An Interview With The Big Cheese, Part II
by The Sandwich

In Part I of this interview, we picked apart chemical delivery system expert, steroid guru, and all-around smart guy Bill Roberts' brain. After we got done talking about steroids, cycling, anti-aromatases, insulin, GH, and even gonadotrophic agents, there was nothing left except a few pieces of glowing red cerebellum lying on the floor.

As such, we thought we were done, but turns out there was a lot more info in those scraps of brain. Hence, Part II of our interview with the Big Cheese.

T: IGF-1. I know it's very popular now. Some people say it doesn't work, and some say it does. What are your thoughts on it?

BR: It's one of those things I can't comment on too much, because I'd want to see a situation in which somebody I knew had used it, so I'd have some results to compare back to back. Then, I could say, "Okay, these two things were the same except for the IGF-1." The problem is that the guys that are on that level [big-time bodybuilders] never do the same thing back to back. Everything is so different, so radically different, that they could tell me that they swear the IGF-1 is doing something, and I could look at their program and I could say, "How in the world am I supposed to conclude that it's the IGF-1 that did this?" I couldn't.

T: DNP. The late Dan Duchaine brought this drug to the forefront, and, surprisingly, it's starting to catch on. Even the bodybuilders who normally don't want to take large risks are taking this drug. What are your feelings on this drug, both short-term and long-term, as far as side effects are concerned? From the feedback I'm getting, it seems that guys can only stay on DNP for only two weeks, because they feel like they're about to die!

BR: I think it's an incredibly stupid idea. It's about the most toxic thing out there, or close to it, and ultimately, all it's really doing is saving you a little bit of time! If you just started dieting maybe a month earlier, you'd get the same results without having to put yourself through all of that.

I just don't see the point. If DNP could somehow get someone into a condition that couldn't be achieved otherwise, then maybe it could be considered worthwhile for some people who need to be in that extreme condition.

But generally speaking, you're talking about people that are using DNP while they're at 8% bodyfat, and they could lose fat other ways. They are basically putting themselves through hell to just save a little time.

T: Prohormones are still very hot. Which ones are bad and which ones are good? There seems to be a lot of confusion out there due to the amount of prohormone variations available.

BR: The first of them is androstenedione. You can look back at the research and say that it was a mistake, that it shouldn't have been introduced. The problem with that is that its introduction was necessary. There was a reason for it, because legally, it was one of the small steps to take in the process of bringing in other prohormones, as it all started out with DHEA. These days, androstenedione should be completely forgotten because of the estrogen problem, except for women, if they even want to take these kinds of things at all.

Then you have 4-androstenediol, which is much, much better because it has very little conversion to estrogen. Then you have the 19-nor versions of these, so you have nor 4-androstenediol, and this, along with 4-androstenediol, are the prohormones that people should put their focus on.

T: If a bodybuilder is going to take those prohormones orally, what type of dose would you recommend that would be effective, but safe at the same time?

BR: Orally, I think that you need 300 mg or so to see substantial results, and if you take more, you'll see somewhat more results. I think the best bet, orally, is to use them in a way that it will not impair your natural testosterone production very much. You take it only during the daytime, and I've found that you limit your use up to around 5pm — some people find its worked okay up to 6 or 7pm — but you limit your use to only during the day. The result is that your natural testosterone production drops very little, if any. So, in that sense, you get a mild type of supplement advantage without any substantial side effects.

T: One supplement that kind of took the bodybuilding world by storm was Triax. What are your thoughts on this supplement, and why did it disappear?

BR: It's the same thing as Triacana, the French drug. It's maybe the worst of the thyroid drugs because it's much less effective than T3 at speeding the metabolism, but it's still very suppressive of natural thyroid production. Actually that's why it's used as a drug, to suppress thyroid without speeding the metabolism much.

Besides that, it's definitely a pharmaceutical drug, so its legality was pretty questionable to me.

For people who want to use it, they should be careful not to stay on it too long. Seems like women are particularly prone to abusing it. They either wind up on lifetime thyroid replacement therapy, or wind up obese.

T: What are your thoughts on the new type of prohormones, the cyclodextrins? LPJ Research contends that HPBCD is the better of the two types of cyclos. Your thoughts?

