 You're tuning in to the best fitness health entertainment podcast on YouTube. This is mine pump. Okay. So check this out. Uh, you can win a free T shirt. You can win this free T shirt right here. In fact, check this thing out. It's beautiful. This is a gorgeous shirt that you can win by commenting underneath this video. So here's a deal comment underneath this video in the first 24 hours that we post this video and tell us a lie that you fell for from the fitness industry. Because this episode we talk all about fitness lies that are told by fitness influencers. So in the comments, put lies that you've been told before. And if we pick your comment as the best one and so long as you did it in a lot in the 24 hours we posted the video, you might win or you will win this amazing, incredible limited edition, mind put media T shirt. Okay. But before we get started with the episode, one more thing. Um, we also don't forget, we have our phase two bundle still going on. I think it's the final hours. If I'm not mistaken, in other words, this promotion is not going to be around for very long. This is maps performance combined with maps aesthetic, both programs about three months long each. So it's like six months of workout programming with videos and demos and everything in there. The phase two bundle is only $79.99. Normally those programs retail combined for close to $300. Go check them out maps, February.com. Also subscribe to this channel, turn on your notifications cause we give things away all the time. You want to be one of the first commenters so you can win some free stuff like this T shirt. All right. Enjoy this podcast. All right guys. So when I was younger and trying to build muscle long time ago, a long, long time ago, I used to work out with Moses back then. I used to get these muscle and fitness magazines. I'd follow the routines in them and I wouldn't build any muscle. And I couldn't figure out why. And so one of the things I also did is I took all the supplements that were being pitched in there because I believed if I followed the routines and the workouts of the big guys in the magazine, I would actually get big myself and it just didn't happen. And this, this plagued me for years and years. And what I discovered after, you know, hanging out with you guys is that there's a lot of lies out there in the fitness space. And I thought it'd be very interesting if you guys would kind of go into that because I think there's a lot of young people out there, even older people who have been following all this stuff for years and years and they had the same challenge I had. We've been bamboozled. You know, not a lot has changed Doug. The only difference is you don't see it as much on magazines as you do it with influencers. Yeah. Yeah. Cause even when we were kids, the lies came from the fitness magazines, muscle fitness or flex or Iron Man or whatever. Now the lies are coming from, it's still coming from the fitness industry, but it's all these social media influencers that are, that are doing the lying. Yeah. They're the ones that are promoting. You've been beating him up for like six years. He doesn't even exist anymore. He does too. Really? Yes. He's gone. I mean, we're all blocked from him so we can't see him, but he's, he's still around. You know, he's still around. I guess he's just my personal thing. You know what he did? He did, uh, um, after the whole, you know, falling out of shreds after that going on, shreds even exist. No, they don't, that completely imploded. Weird. Um, yeah. I'm going to predict that. Uh, but after that, he did this, these rise supplements. So he pivoted over to that. What I don't know is if that's still in existence. Now I, I know when he did it, I don't know who he got behind him financially, but they had people like, uh, you know, Conor McGregor that was promoting it. So I don't know how much money, I imagine if they were dumping that kind of money in it, you know, three, four years ago. Well, they were the originals. I mean, I guess when we first started to get into social media, like we were looking at other fitness people that were in the space and they were definitely a big presence. And so it was just hilarious to me to see like how they were marketing and what they were trying to, uh, educate their audience with. And it was just like a purely a great example for what we're about to talk. Yeah. One of the challenges to with fitness influencers is, and maybe this will change, um, you know, oh, there, look, rise is still exists. Look at that, huh? Fuel your greatness. Yeah. They definitely got money behind it for sure. Yeah. You know what they did so well is they, they did old school marketing just on a new medium. It's the old tricks still work. Yeah. Yeah. It's photo shopping, you know, the challenges, all those things. I mean, it's the, this stuff has been around for a really long time. And they, they were one of the first to do it on Instagram. Well, one of the challenges of the, of this kind of new, like these fitness influencers is, and maybe it's starting to change, uh, not yet, but I think it might be changing soon is that they appear to be more real because you're communicating directly with them or they're communicating directly with their audience. Like when we had the magazines, it was, you were so far away from the people communicating. Oh, a hundred percent. When you were taking EAS, I never felt connected to Bill Phillips. Exactly. I never felt like I got to know his personality or anything behind him where today's market now almost, almost requires as you, as a CEO or a face of a brand to put yourself out there on social media. Right. So, okay. So let's talk about some of the lies that these influencers, and I tell you it, uh, the vast majority of the information they present is crap, is, is, is false. Some of it is outright flat lie. The first one I can think about, that's a lie. And you just, you still see this. And this one's interesting to me because I don't think you need to lie about this. I think you could be honest about this and it's still going to be okay. But it's the lie that they're, it's the, it's the claim that they're natural. Yeah. The claim that they don't use anabolic steroids or they don't, you know, take, you know, illicit substances to make themselves, you know, look the way that they do. And I, I, I kind of get why they lie about that because it's like, Hey, you know, this is why I look the way I do. It's my, you know, my pump formula or my fat burner pill or whatever. Right. But the reality is, uh, the vast majority of these fitness influencers are not natural. Now, I think, I think the pendulum has swung quite a bit with this though. So talking about six years ago when, you know, or even seven years, it's been seven years now when I think I first started my Instagram page. And I openly talked about my anabolic steroid use. Uh, not a lot of people in the space were doing that, unless you were some like super steroid guy out that was rich Piano, rich Piano was doing it. So I'm not by any means, I'm not claiming I was the first to do it, but in the, you know, the, the basic fitness community, most people were not. I do think now it's almost become trendy to post I'm natural and to come out there and say that, or openly talk about your use. But I think what we still see is there were people that started their fitness business five, six, 10 years ago that have been preaching that or saying that they're natural that are like, feel like they're committed to that. You know, there was, there's a lot of guys in the space that, you know, have been popular now for, you know, well over five plus years. And they came out saying they're all natural when, you know, people like us would be like, you know, I know you're not a natural guy. Right, right. Um, and now that they have to maintain the facade. Yeah, exactly. Or I'll say their whole thing has been, it's been a lie, right? Yeah. And, you know, right along those lines, a lot of them do some, you know, unhealthy things to maybe look the way that they do. And you know, on the female side, there's, there's also the claim to be natural, but not necessarily in the steroid arena, but rather the, you know, my butt is real. For example, we know, we know personally people in, in the space who, you know, talk, they sell butt building programs and look at my butt and the difference or whatever, but they got butt implant. Page Hapley got nailed for that. Did she? Yeah, she got, she got nailed. Another Shreds person, they knew how to recruit him. Weird, wow. Well, that's strange that they. She got nailed for that after Shreds went down, that came out on her. And then, um, what's this kid? What's that kid's name? Devin Fizik got nailed for the photoshopping. Photoshopping. Yeah. So he was like adding inches to his arm and shrinking his waist. He had a nice looking physique. He did not have to do that. It was all right. Yeah. Wow. You know what though? You know what's funny about this particular claim? Is it actually causes a reverse reaction? Because they claim to be natural and then people smarten up. And I think this is such a stupid claim to make because smart people be like, well, you're not natural. And then you get kids who think that the answer is steroids in the sense that if, oh, well, he's obviously not natural. But if I just took steroids, I would look like him. That, that is also a lie that just taking drugs will make you look like your favorite fitness influencer. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. So it's like it's kind of this double-edged sword of, you know, on the one hand, oh, you know, they're taking their supplements. That's why they look the way they do. Or the other hand, which is if all I did was take, that's the only thing that's separating me from Arnold is if I took steroids. Yeah. I mean, that was a perception I had forever. Well, because I avoided it and I would see usage of it all the time at these gyms, like gold gyms. You go into the locker room, you see guys, you know, using it, but you never see them really progressing. And so that was one of those things where I was, you know, kind of scratching my head. Like if you're taking all these, these anabolic steroids, like where I'm not seeing this in your physique, I'm not seeing any progress. Well, I think what perpetuates this is there's this illusion that if you look a certain way, you must know what the fuck you're doing. That is one of the, that's the biggest one right there. And I think that's what drives this is that, you know, we're drawn to these physiques. We all admire them, look up to that or think, oh, one day aspire to be like that. And because of that, I think it's created this illusion that, oh, if they got that way or they look this way, they must know what they're talking about. So that's become this formula in the fitness space of get shredded and rip. I mean, I use that. I mean, I knew I would, and my thought was I'm gonna fight fire with fire. It's like, okay, I knew the messaging that a lot of these coaches and influencers that were putting out was garbage, but nobody was gonna pay attention to me unless I looked as good as all of them. I could sit there all day long and tell them what I think is the truth and the better way to train and sharing my experience as a coach. No one gave a shit until I could show you that, okay, I could do what they're doing. I can show you, I can get jacked like that too. Now let me flip the script and then tell you guys all the things that they're telling you that's full of shit. Right, right. Yeah, I know it's false and there's a couple reasons why it's false. Number one, and this is something that you learn as a personal trainer. People are very different, right? So as a trainer, I could find success training one person. That does not mean I will find, at all, that I'll find success training another person. Every person's very unique. And I'm not just talking about the physiology, right? Physiology is also unique, right? So Adam and Justin have different microbiomes, different body shapes and sizes and hormone levels or whatever. So there's all that. But then there's also, and this is a bigger part of it, they're very different emotionally. They're very different with the foods that they enjoy that they don't enjoy, the type of exercise they like, how they like to train. All those, how they medicate with food, some people, right? All these things are so different that just because somebody maybe figured it out for themselves, and by the way, you don't know how they figured it out for themselves, the way that they might look, the way that they do, it might be a very dysfunctional way. Many times it is. Many times it is. It might be a way that is not maintainable for them, or if it is, they have no other life. They've got terrible relationships and maybe even unhealthy bodies as a result of it. So it doesn't tell you that they know how to work out, but it's hard, right? Because when you go through social media, it looks like evidence. Oh, this girl looks amazing, or this guy is so strong, they must know what they're talking about. So I'm going to follow their advice for my body. It would be great if that was the case all the time, right? You could just pick somebody's body out and be like, hey, how'd you do that? And I'm going to take that same formula and apply it to myself, and then magically it'll work out just the way it did for them. Well, and even if they did a good job, right? Because I do think there's some fitness people out there that have done a good job, have a healthy relationship with exercise, got themselves shredded and fit. It's still just a whole different monster. It's a total different monster, getting yourself ripped and shredded, and dealing with Suzy, who's 62, has never worked out before in her life, and she wants to get really good shape, or Timmy, who's 17 and wants to build 15, 20 pounds of muscle, or Janet, who's 35 and had three kids, and she's got gut issues, and she wants to lose 30 pounds. Every one of those is a different monster to tackle, and the formula that you figured out that works for you, even if you did a good job figuring it out, doesn't necessarily, it's not going to work for those people. No. And I think you see that a lot in the space. And it's, again, another thing that's perpetuated by the industry is, this is what companies go, they go after this guy. So they used to sit at the shows, right? So you have competitors that get off stage, and there's supplement companies waiting there to talk to you. Forget if you have any experience coaching clients or working other people out. You've never even tried their supplement. Right, exactly, that too. And you're shredded, now I want you to represent our brand and tell other people how they should be taking this because you've gotten shredded. Right, and by the way, this is a lesson that new trainers learn all the time. So a new trainer will, I've hired many, many trainers in the past, and they have the certifications, they have the knowledge, they don't have the experience yet. And this is a lesson that they themselves even learn. For example, I'll give you, this is kind of a general example, but it's so common. I'm the fitness fanatic trainer. The way that I learned about fitness was I became obsessed, and I loved it, and I lived in the gym. It's my favorite thing to do. And so the way that I communicate fitness to my clients is, you need more motivation. You need to just keep going. This is, don't worry about your time, you've got 24 hours in the day and so it's all about the time that you prioritize. You've got to be more committed. More committed. And they communicate this way to their new clients and they fail. Fail, fail, fail, fail, fail because those people are so different from them. And so this is often what you get. Often what you get with these fitness influencers is they'll communicate this message to people, the whole like beast mode, no days off message that they'll communicate, which might work for them because they are fitness fanatics and they're crazy and this is their favorite thing to do in the whole world and maybe even dysfunctional about it. But then they communicate that to the average person. Oh, the way to get to your goals is to beast mode. The way to get to your goals is do nothing else. This is the most important thing. You've got to push yourself harder. You want to be better than other people? You've got to push yourself harder than other people. And I get where that message comes from but it's not an effective message for most people. In fact, again, and I saw this from trainers, these are people who actually had education in fitness, it doesn't work. It doesn't work because most people aren't like this. This is a hard lesson. I mean, that was definitely something I carried, you know, even from sports. Like I just, I love the working hard message. I love the mental discipline message. Like I just held on to those dearly and tried to pass that on. But you just realize that everybody's motivated by totally different things and they're coming into it with a completely different perception of how they're going to be able to do all these things. This might just look like, you know, an insane amount of work for them and then, you know, and get just burnt out by just looking at what they have to do right away. Well, the truth is, it is motivating. It's motivating to hear that, to see that. The problem is motivation is fleeting and that's not what's going to get somebody these lifelong results. If you want to get shredded and you're needed a little energy to get to your workout, watching one of these guys hype up and talk about no days off and beast mode and then crushing inside the gym can be exciting and motivating. I mean, I've used it. I mean, there's been times where I'll get on YouTube and I'll look up old Ronnie Coleman videos and workouts and before I go in the gym and I use that energy to go workout. So it's very addicting for a lot of people. But the problem is, it doesn't handle the root issue that's going on with that person that keeps that person out of shape. If you fall in love with motivation, if you get addicted to motivation, here's what your workout schedule will look like on and off. It will not be consistent because when you're motivated, it's going to feel amazing. And by the way, this is a true statement. I'll ask you guys, in fact, have you ever had to convince a client to work out or follow the nutrition plan when they are motivated? No. No, when you're motivated, it's all easy as hell. Everything works. Okay. It's when you're not motivated. Oh, by the way, spoiler alert, motivation doesn't last. It just doesn't. This is natural. Okay. Just like happiness. You want to be happy and it's a feeling. It's a feeling. So the beast mode, no days off mentality is, oh, I'm on a drive. I feel good. And then it goes away and then you stop working out. Or you can be like me as a kid who was a fitness fanatic driven by my own body image insecurities as a kid. And I have this beast mode, no days off message hammered into me. And what do I do? I over train the shit of myself. I ignore all my body signals. I ignore the fact that I need to take some time off. In fact, when I finally learned this lesson, I made the best gains of my life. But before I was like, oh, I'm sore. I'm not progressing. I just got to push harder. Oh, it's not where I got to push harder. I got to add more. I got to push harder. I got to add more. It was the opposite of what I needed to do. Yeah, it's one of those things. You have to learn that wrestling recovery is a vital part of the process. And that's just not something that's brought up enough. And I think that it just gets overwhelmed by just trying to get people to buy into the idea of you got to get in there. You got to work hard. And you got to do it like every single day, nonstop as hard as you can. And that just for some reason, that's became common knowledge amongst everybody. Another problem with this is that fitness influencers want you to believe that they're always beast mode and no days off because it sounds heroic and tough. Like, you know, they don't want to like a martyr. Yeah, they don't want to say something like, oh, you know, I'm going easy this week. It's, you know, I got to take it easy. They want to be like, oh, all the time I go hard. In fact, we knew people. We knew people like this who were fitness influencers who said that they would do 50 to 60 sets in a workout and swore up and down that it was, this is how I work out all the time. And then later meet their workout partners like they didn't work out like that. The workouts are not 50, 60 sets every single time. They just say that on, you know, on their media so that people think that they're animals and machines. It promotes the yo-yo dieting of exercise, the binge and restrict. The same issue you have with dieting and telling someone to cut tons of calories and restrict always ends up with binge eating. That's right. The same concept applies when you're talking about exercise. When you're talking about beast mode, all out training to failure, no days off. That is the binge and it will lead to the restriction too. I know the swing of up and down. So that's the problem with it. And that's the biggest issue that I have is when you see people promoting that, it may feel good initially to hear that or to see that or get you motivated, Jim. But the reality is it's not going to keep people coming consistently if they don't learn to change behaviors. Yeah, absolutely. You know it's a big lie and message that I'm seeing now on media with fitness influencers. And I think this is because one of the strategies with media, with especially social media is to take something that is popular and then counter it because you get attention, right? So I'll give you guys an example. In the 90s, we were hammered for at least a couple of decades that fat was why everybody was getting fat. So eat low fat, eat low fat, eat low fat. Well, Atkins came out with a book that said, eat as much fat as you want, cut your carbs, and then you'll lose weight. And it exploded because it was counter to the original message. So people are like, oh my God, this guy's telling me to eat all the fat I want. I mean, people don't know this. Unless you're my age group, this was like a radical idea, a book that came out. It was like a big deal right now. It's not that big of a deal. We know calories really matter. But back then it was a big deal because it was counter to the common message. Well, right now I'm starting to see some of these fitness influencers do posts and videos where they're saying that squats and deadlifts are overrated. That no, you don't need to squat and deadlift. You can do leg press and do these other exercises. And oh, deadlifts aren't really a back exercise. Do all these other back exercises. Totally fine. Totally false. Totally false. They're not overrated. They are two of the most superior exercises you could ever get good at. You know what's funny about this one is that the three of us have been in this space long enough to actually have seen this pendulum swing both directions. I know. Because before, like when we first came in the space, right, so go back 20 years, Nautilus machines had kind of hit the market maybe a decade before that. And they become super popular. Everybody was doing it. There was dust on the squat racks. Nobody was squatting. Nobody was deadlifting. Well, back then it was those are dangerous. Right. They were dangerous. You could hurt you. And I believe that even as a trainer, I believe that. And so I trained all my clients on the leg press, the leg extension, and all that stuff. So, and then here comes CrossFit. I think we've attributed a lot of this to CrossFit coming on the scene and getting people to squat and deadlift again. And so we watched the pendulum swing from the wake stream, all machines, no squatting, dust on the squat rack to now you see tons of people squatting and deadlifting. And to the point where your commercial gyms have now completely restructured their layout. Right. Commercial gyms now all have three, four, five. Racks and platforms. Yes, racks and platforms. None of them had that. You would never see that. Especially a platform or rubber plates or whatever. Never. So it swung one way. Then it swung all the way. But now it's become so popular. Most people know. Like if you're getting a fitness, these are exercises you should be doing. So what's popular now? To try and counter that message. And this one bothers me a lot because we even have friends in this space that we talked to that we've had on the show and that we like and have a lot of respect. But they know that. They know that they put controversial shit out there like that. There's more views. Yes. And they can make a case for it. And they're intelligent. And so it gets really appealing. And my, the way I argue that back to them is it's such a terrible message for the young guy who's just getting into the gym because those exercises are hard. And I was waiting for someone to tell me. Give you a good reason. Yeah, give me a reason why I don't need to do these and tell me I could train all these other machine exercises and get just as good a result. And that's all I needed to hear to not squat and deadlift for the first time. The foundational multi-joint movements. I mean, these things are something that you aspire to master. And the whole idea of mastery in the fitness space, I think is something that doesn't get brought up enough. Like you need to practice constantly and treat a lot of these exercises like skills. And to avoid it completely is just doing a disservice to the public. Right. Well, two things. One, they are foundational fundamental human movements. Okay, squatting is a fundamental human movement. We're supposed to do it in fact all the time. Now we don't anymore because we have chairs and toilets and all that stuff. But the reality is we evolved. This is how we rested. We squatted. We didn't sit on the floor unless we were totally safe. Right. But the way you rested as a hunter gathers, you sat in a squat. In fact, if you go to third world countries, they still sit in a squat. It doesn't matter how old they are, how young they are, this is the way they sit. This is how you go to the bathroom. This is how you rest because you can move. If something happens, this is how you give birth to a child. It's a fundamental human movement. Okay, so that's number. And same thing with deadlifting. Picking something up off the floor. Like I don't know how else you would get something off the floor. Right. You know, without doing some kind of a deadlift, right? So they're fundamental human movements. That's number one. Number two, exercises are not all equal. And some are way high on the list of results and benefits. And some are way low on the list of results and benefits. And maybe only are good for specific things, right? So like I could say, for example, hip abduction, hip abduction machine, not a lot of value, except for some specific cases in which case it might have a lot of value. But squats and deadlifts, tons of value across the board, build the most muscle, build the most strength. They burn tons of body fat. They cause the quickest, highest spike of testosterone and growth hormone. They build and shape the body to look fit and healthy. And you'd be hard-pressed to find three or four exercises in combination that could compete with a squat. And same thing with a deadlift. That's how effective these exercises are. So when people say, now are there cases where people shouldn't squat and deadlift? Of course. But for the vast majority of people, you should or you should learn how to or work on getting your body to be able to. So to say that they're overrated, they're not overrated. That's the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. It's not just that either. There's more to it. The benefits that are so great in what? Because here's the thing. There's a lot of people right now that are your biomechanic experts that will break down a hack squat, activates the quads as much as a squat does. It doesn't work that way, I know. Well, and here's the thing. Even if it did work that way, the learning curve on the squat is where all the real benefits are. If you take both those things and we studied them in six weeks, you might be able to draw a lot of similarities. But show that person who's been working on getting it good at a squat versus that person who's working on that hack squat over the course of a year, two years, three years. And the hack squat starts to diminish. It diminishes because it's so easy. Anybody can get in a machine, unlock it, drop down and get back up. Whereas a squat is so difficult and challenging that you could be doing that a year, two years later and it's still challenging to get good at the mechanics. And because it's still challenging, you're getting more benefits. Yeah, my favorite is when people say the deadlift is not a back exercise. It's not a classic back exercise, right? Rows, pull-ups, those are back exercise. The deadlift is a hip exercise. I know where they're coming from. Yes, the prime movers of a deadlift are the hips. But let me tell you something. You want to develop an amazing back, you better deadlift. This is buried somewhere deep in your Instagram, Adam, but you were a pro physique competitor. You'd been training already for years, so you weren't even a beginner. So you had all those newbie gains years ago and you had a picture of your back, no deadlifts and deadlifts. And it was so stark. It was like three-dimensional. It was a totally different looking back and the only difference, in fact, you took exercises out of your workout and replaced a lot of them with just deadlifting. And to be honest, the reason why I got that great a results during that time was because I didn't deadlift. I rarely ever. I mean, I could count on probably two hands how many times in my entire career of training up and to that point where I had deadlifts. So you threw it in and then boom. Yeah, but here's the thing though. I'll challenge. Show me an isometric exercise for the back that's with 400 pounds. We talk about the benefits on this show all the time about isometric training. The deadlift is an isometric movement for... Somewhat, right? ...of the back. Absolutely. You're keeping the spine in a fixed position, holding three, four, five hundred maybe pounds and doing a hip hinge. To tell me that's not a back exercise, you're a moron. Because most back, big back exercises, a row, okay, that most people, a lat pull down that someone would do, a bend over barbell row. What's the strongest guy? What's he doing with that? Maybe 200 something pounds that he's rowing, but a 500 pound deadlift and holding that bar, just doing that alone will grow the back like nothing else you've ever done. Yeah, they're not overrated. They're so not overrated. And I did these... And now we're talking about building amazing backs and getting strong and all that stuff. Look at athletes, the functional carryover, tremendous. Look at the average person. I was one of the only trainers that I knew during this time, now it's quite common, but back then it wasn't at all, that had his everyday clients deadlifting and squatting. I'm talking about my 45, 55 year old, 65 year old clients whose goals were to lose 15, 20 pounds, feel better. I remember I had a female, she was a surgeon, she was a general surgeon, very, very, very smart woman, wanted to lose weight, she came to hire me and she said, and she was in her fifties. And she said, when I did my assessment, she's like, oh, I can't do, I can't do really much with my legs because I have bad knees and they hurt. So I can maybe do like a partial lunge and that's about it. Well, fast forward a year later, I'm having her do barbell squats, no knee pain, no knee pain. She feels amazing. Doug, I use the example all the time, Doug came to me because he had back problems, back pain. Guess what fixes back pain, proper deadlifts. Now his back is essentially bulletproof as a result. So they're not overrated. I think people just don't attribute a lot of their pains being a cause of an instability and a weakness. And it's like we wanna just avoid the looming weakness, the instability and not address it specifically with these exercises that are the best for those situations. It just takes a progressive approach. You have to really take your time going through it, gaining new ranges of motion, gaining stability, loading it properly so then we can then regain that strength so then it doesn't even become an issue again. Totally. Now here's another one. And you see this more with the female fitness influencers and you see this when they post their fat shredding workouts. So they'll post videos, super fat blasting workout or super awesome workout to lose weight. And what essentially the workouts are, are cardio based type workouts. And I know why they're presenting it that way, right? Cardio type workouts burn the most calories within the workout. And so what they're selling it as is this is the best way to burn body fat, which is actually not true. In fact, cardio is not the best way to burn body fat. In fact, cardio can actually make losing body fat more challenging for your body because it teaches your body to adapt in a way that is not favorable when it comes to fat loss. And this is where people get a little confused. There's essentially two ways to look at exercise. One way is the calorie burn, right? So while I'm doing it, I'm burning this many calories. And since I need to burn more calories than I take in to lose weight, that makes a lot of sense to pay attention to that. Here's the other way, and this is the way you should look at exercise. This particular workout changes my body by telling my body how to adapt and progress, right? So adaptation is, you know, you get more flexible when you stretch, you get more endurance when you run, you get more strength when you lift weights. Those are all adaptations. So rather than looking at how many calories I'm burning, what are the changes and adaptations that this exercise is causing my body? That's what you need to look at because those adaptations stay with you, right? The calorie burn only happens when I'm doing the exercise. If I'm not doing the exercise, the benefit's totally gone. The adaptations, those stick around. What adaptations benefit fat loss the most? The ones that cause my metabolism to burn more calories on its own, meaning doing nothing else, I'm just burning more calories. What a great, it's like trying to, it's like the difference between I'm going to work more hours to make more money or I'm going to invest my money and have it make money for me. It's a rat race. Right. You know, you're on the hamster wheel forever trying to just like keep things at bay. Even if it's maintenance, it's like, we got to make sure that we do this, otherwise I'm going to blow up. Right. So the truth is, you want to burn body fat, you got to build muscle and get stronger. That makes it so much easier. Well, remember what I just said about squats? One of the things that makes squats so great is the adaptation process. It is so hard to adapt. There's so much for your body to learn and grow and respond from that. Guess what is that your body adapts too faster than anything else? Cardio. It only takes your body about two weeks. Yeah. Two weeks or so to get adapted to whatever cardio modality that you're currently doing. So if you love your Zoom but class, you love your HIIT workouts, you love running on the treadmill, the stair master, whatever that is. Yeah, you get some good results for the first couple of weeks that you do that and then it falls off a cliff. The body gets really efficient at it by doing exactly what you're saying is adapting, slowing the metabolism down, getting efficient at burning calories. That's what you do when you do cardio. Most of those benefits that you get from it, most of them come in in that first couple of weeks. You got a window. And then on top of that, in order to keep seeing more benefits, you have to keep adding either more time or more days. Then you look back and all of a sudden you're two months into doing all this cardio and you're doing cardio for an hour, two hours, seven days a week and who is going to realistically do that after they reach their goal? Right. So you reach your goal. This happens all the time. They get to their goal. And then they're stuck. And then now they're like, I don't want to do cardio anymore. It's the first thing they let go of. But now their body is used to burning that many calories every day. They can't eat the same. Weight comes right back on. This is literally still the biggest fight. If I had a new client, like this would be the hardest thing for them to alleviate and to release and be like, OK, well, I'm going to trust you and just lift weights and see if we can get to where I want to go. And my goal and not be so reliant on that button of always going on the treadmill and trying to burn all these excess amount of calories because all of the machines, all of the market materials, everything you see out there is geared towards making you burn calories only. That's right. I mean, would you rather burn calories through work or teach your body to burn more calories on its own? It's the manual versus