Interview with ErgoPharm Co-Founder Patrick Arnold
Patrick Arnold Interview
Well known chemist, Patrick Arnold is by far one of the most recognizable names in the industry. Find out a little bit more about him and what he’s been up to by clicking the link below.
Matt Weik: Let’s start off by getting some background information on you. What is your educational background that allowed you to get to where you are today?
Patrick Arnold: I have a BS in chemistry and some years of graduate school. But my education only provided me the fundamentals to get where I am. An intense intellectual curiosity and strong work ethic allowed me to apply the basic tools to something special.
Matt Weik: Did chemistry always interest you or is it something that grew on you over time?
Patrick Arnold: Science in general always appealed to me. I knew chemistry would unlock a lot of useful knowledge and skills for me but it took a few years of it in college before I felt I had a knack for it.
Matt Weik: If you weren’t doing what you’re doing right now, what occupation would you be in?
Patrick Arnold: I would be working at a chemical company somewhere probably. Maybe doing drug research for a pharm company or some other kind of chemical research. Or working my way up the management chain by shamelessly kissing a lot of ass.
Matt Weik: What was the first supplement that you formulated and brought to the market?
Patrick Arnold: I conceived the idea for androstenedione and then shared it with a guy named Stan who put it under his label back in 1996.
Matt Weik: How did you get started with Ergopharm?
Patrick Arnold: Ergopharm started in 1999 with cyclodextrin complexed prohormones. Before Ergopharm was conceived my business partners and I only sold bulk products such as 4-AD to other companies. Our business at that time was called LPJ Research.
Matt Weik: Can you tell us a little bit about the company as well as Giant Nutrition?
Patrick Arnold: We made Giant Nutrition simply as a way of selling off excess Ergopharm bulk ingredient inventory. It was intended just to be generic commodity-type items but we put some other cool proprietary products on there as well, such as our topical fat loss product Liposolv (which really is a cool product BTW).
We do not advertise for Giant. It is pretty much promoted by word of mouth.
Matt Weik: What is your opinion on bodybuilding right now? Do you think the need to be the biggest freak on stage is hurting the sport?
Patrick Arnold: Bodybuilding in its current state will never gain widespread appeal. It is a subculture thing. Which is fine – it is what it is. I think bodybuilding’s head honchos (Weiders, Manion, etc) realize this and have come to an acceptance of it.
Matt Weik: With so many pro bodybuilders these days using banned compounds throughout the year, what is your opinion on the overall health of those pros?
Patrick Arnold: Carrying such massive bodyweight for a long time is terrible for the cardiovascular system. The human heart can only take so much. This obviously applies to the heavyweights primarily.
As far as other aspects of their health, that is more of an unknown. I will say that we are better off than we were 10-15 years ago when people were dying from diuretic misuse.
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I also think that the number of drugs and the type of drugs used by the pros varies widely. Some gentleman with the best genetics doesn’t need to risk their health nearly as much as others do to stay competitive. I always was amazed by Kevin Levrone, who can pretty much stop training and doing drugs for much of the year and then around 16 weeks before a contest just go for it and swell up enough to stand on stage with the best of them. That’s what I mean when I talk about great genetics.
Matt Weik: What is your take on profession athletes using illegal substances in order to take themselves to the next level? Is it fair since that is their profession and they are in it to reach peak performance?
Patrick Arnold: It is wrong if their organization bans the substances and is serious enough about the ban to enforce it by doping testing. In other words, an athletic organization for which a ban is more than just a public relations stunt.
Other than that I believe in personal freedom. The freedom to do whatever you can to achieve your hopes and dreams (insofar as those efforts do not infringe on the rights of others)
Matt Weik: If there is one person that you would like to work with to make “the ultimate” supplement, who would it be and what type of product would you produce?
Patrick Arnold: I am assuming you are talking about within the supplement industry already. In that case, it would be someone who already has access to research tools – the type of research tools that I do not have access to such as body composition testing, metabolic testing, or in-vivo animal testing.
Dr. Scott Connelly comes to mind as he is brilliant and also has access to a metabolic research center at UCLA (it’s actually named after him). He also has a lot of money (chuckle).
Layne Norton lives in town and does metabolic research at the U of I involving protein metabolism. If there were a way to team up with him on a project and get approval from his department on a project that would be cool.
Other than that, you have guys like Tom Incledon and Tim Ziegenfuss who have places that can do clinical studies with humans. Using these guys in the research stage as opposed to the post-market verification stage would be of great value to me.
Anyway, in the past people have gotten excited about the prospect of me working with guys such as Bruce Kneller or Bill Llewellyn. Now while these are smart guys who occasionally have good ideas, they are not really of much use to me. I don’t need idea guys (I have plenty of ideas already) – I need technical guys with scientific facilities to help me with the research and development of my ideas.
Matt Weik: In your opinion, what is the best supplement out on the market these days?
Patrick Arnold: That question is so general. It’s like “what is the best car?”
But you just want an answer I guess so I will say Clear Shot, which is my energy shot drink. I think it’s some nifty stuff, especially since I figured out how to flavor it nicely. But there are many other great products out there with very diverse applications.
Matt Weik: In your opinion, what is the most worthless “type” of product on the market these days, which people are simply wasting their money on?
Patrick Arnold: I want to say “NO products”, but today’s NO products are more stimulant cocktails that contain a lot of extra bells and whistles (creatine, amino acids, metabolic intermediates). So today’s NO products may actually do something compared with the first generation NO products, which were pretty much just arginine-related compounds.
But there are so many other junk products out there too. A lot of these “natural anabolic” phytosterol-containing products are a sad leftover from two decades ago.
Matt Weik: What is the one thing that you want people to remember you for?
Patrick Arnold: For not selling out and always being honest with the consumer.
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