test
uster and replacement hormone replacement peptides PRP injections. Now over there,

(33:10):
stem cells are becoming more popular and more widely used.
So basically, when you're starting to slow down in life
and feel the effects of aging, you go to one
of these clinics and they no longer view it as
well you're getting older, so you just have to deal
with it. It's like, okay, here there are options for
you to live a more vital life, have more vitality

(33:33):
in your life for a longer period of time.

Speaker 2 (33:36):
And they're testing you all the time too, to just
see where the outcomes are.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
I was doing some tests weekly, blood tests, fortnightly, body scans, monthly,
heart checkups, monthly. It was the first test I did
so after I spoke with you a year ago, I
went overseas to a sports hospital and did a really
in depth full body testing. Where was that. I'm not

(34:06):
allowed to say where it is because they're not fully
on board yet, but it was in the Middle East, right,
and it was a sports hospital. And I went through
heart scans, liver scans, kidneys, MRIs and X rays on
every joint in my body, scans on my brain, scans
on my lungs. They inject you with this die and

(34:27):
you go on an MRI machine and they see how
your your body pumps blood, your heart pumps blood around
your body. It's so in depth.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Is it like a preneuvo It was that the prenuvo
body scan?

Speaker 1 (34:40):
Is that that type of thing?

Speaker 2 (34:42):
I know that, but that's a pretty pretty popular in America.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, yeah, it could be. Like they put it in MRI.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
I was in I wouldn't do one in the US
in LA and I sat in it later for about
an hour and a half.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
Yeah, it's long, pretty freaky. Yeah, you got to try
and stay calm. Yeah. I don't like it. I don't know.
I didn't know. I didn't enjoy it at all.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
Yeah, but like I went through it just for the
purpose of going through the process to see where you
can find or not find so they do. So this place,
the Middle East does all that because there's some pretty
crazy joints around the world where you can get some
unreal stuff done.

Speaker 1 (35:15):
Yeah, and I'd say, you know, within reason, the Middle
East is probably leading the way on some of those things.
And I remember sitting back, So I did all these
all these tests. I spent three days doing these medicals, scans,
MRIs everything, ECG tests. You know where you do the
exercise test they hook you up and all that stuff.

(35:38):
I remember sitting basting your heart, testing my heart. Yeah,
a lot of it was about heart. That's that was
the most important focus. And I think for a lot
of the data they got was around the heart. How
would the heart respond to these protocols, to these products,
particularly in an athlete. And I sat back, I was
in my hotel room. I'd finished three days of testing.
They say, come in tomorrow morning, we'll give you all

(35:59):
the results. Will either give you the green light to
participate in the games, to go through the protocols, or
it is like a filter.

Speaker 2 (36:05):
Was it that the people are running the games?

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yes, run Every athlete will have to do this before
they sign up for the games. Right, So if you
have any underlying hard condition. No chance you're not competing.
And I was sitting in the hotel that night and
I was like, I was actually a bit nervous because
I never had any of that testing done in my
life before. I actually didn't know if I had a
healthy heart or not. I assumed I was fit, I

(36:30):
was healthy, but you should know, we all should not.
I think everyone should know. You know, I was thirty four.
You see in certain sports around the world now people
are passing away from cardiac failure or cardiac arrest. It's
really quite concerning. And I've never had any of this
testing done. So I sat back in my hotel room

(36:52):
and thought, oh, I just assumed this would all go ahead.
You know, I never really thought of the possibilities when
in the next day, when they basically said for full
bill of health, they gave me a biological age of
twenty five, which is nice. I'm thirty four twenty five.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
It's such quite a significant difference between thirty four and
twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Yeah, And they said, you know, you obviously haven't abused
alcohol or drugs or those sort of things through your life,
which has been great for your health, and we give
you the green light to go ahead, and that gave
me a lot of confidence in the whole process. Starting
there and understanding that the concern they had for my
health before I touched any performance and nancing drugs. It

(37:34):
gave me a lot of confidence in the process.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
And it's great about that too, is you've got a
baseline before you touched any Yeah, and then so we
just talked. We did talk about BBC one five seven,
which is basically a peptide they've given America to sort of.
I don't know if that the FDRE might just recently
aband it, but it doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 (37:55):
I think it's back. Now that's back, is it? So?
Robert Kennedy Junior's back.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Of course you can not take it as a and
now you can take it as either a tab's not
quite as biovailable through stomach, but it's actually apparently quite
good for your stomach as it is repairing your stomach
and most of us need to somebody repairs because with
what we consume, especially with it is but that's an injectable.
Did you take things like CJC ipromlean.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Yeah at times. Yeah, So things like CJC, things like
I just a precursor to growth. Hormones. Yeah. Yeah, so
peptides are basically maximizing your body's personal it's its own
ability to produce certain hormones or things naturally.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
But it doesn't produce them.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
It's not putting them into your body. It's maximizing your
body's natural potential essentially. Yeah, these are things with you
know that there's a lot of discussion, for example, in
the UFC around should we make some of these peptides
legal because our fighters are putting their body through hella.
Surely the least we can do is help them help
their own bodies heel between fights. And it probably will

(39:03):
in time be proven that it helps to some of
that head trauma and cognitive function as well well.

