MAX TRUE | About Records, Steroids and Workout | Interview | The Athlete Insider Podcast #30
Max True is a professional calisthenics athlete from Belarus. Starting with calisthenics in 2005 he has more than 15 years of training experience. Max is 2x Muscle Ups Guiness Record Holder and known for his insane strength & physique.
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Age | 31 |
Height | 172 cm |
Weight | 70-72 kg |
Country of origin | Belarus |
Profession | Software Developer |
Started with Calisthenics | 2005 |
First Muscle Up | At the age of 12 |
First World Record | 2018 |
His favorite equipment & clothing:
1. Dip Belt
2. Wrist Wraps
3. Heavy Shorts
The text of the interview (translated automatically):
also people asking which steroids i take they don't ask am i take you know i don't know it's a tricky question that's good so i can say that yo gorillas welcome to the athlete insider podcast by gornation my name is phil and today's guest is again a really really special one somebody who was requested a lot one of the most ripped calisthenics athletes that i know he's called the king of muslims the king of reps and two times guinness world record holder i'm happy to welcome you max true from belarus hi my friends i'm glad to talk with phil i'm glad to know that he received a lot of questions so i will try to answer as i can great we received like over 200 questions maybe even 250 so it was really um yeah interesting and um yeah let's kick off who is max true how do you present yourself uh so first of all i want to so apologize for my english because i don't don't have a lot of practice so sometimes i will use google translate it's open here so that's it so i'm 31 years old so usually people think that i i have less age that this number uh so i i think uh this is because of calisthenics this is uh the most healthiest kind of sport and i'm from belarus i was born on the south of belarus a small city called david gara dock i usually go there once a month so to to visit my parents uh uh i usually i'm making videos from from this town a lot of videos because i have a playground there uh near my house this was a like uh present uh for my guinness record from my um friend uh this friend is building playgrounds in our country and this was very cool present for me so the place where he built this playground is very beautiful and it's very convenient for me to visit my parents and do clearly staying there nice i didn't expect that you're 31 years old at all like i thought yeah of course you're you just became father so congratulations on that but i thought you're like 25 or something like this so 31 yeah keeping you keeping you young calisthenics thank you nice um and can you do me a favor and pronounce your full name for me um i i like i always wanted oh it's very it's very hard for foreigners especially so in uh in dollars uh we pronounce it uh truchanaya's second name so in english manner you can pronounce it true on a bit so first part of it it's true and as i'm a programmer true or false boolean values uh very frequent things that we are using during programming so it was obvious for me to use true as short form of my second name okay interesting so you already talked about your profession or your like your real life you're working as a programmer yes i'm software developer now i'm working in checkpoint software technologies this uh israel company and we are doing security stuff so i'm involved in a project called endpoint security so we are protecting uh windows hosts from different kind of vulnerabilities different kind of attacks this is very interesting and i like it very much so nice so you're usually people ask me which language i use it's c plus plus uh java kotlin basically that's it yeah so you're not only a hero in calisthenics but also in the cyber security and i.t world uh kalista calisthenics calisthenics is like uh things that helps me to rest from my main work so during my lunches after work i go to the playground to exercise so it helps to relax my brain relax my mind to find another to find solutions that you usually don't find because because when you some uh far from the from your what to say from your work you you have to find different angles of view to the problems so usually it helps a lot to find the solutions for your tasks issues that's true um that's also like an empty mind it's also really helpful to find solutions um for example if you are under the shower and or on the toilet or stuff like there you know like usually people get good ideas there because the the mind is empty and that's also for workouts that's true yes exactly nice um people always are interested in the in your body measurements how tall and heavy are you i'm one meter 72 centimeters and body weight it's differs from 70 to 72 so in this uh interval okay so quite heavy like at least for uh for uh yeah it's not as light as i 70 is heavy for me like well for 172 if you see calisthenics athletes like um not like the weighted or the street lifters um i think uh 70 72 kilos for 172 are is good so sometimes uh haters uh writing comments on my youtube channel or something like you know he's this guy is 50 kilos so it's easy to do this stuff so and then they are sitting with with with their big belly and eat chips and like yeah yeah yeah yes on this stuff i guess yeah but what we get this these comments as well like for example when uh we just had a video that was going viral from uh natalia natalia uh i'm missing the second name uh workout malicika oh yeah yeah i know and i don't i don't remember her these two were going viral with their muscle ups like easy clean muscle ups and people were writing yeah they are like 4 50 kilo or 40 kilo everybody can do it with their weight and it's lo you know like uh it's so weird when there's a guy who is like really heavy saying oh everybody could do it with their weight and um yeah there will always be haters writing this but 72 kilos is good you have to feel good with it but thanks guts i don't have a lot of haters so probably this is because i don't uh spend a lot of time in the social network so that's true okay that's also a good thing how to to block haters just not to spend time with them um what is your story how did you get in touch with with calisthenics how did you get the the person that you are today um so this started uh 60 years ago when i was preparing uh to to the university so in my school it it is very hard to prepare to the university uh because this is this was school in small town and to be honest teachers are not very good so i had to prepare spend a lot of time learning physics math learning russian language to prepare for exams so because of that i didn't have a lot of time but i liked sport i played football i visited visited karate so and uh i didn't want to break uh with sport and the only solution was uh to start calisthenics because near my house i had bars so it was very easy to go during my rest from the preparation and do exercises so it was in 2000 uh five and uh this is the time when youtube started i don't remember the year exactly yeah 2007 probably when youtube starts it i'm not sure something like that so i remember that uh in after that in few years uh a lot of videos appeared on the youtube with hannibal with american athletes that doing different exercises it was uh very inspiring very unusual at that moment and i decided to spend more time with calisthenics because i realized i realized that there are a lot of things that could be achieved so since that it was part of my life i was doing calisthenics during the university and after that i also still i i continued with that i had a lot of words from from people that when you when you will you will have a family or when you have a job you will break with it because you don't have you don't have time for that so i would say that this is false statement because if you want you it's easy to find 30 minutes in a day to do calisthenics okay that's it so 16 years i i looked it up uh youtube was uh founded 2005 uh so 15 years ago um so your journey is like a lot longer than most of the people doing this sport was it called calisthenics already when you started no no no no when i started i just did pull ups dips and i didn't call it somehow so after that in probably 2010 it was called in our country workout street workout and after that our people i mean russian people realized that workout is something is this wrong name for this activity because if you translate work out into russia you understand that this is just general uh word for for exercises i don't know so you know i i think it's better to call it at least street workout calisthenics and now people understand that it's proper name okay what was the russian name was it wasn't it like something like washka or something or can you say it in russian the workout uh uh if you translate it it you know it is translated like trinidovka okay like similar to training but uh we call it workout workout in russian manners that's it sorry just using an english word okay okay and yeah yeah daniel was asking an interesting question in my opinion how long did it take from the first muscle up to the world record how was the time span let me count first muscle up i was able to do anything i think 12 years old and the record was two years ago uh so probably something like 6 60 16 years old 60 years 16 16 years wow so something like that so 18 years ago you did your first muscle up yeah yeah maybe even elia wow something like that was it easy for you to to learn the muscle up did you always have the the functional strength to do pull-ups etc i think yes it was easy i spent probably two months for that and i wasn't good enough in pull-ups at that moment so i started doing pull ups and soon i succeeded to his muscle up and what do you think is yours okay and what do you think is your secret you know like somebody who is watching your social media profiles your results your records whatever he is thinking oh this guy has to do something completely different if he's that successful uh he has to do something completely different what do you think is your secret is it genetics is it the food that you take is it uh is it steroids is it what what is it like let us know definitely uh i don't have secrets because uh i i can't say that my way was the the best way uh to achieve this goal because i see that a lot of people uh have much faster progress than i in different exercises uh so i just almost every day i did base exercises pull ups less dips push ups so and muscle ups this definitely wasn't optima optimized way but it was very hard and long okay and if you would start again now like let's switch back 20 18 years how would you change your workout schedule what would you recommend yourself oh very hard question i know i have the hardest questions i'm sorry i think main error when i started was that i did a lot of pull-ups every day so i think you need to do one day you need to do a lot of exercises and other day you need to do if you want to do a lot of exercises you need to to choose those exercises that won't involve uh muscles that you used the previous day so you need to do some rest that's it i think because almost every day i was overtrained so you mean like every day you did pull ups like every day seven days a week yes yes yes only one day a week i did just one set of pull ups and around about five kilometers so it was like a test day for me so i just did one set tried to beat my record and after that around five kilometers okay so you always focused on endurance like strength endurance and uh yeah i don't want to call it cardio because of the running but still like endurance yes yes yes i started weighted calisthenics seven years ago with weighted calisthenics you mean uh lightweight and still endurance or additional yes yes lightweight endurance okay um people were asking did you have injuries on your way because you did um you said you were over trained you said you did pull ups every day did you have problems with ten nighters a tennis elbow or whatever i think no sometimes i had pain in biceps in triceps in my back but usually it takes something like months and disappeared i don't have big injuries and didn't didn't have it before so this is because i'm doing basics basic workout basic exercises and it's hot if you don't use big weights it's hard to take injuries okay and do you do stretching after the workout or a long warm-up or um i do warm up i just stretch in during workouts but sometimes after but mainly during during workouts okay get it um yes let's come to the the present how does your workout schedule look like right now in 2020 so usually on monday i do a lot of muscle ups a little bit dips push-ups so it's uh endurance day and it's a day of muscle ups usually i do first first set it is 50 muscle up without letting the bar 15 or 15 that i do 50. five zero five zero yes what well yeah you know i'm doing rest on uh on the bars so okay it's not consecutive okay but yeah it's also hard it's very very hard but uh not as hard as consecutive muscle ups uh after that uh i'm doing one arm pull ups sets with dips muscle ups dips pull ups and in the end i'm doing like five sets of muscle ups maximum muscle ups uh on monday it takes something like uh one hour and a half uh also when it's warm outside i'm doing a little bit running screen running on tuesday i do regular pull-ups about uh 230 something like that uh it takes one hour and in the evening i do several sets of push-ups it usually takes half of an hour wednesday is a a little bit leg day i do different kind of squats jumps also i do human flag dips a little bit um thursday it's a weighted calisthenics i do pull ups mainly with usually with 32 kilos it takes about two hours friday it's a running day around about 10 kilometers saturday it is a weight muscle ups day usually i use 18 kilos and sound a lot of different easy exercises so it's like not a rest day but uh light workouts okay i really like uh your explanation of the leg day of a little bit leg day with with the dips and human flag you know like the two leg workout leg exercise that everybody knows no but i do i do them during the rest so yeah but lex is using the last day of god exactly could you repeat uh legs legs are not your focus right um yeah yeah sure sure you do it because of health or aesthetics or why do you do legs boss health and aesthetics also i had good results in sprint during during in school in the university my best result in 100 meters is 11.8 it's not something awesome but for me it's good results so okay and when you do explosive leg workout like jumps and stuff like that uh you don't you don't grow big legs right or is it um because your goal is not to have like yes but strong and effective legs yes yes probably yes i think you're right also because of running 10 kilometers i think you won't get big legs if you want big legs you need to run only small distances yeah okay um do you also work on skills that was a question that was asked so many times can you do a plan can you do a front lever um like uh um this also frequent question in my instagram i usually uh i asked answered several times but people keep asking it so uh i can't do planche i i can sometimes when i'm when i how to say rest when i uh fresh uh so sometimes i i can do something like planche about two seconds but i don't train it now i usually train a human flag so i have good results in it i i can hold human flag for more than 40 seconds uh what else also now i started learn handstand a little bit so i now i can do some three push-ups three hands and push-ups uh i started it i started learning it recently so for me it's good result what else front lever ah for front lever yes i learned it many years ago yes i can i can do it also you can find it in my instagram i don't post it very often but okay because because i guess it should be quite easy for you because you have the the power from pull-ups and uh like the the back power which is really important for the front lever yes yes yes somebody was asking can you learn the front lever only by doing pull ups only by doing i'll tell you how i learned the front lever i did pull ups and during rest i just did negative front lever and i think in in two months i succeeded in learning so uh definitely you need to do you need to try it a lot of you need to do a lot of tries without tries you won't learn it i think it's impossible only with pull-ups okay get it um i would be interested in your prs some some of your personal records um because you said uh like um you also do some weighted with uh 32 kilo uh pull ups 18 kilo muscle ups um and uh yeah did do you know like your uh your one rep max for example for pull ups your record for one rep i did 88 pull up and i didn't it was several years ago and i didn't try more uh i to be honest i don't like big weights on pull-ups and divs so i think this is my personal record but i don't train it and you don't have i mean one one rep and you don't have the the i don't know how to call it the curiosity to try if you can do the 100 kg pull-up or is it like it's just not important for you you don't even want to try it it's important and there is a big possibility of getting injures i think okay heavy weights okay so for you the health the health side is there is more important than uh feeding your ego or just trying out the 100 kg right i think this is because i have good results in small ways and body weight exercises and i don't have a big motivation to do something more with big weights and uh additional fact that you can get injured so okay get it both of these um what was the heaviest muscle up that you ever tried uh did you do an attempt a few years ago or something i did three muscle ups with 62 kilos and this was my best result but now i don't train with big weights muscle ups i usually use 16 or 18 kilograms okay so 32 kilos and bigger ways i tried but i didn't succeeded with bigger weights but i think if i will train several months i can increase this results okay and uh like we have our product manager the the fred frederick um he is one of the like one of the really strong um weighted athletes and he is doing like uh 20 to 22 23 reps with 32 kg pull-ups um so like he was uh he was really strong before he became a father he was really really active um if if he would do uh the two others of calisthenics how many reps do you do with uh 32 kg in pull-ups did you try your rap my yeah my personal records is 20 23 it was several weeks ago i'm going to publish it uh on youtube and instagram soon okay so it would be a closer lesson yes it was in garnetian t-shirts so nice that's where the power comes from yes nice that's great um and um yeah like um if you tell somebody a beginner or even an uh intermediate athlete uh three things that he should improve to get better results what would be these things what is something that you give as an advice to somebody who is listening right now i think that the best thing is keep constantly do workouts that the this is the main thing and after some time you will have you will get experience to progress so the the main thing is constant work uh also rests important so you need to rest but uh this is this advice is not for for a lot of people because usually people don't uh work enough for the progress this this advice is for people like like me is it like funds in calisthenics i think this is main two advices and that's now okay um and to have the 0.5 percent of body fat that you have no like how many percent of body fat fat do you have uh uh several months ago uh no not several months ago it was in the beginning of the year um i checked my body fat in in a special hospital they have let's say electro impedance i measured this machine measure measure your parameters of your body like body fat muscle muscle mass your bones and water i think as well sorry water as well i think probably water yes so i have this uh paper with the results i can send you if you want later to play somewhere in the videos as i remember my body fat was 8.6 something like that yes something like that and i i wasn't shredded very shredded at that time but i think it's uh value for my body something like eight or ten percent body fat wow honestly really it looks like one percent two percent i don't know uh but uh yeah that's that's crazy when you have one or two you will you you can't keep this body fat a lot of time you will i think you will lose everything your muscles your your health and it's not good to have very low body fat i think and you keep it the whole year on this level right you at eight to ten percent yes but when we have holidays uh usually i eat a lot of sweets a lot of uh great food from my mother so usually during holidays i have greater value than 10 probably okay wow but i know how to decrease my body fat so it's not very hard okay what does your nutrition look like nutrition in the morning i usually eat cottage cottage with with jam with fruits with nuts something like that at lunch i eat usually meat with vegetables and in the evening also i eat meat and vegetables also i have two snacks between main meals i take coffee probably with with sweets one or two and or cookie something like that sounds good um basically that's it so no no carbohydrates no no rice no potatoes pasta potatoes here sometimes so it's vegetables okay rice yeah but not very often i don't like rice okay so because when you say like meat and vegetables for uh lunch and uh in the evening um it's like not there's no carbohydrates in it right yes agree okay you don't need it but also i i i drink a lot of milk there is a lot of carbs i eat sweets so this is how i take carbs i think but yeah the low chain like the the sugar uh sugar part not the long chain uh carbohydrates that like for example are in potatoes or rice or stuff like that okay interesting um yes so um and your opinion on supplements