 Yeah, you see enough people come in and they show you these magazine covers of like the Reggie bushes or March on Lynch's and I want to look like this routine. Yeah, he eats like this. He trains like this. I want to do this. And you're just like as a trainer, like, oh my God, no, no, you don't want to do that apply to you and not to mention to fucking half the time. The shit that's in the magazine isn't really what they're doing. No, it's just like they're using their likeness and their image to sell you on whatever workout diet plan that's trying to be promoted. So I think that's where I get so passionate about this conversation. And I think sometimes it gets misinterpreted as, you know, I tell anybody who's playing sports, it's bad for you. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not like that. Sports can be, I mean, I love sports. I think sports can be amazing for you. But I think it's a terrible strategy for the average person to pick up a sport with the intent of losing body fat or and or building muscle, which happens a lot. Yes. If you're picking up a sport, your intent should be to get good at that sport. Yeah. That's the, that's the best way to enjoy the sport in its pure form. Boom. Here we are. Mind pump time. All right, you're here for the giveaway, aren't you? Here's the giveaway for today. Maps performance. This is a workout program for those of you that like function, those of you that like to look good, but move well like an athlete would. Okay. That's what maps performance is. And I'm going to give it away for free to one of you viewers. Here's how you can win. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode, subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. Do all those things. If we pick your comment, we'll notify you and you'll get free access to maps performance. By the way, we have another channel called mind pump clips. If you want just short clips, you can share about us talking about specific topics. Go check that page out and subscribe to it as well. It's already blowing up right now. It's really cool. Also, we're running a sale all month long. The starter bundle is 50% off. That includes maps, anabolic maps prime and the intuitive nutrition guide. So that's half off. And then we also have maps split. This is a bodybuilder style, body parts, split routine, high volume. Okay. That program is 50% off. So you can get either one half off or both half off, but you got to go to maps fitness products.com and then use the code may special for that discount. All right. Here comes a show sports. They're not good for you. It's not a healthy way to get fit and healthy. Ooh, yeah. Is this because you play sports ball? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, I like, I like this conversation. Um, we've talked on the podcast several times, especially when we've answered questions related to sports and we remind people of this. Yeah. And I actually just happened to be going back through some of our comments on YouTube. And I don't get a chance to read them all, but sometimes I'll go through there and just kind of read what people are saying. And I saw this on multiple occasions where people are like, those guys don't know what they're talking about. Like, yeah, we should explain. Yeah. So I think the context matters here, right? Yes. Like, okay, being active is better than not being active. Of course, it has to be appropriate because you can, you can work out or play sports in a way that's inappropriate for your fitness and your body, in which case it's not healthy. It could, you know, obviously hurt you and cause problems. But yeah, being appropriately active is always better than not being active. Now, here's where we're going when we say sports are not healthy. I think first off, the roots of it are when we look at high level athletes as the epitome of health and fitness. So we look at a professional basketball player, a professional football player, a baseball player. And we say that is the epitome of fitness and health. I'm going to follow their routine. I'm going to do what they do because that's what that is. And it's, it's not what they are, what they really are as the epitome of performance for their given sport, not health and longevity. At some point when you push performance past a certain point, you actually start to trade longevity and health for performance. Uh, it's, it's most clear in professional football. Professional football is one of the most like just brutal. It's taxing, taxing, damaging sports. Look at the law. Look at the lifespan of the average professional football player. I think it's like 50s or 60, something like that. Um, this is true for, look at a retired, uh, professional basketball player. Look at, look at them when they're in their fifties and sixties. Watch them walk, watch them move and you'll see lots of problems. So at some point performance, you push performance, you lose longevity and health. This is true for strength, sports too, powerlifting, bodybuilding, CrossFit, whatever you trade the two. So it's important to communicate this because we often look at athletes as the examples of health and longevity. They are not the examples of health longevity. Those are the examples of performance, which is something that can be well, and there's another, there's another piece of that that you're missing because you use the analogy and I'm glad you did. So I wanted to bring up other ones because people are one of the things I saw with threads going back and forth were, you know, of course, football, but not all sports. And I said, name one, you know, name me a sport that isn't, and I'll make the case for how it can be. Right. Uh, cause it's not, football seems so obvious because you have two guys that's why you're running full speed at you to try to kill each other. Your car crashes. That's kind of obvious. Like people go like, okay, well, what, yeah, what, what about volleyball or basketball or baseball or tennis or golfing or some of these other? What is the most unhealthy part about professional sports is the decades of repetitive movements the same way, the same side over and over and over. So that is explosive repetitive stress. Yes. So that, that's like a golfer doesn't, a right-handed golfer doesn't practice his left-hand, doesn't develop a balance. Yeah. A right-handed pitcher doesn't practice his left-handed pitch. A batter doesn't practice the opposite side. So you become very, very dominant on one side based off of your sport. And there's not a lot of sports that have you equally balanced out. Which torques your spine. It causes all kinds of problems down the road, you know, from chronic. It's this chronic use of those same repetitive patterns. And so, you know, in terms of us saying it's not healthy, this is, we're talking about the long-term play here. Not, and also I want to do a dress like the, the, the person that will play a sport to get in shape. Yes. And this is, this is a common thought, especially basketball tends to be one of those kinds of sports that people just pick it up. And they think that if I play it more often, I'm just going to be in really good shape and do good for my body. You know what the problem with that is, here's what I'll tell you. Now is that when you go into a sport to get into shape, you treat it like a workout. What does that mean? I'm going to go play basketball. I need to lose weight. So I'm going to go play basketball. So what do you do? You play basketball hard. You don't focus on skill, technique, balance. You know, this is like running. This is why running causes so many injuries. It's not that humans aren't good at running. Humans evolve to be amazing runners. Long-distance runners were among the best in the animal kingdom. But the problem is people say, I'm going to run to lose weight. So they don't go and practice the skill of running. They lace up their shoes and they go run until they're tired. So technique is off, biomechanics are off, they mess themselves up. So when people pick up a sport to lose weight, that's what happens. Versus a kid signing up to play basketball. What does a coach do? A good coach teaches them skills. They teach them proper biomechanics. They teach them how to do the techniques and the moves to become better at that sport. Not just run them until they're totally exhausted. Bad coaches do that, but good ones don't. So that's the important thing to consider here is sports are, yes, they're active. And if you're appropriately active, it's better than not being active. So I want to be clear here that that's definitely true. But going to do a sport to lose weight, there's far better ways to do it. That's where this stems from. But at least that, for me, the passion behind telling people that and getting fired up and like debating with people on how unhealthy sports should be is because I've seen so many people pick up a sport with the intent to lose 30 pounds or to get into good shape. And it's a terrible strategy for that. If you're talking about longevity, overall health, staying fit for the rest of your life, playing a sport where you're going to do repetitive movements or because eventually that will wear down on the body and then maintaining whatever that sport might have got you to is going to be extremely difficult. That being said, I would never, ever, ever tell one of my clients who loves to play a sport, not to. Yeah, right. And I did want to address that too, because there's a way that you can keep incorporating it in a healthy manner, which means you've got to spend more time building the body up, reinforcing the joints, doing the excess mundane work, mobility wise, and things that will help to keep you at top condition and bullet proof as you're going through these intensely rigorous type of movements that put a lot of stress and demand around the joints. So if you do put the work in, you can actually benefit your your sport that you love to play, you just actually as you go along, you have to kind of reframe it as this is you're competing, you're performing. That's a different mentality towards the training side of things. Yes, we've evolved so much in the science of this, what you're talking about. This is why professional athletes now spend millions of dollars a year on recovery. It's the reason why you see people like LeBron James that are going to play 20 plus years in a sport. They didn't do that before. No, it rarely ever happened. And definitely not somebody that that explosive that big, but he spends a million dollars a year on taking care of his body. Now, you may not have to spend as much money and time, but you're also not training as hard and playing as hard. You're not a professional, right. But that the same the same idea applies to you. If you want to play a sport into your 40s and 50s and 60s, then you have to take the time to also take care of the body by protecting the joints and strengthening your core and rotational movement. Yeah, because there is a quality of life thing, right? I love doing it, right? Like you said, I love doing it. I enjoy quality of life. It contributes to health as well. And if you really enjoy it, like my dad, he loves riding a motorcycle. He likes to ride it fast. It's dangerous, you know, but it improves his quality of life so much. He loves it so much that the risk is worth the reward for him. Right. So by the way, you know that that there've been like Roman artifacts or I shouldn't say artifacts where they'll find burial sites with ancient soldiers and they'll pick up the bones and examine them and they can tell which ones were, you know, use the bow, which ones through discus, which ones because they did shape the body. These they did repetitive motion so often that their bones obviously morphed and adapted and you could tell by the spine and they'll see like one arm, one humerus is much thicker than the other. Like, well, this guy probably through discus. You know, for a living or whatever in England, I know they found a bunch of long bowmen and they could see that the spine was twisted even. I mean, those long bows, you know, that was like a super military advancement at the time required. I think it was like 200 pounds worth of pulling power and their bodies contorted and twisted and adapted to that. And so when you look at sports, what makes a sport that sport is a set type of movements, repetitive movements. You look at rowing, you look at baseball or football or basketball or any of the sport, there's like repetitive movements within most sports. And that's what kind of develops some of those issues. Strength training is an awesome form of exercise because I can mold it and modify it regardless of what I'm doing in my life. So if I if I'm a rower and I'm constantly doing this rowing motion, I can help counter that with certain strength training exercises kind of offset some of those potential issues that you might develop from doing that repetitive motion over and over again. I'm glad you brought it up because it's another one of those things that reminds me of when we talk about cardio, people love to take it out of context and then try and pick it apart. Like I would never tell a client that loves playing their sport to stop playing their sport, like that's for exact reasons you said. But the people that I think we are trying to address, which by the way, OK, the people we're trying to address are the larger population or the majority. Yeah, it's it's rare that I have somebody who is a ball player and just wants to keep it going their whole life. Like that that's more rare. What's really common is that we idolize these professional athletes. We put them on the cover of Shape Magazine and Muscle Magazine, and they have great bodies and we look at it and we want to emulate what they're doing. And oh, by the way, they happen to play the sport I played when I was in high school. And so here I am 40 years old. I haven't played basketball since I was 16. And you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to get in shape because I want to look like so and so. And, you know, that's that's who we're trying to speak to. It's like that's a terrible and that's such a high. Let's like it's such a high level of and also you're dealing with genetic anomalies. I don't remember. I should have wrote this down. I don't know, athletes like you guys do, but there was a football player. I don't know his name and he was wearing kind of the you know, the half jersey, whatever. And he's got ripped abs. And then he talked about like how we eat. He's like I eat like once a day, two or three bags of candy. Joe DeFranco posted about that. Yes. I don't know. No, we should look at it up. But he was he was talking about how he just like eats candy and like eats once a day. He looks the way he does. Like, yeah, I don't remember. You're not going to look like him if you eat like him. I'm just going to tell you that's a whole other. That's a whole other type of human, you know. And so we can't always we can't look at these people at that level and say that's what I'm going to do to get fit and healthy. So even if you had their genetics, they're not doing what makes them fit and healthy. They're doing what makes them I also think the other thing that makes me really passionate about that too, is that, you know, I've had the opportunity to be around a lot of professional athletes and they are not the shining example of health. There's in fact, I would I would make the case that a very small percentage of them are really healthy. They are awesome and at their at their gift and they have incredible their habits. Right. But many of them have drug habits, abuse, other things. They're like and again, adding to the repetitive thing. So but and I think that's where this this conversation really came from as a trainer who's trained been doing this for such a long time to hear it all time. Yeah, you see enough people come in like and they show you these magazine covers of like the Reggie Bushes or Marshawn Lynch's and I want to look like this. Here's his routine. Yeah, he eats like this. He trains like this. I want to do this. And you're just like as a trainer like, oh, my God, no, no, you don't want to do that. Apply to you and not to mention to fucking half the time the shit that's in the magazine isn't really what they're doing. No, it's just like they're using their likeness and their image to sell you on whatever workout diet plan that's trying to be promoted. So I think that's where that where I get so passionate about this conversation. And I think sometimes it gets misinterpreted as, you know, I tell anybody who's playing sports, it's bad for you. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not like that. Sports can be I love sports. I think sports can be amazing for you. But I think it's a terrible strategy for the average person to pick up a sport with the intent of losing body fat or and or building muscle, which happens a lot. Yes, if you're picking up a sport, your intent should be to get good at that sport. Yeah, that's the that's the best way to enjoy the sport in its pure form. Totally. And speaking of workouts, oh, my God, dude, I did. I did the perfect formula yesterday for a maximum pump of my workout today. So what do we say before right to get the best pump? Carbs, lots of cars, lots of sodium, lots of water. OK, so here's what happened, right? So yesterday I had for all intents and purposes, I was starting my cut. This is my summer cut. I'm starting right now. So I'm like, all right, I'm going to eat less calories. This is going to be great. Unfortunately, we met up with some friends and they the so Jessica's one of her friends from Cirque. So when Jessica used to work for Cirque de Soleil, she made some good friends there and one of her friends came to visit and she's like, we have to eat at this restaurant. It's called Din Tai Fung. Have you heard of this before? Doug has, of course. OK, I know Doug has. So it's a joke. I know, yes. No, it's not burgers and pizza. So now apparently it's a chain. I had no idea. So I've seen this place over at Valley Fair here in the Bay Area and I've walked by and it's always got this long ass line. And I'm always like, what? And you can't really it's like a small entrance or whatever. And I'm like, what is in there? That is such a long line. Like this is so crazy. It never went in, though. Anyway, we go there and we put our name down. Three hour wait, three hour wait. So I'm like, this place better be amazing. Yeah. Anyway, apparently it's a chain. She's eaten it. She's the first time that it's a chain and it has that many people. I think it's a chain. So she had it in Taipei the first time and Jessica's had it too. With her friend in some of these countries that they travel to. And it's apparently it's amazing, whatever. So I'm like, all right, whatever. We'll wait till, you know, we'll wait for three hours. So we did. We walked around, hung out, whatever, ate some snacks. Then we go in and what it is, it's like, it's like dumplings and pork buns and that kind of food, right? Which I'm not super familiar with. It was amazing. However, it's, it's like carb heaven. It's like, like doughy dough. You know, there's like big things of dough. Yeah. How did you do that? It's like, isn't it like gluten? Yeah. Well, so I'll tell you in a second. So my gut has been amazing and we'll talk about that in a second. But it just, it was so much carbs. It was like fried rice, you know, shrimp dumplings, pork dumplings, chicken dumplings and, you know, then there were like pork buns and just like so many carbs. Then I was so thirsty. I probably drank about two gallons of water from doing this like sodium. Tons of carbs, tons of water worked out today this morning. I was five pounds heavier, by the way, getting five pounds of water. The most intense pump ever. I was just saying incredible, this crazy pump. But good food, by the way, good food. You've been there, right, Doug? Yeah, a couple times. Amazing. What do you think, Doug? I mean, I like it. It's dim sum. It's basically Chinese like dumplings and things. Okay. Yeah. This chain was actually started in Taiwan. Taiwan, yes. That's where they first had it. But anyway, you asked about my gut because gluten bothers me a lot. Yeah, I figured that place would be full of gluten. Okay, dude. First off, my gut got, you know, I've done, I did a few things a while ago, my gut got a lot better. And then we started working with seed again. So I've been taking seed regularly. I have, my gut has never been this great, this consistent for this long. But normally, if I eat a big ass meal of just a bunch of gluten like that, especially the kind of gluten that that was like not even cooked. It's like doughy stuff. Oh yeah. I'd be, that would destroy me, dude. I'd be ruined. Fine. Totally fine. Totally fine. No problems whatsoever. So we, speaking of seed, we actually just yesterday ordered Max a probiotic through them. They have them for kids now. Yeah, they have a kid's one. So how do they do it for kids? It's not in a capsule? Is it a powder? I don't know yet. I just ordered it. So Katrina ordered it. So I haven't seen. I'm going to get some. Yeah, I'll get it probably, probably tomorrow, I would assume I would have it. So I'll let you guys, I'll report back. But Max has been like sick, like crazy. And the, the doctor can. Yeah, dude, I, we, so we still have yet to string 14 days in a row since October of last year. So we, we were out of town last week. We got back in, right? We worked Friday. We did the interview with Cameron Haynes. And then we took off early after that. So I got home earlier than the normal. And I got home in time to go with Katrina to actually pick Max up from school. She's like, Oh, you should come with me. He'll be so excited. You're never, because you're not here to pick him up. So I'm like, okay, cool. I'll come. So, and we're all excited because this is like the first weekend that her and I have had in a long time where we didn't have other, you know, engagements going on or we didn't have company. So we're like, oh yeah, we had Saturday. Jerry was going to come over. Family time. Yeah. Jerry's going to come over and watch Max. So we could do like a day, you know, day at the beach and maybe do dinner and stuff like that. So we're all excited about this kind of chill weekend we have coming. So we're at the right of school, right? And like he sees me and he's like waving to me and you see the teacher bringing him through, you know, to check him out and stuff like that. And as he's coming over, he like, he stops right by the door. It drops his head and just throws up and I'm like, no, no, dude, please tell me he ate something weird right now and he's just feeling this way, but he threw up in the car on the way home. So fully sick. Oh yeah. Fever. So we hit 104. Temperature. Oh, buddy, come on. But anyways, the doctor actually recommended a probiotic for him. So because we've had a radius on a probiotic since he was real young. And I can tell the difference when he goes on and goes off of it. Yeah, I can do it because he'll get a little bit of a skin reaction depending on what he eats. And when he's on the probiotic regularly, that that tends to get a little better, his digestion gets better too. So I think it's, I think it's valuable. But I didn't know seed had one for kids. I didn't either. Katrina sent me a message saying, hey, the doctor sent me over this, this probiotic formula, but I was actually looking at seed. Obviously, Katrina helps oversee and manage the partner. So she's aware of all the part she was, and they have a kid's one. Which one do you want me to get? I'm like, oh my God, seed for sure. So I've, dude, I've tried probably 30 different types of probiotics. And I'll get some. I'll get some value from each one of them. Sometimes I get zero value, but usually I'll get a little value. I swear to God, dude. I take seed and it's like, it's like I'm invincible. And I hate saying that because I don't want people to get the wrong idea. But for me, you guys know, you, I mean, we went out, we were trying. I was eating whatever. And normally you guys know, I have to be very careful. Otherwise, I just was more consistent, you know, like that. That's my biggest thing. I'll go on a string and I feel great. Like my gut's all nice and everything. And then it's just, I don't know, like I just got to keep taking it. And every, so take it right before you got to get one of these, dude. Yeah, I feel like such an old man having to buy one of these. I've never, you got to just concede and be like, look, I do have like daily things I need to take. I'm not like this guy. He's like, he's all, he's been carrying the same purse around. I remember what to take when I just don't. I have, I've never been good. I mean, maybe creatine. I've been the most consistent with, uh, and that's just because. I'm good about, I actually keep. So here we have obviously multiple jars of creatine that's out in the workout floor, and then I have one literally in my garage in my gym. So that's the only reason why I'm consistent with that, because I'll take it like midway or towards the end of my workout. So I don't forget. Dude, if I want you guys to take something, what do I always do? I have to give it to you guys regularly. Yes. Come and feed it. You know, you know why that would never work for me that case? Why? It doesn't fit all the supplements out there. Yeah, no, I know it wouldn't fit all the ones you get. I think Doug's the same way. Like we can't, Doug takes probably almost as much as I do. Are you good? Are you consistent with your pills? Yeah, I am. What I do is I buy these little baggies on Amazon. And then I have these little cups I line up, you know, for every day of the week. And then I just take my bottle and drop them in there and dump them in the baggie. I bought four of these and like and dumped all the pills that I need to take like the whole layout for like how it's color coded to free. Yeah, it's got the night and day on it. And it's got it. That's why I picked it. It's got it's very. Organized. No, so seed, take it. You know what you do, Justin, because it's better to take it on an empty stomach. Put it next to your bed. No, no, no. Put it next to your bed. So right when you go to bed, take two. Oh, do you go to bed? So I've been completely transparent when it comes to any probiotics. Like I've never like you like talk about I couldn't feel that you guys crazy. It's like you make a big deal about all the time. The biggest he does do it like that. It's just like, is he not two days you guys? Did he not come in and talk about seed just like that? Oh my God, can you guys feel it? I feel it. Right? He just feels it. Yeah, so where okay, where the biggest thing that I've been able to connect it to is, you know, we could one of Katrina's favorite foods is either hamburgers or pizza, both of them destroy me, at least now. Like they used to not when I was a kid, but they definitely destroy me now. If I proactively have the probiotic before, it totally mitigates how I feel afterwards. Like it doesn't make me feel great or amazing. But it was a difference. Oh yeah, I know it's a big difference where if I don't take it, it's guaranteed. I'm, you know, in the bathroom 10 minutes later and I'm just like, I feel lethargic and below to the next day. Those symptoms don't seem to be there when I take the. Well, I'm excited to try the one for the baby. I had no idea. Yeah. No, I'll let you guys know it'll be here in a day or two. I think I don't know if it's pill or liquid or what it must. It must be liquid or a powder because you can't wait to give a capsule to your son. Yeah, it's a good point. I didn't think about that. Hey, so are you guys ready for spider season? Isn't this spider season, Justin? No, October, because so we had some of the windows open and what dude is blazing hot over the weekend. So I'm saying, I think they're coming inside. Oh yeah, they have been. I actually last night, I saw a big one. Like as I was letting the dogs out, like crawling its way towards the stairs and had to like smash it. They're everywhere right now. They're stringing from the trees. Like, yeah. So we have that. We have gophers and we have like, like paper wasps. So those are my new enemies. What's the paper wasp? Paper wasps, they just make little nests like in the roof, like in the gutters and whatnot. And do they sting still? Yeah, yeah, they're shitty wasps. I hate those bass. What about the gophers? How you getting rid of the gophers? So gophers, OK, I've been wanting to talk about this because this has been like literally caddyshack. OK, you remember like Bill Murray and like he's trying to throw all this like explosives and holes and, you know, smoke them out and like, like rush them out with water. Like I literally did like all these things because I had no idea how destructive these little fuckers are. Yeah, they're really destructive. Like in Courtney, it's a poor Courtney has been like really trying to overcome her brown thumb, so to speak, in terms of like killing plants and she's trying to like create this whole garden and like so we have like a bunch of vegetables and and different fruit and herbs and things she's been growing. And so she's like really taking pride in this thing, right? And then these little bastards like are getting up there and like eating all the roots and then you see him like just slowly dying. And so she's like trying to get me involved. And I've been taking my BB gun out there and like when they put their little head up and like eat, like I actually like took one out once and I was really happy about that. So this is actually one of my favorite parts of being on a ranch when we were kids because we had so that we they would do they'd burrow and make all these holes and we had horses and horses would roll their ankle. Oh, and then that's it. Yeah. And that like really could fuck a horse up. So yeah, you had to kill him. Like so what do you do? And they're cute, too. It sucks, you know, because like one of them got caught and like one of the snares and it was like, you know, you had to put out of its misery and Courtney couldn't do it. She went off crying and like, she's like, can you handle this? And I'm just like, oh, this little guy's just like, I had to take a big rock and smash. It was awful, dude. Phone call from Peter Kelly. Oh, man, I've been, dude, it's fine. I got like 20 of them. We ate the meat, though. Yeah, we ate it. It was delicious. We ate the meat. I mean, we were smoking these things out. We took like literally you take flares and you put them down. Yeah, you put them down the hole and you cover it and it supposedly like smokes them out. And so I was like, waiting to see where they'd popped their little head out and take them out. Wow. Well, now we are we do to prevent them. Can you put like a fence or something in the ground around here? Like what do you do? So I guess, well, if you have a vegetable garden, they have like this like little cage you can put underneath the roots of it. So that way they can't get to it. But yeah, they've already been in there before we got those. So now it's just a matter of like trying to do catch them. My my my grandfather. So old school Italians, their backyard, even if they have like a five by five backyard, it's like it's always going to be. A matchdown for the best match out, right? So my dad's yards like this. My grandfather's yards like this. My grandfather, my dad, my uncles, it is a constant war against the squirrels. And you hear them talk about these squirrels and they get together and talk about the squirrels. And you think you're taught you're hearing like a couple veterans talk about stories like the Nazis or something like that. I get it. Oh, dude, I had a scroll infestation. Oh, my dad has done everything. He's put like like shiny, smooth, like things around the tree so they can't climb up. But then they figure out a jump from another tree to another. Then he put something over it. Then he stays out in the backyard to try and catch them. My grandfather uses cages and he tries to drown them. And my cousins are all crying. One time my grandfather caught a squirrel because they grow fruit trees and they'll eat all your fruit, right? So my grandfather had a bunch of persimmons which we all know this in the family. Don't mess with my grandfather's persimmons because he'll kill you. Whether you're a kid or you're a squirrel, it doesn't matter. Don't mess with his persimmons. Well anyway, there's the squirrels in persimmons. So my cousin was over there and my cousin at this time was like 20. So he's like an adult, right? My grandfather catches a squirrel. Now my cousin, he's a bit of an animal lover. So my cousin sees the squirrel in the cage. And if you ever catch a squirrel, they scream. So he's like, we gotta let this thing go. My grandfather was like, no. And he grabs a squirrel and he goes, here, I'm gonna show you, you're gonna be a man today. These squirrels try to eat our fruit. You're gonna, I'm gonna make you a man. And he tried to drown it in front of my cousin to kill it. And my cousin kicked him because it was a bucket full of water, kicked it open. And then he let the squirrel out. And there was this huge, like my cousin, my grandfather was like, huge fight over this whole thing. And my cousin was like, I'm never gonna come over here again if you kill squirrels. And my grandfather was like, you would die in Sicily in one day. And I was like, wow, this is cute rat, like tree rats. Speaking of like little vermin or whatever, I was in the shower the other day and I'm taking a shower and I hear Jessica and she's got the baby and I hear her go, Sal, get out of the shower right now. So I'm like, what the hell's going on? Like first I'm like, did I get in trouble? What did I do? I'm thinking like, she's like, come in here right now. I have the baby. I'm not trying to freak out. So I'm like, oh, it must be a spider. Now Jessica's, she's got arachnophobia for sure. So I'm like, it's probably like a little tiny spider. Not a big deal. Bro, this big, this big dude. A house, a redwood spider that we get. In the closet, massive spider like this. I'm like, and the only reason why she didn't scream and freak out is because she has the baby and she's trying to not freak him out. So I'm like, let me get my shoes. She's like, no, if you miss it, I swore to God we'll move out of this house. Well, I swear we'll never. She's like, I have to watch it and I have to watch you kill it. Otherwise I'm never coming back here. I'm like, oh my God, dude. So she's like, go get the can of Raid. I'm like, Raiding? And she's like, tell a big. So the strategy was I sprayed it with the Raid which made it run, but slowed it down. Slowed it down. So it's like running, but you can tell the chemicals are just getting high. Yeah. It's like, and then I smashed it, saved the day or whatever. But I'm like, damn, dude, these are vermin. I think Katrina was telling me she just called Courtney the other day and she's like, oh, she's like, yeah. Courtney put me on hold. She was like killing gophers. Yeah. She's obsessed dude. I'd say the last month she's just like, like she's dreaming about it. Like she keeps talking like every conversation on my way home is like, you know, how many she's got in the traps? Like she's like obsessed with it. Isn't that funny how like some, just depends on what animals do for you. If they steal your food, kill them, if they're ugly, kill them, if they're cute and they're friendly, love them or whatever. We had a wild bunny in the backyard and I'm just like, so excited. Like let's, that's our pet, let's put some food out there or whatever, you know, let's take care of it. Cut you up real quick. Drive to your hell yeah. Wild bunny? Hell yeah. Really? Hell yeah. Corner rabbit? They'll get all crazy. Really? You can do it, try and catch it. See how it works out. I'm not gonna bite you at all. My dad caught a rabbit. Doesn't have rabies. My dad caught a rabbit one. I'm gonna tell you what he did. You know, you know, it'll, they cook rabbits. Yeah. And they eat them. Yeah. Yeah. We had a rabbit in the backyard once when I was a kid and my sister was like, it's my pet. And then we ate it. And then. Oh wow. And then my sister didn't know. He said, we're for sure getting shut down by PETA today. My sister didn't know. She didn't know. And I told her, my dad, you know, I was an older brother. I'm like, oh, it's gonna be great. I'm gonna tell my sister. She cried and cried. Dude, please, please tell me you guys watched. Did you guys watch the our father, the sperm doctor one? Yes, dude. Let's talk about messed up stuff. I watched half of it and I got up to the point where it was like the sibling count kept going up. I'm like, oh my God. Bro, it's still going. It's still going. It's still going. They're like at 90 something right now. This guy was just so. Yeah. So the crew is going to back and bust the load and then they must not have accounted for the fact that like 23 and me like type technology was going to come out. No, cause when he first did it, it wasn't out. No. So this was like a whole new thing and there's no legislation either, which is the craziest part to prevent a doctor. What do you call that kind of doctor? Fertility doctor. Fertility doctor to do this kind of thing. So basically, well, to kind of sum it up. I mean, he was basically going off, jacking off, taking his own sample and inseminating women with his own. The worst part. So there were the women who were thought that were getting a donor sperm. And the idea was we'll find a donor that matches you and your husband cause your husband's infertile. And what he would do is he would go in the back, use his own sample and pregnant and impregnate the women. That sucks because they're not so bad though. The worst was when the husbands needed fertility treatment and they would do insemination from the husband and he would switch out the husbands with his own sample and he would switch it out for the doctors. Oh, like can you imagine? What a piece of. That's, I was telling Justin in the show, they only really interview the kids, all the kids and the kids are talking about how devastated they are because they thought this was their parent their entire life. But imagine being a dad. Yeah. I mean, I'm watching it and Max is playing it. You're torn because you've brought this kid up and not like you love him any less. Right. But what you thought is now different. Yeah. And I don't know about you guys, but like, I don't know. Part of the excitement or what I was about having my son and why I wanted a boy first was knowing that I'm passing my bloodline down, right? Sure. That's like literally what I'm thinking when I think about having my son. And so imagine I go 30 years from now and he takes a 23 meter that I find out it was somebody else that's not even your. Well, genetically, you can like see some of your traits. Yeah. And to remove that from these parents is criminal. It's crazy. I would be torn because I torn up because you raise a kid and you find out it's not yours genetically. You love them. You still love them the same. You raise them. Yeah, of course. But now you feel terrible because now they're gonna know you're gonna know what does this mean? Does this change anything? And it's just what you thought was something with something else? I mean, does it change? Like I would love my kids. If I found out one of my kids wasn't mine, it wouldn't change how much I love them at all. But boy, it would still be devastating. That doctor is gotta be the clearest example of the most like the ultimate narcissist psychopath. Well, the part that was great, one lady said she goes, because he would do that, he'd leave and what they would do is they were supposed to go to the hospital across the street, get a fresh sample, bring it back and then inseminate because back then the technology wasn't as good with keeping sperm alive or whatever. So they were literally, the donors would be creating the sample in almost real time. This woman went through 15 procedures with her till she got pregnant and she goes, I got raped 15 times and I didn't even know it. And I'm like, yeah, that's kind of what happened. Well, the crazy part is that like Justin said, there's no laws against it. So he got nothing, $500 fine. Yeah, $500 fine. What? Yeah, he got slapped on the wrist. Yeah, they didn't even factor that in. Nothing to legislate. And there still isn't. There still isn't any laws to really stop it. And he's not the only doctor who's done this. They found since then over 40 other doctors. What? Yeah. I did not know that. Some people are, I think there's one group that's up to like 100 something of siblings that they've identified so far through like one of these 23 and me. It's like, and the thing is they're watching it every day to basically see, cause like how crazy is that? You go to see like who you're related to, you do this test and all of a sudden like you're only supposed to get a few results, right? And you treat all of a sudden it's like buh, buh, buh, buh, buh, buh. And it's just like, oh my God, like that's just like, that's so much to take in. Oh, that's crazy. At least they got Dr. G. I feel like the show never really did it well. And I don't know if it was intended to be left open like this or it's because they really, like I never felt like I really understood while he was doing it. Like you have moments where you're like, is he getting off on this? Is this something that he's getting off on because he's going and he's jerking off and he's going over