 Hello, everyone. Welcome to Mind Pump. In the first half of the show, we talk about how to make your bones stronger, living to age 100, the effect that sodium has on your insulin levels as well as other topics. In the second half of the show, the guys coach four live callers on questions such as, my back hurts when I shoulder press. How can I fix that? What are the best healthy fats to eat for gaining muscle mass? My low calorie diet is making me sick and tired. What should I do? And how can I modify the MAPS programs and still keep them MAPS programs? Finally, if you haven't yet subscribed to our other channel, Mind Pump Clips, go over there and subscribe. You will not regret it. All right. Enjoy the show. Nothing builds bones stronger than lifting weights. In fact, as you get older, one of the leading causes of death and injury is weak bones and studies have proven that strength training strengthens bones consistently. No, the form of exercise has been proven to do this at nearly the same rate. I'm saying this because of that post. Yeah, I was just going to say, shout out to squat university with the, uh, the cool post about the 70 year old guy. Okay. So check this out. That's a video of a 70, I think it's 70, 70 years old, 72. I think it's 72 years old and he's squatting 450, 450. So he's a power lifter. Okay. He started lifting weights at 50. Yeah. So it's not like he's been doing this whole life, which is awesome. Yeah. That's a great part of the story. He went to get a bone density test. Now, bone weakness is super common in men and women as they get older. Your bones just get weaker just like your muscles do. Well, anyway, this guy went to get bone density test. Let's see what's going on here. A bone density score of 2.0 to 2.2 is better than 95 percent of men over the age of 60. Okay. His score was 5.2. Yeah. 5.2. More than, more than double the most elite people in his age group, five standard deviations above what would be considered amazing for his age for someone over 60, he's over 70. Now this is, this is a big deal because I remember training, you know, at one point I trained a lot of doctors and surgeons and a few of the surgeons I worked with because of the type of medicine they practiced a good chunk of the, of their patients were people over the age of 70. So they had a lot of people over these, vascular surgeons, right? A lot of people over the age of 70. And I would ask them like, what are the, you know, leading causes of death and whatever course the top ones like heart disease, cancer. And they said, you know what's crazy? He goes, you should look this up. Falling, falling is a big deal. And I looked it up myself, falling one out of every four people. So, so any people over the age of 65 on average, one out of every four of them falls every year. In other words, your chances of falling once a year are 25% after the age of 65. And the comment that they said, I'll never forget this, one of them told me this, he says, this is common in medicine that you fall down, you break your hip, you dive in a moment. I was just gonna bring, yeah, bring the hip up. I wonder, so what is that statistic in terms of somebody breaking their hip in terms of their life expectancy after that? It's not even just the hip, although the hip is, obviously, if you break that, you're quite immobile. Because yeah, you're just pretty much sedentary and it's a rapid decline. Well, loss of balance as you get older, yes, balance has to do with the inner ear and your equilibrium, but a large part of the reason why you lose your balance to get older is your weak, you lose strength. So you lose mobility and strength. And you can see this when you, you know, I've trained a lot of older people and I saw their balance improve dramatically just from getting them stronger in the gym. Like you trip over something, be able to catch yourself. If you're not that strong, I mean, you're going down. And then on top of it, when your muscles are weak, you can get, you can bet your bones are weak because they're very closely connected. So anything that strengthens muscles, strengthens bones. And if you fall and you break something, now you're immobile and you see their health decline very rapidly. And that's what happens. Anybody who's immobile for, for a certain period of time, you'll see a health decline, but the older you get, the faster that decline tends to happen. So I remember I had a client, I've told you guys this, I haven't talked about this in a long time. I had a one woman that I trained who, um, I trained her. She was in her 80s and you know, I trained her for about, I want to say maybe four or five years and I could tell that she was kind of, you know, maybe some early signs of dementia. Like she would tell me the same stories here and there, ask me some, you know, some questions, but it was kind of imperceptible. It was kind of like, okay, well, let's, you know, whatever. Well, anyway, she fell in her bathtub, got hurt. She had to have physical therapy in a nurse and her daughter's like, I can't afford to pay for exercise. So she's just going to be taken care of by this nurse or whatever. Anyway, it's like eight months later, I'm at the grocery store and I see this woman that I used to train. And first of all, she's way hunched over on a walker. So her posture just went terrible. She didn't even recognize me. This is a woman I worked out with for four years. She looked at me and I said, Hey, how you been or whatever. And she's like, who are you? The decline in her health was so fast because she stopped exercising and that's what happens as you get older. It's like you're fighting aging and it's a hard fight. And if you stop, boy, does your body decline very quickly. Do you think it has less to do with aging and then the body just adapting to the fact that it's getting no stress in that direction for so many months, so many years, so many decades? Start turning its way down to that level. Yeah, I think what really this example, this guy who doesn't start till he's 50-something years old, what that highlights is less to do with age and more to do with if you stop sending that stress signal to the body, then the muscles, the bones are not going to adapt to support because it doesn't need to. It starts pruning, it starts getting weaker. It starts prioritizing energy and focus and strength in other aspects of the body. But when we talk about it, we always talk about it like age. Oh, when you get older. We blame it all on age. Yeah, people think that when you get older, you're going to have weak bones and it's like, no, not necessarily. If you continue to stress them for your entire life, like hopefully you have a situation like this guy where you're five times the most elite in his class. And doesn't this also slap in the face the notion that you should start avoiding these compound lifts? Oh no. Well, that was my post. I don't know if you saw that. So when you guys shared that clip, because recently I've been annoyed with the amount of posts that I've been tagged in of people that are countering what we talk about here. Obviously, we promote that people squat and deadlift and overhead press. If you can't do those things that you work towards them, we think it's incredible for building muscle, incredible for building bone density, incredible for overall health, incredible for burning fat. Those lifts are so essential to having tons of success. And I say essential because I believe in it like that. Where a lot of people in the space do not. They try and they convince the people that, oh, you don't need to do those things, do these other movements. And I just, I'm so tired of that movement in our space because I felt like we just came from that. The early years, my first five to 10 years of being a trainer in my early 20s, that's where we were. We were in the leg press, leg extension, you know. Everything machine-based. Yeah, Smith machine and shoulder pressing. And like we just came from that era. And I think that we had lost our way a bit from some of these old lifts that were so valuable to us. Well, look, you have to. Okay. So the reason why the bones get stronger is because of the sheer, it's called sheer force on the bones and the muscles anchor at the bones. Right. So that's where they're getting stronger. Find me machine exercises. Because one of the most important bone structures that you need to maintain strengthen is your spine. Okay. Your spine is very important. In fact, as people get older, when they're not maintaining strength and health, you notice that their spine curvature starts to change. In extreme cases, you get a humpback. You get really bad posture. It's hard to correct after a certain point. Tell me non-free weight exercises that strengthen and stress the spine. So you're doing a leg press. You're doing a machine shoulder press. You're doing a machine press. You're doing machine row. Yes, you're still strengthening the bones and all that stuff. But now tell me an exercise that's going to create load on the spine like a standing overhead press or a squat or a deadlift. Right. So those exercises load the entire body and create the strength. Unfortunately, I don't have a study to reference or I can't prove that if this guy would have not have been heavy squatting from 50 to 70 years old, and he did leg presses and leg extensions instead, where would that test be? But I can guarantee you it wouldn't be as high. It would not be nowhere in the world. No way. I would bet that a hundred percent. It makes a huge difference on the strength of your bones and your muscles. They're also fundamental human movements. And one thing that we take for granted is that we can move a particular way, and we assume that we'll always be able to move a particular way. But if you stop moving a particular way, your body forgets it. Even walking, if you were bedridden for two years, you would find walking to be challenging. Even if you're in your 20s, once you got up out of that bed, your body literally will forget almost, for lack of a better term, how to walk. Well, if you don't squat, your body will forget how to squat. If you don't press overhead, your body can forget how to do that. If you don't deadlift, and think about those movements in everyday life, right? You need those in everyday life. So, okay, you're strong in the gym, but are you really strong in real life? What's the carryover? And how many exercises do you need to piece together to try to equal the benefits of some of those exercises? Well, I think we also dramatically undervalue the learning curve of those movements and how valuable that is. You're right. When you see these studies that these Instagram turds use to prove that their hack squat or their leg press is equivalent to what a squat is based off of an EMG or some bullshit six-week study, it's like what you're not taking into account was the benefits that you get from learning something difficult, which is so funny because we know this in life. We talk about this all the time, like we just talked about this on the show not that long ago about anything worth doing is difficult. So the idea that wouldn't apply to health and fitness, you're stupid. Like, it's the same concept that the fact that this squat is difficult to get at it that you're going to have to work towards it for a long period of time. It's hard to measure that and say, oh, well, how much more value does that bring to me than just be able to get into a machine and do it right away? It's crazy. It's not just a muscular thing to identify, right? Right. Like a muscular skeletal, like all these other systems of the body benefit from that kind of load demand on your spine. Yeah. And it's fun. It's the crazy part is if you look at the studies on exercise and bone density, not generally being healthy helps with bone density, okay? But if you look at the studies on other forms of exercise and bone density, the effect is small. It's actually small, like running and walking. Running and walking will have a positive effect on the bone density of your lower extremities from the impact of walking and running. But the bone density improvements in comparison to strength training are small. In fact, here's how you know what kind of effects your form of exercise has on your bones, how much muscle it builds. It's a, there's a direct relationship between the amount of muscle that your form of exercise builds and the amount of bone density that it improves upon with you. And strength training just crushes all. In fact, with runners, older runners, they find a little bit of improvement in bone density in the lower body and they see bone density losses in the upper body because they didn't do anything for the upper body. So very, very, in fact, osteopenia, which is before osteoporosis and osteoporosis, is now showing up in people in their 30s, in their 30s because of the inactivity. And the beauty of strength training is to reap the benefits of it, the muscle building and bone strengthening effects. One or two days a week will give you a lot. Literally, one or