 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump. Mind pump. With your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Mind Pump... You know what? We did not intend for this to be like a super commercial with it, because this is not how this works, where we talk about four or five people, but we were just having conversation. So we do a 47-minute intro. This is before we get to the fitness stuff. We start out by talking about online bullies. We talk about Justin's ButcherBox Instagram Story. Probably the best story anyone's ever done, ever, in the history of Instagram. They are one of our sponsors. If you go to butcherbox.com forward slash mind pump, you will get, ready for this, free bacon forever. Free bacon for life, plus $10 off your first order, and free shipping. Is that like a weird strategy? Like to get people to sign up and they know they ate bacon like crazy, because it's unlimited to them if they die? Yeah, maybe. They calculate that. Free cigarettes for life. Actually, they're bacon quality is so good, and it's minimally processed. So it's the healthiest bacon. Yeah, this is true. We also mentioned Thrive Market versus Whole Foods, and Adam discovered that Thrive Market sells pet food. I did not. No, this goes to show you too how this was, again, not a planned commercial whatsoever. We were just talking about, I don't know, how we got into feeding. Eliminating middleman. Oh yeah, eliminating middleman, and then how great that is. You talked about Thrive and how great they were, and then somehow, oh, I was talking, because I just bought dog food yesterday from Petco, and they have the thing for, you know, Petco delivery, and I'm like, why am I still picking this up? And then Doug all of a sudden pulls up on the screen, what an asshole I am. I had no idea that Thrive Market, which I already ordered from every single month, could be shipping me my dog food. That's right. Stupid. And now we got to hook up for you with them. If you go to ThriveMarket.com forward slash mine pump, you will get one month free, $20 off, three orders of $49 or more, and free shipping. Then we talked about our testosterone test that we just did through Everly Well, and how mine was the highest. No surprise. You're the winner. But we also talked about we're going to go on some testosterone boosting protocols, and then we're going to do more tests to see how what we're doing affects our testosterone levels. Last one, Everly Well is one of our sponsors. If you go to EverlyWell.com, enter the code MINDPUMP, you get 15% off any test. Part of the testosterone boosting protocol was Adam using the Juve Red Light. You can go to joovv.com forward slash mine pump and get a discount on their red light therapy. And finally, we talked about the value of talk therapy. That was something personal for me. Then we get to the questions. The first question was, is there any reason to even attempt a one rep max? And if so, what is the best way about going about it? So should you test out your strength? Should you do that? And if we do think you should do that, how should you do that? Hopefully, don't piss off all the crossfitters. That's right. Next question was, are thoughts on childhood obesity and what may be causing it definitely an epidemic, definitely a scary epidemic. Trigger warning. One that may actually bankrupt us if we don't solve it. So we speculate as to why we think that issue is happening. The next question was, do we have any regrets at all? Great discussion, this part of the episode. Finally, what are the top three books that each of us have decided have impacted our lives the most? We all mentioned books that we think were important for our development. And we also mentioned, or at least I mentioned some YouTube videos that I watched that really changed my paradigm or at least got me to think a little bit differently. Also, it's important to note this month, maps anywhere is half off. Maps anywhere is our maps program that requires almost no equipment. All you need is bands, resistance bands, and a stick. That's it. Resistance bands and a stick. You can do these workouts anywhere. Super effective. The program is now half off. So you save 50% off the price. We also have other maps programs for other types of goals. And we have bundles that put some of these programs together for specific types of adaptations or goals. For example, our super bundle is designed for people who want it all set up for them. It's designed for people who are like, look, I want to get started. I want to get fit. I want to get in shape. I want everything I need to do this. The super bundle does that for you. It's one year of exercise programming. It's also discounted off of the retail price of just buying all these programs individually by almost or over, I should say 30%. You can find all of those programs at mindpumpmedia.com. I think Mind Pump has officially arrived. What happened? I used to always think this was really strange about our business that we really don't receive a lot of hate. And I used to think it was because... Was it because we're getting hella hate? Yeah. All right. Yes, finally. Well, I mean, for example, you just did incredible back-to-back videos on YouTube. You did a great video on Split. You did an incredible body part split versus full body workout routines that just went live a day ago. And you just did a killer one on protein. Both were just great videos. There's very few videos that we do that I turn around and watch again. And I watched it and enjoyed it because the information you provided was so valuable. And you could see how comfortable you are with now talking on just one camera, which I know how weird that is. And then I read the comments. And it's like a 50-50 split. It's such a great video that there's always going to be people that are like, oh my god, that was awesome. They share it. But then there's just people that are just straight hating and trolling. You know what I'm saying? Have no idea who you are talking shit. And even the stuff they're talking shit about is just like, oh, this is hilarious. Like you obviously don't know who Sal is or who mind pump is whatsoever. But we've gotten to that large of a scale now that a video goes out and it instantly sees 7,000 to 10,000 people. And it's inevitable 7,000 to 10,000 because it's being shared and it's being recommended on other pages and shit like that. So we're definitely interacting. You know, here's the thing. If you say things that matter, okay, you're going to get people pushing back. If you never say anything that matters, you'll never get pushback. So it's just the reality. Now of course you get tons of hate. That's different. It could be a signal that you're maybe an asshole or whatever. Right, right. But if you say things that really, really matter, then you're going to start some conversations and there's going to be people who are going to disagree with you and that's okay. And YouTube is like- People used to always say that all you'll see when you guys will get all this. And I'm like, man, I'm really surprised because the business is running and we're doing well and all these things are going great and I really feel like we've been well received and we get a lot of great reviews. You know, I really didn't feel like we ever get any hate. And maybe it's YouTube too, like YouTube is just- The people on YouTube are different than the podcast people. Yeah, it's like a cesspool of hatred. Bro, you go through some videos on YouTube. I've seen the most racist, sexist, terrible shit that no one would say in public ever. And I see it in the comments on YouTube. And I don't know if it's because it's super anonymous or because it draws that kind of crowd. It's a lot of the same thing like you see with online gaming. You know, there's a lot of that too. I don't know, it still exists. Like people just like talk shit and say racist stuff because they feel just like, I don't know, they get something from it. Like they're anonymous and they can get away with it and they can say all this shit. I would argue it's another- Not check them on it. It's a type of bullying, right? Yeah. It's a type of bullying that people are doing and that they can get away with. And I wouldn't be surprised if most of the people on the other side of that are a bunch of little weasels that in real life they could never bully somebody. Which is kind of funny, right? Where we're at now. Every time. So we're all this anti-bullying stuff going on but in reality we're probably bullying people more now because of the ability to do it virtually because now guys that are- And when we grew up in school, the bully was like a hundred- 50 to a hundred pounds bigger than you. Like he just, you know, he hit puberty two years before you- And he ran the risk if he bullied someone. There was always the risk that someone may fight back. Right. But when you're online anonymously, there is no fight back. There is no risk of that. Right. So you have a bunch of- And you don't have to be big and tough. You know what I'm saying? Or smart. Yeah. Right, so that- It's a lot like road rage. Yeah. Oh, it's just a save from the car. You know, like- Have you ever had to- Have you ever checked someone in a road rage incident and seen the switch happen so quickly? Oh, yes. Yeah. Oh, I had a guy yelling at me once and he was, Oh, Custon, and get out of your car, whatever. All I did was open my door and he took off. Yeah. Because you saw me start to come out of the car. Oh, shit, it's happening. Oh, I'm just kidding. And he drives away. Nothing is- And I try and tell people this all the time. Nothing is scarier in a situation like that when screaming, yelling, acting all crazy than being the calm motherfucker who just walks right up. That's it, man. Ready to get thrown down. Let's dance. Nine times out of ten, dude. I'm telling you. More than nine times out of ten. Almost every time. It's very rare. I'm trying to think of a time where I walked up on somebody like that and then we went after it. Most people that are screaming, acting all crazy. It's all front. When you walk up real calm and say, ask them if this is what they want to do. Yeah, though. Most of them are like, Hey, man. Hey, man. I was kidding. Hey, man. Come on, man. Are you sure? So you want to fight right now? Because we can- No, no, no. I'm good. You know it's funny because you see this sometimes with girls, women in particular, where they'll cuss and scream and say stuff because they know that there's not going to be any physical recourse. And so you'll see this sometimes when there's a girl with her boyfriend. You ever seen this at a bar where the girl's talking shit to another guy? Because her boyfriend is there and she knows- She hypes up her boyfriend. And you can see the look on the dude's face where the boyfriend's like, listen, you need to shut up because I'm the one that's going to have to fight. Bro, the best one of my favorite intros to a movie I shared with you just recently, The Way of the Gun. Oh, yeah. The girl's running her mouth like crazy and it's like a 10 minute scene and you just think that it's going to be this big brawl and then Benicio del Toro just straight open hand slaps the chick. Oh, no. Hey, you know, I'm sitting here complimenting Sal on how great of a video I feel obligated to compliment you too, Justin. I think- This compliment is your obligated- No, no, because I had thought about it and I hadn't said anything to you. I think you have done the best commercial slash Instagram story than anybody else and it was for Butcher Boss. Oh, my God, that was so funny. With the bacon that you did. I thought that was so clever. How long did that take you to do that? Um, it took me about a year and a half. How long did that take you to do that? Not long. I mean, it was just one of those things that, for me, it sucks because a lot of times I get random ideas and then I'm like, oh, this is kind of a good idea. Maybe I'll go with this and I've been trying a lot to think in terms of stories because that wasn't one of those things. You know when you try something for a long time and then all of a sudden finally it clicks, I'm like, oh, this is how people, you know, view stories and they want to actually like- A story. This part, this part, yeah. And you line it up and now my brain's starting to kind of click in that direction. So yeah, I was happy that one was received. That's what you know, it's been a while. We pride ourselves on being very open about our business and sharing things like that. I think that's a really important thing for somebody else that's trying to build their business to understand like how to utilize Instagram stories correctly. I think Taylor, out of all of us, is probably the best. I think each of us have evolved and gotten better at it. We're taking a lot from him, yeah. Right. And you know, not a lot of people know that when you, I see this all the time on people's Instagrams where they, you know, they're trying to sell their shirt or their supplements, drive here for a coupon. Like what a lot of kids don't know that are watching that and they're emulating that is that that gets like no clicks. Like you're not making, if I put up this, which is why you don't ever see that online. Yeah, click here. This is my sponsor. Yeah, buy that. Or get 20% off these supplements like nobody buys that shit. Nobody clicks on that. Nobody is making any money on that. Even if you've got millions of followers, you may get a half a percent of people doing that and that might seem like a little bit of money to you, but that's terrible. It's so not valuable. But if you actually put together a story that leads to something, you'll drive a significant amount more people to the actual... How often are you doing the ButcherBox? Are you monthly or every other month? Yeah, I do every other month. Because we end up, I mean, we eat a lot of meat, you know, to begin with, but it's usually just for dinner. So it's not like I'm using that for lunch and breakfast and all that. So usually kind of... I mean, it lasts for quite a while. It's such a brilliant thing that they did by doing it. I'm glad they did that. It goes either every month, every other month, or every three months. And it's frozen, so it lasts forever. So I actually bought some grass-fed meat at Whole Foods the other day, which is more expensive and it doesn't taste as good. Grass-fed meat... I mean, look, here's the deal. Grass-fed meat, healthier for you. But I'm going to also be honest and say grain-fed meat tastes better. A lot of times. Yeah, because grass-fed meat sometimes has that gaminess to it or it doesn't taste as... I don't know, it doesn't have as much marbling or whatever, which is what I like. The reality of it is it tastes how it's probably supposed to taste. That's right, that's right. But now that I know the difference, you know what I'm saying? Right, right. But the butcher box stuff is fucking good. If I didn't know it was grass-fed, I don't think I would have guessed it. It's the best grass-fed I've ever had. Hands down. It's not even close. Because I don't... Even then, if you compare it to one that's been grain-fed, it's going to taste better. There's more fat and more marble. What's the cut that they... It's like a tritip, but they don't call it a tritip. Yeah, yeah, it's a steak. It's like a... Is it a sirloin tip? Sirloin tip, yeah. Is that what it is? Is that what it is? Something like that. What's up, Doug? I think it's sirloin cap. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. Really good. Yeah. No, that's my favorite one actually out of the group. I mean, I do make quite a bit of burger meat and stuff like that, like they have the patties too, but yeah, the bacon. I was highlighting that primarily in this story, but I was like so stoked, because literally my two boys eat so much fucking bacon, we fight over it. So I was really happy about that deal that they had going on. Well, it's this whole model of Thrive Market does the same thing, where they'll take products, deliver them directly to your door, and what people don't realize is there's a lot of cost involved every time you have to include a new step in the distribution, producing and distribution process, right? And what grocery stores, you have a lot of middlemen. You know, it's not as direct like it is with these... Dude, so many. You have someone that has to drive it there in the truck. You have something that has to unload it. And then they have to sell it. They have to put it in the shelves. Then you have somebody that has to scan it at the register. And then they have to sell it for a higher price in order to make their own profit. Then you also got to pay for the place. I mean, the land. Oh, man, it's a... That's what I'm saying. So you have Thrive Market's another good example. That's why they're going to put everybody out of business too. Oh, dude. Doors like that... Have you calculated the savings? Yeah. It's ridiculous. It's like half. No. It's a big savings. I used to just go to Whole Foods and I'm gonna look. I'll admit I'm one of those people that sometimes doesn't even look at the price. I just buy it because quality of food is so important to me that I'm willing to spend a lot on it. I am. Or a lot more than I guess most people. Because it's important. But when I do the savings, when I calculate the savings, when I go to Thrive Market versus Whole Foods, it's like, it's insane. It's like 25% to 50% lower on shit that I'm gonna buy anyway. And it's so convenient. I'm trying to get to a point where I have all my stuff like that. In fact, I just picked up the dog for the other day and I'm like, why am I still doing this? Because Petco does it. So there's all these wags. And I forget all these other companies that do this that I can get my dog food literally delivered to my doorstep on a certain day every single month or every other month, however I want to set it up. And the irony in all of this is that I just been too lazy to get it set up. But it's like, I need to because it frustrates me every time that I have to go to the store because I'm like, I have to go out of my way. It's always a last minute thing. It is a last minute. I'm like, wait till the dog food's out. I'm like, ah, fuck, I gotta get the boy some more food. Oh, there you go. There's some good ones up there. There's some grain-free dog food. Oh, shit. Thrive does dog food? I know. That's so rad. I'm gonna have to take advantage of that too. Are you kidding me, Doug? Yeah. Oh, I feel like such an asshole right now. I know. Actually, I didn't know that either. What? It's all like non-GMO. You can buy lots of organic dog food. What? Whoa, whoa, whoa. Go back up right there. I think that's my dog food. Which one? The brown one. Organics, organic chicken, and oatmeal dog food recipe. Then they have the wet dog food too. Because you mix it, don't you? No, I do half it. Well, when I say half and half, I don't literally mix it together. I eat twice a day. One meal I normally do is like a raw chicken. I do like these patties that I get. But wow. It is good to see that animal food, pet food is the quality of that now has gone up right now. Well, so let me tell you that I believe... Because I can't think of anything more processed than dog food. I believe that anybody who's listening to this right now that is involved in anything to do with that world, it's a very smart trend to get on right now because the animals are behind the humans. We're starting to figure that out. We see how huge organic is going with humans. But the way that we treat our pets and we've watched this devolve in our time, we now treat them like humans. Everyone treats them like humans. Why would we not? Because it's expensive taking them to the vet. And it's like we could put all these preventative practices in place just like we would for ourselves to keep them healthy and cancer-free. And when you look at all the things that we talk about in humans, the rise of autoimmune, the rise of obesity, the rise of diabetes, the rise of all these things. Yeah, our pets have been coming with us. The pets are on the same exact slope. So you're going to see the pendulum swing back. And we kind of see it a little bit, but there's still room for people, I think, to get into this space and make really good money because I think this is going to be the future is... Definitely like the next trend for sure. Yes. I wonder what... How many... Dude, I can't believe they sell dogs. Do we know... Do we know what... I don't know if you can find this dog, what percentage of pets are now on medication? Because I would assume it's exploded and this is my own anecdote, but almost everybody I know who's had a dog for a long time, their dog has died of cancer. It's like super common. Very common. It's... That's what I'm saying. It's very... And the stuff that they get, I hear these people doing it and I look at their dogs and I'm like, dude, this is crazy. I had this conversation with Katrina because people that see the bulldogs, they always want to feed them more, give them more. They're not allowed... First of all, they don't eat table food at all. No human food other than raw chicken or steak or whatever, stuff like that that I'm giving them. But these guys, literally, they'll just keep eating if you keep feeding them. That's key, though. They will and they'll get so fat and then their lifespan is only like seven years and half the reason why that is is because people are overfeeding them. Well, yeah, I want to know what that number is because I'd love to look up and see... Because if their health is starting to get really, really bad, I mean, there's something definitely going on. Dude, it is. I've seen the charts before. Have you? Yeah, no, that's why I'm talking about this. That's why I think it's a smart space. When I was a kid, I even thought it was crazy. People just aren't talking about it very much. People are still coming around to the organic thing with humans. Yeah. I mean... Even when I was a kid, I thought it was weird. I remember we had a dog and I remember looking at it like... All the dog ever eats is the same. It's the same thing. Dog food, hard dog food. And it's super fake. Aren't these... Didn't they evolve from wolves? Why are we giving them... Why are we giving them cereal? Imagine if all you ever ate was Cheerios. Someone just poured dry Cheerios in your bowl. Here you go. Here's your meal. You know what I mean? And then you get cancer. Like, that's weird. How did that happen? How did he get cancer? Why are all these lumps all over him? God damn it. Anyway, that's crazy. No luck, Doug, huh? No. Oh, wow. There might not be statistics for it. No, no, no. I've seen this before. I'll look for it later. I'll check it out. Well, now you know. They've got the wet and the dry dog food. You know, saying wet dog food. It sounds kind of gross, doesn't it? Doug, I see a bunch of one and a half pound, too, which is nothing. I need like a 20-pound, 30-pound bag. Did you see any big bags? Oh, there's a 13-pounder. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. There's a 13-pounder right there, too. That's a decent size. Good deal. I can't believe I didn't know this though. What does Thrive not have? Maybe I should start thinking like that. What am I ordering from somewhere else that I could be just having shit in my house without my other stuff with Thrive? Well, they have household home improvements. Yeah, they have cleaning supplies. What? Cleaning supplies. They have, which we know that. We know that. Yeah. Cleaning supplies. Sal Suds, my favorite thing. Doug, you got to order some more of that. Have you guys tried the Sal Suds? No. I'm not saying that just because it's named after me. I'm not saying it. It's a good product. I'm not saying it because they're fans of mine. It's got a great brand. They named it after me. It literally is a good soap. Yeah. It works really, really well. Well, I think Justin wins the award for the best Instagram commercial, though. That's the moral of this. Sal's winning the YouTube doing as far as the best YouTube Sal wins. The best in the story. You know what, you know what? I'm kind of sucking at everything right now. Doug, did you... You're the intro guy, man. Doug, did you mail in your Test Ostrone? Kill the hype. Did you mail in your Test Ostrone? I didn't yet. Okay. I need to do that. Yeah. I want to see what's going on there because what I want to try with everybody is to... We'll do some kind of a protocol. I've already got one. I've already started. I'm not sharing it. Oh, really? Not yet. I think it would be cool for all of us to share it. Oh, I was going to wait. What? Yeah. Like I'm like formulating it myself. Like I'm like trying... Because you're competitive. I am competitive. I want you to do your protocol, do my protocol, Justin does his protocol. We'll see what's up. We'll see what time it is in another month or two. Well, I just wanted to implement one thing so we could tease out what those impacts are rather than doing a whole bunch of that. Okay. Well, what I'm open to to discuss with you is I'm open to us, because I don't know about just one thing I want to do like one or two things. I think one is like too small of a variable. Okay. You know. Yeah. I don't need your help. Here you go. What I think we should do is like maybe you pick two. Like I know you already like the four systematic quarter steps and those types of things like that. Yeah. And I think maybe you do that and something else. No, there's already one thing I'm already doing. And I've got the Juvelite and I love using... I probably use the... I know, not probably. I for sure use our sauna and Juvelite more than anybody else. You're going to blast the tessies? Yeah. Right on the tessies. Right on the goods. Because I was doing that anyways like pretty consistently, but then I laid off before the test. More. That's all you're going to do. More? More. That's a lot Justin. Hey. I got to get those numbers. You know your number will actually go up and I'm helping you out. Okay. So I'm not... I'm not... Listen. There's a deal. I don't have a scarcity mindset. Your test goes out. That's because you're already crushing us. Well, yeah. So here's what I was thinking is... Well, not thinking. This is what you can do in that regard Justin. Don't jerk off. Don't do anything for... Hold it in. For a week. Because within a week, like one to two week period, that does cause a spike in testosterone. But I don't know if it's a permanent one. Here's what I'm doing. Because I do know that study that... And this is pretty established that if you go really, really low carbohydrate for long, long periods of time, it will lower testosterone. Now, I don't... It's not... I don't know if it lowers it a lot, but studies will show that it does lower it. So now I've been eating starches. My gut health is really good. I don't need a ton, but I am eating more. So I'm wondering if my... What my number is going to look like just from that. To see what that goes up to. My goal is to go over the... I want to see if I can get my number outside of range. You know what I mean? Whoa. I want to be doing that and... Oh, somebody did... I meant to ask you this. I saw the kid. Yeah. Yeah, his numbers would add a range too. Wow. Yeah, which made me feel worse. I know. Well, he was scared. I was like, scared. I'm like, that's awesome. I'm jealous. Well, his estradiol was a little high. He thought it was too high, but I'm like, no, it's not high. I don't know what to do with in range. His estradiol, whatever. I don't know. I want to see if I can get mine out of range, which the range they had was up to 186, I think it was, right? Yeah. And I was 112, I think. That's some high standards, bro. I think I can get mine... Charging it up. It's totally feasible. I got nowhere to go but up, so I'm okay with whatever I do. You mentioned it goes down. Oh, God, fucking... I'll go crawling. Justin was angry about that. I was angry about it. He doesn't like losing. No. He doesn't like it. Especially to the guy that has horn on the bottoms. I like being on the bottom of the totem pole. You know what I mean? Some bullshit. I'm not going to lie, dude. I felt really good about beating you. I know you did, you asshole. Because I was just like, and it's less about like beating you, it's just more like, oh my God. Wow, that's weird. I've been so hard on myself on how horrible my horn levels are. Yeah. And then I was like, wow, this explains things for me. I was using it more to interpret how I've internally been feeling like this fight to like get shit done and do things in the weight room. It's just been a fucking struggle. Isn't that interesting? Like being somebody who has in the last five years, I mean, I don't know, well, personally, I don't know too many people that are friends of mine that have experienced as dramatic of swings of hormones as I have in the last five years. And there's definitely this really, you know, when I, when being low, man, it's a fucking fucking place to be. I have so much empathy now for women that go through menopause or women that are on their period of times or guys that are getting older that just have really stressful jobs, don't get a lot of sleep, don't even realize that they probably have low hormones because they don't ever get attested. Like it's like this. Hormones drive emotion. They drive feeling. They drive, they drive sometimes perception. Like Justin said, what I find the hardest is a guy who has so much passion and love for training like I do. I just, I love to train, man. And it was, it was hard. It sucks when you, very, very hard to muster up the energy. Imagine if, I mean, for people listening who don't know what that feels like, imagine working out and every workout feels like it sucks. Yeah. That's what literally what it was like. And it's compounding on many levels, right? Because it sucks because your strength isn't there. It sucks because your energy isn't there. Your drive. Your drive to do it isn't there. The results are terrible. I mean, when you have low testosterone in you, low testosterone versus mid to high, oh, huge difference. I mean, I already feel like the way my body is responding now, like I'm not putting in that much more work today than I was just two months ago. But now it's responding. It's just that my body, my hormone levels are finally starting to recover a little bit. And so now my body's starting to respond, which then that compounds because it gives me a little more motivation. It's like, oh, oh, this is awesome. I can actually look in the mirror now and see that the sacrifices I was making nutritionally and the hard work I was putting in the gym is actually changing my body a little bit. Well, I tell you what, I don't know if I want to see Justin with higher testosterone. That's exactly what my wife said. Yeah. She's kind of, she's like worried, you know? She's like, no, you're so nice and like thoughtful and like you're going to turn to asshole or something. Did you start crying? You're talking about, yeah. Made you cry. You're like, thank you, honey. No. It is a little weird though that that is the one thing too that I noticed that I think is the positive side of all that is it did make me very, I don't know what the word is that I'm looking at. Empathetic. Yeah, maybe empathetic. You know what though? So here's the thing about that. It's not that testosterone causes you to want to be an asshole and all that stuff. That's not what it is. Here's what I think. Because the reality is that the studies will show that low testosterone also causes irritability, anger, all that stuff. Because what I think it is, is because I know for me, when I feel shitty, you just feel shitty. When I don't feel good, it makes, I almost feel empathetic to other people because I don't feel good. So it's like, you know what I mean? So it's almost like I feel bad for my girl or whatever like, look, I don't feel good. Look, I'm sorry or whatever. Or if she doesn't feel good, I'm more empathetic to it. I think that's what it is. That's an interesting perspective. I could get on board with that because you're right. I remember myself kind of processing like that sometimes where, you know, I feel down and sorry for myself and this and that. And you almost like, you almost want to kind of like tell them, like, look, I'm sorry. Oh, I would. I would even communicate that. I would tell Katrina, I would say, hey, I just want you to know, like I'm just, I'm not feeling myself today. And I'm just, I feel like unmotivated and tired. And so if I feel short or irritable, let me know. But the fact that I have that ability to communicate that and say that makes me seem like I'm more empathetic and that- Yeah, because low testosterone by itself will make a guy more irritable, angry, depressed. And when you look at studies on men who get testosterone replacement therapy, who need it, who actually need it, they'll say they feel more confident. They feel more energetic. They're happier. They're, you know, more connected to people. So it's not that testosterone is this poison that, oh, if it's low, I'm this better person. That's not the case. I really think that this is an important thing that everybody over the age of 30 does. Test it. I think people under the age of 30, you know why? Well, yes. Because I think they should find out what their- Well, that's what- Good hormone levels are. That's what my original hormone therapist said was, you know, and that's kind of what led me yet. Because you need to know what your normal is. That's what he said. That's what he said. Before 30, you should at least test it one time so you can kind of see where you're at. And then after 30, I think it's highly- See, because I know me. I know me. And although my number put me right in the middle of that range, I know that it's low for me, based off of how I feel. Because I know what I normally feel like. I'm in the quote-unquote normal range right now. But I definitely don't feel the best me. I know what the best healthy version of me feels like. But I at least feel better. It's funny too because I told Jessica, I'm like, yeah, I'm going to- I think because I've gone low carb for so long because I've been trying to heal my gut. Which, let's be honest, if you're trying to heal your gut, that if you have an unhealthy gut or you have inflammation, that's going to affect your testosterone more than the fact that you're not eating carbohydrate. So, I think though that- because now that my gut is so much healthier due to some of the fasting protocols and stuff like that that I've been doing, then now I can introduce those starches again and they seem to be okay with me, I think my testosterone levels are going to get higher. So I was telling her this and she's like, oh, shit. She's like, it gets- you're going to get higher testosterone? Because I- and I'm trying to explain to her like, how you know me now, however high my libido is now and that kind of stuff, trust me, it's normally a lot high. Like when I'm fully on, when I know my testosterone levels are where they're normally at, I have an extremely high libido. So even though it's now in the mid-range, this for me feels like it's low. That's why I want to see what will happen. I want to see if I'm able to get it even higher. Well, that's originally how I was able to even get on hormone replacement therapy is I technically wasn't in like a dangerously low where some doctors are different. Like some of them will tell you like, you know, oh, you're fine. You know what I'm saying? You're not dangerously low or it's not going to be bad or unhealthy for you and so they're like- they don't prescribe it. But if you're towards the bottom of the normal range or right on the cusp or like that, some doctors will be like, and you're only 30-something years old and you're a guy like me who exercises- that's how my guy looks like. You exercise, you do all these things like you should be higher than that and if I'm telling him, giving him feedback, I don't feel right. You know, then he's like, okay, you're probably used to being more closer to the 900 range and you're measuring at 250 which is extremely low for a guy like me. Right, right. Yeah, I'm your- And some hormone replacement specialists will say that the higher end is where men should be. I don't know if I buy that though. It's almost like a doctor who's trying to prescribe cholesterol medicine telling you your cholesterol has to be super low. I feel- that's why it's hard for me to believe because I think it has to be based off of your own subjective perception because when they say when you have hormone replacement specialists saying, oh no, they need to be this high, it's almost like they're setting the bar higher because they know they're going to get any more customers. No, I think if you're- I think if you have a good guy like the guy that I had when I did it originally, like I think that it's- it is part of the, you know, is the test and then the other part of it is asking you like, well, what do you feel like? Yeah. Like, do you feel like your lipido's there? Do you have the same sex drive? Do you have the same motivation to do tasks like you did in the past and- I would be interested to see what an actual medical intervention would do to raise testosterone like HCG. I'd be very interested to see what that does to a number because that's- Well, I tell you what, so I have that, so I still have- I have quite a few kits of HCG because that was some of the protocol that I did before. What I'll do is I want to do the natural route right now because I- Yes, I'd love to compare the two. Right, so I'll go the natural route right now doing the things like the Juvelide and using, you know, using supplements and things like that and then, you know, meditation, I'm even going to come off weed before I test. Like, I'm going to do some little things like that to see if all those things can help and then after that, then I'll do an HCG four-week cycle and then I'll see how much- That for sure will raise it. I just want to see if it'll last. Yes, so do I and I also want to see how much of a spike will it do. Will it just give me a little bit of one or will it be a short-lived? I think sometimes it'll push you even off the charts. Yeah, I've had a few clients, males who had low testosterone and usually through nutrition, intervention, sleep, exercise, proper exercise, stress management, usually I can get their testosterone levels to boost considerably. Like I got one guy's testosterone levels from 300 to 700. I had another guy raise his another 30%. But then there was this one dude that it's like we got him up but it was still really low or in that low range. Well, so he did HCG and that should push him out of range but through a couple of cycles of doing that we eventually got it to normalize and it actually stayed at a higher... So what I felt, even though I didn't test I only did the Everly Well Test once so far, what I felt was the drop back down. So I felt really good while I was taking it. I felt really good a little bit afterwards and then I felt like it came down again. Now you know HCG by itself if abuse can also cause the lighting cells of the testes, the ones that help make testosterone to become desensitized and actually start producing less. So you can actually create a negative feedback loop even with HCG and you can get side effects of like you're taking steroids with HCG. Oh yeah, no I've made... I want to say that because I know people listening are like oh shit that's going to solve. No, no, you got to be very careful with HCG too because there's so much information out there that gives different recommendations on the dosage of it that's really like some of these bodybuilder recommendations are extremely high and I remember the first time that I used HCG for a post-cycle therapy I actually felt my gynomastia flare. Oh, gynomastia. Yeah, you'll get side effects. Yeah, I felt it flare up because it actually will... it was too much. Well, here's a cool thing about HCG the black market which is a lot of people will get this because otherwise you have to get a prescription the black market for anabolic hormones sucks because so often is the shit fake or under dose or so often actually probably more often than not. Yeah, watered down. But the cool thing with HCG, well not cool there is a way you can test to see what you have has HCG. You can't test how much is in there but you can actually, in a very inexpensive way figure out if your kit has HCG in it and that is through a pregnancy test. Oh, that's right. Yeah, if you squirt it on a pregnancy test because pregnancy test will pick up HCG or that's what it does to detect pregnancy it'll show up. And so you can actually test it that way just kind of cool. Did you guys hear about the guy who did the test the pregnancy test and showed up positive because he peed on it and thought it would be cute and what happened? No. You didn't hear about this? No. So this dude peed on a pregnancy test his wife's I'm assuming. Yeah, like his girlfriends and it said he was pregnant and he thought it was hilarious. He's like, oh, this is fucking hilarious. It says I'm pregnant. Obviously, I'm not. I'm a guy. Cancer or tumor or something? Yeah, Testicular Cancer. Because when you have Testicular Cancer you'll start producing this particular hormone and so he posted it on his social media and I guess one of his friends or there was a doctor on there and he's like, yo man, you need to go to the doctor right away. Wow. And sure enough, he had Testicular Cancer. Well, I mean that joke panned off that probably saved his life, right? Isn't that funny? Yeah. Wow. That's fucked up, huh? That is fucked up. That's something you knew or just something you saw? No, no, no. I read about it a long time ago. I'm pregnant. You fucking stupid test. Like you got cancer. Go to the doctor now. Just imagine his face. I mean, if you would have never told me that, I would have never known that though. I wouldn't know any better. You know what I'm saying? If someone told me like, oh yeah, you could totally piss on the pregnancy test and then find out. Yeah, I would immediately think something fucked up with the hormones if you're going to test positive for pregnancy. Like, come on. Yeah. That's not like, come on dude. It's like worse than finding out someone's pregnant. You know what I mean? Yeah. Oh shit. Why does it say pregnant? His girlfriend's like, well, I didn't pee on that. He's like, thank God. I just have cancer. Thank God. Phew. It's actually worse. Yeah. You've got cancer. Anyway, I want to ask you guys a device on something kind of personal. I'm going to do it on the podcast because this is my therapy. Oh, yes. I was wondering what your guys' opinion was on talking to therapists. I know you're in your childhood, Adam. I've been in a lot, man. Yeah. What is your opinion on something like that? So I've never been to one on my own. I went to one towards the end of my marriage. But first of all, I guess let me tell you why I've been kind of throwing this around. I got out of a long marriage for 15 years, which I could say probably the last eight to 10 of that marriage and was dysfunctional. It was quite dysfunctional. Especially the last four years or so. It was really, really dysfunctional. And I find myself now so apprehensive for certain things because it's almost like, it's not post-traumatic stress, but it feels like something like that. Like I'm watching the Jersey Shore with my girl, right? And there's all these episodes where Ronnie and his girlfriend getting all these crazy fights and shit. And I can feel myself getting, like, triggered. I'm getting disgusted by it to the point where I almost don't want to be in a relationship myself because I'm watching something on TV. Oh wow, that's interesting. Like really bad, you know what I mean? Because of all the fighting and dysfunction. But I've never gone to anybody for anything like that. I think there is an incredible amount of value. I think that, I don't think you could go to it and especially someone like you who has an open mind like leading into it. So a lot of times like when people do therapy, it's because they got drugged there or because their marriage is falling apart. Yeah, I would imagine a big part is your willingness. Yeah, exactly. A big part is just you being open minded and willing to do it. Now where it may be less valuable for you in comparison do I think to a lot of people is that I think you're a very self-aware and intelligent person. Katrina brought up something for me. There was something that I was struggling with, I don't know that long ago. It might have been this hormone thing where she recommended that to me and I kind of chuckled at her. She goes, why you laugh? She goes, you don't think you can benefit from it? I'm like, no, I'm not saying that. It's just I've been in a lot of therapy. You know what I'm saying? I've been in and out of that stuff and had a lot of people that, even like when I didn't do formal therapy, I stayed in contact with a youth pastor of mine and then a senior pastor of mine for a long time and I used him kind of like that and so I've had a lot of, you know, and I also train a lot of therapists and so I used a lot of like training sessions like that. So I think there's incredible value to that. I think where I'm at in my life now that I also have the self-awareness to be okay, like, okay, let's say there's something I'm, we'll use my struggling with hormones, depression, things like that that I was going through, like I'm aware of it. And then I'm also aware enough to like start to do the research and start to like