 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer questions that are asked by listeners like you. They go to our Instagram page, Mind Pump Media. They post the question underneath the meme picture that says Qua. We pick our favorite questions and then we answer them. And before we get into the questions, we talk about studies. We talk about our lives, our sponsors, training, and fun stuff. So here's what we talked about in this episode of Mind Pump. We started by talking about charity. I brought up a website that you can actually check your charity on there to see where the money's going, how much the people who run the charity are getting paid. It's actually quite interesting. And that reminded Adam to bring up one of our sponsors, Mir. Mir, the maker of phenomenal drinking cups and insulated containers, has donated over a million dollars to various charities. So they're really, really good company. And we are sponsored by them. And we do have a discount if you want to get any of their products. So just go to Mir. That's M-I-I-R dot com and use the code Mind Pump and you'll get 25% off your entire order. Then we talked about our Thanksgiving with our families and friends. And I talked about the workout that I do the day after Thanksgiving with my cousin's brother. And this time Adam was there. So we had a good time. We talked about the well-known fruitarian guy. I don't know what his name was, who just recently died of organ failure. What a fruit. That's weird. We talked about chaga. I brought up chaga because I read some interesting information about chaga and its adaptogenic properties. If you are interested in supplementing with chaga, we recommend you go with FourSigmatic. They're one of our sponsors. And they have some of the highest quality dual extraction process type chaga you will find. We also have a discount for you. If you go to FourSigmatic, that's F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C dot com four slash Mind Pump and use the code Mind Pump, you'll get 15% off. I talked about a study on pornography and its effects on the brain. We talked about how Mark McGrath broke up for someone on social media, which is funny. That's the move right there. I talked about social media and its lack of connection to quality of life. Believe it or not, they found, new study found that. Lots of social media use doesn't mean you're lowering your quality of life. And then Justin brought up how Google is trying to fight deep fake videos. Then we got into the questions. The first question, this person wants to know if trap bar deadlifts are as good as straight bar deadlifts. We talk about the benefits of each and how they differ from each other. The next question, this person wants to know what exercises they can do to repair poor thoracic mobility. Thoracic referring to the upper back and shoulder area. So we talk about exercises to help with improving mobility there. The next question, this person wants to know how strength training can benefit or help people or battling depression and anxiety. And the final question, this person wants to know if there's any benefits to cycling caffeine use. Also, this month, definitely one of our most popular programs. This is our body builder, body sculpting, muscle building, body shaping program. MAPS aesthetic is 50% off. So, and it's all month long, MAPS aesthetic 50% off. So this program is phenomenal for people who want to build and sculpt their body. This is for people who are interested in aesthetic results. Like your main concern is changing the appearance of your body, how you see fit. It's the only MAPS program with focus sessions, which are designed explicitly to do that. Now, here's how you get the 50% off discount. Go to mapsblack.com and use the code Black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0, no space for the discount. So, I don't know if you guys got a chance to look at the mirror website, but they actually update, you know, last time, I think, Sal, you brought this up, that all of their proceeds from Black Friday was going to go towards some of the work that they're doing. Like the charity? Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah, 100%. Right. That's crazy. They've already got over, I think they're almost at $1.1 million over 61 projects from the Black Friday. Wow. Is that just from Black Friday or is that since they've been in business? I'm not sure, I don't remember the counter being up there before. I'm not sure. That's a good question, but I mean, I definitely would have remembered if it was in the millions of dollars that they've already got that they're donating and putting out there, which is just phenomenal. It seems to be a strategy of like high quality brands now, doesn't it? To show that you're giving to a charity of some sort or you're doing something for the community that's positive. Yeah, I think there's some people that are doing it for those reasons. When we met Brian and when we got to hang out with him the few times that we've been together, I don't get that impression from him. He comes from... No, it's genuine. Yeah, well, he comes from a family that has money and has things. And I think that was when he started the project, when he started MIR, I think his intentions of doing that were to do something that he could give back before versus... He really wants to make an impact. Right, versus, hey, this is how companies today, you got to make sure you're donating to something. I don't think it was like a major strategy. It's a part of some companies... It's a major strategic play now. Yeah, because what I mean is like in the past, and a lot of people argue that this is the better way to do it, is you profit, you do as well as you can, and then off of your profit donate what you think is right or whatever. What a lot of companies are doing now is that the charity is part of the business plan. It's almost like another... It's a bill. It's a debtor, you know what I mean? For every dollar that we make, guaranteed we have to give... No, you're right. I've seen that a lot from the very beginning. They've carved that part of the business off as like, this is how we're going to structure the business versus like, let's get profitable and then see how we can then contribute. Now, in my opinion, that's a risky play, right? Because you're in part of your business plan, you're already putting another partner, even though it's a charity. But so in order to do that, you have to be...you have to have very high quality product. You have to do a damn good job, because you're literally signing on another partner essentially. Oh, I mean, they've been exploited. They're crushing. They also have...I thought this was really cool, because I was on there checking that out. They have like a holiday link up there on their website now, and they put together all these packages. Like bundle packages. Yes, and it's really smart, really cool. So if you're shopping for family and friends, I already grabbed a couple things for some of my family members that I think would love. Yeah, I have a lot of outdoorsy kind of people in my family, and I saw that too. Because I remember, we talked about this a long time ago, is that like origami kind of filter thing that you can bring with you outside to brew your own one cup coffee. I thought that, dude, I love that. I want that product. And they had that kind of bundled up with the camp cup and all that. Do you guys get, during the holiday season, do you find yourself being more charitable? I know that's a normal thing. I know charity goes through the roof during the holidays, but do you guys find that for yourselves personally? Well, up until, I think it was last year was my first year not doing the adopting the family. So I think it's now, I'm going on two years now, where I haven't done that. But that's been like a tradition for me personally, that I've been doing for well over, well before I even met Katrina, that every year I like to do that. I was at my mom's house the other night, and she's, as long as I can remember, she's always had a picture of a kid that she sponsors through, I think it's called World Vision. I think World Vision is the, yeah. And since I was a kid, she'll pay monthly to this organization, and then what it does is it puts the kid through school, it gives them, you know, helps the family, you know, support their family or whatever. And the picture will change every once in a while, because once the kid gets to a certain age, then another, then you work with another kid. And you get these like updates of, so I was looking into this, and I, you know, my challenge in the past, not that this is a, I guess this is a challenge for some people, is how do you know your money is going to the person? Well, that's why I liked adopting the family, was because I actually, right there you saw, I used to go and I'd get them a tree. So I'd go put the tree up in their house, and I'd see their kids, and I'd see, you know, where they lived, how they lived, and then I would go and... Well, so check this out. There's a website now where you can kind of fact check a lot of these charitable organizations, right? That's it, so that's what I was doing. So when I saw that on my mom's fridge, and I'm like, you know, it's about time I do something like that. Like, I think I'm going to do something like that. And so I went and did some research on the same charity, because the last thing I want to do is give, you know, money to some wealthy person in a third world country, and none of it get to, you know, the people I wanted to go to. There's a website called Charity Navigator, and on this website, so let me see what the actual website is. I think it's CharityNavigator.org, and you go on there and you can type in whatever charity, and they'll rate it and rank it, and they'll have everything on there. They'll talk about... That's cool. Yeah, like they'll talk about... And it has, like, every charity? All the major ones, I guess. Okay. It gives you the financial performance metrics, and it has accountability and transparency performance metrics. It'll tell you their financial charts, their IRS data, the compensation of their leaders. I was like, this is phenomenal. That's perfect. Isn't it? Yeah, see, he's pulling it up right there. So cool. So if you want to, you know, because the holiday