BR: Oh, as far as the two different types of cyclodextrins, it's definitely the HPBCD. They are far and away the better way to go. So, the cyclodextrins are another good way of getting short-acting type of delivery. As with the orals, you can use them during the day, and I don't think you're gonna' see much overall testosterone suppression. Of course, the problems arise when someone says, "Well, I don't want to see just mild results, I want as much as I can get." Plus, the flip side of the short-acting side is that you would have to take them very frequently.

T: Okay. That leads us to your product, Androsol. What can you tell us about this product, and why would it be better than the cyclodextrins, and more effective than the orals in general?

BR: The difference, essentially, of whether it's better or not depends on what you want to do. If what you want to do is to have minimal inhibition of natural testosterone production, then something like the cyclodextrin products, or just orals are better, because you get the short-acting effect. But if what you want to do is to have high levels around the clock so you can get the most gains, the transdermal, and Androsol in particular, is the way to go for that because inherently it delivers 4-androstenediol for about 24 hours. So if you apply it twice a day, or even once a day, it would be the most effective way of sustaining high levels. Also, bang for your buck, you get more prohormone into the system with Androsol. Or, even forgetting economics, you just can get more into the system.

T: What type of doses, or how many sprays should one use for the best results?

BR: Well, for the most serious results, 70 sprays, twice a day. Now that sounds like a tremendous amount, but it's really not. What happened is that, first, my original design goal for the product was pretty conservative. I was looking to get the same kind of blood elevation that you would get with 300 to maybe 500 or 600 mg of oral 4-androstenediol. The difference would be that it would be for 24 hours instead of about three hours.

First, I did a crude test product. I just went to the supermarket and got myself a sprayer from some kind of cosmetic or whatever. That particular sprayer, by the time you sprayed on 4 ml, you felt like your finger was going to fall off. So, it worked okay, but I wasn't that excited, and actually I tried to sway Biotest from getting the product (laughs). I said, "Well, you know, this would be a fringe market product, it's gonna' compete with Androstederm or something, and maybe we'll sell 1,000 bottles a month or something like that."

This is actually something that Brock Strasser and I were gonna' put out together, by ourselves, and we'd sell a 1,000 bottles a month, and make $6,000 a month each. But, no, Tim thought there would be a substantial market for this thing, but ... (pauses) he wasn't too excited with what we were getting to him at first.

Not only was it a lot of work to apply 4 ml, but the spray wasn't fine enough, and it turns out that's quite important to the efficiency. Tim found a sprayer that gives a really fine mist so you can apply 10 ml at a time very conveniently. That gives you 500 mg. It's surprising how little details can screw you up, or make all the difference.

T: Prohormone purity. Is this something we should be taking into consideration, or ...

BR: Well, that's an issue that's kinda' changed over time. About a year or so ago, maybe less than that, the problem was that we knew there was a lot of additional stuff in 4-androstenediol, and nobody knew what it was. It was a legit concern, especially if people are taking large amounts, like a gram a day.

These days we've found out what the stuff is, even though we didn't know beforehand. Now I really don't have any concerns about people taking the product orally. As far as I'm concerned, the oral product's impurities are safe. We wound up having to purify it further because we wanted a clear solution to spray. Actually, if you just take the 4-androstenediol powder, and try to dissolve it in alcohol, you get a total mess. Thick and chalky, and pretty nasty-looking because the usual bulk product is only about 80% beta androstenediol.

T: What are your thoughts on the other transdermal prohormone products, such as Androstederm?

BR: I'd really rather not comment on other competing products.

T: What would be a typical supplement stack that you'd recommend for the average bodybuilder on an average budget?

BR: I think that the meal replacement powders (MRPs) are really the first thing to use, unless you're set up to where you can eat regular meals every two to three hours. If you can do that, then you don't need the supplements, but for a lot of people, it's just impossible to eat more than two or three good, balanced meals a day. If that's the case, having MRP products in between really, really helps. So that's the first thing I'd recommend.

T: Okay. Let's switch gears yet again. I know you have studied resistance training for quite some time now, and I think the latest fad is the Mike Mentzer, Arthur Jones "Heavy Duty" type of training. What do you think of this training method?

BR: Well, the problem with that is both Arthur Jones and Mike Mentzer have this belief that if you know one thing about a muscle, then you know everything about it. In other words, if you know the strength, then that's all you need to know, because strength equals size and so forth. And, so, what follows from that is if you ever find out what works best today, then that's always the best way to train it. That's how they think.

Jones would train these bodybuilders back in the 1970s that have been training six days a week, maybe seven days a week, for the last five years straight, training three hours a day. He'd tell them, "Okay, I want you to come down here to Florida. I'll pay for your plane ticket, and take four days off. I'm gonna' put you in a beach house and I'm gonna' train ya' for one session." And, these guys would wind up gaining a half inch on their arms from this, but actually they gained most of that before the training session! So, they gained a quarter inch or little bit more before the training session.

They would then do the training session. After another three days of rest they gained a little bit more — have a half inch more on their arms — and they'd be done. Arthur Jones would use that to prove that his training method was the best one out there.

The problem with this is if you tried repeating this method every week, you're not gonna' have a half inch gains on your arms every week. The result really wasn't from the training method. It was a combination of how these guys were training before, combined with the rest. So, there is a lot more to the muscle than how big it is. It's the whole training history and what went behind it.

Now, there are circumstances where a Jones-type workout will give good results, but long-term? It's just not the way to go.

T: What do you think is a nice training method for someone who's been training for a few years and they've hit that dreaded plateau; someone who's natural. What can you recommend for them to get past this stumbling block?

BR: I think the best plan is a periodization type of plan, similar to what most powerlifters do, because once you get past the beginner stage, you're just not gonna' be able to add on five pounds every week, week after week. It's just not gonna' happen, and you can't add a rep every week, either. So, in other words, you can make gains, but the rate at which you can make gains is very slow, and you're not actually gonna' see it by trying to add weight every week to find that reference point.

Instead, you set up a training program in which you start with a weight that you can do so many sets and so many reps with in a fairly high rep range. Each week or each different training period like a ten day micro-cycle or eight days or six days, you increase the weight, and you do fewer reps.

You have this all designed from past experience: you know that this is the appropriate weight to be trying for eight reps and so forth. You finish up the cycle using just a few percent more weight, for low reps, than what you could handle before. After doing that cycle, your next cycle can be heavier by rather small increments. It could just be 5% heavier at ten weeks later.

This actually does work. You put a lot of these cycles together, and you'll make good gains. Furthermore, this way the body keeps seeing a different stimulus every week. This week you're benching 225 pounds for two sets of ten. Next week you bench 240 for two sets of nine.

T: I'm gonna' list off a group of people in this industry, and I want to get your brief, unrehearsed response. Mike Mentzer.

BR: First off, the thing that comes to mind is that he's insane. Everything about him, his thought processes are so screwed up that it's very hard to say anything other than he's completely irrational.

T: Bill Phillips.

BR: He's a guy who's achieved a lot of commercial success for himself. He certainly did it by being rather deceptive to the public. It's very surprising how good he was at doing that. He was able to develop a cult following, people just really liked him. I was one of them. It was really surprising that I look back on it, it was so obvious, like his "National Supplement Association."

He had his own association? I mean, who else was in his association? Him and Shawn? They rated their own supplements! They gave this one four stars, and this one three stars, and so on. It's just amazing (in a perplexed tone) that I didn't see that and say, "What a con artist!" But I didn't. I believed it completely, and so did tens of thousands of others.

T: Brock Strasser.

BR: Brock's an interesting guy. Certainly the persona he projects on T-mag is kind of a loud mouth jerk (laughs), but he's not really like that at all.

T: Dan Duchaine.

BR: Well, there are a lot of people who are going to try to make a big issue of the fact that I've had a couple disagreements with him. The reality of that issue is — let me give you an analogy. Suppose somebody buys something from you on credit a few times. And, ultimately, you wound up having trouble getting payments on some of that. How much interaction have you had with that person? Compared to their entire life, it's nothing. Not even 0.1% of their life. Not 0.1% of your life.

I really never knew Dan personally very well. I talked with him on the phone for about an hour, twice. And, of course, we had a business relationship with me writing some articles and him buying them, and it took me about a year to get paid on them. That really is very insignificant. So yeah, sure, we argued about how long it took me to get paid, and people have tried to make a big myth out of that, that we were terrible enemies or something like that, and that's just not so.

But, insofar as getting that out of the way, Dan is the guy that really started bringing steroid knowledge to the bodybuilding public. Prior to that, it was mostly myth, and so Dan accomplished a lot in that area. I really don't think there's ever gonna' be somebody that you would say is "the next Dan Duchaine." Dan was just a really unique character. A large part of why he was so popular and why he had so much influence was his personality and writing style.

T: You're probably right, Bill. Are there any topics that you'd like me to touch upon? We've covered training, supplements, drugs ... diet! What type of diet are you on, and what do you recommend for a natural bodybuilder trying to gain mass?

BR: Well, right now I'm on the Texas Roadhouse diet, and so that's not one I recommend to anybody. For the most part, I think there are really two good types of diets in bodybuilding. One of them is what Dan called the Isocaloric Diet. The idea that you should basically get approximately equal calories from carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. When someone is going on a much higher calorie diet for a bulking cycle while on steroids, protein should go way up and the fat doesn't need to go up.

The other good cycle — rather, the other good diet — is the ketogenic type of diet: very high protein, high fats, and very low carbs. That needs to be done cyclically, in terms of one or two carb-up days a week. What I've found that works pretty well — once they've adapted to that type of diet — is to be ketogenic during the day, and have a couple good isocaloric meals at night.

T: That's a good theory, which leads me to my next question: should one change their eating patterns once they go off the steroids? For example, should they increase the fat intake at the end of the cycle to help maximize endogenous testosterone production and so forth?

BR: Yeah. When they come off of a cycle, it's a good idea to make sure that there's a reasonable amount of fat, like 30% of calories, and we're talking a reasonable amount of calories, such as 15 calories per pound or so. And during the cycle, yeah, fats can be dropped if desired because testosterone production is going to be suppressed anyway. So, during the cycle, if it's a bulking cycle, then protein needs to be kicked way up, and it helps to have carbs up somewhat, and the fats could drop.

T: What would be a sample meal of the isocaloric diet?

BR: A good sample meal would be to go to Wendy's and get yourself two side salads and a large chili. Or, you can just order the ... the uh ... whatchamacallit ... the taco salad and don't eat the tacos, but it's cheaper if you get the side salads and the chili.

T: What about regular bodybuilding foods? Would some salmon and a baked potato fit within this diet?

BR: It's really easy to wind up with more carbs than you might want with a baked potato. There are a lot of carbohydrates in them, but you can certainly plan it out that way.

T: Well, Bill, it looks like we covered all the bases this time around. I think we got some great information in here, and to cap off this interview, I wanted to get your thoughts on a drug that's gaining popularity on the underground: PGF2a. Despite the terrible side effects, people are actually using this drug. Your thoughts?

BR: Well, I haven't used it myself, and I don't know anyone personally that's used it, so I can't give that much commentary on it, but it sounds like a bad idea to me.

T: What is the future of bodybuilding drugs in your opinion?

BR: The far future, and it might not be that far, is things that actually involve the genetics of muscle. One of the ways the cells work is that the DNA produces something called mRNA, or messenger RNA. Messenger RNA gives the instructions to produce certain kinds of proteins, and there are drugs called antisense oligonucleotides that wind up binding these mRNAs and stopping their actions. One thing that would be possible — you've heard of the myostatin gene?

T: Yes.

BR: You could develop a drug that has antisense oligonucleotides that would block the mRNA from the myostatin gene, and you would have the same effect of myostatin knockout; or removal of the gene. In principle, you could inject that into the muscle, and have the same effect on the muscle as if you didn't have the myostatin gene. So there are things like that that can be done.

In the longer term, it might be possible to have things such as adeno-associated viruses that would actually insert new DNA into the muscle cells.

T: That's wild! Listen, that about wraps up our time here, but thanks a lot, Bill!

BR: No problem. You're welcome.

Bill Roberts is a regular contributor to this site. He probably writes for other sites, too, but we're sure as hell not going to give them a plug.