automatic argument. Now, here's the deal. I want to be clear. Cardiovascular activity and exercise has got lots of health benefits. Right. So if I were to construct a perfect fitness routine, it would have a cardio component. But the cardio component is not added in there to burn body fat. That's not the primary thing. Not only that. You're not adding as a good coach. You're not adding that in until later. Right. The beginning, I'm building your metabolism. So if you come to me and you want to lose body fat and you think cardio is the way to go, I'm not letting you do that at the beginning. At the beginning, all we're doing is building muscle, speeding the metabolism. I'll introduce cardio later on. So I don't care what your goal, health, build muscle, burn body fat. That's not something as a good coach. You should probably be programming right out the gates. Here's what's interesting, too. This is actually quite fascinating. The better you get at a cardio, the less calories you burn while you do it. Your body gets really good at it. Right. Your body's not trying to burn tons of calories. It wants to get good at what it's doing. Now, the reason why this is different with resistance training is because the thing that your body's trying to get good at is strength. The side effect of that is the faster metabolism. You're not telling your body to burn more calories. You're telling your body to get stronger. But because through the process of getting stronger, you have the side effect of burning more calories. Now, with cardiovascular activity, you're asking your body to build endurance and get better at what you're doing. And the way it does this is, number one, pair down this machinery that burns so many calories. This is why studies show when people lose weight doing cardio and diet, it's usually 50-50 muscle fat. The body burns fat because of extra calories being burned, but the body also pairs down muscle to become more efficient at cardiovascular activity. Same studies show that when resistance training is combined with diet, you don't lose any muscle. In some cases, you actually gain muscle. So cardio is not the best way to burn body fat. And again, over time, it can actually teach your body to become more efficient with calorie burn. There's that famous study that was done on the modern hunter-gatherers, where they actually went... Hots of trial. The Hots of trial. They actually went and really sophisticated study. They tested the caloric burn that these people were doing. And remember, these people were way more active than the average westerner. And they were shocked to find that they didn't burn that much more calories than the average westerner. I mean, they burned more calories, but it wasn't nowhere near what they thought. And they thought, well, of course, the body adapts this way. It makes no sense. We evolved as hunter-gatherers. It would make no sense for us to burn 6,000... They would disintegrate. Where would you find 6,000 calories a day to support your calorie burn? Your body has to become more efficient. But as you build muscle, it becomes less efficient. And so the best way to burn body fat, if you had to pick, is definitely resistance training. That's the way to do it. Now the next one, here's one that I fell for all the time, which is that supplements make this huge difference. They make a huge difference with any goal that you have. Well, this is also, again, perpetuated by the fitness influencer because there's a lot of money in this. This is how most of them make their money. Most of them have figured out whether you're the hacking the algorithm of YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, whatever it is, that this is the formula. You build a community. You get a lot of eyes and attention, whether it be showing booty pics, lifting heavy weight, maybe it's dropping good information, whatever. You get a big community of people following you. The next way that you make millions of dollars is peddling supplements. It's peddling supplements and claiming that they do such wonderful things for you by taking them. And I think that this has been kind of an unsaid thing in the space forever. And nobody wants to blow it up because it's how everybody makes money. Yeah, supplements are, I don't know, if diet, sleep, and exercise were, if we looked at it like a pie chart, it's like 99% of all your success and progress. Supplements are like 1%. Little sliver. And we're talking about a few supplements. Some of them are zero. Actually, some of them will give you negative results because you're just losing money and time and you're probably spending less time focusing on the important stuff, which is diet, sleep, and exercise. So like one category would be like fat burners. What a lie, right? There is nothing that burns. There's nothing you take that burns fat. Now if you've taken a fat burner and you found that it helped you lose weight, it's because it's an appetite suppressant. This is how fat burners work in the short term. Or a stimulant. Or a stimulant. You take it. Or you have better habits going into your workouts. Yeah, like if you take it, you eat less. Or if you take it, now I feel like I can go do extra exercise or whatever and now I'm burning extra calories and that's why I'm burning body fat. But if you did the exact same stuff that you did before and you took your fat burner pill, would you see any fat loss? No, there is no fat burn. In fact, there was even a drug that just came out. We talked about this in a previous podcast where people took the drug and lost weight. The drug didn't make the people lose weight. It just suppressed their appetite. So they ate less. And this is where the fat loss ended up coming from. No, here's the thing too. If you've listened to the show long enough, you know that we have partners with supplement companies. But one of the things that we were very clear about before we worked with anybody was that what we won't do is promote this message that this is a game changer for people and that you shouldn't take care of all your big rocks first. I mean, it's literally like throwing a spoiler on a Civic. You know, the difference it's going to make in the quarter mile is so little. You're way better off building the engine, putting headers on it, putting better tires on it. Putting racing chairs in there. Yeah. There's a lot of other things that come first. That doesn't mean there's some supplements on the market like creatine or if you're deficient in something where there's a tremendous value by supplementing a nutrient that you're not getting on the regular basis. So there is value in some supplements, but that's not how the space has been pushing it. The space has been pushing it as the answer. Or, oh my God, this is so amazing when I take this. This is what makes me get amazing results. Yeah. Here's another category, testosterone boosters. Now, I'm not saying that they're worthless. I think if you have low testosterone, you can take certain compounds that will raise your testosterone and you'll feel better. But does that mean they're going to build muscle on you? No. Let me give an example. Let's say your testosterone is a male, measures at 400, which is somewhat low, right? So you take a test booster and in the studies, it raises testosterone by 20%. Sounds like a big number. 20% with 400, what is it going to get? 480? Your number goes up to 480? That's not going to build any extra muscle. In fact, when athletes take anabolic steroids to build muscle, they're making their testosterone levels go up 10 times higher before they start to notice any muscle gains. So testosterone boosters may raise your testosterone somewhat, especially if it's low. I have yet to see a testosterone booster that reliably raises testosterone that's in a normal range. But if it does raise it, you might feel better, but it's not going to build any extra muscle. Another category are the amino acid category of supplements. Oh gosh. We've seen these a lot with the fitness influence. You know. They're sipping on them all day. You know what's funny is this is the gift that keeps giving the supplement industry. It is. This was a thing when I first started working out and then it kind of went away, then it came back, then it went away. And every, I don't know, five years, they make a big push. Cheap, easy, taste good, that's why. It totally, totally, 100%. Now, here's the amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. You take a protein and you broke it down into its constituents. You would see that they were amino acids. Taking amino acids, if your diet has adequate protein, does nothing. It does zero, four. You know when I first realized this, by the way, as a kid? I was taking, I had, I bought this big, big ass container of, what was it called? Like, Amino 5000 or something like that. And I had this picture of like these muscles or whatever on it. And it said, take 10 of these in between meals. And they were, I'm not, okay. This is, yeah. You guys have seen. Horse pills. You guys have seen me taking. That sounds like a twin labs or a G and C. The reason why I didn't do twin lab, because twin lab was, you know, Amino 2000. This was 5000, right? You need more thousands. Yeah, you need more. But if you looked at the, this is, I'm not making this up, okay. They're huge, I remember. This is for those of you watching on YouTube. This was how long the tablet was. And it was literally that thick. It was like I was taking a biscuit and I'd have to take 10. This is why you guys see. You gotta swallow it. This is why you guys can see me take a handful of pills at once. I trained myself with these crazy, I almost killed myself several times choking on these things. But anyway, I would take these, right? And I'd take 10 in between my meals and, you know, oh my gosh, this is gonna totally work. Well, I remember one day I was doing more reading about amino acids and like, this is 5000 milligrams of amino acids. And I was like, I did it like real quick math. I'm like, wait a minute. 5000 milligrams is five grams, right? So I'm taking five grams of amino acids. And I looked at the back and the number one agreement was whey protein. What they did is they took whey protein. So you'd be better off taking a half a scoop more of your protein powder. I was taking five grams of whey protein in between meals is what I was taking. And that was how they were selling me. They basically made it into tablets. What a great scheme. Right. So if your protein intake is high, amino acids are complete. You can take branched amino acids. You could take essential amino acids. You could take more loosing, this, that and the other. Not gonna do you any good. The only time on amino acid supplements might benefit you is if your protein intake is low, in which case. And you're an endurance runner. Yeah. And in which case you're probably better off just taking extra protein. Now on that protein subject, here's one that I love that comes from the supplement industry also, which is protein doesn't make you fat, right? As much as you want. Yeah. That's not gonna make you fat. Yeah, it's the magical macronutrient. Yeah. Doesn't work that way. Excess calories make you fat. They can come from protein, fat or carbohydrates. If you take too much protein, and your calories go over what they're supposed to, you will gain body fat. Or you're not gonna lose it. I feel like protein is the macronutrient that is mostly either under-consumed or abused. There's no middle, isn't it? Yeah, there isn't a lot of middle. So I have a hard time when we discuss this topic because I remember as a trainer, the clients that I get. So if I had your average client, which would be middle-aged woman trying to lose weight, she almost always under-consumed protein. So I would have to get her either to supplement it or get her naturally to eat more meats to get it in the diet so she'd get her protein to go. Then the other side of that is the body-building community or the young teenage boy who wants to build muscle, he was on the 2.5 to 3 grams of protein per pound of body weight. So it's like the two extremes. There was not a lot of people that fell in that kind of one-to-one ratio or the .7 ideally for their body. It was either under-consuming or grossly over-consuming. You know, they just came out. In fact, the study is making its rounds right now where they took two groups of men who were training and they controlled their protein intake. One group was all vegan sources of protein and the other group was omnivore. So they had animal sources. And now we all have heard that animal sources of protein are superior. This is true on a gram per gram basis. However, when protein intake is high, like the study showed, they were consuming 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight, which is a pretty decent amount of protein per pound of body weight if you break it down or whatever. What they found was no difference. So the vegan side, they had soy protein and vegetable protein. The other side had the meat and eggs, all that stuff. But they were both relatively high protein. There was no difference in their gains. So there you go with that one, which brings us to another one, the anabolic window. How long did you guys believe in the anabolic window? Long time. Yeah, for quite a while. Oh, yeah. I used to feel like I wasted my workout if I didn't have food in the first 30 minutes. Oh, yeah. And the thing is, if I left the gym and I didn't get my protein shake, I would get anxiety. And I actually drove back to the gym one time to buy one. Did you really? Well, this is another brilliant strategy by supplement companies. How can we attach something to something? You're a workout person. You got it if you're going to be... Ritualize it. Yeah, exactly. How do you ritualize something like this? And you make a... And that's why I think the pre-workout market is so huge. So smart. It's because now you have your pre-workout and you have your post-shake afterwards. They love you. I mean, you're spending $10 to $15 every workout on supplements because they ritualized this idea of taking this before and after supplement. Yeah. You know what one of the biggest problems in the early days of the protein powder market was that people would buy protein powders and then the jug would sit in their cupboard and they wouldn't use it because they didn't know when to take it. In fact, the instructions back then were to take protein powder with breakfast or take it before you go to bed or whatever. And so people were just kind of loosely using them and nobody really used them much except for the hardcore bodybuilders and so they kind of wasted it. It wasn't until they sold this idea that if you did that protein post workout is essential for muscle building that they started selling protein powders like crazy. Because if you sell to somebody... Because think about what happens, right? I've already sold... And by the way, the magazine's had articles on this all the time, right? They would sell you on the fact that you have to have protein post workout. Well, I'm a regular guy. I'm at the gym. I'm working out. I'm done with my workout. I need protein right away. I have a couple options. Drive home, make myself a meal or prep beforehand. Or... Oh yeah, I got that shake. It's super easy. I could just mix it up right here. Or a bar. Or a bar and have it right away. And boom, this protein industry exploded as a result. It's very parallel to the online marketing where... You're trying to sell somebody something. The best time to do that is when they've already got the credit card information. They already have everything out. They bought their first purchase. Now, what about this? You know, and then they're going to add that other item in front of them because it's like, well, I'm already at the gym. You know, I'm already working on myself. Like, this is another part of this whole experience. Now, so you remember... I mean, you're better at remembering studies than Justin or I. Do you remember what study it was that they started to promote that really close? Because I know I got closed on some. I know I read it. It wasn't like all of a sudden I thought, oh, someone told me I got to do the anabolic one. I know I read this somewhere. I read somewhere where they made the case of the spike of protein synthesis and insulin going up. It creates this ideal anabolic window to build muscle. So you utilize the protein more effectively. Right. So do you remember what study it was that really kicked us off? I don't remember. I remember that it was a long time ago. And what it showed was that glycogen stores within muscle are replenished quickly if you consume protein and carbohydrates because the study was protein alone and then it was protein and carbohydrates. And it showed that protein and carbohydrates post-workout replenished glycogen stores, energy stores in muscle. Right. It was like a 4 to 1 ratio was like the ideal ratio. That's what the studies show, the original, right? And it replenished glycogen stores very quickly. And so they said, this is what you need to do. Now, there were studies that were done later that showed that it didn't matter when you ate the protein and carbohydrates, you replenish your glycogen later on then. It wasn't like you had to do it right after your workout. It was okay to do it later. You would still replenish those glycogen stores. Now, here's where the anabolic window or whatever makes sense. If you plan on working out again in an hour or two, right? If you're double day's football or whatever, then you need to eat something after your workout because you're going to need that energy for the next few. But if you're the average person and you worked out and you're not going to eat until two hours later, you didn't miss some muscle-building window that if you didn't hit, man, that workout was a total loss. Yeah, if your body comp is your thing, right? So if you're trying to lose body fat or build muscle, this is completely moved. Totally. The other category would be fasting. So many, so much misinformation around fasting, both from the weight loss side and then from the muscle-building side. The weight loss side has turned fasting into the latest diet. Now, I'm old enough to remember when we used to call this starving yourself. This was a... This anorexia. Yeah, this was the original diet, I think, before any other weird diet came out. It was just don't eat. And then they turned it into, oh, no, it's fasting. This is good for you. Let's do this. The reality is fasting's benefits really are centered around the emotional psychological component. And it's not a benefit to some people. If you have food issues where you tend to... You're always trying to lose weight and you tend to starve yourself a little bit. Fasting is a very quick road to eating disorder. If you're the guy or girl, usually guy, who is constantly overfeeding because you want to build lots of muscle and you're in the permanent bulk. You're in the perma bulk. Fasting might be a good idea. It might be a good idea to show you. It's okay if you don't eat every three hours. It's okay if you break that tie with food type of deal. There's a spiritual commitment. That's why it's found in lots of religions. But as a weight loss tool, terrible weight loss. This was something that was really tough for me to break through right here because I was the skinny, insecure kid who wanted to build muscle. And from literally from the day I started it, like 17 years old, to all the way till about 27 or so, so probably a good solid 10 years of lifting, I think I was always in the bulk. I don't think I ever dieted down. I never had a hard time being lean. I just stopped worrying about training or lifting weights. I always lost weight and got lean. And I was an active kid. I was doing a lot of things, snowboarding, wakeboarding, playing basketball. So burning calories and staying lean was really easy. It was really tough for me to build muscle. And so I was always, if I was training, I was on the bulk. I never was on the cut. And if I missed a meal, I freaked out. I thought, because, and it's hard because it's the psychological piece that really messes with you. Totally. You look at yourself in the mirror and because you're not all filled up with calories and carbohydrates, you look flat, you look smaller, or the scale goes down, you're not holding any water. And so you as a kid who's trying to build muscle, you start freaking out like, oh my God, I can't miss a meal. Heaven forbid I fast for 24 hours. That's crazy. Later on, did I see the benefits of breaking up my bulk with a fast every once in a while for that exact reason that you say. Just to break the ties from the food of, I don't need to do this every single day, never missing every two hours. It's okay to go without a meal for a while. I'm not going to lose muscle right off my body. There's that spiritual component too, which is detaching from worldly things, right? But it doesn't just, it's not just food that fasting has that particular benefit. You can fast from electronics, right? You can say, okay, no electronics for the next few days and you'll be able to break those ties. You can fast from just candy, or from cigarettes, or from alcohol, or whatever, right? That's that component. Whatever your advice. That's that spiritual component, but using it as a way to dye it and lose weight, that is a dysfunctional way of eating and I would never, never, never promote it. In fact, the only people ever have fast are the ones that have the issues like you were talking about Adam, or people who are already healthy with food, in which case I'll say, hey, let's fast because there's that emotional component that you can get from fasting. Look, Mind Pump is recorded on video as well as audio, so if you want to watch us as well as listen to us, find us on YouTube. You can also find all of us on social media. And by the way, I think my band, my shadow band has been lifted. So you might be able to find me too. Oh, praise Oden. You can find us all on Instagram, Justin at Mind Pump, Justin, me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump, Adam. Adaptogenic herbs are compounds that help the body deal with stress. Okay, think about it this way. Imagine if you have a bucket. It's a one-gallon bucket, and that's your stress bucket. So every stress that you have, bad sleep, argument with the wife, I'm in traffic, whatever, all the stress fills up that bucket.