 In this episode of Mind Pump, so in this episode we answer questions asked by listeners like you. What they do is they go to our Instagram page Mind Pump on Instagram and they ask us questions under the qua meme. We pick our favorite ones and then we answer them, but we also open these episodes with our introductory conversation. This is where we have a lot of fun. We talk about current events, studies and we tend to mess with each other in that first portion. Here's what we talked about in this episode. We start out by talking about why Adam is walking funny. What the hell is going on here? He's got a weird wobble in his step. Then we talked about the Instagram debate or discussion we had with our good friend Eugene Taylor. He's a smart dude. He made a post that said you don't need to squat, bench or deadlift. Actually it was a little bit more controversial than just that. So we talk all about why we think most people should squat bench and deadlift. Then we talked about the Epstein autopsy. Believe it or not, another autopsy came out and the forensics person that did it said he might have been murdered. Whoa. Yeah, who would have believed me? Strange. I talked about the recent podcast that was aired where I was interviewed by Max Lugovir on The Genius Life. This podcast we went off. We talked about counting macros and calories and why you don't need to do that. We also gave a rundown of the Game Changers documentary. So if you want to know what our opinion is, go check that out. Then we talked about how Organify is our favorite vegan supplement company. That's because we were talking about the Game Changers. Now we have a discount for you. Again, Organify makes vegan supplements like protein powders, green juices and red juices and a gold juice. They have a product called Pure, which is a neutropic based gut health supplement. You get 20% off if you use the mind pump discount. Here's what you do. Go to organify.com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump for the 20% off. Then we talked about 24 hour fitness. This is the place where we all went to school back in the day, but it looks like they might be tanking. And then we talked about the show Silicon Valley on HBO. I haven't seen it, but Justin said it's rad. You gotta check it out. Then we answered some fitness questions. Here's the first one. What are the differences between a beginner, intermediate and advanced lifter? Like how do you categorize them? Next question. This person wants us to break down the difference and benefits or detriments of the strict overhead press versus the push press. The next question was what are our opinions on training a muscle that is still sore? Like should you train it or should you skip it? And the final question we answered. This person wants to know what our thoughts were on process versus non-processed foods, even if the macros were the same. So proteins, fats, carbs and calories are the same. What are the benefits, detriments? Or is it the same when it comes to process versus unprocessed foods? Also, you are entering into the final hours of one of the biggest promotions of the year. MAPS and Abolic, our flagship fitness program designed to build muscle, speed up the metabolism, strengthen your body. This is the program that most people get started on with us. It's definitely our most popular one. It's 50% off. So if you're listening to this episode, right when we dropped it, you're lucky. There's some time left for the 50% off discount. Here's what you got to do. Do it now. Go to mapsred.com and use the code red50, R-E-D-5-0, no space for the discount. You're entering the gain zone. Dude, one of the drawbacks, there's not very many drawbacks to wearing the European underwear that I like to wear. Oh, Lord, here you go. You guys know what I'm talking about. I've seen them because they're roomed with you before. They're the least restrictive, right? They keep everything free. Yeah. Are they the least restrictive or the most restrictive? No, free, bro. Everything's out. The only thing that's being held in place is the important part. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I feel like it's, I feel like boxers would be nice. Now, boxers are too flowy. Yeah, go sprint and boxers, watch what happens. Yeah. I kind of like the breeze though. That's why I like the crosswind. That's why I would think it'd be the least restrictive. No, you're right. What I should say is they're the most functional. Yeah, they're designed the best. They keep what you need held. Yeah. Everything else is free. Me. I mean, it's kind of like lady briefs. But here's the, huh? No, they're not. Not at all, but lady briefs. They're in a bikini. Yeah. They did it. Well, I mean, so it is anyway. So there's that. So here's the bad part. Every once in a while, you get a wedgie. Oh yeah. Yeah. So you have a thong on right now. Yeah. And I'm not, I can't fix it because we started a podcast. So I'm already on camera picking at it. I'm already on. If I move, it's not going to be everyone's going to know. It's not going to be good. Do you know what's funny? You brought it up. Yeah. You know, it's hilarious. Watching Adam getting his truck. Oh God. Right now, right now. Little legs sore. Why are you walking like that? I can't remember the last time I was this sore. I mean, you know, it's funny is, you know, this is since probably the original three programs, I haven't like followed a protocol to a T. And I said, okay, when we do, when I do this power lifting program, I'm going to just follow it to a T. Just trust the process, go through it. Those that don't know, this is actually the first program that I haven't been involved in. Like I was, I wasn't here when the guys created it with, with Ben Pollock. And so that's part of why I was excited. Like, okay, cool. You know, I'm literally going through it. Let's see what I'm in for. What if we gave Adam a fake one? That's what I felt like. Oh, I bet he'll do this. Because normally what I would do is I'd go off of how I feel. I mean, we've been doing this for so long now. I know when I'm getting after it and a workout, I know when I'm really overreaching. And this is like, okay, I'm just kind of whatever about all that. I'm just going to follow the programming and see how I feel. And so I am just sore as fuck right now. Well, you went into it with a week off. Yeah, I was, yeah, I was deconditioned. I think I think if you're coming off of one of our other programs, you're coming off of anabolic or aesthetic or split or one of our other programs, and then you transition right into power lift, you'll be fine. That's what it was designed. That's how we wrote it. Because when we wrote it with Ben, we told them, we said, okay, we want to design a program that gets fit people who already work out from where they're at to power lifter competition stretch them a little bit. Yeah, to power lifting competition ready. And here's the thing. I've never trained purely like a power lifter. I've trained with a lot of the concepts and principles around it, but never trained. And I've never really trained like all the way never trained a client for a power lifting competition. I'm aware of the principles and techniques and all that stuff. But I have had friends who were experienced lifters, very experienced advanced, who are strong, go to a power lifting gym or follow a power lifting protocol and add like 30, 40 pounds to like a squat, which is insane. No, me too. I've heard the same thing. So that's why I'm just, I'm, you know, blindly following it no, no matter what. And I'm definitely feeling it. Painful. Yeah, I'm paying for Jordan. Jordan Syat. He when he went to, God, where'd he go? What's the same as there you go? He went to West side and he added like a hundred and something pounds to his deadlift or something like that or even more. Yeah, it was more than that. It was crazy. And he's already was already advanced. I mean, that's the thing about power lifting training. It's very objective and it's tested because it's very specific. Like I've never programmed this specific for that. Like I've always like, Oh, I want to get a better deadlift or Oh, I want my squad to improve. And so along those lines, including it in your right. So then I take some of the power lifting principles and I integrated into my already like bodybuilder type of routine. But never have I just said, okay, I'm really focused on the three big lifts. And let's see what I speaking of that. Our boy Eugene yesterday with his towel. Yeah, with his post a little bit of controversy. Yeah, you know, it's so funny. I, you know, I really like him like he's a good guy. Yeah, we were DMing back and forth last night. And I told him I said, yeah, I saw your because he was just like, man, boy, did that post stir it up big. And I said, yeah, no, I saw what you did there. He said something like people who squat bench and deadlift all the time or something like that. Maybe you could read it at him. Yeah, I don't want to butcher it. Yeah, you know, I'll read it. You know, and what Eugene is really good at is he's really good at stirring the pot like that. I mean, it's got 912 comments on it's got almost 10,000 likes. He said, most of the people doing barbell back squats bench press and conventional deadlifts would get far better results if they stopped doing barbell squats bench press and conventional deadlifts, which is a total controversial statement, especially talking to us, right? Because we just did an episode that was like, you should do those three lifts. And of course, anybody who's been following Mind Pump for a really long time. And they also follow Eugene because he's been featured on our YouTube channel and we're friends. He's a smart dude. Yeah, no, totally. And so everybody and I saw it this morning, you actually brought it up yesterday morning when you saw it, you said, do you see what Eugene posted? And I'm like, no, what did he do? I already know that he did something that would probably cause a lot of discussion, which I like, I like that because he does explain himself really well. And it does create good conversation and debate. And he's not, he doesn't attack people that attack him on there. No, I went on there and I challenged him and we had a civil, smart debate. I don't fully agree with him. I don't think he fully agrees with me. But he makes good points. And I mean here, the thing that I think is important to understand with exercises is this, like let's, let's forget arguing squats, deadlifts and bench press for a second. Let's ask anybody who's been training people for a long time, the following question is there a hierarchy of exercises? Okay, are some exercises more just generally more effective than others? Now, I want to preface this by saying that every exercise is not for every person. Okay, so yes, there's always going to be a variance. There's always individual applications when it comes to exercise 100%. So but barring that, I'm speaking generally, are some exercises just generally more effective than others. Now for people who are thinking, we're like, no, it depends or whatever. Okay, I'll give you an extreme example is a one legged banded leg extension going to be as effective as developing strength and muscle and calorie burn and everything as a barbell squat. Of course not. I don't think anybody's going to argue that. Okay, well, we know the extremes. I think everybody can agree on the extremes in terms of the hierarchy of exercises. Well, at the top, there's still some very good and effective exercises, but some of them are at the top and some of them are a little bit lower. And the widespread consensus among coaches, among trainers, among very experienced lifters, widespread consensus, meaning not all but most will tell you that the barbell squat, the barbell deadlift, and I'll argue that the bench press is probably not as important as those two, but definitely the barbell squat and barbell deadlift. Those are among the best exercises that most people can do. And some people will not, and I'll stand by the statement all day long, some people will not reach their full potential if they don't do them. Some people can only reach their full potential for strength and function by doing those very effective exercises. And so that's just my... Well, it's interesting to watch because it's definitely pulled more on the bodybuilding side because I've seen lots of arguments like for unilateral training being superior to bilateral training with barbells from the strength coach side, from that world, from athletics. And there's some compelling arguments in that direction in terms of longevity and really keeping your athletes healthy and risk versus reward. And you can kind of go down that rabbit hole. But when you're bringing up the most effective time-tested exercises that produce the most strength gains, it's really hard to convince me otherwise, strain me away from those other than whatever little compensations or things that exist within that individual that we have to account for. Well, I responded to it and I said, I like this post because there's a lot of truth behind it. I disliked this post because it validates those looking for an excuse not to do the big three because they're hard. Part of the unseen value of prioritizing the big lifts is the learning curve it takes to get at those lifts. And the reason, and it's funny because some people, there's a kid on there right now that's actually, you can tell he's a young PT who's siding with Eugene. And that's exactly the person why I don't like the post is because I was that person. I was a 22-year-old kid who read the same books as Eugene's reading. I'm the same kid who's heard that information and went, oh, I knew I didn't have to do these squats and deadlifts. I'm just going to stick to leg pressing and lunging and leg extensions and all these other exercises and build muscle. And I did. I totally trained that way and I left that out. But because of that, there's a lot of things that ended up I know hurting me and hurting my clients because I didn't teach them to work towards squatting and deadlifting. And there's a lot of value in, oh, wow, I'm not good at squatting. Oh, I'm not good at deadlifting. Why am I not good at those movements? Unpacking that, addressing all the possible dysfunction and balances that's going on and working towards that. And the truth is it is hard. It is going to take probably a long time to get good at it. But the lessons that you get from working towards that are incredible. And then the argument that came back was, you know, why not just goblets squat? Well, I mean, you could goblets squat, but then you could, and you could elevate your heels. You could crutch your ankle mobility and you could not work on your thoracic mobility. And you could do a movement that builds muscle in the legs, arguably almost as well as a squat. That's a good argument. But what I would say is why not try and get that person who can't barbell squat because they have poor thoracic mobility and they have poor ankle mobility to address the poor ankle mobility, the poor thoracic mobility over time and work towards having a good barbell squat. Sure. And I think it's a little bit of cheating to say why not do another type of squat. Okay. They're so similar. They're still both squats. The value of a barbell squat is you're able to load a lot of weight on your back. The problem with goblets squat is you start to become limited by the weaker players in that lift. Maybe your arms or your shoulders or your hands. So that's what makes a barbell squat. One of the reasons why a barbell squat is so effective. And I'll say this, when we give advice or when you listen to our opinion, what you have to consider is why, how we came to the conclusion. Okay. We did not come to this conclusion solely because we did these exercises and noticed them on ourself. That's part of the reason, but that's a small part. Most of the reason why we have our opinions is based on training hundreds or thousands by proxy because we did train lots of trainers who train lots of clients and we oversaw those programs. We also managed gyms and we saw people working out and we also trained hundreds of people ourselves every day, regular people. And that trumps anything you can, anything else. Okay. If your experience is training a bunch of advanced athletes, great. You've got experience training advanced athletes. So now your, your opinion is going to be based off of that. If you just train yourself, your opinion is quite limited, it's based off training yourself. If you just read a bunch of books and textbooks, well, that's where your experience comes from. But if you're an average person, which the 99% of you listening right now, fall in that category, very few people fall in the category of extreme self-aware, you know, athlete. That's the advice that the advice that we give is probably the one that's going to apply to you. And I use this example right here, you know, it's like you want to travel across the ocean. Do you take the guy who or girl who has studied all the navigation maps, you know, maps and understands the rotation of the earth and the ocean from learning, you know, these things from a textbook, or do you go with the guy or girl who's actually gone across the ocean hundreds of times? Who are you going to get on that ship with? Who are you going to trust more? And so this is where we get our information. So sometimes it's counter to even what might even seem a bit intuitive, because for a minute, from a common sense standpoint, intuitive standpoint, I think you can make an excellent case that you never need to squatter deadlift. I could easily break down the deadlift and be like, well, here's the muscles you're working and you can work them like this. You don't need a deadlift. You can work them this way. Or I could say it's all about tension. The body doesn't know what exercise it's doing. It doesn't know if you're deadlifting or doesn't know if you're barbell rowing. It doesn't know. So all you gotta do is create the right tension and you're going to build the same amount of muscle. I can say all kinds of different things that might start to make sense. But at the end of the day, after I've trained hundreds of everyday people, it just works. It just deadlifts, squats. Just for most people, they're the absolute best exercises. Just to compare it against a pillar, a known path of strength. This is a standard of strength that I know. Yes, I can alter that type of exercise to meet the demands of whatever I'm dealing with the variables that the individual's coming in with. I can assess that and we can work our way. But you have to have a clear vision of what you're trying to work towards. And if it's a strength pursuit, those are pillars in that direction. And to take those pillars out is creating something else that is not commonly shared known by people that have gone through the experience. You look in any sport that's been around for at least a few decades. And what you'll end up finding in each of these sports are, as Justin is saying, pillars. There are certain things that these athletes and coaches have found to be just things you don't want to necessarily take out. There's a certain type of training like boxers, right? Why have all the old-time boxers and why do the new ones even do long distance running? You think to yourself, what does long distance running have to do with boxing? Or why do they spend months of training head movement and footwork only? Or why do they hit a speedbag? Go hit a speedbag. We don't hit a speedbag. Why do basketball players do some of the drills that they do that are staples or judo fighters or any other athlete? Why is there this widespread consensus among coaches and strength athletes and personal trainers who have a lot of experience? Why is there a widespread consensus that those are definitely among some of the most effective general exercises? And it's because there's truth in there. That's why. And the reason why Eugene's post was controversial is exactly that, because he said something that is so counter to the widespread consensus. And that's just it. And it's not always going to be true if everybody's doing it. I understand that as well, but there's a reason why. And back to the point that I made with him, I also went on him and I were going back and forth and I said, I think this is, I think the wrong people are getting the right message from this. And the right or the wrong people are getting the right message from this and the right message isn't getting across to all the other people that you want to reach. And I was telling him that because an example was the kid who came on there right afterwards and was challenging me. I'm like, this is great. This is this young kid who's a trainer right now who's going to go down the same path that I probably did for the first five to eight years of training. And that is, I put a client on a squat and oh my god, it's really hard for them. They're pronating, their feet, their knees are collapsing, their chest is falling forward, they can't retract their shoulders enough. Oh, abandon ship. Let's go to the leg press. Oh, now they can look, they can do leg press. Right. Must be better. Right. And so, and I did, I did a lot of, I don't want to say harm because I didn't hurt or injure my clients that way, but I wasn't doing them a favor by moving to movements that were just easier for me to still work the muscles out. The better version or the older and more experienced version of me says that, sees that and goes, oh wow, you know, we have a lot of areas that we need to address and work on. And then I would unpack the squat and began to address the breakdown in that movement. And that's another thing that makes, that's why those movements are so valuable is they give coaches like ourselves a great starting point of like, okay, this is, this is the pinnacle is to get a good squat or good deadlift. Now, the reality of it, that we all know as coaches and so does probably Eugene, is that probably a majority of your people that come in can't perform those movements very well. But that doesn't mean that you abandon them and you go look for easier exercises to do to still accomplish the building of the muscle. You still should use that, in my opinion, should still use that as foundational movements that we're going to pursue working towards. There's a reason why the squat is a part of most, maybe not all, but most national certification assessments. If you look at a lot of assessments across these certifications that have been around for a while, a squat or some form of a squat is typically in there because it tells you a lot. It doesn't tell you everything. A real good assessment. There's a lot of things, multiple things you want to use and look at. But when you do a squat, you can look at a lot of different things and how they're working, not just individually, but how they're working or not working together. Here's a great example. You, Adam, for all intents and purposes, the squat should, using a lot of the arguments against the squat, it would be very easy for you to say you shouldn't squat. You're tall, you have long legs, your back hurt when you did squats and your back hurt, in fact, sometimes when you didn't squat, it would just hurt. So you were actually the poster boy for, oh, this guy right here, he's tall, he's lanky, he's, you know, hurts his back like he shouldn't be squatting. Now, Adam's a great trainer. He's worked a lot of people. And so instead, what did he do? He said, well, why can't I squat? And he spent a year working on getting himself to be able to squat. Now that you can squat, the benefits are, I mean, you can see it. You can see it blows everything else away. Right, right. And that same example applies to so many clients that I've trained now, right? Totally. Again, the beginning, and I think that's why I'm passionate about this argument, because I think I was on that side of the fence for the first half of my career. And when I'm being completely self-aware and honest, why? Because it was hard. Squatting was hard. A lot of work. Deadlifting was hard. I wanted to get a pump. I wanted to look better. I wanted to build muscle. I wanted to burn body fat. So I cared about, I didn't want to address why my feet were pronating, and why my knees are collapsing, and why my back hurt when I was squatting. Like, fuck that. I didn't want to do that. And so when I read material like this, especially from very intelligent, educated coaches before me that were presenting it, because he's not the first person to challenge these movements. I mean, although it's still the consensus that they're the superior movements, they've been challenged before by other professionals and made cases of other movements being better. But I disagree, because the message that comes across to a young trainer like myself is, oh, good, I don't need to do those movements. And so I avoid them, and I do all a bunch of other exercises, and built an okay physique. And if all you care about is aesthetics, and that's the only goal is how I look, then absolutely you can avoid those movements your entire life and build muscle and burn body fat without ever doing it. But there's so much more carryover that you get from that. Not to mention something that I think we talk about on this show that not a lot of fitness professionals talk about is the psychological benefits. What are the benefits of finding something or trying to get it good at a skill inside the gym and starting and being bad at and trying to figure it out and working towards it over months and probably years for a lot of people, what is the unsaid value of that? Or the value of the carryover. If you could squat well, that means you're going to be more functional in everyday life, more so than if you could leg press well or hack squat well. It just has a lot of carryover. We already make things easier in all aspects of life to begin with. Why are we going to do this to fitness training? That's another reason why I have a problem with this is, is this generation now? Is this the right message to send to the generation that's coming up right now and learning from all of us that, hey, it's okay if it's too hard for you. There's other exercises that are better. I think it's a terrible message. Because most people who don't squat, go squat, they're going to come back and be like, it's not for me. It's a cop out to me. It's a cop out. And it's conforming to your client's demands versus use the professional, taking them through the journey and delivering what's best. Absolutely. And now along those lines of controversy, since we're talking about controversy, did you guys, did you guys see the, the, the autopsy results from Jeff, Jeffrey Epstein? I, what I did see was Joe Rogan's jokes that he's been posting. It's just like, come on guys. So his brother, Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein's brother hired a autopsy. What do they call them? Pathology? I don't remember what they're calling me. I'll pull it up for you. Oh, a forensic pathologist. Okay. And he is showing evidence that he did not die by suicide. He says that the autopsy, autopsy points to homicide. Strangulation. Strangulation. Yeah. Somebody, somebody killed him is what he's saying. Yeah. Which is funny because obviously that's what happened. Now what? Dude, how are you going to do something about it? Or is this just going to be like one of those? Yep. They got away with it. Have you seen all the memes that people are sharing? Yeah. Didn't you see the one that Joe Rogan posted? Did you see the one I posted? The pregnancy one. That was the result. I posted one too. There's a bunch of them where there's like a fact in there like, like did you know that wild boars can carry, you know, 40 pounds of weight on their back and Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. Like all these memes that are like informational and then they'll be like a like a like a Snapple cap, you know, and wasn't, didn't Kevin Spacey, so wasn't Kevin Spacey being investigated for like he was on the, he was on the Bill Cosby train, right? There was something down the same path. There was something that happened with them. Like you were on that train. They were invested and it was connected. Why not? They get off. I mean, this guy's unbelievable, dude. They get off and then they get off again. I mean, yeah, not a way I like to get off. You can, you can rape 72 women, just not 73. You know what I'm saying? Like it's crazy and serve two years or whatever. Well, he got, what is Kevin going to serve? So Kevin, so check this out. So they brought him in and he's connected to Epstein. So they're saying that he's connected. He was fly, he was on his flights, you know, to this island that Epstein have that everybody said was like where he did all this terrible shit or whatever. Anyway, the main, I guess witness or the person who was, you know, had all the evidence against Spacey died. So he's conveniently interesting. This whole thing is crazy to me. What is happening? What the fuck? Did he commit suicide like Epstein? I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. He ran himself over with the car or something like that. Yeah. This whole thing is insane man. It's so crazy. So crazy. Anyway, and then again, more controversy. The podcast I did with the max that I told you guys about. Yeah. Genius life podcast. Right. That one came out. So I'm waiting for a little bit of blowback. Why would you say? Yeah. Also controversial. We talked about game changers, the documentary. And, you know, that's really stirring up a lot of, so, so you know that James Cameron invested like 140 million dollars into a vegan brand. A vegan protein powder. Yeah. Or supplement company. It's actually right now the largest vegan supplement company in the US now owned by, or he's one of the main shareholders is James Cameron. Wow. And we, I knew it. Remember we called this. We said, I bet you they're going to be, they're putting out this documentary and then on the heels of it, they're going to follow along. I hope that if, if Europe is called Zehalu, if I hope, if our, our, our audience, here's this episode. And, and when people like Kai Green, who I, who I think are setting the table for announcing that they're sponsored. Oh, Kai Green so on the road. I hope a ton of people go over there and call him out on it because it's, I think that's what's coming next is he's been doing vegan posts after vegan posts. And it's like, some people though are saying that he's trolling. So I don't, I don't follow Kai. Oh, the Kai is? Yeah. That Kai is trolling everybody. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, if you did, he got me. He seems to be going deep in it though. It was like every post he's talking about it. I agree too. Yeah. So he, he might be, look, I mean, I got nothing wrong with, uh, I mean, organ, plant-based, I'll tell you what, organifies a vegan supplement. It's the best one that I'm aware of. Um, you know, so when I directly, and I take, if I take protein, I take vegan protein and that's because I have an intolerance to, uh, to dairy protein. So I can't do whey. I can't do casing. Um, I could do a beef protein powder, but I haven't had, I never tried one of those. That was good. They're usually beef powder, doesn't sound to. Yeah. They have an egg one too. I remember taking that. It was like G robs or something. Oh, egg protein. Yeah. Egg white. That's like Fart City. My favorite is when we get on these pages and we talk to people about that and they try and throw that back on our face. I'm like, we're sponsored by a fucking vegan protein. Yeah. And we're not anti-vegan. It's just funny. No, I'm, I'm, we're anti-bad. I'm plant-based and meat-based. We're totally anti-bad information. And so Max and I got on there and really kind of broke down some of the fallacies of that documentary. And, and you know, my favorite was the study they showed on game changers that showed that the, look at this, a vegan diet will cause better performance in athletes because they were comparing a freaking keto diet to one with carbs, which is just, yeah, it's like, yes, it's true. If you don't eat carbs and you eat carbs, you're going to perform better, but that doesn't mean vegan is, is better. Uh, that wasn't comparing, you know, the omnivore diet to a vegan diet. That was comparing a no carb diet to a diet with carbs. They took some science and they twisted it. A lot of slight of hand stuff in there. Totally. But well made. No, it was. I really think, I think they had some political strategist, one of the better filmmakers out there to produce it. That's for sure. Yeah, dude. So I don't know, man, we'll see. We'll see what happens on that, but I'm waiting for the backlash, but I love Max. He's a smart dude. He's very measured. You know, he does a good job and, and he's, he's not, uh, you know, he's not biased. He's always trying to do, you know, go off of the science and what actually works. And, um, and I really appreciate that. That's why I can't imagine him getting too much blowback. I mean, he's a pretty measured. He said he is, he still gets a lot of pro. He gets a lot of shit. He says he's been getting so weird. He says that he's been getting attacked by or a lot of vegans are, are, are hitting them hard because he's saying that an omnivore diet is better for most people, which is what the evidence totally shows. You know, so some people just don't want to recognize science, I guess. Yeah. And also I, this is the first time I've ever seen a diet be politicized and being tied to, uh, morality, not just the not killing animals part, but it's better for the environment. It's better for the world. And so because it's politicized, it's kind of drawing a lot lying in the sand. Like diets have been, uh, tribal forever, you know, people have always been tribal about their diet, but never have I like, is it going to be like you're going to be eating, you know, a burger and people are going to think you're like, you know, you know, lighting, you know, oil on fire or something like that. Like the same thing or smoking a cigarette, throw a blood on you. Yeah. Hey, did you guys get, uh, which one of you guys got the DM, uh, from the guy who works at 24 our fitness? I saw that was you. I did. Wow. Yeah. So I guess they're down sizing a bit. I guess all the clubs, this is what he said. So this is from, this is from us, somebody who worked there. So I don't know if this is true, but I guess he said that all the clubs, except for the super sport ones are no longer 24. How do you call yourself 24? Isn't that funny? This could be fitness, limited hour fitness, 20, 20 hour fitness. So I guess they're going to change their hours. So obviously cutting costs, cutting back kids club. I thought I saw cutting back kids club. They're just doing more rounds of costs. The bean counters are definitely taken over again. They are, dude. Fat company, man. What do you think? Do you think that eventually they go to like a fully automated, like almost like, uh, what's that, what's that company that grew? Uh, not snap fitness. No, no, no. I almost did any time fitness where it's just like a card and you swipe. It takes three people to manage the whole place. I kind of liked that model. Yeah, it's interesting. Well, it's my, might be the direction they're going. Yeah. I mean, they've already, they already have established a name for themselves. They already have enough facilities in place, enough branding in place that, you know, they could just be choppin, choppin, choppin, choppin. There was a while there where their, their goal was, and this was under master under mark where their goal was to become known as a good, um, a good gym that is also priced, uh, competitively. Like they, they don't want to be the bottom. You know what I mean? It feels like they're racing to the bottom. Like no, we just want to be cheap. We just want to have more gyms and be cheap. Well, I remember when they, when they sold and then Carl Liebert came in as CEO, he came originally from, uh, Home Depot and he was responsible. He was the CEO of Home Depot when Home Depot created all the self checkout. So that was like his main initiative when he came in was to automate more, to cut, cut, cut people that didn't need to be there and automate and move this gym into the future, uh, with no regard to what it takes to get somebody involved into a fitness journey. You know, it's just a different monster. You go to Home Depot because you need a hammer and nails. And you, if I, when I show up there, I don't need someone to convince me, I need a hammer and nail. I came there because I need a hammer and nail or else I wouldn't even be in there. I don't browse the store. I didn't need to get convinced to go into the store. So it's a total different model than somebody who is on the fence of, you know, should I work out? Do I need to get in shape or my doctor just told me I'm unhealthy and so I need to do something about it, but I'm here. I don't know what to do. When you go to a gym, you don't buy anything. Yeah, that's the thing. It's a dream. You really have to like paint that picture for people. Yeah. And I think that they forgot that what they thought was we're going to lower the cost of operating the company by cutting out personnel or cutting out that, that human touch. And then they assumed that the revenue coming in would stay the same. Yeah. They didn't realize that that would affect. We knew this as gym managers. I walked into a gym and the first month would increase the revenue by 20 to 50 percent sometimes. How the fuck did I do that? Just walking into the gym. That's the kind of an impact that the people in the gym have and CrossFit proved this CrossFit proved this. It became popular not because of their gyms. Their gyms were fucking warehouses. They were dirt holes, but why wasn't the amenities? Why did they blow up? Because it was about the people and the community and the environment in there. That's what makes a gym a gym. It's not the equipment. Nobody gives a shit. People don't know about equipment. They want that accountability. They want to know that people are there in their corner. That's it. And that's what creates, you guys know that as well as I can walk into a gym that has minimal equipment, but you feel the energy. You see the people in there and what's going on. The part that I find interesting and watching it is, you know, can you though have grown to be so big and you have so much of a base already that you can look at your overhead and go, Oh, wow, we're spending, you know, let's just say for argument's sake, we're making a hundred million dollars a year and we're spending 50 million on people to run this facility. Could we cut the cost of 50 million people or 50 million dollars on people down to 10 million dollars in people and afford to lose the 40 million in memberships because there's still a certain amount of people that will pay just because it's absolutely convenient because it's a gym. Well, it was a gym open 24 hours. It has, you know, a lot of them have saunas and pools and basketball courts and cardio and decent sized weight floors. And there's one on almost every corner like McDonald's these days. So, you know, you or I don't need to be sold to go in there. We just want, I mean, I still pay my 24 membership because I know when we travel and we go around places, I can pretty much count on that there's a 24 around. I can't count on that there's a Bay Club over there. I can't count. That's a completely different mentality towards it. Right. So, so why I don't count them out completely? Although, I don't think you could ever build a business or build a gym business with the mentality that they have now. I agree with you that, you know, but do they have enough to wear right steam? You have enough clout that it's okay. We can we can lose 40 million because we're going to cut 50 million and and maybe but the gym business is far more competitive today than it was 20 years ago. You have companies like LA Fitness and, you know, Crunch, Planet Fitness and all these other companies that are competing now. Well, I think that's why they're doing this because Planet Fitness is at the bottom as far as pricing $9 a month or $10 a month and they're everywhere. Yeah. And they're starting to pop up everywhere. So I that's I actually think that 24 looks at them as probably one of their their biggest competitor and they are trying to figure out how do we get our rates down to $9 and and stay afloat and the maybe the only obvious choice of that is cutting overhead, cutting the the kids club out, cutting the the employees that are working from 10pm till 4am because there's not really a lot of traffic in there and getting rid of positions and well, you know, the way that I'm pretty sure that Ray Wilson had comp plans like this for his managers. Now, Ray Wilson owned he's the if if Mark Mastroff is the godfather of the fitness industry. Ray Wilson would be like the grandfather. He's like one of the first people to really kind of start to figure this out. And this is back when 24 hour Nautilus combined with family fitness centers, which was owned by Ray Wilson became 24 hour fitness. But anyways, Ray Wilson had comp plans where the managers were given a budget and whatever they saved over the budget they took. And that proved to be a great model for cutting costs because here's my belief. I think there's definitely ways you can cut costs from the top when you have a massive company where you can cut it from the top, but you're never going to be quite as accurate at cutting costs or as effective as the people individually who are managing each gym because each gym is a little bit different. Like I may be managing a gym and I know what my budget is. Let's say my budget's $50,000 a month. And I'm looking at my club and I'm like, I don't need all this, these people cleaning my club. My club is clean. We clean the club. I can cut a lot of that. Or I may be in a club like, man, this club is dirty all the time. I need more money on that. And I actually need less money on kids club because barely any of my members use this. And so this is what they did. The managers cut where they saw they needed to cut, added where they needed, and then the rest they would take. And sometimes that meant that they just worked more themselves, but the profits did well and they still perform very well. Now cutting from the top can be very difficult. Now the challenge with that is that, you know, 24 has already made the mistake of cutting the cost of, or cutting the pay of these general managers. Oh, they got a lot of the best ones out. Yeah. So somebody who could, who probably managed P&Ls really well like that, you know, back in Ray Wilson days is long gone. And now you're attracting a different breed of managers that come in. So, you know, you think that would be a good idea how to do it, but it might be too little too late in that direction. You know what I would love? I would love to ask Mastroff, what would he do if he got 24 hour fitness again? Interesting conversation. Who knows? Maybe they're, maybe they're maybe they're positioning because sometimes what companies do to positions. Yeah, position to sell. That they do. They cut costs and they're ready to sell. One of the best ways to show that you're profitable when you're that size is exactly what I said is, yeah, we're spending, yeah, $50 million a year on people, get rid of all those people. If the place is still up your value, if that place can still stand, you know, and it may be a recipe for long-term disaster, but an investor may not understand that or see that. Yeah, they're just looking at, oh, shit, you profited $100 million. Look at the numbers and they're handed that. Yeah. Have you guys seen the Silicon Valley that's back? Oh, the new season's out? No, I haven't. Oh, my God. I love that show. It's such great satire on what's all around us all the time. It's great because they, like, Hooli gets bought out by Amazon and they're going through this whole thing and it's just so great. They throw so many jabs at a lot of these like massive companies, like the Four Horsemen companies and they're talking about them basically being the new kings and everything and then they need to take them down and so they're like resisting like this king taking them over and then, you know, going into Congress and kind of like battling the fact of like stealing all the users' data and these are all like real issues that we're seeing. All my clients that are involved, clients and friends that are working for a lot of these companies say that it's so spot on. Is it on point? It's so spot on. Oh, wow. And is this Showtime or HBO? It's HBO. Okay. Oh, you've never seen it before? No, I've got HBO now. You kind of have to watch from the very beginning series. I was going to say, does it make sense to watch it from the beginning? No, no, watch from the beginning for sure. Really? It's worth it. It's hilarious. This way, like Courtney gets like uncomfortable because the guy is like so awkward, you know, he's like, has the most awkward delivery and I love it because it's so funny. Well, it's, again, that's another point they say that a lot of my family and friends and clients that are involved in that space are like those little incubators, the personalities. Those are the CEOs. Yeah, those are the personality. Hyper nerds that hate attention. That's the voice you make when you make fun of me, actually. Hey, on today's episode. I'm always getting bullied. Oh, shit. All right. Our first question is from D-Prinval. What are the differences between a beginner, intermediate or advanced lifter? Now, at first glance, this question seems pretty simple, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that. That's hard to answer. It is, right? Like I would say a beginner is somebody who is learning how to move properly and learning how to do the right exercises for their body properly. Intermediate is somebody that knows those things. They know how to do the squats and the deadlifts and the presses and the rows. They've got good form. They know what the exercises do for the body. I think most people stay in intermediate for a long time. I think intermediate is a long phase. I was just going to say, I feel like I could answer this really well for beginner and advanced. I have a hard time putting together the category that would fit all the intermediate people. What I mean by that is, a beginner to me is somebody who they're very green to the gym. Most exercises are very foreign. Most of their mechanics are poor, and so they're still learning the technique and what is it for? That's kind of like your beginner. Then somebody who's on the advanced to me is somebody who can intuitively lift. They understand form. They understand exercise. They understand programming. They know what their body needs to get to whatever goals they have. I think it just amounts to consistency. If you're an advanced lifter, you've gotten past the point of having those waves of momentum where it's like, I'm on. I'm off. I'm on. I'm off. You know what to do in the gym for the most part. If you're intermediate, you know the mechanics. You know how to structure your workouts, but maybe you haven't fine-tuned it to the degree. Maybe that's just because of the consistency, the frequency that you've been applying these techniques. You haven't really been succumbed by, well, I don't feel like going for a few weeks to a month. Then you come back and it's like this on and off kind of thing. I think advanced takes a long time to get to. I really do. I think it's advanced lifters. It's probably like everything else. We talk about being a master, right? 10,000 hours. Yeah. An advanced lifter is somebody who can go by feel. It's like a black belt and a martial art. You know when a movement is working for you, when it's not. You know when you need to apply more intensity or less. You know how frequency affects your body. You are in the unconscious, competent stage where you don't, it's like walking or breathing. Like I don't need to think about walking or breathing. It just happens. I take one step after the other and I can talk to other people and think about other things and it's normal. And that's what advanced lifting is all about. And advanced lifting, if that's the definition, it takes a long time. That's why I think most people are intermediate. Like in the past, I would have said, oh, you know, after about three years of consistent lifting, you're advanced. I think I change that now. I think you could lift consistently and it might take you longer. It might take more like five years or six years before you really get to that place of really understanding how your body feels. I imagine it. I really like the 10,000 hour rule and it applies to most other things. I don't know why it wouldn't apply very well to this. I felt like it took me 10,000 hours to get good at being a personal trainer. I think it for sure took me 10,000 hours of training myself and others before it became intuitive for me. Isn't that funny too? Because if you, if I went and asked, you know, Justin, Adam or Sal, five years into personal training, do you think you're a master of personal training? Oh yeah, totally. Now looking back, I was far from master at five years. It took me more like 10. I would say it took 10 years before I felt like I was... I like what you said. I think most people in their first year or so fall in the beginner category at least, like for the least the first year. And then after that, once you, you know, get pretty good form down and understand the exercise that you're doing, you probably move into the beginning stages of intermediate. And then you're probably in intermediate for most of your lifting career until you've put that many hours under your belt. And just what comes with that experience is a lot of things that you learn along the way. And you probably are in that intermediate phase thinking you're advanced a lot like what if you would have asked me five years into personal training and seven years into training myself. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know everything I need to, but looking back now, I go like, most of what I think I've learned came from years 10 and beyond. So, you know, it's... Well then, sure. But then what about those, those people at the gym that have been there for like 20 years doing the same routine? You're stuck in intermediate. Yeah. You're stuck in intermediate. But it's not the hours, you know, it's the education. It's the right hours. Yeah. What do they say? Perfect practice makes perfect, not just practice, you know? I think that's a great point. Now that being said, that doesn't mean that if you've been lifting for four years because you're not advanced, that doesn't mean you can't do an advanced programmed workout. Right. Because then there's recovery ability, there's your body's ability to adapt. Now that's totally different. Totally, totally different. If you've been training consistently, hard for two years, three years, you could follow an advanced workout. The problem is you can't write of an advanced workout. But you can follow one. If you bought an advanced workout program and you've been lifting consistently for two or three years and you've got good and you're healthy, otherwise, that's probably going to be okay for you. You're just not going to be able to create one for yourself. You're definitely not going to be able to create one for other people. That's a good point because within beginner, intermediate, advanced, there's different subcategories of what we're talking about. Right. And if you're just talking about... Like your body's ability... Yeah, your body's ability to train advanced lifts or to train an advanced program. If you've been lifting consistently for a year or two, you absolutely can train a... I mean, it's like the power lifting program we have right now. I wouldn't recommend it to a beginner green first month in the gym. I would tell them to run like a MAPS anabolic and go through the three, the three core ones that we originally created first. That's almost a years with the training. Then you would be, I think, in a great place to do something, move into that. But yeah, I think the beginner, intermediate, advanced really depends on what we're talking about. Next question is from Leah V 1983. Can you break down the differences between the overhead press versus push press, which is better for the novice lifter? Excellent. So overhead press is just a straight press the bar or dumbbells up straight up over your head. And it's strict in the sense that your body stays tight and rigid when you do it. You've got good control, good stability. A push press is explosive. So a push press is I got the bar or the dumbbells at my shoulders and then I... You're hinging your hips back and you're explosively kind of jumping the weight up. Yeah, I'm boosting it. I'm boosting it with my lower body and my chest or the rest of my body. Definitely more advanced. Way more advanced. The novice lifter shouldn't be doing a push press. A push press requires all the skills that it takes to be good at an overhead press plus extra. So if you're not advanced... If you don't have it like mastered the overhead press, doing a push press is totally silly. Now, they do have different benefits. The push press is explosive. So there's a speed element. That's excellent for people who've been working out for a little while. So if you've only ever done overhead presses, try some push presses and watch what happens to the muscle on your body. It's also excellent for people that have athletic pursuits. If you care about explosiveness and that matters to you. For the general population that's just trying to build muscle, lose body fat, it's probably less applicable than somebody who's like an athlete. If I'm someone who's a young athlete and explosiveness is something that I want, then there's a little more value to that. But still, regardless, I would teach a strict overhead press and great form there before I start to incorporate. A strict press is definitely a prerequisite for me. I mean, I would need to see how well that you're controlled and that you're able to stabilize the weight overhead. That by itself is quite the challenge with today's demands in the workplace, at home, like what you're doing constantly, just to be able to raise your arms and have good shoulder mobility by itself is quite the feat. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that. They think that by just lifting something over their head, that's the end of the story where we don't even track to see where that bar path is, where your capacity is to bring your shoulder in the right position to be able to now incorporate your shoulder blades to stabilize and get your muscles activated properly. So there's just a lot going on there before we get into going fast. This is why I love the Z-Press. Yes, it forces that. Yes, it forces that. It's showing somebody on our program and a video a strict press is tough because I know from my experience, I could stand in front of a client, show them a strict overhead press, then give them the bar and them do it and then fuck up the bar path easily because their body will deviate and they'll take the easiest path. That's just natural for clients. So I love teaching with the Z-Press because what I know with the Z-Press is you can't cheat it, you'll fall back. And so if you have a poor bar path, you'll know right away. There's no guessing for you. You don't need a mirror to know. You won't be able to extend your arms all the way up and lock out with the bar above your head and not fall over unless you are taking a good bar path. So I love to teach the Z-Press first and get those mechanics down really well. And then I teach a strict overhead press standing where I teach them to engage their core, activate their glutes, and keep their lower body stiff. And then the advance to that is eventually the push press. Totally. When I first became a trainer, this blew me away quite a bit. When I had the average 35-plus year old, so 35 and up, come in who's untrained, just the average person doesn't work out. I was shocked at how little of them or how few of them were able to fully extend their arm above their head without weight. It sounds simple, sounds like nothing. But if you're listening right now, go to your mom or your dad or your aunt or your uncle, somebody who doesn't work out, have them place their back up against the wall and see if they can raise their arms straight up above their head while keeping their hand in elbow and contact with the wall without having to over arch their back or have their butt come off the wall. You'd be surprised how few people can achieve that straight line above their head. When I would train people in advanced age, that was something that I always worked on. And it always blew me away. I was like, wow, you can't even reach straight up above your head. But it makes sense. How often do we do that in our everyday lives? How often do we strengthen that pattern? We don't. I mean, I lost a lot of that. It took me a long time to get that back. And I was still working my shoulders. This goes back to the earlier discussion and the big three kind of, because I would actually incorporate the big four and it would be overhead press. Totally. In fact, functionally speaking, I would even consider it superior to bench press. I agree. And this is just another example that I mean, I did military press and lateral raises and front dumbbell raises. I did all those movements and built great shoulders for a decade of training. And then got to a point where, and I totally ignored overhead press. Why? Because I'd arched my low back. I didn't have good thoracic mobility. So it didn't allow me to retract my shoulders. So I could get my shoulder, my arms up by my ears. And so I just kept building muscle and neglected that movement. And because of it have all kinds of poor mechanics. And it took me probably a year on unpacking that and working on that to get to the point where I could actually do a behind the neck press. But talk about the value in that. I had a lot of neck pain and tightness in my traps all the time. That got eliminated completely. The tracking, just my shoulder, just the whole, the way I would feel the clicking on my shoulder when I did certain exercises, because my scapula was rolled forward, completely got rid of that. I mean, this just goes, this is why these movements are so good. And a lot of people are bad at them. But that's not why you should ignore them. You incorporate them. If they do bother you, they are challenging. Then instead of just walking away from them, you try and unpack that, which this is where why I think that Prime Pro is probably the most valuable thing for everybody, because very few people are going to do the big three or the big four and have perfect mechanics. And it's because they've got breakdown in one of the major joints, if not all of them or most of them, and they should be doing movements. And it's not completely obvious. Right. You know, you really need feedback. And a lot of times, like you can get that from a coach, so it's going to be able to point that out and look at you. But if you're just by yourself doing an exercise, you think everything's going great. Because that's what your body is supposed to do. It's supposed to make it efficient and get to an end point. Like I'm doing this, now I'm getting to an end point. But you don't realize like all these compensations that are occurring along the back in the back in the day, you know, bench press didn't become a popular exercise until the 19, I'd say 30 40s, I think it was always overhead press, all the strength athletes, a few, you know, nowadays, maybe nowadays a little different, but when I was growing up, it was like, how much can you bench? That was your, here was your, you know, how they talked about how strong you are. How come how much can you bench now? It's maybe how much can you deadlift walk? But yeah, much bench, bro. Exactly. No, back in the day, it was how much you could press over your head. That's how much that was a test of your strength. And that's why I make the argument that the overhead, and the truth is, you know, I, if someone compress a shit ton of weight overhead standing, it means more than if they could bench more off their chest. The overhead press is a very valuable exercise. Next question is from jazz fitness. What are your opinions on training a muscle group that is still sore from the previous workout? Boy, I'll tell you what, so jazz years ago, I was, my family and I were planning a trip to Italy over the summer and I wanted to look good because I have a bunch of cousins and family over there and they all knew I was in fitness. I want to make a good impression or whatever. I hadn't seen them for a long time. Yeah. Hot cousins. I'm not that Sicilian. So I, you know, so and I'm always been a historian when it comes to fitness, especially bodybuilding. I love reading old publications. And you know, at this point, I'd been working out for a long time and I'd noticed that the bodybuilders and strength athletes in the past all worked their body parts more than once a week. The once a week training became a trend of each body part where you're like biceps on Monday, you don't wait till next Monday to hit it again. That didn't become a thing until like the nineties. That was because the Mr. Olympia at the time, during the eights was a, an advocate for, you know, the Arthur Jones style of heavy duty training where you hammer the shit out of a muscle and leave it alone for an entire week. But before that, everybody trained muscle groups twice a week. And before that, it was three days a week or four days a week. So I'd read all these things and I was like, you know, I know I'm only supposed to work my body parts once a week, but I'm going to try this two day a week thing. And so what I did is I broke up my, my body into, uh, you know, I did upper body, lower body, rest, upper body, lower body. And part of my rationale was I got to get lean anyway. So I'm just going to burn a lot more calories. So I'm doing, I'm hitting everything more. So I'm just going to burn more calories. Now luckily, intuitively, I knew to not go quite as hard if my body was a little sore. So what ended up happening Monday, I hit upper body, you know, Tuesday legs, Wednesday off, then it came back Tuesday. Oh, it's upper body again. I'm still a little sore. I'm going to go a little easy, um, but I'm still going to train it because I got to see what happens. Blew my mind training a sore muscle appropriately. So don't beat the shit out of it, but training it appropriately. I recovered faster. Actually, I didn't get more sore the next day. I actually felt a little bit better. And then I started progressing at a very, very quick rate. And this was the one of the things that led to the development of MAPS anabolic, which is where you hit body parts essentially three days a week. So hitting a sore muscle group, if you do it right, it's actually better than not hitting it. Oh yeah. I've had, I've had that experience and it's just like promoting more blood flow, like getting the oxygen there, like all these different, like again, this is dose dependent. This is making sure that I'm not going to intense, uh, you know, with that workout where I'm already sore, but to get through like those same movements and get blood flow and get that, uh, to facilitate better recovery, definitely, uh, that definitely was an effective strategy. And that helped a lot because like just sitting around and being sore, like I, I noticeably was more stiff and it would almost exaggerate it on that level. I think it's important though, and I agree with everything we're saying, but I also think it's important to, to note that if you, if you're getting so sore that like you go into it's two, three days later and you're hitting that muscle group again or you're supposed to hit that muscle group again and you're like really, really sore, that's a sign that you, you overreached on the last workout. And you need to take that into consideration when you go back into that, that, that, that routine again, that I didn't need to go that far, you know, and, and, and really what you're reaching for, what you're targeting, the goal for me is always, and I say this a million times on the show, that I'm trying to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. Well, what does that look like? Well, what it looks like is just stretching myself enough that I might be a little sore from it. So I know that like, okay, definitely that was a, that was more for me because my body is telling me I'm a little sore from it, but if I'm really sore from it, that means I way overreach and I way over did more, so bad that it's probably going to hinder that workout that I do again in two or three days that I probably won't be able to get after it as much as I'd like to because I am so sore. So yes, I agree. You can definitely hit a muscle and you should because it will, it'll facilitate recovery faster and you can, you will probably adapt and grow, you're increasing your volume. So there's nothing wrong with training a quote unquote sore muscle, but I also think that's a good signal for you to know that you're, you're overreaching more than you need to and to probably back off a little bit on, on the volume, meaning less sets, less reps or a little less weight the next time you circle back around there. Again, my sweet spot, if I know that I'm hitting a muscle group every other day or every two days, I want to feel it. I want to get a good workout where I'm like, oh, the next day, I know I worked my legs, but when I'm having a hard time walking around, I know that it's like, oh, I totally could have done three less sets and still sent a signal to my body to build muscle there and I wouldn't be walking around like I have a stick up my ass and I'd be able to get a good workout in two days. This is why I've also like, I've, I love, I've gravitated more towards the total body workout instead of split. Like I used to do split routines like a long time ago, but that was way more, I would get sore from that way more so than I would these total body movements. And that's just mainly because I'm hitting them again. I know I'm going to go through these movements again the next day. And then it's, it psychologically kind of prepares you to not overreach because you already know that like, well, I can't lie. I can't really go all out. I have to come back again and two days them again. Yeah. And two days I'm doing, you know, today I'm doing squats and, you know, man, I feel great. And I've already knocked out five or six sets like, maybe I'll push eight or 10 sets. But then I'm like, well, yeah, I could push eight or 10 sets. But I also know on Wednesday, yeah, I'm good to it. I'm coming back here again. And I'm doing Bulgarian split squats or I'm doing lunges or I'm doing front squats. I don't want to, I don't want to hinder those because I went, I went so hard here. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave a little bit in the tank and then know I'm going to get after it on two days later. And also understand that recovery and adaptation are two different things. So your body wanting to heal and your body wanting to build muscle, which is a type of adaptation, those are two different things. Now they happen oftentimes at the same time, because as your body's healing, it's also trying to build muscle, but that doesn't mean you can't get your body to want to build more muscle while you're healing. In other words, if you're sore and you hit the muscle again, but you do it right, okay, got to adjust the intensity. Don't overdo it. Depends how sore you are. If I'm super sore, I'm going light. I'm just trying to get a pump. I'm getting a squeeze. I'm stretching a little bit. You're going to send another or a louder or make the concurrent muscle building signal louder while not hampering your body's ability to heal. In fact, as we discussed earlier, you may actually speed up your body's ability to heal at the same time. Next question is from Riley McFadder, 18 thoughts on processed versus non-processed foods if the macros are still good in the processed foods. As we go to answer this, Doug, will you look this up? Because I'm going to make a point that I want to make sure I'm right on my percentages because it's been a while since I've lived this. Would you look up at what FDA approves labels to be off? How accurate do they have to be? Yeah, I believe FDA allows like 30%. It's 20% to 30% wiggle room on their labels. You would be a fool to think that a package thing like a lean pocket, which is designed to market and advertise to people that are probably trying to lose weight or count their calories, but they also want it still to taste good. You would be a fool to think that they're not going to push those boundaries as far as they can so that you feel like, man, this is so good. I can't believe it's only 250 calories. Well, it technically could be about 320 calories based off of how much they allow it to be off. And then also foods that are marketing to, oh, this has 20 grams of protein. Well, again, if you can be off 20 or 30%, I know I'm targeting the group demographic of people that are searching for protein. I'm going to push those limits. I'm going to round up to make you think that there's a lot more in there. So before Sal goes on his tangent about process and non-processed foods and the benefits of each or whatever, I'm just going to tell you straight up that when you're trying, this is also why 99.9% of all competitors don't eat processed foods when you're competing is because when you are have to be that diligent track, can't count on it. No, you can't. You can't count on it. I can't go eat it. It's much more precise to weigh a chicken breast or weigh. Yes, way, way, way more accurate. And when I'm controlling everything that's in it and being cooked and this goes for when you go to restaurants too, and they now have to like label or list, you know, and to me, it's so funny that this is even a question because do you really think that the thousand Chipotle's that have 10,000 different employees that are that are scooping the black beans and the rice? Well, I know who my heavy handed guy is. I'm like, hey, man, you give me the meat. Right. Do you really think that they're all the same? No, you're talking about and we're talking about hundreds of calories that could be off based off of just one meal. And if you eat multiple meals out or that are processed, yeah, you're, it's nowhere near as accurate as you think it is. So here's what I'm going to say about this topic. I can pretty confidently say, and I think that this will age very, very well. So I think in 10, 15 years, I think this is going to be the consensus, but I can confidently say that it was the processed food revolution that was the single largest contributor to the obesity epidemic in modern Western societies. For a long time, we wanted to blame, we wanted to blame fat. It was too much fat in our diet. That's what's making it fat, making us fat. Then it was carbs or sugar. The reality is you can gain or lose weight if your calories are too high or too low. And it can be higher in carbs, lower in carbs, higher in fat, lower in fat. We know this. So why the hell ever since I'd say the the fifties, but definitely the sixties, seventies and really started taking off after the seventies, eighties, nineties and now, why the hell did we all of a sudden become so fat? And why is it that other countries that start to adopt the quote unquote American diet, which really isn't, it's just really it's the, it's the modern develop Western diet. Why is it that other countries, as soon as they adopt this, they all get fat too. You look at Mexico, for example, Mexico, uh, you know, a few decades ago, three, four decades ago, did not have an obesity problem. You go back 50 years, they had a problem, the opposite. Today, Mexico, I believe rivals America in terms of obesity. Um, how did this happen? It wasn't fat. It wasn't carbs. It was processed food. Now, why does processed food make us gain weight? Well, we now have studies that show this. This is what we've learned as personal trainers, by the way. This is what I knew as a trainer, working with people. This is what Adam and Justin saw themselves as well. Heavily processed foods make you eat more. So now you have, you know, American culture, 60s and 70s, the introduction, or at least the, all of a sudden processed foods started to become part of our daily lives. Now at that time, it was still a staple to have, you know, a well-cooked dinner, you know, you know, mom made dinner for you and lunch was probably still made. And breakfast, still people had eggs and bacon and that kind of stuff. But little by little, these meals were getting replaced by cereal, by, you know, boxed, processed foods, by microwave dinners became a thing for a little while. People started eating out more and more. That's considered heavily processed food, all these fast food restaurants started popping up. And as we started to consume more processed food, our wastes started to grow alongside them, our weight started to go up alongside them. Now we have studies that actually show this. There was a, one of the best studies that I've ever seen when it comes to nutrition. And I consider it one of the best because it was fully controlled. In other words, the people in the study were in a lab the whole time. And one of the problem with studies done on nutrition is that most of them are based off of surveys. So people will go in and then they'll ask them questions like, how often do you eat fruit? How often do you eat vegetables? How often do, and surveys are just notoriously inaccurate. You know, people just, you ask somebody to estimate how many calories they throw is off by 500 calories or more, sometimes thousands. But this study was done in the lab. It was controlled. And what they did is they took two groups of people, one group, they gave them unlimited access to unprocessed natural food. So like chicken and meat and eggs and milk and, you know, and fruits and vegetables and nuts and that kind of stuff. The other group had unlimited access to heavily processed foods. Believe it or not, this is how good the study was done. They even controlled for macros. The macros of each side were similar. So it wasn't like the heavily processed food side was all sugar. And the other side was, you know, less or no. They were pretty, they matched them up pretty damn well. Then here's what they did. That was even more brilliant. They had them stay in their, in their camps for a little while, eat as much as you want, eat as much as you want, both groups. Then they switched them. Then they switched them over just to make sure that it wasn't like these people over here just eat more and whatever. Then they switched them over. Do you know what they found? On average, in other studies have echoed this, on average, when people consume a lot of heavily processed foods, they, around 500 more calories every single day. That's a pound of body fat a week. Okay. That's incredible. And that's a lot of food. Now, how does this happen? Well, because hunger is not regulated, not just regulated by how many calories in your food or how much it fills up your stomach. It has to do with a lot of different things and processed foods are designed to make you eat more. They do a phenomenal job of doing this. So here's the difference. If you've got processed foods and unprocessed foods in the same macros and same calories, you're going to have a way tougher time eating an appropriate amount if you eat processed foods. You're using an example of a controlled study where they factored in what the calories had to be. My argument is that I would say that a majority of people, and we know this from other studies, under report. And they don't know how to calculate correctly. And it's hard to calculate correctly. Doug pulled up the article for me. It's actually, the FDA allows 20% leeway north or south. And they use the example. So a cliff bar legally could say it's 200 calories or 300 calories. It could be literally 100 calorie difference. Now, which one do you think they'll put on the label? 250. That's a 20% variation up or down. And that's on a small bar. The bigger the product is, the more exaggerated that can be. And that's one thing in your diet for that single day. If you've got multiple things in your diet that is processed or packaged like that or eating out, you could be miscalculating by 300 to 700 calories every day, which is typically about how many calories I'm telling a client to restrict or add to their diet based off of their goal. So if you're eating a lot of these foods and you think the quote unquote macros align, they probably don't. So I mean, now that all being said, that doesn't mean too that I'm also freaking out every time I eat. I mean, I had, you know, Mike Matthews, a good friend of ours, sends us his protein. He's always pushing his products on us all the time, right? So, you know, fuck, I eat them. You know, he sends the chocolate chip bars in there all the time. I pick them out and I was eating them yesterday. I don't freak out because I'm eating a bar and going, oh my god, this could be off by 50 calories or whatever. If it's in your diet occasionally, it's not, it's not that big of a deal where I think it's going to be you will or you won't get results. But it's important that you're mindful of these things. You're mindful of the points that Sal's making that when you eat highly processed foods that it's created to hijack your palate and make you want to eat more. That's why it's designed. It's designed to do that. And then also there's a good chance that it's off by a solid 20% north or south and normally the direction that you don't want it to be off. So keep that in mind when you're eating that stuff. Yeah. And at the, at the end of the day, do you want your, do you want to be able to maintain a good body weight or body fat percentage, but do you want it to be a struggle? Like, do you want to have to like use willpower every damn day? Or do you want it to feel a little bit more natural? Eating heavily processed foods is going to make it a lot harder. So regardless of what your goal is, uh, eating those types of foods, just man, and that means I'm counting if everything's equal. As Adam said, it probably not. And we're not even going down the micronap nutrient path. And we're not even talking about the other, you know, reasons why whole foods are usually healthier than unprocessed foods. So there just is no comparison. Now, again, that being said, here's what processed food is really good at because I'm not going to demonize it. I know it sounds like I'm demonizing it, but here's a deal. Processed foods allowed us to feed a lot of fucking people. It's, they don't go bad. I can ship them across the world. You know, there's a reason why in Hawaii spam has become a staple. A lot of people don't realize this, but you go to Hawaii spam and eggs and spam here like, why do they spam someone because we had soldiers stationed in Hawaii and how do you ship meat without it going bad? They made spam, you know, processed foods have value. There's a reason why they exist, but they make you eat more. And I would say if you have the privilege of buying, you know, unprocessed foods can make you, it's going to make it a lot easier for you to stay lean and healthy. Just makes things a lot easier. And with that, go to mind pump free.com and download our guides. They cost nothing. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Adam at mind pump, Adam, Justin at mind pump, Justin, and you can find me at mind pumps out.