 In this episode of Mind Pump, we answer questions asked by listeners like you. They go to our Instagram page, Mind Pump Media. They post the question under the quote meme. We pick the best ones and then we answer them. But the way we open the episode is with introductory fun conversation. We bring up studies. We talk about our sponsors and we talk about our lives. So here's what we talked about in this episode. We start out by talking about our favorite candy bars. Yeah, that's true. Fitness podcast talking about our favorite candy bars. I mean, you know, we're human beings. Then we talked about our time in Las Vegas recently. We went to go see the Bill Burr comedy show. It was hilarious. Doug got destroyed and smashed. It was a lot of fun. He loves when you bring that up. Then I talked about the study that connected dark humor to high IQ. So for those of you that look at my memes and think, Sal, you're terrible. Self-selection studies again. There you go. I talked about how Tesla's stock is roaring and crushing. Looks like they're ugly truck, quote unquote. Apparently that means we're wrong. Yeah, I'm telling you, they're crushing. Sure. Then we talked about the documentary on Netflix called Don't fuck with cats. Proceed with caution. It is a disturbing show to watch, but it's also quite interesting. Not Christmas material. That led us to talk about serial killers. I talked about having vegan protein in Vegas from a company that was not Organifi. And I was quickly reminded why Organifi is the company we work with. Their protein powder is the best quality. And it tastes the best. By the way, we have a discount for you. If you go to organifi.com forward slash mind pump and use the code mind pump, you'll get 20% off their protein powder and all of their other organic products. Then we talked about how millennials are leaving religion like crazy. And we talked about what that could potentially look like. And then we mentioned our favorite Christmas movies. Then we got into the questions. The first question was this person wants to know if it would be beneficial to train entirely unilateral for a while. Now unilateral training means training one arm or one leg at a time. So rather than using barbells, using dumbbells, or instead of doing squats, doing lunges, we talk about all the benefits of doing so. The next question, this person wants to know how reliable it is to judge your progress based on muscle soreness. So we talk all about muscle soreness, what it means, and what it doesn't mean. And we talk about the myths surrounding muscle soreness. The third question, this person wants to know all about box squats, and if they have any value. So should you add box squats into routine or traditional squats enough? And the final question, this person wanted to know what some of the things are that have caused the modern obesity epidemic. Also, four days left. There's only four days left for MAPS aesthetic. One, two, three, four. 50% off. MAPS aesthetic is a phenomenal body sculpting, body building program. So it's a full workout with video demos and workout descriptions. You go in there, you follow it, but you also pick out your particular weak body part. So let's say you want to train your whole body, but you have special focus for your back. Your back is underdeveloped. You do what are called focus sessions, which are specific to MAPS aesthetic for your back. So in other words, MAPS aesthetic is modifiable based on your body, allowing you to sculpt your body the way you see fit. Again, it's 50% off. There's only four days left. Here's how you get the discount. Go to mapsblack.com and use the code Black50, B-L-A-C-K-5-0, no space for the discount. Sal, what'd you get? What'd I what? What'd you get her? What'd I get, Jessica? Yeah. Uh, what should we call it? A wedding band? A whatchamacallit. Yeah, for Chris. Hey, Merry Christmas. Have you ever had that candy bar? Whatchamacallit. A whatchamacallit. I did. Was that a commercial? It wasn't as good as you think, though. I don't know. It was pretty good. It was a little bit of a crunch in there, and it's like a poor man's Kit Kat. Do you know my, yes. Do you know what my favorite candy is, though? My favorite candy bar? Let's talk about our favorite candy bars. It's a good topic. I already know what Justin's is. Yeah, I mean, he had a peanut butter, peanut butter snickers. Damn it. Peanut butter snickers? Yeah, he did. Is that your favorite candy bar? That's right. You weren't around, dude. Yeah. Yeah, when we were sitting around in the airport, I was like, I walked right past it, and I was like, oh my God. And I just impulse, just kicked in. I actually don't think I've ever had one. Why'd you sell horny right now? Did you get horny for it? Yeah, I did get horny. Because I didn't, so I've always been a Reese's guy. And then Halloween came around, and I was stealing candy from the kids, and I stole one of those snickers bars that had peanut butter in it. And it was like fucking amazing. So I had to get it. I've never had one. Have you had one? Yeah, they're good. Oh, you've had one. Yeah, they're good. You know which one is my favorite? You know, for a health ambassador, you've had a lot more candy than I have, I feel like. He's all into the hard candy. I don't think so. I don't know what that means, but it's true. No, I like the gummy stuff. It's true. I am the ambassador of health, though. I still haven't. You haven't lost your ribbon. Did it, did it, did it. No, baby Ruth. Baby Ruth. Love baby Ruth. No. I know it's so simple, too. It's just caramel nugget and it covered in peanuts, but the saltiness. Nugget. So you like paydays then, too, right? Paydays are also good. Yeah. Yeah, I love them. What's your favorite? Too much peanuts. You know what's funny? I'm not a big candy bar guy. I'm trying to remember. Whatever, pick your favorite. As a kid, I was, I love Butterfinger. No, you're a good and plenty guy. I am a good, if I was to have a candy now, you know, that's an old, as I got older. It's an old thing, yeah. I didn't like black licorice when I was a kid. No. You hate black licorice as a kid. No, yeah. But that's one of those weird things that when you get beyond 30, all of a sudden that shit all changes and you start. Yeah, it's like olives. I eat, same thing. Good and plenty. So black licorice candy, which is weird. I never liked that as a kid. You know, pecan ice cream, you know, coconut ice cream. That's all stuff you don't like when you're a kid. Yeah. All the stuff I used to tease my grandparents for eating. You know, like, yeah, that's old people ice cream. That's old people candy. That's the shit I like now. Did you guys ever eat 100 grand? No, there's originals. You ever see 100 grand? Yeah. Yeah, those are not that good. You got to work on those for a while. A little bit. You get stuck in your teeth. No, the worst for that. The worst for that is what are they called? Jujubees. Jujubees, dude. I used to like them. Talk about ripping your enamel right off your teeth. I don't understand how you're supposed to enjoy those. Are you just supposed to suck on them or what? No, what's great about them is that like one little box lasts a whole movie. That's what I used to like because it's just, you could like gnaw in one for a 15 hour. Yeah. Did you guys ever get waxed lips when you were a kid? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a thing for a long time. What's the deal with that? I have no idea. It was like fun because it like made your face look all funny. So is that it? Because when I got it when I was a kid, I thought you were supposed to eat it. You do. You eat it eventually, but like. Why? The fun is just like being silly with your friends. It's nothing. It's a candle. It's a flavored candle. It's disgusting. It's straight petroleum in your chops. You know what I mean? Is it that bad? I don't get it. Yes. Look that up, Doug. It's made out of fossil fuels. We're just eating it. Were they giving us plastic sugar? That's what it is, dude. It's literally petroleum wax. It's like eating Vaseline. You know what I'm saying? Hey, how'd you guys like Bill Burr? Oh, my God. He's the master. He was really good, huh? He was ripping people so hard. Then there was like a good segment where he was like making jokes about women and in front of us because we're four rows back. We're like, I could. Oh, you saw some. I could throw my phone and hit them, right? Some cold responses. Oh, dude. There was like some millennials sitting in front of us and I was like, girls with their boyfriend. Seamen faces. And oh, and you can tell the guys were like, is it okay to laugh? Every once in a while they look at their girl and they're like, I guess I can't laugh. Their bodies like laughing, but not their, you know, they're not like, like audibly laughing. No, see like wax lips with a common name of a candy product made of colored and flavored food grade paraffin wax. Cheap. There's such thing as food grade paraffin wax? I think what it means is it's wax that won't potentially kill you. So they call it food grade. I see. You know what I'm saying? No, but Bill Burr was fucking hilarious. Dude, you gotta be the best. He, I swear, he has like roast turrets or something. Like he's so good at it. Like it's just, it's automatic. Like when somebody yells something out, he just like focuses and lasers right in on them. Oh, and then I don't know what they had in that auditorium, but there must have been a show beforehand where confetti fell from the ground. Oh yeah. So every once in a while confetti would kind of come down and eventually you think to yourself like he's ignoring it, but then he starts addressing it. Then he goes, he add lips. He just starts making jokes about the confetti and the crowd. Yeah, that became part of the show. He's so good. Well, I think he was pissed. I think it was bothering the shit out of him because what you would see, he'd be right in the middle of setting a joke up. And then one or two pieces of confetti would come down and I would watch like all the people in front of us and to the side of us like look up to the left or right. And you know, when you're part of being a good comedian has been able to draw you in and then smack a punchline on you. Sure. Yeah, that takes a little bit away from the punchline. For sure it does. So you could tell that it was bothering him. But for him to roll with it like that was... I like him because I like it when comedians do a good job pushing boundaries, but do it in a way that it's funny because it takes skill to do that, especially nowadays with everybody being offended by everything. Which actually reminds me of a study. There was a study that came out that really showed, and this is not the only study, there's several now, that have shown a strong correlation between intelligence and dark humor. So people who really like dark humor, there's a strong correlation between that and high intelligence. Now what do you think that is? I think that if you have really dark humor, you have the ability to kind of see like both sides of it, right? I think that's what causes that. Is that right? What do you think? I think people