 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. What, what, the Mind Pump, bro? It's here, we arrived. Can we put the in front of there now? Yeah, the Mind Pump. For the first 17-minute intro, me, Adam, and Justin, talk about a variety of subjects. Mainly how cool and how good we are. And how humble we are. Mind Pump hit number one in fitness podcast in the world. So we talk about that for a second. We give each other hand jobs. Then we talk about cooking and baking with Organifi supplements. They make a plant-based protein powder. They make a green juice that's really good. They make a red juice that's really good. Adam talks about some of the recipes he's been having fun with. If you go to organifishop.com, enter the code Mind Pump, you get 20% off whatever you want. We also talk about Adam's Thanksgiving. We talk about the Jell-O salads. People, it really is a thing. Yeah, sorry mom. Why do they call it Jell-O salads? Weird, it's not even a salad. And we talk about other types of foods that we eat during Thanksgiving. Talk about gender reveal parties. Adam was totally confused. Baby showers. Boy or girl, not, yeah. And I give someone a shout out and then everybody tries to piggyback on that. And then we get into the questions. The first question was, are there any detrimental effects of holding stretches for extended periods of time? Static stretching lately has been getting kind of a bad rap because studies are showing that if you do static stretching before your workouts, you actually increase risk of injury. Did that mean you should throw them out with the baby in the bath water? And this is where we talk, right after this question, we talked about Prime and Prime Pro Bundle right now. This is, if you're not somebody who's signed up for the FRC that we have coming in February that we talked about, and you're interested in what type of movements that you should be doing for correct imbalances, do alleviate any aches or pains that you may be dealing with, or how to just take care of your body before you go into a workout, that's how these programs were designed. So make sure you guys check out the Prime Pro Bundle that we have. Yep, both of those can be found at mindpumpmedia.com. The second question was, what is the best way to lower body fat? Sounds like a very general question. We get that question a lot. We're actually going to some of the hits that are on Google for that question. Yeah, we go into some interesting detail with that. You might be shocked at what we say in this episode for that question, in particular all around cardio. It sucks for fat loss. Then the question, the next question was, if all of us had to leave the fitness industry, what would we do instead? And who would survive? And finally, Apparently not Justin. The last question is, what role do we think personal trauma plays in disordered eating? So when people have a bad relationship to food, how much can we blame things that happen to us growing up in our childhood? And we get a little personal with that. We talk about things that happen to us and why that drove us to work out and eat the way we did. Also, Adam mentioned the Prime and Prime Pro Bundle. Those two programs, extremely correctional again, that can be found at mindpumpmedia.com. It's that old time Rocky and Roe. Dang. So try to take me to a disco. You never even sent me out on the floor. Today's music ain't got the same sound. I like that old time Rocky and Roe. Yeah. That's how we opened that shit today. I'm feeling that shit today. Wow. Tamoli. It's, talk about red line. I got MP. I wanna blow everybody's ears out. Look out dude. I feel moisture. I feel the energy. That was, I feel the energy. Why are you so excited? I don't know man. It's a good day. We're number one. Is it because we're number one in fitness in the world? Yeah, in the entire world. And podcasts in the world? Yeah. So, let me just paint the picture. Take the earth. And it's flatness. There's all, like take all the fitness podcasts on earth. Yeah. We're the first place. Yeah. Yeah. And we're in that category. And we're humble. Yeah, I was just gonna say lots of humility coming through this. And we're super humble about it. We tagged everyone underneath us. Hey, let's be honest though, man. See, so they knew. Underneath us. Let's be honest. Let's be honest. I mean, it's been a grind, dude. It's been a grind. It's been a hot, Is that our first time hitting? Didn't we hit number one a little while ago? Yeah, no. We've hit it a couple of times now. But it's still, it's not, I don't know. I think when we first took off, one, it's surprised, right? We came out the gates. When we turned the podcast on, there was a great response. 2017 has been a different one. 2017, we've been in this for a little while. We had a decent amount of listeners. We're always typically in the top 25 or so. But man, it's been a grind to break through that number one spot since then, man. It's been tough. So it feels good to be there. There's a lot of really good rewarding. There's a lot of good podcasts out there is what's happening. It's getting more competitive. It's getting more competitive. It's getting way more competitive. A lot more podcast, period. A lot of people are starting podcasts now, which I think is exciting. I like that people are tackling this. They're able to get their voice out. They're getting their message out. And so far from, because I've been on quite a few of the podcasts now. I've been interviewed by quite a few podcasts and some of them are small. Some of them are just getting started. And I love seeing that because I love seeing that energy and that enthusiasm. I love seeing, if you have a good message, I'll get on your podcast. I don't care how small you are. I don't mind. I love talking about our message. And I wanna encourage people. I wanna encourage people to, we can't, here's the thing. The bottom line is we can't do, we cannot get this movement to do what we want it to do by ourselves. We need partners. We need other people to do this. And I love seeing other fitness podcasters who are promoting what we consider a good message, which is balance, wellness, strength, fitness, health, feeling good. And this is such a great platform to talk about all this stuff because you can go into great depth and then the truth will kind of emerge as a result. And all these like other forms of media are so fast in like short little clips that people get misled all the time just by these little blurbs. And I feel like people need to sit and listen and work their way through all these different topics and ideas. I don't know if I'm more excited about that or I'm more excited about the adventure we have ahead of us now with Amelia Boone or the Thrive Market, continue on our relationship because those companies both Thrive Market and Organifi have been two of our best partnerships. And so we just locked in the next quarter with both of those companies. So that's a, I don't know, there's a lot to be excited about today. All that today, all that happening today. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool. A lot of energy. It's cool when you work with organizations that have the same, you know, similar message, you know, that, you know, so far everybody we've worked with that we've talked to in these companies. It's a lot easier to talk about. Great integrity, you know, they have the right message. They understand kind of what we're all about. They don't try to control us, which is, this is very difficult. We're tough. Here's the thing, we're not the easiest podcast to sponsor because we don't follow direction very well. We just don't. Our ideas are better at the end of the day. And to share with the audience a little bit of how that comes out. Like I remember that when we first signed with both those companies and like most of these bigger companies that, I mean, they run all the analytics. They've done all kinds of marketing advertising. So they send over like all this, this is how, what we want you to say. Read this commercial. Read this. Yeah. And mine pump goes, no, we're not going to do that. No, that's a, if we like it, then we'll talk about it and it'll happen naturally. Right, right, right. And that's it. And it's, Well, that was the beauty of waiting. Waiting for the companies that we actually all would use and that we actually totally enjoy. Speaking of Organifi, thank you for posting that recipe finally. I got you guys. I know, man, it looks delicious. Still haven't tasted it. That's a new one, man. And I had some made for you guys. I'm going to bring some. Okay, so I won't forget. Okay, good. I'm glad it's on podcast. We have it on record. Because so far you've made like five different things. Yeah, we've been playing around with them. And me and Justin have had none of them. It's a zilch. Zilch. I should share the ones that are disasters. So I love my girl. Organifi pizza. So Katrina has turned into like quite the baker and cook in the last like four years of our relationship. And I absolutely love it. And she loves to experiment now. Like, so