 In this episode of mine pump, we answer fitness health questions from people who are listeners like you. What they do is they go to our mine pump media Instagram page. They post a question underneath the quaw meme. That's Q you a quaw. Yeah. Don't ask. And then we pick the best questions that we answer. But at the beginning of the episode, we talk about, uh, current events, our lives, we become interesting articles. Sometimes we mentioned our sponsors. Here's what we talked about in this entire episode. So we started out by talking about the commercials against CTE. This is the brain trauma that people get from it's worth the watch. It's pretty shocking. Yeah. So they're trying to, trying to tell us that kids playing football is like smoking cigarettes every day. It's kind of interesting. Then we talked about Coca-Cola's new subscription model. That's going to be very interesting. Uh, we talked about how GNC is closing a lot of their stores. That's the, the popular supplement company that brought me to talk about supplements and CLA conjugated linoleic acid. This is a fatty acid that has been shown to burn body fat and build muscle when calories are equal. And you'll find higher concentrations of CLA in grass fed meats versus grain fed meats. So if you eat grass fed beef, for example, more CLA in it, then you'll find in grain fed meats. Now our favorite source of grass fed meat is butcher box. This is a company that delivers grass fed meats to your door. They also deliver heritage pork, uh, bacon that is minimally processed. It's a great company to get your meat from. And again, it's delivered to your door. Unlimited bacon, uh, right now, isn't it? No, no, no, it's free. No, right. So butcher box is one of our sponsors. If you go to butcher box.com forward This is what you will get free ground beef and bacon plus $20 off your first box. Go over there and check it out. Then we talked about Justin's Christmas dinner raffle. Uh, they were giving away some prizes. His kid said 666 at one of the raffles. That's sex, uh, which led me to mention, uh, one of our other sponsors, NCI. This is a certification course, uh, that focuses on nutrition. They have a huge giveaway. Okay. So this is for everybody listening right now. If you go to NCI certifications.com forward slash mind pump, you'll get a free thyroid masterclass certification. It's free. It's a $600 program for free. You can also enter to win an additional $500 gift certificate towards their level one and level two certification. So make sure you go to that website, sign up. It's unlimited. So go check it out. Then we talked about long rest periods for building muscle. I talked about a study on lifting to failure. We talked about brightness and sleep, how the brightness of your lights affects your sleep. And then we got into the fitness questions. The first question was, what is your favorite way to develop forearms? So we talked all about forearm exercises and lifts and ways to train your forearms so that they look better. The next question, this person wants to know what the optimal way to use trigger sessions is now trigger sessions are unique to maps and a ball that's one of our workout programs. Trigger sessions can be added to any workout though. So if you want to learn how to use them, make sure you listen to that part of the episode. The third question was this person wants to know how to help people who have trouble with sugar. Sugar tends to be a trigger food for a lot of people. Uh, so we talk all about, uh, you know, ways to avoid the binging that can occur sometimes when you restrict yourself strategies. And then we also mentioned magic spoon cereal. Uh, it's a, it's a cereal that's high protein, minimally processed. It's one of our, it's like kid's cereal that's high in protein. It's crazy. It's awesome. Anyway, we have a hookup. Go to magic spoon.com forward slash mind pump and get yourself a discount. The final question was, is a plant based diet superior to a meat based diet? So we talked all about what best diet, uh, what diet is best for you? That was my English. I was talking like Yoda there for a second. Also this month, maps aesthetic is 50% off. Now maps aesthetic is our workout program designed for people who want to change the appearance of their body. They want to sculpt and shape their body like a sculptor or like a bodybuilder or bikini competitor. It's a very effective program. It is advanced. So make, so make sure if you sign up for it and do it, that you have some training experience. Here's how you get the 50% off. Go to maps black.com and use the code black 50 B L A C K five zero no space for that discount. Yeah. You just tell me when we're all ready to rock and Andrew, you get some of that Bailey's in your car. Rock and roll. You passed. Oh man. Pass. What? He doesn't drink on the job. Yeah. What the hell is wrong with you? I know. Come on, dude. It's the holidays right now. Go a little easy on these guys. Yeah. Huh? That's why we couldn't tell him, bro. See? That's what it was. I knew it was something. All I heard from the back was, don't tell South. I'm like, are you giving drugs to people again? In his 20s they used to call him Santa Claus because he was the drug guy, dude. Now like he's fucking the miser. He's the Grinch now. Yeah, he is the Grinch, dude. Just fucking coal and everybody's stocking. You follow Adam's lead. You might not make it. He's like Ozzy Osbourne. Some reason he's still alive. Who, by the way, is gonna live of ants? Who's gonna live to be 110 or something? I know. Keith Richards, like they've taken all the drugs and they're gonna live forever. What's the other guy? Ted Nugent. Well, he doesn't take drugs though. Nugent's is like straight edge. He's just crazy. He's crazy. I told you my theory on that, right? Why they're still alive. Because their body adapted to all that stuff and they're resilient. They kill all the weak cells. Yeah, you're absolutely right. They're like natural chemo. That's really what it is. So many drugs. I believe there's a little science to that. I think that's true, dude. It's like the Spartans. They used to kick all the weak babies. Our bodies are adaptation machines. Do we not agree on that? Yeah. Okay. So if you were hammering it with all these drugs all the time and you actually survive it, the body probably becomes very resilient to that. And then if you decide you don't, it's like the strong cells survive. Yes. Wow. That sounds very scientific. Yeah, you filter it out. Actually know what I think it is. This is what I think it is. I think that it's just they already or the kind of people that can survive those things. And so what you see is the leftover because I can tell you something right now. Ozzy Osbourne did not live that way. He probably would still be alive, but he probably be able to talk. Yeah. You know, he can't really talk anymore. You know what I mean? He kind of moves funny or whatever. I love Ozby by the way. I was watching TV last night and this was on YouTube TV, I believe. And I was just like completely shocked. And I wanted to kind of show you guys like this commercial spot that I saw and get your reaction and then we can kind of discuss what they're trying. What were you watching? What's on the TV? Yeah, that I just I had Doug kind of loaded up because this was a campaign from basically CTE. So that's this this organization that's trying to address CTE and it's like a flag chronic traumatic cephalopathy. This is the title says tackle can wait concussion legacy foundation. Right. I can already guess what this is going to show. Okay, go ahead. Let's let it roll. Is this going to be like your commercials? Like this is your brain on drugs? And yeah, I mean, it has that shock value to it. I just thought it was interesting. You know, there's spin on it. So let's see. I want to see the concussion legacy foundation. There's a bunch of kids playing football, obviously, tackling passing cigarettes. The coach is like passing out cigarettes. The moms lighten it up for the kid. Oh my god, what a hilarious commercial. Kids, you start tackle at five to 14 or 10 times more likely to get brain disease CTE. That's it. That's the entire commercial. It's like, you know, it's funny. That's brilliant. Right. It's smart. It took, you know, two, two decades, I would say, for the word to get out on how bad cigarettes are. And now that like that's the consensus, now everything is compared. It's the go to. It's like Nazis, you know, it's like everybody's everything evils compared to Nazis. We're guilty of doing it too. So I'll just mention a study the other day that compared, you know, the the not healthy relationships with smoking cigarettes every single day. It's a really dude. It was, it was, it's a different thing when you compare it to it and then you watch little kids lighting up cigarettes and smoking. It's so absurd. I think that was pretty funny. You know, that's a very smart commercial. They make a really good point, but the problem with that is that God, what do you do? Cause here's what I see from this. What they're trying to say is don't, don't have your kids play tackle football. Maybe don't have a box. Fine. But what parents are going to see from that is stay on the couch and don't do anything. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, they were trying to kind of steer more towards flag football, which I don't think they, they conveyed a good enough job, you know, getting people to, to instead of throwing pads on and, and tackling too early, like having them do flag football and then after 14, your chances are reduced quite substantially for, you know, getting CTE, but that's interesting. I can get behind that. I thought it was the other way around. So the, the older you get, the less likely it is. I would when you start later, it's, if you start too early, it's like the volume of it, you end up, the brain is still developing. I got to look, I want to look this up. I want to look up the studies and compare them because sometimes they'll take results and they'll spin it a bit. Yeah. Because okay. Is it, are they more likely because their brains are developing and they're tackling? Or is it just because they've just been tackling for more time? Because I would, because here's the thing. Okay. Maybe the brain is more vulnerable when they're younger, but the likelihood that they get hit by a hit that would really do any damage is correct. You've got to be much lower. Yeah. Those kids aren't very substantial. Yeah. A high school kid, a high school kid who's at that, about that age is starting to be taught to go take the guy's head off. I'll make, I'll make this case right here that a younger brain is far more plastic in the sense of its ability to adapt than an adult brain. So like if you're a little kid and you bend your head real hard, the, I would think that you'd have the ability to adapt and versus an adult where adults have injuries and then their slurred speech or whatever the rest of it. Yeah. I'd be curious to see that because most of what I've seen promoted is the fact that it's the amount of time and the amount of actual contact collisions. And so it's not even necessarily head trauma as it's actual physical collisions that cause your brain to slosh and hit the front. You know what's unpopular about that? Is that soccer? Oh yeah. Yeah. Soccer. Lots of, yeah, lots of concussions. Nobody