 True evidence-based practice is using scientific data to the best of our knowledge, which is always going to be always going to be behind because that's how the scientific process works. It's going to be a little bit delayed, but it's also using anecdotal evidence. And then finally, it's also applying it to the context of the client and their behavior. So that's a true evidence-based process, doesn't neglect any one of those, doesn't hyper-focus on one of them either. The mistakes some people make is they just focus purely on anecdotal or they focus purely on trying to make the behavioral change for understanding some of the science or some of the anecdote and letting it all influence the true evidence-based practice. But that's a big thing like, yeah, science-bound verse, maybe science-based or science-influenced and evidence-based, they're all slightly different things. So what's your problem with squats? It's been a great show guys. Boom, what's up everybody? Ooh, this is the episode you've all been waiting for. Eugene Teo is on the show. You might have seen us have debates on social media. Really smart guy. I love the fact that he came on the show to discuss some of the things that we may disagree upon. For example, our squats overrated, barbell squats in particular. What about posture? Can you correct it with exercise? We actually had some great discussions, would love your input in the comments. In fact, here's how you can win the program Maps Aesthetic. That's the program I'm giving away right now. Here's what you got to do. Leave a comment below in the first 24 hours that we drop this episode. Tell us what you think about the discussion. Make it a good comment. Also subscribe to this channel and turn on notifications. If you do all of those things and we like your comment, we pick your comment, we'll notify you in that section and let you know that you won free access to the very popular workout program, Maps Aesthetic. Also, we got a sale going on right now. The RGB bundle is 50% off. So that's Maps Aesthetic, Maps Anabolic, Mass Performance, Kettlebell For Aesthetics, the Sexy Athlete Mod, and the Butt Builder Blueprint. All of that in that bundle, 50% off. And we also have an individual workout program that's on sale, Maps Suspension. This is a suspension trainer-based workout program. That program is also 50% off. So if you're interested, go to MapsFitnessProducts.com and then use the code July50, July50, no space for that discount. All right, here comes a show. Eugene, welcome back, dude. Oh, it's great to be here. You know what I like about you is that, because we were just, let's start with that. Look at yourself. I feel like your shit's out. It's coming with that right there. No, let me tell you what I like about you first for you. Let's start with the one thing. No, that's not it. No, we were just talking off there about how many people in our space are so like sensitive, that it's so hard to discuss things and talk about things. But, and we just talked about people who we like who are not like that. You're one of those people. I really enjoy talking to you because you're very objective. You have good conversations, good discussions. So that's why we like having you on the show. Thank you. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, I appreciate that. So what's your problem with squats? You did a few posts on squats and saying things like you don't have to squat or something along those lines. Maybe you can clarify a little bit on maybe some of the issues. Is it that people emphasize them too much or that some people don't need to do them? What's the deal with that? So specifically, it's not squats. I think everybody should be squatting in general. Like the squatting motion, we definitely need to squat to be able to do that. But my issue is the over-emphasis of a barbell squat specifically. And even not even just a barbell squat, but a barbell back squat being like the king of exercises. Like if you ask somebody, hey, what's the king of exercise? It's going to be barbell deadlift or it's going to be a barbell squat. And they say, yeah, you must do those two things. For some reason, barbell bench press has got a tostle side. No one cares about bench press, which is why I like it. Me too. But yeah, barbell squat, and it's got to be conventional. It can't be sumo. Sumo is for cheaters. But they're the two king exercises and say, well, why is that? And why are we emphasizing that? And not just emphasizing, but why do we force-feed that to a lot of people? Where I definitely think that we all need to squat and we should all be squatting with some kind of resistance. Whether it's for some people, just body weight resistance could be enough. Whether it's a goblet position, whether it is a barbell as well. I think a barbell is still a great tool. But what I see in the industry by coaches is they have this belief that we all have to be doing a barbell back squat as a mainstay in our programs all the time. And that is the gold standard that we should be working towards. So maybe like my mum, she can't do a barbell back squat right now. But I should be saying we should be working her towards being able to do that. That should be the goal. And I say, well, why is that? Like, why should I put that arbitrary standard on her as the outcome for her to be working towards when she doesn't care about that? Like, she doesn't need that in her age or in part of her goals or anything like that. And the same thing applies to most people. And even like someone like maybe my mum is a very niche audience. What about most of us? Like, do we all need to be doing a barbell squat for our goals of getting stronger, building more muscle mass, getting more mobile, getting more flexible and just improving like bone density? Do we really need to be doing a barbell back squat? And unless if you are specifically a barbell athlete like a power lifter or a crossfitter, I believe that we don't. Like those people definitely need to do it there and they should do it a lot. But for anything else, which is probably 99% of people who are in the gym because they're not power lifters, not Olympic lifters, they're not crossfit athletes, they need to be doing a squat motion. So do they need to do it with a barbell? Probably not. If they want to, you knock yourself out, go for it. It's not going to kill you. Not going to give you knee cancer. Do you have a theory on why that is? Like, why do you think that has become so popular? Do you have a theory around that? I agree with you by the way. I think I agree 100% with what you just said. I totally agree training lots of people, lots of different people. Just squatting, the motion of squatting is very important. It's fundamental. Yes. But what you're saying 100% makes perfect sense. So yeah. So what Adam said, what do you think? Look, I think it's a big thing where people have a hard time separating their emotions from logical reasoning. And this is beyond, this is with everything. And if you think about like, what do, what were most of us brought up when it was things like pumping iron? It was, it was all the strong emotional attachments of those Arnold Schwarzenegger, those kind of bodybuilds, powerlifters. And we see very successful athletes who are very strong or very big or very athletic for performance. And we see them doing a barbell squat. And we just take that in face value and say, ah, the barbell squat is what we must do. Like you look at a guy like Tom Platt, like he's got ridiculous legs. He still does to this day. And he's still barbell squatting. He's the king of barbell squats. And he's the king of legs. And we see them say, okay, logically. Well, we think logically, but it's actually more emotionally. All right, that's the answer. That's what you must do because all these other people have done that. And if you also look at how most of us were brought up in terms of our own personal training, like when did you guys start training? Like ourselves or training clients? Oh, yourself, like yourself. Oh, 25 years ago. Yeah. Probably teenage years. 25. 25 years ago. Oh, 25 years ago. You were like 20 months. Yeah. How old were you? I was 13. Yeah. Yeah. So I was like 13, 14. Yeah. Similar kind of thing. So, and what would most of us do when we start eventually training legs, which might have been like five years later? But we probably start doing barbell squats and our legs would respond. And why did the legs respond? Was it because of the barbell squat or was it because you started giving them some kind of lower body stimulus? It's probably more just the stimulus, not the actual squat itself. But in that age, we have a hard time separating the two. And we just say, oh, barbell squat, I grew legs. I got stronger. I got more athletic. I built strength. I built muscle mass. That's the answer. And it creates a confirmation bias where we see in ourselves, oh, I got all these awesome results doing a barbell squat. And that must be the answer. And then we look at Arnold Schwarzenegger. We look at Tom Platt. We look at a lot of Olympic athletes across a variety. So we see them all doing barbell squats. Oh, that must be the thing that confirms my bias that the squats are what built my legs. And we never challenged that thought process. And then when somebody comes along who does challenge it, we're like, no, no, you must be completely wrong because I've got all this anecdotal history of me growing big legs when I was in my newbie phase, honestly, of growing, of growing legs. So you must be incorrect. And we never really open ourselves up to challenging the idea of saying, well, what is it actually that caused us to get stronger, to get bigger, to build muscle mass? Was it really that barbell squat with a back squat position? Or maybe I could have gotten a similar result with the front squat. Maybe I could have gotten similar results with other exercises like a split squats, lunges, maybe even just, I wouldn't recommend this person, but even if you were just doing just machines, maybe you could have gotten a similar response. But for whatever reason, we just emotionally attach it to that because that's the one thing. So that's, that's an interesting theory. This actually highlights our age gap right here. This is funny because we're, we're all, I'm 40. This guy's 42, 41, like you're 30. So my experience in, and my theory on the whole squat narrative now is it's, it's coming back into favor, where it had fallen out of favor for like over a decade. When I was 20, nobody squatted. In fact, we used to joke around at the gym that we had one squat rack and it had dust cobwebs because nobody squatted. These are 35, 40,000 square foot gyms. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they did not. 2,000 workouts a day and not one person squatting. This was before CrossFit. So I think the introduction of CrossFit and that coming in really started to repopularize the barbell lifts because, and still to this day, you're rarely, we'll see, you will now more than ever, but I'm 10 years ago, you would never see someone deadlift in a 24 hour fitness. Oh no, no, I desisted and I would have members come up to me and I'm a manager, I'm managing the gym. They'd come up to me and freak out. You're going to hurt your back. What are you doing? This isn't how you work out. And I was doing a traditional deadlift. There's two parts of this conversation that I think we need to separate. One is general advice and then two is the individualized aspect because there's so many variances with the individual when you're talking about training. I've had cases where split stance exercises were far superior for clients. Others where bilateral exercises were amazing. Generally speaking, the back squat, in my opinion, were the reasons why it's so great. And I agree with a lot of what you said. I don't think it's ideal for everybody. But generally speaking, I like it because the leverage is great. You can load it very well. And it's hard to do a freestanding squat, like you mentioned the front squat. Although with the front squat, posture tends to be a little better. Mechanics in some cases are better, but in other cases they're not. Like holding a barbell across the shoulders, especially weightlifting style. It's very, very challenging for a lot of people, whereas not saying a back squat isn't challenging, but it's a little easier to get in that position. For sure. And then the load you can handle and the leverage seems to work really well. So that's why I think it's a great, like trying to do a gallblast squat or, although now they have belt squats, which I think are pretty awesome, but we didn't have those forever. And most gyms still don't have that. So I think it's important we separate, like here's the general advice, but there's always individual variances. And I think that's what we're talking about, right? In many cases, in many individual cases, these exercises that everybody touts as being so amazing, might not work. They might not work for you. Well, I think that's where we're all on the same page in this conversation is, although I'm super pro barbell back squat, I would also tell you that 90% of my clients never got to a barbell back squat. So that's where I were all on the same page. I had to do goblet squats, Bulgarian split squats, walking lunges, tend to be step ups, tend to be the movements that I'd have to regress all my clients to. In hopes that one day I could get them to a place where they could do a good barbell back squat. But I think what's interesting is listening to you talk about the kind of history of the barbell. Everybody says it's amazing. Nobody said it was amazing. My experience was the opposite. When we were selling them on the idea of always. Yeah, I was a kid who was tough. Leg pressing and leg extension and lunges and doing all that. And just, I didn't barbell back squat because I didn't know how. I really didn't. Even as a young trainer, I was intimidated by it. I never had anybody who took me under their wing and taught me how to do it properly. I didn't want to look like a fool in it. And it was hard. You know, the few times I did attempt it, it was very, very hard. It didn't feel right. And so I avoided it for most years and got away with it because the gym was like nobody was squatting or deadly. But now it's different. It was CrossFit. CrossFit made barbell exercises come into the fray. The show. Into the main street. Literally, I mean, what he said is 100% true. I would manage these massive gyms, so much equipment, one squat rack. And nobody used it ever, except for you curls. Sometimes you see somebody doing that joke, right? Curls in the squat rack. That was a commonality in the late 90s, early 2000s when I would manage these gyms. Now you mention it when I was like 2009, also when I was first personal training and working in like a commercial gym. Yeah, we big, big boss commercial gym, one squat rack. And that's my bias because I grew up as a bodybuilder. Like I looked up to bodybuilders. I was when I was in that time, I was a bodybuilder myself. So I was looking at my tunnel vision on squat rack, my tunnel vision on Arnold Schwarzenegger. But from the industry perspective, I think you're absolutely right. It's interesting that you looked back to the 70s and even early 80s because late 80s and 90s, squats were out of favorable bodybuilders. It was all leg press. Yeah, it was. It was like Dorian Yates' all machines. Yes, nobody did squats. What do you think about, and I've heard one of the most compelling arguments