uh was asked as well what do you think about whey protein or creatine any stuff like that protein is a good scene when you don't have possibility to eat meat or cottage for example if you don't have a possibility to go home so protein is good but you shouldn't think that this will help you a lot to this you do you shouldn't think that this is the only way to gain muscles because uh with simple food you can get the same that you can get with protein um what else you asked creatine and creatine uh i tried only once creatine and i didn't had big increase in results only only it increased only my weight i think it was additional water so i decided that for me it's useless probably for somebody it can be useful but for me not i think also as i understand you you are getting creatine from the meal from the meat so i don't think that this is the supplement that i should eat additionally okay makes sense um yeah we already had the question a little bit in the interview before but um it was still asked najilka was asking do you take steroids what is your your question to that because you already told me that people sometimes ask it it's very often question a lot of people asking me do i take steroids and also people asking which steroids i take they don't ask am i taking i don't know it's a tricky question that's good so i can say that no i never try i don't i have never i haven't tried asteroids and i don't think that this is uh good uh stuff when you want to keep your body healthy if you want to take money with that if it's your work probably you can get them but for me i'm a software developer and i don't earn money with that what is the sense of that i don't understand people often ask because they don't believe that my results could be achieved without steroids but guys more than 16 years of work of hard work you can try just do workouts more than 16 years and you will get even more than me that's true that's um where um i can just say if you talk about your calisthenics journey and it's like 18 years something um you with steroids you you don't have like such a long career because one day your body starts suffering from the from the yeah how to call it from the steroids you know from it's toxic um for your body or like it it takes takes the energy out of your body in long term and if i listen to your um training journey and uh attitude etc you always think like you're really long-term you're not about the short-term goals or pleasure pleasure etc but you really think long-term and that's where it only makes sense not to take steroids because um you're really long-term oriented i think you say in the beginning you said you want to you one day you want to be able to work out with your with your uh with your boy now with your child and that doesn't work if you take steroids because then you will be wasted in a few years yes i agree with you i saw several people that took steroids and they changed their body in probably months or two they became from these guys to very big i participated in men's physique uh competition in our country and uh for example in spring uh i saw guys that was so so but in autumn they became very huge and it was very very interesting for me of people changing their bodies with steroids if you look uh to my instagram to the videos uh my body uh haven't changed since my journey started a lot so i'm changing a little bit year by year so yeah this long hard way that's true and people will always look for excuses i think this is why they um accuse you of taking steroids or for example the the comments that we had under the the videos with the oh they are only 40 kg etc because people always think oh i'm training for years now and like they are training a lot but not hard and not with the system and not uh with uh with discipline etc and then they see somebody um and they they have like crazy results and they they just think oh i don't have it i work out for a long time i'm impatient this guy has to cheat um so um it's a legal regime um yes so um what's your opinion on recovering faster we received some questions about quick recovery and if somebody can give advice on this if somebody was over trained and has some string experience then it's you um what's your advice to to training recovery recovery i think the best way is do light exercises not rest only rest at all lying on the sofa i think the best way is uh pump a little bit your muscles with blood that will help to recover not a lot but a little bit okay so active correct deload stuff like this yes yes yes exactly and um how does being a father influence your training i think it's uh it's a big change in your life since a few months and how does it influence your training probably now you can hear he's crying so uh now we because of uh corona i'm working from home so for me it's easy to train with child because i can take it take him with me to the playground do my exercises and watch on him and so nothing has changed okay and uh like i see it with with frederick here um he suffered from like suffered it's a big word but um you don't get as much sleep as you did before i guess um how do you deal with that um he's sleeping well now uh when he uh when he had a stomachache he uh cried a lot during the night and uh this world was hard times but now he sleep well he sleeps well and also because of corona i can sleep in the morning more i don't need to go to the office i have more time and no no problems with that nice okay that sounds good um and uh yeah the last question before we come to the end um your current goals what what are you working on right now i don't have exact goal right now and usually i don't tell my main goal that i want to achieve because i see a lot of people that screaming that they are going to break records they are doing something awesome and etc i usually i just do and if i succeeded i tell people about it because i understand that when you go and when you're going to beat records it's impossible to know if you fail or not because this records so i have several exercises that i'm going to focus on but i prefer not to tell which exercises i prefer not to tell that i will do something very very big i prefer to just show my results that's it yeah and that's like that's the the image that i received from you in this interview is like um you're somebody with um less less words and more action like um um for example like that you're so long in this game and probably yes in this sport um like um that's something really special and it's not something that you tell everyone or have so many uh years of experience etc and um it's really interesting um because um uh it feels like you're not the the marketing guy you're not like uh um the the one who who does the the advertisement and uh yeah is is uh talking a lot but yeah like you're working in the background you're working and doing your stuff so yeah that's really nice to see and i think people will appreciate you get to know you better thank you great thank you um we have some quick questions for the end to end this episode what do you prefer pizza or burger pizza definitely pizza okay great are you a dog or a cat person cat person but but now i can't get cat in my house because my wife have an allergy before the head cat and we we lose him but when we decided to get him uh my wife didn't uh know that she had the analogy and after some time she realized that and now it's a pity but we can't get the cat so it's okay very big problem for us yeah i can imagine but you know that there are uh nude nude cats right cats without without hair yes yes but i don't like it okay um what is your favorite location for holidays for holidays probably probably my parents home because i spent my childhood there and all the memories from there and probably this is the best place for me and the good food and the playground with the training park um yeah sounds like a perfect holiday vacation exactly great uh what is the the worst exercise for you the nightmare exercise that you hate all right um i can't choose the one exercise that i hate there are a lot of exercises that i don't love but probably when you don't love some exercises you can just do less of it i'll change it and i can't answer with it okay i i can't find the exercise at the most as it i don't like at all okay that's good um do you have a favorite calisthenics athlete or somebody that you look up to or follow and are impressed by his results or are you focused on yourself only there are a lot of good guys that that i'm following on instagram on youtube and each guy good at special things so i can name some of them for example dima kuznetsov igor kofton zhenya lois if you know him he's from belarus you've lost strong he's called his name instagram he's my good friend and uh javi from spain so there are a lot of guys that i'm following and but i can't name one person that is like god for me okay that's good um do you have a favorite book a book that you would recommend to the people um probably a lot of the rings my favorite i like such kind of books like fairy tales so probably that's it but unfortunately today nowadays i don't read a lot i usually read technical books technical stuff for programming related to my work okay uh what what is the favorite uh what was the best calisthenics event you've ever been at um i liked very much world championship in moscow i was there twice in 2016 and 14. uh also i like burning gate yeah it is in italy uh if you heard about it guys did a good job especially with endurance competitions it was very inspiring really amazing probably that's it okay nice and the last quick question if you have to decide muscle ups or pull ups muscle ups okay definitely muscle ups because they involve small muscles you're also doing dips there okay i expected that but still wanted to ask that's good um if people have questions if people want to get in touch with you how can they learn from you they find you on youtube i think yes on youtube instagram that's it youtube and instagram are your your profile okay nice we will put everything in the description so if you want to check out uh max social media accounts do that and yeah we're coming to an end um before you can say goodbye to everyone max i want to say thank you to everyone listening to this um yeah it's been again a long interview but i think a lot a lot of great insights it was really nice that you you took your time max because i know that you're a busy man a busy athletes uh worker father uh boyfriend and everything so um yeah thanks a lot for that i really appreciate it and i know that the people will appreciate and yeah if you like the interview feel free to share it with somebody who needs it to like it do whatever you want with it and yeah max you can end the episode thanks everyone for this for listening thank you fields and thank you guys for watching for listening um it was really cool questions and uh hope you see in real life when corona finish so thank you.