 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. In this episode of Motherfuckin' Mind Pump. That's right, motherfucker. For the first- How do you start it all with that? We go right into it. Sal's daughter's standup routine. Oh, and Sal, it was such a sweet story. Yeah, we talked about my daughter's standup routine at the talent show. A lot of crying going on between you two bitches lately. Justin crying at the expo. Hey, man, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. I know if we ever see Adam crying. All right, I can't wait, I'll videotape it. He breaks the nail. We talk about fear and courage. We talk about the outliers in society and why we identify with some of them. We talk about Kanye and the black male approval of Trump. New study just came out, a Reuters poll. It shows that Trump's approval rate among black men has doubled. Is that the Kanye effect? Crazy. We talk about the origin of my interest in politics and we talk about the economics of war. We also mention orgasmify, excuse me, organify. Hey, hey. It's getting interesting. Got a good commercial for you today. Listen, green juice may just increase the volume of your semen. And see if you needed more reasons to buy it. Listen to the episode, you'll hear what I'm saying. Anyway, if you go to Organify Shop and enter the code, Mind Pump, you'll get a huge load of a discount. I mean, it's massive. It's shooting out there. Then we get to the first question. The first question was, this female weight lifter is having trouble getting to do her first chin-up. Pull-ups is her weakness. She's been doing negatives, band and box-assisted pull-ups and scat pulls and other kinds of variations and doesn't seem to be able to do a pull-up. We give her the secret in this episode. You'll be able to do a pull-up in no time. You're welcome. The next question was, what are our thoughts on combining resistance training with running? Now, this person likes to lift weights, but also enjoys running, finds it therapeutic. How much running each week is too much? It's like Amanda Redhead's, Amanda Blonde's. Ah, I can't decide. You can have them all. The next question was, is it possible to integrate a MAPS program with an Olympic lifting program? Okay, so do we have a MAPS program that would complement Olympic lifting? The answer is yes, MAPS Prime, 100%. Here is kind of break it down or break down Olympic lifting in this episode. By the way, MAPS Prime, you can find on our website mindpumpmedia.com. And the next question was, which one of us, I guess this question was between Adam, Justin, myself and Doug, has the most lean body mass? We get into discussion about lean body mass when people bulk or when they cut. And are they really succeeding or are they just losing muscle and gaining body fat? We do a little pinch test, you know what I'm saying? We did. Also, this month- Sal didn't bring the numbers out after he pulled the calculator out and figured it out. I won. He used to calculate. He was doing mine. He's like, oh, fuck, that's more than I weigh. Fuck this kid. I won. We're gonna skip past this idea. 10 inches was the biggest. Then, oh, by the way, this month, you get for free, we're giving this way for free. Free? Good of guide and the fasting guide with the enrollment of any bundle. Now, why are we doing this? Are we crazy? We like you guys. Have we lost our minds? Yes. No, it's because summer's almost here. And we know what people try to do when summertime comes around. They wanna get sexy, hot and lean. In that order, sexy, hot and lean. Now, you're gonna have a tough time doing that without proper nutrition. Let's break it down. That's right, there's a fourth one there. Yeah, that was the fourth. Let's be honest here. Can you get sexy, hot and lean with poor nutrition, Adam? Is it no? Absolutely not. It's not gonna happen. So, we wanted to make sure that people who enrolled in our bundles, which are several maps programs combined and then discounted, we literally slashed the fuck out of the price of a bundle. Like a crazy ass girlfriend. Gone. Slashing tires. Adam knows all about that. Yeah. Key cars, bro. We wanted to include those nutrition components for free because that's such an integral part of getting leaner. So again, to be clear this month, enroll in any maps bundle, you'll get the Intuitive Nutrition Guide and the Fasting Guide thrown in for absolute free to get those programs and to learn about them. Just go to mindpumpmedia.com. Dude, yesterday was the big day. Yesterday was? Yes. What do you mean? What happened? The talent show. Oh. Did you guys watch the video? No. No, did you send it to us? Yes. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. I might have not come through. Oh, dude, I can't wait to show you guys. How'd your girl do? So, so, you know, I'm going to sound like a jerk talking crap about other kids, but just the way it is. Whatever. You got an awesome bias. Just the way it is. Yeah. 99.9% of the talent show acts. You remember my daughter's in second grade. And then this was the, she was the one of the youngest. I think the youngest was second grade. And then you got, they went all the way up to eighth grade. Yeah. 99.9% of them falls under three categories. Singing, dancing, or playing an instrument. So that's everything. Everybody goes down there and does one of those things. Here comes my little daughter, my little adorable daughter with her dress that she picked out in her little boots. She gets behind the mic. Everybody's expecting a dance. And she does a fucking comedy show. Love it. My second grade little girl goes up there and tells jokes and everybody laughed. I had all these parents come up to me afterwards and were commenting on her. So check out the learning. She's a natural. Bro. Check out the, and she definitely gets that from her dad cause her mom's not funny at all. But at least not on purpose. So she, when we were going there to do the thing, she's like nervous. You could tell she's nervous. Her little, I was picking her up and stuff and her little armpits were sweating. Her hands were sweating. Did you write the jokes for her? No, we went through them and she, you know, she bounced off. Where did she get her stuff from? Come on, dude. I tell stupid jokes all the time. So obviously from- He's got plenty of dad material. You know what the best joke was? What? What's red and bad for your teeth? Red and bad for your teeth. A brick. Second grader. Second grader. Perfect. Just straight to the punch line. Yeah, she walks out and right away she tells a joke and people are laughing. But anyway, when we're getting ready for this thing, she's just being honest with me, you know? And I can tell she's nervous. I'm like, how do you feel? And she's like, my knees are shaking. So like, oh, I pull her to the little girl. And she's super nervous. So I said, she goes, I don't think I- Do you think that's the first time she's ever felt that feeling? Think about that. Maybe or the first time she was aware of that, right? Right. I mean, the fact that's so cool that she has that awareness that you could have that conversation. Yeah. So I'm like, this is a great opportunity to teach because she's feeling nervous. And so she's like, she said something like, I don't think I'm very courageous. And I said, why? She's like, because I feel nervous. She didn't use that word? Yeah, she's like, because I feel nervous. And I said, I told my daughter, I said, courage is not being scared. I said, if you're not scared, then you don't need courage to go up there. That's easy. I said, courage is when you're scared and you do it anyway. And you should have seen the look on her face. She was just like, I could see the little fire come up inside of her, you know? And she was like, hmm. And then right before she went up on stage, cause you know, my kids during that generation where, you know, YouTube is like, that's like NBC when we were kids or CBS or whatever. It's a big network. And so right before she gets on stage, you know, I or goes back to, you know, get ready or whatever, I kind of grab her by the shoulders and I whispered in her ear and I said, don't forget this. I said, you're my daughter. I said, you know, I get scared. I get nervous when I make videos on YouTube cause she always loves talking about how I'm on YouTube. I said, but I do it anyway, just like you're about to do it. And she's fucking walked up there and she's like had her fist clenched. Ha, it's so great. Like a little champion. So proud. Face it. So proud. So, so nice. So exciting. That's really cozy. Yeah, it's really fun, man. When you watch your kids do something like that and, but I think it's important that you, to tell your kids that, cause I didn't understand this one until I got a little older. I thought being courageous meant having no fear. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, I have no fear. I'm courageous. And I wish somebody explained to me like, no, no, no, no. It's when you're scared and you do it anyway. Yeah, that's what courage is. Cause that would have changed my relationship. Oh, of course. With fear. That stuff that we put, I mean, personally, I put it together over years of that feeling, right? And then not doing it. Like I think it takes like a normal person who doesn't get, who doesn't have a father who communicates at an early age. Like, you know, I'm sure there was many things in my life that I was afraid of that I didn't do because I was afraid of. And I think over, it took years and years of the times when you were afraid, but you still did it anyways. And then the feeling afterwards, you have to do that a few times before you start to connect that like, holy shit, wait a second. Every time I'm scared and I do it anyways, holy shit. That's better than any feeling. That's better than just doing something. I had the same conversation with my oldest. He got elected to be the big bad wolf of this play that like, so it was more than just for his own class. Like he actually had to perform this in front of like a couple grades above his. So it was like his peers that were, you know, older kids. And so he was like totally cool with it. And like, it's like a lead role. You know, he's like a bunch of lines and everything. And he's been practicing. And it got down to the day where of, where it was like, okay, it's the day of I'm making him breakfast. We're all kind of talking about it, hyping him up a little bit. And he was just like, just like, ghost white, you know? Ghost white, like it was just like, I don't know. Like he literally was having like a little panic attack. Like he was like, I don't know if I want to go to school today, dad, you know, and like he was like, it just hit him. Like all of a sudden like, oh, this is like real. Like I'm going to have to like perform. My heart just sinks for that right away too. And it's not even my child, you know, saying just the empathy for the kid going through that. Because at that age, it's different. Like, I could talk a big game right now at fucking, you know, 36 years old and shit like that because you've got a bunch of reps under your belt. But when you're that age, dude, that's got to seem huge. The first time he ever had stepped out in front of like his peers and done anything, you know? Like he's not, so I mean, just talking to him and like same exact scenario where we're just talking about like facing your fears and that, you know, as you go through that, that's what builds bravery. That's what builds courage. And you actually learn that it's not as bad once you start getting into it, right? Like it's all about just getting there and then performing and going through that process. And, you know, and I told him how I'd get scared all the time. I do things I'm uncomfortable with constantly and just what it's helped to build my character and help me in life, you know? And so he just like finally, I guess my wife, thankfully was able to kind of take him to school and watch it. And I wasn't able to watch it because I had to go to work but I guess, you know, he went up there and was just like real nervous. Then just after the first line, it was like he was on fire. Oh really? But yeah, I took it. He still wanted to back out like right before it started. So I got so emotional. I was watching her do the thing and I knew that she was nervous going into it and that, remember this is, I mean, this is, consider this, second grade, she's a girl and you know, girls typically don't, being humorous or being funny, it's not as acceptable I would say for little girls to make funny faces or make jokes. That's something that boys stereotypically tend to do but it's actually kind of true. So she's up there, she's making fun of herself. She's in second grade, she's not doing an act like anybody else. And I knew she was scared and then she did it and I'm watching this and I'm like, I'm gonna fucking cry right in this audience right now. But you know, it boils down and this took me so long to learn and I wish I knew this as a kid. You know, fearing fear or being afraid of being nervous is worse than being nervous or having the fear of doing something. It's worse. It's when you- You're torturing yourself. Yeah, you're so afraid, you wanna avoid the feeling of nerves and anxiety so bad because it's something you hate so much or you create that relationship with it, that you hate it so much. That adds like 50 trillion layers to it because when you stop hating fear instead, expect it, like think about that like, okay, I know I'm gonna go speak in front of these people and I'm gonna be fucking terrified and expect it like that's just gonna happen. Change is a law. All of a sudden you're like, whoa, this is a different, it's a different perception of the same feeling. It doesn't- Oh yeah, we talked about it being exciting and I just kept trying to emphasize the fact that it's like very exciting for you to do this and this is something that you're gonna enjoy completely but what feels like complete fear and the unknown, you know, you can literally start to address it as like this is just an exciting, fun thing I get to do instead. Do you guys remember moments in your life like growing up where you started to kind of overcome that feeling? Cause I'm sure all of us, when we were young- So many reps to get to that place. Like do you remember being terrified before having to speak or do things like that and at what points did you start to feel yourself overcome that? Oh yeah, the first all staff meeting that I conducted as a fitness manager. So I was 18 years old, so I'm a kid. I have no experience doing any of this stuff and then I was a trainer for four years and then now I'm doing a meeting, an all staff meeting cause now I'm the manager of the fitness department. And I remember knowing, I knew I was gonna do it, right? And I got really nervous but my relationship with nerves for that was different and I didn't identify this till much later and the reason why it was different was because I felt like I had a team that needed to depend on me. So once I realized that, oh, these people depend on me I was still nervous but I had a different relationship with that. Like I need to do this for my team and I stood up on a desk and I gave this meeting and it was very, very different. And when I feel, and I didn't put that together till much later on. It actually happened with us here at MindPump. A while ago we had the, I don't remember what we did. We did a big seminar or trainer seminar and I was supposed to open it and I was kind of nervous. And then I don't remember who it was. I don't know if it was Adam or Justin. One of you two said, hey, Sal, listen, we're just gonna follow your lead. And I don't know what it is that I knew like, oh, fuck my team's depending on me. And that creates a different relationship with the same feeling. And so really it's, and I'm putting this together now I'm almost, I'm 39 years old, right? It's all about your, like, am I afraid of being afraid? Or do I expect it, understand it and then I'm okay with it, you know what I'm saying? Change is absolutely everything. Yeah, it's interesting because I've gone through different types of performing fear and, you know, whether it's from sports or from music and I remember at a young age, it was music. It was performing a piece on the piano that I had memorized and I think it was Moonlight Sonata. And I still to this day, that's like one of the only songs I can, I know how to play. Because I took it so seriously and I like, you see my mom has a video this, it's so fucking, it's hilarious. I was like probably nine years old, I would say, maybe eight or nine. And I'm in front of like this whole, like it was in a church, but it was like all of the seats were filled. It was like this big display because they would start with the kids and then it'd go into like, you know, the more accomplished musicians and like there was just so many people. I thought it was just gonna be in front of like the kids and the parents, like, cool. But no, it became this big, huge like ordeal. And so I'm up there, I was just sweat bullets and the first few notes went just sour and I stopped completely. And I looked over, you know, at my parents and I just, I had like a, like anxiety. I just like, I was, I froze and I couldn't like mustered up again and then the teacher came up and kind of like, you know, put her hand on my shoulder and was like, no, you can do this. You know, like it's like, you know the skills, like just relax, nobody's here, blah, blah, blah. Like trying to give me this pep talk. And then finally, like I just, I started playing again and then I just got into this weird zone where I'm just like feeling it. And then, and then I'm like really feeling it to where like the music, I'm like rocking with it. It was so funny, dude, if you watch the video, I just get through the whole thing. Nailed it. Then I'm like at the end, I'm like, I play to where I like soften the notes at the end and I'm like crouching down real low with it. And I'm like, after I was done, everybody's just like, yeah. You know, like burst in the past. You couldn't have planned it better. Like you made it dramatic on purpose. So dramatic, everybody was on pins and needles because I was like so fucking scared. Oh man. Terrified. Do you still have that video? Yeah, I'll have to get it from my mom. Oh dude, you're gonna have to bring that. I actually would love to see pictures of everybody when we were kids. I know. I would love. By the way, Adam, I got a bump to pick with you. Okay, you talk about how ugly we're in high school all the time, I was like, I don't know who it was. Was it your sister or someone posted a picture of your high school yearbook? Dude, he looks like JT. You're a fucking handsome ass kid. You guys are a little prostitute. You're a Poon Tang magnate. Let me defend myself. That's picture day, you know what I'm saying? We're wearing makeup. We have a suit, probably the first suit I ever put on, right? Cause I didn't wear a suit before that, right? No, I know genetics and bone structure and facial features. You were a handsome fellow. I had swag, dude. I had swag is what I did. You could feel the swag to the picture. Yeah, absolutely. I had swag, dude. I think you hella people on the forum too, they're like, wait a minute, they said you were on a track. Well, notice, notice. You're fucking handsome. Remember, it's a headshot too, right? And I'm closing my mouth. If I actually smiled and showed my teeth, my two front teeth are completely crooked. I mean, completely turned in. And let's be honest, when you're a kid and you have something like that. Oh yeah, you make it. Yeah, it's a lot bigger deal than it is. Yeah, of course. I mean, so I mean, I had that. And then you can't tell because I'm in a tuxedo, but I'm a buck 35 wet, you know what I'm saying? At six foot. So I'm, you know, tease for being burnt. Shredded. Yeah, yeah. Shredded to the ribs. Like you could see my ribs more than you could see abs, right? So that's like, look at those obliques. Right, and then I drove the hand me down 1987 brown Toyota Camry with busted out lights and smell like mildew because my parents left the window down the year before, right? So, I mean, I definitely was not. And I know people put them on the forum. I don't know. I know, I'm just. I don't talk about being, I didn't say I was ugly, like fuck dude, like, you know, or maybe I said that, that was me being humble a little bit. You know what I'm saying? I dated the hottest girl in school. You know what I'm saying? Like you can't be like. That just doesn't happen by accident. Yeah, and but the message that I always tried to give to people about that was that it wasn't that, it was because it wasn't a popular kid for the normal popular things, right? I didn't have a lot of friends because I had a nice car. Sure. Because I had a pretty smile because I was a starting quarterback. Like I played sports, but I worked my ass off and I got, you know, okay playing time. I didn't start on any of the teams that I played. I was, but I busted my ass. That was the same way in school. I wasn't super brilliant, but I busted my ass all the time. And I had crooked teeth and I was skinny. And so I didn't have a lot of things like that were in your favor as a kid. You know what's funny though, when you, when you, when you, when you start to realize is that your perception of yourself, cause I'm the same way. And I'm, you know, your perception of yourself was probably way worse than, you know what I'm saying? Like I thought I was so skinny, so painfully, whatever. But if I look at old picture myself, yeah, I'm a skinny kid, but it's not like if I was walking down the street, if I'd see this kid, I'd be like, oh my God, somebody call a doctor. Somebody feed this kid. Yeah, I would be like, oh, it's a normal skinny, skinny kid. But I had a couple of comments and because I identified with it, it was so much worse. Oh, of course. I mean, and it takes years for you. I mean, for most people, I feel like, and some people never get beyond that. I mean, I put that stuff together later on in life. You know, like when I talk about, you know, my character as a young man, it's that's just me being an older guy, reflecting back on it. Like I wasn't that fucking self-aware back there. You know what I'm saying? I was a fucking kid. I'm just running around trying to be cool. You know what I'm saying? Like I just want to be accepted at that age. I just want to have friends. I want to play sports. I want to have a girlfriend. I want to be fucking normal. You know what I'm saying? And I already know that I'm at a disadvantage because I don't have a lot of the things that all these other kids have. And so I had to make up with that with my personality. I was friendly with everybody. I was outgoing. I was just, I was the life of the party wherever I was as a kid. So, you know, talking about nervous moments, I was trying to rack my brain of times where I was really nervous like that. And there's been more moments in the podcasting that I have felt that way than anything else, which is why I love it though. Oh, for sure. Because I have just this different relationship with these things. And one of those is that, and I don't know where I connected this, but the, and it's probably my, I should give my mom some love and credit because I know I beat her up on the show sometimes is that, you know, she's one of the things that she, she established really good morals and values in us at a very young age. And I think the radical honesty and true thing speaks volumes to being able to get through a lot of the stuff. And what I mean by that is when you get really nervous, sometimes I think it's because you're not being 100% honest. I think it's because you're trying to be a certain way for everybody else. And so part of that is because you have to kind of fake it, it gets really fucking scary. And something I learned a long time ago was the more I was just fucking real, like say what's on my mind. You know what, it's gonna rub somebody the wrong way. It's gonna come out. Words are gonna be made up sometimes. It's not gonna flow perfect, but I'm speaking the truth. And having that feeling of like, and that integrity of being able to do that, it carried me a long way at a very early age. And I think that was installed in me from my mother and the values that she built in me later on. And then now I've seen it expressed and now I thrive in those environments. I love to be challenged like that. I love that if I get nervous and scared because what it shows me is now I have something new to focus on and better and improve, you know? So the podcast is probably the most that... What, like any moments in particular? Just the very first day, really. You know what I'm saying? Like every day after that to me was, that was the moment that switch turns on for me. Once I put my mind to something that I want to improve upon it or I want to get better, whatever, you know what I'm saying? Like once I make that switch, I'm committed. Every day was fun for me, you know? Like the first one was a little bit of nerves, like what are we doing? What are we saying? Like who's gonna be listening to this? Like so there was a little bit of those nerves, but I really didn't get that much. I think it's cool because we're all nervous about different things about what we do. And we're all super confident about different things. So they tend to compliment each other, you know what I'm saying? That's been one of the crazy... Like podcasting, for me, never, I've never been, never been, for me it's like talking on a microphone, you're kidding me. Might as well actually ask me to breathe. But you know, if you want me to, if I'm gonna talk to a group of influencers, which I've done before in the past and I can do it, but I always get nervous beforehand when I'm doing like a crowd over there. I always get, yeah, seeing you enjoy doing that. Yeah, I love that. I do better with that because here, and this is probably why I was so nervous with the podcast is because I know I don't articulate myself beautifully all the time. I'm not, I don't have the silver tongue for sure out of the three of us. And so I think my mind is analyzing that the whole time, going like, God, I fucking sound so stupid, but people don't really know everything about me inside because I can't articulate it really well. And so I think that's what I struggled with at the beginning. Well, when you're in person with me and you meet me, I can connect with somebody, I can connect with anybody really fast too because you get to, when you see that, and I feel like when I meet other people that have that honesty piece, I feel it right away. Like I just feel it, which is also why we all connect it. I mean, that was one of the things that connects us. You can just, you can feel, like there's, and we talk about this all the time. Every time we have a guest, you know, off mic, we all are analyzed the fuck out of him. Everybody sits down, what do you think? We argue back and forth, you know what I'm saying? But I could just- We have files on all of you. No, it does because that's just, I don't know, for me, I think it's human nature, right? Of course, everybody does it. Right, and you're just trying to see who's, and really what makes somebody, somebody who we stay connected with or somebody that we rep as a friend is the truth piece, is that they're just honest in being real with themselves more important than anything else. And you know, and I think there's relationships that people probably wouldn't even think that we are really close to, that we're close to, because maybe they're different the way they run their business or things like that. And so people think they're so different than we are, but then what we identify with and what we connect with is their realness. It's that character, real character. Ben Greenfield couldn't be more different than us. I mean, there's some elements that are similar, but he's also, he's a very different individual from us, but we love him, we loved him from like this first or second time he met him because he's got good character, he's kind of a real solid kind of individual. And however different he is, that's the part that I think we're all kind of- No, he's a great example. That's another, that's a great example of somebody who, there's no way probably as a high school kid that Ben and I would have been connected and been friends, just different. And I was friends with a lot of different people, but Ben's just, we were into different things. We're not alike in a lot of ways, but the thing that we connect in is I think he's very comfortable with who he is. Yeah, I think a lot of times when people are living life as their true self, it may seem odd, you know, to everybody. Like, that's kooky, that's weird, like what was he like? And so I think that I've always been attracted to people like that that sort of stand out of the herd and are just authentically living their life the way they want to. And it's such an attractive quality. You know, and a lot of times you'll meet like really weird people and you can appreciate it, but it's like, ah, I'll stay over here. But then sometimes you're like, oh wow, like I wanna be close with this kid. Well, there's an extreme version of that. And then the fake version of that too. That's right, that's up there. Yeah, exactly, putting on a fake sort of facade. Like look at me, I'm weird. Right, right, exactly. And I think some people would think that about Ben when you're outside looking in, but when you really get to know who he is. He's fucking real too. No, no, he's literally like that. Well, I remember the very first time I'd seen his stuff before we met and I remember thinking like, oh, this guy, fucking just peddling everything and making money off all this pseudoscience and shit. I didn't think I was gonna like him, but then what I realized was, man, if there was gonna be a motherfucker that took all these things and tried these things and like went back and measured it, this is the human being I would want doing that. That's your guy you want testing your product. Right, that is the guy I want because I know he is measuring all aspects of his life and he is very meticulous and careful about everything. So I know when he adds something to his regimen or takes it away, like the effects and the things that I want to hear his perspective are probably more than anybody else's. So that's- I can always, for me at least, I don't know how accurate this is, but it seems pretty accurate for me. I can almost always tell somebody's character if they're that kind of a person by the way they are with their kids and that's what did it with Ben. We hung out with him that first time and we're all kind of like, well, I don't know. Maybe, you know, he seems pretty cool. I don't know. And then I saw him with his boys and I was like, oh yeah, this dude's, he's legit, he's genuine. And there's been a couple of experiences like that where we've met people and then we've seen them with their kids. And I don't know, I can just always see that, like especially the way a man is with his children because it doesn't seem to be a second nature sometimes. You know, whether or not they ignore their kids or they're super attentive or you know, how they are with their kids or they treat them, how they hold them, if they kiss them, if they hug them, whatever. And when I see that, I can see like, oh, this is a real. Cause I've seen a lot of people, parents who posture around other people when they're around their kids. So they're trying to act like they're, you know, real good parents and you know, but you can kind of tell like, oh, that's not coming from their heart, you know what I mean? And so I can usually, that's kind of like my litmus test, you know, for something like that. What's the split you guys think of like, people that are fake and all for the show type of deal for the attention and everything like that, whether it be for business or personal and selfish, whatever, and then the split that is like, fucking 100% genuine who they are. I don't know what the split is. It's not a ton of people that seem to be very genuine. It's not a ton, but there's definitely people that are very real. I think, yeah, most people we've met, we tend to just, you know, bring them in. Like if we know for sure they're an authentic, real. Well, we try our best to only try to bring them in or at least help and contribute them in their process in some fashion, because it's like, it is, it's such a rare thing these days to find. Like you don't find a lot of people like that. No, it's, you know, It's posturing. Psychologists explain being like everybody else or blending in, it's a safety mechanism. We evolved to be safe. When you see a bunch of animals in a herd, which one is the one that's going to get killed and hunted by a lion? It's not the one that's in the group. It's the one that's on the fringe. It's the one standing outside. You know, when all of us are the same level, nobody's neck is sticking out. Nobody's putting themselves out there to be attacked or to be ridiculed or whatever. And so it's safe. It is very safe to go with the crowd. And it's very powerful. It's an extremely powerful motivator that intrinsic that we have that we're born with. And it's very hard to break. Now this, I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing always to kind of blend in or whatever. Societies have to organize themselves and people have to work together. Do you think that's already born in or built into us? It is genetic. It is. It's evolutionary because- So then off that, do you believe in that leaders are born or they developed? I think both. I think both. I think leaders, I think there's probably a genetic, like everything, right? There's probably a genetic component. Cause there's something about them too that I believe that they're outlawed. There's certain levels of like leaders. It's just like, you're not the guy who wants to be in the pack with our girl. And you've never been since day one. It's like, and I feel like there's those people. Then I feel there's people who learn the skills of a natural leader and they can develop that and they can lead themselves too. But there's some people that just seem like they have that and they've always had that. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what the split is, but every time they do studies on behaviors, it's always, it's typically a nature and nurture. It's usually genetics involved and there's another component and it's the right mix of the two that creates a type of behavior. For example, let's say you have somebody who's like a super successful leader, great character, but they grew up in a very, very tough situation. The kind of situations that typically break people that or that create criminals or create people that are stuck in the poverty cycle. Well, maybe that tough life was the right mix with their particular genetic makeup and that's what produced a winner. And maybe if that person grew up in a posh environment where everything was provided to them and they had all the support and all the stuff that you're supposed to have, maybe that would have made them more lazy, more complacent or not that kind of an individual. So it's hard to say what produces what because I feel like there's enough extremely successful people that I'm aware of who grew up in very difficult situations and statistically speaking, difficult situations don't typically result in success. They typically look, if you take a bunch of kids and you put them in a household that's poverty, maybe abuse, maybe single parent, like these are all statistics, right? The odds are that more of them will do worse than not, right? But every once in a while you get the right mix and it's not, I don't know, like who would I be if I grew up in a different situation? Who would you guys be? It's a, I think it's a very difficult thing to study because when you're looking at outliers, how do you study the outliers? They're already outliers, you know what I'm saying? They're already not the average. I mean, you can look at the averages, but when you look outside the averages, it's kind of, I mean, Elon Musk, definitely there was some, you know, life's things that made him the way he is, but he's also definitely just a different human being. Right. So how do you study that? I don't think you can. I don't really think you can. That's right. I mean, I feel like, and it's an example of like brilliance like that. Like I'm sure you could back that all the way up to childhood. Like I'm sure if you, and I haven't watched too many documentaries on them that dove that deep into them, but I would assume that there were signs of that early, early on in his life before he even got to the point where he was this maniac. Dude, so check this out. This is kind of bringing me to an interesting topic. So yesterday I did a post on gender pay gap and I talk about the economics and why it's likely, highly likely it's not based on sexism, but rather other factors, like the time decisions that men and women tend to make and all these other things. And I got a lot of positive feedback, by the way, from all women, which tripped me out. I thought I was gonna piss people off. Yeah, wow. But I got something like 50 DMs from women who are like, thank you, I'm sick and tired of being told I'm a victim and all this other stuff. And I was like, whoa, this is, I did not expect this. So it was pretty cool. That's cool. I did get in a debate with a couple individuals or discussion and we went down that rabbit hole. Any really smart people like doctors or anything like that? Yeah, one of them was really smart. So we had this discussion and one thing that I said that really made this individual upset in this discussion was I highlighted how, because we were talking about the different choices that men and women tend to make. And I was explaining, look, if you look at the middle of the pack with humans, we're all pretty fucking similar. There's like one standard deviation difference between men and women in certain parameters, which is not much when you're looking at the middle. Like if you took a bunch of women and a bunch of men and you rated them on something like empathy, which they can test, right? Men will typically rank one standard deviation below women, which in the middle isn't that big of a difference. Speaking of empathy, male humans are incredible, have incredible parental behaviors and instincts, much more than most other mammals. Like male humans are really good parents compared to other male mammals, which tend to be terrible parents and usually just protect and get food and then if the child gets in the way, they'll eat them. That's just, that's a real statistic. But we tend to be pretty good with kids, including other kids, which again, male mammals with other children are terrible and male humans are pretty good. But nonetheless, we do rank lower than women in those kinds of categories. In the middle doesn't mean a whole lot. We're all kind of very, very similar. But if we go to the ends of the spectrum, if we picked 100 of the most empathetic humans on earth, all of them would be women, all of them. Because at the extreme end, you have all these extreme levels of empathy or whatever, which women tend to score highest in. And so you see this in all these other things is we're having this particular discussion. It would be just like comparing the top 100 hunters. There would be, it would be more likely to be men who just pour that, even though there's tons of women that are bad-ass at hunting. Yeah, exactly. I mean, those standard deviation differences are small in the middle, but at the ends, they start to get real big. Just like if you took two parallel lines and you separated them by a tenth of a degree, you keep traveling down those lines and they separate quite a bit at the ends. And so we were talking about this and I said, look, I said, here's an interesting statistic. She didn't like this. I said, when you look at humans, most of us are somewhere in the middle in terms of average violence or aggression or brilliance or whatever, whatever you want to call it, we're all kind of similar. But when you go on the ends, there's more men on the extremes than there are women. For example, if you look at criminality and aggressiveness and violence, men and women, women are about one standard deviation less violent than men are. In the middle, that doesn't mean much. You take a bunch of average people and most of them are not going to be violent. Most of them are not going to want to hurt people and all that stuff. But if you go on the extreme end of the most violent, most biggest criminals, whatever, it's all men and this is why prisons are filled with men and there's hardly as many women in comparison. But if you go on the other end of the extreme and she didn't like this part, you go on the other end of the extreme and you look at achievers, people who can be considered brilliant or whatever, you see also more men and she didn't like that part. But it's evolutionary speaking, it makes sense because if you have a society where there are very, very few men and a lot of women, that society can survive. Technically, it could totally survive. You could have 10 men and 100 women and you're going to make a lot of babies. Flip it would never work. If you had a lot of men and a little bit of women, society collapses. And so what evolution is basically done is it's rolled the dice more with men than with women because we're disposable, because it's okay for it to roll the dice a little more. So you're going to see more extremes with men in all different kinds of cases. And that was just one example of how differences between men and women can account for. When you look at broadly, you see differences in things. And what do you think that is? It's men are trying all these different things so they can reproduce. And so that's what maybe set us off into where it's like, I'm going to work really hard and maybe that's going to get some ass. That didn't work out. I'm going to get really strong. And that's going to be... We're going to go after the saber-tooth tiger today. We're disposable. We're far more disposable than women are. I mean, you can kill off half the men in America right now and America will survive. You kill off half the women in society will collapse. You don't have enough people to carry children. So it's just evolutionary. I thought we covered the gender pay gap thing already. Yeah, we talked about it. Did we do it with Kibbe? You should just... You, of course, you know what? You love that stuff, bro. Yeah. You love that stuff that you even waste your time going back and forth. People actually debate you on it. I'm at the point now where someone asks a question that I know we addressed in detail. Like, here's the fucking episode or go download the app and search it. No, we know what it is. I realize about myself. I like talking about controversial shit. As long as it's controversial, I get excited. If it's like, oh, that's a topic. Well, because they'll actually respond because you'll put bait out there and you're realizing it's not controversial enough for them to respond. Yeah, I just I really enjoy that. Speaking of controversial, you know how we did the episode where we talked about Kanye's song about Trump or whatever? Yeah. And we made the speculation that there seems to be a cultural shift and I was making this big point that for a long time now. And again, I want to be clear. I have to say this every fucking episode. We're not, I can speak for myself but I know you guys do. We're not pro-Trump or anti-Trump or pro-Democrat or pro-Republican. We're much more independent in the sense that we tend to be down the middle pro-Freedom, pro-Liberty, which means sometimes we agree with- I go policy by policy. Yeah, so we were talking about this and I said something like, minorities for a long time, the liberal party, the Democrats have taken for granted that minorities are just gonna vote for them for a little while. And we talked about the history of the Democrat Party and how they used to actually be pro-segregation, pro-slavery, all these different things. And so on our forum, there was a little bit of a debate and somebody's like, ah, it's bullshit, minorities hate Trump. And I'm like, no man, I can sense a cultural shift that's starting to happen. And it's pretty crazy and Kanye's an example of that. Boom, a fucking Reuters poll comes out. This poll just was done. But you didn't even have to send a read to me because once I knew he did anything with Kanye, it was game over. Black male approval for Trump doubled. Doubled. Like after a day. Yes, it was at 11%. Now it's at 22%. Which is, there's a weird. I knew that was gonna happen. There's a weird, crazy shift that's happening in the political sphere that is interesting to me. Well, he has a lot of weight, man. You know, like him voicing that like was, I mean, that's a big deal. It is, but it's also, it's weird because Trump as much as he's, I don't, I really don't like him in many, many different ways, but he has this appeal with a lot of different people. And I don't, I think it's just, it's gotta be because he's, and who knows, he may be the fakest motherfucker in the world, but he comes across as being not fake in comparison to other politicians because there's no polish. Because you always expect a politician to smile and say the right thing and to answer a question with like politically correct. And then you got Trump who's like, now we'll nuke him or calling people rocket man or whatever. And you're like, what? This is why you can't get into sports, dude. Cause you got weight, this isn't sports for nerds. Politics is fucking sports for nerds. That's all it is to me. It really is. It's the same goddamn thing. But I think there's that, I think there's that level of intelligence in sports too, just average people don't dive in deep enough to learn that. That's why I think you would love it. Yeah, I only get into politics because, and I'm not super political in the sense that I follow all the politicians. I just, you know, I got into legislation and economics because once I realized, here's the realization I had a while ago. When I realized, there was two things that I realized that really, I had trouble sleeping the first time I thought of this. In fact, I wrote about it today on my Insta story. When I, I read an article that we all pay taxes, right? And we all have to pay taxes. If you don't pay taxes, you'll get fined, they'll take your property and you keep not paying them and eventually they'll throw you in jail. We all know this, you know, but we all take it for, we all kind of like accept it because we're born into it. And I remember reading this article where this guy wrote and he says, you know, the average American up until about April 22nd, that's they did the math, is working for the government. And I thought about that. I'm like, holy fuck, the first quarter of the year, every hour that I'm working is not for me, it's for the government, which is fine if that's what you want to do, but what if you don't? What if you don't want to do it? And I kept thinking about that and I'm like, oh shit, what is the definition of this? Working for someone else because you're afraid of being hurt or thrown into a cage. In other words, by threat of violence. It sounds like the mafia to me. It sounds like slavery. That's actually the literal definition of being a slave. So when I thought of that, I was like, that's kind of crazy and I don't have a choice. And then I thought about this. I said, wait a minute, I can't do anything I want to my own self. So, you know, think about that for a second. Like, what if I wanted to alter my state of mind? What if I wanted to take a drug for my body? What if I wanted, and I'm an adult, right? What if I wanted to have someone pay me for sex? It's my body, right? I can't do that. In fact, if I do that and I get caught, they will throw me into a cage or find me or whatever. But the point is this, I don't own my body. So I'm like, holy shit, I'm forced to work for someone else and I have no choice in it. Whether I want to or not, I have no choice. And I can't do to myself. And I'm not talking about hurting anybody else. I'm not talking about any of that. I'm talking about my own self. Like, I'm in my body, I own it. I can't do anything I want to myself when I realize those two things. Man, I lost sleep. I remember thinking like, this is fucking crazy. It's a situation that you're born into and then you don't realize like, so then I got into politics as I said, okay, this has a major impact on me in a real way. I just didn't understand it. And so then I started becoming interested in that whole process because I thought to myself, I'm not a violent person. I'm not going to do all, I just said, okay, how can I do this within the system to change things? And I said, I better understand this stuff. I better start learning it. And that's what got me into it. So sports, as fascinating as they are, like, you know, if the Warriors lose or win, it's not going to force me to do something. It doesn't own me. It's not any of that stuff. But I can definitely be fascinated by sports, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, no. And that's how I feel about politics. I'm serious. So that's how- I don't know, I'll do what the fuck I want anyway. How do I, exactly. Yeah. How do I, I mean, when we talk about it off air, I mean, that's how I talk about it. Like, I am impressed with the maneuvers that I see being made. And I love shows like House of Cards. Like, I mean, I'm into all that stuff. So I like that part of it. But that's, again, I just kind of have this, it's like sports for nerds. All these guys are all making all these decisions and moves and what gets put out in the media. And like, we all sit back here and we argue and fight with each other and try and debate these points. It's just like, at the end of the day, dude, they're up there like puppet masters, man. Oh, oh, dude. Totally. They're just spinning wheels and nothing's getting accomplished. And that's why you like to see this whole process get disrupted because it's just like, wow, that was such a gamified thing. Even if there is, I mean, because it's not like, I mean, we're still evolving as a society. I mean, there's a lot of things we're going backwards in it too. So it's not like it's all for waste. I don't think that. I think that, but I definitely think that there's a lot of greed involved. I think that anybody that, and power, that gets that much money and power, I think it's tough to not try and play God. I think that any man or woman in that position would be tempted to do that. And if in our society, the way we are run, nobody has more an opportunity to play God than the president and the government, man. I mean, they have the most power over us as a society. And to think that they wouldn't want to play with that power, fuck. Yeah, you know what it is. I haven't met a man or woman that wouldn't want. Here's what it is in the election. Absolutely. The election of Trump, I was happy with it in one respect. Not because he got elected. I didn't vote for him for the record. I didn't vote for Hillary either. But here's what made me happy about it. Not a single, I mean, I can't say not a single. Almost nobody from either side wanted Trump to win. Republicans hated him. And of course, the Democrats hated him. So here's this guy that nobody wants him to win. Every poll that was done showed him having zero chance of winning. So he was super underdog. If you had put money on Trump in Vegas, by the way, the Vegas odds are the best predictors of who's gonna be president. And the Vegas odds, I don't remember what they were exactly, but if you put money on Trump, you would have won a lot of money because it was like Hillary for sure is gonna win this. And then he won. And I was happy about that. Not because he won. So he made the biggest bets on it. Not because he won. I was happy because it made me feel better. Like, oh, wait a minute, it's not, maybe it's not rigged like I thought it was. Because nobody wanted him to win and yet he still did. So I don't think the voting system is rigged necessarily. But here's what I do think. I think that they figured out how to divide everybody that's rule number one. I don't think the voting system is rigged at all. I've never thought, I think less of that than they're still the puppet masters with the way they put media and information and you get to hear what they want you to hear. And that's why, I mean, I remember when we, just recently we got in that little debate about stuff. It's like anytime a move happens and anyone, and if I'm in a conversation, will we get into some sort of a political debate and somebody starts saying, oh, well, Trump just did this or Hillary just did this or Clinton just did this. And they say some shit like that. It's like, well, really though? I mean, do you, you have no idea? That's what they want you to know. You know what I'm saying? You're not in all the meetings. You have no idea what's coming next. You have like, and so we're over here fucking fighting back and forth. And I think nine times out of 10, that's what they want in the first place. Some topic that we can all debate over while the real shit's happening behind closed doors. I'll tell you what, if you want to prove that point is the easiest way you can do it. Anytime we go to war or bomb another country, go backwards and look at the series of events and things that we've heard in the media and heard them say in order to get popular support because the US government rarely goes in and launches an attack without knowing that they have at least a decent amount of American support. Cause they learned that lesson in Vietnam. Vietnam created a crazy counterculture movement. And part of that was because we had a draft. So we have people who are going to war who don't want to go to war. But the other part of it was extremely unpopular and they continue to do it. And so they always, they're always trying to like get popular support. So if you look at like, look at the event that that finally got us into the Vietnam war was the Gulf of Tonkin. Okay, this is an incident which admittedly, this is not a conspiracy theory, never happened. Never happened. Look at what got us into World War one. Look at what got us into Iraq. How are we sold on getting into Iraq? Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th at all. In fact, as shitty as Saddam Hussein was, he was actually a nice counter to Al Qaeda in the Middle East. Al Qaeda didn't even exist in Iraq. But we use that sentiment, that anger, that oh shit, we got attacked. We use that and then of course, weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. So it's all these false premises and pretenses to get us scared to go into war and then people support it and then we go in and that's the clearest thing you can see. This is with almost every war. Look back and you'll see like, oh, that Pearl Harbor. Do you know how much evidence there was that we knew that they were gonna come in and attack us at Pearl Harbor? There's a decent amount of evidence to show that people kind of knew, well no, that people kind of knew that they were coming, but the conspiracy is, and this is less proven than Gulf of Tonkin, but the conspiracy is we let it happen so people get pissed off and we could jump into the war. Does anything make more money than war? For a special interest, it makes a lot of fucking money. That's what I mean, does it? I mean, what makes more money? Well, think about the business of war. And by the way, it doesn't make American people money unless you're in one of these military, industrial complex companies, it loses money. Nothing loses money more than creating a million dollars something and then exploding it. Well, just keep making, yeah, like tanks and planes. Don't they like cement them after a while after they make too many units? Yeah, what happened is the Cold War. Yeah, you can't tell me too that somebody who's connected like that knows like, okay, way before anybody else knows that we're going to war, that I'm not also investing in Boeing and all these companies on the side that I know is because we're gonna mandate something that all of those things are gonna go up 10-fold. Just look at Donald Rumsfeld and look how much his company or friends profited from the Iraq war. You know, it's really crazy. Now, I don't know if they're like, you can go down the line and be like, oh, they're making people go to war. What I think might even happen, what I think is more realistic is we decide we're gonna go to war for own reasons and then the military contractors or these companies that make these weapons influence how we run the war. You know what I'm saying? Like they sit down and go, okay. Here's the strategy. We have this product. Why don't you guys launch this kind of a war and use this weapon and then highlight it and whatever and make that happen. But you know, here's what happened with the Cold War. One of the approaches from, you know. The bunker bust. One of Reagan's approaches was to outspend the Soviet Union, make them spend so much money that they bankrupt themselves and it kind of did work. But then we were left with this massive military industrial complex and a lot of these, you know, all of these weapons and whatever, they're made in America. So now you have entire states or cities that a large percentage of their employment is these companies that make tanks or bombs or whatever. So now imagine you're trying to, okay, we don't have a Cold War anymore. We don't need to have a huge military. Now you're trying to cut spending, but what you're actually doing is now you're cutting jobs. And those people vote for their politicians. Their politicians come to DC and they lobby the government to keep those jobs and keep, you know, creating new enemies, right? Whether it's the war on terrorism or the war on whatever and so that we continue to spend more and more and more. So it's a monster. Because government, you know, programs in parts of the government, once they grow, getting them to shrink is almost impossible. It'd be like, you know, it's like you're the owner of a business and you have access to unlimited money and then people ask you to take a voluntary pay cut. Like, no, I'm gonna give myself a raise, dude. That's not gonna happen. Like when's the last time Congress voted themselves a pay cut? You know? You know, they get to vote, believe it or not, they get to vote their own salaries. How fucking hilarious is that? You know what I'm saying? And they always have- It's convenient. And they have limitless money on top of it. That's why politics is shitty compared to sports. Like sports, you can't cheat like that, dude. And sports, we try and cheat, you know what I'm saying? Steroids, candles, doing things like that, but not on the level of politics. Politics is fucking super cheating, bro. Yeah, it is. It's super cheating. This clause brought to you by OrganiFi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, OrganiFi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic super foods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try OrganiFi, totally risk-free for 60 days by going to OrganiFi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com. And use a coupon code MINEPOMP for 20% off at checkout. All right. Hey Doug, you know what, real quick, I gotta share this with the boys here. Now you know how the other day we were all joking around or whatever and we were commenting on, you know like, I think Justin was talking about getting vasectomy and how I said that. Yeah, we were talking, no, it wasn't on the show. And we were talking, and I was joking around and saying, oh, you could reduce your semen volume. And we were all laughing or whatever. And it's funny because it's funny because like that's something that for whatever reasons, dude, guys typically want more seminal volume. Okay, whatever. You want to really blast. And some girls, hey. Anyway, so, so I... Where's this going? No, no, bro. Is this supposed to be our OrganiFi commercial? Oh, no, no. Actually, this is a great OrganiFi commercial. Oh, turn it into a commercial. Yeah, no. Ashwagandha, which is the main ingredient in OrganiFi green juice, increases seminal volume. Oh my God, finally. Yes, so you may be noticing more reasons. You may notice as you're drinking more of the green juice that you're making bigger loads. OrganiFi's gonna love that commercial. Bro, it was getting closer to the ceiling. Bro, I'm gonna pay attention now because as I drink more of it, I mean, I'm a look. I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep a check on that volume. Actually, keep Justin posted. Send him, let him know. I'll send you pictures. I'll bring you my cup. Yeah, drink OrganiFi green juice. Increase your load volume. Increase the load. I wonder if it turns green. All right. Thank you, Sal. You're welcome, Doug. Our first question is from Oborra. Tips on getting your first chin up or pull-up as a female weightlifter. I've been doing negatives, band and box assisted pull-ups, scap pulls and other variations for months, but to no avail. So one of the things I don't know because they didn't tell us this, but one of the common things that when I help like a female lifter out with pull-ups or body weight dips, I was actually, in fact, just helping Katrina out with the first time I was ever with her in the gym when she decided she was gonna do body weight dips. And she came over and she's like, you know, I wanna try weighted dips. I know you guys talk about, you know, the importance of increasing that. And I've always just done my body weight. She goes, but I don't think I can do very much weight. You know, and I was like, well, how many can you do just your body weight? And she's like, oh, I can get like 15 plus out of there. I'm like, oh, you can add plenty of weight. And so she's like, she would do a grab, she would do a grab like a 10. And I'm like, no, no, no. Grab more weight than that. You can do more than a 10. She's like, well, I won't be able to get more than like five or six of those. I'm like, yeah, that's okay. I'm like, and so- Katrina, don't you listen to Mind Pump? The point, I know I'm selling her out right now to tell the story right now, because this is common. And I used to get this a lot with my clients. And it feeds into the, you know, girls can't do low reps because it builds bulky muscle or something. It's like, no, like actually doing, I said, you know, it'd be great. I said, find a weight that is hard for you to, I want you to land somewhere between one to three. You know, like, have you ever done that? Have you ever strapped on enough weight to where you know you can only get one to three reps? So she's like, no, I would never do that. And I'm like, so there you go. So let's put a weight on that. If you get three, keep increasing the weight or more. So, you know, I think that a lot of times they'll be doing the bandit or assisted or the gravatron assisted pull-up machine and they're still doing 10, 15 reps. Now that can, that will help. That'll help you build some strength, but you're gonna see a way more bang for your buck if you use enough resistance to go heavy. Or enough assistance to do it. Well, you're gonna teach your body the mechanics of the movement and everything and it's gonna respond appropriately, but to be able to now activate and recruit even a louder signal, you know, to decrease those reps and to really struggle through those reps. Well, think of it this way. This person, this lady is trying to get her first pull-up, right? So she's trying to be able to do one. Now one is that low reps or high reps, right? It's low reps. So what you're actually trying to improve upon what you're trying to improve upon is your maximal strength to start with. Now at some point, if you get good at pull-ups, you'll be doing more and more reps. But remember, there's a rule of specificity when it comes to training. In other words, what you train is what you get and you do get some carryover to other things, but most of the gains and the benefit you get is in the rep range you train and the exercise you train and the style you train. So if your goal is to try and get one pull-up, which is a very low rep and maximal strength, because you can't do any at this moment, then you should practice doing one to two or three pull-ups with assistance. That's the point that I was trying to make. I don't know if I came off. Oh, you did. Oh, no, no, no, perfect. Oh, okay. I thought you were teasing me right there. No, no, I'm back on you. Yeah, because I mean, I would put a lot of weight on and use someone to help and assist if I need to, but you're only doing a single or a double at most. I mean, I think that's what I meant. I think a lot of what I see a lot of times is someone will then get on like an assisted machine or use a band and they can get 10, 15 reps with the assistant and they're doing way too many reps and if you can't do a single one, just your body weight, train that. I mean, for me personally to like going through that and lowering your reps, you tend to find out too where some of your sticking points are the hardest portion of the rep is and where that lies. And so that's, after you get through those low reps, a lot of times I'll get into that same position and whether it's the bottom of my rep, I'm gonna really start to increase my tension within the bottom of that rep. So I'll stay there and like do an isometric rep where I'm just trying to harness as much activity as possible there and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze as hard as I can and then make reps out of that just so my body will, it'll further kind of respond the way that you want it to when you feel like it, you're at your hardest point of the exercise. Right and it's also, here's the other thing, when you're doing low reps, I think people many times confuse that for maxing out. So if I say, okay, you're gonna do sets of one or two reps, then they go pick a weight that that's their max and it's a super crazy struggle every single set. No, that's wrong. Here's what you do, go to your assisted pull up machine or whatever and pick a weight that you can max out for four reps on. So let's say four reps is your absolute max. Now do sets of one or two. Go in there, you go in there with a submaximal intensity because that's what's gonna give you the strength because if you max out the whole time, you're just gonna create a lot of muscle damage and you're not gonna, it'll take you a long time to recover but the adaptation signal will be gone by the time you're fully recovered and you're not gonna gain any strength. So go submaximal, pick a weight you can do four reps with do one or two, do that, practice that and here's the other thing, frequency, practice a lot. I think if you did, honest to God, if you did like three sets of a single pull up with a weight that you can do five reps on for example and you did that, I don't know, twice a day, every day, watch how fast you get stronger. It'll trip you out. The other thing to take into consideration too is this is a strength to weight ratio thing too. So a lot of times if you shred three or five pounds, like and then you go do pull ups again, it's crazy how much that makes a difference too. Like if you, I know every time that I've leaned out after I've been training, even though I'm losing strength because I'm catabolic for quite some time when I'm getting ready for a show, man, when I go do pull ups, I just, I fly up there because I've lost five or 10 pounds. So I don't know how heavy this person is too. If you are, if you're carrying extra body fat on you and you're trying to get good at your pull ups, like one of the easiest things that you could do is shred a few pounds. Yeah, I used to always fool me by the way. Like I'd start cutting and then I'd do pull ups and be like, oh shit, I lost like 12 pounds but I could do the same amount of pull ups. I haven't lost any muscle. And then I'm like, oh wait a minute, I lost 12 pounds. So I'm actually weaker. I can only do 12. I should be able to do like an additional five reps but I can't because I'm just kidding. Next question is from Cell Carp. What are your thoughts on running in combo with resistance training? I lift five times a week but also enjoy running because I'm near many state parks and it's therapeutic. How much running each week is too much and begins to inhibit muscle building? This is a good question because, you know how we talk about all the time how a while ago people started confusing exercise with it just needs to be hard and you just sweat and you need to get sore. And so people stopped treating it like a skill, stopped practicing it and instead went to the gym to quote unquote workout. And so it was no longer about form or the right exercises. It was all about like how hard can I make this? How much can I sweat and how much? How sore can I get? And that's what fucks people up because the body doesn't respond well that way. You wanna go in and you'll learn the skill in practice like any other sport. It's worse with running. It's way worse with running. I don't know anybody that starts running and thinks to themselves like I'm gonna perfect running. I'm gonna perfect the skill of running. No. I don't even know in physical education like any coaches that have like done a good job of teaching running mechanics with students. They just go, it's just like go and run. Run as much as you can or as hard as you can. That's it and like just endurance base. Let's see how much you can endure. If you go and you run hard or you run long and you exhaust yourself, you are assuming whether you realize it or not, you are assuming that you have great running patterns and mechanics because the only thing you should ever train to fatigue or hard is something that you really wanna solidify in your body. And if you have poor mechanics, that's what you're solidifying. And so what we see, we just saw this today as we walked in to the studio, this young lady was running by and it looked gruesome. Poor girl, she's dying. She's sweating. She can't even look up at anybody. Forward shoulder, forward head. Feet are hitting the floor all over the place. Lean as fuck. Yeah and she's just, and you know she's just going for the intensity like how long or how hard I can run. But I can look at her and I can predict with pretty good accuracy. What do you guys think? How long do you think it'll take before she has to stop? Cause she hurt herself. Five more years. Yeah, maybe. Maybe less. Sometimes less. Sometimes a lot less. But this is where you get, you know, those kind of problems. And she was young. She was really young. And she was young. So she's resilient right now. So when it comes to running, like if you run really, really well, that's number one and that's okay. But here's number two. How much running is too much and then it inhibits muscle gains? Well, technically if you run and it improves your general health, that'll probably build more muscle. Anything past that will inhibit muscle. Anything that tells your body to become a runner. That's really vague and hard. I know how different is that from person to person. Well, and I just, when I answer that to people, I just ask them which one's more of a priority. You know what I'm saying? It's like if you're really trying to build muscle, then almost any bit of cardio is not that advantageous. And I know there's studies to prove that increasing cardio can increase muscle mass and that's because like Sal's saying, you're healthier. Your body's functioning better at that point. Your heart is stronger. So therefore you can then in turn build more muscle. But once you get to a point where the running is making you sore or the running is for long duration of time and you can't keep up the caloric count, like then. Well, we're assuming too that they're talking about like endurance running versus like short sprints and short bursts, which I've actually done in combination with heavy lifting, mainly to emulate a lot of the durability I need for performance on the field. And so having quick bursts, but having, being able to get back up and have the endurance and gas tank to keep motoring forward and having like a fast twitch response. But I wasn't teaching my body to just go on and on and on and on and on. Cause that when I'm heavier, that is a disadvantage. So it's a conflict of information I'm telling my body. No, that's a great point. It's a really fine dance for somebody like this. Cause I also don't like discouraging somebody who has found this love for running and exercising where you're exercising five to seven days a week and, you know, and And they're saying it's therapeutic. Yeah. And it's, you know, you're right. So it was not like we're trying to take that away. Yeah. I would never do that, right? I would never, if a client came to me and said like they were, they're happy. They're at where they want to be goal wise, give or take and they're, they enjoy running cause it's therapeutic. I would totally allow them to do it. Now, if I'm looking at you and you've, you've got all these injuries that I know are going on and then I know you're going out and running on that. Then, which I have just had this conversation with a friend of mine that's like a trail runner. You know, he's got fucking hip issues. He's got low back issues and he just wants to run all the time. And I'm just like, well, yeah, you could. He's asking me for permission, basically. And I love that. Yeah. And I'm like, well, you do what you want, dude, but I'm not going to sign off on it. Right. Right. Exactly. You can do whatever you want, but you're just, you're not in the, you have no business in my opinion running cause you're all this wear and tear on your body. Like it's coming from that. And I know you don't think that because you get the instant relief from when you actually do the run and it feels like it feeds a part of you that you like so much. But it's, you're also taking away another part of you which is the wear and tear on your joints and body. People want, obviously people want everything, right? But it doesn't work that way. There's, there's definitely trade-offs. So you get to ask yourself this and I'm going to use an arbitrary number. Okay. But just think of it this way. What will bring you, what brings you a better or higher quality of life? Five extra pounds of muscle or the fact that you can go run in state parks and find therapy in it? Just ask yourself that question. If the answer is, oh, well, five pounds more muscle will give me a better quality of life, then there you go. Then do more weight training and do less running. If it's the opposite, then is the five pounds of muscle worth the trade? Of course it is. Quality of life. I mean, you know, that's, that's, that trumps everything. That doesn't matter. Then at that point, extra five pounds of muscle or better quality of life, there's your decision. Cause I can see, I can see, and I know how it is when, when I was getting ready for a show. What I love, part of what I loved about competing was, you know, I was so regiment and that's an extreme, right? Like that's not healthy to live that, live that way for a long time. But to me, I have found some things in it that I really appreciate. And it was like this organized structure of my program. It was this structure of me doing cardio X amount of times in the week when I was getting ready. And like that also bled into the rest of my day. I was, I was more productive. And I saw, I saw these things, even though, okay, I might be training a little more on the extreme level, but I'm also getting some major benefits in the rest of my life. So, okay, I might overdo this a little bit, but then I'm also seeing it bleed over and other things that I'm, I know that are valuable to me. So, you know, it's, it's a give and take on all these things. And so it's really hard to tell somebody like what the, the right dose is. It's like, you have to make that decision for you, how much you want doing it. I definitely think there's some things that you have to be very, very honest with yourself. And if you deal with any sort of low back knee issues already. Or if you just run terrible. Well, that's, I mean, if you have those things, you are running terrible. Bottom line. By the way, pain is one of the last signals that you end up doing. Right. And that's what I'm saying. But if that's, I'm saying that it could, you could be running and not have any pain right now and still not be doing good, good work for your body. Yeah. You're just waiting for the one way of the fall. If you've already got pain going on, you know what I'm saying? If you've already got issues going on like that, then absolutely it's going to compile. Yes. Just keep this in mind and understand this. Whatever you do, a lot of your body aims to become good at. It, it aims to become efficient at, it aims to become proficient at. And so when you're doing lots of running, think about what your body will have to, especially the longer distance running, right? I'm not talking about sprinting here. Longer distance running. What type of things would your body need to do to make itself better at running? Well, one of them is improve your cardiovascular endurance, improve your muscular endurance. So those are, those are kind of givens. It's going to make it, make you more of an efficient running machine, which means you can't be too heavy, right? More weight on your body makes you not as efficient. And nothing burns as many calories per, I mean, running burns a ton of calories. That's the truth, right? If you run for an hour, you're going to burn more calories in that hour than if you lift weights, just the bottom line. So your body now is also learning to become efficient with calories because you are trying to turn your body into a machine that has lots of stamina, lots of endurance, but also doesn't use a lot of gasoline because that would be, that would be a bad thing. That would be, that would be not as efficient. So you're turning yourself into a, over time, a skinny, slower metabolism type of individual, which isn't necessarily bad. Actually, it's not bad. That's what you're asking your body to do. So it does create that. Now building muscle or lifting weights does the opposite. If I'm lifting weights, I'm looking for strength. And with some of that strength needs more muscle size because bigger muscle fibers contract harder. Bigger muscles do burn more calories, but that's okay because I don't burn a lot of calories lifting weights anyway. And the signal that I'm sending that's being prioritized is strength anyway. That's the one that's causing most of the damage or whatever that my body seems to be responding to. So you get a faster metabolism. So these are the things you want to weigh out when you're combining training modalities. And I mean, here's my view. If you're looking for overall health, you're better off doing a lot of a little, you're better off doing a little bit of everything and worse off doing a lot of just one thing. But quality of life, like for me, for example, do I have an improved quality of life if I lift weights and get strong versus if I do long distance running? For me, I do because I enjoy it way more. I don't enjoy long distance running that much. So that's the other thing you want to keep in mind. Next up is Evans 11. Is it possible to integrate a MAPS program in a three day a week Olympic lifting program? Oh, the best. The program, if you're an Olympic lifter and Olympic lifting is very specific, it's very unique in all forms of resistance training. Most resistance training requires control or slower tempo, more time under tension. MAPS Prime would be dope. 100% MAPS Prime. MAPS Prime would be dope for an Olympic lifter. MAPS Prime would benefit an Olympic lifter tremendously. Oh, yeah. I mean, think about it. Channeling your central nervous system, like everything on command, like that's all part of the training protocol in prime. I mean, it's really just getting your body to respond the way it's most effectively gonna respond and we put you in positions specifically so that communication channel gets opened up, the floodgates open in a sense. Yeah, well, look at Olympic lifters. Look at high level Olympic lifters. They're definitely muscular, but they're not massive. And I mean, in comparison to other- A power lifter. Yeah, like an Olympic lifter, 150 pound top level Olympic lifter is twice as strong as the top bodybuilders in the world. It's a very high skill to achieve. Yeah, and what you're asking your body, of course, your muscles need to fire hard and fully, but power lifters do that too. But what you're also asking upon your body is this perfect recruitment pattern of muscles firing in a particular sequence to get them, it's so much skill is involved in Olympic lifting in comparison to other lifts. It's not even, there's no comparison. It's the fast, loose concept. Yes. So I mean, Pavel talks about this, but it's a tough thing to articulate to articulate to athletes a lot of times because especially if you've come from a strength or bodybuilding kind of a background where you have to learn how to be loose on command. Oh, it's way opposite of bodybuilding. Bodybuilding where you're taught to be, keep tension the entire, the entire, the whole time. It's the opposite. Yeah. It's the exact opposite. I was training, I was teaching Jessica how to do a dumbbell snatch. And she's only ever lifted weights with, you know, when it comes to weights in terms of like a bodybuilder or, you know, with resistance, right? You know, to sculpt or build muscle. And so I'm trying to teach her you got to be fast but under control. And she started off like everybody who ever tries to do an Olympic lift after they've lifted weights for muscle it up. Super slow. Yeah, it's like a, and you're trying, I'm trying to teach her to be fast and explosive and it's a skill. And here's the thing, like if you do Olympic lifts, you know this better than anybody. When you go in to get your lift, you want to hit that lift with the perfect sequence. You don't have, you don't have, you don't even have one degree of fucking up in terms of getting the right lift, maximizing how much weight you can lift and minimizing injury. And so how you set yourself up to do that lift is extremely important. Well, this is why I got so into biomechanics and, you know, and mobility and overall quality of movement because when you look at athletics, it matters so much more than just the raw ability to, you know, strengthen and be able to summon this like really loud strength. Yeah, but how are you going to use that? How are you going to channel that? How are you going to include the rest of your limbs in the movement? How are you going to add anchor points where now I'm stopping preventing certain like, you know, parts of my body to anchor down and to maintain this anti-rotation while the rest of my body's rotating. So it's a very complex concept. But once you start to, you know, really understand that you can have optimal points of tension in each movement. And that's the part that's like, that's next level where you start understanding that as an athlete, I can be loose and then boom, you know, tight when I need it. Till this day of all the programs that we've written, Maps Prime is the one that I consider like the best. And I don't mean the best in terms of it's better than the other programs. It's the most unique and revolutionary that we've created for sure. It required the three of us to get into a flow state like we'd never done with, I mean, we had to fucking turn it on to figure it out. To really figure out. It's complex and we're trying to present it to your average person. So it's, you know, it really took a lot of thought. Well, priming, here's the thing that people need to understand is that is there priming for specific lifts, general priming? Yeah, there is. But it's not even in the same universe as priming your individual body. Oh, it's definitely not the same thing. So if you have, you know, particular imbalances or recruitment patterns or tight muscles or loose muscles or whatever, you, if you prime your individual body based on how you move the right way, you will maximize your specific performance tremendously. And what you do to prime your body can be drastically different than how you prime someone else. I'll tell you something right now. The way I prime my body for squats and deadlifts is very different than the way Justin would prime his body. And I know this because we both have different mobility patterns. Different rituals, you know, if we call them, you know, going into the left, it's all part of it. And if I did my priming like his, it would be better than nothing, but it wouldn't be nearly as good as the one I do for myself and vice versa. And so that's what Maps Prime does is you go in there and there's something we, you know, we created called the compass test and you take this test and basically it's three movements that we came up with as the best movements that you can do. That'll help identify the right way to prime your body. You do this test, you pass or fail, then you figure out, okay, these are the best priming movements for my specific body. And when you do them, they turn on the right muscles. They get the right muscles to chill out a little bit. They create the right recruitment pattern. And then your lift, it's like, it's like going into a lift and feeling like you're in the groove right away. Like better than you've ever felt before. Now think about the Olympic lifting. Can you think of any type of resistance training type of activity that requires you be in the fucking groove more than Olympic lifting? I mean, as complex as a barbell squat is, I would, a barbell squat's not even the same page in terms of getting in the right groove movement as Olympic lifting. Yeah, right. And so try doing a clean and jerk or a snatch, you know, like it's so, that's why I guess I had such a venom when I see it. Crossfit. I just thrown into a circuit. Like it's just completely devalues that exercise and what the intent of the exercise is for. Well, and we know that over 80% of the population have no business doing it. No. Oh yeah. Absolutely not. You're just not, you're not there yet. That doesn't mean that nobody in the- You're at the top of the pyramid. That doesn't mean that there's people that get, that can't do it and or they should never do it. That's not what I'm saying. I think there's so much dysfunction in us. And I think that that is getting worse because of our habits of sitting and rounding forward on the computer and the desk and the phone and all that shit. There's people that can't even do a proper overhead press that are snatching. Yeah, no. Which drives me insane. It's a high skill activity. Getting into the groove is so important. And I'll make this point right now. If I was gonna teach a kid how to throw a baseball, of course I'd just have him throw a baseball, right? But that's not the full answer. That's not 100% the answer. I would teach them how to throw the baseball correctly. And then they would practice throwing it correctly over and over again. Because if I took a kid and I taught him to throw a baseball like a shot put and that's what he practiced or that's what she practiced all the time. Don't get good at that specific movement. Would they ever get good at really throwing a baseball by playing in a baseball game? They'd be terrible at throwing a baseball because all they've ever practiced is this terrible technique. Well, with Olympic lifting, you can go do all the snatches and cleans you want. But if your technique is off by a little, if you're not in the groove, if you didn't prime properly and you're just going through the movement, you'll never get really good at Olympic lifting because you're not practicing good Olympic lifting. If you prime properly, that's what you get good at. You get good at good Olympic lifting or good squatting or deadlifting because it's also obviously for other types of training. And so it's gonna make you better, it's gonna get you better faster by priming properly. And so with Olympic lifting, the truth is, I think everybody should prime any kind of workout that they do, it doesn't matter what it is, running, swimming, lifting weights, whatever. But the one, Olympic lifting has to rank among the top of how important it is to prime properly. It's funny, this came up too. I had one of our listeners, Susan, send me this video of this girl doing a deadlift and she's going through all these robotic movements and she was just asking me, can you explain what is she doing? And I was just helping one of Katrina's friends with her deadlift and the mechanics on these movement, that's not even an Olympic lift. That's not even an explosive lift that you're throwing up over your head. That's just a plain old deadlift. And I'm like, you see all the way she gets her foot in and she gets her hands and shoulders in position, her neck in position, retracts, slides the hips back. I mean, all that is important to prime her body to get in the perfect position to lift that weight. And so it's funny we ended up answering this question because she literally sent that to my DM yesterday and that was what I was trying to get across to her is that, yeah, it looks funny and silly and a lot of people make fun of people that have these little rituals before they do that, but they're priming their body. It's no different than the way a baseball player walks up to a plate and he dusts his cleats off, he throws a bat over his shoulder, he tips his cap and he spits on the ground. Like spitting has nothing to do with his baseball. That's priming his brain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. It's putting him into that flow state where he can sort of avoid all that. But you know, priming's even more specific than that because it would be him in the dugout practicing swinging the bat or working on the muscles that he knows he needs to work on in order to create the right hand. We've built in the fortification sessions in there too, so there's lots of work. Everything, everything. And here's the thing, look, I'll tell you, and I guarantee you this in five to 10 years, all personal trainers will know priming very, very well. But today, if you're a trainer now and you wanna separate yourself from your peers, if you wanna be a trainer that's like, oh shit, that trainer's different than everybody and he knows shit that nobody else knows, learn how to prime your clients properly before the workouts because it's still, right now, a lot of trainers don't do it. And if you're, by now, I think I've said this like three or four times. If you're a fucking trainer and you're listening to this show, you should own Prime and Prime Pro, hands down. If you don't, that's ridiculous. And it's the fact that you get your money back guarantee on top of that, so it's a no-brainer and for sure, hands down. When we designed all the programs, I remember sitting down, I remember us going like, God, we know what we need to provide for everybody, but we know that nobody's ready for this yet. If we would've came out with Prime as the very first program, it would've lost so many people that they would've been like, this program sucks, just give me something that makes me sweat or works me out. But we all knew that it should go with every program that we have. So even if you have any of the MAPS programs, if Prime isn't involved in that or Prime Pro isn't involved in that, that's really the assessment tool that each and every one of us, it really, it's the knowledge between the three of us of everything that we've accumulated over all this. Yeah, and Brink, right? So you add Brink in the mix too, have all put together on if we had somebody, if we had somebody sitting in front of us, what would we do to figure out what this person, how they should get ready before every single lift and workout, and that's how we develop Prime and Prime Pro, man. That's a no-brainer. Next question is from K. Cody RN. Which one of you has the most muscle mass or lean body mass? What kind of bullshit? Well, who picked that question? That's a sour question. It wouldn't even be close if I was competing, but even right now, I'm at 215 weight and I'm probably sitting, I'm fat right now, so I'm probably sitting around, I'm fat for me, sorry, I'm gonna offend somebody who's not lower than 15 or 16% body fat. I'm probably around 15% body fat, so you could figure that out. 215, 15% body fat, you can figure out my lean body mass if you know how to figure it out. Do you remember when we went and did the test, the body fat test, all of us, at what's his name, the supplement store? Oh, that was over in South San Jose. Yeah, now it's electronic impedance, so it's not gonna be the most accurate, but it gives you a general kind of idea, and I love it when Adam threw it off just by eating carbs, that was awesome. Yes. But we all went over there and we tested it, and then it could tell you what your lean body mass, yeah, that's when we all did that. I'm gonna say Doug. Yeah, probably. No, are we talking about pound for pound, or what are they asking you? No, I think that's the most lean body mass. I don't know, that's a good question because... Well, it's easy, just figure out, you know about what percent body fat you are, right? Yeah, I'm probably at like nine right now, something like that. So how much do you weigh? 196. So do that, so it's 19 pounds of fat on you, so you're probably sitting at about 180, 175. You're about 175 lean mass. I'm probably sitting at about 190, Justin's probably. It's hard to know what Justin, do you know what you're about to say? Yeah, Justin's really fat, so it's hard to tell. At least 19 to 20, who knows. Yeah, but I'm like 230 consistently. Damn. That is a lot of kicks. You know, hold on, you don't look like, we all joke around, fat, whatever. You're not that, you're not obviously a massive dude. No, I carry it well. But you've got a lot of, you have a lot. All the good places, ladies. I'm not, yeah, it all goes in the right spots. Damn, bro. Imagine this guy running, barreling at you full speed. We're actually, probably all of us are probably pretty close to the same lean mass. Give or take, I would say five or 10 pounds right now, for sure. At this moment, yeah. Yeah, I mean, when I was all jacked, when I'm jacked on gear and fucking walking. You're tall too. Yeah, I was up at 230 and then when I'd hit stage at 215 was my last pro show and I was 3% body fat. So I'm 200, yeah, 210 pounds of lean body mass on me, which I mean, you don't even weigh that. So you can have it. No, no, no. But I mean, right now I'm maybe sitting on probably 180, 190 pounds of lean mass. I like the lean body mass question because not necessarily for us, but for people listening because especially guys who try to bulk all the time. It's a good thing to know about yourself because the scale can fool you. Actually, no, no, this is a great question for everybody, including women. How many times have you had a female client lose weight on the scale? Be super like, ah, but you know she's doing it wrong. You test her body fat and you show her, oh, actually your body fat percentage stayed the same, which means you've lost this much lean body mass. You gain lean body mass. You remember the story that I shared on here with my client friend, Jessica, who competed and when I told her I didn't want her to compete yet because her metabolism went ready and she went on and kind of did it later on on her own with a friend and she did her body fat test at the end of the show and she didn't want to see it until after she got off stage and then we sat and we looked at it together and when we looked at it, her body fat percentage stayed the same and she lost 20-some pounds. There it is. And so she took off as much muscle as she took off body fat and that's crazy, man. People wonder that, by the way, how can you lose weight and your body fat percentage stay the same or go up? What you need to understand is body fat percentage is a percentage of your body weight. So if you're 100 pounds and you have 10% body fat, that means you have 10 pounds of body fat on you. If you lose 15 pounds of muscle but you still have 10 pounds of body fat, well, now it's 10 pounds out of, what is that, 85. So you now have a higher body fat percentage. Even though you didn't gain any pounds of body fat, it's a greater percentage of your whole body weight. That's why the scale is such a terrible indicator of how- It's stupid, it gives you false, like, I've done this with female clients. I'll wait, oh, I lost 10 pounds, I'm so happy. I lost 10 pounds and I'll test their body fat and I'll be like, your body fat percentage actually went up and they'll be like, what do you mean I lost weight? I'll be like, well, you might've lost a couple pounds of fat but you also lost a lot of muscle. So now more of your body is body fat than before because you've lost a lot of your body and along with losing body mass, is you're not gonna be able to burn as many calories. This is most typical in people when they first get started on their kick, right? So they're, I'm out of shape, I haven't been training. Just the winter, the holidays came around, okay, now I'm gonna kickstart my fitness, right? And they come out the gates, balls to the wall, they tighten up the diet like crazy. This is where you see the aggressive cardio people kind of struggle with that, right? That's when you see this happen. So like when, and that's the extreme version and there's everything in between too. There's some people that think they're not pushing that harder and they think they're doing it right but they still are too because maybe they're not feeding the body properly. I see that a lot. Like maybe you're not killing it on cardio and killing the gym but you're also restricting calories. You were eating 2,500 or 3,000 calories that were fucking terrible choices. And then all of a sudden you went from that so your body's now used to 2,500 to 3,000 shitty calories. Now all of a sudden you cut to 1,800 calories and you're eating lean and clean and your body's probably utilizing most of that shit. Like you're not feeding it enough to keep up and then it ended up happening as you drop 10 pounds in that week and in your head you think you did a good job because the scale's dropping and you ultimately wanna lose body fat but then you find out that you lost, you know, you lost 10 pounds and maybe some of it was good, you lost four pounds of fat but then six pounds of it was muscle and water and other things. So you've got a body fat percentage that actually can technically go up even though you're reducing your calories and you've lost 10 pounds, super common. Yeah, I mean, if you're telling your body to become more efficient with calories it's going to want to reduce your muscle mass. Your muscle mass is the biggest, your skeletal muscle is the biggest calorie burner in your body, arguably, right? Not per pound, I think the brain per pound of mass burns the most calories but total because there's so much muscle, skeletal muscle on your body, that's the biggest calorie burner and incidentally it's also something that your body can manipulate quite a bit. Like the last things that you'll lose to save calories are organs, mass and brain mass because you really fucking need those things but muscle mass, you can get rid of a lot of muscle mass and still function and be okay and so if you're telling your body to be efficient with calories by eating very, very little calories, doing lots of endurance type activity that requires lots of efficiency and also requires you to be kind of light then what you'll happen is your body will adapt in a way that reduces your muscle mass. Now what do a lot of people's fat burning routines look like? Exactly that, I'm only eating 1200 calories a day and I'm doing tons of cardio every single day. Well, you are telling your body to reduce its muscle mass, that's 100% what you're doing and that is exactly what'll happen and here's the shitty part about it because maybe someone's saying like I don't care if I lose six pounds of muscle as long as I lose four pounds of fat. Fine, fair enough, I get that but here's a situation you've put yourself into now. Now is adding rocks to your body. Now you gotta eat less just to stay that way. Now you need to be more disciplined with food and which is again, fair enough, that's fine but you live in a time where highly palatable, easily accessible food is around all over the place and food. Yeah, it's a shitty place to be. Yeah, you don't want to necessarily, I mean, that's a great place to be if you're like surviving in the wilderness, like, oh yeah, it's cool if my body adapts to be off less calories, it's better at survival but if you live in a regular city in America, do you want a super highly efficient body that will gain weight at anything over 1,000 calories? Well, if you plan on eating 1,000 calories for the rest of life, I guess it's okay but shit, we celebrate with food, we do all kinds of things with food, foods around us, I don't know about you guys but I like to have a little bit more of a cushion so I can every once in a while do that. Doing as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change applies to nutrition the same way that applies to lifting weights. So it's the same thing, I think that you, if you were eating, and I tell this to clients all the fucking time, if you are somebody who is off the wagon, cause this is typical, right? Most people are on or off, I'm not speaking to some competitive bodybuilder right now, I'm talking about everybody else is on or off the diet, when they're off the diet, they're eating fucking fast food, they're not paying attention to the nutrients their body's getting, they're not moving very much, they're not weight training, so much is not going on. Just a simple fact, if you're starting to introducing weight training into your life and being consumed. Yeah, don't do anything else. Yeah, literally just don't do anything else yet and then start to take the big rocks out of your nutrition plan. Like if you're eating fast food and shit that's not ideal for you, just switch it out for better choices but still eat when you're hungry, feed the body, fuel it. If it's like, I don't want any of my clients feeling hungry at all when they're first making this new change of lifestyle and you build upon that. You come out the gates, you throw everything at it right away. Nutrition is a hard one. So go, I always tell people like start slow, step by step, because you have no idea how skewed your understanding of nutrition is and you don't understand how dysfunctional your understanding of nutrition is. I just witnessed this yesterday. I talked about my daughter's performance, right? The talent show and they have a little snack shack over there. So I see at intermission and afterwards, all these kids lined up and parents buying their kids candy to celebrate. Now my ex did the same thing. She bought my kids some candy. So my kids get out of line, they come over with their candy and I'm looking at them and each kid has a full bag of Skittles. Now the average person is like, oh, it's just a treat, right? It's not a big deal. A full bag of Skittles is something like 75 grams of sugar or something ridiculous like it. An insane amount of sugar that you're giving a small child and I'm not being a food Nazi here. It's just, we're so skewed with our understanding of nutrition that we don't think that that's a big deal but that's a lot for two adults to eat per body weight. It's ridiculous. It's so much like your body has to deal with that massive influx of sugar all at once and it's a little body with a little pancreas with a little bit of insulin production and I'm like, and I see all these kids and parents so you don't, I'm using an easy example like you, you don't realize how skewed your mentality is. Everybody says they're eating healthy. Everybody says they're eating healthy and they don't really do that much bad stuff. Every fucking single person I've ever had says that. 100 pounds of oil. Until they write it down and they were like, oh really? Yeah, you think caramel popcorn's a good idea. And that's typically what, again, what I always go back to is just track for a week or two. Starts super slow. Yeah, just pay attention. I'm like, most people, again, you're right. They think they're eating well and they're just unaware of what the fuck they're doing. It's like, just become aware. Just becoming aware of what you're doing already. You'll see you naturally will start to make better choices because you start to feel guilty. You feel bad about how you're feeding yourself. Like, oh shit, I'm claiming that I'm eating well but then I'm looking down at my fucking food track here and I'm like, oh fuck, I'm not eating well at all. What am I really doing? And the other people, you know, is the bulkers, you know, pay attention to lean body mass too. I learned this. I didn't care about getting lean ever, you know, through growing up working out because I was skinny, I wanted to gain weight. I remember learning this lesson when I bulked really hard. I got my body weight up to like 241 or 240 or 239. It was right around 240, which I don't have a big structure. So that's a lot of fucking weight. And I remember being so proud of myself like, I got a 240 and fucking big. And then I got my body fat tested. And then I looked at the lean body mass that I had gained. And it was like, not even a third, I think it was like a fourth of the weight that I gained was muscle and all of it was fat. Same exact thing happened to me. It was right when we started getting into the dunk take when Aaron was coming around in the fitness wave and I was on a heavy bulk. And I remember it was like, I remember setting my mind out like, okay, I'm like, this is when I tell you guys the stories of, you know, the finishing the night off with McDonald's, I could crush two Subway sandwiches for lunch, rock star, wash it down with like, I was just- I witnessed it. Crushing food, right? A monster. Yeah. And- I'm so glad you and I weren't like super good friends back then. I don't think we would have survived. Oh, we would have fed it to each other. Oh, so good. Yeah. And I lived with Mark for a while and him and I would do the same thing. We pushed each other. We used to call each other out. You haven't eaten it? I've already eaten three times. Are you pussy? Yeah. You're pussy, I've already eaten. Or your friends in line before you at the, getting a burrito and you are, or you order yours and then he orders this extra meat and you're like, fuck. Right. We used to eat like that. We used to eat like that and try and gain so aggressively. And I remember when I started tracking with the dunk tank, it was, you know, it being as accurate as it is and consistent. I could look back at all the times I tested and I remember how aggressively I was trying to get my weight up and all I cared about was the weight. I just want to see that 240, 240 plus mark. And I remember seeing my body fat percentage and seeing how much lean body mass. I was like, wait a second. You mean to tell me, I fucking worked this hard to put 25 pounds on and like three of it was muscle. I was like, what? Like are you fucking kidding me right now? Like, oh dude, that was like so depressing, man. You see that super common in gyms with people who lift weights. So yeah, putting on, you put on five pounds of just lean body mass and you see a pretty significant change in your body. It doesn't require a shit set of calories. It's the speed thing. That's what it is. It's that, I want to, I mean, for me if you were to ask me back, if you were probably would have told me the science back then I probably would still fucking be doing the same shit anyways because I was filling my shirts out. People were, oh my God, you look jacked. You look big. And so it's feeding the ego. You know what I'm saying? It's covering up the insecurity of being the skinny guy. So yeah, I'd rather be a little softer and fatter and but bigger and buff, right? So yeah, no, I think that's something you got to go through. You know what I'm saying? I think if that's an insecurity of yours, you got to work your way through it. Look at your lean body mass. Check it out. If you go to the app store, you can download the Mind Pump Media app. It's totally free. It allows you to search for any topic within any of our episodes. Go get it now. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes Maps Anabolic, Maps Performance and Maps Aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. 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