 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump! Mind pump! With your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and girls, in this episode of Mind Pump! People from all over the world! We go for 18 minutes where we just talk about whatever. As usual, just keep going. We had a special guest in this episode of our Q&A. One of the first times we've ever had a special guest, but it is a special guest. It's Mike Matthews. You have to be a badass. He's a fucking badass. So he was a little guest trainer here with us on this Q&A. So for the first 18 minutes, we had some fun conversation. We talked about Mike's Disney Cruise first kiss. Dude, he got mono his first kiss. That's right. Epic. Stereo. Mono. Come on, dad joke. We do a little plug for Four Sigmatic, our favorite mushroom company. By the way, you can go to foursigmatic.com forward slash mind pump. Enter the code mind pump for a discount on some of the products. Then we talk about off-limit and exotic supplements. There's some supplements out there that may have some interesting effects. We talk about those for a second. Then we get into the questions. The first question was one person is asking us how they see some people doing lots of volume, but few exercises, and then they see other people doing less volume, but more exercises. In other words, instead of doing 10 sets of squats, doing two sets of squats, two sets of leg extensions, two sets of whatever, what are the pros and cons of each? Then we talk about some strength exercises that can help to avoid IT band issues. That is not an indie band that you find on the radio. Yeah, they're so emo. That is the Illyltibial band. Big word there. Then we talk about the band craze. Sticking with bands. Sticking with bands. Bands will make your dance. And what we think about it. Then finally, we get into how we interview people like Paul Chek and Dr. Makola. Someone wants to know how we can implement some of their ideas without going off the deep end. Maybe it's too late. I think we're sky high. Episode one. Finally, this month, get access to our super famous and awesome private forum. This is a forum full of fitness professionals. Mostly, if not all intelligent people only are allowed in this, right? Oh, the smartest people ever. Fitness professionals, there's doctors, there's other fitness enthusiasts. It's a great place to post your videos of your exercises, ask questions about nutrition, or just post a funny meme. We actually get those on there as well. It's not trash about us to our face. They actually make more memes about me and Justin. I know. We get a lot of them. I love them. Anyhow, get access to that for free by enrolling in any of our maps programs. Now, if you're wondering which maps program is for you, here's a quick rundown. Maps and Ebola are foundational program. That's where everybody should start. If you're a competitor, like a bodybuilder, physique competitor, bikini competitor, or you are very advanced in your training and you need more volume, well, that's maps aesthetic. If you're athletically minded and you like to move as well as you could look, then go for maps performance. Or if you like to work out at home without any equipment, that's maps anywhere. We also have bundles that put them all together and discount them. So enroll in any of that stuff and you get access to the forum for free. And don't forget, September, the price of the forum will go up as well. So it's a great time to enroll. You can find all of this at mindpumpmedia.com. We need a song. Let me start you off, Justin. We are the world. We are the children. Yeah. We are the ones. Something, something, something. I don't know the fucking words. Damn, Justin. It's never good when you try and... I can't force it. I know. I don't know why. I have to start it. You do that to my man over here and you're killing him because this is what he's great at and you force it upon him when he's got guests in it. I've got to be like, I've got to be inspired. Yeah, exactly. So I have to, I'm your muse basically. I have to figure out a way to start timing. You know what I mean? No, it's like the discussion we had about your first kiss. Like you can't, when you force it, it's just awkward as fuck. It's just got to happen. It's got to be natural. Do you remember your first kiss? Are you saying that was bad? Mike, do you remember your first kiss? Yeah, yeah, yeah. When was it? How old were you? He's like 25. Yeah. 20. No. No way, man. I was 15. Me and Tommy. You were on a cruise? Oh, you were on a cruise? Disney cruise. Oh, see, I got mono. Look at that. You got mono from the kiss? Yeah. You got mono from the first kiss? That's like getting STD the first time you have sex. That's horrible. Oh, man. No, it didn't fuck me up too bad actually, but I got mono. So you were on a cruise? Yeah. Walk me through the story here. Disney cruise. So I just ran, I don't know, met this girl there and then was hanging out with her. She was your age? Yeah, she was a little bit older. She was maybe 17. Damn. And there wasn't much to do on a Disney cruise. So. What is that? I didn't even know those existed. Oh, dude, they have massive fucking boats. They're like floating cities. What? Bro, this is a thing, dude. It's a big thing. Cruising is a huge thing. I know a lot of people can do it. I've never done it, but I know a lot of people can do it. Yeah, people you have fun and it's pretty like cost effective, you know, especially if you have a family. Well, and Disney does everything badass, so I can imagine it's probably done up pretty well. But for a 15-year-old, you're bored as fuck because you're like, you're over it. You're over at Disney. It's for your younger siblings probably. I'm a little brother. I don't even know if he... Maybe. Maybe he had more fun. I don't even know. I wasn't with him. Is that when your parents go with you? Or they send you on that? Yeah, no, we all went as a family, but I just was like... That was the worst parent of all time. Hey, kids, we booked you guys a cruise. Have fun. Hey. Take care, kids. That's why I don't have any children. So I'm still learning these things. So you're on the cruise and you're 15. How do you meet this? Because 15-year-old we're all awkward as fuck. Maybe you weren't. I don't know. I feel like I was kind of awkward, I guess. I had acne and shit, so that wasn't... So what'd you do? Did you walk up to her like, hey? It was just... Did you like the Lilo and Stitch cartoon? Yeah. Was that even around then? No, it wasn't. I don't think so. How'd you like Mulan? No, I mean, actually, it was easier than it normally would have been because she was just kind of into me and that always just makes it easy if the girl's kind of interested in you and it's not like... Throwing the vibe out. Yeah, you're not trying that hard for it. And so yeah, there was... I guess it was like a little restaurant bar-ish thing that didn't serve alcohol, but whatever. Surely temples. Yeah, like drinking water. And orange juice. And what was her name? Why do I remember her email address, which is... That is so weird. That's weird. That is weird. That is weird that you remember her email address. I don't remember her name. What does that mean? What does that mean actually? I don't know, dude. We have to figure that out. I was trying to figure out, actually, listening to you talk the other day and hanging out with you today again, you are... And I'm sure you know this, so I'm curious where it comes from. And if you developed it or it was natural, Sal has the same thing, which is rare. Rarely ever do you meet guys as nerdy as you guys that are as cool as you guys are, that are as charismatic as you guys are. Nerd bump in the middle. Really though. I mean, I'm halfway kidding, but I'm really serious because normally a lot of times when we meet someone who's a total cerebral, super intellect, loves to read, and you even admitted it, you're kind of a hermit. You've been built this empire all by yourself pretty much with your team back home. Yeah, yeah. I don't take all the credit. No, you don't. I always like to say I have good guys. No, you don't. And you say that, but you... That's not off the podcast. You say it was all by yourself. What are you talking about? But really though, you... It's Sean. Yeah. Me and Minions. All right, fine. Yeah. Leadership quality is about you. You are charismatic. You have a lot of personality. Where does that come from? Did you develop that? Or did that... You know, that's a good question. You know it's not very normal for somebody like you. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I mean, and again, I would say with that in mind, I also don't... I try to... I value humility and I value more like who I want to become as opposed to... Or what I want to do as opposed to what I've done kind of thing. Because I don't like when... I've even caught myself sometimes getting what I feel is like a little bit pretentious. Or even in certain conversations with people where I feel like... Like you're being pompous. Yeah, a little bit. Or like talking a little bit too much about myself. You know what I mean? I don't like to be like that. It's good awareness. Sometimes I catch it though. And afterwards, I'll be like... I feel like I wasn't really being myself. Like I was kind of trying to be something I'm not, right? I mean, I guess I've always had a combination of extroverted and introverted qualities. You know what I mean? What do they call it? Ambivert? Maybe. Of course I have a name for that. Ambivert. Makes sense. I might have just made it up right now. It could be a word. It is a word. We know what it means. It makes sense. Or byvert. Ambivert. No, not though. That one doesn't sound as good. Alert. Not alert. So, yeah, I mean, I've always kind of had those qualities and I played a lot of sports growing up which I probably helped, right? Because I had to... Although to be fair... It's hard to, you know, to fight all the odds with that one. No sports made it out. So, I had to learn to get along with other people and although I was kind of a dick, at least when I got good at sports and I was like completely intolerant of any people and the teams that I felt weren't good or weren't going their way. You were that butt head. Yeah, but... Oh, fuck. Yeah, it was kind of bad, actually. And that was just because I should have been playing up on higher level teams and then I wouldn't have been in a position to be like that. Right. You know what I mean? Like, I should have... Where I would have just been someone... They should have stretched you. They should have seen that you were already there and said like, Okay, you little fucker, you think you're that good? Yeah, exactly. Let's put you up with some kids and then push you to the next level. You know how much growth comes from getting your ass kicked? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, that is... That is one of the things that you're just like not good at. Absolutely. Like, that's been something like even when I got into golf, one of the reasons I wanted to start doing that are... And I started playing hockey again when I was in Florida as well. Just because I knew I would suck at it and have to humble myself. You know what I mean? Like, I was going to be the worst person on the ice and it was going to be a joke and I was just going to look bad and that's something that I think there's value in that experience. Winning is fun, losing builds character. Yeah. It's not fun, but you're right. I mean, I love watching my kids. Winning is really fun. Obviously, he's never won at anything. He's like, no, no. Winning is fun. Winning is fun. I mean, you know, when you win at life. Losing is building character. Like, my son is in a... He does Lego robotics with his school, which is great. Yeah. Great skills these kids build. Yeah, it's cool. Great engineering. And they fucking crushed at one of their first competitions. Then they went into like the regionals and they lost by like a small amount and I was excited to see... Not happy that they lost, but excited to see how my kid would respond to the loss. And I really look forward to those moments. Those are coaching moments as a parent. Like, when your kid's like kicking ass, it's like, there's not much you need to say, you know what I mean? Like, hey, you won. I mean, they know that. But when they lose or they get their ass kicked, that's when, okay, here I am, you know, spotlight's on me and now it's time to be a great dad and help them grow. Yeah. And then there's probably value. And if you have that kid that's, you know, in that position where he's always just winning to push him to challenge himself. I think there's... Or just beat him up every once in a while. Or that. Just keep the shit. Oh yeah, you think you're cool? Yeah. Yeah, you're real smooth. Shovel. But that's... There's something there though that's what you have to do to go out into life, right? You have to reach out into the unknown and you have to go out and confront the chaos of the world. And if you again, if you're during your formative years, if you never have to do that, if all you have to do is just kind of stay in the womb of what's comfortable, I think that sets you up for a struggle when you get out into the world. Oh man, you're talking about the freaking trophy for everything, you know, generation. The participation trophy shit on that one. Yeah, it's horrible. So then you got mono. So you made out with the girl. Yeah, that was the beginning of the struggle. That was the moment. Oh my God. Yeah, so I don't know. Maybe also, again, I guess I've always been decent as just a communicator and I can listen to people and be interested in them without necessarily trying to have an agenda per se, you know what I mean? And so just ended up making out with her a bunch basically. That was the crews and feeling her boobs and stuff and that was cool. Wow. And... First kiss and feeling it. Yeah. And I was too nervous to try to have sex with her. It's like he got a base hit and he stole third. I didn't know it was fucking impressive. Yeah. Round of the bases. Just like that. You know, Doug just reminded me that we have to do a shameless plug for our sponsor, FourSigmatic, which reminded me what I wanted to ask you anyways because I got a guy like you who has a supplement company. Are you dabbling in shrooms at all? Have you done any of that? The legal variety. Yeah. Are you familiar with like any of this stuff? Like cordyceps or reishi? Oh, yeah. So there's reishi in my green supplement. Excellent. So then I thought you literally meant... I didn't know exactly what you were talking about here. That's why I said the legal variety. Oh, yeah. Let me hear what you say. He's kind of looking at it. So yes. No, no, no. Reishi is in my green supplement. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I saw Mike's face change all of a sudden like, oh fuck, where's this going? Yeah. I was like, oh, I don't know. I'm listening. Yeah. And reishi is the one that brings us... Oh, it's very, very good for balancing the body. Right. Excellent for stress. And the cordyceps is the cordyceps It's a fascinating one. First of all, do you know how cordyceps grow? It's a parasitic. Well, they're all parasitic, but it grows inside arthropods and it takes over the body and they die and then it becomes this supplement that you take. That's a circle of life. It's fucking crazy, but in Chinese medicine they use it for building stamina and endurance and it wasn't that well known until... I forget which Olympic Games it was, but the Chinese swim team was kicking ass and they attributed it to cordyceps, which I'm sure is totally why they're winning. Yeah, absolutely. Not because of their... Not because of their performance in ass and drugs, but it did get popularity and when I trained in Brazilian jiu-jitsu it was popular in the jiu-jitsu crowd for stamina. So I've taken cordyceps for weight training and I don't notice it unless I'm doing long weight training sessions that are very taxing. Kind of like that alien in that sense. Yeah, somewhat. You know, beta-alanine is an interesting one too. Not a lot in strength, but definitely more for the stamina type stuff and you get the tingles. It may help with lean mass. There's some evidence that in a similar way as creatine, but it's not quite established. Hasn't been... It's been observed, hasn't not quite fully understood and hasn't been rejected. So I guess what's the current theory behind the way it works, just that it raises carnosine in the blood and just buffers, buffering lactic acid or muscle waste. You know what I always wonder about that is we do all these things to improve recovery and buffer lactic acid and are we blunting the signals that actually make muscles grow sometimes? You ever wonder that? I've seen some science with cold dips and ice therapy which will actually... Bring down inflammation and stuff, and slow down muscle adaptation and protein synthesis. Similar to if you were to take a bunch of vitamin C after you train every day, post-workout, 3 grams of vitamin C, probably if we're being picky from a muscle hypertrophy perspective, probably not a good idea. No, and then there was arachidonic acid. That was a popular supplement for a while which was a pro-inflammatory fatty acid and then people will build muscle because they're more inflamed. Do you sell that supplement? No. I'm about to talk shit about it. I took arachidonic acid. I took arachidonic acid. What a fucked-up supplement. I took it and I took the dose that they told me to. Maybe I was just more sensitive to it and I got fucking inflammation everywhere, dude. My joints... I'm walking down the stairs. I'm hurting. That's a lot of people's diets, very high in omega-6 fatty acids. That's one of the problems a lot of people have. And they're selling it in a supplement. Too much omega-6 and then you add... Oh, let me just supplement with it as well. Yeah, yeah. There we go. I'm gonna get huge yoked. No, I didn't. I got fucking sore, man. I couldn't move. It was horrible. It took me a little while to recover. What are some... Mike, what are some of the supplements that you see that are getting a lot of traction and popularity that you have no desire to even touch and you don't want, regardless of what the stats and numbers are? Because I know you pay attention to all that. Testosterone. Hormone supplements on the whole. Anything that claims to raise testosterone levels or balance testosterone levels or growth hormone levels. Just because there's... That's because it gets flagged up. So that would encompass all the SARMs, right, basically? Well, SARMs are something else. Yeah, SARMs