Bodybuilding Legend Steve Davis: "Even the Mr. Olympias pose like sh*t" | The Mike O'Hearn Show

even the mr olympia posed like i mean it's unbelievable [Music] i'm pretty excited uh one one thing i love about the health and fitness world is that there are so many real legends not it's not social media legends but real legends guys that did it made a success and made a name from themselves without a platform and to me that's i'm old school so i'm always going to appreciate the guys that got in the trenches won the shows did something special and unique and stood out in the world of bodybuilding and steve davis is who i'm going to talk to today and he's one of those guys and the great thing about steve is he trains at four in the morning around the same time i do and i've always talked to him over the years but he's a bright individual i would say next to frank zane he's he dissects it like we do um and there's so much knowledge here and so for you guys out there this is i guess in today's day and age you would call it a classic bodybuilder but this guy was a big boy 285 pounds and i think that's one miss step that most of you guys think that classic are uh smaller individuals and you go back to the days steve reeves was bigger than i am these guys bodies and in person i guess it was that old school in person meeting a hollywood celebrity they were 6'2 warren beatty 6'3 just monsters in person powerful images i guess you would say now heist is not everything all that is not everything but the structure this guy's structure and he trained with frank zane a lot and they he trained with everybody but what he put together was a beautiful physique and the knowledge behind it and so today steve davis is going to sit down with me and give you guys that information and also one thing i want you guys to pick up on is the diet the training and the com the the energy from him and how they work together because i'm still trying to pull today's fitness back to the 70s and 80s when i started i just think it us as a community would be so much better iron sharpens iron we all go through this i know how tough you guys are training i respect you let's bring steve davis so let's jump back for a second because to me you're one of the for me you're one of those immense idols that i grew up with that i said uh what this guy's doing i want to do and so and there's it's cool that you're a friend so i'm trying to separate the two things because you're a friend but you're also like this this child isle idol of mine that i grew up to that that allowed me to do and chase the dreams i'm chasing and by the way bravo you're doing very well thank you seriously thank you yeah but there's not a lot there's you there's arnold there's lou there's robbie um there's others i was down with frank zane which a good buddy of yours again another training partner of yours and stuff so it's there's not a lot and so i want to be selfish today and i want to i want to ask because this is some of the stuff we were talking back there and what we talked about at the gym rep ranges food not so much for the greatest bodybuilder but if you could go back what would be some of the changes that you would make and and i'm trying to decide and figure out is there changes because everybody talks about rep range too many sets and reps a lot of supersets which i believe in um i like compound movements and super sets but you know i don't think you need to do 30 sets three times a week isn't the idea to crush the muscle feed the muscle let it rest crush the muscle you know so i think i was always negative too much not not enough recovery and joe peter used to see me in my best shape and say oh steve if you only had 10 more pounds on your shoulders how could you when i was doing the volume of work right that's something i would have changed retro okay so i know i can pull on size now if if i was that old now knowing what i know so what do you know now that you're telling young steve to do or eat more often okay and train heavier but training heaven is bad for you doing pullovers that you just said that you like is bad for you in today's society who says that the uh weekend warriors the the internet experts don't you like pull loaders i love it but remember i'm a guy that believes in behind the neck shoulder press pull downs behind the neck uh pullovers anything to keep me open and flexible i absolutely love and also i love heavy weight because stress to the body wolf's law builds a stronger body for a longer time i don't care about weight lifting in a sense i care about being able to be able to do this kind of thing forever like robbie does like you do it's like that's the ultimate goal like i've had both ulnar nerves transplanted for having done for instance six sets of triceps for triceps right lying uh see what you do sits back here six here six here eighteen reps and doing that i mean silly you know so was it the exercise that was silly or the amount of thousands of the volume i just wore out okay they're out stay with the volume right because i'm trying to figure out and i'm talking to all of us guys that are ogs volume is something that society says you have to do this is you've got to train this much it's almost like two body parts a day you've got a six days a week and this is how you got to do it and i'm finding that not only is that not right you can't keep it for a lifetime and you're so tunnel vision on in your 20s to be mr olympia or whatever it is right he was like i'm 24 by 28 i want to be the greatest in the world and then by 30 you're burnt out and destroyed your body's destroyed in the next 