 What you need to gain is not what you need to maintain. That's right. Whatever you do to build less than that is typically required to maintain. So that's another really good point. Why I would be okay with what's up, everybody? Here's the giveaway for today, the prime bundle. So maps prime and maps prime pro correctional exercise, work on imbalances, improve range of motion and mobility. It's a phenomenal bundle, one of our most popular bundles, and you can get it for free, but you got to do the following. Leave a comment below the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you do all those things and if we pick your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to the prime bundle. Also, we're running a sale this month. We put together a bundle of two very popular programs. So a lot of you have been commenting and asking for this bundle. So we've done it. It's the maps power bundle, maps strong and maps power lift. So maps strong, strong man inspired workout program, maps power lift, this is a power lifter program. Both of them combined, normally would retail at $300. But what we've done is we put them together in the maps power bundle and the price is $79.99. That's it. So you pay that once and you get full access to both programs for life. So if you're interested, go check them out. Go sign up, go to mapsmarch.com. Once again, it's mapsmarch.com for maps power lift and maps strong. All right, here comes the show. Let's have a conversation about training tools. Now, I know usually the conversation revolves around machines versus freeweights. We've talked about this in the past. Yeah, we've done that. But I want to make it a little bit more challenging. I want to compare barbells to dumbbells and not very many. I haven't seen too many fitness experts or influencers or whatever talk about or compare the two because they tend to get lumped together. Right. Barbells and dumbbells are freeweights. So they're all the same. But, you know, I don't think that's true, right? They're very different. The way they feel, they're different. Their benefits tend to be very different. And of course, before people start commenting, use them both. Obviously, ideally you want to use them both. But for the sake of this episode, I think it would be fun if we had to pick right, which one, which one's most appropriate for whatever attribute you're trying to seek out or, you know, whatever exercise specifically you think has ways a little heavier for barbells versus dumbbells. They're pretty close, though. Would you say I wouldn't say they're not as different as freeweights to machines? No, no, but they're different enough to where, you know, for example, there's some exercises that are totally inappropriate with barbells and vice versa with dumbbells. And I think it's cool to talk about kind of the pros and cons of each and maybe go down a list of like attributes, you know, physical attributes you would get from resistance training or strength training. And again, to make it fun, we have to pick. We're going to have to try to pick one or the other unless it's a complete tie. Just a general overview of like what, you know, the benefits of like, say, barbell being biloded, you know, for the most part and like being able to generate probably the most amount of force in one controlled sort of a movement versus with the dumbbells. I mean, it has a lot more independent type of loading. And also like you could vary a lot of the loading. Well, I think the I think the move is to discuss like a specific adaptation we're chasing or specific attribute you like, which one benefits most? For example, like the first thing that comes to mind for me for like where I like to use dumbbells over barbell is range of motion. Yeah. Yeah. So like I love like a real deep dumbbell chest press. Yeah, you can't do that with a barbell, right? Because the barbell gets in the way. Right. Bring the barbell down at some point at some point it hits your chest with dumbbells, you could go down, you know, with good technique, obviously you have to have good control, but you could go down way deeper. Not only can you go deeper, but it actually will it'll it'll move at your your body's morphology, right? Yeah. You have everyone's. So if you have a little subtle rotations in there, that's right. Yeah. So if you if you move on the the barbell, you have this, you know, line that you have to stick with the entire time where dumbbells, I can let my elbows slightly come in and that's going to be slightly different than you and slightly different than you. So not only do I get an increased range of motion, but it can also move through the most, I think, optimal path for my body. I think that's an advantage to. Yeah. And, you know, back to the chest press with if you look at the action of the pec, right? It's the horizontal adduction of the humerus, right? The upper arm bringing across the body with the barbell. I'm fixed with my hand. This is about as I can't bring my hand in any closer with a dumbbell, though, I could come up and bring them together to get more of a range of motion rows. Let's look at rows. For example, if I'm doing a row with the barbell, the bar gets stuck, you know, at my midsection, whereas with dumbbells, I can go back even further or one at a time. I can rotate with the dumbbell into a row, right? Shoulder press. Here's another one with the barbell. I'm limited with how far down I can go with the with the dumbbells I can do like an Arnold press where I really bring the dumbbell back spiral line going all the way up, which is anatomically a little more. Uh, it feels a lot better. By the way, I don't know which one was invented first. I think dumbbells were invented before barbells. Maybe Doug could find, didn't they look weird, though? Isn't it dumbbells were first they looked, they were literally bells, right? Like heavy, heavy like kettlebells. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah. So kettlebells, kettlebells were what the original dumbbells essentially look like. And then somebody, uh, the reason why they were called dumbbells was because this is the story goes, somebody noticed that bell ringers, which I didn't even know that was a job, but apparently bell ringers, uh, had really muscular forearms. So what they would do is take the middle part out so it didn't ring and they would do exercises with it because it was a heavy metal, uh, the original shake weight. Yeah, exactly. Bell ringers was a job. Like somebody sat up at the church bell and just all day long just for the, the one hour, no idea. She worked for a whole 30 seconds per hour. I have no idea, but I remember, I just remember reading this, but what they would do is they take out the middle part that would, you know, go back and forth. And so it was a dumb bell, right? It makes no sound. And then eventually they filled it full of iron to make it. No, it's just like one of those things, like the origin of 420 and like we think that's what it is. I think so. It could like, is there like real proof of that? So I think it's like the 420 or two. I do think so. But I know, I'm pretty sure the original ones look more like kettlebells. And then they had the handle with the two round balls on each side and barbells look like this too. They were long skinny bars with two big round balls. Yeah. Two like cannon balls. They sort of fused on there. Yeah. What does it say there, Doug? Well, they say the use of dumbbells dates back to ancient Greece. Oh, with weight, where they would have weighted. That's right. Crescent shaped in the handle for the jumper to easily grab when it was time to compete. There used to be a jump that that Greek athletes would do in their Olympics, where they would use these weights and they would use the momentum of the weight to make them jump further. And that was the first use or documented use of, you know, so they like swung them out and then we're kind of I don't know how they would do it, but that was that was the thing that they so the first attribute that we're going to say is range of motion slash contour to your body. Because I know we didn't list that as like an attribute, but we we both following the bodies morphology like you said, yes, range of motion dumbbells. It has to be. Yeah. You just you just don't the bar gets in the way with dumbbells, you can go far deeper and you can move more in different planes because it's more free because it's connected to just one hand rather than strengthening end ranges and things that you normally wouldn't be able to kind of address with a barbell. Totally. All right. Now let's move to the next one, which is strength. Overall, maximal strength. Now, both obviously develop strength and they're both very effective at doing so, but the barbell allows you to use more load. Like quite a bit more, way more, like you're not going to be able to usually, for the most part, you're not going to be able to dumbbell chest press as much total weight as you would with a barbell. So let's say you could, you know, you're a strength athlete and you could bench press 300 pounds, you're not going to be able to do two 150 pound dumbbells for the most part, right? Well, I mean, especially lower body movements. I mean, you're only going to be able to lunge so much, deadlift so much and squat so much holding on the dumbbells. Right. Right. I mean, what max, the average person, let's say max is holding 80 to 100 pound dumbbells in each hand, which that would make you pretty strong to be able to comfortably hold on that kind of weight and then squat. So you're talking about 160, 200 pounds tops that you could squat with or deadlift with? Yeah. And, but even if you go, even if you compare exercise to exercise where the, where the grip and whatever is an issue, like rows or overhead press, if you think of what your overhead press max is, you, most people could not cut that in half and operate two dumbbells that equal the same amount. So if you could overhead press 200 pounds, you're not going to be able to 100 pound dumbbells in each hand for the same amount of reps. It just doesn't work that way. And the thing about the barbell is like it kind of masks a little bit of the imbalance, the dysfunction in terms of like one side versus the other. It's less balanced. Yeah. So you could actually make up for it a bit and then still be able to express a lot of force together simultaneously to lift a lot more weight versus when you do have independent loading, it really exposes like the weaknesses. Yeah. I, you just, you can't lift as much with dumbbells. Even if you add both dumbbells up, you're just not going to be able to. So if you're looking for like max strength, especially with those big gross motor movements, barbells clearly are going to be the victor on this. So, and is there benefit to that? Absolutely. Right. Yeah. Being able to lift more load overall tends to activate more muscle fibers tends to, you know, you're generating more force, which has its own values. It's a lot louder signal that your body has to respond to. Totally. And pushing together, pulling together on a fixed bar just allows you to generate a lot more force. So when it comes to strength, just like with range of motion, I think it's pretty clear the winner here. And instead of being dumbbells, it's going to be barbells. What do you think about the, the CNS in this