 Next question is from Reese Hocky-Yunga. How to push yourself without a gym partner or hurting yourself? I think the gym partner thing is so overrated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's sort of the messaging that I would probably put out there is like like what's, what's the real value in your gym partner? Like what, that you can't find yourself in terms of like, if you look at the right dose of intensity, the right dose for you individually. It gets muddy in terms of having like somebody there that's motivating you to kind of push past, you know, those natural signals your body's giving you in terms of like finding that sweet spot where you're going to actually adapt and build muscle versus just hammer yourself a bit too hard. That's the problem with our space is we value motivation so much. I hate that. I hate that argument. Like, oh, it's so much more motivating to my friend or my friend motivates me. It's just like, stop it. If you want this to be a lifelong pursuit for you, you've got to get rid of this idea that you need to be motivated to do the thing. Imagine if everything was like that. I know. I only do things I'm motivated to do. It'll never last. You know how much stuff I wouldn't do. Where's my reading partner? Yeah. I'm not going to read without my reading partner. That's why I can't stand it because it's just, it's a terrible message and our space promotes it so much. And we, we lean into it and so many. Because it feels good. Fitness influencers want to be motivating. Yeah. It gives you this initial feel good feeling. But for our listeners, like it's such a, it's a, it's a bad strategy. Like learn to be disciplined. Learn to create habits. And you're far better off doing that for yourself. Somebody is always suffering. If there's a partner workout, whoever is leading it is getting the most benefits because they're doing what they probably want to do or need to do for their body. And then the other person is suffering because it's not what is ideal for them. And even if that's what motivates you to go to the gym, eventually they're not going to be around. Eventually you're going to move. Eventually they're going to get married and have kids. Eventually shit's going to happen. And so you need to start to learn how to create habits that you don't need anybody else. That doesn't mean that you can't have fun. Yeah. Or meet somebody there. Yeah. I'm not saying, I'm not shaming somebody who has a workout partner. I'm just saying that we put too much emphasis on motivation and this need for other people to be a part of our workout. Let me put it like this with workout partners. I have nothing, I have no issue with workout partners except for the following. Okay. Imagine you're about to embark on your fitness journey and you know that this is going to be something that if I want it to be effective and real, I have to do for the rest of my life. Okay. So I'm not going to do this for a month and then stop. The goal is to do this for the rest of my life. Now you got to go find a workout partner that's going to work out with you on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at four, whatever your time is forever. Okay. Good luck. First of all, there's almost nobody you'd want to see three days a week for an hour. Oh yeah. Forever. And depend on that type of consistency to show up, to work out, to want to be around this person. Like that's a tough, and nobody talks about this. This is actually kind of funny. Breaking up with workout partners. I've had people cancel gym memberships because they don't want to break up with their workout partner. So they'd rather go to another gym because then they, because otherwise they'd break up with a workout partner. And then they're worried about running into them at the gym when they work out on their own or whatever. I've had, I've only had a few workout partners that I, let's say I'd work out like relatively consistently with and the breakup part sucks. Cause then you got to tell them, hey, listen, you show up late every time or I just not really working type of deal and it's a friend or someone, you know, type of deal. Yeah, no. Now here's the other part of this. The majority of people who are not getting good results is because they're not showing up. Not because they're not working out hard enough. Now, yes, there are people who need to work out harder. But that's not the big problem. That's, it's a problem, but it's a small one in comparison to just showing up. So about this, like I need someone to push me. If you showed up and you just show up, then you're probably going to be okay. Well, now that we're done ragging on you for wanting a workout partner to answer this question, though, if you were trying to push yourself more, so in other words, increase the intensity in my workout without risking injury or hurting myself because I don't have someone, let's say, to spot myself. One of my favorite things to do is to choose a weight that's difficult for me. So let's say I'm doing a five by five, so I'm doing five reps. I choose a weight that is difficult, but I know I'm going to probably be able to get five because I don't have a spotter, so I don't want something I'm going to fail at doing. And then as I get to the last rep or two, I slow the tempo down dramatically. If you take somebody who does this kind of cadence where this is what a bench press tempo looks like for them and they're like, oh wow, this rep number three is easy. Oh wow, rep number four is easy. Now watch this. And you slow that last rep down completely. I mean, you could take that muscle to damn near complete exhaustion by, and you're moving a weight that you can comfortably, if you realize, oh, I'm not going to be able to get it up, you speed up the tempo and you rack the weight. Like this idea that you need to have these sets that take you to failure so much that you need to spot. And by the way, most people that even do that do this wrong. It used to be one of my pet peeves when somebody would spot me and they do this, come on bro, come on bro, you got it. That's the angle I was going to go because immediately like rereading this question, it's like, you know, if you're testing yourself and you're going heavier than you normally do, you really have to know how to bail. And you have to know how to like dump weight and you have to know all these ways of getting out of those situations and set up safeties and all that kind of stuff. There's a way to do that very effectively and there's a lot more machines, racks and things that have those available. So, you know, look, ask somebody or how to like set that up, but even just in a basic like squat, like you should know that technique of being able to dump the weight and bail and not feel bad about like slam the weights. Listen, people don't hurt themselves working out because they didn't have a gym partner. They hurt themselves because they picked an inappropriate weight for what they were trying to do or they had bad technique or bad form, that's all. It's not because you didn't have a workout partner. It's because you're doing it wrong. That's it. That's the bottom line. I think I've seen more bad technique in form with a workout partner than I have alone. I'll make a bet right now. I don't know if there's any statistics on it, but I bet you people get hurt more often with workout partners than when they work out on their own. Yes. Because you get somebody who they... Oh, he'll help me lift this off. They take it to great strategy to push so hard to where you fail and get stuck. And when you do that, the body goes into this like, oh, shit, get it off me. And then you try and help the weight up with every other muscle than the one you're really trying to work. The technique goes out the window. Yeah. And then it defeats the purpose of why you're doing the movement. So, yeah, I've never been a big fan of the workout partner thing. And most of the workouts that I ever worked out was someone else. I led the workout because selfishly, I want to do what I want to do. I'm like, I know what I need to do. I know how much I need to push today. I know how many sets I need to do of what. Like, so, okay, if you want to jump in my workout and follow on what I'm doing, that's fine. But, you know, telling my workout to what somebody else potentially needs is just not ideal. And you don't need that person to take you to, you can have an intense workout and not take, take every exercise to failure. I hurt myself with workout partners way more often. Yes. Trying to show off. You got a weight that you, oh, they'll help me lift it. And like, first off, a spotter on squatting. Terrible. You're going to get, That's where I really hurt my knee. Yes. Terrible idea. Okay. They end up moving you forward and the whole weight crushed me forward. Yeah. Spotting on like a bench press. Everybody thinks that's a great idea. If you're picking a weight that you could, you're afraid that you're not going to be able to get up with the spotter. Your form's going to go out the window while he's spotting you or she's spotting you. So, also not a good idea. Spotters with dumbbells. That's an interesting one, you know. You guys ever do this where you're, I was a kid, we do like the dumbbell chest press. Of course, when I was a kid, you know, it was all about how much weight you could lift type of deal. Yeah. Where they spot you under the elbows, you end up hitting yourself in the face of the dumbbell. It comes in. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That ever happened to you? That's a good time. Yeah. Then you learn the technique of how to do it yourself. So much better. No, no, no. You got to train with the right intensity. Don't go to failure. Stop a couple reps short. Have good technique. And if you're going to max out, use safeties on a power rack. And that's about it. Then you'll be set.