 What happens to somebody who's, who's trying to, you know, do this for the first time and they've, they've got referred to try, you know, put your food in here and then get this calorie counter here and, you know, or go check out this BMR thing online. Like the, the best way to do this is for to carve out a week or two of you consistently eating X amount of calories. And you can use these tools to give you a starting point on where maybe you're going to do this X amount of calories, but you're really, you're not, don't hang on what they're telling you, pay more attention to, Hey, I've consistently eaten 2,400 calories for this last week while I'm doing these consistent activities and pay attention to how you feel, pay attention to what's going on with your weight. Are you dramatically dropping weight? Are you maintaining weight? Are you gaining weight? And then adjust your calories based off of that and not what these tools are saying, because that's where you, they're, they're great for, for feedback or another way for you to, just like the scale, same thing. Like this where the scale can be amazing or can be a pain in the ass. If you, if you allow the scale, like, because our goal, let's say it was weight loss and then the next day you get on the scale and it went up one pound, that doesn't necessarily mean you were doing anything wrong. You could have easily took in a little extra sodium, drank two glasses more of water and had 30 more carbs in that day. And that could make the difference one pound on your scale up yet you're programming your diet and everything. It's perfect. So the same thing works with these tools is, you know, just because your, your, your thing says it, you burn three, a thousand more calories than what you're eating. It doesn't necessarily need you the next day. You need to bump up a bunch of calories because you're way too low. Pay attention and see what, how your body moves. Use these tools as just kind of feedback for you to kind of figure it out yourself. Hey, look, if you like, you just heard later in the episode we talk about ways to speed up your metabolism. By the way, here's the giveaway for today's episode maps power lift. So you can get free access to mass power lift. You just got to do the following and you have to win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode, subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications, do all those things. And if we like your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to mass power lift. One more thing. We're running a sale this month. We have the starter bundle 50% off. That includes maps, anabolic maps, prime and the intuitive nutrition guide. So that's a bundle that's going to be 50% off. We also have an advanced bodybuilder style maps program. That's 50% off maps split. So that's half off. Okay. So if you're interested in any one of those, head over to maps fitness products.com and then use the code may special for that 50% off discount. All right. Here comes the rest of the show. Listen, when it comes to resistance training, it's a skill. What does that mean? That means the most important factor with resistance training is form, technique and control. It's more important than all the other factors. I feel like you're saying that just so you can make a case that you're athletic. Do you not feel that way? I feel that way. I feel like you're just trying to make a case that you're athletic too. No, you know why I'm saying this because you know why I'm saying this because I look, we all do this, but I definitely would fell prey to this. And I still can sometimes where, you know, there's lots of factors that make resistance training what it is. Obviously the form and technique, which is what makes the exercise the exercise is the value. Then there's the amount of weight that you lift. That's the one that sometimes I'll value above form and technique. It could be the intensity. It could be the pump, the feel, other stuff. But the truth is if an exercise could get a rating, it's the form and technique that gives it the highest rating. If the form and technique is off, the amount of weight that you lift and all the other stuff is way less impact because you're building good habits with that. Otherwise, if we're just focused on any of the other metrics that involves, you know, an exercise, we could get, we could move the weight in an undesirable way, which now we're going to start creating these problematic type patterns that, yes, you could probably increase the amount of load, but like what, what position are you placing your body in and what are you actually training your body to do? Like, for example, does it count to add weight to your bench press if you now are not going all the way down, right? Yeah, or if you're balancing it off your chest or using momentum, right? And those are, those are more extreme examples, but we make these little adjustments to our technique in form. I know I do just so I can add more weight to the bar. Um, and what you're doing is you're trading one for the other and what you're trading is, you know, you're trading dimes for nickels. In other words, you're, you're trading in form and technique for something that's actually less valuable. So in the problem is with, with, this is all exercise, by the way. Okay. All exercise is a skill. In other words, running is a skill. Cycling is a skill. Resistance training is a skill. Yoga is a skill, right? If we, if we only think of it as a workout, like I'm here to get my shoulders tired on my legs tired or feel this on my biceps. And that's important. I'm not saying that's not important, but what happens sometimes we ignore the skill aspect and we lose the value of the workout. So what that means is if you can go heavier, what you should ask yourself is, can I make this better form? Can I make the form better and technique better? Then it'll feel heavier. Just what percentage do you think of that is due to impatience? Oh, I think it's less that it's more ego. Yeah. I would say it definitely could be in patience, but maybe yeah, both, I guess the intensity with it and have intensity with impatience, where they're like, I'm just going to go harder. Yeah, right. Cause I'm burning more calories. I could see that I just want to lose weight or I just want to try and try and get up as much as possible. I mean, I'm sure there's, there's always an exception to the rule. I think it's mostly ego that that's why I think men suffer from it more than women. I think women have their egos more and check when it comes to lifting. They're not, they're, they're not drawn to the, I need to be the strongest chick in the gym. You've heard it every year. It's, there's rare cases. You, there are some that say that, but for the most part, most women aren't caught up in that shit. It's normally a do thing to be so concerned about what everybody else is lifting compared to what they're lifting. And so they're always looking to lift more weight. Yeah, it also is, you know, when we talk about the importance of getting stronger, which it is very important, some wonderful metrics, especially in the first few years of exercise, we place such a heavy emphasis on that, that somebody might get the message that that's the most important. That's the only thing that they need to worry about when in reality it's, that's if your form and technique are, are excellent. If your form and technique is an excellent, perfect that. That'll make the exercise harder. It's going to increase the intensity, increase the tension. You don't need to add weight to the bar in order to do that. So, and it's an, it's an important thing to communicate because we don't look at resistance strain or the forms of exercise skills. Whereas sports, we do, right? If you were learning how to pitch a fastball, you never threw a fastball before. The coach wouldn't just be like, throw harder, throw harder, throw harder, right? They'd be like, okay, hold on. Let me show you the technique. Let me make sure you're doing this right. Position your foot here. Here's how you move your hand. That's going to make you throw the ball faster, better than just throwing harder. Well, I used to work actually with, there was kind of a split in thought process with certain coaches and trainers of one camp being that we would like try to get into it as as soon as possible and then kind of clean it up as you go in terms of like, I'm going to teach you the squat, but I'm not going to break it down to where you have to have like perfect form out of the gates. It's just like, we're going to work with kind of what you're starting with and then we're going to clean it up and tweak things as we go to get there versus the other coach that, you know, really outlines and defines like the mechanics of it and specifics, slows it down, make sure everything's, you know, established 100% and then we start building on top of that. So I always, it was always an interesting conversation because like, you could hear the argument, but I definitely leaned in one camp versus the other, which was, you know, kind of outlining it specifically first. Yeah, that's how I was that way as a coach, but mainly not because I think I understood the science of it so much as I saw that as the only real opportunity I had as a young trainer to help people. Yes, I didn't have a lot. I didn't have a wealth of knowledge, but I did understand like exercises, the proper mechanics of the exercise. And so it was a very easy way for me to be very meticulous about that. It's like, I can't talk very deep about nutrition. I don't know a lot about physiology yet. Like I didn't understand a lot of stuff at that point, but I knew form. Yes. And so I became very meticulous about that to show there's my value, right? So I would like really, really critique clients and I really trained myself that way too. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to every movement that I taught and I would stay away from to be honest with you, I stay away from a lot of Olympic movements because of that. Oh, yeah. Because I didn't have good technique. I never had a coach. So I completely avoided lifting them. I also did that with a lot of stuff like squatting and deadlifting. The reason why I didn't teach my clients early on in my career, a lot of squatting and deadlifting was because I didn't have great technique. Yeah. I avoided doing it because I didn't have great mechanics. I knew I probably wouldn't be the greatest of coaches that way. So I stayed in kind of my wheelhouse and that was the way I kind of built value as a coach early on was just being super meticulous about the movement. Well, what makes an exercise effective and safe versus what makes an exercise not effective and dangerous? It's the form and technique. It's your ability to control it and it's your biomechanics. You can take a squat and it's not dangerous because your technique and your form are excellent. Even at high intensities, your form and technique are so good that the risk factor for injury is really low. Well, you go 50 percent worse with your technique. Now you're doing a dangerous, not as effective exercise. So when you look at the exercises, they're not interchangeable. It's not like, oh, this is all quad exercises. These are all hamstring. So I just got to get the quad sore, get the hamstring sore, get the glute sore. No, no, no. The value of the exercises is in the exercise itself, the technique and the form. So perfect that. And the beauty of this is it'll give you, it'll pay you back dividends forever. It's something that will always pay dividends. You just try to keep lifting heavier and heavier weight for the rest of your lifted career. Watch what happens. I know this is, you know, I've hit that wall many times. So it lays such a solid foundation that, you know, if you, if you stay there first for an extended period of time until you can really perfect form, then it allows you to flirt with the kind of the boundaries a little bit because you know what home-based looks and feels like. Whereas if you just kind of haphazardly build upon it or go like the one method you were saying, Justin, we're like, oh, just we'll work with your, your form and technique and we'll slowly coach along the way. Well, that person never feels what a solid foundation feels like. So what, how far off are you on that squad or how far off am I on that dead lift? It's like you're molding jello. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Ask God, I forgot who said this. It might have been Bruce Leep. So correct me if I'm wrong or search someone watching will, but he said it was easier to teach a person who didn't know how to kick a proper kick versus teach someone who learned how to kick wrong. Yes. For years to teach them how to kick properly because it's so, so if you take somebody and you just don't worry too much about wired. Yes. You take someone and you have them squat and deadlift and exercise, you know, with poor technique and think, oh, I'm going to clean it up later. It's probably going to be harder to backtrack than it would be just to start from the beginning. Well, that's why if you ever talked to like a golf pro, they highly recommend if you're going to get into the sport of golfing at all to go have a professional actually right out the gates, right out the gates because if you learn how to golf for a couple of years and just which is one of the more technical sports when you talk about movements and mechanics and you build this swing where you figured you just kind of figure it out on your own and then you get good enough to get the ball down, get the ball down the course and then you decide, oh, let me go see a pro and teach you and he has to like completely tear apart your swing because it was so bad. I went through this with just because I hit a wall in terms of playing guitar. Like I got only so good on my own because I taught myself from learning pianos. I learned piano and it was actually structured all the, you know, intricate details of like how to hold my hands like the whole deal in terms of like being able to learn chords and whatnot. And so then I decided to just teach myself guitar and then try and then later on because I hit a wall and I wanted to learn new skills is like every teacher that's tried to help me has had such a hard time. There's like, dude, OK, so just try this and like, I know you're going to do your own thing, but like I want you to do it this way. And it's like so I'm actually thinking I was talking about this with with my youngest, like he was flirting with the idea of like learning drums and I'm like, I think I just need to start from scratch a new instrument and start all over, learn every little detail of like how to hold it properly, how to do things like and be meticulous about it so I can actually build on that. I think I like totally like capped myself. Well, that's what it is. I think that's a great way to think about it, too. And I think the same way as the lifting, I think it both can see progress, even the person that has kind of wavy sloppy form in the beginning, right? Yeah, the beginning and get and get away with it. But you're going to reach your ceiling much faster that way. And you may you actually may even see gains a little bit quicker because you just keep adding weight, even though it's kind of sloppy versus the person who takes a little bit more time laying a good solid foundation. That person's ceiling is going to be much much higher. Very, very good point. All right. So Adam, tell me about your weekend. I've been very worried about you. I've been checking in with Katrina all weekend. You guys had something. You guys had something bad. No, the whole family. I feel so I feel so bad for my wife, dude. She so we all three got the flu. Obviously probably stomach flu. Yeah. OK. So and I didn't think I wasn't sure what I had. I drove to work that day. I came to I came in. God, I made you leave. I looked at it. It took one look at him, dude. South, so paranoid. No, I got pregnant wife. This is where South paranoia actually is. I took one look at you. And I was kind of funny was I was really annoyed. I was just like fucking sad drove all the way over here. Yeah, you see my dedication. I like talk. I'm like fucking talking shit like as I'm driving home. And I'm like, oh, oh, oh, shit, I got to pull over. I had to pull over the freeway, bro. I pulled over the freeway. That's how bad it was. It was like I because I was in denial. I was just like, oh, like, this doesn't feel right. Oh, wait, I'll wait till I get home. And then I'm like, I don't think I'm going to make it home, dude. I had to pull over the side of the freeway and just try the way. Yeah, I'm freaking on the side of the freeway, just throwing up, man. I was like, oh, shit. OK, maybe I'm maybe I'm a little sick. Yeah. So yeah, I went home and then and Max and Katrina, same thing. They were already feeling it. So we actually I slept in a separate room that night because Max was already starting to feel kind of off. And he was and when he comes in her bed at times in our bed, I won't be able to sleep. So I'll I'll have the other room. So we already slept separate. I was up early to work and felt off. And I told you that you weren't a hundred percent. Yeah, I'm like, I don't feel right. I feel kind of off. I might be coming down with something. I don't know, whatever. And then you sent me home. And then that happened. And then I called Katrina. She's like, oh, my God, she goes. I was literally like laying on the floor and had to call Jerry to come help me with Max because I didn't know what I was going to do because he's not feeling well. I couldn't take care of myself. I was like, oh, my God, are you serious? Well, I'm on my way. So we get home. We were all sick. Luckily, Katrina has like the strongest immune system of all of us. She was better within like 24 hours. Next day, she was already starting to feel better by day two. She was feeling great. But Max and I still carried it through the entire week. But I tell you what, though, complete transparency to the audience that what I what I didn't realize and it didn't hit me till about day three was, man, this thing. The fevers were still coming. I had the chills. I was just these migraines that were so bad. And what I didn't realize, because I was just thinking about the flu and, you know, getting better from throwing up at that point, I'm only I think I've had like a half a bowl of soup and water is like all I'm intaking. But I had just recently, maybe like three weeks ago, said something to Katrina. I was like, you know, I openly on the show, I talk about any time I take anything consistently, I monitor myself and I and I try and go, OK, I've been taking that long enough or I've moved up because of the dependency like with caffeine or anything. And I just told her, I said, you know, I've been taking these cratum pills pretty consistently for a while. I need to come I need to come down from them. I told her that. And then I had told her, you know, I've been I've been really pushing the the caffeine lately. I said, I'm up to my my what I would consider my max my max for me. So my what I call my my top threshold where I always try and pull back is when I get to I always will allow myself to have a cup of coffee in the morning. I love that. And then another cup or an energy drink that's kind of like my my ceiling. And when I start to go beyond that, I go, OK, it's time to go back. Well, I was at a cup of coffee and two energy drinks. So what is that? Like 700 something like that. Yeah, 700 ish milligrams of caffeine. Yeah, it will be for Justin. It's not just like that's my morning. Yeah. So that's normally I allow myself to get there. But that's normally my reminder to myself, hey, it's time to come back down. So I literally had just told Katrina this that like I knew that I was kind of at my peak or whatever, and I need to come back down. I didn't even dawn on me because all I was thinking about was being nauseous and not drinking or taking anything. Yeah. So I'm not doing caffeine. I'm not doing cratum. I'm not doing anything in day like three. Like, I think it hits me that I'm like, well, caffeine withdrawal sucks at the same time and crated withdrawal can be nasty, too, ever. Yes. So you had both and you were just getting over it. And it was a fucking shit. Now, how did you piece it together? Because you probably think, I don't know about you, but I'd be like, oh, it's the flu. I still have it. So the reason why I thought it was something else was because I saw how Katrina got better. And I also noticed like my my stool was normal. My stool was normal and I wasn't throwing up anymore. So no more flu symptoms. Yeah, no, no more of that. Except for the shitty, the shitty feelings. Yeah. Feeling like shit. That felt that that was what. But then I realized like, OK, I haven't had any caffeine. I hadn't had any cratum. And I went, oh, wow. I was like, and I had known that I just I had just expressed that. So it wasn't like I was oblivious to where I was at. I knew that I was at a high intake. So that's what really would have done. What were your symptoms at this point? I had I kept the fever kept coming back, right? So I even after I had thought I had recovered from the flu, I'd get like these little mini fever spikes where I'd spike back up to like 100, even 101 a couple of times. The night sweats, chills. I couldn't never get the temperature right. I'd either be too hot. I'd be too cold. Yeah, I was I would think I was freezing so I'd get all in sweats and a beanie and covered up the heater on the house. And then three hours later, I'd be drenched in sweat at the peel all down. And that's those are symptoms of like opiate type because Kratom acts on the opiate receptor. Yeah, even though it's not considered an opiate and it comes from a natural leaf, this is the this is the one crack on it. This is also why, by the way, like we'd been approached before about advertising. We talked a long time ago, like years ago when we first heard about Kratom. And I really think it's a I think it's a great resource for somebody who has somebody in their family. I've I've I've actually turned several people that I know that were addicted to opiates on to it as a way to come off of it. But it has addictive properties just like it. And so and like that or caffeine, you could take it a few times and go like, oh, wow, that feels really nice. It's kind of mellows me out or relax me. It can even be pain relief a little bit. And that can start as like, OK, I'll have a few of these. And then it becomes like, oh, I'll have these every day for a little while. And I'll just do that for like a week. And then a week turns in just like anything else. And the dose has to go. Yeah. And the dose. Yeah. So I'm aware of that. Just and I'm OK with it as long as I do what I always do, which is, oh, it's been a couple of months. I've been doing this consistently. It's time for me to come back the other way, just like I do with marijuana, caffeine, anything else. So it was just bad timing for me. It was literally like right when I knew that I should have been coming the other way. And it didn't really kind of dawn on me until I was like, man, I should be feeling better. Yeah, you and I have that in common. I do the same thing. I go, I go, I push something, push something. And then thank God, you know, we both, you're the same way. We have the self-awareness to be like, all right, I'm going to pull back. But then you got to go through like a two days or a week of feeling like garbage grueling kind of detox. Yeah. So I mean, I mean, I talked to Jessica about that for me too. And I'm like, I got to figure out how to deal with bad feelings. That's for me, at least I'm not talking about anybody. It's for me personally, how to deal with bad feelings because I find myself I want to run away from a bad feeling. So I'll take something or do something to make myself feel better. But then that becomes an impulse. Then that becomes a habit. And then you get to the point where you actually start getting diminishing returns like the caffeine, right? You take some feels good, take more, take more. Next thing you know, I'm doing these crashes with energy and I'm like, what? And I'm like, oh, I got to back off. Well, here we go. I'm going to have three days of whatever. But you were just, you know, I'm glad I'm glad that you figured that out because that's scary. Like what's wrong with me? Yeah, no, that many days that I mean, dude, I seriously, I felt like I felt like I was going to die. You're feeling it right now, though. Yeah, no, I feel great today. You know, it's like, I mean, what is that? How many days now? So that was a start of Thursday. Yeah. Yeah, we're going out Friday. So you're out right now. So yeah, man. Well, welcome back, bro. It's good to have you back. Justin, you had a good weekend too. I had a whirlwind of a weekend. I love your tax. I don't hope if you don't mind me sharing it. It's salt all the people in Utah are not going to say all of it. This was the end of the trip. Just there's a shit sandwich here. He was in Salt Lake City for gymnast. Anyway, we get a text, right? And he's up there for his gymnastics tournament. And he's like, I'm finally, he's like, damn, he's like, I'm finally ready to relax. It's been a long weekend. They don't sell alcohol on Sundays up here. What the hell? Yeah, dude, nothing was open at all. Like, so I guess we'll start with the bad, right? So yeah, I was like Sunday, realizing that I guess, like, they have curfew or something because it's like close to the temple there in my downtown. Literally every store was closed. Our whole plan for the day was like, first of all, we had to sit through, I don't know, maybe five hours straight of just like, you know, kids competing. And the day before we were there for like just the morning and then we had the afternoon off and we got to do some fun stuff with the Natural History Museum. You know, I had a good time with the kids and all that, but it was like the Sunday. We're like, OK, so I guess we're here. We're going to watch them compete in their last events. And you didn't know when they were going to go. Their flight group was this time, whatever, you just got to wait. And like, you're just sitting there, just like I have, you know, when you get to that point where you're sitting there and I'm like, I should be having like, you know, intimate conversations with my wife. We should be like, you know, enjoying our time together. We were just like both looked like like the life force was just sucked out of us. Just like the same music on repeat. You know, these like fluorescent lights, like cement floors, like we're sitting when they're done, when they actually compete, then they have to go get their little metal. And that takes about another two hours before, like, they finally get to their group. I mean, so is there a part of you that kind of wishes that your kid doesn't play? So you get the fuck out of there? We were like this, because if they qualified, they were going to be like in nationals, which means that we have to go to like Phoenix after this. This was like the last one in the season. And so we've been going, like, considering on these trips, I know, isn't that? I wonder if my dad did that, you know, like with my sport. I never even thought of that, like, but I definitely had those feelings. Well, at least with football, though, the game and you're done. These there's something consistently going on. This reminds me of of Judo and Jiu Jitsu tournaments because you go and you're there all because you got to wait for your turn. If you don't show up on the map when they can't go get food because it's like, you don't know, you're going to miss a window. And so, you know, we're just so and nothing was open to eat. And and I'm just like, Salt Lake, you know, like, what the fuck? Like just like going crazy. And then that's all finally done. So we go to our whole plan was to go shopping in this one place that like I got all these suggestions for things to do in Salt Lake, which was great. But like proximity, we didn't have a car. So we had to like walk. And then it was raining, also sort of raining. And then it's just riddled with homes people. Like, I don't know if this is a new thing. If nobody was like, like, oh, yeah, they're there. Yeah, not only are they there, but, you know, there's like a mentally deranged person in the middle of the street, like running, like throwing things as a guy fighting some other guy across the street. There's a guy literally like smoking heroin as we walked by. I was like, wow, this is crazy. I didn't know that. I was like holding my kids close. You know, and then it's Salt Lake, huh? Hey, good thing the liquor stores are closed. Yeah, you're already straight. Yeah, but so the only thing was open to Starbucks. And we're like, OK, we're catching a second wind in there, getting warm, you know. And anyway, we're trying to like find any store open, nothing. And then finally later on in the day, we found out like another part, like I don't know, like probably 15 minutes away was open. It was like a Dave and Buster's and some other thing. And so, you know, and this is Courtney's personal help. Because she just doesn't like being in like groups of people in like video game. And so I'm sitting there like I'm geeking out with the kids. I'm like, finally, you know, something I can do. And she's just like, you know, just drained of all life. And then we had to wait because we had to fly it at like 1050 at night to get back here. And I didn't even go to bed to like 1.30 tonight and the airport's a beast. Yeah, it's it takes forever to walk to your gate. And so anyway, it was it was I was like, what am I supposed to learn here, God? Like what? What are you teaching me? He's showing you that you're a good dad, bro. How did your kids like it? So it was, yeah. So all that aside, like they all loved it. Everett actually crushed it. So proud of him. He did. He got first in his group. Yes. For like two of the events. And then, you know, second and another one of them, I felt so bad, though, because like the first day, you were supposed to stay because they get like an initial award. And then you have to come back for like the ceremony where they get the actual like metal and Courtney and I didn't know that. And like, so it was like three hours later. It was like 10 o'clock at night where they're handing him out and like our his coach calls it. Hey, so where's Everett? He's supposed to get this. I'm like, oh, shit. So he didn't get his metal because of hard delinquency. That's going to haunt me, dude. Oh, man. Like, just scratch that one off. So I felt a little bit bad about that. Make him one. You gotta buy him something now. Yeah. Well, so we actually the next day we met up, there's this guy there representing aerial skiing and he like had a gold medal. And so he let like Everett wear it and it was like a real legit gold medal. I took a picture. But what was cool about it was they are recruiting these kids because it translates super well to like aerial freestyle. And I was like, whoa, dude, that's super cool. Like I didn't like think that was an option. So I'm like, I was talking with them about getting them in a camp and and throwing them in the mix. That's why gymnastics is such an awesome base. Oh, my God, different directions. You know, bro, yeah, body awareness. Tell me one sport where you were body awareness isn't going to make you a way better athlete. Yeah, it was especially with all the extreme boats. Yeah, all of them, dude, not just air. I mean, even skateboarding, snowboarding, all of them. Exactly, I wish I would have done it. When I wrestled or did jiu-jitsu people with gymnastics backgrounds who were beginners already were badasses compared to other beginners because they just knew how to move their body and they learned techniques. Well, it reminds me of the discrepancy between a client who had like a sports background versus someone who had none whatsoever. Oh, when you train them? Yeah, I mean, you teach somebody who has had an athletic background their whole life and they could have never touched a weight before but had an athletic background their whole life. Yeah, they at least know the body. I can cue that client sometimes without even touching them and get them to get into great form. You take a client who's never lifted weights. Oh, you have to put him in position. Oh, my God, dude, you got to repeat yourself 15 times, use all kinds of trainer tricks to get them to hold their body because their body awareness just, it's not like if you don't train that, like you don't have it, man. It's crazy when you see someone like that. You're a good dad, Justin. That's great. I'm sure your kids will remember this. I'm wearing the gymnastic dad shirts. Like I, I'm supporting them, but it was rough. Yeah. That day was rough. Well, you know what? You brought up, it's like, so I've been to a jiu-jitsu tournament before and wrestling tournament before where I think that would be different and hard to watch is there's so many different things going, right? Like it's not just, like, if you're watching jiu-jitsu, everybody's doing jiu-jitsu. So I'm- Oh, I hear what you're saying. So if I'm watching as- There's different events. So I'm into it. Like, because I'm seeing another guy's technique, like, oh, bro, did you see that move or like that? Whereas if I'm like, let's say, I don't know what your kid does, but let's say he's into the horse or whatever, whatever, gymnastic. There's so many- There are only aerials. So you do like a double, it's like all basically like trampoline-based things where they jump, flip. So yeah, they run and they do, although do tumbling like back spring stuff where they like- Well, it's just, no matter what, you're there to see your kid. Yeah. But what happens is you're there for 10 hours watching everybody else's kids. Right. But I mean, part of why I imagine you're there for the 10 hours there though is because they have different events, right? So it's like- Well, and this was the biggest sort of the West Coast. So like every state was represented like from the West Coast. So you had like- Bro, for everybody first place, that's a big deal. I know, yeah. Man, it'd be cool if he had his trophy. Bro, kids have no idea of this. He's gonna see this podcast one day, dude. I'm gonna have to come back. Hey, we didn't tell him, dude. But he's like, don't tell him. He's gonna tell him to get a medal. He's gonna tell his friends to be like, hey, I got first place. I'm like, oh yeah, let me see the medal. What do you mean? You said I'm a good guy. I don't know, dude. What I would do is I would go buy one and get one made, dude. And just be like, oh, they forgot to give you this thing. Look, every- Yeah, you can know the difference with that, you know what I'm saying? I was just thinking of making one out of like aluminum foil. Yes, when an Adams physique trophy. Are you sure, dad? Yeah, you can have one, bro. Yeah, I'll do. He's a weird guy. Gymnast are buffed, you know? Yeah, exactly. This is your award. Anyway, it's so good. Well, we have, I wanna bring something up. We got Mother's Day coming up. And this is gonna be just a perfect conversation. I wanna get to Mother's Day in a second, but Jordan Peterson did a post that caused some controversy in my family. So I wanna read this. Whoa, in your family? Yeah, well, we were kind of going back and forth about what he meant. And if he meant to be offensive or what he meant by it or whatever, so check this out. And you know, I'm a fan of Jordan Peterson. I think he communicates certain things in very brilliant ways. So he did this post and it says, this is the first part. It says women have been making men self-conscious since the beginning of time. And then he says, they do this primarily by rejecting them, but they also do it by shaming them if men do not take responsibility. Since women bear the primary burden of reproduction, it's no wonder. It's very hard to see how it could be otherwise, but the capacity of women to shame men and render them self-conscious is still a primal force of nature. So what went back and forth was my aunt posted it and she goes, oh, this kind of makes me feel bad. And then Jessica said, I don't like the way he worded that because I think he used the word shame because he said he's shaming or women shame men. Now the way I understood it, and I'd love your guys' opinions on this, is, and this is what I said to my, because I'm in this big family thread with all my aunts, my mom, and Jessica's in there and my cousin's wife, so it's just a bunch of us. And I said, you know, I said, women turn boys into men. And my aunts like, what do you mean? But I said, well, for men or for boys, I should say, we don't really have lots of pressures to take responsibility. We can have kids up until we're old. We actually become more attractive as we get older and make more money. So we don't have that pressure either. We buy things, we can be very frivolous and not worry about stuff, but then you meet a woman, you fall in love with her and she puts the responsibility on you like, look, you gotta marry me. Like you gotta make this choice. And then, hey, we need to have kids and a boy has to stand up or step up and take the responsibility of, okay, I gotta save money. I gotta buy a house, I gotta support you. I gotta, we're gonna have kids. Now I can't go out with my buddies every night. I can't do this kind of stuff. So that's what I think. I think he not only meant that, but he meant that it's a very primal and instinctual thing too. Not that it's a conscious thing that women are trying. So I don't think it was coming off as like, women are trying to shame men. I think his point is that it's a very primal and instinctual thing for them to do that. Agreed. And for us to breed and to evolve, that's gotta happen. That's how I would take that. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I think that much of society has been shaped on men trying to gain the approval of the opposite sex. And so it's like, puts a lot of weight in terms of like, whether, and they'll let you know whether or not you're on the right direction or not. And so like in terms of shame, maybe you caught whatever you want, but it's definitely gonna be a harsh criticism of like, no, I'm not into that, or I'm into this. And then like men are definitely molded in terms of their decision because of that. Absolutely. Well, I think it caught controversy because, especially in today's time, like nobody, nobody, especially no woman wants to hear a man tell them what they do. Yeah. And that's what it, and it's him saying that women shame men. It's like, and obviously that's sound. Dude, we shame each other too. It's like, it also doesn't need to be a negative thing. Yeah, it's not a negative thing. So that's how, and so I think that, I think automatically there's people are gonna be defensive because like, who are you? You're a man telling me a woman that I, how I act or how I treat men. No, you don't know any better. When I don't think his point is coming from a place of, this is a bad thing. Listen. It's a natural, it's a thing of nature. Who's gonna tell you you're full shit? And that needs to happen. And tell you to take hard responsibility. Look, if you look at the, you look at the number of statistics, okay? Men, when they don't pair up and have a family or especially pair up, we become more violent. We're more likely to use substances. We're more likely to just to worship money and these kind of worldly things. When men meet a woman that says, hey, like, I know you, and you fall in love. It's very, I mean, it's a very powerful thing, right? I mean, I experienced it with Jessica. It's a very, very overwhelmingly powerful thing. And the woman says, you look at, I know we're together, but this is what I want out of you and I want you to marry me or I want you to take responsibility or I don't want you to go act like a kid all the time. You know, maybe you need to start having some drive with certain things or whatever. And then you have kids, right? And it's like, well, you got to be a good dad. And it does it. Women turn boys into men. Without them, think about it. You get this Peter Pan syndrome. You do. Of course, think about it. And you know what? I was just talking to Vicki earlier. She's the one that does her awesome hair. By the way, good job. We didn't have a week. Look at this cut. It is fresh. I was looking like a caveman for a second. But I was talking to her about this and it's like, media that glamorizes boys, like the dude who never grows up and has all the money and all the chicks and all this and that and does whatever he wants. And it's funny because that's, I understand why they glamorize it because they could sell that, right? That's an easy way to sell products and shit. Because when you're really responsible father and husband, you're less likely to go buy a bunch of stuff and seek all this stuff out. So I get it. But you got to grow up. And growing up means you take responsibility. It means you're taking care of other people. You're stable. You decide to be there for your family. I also think that we're just growing up at a time that's counterculture too. That's right. Our generation, Peter Pan syndrome is counterculture to the family man who you were, you know what I'm saying? So I think part of it, I mean, I do agree that some of it's monetarily driven, right? But I also think that it's just natural. So that's just kind of how I believe we always work. We have this kind of pendulum swinging type of society where, and we're always on one side or the other, we all, for the most part, want to be somewhere in the middle. And we tend to swing. And I think the glorifying, the Peter Pan syndrome type of guy has swung really hard for the last decade or so. And I'd like to think being a man, a father, like, you know, I think family, I think that, I hope, is on its way back. I hope so. Definitely. I want to believe so. And of course men have our value. I'm not here to tell you what our value is because we're focusing on this for a second. But I mean, it's true what I'm saying. Look, here's a statistic right here. That'll prove it. We're gonna talk about taking responsibility. What's one of the ultimate responsibilities to take care of your kid? That's hard. Hard work, it's expensive. You can't do all the fun, easy stuff. Sometimes it sucks and whatever. Who is far more likely to abandon their kid? Men are, right? Women take responsibility and they'll force men to do so. It's a very good thing. Now men have our own value, but I'll leave that up to the women to talk about. But speaking of which, mother's day's coming up. So I'm saying this basically to show my appreciation for the moms and wives and stuff out there. Cause you know, they- Without you, we'd all probably die. We'd all be eatin', workin' out. I'd do some crazy stuff. Who know, no, nothing, right? Or nothing. You mentioned statistics. I have to bring this up because somebody sent this to my DMs that, I remember the episode, I don't remember how far back this was, but it wasn't that long ago where you guys were teasing me about not wanting to be buried. And then I said I wanted to be cremated. Yes. So he sent me this article that I was super fascinated. I was like, holy shit, I would never have guessed this. Okay, so I'm gonna give you some statistics here. And just the year 2000, the percentage of Americans that were cremated take a guess, do you have any idea? I'll say 10%. Oh, he stole my idea. But we're gonna press it right? Yeah. 11%, 11% dude. Oh, what a bum. 26%. You're closer to that. Yeah. 2000, okay. 2020, okay. This is 20 years later. What do you think the percentage is at? It went up. What do you think? Oh man, I don't know, 30%. 50. 56%. Wow. It is projected, it is, the prediction is by 2040 that 80% of people will choose to be cremated. Wow. Now why? Why? I don't know. I don't know. Maybe all the same kind of feelings I had. Yeah, why? Maybe there's too many people buried. We already made an agreement anyway. We're not gonna cremate. You died before us. You're shooting flaming arrows at me, I know. No, we're gonna do what that one rapper did. We're gonna embalm your body, stand you up. I'm just worried like technology now and CRISPR and everything, they can just like clone us, you know? Like I just like burn me so you don't have any more of me left. Save your DNA. So you were on board with me with the cremation thing? Yeah, I've always said to just burn me, dude. You wanna be cremated too? Throw me, yeah. Really? Are you and Doug the only berry guys? I mean, I personally don't care. You're old school. Yeah. You're kind of like whatever. You're like flip a coin. Yeah, I don't care. Doug's wheels just flip a coin. I don't need some big mausoleum or anything like that. I mean, it's like, who's eating? See now, if I were to get buried, that's how I would want to get buried. Yeah, yeah, I know. I don't want to be like a resurrected. I want to like a statue, a mansion, a pyramid. I don't want to be like shoulder to shoulder with other dead guy, you know what I'm saying? Like I want to have some space. Just people coming by caroling and constantly. No, I'm gonna have my body. But isn't that a crazy number? That's crazy. That's super high, right? Well, Jessica, I want my body turned into protein powder and then she has to take it. Oh! Until she runs out. That's nasty. You know what that sounds like? Did you see, I just saw an interview that- You're gonna do an acid profile. You just reminded me of something. I saw an interview with Megan Fox and talking about her and Machine Gun Kelly. Yeah, the new weirdos. Yeah, drinking each other's blood. Drinking each other's blood? Billy Bob Thornton and Angelique Jolie, right? Listen. They were the drinking each other's blood. Listen, they're weird. But also, why are you telling everybody? Like, is it because- I'd like to have to tell everybody. Weird, we're interesting than you. Yeah, cares. That's what- Okay, you drink each other's blood, huh? All right, cool. You got a weird thumb making- That's what- It's weird to me that we live in a time that you would do something like that, you would want to share it and it'd be like this positive thing and other people talk about it. Like, that's just weird to me. Like, if you're gonna do some weird shit behind the closed doors of you and your wife, then by all means- Is she talking about the actual ritual thing? Yeah, she said that. She just said, oh, it's like a ritual thing that they do and she's talking about how she's like, I think she was saying how she likes to prick her thumb and then drop the blood and she's more- You're amazing. He just wants to like cut me and suck off my chest or whatever. What the- Yes, yes, dude. I wonder why people think Hollywood is run by satanic cult, you know what I mean? Where'd they get that idea from? Weird. So weird. By the way, I had to mention, I forgot to mention this from Mother's Day, fromuflowers.com, let's see, fromuflowers.com, forward slash flower, forward slash mind pump. If you use the code MP20, you get 20% off. I forgot to mention that, so we have some. They're on our mind pump partners page, too. Okay, per se. So just so you know, I mean, yeah, they've been up on our mind pump partners page. We're gonna take a sponsor break right now. Yeah. That was a new one right there. Hey. Quick commercial break. Hold on a second. I got some stats for you, Adam, talking about stats, bro. Oh, good, fine. It probably brings something for me. It's always Justin in the fricking conspiracy theory. No, this is really cool. I don't wanna open- He's been feeding me. I don't wanna open this with this because I'm like, Adam's gonna talk about this for an hour and a half. So I gotta leave this towards a million years. Oh, wow, you really think so. It's gotta be business related. I looked up statistics on U.S. millionaires and U.S. billionaires. Okay. Okay, so it's really cool, right? And I love these stats because they fly in the face of the narrative, the popular narrative around millionaires and billionaires. Okay, so here's what they are. 88% of U.S. millionaires are self-made. So almost nine out of 10 millionaires in America started out like everybody else and became millionaires. That's great. 80% of them have college degrees. So the majority of them have higher education. Okay, billionaires. Now, billion is a big deal. It's not very many billionaires in the world. 62% of U.S. billionaires are self-made. So what that means is they start out like everyone else. Six, a little over six out of 10, completely self-made. And their education levels lower. So they're not just like, you know, handed it from the Rockefellers and from the other guys. Check this out, right? 70% of them have college degrees. So a little less have college degrees. So here's what's interesting. So I said 62%. Another 18% are a combination of inherited plus they built it themselves. So what does that mean? That means they probably inherited a few million dollars or 20 million dollars and then they turned it into billions. Now, before somebody watching is like, that's no, it is harder to turn five million into a billion than it is to go from zero to a million. Yes. It's okay, people don't realize that. To go from zero to millionaire is far easier. Only somebody who's never built in, more than ever built a business before or multiple business would think that way. I wish that was like, you know, how there's certain courses like through high school. I would love to see them have a course on just like, you have to create your own business. Like everybody has to go through that process. It would be so enlightening. Oh dude. If you gave a thousand people a hundred million dollars, zero would turn it into a billion. That's how hard it is to become a billionaire. Only 20% of all US billionaires are inherited. And these are people who are like, Johnson and Johnson, you know, kids and you know, whatever. So the truth is the vast majority of billionaires in the US are self-made or a combination of inherited and self-made, which totally flies in the face of that whole, you know, narrative, right? Yeah. Add to that. I'm actually familiar with all those stats and they're in the book, A Millionaire Next Door. That's a really good read. Those are actually a book that Mike referred to me like a year or two ago and I read. I really, and I wish like, it was all a lot of the stuff. It was a lot of things that I had read before. I wish that I had read that book when I was in my 20s. One of the things that I thought was really fascinating that I took from it was like some of the stats that it said about millionaires and billionaires and like the cars they drove and the amount of money they spent and the amount of what percentage of their income they live off of. Like most millionaires live off of like 30% of their income. How many people you know live off of 30% of their income? And that's the one thing that like all millionaires had in common was the ability to live below their means. That's how a lot of them got to that point. And a lot of them are not somebody who struck it rich. They're just people over time that have built good habits, good behaviors that have saved, invested. Yes, that's what led them to be millionaires. And a lot of them had very basic jobs. They were just smart with their money early on. So really good discipline. The average like price of a car that like a millionaire drives is like lower than somebody who makes like six figures. It's crazy. So somebody who makes millions of dollars drives like a $40,000 vehicle whereas the average person who makes like six figures drives like a six figure car. Like it's crazy the difference. Like and that I wish I read that when I was in my 20s because it probably would have changed some of my habits because I early on as a young kid, I knew I had those types of goals, right? I had goals to be a billionaire when I was a kid, right? So I think if I would have read something like that, it would have changed some of my spending behaviors in my early 20s because I always reflect now as a 40 years old, like, and I don't regret anything because I had a really fun time in my 20s. But I learned, yeah, and I did learn, but I learned that way. I learned the hard way. I learned through my own lessons of getting back up again and stuff like that. Well, where are you gonna learn otherwise? I mean, you have to seek it out yourself. Yeah, I should have read. I should have read more books. Like I didn't, I didn't read enough. I mean, one of the single most important things I could have done at an earlier age that I didn't start doing until my mid to late 20s was reading more. If I would have read more, is that unfortunately I didn't have great leadership for my parents and that side, you know, as far as business and stuff goes. So, you know, I should have sought out other places. I didn't have a lot of great mentors. I found some mentors within the business I worked. So, I got a little bit of like business mentorship, but like with money and finances and investing, like I think I would have been a lot further along today had I been a little bit wiser in my 20s with my money. I had a lot of fun. Yeah, I learned from my parents' old school skills which were save, don't go into debt, but I didn't learn investments because my family, they didn't invest because they were poor immigrants. All they knew was don't work hard, don't spend your money, don't go into debt. So that's what I did, right? But I had no idea how to invest. I had no idea how to leverage. So what I did is I just saved money and had I learned the next step, because as a kid, you know, I was 19 years old running gyms, making a lot of money, leaving at home, I could have invested, but I just didn't know. I was afraid I had no idea. These are skills that you, they're great skills to learn when you're growing up. Even understanding, like one of the most common things is we actually, we talk a little bit about money and investments on the show, right? So I get, especially when I do my Q and As, I get a lot of, hey, Adam, I'm 20-something years old and I have $10,000 or I have this much. Where should I invest it? The most common answer I saved back to them, which I didn't know this when I was their age either, was invest it back in yourself. I wish I would have spent money on growing and learning and educating and seeking out mentors. What a great point. Even if I had to pay for it, like imagine spending, which would sound crazy. But like you sure I shouldn't buy an NFT? Yeah, no, totally. Because that's what you're thinking when you're in your 20s and you saved up 10 or 15 grand maybe or whatever like that, which is a good amount of money for a kid in his early 20s or whatever to put away. And you're thinking, okay, I finally saved this money up. Okay, I hear all this stuff with NFTs. You know, people made money in stocks, realized all this stuff with that, what should I do with it? And that's really not enough to make big moves in any of those things whatsoever or take those types of risks. And honestly, what will pay you back even more Totally. is investing back in yourself. 100%. And education and growing and learning. And it doesn't mean you have to go through a formal route of go go into some university and go to a four year free. No, there's certifications, courses, you can hire mentors. Yes, yes. And I wish. Or do internships. This is huge. Internships, people think I should be paid. No man, go get an internship somewhere where you can learn and you're going to school for free. That's the thing. You're not going into debt but you're literally learning from in the field, in the market, which no college, no school is gonna be as effective at teaching you how shit works. I just had this conversation with my cousin who wants to get into like the real estate side. And he's, and he was talking about all these different financial moves he wants to make. I said, bro, you've got somebody who is worth, you know, a hundred million dollars. He's got somebody connected to him in that real estate interest. I was like, go work for his ass for free. Yeah. Go tell him that you want to work for him for free. Oh my gosh, that's invaluable. He looked at me kind of like sideways, like, oh, cause I've got this much money. I could go buy this. I could go do this. You don't know anything about that yet. I said, you're wanting, and you got somebody who's way ahead of me in that field. And I'm trying to tell you, like, if I was you, that's what I would go do. I would do that even as me with the money I have and the investments I have. If I had that guy in my corner, who's like a really close friend of him. So, so true. I would say, I told him, I would say, go and hang out with him and find somewhere where you can help him and do it for free, because what you'll probably get in return will be 10 times more valuable than some bullshit paycheck or some bullshit one investment that you're gonna make with that money. Direct education. Yeah, so I wish I understood that. I didn't get it back then and I get that now. And I think that if you're listening right now and you're in your 20s and you've got a few bucks saved like that, instead of thinking of the next stock that's gonna turn or doing some risky NFT back. I wish they taught something like this in high school. You know what I mean? Like debt, investment, saving, the things that bring you the most value like you just said, like you don't learn that? Well, yeah, kind of come in full circle with like the DeSantis, we kind of give some criticism, but like he did pass some bill, like in terms of like the education, like before you graduate, you have to have like a financial literacy, which I thought was brilliant. I didn't see that one. Yeah, so he passed the bill, I think it was that says before you graduate, there's a course you have to take in their high school in Florida where you learn about, I think loans, debt, interest rates. It's like a no brain. We've said this, I mean, I've said this forever. Oh, how to pay your taxes? Yeah. Nobody knows how to pay their taxes. It's just the common sense stuff that you're gonna go through in life like in order to manage your own finances. Speaking of saving money and investing a lot of stuff. So lots of talk around inflation, right? Especially goods and food exploding in prices. And one of the best ways, and we worked with a company called Public Goods. And so what Public Goods is that they have, they're a subscription service, but they offer all these household goods, cleaning products, they have dog food, they have certain canned foods, and you know. Soap, shampoos, dishwasher, my whole house is Public Goods. And their thing is it's very little waste. So it's the same packaging. In fact, if you buy something, then you can buy refills and like packaging that's far less detrimental to the environment also saves money. There's low chemicals. But really these subscription services are incredible hedges against inflation. Because they eliminate as a hedge for somebody doesn't know what that means. If you wanna protect yourself against the rising costs of food and goods, subscription services are amazing because they have a subscription fee that helps bring up their profit. They also eliminate a lot of middlemen and they produce a lot of their own stuff or they do the packaging themselves. So what that means is with less middlemen less hands it needs to, you know, if it goes from- It's closer to cost. Closer to cost. So all the subscription services that exist out there, these are the ones that will protect you the most with inflation versus going to the grocery store and oh, everything went up or whatever. If you belong to a subscription service, you're less likely to be, your prices aren't gonna increase as much as it would if you went to a grocery store. So I see this company doing really well. That's part of the reason why inflation is so bad is because of the entire supply chain. It's not like just a single product. It's not like meat is just expensive or this one thing. It's that it's gotta go through like five different hands and it's like, oh, well gas went up for the drivers and you're driving it here. The farmers are gonna pay more for feed. It's like, you don't think about those things and when you can get a company that can cut out two or three or four of those steps, it's massive. And they won't, even though they get, they'll get hit by inflation too. Everybody will feel it somewhat. They'll feel it less than somebody who has to deal with all that. Yes, because they have more to work with and they're motivated to not change certain things or whatever, because that's what they're all about. So yeah, if you wanna save money, now's the time to look at subscription services. It's a great and public goods. Again, they cover so many things. Well, speaking of saving money, isn't Mine Pump Store doing a discount right now? Oh, you know what, I was gonna ask you. I was gonna say, I was gonna say, I was gonna say, can we tell the audience? Can we tell the audience? We so treat the, none of, why the way too, okay? I think we should make, because we haven't talked about this in a long time. We have minepumpstore.com, which says. We have merch, you guys. Yeah, we have merch. We have a gym equipment, home gym equipment. All kinds of stuff on that. Now, for the audience, they need to know that when we started this podcast, it was something that we like, I did not wanna do anything on that side. I just, I think the margins are terrible. It's a headache side of the business. It's just, it's not even fun to do it. Full transparency. Yeah, just full transparency, right? I'm just not current with trends. We have it, and it's always there. We have lots of cool stuff in there, but we don't talk about it on the show. We don't push. So our staff is always like, you guys bring it up today. So Jerry comes walking in as the response back was, well, you guys gonna pay us our commercial rate for that. It's our store. I know. Hey, so along those lines, so the sale is, we sell home gym equipment. So like, you know, like suspension trainers, for example, Abroller, the river bands. Yeah, bands, that kind of stuff. Dynamometers, so you guys do that grip testing. Yeah, so we have that kind of stuff there. And that's all 20% off right now. But along those lines, did you guys see the statistics? Did I send you guys the statistics on the percentage of people that are still not going back to gyms? Oh no. Okay, so. What is that number at? It's 19% lower than what it was pre-pandemic. So it went up after, you know, the pandemic ended, but it's sticking. Damn, I wish we remember, I wish we had the resources. I don't wanna exhaust poor Andrew over there. It'd be interesting to hear what we all predicted before. I don't remember what, when we were, do you remember what we predicted? Well, we said it would be permanent stuff. No, we did. And we had a little debate on how permanent it was. And I think I was more like, I think most people, more people would come back. I wanted it to come back roaring, but I just, yeah. You know what? I wish I remember what we all, I posted it, let me see if I can find it, cause I actually have the numbers. Most likely I was right, you were probably off. Yeah, that'll be the first one. All right, so here it is. So sporting equipment sales, so people buying home equipment and stuff like that, obviously exploded after the pandemic, came back down, but it's still about 15% above trend. So still above trend. Then the people going back to gyms took a huge, first off, they lost a lot of members after the pandemic, came up quite a bit, but now it's staying steady at 19% below trend. Now, and that's reminding me because obviously we have the mind pump store with the home gym equipment and we do sell more than we have before. I think that's part of it. But here's what else is interesting. We have friends in the gym business, gyms that were able to weather the storm and they're crushing right now. So what I think that happened, even though there's less people going back to gyms. Well, there's less gyms. Way less gyms. So it's like you only have so much to fill those gyms up. So many opportunities. If you survived the pandemic and you're a gym, you pretty crushed. Yes, now is a good time for you because if you made it through that, you had a good business model, you had a good enough business model to make it weather that storm, you were gonna reap the benefits on the backside because we knew that it would flush out. And I forget we went over the percentage, but it was a lot of gyms. Well, I can see why that stalled because of I guess inventory, right? Like there's only a certain amount of gyms that made it, but let's say like a few years from now that business kind of grows again, more gyms opened up. If we don't get shut down again. Now I don't think we've seen the end or the final numbers in this either though, because you're still hearing right now, I thought I heard just the other day, they're trying to freak everybody out that in the summer, another variant of the COVID, right? So there's still people that are fear mongering and then on top of that, you still have some gyms to that still make you wear the mask inside the gym. So I've still seen, I still see, I hear Bay Area. Really? Yeah, well that are just randomly, I've seen people posting their videos and working out. I see people and now it's not required where I go, but I still see people wearing masks. So that's what I don't know because I haven't been in one of myself. So I don't know, but it was odd. I saw a video of like five people, everybody in the video all had masks on inside the gym working out and it's here in the Bay Area. So I'm assuming that some of these gyms are, because it's at their discretion as a private business, they could say, hey, it's still required, right? So I would imagine that. So there's still some people that would like to come back but they're like, that's how I would feel. The reason why I have no desire to go to a gym right now is because the gym that I think is that I would go to is the one that still has got people wearing masks. Yeah, you should check, because I don't know if they would do that, but yeah, that would do whatever. So, and then there's some people that are like me in a sense too, they're like, ah, they haven't checked them. I've figured it out to do it on my own at home or whatever like that. So I'm getting by. Yeah, I kind of miss the gym, but not enough to actually go reactivate my memberships or in my case, I'm paying for them anyway. You're still donating too much to gyms, aren't you? I am, dude. Well, so talking again to my friend who runs a big chain, I said, so what other differences have you noticed in the trends? And he goes, more people are signing up and working out not to lose weight, but for mental health. So lots of people are coming back and saying, you know, what's your goals? When you sell memberships, one of the first things you ask is what's your goals? So you know how to- Interest, Taylor. And he says, I never heard that. You guys ever hear that? No, no, that's not what ever said that. Fat loss, build muscle, look like a certain way. People are aware of that. They're saying, hey, I want to improve my mental health. I need to move more. I was locked up at my anxiety, my depression or whatever. So I find that very interesting that people are starting to see value. Speaking of anxiety, by the way, I made an interesting speculation with blue light blocking glasses. Blue light is stimulatory, right? And if you're already feeling anxious, anything that stimulatory could potentially make that anxiety feel worse. If you ever feel anxious, try putting on blue light blocking glasses. So I did that with Felix Gray's and it does have a calming effect. So if you feel lots of anxiety throughout the day or you're going to go to a stressful meeting or whatever, I would speculate that blocking some of these excitatory blue light will probably improve at least the physical feeling. Do you know what's happening on a chemical level inside your body with that? It's just excitatory. So I know blue light is, it's wakeful, right? That's why you don't want to be exposed with too much blue light before you go to bed. During the day, it's okay because it keeps you up. But if you've ever been anxious, you know anything that is stimulatory, caffeine, loud music, exciting conversation would just heighten that physical sense of anxiety. So blue light blocking glasses put them on and I did and I noticed that it kind of brought me down. It made me feel more calm. So that was my own experience, but I think it makes sense. So we'll see. That's interesting. Start handing them out. Hey, real quick, look, you gotta check out one of our partners, LMNT. Okay, so they make electrolyte powder that has the appropriate level of sodium. Most electrolyte powders don't have enough sodium for people who work out hard. Now, why is this a big deal? You get better pumps. You get better muscle contractions. You feel much better. LMNT has the appropriate level of sodium, no artificial sweeteners. And if you go through our link, mindpumppartners.com and click on LMNT, you can get a free sample pack. So you actually only have to pay for shipping. You get eight packets of LMNT for free. Again, it's mindpumppartners.com, LMNT. Here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Logan from Kentucky. Logan, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys, what's going on? First off, I want to thank you guys for everything that you guys do. I've been listening to you guys for about over a year now. And you guys helped me tremendously. You know, you guys helped me lose 30 pounds from December. So thank you for that. Wow, great. Yeah, but just getting into the question. So a little background, I've been break dancing since 2009. I started in high school and I was competitively doing it on and off, you know, going around the U.S., going through round, we call them jams, going to different jams and competing against other guys and girls. We would be judged into three different guys and we would go round by round, basically a dance battle. And those rounds will last between 30 seconds to a minute long. You know, it's very intense removing in all planes of movement. We're going from really slow, really fast dancing on the ground and all of a sudden we're popping up to a head spin, you know, and then just here recently, you know, I've been taking my health and fitness a little bit more seriously. And like I said in the beginning, like I lost all this weight and I started really focusing on the gym more. And I guess that leads me into my question. Given that we're moving the way that we do West Break dancers, is weight lifting or resistance training in general, diverting my progress? Yeah, it depends how you do it and how it's programmed. By the way, I'm sure you watched the movie, Breaking. 1984. It's really old reference. That's the man. So break dancing is one of my favorite things to see on YouTube, the things that you guys can do with your body. It's amazing. It makes no sense. Please tell me you have like a little iPhone clip or video of yourself doing some stuff. Do you have something? Yeah, you need to send that. Okay, can you email that to my team? Yeah. Who is it? Jerry or Info? Jerry. Live at Mind Pump Media. Yeah, send it to live at Mind Pump Media. Yeah, we'll post it on the show. And when we post the show, we'll publish the show, we'll make sure to plug you in there. Yeah, cause that's crazy. We'll make Sal try and do it after. Yeah, I can do it. Well, this is actually how we decided the executive positions in the company. Yeah, Justin's crazy. Best dancer would end up being the CEO and so on and so forth. Battle me, bro. That's hackers. Battle me. Yeah, no. Okay, so Logan, let's get to your question. Will it kill your performance? Depends how you do it. If you're practicing frequently, right? You're practicing your dance moves and your positions and your sequences. One day a week of strength training is plenty. That's it. You don't wanna do more than that because you're probably already training your body like crazy. What you wanna do with the strength training is just maintain your strength. Now, if you go down to one day a week of break dancing and you're doing four days a week of strength training, yeah, you're gonna hurt yourself. First off, if you'll build more muscle, you're not gonna be as in tune with your new body size. And you're not practicing your skill as much as before. So it really depends on how it's put together. But one day a week of strength training is probably all you're gonna need. Would you put on performance? Oh, yeah, perform. I mean, honestly, if he's doing practicing break dancing three, four, five days a week, it could be even just straight strength training because he's doing so much dynamic movement with break dancing that he's gonna be hitting all the mobility and stuff kind of in that. But I would add additional mobility movements. The second part of your question that you wrote to us is how do you prepare for all day competition? Do you still want us to answer that for you? Yeah, so I think that's where I'm kind of getting a little bit confused with information. So the day before and the day of, what do my movements and more importantly, what does my diet look like? So diet, do not introduce anything new into your diet the day before or two days before. I made this mistake once going into a judo tournament. I thought I was gonna carve up the day before and I ate a bunch of pancakes, which I never eat. Shit all over his opponent. And I had to, I mean, just my gut wasn't good. It was really, I still won, but it wasn't good. So don't introduce anything new. Eat like you normally do. I would just add a little bit extra fuel, but the thing with when you're manipulating your body is additional water weight or a bloat is gonna take away from your skill and your technique. You want to kind of be light, agile, fast and strong. So I wouldn't change too much. Maybe a little extra fuel leading up to it. Maybe a little extra carbohydrates, but not too much more because what you don't want is you don't want to have any bloat or extra four pounds of water weight because that's not gonna help you move any better. It's just gonna make you heavier. So I wouldn't overthink it to be quite honest. As far as the training is concerned, I wouldn't do any heavy lifting at least four or five days before. So I would take at least four or five days off of lifting before the day of the competition and just do mobility movements and practicing your skill lightly leading up to the competition. Cause you don't want to go into it with any soreness or tightness. Yeah, I hear all those, the advice. I think to for sure one time a week is probably plenty for resistance training. I was trying to like think about symmetry only because there's a couple of elements in there that are interesting with isometric contraction with unilateral training and multi-planar type of approach. So it'd be like phase two of maps performance as well. It would help to really kind of bolster and reinforce strength in certain positions where you're in the frontal plane, you're in the transverse plane and just to kind of to strengthen your body awareness and the amount of force you could produce. But honestly, the skill, to Sal's point, it's all the skill is the high priority. Yeah, well, I mean, and this dude's got great body awareness. I mean, you ain't doing that shit like right there. Bro, the proprioceptive ability of high level break dancers is unbelievable. And you can set the highest peak. He's at that level. So I mean, I think the advice is that simple, is you know, maps performance one day a week, that's all you need. And the goal if I was training it would be like, can I slowly get you stronger by increasing weight over time while also like trying to never get you sore? Yes, yes. That would be the dance I'm playing. I'm like, and that is looking at, that is an example of you absolutely crushing it, right? If I can get you over time, right? So over the period. Slowly. To slowly get a little bit stronger. And then also your feedback to me is like, dude, Adam, I'm not, I don't feel sore. Are you, are we pushed? Like I want to hear that from you. That means I'm like doing my job perfect because for you being sore at all is going to really hinder your, your break dancing. So I don't want that at all. I want, and you can be, I think people just, we always flirt with going beyond where we need to. You just, you just need to do just enough to send that signal that the body needs a little bit more muscle. And that would be kind of the dance that we'd be playing is no pun intended. Is that, hey, let's, let's try and do the strength training. Let's try and get a little stronger week over week, but just, just enough to where you're getting stronger, but you're not feeling like you're having to recover for the next two to three days. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, for sure. Now, I guess I already know the answer to this, a little dive into my training. So Monday, Wednesday, Friday, that's my traditional training. So chest, arms, legs, but the first hour, I'm just practicing my skills. You know, I'm going through sets, routines, dancing. That's just for the first hour. And then the second hour, I move into the resistance training. Do you guys, I'm assuming you guys think I'm doing too much. Yeah, I would do, I would do the skills training and then one day a week, devoted solely to a full body workout. That's it. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then I guess it would, it wouldn't hurt, although I don't think it's necessary. It wouldn't hurt to actually do your strength training first on those days, since you're only training one day a week and you, but I also don't need maximum output from you. I don't need you to like crush the weights. So if I wanted to get a little bit more gains in the muscle direction, I would probably say, Hey, before instead of doing our practice for an hour of break dancing and then going to lift weights, I'd say, Hey, let's lift weights and then go do break dancing afterwards. But because you'll get more out of your lifting for sure. I mean, you got to factor in that you've somewhat, even if you're great. And you just don't want to trade skill for strength. Yeah, exactly. This is a big mistake athletes sometimes do is they think that more strength means you're better, only if the skill remains the same or improves. If you drop skill and increase strength, you're not better at break dancing. Are you? Like I'm pretty, I saw your video, Doug put it up there. I'm bigger and stronger than you. I can't dance like you. That's the thing, adding masses is going to be a detriment. Yeah. So yeah, really it's just about like keeping the body healthy, the joints, strong, supported, stable. That would be the highest priority. Totally. Sure. Now I guess to my last point back to the diet question. Now during like, say I'm at an all day competition, you know, fatigue happens a lot. And I'll talk to you guys a couple of podcasts back. Should I use like electrolytes throughout the day? Like water with salt, what do you guys think? Yeah, I would go electrolyte water. So LMNT is obviously the company we work with. We like them the most. So you can put that in your water. You'd also want to eat food throughout the day, small meals and make sure you have some easily digestible carbohydrates. Yeah, liquid calories would be great. So like Gatorade, you know, I know it's full of sugar and all that stuff, but this is where liquid, you know, sugar can kind of be beneficial. I would have small meals in between. So a 200 calorie meal in between your sets or 100, 100, you know, calorie meal, just to give you the fuel that you need to continue, you know, competing throughout the day. Cause it's a long day, right? It's pretty much all day. Yeah, all day from like one to 10 p.m. Yes. Yeah. So you're going to want to eat kind of like, you know, three or four small meals in between your set. Not enough to make you feel like, uh-oh, it's going to affect my dancing, but enough to give you some energy so you can continue performing. Okay, cool, cool. Noel, now that you guys gave me that information, so if I cut out the Wednesday, Friday sessions, you know, maybe that's where I'm actually practicing my dance. Like would you guys recommend Dan out with mobility? Yes, dance and mobility would be great for those days. So fall, and that's in already performance. So literally follow the mobility days in performance on those days now and then just stick to the one foundational day of training. Totally. For sure. We'll send you mass performance if you don't have it, okay, Logan? Awesome, man. No, I appreciate it. Thank you guys so much. No problem. Yeah, I can't stress this enough cause we had a lot of athletes that asked this question. We get one of these every week. Do not trade skill for strength because when it comes to athletic performance, skill trumps strength. It just does. When skill is equal, now strength, if you're stronger, you're going to do better. But you can't do that, you can't, you don't want to trade the two. So don't take your current training, your skills training and trade it for strength training and think you're going to perform better. Especially at that level, especially at that level. That's what I'm talking about. I mean, if you're a kid and you're new and you just started break dancing last week and we're- Some strength in it. Well, we assume you already have a nice foundational layer of strength that you've been able to like accumulate this type of skill over the years towards. So yeah, now at this point when you're at that high of a level of skill, it's about like keeping you healthy and keeping your joints responding and being able to have longevity in this pursuit. I think Doug used to do this. Yeah. Yeah. Doug was one of the first break dancers. I feel like you guys moonwalk. Yeah, that's always been one of them. Doug does the whole pop and lock. Pop and lock. So we're all from the same generation. I guarantee you all of us went through a stand, trying to do a little bit of break dancing. Bro, I threw a cardboard out and like totally tried and then like did the spinny thing on my butt but never on my head. I didn't even, not only did I go through that but I even had the boom box. No, I had the little lasers. No, you didn't. So like the rave kids? Yeah. And you know, you do like your break dancing. You're good at a lot of things but you're a terrible dancer. I can't imagine. I can't imagine this. I can hacky sack. Hey, I had- Could you just say after about six or seven drinks I get really good? Or maybe it's- She's just trying to do your drawing. Maybe after she has six or seven drinks. It looks better. Maybe that's right. No, we had, I had a couple of friends that they figured out how to do. What's that move called continuation? Where they're just over and over? Oh, you know the names even? I don't know the names. I did because you guys, I'm a nerd about things and I remember I was like, I'm gonna learn how to do that. And I was like- I'm gonna go read books. Ain't gonna happen. So I'm not gonna figure this out. You're not gonna learn that easy. Our next caller is Lily from Utah. Lily, how can we help you? Hi. So I kind of have an interesting situation going on right now. I work in remote, like a really remote area in Alaska for four months at a time. And so I'm gonna be doing that this summer. And I just kind of wanna know if you guys have any suggestions on how to maintain muscle when I'm kind of back in remote Alaska. I don't have any equipment and I don't really have like choice in what I get to eat because it's so remote and only accessible by helicopter. So whatever the company like provides me is what I get to eat. And I'm just kind of wondering if there's an optimal way for me to kind of maintain- Are you working on the set of a loan? Is that, are you like a- No. Are you a scientist? No, so I'm a hiking guide actually. Okay, okay. So do you have to walk, so remote parts of Alaska, do you have to walk around with like a side piece, right? Just in case there's grizzlies and stuff. Is that legit? No, so I actually work in Denali National Park. And you can't have, like you could just have bear spray and that's it. So it's a little scary sometimes. Wait, wait, you can just piss them off. Bear spray for grizzlies, okay. Yeah, it's not very effective, but it's what we have, so. That's crazy. All right, workouts. Yeah, Maps Anywhere is a great program. It's all basically equipment-free or we could do map suspension where all you need are a suspension trainer. You could hook that up to any doorway. A tree. A tree, and you could do- Seriously. You could do all kinds, I mean amazing workouts with that stuff. Would you be able to get, like would you be able to order a suspension trainer and get it delivered to you? Or is that a no? So that's the problem, because it's only accessible by helicopter and weight is like very important and they kind of prioritize like the guests that come back there and their luggage and stuff like that. I can't really order anything. So last year, what I did was we had some resistance bands and then we got like a old broomstick, like a old wooden broomstick and we put it in between like two trees and we were able to do like pull-ups with that and then like very, I had like two resistance bands and it was horrible. I just like, I came home and I just felt like I lost like all of my muscle development and it just was not ideal. Maps anywhere. Maps anywhere. Maps anywhere is gonna be pro for you and just keep in mind too. Like I mean you are, I mean if the overall goal is to be healthy and fit and then to maintain as much muscle as you can, when you're back home, you train like a Maps Anabolic type of program, build as much muscle as you can that time. When you head off to Alaska for four months, you follow a body weight type of program. You inevitably will lose probably a little bit of muscle, especially if you're hiking a lot and you're not strength training as much as you were before, but very minimal and it'll bounce back. If you stay good, if you stay consistent with the body weight training and moving around and staying healthy and fit, even if you lose a little bit of muscle, it'll come right back when you get back home. Lily, do you have resistance bands with you now? So I actually left them in Alaska last year so that when I came back, they would still be there for me. So I have them and they're just like crappy ones off Amazon. You're set. Lily, Maps Anywhere, you got it. You have all you need for Maps Anywhere. That's the perfect workout. You have the broomstick and everything. So there's ways you can use that. And here's the thing, body weight workouts, a lot of times people lose muscle on them because they don't program them properly. Yes, it's the programming. The programming makes a big difference and we wrote Maps Anywhere, so the programming was good. So don't be surprised if you lose zero muscle and might even gain some. Right, that is very possible. You know what I'm saying? I want to just, if you did, it's not that big of a deal because if you stick consistently with body weight training, you follow anywhere, there is a chance that you could see canes. There is a chance that you'll maintain. And there is a chance that you could potentially lose some muscle. But if even in that case, if you do lose a little, it'll bounce right back, especially if you stick with your training. Now, if you completely take four months off and just, you know, eat like crazy and you don't, you don't do anything. Like, okay. Yeah, it would be a little bit more work when you get back. But man, you stay active and fit and do body weight training for those four months. I think that you're going to be great. I'm still triveling. Yeah, do you have like a magic eight ball that tells you what kind of food they're going to drop for you? Yeah. So the food situation is definitely not ideal. Last year, it was mostly just like processed carbs that we were eating. So like for dinner, they would, it would just be like frozen food that they would like reheat. So it'd be like lasagna or like... You must really like this hiking guide thing, huh? Yeah, it's super cool. Hey, you can't just go outside and grab... Can't tell you how many clients I've had that had the situation. You can't just go outside and grab a salmon or something like that? No. I actually, when I take our guests out and it's berry season, I always tell them we have to stop and eat berries because that's like the only fresh fruit that I get back there. And so I like eat all the berries every time I take them out because I'm just so deprived of like nutrition. Well, no, we're gonna send you maps anywhere, okay, Lily? That's a perfect workout for... And you have bands and you said you had a broomstick, you're set. Yeah, yeah, thank you so much. No problem. Thanks for listening from all the way over there, by the way, thank you. Yeah, you guys, like I've been listening to you guys for about three years now. And I just like appreciate you and just like everything you like produce is so authentic and I admire it. Thank you, we appreciate you. Thanks, Lily. Crazy how handsome Justin's gotten those three years on. Oh my God. So dramatic. So ugly. Did I get her to blush, Doug, just a little? Yeah, just a little bit. Thanks, Lily. Thanks, guys. You got it. Dude, she's talking about the bear spray with the bear. That reminds me of when I was in Yosemite and I had bear, I got chased by a bear when I was a kid. So I get like I'm scared of him. This is scarred for life. Yeah, dude, I had a bear spray on me in Yosemite and I dropped it. I told you guys this and it punctured and it sprayed and my dad being like, my dad's old school Sicilian. So he's very much like, he covered it with newspaper, keep walking. So we just keep walking. But there was a cloud of pepper spray that got blown across the street. And I see people are like, they have no idea what hit them. And they're like, what's happening? They're like washing their faces and my dad's like, keep going. Just keep walking, keep walking. Yeah, dude. And I was like, oh my God. It just reminded me of that. No, I mean, look, a lot of people think body weight training means you lose muscle. Now in extreme cases, you're an extreme bodybuilder or power lifter, that might be the case. But for most people, it's just gotta be programmed, right? That's all it, and most people don't know how to program body weight workouts. They do like push-ups, pull-ups, you know, body weight squats. They don't know how to put them together. Yeah, it's pretty random. They don't know how to exercise. Yeah, we put a lot of muscle. She also wrote in there, she's been training consistently for three years now. So she's got a pretty good base. And all that muscle memory. You said it, if she loses a little bit of muscle, it'll come right back. So I mean, and especially if you're following anywhere on there, cause let's just, let's look at the worst case scenario. Worst case scenario, she's not hitting her nutrition target, so she's not getting enough. So even if she's sending, following anywhere, like to a T, she and still sending a muscle-building signal, she's not giving it the proper nutrients to build or maintain. There's a very good chance she could lose. But I mean, with the consistency of training like that and making an attempt to stay healthy and fit, when she gets back, it's a good balance. Totally. Next caller is Kevin from Illinois. Kevin, what's happening? Hey guys, how are you? What's up? All right. All right. I appreciate you guys having me on. I've been listening to you for, I don't know, about a year now and I've learned something new every day. So I'll get right to it. I'll give you a little bit of, kind of where I was, where I'm at and where I'm trying to go. Maybe you guys can direct me in the, down the right path. So I'm 33 years old. I've been working out for about 17 years, but never really followed any sort of, specific plan. Maybe in high school, I saw some decent results, but I kind of just followed, do eight to 12 reps of everything, sweat a little bit, and I'll be good to go. I recently learned that's not exactly how it works. A little bit deeper into my background, about two years ago, I was at a pretty low point in my life. I realized that alcohol was taking over and destroying my mental health, physical health, everything around me. So with that, there's a lot of bad eating habits, a lot of bad exercise habits. And I heard from many people, including you guys, that resistance training has a ton of mental health benefits. And I was put through the ringer of medications and whatnot. And I finally decided to start getting into lifting, with intention, and I'm now off all that stuff. Hell yeah, bro. Nice work. So yeah, it's huge. It works. About a year ago as well, I kind of started my lifting or exercise journey with CrossFit, because I thought maybe it'd be good for functional fitness, for my profession. And I saw weight loss, I was 184 pounds at my heaviest. I'm now down to 161. I had some weight loss. I started seeing myself in the mirror, like, wow, something's going on here. It's actually maybe working. But I wasn't noticing any strength gains really at all. And maybe cardio wise, I was getting a little better, but I was also kind of falling into that cortisol junkie, like I've heard you guys talk about. CrossFit, seven days a week, I had to do it to see results. And you guys also taught me that's not the way to go. So I got into Mike Matthews, bigger, leaner, stronger. That's currently what I'm doing. And I have seen quite a bit of progress in the strength department. I'm just trying to figure out how to incorporate some other stuff to work on strength, conditioning, and physique. I'm kind of one of those typical guys that wants it all. I want that power lifter strength. I want the bodybuilder physique and the athletic conditioning. But I know I can't necessarily have it all. So to lead to my question or questions, two quick questions that kind of relate to each other. So I'm a firefighter paramedic. I work 24 hours on, 48 hours off. We are allowed to work out while we are on shifts. However, we do still have to respond to 911 calls. So oftentimes I will get a warm-up going, maybe a couple of sets of, we'll say bench press, and then we get a call. And that call could last anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour plus. So now I've got my warm-up in, couple sets, go out on a call, come back maybe an hour later, start where I left off and try and continue the workout. And we might get more calls, you never know. So with that being said, if all the stars align and I do get a complete workout in 45, 60 minutes, it is then possible that we have a bad night of sleep due to calls. So the main question here is, am I wasting my time while working out on shifts due to being interrupted throughout the workout and or losing sleep, you know, that quality rest to recover. So this is great, Kevin. Sounds like you've been listening to us for over a year now. You've learned all kinds of things from us. We've changed your life. And then you bought a program for somebody else. And then you didn't buy a program. What the fuck, what the fuck, guys? I'm sorry, guys. I know, I know, it's all right. Luckily it's Mike Matthews and a good friend of ours who's pretty damn good at what he does too. I'm just busting your balls. You know, Kevin, one thing, before I answer your question, cause there's a few things in there that I want to address, but before I do, I want you to pay attention to the addictive qualities of exercise and keep that in check, okay? Because going to CrossFit makes a lot of sense when you ended one form of addiction, move to exercise. CrossFit's very, it fits into that category of overtraining, over application. You said cortisol junkie, it's a great, it feeds the itch. Yeah, so pay attention to that, keep that in check with exercise. So all right, let me answer your question with your workout. I'm gonna tell you something really cool. Working out where you do a few sets, take a break for an hour, 30 minutes, do another few sets, take a break for another hour, 30 minute, whatever and do it. That's an amazing way to work out. That is a phenomenal way to build lots of strength and muscle. Most people don't do it because it takes all day, but the fact that you're working a shift and you have that availability, take your whole workout and just chip away at it throughout the day and make sure to eat in between and take your time with what you're doing. Not only is it not gonna hurt you, but I would guess you're gonna probably see better strength gains than if you did all your workout all at once. So that's actually not a bad thing at all. As far as sleep is concerned, you're gonna have to consider how you feel when you go into the day that you're gonna work out. So if you had a crappy night of sleep the night before and you're going into another day and you're like, oh, I feel really tired and I don't know if I should be working out, I probably wouldn't or I'd go really light and just kind of go through the motion. But that's how you're gonna have to judge it. Don't judge it by what's gonna happen tonight because you don't necessarily know. Do it like the following day, like, okay, I feel crappy today, I think I'll skip today or I'll go really easy, like 30% intensity, just go through the motion just so I can move and feel okay throughout the day. That's how you should judge the sleep thing. And then when you do get the time to get sleep, prioritize it, you know, wear your blue light blocking glasses an hour before, make sure that it's a good setup, that you're going down, you're sleeping, you're not eating, you know, a couple of hours before bed so you can really capitalize on when you do get sleep. Did you, Kevin, did you listen to the first responder episode we did? I don't know if I have. Oh, you would know. We did want it actually for you. So if you go and YouTube or even Google search, I think it's first responders, Doug. If he has mind pump first responders, that should pop up, right? Yeah, if you go to mindpumppodcast.com and search it, I'm gonna see if I can get it right now. Thanks, Doug. I've looked it up before and I think all I had to do was go to just Google and go mind pump and first responders and it'll pop up. But yeah, Sal hit everything so there's not much for me to contribute to that, but if you wanted even more in depth, we went a whole hour, hour and a half conversation, specifically to first responders and all the different challenges that you guys deal with everything from mobility to rest to training frequency, everything. So if you want even further information, definitely listen to that. 1487. 1487. Episode 14. Now, Kevin, bigger, leaner, stronger, great workout. Mike Matthews knows his stuff, but I'm gonna send you Maps and a Ballot because I think it's better. So, super. Wow, I appreciate it very much. Thank you. No problem. And then again, if you gotta break the work, that's okay. Make the whole workout of Maps and a Ballot. Break it up so you're chipping away at it throughout the day. And of course, make sure to eat, don't skip meals and all kind of stuff. You're gonna do great. I mean, that's a phenomenal way to build strength really fast. It's really interesting. I've done it on Wicca. It's deceiving how awesome it is. Yes. Because you don't. It's just so inconvenient for people. You just don't get this crazy sweat or maybe as much of a pump or a burn as you do when you do everything in the hour, hour and a half. So, it's deceiving on how well it works. But if you do that consistently, and I've done this before, where since I've got a gym at home and now we have one here, I've played around with this where I'm breaking up my workout sometimes into two, three, sometimes even four little mini workouts. And I actually really like it. Yep. Wow. Okay. I was not expecting that, but that's good news. Yeah. All right, Kevin. We'll send you Maps and a Ballot, okay? And congratulations on being sober. That's incredible. Yeah, man. I appreciate that very much, guys. Thank you. You got it, brother. All right. It's got to be one of the most challenging type jobs, those shift work or... For sure. Yeah, any night shift especially. Yeah, because just the shift alone or the changing of the hours alone is detrimental to long-term health. So, it's like you got to counter that and then you're dealing with bad sleep and changes in diets. So, it's a really hard thing to manage. So, I'm glad you referred to that episode because we talked about all that. Yeah, that's why the advice is challenging because it's like, I mean, you're kind of just putting band-aids everywhere because it's not really ideal for health in general. And it's like, you can't tell somebody to quit their job, but here's what you need to consider to maintain some semblance of energy and health. Well, training is another stress on the body. And people like this have got more than the average person, right? That doesn't mean that somebody who doesn't have this job could potentially have more stress than this person. Of course that exists too. But right away, when I get a client that has a job like this or a swing shift or like the ER nurses, things like that, for sure I know that they're already carrying more stress than my average person has to. And so, you have to modify and accommodate the workouts to compliment that and not be working against your body and having to try and overcome all these different stress. I will say, if you're watching this and you have access to like a home gym and you wanna experiment with this all day workout. You've been touting that for a few years now. It's really crazy. I mean, you don't train at a super high intensity. You wanna keep it kind of moderate high, but literally I would do like five sets every other hour starting at 9 a.m. And I would have time for food and stuff. And it's really weird how the CNS starts to adapt. You get stronger as the day goes on. Then the next day. You get better at the lifts, the more intense. It's crazy. And the day after you did so much falling, you don't feel like you beat yourself up. You have to be careful. I've actually gotten really sore from training this way. I'm thinking I wouldn't get that sore. It's the total volume. Yeah, because you think that, you don't ever get that real sweat or a pump like I was saying. So you kind of think like, oh, that was nothing. And then you get that rest. Well, because you're recovering the whole time. Yeah, so then when you come back to the second 20-minute workout, you feel so refreshed. But then you add up the volume. Yeah, then you add it all up and you're like, oh, shit, I literally just did like two workouts built into one. 40 sets. 40 sets a lot. Yeah, then you feel it. So yeah, be careful because it is so effective. You'd be surprised on how little of effort it will feel putting towards it to have a great workout. Our next caller is Scott from New Jersey. Scott, what's happening? How can I help you? Great Scott! Hey guys, how you going? How's it going? Thanks for having my question. I really appreciate it. You got it. So currently I'm in phase two of MAPS OCR and the workouts going great. But I want to make sure that I'm hitting the right amount of calories. And so my question for you is I went online and I used a BMR calculator to figure out where I should start. And I kind of came up with a number of like 2,200 calories. And so I tracked those on an app, but I also use my watch to track all my activity levels. And that always by the end of the day could, depending on what exercises I do, could add on like 900, 800 more calories. So my question is what calories do I eat? Do I eat the calories, the 2,200, or do I take into account all the activities I'm doing? To make sure that I'm like maintaining my muscle or even building muscle. This is the drawback of all these tools right here. Is what happens to somebody who's trying to, do this for the first time and they've got referred to try, put your food in here and then get this calorie counter here and go check out this BMR thing online. Like the best way to do this is for to carve out a week or two of you consistently eating X amount of calories. And you can use these tools to give you a starting point on where maybe you're gonna do this X amount of calories, but you're really, you're not, don't hang on what they're telling you. Pay more attention to, hey, I've consistently eaten 2,400 calories for this last week while I'm doing these consistent activities and pay attention to how you feel, pay attention to what's going on with your weight. Are you dramatically dropping weight? Are you maintaining weight? Are you gaining weight? And then adjust your calories based off of that and not what these tools are saying. Because that's where you, they're great for feedback or another way for you to, just like the scale, same thing. Like this where the scale can be amazing or can be a pain in the ass. If you allow the scale, like because our goal let's say was weight loss and then the next day you get on the scale and it went up one pound, that doesn't necessarily mean you were doing anything wrong. You could have easily took in a little extra sodium, drank two glasses more of water and had 30 more carbs in that day. And that could make the difference one pound on your scale up. Yet you're programming your diet and everything is perfect. So the same thing works with these tools is, you know, just cause your thing says it, you burn 3,000 more calories than what you're eating. It doesn't necessarily need you the next day, you need to bump up a bunch of calories cause you're way too low. Pay attention and see how your body moves. Use these tools as just kind of feedback for you to kind of figure it out yourself, if that makes sense. Yeah, welcome to the mysterious world of metabolism. It's actually one of the most complex things that we've observed and it changes and it adapts and it moves. So what Adam says is 100% accurate. There's no precise way of really figuring out how many calories you burned. I mean, there's some really expensive testing that you could do. It would be super inconvenient and it wouldn't make any sense. You'd have to have access to very expensive equipment and it would be ridiculous. But so really it's just, watch the scale, watch how you feel. Am I going up in weight? Am I going down on weight? Do I have energy and strength? Do I feel good? That's the best gauge. It really isn't, these things are starting points, but... Right, the weird part about it is if I didn't have any way to track it or track my activities and I was just trying to eat, say the 2200 calories, the reason what was throwing me was like, how do I know I'm still in a calorie surplus or if I'm in a deficit? Gaining or losing weight. Yeah, yeah. That's it. And you won't know based off the tools, you'll know off of being consistent with eating a certain way and consistent with your training and then allowing that data, that feedback, i.e. the scale, strength, energy to give you feedback on, okay, am I too high a calories? Am I too low a calories? Am I in a sweet spot? And honestly, for someone like you, I really, I want you to be in that sweet spot. If I really don't want to see the scale go up much, I don't want to see the scale go down much, I want you to feel good. So I'm looking for a calorie range there where you feel like your performance is good. You're not seeing the way, and by the way, up or down one or two pounds. No, don't look at the daily fluctuations, look at it per week and use body fat tests if you want to get even more specific. If you have access to that. So you could test your body fat on a weekly basis, look at your weight on a weekly basis, then you can look at lean body mass versus fat mass, and then you have all the information you need to know if you're in a surplus or deficit. What do you say? Is it you, Adam, who, your beginner client that's coming in is usually two to two weeks to a month of just like tracking all the food intake and then for the most part, like the weight fluctuations with that, like it takes at least that amount of time to just get some semblance of like what's going on in terms of a maintenance caloric amount. And that's to me. The funny part about it was that since I started listening to you guys and it seemed like, you know what? I think a lot of times you guys are talking about eating more calories to bump up your metabolism. And I know I've always it's been hard for me to even eat 2000 calories. So this is like really pushing myself. But the thing that was interesting, I was 178 and I started eating a lot of calories and my weight started coming down them. Well, you know, here's something else. You've started building muscle problems. Yeah. And your metabolism, look, here's the deal. This is interesting now. If you increase your calories, this is for most people, just an increase in calories will cause the metabolism to speed up a little bit. Cutting calories will cause it to slow down a little bit. Okay. And this effect varies depending on the person and how long the surplus or deficit is happening. Like there's a range of calories that your current lean body mass will burn. On one end is less efficient. On the other end is more efficient. And the things that determine efficiency have to do with hormones and sleep. And if you're building muscle or not building muscle and strength and all that stuff. So just go, I would go week by week, look at the scale. And if you have access to a body fat percentage test, take that on a weekly basis, same day, same time. Make sure it's very consistent. And then calculate fat mass, lean mass, what's going on? Am I going up or am I going down? And then that'll tell you right there. And if you're going up, you're eating more than you're burning. If you're going down, you're eating less than you're burning. That's the bottom line. No matter what that number is, it's telling you if you're eating more or less than you're burning. Right. So I have access to like a scale that you stand on to do your percent body fat. And I also have the one that you can hold in your hands. Yeah. But I always get different numbers between the two. Whatever you use. So that's electronic impedance. It's one of the least accurate and easiest to get to fluctuate. So pick one, stick to that one. Do it the same time, the same day, and make sure you have the same amount of water and food in your system. Make everything as consistent as possible so that reading will give you, it'll tell you the trend up or down. Preferably in the morning on the same day of the week. So every Friday, first thing in the morning before you do anything. Yeah. Naked or just first thing. That's what you got to do. And that'll give you, and again, whether it says 60% body fat or 6% body fat matters less to me. It's that, that's the starting point. Let's adjust your diet to what we think you should be at. And then monitoring it week over week. Is it going up or down percentage or maintaining is how I'm going to adjust. I do not want to get caught up on the actual percentage that it says and worry about how it could be conflicting with another tool. It's like, they're all great tools. They really are, but they can get over complicated when we hang on the data that it's feeding us. And it's like, we're better off getting an idea from just tracking ourselves and figuring out where like what Justin was alluding to, that's how I start everybody is, I use all these tools. I love them. But before we even introduce them, I actually want them to figure out their way, long form, right? Or whatever you want to say, however you want to say that for lack of a better word of just figuring out yourself by tracking where your metabolism currently is. And that just takes a little bit of time for a couple of weeks. Tracking steps too with like a pedometer or a Fitbit or anything like that. Yeah, I use a Garmin watch. Okay, okay. Yeah, but no, I mean, everything we said, that's pretty much it. Just track it on a weekly basis and watch the trends. Don't get caught up so much on the number, but look at the trends, is it up or down? Right, so I'll just use one number for my calories and ignore the extra calories added back in from activities. Yeah, and then based on if you go up or down and body fat and weight and that, then you'll know if you need to add or drop calories. All right, thumbs up. Thank you. Right on Scott. Thank you very much guys. No problem. Yeah, it's really, that's the only way to do it is to track that way. Cause there's nothing is going to be precise or exact. Such individual variances. Yeah, it can change on a daily basis. Yeah, and they're all, these are all different tools. So they're all, you know, they're all giving him different feedback and it can get really confusing if you hang on, you know, precisely what it says, versus kind of taking all that data and getting like an idea, right? Of like, okay, well this says that I was probably too low of calories this week. Oh, and my body fat percentage actually went up because I'm so I'm probably losing muscle. So okay, let me increase like protein, a little bit of calorie. So you use it like that as a general way to give you an idea if I'm heading in the right direction, getting caught up on the, and this, I mean, you know, I used to have a lot of a lot of challenges with like my engineer clients who were like, so they weren't like. Yeah, live and die by the numbers. Yeah, they live and die by the numbers and they want to be like, and I'd always have to tell them like, ah, it's not, we can't do that because of what you brought up with the metabolism. The metabolism is so complex that it literally can change week to week. It's up and down. It auto adjusts all the time. Yeah, and only that, like, let's say we figure out exactly where your metabolism, and then like, And you just stick to that number for three weeks. Well, and then you have poor sleep for three days in a row, like changes, you know? So there's, you can't really get too hung up on these tools and, you know, marry the data that they're giving you. They're great to have. I don't like, I like them. I like having them, but this is where it becomes a problem when you hang on it like that. 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 health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. And you can only find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal.