 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts, Sal de Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep. Breaking news. In this breaking episode of Mind Pump, for the first 25 minutes or so, me, Adam, and Justin have some fun conversation. We talk about candy. Ooh, yeah that old crack cocaine for kids. Gives you diabetes. Then we talked about unpredictable television shows and how much we liked them. We talked about OrganiFi's new product, their red juice, which by the way, if you are interested in getting OrganiFi products, go to organifyshop.com and enter the code MINDPUMP for a discount. Then we talked about beats. Beats man. Not the musical beats. The beat. The beat. I gotta throw it in there again. Yeah, you gotta do that. It's the jam. And how one time I ate a whole bunch of them and I had red pee. Dude, you're peen blood. I had red pee. It wasn't good. No, it wasn't. Then we get into the questions. The first question was, what's the best way to increase hunger so that I can eat more food? This is obviously somebody who's trying to gain more muscle. I hope it's more muscle. I don't know anybody who wants to gain more body fat. Then the next question is, we have an individual who's doing lots of core work, but they're having problems with their lower back. What are they doing wrong? We answer it in this episode. Little deactivator technique. That's right. Then we talk about warming up. What should it look like? How important is warming up? And is there more to warming up than just preventing injury? Yes there is. A lot more, it turns out. Finally, somebody asked us the question, hypothetically speaking, if being healthy meant being out of shape, would we ever sacrifice aesthetics for health? We know Adam wouldn't. And he gave away the answer, but we talk about more in this episode. Also, this month, we've got some incredible promotions going on. If you enroll in any of our maps programs or any of our bundles, like our maps prime bundle. Let's talk about that one specifically. We did talk about that a bit in this episode and its applications. Maps prime and prime pro, two of our most popular programs. Maps prime teaches you how to prime your body properly before your workout. This is extremely important. For many of us, it adds about 10% more effectiveness to our workouts in terms of weight lifted, performance, muscle building, fat loss, throw away your pre-workouts. Simply by priming properly, then prime pro is correctional. So if you have pain in your neck, your shoulders, dysfunction, your wrists, your hands, your feet, your ankles, your lower back, prime pro helps you assess yourself. There's a self-assessment tool, easy for me to say. Or get a drink, an alka-seltzer. Exactly. And you can create, you can, going through the program, you can correct imbalances that are causing those problems. It's really a first of its kind in the industry. You can get them both in a bundle, discounted. And if you enroll in any bundle this month, you get access to our forum for free. That's an $87 value for free this month only. Next month, the price of the forum will go up as well. So this is the month to do it, and we're closing out on it pretty soon. Go to mindpumpmedia.com and enroll now. Best commercial jingle of all time. You think so? You know which one that is? Which one? Take a sniff, pull it out, the taste is gonna move it, it's gonna drop it in your mouth. That's how it's, that's how it's said. The taste is gonna move you when you pop it in your mouth. Juicy fruit is gonna move you out. Is that real? That was the, you don't remember the juicy fruit commercial? You don't remember juicy fruit commercial? Here's the lyrics, here's the lyrics. You can look this up. Take a sniff, pull it out, the taste is gonna move you when you pop it in your mouth. It sounds a lot. Like gay porn. Like, uh, I guess. I'm gonna do an Instagram post of that today. I'm just gonna put just the lines up there. See what happens. Take a sniff, pull it out. And then I'll hashtag, well is it, it's, uh. Juicy fruit. Juicy fruit. Juicy fruit. That's gonna move you. One of the best tasting but annoying gums of all time. Because it tastes super good. For 15 minutes. Approximately 15 minutes. That would be a blessing. There's no way it lasts longer than 25 seconds. It's not like jujubes though. Remember those? That used to like step in your teeth. Just my enamels. You eat three of them for the whole movie? The worst candy ever made. That's the poor kid's candy. You know what I'm saying? Because back when we were poor, my mom, we had a family of five. She's like, okay listen, we get one box of jujee fruits. But it's gonna last all of you this entire year. You're gonna eat like five and just like destroys your teeth. Here's for the first half of the movie. Here's your one. Here's your one. But mom, it's not healthy. Listen, it's juice. It's juice. It's fruit. It's made of fruit, son. It's fruit stuff. Look at it. Look at it. It's little peaches and grapes. Look at son. It's fruit flavored. You know what else? You know it was a good candy? I'll tell you it was a good candy. Let's see if you guys, let's see how good you are. Adam should know this. You're the candy wizard, or at least you should be. I don't know. I'm the wizard, but I don't know if I'm the candy wizard. I'm more like the vagina wizard. The wizard of badge? The wizard of poon. What does that mean by the way? I don't even know. What does it mean? It could create magic. Experiences. Pretty much. Sprinkles fly. You could tell a woman's future by her vagina. That's what I used to say. Crystal balls, you just like summon. According to your vagina, you got a nice future. So no. Here's some candy that'll take you back a little bit. Do you guys remember melon heads? Yeah, of course. So good. Yeah, melon and lemon heads. They were, lemon heads were good. They weren't that good. But they weren't as good as melon heads. Oh, see I like lemon heads better than melon heads. Did you really? You can still buy lemon heads everywhere. Melon heads I've never, I haven't seen since. I was a big nerd fan. That's what we're friends. Yeah, see. So you used to buy nerds from the- Yeah, we had kind of a ritual as kids. We would go swimming at the community pool that was in our area. And then on the way back, there was this place called the fountain. And we would spend whatever changes in our pocket on shitty candy like that. And you'd get nerds. I would get nerds, yeah. I would get nerds or like red ropes. Something like that. Oh yeah, what about the, okay you guys obviously pixie sticks, which is just, is a very lazy way to make candy. Fun dip was the bomb. Fun dip was good. But pixie sticks were just, it was just, hey let's like- Let's just dump sugar in our mouth. Like artificial just powder shit. It's like the candy manufacturers are like, what do we have to do with all this leftover like sugar? Oh gosh, dust. Like every, all the dust in the factory. Do you remember the big plastic tube ones that were like thick? Yeah, remember, get them at Great America. Yeah. Get them at Great America for like two dollars and they're like six foot long. They're just like a tube of sugar. How much sugar do you think is in that? I never even thought about that. Let's think about that right now. I ate those as a kid all the time when I was- A whole one to your face. Yeah. Was it dextrose or is it sugar? It was, well it was sugar because dextrose by itself doesn't taste that good. Okay. So it was, it was table sugar but they made flavor it and have coloring in it. But that's all it was. It was a bunch of fucking sugar in this big tube. It had to have, it's gotta be 100 grams of sugar at least. Had to have been one of the most brilliant ideas as a company like so lazy. Like how easy is this? Like let's just get a fucking giant straw. We love these kids, we're just- Let's get a giant straw for these fucking fanatics, right? And I think about that, I was gonna say it resembles like straw for a cocaine for kids, you know what I'm saying? I thought candy makers, they learn stuff from like- 100 percent. Totally. 100 percent. Here's your evidence. How to hustle it. Here's your evidence right here. I think that's what most drug dealers, they do when they go clean. It's like, you know, I've already made my- Wow. I've already made my 100 million on the street. Now I'm gonna parlay that into going legit. What if that was true? Yeah, like all the drug dealers- Now I'm gonna sling- They go legit and they go into the candy business, right? Now I'm gonna sling some drugs to kids. The, it's true because one of the more popular candies when we were kids was the gum cigarettes, the fake cigarettes. This was a real candy ladies and gentlemen, for those who don't know, this was a pack of pretend cigarettes for kids. You buy it from the- I love those, yeah. And you pull it out and it had powdered sugar in it, so you could blow in it and it would make pretend smoke. And then you unwrap it and you eat the gum. And all the kids would buy it. I can't believe they got away with that shit. For a long time. Totally. It was an old candy. Who was behind that? Do you remember what company made that candy? Morrow-Morrow. That would be smart. No, I'm just kidding. It would be smart. Starts them off early. It would be really smart. They gave it away. Oh, I'm sure they gave it to him. We'll give it to him for free now, because we're gonna get him, we're gonna get him for life on the cigarettes in a couple more years. Brinkle a tiny bit of tobacco in there. Yeah, nicotine in there. So I got one- I remember the transition because at some point there was a transition with the Ice Cream Man candies where they started throwing in the Mexican candies, which are disgusting, by the way. They're not candy. Don't fucking trick everybody into thinking that it's candy because it's not. It's fucking salt. It's salt and spices. You know what I'm talking about? Oh, I remember the green little packets and stuff. What the fuck is that? I forgot about those. Yeah. I remember when they introduced them, I'm like- The lemon- the lime and- lime and salt. Yeah, they call it Lucas or some weird shit. I remember going up to the Ice Cream Man and I was like, oh, what's that? It looks interesting. I'll try that. Spent my hard-earned 50 cents on that. Just pull it out. Angry as a kid. I'm like, oh, look. It looks like crystallized sugar. And so it's like licking. I'm like, what the fuck is this? It's salt. And lime. Lime and salt is what it was. What are they doing over there? That's so funny. That reminds me. You said 50 cents. I literally had a job where I would walk this wiener schnitzel dog for 50 cent piece. And then I upgraded later on to a silver dog. To a full-sized dog? Yeah. And then you got a dollar? Yeah, yeah. Like a bigger dog. I got all this old lady. And I did it for kind of as a favor, but it was like, that's how she paid me. And I just remember that. It was like, I saved all of them. Wow. So I told you guys, when I was a kid, we had a douchen. Douchen. Dots. Yeah. So we had a mini one, a little tiny guy, aggressive as fuck. And did I ever tell you guys when he killed a Rottweiler? What? Yeah. You did not have a mini dots to kill a Rottweiler. Kill a Rottweiler. Yes, he did. Story telling. 100% killed a Rottweiler right in front of me. Like a mangled, like old decrepit. No, no, no. It was a 120-pound Rottweiler. No way. Listen to my story. Oh, God, let's hear it. Listen to my story. This is a tall joke. 120-pound Rottweiler. No. You chased him in front of a car in a car. No. 120-pound Rottweiler. We're listening. And then in my dots and getting to this fucking just crazy scuffle. And the Rottweiler choked on the douchen. You fucker. It's so bad. So now I can go around. Tell everybody my douchen killed a Rottweiler. That never happened. We keep pushing, Peter. I know. What are you doing right now? We already had that episode. Or did we release that episode yet? I don't know if we did. Because I haven't gotten any messages yet. The chicken story? Yeah. I don't think it's been released yet. No. It hasn't. Well, we will. Lord Doug says no. Lord Doug. How many nicknames? Doug's had quite a few nicknames now. This is a new one. I'm actually excited about this. It was Doug the Jug for a second now. That's when we were on the road. That's his nickname on the road. Doug the Jug. Well, I see Taylor upgraded your little table ornament there. I have. I had you. You got the spread eagle on there now. Yeah, I'm all eagle out. The Darth Vader. And then Darth Vader's helmet. Vader moved to Doug's computer. Because he's Lord Doug. I feel like you got the cool stuff, man. You got the Vader. You got the eagle. You got the skeleton guy right behind you. Sal and I have fucking four cinematic shit. I have nothing, actually. I have nothing behind me. I don't need what it is. I don't need those kinds of things. You don't need the possessions of the world. I'm beyond that. I'm beyond possessions. I don't watch Game of Thrones. Yeah, I'm so good. Which, by the way, was fucking epic last time. Oh, dude. What a crazy episode, right? Oh, my God. I haven't actually watched that one yet. So don't say anything. That was cool when the fucking dude and the dragon and that one girl with the white hair. And the fucking, you know, the white walkers and all that shit. Crazy stuff. Crazy stuff. You have been watching. Have you? Yeah, secretly. I can't not know about it. Everybody talks about it. I see. It just pushes me further. Is it everywhere? It's everywhere right now, huh? Everywhere I look. Because it's epic. Yeah. I was like, so the book right now, Irresistible, that I'm finishing up, is right now getting into, like, TV series that were like crazy and epic. And they talked about the Sopranos. Did you watch the Sopranos? I watched maybe like four episodes of it. God, you didn't watch that either. Justin, have you watched that one yet? The Sopranos? Yeah. Like the entire series? Yeah. No, I haven't seen the whole thing, most of it. So what's so crazy about it and what they were talking about for years, people still talk about the ending of the Sopranos. And whether or not. I watched like the second half and actually watched the ending. Yeah, so it's like, it was one of the most epic endings ever. And by epic, I mean, it fucking pissed a lot of people off. And, you know, some people thought it was perfect. Some people thought it was horrible. But very divisive. And the creator would refuse to speak any further on it. It was like, the show is the show. Like, I don't, you know, like, how, it's your. That's how it played out. Yeah, it's how it played out. It's your interpretation of however you want it that he potentially could have got killed or maybe he went on and lived and had an happily normal life, whatever. But man, it creates. So I'll never forget the day I was watched. So I watched that when it was aired. So it wasn't like a recording. I watched it live when it was happening. I remember like sitting there excited. It's the season finale. And then the screen goes blank. And I remember like yelling in the house, like checking all the wires. I thought because they they'd sent. They'd give you like a 15 second blacked out screen pause. And you're everybody at that moment had been thinking the same thing too, that their TV had gone out. Something's wrong. Yeah. And it just goes blank. God, that's so great. Oh, and I appreciate stuff like that. Pissing off people like so many people at once is such a great thing to do. I love unpredictable. Challenging. I love unpredictable movies and shows. Like I like the weird stuff. Yeah, me too. Katrina likes the feel good, know what's coming. Shit. I hate that. Well, because what's lasted with you the longest. It's the ones that like at the end or like throughout the series, they fucking challenge you like hard. Like that's what Game of Thrones. Like you identify or like you figure, you think you figured it out, right? Like this person is gonna be and then he's dead. Yeah. That's why it's great. What the fuck? That's why it's great. It keeps throwing you off. So they talk about that in Sopranos that over. So Tony Soprano had over a hundred. I think he said a hundred or 90 something over a hundred or 90 something people connected to him died throughout the whole series. That's a lot of people over over an eight seas. I think it was eight seas. Eight seasons or 12 seasons, eight seasons, eight seasons. That's a slaughter. Right. Think of how many people had to die. Like that's a lot of characters. I do like that kind of writing where you're watching something and you think someone's a good person and then they turn out to be an asshole or the other way around. You think they're bad or they're both. Which is like that's a skill right there where you can make some of both. Breaking bad, right? That was like groundbreaking because like, you know, that whole character, how he evolved and then like completely turned into this other person. And you're just like, whoa. It was hard, you know, hard for my wife even to take. She wouldn't watch the rest of the series because she had him as like, no, I felt bad for him, right? Because he's got cancer and all this stuff. And then, you know, he turned into this evil mastermind. No, I love stuff that and it challenges you, right? Because all of a sudden you, some people identify with it and you like it. You know, I'm like, I liked him. I like the bad side of him. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, it's interesting. Yeah. When he becomes kind of a fucking dug in a badass and just like, fuck yeah, dude, get him. And you're like, you got to ask yourself like, Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh my God, who am I? That's exactly what happened. You guys' evil laugh when you're talking about it. You're horrible people. Oh shit. Who am I working with? What do you got in your cup there, Adam? Dude, let me tell you, first of all. Okay, I can hear it shaking. I know. This is my first time trying the red juice, like just in the morning time. Oh, the Organifi? Yeah, no. So we got it in the other day, right? I just had it for pre-workout. So it was like four o'clock yesterday, I think. And I can't have any sort of like pre-workout drink or caffeine drink past four or else. Totally sleeping. Yeah, good luck trying to sleep. But I thought, you know what? You were talking about, you know, some of the benefits that you felt from the cordyceps. And I know that the red juice has that in there, has that. And I think it has, I should know, the green juice has the ashwagandha. It has the cordyceps. And then it has... Got rhodiola, cypress and ginseng. Yeah, and you said that you... Be root powder. Yeah, you said you noticed that when you worked out that you felt sustained stamina and energy. So I thought, well, let's see if I can get anything out of this right now. And to be honest with you, I went in very skeptical because I drink a lot of caffeine, coffee, and I even use pre-workouts every now and then. So I figured if I'm going to take something that doesn't have a lot of stimulants in it, I'm probably going to be like, not going to feel much of it. But what I fucking loved was I had an incredible workout. Now, mind you, this is the first time, so I'm still skeptical. But I am sharing with you my first experience with it was I had a great stamina in my right. Didn't feel crazy extra strong, didn't sweat like crazy, like how you get from niacin and shit inside these pre-workouts. But I had a very solid workout, normally where I'd feel like I'm getting pooped out towards 45 minutes and I'm almost done with my workout. Felt strong all the way through. Looked up at the clock, realized I'd already been in there for over an hour. I thought, oh shit, I can go. I need to get out of here. I've already done plenty of work. And when I left the gym, I felt tons of energy and then I still didn't have a hard time going to sleep. So that was my big takeaway. So today, I'm drinking it right now because I wanted to see, because we have this podcast we're doing right now and then we have Kelly Stark coming in next. So I just wanted to see if it gave me like a nice little boost throughout the day and see how I felt. I like it so far. Well, so what's in it that may be doing that is, so it's got rhodiola. Rhodiola is, it's been using Chinese medicine for a while. It's got very strong evidence to show that it fights fatigue. It's good for endurance and stamina. So when they tested on animals and athletes, it's actually been tested on athletes that when they're pushing themselves hard, they have more stamina. It's not really a stimulant. Now here's the thing about rhodiola. I've taken rhodiola in the past at high doses and I don't like the way it makes me feel. It reminds me of red Panax ginseng, which will do the same thing to me. If I take a high dose of it, I get really hot and then I feel feverish almost. And my uncle, who's a, he does Chinese medicine, so he's a certified, whatever you call Chinese herbalist. He said it's because if you have too much yang energy, hot herbs like Panax ginseng will promote too much of that and they'll feel overheated and feel kind of depressed, which is what happens to me. But so too much rhodiola does that. This doesn't have tons and tons of rhodiola, but what it does have is it's got Rashi in it, which should balance that out. And it also has the cordyceps and then it has Siberian ginseng. Siberian ginseng is interesting now. If you have in Chinese medicine, if they, if you present where you have too much yang, like I said, they'll recommend Siberian ginseng and not red Panax ginseng because Siberian ginseng has a balancing effect. So it's pretty interesting. I had some- Well, tell me if I'm doing this wrong then because I actually really enjoy mixing it with the green juice, which has- Fine. Is it fine? Yeah, absolutely fine. I'm not like canceling anything out. No, no, no, absolutely fine. Because I like the flavor of the green juice, which blows my mind. The fact that I actually add green juice to something for flavor, that's the best part about that. I feel like the green juice is that it's the first time I've ever had some of this stuff and it doesn't taste like shit and has this great minty flavor and it goes good with the red juice. So the combination of the two of them together, which makes me feel great. So, boom, I get a good serving of my daily greens. And if I get more today, that's great, but regardless, starting it off with that- It's got beetroot powder in there and a few of the things that have been shown to be healthy and beneficial. A lot of athletes now are eating beets before they're training. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this. I have some. It's becoming a thing. There's compounds and beets that do improve blood flow quite effectively, in fact, more so than arginine or citrulline. Oh, wow. Yeah, so a lot of endurance athletes will drink beetroot powder, just powdered beetroot, or they'll eat the beets themselves, which I think is probably the best thing to do. And they'll get stamina and endurance. I've never tasted, excuse me, I've never tested- So great when you get it from like a natural, earth-grown vegetable or fruit versus taking something else that's manufactured. That's ideal, man. It's always ideal to get food. The thing about Organify is it's all organic. Yeah, you read the label and it's like, these are all real plants. Yeah, and it's all sourced from plants. So it's a good second place, you know what I'm saying? But yeah, a lot of people are consuming beets and I'm starting to see now bodybuilders are starting to do it because of the whole pump. I wouldn't be surprised if beets weren't something that they consumed before going on stage for that vascularity, for that particular effect. I wouldn't be surprised. Have you heard anything about beets? No, I have heard beets, but not in bodybuilding community as much as I have with athletes taking it for sports. So I'll play with, I mean- It's gonna be interesting to get really, really lean because right now I seem to be getting leaner. I'm not really focusing on it, but it's happening. It'll be interesting to see if I get, because I know when I get really lean, I can tell. I'll eat something and I'll know. I'll get vascular, depending on you. You've noticed that but on yourself before. So it'll be interesting to see. Yeah, and that's what I'm the same thing, right? I'm really excited. I'm getting ready. Well, I go to Alaska next week, so that'll be kind of a wash I look at. And then when I get back, I got three weeks till we hit Olympia and then I'll really crank it up. And that to me will be where I'll really be able to tell because right now, I mean, when I'm inconsistent with my nutrition, where I'm not really tracking like super- You don't know what's doing what. Yeah, exactly. I don't know what's doing what, but I will be dialed really hard coming in. And I'm not completely all over the board right now, but I'm not as consistent as when I'm measuring weighing, tracking, which I will be those final three weeks heading into Olympia. Right now I'm just kind of intuitively eating, but a little bit more calculated about it than what I was previously when I was focused on mobility because I'm increasing volume in my training, just kind of maintaining my weight right now before we ramp it up. Dude, I got a story for you. I can't believe I've never told you guys this. Long time ago, I was over at a cousin's house and we're having dinner and they're serving, you know, typical Italian food, right? Pasta, then the meat and salad, whatever. And then they bring out a big plate of beets, which I've never eaten a lot of. And when I was a kid, I didn't like them. So this was like as an adult, right? And the way they were prepared, they were fucking delicious. How did they do it? Yeah, how do you put your beets different? So they were, first of all, they were cold. And I'm trying to remember what she served them with. There was some other fruit in there or something else that made it, they were just really, really good. And I actually enjoy the taste of beets now. I've had chocolate beet cake, which is actually not bad. Really? Yeah. Chocolate beets. It's probably just like consumed by chocolate. So I eat a shit ton of them. Like, I'm just eating a whole bunch of beets. Didn't think twice about it. This is back when I managed the 24-hour on, I think, Santa Teresa. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're gonna love this. So I wake up in the morning after, you know, dinner or whatever, I wake up in the morning to take a piss. Red. Yeah. I'm like- That's like your worst nightmare. I'm like, I'm pissing blood. What the fuck? Yeah, that'll scare you. Callin' sick. Go to the doctor. Doctors like, what did you eat the night before? Did you have beets? Yes, I ate a whole shit ton of beets. Did you know that it can make you fucking pee red? It can make you pee and poop, Doug's nodding his head. Have you ever had that ever happen to you, Doug? Yeah. You poop black, right? No, red. Red, like- Yeah, dude, like the color red, it's fucking frightening. Because I thought like, okay, so if you're shedding blood, and I'm getting graphic here, but like that typically, like it's dark. It's really a dark color. Oh yeah, tarry. Your poop will look really super black and tarry. That means it's higher up in the, in the tract. If it's like bright red, that means that's somewhere near the hole. Oh, is that true? Yeah. So if it's black- Yeah, no, that makes sense. If it's tarry black, then that means that you're bleeding way up high in your system. If it's like bright red, like blood, then again, that means it's closer to the hole. I feel everybody just pucking up, you know. Yeah. No! No! Yeah, so if you eat a lot of beets, be warned. You may be, you know- I keep saying beets, and I have that like, you guys watch Save by the Bell, that Monday. Beat the beat. Beep-a-beep-a-Beep-go bass back. Oh, what a great you remember that what a great show I'm gonna hold on, you just have got a lot of the same things that I have It's just directed to the other stuff a bunch of bullshit, like noise floating Unfortunately for Justin. I it's random commercials and baseball cards you got you luck Yeah, to help you out with the scientific studies over here. I wish I had the same thing same the same. Damn it. That's baseball stats and weird, weird shit like that. At some point it's going to come in handy, dude. It's so random, dude. I don't know. I actually, it's, to me too, it's a, if you don't use it, you lose it. Because, because I don't, I went through this phase like in, I think it was, let's see here, it was 23-ish, somewhere around there. At some point when I started managing, I started working a lot of weekends and I gave up my Sunday football and that, was the beginning of me really falling off of being like a sports fanatic. Like I was a major sport, like tracked everything and stats and who was coming up from college and who was picking who up. Like I was just everything. Like my two best friends are still those guys. Yeah. I, once I started to work the weekends like that, I had this and it was about, I would say two or three years that that happened and I, I fell off enough that I was not current and my buddies just gobbled me up, dude. They just punked me, made fun of me, gave me a hard time because I just didn't know my stats, didn't know my players, like I, what I used to and then I could, I never, and then I never cared enough to continue to keep up. Do you ever like, like kind of fake it? Like, you know, cause like you're in a situation with like older guys that like, they'll see you wearing a specific like team hat or like apparel or something and they're just like like throwing out stats at you and certain players and like, holy shit. I don't know any of these. Well, I mean, luckily for me, like, well, I, and I'll admit that if I'd know that because there's nothing more embarrassing like, cause I have buddies that like, I just thought I might have been keeping track. Yeah. That's my answer. Yeah. I'll be like, no, I have no idea who got picked up this year or whatever, because if not, that you look really silly when you're, when you're talking about a team that you claim is your team and you're like, oh, oh, he doesn't even play for them anymore. Like, oh, whoops. I love it when people wear shirts of shit and they don't know about, it happens all the time, right? If I wears any sports team, of course, you know, I wore it because I thought it looked good. I feel like you should. Like, that'd be awesome. The ironic, my favorite. I don't know. Do you guys know Che Guevara's? Oh, yeah. I love it when people wear the history and have no fucking idea of the guy. The guy completely hated, hated, opposed all forms of capitalism and you're buying a t-shirt with his face on it. What did we see that? We just saw someone wearing that. You know, it was like, what's Beyonce's husband? What's his name? Jay-Z. Jay-Z was wearing a fucking chess shirt. Jay was a fucking racist, dude. A horrible racist. So he had that shirt on. I was like, do you not know what he said about black people? Did you see the new, did you see the new Defiant Ones? Did you watch that show? I watched one episode. I keep forgetting. I know. So good. I watched the last chance to do the new season. I am so into it. Holy shit. I told you. I am like, like, it hooked. I watched like three in a row. I'm like, ah, tell me, the production is ridiculous, right? It's on another level, dude. It's like watching a movie. Yeah. I'm so impressed with the with the videography of that. I mean, it's crazy how how much they've stepped their game just from the last season. I mean, last season was great, too, but first one was good. But this one's like, uh-huh, uh-huh. But I want to watch Defiant Ones. Defiant Ones is very, very good. If it's entertaining for sure, but because of the business that we're trying to build, it's very inspiring to watch, especially because it was my childhood, you know, a lot of these artists that they talk about. Well, at least the first episode I watched, which was with Dr. Dre, but to see what they had to go through the trials and tribulations and how they so strongly believed in what they were doing, they were compelled to do what they were doing. So does it kind of take from because I loved like straight out of Compton, one of my favorite movies, but does it take like sort of from then forward? Like his backgrounder? It talks about the beginning and his relationship with that one producer, that Italian guy, the shaved head smaller dude, can't remember his name, who and they kind of talks about both their stories about how they got into music. And it's great. It's just I love listening to stories like that. They're very inspiring. It's great to hear about people who just overcame odds, had an incredible talent, but the drive and the work that went behind it because it's almost never. Is it Amazon or is it HBO? Oh, it's HBO. It's an HBO series. Oh, cool. Okay. So I have that. And did they release like, there's like four episodes. That's it. Watch. Okay. So I was wondering if they did it like that because you know, some, some of the shows now, you know, instead of trickling it out, the whole season, they release at once, right? So when you when you get the like Netflix does that, right? Netflix when a season I don't know, I have the HBO on demand. So I can go and watch whatever series I want, you know, whichever episode. So that might be plant. I think HBO still drips theirs. I'm not sure. I don't know. It's really good. I'm sure somebody will let me know. All right. On the form. Bring on the defiant bird. Defiant. Today's quads being brought to you by Chimera Coffee. It's the only coffee that is infused with all natural neutral picks for a cleaner, calmer and more focused buzz without the crash. Put the Chimera link at MindPumpMedia.com and input the discount code MindPump a check out for 10% off. It's the motherfucking wall. The eagle has landed. Quikwa. First question is from Mark Wolves. What's the best way to increase hunger and be able to eat more? I like this question. Yeah, no, I did it for you, buddy. Did you? I picked that one just for you. You know why? Because I feel like we talk so much about losing weight and leaning out and all these strategies. That's most of fitness, right? It's usually about around that. Well, it is. And so that's why we talk about it. But I still feel like there's a there's got to be a big portion of people that can relate to what I went through as a young man growing up and trying to build muscle. And this was a major challenge for me. I couldn't I could not keep up. You know, and they always used to tell me, oh, don't worry, that will change. And they were right, you know, fucking 30 years old, it's totally opposite. Now it's just like, fuck, just think about getting fat to get fat. So but as a young adult, growing up and lifting, I had a really hard time consuming enough calories. And it was a combination of things, right? Aside from being already a fast metabolism or faster metabolism. Because I think I just have that genetically already. But I'm also a six foot three guy. And I'm very active. I played a lot of sports. You also sprouted all at once. I did. Didn't you? I did. That's got to take a lot of energy from your but from from your body to do that. Right, right? You know, I'm on how many calories it because you went from you told me you were short up until I was I played point guard my freshman and sophomore year in high school. And it was my junior year. I sprouted up over six foot before that I was like five three. So I was like five three five four in high school. Fuck off. Wait a minute. How many inches did you gain in one year? I went all the way to six foot, I believe so I went from five like I was five three and a half five four my sophomore year. And then my junior year I sprouted up to six holy shit over a summer over a summer. Well, no wonder you couldn't gain what painful was that your body was all going it was all going to your bones. So what it wasn't painful but what I did realize and I remember I totally remember this feeling of so I always played soccer too. Right. So I played soccer for over seven years as a kid growing up. I played all play and then I played basketball. So those are like my two main like organized sports. I played all sports but those are my two organized ones. And I was actually the better soccer player until I shot up. And then I got so lanky that I was not my proprioception was off like my body awareness was so different. Wow. Do you remember that? Oh, I very much so I there was a moment. I'll never forget playing soccer practice in high school. And they they kicked the ball towards me. And I actually just grabbed it. I just caught it. And it was a reaction to to to protect myself from getting hit right in the face with it. And anybody who's playing soccer for everybody knows better to ever use your hands. And so that would then for someone who's been playing as long as I had that's not even a natural reaction. But because my my body did not have the responsiveness that it had that I was so used for so many years that that became like my default was to protect my my face. And I remember that like what the fuck I remember even questioning myself like what did you just do right there? And and then I remember feeling myself cutting left and right on the soccer field. And I used to be one of the fastest guys on the field. And I went from being one of the fastest guys on the field if not the fastest to one of the slowest. And I just did not have the footwork that I had before the body awareness like it was a very awkward time for me now that same time I was playing basketball. And luckily I was a point guard in basketball which required you to have good handles and ability to dribble well. So here I'm sprouting up. I had good footwork as a point guard. So even though I started to get a little awkward and tall and lanky, it actually worked to my benefit being a tall basketball player because most big men if anyone's familiar with the sport, poor power forwards and centers are not the best with ball handling and footwork because they're big and lanky. But because I had trained myself so well as a point guard to handle the ball and cut and move, as I lanked out, I lost some of that ability but I still was so much far further ahead than the kids that were always tall and lanky. So it worked well for basketball and I did better that way. But yeah, no, that's I'm sure that had something to do with it. But I was playing, I played basketball every single day, literally of my life for probably 10, 15 years. And on top of that, on the weekends, I was snowboarding and wakeboarding. And you know, I was always into, you know, paint balling and I was doing extreme real high activity type stuff. And I was lifting weights trying to build muscle. And I was totally going every day I could in the gym. Like it was, you know, I thought the more I lifted these weights, the bigger I would get. And I just had a really hard time growing. And it wasn't until later that I realized that it was my inability to eat enough. Then I tried to out eat my activity and I was that was a constant losing battle before I finally realized that I've just got to chill out. I've got to lay off the activity. I'm way too, if I cared about building, right? And this is, I think every young man that has that struggles with this goes through this this this moment where you decide what is more important to you. Do you want to get bigger and build more muscle and be more like a bodybuilder? Or do you really enjoy playing all these sports? And it's probably not the ideal situation for you to put on 20 pounds of muscle. What which one's more important to you? Now there's now and I think it's important to note that there's there are kids that have the ability to kind of do both. We've all those are mesomorph type body types, even though we don't believe in semantitites really. Those those guys and girls that can be muscular and play sports have a specific body type. I did not. I had an I was a lanky, tall, swimmer body looking guy who was playing sports and also wanted to look like a bodybuilder. And my body just said fuck you. No way. You're not going to do that. And yes, I could. But then it would require me to make some sacrifices. And for me, it was cutting back on a lot of my sports in order for me to and I tell you what, I got all kinds of tips for somebody in this in this area. Like for example, something I learned early on was if I had a really high fat type of meal in the morning, which is how I eat now, ironically, if I were to eat like a breakfast today, bacon and whole eggs and, you know, high fat type of breakfast, that was bad for someone trying to build because it would satiate me. And then I wouldn't want to eat for four or five, six hours later. And for me to get enough calories and food in, I need to be eating every couple hours to get to that caloric intake that I needed to eating these high fat meals. So I had to stay lower leaner as far and lower fat earlier on in the day so I could consume meal after meal after meal. And then I would pile calories on at the end of the night. So that was a major strategy for me. And I know some people are not going to like to hear this, but something that also worked very well for me was this is also when I introduced cannabis into my life. I used a smoking weed to push me over. Yeah, no, I actually I used it for that as a strategy. I would eat my big, huge dinner meal. So let's say I'd consume about 3000 calories throughout the day, which is a pretty good amount of calories for the average person leading into the evening. And then dinner, I'd have like 1000 calorie dinner pushes me at 4000 calories and then I would go smoke weed and then I'd turn around and eat another 500 to 1000 calories afterwards. And that was a big contributor to me putting on some weight and size. So not that I'm advocating you smoke weed, just saying. So yeah, maybe a kid we're talking to. Yeah. So I know who Mark is. If he's a grown man, before I give you some tips and tricks to help you eat more, we need to also be very clear on the signal of hunger. The signal of hunger is a very fine tuned signal that we evolve to have. And it will propel you if you're healthy to eat what you need to based on what your body thinks it needs. Okay. So step number one is if you have mal hunger or you have poor hunger where you don't have an appetite, it's probably you may have some issues going on with your health. Activity tends to stimulate hunger, building muscle for sure will stimulate hunger. In fact, if you train properly to where you send the right signal where your body wants to build muscle, you should notice an increase in appetite because your body is trying to fuel that adaptation. I also don't like the concept of forcing issues on the body. I know we all have goals. I get that. But sitting here stuffing my face with food, which I did, I did it for years. I was a skinny kid. I started lifting weights at 13 years old. So I know this very, very well. Is no better for you than starving yourself in the in the sense of how your relationship to food ends up turning out and becoming. I didn't look at food in terms of health or not. I looked at in terms of calories and I needed calories. So that meant if I had to eat a thousand calories, well, there's a pint of ice cream that works out just fine or let me add a glass of whole milk to every meal or let me blend this food up because it's easier to drink it. No shit than it is to eat it. I used to do that too. I'd blend up. It wasn't out of the ordinary for me to blend up chicken breast or tuna fish in a blender with water and fruit and just fucking plug my nose and pound it. This is why to this day people, my girlfriend laughs when if I'm taking a tincture of like an herb for medicinal purposes like I'm getting sick or whatever and I'll just straight take the tincture in my mouth. No problem. She's like, how can you do that so disgusting? I'm like, you have no idea how I train my body as a kid to consume disgusting shit because I was always trying to gain weight. So number one, rule number one is get healthy, get good sleep and send the right signal to your body and your appetite should be healthy. Okay, you should have a healthy appetite. Now, besides that, ways you can kind of make yourself eat more is realize that the body signal of satiety can be fooled a little bit by messing with how palatable your food is. And what I mean by that is if I eat a big savory meal with lots of fat and salt, salt, sugar trick, there you go. I may be I'll get satiated pretty quick where I'm like, oh, I can't eat another, you know, piece of steak like I'm just full. But if you introduce something sweet like some fruit, all of a sudden, I override that system and I'm able to eat more food. So that's something you can do. But, you know, at the end of the day, let's consider this. Okay, here's this. Here's the let's look at the science. Let's say you want to gain a pound of muscle a week, which by the way, if you're gaining a pound of muscle a week, you're on fucking fire. Like you are doing really, really well. It's signal is loud. You've got a good muscle building signal. You're crushing. You're probably a beginner because you can't expect to gain a pound of muscle a week. If you're advanced, it's very difficult to do. But let's say you are. There's about, I don't know, 120 grams of protein within that pound of muscle. And, you know, if you count all the other energy and stuff like that, I don't know how many how many calories and grams you think will go into building that that pound of muscle, 600 calories, maybe divide that over the whole week. It's less than 100 calories a day. You don't need a shit ton of calories to gain lots of muscles. You just don't. In fact, I've trained young kids and I've had them do it the right way. And they'll just gain lean mass versus the way I would do where I would just stuff the fuck out of myself, make myself sick, gain weight on the scale. But that kind of was a little bit of fat and a little bit of muscle. Then I try and get lean. I'd lose both as well. This is also why I'm, you know, I'd always tell people the wearables, the trackers in the in tracking your food because so you're aware of this like, otherwise, because I remember being a kid and just stuffing and not having a clue. Am I, is that enough? I know I worked out a lot today. Like I still to this day is a 35 year old man. I fluctuate dramatically. The difference between a Sunday day of movement and activity for me is extremely different than a day like today where I was up at five o'clock in the morning. You're talking about a thousand calorie burn difference. That's a lot when you're a guy who's trying to build muscle and be living in a caloric surplus. So becoming aware of your activity and what your body's burning and what you're actually consuming so you don't make the mistake that Sal was talking about because you're right. You don't need to be in this massive surplus. There's this misconception of how and I was, I know I was way obviously kid. I was sick stuffing my stomach. I just think there's a lot of people who train poorly and then and that's why they're not gaining muscle like they're programming is off. So they stuff their face because they're like, Oh, it's food because we've been told that now for years through the body building community that, Oh, it's not your you can't overtrain. You can only under eat or it's not your workout stuff your face, you know, stuff your face and you'll gain muscle. That's not true. Good. The right signaling will put muscle on you. Look, I'll give you an example. Here's a great example. Take a fucking person. A guy or girl wants to build muscle and they're struggling like they're doing the workout. They're eating like I can't gain a single pound of muscle. Don't have him increase their calories at all. Keep your food exactly the same. Give them anabolic steroids. What do you think will happen? They're going to gain a little bit of muscle because now they've got another signal telling their body to put on some muscle. Well, that's the same with your workouts too and your sleep and everything else like you don't need to stuff your face. If you're in the if you're to the point again, this is all within the sphere of being healthy because if you have poor appetite because your sleep is off or high stress, you're depressed. There's something wrong with your hormones, your gut floors off. That's totally different. But let's say you're healthy and you're eating and you're like, man, I can't I can't eat any more food, but I want to gain muscle. So do I need to should I choke this chicken breast down? No, no, you shouldn't like listen to your body. If you're not gaining muscle at that point, then examine the other things, examine your routine, look at your workout. People don't look at their workout enough. No, that was a big game changer for me when I put that piece together too. Because I think there was levels of this for me as because for most of my life, I struggled with putting weight in size on. So for it took me a long time to get to the size I am now or get to a point where I say like, well, yeah, it's a lot easier for me to put body fat on than it is to to lean out. So I definitely think that there's there's levels to getting here. You know, I think that the programming is definitely a piece. I had I realized that most overlooked piece, you know, you can argue for trying to gain muscle. I realized real quick that going from seven workouts down to like four workouts and making those four workouts more effective and doing better movements and not training the other days made a big impact. Like, you know, I was going in the gym every day and hammering high intensity workouts. I brought down my intensity level, did better movements and exercises and trained less and actually saw a huge gain. I saw my bar is actually literally like instituted rest periods. Right. And you've like deliberately focused on what it means to strength train, which I feel like a lot of people decide to train hard. And then they get caught up into like interrupting their rest periods with adding more intensity by cutting their rest periods. Right. That's like a common thing that people don't even realize they do that because they get antsy pansy. And just like any athlete wants to like perform and to be to sit there deliberately and like make your body, you know, go through that process of, you know, just deliberately telling it this one thing. I need to get better at this one thing. And then also like adding in power element to it, like, you know, let's focus on power, let's stimulate the CNS in a different direction. So it's all contributes to more muscle build building techniques that you need to apply. I wouldn't I would actually take days off to so for me, because the food thing was a piece that I needed to get better at. And I was missing there and I knew that I would treat my workouts as a reward for my diet and nutrition being dialed in. So I would figure out what I need to eat calorie wise nutrition what what I needed to grow and build. And I would say, okay, like I got to earn that good workout, because if I go, I could really easily get caught up in that trap that you're talking about right now, where I'm just training intense and hitting it hard is hoping that that's what's going to make me grow. When in reality, like, let's say it's four o'clock, which was the normal time I was training back then. And it was time to hit the gym. And I'm like, Oh, shit, like, I didn't eat, I didn't eat this morning. Yesterday was kind of a light day on calories, like me going and just burning a bunch more is probably not the most ideal thing for me to do if I want to build, you know what I should do, go to the grocery store, go make some meals, get myself prepared to have a more successful day tomorrow. And so I would make choices like that. And it was hard for me to do that because I was trained to go to the gym. I love to go to the gym. I love to work out. It always feels good. You get this massive pump and you'll break the sweat and the athlete in me wants to do those things. It took a lot of discipline for me to say, you haven't earned the gym. You need to get your diet dialed in better. You need to be nutritionally ready to build. You're not setting yourself up for success because you're living in this caloric deficit, and then you're going to go burn a bunch more. Are you really helping yourself out? You're catabolic, you know, so I think that's also something that I had to put a piece together before we go to the next question. I want to be clear eating boosting your calories does cause a small anabolic building effect, but it's short. It is not long. So you can boost your calories and notice you're going to build more muscle just from the more calories. It's about two or three weeks before you can just switch out of that. Otherwise, it just goes straight to fat storage. So that's why we talk about the mini bulks. Quick commercial break, you guys. We keep getting asked all the time, how can I support the mine pump family? Here's one of the best ways you guys can. You guys love that Chimera coffee that we have Chimera coffee with a K. You go to Chimera coffee dot com, put in the discount code mine pump for 10% at the checkout. If you guys have not tried Ben Greenfield's new bars out there, fantastic. If you want some, go to Ben Greenfield fitness dot com forward slash nature bite, put in the code mine puppy get 10% off. Go check it out. Next question is from Firewood 53. Just started doing more core work. Lower back is now a problem. What am I doing wrong? This is common. You know, you know, it's how many times people will tell me I can't do this core exercise or this ab exercise because it hurts my lower back, reinforcing back. You know, it's great about this question was and I don't know how long this person's been with us. But the most controversial viral video or post that Sal's ever done is addresses this exact reason why we encourage the plank the way he did that post. And it's boy, did it stir up so much shit in the fucking, you know, you know, fitness professional community because everybody was the staples the crown jewel of core exercise. Right. Everybody knows to be a certain way. Right. And this just showed this this exact question is very common and very normal. And it's something that the three of us have dealt with ton of fucking times. And it's the reason why, you know, when Sal did that post why he puts that emphasis on the people rotating their pelvis in is because we know that most people that get in that position that think they're working their core are really just stressing the fuck out of their low back and their shoulders and set themselves up properly from the very beginning, which is I'm guessing the direction you were just about to go Sal with this is that more than likely that's what's going on with these people doing yeah, so the front side of the core is part of the is, you know, your abs obliques and all the internal muscles stabilize your trunk just like your lower back does. If one muscle isn't doing what it's supposed to others muscles will take over now your core does a few functions does quite a few functions. The main ones are it stabilizes. It flexes you at the spine both to the front to the back, to the sides and it rotary and it rotates. Okay, now when you're feeling low back problems or low back pain if unless you have a low back issue where you actually have an injury many, many times it has to do with the hip flexors and one hip flexor in particular, the so as the so as muscle is a hip flexor that attaches at the lower spine and it goes through the body kind of in front of the pelvis and attaches at the femur at the top of the leg. When that muscle is doing more than it should it tends to get tightened and flamed and the pain you'll feel is at the attachment at the lower back and you'll know this when you go do leg raises or sit ups and you're like, man, I don't feel my abs working at all. I just feel like my lower back gets tight. Well, what's happening is your, your lower back is tightening and arching your abs are stabilizing but they're stabilizing in this kind of extended position and you're flexing at the hips, which is the hip flexors and you're feeling low back pain. So what you need to do is you need to learn how to flex at the spine, which we did a video series on this. We did. We did that with with Dick, right? We brought we brought Dick over and did talk to all about this exact point right. We did that. And then we did a hip flexor deactivator called video where I show people how to get there. If you are not subscribed to Mind Pump TV on YouTube, get over there. This is what this is the whole idea where all our visuals are right. We talk all day. But like to see it's a totally different experience. And a lot of people don't know how to use YouTube. I didn't know when we first started this. It was until way later and I figure out how organized and nice it is. When you go to YouTube, you subscribe to Mind Pump TV. Then after that, you'll see up in the top of the the channel, there's a there's a tab that says playlist. You click on the playlist and then Doug has organized them in topics like this. And I believe that one falls under core or corrective or something like that. Yeah. I mean, you'll see you'll see the different playlist. Dude, this was a game changer for you for me a while ago, you know, I had I had, you know, I was able to get really lean and, you know, I could get pretty muscular. And I really only have like a visible six pack when I get shredded and if I flex them. But I never had abs that were visible relaxed. I was always envious of that like fuck, look at that guy over there. He's totally relaxed. He's lean, but you could totally see a six pack. That didn't really happen to me unless I got super, super shredded. And then it realized it was because my abs weren't well developed. And part of the reason why they weren't well developed is I didn't understand their, I don't understand working them in a full range of motion, which is at the, you know, flexing and extending at the lumbar spine, not at the hips. Once I figured that out and I started to really learn how to flex and extend at the lumbar spine and then use resistance to build them, my abs really started, they built out to the point where now I don't even have to be super lean. And you can kind of see at least the top two rows of my abs kind of sticking out. And I really started developing kind of this nice, strong built core. But before that, I would experience low back pain too. I would do leg raises or rum and chair sit ups. And it feel like my back would tweak. And I just didn't realize that I was totally doing it wrong. So one exercise I can recommend is a straight up floor crunch. Put your, this is the video that we have, which we'll put in the show notes. You lay on the floor, put your feet up on the bench, press into the bench with your heels so that your butt comes off the floor just a little bit. And what you're doing is you're activating the glutes and the hamstrings. While activating those muscles do some slow crunches where you squeeze really hard. What's happening by activating the glutes and the hamstrings is you're, you're in a way taking the hip flexors out of the movement because you're flexing the opposing muscles. The hip flexors tend to relax and it's going to help you separate the abs from the hip flexors. What you have is a recruitment pattern problem. You could very well have strong core muscles, by the way. It's just that your hip flexors are doing more than they should or firing when, when they should default right now, they're becoming your default and it's causing low back problems. So once you fix that issue right there, then you'll slowly be able to progress to the more intense heavy resistance, ab exercises like leg raises and Roman chair sit ups and all that other stuff. So although I don't know what your form is. I don't know what your, your problems are. I can say with pretty good certainty that the odds are you probably are in that category where you're just hip flexor dominant. Yeah. I mean, he could totally benefit from the six pack. The no BS. Yeah, like it's all outlined in that in a program that, you know, I kind of revisited myself and been going through that. And it's really helpful. It just goes through all these like nuance techniques to, you know, help get more proper engagement with that and really focus and hone in on that proper signal. So if this is already an issue, you know, that's something to consider. Talk about an underrated program, by the way, the no BS six pack. I literally put that together with part of this as one of the issues in there, but it's just a workout that you can add to your workout specifically for core to build the muscles of your core so they are more visible. So you have more of those pronounced, you know, abdominals and defined obliques and all that stuff. But really, a lot of it has to do with form. And then the other part, which I address in the program is how to use resistance for your core because they build like any of the muscle. Next up is Kylie. What should a warm up routine consist of priming? This has changed a lot for me big time over the years, man. Time I used to view warming up as injury prevention. That was it. There was no other purpose or goal for the warm up. It was all about, you know, getting blood flow, blood flow, make my joints feel better. You know, when I was younger, I almost never warmed up. God, when I was really young, I would just get into the bar. Then as I got a little older, my warm up consisted of doing the exercise with lighter weight and moving up in weight. That was it. Then as I got a little older, it consisted of foam rolling and stretching, because then that would help me with pain and stuff like that. And then more recently was a huge, for me, a huge just mind blowing paradigm shift with how I approached warming up. And that was that I understood that warming up. Sure, it should definitely help prevent injury, but that's the least it could do. That's like the minimum, like the bare minimum of what a warm up could do is help prevent injury. It's like a car, like the bare minimum a car is going to do is drive you from point A to point B. But it can do a whole lot more too, right? With your warm up, if you do it properly, your warm up should prime your body for your workout. And what it's doing is it is setting the stage for recruitment patterns that are favorable. It's setting the stage for your central nervous system to fire effectively and efficiently so that when you go do your lifts, you're getting the most out of them because I'll use a barbell squat and a barbell deadlift as an example. Both exercises extremely effective at building muscle and strength. Everybody knows that. Both of them have a potential that they can give you. Let's say that potential is a 10. Let's say that you do that exercise, you get 10 points from it, or that's the potential. If you do a priming session properly before you do those exercises, you're going to get a 10 out of that exercise. Yeah. If you go into it and you don't do a good priming, you might only get a six or seven. So you may not you may not even reap the benefits of that exercise because you didn't prime properly. I have an analogy and bear with me so this is a sports analogy. Oh, shit. But yeah, I look at it like so a golfer, right? So if if they're about to approach a game, they're about to get into, you know, a tournament and they haven't walked the you know, the grass. They haven't gone through. They haven't like really visually like gone through the experience of wow, okay, the dog legs left here. You know, like this is how this is my elevation. This is where the sand trap is over here. Like all these factors of just, you know, going through visually, you know, like walking through and teaching the body, you know, the mechanics to recognize, you know, what are the correct pathways for me to get to this, you know, destination as I go through each hole, like it differs. So if I can start kind of thinking of that in terms of my workout, so I mean, this is definitely like like almost overly planning. But I mean, you could get really specific if you if you so desire, like you can teach your body things to really, you know, set it and hard wire these, these processes. So you get so much more effectiveness out of, you know, what you're trying to accomplish every single workout. And that might sound like daunting, but if you can kind of pull back and just keep, you know, very, very specific movements that you know will enhance pushing, pulling overhead positions, things like that that you can reinforce. Think about how much better your body is going to perform. Well, working out is very much so a skill. And I don't think that we we treated that way enough. I think that people look at exercise or working out as exercise is just this is how I lose body fat. This is how I build muscle, calorie sweat, burn calories, build muscle. And there's so much more to it. And every every movement you perform in that gym is a skill. And some of them are a crazy skill. Squatting and deadlifting and overhead pressing is a major skill, like playing a sport skill. And other movements like a bicep curl or tricep pushdown, still a skill just doesn't take as much skill. And so when you go into a workout, your warm up is preparing you for that skill that you were about to go perform. And like the analogy sal gave of, you know, you may if you don't, you may only get a six out of that skill or that exercise because you didn't prime your body properly, you may get a 10 if you do that. Some people are genetically gifted and get a nine right out the gate without even priming whatsoever. One thing is for certain that I know now being older is if you don't over time that will diminish. So maybe as a young athlete or a young kid, when you first performed some of these movements, you got right into it, you felt strong, you felt great, and you were you're getting eights right out the gate out of the skill, meaning that you were getting decent returns from your squats, decent returns from your deadlifts, you probably weren't getting a 10 because you weren't priming properly and you still could get more of it. You just didn't know you could get a 10 because you felt like you were getting progress from that. As you age, that is going to diminish because throughout the day, you don't spend 24 hours squatting and deadlifting. You spend it sitting at desks, driving in a car, you know, sitting at a computer, sitting in front of a TV, playing video games, whatever it is that you do, you spend more time doing that than you do these movements. So what ends up happening is you start to create these patterns and different pathways. And then you go to go perform this skill that you didn't treat as a skill later on. And now your body starts talking to you and you start feeling these aches, these pains, you start seeing diminishing returns. You're starting to go like, what the fuck? And then it seems around 30 or so, everybody wakes the fuck up and goes, oh shit, maybe I should be doing some sort of a warm up or getting myself ready. I think those that start to put these routines in place at a younger age are going to will surpass most the rest of us and will avoid a lot of nagging pains and injuries and potential surgeries that a lot of people end up going through because they waited until their body yelled at them and said, what the fuck are you doing? You have no business squatting or doing this movement until you actually properly warmed up. But it really depends on what you're about to do that day. And this is really what Maps Prime and Prime Pro were to address was, OK, you know, here's your workout for the day. These are the movements you're going to be performing. These are the this is how you should prime your body to get ready for these these specific skills, because each of them are different. The way you prime your body before you go do bicep day and you go do if you're going to if you have a split that you do is totally different than how you prime your body and get ready for squat day. They totally require different different parts of your body to speak. And you got to understand that all lifting weights if you don't tell the body how you want it to communicate, it's going to take the easiest path for sure. It's going to go. It'll cheat. It'll compensate. It'll do whatever it takes to move the weight, because that's all you're telling it with the brain. If you say, lift this weight up, pick it up over my head. Your body will do whatever it needs to do to do that. But if you're going to do this properly, get the most bang for your buck and not hurt yourself, you want to do it in a in a certain manner that doesn't risk injury and gets you the most bang for your buck, which requires you to understand how to prime for those. And it's also individual. It's very individual. Like if one person could prime completely different than the next person for the same workout and the same exercises based on their natural or their current recruitment patterns based on their posture or previous injury or whatever. I'll give you an easy. Here's a very easy example. If if I have a lot of issues with my thoracic spine, which is kind of my mid back or my shoulder blades are, right? If I have issues where that's excessively rounded and my shoulder blades like to be rounded forward. And I know I'm going to go do some heavy squats. And I know to have a good squat, I should have my shoulder blades pinched down and back and I should have my chest nice and open and wide. Then a prime for me may be to work on that movement, you know, getting my shoulder blades pinned back, opening my chest, maybe stretching my chest out, stretching my shoulders out, you know, activating my mid back with some, you know, specific movements before I do the squat because then when I get into the squat, boom, I'm in position. Yeah, you respond right away. What you don't want to do is get into the squat and try and figure it out when you've got a heavy weight on your back, right? Because now, like Adam was saying, it's going to go to that default to that that old pattern. And then you're strengthening that pattern. What you train is what you strengthen. So if you don't prime properly, you're going to you're going to train these patterns that may not be or are likely not ideal, which is which is not a good path. Which goes back to why I mean, it's been a while since I've harped on running, but this is why I'm not a big runner and why I'm not a big fan of clients doing that unless you are specifically training for a marathon or a sport. Because if you have these bad patterns and then you go run, like nothing is cementing that more than that. I mean, you just repetitive. I tell you what, you know, I know we've said in the past, if they only treated CrossFit like a sport, people would train better. Running is the same thing. If people ran and treated it like a sport, like a skill rather than just trying to sweat and go to go to exhaustion. Great point. People would run well. I'm going to extend that. You should treat all exercise that way. All of it. I don't care what you do. Right. If you treat all your workouts, going in understanding that you're perfecting the skill and the technique and the movement, then you're going to take care of a lot of those problems you're not going to have. And you're going to get better results. You're far less likely to overwork, overtrain, overapply intensity and hurt yourself and create bad recruitment patterns. Because how we what we say about running is the same thing I could say about got people who lift weights. The thing about lifting weights is there's nothing passive about it. It's like everything has to be intentional. Yeah. And I know people want to sort of make that an easier process and make it more general. But you know, that's what that's the kind of results you're going to get as a result. Right. Like you're going to you're going to end up doing what you've already established as being the strong way to get through something. Well, I think when you when people lift weights, the reason why it happens when people work out with weights to. But the reason why it doesn't happen as much with weights as it might with running is because at least when you lift weights, there is more of an emphasis on form. When people go running, there's no emphasis on running us form. It's like, hey, I'm going to start running. Oh, me too. Let's go together. And then you just run. You just go run because you think it's this natural thing that you do. But it's not because you never fucking up and let's move. So and if you if it's super high intensity focused like a circuit class or like some of the bad CrossFit boxes that'll just push intensity, then it's not about for me there. It's all about fatigue and how many reps you can do, which encourages bad recruitment patterns. So when you go into your workout, treat it like a skill, your priming session is that by the way, a good priming session will take you. I mean, if you follow maps prime, you're priming for about 10, 12 minutes, maybe 15 minutes, and then you're ready to roll, which is how long your warm up should have taken anyway. And I promise you, you'll see better results. In fact, I've had people message me now. We've had prime out for a while. People will send me messages and are like, you know what, I didn't change my workout at all. All I did was change my warm up. I switched it out for prime and I added 15 pounds of my bench press and 30 pounds of my squat. Oh, that's every time someone sends me a question like this, I just tell them like now it's just easier. Listen, there's a there's a money back guarantee on all of our programs. Get prime, implement it in your prime bundle. Yeah, two weeks, two weeks. I will first time, you don't even need two weeks. The first time you implement it and actually go through it, you will see a difference in your work. 100% 100% Especially if you're the older you get. So you start getting beyond 25, 30, 35, 40, the more dramatic of a difference you'll see. And the reason why I can say that with confidence is I know that over time, the older we get, the more common it is that you have bad patterns that you've created. Right. And so if I give you a program or a tool that's going to help you correct that, those people will notice more of a dramatic difference. And you know what, if you were somebody that like if you came back and said, you know, I know it's a little bit different so much, well, lucky you that you haven't got you're not that fucked up yet. So keep doing it. Don't stop doing it because the rest of the moldable right. The rest of us that implement that will notice a huge difference. I'll say this, even if you feel healthy, no problems, whatever, prime properly and you'll be able to squeeze out like one or two more reps or a little bit more weight on your lips or you'll just feel like you'll get under the bar and you'll just get into it. So you'll notice that's the bottom line. You'll notice right away. Right. Right. Squeeze it out. Quick commercial break. Hey, people ask us all the time how they can support Mind Pump. Here's what you can do. You can go to www.brain.fm forward slash mind pump and get 20% off brain FM for meditation or focus. You can also go to audible trial dot com forward slash mind pump and get a 30 day trial plus one free audio book. Lastly, you can go to get nature blend dot com forward slash mind pump and you will get a discount on Ben Greenfield CBD product. Next question is from Johnny Dumbbells. Hypothetically speaking, if being healthy meant being out of shape, would you sacrifice aesthetics for health? What a great question. Oh, Johnny Dumbbells. You know what? Wow. What a what a deep question right there. It is. You know what? I think first we should be that's a fucking episode. We should be pretty clear. I think we'll do a whole episode, but let's be very clear. I don't think you should ever sacrifice your health for anything. Let's be honest. I've been around people who are very sick. I've been around people who I've known people who shredded looked amazing and their health fucking turned on them. And let me tell you, I don't care. Would you want to look amazing and have horrible health? How would anybody want that? That doesn't make any sense. You wouldn't enjoy anything with that, whether it be mental or physical health. Now, the question, I know why he asked the question. He's asking the question because in fitness, we have this perception that it's one or the other right that you're either living both really healthy or you've got great aesthetics and you can't have both. And this is false. It couldn't be more false. This is false. And let me explain what I mean by this. If you chase aesthetics, if aesthetics is your only goal and that's all I care about is how I look. Here's here's where that road will may end up taking you. I'm glad you just said that word. It may end up taking that's a good. It's I'm glad you said may because it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be if you just focus on aesthetics. That's all you're a focus on. You need to understand that aesthetics is subjective and it is a moving goalpost and you will never reach that goal. Many times, most people will get to the point where they reach a goal and it's the next goal. It's the next goal. Next thing you know, it's distorting their view of aesthetics. Aesthetics started out being looking fit and muscular and now it's turning into I need to have 19 inch arms or I need to have a tiny waist or I need to have these really big boobs or this really big butt or I need to have you know I need to be super shredded. And now aesthetics to you means I have to take anabolic to look aesthetic or I need to starve myself to look aesthetic or I need to you know spend an hour and a half with makeup and hair and do all these different things in my body. Look, it becomes this moving goalpost and if you only chase aesthetics, you will not get health. That's a fact. You simply won't get health if that's all you ever focus on because eventually your health takes a second. Now that being said, I believe that you can chase aesthetics and it could lead you to health because I think that was the path that I went. I feel like I was heavily focused on aesthetics as a young man who was insecure about his his body and the path of chasing aesthetics eventually led me down the path of health because you as you get better at it, you start to realize that that is the answer that the answer is that the healthier I am, it ends up being a byproduct that I become aesthetic. Well, it's a very easy, like it's actually quite simple. If you chase aesthetics, you may end up like Adam. Adam's a very self-aware, one of the most self-aware growth-minded people I've ever met in my entire life. Okay, which means he's rare. It's not very common. So you may get some health if you chase aesthetics, but most people end up with poor health. But if you chase health, if you chase optimal health and wellness, you will get a great degree of health and wellness and you'll get a great degree of aesthetics. Now you may not look like a bodybuilder. You may not get so shredded because you're not going to starve yourself, but the kind of aesthetics you're going to get are still excellent. And we also want to remember what aesthetics reflect. Why is there, why does our brain perceive aesthetics in the first place? Because see, now that's where I wanted to go with this is that I was actually just speculating this today. I don't know what I was watching and I find it fascinating that why are we as men driven to be bigger and stronger and more aesthetically pleasing, right? And it's the whole idea of procreating, right? Because if you look aesthetically pleasing, then you probably look healthy and you look like you're going to have good genetics, right? It's well, you see good genes, right? You see as a as a female, you are drawn to that because you see a healthy, strong male that you can mate with that is going to give a healthy, strong offspring. It's a visible representation, a very simple, easy in our bodies evolved to recognize it because it's fast. I could see you real quick. Representation of health. So if you have good skin, if you have good symmetry, you move well. If you move well, if you have a decent amount of muscle, if you're not obese, but you're also not rail shredded, which by the way, people think being super shredded is aesthetic in person. It's actually not say. Yeah, like looking at it in person versus like, you know, makeup and photoshop and all that is a complete different story. It's not. If you see someone who's fucking, especially a woman, especially if you see a woman who's like in a single digit body fat percentage and you see her in person. Most people, most healthy people, healthy minded people will look at that. And if you ask them, does she look healthy? Like a lot of them might be able to say, wow, she shredded. You can see also, does she look healthy? Does she look appealing? And most people would say no. And I'm not just talking about men. I'm talking about women. We'll say the same thing. And the same thing for guys, like if you're a guy and you push yourself, you push yourself to the max with muscle, with anabolic steroids and growth hormone and food and you're super huge and all these different things. Most people would not consider that ideal in terms of aesthetics because like Adam's saying, aesthetics, the reason why we even identify them is it represents health. And so if you're the, if you're listening right now and you're, you know, you have the goals of just you want to look good, but you're not trying to compete or anything extreme like that. And you're thinking, I need to choose aesthetics or health. Chasing one of them will give you both. Chasing the other one will give you maybe, most likely just one and likely maybe neither. Because I'll tell you something right now. I know, and I'm sure people listening right now know, lots of people that always chase aesthetics, chase, chase, chase, push, push, push, aesthetics. Eventually you have neither. And eventually, none of us have neither, none of us have aesthetics anyway. You get older. You know what I'm saying? Like what happens at that point? Well, and what you start to find out, and this is where I, what I meant by, you know, I started off chasing the aesthetics and then eventually it turned into this health thing was, I realized that the healthier I was and the more I chase health, the more sustainable the aesthetics came. Where when I was purely focused on aesthetics, anybody can starve the body and train like a fucking animal for six to eight weeks. Almost anybody can do that. Almost any, which is what you see in the competitive world. It's the martyr thing. Right. Almost anybody can put their, put their head down, say, I'm not going to eat. I'm going to fucking train. And I'm going to become aesthetic, right? I'm going to look fucking shredded. But nobody can maintain that for their entire life. And so you end up rebounding and going back to what a normal body type looks like or potentially rebounding and looking worse. But as you start to chase health and then you get yourself, that when you see the healthiest version of yourself and you actually objectively look at yourself, you start to realize, oh shit, not only am I the healthiest, but this is some of the best I've ever looked in my life too with the least amount of work. And actually learning to, and that's what it's all about is learning to listen to the body when it's speaking to you. And I think that is the problem when you become so aesthetically driven, you begin to ignore all the signals that your body was already trying to tell you. Because you're so stubborn about, I want to look a certain way or I want to get to this goal and this is what I see everybody doing. So this is what I'm going to do when your body's screaming at you, no dude, I need some rest. No dude, feed me. No dude, how about some meditation? No dude, how about a night's rest? No, you know what I'm saying? It's telling you all these things and you're ignoring it and trying to push the body and it's crazy. When you work, when you push the body like that, again, in a short term, you may be able to get to a point where you've seen the best shape of ever physically in your life, but sustaining that, not happening. Did you guys read about the girl over the weekend? I think she was in Australia. Young mother of two who died from, they blamed on too much protein. Oh, I saw that. 25 year old girl. So now she has a disorder, urea cycle disorder, which it stops the body from being able to break down protein. So it leads to fatal levels of ammonia. So in this particular case, high, high, high doses of protein combined with extreme exercise can be fatal, which is her case. Now, the reason why I'm bringing that up is because she had extreme fatigue before that. She felt terrible before that. She was getting ready for a show. What do you think she was doing that entire time? That entire time she had extreme fatigue, that entire time getting ready for the show, she couldn't do cardio because she was too tired. She couldn't scarf down another chicken breast because her body just found it repulsive and yet she forced it. What was she chasing? She was chasing aesthetics, which forced her, which put her in a situation where she ignored all of those signals and it led to her death. And that's an extreme case, but that's the case. I mean, I just recently heard a competitor talk about how she could barely walk three days before a competition because she was so exhausted. But man, you should have seen how shredded I was. And I got on stage and I finally won the competition that I wanted to win. And it's like, holy shit, man. What are we doing to ourselves? All for a plastic trophy. All for a fucking trophy. And those of you who are going through this, most of you don't even compete. Like most of you aren't even trying to compete. You're just so obsessed with this aesthetic ideal that you've created in your mind or that you've allowed advertising agencies to crave for you. And again, it's a moving goalpost. You will never get, I promise you, if you chase aesthetics, you'll never get to your aesthetic goal. You'll always be chasing it, always be pushing and it's gonna get more and more distorted to the point where you'll involve plastic surgery, drugs and all kinds of extreme things. And not only will you not get the aesthetics you want, but you'll definitely won't get the health. Chase, optimal health and wellness. And the rest will come. But here's the key now. Here's the kicker. You cannot chase health because you think you're gonna get aesthetics out of it. Right. Because that's the same thing as chasing aesthetics. Forget about it for a second. Forget about aesthetics for a second. Release it for a second. Listen to your body. It's not giving and expecting something in return, right? It's not really giving when you do that. It's like meditating because I'm gonna meditate so I'm gonna be productive. So I'm gonna sit here and I meditate real hard. It's the same thing. Listen, I am 100% living through this right now. I did this, I chased aesthetics for a long time. For me, it was about building muscle. And eventually I learned I could get lean and look like I was a more muscular, but I was never really lean for longer than a couple months because it was very difficult that my body would come out because then I'd wanna build muscle and whatever. Now I walk around and I walk around it with more aesthetics than I ever had before. And the irony of it is I don't even really care about it to my notice it now. And I see it, but it's not something I chase. And you can really get to that state, that point. But never trade your health for anything because nothing is worth it. I mean, think about it this way. Would you really wanna look the way you wanna look? We totally derail this question. We totally derail this question completely. Yeah, they're asking if we would do that. Right, right, right. Well, I mean, hypothetically, fine. Let's pretend like this was the case. Let's say you had to look like you were at a shape to have great health or would you wanna look like you were in great shape to have poor health? That's an easy choice for me. I would never want poor health. Well, health, I mean, you have to be able to move around and do things so you can't be that decognition. No, and I think people would even expect someone like me who openly admits that I'm very aesthetically driven that I would say that and I still wouldn't. I mean, because nothing is worse than feeling like shit. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's the worst feeling. Not having your health, I mean, I could look amazing. And let me tell you, I've had those moments of the feeling amazing because I look amazing, but if I gotta sacrifice my health to look amazing, fuck that, like it's not. It's literally super sick and immobile and like you can't do anything. Right. That's the worst there is. Yeah, so I like. I always love it too. I'll work with clients. I have a few online clients and this is the way I push them. And then I've had a few clients. So I actually have one of them this morning. She hasn't weighed herself for months because I told her not to. She's so obsessed with it for so long. I said, look, let's just, you know, let's just go after health and wellness for now and see what happens. And I told her, I said, you know, you can go ahead and check your weight and see what happens. And she got on the scale. She lost 15 pounds of body fat. Now this was a woman who struggled with five pounds of weight loss. Like it was a major, major struggle. And she literally lost 15 pounds on accident because she was chasing health and wellness. So I'll end it with that. Check this out. We have 30 days of coaching. It's available for free. The place to get it, mindpumpmedia.com. Also go to our YouTube channel, Mind Pump TV. There's a new video every single day, including the core videos that we refer to in this episode. And finally, if you want to ask us a question to answer in an episode like this one, the place to ask it on is Instagram. You can find the page at Mind Pump Media. You can find our personal pages as well. Mine is Mind Pump Sal. Adam is Mind Pump Adam and Justin is Mind Pump Justin. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.