 build the abs, train them like you're trying to build them and get them stronger, not like you're trying to get them to have tons of stamina and endurance. And what you'll find is they'll build and they'll be much more visible. Just like a building any muscle, run it in a bulk. So give yourself a calorie surplus while you're really trying to build and then go to a cut afterwards and reveal the beauty. Hey, real quick, I'm going to tell you about something interesting, but stay tuned because we talked to some very interesting people about their fitness and health goals and we give them great advice on how to build muscle and burn body fat. But real quick, I'm going to give away a program right now to one of you viewers. I'm going to give away maps strong. So here's how you can enter to win right now. Leave a comment below on the first 24 hours that we dropped this episode. Subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications, do all those things. And if we like your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to map strong. Also, we're running a sale right now on a bundle, maps prime, maps, prime pro and maps anywhere altogether in a bundle for $99.99, massive savings, it would normally retail for $360, but right now it's only 99.99. Go check it out. Go to mapsapral.com. All right, here comes the rest of the show. All right, check this out. When it comes to fitness, workouts, exercises, all the commonly accepted methods of training your body, they actually all work, but nothing works forever. Well, it's a bit of a strong statement. All of them. Everything, you know what it is, the commonly accepted. I made sure to put that. I know that's a painting with a broad brush. I mean, I mean, I mean, you could even, you can be general like that. I technically jumping around in circles and waving and flailing your arms. I don't know if that's the end of this move. I mean, it does warm things up. It will burn calories. And if you're not used to training, you may even get a little sore from it, which in turn could technically build a little bit of muscle. So I think, well, I do want to be clear that this doesn't mean that everything works this as effectively and this doesn't mean that everything works as long as some stuff works way better than others. Some stuff works for much longer than others. I put it on a spectrum. You have the jumping around, flailing your arms, doing senseless stuff on this end, and then you'd have expertly programmed training program, right? And then influencers expertly programmed. So I guess the real question I want to hear that is for, I want to hear from you is where would you rate a lot of these programs that are, that are out there or that you see? Yeah, obviously it was a very general statement. You know, and I said commonly accepted because I'm referring to like someone might say, well, what about like five by five, five by five? Or what about like bodybuilding style training or, you know, what about a powerlifting style of workouts or Olympic style work? Oh, I would rate all those on the right side of the spectrum. Or what about someone says, Hey, you know, I don't exercise now. I'm just going to go walking or cycling or taking an aerobics class. Like everything does work. Again, doesn't mean that everything works the same or is as effective as each other or works the same length of time, but everything has an effect. The key, I think the key part of the statement is nothing works forever. Right. So even the most expertly programmed workout plan at some point, if you do it over and over and over again, you'll start to run into some problems. You'll get overuse injuries or there's something lacking that you're not training. So you start to develop weak links or your body just adapts completely. And it just doesn't respond anymore to that same stimulus. I mean, this is why in our programs, we have phases in each of the programs. And this is also why we have so many different programs because as trainers, I mean, gosh, you know, all of us train people for, I mean, a long time, but all of us had clients who were with us for six, seven, eight. And I had some clients for me for 12 years. You, you definitely don't do the same workout all 12 years. And even, even though their fitness may not necessarily, I mean, after four or five years of consistency, unless the person wants to work out more or whatever, their fitness level starts to maintain. But you still have to change the workout. And this is where I think coaches like have to negotiate or compromise quite a bit too, based off of like what you know that they're going to adapt towards or like they're going to keep going because they like and they enjoy these certain types of movements and things in their routine. And so it's like, you know that they're consistently going to be doing this. So it's like, how can we also work in some of the, you know, more beneficial and, and effective type exercises and workouts alongside that? Well, I think it really, their goal matters, right? Because if I had clients, you know, that stayed on like the same routine for a very long time, but those clients had already reached their goals and were happy and we were just trying to make sure we do things that had rotational strength, make sure we strengthen their core, make sure they had good shoulder and hip mobility. And like you could do a lot of the same movements to maintain all that stuff. I think the where it becomes a problem is when you have goals that you're trying to achieve, when you're trying to build muscle, burn body fat and you're trying to go somewhere, change. If you're trying to make change or progress, then then the programming piece becomes even more important. Whereas if you're somebody who's just like, hey, I feel great. I move great. I just want to stay here. Right. You could write a routine for somebody and to kind of maintain or that, although it still would be beneficial to modify and change and switch it up. Because there's always something missing, right? Like, you know, it's if you do the same movements all the time, all the time, even the most beneficial ones, there may be something lacking or maybe there may be a slight like imperfection, your technique to where this imbalance, although you can't tell for a year or two, starts to develop over time, right? And then, oh, we got, like, for example, out on these clients that you're talking about, I'm sure, you know, every three, six months, maybe even once a year or two, you would have to inject a new movement or something different. Because I said, oh, you know what, Adam, my knee feels a little funny. Or I mean, I would, I would do it and I would do it mostly just so we didn't get bored of doing the same thing. But I think that the case that I'm trying to make is that if I, if you have somebody, and what we said this before, like if you're, if you're completely happy where your fitness goals are currently and you just want something to follow, like you could follow a routine like mass performance pretty much indefinitely. Yeah. Well, that's a good example because mass performance is so, like, covers all the basics. That's right. That's right. I would never run somebody on anabolic forever or map's aesthetic forever. Right. But performance is, and maybe even the new one, symmetry. We cover so many things that I think for longevity and health and just overall strength and movement and mobility in those programs and it's phased in so many phases that you could continuously run that and probably stay pretty healthy and fit. Sure. Now, if that same, that same person, though, is, hey, I still want to lose some body fat or hey, I want to build some muscle. Then it'd be advantageous for us to move into another program. Yeah. Like how many times did you guys, even with your own training, try something new and go, this is it. This is, I figured it out. And then, you know, three months later, oh, it's not it anymore. I got to figure some power. Yeah. I think I spent the first 10 years continuously doing that. Yeah. Fully myself into thinking that, oh, it must be the low reps. Oh, it must be the high reps. Oh, it must be these moves when really it's just our body, when it's something that's novel, it sends a signal to adapt and build and strengthen and figure this out. And so it becomes so efficient at what you practice most often. Growth requires change. And that's the hardest part. You know, it's like, you got to change it up and you get, you get good at something. It's really hard to kind of shake it up and do something completely outside your comfort. In fact, one of the best hacks for people who are experienced with training is to find an exercise that you suck at. Yeah. Like if, like you're like, oh, my arms won't grow. And you know, I've been working out for five years, find an arm exercise that you're terrible at and there's your greatest potential for growth and progress. Right. Oh, my legs aren't getting any stronger. And I've been doing the same workout for, find an exercise you suck at and get good at that and then watch you start to get those gains. That's the crazy part about resistance training though. You could just make a little minor tweaks and all of a sudden your body responds in a completely new way. You know, it's like you add, you haven't done any rotation in your body pressing, you know, all of a sudden now it's like you get all this new stability support. It's like you don't have to do something drastically different, but you can change up like some of these exercises to get all new benefits. It's pretty amazing how the human body does such a good job at overtime, getting so good and so efficient at what you do most often that at some point it becomes easy. Right. Like if you've ever, we've talked about this before. You ever work with blue collar workers who've been doing it for, I mean, like my dad did this for his whole life. And I'd go to work with this guy and another man who were older, I'm talking like in their fifties and they wouldn't even break a sweat doing things that I would just kill me. You know, why? Well, they've been doing it for years and years and years. Super efficient. So their bodies are so efficient. Nothing bothers them, you know, they're mixing cement and, you know, throwing plaster up on the wall. I mean, while I'm over here on forums on fire, hands are dying and everything, I'm like, what is going on here? Their bodies became so efficient at doing that because they practice it for so long, you know, it's cool stuff. Anyway, how was your guys's weekend? Did you guys have a good one? Yeah, good. We threw a Easter bash at my house the first time. I saw a lot of kids there. So are those cousins? Yeah, no. So these are friends. It was random kids. Just random. We took them off the street. Hey kids, hey, you want some candy? Explore my property. Yeah. So we hit eggs all over the place and, you know, had a had a bit of a brunch, if you will, with alcoholic beverages and whatnot. And so we did get a drunk text from you. Yeah, I was like, oh man, like, I'm like, hey guys, I'm a little buzzed right now. Yeah, having a good time. Did you get tipsy this weekend? I did. Oh, yeah. I did. But I knew ahead of time. So I did take my zibotic. Did you drink a secret sauce before or what? I took it. But and I saved one for Courtney too and she made the cardinal mistake and passed it along to her friend. She didn't do the zibotics? No. I was like, I specifically got that for you because I know some like because they're coming in with like different type of alcohol and drinks. Like they have this like gin drink that was like somewhat like, I don't know, holiday appropriate. And so it was good. It was like their thing. Like we're bringing in all these other people that have traditions and stuff. And so they're kind of bringing in their dish, their drink and all this. And so I was like, I don't know how this is going to go. So I'm like protecting myself. You know, are there Easter drinks? Apparently. Not to my knowledge. To look it up, Doug, maybe there is. That's that's actually there's associations there. I don't know. I believe you. It's just wine, right? No, it's kind of I want to see it. It was like, it was like gin and tonic. And peeps have like a pineapple, like a bunny name or something. What's it? What's the name for? Is it? Oh, you don't know why I'm in there. That's that's all I know. Speaking of which, if here's what's interesting. So we're not allowed to say that you're not allowed to say that a product is a hangover fixer here because hangovers are actually labeled or registered as like a medical condition, right? So unless it's a medical drug, you can't say this works on hangover deliberately say that. But everybody knows what you're talking about. Yeah. So here's what's interesting. If you study acetaldehyde, which is the so when you drink alcohol, you produce this compound called acetaldehyde and normally your liver breaks it down. No problem. But if you overwhelm your body's ability to break it down, you get this buildup of acetaldehyde and that's what they attribute the all those effects from the hang, the headache, inflammation, the gut, you know, feeling like crap, the depression, all that crap, right? So that's what Zebotics does. Zebotics, these and this is what people trip out over. They don't understand, I should say these bacteria have been literally designed so they're engineered to produce compounds that break down acetaldehyde. So you can't say hangover cure, but you can say what it really does, which is it breaks down acetaldehyde. Do you think there's a genetic component? I guarantee there is. I guarantee some people break down more acetaldehyde than others. Yeah, like I've had some like family members have been like, yeah, I kind of noticed a difference. And like some people will be like, other people go, oh my God, like it was a huge deal for me. For me too. I don't do well with alcohol. Well, did they not get bad hangovers to begin with? Well, yeah, I've had some people. It's usually the case. Yeah, I've had some people like that, that they don't even get a bad hangover as it is. And then they take that and they're like, oh, I couldn't really tell a difference. Where me, it was night and day difference. I had to explain to her friends, I'm like, this doesn't mean you can drink a lot more. It's not about volume. It's just like it helps to kind of mitigate, you know, the next day. I know. So look at all these drinks here. These are Easter drinks? Did you find any Jen ones? Well, they call them Easter drinks. It looks like that one right there. What's that first one? Mamosa or this one down here? Oh, no, it's not that one. Anyway, they have like 20 Easter drinks here, which tells me there's any drink will be an Easter drink. It's on how you decorate, apparently. Yeah, that's what our color is. You know, bunny on there. And it's, I think people just look for an excuse to drink. All it is is alcohol beverage with the spring colors. That's what it is. Yeah, exactly. I don't name one event that there's no alcohol. There isn't an alcoholic. Yeah, see if that are candy. I mean, come on, like choose your poison. I avoided the candy and I had the drinks. I had so much candy. Oh my God, bro. I'm literally, I woke up this morning, five pounds heavier. It's all water and blow from all the candy because it's because first off, I'm a I'm a cheap candy guy. So I don't know if that sounds kind of funny, but everybody made fun of me because I don't candy corn or something. Yes. Oh, yes. Candy corn guy. I like jujubes. I like candy bracelets. I like candy bracelets. I like that's cool. I like circus peanuts, which what the hell is that? What is that? My daddy said does I I like just garbage, like all the craft candy that the kids are like, I don't want this one. Those little root beer ones, those little bottles. Oh, I like those. Oh, I like those. I love us. So I had a ton of candy corn is like, oh, I'll eat a bag of that. No, I had a bunch of candy. But so we went to my aunt's house up in Rockland. And this was the only people missing from this were my sisters and their families and my cousin and my other cousin. So aside from those three, pretty much everybody showed up. So it was like, it was a good 50 something people in my house. Yeah, just a big celebration, just a lot of fun. And then my obviously I have my son who's 18 months or 17 months old, my brother's son, who's about a year old and my cousin, Alex, his daughter, who's only maybe six months old. So now he got babies in the family. And I love it. I'll sit in there at one point and, you know, just kind of chilling, watching everybody. I don't know if you guys do this now. I do this now as an older man, I guess I sit down and watch and I see these babies just get so much love. I just get passed around and people are playing with them and the older kids are playing with them. My son's in heaven because he's an affectionate little guy. So everybody's kissing him. He's just like, ah, I'm so cool. It was just such a good time. But the amount of candy that I ate was it was irresponsible. Oh, that's the word. I know we had two Easter's basically. So I did the day before on Saturday with my brother and his kids. And then a little fatty you. Yeah, dude. I see the candy though. My kids are like, hey, you deserve that one. You know what? Hey, you started working out and eating right, bro. Now your fat jokes are coming back. I wear it like a badge. I came in this morning. He was working out. Uh-oh. I don't know. Like, bro, I'm, no, I'm like, I'm derailed for the last week ever since I heard myself, man. That's I've, I've actually, I've never, I've never strained those muscles in my life before. That's the first time that I've ever had an injury like that. Those intercostal muscles. Once you, you, you like, what is it? Strain one? Yeah. It sucks. His name and exercise didn't involve like stabilizing the location. And we're especially like rotating, trying to rotate. Oh, it's, and it's, it's lingering. Now I'm, I'm coming up on a week now. Now I'm still like, I do some isolation or show this. So I'm still moving. I'm staying on my diet. So it's just frustrating because I had great momentum going right into it. But classic example of all the stuff that we talked to our audience about. You were saying with your son, because he's older now, now he's getting into the Easter egg hunt. Yeah, yeah. So is he all like, like, does he know what's in the egg and all that stuff? Well, we don't, we do different stuff. Right. So we do toys and money. Oh. So there's no money too. Yeah, we do, we do. Everyone, all the adults know to bring $1 bills and like in a couple of fives or whatever it takes. We have a couple more expensive eggs. And then, and then for the little kids like Max, we put like little monster truck cars and stuff from there. And so he's so into cars and trucks and things like that that he just, he don't even know he's not getting candy. Like there's no big deal. Like there's a couple older kids that they had their own little Easter basket and they're doing their thing, having their candy. But he's been so trained that he doesn't, if he sees candy, he plays with it like at the toy. Yeah. So it's, it was great, man. And he's, this was the first year where like he understood what was happening, you know, that we were. So he was excited to go for it. Oh yeah, yeah, it was so cute, dude. It was so fun to, and I'm so lucky because the two days before he got really, really sick, got a fever, projectile vomiting, like he was just a disaster. We were supposed to go out to my mom's on Saturday and I had to cancel because on Friday, Saturday, he was a mess. So on Sunday, we were supposed to host and Katrina, like message her family said, hey Max has been really sick the last two days, maybe somebody else host and then if we can make it, we can make it. If he's doing better, if not, we don't want to have it in our house with him that sick and then potentially just being a mess, right? But he woke up like feeling great and doing much better. Dude, he did this thing. It was so, like my heart, dude, just like totally like melted. He was like literally projectile vomiting, like really most of where I've ever seen him throw up before. I felt so bad for him. And at one point it was the second time in the same night where he first threw up in our bed. So we'd strip all the sheets and everything like that. And then in his bed, and the second time he threw up in his bed, he was like, he finished throwing up and then sniffling, he's like, I'm sorry, mommy. Oh, come on, Bridal. Why you gotta crush me like that right now, bro? My mom's like, it's okay, dude. It's okay, you're okay. Oh, that's the worst. That's the worst because he feels bad for being sick. Yeah, yeah, so it was so, so sad to see him. What a cute little guy. Yeah, I see him like that. But yesterday he was good. So he had a great day, had a blast. It was so far. Kids are funny how they bounce back from him. If I projectile vomited, even if I was okay the next day, you gotta give me three days. And he's really not healed because he was, last night we were up with him last night because he was coughing and hacking really bad. But he just, it was nice. He had a nice window that morning, all day on Easter. He seemed like he was 100% again, but then by the nighttime it set in, which I'm sure he was wore out because he pushed himself through. He probably shouldn't have. No, we had a good time with family and then Aurelius did the Easter egg hunt, but he's so young he doesn't know what's going on. So he's just getting the eggs and putting them in the basket. Doesn't even know, like there's anything in the egg. So finally I'm like, open the egg. And he's like, looking at me. I'm like, open it. So then he opens it and there's candy in there, but he doesn't know it's candy, right? So there's these, I don't know if you guys had these nerd covered jelly beans. Nerd covered jelly beans. You know nerds, right? Okay, so it's a jelly bean on the inside, but it's nerds candy on the outside. Oh my God. We had something similar. It was from C's and it had little like, I don't even know how to describe them. They're like little balls over on the outside. Yeah, it was kind of like that. It was kind of like that. So like a hard kind of candy? That was always like a staple. Like C's candy makes them. And they're like jelly filled. They're really good. I'm gonna tell you, right? I got diabetes yesterday because it's so good. But anyway, I opened it, right? And he's looking at it. He doesn't know what it is. He's like, oh, what's that? So I'm like, I'm gonna give him a little tiny taste or whatever. So I smashed some of my fingers so he gets a little bit and I put it in his mouth. And you get, first you could tell, he's like trying to figure it out. And then, so we got it on camera. And then he's like, it's because smile on his face. And he's like more. And he does it, you know, he does sign language with us. He's like more. I'm like, you're done. Do you know what I think is really fascinating is how, okay, so I think I shared on the show a while ago that I was introduced to the Semen rules from Costco. I think I told you guys about. Like they're just to die for, right? They're amazing. And I hadn't had any since the last time I brought it. Well, since I've been back being consistent with my training, any time I'm on my training that consistent, I always dial in the diet, right? So I've been really good for the last, I don't know, three, four weeks or so. And somebody brought those Semen rules and dude, I couldn't even finish one and it destroyed me. Yet I was able to have it the two times prior when my diet was kind of out of line. Just store you how, gut? Yes. Just, but I noticed this all the time. Anytime there's foods, I find it so interesting how the body adapts and like you eat shit that doesn't agree with you, your body gets adapted to it and it can handle it better than it. Like, you know, certainly the symptoms will be more subtle than when if you've been on a really strict diet and eating really clean whole foods and then you introduce it again to it, fucks you up. Like, I could have ate two of those Semen rules just three, four weeks ago and maybe I felt a little bit upset or what, but this just destroyed me afterwards. Just like your gut bacteria. I think that might be it and I think there's a slight immune reaction. I think that you desensitize your body a little bit. Okay, so you know what? That's what I would, I would think it's just like when you pull off a caffeine for a while, pull off a marijuana for a while, then reintroduce those things. It's like the worst. Well, it's like, okay, so you know with food allergies, what they've been doing a lot of now with kids is they'll do these, like with peanut allergies. I know cause my godson has it, he's peanut out and he's essentially cured. It's not cured, but the whole process was like real slow. Yeah, he was severely allergic to peanuts, like really bad. So they would give him a microscopic amount in the hospital at first to see if that was what, you know, fine and then gradually over the course of like a year or longer. So this was over a long period of time. They would up the dose and a couple of times he had a mild reaction and for him mild as he would vomit or whatever, but they would still kept up this thing to the point now where he has to have a teaspoon of peanut butter every day now. And so long as he does that, he now was no longer allergic to peanuts. So if he stopped, like it would like come back. That's what they think. They think if they stop completely, then it could come back. So I'm wondering if there's some kind of immune response. I've done it enough times and I know there's something there. I can't prove exactly how or why it does it, but I've done this enough times where I've gone on and off of a really strict diet and then allowed things to come in and out. And I experienced it a lot when I was competing because I was on such a tight regimen. And then I, after the show, I'd go enjoy certain things. And boy, it just destroys me. You know, after fast, after a long fast, that'll happen. If I do like a 72 hour fast. After a fast, I have to do like soup, broth. Anything like solid and sensitive. Right through me. Yeah. Don't do like a triple cheeseburger. That's what you did. Yeah. He did a 72 hour fast. He got a triple cheeseburger. Oh, dude. That's a good time. Anyway, I got a cool observation on commonly communicated studies in the fitness space. The other night I was laying down and I was reading studies on muscle activation, compare exercise versus exercise. You guys have seen these, right? Like what works the upper chest more? Like inclined dumbbell press or flat, you know, or inclined barbell press. Or what works the lats better? Pull down to the front versus pull down to the back. What are they using to measure though? Well, what they do is they do, they do measure muscle activation. That doesn't tell the whole story, okay? But nonetheless, they can see if they're similar enough, like pull down to the front versus pull down to the back. One will work the lats more than the other, you know, overhead press, you know, in the front of the head versus the back of the head, which one works as the shoulders more. And I'm reading these studies and, you know, having done a lot of these exercises and practice them, it really, something interesting dawned on me. I love you guys' opinion on this. So let's use an overhead press, for example, okay? A behind the neck press versus an overhead press to the front, which one requires more mobility, skill and practice? Of course, behind the head. Right, in fact, there's a lot of practice required to get into the groove to learn how to do it right before you can actually feel it the right way. Same thing with the pull down. Like if you've ever done a pull down to the front versus a pull down to the back, pull down behind the neck, it takes practice, but eventually I can really feel my lats, but it takes practice, right? So I'm looking at these studies and I realized something. They're taking people, having them do these exercises and many of them, they're just college aged males, have never done or really worked out with these exercises. So when you give a group of guys, and maybe they're college aged guys, so they're not out of shape or anything, but they're not like consistently lifting weights, they're not into it like fitness guys. If you compare an easier to a harder exercise in terms of skill and technique, the easier exercise is gonna show up as being more effective because the harder exercise takes practice. If you really wanna feel and be effective with like a behind the neck pull down, for example, it's gonna take you longer. When you're not familiar with it, yeah, you're gonna be less efficient with it. You're not gonna know like really how to shuttle and use the right amount of force and be able to get that kind of response versus like you're just already immediately familiar with the other exercise. Especially from a bodybuilding perspective, right? Like Adam, like how many exercises have you done that are working a particular part of the shoulder or the back, but it takes practice before you can even feel it that way because it's complicated and it requires technique. Well, especially when you're trying to separate a part of the shoulder, right? Exactly. And focus on that. So first of all, which one was more? Was it the what we? Yeah, so the one study that I looked at was pull down to the front versus pull down to the behind the head. Okay. And they said, oh, pull down to the front, activate the lats a little bit more than to the front. And because it's more safe than that's the better exercise. But I'm like, okay. That's not the whole story. Not the whole story. And what they said is technically true. It's more complex. So one is definitely safer generally than the other. But I know behind the neck pull downs, it took me a while to really be able to feel it in my lats because it's a very technical exercise. Do you think that you get a better contraction coming into the front than you do from behind too? I almost feel like your shoulder blades almost get in the way of each other when you're peeled all the way back and you squeeze versus when I pulled down. I don't know, it's a... Well, all I'm saying is that that may be true for some people. Well, all I'm saying is like, depending on the exercise, it's not fair. If you wanted to make a fair comparison to like a standing shoulder overhead press to a standing behind the neck overhead press, you'd have to take people that were very well versed in both. You can't just take people off the street because everyone's gonna do to the front better than they do behind the neck. And you're gonna see different muscle activation as a result of that. So that was just my whole thing. Did it show... I mean, did you see all the controls too? No, it was literally college age males. That's all I get. Yeah, and they weren't like, that they'd been lifting weights for years or whatever. You know what I'm saying? Cause I wanna... It's gotta play a factor. I mean, you're less familiar with it. Yeah, I mean, but again, yeah, because of morphology or whatever, I'm sure there's variances with how people like experience and feel contraction. But still, like, if you're not even familiar with that exercise, that's gotta be a downside to it immediately. It is, and it's gonna show up. Like, if I take somebody who's really good at squatting and knows good muscle, a mind-to-muscle connection, I bet you I could tell them and look at it with the machine and say, feel it more in your quads. And then I'd say, okay now, same exercise, feel it more in your glutes. For sure. And I bet you'd see two different measurements. Oh yeah, oh yeah. So that's my point. Because you take untrained people and you have them do an easier exercise and a harder exercise or a harder version of that exercise, the easier one's gonna show up better because they're able to do it versus the other one. Yeah, that makes sense. I think that's just a hard one to try and compare. I'm trying to give a better exercise. I was just thinking along those lines, you know, because there's a lot of exercise, like dips, body weight dips, for example. I've seen studies showing that the pec activation on body weight dips is bad. But it's bad only if you don't practice them right and know how to really feel it in your chest. Because most people, the first time you have them do dips, it's like all triceps and shoulders because they don't know how to get in the position to really feel it in the chest. Oh, even like a bench press. I mean, how many times have you guys taught a bench press and someone doesn't even float in their chest at all? So you can make that same exact movement, forget changing the part path at all and just by them knowing how to activate their chest can get a tremendous amount more. Exactly. So it's like a huge flaw that I saw in that. Because if I ever look at a study like that again, what I want are people who are well versed in both exercises, that's the only fair comparison. Otherwise, you know, I'm not gonna see it. I just started trying to do those behind the neck presses again too, it's funny you say that. What do you think about them? I like it, it's difficult. You know, it's not something I've practiced since like college, so. Olympic lifters do them a lot, don't they? Yeah, they do them a lot and they'll, yeah, they'll do, yeah, they'll do like a power version of that too, which, yeah, I'm gonna work my way towards, but it's just because I don't do them, it's like I always find my way back to things like that that I haven't done forever because it just provides something totally new. I love to do it on like a light. When I know it's a day that I should take it light on my shoulders, like maybe I just hammered it on the last time or I'm still kind of feeling a little bit then I'll do the behind the head and just real, real light. Start with the 45 pound bar, that's it and slowly work my way up. Oh dude, I'm so bought in now on doing that with everything. I'm so like, I was going heavy for a second there and then I started feeling my joints. I'm like, what am I doing? That's, I like, I've been doing this. I'm so mad at myself for my stupid thing right now, having that kind of momentum all for what? You know what it is though, it gets in your head like. Totally. And shame on me like. By the way, I guarantee I'm gonna hurt myself again in the future. Well, you know like, what got me was that I didn't think I was pushing the weight. Like that 200 pounds on a squat is not a lot of weight for me, not for my legs, but on that stupid fricking, what should we call it? Safety's bar, right? The safety squat bar. Yeah, the safety squat bar. It front loads it so much that it requires a lot of. Was it a long time? Like the, had you not done it for a while? Oh yeah, a long time. Yeah, it's been a long time since I've done that. But see, I've been consistently still barbell back squatting and traditional front squatting. So my legs felt really strong. So as I'm moving up in weight, I'm like, and I know that bar always feels a little bit harder. It's a little more challenging, right? So I knew I knew I was gonna be squatting as much as I back squat. But I thought I'd at least get closer to my back squat. But what it was that gave out was my core, was my legs. My legs could have easily handled significantly more. But like a dumb ass, I'm like, I haven't done this in forever. I haven't even been doing really good core training either. So I didn't have any sort of a support system there to support it. But what messed with me was, you do an exercise like that and you're not initially thinking core. I'm thinking legs. Oh, my legs got this. That was way easy. Next one, stack it up. When you start to feel you're fricking, you just start to feel good. You know, it's, this is a good lesson for anybody watching this right now. Cause remember, you're listening to three very experienced coaches and trainers who are running into this problem. So if you think you're immune to this, you're not. Because we're not even immune to this. But I'm now finally, and maybe I'm guaranteed I'm gonna forget this lesson. Cause I always do when I start to feel real, you know, super agro or whatever. But right now what I'm doing is it when I lift away and I go, oh, that's a little easy. I go, how can I make it feel heavier? I stopped adding weight to the ball. Like how can I make this feel heavier? That's the whole goal now. And I'm getting way better results. Now consider, I've been working out forever. So at this point it's my body responds differently. I think when you first start out adding weight to the ball is really important. I think it's, I mean, you wanna test yourself initially. And so you gotta kind of go through all of that and get to the point where you don't even need to like have the ego portion of the lift. So you just don't care. It's like whatever benefits me the most. It takes a while to get into that head space. Speaking of which you're still working out with the kids aren't you? Yes, I did that this morning. Wait a minute, what's going on? Like what did you do today? I worked out with them. I was just doing dips and pull-ups and I did some really heavy farmer walks with the trap bar. Just to, you know, just to show that it's what's possible. I have to like show one thing that's possible. So it's like, you know, it's the minute mile thing. Right? These kids don't even see, they see weight. They don't see that you keep adding weight. Yeah, so you got to show them that you keep putting the weight on. So, you know, How heavy did you go, Justin? Not that heavy, dude. It was like, you know, it was like four plates, but it wasn't that bad. I mean, compared, you know, to whatever, but it, yeah. So they're doing like one plate and then I started to see like two plates on there. And I'm like, okay, now we're starting to see like some people getting it. So it, unfortunately, you have to make an example like a physical example. Bro, heavy farmer walks though. How did you feel afterwards? I'm hurting a little bit. Oh, you are. I mean, just like, just fried. Like I haven't done that. It's a CNS workout. Yeah. I can't think of your whole CNS just gets turned on like nothing else. I couldn't believe, I never thought of it as a muscle building exercise until I did them consistently with MAP Strong. And then I was like, oh, my biceps actually grew from hanging on to a heavy ass trap bar. Such a good exercise though to bulletproof your entire body. That's it. Because it's like from neck to toe, everything being activated, you know? And if you can actually move it up to where you're carrying more than your body weight like in your case, 400 pounds, like talk about bulletproofing yourself for a bunch of other rumors. Just that work capacity. I just, I keep trying to stress to these kids between that and like pushing the sled and pulling the sled and like doing these farmer walks. Like you need to be at a really high level of performance but maintain that high level of performance in games. And there's no other way to really reinforce that than to just like put you in the grind for a longer amount of time. Well, the other thing too is when you first start working out, of course you want to work on form stability, make sure that you have the control. Once you start to establish that, it's really important to add weight to just get stronger. At some point though, obviously that slows down, right? You can't keep getting stronger forever. But in the beginning, that's very important to just get stronger. Especially when you're, again, with those other things all being said, right? Good form, good technique, good stability. But especially when you're a young man, when you're a young dude, like the potential to add weight to the bar is, I mean, I remember as a teenage boy working out and I would add five pounds of the bar every week, every single week, five pounds of bar every, for a while it happened. Now I started real low. So it wasn't like. That's interesting. You have to convince them to do that. I would think they would, I would think you would have to hold them back more. That's what I would have guessed. That's a good point. Is it different? Because I remember as a teenage boy, we were dumb like that. Like, oh, I could put more on there. I'm always trying to put more on. I can't even convince them to eat more calories. They're like, I don't want to give that. What? I'm like, what? Like, you need size. Like you're a little twig. I'll snap you, you know? Like, you need some beef, dude. Like I need to work with this here. Like, you gotta be intimidating on some level out in the field. It looked like a much little stick figures out there. I can't imagine like Justin taking them to lunch. Is that what you're going to order? A salad? A salad? That's exactly what I'm having. Oh, you're getting a burger with one patty? Okay. One patty, huh? That's going to do it for us today? That's funny. Anyway, you know what? Before I forget to do our commercial, we had Organify today and I finally got a chance to taste the new green juice. So it's crisp apple. What's the difference? The hell look good. Like describe it. Okay, so Doug had it first and Doug had me disappointed before I got into it because he was just like, ah, I was kind of hoping for more of an apple taste. And so it does, it tastes like the other one with just a like a hint of... Which is good. Yeah, which is good already, right? With a nice hint of apple. It could have been more of a sour apple. I think that's what he was looking for. But I think it's good. I think it's bomb. I think you still have a little bit of the mint. To me, it does. It has a kind of a minty apple thing. So it kind of tastes like the original one with a little bit more of an apple kick to it. For people wondering what the ingredients are in this particular product, the blend is organic wheatgrass powder, organic moringa powder, spirulina powder, chlorella powder, matcha green tea powder. And then the superfood blend is whole apple powder, coconut water powder, ashwagandhas in there. Actually it's a good form of ashwagandhas, the KSM66. Lemon powder, red beet powder and turmeric is all in there. I think they had turmeric in there. They do. You know what? Here's another thing that's interesting about this. You might, you won't find this on a lot of supplements. There's a company called, let me see if I can read it here. It's about what they test is for glyphosate residues. Okay. This is certified glyphosate residue-free. So glyphosates are what they spray all over genetically modified plants. And that's what they think is causing the issues with a lot of people. It's because glyphosates have kind of this mild, anti-microbial. It's an herbicide, right? It's an herbicide, but it interacts with the, I think it's called the shikamadi pathway of weeds, which also exists in bacteria. So spraying the ground with all these glyphosates is killing the biodiversity of the soil. And when you take foods that have glyphosate residues, it's potentially influencing the microbiome in your gut. So, organified supplements are glyphosate residue-free. So they don't just say it's organic, it is, but they also test it on top of that to make sure there's no glyphosate. Who's the leading researcher on that? Is that Zach Bush? That's his field, right? Isn't that what he's like? Not a leading researcher, but he talks a lot about it. He's a doctor that talks a lot about it. Yeah, I interviewed him a long time ago. Long time ago. His name came up, though, again. We were talking to somebody. You're the hell out of me with that. I know, dude. It's like it's coming from rain. Well, what was sad and unfortunate was he was like, you're not even with organic food. He goes, because of the rain, I don't care if everything's all organic, you're still getting some of it. It's impossible to not get any of it. You know, they find some of these chemicals in breast milk, babies you're in, infants. Yeah, it's like the whole, like it's everywhere. So like your goal now is just mitigation. Like, well, I'm going to be exposed to some, so let's just minimize. Just bring that volume down. Yeah, speaking of which, I did watch some of the Bill Maher interview on Rogan. Oh yeah, I watched some of that too. I can see why there was a controversial. He said some stuff on there that I couldn't believe. Yeah, he made some mass comments that was really surprising. He really let his hair down, I enjoyed it. The part where he talked about doctors and science, he goes, you don't know what you're doing. He goes, you figured some stuff out, but you don't know what you're doing. Exactly. He's like, you still don't understand this. You don't understand this. Human beings in the day just like the rest of us. You don't have answers for everything. He's like, we recall 100 or 1000 drugs every year. Something like that was a number, that's some crazy number. After they passed FDA trials, wasn't there a drug? What was it called? Was it, it was an arthritis drug. I can't remember it, that people were taking was causing heart issues. Then there was another drug. Chantix. No, Chantix was an anti-smoking drug. So you take it and it prevents you from smoking. And why would you want to quit smoking? So that you lower your cancer risk. Oh, it causes cancer. Oh wait, Chantix causes cancer. Dude, you know. And it was on the market for like 10 or 15 years, right? It was a long time. There's a lot of stuff like that. It'll be around for a long time. And then all of a sudden, oops, I mean, it's understandable. We got to try and figure this stuff out. But when they pretend like they know everything, no you don't. Well, yeah. And just to not allow any kind of questions, really just questions, like from general public or like other doctors that have a differing of opinion, having second opinions to like the first, because they need that. They need that kind of counsel amongst the medical community because it can't just be like, we're going to shut you off of conversation and we're just going to keep rolling with this idea, even though it's not working. Did you make it all the way through that interview? Yeah. You finished most of Joe Rogan's, don't you? I did. That's because of his drive. I got a longer drive than he does and I don't finish though. You listen to him on the whole drive? No, I don't listen to him that often. But every once in a while, like Bill Maher, I put it on there. But I just can't stay sucked in for three hours. You end up thinking about this stuff? I guess. Or what happens is I listen to it for the hour drive and then I don't want to come back from it. Oh, it's because the episodes are so long. Yeah, they're just so long. I actually, I take a lot of Joe Rogan stuff in by his clips, by his short little 12 or 13 minutes, like the title of it, I'm like, oh yeah, I want to hear Bill Maher and him talk about that. So I listen to the 13 minute clip. I don't know, I think it's kind of weird, but like his curiosity and the way that he thinks, like I'm very scattered brain too, so like I don't know, I get a lot out of it. I appreciate his interviews. I know some people don't like it, but I like it, it's very similar to how we are, very conversationalist, I think that's how he is. So I enjoy it. It's the most relaxed interview. I get a lot out of that. But sometimes it's just long. It's just really long. It's hard to stay with me or on, I mean, shit, I could, you watched two of his interviews, could have finished a book. You know what I'm saying? Like literally the same amount of time, that's why I have a hard time justifying. Shit, I could have a couple, you know, accolades behind my name at this point. You have a PhD. Hey, have you been staying up on the winning, the Lakers dynasty on HBO? Such a great show. You haven't started watching it yet, have you, Sal? Even I got dug on that. You would like it even though you're a big sports boy. You know what? I would, I would probably like it. The problem is I don't have a lot of time. So, I got you. So the reason why I bring it up, okay, so did you see what Apple TV is doing in relation to that? Either one of you? No, I just been watching it on HBO. Okay, so guess what drops next? So I think the season finale for that winning I think is coming up this weekend. What decades or what timeframe is this on? Because this was when they were only... Talk about Magic Johnson's story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's all about his arrival. The Lakers, but I mean, his story is... I told you guys I had lunch with him once, right? No, I didn't know that. So remember when he worked... With Magic Johnson? Yeah, so remember he sponsored, he was with 24 Fitness. I've been around quite a few times. He used to be at all the events. Yeah, I won some, I was like the top sales guy or something like that, I was this huge... He's fucking giant, by the way, too. Oh, I imagine. Oh, yeah. I mean he's a guard, but you would think... I met Bill Cudder, right? And he was just like this huge... No, no, I shook his hand and his fingers were down on my forearm. Big dude, and he... Because Mastroff, Mark Mastroff, this is when he was running the company, he goes, Sal, come sit with us. So I was like, all right. So I sat next to Magic Johnson and he told stories the whole time and he was the most entertaining, charismatic, who's so fun, had a great time with him. So you would like... Because this tells his whole backstory. But why I'm bringing this up, which I find really... And I've seen this now two or three times. So they finish the series, it's coming to the end. Apple Plus, okay, Apple TV, is dropping Magic Johnson's four-part documentary. Oh. On the same thing. Thank you, back in. So I see these, I'm starting to watch these streaming services play this game, where somebody will do like the actual real documentary and then someone will do a dramatization, the other streaming service will drop a dramatization of that same thing right afterwards. So like watch, like watch the Super Pump just finished, watch somebody else drop the actual real documentary to it. It's like, and I would love to talk to, who's it, Mark, who we had from Netflix? I can't think of his last name right now. Randolph, Randolph. Yeah, Randolph. I would love to ask him about this, like... That's a good strategy. If this is becoming like a new way they do these streaming wars is, okay, we'll let you go do that first, you test it, if it does really good, then we'll go. Then we'll jump on it. Yeah. Interesting. What was that conspiracy theory that you had about Magic, or not you, but it was around Magic Johnson, that he doesn't really have HIV. He said that he does. I've heard of it. Who said that? It was you. No, I didn't. Or was you? It wasn't me. Okay, well, hold on. I'm not proud of this one. No, no, this was a theory that, hold on, I wanna see if I remember this right. I wanna hear this. I definitely wanna hear this. That he doesn't really have HIV, but he said that, so that it becomes a public figure because like the theory was that he was like banging one of the executives' daughter from the league. And then this was like, they were using him to campaign towards HIV awareness, or whatever. Okay. Again, not my personal. So the theory was that if he comes out and says I have HIV, none of the women that he has been with will wanna come out and say that they had affairs with him. Yes. Because then they would be, oh, nobody wants it, now I was with the guy who has HIV. So it would prevent people from coming out to say that they had affairs with him. And because he supposedly had an affair with like a major executive within the. That was the theory. That was the theory. Well, the other one was. I mean, can it be true though, the sneak about it? Like, okay. I mean, it doesn't have to be conspiracy. What if he really did have HIV and that really did happen? Yeah. I mean, so that's believable. I'm sure he has HIV. Because his, I'm Charlie Sheen, right? Wasn't his, he started to get me tooed. And then like all of a sudden now he's got AIDS. Did you guys ever read the Charlie Sheen's Playboy interview? One of the best interviews I've ever read. If you haven't read that before, read it. He's the most, that one interview he did on video where he said he had Tiger's blood. And he was, I was like, wow, this guy's. I'm pretty sure he said. I think that's the move for cancel culture. You gotta go super crazy. Yeah. You gotta just like completely go like insane. Then there's nothing they can say about you. What else are you gonna do? They can't. I mean, we obviously give him a pass and he's like one of the craziest people. I heard, I heard on a podcast, some guy was like, oh, I was parting so hard. And he goes, now how hard were you parting on a level of Charlie Sheen? Like Charlie Sheen? Yeah, yeah. That was the only guy. Charlie Sheen or Ozzy Osbourne? Yeah, they were like these. I can't remember. No, was it? It was zero to Charlie Sheen. Nobody parties harder than Ozzy Osbourne. No, you guys heard this. Charlie Sheen. My favorite story was Niki Six and Ozzy Osbourne. On tour. On tour, which they're both known to be insane, right? Obviously, Niki passed away from. It was when they were snorting the ants and doing all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and they were trying to out freak each other out and Ozzy Osbourne, like he not only freaked him out, he grossed everybody out so bad. Everybody's like, I'm not gonna ever win. Yeah, I'm gonna leave this guy alone. That's it. See, Charlie Sheen's not that type of acrylic. Bite the bird's head off or snort ants. He's like, I'm gonna bang 17 chicks in one night type of dude. That's who he is, you know? And do like hella lines of coke. Like that's more Charlie. How does he not die? Hey, my theory is that these guys. I think all those drugs just kill all the, everything, toxins, everything. All of his potential cancer cells are dead. Or you push the limits so hard, your body's adapted. It's like, it's so ready. Like you pushed to death like so many times that it's adapted to that. It's like, it's gonna take so much more. He's just spartan kicking all the rest of his cells in his body. This is like the argument for when people are like, no, you have a set date when you're supposed to die. I mean, look at these guys. They didn't die because they're not supposed to die. Keith Richards and dude, come on. How are these guys still alive? I don't understand it. And I know nice people who died for no reason. Hey, so more cool science stuff. So I was the other night, I was trying to find research on, because I was using brain FM. And every time I went for a little stint without using brain FM, and then I used it again and it always blows me away at how effective it is. Like the focus, songs, or I don't know what you call them, the beats or whatever, literally about eight to 10 minutes in, it feels like a focused drug. I could feel myself totally focused on whatever I'm doing. So I was trying to look up research on sounds and how they affect the brain. And the best I could find were some research on binaural beats, which is not brain FM. Brain FM technology is like a level up from binaural. They actually write music with brain FM. It's just a whole another level. And there's a lot of research actually, we're not supposed, we're not able to disclose, but brain FM is doing a lot of research on their, how they do their stuff and how it affects the brain and affects focus and affects sleep and all that stuff. It's really fascinating stuff. But anyway, binaural beats, which is a step down, is still very interesting. There's this study on kids that use these binaural beats to achieve, like get high. So like they'll design these sounds and they'll put on these really like big headphones and they'll go in a dark room and they'll report that they get either psychedelic effects or some of them will feel like they're on speed or depending on the sounds and the beats. And apparently it's getting really popular in Latin American countries and now in the U.S. more and more kids are using them. Did you guys ever do that at Paleo Effects? I believe where... Yeah, the... Oh yeah. But it was lights and it was like... Yeah, yeah. That was weird dude. Yeah, so you're like laying in this chair and you start to see all these fractional geometric patterns and then like it's like this crazy music to go with it. I was tripping a little bit, I'll be honest. Yeah. Yeah, it was weird. I don't know, well brain FM always trips me out every time I use it. If I use the meditation, have you ever meditated with the meditation sounds? No, I honestly, I'd use focus the most and then sleep occasionally, but I'll have to try the meditation. I've done the guided and the unguided one on there. That is crazy. I mean, I love their product. Like you know what I was late to the party was the focus part. Yeah. Justin used to always do that. Yeah, you figured out how to use it for sex. Yeah, you remember that, right? That was a little hack dude. That was a good little hack. It did work for that, it was incredible. In fact, we should do that in a while. I think it's been a long time since I've done that. That was actually... You're welcome. Yeah, incredible. There you go Katrina. No, there's... She's texting me already. Adding the stability ball. You're welcome. No, their product is legit and we haven't talked about it on the show in a really long time and it's been one of those things that I mean we've been working with them for a very long time and consistently I use it. Even if I haven't used it for a while, I'll eventually go back to it for something whether it be me trying to study or do something or write or do something creative or go to sleep. People who are skeptical about kind of stuff like this because I can be very skeptical initially but then I have to question like, wait a minute, it's obvious music has an effect on your emotions and your state of mind. Nobody would argue that, right? Nobody, like there's certain songs that can invoke a feeling in me. Of course. Even the first time I heard them and some I can hear them repeatedly will do that. There's a reason every single movie has music. Disney hacked this a long time ago. They hacked this a long time ago. They make you feel something. You're scared, happy, sad, whatever. They have a literal way to like evoke that. Haven't you seen those examples before where they'll show like a movie like that that has like this crazy like cinematic music behind it? When they take the music out? And they take it out, it like kills it. Totally. Yeah, it don't even give you the same feeling at all watching it. No, and also before- They could have careless whisper on there instead. Before we learned how to record our thoughts with writing, the way we would pass information was through song because our memory is significantly better when it's tied to music. Like right now, if you were to say the ABCs, you would sing it. That's how you learned it and that's why you'll never forget it. I told you guys about that with my cousin who has five kids and she came from homeschool family, she homeschools and the kids are all like geniuses. And one of the things that the way they've taught them since they were tiny is through song and they build on the songs as they age. So they start with something super remedial, real basic for them to start off that's very easy when they're toddlers or whatever. And then they add a little bit, then add a little bit until it turns into this like massive song where they're teaching history and science and everything built into it. It's wild. I love it, there's a school like that, they could just go like that's brilliant. It's crazy, it's crazy how smart these kids, there's all of them are, I mean some of them are teenagers now, but a lot of them are like, eight, nine years old and stuff in that age range. And they'll be watching like the history channel and be able to like quote all these random facts about- Because of the song. Yes. It's weird. Are we evolved that way for some reason, right? You mentioned Disney earlier. Did you see that police officers are playing Disney theme songs and music when they're pulling people over and doing like when they're- For copyright issues, the cops are doing that? Yes. No, they're not. Yes, they are. No, they're not. Yes, they are. That way people can't share the videos on YouTube. Everyone, you brought that up about like, you should make your sex tape back so that we can share it. You play Disney because you're the most litigious or what? Well, because if a cop pulls someone over, oh, oh, resistance to arrest or whatever and there's like Disney's music in the background. If you post it to YouTube, it picks up the Disney music and it takes it off immediately. That's brilliant. I literally read an article on Reason magazine about this that cops are figuring out a way. I don't know, isn't that funny? That is funny. Can we build a snowman? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's fucked up, man. I'm sorry. I'm not happy about this. Like they're waiting that, because it's like 15 seconds, I think, right? So you gotta wait the 15 seconds before you can do anything. Hey, I'm just going over right now. Okay, go ahead. Alarm goes out, bing, bing. Yeah. Hey, so Disney, Disney's crashing, right? The stock is tanking right now. I knew it anyway. I knew that would happen. I don't even like checking that right now. Bro, they should have kept their mouth shut. So what do you think's gonna happen though? I don't think, I think they'll respond. I think they initially put that. If they're smart, they will. They will. I think that money is a very powerful motivator for a company. Yeah, I think so. And so you lose money, you change your direction real quick. I think so. You didn't read the crowd well there. Yeah, it's a bummer because they got all these new shows coming out. I want to check out, but it's like, you know, like I don't want to support whatever the hell they're doing over there. Which one of you, the amount of subscribers they lost, it was a huge number, right? Yeah, they did. I've said this before, if you're a big corporation, especially one that's been around for a long time, don't take positions on things. Cause 100% you did something in the past that's gonna counter that. And then people are smart, they'll look it up, or just something you're doing now will make you look like a massive hypocrite. So it's just you're better off keeping your mouth shut. I think that's perfect. I think because it's become so polarizing that I think that that's gonna be the future of companies is to stay out. I think more and more. Like that's their policy. Yeah, you saw who came out, did they have a coin base and a couple other ones that know politics? Smart. Yeah, just, I think that's gonna become a thing in the future is like, cause taking a side like that right now is dangerous. I remember when I was at the bar, it was like, you don't talk about politics, you don't talk about religion, talk about money. That was the rules. And it was great. Yeah. Everybody was cool. Everybody has to talk about those things. It won't, maybe not all more, just the politics part. Yeah, you're done. Unless you're perfect, you should probably shut your mouth is what I would say. Hey, real quick, I gotta talk to you about one of our sponsors, Livon. Now, one of my favorite supplements that they make is their liposomal glutathione. Here's the problem with glutathione. 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Head over to the mindpumppartners.com page, click on Livon Labs and check out their stuff. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first caller is Bergen from South Carolina. Hey, Bergen, how can we help you? Hi, guys. So I'm super nervous, but I wanted to thank you guys first for doing everything that you do, putting all the free content out that you do. It's changed my life. I know you've helped a lot of other people too. And I wanted to thank you too for finally creating map symmetry. I broke my leg two years ago and haven't been able to balance out my lower body ever since. So I'm on finishing up week one and it's already such a good program. Thank you guys. Thanks to you. I'm so glad. I'm sure you need that 50 bucks for that plug, please. You're welcome. Great commercial, I appreciate it. So anyways, my question, it's a little bit long-winded. I started out as a trainer in 2013 in big box gyms, made a career change to a desk job in 2018 and then realized how much I missed training. So thanks to you guys, I found NCI. So I'm going through level one and a bunch of other of their certifications. One of the most pivotal things that they talked about for me in the certification was the idea of periodizing diets for clients. So they put it in terms of in season, post season, off season and pre season. So in season for a typical weight loss client is gonna be like the actual cut phase, going for whatever their goal is, off season is gonna be reverse dieting, returning to homeostasis, focusing on biofeedback. So my ideal clients for the business that I'm building is females with a history of yo-yo diet, sort of like tried everything and haven't had success, maybe have some hormone imbalances, cortisol issues, things like that. So my question for you guys is how would you take that periodization season and women's idea on the training side? So like take an average, maybe 40 year old client, female client that's been chronically dieting. She's not in a place where she should take on a diet. So how would you take that client from off season to the diet phase on the training side? I like this question. That's a really good question. Yeah, I like this question. Bergen, by the way, do we see you at the coaching con? Were you there? No, I was not. I really wish I could have gone. Okay, no problem. Next one. All right, so look, so this is a good example of, this is a common mistake a lot of coaches and trainers make when they start to learn new information is what we tend to do is we tend to overcomplicate things and try to apply that information in areas where they don't necessarily need to be applied or in ways that might be maybe not as beneficial. So let me explain what I'm talking about. So what you mean with the nutrition or how they're breaking up nutrition, very beneficial, makes tons of sense. So that's how I would work with someone's diet. It's perfect. Now with workouts and the way we wrote our workouts is totally different. Now we phase the workouts based off of the body's ability to adapt and the programs themselves are specifically designed for a target type of goal or adaptation that we're looking for. So, you know, map starter would be really good for a total beginner, for example, maps resistance, maybe somebody who's a little bit more advanced, who has some little bit of experience with barbells and dumbbells, maps and a ball further, right? Great for strength, but very much stuck in one plane of movement, but very good for strength and metabolism building, performance, obviously more mobility and movement focus, but also great for strength and muscle building and then so on, right? Aesthetic, more body building, more volume, that kind of stuff. So really what you wanna do, Bergen, is you wanna pick the program that works best for the client's goals and their workout history and their current fitness levels. Now, from there, as a trainer or coach, this is the beauty of being a great trainer or coach, is you can modify it to suit the client even better because as much as we tried to make the programs as applicable as possible for the people that we designed for, we're still writing them for a general audience. So what I would do is I would take, you know, let's say you took your client and they're, you know, somewhat experienced or maybe they worked out a couple of years ago, they're not really working out now. You wanna speed up their metabolism, you know, so you wanna build muscle and strength. You're gonna, maps and a bulk would be a great addition, but within maps and a bulk, I can look at the program and say, okay, I can go two foundational workouts a week or I can go three foundational workouts a week or I can go one and bring it back from there. So that's how I would use the programs. I wouldn't look at the programs specifically as pre-season, off-season, post-season, you know, type of goals. It doesn't really work that way. In fact, if you look at maps performance, maps performance itself, it looks like how you would train a client from off-season to, you know, to getting right before they get to peak. To peak right before season. Yeah, but really don't apply the nutrition, what you learn with nutrition in this context to the programs specifically because it won't work that way. Now that being said, there are some things though that I think she should look out for. So say for example, you allow a client to drive your decision on what program because they say, I just want to look a certain way. So you put them in something like, you know, anabolic or aesthetic and then they go to split and they become very focused like bodybuilding type of programs because they care about how they look the most. And so you as a coach, you start picking, you keep picking all these maps programs that are focused around, but then you neglect to do things in different planes like which performance and symmetry provides, right? So I do think that there is, there's some like mild rules that you would want to kind of follow as a coach. If you found yourself doing like anabolic, aesthetic, split, all like back to back, and then you have a client who's complaining of like joint pain or even just chronic pain because maybe the volume of training is too much for them. So there are some things like that where you as a coach have to be able to pay attention to that and go, oh, that's because we're neglecting, you know, unilateral work or we're neglecting other planes of motion. And so I need to incorporate performance or symmetry even though this person's goal is build more muscle, build more muscle. So I do think that you got to pay attention to that. Now, we don't talk about this a lot on the show. We did early on, we wrote the programs in a specific order. If you follow that order, no matter what you're doing diet wise so that you're going to be fine, because we took that into account like that no matter what your goal is, everybody at one point should run through performance. So if you go anabolic performance, aesthetic, and you cycle through that, say every year, you don't allow yourself to completely neglect that, you'll be fine. So I think there's, there are something, it's not, but it's not as cut and dry as like dieting where it's off season, on season, reverse dieting like that. Yeah, speaking to the training side of it too, it wasn't mentioned in any of our prime programs in here, but the prime compass test is something that's very valuable for coaches to always take into account, like if you're transitioning from one program to the other or before you start the program, really what you're working with, like what kind of imbalances are there, dysfunction, any kind of loss of connection. And that way you can make those decisions in terms of like what you can focus on, whether that's unilateral work, whether we need to work on multiple planes of motion, or if it's pretty straightforward, we can kind of get after it and just work on muscle building. Like that's something I'm always actually cycling back in to retest, so even like sometimes I'll take it in for like every month we get through a training cycle and I wanna see what the body looks like after that. So that's just something to consider. Yeah, and I'm gonna simplify this, I'm gonna make it real simple for you Bergen. Can you go, can you be on a diet where you're cutting and run maps anabolic? Yes. Can you be on a diet where you're reverse dieting and be on anabolic? Yes. Can you be on a bulking diet and run maps anabolic? Yes. Can you be on a diet where you're trying to work on your gut health and follow maps anabolic? Yes. This is true for all the programs. All the programs, any kind of diet will be appropriate so long as the context is appropriate, so long as the program is appropriate for the client. It really doesn't matter if you're cutting, if you're building, if you're reverse dieting, if you're maintaining, the program is the program. So what a lot of people get confused with is they think here's my cutting program, here's my bulking program, here's my, and really the reason why people see value in doing that, because you'll talk to people to do that and they, oh, but it works. Every time I do that, it works. You know what worked, is that you changed something. Yeah, or you were consistent. I could go, look, classically, just to give you an example, right, classically bodybuilders would say that super sets and giant sets and short rest periods are better for cutting because the thought was, well, you're burning more calories. So I can see where the rationale comes from, but honestly, your body adapts really fast to that. Just like it adapts to any kind of resistance training program or any kind of workout, regardless, can you do a strength building type program where you rest three minutes and do a cut? Yeah, in fact, if that's what's different for your body, if that's what's novel, that's better than going with the idea that you gotta do super sets and all this other stuff. So look at the workout like this. What workout is best for my client's goals and their history, and then the diet you can apply and it doesn't matter what diet you do. And of course, modify the workout, whether or not it's working, if it's too much volume or too little volume for that individual. Diet can affect those things, but that's where you observe as a coach and say, all right, we're cutting calories. Maths aesthetic is really high volume anyway, and now it looks like it's too much volume because the calories are so low. So now we're gonna reduce the volume a little bit. Does that all make sense to you? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's really helpful. It's helpful for my own personal programming too. Yes, yes, yes, excellent. Yeah, very cool. Thanks for calling in, Bergen. And you know what? Because you're a trainer. I'd like to give you something. Yeah, what are you missing? Are you missing any of our program? Any program in particular you really like to have access to? I mean, I used to be a competitive power lifter and I don't have power lift. Oh yeah, boom, there you go. We're gonna send you a 5% off coupon here. I'm just kidding. We'll send you a Maths power lift right now, okay? Awesome, thank you so much guys. No problem. Thanks for calling in. I like that question. Yeah, what a common mistake, right? And I'm glad you addressed the way you did and made it simple because it's probably one of the most common questions that I get is like. How do I eat in phase two? Yes, someone buys a program and they go. Why don't we have paired meal plans to go with our programs? Yeah, right. Should I bulk on this? And what it is is people just want, they want to be told what to do. They want to simplify it. But the truth is you said it perfect is that there's tremendous value in running anabolic in all the different ways of dieting. And that goes true for every program. Have you ever cut like, have you ever cut on a straight up strength program? Yes. I mean, that's how I got shredded. I've done all the above. And there's science. There's muscle preserving a factor to that. It doesn't, I mean, I've done the high volume superset giant sets when I'm bulking too. It doesn't, this whole pairing thing that we try to rationalize. Really it's more about like does it work? Is it novel? Is it what your body needs? You can pull science to support all of them. So, and I think the most important thing to, and you addressed it also is the novelty. If you always run supersets during the year and you're getting ready to go into cut, well, supersetting in that cut is not a great idea because you've been doing it. And we'll be great as an anabolic type program, five by five strength with long rest periods. So because it's novel, right? Because you haven't been doing that. So I think that's the big takeaway with this, but we do get this question a lot. And then one thing to add to that that I didn't even tell her, just dawn on me, also consider your psychology when you're switching your training program. I definitely will lean towards, now I've done strength during a cut, okay? And it was really effective because it was novel. But I definitely lean towards shorter rest periods and supersets when I'm cutting, but it's not because that's a superior way to work out when I'm cutting. No, you don't want to feel like a wuss because you know how strong you are when you're calorie. I gotta go lighter anyway, right? So, and if I'm cutting my calories and I'm trying to lift heavy and I'm watching the numbers go down and messes with me psychologically. So that's something else to consider. I agree. Our next caller is Skylar and Jolene from Nebraska. Hey, you two, how can we help you? Hey guys, it's nice to talk to you today. We're super excited. Awesome. You're right. So, like I said, we're Skylar and Jolene here. Skylar's my workout partner. So we're super excited to talk to you today. Skylar's working to get her certified or personal training certification and your guys' podcast, what she's learned there and working through the programs is really kind of what inspired her to pursue that. So thank you for doing what you guys do. You really make a difference. So we appreciate you. Thank you, very cool. So I'm 48 and my daughter is 21. Like I said, she's my workout partner. She pushes me to lift more than I ever would imagine that I could and doesn't let me slack because I'm an old lady. So I appreciate that. We've run anabolic once and aesthetic twice. We just started performance. We were gonna start split, but after listening to a podcast where cell was very strongly recommending performance instead of split, we put split on the back burner and now we're starting performance. So we feel like we're on the right path as far as our workout goes. But one thing that we've been kind of focusing on, especially in the last phase of aesthetic was our intake and with our calories and protein. We really struggle to get like 1500 to 1700 calories in a day and to be in a surplus and then getting 100 grams of protein in a day is tough. And it's mostly just because we're not hungry. So my question was, do you guys have any tips on how we can get more protein and calories in? Do we just kind of shut up and eat more or change our mindset? I was gonna say, how would you respond if we gave that shut up and eat more? Next question. Shut up and eat more, okay? Simple. Now that's not a very common question, but it's not also not super uncommon. I'm so glad actually they're asking this because we say it on the podcast, but for some reason, I don't know why people don't admit it more often because we've all... Especially the protein. Yes, we've trained enough female clients to know that a majority of them miss protein intake. Most all of them do. And it's such a game changer when you hit those targets consistently, especially when you're following a good training program. If you guys consistently hit your protein and calorie intake, you're gonna see muscle come on the body, lean out, tighten up really quick if you can be consistent with that. So there's three things I'm gonna say here and that I think can help. One is sometimes if the volume of the training is too high, okay, and I'm saying this because you both did aesthetic. And aesthetic's a lot of volume. And I want people to know this, like I've been working out for years. I know I'm 43, but I've been training for a long time. And aesthetic is usually too much volume for me, okay? It's not always, but usually. And what happens often when volume is a little bit too high or maybe even a lot too high, especially a lot too high for people, is their appetite actually decreases? It's actually, it can be a sign of overtraining. And as this appetite decreases, cravings go up for other types of maybe quote unquote unhealthy foods. So pay attention to the following things. Is your sleep disrupted? Are you noticing any intolerances to hot and cold? Do you feel more sore than you normally do? Is this the weight on the bar, the dumbbells, has it plateaued? Your volume may be a little too high. And sometimes when you drop the volume, then the muscle building signal is louder because now the body has more room to adapt. It's not just worried about recovering. And then the appetite goes up. Now that might not be happening with you, but I'm just throwing that out there. So that's something you might wanna ask yourself. The second thing is, if this isn't the issue, then I would also look at other aspects of your life that may be contributing to your appetite going down. Are you getting good sleep? Do you feel like you're otherwise active besides the resistance training workouts? Are you guys walking, that kind of stuff? So that's something else to pay attention. And then here's the third thing. Let's say everything's good. You're feeling strong. It's good amount of volume. You guys are doing everything right. But man, it's really hard to eat the amount of calories. I think I should be eating to hit my goals. Well, one, we don't wanna create a dysfunctional relationship by stuffing yourself or force feeding yourself. That's dysfunctional, just like restricting would be with somebody where they're just constantly trying to restrict themselves. So don't do that, but rather maybe seek out foods that are a little bit more palatable, right? So chicken breasts, kind of hard to eat when you're eating, you know, trying to hit a certain amount of calories. You know, flank steak or ground beef. Or chicken thighs. Or chicken thighs, maybe a little bit easier, right? So look for things that are a little bit more hyper palatable. And then here's also where protein shakes can be quite valuable. And in some cases, person finishes the day. They're like, oh, I ate 80 grams of protein or 70 grams of protein. I'm not really hungry enough to eat a full meal, but a 30 gram protein shake, not a big deal. Now I can have that shake and hit those protein targets. So those are the three places that I would look. I think with perform, how far along are you in performance, by the way? This is our third day. Only the third day. I would be surprised if your appetite didn't go up by the second or third week because aesthetic is so much volume. Performance is more of an appropriate level of volume, especially phase one, for people that what we often see is a healthy increase in appetite because that stimulus is a little more appropriate. So I'd be interested to see if your appetite changes by the second or third week. But if it doesn't, the shake or choosing things that are a little bit more palatable, this is where you could seek foods out that you enjoy eating more that can help with the increased calories. I'm gonna give you a generic piece of advice that's helped a lot of people in the same boat as you guys are in. What I've found, it's really hard, and I've struggled with this personally too, not just with clients. It's really hard if you get to noon or one and you were way behind on protein already, then you're trying to feel like you're trying to catch up all day and all night. So staying on top of the protein and take early and consistently helps a lot. Now, why that's so challenging is breakfast foods generally aren't high protein. Most breakfast foods are high carb. So one of the things that's worked wonders for me is that whatever it is that you have for dinner, normally everybody has a, not everybody, but normally clients that are listening to this podcast are eating a meat base type of dinner. And what I'll do is I will cook more than what we need for dinner. So I have whatever that meat is, and it could be chicken, ground beef, turkey, steak. And I'm gonna carve off at least four to six ounces of that to the side for my breakfast the next morning. And then I'm gonna scramble eggs and cheese with that. And that is like a 40-gram, 50-gram breakfast that's protein rich. That's huge when you're trying to hit 100 grams to already get out the gates with 40, 50 grams to start your morning. That's almost half. Yeah, and then the other thing that I noticed, and I've talked about this on the podcast a couple of times that I thought was really interesting. The guys, in fact, it was just a couple of weeks ago, I remember when I used to start my mornings really early and when I was trying to increase my calories, I found that if I got up early and I had something light, like a bowl of oatmeal with blueberries and strawberries and a scoop of whey protein, I found it was hungrier again like two hours later. It would just like kickstart my metabolism. It felt like all of a sudden I wanted to eat again. And then that second meal would be like the meal I'm telling you right now. So those are two little hacks that are generic pieces of advice because I don't obviously have all the details about what you guys are currently doing that I've seen help a lot of people. So if you haven't tried that already, I would implore you to try that. Okay, yeah, that's good. I think I personally, I wait until like 10 o'clock before I even start eating and that's just because I'm not hungry. So that's a good tip to maybe start with something smaller in the early in the morning. So if we're not getting, if we're kind of struggling during the day to get, you know, like maybe to 1,500 to 1,700 calories and our protein, do you guys think there's one that we should maybe shoot for more than the other? Like should we kind of focus on getting our protein for the day? Protein. Okay. Protein, protein. Yeah, I would aim for the protein, but I mean, you know, if you don't mind me asking, what are your guys' body weights? Cause that'll also give me a better idea of what the protein, you know, the range of protein targets. We're both, what are you? I'd say like 145. I don't weigh myself regularly though. Yeah, I'm about there too. Okay. 141.5. Yeah, 100 grams is about right. 100 grams is good. So I think you guys are on, right on track. And again, look in the morning, you know, if you don't eat till 10, have a 40 gram protein shake right when you wake up. Really easy to digest. There's 40 grams gone right there and it probably won't affect your appetite in negatively in the context of what we're talking about too much. And you get your 40 grams right there and you could just, you know, shake it in a shape or cup and as soon as you wake up and boom, there's your 40 grams and you could take that off your total. Yeah, if you have a hard time doing the advice I just said about, you know, the meat and the eggs and cheese because that just sounds heavy and a lot to you, do what just Sal said or do the oatmeal and whey thing that I was talking about as early as you can. Right when you wake up. And then that will help you get to that second meal. Yeah, now what I said about, what I said about overtraining, does any of that resonate with you? And let me explain why I said this to you, okay? This is why, and I'm guessing based off of my experience, I could totally be wrong, but you have a daughter that's becoming a personal trainer and nine out of 10 times when someone's becoming a trainer, they over train themselves and they over train them clients. It's exciting, it's fun. You're also young and you get away with overtraining differently than you will when you're a little older. And then the second thing is the comment that you made in the question that she doesn't let you go light or slack. And that could be, maybe you like to slack a lot, maybe you don't wanna work out and so she's like, come on, let's go do it. Or maybe you're pushing your red lining too often with the workouts. Hard is good, harder is not better. A certain amount of volume is good, more volume is not necessarily better. And I can't stress this enough, especially when we're excited and we have goals and we're motivated, you're probably gonna air the side of too much. So I really, I'm gonna guess that by week two or three in MAPS performance, you're gonna see a more healthy increase in appetite. When I say healthy increase, there's a difference between cravings and appetite. When my body wants to build muscle in a good way, I wanna eat whole natural foods. When I'm overtrained, I want junk food. I want things that increase my serotonin and dopamine to help me feel better because I'm overtrained. So it's a different kind of feeling. So I'd be surprised again, if by two or three weeks nap from now, if you don't start to notice an increase, especially going from aesthetic, a kind of healthy increase in appetite. Well, in aesthetic too, I really struggled with my squat. I couldn't get more than a plate on there. How long were you stuck at that weight for? Oh, like, I think all of phase three. Yeah, well, phase three is gnarly. And again, I wanna make this point again, because I know a lot of people like MAPS aesthetic because of the name. It's a lot of volume. It's probably too much for most people. So let's see how you guys feel after MAPS performance, especially after phase one. I really think the protein's gonna make a big difference to be consistent with that. Because 100 is already on the kind of lower end, you could definitely go all the way up to 120. I mean you go up to 140 if you want. Yeah, and if you have a hard time missing the lower end, I mean your body's just, you're training, sending the signal to build muscle, but you're not giving it the building blocks to do it. So which will also explain why you get stuck at a certain, you know, you've built a lot of strength for your size and the diet that you're eating right now and you're doing great. And the body's wanting to grow and build more muscle, but you're not giving it the nutrients that it needs. You'd be consistent with that. And I think you're gonna see a difference. Now, I also wanna commend you guys, both of you on working out together. I think this is phenomenal. What a wonderful experience to have mother-daughter to go through, because exercise and working out, especially resistance training, it's such a growth-minded. Thank you, no, I got weird to it. Hey, it's great, I'm sure you guys value the time aside from the workout. Yeah, but just so you know, a lot of parents wouldn't have joined, you know. I know a lot of young training kids that wanna get their mom or dad to live with them. And they say no, so that's most of the time. But what I said about the overtraining, is that resonated at all, or am I off base? You guys pretty... Oh yeah, it does. Okay, all right, well, let's see how you feel after mass performance, okay? All right, thanks guys. No problem. Hey, good luck with your personal training certification. Which one's the daughter? Is it Skyler or Jolin? Skyler. Skyler. Good luck with that, okay? Thank you. You got it. Thanks guys. Thank you. Yeah, so I would guess. You know, the thing about questions, you know, when we answer them like this, you have to guess a little bit. Of course, of course. But I mean, you know, my daughter doesn't let me slack, she doesn't let me go light. New trainer, maps aesthetic twice. It's hard to eat more food. You're probably over-trained. That's what I feel like. Well, and it's like a feedback loop too, right? You're overtraining and you're under-consuming on the protein. And so talk about it hard. It just goes down in the cycle. Protein helps you recover. I really like, I mean, I wasn't gonna chime in, but it was the same advice you gave out of me. It was really just, when I noticed, especially with my, the kids that I train and myself, even personally, the earlier I eat, the better. And it's just like, it just starts you on such a better path to get those calories in. And then, yes, it might not be, I'm not hungry. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Like you gotta, and even if it's a small amount of calories, it's better to just start kind of, you know, training your body to get used to that. I had to start with, and I know it wasn't the best choice. This is me at like 22 years old or what with that, like a yo-play yogurt, because I had no appetite in the morning, but I recognized that I had to get it going. You picked the manliest thing that you've seen in the morning. Do you remember those? Did they make those anymore? The yo-play whips? Yes. I love those things, right? So that, but I mean, It's a little goger. In the bath with bubbles. It was so, it was so light that, even if I wasn't hungry, it was nothing. I bet it got you hungry. It did. I would do it when, first thing when I wake up when I was trained, five o'clock in the morning, five o'clock in the morning, I did not want to eat a egg steak, you know, rice and cheese type of meal, but I could, I could drill that. And then also in an hour or two, I would want to eat again. And then I'd have that big, you know, egg and steak and rice type of breakfast. Our next caller is Dylan from Minnesota. Dylan, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey guys, thanks for having me out on the app development. I've been working out now for about six years consistently. And you know, I've done a number of bolts and cuts in that time. And even when I've been down to my leanest, which was around 155 pounds, five foot nine, I've always had trouble really getting the big blocky invisible abs. They bother to see it kind of washed out. Not really there unless I'm kind of twisted to the side and crunching down. Okay, so you're, by the way, where are you calling? Are you on Mars right now? Where are you calling? He's in a tunnel. I think he's under water maybe. No, okay, so the question is, you want your abs to be more visible. You want them bigger and blockier, right? Yeah. Okay. You got to build them. You know, abs are muscles, just like your biceps and your pecs and your lats and your quads. And for some reason, the way we tend to approach ab training is totally different. Like all of the muscle building principles that apply to the body, all of a sudden go out the window. Isn't that funny? We train abs, it's like 5,000 reps. We're all guilty of this too at one point in our lives, right? So what's higher reps? What is that? Who started that business? You know, it was a old school bodybuilders. It was old school bodybuilders really. And they would, like Arnold was known for doing, he would get on the Roman chair and do sit-ups for 30 minutes straight. And that's what he did. And the reality is that high of reps isn't going to build muscle just like it wouldn't build your biceps or your quads that much. So what you want to do is you want to train them like you're trying to build them. So this means high tension, high resistance, and your reps around eight to 12. Now, high tension and high resistance is all relative. So what I don't want people to do, and this is where I'll add a little caution, is where people will add tons of resistance to an ab exercise and then their form goes out the window. Because to really train the abs properly through a full range of motion, remember the function of the abs, think of it this way, right? So the bottom of the abs attach at the pelvis and the top of the abs attach at the rib cage. And when the muscles contract, they bring the rib cage to the pelvis. So they literally round the lower back. Okay, what they don't do is bend you at the hips. Bending you at the hips is your glutes and your hamstrings or your hip flexors, right? So either you're extending or you're flexing. But what you want is you want to bend at the lower back. You want to roll yourself up. So that's the motion and do it with a lot of tension and resistance. So that may mean just reverse crunches on a bench. It may mean maybe you're really strong. So you could do decline sit-ups really well or leg raises really well where you really tuck the tailbone or maybe you're really strong and you do decline sit-ups holding a weight. Although I doubt that. Most people can't do that, right? But maybe that's you. But build the abs. Train them like you're trying to build them and get them stronger. Not like you're trying to get them to have tons of stamina and endurance. And what you'll find is they'll build and they'll be much more visible. By the way, this was me. I used to get down to 9% body fat. If I didn't flex my abs, you couldn't see them. Then I built them and now you can see my abs when I'm at 12% body fat just because they're a lot bigger. So if you focus on building them like any other muscle, it'll work better for you. Also keep in mind, there's a genetic component to this too where some people just carry more body fat in their abdominal area and other people don't. And that's why you can probably, or you probably know somebody who you're like, man, I'm leaner than they are, but I can see their abs and I can't see mine. So there's a genetic component. But Sal's advice is spot on. Nothing's gonna help do that better than building them somewhat. And then also getting leaner than you've ever been because they're there, you have abs. You have diced up shredded abs, guaranteed you have them. You just gotta get down to that body fat percentage or do what Sal is saying. Or both. Yeah, or ideally that's what I think we would train you is I'd run you through like no BS six pack abs and try and bulk in a calorie surplus and then run you into a cut afterwards to try and reveal that. Have you actually like progressively overloaded your abs and worked on it like that? Like you're trying to really build up the strength of your abs? Yeah, yeah, I've done weighted crunches along with leg raises, Russian twists. And I was gonna kinda ask if there's a good way to program them or if you should hit them more often than other body parts that sometimes you hear that you can add to every day. But if you're really loading them, should you do them every day or just a couple of times a week? Yeah, you can hit any muscle group every day but you have to adjust the intensity. You can't hit the abs hard every single day. We're gonna send you the no BS six pack formula. Yeah, it's all outlined in there and it'll show you a good blueprint. Also, there's a full range of motion for the abs that we often don't hit. Like remember it crunches and it rolls up the lower back but if you bring them to their full extension you actually have an arch in your low back. So if you do a crunch on the flat floor you're not getting a full range of motion. If I do a crunch and I have like a half foam roller behind my low back or if I do a really good and this takes a lot of form and technique, a really good crunch, full range of motion, sit up or crunch on a physio ball. Now I'm getting a full range of motion, extension, contraction. And I love doing physio ball sit ups with my arms extended over my head like straight and that's all the resistance I need. And I'm doing like 12 reps really slow. That's plenty of tension to build that up. But we'll send you the no BS six pack form this. You have like a structured routine that you can follow and then watch the videos in there so I really break down how to do the proper technique and form. And run it because just like a building any muscle run it in a bulk. So give yourself a calorie surplus while you're really trying to build and then go to a cut afterwards and reveal. That's right. The beauty. Awesome. And is that something else kind of an addition to another program? Yeah, so okay, you cut out there but I think what you said was is it a whole program by itself or do I add it to something? It's only abs and obliques. So you take the no BS six pack formula, apply it to your current workout, take out whatever you're doing for abs in your current workout and just replace it with a no BS six pack form and then train the rest of your body. Goes great with the way you have. Goes great with maps and a ball. That's a wonderful combo of maps and a ball. Okay. All right Dylan, have a good time there on Mars. Yeah. Appreciate it. No problem. And see you later. Where was he at Doug? Uh, Minnesota. Oh yeah. They don't have internet back there. It was added like a cup and a string. Really old cell phone towers. No, this is a big one dude. I still see people training apps for this way. And it's like, I'm telling you man, I had a flat mid, I would get lean and have a flat midsection. And then all of a sudden I built, and you know what I started noticing? I started getting a pump. Like when's the last time someone got a pump in their abs? I started getting a pump in my abs and I'm like, oh, this is interesting. And then they started to build and it's like, I mean, now it's like my abs show at almost anybody and I store body fat in my midsection. That's why I store it. So it makes a huge difference. You can definitely build them, but you got to train them like you're trying to build. I brought my laundry to wash on your stomach. Damn. I didn't tell anybody that. Our next caller is Edward from Washington. Edward, what's happening? How's it going? A big fan of you guys been listening for a few months now. Thank you. All right, thanks man. So I just wanted to give a little back story. About a year ago, I weighed 227 pounds. Now I'm down to about 167 and I'm trying to cut down and lose body fat. So I started running a 10K every day. I've been doing that for about 90 days and I strength train five to six days a week. But when I tested my body fat at the beginning and then at the end, I actually increased my body fat by a percent. I'm eating in a caloric deficit and so I don't understand what I am doing wrong. So I shared in one of the episodes not that long ago. I used to do this challenge with all of my trainers. And I remember the first time that like I really, really saw this happen like with a group, right? So I had 20 trainers that were working with me at this time and I put out like some spiff. Like if, you know, the trainer that had the most, the greatest change in body fat percentage over the next, you know, three months would get this cash prize. And the crazy part, what happened to a lot of trainers, in fact, I'd say the majority of them had really bad results. You know, these are trainers, right? They know how to program, they know how to diet. And it's because they all did exactly what you did, which is they went to the extreme, they restricted calories, they moved as much as they possibly can to shred as fast as they could. And a lot of them lost weight on the scale, but then they saw their body fat percentage go up and everybody was fucking pissed. Like, here we are trainers and, you know, should know what we're doing and this, but what's happening is you, you are, you're overtraining the body and you're not feeding it enough nutrients for what you're doing. And so the body is paring down muscle. All that activity, not enough nutrients. And the body says, we don't need all this. We don't need all this muscle to do what you're asking it to do. And it actually pairs down muscle as fast or faster sometimes than you actually lose body fat. So you may be wondering, how does that make your body fat percentage go up to lose muscle? Think of it this way, okay? If you're 200 pounds and you have 20 pounds of body fat on your body, that means you're 10% body fat, right? So 10% of your weight is body fat because 20 pounds out of 200 is 10%. Now let's imagine you lose 100 pounds. So you go down to 100 pounds, but you still have 20 pounds of body fat on your body. So you lost 100 pounds of muscle. You are now at 20% body fat, right? Because 20 pounds out of 100 is 20%. So you might have lost, you probably lost body fat too. So you lost a lot of weight. You probably lost a lot of body fat too, but your body fat percentage went up because the amount of muscle you lost outpaced the amount of fat you lost in the context of your total body weight. So your body fat percentage is higher now, okay? Does that make sense? That does. So what could I be doing that would get that body fat down and increase muscle mass? You gotta build muscle. You gotta build muscle and stop doing so much endurance work. A 10K every day, what that's telling your body to do is become efficient. It's telling you to become a better 10K running machine, which means lighter. You don't need a lot of strength to do that. In fact, you need very little strength and your body burns calories while doing it. So your body's becoming more efficient. Just like a- And it wants to store energy as much as possible. This is all activity. So you just lose, you end up, your body pairs muscle down. This is also why you hear us harp about cardio on the show so much. You're a perfect example of this. Because guess what? If we would have changed nothing different about what you did and simply just walked instead of you running those 10Ks, you would have seen a difference on body fat percentage. Yeah, you probably would. So here's the thing. You're working out way too much too anyway. I mean, you know, five to six days a week of strength training plus running every single day. It's way too much. Yeah, I would have you follow maps and a balik. I would have you walk, not run. Now I don't want you walking for five hours a day. You know, do like a 30 to 45 minute walk every day is perfectly fine. Do maps and a balik. And then I want you to take your calories, make sure you hit good protein intake. So if you're 167 pounds now, aim for 167 grams of protein a day and get your calories and slowly creep them up. But the most important things that you hit your protein targets, 167 grams, if that's your body weight, then hit your body weight in grams of protein, follow maps and a balik, stop looking at the scale. Don't look at the scale anymore. And then pay attention to your strength. Am I stronger? Am I lifting more? Do I feel more stable when I squat and bench press and overhead press? And then give it time. The, it's a slower process because it's a snowball effect. When your metabolism really starts to kick in and it might take a month or two, as it starts to kick in, then you'll start to get leaner. Now also consider this. Your body weight on the scale may not change because you may build muscle as you burn body fat. You may also notice comments from people who say things like, did you lose 10 pounds even though you might have gained five pounds on the scale or nothing at all. So follow that advice, don't over train yourself with cardio and stop the cutting the calories too much. And that should move you in the right direction. Okay, that sounds great. Excellent. Do you have maps and a balik by the way? I do not. I was undecided. I didn't know which one I should get. I was looking at that or aesthetic to kind of figure out. Start with anabolic. Yeah, you gotta do maps and a ball. We'll send it. Yeah, we'll send that over to you. Okay, so you'll have access to it. All right, thank you guys. Yep, you got him. Dude, so, so common. And you know, for listeners and hopefully forever, so he doesn't feel bad. Like, I mean, my trainers were all, Yeah, I've done this. I was part of that competition. Yeah, I didn't know what I was doing. It's just a thing. You're just so conditioned. And he's probably an athlete too, I would imagine, just based off of like, you know, how much effort he's putting into this whole thing. It's like, you think that more intensive work is going to produce a better result too. This is just an example of it doesn't always work out. We confuse lighter and smaller with leaner. It's not the same thing. I mean, I weighed 212 pounds. If I was 212 at my current body, at my current height was six foot, but my body fat was 20% instead of what I'm at now, which is probably around eight or nine percent. I would look very different. And I would look, I would be a very different size and shape, right? So leaner, lighter and smaller is not always leaner. And people confuse it too. And you lose 50 pounds. You're like, how did my body fat percentage? How frustrating is this bullshit though? Like, It's the most frustrating thing. Like literally. All that work. He could have done less days of strength training and less running and probably would have seen more results just because of the opposite, the competing signal that he's sending to us. It's because we value, we have been taught to value the calorie burn more than the adaptations that the exercise routine induces. The calories that you burn while you exercise is the least, literally the least important thing of the exercise. It's the least important factor of all the factors that you should consider with your workout routine. The one you should consider the least is how many calories I'm burning while I'm doing it. It's actually inconsequential. And in fact, if you value that above everything else, you'll end up just like this guy. Well, I just read that he's in the Muay Thai fighting. And I remember going through that training. I bet his conditioning is superb, right? Doing all this excess work because you do see all that work applying well towards the conditioning end of it and the performance side of like really drilling the skill. But now in this pursuit, it requires a completely different shift of focus. Well, yeah. Being a great Muay Thai athlete and building muscle are totally different. Yeah. I mean, they're not the same thing. And this is what happens. You get people that kind of want the best of both worlds. It's like, well, something's gonna give. And what's gonna give in this situation is all that activity, your body's gonna be like, I don't wanna put more muscle on this body. We're running like crazy. We're fighting all the time. Well, I hope he takes your advice because that's a really tough transition. That's a hard reversal. And again, when it comes to sports, the primary goal is to perform better. The side effect of which is how you look. Nobody cares how you look if you perform great. And there's a lot of athletes that don't look like they're shredded but are incredible athletes. So to your point, Adam, it's like, which one do you want to do? I hope he does take your advice and I hope we hear back from him in a couple months because I think that it'll. It'll blow his mind. Especially if he's got the, like if he's got the discipline, sound like he's got the discipline. Definitely, yeah. So if he can switch the mindset from the, huge. Yeah, this idea of more work means more results and focus on lifting smarter, eating correctly, it'll be huge, huge difference. Look, if you like our information, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find us all on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. You can find Adam on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. And you can only find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal.