 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer four fitness and health questions for, but we open the episode with current event conversation. We have some fun. We mentioned one of our sponsors. Here's what we talked about in this whole episode. We start out by mentioning Katrina and serial killers. Listen to the episode to find out why Adam got almost slapped in the face. Yeah. We tried to kiss her. I talked about how Apple and Microsoft combined have more worth on the stock market than all of Germany's stock market combined. America number one. USA. That's it. Then I talked about how the GDPs of U.S. states and how they match up to other countries, entire countries. We talked about college campus surveillance. I guess we can't watch and monitor kids enough, apparently. Then we talked about helicopter parenting and the challenges with our own kids. We talked about a duct-taped banana. Look that up. Apparently it's art. Then we talked about our new sponsor, Legion. Now Mike Matthews, good friend of ours. He owns the company Legion. They produce high-quality, high-performance supplements, so things like pre-workout supplements, protein powders. Now Legion only puts in supplement ingredients that are backed by science, actually backed by clinical studies, and he puts the right doses, full transparency. So if you look at the label, you'll see exactly how much there is of each thing. There are anyway good products all the way around, and we have a discount for you. So if you go to buylegion.com, that's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N, buylegion.com, forward slash mind pump, and use the code MindPump at checkout, you'll get 20% off your first order or receive double rewards points for existing customers. Massive hookup. Then we talked about the 6 million Google searches on CBD, and had a little discussion as to whether or not CBD was a bubble that was about to pop, or if it was going to continue to grow. CBD everywhere. And explode. Then we got into the fitness question. The first question was, what are some ways to improve squat depth and to prevent butt wink? So butt wink is when you squat down real low, and then your hips tuck underneath you. And then we had a discussion as to whether or not that should be fixed, and if we think it should be fixed. Not to be confused with the brown eye wink. How do we fix it? The next question, this person wants to know when they're bulking, in other words, their calories are higher and they're trying to gain muscle mass, size, and body weight. How much body fat is too much to gain? So we talk all about bulking there. The next question, this person went through a severe traumatic experience. They didn't work out. Their nutrition went bad. So they're taking a long break. How do they get back into training nutrition? So we talk about that. And the final question, this person wants to know, through our years of experience in the fitness space, what's the one biggest thing each of us has changed our opinion on in regards to fitness and nutrition? Also all month long, it's a brand new month, new year. Most of your goals are fat loss related. Most of you listening to this right now are like, hey, I want to burn off the body fat that I gained over the holiday season. The most effective maps program we have for pure fat loss, for short term fat loss, is maps hit, hit stands for high intensity interval training. Now this is high intensity interval training done the right way. It's all programmed out properly, so you're not just spinning your wheels on the dirt. You're actually burning body fat, preserving and building. There's cool mobility sessions in there too. There's also mobility sessions in there to work on mobility, because hit can be very intense. One of the hallmarks of it. Now that program, 50% off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapshit.com, that's M-A-P-S-H-I-I-T.com, and use the code HIT50-H-I-I-T-5-0, no space for the discount. I like that song you were singing, Justin. Yeah. Rico. Alea. Suave. Remember that song? No, I don't. You don't remember that? No. What was the name? Something like that. He was supposed to be like the sexy Latin dude. How far back? How far back? This was like 90s, early 90s. Oh, this was like high school? He was early 90s? Yeah, early. Maybe mid 90s. Really? You wore jeans and like... Yeah, like shredded jeans, and he had like a bandana. And like cowboy boots? And he was kind of fit? Early-earred. Yeah. Oh my God. I don't remember. I don't. I don't. Suave. Yeah. You don't remember that? No, I don't. Oh, the girls in San Jose lost their minds? Everybody's singing it. I wasn't in San Jose at the time. I was in Cowboy Capital of the World at the time. Oh, you didn't have a lot of Hispanic? Yeah, yeah. You were the only Hispanic person? Yeah, I was. And I only have a quarter of representation. Keep country! Oh, no. In San Jose, they went fucking nuts for him. Yeah, they weren't doing that over at Oakville. He had one song though, right? That was it. Doug, can you bring him up? Gerardo G. It's a G-E-R. It's another one of those kind of one-hit-wonder people, right? There was a bunch of those. He's right there, bro. Yes. I do remember now. Do you remember that, dude? I do. He's got the big hoop earring in the bandana. What happened? It's a great look. Dude, he was fit too. Remember, in the video, he's all like kind of jacked a little bit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like rocking the six-pack. Wow, I can't believe you remember this. Dude, he was getting... It's like the whole Right Said Fred era. You know, like, I'm too sexy for my shirt. Too sexy for my shirt. So sexy. It hurts. Everything was about sex. It was. Yeah. But this guy got way more girls than Right Said Fred. Now, how do you know that? Probably, I don't know. I guess because the Files are girls. I'm glad you called it out. I'm glad you called it out. I'm tired of always calling out his random facts. I feel like Right Said Fred did pretty good. You think so? I guarantee it. He's more popular. I mean, he might be on the other team. You just saw a picture of Gerardo. Right, pull him up then. Look up Right Said Fred. Who would you rather go out with? He had, like, a mesh shirt and everything. Well, the guy tried hard. Who was more famous? Right Said Fred, that video went crazy. There was like two guys. But look at that. Look at that right there. Tell me, if you had to pick, who would you go out with? Him or freaking Gerardo? Well, neither one of them are my type. What's your type? Who's your type? I typically like females. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's that. Well, that's not how you play this game. That's why I think that. That's breaking the rules, Adam. That's not fun at all. We're getting literal now. Dude, you know what's annoying to me? Do you guys see these? Which I'm going to offend a lot of people. So if you have kids and do this with your kids, totally fine. If you don't have kids, why are you doing this? These are the Christmas pictures where you got the boyfriend and the girlfriend and they're wearing like matching. Yeah, pajamas. Oh, bro. You can't call that out. You are going to offend like 90% of the population. You know the girlfriend convinced the guy, right? Let's take a picture. It's like the shirts that are like, I'm with her. Every guy was convinced to wear that. If you wanted Christmas sex, dude, you can't hold it against that guy. I feel like they're the same people that have like joint Instagram accounts. You know what I mean? No. The same people that are like way too into Disney. They're making trips. Without the kids. We didn't have matching pajamas by any means, but I will defend those guys out there that are rocking that for sure they were told by their wives that they wanted Christmas. If they wanted those cookies, they better fucking get on the pajama train. Christmas cookies. You want Santa's cookies. You want Mrs. Claus' cookies. You better fucking have some of them cookies. Put on the foot pajamas. I don't want to. Okay. No cookies for you. Speaking of trying to get some last night, I totally fucking, I haven't seen a dirty look from Katrina in a long time when I got one last night. A good dirty look? Like a mean look. She don't give me those like mad at you looks. What'd you do? Well, I didn't know that she was, first of all, I didn't know she was asleep. I mean, maybe because she got up throughout the night. Maybe because her eyes were closed? Maybe, maybe it was all the sleepless night and then getting up at five o'clock to go to work all day long. And I was wondering why she fell asleep at 10 o'clock where we're watching a show. So I'm watching season two of You. Oh, I started it. Yeah. So did I. Just get ahead of me. It's two episodes. Oh, so did I. Okay. So I'm on episodes so then you'll appreciate this. This show big time. So and my new thing right now. So I bought this thing on Amazon. They had this, this, I don't know how long this technology existed. I know it didn't exist five or six years ago when I was looking for it before, but you now can get Bluetooth little things that hook to your TV. So multiple headphones can be attached to it. Wireless. So two or three people can watch something with headphones. Yes. Oh, cool. And it's really cool for me because Katrina's been driving me crazy. I've got this badass round sound. I was asleep at seven o'clock and she's like always turning it down. I'm like, I can't even fucking hear it. And if you're doing anything in the house, like it making a noise, I can't hear anything. So I ordered this and I saw I got my headphones on, right? So I can't hear her. I don't know if she's sleeping or anything. She's, she's next, laying next to me. And it's on the second, second episode of You. And the guys, you know, gives her kisses the girl the first time, you know, and it's like just a super romantic kiss. And I, and I grab her face and I, and I whisper in her ear, I want to kiss you like a serial killer. Oh, wow. Yeah. She like rolls over and looks at me and gives me like the dirtiest look ever. And then I pulled my headphones to the side to like, like, I could tell she's going to say something to me. Why the fuck would you do that? It's like, honey, I'm just, I'm just trying to kiss on you or whatever. She's like, I was sleeping. Did you not notice I was sleeping? I'm like, oh, okay. My bad. We're trying to do a nice thing. I thought so too. I said it in a weird way. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Like, how do you kiss someone like a serial killer there? Yeah. In other words. Aggressively. In other words, stay asleep. Let me go to work. Let me kiss you while you sleep. I don't know what it is about that show that I like. I think it's so good. It's got, that last season was really good. They did a, you know what I like? I really appreciate really original content. It's hard to make super original content in the, in a copycat world we live in today and so many of the great hits that we, everything from music to movies we watch are remakes of something older. It's such an original spin on serial killers. It gives you this inside look of what goes on in their head. I also feel like the second season is going to have a lot of weird twists. So far it's a little unpredictable. I don't want to ruin it for people, but there's definitely stuff happening that I'm thinking, this is going to be different. It's going to be different than the first season. It is. But it gets you inside his mind and you can't help but watch it and go like, oh man, now I get it. Like this is, this is what goes on in their head when, when they do, because you always see, hear of crazy shit and you go, what the fuck is wrong with these people? How do you get to this point where you do something like that? And you just write them off as crazy or psycho, which they are a little crazy. But when you start to listen, yeah, when you listen to the self talk that he's having in the show, the way they like, oh dude, remember Ted Bundy justifying it the whole way. Remember Ted Bundy? They caught him. He was in jail. He escapes and he had to kill like four women. And one night he had, it's like he had this damn, this crazy urge. And as soon as he got out, he's like, I got to go on a bender. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's like this crazy impulse pent up. So disgusting. Dude, I was, I was looking up some economic statistics the other day and I came across some crazy insane statistics. Check this out. I was going to blow you guys' mind. I've never said that as a sentence, by the way. As a sentence. Yeah. Dude, I was. It's just some crazy economic statistics. It's going to blow your mind. Hold on. Hold on to your shorts. Yeah. That's how I turn on Justin. I'm ready. Did you see the economics? Did you see the question that Justin sent over to the mind pump thread? No. And I posted on the people's prediction of what we were like in high school. Oh, no. What did they say? Oh, it's so funny, dude. I'll read it later. I posted it on my story. So it's in my story. So, so no, this is actually, this is wild, right? So the combined market cap of Apple and Microsoft by themselves. So just Apple and Microsoft is $250 billion higher than the entire market cap of the German stock market. Wow. So two companies have the more higher value Apple and Microsoft than all of the German stock market combined. How insane is that? Two companies. Two companies right there. Here's another one. I did. I looked up the US state GDP. So these are like the gross domestic product of individual states. And they compared them to other countries. You know that California's GDP, just California is equivalent to the United Kingdom. Just California. Texas is equal to the entire country of Canada. Just one state. Just to show like the economic magnitude and power of this country. Do you ever, I mean, what's your thoughts like if we were to divide us up more like our states would have more liberty per state? Because of that. They're almost like countries by themselves. Oh, on their own? Yeah. I don't know if that's a good idea. I think that the way that we have it designed to where... I think it's worth exploring the idea or at least having conversation around it. Wow. Because you know what will happen, right? Everybody will kick California out. First thing. First thing. They'll be like, get out of here. Yeah. I think it would be interesting, but the way that it's designed I think is smart because the states do have a certain amount of power over how they run themselves. And so you can see what is more, you know, what way is more effective than the other. One of the best ways you can do that is by see, by watching migration of people. So which states are attracting more people and which states are losing people. And for example, California has been bleeding residents for a while now and it's been losing people to the second most... Is it still, are we still like technically year over year it's actually losing? Is that true, Doug? Yeah. It definitely feels that way. I know a lot of my friends have left. I feel like people always still migrate to the water and the coast. It's so unreasonable. We do, but we have, it's a net loss. More people leave. I'm curious. That's true. More people go to, like a lot of state people go to Texas. Now that's interesting to me because our housing market continues to rise year over year, decade over decade. It depends on where jobs here. Yeah, you would think that it would be... It depends where. It depends where in California. So like the housing, the houses in the Bay Area and the coast, Southern California, that is continues to climb. But that's also a, that's also a product of the supply, the supply of, yeah, see, there you go. From 2000, well, that's a, it's not super recent. Yeah, but that gives you an idea still. Yeah. Wow. I did not know that. But I mean, it feels like a lot of things are trying to look elsewhere. Like it's a plant other locations and then eventually like take all the employees and go in that direction. It just doesn't feel like it's sustainable the way that like California is taxed. No, the supply of houses is low. That's one of the reasons why it's so expensive. Part of the reason is because of the regulations that we have for building. Yeah. It's hard and expensive to build new properties. So you have a lot of people fighting for fewer homes. Of course, the pay in the Bay Area and the coast is really, really high. California, though, has the highest poverty rate and it also has the highest disparity between wealthy and the poor. And you know this when you drive through California. Oh, it's very visible. Oh, yeah, there's parts of California. You think it's a completely different, you know. It's like a wasteland in certain parts. Totally. Totally. But yeah, no crazy, though. And so most of that GDP from California comes from the Bay Area and the coast, the vast majority of it. The rest of it's like agriculture and stuff. Damn. Anyway, kind of cool. Wow, that's super interesting. Did you see it? You know that they're doing this in college campus. I know Syracuse does this and there's a couple other big colleges that are doing this where they are like full-time monitoring the students through Bluetooth. What do you mean full-time monitoring big brother stuff? Yeah. So like all the class and they originally did it for attendance to encourage kids to show up to class and to penalize them for not going to class. So they have all in all the classrooms, the library, all these places all over the campuses. There is Bluetooth and then it picks up the kid's phone. So the kid walks into a classroom. It registers that oh, he made it to his third-period class. See, I would hack that and just give it to somebody to sit in for me. Oh, I'm sure so. You know, like there's always ways around that. You know, it's funny. You would do that. I would do that, too. But kids today would look at leaving their phone with somebody else for an hour and a half. That's a good point. Oh my God. That'd be like giving him up. You get another phone. There's no way, no way a 17-year-old kid can give him the shitty phone. He's right. You just get a different phone. Well, you're not a rich kid. How many kids could afford two iPhones? I mean, the ones that go to college. What do you mean? What do I mean? Who do you know that has two without it's not a drug dealer? Bro, most kids, what are you, 1990 right now? Most kids have two iPhones? I have an old one and then a new one. Yeah, you get the old shitty one. You got to pay for two separate phones if you want them both to work. Not the Bluetooth. The Bluetooth, I think, so. I don't think you need to connect to it anyways. You can connect to Wi-Fi. Yeah, it's a terrible argument. You can connect to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth without having a phone being active. I know this because I feel like there's a will, there's a way. Yeah, I think you figured that out. At that point, it's just easier to go to fucking class. It's like you're trying to hack the system so bad you're spending money on two cell phones. I mean, I would just do that as like a point, you know, like stop monitoring me. You know, it's funny about that with kids because I'm dealing with this with my kids. So my son has, he has a cell phone. My daughter has an iPad now. She got for Christmas. And my ex-wife put all these like parental controls and all these different things on them. And I laugh because I'm like, you really think that we're more tech-savvy than these kids? Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Well, so this was the reason why I brought it up was there's a little bit of debate around whether this is good or bad. And some people are complaining that it's a bad strategy to encourage kids to go to class by trying to, you know, fear, get them from fear, say, oh, you know, you're going to get penalized if you don't go to class. How much are we going to monitor kids? You know what I'm saying? At some point, then they have to kind of grow up and deal with their own consequences. So that's the point, right? So that's why I was curious to hear your guys' opinion with kids that are older that are heading that direction like, you know, do you want to monitor one? Do you want to encourage them to do things? Is using tech in this this way a good thing? Or is it more just, you know, more helicopter parenting? Oh, yeah. That's an extension of helicopter parenting. A lot of lessons have been stretching out now for decades. I mean, obviously we were more watched than our parents were and they were more watched in there and just keeps growing. Kids now don't even get driver's licenses until they're 20. You know, I know a lot of kids, 20 years old, no driver's license. My fear is just not the good motivator. You know, like they're never going to like become what, you know, what you think they're going to become if they're just like basing all their decisions off of fear. Totally. Totally. Wasn't that long ago where you left the house and you were gone? Yeah. You know what I mean? We got to wait until you know where you're at, you know? Now they have like watches. I know like some, some of these other parents that we hang out with are always like trying to convince me it's a good idea to have these watches for the kids. So it's like, you know exactly where they are based off the satellite. So they just like if they walk on the playground, you know, they're off at this like beer garden doing their thing and the kids are just kind of like the corner of my eye seeing them, you know, visibly. Like so I'm like still kind of, that's a part of me. I want to be able to be there physically, you know, for a while until they get a little bit older. Are there things right now that you guys are both currently going through like with the age of your kids that you're, what's like the most challenging thing right now? Like that you, you wrestle with yourself or with your partners like on how to handle or not handle like what is current because I know you have different ages. So Justin, what are the things that you and the boys that you and Courtney wrestle back and forth with as far as like should or shouldn't do or maybe one's too conservative about something and one's too liberal about something. I think I've stretched, I'm more pushing for them to have more autonomy and like do things to figure things out for themselves and like one of those is walking the dog and like going a little bit further. Like so, like they have like a trail that now I've convinced Courtney it's okay. Like they can go by themselves with the dog and they go for a certain amount of time and you know, if they don't come back within that time then we can sort of walk out but like she like it makes her sweat. Where are they? Where are they? And the other one was like like taking the bus because she's always like been picked up and dropped off at school forever. I'm like, they don't need to do that. They just jump on the bus with their friends. Yeah, come home and then walk home. Like that's all part of the experience. Like picking them up all the time and like babying them. But yeah, I'm always the one that's a little bit more trying to stretch so they so they can like like work through this more freedom, more challenge, more freedom, more challenge. Did you guys take the bus when you were kids? Yeah. You did? Yes, I never did. I never took the bus. I didn't just take the bus, bro. I walked for miles. I'm that, I'm that bullshit story that like old grandmothers make up about walking I literally walk miles to my bus stop. Okay. I live in the country. So when you live in the country, it's not like the city is up. Yeah. When you live in the country and you know and every house has got you know you know quarter miles between each house the bus stops at one spot and the 30 houses that are within a 10 mile radius have to all You have to drive your kids to the bus stop and drive them off. I mean if we were lucky my mom would drive us to the bus stop but no, most more often than not we had to walk to the bus stop and when I went to my first year high school, I was in the small town that I was in literally had 55 students in the whole high school. Oh, wow. And I didn't want to go there. Was it a barn? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. So I didn't want to go there. The next like legit high school that had like sports and a like a normal high school that had thousands of kids was a good hour and 20 minutes away from me which is up in Mariposa. And so I used to have to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning hoof it to the first bus stop where I would pick me up at like 5.30 in the morning and I'd get on that bus all by myself would be the first bus that bus would then link up with another bus by like 6.15 and then I'd catch that bus and ride that for the rest of the hour hour and a half till we get to school. What'd you do on the bus that whole time? I lay in the back because I was the only kid so I'd get all the way in the back and I would lay across the aisle and sleep and then she'd wake me up when we get to the next bus exchange and then I'd go climb on the bus again fall asleep until kids start piling in like a half hour later or so so I'd sleep that was my routine Do you have like good conversations with the bus driver? No I was all in the back I'd go all the way to the back of the bus and yeah no you're if you sat in front of the bus you're a dork you're a dork so you went to the back of the bus I used to walk because our house was close to the school so I would just walk to school so I never took the bus except for field trips and I thought the bus was cool although it is interesting that you know right? yeah strange it's so liberating though I love it and they haven't changed the design that much haven't they? they're like tanks dude yeah I feel like you know what it is right they have contracts with these bus makers they have no incentive to create why innovate? exactly the state's gonna buy your bus anyway so it's gonna look the same you're gonna have bunches where kids it still works slide all over so what about yours right now what's the biggest thing that you wrestle with right now? you know both of my kids sometimes can be a little bit perfectionist and so what I struggle with is I really monitor make sure they're not doing too much because my son will do hours of homework and my daughter will do her homework she'll do her projects an hour early excuse me a week early and sometimes they get a little stressed out so really that's the big struggle is are they pushing themselves too hard how do I get them to kind of pull back a little bit oh my god my kids are too good I have to hey you know what that can be just as big that can be a big problem dude your son is grinding right now I'm impressed he does but then he comes out of his room and he looks like a zombie looks like a ghost yeah and I'm like you need some sunlight buddy let's go sit in the backyard for a little bit yeah dude you get some sunlight on your face but they seem to like it they seem to enjoy it I'm just keep going with his friends are they going through the same thing that go to school with him they do but then in the weekends when he's like free or whatever they'll get out on video games for hours at a time yeah and part of me doesn't want them to do that part of me wants to but that's the way that they connect because you work so hard I want to let them do that it's an outlet it's a fun thing that they do so it's like it's hard to take that away it is and that's how they connect nowadays they don't really go over and if they do go over each other's houses you know what they do play video games they'll set their computers up next to each other and then play video games video games are awesome it's tough I get it actually I saw a study that showed that there were the connection between there was a connection between social media and TV usage to anxiety and depression but they did not connect they weren't able to connect video games to that isn't that weird so kids who played a lot of video games they weren't able to find a connection between that and anxiety and depression but people who are on social media a lot and watching TV a lot that was connected so I wonder if it's because are they like because they're working together they're problem solving together it's not just like some bullshit like exchanges on social media I think so your brain thinking about how your brain is having a war yeah I mean the games today one of the reasons why I can't play video games with kids anymore is they just got so complex I mean now they got 12 buttons and there's like so many maps are so vast yeah you gotta memorize all the map stuff you gotta all the combinations I mean it gets you can't come into it and like play it and be good at it sometimes at playing you gotta play a lot yeah it's funny because I was like really close to getting the new like the PS4 not even the new ones like old now but because it came out that new Star Wars game like oh my god I can't wait but I was like hesitant cause you know obviously the kids like to get really into it and so this year I tried to gift things that were still promoting outdoor play and everything and like just like experimenting with other stuff and you know I was like but my youngest I built this this tether ball set up outside and he's fucking he's out there for three hours straight just by himself like I'm getting better I'm getting better just punching it that made me so happy like inside I was like ah that was a win do they still do tether ball at schools? yeah that was a fun yeah he's like all about it dude yeah that was a really fun game no I watched my kid play like a first person shooter or whatever and I don't understand what's happening he'll move and jump and bounce and then boom take someone out with a headshot and I'm like how did you how did you know when to you know they're just so good and I think that kind of high and high coordination and I think because of that I think that's why there's not the same connection as there is to like watching TV just because that's kind of mindless right you watch TV and there's not a lot you sit there and social media you're watching other people have a better life than you or whatever and making yourself feel kind of bad about yourself and then with video games or at the time that he's playing he's on his headphones and he's talking to his buddies and they're yelling and having a good time you can create things dude that's the thing like even Minecraft like you can just create so many things new worlds now the thing with my friends and I were like just like that too like we did the same thing we were crazy where we hooked up TVs and did that where all day we played but we did we kind of self-regulated like our parents would let us do that for three days straight if we wanted to five, six hours we'd be like let's go play ball for a while and then we go play ball outside for a while and take a break from it and then come back in and play again like that was kind of like a weekend we'd go over to each other's house and it would be split up between playing either basketball or football and playing video games old night yeah and exactly you rotate you muck out for a few hours and then you're done and then you go play some sports and then you come back and you do that otherwise you do you feel like a zombie and you're there at the screen for like you'd feel it your eyes get all groggy and you feel all yeah so oh I can see it man he comes out of his room and I'm like whoa but here's some here's some food and some sunshine let's go get some let's get you the sun hey have you guys seen the world have you guys seen the duct tape banana phenomenon that's happening right now but what you guys haven't seen it either is this another challenge or something no, no okay so I didn't know what this was all of a sudden bananas the shit it's like and I'm like what the fuck is this so I google it and I start looking into it like onto things like they're duct taping bananas everywhere yeah they're what's happening now the phenomenon is everybody is doing it and making fun of it but what happened was an artist I think it was a Miami art show just a couple weeks ago or a week ago even though it's just very recent duct taped a banana against a canvas as a piece of art and it auctioned off at like $150,000 no it didn't and he sold like four of these no it didn't $100,000 $150,000 between I think that's the most frustrating form of art multiple when they do shit like that you know what I feel like it's an empty box I feel like the people that buy shit like that are it's just a way of showing off like they have so much money exactly so I was reading articles on it I'll buy that all these reviews and that's one of the things that someone's saying is like can you consider art and one of the guys that I was listening to that was doing a review on it was like listen if someone creates something or does something and calls it art it's art doesn't mean it's good art it's art it is what it is and people that are somebody these millionaires and billionaires that are spending $150,000 it's as the same as you or I putting a quarter in a bubblegub machine it's funny you see a stupid little toy that you would probably never play with you'll probably throw it in the trash the ratio of how much money you make to 25 cents is that $150,000 to a billionaire is like a quarter to us no that makes sense and so it's funny to be with all your friends and be like $100,000 $120,000 $130,000 $150,000 for a tape banana that's right for a duct tape banana you got it now that's the kind of stuff that makes people pissed off you know what I mean well yeah of course then there's outrage people that are homeless people people who need food or whatever and you're buying a duct tape banana for that joke that's crazy you know there was this one woman you want to talk about crazy art she would take colored liquid give herself an enema and she'd spray it on a big piece of paper just squat over and just squat yeah and she would paint that way wow she'd paint by spraying out I mean at least there's a talent there I mean I don't how good can you be was it Bob Ross good no no I don't think it literally this is a happy cloud yeah well people I think would pay to watch her do this they'd watch her create her art by spraying it's kind of hot liquid no what kind of hot not really that's weird Adam you just you just went too far that's disgusting I'm going to change the subject real quick dude so Legion yeah congratulations I feel like he's been trying for a while Sal and Mike have been working on this for a long time yeah Sal had been trying to convince us for a long time to do this and work with Mike and I mean Mike's a great friend of all of ours oh he's a great guy well you know the supplement space is full of just charlatans shenanigans just riddled with garbage especially the you know muscle building fat loss kind of like that more the performance driven supplement so I'm going to talk about Mike is first of all he doesn't overhype his product so if you watch his commercials or his ads he doesn't sell it like it's magic he's always very honest this is how it works this is what it does reasonable doses this is what it doesn't do then his products have the only things that have clinical evidence he doesn't ever put ingredients that he only puts stuff in there that's got evidence and then he puts the doses the efficacious dose so you know if studies show that for example you know theanine works with caffeine which it does he's going to put what the studies show to be the efficacious dose he's not just going to sprinkle in which I think you have to talk about that for a minute because this is what the people that are making the most money in the supplement it's huge and the average person like the average consumer that's buying supplements knows what creatine is they know what citrulline is they know what beta-aline is they know what BCAAs are but they don't know what the studies say about how much of that you should take to get the maximum amount of they're just looking for more or they're just looking for it they're just looking for it if I can put a BCAA in there if I can put a citrulline in there I can put a beta-aline in there I can throw a creatine in there throw some caffeine in there and all you have to do is put a little bit in there just to show it on my label that it's there put a lot of caffeine a little bit everything else right people are going to feel it and they're going to feel like oh wow this is working because I can feel the caffeine which is really cheap for you to put the ones out there again because it's got stuff where there's actual you know evidence to show that it will improve the performance of your workout and he has it in doses that the studies support so like you know like when you look at like beta-aline for example beta-aline in studies you need to take like three grams of it for it to really for you to really get any kind of a performance benefit a lot of companies will put one gram in it or 500 milligrams sometimes they'll be smaller than a gram so it looks like oh my God this has 500 but that's only half of a gram or you know theanine for example studies show that a one to one ratio or sometimes a two to one ratio of theanine to caffeine is what's efficacious he puts that in his pre-workout so his and everything's very transparent he doesn't use proprietary blend so you see exactly what's in there and then the people who buy his product here's what really sold me is that the people that buy his products continue to buy his products and he's got such good ratings because of all the stuff that I talked about so you know for those reasons it's like the integrity well I mean since day one the message from us has always been to target all of all of your nutrients through that's and he says that in his ass and here but there's still people that the high performance level that you know the 1% difference they're hitting all strides and now this is another thing and we get asked all the time and I've been referencing Mike I know I tell people about it anyway I've been driving people to his business for you know that ask me where would you get a reputable creatine who do you think is the best pre-workout who do you like for whey protein in his directions but so officially now mine pump and Legion are partnered up we have some really cool things another thing too that obviously made the difference was you know we didn't want to just do you know repping Legion we also wanted to work like a partnership with Mike and create something together which I'm excited that we're going to do some stuff in the first quarter that will probably announce that and the end of January February time we're going to be working with him so I'm super excited just to be working with a good buddy of ours I mean Mike's such a great guy and look forward to what we'll be doing with him in the future I have something that I wanted to tell you guys too bro your dog just fucking he just he just dropped the worst far ever and it's like totally pointed it's pointed right at you dude bro I can't even great move Adam breathing through my mouth isn't working the funny part you can bomb bro bad yeah they are bad you know what's funny though is when it's really bad and it wakes him up so the funniest thing ever will be he'll be sleeping like he is right now when we're watching movies it's all confusing oh yeah he gets up he's looking around like bro that was you dude that was you that just woke yourself up it's funny because it smells like dog food poop I can almost smell the dog food that eats plus poop I'm so glad that's aimed right at you that's so bad that's terrible that's terrible anyway I started interrupting no I was going to bring up so I was reading this article on Google searching for CBD and 2019 they're hitting like over 6 million searches for Google and they project that to increase by another 120% over 2020 so the market I mean it's now surpassed acupuncture meditation all these other it's legal in all states now right the hemp version it's not legal everywhere but and those states that it is legal it's obviously searched more so that was in the article and that's part of the prediction of why it will continue to grow at the rate that it is as far as searching it's because of that because as more states come on board it's just gonna naturally more people will be searching it but I mean it's a bubble there's gonna be a pop it's cool it's the cool thing right now there's just everything and then there's a huge novelty aspect of it where a lot of people have heard about it when you say bubble stuff I don't sometimes when you reference that it's the wrong time to say it and what I mean by that is I don't think if it's a bubble and it eventually burst everything reaches a peak and tops out eventually right everything does nothing goes on forever and keeps rising rising rising eventually you max out on how many people reach right so what Bubble to me is something that bursts and goes all the way back down. When this burst, I bet you it doesn't even go back down to what it's searching right now. So if it's getting sick. Like plateau. Right, exactly. So if it's getting six million hits right now, and let's just say hypothetically, it rises to a hundred million hits a month. And the bubble burst, it ain't gonna come back down, it's gonna come back down, but it ain't gonna burst all the way below six million. It'll level out at 50 million. So it's still gonna grow way more. So here's why I think it's gonna burst because I know what CBD does. I know what it doesn't do. I know what the other cannabinoids do and what they don't do. And a lot of the products that are out there right now that are getting sold are promising things like fat loss and muscle recovery and they're putting it in ice cream and they're putting it in water and they're putting it in burgers. It's, they're selling it as a novelty. That's what they're selling. So like why would you put CBD, for example, in a burger? There's no reason other than people hear the word CBD and wanna try it out. Here's what I think. I think that it's not gonna burst because what I think is going to happen when it does finally peak and it does, you start to see it slow up or even potentially slowly come back the other direction, then it's gonna start to drive prices down because right now the margins are ridiculous in it. I know what you can make it for, okay? I know what it takes to do that and extracting CBD is not that expensive. If you have the tools and resources to do it, you can mass produce it. And right now people are making tons of fucking money off of it and that will eventually end. Right, that'll end because you're gonna get a lot of people entering the market. They see the margins, but the competition is gonna bring prices down. But because of how cheap it's going to be and how readily available it will be because it's a fucking weed that anybody can pretty much grow, I think it'll be around forever and I think we'll continue to see it in almost everything and it will become like fucking oregano in your cupboard. Like, you know, just be, everybody will have it and you'll just throw it in stuff or use it or it'll be infused and everything. No, I think what's gonna, here's what I think is gonna happen is that people are gonna, the more studies are gonna come out showing that CBD does alter the way that the liver metabolizes certain drugs and vitamins, so there's gonna be a little bit of controversy around that. There's gonna be studies and stuff that are gonna come out saying, hey, CBD does this, but it doesn't do all this other stuff. People are gonna have tried it because it's everywhere. The novelty will wear off. Right now, again, if you go to buy ice cream, you've heard of CBD and you see ice cream like, this has CBD in it. Let's try it out. You know, it's got some weed in it or whatever. Then you eat the ice cream and be like, I don't notice anything. Novelty's over. So I think we're gonna see, it's gonna keep climbing. The novelty still is exploding, but at some point people are gonna get over it. The ones that are really getting benefits from it are gonna keep using it, but most of the hoopla that's going on right now, that's gonna drop off and you'll just see the market come up and then boom, drop right back down to the kind of this baseline because although it does have some application, it doesn't have these broad, crazy applications. I don't think we've reached the baseline. Oh no, no, it's still climbing. Yeah, that's why I say it's not like a bubble, a bubble that's going to burst. Well, if and when it does, it's gonna be still significantly higher. I give it five to 10 years. That's how much I give it. About five to 10 years and I see that the market for it's gonna- Well, I'm curious, which states? Like it's not legal. Like how many are left? There's still a gray area in some states where you can say hemp oil, but you can't say CBD. Yeah, yeah. Part of that, there's this fight to regulate CBD because pharmaceutical companies are selling drugs that have CBD and as a pharmaceutical company, you're selling a CBD medicine and then you've got- And you wanna eliminate competition. You've got competitors who are selling it on the open market, don't require a prescription. That's not gonna look good for you. You want something that's kind of protected. Well, I think that we're gonna see that. Like it eventually is gonna hit like your big pharmaceutical companies and then you're gonna be able to get like these super potent high-dose pills that are, that was already starting to happen when I was in the club. So it's only a matter of time before like your company that you're invested in is gonna start putting out pills like that for people. They are, they already have two, I believe medications already approved that contain CBD. One of them was a more recent one for certain types of epilepsy, especially in children. I think I don't remember what the name of it was, but it was a really, really terrible form. And it's got, it's very efficacious for it. They're doing a lot of studies on CBD and other issues. There's some cancer studies. There's some autism studies. But what they're gonna find and what they're finding is that that a combination of cannabinoids is more effective than just purified CBD. So, but it's gonna be interesting. The part, here's what I'm excited for. This is what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to the cancer studies because I've seen the preliminary studies. I've seen the animal studies. That doesn't guarantee anything, but I've also heard the anecdotes from people. I think what we're gonna see in the future are cannabinoid-based cancer therapies that are gonna be used in combination with traditional therapies. So, rather than taking X amount of chemo, you can take half as much chemo if you combine it with these cannabinoids and it seems to be- Yeah, to mitigate some of the effects. Not only that, but it's showing effectiveness to kill the cancer cells. That's gonna be exciting. And the reason why that's exciting is because we really haven't seen something that can reduce chemo or even replace it for cancer treatments. Plus, imagine the news headlines. New cancer treatment that's non-toxic. That'll blow things up. So, we'll see what happens. Autism is another interesting one. There's some interesting studies on cannabinoids. Definitely a lot of directions that can go still. So, yeah, I definitely think there's, it's gonna be a while before we see anything like start to decline. Yeah, I even think five years is an early call. I mean, it takes a long time just for research and studies to happen and we're gonna start seeing more and more stuff come out to your point that you're talking about right now. It'll take three to five years just for that. For the, yeah, pharma companies will take a long time. Yeah, for sure. And as more headlines start posting like that, it's only gonna drive the, for the- Right, because you get the knockoffs, you know, selling the oils. So, here's what I predict. I predict the CBD market will start to top out and then what they'll do is they'll start to come out with other cannabinoids and hyping the benefits of them. So, like, CBC, for example, has some pretty interesting effects. It's also non-psychoactive. So, a company will come out and say, hey, you know- Do you think that'll happen before we start to get the studies to back up, isolating each one of those compounds is beneficial? Yes, because right now it's all hype, you know? Like, look at all the, look at the vast majority of companies that are selling CBD products are selling them without any scientific, and they're selling them for reasons that are not backed at all. There's like fitness bodybuilding supplements that contain CBD and you wonder, for what? What's that in there for? It's just because it's the cool thing. You know, it's the next cool thing or whatever. Just smash it in there. Yeah, so no, I think they're gonna, I think they're gonna start selling other cannabinoids isolated and then people will be like, I tried CBD, but now let me try- Well, that's why the research is so important. So, it's like, now you know like the true benefits in the usage of it, you know? You can see the direction, you know, you need, we need to go with it. Yeah, well, and the other thing I think is, I think pharmaceutical companies are gonna start to really figure out how they work and then start to synthesize synthetic cannabinoids that are not the same ones. For two reasons, one, you can patent it because you created it, and two, if the pharma industry can figure out a way to maximize the good effects and eliminate or minimize the psychoactive effects, then that might get pretty interesting because especially with cancer, there seems to be a dose-dependent effect. Like the more you take, this is according to the studies I've seen, the more you take the more of an effect it has on cancer, but you get limited, right? You can't take, you know, 5,000 milligrams of THC because yeah, you might, you know, maybe it'll have an effect on cancer, but you'll lose your mind, which is I don't know if that's not really a good trade. I don't know if that's a good trade, yeah. All right, first question is from Kay Gorsky, 88. What are some ways to improve squat depth and to not buttwink? Mm, a good old buttwink. Yeah, well, I think we first, let's address buttwink first, and then we can talk about squat depth because there's a lot of controversy around buttwink. There's a camp that will say it's very natural. Yeah, some of it's okay. Yeah, it's very natural to have your tailbone tuck as you hit, as you hit all the way down in a deep astagrass squat, and that's completely natural and normal and safe to do it. And then there's the other camp that's like, oh, any sort of movement in the tailbone at the bottom of a squat is dangerous. In my experience, the way I help somebody figure this out for themselves, if it's something that is potentially dangerous for them, I've found that it's really obvious when it's an excessive buttwink. You'll actually feel your, in your erector spinae, you'll feel those muscles so your low back feels like it's on fire. This was me, so I had an excessive buttwink when I did really deep squats. So this is when you squat to the bottom and your tailbone tuck, that's it. Right, and that movement, so any time I would squat, and this is how I would tell someone to feed us, and you start light so you can dose is squat light, but if you squat 10 or 15 reps, like the higher reps, that movement of the extending, flexing, extending and flexing of the hips, the buttwink in and out, will light the low back on fire. And if you feel like that when you squat, your low back feels like it's on fire, there's a pretty good chance that you're having, you have an excessive buttwink and there's work to be done to address there. If you have a slight buttwink or someone tells you that because they want to just sound smart. Oh, you have a buttwink, you need to work on that. And you're like, I feel like, I feel like the internet troll. Right, I feel it all in my quads and my glutes and you don't feel anything in your low back, you're probably fine. So that's my take on the buttwink and the controversy between it as far as, is it a thing, is it a bad thing, is it dangerous as hell? I think there's examples where it is completely safe and okay when someone's in a really deep squat for their tailbone. Yeah, if you're losing bracing and muscle tension as you're rolling your hips and sort of tucking them under like that, like that could potentially be a problem. Just for the same fact that if you're dropping down into a squat, you lose tension, you're bouncing up off your joint. You know, that's just gonna create these shearing forces you're not distributing properly. If you look at the best squatters in the world, power lifters and Olympic lifters, they tend to have no or little buttwink. They really do watch them at the bottom, especially Olympic lifters who Olympic lifters are the deepest squatters in the world. Not because they have to squat that deep but because it's part of their technique to get under the bar, the lower you get, the better you're gonna be at your squat. And if you watch them at the bottom, they have little or no buttwink at all. Same thing with power lifters. Power lifters don't have to squat quite as low. They just have to get the hips to go lower than knees. But that's the same thing. Now, why can a buttwink increase your risk of injury? And there's a distinction between increasing risk of injury and then just saying it's dangerous. Dangerous means don't do it ever, don't ever do it at all. Increasing risk of injury, well that just means that the potential to hurt yourself is a little bit higher because there's more moving parts. So when you load a bar on your back and you're squatting down and your spine is totally stable, less risk of injury than if your spine flexes and extends while you're loading weight on top of it. That's just obvious, that's normal. Some people can get away with it more than other people. Now my, the most effective, simple thing I've ever done for clients to help reduce that lumbar, that low back, you know, flexion extension where the tailbone tucks is a box squat and to use progressively lower and lower boxes. So what I will do is I'll watch my client squat and right before their tailbone tucks, like right, like literally the second the tailbone tucks, I'll get a box that's right about that high and they'll have them practice squatting down without butt wink, sitting on it and then standing up, getting good at that and then what I'll do is I'll progress them to a slightly lower box, slightly lower box and then I'll have them practice that and then I'll use a slight, until I can get them down to, you know, the part, the point where I think we're doing a nice full squat. For me, that's the most simple, easy, basic way to help train yourself out of a butt wink. Now there's more specific applications of exercises and this is more specific in the sense that you're identifying your own imbalances. So if you have like an ankle mobility issue or a hip flexibility issue, then you can do things like 90-90, we have a great YouTube video on that, ankle mobility, Adam did a phenomenal combat stretch video that shows you how to improve your ankle mobility. But so I don't necessarily think it's bad to have some butt wink. Some people will do it and they're just fine, but I think I can make the argument that having a totally stable spine is just a lower risk potential injury. Oh, I think it's ideal no matter what. Yeah, I think you just have some people that are, you know, scaring people that, oh my God, you have a butt wink at the bottom that's so dangerous or don't do that or it's bad. And again, in my experience, it's kind of, it's pretty obvious when it's excessive. You'll feel the low back, especially high rep squats. You could probably get away with it with low rep, five reps or lower, but once you start getting 10, 15 reps, the rep, that many repetitions of the flexing extending of the low back, because that's such a unique movement that most people don't train that much. You'll feel your low back is on fire from that and that's your kind of indicator that there's too much going on there. And to work on that, I love doing, you know, I'll talk about this the other day, like split stance squats, Bulgarian split stance. And why I like that is I teach that to start from the ground up, right? So you get in the- And you keep their spines there all the time. And so I get you in that position, I get you all the way at the bottom in the split, in that split position where your ankles hooked up behind the bench or whatever and your knee is all the way down the ground. And there I take a client and I align their posture really well and then I tell them to brace their core and this is where I want you to start and you start from the bottom up and you strengthen one side at a time. I have found that gives you that really good control of the hips in the deepest part of your squat. That'll help that. It seems to me to be more of an instability issue, like for the most part. And so I totally agree with that. And like for me, it's like, I have always wanted similar to like a step ladder approach like you're doing with the boxes with that but more of like just creating more tension and pausing in that squat and really getting them to focus on squeezing and creating like a more recruitment to then help with the stability of the hips and then supporting the spine in a low position. Yeah, I mean, you know, here's the thing, butt wink is a little bit natural in the sense that if you watch someone sit in a squat, if you go to, there's some countries where they don't even use like chairs or bus stops, they'll just sit in a squat very, very comfortably. It's a natural kind of to roll into that. Butt winking is natural in the sense that when you squat, it opens up things. It's actually a natural way to poop. It's a natural way to give birth. In fact, if you're giving birth and you're squatting, you want to have a butt wink because that opens up the birth canal. But the difference is we're not talking about sitting in a natural squat. What we're talking about is loading weight on your spine and then doing resistance training. And there's a big difference between body weight, sitting in a squat and doing one with weight on your back. So I think it's probably best to try to avoid it or train yourself to not have it when you're doing. Yeah, no, I agree. All right, next question is from Matt White, 15. When doing a bulk phase, how much body fat is too much to gain? What is the ideal fat to muscle gain ratio? You know, this is an interesting question, but a good one because I think it's really, even in the professional bodybuilding world, it was really common for me to see these guys show up to the stage, show after show, after show, after show, and kind of look the same, but go through these aggressive bulks and aggressive cuts. And I remember watching their diet and their training and going like, what the fuck are these guys doing? They're literally bulking, putting on 20, 30 pounds and half of it is fat and half of it is muscle or potentially more of it was body fat and a few pounds of muscle. And then when they go the other direction, they would end up at the same starting point as they were just, and maybe if they were lucky, a half a pound of muscle or a pound of muscle, why take your body through that? So honestly, and I saw some people answering this question on our thread, trying to throw out what they think and I think the answer is as little as possible. My goal when I'm bulking is, it's inevitable, I'm gonna put some body fat on, but my goal is to only put muscle on and put very, very little body fat. Now what's challenging about that is the mental aspect because when you're in a bulk and I understand what this is like because I made this mistake for many years is you wanna see the scale go up. If I'm lifting heavier weight and I'm eating more calories and I'm trying to grow, I wanna get on that scale every week and go, oh, I'm up two more pounds, oh, I'm up four more pounds and it's telling me I'm growing, right? I'm getting bigger. You are getting bigger, but a majority of that is probably water and fat if you're actually putting on that much weight. So I think a better indicator, and I know Sal alludes to this a lot about is actually watching your strength gains. I'm pretty confident that if my weight on the scale is staying about the same, but I'm getting stronger and I know that I'm feeding my body a little more calories than what I was doing before and potentially a cut or staying at maintenance, you're probably putting on muscle. And in fact, if you're not putting on a lot of weight on the scale, but weight on the bar is going up and your calories are slightly up, you're probably adding muscle at a really good rate, at adjusting the right amount that you may even be leaning out a little bit while you're also building. Now, here's the other part of that, a part because sometimes just eating more calories just makes you stronger and sometimes getting body fat makes you stronger. Changes your leverage. I know for me, the heavier I get, the more I can squat almost no matter what. So you think, am I adding more muscle or is it just because I'm heavier and I feel more stable because I'm more body fat on my body? So one thing that I would do is I would look at my strength gains but I would also look at my strength to weight ratio. So if I gain 15 pounds on the scale and I get five pounds stronger, that's not really a good trade in my opinion. I added five pounds to the bar but I gained 15 pounds of body weight. My strength to weight ratio went down. You see what I'm saying? I like my strength gains and they're not gonna completely match. You're gonna gain more, when you do a bulk you're gonna gain sometimes more weight than you'll put on the bar. But I think it should be kind of close. If I gain 20 pounds, I want at least the 10 or 15 pound gain in my big lifts. I don't wanna go five pound gain. See, I approach it the same way that I approach somebody in a cut which is somebody who's on a cut, I want them to, the goal is to hold on as much muscle and to lose as much body fat. And so I know I'm in control of their diet and their exercise programming. So I know that if I just, I'm reducing calories and I know that they're following their program and the scale is staying the same. I know I'm leaning this person out. I know they're leaning out. In fact, they're probably leaning out just the right ratio that I might be adding a little bit of muscle while I'm also leaning out which is a perfect world. The same thing goes for bulking. I don't wanna see a big leap in anything. If I know that I'm adding three to 500 more calories per day and you're not putting a bunch of weight on the scale, we're probably adding muscle. But what's happening is you're probably also losing body fat and so it's leveling out. So if I can keep adding calories to your diet and actually not see the scale shoot way up and also see strength gains, I know I'm in a very nice sweet spot. I'm getting stronger. My weight isn't going up on the scale. I'm also adding a little bit more calories and I'd always lean towards the lower amount first. So start off by only maybe adding 200 something calories a day and if you still don't see any weight go up on the scale, okay, cool, let's bump up to like 300 or 400 calories. I'm adding more calories still. Oh wow, I'm still not seeing the scale. If you've added 500 calories a day and your scale weight isn't going up and you're getting stronger, you're building muscle at a really good, at a very good ratio. Yeah, you're crushing. I don't like to allow, that was just personal. So there's a bit of an individual variance here too because if you're a power lifter you're probably a little bit looser with how much body fat you wanna gain. Yeah, cause it's all about your strength and over. You don't really care about the aesthetics. Yeah, or if you're, you know, if you're just, you like the way you look then this may be a little different for you. So I'll give you what my numbers are, right? I don't like to let myself bulk more than, you know, 15, 16% body fat at most. 15, 16% body fat, that for me is about the top of where I'll allow myself to bulk. And when I cut, when I go down I like to get down to nine or 10%. Now I've been leaner than that and I've been fatter than that but each time I notice a detriment to how I feel and my health. Now for women, you know, for women I would say if you're bulking you probably don't wanna go above 26% body fat at most. Women can hold more body fat and be healthy. And as far as cutting goes, you know, I know women like to get into the teens but I typically will tell clients, hey look, once you get down to about 18% body fat you probably don't need to go down that much leaner. Maybe 16, 17% at the leaner. So you kinda play with that range a little bit but it's gonna be different from person to person and see what you're comfortable with. I also don't like to bulk for more than, you know, eight weeks at a time. Four or five weeks is the sweet spot for me. Once I go past eight weeks. Then it just ends up being a lot of body fat. Now I'm just gaining body fat. You know, and I start to lose the muscle building effects of the extra calories. Ideally, here's a great way to bulk and in my opinion I've had a lot of success doing it this way. Where you go in a calorie surplus for about three weeks then you do calorie maintenance for about a week maybe throw in some deficit days here and there and then go right back on the bulk. So it's kind of a staggered approach and it keeps your body sensitive to the extra calories so that it, you know, tries to build more muscle rather than trying to capture the calories as body fat. I love that. Next question is from Ivoli. How does one get back into nutrition and training after going through a severe traumatic experience? I have taken a break for a month and I'm wondering if decreasing the weight or reps is the best way to bring myself back up to where I was before training and nutrition wise. I like this question because, you know, we're, this is gonna be, you know, this happened, obviously this person had something traumatic happen in their life but with the Thanksgiving and Christmas, New Year's, I thought this was a good question to answer because a lot of people will probably be coming off of a one month or two month break from the holidays and are gonna be wanting to start the new year, right? And we say this every year and I'm gonna say it again. I think one of the most common mistakes made by everybody when they go back into the gym after taking a month or two months or six months off, whatever the timeframe is, if it's longer than a month, this pretty much rains true, is doing too much too soon. You know, we just had a great interview with a friend of ours, Max Marzo, and we talked about, you know, the goal of, there's really, it's really a sweet spot on how much you effort and how much work you do. And when you first get back into training, it takes very little to elicit change in the body. So- And doing more doesn't get you faster. Right. If anything else slows down your progress. Exactly. And so starting off with like a MAPS anabolic pre-phase or 30 days of fitness for free that we have on the YouTube channel, you know, I push people in that direction. We design those, both the pre-phase and those 30 days of free to really help jumpstart somebody from not working out for 30 days or more and ease them into training, that it should look more like that. And then you can jump into one of the MAPS programs like full on and follow it. That would be my recommendation. Yeah, I think of it as like going in with a practice mentality. Like, especially if you've had experience training before, you're not like a brand new to the gym, but you want to get back on track. Like I just look at it, I'm doing all those moves and I have the same structure for my workouts. I'm obviously I'm not loading quite as much. I'm probably not doing as many reps, but I'm having the intention of it to get my body re-acclimated to those movements again and just kind of work my way through that. But it is hard. The hardest part of is being disciplined enough to stop yourself from doing too much a lot of times. I know like, if there's anybody out there that's like me and has that mentality of like, well, like I want to tackle all of this, you know? And like, I just want to get to where I want to be. That's going to be very challenging and something that psychologically you have to go in with a plan to really just limit the amount of volume that you're going to expose yourself to. You have to develop a good relationship with exercise. One that's going to benefit you forever. Okay, so what does that look like? Okay, well, most people who work out have a relationship with exercise where they look at exercise as a tool to build muscle and burn body fat or as a tool to change how they look. Now there's not, there isn't anything necessarily incorrect about that because exercise is a tool that also does those things. It is a tool that helps you build muscle, burn body fat, and it is a tool, a very effective tool that will help you change the way you look. But it's a multi-use tool that has far more value than just that. Exercise is a way to de-stress. It's a way to improve your health. It's a way to improve your mobility. It's a way to become more present. Look at exercise and understand all of its value. So you just came out of a traumatic experience. You took a long break because of it. The probably the best way to view exercise from that point is I want to become healthier. Like I just had a shitty thing happen to me. I need to get healthy again. Now look at exercise that way. You're not going to the gym to build muscle. You're not going to the gym to burn body fat and to look amazing. You're going to feel good. You're going in there to feel good because you just went through this traumatic experience. Going in with that attitude, you're far more likely to use exercise appropriately. So understand that. Now that approach, here's the irony of that. Here's the cool thing about that is that approach will give you long-term better results on muscle building fat loss and looks anyway. Because you're using exercise, the most effective way you use exercise is to use it appropriately. So if you want to use it in the most effective way possible, use it as appropriately as possible. So if you're coming off of a long layoff, lots of stress, something bad happened to you, then use it appropriately. Stress relief, becoming present, getting away, improving my mobility, making myself just feel better. Now that workout looks very different than the one where you go into the gym and saying I'm trying to get the biggest squat and I'm trying to build the biggest arms or I'm trying to go shred it or get shredded. Those are two different looking workouts but they're using exercise as a tool. So right now that's your goal. Look at it differently, understand its true value, know what you're going to the gym to accomplish and that will help drive you in the right direction. Well, I'll give you an example what that looks like for me too. And I do this even after, I rarely take a 30-day break. A lot of times I have like a two-week break. That's, and after a two-week break is enough for me to kind of reset to this kind of mentality where when you go in, that might be a 20 minutes of it spent on 90-90 combat stretch, some lizard with rotation, a bunch of mobility kind of stretching work. Then I might work my way over to the squat bar, do five sets or six sets of like some light squats where I'm just working on the movement and maybe do some farmer carries, call it a day. That's it. That might be my first workout back and that's a very effective workout. I know I haven't done any of my mobility work. That's probably the thing that needs to be addressed more than anything else because I've been sitting in a chair sitting on a desk or sitting on a couch for the last two or three weeks. And so getting myself mobile and waking everything up and doing that as a priority. And then the things that get the biggest bang for your buck, a squat or a deadlift type of a session. I don't need to do a bunch of other auxiliary work. I'm just gonna do one of the biggest bang for my buck exercises, really focus on the movement of it. And I don't need to load the bar super heavy. It's probably gonna get a little sore just from doing five sets of light squats. That's enough. And so I encourage people to make it look like that when you first start off and then build on that. The next workout, you have a little bit more. The next workout, a little bit more. And then eventually you can go into a fully built out program like a MAPS program where we, which are designed to progress you week over week and it's more designed for somebody who's kind of already been working out unless you're starting in the MAPS anabolic pre-phase which is why- Or MAPS starter. Or MAPS starter, right? MAPS starter would be something you could hop into right away. And that's why we designed those programs. We designed it for people to have that in their tool bag for the moments and the times like this when you haven't been training for a while to utilize the pre-phase anabolic or utilize MAPS starter. Or if you don't have any of our programs trying out the 30 days of free fitness that we did on the YouTube a couple of years ago, that's how I encourage people to get started. Next question is from Catherine B. Fitt. Through your years of personal training and experience, what is one major thing each of you has changed your opinion on regarding fitness and or nutrition? Boy, there's a lot of things that change my opinion on in regards to fitness and nutrition because as you train people through the years, you really start to see what works and what doesn't work. So I'll pick one. I'll pick one thing that I think was a big change for me. The first thing was just that anything is better than nothing. That was a big one for me. I remember when I first became a trainer and probably for the first couple of years, if a client came to me and said, oh, I just started walking or a client said, hey, I can only work out once a week. To me, it was a waste of time. Either you commit or you don't. Like don't waste your time. And I had this attitude with clients and it was an effective attitude for a short period of time. I was very motivating, I was very inspiring and I'd get people motivated for three months or four months to just dedicate their lives of working out and they would drop off like crazy and I had terrible long-term success. I remember when this really became evident. I had a client who would miss work out, she had that hard schedule, she had kids, all that stuff. And she would make it to the gym maybe once, maybe twice a week. And I remember I had this talk with her once where I told her, hey, if you can't come in three days a week, then you're wasting my time and you're wasting your time. And she left and never came back again. And I realized that once a week with me was way better than zero times a week in the gym. And so that was a really big one. When I changed my attitude with this, I became a much more effective trainer. Clients would come to me and they'd say, I can only dedicate this much time or here's what I wanna do and I'd say no problem, let's work with that. And then what ended up happening is by meeting them where they were at, I slowly was able to progress them and they actually would progress themselves little by little. They'd come to me and say, hey, I've been consistent once a week now for a while. I feel good. I think I'd like to add an extra day or I think I'd like to do stuff on my own or I think I'd like to get a little bit more serious with my nutrition and little by little, the client would let me know when they were ready and sometimes it took years. They would let me know little by little when it was time to progress. And the difference was their success became permanent and long-term where people would stay with me for 10 years and then they'd go off and they'd continue working out for their five or 10 years on their own until this day I'm in contact with some of these people who when they first met me had no exercise program routine and terrible nutrition and today 15 years later or 20 years later they're still doing it on their own. That was one of the biggest changes I could say that I made in my attitude towards fitness. Well, yeah, I guess this will be a theme here because this is very similar for me. Agreed there's many things that I think we've changed our views on over the 20 years that everyone's been training for but the thing that I think is the most important to convey to everybody listening right now is along the lines that what you're talking about Sal. And for me that was like just walking in general. And I've shared this on this podcast multiple times that a client would come into me and we used to fill out those park use and then ask them questions about how do you hear about or how have you worked out? Do you do this? What do you do for fitness now? And the good answer is like, oh, my husband and I walk three times a week for an hour and I would scoff at that. Like that's not exercise. If you do you know how many calories you actually burn when you walk and then I would compare it to the treadmill or lifting weights and breakdown. And you discourage the fuck out of that. Right, totally shit on there. And not with intent of that like I wasn't like this dick where I was trying to be an asshole. I really believed that. I really believed at that time in my life that it was almost a waste of time that if they are gonna spend a time for an hour doing something then your ass should be in the gym and lifting all these heavy weights or on treadmill and doing cardio to burn a bunch of calories. And so that was the message that I was presenting to these people and the reality of it. And what we talk a lot about on the show is the way you create long-term behaviors in people is you set these really small obtainable goals that they can start to implement into their lifestyle that then become behaviors. And if I'm said trainer and I've got this client who tells me they walk two days a week and they don't do any sort of lifting weights and I'm over here trying to convince them they need to do three to five days of vigorous working out. I mean like to Sal's point, yeah, I could convince them to do that for three to six month shots and make them pay me to see me three times a week. So they shell out thousands of dollars and I get them in good shape in those six months. But then what would happen is they gain it all back. And for me, you know, I looked at that as like, oh, this is great client retention. You know, they always need me. They need me and I'm making to make more money because they have to see me. So opposite. It is, and it took years before I really realized that and realized that I wasn't that good of a trainer if I wasn't changing people forever. Yes, I could get somebody in shape. I understood, you know, I understood physiology, I understood nutrition. I knew how to tell someone exactly what to do to get them in great shape. But I really wasn't fundamentally changing their life for the better for the rest of their life. And that's when it really hit me. And I, and now ironically, the very, I'll talk people out of doing more days and tell them to start with less and just walking a lot of times. And that's because I know this. I know that even though you're coming to me and you're paying all this money to get started and you want me to push you and get you to your goal as fast as you can, I know if you just, if you conveyed to me that the last six months to a year, you haven't been doing anything exercise wise. Your nutrition's been all over the place. I've kind of tracked your movement maybe for the first week. Because that's for me, that's first and foremost. And that's something, it's not that it's changed. It's something that I've evolved into doing that when I first meet somebody, I have them log their food and track their steps for the first week. So I have a good idea of where this person is at. And I don't want them to impress me. So don't go take walks because you're, I'm tracking your steps now. Don't stop eating your Snickers bars or just driving through McDonald's because I'm paying attention. Do your normal week. I want to see this as very important. I say that. And then I look at it and from there, I make very, very subtle changes. And that took me a long time to get to that place where I realized how effective that was in comparison. Sure, if I was racing the old version of me, the old version would get somebody in better shape faster in three months because I would motivate them and push them to get there. But that person, the success rate long-term was probably less than 15% or 10% where now it may take me longer than three months to get that person to where they want to be. But instead of only being able to keep that person there for the rest of their life, 10 or 15%, the success rate was more like 80%. Now when I take longer to get them to where they want to be, but by the time they got to where they want to be, they have now created all these new behaviors in their life that they maintain that for the rest of their life. And of all the things that I've changed and done different or gone back on or said to me that the most important message is that one, is that. And it goes along the lines of the last question that we just answered of how you start off this New Year's of just slowly, incrementally adding more and more to your workout routine. Yeah, I think that's just part of the maturity of through the evolution of working with so many people, you realize what actually works. And what works is you really have to reduce what you present to your average person. So they're just not constantly swimming in all these different options and feel overwhelmed. And I think through the career I started out, like having to write down every single workout. And I wrote everything down to the T. So I'm like super, super planned out. And then the next evolution was that was basically throwing that away. And now having the flexibility to work on the fly. And then what's appropriate for that day. And it doesn't, I was trying to work my clients into my system and then realize I had to work with them within those parameters. And then later I threw that whole system away and just really just tried to focus in on the individual of like what do you do? Like what do you eat? What do you do? I need to really like peer into that and understand you what you're coming in with. So I can then create this hierarchy. I can create the priority list of things to address. If there's any pain, that's one of them, right? If there's like a gross offender nutritionally, like we're gonna look at that. If there's just little things like throughout your day we can just do one little thing, like let's do that thing. And so it sounds so vague in general, but honestly it's, that's what's been the most successful with all the clients that have then continued on and they've really adopted the concepts because it's freeing. It's freeing and knowing that every day you can just make a little adjustment and it's gonna like do massive things down the road. Yeah, do you, here's another big one that I'm thinking about right now. And it's actually a massive shift because when I first started training people I thought motivation and inspiration were the key. I thought that was the most important thing. I thought if I can just motivate and inspire people that they then would become fitness fanatics like me. And now here's the shift. I took me a long time to realize that motivation and inspiration were actually not important at all. It went from being the most important thing that I thought to becoming one of the least important things that you may be listening and thinking what do you mean by that? I thought motivation and inspiration were important. Okay, here's why they're not important. First off, they're fun and awesome when you have them. If you're motivated and inspired you don't need anybody to push you. You really don't need structure. You just go, you do it. And this is why Adam said to have to, now I talk clients out of working out so much when they first come see me because they're riding a wave of motivation and inspiration. They walk into the gym on this sudden wave of motivation and inspiration. They're talking to a trainer like, okay, that's it. I'm ready. I'm ready to work out five days a week. He's like, well, how much are you working out now? Zero days a week, okay. You're going, we're starting too fast. Now, why is motivation and inspiration bullshit? Because it goes away. It's a feeling. It goes away. It's gonna go away. Nobody stays motivated and inspired forever. It's just like you're not gonna be happy or sad. And all you're left with are the behaviors you've created. So what happens when you ride that wave of motivation and inspiration, you place tons of value on it? What happens when it's gone? You stop. And this is the biggest problem with the fitness space. The biggest problem with the fitness space is it pushes- They cash in on that. So much. It's all about motivation. It's all the workouts are fun and exciting. You can do it and you can do anything you put your mind to and you're gonna change your life and it's great. And it sounds awesome and it's exciting. But what ends up happening is people start and stop. Start and stop. I mean, you know, we say we have a body fat or weight gain problem in this country. We actually don't. We have a weight loss problem. Not because we can't lose weight. People lose weight all the time. They can't keep it off. They gain it and they gain it back. And it's because of that right there. So once I learned that, oh, motivation, inspiration is actually not important. I'm gonna try and figure out behaviors that you can continue when the motivation goes away. That's why you start so slow. Because like when this motivation is gone, Mrs. Johnson, when you're not motivated anymore, how many days a week you think you can make it to the gym? Not five. Maybe probably not even three. How about one day a week? Do you think you can make it one day a week here to train, to work out for the rest of your life during those periods of time when you're not motivated, when you're sad, when you're depressed, when you're tired, do you think you can make it once a week? If that's a yes, that's what we're gonna start right there. I'll give you another one that I know that you guys both do that I guarantee you didn't do early on and that we all do differently now that was probably a massive game changer for all of us. And that's related to nutrition since we didn't talk a lot about nutrition. When I started to, when I first started, I would look at somebody's, I would do all the calculations. Oh, you weigh 140 pounds, you're this percent body fat, you're considered sedentary, you're gonna be exercising this much. Okay, you need 1,400 calories, this many grams of protein, to lose weight and I would ride out a diet. Here's your diet, follow your diet. That has completely changed how I take somebody through a nutrition plan and it almost seems opposite of what you would think when you have somebody. So I get somebody now who comes in and they want to lose body fat and I actually look at their diet and then I add, which seems crazy because this person is coming to lose weight, the thought of adding food to their diet would be counterproductive. It's not though and this is something that it took me years to piece this together because what happens to somebody, when you tell them to not eat certain foods and to follow this, it promotes the binge and the restrict wave of the yo-yo dieting where, okay, I know I can not do this, not do that, not do this, not do this and eat all these weird foods that I don't really care for for a matter of six months, but then eventually you go back to all the other bad behaviors. It relies on willpower. Exactly. It's all about willpower. It's all willpower at that point, whereas it was kind of like a reverse psychology that I would do on the clients is, instead of telling them, no, you can't have McDonald's, no, you can't have these things, I would say I would look at the diet and see what they were lacking the most. Maybe they're not getting enough fiber, maybe they're not getting enough lean protein, maybe they're not getting enough healthy fats, whatever it was, I would look and see what they're not getting enough of, because here's what happens. When you eat a bunch of shitty food, and this is why there is such thing as good food and bad food, I know there's a lot of people that hate that and say it doesn't exist. Yes, it does. There's foods that are super high in calories and they provide very little nutrient value. That to me is crappy food. Food that is lower in calories, provides lots of nutrients, that is good food. So when someone has a diet full of crappy food, they're getting lots of calories, but they're not getting a lot of the nutrients that their body needs. And so I would look in areas where they're lacking the nutrients that their body needs to be functioning really well, and I'd have them add. And a lot of the most common offenders are, like I listed off, like not enough fiber, not enough good protein, not a good healthy fats. And so I would look at it and say, okay, Susie, what I want you to do is don't worry about all the other things you're eating, but every day I want you to make sure that you get this giant salad. And I want this in there, I want a avocado in there, I want this and I want four ounces of chicken. I would give them something and they're like, that's it? I'm like, yeah, no, everything else, whatever, just every day, make sure you add that. And what ends up happening is they're like, this is awesome, I'm the best trainer in the world. He didn't tell me I can't have my McDonald's, he didn't tell me I can't have this. All I have to do is make sure I get a salad. I can fucking do that. It also becomes this real easy task for them to do. And what I know is that when they start to eat that meal, it naturally ends up replacing something else that I know that isn't nutrient dense. They start to reduce the intake of shitty food. I mean, I would add glasses of water. They start to build a pallet for it too. I would add vegetables and then maybe I'd throw in like, hey, do this before lunch, do me a favor and eat two cups of cooked broccoli. Before you eat your lunch, just add this to your diet. You don't have to change anything else. And it would naturally get them to want to eat less, but it's so funny too, because the old way, the way that we were taught, which was here's your calories, proteins, fats, carbs. Get rid of this, this, this, this. Here's your diet plan, this is what you need every day. The worst, that's the worst approach. It's completely foreign to what they would normally do. It's actually the worst possible approach. It's actually even worse than telling someone to cut carbs or cut fat. It really is because it's way more, you're making way a lot of changes all at once. And then you're telling, essentially, the client has to rely on their willpower to do it. And I don't care who you are, you could have the best, strongest willpower on the world. At some point, your willpower is gonna break. And then that party is gonna come out, that's free. And then you do it like Alex and David. Well, that's why I have a problem with all diets. I mean, I just have always had a problem with that because it just isn't, I mean, it doesn't reflect what they would do on a normal day-to-day basis. And it's just so limited, unless you have some kind of medical issue where we're addressing this through food nutrition. But at the end of the day, this has to be sustainable. This has to be something that you're gonna incorporate in your life, then on out. So like, what does that even look like? Like, how can we create that and build little tiny steps towards that? Yeah, your job as a trainer is not to get someone to lose 30 pounds or gain 10 pounds of muscle or become super mobile or super strong. That's not the primary job that you have. I know it's part of it, it's not the primary goal. Your primary goal is to guide the client to developing a relationship with exercise and nutrition that allows them to lead a healthy life forever on their own without you. That's your goal. And the most effective way to do that is exactly what we're talking about. And I apologize to all the clients that I trained, the first five years that I trained. Me too. Because I did it all wrong and I was a terrible guy that was all about fat loss, muscle gain and that kind of stuff. So, and with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our resources and guides. They're all totally free. Go check them out. You can also check all of us out on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.