Speaker 2 (39:09):
The same and it's interesting you really brought up creatine.
One of the things that the same creatine does is
really good for brain.

Speaker 1 (39:14):
Brain is amazing.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah, and now it's like accepted and I'll guarantee most
UFC athletes would be most fight athletes, martial artists would
competing would be taking creatiant of some type. Yeah, because
you know, if you're getting hit in the head, punched
in the head all the time. So so, but the
so the peptides were like there was a stack that

(39:36):
they gave you, like what I mean by stackers, like
a like a whole series of ones. And then do
they change it at some stages and say, okay, mate,
how are you feeling? They so let's add this in
or take that out.

Speaker 1 (39:48):
Yeah, and beyond how you're feeling, what are your bloods
telling us? Right? Well, you know, things like cortisole levels
are showing how much stress there is in the body.
Different markers is show knowing how much muscle breakdown there
he is. So we're working with the medical team, the
scientific team who's saying, this is what's out there, this
is what's available, this is what it does. And they're

(40:10):
conversing with the medical team who's saying this is James's result.
And then below that there's the layer of my swim
coach and my strength coach saying this is how he's performing,
this is how things are working. And then to the side,
you've got your dietitian who's saying, all right, based off
the feedback I'm getting from these people, this is what
we're doing with diet. So it's a big team. It's

(40:32):
a big team, and it's you know, at times it's
a lot of opinions. It's discussing things as well, because
again you can't flip to page fifty of the handbook
and say, all right, sprint swimmers have historically taken these
things and got these results. A lot of the research
or the studies or the data that they have is
actually on bodybuilders who don't need the same athletic output

(40:58):
as a sprint athlete does. So we were kind of
forging the way.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
I think that's important for you to explain that because
bodybuilders just building for shape and mass correct not necessarily
for functionality. Yeah, and also efficiency like muscle efficiency of
what I mean is that muscle working with that muscle they.

Speaker 1 (41:20):
Look ability to clear lactate and the ability to deliver
oxygen to the muscles. They're all byproducts of more aerobic
training or anaerobic training, hard work basically in terms of
putting on size, I mean, all those things work incredibly well.

(41:40):
You saw the product at the end of it. You know,
there was a time then when I couldn't stop putting
on weight, and I'm going, maybe we just quit this
and we go into like a mister Olympia or something.
This is insane.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
So we will always be your greatest weight gain when
sort of what sort of period?

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Probably the first I think the first ten the first
ten days I gained about five kilos well, which was
just like and I mean, naturally it's not possible. You know,
you talk to people like it's not possible. Yeah, well yeah,
I wasn't playing by the rules so to speak. You know,
I was using these enhancements. And that just shows when

(42:21):
you take the foot off the break and just see
what's possible. These things do what they say, and for
an athlete and who you know. Again, I was a
hyper responder. But it wasn't even like I was trying
to get bigger. I was training like a fifty meter freestyle.
I was training power. I was just training my strength.
I was training hard in the pool, resistance work. The

(42:43):
weight was just a byproduct. It was never the goal.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
And just in terms of you're lifting abillity. For example,
I don't know if a swimming does bench press, but
do you do bench press.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
As yeah, we're doing compound with dumbells. Oh yeah, okay,
so I had one hundred and fifteen one hundred and
twenty pounds dumbells, say fifty five kilo dumbells and I
was just punching out sets of ten like it was nothing,
which I don't even know if before that I would
have been able to pick up a fifty five kilo
dumbell Like that's pretty heavy. So that's the biggest one
you find in a gym. Basically squats. I was squatting

(43:18):
five hundred pounds, which is like two hundred and thirty kilos.
I was doing reps sets of three chin ups of
sixty kilos hanging around my waist plast one hundred and
fifteen kilos body weight. My strength was crazy. I was jumping, throwing.
All those athletic indicators were off the charts, and it

(43:43):
was happening quite quickly. You actually when you first walked
into the studio.

Speaker 2 (43:48):
Says, I don't know from my imagination, but you look
younger in your face.

Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Do you feel that there's been changes in the way
you look your face offto a bt weird eyes, weirdly.

Speaker 1 (44:01):
I do, And it may just been enthusiasm for life.
I don't know, but I feel I feel younger.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
I can feel an energy like that you didn't have.
Maybe that's because a year ago you weren't that fit.
It could be you hadn't gone through your you know
what your body actually responds to, training, discipline, structure, eating regularly,
certain things at a regular time, et cetera. May have
been then you weren't because of the way you're living
your life. I'm not saying you're a slot or anything,

(44:30):
but relatively speaking, but I just do.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Get a sense of energy and positivity, et cetera. I
think almost when I spoke to you last time, I
was excited about the opportunity, but there was an underlying
trepidation around, yeah, are these things actually safe? Will these
games actually happen? Are the team that enhanced the real deal?