that like dark humor aren't necessarily sick people, they just see the irony in them. Their mind goes into ridiculous places. Well, so here's what I think. I think because there's a novelty aspect to humor. So if something is funny, it's oftentimes because you don't expect it or it's an unexpected punchline or whatever. And I think intelligent people need to be challenged more in order for that to happen. So it has to be something that really, oh shit, I can't believe you just, and then you laugh. Because you train a lot of doctors and I have some doctor friends too, and they have the sickest humor like way beyond me. Oh, terrible. I was like, wow. And really smart people, but that's the thing. I think it's just also, I think it's like a filtration thing, like they're expunging these ideas out of their mind on some level. Oh, it's terrible. What's the term when you can, when two opposing ideas can live in your mind at the same time? What's that called? There's a term for that. You know what that is? Bisexual. No, it's not bisexual. That's what your friends call you. That's not what I'm talking about. There's a term. I tell you, you don't know the term. You're worthless sometimes, I tell you. Come on, you're supposed to. It's not on command, bro. It just comes out. Doug, you don't have that? It's not in his wheelhouse. There's a term for that. When you have two opposing ideas that simultaneously you can hold, right? So what is that? You can't, you know what I mean? It's the duality of ideas. The duality is no idea. For lack of a better term, we can use duality. But I think that's what it is. I think it's the ability to see both extremes of that. And most people can't do that. Most people are easily swayed one way or the direction they're manipulated. We're an intelligent person as the ability to laugh at it because they don't truly believe it. See the front and the back. They just think it's ironic. And they don't identify with the fact that they're laughing. Right. So it's like, I can laugh at this joke and it doesn't mean that I think that that's okay. It doesn't mean that I, you know, promote that or whatever. I don't get offended or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, Vegas though, huh? Does that, I don't know, this happens to me. I don't know if it happens to everybody. This is what happens to me. Any time I fly into Vegas, I get in the, as soon as I get in the airport, you know when you smell a certain scent and it brings you back, you get memories. So like, you ever walk somewhere and you smell something. Oh my God, this reminds me of first grade or this reminds me of grandma's house. Okay. You just smell debauchery. As soon as I land in Vegas, I'm like, oh, hungover. Oh, I'm going to feel like, oh God, it's terrible. Too much. You know what I'm saying? Did you guys get that? Yeah. You just smell bad decisions coming my way. It's such a place of like terrible, gosh, everything. Like you just, every way, we're driving and cars are pulling up next to us, taxis and the advertisements are for either strip clubs or escort services or weed or guns. You can shoot machine guns. It's like you landed into Grand Theft Auto. Yes. You're just like, all right, cool. We did stay just in one place while we were there. That was the first time that I've done that, I think where I was just like, here's the hotel, the events right here, the meetings right here, you're going to get to sleep right here. Everything was like right there. Cosmo, nice hotel. Yeah, I think that it was necessary for us to do it. It was an in and out trip for us. You know what I'm saying? It was convenient. Nothing was worse than going to Vegas that quick and then having to drive all over the strip to get to places. So the fact that we weren't able to stay right in the Cosmo. Now, what's the longest you've ever stayed in Vegas on the strip? Two days. There's no way I can stay longer. I swear to God, I don't think I could do it longer than two or three days. I really don't. After the second or third day, I need to go home and take a shower. You know what I mean? I need to like wash myself. Like I can't do this anymore. How about you, Adam? You've been there for a week, haven't you? You've done a week, haven't you? Seven days. Wow. But it was not by, not intentional. So one trip. This is actually one of the first times that Katrina and I really first started talking or started getting serious, I should say. I was shooting before you were competing. Yeah, just before I was competing. We went out there for a trip and this was kind of, I don't remember what time of the year it was because we were flying to Florida after that. So I had like 10 days off of work and we were flying first to party in Vegas for like three or four days, not only like three days. Three days. And then we were hopping on a plane and flying out to Florida and then we had a place out in Florida for the rest of the trip. And I got this god-awful flu, like so bad that I couldn't get up and... Oh, so you were just in Vegas because you were sick. Yeah, so it was in by design. So what ended up happening was I had all the time off. I had to, I totally lost the money for the place that I had already paid in Florida. It was a timeshare situation that I had set up. So I lost the money on that. I had to cancel my flight. My buddy who was, my buddies that were with me that were supposed to go out there and his wife, they flew back home and I was like, I'm just going to stay here. So I just booked the rest of the week and just... Oh, that doesn't count. Yeah, so you're stuck. Yeah, I was kind of stuck there. Now what's the longest you've stayed there without being forced? Probably four days. Yeah, that's about, that's max. Yeah, four days. And I like four days because I like a come in day that you don't really do much and a last day that you don't really do much. And then the partying is in between. See, I say that to myself every time. I say to myself like, we're going to fly. Just take it easy tonight. Tomorrow night's the hard night. Let's just take it easy. Never happened. No, that doesn't, yeah. It's a great idea. Yeah, I've done it where I flew in and partied and flew out and didn't even stay in a hotel. So we literally flew in, landed at 8 p.m., went nuts, and then got on a plane at, I think it was like 11 a.m. the next day. Just no sleep. And just, oh, and then that's the time. That's one of the only times I ever threw up on a plane. Oh, no, I've shared stories where I've, I'm pretty sure I've shared on this podcast where we've done Vegas trips. I mean, I was trying to think when I came in there, for sure Vegas is the most traveled to place for me, at least 100 times that I've been to Vegas total in my life. And one of the times I remember we were at, what's the club that stays open all night long? That's in Barley, the, fuck, what's it called? I don't know. I'm losing, you know, it's the Drays. Okay. Yeah, sorry. The film. Yeah, so it, we go there all night long, and I think my flight is like at seven o'clock in the morning, seven or eight in the morning. And so instead of like trying to go home early and take a, take a nap and then go, I was just, I'm just going to fucking party through the whole night. And then I'll just take a cab at like six o'clock in the morning or whatever to the airport. And so that's what I did. And I remember I had, I had checked in early. So I had like a priority, but I was so exhausted and I was so hungover from partying that I was afraid that I would miss the flight. So I, I took my, my duffel bag and the airport's almost dead at that time. And I put my little, you know, like a bag, like a pillow and in the Southwest A line at the very front, because I had like A five and fell asleep and like woke up to like people like stepping over me to count the plane. For them, that's like, that's like normal. Yeah. Nobody woke me up. It was great. You know what I'm saying? That's another day. All he had Vegas, everybody lets you get away with that. You know what I'm saying? There's like, oh, no big deal. This guy had a hard one. Right. So disgusting. My favorite, my favorite to the hotel is the airport degenerates that are still gambling. You know what I'm saying? Can't get enough. I got to spend more money. Well, you know, I think part of that is, you know, those machines are the tightest. No, it's the opposite. And the airport? Yes, they hit the most. I read that they hit, they're the tightest. No, I think they hit the, I was just listening to a guy, literally, I've won in an airport. Right. I was listening to a guy. Okay. We were before we flew back. One of the dudes that works for the Southwest was talking to somebody who said the same exact thing. And he's like, no, machine, whatever. I watched it hit for this much. This is about. He might be just trying to sell it. He's full of shit. Why does he, Southwest? What the fuck does he care? Because he works for the airline industrial complex. Maybe. It's stupid, the airline industrial complex. Let me see. I'm going to look it up. Well, wouldn't it be like you'd want them to win so that way you're motivated to stay there? Right. Like, oh, yeah, awesome. Let's keep this going. And then you go like get a hotel. Let me see. I don't know. I don't know. I'd have to look it up. I'm trying to look it up right now to see what you're up to. Pure speculation. It'd be interesting how you would measure that statistically, too, because obviously there's way more machines in a hotel than there is at the airport. So it's like. OK. Airport slot machines are notorious for offering low payback. That's what it says. And I feel like it would be because. Well, maybe a lower payback, but more frequent, maybe. I don't know. Yes, you win like a hundred bucks or something. Just now, like $5,000. That's enough to make you go, fuck, I'm staying an extra few days now. 8% difference between the machines in airports and the ones in the casinos. In terms of payback and frequency of wins. It's either tighter, bro. I knew that. No, I don't. Think about it. Think about it. You're gambling in the airport. You're degenerate. Your plane is over there. You're like, you know what? I lost 10 grand, but I could win it back in the next 40 minutes and see what happens. That's why I think they do that. I think they do it to Justin's point, because you got somebody who's got to fly home and they're almost broke. And so they put. They missed their plane. Yeah. If it's their plane, they're like, might as well stay again and lose more money. Hey, Doug had a good time. Yeah. Did he have a good time? Hey, only three times. Doug turned into Doug the Jug all over. Doug went hard. Only three times in his life. Only three times in his life has he thrown up. That's what he said. Yeah. That's what he said. So we're actually glad to be a part of that. You look good. I'm glad you're sharing this. You look good, Doug. You look good, though. You look really healthy. I survived. Yeah. We didn't do anything crazy, Doug. Well, so I got to tell you my experience the whole thing, because you know you guys know how hard it is for me to not intervene and try and take care of people. Oh, make sure you don't have enough water. You guys always make fun of me, right? So I'm like, fine. I'm going to let Doug do what he wants. So we're at Bill Burr. Oh, but she didn't. Yeah. Now you say that. Yeah, come on. Every time I jump in, everybody gets in front of me. Doug needs you. Doug needs you as a regulator, dude. No, no. Well, so we're there and Bill Burr, we already drank a bunch. Then we go watch Bill Burr. We had dinner. We're dying of laughter. We get up. Bill Burr's over. We're walking out. And Doug's like, wow. He goes, I'm fucked up, man. I'm really drunk. That's what Doug is saying. So you know, when someone says that, like, you know. You're admitting it. Yeah. So then we go to the lounge and he has two more drinks. That's where you're supposed to say, Doug, hey, use your brain. I started from here and there. I started too, but you guys always make fun of me. So I'm like, hey, he's a grown man. Let's see. No, he's a grown man. You were slurring after the first one. Hey, here's the thing. I hardly ever drink. And so I have no real way to monitor myself, I guess. He polished off a bottle of wine with my uncle at dinner. So they polished off a bottle of wine there. And then that drink that we had, that was a triple shot. That dude poured it heavy. He was my hero of the night. Well, we asked for a double. And it was like three and a half shots. He poured my whole cup up with crown. I was like, thanks, man. And then we go to the lounge, we're drinking more. And then I'm looking at Doug and I'm like, do you want me to take you upstairs? But he's like, yeah, I think you should. So I walked him upstairs. And you know, but your balance isn't bad. You've got really good balance. Seriously, some people can't. Well, I thought I was going to have to carry him, but he did all right. He did okay. Did you throw up in the middle of the night or when you first went up? Shortly after I got up there. And then you slept? Yeah, I slept good, actually. Normally you wake up really early, right? But I slept till like 10 o'clock. Sal wanted us to go bother. Interrupted. Yeah, I told Sal, don't bother. I'm worried. All the next morning. Yeah, he was hella worried. I was going to knock on the door at 9 a.m. I said, we have a later check out. I said, wait till he's got at least until 11 before we go try and wake him up. Dude, yeah, anyway. It's a good time. Hey, by the way, I think this is a good time to bring up how I was right again. So anyways, I mean, I love these segments. Do you guys see Tesla stock? Boo! How are you right on that? Because you guys made fun of the truck and said how it was. I'm still going to make fun of it. There's nothing to do with a stock. It's a great company. You got to talk and shit. We're Tesla fans. That's where you're misinformed. They are, they're hitting, I think, right. As a matter of fact, as of this podcast, 425, they are hitting astronomical numbers right now. Well, didn't the stock market just break more records again? It did. I saw a Trump tweet about that. Yeah, it did. I know how funny, right? How funny. But Tesla exploded. And you want to know what's crazy about Tesla? It's such a, Tesla is such a, they trade it like a tech company. They don't really follow fundamentals like they do with other companies. Like, they were at a loss at the beginning of the year. They showed them, they're showing like a, like that they may profit towards the end of the year, blew up the stock. It's crazy. China is opening a new factory too. Where were we just at? I heard they opened them. I know they opened a big one out in Reno, didn't they? Yeah. The model Y is supposed to begin production in 2020. Yeah, see here, look at this. I have this article. Tesla's financial performance ranged from a more than $700 million loss at the start of the year to crawling back into profitable territory in the third quarter. And yet their stocks, their shares are sharing at, like they're over $400. Absolutely insane. So they got a lot of buzz from the truck, but let's be honest, it's still fucking ugly. I bet you guys are going to see a lot of them. Well, of course. I mean, there's, there was a ton of Priuses everywhere. I know. They still stand by as one of the ugliest cars I've ever seen. Yeah, it is. Our boy Brendan bought one, so I'll see it. Did he order one? Yeah, he's already ordered one. How long until they come in for people? If you bought, because you said they start? No, that's the model Y is different. That's not the Cybertruck, right? Model Y, is that what, did they call it? No, model Y is a different car. Oh, I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know. That's a different car. When's the truck getting in? I have no idea. Oh. I have no idea. All this talk about, you don't even know. But, huh? I'm just right. That's what I know. I just wanted to like bring up them right and the, you know, stock prices and whatever. That's what I know. You brought up the other day that I think Jessica watched Don't Fuck With Cats? With me. We watched the first episode. Holy shit. Yeah, dude, that's not cool. How did you watch the first one and not get pulled into it? I want to watch more, but here's what happened. We put it on and I convinced. What made you even want to watch it? Because the only reason why I watched it was because I had heard about it. I watched it, you know when you're on Netflix and if you hover over it, it'll show like a commercial Ford or whatever. Yeah. So you see some of it and I'm like, this looks really interesting. That popped up on mine. I haven't watched it though. So I told, so I convinced her. It's my bad. I convinced. She likes, this looks like it might bother me a little bit. I'm like, no, it looks kind of cool. Oh, she straight called that. Like it's fine. It's very disturbing. And it's at night, right? Right before bed. So I put it on and we watched it and she couldn't sleep all night. She had terrible nightmares all night, freaked out, felt like shit the next day. She's like, I am not watching anymore. So I have to watch it on my own. Yeah, it's crazy. It was terrible. It's a terrible show. You haven't seen it, Justin? No, so what? It's like some. I don't want to eat it. You don't want to say anything about it? I don't want to say anything about it because I almost turned it off because it's so disturbing. Like the first part of it, I'm like, I can't watch a whole show on this. But by the end of the first episode, it kept me in to go, okay, I'm just curious of what's going to happen in the second episode. And then the second episode, it takes some like turns and twists. So essentially, and correct me if I'm wrong because I haven't watched the rest of it. I see, I don't want to, you haven't watched the rest, so you don't know. Okay, well, I'm not gonna, this is what I'm gonna say about it. And you let me know if I'm wrong. It seems like, so there's a guy that posts videos himself doing terrible shit and a bunch of people online band together trying to find out who this guy is and try to find him. So it feels like the rest of the series is about regular people figuring out how to find this guy through the internet and through that kind of stuff. Am I wrong? Yeah, a little bit. Wow, I am. Well, I mean, of course, they're involved in it the whole time. Okay. Because they're, but this thing goes crazy. Oh, worldwide. Really? Yeah, no, this worldwide manhunt on this guy. Oh, dude. Yeah, yeah, no, this is, it's a, it's a, it's a big deal. And it's twisted and it's got twists in it and it's, it's crazy. It's a, it reminds me of a, like a shorter version of what was the one Justin and I brought up to. Making a murder? Yeah, making a murder. Oh, really? Yeah, where you're just kind of back and forth on which, how you, how you think about it or feel about it. So it doesn't, it's a, it's a crazy fucking doc. I can't believe I watched it. I didn't think I would, I would. Did Katrina watch it? No, she started it with, with me and then she had it, she took the baby for a bath and then she came down. She's like, you're still watching that? And I'm like, oh my God, it sucked me in. I can't stop watching. And so I pretty much finished watching it by myself. And she was wrapping presents and doing stuff. So I should watch it? Yeah. I watched that, the confession killer. Did you watch any of that? Yeah, it was all right. It was interesting. The guy was like, you don't know if he actually did kill some of the, I mean he killed some of the people but then he started claiming that he killed like all these people, nationwide, like all over the place because like there's some racket there with the marshals in Texas, the Texas marshals. And like they, they treated him well, the stuff, because then he was making their job a lot easier because he was just claiming that it was him that killed it. And so then it's like, okay, that case is solved now. Yeah. You know, did you, did I hear you talk about, one time about the decrease in serial killers today and versus whatever? Yeah. Is it extremely low? It's, it's a lot lower than it was in past decades. A lot of that they think has to do with the fact that, you know, when you have crazy people who are like borderline but also who are narcissistic because a lot of these sociopaths are also, you know, part of that, that, that psychology is that they're also extremely narcissistic. Right. So they're crazy, they're borderline, extremely narcissistic. And when they see people doing stuff and getting lots of attention, it sparks them to want to try to do the same thing. Right. A lot of serial killers like the chase. They like that people are talking about them. It's not that they don't, they don't want to necessarily get caught but they want to get respond, they want to know, they want people to know Yeah. That they're the ones that did it. So it's just weird. And so with serial killers, same thing with like people who do shootings, the more that happen and the more that more publicity they get, the more tend to happen. Yeah. So if like, if they stopped getting publicity, the theory is that, that we would actually see less if that's kind of stuff. So are we, I always think about that, especially when a tragedy happens, like you wonder like, how much better would be if they like downplayed it all. They would probably be better off not reporting the killer's name and all his information and oh, he was this and she was that or whatever. Just, you know, shooting happened. Don't talk about the person at all. Give them no press whatsoever because that can actually trigger people because there was a, there was a period there in the 60s, 70s and 80s where there was, seemed like there was a fucking serial killer every other year. Oh yeah. Yeah, there was a whole bunch. You know how they got some of them? I forgot who it was. I'm trying to think. They got one of them to kind of talk, admit to what he did. You know how they did it? They prayed on his narcissism. Yeah. They brought him in. That's in that documentary, Manhunter. Yeah. Oh, is it? Yeah, that's where they're like, hey, if you were to do it, how would you get away with it? Well, and they, one of the guys that gets caught in there, and I think that it's based on true events. I don't know, it's a, I don't think it's a true story. Based on true events. And they talk about that's like, was part of, when they first figured out what serial killers were, and they were, because that wasn't even a thing before, what the 70s or 60s, when in the first serial. Well, I mean, they've been around. Right, right. But we didn't have a title. We didn't have a name for it. You didn't have a psychological profile for it yet. Exactly. Right. And so, and one of the, when they figured out they were, they were highly narcissistic, they would, oh wow, these guys want to talk about it, you know. And so, feeding into their ego and asking, was part of the way how they entrapped them. There was the Zodiac Killer, who was in, I believe he was in California. San Francisco. San Francisco. Yeah, it's here. And he used to leave, he used to like tell police what he was going to do, when he was going to do it, he'd give him clues. And it's like, And he'd like be there and watch. Yes. Yeah. So creepy. Fuck. I don't know. Screw that. Anyway. So, dude, I was, when we were in Vegas, you know, I stayed there longer to visit with Jessica's family. And her mom works at Whole Foods, and you know, we go over there to visit her, wherever I say, hi, while she's working. And I had an eaten all day, and I wanted protein. And, you know, OrganiFight doesn't sell retail, do they? No. Yeah, nowhere. So anyway. You haven't seen them. So I'm going, I get a vegan protein, and it's, I can't remember the brand, Life, I can try to think of the brand, Organic Life, or something like that. Uh-huh. Disgusting. I used to drink it all the time. Yeah. I used to drink it all the time, and I forgot how, like it tastes like powder, dirt, you know what I mean? Well, that was the original thing that made me, because I tried, I tried vegan protein, like, I don't know, 10 years ago, just to see, because I had heard people tell me, like, you know, your stomach could be upset or could be bothering you because you have a lot of whey. Yes. And so I tried it, and I was like, ugh, it just, it tastes so different. If you're used to like whey protein shakes, and then you make the switch over to a vegan, a vegan protein, it's really tough. Raw protein, that's what it was called. And it was so disgusting, it was like a, it was like a char, and I used to drink it all the, because I can't have dairy. I used to drink it all the time. But I haven't had anything like that in a long time because of Organifi. That's the one that I'll use now. Yeah. So whatever, I mean- It's crazy when you do a different one, you realize how good, how good they did as far as- You forget it's vegan protein. Yeah. The texture and the flavor for, it's about as good as it gets, you know? That's right, that's right. Absolutely. I was reading another article that I wanted to bring up. So there's this huge migration that they're observing right now of millennials and younger, but mainly the statistics are coming out, millennials, who are leaving religion unmasked. Just by the droves, they're leaving religion. And in the past, when this has been observed, what we've seen is that people leave religion as kids, but then when they start families, they go back to religion. Not happening this time. Millennials now are getting married, and they're not going back to religion. So this is the largest migration that we've seen of a population leaving- Now is there something they attributed to? Well, I have a few points here that they talk about in the article. They said that one thing, many millennials didn't have strong ties to religion to begin with, so they're less likely to develop those habits or associations that make it easier to return to religious communities. So a big part of it's their parents. Their parents didn't raise them in that, and that makes a big difference. They're also increasingly likely to have a spouse who is also non-religious. So then they marry someone who's also not in the religious practices or whatever. And then there's changing views about the relationship between morality and religion, and so a lot of young people are convinced that religious institutions are irrelevant or unnecessary for their children. What do you guys think of that? Do you guys think that that is good, bad? What are the potential side effects of that? What do you guys think? I think it'll swing like it always does. I think that it was inevitable we would go this way, and I think you'll see a big movement out of people, and then you see people like the Bishop Barons that are starting to reach and penetrate social media and the masses like he is that's kind of bringing people more back that direction. So I think it'll naturally swing. At the end of the day, the thing that... Because Katrina is spiritual, she's not religious, right? So she comes from a family that talks about spirituality a lot. I come from a family that talks about Christianity and God, right? So we're not the same when it comes to that, but at the end of the day, the values and principles that I learned going through church and being a Christian growing up, she 100% values that, and there wouldn't even be a discussion. Like if I wanted to bring Max to church, she would be 100% supportive of it. In fact, she would encourage it because we see the value in the structure of it. There's a lot of spiritual truth that you find in different religions. They're all different different practices, but they all kind of echo similar things. So I guess you could call that spiritual truth or wisdom. But when you dive deeper into these studies, you find that although millennials are leaving religion, it doesn't mean that they're not spiritual. Yeah, they're chasing the crystal thing. I would argue is a lot of the resurgence of what you kind of saw in the 60s and where people are kind of going to these festivals, they're looking for connection in different ways, like community in different ways. I think it's like the need is still there. They don't realize how to fill that need yet. And I think that it's just, this is a period where if they weren't exposed to it and we went away from it for a while, it seems like the necessity isn't there where it's gonna come to a halt. I also think that things like Christianity have been under attack quite a bit. Oh, it's not cool. The last few decades. Yeah. So, I mean, an example, we were just reading something, right? Like I think we brought up on this show maybe a month or two ago. One of us, I don't know who said it first, was talking about Joel Olstein and his, you know, bajillion dollar property or whatever like that. And then just recently, we were talking to him and found out that he doesn't take any money from the church at all, which by the way, most- He sells books and shows. Yeah, most pastors do that. Most pastors take a salary from- That's their job. Yeah, right. So, part of them takes a salary so they can- Yeah, that's commendable at that point. Right. So, you know, but yet we, there's so many memes made around his massive house and how wealthy he is and this and that. It's like, well, I mean, if this guy built this church and community and he completely puts all that money back either to helping other people or back into his community and then takes $0 for himself, and we're gonna shame him because he writes a book and millions of people buy it. Like, that's kind of weird to me, you know what I'm saying? And it's kind of unfair. And even myself was unaware of that. Yeah, I totally was judgmental on that till I heard that. Right, right. I'm not pro or I'm not pro. Yeah, I don't know a whole lot about it. Right, I don't either. But it's, that's an example of things like that, I think, get put out there into social and somebody sees it real quick, doesn't know much about it. And they're like, oh, just another thing that confirms that church people are bad. They're out for money and they're out there. Well, because you've seen televangelists out there that have really been called out and done some shady things, you know? Like that's happened in the past, going through the 80s and like, you saw these examples of people just taking money. If there's a way to influence people and take advantage of them, bad people are gonna find a way to use that. And that doesn't matter. It's a position of power. I don't care if it's supplements, the fitness space, religion, politics. If there's a way to influence people and then take advantage of them and be a shitty person, you're gonna find shitty people in that space, not all of them, but you're gonna find them be attracted to them and be like, oh, this is a great way to manipulate the hell out of people. When it comes to beliefs and stuff like that, Carl Jung warned about this and said, essentially that people were, we always will worship something. And he feared that the removing God, in his words, people would replace it with government. And what we saw in the 20th century was a lot of that with communism and Nazism and fascism, is that people, when they stop worshiping things, or they think they stop worshiping things, they actually replace it with something else. And oftentimes it's... Well, I found that really interesting that even somebody who considers himself an atheist, like Mark Manson, was talking about the hierarchy of that, like that, it's you worship something. So if it's not a God, it's something else, whether you think it or not. It'll be a material thing if it's not God, typically. So if it's not something metaphysical, then it's probably something material. And there's, I mean, I don't know, you can make the argument good and bad about that, but to say I don't worship anything is false. You do worship something, it's just your top value, your top ideal. It could be good for a lot of people that that's their main driver and passion for many years, until what ends up happening is that, and I think that's the case that someone like Bishop Barron tries to make is that eventually that leads to... Yeah, money, what was it? Money, power, honor, pleasure, a few other things. No, it's really interesting. And you made a good point about how, especially Christianity gets made fun of in the West, I think it's because they allow it. You know, it's one of the only religions that if you make fun of, they kind of sit back and don't say a lot. And they've also, obviously, they're extremely influential, so they're like the big guy, right? The big guy that you can poke will have fun. Just be consistent and make fun of all of it across the board. You know, that's like, if you're gonna do it. Yeah, but you know, it reminds me of something I was thinking about over the weekend is how fathers are depicted, how fathers have been depicted in modern media for so long. I think it's sending the message to men that being a dad, you know, having kids and whatever sucks that's shitty, it's not cool. You know, if you look at movies and TV with dads, they're like idiots. And they think about the days when they weren't, you know, married and they could do whatever they want. And I think a lot of guys... How they can