Quote from Editor on January 16, 2025, 12:43 pmLee Priest on bodybuilders in the 90s, tren cough and so-called 'gurus'
Asked whether someone helped him with his nutrition while he was a competitive bodybuilder, Priest shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "I just tried to narrow it down [to what worked for me]. That's why I don't believe in coaches, gurus and all that bullshit. No one knows your body better than you.
"Some of these pros now are going, 'I'm going to go to Patrick Tuor', or 'I'm going to go to Hany [Rambod]'. Hany had these fellas who were already champions. My grandmother could've got them in shape. You can just tell they're going to train hard, eat their breasts, you know, they have the genetics. We always give these coaches too much credit, because if you come to me and said, 'Lee, get ready for a show', I don't know your body, so all I'm going to do is say 'here's a diet, here's some steroids, here's a programme, go train'. In a week or two, I'll say, 'how are you feeling? OK, we'll cut that out, put this in'. All that stuff you can do yourself if you've been doing it long enough.
"They're talking about Derek [Lunsford] going over to somebody else [he has teamed up with Chris Aceto]. Derek won the Olympia with Hany and I'm sure he's got notes on what he did with Hany, so just follow those notes. Yes, you've always got to make little tweaks here and there, but what you really need is a good training partner, someone to keep your head on straight because, in those last few weeks, you always think you should do something different. So as long as you've got a good support team around you.
"These trainers and gurus get way too much credit because, like I said, you're the one that's got to deal with it, how your body feels and that sort of thing."
"The last two weeks is where people fuck it up. I didn't even do carb loading once, I just ate the same food all the way up until the show. Then the last week, I dropped by the water slowly. Say Monday I was having seven litres, Tuesday I'd have six litres, Wednesday five litres, the day before the show, I was still having a litre of water. But if the show was Saturday, I'd still train on the Friday. When your body's that finely tuned any little thing you do, it's going to be hit or miss.
"Even diuretics, you know, other guys will start taking diuretics on a Tuesday, Wednesday. If my show was Saturday, Wednesday I might just take half of one and see how I look. If I look good, I might just take a quarter of one because, if you go too hard and you pour the water out, you're not going to get it back in time."
Priest also discussed the time he took tren, describing the reaction being so bad he decided never to take it again. He said: "You go online now and every young kid is like 'tren this, tren that', I used tren four times my whole life. But the last time I used it was probably in 2002 and I just got this massive pain all through my chest where I couldn't breathe. I was like, 'fuck'. I've never taken that again.
"That's what amazes me now, because I read online about the young kids saying, 'I take tren and it makes me irritable, I can't sleep'. And I'm thinking why would you take something that makes you feel like I'm fucking shit? It's just stupid. The internet can be a good thing, but there's just so much shit on there it's just crazy.
FLEX AND DILLETT WOULD BEAT SAMSON
I'm always going to say, I think the 90s, that era, into the early 2000s was the best. Like, Samson's good, but if you had to put him up against Flex at his best, Flex would like... and I know these website's put up photos side by side but having two photos from different stages at different times is different than having him in the flesh."
The point was made that Dauda was about 300lbs on stage and carried it very well, but Priest countered that, believing that another of the 90s greats would have beaten the Briton.
"Yeah, but Paul Dillett was only like 265 270lbs and if you stood Dillett beside Samson, he [Dillett] look a lot better," said Priest. "It's all an illusion. Stage weight doesn't mean nothing. When I won my first pro show, Chris Cormier was second at 260. I weighed 199 pounds but people thought I weighed 230. So it's just an illusion up there. I don't care what people say. If that [size in pounds] was the case [Marcus Ruhl (22:32) or those guys, the guys from Canada who passed away, Greg Kovacs should have won every show."
Asked whether someone helped him with his nutrition while he was a competitive bodybuilder, Priest shook his head. "No, no, no," he said. "I just tried to narrow it down [to what worked for me]. That's why I don't believe in coaches, gurus and all that bullshit. No one knows your body better than you.
"Some of these pros now are going, 'I'm going to go to Patrick Tuor', or 'I'm going to go to Hany [Rambod]'. Hany had these fellas who were already champions. My grandmother could've got them in shape. You can just tell they're going to train hard, eat their breasts, you know, they have the genetics. We always give these coaches too much credit, because if you come to me and said, 'Lee, get ready for a show', I don't know your body, so all I'm going to do is say 'here's a diet, here's some steroids, here's a programme, go train'. In a week or two, I'll say, 'how are you feeling? OK, we'll cut that out, put this in'. All that stuff you can do yourself if you've been doing it long enough.
"They're talking about Derek [Lunsford] going over to somebody else [he has teamed up with Chris Aceto]. Derek won the Olympia with Hany and I'm sure he's got notes on what he did with Hany, so just follow those notes. Yes, you've always got to make little tweaks here and there, but what you really need is a good training partner, someone to keep your head on straight because, in those last few weeks, you always think you should do something different. So as long as you've got a good support team around you.
"These trainers and gurus get way too much credit because, like I said, you're the one that's got to deal with it, how your body feels and that sort of thing."
"The last two weeks is where people fuck it up. I didn't even do carb loading once, I just ate the same food all the way up until the show. Then the last week, I dropped by the water slowly. Say Monday I was having seven litres, Tuesday I'd have six litres, Wednesday five litres, the day before the show, I was still having a litre of water. But if the show was Saturday, I'd still train on the Friday. When your body's that finely tuned any little thing you do, it's going to be hit or miss.
"Even diuretics, you know, other guys will start taking diuretics on a Tuesday, Wednesday. If my show was Saturday, Wednesday I might just take half of one and see how I look. If I look good, I might just take a quarter of one because, if you go too hard and you pour the water out, you're not going to get it back in time."
Priest also discussed the time he took tren, describing the reaction being so bad he decided never to take it again. He said: "You go online now and every young kid is like 'tren this, tren that', I used tren four times my whole life. But the last time I used it was probably in 2002 and I just got this massive pain all through my chest where I couldn't breathe. I was like, 'fuck'. I've never taken that again.
"That's what amazes me now, because I read online about the young kids saying, 'I take tren and it makes me irritable, I can't sleep'. And I'm thinking why would you take something that makes you feel like I'm fucking shit? It's just stupid. The internet can be a good thing, but there's just so much shit on there it's just crazy.
FLEX AND DILLETT WOULD BEAT SAMSON
I'm always going to say, I think the 90s, that era, into the early 2000s was the best. Like, Samson's good, but if you had to put him up against Flex at his best, Flex would like... and I know these website's put up photos side by side but having two photos from different stages at different times is different than having him in the flesh."
The point was made that Dauda was about 300lbs on stage and carried it very well, but Priest countered that, believing that another of the 90s greats would have beaten the Briton.
"Yeah, but Paul Dillett was only like 265 270lbs and if you stood Dillett beside Samson, he [Dillett] look a lot better," said Priest. "It's all an illusion. Stage weight doesn't mean nothing. When I won my first pro show, Chris Cormier was second at 260. I weighed 199 pounds but people thought I weighed 230. So it's just an illusion up there. I don't care what people say. If that [size in pounds] was the case [Marcus Ruhl (22:32) or those guys, the guys from Canada who passed away, Greg Kovacs should have won every show."