that I've heard with lower body exercises. And again, we're speaking generally here because when you look at the individual, anything can change. It can all change, right? But when we're talking generally, I've heard the argument that split stance exercises are superior to bilateral lower body exercises like squats. So like lunges, Bulgarian split stance squats and all the variations are better because it more simulates locomotion running. You always have one leg in front, one leg in back type of deal. What do you think about that, that type argument? Oh, I would tend to agree and lean more towards that. Yeah, I would agree with that because from a pure efficiency perspective, you are going to get a lot more of a tension on that muscle on both the front leg and the rear leg, depending how you set things up. I think that's one thing people really don't realize a lot is like say on a split squat or a Bulgarian split squat, especially that rear leg is working a ton. And it's not just working. It's working in a range of motion in that fully stretched position for the quad anyway, that you don't really get on many other exercises for the lower body. And if all you ever did for the rest of your training career, it was just a bilateral squat where you didn't get that fully stretched length and position on that rear leg. Who knows? But I wouldn't be surprised if there were some deficits then in mobility because of that. Yeah, I'm also thinking of the counter torsion and the stability, right? Yeah, and that's where we've got to weigh these things up is we get the extra benefits of a stability challenge. We get the extra benefits of maybe replicating the locomotion and those things will obviously compromise the overall weight. That compromises the overall stability. So the actual benefit is it is also part of a drawback. So it comes down and weighing things down. But I'll say for sure in terms of how I program for myself and for most people on a very general perspective, I would rather they would do a split squat variation or a single leg unilateral variation as opposed to a bilateral. If I just had one exercise to give them. If you had to pick. If I had to pick, I would say it's more superior. It's a lot more accessible as well for a lot of people. And yeah, they're going to use less weight. But regardless of the goal apart from pure powerlifting, when is wise or when is weight ever the real thing we should be thriving towards? Like lifting sheer heavy, heavy weights. As long as you're exposing your joints, your muscles to the required resistance to a significant amount of tension, the weight on the bar is less and less relevant. Because yes, you might lift less weight, but you're still exposing your muscle potentially to the similar amounts of forces. Yeah. And I think in the beginning of training, measuring your strength and getting stronger is much more important than it is later on. And what I mean by that is like now my training, like, you know, at some point you hit a ceiling, you're not going to otherwise I'd be squatting 5,000 pounds. I've been working out for so long, right? So at this point, I'm not looking at the weight, but when I first start training someone, if I get them to add three reps, five reps, 10 pounds, they go from 100 pound to 150 pound squat, a huge benefits. You know, when you're starting after a while, it's more important to look at other things. So I agree with you. I think it's pretty nuanced. What do you think about the functional versus just hypertrophy argument that we see so much on social media? Is that I've heard people say, just getting bigger and stronger makes you more functional. Then I've heard other people say, and I agree with both to some extent, then I've heard other people say, well, no, the specificity of a functional exercise, what makes you more functional in the real world type of deal? Like, what do you think about that conversation? I definitely lean more towards the lens of saying, whatever helps you build muscle mass, build strength, build coordination, build all these different aspects that we need to be focusing on, whatever helps you do that as efficiently as possible is going to make you more functional. It's not about necessarily recreating everyday life motions or in some way preparing you for what you're doing in your sport because the thing that's going to help prepare you the most for your sport is being more muscular, stronger, more mobile, more agile, and it won't necessarily come from one specific movement. It's all even one specific class of movements. It's going to come from the way that you set up your entire broad context of your training program and making sure you're hitting all these qualities and not having deficits anywhere. Like even like we can say like that maybe, I don't even know, maybe we could potentially say this, a split squat is more functional than a back squat in inverted commas there because of the extra stability demand, which makes it more applicable to athletic populations. But again, that's looking at things through a vacuum and are we ever really going to give our athletic client or our gen pop clients a just one exercise? For discussions, we'll talk about that and it's cool to have those discussions but realistically in the real world, we're never going to give them just a back squat or just a split squat or just some rotational med ball throw kind of thing in a lunge stance. We're going to give them a whole host of things or what makes things functional or not is not the one exercise but the application and the broader sense of a program. And that's where people are missing the forest for the trees. They're focusing on having these arguments about saying, hey, squats aren't functional, split squats are better, doing it with a barbell held overhead and that position is going to be even more functional, doing a balance going to bose balls even more functional. I was like, well, who the fuck cares about that? Like you're not going to give them just one exercise but it looks cool for Instagram. It looks cool for Instagram to have those discussions to be like, yeah, this is the most functional movement ever. It highlights too what we talk about all the time so much is that it's the part that I can't stand about our space is we tend to get in these camps. On the crossfitter, on the bodybuilder, on the power lifter, it's like, fuck, why wouldn't you use all the techniques from all those guys? I didn't mix martial arts, teach us a lesson. I got to know all this stuff. So Justin was on a podcast recently on Joe to see... No, what's it for? Joe and Franco's podcast. I saw that, yes. Yeah, very good discussion. And one thing that I think was an excellent point was how they brought up the skill required to do a particular lift that made the curve or the learning curve maybe so long that it may not be worth doing that particular exercise for an athlete because they're about to go into season. For example, you take a young athlete and you're like, okay, power cleans are great for power, but we got three months to train to get into season. And I'm going to barely get you to do just the barbell with the power clean because it's so technical. So instead, we're going to do kettlebell swing or we're going to do a trap bar deadlift and maybe jump or something like that. So that's another part of this conversation that changes everything. So for example, I'll give you an example. I've seen studies where they measure muscle activation and they'll compare two exercises that are similar, but one, there's far more skill involved. So I'll give you an example, a pull down to the front versus a pull down behind the neck. Both very similar, but they'll show in these studies and they'll take 20 college-aged males with some exercise experience, what they say, which means that they may be played sports. And they'll say, oh, the pull down to the front activates the lats more than the pull down to the back. And I say maybe because I know a behind the neck pull down requires so much more skill that you'd have to practice it for a while to really connect and be able to activate the lats with that particular exercise. Whereas if you pull down the front, you're going to turn it on much easier. So that's another part of this whole conversation that I think is really interesting and we don't really consider that when we have these kind of discussions and debates. Yeah, I think, I mean, in terms of being a coach, that's a big part of the whole thing, especially with athletes, you have to structure, like what do I do that's going to be the most effective in that time sequence where it's going to adequately prepare them in the best way possible, where I'm like assessing risk, reward each one of these exercises that we're going to program, how long does it take for me to implement this skill, you know, how much is that skill going to apply to the field and like you're kind of like really like going through the whole host of like what it is, what's the best plan and what for this group of kids specifically too. So not just like in general, which I think that a lot of coaches, we get into the general side of things way too often where we're not really, you know, looking at needs. Like there were so many needs specifically where, you know, hip flexors and we need strengthening there and like we need to mobilize certain joints because people are dropping like flies. And so I think like there's so many nuances to a lot of these conversations that like, you know, plug and play that person specifically into like a hypertrophy setting and what their goals are like and determined to just like make maximize that opportunity may look completely different than, you know, your athlete's experience, your mom's experience. Like, you know, so I think that we need to talk about these things a lot more because like people need to understand there's so many different formulas in past people can go with training. Absolutely. And there's like not even beyond that, there's also a whole lot of, I mean, there's a whole bunch of confusion and a lot of it comes from people really don't have the skill set or the knowledge which is completely fine to interpret what these things really mean. Like taking something like, even like a lot of stuff as an activation, they're using EMG as a test and like, well, how good is EMG for really measuring what's happening within the muscle? It's going to tell you some electro activity activation but does that translate to an exercise being say better than another one for activating your lats or glutes? Yeah. There's a lot of flaws there in terms of what actually means for muscle building or for strength building or actual tension being placed on the muscle and how the muscles have then produced force where the electro activity doesn't necessarily translate to all of those things. No, I'll give you an example, Eugene. Wearing a weight belt activates your core as much or more than not wearing a weight belt. So somebody may see on a study like that. So someone may look at that and be like, oh, a weight belt. I mean, they said it was going to weaken my core but no, it's going to make us stronger. But what you don't realize is wearing a belt, your core activates differently. You push out against the belt to create stability. Whereas when you don't wear a belt, it kind of braces. So you actually teach yourself a different way to stabilize your core if you always wear a belt versus if you don't. Those studies, those EMG studies would not tell you that. It would just say, oh, look, you activate your core wearing a belt so it's totally fine to wear it all the time. And that's the tricky part because then most people, you or I might have this knowledge how to interpret that but most people out there, they don't. They don't understand what these differences are because it does take a fair amount of experience, a fair amount of background knowledge and maybe biomechanics or anatomy to understand, oh, what is actually going on and why does the EMG results show this or the other? And those are people really, one thing they don't have the knowledge about, this was just stuck at asking as to why is the results showing as it is. Which is a shame because that's where all the arguments come from. That's where all the debates. It's like, well, we're debating. We're probably on the exact same page. We just have different levels of understanding or interpretations of it and it's... Well, so my question to you is because you are on social media, you communicate to a pretty large audience. This is something that we early on decided that we were gonna focus on because it's really easy to get caught up in the weeds and in the nuances. When I'm talking to someone like you, great discussions, we can do that. But when we communicate, we're community to a general audience. So we talk about this all the time. We're very careful what we communicate because we know we're talking to millions of people and we don't wanna send the wrong message. For example, the squat isn't great for everybody conversation. Now, we just had a great discussion about it, but we're very careful to not communicate that in a way to where the kid listening now has an excuse to not practice barbell squats. Oh, those are hard. I'm just gonna do leg presses all the time then because that's a great exercise. How do you... Is this something that you have to think about as well? Because otherwise we're kind of in an echo chamber. Like I'm just talking to other trainers and coaches and I'm not reaching the average person and I don't wanna confuse the average person by focusing too much on this kind of stuff. It's incredibly challenging. That's one thing I respect about you guys. A lot of these you guys are always, you're toeing that line. You're doing best to spread good information and you also respect that you can't always go into the nuances on social media. It's just why you have your podcast where you can really discuss things in a lot more detail. Because yeah, it's a nightmare. It's a daily struggle. Every post I'll make is like, I remember the first post that I did, that triggered you guys. It was about the barbells a few years ago. And you had a discussion about it. And I thought, you know what? What you guys said is absolutely correct. It was refuting a lot of what I said in terms of like you were saying, look, you've done this post and it's correct. But it's also, it's gonna create that excuse for people to not push hard on a barbell. Because I said, you know what? That's right. And I haven't... And I should have specified that as an extra disclaimer and extra nuances. Like, hey, this is not excuse to not train hard and just do leg press instead or just do machines instead of squats. But I didn't do that. But then I changed it up. I said, you know what? I'll take that on board. That was my bad where I was too hotheaded and just jumped into this one nuance without talking about the general impacts it'll have on the wider audience. And that's why I still do talk about the, I guess, downsides in inverted commas to barbell squats over other movements. But I am always a lot more careful now to say, hey, as much as I think this is some of the features of a barbell squat that may be advantageous and disadvantages, it's not an excuse for you not to push hard or it's not a cop out for you to just do a leg press all day. You have a large audience of very, also very technical experienced trainers where, you know, we have those as well. But when we talk to them, we're really... It's a much more general audience. Yeah. And we're talking to them more about how to communicate to their clients. Yeah. I'm not going to get into the super intricate details of this, the physiology and science of, you know, whatever. Not because I don't think it's cool. I love it. If I talk to someone like you, I'll talk to you for hours about shit like that, but just because that's what we've decided, because otherwise you're screwed. Yeah. It's like, if I communicate to those people, there's going to be a whole bunch of people over here that are going to read into it wrong and be like, oh, like, you know, I'll give you an example. Like, you know, all right, here's a silly example. Studies show that a cold therapy post workout will blunt the muscle building signal a little bit. Yeah. So now you're going to get a bunch of kids who are like, no cold therapy because I want to maximize muscle growth. Well, if you're teetering on the line of overtraining, it can actually probably help because you recover a little faster, less inflammation, maybe blunts the signal, but maybe that's what you need because you're constantly overtraining yourself and so it'll actually help you train harder and whatever. So this kind of stuff is like, it's constant. We got to go back and forth and kind of fit. But you have a large audience, I noticed with your post, really smart technical coaches. So it's like, I can feel how you have a tough time. Like, okay, I got to talk to them, but then... Yeah, it's tricky because over the last probably two or three years, so since I was last here actually, is there's been a big shift where probably maybe 80% a few years ago was very smart technical coaches and they're still around. I hope most of them, I don't know, probably all blocked me by now, who knows. But there's been... My social media across all the platforms has grown a lot more and now I've got a lot more of a general audience as well. And now I'm learning how to navigate those people. And it's still a continual learning process. Hang on, I've got to now speak to these people as well and make sure that they can understand it and they're not getting the wrong message as well from a lot of my posts, which in the past were a lot more technical and now I'm saying, hey, how do I make sure that this audience doesn't feel alienated or confused, which is a big part, which is a big fear of mine from what I post. Because yeah, you're right, it's... And that's hard to do on social media. I think you do a good job. I mean, we talk about you a lot on the show. I think we've plugged you at least five to six times on here where we've talked about your posts. Well, what it does is it creates great conversation because I do think that you attack really difficult, nuanced thoughts that trainers and coaches have. And I love the way you put it because every time you put it, I go like, he's right. So I'm not going to say he's wrong with what he's saying, but this is how I would be saying it. This is where I have a different opinion on it, but I appreciate that about you. I think you do a really good job of... Yeah, I'd say you're one of the better people for sure. And you don't get offended if I challenge you because I want you to... I want that. Like you guys say, you don't want to echo chamber. You don't want people just always saying, yes, you're so good, preach. Yeah, preach, keep going. Yeah, say it louder, people in the back. Oh my God. I was like, that's great. I'm always going to love that, always going to respect that, but it's important to be able to have discourse where if someone has a different opinions thing, you know what, maybe you should have said it this way instead or maybe you could have worded this a bit differently or you know what, you're completely fucking wrong. Well, sometimes I liked, and this happens on our show a lot, like people think that Sal and I don't like each other or that like people get mad at me, or we should just shut up and let Sal talk. And a lot of times I will challenge something of his that I actually totally agree, but I actually, because I respect his ability to articulate his point, which I think you do a really good job also. So sometimes people misunderstand me, I'll challenge a post or I'll challenge something he says, not necessarily because I disagree, because I think where you're going is so good, and I want to challenge you. So you want to represent somebody else's. So people can like enjoy that conversation and learn that way, because I know there's somebody who's thinking what I'm about to go say. What about this? So it's not always I'm like, it's not like, I'm always attacking him. Sometimes I just, yeah, I just want to keep you going in that direction, because I know that you have a lot to say about that point and that dialogue, I think people will learn the nuances of both sides. And then from there, hopefully they can take that information and go, oh, this is how it applies to me. Here's, you know, here's something I've wanted to ask you, because you're definitely a science-based individual in terms of your opinions and kind of what you talk about and write about. And the challenge sometimes with that is our space is, the science hasn't yet caught up to many people's experiences. Now, not somebody that's going to say anecdote outweighs evidence and science. However, and I'll use another example, in some cases, I'll take anecdote and what I mean by that is, because before everybody freaks out, I'll give you a great example. So if you look at like wellness and you look at like herbal treatments for inflammation or headaches or PMS or nausea or whatever, you have ancient, old, thousands of years old practices where it's like Chinese medicine or heredic medicine, who they didn't use a scientific method, but they used, let's say Ashwagandha for stress relief for hundreds and hundreds of years. And up until recently, we now have studies showing Ashwagandha be quite effective for stress relief over the last maybe 10, 15 years. But before that, it was zero studies. But our heredic medicine, this medicine said, this is amazing. And it was literally hundreds of years of anecdote. And in those cases, I'd say, you know what, I like the anecdote because when you're looking at five, 600 years of people using it, they tease out a lot of stuff and there's some truth there, type of deal. And we see that with exercise too, and I'll give you an example with fitness. We were told forever that light weight and high reps doesn't really build lots of muscle. Lots of bodybuilders are like, no, it builds lots of muscle. You could do 20, 30 reps and you'll build muscle. And then the other people say, no, it doesn't. Well, now we have studies showing, well, if you train with high enough intensity, the high reps will also build muscle. So now the science finally matches the anecdote. Do you have any examples or how do you navigate this where you know through experience, you know through training lots of people. This is probably what the deal is, but I have nothing supporting it. Or maybe even there's some science that counters it, but that is completely different from my experience. It's a tricky one. It's a very, very tricky one. And I think first of all, the most important thing that we need to do on any topic, whether it's like the Ayurvedic stuff, the supplemental stuff, the nutrition stuff, where it's like fasting or ketogenic diets or veganism or whatever, I shouldn't say being more like plant-based diets, but that's different to a vegan diet. There's going to be a lot of anecdotes that are going to, from thousands of years of experience where you say, yeah, probably this is better or this is very beneficial. But until it's been rigorously tested, this is why we have the scientific method. We can say that they might have some benefit, but the danger comes from when we make bold, sweeping definitive statements about it, saying, ah, say Ashwagandha. Let's say there is a growing amount of research supporting its efficacy and its benefits for inflammation, for thyroid health, for sleep and recovery. And let's say that wasn't around just yet. Say we're just going off all the Ayurvedic and the ancient Chinese medicine, we could still say, yeah, it's probably, it's got a good chance to be helpful because it has thousands of years backing it up. And that's part of being an evidence-based practitioner as well as being able to use anecdotal evidence and use it in your decision-making and how it applies to the client. The only thing that I would mention there is just saying like, just be mindful of making any sweeping statements that aren't completely holistically evidence-based where it has been rigorously tested because that then creates this false sense of what you must do or what you are lacking. And it becomes almost, it can be used very maliciously in a marketing way or in a sales-y way, saying, hey, this is the Astral Gauntlet you need to take to fix your sleep. Or this is the exercise you have to do to be able to fix your posture or whatever it is. I mean, that's one that I'm very, yeah. Oh, we'll get there, yeah, yeah. Don't worry, don't worry. So it's been a great show, guys. Yeah, it's been a great show, guys. Yeah, it's been a great show, guys. No, an example of what you're saying but what first comes to mind is maybe marketing yourself as a liver guy and biting into all these raw organs, trying to claim that that is going to help that specific organ in your body. But I'm not going to disagree with you. I agree with what you're saying, but I'm going to say this, they do the same thing with scientific studies because there are studies like, I could pull up 10 articles right now that say compound and chocolate shown to burn body fat or some stupid shit. And what they'll do in the study is they'll take one part of it and they'll extrapolate, oh, this burns body fat or fasting better for fat loss because it increased fat oxidation, which at the end of the day doesn't make a difference because it's the total calories type of deal. And here's again, some of the issues I have with people who are not science bases, but science bound. I'll give you some great examples. So I've been, I had the luxury of at one point I had a wellness studio. I was a trainer, bro, total like, lift weights, macros, calories, but I had the pleasure of working with people who worked in wellness and they were way ahead of what was popular. And I remember when they would talk about leaky gut syndrome, leaky gut syndrome. And the medical community and the scientific community laughed at them, leaky gut syndrome. This is so dumb. This is bullshit. What are you talking about? And they would, and they were all about it. Well, guess what? Now they call it intestinal hyperpermeability, right? This is the, this is the medical term now because they've now identified, right? Here's another one, adrenal fatigue. Okay. Lots of people making fun of adrenal fatigue, laughing at it. Now with the wellness people had right were the symptoms. What they had wrong was explaining why your adrenals get fatigued. That's not really what's happening. You have an imbalance between your, your HPA axis, right? That's actually what's happening. But the symptoms were real and the treatments that the wellness people were actually legit. That's now what they'll recommend for HPA axis dysfunction. So I think it happens on both sides and both sides can use like, you can use one scientific article done on 15 people, you know, college age males, all athletically, whatever, you know, experience. They'll extrapolate that. Here's your headline. Boom, take the supplement. It's amazing resveratrol, lengthens your telomeres will make you live longer or whatever. But then you also have the people on the other end who say ancient wisdom says, you know, if you eat this herb and, you know, shine your butthole to the sun or whatever the latest thing is, it's going to improve your health or whatever. So I think it happens on both sides. This is what makes our space so frustrating. It is so frustrating. And that's where eventually, so I like people like Dr. Andy Galpin. Yeah. Have you had on this right before? Yeah, yeah, he's great. Because he really goes into breaking down mechanistically what's happening within the body, how there's a physiology of the human body work, like what's, what are the fundamental biochemical processes, here is how it works. And then you can then filter in and say, okay, because this is how the human body works, here is how this compound or this stimulus of training or whatever, here's how it may interact or here's how it makes complete nonsense. Like if somebody told me, oh, hey, carnitine is a great fat burning supplement. So here's the latest fat burning supplement is going to help me. I'll get caught up in that if I don't understand the deeper layer of the biochemistry and science of how fat loss really occurs. And he's a great guide explaining that. And I think that's where this is where a lot of the confusion comes from people is they don't understand that deeper layer of just here, how does stuff work and then why do the things that we take potentially work or not work? Yeah, or why? So like my favorite is like, there's certain bro science things that the way that they explained it was wrong, but the results actually worked and it was because of a behavioral adaptation that nobody really explained, like fasted cardio. Fasted cardio, wake up first thing in the morning to do your cardio, you'll burn more body fat. We know that's baloney. However, when I would have people do fasted cardio, I understood that it just got them to move more. They'd wake up first thing in the morning and do a little extra activity and it worked. The other one is drinking a gallon or more water a day. We know studies will show that except for people who sweat a ton and endurance athletes doesn't really make that big of a difference, half a gallon, gallon, whatever. But I knew that when I told my clients drink a gallon of water every day, they drank less soda and wine and juice and they really had no time to drink anything else. And so they would lose weight. They peed 10 more calories. And people would hear that and be like, oh, that's not science-based, that's not evidence-based what you're doing. But it actually is. Like true evidence-based practice isn't just saying, hey, the research shows you've got to have one gallon of water per 24 hours to increase your telomeres or whatever, make it dig longer. But true evidence-based practice is using scientific data to the best of our knowledge, which is always going to be, always going to be behind because that's how the scientific process works. It's going to be a little bit delayed. But it's also using anecdotal evidence. And then finally, it's also applying it to the context of the client and their behavior. So that's a true evidence-based process. It doesn't neglect any one of those. It doesn't hyper-focus on one of them either. The mistakes some people make is they just focus purely on anecdotal or they focus purely on trying to make the behavioral change for understanding some of the science or some of the anecdote and letting it all influence the true evidence-based practice. But that's a big thing like, yes, science-bound versus maybe science-based or science-influenced and evidence-based, they're all slightly different things. Yeah, totally. I just learned later on that training, and again, this is a general population. So when I'm working with a bodybuilder and athlete or somebody that's super neurotic and going to do everything I tell them, totally different. When I'm working with the average person, it was all behavior-based. The mechanistic actions of diet and exercise, if I focused on that with them or at least focused on teaching them that, it was a waste of time. I wouldn't know that, but what I did is I always worked on behaviors, always, because that's where all behavior-based creatures. And you tell the client, count this, do that, add up this, and they'll do it for three months, and then they're off. But if I say something like, hey, eat as much as you want, just don't eat heavily processed foods, and they're like, oh, cool, I get to eat as much as I want. And then they eat 600 calories less a day because that's what happens when you don't eat heavily processed foods. All right, let's go to posture. Because that was, that post was great because it really got a good discussion going. But your original post was basically, and this is social media, so I know part of what you're doing is like, you get attention, let's start the conversation. You said something like, if your trainer or coach is doing exercises to correct your posture, they're full of shit, they don't know what they're talking about. Sure, here you go. Anybody who claims to be able to correct your posture either has no fucking idea what they're talking about or is trying to make a lot of money off you because there is no posture that has been definitively shown to be good or bad or to keep you free from injury or pain. So there you go. So explain what you mean by that exactly and what you're seeing out there that promoted it. Yeah, so. And I hope I paraphrased it. No, yeah, you have, yeah. Pretty much. It's just like, because I, one of my biggest pet peeves within this industry, especially the more I get, like Deepra got a few years ago when I was in the very professional space and clinician space and even more now in the gen pops that's got to see what a lot of the gen pop people are being exposed to is the misinformation when there is very good evidence on both sides around something like posture and it's diagnosing people saying, ah, you got anterior pelvic tilt. Ah, you have kyphosis. Ah, you have lordosis. Ah, you have this. This is why you're in pain. This is why you shouldn't be doing this exercise. You don't meet the requirements for this exercise. And it's usually, usually from a well-meaning place because you want people to be lifting as safely as possible. And you want them to be able to use good technique to be able to load up their muscles to get stronger with some kind of longevity. And I respect that. So we'll come back to that as well. But the pet peeve that I have is when people take this and a lot of very big influencer accounts take this notion and extend it further. Hey, you have this winged scapula. You have this slight scoliosis. You have this leg length discrepancy. You have anterior pelvic tilt. You are now broken. You've got to fix that. You've got to use these 10 stretches a day. This mobility drill. You've got to do this exercise. You've got to do this before you can squat. And what this does is intentional or not, but it creates barriers. It creates big barriers for the very people that many of us are trying to help, which is the GenPop. Not even the nuanced high-level athlete. It takes it now. If you take the GenPop clients, if they're now thinking, oh my God, I've got these four postural deficiencies, these issues in my body, and I need to do this half hour, even 10 minutes mobility routine before I can even train and lift in the gym. Now that's an extra barrier. And then when they're lifting, they're thinking, oh, am I really lifting correctly now that I've got all these issues? I've got this anterior pelvic tilt. I've got this kyphosis. I have this forward head. I've got this XYZ. Am I in danger just me being in the gym? Am I ready to be lifting with this kind of exercise? And it creates a lot of extra stress and extra fear that for most people in the GenPopulation, it's unwarranted, especially when you start to look at what evidence shows, not just scientifically, but also anecdotally, when it comes to things like posture, when it comes to things like the individual variances that apply across every single person, even like the four, five, however many people are in here right now, all of us, we're all going to have very, very different postures. We're all going to have very, very different displays of pain, of mood, of psychology, but taking it just by mechanically, we're going to have very different posture and very different lifting techniques as well. Where there's going to be some cornyality around, there's going to be ranges that we stay in, but there's a very good chance that if we all go through different postural assessments, we will be showing up with at least three, if not a dozen different deficiencies or things that could be improved more. And that can create a lot of psychological fear and a lot of barriers to exercise. And then when you look at it from a pain perspective, somebody was dealing with an injury or they were dealing with something like lower back pain and they went to go see a clinician who said, ah, your lower back pain is because of your anterior pelvic tilt and it's because of your weak core and it's because of your kyphosis. Now this creates even more fear and in terms of what influences pain, psychology is probably one of the biggest rocks that people aren't looking at, trying to invest and trying to allay when it comes to improving people's symptoms of pain because of how complex this whole process is. And that's my big take on that is like, yeah, like I care about posture, I care about technique because I know that, let's say we're doing a deadlift, for example, I know that a very rounded back Jefferson curl for it is Jefferson curl is not a bad exercise. But if I'm trying to do what I would do on a conventional deadlift with the Jefferson curl, I'm probably gonna have a bad time. I'm probably gonna have an issue with my overall efficiency and my ability to handle load and tolerance, all that kinds of things. But I wouldn't necessarily say one is good or bad. I just say, look, they for different purposes. Yeah. I would say, yeah. Yeah, so I've worked with some really, really good physical therapists who I think generally are probably some of the best correctional exercise specialists, generally speaking. And their assessments are never just posture, right? They'll do that, but then they'll take person further through movement and identify what causes pain, how the person feels, what is where they're strong, where they're weak, where they lack mobility. Here's the challenge with pain and here's my issue with studies on pain. Pain is probably, God, it's one of the most complex, subjective things we could measure in science because you have the signals of pain which are objective, so we can measure your pain and your pain receptors and what your brain is sensing and what's happening going on. But what we can't measure, which is the subjective part, is your experience of pain. This is where everything gets really, really weird. Like there's really good studies that'll show that people with low back pain, lots of people with low back pain, the low back pain goes away when they go on SSRI drugs. So they did no exercise. They did no correctional exercise. They didn't improve their fitness. They went on an antidepressant. My low back pain is a lot better. We have really good evidence showing that trauma can cause physical pain, for example. We have lots of evidence where, like I could take 100 random people on the street, do an MRI, and I would probably see two or three times as many discs that were not in right position than I would with people who actually have pain from that. That happens all the time. Or you have people with pain. You do imaging. You do everything, movement. You're like, everything looks great. What the hell is going on? So this is where I have a challenge with studies that show. There was one study, it's my favorite one. I don't know if you're familiar with this, where they did knee surgeries on half the people and the other half the people, they actually cut the knee open and then soda back up did no surgery. They had similar results at the end of the study. So the people who thought they had surgery, now I'm not saying knee surgery is a waste of time, but this does illustrate the challenge of like using pain as a measure, well, correcting posture, quote unquote, waste of time because this study shows that. I mean, wow, that's really tough. That's a really tough, because in some cases it is movement. In other cases, it might just be the person feeling more confident. It might just be overall fitness, or it might be the empowerment of feeling like they're doing something positive. Yeah, I want to sum up your argument, just so I'm clear with it, in terms of like your issue is mainly the diagnosis, in terms of like what they're sort of pinpointing, in terms of like, well, now I have the sickness. Like when you go to the doctor and you feel these certain symptoms and now all of a sudden you have this, oh, okay, I'm this person, identify as this type of a sickness, versus you don't have any problem with the actual addressing the mobility side of it and gaining traction in the joints and actually getting somebody in the right sort of stack where we can now perform movements more effectively and efficiently. Is that correct? Yeah, because yeah, from a purely biomechanical perspective, there's always going to be better positions we can tend toward or trend towards to help us lift the heaviest weight with as much volume frequency intensity as we can for the longest amount of time possible. That's what we should be striving towards. That will look different person to person. It's always going to be there. And yeah, my biggest thing is this hyper focus of on the diagnosis and saying like, you're fragile and that you're broken, that you're fucked up because a lot of the times what I see is it's being used to sell something. Yeah, well, I mean, off air, we were talking about somebody in particular that is exactly like that. They use, I mean, they're fear mongering, right? That's what it is. You're broken. I have the remedy to fix you and you need to do this before you can do X, Y, Z. So, okay, knowing that, but then also being somebody who is pro what Justin was saying as far as getting the joints to be more mobile. How do you reconcile that when you're, say, you're training a client and you're getting- It was a protocol look like, I guess, in terms of addressing glaring issues versus just kind of working on strength. Yeah, so let's take a specific example to help people visualize it. Let someone comes in and they want the deadlift and they can't deadlift off the ground with good technique from a deadlift perspective. Like their backs really rounded and I know from anecdotes and from the science that having a rounded back, even the lumbar spine in motion, in deadlift, isn't going to necessarily cause you pain and make you burst into flames. I probably am going to be mindful about how I load that long-term and how I progress and how much frequency I give that person. And I do want to get them lifting with a straighter back over time because that will mean that from a mechanical perspective, they can handle more load, more frequency, more effort. But if I had that client coming in and I saw a round to their back and I saw that they were losing posture in that deadlift, they rounded up a back and they just even lower back round. I said, okay, I'm not going to tell that person that it's good or bad. I'm going to say, great, cool. In my mind, what I'm going to be mindful of doing then is being mindful of the load that I use with them, the reps that I use, the range of motion that I use, the speed that I use, and how much I push them on that movement. Knowing that from a biomechanical perspective in a very vacuum sense, it's going to be loading their discs more, which is not bad. It just means they've got lower tolerance. And that's how I would navigate that. I wouldn't even have the discussion where I'd say, this is bad and it's dangerous. What you're doing right now is not ideal. I would just say, hey, for us to be able to handle the load that I want to give you, that I know that you're capable of, and for us to be able to give you the reps, the intensity, the explosives, the power that you need, I need to get you over time moving into a better position. I'll then modify that without necessarily telling them that it's good or bad. So let them lift. Why create the extra fear and stress around how they're currently moving, which they can't fix because it will take time. You know, it's a skill, because it could just be a skill thing. It could be a mobility thing, but just practice it more and practice it within their current constraints in terms of how they can handle it. Knowing that I'm definitely loading their discs more than I am their muscles. So I'll change the loading parameters around the frequency around that. And then I'll probably give them maybe some regressed exercises as well or other accessory movements alongside that. And that's where it becomes less about the one exercise in a vacuum, but more about the whole program and how it'll fit. Yeah, I think specifically speaking with the back rounding, if it's the end range of motion for the joint and the joint is supporting the weight, that's when there's an issue. If it's not the end range and the muscles are supporting, then you're probably okay doing certain types of exercises even without perfect positioning. Where do you see value then in looking at someone's posture and using that as part of your protocol to identify exercises that you may want to start with or focus on? Yeah, that's a very good question because honestly it's I don't do much of a postural assessment. I don't do much with that whatsoever. I just make sure when I give a client an exercise, they're able to do it using the muscles that I intend and the positions that I intend them to get into. So you're watching the movement? Yeah, I'll look at the movement I say there. You currently, the way that you do this deadlift, it's with a round back and it's definitely loading up into vertebral discs a lot more than I would like. So I need to get you doing it from a regressed position to a point and it could be like a two inch block pull for that person. Not because they're a powerlifter because they're just very immobile. I haven't moved much. I'll just start them with that instead. And I've got in my in my own mind my ideal standard, which you could call an assessment of here's what's going to biomechanically allow them to load up their hip extensors the most. Here's what's going to allow them to load up their shoulders the most. And can they get into that position? No, they can't. Okay, what if I took a neutral grip? What if I took a decreased range of motion? What if I just took a bit more time with the exercise from the learn the skill and just build it out from there? But the big thing that I mind for is just I just don't tell I just don't communicate. I don't think it matters to tell them that this is good and bad and that you've currently found this is where you should be. I said, no, you see is let's use exercise for you right now. Here's a program that you got to follow and here's the level at which you meant to do this movement in. So like in a lot of the programs that I run, I have a lot. I have a deadlift, for example, but I'll have 10 regressions to it. And I'll tell the client, pick whichever one you need to pick. It could be the most basic regressed low load small range of motion exercise that mimics their hip hinge lifting carry motion all the way up to maybe a deficit snatch grip deadlift being the most advanced exercise. And I let them pick or I help them choose where they currently fit in terms of their ability to load it and do it comfortably and experience the beneficial effects of lifting. And then if you can do that, great, go to an exercise, go to an exercise and keep going up as they see fits. So what so an example of like, okay, let's say somebody is squatting and their heels elevate by the time they even get to 90 degrees they get 90 degrees. The heels come up off the ground. Now is your answer that to just elevate the heels and keep them squatting or are you going to address ankle mobility at all? So that's an interesting one. By elevating the heels. Okay, people see that as a bandaid that will actually improve over time their ability to push their knees forward from a new logical perspective because of how it shifts their center of mass. Sure. And that will actually have a big impact on ankle mobility as well. So I will do that, but I'll also add anything. I'll say, you know what, you can't squat right now because your heels lift off so much. I'll give them heel elevated maybe anterior loaded squats that will help to address that in terms of the actual squat motion. But I also will give you some split squats. I'll give you like, if somebody can't squat past 90 degrees that the heels lifting off, I'm still very confident that if I give them a front foot elevated split squat and I had a very high elevation, they'll be able to push that knee, assuming no injury, they'll be able to push that knee very, very far forwards into that ideal position for ankle mobility. And I'll have that as their exercise. So in terms of my continuum, maybe the barbell back squat flat foot with a high bar position upright posture, that will be the gold standard in this mobility sense. And then the most, most, most regressed exercise from that might be a very high elevation, like a above your knee elevation, front foot elevated split squats, with some anterior load helps that you say more upright and really drive that knee forwards, maybe even with heel elevation. And then over time, decrease the elevation, decrease the whole front foot elevation, change the loading pattern, get them squatting on both feet, barbell on their back, flat foot, and it builds them up. What I think a mistake would be, would be to say, oh, you can't squat right now. Let's keep you trying to squat unless you do all these extra mobility things as well. Because then we're adding in a whole bunch of other stuff instead of just saying, is the issue really with the mobility? Yeah, it is. But how can we address that by not overwhelming them and making them hyper focus on things that may be inefficient from the efficiency perspective? So I'll say, instead of giving you a squat, I'll just give you this exercise that you can execute elegantly. I always look at it from a skill acquisition. And if the client doesn't have the skill right now, what skill do they currently have? Bring it back to that. And then build them towards, towards that ideal as well. And that may involve mobility. I like that answer. The only thing that I found that's challenging with that and why I liked it to isolate something like that and focus like say, I would, I would prime them before and do like a combat stretch. And the reason why would opposed to the direction that you went because I don't disagree is that I found in my experience that it's hard to get a client to cue them to do what I want them to do. So if I just put them in the lunge, they'll still go to that in range that's comfortable. Yeah. And either the heel comes up or they won't, they won't let the knee travel where I'm trying to get them to challenge and push that knee forward. Because I want, I want, I want it from a neurological level to get reconnected and go, hey, I want us to be comfortable with that knee going forward. So I'm just going to focus on that, driving that knee forward and I want you to connect. Now when we go into your exercise, I want you to think about that. I just have found I've had better success by isolating that first and then taking them to exercise versus just modifying the exercise and then hoping that that new modification will over time get them to do that. I like that. I think that's applicable to a lot of people. I think that's going to work well where they, no matter how much changes you give them exercise wise, they're still going to screw it up. It's people are fallible like that. I've found both to hold you where there will be some people and it usually does become the complete, complete first timer where they really just need that very low load stretch combat to help them prime that area and be, oh, this is what it feels like have my knee going forwards. What I also find is if I elevate the heel enough, it forces their knee forwards on a split squat, for example. And that could be, it would actually emulate the exact same position of a combat stretch. If you're front foot elevated, heel elevated, you can't do a front foot elevated heel squat with, sorry, front foot elevated split squat with that heel elevated. You can't do that and get your hamstring touching your calf without your knee traveling over your toes. It's like it becomes kind of biomechanically impossible unless they're really, really, really messed up. So I think both directions, I mean, the commonality there is the time it takes for them to learn and acquire the skill of stabling their ankle properly in that range of motion. And so it's not, again, it's a different mindset in that same outcome. Same goal. And if you want to add in that combat stretch or four of the stretches, it's high go for it. Like it's not going to hurt them. It's not a negative thing. Yeah, this is why I hate social media because you do a post in a video and it's like 100 words in a short video and you can't possibly explain all of this in a social media post. That's why podcasts are so great because we've talked about this forever. Do you think here's something that is a bit of controversy? And I don't know if people are saying this because it sounds counter and it gets attention or if they actually believe this or so. Do you think a deadlift is a good back hypertrophy exercise? Because I hear people arguing, it's not a back exercise. It's a hip exercise. And I get the biomechanics, but for anybody who's ever deadlifted for a long time, I think they might disagree or at least a lot of people. What do you think about? Yeah. So it comes down to definitions. What do we define as back? Are we talking the lats, the traps, the rhomboids? They're only ever going to be working isometrically or through a very, very small range of motion. So they are going to receive some hypertrophy stimulus because you can grow muscle isometrically as you guys, I know you guys have a isometric-based program as well. It's like that's going to build muscle. So of course you can. Your spinal erectors, they're definitely going through a range of motion there. They're definitely under load. They're going to grow. And I would call them back because I'd say, yeah, it's a back hypertrophy exercise. I wouldn't categorize the deadlifts as the same, I wouldn't, if I'm picking back exercises, I wouldn't put them in the same category as a pull-up or a row because we're working different muscles now, you know? The deadlifts still does work those muscles, but isn't taking through the same range of motion from a movement or a hypertrophy force production perspective as a pull-down, pull-up, row, whatever all the exercise you might want to do because it's a static exercise. So it just comes down to again the context and the nuance and how you define things. And if you were to completely categorize just a deadlift and say what is the prime mover? Being what muscles contribute the most to performing that hip hinge, hip extension pattern? It has to be the glutes, adductors, hamstrings, bit of quads as well. But to say that it's not a back exercise is, I'd say it's clickbait. I'd say it's also from poor understanding, trying to get attention. It's oversimplifying things for the sake of attention, whether it's intentional or not. You know, it's a lot of monkey see, monkey do, parroting out there. Hey, this coach says it's not, it's a bad back exercise. Like I'm going to give people a deadlift to improve their back strength. Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know it's weird about it though, I'll say this. I've trained enough people to know that it is isometric in some extent. It's very limited range of motion. You can get some, you know, rhomboid and trap, you know, range of motion because maybe your scapula is a little more spread at the top, you bring them together. Your lats at the bottom, obviously as you come up, the arms come closer to the body, so there's some little bit more range of motion that's isometric. But man, in my experience, it's like a great just overall muscle builder for the entire back. It's the load. It's the load. It's 100% the load. What, what, show me a person who's rowing anywhere near what they deadlift or doing a pull up of anywhere. So even though it's mostly isometric or short in range of motion, I think it's the load is so dramatic that you get this incredible stimulus out of it that you just wouldn't get. What other isometric do you get where you can, where it's that heavy? That's what makes it so unique and why, why I do think it's such a great back size. To your point you made earlier though, where in the hell would I ever not use other exercises to compliment the back? Yeah. That might be the whole thing, right? The whole argument of this versus that. It's like, why not both? Yeah. Talk those are pizza. I mean, I think the point of you bringing that up and why it's a good discussion for all of us to talk about is because there are people on social media that have tried to discredit it as a good back exercise. And it's like, no, anybody who's heavy deadlifted has developed a back front. What do you think about the systemic effect of some exercise? Because obviously you do an exercise as a localized effect, right? So the target muscle, hypertrophy, CNS, very targeted, but there's also kind of the systemic effect that you get like a farmer's walk, a heavy farmer's walk. Okay. I never programmed those in my workouts. I did them with clients, but I never really did it myself until maybe a few years ago we did a program called Map Strong that we wrote with Robert Oberst who's the strongest man competitor. And it's part of the programming because in strongman competitions, you often do a farmer's walk, right? Yes. So it's in the program. And I did them. I followed the program and I did them. And my arms grew from doing a farmer's walk and I don't know if it was a load or my explanation. And again, I don't think we have any science to explain this yet. Maybe we will. But I feel like it was a systemic CNS activation. My whole body had to stay tense and the load was so heavy. Like what do you think about that? And is there anything that you found with clients or with yourself or kind of points to something? Well, for one thing, I mean, you also just going to have a genetic component. You've got great arm cell. Sure. You really do. Yeah, I appreciate it. I mean, I feel like you could do calves and your arms will just grow. I think that's what happens when we do calves. So like there are four, again, reasons that we probably don't understand or at least I don't understand to any degree, but there are going to be hyper responsive muscle groups no matter what you do in terms of exercise. It's just having the anabolic signaling coming out from your brain and having the anabolic hormones circling through your system on your neck level. Some muscles will respond. They're just going to grow. You know, like my calves, they just grow. They just grow the opposite. Your arms should just grow. They're growing right now, like just sitting here. They have to add another inch, you know? Yeah. I'm more jeans to you guys today. Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I appreciate it. What are some, okay, thinking back to your journey, okay, from being just a young fitness kid to getting into coaching and acquiring all your knowledge, what were some of the greatest, you know, paradigm shifting moments for you as far as like things that you thought to be true and then it just blew your mind. You're like, no. Hang on, before I get that, I've got to answer Sal's question. Oh, okay. Yeah, so Sal's just like, come on, man. Adam stopped it because he started to complimenting my arms. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right. I don't want to shut that down. Yeah, you don't need more of that. He's just politician to me. That's enough. That's enough right there. His head barely fits through the door and he's getting a little more. His kiss is biceps. Anyway, continue by my arms. So tell me more. I'll put some oil on for the next ad break. Systemically, yeah. There's going to be some exotic, maybe a deadlift that just has such a potent stimulus on your nervous system that just tells your entire body, hey, we've got to build some muscle. And then your body will indiscriminately just put muscle wherever it can. And it will probably bias the muscle growth towards what is under the most load, which will probably be in a deadlift, glutes, hamstrings, erectors, adductors, quads, maybe. But there's going to be some that will go to your arms, so your delts, even your chest, even though they're not prime movers. And let's say that your chest is just a very good responder to muscle building unabolic signals. There's no reason why I can't grow a ton from a deadlift, even despite it not being a prime mover. I still wouldn't call the deadlift a chest exit. Even if someone stole that response from it. But that's probably what's going on there. Systemically, your brain receives a signal of saying, holy fuck, we better build some muscle mass right now. Let's just build up that machinery. And if for whatever random genetic variance you have a response in your chest, it might grow some. It might not grow as much as your glutes, hamstrings, erectors being the prime movers there, but they'll receive some stimulus. So it makes sense to me that your arms would grow on a farmer's walk or a deadlift, despite then not going through much of a range of motion. But then the other, the next extension to that question is also going to be about how do we bounce, like would you then program, for you personally, would you then want to program farmer's walks on your arm day? Would you program that for everybody else, generally speaking, as an arm exercise? You wouldn't. You'll say like, if you want to grow arms, you're going to do curls, you're going to do dips, you're going to do pull-ups, you're going to do rows, you're going to do the other actual flexion movement-based exercises instead. But that wouldn't discount the fact that farmer's carries have all deadlifts have helped be an anabolic thing for your arms. But it just comes down to how you define that. Because if you gave everybody, based on your experience, a farmer's carry or a deadlift as a arm day exercise, they're probably not going to grow and they're probably going to get very systemically and neurologically fatigued, which will then impact on their ability to actually create local fatigue in the tissue that they want to grow. But yeah, that's a really good question and experience from yourself as well. I think there's a novelty thing there too. I think because it's such a different stimulus. And I think that part of why we wrote a program that was centered around isometrics, I also remember during COVID, you were doing so much stuff. And I remember that was another time that I was pointing people in your direction because I think isometrics have fallen out of favor. Nobody talks about them and there's tremendous benefit. Oh, the studies around them are incredible. Yeah. And so there's a lot of your traditional programming that's done that's out there online just doesn't include a lot of isometrics. And there's an isometric component to you doing farmer carries. And you're doing it very loaded. So I think that being novel and getting the benefit. There's a lot of heavy force demand that you're trying to sustain versus. So I think there's your point to the genetic component, the overall systemic that you guys are saying. And then also the novelty of probably not training a lot of isometric exercises. For sure. I really like your answer. And back to isometrics, it's hard to find actually a training modality with as many studies. Isometrics has been studied heavily, especially in the Soviet Union. This is obviously before the Iron Curtain came down. They use them quite a bit to train their Olympic. And they dominated obviously in strength sports. And it did fall out of favor. And I think it's because you don't use any fancy equipment for it. But I mean, I can't think of a safer. It's actually hard to sell shit with it. It's one of the safest ways to exercise. And although it doesn't, the strength gains from it don't continue because it kind of plateaus very quickly. The strength gains are very fast initially. And it doesn't require. A certain degree carry over a force transfer. And it doesn't require a ton of recovery. So it's like this wonderful tool you can add to your routine and see gains right away. But it did fall out of favor. I think it's the equipment thing. You can't sell a lot of fancy. What do you think? I think one thing it's equipment where there are a couple of really cool devices. I wish I knew the names of them. I've got to find them. These isometric devices we can set up for every single muscle group, different isometric movements. And they usually, but it's usually geared more towards rehabilitation. Like a lot of the research that people use for isometrics and a lot of the applications, unfortunately it gets, it's high focus on the safety of them. Because they are a great regression for movements. And then people forget that hang on. They're also a great way for strength athletes to improve their power, their speed, their force production, their activation and motor units. But they're people focused on the rehab. So I'm thinking, oh, it's foffy. Also, I think it's just, it's fucking hard. Like if you're doing like an extended mass isometric, it's really hard. Even just the 10 second max hold. You got to have a gun to get to that complete max output. It's challenging. And I think that's part of where it falls out of favor. There's a lot of just different variables there. But I think probably a big one is honestly equipment and the ability to make a sales thing out of it. Yeah. It doesn't look sexy. I'm trying to sell people under here. What's the guy doing? He's not moving. Yeah. I think all you use was a towel, right? I use a towel. Like, sorry, buy my e-book now. You got a towel, you got a gym. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. You know, there's another great technique I'd love your opinion on. You know who Paul Anderson was, one of the greatest weightlifters of all time. Yes, yes, yes. The American weightlifter. This guy was incredibly strong. This is pre-anabolic steroids or maybe there were, but they definitely weren't using what they use later on. Yeah. And he would do something called an Anderson squat, which we now, I think we now call a, we might call it like a dead squat or whatever. But he would get, so without the, I don't know, what's the term? Is it the stretch reflex or the stretch loading when you lower weight and then come back up? Yeah, it's like that. Yeah, stretch reflex. Yeah. He would get under a bar already at the bottom and lift it from there without lowering it, which if you've ever tried this, you're not nearly as strong as when you lower a weight. And he would do this, and it was one of the keys that he said to his strength. I know some athletes that do this and it's tremendous. I used it to gain literally 30 pounds on my squat years ago where I would load the bar on the bottom of the rack, get underneath it, get in my position, and then take off. And it made my normal squat go through the roof. Do you, have you ever tried using these or any kinds of variations of this type of training? What do you think is happening there? I think, yeah, I've used it a lot in the past when I was doing a lot of power lifting and strength-based work. And I think it has a lot of application. I mean, if you look at how most people would do like their max deadlift or close to a max deadlift, usually, say we're doing a double, a heavy, true two rep max, usually the second rep is better than the first one. And why is that? It's usually because they've had that essential component to find a better position. And then they get, because people suck. There's some energy loaded and saved. And then that's what they say. There might be as well. Definitely as part of that as well. Even if they did a complete dead stop and like a bit of a relax, neurologically, their body, their brain knows how to get into slightly better position because of that lowering component. And then it's like, okay, now I can get into a better position for rep number two. And even that happens to a lot of very, very, very advanced top-level deadlifters where that's their common issue is my second rep is always better than the first rep. And it's like, well, how do I do the first? How do I do the second rep first? Just do that one instead. And that's why I think what's going on with squats is when you start the anus and squat in the bottom there, it's forcing you to learn positionally where the best position is because you don't get the eccentric time on the lowering phase to work that out for yourself. And then definitely there is a whole stretch of reflex where you get rid of that elastic energy. So it is more of an honest squat, I guess, in inverted commas. And just the amount of recruitment it takes to go from a complete dead start in terms of modian recruitment, your brain has to work a lot more efficiently and effectively to go from a dead start as opposed to getting that lowering component. So there's a few different mechanisms going on there. What would you consider for you one of the most underrated valuable training techniques? Would you say it would be isometrics or is there something else? Honestly, it's been like for the last 10 years, it's been isometrics. It's been whether it's for a rehab perspective, whether it's from a conditioning, like a perspective for like the capillaries, the blood vessels, it could be isometrics, it goes from max strength, like the anus and style squat, or even just a pause squat, or just even a max isometronic like Bruce Lee style isometrics in whatever application may be, whether it's extended for like five minutes or it's a short 10 second thing, I think isometrics are very, very underutilized. They use a lot in very nuanced applications, like rehab or for the very elite sporting people, but the gen pop can benefit so much just from utilizing that, even from a technique perspective. 100%. Yeah, one of the easiest ways, advanced ways to do this, and I've talked about this on the show, so I hope people try this, what they're home gyms, is you can literally anchor two chains into the concrete, making sure they're very, very well anchored, put collars, have attachments for collars, and I could set up a barbell on a different varying length, so I could get underneath it and squat, obviously I'm not going to move, or I could press, or I could row at max effort. The strength gains from that come so fast and furious, it's ridiculous, like literally if you practice that by the second week, and then you go to your traditional lifts, you're going to be like 10 pounds stronger on a little less. Yeah, it's incredible. I mean, that was a lot of what Bruce Lee would do. Yes. It's isometric work. I'm a huge fan, by the way. And that's where I'll use a towel. Just to, again, you've got to have a pretty long towel to be able to squat with that, to better get into the ground anchored on the ground, but any, like I used to actually use a lot of gymnastic rings, the straps, that's the perfect way to create an anchor point. Wrap that around yourself, put it on your shoulders, step on it so you can't lift it up, and just squat or do a deadlift position, and that will be a similar kind of finding to yourself. It will really ramp up your modian equipment, which will carry over to your actual movement exercise after. Great way to very quickly supercharge your strength. So going back to the original question that I asked you, that you left, you know, this is good on this topic, like these techniques, and what are some things that, you know, you've changed your mind about during your lifting career, or things that were paradigm-shattering for you? Biggest one, 100% conditioning. Conditioning cardiovascular work. Again, like growing up, I was a bodybuilder, and cardio is seen as a way to lose fat. And I lost a lot of fat doing a lot of cardio. Like from my first bodybuilding show, I had to drop about 45-50 pounds of fat, and it was done, in my opinion, through, like it's calorie deficit, but my neck, the way that I implemented it, was doing like three hours for as a cardio a day. Oh my God, every day? Not from day one, but it was, it started out, you know, 30 minutes a day, and then it went to 40 minutes a day. And I went, okay, an hour's kind of boring, let's do an hour in the morning, and let's do maybe 20 minutes at night, and then it went, it got to three hours, four hours. It was not good. Somehow, I balanced uni, and working as a PT, and my actual weight training, in between, I don't know how, I don't know how. Man, you must hold on to muscle really well, because I did not, I lost a lot of muscle. Was not very successful. No, just, yeah, I lost all my muscle. That's a catch there. But in my head, like, cardio is for fat loss. In the off season, when you're trying to build muscle, you're trying to build strength, you don't do cardio, you don't do conditioning work, because it's going to decrease your gains. And then I started learning a lot more about conditioning and cardio, and obviously, the fact is like, hey, cardio is about not eliciting a calorie deficit, it's not about energy burn, it's not about fat loss, it's literally about training your cardiovascular system, your heart, your blood vessels, your lungs, and that has applications for muscle building. Like, if you take all of us right now, instead of we want to put on as much muscle as we can, like, we want to get fucking jacked. I want to put on 30 pounds in the next 30 days, okay? Apart from steroids. D-Ball. Yeah, that's the protocol, right? We're going to use a lot of Anand's Roll and D-Ball. Give me 30 days, dude. 30 days. If we can, we all have our idea of what the program or the anabolic stack or whatever would be that would help us out. But if you took all of us and put us through the exact same protocol of all those drugs and all those training, we'll get a response. But if we took our exact identical twin, but that person had a better VO2 max, a more intricate capillary network, or more of a robust heart, lung, blood vessel, all that kind of cardiovascular system, if you took that person and put the exact same protocol on them, they'll probably put on 60 pounds, not 30 pounds. Yeah, I love what you just said, because my issue or our issue with cardio is making that the fundamental way that you try to lose body fat, which we've talked about many times, is really not a really good long- The manual calorie birth. Yeah, it's not a really good long-term approach. If I really get boiled down the root of what annoys me about that, is that we value, or I should say the mainstream, values exercise based off of its calorie burn. This is how we've ranked exercise for so long. Oh, we gotta burn more calories. What's the best form of exercise? The one that burns the most calories. Which is terrible because we ignore the most important thing about exercise, which are the adaptations, which is what you're talking about. And I agree 100% with you. When I have better stamina, I can lift weights better. Well, my stamina is crap. I can't lift weights that great. You try to do a set of 20 reps of squats, which is great for building legs with poor stamina. You're dead, you can't do it. So I completely agree with you. So 100%. What are your favorite forms of conditioning? Do you just steady state, or do you like hit, or like for... Yeah, it varies. So I mean, there's so many layers to how you can program conditioning. People normally think of it as hit all this, and they think of it as being on a treadmill, or maybe mix it up and go onto a spin bike, or maybe mix it up and go into an air bike, or a rower. But really conditioning can also be how you perform your weights. Like there's no, like we identify conditioning by exercise choice of running, or jogging, or cardio exercises. But conditioning should be and determined based upon the work to rest interval, the duration, and the overall intensity that you use. And because of that, you can use any exercise. You know, you can use deadlifts, you can use an overhead squat or whatever. So it really comes down to how you apply the exercises. So that will then become individual dependent. What I personally will do will be based upon how it fits into what else I'm currently doing. So when it comes to programming for conditioning, the first thing I want to ask is, do I want to be, am I focusing on this particular session? Am I focusing on aerobic conditioning or anaerobic conditioning? Because there's totally different things in terms of the overall duration of it. And that will then determine, okay, how long is it going to be, and what's the relative intensity. That will then determine what exercises are going to make the most sense. Like if I'm doing an all out anaerobic 20 second burst, like 20 seconds on and a minute off for like 10 sets, that's going to have a very specific anaerobic conditioning stimulus on my body. It's also going to predicate me towards certain exercises where maybe something like more plyometric based exercises are a really bad choice because I'm going to be very sore. It's a high injury risk. It's going to damage my ability to be able to do higher frequencies of that to create more adaptations. So, and then when, why would I do that over doing more of a steady state long duration? It may be because I need to improve my max power output and my ability to handle things like lactate, my ability to handle myself working at a maximum intensity under fatigue conditions. That's a very different adaptation to what I'm going to get from the zone two cardio. The low intensity stuff is going to work more on the mitochondrial side of things. It's going to work more on the, just the overall blood flow and the stroke volume, the heart side of things, adaptations there. So I think the mistake people make is they argue between hit or list. Hit, you can get the afterburn. List, you're going to get the lower intensity, but the reality is you need both and they support each other. They're going to help each other. So we should be doing plenty of both styles of training. You can't just do lists, even though it helps you, it's going to help you for recovery. It's going to over time, not let you learn how to push hard under a fatigue state at a maximal intensity of the max heart rate. You can only get that from doing true anaerobic intervals and you can't even get that from doing weightlifting. You can't get that from even a hard set of like a true grinder, 15 represented squats. You're not going to practically be able to do that enough to be able to get the anaerobic stimulus that you need from just doing a few hard sets in the gym. Because technically speaking, I could do a 20 second all out burst one minute off 10 sets. That's going to give me the anaerobic benefits of training under fatigue conditions. I could do the same thing on a squats. I could do a 20 reps set of squats. That might take me 20, 30 seconds. My eyeballs will be bursting out. I could take a minute rest, do it again. The issue there is, as I do more sets to commit the required volume to create the adaptation for conditioning for the anaerobic stimulus, it's dangerous. It's dangerous, impractical. So eventually, whether you like it or not, we all should be doing some cardio work that is probably going to be on a cardio-based machine in the anaerobic threshold and also in that low intensity threshold to supplement and support our weightlifting. Because you can't get the same adaptations across all these different things from the one implement. And that's what we should be looking at. How much of that are you programming in a week? Typically, a generic answer obviously. So, if I really want to drive up the adaptations to improve the benefits for recovery in a certain cycle of training for myself right now, it would be every day I'll be doing some kind of conditioning, whether it's anaerobic or aerobic. I might usually flip-flop between the two, so maybe three days of each a week. My weight training will take a back seat. I might only train twice a week for doing pure strength work. Because I can't handle all the extra cardio work I'm doing. But it's okay, because training two days a week, are you going to lose muscle mass now? Such a good point that you just did. You just said that right there. Because I think everybody just adds. That's the mistake that I think most people would make, and then they end up losing muscle because of how much they're throwing at one. For sure, but it's like, what's my main priority right now? My main priority right now is to drive the cardiovascular adaptations. I need to do aerobic and anaerobic stuff. I need to do it probably most days, because it doesn't take a lot of soreness, it doesn't take a lot of recovery from us. I'll do it every single day. But, neurologically, I maybe probably can't perform as much in my weight sessions. I'll do less there. But again, realistically and mechanistically, am I going to lose a lot of strength and muscle mass training twice a week with weights? I'm not. It's going to, at absolute worst, it might come down 10% that it'll come back overnight. That's the beauty of strength training, is that you, such a small amount is required to maintain what you built versus what you did. Not necessarily true with other forms of exercise. I know with cardiovascular exercise, the more, I mean, obviously you can't keep doing this, but the more the better. Strength training is really interesting. Especially, I've been working out for so long now that I can keep muscle really easy. Like if I just worked out twice a week, I wouldn't lose any muscle or strength, but I wouldn't have built any, or get to this point, which is two days a week. It's really interesting. Yeah, and cardio is interesting as well, because it is kind of similar where, once you spend like a good four, eight, maybe 12-week block of doing this dedicated conditioning style work, you've created changes to your heart. Like your left ventricle was grown. You've created more blood vessels. You've changed your body on a cellular level. That's not going to change overnight either. Like once I've done that block of say, even just four weeks of doing a lot of conditioning, I'll probably come back to just two sessions a week. Like I'll do one extended, like one hour 90-minute session, and I'll do one 15-minute anaerobic session, and that'll be enough to maintain, and then I can ramp up the weight training, and it'll maintain for a while, but eventually there is going to be slow diminishing returns, slow diminishing benefits to it, and then I'll need to ramp it back up. Yeah. Like we know for all of us training two days a week with weights is enough to maintain, but for how long? If we trained just two days a week for the next five years, we're definitely going to be a bit smaller, a bit weaker at the time. Yeah, sure. Yeah, we've got to find where is that point where what's the minimum effective dose of cardio that I can do to maintain where I'm currently at, and then when I see it decreasing as well, I need to add more back in again. It's all it's ebb and flow, push and pull. So good. That's programming though. Yeah. How do you feel about the full body versus body part split debate that you often see? I remember for me that was really a game changer, and we talk about on the show why, and it's not necessarily the frequency because you could do a body part split and still hit the body parts two or three days a week, but rather it was just the exercise selection tended to be better because I'm doing less volume per body part, and if I miss the workout, I didn't miss the legs or whatever, the body parts I like to miss or whatever. So I mean, what is your experience on that and do you have a preference? I personally prefer for most people, this is gen pop and advanced people. I usually try to trend towards more of a full body or a blended body part thing, as opposed to day shoulder day, back day. And that's actually not how I grew up. I grew up doing body part splits. I grew up doing bro stuff, but then I realized that, hey, it's overkill, and I'm doing 10 exercises for back, and they're all good exercise, I'm pushing them all hard, but at some point the stimulus just keeps going down and the fatigue starts going up. So the whole full body or half body, upper lower splits, they're designed to try to find this balance between stimulus and fatigue and saying, how much do we really need to stimulate muscle growth or strength or whatever the adaptation is versus how much more would I add on that would then create extra fatigue. And that's why I think there's a magic in full body work is it forces you to really be intelligent about how you choose exercises and how you direct that hard stimulus because you only have one exercise for say back on that one day. So you've got to make sure it's a good exercise. You wouldn't necessarily pick deadlifts for your lat hypertrophy on that full body workout. You think more of a pull up, you think more of a pull down or a row instead, and you'll do deadlifts maybe as a hip extensor posterior chain on the other full body day that you do. So it kind of forces you organically to be smarter about exercise selection and also be smarter about how you really push yourself and make sure you're giving yourself an honest effort. Agreed, yeah, I'm just spoken like someone who's trained a lot of people. Yeah, also very practical too. You know, when you think of the average gin pop, the person who goes a whole year and doesn't miss, weeks here and there of training. And if you miss a couple of days in a week and you only got in one day, at least you got a full body routine and you didn't miss certain body parts. So that's why I really like it. Yeah, so what annoys you the most right now about, I guess the mainstream, I don't know, social media fitness space, it changes all the time. So one minute they say this, another minute this is the popular thing. Is there anything right now that you're seeing that's kind of popular that where you're just, you want to roll your eyes? It's less about actual what people are saying because there's always going to be a shit that pisses me off. But it's actually more about the platform. It's more about the whole general culture of people and society as a whole on a meta level. And honestly, it is TikTok. And it's not just because TikTok is a new platform, but it's actually what I've noticed that it creates what it breeds in terms of the population. Like I can put something up on Instagram or I can put the same video up on YouTube and it will create a fair bit of discussion. It'll create like people are saying, yeah, talk to me more about this or I disagree with you. Let me tell you why I disagree with you. And we have discussions around that. You posted on TikTok, no one has their discussions. Instead it's just about, I'm going to tag my favorite influencer because I want them to tear you down. I want that person to give their opinion. I don't want to give my opinion myself. I just want to just sit back in my voyeuristic little- Watch drama. Chamber. Yeah, and just watch a reality talk show or reality show Kardashians with Eugene and mine pump Adam instead. And it creates a very, very different platform, I guess, a very different arena where discussion and nuance things and information can no longer thrive. And it's more just about egos and arguing and controversy. And I don't think it's necessarily social media to blame because, hey, YouTube, Instagram, it creates a lot of really good traction for me personally in terms of good discussions. But it's TikTok specifically where I've always got to just like, take a deep breath, Eugene. Use TikTok for what it is in terms of gaining engagement, gaining, not discussions, and not even back and forth with anybody. It's just like putting stuff out so people know who you are and just walk away from it because I get too pissed off. You know, that's why when we first got together, we wanted to do a podcast because, and at the time podcast, I mean, straight up, this is almost eight years ago, I think, seven, eight years ago, to ask people, hey, do you listen to podcasts? I swear to God, 50% of them would ask you, what's a podcast? Okay, so it wasn't the most popular, but we chose podcast over Instagram and other media because we know that fitness and health and nutrition and wellness and fat loss and all that stuff is a conversation. Like I've never trained a client and gotten through them accurately with 50 words or like a post. It was always like a conversation that we had over time and that's why we enjoyed podcasts. This was an hour, two hours, we could talk about this, discuss like we're doing right now, nuances. Do you have any, do you have a podcast, by the way? Are you, any ideas in the future? I feel like you're well suited for it because talking to you on a podcast is, you can really discuss all these nuances versus social media, even Instagram is really tough, but YouTube gives you more time. But yeah, like I'm probably behind me. Katrina's just laughing because literally every other day and every person I meet, they're like, you should do a podcast. And this goes on for years. Well, we don't say this to a lot of people. I'm gonna tell you, we'd rather people don't put up our podcast. For me personally, I shoot myself in the foot a lot because I have one of my big limits holding me back is like, I see what you guys have and I'm like, man, this is fucking cool. If I did a podcast, I don't wanna do it over Zoom. I don't wanna do it over Skype. I wanna do it in person. I wanna have a proper facility where I'm writing something, which I do have, like I got my own, my own private gym, my own provinces where I could film things like this. But I also know that I feel like I wouldn't be upkeeping if it was just me on my own where I would need, you know, you had a group of guys who can dance off each other. If it was just the Adam show, just the Justin show, you probably, you wouldn't run out of ideas, but you would find it hard to keep. It wouldn't be as popular. I'll tell you that right now. It'd be hard if you keep showing up as well. But there are guys like, you know, Ben Greenfield has got his own podcast. He does all his own stuff and he just pumps it out and that's his thing. For me, personality wise, doing it on my own is not a good fit. So I'm like, okay, what would I personally want to get out of a podcast? I'd love to be able to have interactions with cool people in person. And I've got the space for it. I'd have the equipment be able to do that, but I don't have being in Australia. Very isolated. It's a little far. Ah, hey Adam, you want to come out and do a podcast next weekend? I'll foot the bill for you. Here's the biggest disagreement I'm going to have with you because I'll disagree and I'll tell you why because there's a lot of paralysis by analysis going on right now. I disagree. You could do just fine by yourself. You're very, very articulate and you could pick a subject and you don't have to do... We do five podcasts a week. That was our strategy was to just blow people out with information plus we like to talk. You do one episode a week and it would support your social media and you would literally bring up a subject and talk for 45 minutes on it. I think you were made for that type of thing. Well, there's other ways to do it too. In fact, actually, I think you mentioned Andy Galpin earlier. By the way, it's so crazy to me. Isn't it wild how not popular he is? I know, it's messed up. It's the best. It's because he's not click baity. It's because he is every time he... One of my favorite things... He doesn't look like a big juice addict. One of my favorite things about Andy when you talk to him is he is very careful to... Every time he never speaks in certainties. Even when he's speaking about studies, he'll always tell you all the nuances of it and what we're getting right now. Yeah, so he's... But unfortunately, he's just not popular. A lot of people don't know who he is, but I think he puts out some of the best information. My point of bringing him up, he does seasons, which I think is kind of a cool way to do it. If I were to do podcasting over, if it was just me by myself, I would actually plan out 12 episodes. That way I'm not held accountable to every week have to come with this thing. I'd plan out my 12 episodes and it would be a season. That way I know the content I'm going to produce. Now hopefully I'd get some guests. Maybe I could convince to come in. If not, I'd hold some by myself. But then when I'm done with my season, I can pause until I'm ready for my next season and say release it like a Netflix show. I love that. Yeah, it's smart. What's his podcast? Oh, I forgot what he is. I really liked that idea. Yeah, no. There's other people that do it too. I just remember he was one of the first people I saw that he might not even still do it anymore. Yeah. It was like a lot of historical stuff too, like bodybuilding. Yeah, yeah. He's a real historian around bodybuilding. So he's fun to talk to. Yeah, I think that's cool. Yeah. I think you're absolutely right, because I know for myself, I'm a big paralysis behind analysis. Okay. And for the podcast on there, that's my thing is like, does it have to be perfect? It does not. But my thing that holds me back is like, I want it. Okay. You know what'll help? Go back. And I don't want my audience to do this. Don't do this audience. But I'll tell you, go back and listen to our early episodes. And they'll be like, oh, okay. These guys, if I can do it, they do not. There's no paralysis by analysis here. No, the movie is a season thing, because you can come up with 12, I love that. 12 episode topics that you have. Maybe you could even do planning ahead where you line up, like I said, a couple of guests where maybe you could do it, or if you were over here, you could do one, right? And then you don't have that pressure of like you have every single week drop. Yeah. No, I really like it. I can focus for 12 weeks, or for 12 episodes. I'm not going to end 12 days even. I can do that. Yeah. And then I'll just fall face to the effort for 12 years. I mean, you're one of the guys that are out there, you know, in our space that I think does a really good job of communicating both the science base and then you also have the experience of training real people. That's one of the things that's interesting today is you have, I mean, this didn't exist when we were coming up. You have like online coaches, coaches who like literally have never seen a body in person. They've just, they got their certification. You've read a lot of books. Yeah. And yeah, they may have read some books. Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah, maybe. Not all of them. You know, but they haven't actually gone out and trained a lot of people and they're out there providing information and arguing and debating. And they're good at social media. That's the challenge is like, they're good at gaining attention. And so they're popular, but as far as the advice and experience they have, they just lack that. Yeah. I mean, you learn so much, you know this because you train a lot of people. You learn so much because you can look at the evidence and say high protein diet is superior, but I've worked with not a, this is not a majority of people, but a minority of people where it just messes with their digestion. For sure. So it's not a good option for them. For sure. So that experience goes a long way, but I definitely think you were made for discussion. Thank you. Because the other platforms, I mean, YouTube, you can do this. YouTube gives you the opportunity, but the other platforms are like quick bit. And we know we do this too, because they'll take one with something that we said make it a short clip and it's controversial. But, and people will comment and I'm like, okay, you got to listen to the episode because this, this doesn't explain the whole thing. This is just me making a statement that was designed to get your attention, but this is much more of a discussion. Absolutely. I mean, that's what it's designed for. I mean, it's one thing that's why, as much as I hate TikTok, I know what it's, what its benefits are. So I just got to make sure I don't look at the comments. I'm going to make sure I just put the content I want out and get out. Same as Instagram is like, I know what this is good for. I know what the story is good for, the story shares. I know what this platform is made for, for maybe interaction with some people. But I know that it's not made for long form. That's where I have the YouTube as well. But then definitely I know that a podcast would be the final tier that helped her just bring it all together. What's your main source of business? Is it, is it coaching and training people? Or do you- It's, it's my app. So Gambaru Method is my app, where it is like a program, coaching, nutrition, education, platform. Everything that I do is all on there. People visit can like, similar to all the maps, maps programs that you have, instead of having as individual purchase bundle programs, where it's all in the one membership. Got it. And so people there's like a few, tens of thousands of people on there using these and interacting and getting critiques, everything. And that's, that's the main thing. I used to do a lot of touring. Like when I was here last time, a few years ago, pre-pandemic, it was, I was on the road for like eight, nine months, just running events. Doing seven hours and starting. And then that nearly killed me. That burned me. Like, I was, I was kind of happy the pandemic happened. Like, oh, I can, I've got an excuse to not go on tour again. And I could drive, I could just focus a lot more on the, on the app side of things, which, which honestly made a lot of what I do a lot more accessible because for people to come to an event, or for people to be online coaching with me, it's so expensive just because of what they have to invest to make it worthwhile for me to be able to meet up, meet the demand. Right. And I've got to jack my prices. I was like, well, that's not feasible because it's not like, for me to actually train someone or coach somebody one on one, same as you guys, what would your hourly rate have to be? Yeah. You got to measure the cost benefit and the cost of not doing something else. And like for you guys, it probably would easily be a few thousand dollars for a single session to make it actually worth all, but versus what you would be spending the hour doing. And then realistically, is it actually worth that person to spend a few thousand dollars for one session? Absolutely not. They're better off seeing a PT in the anytime fitness around the corner and they're going to get a similar benefit for, for more value. And I respect, I say, you know what? That's why the Apple, the e-books that you guys have, they're so beneficial because it makes it more accessible to be able to get what they need at a reasonable price. I keep hearing about the, how the fitness and health scene, I guess, for lack of a better term in Australia is just massive. I keep people keep telling us, you got to go to, is it, is it like a big, is that accurate? Yeah, like when it comes to, I look at it from when I was- Huge fitness culture, right? Yeah. When I was touring and doing all my events, and it's a bit biased because I am Australian as well, but I do, I do see as it playing out with people like Charles Pollacken when he was around, he was touring a lot and I was helping to organize a lot of tours for other people as well. The biggest places that would sell out in terms of, for fitness-based education and training, it was Australia, the UK, they were the top two. Oh, wow. Yeah, and then next would maybe be through Asia, maybe Singapore, maybe Canada, they'd be kind of neck and neck. And then you have some random places like Norway or something we wouldn't even think of, but these other countries in Europe. The States would actually be surprisingly low. Even though you have so many people in the States who care about fitness, especially here in California, such a very fitness forward space, but I find that for whatever reason, people don't want to spend money in the States on education, whether it's an ego thing, whether it's a cultural thing. I'm not too sure what it is. They think that they know what they're doing. Honestly, I think that, I think personally, outside, objectively, I think they have that belief, though. I think it's because, I think culturally, in whatever reason, in the UK, through Asia and in Australia, people are a lot more willing to be like, hey, I don't know. I don't know, I need to learn more from this view. I need to learn more to get better. It's in the States, they're like, I know what I'm talking about. I'm the fucking king. I'm the best. You can't tell me shit. Or they'll respect that I don't know enough, but they don't want to spend. They don't want to spend much money. Interesting. They'll spend like 50 bucks and I'll be expensive. I wonder if it's just the competition. There's so much competition here. It could be that as well. But I find like, if I run an event in Australia, it'll sell out in about 10 minutes. If I run an event in the UK, probably maybe an hour. US, it'll be two months to maybe sell. Wow. We would have been out there by now, but you guys have such big spiders. I don't know if I could. They're not that bad. I mean, look. Bro, I've seen videos of people. Toilets, I just have to clear this up. It doesn't happen like, I barely see anything like that. And the reality is, the ones that are going to kill you, you're not going to see them. You don't need to worry about that. There's so much money. You're going to be dead. You're going to be dead. Who cares? You live the good life. Look at the time is now. Eugene, who are some of your favorite content creators in Australia? Who are your peers that you like? So my absolute favorite is my training partner, Cheryl. Cheryl Grant, again, it's going to sound incredibly biased, but she does put out some incredible content that nuance more for women. She's an incredible role model for women. She's putting out really good nuance discussions. And she's again, a person who doesn't want to be an echo chamber. She wants to learn. She wants to always bounce ideas off other people and just expand her mind as much as possible. Other creators like this guy, Luke Tullock, you may not have heard of him. He was based in Sydney. And now he's actually, he's over in I think Sweden now, because he went pre-pandemic on a holiday and then kind of got stuck there with his wife. And then they had a kid, and then now they're just somewhere in Europe. But he, I call him Australian, so because he has an Australian accent, but he's a really good evidence-based, science-based content creator. And again, like, what I love is, he's very much like an anti-Galpin. It's never to Finland. It's never like, you should do this. It's always bad. Here's the mechanisms that we know so far. And here's how open it is to interpretation. I think, I feel like us in Australia, we can adopt James Smith as a person. He's like, we're going to say, yeah, he's an Aussie, he's a good guy. Yeah, as much as he triggers a lot of people, and he loves little people the wrong way, if you look at where he's coming from, and you look at his character, well, like, what can we learn from that? Like, whether or not you like the way he's style, like, I'm sure people don't like my style. I know that. And he's comfortable with that. And say, what can you learn from the way that he carries himself? Whether or not you agree with him, whether or not you agree with his style and his mannerisms. The fact is, what can you learn from the way that he conducts himself and how he's clearly a very happy individual, and he's very confident in himself, and he wasn't always like that? Yeah. And I think that's something that we can aspire to. It's like, you know, I don't want to be you. I don't want to be like you, but I respect where you've come from and what you're doing and how you're living your life on your terms. Yeah, I think the challenge is, I like that, because I don't mind disagreeing with people. I don't mind not liking your style. What I mind is not people not being able to, like, debate and discuss, like, and being afraid or too sensitive or whatever triggered by it. That annoys the shit out of me. And I think you see more of that in fitness just because we tend to be more insecure because most people get into fitness because they had body image issues, I think that might carry over. Yeah. Something you mentioned that I think is a really bright spot, you mentioned your training partner and how she's influential. The communication to women about strength training has radically changed since when I first started. It's amazing. You know, I haven't worked out in a commercial gym in a long time. I just restarted maybe six months ago. And I'm seeing women in the gym lift, deadlift, squat, bench, overhead press, using, like, challenging themselves with strength-based exercises like I'd never seen before. This is a totally different, it was so different back in the day that this is really, if I could point to one really positive change in the fitness space, I'd say that has to be one of the biggest ones. Yeah, that's a big one. It's incredible. And it's honestly intimidating. So, like, people ask me and say, hey, did you want to do powerlifting? I'm like, I don't want to do powerlifting because I will be out lifted by women who are, like, four weight classes below me because of just how many people are doing it. That's how Steffi Collins squat, four or five. Yeah, like, I'm done. I'll give it a go. I'm good. I'm happy. I stopped squatting. Yeah, I don't want to expose myself to any more ridicule than I already am, you know, just, like, leave me out of this kind of thing. I think it's incredible though, like, seeing how women are a lot more confident and they're making a much bigger presence within the fitness industry. And I think it's so cool. And I think it's actually the important thing is, if I look at my analytics on my followings on YouTube or Instagram or whatever, I have, like, 80% male. But you look at my customers, it's, like, 60% female. Yeah. And women are the ones who are driving the industry forwards. They're the ones who care, they want to learn, they've got no ego. They want to push the industry forwards. And that's why I think we're seeing such a big surge in the fitness industry. It's not because of men. Even though men are typically seen as, like, the authorities or whatever, you look at the biggest influence to the creators, it's mainly males, unfortunately. But they're not really the ones pushing the industry forward. You think they are because they're the faces of it, but really it's the women because they're the ones creating the demand. They're the ones creating the market. They're the consumers. Yeah, the consumers. They're like that for most markets. A lot of people don't know that. They're the consumers of most markets. So that's the same for us. Yeah, very true. Well, bro, it's been a good conversation. Yeah, yeah. I really appreciate you coming on the show. I like that we can talk about certain things and appreciate what you're doing. And I think you should start a podcast. I really do. Absolutely. Thank you all of you. There's the take away. I love that idea, the whole 12-week season, although maybe four-week one-one episode season will still see what happens. But I love that idea. So thank you for bringing that up. And thank you for the time. Like, I really appreciate it. Like, I love it when I came back and I came here like whenever it was a few years ago, I really wanted to come on, but we couldn't make it work. But I'm so happy we can finally make this happen. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, good deal, man. Yeah, good deal, man. Thanks for having me on, man. Yep. Thank you, guys. How do I incorporate cardio and not lose muscle? Seeing people do this before where they'll start to lose the sharpness of their muscles or they'll start to lose the sculpt a little bit. And that's disheartening. But if you do it right, then you minimize that muscle loss or that metabolism slowdown. In fact, if you do it right, you can actually speed up your metabolism at the same time that you build stamina and endurance. You just have to be able to kind of program it properly. And the way to program it improperly is just go do it as much cardio as you can for as long as you can. Right.