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Adam Reich has been in this sport since he was fifteen, competing at Teen Nationals in 2003 alongside Steve Kuclo and Brandon Curry. He competed straight through to 2014, took a decade off, spent five years as a corrections officer working the main intake at Rikers Island, then moved his family to South Florida and went back to coaching full-time — which is what he has actually been doing since 2011. He came back to the stage in 2024 and turned pro. He promotes the IFBB South Florida Pro and the NPC Chisel Classic, had six athletes on the Olympia stage last year, and learned the trade under Dave Palumbo, Chad Nichols, Fakhri Mubarak and George Farah, back when prep meant an hour on the step mill in the morning and another hour at night.
That background is what makes this conversation worth an hour, because Adam now argues almost the opposite of how he was brought up. His whole system is built on using less pharmacological force and controlling the conditions around it instead. Peptides that let him take clenbuterol down to nothing. Starting prep near maintenance rather than in a hole, so there's somewhere to go at eight weeks out. Never more than forty minutes of cardio in a sitting, because the inflammation costs more than the calories buy. Shortening a female's time on rather than cutting a male's dose in half — the poison is in the duration, not the dose. Weekly blood pressure and glucose readings, because a stalled athlete is usually a filtration problem rather than a diet problem. A fifteen-minute walk after a meal instead of another unit of insulin. And a peak week where water and sodium go up rather than down, because water is what carries the carbohydrate into the muscle. He closes with the worst protocol he has ever seen a female handed by another coach, which is the argument for everything above it.
5 Key Takeaways
- Why athletes who start prep already underfed have nowhere left to go by six weeks out, and where Adam sets the starting point instead
- The rule that governs how he builds every female cycle, and why halving a male's dose is the most common and most damaging mistake in the sport
- The early virilization signs that are still reversible if you catch them, and the ones that aren't
- What an elevated blood pressure reading tells you about why an athlete has stopped losing weight, and why fixing it moves the scale
- Why he drives water and sodium up in peak week rather than stripping them, and what happens to a carb load when an athlete is dehydrated
Chapters
0:00 The Peptides That Replaced High-Dose Stimulants
3:44 From Teen Nationals to Rikers Island to Coaching Full-Time
8:18 How Fat Loss Prep Changed: Starting Point, Fatigue and Cardio Structure
14:51 SLU-PP-332, Clenbuterol and Cycling Fat Loss Drugs
23:13 Peptides for Muscle, and Building a Male Cycle
27:31 Female Cycles: Duration Over Dose, Virilization Signs and Multi-Show Strategy
35:31 What Blood Work Keeps Showing, and Managing Hematocrit
39:44 The Cardiovascular Stack, Blood Pressure and Glucose
45:38 Insulin, Carb Timing and the Post-Meal Walk
53:00 Steps, HIIT, Sleep and the Daily Tracker
59:28 Peak Week: Why Water and Sodium Go Up
1:03:42 Where to Find Adam, and the Worst Cycle He's Seen
Connect with Adam
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/adamreich
Coaching with Team Best Built
