HC

 

Nathan: There’s a motivational speaker that, the days that I don’t feel motivated, I read or I watch motivational videos.  Les Brown, he’s a motivational speaker. I might get this story mixed up, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.  He was homeless at 17, he didn’t have a dad; his mom had three jobs. It wasn’t enough to sustain them and they ended up going into a homeless shelter.  He hated the homeless shelter, thought about suicide a bunch, but found God, found himself through God, and now he’s worth $35 million.  He worked 5-11 every day, slept three hours. There’s almost limitless possibilities to the human brain and what you can do, so I think in the morning I just realize that if other people can do it, I can do it. I’m just as good as everybody else.  Will smith quoted when he got his first Oscar, “greatness is not this foreign, beyond reaching ideology that only a few can taste. It truly is within all of us,” and I definitely agree with that; you just have to work for it. So in the beginning of every day when I don’t’ want to do it I realize that someone is working harder than me.  I want to make sure that when I’m in the gym I’m working harder than every single other person no matter what. And I make sure that every single day I do that and the guys I work with, Grant and Shane and Zach, and Oscar, the guys who really push it every day, I always make sure that I’m pushing it even harder than them and make sure that I’m always working 110%.  ‘Cause you know you only get one life, and God gives you that life and you need to respect it and cherish it, so if you waste a day you’re wasting his life that he’s given you.

 

HC: So would you consider yourself a pretty religious person?

 

Nathan: I studied six religions, three months each. Not religions I guess, some religions and some practices.  Buddhism isn’t considered a religion. But Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism, Christianity and Islam. I went through all of them.  I was pretty lost for a bit, and I wanted to figure out what fit best for me.  I really liked Buddhism, I really liked Christianity, I really liked Islam. I strayed away from Islam because of Jihad and the holy war thing. I think that no matter what that life is sacred so you shouldn’t be able to kill in the name of faith. I don’t think that that’s right in the first place and so that was the only thing that I really didn’t like about Islam. And it parallels really closely to Christianity and people will fight you on that, but if you look at it objectively they’re pretty similar. And there’s a famous phrase that Christianity is a religion in search of a practice and Buddhism is a practice in search of a religion. And so Buddhism and Christianity work very well together as far as the whole humility and selflessness aspects and I really liked Hinduism for Karma and Dharma I thought those were really cool too.  But Christianity just really hit home with me. I was an alter server for seven years, big in the Catholic faith. But I went away from it. I wanted to figure it out for myself. My parents guided me to Christianity but they never pushed it on me.  I said I wanted to do my own thing for a few years and they said that was ok, and eventually I just fell back into Christianity. Right now my faith is stronger than it’s ever been and I can tell you that my life is better than it’s ever been.

 

HC: Mentally, do you think that helps you in the gym?

 

Nathan: Absolutely, yeah there’s extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.  University of Chicago did a poll on successful people with extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation and God is a mixture of both.  You work within yourself for him and so I think it’s that balance.  If you feel weak that day you can call upon Him, and if you feel strong that day you know that He’s beside you, but you can also work with what he’s already given you and better yourself. More than anything else God is what gets me up in the day.

 

HC: Just to back it up a bit; I’m assuming you played sports in high school. Can I take a guess at what you did?

 

Nathan: Yeah go ahead.

 

HC: I thought about this a lot; I’m gonna guess that you wrestled.

 

Nathan: Nope.

 

HC: You didn’t wrestle?  My other guess was that you ran; probably some kind of distance running?

 

Nathan: Yeah, why’d you guess that?

 

HC: Well, to me those were just the two sports that require the most mental and physical tenacity and I feel like that’s what make’s a good lifter.  And I can just tell that you’re a really mentally sound and mentally tough, motivated person, and I feel like that’s where those two sports fit in the most.  So tell me a little about your high school career.

 

Nathan: Cross-country and track year round-- yes distance.  I was pretty good at faster things. The 800 I was really good at too, but man if I’m being honest I am not coordinated. I did boxing for three years and I was really good at that but anything that requires a ball man I’m just not good. I could get hit in the face with it.  I can run a football, but this isn’t me being modest at all I am literally terrible at basketball or baseball and things like that, so I just figured, you know, work with what you got and if I can outwork somebody I can do better than them. And I’m really blessed to have great genetics as far as bodybuilding is concerned.  I mean I build muscle better than I would say 90% of the people I know. In the sense of running that person is right in front of you. Just pass the next person, pass the next person. Bodybuilding is a little harder to see that conceptually, but you see it, and it happens, and you grow and I love it. I love working everyday towards a better goal to better myself for myself and for God.

 

HC: So I remember seeing you around the gym a lot last year as a sophomore, and you were always one of the bigger guys who was working harder and really seemed to know what they were doing, but the leap that you made from last year to this year is just such an incredibly noticeable difference.  It might be the fastest and the biggest gain I’ve ever seen in people I know.  So what helped you get there? Was there any one thing, one strategy or one tactic that helped you get there, or was it a combination of a lot of different things?

 

Nathan: So to make it easy on you, the first thing that everybody asks is no I haven’t taken steroids.

 

HC: I never thought that.

 

Nathan: No, it’s ok I just wanted to put it on the table. I’m really fortunate for knowing a few people. My main coach, my strength and conditioning coach David Poll is a man who built himself up.  He came from nothing, lived in Mississippi. He would probably hate me for saying this but was piss poor.  He worked his ass off, did 70 hours a week as an EMT and then became lead EMT for his county.  Then he sold an efficiency of contract labor to the government for $4-5 million.  But anyways he has that mental focus and he also was a bodybuilder himself and he saw me working in the gym a lot.  I did it for two years and I started at 128 and over those two years I built about 30-35 pounds of muscle and he said "If you want I can help yo."  And I'm a really humble person when it comes to people helping me, especially since he was three times, four times bigger than me and I said "Absolutely."  So he’s the first guy I have to thank for getting me all the connections.  But I was fortunate enough to meet Dan Greene, who if you don’t know is the strongest person pound for pound in the world. He just broke two world records. 

 

HC: I heard that you trained with the strongest man in the world.  I was eager to hear this story.

 

Nathan: Yeah that was a hell of 10 training sessions that were two and a half hours each.  And he just laid everything out. I mean the key to success right then is to eat.  I mean I don’t know if you remember when I came in here in the beginning of the year, but I was a little chubby. I definitely wasn’t as cut as I am right now.

 

HC: I just remember that you looked like just massive.  Maybe not extremely cut, but just like crazy big. 

 

Nathan: Well I appreciate that, but it was really just Dan like fixing a few things, well not a few things, fixing a lot.  A lot of my form.

 

HC: So you think it was just good instruction?

 

Nathan: Absolutely.  In two weeks of lifting with him my bench went up 30%, and that’s just technique, just breathing. And that resonates to the guys that I lift with now.  And they’ve made strides, huge strides.

 

HC: I was going to ask if that’s why you were so generous.  It seems like you really enjoy helping other people out.

 

Nathan: Yeah, I mean I think the purpose in life is to make other people enjoy their life, to make other people better.  I think that’s why everyone is instilled with this feeling of giving.  I think that humans are born good, and through whatever scenario some people go bad, but I mean I think that if you’re a good person you’re going to get rewarded.  And I don’t do it for the reward, but it happens that way and it’s really great to see people smiling and see people get their goals of what they want in life.  And that’s what I want in my life; to help people achieve their goals. And so, yeah im gonna be generous with it because I’m very happy and if I can make people as happy as where I am right now, that’s great.

 

HC: So what’s a bit of advice you would give someone that’s walking into the gym for the first time, never picked up a weight before?

 

Nathan: Drop your ego at the door.  Don’t worry about weight.  Being blunt, nobody gives a shit about you.  If you’re a small guy in the gym nobody is going to look twice at you, so don’t think everyone is looking at you being small because they’re not. They’re worried about their own workouts or they're worried about the people they’re training with or being the biggest guy.  So keep your form, keep your practice, keep your humility and eat a lot.  The weight will come.  Weight is resistance.  Don’t think of it as weight training, think of it as resistance training.  The more resistance you put on that muscle, the more evenly distributed, the bigger you’re gonna get.  If I see somebody that’s lifting more than me at the gym, or doing better than me at the gym, I’m happy for that person. I want to get there. I take that as a challenge, but in no way do I think negatively toward that person.  And appreciate advice, I mean at your own discretion. Realize if somebody’s being an ass or if someone is being genuine, but don’t shut them out.

 

HC: Going off that, what would you say to someone who maybe has been lifting for a while, but just isn’t reaching the goals that they want to achieve.  The people that are getting frustrated and getting discouraged, and maybe even second guessing if the gym is the right place for them.

 

Nathan: Think about how far you’ve already come.  If you hit a plateau, realize that everybody hits that.  Whether it’s mentally or physically, you can see in the gym you have a certain weight that you can’t get past, but do that exercise in different forms.  Do different muscle confusion techniques. Eat more. There’s way to work around your failures in the gym. You can’t get discouraged.  Les Brown has a saying that he wants you to “fail forward”, and what that means fail, but you learn from what went wrong.  He talked to a large group of individuals and he said “If you’re going to class, and you know you’re going to fail that class, but you keep going because you’re going to learn, and the next time you come around to that class again you’re going to know more." You keep trying and keep trying.  You’re going to keep failing, but eventually that’s going to stop.  You’re going to get stronger, you’re body’s going to get better, everything’s gonna come back around.  You have to mentally push through it.  Lifting is 60/40, 60 mental and 40 body.

 

HC: You mentioned eating a few times.  How many calories would you say you’re taking in per day now?

 

Nathan: Not as much now as I was, but when I was bulking 7100 to 8100.  Arnold has a famous saying that “It doesn’t matter if you have a Lamborghini, if you there’s no gas in the tank, it’s not going anywhere.”  It doesn’t matter if you have the best body in the world; if you’re not feeding it, it’s not going to perform.

 

HC: What are your go to foods then? Obviously if you’re eating that much you have to find things to eat, so what do you like to rely on?

 

Nathan: Brown rice, white rice, chicken, raw eggs.  Staples are complex carbs, dense carbs, dense meats.

 

HC: How do you feel about red meat?

 

Nathan: I love red meat.  Read meat has creatine in it. Creatine helps with ATP and allows for more water to be stored in the muscle and more water to be stored in each cell, which allows you to push harder. More water is more ATP breaking; more ATP breaking is more energy.