and then he's inseminating. Well, that's the part because he had to get aroused and ejaculate all within a very short period of time. Enough time that they would calculate he's going to the hospital across the street to get the sample to bring it back. So is it that or is it that he's such a narcissist that he wants to see his genes? There's gotta be part of that because he actually did visit a lot of the families initially after the birth, right? To, you know, with his wife, they would go visit some of these parents and he would be like, you know, want to connect with them. He will, he ended up being the gynecologist for one of his daughters. Oh, what the? Yeah, that was a little plot twist. You know, by the way, there's rules. The reason why they have rules where they don't allow one donor to donate more than so many samples. Yeah, it's only supposed to be three and it's so you don't even marrying your brother or sister. Yeah, you imagine? Well, yeah, you do that enough to, if you have a guy in one town. And he, yeah, you have a guy in one town and he's inseminated, you know, 90, 90. There's a very good chance that. They showed this like five mile proximity in like all of these people that related to each other from him. That's so gross. But I don't think actually they had anybody that ended up marrying or anything like that. So I think they lucked out on that part, but. I did see a story about like this. And I think this was on like one of those other podcasts like Barstool or something. But there was like, so this kid basically was reconnecting to find his mom who had sent him off for adoption and over the years had been trying to trace her. And so anyway, they finally connected over the pandemic or whatever and they like fell in love with each other. What? And started like, you know, doing it. What the fuck? With each other. She's professing like, she wants to have his baby and everything. Everybody's just like, no. Where was this? Oh, this is on a podcast? Yeah, this is real news though. It's not like made up. It's not like a national choir or anything. It's like real life we're living in right now. That's against every law of nature. You know that there's, there's, there's literal like genetic like stops that'll prevent you from being attractive to siblings and relatives. Like there's, there's actual, they've identified this because obviously you know that you needs doesn't work. Like, well, isn't there is bad genes you're passing on? Isn't there a theory around kissing and the exchanging of our bacteria with someone? Is saliva and stuff you pick up? Yes. Well, yeah. There's so, so I don't know how much truth there is to this. I can't remember where I first saw this, but they, they I've heard where you, you know, people talk about like that chemistry of the first kiss of like, oh, I just knew from the first kiss or what that, that there it's the exchanging of bacteria that we, we are naturally want to do. And the compatibility of it is what makes us. I've read that. Yeah. I think there's some truth to that. Yeah. I read there's some studies that theorize that and there's some decent, there's some, you know, evidence to suggest that. You're looking that up for me, Doug or what? That might be. It was on Drinking Bros, the podcast. Yeah. Well, you know, in, in ancient times, royal families, in order to keep the bloodline pure would often have first cousins and even siblings would marry and produce offspring. And you'd get these genetic deformalities and issues that would, you know, like Prince Harry. There's no, there's like some, like some like royal families of the past that would have like a specific like underbite or, oh yeah, and they would, they would name it after the family because it would get passed on and obviously amplified because of this. And then you get mad, you know, what they call mad kings and queens. Well, I wonder why they're crazy. It's because their parents were, we're not supposed to do that. No, it's just, yeah, it's, it's genetic. Like you're just mess with nature. Oh, that's gross. Anyway, okay. So my brother sold me on, I'm not a big like bi-expensive tech guy. You guys know this, I could be, I could be funny about that. Not a big buy anything expensive guy. Yeah. Well, it depends. I'll spend money on vacations, dinner, stuff like that, but you're right, I'm not. But my brother is like, dude, you got to try the AirPod Max. Oh, did you get them? On phones? Bro, they're, they're on my list. They're so great. So great. Really? Yeah. So the material that they put in the headphone definitely reduces the sweat and stuff that gets produced in a year. It's the most comfortable headphones I've ever worn. The sound is incredible. So this is for working out primarily? Yeah, we're in for working out. They're the best headphones I've ever, I've ever owned. They're, they've knocked it out of the park, Park, Apple does it. And then the feel of them, you know what Apple does really well is like the feel of their products. Like the way that the, the metal or the plastic feels or how it feels on your head or whatever, they crushed it, dude. You're going to get some, right? Of course, I will now for sure. I've been wanting a new pair of headphones anyways, and I was waiting for them to come out. They're so great. I mean, and they crushed it. Did we bring up, we did bring up the AirPods thing, right? I thought that was so cool. Oh yeah, they sold, it was like one of the highest tech selling devices, period. Margin wise stuff. Oh yeah, it's insane. Anyway, speaking of cool stuff, Justin, you were talking about how PRX has a dumbbell rack on the wall? Yeah, cause I've been, I'm always paying attention. Well, I'm always paying attention to accessories and things, especially when you can have wall mounted options, because we have right now just our dumbbells on the floor. And it's like, I, I much prefer to have them like on a rack. I was thinking about getting a rack, but then again, it's, it's now, you know, taking up space. And so they have, they have it's kind of slanted, almost like a shelf on the wall that you can mount. And it'll carry up to like three sets of dumbbells. So, you know, just for like your, your quick handy, and I'm sure you could buy a couple of them to then wall mount. So it doesn't take up so much space. Yeah, they knocked it out of the park with their, with their, I mean, they're, they're just their rack, right? Their signature fold out rack is more, this is true. It's more stable than your power racks at the gym. It's extremely stable. Cause that was always my worry. Like, oh, I'm gonna fold, it's going to fold out against the wall. Is it going to be stable? Yeah, almost the force is downward. So it's, it's less of pulling back. Yeah. So yeah. Wow. It's like, it's So there's, they have a kettlebell wrap too. Yeah, that's a kettlebell. I've seen that one. That's okay. So the dumbbells are, are like up? Yeah. So it's up and kind of slanted it like 45. Oh, that's easy to grab too. Exactly. Yeah. Look at that setup. Oh, they're doing a great job. I'm stoked to do that. I'm going to get a mirror and then put those. You know that, that 20, there's a still at 19%, 19% less people or should I say pre pandemic level numbers of people going to the gyms is still, it's still lower than it was a pre pandemic right now. 19% of people who used to go to gyms now are working at home permanently. Oh, speaking of that, I just saw a thing on, you know, when you do the day we're talking about the, just the stocks, just taking a dive every day. And we talked to you specifically about some of the, what they called the COVID stocks, like your Netflix, your Peloton, your Zooms, everything like that. Everybody crushed you. Did you know that if you were an early investor in like late stage early investor of like before they went public for Peloton, it is now valued lower than what it was pre-public lower. Yeah. So imagine, okay, just imagine, cause there's obviously people that did this, right? There's people that were angel investors or VCs that put money into Peloton pre going public, they go public, they make a run all the way to 170. Imagine how many X their money was at that point and then for it to come all the way back down to the valuation that you potentially bought in or lower. Wow. Yeah. That's stings. Yeah, yeah. I get all, you know, butt hurt about my portfolio being cut in half right now, but that would be way worse too. Yeah. Those pandemic stocks took a, I mean, I own some of them. I'm a buy and hold guy, which didn't work really well for me this time around. They're saying still, we still haven't seen the floor yet, right? They're saying that we're going to still see another, another dip over the next couple of months in the stock market and then eventually start to bleed over into real estate, which we haven't really seen yet. No, I think real inventory is going up right now with real estate. Yeah, that's what's going to cause it. Yeah. And what I was reading was that real estate sometimes lags because there's people, sellers who are just stubborn. They're like, no, I'm not lowering the price. I'm keeping at this. And then eventually it's like, oh crap, we got to lower the price. So let's see what happens. I'll welcome that because that is a buying opportunity for me. Potentially. I mean, depending on how much it goes, right? So I don't know what, I mean, I've heard between 10 and 30% is what we're going to potentially see from it. I do think this is going to be a kind of a long drawn out one. Like I don't think this is going to be an overnight, like all of a sudden drop. I think the stocks are the first that we see because that's more speculative. The real, I mean, we're at prime buy time right now in the year for housing anyways. So the fact that it's even slowing up right now is a little scary. It's not supposed to be till October when you start to see people already. So I anticipate then October is when we're going to see the real damage. I again, predicted Idaho is the area to watch because their inventory was the highest, the earliest. So I think they'll be a good indicator on like what you'll see. And when I go on Zillow and I look, because I look at properties all the time, right? So when I go on Zillow and I look over- You're seeing price drops? Yeah, there's price drops already starting to happen. So yeah, I think it's happened. I mean, and the interest rates are, or I mean, they're at like for a 30 year triple A credit 20, 25% down five points, something. Most people are getting like six and above now. So that's moving up really fast. Wow, all right. Well, speaking of more crazy stuff, I just read some interesting information. There's some studies on NSAIDs, right? Non-steroidal anti-inflammatories like ibuprofen, for example, or naproxen, which is, you know, brand name Aleve showing that they may actually increase chronic pain over time. So using them regularly, which often it's recommended. Oh, you got back pain? Take two of these every day. Yeah, don't forever, whatever. They're starting to find that over time may actually make chronic pain worse. Now I have a couple theories on this. Yeah, theory one would be the body adapting to the inside. That's one thing that I would think, right? Your body starts to produce more in response, more inflammatory markers. I know people who use NSAIDs all the time, and I do know that over time they have to take more and more to elicit the same effect. The second theory I have is that whatever movement pattern or issue that you have that's causing or contributing to the chronic pain, because it's masked, you continue to move in a way that makes things worse. And then because you have a lowered or blunted inflammatory response, you don't heal like you did before, which is why we have past studies showing that athletes that chronically use, like ibuprofen, for example, are more likely to have a tendon rupture or tear or joint degeneration. Well, I've always been worried about that just because of liver and kidneys and whatnot. Yeah, just chronic use of those, because it's not good over time. But yeah, that's interesting that, because I have seen that too, you have to increase the dose, and then you increase the dose, you put more stress on your liver and kidneys, so it's like this vicious cycle. Yeah, I can't think of another thing that I would add to that. I think that's a pretty good guess right there on both those, body getting adapted to it and then to masking the real root cause. Yeah, that makes sense. Because normally that, I mean, that's probably one of the most common things that you see with anybody taking any sort of pain medication is addressing it through taking a pill versus trying to get to the bottom of why am I in this chronic pain and then putting the work in, because the work. How often do you guys take NSAIDs, you say? I used to take them a lot when I had high blood pressure and I was having headaches all the time and it really was not a good place for me. Like I felt, it was just one of those things you don't feel good with your body, like you know something's off and so I've really tried not to take it as much as possible, like going for, but occasionally I'll have some inflammation or a headache or something, I'll take it, but usually no more unlike a small dose. Yeah, I'm probably like once a month, I'll take Ibuprofen, maybe once a month and it's if I have like a late night and maybe alcohol is involved or something like that, just kind of the way to prevent, you know, shitty sleep or whatever, but that's about it. But I know people will take them several times a day. We rarely ever take them. This last year since COVID, I've taken more Advil than I've probably taken in my entire life. I would say a bottle of Advil would last my house over a year, so we don't, and that's me sharing it with Katrina or anybody over that says, hey, do you have any Advil? So we don't really use it that much, but I have used it. I mean, I had so many headaches this last year. The worst part of COVID for me was the headaches. This recent flu that I just had was the headaches and then coming off the caffeine was the headaches and so I use more Advil than I think I had used probably in the previous five years off of mine. Jessica gets migraines that are just brutal. And so then she'll use, and not now because she's pregnant. Yeah, you need intervention with those. Hey, they're valuable. I think it becomes a problem though, when they, and like I said, I know a lot of people like this that their doctor just said, oh, just take four of these every day forever, like for the rest of your life. Like that can't be even just the process by which they work, you're blocking a very important signaling system. So there's going to be downstream effects that are unintended consequences. So, hey, real quick, I wanna tell you about a company we work with called Bio Optimizers. One of the products is Mass Assigns. These are digestive enzymes designed for fitness enthusiasts like you. So maybe you eat a lot of protein, but you find when you do so, you might get a little backed up or get some digestive issues. Take Mass Assigns with your meal helps break down those proteins into amino acids. So they get utilized more effectively. Your muscles get to use them more effectively and it helps your digestion. Mass Assigns also contains enzymes for carbohydrates and fats. Take them with your meals for enhanced absorption and better digestion, okay? So if you're interested, go to mindpumppartners.com, click on Buy Optimizers and use the code Mind Pump 10 for 10% off. All right, here comes the rest of the show. Our first question is from Josh Jackson. When training isometrics, should you do them from the stretched position where you're weaker or mid position where you are stronger? Yes, in other words, both equals, yes. Do them all, isometrics do them in all positions. So you can do an isometric in a stretch, but so if I'm doing a fly, right? I'd be holding a weight in this position here as an isometric or I could push on an immovable object in this position. I could also do it mid-range. I could also do it peak contraction. That being said though, wouldn't you guys all agree that the biggest bang for your buck if you had to choose one of the others is gonna be in the weaker position. Do an isometric contraction. Well yeah, if you want that strain-carriage position. Yeah, just because you don't typically try to generate force in some of those angles. And I think that there's massive benefits to that carrying into conventional lists. I'll say this, for lagging body parts, usually typically a lagging body part is a body part that you just don't connect to as well as other body parts. Hard for you to feel a lagging body part when you're doing a compound lift, for example. In that case, I like isometrics in the shortened position. Like if I have a tough time activating my glutes, doing a shortened position, like a hip thrust, but at the top and squeeze the glutes will help me connect more to my glutes. And I find that to be true for any muscle group where I have a kind of a, it's a lagging body part or poor connection. But nonetheless- Well, wouldn't you agree that that's for hip bar, I mean for your hips, like that would, or your glutes, that would be where a lot of people are weak. Yeah, I mean, if you have a tough- People aren't normally weak in the extension, right? It's just, it's harder to connect to a muscle in a stretched position. And if you already have a tough time connecting- It's kind of like calves. I felt calves the same way too. Cavs less in the stretched position. Cavs in the flexed position. There's not really a really good connection. Yeah, like imagine if you had a tough connection to your pecs, it'd be harder to connect to them in isometric and stretch than the peak contraction, the squeeze. So that's why I would say start there. But really when you do an isometric, you're getting, most of the strength that you get in isometric is in that position. And then I think it's 20 degrees. Yeah, it's like 15 degrees both sides, yeah. 15 degrees up and down. So that's where the carryover is. So really if you want full range of motion strength from isometrics, you do isometrics in different positions. And that's where you're gonna get the best results. But the other way to use them is what you guys are kind of talking about, where if I, for example, do a squat and I find that the bottom position of squat is where I'm weakest, I'll do isometrics in the bottom position. And I'll gain strength in that bottom position. So then when I do my squat, it's no longer as weak as it used to be and have better control, better stability and better power. But that's the beauty of isometrics is that you can literally train strength in whatever range of motion or position you want. And so what you should do is go through your body and identify where you need the most help and then attack that angle. And the carryover is just tremendous when you do that. Where is there a leak of force? Like where is there a leak of performance in your lift? Like that's where I would hone in on and really use this technique because it's very valuable. Yeah, where do you guys prefer to do isometrics? And it just depends on where you're... Yeah, it depends. Like you said, in range, like for a squat for me, it's generating force at the very bottom and really focusing in on that is where I need it the most. I did this morning. I did isometrics this morning and I actually did it at both ends. And ironically, I was in what triggered me to do it was I was on our buddy Eugene Tau's feed, which I know we've beaten up recently. And he actually had a really good post for calves. And he did an isometric hold in the stretch position and an isometric hold at the top. And 10 reps. So 10 reps with the isometric three-second hold at the top and then 10 reps with an isometric hold at the bottom and then 10 full reps. Oh, massive pump and amazing on my calves. And I actually have not ever done that exact protocol. And of course, I understand the purpose behind it. And so I thought, you know what, like that's a... Now I do isometric holds on my calves a lot. In fact, I'll even do stuff like this because that's obviously a lagging body part for me. I'll even do them like in the shower. So I'll in the shower and I'll stand up on my tippy toes and just contract and hold for 10, 15 seconds then come down, contract. I was picturing right now, I was in the shower and you do picture me in the shower all the time. I'm gonna go ahead and knock. Yeah, you go ahead and come with us. You know, I picture you in the shower, Adam. Hold on, hold on. If you know for a fact, I guarantee you you have two or three fluffy luffa things that you... I do not. I am not a luffa guy. Yes, you do. I'm not a luffa guy. You don't gotta... My wife is, my wife has a luffa. Oh, that's what those are. Yeah, I'm not a luffa guy, dude. I'm a bar soap. Yeah, I'm a bar soap and I use our partners. So yeah, public goods. Shout out to public goods. This is the name of the commercial. There you go. Next question is from Iron Crypt Customs Steve. What are the best rear delt workouts? I've always had legging rear delts and I really want a full-looking shoulder. This must be a new person to the podcast. Yeah, you know, I've done a lot of stuff on them. You have. I'm really passionate about this. You know, the biggest challenge with using the train the rear delts is that it's really hard to not totally incorporate the muscles of the back. Like the staple exercises. Very small range of motion. Is a rear fly, but very easily do people turn this into like a modified kind of row? Yeah. And they'll wonder why they don't develop. You know, it's funny that, okay, the question that was right before this, this is great. So one of the single best exercises. I've got a bunch. And by the way, if you haven't gone to our Mind Pump TV YouTube and put Mind Pump TV and rear delts, I think I've personally done at least three videos myself on rear delts and I think you guys have too. So lots of content on there. One of my favorite movements for training my rear delts was actually a bent over rear delt cable fly. And I use it with an isometric hold at the end. So I do a really lightweight. And you're pulling through, right? Yes. So to your point, because it's such a small muscle and it's on your backside, it's really easy for people's back to take over the movement, like you're saying. So I love to do this bent over fly where I'm pulling through and I'm flying back. So the cable is across your body. It's like attached over where you're at and I'm pulling back and out this way. And I'll do a weight that is really light that I can go really slow and controlled and then I can get an isometric hold at the end and flex my rear delt. So I can really feel it from there. And then I resist it on the way back in and then I come back out again. By the way, notice, bring your arm up like you finished the rep. Notice how Adam's elbow is high. That's rear delt. A lot of people will externally rotate and their elbow will be closer to the body. Then you know that they're using back. And the other cue I like is fly out, not back. Yes. So we have a tendency on rear delt exercises. Chest comes up. Yeah, guys will do that. You see a bunch of rhomboids. You see it all the time and you'll see them doing it. And by the way, it doesn't make that movement bad or wrong. You're not gonna get a lot of rear delt. You're gonna get more traps. Rhomboids. Yeah, you're gonna get a lot of your back muscles versus hitting your rear delts. And so if you want rear delts, to fly out cue is one of my favorite cues. Use a weight light that you can first learn to isometrically contract that muscle. Then once you've trained that, then some of my favorite movements were just heavy bent over dumbbell flies. But I couldn't do that really well until I learned, like I can take my arm across my body and I can flex my rear delt in this position. So you have to learn to be able to train that, to be able to contract that small muscle, even in a position like this. And once you learn to do that, then taking cables, I mean, dumbbells, whatever you want, you can get a great workout. But the mistake that we see people make is they let their back muscles take over the movement. Yeah, another thing I used to do with some clients just to help, because what would happen is they do their rear fly and their elbows would kind of come in and it would turn to this row, is I would tell them to take their palms and face them back. So they're pushing out with the pinkies. That just encouraged, because the shoulder has nothing to do with this rotation here. But all it would do is encourage the elbow to stay out and encourage them to go out rather than back. So those are just, that's just one other cue you can use to kind of, but the key is to go light. You go light on this, because trust me, it's a small muscle. Go light on it and isolate it. If you go heavy, you're gonna turn it into a back. You can't go, I mean, eventually you can get to a place where you go heavy. This guy right here, right? Yeah, no, totally. Like remember, I mean, I did all the, and that's why I think that cable exercise, because we typically tell people barbell dumbbell exercises are superior when it comes to building muscle. But here's an example of when training the movement and getting the cues down becomes one of the biggest challenges. And when you're doing a freeway exercise, it's really hard to do that. So here's where I love to train somebody on how to fire the rear delt. Then when you get really good on command being able to fire the rear delt, then you can do some really cool exercises with dumbbells and barbells to really get the rear delts going. Next question is from Pete on the gram. You guys talk about gaining strength to gain muscle, but how do you know if you're too weak? In your forties, for someone that has never lifted for strength, what should your goal be? Deadlift, squat, bench press, your weight? Should you press half your weight? Remember Sal, the, remember the thing from? Yeah, it was a chart. Yeah, what's the guys, what's their names? T-Nation. Yeah. T-Nation has a really cool... Now they're using the chart to compare you to like decently strong people and gyms and stuff like that. This is a tough question to ask because how do you know if you're too weak? Averages and generalizations. Yeah, it's like, okay, how do you know if you're too weak? Well, do you have a poor quality of life? Do you notice lots of pain? Are you unable to perform activities that you want to perform to enjoy your life? If the answer to that is like, no, I can't do stuff. I can't play with my kids. I can't, you know, do certain things. My back hurts, and then you're too weak. If you're strong enough to enjoy your life and you have a good quality of life, then you're strong enough and you're totally fine. Now the second part of the question is like, what should you be able to lift? I mean, I don't know. When clients would ask me, this was a tough thing to answer. Well, you know what, you're actually saying something, because I was heading in the direction of giving them something more tangible or more specific, right? Like the T-Nation chart, but you're right. Like the truth is, why do we do all this shit? Yeah. I mean, why do... I know some athletes that, I mean, they're not strong in the gym at all, but they can move, they feel good, they have a great quality of life. Here's the deal. And then I know people who are hella strong. The fact that I can squat 400 pounds on my back has not transferred over that much into real life. Not 400 pounds. The fact that I can squat over 150 pounds has. There's plenty of times where I'm carrying a kid or I gotta lift something up that weighs 100, 200 pounds. There's not a lot of times. No, there's a one time you gave Justin and dug a piggyback ride. And that's when it really... There's not a lot of times where I need to be able to, you know, deadlift 550 pounds off the floor. But yeah, okay, that makes the couch really light for me. So you're right. If you can do the things that you like to do in life and it doesn't break you down or you're not sore or you're not able to do it because you're too weak. Totally. Then you're technically strong enough. Totally, 100%. Okay, so here's some gym numbers that, I've communicated to people in the past and it's like, okay, well, you're doing pretty good in gym standard for a man, average guy, if you could at least bench press your weight, if you could at least squat one and a half times your weight and if you get at least deadlift twice your weight, you're doing pretty damn well. Most, a lot of people can't do those three things. Now you go beyond that, now you're starting to get pretty damn strong. If you could bench press one and a half times your weight or two times your weight, you're pretty freaking strong. You're like in the 5%, right? If you can deadlift three times your weight, you're in the top, you know, few percent, right? Type of deal, but the numbers I gave earlier, those are, I guess, cool numbers to aim for, but don't get hung up. I mean, like I said, there were guys I used to train with in Jiu Jitsu that, you know, they'd come to the gym every once in a while with me and they could, I could, I could outlift them all day long. They're like an entirely different skill. Yeah, but they were badasses. They were strong in their sport. Yeah, we hit the mats and I was like, I was in danger, you know, and, you know, they've lived great lives and they were perfectly fine. I've worked blue collar jobs with my dad with guys that I could outlift all day long in the gym but they could outwork me, you know, all day long. So it's really just about your quality of life. If you're, if you can't, if you don't have a good quality of life and you can't do the things you want because you lack the strength, that's when you know that you're too weak. Yeah, I actually would prefer more of like just testing your grip strength just because of longevity purposes and also being able to access that kind of force generation. So because it applies to almost everything but in terms of like very specific compound lifts, like, you know, unless you're working on it incessantly, you know, like that's something I wouldn't really focus too hard on. Part of my inability to sit in a deep astagrass squat or sit down and play with my son was also weakness in my hips. So you could technically make the case that even though I was deadlifting and squatting four or 500 pounds, I was super weak in my hips. Cause I, and so mobility became this huge thing for me before Max came was like, I want to be a dad who could sit down and do his puzzle with him in a seated position in a squatted position without getting exhausted. And so, you know, I actually had to get weaker in my squat and deadlift and put a lot of energy and effort into my mobility and strength in my range of motion in my hips to allow me to do those things. So technically I am a weaker from a standpoint of deadlifting and squatting today, but I have better stable and strong hips right now today than I did five years ago. So there's a lot of different ways that you can look at this. And if you're a 40 year old dad potentially like we are, to me, that's the shit that really matters is the fact that I can comfortably get down and play with my son. Nobody's asking me, hey, Adam, are you still squatting 400 or deadlifting 500 pounds? Like no one gives a shit about that. Like the fact that I can get down and do those things, that is what really matters. As long as I'm stronger than my kid's friend's dad's. It's just, it's just his life. If I'm stronger than their dad's, then I'm good. They are stronger than my kids. I'm gonna punk them forever. Next question is from C. Smith, 731. What is your opinion on the Carnivore diet if someone is doing it for lifestyle purposes and not weight loss and they already eat low carb due to gut issues? God, the Carnivore diet, okay, so I want to be very clear. It is not by any stretch of the imagination an ideal diet for the vast majority of people on earth. It's just plain and simple. It just is not. That being said, for some people it is an ideal diet and here's probably why. It's the ultimate elimination diet for a lot of people. And some people are so, their bodies are so reactive. They have autoimmune issues that are so reactive to foods that cutting out almost everything except for the one food that is one of the most nutrient dense, complete and the least likely in many cases to cause an immune reaction. For those people, that's a great option. McKayla Peterson, Jordan Peterson's daughter was an example of this. She really was one of the first people to come out and talk about how great it was. Her body was so reactive to everything where she would eat things and she would get mental issues and inflammatory issues that she cut everything out but meat and she had tremendous improvements in her health. I know a couple of people like this where this is the case. In those cases, carnivore diet's great because the alternative is so much worse. But for most people it's not ideal, it just isn't. Fiber is an important part of our diets. There are other types of nutrients found in other foods that you're not gonna necessarily find in meat that probably are beneficial. Plus your quality of life isn't gonna be that great if all you can eat is one food. To me, that's the real one here because the question says for lifestyle purposes, for lifestyle purposes, that fucking sucks. You know what I'm saying? To eat just pretty limiting. Super, pretty limiting, it's as limited as it gets. It's the most limited diet I could eat. It doesn't get any more limited than that. That's crazy, that's more limited than the vegans are. It's just not a long-term strategy. Now to Sal's point, do I think it's a decent strategy to get to the bottom of your gut issues? Like, yeah, you eliminate down to one food and you're gonna see all those potential things go away and then you can, but to me that would not be the end goal. The end goal would then to be, okay, now let's start reintroducing some of these foods that I would like to be able to have for the rest of my life and see how my body responds. And so to me, it's like, why not have a diet like that? Like why eliminate everything just down to meat just because that makes you feel good? Why not find out, does potatoes make you feel that way? Does sweet potatoes make you feel that way? Does yams make you feel that way? Does quinoa make you feel that way? Does rice make you feel that way? Like are there certain vegetables that you can eat that make you feel that way? And if all those other foods don't disrupt your gut and make you feel okay, why not have a carnivore-esque type of diet where you eat mostly meat, but then you introduce some of these other foods that agree with your body and now you have more variety. Like to me, this is why I can't stand. There's more work involved. That's why I can't fucking stand diets because it becomes like a religion where it's like all or nothing. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. And it doesn't mean that all of these different diets don't have, they wouldn't get as popular as they were if they didn't help a ton of people, right? Well, I get it once, it's like you finally found the thing. Like maybe you have been suffering from all of those autoimmune issues and all this and nothing's worked and now suddenly you've reduced it down to just meat and it's like, I can handle this. But then it's just, to me it seems like if there's a parallel to this, it would be like, I can't do squats anymore, right? I can't do it with a doctor. It's like, it's hard on my knees, you know, my back, this and that, so I'm gonna avoid them but I'm gonna do these other, I'm gonna do leg press only, you know? And it's just like, I'm just gonna focus on that because that's the only thing that's gonna benefit from me. Instead of then trying to work my way back, you know? Figure out why. Figure out why, figure out the root of it, you know, start introducing other exercises that are similar and kind of work my way back. But same thing with the food. It's like, I wanna make sure too that now, okay, I can actually heal my gut. I can actually like repair things. I can introduce, you know, these types of food groups back in small doses and start training my body to get back to writing. And the truth is you may never find the root cause. I mean, there's some autoimmune issues caused by food that we still have no clue. We have no idea. And there's some people that do carnivore and they reintroduce anything and they get a crazy flare up and they're like, I can't do anything and I've tested for this and I've tested for that and I've tested for everything. So then it's a great, yeah, it's a great thing to stay there. And it's totally fine. And then here's the challenge. If you, look, if you're somebody who suffered from terrible autoimmune issues, inflammation, skin issues, depression or anxiety, like mental health issues, and then you go carnivore and you all of a sudden cured all those things. You know what you're gonna become? An evangelist for carnivore diet. You're gonna talk about it. And then what you're gonna do is you're going to find all the reasons why all the other foods are probably not good and you're gonna sell that, like plants create. Versus realizing that maybe it was asparagus, avocado and cauliflower, which was causing this to you. And you got rid of everything including that. Could be or it could be everything. Like I know there's some people that's like, no matter what I eat, I mean, okay, fine. But, and they'll make the case. They'll say, look, plants have defense mechanisms. Yeah, they do, but that's why we cook them. That's why we process them in particular ways. Like that's what humans have been doing that for a long time. What you don't wanna do is ignore thousands of years and millions of people who have eaten certain foods and have thrived. There's cultures that have thrived on eating lots of grains and lots of vegetable. That might not be good for you. And there's a huge individual variance. But what you don't wanna do is become an evangelist where you tell everybody, you learn this as a coach, man. You learn this hard as a coach. Because when you become a coach or a trainer, when you first become a trainer, you are an idealist. Every trainer, when they first become a trainer, especially when you see something work, you're just like, oh, cool. I'm gonna use the same playbook on this person. Do you guys remember this? Then you quickly realize, oh, shit. You never could do the same thing twice. No, you're an idealist. Like, no, everybody has to do this. And everybody's not gonna do well with this. And gluten affects everybody poorly. And this is great for everyone. And then you train a whole bunch of people. And if you really care about them, you start going, oh, well, yeah, there's a couple people or that was always an exception to work. And that person over there, like, you know, we did an interview recently with Nutrisense, where we had one of their dieticians come on and talk about their continued glucose monitor. And she was talking about how, like, for her, for example, a sweet potato, which on the glycemic index, the glycemic index of a sweet potato is lower than a plain, than a white potato. White potato affects her insulin way better than sweet potato. Sweet potato causes it to spike. There's some people that are like that with, like, an avocado. It's all fat. And then you see these crazy spikes or whatever. There's a huge individual variant. So there's general rules, but these specifics, just they don't. And carnivore is just, it does not, it is not an ideal diet for most people. For a few people, for a very small percentage it is, because their body's so reactive, but for most people, it just doesn't. And that's just- That's my point of saying that, addressing the whole lifestyle part of this. Like, if this is gonna be a lifestyle thing for the rest of your life, then why, I wouldn't stop at just the carnivore diet. I would maybe utilize that diet to eliminate a lot of foods, but my desired outcome would be, get to the bottom of things like that. And I tell you what, someone who is listening to this, that this, you know, rings true for you or you're like this, you're a great example of somebody who should look into like, neutrosense and a glucose monitor and see how those different carbohydrates are affecting you. See what's going on? You may have that exact thing. I mean, I told you, I had that similar experience when I was messing with different foods. Dude, I had literally like a half of a cinnamon roll. That shit went through the roof, yet I could eat 10 tacos and my body was like totally fine. It didn't look like I had a nice balanced, low calorie meal. So you don't know until you start testing some of these things. And I think there's tremendous value. And I would never want to eliminate everything down to one food group for the rest of my life and consider that lifestyle. If you can help it, right? Yeah, no. When Doug first read the question, I thought it meant for moral reasons. I'm like, who eats just meat for more? I want to save all the plants again. And I hate cows. I only want to murder. So I just want to eat meat. 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. And again, they're all totally free. There's a lot of them on there. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump Sal.