brings up soccer but studies show that soccer because of heading the ball. Yeah. So they're trying to change it so that. Or even just bumping into other players. And at a young age, I would think that's far more likely a kid who's nine, 10 years old, someone who kicks a ball hard and then you head it, I would think is far more risky or dangerous than the, you know, nine-year-old kids that are hitting each other with pads on. Like if you've ever watched, you know, Pop Warner football and you see two kids going at each other. Hug each other. Yeah. It's like they're wearing these padded sumo suits. Yeah. And that's not to say there hasn't been cases where something has potentially happened or that freak accident when it's just time just right. It's just I don't like scaremongering or as Adam would say, mongoling. Sounds better with an L mongoling. I don't like scaremongering like this because they're trying to make a good point, but because they're doing it in a way that is, that's, I believe to be ineffective. It's going to backfire. Right. Because I could use the same, I could do the same thing and say children who play sports between the ages of seven to 14 or 10 times more likely to go paralyzed. Yeah. Because why? Because you're moving and you might hurt yourself. No, I know it's a tricky thing because you get what 30 seconds? How are you going to get somebody's attention? Well, you're not, you're not far from this being a serious decision for you, right? I mean, your boys are getting, your boys are getting to that age where Pop Warner football will be coming, right? Yeah. And that's why I've already started with flag football because I do feel that they get a lot out of, you know, the gameplay of it learning, you know, where everybody should be. Like you get a lot of that going into high school, which I think is enough, you know, they don't need to tackle right now. Like that's not something, that's a skill that can develop later when their body is a little more formed, I think. But I mean, I'm not, I'm not a Pop Warner. No, I didn't, I didn't play till I was a freshman in high school. Oh, really? Okay. So now if your boys want to play high school football, you're cool. I mean, yes. But at the same time, I'm still paying attention to the science and the research and, you know, maybe the best techniques or maybe we change the technique of them tackling, you know, I don't know. Well, that's already happening. I mean, you see that in the NFL, like, I mean, we're, it's getting, and a lot of people can't stand it that are, that are fans and consumers on all the flags and, but I mean, they're obviously the NFL is trying to do something to counter this, right? I was just reading an article. This was actually a while ago that there's this new helmet technology that they're researching. I guess is this material that somebody developed that reduces the impact from a hit significantly in the NFL's kind of investigating and seeing if this is something that they want to I mean, they always are. I mean, every couple of years, they do a whole clean out the old helmets. I mean, that was the big thing with Antonio Brown, right? Why Antonio Brown, his whole ordeal was he wanted to play with his original helmet, which is like seven year old technology or nine year old technology. And they were, the NFL said, no, you can't. Yeah, I've actually seen some cool things like with sensors in the helmet, where they can monitor just like a HRV, where they can monitor the amount of impact you've had, you know, throughout the week. And so then they can sort of adjust that based off of practices. So it's like, let's do hitting drills, let's back off hitting drills, you know, or whatever it is. But yeah, dude, again, there's, there's risk in each sport, and there's risks in physical things that you're going to pursue. And so you just got to kind of weigh them out and see whether or not it's worth it. Meanwhile, in Russia, they have MMA with swords and armor. Or just like, like slap fights. Yeah. Yeah, for no reason. Have you guys seen, by the way, I've seen the slap ones, which is funny. They literally just stand there and they just take it like to knock the other guy out of the head trauma. But then there's a, they actually have MMA fights where they're wearing full armor shields and swords. Yeah. Then did you see swords? Did you see that where they have platforms? So they have the shield swords and then they can jump up on a platform and then fight on top of platform, jump off onto people. Dude, one, I saw one fight where the guy gets, he got hit with a sword on the side of his metal helmet, gets knocked down. The guy gets on top of them and just starts blasting him with a shield. I was like, this is in Russia. Yeah, they're like, you pussies. Yeah. Meanwhile, over here, we're like, yeah, yeah, don't play football. I saw some crazy news. Did you guys see the article that I sent over about Coca-Cola? No. Did I? Oh, wait, it was a membership? Oh, I didn't realize. Yes, I sent it over late last night. A subscription? Wait, they have a subscription month? Yes, $10 a month for Coca-Cola. Doug, you got to pull this up. Wait, how much is that in tail? Yeah, what is that? Well, I'm assuming that it's, it didn't show, or I couldn't find anywhere exactly what you get with that. I'm sure we can look it up and figure it out. Yeah, that makes a big difference. Well, why? I mean, don't you think it's going to be unlimited? Unlimited Coca-Cola for 10 bucks? Yeah. Everybody gets diabetes. In America, they'd go bankrupt. You think so? You have free refills when you go to McDonald's? Yeah, but you don't live at McDonald's. I don't, I cannot see, let's see. Yeah, let's look at the details here, Doug. What does that even mean? Maybe read that and let us know what that looks like or whatever. Let's see, the company. I mean, it's our, the stock price has already jumped. From because of this? Oh yeah. I mean, they released some other flavors and some things like that that they attribute to it. Exclusive access to all new flavors. Tell me how, I mean, it's going to be a good deal, right? You don't do $10 subscription fee and it's just like anything else. They've already probably figured the math out on what the average consumer drinks. Okay, so it's the Insiders Club and then what they do is they send you a box. They send you new flavors and stuff every month. That's what it is. Yeah, that's what it looks like. So I'm scanning the article. It looks like that you get a box and every month. How much is in the box though? It's what I'm at. I guarantee it's, you're going to win, right? It's going to be- I don't think it's as much of a value of a volume thing. It seems like this is more of a value of like a, you get to try new cool flavors every month. I bet it's both. You think so? I bet it's both. Of course. I mean, they're not losing. Okay, if- See the first 100, oh there you go. See the first 1000 insiders will get an exclusive first taste of some 20 plus new beverages. That's what it is. No, that's just the first 1000 people to sign up for. That's the incentive to get you in the subscription. But yeah, what is the actual subscription? I think that's what we're trying to dig at. Yeah, if they get unlimited bro, they go bankrupt. I know people, dude, I've trained people. I'm sure you guys have too. I've trained people. My brother back in the day. That drink, they wake up in the morning, Coke, another one for lunch, another one on their break. Well, dude, do you remember double gulps at 7-eleven? Like my brother used to take those down like on our way to church. It's like a leader of- There it is right there, Doug. What does it say? Shoppers have the option to pay for the limited edition boxes for $10 per month or prepay for all six months and save $10 for a total of $50 up front. Yeah, so they're just limited edition boxes. Yeah, no way they're going to do another- I'm telling you, that would go bankrupt. The way people drink soda in this country, people start taking baths in it and shit. You know what I mean? There has to be some research on what the, of all Coca-Cola consumers, where the threshold is. There's always going to be outliers, right? There's always going to be somebody like you said that literally would bathe in it. Baptize Kyle. But I would actually think that there is a larger majority that drinks Coca-Cola once a day or whatever. And if you do the math on, okay, we just got to figure out where that sweet spot is. Yeah, we're going to lose money on Timmy who bathes in Coca-Cola, but we're going to make a ton of money on all that. This asshole is coming into a building, holding like two leaders, just shaking them up. Yeah, I'm fucking balling. Don't worry, I pay the subscription. It's unlimited. Don't use the water to wash the car, we're talking about. Use the Coke. Well, I wonder how many cans or how many liters are in the box, does it say, Doug? It's probably just exclusivity. Like here's your- Yeah, so here's the details on this. Starting in January, insiders, which are these people who subscribe, I guess, will receive monthly shipments of beverages, which can include anything from AHA flavored sparkling water to Coke Energy for six months. They'll also include other surprises, although the company didn't specify what those might be. Surprises. Surprises, our old formula with Coke. The fifth month? There's a Pepsi in there. Yes. The fifth month comes with insulin. Oh, it's month five. It's about time for your insulin. You know, what else I was reading last night is GNC is projected to close 900 stores. Oh, the supplement company? Yes, it's about time. Well, it was only a matter of time, right? Imagine all the people- remember, at 1.2, I talked about potentially working with a supplement shop, right? A shop that actually was in location over off the Bernal, over by the golds over there. Buddy of mine actually bought it from somebody else. Max Muscle? No, it's not Max Muscle. Okay, Nutri- It's bought again by somebody else. Nutri Shop, right? I can't think of his name right now. Supplement stores are not a good investment. No, not now. No. Not now. It used to be. Yeah, they were a cash cow. They were a cash cow at one point. Especially with the location, if it was right next to a gym. Yeah, I almost bought one when I went, before I opened up my personal training studio, what I wanted to do was open up a supplement store. But what stopped me was I was buying my supplements on bodybuilding.com at the time. And I would see that online, you could get way better prices and way more variety. Yeah. And then Amazon started blowing. I thought, this is no way people are going to buy supplements at the supplement store. There's no way. Yeah, it's all retail is suffering. And the margins are shit. They're not good. Supplement market's gotten so competitive that unless you come out with a new product that nobody has, like pre-workout supplements used to have great margins when that market first came out. Now the margins are bad. Protein powder is the worst margins of all. Terrible. When they first came out, when Designer Way, it was Designer Way that really popularized whey protein. When that came out, it was like the, you know, the tube, it's like a, it looks like a cardboard tube, like the smaller serving. What is that, 12 ounce or whatever? That was almost 50 bucks. Back in, I want to say 1998, I would say. I would buy that for like 48 bucks. Whey protein. That's when I was packaging it. Because nobody had it. So I worked in, I worked in a mixing factory. So you're trying to say that I probably had some, some protein that you. Absolutely, for sure. And I, and I mixed scooped all the time on accident. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, there was, there was no regulation. That's what, I mean, that was like really my first introduction to like, how. Did you just like have a little bit for yourself? Like, oh dude, there was, oh yeah. The kid, come on. The kids, we always, oh, missing bag or barrel. Oh my gosh. Yeah, come on. Massive factory. There's probably 30 of us on an assembly line. And I mean, that was the one, what a crazy job. I remember working in the hopper. So you would be up, you would get these. They're to the hopper. Yeah, they're to the hopper. You'd have these like three ton bags that they would take a crane. And it was just full of the mixing powder. And there would be two of them. And they run down this funnel. And my job, if I was running the hopper that day, everybody would rotate, right? Like you wanted the hopper job because you could, you're upstairs by yourself in this closed room with this big giant bag of protein. And you would fall asleep on the bags. And you wouldn't wake up until you hear this. Hopper! People yell at you because you got caught. You know, got stuck a little bit. But for the most part, if you get it going right, it'll just feed down to the assembly line. Just fall asleep. Oh yeah. So, and it was one of those jobs. I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to be there. And you would, we'd all like, you know, row shampoo for who gets to be in the hopper because you knew that you could go to sleep for a couple hours, you know. And every once in a while, someone would bang on the thing and then you wake up. And you get up, you jump up, and you shake the bag a little bit, get it going again. Dude, they used to throw away a way. Way away. They used to throw it away. That was considered like the waste or whatever. And then they figured out that whey protein is a great, mixes easily. Of course it's a good source of protein. So the first ones to really market that made out like bandits because it's cheap. Whey is cheap to buy. But then it's, then you could sell it expensively as a protein powder. Now the margin now are garbage. Now whey protein is, you're not going to make shit off of whey protein. Well, don't you think that's where why the whole collagen thing got really big too is because it was, that was another waste that people were kind of. Collagen was garbage. Yeah. When I, when, when, you know, when I was working out. Just needed a rebrand. Oh yeah. It was exactly what happened. In fact, they got called out. Back then I, do you remember the American bodybuilding? I'm sure they still saw. ABBS. Yeah. The drinks that would be behind the counter at the gym. I mean, that's what speed stack was from. Oh, speed stack. Yeah. So, so when I was a kid, I thought those were magic. I was like, I was like, oh, fuck it. That's all I got to do is drink those and I'm going to fucking blow up. So I'm 16 years old. I start working out the 24 fitness and they have the, the counter. I had a job. I remember the fake recovery ones. Bro. What do you mean? Do I remember? What do you mean? I would start, I would start my workout with blue thunder. That was the name of it. Yeah, I remember. Do you remember blue thunder? Do you know why I like blue thunder? Because I would ask the girl behind the desk. Blue raspberry taste? No, I'd say, can you, oh, garbage. I don't care what the flavor was, terrible. I'd say, let me see, I'd say, let me see the bottle. Remember, this is, I'm still me. So I'm 16 year old me, right? So I'm like, let me look at the ingredients. Like I knew what I was looking at. I'd look at the bottle and it just had the most stuff. Well, this has everything. They just do it all in there. I was like, this is the best. That's the best. So I do blue thunder before my workout and then after my workout, I did. I think it was a minnow 3550 or something like that. And all it was was collagen protein in whatever mix or whatever artificially sweetened. All the leftovers. Oh, it was terrible. And one time my cousin and I worked out hell of hard because that's what we thought we were supposed to do. We spent, I think it was like two and a half hours at the gym. We drank, that might have been the first time I had a speed stack. So we went, we worked out for two and a half hours, pounded one of those, went back to his house and he threw up because of all the drinks that we had. You know what I mean? Oh yeah. Oh, so great. Anyway, speaking of supplements, so you guys are familiar with CLA, conjugated linoleic acid. Yeah. Were we selling those back in 24 hours? You guys were too, right? Yeah, it was part of the, there was a anabolic stack from Evogen or Ergogen. Not Evogen, that's the brand now. Ergogen that we used to sell and CLA, methoxybolic, DHEA. Oh my God, that's right. Creatine, can I remember all of them? I know there was, it was seven. I used to, and it used to retail for like $380 and I put everybody on it. Oh. So that's so bad. 15 year old calcium or something. So bad. I mean, I was taking it too, I believed, you know what I'm saying? Dude, I gave myself that. I'm just a dirty fucking salesman. Like I was taking it all myself too. Oh, you believed the dream. We were drinking the Kool-Aid, you know what I'm saying? But anyway, so CLA is a type of fat that when people, they've shown in animal studies, when animals consume it versus other types of fat, they get leaner and they build more muscle. Human studies show a similar, a less dramatic, but similar effect. So when people eat more conjugated linoleic acid and all calories are equal. So you get two groups of people both eating the same calories, both exercising. This group eats more CLA, this other group eats more other types of fats. The CLA group tends to be leaner and have more muscle. So supplement companies jump on board, right? They start selling CLA products, CLA capsules. The problem with that is that CLA, it's not all the same. CLA, there's different types of CLA, and some types of it can cause more inflammatory type issues in people. So they were doing studies where they were, people were supplementing with CLA capsules, and they found that doing so increased liver enzymes and inflammation of the body. But when people eat foods that are high in CLA, natural forms of CLA, that they actually, that doesn't happen, and they get the health effects. I looked it up. The CLA that's found in meat and dairy, so healthy in particular grass-fed meat. Grass-fed meat has way more CLA than grain-fed meat does. 75 to 90% of it consists of the forms of CLA that are good for you. The CLA that's found in supplements as much as 50% are coming from the forms that are inflammatory. So it just goes to show you. Is this all part of the same conversation when we talk about how it changes the fatty acid profile and how there's more, there's more. There's also more omega-3 fatty acids in grass-fed meat. So grass-fed meat, when people say there's no difference, there is a difference. It's not huge. Like if you're just eating one steak, fine. But if you eat red meat on a regular basis weekly, or like I eat it four or five days a week. Or you eat a lot of high inflammatory foods already and then you're piling that on top of it. That's not ideal. Right. Then you want grass-fed red meat because it's way higher in the good form of CLA. It's higher in omega-3 fatty acids. It's just a healthier piece of meat, so it does make a difference. Speaking of that, you just reminded me. So my last Q&A I did on Instagram, somebody messaged or asked a question about Butcher Box and said that he heard that they are grass-fed grain finished. And I said, I've never heard that. And then I tagged Butcher Box and asked, could you guys address that? And they actually have a whole section on their website. And he sent the link over to me and said, absolutely not. If part of it's saying that they are free-range grass-fed their entire life. There's no grain whatsoever ever fed to any of those cows. Grass-fed grain finished is almost the same as grain fed their whole life. So what they'll do is they'll feed them grass and then for the last part of their life, they'll feed them grain so that the meat tastes. Fatten them up a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, butcher box is 100% grass-fed all the way through. And you know, look, here's a deal. You can taste it. They're also too like, if you're somebody who believes that it changes the way you treat them, like they're free-range, they also get shelter. They get treated way better. They get shelter in bad weather. So they, I mean the- It's better for the environment because of the way that the animals feed and fertilize the ground. They produce less waste. It's just a better, it's a better, if you're going to eat meat, it's the best way to do it by far, absolutely. Don't tell you guys about the other day. We have this like community sort of dinner that we do for every Christmas and every holiday. Like all the homeowners kind of come together and I sent a picture. It was like all like silver hair out there. Oh, you did. I was, we were like the youngest family that were there. Is this the neighborhood? Yeah, it's a neighborhood. So the whole neighborhood comes and they provide us with dinner. It's really a nice thing. But it's kind of a funny thing because like my mom gets really into this where she's, I've told you guys before she's really into costumes and used to make me wear like, for instance, for St. Patrick's Day, I was the only kid that's ever been a leprechaun at school. I thought that was normal. You went to school, your mom dressed up as a leprechaun. Yeah, dude. No one else dressed up. And nobody else was like, nobody else told me. I just showed up and I'm like, hey, nobody else. What grade were you in? I was in probably third grade, dude. Yeah, third grade. High school. And it was funny because like all these other teachers were trying to, yeah, dude, they loved it. Like the other teachers were pulling me in their class and like I did this little Irish jig and I thought, yes, yes, dude. It was so embarrassing. But anyway, I get to relive that now because like my two kids like have to deal with her craziness. Did she make them dress up? Yeah. So they had to dress up as elves, you know, going to the stake and they hated it. You know, I'm like, you have to do it. I did it. So I'm like watching them squirm like, you know, handing out raffle tickets and all this stuff that people coming in. And so like me and Courtney are dying, you know, because they're just like begrudgingly, you know, up there. But then they start getting into it and liking it. And she's dressed up as like, you know, Mrs. Claus or whatever. Your mom? Yes. No way. Yeah. So there was another funny moment. So we get through with dinner and we do in the raffle and he's like, they're calling out numbers. And so there's, you know, my two boys are like calling back and forth, like which numbers in Ethan. Like he calls out six, six, six. And then everybody starts laughing and everything. This is like a, like a Christian community thing or