two days a week is enough to have positive effects on that, on those types of things, because strength training is about the adaptations. Other forms of exercise really to get, you'll get some benefit always, but it's usually like, okay, you really get the benefits, you got to do a lot of it. Strength training one or two days a week and you'll see positive effects. Remember, I told you I had a client who was, had osteopenia and they were doing everything with her, her doctors. They had her on Fosamax, which is like a, it's a drug that you use and other things. And she started strength training with me and for the first time in a decade, I think it was, they saw reversal and her bone density to the point where her doctor called me, got on the phone with me. He's like, what are you doing with her? And I'm like, uh, you know, squatting, we're doing some lunges, we're doing some push-ups. I mean, she was older. He's like, that's it. I said, that's all I'm doing. And they turned her into a case study that they actually use as an example for their other patients. And it was literally, I trained her once to twice a week. It wasn't like anything hardcore. Yeah, I remember, yeah. So my grandma's husband at the time, he was, he would have a hard time just getting up and out of his chair. And like his doctors were telling him, he had like signs of osteopenia. And he was trying to ask me about like supplements and like calcium and like all that. Like you literally need to strength train. Like, like you're weak. Like that's what, like you need to focus on. And it was just really hard for him to understand that fact. It's like, that's what's going to move the needle for you the most. You know, being able to consume some kind of supplement for this is not even going to impact what's going on. That was my point of bringing that up that we had this idea. Most people think that, you know, osteoporosis is because you get older and you lack like nutrients. And it just, it's an age thing and a lacking nutrients thing versus the, like your body just adapting to it. The bone's not being stressed. Whereas if, you know, forget, I mean, you should forget, but the value of the nutrient part is, pales in comparison to the benefits that you get from strength training and stressing the bones that way. You have to have severe nutrient deficiencies to notice bone loss. Right. If you're strength training, strength training sends a signal. It's like adding calories to build muscle, but you're not lifting weight. Right, exactly. You just end up getting fat. Exactly. All right, everybody. Here's the giveaway for today's episode. Maps and Ebola, the program that started it all. Here's how you can enter to win. Leave a comment below this video in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Subscribe to this channel. Turn on notifications. Do all of those things. If we like your comment and pick you as the winner, we'll notify you in the comment section. And boom, free access to Maps and Ebola. We also have a sale going on this month. Check this out. Maps Anywhere, Maps Suspension, Maps Prime, and the No BS Six Pack Formula all together in an at home holiday bundle. The price, $99.99. That's less than the price of a single program. So $99.99 gets you all of those programs to get started. Just click on the link at the top of the description below to get yourself set up. All right, here comes the show. You know, speaking of lifting really heavy weights, I see the deadlift bar stacked up. Listen, I gotta say something. You're on like a PR kick here. Dude, I hit a lifetime PR. You did? Speaking of, I did 605. You did? 605 this morning. Oh, I didn't see that video. I've never, I sent it to the group. No, I don't watch all the videos. I was actually bringing up. I was just, yeah, I stopped watching. I was posting it on the mic pump. Instagram. I actually, I didn't look at it. I actually, I was referring to, oh, that group. I was referring to your last one that you just did. 585, right? Yeah, yeah. 4. So when I did 605. 605 today, yeah. 600 was my previous PR. Strapless, too. You was like, if the baby's not coming. No straps? No. PR. Wow. No strap. I did have to use an alternate grip. Oh yeah, that's fair. Now, I'm not gonna say this is all of the reason, but it is kind of weird that I use the peak power from Organifor. That's all to say, dude. Sales. Both, hey, both times. I did it when I hit 585 and I did it. The power that I formulated. No, all joking aside, that's the best. That feels the best. I've never felt, it feels so good. And I don't have to take as much. How many skills are you doing? I go down to two. 200 milligrams caffeine. Normally, I'd go up to 300. But I went down to 200 and I felt great. I tried three of the other day. It was nice. Right? Yeah, it was a nice feeling. And it lasted a long time, actually. I was actually surprised how long it lasted. So it was pretty cool. No, you know what it came from? The PR was mostly from, well, joking aside, I cut my volume down. I know everybody. Yeah, the guys who tell everybody don't over-train. I was probably over-trade. I focused on getting eight to nine hours of sleep instead of seven to eight. So I tried to prioritize sleep a little bit. And then I bumped my calories and then boom, just like magic, you know? Wow. How did it feel coming up? I mean, you could watch the video. I got a little shaking in the legs, which I hate, but it came up smooth. Was it at the Barstay level and everything? Yeah, I probably could have done. I bet you could have done that. I feel like if I wanted to really push it, I could have gone 615. But I'm not trying to hurt myself. But yeah, it came up pretty good. I couldn't do a double overhand grip. I didn't even try it. I went with alternate, but it felt pretty good. And speaking of aging. Oh, yeah, dude. You see that? Oh, yeah. That was a good time. A little shaky leg there. A little bit. Yeah, that's good, though. The speaking of aging, age does play a role. I want to say that, because before people were like, Adam says aging doesn't play a role. Yeah, okay, it does play a role, but it's not the role that people make it out to be. Now, yes, at a certain age. Yeah, but okay, it does. But for what reason does it play a role? It plays a role because it's less about the actual number. And it's that, oh, it's been 20 years since you touched away. Well, that's what I was going to say. The majority of what people notice is that age does play a role. Especially once you get past 75, then it starts to play a larger role. But look, I'll remind people that powerlifting records are often set in men in their mid-30s to mid-40s, well beyond what's supposed to be your peak, right? Jacqueline set world records in his 50s at 70-something years old. I think for her 70th birthday, he swam handcuffed, legs shackled, and pulled, I think it was seven roboats with 10 people in each one. I said tokeboats last thing you did. No, you got that buried in my head. I mean, this guy you just gave, we just shared the example from Squat University. The guys will definitely share the clip from there that, you know, who didn't even start till he's 50-something years old. And now he's squatting more than I could squat. Doug hit his PRs 50, if I'm not mistaken. 48 or not. 48, 49, yeah. So almost 50, Doug hit PRs, and he did work it out his whole life. Yeah. And it was because he had good training, programming, and, you know, finally, and, you know, diet and all that stuff. So yeah, that was without peak performance, huh? Imagine if you had peak performance. Yeah. I may have to go do it again, right? I don't want people to be like, I'm going to do this. I don't know, man. Coincidence? You tell me. Anyway, did you, so Justin, you and I had the same notes for this. And I brought it, I wrote it down for you, because I knew you'd love this. Did you see what, okay, so Adam does notice. Do you see scientists what they did? They took chicken embryos, and they genetically modified them to give them dinosaur legs. Like Jurassic Park kind of shit. Like a real life picture. Show me a picture. No, I'll send the link to that. Yeah, no. Okay, we're embryos. Is this like Jurassic Park? They never actually hatched them. How do we do this? To get the DNA out of a mosquito that was trapped in sack for 10 million years? How do we do this? That sounds, that's in the movies. Yeah, is that, how do we do this? No, I don't know how it works. That's a good question. I don't know how they do it in real life. How do you get dinosaur legs? I don't know. I don't know how they got the DNA in the dinosaur legs. I mean, what are they trying to do? I have no idea. I mean, they were trying to bring back a mastodon. Amethysts, yeah, to graze on all of the, what the, the tundra, what do they call that? Where it's like all the permafrost. Permafrost. You know what though? Did you guys see that giant turtle? You're talking about dinosaurs. That should look like a dinosaur. Oh my God. That turtle that I sent over? So who was that? Is that your friend that sent that? No, no, no. I just saw somebody on Facebook shared it, and then I fact checked it to make sure it was real, and it was, it's a real photo. The oldest land animal, I think, right now is a 100, I want to say 86 year old turtle. Tortoise, right? Tortoise, yeah. 186 years old. Older than shark? Sharks are okay? Land animal. Oh, land animal, he said, sorry. Land sharks don't exist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just in cartoons? Yeah. Ah! Yeah, dude, they sell you loans, right? But 100 is this? Shark does the oldest animal that we've found, right? Or jellyfish. Oh, it was. That was the one shark, right? That they found. 500 years old or something like that. He was alive when America got founded. Can you imagine that? That's crazy. Well, I'm just wondering how they know how old these things are. You count the rings. Oh, you do? Cut them in half, and then you count the rings? Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I'm suspect of all of it. Remember what I, remember when we got in the big old thing about carbon dating and stuff like that? And then Graham Hancock, I watch it and stuff like, I don't believe none of that shit no more, dude. So I only confirm my bias, dude. Remember when we got into that conversation and you're giving me a hard time? Like, dude, what do you mean you can't? I'm like, yeah, but then you see stuff like, well, I mean, there's just so many examples of how it goes way further back than our original timeline, and nobody's accounted for that. Or they're just going to be like, well, that's weird. Like, is that what we're left with, with academia? Yeah, do you know what you want to know? What's crazy is that in some of these countries where people are like, oh my God, so many people live over the age of 100, like in Sardinia, it's this island off the coast of Italy. Yeah. There's a little bit of an issue there because a lot of people lie. They lie about their age so they can get pension. So they're not over 100, they're like 80 or 90 or whatever? Yeah. Isn't that funny? I've heard that. Wasn't there like people do that lie about that for like getting out of the war, getting out of things too? Yeah. So there's like a couple waves of people that their ages aren't real, dude. Dude, that's so crazy. So we were at the Warrior Game just two nights ago and they were celebrating a lady, I forgot, Dr. Jean, I want to say her name was, 104 years old. Wow. At the Warrior Game. Oh, awesome. Yeah, yeah. How old do you guys want to lift here? Do you guys have a number? 100. You want to go 100? I do want to go 100. 100? At least 100. You know why? Because our generation. Oh, that's an easy, at least minimum. Yeah, I do want to go at least 100 because I think our generation is like really the first to be health conscious early on. Our parents' generation weren't health conscious like we were at our age. Yeah. No. And we were. Like we were already as young teenage boys already thinking about eating better and we've learned in our 20s what we were doing nutritionally, strength training, things like that. I just think that we have an, and science. It'd be interesting to see like a strong 100 year old, you know, right? That could still like look really able bodied, capable, independent, you know, like I could, I could get down with that 100 years old. Do you guys want to hear something to make you feel how old right now? We're closer to the year 2050 than we are to the year 1990. Yeah, that's that. What? That's the best step, Todd. It's just driving my brain. Does that make you feel old, Zell? Yeah, yeah. 1990 doesn't seem like that long ago. So it said date yourself. I saw, I shared, I mean, the day like dating yourself to the younger generation. How would you date yourself without telling them how old you are to a younger, and one of the memes said the guy said, like video games used to only work on channel three. Oh, wow. I was like, oh, that was a good one. That's true. What is that, Doug? It's a 100 year old lady who is deadlifting and powerlifting. Look how solid she looks. Look how good she looks, dude. Look how solid she looks. She's a 100. So I definitely want to live to a 100, bro. Come on. Yeah, her name's Edith Merway Trayna. Can you show me a little clip of her doing something? I was 91, and I started actually missing on a regular. Edith Merway is not only celebrating her 100th birthday, she's also celebrating her entry into the Guinness Book of World Records. I don't know, man. There's a lot of unhealthy stuff we did in our youth, bro. I don't know if we're going to make it. It's got to be only like a handful of examples of this right now is like, imagine, like he said, the generation's coming up. Yeah, you're seeing more and more though. I see 80-year-olds all the time that are like, look good. You know what? Do you guys look forward to getting older? Or do you guys look at it and go, I don't want to do that? Yeah, that's fine. So do I. I feel like the older you get, the more, well, I don't feel like this is true, the more you get away with anything. You can say the more creepy you get. Part of that twist, though. No, not creepy. Part of it's, we can't get away with it. You know what you can and can't do. You know what I'm saying? You've learned that. No, man. My grandfather, man, before he passed away, he would just say shit. And I remember being like, oh, I was envy. He was like, he could just say what he wants. If nobody's going to say these 90-years-old fucks, give in is way less. That's what I said. That's what I said. I can't imagine you at 100. Where are you going to go with that, Adam? That's going to be crazy. You know what I imagine? I'll be like the quiet 100-year-old saying this. I already said everything I need to say. I'll just kind of sit there and watch. Yeah? Yeah, I feel like I could be that guy. I don't think I'm going to be quiet at all. 100-year-old Tantan, a grandma, says, Guinness World Record for weightlifting. She said a world record? Look at her. I was just understanding you, this guy. Man. All I know is, you know, if wife and I make it to. She's pressing good weight, too? Yeah, dude. So I used to love training people in this age group. She doesn't look 100 at all. She does not look 100 at all, dude. She looks like she's in her late 70s. Yeah. That's remarkable. There was this one woman who was in her 70s, by the way. Hey, by the way, see the gym she's working out in? Oh, it's a gym, Jim. Yeah. She ain't working out at all. Yeah, powerlifting type of gym. So great. Yeah. So the best-looking older people that I've ever seen, all lifted weights, all of them. Every single time I've ever seen. There was a 70- That skin, like, yeah, everything about them looked radiant. Mobility, like everything. There was this one woman I remember, she was in her late 60s. So not super-old, but older. Late 60s, pure, like, total white silver hair. She used to work out at the club that you guys ended up working at one point. So I don't know if she was still there when you guys were there. But she'd come in and work out. And she'd wear, like, you know, spandex, like, workout clothes and stuff. And we'd look at her like, God, I remember I went up to her. I said, if you don't mind me asking, you look phenomenal. I see you working out. You really know what you're doing. I know it's kind of rude, but I'm actually, you know, admiring you, like, how, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? I thought she was gonna say 50. Granny's got back. She was, like, 60-something years old. Because of that, dude. I mean, got her phone number. She got me a discount. Why is that? She got me a dinner. Why is that politically incorrect? Or to ask a woman- Because people aren't secure about it. Yeah, but why? Yeah, why? Because society plays a high value on youth, especially with women, where they feel like if they say they're a certain age, they're gonna lose status or value. It's like asking a man how much money you make. Yeah, but at some points, it's gonna be like bragging rights, you know, if you still look good. Right. Yeah, I'm, you know, I'm 95. Which is, well, I think somebody responds when they are older like that and they've taken care of themselves, because they're proud. Yeah, yeah, they're proud of it. It's totally true. Dude, I watched this, there's this series on Netflix I think you guys will love. So you guys know Jonah Hill is, right? Yeah. Huge fan of the guy. I think he's hilarious. But he did this, like, docuseries where he's interviewing his therapist. And his therapist, the guy's name is Stutz. S-T-U-T-Z. This guy is, if you guys like really good, like, like insight on life and happiness and all that stuff, this guy's brilliant. So I've only seen a couple episodes with Jessica, but it's filled with total gems. Netflix? Netflix. And it's in, like I said, Jonah Hill's producing it or whatever. Okay. So check this out. This was so cool. So one of the first things he talks about is your life force. He says, if you can organize your life force, almost everything else falls in order. And this is how he labels it. It's like a pyramid. Okay. And the bottom, the base of the pyramid, is your physical body. I don't remember what the other ones were. I think it was family and friends, and then yourself, if I'm not mistaken. So yourself is at the top, family and friends, and then your body. And he said, with the base one, he says, extras, he goes, people come in here, they're depressed, they're anxious, they find like life has no meaning, no purpose, they don't know where to go. And I get them to exercise, eat right, and sleep better. And he goes, and that fixes 85% of the people that come in. And Jonah, and he's guys like a big, like this is what he does, he obviously works with celebrities, he's a good job. And he says, are you really 85%? Absolutely. You do that 85% of the time. I mean, that aligns with what we've been saying for a long time. It's just cool to hear somebody in that space really acknowledge that just, so like if you're feeling that way. It's unfortunate, to your point, that that's not communicated. Totally. In mainstream. Like 100%. Why do we not see commercials for that type of stuff? For mental health, and just to feel better about life. It's all about looking better. So, and that's what Jonah Hill said. Jonah Hill said, I would have started, because he struggled with weight for a long time, he was really insecure about it, and he opens up about it in the series. And he says, when I was a kid, I was repelled from exercise, because it was all about image, and how you look, and all that stuff. He goes, if I had known that it would have a positive impact on my mental health, he goes, I totally would have adopted it. It took me much later, working with this therapist, to really kind of figure that out. It's one of my favorite compliments that I think that we get for the show. I mean, when people call in, and we get a chance to talk to them, and they tend to think, oh, it's been years that we just had today, we had live callers, and they call in, and they say, the number one thing I hear is, we've helped them change their relationship with exercise. And since then, they've been so much more consistent, because it's not this on-off type of deal. They reckon that we constantly are communicating that something is better than nothing, and then there's gonna be times in your life when it's 15-minute workouts, there's gonna be times when you're killing it in six days a week, it's just like, and learning how to ebb and flow, and recognizing that the reason why you work out isn't just for the aesthetics. It isn't just for the way you look. It's also for all the other positive benefits in your life. And so who cares if you're lifting weights, and sometimes the weight goes up a little bit on the scale, because you're still getting tremendous benefits in other aspects of your life. That arguably are more important. Right. That are arguably more, you know, it's funny, and as Jessica and I were watching this, I mean, I'm pretty open about this and honest. For me, exercise is a very necessary, anti-anxiety antidepressant. If I didn't do those things, I think my tendency would be to go in that direction. And I notice, I know this about myself, that exercise for me is very much a medicine. And not that I've really ever stopped for long periods of time, but I know my mental state changes so much from a workout. I could be an argument, I could think negative about a workout, and I just all of a sudden become elevated and evolved, and I think about things. I could physically feel myself getting either angry or depressed. If I haven't moved very often throughout the week, like it's just one of those, the sedentary nature of it. You just feel the impact of how you think about things or stresses or tasks, especially that you need to accomplish. Look at it completely differently when you feel like shit and you haven't been expressing movement. It's just like it's totally a physical thing for me. I haven't quite wrapped my brain completely around that phenomenon that you both are explaining right now, because sometimes it's a blessing and it's a curse, that you've learned to attach all the positive things that workout gives you so that when you miss it, you also go like, fuck, I'm less of a husband. I'm less of a father. I'm less of a... Oh, a double edged sword. Yeah, it's kind of a double edged sword because I do know how important... So to your point, like I've caught myself before, just kind of in a negged out mood because I didn't get to my workout. I didn't get to my workout. And so then I'm kind of a negative Nancy because I know how important it is. And so there is kind of an interesting dichotomy right there, right there. You go, oh, wow. Do you punish yourself if you didn't do it? Yeah. Well, I know. And I've kind of gone through that. And then also it was, for me, I just kind of reduce it back to just overall movement. Like, so if I'm at least getting like active and I'm up and I'm moving, like that's... I have to do that. You know, it's so... I don't need to punish myself for not getting my workouts to that point, but I do need to express myself. That's a really good point. And I think that's been the evolution for me, too. It's just like, okay, maybe I need to get my workout, but then I washed two cars. It took two and a half, three hours to do it. I just got up and moved. Yeah. Went on an hour walk and listened to a podcast that I wanted to listen to. At least I went and did something physically active and positive for me. So that was key. Hey, so I just... I read something really interesting today. I didn't know this, but there's a possible connection between a low sodium diet and insulin resistance. Oh. So... Why? Because insulin helps the kidneys retain water. Okay. And if your sodium is low, your body needs to... So it pulls where it's harder? Increase its insulin to help your kidneys retain more water. So according to what I read, in some cases, increasing sodium can help somebody with their insulin sensitivity. Now, the reason why a lot of people don't necessarily talk about this is because oftentimes, people with diabetes or insulin resistance are eating a diet that's high in sodium because heavily processed foods tend to come with lots of sodium. So they're eating a shitty diet, then there's high sodium, and they connect those things. But in reality, oftentimes, if people are trying to eat healthy and they think, oh, I'm going to eat real low sodium, that that could actually cause issues with insulin. So especially if you eat low carb or you eat a non-processed food diet. Well, I wonder too how many people have hypertension at the same time that are in that diabetic kind of state. Yeah. Because I mean, I just know, for instance, my dad or somebody in that kind of category that's already kind of unhealthy. And so it's now ads. So the little leery of adding that is advice. Yeah, it's really interesting. Anyway, so I got to tell you guys a funny story about this girl that got detained at the airport for smuggling something through security. How did she smuggle it? Well, so here's what happened. I read this story. In an orifice? I read this story. So she videoed this in social media. That's why I didn't see that word. She did it. She made a thing out of it. Okay, so this is going to get weird. She made a real out of it? This is going to get weird. Her boyfriend died. Okay. On this trip? No. Her boyfriend died. So they cremated him. She took his ashes. Put it in a butt plug. That was made out of metal. Warred the butt plug and tried to get through security. And they caught her. And they found it. And she got in trouble. And she fell. Just how her boyfriend would have wanted it. Yeah, dude. Why? Okay. People probably wrote that in. Why would you need to smuggle somebody's ashes? She was doing this, I think, as a social media thing or whatever. But like, what? I don't know. Are people like, people just don't... Bro, it's so not desperate for attention. Yeah, it's so hard to... Maybe that was his wish, though, when he died, though. Yeah, that's what it means. I've always wanted to just live in there. She's like, what's your... What's your died wish? Oh, Steve, and you're hilarious. Carry me around. The lengths that we will go for... Seriously, write this down. Social media attention now is... Bro, there's no limits to that at all. That's so funny. You imagine being the security guy or girl that found that? It's like, with the wand? They're like, wait a minute. Beep. As a species, I truly felt like we've continued to evolve to get smarter and smarter and smarter. Meanwhile. The first time in my life or that I could remember or historically I'm familiar with, it seems to be like looking like a bell curve now. We're on the way down the other side. Idiocracy is in full steam right now. That's a movie everybody needs to watch, by the way. Yes, please do. Which one? Idiocracy. Idiocracy. I don't know if I saw that one or not. Oh, it's instant classic. It's Mike Judge, it's the same guy's office space. And it's just, yeah. It's so relevant. It's, God, when was it? Late 90s? Yeah, just gotta be the 90s. So dude gets, I think he gets stuck in a cryogenic chamber. And then they, I don't remember how it happens. I forgot, I watched it once. But he wakes up in the future, way in the future. He's just an average guy. He's just a regular dude. He's like a regular, whatever guy, right? Anyway, he wakes up in the future and what they showed was while he was frozen over however many thousands of years that dumb people were having lots of kids and smart people weren't. So they were showing how human evolution started going in that direction. And then he comes out and it's in the future. And he's the smartest man on earth. Yeah, the smartest guy on earth. And he's a kind of a dumb guy. And the president is a pro wrestler. Yeah, he's just a regular guy. He's just, the accuracy bro, the accuracy. I'm telling you, I'm calling The Rock will be the president though. No, and he solves all the- He solves all the most relevant movie right now. He solves all the world's problems because the world's problems are so- Is this it right there, Doug? That's it right there. So there's this like energy drink. Luke Wilson, yeah. There's this energy drink that they just, they use for everything. They drink it. It's got electrolytes in it. It's called Brando or something like that. Brando. And it's like Gatorade. I can't believe I've never seen this. Oh my god, dude. All the crops are dying. They're like watering it. Yeah, there's water. Yeah, it's like, I think we should just use water and everyone's like, this guy's brilliant. Wow. It's like, but it's got electrolytes. Doesn't it feel like we're trapped in that right now? I'm telling you, dude, every leader coming up, like people trying to run for president. Like what is happening, dude? Oh, bro. We are in dumb dumbs. There was no flat earthers when I was a kid. That's all I'm going to say. Yeah, that's right. We are. We're going the opposite direction. That's because they find each other. And so it gets exaggerated, do you think? Well, I think, yeah. We're also indoctrinating other idiots, though. Well, I mean, if you're stupid by yourself, you're kind of like, am I right? Then you find 10 other people like you. Did they all agree? Yeah, you double down. Yeah, yeah. Birds aren't real. You think that too? I knew it. I knew it, you know. Well, that is some truth, though. Hey, so I just read this. They're doing this experimental vaccine. Uh-oh, vaccine talk. I've been seeing ads for more and more vaccines right now. Well, I mean, though. It's like a new trendy thing. Well, the vaccine's been around for a while. No, no, yeah, but to see it advertised a lot, and like the vaccine for this, the vaccine for that, I've seen it pop up. Just wait until they have a vaccine for depression or something. Anyway, there's a vaccine that they're working on for animals, that they're testing on animals for fentanyl. Wow. So it's a vaccine that give it to you, and it prevents fentanyl from getting into your brain. So you take fentanyl and you get no effect. So the theory is we can vaccinate people, therefore they won't get addicted to this very powerful opioid. Yeah, I don't think that's a good strategy. I think people are going to figure out a way to take some other shifts. Of course they will. You know? So, okay, so it doesn't affect the brain and it also, they don't get the high from it anymore? Correct. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Yeah, they'll just choose a different drug. That's what I was thinking. You're not solving the root cause. That's 100% what I was saying. Yeah, I mean, they'll, I mean- People will abuse anything. Yeah, no, if you can't. Although- I mean, we see this, you see this in almost anybody who has battles, any sort of addiction, whether it be pornography, drugs, alcoholism, smoking cigarettes, food. Yeah. Yeah, you just, you finally, you'll find something like that that gives you a temporary fix on the thing, like somebody who's addicted to food, you know, you could staple your stomach, you know what I'm saying? And have a tiny little, so you can't possibly eat anymore. But what ends up happening is then you pick up alcoholism, or you pick up smoking, or you pick up heroin, or you pick up something else, or gambling, or like there's so many things that, because you don't ever address the root cause. Are there any good stats on that? Because it does seem like fentanyl deaths have increased. They have. They have. They have. They have. They've definitely gone. That's probably why this is- Yeah. It looks like a really big issue. So what's happening is they're importing raw materials from China. Which by the way, that's how they use, they'll use that narrative to push the vaccine. Yeah. Sure. They'll use that, they'll use that as the way to campaign. Is that, oh, we've seen this, the alarming increase, and we're going to save, you know, tens of thousands of people's lives by doing this, when in reality, no- Yeah, plus I wonder if you could just change the fentanyl a little bit so that it bypasses whatever the vaccine did. But anyway, they're getting all the raw materials from China, and they can't ban or block those because pharmaceutical companies need them. So what's happening, because fentanyl's, it's homegrown. They're taking these raw materials, making the fentanyl here, pressing them into pills and selling them, and the deaths have exploded. You know, like 500,000 people died from overdose of fentanyl? Doug, what is, what family is fentanyl come from? Is it like an opiate? Yes, it is. Is it like heroin? Yes. Way more powerful. Or- It's way more powerful than heroin? More, yeah. Oh, it is. I don't know about heroin. Oh, I don't- Well, more- It's more of an opiate. I didn't hear heroin, but- Sounds worse. Sounds worse. I don't know if it actually necessarily is. I know it's in that category. I would like to see it. Let's see heroin deaths versus fentanyl. Well, that's because fentanyl is so easily accessible. You don't have to inject it. And which- Okay. Yeah. So what is that right there? It's a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin. Justin wins again! Thank you. Up to 50 times stronger, yes. And 100 times stronger than morphine. See what happens when I- I second guess myself. Stop doing that, Justin. You know, that's happened like- That's happened like five times down the podcast. Yes, I know. Where you were right and Adam and I were right. I should never question you, dude. Never. You guys should never do that. Wow, it is that strong. It is. And what's happening is that kids are buying these pills. And they're used to a particular dose of whatever opiate that they normally take. Then they take fentanyl and because it's so much stronger, overdose. I mean, these overdose deaths from fentanyl. Crazy. Yes. Wow. Crazy, right? I mean, obviously it's a big problem. And they're trying to solve it with that, which I don't think that's the answer. No. But that's, yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. It's like that. Wasn't there one- There was a drug. I want to say- Are you talking? No. There was something for alcohol where they give it to you and then if you drink alcohol you just get sick. If that wasn't mistaken. And that's been around for a little while. Maybe Doug can figure out what that is. You know they made that for sugar, too. What? Yeah. There's a company that does that where you- Oh, yeah. You chew gum or you have this pill or what you take and then it reacts with sugar. So when you eat sugar it doesn't taste good? Yeah, it tastes like shit. So now you just reprogram your association with a lot of these foods that way, right? You're probably right. What does it say, Doug? I don't know if this is the right one. It's a disulfiram is a medication that's used to treat alcohol use disorder cause people who drink alcohol while taking this medication to become very sick. That's it. That's it. That's the one. So they'll give alcoholics this medicine and then they can't drink alcohol anymore cause it makes them sick. And I mean, is that cured alcoholism? I don't think it's had a big impact. You know what would be smart is to, if you had someone in your family that you snuck that in. But you didn't tell them. Because if you took it yourself- You could just stop taking it. Yeah, psychologically you would know that like, oh it's because I took this pill. But if someone snuck it in and you didn't know and every time you fucking drank you started getting sick again. Maybe you would create the association. You'd only have to do it a few times. That's right. They're like, fuck I can't drink anymore. I can't drink anymore. And then they had no idea that. And then they would be like, oh, maybe I'll try rum instead. You know, keep going down the line. Move it down the line. Yeah. And then they're like, I'll do fentanyl. I gotta go to fentanyl. Dude, speaking of drugs, there's a- I just read this today. There was a popular tourist beach in Mexico. Let me see. A popular Mexican resort town. Let's figure out what this place is. It's a drug transition. This is good. I know. It's really good, right? I gotta find what the name was. Visitors to Acapulcos famed Playa Condesa. So people are on the beach. They're like, yeah, this is cool. That's good. Oh, body's washing up on the shore. What? Yeah. And they were all tortured and beaten from the cartel. The cartels? Yeah, dude. Yeah, one was with gunshot wounds. Another one was tied to a cement anchor. Another one was lying face up in the sand. This is like a popular destination. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Resort. Yes. Yes. Wow. That's not cool. Can you imagine, dude? With your kids? Hey, dad. Yeah. Yeah. That guy is sleeping. Yeah. Dude, that's crazy. That is crazy. Yeah, the drug war is getting really, apparently really crazy over there. It's getting worse. I don't know. I know it was for a second. I don't know about now, but I know that they declared like this. They're like, we're going to go to war with them. And it just ramped up the violence. I don't know what is worse is having like a country that's full of our cartel, people like this, with bodies washing up or living in America where they're all fucking politicians and you think that they're good people. Like what is worse? They tell you what you want to hear, but they just steal all your stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And then we are smarter than you. I don't know. Like cartel is like, they're gangster as fuck. They're like, let the body wash up there. Dude, you know what you're dealing with. Let the people know. They're straightforward. Let the people know. Yeah. Let the people know what we did. You know what I'm saying? You sound like... The politicians are not doing it like that. You sound like my grandfather. My grandfather used to be like, oh, yeah. The mafia takes your money. What do you think they do over here? They take your money? They do. To me, I know this is going to be controversial, but... No, come on, bro. Then I can't do that. I would prefer... No, don't do that. No, you don't. Don't do that. Don't do that. No, you won't. You say that. You say that. It's just as corrupt here. It's a different kind of corrupt. I don't know. How many bodies are washing up on the shore, though? What's that called? What do you think they just... Okay, so, okay. Do you think that the cartel and the mob just killed random people for random people? Or do you think people that stole from them, people that didn't pay their shit, didn't do the shit? Or do you think they did it to just random people? Trust me, there's a lot of people getting caught in a crossfire. And... And... That's fair. And... How many people do you think you caught in a crossfire in the U.S. or the U.S. fucking people over? I don't know, Adam. Not too many. Yeah, yeah. Don't live there for a while. Tell me how it goes. Don't pay back your... I've watched too many Narcos series on Netflix to say I want that. Don't pay off your car loan. I'm not saying that I want that. Don't pay off your car loan. What I'm saying is that I think people are blind if you don't think that it's damn near as gnarly over here. It's a different kind of gnarly. It's a different game we play here. We play a different game that... And over there is gangster in old school. Mob and cartel life is old school gangster shit. U.S. is modern day gangster shit. To use an example, I'm going to disagree with you, but to use an example, there's that guy. What was his name? Robert Olbridge? Was that his name? The guy who had... Who did the Silk Road? Was that his name? Oh, yeah. It was... I think it's Robert Olbridge. I'm going to look it up because I wrote it down here. Yeah, you have the STX gangsters, right? Oh, Ross Olbrecht, right? He did the Silk Road where people are voluntarily buying and selling drugs from each other. So nobody's being forced, not saying that it's good or bad, just saying it's true that people chose to go on there to buy drugs and people are choosing to sell it. And so it's this voluntary interaction. He gets two life sentences plus 15 years. So he gets busted for having this website and goes to jail forever. Forever. He's gone, right? Then you got the dude that built FTX, literally stole $10 billion from average people. Nothing. Nothing so far. Yeah, Doug, pull up a staffer right now because you guys are irritating me with this. Tell me how many people in the United States die of prescription drugs. And then I want you to tell me how many people in the cartel kill people in a year. Oh, well, that's not the same. Well, what do you mean it's not the same? We push drugs on people. 80% of our advertising is ran by pharmaceutical companies, we get people hooked on prescription drugs. It's an alarm. Give me the number. Well, it's a lot. Okay. How many people in the cartel kill? I mean... Do you think it's the same amount of people? How many Colombian tuxedos? Do you think it's even close? I don't think it's apples to apples either. Yeah, that's not so weird. You guys are... No, no, no. You guys are funny to me that, okay, because it's all... They shot them in the head. That's so much worse than like getting them hooked on pills for 20 years and then them shooting themselves. Well, no, but it's not... I mean, it's not a really a direct comparison. Of course, it's not exactly Apple. Pull up the numbers for me. So we can see how alarmingly different it is right there. Yeah, it's a lot, dude. Yes, definitely more people die. Okay, so explain to me... I think it's a little stressful. Yeah, that environment. I mean... I'd rather deal with my doctor. Just for your average person, I'm just thinking about... I don't know. I'd rather... Would you rather... They want to be lied to and they want to feel like they have... The choice. They want to believe the choice. Exactly. And that's all I got to contribute. Like, you know, maybe the lies are a little more soothing at night, but... I don't know. Having it visibly right in front of you and the threat of violence... You have the option of going to your doctor or El Chapo. Like, which one do you do? He's like, hey, take some bike in it. It ain't like that. Where are my numbers at, bro? Well, I'm getting the numbers. They seem awful low. What, the cartel killing people? No, the drug overdose. This is opioids. 3,400 people in 1999, 17,000 in 2017. Oh, wow. But prescription drugs are, in fact, the third leading cause of death. Oh, wow. With how many? What's the number? I'm trying to get a number here. Okay, so then also give me the cartel number. So, 932,000 people have died since 1999, which seems low to me on that. Million people, huh? Okay, so, but you're talking about people out on the street with guns shooting people in the head. Okay, so... They're either next and... Okay, so explain to me what is worse, though. A smaller percentage having crazy scarier deaths or a number that is a thousand times bigger that a slow, a slow, sneaky death? Hold on a second. But they're also selling the drugs at cartels. So, there's a lot of people dying from the drugs that they're selling as well. Drug overdose. Okay, so look, here's the deal. One of the leading places for pharmaceutical prescriptions would be like, I don't know, Miami or Fort Lauderdale, right? Florida, we have all these retirees. Would you rather live there? Of course I'd rather live in Florida than Mexico. Or would you rather live in... Doug, find me a cartel, like, you know, city. Tijuana. War is. Yeah, where would you rather live, bro? That's just it. I mean, I'm worried about the crossfire, personally. The point I'm really trying to make, of course I would rather live in fucking Miami floor than I would rather live anywhere in Mexico. Okay, so that's... But the point is that we pretend in this country that we're so sophisticated and we're not evil, we're not as bad, and the cartel is so scary and so bad. It's like, to me, I would rather be faced with evil and the bad knowing that they are, that they're letting... Are you doing PR for the cartel? No. It kind of feels like it a little bit. He's like, thank you for not talking, guy. We're just different in that area. I don't believe you can turn the phone. We're different. We're different. We're definitely different in that area, brother. I need you Spanish. Are they paying a sponsorship money? What's going on here? Are we getting underground money from the cartels? Say some good things about us, compared to the U.S. government. Yeah. And you're all good. All right, speaking of things that affect you, cause changes in your mental state, what are you guys thinking about the Brain Blend from Ned? You guys been using that now for a while? I mean, it's not fitting all, but... Definitely not going to kill you. It's not going to do that. I noticed you got... You use it every day. I actually, this is... So they've done a couple of new products that we have, we use, and then there's a few of them that I'd use, and then I'd be like, whatever. Obviously, I've talked about Mellow being my absolute favorite product that Ned's done. This is now my second favorite product that I've done, is the Brain Blend. Feels good. I'm using it consistently, because I feel like I can feel a difference when we podcast, when we take it before, or when I don't. Both of you guys are using it pretty much every single time. Way sharper with it, yeah. And I do it pretty much before every podcast now. And combined with my caffeine drink, I absolutely love it. The combination of the two of them together is like... What a great combination. The two of those. That's my jam right there. Oh, you know what? I want to give out... We got to do a mention, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Can we keep that going? Yeah, I got one for you. Okay. Old school bodybuilding... Bodybuilding Z. SY at the end. So old school bodybuilding, and then SY. Doug, you can look it up. It's got great posts of old school bodybuilders, strength athletes, how they worked out, quotes, stuff like that. Really cool stuff. I love watching stuff like that. Very cool. Cool page on Instagram. I'm on it. Go check them out. Check this out. You're not what you eat. You're what you digest. Digestive enzymes tend to drop in your body as you age. And this may be why you're noticing digestive issues. Well, you could supplement with digestive enzymes to help break down proteins, fats, and carbohydrates for better digestion and better assimilation of those nutrients. Now, there is a company that makes digestive enzymes specifically for fitness-minded people. It's called Mass Zymes. It's the best digestive enzyme company that we found. Go check them out. Go to masszymes.com. That's M-A-S-S-Z-Y-M-E-S.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code MindPump10 for 10% off any order. All right. Here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Drew from Colorado. Drew, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, guys. What's going on? So good to be on your show. Yeah, thanks for calling. Yeah, so quick background. I'm running anabolic for the second time around. After running anabolic, then performance, and then power lift. I'm really enjoying anabolic again. But during my overhead press in phase one, I really can't go above 95 pounds without getting some pain in my mid-back. I think it's my erectors, but it's kind of when I'm pressing up and getting my head out of the way so it doesn't hit my chin. My back is hurting pretty bad. I do have pretty good shoulder mobility. I work on it daily with Indian clubs and May spells and stuff. But yeah, it's just really frustrating. I'd be able to go above that weight. And I shall also note that I do have hypermobility, and I have had shoulder surgery before on both shoulders. Where's your hypermobility? Is this throughout the whole body or just in the shoulders? It's kind of throughout the whole body, but mostly in my knees. I don't get any quad flexion when I hyper extend my knees. Same with my glutes. If I hyper extend my hips forward, I don't get any glute firing either. So you're just overall super flexible? Yeah. Okay. This is a core stability issue. Okay. So when you're pressing up above your head, what you want to do is you want to brace your core really hard so you don't over arch your back to press the bar above your head. So what you're doing is you're overarching and you're probably feeling some shearing forces in your back. Drop the overhead press for a Z-Press. Z-Press would be good, but you got to brace your core. He doesn't have an option. He doesn't have an option. He's going to fall over. That's why I like the Z-Press. This is a great example of where I would pull out anywhere in a program where it says overhead press and we would Z-Press. Yeah. Another thing too is you could do one arm. Overhead carry. Yeah. Overhead carries and one arm presses. Where you keep one hand on your core to activate it. So you put your hand on your belly, brace your core. Don't arch your back as you press up with the weight because that overarching that's causing the problem. That's what it sounds like. So really tense up your core like somebody's going to come and punch you in the stomach while you're trying to do this press. You may have to go lighter in order to make this happen because it's going to be a new recruitment pattern. Okay. Awesome. So do the Z-Press instead of overhead press and work on the core. So you're saying I shouldn't skip the ab exercises and map Santa Bolic, right? No, no, no. So it's not that, okay. So you got to understand it's not necessarily a weakness. I want to say that because you might be able to do lots of ab exercises and core exercises. It's just not bracing properly and you're overcompensating. Connectivity issues. Yeah. You're really arching your back to try to get the bar overhead versus staying a little bit more upright and rigid. So when you do the press next time, before you press the bar, brace your core real hard. Don't allow your body to arch and then see if you can press the barbell overhead and how that feels. All right. Well, thanks guys. And you know, I do need to tell you guys a big thank you. Coming out of college, I weighed about 350 pounds and I found you guys shortly after and since then has completely changed my life. I've listened to you guys for about four years now and it's been incredible. The messages you guys give about fitness and making it a part of your life and chasing health and not aesthetics. It really resonated with me and it's changed my life. So thank you guys so much. Oh yeah. Thank you. But we should send, let's send them a program, right? Because you're doing, you have what maps and a ball, what programs you have? Does yes. I have a lot. I pretty much have them all. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. They're fantastic. Awesome. All right. We appreciate it. Yeah. Keep in touch. Let us know what happens. Well, dude, thank you guys so much. Thank you. Right on. Sometimes people would feel this with cable rows too. And it's just, they had to just brace their core to offset the overarching. Could also just be tightness in the mid, mid upper back, but this is not uncommon, right? It was body's natural way of protecting itself by compensating and kind of like making sure that it's secure. So yeah, to be able to slow down and really focus on bracing and making sure that mechanisms happen is everything. I actually think it's more common than, I mean, for different reasons, right? It could be tight lats, it could be forward shoulder. It's all compensation. Yeah. So it's, you know, when you're trying to press a bar up above your head, if you have really tight lats or you have, you lack the shoulder mobility or you are in a rounded position with the scapula, like all those things could cause what he's feeling. This is why I love the Z-Press because it literally eliminates that. Like you cannot press that weight up above your head without stabilizing the core, without having good mobility in your shoulders, without retracting this scapula. It just- He's going to have to go down to the bar. Yeah, you start off with that, but get strong on that. If you like start with the bar on Z-Pressing and work your way of getting strong on that, and then go back to a press and use the advice that you said with, you know, tightening your core as you press and see what happens. Yeah, and really packing the shoulder and going through that part of it and everything else, like once he really starts dialing that in, it's going to be absolved. Our next caller is Grail from Wisconsin. Hey, what's happening, man? How can we help you? All right. So my question is, I eat a relatively high-carb diet because I want to get proper fiber. I've been eating oatmeal every day because it's the first thing I think of as a breakfast food that has fiber and I like it. I'd like to lower my carbon take. So how could I do this while still properly getting fiber? And I've been reading that oatmeal is actually not that good for you. May I add your song or is oatmeal really bad for you? Okay. So let's start with the low-carb thing. You can get fiber from well-cooked fibrous vegetables and berries. Berries are low in calories and carbohydrates and also high in fiber, but well-cooked vegetables are easy sources of fiber that can give you kind of what you need. It doesn't have to come from carbohydrate sources. Oatmeal can be very good or very bad. Depends on the rest of your diet and how you react and respond to it. Yeah, if you like it and it's working for you, it's not bad, bro. No. Generally, it's a health food. I would categorize it. Generally, it's something that's healthy. It's either gluten-free or maybe gluten-residue if it's made with other products, but usually it's gluten-free. It's usually easy to tolerate, good source of carbohydrates, easy, long shelf life inexpensive. It's a good source of carbohydrates, so it's actually a pretty good breakfast. Now, if you eat oatmeal in the morning and find yourself not feeling good, it might not be for you, but for most people, oatmeal is pretty good. You guys answer your question? Yeah, definitely. I see here you're also asking, what are the best healthy fats for getting muscle mass? Did you want some answers on that as well? Yeah, well, my goal was to maybe Swiss room because I'm slightly pre-diabetic, so I wanted to lower my carbon take just to take it easy on my pancreas and get higher healthy fats. So I thought maybe that'd be something good for me because I'm in a newbie stage where I'm still putting on mass. My weight has been dropping, man. I've been eating. I've been following you guys' little program to just eat and live, and it's been dropping off, so I don't know. I might just keep it the same, I guess. Usually, if you're losing body fat and you're in a calorie deficit, usually that'll positively affect your blood sugar. I still monitor it because you can eat a diet that's got carbohydrates in it and eat properly for yourself and have great improvements. It's the calories. Too many calories usually cause the issue. Now, you can go low carb, which is another step, and some people see a lot of success with that, so the question is, what kind of fats should I aim for? This can be quite individual, but I would stick to natural fats. Avocados, chicken thighs, steak. Yeah, olive oil is like a superfood. It's a great, healthy fat. Most people do really well with it. Yeah, and animal fats, some people have issues with them, other people don't, but if you find that saturated fat intake has a negative impact on your blood lipids, you could try grass-fed meats, pasture raised eggs. They have higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids than the conventional type of stuff, but if your calories are low, generally you'll just see improvements regardless. Also, keep in mind, if things are working really well for yourself, too, there's not much I'm messing with. Like, you like oatmeal, it's sitting well with you. You're seeing great results. You're building muscle, you're slowly leaning out. If you're also getting stronger, too, I mean, if all signs are pointing in that you're doing things pretty well right now, don't get caught up sometimes in the Instagram hype of somebody doing the alarmist post of, oh, oatmeal's bad for your, oh, this is, you know, I know there's so much of that in social media where all of a sudden, one day you think you're doing something right, next day you see some expert say that this is bad for you and so, you know, be careful of that. Yeah, be careful of that and it sounds like you're doing a really good job right now. Yeah, and then just side note, the best thing you could do for insulin sensitivity is build and strengthen muscle. Muscle is very insulin sensitive, so it's, I mean, you could, there's studies on people who are obese and they don't do anything, but get them to build muscle and you see these improvements. And how their body responds to insulin. So building muscle alone, and it's another store, it's, you know, it stores glycogen, this is where carbohydrates get turned into energy, it's insulin sensitive. So building muscle is a great strategy for improving your blood sugar and your insulin sensitivity. What maps programs do you have right now? I don't. Oh, okay. Get you started on maps and Ebola, dude. Yeah, maps and Ebola, that'll be a great program for you to start with. And then I'd follow that up with maps performance and maps aesthetic, but anabolic would be a great program for you. Gotcha. Yeah. Doug's gonna send that over to you, bro. All right, so I'm good. All right, man. You got it, man. Thanks for calling out. All right, bro, let's have a good day. All right, you too. He looks like he'd hang out with the Diaz brothers. They look like they come from the same crew or whatever. I feel like he's, you know, he is doing a good job right now. And you just end up questioning yourself, right? Well, I mean, it sounded like somebody, he'd seen something recent that someone said that like oatmeal's bad or what like that. And, you know, it's unfortunate what's happened to, you know, so many good things because of social media. Obviously I'm very blessed. We've built a business off of it. We've had the ability to, the podcast can connect to so many people, but the unfortunate part now is there's so much information. Well, the only way to get attention now is to be an alarmist. No, you're right. And that's the only, like to be counter what everybody believes to be true. And so then as a consumer, you're like, wait a second, I just heard the other day that this is good. Now this guy who's a doctor or this person who's an authority is telling me that this is bad. And it's like, bro, you were doing good. If you're, if you are seeing yourself, lean out, build muscle, blood sugars looking good, like everything, I mean, you're probably doing pretty damn good. Yeah. And the worst part about it is people who feel like crap will ignore that they feel like crap because they read that the diet that they're on is supposedly amazing. Right. And then on the flip, people who feel great will question the diet that they're on because they read something that says that that diet isn't good. Change things unnecessarily. At the end of the day, like listen to your body. If your digestion is good, you're getting leaner. Blood lipids look good. Blood sugar looks good. Performance looks good. You're probably okay. You're probably doing all right. Our next caller is Joanne from Florida. Hi, Joanne. How can we help you? Hi, guys. I want to get your opinion on a situation because I know you guys are full of opinions. And I do want to credit you for giving me like my life back. I've listened to you now for three years and I started on Anaba last year and did aesthetic and performance as well. So I'm running through Anabolic for my second time through. Thank you guys for saving me from overtraining. But my issue now is that I'm with a coach who is... I think I'm at too low of a deficit even though I can't wait till there's weight. I'm now in my second cold in a month from being at this category range. And I know Adam's an expert on reverse dieting, but I just wanted to see what you guys thought of how the process is going. Where were your calories at before and where are your calories at now that they cut you? Well, she had us do about a month of running our own, you know, just not changing anything and tracking. So it was probably somewhere around 1800 to 2000. I mean, I was definitely needing to tighten up. So when she put me on the fat loss phase, I guess, we were at 1600 and she's dropped me now to 1200. I've been at 1200 for about five weeks. And how do you feel right now? You've gotten sick twice, you said. How does your energy feel? How does your strength feel? Do you have any idea like how much you move throughout the day? Do you have a sedentary job? Do you step a lot? Do you have any idea? Oh, my steps, I don't even count them. I have a desk job. I have a 45-minute commute either way. My workouts are about the main thing that I do for movement. I would rather be doing cardio just to keep functional. I try to lift two days a week and do cardio on the other days just for some movement. And she told me to cut out the cardio because obviously she thought it was interfering at this low rate, I guess. It says here that you're also not having much energy and skipping workouts because of the low calories. Yeah, that's true. So I would often prefer to lift every other day, but I will find it to maybe Sunday when I lift and I might not fill up to it again until Saturday. But lately what I've been doing is just when I get home, I say there's no real excuse to not lift because you guys give us so many minutes between sessions or sets, I would say. So I just go ahead and push through it. Joanne, what does your gut tell you about this diet? What do you, because it sounds like you want us to confirm what you already are feeling. You're kind of your, the way you're asking questions, it sounds like you know the answer, but I want to ask you directly. Do you think, how do you feel about your calories? I mean, I think I could be wrong. That's why I'm asking because I feel like this is, I mean, it's a balance macro split. It's about 30, 30, 30. I mean, she was very clear about not wanting to take us too low and I just think I'm being a baby and not wanting to do what I'm told to do, to be honest. Well, look, if you're feeling really low energy, you're getting sick often. You're not working out like you want to. So you're losing strength. You're not feeling great. If your weight loss is feeling like it's stalling or not consistent, like if all those things are happening, I think you're, I think going on a cut right now is probably not a good idea. I think it might be a better idea to continue to focus on feeding your body, building strength, and getting yourself to a point where cutting doesn't bring you down as low as 1200 calories. Like, where are you going to go from here? In other words, like- I mean, I could tell you what I would do with you. I mean, I would actually keep you up in the 1800 calorie range, but make good choices, right? So if the last month was kind of just tracking what you were doing and you weren't really targeting macros or going after like a good high protein diet, I would be focused on that. I would say, hey, let's clean up the diet. Let's make good choices. Let's make sure we hit your protein intake, but let's keep your calories at 1800 to 2000. Let's get strong. And then I actually would schedule walking for at least an hour a day for you, because it sounds like you're in the same kind of boat that I'm currently in right now where I started tracking my steps and was blown away that I'm only doing like 3000 steps a day just because we're so sedentary here. I sit in a car for 45 minutes to an hour, both ways to get to my work. Then I typically don't want to move around very much when I get home. And so I've actually become very sedentary in the last couple of years. And so now I have to like proactively go for a nice extended walk in addition to my short little 10 minute walks that I like to do after eating. So I would actually increase some movement for you, not hard cardio, not getting on there and sweating your ass off, just moving. I'd want you to try and track our steps and get our step count up a little bit while keeping your calories at 1800 to 2000 and eating good balance. And then our focus would be, let's get strong. Let's get strong. Let's build some muscle and let's see how you feel. And I think that we could lean out slowly while building strength and hopefully your metabolism at the same time. Yeah, and I see here that your weight is at 146 at 55, is that correct? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and you want to drop 15 pounds. Your body weight's actually not bad if you had good body composition. I wouldn't worry too much about the scale. I'd worry more about the muscle and body fat percentage when you get to that place. But Adam's advice is ideal because what's happening right now is you're cutting your calories, so 1200 calories is very low. That's the lowest I would ever want to take anybody and I would only take them down to 400. For a short period of time. Very short period of time. And this is for somebody where like, we're getting them shredded, not going from like, oh, I want to drop a little bit away, but rather I got to get down to get on stage, right? I'm going to compete in a competition where I'm getting to a borderline unhealthy body fat percentage. In other words, it's not a healthy place to be. So I'm on board with Adam right now and your body's kind of talking to you. And here's what you'll find. With the higher calories and focusing on strength and increasing your activity, you're probably going to get leaner doing that. You're going to feel better and get leaner and feel stronger. You should not feel terrible going through this process. Now I don't mean you shouldn't feel hungry because that's kind of normal if your calories are cutting or whatever, you're burning more than that. But the whole like, I'm feeling down, I'm feeling low energy. I'm dragging ass. And then you're asking yourself, am I being a baby? You know, am I being weak? You know, the truth is, I don't think that's the case with you. You hired a coach. You've been listening to us for a while. You're probably pretty consistent with work. You don't seem to be some, you don't come across to somebody that seems to be lazy. So I think it's probably just too low for you. I would go in the op. I would do exactly what Adam said and take your time and see how you feel. Yeah, in a perfect world, I either keep your calories right at 1800 to 2000 and I slowly lean you out over that time or we start to increase your calories and we speed the metabolism up. I'd be more happy as your coach if we didn't move anywhere on the scale and at the end of the month, I had you eating, you know, 2200 calories and we're kind of maintaining. Then if you dropped five pounds and we're eating 1200 to 1300 calories. So that would be my coaching to you. But I know that in defense of your coach because I don't know what the conversation looked like. I know how hard it can be sometimes as a coach when my client is telling me like, I want to lose weight now. And so I don't know if you were that client where you're telling her like, were you doing that? I mean, I have been because I've used the excuse of getting stronger and not worrying about my macros until this point. Like for a few years trying to build up muscle as I knew that it was declining and I'm trying to take advantage of the opportunity. So now I'm at the point where I just couldn't accept that like, you mean I have to count my macros down to like, plus or minus five and arrange every, every single day. So I think I've resisted being this strict and I wanted your opinion on like, is that what it really takes? No, I don't ever want to go on the stage. But I would like to be back to my normal size. It does take that initially. And let me tell you what happens when people do exactly what you said, which is super common, especially with my female clients that I would tell, okay, hey, we're going to go on this mini bulk or we're going to increase the calories. We're going to get stronger. As they do exactly what you says, they make the excuse of eating more, but their choices of what they choose is not what their body needs. So what ends up happening is they're eating 2,200 calories, but then their protein intake is still dramatically lower than what they need for building muscle. So what ends up happening is they put weight on, but they don't put good weight on. They end up putting five pounds on, but we didn't put five pounds of muscle on. We put four pounds of fat and one pound of muscle or no muscle and all body fat, because the choices of calories that they consume were not ideal in relation to their strength training program. And so you tracking and tracking through a bulk, I think would be very valuable as just a pure learning lesson for yourself of like, oh, this is what it needs to look like. So if I want my body to respond in a way that I put on good weight, then I do need to be tracking the same way that I would track if I were cutting. Now, Joanna, let me ask you this because you said you've been doing this for a few years where you were kind of trying to build strength. How much stronger are you now than you were three years ago? Or how different do you look? Is your body weight different? Like what are the differences today versus three years ago? It's dramatic. I mean, by nature, I am an ectomorph. I have a tiny frame or as my bone structure. So having extra weight is super uncomfortable for me. However, I mean, I have, I mean, I'm lifting couches with my husband. And, you know, I don't, I want to be able to do things like haul my own luggage on business trips and not think a thing about it. Like I want that kind of functionality in my everyday life. And that's what I've been working towards. Do you know what your body fat percentage was when you started three years ago versus now? Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, you could ask me what my muscle mass was and I would tell you it was non-existent. Okay. But as far as like my general constitution, I definitely put on some fat in addition to that. Now I'm probably close to 25%. I would think. I mean, I think you, I think you know exactly what you did. You, you already said it to me. Like I think you were eating in a surplus. You gave yourself that kind of green light of, you know, hey, I need to put on some, some mass and I'm lifting weights and probably weren't making the best food choices. You're not very, you're not very active because of the job that you have. So you don't have the opportunity to burn a lot of those excess calories that are not ideal for us. And so you've put on some body fat on the waist. I literally think just by you tightening up the diet and making good choices, but staying fed, giving your body what it needs. So eating that 1800 to 2000 calorie range, but making good choices while lifting weights and then adding some walking in your day, like a nice hour walk, whether, whether you break that hour walk over small 20 minute walks or one long hour walk. I think those two things right now would, would really do your body good. Yeah. And you know, your 25% body fat is not bad. Just going down, it's interesting with body fat percentage. So it's different numbers for men than for women, but women, when they go from like mid 20s to low 20s, so like a 4% drop, for example, in body fat percentage, it's quite visible because going from 25 to 21 looks very different than going from 30 to 25. So 25 to 21, you know, that's not a huge, that's only 4% drop. Your weight wouldn't change a ton, or if you gained muscle at the same time, it might not change at all, but the way you would look and feel would change quite a bit. And 25% is a great body fat percentage to live at for a woman. It's, it's healthy, hormones are pretty balanced. And you know, typically women, when they want to look a particular way, the goal is usually to get down to like 20. You know, so, so you're looking at a 4% to 5% loss on body fat, probably for what you're looking for, unless you want to get like really, really lean, where you see striations and that kind of stuff, but. No, because then you look older. Yeah, great comment. And with that. Yeah, great comment. But yeah, so I mean, you're, you're doing pretty damn good. I bet if you, if you followed Adam's advice and stayed the course and hit like 130 grams of protein a day with, you know, 1800 to 2000 calories, you're probably gonna see yourself get leaner while you build a little middle muscle. So your weight on the scale might change a little bit, but the way you look and feel will change a lot more. And this is going to take a long time, right? Like maybe a year. No, I don't think so at all. I think you're actually in a pretty healthy position. You're not far off where I, where I'd want you to be. A good goal would be in the next month or two to actually be in a place where we're not adding body fat and increasing your calories. Because then in a perfect world, I've got you up to about 22 to 2400 calories. And then I cut you back down to like, say 1700. And then you lean out fast. So if I can get you up to eating 2400 calories, not putting on body fat, we've added some strength and muscle along the way over that course of that month or two of increasing there. And then I cut you down to 1700. You're not only eating a good amount of calories, that's good and balanced and healthy for you. You're also putting in yourself at a deficit of 700, 800 calories a day. You should be, you'll lean out week over week for a month. And also, Joanne, I just did the math. If you dropped 4% body fat, that would be a six pound loss in body fat and a six pound gain in muscle. Not that, it's not a huge number. So if you lost six pounds of body fat and gained six pound of muscle, in other words, your weight stayed the same, you would be 21% body fat. And remember, body fat takes up a lot more space on a pound for pound basis. So you'd probably lose close to one fourth of the size that you noticed. Now, so you'd be smaller, same body weight, faster metabolism. So I think sometimes people look at weight on the scale and they think, oh, I want to get down to a particular weight. But when it comes to body fat percentage, usually less than you think, unless we're talking about somebody who's really, really high body fat percentages. Okay, I'm digesting it all. No problem. All right. You know, it would be a good program for you. Do you have MAPS-15? No. MAPS-15 would be amazing for you. Instead of doing two workouts a week, 15 minutes a day, I bet you would find yourself, it would be easier to be consistent. You'd have more energy. And as a result, you'd probably get better results. I would love for you to pair that with the walk I was talking about. Yeah, I'm going to send that to you. It's literally 15 to 20 minutes a day, every day versus taking an hour twice a week. Well, thank you, guys. I mean, I certainly, I didn't care about getting anything free as much as I just wanted your input. Like, I know this is supposed to be working. I have a friend in the program that's doing phenomenal. She's losing weight. And I'm like, I'm just either resistant or not. This isn't my way. Yeah, no, everybody's different. And it's really, really, it's pretty amazing how wide the individual variance can be. So be careful when you compare yourself to other people because it's, it could be very different from person to person. But if you compare yourself to yourself, like you said, you're a lot stronger than you were three years ago. I mean, that's huge. You're doing great. We're not far off where we need to be. I don't know. Follow what we talked about and then circle back to us. I'd love to hear where you're at in another month or two. Totally. Thank you all. All right, got it. Thanks, Joanna. Was she not the average client? Yeah, yeah. That was such like a conversation that I've had so many different times. No, 100%. And I, you know, having a really sedentary job, already not a roaring metabolism, this is a tough spot. And it's a tough spot too. I want to defend the coach that I don't know, right? Because I don't, sometimes I feel like when we come on here and we like shit on like the advice of the coaches. I also know what it's like to be the coach and have a client who's just like, I want results. I want results. I want to, I just need 15 pounds. Probably obsessing about it. Yeah, right. And then you as a coach, you're like, wow. Okay, you want me just to show you? Like we can just cut some calories and I can show you, but it's not what I want you to do. You know what I'm saying? And so then you're in this predicament where they want it now and you want to show them that you have the ability that you can drop five pounds really quick on them. But you know what's best for them is to stay focused on building strength, getting those calories up, moving more. Like, and then we cut down. So, yeah, you know, a good rule of thumb is if your diet makes you feel like crap, it's probably wrong for you. So, cutting calories, yeah, you're not going to feel as strong. You might have some dips in energy, appetite, you know, goes up. That's normal. But if you're on a cut and you feel like crap and you don't want to work out and you're getting sick, it's not working for you. It's just not working. Another easy generic thing. I never wanted, I never wanted my female clients to have to go below 1500. I never wanted my male clients to have to go below 2000. Yep, yep. So, if you are in a cut and you have to be below either one of those numbers as a male or a female, now, obviously, there's a huge range on body. So, I know there's people like, what? That's crazy. That's a general, that's general. But that's pretty true. A very general generic number is that my women should not have to be below 1500 to lose weight. My men should not have to be below 2000 to lose weight. And if they do in order to lose weight, then I need to do a job, a better job of helping them build their metabolism through building muscle and speeding their metabolism up before I cut them because I want to be able to cut them and keep them at those calories or higher because then they're in a more sustainable place long-term. Our next caller is Matt from Utah. Matt, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, hey, what's up, guys? So, the crux of my question is, you know, you've talked about like personalizing or modding maps programs. So, the crux of it is like, at what point do you personalize and mod a program that it's no longer a maps program? Like, you just went counterproductive and you're just adding too much of your own stuff. It's just a quick context. Like, I ran maps anywhere like as is. I did it the second time with all the suspension mods, but actually even in the foundational exercises, I just did only suspension, did all that stuff in there. I ran, actually, I ran aesthetic because I got the businessman bundle. When I ran aesthetic one time, I ran it once like the home thing with dumbbells because I just, realistically, the way of my job and life is like, I'm just not going to have access to barbells or to a gym. But so, I ran the home edition with dumbbells. I ran it again using the suspension stuff, but like being hyper-focused to stay in the rep range if I'm going above or below it, I'll either add like a weighted vest or make it harder or slow down to time, under tension, stuff like that. I'm in the third phase right now of Maps Power Lift and since there's not a home option, I just did dumbbells in place for that. I had to get creative on some of the lifts, but it's actually worked out really well. And even going into like modding a program, I think it was in like the strength phase. There was one, I overdid it. I started adding some chin-ups to my routine and I actually did a week of basically following the Power Lift program, but just with the bands, similar to like trigger sessions and stuff. But so that's the main thing is, at what point have I just changed it up too much that it's no longer a Maps program? And the main reason I'm asking that is, I got my year planned out. I basically go from aesthetic to performance to Power Lift and then I was gonna jump into strong. I'm going for like programs that are as different from each other as humanly possible. But I've also been thinking, I don't know if there's a home addition for strong that would make sense or if I'm just gonna need certain equipment. I've also been debating doing symmetry, but that, and I know those are different programs, but the reason on symmetry is because like, I started having some shoulder stuff, kind of feeling a little bit off, but really I felt like I was in pretty good shape between Prime and Prime Pro. I'm like, I thought I was, I got that sorted out, but I'm also like symmetry is like, if I'm using dumbbells and suspension stuff, I'm probably, I'm wondering if I'm already getting the benefits that I would get from running symmetry. So that's the main question. At what point have I just changed up the program that it's no longer recognizable? I love this question, Matt. I think that, well, first of all, let's address the programs that I think you should get or that will send you, right? So I think have Doug send you symmetry and then we do have an at-home stuff that you can do with strong. So you can do that as a potential follow-up, but I think symmetry will benefit you. I also think that you literally already knew the answer because you, the way you've modded maps programs are completely fine. The only time you made the mistake was when you started to add to the program. That's, so as long as, and the guys will chime in, my opinion on this is that when you follow a maps program, we encourage people after they've ran it to go ahead and mod it. Now, modding it though, but still following some of the fundamental principles like how the exercise selection, how much training volume is it? So if someone goes, oh, I'll mod it myself, I know what I'm going to do, I'm going to add four exercises to every day. Not a good idea because then, then you're probably going to go back the opposite direction. But taking an exercise, let's say out of there, like let's say squats are, you know, a traditional exercise, but you're like, you know what? I really want to get better at my Bulgarian squats. I'm going to pull squats all out and I'm going to put Bulgarian split stance squats in all the places that squats are. That's totally fine. And it still is a maps program just because you've got rid of an exercise and you've replaced it. So replacing or how you did anywhere, and then you went all like suspension trainer and you went, you went that direction instead of doing body weight stuff. All that stuff I think is a great way to modify it to your life and have fun with the program. When you start adding to it and doing more than what's program, that's where you get in trouble in my opinion. You hit the nail on the head, Adam. You know, there's a kind of a hierarchy of importance in, in workout programming. And the most important things are total volume, frequency and intensity. Okay. Next up would be exercises. You know, exercise selection. And then it goes down from there. So you can switch up exercises and replace some that are similar and you'll probably be okay. It's when you mess with volume, frequency and intensity that things get messed up. So someone may say, well, I know this program says don't go to failure, but I'm going to modify it and go to failure in every set. The whole program you can throw out the window, right? Or I know this says I'm doing 12 sets, but I'm going to do 17 sets instead. You throw the whole program out the window, right? So those are the most important things. But the idea behind modifying programs is to really learn and understand your body and my advice is to make small changes and then stick with those small changes, see how you feel, see how everything's responding and then make another small change. Because if you make a lot of changes, well, look, it's like anything else. Like it's like, if I'm doing a computer program and I change 10 things at once and then something doesn't work, well, which one of those things is it that threw the program off? I don't know, right? But if I make one change, now I can identify how that one change is affecting me and if it's good or bad. And then I can add to that. So if you do make changes and modify, do small changes, try to keep them basic and simple, see how you feel, and then go from there. Don't try to make too many changes at once. I'm actually curious how you're able to modify power lift, just being limited with weights. Yeah, so I mean, did you just add pause reps in there? Did you increase your time under tension? Well, it's funny. So my background, this back in the 90s, I did power lifting as a kid in high school and stuff. So I was somewhat familiar with it, but I spent the last 20 years working out too hard, hurting myself, getting lazy, then getting motivated. So this is why I've loved these programs, just because it's not taking it to failure was the hardest thing to get out of my head. And so on the power lifting, I mean, I have these yes for all, whatever, some dumbbells on that I got on Amazon or something. Then they go up to 100 pounds each. So that was pretty good. It's just a matter of keeping it at your chest. That was the big thing. I tell you, the hardest one to mod was when they put leg press in the first phase. With that one, I used the suspension trainer because I can do a pistol squat, but I just kind of used it as a little bit of, but the rep range was like 20. So I would do like 20 on each leg because I figured a pistol squat was kind of the most equivalent to a leg press, which I'm not a huge fan of a leg press anyways, but yeah, so that's what I kind of did on that one. But yeah, surprisingly, I mean power lift just, I mean, and I think the part that kind of hurt my shoulder was, dude, like to kind of make it, because the volume wasn't enough for just like 200 pound dumbbells. I mean, for squats and deadlifts, it just got hard. I think the problem that I was having, because like you're literally holding all that weight on your arms, like suitcases. And it's just, I think that was just hurt. The problem is I wasn't engaging my shoulders enough. I was kind of loosey-goosey, just kind of holding it, the logic being, as long as I could grip it, like I didn't want to use grips or like wet bands or anything like that. But anyways, I think that kind of was extra volume on my shoulders than I was anticipating. So when I started adding pull-ups, then it just kind of screwed me up. But it's doable, but it's kind of, you had to get creative. Yeah, I mean, literally small changes. See how you feel and go from there. You change a bunch of things at once. It's going to be hard to know what's working and what's not working. And Adam hit the nail on the head. The biggest mistake people make when they modify is they add volume. And that's just- Yeah, thinking more is better. Yeah, that's the biggest mistake. For future replacements of leg presses, sissy squats is what I would do. Oh, dude. Sissy squats would be good. Oh yeah, the sissy squats and aesthetic. That, oh dude, those blew me up. Those were so, I would have never imagined that they were that hard. That's a great exercise. Good deal. What are we sending, Adam? Did you offer symmetry? Yeah, symmetry is what Doug's going to send you. And then if you were to look into any other one, it would be strong. That would be the other one. But a symmetry we're going to send you your way. Do you think symmetry, how similar is symmetry to aesthetic? That was one thing I was sure of. Nothing like it. Very different. Oh really, okay. Nothing like it. It's fact, by the way, I didn't comment on that. I love the idea of how you chose your programs. Because I know we have kind of a traditional, like how we order in for most people, but you've been lifting for a while. Yeah, you've been lifting for a while. You're advanced. And then to choose programs that are so unique and different from each other, I think to get the best novel stimulus from it is a great strategy. And so I think symmetry and strong are definitely two that will complement your array of programs you chose already. So Doug will send you symmetry, check that out. And then if you were to look at anything else, then strong would be a great addition. Totally. Awesome. This has been a lot of fun, guys. All right, Matt. Thanks for calling, man. Thank you, dude. See ya. It's funny. If you look, because there's a lot of studies now, these days on exercise and workouts and what works best. And if you look at the data, the best data, in other words, the most consistent data on what works is around volume, frequency, and intensity. And then it goes down to like rep ranges. And then it goes down to exercises. In other words, if you get two programs where the volume, frequency, and intensity are very much similar or the same, you're going to get similar results. Even if exercise is different, even if rep ranges are somewhat different. Not saying that there's no value in those, but my point with that is those are the things you probably want to modify the least when you're following our maps programs. Because those are the things that, that's the skeleton, right? Intensity, volume, frequency. And then it's exercise selection and rep ranges and tempo. You can mess with those a lot more. Which by the way, those are the things that when one of us looks at somebody else's programming, can critique it really quick. Easy. Like right away, it's not, I'm not going to like critiques. I'm like, oh, you put Bulgarian splits. No, that's exactly. It's like, that doesn't matter. But what we'll look at right away is the frequency and the volume, right? And then how they phase the program, right? Or paradise it. And so that right away can tell you like, oh, this person knows how to program. Totally. Hey, look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have free guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Justin, Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump. Adam, you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump. And I'll give you a little thumbs up. This one's really important. And that is to phase your training. If somebody trains for a full year doing a bench press and they're always aiming for five reps, if you compared that person to a person who did bench press where they did three or four weeks of five reps, but then they did three or four weeks of 12 reps and then three or four weeks of, let's say 15 to 20 reps. And then they'll throw in some supersets. At the end of that year, you're going to see more consistent progress from the person who's moving in and out and less injury. That's another thing. You'll see less injury as well.