Ep 338 – The many eras of evidence-based fitness (ft. Dr. Jim Stoppani)

Iron Culture

The MASS Crew

Sports & Recreation, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 827 Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Back when Trex was a 14 year old, his wrestling coach noticed his passion for training and nutrition. This coach took Trex under his wing, and they started absorbing and applying as much information as they could. Their source material, almost exclusively, was the content produced by Dr. Jim Stoppani – primarily from magazine articles, but also from the totally novel medium of online video content. Jim was a jacked PhD with tons of “in the trenches” experience - back in 2005 that was a very rare combination, and there’s no question that people like Jim led the way for the next generation of “bodybuilding academics” like Helms and Trex.

Jim has made a huge mark on the fitness industry. Perhaps his most impressive feat is maintaining his impact and relevance as the industry has fundamentally transformed itself multiple times. Jim was the face of some of the biggest muscle magazines (in their prime), one of the most recognizable content creators when bodybuilding dot com was THE place for online fitness, and way ahead of the curve when it comes to building your own platform and leveraging mobile fitness applications. In this episode of Iron Culture, the Erics have a great chat with Dr. Stoppani about how the industry (and science communication more broadly) has evolved over the last 25-30 years.

To learn more about Jim and support his work, check out his social media channels and his website

https://www.jimstoppani.com/

Time stamps

0:00 Intro

3:22 Jim’s education

14:18 Jim’s transition to the muscle magazine industry

30:44 Jim’s bodybuilding dot com days

44:52 Fitness content creation in the age of social media: the good, the bad, and the ugly

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello everybody. Welcome back to Iron Culture. I am Eric Trexler, one of your dear hosts,
0:12.6	joined as always by Dr. Eric Holmes. And today is a special treat, a really exciting episode
0:18.4	for purely selfish, self-interested reasons. So we are joined today
0:23.7	by the Dr. Jim Stepani. And for a little background, think back to a simpler time. The year was
0:32.6	2004. I was a freshman, maybe sophomore wrestler back in Ohio, and I started to really take a liking
0:42.7	to lifting weights and nutrition and things like that. One of my assistant coaches saw that in me
0:49.2	and said, when the team's doing their workouts, we're going to do our workouts. And this coach was jacked.
0:54.8	He was just a phenomenal athlete.
0:56.4	When he wanted to be a bodybuilder, he blew up.
0:58.7	When he wanted to get into marathons, he was below three hours by like snapping his fingers.
1:03.0	Just a freak.
1:04.6	But he took me under his wing and we trained and trained and trained.
1:08.4	We talked nutrition.
1:09.8	And it really set me on the trajectory for
1:12.4	everything I've done in my life since. And the single source material that we based our workouts on,
1:19.1	that we talked about nutrition about, it was all Jim Stepani's content in muscle and fitness
1:25.7	magazine. So for me, you know, you get on a podcast,
1:29.7	people do all the flowery introductions. This is straight from the heart. I couldn't be more stoked
1:34.6	and I'm excited for this conversation. So Jim, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you guys
1:39.8	for the invite. Absolutely. So Helms, yes, go ahead.
1:49.2	Yeah, I just want to echo it with my own, you know, kind of backstory. I started lifting in 2004, not as early as Utrex, but same exact era.
1:55.5	I was still in the U.S. Air Force, kind of near the end of my enlistment.
	...

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