whatever. And like he's, it's like, he had no idea what that meant. And like later on he's asking me, he's just like, dad, what, what's so, what is that? You know, I'm just like, that's the sign of the beast. It's the devil, you know, it's the dark one. Apparently they haven't covered that yet in Sunday schools. I had to educate them on that. You're giving them like some heavy metal. Yeah. Here, listen to this. You gave it to an evil, you know. No. That's a lie. Well, speaking of giveaways, dude, Jason Phillips and his NCI certification. Did you see what they're doing? What's he hooking up this one? I know he's hooking up something else. Doug wrote it down. Doug, if you could scroll for me so I can read, because he's given, okay, here you go. Check this out. So it's the thyroid masterclass. It's a thyroid masterclass. So it's valued at $600. So that's being given away. He's given that away to people who listen to Mind Pump for free. Yeah. Yeah, I know. It's dope. And on top of that, he's going to be choosing 10 winners to get a $500 gift card to apply to either their level one or level two hormone or mindset course. And then they notify people via text. He's going all in with these giveaways with people. And I think it's worked out well because we did the other one. What was it? The gut health one? Yeah, yeah. Huge response. I think you had thousands of people that popped in there to get that. I like it. I like that he's doing it that way. I'm getting tagged in people DMing me afterwards about how awesome that is. So what's cool is that, I mean, that would cost somebody $600 to do that. And just by being a Mind Pump listener, you're getting access to that for free. Like, if you're a trainer and you're listening and you're not taking advantage of free education like this, especially what I really like about Jason's courses is, because he's been a longtime trainer, he's like where we come from where not to, I know we harp on academia sometimes, but one of the harps on academia is that it is, it's just the purely science-based information with not a lot of application behind it. It's like, here's the science. How do I do this? Right. It's like, okay, great. I understand the science now, but what do I do when someone asks me this? Or how do I handle that? Or what are the first steps I should take when I run into this scenario? And a lot of the stuff that he talks about is real-world application and how to take that science and information. And then how do you deal with it with a real client? And so anybody that I've met or talked to on Instagram or Facebook or whatever that is, a trainer and you're not taking advantage of this partnership that we have with NCI right now, I just... Well, thyroid is something interesting, very interesting to learn about. There seems to be a rise in people with thyroid autoimmune type issues. Is it considered on autoimmune? When you have like Hashimoto's or antibodies. Yes. Okay, so some of them are considered autoimmune than some of them. Often, often. So if you have normal thyroid and then you get older and all of a sudden your thyroid isn't working well or you have thyroid hormone but you have symptoms of low thyroid, it could be that your body's developed autoimmunity and there's different ways to test for that. And I'm not a doctor, so this is something you want to go see your doctor about. But you, as a trainer, I think it might be important to be able to identify potential symptoms and know where to direct people. You know what I'm saying? I mean, when I think back to... And this is just, if it's on the rise, I mean, I think just two decades ago when I was training clients, it was, you know, this is common. Thyroid conditions was really common. In fact, I remember that being hit with that as a trainer early on and being like, fuck, what do I do here? That was the most common thing to be medicated for. The most common thing to be medicated for. But it's important as a trainer to identify symptoms and then point... You're not the doctor, right? You're not the one that's going to diagnose and you shouldn't, but it's good to know these things so that you can say, hey, you know what? I want to get this checked out. Yeah, let's go get this checked out and see what your doctor says. Now, how is he... Now, isn't he collecting phone numbers in order to do that? Like, how does that... I know he was doing something different to announce them. If you leave your phone number, you'll get taxed and that's the only way you can get the potential $500 gift card. And that's on our link. That's on the link that we said in the beginning of the episode of the intro. So anyway, cool study. Cool study, but also not cool study. So I'll tell you guys why. I think you guys know why. You're liking to hate it. Yeah, studies showed they compared rest periods and compared rest periods for which one built the most muscle. Here we go. Here we go. The studies showed... What do you guys think? What rest period built the most muscle? 90 seconds. It was the... It was a two minute. Okay, so two minutes. Yeah, so you guys are close. Two minute rest periods, two to three minute rest periods built the most muscle in comparison head to head. Which there's nothing wrong with that. It's actually very true. But here's why I don't like that because that's true, but it's not always true. And it's not true forever. It's not true after six months. Yeah, that's a real easy generic way to say that. Like, it's not true after six months. If you follow that for six months consistently and you don't move out of that rest period, then it no longer becomes the best. And in fact, almost anything else now becomes better. You could go to shorter rest periods and I would be willing to bet you will not... I know you will build more muscle. You go to longer rest periods and increase your weight and intensity. And you'll also build muscle. It's like we say, talk about all the time with everything else. It's... The body doesn't take... And it only... See, studies like this used to confuse me because as an early trainer, early fitness fanatic, I would read a study that said something like this. Me too. And I'd be like, oh, that's the rest. I'm going to rest two minutes. This is what everybody's doing now. Yes. And I remember the first time I messed with rest periods because I would always do long rest periods because that's what I read. The studies even back then showed this, by the way. This isn't like new information. It's just a new study. And I remember the first time I read about supersets and the pump and I said, you know, let me give this a shot and see what happens. And I built muscle. I was like, what the hell? I thought it was... You know, I thought I had to rest long time. No, it's... The novelty makes a big difference. Now, if you measure head to head and you do a short study for three months or whatever, of course, eight to 12 reps, you know, long rest periods, build the most muscle. But if you plan on working out for longer than a few months, you better start messing around with different rest periods because... You know why this is so hard to counter too is because somebody reads something like that or gets told from a trainer or finds learns and then they start to apply it themselves. They like you, see incredible results. And so try telling somebody, you know, it's just like how many times have you tried to tell a client that? And it doesn't matter to them. They're like, I already seen the results. It doesn't matter what you're going to try and tell me I should do. I know that when I started resting this rest period or I started lifting this many reps or training this way, I saw the best results I've ever seen. And it's really hard to get them to look beyond that and go like, yeah, well, that's because you weren't doing X, Y, and Z. Now, it's like the nutrition thing too. I talked to... Just did an interview of talking about this where, you know, we get so caught up in these camps and diets and philosophies and ideologies of training and go, we switch over to them, whether it be vegan, carnivore, doesn't matter, right? And you switch over to it and you see these phenomenal results. And we stay there and we attribute it to the diet or we attribute it to the rest period or we attribute it to the crossfit or the orange theory or the new training regimen that I'm following right now. And it's none of that. It's not it itself. It's what you weren't doing before, what you're doing now. That's what's giving you all the great results. And when you understand physiology, those will sooner or later begin to diminish and it's important that you move out and around. Totally, totally. Along those lines, another study came out about training to failure and they compared groups of men. One group went to muscular failure. The other group stopped before muscular failure. And again, another study shows that not trained to failure produces better long-term results. People just build more muscle long-term when they're not going to that extreme level of intensity all the time. But again, with this study, failure training probably has a place just intermittently. Especially if it's novel. If you never train to failure, a few sets here and there to failure will probably give you some results. Now, when you're reading these studies, are you also diving into what the group looks like how big the group was, how many weeks or months they're actually following it? Yeah, I look at all that. I do. And most of these studies on fitness, here's the thing with fitness studies. They're pretty biased. They tend to be done on college-aged men. They tend to be done on untrained college-aged men. And their studies are typically smaller groups and for relatively shorter periods. And the reason for this is it's hard to get other people to be in studies. It's usually college-aged men who want to make a little money being a study. So they'll sign up for something like that. So you're totally right now. That's what I love about those Russian studies. Which one? They go off on the elite athletes that they follow them for years and then show their progress. They definitely concluded that same fact that intermittently maybe they reach that max effort. But the less frequently that they tap that, the better. Yeah, the communist studies? Where they force people to follow them. Where they kidnap people's kids. I mean, how much more effective that is than voluntary. Trust me, we controlled everything. They were locked in the cage. Yeah, you're not going to refute that. Yeah, I'm sure, yeah. Crazy. Anyway, one last thing. I thought this was fascinating. Read some studies on light and how it affects our sleep. And we've talked about things like blue light and green light and all that stuff. At the end of the day, this is important to communicate. At the end of the day, it's the most impactful thing on your sleep is the brightness of your light. So even though you may be blocking blue light or doing certain things, if you're in a room that's bright and the TV is bright, the brightness of the light is sending the loudest signal to your brain. So at the end of the day, it's important that sure you worry blue blockers and all that stuff, I still think people should dim or turn the lights off, use Himalayan salt lamps like I've been doing. That will make the biggest difference. Why does this seem like duh? Totally right. It's