season, a lot of people donate to, you know, they want to donate to... Check on something like this, because I've heard stories of, you know, I forgot where I watched this documentary once. I don't remember what the charities were, but this man did some research and he found that there's a lot of charities where you have, like, it's wealthy people in first world countries giving it to wealthy people in third world countries, and then they'll go and take pictures of kids and stuff in these villages, and then they'll... Such a hustle. Yeah, and so something like this, I think, is really cool, because you can enter it in and be like, you know, Red Cross or whatever. You want it to go where you intended it to go. I mean, that's the part. People just don't like... I mean, you have this, like, you really want to help somebody out, and you're not even getting it to them. That's so frustrating. Yeah, and then it also talks about how they help. So is it like, do they just give them food? Or do they set up schools? Do they give micro-loans? I like that one. Well, you remember when we... That's cool. Remember when we... Was it Justin Wren when we interviewed? Or maybe it was Brian, but I remember one of them was making me privy. I had never... I didn't realize how important that was. Like, what they do with the money is as important, if not more important than actually the amount or what they're giving, because, you know, and I'll use, like, Tom's as an example, although I don't know this is how this works, because most people understand if you buy a pair of Tom's, they send it to a family in need of a pair of shoes, right? But if you do that to a town, right, you come in and you say, oh, you know, our business is going to go to this third world country, and we're going to donate all shoes to this town so they all... But there's two shoemakers that work in that town. Put them out of business. Yeah, you put them out of business, and it's like, you think you're helping somebody, but you could really be hurt. Bro, that actually... Yeah. We had a great scenario, or a great example, I should say. It was a terrible scenario, and a great example of that. In the 80s, there was this huge push to feed certain parts of Africa, and you saw these huge concerts and Feed the World, and Western nations donated hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food to help feed, because there were people who were starving in some parts of these countries. And what ended up happening is, yes, we gave people food, but within a couple generations, they became completely dependent on this donated food. They lost the skills to farm and produce for themselves. Wow. And so we set up a... Through good intentions, we created a terrible situation. So what I'm looking for in a charity is, okay, are you helping the people help themselves? Are you just giving them stuff, which... Are you creating benefits to their economy so they can trade amongst themselves? Totally. That's why I like the micro-loans. There's charities that offer these micro-loans to people in these countries who they'll take the loan and they'll build businesses on their own. And I think that's phenomenal, because, well, the dignity, they're actually providing value, and they're learning skills that they'll pass on to generations or whatever. I thought that was really cool. Do you guys have a good Thanksgiving or what? Yeah. Yeah, it was fun. I spent a bunch of time with the family, played games, and it was pretty much on lockdown. We made sure this time, at least, we brought a bunch of activities with us, because we knew we'd just be sitting there staring at each other, trying to talk about whatever the hell we could think of at the time. So it's like, give me some distraction. Give me something. And so we bought this... There was this game. It had like... It was almost like a dental device that goes into your mouth. I saw this. Yeah. It looks creepy. It opens your mouth. It's real creepy. It's almost like a Marilyn Manson video or something. It stretches your mouth open. You see nothing but gums and teeth, and so you're supposed to list off a couple of these words, and your partners are supposed to guess what you're trying to say. And it gets... The bonus ones are really difficult, especially anything with a B or... Yeah. And it's like... But it's funny because I think married couples, they should be eliminated. They can't be on the same team. Why? It's too easy. Oh, you can guess? Yeah. It was really strange. Like the married couples, like me and Courtney, it was like... She didn't even have to really say it more than once, and I'm like, oh yeah, and I got it. You know, bread. You know, that's exactly what you said. It was just weird. It was like, because you know all the little nuances and the ways that... You guys already played that game, huh? Facial expression. Yeah. You're brushing your teeth. Yeah. You know that kind of stuff. You know what you're saying. This is like the game we play at home. Yeah. Dude, talk with your mouth open. Oh, the best. I got to remember, though, that there was this one... There was this one moment where like... Watch your mouth. My son, Ethan. Okay, so the word was gutter balls, right? Yeah. And so he's trying to tell us gutter balls. But, or no, one of my other, like so Everett said gutter... was trying to say gutter balls, and Ethan was guessing. And he's like, glory holes? Did I just die, dude? I was on the ground. Die. Yeah, obviously what that is, but that's what he heard. And we just didn't know what to do. I was like, this is the best. It reminds me of that. You guys, the video, or the movie that Sal made me watch, The Good Boys? Is that what it's called? Oh, sorry. The Bad Boys. What's it called? Yeah, it's... The Good Boys. I think it is Good Boys. Is it Good Boys? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so good. Where they just start making up... They hear the phrase once? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Because he obviously has heard the phrase, right? Like, I don't know where. Like, he just like put that together. Or whatever. It sounded kind of like that. Yeah. I was on Dad's phone. Yeah. Oh, man. Oh, no. Yeah, no. We had a good... We had a really good Thanksgiving too. It's nice to have the whole family together and enjoy each other. How big was yours? Typically, it's... I don't know. I should count next time. It's probably around 40 to 50. Wow. I would guess. Wow. Because we have a lot of... We have a big family. We had a good time. You know, of course, ate a lot of food and had a lot of fun with the kids and all that stuff. And then this was the 11th year that we did the workout, the post Thanksgiving workout, where me, my cousins and my brother meet up the day after and then we do a heavy lift. This time, Adam was with us working out. And it's funny because we're working out. And my brother is... He's a moose. He's basically a moose. He's fucking huge, right? He's like, he's 6'2 or 6'3. Yeah. 2.30. He doesn't work out. Actually, no, he does work out. He does long distance cycling. He rides his bike. But he doesn't look like a long distance cycling. No, no, dude. And he never lifts weights and he comes in here and he's just repping 225 on the bench like it's his fucking nothing. And Adam's just like, he goes, oh, it looks like your brother got all the genetics, huh? Like fucking... He's son of a bitch. You and me both have to try. No, dude, he's just a massive, strong as fuck kid and I always make fun of him because I'm like, dude, you just lifted weights. Yeah. You just cared. You just did that. I feel like that tradition's slowly evolving, though. It's turning more and more into less working out, more weed smoking and business talk. Oh, yeah, dude. Which is cool. I like it. I like it. Last year, I think I got sore from the workout. This year I have all kinds of ideas. Nobody cares about your ideas. Yeah, everybody shows up. You know what they do? This is what they do. They prepare it, right? So the day before is when the shit talking starts. We'll be on text. They're like, oh, I'm going to be the reigning champion. Oh, I'm going to be whatever. This time it was like, oh, I hurt my back last week. So I don't think I'll be able to do it. Oh, yeah. My knee's bad so I can't squat. Like, you guys are. So is it just deadlift, bench and squat? No, everybody kind of did their own thing this year. It's whatever. Typically it's whatever I pick, but I think nobody wants, nobody cares anymore. So they just come in here. Just whatever. Sal was still getting all his massive pun. He was pretty serious about his workout. I was more interested in what all the family had to say about investments and stuff. So we were over there. It's smoking weed talking. And then I go get a set in and come back. Yeah, it was a good time. It was a good, how was your, how was your thing? Good. It was, this is probably one of the biggest we've ever had. We had, we had over 40, which is a lot for us. That's a, that was a ton. And it was really cool because. That's a big one for you. Yeah. I mean, Katrina's family's pretty big always. Like they're, they're in the high, I think the smallest one I've ever had with her is like 20, 28 or so. So they're normally 30 plus. Right. But this year it was all of them. And then, you know, I had two parts of my family or excuse me, three, three different parts of my family actually show up. So we had some of my family and then her big family all together, which is cool. And there are a lot of my family members that I haven't had them all over for Katrina's Thanksgiving, which was cool. It was really cool. A lot of them. Now is that at your house? No, this is that. Oh no, God, we would never feel to fit all 40 in my place right now. This is at our mom's house where we set it all up. And we buffet style, right? Do you guys have any traditional foods that you eat for Thanksgiving or is it just the Thanksgiving time? No, everybody has. I mean, my mom with her stuffing and her cheesecake, that's always a tradition. And then Katrina's niece always brings, you know, two or three new pies that she's making. We always do a traditional turkey in the oven and deep fry another one. Yeah, there's all kinds of traditional plates on there. Dude, I ate caramel apple pie. Do you ever have caramel apple pie? Was it out of an iron skillet? I have no idea where it came from. Bro, I've had one like that. Like inner skillet? Yeah, it was the best thing I've ever heard. I can't even, I had to, I don't know what, I had to play mind games with myself to prevent myself from eating. It was so good. It was so good, but I could feel, you know, diabetes happening as always. I actually, I ate hardly anything on Thanksgiving Day. This was obviously my first Thanksgiving as a father. You just playing with the baby? My God, bro. I was just, I mean, I guess it was a combination of having my family there. And so there was obviously, I wanted to make sure that they didn't isolate them. So that big of a Thanksgiving and then having new people there, I wanted to make sure that they were having a good time. So part of me was also... You were the integrator? Yeah, integrating and hosting, you know, my family and introducing them to Katrina's family and then also having a child. So if I was not mitigating conversations or whatever or making sure that everyone was good, I was in the back, you know, rocking him to sleep or changing diapers or whatever. And so I remember at about 8 o'clock at night coming home and looking at Katrina and just being like, oh my God, I want to relax. So we had three Thanksgiving. So would you do just eat leftovers then? I did bring some leftovers. I didn't actually, I didn't eat like an asshole. Normally I do on the holidays. My mom made sure that I brought home my cheesecake and I did have a slice of that or else she would be pissed. But my siblings came over yesterday and pretty much crushed all that. So I really didn't do too much damage. I didn't drink this year. Yeah, I didn't drink. A lot of talking. I did, but I didn't even get a buzz. It was so depressing. Really? Yeah. How much did you drink? I don't know. I mean, probably a quarter of a bottle of vodka. Wow. Yeah. And you didn't get a buzz? Nothing. Bullshit. I'm not even joking. And you know why? Because it was called charcuterie, the board of cheese and all the spread of all the stuff. Oh, we're about to learn some science? No. I just kept eating continuously. And I was sipping. And I don't know. For some reason, nothing happened. Just as like cheese prevents. Yeah. Yeah. It's proven science. Speaking of food, did you hear about this fruitetarian guy that just died? Yeah. No, I shot that over to our art thread. I saw it on Sean Baker's Instagram first. And then I've been seeing it pop all over the place. Now, when I read the article, it's definitely a lot of people are speculating that. He died of mountains. He died of malnutrition. He was 70 something years old. 75. He was 75 years old. And he had been a fruitetarian for 40 years, I believe. What a weird 40 years. What a weird of all the things diets, extreme diets you can do. Fruitetarian? Yeah. I feel like people just look at animals and think, oh, look, a monkey. They're so strong. I should eat like a monkey. That's exactly what it is. You know what I'm saying? Or whatever. You know Steve Jobs was a fruitetarian. Yeah. And then he had obviously he got his pancreatic cancer. Ashton Kutcher tried to go fruitetarian and cause himself health problems. That's a terrible, that's like, if you want fatty liver disease and issues. Terrible. I can't believe people do this kind of shit. I can't believe he survived for that long. And that's what actually what happened was his liver shut down, right? Isn't that what the article said? Organ failure. I don't know if it was liver. I thought I read liver. But yeah, I thought that was interesting. You know, here's the thing with humans. We obviously evolved during long periods of scarcity. And so we evolved being able to get away with eating a lot of different things. And being able to get away with not eating at all. So just because you can. Doesn't mean you should. Yeah, like, because I think people look at that and be like, oh, look, he survived for 40 years eating only fruit. And then they think that means I can, I should do this. Not only that. No, it doesn't mean you should. Yeah, but a lot of times when people make the transition from whatever said diet or however they're currently eating, right, which is, you know, the American diet is terrible, right? And if all of a sudden you decide I'm going to be a fruit Italian, I'm going to be a carnivore, I'm going to be a vegetarian, I'm going to do one of these things. And you go when you do that. What's so hard to communicate to these people is they do that and then they get all these positive benefits. They feel inflammation go down their energy level, they lose body fat, whatever the case may be. And I was just talking about this on a recent interview is what it is. It's less of the diet that they're currently doing and it's more of them eliminating something that they were probably eating or overeating before. Or it's one factor. You know what I mean? It's like maybe their lack of fiber in their diet was causing them problems. So then they go pure vegan and they feel way better. And here's the thing with nutrient deficiencies. They can take a second before they turn into something bad. Like you can go without a nutrient because your body stores them, right? And then what will happen is symptoms will slowly start to creep up. And if you have this cognitive dissonance where you're like, no, this is the best diet ever. You start to ignore symptoms. You ignore the fact that your hair is falling out. I've trained people like this where I could think of one lady in particular that she came to me and she had her hair falling out. Her nails were weak and she'd been vegan for super long. And finally, she went to the doctor and realized, oh, I got nutrient deficiencies. And she had to either supplement or eat, start eating meat to make up the difference for these types of things. So it's stupid. So frutitarian. What's the next thing? I'm going to be a breaditarian. I don't know. Just make up some shit. That would sound like fun. I like the ones that were just eating air. I don't know what you call those ones. Brethitarian. Brethitarian. I guess you put arian or something at the end of whatever. Then it's good or whatever anyway. I think Aryans are always bad. Exactly. Stay away from that. Stay with the Aryans. So anyway, this weekend I was reading on Chaga, which is the... Chaga is considered one of the king-like top mushrooms. And I first got introduced to Chaga years ago when somebody very close to me had cancer, terminal cancer. And when I went online, I was researching alternative treatments because there were no conventional treatments that would have helped her. The type of cancer that she had, there was nothing that could help her that we knew of. So I went the alternative route because, hey, I have nothing to lose. And the litmus test was because we know of all the stuff that has human clinical trials. So I went to animal trials and I went to... And Chaga came up because Chaga, it's been known to be anti-cancer in animal trials for a long time. And the Chinese and the Russians have been using it for cancer properties as well. So I read up on it a little bit and I want to learn why some compounds have such powerful adaptogenic properties. And for the listeners who don't know what adaptogens are, adaptogens are foods or herbs or things that help your body adapt to stress. Meaning if you need a stronger immune system, it'll strengthen your immune system. If your immune system is hyperactive, it'll help bring it down. It's a regulator. It's a regulator. It's an adapt... So it's got like multi... It's got lots of benefits. I feel like a regulator is a better name for it than adaptogenic. Probably. The term adaptogenic was coined a long time ago by, I forgot who, but... So that's the word that we use now. But I was reading about the Chaga mushroom and it says that the... So the Chaga mushroom itself really does a phenomenal job of resisting... It resists seasonal environmental stresses including freezing temperatures. So the Chaga mushroom grows in trees. It's a parasitic mushroom like they all are and it grows in trees. It won't freeze to death oftentimes. It can survive UV... Very powerful UV radiation. It can survive the invasion of pathogens. And so it's evolved this complex integrated defense system. And they think that these integrated defenses are what give the Chaga mushroom its adaptogenic health benefits. In other words, because it evolved to be so damn resilient to all these stresses that when you consume the Chaga mushroom, this is probably why it's providing this... So how do you adopt that? So is it likely that we'll see things like Chagas most likely going to be found in like immune boosting type supplements when you see something like that? Immune regulating. It's got anti-cancer properties, anti-inflammatory anecdotes. There's a lot of athletic anecdotes that say improve stamina and recovery. Anti-hypoglycemic properties? Yes, it's supposed to be really good at regulating blood sugar. Yeah, so it's got some interesting properties, but as I was reading up, it was quite interesting. I was like, oh shit, it's such a resilient mushroom. And they think that may be why. No, it's... It's been used, so check that out, I went even deeper. It was used by the Persian physician of Asena, who's a famous Persian physician. This is back in 980 AD. They used Chaga mushroom extensively. It's also been used since the 16th century in folk medicine in Russia and Siberia. And then the Russian state adopted it as part of their medicinal programs, their pharma copia in 1989. So this is like... Chaga is a big deal. This is like ancient wisdom. We've just been dismissing as sort of like hoodoo jubu stuff. I haven't tried to come up with a name for that. Hoodoo jubu. It's a new way to describe it. Yeah, but again, it's like the king mushroom. And when you read stuff like this, do they explain how much of it you have to take in order to get these benefits? Does it take very minimal for you to reap the benefits? I could look that up, but you could easily find what are considered recommended. Now here's the thing, if you want to use it for acute medicinal reasons, I would suggest you go to a health practitioner that, like Chinese medicine, Ayurvedic medicine, where somebody was experienced because then they'll give you a specific dose. The supplemental dose is probably lower. So if you're going to supplement with something like Chaga on a semi-regular basis, you're probably not going to take massive doses like you would if a practitioner found, oh, you know, we want to use Chaga to help you with your blood sugar issues along with all this other stuff. That's what I would recommend. Right, is there like, I mean, can you take too much of it? Of course. Yeah, right. So, I mean, I would assume that taking it like small doses would probably be good for like a hormetic kind of response. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend taking too much of anything. I think anything that has got a beneficial effect probably has a negative effect if you take too much. I learned this lesson many times as a kid taking supplements. I was like, oh, five grams of creatine a day? Oh, I know. You know, four should be even better. Yep. Diarrhea, anyway. More science and stuff. An article came out on porn. So they came out with another study on the... That's exciting. Yeah, I googled porn. The stupid study came up when they came out. They're on to you, dude. Yeah, no, I was reading this article about the effects that pornography has on the brain in particular binge watching porn, which if you looked at the consumption of pornography among young males, it mostly fits this pattern of what's known as binge watch. Well, they'll watch it for an hour and they'll go between... They discussed it in the article. They're clicking on different tabs in their... You start out in the living room and then you just creep back into the closet. You're like, how did I get here? Yeah. Lights get darker. Well, they're talking about how they're definitely connecting it to depression, erectile dysfunction, and how it's disrupting neural wiring in the brain, and they think that this will ultimately lead to an inability to achieve erection or orgasm with a real-life partner. In similar ways that drugs do this to the brain, like if you use a lot of, let's say, cocaine, and cocaine obviously produces euphoric, energetic feelings, if you use lots of cocaine, your brain and your body starts to adapt and down-regulate things. And then what ends up happening is when you're not on cocaine, real life is far worse than it was before, and then cocaine makes life feel kind of normal. So then you want to get that feeling again, so you have to go back to the substance. Yeah, and what they were saying in this article is that, especially with young men in their teens, because their brains are still not fully developed, they're theorizing there could be some long-term effects. Well, we've known this for a while now, right? Isn't this why there is, like, what is it, NoFap November or whatever it is, where nobody is... NoNut November. What was the last one? I don't know, there was another one. Yeah, I thought there was one like that, where no one's masturbating for the entire month, right? Isn't that where these are coming from? Yeah, I think people trying to self-regulate. They're like, you know, I gotta get away from this. I wonder how many break-ups have happened because of finding out their partner is consumed with porn. Too much of it. It's actually becoming a bit of a problem when you look up the statistics on why people see counseling with their partner. Pornography now is making them... I'm sure, yeah, they must see. Patients come in quite frequently. So in this article, they talked about how there's this new... The market is now providing all these solutions. There's apps you could download to your phone and your computer that will block porn sites. So even when you're trying to log into it, it'll just... For yourself. In order to get on the porn site, you have to take several extra steps, which may give you enough time to like, okay, maybe I shouldn't go on this or whatever. Yeah, but like crazy. Did you guys see, brought up breakups because Mark McGrath had this like viral video happen, I guess. You know what Mark McGrath is? No. The lead singer for Sugar A. Yeah, okay. Way back in the day. Yeah, yeah, of course. I want to fly? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm trying to remember the app, but I think it's... I forget the name of the app. We'll look that up. But basically, you get on this app and they pay for you to do these cameo spots. I think it's like cameo or something like that. And so you get them to kind of do like a shout-out or whatever, to like one of your friends or family or whatever. So somebody paid him to basically break up with his girl. And so he's like, dude, going through this whole thing and then like he lets her off nice and kind of describes him and his wife's relationship and all this stuff. But basically, the guy pays him to break up with his girl. Oh, that's... Okay, so someone pays Mark McGrath. Yeah, Mark McGrath. Somebody to send the video. Like she thought it was like, oh, it's a shout-out from Mark McGrath, you know, but he's breaking up with her. Yeah, for the guy. For the guy. Hey, John, can you see the video? Yeah, the video's great. Yeah, but I mean, he does a great job. He's like trying to be nice about it and kind of relate with the person. What a funny... What's the... How much does he make off that? I wonder what you pay him to do that. I wonder how much he made on that. I'm sure. Like you got to pay to pay for these videos. Hey, it's gotta be... And in order for him to shoot that or do that, it has to be a decent amount of money to be worth his time. It's just on his phone. It doesn't matter. You're still your busy fucking guy. Would you do that? Imagine getting broken up by some like, you know, random celebrity. Bro, he's not taking... He's got plenty of... Bro, it's sugar raised. He's got plenty of time, bro. They haven't done shit for a while. He was doing something else. I can't remember. Maybe look him up because I... He came across... I came across something he was in. I think he's still making music. I'm sure. I'm sure he's still doing stuff. Yeah, I think he's still doing stuff for sure. I mean, if most these celebrities that... Whatever time they made it big, if they're not like in rehab somewhere, they're doing something, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. It's like, it's a 50-50 shot. They're either in fucking rehab and on... What was that? What's the show called? On VH1? Oh, I remember that one. With Dr. Drew? Yeah, yeah. What was that one called? Celebrity Rehab. Yeah, so if you're not on Celebrity Rehab, then you're probably still doing shit, you know what I'm saying? What a depressing... I want to get screeched to like send a nasty grant. What was his name? Dustin... Dustin Diamond. Yeah, how do you remember these names? Because I grew up with him, man. Yeah. Like, I totally forgot. I mean, now that you said Mark McGrath is Sugar Ray, I remember now, but I mean, Sugar Ray was like, so such a small window, they weren't even a thing, dude. That's like high school and that was it. That show Celebrity Rehab was so depressed. Did you guys ever watch that? Yeah, I watched it. It was so... It's like a train wreck, dude. Pressing to see them go through all that withdrawal. I feel like Danny Botteducci and all those guys. Oh, man. They went off the rails. Remember when he was all... He was like hella-roided out, smoking cigarettes at the same time? Yeah. I was like, bro, you're using it wrong. I feel like it's good, though, for people. A lot of people still think that Celebrity's like have it all and have it all made. And it's like what they have is a lot of money and fame. Yeah. And I think those shows like that really highlight that that's not the answer. You know? That doesn't necessarily give you purpose. And I think that's... In fact, it exaggerates the fame and success so much that I think it makes... I think the swing is even harder. I would say this. If they did a study and they actually tested, you know, Celebrity's versus just the average person. Okay? So the average American versus the celebrity. I bet you the depression and the mental illness rate is far higher in Celebrity's than it is the average person. Oh, I would bet the same thing. I believe they've done like happy surveys on famous people versus just average people as far as who's considered more happy. You know what I mean? And it's funny because all the average people... Added pressure and everything else. Yeah, all the average people like, oh my God, I wish I was like rich and famous and it's like, well, actually it's probably a bit of a curse if you're not like super solid with yourself. Well, if you're totally wrapped into that identity in the moment like you start losing favor or something happens. I think it's getting worse now because the like back two decades ago to become famous like you would have to have written many songs that have gotten popular. You'd have to be on multiple shows before you got really like one show doesn't do it. That's not enough to make you super famous or whatever. But we live now in this time where, you know, you could become famous like almost overnight on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook. So and then right away, generating tons and tons of money. So I think we're seeing a lot harder swings and crashes from these kids because you're starting to see these people that didn't really have put a lot of work in to get to that point. And then all of a sudden overnight, they get all this success. And part of the importance of taking time is the lessons you learn. All those lessons are so valuable. Along the way. I was just gonna say that. I almost feel like before you become super popular because we didn't... You know, it's not natural for us to have that level of fame and popularity. That's a very rare, rare thing. So it's not like you're gonna get there and then know how to deal with it naturally. It's just not... It's an unnatural thing. And to have that much access to things, I feel like you need to... You have to be prepared for. Almost like you need to be trained, know how to deal with it, be so solid with yourself. And then you get put into a position like that and then you're able to handle it. Because I think if you take the average person and you just make them famous, I think that they'll love it for approximately a week. You know what I mean? And then they're gonna be like, wow, this is