 Welcome to Mind Pump, this is the world's top fitness health and entertainment podcast. In this episode we answer fitness and health questions asked by listeners like you, but we open the episode with introductory conversation where we talk about scientific studies, sometimes random conversation and other times we mention our sponsors. So here's the breakdown of what happened in today's Mind Pump podcast episode. Here's the breakdown. I open up the episode by talking about random fish news, science alert, then we talk about how obesity may be one of the worst things you can have if you get infected with the coronavirus. They're showing that that is one of the worst co-morbidities. Then we're talking about how hospitals are laying people off. That's right, with all of the stuff that's going on, they're not getting enough work. That's kind of crazy. Then we talked about the gym industry. We recently did an episode where we interviewed industry leaders and asked them their opinion on the future of the gym industry. So we kind of went in on that topic. Then Justin brought up his interesting thoughts on gangs and social distancing. Then he talked ... Is it really a gang anymore? Then he talked about the toilet paper king, Roll Exotic, is that what you think? Yeah, Roll Exotic. That's what we're calling him now. That's pretty good. Adam mentioned how Felix Gray, they're the company that makes the best looking blue light blocking glasses you'll find anywhere. It's their birthday. What does that mean for you? 15% off any products on their entire site. So Felix Gray is known for having some of the best blue light blocking glasses. They look amazing and they never go on sale. So this is huge. Take advantage. Here's how you get the 15% off birthday sale from Felix Gray glasses. Just go to Felix Gray glasses. That's F-E-L-I-X-G-R-A-Y glasses.com, forward slash mind pump. Go there, you get free shipping, free returns, and of course 15% off to celebrate their birthday. Then I talked about how I'm eating tons of Paleo Valley grass-fed meat sticks. Now I'm eating them right now because I'm at home and I'm trying to avoid eating all the processed food. Well, meat sticks, you know, they're convenient. They have a long shelf life. They're grass-fed, naturally fermented, low in calories, high in protein. It's a great snack for the house right now. By the way, if you go to paleovali.com forward slash mind pump, that's P-A-L-E-O valley.com forward slash mind pump and use the code mind pump 15, that's the number 15 in the word mind pump. You get 15% off your first order. And then we got into politics a little bit and I talked about the Democrats potential political strategy that I think could be a game changer. Interesting. And then we got into the fitness questions. The first question, this person has unbalanced muscular development. So one arm is bigger than the other and they want to know what the best strategy is to balance those out. The next question, this person does lots of squats and deadlifts which definitely work the core. The core has to stabilize the body. So they want to know, should they even work their abs directly? Is that something that's even going to benefit them? The next question, this person says, look, the front squat is now often being regarded as more functional than the back squat. Does that mean I can just do front squat? Should I avoid back squats now since I already deadlift? So that gets my glutes and hamstrings and I'm front squatting. So what's the deal? And the final question, this person wants to know what the hardest obstacles each of us have ever had to overcome in regards to fitness. So Justin tells his story, Adam tells his story, and then I tell my story. Also this month, maps prime and prime pro are both 50% off. By the way, as of the airing of this episode, you have 48 hours left to take advantage of this promotion. After two days, these programs will double in price. Now maps prime is a phenomenal program to teach you how to set up your priming session based off of the way your body moves. There's an assessment tool in there, you take the test, figure out what your imbalances are, design your own pre-workout priming session. Now you can do 10 minutes of targeted priming before your workout to give you better movement, greater ranges of motion, more strength, reductions in injury, and just better results overall. Now prime pro is all about correctional exercise. So this program, you go in there, you identify the joints you want to work on, areas you feel like your mobility can improve, areas that may have bothered you in the past with pain, and you target them with the prime pro exercises and exercise demo videos. Okay, so both are half off. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsfitnessproducts.com and use the code prime 50 for the discount. That's P-R-I-M-E-5-0, no space. Again, you only have two days left of this month to take advantage of this promotion. And it's t-shirt time. Oh, shit, dog, you know it's my favorite time of the week. Oh, yeah. Didn't see that coming. So we have three winners this week, one for iTunes, two for Facebook. The iTunes winner is Aristotle Daphnis Fitness. For Facebook, we have Keisha Watts and Mary Jorgensen. All three of you are winners. Send a name I just read to iTunes at mindpumpmedia.com. Include your shirt size and your shipping address, and we'll get that shirt right out to you. Hey, I got a joke, an old joke, old school joke. Let's hear it. My favorite. Is it a podcast program? Is it a knock, knock? No, there's this old couple hanging out and, you know, someone asked the old man, hey, man, this wine you're serving us is just incredible. What's the name of the wine? What was it? And he goes, oh, he goes, damn, I forgot. And he goes, hey, he goes, what's that flower that grows with the red, you know, petals? And you give it to someone you fall in love with? And like, oh, Rose, he goes, that's right. Hey, Rose, what was the name of that wine we got? Oh, yeah. Hey, I got some random science fish news for you guys. Sounds fishy, right? Because, yeah. Anyway, jokes, thanks, Justin. Yeah, I had to. I was sitting at home and I was just, you know, I haven't done this in a long time. I used to love doing this, where I would just get into rabbit holes and just learn random shit, you know? Yeah, I've been doing that a lot. This is very fascinating. I did not know this. So you guys know great white sharks, right? I've heard of them. Now, great white sharks in my mind are like, they're like the lions of the ocean. Jaws. Ain't nobody fucking with them. They're the apex predators. They're a freaking great white shark. Have you seen them attack seals and like bust through the top of the water and like launch? Oh, they're like torpedoes. They're like missiles. Oh, it's scary. They're frightening, frightening. Here's something very interesting. If great white sharks go to a hunting ground, let's say there's a bunch of seals and they're hunting the seals and it's like amazing. There's so many seals and they're eating them. If orcas pass through that area, the great whites run away. They don't run, they swim. They're little bitches. They swim away and they don't come back for months, sometimes years. Wow. Because they're terrified. The ultimate force. They're terrified of killer whales. And then in 1997, this is the first time it was ever. Killer in their name. They do. Recognized. Yeah. They got good PR. Yeah. They certainly do. What kind of names should we have? They, in 1997, this is the first time this was ever filmed, they filmed orcas attacking and killing killer whites, actually hunting them. And before that, they kind of speculated that this happened but never saw it. Here's what's even weirder. So you know what they do when they get to the great white? They attack them, they bite, open their gut, then they crush them and squeeze the liver out, eat the liver and leave the carcass and swim away. So when gangster. So when they find empty, like, liverless, great white carcasses, they know that it was killed by- Like, we've been here. It was a killer whale that did that. Wow. Tell me, that's not crazy. That is not crazy. Killer whales are like, they look like they're, you know- What sends you down that rabbit hole? I have no idea. Were you watching? I think that's like five levels of rabbit holes. Yeah, see, because I knew that occasionally they'd run into them and they would, you know, some of them would kill them, but I didn't know that they actively like hunted them. They actively hunt them. And then because orcas are, you know, from the dolphin family, they work together. So great white sharks are kind of loners, right? They don't really work together. Sometimes they fight each other for food. Orcas swim and will trap food or push things up to shore so they can attack them. Yeah. Sharks are fucked. I didn't know that. I thought sharks worked together too, no? Is that true? No, no, not like an orc. Some sharks might, but not the great ones. Yeah, when you're great, you're by yourself. Yeah, not the great whites. Isn't that crazy? That is crazy. Overall, we think they're so cute and friendly. No, it's not the case. Deadly, deadly, deadly killers. Anyway, how was your guys' weekend? It was good. Oh, you know, it's funny. So this new norm thing, right? With not being able to go places, used to go, like, my parents decided they would watch the kids from me. I'm like, oh, sweet, this is great. You know, the one family we've been interacting with, you know, I'm sure I'll get flack for that. But whatever, my kids go to stay there overnight. We get a date for once. So where do we go? We have no idea what we're going to do. So we go and get, like, some tacos. And then we take it out to, like, West Cliff, where there's a place where you can, like, watch the sunset and all this kind of stuff. You can't park anywhere. Everything's closed. You know, there's nowhere to go. So we found this spot that was, like, I could pull off, like, the road that was just next to the ocean. And we kind of were in somebody's driveway. And we just parked it there, you know, turned it down, listened to music we're eating. I snuck some white claws that were sitting there, like, drinking, allegedly, you know, drinking, like, looking out for cops and stuff. I felt like I was a fucking junior high. Yeah, but it was awesome. We had a great time. That's hilarious. Yeah. The window's all fogged up. It's as if people were driving by. We ducked down, you know what I'm saying? Dude, did you ever get caught like that when you were a kid in the car? Yeah, I think it was somebody was hot boxing, you know? Oh, dude, I was obvious. I was in the car with my girlfriend at the time. And that's what you used to do when you were a kid. You had nowhere to go. You're not going to go to a hotel room. You both live with your parents. It's like, where are you going to go to get some privacy? So we had this. There was a specific parking lot that we used to go and park in. And, you know, we would do, you know, whatever, hang out. And, you know, the windows would get all fogged up. Well, this is a true story. We're in the car and we're fooling around or whatever. And I hear tap, tap, tap on the window. And I look up and it's no joke. It's a cop with a flashlight through the window. And we were in various degrees of undress in the car. Super. That's happening to me too. Frightening and embarrassing. Hopefully the cops just let you guys go though, right? I mean, that's like. No, here's the bad part. You didn't meet me like, like walk and do the whole thing. Like he was messing with me. What? All they did for you? Yeah, like it was like, I was like drinking. I wasn't even drinking. We were just necking. You know what I mean? Wow. You did that too? Yeah. You're hella white too. That's weird. You just dated yourself right there too. That's what I said. Nobody goes out next. Imagine if Justin was ethnic, they would have beat the shit. That's terrible. Yeah, they would have. No, dude, what was weird with me is the cop, not only he flashed our light through, but we were, like I said, we were in various degrees of undress. Fucker stood there and watched us. Wow. You know? That's a power move. No, it's a creepy move, dude. Like what are you doing, bro? Just looking in. My girlfriend's trying to get her clothes on. I mean, at that age, though, you're probably just happy to get in trouble, like whatever. No, it's true. He did. He's like, I should probably tell your parents. I'm like, please don't do that, dude. That would be the most embarrassing thing in the world. Yeah, those are good times. If you tell my parents. Dude, you know what they found in New York City? The number one, I guess, co-morbidity, the number one reason that people would have fatal, you know, would die from the coronavirus, what it was? Diabetes. Obesity. And obesity-related diseases. I saw that. So being overweight in that case, a parent, and they're mirroring that in other studies. It's so interesting. And then you look at where the culture was leading into this whole crisis and everything of how we were just trying to justify obesity and the new. It's normal. It's healthy. It's like the spin that we were trying to place on it, when, in fact, it's not advantageous for you to stave off diseases. No, no. Again, it was the number one common reason why a lot of people didn't make it. It was obesity and obesity-related diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes. So stay in shape, man. Stay fit and keep yourself healthy. That's important. What's your guys' thoughts on how this plays out then? We just recently did an episode where we interviewed five different fitness leaders in their space, and we talked about the potentials of it crippling a lot of businesses. Now, do you see, and I don't, we didn't cover this, but I have something that I think as a theory will happen potentially, is if we go back to normal and no businesses are affected that bad and everybody pretty much is OK, do you see that as a possibility is happening? Like, for example, if more and more data keeps coming out and before we, and when it's all said and done, we find out that the death rate is extremely lower than what we saw. In fact, it's no more dangerous than the flu. We know that it spreads faster, right? That's already been proven. It's been proven that it's more infectious and we don't have a vaccine, so therefore, it does make it scary for those reasons and how overwhelming it can be for hospitals. But if these tests start coming back like they are right now and more and more people potentially already had it or asymptomatic, do you think this potentially could be enough for people to go like, oh, this is no scarier than then? Well, I just have been talking with Courtney and some of her friends actually are still working in the hospitals and in the environment and they're reporting back that they'd, I mean, they're getting sent home. They don't have enough patience coming in for them to even service. And so it's like, it's total misinformation that's getting flooded out there. Like, oh, we're just gonna crowd the hospitals. Like, these hospitals are struggling to just make it business-wise right now. That's actually true. Some of the biggest layoffs are happening in hospitals right now. Because what you have is you have laws ordering non-emergency surgeries to be shut down. You have people who are not going to the doctor. In fact, strokes and heart attacks. Why would you want to go in right now? Strokes and heart attacks are down. You guys know that? Which is weird. But people aren't going to the hospital. They're not going to their doctor. And so they are laying people off like crazy. Here's how I, here's my opinion on what I think is gonna happen with the gyms and what you said, Adam. There's two main factors that can affect businesses. One is consumer confidence, consumer fear. That's gonna play a role. Consumer fear is hard to predict. People are really easily scared. Very, very difficult to unscare them. Once we're frightened, it's hard because now the game can be this. Like, oh, not as many people died and then people can come back and say, well, that's because we shut everything down. That's because we weren't going anywhere. So you can kind of get in that, that spin. So there's that, but that's up to the consumer. We'll see how we all feel and if we're scared or not scared or whatever. Here's the one that I think, the factor that I think has the biggest impact. Legislation. Legislation. Because the legislators are gonna be passing laws that require businesses to maintain distance between consumers that are gonna maybe, maybe they'll pass laws that say, you have to take people's temperatures. You can only allow this many people per square foot in your facility. And many gyms are based on a model of getting X amount of people per square foot. Well, if legislation comes out and they say, you have to cut that in half, well, that's gonna kill that business. The whole model was designed around something completely different. So the legislation is where I see the problems. Now, how long could legislation last? I don't know, three months, six months, until a vaccine is out, which would be even longer. But let's just say three months. Let's say for the next three months. You gotta make a third of your income after being shut down for two months. How many fitness companies do you know that could survive that? No, I agree with you. I think that's tough. I think that's what we're, it's gonna be, that part's gonna be scary. Imagine how frustrating for a small box owner that like a CrossFit or an orange theory, how frustrating that is if, even if the stats come out and people are like, oh, I'm no longer afraid anymore, but it doesn't matter because they've already said, listen, until we get the vaccine or until we know for sure, these are the precautions. And that's why I was, that's why I liked that we did that episode because of all the different industries that are gonna be impacted, once the fear goes away, I can't see anybody being more impacted than gyms. Do you? Yeah, gyms. I would have thought restaurants would be up there too, right? I disagree with that now. Like I was, we're up in, we're staying up at the sanctuary where I'd love to go up by the beach right now, right? And we ordered a curbside at the Fisherman's Grotto, my favorite place up at Fisherman's Wharf up there. And the kid runs up and he's got a mask on and everything and he's got gloves and delivers it into my, into the passenger side of my car and everything. And I asked him, I said, hey, so how's business, how are you guys doing? He goes, you know, we're doing okay, actually. A lot of people are, and by the way, they are offering people that did curbside 25% off of their bills. So it's even a better deal for us to get food from them. And he goes, I guess city officials over there are already talking about what it's gonna look like at least in their county. The restaurants are looking to open up next month, but it'll be, you're allowed half the tables. So half the tables will serve. And he says that they have now made this model work so well that it'll probably be a model they keep forever, where you just do curbside like that and come pick the food up, which they weren't doing before. So I think a lot of restaurants that have pivoted really quick have found that they're having a lot of success with this and they might be okay. I've noticed the same thing. I was talking to one of my favorite restaurants about that and they'd converted to Grubhub and like all these like food service deliveries that they had like a specific part of the back door open for them. And so they were like in and out like all day long just getting food and driving out. And then in the front, you could come in and pick up and do curbside with that too. But it's still a pivot, I think. Yeah, but I mean, you've been able to like lessen the blow versus like a gym has not been able to just slightly, you know, add rev like the whole virtual model for like a commercial gym is, I mean, come on. No, no, there's no doubt that the service industry, travel industry and the fitness industry, the gym industry will be hardest, but I think the gym industry will be among the hardest hit of all of those. Again, because their models are so dependent on something that will probably be made impossible to do with legislation. I'll tell you what, look, I grew up in gyms. Okay, I became a member of a gym at the age of 15. Never, I have not stepped foot in a gym for longer than a few weeks since the age of 15. So I've been there for decades, you know, working in them professionally, managing locations. I have never seen some of the current trends that I'm seeing. Here's an example. I'm getting no joke, at least 10, if not more DMs a day of people who have made their own home gym equipment, made it. Either they made it with iron or wood or and why are they doing this? Because at home gym equipment is so high in demand right now you can't find any. And so people are building. I've did two polls on my stories. And my stories get a decent amount of views they get. So it doesn't represent everybody, but I'm getting 16 to 20,000 views on those things. And I did two polls. One of them was, would you be willing to pay double or triple your monthly dues to continue going to the gym? Because 20% said no. 80% said no. And by the way, my audience is SKU's hardcore. People who follow me are really into fitness. Yeah, exactly. They're real gym goers. Yeah, and 80% of them said no. And you know what the comments were? It's not worth it. I'm just gonna work out at home. I'm gonna buy gym equipment and stay home. I agree. I found that interesting too. Because I posted the little teaser of the episode we did. You know, and I got a couple of people on there. Oh, I don't care what you guys say. As soon as the gym- Day one. Yeah, day one, I'm back there. I'm like, well, okay, that's great. But it's not about you. Or are you willing to pay twice or three times a month? Yeah, but even then, again, what depends on what your gym is forced to do. Like, that's great. You are one of the, you know, thousands, let's say, that agree like, hey, day one, I'm back in there. I'm not afraid of what's going on, so I'm gonna go in there. It doesn't even matter what you think if they don't allow enough people. It's just a numbers game. It's like, listen. If you take two thirds of anybody's fitness business, I don't know, we've already talked about this. Fitness is not, it's not like finances. There's not huge margins. You own a gym, even a well-oiled machine is not cranking out huge revenue numbers. And if they are, you're an anomaly, right? For the most part, majority of people that are running these businesses, it's a passion business. It's costly too. You love to do it because you love having a gym and hey, you found a way to make decent money doing it. If you told most those people that you now don't have the ability to make two thirds of the income, boy, that's gonna be crippling for a lot more people than you think. A lot of gyms are heavily leveraged. Very few gyms own their equipment outright. Most of them lease a lot of the equipment, which makes sense because you have a lot of people using it. And when you lease equipment, you can switch it out, keep things new. So they've got high bills, big footprints. So there's a high rent. You have a staff that you have to pay. It's just, and here's the thing. If gyms close down, it will be more because of the legislators and regulations and less because of consumers. I'm gonna tell you that straight up right now. It's the legislation and the laws and the regulations that'll cripple the gym industry. It's not gonna be the consumers. The consumers can decide for themselves how they wanna show up, how they wanna work out. I'm already annoyed with this whole mask thing, man. Like it's everywhere now, right? You have to get into just like a convenience store. You have to wear it. So I borrowed my dad's a handkerchief. So I have to- You look like a gangbanger. Yeah, it's red, dude. So I'm like going into the store and I was like, ah, the bendito is here. You know, I thought that was so crazy to me that that makes you feel more comfortable. Like I totally felt like a bank robber going in there. And then it got me to think, I'm like, wait a minute. Like what about actual gangbangers? You know, are they like practicing social distance? Like what does that even look like? Is it really a gang at that point? Or is it just a plethora of people? Yeah, we are a plethora. Yeah, stay at home, okay? No, it is kind of, look, I was also thinking about, you know, liability waivers. Like when you walk into a gym and you sign a liability wear, are they gonna put on there increased risk of COVID for coming in? Are liability waivers gonna change? Oh, I'm sure. It's, and again, it's about the environment. Here's why I think the restaurant industry, also gonna suffer heavily. Now I'm sure they can pivot, like you said, Adam. But I think they're gonna suffer because just like the gym, you go to a restaurant and a big part, and restaurant owners know this. What makes a restaurant successful? What do they call it? The ambiance, right? It's the experience. What if you go in there, waiters have masks on, disposable menus, you're sitting far away from everybody, you've got this kind of weird, like, I don't know, I'm on the fence on that one because I also think that we are in the middle right now of an explosion of a totally new market that didn't exist a decade ago. And that is the door dashes, the grub hubs that Uber eats. Like that didn't exist a decade ago. And that is exploding. But it's still, and it hasn't hit the peak yet because I still have lots of family and friends that don't use those services because they've never done it before and they don't realize how convenient and nice it is. Now I love it, but even me, I remember I was eating at Rush, I used to eat at this breakfast spot every single morning, right? And I remember when door dash first came on the scene before I even knew what it was. And I'd be sitting there, then all of a sudden, I don't know, I've been eating here for years, right? Same spot, everything. All of a sudden I start seeing these kids coming in wearing this red shirt all the time. And they're picking, I remember asking the owners, they're like, oh yeah, that's a door dash, it's a new service, and they explained it to me. I'm like, oh, that's brilliant. And it must have been probably a year or so that was there before I even decided, let me try this and see how it is. Now I live on it. I love it and use it all the time. I think there's actually a ton of people that have been introduced to that that have never been introduced to that before. And if businesses have now pivoted to be able to offer that service, it may be enough to supplement them to continue to be okay and survive. And then the future may look like for them to downsize their restaurant. Maybe now we don't have a restaurant that's massive in this future. They just have a kitchen. Right, they have mostly a kitchen and they cater more to that. It's almost like a drive-through just for the door dash people and then you can come in the front. Right, so. Totally, it's gonna be a kitchen. I find what Jason Kalipa said the most interesting. Like some of the points he made, I thought were really, really good. And one of the ones that, there's a lot of gyms right now that out of desperation and necessity have pivoted to virtual. We've gotta figure something out. And they all seem to do that. Some of them offered it as a free service just to stay in touch with their members. Some of them have completely pivoted into a paid service that way. And when he made the point about being very careful of losing your identity and going all or having one foot in the brick and mortar and one foot in the virtual, that is a really good point. And it's one that we can speak to and have intimate knowledge of. All three of us have ran and been in brick and mortar for more than a decade. And now we've got over five years of experience of complete virtual business. And one thing I think we can all agree on is they are total different monsters. Completely different animals. Yes, and so you may be finding that you're okay and you're surviving by pivoting to virtual right now because it's kind of a weird time. And so it's kind of getting by. But if you think you're now gonna become this virtual business and that's a mainstream, there's other things you need to be thinking about that like building a serious online presence that maybe you don't really have and that we know how long that takes. It takes a long time to do that. Yeah, I think, I don't think the demand again. And here's something that the fitness industry may use to their advantage. I just talked about how obesity was the number one risk factor for severe complications from COVID. Well, that may be something that the fitness industry and the gym industry uses to lobby to lawmakers and to also use as a selling point. Like, hey, one thing that we've noticed is that people who are fit and get sick are far less likely to have severe complications and die and have all. So that may be one way to do it, but here's what I think. I don't think people will stop working out. I wanna be very clear. I just think that their behaviors are gonna change. I think people are going to probably wanna work out more at home, more stuff outdoors. The people who are really hardcore fitness fanatics may either really well-equip their home gyms or maybe the ones willing to pay the high dollar amount to go work out at a gym, but those gyms business models did not, they weren't built on those kind of people. They were built on, I definitely see those streaming services in the forefront, like really taken off. Like these classes and, you know, Peloton was a good one but like also, like, I mean, there's few different examples of that, but you know, that sort of live feel where you can connect and have community with people still somehow, but like through virtual means. But again, it's never gonna really replace the same thing. So it may be just a bubble, a bubble where people aren't comfortable yet. You know, we're gonna go in this direction for a while and then maybe the dust settles and it comes back. You have to factor in too, how many people? So we said what, 676% increase in gym equipment, at home gym equipment. There's gonna be a good majority of people that just invested $1,000 on a squat rack and whatever a whole setup. And just that in itself is enough to keep you from going back. Maybe I want to go back or maybe I may even think about it at one point, but right now it's like, I just spent almost- But you're invested now. Yeah. You want to hear my little, some alarming comments I was getting. These are from hardcore gym enthusiasts. Who you would think would be like, no man, I'm gonna pay, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna support them no matter what. I got messages from them that are like, well, I'm gonna wait till these gyms liquidate and I'm gonna buy their equipment. I got a lot of those messages. So people will still, and here's the thing. If you own it- There's gonna be a lot of that. If you own a gym, and this is something that I learned owning a personal training studio versus managing big box gyms. The more service you provide, the more close contact you have with individual members, the more you know their name, they know your name, the more loyal they're gonna be. The big box gym model is hard to do. It's very hard to do that. Now I tried to do that. I was on the workout floor all the time as a general manager, trying to know people. We had so many people that it's impossible for me to be like that with everyone. And many managers in these big box gyms are encouraged not to do that. They're encouraged to stay in their office, look at the paperwork and sale staffs are being dwindled. I mean, the big box gym industry, we know this, went from trying to be more service to trying to be as cheap as possible. And that happened over a course of a couple of decades. That means you have zero loyalty. You have no loyalty. So when you double the prices, people are like eh, whatever. I mean, how telling was it when we talked to Scott who has a personal training studio here in San Jose, Red Dot Fitness, right? High service, high dollar. We asked him how many members have he lost? Six. Six total members. And that's because he built that loyalty because of the high service, totally, exactly. So it'll be, I don't know. It'll be really, really, here look. The regulators are the ones I'm worried about because they pass broad laws and they say, and it's just with one swipe of the pen and they destroy a lot of businesses. What I wish they did is they gave recommendations and they left it to the consumer to go in and decide for themselves, does this feel safe? Does it not feel safe? It's still gonna get hurt, but the regulations are we're gonna screw people. I'll give you an example of what I mean. So they obviously passed this huge, what they'll call relief stimulus bill, right? So money to people and we need to help people. Anytime you see politicians on both sides of the aisle totally agree on something, you know you're about to get something that's gonna screw a lot of people. And that's what happened. So they passed a lot of stuff. You wanna know what's happening right now? Small businesses are in a very strange conundrum because their employees, some of these small businesses are able to maintain their businesses and pay their employees, but their employees are begging to be laid off because their unemployment is more than they're getting paid. And so now the employer, and this is actually a big problem right now, a lot of these employers are in a weird situation. Do I lay them off so that they can make more money? You know, because I care about them, but then they're not working for me and I can't maintain what little business I have. And that's because of these big, wide, you know, these wide regulations where they don't mess, you know, again, for a lot of people they're gonna be detrimental. Now are you guys still seeing people like hoard toilet paper and do crazy stuff where you guys are at? Oh my God, there's this guy, right? We call him the toilet paper king of our neighborhood. Right, we were on a walk and we've been doing this a lot, like our entire community, like we're walking around all these different houses, these different streets and we go buy this guy's house and he has the balls to have his garage door all the way open. So you can like, I mean, it's very visible. You see like the stockpile right in your face. There was like 10, if not 12 of the Costco size like amounts of toilet paper just stacked in the corner right there as we're walking by. And it's like, it's funny because like my kids have no filter, you know? And so like they see something like, hey, why'd you borrow that toilet paper? Like they're like yelling at the guy and I'm like, hey, calm down. Like obviously this guy is worried, you know, that he's not gonna be able to shit comfortably. Shame him. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, they were shaming him the whole time. But yeah, it was just funny. It's like, dude, okay, first of all, you're gonna go in there, you're gonna take all the toilet paper but now you're gonna show it off like, you know, like, hey, like this is my status. Back in the day it was the garage was rolled up and there was like a Ferrari. Exactly. Now it's like, oh my gosh. Yeah, he's just flaunting it. Like, he's all flossy. 10 pallets of a. I wonder how much that throws off like the companies that produce it. Like, cause there's not. You're right, they might be getting so much demand from idiots like him. Right, cause there's not. That's what it was. There's not really, yeah, it's kind of a false signal, right? All of a sudden they're having to produce so much more but then what happens when this all slows down and everybody's like, yeah. Like super low. It wasn't even scarce. It's just that people, assholes like that just start doing that. There was some guy that tried to return something like 10 of those big, you know, packs to Costco. Tried to return them and they told him to fuck off. Oh, really? Yeah, because again, he was being a jerk. They tried to return it. I read this in an article and the employees were super pissed. Like, oh, now you want your money back? You keep all that fucking toilet paper that you bought. That's all yours. You're stuck with it. That's all yours now, you know what I mean? I was thinking about that with, cause I have a garage with some like gym equipment and I was thinking like, I wonder if this is now something I got to be careful if somebody will want to steal, you know, because the value of certain things has changed so much. You know what I'm saying? Somebody was actually selling in our, our forum wasn't doing this, but they posted this because they thought it was ridiculous. Somebody posted a gym setup, squat rack bench, barbell dumbbells, $8,000. It was on like a Craigslist side or something. They're like, this guy wins for the biggest balls. I wonder if he would get, I bet he gets it. I don't know, man. There's definitely got to be some people that have lots of money and the $8,000 ain't a big deal to them that wants, that doesn't have gym access. I would assume. Well, I know when it's cheap, there's a lot of flipping going on with equipment right now. That's another way to hustle some money. My cousin bought two stands, not even a squat rack. They're just the little, you know, stands that you could put a barbell on. So it's not even a squat rack. A barbell and not even like a legit awesome barbell, just your run of the mill barbell. Regular weights, they're not the greatest. They're iron or whatever, not a ton. Two adjustable dumbbells. That's all she bought. Thousand bucks. Thousand bucks. And that was new. It wasn't even used. That wasn't even on the second market. Pricy. And that's because the demand has gone, you know, through the roof or whatever. Anyway, speaking of prices and stuff, I get message. I want to make, I want to say this on the podcast because I get messages all the time about the Felix Gray blue blocker glasses and how they never go on sale. Yeah. It's their birthday. That's what I was going to say, 15% of it today. Yeah. And stuff never goes on sale. I know. There's such high quality, but right now it's 15% off because of the big sale that's going on for the birthday. I just had an interview that I did about these, like these guys are like interviewing or they're the network they're trying to build is around high performing executives. And they were asking about my thoughts on like high performance supplements and things like new tropics, stuff like that. And I said, you know what's funny is that there's so much marketing and stuff that's behind things like that that a lot of that BS has been sold on a lot of these people for a very long time. And I said, you know the irony of that is we all have routines. We all have this morning routine where we get up, we brush our teeth, you have breakfast, you read your Wall Street Journal, whatever it is and you poop whatever, start your day. I said, how many people, including high performing executives, do you know that have a legitimate like get ready for bed routine? I don't know any. In fact, most of the people that I trained or that dealt with that are high performing executives are the ones most guilty of still on their phone or their laptop in bed and doing things like that. And I was explaining to them, instead of getting that person on supplements, they would be far better in spending $200, $300 on supplements every single month. They'd be far better in investing in something that helps them with their night routine and get it together. And I was explaining some of the things that I do personally that have been game changer and one of the things I brought up is, I said, I would never do done this in the past and I thought they were dorky before, but blue blocker glasses. And it's not just doing the glasses, it's also, it's just making a routine that, hey, when the sun goes down, I put my glasses on, I also try and bring down all the fluorescent lights in my house and just doing that is far more beneficial than spending hundreds of dollars on performance supplements every single month. It's backed by many, many studies too. They show melatonin production goes up, deep sleep improves, but I mean, it makes perfect sense. Your brain and your body evolved in an environment where the sun set and then went down. So it went from bright light to darker, darker, darker, darker, and then dark and your brain actually adjusts accordingly. So when you're on your electronics or you're under bright lights and then you just hit the pillow and close your eyes. Artificial light all day long. Yeah, and then you close your eyes and you expect yourself to get this great sleep. It takes like an hour or two for your brain and body to even register that it's time to go to sleep. I was talking to my brother-in-law about a lot of these corporations, like Apple, Google, Facebook, and just about their work environment. And I'm like, oh my God, how's this all gonna change? Are a lot of the employees gonna stay at home now because of all this stuff that's going on and they've found that they're productive. But he said that they're productive, but they're not productive in a cohesive way where normally they're in the workspace so that way they can directly communicate with each other so they can keep the projects moving that they're individual working on. So to be able to kind of piece it all together, they still need to be in close proximity. So he's saying that they're actually gonna be coming back in a lot more to the workspace, but they're having them spread out. And also there's all these like new parameters where they're gonna have like ionized filtration systems and UV filtration system to kill the diseases and bacteria within that. And I was like, oh my God, all that. And then also, you know, I'm like, dude, I tried to tell them about blue blockers and like how that should be like a standard for employees as they come back and they're on there already. I'm like surprised they haven't like instituted that yet. Well, that's happening. You know what's funny though, you say that is that Facebook is actually the opposite. They're looking to actually get rid of some of their locations because they're having so much success with everybody working at home. Yeah, so I have it. See, that's what I thought, but he said the opposite. Yeah, I have a niece and she works for Facebook and she's her hub is in New York. And they're actually talking about just keeping them all home till the rest of the year. Doesn't matter what they legislate or anything like that. Just like they're having so much success with everybody working remotely anyways. And they're like, why risk it? And then what they might do is actually downsize some of their facilities. It's pretty interesting what you've seen with things like that. I think in many ways, life will never be the same again. And I don't mean that in a bad way. In fact, I think what we're gonna find is certain industries are gonna realize that they could do business in a more efficient, effective way. One of them is what you just said, Adam. A lot of companies are starting to realize that, hey, you know what? A large segment of our workforce can work from home. We're more productive. It saves us money. They prefer it because they like to be at home. Now that's gonna change some interesting behaviors. Are people going to move further away from work hubs not worrying about long commute? How is that gonna change the work-life balance? That'll be interesting. I think that there'll be some permanent changes there. I think education is gonna change also permanently. I see a lot of colleges are staying closed to the fall and are only offering online courses. When you're doing everything online, why would you spend $100,000 on your private college tuition when it's all just coming online anyway? And why would I spend so much money on a book when I'm downloading it this way? Anyway, I think it'll open the door for less expensive, efficient sources of education. I really do. So I think that's gonna change permanently. And then the home delivery with food. I don't think it'll be maybe as much as it is now, but it'll be more than it would have been had this whole situation. It'll increase it substantially. Speaking of food, I finally got a grip on the processed food consumption. So hard when you're stuck at home and you don't wanna go grocery shopping and you have, you buy all stuff. The paleo meat sticks are game changer. Like just having them in the house makes it totally better than grabbing something else. I like it, cause especially, you know, even on the kid level, like just having things available around for snacks and stuff that aren't like, you know, like chips and like all the regular kinds of like those bars and all the Z bars and all this kind of stuff. Like having those around, like I just feel better about them eating those. Did either one of you guys look up cause I know on the actual, you know, beef stick, it doesn't actually have the macro breakdown. Did you guys figure out, I know it's like 70 calories a stick, but what's the protein intake on it? It's six, six grams per stick. I think it's how many grams of fat is like- Two grams of fat. Two grams of fat of- I believe. No carbs or whatever. It's naturally fermented, you know, interesting that is. So they don't use GMO corn. I think it's called citric acid. I can't remember what it was to ferment it. It's a natural fermented process, which means their beef sticks actually have a healthy probiotics. Actually five grams of fat. Five grams of fat. Okay. So they actually have healthy probiotics in them. So what you may find is, you know, these meat sticks are feel better on your gut than other types of, you know- Oh, that's interesting. Long shelf life type of meat or whatever. That's really good to only 70 calories a stick. That's not bad at all. No. And still getting six grams of protein. You have three of those, it's not a big deal at all. The 200 something calories and then getting like 20 grams of protein. That's nice. But it's not like the kind of where you eat and then you start to mindlessly, you know what I mean? You end up eating 500 calories of laced potato chips like I did. You get so much satiated that way at least. Dude, so politics. I know Doug loves it when I bring up politics. But I'm not gonna, this is not that controversial. Squeezing it in here. This is not that controversial, Doug. I, you know, I've commented on how I think it's gonna be very difficult. And I don't have a horse on this race, but I think it's gonna be difficult to beat Trump with what the Democrats had on their side or whatever. I did not consider the following strategy, which I think is the smartest, if they can make this happen, this is the smartest political strategy that the Democrats could bring. And I think it would pose as a hardcore threat. What's that? Against Trump, Biden having Michelle Obama as his vice president. Now, is that true? I heard rumors of that and I haven't seen anything confirmed on that. It has not been confirmed, but Biden said he would love it. They wouldn't announce it until the perfect moment. So even if they did agree, one thing that they tend to do is they say, was it, was it thinking about it? I thought they, he, I thought, or was it Bernie Sanders that Obama didn't cosine for? Did he cosine for Biden? Well, Biden was his VP. Yeah. Okay, so obviously- I'm pretty sure he cosine. Yeah, so, but Biden with him, so with Michelle Obama, that would be such a hard ticket to beat because- She's a powerful force. She's super loved. Her, as the VP means her husband is now kind of in the White House and people loved the Obama-Biden administration, which it would still be Obama-Biden or Biden-Obama administration. And as much as Biden, you know, you know, bumbles and whatever, Michelle is very tight. She can articulate points a lot better for sure. Yeah, the only person who does better on the stage is her husband. The only thing they'd come at her with is her experience, right? With being a politician. That's why she'd be, as a VP, it would be perfect. The political strategist in me is like, oh my gosh, that would be the best. Now, at what point do we have to hear, like when will this be announced if it is gonna happen? I don't know when they announced the VP picks, but one thing that they tend to do is they say things like, we would love for this to happen or oh yeah, that might be a good idea and then test to see what the response is to help them make their decision. So, but we're not gonna find that. That's kind of a wild card, huh? I do see that actually is being interesting. Oh, it'd be very interesting. And I think if that happened, then it would be a 50-50 shot. I think we'd see the election cycle of the... Yeah, you say that about Trump, but I mean, what worries me for him, and again, I'm like you, I don't have a dog in this fight, but what about unemployment right now? Isn't unemployment just like crazy through the roof right now? Yeah, but that's the thing. It's gonna be blamed on the virus. Does that matter though? Yes, it does. Really? It does. As long as he looks like... Statistically speaking, that's not true because anytime that you've had, it doesn't matter what the reason is or is not. If unemployment is at record highs, that person never gets reelected. If it does matter, the reason matters big time. If you, if the reason of the unemployment is blamed on the person in office, it kills them. If it's blamed on something outside of their control and that person looks like they led with confidence during that, then they'll be trusted and they'll be voted for. Yeah, I thought that's untrue. I thought anytime that we've had the highest numbers in unemployment, always the president's not, no matter what it is, hasn't been reelected. Well, again, name one time where we had something completely not due to anything that has to do with economics cause unemployment. I can't think of any time, right? Whether it was the Great Depression or the Great Recession that could very easily get put and blamed on legislators and politicians. Coronavirus is a virus. Now, if Trump's approach to the coronavirus gets painted as a terrible one. Which is Ben. Well, they try. That's the thing, but that's a tough one. It's murky. That's a really, really tough one. Yeah, I'm telling you, they're their best bet, man. If they get Michelle as Biden's running mate, that'll be their best bet by far. Otherwise, I don't see them coming close. Okay, first question is from Hailey Phillips 34. If my left bicep and shoulder are bigger than my right bicep and shoulder, does that mean I should do extra reps on the smaller, less developed arm? So there's two strategies when trying to bring up symmetry, okay? One is, in my experience, far better than the other. Now, one is to maintain your current level of training and everything for the more developed side and just try to make the underdeveloped side develop faster, even faster than it has been. The other strategy is to use the smaller side and weaker side as a guide. So you slow down the development from the dominant side to allow the smaller side to catch up. Now, the first option sounds more appealing to people because they don't wanna slow any gains down, right? So they're like, no, no, no. I wanna keep everything growing at the same pace. I just wanna make the weaker, smaller side grow faster. But the truth is that almost never works. I've almost never seen that balance someone out. The only strategy I've ever really seen be effective is where you slow down the progress from the bigger side by using the smaller side as a guide. So one way to do that would be, let's say one shoulder is stronger than the other. I do my sets with my weaker side first and however many reps I could do with that, I do that with the stronger side, even if I can do more, even if I could do more with the stronger side. I agree with that, but there's part of this, there's a question that's missing from this question and that's why, right? So, and I think that's the mistake that a lot of people make in this situation. There's normally a really good reason why there's that much discrepancy. So, and this was a mistake that I think I made as a young trainer early on was just trying to solve the, oh, this is bigger. So, and what Sal said, I think is the answer. I think that going unilateral type of movements, focus on the weaker side first, as soon as your form starts to break down, you stop it right there and then you mirror that with the dominant side, even if you can do two or three more sets and eventually it'll catch up. But there normally is a reason why you have that. And this one in particular, like when you have the shoulder and the bicep dominant, I had this and I can't help but think that this person, that's their dominant side, is that way and it's rolled forward, right? So, if you have like I had where my left shoulder was rolled forward just, and it's like just barely, the average I wouldn't be able to tell this, but it was just enough rolled forward more than the other side. So then every time that I did these curls, my front delt and my bicep was, or my front delt was taking over the load and then it's already a dominant strong side because it's my dominant side that I used to play sports and everything else. And so, and then you go to do, you know, barbell exercises where both arms are working at the same time and the dominant side just takes over the movement. You got to address the breakdown in the mechanics and the posture, right? So, and that was really the motivation behind Maps Prime is you have that assessment test that's in there to see how your mechanics are and how your movement is and then if it's broken down anywhere, what exercises you should do to prime and address that. And so, to me, you also need to do whatever is necessary before the workout to fix your posture. And a good video to reference is the bicep curl one that I did on our YouTube channel and this is part of the reason why I talked about the pulling the shoulders back and doing the split stance thing is because it is, it's very common with people that are learning to, and this is not talking about advanced people, everybody else, general population, when they do a bicep curl with both arms, like doing a camber curl or a straight bar curl, they end up cheating one side more than the other. And so, addressing the breakdown in the form and technique and using something like the Prime or the Prime Pro compasses and tests in there, that, in my opinion, has to be done first before any of this and then you take the advice that you just gave Saungo that way. Yeah, I think it's interesting to think about, I definitely agree with, you know, focusing on, you know, bringing it up but also like doing as many reps as you can and then kinda stopping with your dominant arm but what about, you know, the lifestyle implications in terms of like then prioritizing certain movements that aren't super skilled movements but they're just everyday things that you're constantly focused on like using more of your left arm, like just picking things up, constantly opening things, like grabbing things, just doing, just being a lot more mindful of like using your left arm to then kind of like reconnect and get that portion of it because, you know, a lot of it is just a loss of connection, a loss of function that may prohibit you from using it within a workout. Now, I think that's good advice but the truth is nobody fucking does that. Nobody's gonna do it but it'd be interesting if they did like an experiment. It is, it's good advice. It's good advice because if you were to do that, I think that in itself would already help and make a difference. The reality of it is nobody's gonna do that. Nobody's gonna start brushing their teeth with the opposite hand, eating with the opposite hand, combing their hair with the opposite hand, picking groceries up with the less dominant. Unfortunately, we just, we're not that aware. We have so many other things that we need to be more aware of before we even get to that level where we're being that aware of what we're doing. So to me, more unilateral work is in hand but addressing it, this is why those programs were designed was to help people try and troubleshoot and figure out, why am I not moving properly? Why is one side developing more than the other? There's a root cause of this. We're speculating right now because we're on a podcast and I can't see the person but if they were in front of me, that would be my job as a coach is to figure out why is there an imbalance here? Where is the breakdown and the communication in their body and then help them address that? And there also highlights like how much do you want it to change, right? So if you're not willing to do that, like for me, like I broke my arm twice the same year, my right arm. I had to learn everything with my left arm and that's something that like totally transformed the way that I do things, in terms of like being able to activate and like actively use both arms. Like I just do that all the time now. Yeah, one of the most imbalanced from right to left because everybody, most people are gonna have a little bit of a discrepancy between the right and left side, but man, I trained one kid who was a pitcher for most of his life in baseball. Like as a kid growing up, this kid was just and he could throw heat. I mean, in high school, he was hitting almost 90 miles an hour. I mean, just incredible. But when I trained him, his body was morphed and twisted into this pitcher. His right arm was way more developed. His strength and his right, it was like you took two separate people and cut them in half and then glued them together. And that was all because of what Justin's talking about just using one side over and over and over again. It's pretty crazy. Next question is from Donovan Kirkpatrick. Do I have to hit abs directly for every full body workout or can I rely on compound lifts like dead lifts and squats to work the core and just work out my abs directly once a week? Well, you're an adult. You can do whatever you want. Yeah, that's it. That's it. If people ask you that. Can I please? Yeah, you can't literally, you can do whatever you want but you know, okay, look, here's the thing with dead lifts and squats. This is where the confusion comes from when people are like, it works your core and then they have studies that show that when you squat and deadlift that there's all this muscle activation in the core. Okay, that's true. Your core is very active when you're doing a heavy exercise that's standing because your core has to stabilize your body but there's also specificity and how muscles activate and work and how their strength is expressed. Okay, so if your core gets really, really good at stabilizing you for deadlifts and squats that's probably gonna come from deadlifts and squats but your core might not be strong moving through full range of motion like a full sit up or a crunch. It's totally different. Now there's some carry over so you'll be better than somebody who does nothing at all but you're not developing the muscle through. You're just highlighting one function. Isometrics. Yeah, that's it. It's just like, imagine if you only did isometrics for your biceps or only did isometrics for your chest, like what's great and why there's studies and why people why this is even a conversation is because there is a lot to support. There's a lot of value in that. That's one of the great benefits of heavy deadlifting and heavy squatting is it's incredible for isometrics for your abs to stabilize your core with two, three, 400 pounds on your back takes a lot of isolation strength but there's two other parts there. There's the concentric and eccentric portion of the exercise that's completely being neglected. So it'd be like only doing isometrics for all the other parts of your body and neglecting the centric and concentric portion of every other exercise. It's not that it's bad. It's not that it doesn't get some work. Your abs are getting some work and I'll tell you what, it's better than nothing. The guy who, you're the guy or girl who squats heavy and deadlifts heavy is better off than someone who does no exercise for their abs, right? So that person is better off than that but you are missing out on two other parts that are extremely beneficial. Yeah, this myth or I don't wanna say myth but this idea really came from the power lifter segment of the lifting community. Because they didn't wanna do it. They don't wanna do it. They don't care. Typically they don't have abs anyway or they're not supposed to have abs. When you're a power lifter, you're not getting judged on how you look. It's about how much weight you can lift. So a lot of them don't give a shit about looking really great in the midsection. It's like, how much can I lift? So then it became, well, why do I need to work my abs anyway? Like who cares? I'm just squatting, I'm just stabilizing. I'm good at it. It's all good. Why work my abs to begin with? You also hear power lifters say things like why do I need to work my calves? Why do I need to work biceps? Sometimes you'll hear strength athletes say, you know, if you train muscles fully, it's better than if you don't, that's all. So it's a little bit, it's gonna be better if you train it fully than if you don't but are you gonna be okay if you only hit your abs? You know, once a week, yeah, you'll probably be fine. It's not a big deal. They're just not gonna be as developed or you're not gonna have as full development of the strength curve and all the strength, you know, factors with your abs, just not gonna be as good, that's all. Next question is from the grumpy Yeti. The front squat is now often regarded as more functional than the back squat. It doesn't allow for as great of overload but it allows for a greater range of motion and is more quad focused and core and upper back demanding. Plus, if you deadlift, the hamstring and glute emphasis is already there. Should the front squat take the pedal stall from the back squat? You know, no, no, I don't think so. I mean, could it for someone? I guess, sure, but I don't think so. This, the idea that, oh, this exercise works those muscles, therefore, we don't need to do this other exercise. I can see the rationale there but again, when you build strength, there's a lot of specificity to how that strength is applied. So if I deadlift a lot, yeah, I'm working my glutes and hamstrings quite a bit. Am I developing squat strength by doing that? You're developing some squat strength but not a lot of back squat strength. Yeah, well, I would argue that we're already very much anterior driven. Like there's like an excess, like everything is anterior driven and so the opportunity to present more exercises that address the posterior chain are invaluable because we just don't focus on that and a back squat is essential for that. Yes, the deadlift covers that as well. You want more exercises to specifically cover that portion. You need that support system to be in balance. So that way, you're not overly dominant with your quads which most clients I've had, especially athletes are quad dominant. Well, this is just another thing that highlights why I get annoyed by our space so much too. It's like the truth is they both belong there and there's nothing wrong with maybe for a while you're focused heavily on the front squat and there is no back squats. There's many times in my training where I go months and I don't back squat because I'm focusing on my front squat for a while or I'm doing something or I'm lunging, doing unilateral with Sal just came off of this recently I believe, right? You eliminated that. I didn't squat for almost three months. Right, so there's nothing wrong with that but when camps try and make cases for this is more functional and this is better and there's no need to do this or it's like the truth is why would you not do both? They both have tremendous benefits and you can probably have one in each camp argue why one's more, the truth is have them both. Like why subject yourself to saying that oh, I'm only gonna do this or it should take the front stage opposed to another movement. It's like no, they're both, I mean if you look at our programming there's always front squats and back squats incorporated because we see the tremendous value in both of them and Justin's right. I think we are extremely anterior driven but this person's very right too. You get deeper in the squat, you have to have better shoulder mobility to do it so there are some great benefits to becoming a good friend. Oh, it's a great exercise. Right, but like to your point we don't do enough posterior chain work. So you know why not have both included in there because they both are so functional. Now the whole functional argument sometimes the noise of shit out of me too because people become very narrow with their focus. So front squat, maybe it's more functional from this standpoint. If you're likely to squat with weight in the real world it's probably gonna be something you're holding in front of you. Yes, a lot of people can go lower in a front squat in fact I would more often than not be able to get a everyday client to be able to do a good front squat before I could get them to do a back squat. So oftentimes when I'm training someone where in the beginning stages of training their front squatting way more than their more often than their back squatting. Just to just your form is it's easier to get somebody in a better position, okay? That being said, there's also the amount of strength that you gain sometimes washes out some of these factors. So if I take a back squat I can squat more with the back squat than I can with the front squat and my gains in the back squat once I do it right tend to go up really fast, faster than a front squat a little bit faster than a front squat. So if I'm able to squat back squat 400 pounds but only able to front squat 250 pounds the front squat might edge it in functionality in terms of movement but because of the overall strength gains I get from the back squat it still wins. Now I'm not saying I'm not making the argument that one is better than the other it really depends on the individual but my argument is you gotta look at the whole thing you can't just look at oh the functionality because then you get into the craziness like well you know we should do everything split stance since we walked that way let's do everything on one leg. Well that's the truth though if you're gonna make the functional argument then I would argue back to you that okay well a goblet split squat a goblet squat or a walking lung is more functional because or even a zercher squat is more functional because when are you ever gonna rack something on the front of your shoulders with your elbows present I don't ever carry anything like that I carry it more like a zercher squat or like a goblet squat if I carry something so yeah the default to the this is more functional than that all that does is it appeases all of us nerds that are really into fitness and it loses all the general population that really need the good advice and the fucking advice for 99% of the population you need both in your life. Next question is from Noah Wilmot 97 what were the hardest obstacles for you to overcome during your fitness journey? Ooh, hardest obstacle. Mine is what we I just I mean not just it's been a while now the back to back of the low testosterone so coming off of testosterone after being on higher doses like when I was competing right? So coming off of that to none and obviously I worked my way down but once I got to a place where I was taking none that coupled with tearing my Achilles right after that. Double wing. Oh man it was already hard right? And I knew it was gonna be hard I knew it was gonna be difficult I knew I was gonna have low testosterone levels I knew I was gonna lose my strength I was gonna lose lots of muscle I was gonna lose the drive to even get to the gym and so I was already thinking about that going okay Adam you just need to stay active think of the things that you love to do like basketball integrate that into your fitness so that it keeps you consistent with working out an exercise and then you'll get back to feeling stronger as your hormone levels come up and then sure as shit I'm like two weeks into playing basketball and I tear my Achilles so now I'm dealing with hormone level testosterone levels being extremely low and then on top of that having a torn Achilles that had to been the worst storm that I ever had to weather I mean that's the closest I've probably been to depression since probably back in my house days we were like in 2012 or whatever that was. Yeah there's no doubt that if you're really into working out and fitness making the transition from I love this because I'm getting strong I love this because I'm able to lift more weight I look better I'm chiseled you know this is great like that too if you work out long enough at some point you're gonna encounter something like what Adam did or what I did were at one point I had severe digestive issues thought I had an autoimmune disease it turns out I didn't but I thought I did and you have to make the transition from training for strength, training for aesthetics to I exercise now is just to maintain my health that is a hard, that is a very hard transition that all of you listening are gonna have to go through if you stay consistent long enough you stay consistent with your fitness long enough if you're young right now you're probably you know motivated you're getting stronger you're faster I feel good everything works good this is great at some point whether it's a family issue, job issue health issue, injury something is gonna there's gonna be a wrench that's gonna be thrown into that machinery and you're gonna have to develop a brand new relationship with exercise or stop altogether some people never go back some people get injured get off testosterone like Adam did and I know guys like this they were all juiced up in their 20s had to go off and just stop lifting weights because they just the relationship with exercise was purely to build muscle and look amazing and once they had no testosterone well you ain't gonna train the same you ain't gonna get the same benefits and results so they just like screw it I don't wanna do anymore that's a very hard obstacle I had to do it myself I had to completely shift from training for aesthetics and performance to training for health it was extremely difficult I was almost forced to make that transition it took me a year to really start to develop that relationship but at the other end I have a much more complete lifelong relationship with exercise but it's a hard that's a hard transition yeah for me it was more that transition from being a working out to then produce a better version of myself to perform on the field and see what all my work transpired to become and also along with that you're working out with people all the time next to you and so I was like working in a team environment I would work out I was like the typical guy that would work out with like a workout partner like we would plan and organize our workouts like based off each other's schedules and you know and then once the last game I played like I went through this whole cycle of depression of just like I, you know well what am I even gonna work out for? You know like what am I doing this for? Like I just didn't have a clear vision of what that looked like anymore it was like it was always for something and so you know it took me a good like year and a half maybe even two years of just like scrambling to find a motivating factor for me to you know push myself so and then later on as I got a little more mature in the process realized like I don't need to you know hammer myself to produce the results that I want and to be healthy and to do all these things like I can actually feel really good you know coming out of these workouts and so anyway it just that was a really really tough transition for me because it just wasn't clear I didn't have a vision of what that looked like. Many times it's we need to just change the goal right so you know it's really common that when you get into working out you're heavily focused on the way you look or you know losing pounds on the scale you know or getting bigger muscles and so we tend to have these very superficial type of goals it's just how we all operate we're driven by insecurities we're visual creatures and so a lot of times that's what gets us initially motivated to come in the gym and eventually that does like Sal said you will be faced with that one day and when you do if you're still hung up on that goal like if I was still hung up on how do I still build as much muscle as I was when I was doing steroids or can I get at least close to that or I still want to look awesome you know if I was so hung up on that goal during that time I definitely would have fell in a depression and never came back to working out but I just had to reframe what my new goal is and you know I give the spiritual side of me right so I know anybody who's non spiritual this will bug them or whatever so reverse or take out God and put universe for whatever reason you know? Crystal. Yeah, whatever makes you feel better but for me I always felt like I always feel like when I feel so strongly about something that I want God always has this funny way of slapping me in the face and being like this isn't your plan this is my plan and I'm always reminded of that when I have things like this like for me I said that when that happened to me testosterone wise I shifted over like okay this is how I'm gonna handle it and then also I tear my Achilles that to me is that wake up call it's like okay Adam you're looking in the wrong areas of your life this isn't where you're supposed to be focused and so whatever you wanna believe in I think that we get revealed things like this all the time in our life and if you're struggling right now and you constantly keep trying to force towards a certain direction maybe you're going the wrong direction and maybe there's something else that you should be focusing on and reframing and changing your goal. You know what's interesting about this right? You have three guys who have made fitness their life who's been all been working out for decades right? Relatively or extremely consistently and all of our answers there was a common theme although different circumstances the theme was developing a new relationship with exercise from the one I started with that was the hardest obstacle. It's not the injury that was the hard obstacle for Adam it's not that I got sick the hard ops or that Justin stopped playing sports it's that what is exercise what does fitness mean to me now? And it's funny it reminds me of there's a certain type of client that is the most likely to hire a personal trainer but also simultaneously the most likely to stop after a short period of time. That's the client that comes in and wants to get in shape for a specific date or event. If somebody comes in to hire you and says I wanna get in shape for Vegas I wanna get in shape for my wedding I wanna get in shape for whatever. As a trainer I knew the odds are gonna hire me are very high they're gonna definitely buy some training for me. The challenge was keeping them going when they after they were done with that date because their relationship to exercise had a time frame had a time limit on a specific one whether it be March 37th, 27th not 37th doesn't exist March 27th I'm getting married or whatever. Okay, after March- COVID days are really blending together. Totally, oh I got married on that day I'm done now my relationship to exercise either needs to change or I'm done with it. So if you want long-term success your relationship to exercise is if you want long-term success you're better off tying it to making myself be a better person. Working with my health working with my life circumstances that exercise to me is a way to improve myself in all aspects not just something specific like strength because that can be taken from you or my body, hey, circumstances may change or I'm gonna do these specific exercises that's all I do because you may get injured or it's to do great in a race because then the race ends is really to tie it something that's bigger than that which is general growth, general overall health if you do that you're much more likely to have long-term success. And with that go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our guides and resources you can also find the three of us on Instagram you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin you can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.