super obvious. Just be dark. Yeah, yeah, just like turn the lights down a bit. But even if you have a bright TV on and like let's say a blacked out room and you have your blue blockers on, you're definitely filtering a lot of that high blue light. You are, but it's still bright, right? It's still a bright light. So one thing you can do, and this is something that I've started doing, is obviously dim the lights. We use Himalayan salt lamps. For watch TV, I dim the back light on the TV, which you can do. You can actually take your TV and make it less bright. Now, for some people that might affect their movie experience, totally get that. But if you're going to do this on a regular basis, it's probably a good idea to dim that. Well, you can set your phone like that too. I set my phone like that. As soon as it hits seven o'clock, my phone switches over to like the really like almost hard to see. It does it? Yeah, yeah, you can change that. And you can also switch the background of white. So right now everybody has like a, like when you're tagged to black. So I switch, mine goes to black, and then the brightness of the screen actually goes all the way down to the lowest after seven o'clock. But it's crazy what darkness does. I mean, go in a room that's pitch black, sit in there for 30 minutes to 40 minutes, and try not to fall asleep. It works on everybody. Yeah. You know? No, I even noticed like, so we've been kind of doing this lately. It's wintertime. It's my favorite time to have like fires, obviously. So I'll go downstairs, our bottom floor is where the fireplace is. There's no TV. There's, we don't have any really, we have one lamp that we normally have off in that room. So it stays relatively dark. And man, I just going down and sitting and like looking at the fire, like in talking to Katrina for like 30 minutes to an hour before bed. Boy, I can, it settles me way down. Night and day difference than that, then watching our favorite show and then going straight to bed. And to your point, even wearing blue blockers, yes, it's better than not when I'm doing that. But it, doing something like that, you know, more organic, I guess you would say, that sitting down and just looking at a fire in the dark with her. Yeah, I had to regulate with, you know, my oldest, he would read all the time. Like even when we, you know, I'd take him and put him down to sleep. He would, you know, turn his little lamp on and kept reading, but then he would wake up, you know, in the middle of the night kept coming upstairs. And I'm like, what's going on? And then I found out later, like he kept reading with his light. And that was interrupting, you know, his whole, his whole cadence of like going to bed and like going, falling asleep easier. And so you started cutting that out. And then like, of course, just like magic, like he's sleeping through the night. Could be worse. Could be doing drugs or something like that. Yeah, I know. Kind of cool that your kid fucking sticks up in the middle of the night. He's like, read all the Harry Potter's now. So first question is from Kerry Jordan S. What is your favorite way to develop forearms? This video you did on our YouTube channel. The one everybody made fun of me about? Yes, I will be the first to admit I did not foresee the traction that that video would get. I remember you brought it up one time. Yeah, I thought that was a joke. Forum training. Yeah, I was like, really, dude? He's like, no, a lot of people ask that. I'm like, all right, whatever, dude. And it's one of the most viral videos that we have. And it's interesting. I didn't think that was such a pain point for a lot of people. I think there's a combination of things. One, it is a pain point for people who have skinny forearms. And think about it. It's not popularized, but the reality is, if you're wearing a short sleeve shirt, what's showing is your forearms. And if they're muscular, you can tell. And it does kind of command a little bit of presence. It's something that, in fact, when women are pulled, body parts that they like most in men, hands and forearms, when it's given as an option, tends to be one of the top things. Are these like baby boomer ladies, though? You know, from Popeye? No. Yeah, that's the only time I knew forearms were popular. No, no, this is, I think this is an evolutionary thing. I can't confirm that. I only know, I've seen arms in general put in there, but I've never seen forearms. Ask a woman, a man who rolls... I mean, I'm not going to argue that much with you because you already won this argument. I mean, the thing went fucking viral. There's your litmus test right there. The other thing that I think is a combination is there's not a lot out there. There's not a lot of information out there on how to train your forearms unless you're like an arm wrestler or a rock climber. Nobody thinks about it, but it's something that a lot of people ask. This is funny because this is literally the fifth question on the meme of forearms. As we were scrolling through picking questions, there was five of people asking forearms. So people want to know. And to your point too, it's dual, right? There's the aesthetic side that people probably want to have nice looking forearms, but it's also probably one of the number one limiting factors for people that are trying to strength train. Like when you are trying to work on your deadlift, I mean, it's my limiting factor right now. Like I've been trying not to use my straps and trying to do a double overhand right now. And I'm frustrated. It's frustrating for me because it's not my legs, glutes, hamstrings, and back that are giving out. It's my forearms. I can definitely pull the weight up no problem getting it off with my back strength. I have a hard time with holding the weight. I got really into forearm training when I stopped using wrist straps and I realized just how weak my grip was in comparison to my back. So I started to read, I found books and magazines for armrests. Arm wrestlers are huge into forearm training. Of all the athletes that are out there, besides maybe rock climbers, arm wrestlers probably have the best, I would say, forearm training. And then when I did Jiu Jitsu and Judo, I also found that was real important because there was so much grip involved. Yeah, grabbing the keys and whatnot. So here you can break down forearm training into a few different categories. One is the static type of training, the isometric holds. Now isometric training, I think, is important for the whole body, but it's especially important for your forearms because much of the work that you're gonna be doing with your forearms involves holding something. So more than any other body part that I can think of, your forearms and your grip require static strength because you're holding on. And it's not that you're not opening and closing your grip as much as you are just holding, closing your grip and then holding. So static training, in my opinion, should play a major role in your forearm training. So what are some things you could do for static? Forearm walk is phenomenal. Excuse me, a farmer walk is phenomenal. Hold two heavy dumbbells or a trap bar. Walk for distance, keep a tight grip. Don't go to failure. Bottoms up, kettlebell press, but not even press, but just a hold and a walk with that is very, very good for training the forearms. Yes, and static, it's all static. Static-wise. Yes, and don't train to failure. So I think a lot of people, when they train their forearms, they'll hold on to something until they can't anymore and they'll drop it. Every once in a while, that's fine, but failure training, just like with the rest of the body, is less effective than going to almost failure. So I recommend, if you're gonna do a farmer walk, do it when you feel like, oh shit, if I walk another five more steps, I'm gonna drop this, that's when you stop. Don't wait until you drop the weight. The other thing you wanna consider with static training for the forearms is static training, although there's a general effect, most of the strength is in the position that you're training your forearms in hand. So what I mean by that is, if you get really good at holding on to a barbell, that's the circumference that your hand and forearm get strong as that. Once you go wider or skinnier than that, you may actually lose strength. So what I recommend is, do static training on different sized grips. So a couple ways you do that is with either a bar, you could wrap towels around the bar to make it really thick, so now your hand has to open up even more, train that static grip. You could do a pinch grip where you're pinching your fingers together like when you're holding a weight plate. You can also focus on each individual finger with different types of plates. So those are the ways I love doing static training. And I'll do just like farmer's walks or hanging a little. Those fat grips are, I mean, a cheap purchase if you're somebody who's really chasing after form strength, and that's a tool that you can use to your point of using different. But I mean, at the end of the day, if you're doing it to get better at your deadlift, which you'll be using a regular bar, it's probably best you get strong holding the bar really heavy and do most of your stuff that... Sure, but the carryover of training in different circumferences really is amazing. Going through that rice bucket, those drills in OCR, when we were filming that, I was like, wow, man, that was like substantial. And I felt my forearms and hands and grip and strength in general. That's phenomenal for stamina and for mobility. But let's say you want to build mass. Let's say you want to build size in your forearms. Right, anyway. Trade them like any other body part, full range of motion, your forearm muscles flex your hand. So that means they bring your hand down. They also extend where they bring your hand up. So those are the two main motions of the muscles of the forearm. But they also bend laterally. It's a shorter range of motion, but there are muscles that flex your wrist towards your thumb and then towards your pinky. Do you do those wrist curls at all, like with the barbell? I used to, yeah. I would do... And my favorite one was a behind-the-back barbell wrist curl. This is where you hold the barbell behind your back, arms are straight. And let it roll down your fingers. You let it roll down a little bit, grip it, and then roll it all the way up. And then my favorite exercise for the top of the forearms is a reverse curl. This is where you grab. And if you want to really hit forearms, go thumbless. So you're gripping it without your thumb. Like flippers. And yeah, and you're doing... I got really good to the point where I could curl as much reverse as I could with a... I used to love that old-school rope where you would sort of roll up, like weight from the ground. I used to do that all the time, too. Now, the cool thing about forearms is once you start to train them, they respond really well in most people. And I think this is because most people don't train them directly. But once you start to train them, they do a great job. If you don't train your forearms now, do not jump into a full-on routine right out the gates because what will end up happening is you'll give yourself a tennis elbow, where you have pain at the top and bottom of your elbow from overtraining the forearms. I suggest start out with once a week some forearm training. Spend about five to 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes on training your forearms. Once that gets easy, two days a week. Once that gets easy, three days a week. Three days a week, spending five, doing like a few sets for your forearms is plenty alongside the rest of the session. You may have to make a forearm mod just because of how much we get this question. Oh, that'd be fun. And that's one of the groups that we didn't do, huh, Doug? Yeah. And I didn't think about that, how much we get questions around this might be worth actually putting that together. There's awesome tools, too, for forearm training that you'll find in arm wrestling circles. Like, there's this one where it's a fat metal grip, and then it's got a chain, and you can attach weights to the bottom, and then the grip rolls. So you have to... It's basically a static hold. I think Jujimufu sells that, doesn't he? He might have that. I think he does. So you stand up and hold it, and you have to grip it, and then the roller makes it more difficult. Here's a great exercise. I love this one. Get yourself a short barbell, and you can eventually attach weight to one end. So it's just one-ended barbell, or just use a metal bar, hold it at arm's length, and then do lateral flexion of the forearm. So it's out at one end or whatever. That one's also phenomenal. Next question is from Ms. Brooklyn11. Is there an optimal way to program trigger sessions? For example, should we do similar exercises and accessory movements to the big lifts we did during our heavy session the day before? I'm glad whoever picked this. I'm glad you picked it because I think probably one of the most popular things that I get in my DMs is related to the trigger sessions. And I think maybe it's been a while since we've kind of gone over the philosophy behind them. I mean, this is really Sal's baby when he created Maps Anabolic. He included these trigger sessions, which I think are absolutely brilliant. It was another one of the things that I remember when I was reading the program when he sent over that I really started to understand the benefits of active recovery and frequency. And so programming it in like that is really smart. Now, I do think that a lot of people kind of misunderstand them and the most common mistake I see with people that are following our programs is too much intensity with them. And they're really not designed that way. They're designed more like just a frequency builder and in active recovery. I try to explain to people. So I came up with the trigger session concept and the reason why I'm explaining how I came up with it is it'll help you understand how to use them properly, right? I came up with this concept after observing the blue collar workers of my family. So I come from a blue collar family. My dad was a tile setter and a stone worker. I had uncles that were in construction. I had aunts and uncles who were male carriers, plumbers, mechanics. And I noticed that and remember, I've been into training since I was 14. So I'd always noticed from that age, muscular body parts on people because it was something that I was into. And I noticed like that the mechanics and plumbers in my families had muscular forearms. Now, these were older men by this point. At this time, they're probably in the 50s and 60s. They didn't work out. They weren't fit. It wasn't like they worked out and they were into fitness. They ate terribly. But for the last 30 years, they were plumbers or they were mechanics. Then I noticed that the male carriers in my family all had muscular calves. I even had an uncle who had really high short calves so that he didn't even have long muscle bellies. But he had this really bulbous short calf muscle. And I remember none of them worked out. And here I am in the gym, busting my ass, working out lifting weights. Meanwhile, they have these muscular forearms or calves or body parts related to their jobs. And when I would go to work with my dad over the summer, I would get sore for the first two weeks I'd go to work with him. For the first two weeks mixing cement and carrying buckets of sand and carrying tools. My hands would get sore. My back would get sore. My shoulders would get sore. But after about two or three weeks, the soreness would be gone and I'd kind of get used to it. And then by that time summer was over and I'd go back to school. So I'm thinking to myself like, man, my uncle's forearms or he looks like he's got bodybuilder form. The rest of his body doesn't look super developed. Lots of butt crack. But he's got very muscular forearms. And I'm thinking the soreness and the muscle damage effects from working with wrenches, I'm sure he was over it by a year. Like a year into being a plumber, he's not breaking down muscle anymore. He's gotten used to it, but he just keeps doing it. And yet his forearms are super developed. So I started to think to myself, I wonder if muscle damage or causing damage, I wonder if that's really the only way to build muscle. It doesn't seem that way. I think that's just sending a frequent signal without muscle damage also causes muscle growth. Now that's not to take anything away from the intense workouts because obviously that's real important. But what that told me was, I bet you I can add something to my intense workouts that isn't going to cause further damage, but that will also send another muscle building signal. Because the big drawback with intense training, the big, I would say the roadblock where the bottleneck is, at some point you can't add more hard workouts. At some point your body just can't recover. If it could, you could just, then great, I would just work out 24 hours a day and I'd get great results. But the reason why I can't is my body can't recover. So it's like, how do I add more, but not damage my body more? So then it came up with a concept of trigger sessions. Now with a trigger session, it's not a workout. The idea is to get a little pump, maybe feel the muscle burn a little bit, and then leave it alone. And the goal is to do this frequently, several times a day, and do this on the days you're not doing your heavy hard workouts. Which this point alone, I think a lot of people aren't doing correctly. Like, because it does state that, you know, like three to four times a day would be like optimal. Like that's, you want to do these frequently because this is that signal you want to keep reiterating with your body and to get that blood flow, because the blood flow helps to facilitate the recovery, then going back into your more intense workouts. And that's just the thing, movement is medicine. This is something that, you know, physical therapists always preach about. You know, anybody that's in the corrective space, you know, we need to be able to shuttle that blood flow, to be able to make, you know, the body, to help it to repair and to replenish everything. Well, that's part of the recovery process, right? More oxygen, more blood, more nutrients. And if you are doing something that's going to pump more blood, more oxygen, more nutrients to that area that has damage to it, it's going to recover faster. We know that the science shows that. Without causing more damage. Right. But that's where there's the, that's the caveat, right? If you actually do that too much to where you cause more damage, then you just get in that recovery trap all the time. So there's a sweet spot and it's, and you're, when you're doing trigger sessions, you're far better off leaning on the too, or too easy than to flirt with too hard. Yeah. Like you're just, and it's kind of like how I also talk about mobility drills. You know, when we do mobility drills, it's not how intense and how hard and how long you can do that. You're far better off doing it more often and way less intense and just more frequently throughout the day. You'll get far better benefits. It's trigger sessions very similar in that matter. And that's why rubber bands were recommended, because it is one of those tools that, that, you know, provides less damaging type of exercise. So you go through that natural strength curve and it sort of like mimics that nicely. Resistance bands are perfect for trigger sessions because exactly that, they don't cause a lot of damage. Also they are convenient because you're doing trigger sessions throughout the day. You could take them with you to work. And you know, yesterday I hit my body really hard in the gym. Today is an quote unquote off date, but today I do my trigger sessions. So for five minutes in the morning, I'm going to do two or three exercises, get a good pump in the areas of my body that I think need a little extra focus. So I'm going to do a little biceps, a little shoulders, a little calves or whatever. I'm not going to make it last longer than maybe five to eight minutes. Then again at lunch, I'll do it again, and then again before bed, I'll do it a third time. And this is what it feels like. When you do trigger sessions properly, what it feels like is a turbo. It literally feels like that. It feels like your current workout has been turbo charged. Your current routine and your progress has been turbo charged. The key though is to be consistent, to do them frequently, to get a little bit of a pump but not overdo it. And I can't stress this enough. If you do this consistently, it will blow your fucking mind. It really will. If you don't do it consistently, it's not going to do much for you. So trigger sessions don't work if you do them every once in a while. They just don't. But if you do them three times a day on your off days, do pick three to five exercises that take you maybe a grand total of eight minutes. Shouldn't be longer than that. Get a little bit of a pump. Then you're done. Do it again later in the day. Then you're done. Do it again the third time. Watch what happens. It's... I will challenge that though, that even just doing them once a day is a big deal. I mean, I noticed that when I first started to implement it into my routine and just being consistent with, hey, on my off days, instead of not lifting at all, I'm going to touch all the muscle groups that are kind of sore from my workout, but just pump some blood into them and be done. 10 minutes, 12 minutes tops. I'm not spending very much time in it. I noticed that it's huge difference, just from one. And then if you actually do discipline yourself to do two, three in a day, I think it's huge. But even just being consistent with on your off days, getting a light pump, ideally... I like bands or body weight. That's what I like. And I know some, you could do enough damage with body weight, but I would do... If I'm doing back stuff, I'm doing something where I'm doing like a... Yeah, I'm using the Smith machine here to do pull-ups on or something, just trying to get some blood in my back. I'm doing chest stuff. I'm just doing push-ups with my body weight, get some blood in there, band stuff for lateral raises. I mean, just... That's all I'm trying to do, shoot some blood in there for a few minutes, and then I move along. And even when I was just doing that one day, one time a day, I saw a big difference. Dude, that was the best shape I ever got in my life is when I do that consistently. So it can be hard to do, but it's also easy once you get to the rhythm. It's easy if you schedule it. So like first thing in the morning, I'm at lunch break, and then maybe before I go to bed or an hour or so before dinner, then it becomes much more convenient. I'll tell you this too, talk about energy. Yes. The energy that you feel from doing this. Right after you do, it feels amazing. Oh yeah, you're waking your body up, waking your brain up. I found myself to be far more productive. I know a lot of you who are listening right now, if you have a desk job in the middle of the day, doing a five to eight minute trigger session, watch your productivity. You feel so much better. So to that point, I actually would use them. So I used them a lot with corrective stuff with clients. So let's say I have a client who is at a desk all day long, and so our trigger sessions, they were less aesthetic driven, like, oh, I don't care about how much I look. I just want to feel better. I don't got chronic back pain. I've got issues from sitting at a desk all day long. So like band pull apart. So I'd say, hey, at every hour throughout the day, get up and I want you to do three sets of 20 band pull apart to try and counter what you're doing by sitting at the desk all around it. And man, that was what they would report back is not only did it feel better on their posture, but the energy spike they get. When you're sitting still and then you're not moving very much, heart rate starts to slow down, not as much blood plumbing to the body, energy levels start to drop down a bit. And just by you getting up, moving around a little bit, pumping some blood, like all of a sudden you feel this surge of energy. That was one of the number one things that was reported from clients when I had them do that. Next question is from O'Borah. What are your top tips to help clients who have trouble with sugar and tend to binge and restrict? How do I help them find a balance between being able to have a little something once in a while without going crazy? Who picked this? You? Yeah, I picked this one. You picked this one? This is cool. Yeah, I knew you had some good tips for cravings of sugar and all that. We addressed back in the day, but this is a common thing that just keeps popping up all the time. And most clients that we see, it's pretty much related to sugar where most of their bad habits stem from. Well, this is also where recently when we signed with Magic Spoon, we got our forum is always quick to be like, it's processed. And it's like, okay, we will always on the show. This message will never change that whole foods are ideal. Eating tons of processed sugar is not a good idea at all. But at the end of the day, I enjoy sweet and I like to do things that I can sit down and feel like I get that sweet feeling from whatever meal I'm having. But then I don't feel like I abuse it and go over the top. And for this, I like products like that because it helps. This is something that's funny that I know it's a cereal and probably most people would eat that for breakfast. I already have like a great routine for my breakfast. I love my bacon and eggs or steak and eggs. Like, and that's a, I love that for breakfast. So I don't need to fuck with that. So honestly, I never even use magic spoon for breakfast. What I use it for is for a majority of my life, I talked about on the show that I fucking eat ice, I used to eat ice cream every single night forever. So I have this crazy sweet and part of that's behavior. Part of that is that my body's adapted to wanting that for so long. So after dinner, I have this sweet tooth where I would want to eat ice cream. And this is where I use a tool like this. Where I can go have a bowl of magic spoon, which, you know, I'm eating two and a half cups, which is like nothing, okay. Gives me 30 something grams of protein, extremely low on sugar. I have it with almond milk or macadamia milk. And it gives me that feeling of I get a little bit of a sweet kind of taste or dessert feeling. I'm eating it out of a bowl like ice cream. And then at the same time too, I'm getting, I'm kicking my protein intake. I would, I prefer to do things like that than just have a boring ass protein shake. If I'm like needing to bump my protein intake, I also have a little bit of a sweet tooth. This is how I use tools like that. Yeah, I'm going to go a little bit deeper with this in the sense that, okay. So the question is how do I, how do I train them to find a balance between having a little of something, you know, every once in a while without going crazy. She also used the term or he used the term binge. This is a symptom of something. This is not, this isn't the cause of the problem. This is a symptom of another issue. And I'm going to, I don't know this person, so I'm going to take a guess here, but I think it's a good one that they are in that restrict binge mentality where they are, they feel like they can't have something. So if you were to offer them a cookie, no, I can't have that would probably be what would come out of their mouth. That almost always results in the opposite when the person finally breaks free of their, you know, their own tyranny on themselves. And then they binge a better approach, one that I found that works for me is to help teach your clients the, all the true values of food. So what are those? Food, it tastes good. That's a, that's a value. It's a real value. We can't deny that. We cannot deny that we value food because we enjoy the way it tastes and the way it makes us feel. So that's valid. We can't invalidate that because invalidating that and saying all food is is fuel. Maybe lying to yourself. You're lying to yourself and that, that can, that can contribute to that. But food also provides us with nutrients. It's also fun to eat certain things when you're in certain places, like eating a hot dog at a baseball game or popcorn in a movie or, or birthday cake at a birthday. So there's, there's context, there's culture. There's sometimes food helps us with our emotions. That's valid. Isn't always a great choice, but it's also very valid. Once you understand and accept all the real values of food, then you can make your decisions based off of that information. So now when I'm going into a situation and I'm presented with sugar or cookies or whatever, I can say to myself, okay, definitely going to taste good. I'm going to enjoy it. I'm, you know, I'm hanging out by myself at home. I don't really need that value. I don't want it. I actually don't want it. I don't want it. Doesn't mean I'm not acknowledging that it tastes good. It means I don't want it because right now I don't, that's not the value that I want. But let's say I'm at a party with friends and we're enjoying ourselves and somebody made cookies and sure physiologically it's not good for me. It's not going to be great for my muscle mass or my fat or whatever. But hey, we're enjoying each other's company. We're having a great time. Right now I value the fact that this is going to taste good. So yes, I want that. And it's a totally different mind. It's a mind shift that you make. But when you're able to make that mind shift, what ends up happening as a result of that, the side effect of that is you don't binge. You just have someone you want someone you don't, when you don't because you understand the true value. There is no, because think of the behavior of binging. The binging behavior has very little to do with enjoying the food that you're eating. Think about the last time you had that kind of binging tendency with something. It wasn't about the food that was in your mouth that you were tasting. It was about getting the next piece in your mouth. Every piece you put in, you don't want, it doesn't matter what you taste, it's about getting the next one. So it's next, next, and it creates that impulsive type of behavior. Binging is not about enjoying the taste. It's not about enjoying the food. Binging is about revolting against your own tyranny of saying I can't. I also think it's great that we live in a time where we've been able to engineer things like a magic spoon cereal, where I get some of those pleasures of what it's like when I, and at the same time, aftermath isn't quite as bad. Not even quite as bad. I'm actually getting some benefits. 30 grams of protein is not easy to come by. So getting, the fact that I could sit down and I can have, or something like halo ice cream, that, you know, the whole pint of that thing is, you know, they have ones as low as 220 calories. 220 calories for me is like nothing. If I ate a bowl of ice cream, which I, or Ben and Jerry's, which I used to do, I was 1500 calories of a sugar bomb. Like I'm asking for diabetes, eating that every single night. It's the same thing. I mean, like I get made fun of by my friends all the time for drinking white claws, but it's, you know, it's like less calories. There's no gluten. Like that. You are a basic bitch. There's like these things there, though, that you just start to evaluate. Like I know exactly what I'm going to feel like, you know, immediately after I go in this direction, or I go, you know, the next day, what that that's going to look like. And, you know, it's a maturity when you start to look at all these things where, okay, I know, I know if I keep going in that direction, it's going to, you know, take me completely off track. But there's a way that I can sort of be a little bit more reasonable with it and still incorporate in my life because I still reap some of the benefits of just relaxing, just hanging out, being social, you know, whatever those reasons are. And here's the big difference. Do you feel like you're restricting yourself from beer and wine? Or do you feel like? No, I pursue that because it's, I get that like calm, like, you know, like nice social kind of takes the edge off a little bit feeling. But I'm not like, I don't feel like. That's the difference. You're not saying I can't. Oh no, I can't have beer. I can only have white claw. Because what will end up happening is you'll have a couple of white claws, loosen up and be like, fuck it, I'm having hella beer. Well, it's the combination of what both you're saying right now. And I agree with you, Sal, like you have to first, those tools are band-aids if you don't first address. Totally. Where this came from. Definitely. And that's where I'm not a fan of that. I'm not a fan of taking a client who abuses sugar like crazy, hasn't even figured out why they do it. Yeah, and then you're like, here just have artificially sweeten everything. Exactly. Here, just have magic spoon all day boxes of it for nighttime. They just binge something that's a little less bad. That definitely can happen. That is still a poor relationship with the food. But if you first teach them to unpack what causes them to do this binge and restrict thing, and they understand, like for me it took me a long time to really figure out like, why do I do this with sugar foods? And then I remembered that when I was a kid, it was very rare that we got treats like Oreo cookies or fruity pebble cereal or mint chip ice cream. But boy, when it came in a house of four kids, it was like... You better eat the shit out of it. You had to eat the shit out of it. Yeah. And I remember as a kid, I remember even sneaking out of bed and coming back and even after I was told I couldn't have another serving, going and getting it because I knew that between the four kids, the two adults, one freaking thing of ice cream doesn't last more than a day or two. And so I would always over-consume and binge in fear that I wouldn't get it. And then you would know that ice cream would come. And then as a kid, I might not get to see it for another three months before it made its way back into our... So you better eat it all. Right. And so I built that relationship from your early ages all the way into... And then guess what happens when I become an 18-year-old adult who makes good money? What do I do? Fuck an A. I'm going to load my freezer up and all those things. Always have Ben and Jerry's on hand. Because I can. Yeah. And so then I went from it being an issue that I had as a child because it was never around. And then I over-compensated as a young adult when I had the money and I could afford to have ice cream for breakfast if I wanted to. And like an asshole, I did things like that because I could. You know? Or sit down watching television with a spoon in the big-ass gallon of ice cream because you can. And so then I went to that extreme for so many years. And so once you realize what your story is and why you do those things, and that's just mine. Like somebody else, it could be they're hiding from emotions or it's a comfort food for them for other reasons. Once you start to realize, unpack all that, then you can start to use tools, I believe, like the halo and the magic spoons and the things like that. And then I see a lot of value in intermittently. I don't eat that stuff every single night. But what I do, it's in my cupboard. It's free. It's in my freezer. And when I'm like, hey, you know what? Great week of training this week. I'm sitting down to watch a new movie we haven't seen yet. I, oh, all of a sudden I get that feeling of, God, I wish I had a bowl of ice cream. No, you know what I have? I have magic spoon in my cupboard. I go get that. And I get that feeling of satisfaction like as if I was having that. And then at the same time too, oh, what do you know? I get some benefits of protein. My dad used to buy a spumoni flavored ice cream. Do you guys know what spumoni is? Spumoni. Fucking gross is what it is. What is that? It's like different layered ice cream. Yeah. And it's got like fruit and nuts in it. Oh, yeah. It's basically, you know what a fruit cake looks like? Yeah. It's like that, but ice cream. And he would buy that knowing. You mean the gift that everybody just regifts and like throws away? But he knew that the kids wouldn't eat it. So that's the only ice cream he would buy. And I opened the freezer like, but finally what we did is we figured out if we scooped out, like if we scooped around the fruit and nuts, we get like the strawberry. So he'd go in there and to be like a whole, like a whole segment missing. I can't be the only kid who did what I did. I know that there's more people out there that grew up in a big family that had to fight for the food. And then when you became an adult, you became an asshole just like me and you filled your cupboards with that stuff because you could and then you over ate. Next question is from Isaiah Mad. Is a plant-based diet superior to a meat-based diet? Oh, God. Yeah. You know, okay. So I'm going to speak generally first, but then we're going to get down to the individual. I want to let out a sigh of like, ew. At the end of the day, I'm going to say this. At the end of the day, my general, what I'm about to say generally doesn't make, doesn't, don't care about that. It all goes down to the individual. But let's start generally first. Generally speaking, when we look at the studies that we have on the healthiest people in the world, a diet that is comprised of a lot of plants with some meat seems to be healthiest, generally speaking. Okay. Not vegan, not vegetarian. I'm saying a diet that is comprised of a lot of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and that also contains some meat. Which doesn't fall in either one of these categories. Well, that's not a meat-based diet. It's not a plant-based diet. No, it's less than plant-based. Although you could say it's plant-based, but it's less than plant-based because it includes more meat than just once a week or whatever. Now, that's what the studies show generally. But here's the problem. The problem is that you have a unique physiology, microbiome, you have a unique life experiences in immune system that really give you a fingerprint. And that means that your body is relatively unique in terms of how you respond and react and feel, here's another big one, feel around certain foods. I think sometimes we separate the emotional connection to food thinking that it's not important. It's extremely important. If you eat something that you, if there's a, there may be a food that provides you comfort, that to me, I look at it, it provides me with nothing. So that may have a different value to you than to somebody else. You can, there are people out there that can eat a very high meat-based diet and be far healthier than if they themselves ate a plant-based diet. And the true, the reverse is also true. So at the end of the day, it all comes down to the individual. So I really despise these type, these general, like, oh no. My disdain is really the superior statement, you know, because again, to get, to take it back to the individual, there's just so, like, there's, everybody's so biodiverse. Like there's so many variables to consider what is going to be most appropriate to your genetic makeup and to what will benefit you the most nutritionally. And so to have these statements like that really just, it irritates me that, because it's an agenda, it's a marketing, it's what's the new, you know, tribal thing where like plant-based is, I mean, it's just getting pushed so hard out there that it just, it makes my skin crawl. I actually, Sal, I don't like the analogy of it's like a fingerprint or you either because it gives people this, because first of all, it's not. Your fingerprint is your fingerprint for the rest of your life and it never changes, stays the same. What is working for you today could absolutely change tomorrow. So it's more unique than that. Yes, your fingerprint is not, it's forever and it's the same. And the reason why I don't like that analogy is because a lot of people, what ends up happening is they follow a typical diet, whether it be plant-based, meat-based or whatever that is, and they have phenomenal results and then they marry that. And what they lacked to realize is that there's a good possibility that it's less to do with the diet that you're now following and it's more to do with what you weren't doing before or what you were doing before that was causing harm. So you were either doing something that you were eating that was not advantageous for your body and now that you've eliminated that because this new diet doesn't allow that, you feel amazing, or there was something that you were lacking and you weren't getting and now that you're on this new diet that is based mainly around that, you're getting all the nutrients from that and so your body responds incredibly. And that's all it was. It wasn't that this diet is great or best for you even, it's just that you were missing something, you now have it and honestly, that could fucking change. You could easily go through a period whether no matter what based diet you're running and over consume in a state where you're in an inflamed state and now you get leaky gut and something from that diet now leaks into your bloodstream you now have an allergic reaction to it in the future and now it's all flipped on its head. That's no longer working for you especially if you're following one of these diets that is very restricted and you have to eat a lot of the same food because that probably increases the chances of that happening. That was one of the things I actually didn't like about when we went on the ketogenic diet was man I found myself eating a core eight to ten foods which I also noticed with my friends that do things like vegan like you find something you find a handful of foods that fit into the parameters of diet and then you eat like 90% of that and then every once in a while you move out. Yeah or creatures of habit. That's going to happen. You want to make things easier for you. Yeah so it's like, I don't know. There's benefits to going vegan. You know that we're not saying there isn't like there's some people that could benefit from that nutritionally and again it usually revolves around deficiencies or not introducing these type of nutrients otherwise but there's plenty of nutrients in red meat that you could benefit from as well so you can't make a blanket statement like that that it's superior. Well there are some general rules. I mean generally speaking don't overeat. Overeating on any diet is not going to be good for you. That's the number one effect. Yeah that's number one. Number two you need to have some proteins and fats. Those are essential. You can't have a no fat or no protein diet. You'll die so there's 100% you need them. Number three heavily processed foods probably shouldn't be a big part of your diet. They should play a small role in your diet. That's a good general rule to kind of live by. Other than that you want to eat based off of what makes you personally feel the best but you have to be honest with yourself too because sometimes you go in with an agenda and you ignore signs and symptoms. Like I would have people messaging me saying hey Sal I've been on this ketogenic diet that everybody's talking about. I've been on it for three or four months. Feel miserable. I feel terrible. When am I going to start to feel better? Like well you're not. It's not for you. Who's stronger? That's not for you. You need to go off of it. Or I've also worked with vegans who went vegan and they're like you know I feel terrible but I know how bad meat is so I'm just going to stay on this. What should I throw in? Like well you should probably throw in some meat. I think you're lacking some nutrients that you can only get from meat. So at the end of the day it's very individual and Adam's completely right. It does change. Your circumstances change. Your stress levels change. The demands upon your body start to change. You may start to develop food intolerances as you get older that you didn't have when you were younger. And you know variety helps quite a bit. Now meat is extremely nutrient dense. It's actually one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. But not only eating meat will you have some nutrient deficiencies. You might start to play in that. Not eating meat only eating plants will you have some nutrient deficiencies. Yeah you increase your risk for sure. Variety kind of helps offset that a little bit. So having a little bit of everything is kind of a good strategy. Very few people should be on the ends of the spectrum. I'll say that. I'll make that statement. Very few people should be all meat or mostly meat and very few people should be just all plant. You'll find most people are somewhere in the middle. The extremes tend to be people who have reactions to the offending foods or whatever. And with that go to MindPumpFree.com and download all of our resources and guides. They're all totally free. You can also find three of us on Instagram. You can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin. You can find me at Mind Pump Sal and Adam at Mind Pump Adam.