 One, two, three, boom, mind pump time. All right, today's giveaway is maps hit. High intensity interval training done right. So we're gonna give away a free program to one of you lucky viewers. Here's how you enter to win. Leave a comment below commenting on the intro. We talked about a controversial topic, white privilege. So give us a comment about that in the first 24 hours under this video. Also subscribe to this channel, turn on notifications. If we like your comment, if you put forth a compelling argument, you will win free access to maps hit. Isn't that great? Also one more thing before we start this episode, we are having a sale on two programs, maps hit and the no BS six pack formula, both 50% off, go find out more or just go sign up at mapsfitnessproducts.com just use the code July special with no space for that discount. All right, enjoy this podcast. I saw the safety squat bar. Am I saying is that what that's called? Safety squat bar or safety bar? You would know that. Safety bar, yeah. It's just a safety bar. I was using it. So I haven't used it in a while. I used it when we first got it, didn't forgot all about it. I don't even know where we put it. I didn't know we had it. I said, so the box of PRX sent some stuff in the other day or they sent us, oh, the new incline bench, by the way, we'll save that for that. They're commercial when that comes back up. Can't wait to use that. Yeah, no, but the safety bar was out. And I was like, oh, when did we get this? It looks like we've had it for months. I didn't even know it was in here. Yeah, so I trained with it yesterday. Okay, so did I. And it was really paying attention to the change in how it feels on my legs. It feels much more like a front squat than a back squat. Oh, that's why I love it. I love it because front squats are hard, dude. I mean, I have to- It's just hard to hold. Yeah, I have to go do a bunch of my shoulder priming to get myself in that position. Honestly, the safety bar is like my lazy shortcut when I know I need to do front squats and I'm like, I don't feel like doing all my zone one stuff. I'm like, I just want to get into it. But dude, I did it and I felt weak as shit. Is the bar way heavier? No, you're just weak, I think. Exactly what it is. I worked at the 225 and 225 was heavy, man. No, that ain't 225, that bar is heavier. Oh, okay. Yeah, that bar's got to be, I would guess, 70 pounds. Oh, okay, that makes me feel way better, dude. I was creeping up on it, I was like, first I did 185 for 225 and I'm like, God, that felt really heavy. I'm like, well, maybe I'm still warming up. Then I moved up to 225 and 225 was struggling for five, dude. Yeah, so as I was doing it, it's very quad heavy, right? Keeps my body upright really good. Fires your core like crazy too. Yeah, so what I did, just like front squats, right? So what I did was is I kept it light, right? So I put just a 45 on each side. I don't know how much that weighs with the bar. It's probably, I don't know, 180 pounds or something like that. And I was just going real slow, staying upright. And then at the top, I was squeezing my quads really hard. I was thinking like, train like a bodybuilder, train like a bodybuilder. Cause I've got that down with my upper body right now, but my lower, my legs, I still, I'm so hard headed. I started loading the bar and I'm like, let's just do three reps. Well, part of that, your legs seem to be resilient to shit because I see some of your leg sessions and I still feel like such a wuss. Cause I did some stiff-legged deadlifts and light, like high rep at light. And then I did front squats or I did the, excuse me, safety bar, five sets and my legs are trashed. Yeah. Yeah, it's all, I was like, oh my God, dude, I see some of the stuff you're doing on your legs. I'm like, there's no way. I do that volume and I'm limping for like the rest of the rest of the week. You know, I saw, it's been a long process of trying to get to that point. I still, again, I still tend to go towards like, just going heavy because the higher reps are so damn exhausting. So I'm just going to go light and focus on form and just screw the weight and just see what I can do. But you know what's funny? I read an article written by, I forgot what it was written by. It was like a strength coach, a well-known strength coach, can't remember his name. And he talked about training for men over 40. And he didn't say the typical stuff, like, oh, reduce your volume and, you know, make sure you don't hurt your joints. He made a very interesting point about lower body training. He said, do less of the high volume, heavy traditional squats, front squats, lunges, do a little less of that and do more sled work. And he made the case that as you get older, because when we tend to have dysfunction or if you've been working out for years, the areas that tend to get issues are lower body, right hips, knees, more common than upper body stuff. He said the sled is so much easier on the joints. There's no negative on the sled, right? Because it's all positive. And you know what? I have to agree because I've been doing more sled and I'm getting so much out of doing the sled. That's really strange you bring that up because just intuitively that's what I've been doing because of my hips that have been a bit of an issue, like doing heavy squats and heavy dead lifts and things like, I've reduced, you know, volume of that, you know, specifically for that reason because I'd wake up and I'd feel like there's just this stiffness, this pain, you know, and also from driving a lot too because I'm just in this like fixed position a lot of the times and then I'm always just trying to correct it with mobility and it just feels like I can't catch up. And so I just started to kind of reduce, I'm still doing like squats and deads but not, you know, nearly as much as I was previous to that but I'm doing a lot more sled work. And yeah, it feels good and it's maintaining my muscle mass at least. So I attribute a lot of that feeling to that. It's that dropping into the hole with heavy weight, right? When you start to really start pushing three, 400, you start moving up on the squat like that. I mean, it's really hard to do a four to five second, you know, negative and most people kind of drop into that hole and you got to think three, 400 pounds on your back, drop it all the way to the deepest part of your squat and then going back the other direction that the amount of stress that you, now a lot of that stress is also what sends that signal to adapt and grow and build a lot of muscle. So there's a lot of muscle building benefits but you got to think that the stress of that also is what we feel a lot. And that's a natural response too. Even though, you know, like I've gone down super slow and I'm doing like some of these pause squats and I love, that feels really good but then once you start loading the weight, you're like, ah, I gotta get up. Yeah, I also think this, like let's say you're four, let's say a hundred represents perfect form and you've been working out for, I mean, we've all been training consistently for 20 plus years. So it's a lot of time training with exercises. Let's say your form is off by 2%. You're not gonna notice for 10 years, 15 years, but over the decades, that 2% is gonna start to add up. And so now you're in your 40s, you know, I've been working out since I was 14, now I start to notice. And then there's this other part that, so that article really, only because it resonated with me, right? Because I was like, I noticed the same thing, like the sled is so much better for even just for building muscle for me than it ever was before. So I started to do some research on androgen receptors in the body. Because, oh, here's the other reason why. You ever notice, I know you guys don't follow bodybuilding like I did as a kid, but one thing I noticed with bodybuilders was as they got older, their upper bodies would maintain, it was the lower bodies, their legs that usually would start to lose some mass. And I thought that's very interesting. I wonder if there's a difference in androgen receptor density or something. Sure enough, the highest concentration of androgen receptors, the receptors that testosterone attaches to are in the upper body, in particular the traps in the shoulders. Right? And that's, this is one of the reasons why they, you know, one of the things, and this is like, I don't know what you would call this, like more rumor than anything else, but I feel like it's been accurate every time I've seen it, is one of the ways you could tell someone's on a lot of gear is their steroids, right? Is that they naturally get big traps. And they don't even have to be doing a lot of shrubs. If you will, because it's such a dominant stabilizer muscle in so many upper body movements. And because of that, I think it just develops so much. So one of the ways you can really tell when someone's probably on a lot of gear is they get these massive traps like out of nowhere. Yes, and if you look at the whole body and you consider evolution, the legs really did evolve to have tremendous endurance and stamina, right? If you consider how we hunted, which was we'd throw something at an animal, and then just run after it until it died, but the upper body was always typically involved in explosive movements, throwing a spear, or then we catch the animal, we have to take it down. And if you look at the discrepancy between men and women in terms of muscle mass, there's a discrepancy in the lower body, but it's the upper body where there's a major, major difference. So I'm wondering if as you get older, the reason why you see the legs start to, it's harder to maintain size there, has to do with the dropping testosterone levels, less androgen receptor densities, and so on. Just a theory, but I did find that, because I tell you what, my legs always, that's probably my best body part. If my quads just blow up, they don't respond like they used to, definitely not. Like when I was a kid, three, four sets of squats and they explode. Oh, you think even more, huh? Oh yeah, my legs. Oh, that's interesting. My legs do not respond. See, now I feel like that's the opposite for me. Well, you had such a, you didn't squat. No, you're right, you're right. You're right, like I avoided a lot of that stuff. So maybe I'm reaping a lot of the benefits from my last like seven years, eight years of training of like really putting a lot of emphasis on deadlifting and squatting, because now I feel like I can do so much less for my legs to maintain the size. Where before, I remember as a kid, I mean, but again, I was leg pressing, maybe I was lunging, which is probably the best movement I was doing back then, but leg pressing and machine, all the machines. And once a week, probably. Yeah, once a week, maybe two times, like when I was really trying to push legs, and I felt like I had very, very little development in my legs were now, so long as I squat every once in a while, and that's what's kind of beautiful about it. I feel like so long as I hit squats, and it doesn't even have to be every single week, if I'm squatting, but every other week or so, and making sure I put enough volume in on it, my legs will maintain just from that movement alone. That's how, that's how valuable. Well, no doubt the squats like the king. Like I can't even compare, there's nothing to compare. But I tell you, I'm finding so much more value in the sled. I'm starting to do it on a regular basis. I love it. You were right, Justin. I'm telling you guys. One of that has to do the, like you said though, there's no negative. I mean, most the damage to muscle is done on the negative in all exercises, both upper body and lower body. So if you completely eliminate the negative of the exercise, I mean, I would assume that it's gonna do less damage. And you can do more frequency that way. Right, cause you're less damaged. So you can focus a little more on the posterior chain. That's another valuable way to use it, the sled. So it's, again, it's an underrated exercise that I think for beginners and for time away. It's gotta have to do something too with the way the hips are moving, which is more similar to how you're walking all day long. Yeah, you get a lateral positioning, you get that contralateral position. That's what I'm saying. Like when you're driving the sled, it's emulating something more similar to the way we walk every single day versus when you're dropping down into a squat where it's just a hinge pattern, right? You gotta think that that is not as beneficial as the actual kind of walking motion. It's definitely more functional. Right, right, so I know. And then I did like to emulate leg extensions where you pull it. You pull it and you just, it's all knee extension as you walk. I love that. Oh yeah. You know, and I don't know if it was Justin who got me doing that, but he, I did that with him back when I was competing and saw big, I actually stopped leg extension machine. I never did it again after that. I preferred to do it on there. I just got this massive, massive pump from that. It felt so good and it did. It felt more functional when I was doing it. So I remember after he introduced that to me, I don't think I ever did the leg extension machine. After that, I just would drag the sled. That's awesome. It'll be interesting because we have sleds and stuff for the football team and I can't wait to get into all that. They have like single sleds where they kind of push it all the way across the field. That was something that I was always like really good at. So it's just funny because that's something I've carried into workouts now still because I enjoyed and valued it so much. But yeah, speaking of the football team, so there was actually like a couple of kids actually, one of them was talking about this, like they were trying to figure out, I had this big nutrition talk with them. I was gonna ask you, are you getting into that? Are you getting into nutrition with them or is it just strength training stuff? I was just strength training and then I was like, you know what? I just want to get a pulse and see where these kids are coming from in terms of nutrition. I'm like, is anybody taking any protein powder? Anybody do any creatine? Are you even paying attention to your calories? Anything. And so I kind of like had this long spiel and then it was going back and forth and I'm like seeing a lot of dead eyes out there, like there's kind of a wing in it. You didn't get anybody who was like, yeah, I'm following a diet or a meal plan. Not till after I was done talking, there was a few kids that were like, yeah, I'm sort of taking some protein powder, but really they're just trying to eat when they're hungry. Like they're not really like trying to eat to gain. And like, because I remember, yeah, back in the day, I was like, at least our mentality was we need to get more calories in so we can get bigger, you know? And so there was that sort of mentality, but there was a few kids that came up to me afterwards and were like, you know, I'm taking this protein powder, but you know what, I'm lactose intolerant. And I'm like, oh really? Okay, so what have you been taking? What kind of protein? And he was talking to me about a few of these vegan protein powders he tried. And he's like, he's like, I tried to stay with it, but I can never stay with it. It's so disgusting. Well, it tastes like you mowed the lawn and then ended it. You got to hook them up with the OrganiFi, dude. Yeah, so I actually, I took some out of the back yesterday. Oh, you did? Oh, cool. And I brought it to practice with me and I told, I'm like, you know what? Like I do have a product, actually, one of our sponsors that's really, you know, game changing in terms of like, if you have like lactose intolerance, like it's actually tastes good. And it's, you know, a real valuable like protein source. So yeah, send it to him. So I'm going to get some feedback from him after he uses it. But I wonder what if you brought, just got a couple of those jugs, brought them to practice and then had everybody take a shake post-workout. You just, everybody take a scoop, throw it in there. I know. I got to, I got to set something like that. How many kids are there? Promotes. How many kids are there? I want to say there's about like 50 something kids. Bro, that takes like four jugs. It only lasts you like four days. Like we're doing like freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior all together right now. And it's not the full team yet, cause it's in the summer, but yeah. Let's talk to Organify about it. Well, I mean Organify will probably hook something up. But if you're real geeks or you get to school to like fund some of it, so you know what I'm saying? I'm like trying to work on all this, dude. It's so funny because everything we talk about on this show, I'm just like, oh my God, they could use this, they could use this product. Like are they, so are they, do you know if any kids are listening yet? Do you know? So there's one kid came up to me. One out of all of them? Yeah, he was like. The one smart kid. Yeah, after a workout, he was like, it's like wait a minute, he's like, mind pump. He's like, you're a mind pump. I'm like, ah, you found me, you know? I tried my best to kind of keep it like behind the scenes incognito. And I didn't want to like come out and be like, you know, look at me. Look at me. I'm a cool old guy, or whatever. But yeah, so he was all like, whoa, crazy. And I'm like, yeah, so he's the one that's been asking me the most questions of course, which it'll be cool to see if the rest of the kids sort of find me naturally. Of course it will. I mean, imagine if you had a coach or a teacher. Of course it will. And then one of your friends came up. It's going to spread like wildfire, but the next time you go back, dude, I bet you it's already spread. I guarantee it. Yeah, we'll see. Did you know our coach takes edibles? Listen to this part of the episode. Shut up, dude. You have to go way back to listen to that now. Now I'm screwed. Yeah, everybody knows that. It's all good. Whatever, dude, it's fine, dude. It's all good, anyway. Hey, someone sent me something. So I wanted to hear if you guys heard. I haven't done enough homework, so. But I did start to Google and read some articles. They sent me this message that there's a thing going around right now that math is racist. Yeah. Oh, you've heard this. Yeah. Well, no, no. OK, here's the new game is. Check out. Everything is racist. Yeah. I was so. Everything is racist. Being on time is racist? I know I shouldn't comment about this because I haven't done enough reading to figure it out. But my first reaction to that is like, how? Yeah. How in the fucking. It's the last objective thing on the planet. Yeah. OK, so do you know the premise of it? Do you know where it stems from? It's based on the fact that minority children do worse in math. And so then they take a lot of leaps and say that it's math is racist. And then they go and they try to make these crazy connections to basically everything. Or just bad teachers. Yes, basically everything is now racist. Which is kind of like the leaps. It's really sad. This is I swear to God, if you look at history. Dude, we're all just mentally ill. Yeah, if you look at history, this is a very effective tool to divide people. And it used to be the way that they would divide people was working class, they would say, the working class and the ruling class. And then they would connect every single dot to that discrepancy. And they're doing it now with this. And it's very, I tell you what, it's very valuable for people who benefit from this type of division. Because if everything's racist and you're the one that's going to save them from all this, well, now you're, and then, of course, people on one side, they want to appear virtuous. So they say, yes, it is racist. And it makes them feel good socially. It's crazy. In fact, the fact that you brought that up, and I was watching our, so we just dropped our interview with Melissa Wolfe. She's the founder of Wolfe. No, no, no, Miss Urban. Urban, sorry, Melissa. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just thinking that exact same thing that was the same leap that she tried to make with healthy food being white supremacy. OK, so I'm really disappointed. I'm really disappointed in myself, because I kind of talked about it to her, or she said white supremacy and I addressed it a little bit. But I let her get away with it too much. Because it's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard in my entire life, because there are many white kids that suffer from living in areas that are poor and don't have access to healthy food, or maybe in situations where their parents don't really do a good job trying to take care of them, or single-parent households where they're super busy. That and the other part that I hate about that conversation is it really does fall on its face when you look at the most successful groups in this country. If you look at the most successful groups in this country, they're not white. Yeah, no, I shared that in my story. Asian-Americans, Pakistan-Americans, India-American. India-American, yeah. Oh, yeah, they all do very, very well. And one thing that people are ignoring, and by the way, this I hate it when people come at me with this whole like, are you saying racism doesn't exist? No, stop making false arguments. That's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is that that is not, when you consider all the factors, it's actually not even close to one of the most powerful factors that'll affect your life. In fact, one thing that everybody ignores is if you look at success, you look at access to nutrition, you look at being going to jail, you look at education, you look at all these different things, there's one factor you can connect to all of them actually quite effectively, which is did you grow up with two parents or did you grow up with one parent? That right there is the best predictor compared to all other predictors of success. What upsets me is that true racism gets watered down. That's what's most dangerous about that. That's what's most dangerous about that. Everything is racist. No, let's specifically hone in on where that very toxic element lives. It's not everywhere in everything. You could literally just find it in anywhere if that's all you're attributing to all the problems in the world. I listened to that interview again too, and I agree with you, I think that we all disagreed. It wasn't like we agreed with it. I get what you're saying, you could have went harder on the situation. Because it was just a silly, what are you saying? Well, I think it caught everybody off guard a little bit. Totally. Listening to it again, I was like, oh my, I would have laughed now if you would have said that again to me because I'm going like, whole foods and sprouts, don't make the decision based off of the color or race of somebody going into a community. It has everything to do with economics. It has everything to do with money. They don't go like, oh, look, that's 80% black people and 10% Indian people and only 5% white. We're not going in there. They go, what's the medium income? What's the density of the population there? We're going there. There's a lot of money. There's a lot of people. That's where we're going to put our business because we know that we're going to be successful. That's nothing to do with race. So to try and make that correlation that they're racist or that there's something to do with that, that's absurd. But here's the thing I want to, I want, you have to have some empathy for yourself here, Sal, because, and I know it beats you up. You felt beat up a little bit because I know that, I mean, you of all of us are probably the most, or understand or read the most on this and you didn't probably jump down or throw it. But here's where I want to defend you or us in general is for most of our career, we've been personal trainers. And one of the things that makes you a really good trainer is the ability to be a chameleon, the ability to train people that you'd completely disagree with. Maybe you don't even like. You have to focus on common ground. That's right. Relate somehow. You have learned to be very good at ignoring all the things you may not like about somebody, honing in on the things you do like about them, finding that common ground, building a relationship with them because it would serve you in business. And so- And it helps them. And we are in a whole new, I mean, we're six years into this game of podcasting and interviewing people. And it's such a transition to go from being those type of people who are trained and honed in on a skill of finding common ground and learning to like people and be likable to now also being like, no, we're here to serve the people on YouTube and on iTunes that are listing this podcast. And they want to hear us freaking get after that if we disagree with that. And so that's still something that I feel like- You're right. It feels a counter to my nature because my nature is in real life. You know, what I'm talking about. You're likable. I'm going to focus on the common ground. That's really a piece of shit, right? But I want to focus on common ground. And you're right. You do that as a personal trainer, but I was pretty annoyed. You know, in that same, it's almost like in that same breath, they'll say things like, they're selling more cigarettes and alcohol in bad neighborhoods because they're taking advantage of people, right? And yet food companies aren't trying to make money, you know? Companies like Whole30 and aren't trying to make money. So it's an economic thing. And you know, economics can affects anybody and it doesn't care. The color of the color that matters green, that's the color that everybody's looking at. And I hate it when they place it on. Look, I'm a son of immigrants. My family, I tell you what, if you're watching this right now, chances are I don't care what color you are where you came from. My dad had more money starting off than I did. My family came, my dad had $200. That's it. He had $200 and no education, not just little education. He went to second grade and then left because his family was so poor that he had to work. So, and I'm not saying, oh, look at me. I could do this. I'm just saying, you know, I came from poor immigrants. I see like, and my family was always very much about work, focus on your opportunity. I don't speak English, but here's what I can do. My dad still speaks very broken English. So it gets on my nerves when people blame things, especially the wrong things, and when they get manipulated to divide everybody. Well, it's really Justin and Doug's fault. They're bringing our white privilege up. If it was just you and I. Yeah, stop wearing shorts. If it was just you and I, we'd crush that all day long. We'd say, like, get out of here with that bullshit, but it would be fucking Justin and Doug. That's why I just sit there like, and all their white privilege brings out. Here comes, you know, how can I respond to this? Nobody's gonna listen. All right, so I'm gonna lighten things up. I read some weird news today. You guys ready to hear some? I love weird news. Oh, this is one of my favorite. Now look, we're gonna laugh at some of this, even though it's kind of sad. But so this, on July 10th, where's this happening? I think this was in Miami, okay? A homeless man stabbed someone with a pair of scissors. Now here's the weird part. You're lightening this up? Okay. Yeah, this is how, this is the weird part. Homeless man stabs somebody. The homeless guy has no arms. So. Wait a minute. Okay, all right, now I'm in. So he grabbed a pair of scissors with his foot, and he stabbed somebody with his foot. So he's laying on his back and he's like, he was hopping on one foot and attacked somebody with his foot and a pair of scissors. You gotta give it to him. That's pretty skillful. Yeah, so that's one piece of weird news. Homeless man with no arms stabbed someone. Stabbing somebody. Was the article going to, what was it about? Or what was his desired outcome? It doesn't say what the hell it was about, but it talks about this guy who was walking with his friend, and then this guy came after him with his pair of scissors and his feet, and then stabbed him, yeah. All right, so here's another. That must have been a sight to see. Here's another one. This one's kind of, again, creepy, but also hilarious. So this guy, and they have a picture of this guy. I have to send, I'll send this article to Andrew. That was in Florida, right? It just, why is it always in Florida? I'm just saying. It's the basalts. There is some seriously crazy stuff that happened. Well, here's this next one's from Michigan. And it's funny, when you see the pictures of these people, you're like, oh yeah, that guy would totally do that. So this guy was hiding cherry pies under women's cars. So he would take cherry pies and put it under the cars. Do you know why? She's my cherry pie. Cause he'd stand back and he'd wait for them to bend over to pick up the cherry pie. So he could look at that. What a creepy. No way. That was his strategy. I mean that is an elaborate plan to see someone bend over and go bake a cherry pie just to see some ass. Oh my God. No, here's what it says. He's the same guy with a walking stick that has like a mirror at the bottom. Yeah. So what he says is he would wait in his car. So he'd see a female drive up park. He'd wait in his car. Then she'd leave the car to go to the store. Then he would run over and place cherry pies. McDonald's cherry pies underneath the car. I'm so confused. Like how did he know that like mostly women would be bending over to buy, pick up the cherry pies? Because he'd see that the woman caught out of the car. So he's stalking them, right? He's watching. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, oh, she left. Underneath, then you would go back to his car, get his binoculars and wait for them to pick up the cherry pie. What an elaborate plan to be a peepee tom. I feel like it'd be so much easier than that. Hey, cherry pies are delicious though. I mean, irresistible, obviously. That's a lot better than this guy. I read the news that was like hiding in like porta-potties, just like, you know, hey. Like it was Christmas for him. Every time someone took it down. I read that, dude. It's so scary. Yeah, no, I heard that one too. How scared would you be, by the way, if you looked into the porta-potties? That's a horror. That's a scar for life after that. A nightmare. It's like it, right? Remember it with the clowns and the gutters. Like, I think I was scared like that. You had Taco Bell, yeah. Yes. Oh, it's disgusting, bro. Hey, what if you, hey, what if it was one of the... You get so excited. Because here's the deal. Okay, if you're pooping in a porta-pottie, it's because it's an emergency. Nobody ever just like, I think I'll choose that over into the bathroom. So if you're going poop in a porta-pottie, it's an emergency. I have never pooped in a porta-pottie my entire life. Never? Have you ever worked on a construction? Come on, man. Yes. Where'd you poop? Not in a porta-pottie. I did not. I've always been able to schedule my poops or know not to eat some bullshit that's going to make me have diarrhea. Yeah. So you never had 7-Eleven for lunch? Exactly. I had dashboard burritos. Yeah, I know. It's just inevitable. You know, as a kid, I was definitely intermittent fasting, not intentionally. Like I always would like not eat or I'd have like a donut in the morning when I was doing that type of stuff and then not eat all day at work and then eat when I get home. So and by the way, none of that was like through strategy if I don't want to poop in the porta-pottie. I wasn't thinking like that. Did you ever poop at school? Yeah. Oh, OK. Yeah, I know. I mean, but also that, I mean, when I worked. So we all worked for 24. I worked for 24 Hour Fitness for almost 10 years. I can count on one hand how many times I pooped at 24 Hour Fitness. You're kidding me. Oh, I would go home. Oh, yeah. You would go home? I would go home. Now, remember, the first five years, I lived across the street. So that's not a big deal. I don't care. You still got to go across the street. But I mean, later on in my career, I'd drive across. I lived across town. I would drive back home at lunch to go take a poop at my house and I would at the restroom inside the gym. You know what? Because you were such a producer, nobody said shit to you. Of course not. You imagine if you have an employee, does that? Where'd he go? He had to go to the bathroom. What the fuck? Well, I didn't announce it. Like nobody else knew what I was doing or if that was a thing. But like, yeah, I have a weird. I just could not. And still this day like that. I mean, even with our, we have nice bathrooms now, which is awesome. But there's nothing like a home poop, dude. A home. There's Doug's laughing right now, but he knows. I know you know, bro. Can you deny it? I will not deny it. OK. You're right. You're right. There's nothing like a comfort there. There is a great comfort there. I mean, you extend the legs out. You get your phone propped up. Take your shirt off. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. Maybe even leave the door open if no one's home. You know what I'm saying? Like, you're just, it's your home. I may take 30 minutes. I may take 15, you know? Like, hey. Yeah, you're home. Call your friend. Yeah, you know, you don't freak. You don't like scrub the seat before you sit down. You know, it was my ass or my wife's ass that was sitting on there before that. So I'm totally comfortable sitting right down. I take pride in the fact that I can go anywhere. Anywhere. And I learned this. It's like you're sleeping. Hey, by the way. All right. Katrina told me that, yeah, they were going somewhere with your son. And she says he has the same superpower as you. Oh yeah, he'll fall asleep anywhere. She goes, they were all, yes. They were all going, I don't know where we were. Oh, they went to the pool. That's right. They went to the pool. That's like a superpower. So they all talking to each other. And the pool is, by the way, it's for the audience, no. So the pool that we were going to was 15 minutes up the road from the truckie house. And the girls all went and did that on the day that we were, I think, recording and doing work still. It was like 30 minutes. And is it, well, at least. Yeah, the neighborhood stuff. Yeah. Yeah, it's technically 12 miles. So it's. All right, whatever. It was like 45 minutes. I feel like you're annoyed by that. Yeah, it was like, it was longer. It was way longer. Adam said it was 15 minutes. It was a half hour. I kept promoting at 15. And I was, I was watching the clock. So anyway, it's technically. Katrina's taken, I think Katrina and Courtney were taking the kids all over the pool. It's a half hour away. And she said that they didn't even leave our community at the truckie house before your son fell asleep in the front. Middle of the day on the way to go play in a pool, your son's sleeping. I was like, oh, my God, could he not be more sound? He just looks right. He's like, this is boring. It is definitely a talent because you know what it is? It's time skipping. It's like as close as you can get to being able to skip time to the future. Speaking of that, did you guys watch Loki? No, I didn't watch the new one. You're behind on this. Oh, I want to talk about it. But I did watch Tomorrow Ward. You guys see that? Yeah, it was all right. That was, you don't like it? It was all right. I thought it was great. I enjoyed it. I mean, the aliens are really cool. I enjoyed it. The bro, the scene with the daughter, I almost started crying, bro. I got emotional. I don't know why. Well, you have a daughter. The daughter reminds me what happened with the daughter. I don't want to give it away, bro. No, no, I mean, it's, yeah. That's a huge part of the movie. It's a big part of the fabric of the story. So I don't want to ruin it for a minute. I mean, that's how forgettable the movie was to me. Really? Yeah, I mean, I watched it as soon as it came out. We all watched it. Pratt, Pratt. Yeah, we watched it together. I was actually more excited to watch it, because I knew Justin really wanted to watch it. I enjoyed it. So I don't want, I mean, I know that there are people DM me like it was a great movie. Like, oh, did you watch Tomorrow Ward? That was fun, bro. I mean, it was good. Like, I'll say good, not great. Did you watch Doug? We watched it together. OK, you were in there, yeah. Yeah, how'd you feel about it? It's one of those throwaway movies. Thank you, Doug. Doug's way out. Doug and I are on the same page when it comes to the movie. I'm not saying it was great, but it was good. It wasn't great. But Doug hit it just for me. It's a throwaway movie. It's like, I'll watch it when I'll never watch it again. I'll never watch it again. I liked it. Here's the one plot hole. So I don't think this will give away too much if you haven't watched it. Here's the one plot hole. So they can travel because you see this in the trailer. Future humans travel back in time to recruit past humans to fight the future war because they need more people and everybody's dying. From these aliens. OK. If you could fucking go back in time, why don't you go back in time and tell them to prepare for this invasion and give them new future weapons and shit? What a weird strategy. If you come with us and die, I would have gone back in time like, here's a deal in 30 years, you guys need to prepare for the aliens. That's what I would have done. Well, that's where they didn't know where they came from. Yeah. That doesn't bother you guys enough. So stuff like that, when a storyline has so many holes like that, it just, I can't look past it. Because what I see right away, it's like, oh, you're just playing to my cheesy 12-year-old boy and me. Blow him up, shoot him up. Aliens like, yeah. Cool guns, cool this. Well, that's why you got to get into that zone. Yes. And that's when you enjoy it. When you watch sci-fi, when you watch sci-fi, especially sci-fi that involves time travel, you have to suspend a lot of, you have to. Otherwise, anything with time travel. See, but here's the thing, are you watching Loki? Are you up to date? I am. OK. So total fake, right? There's nothing real about that. But the storyline and the acting is so phenomenal in there. I mean, the characters are incredible. That's Disney, dude. The plot is incredible. I mean, it's so brilliantly written. Yes, I love it. Even though I know it's just as fake as Tomorrow War or what about that. I mean, you don't get a whole lot of those. So I think that's why you end up enjoying the Tomorrow War or whatever, because it's just like, ah. I mean, I can get behind what you guys are saying. It gives me kind of an action of it. It's like, are you going to do that to Predator? Yeah, come on. Are you going to do that? I'm like, come on, dude. I still think Predator was good. Oh, that's a classic. That's one of the best movies of all time. And maybe what it is is that, to me, Predator doesn't even try to be something it's not. Where I feel like, Tomorrow with all the dialogue and trying to get creative with the storyline, there's nothing like, what does Arnold say, like five different lines in that entire movie? It's literally like, look at this jacked dude fight a fucking alien. You know what I'm saying? All it is. My favorite line is when he kicks the door open before he blows someone away, knock, knock. He always says something before he kills somebody. Remember, he throws a knife at the guy? That's so fun tonight. He throws a knife at the guy, gets stuck against him, always like, stick around. He has time to, like, say shit. It's so good. It's so good. All right, you want to hear something cool, Justin? Yeah, I do. All right, maybe Adam will like this, too. So you guys know what the Bermuda Triangle is, right? Yeah. OK, so there's a point in the ocean. There's three points at which lots of ships have gone lost, planes have been lost. What's the name of that sea? Because they've deemed it like a sea that's in between the oceans that has a different type of a current where it's actually, there's like a still part of that massive body of water. I don't know. OK, so it's Bermuda, Florida, and Puerto Rico. So that's the triangle, right? And there's just a high amount of. It's that close to Florida? Yeah. I didn't know that. It's a big area, right? Because it goes Florida, Bermuda to, what did I say? I didn't know where it was at. Yeah, and you know, I'm geographically challenged. Bro, 75 planes at least, hundreds of ships disappear in there. And so like what the hell is going on? Yeah. Scientists think they figured it out. No, they didn't. They think they figured it out. Let's hear it. So they think that because now they're using satellite imagery because they're looking and saying like, why is this part of the world so dangerous, apparently? And so meteorologists said that they think the reason why this is happening is there's something in base? Yes. No, I'm just kidding. OK. Keep going. They think that there's so in that area, these unusual hexagonal clouds develop because of the interesting weather and patterns that happen in that area. And these hexagonal clouds, not clowns, clouds. Hexagonal clouds? Yeah. All right. That's scary. They create, I'm going to read right here, 170 mile per hour air bombs full of wind. And what they do, because of the way that they're shaped, is they blast air down extremely powerfully, which causes the waves to, and once the waves start to interact, you get these insane waves in the ocean plus down gusts of wind. And they said, you go through this, and if that happens, you're fucked. So they think it's a weather phenomenon. OK, so I had no idea this is where this was at. Where do you think it was? I don't know. Again, I told you, geographically challenged. So on the guy who thought, the first time that I was going to, where was I going to? We were going somewhere. Oh, we went to, God, what is off of Florida over there? Oh, I can't think of where we were. The Bahamas? Yeah, no, no, not the Bahamas. When I went to. The Keys, Cuba? No, no, no, no, no. Jamaica? Yes, thank you. When I went to Jamaica, I remember when we first got our tickets and people were asking me, oh, how long is that plane flight? I'm like, oh, man, I'm not looking forward to it. It's like 15 hours or something like that to get there. I had no idea it was only like five and a half hours. Oh, yeah. I thought it was so much further. But OK, so if that's where the Bermuda Triangle is, what about planes that are flying from Florida to Puerto Rico all the time? Do they fly through it all the time? And it's only sometimes there's issues? I think they might fly out of it. So they fly. Do they actually, that's what I'm saying. Do they actually try and stay out of it? If I'm not mistaken, they oftentimes will try to avoid that area. Yeah, because I feel like if you are flying anywhere from northern Florida and you're going to Puerto Rico, you pretty much have to go through that unless you actually make a scenic route. They go down and around. Do they? I think so. That's how afraid of the Bermuda Triangle we are. Well, that's a real deal. So here's what one of the meteorologists said. Do they really avoid it? Is it true? So what I was thinking of was the Sargasso Sea. I think it's up a little bit more north, but it's where the entire ocean just is completely still. No wind. Doldrums. What does it say, Doug? That's what they call the doldrums. I'm trying to find out the answer here. The pilots actually avoid it. All right, well, while you look at that, Doug, I'm going to read a quote from this meteorologist. He said, the satellite imagery is really bizarre. These types of hexagonal shapes over the ocean are, in essence, air bombs. They are formed by what are called microbursts, and they are blasts of air that come down out of the bottom of a cloud and then hit the ocean and then create waves that can sometimes be massive in size as they start to interact with each other. So when this happens, if you're a ship or a plane going through and you get hit by these down blasts of air or the ocean gets all crazy, you're dead. Is this speculative or do they actually have? It's a theory. Yeah, like a footage of these hexagonal. They have satellite imagery above. It's interesting because so you have, obviously, the Gulf of Mexico, which is really warm water, and then a little bit lower, and then the entire Atlantic. So it's almost like, I mean, that's what always causes crazy weather to occurs when you get the mix of both. I knew it. Fact check. I knew it. Thank you, Doug. Would it say Doug? They don't even avoid it, bro. They don't avoid it. It's a bunch of bullshit. Well, the bullshit is not that people have begun missing or that lots of planes, and that's true. Well, that is true. That part is true. But I guess they don't avoid it. Yeah, so it's not that. So it's too expensive. And what you're talking about only sometimes happens, is that what the theory is? Yeah, it's not all the time. Obviously, if they don't avoid it, then it must not happen often enough for them to be afraid. And because it's a trying episode, is it like the center of it, is where it's most crazy? It's just in between those points. So they create a triangle out of it. I don't think it's a hard head. So was it Amelia Earhart who got caught up in that, or I mean, she crashed, right? I don't know. I have no idea. I'm just going to throw more things in there. It's like, come on, let's show how much we don't know. Hey, so I wanted to ask you, I know we're supposed to talk about another sponsor, Caldera. Justin, I know you've been using it. Obviously, look at that. Wow. Do you guys get yours? They just sent a kit over for everybody. I just re-stocked, yeah. Here's my question to you. I know you've been using it regularly. You've been in the sun more often. Do you notice any resilience to sunburns or as a result? I didn't really associate that, but I haven't had any real bad sunburn, except for my shoulders a little bit. So I don't know. Maybe it's been helping with sunburn. Does it have an SPF to it? It doesn't, but I know when skin is, I would assume, as skin is healthier, that it's going to be a little bit more resilient to damage. And so that's the question that I want, because I know Justin's so susceptible. Interesting. Well, we'll have to test that out in Hawaii. Yeah, I don't know about that. Now, Doug, you've been using it pretty consistently now too, right? The Caldera? Yeah. Yeah, I love the cream for the face. It's used very little of it, and it goes in very nicely. I know, I just, that jar lasted me till now. So I don't know when I first brought it up that we got it, but it feels like it lasted more than a month. And I've been extremely consistent with using it. And it makes my, but here's the thing too. So I had a day or two where I didn't use it. Now, and I don't know if this is just subconsciously, because I knew I was taking it all the time, I can really feel how dry my face feels if I don't use it. I feel the same way. OK, so I never noticed that before. I never was a guy who had a contrast. Oh, my face feels so dry, I need to moisturize. I've never said that in my life before or ever thought that I've never used the word moisturize. But now that I've had days where I don't use it now and I was using it so consistently, now I really notice it. Now, I'm assuming, Sal, that's probably because my skin is adapted to absorb. Now it almost needs it. I think it might be the contrast. Oh, wow. You just really didn't notice before. Now that you know what it feels like to be really feel nice. Now you know the difference. Oh, yeah, I tripped out on that. I was like, oh, wow, that's crazy. Now I feel like I feel like I look more tired before too. Like, if you look back at old videos and stuff, I don't know if that has anything to do with it. Yeah, maybe I was more tired. How was your face? I think that has to do with more of you being fit right now and looking good, because I think that's, I think you right now are the best looking I've seen you since we've done Mind Pump. Stop it. No, you do. You look so attractive. Adam was telling me about actually yesterday. He took me aside and he goes, I got to talk to you about something. Yeah, yeah. What? He goes, Justin's really handsome. Yeah, we're all after it, man. I said, OK. That's, you know. Yeah, I see too. We need a little bit of motivation. Sal's vlog that's going crazy right now with his wife, Peter, looking all jacked and stuff. Yeah. One of the things that he said in there is that he's trying to catch you with your strength and chase Adam with his aesthetics. So everybody's like, damn, what does Adam look like right now? I think he overhyped us a little bit, bro. You have a way to fuck me on that one, guy. I appreciate it, but also, I'm not going to live up to that. Yeah, right there. Listen, stop being humble. Yeah, I see what you did there. Stop being humble. Mr. Wide Shoulder Small Waste used to be a pro and fucking break every piece of equipment in the gym. No, bro, you're leading the way right now. You're leading the way for sure, I think. This is, this reverse psychology is very effective. Yeah, you started it. I think we stopped working out. You started it. More food, you know. Yeah, I want to circle back to the Amelia Earhart crash. This was Howland Island, which is out in the middle of the Pacific. Oh my god, the way off. So way away from the Bermuda Triangle. I love it, dude. Thank you, Doug, for the correction. I know. We don't know about an American hero like that. We don't know all the information that's sad. She's a badass. She was, she was awesome. Hey, real quick, I hope you're enjoying this podcast. Stop real quick and head over to mindpumpfree.com. We have some free giveaways that provide value and information on building muscle, burning body fat, getting better shape, lots of guides over at mindpumpfree.com. And of course they cost nothing. Go check them out. All right, enjoy the rest of this podcast. Our first question is from RTWGirl. Should certain people avoid HIIT? Or is it a good workout for all people? I love this question. I love this question. OK, so HIIT stands for High Intensity Interval Training. And I remember when the studies came out, I know you guys did too, because this is a big deal in fitness, where they showed that short HIIT workouts were at least as effective, but often more effective, for burning body fat and preserving muscle than steady-state cardio. And I remember when that came out, every trainer was doing HIIT. Oh, it was all the latest rave. Like everybody was jumping in on the HIIT bandwagon right after that study. And now HIIT, the reason why it's more effective is because HIIT is more like resistance training than steady-state cardio is. Steady-state cardio is definitely very cardio-like. HIIT is like doing, you know how we say doing like tons of circuits with weights is doing cardio with weights? HIIT is like doing weights with cardio. It's explosive. It's more strength-built. It's not exactly like lifting weights, but it's much more like lifting weights or doing resistance training. Therefore, it's gonna preserve more muscle. Therefore, it's gonna be very effective at pure fat loss. Now, here's the problem with it. And this was the issue that I had, is when I saw all these trainers doing it, there's a lot of people, it's just completely inappropriate. Oh, yeah. I mean, and that was everywhere. I mean, that was the first thing that I saw was like, oh my God, I would never take certain clients through a workout like that, because they just don't have the joint integrity. They don't have the ability to properly stabilize and to get through these types of explosive moves. Well, when you're training a client, you talk about stability, strength. I mean, explosive performances at the pinnacle. I mean, most clients that you get or that we would train were deconditioned, out of shape, poor mechanics. I mean, if they were ever to do HIIT, it wouldn't be for a very long time. It doesn't belong in any programming. In fact, if you're an OG listener, you have probably heard us talk about this a little bit. We haven't talked about it in a long time, but I remember when we first hired our marketing team and they wanted us to write this and we didn't write a HIIT program till way later in the business because we, and by the way, the reason why they want to is because they have the tools, right? We have the tools to be able to look up what people are searching the most and we knew that it would be more profitable for us to release it. In fact, when we finally did release it, it was one of the biggest program launches we ever had and it is the only program of all of our programs that comes with a warning and that we don't think you should do this for long term. It is not for most people and that just speaks to the integrity of the business is that when we first started this, we were like, listen, we know that there is a place for this stuff. We do know that it has value, but we also know that the majority of people shouldn't be using it and most certainly shouldn't be using it for long term, which is what I also saw. So after all those studies and stuff that came out to support the benefits of HIIT when we were in the early 2000s, when we were all trainers, the next thing I saw was that's how everybody started to train all the time. It's every single infomercial, it was every single app in the app store was based off of HIIT training. It just drove me crazy because nobody was emphasizing all of the prerequisite stuff that you needed to build up your body in order to be able to withstand and handle that kind of stress. Yeah, one of the characteristics of HIIT is that there's short periods of going all out. So, and you see people do this on treadmills, on bikes, on rowers, and then of course, even worse, they'll do this with weights and equipment and jumping on things. But even if you do something as simple as a bike and you go max exertion and you're not somebody that works out consistently, you've never done this before, the risk of injury goes through the roof. But it's even deeper than that. Even if you don't hurt yourself, if you're a high stress individual with borderline hormone issues, you don't get good sleep, you've got kids, you have a mortgage, you've got a hard job. And then you're doing resistance training, which is good, but that's also adding a stress. And then on top of that, your cardio is HIIT and you're gonna go add HIIT on top of that. It's probably not gonna benefit you. In fact, I've taken clients who are in this category where they just overdo everything. They don't get good sleep. There's type A type individuals. I look at their workouts and like, oh yeah, I do HIIT five days a week and cause I know that's good. And I took them and said, no more HIIT, you're gonna do steady state. But I thought steady state was not as effective. No, no, no, we're gonna do steady state because your body needs some more recoupative type workouts. And then low and behold, they burn more body fat and they feel better. And this is like the key to exercise. It needs to be appropriate for your body. If it's not appropriate for your body and your lifestyle, I don't care how awesome the workout is on paper or how great it's supported by studies. If it's not right for you, you're not gonna get there any faster. You're not gonna progress any better. And if anything, you'll get there slower and maybe even set yourself back a little bit. And another thing to consider too is that as you ramp up like, one of those variables like intensity, you have to also be able to counter that with more emphasis too on the recovery. So that is something that I do think that we did well in terms of like alternating that with our flow sessions and really emphasize the fact that we're gonna need to maintain the joints health through this process of really like hammering it. So you don't find that in a lot of HIIT programs at all. It's just all just the HIIT. And then you come back and you do it on yourself again. We should probably have a little bit more clarity here or bring some more context for the listener who doesn't want to know what HIIT is because there's two things, you guys are also talking about cardio and resistance training. So you can use HIIT in both ways. So you can do the high intensity interval training with cardio modalities and then you could also do it with resistance training. Essentially it's short bouts of maximal exertion interrupted by bouts of minimal exertion. So it's like, to give you an example, it would be like you're on a bike and you're riding at low intensity and then every 45 seconds, you do 15 seconds of all out sprinting on it. It's hard as you can, right? Yeah, and then you back all the way off, let the heart rate recover and then go. And the benefits that all the research and studies show, it's the calorie expenditure that you're getting from the massive spike and then the heart trying to recover to come back down to its resting heart rate. And because of that, the body has to burn a ton of calories to do that. So that's where a lot of the positive benefits come from. Now, I like using it and I used it quite a bit with clients for cardio and I'd use it obviously later on when they're ready for some of that because there's a little less risk with cardio than there is with weight training. Like so where I have the biggest bone to pick with it is when you see trainers using it with jump boxes and speed ladders and then they're doing squats right after that. And I mean, that's where I have a problem with it because you see all this dysfunction in the client. I mean, their form looks, and they're literally just trying to exhaust this person and burn as much calories as possible, doing these dangerous exercises. And even if it's not dangerous, like they're gonna get hurt, like maybe they have enough control to not get hurt, I rarely ever see anybody do it with great form. So you see this kind of like circuit-based type of training and it's really these trainers that are either one are short on time or just trying to burn a ton of calories. And I have more of an issue with that than I do with cardio. To be clear, doing it with resistance training can be far more effective. It just requires better programming. There's more things more, I mean, our HIIT program is HIIT with resistance training, not on cardio, but we carefully programmed it and planned it out so that you reap the benefits and minimize the potential. Well, and one of those determiners was when your form breaks down, you stop, right? And so that was something that we tried to emphasize as much as possible is that, we are trying to get through this time of like cutting out the rest and we're trying to get through these exercises but we're not trying to degrade the performance of each one of those exercises. We stop if that's the case. So the way I used it for cardio was like this and I did this the entire time that I was competing is I talked about this many times that I did hardly any cardio when I was getting ready for a show. So I would do any sort of movement was exercise, like training, resistance training or walking for 90% of my training. Now, when I got to the last couple of weeks was when I would start to introduce cardio, HIIT was actually the first piece of cardio that I'd introduce. So I would actually do that post workout, three days a week, I would do 12 to 15 minutes of HIIT afterwards. So I'd do my weight training session, get on the elliptical, Stairmaster, Treadmill, whatever, and I'd do these 12 to 15 minute bouts. The logic and theory behind it for me as a competitor at that time was, the last thing I want to do is add more time to the gym. I'm already training seven days a week and an hour, hour and a half inside the gym. So I don't want to start introducing a half hour hour of this cardio, these cardio routines. I want to just up my calorie expenditure with the shortest amount of time and doing that with HIIT post workout was the strategy on it. It wasn't until I got even closer, which is like the final week when I would start to do these 45 minute to hour long bouts of cardio. I wanted to avoid doing long bouts of cardio for as long as I could because I knew that that would also sacrifice the most muscle that way. Your body would start to adapt after, that's why you do this for such a short period. Yes. Yeah, it's a very smart application. Look, to be very clear, 30 minutes of walking is not nearly as stressful in the body as 10 minutes of high intensity interval training on a treadmill, literally. So three times as long of walking is not gonna hammer your body like one third of the time but done with sprints, with interval type of sprints. So when you're trying to train yourself to also facilitate recovery, and which that's how I like to use cardio with a lot of people is they're already pushing themselves the resistance training, especially if they're beginners or intermediate. I'm not gonna throw more crazy stress on top of them with sprints. I'm gonna say go for walks, a 30 minute walk. You're still moving, it's good for you, but it's also not damaging and that's stressful in the body. In fact, oftentimes it's the opposite of stressful. It's actually more rejuvenating. So just to paint the picture, like hit, even though it's shorter, can definitely place a major stress on the body more so than steady state cardio. Of course, unless you get into the extreme states of steady state where you're walking for three hours a day. The next question is from TheRealRashden. What are your thoughts on forced reps with the help from a training partner? I've read that it's excellent for muscle hypertrophy because it basically puts you past failure, thus recruiting more muscle fibers. Do you guys think this is a good idea or could it be too taxing on the CNS if performed too frequently? Man, who picked the questions today? I did. Good, challenging cry like we were going here today. Yeah, so, okay, so back in the day, I read this, there was a flex magazine put out this article and it said, the five keys to mass building or something like that. I had a picture of Mike Moderato and I can still remember the cover. He's a deceased bodybuilder, but back in the day it was this huge muscular guy and then in there, one of the five keys to building mass was forced reps and they said exactly that. It recruits more muscle fibers. It's a high intensity technique. They also said something about partial reps and negatives and so what do you think I did after I read that article? I applied everything on my body. Yeah, and then of course later on, I just did lots of forced reps. In fact, this is the thing you did with your workout partner back in the day. If I had a workout partner there and I'm bench pressing, the reason why they're there is not to watch me lift but rather to get me to squeeze out three or four more reps. This was extremely detrimental. In fact, years later, when I not only stopped forced reps but actually stopped going to failure and did maybe two reps before that, my body responded like it'd been asleep for years. It was like, what the hell is going on? Forced reps is way too much intensity for most people most of the time. Going to failure by itself is in that same category but forced reps is a whole another level. Ask me now how often I do forced reps. Never. Ask me how often I did forced reps with clients. Never. It's something that is just way too, it just doesn't give you more benefit because the detriment of the forced reps counters it quite a bit. I've never been more sore in my life than after doing forced reps. I'd like now thinking back to that, like the workouts, like preceding those forced rep workouts. I remember I could barely even move my body. That's part of the problem though, as a young trainer, it used to think that that meant that you were gonna get the most muscle from it. You're growing now. Yeah, no, I was in the camp. I remember the reading, I remember reading the study and I remember like going, oh my God, I need to train like this. Like every exercise I was training this way. If I had a workout partner 100%, they were there. I wanted to do two more. Barely took the bar, make it hard. Matter of fact, that was, I remember in our gym, like amongst all the trainers stuff like that, it was all about like who knew how to spot like perfect. You know, like it was all about who could keep you moving on those forced reps just right. So you're hitting 99% intensity on your last three or four reps. It's crazy. And then how sore you were would be my gauge of like how perfectly done that workout was. And the truth is, it's terrible. It was a terrible way of training, training myself. It was a terrible way to teach any client to do that. And it's another thing that I think back to and I think, oh my God, it was such a bad trainer when I first started because, you know, but again, part of the motivation of what we do on here is it was to talk about this type of stuff. That's why these questions are great. So you learned that you weren't building, you're just surviving. Well, it's hard. For a consumer, right? Or the average gym goer like, this is where I feel so much empathy for that person trying to figure this out. I mean, we're trainers. We're in the thick of all this stuff. And I was still making that mistake. So how could I ever expect an average person who's coming in the gym just trying to get in shape, not to make these same mistakes because there was so much stuff around it. I mean, just the last question was all about HIIT. You know how much that was promoted? This whole idea that you could do a shorter workout and get more results, like that went like wildfire everywhere. And trainers were promoting it. Everybody was doing it. And then now this one with four streps, I remember when it talked about going to failure like that would recruit all these muscle fibers and build the most amount of muscle you could from a workout. So nobody talked about like how taxing that could be on your CNS. And then also, which none of us has said anything about it yet. And I was, how much that would screw your form up. I mean, if you've ever watched somebody max out or do a forced rep, this is what it looks like. Yeah. Yeah, asymmetry going on. Yeah, it's terrible. And when you do that, it's not like you get any more really out of the chest. You do end up recruiting a bunch of muscle fibers. All the ones you don't want to recruit from other parts of your body trying to, yeah, other parts of your body trying to overcompensate to help get the weight up. And so I can't even tell you the last time I did a forced rep. It's just, it's so overrated. The training to failure, forced reps is so overrated and overrated because another factor too is if you do it and you get so sore like Justin was talking about and it hinders your next workout, you go backwards going the opposite direction. Even if you don't get sore. I mean, I got to the point where I would do this off and I didn't get sore anymore, but that doesn't mean you haven't gone too far. I see a nest couldn't recover. I wasn't getting any stronger. I wasn't progressing. But by the way, there's a myth that this is how bodybuilders train. Maybe some, but most don't. Like Arnold, for example, the most well-known bodybuilder of all time who did these super high volume workouts was hitting his every body part three days a week. He rarely went to failure. Now, when they talk about it in articles or you film a bodybuilder's workout, you know, if you're filming me working now and I really want to show how badass I am, I'm going to do more weight. I'm going to have somebody, you know, do the forced reps with me to show the intensity, but they often don't train that way. And then if you look at the most successful strength athletes of all time, when I say most successful, I mean the strength sport that has the most science behind it by far is Olympic weightlifting. There's no strength sport in the world that has had as many studies, scientific studies done, like Olympic weight lifters, especially during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union in particular, of course the Olympics was a great way to showcase the, you know, just communism more effective than capitalism. And one of the ways they would do is when the Olympics would come along, whose athletes were the best? And the Soviet Union spent a lot of money, a lot of energy, and they literally had captive athletes. They would take these athletes, you're living in our facility, you're eating our food, you're taking our drugs, you're doing everything. And you know how they used to train them? Never to failure. It was very high frequency. They trained often at sub-maximal intensities and they resulted in some of the best strength athletes of all time. Never, almost never trained, you know when they trained to failure, when they pushed their limit to the max? Competition. That's when you're trying to see how much you could do. So failure is not only overrated, it's damaging. I would say for most people, don't do it, don't avoid it ever. Unless the goal is to somehow train your psyche to be able to handle intensity, maybe there's some value there. But from a muscle development standpoint, not really. Well, we consider failure, the moment form starts to break down. And we also advocate for one to two reps short of that. So a lot of people I think flirt with this and don't even realize they are. How many people go to the last rep they could probably perform? I would have stopped you a rep or two before that. And again, just because you're not struggling or it's not hurting you more the next day, you assume you're not doing a good enough job and it's the opposite is true. Next question is from Rohan31 Patel. How many sets and reps should you do for each body part if you're training with full body workouts? Oh, good question. And studies, they've actually done studies on this to find the optimal amount of value, excuse me, volume, total volume per body part, per week. So when I say per week, that means you could divide this volume up by two workouts, three workouts, four workouts, or maybe even one workout. Although studies show that you wanna train a body part at least twice a week for maximal results. So what do the studies show? It's anywhere between nine to 18 sets total per week per body part is seems to be the sweet spot for most people. Now, of course, there's gonna be people on either end of the spectrum, people with extreme recovery and genetics and who can just handle a lot of load and a lot of volume and the body really responds well. And then there's people who just really get fried with volume and intensity who are on the other end of the spectrum. But the studies do show nine, about nine to 18 sets total per week. And this is where I'm always within that range. So I'm either doing three sets per body part, per workout, and each body part three days a week, or I'm going up as high as six sets per body part in three days a week. I wanna take that a step further too because there's not only a massive individual variance with this, the nine to 18, I also think there's a massive variance even per body part. So we were talking earlier about how I'm just like blown away by the amount of volume you can handle on your legs considered what I can handle on my legs. But then there's other body parts, my biceps I could just destroy and smash and they can handle so much. So you have to kind of figure this out too for you as an individual and then you as an individual per body part. So it's not like this generic rule where it's like, oh, it seems like 12 sets is perfect for me for the week. It may be perfect for your chest, but then for your legs, it may not be or for your arms, it may not be. So there is that variance, but I definitely think that a lot of people flirt with going way, way beyond this. And that was the mistake I made when I started to increase frequency. Like, and I, you know, when you look at maps anabolic, most everything is two to three sets. And I remember the first time I was following a, this is well before anabolic, but when we were, I was following a protocol similar to that where the frequency was higher. I was training two to three times a week on the muscle, like dropping it down to two sets felt like I wasn't doing enough. And so I would keep going like, well, I'm gonna follow this, but I'm gonna do more sets cause I know I can cause I could do more. And I was still in that mindset of like the last question of training to failure and keep pushing and stuff. And so it's, it's funny that it doesn't not take as nearly as much as you think it does if you are training with more frequencies. This is a tough one for me to prescribe generally, even because like experience also plays a major factor in that, like coming in, if I get a beginner, like, obviously, you know, we're gonna work our way through that. Like what kind of volume, you know, is even appropriate for, you know, somebody just, just being exposed to this new stress to their body. So again, like between everything you guys said, it's like there's so many different individual variances involved in this process. But, you know, things to aspire towards, I think, yeah, the three to six kind of set amount is pretty much a general thing that I shoot for. So the recommendation then, based off of like what Sal said in the nine 18th, such as such a wide variance, is that start with the least first and scale up. I mean, the goal always is to do as little as possible to elicit the most amount of change. So start at nine and pay attention to how you feel and how your body's responding. If it's responding tremendously at nine, there's no reason to scale. Save that for later to scale it up. Yeah, there's a difference, by the way, between optimal sets and then the maximum amount of sets you can handle. The maximum amount of sets you can handle is not optimal. So you may, optimal may be, you know, 12 total sets per body part for the week, but you can handle 18. And that 18 means you can recover from it, but you're not gonna get as good as results as you did with 12. What we tend to do is we tend to skip over optimal and go to the max that we can handle. Also another factor, you said, you know, body parts can be different. It's also exercises, right? So I can handle 18 sets for the week for my legs if it's like, you know, lunges and leg extensions and single leg deadlifts and stuff like that. 18 sets of squats and front squats, maybe not. That might be a little too much. That's such a good point because that probably speaks a lot to my point with being able to have a camera on my biceps. I'm not doing a bunch of compound lifts for my biceps. I'm doing a bunch of preacher curls and dumbbell curls and machine stuff. So that's probably a lot of the reason why I can handle so much more than my legs. Next question is from Danny Burdick. How does poor gut health affect the metabolism and your ability to efficiently lose body fat? Okay, so I'm gonna change the question just so that the answer becomes more obvious, but then we'll get more specific to this particular question. So the question now is, how does poor health affect metabolism and your ability to lose body fat, right? If you're unhealthy, your body isn't gonna adapt as well to anything. It's going to want to hold on to body fat because body fat is an insurance policy, right? If you have stored body fat on your body, that is just in case something goes wrong, just in case you don't have enough food, just in case you get sick, right? You've got all this stored energy. By the way, our body does store glycogen in our liver and some in our muscles, but even lean ripped athletes have far more energy stored as body fat than they do as glycogen. So it's this wonderful insurance policy. So if you don't feel good, if you're metabolism, I mean, excuse me, if your health is poor, your body is gonna want to store body fat. It's also gonna want to not build energy expensive muscle, right? So if you have poor health, you're not gonna build as much muscle. So now let's talk more specifically about the gut. Although that falls under this category, there's some pretty interesting specifics when it comes to gut health. Number one, nutrient deficiencies become much more prominent. So if you have poor gut health, you're not absorbing nutrients. In fact, nutrient deficiencies are quite common even if people who supplement when they have poor gut health because their body's just not absorbing enough nutrients. Does that affect your hormones and your metabolism? Absolutely. Poor gut health also strongly contributes to overall systemic inflammation. So if you're gonna work out and get inflamed and have to heal from that, well, now you're even more inflamed and it's gonna take you even longer to recover. This is a big issue that a lot of athletes start to run into later on because we tend to hammer ourselves with food. We tend to hammer ourselves with exercise. Lots of stress on the body can also make the gut more susceptible to having issues. We eat right after we work out, which is often a good idea, but sometimes not a good idea, especially if we worked out really, really, really hard. It can cause gut imbalances. Then we take lots of supplements with artificial sweeteners, which there's debate as to whether or not it's okay for the gut or not. I think that it's probably, I lean more towards it probably not good for the gut. And so then you see all these athletes who've been working out for a long time and they find in the 30s, can't digest food like they used to. All of a sudden foods that they used to eat now they can't eat anymore. And then their bodies are just, not just not responding like they used to, but like way differently than they used to. So this is a big deal, but so is your overall health. So if you're unhealthy, you can pretty much kiss burning body fat and building muscle and stuff. Goodbye, it's just not gonna happen as much. Well, I think there's an even simpler way to put this. And I think I remember, I think it was Paul checked the first time we interviewed him that I really loved the way that he talked about this. And I don't think I'd ever communicated it this way before. And it's really this simple. Your body has like 11 major systems in it. And if any of them are off, it affects all of them. They're all connected. They're all your one thing. That's right. And the reason why this is even a question and why there's somewhat of a misunderstanding around this is because in Western medicine, we isolate. We take, you know, your- Yeah, there's a digestive system, the hormone system. Yeah, we're educated that way around it. Our professions are around that. You go see a specialist for each one of those. Unless you're going to see like a holistic type of doctor, you're not getting that. You're getting someone who's talking to you about the central nervous system. You're telling somebody who's talking to you about the skeletal system. You're getting somebody that's talking about the digestive system. But the truth is they all work together. And if one of them is not running optimally, it is going to negatively affect all of them. Now, maybe it negatively affects one system more than the other, but they're all being impacted. And that your body has to prioritize to try and get that running optimal. So if it's prioritizing any of its energy and resources to try and fix that area that's not doing well, the gut in this situation, then it's not going to be able to put as much resources to other systems. It's like looking at a car and saying, which one of these affects the car's ability to drive? The pistons, the exhaust system, the fuel injection, or the tires, all of them. If any of one of those are off, or which one affects the speed of the car? Yeah, they're all going to affect the car. So they're all going to have an issue. So if you have poor health anywhere, then it's going to make everything much more challenging. Well, I do think though too, this is one of those overlooked areas. And now it's just starting to get light because of new science and we're getting more information in terms of how to better address gut health, especially in athletics and what we're consuming and how that really affects the overall system of the body. And so I think that it's good that it's getting highlighted now and people are asking questions like this because it's pointing to that fact that this is also something to really consider when you want your body to perform at its best and to be able to get the kind of results that you're looking for. So if something like this needs to be addressed, you need to look into it. I remember when we started the podcast about six years ago, nobody in this space was talking about gut health. I mean, you had the very holistic wellness side that talked about it, but nobody in sports performance, fat loss or muscle building was talking about gut health. And I remember we would bring it up. We were kind of the first people in the space to really talk about it quite a bit. And I remember all the messages I was getting from people who were like, oh crap. This is what- Dude, it was mind blowing to me even. Like I was never exposed to information, going through all the certifications and through athletics. And obviously you knew that you wanted to kind of eat better food just because you didn't want to get like fatter. But that was really the gist of what kind of information. Well, it's again, it goes back to what I was saying. We're not educated that way. We're educated in a way that breaks up all the systems. And when you're thinking of like the digestive system and you're in the business of building muscle and burning body fat, you just don't think about how much those are actually connected to each other. And I think that's the mistake we make a lot of times is realizing that. And I mean, even like mental stress will affect all those things. There's so many things that affect your ability. And that's why it's so complex too. And it's never a simple answer for somebody who's like, oh, I'm having a hard time losing body fat, even though I'm doing all these things. Just calories in, calories out, bro. Yeah, no, it's way more complex than that. Totally. Look, if you like our information, you gotta head over to mindpumpfree.com and check out all of our free guides. So we have guides on developing better arms, midsection, better squat, burning body fat, building muscle. We have guides for personal trainers. We have guides for people with back pain. Go check it out mindpumpfree.com. You can also find all of us on Instagram. So you can find Justin at Mind Pump Justin, me at Mind Pump Salon, Adam at Mind Pump Adam. An important part of development. If you want somebody to be able to do transfer, okay? So if you want someone to do the same thing over and over and over again, then okay. Like you can have them trained by doing the same thing over and over and over again. But if you want transfer, which is their ability to take those skills and apply them to new challenges, which of course is like the essence of not only athletic creativity, but