Eric Helms

Eric Helms is a strength and physique sport researcher, coach and WNBF Pro natural bodybuilder. According to 3D Muscle Journey, he holds a PhD in strength and conditioning (on autoregulating powerlifting), two master's degrees (exercise science and a research-focused degree on protein and macronutrient manipulation in dieting bodybuilders), a bachelor's in sports management, fitness and wellness, and the CSCS certification. He is a research fellow at the Sports Performance Research Institute New Zealand (SPRINZ) at Auckland University of Technology, where he supervises master's and PhD students. BarBend described him as 41 years old in an article last updated on January 15, 2025, and reported that he placed seventh in the Open Middleweight division at his professional debut at the 2023 WNBF World Championships.

He is one of the founders of 3D Muscle Journey (3DMJ), a coaching and education company for drug-free bodybuilders and powerlifters that its website says was founded in 2010 alongside Jeff Alberts, Brad Loomis, Alberto Nunez and Brian Minor; some interviews give 2009 as the year. His title there is Chief Science Officer and Coach. He is also a co-founder and reviewer of MASS (Monthly Applications in Strength Sport), a research review started in 2017 with Greg Nuckols and Michael Zourdos; Nuckols wrote in March 2023 that he had left the project, and the current MASS team page lists Helms, Zourdos and Eric Trexler. He is the chief author of The Muscle and Strength Pyramid books, co-written with Andy Morgan and Andrea Valdez, and co-hosts the Iron Culture Podcast with Omar Isuf.

His personal Instagram account, @helms3dmj (linked from the 3DMJ team page), showed 202,000 followers on September 14, 2026. The brand channels he appears on are separate accounts: Team3DMJ on YouTube had 122,000 subscribers, the Iron Culture Podcast channel 27,200 and the MASS Research Review channel 6,440 on the same date. The Instagram handle @erichelms belongs to a different person.

What he sells, through his companies: 3DMJ publishes coaching prices on its website — $500 per month for bodybuilding contest prep, $400 per month for off-season coaching ($350 for training or nutrition only), $450 per month for powerlifting meet prep, and one-off video consultations from $300 to $450. Coaching is by application form, and 3DMJ states that clients cannot request a specific coach, so buying coaching does not guarantee working with Helms personally. 3DMJ also sells three self-paced online courses hosted on Kajabi: Hypertrophy Programming for Bodybuilders ($145), Nutrition for Hypertrophy and Strength ($65) and Off-Season Mastery ($55). The sales pages do not name the instructors in their text. MASS Research Review costs $29 per month, $299 per year or $999 for lifetime access. The Muscle and Strength Pyramid books cost $49 each in print or $67 for the PDF bundle of both, according to the official book site, which also claims more than 200,000 copies sold; there is no independent source for that figure.

Reputation: we found no press coverage reporting a court case, regulatory action or sanction involving him or 3DMJ. A search of ftc.gov for "Eric Helms" and "3D Muscle Journey" on September 14, 2026 returned no enforcement action under either name. The most cited public disagreement is a scientific one: an October 2015 debate with coach Menno Henselmans about protein intakes above 1.8 g/kg, which Henselmans later wrote about on his own site, and which Helms himself revisited in a Stronger by Science article on five years of studying protein. OpenCorporates could not be consulted (it required a captcha), so the legal entity behind 3DMJ and the country where it is registered were not confirmed.