situation? Because I could, I could make a case for both, right? So the, the independence of the dumbbells is going to challenge the CNS in its own way. And then the ability to lift more with the barbell, you're going to get challenged. That's a good question or a good point. So I think the CNS is obviously getting activated a lot with both. But with a barbell, the CNS is able to direct more of its force in one direction. Or yes, right? So if I'm pressing a barbell, my CNS can activate my muscles with more of a singular focus, press the weight versus when I'm using two dumbbells. At the stabilizer. Yeah, more of it's going to have to be focused on balancing. A little bit of a leak of performance, I would think in that regard. Exactly. So strength. But also making the case what you said, how we started this podcast, why one contributes, why they're both so beneficial, because you think about that, you, you get the stability down really well with the dumbbells and that's going to transfer into the force generation that you're going to get with the barbell. Yeah, and again, I think that what you're going to find with this conversation as you're watching is that they're going to be so complementary. It makes no sense to stick to one or the other. But we made that point, right? So we're not trying to say, do one over the other. But it is interesting to talk about the benefits of each because they're not interchangeable. I do think sometimes people think they're interchangeable. Oh, I bench press with a barbell. Why would I do a chest press? Right? Oh, I do overhead presses with a barbell. Why would I do overhead presses with dumbbells? This is sort of the predicament we get into even when we're programming for the general audience, too. It's like we have something very much in mind about the best pathway to get there. But also there are are alternatives. So dumbbells sometimes will fit into alternatives. But for that specific exercise, it would be best to have a barbell and we want to be clear about that. Totally. All right. Now let's talk about what most people work out for, which is aesthetics. Yeah. And I have a bone to pick with you on this one because this one you picked this as a tie for the tool. I would say it's a tie. But I would love this debate. Yeah, I would argue the dumbbells is better for this. And mainly because, especially with bodybuilding, there are you many times a day training day. I'm targeting very small muscles. And it's not like your typical client that you're training for overall strength or even even overall fitness where when you are sculpting the body, you are constantly looking at yourself and going like, oh, I need a little more rear delt here or I need a little more calf or oh, I need a little bit more of my bicep for more. You start looking and you start separating muscle groups on your body and the dumbbell just lends itself better to isolate than the barbell. It does. But then when you factor in mass and strength, barbells win, right? So aesthetics, yeah, sure. If you've built all your mass already and you're very big and muscular, can you get away with just dumbbells? I think it's really just focused on fine tuning and sculpting your way there. Yeah. But if you're like the average person watching this, you want to have you need to build muscle also to contribute to your aesthetics. Good luck trying to build a lot of muscle or building as much muscle as you could if you didn't with dumbbells that you could with barbell, especially with the lower body or especially with big gross motor movements because barbells contribute more to strength in that overall muscle mass. Now you're going to get that and then the dumbbells do what you say, like try doing a lateral with the barbell, right? Try doing a rear fly with the dumbbell or flies or, you know, in these other exercises. Yeah, try isolating the rear dealt with your. That's why it's a tie. Like I couldn't pick one because they're both so beneficial. And now I could see how if you speak, you pick a specific person, how maybe you could lean one way or the other. Like if I'm talking about the guy or girl who's, you know, wants to build more mass and kind of getting started, I would say, OK, just if we had to pick, I'd go barbell. If I was talking to somebody who built lots of muscle mass already and they're telling me I just need to, which would be a stupid thing to say, but let's just say they said, I want to pick just barbells or dumbbells. Then I may go with just dumbbells because now I can start to sculpt or whatever because they have that mass, right? But I can't pick one. I mean, that's a fair argument. I mean, you're going to, you're going to, you're going to lay a more solid foundation as far as overall mass using the barbell. Then you are the dumbbell. But then I think of like the dumbbells as like the chisel, right? Like that's what's going to single joint movement, you know, preferred tool. Yeah, it's what's going to, you're going to be able to sculpt the body better with dumbbells and you're going to be with a bar. And it's not to say that you couldn't with both. I mean, you absolutely could build an incredible aesthetic physique with, you know, just using one or the other, ideally both. But I see where you're going with that now is that if you didn't have, if you had not laid a foundation at all, the gains that you'll get, they'll come on faster with barbell lifting at the beginning. So. All right. Here's one for you, Justin. Let's talk about athletics. So athletics would be right? Your performance. So who cares about how you look? Yeah. How strong are you? How fast are you? How agile are you? Yeah, I also labeled this one a tie