(44:58):
And now I've been there, I've lived, I've seen it,
I've seen behind the scenes, I've met the people in charge,
and it gave me a new spur, a new burst
of energy and excitement for this project. And now I've
seen the waves it's making around the world. And you know,
I've met other athletes that are competing. I've done the protocol,

(45:20):
I've seen the results. I know it's not unsafe. It's
kind of validified everything, validated everything that I suspected, and
it has given me a new lease on life. And
I feel like an athlete again. That's that's when I'm
my happiest. What about the Greek dude brought the regular crazy?
What happened? It was an amazing story. So basically Christian Golomeive,

(45:43):
He's sounded like a Greek name to me. He brought
in Bulgaria. Okay, born in Bulgaria to Bulgarian parents. His
mother died whilst giving birth to him, moved to Greece
with his father. His father then passed away, and so
he's had he's had a pretty tough go at it,
and he's swum at the past five Olympics. At the

(46:05):
past two Olympics, he's finished fifth in the fifty free style.
So I was there in the crowd watching him at
the Paris Olympics. Basically I was in California training and preparing,
and he actually had seen me in a podcast and said,
I want to do the games as well, and they
said James is going for this record attempt. But that's

(46:25):
after so he went.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
He did the enhancements as well, yes, but that was
after Paris.

Speaker 1 (46:32):
Yeah, so he raises in Paris as a clean athlete.
He's thirty years of age, so he's four years younger
than me. He's thirty years of age, and for all
intents and purposes, he says, I'm done with my career.
He sees me in a podcast and goes, oh, I
don't mind the idea of this enhanced games. Guess in
contact with them. He's speaking with them, and they said, well,
actually James is over and here in California right now,

(46:52):
and he's going to have a crack at the world
record in a couple of months time. Would you like
to come across and have a crack protocols, same protocols. Yeah,
So he comes across and starts training with me, which
was a great motivated for me because I'm like, oh,
now I'm training against the fifth fastest kind in the world. Though,
this is good to see where I'm at, and when

(47:14):
I talk about how I peaked in December, he basically
comes across and starts all the protocols later and stuff
like that, so his timeline pushes up really nicely to
the actual event in Greensborough. We get to Greensboro and
the last week or two he weren't swimming that much together,
and I knew he was in good shape. I knew
he'd been doing the same training as me. He's been
on the protocol only for a very short period of time,

(47:36):
but he's got that quick upkicker that I got at
the start, and he wasn't going to race that week,
but they said, oh, you're here, James is doing it.
Why don't you suit up and see how you go?
Puts a suit on, doesn't attempt world record? Just then
and there nobody in the stands, no one around. We're

(47:58):
just saying there going what that just happened? Like that
was incredible, And so for me it was a little
bit of sweet at first because I was like, that
was meant to be me. And I knew that week
that did he win the million bucks? Do you want
a million bucks? Last spot? Yeah? Changed his life, more
money than he'd ever made in his entire Nice. It's nice.
He's got a wife, he's got a young kid than us.

(48:20):
It's changed the trajectory of their life drastically, And so
I was. I was so happy for.

Speaker 2 (48:26):
Him structurally, like I saw I saw a for me.
I didn't actually see him out of the pool. But
he's not that doesn't have your sort of statue, does he.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
He's six seven. Wow, it's taller than he's total yeah,
I'm six five. He's six seven. Wow. But so I
was big though, No, we were talking in pounds over
there a lot. So I was two hundred and fifty
five pounds. He was about two hundred and fifteen pounds.
Significant forty pounds. It's like fifteen sixteen.

Speaker 2 (48:53):
Kilos lighter them and two inches taller.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
And two inches taller. Yeah, so very different frames. He
has more, But did he muscle up? He so throughout
the process. So after he broke the world record, he
continued on the protocol for the full twelve weeks, which
is how long the ideal time frame is, and by
the end of that protocol he'd put on ten pounds,

(49:16):
but his swimming times were still out of this world.

Speaker 2 (49:19):
So in other words, he put on less muscle than you,
but built up a significant amount of extra strength.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yes, from there. And that just is a product of
different DNA, different genetics, different types of athletes. And so
for him, like you said before, you know, when I
was younger, I'd sit up really nice and high in
the water. He was still in that position. However, he
had all this extra strength from that uptick that he

(49:47):
got from the protocols, and he'd come across from the Olympics, right,
So he's had NonStop, you know, the past fifteen years
of training, so there was no I need to get
back into it, I need to get a feel, I
need that skill acquisition phase. He was just sort of
straight into it. But what it did, you know, it
was weird watching and I was really happy for him.
He's a great guy, you know, he's he hasn't had

(50:10):
had it easy, and I was really happy for him
a bit. It'd have to be the first Greek swimmer
ever to break away. I don't think he's happened for No,
I don't think so either.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
But but not the first Bulgarian to break a record.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
No, not the first Bulgarian. Yeah, and it's a very
Bulgarian name he's got, but his young son, Theenos, that
is a very Greek, very Greek. But it was a
bittersweet moment because I was like, ah, that was supposed
to be me, and I knew by the time I
got there that I wasn't swimming at my best. But
what it did was it showed the world, Hey, this works,

(50:48):
this works, this is the real deal. We've We've taken
this guy from fifth at the Olympics he's come across
and within two or three months he's broken the world
record that that had been standing for fifteen years. So
so he broke the two thousand nine record. He broke
that record. That was is the only much James point two?

(51:10):
So what were we talking about it in terms of
body now? Finger oop? Yeah it was close. Two hundreds yeah,
two hundreds yeah, yeah, and but no one. I mean
at the Olympic Games. I think Ken mcavoyd won in
say twenty one point two, twenty one point three, So
Christian was about half a second faster than what won
the Olympic Games within that that short.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
Time and half a seconds A fair bit though, yeah half.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
A second you're talking st two meters yeah yeah, I
was going to say more than body length. Yeah, you're
swimming at more than two meters a second. So but
did you?