hang out at the bar longer just to not go home. Yes, and I knew what's funny is that for most of human history, it was never that way. For most of human history, a man's... Since of pride. It was prestige and pride to have a lot of children. I have four sons. Exactly. Or you know, I have five, you know, 10 children. I have 15 grandchildren. You know, I'm married for whatever. And people were like, wow, what a great... It's not like anymore. Like media has depicted it as like, oh, you're married. Oh man, that sucks. Or what? Oh, you've got kids. Oh, poor you. You can't go have fun. And it can't even be in a mother too. I mean, that's been a lot of shame in that direction, which is bizarre to me. It's weird, right? I feel like we need to reverse it a little bit and tell people the... Yeah, it is hard, but it's also extremely meaningful. I think it's something to strive for. Oh, it's more than just... It's hands down the most important. I also think too, like the real MVPs, man, are fucking single parents. Oh, that's so hard. I can't imagine that. All you have to do is be a dad or a mom and fucking spend one day with your newborn for a weekend. And like you have this whole new appreciation for the people out there that are... It's the job you never clock out of. Yeah. No. It's just always there. I mean, if... I can't imagine if I didn't have Katrina and I had to raise Max and I believe that we've built something very conducive to making that happen. Like if that happened and I had to raise Max by myself and the work environment that we have, like I'd bring him here and there'd be ways around that. And even that... And you have a successful business. Right, right. Imagine if you were... Just a normal person. Normal person. You're making normal money. Work at nine to five. Nine to five. You have to raise a kid by yourself. Oh my gosh. Yeah. The challenge that that would present, which is why oftentimes they're in poverty. Oftentimes if you're a single parent, you're in poverty. So, but I do think society needs to... Because societal pressures aren't all bad. I know all the time. Well, you can make the case too that we needed to swing that way too a little bit because then there's that other thing too where I think a lot of people were having kids early and irresponsibly and not stepping up to the plate. You know, 20 years old popping a kid out and you still want to go clubbing every night and you're leaving your kid home. So... You're different. See, that's the thing. That's what I mean. Societal pressure, sometimes we talk about like, society expects us to be this way. So, and that's stupid or whatever. I get that, but there's also a certain... There's a certain... There's a reason why certain societal pressures exist. And it's because we're social creatures. And sometimes societal pressures exist because they help us be better. And one of them is, you know, the societal pressure of, you know, be there. Be a good parent. Men don't have the same pressure as women do, which is why I think part of the reason I think a lot of men leave their kids. Because, you know, if a mom leaves her kid, the kind of, the looks that she'll get and the way people will talk to her, then you got dads who are like, oh, I'm there every other weekend. And they're like, oh, you're a great dad. You know, good job. No, man. Yeah. You know, you got to be there. You know, you got to be there for your kids, just like the mom is or whatever. I think that's super important. Yeah, I agree. Did you guys watch any Christmas movies over the holidays? Did you guys watch anything yet? Yeah, I watched a few. You have? Yeah. What do you go to? Well, the main one that the whole family loves, Elf, you know, that's our first go-to. We watched, what's that other, the really old one, like it's a wonderful life or something like that? Is that the one? Oh, I never saw that. Yeah. Yeah, that's the one. Like I grew up watching that movie and then obviously the Christmas story. Oh, you know, my favorite actually is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Oh, I haven't watched that one a long time. Yeah, that one's my favorite because it's just like, you know, it's like hilarious. And I mean, there's some language in it. So I'm always like trying to like earmuff the kids, but it's worth it. Yeah, I love it. My favorite Christmas movies die hard. Did you watch it? There is no better Christmas. Yeah, did you watch it? You even read it, you know, all the internet shows. No, I watched a new one on Netflix called Noelle, which is actually pretty good. It was a cute movie. Oh, she turned it off. She thought it was cheesy. Did she? It is a little cheesy. It is. Most Christmas movies are a little cheesy. Yeah, yeah. How about you? Elf, that was Elf and then Arthur's Christmas. Have you seen that one before? No, what's that? That's like a cartoon digital animation type one that's actually pretty funny. Really? Yeah, yeah, it's actually good. It's like Santa has like two sons, and he's got like, and one of them's like the Arthur, who's like this kind of weak little weakling son. And he has like the real Christmas spirit and wants to be like the next coming Santa when dad passes on. And then there's like the kind of like asshole brother who's like all big and like, you know, yeah, and like wanting the power and stuff. And so the struggle of the two of them like fighting to be the next Santa. It's actually a cool, it's a cool story and it's like kind of futuristic. It's cool. It's great. I like it's one of the ones I really like that one and then we watch the Christmas Carol with Jim Carrey, the animated version of that. That's a definite. So that one and Elf are like traditional too that we always watch because one Elf is my favorite. I think it's just Elf wins. Yeah, it's just so fucking funny. Did you guys watch? Have you guys ever seen Polar Express? Yeah. Oh yeah, what's on the X? Creepy, right? And it's a little weird. It is a little weird. The animation is a little, they're a little... Yeah, it makes it kind of a little bit off. Yeah, it's kind of a strange thing. Yeah. That's like the Christmas Carol has that weird animation like that where they use, you can tell the cartoon is Jim Carrey's face, but it's a little distorted or whatever. It looks, that's kind of like how they did it with Polar Express. Beowulf was like that. You guys ever watched that? Yeah, Beowulf was pretty. Was that nude scene with Angelina Jolie playing that one character? I was like, dang. That was a nice transition. Yeah, I like that. See, we're all talking about Christmas. Yeah, I'm thinking about this naked cartoon character. You know, I got one for you though. There was, this is so random, but every Christmas, like my brother and I, we have to watch this like at my parents' house. It's the raisins Christmas. So they did like a special, the California raisins. This is like way beyond, yeah, like anybody listening. Oh my God, I remember that. One of the most successful ad campaigns of all time. Yeah. So like they actually did this whole like special and it's all claymation and everything. And so it's like super like cheesy, but like awesome cheesy, you know, and like they're all singing and there's lots of little skits in it and everything. But it's like, I have to watch it on VHS. You guys have a VCR? Yeah, we have one VCR, like literally just for that, like every year. I feel like you guys have a VCR. Yeah. It's crazy if you have a DVD player these days. I know. That's crazy. Yeah, it's getting like, every year it gets worse too. It starts getting choppier and a little fuzzier, you know, I'm like, oh no, no, how long this is gonna last. It gives it that good quality though, doesn't it? Oh yeah. First question is from Coach Carruthers. Would it be beneficial to train purely unilateral for a phase or two to combat imbalances and increase overall strength? Yes. Yeah, great approach. A hundred percent. I am right now in the middle of my longest cycle of doing that for my lower body. So I love squatting, love deadlifting. I've did them for years, got pretty good at both of them, especially the deadlift. And I started noticing that I just had an imbalance between the two sides, and it became glaring when I would do weighted Bulgarian split stance squats or lunges. And it was glaring in the sense that it just felt different. Like my left foot, when that was forward, felt different than when my right foot was forward. So I said to myself, I'm not gonna squat at all until I feel super strong with lunges and Bulgarian split stance squats. And so I'm probably three or four months into just doing that. And I'll tell you what, the leg development is good, but what's better is my stability. I feel so much more balanced. And I know when I go back to squatting, I'm gonna feel that much stronger because of it. Oh, absolutely. It's gonna make you stronger. I noticed the same thing. And it happens so gradually. You know, like my hips started to just barely rotate, like ever so little by little, it became an exaggerated thing to where then, in the middle of the night, like I would get pains and things shooting down my leg. And now I've learned to address it a little bit earlier and start doing more unilateral training because it does. It provides so much more stability around my hips. So that way when I'm doing these bilateral movements, everything's like working together simultaneously. You are able to produce more for stability. It makes you stronger. I was making a case for this a couple of years ago on here when we were talking about Bulgarian split squats and what a game changer it was for me and my squat. It was when I was going through the whole mobility stuff, I did the same thing as Sal. I kind of stopped squatting with both feet and started doing split squats. And it was a game changer for me. And I think this is true, even if you don't have discrepancy and imbalances. So even if you have good symmetry and you're not off, I still think there's a lot of value in unilateral training period, right? So doing one leg, one arm at a time. So I think everybody should face at least annually, if not every couple months, throw in some training blocks that are primarily unilateral. So I find value in that for anybody, even if you're not. And if for sure if you have imbalances going on, I think there's a ton of value. Yeah, and I think people will fear that they're going to lose muscle and lose strength. Not at all. No, and you know, there's this phenomenon that happens with resistance training that I identified a long time ago and every once in a while I take advantage of it. And that's when you do a new exercise, you're not nearly as strong as you are when you do exercises you're very familiar to. Now, why is it a good thing? Because the potential for progress is massive. Like when I do, you know, when I'm doing squats with 315 and I feel comfortable doing that and I haven't done lunges in forever. And then I get underneath a 105 pound barbell and do lunges. My legs are getting real fatigued because it's a new skill. That means as I'm learning, as my body's getting used to it, my progress from, and that lung is going to go from 105 to 225 in a relatively short period of time. I'm not going to get that with my squat because I'm kind of tapping the ceiling with my squat, so to speak. Or at least I'm closer to it. So that potential for growth is there and what ends up happening when you add 50, 60 pounds to an exercise as you get better at it is you just, your body responds. You get exceptional results. Now, one of the best ways to apply this, by the way, and this is something that, you know, Adam communicated a long time ago and I thought it was brilliant, is make sure you start with your weaker side and use that, let that dictate how much weight and reps you do throughout the workout. Because what you don't want to do is you don't want to start with your strong side and then maintain the discrepancy between the two. So let's give you an example. Let's say I'm doing a Bulgarian split stance squat and I notice my left leg is much weaker and I can hold 30 pound dumbbells and only do eight reps with my left leg. But with my right leg, I can do 12 reps. I'm only going to do eight. I'm going to stick to what my weaker side can do and allow that to catch up. I'm not going to do eight on my left and 12 on my right and just keep, have them both grow but continue to maintain the, you know, the discrepancy between the two. Allow the weaker side to dictate the weight and the reps and then watch what happens and start with the weak side. Start within the beginning of your workout. You know, studies show that how you prioritize your exercises, you know, the exercise you do first in your workout tend to get the most gains. Start with the weak side and allow that to happen and watch what happens. And now visually, what does this look like? Visually, you start to develop more balance in your body. Your pecs match better, your lats start to look like they match better, your shoulders, your legs. Then when you go back to your compound movements where you're using a barbell and two arms and two legs, all of a sudden, like when you jump back, you just feel solid. You feel way more solid and way more stable. And then that allows you because here's the other thing you want to consider. Oftentimes, what's holding you back from progressing is the weakest link in whatever it is in your body. Your body will not allow you to progress past the weakest point. So if the discrepancy between, for example, your right and left leg is big, that may be what's keeping your squat at whatever weight. Well, and I think too, the problem is you're thinking about how much weight you're actually moving and people get fixated on that, but they don't realize this. You're getting novelty gains. You're getting these gains that are actually like building more support. So that way, when you go back to these other lifts that you're doing, it's going to feel more secure, more stable. Like you're going to be able to allow your, your body is going to be able to allow to produce more force to get stronger. So it's a lot of times the missing piece to getting past your plateau. Totally. Single leg deadlifts. Another phenomenal exercise. It's an exercise that if you're stuck with your deadlifts, I tell you what, if your numbers on your deadlifts are stuck, try doing single leg deadlifts for, you know, I don't know, three, four weeks. Go back to your traditional deadlift and watch what happens. Yep. Next question is from Matt Ammo. How reliable is it to judge progress based on soreness? Is it possible to be sore and not be making progress in terms of building muscle? I love this question, man. Because this is, I think, more people. You haven't addressed this in a while. And I think more people than not make this mistake. I made this mistake forever. I mean, chasing the soreness and thinking that, you know, how sore I was dictated how successful of the workout was. Yeah, the more sore the better. Right. And honestly, this heads you down actually a really bad path to building muscle. What ends up happening is you end up, your body's constantly trying to recover from all the damage you've done that you actually don't allow it to adapt and progress. And this was a really hard thing for me, especially when I started to go from the training of muscle group one time a week, right? Whereas, you know, and when all the stuff started coming out on frequency and frequency, frequency was king and that it was, you know, far superior than the intensity in one workout. If I could hit that muscle three times in the week versus one time really hard, I would see change. The problem was when I first made that transition, I still had that train that hard mentality. And I took it into the two and three times a week and I'm like, I'm not going anywhere. I'm not progressing. I'm getting weaker. If anything, that was because I was hammering my body and I wasn't backing off the intensity. And technically, when we're really sore like that, it's actually technically a sign of overtraining. People don't, if you read the literature on that, you've trained the body so hard that you've gotten really sore. So the idea of chasing really being really sore in order to try and build muscle is completely false. And some of the best gains that I started to get was when I backed off of chasing that, I was able to get three workout, three workouts a week on legs, which I wasn't able to do when I was training that in high intensity chasing soreness. I looked at it more like practice and perfecting the squats and the dead lifts and the movements, not worrying about going to failure. And that's when I started to see my body really progress. But that took me years to get out of this mentality. Oh, same here. So there's two myths around soreness. One is that really, when you get really sore, it means you had a good workout. And then the other one is that you should never train a sore muscle. Those are both two myths. So let's start with the first one. Soreness indicates potential that there was maybe some damage. If you're really, really super sore, you probably overdid it. My best progress in my workouts and my clients was often when they didn't get sore. It was often when we would work out and the next day they'd say, I feel a little bit, but I'm not really sore. That was usually the right. So that's when I would use soreness. The way I would use soreness would be if they were really sore, I know I did too much. Other than that, I didn't really make a big difference. Now the other myth is that you don't train a sore muscle. And I used to fall prey to this when I was a kid where, oh, it's chest day, but my chest is still sore. That means it's still recovering so I can't work it out. Actually you'll recover faster. Now if you have to work it out with a low intensity, you're not going to go to the gym and beat the crap out of yourself again. But if you're sore, sometimes the best thing you could do is stretch the muscle and exercise it, work it out a little bit. And you'll find that the soreness will actually dissipate within the workout. Like right then and there, you'll start to feel the soreness go away and then you'll start to recover faster. Yeah, as long as the intensity is appropriate. That's right. Intensity has to be appropriate though. So that way it's restorative. Yeah, I think, and this is a tough one, especially when you're first starting out because all this novel stimulus, all this new stuff that you're trying to learn, like your body's going to react to it inevitably. And so finding that right amount, that right dosage of stress within each workout really does. Like it takes practice. And so as I've gotten older, like I've definitely tried to voice like less is more. And like that used to never be my message. It was always like, oh, you get over it, you'll get through it. And like it's really not that advantageous for you to blast yourself like right out of the gates like you would think. So be mindful of that. Like there's going to be soreness involved, but reducing that and trying to find the right dose of exercises and to build upon is much more effective strategy. I like what you said, Sal, about like the way you use soreness. That's how I use it now. Like I still use it as a gauge, but it's more so to tell me I overdid it, right? That's not like I was a young kid. Lifting, I used to chase the soreness. And it used to be like, you know, if I wasn't like crippling sore, it was like, oh, I didn't get it hard enough. I didn't do enough. I didn't do enough where it's, I have kind of the opposite idea now. It's like, okay, if I feel really sore or even if I just feel pretty sore, I'm like, ah, I overreached more than I need to. I want to feel like I just, I could tell I worked out. That's it. The next two days, I want to feel like, oh yeah, I could, if I flex that muscle, I can feel like it's been worked and it's a little sore. But if I'm limping, you know, or someone pokes me in the chest and I'm like, oh, you know, if I'm sore to the touch, that's way overdoing it. I did not need, I didn't need to stretch that far to get the muscle building benefits of not only the breaking down process, but also the adaptation process. So, and it's a very, that's a sweet spot. That's what you're trying to do. You're trying to stretch your capabilities just enough that the body is forced to adapt a little bit. And maybe there's a little bit of damage done that you have to repair, recover, grow and strengthen. But what you don't want to do is overreach so much that it's one, going to hinder the next workout. And two, your body is taking most of the nutrition into prior to just recovery. And it's actually impeding on your workouts in the next couple of days. Healing and adaptation for the sake of this argument are two separate things, okay? Now they do oftentimes happen at the same time, but healing does not mean adapting. So just because your sore and your body heals, it doesn't mean it's going to go then and get stronger. And in fact, if you're listening right now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you're plateaued and you're getting sore every single workout and then you're not sore and then you work out and then you're sore and then you rest and then you're not sore and you work out and yet you're in the gym and you're not stronger. Your body's not changing. Muscles aren't building. All you're doing is healing and all you're doing is creating damage and healing, damage and healing. You're not allowing your body to adapt. Adapting is on top of the healing process or again, for the sake of this podcast, you can consider it as something separate and getting too sore, creating too much damage. All that does is makes your body need to heal. It doesn't even think about adapting. Doesn't have time. Doesn't have resources to do so. It's just going to heal. That's great. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're trying to progress, then you're just spinning your tires in the dirt. Next question is from PhillyFan1728. I see the West Side Barbell Guys doing heavy box squats. Is there a benefit to this compared to traditional squats? If so, what and why would you incorporate it into a program? I love box squats. Box squats, box squats were one of the ways I got my squat up to the only time, the first time I ever did, and the only times I did over a 400-pound squat. It was the box squat that took me to the next level. Now, what I take from the box squat, so to do a proper box squat, by the way, is you get under bar, like you're going to do a squat, you take a low box. Actually, you can use different heights, but I would pick a box that would have me at the bottom of my normal squat. Your end range squat. My end range. And I would slowly lower myself down. I'd sit, I'd stay tight. I wouldn't bounce off the squat. I've seen people do this on a box where they use it as a tap or what. Or they rock back. Or they rock back. I would sit down on the box, stay tight. I'd wait about two seconds, and then I'd stand up. And what I took from that was the strength at the bottom of my squat got so much better. It made me way stronger at the weakest part of my squat. And I think it's because when you're at the bottom and you sit there for a second. You're at a dead stop. You're at a dead stop. And you're getting rid of a little bit of that elastic rebound that you get from the bottom of an exercise. You have to lift from almost a dead position. I would make the argument that similar benefits is pause squats. You're taking momentum out, right? And I think that with squatting and less so with dead lifting, but with squatting, especially you get that major rebound effect of bouncing off the back of your calves and the release and then pop back up. Whereas if you stop and you pause for two or three seconds and then come back up, I mean, that's very similar to the box squat feel where you're sitting, you're completely stopped. And then you could also, instead of using the box too, you could also use like the rack and come to the bottom until the weights hit the rack and then you're at the bottom and then come from a dead stop like that. You can, but the box is a little different because when you sit on it, even though you're staying tight in your core, your muscles do relax far more than if you're supporting it at all. Right, right. And so you kind of sit down, pause for a second, come up, and the carryover, the reason why the guys from West Side Barbell did it was because of the carryover. When you got stuck in your regular squats, you started doing some box squats, all of a sudden your regular squats start to go through. You're training the recruitment process. You're enhancing that in the most vulnerable part of the exercise, right? The one where you're down at the bottom of your squat, typically you're not going to produce the most force in that position. And so to then fixate on that part of the exercise where typically you don't have that much force production, now let's train that to really hone in and focus on generating more force without it, it's going to benefit you tremendously. Now, we're making the case for how great they can be. I'm going to make the case for the other side too, that it's not the most valuable thing for the average person. I think more people would benefit from working on their squat depth and getting better range of motion than loading the bar heavier and shortening the range of motion up and going heavy. As far as the carryover it has for strength and building a squat up, incredible. So I think it's an incredible tool like many other tools and that's the reason why Westside Barbell uses it and does it. But for the average client, I had more people that were stuck at not being able to get a squat 290 or beyond 90 and so putting a box underneath them where they don't even hit 90 degrees or barely do hit 90 degrees normally what people do with box squats too is they load it heavy, really heavy. I don't see a lot of value in that for the average person. I use box squats more for the average person to actually treat, to teach form. Yes. I was just going to say, I was going to give you some pushback because I loved box squats for the average person. For former, like to teach them how to sit, like it was a great way to teach someone how to sit back. Like if you get a client and trainers will understand this, they're listening. You know, sometimes queuing, hinging at the hips is like what the fuck does that mean to Susie who's, you know, 65 and is never fucking, doesn't know what that means, right? But telling them to sit back on the box. And because the box will catch them, they're not afraid to sit back. Exactly. So they get more comfortable with the movement pattern of sliding the hips back and sitting down into a seat or a chair. So that's how I use the box rather, which is not how West Side Barbell, West Side Barbell is using it for what we talked about at the beginning, which is building strength, tons of value for it. I think it's amazing for those reasons. But when I think back to the average person that I train, which is I think the majority of people probably listen to this podcast, I'm not really using box squats that often, unless it's somebody who's like really new. I'm teaching how to hinge back. But if it's like the average person who's been weightlifting for a couple of years, it's just not a tool that I use that often. So the first time when I started doing box squats with other people, it was, this is when I started to understand priming. This is box squats actually are what led me to really start to understand the difference between priming and warming up. Because I noticed when I'd have my regular clients do box squats before they squatted, their squats looked better. And it was because exactly what you're saying, it taught them, it got them in the right recruitment pattern and feel. In fact, MAPS and Abolic box squats are put in there before traditional squats, specifically for that reason. This is before ever ever talked about or created a program like MAPS Prime. Well, and I too, I think that it teaches supportive muscular tension that is necessary in that position. Because a lot of my clients would go through the movement of it, but then they would bounce back up off the joints. And so you would see them actually relax down at the bottom position, which was very common because you could utilize that elastic spring effect. And that's something we're trying to teach against because the more you load, now it's going to compromise the joints down the road. So I'd looked at it as a great way to then teach. So now I'm at this bottom position, I have no momentum to spring up off of how do I get up? You have to really utilize your central nervous system, recruit and squeeze. You got to be tight. Your muscles have to be really involved that way. All right. Next question is from Bear Bowen. What are some causes of the obesity epidemic? Oh man. Did you see my post that I like to pull and trigger people? Which one was it? It was on the study that you shared in the intro today. The obesity, I actually- I don't think I shared it. No, you talked about it on the intro to the show. Did I talk about it? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Did we talk about the show? I don't think so. I don't know. No, I don't think we did. Oh, we didn't? No, no, no, no. Oh, we talked about it before. I was going to bring it up. Yeah, we talked about it before. Oh, so there's, I mean we should talk about it right now then there's a, you know, somebody shared in our form a really great article I shared in my stories earlier the last week. And it's showing that by 2030 that more than 50% of our country will be considered obese. But if we just keep on- It stays on the trend. Which, I mean, it's, we're not slowing down. It doesn't look like any of it's slowing down. The trend's technically speeding up. So it looks like that that's the direction that we're going. And so I, on my poll, I did a poll saying that, do you think that the healthy at every size is positively affecting this or negatively affecting it? Everybody said negative. You know, there's a lot of people that, there's 4% of my following that disagreed. Well, so you know what's happening? We offended somebody on that last topic, by the way. I'm sure we did. Yeah, I pissed somebody off when I went on my rant about how terrible I think it is. It's not the cause of the obesity epidemic, by the way. I don't think that's the case. Oh, no, no, no. I think what ends up happening is when you get enough people that are in a category, then they start to, it's, they start to demand being treated a particular way or whatever, you know, like when airlines get sued. And, you know, they're changing the size of chairs now. They're saying, changing this, like extra-larges aren't the same size as they used to be. Extra-larges now are bigger than they used to be. Yeah, they start to normalize it on all levels. Well, and because it comes, because it's normal. When half of everybody is obese, Right. It is a normal thing, right? True. Well, okay. So I have, there's been a lot of theories as to what is cause, now, of course, if we boil it down, we really break it down, we're not burning as many calories and we're eating more calories. And that's a duh, right? But why? What exactly has happened to cause that? So there's two things, the lack of burning calories. Well, that's an easy one. Life has gotten much easier. Things have gotten automated. You don't, you know, washing clothes now. We're not done by hand. We don't have to carry jugs of water everywhere. Jobs are typically behind a desk now where they used to be very, very physical. So we're just, daily life is just far more sedentary. But I don't think that's the main cause of obesity. In fact, when they do studies on that, they find that the lack of calorie burn has a small, maybe a small part to blame of the obesity epidemic. Really, the big chunk is how much more we eat. Yeah, I think it's really the combination of the two of them, right, though? Cause you're right. Like when you look at, it's far easier to sit down and over consume 700 calories than it is to take a daily habit that's changed now by 700 calories, right? Like even somebody who, let's say like a carpenter versus a engineer at work all day long. You know, the carpenter doing a physical activity, and by the way, his body starts to adapt to that after he's been in carpentry for after six months. They're not burning as many calories as you think. They're not. They're not burning that many more calories more than the engineer who's sitting. They're healthier. Right, exactly. But they're not burning that many calories. So that's the reason why that study is true when you read that, that you're right. But I think the combination of a sedentary lifestyle with the overconsumption and how easy it is to consume calories is just the fucking recipe for disaster. What you have is, and we'll start with America cause we started the trend, right? When we talk about western dietary practices that are contributing to obesity, America started it. Now, how did America start it? Why is it that way? Okay, so America became one of the wealthiest countries, the fastest, and we had some of the best markets in the world. And what do markets do better than anything? Give people what they want. They give people what they want. So if people really value shoes, then the markets can produce a shit ton of awesome shoes. If people really value the way food tastes, if that's what we value the most, more than anything, is I want food that tastes really good, the market is going to create that as much as possible. The second thing that Americans, or that people in general, really value is convenience. We want tasty food that doesn't take a long time to make. In fact, I don't want to make it. I want to buy it and I want to be able to eat it. And so we have this huge flood of hyperpalatable processed foods that started to come into the market. And so that's the main cause of obesity because that's what causes people to eat more food. Now, we used to think it was sugar, carbs, fat, people are eating too much fat. We got to make everything low-fat. And then what do food manufacturers do? They find a way to make food tasty without fat by adding more sugar. Oh, no, it's too much carbs. Cut the carbs out. So then food manufacturers figure that out. And they're, oh, fat's okay now. Let's make food with fat or whatever. The bottom line is super hyperpalatable foods encourage you to eat more. That's what they do. They're designed to do that. And they do it in such a way that it's almost, I hate to just use the word unfair, but your body's natural ability to tell you to okay, you've had enough food. It gets a little hijacked. And studies now show that people will eat about five to 600 more calories a day when given access to hyperpalatable processed food versus whole natural food. Even when people aren't, they're not counting macros or anything. They're just going about their day. You'll eat five or 600 more calories of processed food than you will other foods. So when you look at the rise of obesity in America and you slap on top of that a chart of hyperpalatable processed food penetration in the market, they match. Americans used to eat homemade dinners and those started to kind of fall out of favor, more and more processed food. Homemade breakfast, homemade lunch, homemade dinners, those started to fall out of favor. More and more processed food as that started happening, more and more obesity. And it's just, and every time another country adopts our, you know, these types of foods, you look at Mexico for example, their obesity exploded over two decades. They went from having no obesity becoming one of the fattest countries in the world. I also think that us having obese kids now is greatly contributing to that. I mean, just a couple of decades ago, that was rare. It spreads everywhere. It was rare to see a child under the age of 10 or 12 that would be literally like obese where it's extremely common now. And I think a lot of that has to do and, you know, to again kind of debate the movement point because, you know, I was a kid who could get, I ate a lot of, I ate shitty food and candy as a kid growing up. And I got away with it as a kid because I was extremely active. I was playing all the time. Like all day, all day I was playing. Like my parents would have to settle me down, like sit me down or bring me in the house. Like I was not sitting on a phone or on a computer or an iPad all day long. And then also shuttling all that crap. Yeah, I was eating Slurpees and having candy and eating desserts. And I was doing a lot of that stuff as a kid, but I was also digging holes and building forts and fucking playing tag and playing flag football. Like, I mean, all day long. Yeah, to me it seems like we started out, like we've solved all these problems for adults in their jobs. Like less, you know, laborious jobs that we had to do. And like now we can kind of sit in the comfort of our own chairs and on screens. And, you know, now it's trickled into play. And you see this a lot with kids now where it's like, you know, lots of the entertainment and the excitement is revolves around video games. It revolves around, you know, whatever the latest social media thing is that they can interact with, you know, and they're just not outside being interactive, like and using their body to do things as much. But there's another part to that. Yes, you burn more calories because you're playing all day, but you're also too busy to eat. So when- Right. It's a, it's a- Yeah, because when I was a kid, if we were out all day long, I wasn't snacking all day long. That's why the study of showing that like, oh, when you look at it just like, how many calories more they're burning, it's also affecting that you don't have time to sit in front and eat. And sitting in front of a fucking, a screen being sucked into a video game. And the pantry's right there. Right. I mean- Much easier to sit there and suck on sodas and- Even like these, like my kids are in sports and like half the kids will come in, their parents will give them all this junk food and shit to fuel, quote unquote, their activity, you know, and so it's like, they're getting activity, but now they're pumping them full of like cookies and all this bullshit before they even get started. My mom used to have to chase my siblings around to make them eat. She used to have to chase them because they didn't want to stop playing. Yeah, that's how we were. So like you'd eat breakfast and then you'd be playing and then lunch, you'd come in and eat whatever your mom made real quick. You'd come in just starving, like, ah! And you'd eat it real fast and get the fuck out. Well, if you're on your computer or on an iPad, all watching TV all day long. You're shoveling food while you're- The food's right there. And you're mindlessly eating. And then of course, again, it's at 100%. I place most of the blame on the hyper-palatable food. Now this makes the argument for why people need to be healthy because remember, markets reflect what people want. And anytime we look at markets and we think, oh my gosh, this is terrible. Why are we making these things? Why are we feeding ours? Because we're paying for it. If humans were truly healthy in the fullest sense, the decisions that we would make and the value that we would, the values we would have would push the market to make things that were better for us. So if everybody valued real whole foods and if everybody really understood the true value of food and wanted to be healthy and enjoyed eating certain healthy things because they loved themselves, the market would go in that direction. But the problem is people have a bad relationship with food. Food is a way to make yourself feel better about your emotions or your anxieties. You only value food for its taste. Ask somebody, next time you go out with your friends and you say, hey, what do you guys wanna eat for lunch? 100% of the decision is based off of what they is gonna taste the best. None of it's gonna be like, oh, you know what? I think I really need to eat some vegetables for my digestion or yeah, I'm feeling kind of low energy. It's always like, oh, I don't feel like Mexican. I feel like, oh, you know, it's really good. Let's try eating. It's all based off of the taste. So when you go to the grocery store, all of the foods that were made and manufactured are all, I mean, all the money goes into making them as tasty and enjoyable to eat as possible. Not inherently a bad thing, but if that's all you eat, you're gonna eat more. And that's 100% what caused. And again, when you look at countries that adopt this, the more processed foods they start to eat, the fatter and sicker they get. Again, Mexico is a phenomenal example. It was like 20, 30 years ago, obesity was rare in Mexico. Today, I believe Mexico is either mirroring America's obesity rate or might even have surpassed us because they started to eat a doctor. I've heard this from a lot of immigrants coming in and culturally like getting into like the way Americans are eating with the product. And it just like totally affects them. All of them get obese. And I don't wanna demonize processed food because by no means does a day go by that I don't have something that's processed. So I wanna make that clearer. But you're aware. Yeah, so I think it's just that, but a bulk of my food still comes from whole foods. What happened was we came up in a time where we're at one point, we were mostly eating whole foods, then processed foods came in and then it went from being whole foods, a little bit of processed foods, whole foods, then half processed foods, a little bit of whole foods, mostly processed foods to now all processed foods for a majority of people. And that's where we went really wrong. It's not that you can't have something because so much is processed. Our protein powders process that we talked about today, that's processed, right? So there's so many things that are processed. And processed foods allow food to be transferred and moved and allows them, and it's fed a lot of people. There's a lot of value to it. But I think you have to be aware. Yeah, you just gotta, you just have to be aware of how much of it, and if it's making up a bulk of your day and a bulk of your eating it, it should be mostly- You have to be conscious of it now. Right, it needs to be mostly whole foods. And then you use those processed foods, I think, the occasion when it makes the most sense. It's one of the main reasons why I fear the demonization of meat that we're starting to see in a lot of these documentaries and stuff is because a lot of people aren't gonna go vegan for the right reasons. They're going to just avoid meat. And if you look at the typical person's diet, the typical American's diet, it's mostly processed food, but the very few things that are unprocessed tend to be what? Chicken, meat, eggs, milk. So then they're gonna be afraid of those things, and now you've eliminated all their whole natural food. All processed foods. Now it's 100% processed food. If you look at Europe, for example, Europe's obesity rates are climbing, right? Starting to match ours. But one country in Western Europe kind of fell behind with the obesity that was Italy. For a long time, Italians had some of the lowest. Now it's not like that anymore. Their obesity is climbing quite high, they're starting to climb pretty high. But they had low obesity rates compared to other countries. Part of the reason for that is because Italians are, they have a pride in homemade foods. They have a culture around it. So they resisted for a long time the processed food culture. Now they didn't win. Processed food has won, and obesity among Italians now is going through the roof, including- Shift-Chorities made its way. But I remember, I remember there was a story, this was maybe 15 years ago where a McDonald's opened in a town in Italy, and the Italians protested it and made it shut down. Cause they're so like, no, we love our homemade food or whatever, but it actually protected them from obesity for a little while now. Now they're climbing, it's a little terrible. And with that, go to mindpumpfree.com and download all of our resources and guides. They're free, they cost nothing. Mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mindpump Justin. You can find me at Mindpump Sal and Adam at Mindpump Adam.