terrible. I don't like this. This is not... It feels empty. I can't go anywhere. Probably longer than that because you can numb yourself with a lot of cool stuff for a while. You know, that's what happens. You start distracting yourself. Yeah. You got a bunch of money now and now you start feeling that void with all that stuff. Drugs and sex or whatever. Eventually that does come back. And then it starts to get real dark. Along those lines, they did a study on social media. Who was it that we interviewed that blew our minds on social media? Was it near? Near. Right, right, right. So this study kind of confirms what he was saying. So in this study, they actually took groups of people and they assigned them one group. You're gonna continue using social media. And then they took other groups and they had them abstain from social media for one group for seven days, one group for 14 days, another group for 21 days, and another group for 28 days. And then the scientists monitored the social media to make sure that they actually stuck with this. And at the end of the study, they asked them questions like, you know, how much are you working out, eating, what activities you're doing, how much TV you're watching, and this kind of stuff. And at the end of it, they rated their well-being. You know what they found? Hmm. There's no correlation between social media use and lack of well-being or well-being. In other words, the people that abstained from social media, even for the longest period, which was 28 days, had no improvement in their quality of life. Now, I would challenge that and just like we would challenge a supplement study that lasted 28 days, quality of life, purpose, things, well-being, these things, in my opinion, take a lot more than 28 days to really sink in for anybody. So, I mean, I don't know if that's how good of a study that is. Well, how many real-life friendships do they have, like each one of these people, like were they able to, you know, go in that direction or are they still isolating themselves in those 28 days? You guys make a good point because, number one, lots of social media use may be a symptom and not the cause. In other words, if someone's on social media all the time, maybe because they're depressed, it may not be causing the depression. Now, the second part, and here's the second part to what you guys are saying, I think you make a good point, just taking social media away doesn't mean that they're replacing it with things that make them, that improve their well-being. Right, exactly. So, maybe if it was longer, they would be forced to, or maybe they'll figure out another way to fill their time like they do with social media. Like, I'd like to see a study that says no social media but we're going to replace it with these positive activities, these positive behaviors, and then see, just simply taking it away. Right, because to Nier's point, you would just drop social media and then now that would be video game time or that would be whatever. Or drinking or something else. Yeah, they would just replace it with another distraction. And I agree with him on that. I think that that's the case. We've always seen that. I just think that the accessibility of social media in comparison to any of these other things is like, I don't know, it's crazier than anything else that we've ever seen before. Yeah, the way I would view it is, let's say I'm monitoring my kids, for example, I would monitor and see, oh, wow, you're on social media a lot. Something must be, maybe you're feeling a little down or whatever. Not that, oh, you're on social media a lot. The social media is causing you to feel down. And the reason why there's a difference there is if I don't think that way, I think a parent might be more apt to just say no social media. Yeah, oh, that's what's making you sad. Get off social media. But your kid's still not feeling great. Well, I think about it is like the way we get entertained from television, right? So, you know, as a kid, we grew up obviously in an era that we had cable TV so we could come home and watch your favorite shows. You know, the only difference now is your kids have all their favorite channels at the access of their hand 24-7. Right. That's really the difference. And because if we were kids and we had that access to all your favorite TV shows, 24-7 around the clock, you'd be watching TV all the time too. So it's kind of like that. And so it's just... I trip out on that a lot of times because like knowing that your show is only going to be on Friday, you know, and like you would plan your whole day to like get back home, you know, after doing all this stuff outside to drive back to get to, you know, hang out and watch the thing like it was an event. Right. I feel like the whole event thing around all these shows and it's just been lost because, you know, everything is just like right away. Yeah. It is interesting, but I do think it's a symptom. I don't think... I think he's right. I don't think it's a cause of the problem. I think it's just... it's a symptom of it and simply taking it away isn't going to solve the problem. You have to replace it with something that's going to provide them with good value. I just think that it's just going to... it requires a level of planning and discipline more than anything we've ever seen before. Mm-hmm. You know, when you go off to school... Because it's so easy. Yeah. Your television's still at your house, right? So as kids growing up, you know, I didn't have that option. You know, it wasn't... the TV's not in my back pocket where these kids have the TV in their back pocket everywhere they go and so the temptation to fill that time with that versus communicating with other people, socializing, playing games, physical games outside, it's just... it's higher than... It's actually... just like when I talked about earlier with pornography, you know, I didn't have to like create structures in discipline around porn. I didn't have access to tons and tons of pornography. Right. Nowadays, you're probably going to have to have structures around your pornography use so that it's... You use it appropriately. You're regulating it. Yeah, because it's exactly... you have to structure these things just like with anything else. Like food. I tell you what, it's... they're all... The future is all about discipline. Yeah, no, 100%. Like if you believe in your theory, which you've mentioned before, that, you know, we're gonna see... I mean, everything that can be free will be free. You'll be able to 3D print all the things. More and more people are going to have anything and everything they've ever wanted in their life. Soon, it will no longer be about that. Abundance. That's the root of all these problems. I mean, like even with the whole like news feed and everything, like everybody's getting these knee-jerk responses to just, you know, pop up things that happen, but haven't really been, you know, given the chance to really go through the content and see like specifics, you know, of what this entails. And it's interesting because like, even now, like they're looking even further at like deep fakes. Like Google right now has this whole like department devoted to trying to understand like the creation of these deep fakes, how to stay ahead of the deep fakes. I mean, they're definitely not ahead of the deep fakes. They're way behind. I guess they did like a bunch of, like 100 different videos of people walking down the street, filming themselves like saying something to the camera. And then like in the studio, recreate it, put a different face on, you know, with AI and then like, like presented it to like this group and asked them to determine like which one was the real, which one was the fake. And it was like, they still Yeah, they still were having a hard time distinguishing between the two. That's going to be weird. So it's like, dude, and like the next elections and everything, I mean, they've already messed with, I guess, an Elizabeth Warren video where they made her like all sound drunk and everything and then they found like that it was a fake, you know, eventually they reported it, but some of these they're not going to be able to know and then that's going to become fact because people are just like, or they won't know soon enough, right? They won't know. Yeah, exactly. Eventually it'll reach millions first. Yeah, eventually it'll just be like, we don't believe anything. Yeah. It's going to get there really fast is what I'm saying. Like this is going to get like really weird. That's weird. All right. The first question is from Cole World. Are trap bar deadlifts as good as straight bar deadlifts? Oh, we did trap bar deadlifts on our post Thanksgiving workout. Yeah. It's not that I don't think it's a as good or not as good. It's different. Yeah. You know, I like, I actually like trap bar deadlifts better for the average person than a straight bar deadlift because you get a lot of similar benefits. It's not the same. It's a different exercise, but you get similar benefits but it's easier to learn and to do properly. Less actual skill of having to, you know, like, like your mechanics aren't as like, like there's not a whole lot that you have to teach in terms of like where you have to be specifically to otherwise, you know, like you're going to like potentially get hurt if you do it wrong. Yeah. The risks with straight bar deadlifts are higher than with trap bar deadlifts. It's more technical with the straight bar. Way more. And so your risk of injury is higher. Now that doesn't mean you're going to get injured. If you do both right, you're fine. It just means if you mess up a little bit, you're probably more likely to mess up with a straight bar. And then because you mess up a little bit, you're more likely to hurt yourself with a straight bar. So now that being said, functionally speaking, okay, I think straight bar deadlifts have a little bit, get the edge in terms of functional strength because when you're bending over to lift something up, it's typically in front of you. So I think of lifting up at the end of a couch or helping your buddy carry something. Yeah. You're not grabbing in a neutral grip unless you're carrying a wheelbarrow or fucking horse and carriage. Exactly. It's not posterior base. Yeah. In case you're doing that. Yeah. But I get a lot of similar benefits. So with the trap bar, a little bit more quad involvement, but I still get that back thickness feel from it. I get less low back involvement than I would with a straight bar, but the low back is still pretty heavily involved. I personally can lift about anywhere between 60 to 70 more pounds with a trap bar because the biomechanics are just, it's better, there's more advantage to it. You know, if I could pull 600 pounds with a trap bar, then that means I'd probably have 530 with a straight bar. You know, type of deal. Yeah, I use the trap bar with, I guess we should explain what the trap bar is for somebody who doesn't know what that is. That's true. Right? So the trap bar, it's like a, what shape is that? It's almost like a hexagon. It's a hexagon. It's a hex score. They call it a hex bar as well, right? It's a hexagon. Yeah, so it's a hexagon is what it is. And then you stand in the middle of it and the hexagon goes all the way around you, right? And then you grab in a neutral grip. Which is my favorite part, is that it's in a neutral grip. Right. So I use this a lot with like advanced age clients that I'm like training, right? Yeah. You can get the benefits, but a lot of the benefits that you get for deadlifting without being as technical as the deadlift. But I prefer to teach that with the idea that we're going to progress to a deadlift eventually. And in fact, sometimes as a trainer, it's tough to actually get somebody really good at the trap bar and then transition to a conventional deadlift because if you didn't teach them how to properly set up with the trap bar as if you were going to be deadlifting with them, their setup is different. A lot of people can just get bent down to grab the trap bar and then they pick up and then they're all quad in it. And when I teach to get in set for a deadlift, I'm teaching more of the sliding the hips out and hinging back versus bending over to get the bar. And that's part of the poor mechanics that I see when people deadlift is they bend over to pick the bar up to deadlift and setting yourself up already and not loading the posterior chain first is one of the number one flaws I see with people deadlifting. And the other thing with the trap bar too is that there's two sets of handles on one and people don't know this, but if you, most trap bars, you can flip it upside down and there's a second set of handles and the handles on the backside of it are level to the weights where a straight bar will be. The ones on the top side, the handles come out and actually means you don't have to go down as low. And so when you use the upper handles, you're actually not doing as full of a range of motion as you are with the straight bar with whatever the circumference is of a 45-pound plate. So that's something to consider too. If you use a trap bar, play around with the other sides, you go deeper. Also, to that point, that's the other group of people I like. Trap bar is great for athletes. Oh, it's the best deadlift for athletes. Right, because it more closely relates to the position that you would be in in basketball and football and any sports. Rarely ever in sports will you be in a full range of motion, deadlift a barbell off a floor type of position. You're more likely at a slight bend in the knee like you would be in a trap bar deadlift. So I think great for explosive jumps. Yeah, I would do jumps with a trap bar way before I would do jumps with a bar on my back, doing like a squat or whatever. You figure your arms act a little bit like shock absorbers when you land. So you can really focus on that explosive movement. Yeah, well, I even like somebody like Corey Schlesinger who uses it like that same explosivity out of the movement of like a power clean, but you're just now basically using the trap bar and emulating that same movement with your hips and triple extension, but it's so much safer and way less to learn skill-wise. Yeah, one of my favorite exercises that I do now more recently than I never did when I was younger are heavy trap bar farmer walks. And this is something I learned, I started using because of Map Strong. Map Strong is part of their work sessions. You do farmer walks and it is recommended. You can do those with dumbbells too, but a trap bar is great because you fit right inside the trap bar. When you can load it way heavier. You load it and you walk with it. Good form, stabilize your body, tighten your core, and I just got great result. My arms felt bigger from doing that, just from holding on to that heavy weight. That's my favorite. I mean they do have some of those like handles where you can load plates and so you have like two different handles that you can load like a heavy farmer load, but it's still, I mean you're going to have that shift to consider. So it's nice to have that kind of balanced load too to load up heavy and walk with. Next question is from Tim Craven. What are some exercises for someone to repair poor thoracic mobility? Yeah, so thoracic mobility, they're referring to the part of the spine that's, well the thoracic part of the spine, but this is up by where your shoulder blades would be. So it's kind of like your upper middle back area. It's not where your neck is, that's a different part of the spine, but kind of up where your shoulder blades are. And if that part of your spine has poor mobility, either because it's tight, or even maybe because it's super loose but not strong, it can cause a lot of different kinds of problems. Now the most common types of issues that people will get from poor thoracic mobility is neck tightness and stiffness and shoulder problems. So it's an important thing to work on. Now people with a very mobile thoracic area, or should I say flexible one that's not very strong, now you start to get upper back pain and problems. This is where people feel, you know, mid-back pain when they get stressed out or when they're sitting too long or whatever. How do you repair that? Boy, there's a lot of phenomenal movements you can do. One of my favorites, I actually like lizard-wroth rotation to work on that rotational thoracic mobility. I know we did a video on that a while ago. I think you were the one that... Yeah, and I'm going to redo that. I'm actually going to do... This is a cool question. I didn't know whoever picked this, that you went this way because this was actually in my notes for me to do a video on this, on the YouTube channel. And I really want to do it because this is an area that I'm addressing right now. So I would improve to continually to work on my squat. So my squat is far from perfect still, but it's come a long way in the last two years. The main focus was to address my ankle mobility and my hip mobility to where I can now sit in a really deep squat. Now I still don't have great thoracic mobility. And what that looks like is when I, at the bottom of my squat, I'm still got forward head and kind of rounded shoulders. It's really tough for me to control and stay in that really good retracted position in my head in a neutral position, especially with a loaded bar and deep in a squat. And so I have two things that I do. So we've talked about this on the podcast before many times that we recommend when people find one or two things from Maps Prime Pro that you can tell you need to work on or greatly benefit your movement to just stick to those two and hammer them home and get good at. For me, there's two things that I do every day before I work out, especially if I'm squatting to address this. Lizard with rotation is a good one though too, even though it's not the two main ones that I do. So I do our zone one test in Prime One, which what I like about that is I use the wall for feedback. So I put my back against the wall. I then tuck my chin so that I can feel that my cervical spine is in a neutral position. So my head is back and neutral where it should be. So then I can feel it against the wall so I can get feedback there. And then I put my arms up by my side. So my wrist, my elbows, my head, everything is being pinned. And all I'm really doing there is you're waking up all those muscles in your back or getting better connected with them that are responsible for keeping me in that good neutral position or a retracted position as I go down. And so I'll do hold. So I'll get in that position, tuck the chin, drive the wrist and elbows back against the wall. And I'll push and push against the wall as hard as I can for like real similar to how I taught the combat stretch where I lift my toes up and I'm trying to intensify that move. I'm also pushing against this wall with my head, my wrist, and my elbows and driving against that to kind of get those all connected. And I do the same thing. Five second intense holds, relax. Five second intense holds. I do that for five times and I do two or three rounds. That's the first movement. And then the second one is something that I can do now that I wasn't able to do before. I've also done a video of this on my Instagram where you may have seen me sitting down in front of the squat rack at the deepest position I can get and then I grab a band and I do band pull-up parts in that position. And while I'm doing the band pull-up parts, I'm also trying to tuck my chin back. I do that for a primer before I get in my squat. Those two things, I've noticed the most benefits for me personally, even though I do like the Lizard with Rotation, but it's in my notes to reteach it because something I see people do wrong with the Lizard with Rotation is they just kind of go through the motion of doing the rotation. Sure, that's decent for warming you up, but if the idea is to improve the mobility, you need to be challenging the in-ranges emotion, which would mean taking that Lizard with Rotation to the end point and then challenging it by intensifying it there. That's what's going to really increase the mobility. I noticed too something. I was in a gymnastic class a long time ago when I was just trying to experiment and find out other forms of modalities out there that people were using when I was really getting into bodyweight training. I found out when we were trying to do these tuck rolls where you would do a handstand, then you'd try and tuck and then kind of roll out of it. I had a really fucking hard time with that and my thoracic spine was super stiff and I couldn't