 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer fitness and health questions, we talk about exercises, best exercises, we talk about how to train the body, become fit. But in the intro portion of this episode, we talk about current events, news articles, scientific studies, talk about our lives, and we do mention our sponsors. Here's what went on in today's episode. First off, we start talking about Adam's net worth. So apparently there's a website that listed Adam's net worth, totally inaccurate, but it was absolutely hilarious. Then he talked about how he played basketball with a 12 year old and just hooped all over him. Super braggadocious about it. I talked about Lent as of the recording of this episode. Lent is starting. And if you're not religious, there's a lot of value in practicing detachment. So that was a really good conversation. Then we talked about weighted stretching and how it may improve your results or get you to build muscle faster. Then we talked about the Utah bill that decriminalized polygamy finally. All right, you're that honey. Justin talked about Utah his last improv classes. I talked about using a hand gripper in the studio to help me pay attention because I have ADD. We talked about the macro comparison between, so macros are proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and then of course calories. We compared fruit loops, the sugary cereal that is terrible for you. Two canned Sam, two magic spoon, which tastes just like fruit loops are very close to fruit loops, but it has a much better macro nutrient profile. No sugar, tons of protein, weight protein, good quality protein. It's a great product. We work with magic spoon. Again, they make these really delicious cereals that have phenomenal protein content, no sugar, great macro nutrient profile. Here's how you get a discount because we do have a mind pump discount. If you want to try out magic spoon, go to magic spoon.com forward slash mind pump. You'll automatically get a great discount plus free shipping. By the way, there's a 100% happiness guarantee. So if you don't like it, you'll get a full refund. By the way, don't forget to use the code mind pump. You will be happy though. Then I talked about plant proteins. If you're going to use vegan proteins, let's say you have an intolerance to whey or dairy like I do, but you want to use plant proteins. You want to go with a blend. It gives you a better amino acid profile and it's much more effective. Of course, our favorite protein blend, that's a vegan protein, is OrganiFi. It's also organic. This is a company we've been working with for a long time. Very reputable, great supplements. Again, they have a great vegan protein powder. If you want to use the mind pump discount, do this. Go to OrganiFi, that's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com forward slash mind pump. Use the code mind pump for a full 20% off. Then we talked about how I am going to be signing a book deal to write a book representing mind pump. That's kind of scary and exciting at the same time. Then we talked about the Astros and how they are now paying the price for cheating in the sport of baseball. Then we got into the questions. Here's the first one. This person says, look, how do you use supersets? You might have heard us talk about them. They're in a lot of our programs like maps, split. What are supersets? Why are they valuable? What are the best muscle groups to apply them to? The next question, this person says, how do I take advantage of using different angles when I'm lifting? What's the value of changing angles and exercises, and when should I do that? The next question, this person says, what are your favorite exercises to increase your sense of balance? If you want to improve your balance, we talked a little bit about how to do that. The final question, this person says, what are some things that people in their 20s need to hear about when it comes to training and nutrition? If you're in your 20s and you think you know it all, you don't, we try to help you out with things that we think are valuable to people in your age group. Also, 48 hours left for our massive maps, split program discount, 50% off. Now, maps, split is an advanced workout program. It's six days a week in the gym, extremely effective. It is a spotty part split routine done the right way. The program comes with exercise demos. We tell you exactly what to do, follow the different phases. You're going to get great results. Again, it's advanced. If you like to go to the gym a lot, you'll love this program. It's half off. Okay. You have 48 hours left. Here's how you get that 50% off discount. Go to mapssplit.com. That's M-A-P-S-S-P-L-I-T and use the code split50. That's S-P-L-I-T-5-0. No space for that discount. Get that sexy spod. Dude, I gotta tell you guys something. Courtney was filling out some paperwork and they're asking for business information for my business. She went down the Google rabbit hole of trying to see if we had an actual phone number that she could put down for us. This led in a direction of all these different links. There was this one link on there that was basically, it was like Adam's net worth and celebrity info that you specifically got us. I looked it up. Justin told me it says Adam Schafer's net worth. What? Yeah, dude. That's online? Yeah. We have some information we need. Yeah, because if it's true, dude. Pull this up. Let me see it, Doug. You're not telling us, bro. What do you search? It says, first off, it says your net worth is $36 million. $36 million? $36 million? Yeah. I was like, man. That's a little bit of an exaggeration. Dude, Adam's been closing deals left and right. We have not been keeping track. Let me see it. Let me see it. I'm like, it's got some, some information is accurate. It says you have one sister, which you do, but you have more than one sister. Right. What is it? My birth sign's wrong. It says you're 35. Let's see if my birth date's wrong. Is it anything right here? Let's see who it says. Nothing. Look at the net worth. What does it say there, Doug? I'm just like, who? Oh, it says one to five million. Oh, it says. I saw another one. It said 36 million. Oh, yeah, that's the wrong one. There was one that was like, yeah, it was, and it had more accurate information about like where you're located, like Katrina, like everybody was in there. Oh, dude. That's so weird. And that's why I was just like, who's putting this out there? And also, is this true? I like the, I like the ads at the bottom. Look at the ads at the bottom. You're all ass pigs. So you know it's like photos. Adams liked the most. This is likely. This is an Adam picture stuff Adams into. Don't click those links, Doug. Oh my God. How crazy it was just so funny, dude. It's like, you never know what you find online. Dude, basically what it is is someone who listened to the show, gather an information and then guest on the ride. They filled in the holes. You know what I'm saying? Really bad though. I mean, there's, I mean, the, the month of my birthday is wrong. The year is wrong. Look at that. A bunch of stuff on my network. Click on that. Click on that one right there. Oh, yeah. Hey, look at your picture, man. I mean, it's legit. How much does it say there, Doug? Four million? No, I think it said four. Well, that's Organify ads. Look at Organify, huh? Yeah, they're gonna scroll down. Look at that. I don't know how much money Adam makes. Check out Organify. Well, at least this one's got pictures of dudes without their shirts on. It's a little more accurate. Now we're getting hot. Wow. Wow. Look at all these. Yeah. Isn't that weird? That is weird. You know what, I look at all you. It's not me and Sal, but I don't say. How does that, how much does that one say? Oh, a little video of me. There's a video of you when you were shredded. Have you seen this video right here? I have. That's that's where my first place went right there. You know, that video I went before you and I started talking. That guy was like doting on you. Yeah. Was he interviewing you? No, no, no. Before, before we ever talked about starting mine pump, when you and I were just talking through social media and when I sent you a maps or whatever. Oh, see, this one's a little, this one says you're dead. It's a big range, right? This one says a hundred grand. A hundred grand to one million, like somewhere in there. That's hilarious. Yeah, pretty much. But that video of you getting interviewed after your first, was that your first pro win? Yeah. Is that what? No, no, no. That's before that's what got you to be pro. Yeah. Well, that's what got me qualified to go to national. So as an amateur, you have to take top three to go to nationals. From nationals, you have to take top two to go pro. So that was actually my first, first place win as an amateur. Okay. So I, before you and I got on the phone and all that, and we were talking through social media, that video closed me on sending you. I forgot about this, by the way. I totally forgot about this. That video closed me on sending you maps. Oh, no kidding. Yes, because I, you know, we have a lot of mutual friends and they would, I would always hear about you and they would always say you got to meet them. You guys would be work great together. So I found that video and I watched it and you, the way you talked and the way you presented yourself, I was like, oh, I see what they're talking about. And then I sent you the. Then you got all competitive and you're like, I had better lats. Yeah, I didn't, but. You know what? We, so funny, you're bringing the stuff right now. So yesterday, I don't know if you guys saw my story. I was, I was playing basketball at the park and. Oh, the one with you, we were pissed with your son? Yeah, yeah. Dude, can you please bring him in? Yeah, he's got, he's got basketball practice. He's got basketball practice. He's too cute. I can't even do this anymore. So I'm at, I'm at the park, I'm playing