Speaker 2 (51:43):
I mean, I don't know if you watched him pre
maybe did pre enhancements, watched him in race?

Speaker 1 (51:49):
But did is it because his kick was bigger?

Speaker 2 (51:52):
I watched him. I didn't know what he used to
look like. But was it his reach or his drive
or he's kicked him? Did you look at the biber?

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yeah, there's a couple of things. He got more off
the start, he got more power, so he.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Got right out. Yeah, and under the water.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
Under the water is not his best area, right, But
he got up. He got up and was stroking pretty quickly.
But his last and when you look at it as
a comparison the data, his last fifteen meters was the
quickest we've ever seen. So he didn't fatigue at the
same rate as he was previously.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Most people were thinking fifty meters, you know, Grand Hack.
At fifteen hundred meters, what are you talk about fatiguing?
Maybe you could explain that as a as a sprinter,
what does that mean?

Speaker 1 (52:40):
So fifty meters it's twenty seconds or twenty one seconds.
It's the same as two hundred meters on the track.
So one hundred meters on the track you can pretty
much put the foot to the pedal to the metal
and go full bore. Two hundred meters. You have to
be smart about it still, because that's outside your atp
PC system. You're working is your energy system. And yeah,

(53:01):
it's outside that pure speed energy system, and you're working
into lactate production. And so that last fifteen meters, that
last five seconds of the fifty freestyle, it hurts. You know,
you have really high lactic acid levels in your blood.
Things start to tighten up, things start to hurt, and
that's where it's really important to stay high in the water,
stay really technical and kind of blasts through that last

(53:23):
fifteen meters And that's that's where he swam faster than
any other athlete in history.

Speaker 2 (53:29):
So, like you were saying, his last fifteen meters was
perhaps enhanced, obviously enhanced compare what he would ordinarily do.
So what he did in Paraslympics, certainly, Yeah, certainly.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
And the crazy thing with Christian was, you know, I
watched his preparation and it had been such a short
time and things just stacked up so well for him.
I reckon Christian could drop another half a second off
that world record with a longer preperation. With now knowing
what we all know about the protocols that we can

(54:03):
and can't and should and shouldn't do about the effects
of different things. I mean, I think some of these
world records are going to get shattered. So I think
it's important that we start sort of talking about them
as the fastest swims in history rather than world records,
because these are going to start to go above and
beyond what we've seen previously.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
And so could I just quickly talk about testosterone, but
like being a steroid that you were taking, so the
other stuff at peptides, how do you how do they
what's sort of tests from you're taking like it is
like as in TRT style testosterone or is they're giving
you some of those bodybuilder type things.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
I don't even know what they're called. No, Yeah, it's
just your more tr T type your hormone replace just
just prop a hormone. You're not needing to get too
freaky with it. Yeah, yeah, and again you know, you
get it, you go to the doctor, you get prescribed,
you get pharmaceutical grade, and basically you feel like an
eighteen year old. Again, that's a great way to feel.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
So yeah, just in terms of that, like, so let's
say the range for testosterone free testosterone in your body
is so I think the lower range is nine, and
it can go up to the normal range goes up
to twenty five or twenty eight or.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
Something of that.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
Were you measuring sort of way beyond that like forty fives.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
And forty No most of the time, So what you
find if you take a spike or it would no,
we stayed saying that in the higher range to maybe
just outside that natural range.

Speaker 2 (55:37):
But so it was a daily but it was a
daily dose to give you at one level. It wasn't
would they give you a shot on.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
Twice a week, twice twice a week, and that kind
of keeps it pretty flat. And if you test that
a normal athlete who's in full training camp or full
training mode, their testosterone results will actually come back as
quite low because basically you're all the testosterone and the
hormones you're you're producing is going into recovering muscles or
repairing muscles, and you're constantly chipping away at it. What

(56:06):
I had was basically high level test austerone which a
person could get to naturally, but not an athlete who's
training full bore and breaking down their body, because to improve,
you essentially have to break down the muscle. It repairs,
it gets stronger, it gets fitter, it gets more efficient,
and so athletes and my historical results were my testosterone

(56:27):
at peak training would be quite low, whereas this time
during peak training I had quite high levels. Therefore, you know,
I had an energy I was bounding out of bed
in the morning, I felt motivated. I was able to,
you know, push harder than I had previously been able to.

Speaker 2 (56:43):
It was a good at motivation. Like does it give
you that full motivated fear?

Speaker 1 (56:47):
It gives you It gives you a thirst for life,
even mentally in terms of like your approach to things
that might rattle you normally, or or things that might
give you a bit of anxiety or you know, trepidation
or anything. You just blast through life. And added effect,

(57:08):
you're sleeping, sleeping longer, sleeping deep, sleep better. Yeah, more
more ram and more deep. So your WOP was telling
you more. Yeah, I have the craziest stats on my WOP.
So so what are we talking about on WOP? Now?

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Just can we just go on sleep for example? Yeah,
so I presume you're wearing this in the water and
at night, et cetera, and look in the morning, you know,
look at your recovery, et cetera.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
What was your telling you.