are a drug. You know what I mean? SARMs, they work for sure. I wrote a long-form article on the SARMs. They did quite a bit of research on them. They're not as powerful as normal antibiotics, obviously. And the doses that people are using shut down your freaking testosterone, just like antibiotics do. It's kind of a ridiculous thing. And also, like, we don't quite know... I mean, a lot of... You can say it with a lot of the pro... You know, the muscle-building drugs that people use. In a lot of cases, we don't know the long-term effects. Like, these people are the case studies that we're going to look at, you know, 30 years from now. I'm going to be like, oh, well, I guess that blows up your heart. What's the other popular one right now? Medofino, what is it? Oh, that's been around for a long time. Smart drug. But it's getting really popular right now. I mean, it works. There's no question. I mean, I haven't tried it, but there's no question. So I did try it, and I fuck, I did not like it. I actually got one of the rare side effects of it, which was, like, prickly sensation on my face, which can become permanent. I took it once, got that effect, and went off of it. And you're like, never again. Yeah, no, never again. But it is... It's a wakefulness agent. It is not a classic... It is not a neutropic. They call it a neutropic, but it's a wakefulness agent. So you can just go for 24 hours straight and beyond? Yeah, so they prescribe it to, like, like fighter jet pilots and stuff like that. To stay awake when they're doing their missions. Yeah. So for a long time it was just meth, right? I think legitimately. Amphetamines. That's what they took for real. And then Dave Asprey started talking about Midoffin, like it was a great thing. And so now everybody's messing with it. Same thing with Metformin, which is a... Diabetic. And they're talking about how it's so good for you and it's so great, but, you know, Dr. McCull actually pointed this out, and he's like, no, mitochondrial damage can happen from taking this drug. So it might not be a great idea. If you want to improve insulin sensitivity, go with berberine instead of Metformin. I mean, as research that shows it's just as effective as Metformin, but... Natural. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Natural route seems to be the better route, usually. Not always. Yeah, sure. I'm just saying, like, I mean, Norm, again, if you have a medical condition, but if you want to improve... Yeah. That's something that we've actually tried to work into a supplement. We wanted to put it in a post-workout, actually, because, you know, if you eat a bunch of food, it'd be a good time to have more insulin sensitivity. But... The theory is what? Shuttle more glycogen to muscles, amino acids to that? Yeah, exactly. And... But it just tastes horrible. It tastes like puke. Like, actually, it makes whatever you put into it taste like puke, like you puked in your mouth. That's how it tastes. And we tried and we gave up. So it'd have to be a pill. I don't know what that pill would be. It's one of those things, one of the substance on a list of... It would be cool if we could fit this into something and not have a taste like puke. You know, since we're talking about more exotic supplements, here's a category of supplements that I find absolutely fascinating. And I've dabbled with them in the past. And these are the ectosterone chemicals. Ectosterones are insect hormones, but you also find them in plants. And we're not quite sure how they work in humans, but there's some pretty compelling evidence from the Soviet Union, who did a lot of studies on them, showing that they're quite effective at increasing muscle protein synthesis. In fact, they compared it head-to-head against a diannibal and found it to be just as effective, which I was very skeptical with. I've taken ectosterone in... I've taken it in the past and if you find a good quality source, there's actually some pretty decent effects, but it almost feels androgenic in nature, but apparently has no effect on the hormone. So I know it all sounds too good to be true. I'm not selling out of it anything, but for those who are listening, if you're really into that kind of stuff, look them up, like ectosterone, then there's like turquesterone. There's different types of these ectosteroids, either kind of plant steroids or insect steroids that have an interesting effect on the body. Fascinating stuff. I love reading. It's like Arcana, like esoteric, like secret... Secret... You had to journey to the ends of the earth to find the... The pollen from the... Well, I want you to know, Mike, that this is the highest honor that we could possibly give you is what we're about to dive into right now, because we've had... Hashtag blessed. Right. You have... We've had hundreds of guests now by all the shows we've done, and we do not let anybody... You're in the circle. I don't know how you did this. You got yourself in the tightest part of the circle, which... The Illuminati. Right. You are part of the Illuminati now. We would not just let any mother fucker from our listeners and fans, because we don't want people... We'll interview almost anybody just to hear what they have to say, but we would not just let anybody come in here and chime in on their opinion on this stuff. So we are about to kick this qualifier off. Doug, could you get us a bird? This quiz brought to you by OrganiFi. For those days you fall short on getting your organic veggies or whole food nutrition, OrganiFi fills the gap with laboratory-tested certified organic superfoods to help give your health and performance the added edge. Try OrganiFi totally risk-free for 60 days by going to OrganiFi.com. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com. And use a coupon code MINEPOMP for 20% off at checkout. So the first question is from happy, healthy, and free. I see people do tons of volume for one exercise, but I prefer to do less with more exercises. In other words, lots of sets of one exercise or less sets but more exercises. Assuming the total volume is equal, what are the pros and cons of each? Right away, the con that comes to me is that part of the adaptation process is our body starting to figure out or get good at a movement or a type of exercise. If I just did one set of squats and then one set of leg press and then one set of lunges, well, yeah, I could still build muscle. Yeah, it could be good still, but part of us building more muscle would be allowing our body to get really good at that one movement. But to a point, right, because then you don't want to get so good that all you ever do is squat. So let's say it's now two months. I've been just squatting. Well, then, yeah, the person who's varying it through all those movements would benefit, right? Yeah, in that case of just squatting, I mean, it depends. I know if I were to do that just because my quads tend to be just dominant and also perpetually tight even though I do yoga and stretch and get massage and everything. I mean, they're not, like, really bad, but if I were to just to squat and not do any sort of hamstring isolated or more hamstring-centric movements, that would get worse, for example. Because, I mean, the squat, obviously it's not just a hamstring or a quad movement, but it's more quads than hams, right? Yeah, I would say, so here's the pros and cons of doing lots of one exercise. So when you do lots of sets of one exercise, you're going to get a lot of CNS adaptation. And that's a very important part of just overall adaptation for the body, especially for muscle adaptation. Meaning you're going to get good at it, right? You're going to get really good at it. Your central nervous system's going to fire really well. You're going to become excellent at the skill of that exercise, which then will translate into getting more out of that exercise. So that's one of some of the pros. Some of the cons are if you want to develop muscle imbalances, that's a great way to do it. Your body gets, you know, you get what you train. So you'll get really good, again, with using squats as an example. If you can get fucking excellent at a squat and there'll be some carryover, especially an exercise like squats, there's lots of carryover to other exercises, but not a ton of carryover. So if I add 100 pounds to my squat and that's all I ever do, now when I do a split stance position, like a Bulgarian squat or a lunge, all of a sudden I'm unstable. My pelvis is rotated a little differently because of the positioning, even though that front leg is essentially doing the same movement as it would be in a squat. I'm not nearly as strong, not nearly as functional. So there's some of the cons. When you're doing different exercises, some of the pros are you get a lot of variety of different movements. You get to do all these different exercises so your body gets to adapt in different ways. But some of the cons are you don't get to get really fucking good at one thing. That's why we phase, you know, and we did that a lot in our programs for that specific reason, because you want to be able to get good at a movement like a squat and be able to assess, you know, your progress with that, you know, with the metrics of, okay, now I'm adding this much load into this exercise and I'm improving strength-wise. But also, I'm not locking