 Hello everyone. Welcome to Mind Pump. In the first half of this episode, we talk about how to accomplish more in 2023 by focusing on behaviors rather than results or outcomes. You're better off doing little things on a daily basis where you actually accomplish them versus aiming for this one big thing. And then maybe you hit it every once in a while. The small wins lead to the state of mind that is more conducive to success. How to train a toddler to have a good relationship with food. Sal also talks about his brain boosting peptide protocol as well as other topics. In the second half of the show, the guys coach for live callers and questions such as, I'm going to hike the Appalachian Trail. It's 125 miles. How should I prepare for that? I'm suffering from hip pain later in the day after I squat. What can I do to correct that? I'm not seeing the gains I want to see in the gym. Could it be because I'm eating too much protein? And I'm super fatigued after working out what's going on with me. What can I do to fix that? Finally, it's a new year. You may be wanting to lose a little weight. You may want to put on some muscle this year and you may need a little bit of help and advice. Well, you can find that advice over another channel, Mind Pump Clips right here on YouTube. All right. Enjoy the show. If you want better chances at success, stress the behaviors that lead to the results. Don't stress the results. In other words, let's say you want to increase your knowledge. Don't say to yourself, I want to know more about the subject by the end of the year. Just say to yourself, I'm going to read five minutes every single day. When you stress the behaviors, the results happen. When you stress the results, oftentimes you don't get there. I would, yeah, I would take it a step further. You know, I was thinking about this with obviously the new year being here and everybody talking about goals and stuff like that. I even liked the idea of focusing on creating behaviors even more so than setting any goals. A hundred percent. It's just that if you haven't, if you haven't read at all, setting this goal of all I'm going to hit, I'm going to read so many books this year, instead of doing that, just like, Hey, why don't you just read a page a day or start with that and then catch the momentum after you've been doing that consistently for weekend week out and then build upon that. And that same philosophy of reading applies to exercise, nutrition and every other aspect. Yeah. So instead of saying I'm going to lose 30 pounds this year or I'm going to get in better shape, say, Okay, what are the, what are the behaviors that lead to this and which of these behaviors do I know I can do? And let me just focus on those and not even worry about the goal anymore. So maybe it's, Okay, I want to lose 30 pounds this year. What can I do? And then you come down to it and you say, Okay, well, I'm going to walk 10 minutes after breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I'm going to do that every single day. And I'm going to avoid heavily processed foods six days a week. And I'm just going to focus on those things. I'm not going to worry about anything else. And then what ends up happening is the results, they come along, but it's the behaviors that lead to that. And it's the behaviors that stick around. That's what is, that's where the success comes from. You guys weren't in here yesterday when I talked to Doug, were they, were you guys in here when you and I told you what Katrina and I did for years? They weren't in here. No. Yeah. So it's interesting. You, I didn't know you were going to go this direction and I actually forgot about this until you, until you just brought this up. So I'm going to pull it up so I can actually kind of list them. Hopefully I can get there in time. Here we are. So Katrina and I did something a little bit different this year for our New Year's thing. And so what we did, and of course not pulling up, but I remember most of them, so it don't matter. We made a list of all of these behaviors that we want to do more of. And the idea was, and there's a list of about 10. And it has everything from a cold plunge to sauna sauna to meditation to red light to exercise to go for a walk to read. All these, so there's about 10 of them of these behaviors. And so we set a goal of to try and knock off at least two or three of these things every single day, two or three. That's it. Yeah. And what we said was that we're not even going to hold ourselves accountable that, but the goal is to how long can we go into the year of never allowing a day to go by that we didn't do one of them. So yesterday we both did three different things in those categories and like we checked in with each other at the end of night. And even if you guys put a sticker on like a border. No, I mean, like we know what they are. We have those, she has the list saved in our phone. One of them also was getting to bed by 9 30, which is tough for us to do, which we actually accomplished last night. And so we just made a list like that and said, Hey, and now, of course, I would like to do all 10 every day. And there might be some days where I get all 10 in a day. But I didn't want to make this mistake of setting this goal of I'm going to do all 10 every single day. It's that here's a list of things I want to become behaviors in my life. And I'm going to try and set this thing where I do as many of them every single day. And what my real goal is, is to never allow a day go by that one of them. So here's why there's so much brilliance in that. And I know that that's based on your experience, right? Training clients and seeing what actually works. They actually just study on this where they set, where they found that small frequent successes led to more motivation and more of those motivated type feelings, which we're all looking for. Right. When you feel motivated, it's easier to do the things that you think you need to do or you should do. Right. When you feel unmotivated, it gets real tough. So what they found in the study was that small, frequent wins or successes was more effective at producing that state of mind than infrequent, large successes. Okay. So you're better off doing little things on a daily basis where you actually accomplish them versus aiming for this one big thing. And then maybe you hit it every once in a while. The small wins lead to the state of mind that is more conducive to success, which is that feel good, motivated state of mind. So you're far better off with those small steps than you are with the trying to hit the bigger steps. This took me so long to figure out as a trainer. I wish I could go back in time for that first seven, eight years of training and training and teach people differently because it was such a big game changer later on that my success rate quadrupled with my clients from just applying strategies just like this one. I know. Same thing always focused on two bigger goals and even trying to reduce it down. It wasn't based on those every single day activities, like the ones that it just takes very little friction to get involved into do, but then it just seriously like transcends into bigger, bigger goals and bigger lifestyle changes that happen as a result because it's just like a bit of that snowball effect that you just get from it. Yeah, right. So I'll give you another example. This is a real clear one. I could say I'm going to cut my calories by 10%. I'm going to reduce my caloric intake by 10%. So that's a goal. Or I could say I am no longer going to eat while distracted. I'm not going to eat while I'm on my phone. I'm not going to eat while I'm watching TV or on the computer. When I eat, I'm going to eat and I'm just going to be eating my food and I'm going to be present. Now, what that does studies show very consistently. It reduces your caloric intake by 10% to 15% by doing that, but it's a behavior rather than aiming for the 10% cut. I'm just going to change my behavior. The result of which being the automatic cut in calories. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see which one is more likely to be where you'll be successful. Which one are you more likely to be consistent? One thing I did notice though to clients is like, they just weren't aware of a lot of their behaviors like that they would do on a daily basis and would like almost their mind would play tricks on them to shield and hide a lot of these behaviors where they would quickly consume food and not even realize like how many that was that they actually ate or whatever it was like if they really thought they're getting eight hours of sleep, they really kind of looked back at that and found that like only maybe five hours of it was quality sleep. They woke up and a couple of times during the night. So I think like, you know, really kind of taking into account an accurate assessment of what you do on a daily basis. Like the most you do, like the habits that you repeat the most. Yeah, you have to be, you have to try to consciously become aware. You know, it's funny when you say that I remember distinctly. This was relatively recently with Araleas. He's my two year old. I'm like, you know, I want to be more present with him. I want to be more present with him. And so once I had this bad habit of when he would be playing or we'd be playing together, when he would go off to do some playing on his own. So him and I would play with cars or something like that. Right. And then he'd go off and then start playing by himself. And I'm like, oh, he's by himself. I'll just get on my phone and do some work. So he's over there. I'm over here doing this work on my phone. And I said to myself, you know what, I'm just going to be really present at the very least. I'm just going to look at him and observe him and watch him and be, and you know what I noticed. And this broke my heart when I noticed this. I'm watching him. So I'm not on my phone. He's over there playing by himself every once in a while. He turns up to look and see if I'm watching him. And I realized, holy shit. I wonder how many times he did that to me. And he looked and I was on my phone. I had the same epiphany. Did you really? Oh, yeah, I'm watching my son play. And they just want to know you're watching. That's really all it is. It's like, and if you're not, even if it's just for a second and then they see you on the phone, it's just like it has to affect, you know, part of their psyche a little bit. Oh, a hundred percent. That was actually, that was one of the things. I mean, we didn't get everything right. It was one of the things we got right. Cause Katrina and I both agreed upon that early and it doesn't mean there hasn't been slip-ups where one of us starts with, but it's so great that we both were on the same page and that the other one calls the other one out. Yeah. So like if I, if we're all in the living room, Max, me and her and one of us pulls our phone out, it's like, what are you doing? You know, get on your phone and then like call the other one out and like right away. Yeah. And so it's just been something that we've been really, we've been really good about that. And even like the TV, like for the most part, it's those, I don't want him to see me sucked into that. I can still manage to go, I can go to another room and like go up to the office and go do that. If I really need to go take a call or I really need to go answer something. Cause that happens, right? There's times when you're running a business that we have to put fires out or you don't, you don't anticipate that. And so there's ways to, yeah, maneuver around it. But I think it's so important that when there's playtime and you're right there and you're interacting that he doesn't see you like that, you know. Well, you know, too, like I've actually had to verbally announce that I'm doing emails or I'm on, I'm working, you know, and it sounds ridiculous and silly, I gotta do that. But like, I'll be like, for 20 minutes right now, like I'm doing emails, I'm on the phone like doing work and like the kids know I'm doing smart. I think that's smart because you're showing the intention and they're not just thinking or the dash scrolling. Yeah, we're subconsciously. Yeah, farting around on there. Like just, you know, try to ignore it. By the way, dude, when you do this, because we were pretty good with TV, but recently we're like, let's almost eliminate it to the point where the only amount of TV that will let them watch is about 15 minutes before bed, like a treat. Okay, so get ready for bed, 15 minutes. We set a timer, he watched. So other than that, there's nothing. Okay, it's a lot of work because you have to be on all the time. So, you know, we had this break where we were off and I was home with, you know, with Jessica and we didn't use the TV at all and you were on like, it's not like you can't put the TV on and have it. So alluring, you'll turn it on to give yourself a break. Yeah, right. So you don't do it. It's like, you're signing up for a lot of work, but I think that's totally worth it. I mean, we were talking about it and Jessica and I are like, you know what, you can't become a better parent without becoming a better person. You have to become a better person. You got to adapt. That's it, but I'm fine. I think it's kind of like the advice so that we give around like fitness. Like we had live callers and we talked to a caller and said, you know, about like mobility and stuff and like it's something he avoids. And so it would be one of those things that I would tell someone, like just do this and then see for yourself and then you make that call. I feel the same way, kind of with like parenting in a situation like this, right? Like you don't know that you don't know. Like I have so many friends that have never actually disciplined themselves to take the iPad or TV out of their lives and then actually do the work of like, Oh my God, this is an exhausting week. We're not doing any iPad, but pay attention to the kid's behavior. Totally. And it's, it was so obvious. You can see that the difference when they go back on it. We did it enough times of, oh, let's try and let it in. Oh, let's try and let it out. Oh, let's give her this. Let's give them this much time. Let's only give them this much time. And we played with it enough times to go like, there is a clear, very clear difference in and even an amount of time. Like you talk about a small window like 15, we found even, even up to an hour is not bad. As soon as it gets beyond a total of an hour of time in front of any sort of tech like that, the iPad or the television, we see negative effects, like more irritable, irritability, behavior. They doesn't listen as well as he doesn't go down, isn't go down for bed as easily. He doesn't sleep as long. Like, I mean a whole host of things, which by the way only makes all those things more difficult. So you think as a parent, you are, you are helping yourself out by putting them in front of that iPad for an hour or two. But then what you don't realize is you make nighttime and bedtime and then listening to you more difficult. So you really want to use a TV more. That's right. So you're really only trading one for the other. You're really, you're, you're temporarily making it easier for you in that moment, but you actually make the rest of the day more difficult for yourself. And I think when you, when you tease it in and out enough times as a parent, if you're aware, if you're paying attention, just like somebody who is learning about eating correctly for the first time and pulling certain foods that don't agree with them out, if you're become aware and you pay attention, it's not hard to close you. No, it's not hard to convince you to do that. No, you can see the value. And you know, speaking of awareness, you know that kids are the most present people, like children are so present and aware of everything that's going on at all moments with the TV and electronics and that kind of stuff does is actually teaches them to not be present and not be aware. But when you take that away, like, you know, when little kids, like I said, I have a toddler and his language is developing so rapidly. And he's saying things and phrases that we didn't necessarily teach him. He's just saying them. And then you realize like he hears and sees everything. They have to be present. It's a new world to them. So everything they're paying attention to moods and what you're saying and changes in the room and what's happening. And what the what electronic does is actually teaches them to disconnect. And there was that study I brought up a while ago that shows that it prevents children from learning how to regulate their emotions because they learn how to soothe and disconnect. So they're I'm upset TV, boom, disconnect. They never learn or they don't learn as well the skill of emotional regulation, coping, which is super. So what they said in that study was if you are going to do stuff like that, like watch TV or whatever to interact with them at the at the moment to make it which to me is exactly what I see when I don't. When I allow them when I put it on, yeah, when I put it on, I'm do it. The things that I'm challenged with is that his behavior and his ability like it Max is so good about his routine and his time and the things that he does that if you know, it's OK, it's bad time. OK, you know, OK, Daddy, two minutes, OK, two more minutes and then we go up. All right. He's like if it was one of those days where he got more and we saw this over vacation because we were a lot, we were looser on vacation with some of the tech and stuff. If I allow him to do that and then OK, some of that. No, I don't want to. Like what? No, you tell me no. Like, you don't tell me no, but he does tell me no then. And then when I'm yes, you are no, no, no, and I don't want to later, Daddy, later. And it's just like I see that clear difference of when it's been a day where we've been outside playing and we've been doing physical activity. And he's like ready. What's up, everybody? Today's giveaway is Maps Aesthetic is a great body building inspired workout program. You can get it for free. 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And that's where he gets it up. All right. Here comes the show. So kind of similar topic. So we've been learning about teaching young, young, young children how to have a good relationship with food, which is different than what I would have thought. So I always thought, well, you teach the kids, this is healthy. This is unhealthy. You talk to them. This is what we're eating. This is what we're not eating. But what we're learning, and this actually is quite effective, I'm seeing it now with my toddler, is you do sacrifice initially a little bit of nutrition so that the child develops a good relationship with food. So here's what you do. You set out three or four things, one or two of them you know that they like. The other one of them you know that maybe they'll eat the other one that's kind of experimental. You put it out in front of them and you say, hey, it's you know, it's snack time, time to eat. And then you let them eat what they want and not eat what they don't want. And you continue to introduce the foods that you want them to and eventually they start to pick it up and eat the foods. And what it does, they develop this better relationship with food versus this finishes. Because they chose it though. Don't eat that. Can't eat this. That's unhealthy. Eat that. That's that's good. And it's working. I would have never imagined that it would have worked this way to where now I'm introducing these foods. I'm not saying anything. I put it in front of him and the first 10 times he won't touch the new thing. He'll just leave it. That's fine. No big deal. Hey, snack time is over. Or can I throw this away? OK, blah, whatever. Well, and it's such a trip too. I noticed this even with my kids and especially Everett because he's the most picky that their palate changes. And it goes like every I want to say like almost like in a five year schedule with him, like all of a sudden he's like wants to try all this new stuff. And he was like eating fish and we're just like Courtney and I are looking at each other like what you want to have this and it just like you give up hope for a while because you're just like I don't know if he's ever going to like come around. We're always going to be like trying these methods and doing this, this like well, let's try this method. And and eventually just, you know, like overnight he just decided on his own. Like it just I think it just really had to be on his terms. That's just his person. Well, that's exactly it because now when you look back though, Justin, do you because I know that you guys had different like consistencies with Everett and Ethan around their eating. Do you attribute any of that to the the eating behaviors that you guys created everything from breastfeeding to the whole foods that you were preparing yourself for Everett and Ethan? Do you think that had anything to do with it or do you think it's purely they're just there? Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I know what you're talking about, like when I was describing a little bit of a difference there, but like and Courtney corrected me. She heard that episode. It's like, no, I did the same thing. Like she's like breastfed in the same amount of time, if not longer, had like pre made a lot of those blended options where you put like, you know, spinach and kale and then, you know, had had that and fed him with that. So it was just interesting that he just completely had a different palette and was just very much drawn to only like three foods and was like all like carb heavy. But yeah, I think it's it's for them for Ethan ever. It's very much of a personality thing. And again, I don't know specifically that it's like I could I could just divide it in half of like, like Ethan is completely Courtney personality and ever it's completely like me. But it's very close. And so I was very much like that. You know, when I was a kid, it was very hard for me to eat new foods and to be convinced otherwise, because I wanted to buck, you know, want to buck the system. Well, so that's so that's just it, right? So this has totally changed my my paradigm on the whole thing. The most important skill you can develop in a modern world around food is to have a good relationship with food. In the past, it was understanding that we don't have a lot of food. I got to eat all this where I'm going to miss these nutrients or I'm not going to be healthy. So you look and that's stuck around. That's how we were raised. That's how our parents are raised. And, you know, definitely our grandparents. But today there's so much food everywhere that the adults that succeed in this environment. They just have a good relationship with food. They don't use it to, you know, to lull themselves. They don't use it to distract themselves. They use it in the depressed. They just have. So the most important thing, and I totally would, I would have said completely different if you asked me five years ago, the most important thing today, what that I think now today with my youngest is my youngest kids is the relationship part. Not that like you have to eat that. You don't have to eat that, but rather giving them a sense of a feeling of autonomy, learning to kind of feed themselves, kind of creating barriers that they're not necessarily aware of. Like I give them the options, but I give them enough options and I know that there's at least one or two things that I know they'll eat. So they get, and if they want more of that, that's totally fine. And then there's mealtime. That's the other boundary. This is mealtime. This is snack time. Oh, you're hungry. Snack time will be here in 20 minutes or whatever. That's pretty much it. And it's working. Yeah. And to kind of, you know, go further into that. Like what we found too, was that Everett was really into the cooking process of it all. So he got into that and Courtney started to really kind of work with him on like creating recipes and doing stuff with her. That's Max. So it was like game changer though. He'd actually eat it then. Yeah, I think okay. Yeah. So it's like duh, it's like such a no-brainer, but we just didn't include him in that process, you know, to be fair. Wasn't interesting anything I've never thought about that. Although, so we're pretty lucky, right? Max is not a picky eater. I mean, he will eat pretty much anything that we'll put in front of him. Although he does gravitate towards carbohydrates more and I have to be, we have to be more actively aware, but that's just on us. That's us making the choice of making sure we put that in front of him. But I do know he gets really excited to try the food that he makes. So that's a cool strategy. If there is anything that I struggle to get him to eat more of, is to actually probably have him prepare it in the kitchen with Katrina because he loves to do that. He absolutely loves to cook with her. And you can do that when they're even younger. I mean, because Max is what, is he three? Yeah, he just turned, yeah, he's barely, well he's three and a half now, right? So, but he's been doing that for the last year. Yeah, because you can have him do something like, I have a really, he'll like grab the seasoning for the meat. Like you can't do anything else. So let's have him like sprinkle it on. Yeah, he just loves to get up on, like we have a stool to get him up. So he's at the height of the counter. Oh, like one of his Montessori. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he just gets up there and like, you know, Katrina will hold this, you know, hand me this, pass me that. And he's not really doing anything, but he feels like it. Speaking of food, speaking of food, I had a little panic attack over the weekend. We went to Whole Foods to go do grocery shopping. And I'm over there and I'm gonna go buy eggs. No eggs. Not no eggs that I like. There's a shortage going right now. No eggs at all. Yeah. So I'm like, that's weird. When have you ever been to the grocery store and there's no eggs? So I'm like, this is weird. So finish our grocery shopping, go to Safeway. No eggs. Bro. No eggs at all. We were considering getting chickens again, because we did see that. Like it's crazy. They're like hard to get right now. There's a, there was an egg shortage going on. Now I found some and now they're available again, but there's an egg shortage going on. There's so many goddamn chickens. How's that apply? I know how like, what is happening? Bird flu. Yeah. Is that true? Yeah. Maybe Doug can confirm it. I think you're right. Yeah. I looked it up yesterday. Yeah. Bird flu. So there's literally, so egg prices are gonna go, I'm sure are gonna go through the roof. Yeah. But you know the sense, it's okay, this is so weird. Never have I ever lived during a time where there was a staple, like where I go to the grocery store and there's a staple food that's not on the shelf. I've never experienced that before. Yeah. Okay. Like bread, milk, meat, you know, fruit. Just toilet paper. Right? Yeah. That's the only thing you've experienced. Now we get to it. Yeah, I know. That was dumb. So you go to the grocery store and see no eggs and then I'm like, uh-oh, is this like part of the like supply chain thing? Like what are we doing? What the hell is going on here? They call it avian flu. Avian flu. Yeah, not bird flu. Why not bird? I think that's what humans get is bird flu. I'm not sure, but avian flu is the technical map. I feel like Peta said that that was offensive or some shit. That's what happened. Don't call them birds. Yeah, I mean, is there stats on like how many, how many like flocks it knocked out or I mean, what's happening? Not the flock out. I mean, is this how we, I mean, this is how it was cheap going on. Bro, we're such cheap. You know what I'm saying? Like, oh, there's no eggs. Oh, Google. Oh, Google tells us there's perfect. Okay. It's all I needed. So it was like foster farms. Like getting hammered right now. Like what's going on? Foster farms, yes. Obliterate. I want more answers. You know what I'm saying? They're still cranking away, making great money. Did it really freaking hurt them that much? Or what? Maybe they met with the beers. Was it the beers, diamond, mind people? How do we do what you guys do? Right, right. So regulating eggs, same way they do diamonds. He'll have the chickens, trust me. It'll work. Eggs will go through the room. You getting anything, Doug? Yeah, 10% hike in price. Yeah, that's it. I'm not getting, I'm not getting details about how many chickens are knocked out here. I tell you what, that tinfoil hat is starting to get more secure on my head more and more. Oh, I'm telling you, man. Justin and I, man. Oh my God, dude. I saw that. I'm so sad to be right. That's all I'm gonna say right now. I wish it wasn't right. It was half the stuff. It's the worst. Dude, speaking of grocery store, I don't know if I ever told you guys this a while ago. I just remembered it today. I was like, I gotta bring this up. So years, this is the weirdest, this was the weirdest experience. One of the weirdest experiences for me. So when I was in junior high, junior high was a tough time for me and I got a lot of scuffles and fights. And at one point I got jumped. I told you guys this in the boys' bathroom. I walked in, bunch of dudes walked in, shut the door behind me. And there was one guy in particular who was kind of leader and it was like this gang or whatever. And I got jumped by like five dudes, right? And it was like, you know, soccer was traumatizing after that. I went after the guy, I got suspended, it was a whole big deal. Well, anyways, years later as a grown adult. So I'm like, you know, late 30s. I'm at the grocery store and dude taps on my shoulder and turn around. And it's the dude, the main dude that jumped me with all those other kids. And he was, wow, man, I gotta apologize to you, man. And he's like, I'm a pastor at this church. Oh, wow. He became a total Christian, was apologize. And I was so torn as a grown man. Because part of me was like, yeah, now, let's see you try that now. I've been training, dude. I've been dreaming about getting a movie. Like every time I was like, yeah. I used to see you sounds like fists. Just, yeah. I was so torn, like part of me was like, well, that's nice. The other part of me was like, you know, can I get like one, you know? You really feel bad? Can we just hit you real one time? Yeah, you're really ruining my fantasy. Let's see what happens. Yeah, I got some stats here for you. On birds, deadliest in US history. I guess bird flu is a correct name as well. The worst poultry health disaster in US history, 52.7 million birds dead. Whoa. It's a chick apocalypse. All right, I feel better now. No, I mean, not like. Wait a minute. 52 million? Yeah. Oh my God. That's crazy. Well, and okay, on average, do you remember? Justin, what a chicken produces? What's an egg? For like a month or day? Yeah, just like a couple of eggs a day per one, though. Per one, yeah. One is one a day? So it depends. Well, I had a chicken that produced at least two, three. A day, yeah. I think average is around one, maybe. Yeah, I think one a day. So that's 52 million eggs a day that were short? Yeah, what's going on? Yeah. Holy cow. Yeah, it's a big short, isn't it? That makes sense. That makes sense. That makes sense. This is wild. It's more logical than the toilet paper. What else is going to happen? That's what I got, man. What's going on here? So you guys, I don't know. Locusts, that's what's going to happen. Great. You know what, if we see locusts and boils, I'm done. I'm going to tell you right now, if I start to get boils, then we see locusts fly through Saddle's A. Bro. It's done. Yeah, I repent. So I told you guys, I'm going to tell the audience just so they can follow along. I'm starting on, so at NPHormones.com, I told them that my goal is I want cognitive performance. I don't care about muscle, fat loss. I'm happy with all that. I want them brain gains. Yeah, I want you to put me on a peptide combo or whatever that is going to maximize cognitive performance. I've done the same thing. You got, OK, so today I just started. So I'm obviously too early to notice anything, but I'll let everybody know what happens. I told them to dumb me down, just make me sexy. Make me as hot as possible. If it makes me stupid, that's fine. Don't cut any corners. Yeah, just give me whatever it takes. Hold up the handsome hair. Well, it doesn't a two-nerd, cute show. Lots of their big-ass heads. Justin and I are going to be the smart guys. Look, I'll just add them. He's so simple to do. He's so handsome. He's so handsome. What the fuck? God damn it, you get a pass. Did you really? You didn't say that. No, of course not. Are you doing? I got to meet with them. So I'm the last one to go get my, I had my blood work. Why do you wait so long? We're always such a, every time. You know, it's like, you would think I was doing a bunch of stuff, you know, if it was me. Of course, I'd say you went for that. So you guys have so much free time. Yeah, it must be nice, you know. I actually had a, I had a blood work appointment on Friday and I don't even remember why we had to cancel it. I had to cancel it though. I canceled it and something else came up. So I got a reschedule and I will, and I'm looking forward to, to meet with them. And I'll have them put me on a stack. So we'll see what we'll see what I do. I'll tell you guys the nurse like flirting with me when she took my blood. No. At least I thought she was flirting. Do you think everybody's flirting with you for a long time and go to Earth? So I can confirm this. Oh, wait a minute. Hold on. I don't think everybody's flirting with me. Why are you making that up? She wants me. Yeah. You guys just, you can't just make things up. I don't make things up. Somebody give my back right now, Doug, Justin. I'm sorry. I was getting your back right now. I was reiterating. Listen, that guy was looking at me for a while. No, I'm in there and the nurse, the nurse goes to take my blood pressure and she puts the cuff on me and it didn't fit. She's like, oh, you have big arms. You have big arms, man. That's all she said. That's all she said. But I made sure to text you know, my wife afterwards. Like, babe, I don't know, I was there. I love you so much. The nurse was calling to go to the side of my arms. She said I had to use an obese person's cuff. That's what she said. That's right. I'm gonna jump ahead of you on this one because we got a massage in Iceland. Oh, what? I know you're gonna bring this up. Wow. What do you mean, that's weird, Justin? I'm just saying. Okay, so I heard you telling Sal yesterday and so you had these hot springs, correct? Yeah. Salt, geothermic heating. So it's all like part of the hot springs and stuff that they have around there. And you actually got a massage while floating in one of these hot springs? So it's like freezing outside. That sounds cool in itself. So super cold, super cold out the surface and then warm water. And so they have these yoga mats that are extra thick and they kind of float. And so they put this warm blanket on you and then you have this pillow and then towel over your eyes and all that stuff. And yeah, so they still use some kind of oil and they kind of lift your back up and massage your back and then massage your neck and all the tension spots in the head. Dude, it was fantastic. And I thought it was gonna be crap because it's like you're floating around like in water. I was like, how can this be any good? Now you say they, like who's they that massages? Do you get massaged by guys or girls? No, no, no, I don't, no. It's always girls. Okay. I'm the same way too. I'm just saying, I'm not only enjoying it and like some dude. I can't relax. Obviously that's the Katrina's profession and that was like one of my stipulations was like, no, it has to be a female. It's like, it's not like a sexual thing. It's that I can't relax with a dude rubbing me. Thank you. Yeah. It's just not my thing. It can be your thing. My brother-in-law like massages, he'll come by and he'll like rub my shoulders. I can relax a little bit when he does that. But if I'm like naked and he's rubbing all over my body, just can't relax. That's a different level. Challenges you too much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It threatens me. I feel like I gotta be prison tight. What are we doing? You know? I don't like this confused voter. It's so confusing. No, so, so it was. So yeah, she was mildly attractive. Oh, mildly. They're just totally downplaying. She had a touch of attractiveness. She's pretty attractive. So this was an Iceland. So this is probably a tall, like... Yeah, some kind of Scandinavian blood going on there. How was your trip over there, by the way? I'm gonna rescue you right now. Pull him out. Pull him out. I'm just being honest. How was the trip over there? So you go to Iceland? No, it was great. You know, Iceland itself, because that was the second half of the trip. I'm totally doing this out of order, but Iceland was amazingly stunning, gorgeous environment. It almost feels like you're in an alien planet, because first of all, you only have like four hours of daylight, because it's winter. And so you'll see the sun rise at like 10, 30, 11 o'clock, and then it goes till about four o'clock, and it never gets higher than where you see set. So it was just like barely above. Weird. Yeah, the skyline, and then it would just go across like this, and then go down. Oh, wow. And it was just so trippy. So it was like nighttime most of the time? I mean, it felt, yeah. I mean, for the most part, it was night. Like, we did a lot of things at night. Wait, wait, so you don't see the sun do this? No, it just kind of stayed, because we're at the very top. That would trip me out. Yeah. And you also see the moon, too. So the moon, it was like visible still, and you see the sun kind of doing this across, and dropping down. Weird. It literally felt like it was on Hoth. Now, they say that cold weather and darkness tends to affect people's moods and personalities. How are the people over there? Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, I found Iceland to be amazing. Like, it was great. There was a distinctive difference in culture and people with Scotland and Iceland. Oh, really? And I think the cold weather and the dark nights, it has to like play a factor. Really? People not happy? Like, very like, no bullshit. You know, like, we don't joke here. You know? It was like, we had like a coin toss, whether or not we were gonna get good service or like extremely rude service. Really? Yeah, it was very much of a coin flip. And it was usually the younger crowd, like all the younger people were super cool, nice, but like the old dogs that were there. Dude, we had this tour guide that literally was trying to leave me. I stepped out like at this stop to get food and I was trying to get it. And then I saw something that I went to go purchase. Like I put the shirt on, oh, this is sick. I'm gonna get this. And I'm like, oh yeah, go in there. I was literally a minute late. And there's like, he's like, yelled at Courtney and her sister and the other girl or traveling lift and was like yelling at them because they brought food on. I was like, you don't do that. This is not a cafeteria here and blah, blah, blah. Like chewing them out. And he's like, where's the, like, he counted everybody inside. I wasn't there. And so he was like, get in, we're leaving him. And like starts the bus up and was like trying to move out. My sister in law steps in between him and like puts her foot outside. So she's blocking the door from closing. He's like, you're not leaving. Wow. Wow, bro. Yeah. That's crazy. He was a dick, dude. I'll roll him under the bus. Like, wow. David is his name. Anyway, fuck that guy. Fuck David, I said fuck yeah. Just a prick. Okay, which one do you like better? So, I mean, that's tough. They're both awesome experience. Like, so it was, I liked Scotland because it's like, I have ties to that somewhat like, I know like some of my ancestors came. It's kind of like, you know, identified being Italian. It's like, I kind of identify with that. But also too, just the people were so overly welcoming and hilarious and like super dry, sarcastic. Like everybody's busting my balls the whole time there. Like, so I had to drive on the wrong side of the road. And that was like the first time I ever done that. Because we do it the right way. It's wrong. It's the right side anyway. Did I see you, it was a manual too? And manual. See the shift? That had been weird right there. Weird. And also too, like, so we had to go from Edinburgh, which is the city, which is shielded by a lot of like, so not a lot of the snow and wind and all that come there. And so we were going up to the Highlands and as we did that storm rolled in, and I'm like, first time like driving the stick on the left side of the road and then going up and then it just started bombing us with snow. And I'm two wheel drive. Like it's going all over the place on me. There's these roundabouts. So they had roundabouts in the middle of the freeway, dude, and it was so confusing. Like there was like- Oh, because you got to go left. Yeah, you have to go left to get around. And then you have to know which stop to take. And so I missed one or two. And then we're, I was at this back country, just like driving like a one lane road. And I didn't know like the protocol of like when I ran into somebody, like who goes first and all that there. One biggest thing was like, when I had to get back on the freeway, there was this sign. So you look at like an entryway to get onto the freeway. There's these two signs and it was a circle with an X and it was red circle with an X in blue. Now tell me what the fuck that means. I mean, I would stop probably. You stop. Yeah, that's what I would do. You don't stop. You're not supposed to stop. Oh, that's what that means? Don't stop? It means don't stop. Don't stop. Go all the way through to the freeway. I was like, no. So like I pulled over and I was like, Courtney, like Google this. And I'm like, you know, panicking, like swaying. Oh my God, what a shit dough. Oh man. And so we read up on that. I was like, whew. So I at least was glad I pulled over and then this car kind of went past me and like, oh, I guess you do go and fall. But there was a few snafus, but not too like terrible. But yeah, it was, driving was nuts. Was there a name of those Mercedes buggies that you sent to those were sick? Oh yeah. I've never seen those in the United States. They're like inflatable. You didn't see that? No, no. Oh, they were sick. Yeah, I don't know the name of them, but they look like Tundra vehicles. Did you say they were like a crop? Okay, you know the Mercedes Sprinter Vans? They kind of look like that, but a little beefier with these massive mud tires on them. Massive tires. Yeah, they look so sick. It looked like a toy. It looked like you. I want one. The guy was telling me like how incredibly difficult is to like maintain them and service them and stuff. But so they, when they get to like real deep powder and snow, they deflate the tires like you would, like you've seen some of those in like a Pismo and in the sand, very similar to that. So they're like deflated a bit so it gets that extra surface area. Yeah. So that's kind of what the, so we took those to a tour up to there. They had a glacier that you take like these snowmobiles and you just bomb it up this glacier. And they had, which kind of was a bummer in the tour. We got like all the way up there and we were supposed to go through this ice cave. And it was the weather conditions got crazy and it like covered like the cave. So we had to turn around and come back. I was like, oh, my Instagram moment. No, it's incredible. You know what you just said is actually, I was going to tell Doug that when we got, we got caught in a storm up in Tahoe. We just barely missed it. I drove through more of it and Doug has had the BMW, which just got a four wheel drive. And so he went and got chain or he wouldn't put chains on, but you don't know chains on that. I was going to tell him to just flatten his tires because that's a great strategy for someone who's driving. What do you do? Just let you just bring the air down. Yeah, you just bring like 10, 15 PSI out and it lets the air out of the tires. And so they. Better traction. Yeah, better traction. So when they're all tight and air tight and it's snow, it just spins like crazy where if they're deflated. Are there times when you need chains, even with all wheel drive or four wheel drive? So what? So the CHP will enforce it if you have street tires and not off road or grass. Like my truck doesn't ever need. Never. Right. Like so even in the like blizzard conditions, like you're you're still fine with tires like that. And technically, if you have good all wheel drive, you still should be pretty fine. And the new cars, especially like the Rover and stuff like that, like those things, it senses a tire starting to spin and it will shut that one off. The other one overcorrects. And those things are really, really stable, even what they're like, they're quote unquote street tires. Yeah, you ever drive an old car on wet roads and stuff like that? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's why Doug was a little nervous. Like his BMW is a little bit older, right? You're almost like 10 years old. Yeah. And I driven to Reno that morning and on the way back, my car was definitely drifting. Yeah. And so I said, well, I better just put the chains on for extra, you know, safety. Yeah, I went I went bottom for my niece who had a, you know, she had an all-wheel drive Subaru and I still put them on hers, which it was necessary because I even drove her. I drove it around and I came to stop at the stop sign. I went right through the stop sign. I was like, OK, good. You know, I've never taken me, you know, I've never even put chains on the car. I'm not even how to do it. Well, they're pretty. Never done it, really. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not that. Yeah, it's not that terrible. And you can use anything today, you know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, it's pretty easy. I know Doug fucked around with his for a little while, but I think he had, you had ones were they older? Did you have them for a long time? No, I actually bought them last year. Oh, really? Yeah. So we had this young guy named Max. He came up with a delegated. That's why you know, yeah. So I was 16 year old. Yeah. So he is a smart kid. He got on YouTube and he kind of figured it out, but he put them on the wrong wheels and then he put them on upside down. But anyway, we got it figured out in the end. Yeah, I'd really not use chains a lot. So I got kind of wet out there because it was snowing pretty hard. So you know what actually? Because Katrina was like, you're so crazy. When we get in these moments or like we're driving through the blizzard and she's like you and my niece was freaking out and like worried about her and I did all our change. Like that. She's like, you don't even worry. I think I don't. The snow doesn't scare me as much as actually the rain and water on the road. Yeah, because that shit, you'll be driving 60 70 because it's unpredictable. And all of a sudden you'll see a puddle in the freeway. Or you won't see it. Or you won't see it and you hit your wheel and that shit will jank you. Yeah. And so I'm more tense in that one. And so we went down the hill in the blizzard. Totally fine. Whatever we drive a little bit slower. So if I had to get down there, which took an hour and a half to get down the hill, then we hit into Sacramento city area and it was just pouring. And I was more tense driving in that all the way home than I was in the blizzard because I feel like in the blizzard, everyone's on full alert. You're driving 40 miles less than you would be. The rain, people will be bombing still and you're flying on the freeway because it's just rain. And then all of a sudden you hit an area where there and it just pulls the vehicle. I got both when I was in Scotland because it was more like rainy and then you kind of went up and then it started snowing once I got higher in elevation. But dude, I had like everything thrown at me possible. And I was driving the wrong side of the road. I'm going to stop and make a total commercial right now, though, because like I actually I did a really good job of packing the right clothes for each environment. Yeah. And I didn't know ahead of time that Viori had this rain jacket that's super light. Like it it it's just like it's thin material but repelled like all the water and everything. So I just layered up. Oh, nice. I was like it was cold but in rainy. So it was like kind of difficult to gauge like what exactly to wear. And so it was cool because I could just put it on top of whatever I was wearing. And then I didn't have I made a raincoat. Yeah. And it's sick too. I have it over there. But it's like stylish and whatnot. So I prefer stuff like that too because of the how quick I warm up the temperature. And it's like you have some big, thick, heavy coat on that protects you with some of that. But then you're like sweating inside my battle in Iceland. I had to have like a down jacket and like I had to like the first day. I didn't do it. Yeah. Froze my chonies off. Have you ever noticed what I snowboard in? I snowboard in like like just like this, just like that Viori jacket, a real thin. It's water repellent, so I won't get wet in it. But I'd rather wear a sweater underneath. And then when I get hot, I just peel a sweater off and have a t-shirt underneath versus like this. Then I have a jacket that's like thick inside and it's a snowboard jacket. Oh, man, I'm like dying by midday. I go inside. Oh, my God. I was like, yeah, I would see. I would snowboard in that. Yeah. That's it. I didn't know they had that jacket. Yeah, neither. I was totally digging it. Hey, I want to bring up a study with you guys because it's a new study and it's a study on strength training and diet. And I'm going to read to you some of the stuff that came out of this study. And it's cool because it supports a lot of what we talk about on the podcast. And it's even cooler because they did some pretty cool comparisons. So check this out. They compared resistance training plus diet to endurance training plus diet to resistance training plus endurance training plus diet. So those were the three groups or the three comparisons. The one that did the best with body composition changes, resistance training plus diet. It even outperformed strength training plus cardio or plus endurance training plus diet. So just strength training plus diet. It aerates everything you've been trying to write about. It performed the best. It also was the most effective at reducing fasting insulin levels and blood lipids. It was actually superior in pretty much every category. Just strength training and diet. Now, OK, so let's take this further because I think this is such an important study because it does align with what we talk about on the show. And we do get a lot of pushback on the message around telling people not really to do cardio at first and to focus on strength training. But this is the reason why. Now, how would you explain this to somebody on how in the world did somebody get better fat loss benefits and overall health and strength and everything from just diet and resistance training and not the diet resistance training and cardio routine? So here's so there's a couple of things. One is when you're cutting your calories, you are sending a very, very loud signal to your body that is saying, we need to adapt our metabolism to meet this lower caloric intake because your body's always trying to achieve balance. It doesn't want to burn more than you take in. This is an evolutionary. This is a part of how our bodies evolve. Well, it's always trying to survive is what it's trying to do. So when you're eating less than you're burning, your body's like, OK, we need to learn how to burn less. Now, strength training sends the opposite signal indirectly. Now, strength training, the direct signal is build strength. The indirect part of that signal is, well, through the strength building process, if the body believes it needs the strength, you are going to maintain a faster metabolism and you're going to build more muscle. Or you'll get not just maintain a metabolism, but it might even speed it up. This makes body composition change more effective, meaning fat, just pure fat loss. Because one of the ways that your body will slow its own metabolism down is by reducing calorically expensive tissue, muscle. Your body will reduce its muscle to reduce its caloric expenditure. So if you do strength, if you do. So in endurance training, thank you. Endurance training burns a lot of calories. Endurance training does not tell the body to keep muscle. So if you're burning even more calories with more endurance training and cutting your calories, now you're really telling the body, pair muscle down. If you do strength training plus endurance training plus cutting calories, you are sending muscle building signal, but you're still burning a lot of calories and you're still competing a bit with it. So you're going to still see some muscle. It's that competitive signal, yeah. And I also think this, this is the other part of this. Because this was a big study and it wasn't done on advanced people. This was done on the average person. I think the average person is also always playing a game of, am I going to overdo it? Am I going to underdo it? What should I spend the most time doing it? 100%. It's such a fine dance. So for the average person, if they're going to spend what they should do is completely prioritize strength training. If they have extra time, then do the cardio. And in fact, rather than doing that, what do we always advocate for? Just do more walking, because it's much more sustainable, especially when you cut your calories. Well, here we have a study and this is a new studies was published in December. But and also better fasting insulin, better triglycerides, better cholesterol. Why? Because of the fat loss. When you lose fat and maintain or keep muscle, you're going to have better fasting insulin because muscle is very insulin sensitive. And fat loss itself, even actually, even if the diet isn't great, so long as it's low calorie, will give you better, better blood lipids. So pretty wild. Yeah. I think the mistake that people make is when they're already low calorie and then they add the cardio in addition that when if you were going to do cardio, like let's say you, hey, I want just overall health and I don't really care about if I lose a little bit of muscle, although I'm not trying to lose a lot of it. And so I do want to incorporate that. A better strategy would have these would be to undulate your calories, have higher calorie days. And on the higher calorie days, you do the intense cardio. So you get the endurance, the stamina, the health benefits. And not the muscle loss. That's right. And so when you're well fed, which is the opposite of what I think most people think is most people are trying to lean out, lose body fat. They think they're stacking fat loss. That's right. And so they go like, oh, I've already, I'm low calorie today and I'm going to throttle down on the cardio. So I'm going to burn even more fat is what they're thinking, but that's not what ends up happening. What ends up happening is you, you burn probably about the same amount of fat, but then now the body pairs down muscle because it thinks like, oh, shit, we have this expensive tissue. Now this person's not only not feeding you much, they're also asking me to run like crazy. So I don't need this expensive tissue, get rid of it. We are very close to this being standard protocol by Western Medicine. I think we're within five years of them saying, hey, let's prioritize strength training above all other forms of exercise because we know that people are really going to do one. And this one seems to be the most effective with the least amount of time. Because again, it's not about the calories you burn while you do it. It's about the muscle building signal and you only need to do like one or two days a week for the average person. We'll send that muscle building signal. You don't need to do a lot of that. Glad they're finally catching on. Oh, I mean, I like to think that we're, you know, obviously we're not massive and mainstream, but we're starting to make a little bit of a wave, I feel like. I mean, we just had a live caller and that wasn't he, was he an obesity nurse? What was he? Oh, he was a practitioner. Yes, he worked in obesity clinics and he was a nurse. Right, right. He was MAPS anabolic as the primary source to. Speaking of MAPS anabolic, we haven't talked about this in a while and someone just reminded us, people don't know this. We offer the first week of MAPS anabolic for free. Oh, that's right. We have a video series on YouTube. You can follow the first week. This is the most popular maps program we have is MAPS anabolic. It's the one that is most appropriate for most people. You can get the whole first week with video demos and everything for free on YouTube, which is going to be linked up here. So if you want to follow it for a week and not have to buy anything at all, well, there you go. Do you know the other thing that, so I'm running the Mindput Media page today and so I see the tags and so I obviously see different tags when I'm running that than my personal one. And two tags today, I saw of people talking about the 30 days of free coaching that we've had. We never talk about that. That's another never bringing up, yeah, anymore. I mean, I see, so I get the stats every day, so I get to see like how many are inbounding on it. And the thing average is like 30 to 50 intakes a day of new people that are following. Basically what you get is every day for 30 days is you get a topic and a coaching, basically coaching every single day in your email. I mean, I'd really like to go back and revamp it, but even with it being as old as it is, it's still great information. For someone who is, especially right now in the new year, you have a lot of family and friends who don't know where to start or just getting started. It's almost like couch to resistance training. Yeah, they've never listened to any of our shows. You're trying to help them like how do I, well, what's like what bits of information would I give them from Mind Pump? Well, the 30 days of free coaching is a great resource because they are gonna get a short email every day that's gonna cover a single topic. On there is also links to episodes where we talk about the topic further in detail if they have more questions around it. Extremely valuable. Yeah, speaking of callers, I wanna bring up, so we had a caller a while ago named was Teresa who had called in and she had talked to us about wanting to diet, whatever. Anyway, our advice to her was to feed herself, eat more, focus on strength training. We had asked her questions like, have you had a menstrual cycle? Because we, I think we all knew that she was probably under eating. Well, here she's in the forum. This was January 1st. She wrote this and she said, hey, I'm the live caller at the end of episode 1976. I'd like to share my most recent celebration, the return of my menstrual cycle after 12 years without one. Wow. That is a big deal. And he says, I decided to follow your advice and eat a fucking cheeseburger. You said that to her. I said to go eat a fucking cheeseburger, so I said. I'm so glad she did that because I remember right away who she was because I totally remember who that was. Dude, 12 years, 12 years and now she finally got it. That's a big deal. That is a very, very loud and clear signal for women and their bodies. That's awesome. Losing your menstrual cycle and then maybe even getting it back. That's good to hear. Anyway, speaking of eating, did you guys see Butcher Box's promo this month? No. So Doug, maybe you could pull up. Oh yeah, check it out. You get pork tenderloin, ground turkey and top-storey steak for free with this month when you sign up at Butcher Box. Plus $10 off. So I don't have any. Give away the house. I don't know how they keep doing that. Probably not the bigger giveaways, no? That's one of the bigger giveaways. You get all three of those for free. I was happy with just their bacon giveaways. These holidays helped it. So I have a, I don't know if you guys, do you guys have freezers in your garage? Do you stock up? Yeah. Yeah, so we stock up on the freezer and our freezer has been pretty full for a while and I've been telling Katrina, I'm like, you know what, can we stop shopping and like really start to chip away at the freezer? Yeah, we do the same thing. So we actually saw the bottom of our freezer for the first time in a long time where we started like, you know, because I have a lot of miscellaneous meats that I'm like, oh, when am I gonna make that? Or when am I gonna put that in? And so I was just like, you know what? Let's discipline ourselves to get through that. And of course, New Butcher Box comes in right away. You know what I did with the pork? So, you know, I always talk about their pork. I'm not a fan of pork, but they have that heritage pork, which tastes real good. So the pork is thick, right? So I take them and I cut them in half. So I have two thinner slices. I get egg and I dip them in egg and then I do seasoning and then breadcrumbs. Oh, interesting. And then I get a cast iron skillet and I put just enough olive oil to be able to kind of low, real, real low fry. So it's not like it's in oil, but it's, you know, somewhat. And it's what do they call that, schnitzel? Is that German for what it is or what? So good. They're so good. Why do I feel like you don't do that? Jessica does that. I swear to God I do it. You do that? I did it. Bro, first of all, we got an infant. You think she can get up and do anything with a baby cast iron? Really? I can't believe you can do that. I did. I didn't even know you knew how to use a cast iron skillet. I can make meat. Yeah. The meat stuff I can do. Yes. I make meat, vegetables, and rice. We were making fun of you as a worthless Italian over the weekend. Really? Yeah. I had Marcucci with us, right? Oh, right, right. So Marcucci came up. I love that guy too, by the way. He came up and that was Doug's first week of really hanging out with him, huh? Yeah, yeah. He's quite a character. Isn't he, right? He loves to cook. Yeah. Yeah. He got out of it too. First thing in the morning, he'd have five or six pans going in front of him, making everybody like these super custom breakfast burritos. And for his birthday, his request was that he'd cook dinner for all of us. Like, so I was like, man, where's this Italian side of sale? I said he never cooked shifters. You could use that, yeah. Dude, I made this white wine sauce. I can't remember the ingredients, so this is going to kind of waste time. But I did make a white wine sauce that I made with gluten-free noodles. And my kids, you know, my older kids, who they also stay with their mom, who's from Italy and cooks. So I was like a little nervous, like, are they gonna like this? Loved it. Wow. Actually, I actually hit it out of the park. I actually did a cooking class when I was in Scotland, which is like outside my comfort zone completely. Also kind of a random place to do that. Very random. Well, not really known for food, are they? Very different. You know what? They have really good food. Oh, really? It depends on, yeah, like the authentic stuff, like I had, we had haggis balls that I didn't really care for. I mean, it's not like they're like balls. Those are like baby goat balls? No, no, haggis is stomach, right? Haggis, stomach, intestinal meat, you know, kind of ground up, but they season it with some specific season. But Courtney likes it and loves it, whatever. But that was like one of the things on the item, which, so what you do is you, he taught me how to like make this peppercorn sauce that I would actually like finish off with a bourbon. And then you would put that on, I'm gonna put it on steak. He put it on the haggis balls and I was like, but you know, like I was like, oh, I'm gonna take this and then apply it to steak when I get home for sure. Delicious. So yeah. Oh, hey, shout out today. So I don't think we've shouted him out. I know we've obviously had him on the show and talked about him, but such an excellent follow is our good friend, Dr. Stephen Cabral. So his hand. Yeah, Stephen S-T-E-P-H. Yeah, so it's Stephen Cabral is the handle. And you know, multiple times I've shared some of his posts and his tweets that he does. So I love the content that he covers. So just a great follow. If you're not following Stephen Cabral, make sure you guys follow him. Hey, check this out. You gotta check out a company called Joy Mode. They do sexual performance booster supplements for men. It's like a pre-workout, but for sex. Now this was created because a lot of the products in the market are not so good. They don't work very well. And then of course, prescriptions come with all kinds of side effects. Joy Mode is all natural, science-backed, wellness products, specifically for men. Go check this company out. Go to usejoymode.com forward slash mind pump, enter the code mind pump and get 20% off your first order. All right, here comes the show. First caller is Justin from Maine. Hey Justin, how's it going? How can we help you? Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I've been listening to the show for the last four to five years. Going back to probably the early four to five hundreds as far as the shows go. So everyone kind of feels like family at this point. So I've been through a couple of pregnancies in a book. Adam's been through early stages of fatherhood, couple of houses, couple of questionable stocks. Justin, I appreciate your coaching. I've been coaching my kids growing up. And I believe he's actually growing the same beard since episode 702 around. It's pretty much the same length. It doesn't go any further than this. Split ends. In all seriousness, I have nothing but praise for what you've all been contributing and continue to contribute to the space. I'll preface my question by stating I'm not a personal trainer. I'm a family nurse practitioner. I work in family medicine, but I also specialize in obesity management. I'll apologize to everybody up front by saying Sal was right. When I make recommendation for physical activity, I first make a recommendation for strength training and resistance training and actually prescribed maps programs to my patients. So I appreciate that being available for a few people to have. Awesome. So my question is training-based. I was asked to help coordinate training for a group for which I'm working. And I don't know if I can like drop names or what the preference is with that. Yeah, you can- From the Oregon. Yeah, you can talk about that. Okay. Okay. So I'm working with the summit project and the mission of the summit project is to honor our state's post-911 fallen service members and through education, fellowship and physical activity, provide assurance to their families that these sacrifices will never be forgotten. So there's going to be a group of 10 individuals, including myself, that will be hiking the northernmost part of the Appalachian Trail. Beginning in July, we'll be doing 125 miles over probably a 10-day timeframe anywhere between 22, 23,000 feet worth of elevation gain and elevation loss. It's also one of the more remote parts of the Appalachian Trail as well. So we may or may not have a lot of access to or for replenishing points. Or also in addition to our packs, we're also going to be carrying stones of the fallen. So these are chosen by the Gold Star family members with sentimental value. And we will take the weight of the stone and have it also be representative of the burden that is carried by service members and their family members as well. So I think it's going to be really, really powerful type of event. So seeing how I'm coordinating the training, I wanted to bring in expert consultation, but I understand that nothing will really replace putting on a heavy pack, hiking for days at a time, logging miles, multiple days in a row. I do also have access to anabolic performance and prime, which I think would be of most benefit when we're looking at what this training regimen will look like. And I presume it's going to be some type of inverse ratio with strengths to endurance that will slowly shift over the next six months. And we do have, we got a pretty bad ass group with the people, we have veterans, we have marathon runners, we have Gold Star family members, we have lifters and all of us that are hikers. So I wanted to kind of present it to you and see what your thoughts would be of how we could potentially mold and integrate MAPS programs so that we thrive in our endeavor. Yeah, great. This sounds pretty awesome. So you're doing 125 miles over 10 days. So on average 12 and a half miles a day, I'm assuming some days will be last, some days will be more, correct? Correct. Okay, and this is in six months. So we start our journey on July 1st. Okay. So right now you could focus on building a strong base, but the closer you get to the hike, the more your training is gonna be simulating the hike itself. I do recommend that when you do do your hikes that you use the same equipment that you'll be using on the hike itself, mainly because it helps you discover whether or not your pack is the right size or right placement or your shoes are working properly. The things that when I would train people who would do similar types of events or training or whatever, the comments I would get would be like, man, I didn't realize that I got a blister in this part right here because of my shoe or my backpack started to dig into my shoulder over here. And they really didn't discover it until they started doing the event because when they were training, they didn't use the same exact type of equipment. That actually makes a huge difference. So just something I wanna comment on. But right now I would say you're building foundational strength, but the closer you get, the more you're doing mobility and the more hiking you're doing. I would focus on ankle, foot, hip, mobility, and maybe some thoracic mobility as well, but it's gonna be ankle, foot, and hip is where I'm gonna be focusing the most. A lot of foot, a lot of foot and ankle stuff because that's what's gonna be taking the biggest beating. So the training is gonna start, I would say now, two days a week, strength training, three days a week, strength training, build a strong base. Maybe three months from now, you're starting to make the shift where you're reducing the strength training, increasing the hiking and working on mobility and then as you get closer to the hike, you're not really doing any strength training. It's mobility work and hiking. What do you think about, I mean, the thing that comes to mind for me is mapped cardio, running that up until getting closer to that time. That way they're building a little bit of cardio endurance. They're still building strength along the way, include some of the mobility around there. I also see a place, we tease on the show about the elevation mass, but here's an example of where I would actually apply it to my training, where I would use this. They're gonna climb 20,000 feet on this climb. So actually using those masks in their training would actually have some benefit. If you have access to something like that, I would do that too. Potentially. Yeah, so if you're to stack like our maps programs, like if you wanna build the base, like start with anabolic, move into like performance. One thing with performance, I think that to Sal's point earlier about like foot strength to, if you can do like squats barefoot, if you can do farmer carries barefoot, do a lot of walking patterns barefoot, just to get that sort of dexterity and strength, even through the toes, through the ankles, and just get a good grounding kind of base to that. And as well with performance, you get the mobility sessions in between, which is gonna be huge for reinforcing and strengthening. Now to add to what Justin's saying, because you're gonna be working with equipment, right? So to use another example, a power lifter would work with knee wraps and a belt. It would be a good idea for a power lifter to develop good core stability, good stability in his hips and his ankles and strengthen his knees, but the closer he gets to competition, he needs to get used to training. He or she needs to get used to training and a belt and knee wraps. So your workouts, as you get closer to your hike, you should be wearing the same shoes you're gonna be hiking in. You should be wearing all the equipment you'll be using when you're hiking because it's not gonna be so much how good I can perform without the equipment. It's gonna be how good can I perform with the equipment that I'll be using? Cause you're not gonna be doing the hike barefoot. And so I wanna make that point because people can sometimes get a little confused and be like, oh, I'm really, really good. You know, barefoot, no equipment. And then they go put the equipment on and their body's not acclimated to all of this equipment. And like I said, I've trained a few people who've done things that are similar. And the biggest challenge for them was the equipment was the stuff that they were wearing, was the shoes that they had on. They didn't realize that it dug into a particular part of their achilles or their heel or their foot or whatever. So the closer you get, the more I'd wear the same equipment when I'm working out, when I'm doing mobility and of course when I'm hiking. Now, diet-wise, I would wanna go into this with a higher body fat percentage. So I'm looking at like, I wanna go in with 15%, 16% body fat percentage. I don't wanna go into this 9, 10%. That's not a good idea because you're not gonna be eating a lot. You'll be expending a lot of energy. And 15, 16% body fat will give you some good energy reserves. So don't go into this shredded. You wanna go into this, kind of a healthy body fat percentage, like 15, 60. That's not overweight. It's also not super lean. So run anabolic, run performance, all of them in a bulk and then transition into what the final? Cause he's got basically what, six months? Yeah, six months. Yeah, I would go, I would go. Right, cardio. Yeah, maybe cardio. And then maybe just mobility, mobility and hiking. Like that last four weeks is hiking and mobility work and not much else. I mean, it could look more like OCR at that point, just for endurance and I guess that kind of challenge. I mean, with only six months, I like something more like performance, right? Cause I don't think there's timeframe. Yeah, I agree. So I think performance right now and then cardio and then tail off from cardio to what you're saying. I agree. And the only thing I would keep in there is like the mobility stuff, right? So I would run performance as it's laid out. After performance, I would run cardio. But while I'm doing cardio, all the cardio recommendations we have in the program would be centered around the hikes. So it would try to, I would try and emulate the hikes instead of doing what we prescribe in there for cardio sessions. It would all be around the hiking. And then I would just include the mobility stuff from performance in there too. So I'd have some days where we would, you know, add some mobility work. And obviously that would be more, if I was training these people, it'd be more curtailed to each person, right? So what do they need more of? I'd say, hey, you know, practice this two to three times a day every day cause you lack the ankle mobility, but maybe somebody else has poor hip mobility. Without modifying it completely to the individual, this is just given like how we'd use like our general maps programs to do that. Now that I think about it too, Justin, another thing I remember coming up was that people were not acclimated or used to the food that they ate while doing these events. So I would also recommend that even though leading up to the event, you wanna eat in a calorie surplus, the closer you get to the event, the more your diet should mimic the diet you'll have on the hike. The only difference being more calories. So if, cause you're not gonna be taking, you know, all kinds of food with you, right? So the kinds of foods that you'll be taking with you probably have a long shelf life, they're dry, things that you can carry very easily. So leading up to that, I would eat very similarly. I would just have more of it, like a lot more calories. And that'll help you in two different ways. One, you'll be able to identify if it works for you cause I've had people say, oh my God, I took dried fruit and, you know, nuts with me and it just messed up my gut and they would have realized that had they tried doing that beforehand. So that's number one. And then number two, you're eating more of the same, you're just eating the same kind of stuff. Your body's used to it, you feel good. You're probably not gonna need a ton of carbohydrates. Those are more challenging to take with you. So you probably have more fats and proteins that are essential. Just make the calories higher. And then when you go on the hike, the 10 day hike, it's just less of the same kind of foods that you've been eating for the last maybe a couple of weeks. So just one more thing to consider. Yeah, fair, yep. Yeah. Any other questions? No, no, it's pretty fair. I know that like I was excited with some of the performance as far as the work capacity and increasing work endurance, so to speak. But I guess I hadn't really considered the cardio aspect. Living in Maine, I mean, we'll have snow on the ground maybe through June, so outdoor hiking may be a bit limited leading up to the event. So we will have to find some creative ways to boost that endurance as much as we can. Well, this is a perfect example. This is where, okay, I know on the show we've made fun of people who do the mask on the Stairmaster or something like that. But here's an example of where I would use this. I would throw the pack on. I would get on a Stairmaster. I would use the mask. If we have snow on the ground, I can't get outside. I can't do a hike to try and emulate the closest thing to it. And I'm forced to be inside the gym. Then this is the guy or girl who it makes sense who has the backpack on with the rock in there and has the mask on and is on the Stairmaster because that is the closest thing I think I can get to simulate what you guys are gonna be doing without actually going out there and doing. Yeah, you know what's interesting too about this is that when people prepare and you talked about the kind of people that are in your group, they sound like people who have experience being fit. They sound like people who have some athletic background. So we're not talking about like just couch potatoes where like, hey, I'm gonna go hike, the Appalachian Trail. So fitness is gonna be less of a concern. Not that it's not a concern. It's gonna be less of a concern. The stuff that's probably more of a concern are the unforeseeable things like I mentioned. Like I said, I had a client in particular very fit. And when he came back from doing something very similar, I'm like, what was the biggest challenge? He goes, man, I didn't realize how uncomfortable some of my equipment was because I'd never really trained for long periods of time in it. And it really messed me up. And he had marks on his shoulders and his feet got messed up. And so he said to me, if I do this again, that's gonna be something that I really take into consideration. And then the food part of it, right? If you radically change your diet because now you're on this hike and don't realize that it doesn't agree with your system or your body hasn't had time to acclimate, that's gonna be a big hurdle. So those are the big things I would say to pay attention to. As far as fitness is concerned, as long as you don't over train, you guys are probably gonna be okay. I mean, 12 miles a day for somebody who's pretty fit, you're probably gonna be okay. But mobility is gonna be a concern. Maintain, not over training, that'll be a concern and then diet and equipment and how that's used. I would say those are the things to focus on. Okay, cool, cool. Probably a lot of unilateral training as well for stability purposes, you think? Totally, yeah, totally. Justin, do you already have MAPS cardio? I do not have cardio. We'll have Doug send that over to you. Thank you, I appreciate that. You got it, man, thanks for calling in. Yeah, no, I really appreciate everything that you guys have been doing. So take care, guys. You got it, all right. You know what this reminds me of? Do you guys remember, there was a book that came out a while ago that talked about how humans evolved to run barefoot and there was this scientist who studied it. Born to run, I think it was. I think it also was, yeah. And he's like, oh my God, when you run, you hit your forefoot first instead of the back foot and when you put on running shoes, it totally changes the biomechanics. It's a natural sort of shock that's built in place. Yeah, and here's why we have all these problems with running. And so then I remember we had all these runners when that first came out who were like, oh my God, this is the answer. And they went right from running shoes to barefoot shoes or barefoot and had all these injuries. They just joined themselves, yeah. It's like you gotta give yourself time to get used to and to acclimate. It's like you could just jump right into it. So it just reminded me of that with this conversation that you gotta put this stuff on and use it for long periods of time to really figure out how your body works with it and how to get the right fit and all that stuff. Cause that's part of the training. Yeah, that's where I see really spending time without shoes and gradually progressively overloading that to build the base of that. But to the point of finding the right fit once you get to training and being able to find the right shoes specifically, that takes a while. And so if you're comfortable and you know what to expect in terms of like, that kind of endurance within those shoes, you're gonna be set up so much better. I'm actually surprised that you guys didn't jump all over the elevation mass thing because 20,000 feet is fucking nuts. Do you guys understand how thin the air is? You guys know what it's like to train in our truckie garage, which is 5,700 feet. Okay, so think about that for a second. Now the only reason why I didn't jump on it is because it restricts breathing and the data is limited as to whether or not it actually increases red blood cells which would make the biggest difference. So what it does do, what the data does show is that it may strengthen the diaphragm. So your ability to suck in and blow out. So that's why I'm not all over it. Although I don't think it could hurt. And if I had to bet, I would bet it probably has a positive impact. I just think that if there was ever an application for that shit, this is it. I mean, this is the person who I'm like, this makes sense. This person strapping this on and getting on that stair master is the person who I see goes, okay, this person's about to go from, basically sea level training to 20,000 feet. Bro, that's a huge difference. Again, you guys know the difference of what it's like when we go up to the truckie house that's at 5,700 and you're gas doing 10 squats. So just think about that for a second. This person, it makes sense to actually utilize it. I'm wondering if it starts, I hope the hike starts at a lower elevation and then works its way out. Sure, sure. It's gotta be, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. It doesn't start at 20,000, but I mean, even if you've got a climb, I mean, they're probably starting at least at 5,000 or so. But if I'm thinking of the biggest challenge of doing this, right? So 12 and a half miles is not a little, but it's not like a ton, right? So, but you're doing that for 10 days. You're, like you said, you're at elevation. The terrain is probably uneven. So that's a big challenge. And then think about wearing this pack with the boulders that he was talking about. And you know, day one, you're like, ooh, that's a little sore right there. Ooh, that hurts a little bit. Day five, you're like, oh my God, I got like no skin left on this part of my foot. No, I think you hit it on the head, especially considering that we probably are speaking to people that are relatively fit. Yeah. If you're relatively fit, you can walk for 12 miles. Yeah. Very few people I know that can't- You can get through it. That can't hike for 12 miles that are relatively fit already. So, okay, if we're gonna train this person, the gear is probably one of the biggest things that will be an annoyance, 100%. The only thing, I know he was kind of alluding to like the unilateral training. Interchangeably, you could kind of switch out performance with symmetry, I would say, like, you know, in our recommendation, but I think performance pretty much covers it. Yep. I agree. Our next caller is LaVar from South Carolina. LaVar, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, what's going on fellas? It's definitely a pleasure and honor to be here. Been a loyal listener for about three to four years, ever since you guys were interviewed by Joe DeFranco. So- Our boy. Gonna be on the show. Oh my God. Cool deal. All right, so what I'll do is just kind of describe my issue and give a little context of what's going on here. I guess I'll say for about the past six or seven months I've been dealing with this sharp right hip pain, kind of around my hip flexor area. I've really been focusing on increasing my depth and range of motion in my squats. So I really feel it more on the days where I do any type of squat or lunge variation. The thing is I don't feel it while I'm performing the movement per se, but it's typically about an hour or two. I'm sitting down, I have a desk job. So if I go to stand, then I'll just have the sharp pain which will stop me in my tracks. I may feel it for about 30 seconds to a minute before I kind of am able to move without limping or get around normal. So I guess my question is, do you guys think I'm trying to push too much from the depth standpoint and or should it be more I'm doing from a mobility standpoint? I do use maps prime before I do all my movements. I actually about two years ago went on a mobility kit kind of like Adam did back in the day where I just tried to focus on like my hip mobility, ankle, shoulder mobility and all that good stuff. I'm really trying to work on the low aspect specifically with my barbell squat. So I'm wondering if that could be the main factor of why I'm feeling this pain. I love this question. Yeah, obviously the depth is an issue, but the real issue is why, right? Why is the depth of the squat? It wasn't a disconnector. You know it's weird, Lavar. This is often not the case, but I've now encountered a few situations where this was the case and it was with people who were kind of troubleshooting hip pain when they were doing a squat. These are people who are fit. They're doing, you know, hip mobility movements. They're working on abduction. They're doing all this other stuff. They can't figure out what's going on. And then what they figured out was what usually isn't the issue with most people but with these people it was weak hip flexors. Weak hip flexors, yes, thank you. Which you almost never have anybody tell you strengthen your hip flexor. It's almost always hip flexors are too tight. Stretch it, yeah, it's like too tight on you because you're sitting all the time but you're probably just weak there. Yeah, I would do like a simple exercise would be to lay on your back, both legs out straight, keep one leg on the ground and then do a single leg raise. Incorporate hip thrust. Well, that would be glutes. Incorporate hip thrust, yeah, but you'll get hip flexor in there too though. You'll definitely get that. Load it on the bar like that with emphasizing the squeeze at the top. You'll absolutely get that. So that'll be glue, but I'm talking about the front. Like we're looking at working the anterior part of the hip. So like a single leg leg raise or a knee raise. Knee raise, yeah, I like to hanging knee raise too and they have this monkey foot, I think that's where you can attach. Yeah, like a dumbbell to your ankle and you do those leg raises like one at a time while hanging. Yeah, so I would try doing some single leg leg raises or knee raises before you squat. See if you notice a difference. See if it actually helps. I also think map symmetry for you. That's the other thing. Yeah, unilateral stuff. We're gonna send you map symmetry because I would for sure, honestly, all I would do because I would be, I hate doing the little tedious shit like that, you know? So if you can, you disappoint yourself to do it, then fine. I honestly think if you just added barbell hip thrust in there with map symmetry, I guarantee you're gonna see a difference. Keep doing what you're doing with the mobility stuff and you add those things and I bet you he would see a difference. Well, what are you doing now for your, you said you, you know, in your written question that you're doing hip mobility and so what are you doing? Are you doing hip thrust and what else are you doing? Yeah, so I'm actually about to, starting next week on phase three of maps performance. So I'm doing all the mobility stuff that's there and then I use everything from maps prom to prom. Yeah, so again, I'm guessing but I feel pretty confident that it's your hip flexors because I know what hip mobility looks like. I know what the exercises look like in our programs and rarely do we put any targeted hip flexor work, mainly because it's usually an issue for people but somebody who's fit like you literally, this is, you're like the, there's been three people now that I've talked to. I had this similar problem. So that's why, you know, that's something I did to strengthen and it really made a big impact which I was doing all the mobility for it. I was doing the 90 90s. I was doing the, you know, the kneeling hip flexor stretches thinking it was a tightness issue but it was a strength issue. Yeah. So I try it before you do your next workout and it may sound tedious and small but you'll know if your hip flexors weak, you'll try it and be like, oh wow, that doesn't feel right. That feels kind of strange and not so strong and get them to activate a little bit and then try your squats and then see if you feel the same the next day. And then with map symmetry, just cause it's unilateral, it naturally will open up and highlight any imbalances or weaknesses that you may have. I'm assuming this is one hip and not both. Yeah, no, it's my right hip. Yeah. There also could be a slight asymmetrical shift at the bottom of your squat because it only comes out when you load it really heavy. So this is also a possibility. So I would take a video of myself from the front, side and back and I would really pay attention at the bottom of that squat if you see the slight shift to one side or the other and normally there's some sort of a breakdown in the feet first. So I had the same issue. Mine wasn't hip flexor. Mine was that one side was, my foot was slightly pronating more on one side than the other, which was causing me to shift my hips at the bottom of my deep squat, just a tiny bit. And that little bit of a shift just overworked that one side and then it just like you, I wouldn't feel it during the workout. I'd feel it like the next day and it felt like someone was sticking a knife in my fucking hip. And it was all related to my foot. It was actually related to my foot and then the shift in my hips at the bottom of the squat. So that also could be it too. Okay. Yeah, no, that makes me feel better because it was getting a little frustrating because I feel like I'm doing everything from a mobility standpoint. So the fact that you guys have experienced it yourself, you're hitting the nail on the head with exactly how I'm feeling. Yeah, to Adam's point too, like any sort of like rotation with that, one way to address that is a single leg deadlift. And to do that, you really want to pay attention to your foot, whether or not it starts to rotate it all on you and to be able to, the whole intent of that exercise is to make sure that everything stays completely straight. And if it doesn't, then you stop and then you keep at it. So that way you can build and pattern that correctly. This is why I love map symmetry for this right now. I think map symmetry, yeah, because it's all lateral work in there. So I think that's going to really benefit you. But if it's not one, it's going to be the other. The two things that we're talking about, 99% of the time it's one of those two things. The hip flexor thing I think is way less common than- But it's so frustrating. It's like you'll get somebody who's fit like Justin. I remember you doing this. Like he couldn't figure it out. And then I don't remember who I talked to. It was that trainer that we know. I can't remember his name right now. Real smart guy can deadlift a ton of weight. Good friend of ours. I can't, his name slips right now, but he told me, oh man, I had the same thing. It was my hip flexor. I told Justin and Justin was like, huh, I wonder. And you went out and did some stuff for your hip flexors. Marlin, right? Yes, there you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Marlin. Yeah, that's it. Cool. Can I follow up with two quick program questions real quick? Yeah. So for performance, considering all the issues that, remedies for my issues, should I still try to focus on load and movements? Or should I kind of just bring the weight down, focus on the technique and get it to feel better first? Or you think as long as I do like the proper priming and the moves that you recommend, I should be fine to still try to push the load. I mean, I would lighten the load, but I also like the idea of somewhat challenging it every once in a while to see if you're making improvements. So like when I'm trouble shooting something like this, I back off the load a little bit, I put in the work on the things that we're talking about, and then I kind of challenge it again, see if the problem arises again. So you're kind of going back and forth, right? So you're, I would say, come back on the load, focus on the things that we're talking about with the feet and the hips and the stability and all those things. You're gonna go to symmetry right away. I'd actually, I'd want you to go right into symmetry, start training that and follow it how it's laid out. And a lot of that isn't focused on really loading, but it's okay to kind of load every once in a while to see if that, you have that breakdown every time you load because that tells you like, okay, I'm not fixing the problem, it's still there. Hopefully you can start to progress the load and you start to see that it's getting less and less or it goes away completely. Perfect, all right. And you actually just asked me my next question because I was following the intent was to follow RGB as laid out. So I was going to ask when should I work in symmetry? So I'll go into that, right? Yeah, go right away. Yeah, go right into symmetry. Awesome, all right, perfect. Thank you so much for this big help. All right, man, thanks for following in. All right, awesome. Yep, thank you. You got it. Yeah, it's a, boy, this is something that was recent where it was Marlin, it was Marlin. And he's like, man, I had weak hip flexors. And this is like, I was fit, strong, pulse over six pounds. He's like, I couldn't figure out why the hell my hip felt impinged. And it's because nine out of 10 times, it's not that. Man, 10 times you have someone do that, it gets worse. So I wouldn't even have thought to go in that direction, which was crazy. Because again, like from the mobility side in the back, I saw how that really transformed like the way I could move. And then suddenly it has to be a mobility issue. Yeah, exactly. But no, I just was lacking strength. Wasn't it him who also said that he started to incorporate the hip thrust and then he noticed he didn't have any problems with it? I don't know if that had to do with that. He incorporated it for sure. Yeah, I know he started to hip thrust a lot after that because he wasn't doing any hip thrust and then he started to hip thrust after that whole issue happened. And then I thought that was enough for him to not have that problem anymore. Yeah, no, he was doing like, well, especially if you hold at the top, you have isometric component to that. You know, you can get some good strength there. Yeah, but he was doing, I think it started with like single leg knee raises and like those little things, you know, just kind of connect. But yeah, it is interesting. It's really frustrating when you're doing, you feel like you're doing everything. It's not frustrating when you're doing nothing. Cause then you're like, well, I guess I know why it hurt. But when you're doing everything, boy, it can, you start to have to become Sherlock Holmes trying to figure out. Yeah, I really feel like it's going to be one or the other. Are those two things that we just, we just said, it's more likely one of those. Our next caller is Stacy from Oklahoma. Hi, Stacy, how can we help you? Hello, I have a question. First of all, I have a tendency to go off on a tangent. So stop me if I've already digressed down on the way. Okay, that's enough there. We can answer it. We can do that. My question is I try to keep my protein between right around 130 grams and my calories between 1800 and 2000 a day. I consistently consume too many protein grams. Okay, plus or minus 200 calories. I lift four times a week. I do mobility. Recently in the last two weeks, I've cut my cardio down to maybe a walk every day. I am not seeing body comp changes like I would anticipate. My weight has been consistent for like the last 18 months. And I'm wondering if my protein is the problem. I'm an older female. So I don't know if at some point, protein becomes a huge issue. Overconsumption of protein becomes a huge issue as opposed to it just being wasted. Yeah, a few things. So if you eat too many calories and your goal is to get leaner, then obviously you're not gonna get leaner. And those too many calories can come from protein. They can come from fat or they can come from carbohydrates. If your calories are appropriate, can you have too much protein? Well, I guess if it pushes out essential fatty acids or if you notice any gastro issues from too much protein, some people might get constipated or notice gastro issues. Here's the other part. I can't tell from looking at you, although it kind of looks like you're pretty lean right now. What's your body weight out? How tall are you? Do you know what your body fat percentage is at? I'm almost five, seven. And I'm currently at 144 pounds. And I think my body fat is probably at 24. I had been down at 21. I have gained it. I had gone on the bulk because I got hurt. So I just decided to capitalize on that. And I gained 12 to 13 pounds. And that increased obviously my body fat percentage. And then I was like, okay, I'm going to try to cut. And now I just can't get off the protein man or girl likes to eat. Let me ask a little bit about your weight training. So you weight train four times a week. Are you following a mass program? What does your training look like? I'm not currently following a mass program. I do have a personal trainer and I was completing, shall we just refer to it as functional fitness before, you know, with a strength component, accessory component and then the conditioning component. And I have decided that I'm just going to cut out aside from like maybe one day a week, I'm going to cut out the more traditional, okay, I'm lying probably two days a week without cutting out the traditional more cardio functionality. I do run once a week, but I was doing like, okay, with CrossFit, I was doing CrossFit. Okay, okay, so this is where I was going with this question. I already had a feeling that your training program probably looked like a circuit-based type of training program. And what you need is a good strength-based program like Maps Anabolic with your calorie intake, your nice high protein and build muscle and build your metabolism. You've probably been doing the same type of a routine, which is this kind of go, go, go type of lifting weights and your body's probably pretty adapted to it. And so you've stalled your progress. And so what you need to do is get out of that and train a more traditional way of lifting, which is like a Maps Anabolic or a five-by-five type of routine. Progressive overload with a good adequate amount of rest in between. Your body's going to have like a completely different response to that, which I think it's craving that to be able to allow that, especially if you're in a bulk, that's the perfect time to really focus on a real solid strength training program. Yeah, I mean, we can either eat less or get your body to learn how to burn more on its own. And that's what we're trying to encourage you to do. I don't want to eat less, so. And within the last two weeks, I have started a new training cycle with my trainer so that all I'm doing is weight training. Just traditional resistance training. I don't like machines just for me and myself, so they're all three weights. Arbal, dumbbell, kettlebell. Where are your reps at and what do your rest periods look like? My rest periods are probably not as long as they should be. And the rest just depends on what he's got me working at. Somewhere probably five to 15 maybe. If I'm going to do tempo, like say tempo back squats, it's more like five to seven, but if I'm going to do, I can just literally just changed it. So I don't have to do a mass program. Yeah, sounds like it's all over the place. Yeah, I would go, I would go five to eight reps, maybe 10, I'd rest two minutes between sets at least and just try to get stronger. We're going to give you maps in a baller. We're going to give you maps in a baller and then just have your trainer take you through it. Yeah, and they can modify it based on their experience with you. Yeah, I would do long rest periods, focus on getting strong, stop trying to sweat, stop trying to get the burn, stop trying to feel exhausted at the end of the workout. Your goal is to get stronger. And if you're getting stronger, then we're probably affecting your metabolism and the positive. And then you'll see the effects from that. And I had gotten stronger over the last, like say six months when I do do an injury, I had broken my foot and due to an injury, I was not able to do the traditional cardio. So we went more towards a weightlifting, not so much powerlifting, but weightlifting environment. And then of course the minute that I was released from the doctor and added that cardio piece right back in there. I mean, I like what I see as far as your macro breakdown, as far as your grams of protein, your calories, the fact that you're walking every day, I literally would just address your training program. This is, you're somebody who I'd say, listen, we're going to follow maps in a baller. I don't want to mess with anything with your calories. I don't think you're eating too much protein. And if you're not seeing any body composition changes, it's just because you've got an even exchange. You're burning exactly what you're taking in. And like Sal said, we could either one, cut your calories, which doesn't sound like you want to do. I wouldn't want you to do that either. I would simply adjust your programming to build muscle and focus on getting stronger, lifting weights, long rest periods, which this is maps in a baller. So I'd have you follow that to a T and trust the process. And then we'd reassess at the end of the program. Okay. We're going to send that to you, Stacey. Okay, I'm sorry. We're going to send that to you, Stacey. Awesome, thank you so much. So, but there's not like some magical age where it's like, down shelf life. No, no, no, no, actually, you're going to benefit from it. No, if anything, Stacey, the data now is showing that. Higher. The older you get, the more protein you need. Yeah, yeah. You're doing, you're fine. You're, in fact, I would be ecstatic if my 53 year old female client was eating too much protein. That's actually one of the biggest challenges I had with my female clients was to get enough protein. So that's a good thing that you crave that type of food because it provides so much good nutrients for someone who's trying to build muscle and build their metabolism. So I would literally just address your training program. That's what I would do right here. Awesome. Thank you so much. You got it. All right, Stacey. Thank you guys. Have a good day. Thank you. Have a good one. She's like, I don't do cardio. Yeah, you do with weights. I do cardio. I knew it. I knew it. I was like, I do cross it. She's scared to say it. How dare you? I knew it. I knew it. Come clean, you guys. You want to know what's crazy? Literally, a study just came out that compared strength training plus diet to cardio plus diet to strength training plus cardio plus diet. You guys want to guess which one performed the best? Say it one more time. Strength training plus diet versus cardio plus diet versus strength training plus cardio plus diet. Which one do you think resulted in the most pure body fat loss? Strength training and diet. Just strength training. Actually outperformed strength training plus cardio plus diet. Yeah. So it's a simple as that. That is. You know why? Because it's such a fine dance when you incorporate that. Totally. It's such a fine dance of am I feeding the body enough to get the benefits from the cardio but also not sending a signal in my body to building atrophy. Yeah, that's it. You want to tell the body to keep the muscle or build the muscle while cutting the calories so it burns the body fat. You got to send both signals. Otherwise you'll end up losing muscle as your body tries to pare its metabolism down. And so her training, that's what she's doing. Yeah. She's telling her body she's burning all these calories manually and her body's just adapting. And it's like, OK, we're cool at 20, whatever, percent body fat. We're not going to get any leaner. And if she does lose weight, what'll end up happening is her body fat will probably stay the same. And it sounds like the trainer, it's not so it's hard to say if they're they're good or bad or what that, but it it sounds like it's not. They're not consistently doing anything. Yeah, sounds like he's he or she is mixing it up all the time. It's like, and so you get this feeling of, oh, well, no, I do do some strength training, but it's like, OK, so you did one workout where it was like a five set of squats. And then the next workout, you're already going back to your little circle or in that same workout. You did a five by five. But then all of a sudden you do a circuit set right after inducing like so many concepts continuously. Yeah, very common with trainers. Our next caller is Sean from Maine. Sean, what's happening? How can we help you? Hey, guys, how are you doing? What's up again, man? Awesome. So I don't know how much the background you need. I'm 42 years old. I've been pretty active my whole life. Just recently in the last six months, finished MAPS anabolic. I went through that twice. And right now I'm just kind of doing my own kind of short workouts every day. And what I've noticed is that even during anabolic, or I would get a couple of weeks into it and I would feel incredibly worn out. My muscles just fatigued. And it was really hard to kind of do anything. And I basically had to take a week to two weeks off to kind of recover. And that's really been bothering me because I want to keep moving and keep going. I don't feel like I'm doing too much volume. Just working out at home with dumbbells. And they're not super heavy. I'm just trying to get stronger and build some muscle mass. Yeah. So it is too much volume if that's how you feel. So it's all relative. And the context is what matters. So if you're feeling that way, even if you did one set once a week and you felt that way, it would be too much for your body. So the question is, why is it too much for your body? First off, were you training with the appropriate intensity, meaning were you training to failure or were you following the program as it's laid out where we tell people to not go to failure? Yeah. So when I was running through anabolic, I was following it right to the letter. So the first week or so, it took me some getting used to on the appropriate weights for the appropriate volume. So I kind of dialed that in. And to answer your question, yeah. Are you reading up there, too, where he talks about his food and sleep, too, would be another issue I talked about. You got to look at your lifestyle. Because maybe the program isn't that intense, but relative to not good sleep and a low-carb diet, it may be. So I would definitely dive into that. I see that you have been running a low-carb diet. Is that something that you've always done or something you currently sort of do because you wanted to lean out? I don't respond well on too low of a carb diet. Like we've shared on the podcast before, Sal loves that. It works extremely well for him. He can work out fasted. I'm miserable if I don't have a certain amount of carbohydrates in me. I just cannot get the motivation to lift. And so you may be more like me in that situation. And so that may be why you feel the way it is. It's not so much the program or what you're doing in the program is too much. It's just too much for what you're also doing with your diet and your sleep. Yeah, I would look at your whole lifestyle, look at all the things that affect your stress, sleep, diet, stress, and see what's going on. And then have you been to mphormones.com? Have you talked to any of the hormone specialists there to get some testing? I have not. I mean, I've heard you guys talk about it quite a bit on the podcast, but it's not something I've dug into yet. Yeah, so if you get to the point where it feels unexplained, you're like, huh, I feel like I'm getting good sleep. My diet seems pretty good. I seem to be training appropriately. I'm not beating myself up. My body is not feeling like it used to or like it should. That's when I would go get blood work done and see if hormones are off, if you have nutrient deficiencies that you may need to fill, because that can often be good. I would actually do that no matter what. I would do that now. You're 42, you're at an age and you're at a point in your life where it's worth, if you have the finances to go and get your blood work done, it's absolutely worth it. At least getting that feedback, because I guarantee you'll learn something. Then you could see what steps you could take naturally to increase if it's a low dip in testosterone or whatever the imbalance is. If you can adjust like sleep, you can rearrange things stress-wise to see how that affects you and then take steps from there. Yeah, that was me, Sean. I was very consistent, dial everything in, I thought, and I just couldn't figure out why little by little I was declining energy, my ability to exercise, work out, it was just going down, down, down. And then I got blood work and I was like, well, there it is right there. I had my hormones were, did not look good at all and trying to change them naturally. They don't work super well with me. So I had to get and work with a doctor and it was game-changing for me. Now, that doesn't mean that that'll be your case, but at the very least, you'll get a much fuller, clearer picture. And if it is the case, then there are remedies for sure. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I've definitely been working a lot on, I don't eat a lot of carbs just kind of naturally add them to what you kind of said. It's just, I've been cutting weed out of my diet for like 15 plus years, just felt a whole lot better. We eat whole foods at home, we cook all of our own stuff and make all those dinners and felt a ton better with that. I did get some blue light blocking glasses to kind of help with the sleep. So I'm actively working on a lot of these things. So yeah, hopefully maybe it is a low testosterone or something like that. I do have a stressful job in life at the moments that could be contributing to that as well, I guess. I'm gonna have Doug send you maps 15. And my recommendation is to switch over to maps 15 for a while, while you get your blood work done and see what it says. So see what happens when you drop down to something like maps 15, that may be actually perfect for you. I was, you know, one of the things that we talked off air when we were building that routine, I remember telling the guys like, dude, this is wild, I'm only training 15, 20 minutes a day. And I actually am feeling better. You're super charged for this. Yeah, so let's switch you over to that for right now. And then let's also get your blood work done and see what that feedback, maybe the switching over to maps 15 right away makes you feel a lot better. That would be awesome. And then I do think no matter what you feel, you should get the blood work done. You're at a point in your life where I think it's worth it to at least look at your panels and see what it is. And by the way, they will assess it all for you. So you get it done. They'll do a consultation with you. They'll tell you what's good, what's not good, ways that you can improve it naturally, ways that you can do it synthetically, all those things. So it's worth going through that process. Okay. All right, John, thanks for calling in. Thanks a lot, guys. I really appreciate your time. All right, man. You got it, man. Yeah, especially when you're over 40, I think as a man over 40, because if your tests come back and you're like, well, I'm getting kind of, I'm getting good sleep. I'm eating right, whatever. And let's just say, for example, testosterone is so low that if you doubled it, you're still low. This is kind of a similar situation that I was in. At that point, you're like, well, I think then the option is to, I'm gonna. I actually love the advice that Katrina's mom gave all her kids. They actually, on their 30th birthday, they all, well, she said. Just get a baseline. Yes, she goes, go get your blood work done. So we have, and there was, oh, I feel fine. That's why I want you to get your blood work done. You know what feeling fine should be. Yeah, go get it done. So we see what it's like, because when you get 40, 50, 60, my age, you would say, it's gonna be different. And you wanna know what optimal feels like and what it looks like on paper, and then you have a reference. Second replicating. So I absolutely think you should even do it earlier when you, just so you have something, and then the inevitable will happen as you turn 40 and 50 and 60, they will change. It will change absolutely because of diet, getting older, rest, all these other variables. And you wanna know, like, oh, what does optimal feel like? And then what levers can I pull to get myself back to there? Totally. Look, if you like Mind Pump, head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out our guides. We have guides that can help you with almost any health or fitness goal. You can also find all of us on social media. So Justin is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Justin. Adam is on Instagram at Mind Pump, Adam. And you can find me on Twitter at Mind Pump, Sal. Today we're gonna teach you everything you need to know to build a strong, well-developed chest. When I think of weak points and areas that I struggled with developing for a really long time, chest was up there with the- Yeah, it was for me, it was for me for sure. I got more caught up in the weight I could lift versus how I was developing my body. I think it's one of the most challenging muscles to develop for most people because the form and technique.