What's your opinion on solid food versus shakes and bars? Some of these new gurus who get guys ready for contests say shakes and bars are nowhere near as good for you, and that you will gain muscle and lose fat a lot faster if you eat all real food instead of relying on supplement meals. As a trainer of celebrities, you must deal with clients who don't have time to sit down six or seven times a day and eat solid food, right? Do you think it really matters?
     I'll tell you what I think matters most, and that's not missing meals.  Missing a meal is always worse than having a supplement meal such as a shake or a bar. Personally, I tend to agree with those who say real food is best for you. Think about it. Human beings have been on this earth for around a million years now. We have only had meal replacement powders and protein bars for about the past 12 years. That means our species has evolved on eating meat, poultry, grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts and dairy products. These are the substances our bodies are designed to take their nutrients from and thrive on.
Of course, you could easily go ahead and make the argument that supplement manufacturers have simply found ways to isolate and distill those nutrients into more convenient forms. For instance, it's a whole lot easier to pop a vitamin C tablet with each meal than it would be to eat an orange or a grapefruit five or six times a day. But one major advantage whole food has over the synthesized versions is that it needs to be broken down and digested. That requires a certain amount of energy and effort from your stomach and colon that you just don't get when you drink a shake. Think about eating a bowl of chicken breast strips, brown rice and chopped broccoli or cabbage (a very common bodybuilder meal out here in LA, available at any number of fast food places that cater to healthier folks). That meal is going to take a while to break down and digest, and your body will expend a certain amount of energy in doing so. Contrast that with what happens when you simply drink a meal replacement shake. In liquid form and having almost no fiber, it goes right through you. That's why you're hungry again in an hour.
So, eating real food, in essence, burns more calories than supplement meals. As one of the busiest, if not the busiest, trainers at Gold's Gym in Venice, I'm often in the gym with clients from four in the morning until seven at night. You might assume that I drink shakes and eat bars that whole time, but that's not the case. I pack my cooler full of meals and put them in the refrigerator at Gold's. Between clients, I pop each pre-packed Tupperware container in the microwave and eat my food. I do have a couple of Nitro-Tech shakes a day, but to me, there is no substitute for solid food you can chew and swallow. Most of my clients who are actors eat the majority of their meals in solid form too, on my advice. It takes a little more planning and effort, but I just think it is better for both muscle building and fat burning purposes.
 
     I'm curious to know what you think rep speed has to do with gaining muscle. I notice that some bodybuilders train with slower, controlled reps, pausing to squeeze the muscle and getting slow negatives. Then there are others like Ronnie Coleman, who uses more of an explosive style, never getting peak contractions and not really seeming to control the negative.  Which style is better?
     You know, it depends on your particular body type. We all get more out of training one way than the other. Going back to my own early years in bodybuilding, when I started out, Nautilus machines were everywhere and so was the influence of their creator, Arthur Jones. Jones had written a series of bulletins that stated with absolute authority that unless you were doing your reps slowly and especially emphasizing the contractions and the negative stroke of the rep, you were wasting your time. Well, I sure gave it a try for a while and I got decent results. But when I came out to California as my bodybuilding career was taking off, I noticed that not all the pros and top amateurs out here were doing their reps that way. Some of them were training in a much more explosive style. 
Once I gave that a try, I started growing faster than I had in years. It turned out that for my particular body, with my individual makeup of slow and fast-twitch muscle fibers and so on, explosive reps were far more productive. That doesn't mean that they will necessarily work for you, though. Take someone like Dorian Yates. He tried both ways and determined that the slower, more controlled reps were better. For guys like Ronnie, Flex and Paul Dillett, explosive reps deliver the best results.
You will probably notice even before you see changes in your body that one style simply feels more natural to you; you could even say more enjoyable.  But even then, over time your body adapts to whatever way you're training, and it's smart to switch things up for a while. So, if you figure out that slower reps are best for you, it's still a good idea to train explosively once in a while and vice versa. But to answer your question, neither rep style can honestly be said to be "better" than the other, except to you as an individual. Once you find something that works well for you, don't worry whether or not it works for everybody else.  What does that matter? 

     How much of a difference do you think fat-burner supplements make?  I mean, if one guy eats perfectly clean and does his cardio all the time and takes no fat burners, and another guy slacks a little bit both in his eating and his cardio, but takes plenty of fat-burner products, which guy do you think will lose more fat?
     That's very easy to answer. The guy eating clean and doing his cardio is going to get leaner than the slacker who relies on fat burners to do the work for him. Fat burners can be a very useful aid to get slightly better results from your fat loss program. But anyone who has ever helped someone lose fat, whether that person is an obese housewife or a professional bodybuilder, knows one thing. There is no substitute for a proper diet and cardiovascular exercise.  None. You simply cannot cheat on your diet and eat junk and expect to get ripped. I don't care if you're popping 100 fat burners a day (which by the way I do NOT recommend!).
So many billions of dollars have been made selling diet products and ab machines on TV infomercials because people are lazy. As a trainer, I am approached all the time by people curious as to how they can lose their spare tire or their fat hips. I know what they want to hear. They want me to tell them there is some little magic pill they can take every day that will melt all that ugly fat away with zero effort, or that there is some very easy ab exercise they can do for five minutes a day, three times a week. But that's a bunch of bull.
      Instead, I start talking about living a healthy lifestyle of small, nutritious meals eaten five or six times a day. I talk about exercising with weights and cardio at least three times a week. You know what happens? These people either lose interest in 10 seconds, or they start getting annoyed with me, thinking I'm trying to get them to hire me as a trainer, which I'm not. I have all the clients I can handle and a waiting list beyond that.
I'm just telling them the truth, which they never hear in the mainstream media. People love the ideas of fad diets and miracle pills and creams to rub on their cellulite. They usually hate the idea of having to invest some time and effort into eating right and exercising. So, yes, fat burners definitely are effective.  We had a ton of research proving that ephedra burned fat before it was banned and new research is being done all the time with new substances to prove their efficacy. But never, ever, look to any supplement to take the place of hard work and discipline. If you do, your goals are destined to failure. 

Do I have to bench press? Everyone says you have to bench if you want a huge chest, but I've never liked the exercise. It hurts my shoulder, I don't feel it in my chest and I have never been very strong on it. Dumbbells work better for me, even Hammer Strength machines; my chest has improved a lot since I started training two years ago. But there's this big powerlifter at my gym who weighs like 300 pounds and can bench almost 600. He gives me crap every time he sees me training chest and doing those other things and not the flat barbell bench press. I'm sure you've helped a lot of guys get big chests over the years. Do you consider the bench press mandatory or optional?
     I consider the bench press mandatory if you are a competitive powerlifter; that's about it. Since you aren't one of those, you really shouldn't be concerned about whether you ever do that particular exercise ever again in your life. First of all, powerlifters bench press totally different from the way bodybuilders do. The singular goal of a powerlifter is to move the most amount of weight from point A to point B. That's it. Working his chest or getting it to grow is not something he thinks about. As such, he does things that someone trying to work their chest hard would never do. 
For one thing, he uses a very wide grip on the bar. The purpose for that is to shorten the range of motion so he doesn't have to move the weight over as long a distance. Bodybuilders usually aim for a full range of motion to work the muscle completely, and only use partial reps occasionally, such as at the end of a set in which they have been doing full-range reps. Also, powerlifters use a lot more triceps in the lift than a bodybuilder would want to, and they even manage to get their lats into the motion. Further, they often arch their backs quite a bit to once again shorten the range of motion. In competition, they use things like super-tight and springy bench shirts to increase their pushing power. What on earth does all that have to do with building your chest?  Not a darn thing, and that's my point.
Some bodybuilders have great success with the flat barbell bench press, but many do not. Most of my pro bodybuilding clients don't do the lift anymore for various reasons. Like yourself, there is often a history of injury associated with it, or they have discovered that they simply get better growth in the chest from other movements. I say this all the time, but it always bears repeating. If you have figured out what works and what doesn't work for you, never worry about what others say about it. So this powerlifter at your gym gives you grief because you don't bench press. Big deal! His goals are totally different from yours, as is his training style. I bet you that if he brought his reps up to eight to 12, used the form of a bodybuilder on the bench press instead of a powerlifter, and ditched all the support gear, that 600-pound bench press would suddenly plummet to 400. Not that 400 pounds isn't a decent weight to use for reps, but for a man weighing 300 pounds it's not all that impressive.  That's like a 200-pound guy using 300 pounds in the bench press, and there are a million of those in gyms across America. 
Keep doing your dumbbell bench presses and Hammer Strength chest machines. Build your chest up until it's simply massive. Then one day when this guy starts harassing you, challenge him to a chest pose-down in front of a few of the other members. If you're relatively lean and have some good muscle separation and striations in your chest, I guarantee you will show this big fool up. Then if you want to rub it in, you can say, "Hey, I guess all that bench pressing hasn't done too much for your chest, huh?" Just be ready to run. He's still 300 pounds! 

     Do you think listening to your favorite music while you train is a good thing, or do you think it makes it harder to concentrate on what you're doing? About 10 years ago, I came out to LA on vacation and stopped by Gold's Gym and World Gym. Gold's had really loud music blasting, so loud you had to shout to talk to someone next to you. Then I noticed that the late Joe Gold wouldn't allow music to be played in his gym a few blocks away, and wondered if that was the reason- it makes it too difficult to focus.
     As for the late Joe Gold, I can't say I know why he didn't allow music to be played in the various World Gyms he had in Santa Monica, Venice and Marina Del Rey over the last 20 or 25 years. I have heard some people comment that the atmosphere he was aiming for in the flagship gyms of the franchise was almost religious, with very high ceilings and skylights that bathed the workout floor in morning sunshine. I guess a few of his close friends who survived him may know the real reason for the lack of music. But in my opinion, music is just background noise. If you were really focused on the task at hand, music sure wouldn't be able to distract you. Someone would have to get right in your face or touch you to break your concentration. Here I'm talking about the music played over the gym's sound system.
Now, wearing headphones and listening to your CD or MP3 player is a different story. Your favorite music can actually help you focus and get into the right frame of mind for hardcore training. Chris Cormier is known for always training to his favorite tunes. Not only does it help keep him motivated through the workout, it also discourages people from engaging him in small talk that would only eat into his limited and very important gym time. (Keep that in mind if you ever visit Venice again and are thinking about approaching a pro while he's training. Realize that he is actually at work).
 If you are in the gym to train and not to socialize, headphones are a very valuable tool to make sure your time isn't wasted by well-meaning, but time-consuming, guys and girls who just want to chat. If you train in a home gym, or if you are lucky enough to be like Ronnie Coleman and have the gym owner let you put whatever music you want on while you work out, you can use the music to your advantage. We all have some type of music that makes us feel more energetic, stronger and more aggressive. You may have noticed this accidentally at the gym when you're about to do a set and your favorite song comes on. All of a sudden you get a rush of adrenaline and blast out a better set than you expected. The only time I would say music can be a bad thing is when the gym happens to be playing something you really can't stand, and you let yourself get bothered by it.

How often do you have clients do pullovers for the back? I remember reading stuff from real old magazines that said it was the most productive back exercise you could do because it was the only one that went directly to the lats without having to use the biceps, which it said were a weak link. But I usually hear about deadlifts, rows and chins being more important for building huge lats. What's your take on it?
     I think pullovers are a very good exercise and I do have most of my clients include them in their back training. I prefer lying crosswise on a flat bench and using a dumbbell, as I feel you get the best stretch of the lats that way. But if you ask me what I think is the very best exercise for building the lats, I would have to say chin-ups. Chins really pull the lats out wide and give you an awesome V-taper. Then, to thicken up the back, barbell rows, dumbbell rows, and deadlifts get the job done very well. 
Pullovers make a good supplemental exercise to all of those. Another very useful way to incorporate pullovers is as the first exercise in a pre-exhaust superset. You isolate the lats with the pullovers, then go right into chins, lat pull-downs, or some type of row. Since the biceps and rear delts are still fresh, they will temporarily be stronger than the lats and help you drive the lats into a deeper state of exhaustion.
But I have to comment on the idea of the biceps being a weak link. Technically speaking, it's true. At the same time, though, you can't always think of the human body as a series of individual parts. It's one integrated system, which is why compound movements like squats, deadlifts, rows and bench presses, which work several muscle groups at once, are so extremely effective for making rapid gains in size and strength. The compound exercises let you use the most amount of weight, and this in effect causes the greatest adaptation of the body in terms of size and strength. Doing pullovers with a 75-pound dumbbell will give you a nice stretch and pump in your lats, but it's not going to make your back grow the way pulling 400-pound deadlifts or 300-pound rows would. 

How many years do you think it takes to maximize your full bodybuilding potential, or how many years should it take if you do everything perfectly right?
     This is one I can't really answer, because we all grow at different rates.  This even applies to pro bodybuilders, who are certainly among the most genetically gifted human beings on earth in terms of being able to gain lean muscle mass. You have someone like Shawn Ray, for example, who had gained most of the size he ever would by the time he was still a teenager.  Shawn turned pro at age 21, I believe, at 198 pounds, and never competed at much heavier than 205 or 210, even into his late thirties. Jay Cutler is another guy who put on most of his size in a short amount of time. He began competing at age 19 after going from 180 to 240 pounds in his first year of lifting weights, and within a few more years he was ripped on stage at about 260 pounds. 
Then you have a man like Dexter Jackson. Dexter didn't even start competing until he was in his early twenties, and he started off at a whopping 137 pounds- a bantamweight. Now, a little more than 10 years later, he's 220 or 225 onstage. Dexter didn't go from 137 to 225 fast, it was a gradual process of putting on five or 10 pounds of quality muscle every year. And it's safe to say he can still put on a good 10 or 15 more pounds if he wants to. So you can easily see that the rate of muscle growth, and consequently how long it takes you to reach your genetic limit, varies greatly from person to person. 
If you do everything right, it can take you anywhere from five to 25 years of training before you totally max out your potential. I have seen guys in the Masters divisions who are still improving every year, even though some of them have over 30 years of training under their belts. Enjoy the journey and don't worry so much about the final destination. Experimenting with different styles of training and nutrition to keep coaxing gains out of a physique that's already exceptional is the challenge and the real fun of bodybuilding.