basketball. Katrina comes down and, you know, this is how, this is how I'm starting to indoctrinate him, right? I'm having him just see me play the ball. And you're accurate with what you're calling it. Yeah. And you don't say like. The brain. Yeah, I'm not going to force it on him or tell me has to play. He's just going to see a lot of them and come back home. We watched freaking the, the Warriors play later on that night. You know, so this is. Got a jersey coming in. Yeah. Yeah. So this is, this is my, me hoping that he's in a, want to play basketball, but anyways, I'm playing Katrina comes down, shoots little hoops with me and then takes him off. And I'm by myself and up walks this, like this little kid all by himself carrying his ball. It looks like it says grandma sitting over at the picnic bench to watch him. And he's like, can I, can I play with you? How old was he? 12. Okay. So he's 12 years old. You didn't let him beat you in front of your son, right? Yeah. Can we play? He actually asked you to play one-on-one. He goes, can we play some one-on-one? And I'm like, just swatting. Yeah. Totally like deeing him up hard. I totally try harder. Totally whooped up on this kid. No, the funny part was a great, great little Muslim kid. He's telling me all about his religion, telling me about his parents, his brother, his sister, and I mean, just a motor mouth. This kid's talking like crazy to me, right? We're just probably a good half hour, 45 minutes. We're hanging out and playing basketball together. And I'm getting ready to leave. And he goes, what was your name again? Are you on social media? And I go, I'm actually a social media star. I'm a big deal. You didn't say it like that. I did. I swear to God I did. Yes, I did. I just wanted to see what this guy, I go, I'm a social media star. Social media star. He goes, he goes, what? Are you serious? I go, yeah, no, I'm serious. He's like, how many followers do you have? So here comes, after I said that, like now I have to prove everything. That's the currency right there. Oh yeah, dude. So he asked me, how many followers on Instagram I had? How many people comment on that? Do I have a YouTube channel? How many people are on my YouTube channel? How much money do I make? How many cars do I drive? He wanted to know all this. How many sponsors you have? Bro, this is a future little champion, it sounds like. He had the guts to go up to an adult man, ask him to play basketball, and then he's asking all these questions. Oh, he had a business related question. I like this kid. Yeah, he was, I mean, I, he'd ask how many cars I'd say, how many cars I had, then he'd be like, which ones? Tell me. I get all like stuttery, like, uh, uh, right. That's awesome. Oh, it's hilarious, dude. That's fun, dude. I like that. I like seeing kids that are not afraid to talk to adults and ask questions like that. Oh no, he, and he did. He pressured me to follow too. He's like, will you follow me back if I follow you? And I'm like, yeah. No, he did. Yes, he did. I swear to God, dude champion. I lost a little credibility though when he asked if I had TikTok and I said no. He's like, oh. Oh, you lost it? Oh, that's funny. Yeah, I got shamed for that before because I was like trying to get trying it out and some kid was like, oh, you're on TikTok. Lame. Like really? Too old. I thought you guys were into this, too old. It's like, that's so funny. Yeah, that's why I won't get on that. This isn't for you. Yeah, I'm like, okay. So you guys know, you guys know today as of the recording of this episode, it's the first day of Lent. How is that going on right now? Today's when Lent starts. And uh, it's- What are you practicing it? I am. Now it's, this is what's interesting about it. So regardless of whether or not you're Catholic or Christian or religious, I think it's a very interesting and important practice. I know people that participate in it that are not. Yeah, because it's so valuable. Yeah, I agree. If you look at all the religions in the world and all the different cultures, the wise people, they all talk about detachment in some form. And that's what Lent is kind of about, right? So forget the religious aspect. Find something that you feel attached to and how do you know you're attached to something if it makes you cringe to think about avoiding it for 40 days, right? So if you think like, if I tell you like, no coffee for 40 days and you go, oh no, I can't do that, that's probably the thing you should detach from or whatever. Why are you pointing at me, dude? No, I'm not. Little sideways. But I mean, in reality, I don't think there's anybody who can honestly say there's not something that they should probably scale back on, whether it's caffeine or- Drugs or cigarettes or phone or television. Sugar or whatever. So my kids, you know, and I talked to my kids about this and I was so proud of my kids for picking things that I know would be difficult for them because in the past, like maybe two years ago or whatever, I would tell my kids, hey, what do you want to give up for Lent? And my kids would say something like- Vegetables. Yeah, like, oh. Like, oh, you little shits. Yeah, exactly. Oh, I'm not going to run anymore. You know, it's something stupid like that. You already run. But this time, they were really good. So my daughter gave up rice. She loves white rice. So she's like, I'm not going to- Because she's understanding now the whole attachment thing. Like, okay, I'm going to detach from it. Yeah. My son says he's going to go to bed at nine o'clock at night every single night, which I'm- Wow. Yeah, we'll see if he succeeds at that. Well, he just like gets home at like six or seven, right? So he only has like a few hours to sleep. He's a night owl too. The kid loves to- He hates going to sleep. But he said, he said he's going to give up, you know, he's going to go to bed early. So I was just thinking about what a remarkable practice. I think everybody should do something like that. Again, forget the religious aspect of it, but detach from something you know you're attached to and just do it for, you know, whatever, 30 days, 40 days, whatever. And then watch the growth that, you know, comes out of that. I think it's a really, really good practice. Oh, I think you- One of the things you start to realize, I mean, and I try and practice something similar. And I did- I do it just whenever I feel like- I've seen you do this. Yeah, right? If anything gets ahold of me, I don't have like a certain set days. It's not called lint. It's not 40 days. It's like, you know, I try and challenge myself to be self-aware. And when I catch myself doing something habitually that I know is not serving my body or serving me period, I try my best to like, okay, like I'm not going to do that. And just it's not because I'm demonizing it, because I don't think there's value to it or that it's, you know, anything like that. It's just simply, I want to be in control at all times. And I don't ever want anything in my life to feel like- Like it owns you? Yes. And so I think it's a very important practice. And I think more people should do something like this. And I think it's unfortunate that we just dismiss stuff because it's attached to religion. And so it's like, oh, God, it's religion. Ugh. You know, so it's wrong. So fuck it. Don't do it for religious purposes. You know, become self-aware as a person enough to recognize that there's certain things in your life that you allow to get a hold of you. And you know, when you, and what's amazing is when you do start to cut it off or detach from it for a little bit, you realize like, oh, wow, what a grasp it had. And then all of a sudden you notice like, oh, wow, I have better relationships with people or it frees up this or- It's also super empowering because when you feel like something has a grasp of you and then you say, okay, I'm going to cut this out. Ooh, this is going to be challenging. But then you succeed at doing it. You feel very empowered and confident. You feel like you're far more powerful. Like, okay, I can do- Like you had some sort of control over you. That's why it's part of every spiritual practice. That's 100, every spiritual practice, every major spiritual practice, whether it's Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, even the smaller, you know, less popular spiritual practices, they all talk about detachment because there's that spiritual power that comes from detaching from material things. So you could say something like, no TV for 30 days. Like, if you're listening right now and I say to you, try cutting TV out for 30 days and you get this feeling inside of you like, no way. Just don't cut out podcasts. What am I doing? We're on our downloads, guys. It's terrible. But you get the point and it's a very, it's a very good practice to have. What's the carryover to fitness and to nutrition? Well, it's a huge carryover because part of fitness and nutrition success is altering your behaviors and being able to change things that you, that have a little bit of power over you. You know, it's funny, whenever I would train a client and I would look at their nutrition and you could tell which foods had power over them because I would suggest like, hey, maybe we should cut the bagel out that you have every morning and you'd see the look on their face. Like, I have a bagel every single morning. I can't do that. And then you realize there's a stronger connection and attachment here. And okay, we won't do that just yet, but I'm going to mark that down because this is something that we may want to kind of revisit. And then when they're able to do that, moving forward, just the behavioral changes that you can incorporate. Man, it's amazing. So I was just thinking about that this morning, like, you know, everybody should think about practicing some form of detachment, regardless of religious affiliations or not. Agreed. Yeah, anyway. Another thing, too, this morning, have you guys ever incorporated intraset or intra-workout-weighted stretching in your routines? You have? What's your experience with it? No, I haven't. I see I get a big pump from it, but I haven't done it long enough to be able to say, okay, I noticed these great changes like where I saw major growth or I saw a huge strength gains from it. But I do notice the pump in the workout. I do notice that. And maybe, my experience at least, less sore. And I don't know what that is from the stretching portion of that, but I noticed a little bit better pumps and I noticed that I get probably less sore from it. So I know Pekolski was a big proponent of it. And there's other bodybuilders, smart bodybuilders that talk about it. And I respect Pekolski. He's always got really, really good information. He's one of the smartest pro-bodybuilders ever met. I've also read studies in the past on weighted stretching. And what they'll do is they'll do intracet. So what weighted stretching basically is, is let's say I'm working out my chest that day, in between exercises or even at the end of my workout when I'm done with my chest, I'll get like, let's say normally I do chest flies with 45 pounds, 45 pound dumbbells. I'll take 25 pound dumbbells. So I don't want to go as heavy as I do when I work out because it's too much, but I'll go 25 pound dumbbells. And then I'll let them bring my arms down on the fly and I'll sit in that stretched, weighted, stretched position. And you still have to resist it so you are like creating tension. A little bit, right? A little bit. I'm letting it stretch me, but I'm not like completely relaxed as if my arms will flop or whatever. But it's holding me in the stretch position for about 30 seconds. So that's kind of how you do it. And studies will show that when you incorporate that in your routine, your gains are better. You build more muscle. So it adds more hypertrophy. I mean, I have a theory on that. I think that, and I think the reason why we probably see why the studies show this is I really feel like very few people put a lot of emphasis on the isometric portion of an exercise. We talk all about eccentric concentric, so the positive and the negative of an exercise. Very few people put any sort of energy towards isometric exercises. So I think programming that in itself would show probably similar or as pretty close to the same benefits as the interest. So I think they've found a creative way to program it and add some weight in there to help people. You're gaining more strength and in range that way by creating this isometric tension. It's interesting. I don't know if extrinsic is a word or not, but think of it in terms of creating tension to kind of like intrinsic tension you produce versus this is like an outside stimulus that's placing in that position that you're fighting the resistance against it. Yeah, those are really good observations. I would agree on that because if you think about when people do apply isometric contractions in their programming, they typically apply it to the contraction, to the shortened position. That's more common. So someone would say, oh, at the end of my chest workout, I'll squeeze my pecs as hard as I can and hold that for 15 seconds. Rarely does anybody say, I hold in a deep weighted stretch for 30 seconds. So I would agree. I think it probably is. And I started incorporating it this morning. And so it's too soon for me to really tell, but 100% the pump, I get a massive pump from doing it. I noticed the pump right away. But I mean, the other thing is too, so not only are you getting the benefits from programming isometrics, which very few people do anyways, you're also programming it, like you said, in the stretch position, which we know that's the weakest point. So probably has the greatest opportunity for growth and change, right? If you're really good at strength training, you've been lifting weights for a really long time, in the fully contracted position, you're probably in the upper part of your potential because you're always lifting and fully contracting, right? But how often do you isometrically hold in a fully stretched position? You expanded your strength curve. Right. You probably rarely ever do that. So you're getting the benefits of isometrics. And then on top of that, you're also addressing the weakest part of the movement through isometrics. I think that's where we're getting this, where the studies are starting to show the benefits. And the Soviets, the Soviets were big on this. The Soviets talked about this benefit. There was one study in particular done on birds that was incredible where they had a bird, where they did a weighted stretch across the pec muscle of the bird or whatever. And it just kept it there. I don't remember for how long. And the hypertrophy that the bird saw on that wing was exceptional. And then they started applying it to athletes. And really, the idea behind it is, as you're holding the stretch for 30 seconds, you're finding that it gets deeper and deeper and deeper while you hold. And it's painful. It's not a fun feeling to hold that type of a stretch for 30 seconds. The pump is incredible. Here's the other part of it that I like. In terms of increasing range of motion flexibility, it's also a great time to do that. One of the best ways to apply static stretching, in my opinion, at the end of a workout. That's what we have in MAPS Prime, where we don't recommend static stretching before you work out, but at the end when the muscles pumped, go ahead and throw a long static stretch on the muscle, get more of a range of motion, and then you'll get some of these muscle building effects. I started doing it. I'll let you guys know what I get from it because I'm gonna start doing it on a regular basis. I think we did a good YouTube video with Ben on this. We did. Okay, I thought so. Yeah, he talked about it in actually one of our more popular videos. Yeah, yeah, he did it with it. A cool experiment. I went on a little kick for a while where I was doing it. Like I said, I had noticed the pump from it. I thought maybe it was helping recovery. But my theory on it, probably increasing strength, is simply I'd be interested to see if I really, if I were to program just purely isometric stuff in there and especially in the stretch position to your programming, I think that would show benefits for most people. Yeah, I would totally agree, but it's not nearly as important as like your programming, your, you know, the exercises you pick. It reminds me of like BFR, you know, there's value there too. Why don't I always do it? Because it's a little bit of value, you know, it's not as valuable as me making sure I do the right exercises, the right form, 100%, you know, all that stuff. Anyway, do you guys see the bill that Utah just passed? No, I didn't, huh? You didn't see that? So they just decriminalized polygamy. What? Yeah, so it's decriminalized now. So they had laws. I didn't even know it was actually, I didn't know it was. Well, yeah, that's why like a lot of the families moved down to Mexico, right? I don't know. I don't know about that. I remember seeing like, you know, when I was in that like Colt watch sort of mentality, I was like pause there for a while. When I was in that Colt. I was not actually in the Colt. Yeah, I was watching out for them like, what are all the Colts out there I need to be aware of, you know? So there was one that was definitely like a whole, I don't know if it was two or three families moved down to Mexico and they were actually having problems because the cartels, you know, they're in cartel like territory. And so they've had to actually fight them off. And like there's some people that have been killed like in those communities down there. Oh, that's great. They moved down there. Well, I know Utah has a huge Mormon population. Yeah. I know that the current Mormonism as it currently stands doesn't promote polygamy, but the old, you know, Mormon religion or whatever, that was part of their religion was, you know, you have lots of different wives or whatever. With polygamy over there and Mormonism so popular there, I would venture to think that probably 60% of our population comes from out of there then. What do you mean? All the children they have, dude. You got three wives you could probably pump out at least 15, 20 kids, you know? I think most Mormons are targeting like 10. I think that's like most of their goal. Yeah. That's a lot of kids coming out of that state. They did pass the bill that decriminalized polygamy between consenting adults, which to be honest with you, it's weird that we had a law that said it was illegal between consenting adults to begin with. And the whole reason for the law in the beginning was, you know, because if they had underage marriages and I honestly think it has more to do with taxes. I honestly think that they want it. They there's a lot of once you start to open up actual marriage to multiple people, you could see how people might take advantage. More money for the state. Yeah, like it'd start taking advantage of stuff like that, but it's interesting. So that's the only state though that would allow polygamy? I don't think they allow people to get married, but I think they're it's, I don't think it's, it's, it's It's like mushrooms in Oakland, bro. It may be. It's like, yeah, they're not going to throw you in prison for having it. Decriminalizes it. Yeah, exactly. They're not throwing you in prison. They're not promoting it, but they're not like handcuffing you. Yeah. I don't know if it's, if it's legal. Are there states that allow it? Oh no, it's illegal, illegal in all 50 states. That's what I thought. Wow. Yeah. But it's, it's decriminalized doesn't mean it's legal. Yeah. That just means it's not a felony or whatever it was before. I think really it is to kind of, because, you know, how we are so adamant about like not allowing these cults to come out of, you know, the woodworks and, and I don't know, like it tends to kind of start these