when we first started dating, she was the total like athlete and, you know, go get her woman working crazy hours and like, you know, eight out every single day. And she's completely like 180 to be, you know, we always have a home cooked meal. There's always meals that she's prepared already in the refrigerator. So I eat like a king now. And now she's starting to get into the baking because we've been messing with all these recipes. Organifi is incredible. Like if you haven't been on their website. So their stuff cooks really well. It does. And you're using the green and the, it's usually the green powder in the protein, right? Right. So some recipes are better with just, and what I was just going to share with you is because the green goes so well, she's been like trying it almost everything. Well, she made these red velvet chocolate chip brownies and which was perfect for the way, I mean, the protein powder. Like that was perfect for it. But she thought, oh, I'm gonna try the green juice in there. And it just did red velvet, chocolate, vegetables, vegetable flesh. Yeah, dude, it was a total, it was a total. That's worth trying. Yeah, it was an epic fail for sure. It was not a good one. But certain, like it just depends on what you're making, right? So things that... I wanna see the macros. I think it would be smart if we knew what the macros were because, you know, we have a lot of people that wanna know... I know, I know. That's just one more step I have to do to do that. I actually do that, like when I'm competing and tracking, obviously. But I'll tell you right now, I look at it and add it up to go like, oh, it's a light, healthy snack. This is not a... Because you're making those same brownies for things. I heard you were in the car and you got on the phone with your mom and you were talking about how you're gonna bring a healthy dessert. I'm assuming that's what you were gonna bring. This is what we're bringing my mom. My mom tells Katrina to bring a jello salad and she's... Katrina goes... Katrina's like, what the fuck is a jello salad? Well, it's this thing that my mom has made where we make jello and they put marshmallows in it. I don't know why it's called a salad because there's no lettuce in it. It's green jello. Oh my God. It's awful. And I told my mom, like, my girl's not gonna bring jello salad to this. Like, no, it's not okay. Dude, that's not just a thing there. That's a thing in my family too. I can't understand it. I'm like, what is this? It's not even good. It's like marshmallows and jello and like, oh, you're gonna eat that as your salad? Like, no. Yeah, are there staple dishes you guys have at Thanksgiving that are different than the traditional dishes? Oh, the ordinary. You know what I'm saying? Like, everybody does turkey. Everybody does. Is there something that's... I mean, we have... Pop tarts. What? Just kidding. Oh, I thought you were serious right there. I was like, what? I was like, that's laser. Hey kids, I made pop tarts. Yeah. I don't think there's anything like two or... So Katrina's family, they do this like three layer mac and cheese thing. That's pretty crazy. I've never seen anybody do it before. And it's like... You guys don't do tamales? Justin would literally orgasm. Just eating it. Oh my God. 100%. Make sure not to give Justin some of that. No, no, it is a cheesegasm. It's like three different types of cheeses that compliment each other. And it's like layers. And then there's just some noodles and... I wish I could have dairy. So that's something that her family does. My family, there's nothing too original. I mean, the stupid jello salad. My mom does the sweet potato yams with the marshmallows. But what I... I mean, we have this 100 year old recipe that's a stuffing recipe. And my mom, you know, stuffs that... We actually cooked the stuffing in the turkey, you know? So I don't know. Yeah. So a lot of families don't do that. I thought everybody did that. Like I just assumed, because I grew up on that. And then I'd have all these Thanksgiving... That's the way you're supposed to do it. Yeah. And I'd be like, what? A box? What? The oven? What? No, it goes in the turkey's ass. That's the only way to have stuffing. You're not eating real stuffing unless it comes out of your turkey's ass. That's the only way it's real. Otherwise, it's BS fucking stuffing. But my mom... That's what gives it the flavor of that turkey's ass. It is. But that's it. We don't really have anything else. I think that's really crazy. I mean, do you guys cook your turkey different every year? Or do you cook it the same way? I still want to go to somebody's house that fries it. I did that one year. One year. So tell me when you do it. I didn't do it. My friend did it. So he had the fryer. First of all, did you know that a large percentage of fires that happen around the holiday season are because of fryers? Yeah. I didn't know that. Apparently they're extremely dangerous. That makes sense. Yeah, I always hear how dangerous it is. And when you lower the turkey in the fry, because we had it outside, so my buddy, it was at my buddy's house and we did it. It was a friend's giving. So it's kind of like a Thanksgiving, but not right. That's the new thing. Do you guys know that? Yeah. The week before Thanksgiving is friend's giving. People are always doing things and labeling. Why don't we start a holiday? Yeah. A mind pump giving? Yeah, pump giving. Like the push present? You know what I mean? I had to find that one out. The fuck's a push present? When you give birth and then now you have to give him a present. What? For the process. Why? I'm not making it up. This is something that was expressed to me. I was like, you're making this up. Explain this to me. So the present goes to the... This is the present after your lady gives birth. So the husband gets nothing? No, no. All the work we did. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes sense. I mean, it's, you know, they go through the... We push too? I mean, I would do that out of like the kindness of my heart. Anyway, but like, you know, put a label on it. I'm not doing it. So who gets it? Just friends are supposed to do that? The girl. The mother does. Okay, wait, let me back this up a little bit. So we've got now, we've got engagement parties. Thank you. We have... Which engagement ring? And when you have baby shower. Okay, so when I grew up, a baby shower, dudes didn't go. Right. There were no... We lucked out. Oh no, I refuse. I will not go to anybody's. I've been to... Don't invite me. I've been to two of them. I've been to two now, baby showers. Wow. That's horrible. So apparently when you go to a baby shower, I didn't know this, apparently when you go to a baby shower, you play games. Yeah. That's how they do co-eds. You play... I've been to a few. No, no, no, no. It's always been games. It's just now we are in the games too. This is not for men. Yeah. There was a... One of them was a relay. Dude, they go... So... Yeah. And I'm like, I got to run. I don't even run to work out. You want me to run for... We're already awkward. Around babies. Katrina and I went to... One of her best friends had won a baby shower. And it was like, it was all... It was Tiffany's was the theme. So everything was wrapped in the Tiffany's paper. All the gifts to the cake was all Tiffany's. Alluding to like presents like that. Yeah, yeah. We were all... No, everything was, dude. It was ridiculous. How many was your Tiffany's gift? We were all white, so you were all white. It was crazy. It was crazy over the top. For a baby shower, dude, out of control. I don't know, dude. I don't get it. But then they have the engagement party, right? Then they have the baby shower. Then they have... There's another one I'm missing. I'm missing another... Yeah, there's another event that guys... Reveal. A reveal. Oh, yeah, yeah. Gender reveal. That's a thing now. Gender reveal, baby shower. Everybody's so creative with that. There's like fucking nine parties, dude. So the gender... There's so much shit now. Gender reveal parties. Can I tell you what? There's a lot of planning. There's a lot of money that goes into them now. So can I tell you what? Thank you, Bob, dude. I thought a gender reveal party was somebody coming out of the closet. Yeah. All like a trans? Yeah. So Katrina, she tells it. The first one that... The way I found out that she's like, hey, there's a coming out party. And she tells me who it is. I'm like, what? They do that now? Oh, did not see that coming. She's lesbian. I had no idea sometimes. She's like, no, you idiot. She's pregnant. This is the kid, the kid's coming out. And usually... I'm like, oh, I'm so confused. What does this mean? And what they do in these gender reveal parties is there's usually either a balloon or a cake or something that you cut into and then is it blue? Oh, it's a boy. It's a girl. And this didn't exist when I had kids. And my daughter's eight. So this is a recent phenomenon. No, we found out right away. What do you mean? Like a girl or boy, like based off of... Just put it on Facebook, huh? Yeah. Fucking party. Yeah. Well, hey, you know what though? You didn't get presents. So you could have got more presents. Oh, I see. That's what it is. It's how you milk gifts out of people. Well, I'm a good person. You know what I'm saying? I don't do that to my friends. No, I think that's what it is. It's just how can we get more gifts, man? Let's get out of control these days. Oh, it's getting wet. Everything's a gift. I know. I wonder if this is just... It makes you wonder. I wonder if it's like retail companies. Conspiring. Of course, of course. You know what I'm saying? Of course. What do you guys have on the shelf now? Like, you know, dominating Christmas. I'm like, who is this elf on the shelf now? I gotta fucking do it every time. Who was I talking to that is into fashion there? Tell me that, how much that's evolved in the last 10 years to where, you know, it used to be clothes, there were seasons, right? So this is fall, winter, summer collection. Oh, no, it's like 30 seasons now. Yeah, now it's every week. So it's 50 something. Well, they know every time they change a season that they're gonna sell more clothes. Right. So they, now it's... Burn and burn. Yeah, stuff moves so fast. That's why we're gonna release a new maps program every month. It's every week. Every month, then every year. Every week. There's a new maps this week. What else can we figure out here with it? I'm all mapped out. What else is left? Oh, man, it's crazy. Oh, bring on. You know what? I wanna give a quick shout out. The reason why I wanna give this shout out is because I always appreciate when people do a good job with business. I was on a podcast, it's a newer podcast. I got interviewed by Alt Radio. Great guy, Elijah is the host of the podcast. It was episode, it was October 4th that was released. So it doesn't have an episode number. And we talked about how to naturally race testosterone. But great guy sends me a freaking thank you card, writes a nice note, and then gives me a gift card to Amazon. Wow. Like all of this is totally, like you don't need to do that, dude. But fucking great. Paying attention. That's very nice of you and you're doing it right. You're doing it right. Ask, you know, it's a... Dude, you can't be doing those like that. Then I have to give out all the... Yeah, you can't be starting to give people love on the show like that. Well, did you get an Amazon part? No, I get stuff in the mail all the time with that. That's true. Shout out, step your game up. Yeah. What do you mean get stuff all the time? I get stuff in the mail all the time. Like what? Don't share it with you guys. Oh, you have the mail to your personal address? Fuck you, dude. I see. If it's something that I'm gonna use, you guys are gonna use it. What? Like I just got some hats like from my boy Rantz out there, Taylor. Taylor underscore made. Send me something. Don't piggyback my shout out. Well, you're gonna get an order of man supposed to send me a hat. Don't steal that. Right? You guys are making my shout out. It's Luster now. Well, we live like assholes without a shout out. We have another episode we'll record. No, Luster lost. It's a nice gesture and you just decided to bring it up. We have gestures coming our way too, bro. I thought it was very smart, very smart business, very nice, nice guy. I think that's right. Very, very good. Way to try and get other people to send you Amazon cards. If you send Sal, if you're gonna do it right, send Amazon card, he'll talk about you in the show. Well, I mean, really, if we analyze the data, you send Adam a gift, it doesn't tell anybody. Sell to, give it to Sal, you get a shout out. Wow. It does buy you some. You dick. Bring on the bird, Doug. Quo-o-o-o-o-o! Engle-a-flambant. Quimera quo-o-o-o-o! Today's Quo-o-o-o-o-o-s being brought to you by Quimera Coffee. It's the only coffee that is infused with all natural new tropics for a cleaner, calmer, and more focused buzz without the crash. Click the Quimera link at mindpumpmedia.com and input the discount code Mindpump a check out for 10% off. It's the motherfucking quaw! The eagle has landed! Quique-quaw. First question is from sec-guy Seth. Are there any detrimental effects of holding stretches for extended periods of time like one minute? There are beneficial, and you always do that. I hate that. It's true though, it is true. Because I know, you know why I had to get it in there because I know you're gonna do it. Throw that one in there. I throw it in depends. And then I'm always like, oh wow. There are detrimental and beneficial effects to holding stretches for long periods of time. So what stretching does is it manipulates, because this was a paradigm shattering moment for me relatively recently. Actually, while we were recording Mindpump, I think, it was a while ago where it really started to dawn on me that, and it was something that I kind of knew, but I didn't really get, that stretching really doesn't change your muscle. You're not lengthening your muscle. The muscle itself doesn't change. What you're doing with stretching is you're manipulating your central nervous system. You're trying to change the signal that the central nervous system is sending to the muscle. So knowing that and understanding that, you can start to examine and look at different forms of stretching and start to really break down what they're doing and then when is a good time to use different types of stretching. The type of stretching that this gentleman's asking about, this girl, I don't know if this guy or girl is asking about holding a stretch for long periods of time. Yeah, like static stretching. It does a very good job of depressing or relaxing, if you will, the central nervous system. It lowers the signal so that the muscle then is able to elongate more. It's like you're telling your body that it's okay. Like it's okay, you don't need to protect this muscle that much. It's okay to loosen your grip and the muscle slowly relaxes, which allows you to get into a deeper and deeper range of motion, and this happens with the governing sort of bodies that are in place to keep you from getting too far. This is why if you right now are listening, you can test this out yourself if you haven't done this already. Get into a stretch, hold the stretch for a minute and you'll find that within that minute, within a very short period of time, you'll increase your range of motion. Now it's a temporary effect, because after the effect wears off, the central nervous system goes back to what it was doing before, and then your range of motion goes back. But if you practice it over and over again, you train the CNS to allow muscles to elongate more and more. So that's the benefit. The benefit is it increases range of motion. Now here's the detriment. The detriment comes from the benefit. If you tell the central nervous system to relax and allow this muscle to move into a longer range of motion, you're hyper flexible, huh? Well, you're moving into range of motion, you don't have control over. In fact, you're actually asking yourself to move into positions that you don't have any control. That's why your central nervous system is so tight in the first place. In other words, if I stretch to touch my toes and I go down, I'm gonna just come up with an arbitrary number. Let's say I go down 24, I'm 12 inches from my feet. That's because my body has identified that if I go closer than 12 inches to my feet, I now have no more control. So my central nervous system is saying, nope, this is as far as I'll let you go. Anything beyond that, you have no control. If I keep pushing that without strengthening that new range of motion, I've actually increased my risk of injury, which is why static stretches before training or athletic events has been shown to not reduce injury. In fact, it's been shown to increase risk of injury. Because you don't own that range of motion yet. You don't own it. And that's where mobility, I think that's why we stress mobility so much these days is because that's something we've recently learned over the last few years, is that being able to get in a range of motion is great. And that's ideal. And we look at that from a posture perspective of like, how can we align better? And how can we get into these certain positions and have optimal biomechanics in these positions? But guess what? If you get these ranges of motion, you have to be able to have strength and be able to summon that response from your central nervous system effectively so you don't get hurt. So going through these practices, it makes it all the more important to apply these types of movements constantly. And the more frequently you can get into, maybe not that end range of motion that you could get into passively, but like working your way towards that with applied tension and communication with your central nervous system. Tension is key. This reminds, Doug, when do we have, when is Ken Stretch, Dr. Spina, come through? February. Spina. February what? And have we opened up signups for that? 10th and 11th is what it is. 10th and 11th, February. I