40 years you're walking around hobbling around well i blame the writers to muscle and fitness and those magazines with the routines they used to write out and remind remember we had no internet we had nothing but muslim fitness right my little favorite iron man yep uh muscle mag that's what you cover up right there because you were covered bob kennedy and i were friends love bob loved he he thought that i was a cross between frank and steve reeves and he liked that i agree this type i agree but i know i'm not i am able i would have been able to put on more density but when you're doing a thousand reps you know it's impossible so you would say the young you wouldn't do as much volume oh no it's kind of like you light a match down well i did i lit the no liner intensity right hit it hard you know 10 8 6 5 3 1 1 done that's it but you know i never did that there were many more sets of reps i got so lucky doing it like that early i think i discovered early that uh i first of all wasn't recovering and i was like how do i recover it came it became apparent to me it wasn't about how much i destroyed in the gym it's how well i recovered can i recover from a chest workout by the next workout and if i can then okay cool i'm right around that going over the fence kind of a thing you know it's like you come up to the fence don't over train don't go over the fence and you were always going over the fence you were like pushing it until you can't walk out of the gym for instance i i don't know that i work biceps anymore i have plenty of my back workout one dumbbell row barbell roll pulldowns all that i don't i mean it's a little tiny little thing um but back in the day you know barbell curls incline curls concentration curls cable curls way too much i think you know for for the end result so then my question would be could you go back still win the mr world with your new philosophy of how you should have trained because you can't take away whatever you did worked and you won the worlds and you won mr california you missed the answer is a thousand percent yes because i'll be listening to led zeppelin and posing to stairway to heaven rift while these other guys are on their cell phones between sets bring them on bring on the new bodybuilder was posing a big thing yeah because i came from the background of music teachers and balbaranas so did posing help the body oh definitely tell me how especially right before our show look i mean i i haven't been around a lot a lot but it just always amazed me that guys should barely handle it we went through our routine so there was no thought process at all you were in shape you and even the mr olympia posed like i mean it's unbelievable i felt jori and yates had a good routine uh i i think maybe ronnie coleman probably had a good routine but a lot of them are just you know missing where you put your foot and now they all pose light right the side says here they have the side the leg [Music] very almost homogenized and and you believe as a youngster maybe you should have done maybe a little bit better on the heavier weights in the sense yeah and so more basic movements you didn't find that at vince's right the deadlift and stuff like that and the military press okay uh let's talk about pullovers let's talk about exercises that uh jeff reads a lot of the comments that like oh if that's gonna hurt you when you get older i'm already older and i've been doing these exercises since i was nine but i believe there's exercises that are incredible for keeping us mobile and movement and and healthy shoulders and healthy you know arms and elbows and knees and lower back that most people take for granted when they're in their 20s and lifting but they don't realize that's going to catch up well i'm going to have to give full credit to frank's lane this was always kind of a weak area for me where the pec attaches and the sternum and i asked him what do you think he says pullovers would clean up your chest so he showed me how and from that point forward at that point i was married to ellen and we lived in an apartment in sherman oaks and i have a 90 pound dumbbell and the bench in the bedroom a little tiny place and a barbell i think 185 so every morning every day pull overs and roads uh in our little home and uh our apartment everything yeah you didn't over train no not at all nothing at all i was down there with him and i was doing pullovers and he was uh he showed me his form on pullovers right and my question to him was but the internet trolls say that that will hurt you and he says instantly it was so beautiful he goes and you know frank he's very soft-spoken peaceful warrior he's like it'll hurt them it won't hurt me and i love that answer and it's funny because it's it's our belief everything he's healthy yeah but it's it's like one of those things that our old school beliefs on range of motion is pull-overs they think it does no no but they these guys nowadays if you heard some of the things that they say hurt you looking up hurts you moving your head hurts you by just looking up this is the kind of stuff they say nowadays and so from you somebody that's still doing this still exercising and you exercise intelligently now do you agree but you agree though yes it's very intelligent and what's the goal of your training now healthy muscles okay i believe there's something to do with longevity um i like to work with legs and then just pull overs shoulders chest triceps and then pullovers rowing rear delts that's our my wife and i that's our work some of the stuff that i see do with tr is like squats still kicking that butt back shins up right range of motion well i never knew that you're not supposed to go forward i never knew that you never had that power lifting background from that it's crazy to grow you were just fine-tuned for bodybuilding agreed well i mean i did i did take a trip to york pa okay and uh on a gloomy horrible day and went into the gym nobody was there hoffman wasn't there uh uh none stanko or remy nobody was there but they had a lot of equipment and um i wasn't that impressed but i loved the bakeries in new york but no i didn't know about powerlifting and even like you go to ucla now their weight room has everything our weight room and bourbon and burrows height had you know those long benches outdoors that was our bench and guys would share and you put two together and do zips in the mirror there were no swag rash just barbells and you still created that physique yeah i guess just for me it's just in other words i never had i never had trouble building my chest so therefore mass is possible but um what was the stubborn body part for you then besides back i never worked my back right um no no everything grew yeah yeah that's pretty that's pretty tough in today's society because everybody has those stubborn body parts now i didn't and and i'm wondering if there's something about how they're training now relative to what we did look um i gave frank credit for the pullovers yep i'm going to give my mother's credit uh for having a female version of steve reeves frame and my father for having the thinnest paper tissue skin in the world and those were my parents the genetics right incline bench flat bench incline shoulder press good or bad great pullovers good or bad excellent squatting correctly good or bad great deadlifts 100 i may not use them your way i would use them more like just getting the feel yeah and then here a partial here look at that back look at that it doesn't look like a cast anymore it looks like you get a little back there buddy i love that what would you uh finish by saying to these kids today how's up what would you want them to understand from somebody that's done this for a lifetime and you did you started in high school and you still do it today and you took it to the top level um nutrition over everything yeah i mean isn't it true i'm asking you now diet and nutrition are 99 it really is and it's all the time it's not just just you're you're heavy i'm off season yeah right i'm healing the body and making it um one of the things i believe is that it's all year there's no time off the nutrition right you're always for me i'm always working towards a goal mm-hmm whatever that goal is but it's always nutrition well i i copied bruce randall he was from london he went from 220 to 320 and lost the weight down which is what i did and won the nava he won the universe yeah uh-huh bruce randall that was the right copy so back in the day there was a lot of uh it's interesting because you look at photos and you can kind of see franco off season uh arnold off season and then getting ready for the show did you guys when your off season was did you guys stop lifting did you stop nutrition did it change did it change for you what did what was the difference back then to today 220 pounds of mass calories up yeah larry scott used to say if i can add five pounds of muscle every year i'm happy that's not a lot mm-hmm no no that's one of my beliefs i think i grew up with that i think that was the mindset pound filet nice and if you can spread that around especially in areas you're trying to bring up to have balance that's a good amount it's a huge thing if you do it three years in a row that's 15 pounds when you stepped on stage maybe not 79 because of the flight but maybe 81 olympia what was your weight 98 98 yeah off season 20 220 yeah so it's not much of a cut there no did you play with water back then it means i take uh diuretics or anything like that but i never i never needed it you already had that thin skin from dad well but more importantly i was in shape a week before the show okay so i didn't have to carb load i had just another day and as i got closer i did less work more sun practiced posing and that made the difference and you didn't carb load no what you liked how you looked yeah all right i was right on the money wow there's a couple others that didn't do that uh when uh like eddie giuliani eddie great guy great cat um a lot of those guys talked about they didn't carb load as much as they do today draper had a bowl of pasta that's not much no no i mean because today they're eating three four 500 grams of carbohydrates where a bowl of pasta is 50 grams yeah so it's a see i don't believe in that mike i'd like to be here but you're all about feel no but i don't want to have to come in you know on thursday and say don't worry right right and then come up no no it's not for me i want to be ready ahead of time did some of the guys carve up some guys didn't you guys i told you about peter chelsea he had a whole cherry cake um why don't you do something instead of uh lifting why don't you just do like a lot of the guys go look yoga or they go completely away from left hand look i'm a horseman okay um i was a professional skier okay um i was an athlete always have been but there's something primal to my makeup about working out good term good term i think that's uh and you know what my what besides saying steve reeves the story of my love you know that story of course i do that's where my birthday squats came from so you'll understand this and we'll explain to these people uh milo was i don't know if it's a greek mythology is it greek mythology okay so my belief is when i turned 17 and i did 17 squats with 3 15 on my birthday and every year i would do that right and so the reps would go up regardless of the age and i would continue that pattern god bless that story of course in the world for you guys at home that don't know uh we'll put up uh the basic story of this but i want to hear it from you well my understanding um was the little boy milo was given a calf and it was his idea to put the calf on his shoulders and walk up the hill and every day the calf got bigger and heavier milo got stronger and older and voila progressive weight training was built right so it's a great start it's a beautiful guy i love the image because it shows a young boy with a calf on his shoulder and then it shows the strong older man with the ball on the shoulder right and what people go oh look at it he's like no it's the same for him that weight is the same percentage-wise it's he never gotten bigger because he got stronger and so i think it's just a beautiful thing and i believe that's weightlifting if done correctly right i i didn't complete my master's degree but my thesis was the use of progressive weight training to improve the self-image of mentally abused children what made you decide that because let's say i'm working with you your parents say mike you're never gonna amount to anything go up to your room and pretty soon you internalize that kind of negative onslaught and you're young so i thought that if i could take you and one day you left five pound dumbbells and we put that in the chart the next week 7.5 the next week 10 you were being successful and to me that was the milo story made relevant to today's youth i started winning contests and didn't finish my masters and when you finished today and you crested today you gave these guys insight now i've talked to you over the years about wanting to sit down to these kids today that are coming up that want to be on the covers of magazines like you i want to be a mr world like you to be also not just someone that's relevant to that era that that we talk about today when we talk about the golden era you're part of that that's you that's you that's frank that's these guys you know i was uh going to ucla uh history english and when i was in the library i was looking at nutrition books so i was immersed in in the desire to make it a scientific pursuit and um you know it might the cell phones have changed the reality that's both good and bad but you there's so much awareness to develop about each person's your body is your temple and i think if people focused on that and said okay so i want to have this kind of shape i'm going to work out like this you need to have a plan and and i was never one to write things down i have a pretty good uh recall but i was listening to dorian every single set i i don't need that i know where i was last time but in a way i guess i can understand this to each their own kind of a thing if that works for you great if it doesn't work for you right but you know rome wasn't built in the day here we are with all these slogans um it takes a while yeah how long have you been working out like 45 years now and for me i would say 62. so we learned and i'll learn tomorrow watch me yeah i i agree i i guess for me if we're going to finish off with anything here i think regardless of the time we've been in here and the people that you've rubbed elbows with and learned from you're still learning and and i think that's amazing thing because you're at the pinnacle of the the mountain you're when you're right you're rotten when you're grinning you're growing whoa look at you i'm going to snake that one that's that's a good one yeah i love it man thanks for joining us my pleasure thank you for having me well that's the man right there steve davis so much information great guy um like i said tell me what impressed you because what impressed me and i want to hear from you guys what impressed me is the gyms that he was training at up in hollywood burbank no squat rack um and fences you couldn't even do legs really unless you did like maybe old school hack squats or something but they got such amazing physique so physiques that i prefer then compared to now no disrespect to the guys today 100 you guys work your asses off just my taste on it is that i prefer that type of physique that is globally appreciated not the small one percents and again that's just my take everybody has their opinion on artwork and i understand that but to do that and create those physiques with so little i think that's the most impressive thing in the way they ate and the information that they had back then compared to today you guys get so freaking much at uh information and you're still confused back then it was such a minute amount of information and they did it right or they did it healthy enough to where he's still sitting here today looking beautiful um again man i'm gonna bring you some of these guys next up is lee haney we got um ali labrada and then back down to see frank zane and then we got some incredible guests from the big time movie world terry crews frank gorilla jonathan scheck so stay with us guys i'm bringing you everybody from every walks of this world this is the titan show talk to you you

Channel: Generation Iron Fitness & Bodybuilding Network

Views: 15,008

Keywords: Steve Davis, Steve Davis bodybuilder, Steve Davis interview, Mike O'Hearn, Mike O'Hearn Show, Mike O'Hearn bodybuilder, Mr. Olympia, Olympia, fitness, weight training, Generation Iron

Id: XjWw7tFIUnM

Length: 29min 58sec (1798 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 19 2022