compounds. Like we pay a lot of attention to these compounds when you start like isolating yourself and then like everybody's sort of just, you know, doing their own thing. Like the government doesn't like that. Yeah. Interesting. Anyway, how was your last class? Oh, it was, yeah. No, it was good. It was interesting because like this time it was all about acting and, and becoming a character. And like there was just so much about it that I was like, man, this is so foreign to me. Like I'm not like, I don't think like that. Like they're like to be able to portray something and like animate myself with my body, everything. So it was all kind of leading up to this point of, you know, being able to kind of like get in front of people, like have something to say. But now you have to have like some kind of narrative behind it. And then you also have to pantomime, you know, what you're doing so people understand what you're doing. And so it was actually really cool. It was like a, like totally out of like a normal thing for me. Is this, are you acting in front, are you going up by yourself? And then you have to do it in front of everybody? Yeah. Well, actually that was only one time in the class where you had to get in front and then become like an expert about a subject you didn't know anything about, which that was terrifying. That was probably the most terrifying for me because, you know, that's a deep rooted, you know, like fear of mine. It's like getting up there, not knowing what you're going to talk about. Oh, shit. You know, and so pretending like you do. Yeah. Yeah, pretending like you do. Just bullshitting your way through it. So, but it was actually, it was great. That had a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun doing that. But this last part was for you get up there with like three other people and they were trying to actually show like status. So you, we started out with a clear example of like, I'm a king or a queen and, you know, the rest of, of you guys are servants. And so like your whole role was to try and please the king or whatever. So they didn't kill you. And so that it showed like. How did you please the king? I juggled. Naturally. What were you juggling? Airballs. Yeah, I was miming it. So where do you, where, how many, first of all, how many people are in the class? There was like 25 people. Is it always 25? Is it always the same 25? Are they different? Yeah, there's just usually one or two that doesn't show up. Okay. So maybe this is the same group that you've been going through. Yeah, same group. Now, where do you rank? I don't think they have. I mean, there's no rank. Come on. You know your shit, bro. I know if I go play basketball with 25 people, where I land, am I like fucking the best? Am I the worst? Am I the middle? Where are you at? I'm good on some of the aspects, right? Some of the stuff that's super random, where you have to come up with a subject or you have to come up with an idea, I'm really good at that. But when it comes to the acting part, I felt really clunky. And there was people in there that were good actors. Yeah. Like I could tell they had some kind of training where they became the sandbaggers. The other person. Yeah, totally out of nowhere. I'm like, oh. So you're like 11. Yeah, yeah. That's probably fair. Somewhere in the middle. Yeah, I mean, I got some strengths. I got some weaknesses. Yeah, well, that's kind of cool though, that there's actually people that are pretty talented. So I mean, I feel like I learned better when I'm watching somebody who's far better at their craft than I am. So I can like pick up on things that they're doing. Are you learning stuff that way? Like when you see somebody like that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Totally. There was like little tiny things. Like you start to pay attention to the way that, like for instance, if somebody had a certain way that they walked with their gate, like one leg was they're pretending to be a little bit longer than the other leg. And so it like gave them the certain kind of shift. And then that like gave you a lot more information about the character. Like, oh, there was probably something that happened or like, you know, maybe they were born with some kind of deformity or whatever. Like they were just doing like little things to add more depth to their characters. Oh, interesting. Like I was going way too general, you know? Like, and I'm like, oh, shit, you could get way more specific like with like how you're, you're, you're portraying yourself. Like an accent. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah, something, just anything. Like you think in the instructor, Jeff, he was great. He was like bringing up all these examples of like, like think about if you're counting in your head to 10, as you're acting and as you're interacting with these other people, how would that affect the way that you interact with these people? Like if I'm sitting there like consciously trying to count to 10. While you're talking. I'm going to get irritated with you trying to interrupt me or like, tell me or I'm not going to listen or you know, it's going to affect my timing or you know, there's just like little things like that that you sort of take that into account. What do you think has been the most valuable thing that you've taken away? Because you're now on like, this is like the, what, the sixth class or so you've done? Eighth. Eighth class. Yeah, I'm done. This is the. Oh, that was a fine. That was the level one I'm done. Yeah. Okay. So what was the greatest takeaway of this entire course? I think really it was, there's exercises that are available for you to, you know, be able to really access your right brain more specifically and to be able to react and speak without like getting it all muddied up with analyzing it. You know, and so I could say what's on my mind and then get better at saying what was on my mind before like being rational about it and like being logical and you know, it's really hard to, you know, filter that out. Like because we're so conditioned to, everything has to make sense. You know, everything has logic behind it. Everything has to like be structured all the time and to be more creative and ridiculous is a hard space to get into. So it's like not, it's like learning how to not overly scrutinize yourself when you're communicating. Yes. Yeah, that's a big one. Which is big for me. Yeah. When you talk to people who tend to get anxious when they talk to in social situations or whatever, what they'll often say is I'll start a community, I'll start a conversation and then I'll start listening to myself have the conversation and then I get all weirded out or whatever. All the time. Yeah. Rather than just having the conversation, it's interesting. Actors are interesting to me on one hand, really good actors are interesting to watch. On the other hand, it's like, I don't trust you because you're so good. I know. At pretending, you know what I'm saying? Like, yeah. Who are you? You know what I'm saying? Do you really know who you are if you've been like all these characters so often? Well, dude, you ever watch act like famous? You ever watch John Travolta's Instagram? Oh, he's he's bizarre. Fucking awkward. Super. I don't think he knows how to be not like not act. Like when you watch him on, you're like, that's weird. But when he acts, he's great. You know what I mean? It's so weird. Hey there, Instagram. Well, something, you know, a lot of these, a lot of those guys are more comfortable being another character than themselves. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? It's it's it's a strange stuff. Anyway, what do you guys think about this hand grip I've been messing with? Is it working? You know what? So so this serves us to to I'll put it here so you can see it on camera. There's there's two values to to this for me. One, it helps control my ADD because I have terrible distractibility. Yeah. And two, I've been squeezing and messing with the hand gripper now for the past couple weeks. Legit made me stronger. 100%. I go lift weights and I feel like my grip is just solid, way stronger. So it's just something I mess with. I don't like work out with it. I just squeeze it here and there, whatever. You know, the cut, why don't you reach out and try and see what you can get sponsored by? I know. I was like, what the hell's wrong with you? Yeah, where's your business brain? Yeah, dude. Come on, guy. Hey, speaking of business, I brought up some macro comparisons for one for our sponsor, Magic Spoon. So I'm going to compare fruit loops. Oh my god, dude. Tell me because I just know I used to I used to eat bowls of fruit. So I did this, but I don't know the numbers off the top of my head. It's pretty. This is what got me so hyped about the product. Yes. So it's way to you. I can't wait to hear the numbers. So this is so I'm comparing the like fruit loops to the fruity cereal, fruity flavored. Yeah. It's what it tastes like. Cereal, which tastes like, again, phenomenal. So this is now a serving on Magic Spoon and on cereal boxes, by the way, is three quarters of a cup. Just nothing. Right. Because I because most people eat what? Two cups. Yeah, not even my son who's seven months would eat more than that now, dude. It's like it's nothing, dude. So this is a small, you know, what they would consider serving, but the reality is most people at least two cups or if you're like Justin, a punch bowl of cereal. I'm totally guilty. So here's the. So the macros on fruit loops is one gram of protein. Oh, wait, back up. Are you doing just a serving? Just the three quarters of a cup of serving. Oh, see, I like to do. I like to do like what a real bowl of cereal will be like two, two and a half cups. You want me to do math right now? I never mind. Don't do it. All right. Well, it's just, it's, I mean, the bigger the bowl, the more extreme the discrepancy is. Oh, yeah. And let's be real. Nobody is pouring a three quarter cup bowl of cereal. You're bare minimum. You're, I mean, imagine right now in your head, a two cups measuring cup. Even that's not that big. Most bowls are at least another quarter or a half size of that. All right. All right. So I'll start doing a little bit of math here for you. Okay. So at least double it. Yeah. So double what the serving is, right? Three quarters of a cup. So fruit loops would have two grams of protein. So two grams of protein, and that's not including the milk. That's just a cereal. Carbohydrates. It would have 40 grams of carbohydrates. Wow. And about 20 grams of sugar, right? So magic spoon would have 24 grams of protein, which is a, you know, milk protein isolate and whey protein isolate. Very high quality protein. 16 grams of carbohydrates. So the difference is between 40 grams of carbs and 16 big difference. Here's the biggest difference. 20 grams of sugar in the fruit loops. Zero. None. Zero. Yeah. Zero grams of sugar. Did you say two grams of protein for? Only two. Right. Versus 24. Versus 24. So huge, huge difference in the, obviously way more protein in the magic spoon. And a taste bomb. And zero. Yeah. What kind of magic are they doing? Like legit. Wizardry. What is going on over there? They make it taste that good. It's quickly becoming one of the favorite sponsors for sure. And then speaking of protein, another thing. I was writing an article on protein, which led me down the path of studies and articles and whatever. And the bottom line is that animal proteins are just generally superior to plant proteins. It's just hands down. It's just the way it is. I know vegans don't like to hear that. They don't like to hear that. It's totally true. You have to, in order to get the same effects of animal protein, you have to eat a lot more plant protein. If you eat a lot of plant protein, then you can make up for the difference. And don't you also have to have a variety of different sources for plant protein? I was just going to say, but let's say you don't want animal protein for whatever reason, because nine out of 10 protein shakes that are animal derived or milk derived, which is nothing wrong with it. Whey protein is extremely high quality, very, very good. But if you're intolerant to dairy like I am, I can't do whey protein. So I have to go with plant protein. In order to maximize the effects of your plant protein, you want to have a blend. You don't want to have a single source of plant protein. You want to have a combination of plant proteins that complement each other. So you have a more balanced amino acid profile, higher amounts of leucine, which plant proteins tend to be low in, but you can find some plant proteins that are high in leucine, lower in other amino acids, but then you combine it with other plant proteins that are higher in those missing amino acids. So when you have a plant protein blend, now you're getting closer to the benefits of animal protein. Now, have they figured out what the optimal blend looks like? Like if it's sunflower seed with soy with, what is the algae? What is, yeah, what is like, do we know like what the best blend is? Well, Organifi has a really good blend. If you message Organifi, you can get, you can ask them for an amino acid profile of their protein, but they have a really good blend. They combine I think three or four different plant proteins. Maybe Doug can bring it up for me because I don't want to miss be misquoted, but they have a really, really good blend and they've done the right thing. So again, if you're going to have a plant protein, because here's what happens. You hear mind pump and you hear, I need to eat 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of body weight to reap the benefits of a high protein diet. Well, that's based off of animal protein. Oh, wow. And they do those studies. That's interesting. So that means if your plant break base, you're going to need to be on the higher end of that to get to derive a lot of those benefits. But if you do a protein blend, then you're closer to the effects that you'd get from animal protein. What is the blend there, Doug? Yeah, it's hard to read here. They have an image. I've seen it before. Yeah, they do somewhere. It's organic pea protein, organic quinoa protein, organic pumpkin seed protein, and then they have some enzymes as well added to it. That's the other thing too. One thing that I like that they did is they added enzymes, which will help the assimilation. But pea protein is actually a decent plant protein. It's one of the better ones if you had to pick one. They don't have soy in there, which I like. Not soy is necessarily bad, but soy can have some potential estrogenic. It's a small chance of this, but it's still some people need to be careful with soy because of the potential estrogenic effects of soy. So having tons of soy could cause... Typically GMO, or is there some organic soy? You can get organic soy, but it's usually GMO. There is? I thought there wasn't. I know. Most of it's like GMO. I don't know where you'd find it, but I'm sure that there's soy that's non-GMO, but most soy is... I thought I read that. Maybe it was a high number, like 80 or 90 percent of soy. It's one of the... Doug found a few of them, but they're not nearly as popular. Yeah, soy is one of the top GMO crops in America. If not, what is corn, I think it said. Yeah, it was the other. Yeah, yeah, corn is the top. Hey, I wanted to ask you. I don't know if you're okay with talking about this on the podcast. Doug can just edit it if not. Where are you at right now with Hachette? Are you signed still on it? No, no, no. When's the book start when you start? Yeah, no, we haven't signed yet. We're just looking. We're still going through on the contract. That was a process, huh? Oh, yeah. So this is for... This is to write a book. I don't know if we should talk too much about it, because nothing's been finalized or signed or whatever. But yeah, we're in the process of getting that finalized, and then my pump will put out a book. Oh, exciting. Are you excited or what? Yeah, super excited, dude. No, no, I'm excited for it. Yeah, it's going to be an interesting process. I've never done that before. I've written blogs. Let's turn into books. Yeah, they say it's just like 500 of those put together. That's it. That's all it is. No big deal. Just slap a few together. Copy, paste. Yeah, the whole process is going to be interesting. But yeah, the process of working with publishers is... I have an agent that helps with all that. Thank God I do, dude. It's a complicated... Do you think it's more complicated because of our business, or would it be as complicated, even if we had no mind pump, it was just you writing a book? Dude, I don't know any of the... I don't know. We're totally unfamiliar with what that looks like. So imagine going in, signing a contract, and you have zero familiarity with the space, what that means, what's the standard, how that could potentially impact me. Had no idea. So working with someone who's experienced was invaluable. We ought to send Mike a gift for... Because I know it was Mike's agent that he sent over. Yeah, he recommended somebody to me. Which you have. You've expressed what a lifesaver that's been. We should do something nice for Mike just as a... Because that's a solid move. I mean, it sounds like it's going to end up saving you a ton of money. It sounds like it'll also protect the business. Like a lot of things that maybe you would not have thought of. It's interesting too, because we are a media company, and we already have published content, and we'll publish more content. Typically what publishers will say to somebody is, they'll say, we're going to sign you, you're going to write this book. But within this two-year period of the publishing of the book, you cannot produce any other written content that's similar. Which would fuck us. I mean, if I'm writing a book on health and fitness, like how would that be possible? Obviously we're going to publish content on health and fitness. So it was a little bit different, I think, than what normal people would go through, or people who don't have a media company would go through. Justin, you told me the other day you brought up the Astros, the thing that I talked about maybe a couple weeks back, about them cheating. Them cheating, and so did more come out on this? Yeah, so they basically, they kept their title, right? Their World Series title. And this is something that's sort of aggravated, like the entire league, that they're able to keep their title and everything. And so Aubrey Hoff, a retired baseball player, came out, and I think it was on TMZ or whatever, and was starting to, he was basically saying that they should wear bulletproof vests going up to bat, that they were going to be in for or getting beamed almost every pitch. I just read an article on this. I think six of them have been hit already. Yeah, so they're thinking that this is just going to keep continuing the whole season. And he was saying that half joking, but half serious. They're not okay with you guys openly cheating, and then getting away with it, and also maintaining your title. Oh my god, that is so funny. I did not know that was happening. So they're getting hit on purpose because they cheated, so the pitchers are like targeting them. Yeah, they're like, fuck you. No way. And I get it. And the thing is, there's been waves of different types of cheating, but then people get punished for it. They move on. It's an understanding that what you can get away with, you can get away with, but then once you get caught, you have to own that you got caught. Well, that's okay. So this is such a... Look at this article in USA Today. The Houston Astros could challenge the record for most hit by pitches in a season. That's crazy. Hey, that's what you get? 100-mile-an-hour fastballs coming at you. I mean, this subject's a little nuanced, right? Because forever in baseball, you've been trying to steal signs, and that's a part of the game. It's a total fair part of the game. If you are on second base, and you can catch the sign that the catcher is throwing the pitcher, you are doing your best to give a sign to your batter to let him know, yo, change up his comment. He brought that up, too. And that was like an understanding they had. It's like, if you can hack, you know, like, if you're on second base, you can see what those signs are. That was understood, but like, this was using technology now, which they have a problem with. Exactly. So it's like, they're kind of the first ones to really hack it with technology, which this is very similar to the trouble that the Patriots got in. You know, stealing the plays from... I mean, they had... They were using... I think they had like cameras that were video recording, you know, other football teams plays. But I mean, since the beginning of time, that used to be... I mean, your goal was the game. Yeah, the game was to trying it. And if you had an inside man, or you knew somebody, I mean, that's part of the game. So... Now, in the past, have they ever done before we had like these cameras? Did anybody ever use binoculars? Of course. In the audience? Yeah. Of course, all these things have been messed with. That's why it's kind of this, you know, how do you punish them? And I'm not... By no means am I defending the Patriots or defending the Astros for using technology to cheat. But I do understand, as a league, how you can't strip them of their title because this hasn't happened yet and you haven't laid down the law for it. And honestly, it's always been kind of the... It's been an unspoken thing, part of the game. Yeah. Oh, that's hilarious. I know. And now... And so, this is kind of like... This is like... This is like... This is justice, right? This is free market. This is what I like. Let the market correct itself. Now they're gonna regulate by beaming the shit out of them. They're gonna get their ass beamed every fucking day. Punishment. Yeah. We don't need authorities to come in and make more rules and shit like that. Don't worry that... We're just gonna scare the shit out of everybody. The players will handle this just fine. Yeah, they'll handle this self-regulate. Yeah, that's very good. I like that. First question is from Cyprian Bolen. How often do you use supersets and what muscle groups do you use them with? Are there any groups that are better suited to supersetting or is it good to mix them around every now and then? Oh, great question. You know, supersets have been a bodybuilding staple for quite a long time. I think they achieved a lot of their popularity in the 70s during the golden era of bodybuilding. This is when Arnold Schwarzenegger was dominating that whole thing. So the idea behind a superset, essentially, is you do two exercises back to back. That's the breakdown of a superset. Cut the rest in between. But there's a lot of value in different ways to do supersets. So that's generally what they mean. But I like to personally use supersets as ways to combine a compound movement with an isolation movement to target a particular body part. So a good example would be supersetting bench press with flies. So I did the bench press first. That's my compound movement. Then I go to flies to really hammer out and squeeze the pecs. Or reverse, do the flies first, then do the bench press. That's known as a pre-exhaust superset. The main benefits I see of them are honestly it all boils down to getting an insane pump, getting lots of blood to the muscle. It's a tool. I think there's a place for it. I think it's a great way to build volume into your program. But I also think that you should scale up to it. So if I'm following a strength-based program where I'm running a five-by-five, I want to run that and I want to slowly start to add volume. When I get to a place where in an hour workout, I'm starting to max out. Like I'm moving from exercise to exercise. I've been doing that over the last six months. This is where I like to start to add things like supersets so I can build more volume into the workout. Versus I'm a new lifter or I haven't been lifting for a long time. I just start getting into it. I'm listening to Mind Pump. They talk about the benefits of supersets. So all of a sudden I'm throwing supersets into my workout. It's an advanced technique. And it also lends itself better with hypertrophy training. So because you're going to fatigue the muscle, you're going to get this massive pump. If I'm strength training in like I said, like a five-by-five type of block, I see less value in doing supersets. I see more value when I move into the 10 to 15 rep range and I'm chasing the pump. I'm chasing hypertrophy. Then it makes more sense to throw supersets into the routine. You can abuse them just like any other thing. This is the bad side is I've seen people who all they're focused on is hypertrophy. All they're focused on is body sculpting. And that's all the routine consists of. I was guilty of that. It's addictive. Yeah. I was guilty of this. And I think so are a lot of bodybuilders. Yeah. And you won't get results. You won't continuously get results from them. Yeah. And it gives you this artificial feeling that you're getting results because you get a massive pump. Yeah. You get all aired up. And so you think that this is like the go-to every time. I want to walk out of the gym feeling nice and big and puffed up and it provides that feeling for sure. I've also used it too. Like if you want to go like biceps to triceps or you want to do something like that in terms of not hitting the same muscle group but now you're hitting opposing muscle groups, another valid way to do it. Yeah. Now the reason why I like to do that is because of the feel. I don't know if it necessarily has any value. Makes you look big on Instagram. It does. It does. Before I do any pictures, I do lots of. Guilty. Adam called me out. No, but seriously. So Arnold loved doing a chest to back superset. So he would do this one. He's famous for it. He would go bench press to pull ups. So lats to chest. Now I don't know if there's any necessarily any muscle building benefits but there's a great feel benefit and I'll make this argument all day long. The feel you get from your workouts contributes to your progress as well. If I start to enjoy the feeling of my workout and what I'm doing, I'm probably going to have better workouts. I'm probably going to have better focus. Here's the other thing with supersets. They taught me how to prime my body before I even knew what priming was all about. I'll give you, I'll tell you guys a story. When I was a kid working out, one of the hardest body parts for me to feel early on was my lats. It was really hard. I would do pull ups and I would do rows and I would just get a pump of my biceps and my forearms and it was really hard for me to feel anything happening in my lats. Part of it was because they were underdeveloped. I was a kid. The other part of it was I had no idea how to connect to them because they're on the back of my body. Don't know what they're supposed to feel like. So then I read this book by Mike Menser called Heavy Duty and he talks about pre-exhaust supersets where you do an isolation movement for a body part and then you go to a compound movement and the whole concept of it was you pre-exhaust. For example, we use the bench press fly example. When I do a bench press and I go to, let's say, I go to failure, the muscles that may fail before the target muscle or the chest that might get in the way of me progressing. If I fail on bench press, maybe it's my shoulders and my triceps that give out not my chest. So how do I maximize the effect on my chest? I know I could pre-exhaust the chest by doing flies first, then go into the bench press. Now I'm going to pre-exhaust. Now they've done studies on this and there's pre-exhaust. There's some debate as to whether or not there's any value to what I just said. But there is value to this. So I couldn't feel my lats. I just say there is if you feel it. Yes. Yes. So I read this book. I did pull-overs. Dumbbell pull-overs. First, isolates lats. Then I did pull-ups. First time in my life, I felt my lats had a pump. From that day forward, I could connect to my lats If you've been training for a long time, you know this is like a great secret. If you get a client that wants to develop their butt, common one that you get as a trainer and they don't feel it though. Oh, Adam, every time I do squats, every time I do deadlifts, I feel it in my quads, I feel it in my hamstrings, but my butt just doesn't get pumped. It doesn't get sore. So one of the best things that you can do with a client life because we know, we've talked about this before, that squats and deadlifts are some of the best movements that you can do to build the butt. The problem with that is getting the butt to move and work and fire the way you want it to if you're not connected or you can't feel it. So I'll take a client over and we'll do floor bridges, single leg or both feet on the ground and actually get a pump in their butt or a pre-exhaust like Sal's talking about and then go over and do squats. Now they feel it. And they feel it more. Whether the studies show that they build more of a butt from that or not, it doesn't matter if the client can connect and feel the butt better. It's going to benefit them squatting if they're trying to develop their butt. Yeah, because then you start, what ends up happening is now you squat and you can feel the glutes and so you squat a little bit differently. Now you're activating the target muscle better. I think that has tremendous value. Unfortunately, the studies that do that, Adam, they don't do them long enough. I think you follow people for a year with pre-exhaust techniques and that's when you're going to see. It only makes sense, man. If you gain access now to that pathway, you can recruit more muscle fibers at that point. There's got to be a way to study, improve the fact that once we actually can highlight and activate certain muscle groups, now having that access, I can increase that. Totally. And so where will you find supersets in our programs? You'll find supersets in our body shaping, body building type of routines. The routines that really focus on when you're trying to shape and sculpt and build. A static, split, PED, all have them. Map split. Map split has lots of supersets towards the end because typically the way our programs work is there's different phases and different focuses. When you're focusing on strength and building strength, which also is very important, no supersets. But when you get to the end, now we're progressing to the supersets and you'll find the last phase is full of these pump inducing supersets. And when you do it that way, man, the results are just crazy. Next question is from Connor Alex Smith. Can you explain how to take advantage of using angles when lifting? Good questions, Justin. Yeah, I know. You guys like this? Yeah, yeah. Is there any nutrition to help? No, no. Zero. Yeah. What do you think about cheese? I was looking for the barbecue sauce, especially. It wasn't there. No, so angle. So okay, I'm going to try and explain this both in how you would understand in terms of results, but also how it works. So results-wise, here's the bottom line. Training, body parts with different angles of pull. Different periods of, or points of tension is going to give you better results than if you just do the same thing all the time. That's just a fact, okay? You ask any trainer or coach who's been working with people for a long time. That's just the bottom line. How does it work? Well, if you imagine your bicep, we'll focus on that because that's an easy one to understand. If I'm doing a dumbbell, standing dumbbell curl, so I have a free weight dumbbell, when I curl the dumbbell up, let's say it's a 35-pound dumbbell, I'm not directly opposing 35 pounds until my hand is about parallel to the ground. Right at the halfway point. Right, because that's where I'm fighting gravity directly. From there up, it's a little easier, and from the bottom to the midpoint, I'm pushing, I'm curling the 35 out and up, but once I get to that midpoint, now it's max tension. So my bicep is achieving max tension about halfway through its full contraction. And when you look at muscle fibers and the way they contract, they slide along each other and they attach in order to, as they're sliding, they attach to each other to create tension. So maximum tension in a dumbbell curl is in the midpoint of contraction. That's great. Now what about a concentration curl? Now I'm bending over, now I'm opposing gravity directly when my bicep is fully contracted. Now I get max tension at the squeeze. What about a preacher curl? Now the max tension is in the more stretched position. So that's one example of how angles will hit muscles differently, creating different points of tension, and that's why you get better results. And it's really the novelty of it. Yes. I mean, more than anything else, more than the degree of the angle or the specific exercise, it's the novelty of it. I mean, when you do something over and over, our bodies, they're adaptation machines. Eventually they get adapted to whatever it is that you're doing, and then the results, the change that you get from that, starts to diminish. One of the easiest ways to keep that progress happening is by manipulating angles and things like that. Sure, it's not. Where it gets wrong and where there's all this debate argument is when people try to make the case that, oh, this is working the peak of the bicep, or this is what makes the round part of your bicep, or this is when they start saying that you're targeting, here's the thing. It's impossible to isolate one muscle. Our bodies all work together. So you can't even isolate one muscle, much less a part of a muscle. So that never happens. Everything's working together. But you can target a muscle differently so that it seems new. This is different. I'm pulling from a different direction. Even though I've done a curl, a bicep curl here, I've done that 100 times, doing it with my elbow up above my head and curling. It's still a curl. The bicep still work, all of the bicep is still working, but because it's novel and it's different, it's a new stimulus, and then we get that new adaptation, which is going to help you progress. Now, biomechanics still applies. So there are angles that aren't very effective for certain muscle groups, and they're not going to activate and stimulate that. So keeping that in mind in terms of keeping your elbow, for instance, in the same pathway, but now I'm raising it up or I'm lowering it, but I'm not bringing it way outside and flaring it out. There's certain points of where that makes sense. Yeah, and the rules of physiology and anatomy still apply. It still applies to the point. And an easier example for somebody is a tricep pushdown. If you do a tricep pushdown on a cable machine and you do it with a triangle, a rope, a straight bar, a reverse grip, all the same. Yeah, the physics is still... Yeah, the elbow is still in the same position. Pension points are still in the position. Slightly different. Is it enough of a novel signal to cause any change? Probably not. Probably not. Now here's the other thing, too. You may be thinking to yourself, okay, different points of tension. Well, what if I just use a cable? What if I use a cable which gives me the same weight throughout the whole range of motion? Do angles still matter? They do, because then it depends on what position the muscle is in when it's pulling or contracting. So now my elbow in front of me, side to me, behind me, whether I'm pulling the weight with each of those positions, because the position is different, it's still considered novel. So angles are important. Now here's what people get in trouble and Justin kind of touched on this. People think, oh, this is great. I'm going to get crazy. I'm going to do all kinds of weird and crazy stuff. Look, you could use all... I'm doing these sideways now. You could use all the angles you want for your quads and all those angles aren't going to be as effective as squats. It's just straight up loaded barbell squats. You could do all the angles in the world for your shoulders, but overhead shoulder press is going to be the king of all exercises. It's just one factor. Angles is one factor. It's an important one, but you don't want to get caught up, because I've seen this where people go to the gym. No, this is a good point. This is really common right now in the Instagram world we live in, where these popular bodybuilders, who what people fail to realize, these amazing physiques that we follow and idolize, these guys and girls, they've covered all the bases. They're doing all the major good lifts. They're consistent as shit. Their diet is dialed. They haven't taken a day off in five years. And then you see them do like a sideways chest press on a hammer strength machine. And you think, oh my god, he looks this way. He's doing that. I should be doing this also, or I'm going to incorporate that. Now he can get away with doing a lesser valuable exercise because he's doing so much other stuff. And that's where you got to be careful, is where you're at in your lifting career. If you do not replace a sideways chest press for your barbell bench press. I mean, get your good compound big lifts and be consistent. Get great at those. See progress in all those. Yeah, if you're training six, seven days in the gym and you've been lifting for years and years and you want to get creative and add different exercises in there, then there's some value to that. But don't do that to replace something that has got a much higher value. Yeah, and I know it can be confusing. If you're listening like, gosh, there's so many exercises to pick from. There's so many different angles, so many different ways to alter tension. And I get that it is very complicated. And there is a hierarchy of exercises. And there is a way to combine different tension points to give you better results. If it's complicated or too complicated for you and you want the guesswork taken out, then just follow an established program. I mean, we obviously have created a lot of really good programs. And so we've done that, right? We've done that for you. We've plugged in the right exercise, the right combinations to take advantage of all these different factors. Next question is from Ethan Schlemmer. What are your favorite exercises to increase a person's sense of balance? I think this is especially important for trainers working with the older age adults. Oh, I love this. That's another great question. So number one, the most important thing that will benefit your balance is to be strong. That's number one. So when you're working with old, I worked with a lot of people in advanced age. And I would, sometimes they would come in and they would maybe have gone online or their daughter brought them in to hire me and then the daughter said, hey, I went online. And there's all these like foot balancing exercises standing on one leg or whatever. And I'm like, look, your mom is just weak right now. The reason why her balance is bad is she's just not strong. So every time she takes a step, everything feels weak and shaky. Number one, get strong. That's number one. So that's a good point. Because that is the natural tendency, especially for trainers, is to now incorporate these unstable type tools and incorporate that or the single leg, single arm and really try to challenge the client that way. Whereas it really is just instability. It's lack of strength and support around the joint. So to be able to get that, you need to really work on just purely strength training. Totally. So I have a, I'm gonna give this person an exercise. It's funny that you picked this, Justin, literally last week, I'm talking to a client of mine and she's in her fifties. And we were doing something and I actually made a point. I said, listen, at one point in our lives, we'll probably be in different places and we won't have the opportunity to train together. This may be the single most important exercise I want you to do forever. And that was a step up to a single leg balance to an opposite hand toe touch. Oh, I did that exercise so many times with clients. That exercise I like for a lot of reasons. We talk about the importance of strength. A step up is such a great strength building exercise, especially as we age. It's a quick one. We lose the balance and stability portion. Obvious reasons why that's important proprioception and then stability, right? And that especially with the hip, right? The hip and the glute, making sure they're being able to stabilize on one leg and that. And then the hinging over with the opposite hand, you get a little bit of rotational and anti-rotational movement in there. So you cover multiple planes, you throw in some strength, you have some stability. And my point I was making to where I said, of all the things I teach you that is important, and I say a lot of things are important, you know, this is an exercise that you can really do on your own at home. And, you know, it's a good way for you to gauge that you're not losing this. Don't lose this ability to be able to step up, balance opposite hand, come over and touch your toe like that and be able to do at least 10 or so on each side, really good. That's a great point. I think too, like you have to consider like what the functional movements are for your daily activities, like in what you're doing around the house, what you're lifting, you know, like, how can we support you and gain balance in those movements? And a lot of times, people are in a split stance position. You know, very rarely are we, you know, bilateral and we're standing nice and balanced all the time. So that's definitely one thing I consider and I bring in lunges and I bring in step ups and things like that to make sure that, yes, you know, your hips and your major muscle groups are responding and pulling in and centralizing your balance that way. Now, here's another part that I recently got my mind changed by Joe DeFranco, who I consider to be one of the best trainers you'll find in the fitness space. And he made the point of the value of plyometrics training for everybody. And of course, there's a range of plyometrics training. So you have the extreme performance type of plyometrics training, then you have the more easy kind of general, just like jump in place type of plyometrics training. And he made such a good point. And I felt, I knew exactly what he was talking about because before he came in to be on our podcast, this was a while ago, before we talked about this, I was helping my dad unload his working van. He had some stuff in the back and my dad has a bad back, so I'm unloading stuff. To get out of the back of the van, I just had to jump out. Not a high jump, it's a work van. So it's like jumping out of the back of a truck. And I remember I landed and it just, I didn't land very well. I told you about that with the habit of me. You remember jumping out of my truck. Oh, so you know exactly. They're not eggshells, guys. I just landed on my car and I'm like, whoa, this doesn't, and I'm strong. I work out. So Joe DeFranco comes in and I'm asking about plyometrics for the average person. He goes, yeah, you know, you can be strong. That'll give you that first initial general balance. But then you need to be able to express it if you like twist or jumper. That's why you should practice at least some type of plyometrics. So if you're advanced lifter or you're pretty fit and you don't think you need to work on balance, I'll challenge you. Even just jumping in place or jumping on a bench or just jumping down off the bench. And left to right. Yeah, just practicing. Because if you don't practice that skill, trust me, you'll lose it. No. Next question is from Anahata Lifestyle. What do you think you young people in their 20s need to hear about training and nutrition? What are their biggest misconceptions? Easy there, Doug. Butchered that one. Butchered that one. So what, okay. So people in their 20s. Babble.com. I got to think of myself. What do we think they need to hear as far as training and nutrition and what are their biggest misconceptions? I think one of the biggest misconceptions in your 20s right now, and I think it's something it's not new. You've heard this on a mine pump a million times. It's the over application of intensity. Yeah. Everybody on Instagram is making a martyr of themselves to show their sacrifice. How bad do you want it? If you care bad enough. 4 a.m. clocking. Yeah, exactly. Or showing pictures of your watch at 4 a.m. every day in beast mode and all. And so we've over glorified the value and the benefits of intensity to the point where everybody thinks that in order to get a very effective workout, you've got to be hobbling out of the gym the next day or done. And the reason why that, it works when you're 20 and you can do that and you can kind of like go up, you know, the yo-yo back and forth. Oh, I'm on and I'm crushing it for a while, then I'm off. And I'm on and I'm crushing it for a month. And then eventually you get older and you go like, what ends up happening to these 20 year olds 20 years later is they recall what the way they were training in their 20s and they try and duplicate it. They either try and duplicate it or they just write it off. Fuck that. Yeah. I'd rather be a little. I can't do it now. Yeah, I'd rather just accept the dad bod and just, you know, forget. I don't want to exercise that. I mean, I have friends that were like this because even in our era, there was an Instagram that was promoting this, but the athletic mindset, like we all train like we are professional athletes and training to be healthy and aesthetically fit is totally different than a wide receiver for the NFL and you have no business nor do you need to train that way. But that's what's sexy. That's what's sexy on Instagram. So I think the kids and their 20s that listen to this podcast need to evaluate who they're following and the message that they're presenting. And what I see a lot of is the over application of intensity. Yeah, I 100% agree with that. And I'll add to that in terms of I think that sleep is definitely with the 20 year old mindset is definitely an afterthought. And I think that the biggest sort of awakening I've had in terms of the way that I am able to still progress is like getting better quality sleep and being able to be fully recovered and allow my body to actually repair and rebuild itself. That's such a vital component to building muscle and to thriving and being healthy and operating all systems of the body. And so I think that is definitely undervalued when you're young. You just think that you can just keep going and hammering your way through like everything. And sleep is something that you'll get to eventually. Yeah, now I'm gonna balance that out a little bit because you guys are 100% right but I'm gonna balance it out and I'm gonna say this. If there's any point in your life where it's appropriate to test your limits and to see... No joke, no joke. Damn it, Sal. If there's ever a time in your life where you can work as much as you possibly can just to see where your limits are push yourself hard to see where your limits are. Don't hurt yourself. But just to see what you're capable of your 20s is the time to do it. That's when you... If you're gonna work 80 hours or 150 hours a week or whatever, go for it. If you're gonna work out two or three times a day, okay, go and test it out. If you're gonna drink with your buddies and whatever, that's the time you wanna test out your limits. Totally fine, of course. Be safe. The real lesson in my opinion from the 20s is this. Is that be growth-minded because that doesn't last forever. It's okay to learn your limits but then learn how to fine-tune everything and be okay with changing as your life changes. As things change, context changes, you have to be okay with letting that go because I know a lot of people who get stuck. They get so stuck in that mind space that now they're 30 or 40. They have kids and no, no, no, no. I'm still gonna be like I was in my 20s. They burn themselves out. They get sick. They hammer their metabolisms. They get injured. That's where the problems really lie. Yeah, and I think that raises a good point but also I think they can do a better job of being able to push themselves but finding themselves back at homeostasis. I think that that doesn't even get considered when you're in the mentality of like, I'm just gonna hammer through work. I'm gonna hammer through these workouts. I'm just not gonna sleep. And then later it builds like really bad habits like going forward. It does. You get used to it and you think that that's how you're always gonna be or you cause long-term, potentially long-term damage. I mean, I would have clients that would come see me in their mid-30s and they're so burnt out that it would take me a year, no joke, would take me a full year of scaling down exercise, getting better sleep, looking at their nutrition. After a year, their body finally started responding because it took us that long to repair what happened before or it was somebody in their 20s who they could eat whatever they want. They had a fast metabolism. Now I have them in their 30s and they've got four food intolerances. They have irritable bowel syndrome or inflammatory... But they're not indestructible. Totally. So you can definitely push yourself but you gotta listen to your body and be smart about it. But again, if you're gonna test yourself and see where those limits are, that's probably the time to do it. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides and resources. Also find us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.