don't think we've opened up signs. Yeah, we have, dude, it's already open. It's like a lot of people have already signed up. Oh, wow. We haven't even mentioned it on the show yet. No. So we do have, I mean, at least a lot of my information that I share and teach, a lot of that has come from FRC stuff, right? So I think Andrew Spina is one of the best guys out there that's teaching this method and showing people how to do this correctly. And a lot of the stuff that we have put out there with Prime and Prime Pros, some of that information comes from him. And so we had to book him out over a year in advance to come into the facility. So he comes in February. And if you guys want a class that will rock your world as far as like information and being able to gain real connected range of motion. I mean, his level of knowledge and the way he explains things is incredible. And what he's doing with FRC is awesome. And I think just the concept of it, for the general public, it goes over their head. But when you really get into it and feel your way through these, you start to understand on a deep level like what you can control certain areas of your body that you didn't think you could. And it's pretty enlightening. Yeah, now what we should do is we should talk about where, where would you use, because static, because then I have people, I've had trainers, you know, I've talked to who then will say, oh, don't do any static stretching. It's a waste, there's no benefit at all. Post workout is a great time. Or like sometimes like when I'm like really sore from the day before, maybe I pushed it too far, I'll get down and hold stretches and do things like that. So static stretching is not- It's also can be used quite effectively with a correctional approach. Right, it's not dead. Like I think some people make it out to be, it's not dead, it's just been used incorrectly for a very long time. It was the only form of stretching for a long time. When I was a kid in PE, that was stretching. There was no other form of stretching. When you warmed up, that's what you did. You literally got on the floor and held stretches for long periods of time. But as far as the correctional standpoint is concerned, sometimes I'll use this in a workout. So let's say I'm training a client and their pecs are really, really tight and it's not allowing them to get good shoulder blade retraction. I'm not able to get a good full squeeze when we're doing a row or something. I may have them do a static stretch for their chest to temporarily lengthen or weaken them and increase their range of motion. So now I can go and strengthen the back more effectively. So you can use this for lots of muscles. Let's say when I squat, I've got my calves don't allow my ankle mobility to move into a particular position. Then I might do some static stretching, but then again, I would also combine it with some tension because I'd also want that control. The other thing too is my girlfriend, Jessica, she traveled with the Cirque du Soleil for I think five or six years, maybe four years. And she got really close with some of the world's top acrobats and their coaches. So these are like people, a lot of them were from the former Soviet Union, some of them were from China and these cultures have some of the best stretching protocols or functional flexibility protocols you'll ever find because they have these just long lineages of acrobatics and contortionists in particular. Like that's really big in some of these countries. Like contortionism is not massive in America, but if you go to some of these other countries, it's an art and they've got schools that teach it and stuff. And one of the things that she told me, the way that they would use static stretching is you gain range of motion with static stretching, but then you connect to that new range of motion once you gain that new range of motion. And an easy way to picture that is you get into a stretch, I gained two more inches of range of motion that is through the static long hold stretching. Now I get into that stretch and then my goal is to try to connect to the muscles that both stretch that or that are stretching and connect to the muscles that are opposing it. So again, if I'm doing a hamstring stretch and I gain a new range of motion and now I'm in there, and that way you can pull on it harder. I'll activate both my hamstrings and then I'll activate my quads and hip flexors and go back and forth because I want to connect not just to the muscle that's elongating, but I want to connect to all the muscles surrounding that particular joint because I want total control of that new range of motion. And she told me that this is a lot of what she would do and a lot of stuff that the coaches were taking her through. And she went from being a young lady who could not touch her toes and she swears, because I thought she was lying, like that's not, there's no way. She swears 100%, that was true. She could not touch her toes. To someone now who can get in the splits and have one foot on one silk and another foot on the other silk and do like a Van Damme split in the air. Yeah, I mean, it's a great point because if you think about it, her focus is to get strong and to get strong with that flexibility. So I think that a lot of people, the misconception with it is that we just need to get more flexible, but as you're getting flexible, you need to gain strength, even if it's one to two inches of range that you've increased, you still have to get strong in that. People injure themselves all the time from being too tight and probably as many people or almost as many people injure themselves from being too loose. That's actually quite common. I've had quite a few clients like that where they come to me and they're hypermobile, super flexible, but have no control. No strength. So when they go, yeah, they go into a squat or a deadlift or they go into a lunge or whatever. It's like shits all over the place and that can cause some serious problems. Here's another thing you wanna keep in mind with flexibility. This is true from pretty much any adaptation that I've looked at and observed and studied. You respond much better to frequency with flexibility than you do with intensity. So something that I thought with flexibility was I'm gonna stretch and I'm gonna do it hard and I'm gonna hurt and I'm gonna make the muscle sore and Jessica's like, no, which is the same thing when you exercise. You're not going to failure. Get to the point where you're a little bit beyond your range of motion and comfort and then play with that, but be frequent with it, like every day or twice a day and then you'll watch yourself progress very, very rapidly. You'll actually see a very consistent progression by applying that frequency principle. So it's really no different than how we treat exercise. So if you're somebody who is a personal trainer or looking to be a trainer or just wanna gain a lot of knowledge in this arena, the FRC comes to the Mind Pump Studio February 10th and February 11th. Doug, what website is that for them to sign up? It's functionalanatomyseminars.com Functionalanatomyseminars.com Yeah, you just find the Mind Pump one in San Jose and then you can click register and it's hosted here at our facility. Right, if you wanna come down to Mind Pump Media you do that one, but they have them like every two weeks. And then if you're just a consumer or somebody who's working out and you want the knowledge but maybe you don't have the money to spend that on a certification, highly recommend going through Maps Prime Pro because a lot of the information that we've learned through FRC is applied in that. Dr. Brink has all the certifications that Andrew Espina has put out. And so if you guys want to learn that information or how to apply it and use it to yourself with an at-home test, that's what Maps Prime Pro and Prime are all about. And Dr. Brink, who obviously helped us create Prime and then was extremely instrumental in Prime Pro, he gives a lot of credit to what he knows to FRC. He's done a lot of courses and he always references FRC as one of the ones that really shattered his paradigm. Next question is from Triples1985. What is the best way to lower body fat? That must be the question I get the most all the time since I became a personal trainer. Always. It sounds super general, but you know why I put that up there? Because I keep getting it asked and... That kind of brings it back to what, you know, like people coming in for the first time or even just your average person in general. Like this is like what people always tend to lean on. They always get this question or what exercise is best for this, right? And they're both very similar answers. You know, they're very similar and there isn't this best way for everybody to lose body fat, but there's some general rules that do mean that these... And there are exercises that are superior and then there's a way of losing body fat that is superior than what the majority do. I think the biggest mistake that I see in fitness to lower body fat is cardio. I just did a post on Instagram. No, I know, and you ruffled all kinds of others. And it's going crazy because it's so controversial to say that. And we always piss people off when we say that because everyone's like, oh, mind pump is so anti-card. It's like, no, we're not. It's just that we're just trying to get a different message out that's been given to you guys for so long that's wrong, that cardio is the best way. It is not the best way. No, it should not be the cornerstone of your programming. If your goal is to lose body fat. If your goal is to build endurance, then cardio needs to be. Exactly, if you're an athlete or you're somebody who needs endurance, then 100% cardio should be a steal. But if you're somebody who's trying to reduce body fat and or build muscle, cardio is not the way to do that. No, let me, okay, so let me blow your mind real quick. I'm gonna break it down, very, very simple for you. There's really two general ways you can look at exercise in terms of fat loss. One is manual calorie burning. Okay, manual calorie burning means that I'm having to manually move my body to increase my calorie expenditure. Obviously, it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. It's, you know, I'm having to move, I'm having to schedule all this movement. So that's the bad side of it. The good side of it is it's quick, it's very quick. If I wanna burn an extra 500 calories, just go move and I'm gonna burn an extra 500 calories. So that's the benefit of it. The other way to do it to approach it is to increase the amount of calories I burn automatically. This is my resting, you know, my resting calorie burn. This is how many calories my burn, excuse me, my body burns just being alive and just doing my normal everyday activities. The benefit of that is it requires little effort. Like how great would it be if you could increase your metabolism by 200 to 300 to 400 calories a day and you don't have to move anymore for that to happen? That's awesome. The awesome thing about it is it's more permanent. It's more long-term. And in the context of modern life, it's the best way to go. And what I mean by modern life is you are surrounded by all this food, this hyper palatable food. You're not living in times of scarcity. So the struggle is always gonna be I potentially can be eating too much. You know, versus if I go back 1,000 years ago, the struggle was I'm probably not eating too much. So increasing your metabolic rate, increasing that automatic calorie burn is the better strategy. Now when you look at exercise, don't look at it in terms of what's happening while you're doing the exercise. Look at it in terms of the signal that you're sending to your body. And every time you exercise with any type of intensity, you're sending a signal and your body aims to adapt to that signal. So if we examine cardiovascular activity, cardio burns manually, burns more calories per time spent than any other form of exercise. In other words, if I do hard cardio for an hour, I'm gonna burn more calories in that hour than if I lift weights, than if I do yoga, than if I do any other form of exercise, bar, Pilates, whatever. I'm burning more calories during that hour doing cardio. So that's sending a signal to my body saying, you need to become more efficient with your calorie burn. Here's the example I like to give people. Let's imagine tomorrow you go to the gas pump and gas went from, what is it now? Like average in the nation, 250 a gallon to $150 a gallon. That's a signal. The signal of $150 a gallon is telling you you can't afford to use too much gas. So what's the, what's the, what do you think's gonna happen with car sales very, very quickly? Right, decline. Either, well they're gonna decline and people are gonna buy super efficient cars. In a very short period of time, the market will respond to that signal by creating cars with incredible gas mileage. Power, nobody's gonna give a shit about power or speed because when you're trying to save money on gas and you need to drive to work, you know the speed limit is 65 anyway. You don't need to go zero to 60 any faster than 30 seconds. It doesn't matter. You're gonna want a car that's gonna spend the least amount of gas to do the job that that car is there for, which is get me from point A to point B. That's what happens with cardio. Cardio's telling your body, we need to become efficient with these calories because remember your body is the result of thousands and thousands of generations of evolution and most of them evolve during times of scarcity and a body that burned tons of calories is no different than having a V8 truck with $150 a gallon gas. It doesn't make any sense. Your body's gonna try to become super efficient and on top of that, cardiovascular activity requires very little speed and it requires very little strength. All it needs is for you to move in the same whatever for long periods of time. So you just need to turn your body, your body literally turns into a Prius. Well, yeah, to kind of piggyback on that analogy as far as like the inner workings of the engine and everything else as far as like the timing belt, you know distributor, like battery, like all these different things like inside the body. Like I know we talked about this a long time ago about like healing your body and really like working on being as healthy as possible first because and that's something that I've definitely made a focus and noticed just how the body naturally just wants to respond and increase the metabolism that response. Like it'll fire things back up to where everything starts to become more efficient again when I'm working out and I'm eating healthy again. Even when I was doing that and eating healthy and there's these interruptions in that process because there's something in there that is causing inflammation and is causing internal backup. So it's just something to consider like are you as healthy as you think you are? Well, I think part of the reason why we're so passionate about this is because most people that we would get that we're trying to lose body fat had been underfeeding their body nutritionally and over pushing it to get to that point. So when we get a hold of them, most of them just running in, let's figure you run on, I'll give you an analogy, a different one than what Sal gave. You get on a treadmill and run as hard as you possibly can for an hour and maybe you burn about 500 calories, give or take. But if you didn't do any running whatsoever and all you spent time doing was building muscle, by the time you add three to five pounds of muscle, your body's gonna burn an additional three to 500 calories almost every single day without doing any extra cardio. So building a metabolism, you're not gonna, by doing cardio you're not building your metabolism. By doing cardio, all you're doing is just burning, burning, burning, burning, burning. And your body is getting more efficient, more efficient, more efficient. And how does it become more efficient? One of the first things it does is it will reduce your muscle mass. Muscle is expensive, muscle's your engine. Get rid of mass. It's, and you don't need lots of muscle to do lots of cardio. In fact, you're better off having less muscle. Look at a long distance runner. They have very little muscle. There's, you know, stick legs, skinny arms. Especially in the upper body. Like you ask any personal trainer who's been in the industry for longer than five years, ask them what a cardio bunny is and they'll tell you what a cardio bunny is. This is a term we use to describe people who would come into the gym and do an hour of cardio every single day. And they all look the same. You know how they look? They're skinny fat. They all have, they're all flabby. They have a higher than they should percent body fat. And they have no muscle because their bodies have become extremely efficient at, you know, saving calories. So that's the worst way to lose body fat. And I wanna rephrase this whole what's the best way to lower body fat? The best way to lower body fat is the best way that you keep body fat off. It's not just to lose body fat. Cause if you just wanna lose it and you didn't give a shit if you gained it back, well yeah, you can go do tons of cardio and starve yourself. You lose a lot of weight real quick. Which I think that's very, very important that you said that. Because if we were to take a study, which this is how people get so confused because someone who's trying to promote a fat burner or promote cardio or do that, it can show, if I had two people, one is just strength training. One is doing cardio and it's a two week study. You know, and it's like, okay, you go balls of the wall and cardio, you go balls of the wall and weights. After two weeks, the person that went after the cardio is gonna show more calories, burning probably more body fat lost in those two weeks. Problem is it only takes about two to four weeks for the body to get very adapted to whatever cardio modality that we're doing and those returns begin to diminish while the opposite happens with building muscle. It might have a slower start. So maybe out the gates, the cardio seems to be winning the race. But over time, the muscle, building more muscle, building more muscle actually in turn burns more fat, burns more fat, and then like Sal was saying, keeps it off forever. And I wish that study, I wish there were studies like that existed, but that existed, but they don't. Like, you know what studies right now show, and there's a lot of them, that exercise alone is terrible, terrible for fat loss. They do study, there's lots of studies like this where they take people who change their eating habits versus people who change their eating habits and exercise versus people who don't change anything and then they just exercise. And they show that when people just exercise, it's a horrible way to lose weight, but here's the problem with those studies. The people that just, and yes, you need to change your diet too, so I want to be clear there, but what the studies always use for exercise is cardio. None of these studies ever use proper resistance training. It's always cardio, cardio, cardio, 30 minutes of vigorous activity is what they say. To the point now where the government will recommend that, you go to your health insurance will tell you 30 minutes of vigorous activity, cardiovascular activity, because nobody studied resistance training and its effect on your hormone levels, on metabolism, on all the things that are being negatively affected by modern lifestyle. Resistance training, by far, if your goal is just to lose body fat, the cornerstone of your workout program, literally should be resistance training. That should be the focus of it. Now that doesn't mean you can't do cardio, cardio's got health benefits. I want to add something to that though before you go that direction, so going back to what's the best way to lose body fat, so in my experience of the clients that I've trained, most, all Americans, okay, most, there's always exceptions to the rule, but most all Americans are not fucking moving all day long. So one of the best things that has been a game changer for me to help clients out is to first assess their week and see their current movement. So I would make every, and I've been doing this now for about six, seven years before the Fitbit was even around, so we were using the body bug and tools like that. I would make all my clients buy one of these, and then I would make them track for a week. It's not to show that, oh, this is the most accurate tool on the market, it's to give me an idea of their movement and that what I would see is like, wow, most these people are moving less than 4,000 or 5,000 steps in a day, which is not even walking for an hour, okay? If you walk for an hour straight, you'll get to like 7,000 steps. So that being said, I would take that and I'd say, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're gonna take you from 4,000 steps a day on average to 6,000 steps a day, not doing cardio, walking, that's it, increase by 10 to 20% where their current steps are at and then add resistance training three times a week. Those two things, and if you just keep increasing the steps through walking throughout your day, being active, walking your dog, walking with your fiance or whatever after dinner, whatever you need to do to get these extra steps in the middle of the day while you have work for your lunch break, instead of driving your car somewhere, walk somewhere, starting to create habits like this will make a huge difference, more so than scheduling a half hour hour of intense cardio. That's right, so best way to lose body fat in terms of exercise, make resistance training the cornerstone of your routine. Number one, probably. Build muscle, build strength, boost your metabolism. It's the only way for long-term fat loss success. Next question is from Bitch Can Move. She sure can. Hey, if all of you could never work in fitness again, what would you do instead? Wow. You know what? We should give each other, like predict what the other person would do. You ever want to make fun of each other? Last time we did that, we did the stripper, the bus driver, or something like that. Are we going to answer this real or are we going to answer like kidding around? Because if we're kidding around, then we could do each other. Because then I know that you're everyone's going to give funny ones, right? I don't know. Well, give us your real one. Well, what are some jobs you almost did really do? Was there ever something like a client almost got you to do, or maybe you like thought about it? Bro, I did, I've been fitness, I've been professionally in fitness since I was 18. I know, but you never ever thought about it. So for me, okay, I'll share it then, since it sounds like you don't know, maybe it'll help out. So, I mean, I was real close to becoming a mortgage originator, so selling home loans, right? Bought all the books. I was all set to go to do. Was this before the crash or after? This was in 2000, and yeah, when I was going to go to, oh, you mean crashing homes? Oh yeah, of course it was before, because all my buddies were making crazy money. Oh my God. Crazy money. It was crazy. They were making over a million dollars a year doing this. And to the point where they were telling me, like, listen, I know you love what you do, I know you're making good money, but I'll pay you more money out of my own money just to get you to come over and do it. And at that point I was like, I'd be stupid not to, so. Anyways, I almost did that. And so I could see myself doing something like that. That would suck though, right? It'd be so boring. Well, yeah, I mean, nothing's gonna compare. So you can't, if you have to do, we have to separate ourselves from we love what we do. We wouldn't change anything to what if. You'd be a pastor. Like, that's what my mom would say. You almost word, didn't you say you were gonna go become one at some point? I can't believe you brought that up. That's what I knew you. My mom to this day thinks that that was my calling, right? You're supposed to be a pastor. Like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe, ma. Maybe, maybe one day. No, I never thought I would do that. She thought I was going to do that as a kid. That's just because I like to talk. When I was really young, I wanted to be a lawyer. I would never want to do that now. I got scared away as soon as I saw the types of books and how many books you had to read on laws. That's, there's no way. I mean, I'm more, I mean, I read a lot, but I have to read something I'm very passionate and excited about. And I'm not passionate about the law. So that wouldn't work for me. I wanted to be an architect. So I was in drafting class and I thought I was gonna be an architect. I could potentially do something like that. I love to draw. I love houses. I love architecture. So, and there's good money in it. I think that's something that I could have seen myself doing. If Mind Pump Crash blew up fitness industry, just went away, didn't even exist. No one cared about getting in shape or we created the magic pill and everybody was super ripped and fit. Then I would probably have to do something the next day that to get my off and running in sales, something. Cause I like to talk to people and I like people. So it's just natural for me. For me, that's a tough one. I think. I used to think you're stripper, but that's for you. I don't think anyone wants to see me naked anymore. Well. I'm getting old now. You can't dance either. You wanna be that old stripper. You have to be able to dance. If stripping was just getting naked, yeah. All you gotta do is a macarena. I feel like I would be a better dancer naked than cloth. You think so? Yeah, I think so. I don't think it changes anything. Oh, the gyrate is. Your clothes get in your way. Yeah. You're a big gyrator. Justin would be a good stripper. He can move. Oh, I would bring the house down. Yeah, he does a good shake. That'd be a lot of money. Well, tell us big mama's house, what would you do over there? What would I do for my work? Yeah. Well, at first I wanted to be a rock star. I mean, that was like a real thought in my head. That'd be my job. That's your first job. That's your first pick. So you'd be broke? Yeah, we'd be broke. No, I went through that whole process. I got a van, we got all this equipment, and we toured. You had a van? Yeah. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, shit. Yeah, we had a van. We had a trailer attached. Oh yeah, you toured. That's why you did tour. But we didn't tour anywhere far. We went to like Indiana and all the surrounding bordered states to Illinois. You guys making any money? No, just enough to get by, just enough to pay the gas. Yeah, pay the gas, that was it. Was it fun? We didn't make shit. It was so much fun. It was so much fun. I enjoyed the shit out of it, but I knew that I was like, wow, we have a lot of work to do. I was the only one that was really business minded in the group about scheduling and booking these types of events and venues and stuff. And I just got burned out doing that because I was like, man, nobody else is putting any effort into this and we suck. Now having that experience, do you think there are a lot of unknown bands because the guys are extremely talented but absolutely retarded when it comes to business? 100%. Really? There's so much talent out there and nobody will ever know about. Wow. And that's a statement I'll stand by because that's why these production companies exist, man. They're just so hard. Like, and why do you see how they're so predatory? You know, that whole business, like you get somebody coming in to produce them or to manage them and they just like, they pray off of that because their mind is all about like, I wanna be like, make the best music ever. My fans love me and it's like, no dude, how are you making money? Yeah. How is that working out for you? And nobody really, like not a lot. I mean, there's some smart guys out there that are making moves that, but even that industry is dead. You know, like it's a tough, tough industry to get into and actually make a name for yourself anymore and actually make money off of it. It can be pretty sleazy too. Oh my God. Yeah, I would hate that. It's crazy. So actually I had real thoughts in that direction, pulled out of that almost like immediately. And then, I don't know, I messed around with ideas of like, getting into film and what else was that? I was actually thinking of being like a forest ranger at one time. A forest ranger? That could be a cool job. It could be a cool job, dude. I love the outdoors. Even after the bear attack, you don't think that's scared you away? Well, now that. Yeah, I don't know. He'd be smoking the bear bro. I wanna hear all Sal's philanthropist's ideas because you know that he's gonna kiss all the audiences ass right now. I would give all my time away and save children all over the world. Oh wow, that would be good. Yeah, let's hear it dude. First of all, I'd have to pay the bills still dude. Okay, good. You're gonna keep it real then. That's what I would do if I had all the money that I needed and then I could pick whatever. I see. Psychiatrists would have been a cool job. Ooh, I wanted to be a counselor when I had one point. That's an interesting job. No, psychiatrist or a surgeon, orthopedic surgeon. I actually thought about that for a quick second. Or a professor. A professor on a subject that I enjoy, like history or science or economics. Just cause I love teaching people. I love having people that I can talk to and teach and discuss ideas and stuff like that. I think it'd be a lot of fun. It's pretty much it. Nothing too exciting. I like the therapist idea because that's something that I could do for sure. What we do right now, I kind of feel like that. Sometimes I feel that way with the people that we get to talk to on a regular basis. Most people are asking us stuff. Well, that's our whole training career as we've been sort of. The only other career I've ever had that wasn't fitness was I had a, I wanna say an eight month stint in banking where I was a premier banker for Bank of America. And this is where you handle the wealthy clients of the bank or whatever and you're supposed to help them with certain types of investments and directing them in the right way and helping them manage their money and getting them loans and stuff like that. And it was torture. It was literal torture. I'd go to work. I would dive. Bro, I would go to this bank and it'd sit at my desk and at least three times a day, one of the staff members would go, shh, to me. Because I'm loud. Did you imagine me in a bank? Imagine my voice in a bank talking on the phone with someone or trying to talk to a customer. Mrs. Johnson! I'm too loud. In my head right away I got this like great Bank of America Kermit commercial, you know what I'm saying? Hi, welcome to Bank of America. Give me your money. You know, someone said the other day, someone DM me and said I sound like, what's that guy's name? Oh, Ray Romano. Ray Romano. You do. And then I listened to him and I'm like, fuck, I can't, I can't deny that. I do kind of sound like him for sure. I would probably hop back. If I absolutely needed to make money right away, I'd probably get back into marijuana even though I would have no desire to do that at all, dude. I absolutely, well, you would kill it in there. Well, you know all the ins and outs. Right, that's the only reason why, right? If it's, that's what I'm trying to think about. Like, are we picking things that we would want to do? Well, when I was a kid I liked the idea of being a veterinarian and I really like love that idea because I love animals and everything, but then realize all the shit you have to do. You're doctors. Yeah. They're straight doctors. Animals, that would like tear me up, man. You're just like dealing with all these like decrepit. Oh, I can't handle, I cannot handle sick animals and sick children. I don't know how my wife does that. Kills me, it destroys me. Yeah, I'll tell you what though, if I couldn't do mind pump, I'd still want to work with you guys doing something else. Fuck yeah. I would sell lemonade with you guys on the corner. We'd make it out. Oh, fuck. Kill it. First of all, that's lemonade. Whoa. Whoa, dude. Hey, kids. Justin just got to shut down. What, we're not putting him in production? He's the best. He's the best lemonade ever. He's not in charge of the formula. He's not how Coca-Cola got started? Justin's like, hey guys, I got to lemonade. That's going to totally take off. Every customer's going to be hooked. We'd have a real strong first quarter. I wasn't dropping off. All right, Doug, bring it on. Next question is from Karees Lee. What role do you think personal trauma plays in disordered eating? Oh, wow. Huge role. Huge, yeah. Huge role. That is the role. Yeah. If you're talking about truly, truly disordered eating, that's probably the biggest thing. I would even go further to say that all of our insecurities and even those of us that don't have full blown air quotes, eating disorders, I think that all the things that drive us to eat certain ways or to push ourselves in the gym is driven through insecurities. And those insecurities are normally rooted from sort of, and trauma is a strong word, because not everybody went through like a crazy traumatic experience. But I do believe that in those formative years of five to 15 years old, there's been. Lisa imprint. Right, it's left imprints on us that now have formed us and shaped us into adults that tend to dictate the way we eat, the way we train, the way we look at ourselves. Bro, I remember one specific instance for myself. Literally, and it was throughout my life as a kid, I was called skinny and, what is it, green bean or stick bean or bean pole, whatever. String bean, yeah. I was called all these different. String bean. String bean. Yeah, green beans are skinny too. String, string bean. That's what we used to be called. Delicious. Because I was called at the same thing. I was called all these different things. And that definitely played a role in how I ate, which was then I just stuffed the shit out of myself because I wanted to get away. But I remember one instance in particular. I don't know if you guys remember any particular instances, but I remember one in particular. We were at a family member's house. She had a swimming pool. And so what we used to do in the summertime is we'd all gather there and we'd all go swimming and we'd barbecue and it was a great time. And my cousins were all there. We have a big family. So there'd be like 30 to 50 people there. And it was just something that I always look forward to, especially in the summertime. And I'll never forget, I get there with my parents and we're all hanging out and everybody's like, OK, let's go swimming. So I grab my bathing suit and I go in the bathroom to change. And I'm probably 11 or 12 at this time. So I'm starting to get into that those formidable ages where you start to go through puberty and you're already feeling uncomfortable, right? I walk out of the bathroom with my bathing suit and no shirt on. And my aunt sees me because she's down the hall and she makes this face like this very concerned face. It wasn't like a teasing face. It was like genuine concern. She was like, you need to eat more food. And it really fucking hit me. I'll never forget it. Literally, I can remember what she looked like, where I was. And she said that to me and fucking devastated me that the way I looked cost somebody to have that kind of a response. Now my aunt, who was young, she was closer to me in age. So it wasn't like she was an adult. I don't think she was an adult. She was definitely a teenager. So it wasn't like she was aware that would be a bad thing to say. And she's a loving woman. I know her very well. Right, she didn't mean to mean harm much. She wasn't even being to mean to me. Which I think is what happens, right? This happens to so many of us that it doesn't always have to be this traumatic, right? It wasn't like something like it did scar you in a sense for life, but it wasn't like this, somebody died or somebody beat you in a room. It's like it doesn't always have to be this crazy over the top thing, but it formed you. In fact, if someone was straight up being mean to me, it would have definitely hurt me, but I don't think it would have affected me the same because when someone's being mean to you, I could always dismiss it as, well, they're just being mean to me and they're being assholes, right? This was like just a normal thing. And she made that face, said that to me, and I'd never forgot it. And I remember that specifically because it really, after that is when I really became super motivated to work out and take supplements. And you know, I totally remember now. Yeah, you bringing that up like it was that summer camp and of course summer camps, one of those things like you get out and you get into the lake and you're around a bunch of kids that are like, kids being kids, the first thing they're gonna do is laser in on anything that they can to find on your body that sticks out or something they could pick on you about. And I just remember, because I was like decently muscular and shredded and whatnot, but I was very like bony and my shoulders like really like pronounced. Because I was like smaller than I was developing, like it was like very, like it stuck out. Like I had these two, like two bones up here, you know, my shoulders that were just like very visible and like these kids were just like roasting me on it. And that on top of, you know, being like the widest like ghost kid out there, you know, I had all that going for me. And so I was just like that carried with me into it. I know that's what motivated me to start lifting weights because I wanted to like build muscle on top of that to sort of shell myself. Well, that's talking about all of our insecurities what drove us to work out. I believe too that when you look at, and this is hard for people to do. So, and I, because I still- Do you remember the phases of processing it? Of course, dude, this is- How weird is it to look back? So I challenge people to try and do this. And this is a process that will never end for you because here I am 15 plus years in fitness and I still have to do this to myself. And I'll give you an example when there's foods or things that I gravitate towards. And then I catch myself saying like, oh, I love this or oh, I wouldn't let go of it or there's no way I'm not having that or I need that in my diet. A lot of people just accept that and they don't actually unpack it and try and figure out where did that come from? Like why do I, why am I so attached to donuts or why am I so attached to diet soda or why am I so attached to pancakes or why do I have to have chips or why do I need wine? Like where did that stem from? Like where did that start that you have now attached it to part of who you are? It's just a fucking food, it's just fuel. It's just fuel that you're consuming. And yeah, sure, it tastes good, but a lot of the why it tastes good is because you've trained yourself to think it tastes so damn good. And what was it that started that and learning to unpack that and find out where? And most of the times it goes all the way back. I remember the memories attached to it. It goes back deep, man. I remember the phases. I remember the phases of awareness with this. I literally, you know, all of a sudden I became very focused on lifting weights and eating more and taking supplements. And I remember, I don't remember who it was that told me this. I wanna say it was my mom. And she was like, you know, you're very insecure about, you know, being skinny. And I remember thinking like, no, I'm not. Like totally, totally in denial. So in denial that I didn't even, when she said that to me, it was almost offensive. And it took me so long to start to identify or at least acknowledge that that may be an issue. And it took me years after that to, after I acknowledged it to actually, you know, make changes and to see that I was harming myself in certain ways. It took a long time. Cause what happens is, here's what happens. When you have some kind of personal trauma that makes you not like yourself, you start treating yourself like you don't like yourself. Okay, so here you are. You're a person who's getting teased because you're chubby, right? You're growing up and you're chubby and people are calling you chubby and they're saying you're fat and whatever. And now you're an adult and you're really overweight. And some people would say, well, well, you were teased so much for being chubby, you would think that you would just be, you know, really skinny. And that's not true because what happened to that individual is they started to hate themselves. Right, and then they revolt. You hate yourself, not only revolt, but if you, how do you treat something when you hate it? When you don't like something, how do you treat it? You treat it like shit. And if you don't like yourself, you start to treat yourself like shit. And it's not something that you're aware of. It's not like you're thinking yourself, I'm gonna treat myself like garbage. No, it's the revolting part. It's just- You're saying, you're saying, fuck this, I don't even wanna focus on it because you don't care. I've had so many clients that were very overweight, right? Over 80 pounds overweight. And they would tell me, they'd actually confide in me and say, I never look in the mirror. I actually had clients that would tell me that. Oh, that was shocking. We talked about this on an episode a long time ago. And I remember that being one of the things that I became a regular thing that I asked people because I didn't realize how common it was until years of training. And then I remember one after another and then I thought, whoa, most these people that once they get to everyone, and everyone I feel like kind of has their point where they get to the point where they put on so much weight that they absolutely do not wanna see themselves in the mirror and they avoid it. And it's very common. It is very, very common for that. And you just, you don't wanna look at it. You don't want to accept it. You don't wanna think about it. You're partially in denial. Like you're saying you hate yourself over it. You're vaulting from it. All that's going on. Yeah, if you hate yourself, there's no way you could possibly take care of yourself. You're never gonna wanna take care of something you hate. And what ends up happening through this process of self-hate is you don't take care of yourself. You don't take care of yourself. You don't take yourself. You hate yourself. You hate yourself. You hate yourself. And at some point you need reprieve. At some point you need to break because nobody, it's exhausting to be in that cycle of self-hatred. And so what you're looking for is a momentary period of reprieve. And what gives that to you? Eating that cheeseburger, eating that donut, doing that thing that you know isn't good for you and you don't care because you hate yourself anyway. But at the moment, at that one moment, you get this relief from feeling shitty. And this cycle continues and continues and continues. So you have to identify that in yourself. You have to come to terms with it and be honest. You have to literally look in the mirror and say to yourself like, okay, I hate myself and that's why I'm treating myself this way. I need to change that. Once you can change that, everything else becomes a lot easier. And but it does take time and be okay with that. Be okay with it taking time. It won't happen overnight. And I think a lot of people, they want something to happen overnight because again, because they hate themselves so much, like if I just fucking change, I won't hate myself anymore. And it doesn't work that way, unfortunately. It's like an ultimatum. Yeah, it doesn't work that way, unfortunately. It just gotta work on it. Check it out. Go to YouTube, Mind Pump TV, subscribe to our channel. Our channel is actually growing pretty quickly right now thanks to our listeners. If you're not subscribed already, then you're not supporting us. What's wrong with you? Go in there and subscribe. One of the best things you can do too is like when we put out videos because we track all the analytics and part of what we do right now is we're always posting different types of videos. And we can see when people share them. So if there's things that help you, one of the ways you can help us to keep guiding us in that direction of giving help to you guys is to share. So when you share those YouTube videos, we see those analytics. We're voting for those. And then what we do, exactly, you're voting for those types of videos because you really like them. So the best thing you could do is like, comment, and share on the ones that you really do enjoy or really do help you. And that helps us kind of direct where you guys want us to take to YouTube. Excellent. Also, if you go to mindpumpmedia.com, we have 30 days of coaching for free. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. 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