Speaker 2 (57:35):
About, for example, just just talk of sleep. So pressing
on the sleep button, what was it telling about sleep?
Is it what is it saying in terms of sleep efficiency?
What was it talking about sleep in terms of your
sleep duration? Was it was telling you in relation to
deep sleep and regenerative sleep generally, which includes REM street
sleep as a percentage of your title, What does it

(57:56):
look like?

Speaker 1 (57:57):
Yes, I stacked up leading into that Christmas where I
said I was really peaking physically. I stacked up about
six weeks straight one hundred percent sleep efficiency, which was
just crazy. I was getting about four and a half
hours of regenerative sleep and a half hours, So that's
a combined of REM and deep sleep, so almost two hours.

Speaker 2 (58:15):
Now mine was last night combined one half hours. Well yeah,
because I DIDN'TET, had really late and I was all
wound up and from work and I had to get
up early, ceterbidly and fricks out on it.

Speaker 1 (58:27):
It does, it does, But yeah, it does. You want
to share it with to show someone? And what other
stats were good? So what about HIV for example? So
my HIV was getting up over two hundred. Yeah, it
was probably averaging out there around the one sixty to
one eighty.

Speaker 2 (58:46):
And I was talking to James Edesco the other day
the RUGBIY play and he tells me he gets at
one forty one fifty.

Speaker 1 (58:52):
Yeah, but two hundred, and this is I would like
to work with because I don't know if they've seen
numbers like this before, I guarantee not. My resting heart
rate was twenty eight No. Yeah, and I've got all
the data back, Yeah, twenty eight, twenty eight. So when
I was competing, I used to I did, used to
have quite a low resting heart rate. Say so this

(59:13):
this just some people know. This is your heart rate
when you're asleep, so they yeah, this is the average
of your heart rate across that sleeping period. So at
times it was dipping down to like twenty four. No,
the average across the night twenty eight, which is.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Like if I get a fifty, I'm happy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:29):
I mean I remember hearing about Lance Armstrong. I can't
remember the numbers, but I know he was in the twenties.
I don't know. It's not something athletes talk about a lot.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
But it's got a lot to do not just with enhancements,
it's got a lot to do with your general fitness
and health.

Speaker 1 (59:43):
Yeah. And like I said, the lifestyle, I mean I
was eating, sleeping, recovering. Everything was perfect. There was there
was no alcohol, there was no chocolates, So what could
I actually work?

Speaker 2 (59:56):
So just on the river, what was your respiratory rate,
you know, the number of breast.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Yeah, it was about fourteen point eight, which I don't
think is that extraordinary.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
No, No, that's I'm about that. I'm about fourteen point something.

Speaker 1 (01:00:08):
Yeah. And it didn't it didn't come down.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
It didn't come down. That's interesting at all.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
No. Yeah, which it didn't move around either. It didn't
go sixteen twelve was No, it was pretty consistent. Yeah,
it was pretty consistent. But my heart rate variability, I
mean when I first went over there, if I got
up to one hundred heart rate variability, it would be
telling me, you know, your recovery is perfect, go hard today.
It just tracked in a linear progression. Must have been

(01:00:35):
getting green every day. Yeah. And the only reason it
stopped tracking up was because I finished in Greensboro. I
came home and sort of relaxed and stopped training.

Speaker 2 (01:00:45):
And just because you're still wearing it, is it much
difference you're not, he's still doing the enhancements.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
What do you call it? No, I'm off, Yeah, you're
off everything. So what difference you see now? Resting heart
rate about forty four, heart rate very ability max. At
the moment, I think it's probably been one twenty. Is
the biggest I've seen. They're still pretty good by but yeah,
it's not bad, but the numbers were getting and I mean,
and again that's its measures of health, right. Yeah, I

(01:01:14):
was a ever been in history. I think, ridiculously healthy, ridiculous.
So at one stage, so I had to go and
redo the tests where they inject you with the with
the die, you go on the MRI and they see
how your bloo's pumping or anybody. And we had to
redo it twice because my heart was pumping slow, so slow,

(01:01:35):
it's almost going one beat every three seconds. They're going,
we just can't track it properly because it's so low.
And then they wanted to do these tests in La
up at the hospital, and they said, we can't send
him up to the hospital, a general hospital in La
because if they see his resting heart rates below thirty,
I think he's going to die. They'll resuscitate it. I
think he's something wrong with it. They'll put the paddles
on y. Yeah, and so but they're all sitting back

(01:01:58):
and then the cardiologists and endochronologists involved and they're going,
this is amazing. We were so worried about his heart health.
His heart's more efficient, it's stronger, it hasn't thickened, his
blood hasn't thickened. We're watching it in live time. This
is one of the healthiest hearts we've ever seen. When
everything we're being told beforehand was if you do performance

(01:02:20):
and anything drugs, your heart's shot. You're going to have
a heart attack at fifty years of age.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
I think by no means it just what do you
call it? The fool and scientists?

Speaker 1 (01:02:31):
Bro science? Yeah, bro science.

Speaker 2 (01:02:32):
But I think you said something quit before you You're
everything you were doing, you're dosing at the low end. Yeah,
I mean maybe yeah, like everything. If you know, maybe
one glass wine is not too bad for you, but
victory ten and you've got a problem. Yeah, you know,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
And I think it'd be great that the conversation around
these products should be it's not about the use of them,
it's about the misuse. Yeah, because people abuse anything, right,
Like if you make alcohol legal, people don't drink. You
make it legal. Some people are going to drink one
hundred beers. Some people are going to be sensible. Any
drug in history has had misuse or abuse, and that's

(01:03:12):
when people want to push the limits and get too
big or too strong, or you know, bodybuilders, different sports.
But what they're doing with enhanced is, rather than doing
drug testing before you're allowed to compete, you have to
do this full in depth health analysis. And if you're
not healthy because you've been abusing performance in the substances,

(01:03:33):
you're out. You just can't compete. And so suddenly it's
this whole new world of we don't want the cleanest athletes,
we want the healthiest athletes standing behind the blocks. And
what that should produce is the fastest athletes as well.
That should be a byproduct of having the healthiest athletes.
We've also got the quickest athletes.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Can you remind me again who's behind this? Like the individuals?

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
So Aaron Desuza is the founder. You've got Peter tier
bit about Aaron de Susan. So, Aaron was from America.
He worked for Peter Tiele, he was a lawyer. He's
now in he's worked in venture capital and different things.
He's based in London, but now the whole games has

(01:04:15):
moved across to New York. So basically since I was
here last there was an election, a new leadership, Donald
Trump Junior and his venture capital firm invested quite heavily
in Enhanced. Donald Games is an entity.

Speaker 2 (01:04:33):
Enhance is actually a business, a business.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Donald Trump came out and endorsed the Games and said
he wanted them to be held in America. So Enhance
packed up all their operations moved everything to New York.
They've since announced that the Games will be held in
Las Vegas, which is awesome, perfect. Yeah, and now it's
got the supportive of the American government, which is basically

(01:04:59):
the green light in to run an event like this.
You know, there's a lot of politics in the world.
There's a lot of politics in sport. There's different federations
and commissions and governing bodies. But you know, within reason,
once you've got the support of certain people, then you
can do whatever you want.

Speaker 2 (01:05:14):
It sounds like a business to me, though, something's going
to come out of this. Is going to become a business.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
So what I couldn't understand. I was sitting back and
you know, Peter Thiel invested. There was you know, a
couple of families, private equity families from the Middle East,
you know, princes and stuff investing, and I thought, you know,
I think it's a great concept. I think it could
do a really big audience, you'd sell tickets. I think

(01:05:43):
the broadcast numbers would be solid. But why are they investing?
You know, they've got billions of dollars in funds invested
into this. Why do they need that much money? And
what's the return on that? It didn't make sense to me.
So they announced while they're in Vegas. Then Enhanced Enhanced
Limited will do direct to consumer products.

Speaker 2 (01:06:06):
So James enhanced them and to those endings that owns
Enhanced games, they will.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
Do direct to consumer products. If they said when, you
can sign up now and it will launch the next
couple of months as a weight list a weight list,
and to my understanding, it will be you go to
your local doctor, you do your bloods, you send your
results off to Enhanced and they will custom make a

(01:06:32):
protocol based off your personal In America, they're not here.
Only in America for now, which is the biggest market
in this space. I think eventually it will be global,
but for now, the jurisdictions of different countries are two streets,
so it will start in America. You know what I'd

(01:06:52):
like to eventually do is you know I'd love to
do it with Enhanced Could we do a missile stack
or a what does that look like? But once I
heard that, I was like, Okay, this is this is
a sporting event to promote an industry. This is the
anti aging industry that's getting into here. It's a launch.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
This launching an anti aging brand.

Speaker 1 (01:07:14):
Good Enhanced And if you the way I kind of
think about it, you know, I sat back and I
thought about deeply. I guess red Bull is a product.
They've always run sporting events and sponsored athletes. Red Bulls
always been the product. But they don't to They don't
super heavily promote that product. You just know it's you know,
the red Bull X fighters or the Red Bull Dirt

(01:07:35):
Park or whatever it is, and they don't go that
heavy on the actual branding of a can of red Bull.
But you know that Red Bulls are product involved with
these sports and you know that. You know that that
for a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
But the biggest events, the big events that they sponsor.

Speaker 1 (01:07:51):
Yeah they're there, and that that drives all the consumers
to their product. This for the for the anti aging space,
for for that that whole world you'll see enhanced and go, well,
look at these amazing athletes, and that will filter into
the product.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
So maybe you can just give us a bit of
a sense of what it goes on in the US.
But the USA, when it comes to anti aging is
out of control, and I mean in a good way,
Like it is so focused on anti aging compared to say,
what we have here.

Speaker 1 (01:08:21):
It's just mental.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
What are some experiences that you know in this little
journey that you've just gone through over the last four
or five months, whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:08:28):
Is probably a year.

Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
What do you think about that we're moving away from
the enhanced games? What do you think about the whole
anti aging game as such? Because it should be called
the NDIE aging games, and that's a game that's perpetual,
it doesn't stop as every generation, your generation, my generator.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
None of us want to die. We all want to
live longer. That's probably you know.

Speaker 2 (01:08:50):
The you know, the youth Alixa has been been sought
after for a long time. Maybe finally someone's going to
maybe get it closer to discovering.

Speaker 1 (01:08:57):
I think we're getting closer. I think the really interesting
thing has been you know, these are really big, really
powerful people involved with these games, and the more people
I've met, it almost feels like the more wealth you've
accumulated across the years, the more you realize, Okay, the
one thing that I can't buy now time is time.

(01:09:19):
And everybody wants.

Speaker 2 (01:09:20):
An optimization during the time.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
Yeah, an ability to have energy to your last breath.

Speaker 2 (01:09:25):
And if you're if what you're saying is correct, and
let's say I could get fifty percent of it, of
that energy and that feeling and that optimism and that
ability to wake up in the morning, I want to
go training whatever is because right now when I wake
up and training, I'm going to training training. I don't swim,
but I would go training to do what I do
because I have to, I know, because I think, fuck

(01:09:45):
you better train to day mark. Even though I feel
like jack shit this morning and I look at my
I looked at that I had had a red circle
and still but I still went because I thinking I've
got to do it just to maintain my position like
physically and meant et cetera. But if unbelievable because sometimes
like if you have a great sleep, like let's say,

(01:10:07):
wake up on a Sunday morning, because I had a
great surlum Saturday night and maybe let's say slept eight hours,
I train so much better. And then when I train
so much better. I feel so much better. Imagine if
you can do that every day of the week, you
never feel tired, never feels especially my age, like I
would I would like. I don't give it, damn as
long as I know it's safe and that someone scientifically

(01:10:28):
is monitoring it, managing it and sort of looking at
my bloods and doing anything. Because I mean, I'm not
competing it, so I don't give it care. I don't
care if I'm enhanced, you know, because someone might say,
we're going to eat these sorts of fruits and vegetables.

Speaker 1 (01:10:41):
It's the same deal.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
They're all chemicals and molecules, and you know, nature's made
like they're all come from from something.

Speaker 1 (01:10:49):
They're not sort of being plucked out of the.

Speaker 2 (01:10:51):
Out of the stratosphere some whether they're here for a reason.

Speaker 1 (01:10:55):
When you break it down to a cellular level, any
problem is fixable, and in time, I think we will
cure aging, which is really exciting. It's one of the
few things and this may be a product of being
an athlete. My identity has always been intrinsically linked with
being big, fast, strong, healthy, healthy. That's that's vital, that

(01:11:19):
that's who I am and you know, as I you know,
I'm only in my mid thirties, which is by no
means all, but as I see that next phase of
life coming, it actually scares me a bit because it's like,
all right, if I'm not the big, far strong guy,
who am I? Yeah? You know, I didn't go to university.
I haven't spent my life in the business world. You know,

(01:11:42):
who am I beyond this career? And you know, how
do I stay that larger than life guy who's big,
far strong, you know, healthy.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
To maintain my identity and relevancy?

Speaker 1 (01:11:54):
Yeah, and I see it a lot in It's happened
a lot in swimming over the years. People have faced
this exonstential crisis when they retire because they lose it
that they're no longer the big, strong, fast guy, they're
no longer the swimmer, that they feel different in themselves
and they turn to different things to fill that void,
and it's caused a lot of problems for a lot

(01:12:16):
of athletes in retirement.

Speaker 2 (01:12:17):
Did you follow on with various protocols? People like Brian Johnson?
So what do you think of those sorts of people,
because they're not athletes, but they are.

Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
He's a walking experiment. He's almost more at the cutting
edge than what we were doing. Stuff we're doing he
did probably a decade ago, and he's pushing the boundaries
and at times he's finding things don't work, which is
also must be quite scary in and of itself. But
if you don't have pioneers like that who are pushing
the boundaries of what's possible, then you're not going to

(01:12:52):
make medical advancements because otherwise they're just testing these things
on animals. Yeah. Yeah, but what do you think he's
so divisive?

Speaker 2 (01:13:01):
Like so many people, a lot of people really love him,
and following him, a lot of people just rip. Yeah,
why do you think that? I mean, you must have
had some time reflect on this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
Yeah. And I think the industry as a whole at
the moment carries some connotations around this is rich men
wanting to live longer, and there's a little bit of
animosity towards that concept. And when you think about the
people that are at the forefront of this space in America,
and you talk about your Dana White's and your Donald

(01:13:32):
Trump's strong personalities, strong men, successful men. Yeah, Joe Rogan,
And again, is this enhanced games is about breaking down
some of those stigmas. You know, here's some athletes, here's
how they're responding, here's their health metrics. This isn't sketchy stuff.
You know, people jump down Joe Rogan's throat when he

(01:13:54):
speaks about testosterone or anything like that. But it's a
new world.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
Yeah, but it's interesting you're prepared to eat sort of
right along with it because mainly because you've tested it, it
hasn't really didn't do any damage that you can see.
That you can see, and then of course you've had
a double check by various layers. Yeah, what about things
like you know, like I'm at an age where you
see you see urologist every six months for your prostate?

Speaker 1 (01:14:23):
What about things like.

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Testosteroney and prostag Do you have to see a consult
of eurologist about this stuff?

Speaker 1 (01:14:30):
I haven't had to yet.

Speaker 2 (01:14:32):
Do you do any PSA testing all that sort of?

Speaker 1 (01:14:35):
Just because of my age and health, it's it hasn't
been front and center.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Do you think maybe do you get worried though?

Speaker 1 (01:14:42):
James?

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
At five years time, you you know, you grow another
tit or something like, you know, do you think this
shit maybe is going to be delayed?

Speaker 1 (01:14:50):
I have thought about that, and I have thought about,
you know, fertility and having kids. Yeah, thirty four, I
don't have any kids.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Do you get those things tested like sperm tests, etc. Yeah,
that's part of the protocol testing.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
Yeah. Yeah. And basically whenever I have fears or questions
like that, I've got access to the top medical professionals
in the world. So I don't sit back and spend
time or I've never lived my life about what if
I should I or shouldn't I. I just pick up
the phone and call them and say, hey, well what
about you know you don't ruminate on it. No, No,

(01:15:29):
I'm quite pragmatic, And I'll just wring my cardiologist in
the Middle East and say, hey, I know my heart's
healthy now, but could something come up? And he'll just
sit down there and he'll give me the facts. Well,
based on every bit of data we have on you
so far, absolutely not your heart your heart got healthier.
So what would happen from a chemical level, Like if

(01:15:50):
we sit back now, I'm on nothing, I have a
baseline health now, I'm very healthy right now. From a
chemical level, what would happen now in you know, after
the fact, that would cause your heart any stress from
a biological standpoint, there's there's nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:08):
Giving your scientific deductions.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
They're telling me the science. Yeah, as opposed to you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:12):
You're and or I are sitting around sort of worrying
about ship that we might have saw in a sci
fi movie or something, or read the book or got
heard from the background noise of someone at a gym
like twenty years ago or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:16:25):
Yeah, So just just to close off.

Speaker 2 (01:16:27):
So when you start, when you kick off a training
again for the Enhanced Games, which is is May next year,
May next year, so when you start with the series training.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
So I'm in talks right now with a couple of
different options of places to go and train and do
the protocol again back in America, though America is an option.
There's some options in the Middle East, but not here.
I'd love to be able to you know, above and
beyond anything else, I'd love to be able to do
it any where. Were you from. Are you a Queensland?

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
Because a lot of mccurey, because a lot of queensids
killing it at the moment that they've been doing so well.
Because the pools and the infrastructure is great up there.
It'd be great if you could measure. If you could
train the Gold Coast.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
It'd be amazing. Basically, the way that the current federation
stand is, I wouldn't be allowed to train with current athletes.

Speaker 2 (01:17:18):
Really, yeah, because somebody might come into your skin in
the pool or something.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
I don't know. I think it's almost more a moral
or ethical standpoint than anything. Don't pollute our good cabin yeah,
something like that. So I need to go back overseas
and for the protocol as well. Again, maybe there is
a doctor I could find in Australia that would be
able to do everything that I wanted, but people get

(01:17:44):
deregistered pretty quickly. Yeah, and to put yourself put your
name to James Magnus and who's in the Enhanced Games.
That's difficult in itself. So I'm looking at my options.
I'll probably have to go overseas, but I'm kind of
at peace with that. I'm just so excited this timmer around.
You know, I'm coming in. We've got a date, we've
got a location, there's other athletes, we've got a world record,

(01:18:05):
we've got protocols. So this time it's you know that
the games are inevitable and I want to be the
story of the Games. I've done the protocol, I got
the result I got in Greenspa. But I think that
makes for a really cool story when I turn that
around in twelve months.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
And then just finally on that. Why you mentioned the
Middle East a few times, it's interesting, like it's not
something we normally associate with the Middle East, and you know,
you'll be very careful not to disclose which part of
the Middle East, and it's a big place, but the
Middle East seems to be knocking on the door of
every sport and every sort of thing like boxing, tennis, soccer,

(01:18:50):
golf obviously just better. I've even heard there's been talks
about rugby union so and I didn't even know they
would have swimming facilities over there that someone like you
needs to have. You need fifty meter pool, you need
a proper pool, proper depth, the whole thing, like a
proper Olympic style coaches infrastructure. I didn't even know they

(01:19:15):
had that sort of stuff there.

Speaker 1 (01:19:16):
Yeah, they have amazing facilities. I think some of those
countries are pushing to host those big international events like
World Championships or Olympic Games or something similar, so they
have those facilities there and the same as those names
I mentioned in America, some of those some of those
guys in the Middle East with high net worth. I

(01:19:38):
don't want to age that they want to slow this process,
so they want to be involved in the enhanced movement
in that industry and supporting athletes is one of the
ways they can do that. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
I'm looking forward to watching you, as an Australian bring
it home for us. Like I always back every Australian
every competition. I don't give a damn what the competition is.
Well I do, but Enhanced Games doesn't bother.

Speaker 1 (01:20:02):
Me too much.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
There would be some competitions that good and back, but
that one I'm very happy with, particularly in the swimming.
James Macism, thanks very much. Good luck making the enance
Games good.

Speaker 1 (01:20:11):
You look great. Thank you

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#204 James Magnussen Returns: Life on PEDs, Enhanced Games & the Anti-Aging Industry

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

All Episodes

#204 James Magnussen Returns: Life on PEDs, Enhanced Games & the Anti-Aging Industry

Stuff You Should Know