myself into that one specific skill where I have to express myself in all these different ranges of motion and movement in order to be, you know, complete and it all feeds back to that and it helps improve the overall. So there are periods where we do have to focus, though, on that specific movement. Yeah, there's two approaches you can have with this, the way I look at it is you can kind of find a happy medium, which is what a lot of people I think they do. Right amount of sets for certain exercises then add some variety. And then there's another option that's a lot of fun and that's to play with both of these extremes, where I do three or four weeks where I pick a few exercises and I get really, really good at them and just maximize those. And then I pick a few weeks where there's a lot of variety and I'm training much more like maybe like a bodybuilder where I'm going and hitting different angles and really paying attention to how my body responds to each particular one. But if you look at athletes, for example, strength athletes are much more in the former of doing more sets of single exercises and bodybuilders tend to be more in the latter. In fact, even bodybuilders like Dorian Yates, who was a big intensity guy, so he was not a huge volume guy. He would do maybe six or seven total sets for a body part, which if you know bodybuilding, professional bodybuilding, that's not very much at all. But he was doing six or seven exercises, so he'd take one set of each of these exercises and take it to absolute failure and beyond. Adam, you probably have the most experience of either extreme. I'm just going to say that I've lived in both extremes and I think that's what you have to be careful of. You have to be careful of the extreme of each side, either the person A, which I was like, where I used to pride myself and I've said this in the podcast before of no workouts ever the same. You know, like I used to come to the gym and every workout I never... Confused the fuck out of me. Yeah, it was the muscle confusion like mentality, right? That was literally how I trained myself in my late teens, early 20s, and some of the pros of that was I didn't deal with any real imbalances, like I, uh, good, good stability. I was strong, but not really strong. I was, I had built some decent muscle, but not nowhere near where I am now. So that was kind of the drawback of it. The other side, then I went to the other extreme, so then all of a sudden I get introduced to, you know, the importance of barbell back squats and dead lifting and overhead pressing and it was like, holy shit, boom, my body starts to explode and then I get married to those movements and that's all I'm doing and then all of a sudden all these imbalances started and then I start dealing with joint pain and issues that I never dealt with before and so they both have their pros, they both have their cons. I think where it gets the most dangerous or the least benefits is when you get married to one way or the other way when you want to have a little bit of both, right? I think that's I mean the perfect world, of course, this is how we encourage people is to phase, you know, three to four week type phases where you're phasing in and out so your body does get some time to adapt, but then you don't get stuck where you get in this kind of like just hammer, recover, hammer, recover. Yeah, the way I like to look at it is if you're in a strength phase, you're probably better off doing less exercises with more sets per exercise. So if I'm in like a phase one of like maps anabolic, that's kind of what it looks like. Once you move into more of the hypertrophy or even the sarcoplasmic hypertrophy type workouts where you're trying to just get a maximum pump, then it's not learning the skill of the exercise isn't as important as getting the feeling in the muscle and getting the pump, right? So now I'm doing all these different exercises and doing, you know, a few sets or two sets of each particular one. Mike, how do you typically train yourself? Are you somewhere in the middle? Yeah, so I mean this has really just been for years now. I stick to like I do, I'll do squat variations, so I like to some weeks, three or four weeks, I'll do front squats and then I'll do back squats and then I'll do split squats. I've been in quite a few, quite a bit of split squatting recently just because I hadn't for a while and... So funny we're all about. I know. I saw your Instagram after we had already booked you coming out here and I was like, oh, that's so funny that we're all, Justin's on it right now, I'm on it. Yeah, I'm here Yeah, front squats are an excellent list for me. Yeah, front squats are pain in the ass at first. Oh my god, literally. Yeah, yeah, actually. Humbling do if you're going from a lot of back squatting to front squatting. So I do I deadlift every week as well, so I like to, I like trap bar, I'll do trap bar for three or four weeks and then and then just conventional. I like conventional more than sumo. Sumo doesn't feel good to me. I don't like it, it's just the, I guess, probably the biomechanics. I feel more comfortable with conventional. So I stick with conventional and so I kind of like a base. I'll do some bench pressing every week and some overhead pressing. So I have my base lifts and then I'll work in additional accessory work and that's where I'll put more variety in but I'm usually sticking to you know, three or four weeks or so as I'm doing even the same accessory and then I'll change usually the base movement and then work in different accessories. How long does that usually take before you make that switch? I mean, you know your body so well, so it sounds like it's a bit of an intuitive process. Yeah, I mean, again, it comes out to, I would say every month. The most I'll go without making a change is two months usually. And again, I mean I'm in a place where I'm trying to I would say maintain but I want always I mean, things are always getting better or worse, right? There is no everything Exactly, everything around us is decaying, right? So it's the same with us unless we're moving in the opposite direction. So always I'm wanting to improve, improve my performance a little bit. You know, I know that I can gain a bit more muscle. I'm not trying to like program specifically for that or even diet specifically for that but I'm increasing volume on like I'd like some more shoulders. So I'm doing, you know more side raises in particular and in doing that a couple times a week and calves I will not give up on have you done a collusion training for your calves yet? No, actually I guaranteed gain at least a quarter inch on your calves and a very short I'm sold. Adam gained like three or four new veins. He did I can't get any size to just get more fucking veins. I got the next question. Alright, so the next question is from what is that Jennifer Marie underscore Hanson What are some strength exercises to focus on to avoid IT band issues? Now I picked this because we just shot a YouTube series addressing this and I don't remember what prompted that. Do you guys remember a question It was another question on the Q&A. Was it related to IT? They were talking about IT band and foam rolling didn't help or something like that. It's hard to get anywhere with a foam roller. Yeah, that's a good that's a good topic there. What do you mean it's hard to get anywhere with a foam roller? Because it's a pain in the ass to try it. I mean I've tried I haven't gotten anywhere personally with foam rolling with IT band and I've spoken to some smart people, some sports doctors that are also like it's probably not very productive It's not. You're basically band-aiding. We're not addressing the root cause is what's going on. And I've dealt with tight IT band issues Super common. Especially an athlete, especially an hockey player. I mean for sure that's a basketball player IT is like and forever all I did was foam roll and it was just like that became like my routine like I'd have to foam roll the IT before I worked out and if I didn't want to hurt that's what I had to do. I've done the same thing. I'd use the barbell I'd go on the Smith machine and get in there. If I didn't then squatting, if I'd start squatting heavy I'd get some patellar pain. Here's what happens when you foam roll just like massage. Massage therapy is very similar. It can change temporarily recruitment patterns which will alleviate pain but if you don't fix the root problem then it gets back to its default pattern and you never really address the issues. Yeah so it's like almost always the root cause head up towards the hip. Very much so. Here's a good analogy. It's like having a very tight trap like tight neck and people massage your neck and then it feels better because they work the knots out and then it gets tight again and people have to keep massaging it. Instead of realizing that the reason why you've got those knots in your traps in the first place in fact your scapula well so that your upper trapezius muscles are overactive so if you don't fix that problem you have to massage all the time and that's what happens with foam rolling. So with IT band issues like Adam was saying move up the body. It's much more commonly an issue with the hips although it can be an issue with the ankles. Yeah mobilize the hips but work on lateral strength. When