get the flexibility out of it. It takes to be able to kind of roll into that rounded back position. I know that this might be a common thing for guys or whatever that are trying to really build up their back and build up their chest and whatnot, but for me, it was challenging. I tried to address it through a bunch of different ways and doing cat and cow and trying to really articulate my spine and to really push and get reconnected there to my thoracic spine was something that I definitely had to do, as well as visit rounded back lifting and so hugging heavy medicine balls and placing them almost like an atlas stone lift or just squatting with rounded ball and really squeezing it. Zercher squats. Zercher squats is another great one, so just things like that to consider if that's a problem with your thoracic spine that you're dealing with. Yeah, and you'll actually sometimes find that people's low back pain is because of the poor thoracic mobility. I mean, if you're rotating and your thoracic spine is tight, you're still trying to rotate. So what ends up happening is for a lot of people, their low back takes over and they over rotate in their low back because it's kind of picking up the slack. So sometimes, and sometimes it's often that I found this where one area hurts, but it's not because that area is the problem. It's because of the surrounding areas. It's almost always like that. It's rarely ever, you know, I have low back pain because I have a bad low back. It's because something else is stressing the low back and, you know, I'd echo that. So I think that it's really common that if you have poor thoracic mobility, more likely than not, you're also somebody who has kind of the forward shoulder, forward head, and so you're carrying, you're distributing the weight forward and so think about, and I used to give people the analogy of what they were doing to their low back to get the point across is that have them grab like a 40 pound dumbbell and like slightly lean over and then like just have them hold that for a second and then within 30 seconds to a minute, they're like, oh my God, my low back is fatiguing out. It's like, okay, that's what you're doing to yourself all day long. And I made you hold a 40 pound weight to exaggerate it and so you notice it right away, but all day long, you're carrying your weight forward and like that and so it's not being distributed evenly throughout your spine and so you're getting all this stress in the low back and so addressing thoracic mobility and getting to that place where you can, you know, address the upper cross-engine with a forward shoulder I'm talking about, a lot of times will alleviate somebody's low back pain. Next question is from McFlex. What are the benefits of strength training when battling depression and anxiety? Oh wow, so first I want to preface this by saying that we're not doctors. Therapists? Yeah, or therapists, but I'm going to speak from just experience, from working with clients and also working with clients doctors for, you know, I trained clients for years and oftentimes when they had a situation pop up that would come up in their questionnaire, I would contact their doctor and then we would kind of work together. Now the studies are pretty clear now that any kind of physical activity or exercise has a very positive effect on anxiety and low to moderate types of depression. In fact, in head-to-head comparisons against some of the most popular antidepressant medications, exercise is as good in the medium term and in the long term some studies even say that exercise is more effective. So it's definitely something that is extremely effective. Now the problem, of course, is if I'm depressed and anxious, the last thing I want to do is go exercise. So it's kind of like, okay, like which one do I do first? Like I got to get rid of this and this is how I get rid of it, but now because I feel this way, I don't want to go exercise. So that's the hard part. But let's just say that you can will yourself to get to a gym or start being exercised. Number one, any type of activity should have a, as long as it's appropriate, should have a positive effect on both anxiety and depression. That being said, I will make the case that strength training is the best form of exercise for these things, for a few different reasons. One, resistance training has, when done properly, has a very positive effect on hormones and we know the role that hormones play in how we feel. So when men, resistance training has been shown to raise low levels of testosterone, low levels of testosterone definitely can cause depression or anxiety in men. In women, resistance training, when done appropriately, is a more effective way of balancing out your progesterone and estrogen balance, which when that's out, it can cause anxiety and depression. Resistance training also is pro muscle, pro tissue. Your body actually starts to burn more calories as a result and that just tends to feel good. When a body becomes efficient with calories and slows itself down, as is the case with lots and lots of cardio, over time, this is just my own observation, over time, that can start to make you feel a little bit depressed because your energy's lower. Your body's becoming more efficient with calories, burning less calories. You may find that you have less energy. Strength training, when done properly, is very invigorating for the body and it's also complex. It requires you to be present more than other forms of exercise, which tend to be repetitive. Writing a bike or walking. Yeah, writing a bike for an hour could really make you sit in your depression a lot more. You could sit in your looping thoughts, but when you're lifting weights properly, you're... Especially strength training. Yeah, you gotta pay attention. Yeah, back squat 200 pounds and think about how depressed you are. Yeah, that's hard to do. And it's also extremely, what's the word, empowering. Yeah. You know, if you go to the gym, let's say you're feeling down or whatever, but you're like, I'm willing myself to work out. I'm gonna do it properly. Let's say you follow maps or you have a trainer, so you know what you're doing is right. You go to the gym and let's say today I did, you know, 100 pounds on the bench press. Or I did, you know, seven push-ups. I did seven push-ups. I come to the gym tomorrow. I did nine push-ups. Then I come back, you know, three days later, I did 12 push-ups. It's hard not to recognize the connection between the work and the progress. It's very, very clear with strength training. I'm getting stronger. And then, of course, you're proving. Yeah. And that makes you feel good because of your hard work result. That's like a great combination right there. No, I want to add to that. And again, not a therapist by any means, although I've experienced feeling like this, especially in the last couple of years coming off the Testosterone. And this was, this is close to home for me. And one of the things though that I want to add to the point that Sal made is that I do agree that strength training of all the things that I was working on during this time was one of the number one things that helped me through it. But I also had to be okay with the fact that I might go to the gym today and it may be all yoga. Because here's the thing, when you get caught in a depression loop or have a ton of anxiety and stress going on in your life, and you also know that a heavy squat session is ahead of you today, sometimes I just didn't have it in me to do it. And so I had to be okay with sometimes doing a workout that was less strength focused and more recuperative or working in where maybe it was sauna and stretching that day or it was all mobility work or I just didn't quite have it in me to get after it and so then I would just chase a pump and call it a day. It's okay that too, but nothing I think will physically benefit you more in the gym than strength training but also know that, you know, you don't have to put so much pressure on yourself that I've got to go in there because that's hard sometimes when you're in that place to get the muster to get up and go get after it like you know you can do. And so I had set for myself personal goals and I would recommend the same thing for a client that was going through this. For me who was used to training, you know, six, seven days a week consistently, I told myself, listen, if I can get it in there and I could give myself three good lift days, of course I want to, my goal is to go every day still but as long as I get two to three good lifting days that's an accomplished week for me. And so a lot of times I would go to the gym and it wouldn't be a hard heavy day but I'd still make sure that, you know, two or three days of the week I was doing that. Yeah, I'm definitely not a, I would put out a disclaimer as well. But I know that too, just a lot of times there's that internal chatter and there's all this like excess of energy that needs to be expended that, you know, your body a lot of times like it just wants to get rid of it and that feeling of exhaustion, a lot of times it helps to then, you know, like limit a lot of that excess amount of energy that's just stored in your body that like makes its way up into your thoughts. And I think that, you know, just to be able to expel that to, it definitely has its own benefits on its own. Yeah, there's, when you look at exercise and you look at the literature on exercise and this is just from my understanding and depression and anxiety, you have the acute effects where right after the workout you tend to feel a little bit of a mood lift and you feel a little bit better. When we look at strength training versus aerobic activity they're pretty equal there with the acute effects. Now the long-term effects argue resistance training is better. Mainly because of my experience training clients and seeing how strength training just has better long-term effects on people generally anyway. Again, it speeds up the metabolism. It's very individualized. You can train your resistance training according to your goals where it's with cardiovascular activity, tend to be stuck in the same, you know, repetitive motion or whatever. It's pro-anabolic hormone. It's pro-tissue, which is muscle. And so long-term is where I'll argue that strength training probably shines. I think it shines even more head-to-head like you said before. I think that it's pro-posture and we know the connection that posture has with like depression. A lot of times when you see someone who's depressed you get to see it in their posture. Their head is down, their slouched way forward. Man, you get a great workout. How many of you ever walked out of the gym slouching over? No, your chest is up. You feel more upright than you felt all day after a workout. And that, you know, definitely has got to feed into feeling better also. So I would make the case, Sal, that it's even better than cardio because you could run on a treadmill or slouch over a stair master for an hour. Strengthen that slouching posture. Right, and still get a dopamine rush that's equivalent to what you've got from weight training. Posture, so I think it definitely supersedes cardio in that case. Next question is from Tom LeBanc official. What are the benefits of caffeine cycling and how should I do it? The benefits of cycling any type of a substance including caffeine that has such an acute effect on the body. Makes it awesome again. When you look at a substance you want to ask yourself what are the benefits I'm getting from this? So this is what I've done this with caffeine. Yeah, why am I taking this? Yeah, I look at caffeine I think to myself the benefits are I get lots of energy I'm up, I feel less pain I'm a better human. I feel more motivated, you know my athletic performance goes up so I want to get those benefits from caffeine now what are the negatives that I can potentially get with caffeine? Well I can get nervous it can affect my sleep it can cause elevated heart rate it can affect my digestion maybe poorly so I want to maximize the positives and mitigate the negatives. Here's what happens when you use a substance like caffeine consistently. Your tolerance goes up very quickly with caffeine because your tolerance goes up you need more and more to try and get some of the benefits but as the amount increases so do the negatives and at some point the negatives start to outweigh the positives. So the benefits of caffeine cycling are maximizing the benefits and minimizing the negatives but it takes discipline. So like for me I found that caffeine three days a week is ideal. Three days a week I have about two to three hundred milligrams of caffeine before my work out because that's when I get the most benefit and the days in between I don't have any caffeine at all when I have it every single day I notice that after a short period of time you gain tolerance to caffeine very quickly I notice that having it daily it just starts to turn into what I feel normal which to me is very much I've lost the benefit. This is true for a lot of substances pretty much anything. I think it's with all drugs. I mean caffeine is a drug and it's socially accepted we all do it and there's a Starbucks in every corner but the reality of it is personally if I want to enjoy the benefits of the drug the same way I did the first handful of times that I had it I have to cycle off it to get that same feeling so and this is so individualized I mean if you looked at Mind, Sal, Doug and Justin's caffeine consumption it's all different and to each their own you know what I'm saying? I really enjoy a cup of coffee every single morning I don't know if I'll ever when I cycle off I don't have it but I don't think I would consistently do something that Sal's doing where only a few days a week I enjoy having a cup of coffee every single morning it's just something I enjoy to do but I also have just these things that I pay attention to and that is you know one cup of coffee turns into two then turns into three then turns into four and you know before I know it I'm doing that and then I'm having a pre-workout or having energy drink on top of it and so I know myself and what kind of like how that scales and so I just kind of have this hey once I get to a point where I'm having you know four cups of coffee which sounds like a lot but I'm actually saying real four cups like most people's mug is a cup and a half in itself like once I get to a place where I've drank four cups of coffee which is basically two big cups that I'd have in the morning once I'm like reaching for more that's always my sign to go back the other direction and that's just kind of how I always do it and I go back the other direction by scaling back first which that four cups is now like three to two to two and a half and then going to a fast where I'm off of it completely and for me it only seems that I have to take about a week or two of none at all to get that same feeling when I get back on it it's the same thing that I met when I mess with things like Kratom it's the same way that I mess with things like Cannabis I notice the same type of effects something that could be start with me just a little bit every single day to multiple times in a day scaling up on any of those types of drugs I wing myself off slowly then I go to a fast and then depending on how long I'll fast a little bit longer with weed typically but with caffeine I take about a week or two off and then come back and it feels like it's the first time I've had caffeine again the slow weaning process is more tolerable isn't it because it's like going from four cups to none that's not gonna happen it's brutal and so there's a different way there's a few different ways you can cycle it the way Adam's talking about I think is a better way to do it if you want to come down and what I've typically recommended to clients was to reduce their caffeine intake by a quarter every week so after four weeks they're off so it gives them a four week period so it's like four cups goes to three do that for a week, goes down to two do that for a week one and then none and then reintroduce it the other way you could do it I really prefer this because I hated the complete fast so much like I hated the week that was off my workouts sucked it was terrible and I didn't like it when my tolerance was up either there was like a few weeks there that sucked too so the other way to do it is just to use it in a way that doesn't require you to cycle it again like what I'm doing three days a week I don't need to cycle it it's just three days a week Monday Wednesday Friday that's it I'm strict with that I never have to go completely off and I avoid that week or two I think if you're using it less than I mean if you're using it less than what you're off of it you're going to be fine it's when you start getting to where we're at where it's every day and then it's multiple times a day and then you're at Justin's bar I enjoy that cup man, I'm going to be honest that's one of those things like I have gone off before but it was just like this is not my existence I like the ritual of it I enjoy the smell the smell of the coffee brewing in my house in the morning I enjoy sitting down and reading articles and sipping on the coffee so for me it's not just the caffeine effect although that's obviously an amazing side effect of it it's the ritual of it too it's like a cognitive prime for me I need that that length of time drinking it in order to like arise and become aware of my world in front of me so that first cup for me is not going to leave but the rest of it cup zero I will scale based off just like you guys are talking about it can get to a point where your workouts you just don't have the energy and you know that you need the stimulant to be able to fuel that energy into the workout that's a problem I don't need that I don't need something right beforehand to get me up and lively so I do adapt to it very quickly the consumption has really exploded more recently with the widespread consumption of coffee and energy drinks because coffee wasn't consumed by teenagers and kids in their maybe in their 20s in college but definitely not teenagers coffee was an old person's drink and it tasted gross now they're drinking coffee energy drinks didn't really exist the only energy drink I can remember as a kid was jolt cola mountain dude and those weren't considered energy drinks they're nothing dude it's like 48 milligrams of caffeine which is nothing so consumption has gone up now caffeine itself is not bad but if you have an intolerance to it or you're sensitive to it it can be very bad and this is different from person to person my tolerance for caffeine is Doug and I have a very low tolerance to caffeine in comparison to Justin and Adam the appropriate amount for me or Doug is far different than the appropriate amount that would be for Adam or Justin this conversation reminds me of that old Seinfeld episode where they master my domain do you remember that one you don't remember that master of your domain and they're talking about fasting from masturbating I find if I catch myself using words like need or have to things like that I always challenge myself I don't want to fill dependent on anything try to see the connection between the episode of masturbating it's being addicted to anything you brought up porn earlier in this episode to me it's all the same whether it be a physical energy addiction or a mental stimulation addiction anytime I catch myself saying I have to or I need or I want every day I always be a red flag I always challenge that and then I always restrict myself to prove that I'm in full control of this meat wagon I'm not a slave to anything and I think that's a good practice in the ritualization of morning coffee is definitely a piece of why it's so hard to stop and supplement companies who do pre-workout supplements or the first ones to come out with pre-workout supplements were brilliant because they understood that if they took a product that you could feel and it's got full stimulants that you could ritualize have this before your workout because what does every fitness person do work out if you could ritualize a supplement you have made a lot of money that's why it's the number one seller for every supplement and I know a lot of people who work out do not work out unless they have a pre-workout which I find pretty fascinating because that was never a thing when I was going up and with that go to mindpumpfree.com and download our guides and our resources they're all absolutely free you can also find all of us on Instagram you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam