Rich Piana: A Cautionary Story in Bodybuilding @Hulktube Motivation @Rich Piana

Watch on YouTube · 2026-04-21 · 31 min

0:00 Hey, what's up? Some of you guys asked me to review a video about Rich Piana. He died in 2017 at the age of 46. He was deep into bodybuilding, which is body destruction. I remember seeing his videos. back when he was still alive. Obviously, I'm not going to be badmouthing him in this video because he's dead now. It is what it is. But I will talk about the influence that he had on people, which was only bad.

0:44 It was one of the most severe cases of body dysmorphia.

[video] 0:50 Obviously, something that doesn't exist won't be able to make you do something.

[video] 1:14 He had the grind, but he just didn't have that structure, that kind of genetics for a naturally pleasing physique. We're all human, but nobody is built the same.

1:26 I think that what they mean is the development that you experience when you're a child and especially during puberty, that's what will create a wide and so-called aesthetically pleasing body. And bodybuilders, especially the guys that use drugs, kind of try to imitate that, even though it's impossible because it's all based on your bones, not muscles. But they try to have this kind of wide and big body.

[video] 2:01 Muscle shapes, different structure, different response. That's why every workout and every meal matters. Every time you eat, it's like laying another brick on the physique. And somewhere in that process, you discover what your genetics really are.

2:17 And in reality, there are even people who eat a vegan diet who look pretty much like him. Maybe not as huge, but close to it. It really has nothing to do with the food that you eat. It's all about the drugs.

[video] 2:35 You find your own blueprint, your own goal. Because not everybody is chasing trophies. And Rich Piana was never just about competing. This man was a monster. A one of one.

[video] 2:50 Wow, here he looked very sick.

2:58 This was probably not long before he died, I assume. It looks like he's in his 40s for sure here. Obviously, he looked a lot older than he was officially because of all the damage that he did to himself.

[video] 3:18 Rich Piana wasn't competing anymore, so his diet wasn't super strict like a contest prep diet. But one thing never changed. He ate a lot of food. Six meals, eight meals, sometimes even 12. You gotta eat big to get big. You guys heard me say this a million times, but I'm saying it again because people need to hear it again. And there was a time when I ate 12 meals a day and I never missed a meal. I would stay up till three in the morning if I had to get up at six in the morning to get those 12 meals in.

3:48 Food is a little bit important, but these tumor-like muscles all come from the toxic drugs that you use. Obviously, it should be needless to say, but a lot of people out there don't understand it. You would be surprised how many people still believe that... bodybuilding or pro bodybuilding, the bodybuilding where you use drugs, has something to do with your diet. Many people are waking up to it, thankfully, now.

[video] 4:24 Because that's how obsessed I was with being the best bodybuilder I could possibly be.

4:31 What you see there is all drugs. It doesn't matter what kind of food you eat, how much food you eat, you will never achieve this. By eating food, it's impossible. Yeah, just waste products.

5:04 tons of toxins. Of course, he was damaging his organs with the drugs for the most part, but it adds to it.

[video] 5:21 I'm a little lazy, so I'm not like the average bodybuilder that cooks all their food every day, puts it in Tupperwares, brings it to the gym, brings it to work. So I've opted for more easier choices. And I'm not saying it's better. I'm just showing you what I do.

[video] 5:40 It is 5.30 AM. early as . So first thing in the morning, Rich does fasted cardio. Then, right after that, comes meal number one.

5:52 that is really bad for your heart, very stressful, especially when you do it in a so-called fasted state, in a starved state, if you don't eat enough, especially if you didn't eat enough the day before, which he did. But when you try to keep up So much mass, you just need to eat all day long. And of course, you need to be taking the drugs all the time to maintain it.

[video] 6:23 Most of the time, his first meal is simple. 10 egg whites and three packets of oatmeal. Here, you can see him spray the pan with oil, then pour the egg whites straight from the carton. No measuring, he just pours what looks like around 10 egg whites. While that's cooking, he gets the oatmeal ready. Three packets of oats. One packet is 62 grams, so three packs comes out to 186 grams. Then he adds water straight from the tap. And Rich usually adds more water than most people because he likes to drink his oats. After that, he throws the bowl into the microwave. And remember the egg whites? No salt.

6:55 I would assume that he experienced something very traumatic. I may be wrong, but why would you want to grow and grow all the time until your body can't take it anymore? Then you also have all of the tattoos. It's just a self-destruction at the end of the day. And the question is, what drives you to self-destruct like this in such a severe way?

[video] 7:24 No seasoning, nothing fancy. Just plain egg whites. Well, the way I see it is everyone wants to be big, but no one wants to eat the fing food. Eating the food is the easy part. Come on, man. Everything is fast, simple, and straight to the point. The whole meal takes maybe five minutes to prepare. Fast fing plate.

[video] 7:45 Ooh, let's go back. He looked very sick here also. Yeah, he looks insanely unhealthy. It just has to be said.

[video] 8:13 He eats the egg whites and drinks the oats down.

8:16 Look at his eyes. It's crazy.

[video] 8:19 Not the tastiest meal in the world, but it's packed with protein and carbs. And for Rich, that's what mattered. No pepper, no cheese, no salsa, no nothing.

8:35 It's mainly the drugs that did this to him, obviously. The diet was also garbage, but that wouldn't destroy your organs, your skin and everything this badly.

9:09 And it's so strange that these so-called bodybuilders do this. You won't be gaining or maintaining anything with this, seeing as you're eating some kind of slime with seeds. Again, it's all about the drugs.

[video] 9:25 Now we get into meal number two, and this one is a shake. Rich liked this because he was busy, training clients, moving around, and it was just easier to drink the calories. So for this shake, he starts by pouring around 10 egg whites straight into the blender with some water. Again, no measuring, he just pours. Then he adds three scoops of real food.

9:48 Absolutely makes no sense. He leaves out the best part of the egg For no reason Tons of powders some kind of

10:17 seed products, which he probably ate during his childhood.

[video] 10:25 After that, he adds some cereal on top.

10:28 I only mentioned that because maybe he used to eat that when he felt small and weak. And then later on, he imagined how he's strong now. And he kind of lived in the trauma, the memories in his mind.

[video] 10:48 This time, it's Cocoa Pebbles, and he throws in around 50 grams or so.

[video] 10:59 Then one banana goes into the blender too. Once everything gets blended up, the shake turns thick, heavy, and packed. Then he pours it into his big 5% bottle, and you can see that thing is almost full.

[video] 11:17 how much food this kid has. Damn, this is crazy, because we got like six freezers full of food. Like I said, we got this freezer, we got this big ass freezer. That's only a freezer that I bought specifically for extra food. And then we have two freezers in the TV room at the bar, and then we have two freezers outside here, the outdoor kitchen. Oh, we got a freezer upstairs. We got food in every single freezer, full. It's awesome. There's nothing like an overabundance of food. Yes. And now we get to Rich Piana's third meal. This one was usually rice and chicken. Most of the time, Rich ate out. He didn't really cook a lot of his meals because at that point, that was just his lifestyle. He wasn't in contest prep. He wasn't trying to live like a bodybuilder getting ready.

11:53 Wow, most of the food looks super disgusting.

11:59 It was just a life of torture. All the drugs, going to the gym. He hated it so much, as you can see in the videos. He even hated the food, for the most part. It's insane.

[video] 12:16 For the stage, he was living his life, doing bodybuilding the way he wanted, as a hobby, while building his business and making money. And usually, I eat out. And this food was bought out, three chicken breasts, two cups of brown rice. And that's normally what I eat for lunch. Now, I'm not saying this is something you should copy. I wouldn't recommend that. But this is what Rich actually did. And the thing about Rich, he always told it straight. He was real about how he lived. So for lunch, it was usually simple. Three chicken breasts and two cups of brown rice. That was normally his third meal.

12:51 And there's just no actual reason to be eating brown little seeds. They simply do this because of the brainwashing. There is no other reason. You could do bodybuilding in a sort of healthy way, not that it's really possible, but if you would be eating raw animals, raw animal foods in general, then it would be a lot better. You wouldn't damage your body as much, but... When you push and pull metal for no reason, you use drugs, and then on top of that, you eat all of this junk, then you can expect a life expectancy of 30, 40, maybe 50. That's pretty much the highest age that these people achieve.

[video] 13:44 This is meal number six. But honestly, even though he calls it a snack, it's still basically a full meal. He starts by throwing the Greek yogurt into a bowl. The whole container. So right there, that's already a lot of protein. Then he adds two scoops of mutant whey, chocolate flavor. Mixes it all together, and just like that, it turns into this thick chocolate pudding.

[video] 14:14 Then after that snack, it's time for dinner. Meal number seven, the final meal of the day.

14:20 As you can see, just pure hate in his eyes. And what we can see is that it was self-hate because he was doing it to himself. He went to the gym, which he hated. He forced himself to eat, to grow. And people really need to think about what's driving... a human being to want to grow all the time, to get bigger and bigger. Why? Because you feel small and weak inside of you. Could be trauma, some kind of experience in your life, but there is a reason for it. This doesn't just naturally happen somehow. Nobody simply wants to grow and get really big, abnormally big.

