DDT Method Podcast — Peptides, Performance Enhancement and Advanced Protocols with Drew Donaldson

Drew Donaldson | Performance Enhancement Coach
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DDT Method Podcast is for serious athletes and advanced lifters who want accurate information on compounds, protocols, fat loss, and the performance strategies that actually deliver results. Drew Donaldson has spent years coaching serious athletes at every level, building protocols from the ground up alongside the practitioners, researchers, and competitors doing the same work. If you're serious about performance enhancement and want advice from someone operating at this level, this is your show. Topics include: peptides, hormone optimization, performance enhancement biohacking and training.

  1. 1d ago

    Peptide Science vs. Peptide Hype: Dosing, Naming & the Research Nobody Reads | 25-Year Peptide Pioneer

    At-home bloodwork, no doctor visit required. Know your numbers before you touch a protocol https://ddtmtd.co/Amplify JANUS OPTIMIZE — third-party tested research compounds and peptides. Use code DDTSkool at checkout. JOIN THE DDT METHOD SKOOL COMMUNITY — protocols, breakdowns, and direct access to the team https://ddtmtd.co/skool WORK WITH A DDT METHOD COACH —  https://ddtmtd.co/apply Jean-Francois Tremblay has been working with peptides since the 1990s — back when the only source was China, the only real literature was a forum, and melanotan cost a thousand dollars a day to synthesize. He's a pharmacist with a background in exercise physiology, he came up alongside Charles Poliquin, and his lab was the first to synthesize MOTS-c. Which means he watched the entire field get built. And he's watching the current boom repeat mistakes that were already settled twenty years ago. In this episode he takes apart the errors nobody in the space seems to notice: why "TB-500" doesn't reliably tell you which molecule is in the vial, why the GHK-Cu results people are excited about are mostly the copper, why the doses that sound dangerous are the ones the papers actually used, and why the human research everyone says doesn't exist has existed for decades — just not in English. He also gives you his own protocol, which is a single weekly injection, and the reasoning that makes daily pinning unnecessary for most people. Then he does the thing almost nobody in this space does: when Drew asks him to rank SS-31 against MOTS-c, he says he doesn't know enough to answer. If you've been running peptides for a few years and you're starting to wonder how much of what you've been told is actually true, this is the hour. This conversation is for informational and educational purposes only and is not medical advice. Compounds discussed are research chemicals. Nothing here is a recommendation to use them. Talk to a qualified physician before changing anything.

  2. 6d ago

    The Fourth Phase of Water: Structured Water, Cellular Hydration & Mitochondrial Energy | Todd Shipman

    This episode is brought to you by Amplify Wellness — nationwide blood work for men and women, no doctor visit required: https://ddtmtd.co/Amplify And by Janus Optimize — third-party tested research materials. Use code DDTSkool. Join the DDT Method Skool community – https://ddtmtd.co/skool Work with a DDT Method coach – https://ddtmtd.co/apply Todd Shipman's education in water came from John Butts — a military nuclear engineer who got into the subject twice over, first through the specialized water used around nuclear weapons, then as a cowboy who noticed that given a trough and a running river, the horses chose the river a thousand times out of a thousand. Butts went on to do his own lab research and ended up consulted by many of the better-known names in the field. Todd worked alongside him for hours at a stretch, sometimes six a day, until Butts died of ketoacidosis. Todd's other education came the hard way, running 100 and 200-mile ultramarathons, where they weighed the runners every ten miles because too many electrolytes and too few produce exactly the same symptoms. The argument in this episode is that the entire popular conversation about water is stuck on one half of the problem. We talk about what to take out — chlorine, fluoride, microplastics, pharmaceutical residue — and almost never about what the water is once it's clean. Todd's position, inherited from Butts, is close to the opposite of the standard advice: revitalizing matters more than filtering, and the only reason he'd filter at all is taste. Drew pushes him through the practical stack anyway — where reverse osmosis genuinely helps and where it leaves you worse off, why distilled is closer to what nature does, what remineralization actually needs to look like, and why the sodium-to-potassium ratio decides whether the water you drink ends up inside your cells or around them. From there it goes into the fourth phase of water, why hexagonal structure holds more energy, and the claim at the center of the whole thing: that your cells have to convert ordinary water into crystalline water before they can use it, and that conversion costs mitochondrial energy you'd rather spend elsewhere. 5 Key Takeaways Why a reverse osmosis system can leave you less hydrated than before you bought it, and the two-line fixWhat to check on a filter's published results that most companies were quietly avoiding for yearsWhy too many electrolytes produces the same symptoms as too few, learned over 200-mile racesThe reason your cells can't use a glass of water in the form you drank it, and what that costs youWhat John Butts's horses understood about running water that most of the wellness industry still doesn'tConnect with Todd Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/thatoddtodd Natural Action – https://www.naturalaction.com Natural Action on Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/naturalaction Disclosure: Todd works with Natural Action, whose devices are discussed throughout, and Drew has an affiliate code with them which lives in the DDT Method School Group.

  3. Aug 12

    Enhanced Athlete Risk Management: Dose Economy, Blood Work & Long-Term Health

    This episode is brought to you by Amplify Wellness — nationwide blood work for men and women, no doctor visit required: https://ddtmtd.co/3TQ2822 And by Janus Optimize — third-party tested research materials. Use code DDTSkool. Join the DDT Method Skool community – https://ddtmtd.co/45jhizl Work with a DDT Method coach – https://ddtmtd.co/apply 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 insteadThe 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 sportThe early virilization signs that are still reversible if you catch them, and the ones that aren'tWhat an elevated blood pressure reading tells you about why an athlete has stopped losing weight, and why fixing it moves the scaleWhy he drives water and sodium up in peak week rather than stripping them, and what happens to a carb load when an athlete is dehydratedChapters 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

  4. Aug 5

    How Digestion Controls Nutrient Partitioning, Recovery & Physique Development | Functional Health Coach Austin Stout

    DDT Method Podcast is powered by Amplify Wellness and Janus Optimize Full blood work online, no doctor visit required. Know what's actually going on under the hood: https://bit.ly/4fWivl2 Janus Optimize — third-party tested compounds. Use code DDTSkool Join the DDT Method Skool community – https://bit.ly/3KSdGxn Work with a DDT Method coach – https://bit.ly/3Se5g7i Austin Stout has spent close to two decades doing something most people in bodybuilding still treat as a side quest: figuring out why two athletes on the same food and the same protocol get completely different results. He started as a wrestler who picked up bodybuilding magazines because there was nothing else to read about lifting, prepped for his first show while still in high school, and went full-time coaching while charging fifty dollars a month and barely covering rent. Then he competed too often, ran himself into hormonal downregulation and digestive problems, and had a doctor tell him plainly that he was killing himself. Working his own way out of that is what pushed him into blood work, GI testing and functional health years before the bodybuilding world had any patience for it — the response to his early posts was mostly "this is b******t, don't complicate it." What he arrived at is the argument running underneath this entire conversation: the limit is your body's capacity to use what you give it, not the size of what you give it. Almost every standard fix in this sport adds something — more carbs on show morning, more food on a refeed, more cardio, more compounds, more antimicrobials — when the move that actually works is reducing load or rebuilding capacity. Austin walks through what that looks like in practice: why peak week fails on digestion rather than carbs, why a refeed's real benefit is fatigue reduction and not the food, how he doses cardio against an athlete's entire life rather than their training, how to reintroduce food to someone who hasn't eaten a piece of fruit in five years, and why the standard SIBO protocol keeps sending people back around the same loop every few months. Drew brings his own version of it too — the years he assumed he was a poor responder, and what changed when he took his fiber from ten grams a day to seventy. 5 Key Takeaways Why a flat physiques happen on show morningThe real mechanism behind a refeed and how to enhance itBalancing cardio against an athlete's total stress load rather than against their trainingHow to reintroduce foods after an elimination dietWhy most SIBO and antimicrobial protocols relapse within months Chapters 0:00 Where Peak Week Goes Wrong: Fiber, Water and Digestion 6:13 Show Day: Why You're Flat and What Actually Fixes It 13:57 From Wrestling to Full-Time Coaching 19:20 Competing Too Often, Blood Work and the Turn to Functional Health 24:15 The Three Camps and the Evolution of Refeeds 29:17 Refeeds Are Fatigue Reduction, Not Just Calories 32:42 Cardio, Diet Leverage and Your Prep Starting Point 40:40 Diet Diversity and Reintroducing Food 45:31 Fiber Types, Dosing and Drew's 10g-to-70g Experiment 52:11 Feeding Good Bacteria: Resistant Starch, Butyrate and SCFAs 59:30 Why SIBO Protocols Keep Failing 1:04:52 Where to Find Austin Connect with Austin Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/austinst8 Linktree (coaching, mentorship, education, discount codes) – https://linktr.ee/austinst8 Integrated Muscle & Health – https://intmuscle.com

  5. Jul 31

    Quantum Dietitian Explains Why Your Fat Loss Stalled (It's Not Calories)

    Join the DDT Method Skool Community (100+ deep dive education on peptides, PEDs, training and nutrition): https://www.skool.com/ddtmethod Work 1-on-1 with a DDT Method Coach: https://www.ddtmethod.com/apply Everyone approaches fat loss from the burn side — more steps, more cardio, more output. Ethan Okunas makes the case that this is the wrong end of the equation entirely. Going from 10,000 to 50,000 steps buys you maybe 150 calories. A five-mile run, 300 or 400. Meanwhile GLP-1 drugs, which don't raise your metabolism at all, produce dramatic results through one mechanism only: they make you less hungry. Ethan is a registered dietitian who spent his first job out of school doing outpatient weight loss inside a hospital system, and watched the same thing happen over and over. People lost the weight. Then 75% of them had it back within a year and 95% within five. The calorie deficit worked and then it stopped working, and nobody could tell him why. This episode is his answer. Leptin is the hormone that counts your stored energy and sets your appetite accordingly, and most people's count is wrong — which is what leptin resistance actually is. Leptin runs on a 24-hour clock that only stays synchronized if you see the sunrise. Ethan walks through the five levers that restore leptin sensitivity, the study showing that morning light raises leptin and lowers ghrelin even after a terrible night of sleep, and why the DHA in your eyes determines how much you actually get out of the sun you're standing in. From there it goes deeper: how mitochondria turn a burger into electrons and protons, Gilbert Ling's argument that we don't make enough ATP to power ourselves, structured water as the body's real battery, why arterial plaque may be an exclusion zone problem, and the deuterium story — why the extra neutron in heavy hydrogen jams the ATP motor, why eating a pineapple in a New York winter is a mitochondrial problem, and why deuterium-depleted water is a prescribed cancer therapy in parts of Europe. KEY TAKEAWAYS: GLP-1s don't raise your metabolism — appetite suppression is the whole mechanism, which is exactly why the weight comes backThe five levers that restore leptin sensitivity, in the order Ethan prioritizes themThe study nobody cites: morning sunlight raises leptin and lowers ghrelin even after a poor night of sleepWhy the DHA in your eye membranes decides how much usable signal you extract from the same sunlightDeuterium, the ATP motor, and the practical ways to lower it without buying $10-a-bottle waterCHAPTERS: 0:00 Why fat loss isn't a calorie-burning problem 1:27 GLP-1s prove appetite is the whole game 3:12 Leptin, and what leptin resistance really is 5:50 Sunrise, photons, and the 24-hour clock 8:52 DHA, seed oils, and the rest of the leptin levers 16:24 Ethan's story and the 95% regain problem 25:03 What "quantum" actually means 27:16 Mitochondria, ATP, and the battery you didn't know you had 33:58 EMFs, voltage, and structured water 44:03 Deuterium and the marble in the hose 48:20 How to lower deuterium (mostly for free) 54:41 The 80/20 rule, the toxins everyone forgets, and where to find Ethan Connect with Ethan Okunas: Instagram: @quantum.dietitianWebsite and books: https://quantumdietitian.comBooks: Quantum Nutrition and Quantum Weight Loss (buy direct through the site — ebook buyers get edition updates free)Coaching: DM on InstagramBooks mentioned in this episode: The Fourth Phase of Water — Gerald PollackThe Invisible Rainbow — Arthur FirstenbergThe Rainbow and the Worm — Mae-Wan HoHealth and Light — John OttUnderstanding the Heart — Stephen HusseyLife on the Edge — Jim Al-Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden

  6. Jul 29

    Why Your Program Stopped Working (And You Didn't Notice)

    Join the DDT Method Skool community – https://www.skool.com/ddtmethod Work with a DDT Method coach – https://www.ddtmethod.com/apply Paul Carter started lifting at 14 and has spent the three decades since inside almost every corner of this industry — football, five years of MMA, ten years of powerlifting, competitive bodybuilding, and a writing career that began on a personal blog and ended up in every major strength publication there is. He is also one of the very few people at that level who will tell you out loud which of his own published positions he no longer holds. People still quote articles he wrote thirteen years ago back at him as though nothing has changed. What he does with that is the most useful thing in this episode. What follows is a conversation about what to remove. The last rep of every set. The volume. The drop sets and intensifiers he built his early career on. The surplus. Most of the fat in his diet. The cycles — he hasn't run one in eleven years and still gets accused of lying about it every week. And most of the peptides currently on the market, which is the part that should stop you, because Paul is affiliated with a peptide company and will still tell you to wait. He gets into why he pulled a client off a fat-loss protocol he had already bought for her, what happened when a peptide genuinely worked on his knee and it still didn't matter, and why he thinks this boom looks exactly like the last one. Somewhere in the middle he explains how leaving a single rep on the table broke a plateau he'd been stuck on for years. 5 Key Takeaways Why judging a coach by their physique is the most expensive mistake in training, and what to look at insteadThe training frequency ceiling almost nobody talks about, and the recovery window that explains why it existsWhat happened to Paul's progressive overload the month he stopped chasing the final grinding repWhy you can build muscle just as fast at maintenance as you can in a surplus, and where the "small surplus" argument falls apartThe two things outside the gym Paul thinks move the needle more than any supplement, and why both are freeChapters 0:00 Why Smart Lifters Still Get It Wrong 4:31 Paul's Background and the Mentzer Lineage 11:18 Arthur Jones to Dorian Yates 15:45 Frequency and the Growth Window 19:14 Why He Stopped Training to Failure 22:35 High Reps, Supersets and Blood Flow Restriction 27:46 Mesocycles, Rotation and Burnout 32:45 Cutting, Maintenance and the Surplus Myth 39:31 How Low Should Fat Intake Go 42:37 The Keto Cult and What It Cost 47:01 Peptides and Wait-and-See Mode 51:48 The Two Things Nobody Optimizes 55:19 John Meadows Stories 1:01:12 Message Boards vs Modern Social Media 1:07:09 Where to Find Paul Connect with Paul Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/liftrunbang1 Website – https://www.liftrunbang1.com Training groups (Yoke Buds, Yoke Squad, Garage Gangsters, The Valkyrie, Iron Pulse, plus all-access) – https://www.liftrunbang1.com

  7. Jul 22

    The GLP-1 Guide Every Lifter Should Hear Before Starting | Jason Theobald

    Go deeper on the protocols → DDT Skool: https://www.skool.com/ddtmethod Work with a DDT Method coach → Apply: https://www.ddtmethod.com/apply Jason Theobald (Scooby Health, Advanced Vitality HRT, GLP Mentor) joins the show for a full GLP-1 deep dive built specifically for people who train — not the general population. We break down the real mechanistic differences between semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide (and why stacking GIP with glucagon suppression changes everything), why retatrutide's aggressive fat-burning comes with a real cost — elevated heart rate, HRV crashing, and in some of Jason's female and perimenopausal clients, lost muscle instead of fat — and why the "strongest" drug isn't automatically the right one for your hormone profile. Jason also breaks down his own experience pairing GLP-1s with small-dose fast-acting insulin, his tapering protocol for coming off after hitting a goal, and why he considers GLP-1 + HRT one of the most underused combinations for menopausal and andropausal clients. Pulled from thousands of patient cases across his coaching business and his HRT clinic, this is the guide for anyone using — or considering — a GLP-1 as an athlete. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Why Semaglutide, tirzepatide, and retatrutide aren't interchangeableRetatrutide's triple mechanism burns fat fastest, but there’s a catch for some populationsThe real cost of retatrutide most people ignore and how Jason manages itJason's "Slingshot Method" to grow from GLPsThe best use case for GLP-1s and metabolic functionCHAPTERS: 0:00 Where everyone gets GLP-1 use wrong 1:36 Semaglutide vs. tirzepatide vs. retatrutide — the mechanism explained 8:59 The female retatrutide cases — when the "strongest" drug backfires 17:49 Mitigating Reta’s HRV and heart-rate cost 23:15 The origin of the Slingshot Method 27:29 Stacking fast-acting insulin with the slingshot 32:02 The post-prep tapering protocol 36:58 Menopause, HRT, and why it's the best GLP-1 use case 46:27 Ancillary tools: metformin, berberine, Jardiance 52:12 The GLP Mentor app + where to find Jason Connect with Jason: Scooby-U coaching (on the Mighty app) — or DM @ScoobyHealth on IGHRT & peptide clinic: https://advancedvitalityhrt.comSupplements: https://newethics.comGLP Mentor app (AI coaching for GLP-1 users) — Apple App StoreBooks on Amazon — search "Jason Theobald": The IBS Fallacy, GLP-1 for Seniors, Menopause guides, 5-Minute Mediterranean Cookbook for GLP Users

  8. Jul 14

    Clean Bloodwork, Wrecked Prep: What The Panel Missed

    Go deeper on the protocols → DDT Skool: https://www.skool.com/ddtmethod Work with a DDT Method coach → Apply: https://www.ddtmethod.com/apply Paul Romzek ran the best prep of his life — 25 to 30 pounds gone in eight weeks, food staying high, looking incredible on the way to a Junior Nationals qualifier — and then his body forced a decision no competitor wants to make. Alongside his coach Dom Kuza, a prep-and-healthspan specialist who has taken clients from an eGFR of 40 back to 110, Paul walks through the aggressive SS-31 and MOTS-c protocol that made the prep so smooth, the reflux and vomiting that quietly escalated into a 3AM hospital call, and the bloodwork that made the whole thing a mystery. Here's the part that'll get you: his liver panel came back almost clean while he was on orals — so what nearly ended him? This is the rare enhanced-athlete conversation that isn't about pushing harder. It's about knowing when to pull the plug, why "I'll die early, it was worth it" is a story these two refuse to accept anymore, and how Paul walked away from bodybuilding at 27 with markers most naturals would envy. If you compete, coach, or run anything on cycle, this one could save you a hospital visit. KEY TAKEAWAYS: Why a near-flawless prep still had to be called off — and the exact symptom that forced the decisionThe bloodwork lesson most coaches miss: why "normal" liver enzymes can hide the real problem, and where to actually lookDom's sequencing logic for priming hard responders before an aggressive diet — and why order mattersThe allostatic-load explanation behind the reflux, plus the cheap gut-repair stack that finally fixed itThe longevity case against "dying early is the price" — and why walking away at 27 was the smartest rep of his career

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DDT Method Podcast is for serious athletes and advanced lifters who want accurate information on compounds, protocols, fat loss, and the performance strategies that actually deliver results. Drew Donaldson has spent years coaching serious athletes at every level, building protocols from the ground up alongside the practitioners, researchers, and competitors doing the same work. If you're serious about performance enhancement and want advice from someone operating at this level, this is your show. Topics include: peptides, hormone optimization, performance enhancement biohacking and training.

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