read and dive into things and meditate. I think that's where I'm at right now. Meditate on the process of all that? I think that's where I'm at. I've yet to like buy books specifically about, you know, what I'm talking about and so I feel like I want to go there first before hiring somebody and sitting down and I also have you guys. I talk to you guys all the time and I appreciate that and we have the podcast and I'm an open person. You guys know that. I'm not, I'm always talking, you know, express how I feel. I'm not embarrassed. I mean, hell, I'm doing it on a public podcast but it's just, I don't want, the problem is I feel like, you know, if I have an argument with my girlfriend, for example, I don't want to be so deep in how my past was that she pays for or that I'm not sure if I can even accurately, if I'm being accurate with what I'm saying, because am I saying this because of how I've always felt before or am I saying this because of this one situation and I don't want to be in a position where I question that. Right, you're trying to be proactive about things you've already recognized. Like, oh shit, I built some walls up here. You know, just by seeing this, it had me react a certain way. We do get in a fight, you know, this is going to be something that's like, ah, like it feels like, you know, something that you've already gone through. It's a lot like hiring a personal trainer. Yeah. I mean, and I would think that all three of us would agree we probably highly recommend to most people that you should hire a trainer at one point in your career if you're not one already, right? No, it's an outside perspective that gives you great insight. A lot of times you can't find that yourself and if you can find that yourself and you're saying self-awareness-wise, like I think that's, it's valuable then to dive into it and do research. And that's just it. You have to ask yourself if you're the person that will do that. Now I know you and I know the type of people we are and where I'm at in my life and where I think you're at in your life that you will read something and start to dive in and learn and I think you'll get as much value if not more value than even sitting down and having someone tell you, right? Yeah, I think that's kind of where I'm at. I think I'm going to start with something like that because, you know, it's like this. And by the way, you know, I have a tough time saying this sometimes not because I have a tough time saying it but because I don't want people to have a negative view of my ex-wife because believe me, there's two people in that relationship. There's definitely two sides to it and we both contributed. Which is also what makes you, why I said what I just said is that because you have that ability to see that, it's like when I talked about, I've talked about being cheated on by my ex and that was the first time that ever happened to me and so many people would be like, oh my God, fuck her. And I'm like, no, not fuck her. You recognize your side of it? Yeah, what did I do? Like this is definitely a growth opportunity for me. There's something in this relationship like the fact that she felt the need to go outside of our relationship for some sort of attention or love or whatever it may have been. There's something to be, there's something that I can't control her. I can't do anything. You can't do anything about your ex-wife but what you can do is dive deeper into what role of that did you play in that? Oh yeah, no. And you're the type of person that I think, oh, I've dug very deep into that. I've admitted a lot of things that I've done wrong and I understand that. But the last, especially the last four years or so was just this constant dysfunction, constant fighting, constant, just a terrible environment overall. And so what I don't want is for, because then I got divorced and I was done, trust me, I was done years before I actually left. I think both of us were, which is why we both transitioned and were able to be amicable at the end because we both agree this is what we need to do. But it's like, if I get in an argument now, I don't want it to feel like it's like a, it's almost like you have a limit, right? You have this limit of drama that you can handle. And it's like, it's not fair to the person I'm with now that my limit is so fucking high. You ramp way up. Well, I know this. Like I know when somebody mood changes in a way that feels irrational to me. First off, irrational to me is probably, I'm probably extra sensitive to it because of how things were before, right? And number two, like there's not that much leeway. If somebody, if there's any kind of a raising of a voice or any kind of an emotion shift, I'm like, run. I don't want to, like I don't want to deal with this at all because I dealt with it for so long beforehand. So anyway, I think that's where I'm at. I think I'm going to buy some books and just start doing my own research and reading about it. Yeah. I just want to say to the audience that's listening, I think that I am a big fan of it. And I do think that a majority, I think everybody can benefit from it. So I think it's, I think overall it's a really good thing. It's like everybody can benefit from personal trainer. Even if you are a personal trainer, could you not benefit from going and being trained by someone who's even more educated in that field? Absolutely. Do I think it's necessary? No, I don't think it's necessary. And I think there are people out there that just like with personal training, I think there's people that can never, I mean, I've never hired a personal trainer. Everything I've always, you know, I've figured it out myself. So if you're passionate about growth, you're passionate about learning about yourself, which I feel you are, I think you can accomplish a lot of that stuff on your own. Could you fast track you there by hiring a trainer and spending the money there? I mean, hiring a therapist. Yeah. And there's also too, like just with your partner. I mean, I know you guys probably, like it's really easy to discuss things because it's like, you know, something that you guys have established in relationship. And for me, like with my wife, you know, we did go through a little bit of counseling, which is, you know, not therapy, but it's definitely having somebody else in the room to identify things and present things and contemplate, you know, what problems may arise based off of our value system. And, you know, so we went through that whole process and it was very, very helpful. So I definitely, I think, you know, relationship-wise too to, because I mean, you can get so far as to like explain things with your partner and one-to-one, but having somebody else, they just, they frame it in a different light to where a lot of times my wife could be like, oh, okay, and then she gets like what I'm trying to say. Yeah. I mean, I've been before, like I said, towards the end of my marriage and it was definitely helpful, helped us, you know, make that decision to, you know, end everything or whatever. But I want to feel like totally ready. Like, okay, that's what I want right now. And I haven't, I don't feel like I've done the other stuff yet first, which is like read some books on it and dive into it. What they're really good at doing is like asking you like a question, like, you know, hey, when you watch Jersey Shore style, like, you know, what do you feel? They ask you that first. And then you explain it. And then they say, well, why do you feel that way? And then you explain why that, and then they, and then what they do really good is like you may start to take off on them, like, well, you know where I used this and then my wife did it and then you start going, whoa, stop right there. You know, you just said something right now. You know, she's like, I could do this with you all day. Yeah. No, I'm not hiring you. I'm not going to hire you. I just get you to start to think about what you're saying, which I think you do a really good job of. I have a good partner too because she allows us to, you know, we can talk, we can talk a lot, but you know, I don't want her to have to, you know, bear the brunt of, you know, whatever else comes out of it. So we'll see what happens. I'll tell you what though, it's been, I've definitely changed and grown a lot since that period of time and I am a growth minded person. I just want it to happen faster. We'll see. We'll see what happens. Yeah. If you're a listener of both Mind Pump and RX Radio, you guys will have to tag Jordan Shallow and talk shit to him because I'm going to punk him right now. What would he do? No, I'm not, I'm not letting him on the show anymore. That's how I'm going to tell him. No, what'd he do? No, no, no, I would, I would totally let him on. Of course we love him. But I, my inbox is just, and I apologize if you're somebody who's still there. I saw that I still had people from six days ago. I don't ever let the thing get that crazy, but it's just been overwhelming this last, this last like week, especially since Jordan Shallow's episode because I must have had 50 DMs on people asking me to interpret half the shit on the podcast. You know what's funny? So we bring him on the show and he just added work to me, dude. I was like, the whole point of having you on here is to take some of the load off for us. Bro, nobody DM me about that. Nobody did? No, but I think it's because they feel like I'll explain it. The same way? I will. They know I'll dumb it way down. Like, ask Adam. He'll say it in way simpler terms. What was he saying? Bend your elbow when you do that lift. Oh, thank you. This quiz brought to you by OrganiFi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, OrganiFi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try OrganiFi totally risk-free for 60 days by going to OrganiFi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I.com and use a coupon code MINEPOMP for 20% off at checkout. First question is from RobertM75. Is there any reason to attempt a one-rep max? If so, is there a way you suggest going about doing it? I have two thoughts on this. Yes and no. Yeah, you can make an argument for both. I do. Yes, you do. You have to take a position out of it. I'll make the argument four, but you go ahead. Well, okay, so if you're going to make the argument four, let me make the argument for not at first. Yeah. What I see and what I've experienced myself when chasing the one-rep max, you can build an incredible physique and be extremely healthy and never test your one-rep max your entire life. Yeah. For sure. For sure. You can never, ever max out on a lift and I would argue that that may be a good strategy for a majority of people because there is risk that comes with lifting that heavyweight and you need to be pretty damn experienced on how to bail on a squat or a deadlift or a bench press the right way if you're going to be max lifting and then on top of that, the other knock I have on it and this is to knock CrossFit a little bit is we got into this PR culture. Like PR didn't even exist when I started as a trainer. No, I didn't even know what PR was until after a couple years of hearing people like, oh my PR, I'm like, what the fuck is PR? I could never heard that term when I first started as a trainer, but it's become so popular that everybody is chasing their one-rep max and I would argue that it's contributing to a lot of the injuries that you see in things like CrossFit. So that's my no, even though I could say yes to it. I'm going to agree with you and I'm going to add more to that and say that if you want to be fit, strong, healthy, there's no reason. I don't see what the reason is. As long as you understand how to judge your perceived effort and train relatively intensely, I don't know why that would be important. The only thing I can think of why it's important to test out how much you can lift for one rep for a max. And by the way, we're not talking about training with low reps like doing sets of one. We're talking about maxing out for a rep. That's a big difference because I've trained many, many clients with reps as low as one, but when you're doing that, you're not maxing out. You're doing something like 80% of their max or whatever. It's heavy, but it's something that they can do and they can duplicate for sets. A max is literally the most you can lift for a single rep. And I guess the only benefit I could see to that is if you're trying to figure out your percentages of your max or you're trying to figure out if you're getting motivated by the fact that your max went up. But here's the deal. You don't need to max out to see if you're stronger. Let's say you're working out with me. Let's say you're my client and we're doing, we did six reps on the squat. Six heavy reps on the squat. And your perceived effort was pretty hard. Like you're like, oh, that was pretty intense. I feel like I maybe would have been able to squeeze out one or two more reps, but we did six. The next time I train you and you do the same weight for six reps, you'll know if you're stronger because you're like, oh wow, this is easier. I can actually do seven reps with the same perceived intensity or the same perceived effort. And so that's why it's hard for me to even justify. I don't think I've ever had any client except for maybe Doug and a couple others who are very competitive and with good instruction. Sure, I agree with you guys, but at the same time being an athlete and having gratifying moments that I can think of in my weight training career, in my athletic career, a lot of them were when I pressed my body to the limits. And this is one of those things. If you feel like you've been doing the work and this has been a few years even in the making, I'm not talking about doing this every year even or every couple months. I'm talking about this is something that I've been working my ass up towards. And if I want to see tangible evidence of strength that I can summon there's nothing better than a one-wrapped max. So I do see the argument that is it unnecessary? Yes, it's unnecessary because I could still just do multiple reps and get gratification from that and still be able to... It's not going to hammer my body to where... Well, you'll still see you're stronger. I can get on board with the athlete thing. And the reason why I can get on board with the athlete thing because if you play sports competitively, there will be times when you're playing where you're going to stretch your limits or you'll be challenged with that of wanting to fold, wanting to break, wanting to give up because your body is wanting to shut down. And there's something about the... It's a mental... The positive things you're going to get for your CNS, the positive things you're going to get for the psychological piece, there are some really good benefits to pushing to that limit. Now, the greater the benefits with things like that, the greater the risk. And so who I'm talking to would totally change this, would change my advice, right? So if it's somebody who's extremely advanced, you're an athlete, you're... I get it. Or you're competing in powerlifting. Like, that makes sense. For sure, that makes sense. Right, that makes sense. But if you're a mind pump listener and you love to lift weights, you want to be healthy, you want to be strong, you want to look good, and those are pretty much your main goals of why you work out. It doesn't really serve that big of a purpose. In your routine. The risk is too high. Look, here's what happens when you go... when you go to failure on any set of resistance. As you go to failure, your form starts to break down. And so now you're supporting a weight or holding a weight or lifting a weight with suboptimal form, which increases the risk of injury. Now, with a one rep max, it's even worse because you're lifting the heaviest weight you could possibly lift for one rep. And so if your form is off a little bit, like, look, if I'm doing a set of 20 with a squat and my form is off, I may be doing that with, you know, 275 pounds, right? If I do a one rep max and my form is off a little bit, I might have up to 400 pounds on my back. The risk of injury is quite high. Now, that being said, I test my one rep max all the time. Why? Because I'm experienced and I enjoy the challenge of it and I enjoy seeing the progress. And so from that standpoint, then I can see the benefit. But I don't see that happening with a lot of people. I think I see that happening with a small percentage of people or at least a small percentage of people that I think should be attempting one rep maxes. That being said, if you are going to test your one rep max, there is some advice I have for you. Don't guess what your one rep max is by throwing a bunch of weight on the bar. Yeah. Well, we're laughing, but that's what people do. No, I know. Don't be like, oh, well, I lift. Just feel it. Yeah, normally I lift 135. So yeah, let's try 225 and see if that's my max. No, no, no, no, no. Bad strategy. Give yourself a lot of time to slowly inch your way up to your one rep max. So I'll give you an example. Let's say I can do 315. I can squat 315 pounds, let's say 10 pounds, 10 times. Let's say that's my, I know I can muster out at least 10 repetitions. I'm going to go up, I might start off going up 15 or 20 pounds. And then as I get closer to the weight where I start to feel it starts to really get heavy, I'm only going up by two to five pounds and that's it. I'm doing one rep each time to not fatigue myself. But the last thing you want to do is overshoot what you think your max is, fail. That's good. That's good advice. Yeah, you don't want to fail because now you've failed, which is tough. Let me tell you, failing on some lifts like a bench press or an overhead press or a squat, you need to have a technique on how to fail, by the way. There's a technique to lifting it and there's a technique to failing because you can have a great squat and not know how to dump the bar or not know how to drop it on safeties and that's what people tend to hurt themselves. So you got to have that technique and also when you fail at a one rep max attempt, you're fried. So now your one rep max is lower. So now you try to back off on the weight and you really don't know what your one rep max could have been because you've literally just done a force negative with heavy weight, which fucks you, just fries you. I've never been somebody to really calculate the percentages out for something like this because I've never been into powerlifting competing, but I have checked my one rep max and I was kind of thinking like, how do I get to that number? How do I figure that out? And listening to you talk, I'm like, you know what? There is like a formula or a pattern that I have when I'm trying to test this, right? And if it's upper body, like bench press, overhead press, I'm testing a max there. I'm going to keep going up and wait until I find a weight that I can only get about five reps. Once I get to a weight where I can get only about five reps, then what I do is I incrementally go up five to ten pounds because it's upper body, right? And then I just keep going up each, and I give myself long rest periods in between, then I add five to ten pounds, go long rest period, five to ten pounds. I keep going until I can always squeeze out one or two reps and then I've got an idea of where my one rep max is going to be at, right? If it's legs, I can go a little bit, I can go a little bit faster than five or ten pounds. I can go like 15 to 20 pounds every single time. So I'll go all the way, I'll squat or deadlift until I can only get five reps with that weight. And then from there, I'm inching up 20 pounds at a time, so ten pounds on each side until I can kind of get to the point where I can find what my singles or doubles would be at. Yeah, yeah, same thing. And as far as how often you should test your one rep max, if you're that person who's experienced, has good control and knows how to dump a weight or knows how to fail, I would say, it's probably safe to max out once every other month. It's probably a good idea. Once a month, you might be able to get away with two, but that's probably pushing it. I would say probably once every two months, because you got to give yourself some time to build your strength up or do some back off sets. Well, a perfect world, if you're following maps, if you were to incorporate this with maps programming or how I would do it, it'd be the end of your programming. Well, I would do the end of every strength phase. Yeah. Which is usually three to five weeks. And then as you cycle back through, I would do it again at the end of the strength phase. So run any of the maps programs and when you get to the end of the strength phase, that would be when you test it and you would go and transition the next phase when you come back around through that maps program or another maps program, you could test it again. I mean, that being said, training at that limit or that type of max capacity for a rep, there's definitely a skill that's involved, that's unique to it. So what I mean by that is for those of you who are competitors or who do find lots of value in this who also, again, are experienced and know what they're doing, the more you practice one rep maxing, the better you get at it because there is a skill involved. The weight moves different. It takes a different type of intensity and drive and focus and finding that right amount to ramp up to, you know, the ultimate output is definitely part of the process. The skill you need to learn like, you know, did I do too much? Like, is that going to take away from my one rep max? Did I not do enough? So I primed my body properly for this. So this is all things that you have to literally practice to build up to that experience where now this is something that you start to get good at. Are there any lifts that you guys will test more often than others or lifts that you don't like to test out with one rep max? I test the most with squat. I test my squat. Oh, you do? I test my squat and I used to test my bench a lot. Really? Yeah, yeah. I got a lot of pride in that for a while and then I haven't in years. So it's been a skill. I've lost, you know. Yeah, squat and deadlift. See, I never... Overhead press. I always test my bench. I never test my bench because my shoulders are okay if I don't push it too hard. But if I max out, my form always goes off a little bit and I end up feeling my AC joint on my right shoulder. Yeah, yeah. I rarely ever max out in squats because I hate failing on a squat. That is a terrifying feeling. And dumping a bar is a very loud occurrence. I've gotten really good at it. I've been... Yeah, I've been on squats pretty good. Like that's... That's what I'm saying. It's a skill. I scare people around me so I can dump it behind me. That's why. Yeah, I feel okay. I feel the best about pushing my limits on the squat because I feel the most comfortable with actually getting out of it. Chest and overhead press, I don't. Like if I'm pushing an overhead press, like if I'm going to compensate anywhere, I'm going to be my low back arching and I'm afraid of stuff like that. Exactly. You got to know this. Deadlift for me, I'm a little weary because of an injury I got while doing it. You know, the other time when I hurt my QL a bit, but yeah, it's like that's one of those things that just sticks in your head so now you have to overcome these barriers that you've placed psychologically. Deadlift for me, that's the one that I'll test because I just feel most comfortable. You drop the bar. It's right down in front of you. And I've been through some grinders. Let me tell you, I've been through some deadlifts that were... It felt like it took me five minutes to get the bar up into position. Those can be pretty nasty. Those can be very, very nasty. Yeah. Next question is from Cell Carp. What are your thoughts on why childhood obesity continues to grow? Your opinions on how it got so bad and how we should fix it? This is a scary problem. You know, childhood obesity is... It's scary because it wasn't that long ago that childhood obesity almost didn't even exist. No joke. Like, it almost didn't even exist. When I first got my... When I got my first personal training certification back in 1997, they called Type II Diabetes in my book in the actual certification, it was called Adult Onset Diabetes. It wasn't called Type II Diabetes. It was Type I Diabetes where you're not making insulin and you need insulin. And then there was Adult Onset Diabetes because this was the type of diabetes that you developed as an adult through, you know, poor diet, bad lifestyle. We believed you could only get it as an adult. That's because that's all that ever had. It never happened that way. It never happened where a kid wasn't born with diabetes and then got it until... I don't understand how that's not so fucking scary as a parent to see what has happened just in the last 30, 40 years with childhood, with obesity and diabetes in children. Like, that's crazy I think that it didn't exist 50 years ago and now it's something that has been on the rise. And there has to be like an epigenetic component where like a lot... I don't think so. I think it's less of that and more of what we see and more of this sitting in front of video games and computers and phones and then eating fire cheetos and some drinking sodas. Well, except for how you're setting them up like from the womb. Well, I'm not disagreeing with you that that may not be a role being made but I think it's less of that and it's more of our society right now. I don't think that we've never been here before. We're a kid. I mean, when you were a kid we remember it wasn't that long ago. You know what I'm saying? When you were a kid you died. It's one generation. Yeah, exactly. There was literally like one kid at school. You knew it was like the fat kid. Right. And now it's it literally it makes up almost I mean it's not the majority but it's a very high percentage that there's a lot of new things that like now we're like oh well this is like the new normal. Here's what here here's what here. Check this out. So I just looked up the statistics. This is from the CDC and it shows that childhood obesity has tripled has more than tripled since the 1970s. This wasn't that long ago at all. It wasn't that long ago at all since the 1970s. Today or data that we have from 2015 to 2016 shows that one in five school aged children has obesity one out of every five. So that's tripled from 1970. Here's the part that really bothers me is that as I'm going down and scrolling down the CDC website they say many factors contribute to childhood obesity including ready for this here's the top two genetics metabolism which is okay what do you mean metabolism what the fuck does that mean that could be changed whatever genetics wrong sorry we did not evolve we didn't evolve rapidly since for the last 40 years where all of a sudden we went from one out of every 15 kids or something like that to now one out of every five has obesity that doesn't work then number three those are cop outs then number three is community and neighborhood design and safety what short sleep duration maybe and then finally the last one they put is eating and physical activity behaviors oh you think the last part oh you really think right here's what's scary about this besides the fact that these are children and you know that's terrible because in many cases these children are not at fault for their poor health because you know kids don't typically go grocery shopping they don't typically buy the food they don't eat how you eat and you're eating behaviors and patterns there's a large part of it that is learned through your environment the correct reflection of the environment that you know the parents have provided and you know however you want to spit it they're dependent on you know this food coming from you know the source where it's coming from that's from the parents that's right but the scary thing for me is less about the kids being obese and the fact that a child that's obese has a very very high likelihood of growing up to be an unhealthy adult and what we know about health is this the younger you're unhealthy the worse that unhealthy becomes I wonder what the if you are and here's another thing too some parents like I see this a lot I remember having this conversation with Katrina years back and we were talking about you know kids and overweight and I was pointing out a kid that was overweight oh that's you know because he's really young that's his baby fat I'm like no you know he's carrying like 20 pounds of excess weight as a child like that is not baby fat that's not like he's not going to grow out like transitional fat yeah no a lot of parents they just think they're going through a phase and that they'll grow out of it or grow into their body and it's like no they have a belly that is hanging over their shorts and they're 10 years old you know what I'm saying like that they're being fed and they're not moving enough well yeah and the play is different now like you know the focus with all their friends is different like what they do now is different there's so many different contributing patterns to this that all these variables now like it's so much set up for obesity to occur I have a very very strong opinion on this this is just a subject that's been a passion of mine for a very very long time about what I think is to cause for before I go in that check out this statistic if you have an obese two year old two okay so this is somebody was born two years ago right an obese two year old has a 75% chance of being obese at 35 now a normal two year old today has a 57% chance of being obese just cause that's our obesity rate among adults so that's a big difference that's the difference of about 20% increase in risk a 19 year old that's obese has an 88% risk of being obese a 19 year old who's not obese only has a 44% risk so what this tells us is the longer you're not obese the lower your likelihood of being an obese adult if you're obese when you're young the likelihood that you'll be obese increases and the longer you stay obese like if you're a teenager that's obese the odds that you're going to be an obese adult is almost 100% it's close to 90% I used to tell my female clients that I get that we're in their 20s this is totally my experience I have no studies or anything to prove this but in my experience if