you have that weakness and lateral strength when you don't abduck very well it's causing the fascia latte and the glutes to operate with dysfunction which attaches to this massive fascia called the iliotibial band and that attaches around the knee and around the shin and now you've got problems. This is where we're talking exactly sagittal plane so we're always talking about like improving skills but we really need to include this frontal plane movement into the mix otherwise we run into this problem over and over again. Were you guys able to listen to Dr. Schall and I when we were shooting this video? No I wasn't listening. So we got into some great discussion actually on the video and You guys talked specifically about this? Yeah exactly this and he actually enlightened me on something that I thought was a good point to make since this is a question because the question is what are some strength exercises to focus on the IT band issues. Well if you're having IT band issues it's probably your hip is not very mobile you're not very well connected to all these muscles that are responsible for moving it all the way around so it isn't really a strength issue here it's more of like a pelvic stabilization type of issue that's going on so the emphasis should be placed on the stabilizing and mobilizing and not so much the building of the strengthening so and what I mean by that is I was showing him how what a difference the Bulgarians split squat had made for me right? Totally. And so he was like also keep this in mind though so instead of you thinking as you're getting stronger I told him how when I first did it I was shaking like a leaf with just my body weight right? And then I progressed 20 pound dumbbells 60 pound dumbbells now up to like 80 pound dumbbells he goes well instead of progressing up with weight because you're not trying to really address a strength issue there he goes then it's not that much different than the squatting so what you should do is you know throw one dumbbell on the foot that's forward hold it on just that one side because that's going to challenge you more stabilization interesting in that in that deep range of motion and since we're trying to get more of that out of out of what you're doing then building strength because you're really you're going to you're still not going to build more from that Bulgarian squat than you would from putting 400 pounds on your back on a back barbell squat so also balance and stabilization like say you're doing like a lateral step up to balance something like that right but strength but like offsetting offsetting on yeah unilaterally with the weight right because then you're going to get that like you said the frontal plane stabilization involved in that while you're going up there and you're doing it so instead of doing a step up to a balance and then continuing to progress the load challenge the load more yeah more so and especially with from that the lateral movement from side to side and something to consider to whenever we're talking about pain in the body is when the pain is gone that does not mean you've solved the problem what it means is you've worked on the problem enough to make the pain go away but there's still an issue there so continue to work on this particular issue because I got I fell into this trap many times where I have pain in my shoulder or pain in my back or whatever I do the right corrective exercises till the pain goes away yeah boom right back to where I was before hit it hard again yeah exactly have you experienced that before yeah I was running in some biceps tendonitis from that in the end I mean it was just like that was just a symptom of you know three previous causes basically and so you know I was working with actually this sports doctor I was talking about that I want to do this mobility course with with that guy I mean super super bright and so in the end one of the one of the root causes was my pec minor in particular my pec on the right side and I think back I've actually probably had this problem for a long time was just tighter than than usual like tired on my left which would pull my collarbone a little bit down right like it so it shouldn't be you know be a little bit lower than it should we're talking about like very small you know millimeters but which then prevented it from you know it's kind of like works like a lock and key so it prevented proper range motion on my collarbone and so that was causing you know instability especially on my pressing and my serratus also wasn't on my right side firing properly which then it was putting more stress on a rotator cuff on the right side so it's just very interesting to have him walk me through and be able to demonstrate it like all right um you know through muscle testing but not like bro science how many pills do you take one two three four like go see a chiropractor like no how many bottles of standard process do you need let's muscle test it oh you need 20 but no like hey can you keep your arm here you know what I mean like see on this side yeah and then put me in a position and this side it's just nothing and then it'd be like okay now watch this is because of this and if I put this muscle here in this position oh now it locks and there's I'm totally stable so he's able to demonstrate that to me and you know working with him I made more progress addressing like the roots as then I had previously and anything that I had done foam rolling stretching massaging mobility uh ART you name it um yes I could bring inflammation down and like get it to where it's functional again but because there was an underlying structural issue um that yeah it was like you know more muscular than but it was it was affecting the skeleton and it takes and people don't realize this it takes a long time to change your recruitment patterning especially if that was your old patterning that you've been having for so long and I had to do corrective exercises like for a while like band stuff just for recruiting the serratus like this and in weird positions and stuff it takes a long time and you probably couldn't go heavy for a long time not that you couldn't because you couldn't do it I just chose not to yeah because as soon as you go heavy you got your body reverts back to its old its old patterning so that's always a good sign to have a good PT or a good Cairo or whatever you're working with when they when they break down the communication process and show you how it's broken down because to guys like us that understand the body I mean when we found dr. shallow and dr. brink that's how I knew we were dealing with guys that knew their shit was you know I had actually a very similar issue and you know he took my arm put it in a certain position said now fight against me it was just nothing it was like holy shit when you showed me that it was like obviously there's there's a breakdown somewhere and then show you the quick fix I don't know like see now look if I put this similar with my collar bones they showed you know in a certain position I remember exactly what it was but completely weak no couldn't resist at all and then he just said that's because your collar bone here's where it should be and just press on it wasn't even wasn't enough pressure to be painful it was just this is where your collar bone should be and then up perfectly like do you know what I mean and I know that the audience is listening right now we totally detour talking about your your bicep and your peck right now but it's all the same it's the same thing that we this is this person has got the similar issue going on the hips yeah you know right now and your answer is just to keep rolling it just like your answer in the past would probably be massaging it out or doing flossing or doing all these different this work ART you need to hone in on these good patterns these recruitment patterns that are ideal for you so some good basic exercises that help a lot of people with it bandage this YouTube series is so it's perfect for us it's a three-part thing where and and shallow doctor shallow goes over how he warms up before he gets into squatting that was one of the movements that I said but there's two other ones that he incorporates so make the show notes will make sure to link the excellent so next question it's Chris stacks what do you think about the band craze is there a craze of bands he I've seen it I guess it's a thing I've seen on Instagram girls with like that we're talking about yeah that's what matters is the machine everything with bands around your he's talking about both right he's talking he asked a question he referenced both those things loot training is like the thing now it is it is extremely popular right now for apparently if you tie a band around your knees anything you do activates the yes by my bands so yeah so that that is one of them and then the other craze right now is the manipulating of the strength curve by putting the bands on all the hammer strength machines and then turning sideways and doing weird stuff on it so yeah those two big crazes the famous what do we think about it you know what what's what's tough is you know how do I how do I answer this question not sound like a hater because I know people oh it's working for me and I use bands properly and they're fucking awesome and how many people use them well