15:14 You don't see anything like this in nature, obviously, because this kind of a physique is pretty much the opposite of a natural man's physique. It's as unnatural as it can get. It's only achievable through these drugs, which create these sort of tumor-like muscles. Obviously, those are not really actually muscles.

[video] 15:38 And this is where Rich usually picks whatever place he feels like eating at. Maybe Mexican food, maybe Italian, whatever he's in the mood for. What's up? We are on our way to Chipotle. Running late. It's 11.25, closing five minutes. But yes, I'm eating on the way to Chipotle to get more food.

16:00 Now, even though he's enjoying himself, he's still thinking about the basics.

[video] 16:11 He still cares about getting enough protein, carbs, and fats in. But at the same time, this is his chance to relax a little, because he's not competing.

[video] 16:31 So for dinner...

16:32 Someone do keto, then you see a pizza. Okay, those clips may have been filmed years apart also, as far as we know, which we don't. It's just a compilation.

[video] 16:46 He'd pretty much go with whatever he felt like having.

[video] 16:51 But he never made actual videos of him using all of the drugs. He talked about them.

17:18 But as you will see in a video, which I will show in a second, he actually talked more about food and he was trying to tell people that it's all about the food that you eat. That's how you will grow.

[video] 17:31 You have to be willing to do whatever it takes to reach your goals. And I'm going to talk a little bit about eating as a bodybuilder. Now eating as a bodybuilder, you have to be willing to eat six to 10 meals a day with no fucking excuses. I'm so tired of hearing excuses from people at expos constantly. People come and say, hey Rich, How can I get bigger? How can I get bigger? Let me think.

17:56 The thing is that these bodybuilders don't actually want to get bigger. At first glance, it may seem like it because they talk about it. They go to the gym. They eat tons of food. And if they want to get really big, then they will use drugs. But in reality, it's not about that. They don't actually do anything with this mess. They simply go to a gym. and push and pull metal. There's no purpose to it, no meaning behind it. It's not the actual goal. The goal is to fight the trauma, the problems which are inside of them. Bodybuilding, especially pro-bodybuilding, is a psychological problem, and you need to figure out for yourself why you are doing it. There's always a reason behind it.

18:52 And if you go as far as using drugs, then you have a very big problem. And you will never solve it by going to the gym and pushing and pulling metal for no reason. You are simply trying to bury the problem.

[video] 19:13 And the thing is that it won't, at all. You could eat exactly what he ate, without drugs, nothing will happen. And this is why he wasn't an honest guy. If he would have been honest, then he would have a...

19:40 said exactly how to get big. And there's only one way to get this abnormally, unnaturally big, which I'm not in any way promoting, obviously. I'm against that.

[video] 19:51 Yeah, I know, but you don't understand. I eat so much. OK, you need to eat more, more.

19:58 Yeah, but I already eat, you know, five times. No, guys like this should have told everybody that in the first place, it's all about the drugs. There's no other way to achieve this kind of a physique. And then they also should have said that your diet pretty much doesn't matter at all. You can even eat a vegan diet and you will look pretty much like me as long as you use the same kind of drugs.

[video] 20:25 That is very interesting. He said weak-minded.

20:48 Whereas in reality, obviously, you have to be weak-minded to do bodybuilding, especially pro-bodybuilding, seeing as you have to feel very weak and small inside to actually do that. You have to feel insecure, possibly traumatized. It's the only way. You cannot do this if you have a strong mind. That's actually impossible.

[video] 21:20 Yes, because it goes against your intuition. That's why people said that.

[video] 21:39 time for people that are weak, and they say, I can't. No, you can. You will. When I say you need to eat more, it's great when someone says, okay, I eat five meals a day, Rich, what do you suggest? Okay, buddy, I suggest, why don't you bump it up to six, keep it there for two or three weeks, and then bump it up to seven, keep it there for two or three weeks, and then bump it up to eight. Keep eating eight meals a day. Look at yourself in the mirror, keep track of your progress. How many hours a day do you work out, an hour? Okay, why don't you try working out two fucking hours a day? So you're gonna eat eight meals.

22:07 And why would you do any of this? You don't actually do anything. You simply go and push and pull metal for no reason. You're not helping anybody. You're destroying your own life. You're influencing other people to destroy their lives by creating content about this topic. If you would actually do something, Then I could maybe even understand it. But they don't even do anything. They simply destroy their health and die young. Positive.

22:55 To him, positive means forcing yourself to eat, going to the gym, which you hate, and possibly also using drugs.

[video] 23:06 And that's the thing. It's not their dreams or goals that they are fulfilling. They are not fulfilling anything. They are simply trying to deal with the problems in their mind.

23:32 Again, this is a psychological problem that you're trying to deal with by lifting metal in a building full of slaves.

[video] 23:41 And I can sit and talk with someone for 10 seconds and I can determine what kind of person that is just by our discussion. And when I'm at an expo and people come up and talk to me, you know, I get about 50% of this and 50% of that. And what you have to do is you have to change your mentality. You have to be willing to do whatever it takes. So if I tell you you need to eat six to 10 meals a day, your answer is, okay, that's what the I'm gonna do. I'm gonna, starting not tomorrow, not Monday, not next month, starting right this mother . minute, I'm going to start doing what it takes. For the rest of the day, I'm going to eat every two and a half to three hours solid food because I want to do whatever it takes. Now, you can drink three shakes and you can eat three meals, but that's the half ass way to do it. That is not the 100%. That's exactly what he was doing.

[video] 24:37 Everybody knows is the way to get there quickest. So take my fucking advice, please. And eat six to 10 meals a day and start growing.

24:49 Start getting those. It's the typical mentality. Life is hard. Go through hardship. Go against your nature and intuition. do what you hate and so on.

25:13 These are the comments under the first video. Rest in peace. I do the egg white oats combo too, but I combine them into one bowl. Makes a fluffy texture. I add almond butter and then top it off with berries and cinnamon. Tree bark, pesticide-ridden berries, some kind of seeds. This is how he influenced people. And... It seems like he's still influencing people now with the videos that he created.

25:49 People eat the worst food on earth just because officially they want to get bigger. As I explained, in reality, they are dealing with their own psychological problems. Steroids, unfortunate, led to his last day's heart failure. Gigantic man, truly impressive physique, impressive. I could understand it if you mean that his physique was very abnormal in the sense that it looked very unnatural, but you have to really, really severely go against your intuition, which is your nature, to actually achieve this kind of physique, which is why impressive is the wrong word here.

26:41 Rich Piano injected pomegranate oil in his arms. Really? I don't know. Oh, did he use synthol?

26:52 I've seen videos of guys who used it. Petrogains oil.

27:03 If you want a heart attack, eat away heats. Okay, I like seeing that because it really was not a heart healthy diet, that's obvious. It was the opposite of that pretty much.

27:19 Okay, I was expecting all of the comments to talk about how great he was. He was the first monster in the bodybuilding history. Yes, but again, this is nothing to look up to. After spending two weeks in a medically induced coma following a cardiac arrest, an autopsy revealed significant heart disease, including a heart and liver that weighed over twice the average, but was ultimately inconclusive on the exact cause of death. What does it even matter what the exact cause was? His liver was huge because of the drugs and the heart, of course, also. It's also because of all the so-called cardio, which really stresses the heart.

28:10 Even people who simply run marathons and don't use any drugs have way larger hearts because the heart will stretch out if you stress it. The same will happen when you go to the gym. But when you combine it with the drugs, then it will simply be even worse. Overall, if we can be honest, then we can admit that Rich Piana had a terrible influence on men. He was constantly talking about going against your nature. He talked about a weak mind, whereas in reality, you have to actually feel very weak to go against your intuition. Because strong people do exactly what they want to do. The strongest people on earth do exactly what they want to. And most people are too weak to do that.

29:09 That's why they force themselves to eat. They force themselves to go to the gym. They hate doing it, as you can see. Rich really hated doing it. You use all of the drugs even though you know that they are so bad for you. Your life becomes torture. It only becomes torture when you are weak. If you are strong, then you will seek health and happiness. You will want to live long. You will want to be actually strong. A strong mind creates a strong body. And if you live intuitively, then you will have the strongest body. And strong bodies are healthy. And you will also be happy if you are strong. Strength is nature. There is no way around it.

30:06 You can see that the strongest, healthiest, and happiest people are the ones that completely listen to their body. They are agile. They can actually move around. And they won't be able to bench press a lot, and that's because we are not naturally supposed to. But when it comes to actual physical fights, those kind of people would always win because they would have a naturally, physically strong body. Whereas this kind of a physique will always fail in a scenario where you need to prove your strength. This kind of a body is good for lifting metal up and down for no reason in a gym together with other brainwashed people.

31:00 But when it comes to actually doing something in this life, when it comes to actually winning, then you will realize that with that kind of a body, you will only lose. Thanks for watching.