I had met somebody who had not figured out a healthy eating habits and an exercise routine by about 25 or 26 that the likelihood of her being overweight or obese in the future is really really high and the likelihood of them ever getting in really good shape is really really low because they haven't installed those behaviors and habits by the time they're in their mid 20s they're so ingrained it's so rare and I do have examples I've trained thousands of people so of course I've got handfuls of 40 year old lives and one of that but they're so small it's so so small it's a very hard thing to change here's what I think look I think the lack of physical activity is not the main culprit when it comes to obesity I think the lack of physical activity is the main culprit for the physical dysfunction that we see in kids like forward shoulder forward head the fact that kids now have you see a lot of pronating feet and issues with knees and back even less movement that's what I blame on that but as far as obesity is concerned you could place that squarely at the feet of how we feed our kids 100% look at do this for me go to a grocery store and go to the kids food section and try and find foods that are not totally bad for you like good luck the vast majority of the foods that are dedicated to kids is fast it's heavily processed high long shelf life heavily easy to access well even before that highly palatable tons of sugar highly palatable food now why is that is it because we have an evil food industry no I think the food industry is smart I think there's definitely some evil people in the food industry they're smart their job is to sell and not only they'll give a fuck who eats it what happens if you eat too much they give you what you want that's what selling is you give someone what they want what do parents want well they want fast highly palatable for their kids because I'm a parent of two children Justin can probably echo this one of the most stressful things or times of the day with kids is feeding time always ever since they they're in a high chair and you're feeding them yourselves battlegrounds always it's not always but it's common it's a common battleground and so if you can create a child's food that the kid will just love to eat I mean parents are they feel like oh yes oh goldfish look at goldfish why do you think goldfish is so popular cause kids love eating them and so parents are like oh easy snack eating something yeah eat some goldfish this is so easy for you so that's the big problem the big problem is the food and the big blame goes on the parents well period I mean it's uncomfortable but it starts early man with your decision making process like I'm sorry but breastfeeding is fucking hard hardest things like women can do you know and I know my wife going through that was like expressing that to me like this is so difficult and it's very tempting to stop and it's so much easier to do formula it's very easy to do formula they have connected formula to higher rates of obesity nobody wants to talk about that you know sorry it's a very sensitive topic right now for my two best friends who are having kids right now and like already feeding her feeding him you can pump yeah there's options there's things you can do and there's also like was it wet banks or whatever so anyways I mean obviously that's like that's one factor by the way yeah that's just one thing I'm just saying like like thinking in terms of like setting up you know your child's like health in the future it starts like right away it does have a lower risk of obesity that's a fact when they breastfeed it could be the health aspects of it and the other part of it could be because I don't want to throw this out either and I'm not saying breast milk isn't the most healthy thing you can give your child I believe it is just as we evolved to have it so I don't think scientists have created anything that can mimic nature perfectly yet I think we will in the future but I don't think we have yet but I think the other part of this the kind of parents that tend to not breastfeed and want to give their kids formula probably also the kind of parents that are the ease of access right and so there's you know expediency becomes you know modern life is very difficult modern life there's a lot of shit going on and so I mean look parents used to spend time on making food and making meals and taking the time to feed them and all that stuff and it's not like that anymore and here's the other thing too likely it's highly likely if you see an obese kid they have obese parents it's highly likely the challenge is it does start with the parents and I know it sounds like we're over here because you can't just change your kids eating you gotta change your own you know what I mean and that's where the real challenge comes in let's be honest it's like you know the parents are struggling with the kids the habits but I mean if you're a parent that didn't have any of that stuff in your cover on the weekends you guys did is you know obese or really overweight and they play video games they eat fire cheetos all the time and on the weekends they muck out on video games why you do other things like yeah fuck it's gonna be really really tough to manage this I can I feel for parents in situations like this cause let's say you're a parent and you've got you know two kids or three kids and let's say your youngest is four and your oldest is I don't know you know twelve I'm obese my kids are all obese I need to change everybody's eating habits because it's just not healthy and I know that I'm also somebody that needs to change my eating habits let's say you're a really self-aware parent and that's your position well now you have to be willing to go through roughly two or three months of shit that's at least it's gonna take that long because kids may not be on board and the kids eat what you buy and so they're gonna protest they're gonna fight they're gonna not eat you may have your kids say fine I'm not having dinner at all and now you gotta play that game where you wait it out until your kid is starving and decides to finally eat so you have to commit to a shitty house life for a few months you have to go through a little bit of hell it's gonna be that way but what is the benefit well I can I can tell you 100% what the negative will be if you don't do that if you're obese and unhealthy less mobility they're gonna find less pleasure in physical activities of course risk there raises the risk of things like being ostracized with other kids bullying all that stuff and then health problems the health problems that you're setting your child up for when they're older is very very high and I don't I don't buy the whole but they don't do what I say bullshit that's bullshit sure if you have a teenager that's got a car it's very very difficult but if it's your house you buy the groceries you're the one that's in charge so when they go to the cupboard open it up to find a snack and all they see is nothing and maybe there's you know cheese wheels and carrot sticks and apples and you're like well that's what we got so if you want a snack you can eat that if you don't then there's nothing else you know then watch what happens but it's gonna start with the parents I've never seen a parent successful where we're at right now in our lives seems like punishment or so evil to do that just a few hundred years ago you know what I'm saying like if you had food if your child was hungry oh my god we have a cure it's the opposite you were like dying to get them food you know and like that was like the priority was just to be able to get them food and nourished and now it's completely the opposite problem which I think also part of the problem is that we're over saturating our children with stuff like that and we're already training them to these meal times and thinking that they're three or four times a day when in reality they probably especially if their activity is low they probably don't and I hate to draw the same draw a parallel to my dogs because humans and dogs are different in a lot of ways but I mean it's the same way like I feed the boys it's like if I didn't get if I didn't get off my ass as an owner because this is true I'm not a perfect dog owner all the time where I walk my dogs and exercise them like I should I feed them differently they don't get fucking four cups of food every day if I don't go out and exercise them otherwise they put on the weight really fast and so why would we treat the kids any different than that why would you when they eat the snacks that are like crackers and you know sugar stuff like that makes them more hungry well and this is like now are you just overwhelming them with even more calories no it's true typically when we let them do it is at the worst times when they're sitting down watching TV for two three hours straight or playing video games for four or five hours and they're drinking soda and shoveling the food it's like man it's I'm not trying to demonize certain foods or say your kid should never be allowed to ever have a fire cheater like that I'm not trying to say that at all but it's like where it's compounding because of all these other things because they're not moving because they're sitting still and on top of that you're feeding them these types of food or allowing them to eat these types of foods while they're doing that yeah they still have the flexibility and it still makes its way in but I just recognize the battle of it and like that that's always there and then I'm willing to you know recognize you know like okay I need to I need to like handle this and make sure that I'm on top of this and by the way like you know we always recommend when people change their own eating habits that they do it slowly one step at a time totally if you're the head of household or whatever your mom or dad and you have kids and you're like okay we need to change our eating habits and you've identified that you need to change your own because nine out of ten times it's everybody's maybe you do it so slow that kids don't even notice you know what I'm saying maybe it's just like hey mom why are the snacks this way this time or wait how come we're not having you know bread with our dinner tonight or why aren't we drinking soda or why did you change the juice from you know this brand to this brand because you can slowly start implementing these things for yourself and for the family and make it you know a little bit and then their palate will change and you know and then you can introduce more healthy you have to do it at the speed of what they're going to accept but I'm telling you right now if this doesn't change if this doesn't become something that parents start to do now we are going to be footing the bill for this younger generation when they become adults it could screw us up pretty bad next up is mind to muscle do you have any regrets you know it's crazy that we went this way because I wanted to ask you and Justin because I think this is a great segue into this and gives an opportunity for you guys to kind of talk about I know you probably are thinking of regrets personally but be interesting to hear you guys talk about you know as we just sit here and talk about childhood obesity and the challenges that you guys both probably deal with the dinner table and these things like that you know is there a little bit of ownership on your part where you go like fuck I did allow the kids to do certain things five years ago or six years ago that I wish I would have done differently now can you think of things like that all the time I can think of this part of this issue when it comes to feeding and eating especially with my kids you know in my culture or at least in the culture of my parents right the one that I always raised in food you feed the hell out of your kids and that's how you show them that you love them and if they don't eat you know it's a it's a big problem and so you're constantly force feeding kids and when I was young I remember I mean my grandma would say things like to me and my cousins like let's you can finish first whoever finishes first gets five dollars oh my god you know you guys really did shit like that yeah they would actually make us compete straight bribing you to eat more food yes if we didn't eat we would get in trouble meals always started with starches so you know you would start every meal with pasta and bread and then you'd end up finishing with the you know the protein and the fat or whatever and the vegetables that would be kind of towards order you know of how you eat so it's those are things that I've done that I did with my kids like we would have meals and they would start off with pasta and bread and then we would move towards the the healthier thing so that I regret you know doing I don't do it anymore and that's they actually thanks to Jessica she came up with this it's brilliant it really is very simple but it's quite brilliant and where we serve in reverse we serve in reverse of what everybody else does isn't that crazy healthy strategy right out the gate is think about how every restaurant serves you food and serve it well I guess dessert sometimes it serves less except for that right well they'll serve you bread first because it tins that make you hungry so what we do now with the kids is we start with vegetables then we move to the meat the protein and the fat and then if there is a starch then we move to the starch and in order for my kids to go to the next level or whatever the next course they have to finish the first course and this is the brilliant part and this again I have to thank Jessica for we don't make a big deal about it so if I put six pieces of broccoli on my daughter's plate and she says I don't want broccoli the response is you don't have to eat it that's fine and that's it we don't talk about it and then we'll move on and she'll be like but I want I want that I want that meat or I want that pasta and I'll say well you can't have that unless you you finish the first course because this is the right this is the right way you have to leave it up to her it's her decision and the reason why you do that is you want your kids you want them you want it to be their idea because it makes them feel more empowered and my regret in the past was I would force my kids I would literally say to them if you don't eat that you're grounded or you know if you eat that then I'd reward them with dessert like okay listen if you finish all of that as a punishment or as a reward when that alone will create you know bad relationships yeah and then the more consistent you are with that process it becomes less of a battle because they just expect it like okay well this I know that like not going past this is going to limit me from eating the other items were you thinking of other regrets or not because I just thought that was a great follow up because of what you were talking about and I thought I bet you both as parents have some regrets on the food piece perfect ten years ago with your kids using food and you probably see how it how it's now unfolded and you go fuck I wish bro do you know how hard it is to erase some of those ingrained things like if my kids like my daughter eating all of your plate like my daughter is the hard one when it comes to food and like in the she doesn't want to eat in the morning do you know how hard it was for me to let her to go to school without eating breakfast it was so hard what I actually would go to the store I think would taste good and I actually no joke actually I actually bought a sugary cereal so she would eat breakfast and Jessica pointed out she's like are you really giving her that just so she'll eat she's like what's wrong if she doesn't eat breakfast and I'm like you know I hear those words and I'm like well fuck yeah you're right it's so weird because it's so ingrained you know that you don't realize it so those are the big food regrets that I have as far as regrets and the other regrets I have with with my kids you know what every single almost every time I ever lose my temper with my kids I regret that I showed them that I lost my temper almost every single time it doesn't do anything but scare them and I don't want my kids to do the right thing because they're scared I want them to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do because they want to because they want to and so I've done that where I've scared them because I lost my temper and then afterwards I'm like oh man I don't have a lot of regrets because I really have the ability to see kind of the silver lining and everything and I don't repeat a lot of mistakes like I make a lot of mistakes 100% like I'm definitely far from perfect and I do make a lot of mistakes but we talked about on a podcast recently about this where you know I think there's I think somebody who continues to make the same mistakes over and over like there's some shit there's some work you need to do inside of yourself because there's a pattern that I've done that have been big fuck ups or that have just devastated me I learned from them I learned from them and in fact if they were really devastating or really bad it actually ended up being a really good lesson like that is like forever ingrained to me and I'll give you one that I think of that comes to mind that is probably a big regret I definitely learned from it so I don't know how much of this is a regret yeah it's hard to look at it from that standpoint because if you didn't do those things how the hell would you do that like forgetting that so something that I went through in my from about 20 to 25 I would say somewhere in that range I I spent a lot of fucking money and I spent a lot of money on not just myself but other people and friends and a lot of that was driven by my own insecurities because I was the kid who didn't have a lot of things growing up I reached a level of success and it wasn't like I was rich I was just a kid who was 20 years old making six figures but for me it felt like I was rich and I felt this need to feel that way so I expressed it through buying people things and flying everybody everywhere and spending money in Vegas and tables and picking up $600 bar tabs and fancy restaurants all the time and always picking up the bill and taking care of that and I really trained a lot of my friends for a long time to expect that and it caused a lot of issues with our friendships later on because later on I started to kind of resent them and it took me a lot to own that it was my fault that I was the one that trained them for they're all good friends of mine they love me either way but because of my insecurities of wanting to feel like the guy who had all the money all the time I paid for everything so sure when we go do things in my late 20s we go somewhere my friends would look over at me bill would come flying over and everybody just like Adam's got it he's always got money he'll pay for it and I remember I had a point where I was like man what am I doing this is so wasteful and not fair to me but at the same time too I trained them to do that because for years I was feeding this insecurity by paying for all these people and it took me years later to break that and to retrain that I first had to accept that it was my fault and own that and then dig deeper into that insecurity of wanting to you know feel rich or look like I had all these things and then I had to first fix that and then I also had to retrain my friends that hey regardless if I got the money to do it or not like motherfucker you gotta pay for your shit every now and then you know what I'm saying or it's we gotta split this every now and then bitch I hated doing that stuff I don't like that there's nothing that bothers me more you want people to ask yeah oh god I got it and it feels good like okay cool yes totally so that was you know and again back on me if I had to try and pick a regret that's the first thing that comes to mind that I think going back I would have done things totally different and because of that I think I would have saved a lot of turmoil and hard conversations my friends I would have saved a lot of money so that's probably the biggest regret that I could think of yeah I'm man I'm really trying to think of something that like stands out because you made a good point about doing all these things that ended up teaching you a life lesson that is even more valuable because I put myself out there and I risked my comfort level and I feel like I am where I am today because of the major risks I took in my life and I can I can trace back to those major risks that have you know some of them have failed miserably and some of them have you know thrived in either way like to me the failed ones I hold even more valuable just because for me it was it just showed me how resilient you know I could be in the face of something not working now completely the way I wanted it to but also just reevaluate and I continually reevaluate the process of how sometimes I basically replay it in my mind of how I could improve it and so it's like it's a real it's a real experience that now I can I can keep learning from it whenever I see that come up as a pattern so for me to repeat the pattern would be that would be devastating right I definitely think there are lessons however that you learn from a mistake that perhaps somebody else also had to pay the price for and those are the ones that would be more likely to regret you know what I'm saying like if I if I fuck up and I make a mistake and I learn from it and somebody else like I can't from it yeah I can't regret it but if somebody else got hurt from it like I said when I get mad and yell at my kids no that's a great example yeah it's like I learn from that for me but fuck these you know those poor kids or whatever had to like pay the price for me learning or making this mistake I agree it's a total piece of shit you know because I just I wasn't in the right state of mind you know and I lashed out or I said something that I wanted to take back and you know I know that I know that's happened and I know that later on in life like your kids will come back and be like they'll remember those moments and bring them up you know and that sucks that sucks when you face that but we're human beings you know like if I'm not if I'm not checking that process and always thinking about that like and trying to improve upon that process then you know like it's a it's a much more philosophical question than you think yeah I don't because I do regret anything even the point that you bring up right there with like because you you struck a chord for me right there with like oh shit you know what about situations that I've done where I like hurt somebody else right or like for example over you know a situation right like we we both were my buddy my best friend at the time and I was the best man in his wedding and I have so much love love for the guy and you know we there was a lot of stress that was surrounding the business that we are currently running this was when I was doing the cannabis clubs I was growing he was he was creating wax and stuff like that and we were doing all this stuff together and it was just super stressful time and you know we forever went different directions and we haven't spoke since then and I remember I wrote him like every month for a year because I was he was such a close friend of mine and I think like fuck you know do I regret that conversation do I regret that big blow up in that fight or do I regret even going into that business with him and because I lost the best friend and I think for a long time I might have regretted it but when I really start to think about it now how we continue to evolve and grow and sometimes you outgrow relationships you know I have to ask myself that you know potentially was that relationship heading down an unhealthy path and you know I don't know maybe it was and maybe really what happened was for the best you know and so that's the philosophical side of me that's going it's true because you're always going to think like well it's supposed to be that way right right so it's hard to regret something if you believe it's supposed to be well especially if you see the future getting better and better and better I think that if if I were to make a decision that brought me and I started spiraling you know from that decision and I wasn't able to pull myself out of it I would definitely regret that you know that I chose that direction like if it was something where yeah somebody like obviously got hurt or like I you know I had to I had to pay the price for that and like I had to take myself out of something that was well that's how I instrumental that's why I asked you guys you know and I know you had to get up for a second but that's why I asked you guys that I thought it was a really cool that we followed this question up after the child thing because you guys in a sense are seeing that play out right now some of the decisions maybe you made as parents that you might have thought was the right decision back then or you didn't even think at all about it parenthood is a constant constant stream of questioning yourself a hard game to play you do play and it's okay and I understand why you do it as a parent because you want to make sure you do a good job but if you get caught up in it you get frozen by it because you will question every goddamn every damn thing you make letting them explore like for instance like you know my kid like hurt himself falling off out of a tree you know like should I blame myself or not tell him to come down like I put your kids on formula right away or did you allow them to eat ice cream and candy when they were too did you do things like that that you again if you think that things are the way they're supposed to be then you can't regret anything but I will say this one of the worst regrets you could ever possibly have in my opinion is the regret of not telling someone how you really feel about them before they're out of your life because now for me luckily I've always been okay with expressing myself and I've lost a couple very close people to me very very close but I never regretted not saying how I felt about them because you guys know me you know if I love somebody I'm gonna tell them man woman whatever I'm gonna tell the person how much I care about them and I'm glad I do because I have lost two people very close to me and there was never the and after she was gone you know there were there were definitely people that were like God I wish I told her how awesome she was to me how much she really impacted me and that's a tough one that is tough to swallow that's a good piece of advice tell the people around you that you care about tell them how you feel because that feels good there's nothing wrong with that but not doing that and then having something potentially happen John Palastre what are your top three books that have impacted your lives the most in overall approach to philosophy wealth podcasting etc cool question is a cool question cool question I can think of so I can think of one book and then I do a lot of my reading online so although I do read books most of the reading I do is stuff that I look up online or lectures that I'll find on YouTube I love watching that way at least I move in that direction but one book that really impacted me was and I can't remember the author God is not great maybe you can look that up Doug who wrote that book but it's the and I can't believe I can't remember his name because he's like the or God is not I think it's God is not great he's like the world's most prolific atheists if I'm not mistaken that book already Richard Dawkins is that what it was yeah how religion poisons everything so that's ironic that you chose that book yeah yeah yeah so oh Christopher Hitchens I'm sorry Christopher Hitchens so this was years ago when I first read this book up until this point I had become very very skeptical and of religion I had become very cynical of religion my family of course being Catholic I would search on holidays and stuff like that I'd look at all the ritual and then when I visited the Vatican I saw this opulence and I just thought this is ridiculous this is hypocritical this is terrible and I blamed everything for on religion I thought it was just silly why people believed in this shit because they didn't have science they didn't understand how things worked and so they'd make things up and then I read this book and it really solidified that for me and I became an atheist you actually look at the question of God much deeper than someone who doesn't think about it at all and most people or a lot of people I know don't even think of that question they don't think of is there a God like what like it's not a question they ponder over but if you're an atheist you've actually done a lot of thinking about it you've actually sat down and thought and read and come up with this consensus and so this book sometimes this book got me to think well you're right but they may not be they don't realize they're worshiping different Gods that's right and so this book I became a hardcore atheist and so I started talking about it more with people debating people and diving deeper and this book pushed me then to because of this book I started learning more and more about science and I started reading books on quantum physics quantum physics is fucking weird very very weird watched a couple documentaries did my own research and I started to realize that we don't know at all much we don't know much at all in fact especially if you look at some of the weird strange occurrences in quantum physics kinda sounds like some of the stuff that people in religions and spiritual practices will preach and so it brought me down this path where I went from atheism to being more agnostic to really diving into that question and so this that book actually moved me not in the direction of atheism as much as it moved me in the direction of really examining that question and what that meant for me and so it led me on a more spiritual path I should say and I know Christopher Hitchens if you heard this would be like fuck that wasn't my goal that's why I have to counter that with so top three for me is challenging top one is very easy for me it's not even a close call the bible is by far the most powerful read I have ever read in my life and I know there's probably people that listen and then probably cringe at that and a lot of that well I challenge you to ask yourself why do you cringe at that a lot of people haven't read it who say that exactly very few people that because you can read it without being a church without being a religious person or believer you don't have to go to a church and belong to a congregation to read the most powerful book ever written and I'll debate somebody all fucking day long on that because name a topic a subject that you want to learn about or you want advice in and then I bet you money you can find it multiple times written about inside that book the problem with it is that what man has done with just about anything is we've bastardized everything we've taken something and we have manipulated it to create these congregations and dogma and we've turned it into such an ugly nasty thing that we've divided ourselves as a society of half the group of these people worship it and it's everything to them and then the other half of the people rebuke it and say it's awful and I would never read it it's like no you're talking about one of the best books ever written it's definitely the most read and that's a statistic that's real in the last 50 years someone did the statistics on this last 50 years have been 3.9 billion copies sold in 50 years now obviously the Bible's thousands of years old right that mean the way I look at it is this and this is coming from someone who again was atheist who's no longer atheist but I'm not specifically religious but I'm definitely open to spirituality there's ancient texts have a lot of wisdom and the fact that the Bible and there's other ancient texts that are widespread but the Bible in particular which is the most popular one the reason why it's so popular and has spread so far and people continue to read it even today is because there's a lot of wisdom in it for sure there's a ton so you don't have to be a religious person you don't even have to believe in God to find some of the religion and some of the wisdom and I know we're all on the same thought process right now so that was one of mine but at the same time it's because I went through I mean my whole childhood was breaking down like the meaning and the purpose and you know within Proverbs and you know all the different parables and different ways they explain things and just the communication and there but you know for me like I was very I've always been a skeptic and so even within that setting and that environment I felt uncomfortable like I felt like the human element of it and the way that you just see like different different ways it's gone different interpretations so many different directions people like humans have taken it like the message and then sort of muddied the message and so I've always been like very curious to find what the actual message was and like what you know if we were to get to the root of the message which you know people have used for power and people have used to put people under oppression and so anyway I've always had that and asked really hard questions you know to preachers and to people within the faith to you know to really analyze because I just don't like I want I always wanted an empirical you know evidence that's why I was into science you know I really got into science because I could test things and I could like figure things out tangibly of like okay this equates to this and it's constant you know like math it's a constant thing that I can rely on in this so anyway I brought me to this book it was called The Science of God and that was by Gerald L. Schroeder I believe I've heard great things about that book I've never read it though yeah so I have that in my house I've read it multiple times but what this author was trying to do was like realize that at one point science and religion you know like there used to be the great thinkers in the world started within the church the church actually funded scientific research for a long time funded a lot of stuff it divided I think because the powers that be within the church viewed it as a threat especially when you had people saying things like oh the earth actually revolves around something else things don't revolve around us yeah and things don't fit narratives it's like you just dismiss all the actual science instead of trying to interpret our world based off of a creator in mind there was this big division that had to happen all of a sudden so anyway my brain is always like well what did it what would the original message look like and why did we receive benefit from it the part that I find the wisdom in the Judeo-Christian religion that I find most fascinating is the radical notion because people need to realize just how fucking radical the following idea is or was when it first came out it was the notion that there is sanctity in the individual because every individual had a soul this is the teaching from the Judeo-Christian religion every person has a soul and every all souls are a piece of God we all have God within us that was a radical notion because during these periods of time and way before that kings and queens were they were the fucking blessed ones everybody else was a peasant or if you had power if you had money then these people were less than they were less than you well here comes this belief system that says no we're all equal we're all equal in the eyes of God we're all made in God's image or whatever and that led to that led to freedom that led to free to countries that valued the individual and of course it didn't happen overnight it took time but we now see how successful that viewpoint is because if you don't believe that well then why would you why would you treat everybody the same it doesn't make any objective sense you would this guy has he can't offer me anything and I don't give a shit about him and you're a peasant and I'm rich and you're disabled or whatever like might as well kill you I'm in charge that was the belief system before people believed this underlying you know this that came from something bigger than that said no no no we're all we all have God within us so we all have to respect that you know that sanctity right of the individual so that's some brilliant brilliant wisdom that was completely radical that came from that that I will always respect regardless whether or not I believe in the the you know the the metaphysical part of it or whatever we all we all picked a you know God type of book for our mind was an anti which is great though no I think that's I think that's great I think it's hands down I think the one when we get to books two and three is where there's going to be a lot of diversity amongst each of us and I even myself going through like my library of books and go like man which ones have been the most impactful and I think that this is going to be so different for everybody like so I'm going to name books that maybe may not be that impactful for you but I think they represent a time in my life that when they came that was so important for me to probably read that and a book that I tend to recommend a lot to people and again it's selfishly for me because how it impacted me was developing the leader within by John C. Maxwell and that sent me down a rabbit hole like I read like almost all his books I've read a ton of his books and he's got a bajillion of them because I had fallen in love with the style of his writing and the message behind it and he does like the way he writes he writes in these short stories and for a guy like who had a hard time reading books and staying focused in the book and I would trail off a lot my thoughts he really started his way of writing is what really gave me that thirst to read and grow more so it was very impactful and then of course to read a book like developing the leader within much of those principles are within that book and the way he writes he writes in these short stories so a chapter is only you know five to ten pages sometimes and so I can be engulfed in a short story really really quick and easily and not be distracted and I would digest a lot that so that was a extremely impactful book for me Yeah for me the next ones are weren't books now I did read books by these individuals but it wasn't the books that impacted me the strongest so the next thing for me was I did a lot of learning through watching lectures and there was a talk this was years ago Ron Paul gave on to Congress and it was a talk about I almost forgot his fed up book that was a great book Yeah he did a talk on you know terrorism and how would we feel if we were being bombed and would we become terrorists and you know and he did this whole talk on it and it blew me the fuck away like I listen to this man I'm like oh I never thought of things in that way and I went down the rabbit hole of Ron Paul and watching his his talks and what he says about freedom what he says about you know our foreign policy of you know invading other nations and all this other stuff and it led me down a path that really you know shaped me to kind of who I am because of Ron Paul I started reading about economics I started reading you know people about Austrian economics versus kinesian economics I started I read Mises and you know Hayek which then led me to the revolution real quick which was Milton Friedman and Milton Friedman has a series on YouTube called free to choose it's an old series it was filmed I think 1979 or 1980 absolutely brilliant and I like that it's old because all of the predictions he made in some of these videos about what's going to happen if we don't change course totally true so watching that was like watching like a dude prophesize what's about to happen and then a lot of it happening and going oh shit and Milton Friedman in fact on me you know just in terms of understanding how you know human behavior and markets or at least how economics is kind of what drives you know peace and prosperity in the world so that's always my third one yeah I just I think for me less on on books and just more on just initial story lines that I helped me to think deeper and I've gone I think for me like what really changed was just like kind of getting diving deep into like philosophy and philosophers and I took a couple courses in college that really challenged my way of thinking like really diving into Socrates and Plato and St. Augustine and just understanding the freedom to explore you know your own process and understand the world around you without subscribing to somebody else's like already laid out thought process and so like that's I've used that in everything I've done going forward it's just like I have to it's like question everything you know it's like is what you believe really what you believe and being individual what does that look like for me it was leaving my comfort zone and going to to Chicago and understanding who I was as a person and like I've been hammered growing up my whole life to live a certain way be a certain type of person subscribe to a certain thought process you know like follow these rules and just knowing that there was brilliant minds in the past that collectively would challenge each other and would think about the bigger things like why do we even exist you know like what is our purpose what like I just can't I can't pull away from that that's always something that I come back to well I think all the Stokes are awesome I think that's a and it's hard for me to pinpoint just one book right because I could say something about Aristotle you know like I've read books on him in Socrates and I always get something out just because I just love I love hearing people challenge common thought I so I I'm going to give you guys one that I think is kind of cool to or pertains to maybe my philosophy now and how that's changed so just recently and like it's since mind pump has started because I could go all day along about all these different books that I think have impacted me in different ways and that I think they all have in a sense right but I think it'll be cool to tell you guys something that I think is really and I think the guys are going to really piggyback off of this or agree with me Ryza Superan and Stealing Fire were very enjoyable books for me and they also really changed how we do certain things as a group and then how I do things as an individual now because before that I was just not familiar with flow state I just had never really used anyone heard anyone use that it didn't register on what that was it was it a real thing was it just a term that people are making up can you actually train to be in flow state can you actually do things to promote this state that people talk about and the book does a really good job of introducing that to somebody like me who is just not familiar with what flow state is and I took so many things from those books that we now apply within mind pump there's these these little rituals that we all kind of do and when you really unpack these things like what we're doing is we have found things that promote this group flow and that provides either one a better show or two a better product or three a better program like so and I've been able to apply it to many things that I do even like something as simple as walking into a conversation with my partner and making sure that I do the work to mentally prep myself to go into those conversations make a huge difference or before I go into an interview or someone's interviewing or a big conversation that I have to have with another you know maybe a sponsorship or another person that we're trying to do business with or negotiating something like I've learned I took some of the principles from that book and I've now applied it to my life and man it's really paid dividends so you know as many books that I could list off that I think have been impactful that one is something currently that I think has personally impacted me and probably impacted the boys and it's something that I think that we continue are developing and really the roots of that information and knowledge came from those two books that you know maybe agreed right wouldn't you say so absolutely I think it's something that we all really appreciate and try figuring out how to go into flow without even realizing that's what we're doing but it's nice because it makes you realize like okay that's why we end up going off on a trip that's why we end up doing that ritual of the process because it puts us in that state now we have a name for it we can identify it and we can value it so we can respect it differently yeah I think so so check this out we have a bunch of free guides we have a guide that teaches you how to train your arms your core properly and more they're absolutely free they cost nothing just go to mindpumpfree.com and get one of them for yourself we had to cut that short because Justin's only read two books thank you for listening to Mind Pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgbsuperbundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgb superbundle includes maps anabolic and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos the rgb superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the rgb superbundle has a full 30 day free resources now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is Mind Pump