and they're and there's some there's some bit of science to support some of this stuff now what I see in the gym I would say probably 90% of the people using it have no fucking clue what they're doing and they're just emulating what they saw somebody else do on Instagram and it's and then for that reason it's silly if you know what you're doing with with the bands and the purpose and you have an idea behind it and if and the answer shouldn't be I'm just trying to work my glutes more because that to me is silly because there's an exercise over there called a barbell back squat you can do that's going to do a shit ton more than wrapping that band around your knees and doing these pumping frog squat and a year ago I had a trainer who worked for me and I saw him doing an assessment with a lady who was a new trainer and when she did a squat and this is not as common as knees going in but sometimes you see this with women where her knees would come out real wide so she wasn't very balanced and so what this trainer does and I'm watching like okay let's see what he does so he goes over and grabs a thick resistance band and puts it around her knees to keep her knees from going out so she's doing a bunch of sets of this and I'm like fuck right so wait till she leaves or when I go up to my why did you put a band around her knees he goes oh well first off I want to hit her glutes and second off it's to keep her knees from going out and I said okay you do realize that what all you're doing is creating resistance for her to push her knees out you're just going to make a fucking that when you take that band off they're going to be so much stronger pushing out now like what you should have done is hardwired like yeah between her knees yeah like the opposite yeah so what you're going to see with bands especially this putting bands around my knees all the time type of stuff is you're going to see people create imbalances because if I'm constantly fighting that outward you know that pressure that's pushing my knees in and I'm constantly trying to push them out while I do every damn leg exercise I'm going to create a hip imbalance where that's where my legs want to push all the time and then I'm going to have an imbalance between my abductors and my abductors which is going to cause problems with my pelvic well let's talk about why it works because of what the band okay when you push your knees out your glute you have your medius your minus maximus your glute and your the medius is responsible for pushing those knees out so that's why you feel that so it's just like doing the good girl bad girl machine when you do that of course you feel it there but there's so many other movements and the girls that I see doing this and that's why I said if you're doing it with the right intention or purpose and I get it but the girls I see doing it are never the girls that are also barbell back squatting Bulgarian squatting front squatting doing these badass movements that really will build the ass they're always the ones that are doing these body weight jump lunges and doing like the side lateral kicks and the on your knees you know butt kicks and fire hydrants and you know doing 50 repetitions with no rest and circuits you know like these are the people that I see doing that that's where this is just it's ridiculous waste of time it's a waste of time and that that same girl who's trying to build her ass would benefit way more by doing some really good squat variations or better deadlift variations is gonna build that ass and then doing that and then to address the to address the guys that are following fucking Joey swole and wrapping bands around hammer strengths and then turning sideways does it change the strength curve yeah okay so is that if you always train that machine all the time and then now you change the the strength curve by adding a band to it will it create a new stimulus a little bit yeah is that a much is that an inferior exercise to fucking 50 other ones you could do with dumbbells and barbells absolutely you know so if you I see the place for that if you're if you've if you've gone through all the the major movers if you've done all the big bang for your buck you're just bored then I want to throw a band on everything right yeah I like here's what I like bands for if you're if you're focused very heavily on building strength and performance in that particular realm you're already pretty advanced so you've kind of got a good hold on you know your squats your deadlifts or whatever you're trying to build strength on then bands become an effective and very convenient tool because now I can attach bands to my barbell anchor them and now when I'm doing a squat I'm going to overload the top of the rep and have less resistance to the bottom which is going to follow my natural strength curve and they do produce amazing strength benefits you can get adapted to a little bit heavier weight and kind of challenge yourself that way so at least you can feel the weight and go through the movement of it but now you have a little bit of that help well how do we all use bands I know we all do I do everybody everybody use bands and here Mike how do you use bands you ever use bands and how do you use them oh so you don't even use them see if I'm going to use them I'm going to use them either one on our trigger days when I'm traveling and I just needed a hotel room and so I want to get a little workout like that I'll use them like that or I'll use bands like you were like different resistance with squatting and deadlifting right I'll take a I'll also use them for more explosive type movements of my yeah we did a video on on the with the kettlebell mm-hmm yeah we did a kettlebell YouTube video where he did it with a band yeah for explosive power so that way because I mean if speed you know that that speed that's acceleration is really my my goal like my focus adaptation for that period like they're great for that because you know it's it's somewhat of a controlled resistance if you you know set it up right and you have the right type of movements where you can be explosive no that makes total set for sport specific reasons I could I could totally see using it for that also again again I could see someone like the vertebrae I could see exactly I could see an athlete tying bands their chains down and then explosive squats and doing things like that that makes sense to me the craze though in that program didn't a lot of strength training program right right that that makes that makes a lot of sense but the craze that I see the people that are speed like you know me yeah right yeah again you know these are these are you know you have a purpose behind why you're doing it it's not I'm using these bands to you know build my it's just it's a tool and what happens when a tool gets kind of popular is then it becomes like the tool that everybody uses on every shiny object syndrome yeah yeah and it loses its value one thing that I like about about bands quite a bit is that they don't seem to and this is purely anecdote but there's my own experience training myself and then training lots of other people they don't seem to create as much muscle damage even at high intensities now which is why they suck for building muscle right for that for that they suck for building muscle by themselves yeah it's always better but you can add them to a routine with lots of weights where you want to send another muscle building signal but you're also limited by recovery and you don't want to damage anymore now you do bands so this is this is how we promote people use trigger sessions is like they do their heavy foundational workouts and then on the days in between you add volume and frequency with bands you're not creating more damage but you're still sending a small muscle building signal so it's like turbo really appreciate how we did this you talked about you know possibly in the future for yourself creating some sort of an active recovery type program we have what is what Sal's referring to is trigger sessions which is like that it's kind of like an active recovery where we're not trying to do a lot of damage there we're just trying to send a signal adding to the volume yeah a load to moderate intensity right so you would appreciate that piece but I mean that to me I mean have purpose with it if you're going to do it I just feel like I want to talk to the girls I'm not going to be using it to build the butt you know go through your list of you know squat variations and deadlift variations first and then maybe do some of this weird stuff you know we got bands really popular back in the day you guys remember Bow Flex not Bow Flex excuse me not Bow Flex but the other one what was the other one with the with the bands it was like a Bow Flex but it was I'll remember it in a second Bow Flex was the one that did no no there was one before that all over TV and it had like these thick black resistance bands on it I'll remember it I thought it was Bow Flex I don't know bro I'll remember it give me the next question this one's from John Wayne Cowboy you interview people like Paul check and Joseph Merkola how do you implement their ideologies without going off the deep end it's a fine line man well first let's share some of the I'm sure you're familiar with Merkola I would think yeah but maybe not Paul check as much you guys mentioned it a little a bit azoteric is that what you say azoteric azoteric you can say however you want I say however the fuck I want this is my show damn it make up words as we go hey Shakespeare did it Adam's an asshole yeah they I think if you're somebody who like we did have some people who were offended by it that they were on the show how could you have somebody on the show that talks like this and goes that I absolutely love and enjoy I'm not turned off by somebody who gets a little woo woo I think it's it's fine especially when they're very intelligent both of them are fucking brilliant brilliant men and they have they're little different as far as I are actually a lot different I mean Paul gets a little more spiritual and I can definitely go that way yeah it's tough to ask him a very bored answering it like regular right you can't have he has to go to the cosmos and then come right like I mean you're still there we always tell people this right we are we're always you know preaching that before you do any of these things you need to work on your relationship with yourself your relationship with exercise and your relationship with food like those are three right it's like we're always telling people like you know before you're trying to you know conquer the world and you know win a race or build all this muscle and get on stage or these things like first work on those three things and then the rest will follow and you'll be amazing you'll be amazed by how easy it is when you do it in that order well people like Paul check I feel like if you ask them a basic question about they go even deeper of like okay well you need to understand the you know meaning of life first before you even think about a bicep curl so I think that's where people get kind of scared you know when people say the deep end I mean I want to be clear with you there's some implications in that question they're implying that there's some there's a lot of bullshit in some of the stuff that they say and I'll say this much about let's start with Paul check Paul check in my opinion is he's clearly the godfather of the wellness industry so here's a man that was talking about you know gut health before anybody knew what that meant he was using probably called a quack for it he's been Paul check has been hammered and called names since he first came out and all the stuff that he talked about when he first came out it's all now it's all mainstream now like physical ball training instability type training functional training Paul check was doing that in the cable cables people were making people were making fun of them for that kind of stuff gut health you know how your emotions affect things like your appetite and pain and function people were making fun of them for that kind of stuff he's a man that he definitely can go on the spiritual side and then he can go deadlift 500 pounds or whatever so he kind of walks the walk so when somebody like Paul check says something that sounds crazy to me I don't ever take anything for face value by the way I want to be very clear like I don't care who it is they could float down from the sky and I'll still that's a hologram I'll still be skeptical of what they say however with someone with a reputation like Paul check who has had you know throughout all these through the decades has been true on some of the different things or been accurate I should say on some of the different things I'll be open minded and see if I can understand it in a different way what I mean by that is sometimes people will explain things in ways that prevents you from being open minded and I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about when we talk about acupuncture or Chinese medicine Chinese medicine will use terminology like your chi or your meridians or flow of energy throughout the body and if you're a western you know medicine or science kind of person right off the bat you can be like your bullshit that's bullshit because there's no such thing as chi and there's no such thing as meridians but the problem with that kind of thinking is you're throwing the baby with the bath water out perhaps there is something that you know is coming from acupuncture that's effective and there's a way that we can explain it through western science I mean there is and there is and there absolutely is it's not chi it's not meridians as they would explain it and that's the way they explain it so that's what I do when I listen to some of these people now which is actually kind of mind blowing that people had figured that stuff out isn't it fucking crazy that's what's really fascinating when you listen to catching up to that can I just say this right now aliens and Mike I know you're a big nerd like I am how crazy is it that all of this ancient knowledge that we've known about that people have passed through thousands and thousands of years on nutrition and health and herbs and all that stuff how crazy is it that a lot of it is getting proven true now it's fucking wild right something that blew my mind a lot but it's kind of along the lines of what we're talking about here you know when they discovered that the God what is the gland in the middle of the brain now I can remember third eye not the pituitary but the looks like a pine cone pineal gland the pineal gland just make up words pineal the pineal gland produces naturally produces dimethyl tryptamine in the brain which is one of the known as one of the world's strongest hallucinogens probably what happens when you're near death or maybe even when you dream but ancient philosophers were talking about the pineal gland like it was the third eye how the fuck did they know some of this stuff so it's very interesting things from some of this ancient knowledge so anyway going back to Paul check and Dr. Polo doesn't fluoride have a high affinity for the pineal gland a lot of people will say it calcifies the pineal gland I'm not quite sure if the science supports it but yeah exactly who knows but Dr. Merkola is another individual who was laughed at for a long time he was laughed at when he said dietary cholesterol is not a problem and saturated fat is not a problem well now we know that he's a lot of what he's saying is quite accurate in those particular cases well and they're laughing at him right now because he sleeps in a fucking cage and he talks on his cell phone on a selfie stick but you know I don't know after talking to him now I'm scared to death it makes me more paranoid absolutely so how do we implement their ideologies I don't implement every ideology I don't think any of us implement every ideology I think if you I think ideology is the wrong word I think you can implement ideas I mean ideology implies that you're buying into something wholesale and everything that someone says is you do right I mean that's kind of the that's what comes along with ideology right so I think it's more implementing ideas so as you start to dig deep into things Mike how do you decide like okay this is something I'm gonna implement this is something I'm not I mean I guess over the years and this has come from just reading a lot and as a consequence of writing a lot right so if I'm gonna write about things I'm gonna go research about it and so I've I guess maybe developed enough general knowledge I think to have pretty good instincts on what seems to make sense and what doesn't but I'm pretty open minded as a person so I'm willing to try a lot of things actually if they can make they make sense and I think especially where there's areas where I mean it's something I always try personally to to keep in mind is how little I know like and you know I almost to the point where I it creates like an imposter syndrome you know what I mean and but I'd rather be on that end of the spectrum than I'd rather be that than a Dunning Kruger person who just thinks that I'm a fucking genius and everything you know what I mean and and then I'm actually just dumb I don't know anything I think that's a that's a great level of awareness just to start to realize that you don't know yeah so you just don't know I think like order of operation I mean I feel like we and even with these guys like there's enough research and studies around the stuff the idea is that they share and they talk about and if they're sharing something that something that maybe I like for example like this last year or two I have put a lot of effort into improving my sleep and because the research is there to show like I mean right getting better sleep in poor improves so much what has worked really well for you brain FM has been huge for me turning off my masturbating before bed no turning turning off my electronics by seven so no more screens try and get the lights out do candle or whatever those have been some of the things the ones where I was bad the phone was the big one because I'm the type person who even even with like whatever the I mean I think I don't have a built-in right like they have a flux thing they have so my what it's called I've got my mind's on auto on that so as soon as it hits seven o'clock it goes that in case I do sure at my phone or you try to just cut it out yeah I try and make a habit of you know and that's carried over and do other things too like that's improved my relationship because you know from seven to ten p.m. it's definitely my time with Katrina and that's where we are conversing and spending time together so it's improved that it's improved sleep what else have I did the brain FM caffeine intake was that a thing so I can't do caffeine beyond about three o'clock or so so I'm allowed to do it before that we also talk a lot about caffeine and cycling it on and off which I'm definitely a fan of that if I find myself going for another cup of coffee because I'm not feeling the one I just want no caffeine right that's exactly what we do reset I keep my intake I mean these days I really actually have one cappuccino a day and it's not for so much even the caffeine I just like having cappuccino that's I'm normally a cup I drink I drink a couple yeah I mean I have at the office or whatever I drink a cup on the way over here and then I normally have one of the small cups of our own stuff that we have inside here because we have the chimera in there but but yeah absolutely those things make a difference what else have I really to tell me out in the bedroom cold you bring it down to like well I'm already like a I'm a polar bear I sleep naked my room has to be like a pull I like it's freezing I can't do this I like a cold I can't do the fully naked thing about I cannot sleep I have to have at least normally a chick problem no I sleep I sleep chicks have a problem with that they don't really have to be in there like onesie and she like no no no I don't need a onesie I just need my underwear dude come on you've seen my onesie that's crazy you don't like sleeping naked no because then things move around and stuff that's why it's awesome around it's just to you know what I mean because I'm used to things being you know tucked in I don't want everywhere you know I mean well point of me though is order of operation so I feel like even some of the things that they talk about I don't look at it like oh these ideologies or I don't look at it like this is so far out there it's just like okay really do I really need to be worrying about the positive negative energy in my water right now if I'm eating like shit I'm still drinking my diet soda and I'm fucking stressed out because it work and I'm missing my workout you know I'm saying like totally it's like let's let me let me figure these pieces out in my life operations yeah I get this shit put together and then let me the 20% that's going to give you 80% anyway and right and then you know whatever dabble and other things right so that's I mean and I think everybody should approach listening to guys like that I don't think you should dream idea that they're talking about that may be too far for you well it's probably too far because you're not ready for a lot of their areas you need to just be open minded that doesn't mean you accept everything but be open minded understand them and maybe try to understand them in your words I'll give you another example Paul check he takes like 30 seconds before he eats a meal he'll have the food in front of him and he does this thing where he puts his hands over the food and it looks like he's praying and I asked him if he wants this food and he asked the food if he wants to be eaten in part of his body and does this whole thing and it sounds fucking crazy like what are you talking about and and as he's saying it I'm literally catch myself thinking like okay well this is an idea that's that's kind of out there that's not cool yeah and then I stop and I think to myself like man almost every culture in the world has some type of you know tradition that they do before they eat whether it's prayer or something sure and it was just you know whatever you eat and I thought to myself like hmm how often would I eat horrible food if I took 30 seconds to sit there and ask myself if I should be eating this food yeah and so there's a lot of the benefit right there so yeah go ahead probably something to be said for though I mean like you're saying even with training like learning to listen to your body or food and diet and stuff I think there actually is something to that so whether I mean I don't know if asking the body if it wants the food I mean who am I to say I think that a lot of people I think just in life tend to discount their intuitions about many things you know what I mean and I think that our intuitions can be a lot more powerful than we realize simply because subconsciously our mind is always working always making associations bringing things that we aren't necessarily coming into our conscious processing mind but can produce changes physiological changes even that we can feel that we don't know why we don't you know I mean we can't process the thought and articulate it but it's there and if we can ignore it and that's fine but we're taught to ignore we're taught to ignore these signals you know when you get a feeling like I don't you know I got a bad feeling about that guy or weird energy over here and it sounds crazy and hokey but from a scientific standpoint your brain is literally it is literally receiving and processing so much more information than you're aware of you're aware of a tiny tiny tiny fraction of information that your brain is actually perceiving and so when you get that weird feeling about someone your brain is literally giving you that weird feeling about someone because evolutionarily speaking you probably acted upon it but today in modern times we are taught to ignore all this shit which is totally so disconnected to our bodies now that when I try to teach and our minds in that sense yes and when I try to teach people intuitive with their diet the whole first fucking three months of it is just teaching them to stop ignoring shit like you know what I mean I guess I do have bloating what is that and that's like in a sense with Paul so there's a whether it's an imagined thing or not but there's a communication going on with his body I mean it's the same thing of being aware of the body and there are communications there are physiological communications that you can be aware of and that are always there I mean whether you know whether you're paying attention or not and Dr. McCullough another one of those people so I'm not saying look at individuals like this and take everything they say sometimes the words just aren't there yet sometimes the language we're just not there yet we're still trying to figure it out and I think it's so shame on you or shame on us for shaming someone who's trying to put words to something that he's obviously ahead of us on especially if it's genuine like if it's something that yeah yeah I mean just like what I respect so much about him is just that he completely you know tapped into that intuition and he listened to his body on such a level where he just like went through the process of it to where now test me scientifically test me in the lab setting can I reproduce these methods and then teach other people to do it and show that you can so now what through cold exposure and holding your breath so Paul check was talking about this way before Wim Hof right he broke it down to you when you first shared that with him right yeah he was talking about how exercising the body systems of acclimation to temperature and how that is a system that we never train anymore we're totally totally atrophy in that particular sense because we're always in these air conditioned rooms that this is a part of your body I'm sorry hanging out being fat exactly but it's hanging out being fat it's a part of your body that's never trained and you know like anything else you don't train it gets very weak and it affects other systems and you know understanding that the body is a whole so it's not just focusing on one thing because everything communicates everything and so there's that whole holistic approach but you know Dr. Macaulay he was talking about blue light exposure a long fucking time ago and people made him made fun of him for that and now everybody's like oh blue light exposure is not good for me and it's this new like science thing and now he's talking about the dangers of wifi and all that stuff so we're all getting brain cancer right now that's great that's alright I'll just go where's Alec Jones when we need him check this out go to mindpumpmedia.com we still have 30 days of coaching and it's still available for free also if you go to youtube you'll find some of the videos that we referenced in this particular episode the channel is mind pump tv or Justin will beat you up also if you want to ask us a question that we answered in an episode like this one the place to ask it is Instagram just go to mind pump media page you can also find our personal pages I'm mind pump Sal, Adam is mind pump Adam and Justin is mind pump Justin thank you for listening to mind pump if your goal is to build and shape your body dramatically improve your health and energy and maximize your overall performance check out our discounted rgbsuperbundle at mindpumpmedia.com the rgbsuperbundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance and maps aesthetic nine months of phased expert exercise program designed by Sal, Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs with detailed work out blueprints and over 200 videos the rgbsuperbundle is like having Sal, Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the 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