because barbells like strength and power win, but dumbbells just mobility and balance and stability. You just superior. And again, to the range of motion kind of point with that to address a lot of that when, you know, you're in certain positions, you're in the split stance with the majority of the time you're competing in most athletics or, you know, it's it's usually like one limb versus the other or some contralateral type movement, which, you know, a barbell doesn't really provide that, you know, that that type of training towards, but the barbell is essential again to be able to create a louder signal for force production because with athletics, you really need as much of a loudest signal as possible immediately. Yeah. And then you and then you need to be able to react and decelerate and stabilize and all that kind of stuff. But the initial bit of athletics and power and strength. I mean, that's the baseline for anything you're going to see if you had to choose. I mean, traditionally athletics have picked barbells over dumbbells. Yeah, I would probably go barbells just because of the skill training is going to cover a lot of, you know, these extracurricular type of movements that you can kind of fine tune as you're going through the very specific type of movements you need for your sport, where you're, if really, if you're just going to draw from the strength and power, you could get that from the barbell. Yeah. I mean, traditionally, it's been barbells, right? Power cleans and back squats and in some cases, deadlifts and push presses. Those are all barbell exercises. But part of the reason I'm going to argue now on the contrary, I think part of the reason why athletic trainers have picked barbells over dumbbells is because at Olympic lifting, got way more credence than body building did for athletics. And rightfully so. Olympic lifting gives you more performance gains than bodybuilding will, right? So I think dumbbells have always been kind of relegated to bodybuilding. So athletic trainers like, oh, that's for bodybuilders. Olympic lifters are like athletes. So let's use the barbell. But I think if we're being really fair, can you, can you do power movements with dumbbells you can, you know, but there's some movements you can't really do effectively with dumbbells like deadlifts. Honestly, I say it because you put me in a corner with it. Yeah, I totally would use dumbbells, especially when I'm getting into multi-planar movements and things I want to strengthen and range. That's crucial for athletics. Now, that's a little bit of a twist on this whole, this whole thing that we're doing right now. But what about kettlebells in there? Because I feel like kettlebells seem better. That's why I was wondering if you would if you because there's a lot of things that you can't really do as well as it's explosive with the dumbbell. Yeah, because of the way it's loaded. Yeah. Well, it just forms into, you know, the way that it's loaded just feels a little bit more controllable. And also, you can get ballistic with it and really dynamic with, you know, kettlebells versus dumbbells. They're just a little more clunky the way that they're balanced dumbbells. So yeah, I would probably personally prefer kettlebells over them. Now, if you were that's over dumbbells, but if you were still if I still put you on the spot and said, OK, now you have an option of kettlebells dumbbells or barbells for athletic training, are you still going to Yeah, I'll still pry. Do you barbells? Yeah, but it's I mean, I think it's fair to say, though, it's a tie, right? Yeah, this one is all have applications. This one's really impossible to pick one or the other. Of course, all of these we're going to go down are your best using both. But in some of these are so close, I think we had to call it a tie and the athletic one has got to be, you know, one of those. All right, this next one was kind of easy for me to label. And that's muscle imbalances. I think dumbbells crush barbells. When you're you're loading the body unilaterally, muscle imbalances are way easier to see. You can hide muscle imbalances pretty damn well with a barbell. I know because I did for a long time. I deadlifted really heavy with this kind of alternate grip. And I favored one side. And I developed a muscle imbalance in my rectus spin a muscles that didn't become evident until I saw some pictures of myself really lean and I could see one side was more developed than the other. With dumbbells, I wouldn't have gotten away with that, right? You I've done this too as a kid where I bench pressed with barbells all the time went to dumbbells and one side was so much stronger than the other. I didn't notice with the barbell. The barbell move pretty smooth, I couldn't tell. Well, and what I love about dumbbells too is you can do unilateral movements and you can really then if there is any kind of discrepancy, you can really focus on bringing that up versus with the barbells just kind of a technique and you know, you really not going to be able to isolate one versus the other when you're generating force all simultaneously. I feel like there's a little bit of argument in almost everything we've done so far or a little bit of debate back and forth where this isn't even close. No, not even. That's a good point because I think the barbell, if anything, will actually mask and hide some of these issues and you can create imbalances with a barbell. Right. I think it could make it worse where the dumbbells I think is that's the first the first move if I have a client that has any sort of discrepancy from left to right, especially if it's glaring, we're going to go all unilateral dumbbell work. Totally. So I mean, that's that's like the first thing you do. Yeah, like to put it differently, like if you're pressing on a barbell 100 pounds, you're thinking I'm lifting 50 pounds with with each arm, but that's not that's not quite the case. If my right arm is a little bit stronger, my left arm. Now, if it becomes really obvious, you see the barbell turn, right? You start to see it one side lower than the other. But sometimes you don't see that even though one arm is pushing three or four pounds more than the other arm because it's it's because it's on a bar and you won't necessarily see that on the barbell. You won't see it until it becomes five, six, seven or 10 pound difference between the two. Now you might think what's two or three pounds? Well, you train for years doing it that way. And you're going to develop one side more reactive and stronger than the other. And it's going to be quite glaring when you go to dumbbells, you'll tell right away. Well, and you're pointing out the shoulder with the true. I mean, the compensation runs all the way down the connect chain. So you're also going to have you're going to have someone arching their back and slightly rotated to one side, even if it's not obvious to the average person. If there is any sort of discrepancy from left to right on a movement like a push press like that, they're going to press over the stronger side is going to not only in the shoulder going to carry the load, but then your body is going to overcompensate throughout the rest of the connect chain. Yeah, it's actually what back in the day before I became more versed in finding muscle imbalances. This was how I found muscle imbalances. So it's an early trainer not knowing how to look like I do now. I would just have a client lift with dumbbells and it became much more obvious. I could see, oh, we're doing a lateral. This arm is not moving like the other arm or we're doing a curl or a skull crusher with dumbbells or whatever. You could see it quite clearly. It's just daily patterns. I mean, you you prefer to grab something, you know, typically with one arm like for the majority of the time or just the way that you do things usually step and push off one foot versus the other. And so all those things over time, I mean, one's going to get substantially stronger than the other. It's just never. Oh, dude, barbell squats. Like I I could squat quite comfortably. I could squat a lot of weight. And then I went I started noticing some member. I think it was like a year and a half ago. I told you guys, I'm going to stop doing barbell exercises from my lower body because I feel like I have an imbalance between my right and left. Man, I did back. I remember when I first really went and focused on lunges. And I mean, when I was squatting, I couldn't tell. You could watch a video of me. My back didn't shift. Everything looked fine. When I went to lunges, my right leg was significantly stronger. Like I'd split stance. I'm like, whoa, yeah, this is a huge difference all because I did split stance. And, you know, so, you know, that's what we're talking about, right, unilateral type exercises. So yeah, with I'd say with imbalances, you're right, Adam, this this one's not even close. Power. Let's talk about explosive power. This one's tough. This one was tough for a second because you can get explosive with dumbbells. But here's the problem with barbells because I'm using both arms at the same time. I can generate more force and the name of the game with building power is force. How much force can you generate? I do now besides the complexity of the exercises, I think it's pretty safe to say that the Olympic lifts are probably some of your best power generating exercises and they're all done with barbells. This one to me once I thought about it for a little bit kind of became pretty clear power goes to the barbell. Yeah. And I mean, most expression of power, you want to be like equally balanced and have both upper body lower body contributing simultaneously. And so to be able to see that expressed in a way that's not kind of funky, the barbells really do play a good part of that. It's tough, though, because if you break it into like specific movements like I'm throwing a baseball or you're in a split stance and we're going one side versus the other. But in terms of exercises and like what can train the body is like the loudest signal and force production instantaneously, I would say barbell, you can direct it better. That's a really good interesting point, though, Justin, like what sports? OK, so you throwing a ball, that's one obviously throwing a punch you're going to be like that. What else are you going to be like that sports wise? We're like, I'm trying to think of like your main sports football basketball. Well, even just like in the sprinter stance, like you're going to be pressing off, you know, one versus the other, you know, off of the start. And there's just a lot of them where you're going to be split or you're going to prep preference being that you're going to either throw or shoot a basketball or do something, you know, a bit one side of verse. Yeah, historically, right? Athletic trainers have done this. They've gone and used complex barbell power movements in the gym. And then they would then they would practice power movements specific to the sport, right? So they would like how fast can you take off from the line? Skill training comes in. Yes, right. So what they didn't do is mimic the the movement in the gym with dumbbells. They went Olympic lifts clean. Like think about like, yeah, football play like a clean is a state. It's probably I would I would love your input on this, Justin, but I'd say besides the back squat, it's got to be one of the most staple football exercises. The way it's is a clean. It is. Yeah, it's got to be right. And and when you're doing playing football, you're not cleaning anything, you know? I mean, you could argue when you're hitting someone, I guess a little bit of it, but it's not really a clean, but the translation and powers obviously caught snap. I mean, it really it's connecting hips and upper body together like that gives you so much more crazy amount of force that you need to push somebody off and stability, control, shift. Yeah, and almost every position requires that. So that that makes a lot of sense to me, like obviously for football, but that's the only one I can think of where like a traditional barbell movement, power movement really translates to the field. Other than that, then now I even vertical jump to because it's a triple extension and to be able to pull out. OK, that's a good point. Have you guys ever seen the studies on Olympic lifters and their athleticism? Have you ever seen this? Like they'll take Olympic lifters who don't play any other sports and they'll measure their vertical and their sprint. And it's insane. It's like they're like they're they've trained in athletics. Oh, wow, really? Yeah, the power they could generate is so ridiculous. Part of it is obviously genetic, but part of it is the fact that they've been training explosively for so long. Yeah, if you look at the vertical, I remember reading about the verticals of Olympic lifters and it's like it's pretty damn close to like professional athletes. It's pretty insane. But you're right about because this has been a debate, I think a lot in the athletic space because you have seen trainers in the past try and emulate a lot of the skilled type of exercises that they do in the field with weights. And it just doesn't translate the same versus like going back and just focusing on the elemental part of that, right? The fundamental part of power, strength and being able to generate maximal force. Now you do the skill training version of that and it applies greatly. And now here's why. OK, let's say I'm a boxer. I think this is easier to explain in this sense. Let's say I'm a boxer and I want to improve my explosive power with a punch. If I add weight or resistance to my punch to generate to be able to build more power. What I've done is I've thrown my timing off. I've thrown the skill off, right? And skill is very important, obviously, in athletics versus building general CNS power and explosiveness and then practicing the skill on the field or in the ring. Being able to translate it, which is why they don't take dumbbells and just copy what they do on the on the on the field. When they do that, they end up throwing their their timing off and then you lose your athleticism. Good point. Yeah, all right. So now here's what I did. I broke up the body into upper and lower body and we have to pick dumbbells and barbells for upper or lower body. So we'll start with kind of easy. Yeah, I think I know. I thought so too. So upper body. If I had to pick barbells or dumbbells, dumbbells. I mean, there's way more exercises. Yeah, because you have to get of all the arm, the shoulder. I feel like it's just the shoulder. Yeah, I think shoulder. The shoulder really is the is the such a dynamic joint, right? Right. It's such a dynamic joint. You're going to have such a different or such an individual variance between how wide someone is, their ability to. That's why I was making that point earlier about a chest press. Each one of us, if we were to do a dumbbell chest press and literally took a tape measure afterwards and measured where was the end point where we'd all be different. So it allows that. So I think for sure upper body dumbbells, I think you you're going to get the benefit. And if you watch bodybuilders workout, not that they're the ideal people to watch in terms of examples with training because there's genetic anomalies and all that. But when you watch bodybuilders, I have to more than half of the workouts consist of dumbbells for the upper body. They do they typically do more dumb. You'll see bodybuilders in the early days do more barbell work as they get more advanced. Like a dumbbell chest press, dumbbell incline press, they tend to do that more often than barbell presses. They do specifically because of the range of motion and all that stuff. So upper body's got to go to the dumbbells and hit some of the more angles that way that are totally and then the isolation stuff. Like you said, like the laterals and the rear flies and the flies and all that stuff and pullovers and you can't do half that stuff with the bells nearly as effectively. Then we go to lower body. I think it's just as easy to pick one and that's barbells. Like it's really hard and mainly because it's hard to do heavy stuff to load it. Yeah, squat and deadlift. I mean, those two which we everyone would make the case that those are the kings to the most important movements. Yeah. And if you can't load the two most important movements, then, you know, that's I think you're losing out on so much of your lower body strength and I would suffer greatly. My lower body development and strength would suffer greatly if I couldn't use barbells. There's nothing I could do. I couldn't load barbell dumbbells enough and support them enough to be able to do what I do with barbell. You know, this is a weird transition to talk about this, but this has been on my mind. Anyways, it was one of the things that I disliked about the tonal machine so much. Oh, right. The lower body. The lower body was terrible because you have to hold. You can reconcile. You have to hold the cables with your your upper body in this awkward position in like this goblet position where you're putting this cable. It's pulling down and just you couldn't load it. So I mean, yeah, you can get a burn on your legs and you can get you can get a workout. They have exercises in there, but really terrible for trying to load it. You ain't deadly. You ain't you're not emulating deadlifting 400 plus pounds. You're not deadlifting or squatting 300 pounds on there. It's like because the limiting factor is the ability for you to hold it with your hands. And it doesn't have to be that much weight either. You take someone who could barbell squat 100 pounds. Right. They they're not going to be able to hold 50 pound dumbbells to copy that. Right. It's just not going to be you're not going to be able to do that. Yeah. No, it's totally superior. Even even for split stance exercises where dumbbells are great, like lunges and stuff. Dumbbells are great. I love lunges and barbells. Exactly. You can go heavy. Don't have to worry about holding on to the to the. It's on your back and you do your walking, you know, lunges with the barbells. So lower body barbells wins. All right. So now I didn't put this one up there, but we have to pick one. If you had to pick one over the other forever to train, not that we ever personally, not that we ever would. For me, that's easy. It would be dumbbells. OK. Yeah. And I think a lot of that has to do with like us talking about the the range of motion, the versatility of dumbbells. Like, I know I would lose out on the squat and deadlift part like that would probably really piss me off. And I try and find as creative ways I could to try and make up for it with tempo and, you know, all these other ways. But yeah, the the versatility of the dumbbells. I think if I had to choose one for the rest of my life, plus the things that make the barbell better are also what tend to get me in trouble. The benefits of loading the bar and being able to get after it and go heavy are tend to be the things that get me in trouble. The the the ability, the fact that dumbbells would limit me on how much I could technically lift for like deadlifting and squatting. So like that, I probably less likely to get hurt. So it's probably the smarter play for me to go dumbbells. If my if I if I could, which I can't, but if I could get my ego out of this question, I would say the same thing. I know it would help me. I'm struggling with that, too. It would be it would be better for balance and we better for mobility. For me at this stage, I've been working out for a long time. If I was a beginner, clear barbell. But because I've been doing this for so long, all the stuff you mentioned, Adam, I would agree. Unfortunately, my ego, I can't I can't. And so if I had to pick, it would be barbell. I can't get I can. I would right now go barbell and body weight training. Oh, yeah. I guess now you're having a make pull that, you know, in terms of like still adding some of that like multisplanar functional movements. But again, it wouldn't be the same. No. So yeah. But I I'm trying to think in more in that direction with just dumbbells and trying to like pull pull some of the ego out of it. But yeah, I was I was even though we were talking about the the drawbacks of dumbbells for the lower body, I was able to develop my quads quite a bit with bulk area and splits quads. Yeah, that's a good exercise. Yeah, you hold you. You hold on to some, you know, 80, 90 pound dumbbells and 30 pound dumbbells full range of motion. I'm saying, I mean, and you can get to a place where you're holding some serious weight on there. Same thing with the single leg deadlift was doing that with the heavy dumbbells. So yeah, I would find a way to still get pretty good development on my legs with the dumbbells. And I just think that it would be better for me. I know I know what I need and what I should do. And I think the barbell now, if you were talking to 20 year old Adam, who's starting to build mass wants to pack on more muscle, would you make it the same answer? No, no, I would definitely go barbells being knowing what I know, especially especially since I really didn't go heavy into barbell lifting until later in my lifting career and was surprised how much mass I put on even that late in my career. I wish I knew that when I was 20 and lifting, I would have done more bar. I would have stuck to the big five and lifted that. I think that is such a solid piece of advice for the average young lifters, like get a barbell, stick to the big five and just get good at those movements. That is going to lay such a solid foundation for most people. And then where you go from there is preference and what you think is. Yeah, and just to add to that, what you need to gain is not what you need to maintain. That's right. Whatever you do to build less than that is typically required to maintain. So that's another really good point why I would be OK with with dumbbells. We've all built a long foundation. I know that I point. I know that I have enough of a foundation that I could train plenty hard enough to maintain a physique that I want to lose games. Right. So that's a great point. Yeah. So but at the end of the day for all intents and purposes, stupid debate, right? Use them both. I think that we've made the case that they both have tremendous value. But hopefully this gives you some insight into where you may use one more than the other based on your goals and based on what you're looking to accomplish. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any fitness or health goal. You can also find us all on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal.